What's Left Behind [Lev/Private]

Lev had been through these halls countless times, probably glossed over books in times just as many, but he never quite found whatever it is that he was looking for. Not that he knew he'd have found it if he never knew what it was. His lack of ability to heal made him even less than useless during the plague, and while he did some work around Seireitei, he couldn't say it was something notable, to begin with. He liked to believe that he was largely unaffected by the plague, with his shinigami's soul carefully tucked away in some grey area of their shared unconscious. And yet, if there was any indication that they shared any sort of anything except inhabiting the same body, Lev could at least confidently say that he hadn't found it... yet.


He could say he was trying, in the very least, but this book wasn't even among those he could pry that information from. 

What Machie was looking for, Lev was seeking to put back. It wasn't until he was inches from mindlessly chucking it back in that he even noticed the hand hovering on the spot that he even noticed someone was there. Same shit, different day. Same shinigami looking for the same books, different shinigami looking for the same books. They're all pretty much the same to him. They were survivors, but most of them at least partially seeking to be the first one to solve the plague's conundrum. Nowadays, it's what everyone and their mothers are looking to seek. 

"I thought this book was uninteresting enough that the plunderers literally left it right here," he said flatly, giving Machie very little regard despite looking at her straight in the eye. Lev never blinked, and neither did she look away until he lifted the book at her face level. The lack of dust on the book itself was astounding, no dust even when he took it as though to confirm that it was the right book. Then again, Lev couldn't say he was returning it to the right spot he got it from. Just... returning it to a shelf it looked like it belonged to. 

"But here you are, bothering with Zanpakutou For Dummies long after you'd have a need for it." He tilted his head slightly to peek at her as he held it near her hands, hoping the book wouldn't have to touch that dust-covered shelf that looked like it could house spiders any moment now. "I mean, I'm not judging you, considering I just read it and sat through the mess of words that was the author trying to make out what zanpakutou spirits are and what a shinigami relationship is supposed to be. I wouldn't say it was rubbish. All in all, though, I think it's a waste of paper." 

Lev’s sudden proximity nearly startled the dark skinned woman. Slowly, she turned her head to see who had gotten so close to her without being noticed. Machie accepted the book, after catching the disgusted look Lev gave the shelf. She watched him talk at her, unblinking. The feline glanced down at it briefly. She wiped away the cobwebs and dust before replacing the volume on the shelf. The slightly weighty book hadn’t been the one she was searching for, but the dark skinned woman had read it once before. Her hazel eyes returned to the pale face of the person who had approached her. His short, messy hair and dead, silver eyes reminded the woman of herself. For a brief moment, the feline shinigami considered turning on her heel and walking away however that would have been rude.

“I haven’t read that one in a long time,” Machie told Lev, voice soft and with hints of nostalgia. “It doesn’t hurt to look at the basics a little more closely, though. There is much that is taken for granted, although this particular book probably doesn’t contain such things.”

The slightly taller shinigami tilted her head to the side, watching the man beside her for a response. He was talkative, direct, and almost rude, but he actually bothered to be conversational with her, something the feline woman hadn’t experienced much of for a long while. The more striking thing about this shinigami, however, was how self-assured he seemed. Most of the others were on edge, irritable, worn down, depressed, or withdrawn.

Curious.

“I didn’t catch your name,” Machie added. If nothing else, it would be nice to put a name to the face of the man with such a refreshing attitude. After this, she could politely excuse herself if he didn’t do anything else surprising. Although, allowing herself a short, meaningless talk wouldn’t hurt. To interact or flee, that was the question.

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"Well, if you were looking to find valuable information, take this book out of your list. It's an insult to zanpakutou spirits." Lev took one last side glance at the book before peering back to Machie. In the years that he'd been a semi-resident of this library, he couldn't say that Machie was a familiar face to him, and yet she didn't have the face of those only looking to take away. For once, it looked like he found someone who'd just read. For fun. Nowadays, even finding those people seemed more like a rarity when time was too much a luxury to be afforded. 

Soon, he took one step back and turned on his heel to face Machie, and yet he only stood stiffly on his spot, without too much flare on his movements. He didn't raise a hand to shake hers, but he looked at her firmly, as though to say that he wasn't about to be the one to turn away first. 

"It's Lev, by the way. It should've been Levi, but it's a pretty boring name. Not that you'd ever find a need to know. It's kind of fun seeing alive people around, though, so why not." There was no hint of derision on his voice as he spoke, no hint of the haughtiness his manner used to carry to easily. Five years had come and gone, and gone were the days people gave too many fucks about who knew better, or who had a better power, or who had been serving the Court longer. He could've easily said 'Back in my day, people introduced themselves first', but on a sea of people who just escaped death and people who are about to die, he thought manners were far from the thing he'd make a huge fuss about. 

