Sorry for being late! It's been a weird month, I had this written for ages but I never quite felt like it was right. Hope you all survived the (northern hemisphere) summer!
Daisya pinned the hand to his chest and grabbed for the other, falling slower than he ever did the night he burned. It was weird. The whole world around him was empty, he couldn't even feel the wind rushing. Above him, there was nothing where he should have seen the blazing room. God damn, he remembered that! It wasn't there. Nothing was.
Except Kanda, who'd frozen mid-fight. If closing his eyes would do anything he would, so instead he tried to focus on his other senses. Sight, nada, hearing, nothing except his heartbeat and his and Kanda's breathing, taste was a little blood where Kanda hit his mouth, smell was sweat, and touch…it was Kanda. He'd grabbed the other hand now and held it. These were Kanda's skinny wrists. Moving a hand further up the forearm, he could feel there wasn't any fat between the skin and muscle. That was Kanda, too. Spending two, three hours a day in the dojo these past months, he was sure he could find Kanda and Lenalee by touch.
This place wasn't right. That much was clear when it tried to show him the old man. It was all around him, though, so what was the use of that? There weren't any doors, he couldn't get out of here because there wasn't any here, he'd seen it enough times as he tried to remember where he was. Actually, since he was on that, he could remember now. Why?
"Kanda?" he breathed.
And woke up.
Daisya was looking into the lidless button-eyes of a Level Two, grinning as it pinned him to the ground.
Shit!
In a split second he brought his feet up under him and kicked it off with a two-foot blow to the skinny torso. That didn't quite take care of it, since he was holding on to its arms—why was he holding on to it, again?—but it helped. The akuma flew up over his head and once he remembered to let go of it, he curved his back and let the momentum of the throw carry him to his feet. He didn't remember how he got here, but if he was face-to-face with one of those, he'd have to be real quick to survive.
At least it seemed to be distracted. He'd slipped into a defensive by second nature, but once he saw it was down for the count he turned and ran.
Where was he, again?
Almost as soon as he thought that, a dusty road formed under his feet and the space ahead of him widened into a square. Plaster-walled and thatched houses popped up along the sides, except they didn't, because they had always been there. Daisya was starting to catch on to this kind of thing. He couldn't remember anything, because what had been there was nothing, and because there was nothing, this stuff wasn't new. It just…hadn't been there before. No one thing came after the other thing, because nothing had ever been there. That didn't make any sense!
Which meant it was the right explanation.
Daisya was feeling so smug that he didn't even notice the noise behind him, as the akuma caught up to him and attacked.
It grabbed his arm, leaving the inertia of the run to swing him around for punching. Thank god for training. Daisya just managed to lean into it and turn fully, so that he was back-to-front with the akuma, and used its grip to hip-check it forward.
Or at least, he tried to.
He'd been too impressed with his reaction time to get what happened, but some weird alchemy of movement had him on his back on the dusty ground before he knew it. Oh, shit. Oh shit. It had barely been a minute, and already it had him beat. Did he have backup? If there was a Finder here with him, they'd have to be dead already.
Funny. That felt like something he'd thought before. Coming back to the same place…was this a town he'd been in? Was this some Level Two he'd already fought? His heart was in his throat now as the seconds spread out like minutes. Level Two. Akuma. Long-range Innocence. Get out of there!
It had his hands pinned down above his head. That would be difficult to deal with. But, why would a Level Two fight hand-to-hand? Why wouldn't it just shoot at him? Why couldn't he feel his Innocence?
If everything was wrong, then maybe the things that were wrong in the real world were right. This akuma hadn't attacked him…as far as he remembered. And it should have killed him by now if it was interested in a fight.
Daisya did nothing. He waited.
The Level Two's face was something to make your skin crawl, two black holes in a porcelain face. Its arms were long and bony, its mouth was a flat slit. He couldn't not see it even if he closed his eyes. It wasn't fun for a young man to be trapped with that thing.
