This arc is just full of upset yelling. Sorry about the lack of updates, but...you know...

I had to go back and reread a bit of the old stuff to remember exactly what I've written, and was funny to see how my writing style's grown up with Daisya. It's been 2 years in real and story time, so if that keeps up this will finally be finished in 2022! Lol, hopefully before then. As always, any feedback honestly means the world to me, so thank you all - especially karina001, who's been here the whole time. Even I don't have that much commitment to this work!

Not sure how I'll continue after this chapter, but I might do a couple of flashbacks to fill the time

Kanda carried him through the night, his short steps never flagging. They needed to get on to the main corridor that ran between Bratislava and Vienna, and soon. From there they could catch a train that would return them to the Order's doctors in time, or at least to some kind of help that wouldn't ask awkward questions about the state they were in. Kanda hadn't had time to think when he tried to heal Daisya, so in places the skin and bones knit together in ways that just looked wrong. If they waited too long, the damn leg would have to be broken and reset.

So they trudged along ankle-twisting wet roads, soaked through and bone tired. In between snatches of sleep, Daisya gave up wondering how much it hurt Kanda, even with all that whacked-out magic he had.

…

Daisya woke up in an unfamiliar bed, in a room he did not remember, with a dull ache in his leg that was a heck of a lot more recognizable. Not really pain, but a kind of itchy off-ness to it that crawled up his body. The leg, the room, even his eyes seemed like they were a mile away from his head. After a few shallow breaths and today's first dose, his senses finally kicked into gear, and waited, observing, while the body got itself in order.

It was brighter out than yesterday, but the light was still a thin blanket over the room, bleeding both the colour and the contrast out of it. Even the window opened on an off-white sky that made your eyeballs ache. That meant...they were on the first floor up? Second floor? He didn't remember this town, either, so it was hard to tell where the room was. Probably the second floor. Not much else was there, just the window that was under the ceiling in the corner to his left. And underneath that, sitting on his own bed and staring impassively, was a sideways Kanda. He supposed he'd have to sit up at some point, but for now it was so much easier just to let his head fall all the way to the side.

Like the parts of a puzzle box, Daisya's mind slowly put together something to say. It was...not night. Probably morning.

"Oh, hey," he slurred, "G'mornin'"

Good enough. He'd said something, even when the rest of him felt like it was made of lead. The components of the box moved again, a scrap of memory sliding into place and unlocking another piece, which moved to join the rapidly-forming mosaic of the Life of Daisya Barry These Past Twelve Hours. Mostly it was rain, and complaining, and complaining about the rain, but then…

…oh, boy. Trying to pick a fight with Kanda. Picking a fight with Kanda. What a move. He'd try to remember the details of whole thing later: exactly how he'd been right about Alma, how he'd known to guess it, how Kanda had finally caved in and admitted about the whole healing thing, but for now he was just going to steer clear of all that.

"Uh," he started again, keeping his vowels from sliding around this time, "What's going on, again?"

"It's past four. We'll change the splint, and then we're leaving as soon as you can eat something without spewing all over the floor." Kanda hadn't moved, so he was probably waiting for an intelligent response. Well, intelligent by Daisya's standards.

Wait…no, no, that wasn't right. Daisya'd always been the smart one, between the two of them. After all, who did better in German? Who'd come up with that really cool move he and Marie did back in Hungary? It wasn't his fault if he couldn't live up to Kanda's faulty logic.

But he did feel a bit scatterbrained.

Anyway.

Four o'clock. It wouldn't be this light out in the morning, so it was the afternoon. Go figure. He must have been asleep when they arrived, and gone straight through the day. His travelling clothes had been changed for the spare nightshirt, but everything was soaked, so a new set of bandages wouldn't hurt. No objection there. But food…his stomach was in the habit of turning these days, and this was going to be way worse. The dry ration biscuits would have to wait for later. Last but not least, he was in no fit shape for walking. True, the constant doses of medicine kept the pain down, but after yesterday the roads would be too slick to chance with a half-broken leg.