"Considering you're here only now, though, I don't suppose you came here looking for the same books most people would look for. Anything you're looking for, in particular? I suppose you didn't come all the way here to wipe every dusty cranny with your sleeve." 

344 / 811

Machie continued to stare at Lev, amused by his chatter. If she didn’t know better, she would have assumed he had somehow managed to miss the past five years. Her lips twitched at the corners, belying her opinion if only just barely. His forward ways and confidence convinced the feline shinigami to stay and chat for awhile, or listen to Lev babble. Even before the plague, Machie hadn’t been terribly verbose.

Nevertheless, the feline woman met the male shinigami’s gaze evenly, almost staring through him. Looking people full in the face was usually painful these days, most people looked haunted or stressed. Fortunately, Lev seemed to be an exception.

“It’s nice to meet you Lev, I’m Machie,” the taller shinigami introduced herself, voice a bit bland. Inwardly, she was still musing at Lev’s casual, almost cheery speech pattern. It didn’t quite match his facial expression, though, that easily could have been the results of the last five years.

“I came here because I have fond memories of this place. I was…” a pause and a tilt of the head interrupted her speech here, “I suppose I was looking for something familiar. So much has changed.” Machie didn’t need to specify what exactly had changed, everyone knew that. The plague was at the back of everyone’s minds if it wasn’t their first thought. Everything was off kilter and out of place, gathering dust and half healed wounds.

“I don’t think I could keep this whole place dust free even if I wanted to,” the dark skinned woman murmured, a hint of a frown appearing on her face for a moment. Absently, she dusted her sleeve off on her thigh and tried to ignore the small holes and threadbare texture of the fabric. Machie had tried to keep some semblance of order and maintenance in her life, but with limited success. There was little she could control.

“Do you come here often?”

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Total: 984

"Do I come here often? Ha..." His silver eyes took wistful glances around the library, images of a bustling establishment dancing in his mind, only to see dust-covered seats and empty tables in its wake. Eventually, his gaze fell on gaps between the shelves, trying hard to envision the kind of book that once occupied the spot, and whether his answer could've been on one of those books. 

"You could say that, I suppose." Lev gave Machie a half-hearted nod, and casually folded his arms on his chest. "I'm not allowed anywhere near the hospital, so most, if not all, my duties and free time are spent in here. Even my furry friend lives here now, it's nice." There was a time, sometime in the now-distant past, when he obsessively searched these books. He had to be forced out from overstaying, and he had to come home to take a spellbook or two to Kokoro. They took better care of themselves by then, at some point he bothered with care, like trying to brush tangles out of this strawberry-blonde hair in an attempt to keep its pristine condition, and trying to eat way more than he could handle in an attempt to at least look marginally healthy. He managed to fish out the recipe for these gender-shifting cookies out of the Fourth shortly when they decided they couldn't bother with the dumb cookies as the plague went on its height, and yet it was the only thing he could say he'd successfully managed consistently. He goes home to bathe when he decided he was malodorous and leave Kokoro behind, not wanting the little critter to witness the abomination that was the plague. 

"Does it still count as me coming here often if I don't have to come here to be here? Maybe not?" He took one sharp inhale, his face wrinkled with a slight bemusement, before turning back to Machie. "Maybe you could come here often and show the books some love. We've kind of lost all our regulars. You get to hang around to read and uhh... not sure. Help make it look like an acceptable library for the future generations, I suppose. If that's even a thing. Not that a lot of those souls in Rukongai are any less enthusiastic in joining the Academy to join us." Lev gave her a shrug, and it was one of those times he wished she'd actually entertain the idea. 


"I mean, if you're not spread thin with all the things you have to do. I hear everyone's still doing double shifts to cover things."  

Machie followed Lev’s gaze as he, too, took note of the slight deterioration of the space. She wondered how lonely it was for the man if he was here so often. The thought of one of her favorite places silent and abandoned instead of peaceful made her feel vaguely sad.

Her brow arched at the man’s claim that he wasn’t allowed near the hospital.

He must have no healing talent. Probably focuses on spellcasting.

Even though the feline woman knew full well the Third wasn’t entirely medics, her association with Merrick and Ren had made medicine her primary association with the spellcasting division.

The next string of words out of Lev’s mouth drew Machie’s gaze back to his face. An eyebrow raised a fraction.

Is he inviting me to spend more time with him?

“This place has gotten too quiet,hasn’t it?” she mused, not quite answering the question.

The feline woman considered the prospect of spending more time here; perhaps now that things were a little less chaotic she could attempt to restore some order to the Third’s library. Though not a member of the spellcasters, Machie respected their focus on kidou and the collection of knowledge they possessed. She had been allowed to use this place as one of her refuges, tucked away in a corner where she could read unquestioned and without being approached. Something in her chest ached at the memory.

