Thud!

"A-a-aaaAAAAA!"

"Che!"

"Kanda." Tiedoll took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes hard before replacing them. He was not sure he wanted to see what had happened in the other room. "Kanda," he repeated, "come here a second." Instead of the requested disciple, Daisya came running into the small closet-converted-to-studio attached to Tiedoll's Headquarters room and buried his tear-streaked face in his teacher's stomach. The general sighed and placed a weathered hand atop the scruffy tuft of hair connected to the wailing visage burrowing into his uniform jacket. "Kanda, last time," he said in his gentle manner of speaking so that it was really no wonder that the boy felt no threat and thus no motive to oblige the softly spoken commands.

Footsteps.

Marie entered.

"Ah, Kanda…" Tiedoll eased out of Daisya's death grip and crossed the room, passing a grave looking Marie on the way to his small bedroom where an intensely scowling Kanda stood, arms crossed. Gray eyes drifted calmly from one side of the room to the other, passing over the fierce glare and sharply down-turned mouth of his pupil, several sketch books gushing loose papers and laying in discarded clusters, and the familiar shiny orb that was Daisya's innocence still jingling feebly as it spiraled to halt a few feet from the bristling Kanda.

Gray toed socks shuffled across the room, pausing in front of the grumpy looking young exorcist but not turning his direction.

"Hmm..." Dark eyes glared at the hand that extended down to lift the charity bell but did not shift to the carefully bending body, knees slowly bringing his master closer and then farther from his level. Tiedoll rubbed his head and back while appraising the silver sphere in his large hand before beckoning to Daisya with one finger. The tearful boy hesitated before crossing the room to stand before his angry peer, taking the preventative step of positioning himself slightly behind Tiedoll's leg. "Marie. What happened?"

Daisya and Kanda both started slightly in shock, Daisya having been well prepared to recount a tragic and dramatized version of the latest of Kanda's assaults and Kanda being equally prepared with a healthy stock of sour faces and snippy comments to irk his mentor with. Tiedoll pretended not to notice as the two regained their composure, smiling softly at Marie to encourage the similarly startled student to answer.

"Daisya was annoying Kanda. Kanda got angry. And Kanda hit Daisya with that," he pointed a small brown finger to the innocence still in Tiedoll's loose grip.

"In the mouth," added Kanda, looking up now at his mentor who glanced down at the guiltless gaze passively as if Kanda had commented on the beautiful weather they were having and not admitted to his breaching of the 'no-hitting-biting-kicking-or-scratching your comrades' rule.

"So it seems."

"I think I chipped his tooth. I was aiming for his nose."

"I see."

"I'm not supposed to hit Daisya," Kanda's eyes continued to meet Tiedoll's evenly, not in a challenging way nor in a way requesting pardon.

"No… you're not supposed to. But do you think it was the right thing to do?"

"Of course. It's wrong to do something you don't believe in."

Tiedoll nodded kindly.

"But it's wrong to hurt people too. Unless you have a very good," the general eased himself to the flat stone floor, "very true reason," he finished, wincing slightly at the ease (or lack thereof) with which his joints obliged him.

"I do," Kanda replied, unshaken by his interrogator's new proximity to him. Tiedoll waited patiently for his student to continue, patting the floor beside him for Daisya to sit and vaguely restacking the unorganized leaves of scattered sketchbooks. "Daisya was having an argument with me and he was saying wrong words. I told him he shouldn't play with his Innocence because it's a weapon from God to fight the Akuma so it should be treated with relevance."

"Reverence?"

"That as well," Kanda faltered for the first time, withdrawing slightly from embarrassment about his English abilities.

"It's a big word." Dark eyes stared unhappily at careful hands shuffling more sketches together but not shifting upward to seek gray eyes respectfully averted.

"Daisya told me I was too serious all the time and that I was just jealous he had an innocence he could play with and I had a sword that's too heavy for me. And that's not true so I called him a liar and that made him angry with me. So he called me stupid and that made me very very angry with him so I punished him by hitting him with his charity bell." His story now concluded, Kanda fell resolutely silent and resumed his introverted, cross-armed position.

