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Title: The Island of Misfit Toys

Author: NinthFeather Rating: T

Characters: Neil Dylandy, Setsuna F. Seiei, Tieria Erde, Allelujah Haptism Summary: Neil Dylandy sees the beauty in broken things. WARNINGS: Angst and spoilers for a good bit of the first season. Disclaimer: Unless having a plushie replica of Exia counts, I do not own. AN – This drabble is set somewhere near the end of the first season. Thank you to StormyMonday for beta-reading! (By the way, if you were hoping this was an update of Recurring Nightmare with Popcorn, don't worry. The new chapter will be up by the 10th of June.)

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When Neil Dylandy joined Celestial Being, he hadn't realized that he was, in a sense, marooning himself on the spacefaring version of the Island of Misfit Toys.

Sure, he'd expected his new co-workers to have some issues. After all, pretty much the only reason anyone would join Celestial Being was that they'd been hurt, somehow, by war. But the truth far exceeded his expectations.

There was a fine line between "damaged" and "broken" and his new comrades, especially his fellow Meisters, made their homes on it. They were not just hurt, he realized, they were seconds from falling apart.

This realization became a conviction as he watched them and worked with them. He could feel the weight of it pressing down on him, because he was the only one who had noticed just how fragile the other Meisters were. And thus the only one truly looking out for them.

Setsuna was always a few reminders of his past away from a total emotional shutdown. Tieria was obsessive and irritable about Celestial Being's plans because he didn't have anything else, and hid his insecurity by acting superior. And Allelujah-well, in some ways he was the worst off, because he seemed so normal on the outside that no one noticed the constant battles raging in his mind.

Neil tried-never let it be said that he didn't. He tried everything he could to bring them closer together, to cheer them up, to give them strength. But it never quite seemed to be enough. No matter what he tried, he couldn't fix them.

It made sense, after all. He was a sniper, not a counselor. He destroyed, he didn't build. Sometimes, he didn't understand why he tried at all.

But he couldn't help it, because below Setsuna's hardened exterior, there was an exceptionally good, selfless kid. Without his icy façade, Tieria was genuinely intelligent and surprisingly gentle. And Allelujah had untapped depths of kindness and compassion that he hid from the world, lest someone get close enough to him to also encounter Hallelujah. He could see the beauty in the broken toys, and he wanted to fix them up so that everyone else could see the same things he saw.

And besides, he knew he was just as broken as they were, only better at hiding it, better at coping. But he had maturity and experience that they didn't have, and that they might never gain, depending on how well their battle went.

He didn't want to think about that possibility, though. He didn't mind the idea of dying himself, but the thought of any of the others dying now both terrified and saddened him. If Setsuna never got to do anything other than fight, if Tieria never had a chance to let anyone in, if Allelujah never lived long enough for time to face the guilt Neil knew he felt every time he participated in an armed intervention…the world would never know what it lost. It would never even mourn them. They were the wreckage of humanity's mistakes, dismissed by a world that wanted to forget that such people existed.

If they hadn't been asked to shoulder the burdens they'd been given, what might they have become? He could imagine Allelujah as a teacher at an elementary school, letting the kids call him Mr. H. because they couldn't prounounce Haptism. Tieria would have made an excellent IT expert or computer programmer. Neil could picture him muttering insults at some computer novice while he fixed their hard drive. Setsuna…well, he hated to admit it, but he couldn't really picture Setsuna in a normal civilian job. Maybe he could have been a police officer or a security guard, though. Maybe he would have smiled more. Maybe they all would have smiled more.

If he needed a reason to hate the world, besides the death of his family, then these three were it. A world that couldn't even recognize how wonderful the other members of his little misfit family were didn't deserve to exist.

But maybe, someday, it would. That, as much as peace, was what he was fighting for.

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