"I'm not—"

"I'll carry you. You can sleep on the train, when we get to it." Kanda had slumped into a pretzel-like position, one leg bent up into a triangle with a hand stuck under it, grasping the other.

But, no, you can't sleep on the train with all that bouncing and rattling and all. He was dizzy in a regular old bed, so imagine what a train would be like.

"You were snoring on the way here, dumbass."

Daisya paused for a moment, and squinted until the light stopped dancing in front of his eyes.

"I said that out loud, didn't I?"

He sighed after a moment at the lack of response, and slowly, inch by inch, sat up. He looked back at Kanda, who was still a bit out of focus even right side up. God damn. A spinning head could be chalked up to lack of sleep, so he supposed he wasn't completely infirm.

"You going to eat now, or later?" asked Kanda, now walking over to him.

"Probably now. I'll just stare at it for an hour, and then I'll feel really sick, and maybe I'll throw up, and then I'll eat it."

"You're disgusting."

…

Kanda said nothing as he worked, undoing the more temporary splint piece by piece and improvising something closer to a cast. Keeping the leg still and in a natural-looking position was the most important part.

This was part of what they learned in the field, practicing on Finders and Exorcists, and even civvies. Kanda wasn't the best and wasn't close to it, but his hands were steady while cleaning wounds and binding them. This one must be nasty. Though Daisya had to crane his neck, he could see that the skin was healed over in some places and raw in others, revealing the mess that ran underneath.

"Stop moving."

It was barely a murmur, but Daisya laid back down.

"I kind of got the gist last night, but how bad is it?"

Kanda's hands slowed for a moment, holding in place as he got a pair of tweezers out of the oilcloth kit beside him.

"I've seen worse."

"Yeah, on me."

Daisya couldn't help adding it on, remembering how often Kanda had complained about his supposed injuries.

"Yeah."

The seconds blended into one another, as Daisya ran his eyes over the ceiling, and thought. Of a little seaside town in Turkey. Of the first time he saw the akuma, the first time he was really afraid, and when the old man destroyed them. Of when it felt like what he'd wanted so badly was finally his. Of the year when it was just him and the old man, learning language and healing and how to kill the akuma. And then, his first mission with Kanda and Marie, and the years since then. Of getting burnt up, trapped, and crushed, to the point where even that weird girl gave him up for dead, all for the sake of…what? For the sake of someone else? Or for the sake of becoming a hero?

All he'd ever wanted to be was extraordinary.

Not much. There were so many ordinary people out there that he had to be unique, just to notice how boring it was. He had to be, otherwise what was the point? Growing up, minding the kids, becoming the shopkeeper, being forced to marry some girl he'd grown up with who didn't want to marry him, having a bunch of brats just like his siblings — God, it was disgusting. He'd wanted to be extraordinary, and he had been. Saviour and destroyer. Special.

Except that he wasn't. Not a saviour, even though he'd saved, not a destroyer, even though he'd done that too. Kanda just couldn't let him have even this without getting in the way, saving him like some kid in the riptide and cussing him out, even though he'd known what he was doing. Probably.

His head spun, the pain crept through the medicine, and he slipped up time after time, just barely getting out. This mission was the knife's edge between a risk and a mistake. He'd felt fear watching Kanda forge forward in the darkness. Too many times, in flames and flood, he'd been afraid for that hardassed brat.

More than that, he'd been afraid for himself.

It was probably the fatigue, or time to take another dose, but he was glad Kanda kept his head down.

…

Daisya forced down the last of the meal, and swung his legs over the side of the bed, testing his weight on the good one. On the other side of the room, Kanda had spread a map out, to memorize a path.

"Don't put weight on it. You'll mess it up."

"Yeah, yeah."

He picked up the rough crutches Kanda had made, and after a few false starts was able to hobble around the room. It was hell on the shoulders of all things, but he'd felt worse. Now that he could remember yesterday's conversation, he could guess how much worse. When changing back into the uniform he'd seen the scar tissue that extended up to his ribcage, and the protrusions of bone under the skin that hadn't been there a week before.

Yesterday, for once in his life, Kanda had been crystal clear.

He had died.

