Excerpt: Foresight Is 20/20

The loud knock on the door dragged Lavi out of his feverish dreams, but it took him a moment to realize he was awake at all. When he forced his eye open he thought he saw Kanda standing there in the doorway scowling at him, but when he blinked he saw only the heavy wooden door. Then he blinked again and Kanda was back, with a ghostly outline of the door half obscuring him.

Groaning, Lavi turned and buried his face in the pillow. It was soaked with sweat, as were the sheets tangled around him. Although he always slept in at least his pants and shirt when on a mission, this once he'd stripped down completely. He was grateful he had, or he'd have been forced to finish out the mission in clothes that reeked of sweat and fear.

The knock came again, echoing painfully in his pounding head. "Yeah, what?" he rasped out, struggling to raise his voice enough to be heard beyond the door which might or might not still be closed.

There was a pause, then he saw Kanda sigh. Which was a feat, considering he had his eye closed and face still turned away. "I'm guessing you're not up to coming with me to hunt down the damned Innocence today, either," Kanda grumbled.

Lavi tried to sit up, and his stomach rebelled. He gagged and choked on bile, but managed to keep himself from throwing up. Barely. Not that there was anything left in his stomach; he'd lost everything yesterday after he'd first gotten to the room, and just the thought of dinner had sent him burrowing under his blankets in an attempt to hide from the world.

"No," he groaned, clenching his fists in the sheets as he fought for control of his body. "Fuck. I think... I'm even... worse." He had to force the words out between the pulsing of his headache, hardly able to focus enough through the pain to form the thought in the first place. "Sorry... Yuu."

"Not like you're much use at the best of times," Kanda said, but the imaginary Kanda in Lavi's mind's eye actually looked a bit worried. That made Lavi certain it was just a hallucination, because the day Kanda was worried about him was the day they all went ice-skating in Hell.

The hallucinatory Kanda hesitated a moment longer, but finally turned away and left Lavi to suffer in solitude. Lavi just lay there for a long while, drifting in and out of fever dreams.