A/N: Originally posted on AO3 on July 18 2017 This is a nebulous sort of AU, brought about by a friend. It started out as a silly conversation and then there was a good word here and there and inspiration decided to sock me in the face. Why can't it always do that?
I'm a huge sucker for outgoing girl/shy boy so I guess bad girl/good boy is its cousin? I suppose this is more like "person who got into fights as a youth and is now burnt out by it" in hindsight. But that doesn't roll off the tongue very well.

It had been a long time since Daisy had gotten into a fight; a real one, where at the end of it there would be bloody, scratched up knuckles and blood dribbling down one's chin and aches that would last. It wasn't out of necessity, to defend but rather because there was some joy and control in where your fists could land. Eventually, you would have to put up your hands and say to yourself, "enough," because these kinds of things left you with damaged knees and elbows and headaches that would not go away.

Well, that last one was probably for the habit of smoking. That was one last sharp thing she wasn't letting go of.

Eventually she did find herself in a fight again, a good many years after she put up her hands and said, "Enough," but she told herself it was for an altruistic reason. It was early morning, Daisy had been up for a while, and she found herself looking at a one-sided brawl. She had flown in out of nowhere and chased off the kids.

They were probably stupid kids like how she once was, she thought, not fighting because it was for their own defense but because it was fun. Well, picking on some innocent passerby that couldn't fight back was the lowest of the low.

She finished grumbling this to herself and turned her attention to the man that got attacked. Her hands tingled and wanted to open up the cigarette carton in her back pocket but she resisted.

She asked if he needed anything and what she managed to hear was, "Coffee," so she helped him up and eventually found a coffee shop that was open. Daisy got a regular one with a packet of sugar sprinkled in but the man put in so much milk that it could be called coffee flavored milk.

It seemed to help and he was gracious for her help and offered up his name clearly, "Luigi," and was pretty cheerful for someone who got ambushed by a couple of kids.
Back then this attitude would have earned him a billow of smoke to the face. But that was back then and she didn't consider herself rude enough to do it now.

And that thought made Daisy feel guilty so she asked spontaneously if they could keep in touch and Luigi accepted.

(This feeling of guilt didn't cause her to ask him out on a date some months later, however.)

Overtime she found that kind of attitude endearing. Like when Luigi said that if worst comes to worst he wanted to learn how to defend her – but his fighting stance was all wrong when he demonstrated, his thumbs in his fists and nothing in his stance to protect his lower body. She showed him how to do it right.

Though that didn't mean she always did right. There was a game he liked to play and Daisy would play it secretly and open up treasure chests in parts of dungeons he hadn't yet explored. Seeing his confused face at the empty treasure chests made her snicker behind her hand.

But for the most part she did right. Daisy didn't smoke when she was around Luigi because it made him cough but he would try to hold in the coughing so she wouldn't feel bad. She substituted cigarettes with lemon candy and besides she could share those with him.

More and more she had a lemon candy in the corner of her mouth instead of a cigarette between her fingers.

"Well," she thought once when she opened up the box and shook out two of the candies. She handed one to him. "Cigarettes are expensive anyway."