The late, great Sir Terry Pratchett (not that I could ever claim to be even slightly comparable to him) described his way of building a plot as investigating a valley full of clouds. You see a church steeple, or the top of a high-rise, and you only start to see more as the clouds sink. This particular section is 100% clouds, which is why there's no coherency, or meaning, or point to this whole thing at the moment. At the moment it's just more Daisya psychoanalysis. And exam season is here, so this is a bit rough and the only update you'll see in a while. Sorry about that! And thanks for the comments, again. They keep me going when I'm staring blankly at a phrase I've tried to rewrite three times and that still isn't cooperating.
It had been an uneasy ten minutes as the knights that may or may not have been Arthur's debated, but in the end they had pretty bad taste. The tapestry, now devoid of the Innocence that had kept it intact, had withered into an old rag. It was sort of sad, really, to see how it all faded away. The colours, the writing, the knights — they were all still there, yes, but in grey and faded ochre. Nothing exciting.
Daisya should have been happy to single-handedly get it over with before the akuma came, telling an impeccably crafted tale of sorrow and heroism, but it was pretty boring. Lenalee had taken care of a few akuma who didn't know they were coming earlier, and the rest of them hadn't even gotten a chance to activate. They'd gone down one by one, in piles of dust, without even really putting up a good fight. Just a few flashes of light above the dying heather, smothered in a matter of seconds.
Then he'd met the guy who could've been King Arthur, the stuff of legends, and he'd had to argue with the pious bastard. God this, our Lord that. If some son of a bitch made you live in a boring old tapestry in a boring old castle for an entire fucking millennium, you didn't respect the guy. You hated him. That was how stuff went.
The old man would make him swallow a soap bar if he ever said that, but it was true. Eleven years in tourist town had bored him enough to poke his face full of holes just to try and make something interesting out of it. He didn't know what he'd do if he had to put up with that a hundred times over. All because of some guy in the sky who thought he knew best.
No Kanda to figure out, no Marie to irritate, no Lenalee to play with.
Mind you, it hadn't been just old Artie. There were twelve of them, trapped there. He didn't remember most of the names, but there was Lancelot, and Percy, and probably Lancelot's kid, whoever his name was. It might not have been too bad.
God, then. What about a god? A God? The old man had told him stories about the Roman gods and the Norse gods, but they seemed to be different from the God that the Black Order followed. Those were just humans with lightning bolts and such. Zeus kissed too many girls and Loki just wanted to have some fun. The Order's God seemed to be a lot smarter than that.
The old man said he knew everything, and that he always did the right thing because of that. He didn't look like he believed it. The finders said he was like a schoolmaster: he wasn't that nice all the time, and it was boring when he was around, but you came out of it better off. Though they didn't say that when only an exorcist came back from a mission. Mostly they just sighed, and prayed harder that they wouldn't die. For people who should'a been fine with dying, because it was always the right thing, they sure didn't want to. They never seemed to have much fun.
The exorcists never seemed to talk about it. They just showed up in the chapel when they had to. Kanda just read prayers off of the hymn book. Lenalee and Marie seemed to have something more to say, but try as he might he couldn't quite hear what they murmured. The older three didn't say anything, and Kiki followed Kanda's example. Jeanne and Isaac played chopsticks to pass the time. For servants of God, none of them followed the example very well.
And Daisya? What did he do?
Depends. Some days he recited the multiples of eight as high as he could go. Some days he joined in with Jeanne and Isaac. Some days he was quiet.
The one thing he was sure about, when it came to God, is that he didn't know what to think.
So what if God says he knows everything and is always right. He says that, too, but Kanda never buys any of it. Prove it, Kanda always says.
Let's say God's right. He's good. He sent the old man to whisk Daisya away into a life where he can do whatever he wants, have as much fun as he wants, eat as much shark fin soup as he wants, and no one will tell him to minds his manners or his siblings. God's great! He put Kanda right there, where Daisya couldn't miss him, and hand-delivered a bundle of mysteries that are gonna take years to get through.