As he waited, breathing, he tried to focus on other things. Sound: he could hear his own breathing. Nothing else. Taste and smell: sweat. And blood? When had this thing hit him that hard? Was it before he came to? Touch: he knew he must be lying on the ground, but the thing that nagged at his nerves was the hands gripping his wrists like monkey bars.
Hands.
Level Twos didn't have hands, did they? Or, they did, but they were that hard, bonelike material that the masks were made of. These were hands. He could feel the flesh.
It was a girl now. He didn't know why she scared him, coarse hair falling around her face, but once he heard the voice he remembered.
"She's akuma, Daisya. Don't be fooled," the old man said from somewhere. "You have to kill her, please. It's the only way."
Of course she was an akuma! They'd both been there when she let them into the inn, in Hungary. He couldn't remember her name, but she'd been there, she'd been killed and called back by her sister, hadn't she?
But she was a good, solid woman, her hands would be round and calloused. Not the ones holding him. They were so familiar. Where had he done this before?
Her face transformed again into Antonina, her hair stretched out over him and gripping his wrists. No. Still hands.
He had to be on to something. The face above him changed and he heard the old man again, telling him he had to fight to live, he was in danger, everything to make him get up. So, of course, he just stayed where he was. It gave him time to think.
A Level Two fighting by hand. One that moved fast but didn't fly. A throw that had him on his back before he could blink. An effortless counter to a hip throw he was actually pretty proud of.
"Daisya, you've failed. You will kill this akuma, or I will send you home," the old man said, leaning over him.
Of course, that made sense. The rightest part about the real world would be the wrongest part here. The old man, and—
His hands were trapped, but he wasn't out of tricks yet. Kanda—the thing pinning him down—wasn't expecting resistance. He managed to flip them both by hooking a leg around his waist. Instead of immobilizing him this time, he grabbed his hands, claws, whatever it was using to lash out at him, and pressed them to the bandages along his cheeks. If the sounds were wrong and the sight was wrong but the touch was always the same, then maybe touch was the same for everybody here.
He hoped so.
There was nothing he could say that Kanda would hear, but maybe he'd know him from this, like Daisya knew him from the moves he'd used to counter him. It lasted a second.
And Kanda threw him off, of course, so there was nothing else he could do but grab on to him with arms and legs and hold on for dear life as they struggled.
It was as hard as he'd thought it would be. Kanda scrabbled around as badly as his siblings did when it was bathtime, and he had his strength to boot. He just barely managed to hang on because Kanda couldn't bend his arms backwards. It also helped that the world around them wasn't real. When Kanda tried to slam him against the ground, it didn't hurt so much now that he knew the trick. It was all in his head. Except for Kanda.
While he held on so tight his hands hurt, the dream was trying everything to get him to let go, switching through different shapes. Each time he could never remember what it had been before. The last time Daisya came to, arms clutched tightly around a body, it was back to being a tough Level Two that Daisya took down in one of his very first fights where the old man let him go with.
Hah. He knew better, because that thing was enormous! Whatever he was holding on to—what was it, again?—it was smaller than him. This dream was getting less and less convincing.
It tried to shake him off again, yanking his head off of its shoulder briefly, but Daisya held on. This had to be important, he remembered it being important. Otherwise why would he be this beat up and still doing it?
And then he caught a look at its face. His face. Whose face?
Daisya was sure he'd been fighting this guy for a minute, the sand from the beach was kicking up in clouds everywhere, so why did he freeze up now? He must have seen it before he buried his own face in his neck to latch on all the better.
He looked down at someone who he'd imagined sometimes, when he was too sore to sleep.
He was smiling, the boy who let go of his head and placed both hands flat against his chest, trying to push him off like he was a clingy cat. Daisya stared down at him, the fake sun shining just over his shoulder and lighting up the face too well. The hair was familiar, choppy and dark, and the way his skin creased up around two round eyes was something Daisya hadn't seen a lot, but sometimes. But that was all just how people looked when they smiled. What made him stop struggling for thinking was the two tattoos he had beneath either eye. The scar across the nose, that was new, but those looked just like his, only darker.