It was somewhat doubtful Lev would help her clean up the library, but his presence might make returning to one of her favored haunts (how long had it been since she’d had time to come here?) a little less strange and jarring.

Then, the dark skinned shinigami considered her schedule. For the most part, between mandatory training sessions, runs to perform konsou, and patrols of the inner districts of Rukongai, Machie elected to sleep or meditate. There was little stopping her from choosing to do that here.

“It would be nice if there were more people here wouldn’t it?” It wasn’t quite an agreement, but her tone was promising.

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The only response to her inquiry, for a long while, was a long, drawn-out sigh from the blonde man.

If only they listened intently, they might even be able to hear the ghosts of the past crooning at their ears. For Machie, it might have been different-- Giggles being silenced, chairs being dragged, pages being turned. Lev, however, had a wide array of experiences with libraries. He remembered late nights with Lyv, when she snuck out of the quarters to read on history. He commented on it and, well, at least half of those ended up with a book change, the rest was Lyv claiming that she swears those kinds of books carried some kind of curse. When he took over her body, he remembered sneaking into this very library to look for answers-- he was often shooed or scolded by the librarians from hoarding the books, taking them to a corner, and poring over them while they scattered around him, back slumped with fervent determination. He often had disagreements with them until, well, they kind of died. The rest was chaos, long days of chaos when all he could hear was the frightened murmur of the people talking about the plague, and no one to silence them. Their words hung in the air and stayed, even long after they departed. Sometimes, he'd hear intruders just stealing books off, some announcing what kind of books they should be taking. Some of them ended with the sound of books unceremoniously dumped on top of another, but most ended in curses when they realized how well the restricted section was blocked off. The last sounds he remembered was the occasional sound of hellos cutting through the silence, of people's slow footsteps as they wander around-- not really reading, just reminiscing. 

"It's gotten too quiet, yeah. I like the idea of the silence, but not this kind of silence. My kind of silence is a comfortable kind. This silence is just..." Lev grimaced, unsure of how he'd describe this hollow feeling carved out from inside him. "Deader than dead. I used to stay with dead things for a long time, can guarantee they're noisier."  

This isn't Buyan, where everyone was dead and he'd occasionally hear collective cries from his resident skulls, or when it would suddenly echo with Lyvalaea's thoughts, or when a sudden downpour would cut through his blood tea afternoons. It was one thing to expect dead things to stay dead and the silent remain silent. He supposed that even he, the one who liked seeing death, felt empty when things he expect to stay alive ends up dying. Not sad, just... empty. 

"I suppose it would be nice to have some people. More people...." His eyebrows raised lightly as his lips tightened to a purse. "Ah, not too many people," Lev frantically waved his arms, taking back what could be thought as a let's fill the library with people kind of thing. "Just... more people. Hopefully the not-dying-soon kind." A silence hung between them, for a while, before he stopped still and looked in front of him, wholly pretending to be highly interested in a specific speck of dust on the shelf. 

"But then... the plague is pretty much done, isn't it? Do you think the answer to that plague was ever in these halls? A good chunk of people thought this would be a nice go-to place for plague information, and I must admit the Third's collection is intensive as it is expansive. However, if the answer was as easy as looking at a few books, that plague could've been nipped in the bud. If it was an easy opponent, even, a master or two could have easily devised a solution to stop it from spreading. Do you think the answer would have been... in a place none of us can reach? Or worse, undocumented beneath a series of puzzles that one can only hope to solve by personally going through those hoops?" 

Machie raised an eyebrow at Lev’s sigh but let the comfortable silence settle between them after. She slipped into her own contemplations; the piles of eclectic books she'd borrow from the Third ranging from psychology to kidou theory, searching out Merrick's presence and trying not to annoy him too badly, curling up in one of the less visited accloves to evade direct social interaction. She had admired the library, it had been one of her sanctuaries. Now it was… a shell of what it had once been with dust, the fucking dust, settling into the spaces where knowledge had been taken never to return just like --Machie’s chest ached and she tried to ignore the thought unbidden. Her personal losses were something the feline woman did not enjoy contemplating. If only the things taken from her and the library could be put back. Some of the damage was permanent, something that chafed at Machie. She couldn't return things to the way they were.

The bitter expression tilting the corners of her mouth downwards and drawing her straight brows together slid off her face. A short sigh of her own followed. A hand came up to sweep her braids out of her face.

Her hazel eyes settled on Lev’s silver ones with a distant stare that seemed to look through him. Nevertheless she nodded along as he complained about the library's state. It was indeed too quiet here.