So, from what it looks like, the old man's pretty right.
But that isn't the whole picture. Not by a long shot.
If God's so good, then what happened to Kanda? Why does it make him grind his teeth whenever someone saves him? Why does he toss and turn at night and whisper "Alma" like it's a curse? Why is Lenalee so nervous?
Even if he's being petty, Daisya's covered in ugly scars. Sure, he earned Kanda's trust, but why did it have to take that?
Not like he cares, because friends are only really for keeping things un-boring, but no one's going to like anyone that hideous—
It was when his heart started to beat in his ears that Daisya decided it was time to stop thinking. His piggy-back cargo, who was sound asleep, might hear it. And besides, he was starting to see weird pictures in his head. One of the older exorcists, with long, thick, matted hair, staring at the stump of her wrist with a kind of disgust.
He always got their names mixed up, but this one was probably Antonina. She had one hand. She liked to grin. Each time she did, it crawled slowly across her face, with an expression in her eyes that made you, just for a moment, expect blood dripping from her mouth. Her hair fell into her eyes, and she sat hunched over at the table, every lunch, every dinner, laughing harshly and too loudly, looking feral. Her eyes were sunken and bloodshot, in sallow skin.
No wonder she looked at herself like that. She was disgusting.
Daisya took a deep breath, swallowed, and reminded himself to take a page from her book.
Then, he tried to think of anything that would force that train of thought off the tracks. God, life, Bodrum, boredom — yes, boredom. That was good. He always thought too much when he was bored, and there was nothing better than complaining about being bored.
"I gotta say, that was really easy."
Daisya stopped it the middle of the road for a moment, adjusting Lenalee's position on his back, then continued walking. He focused for a moment on the dim air around him. It was a brief stretch between coach routes, and it was her turn to sleep again. She'd had a few hours in the early morning, Daisya until mid-afternoon, and Kanda after that. Three people meant enough for one sleeping, one carrying, and one guarding.
"Talk to me, Kanda. Don't you think it was boring?"
Daisya jogged up alongside him. Kanda's long eyelashes fluttered once, twice in succession as he blinked. He was probably still waking up.
"I sure did."
Getting a conversation out of Kanda right now probably wasn't worth the risk, but Daisya was, you guessed it, bored out of his mind. Kanda was as good an antidote as any.
"Whatever," came the weary reply.
It was easy to miss, but Daisya had been watching Kanda long enough to know that this was an invitation.
"Well, there was only one akuma, and the finders had it blocked off."
The crunching of stones under boots coloured the silence between them.
"And Lenalee finished it off for us."
"Yeah."
"We barely had to do anything."
Kanda didn't reply, but the silence that answered was comfortable as opposed to cutting.
"I can't believe they actually thought my story was good. Did you hear it?"
"Unfortunately."
"Kanda! That's rude."
"And?"
Daisya sighed dramatically, and would have thrown up his arms if he'd had them free.
"Why am I even friends with you."
The exchange of comments and quiet replies petered out after a couple of minutes, but Daisya didn't mind. Kanda had given him his relief, and they were all pretty tired — Lenalee had knocked herself out a while ago.
After another couple of minutes, Daisya's thoughts slithered half-heartedly into motion again.
The journey had taken a couple of days, and sleeping had been a bit rough, but…it was so easy. Just a fun little jaunt in the countryside, to fetch some Innocence and wreck a tapestry. No collapsing, no fires, no defenestration.
No excitement, and yet…
Kanda had been so happy, acting sullen all the time.
Lenalee seemed to cheer up anyone within a few metres of her.
The sun had sunk below the horizon, but the breeze from the sea was warm. Lenalee's breath was a regular pattern to match his own, and the scrape of Kanda's boots.
There was silence, but now he had no need to fill it.
The others just being there was enough.