All told, they were out of there in two days. It took that long for Kanda to clean the akuma from the area. They would be back. Daisya's leg was wrapped up with a splint, and he used crutches when he could. He always carried an emergency stash of medicine around, since the first time he'd been really banged up; now, he needed them.
Between a string of carts, coaches, crutches, and in a couple of places Kanda, they escaped with their bodies mostly intact.
…
This stretch was another of the painful ones. Daisya could hobble along on crutches well enough, but when the ground was almost mud and the ruts ran deep, those weren't enough. Sometimes Kanda could act as a human crutch, but on bad roads like this one he had to carry Daisya like a backpack. They couldn't afford to wait for him to heal, not if they wanted to get back to the order before any damage became permanent.
Since they set off from that abandoned cabin, there had been no comfort. In any other place, at any other time, Daisya would keep a pretty good conversation going by himself, and Kanda would sometimes contribute a retort or even a full sentence. The lapsed silences would then be a blanket, made up of the knowledge that there was nothing much to say, and nothing that needed to be said. The golden quiet would wrap around Daisya, slithering between his fingers and curling in his chest. It was so full of normality, and yet it was so far from boring.
These ones — the silences since the castle — were bitter and tired, made up of the fragmented beginnings of sentences and stone blocks of slit-eyed glares. Misery, that was the word. Misery — thin, iron grey, and watery — dripped off of it, like the rain off the trees and Daisya's hood.
The medicine took the edge off the pain, but not off the sheer sandpaper roughness of Kanda. There wasn't a good reason but still. Still. Things had been so good for months. Kanda, even though the rest of them were dropping like flies, was just himself.
And the others didn't even matter so much — you dropped a card at the plaque on their birthdays, you remembered what they did, but never who they were. There was a way to do that. A word, repeated often enough, loses its meaning. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac.
Had enough? Yeah. Now it just looks like a mutation of the alphabet, with too many A's. Not the kid who got Helle to teach him how to braid hair so that he could do his sister's.
You had to do it. You didn't want to know how your own name could end up meaning nothing.
Daisya tried to concentrate on his own breath, caught in his suddenly swollen throat. He could feel Kanda's too, so much more measured and more quiet.
He wasn't complaining. Contemplative, sleepy, and calm were the words that came to mind when Daisya examined him. Even his footsteps were light.
Obviously, someone had to fill in for his usual role.
'Cos Kanda was just acting like a kid throwing a temper tantrum, but in the opposite direction. Even his brothers had been more cunning about this, and they thought that drawing moustaches on pictures was the cleverest joke in the book. Come on.
Yeah, the moustaches were pretty funny, but that was beside the point!
Kanda and his hero complex were hilarious at first, but they got pretty tired and annoying pretty damned quickly. Sure, he'd taken a massive risk, but he knew that, and didn't care. He was just having fun. Everything else that happened was bad luck, a price to pay. They knew the deal. He'd even tried to stay alive. Hear that? He'd tried! Daisya Barry had tried! Kanda seemed to think of him as the Order's machine, but at times like this he didn't act like it.
Daisya felt his fingers tighten, the words piling up indignantly behind his teeth.
He'd seen how Kanda looked every time one of the exorcists died. Even if it was for a second here and there, there was always the same look of mute horror. For a moment, he just seemed to shut down.
Dying was fairly final. It was it. You never came back. Even if you continued to exist, knotted up behind gunmetal, there was no guarantee that it was the best option.
Kanda hated dying. That was old news. It was getting tired.
There was another, more important question.
"Hey, Kanda."
Silence followed the bitter words, their consonants chipped from rock.
"Alma's pretty short. He's got dark hair, wide eyes, and I'm still guessing he was your friend."
Silence.
The looks were a shot in the dark, as always, but those were only trimmings.
More silence.
"Hey, Kanda, I don't think I caught that."
Daisya didn't bother trying to hide the irony in his voice. People were afraid of Kanda, and he used to be one of them, but he was fed up with playing by someone else's rules. Even for Kanda.
"Shut up."
Warning number one.
"Come on, that's not what you said. So am I wrong or right?"
"Shut up."
Warning number two.
"You know what? I think I'm right. I've known you long enough to know–"
The support under Daisya's legs dropped, and he fell, catching himself on his forearms before the force of the fall got to his legs. Kanda hadn't bothered with the traditional count of three.
And now his clothes were all muddy. That sucked. They'd been muddy for days. It was getting boring, just like the rain, after a while. And Kanda.
Daisya decided to leave the crutches folded up in his backpack, and pulled himself up to sitting. He planted an arm behind him, and let himself shift back. One leg bent up, taking most of the weight, and the broken one lay outstretched.
"Hey, Kanda, you gonna help me up?"
Kanda threw him a glare. "Help yourself up."
The raindrops, fat and lukewarm, made dimples in the dirt around Daisya's fingers.
"So I was right."
Kanda wasn't walking at least, but standing to the side of the road, looking back.
"You know, you're acting like a little kid."
The gaze that met him was impassive. Kanda knew he had the high ground, and was in no hurry to give Daisya the advantage.
"You're just getting mad over something stupid. I've got siblings, I know what it looks like."
Daisya had already catalogued the trees around here to the best of his spotty knowledge, but a tree caught his eye that looked a bit like a hemlock. Amazing, what you notice when you've got more important things to think about.
"So just help me up and quit whining. It's getting boring."
Kanda seemed to have lost his patience, because now he was moving. The look he had plastered on was enough to make even the most terminally cheerful keep their distance. Daisya wasn't one of them. He wasn't about to lose this argument, not with two years of waiting.
