A/N: Well, I was expecting this to go on for a bit longer, but... *shrug* Other employees of the Order thinking about the exorcists is actually one of my favorite things. Also, I get to dump a bunch of headcanons I've been storing up. *chuckle*

Thank you to Candy Crackpot, AngelHeartsX, person, and Lena-luvs-cats for reviewing!

Title: Mandala

Author: liketolaugh

Rating: T

Pairings: None

Genre: Friendship/Family

Warnings: None

Summary: For the 221st night countdown run by lenaleelee17 on Tumblr. Day 1: Favorite character (Allen Walker)

Disclaimer: I only wish I owned D. Gray-man.

Day 4: Exorcists

Exorcists made the worst patients.

Head Nurse hated to say it, but it was true. Exorcists had a frustrating tendency to come in with horrifying injuries, argue with treatment if it was still at all possible, and then start attempting to leave as soon as they woke up. It was maddening.

This tendency was universal, and the bane of Head Nurse's existence. Cross would vanish within a few days if there wasn't a woman in the infirmary. Zokalo threatened his way out. Allen would charm them into letting him leave early, and no one believed her when she said so, which meant personally going and dragging him back.

It had been easy to cope with, early in Head Nurse's career, when all of the exorcists were adults. Some of them could be reasoned with, and the rest at least had a basic understanding of their own vulnerability and worth, even if they chose to completely disregard their common sense. (Of which, they clearly had none.)

It was when the child exorcists started to appear that Head Nurse had trouble.

Lenalee was the first Head Nurse had ever encountered below the age of sixteen, and most were over twenty. She first showed up in the infirmary with dispirited eyes and legs that were bruised and scraped, stumbling with exhaustion and trying not to cry. Trying to be brave.

She wasn't there three days before she was taken away again.

Lenalee showed up with distressing regularity, and she was sweet but rarely spoke unless prompted. She always looked sad, and for the first two years, her legs were perpetually covered in bruises and scrapes in various states of healing. (Human legs, after all, weren't meant to smash through metal, augmented by Innocence or not.) Head Nurse looked after her the best she could, but there was only so much even she could do for a patient with little will to live, whose only thoughts seemed to be geared toward surviving for just a little longer.

Then there was Kanda, who was vicious and stubborn and saw no need for treatment in the light of his (admittedly remarkable) healing ability, and who insisted that he receive a new mission as soon as the last had been done. Head Nurse decided from the first time she saw him to disregard all arguments and force him to stay until she was satisfied with his recovery, and despite all attempts to change her mind, she'd stuck with that since then.

There was Daisya, mischievous and hyper and with a special hatred for bed rest and a need for constant action. Allen, the aforementioned troublesome charmer. Lavi, who was some unholy combination of the two. Timothy, who seemed to forget that he was injured as soon as he woke up the first time after treatment and always eager to get back to work.

All of these godforsaken children shared a mentality which was lacking in the adult exorcists, a certain disregard for themselves that came from repeated reinforcement, not a deliberate decision to take matters into their own hands.

Because Head Nurse was not oblivious to the influence the Order tended to have on the younger exorcists. There was no reasonable way to expect, really, that they could tell them, over and over, that the fate of the world was in their hands, that they needed to fight for a cause that was almost bigger than they could comprehend, and not expect it to have an effect.

Head Nurse still remembered the early days of her employment, when exorcists were almost always addressed as the accommodator of their Innocence, not as people themselves. There were some days she doubted that the administrators knew the exorcists' names, even though she herself knew every single one. It had been months before Lenalee stopped answering to 'the Dark Boots' accommodator', and longer before Kanda did the same.

But she digressed. The point was, the Order had done everything in its power to make sure that the exorcists knew that they existed only to defeat the akuma. That they knew that that was their only purpose in life.

The older exorcists disregarded this as the foul-hearted rubbish that it was.

The younger exorcists, on the other hand, seemed to believe it.

And it was a difficult patient that believed that their own life had no worth outside of their ability to fight.

Again, short, but... *wave* I'm content with this one, I think. More musing, mostly. Thanks for reading, and please review!