It was him. A second one.
Antonina had said something. Something he'd forgotten, but he remembered how he felt. He was never going to look right, burnt up like he'd been. Even after all these years he was still patched with scars all over. His hair only grew in a few places. His own face…his face was fine, except for the bandages. But he always thought that maybe, he'd be different if that never happened. It was hard to forget the pain.
He chose it. It just didn't really sink in at the time that this was what he was choosing. No one who ever looked at him could ignore it. Good. He was that interesting. He wanted stares. But when he daydreamed about it, they always looked at him because he was good at something. Usually football.
The boy who stopped mid-throw was the him that he'd always thought he'd be. Sometimes the guy he still thought he maybe would have been. Now they were both stood still. Daisya knew he was important, but how? How? He couldn't even remember how he'd gotten here, how he ended up fighting him, and he had no idea why this fake-Daisya would stop fighting before he'd even fully disengaged. This was important. This was important. If he forgot now, then he wouldn't, he would never…
A voice drifted in from one of the fight's spectators as he scrambled to his feet, squinting in the blazing light. The boy on the ground was still dazed, staring at his hands now that Daisya was free.
"Daisya," the old man said gently, "You need to go home. Your mother says you'll get burnt if you stay out in this sun any longer."
No! What? No! To hell with that!
And that was that.
Daisya's drifting thoughts crystallized. This wasn't where he was supposed to be. He had to get out of here. He had to get back to Lena. He had to tell Marie what they saw. And he couldn't leave just yet because here was Kanda. The choice was always the same. Save himself, or help him.
He reached down and took his other self by the wrist. For once he didn't resist, and let himself be pulled to his feet. This wasn't the other him. That was just what the dream told him to drive him away. The self he resented. Flipping over the hand that held his, Daisya traced the letters, the ones Kanda taught him, out in his palm. 神田. It was faster than writing it the normal way. If touch was the only thing that worked here, he had to.
…
Kanda yanked his attacker's head away from his shoulder to break its grip, exhausted after so much fighting. It only lasted a minute, but wrestling the Noah to the ground took everything he had. Didn't matter. She was grinning down at him as she held on, draining the energy he had left. He couldn't afford to drag this out.
Bracing his back on the forest floor, he slid his hands into the space he'd pulled open between them and shoved. He'd meant to push her off. She stayed. Smiling at him.
His memories were hard to deal with. There were places he'd never been to or people he'd never known that showed up out of nowhere. Usually he forgot them. If it was only the memories he'd inherited, it might be easier. The problem was that his recollection from the Asian Branch was bad, too. Sometimes it felt like he'd dreamed the scientists and Alma during a nightmare, until he saw the sign on his chest.
He didn't think about the past much. No point. His memories only came back when he didn't have a choice. He'd be walking from a village to the closest railway track when the world would change seasons and he'd be in a place he couldn't name, just because he heard birdsong. Mostly they were happy. That didn't make it better.
He never knew what the trigger was until it happened. It didn't always strike twice. Didn't matter. When he moved to throw the kid Noah off him, his hands pressed up against its chest, which should have been skinny and flat under the bad black dress it was wearing. His hands didn't feel it. The fingers that were made to be sensitive to feeling and numb to pain felt thicker fabric. His muscles strained to lift a heavier weight. More than that, the surface he felt wasn't even. Beneath the fabric he could make out odd and jagged dips and spars. The barrel chest was like a closed fist with knuckles jutting out.
The feeling shocked him out of fight-or-flight. It was anatomy that shouldn't exist. He knew it.
He remembered broken bones melting together in shapes that were wrong. He remembered skin stretching over them. When he broke his bones badly enough that they didn't heal on the spot, they would drift out of place and heal in the wrong position. Even for humans, a broken leg would heal crooked without the right splint.
He was good enough that he'd never broken that bad.
