crumbled: (Default)
ʏᴜᴜ ᴋᴀɴᴅᴀ? ([personal profile] crumbled) wrote in [community profile] niteo_logs2011-09-03 06:36 pm

hold me in your arms tonight.

Characters: [livejournal.com profile] coldbrokenlight and [livejournal.com profile] fallforthesky
When: ...Today?!
Where: Nesreca Lenalee's roommmm.
Rating: Should stay PG-13..!! plus the occasional swear word, maybe.
Summary: The one where Kanda visits and they sit around quietly. Except not really.

From the beginning, it's never been easy. Easier, maybe, with her, but not completely. He's never been good at dealing with other people. At least, not beyond the initial stages of necessary interrogation. Alma was just persistent.

So are these people.

So is Lenalee.

That's not why he's currently in front of her door, though, hand raised and ready to knock. It's not because he hasn't seen or talked to her in a while. If he wanted to make up for lost times, he'd go find Lavi or Walker.

But Lavi's a missing Bookman, and Kanda doesn't know if he can yet stand to sit near Walker without starting some kind of fight completely unrelated to their usual(?) quarreling. Whatever that means. It's been four years since he's had a (relatively) proper harmless argument with the guy. They say old habits die hard. Yeah.

They die pretty hard alright. These two are going to take more than a bit of prodding back to life.

For now he makes his presence known with a few quick raps of his knuckles on old wood and addresses the worn surface in front of him.

"Lenalee, it's me."

He takes a step back, subconsciously reaching for the sword at his side. Unfortunately, it's lying in his room two floors up, so he settles for tugging the sleeve of his coat further over his wrist. He remembers Lenalee's expression when he was finally released from Asia Branch 2 years ago. And while the one behind this door isn't one and the same, she's still Lenalee. Just as strong, just as fragile. Without Lavi or Walker there, it was really just them.

It's kind of nostalgic to see and hear the four of them here, Noahs and Alma(s) aside. He almost feels like he's intruding on something-- something he only knows to be already broken.

Himself aside, though, he's always known Lenalee the longest. And she's always gone to his meditation place to find solace.

Kanda figures it's about time he returned the favor.
setalight: ([♦] Tell me "we both matter don't we?")

teal... deer......

[personal profile] setalight 2011-09-04 02:52 am (UTC)(link)
Lucky for him— though it's less luck and more I don't care anymore, I'll stay here— Lenalee is in.

See, she's been sick. She's been tired. She's been quietly going insane, losing track of the days because when she got sick and got tired, there'd been no one to keep etching them into the wall for her. But out of everything that she's been lately (and she's been a lot of new things), it wasn't prepared for Kanda (hers or otherwise) to come and seek her out.

("Seek her out"— as if she's hard to find these days. Ha ha.)

It never happens.

That's why, when she answers the door, it's slow and wary; she's not sure if it's really him, or if she's just being wishful, or if something's happened (about to happen, happening) and she's needed. But it is Kanda, and he looks so much older, somehow ...fine, so she pulls the door open wider and stands aside, legs quietly knock-kneed. It's clear to anyone who knows where to look that the last four and a half months haven't been easy on her, even if it's only visible in the faded circles under her eyes and 'pursed too tightly, too often' lines around her mouth.

"Kanda..." Always with the vague questioning undertone to his name, because why are you looking for me, it isn't like you. "What are you doing here?"
setalight: ([♥] Just got to put these wings to test)

DELICIOUS *A*

[personal profile] setalight 2011-09-04 06:40 am (UTC)(link)
"N-No!" A little too quickly, but she corrects herself just as. "No, don't worry. It isn't."

Because honestly, what kind of time do they have here beyond too much of it?

She gives a soft laugh and gestures for him to come on in, and don't worry. Her room is bare bones; a table made from plywood and crates, a sunken mattress on the floor... lingering claw marks from an event that feels lifetimes ago with the way time in Nesreca drags along like pulling teeth. "I know it's not much, but come in."
setalight: ([♦] Everything is all right by me now)

[personal profile] setalight 2011-09-05 05:45 am (UTC)(link)
Lenalee wouldn't know; she'd never felt uncomfortable as the visitor. That had been the entire point behind fleeing to Kanda's room.

She sits gingerly on the mattress near to him and stares at the place he'd started picking at without really seeing it. The difference in height feels as if it's separating them, and that's distracting; as if being up here puts them onto different levels somehow (more than just literally), so she scrunches her legs and slides down to join him on the floor. In the tone of someone trying to downplay things, she murmurs, "It's all right," then hesitates and adds, "I've slept on far worse while on a mission."

