Thanks for reading if you still are! FF dot net stats broke 2 months ago, so we're now completely flying blind. Sorry about timeskipping over the action, but I figure I need as much help as I can get to make the deadline of 'end of winter break'
It could've been a lot worse, Daisya was sure. About halfway through the next day he got too curious to keep avoiding Lavi. The guy was way too open once he started snooping around his Innocence and redirecting all his questions to shop talk. That meant he had to be hiding something that wasn't whatever he was doing at the Order. Weird. The Order had so many skeletons piled up in it that Daisya couldn't imagine what would be worse than spinning up fake people to stuff full of Innocence and kick out on to the battlefield.
He glanced over his shoulder at Kanda. When he caught his eye, he grinned and waved. Kanda huffed back.
So, it wasn't all so bad. Kanda just wasn't himself when Lavi was nagging at him. He got all prickly at him instead of Daisya, like he should've. The only thing he could do about that was just make sure Lavi was only ever talking to him.
That's how they did it. The whole morning after they woke up, Daisya lined up all the questions he could come up with and shot them at Lavi like he was trying to get five skips from a stone across the bay at home. What sort of foods d'you like? What songs did he know? Could he dance? Would he dance with him, if Kanda was such a miserable bastard that he had to get wheedled into it?
Before lunch, he'd figured out the way to find one teensy little piece of Innocence in a dozen hectares of rotting forest.
Kanda was the referee. The lined up the Charity Bell on a broken stump with Lavi and his hammer standing another ten foot away. It took a few tries to get right, but eventually what happened was that Daisya kicked the Bell over to set it off, and Lavi swung up and hit it into the high grey sky like a cricketer.
Daisya felt it when it happened. He and Marie had a pretty good overlap from all the years they'd practiced, and this wasn't as good as that, but it was new. Hell, it was interesting. The Noel Oraganum was just another sound-based Innocence that cast a net over the area to resonate with Innocence and akuma at the same time. This hammer, whatever Lavi called it, was a short-range weapon like Mugen or the Dark Boots, but it had something else going around in it. Maybe that was because he hadn't been trying to synchronize when Lenalee kicked the Bell around once or twice, but keeping a hold of the Charity Bell's resonance when another Innocence came crashing in was like trying to keep an umbrella upright in a rainstorm.
It was awesome.
The force knocked him right over like the bent trees all around them. He did manage to stay on his feet, even if Kanda came running up behind him like his mom or something. He'd felt the edges of his range race right over the hills around them for one second when the hammer hit. It faded pretty fast after that, but it was like that just then. He even thought he could figure out where the akuma were that blew half this place up the other week.
So they tried it again until he managed to spot the only Innocence on the map there that wasn't theirs. It took six or seven goes at it with Kanda's hand on his shoulder. The space he could feel was so wide on that first hammer strike, he could only focus on a part of it each time. It took four more times after that to pin down the location and hike to where the Charity Bell was in range. He'd thought they'd have to spend another week going bit by bit! What a drag that would've been.
That's what he'd been thinking.
Getting the Innocence out was a whole different story, with that stupid eagle owl trying to rip out his fucking eyes for stealing its "egg." It was fun fighting it up in the branches right up until Daisya thought it'd got him. The only reason he made it out of there with any sight was Kanda whipping a rock up at the bird from twenty feet down below. He caught Daisya, too, when he crashed down through the branches flailing the Innocence around in his right hand.
So, Daisya didn't get to just hang out with Kanda for another week, but this was more exciting.
The only problem was that he'd been so busy chatting up Lavi that he didn't have any time to get anything out of Kanda. And Lavi didn't give him anything either. He'd have to get one of them to entertain him for the long trip home.
That's what he was trying to figure out.
Once Kanda dumped some cold water over Daisya's face to wash the blood away and put some extra bandages on, they'd set off on the road home. Now they wandered into the first village out of the forest in the early evening, before the grown-ups came in from the fields.
Daisya ran a finger along the inside of his bandages. There was something that was making him way itchier than he usually got. Just as soon as it got dark, he could take them off and give himself a good scrub-down.