Bad enough that Kanda stayed there a day, waiting to update the Order on mission results.
He'd pushed those ribs down until they broke again, trying to get the heart started. Then he'd healed them again. They looked more like old gnarled branches than bones. He'd done the only thing he could.
Still facing up under the black treetops, he didn't notice that the forest had changed to the one he carried Daisya through while his legs were healing. Kanda was staring holes through the grey face. It was Daisya. He'd been fighting the Noah. And it was Daisya. Was that another trick?
He didn't notice the movement until it was too late. When the hand closed on his wrist, he tensed to fight, but kept still. If it was Daisya, he didn't need to.
It still had the Noah's face and Daisya's hand. It pulled him up, like after any training match. Except Kanda always won those. He waited for something to happen. Alma—no, it looked like Alma, but it wasn't Alma, Alma was dead, this was Daisya—turned his hand over. He moved a finger over it. Kanda tracked the lines that he drew. 神田. His name.
The one that wrote his name had the scientist's face. He could never remember his name, and he'd forget it even if he did. He saw it in nightmares. If the man wasn't dead already, he'd kill him. It was his face. It wasn't him.
Kanda closed his eyes, which didn't help. Huh. The scene stayed in his mind no matter what he did. He'd just have to remember it was Daisya.
Breaking the grip with a quick move, he took Daisya's hand instead. DAISYA. He used his nails to score the letters. Daisya's hands weren't sensitive enough for him to read the writing, even if he didn't have his calluses.
His pulse was fast. Moments ago he'd been fighting for his life. It hadn't been long enough for it to calm down. He waited, holding Daisya's hand, just in case the face changed again and Kanda couldn't find it.
The scene around them was a complete mess. Kanda ignored it, and focused on the mission as the mask over Daisya worked through the long list of people he hated. He wondered where to start. If the Noah took Daisya by surprise, he might not even know what this was.
NOAH, he wrote. He flipped his hand back over for a reply. Eventually, Daisya gave him one.
OUT?
Kanda was standing on the forest floor, in a burning room, on a pile of akuma dust, on HQ's parapets, all at the same time.
? he answered.
Instead of writing, Daisya took his arm and started moving it weirdly. He pointed it at himself, then at the chaotic mix of Black Order personnel gathered around them, chanting and lunging at Kanda, then used it to touch one of the images. It felt real enough.
"What," he said.
Sound was also part of the illusion, so Daisya didn't react. He moved Kanda's arm in a different direction this time, back to grab the sword on his belt. Kanda drew it obediently. This was already a stupid mess they were in. He could afford to let it get dumber.
Daisya slipped around to his right side, always keeping a hand on him to make sure he didn't get lost, and reached along his arm to guide the sword from his wrist. Kanda moved his hand in time with the directions, swinging left and right experimentally. The dream-people kept on stumbling around them, trying to knock them over or scream them into submission. It was a lot easier to resist Lenalee's puppy eyes when he knew her legs really weren't broken, and she really wasn't crawling along the ground toward him trailing blood.
Damn. He'd been distracted for a moment. The jerk on his wrist came as a surprise when Daisya tried to swing Mugen at someone who looked a lot like Edgar. At least he was fast enough to react. Leaning into the movement, he flicked the blade down through the shape. He felt the impact. It didn't. It just changed more to look like Edgar's corpse.
Switching back to the hand-writing, Daisya tried to explain what he was doing on his left palm.
KILL. OUT.
Then he moved Kanda's sword hand again. Huh. That was dumb. What was the point in killing these things if they couldn't die?
He got into a ready stance anyway. It felt better than doing nothing. Daisya didn't have any weapons on him besides his Innocence, so he'd have to do the fighting. Not even fighting. These things didn't fight. The faces in front of him changed again.
Daisya's arm held him back before he could move, though.
"What the hell do you want me to do?" he asked uselessly.
He got an answer pretty quickly. Slipping his right hand into Kanda's left, Daisya pointed at one of the shapes that looked like a Finder. Whatever. Kanda was getting sick of this.