Dead things? Machie’s right eyebrow twitched questioningly at Lev’s casual mention of spending time with dead things. Closer inspection of the man’s microexpressions made the feline woman suspect he had been through hardship, something harsh and traumatic. Machie decided not to ask directly. Everyone had been affected by the harsh realities of the plague.

Then, Lev turned the subject back to the sorts of people he hoped would visit the library. Ones that weren’t sick or dying. Harsh, but logical. No one wanted to be near someone with that sickness. After the harrowing anxiety of trying to avoid that awful rust on ones’ blade, the mere idea of being surrounded by carriers of the mysterious plague was too much for many to bear.

“I'd hope not,” she murmured. Not even the influx in missions had completely spared Machie of the madness, no matter how lucky she considered herself for not getting swallowed up in the thick of it.

“It's finally over…” the feline woman replied numbly. “I really couldn't say if there was an answer… maybe it's better if it didn't exist at all. People searched so desperately though, maybe it was never put together. Does it matter now? Even if we found a cure, so much is already missing.”

It took conscious effort not to count the empty spaces in her life, to keep from wondering how many books had been taken never to return to their rightful places, how many pages had been dogeared by hopeless research with notes scribbled in the margins losing cogency as they became less and less legible. How much dust had gathered in the spaces left behind? Machie didn't want to know.

“It would be better to focus on cleaning up the mess it left behind. To fill in the holes….”

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Total: 1865

For the teeny fraction of a second, the smallest hints of a smirk appeared on the corner of Lev's lips, an eyebrow raised in slight amusement. "A realist who lives in the present. I like that. Simple and straightforward." He gave her a single nod— of consideration, but neither approval or disapproval. Lev carefully reached up to her, placing a firm grip on Machie's shoulders as he looked her straight in the eye with a deadpan expression on his face.

"You're exactly the kind of person everyone would hate if Seireitei wakes up to another wave of that plague." 

Lev pressed his lips firmly, almost resembling what could've been considered as a derisive smile towards her direction. He liked to think he wasn't judging her all that much, the glint in his eyes firm, but nothing less honest.

"'Why did these people not research about it when we had time?' 'It's like they don't care if history repeats itself!' The don't seem to be thankful enough for their spared lives.'" Lev mimicked the high and dramatic voices of those left behind during the last plagues he'd been in, echoing the voices of mortals now long gone. "Nooo, if we don't find the cure, our researcher friends would have died in vain! We should keep looking!'"  It echoed the voices of a much recent time, one that plagued the very walls of the Third, letting his other hand cup over his mouth and stifled a pretentious sob.

"Yeah right." He pulled his hand away with a scoff as he rolled his eyes the farthest it could reach. "I think it's pretty pointless too. You'd think that with a race to the cure, whoever concocted that bullshit already mutated the strain so it becomes incurable. You don't think they're trying again, though, do you? They've have to have some sort of immunity to pull that kind of royal assholery." Lev sounded even a wee bit doubtful at his own words, knowing someone, somewhere out there, might as well be. It could've been a shinigami, or it could've been a human. It could've been a hollow-breed. It could be something else entirely, and they would never know. "I think it matters, for some people. It gives them the comfort of closure. That this phase is truly over. That they're prepared if it ever comes back. Mostly, it matters to some people so they can silence their own demons." Lev wasn't about to say how the only thing in it, for him, was sating the curiosity it held, the cleverness weaved behind the work that toppled the order shinigami boasted to the rest of the races. To discover the beast that crushed their wills and lives. That in the face of one plague, the shinigami was nothing but creatures that are slightly-less-mortal than mortals. If it wasn't so prevalent, Lev even wondered somewhat if he could've been friends with it. A chuckle escaped him at that thought as he took a step back, pulling himelf farther away from Machie. 

"Fear is motivating in its own ways when it holds a firm grip on people. Too much of it, however, makes it a hindrance. You could be saying you're doing something for the progression of things, and you can be the one regressing the most. It's a funny thing." He turned on his heel and sauntered a bit away from Machie, hands clasped on his back. "Fear of the future. Fear of the unknown. Fear of what might be. Fear of what could have been." His steps went on an abrupt stop. "People fear so many things, you know? I think fear is just hope in a different direction. The dumb direction." Lev tipped his head back, just enough that he could peek at Machie from the corner of his eye. 

"But I think you're handling that fear well. You're filling it in and drowning it with hope. I like it." 

He took a few strides forward, leaving the shinigami to her devices as he closed in to the side of the shelf. "Should you ever decide that these tomes would help fill that emptiness you feel that's making you look at all the missing spots, I'm sure Bonnet won't mind you overstaying around," he gave her a dismissive wave of the hand as he disappeared behind it, his form visible to Machie only through the gaps left between the books. His gaze on the next shelf was scrutinizing at best, judging the spots where there could've been new omissions from their collection.

"And, you never did tell me that book you were looking for."