[Open] Kanda Comes Home

[madmugenskillz]

WHO: Yu Kanda, Daisya Barry, Lenalee Lee, Froi Tiedoll, Gregory House
WHAT: Kanda is in a lot of damn trouble.
WHERE: Exorcist's Home
WHEN: The day the SOS Brigade returns from the jungle.

Comments

[hiheelboots]

Lenalee had been sleeping when the commotion downstairs awakened her. Instinct told her right away that something was very, very wrong.

She sat up in bed, straining her hearing. There were voices -- Daisya, and Tiedoll, and somebody else that she didn't recognize . . .

She jumped to her feet, grabbing a too-big robe and tying it around her, and rushed to the stairs, peering down -- and her heart nearly stopped.

Kanda was lying on the couch. Daisya and Tiedoll were beside him, and there was someone bending over him, and a tube coming out of Kanda's nose. One look at her childhood friend told her that something was very, very wrong with him that went beyond his transition back to his old self.

She let out a gasp, her hands nearly covering her face.

[sh_hereisgone]

Daisya turned at the sound and nearly snarled as he rushed towards her, shaking his head. "No," he snapped, worry and fear setting him on edge. "I don't want you seein' him like this an' I know he wouldn't want it either. C'mon."

He put his hands on her shoulders and tried to guide her towards the stairs, anxious and trembling. "C'mon. Let's go. You should be restin' anyway."

[causticguy]

The sound of footsteps on the stairs hadn't been what caught House's attention. The sound of the gasping voice and Daisya's sudden movement were what did. Snapped out of his thoughts, House looked around to see the girl standing by the foot of the stairs, and yes of course he recognized her and of course he knew that they'd told him that the guy on the couch with the painters smock and the blood was supposed to have been her-or she was him, or something-when he'd treated his/her knee…but actually seeing the girl (knee apparently uninjured, he noted, to judge by the way that she moved) had a way of solidifying things.

House watched Daisya try to turn the girl back upstairs, and yeah he got that maybe none of them wanted her seeing this, but he hadn't missed the 'should be resting' comment or the oversized robe, which meant that she was apparently convalescing from something and wasn't supposed to be out of bed, and there was no way that that was just a coincidence

[hiheelboots]

Lenalee recognized the name -- this was Daisya's friend. That the thought was even registering in her panicked mind was nothing short of a miracle. Her eyes went from Tiedoll to Daisya to the doctor, unable to linger on Kanda and register the full horror of what was happening to him. And she said the first thing that came into her head, in a small voice: "Doctor, is he going to die?"

[makerofeden]

Tiedoll, instead stood up and smiled, "Doctor House is a trained professional, I am sure he will make sure everything will be alright." he said this with a tone that would hide up any fact just a few moments ago he wanted to cram 'Miss Manner's Bedside Manner Book for Dummies' down the Doctor throat or beat over the head with it.

"Would you like a seat, Miss Lenalee?"

[hiheelboots]

"Yes," she said, letting the General lead her over to a chair, trying not to look at the pale, limp figure on the couch but unable to tear her eyes away. "Whatever it takes to help Kanda, I'll do it."

[causticguy]

House hated that phrase-trained professional. The damn cable guy was a trained professional. The telemarketers who insisted on clogging up his answering machine (national Do Not Call registry and unlisted number be damned) were trained professionals. "Trained professional" was what people called someone when they wanted to instill trust in a person who couldn't gain it simply by their actions alone

[hiheelboots]

"We switched bodies," she said. "Or, rather, the form of each other's bodies. I don't know how it happened. We were both knocked out at the ball and woke up as each other. At first, I thought they'd literally put our minds into each other's bodies, but when we started to change back, I knew they'd just changed the shape."

[causticguy]

Finally, maybe they were getting some place. Or at least he was getting some actual information. Something that he hadn't already heard before.

"When did you start to change back, how long did it take, and did anybody see it happen?"

[hiheelboots]

"Right after Kanda left for the mission," she said. "It took about a full day to happen. Daisya was with me. I don't know how it went for Kanda, but with me, it kind of stopped and started."

[causticguy]

House cast Daisya a fleeting glare, "You've been holding out on me, Sunshine." But for the moment he was more interested in following the line of Lenalee's words.

"Stopped and started. Describe it. Was it localized--an arm then a leg? Or everywhere at once. Tell me what it felt like."

[hiheelboots]

"It was my legs, first," she said. "Then my head, my face, and . . . then, my whole torso at once, and my . . . my insides. The part with my insides, it happened all at once."

[causticguy]

House limped over to stand between the couch and the chair where Lenalee sat, looking down at one and then the other. "You're smaller than him," he observed. "Did you feel tightness? Pressure? Did it feel like you were being compressed? You have any trouble breathing or moving?"

[hiheelboots]

"I stopped being able to move entirely at one point," she said. "There was pressure constantly, especially when things were shifting inside me. When . . ." She blushed a bit, then remembering that she was speaking to a doctor, she took a deep breath, closed her eyes and said, "When certain organs came back."

[causticguy]

Oh, for the love of--how old was this girl and she couldn't even properly name her own genitals without blushing. But then, House reminded himself, this whole Exorcist lot was supposed to be from 1800-something, weren't they? He guessed he should be thankful for what he got. But if she was blushing already, he knew she wasn't going to like the direction of questions yet to come.

The paralysis was interesting. He paused on that momentarily: "You couldn't move--for how long? Did you lose consciousness at all?"

He paused and then, apparently sparing no concern for her modesty asked, "Any nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, or blood in your bowel movements--at any time, either before, during or since your whole switcheroo?"

[hiheelboots]

Lenalee looked nervously around her. Could she talk about intimate bodily functions in front of Daisya and General Tiedoll -- with the former bothering her more than the latter?

"It was maybe an hour or two that I couldn't move," she said. "I kept going in and out of consciousness through the whole change back, but I was out for some time after I was paralyzed. And I was sick to my stomach in the middle of the change, a couple of times."