A couple of rounds of the room, and Daisya was satisfied that he'd be all right for another day's walk, so long as he wasn't the one doing the walking. Speaking of which, he'd been doing some thinking.

"We takin' the same road back as coming here?"

"No. Could be akuma on the main highway."

The question had mostly been for the sake of it, but Kanda hadn't noticed. What mattered was that he got a conversation going. He needed to talk.

"Got it."

He needed to say something.

"Then we're going," stated Kanda, folding up the map.

"Say, did you get much sleep last night?"

He needed Kanda to understand how much of a bastard he was.

"Enough. You'd better grab your bag, if you don't want to walk by yourself."

"Not right now, Yuu."

It was as if he'd dropped a bomb.

"What part of don't call me that do you not understand—"

The first thing to hand to get Kanda to pay attention was always Alma, but now that he'd figured it out, it wasn't enough. So what if the person he hated so much had been his friend. So what if Alma had tried to kill him. Daisya needed to know why, and the given name was the next step on the path to discovery. It had certainly worked to make Kanda (because even though Yuu was his real name, he was still Kanda) whip around to face him, and shoot him a steel-cold glare. But it wouldn't worked this time: it hadn't worked yesterday, nor would it now. Daisya wasn't scared, though his heart beat bruises in his chest.

He just felt sorry.

"I didn't call you that until now, so shut up," he snapped. "Anyhow, there's some stuff I've got to say, before we screw anything else up."

"Before you screw anything else up."

"Nope, before you do." He hopped towards Kanda's bed, and sat down, for a better seat.

"Fucking try me."

"Oh, I know I'm not the top of the exorcist pile," Daisya said, letting the usual sardonic edge back into his voice, "But what I did? I told you, I wasn't being stupid. I knew exactly what was going to happen if I stayed still. I know that you're a better than me at this, so if it's a choice between the two of us, it has to be you. You know that, I know that, Lenalee's four-eyed nerd brother knows that. Don't."

Kanda had tried to turn away, to dismiss him like he always tried to do, but Daisya's hand had lashed out to catch his wrist. Why couldn't he just listen?

"But even that doesn't matter, because like it or not, I care about you! We're friends! I don't want you to die! So I just did what was the right thing at the time, and now we're both here to tell the tale. I. Saved. You. Because I wanted to, for Christ's sake. Because I was scared to hell and back that you'd be strawberry jam on the ground and I'd be all alone. Finishing the mission, and then going back and telling them all that you—"

He took a deep breath, and went for the throat of the argument. "Not because I was being stupid. I'm still the smart one, here. You know what? I saved your sorry ass from getting burnt alive. I came up with a way for Marie and I to exterminate a whole horde of akuma, I got the Innocence out of the Opera House, and I figured out how to get to the Innocence that made those illusions back there. That was me! Maybe I felt sorry for you, maybe I needed to prove myself — doesn't matter now."

It was time to gulp another cupful of air, and hold it until whatever it was inside him stopped shaking.

"Because every single time you find something to bitch about. I'm sick and fucking tired of it. Just because you've got a God damned hero complex doesn't mean that the rest of us are only there for you to save! I saved you then, because I needed to, and I've just saved you now. Not the other way around."

There was stillness for a moment.

And another.

Another.

Daisya exhaled, but didn't flinch away from the confrontation.

Then, slowly, Kanda's lips pulled back to reveal gritted teeth. With a single movement, he broke Daisya's brittle grip, and finally turned up his mouth to make the grimace into a terrifying smile.

"You get it, now," he spat, "You said you were scared. Finally, you know how I fucking feel."

He turned towards the door, and left Daisya frozen in place.

"Get your stuff, unless you want your leg to stay like that."

Kanda. Feeling. It was something he'd never really thought about before, not in terms of himself.

"Daisya."

Not like that. He knew Kanda had to save people, but for him to admit what he did and admit that he cared, not just doing a job…it wasn't a Kanda thing. He got mad, but he didn't get worried, and he didn't tell Daisya the whole story. Until now.

"Get. Moving. We don't have much time."

Daisya breathed in, and out, and in again.

"Yeah. I know."