Though it was still day, the clouds were thick and bruised, blocking off the sunlight and staining the earth dark with water. With the sun hidden behind the trees, it seemed almost as dark as dusk.
The pair of boots — his ankles were so skinny that he still had to wear the kids' ones, Daisya noted — came to a halt about a foot away, leaving Daisya looking up into raindrops and narrowed eyes.
With the shadow cast by what light remained, you got the impression that instead of an exorcist, fury incarnate had stopped by for a bit of a lecture.
"You were dead."
The words didn't just describe what had happened. They set it into place, as if carved into a headstone.
The spectre pointed at him with two fingers, leveled like a knife. Stretching up the wide sleeve of his coat, a long scar suddenly caught Daisya's eye. That was new.
"Don't try to tell me what happened."
The words were spat, and Daisya couldn't help feeling his breath speed up, looking up into the thing's eyes.
Enough.
Kanda liked to play this little game. Dance around and blame him whenever something went wrong, when Daisya had made a mistake, and he'd had enough. He'd been willing to take the consequences. Why did Kanda always have to be the saviour? All the times he'd played ball with him, partnered up for studying, hid a smirk at those terrible, terrible jokes — it went down the drain the moment things got serious. Then he was cold as hell and hard as stone and Daisya was so damn sick of it—
He lashed out, grabbing Kanda's outstretched arm and pulling him off balance, down to his knees. With the other hand clutching Kanda's coat, Daisya pulled him so close that he could see the bloodshot whites of his eyes. Kanda looked shaken, desperate. Just like he felt.
"What the hell—"
"Just admit it!" Daisya yelled, cutting him off, "Tell me what you did!"
"Let go of me." Kanda's voice was still set in a low growl.
"No. Just tell me. You got in trouble, I got you out, got myself into more trouble, you saved me! How god damned hard is it to say?"
"Shut up."
Daisya pulled the sleeve down, revealing the mark on the inside Kanda's forearm.
"You cut deep enough to be bleeding all over the place. Trust me, I know what it looks like. Just tell me what that was about. It doesn't make sense."
Kanda didn't answer, still breathing heavily.
"You know? You did this shit back in Budapest, in the forest — you're always like this every time it happens."
"Yeah, because every time you always do the same fucking thing!"
Daisya leaned up, covering the last few inches between them. He could feel Kanda's stray breath on his lips.
"So what, huh?"
"So you're fucking stupid It's my blood. That's what heals me up, what I just wasted on you."
"So why d'you even try to save me? It's not like it doesn't cost you anything."
Kanda's face twisted. "Fuck you. Fuck Marie."
He should probably mention later that it was the old man who'd told him about the cost of Kanda's healing, and not Marie, but he was too pissed off to correct Kanda now.
"Tell me why, or stop fucking pulling these stunts and expecting me to understand why you're upset!"
"Says you—"
Daisya felt himself tense in desperation, muscles coiling like an animal about to fight or run the hell away. He was wrong; so, so wrong, but there wasn't any other explanation and he was so weak.
"Just admit it."
Daisya cut himself off. His voice had evaporated, leaving only a whisper, and he'd already gone too far. Almost.
"Tell me you love me or hate me or something—"
Kanda was silent. Daisya let go.
"You suck at talking," he finished unceremoniously, "Lenalee says."
He was expecting Kanda to pull away, avoid eye contact, say nothing. Instead, he felt an iron vice around his arm.
"You want me to tell you why?"
The voice was level.
"If you'd been travelling with anyone else, you'd be dead."
Kanda looked like he expected it to be an ultimatum. Shut up, be grateful for your life, and stop prying. But Daisya was one step ahead of him, for once.
"No."
"What."
He smiled, still trying to guess whether he'd been right about why Kanda always had to save him. He was so close to the answer that would let him go, free of all Kanda's stupid bullshit.
Alma.
"I mean, you're wrong." He'd meant for the words to be an arrogant declaration, but instead they came out wet and choked. "If I'd been travelling with anyone else, they'd be dead. Well, no, Lena and Marie still count, but the rest of them — I'd be alive. They'd be six feet under a pile of rock."
For a moment something in Daisya's line of vision gleamed. Everything was too real. His breath hung hot and heavy in his lungs, and he trembled. He could feel his heart hammering at his bones, as if something was trying to rip its way out of his chest. He was so close. To Alma. To Kanda.
Even now, when he was barrelling over the edge of the cliff, telling him everything and trying to get him to talk, he'd wanted to tear Kanda apart. Take out all the hurt, and put him back together without the thing that gnawed at his insides and kept his mouth glued shut. This wasn't the feeling he'd read about. Not anger.
He couldn't remember when it started, only that this was the closest he'd come to admitting it. Kanda wasn't the only one who couldn't deal with a problem.
For one moment longer, Kanda held his gaze, then knelt down beside him.
"If you do it again, I won't save you."
Daisya almost reached out, almost asked him all the questions he almost had the answers to. So close.
Instead, he let Kanda pick him up carrying him the rest of the way.
Kanda's movements were almost gentle.
…
Kanda could heal himself. His wounds barely lasted for a few hours. There was nothing saying that his blood wasn't enough to heal others.
The mysterious girl had thought he was dead. The blood everywhere and the pain he had felt hadn't stopped him from looking at her.
And how had he managed to survive what would have killed Kanda?
Sprawled out on the ground, the pieces of the puzzle had slid into place for Daisya just moments before Kanda had told him how it worked.
"Alma" was just another word for "death." And — maybe, just maybe — another word for "friend."
Daisya felt his consciousness slipping away as he considered the answer that was almost right.
All these almosts were getting boring.