Experiences

By: VivaciousWolf245 & TheBlackButler

Disclaimer: don't own DGM!

Quick Author's Note: I know it seems a little cut off, but there's some things that I want to leave Maddie to explain. Well, then, let's just get right to it!

I groaned. Pain hit me first. Was the pain a good thing? It meant that I was still alive. Had the implants worked? I could remember Maddie offering to go first, much to my completely angered maternal instincts screaming at me to yank her back and tie her down so she wouldn't. Every wince as she started screaming hit me and I hoped briefly that she didn't remember any of the pain. It was excruciating. When Hevlaska had grabbed me, I ignored the height and focused on the light that had surrounded me. The pain was worse than I'd ever felt in my life and, upon hearing one of my arms snap, I felt a little sad that my record of no broken bones had been crushed and spit on.

As I opened my eyes, I saw the ceiling rushing by me. Lavi, Bookman, and a few nurses were rushing me down a hallway in a gurney. My brown eyes glanced around, Lavi noticing I was awake. I ignored him. Maddie was missing. Where was Maddie? Why wasn't she there? What happened?

"Rain-chan's awake!" Lavi exclaimed softly, a faux grin playing on his face. I didn't respond. I could see the blurred line between real and fake. It was sad, I thought, that one of my friends had to pretend all the time. He really loved his job. It was almost a shame. He'd have made a wonderful history teacher – the funny ones always taught you the most, it seemed.

"No shit, Sherlock," I groaned, trying to sit up only to have one of the nurses sternly push me down and waves of pain to hit me from my arms. "Where's Maddie? Did everything go okay?" Bookman gave me a firm nod of confirmation to my latter question, but no response to the first, and I glared at him. It helped a little, regardless of the fact that it probably did nothing to faze him with his old age. He'd probably seen more than anyone should in a lifetime.

Lavi grinned almost comically at me, and I could tell that it was real, "Everything was a complete success! We just have to wait a little to figure out the Innocence type, thought judging by the cuts on your limbs, we're betting parasitic." I growled as I began thrashing. The nurse wouldn't let me sit up!

"Damn it, Lavi, Bookman!" I hissed, venom in my voice as I ignored the blood seeping through the bandages as the wounds there reopened, "why the hell won't someone give me a straight answer! Where the hell is my SISTER!" We entered the infirmary after a few more unintelligible shouts, and I allowed myself a small bit of comfort when I saw Maddie sitting up ( I growled a little at that ) and talking to Komui. When she looked over at me, I thrashed a little more, glaring heatedly at her.

With a strength I didn't know I had, I pulled myself away from the nurse restraining me, much to the chagrin of the junior bookman, and stormed towards her. I ignored the pain in my legs and the protest of the other nurses, grabbing her firmly by her shoulders and surely shaking her head off of them. "What the HELL were you thinking!" I was in her face and shouting at her, and I didn't really care. My worry outweighed, once more, my well-defined sense of personal space.

She tried to avoid my gaze, grumbling enviously under her breath, "You can walk…lucky…" I didn't care, shaking her more and sure to cause her whiplash that she didn't need. I didn't care. She was stupid, naïve, irrational, and she rushed into things without thinking!

"The next time you do something like that, if you don't die, I'll kill you myself!" I screamed, acting uncharacteristically, not that I cared much. "You act irrationally and you worry us all!" Maddie looked at me confused.

Weakly, she pointed out, "You do that on a daily basis…" Groaning in exasperation, I glanced away for a few minutes. Kami, why couldn't I talk any sense into her?

I shook her a little more, much to the displeasure of the nurse that was standing behind her, "Damn it! Don't you realize why I do those things? It's because I want to keep you safe! I act reckless so you don't have to! You're my friend! You're my family, my sister! Damn it, Maddie, don't you see? We may not be related by blood, but we're related through experiences! You, and Isaac, and Tristan, and Marielle, and Katt, and everyone else are my family because of what we've all been through! It may not be much, but we've all been with each other through everything! You've all been with me through the crap with my mom, all of my family drama, I've been with you guys through your relationship problems that I never understood but helped with anyway! I don't want anything to happen to my family so I put myself out there so you don't have to!" Maddie stared at me for a moment and I felt my mind betray me and flashback to right after Maddie had volunteered herself.