Lunging forward, he rammed Mugen through its guts.
…
Daisya tried to figure out the letters. MOAT? JOKE? SCAM?
Context. Context. What would Kanda be trying to say to him? The scene was going haywire now, he could hear Antonina telling him they were both doomed to live out their lives hideous and uncared for. She really needed to calm down. He really needed to calm down. Okay. Kanda. Kanda was here. Kanda was telling him something. Where were they? What was going on? The ground felt uncomfortably hot, even if he knew it couldn't be. His dad was calling for him now.
He tried to think of what he remembered. It was a lot easier to concentrate now that he'd found a point of reference, but that didn't make it easy. He'd been walking. Lenalee had been there. Marie and Kanda were there, but somewhere different. They were trying to find them. They were running away.
The were running away from a Noah. NOAH. Okay. Maybe Kanda had found them. Was Lenalee here? Marie? Who knew. But a Noah had put them here. This was a Noah's domain. That helped. A bit.
OUT? he asked. Maybe Kanda would know that too.
?
Or maybe not. Okay. He tried to run through everything he knew. 1. Kanda was here. 2. Most of everything else wasn't. If Lenalee and Marie were here, they were real, if they weren't, then they were unreal. But they wouldn't look like themselves. 3. Everything fake felt real. All the illusions and the scenes felt real. Even Kanda was wearing a body that didn't look like him at all, actually, it looked like one of the horrible stuck-up kids who thought that Daisya being great at everything was somehow his fault. He only knew it was Kanda because of the body. Whatever it looked like, it felt the same. So the illusions could feel real, but you could tell they were real if they felt the same. Bodies existed here. Sort of. At least, you could use them to tell what was real.
So, maybe the real ones in here would defend themselves. If you tried to attack them. Kanda should do that, he had the big sword and better strength.
He tried to think. What would they do, if they found someone real? If it was Lenalee or Marie, they could make contact the same way. What if the Noah was in here?
Actually, the Noah probably was in here to keep an eye on them. The way the disguises worked-he remembered now-they made it so that he and Kanda would want to hurt each other. So, the Noah could be here, it would just have a face that neither of them would ever attack. Okay. Daisya scanned the crowd again and tried to guess who he'd never guess.
And the scene changed again to the first view he'd ever got of HQ. He manoeuvred his way over to try and tell Kanda what he'd thought. What would make sense? He used Kanda's arm to point at himself-real-and then at the dull-looking horde of Finders whose sullen expressions blamed him for their deaths-not real. Probably. Did Kanda get it? Who knew. He tried something simpler for the next part. Sword. Swing sword. Get those guys.
That was too vague. Kanda didn't have a great imagination, so he tried to tell him directly. KILL. OUT.
There. That would do it. Now, he just had to find the right one. Right at the end, the dream fell back on showing him familiar faces.
Kanda tried to move, but he held him back. It would just waste time to lash out randomly. He had to think about this.
All of them. Neighbours, friends, family, Finders, Exorcists, all wearing the Black Order's uniform. Why did these illusions always try to make him remember home? That place was gone! They wouldn't even recognize him if he went back now! Why'd everyone always try to send him back there?
And why did he feel so guilty?
That was it. That was it!
Before it could change again, he grabbed Kanda's sword arm and pointed it at his mother. She'd raised him to help her because she was tired of work. She looked so old. Not angry at him, just sad, and old.
…
Side-by-side, two sets of eyes snapped open and two bodies gasped.
I think I've confused myself now...I tried to go off of Lavi's nightmare for this encounter, and he figures out that he can get out of the dream by killing dream-Road, even when she's disguised as someone else. Based on that, I guessed that the fake people in the dream (Lenalee in Lavi's dream) feel real and the real people can be in disguise (Road looking like Allen), but the real people must have some kind of 'real' presence, otherwise why would Road go into the dream and risk being discovered? Or maybe I'm overthinking it.