Which is true— she has. But never for five months. Never paired with constantly less-than-what-they-need food supplies, people she doesn't know, and slow, torturous play weeks that may not grind to bone as quickly as Rhode's games, but still eat away like them. None of this is something Lenalee is going to say. Complaining doesn't fix it, after all.

"You get used to it after a while."
setalight: ([♦] Tell me "we both matter don't we?")

[personal profile] setalight 2011-09-11 06:07 am (UTC)(link)
"Of course." She says it too quickly, too smooth for it to be entirely honest. It shouldn't come as much of a surprise, though; not when her entire life has been stacked upon the building blocks of telling people she's fine so they won't worry.

Sad truth is, such blatant concern on his face (that is to say, blatant in relation to her Kanda) does well to surprise her enough that she can't seem to give an honest answer anyway.

"...What about you?"
setalight: ([♥] I swear I'm almost there)

[personal profile] setalight 2011-09-17 02:17 am (UTC)(link)
But she'll last at least once more. As always.

The corners of her mouth purse a little as she looks away, too; partly amused... mostly tired. How does she act around someone she theoretically grew up with and has never met before?

"I won't if you won't, Kanda."
setalight: ([♠] Strange highs and strange lows)

[personal profile] setalight 2011-09-20 08:10 pm (UTC)(link)
Does he really have to answer it, though? If he didn't... well. He probably wouldn't be nearly as tolerant of them. Of Lavi's antics and her nagging and Allen's sharp words and softer glances.

When he check her forehead, her expression falters into mild surprise and she touches his wrist gently.

"I've already been. It's fine, though. We managed."
setalight: ([♥] I swear I'm almost there)

[personal profile] setalight 2011-09-22 07:24 am (UTC)(link)
Caring is subjective for any Exorcist, right?

He's just figured out how deep the word can really go.

(Maybe you should let her know in so many words one day. Even if actions...)

"Hah... I sleep enough. More than I did at home." And that's the sad part, isn't it? Her voice begins to waver a bit on the last word, too, because his hand is warm against her forehead and when he lets it linger there, that says it's more than a perfunctory gesture. There's honest concern behind it. Of course there is; it's Kanda, but still...

You know... the only real physical contact she's had with her Kanda since arriving was tackling him to the floor in a stairwell. It was to keep him from doing something stupid. He did it anyway, so she'd screamed at him. ...She hasn't touched him since.

Funny, right? The touchy girl who, back home, didn't seem to go more than an hour without resting a hand on someone's forearm or holding their fingers tight in a white-knuckle grip... has been living off a few scarce touches (and the occasional grief-ridden hug) stretched out over months. Like a plant denied the amount of sunlight it would like, she's just kept twisting and bending backward to try and make the best of it, but now that there's a hand on her skin for reasons besides violence or overwhelmingly pervasive angst, she's a little...

Well.

Bolstered by the knowledge that Kanda touched first, her hand doesn't even shake when she moves it from his wrist, reaches out, and runs a finger through his side bang. "Your hair got longer."

And lighter.
setalight: ([♥] Eyes are East and lips are West)

[personal profile] setalight 2011-09-23 05:16 am (UTC)(link)
That's what they call life.

She half-laughs and pulls her own hand back, a little sheepishly. "Give it time."

Like she's given Nesreca hers. When she arrived, her hair had only just finally begun to graze her shoulders (she remembers days spent standing in front of the mirror at home, tugging sulkily on the tips as if it would make them grow faster). Now it's making its way down her back and marking the passing of days spent here far more subtly than her wall-etchings ever did. It was a little sickening, when she finally noticed it.

"Don't. Cut it, I mean. It looks nice."
setalight: ([♥] I swear I'm almost there)

[personal profile] setalight 2011-09-24 05:33 am (UTC)(link)
They have already been here longer than necessary. Everyone. Right? Some of them... nearly a year. Others for even longer (although she has less affection for them than for her comrades). Still, Lenalee nods and lets her smile fade into a quiet turn of her lips.

"Oh." She's a little surprised he'd agree to not cutting it, then. "It does get a little difficult to handle when it's longer."
setalight: ([♦] If you kill the bird)

[personal profile] setalight 2011-09-26 03:44 am (UTC)(link)
They really are beginning to look worn down, aren't they? Hah.

"I haven't had to in a while." A few years, now, right? Nesreca's thrown her sense of time right off, so who knows anymore. "Maybe it'll be harder when it's that long again."
setalight: ([♦] I really fucked it up this time)

[personal profile] setalight 2011-10-08 01:52 am (UTC)(link)
Hah. But they will be. She's heard that what memories you gain in this place don't follow you home. They'll be none the wiser, in the end; even if their bodies might remember.

"No, don't." A little too quickly. "Go, I mean."

She... really wants him to stay, somehow.