"Somethin' on your mind?"
Daisya stiffened. Maybe it wasn't the sweat. He still got under his skin well enough to make the one or two hairs that Daisya had left stand on end. Just because he had their backs when it came to the fight, Daisya wasn't about to ignore all the other stuff that made this Lavi guy so hard to get a hold of. Whatever he threw at him, it just slid off. He didn't even give him a reaction!
"Nope," he said.
"Hmmm, you sure?" Lavi leaned in way too close to him. "You've been playing with those all evening. If you think there's some kind of akuma out there..."
"Are you kidding me? There's always some kind of akuma," he said unhelpfully. "That's why we have to go out and get 'em in the first place. You didn't know that?"
Backing off, Lavi raised his hands to either side of his head. "I'm new at this, just wondered if there was going to be trouble. You seem to know what you doing."
With a flick of his eyes that Daisya was sure was meant for him to see, Lavi brought Kanda into their conversation. He was trailing behind and trailing storm clouds, staying quiet as a stone while the two of them chatted up from. So he didn't want to deal with the new guy. Tough! Daisya didn't want to either, but here he was. What kind of bad teammate left him out to dry like that?
"I do. Like right now, I know I'm walking. I'm also talking. If you really want, I can start singing and dancing instead. How'd you like that?" he sniped. "You said you danced."
"I wouldn't mind it," Lavi said easily. "So it's nothing I should worry about?"
"What?"
"That you're on edge."
"Can't a guy scratch without getting nagged? Geez, you're worse than Kanda," Daisya said, tossing his head back to get a look at him.
"Shut up," Kanda said. Nothing too interesting. Daisya just liked to see the little twitch in his brow while he tried to go from his thinking face to his angry face. Wasn't he just adorable?
"That's just what I was going to say."
"Fine, fine," said Lavi. Good. Daisya felt a little satisfied at pushing him off like that.
Steel-toed boots thumping back down on the dirt road, Daisya fished a length of string out of his pocket and tried to get into a game with it. Maybe this damn Bookman would learn a lesson if he knew he wasn't the most interesting thing on these fields of grass. Daisya knew all sorts of ways of having fun when he was stuck on the boring leg of a long journey. He didn't have to just get it out of the people here. Weren't most people boring?
It didn't work.
Daisya was thinking plenty about the string, but he could feel Lavi watching him like his little sister with her big pay-attention-to-me eyes. Did he seriously have to babysit a guy his own age?
He wove through different knots that would make shapes in the simple twine loop. It wouldn't be so bad if he was just a newbie. Lavi was definitely trying to make him mad. He would know. He was just like a little brother, actually, except for the fact that he was so tall. Since he turned sixteen, Daisya had pretty much stayed stuck at the height he was so happy about having when he was younger. It was like he just grew at a girl's pace. When he left home he'd started shooting up, with growing pains that were hell on his knees and spurts that threw off his aim for weeks with how much longer his legs got, and now he couldn't even meet Kanda's eyes except when he was lying down next to him. It was worse that Lavi was taller than that.
Without even realizing it, Daisya reached a hand down to fiddle with the cuff of his boots.
"I bet those bandages are irritating, if you have to keep scratching them like that," Lavi said.
There was nobody else older than him at home except for mom and dad. Daisya knew right away that he didn't always want to do what they wanted, and he knew that he definitely didn't want to do what his little siblings wanted. As for the neighbourhood kids, well, they were sore losers. They wouldn't stop trying to kick him out of games because he won them all.
He grinned to himself.
"You need to go have another look at your vocabulary, if you think this is a bandage," he said.
"Mm, you were scratching your bandages before."
"Yeah. Now I'm checking my boots."
"You have bandages under them," said Lavi. He didn't seem mad at all, swinging his long legs along with his hands in his pockets.
Aha! That was an opening he could take. "How hard are you looking when I strip?"
