Category: Gen
Characters: Leverrier, Komui, mentions of others.
Warnings: This entire thing is about Leverrier.
Disclaimer: D.Gray-man and its characters are the property of Hoshino Katsura.




I.

Something was very wrong with his family. His father sometimes walked with him down through London, the very center of it, past the churches, vendors, and shops with an air of 'we own this place, you know' about him. It was winter now, and his cheeks were chapped and burning from the cold.

The peddlers were trying to sell their wares, but his father never bought anything like all other fathers would sometimes do. He never knew exactly what his father did, but he was always away for the church, and his mother told him not to worry about it, and that he'd understand when he was older. His brothers never mentioned anything, and they politely changed the subject when it came up at dinner a few days later, instead slipping him a small chunk of Stilton. He hadn't seen his sister in weeks.


II.

Older came one day when he was around nine. He'd grown used to his father's frequent disciplines, and after only a handful of visits, he dreaded traveling to the Order.

He just wanted to touch them, after all, since they were hurting, and his father and the others never did anything but stand there and say 'again'. Once he was punished for being sick at the sight of a girl. There was something just so wrong, horribly wrong about her body that he couldn't have helped it.

He cursed himself for ever wishing to know just why his father was away all those years. He hated his father and all the blood and the screams, he hated the beatings, and he hated the Order. Most of all, he hated her. Hebraska.

From the stories his great uncles told him, she started out as nothing more than a twisted mountain of gnarled flesh, and over the years she grew into a coiling, glowing, snake-like thing that was only barely human anymore save for the voice. She was the family pride. Saints were supposed to be beautiful, he thought. They don’t kill, either.

But that was just how it worked in this place, and his mother always doctored his bruises and scrapes when he came home without saying a word.


III.

Somewhere between the age of fifteen and twenty-five he gave up on most of his harbored feelings and simply did what came naturally; he began turning into his father.

A part of it never felt exactly right, but he could actually sleep pretty well at night now. That was just how it worked.


IV.

The experiments finally stopped. For the first time in his life he saw his closest cousin rear a daughter, and she was beautiful now, in her prime. She lived seven years longer than intended, and she'd be married soon enough.

It was true that he never really stopped resenting his father and his father's father for everything (and especially not Hebraska,) but this newness was so uncomfortable that it pulled at something in his chest.

And his family was "saved," of all things, by a young oriental man who came from a family of tailors. Saved. Saved.

"Saved? Not quite, Mr. Lee. My family is just as damned now as it was before."

And to this, Komui could say nothing. He just excused himself under the guise of making more coffee.


V.

He was relieved when it was time for him to be given an assistant, since it would certainly be a boy, and he actually yearned for a way to feel young again.

The aging process was going only decently—his prostate was acting up, his wife was frigid (and funnily enough starting to resemble her mother,) and the only excitement was in the occasional visit to the Order, where any number of things could preoccupy him. The church had become his other woman.

Naturally, he was vaguely disappointed when the young man, Howard, had turned out to be quiet and set in his work. He couldn’t complain, however, since the boy was reared correctly (he knew,) cleaned up nice, and was willing to do his job.

Howard wasn't a challenge. He examined him in his office during their second meeting, and, rubbing at his temples lightly, determined that he’d be taken on the next trip to the Order. Whenever that should come.

His hair had a similar color when he was the boy’s age. Not that he thought too much of the past, now, of course.