"Daisya," Tiedoll thumbed through the sketchbook presently in his grasp and pulled out a smudged rendering of a wooded landscape, "what's this?"

"A forest." The general leaned forward, looking back across the room to Marie and holding the picture so that he could see it.

"Wessex Glen." He flipped one finger deftly and spun the picture once for Kanda's appraisal.

Kanda glared at the paper as if silently willing it to burst into flames.

"What does the picture look like to you, Kanda?"

"A river."

"Ah… let's see," gray eyes squinted behind wide framed lenses as they scanned the slanted manuscript on the back of the sheet. "'Glen'…hmm." Tiedoll laid the picture down gently in his stack. "We all saw different things in a single picture. The same picture was unique to each of us, just exactly as any situation is. You, Kanda, and you, Daisya, saw the same picture but it meant different things to both of you."

"But Daisya thinks the wrong thing," Kanda could not suppress the confusion in his voice this time. "He was doing the wrong way, sensei."

"So were you then, when you said this was river."

"I-" the glare on Kanda's tiny pale face had transformed from furious to frustrated. He couldn't finish his sentence.

"Kanda, come here," Tiedoll held out one hand between them and gingerly grasped his slender arm to pull him closer when Kanda grudgingly shuffled mere centimeters towards him. "Can you see me?" Kanda nodded reluctantly. "Clearly?" Kanda tried to pull away half-heartedly. Tiedoll smiled kindly and released his arm.

"Yes…"

"Good. I can see you too," Tiedoll briefly shut droopy, aged eyes and pulled his large glasses off the bridge of his nose with a thumb and forefinger. "Can you still see me?"

"Hai…"

"I can't see you at all. Are you still there?" Kanda nodded then replied orally, remembering his mentor's current vision abilities,

"Hai…" Tiedoll turned his wrist so that the glasses now faced his disciple and, very slowly guided the spectacles to rest on the bridge of the petite ivory nose, tucking the ends around his ears with his other hand. Dark eyes struggled to see through mirrors that straightened the world for gray ones, squinting and widening in attempts to find a breech in the impenetrable concave glass. Small arms extended and small hands sought Tiedoll's sturdy arms for stabilization. "I can't see."

"Am I gone just because you can't see me?" Small fingers folded around dark sleeves.

"Iie…"

"We're both here, we just can't see each other. There are many things all over the universe that are there; you just can't see them. Most of them," Kanda blinked rapidly as the smooth bridge of the glasses slid off his nose and refractions returned to normal, "are ideas. Morals. Opinions. The like." Tiedoll adjusted his heavy spectacles back on their proper perch. "Daisya has an idea about the treatment of his Innocence and you just can't see it. It's not wrong; it's just different. Exactly like you and I, I need these to see and you can't see with them. Do you understand now, Kanda, how you're both right?" For the second time the gray gaze met the dark gaze but this time there was emotion in the smaller pair of eyes, slight bewilderment and a tinge of discontent.

The dark eyes flicked away and Kanda began to show early signs of his withdrawal process, slouching and holding his hands in front of him, taking a few steps back towards the foot of Tiedoll's bed. He grasped for familiarity in the midst of the discomfort of borderline confusion and understanding of his error, starting to speak in his native tongue before realizing he was doing so and reverting to English.

"Can I have the picture?" Tiedoll was startled by this abnormal request, as Kanda, on principle, avoided any form of expression, especially if it involved Tiedoll or his artistic endeavors, but he suppressed his surprise so as not to discourage whatever Kanda planned on accomplishing with the aid of the sketch.

His fingers gathered minute gray flakes of ancient strokes of graphite on the surface of the page as he held the sheet out to his student. Dark eyes rapidly scanned the features spread across the paper before Kanda enfolded it tightly yet carefully in his arms and small bare feet padded across the room to the door.

"I'm sorry about your mouth Daisya," he turned abruptly at the door; hand on the handle just barely in reach. The door swung open and Kanda continued his exit, looking down at the picture determinedly.

"Kanda." He halted, turning back to Tiedoll who was gathering up his sketchbooks.

"Aim higher next time, please." Dark eyes fully took in the old man cross-legged on the floor, not just his graphite-coated hands.

"Hai."