Daisya thought he heard some kind of noise from Kanda. He really wanted to look back. That was one thing he wasn't going to share with Lavi, though. He didn't need to know anything about Daisya. The more he tried, well, the less he was getting. He had to give something up himself if Daisya was going to even think about saying stuff.
In the rich mid-spring afternoon, Lavi's hand cast a long shadow over his face as he brought it up to the back of his head in embarrassment that Daisya was sure was fake.
"It's unusual. D'you mind if I ask why you keep them on? I didn't think you were the type of guy who cared about clothes," Lavi said, which had to be a dig. "Or did that owl have some more time with you than what I saw?"
"Nah." Something popped into Daisya's mind. "I don't actually know why. If they're so itchy, I should take them off. Right?"
Lavi shrugged. "Whatever you want."
This time Daisya did look at Kanda first. He wasn't going to change his mind depending on what he saw there, but he still wanted to know what it was. A deeper frown. Hah!
At least it was warm. Daisya grabbed the front of his cloak and pulled it off him with one smooth movement mid-walk, tossing it right over his head behind them. A cloth-y smack and a jingle told him that Kanda caught it. Nothing to worry about there. Now that Lavi had a good view of him, shoulders and all, Daisya reached for the safety pins that held his bandages in place all over his body. He started with the neck.
It was tricky to undo them without a mirror. At least, it was the first few times he did it. Daisya's fingers were all numb from callouses when he was a kid, even before getting half the skin burned off them, but he could still feel the bends of the pins beneath the pads on his fingers. He slipped one off in a jiffy and hooked it into his belt for safekeeping.
They could see the five or six buildings in front of them that would make up the town where they'd get something to eat. There was still light left in the day, so they wouldn't stay there. They'd just be three exorcists passing through. Old women would call them good boys and everyone else would look at them like a new circus act. Perfect timing.
Daisya listened for a word from Lavi as he started to undo the bandages, but there was nothing! Even that chatterbox couldn't think of anything to say now.
He unwound one of the bandages from around his chest, awkwardly reaching under his shoulders to get it off. That was the easiest starting point. Then he got up to the neck and head, which were the only ones that he really needed. They were also the only ones that did sometimes itch too much.
With each one that he tore off, he made sure to roll them up and pin them in place before he tossed them back to Kanda's waiting hands. He never checked to see where he was throwing them. He didn't hear any of them hit the ground either.
The scars on him were as faded as they'd ever get. Mostly they were on his back, not his front, so it didn't look too weird if you ignored his head. The glass shrapnel that flew at him that night that always seemed like it was pretty close by, except for the fact that it happened forever ago, caught him when he was facing away and out the window watching Kanda fall. There were patches of once-burned skin eating along his shoulders and under his arms, and long striations from the cuts that criss-crossed his back and reached around the sides of his ribs, crunched up like a closed fist from being broken and re-healed so many times. No, he skin didn't look too bad from the front. Daisya had spent enough time looking at it to know it.
But his face, that could give the Level Twos a run for their money. His hair burned off in a moment, so the skin on his skull was all wrinkled and pulled together. The hair was still only growing back in patches. Where he'd had bangs when he was a kid, there were two long sideburns of mottled red-white tissue down the sides of his cheeks, just in front of the ear.
Grinning proudly, Daisya felt the faint hint of a warm breeze on his skin. That was the other thing. The bandages weren't really so itchy if he couldn't sense much of what they were covering. He basked in his own self-satisfaction.
Poor, nosy Lavi wanted so bad to see what he was hiding? Well, he was definitely going to get what he asked for.
"Ah! You're right, that feels a lot better," he said. "Thanks."
He kept on striding into town. The show was just about to begin!
[puts another quarter in the body horror jar] I just like the idea of Daisya and Kanda as foils. One hates the Order, one loves it, their personalities are totally different, one is visceral and hedonistic, one is detached and doesn't even interact with the world as himself (instead acting as a proxy for his past life), and I think part of it that's cool is for Kanda to be the perfect smooth-skinned inhuman specimen and Daisya to be the mangled gremlin Real Person