I watched, furious as Maddie offered herself to go first. I opened my mouth to protest, but Lavi's hand on my shoulder restrained me from lunging forward and yanking her back. He leaned forward as he was standing slightly behind me and began whispering in my ear.

"Let her go," he said calmly, in a manner that made me slightly envious of his uncanny ability to keep himself in check. "Rain-chan, don't you realize that you aren't the only one wanting to protect someone you care about?" My mouth open and closed like a fish. I wanted to respond, but I had no words that I could respond with. Instead, I closed my mouth, drew my hands close to myself, and stepped back slightly, watching as a member of my surrogate family was drawn up by Hevlaska's transparent tentacles.

I felt the guilt of my almost mary-sue-ish selflessness as Maddie responded, "You think I didn't know that? I'm tired of you taking everything. Regardless of how tough you try to appear, you're human just like the rest of us and humans can only take so much." I winced, now starting to feel any adrenaline wearing off and the pain of the cuts and my broken left (thank god, I was primarily right handed) arm shifting with the movement I shouldn't have been making.

I let a small, wolfish grin cross my face, "Yeah, and while everyone has a breaking point, even physical lines are determined by the mental ones. Ah, who cares? I can't stay mad for too long. Truce?" My blond friend stared at me with confusion before shaking her head and giving me a high-five. My actions were quick and my mood change not-so-subtle, but she knew that it was just how I was.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," she grumbled, turning to Komui with an almost comical air about her. "Now, can I get some food, please?" I nearly laughed, but was dragged away by the nurses into another room. They weren't happy with me, and Lavi laughed boisterously as he followed.

"You're going to need to rest for a few days. With the Innocence, your wounds will heal a bit faster, within a few days, but if you strain or reopen them again, it'll take even longer," Lavi explained at my confused expression as I was helped into one of the beds. The room was lonesome, shrouded in a mysterious solitude. They were trying to separate the two of us, and I could understand it. If one of us reacted, they didn't want the other to know about it and end up harming ourselves more in the long-run in an attempt to get to the other. It made sense, no matter how annoyed it made me.

As Allen stepped into the doorway, Lavi bid me a good day and slipped out to go talk to Maddie. Lenalee followed behind the white-haired Exorcist and they began chatting good-naturedly with me. I thanked it, welcomed it. I needed the distraction, and I was sure that Maddie would appreciate Lavi and Bookman talking to her about something hopefully unrelated to the whole fiasco we'd just endured.

If only to take her mind off of it for a minute.

About three days later, Maddie and I were finally allowed out of our hospital-like confinements. Maddie seemed eternally relieved, and I nearly laughed at her. I knew of her dislike for hospitals and, myself, I didn't understand them. I loved hospitals, but that was probably something to do with the fact that I was in and out of them so much as a visitor because my family had ridiculous medical problems from time to time.

I had gotten my bags from my room and slipped into an outfit from my dimension instead of my Exorcist uniform, tired of it and needing a change. It was just a pair of flair jeans tucked into black, down snow boots that ended just below the knee, a thin, white, long sleeved shirt with an intricate cross-and-rose design (nothing like a rose cross, just a fancy gold cross surrounded by antique-like black and light pink roses), and an extremely baggy, black hoodie with drawstrings through the hood and F.B.I written on the front before a faded fingerprint. The long sleeves of my shirt peaked out, a hole for my thumb in the rose-printed cuffs as it ended by my knuckles. I loved the shirt, but it was too thin for the chill of the tower and the fuzzy inside of my sweat shirt was just too inviting. I left my hair down to cover the goose-bumped skin of my neck and walked out to meet Maddie in the hallway. As if we'd switched, she was wearing her newly acquired Exorcist uniform (no skirt, as much as I envied her).

I grinned, "We switched, eh?" She laughed with me as we med Allen and Lenalee to head down to Hevlaska's chamber. Much to the truth of Lavi's words, our wounds healed rather quickly, though I still had a cast on my upper left arm, and on my forearms, calves, and right in the center of my collarbone were glowing, crystal crosses made of Innocence. Maddie held no apparent signs of Innocence, and so it was suspected that I was a parasitic type and she was equip. The trip to see Hevlaska would hopefully clear up everything.

…Hopefully being the operative word…

Final Words: Yep, going to get fairly interesting from here on out, so stay tuned, and, well, you know the drill!

R&R!

~VivaciousWolf245