Yuu ;;
{--Though very seemingly one-sided and it can easily be seen that Lavi has much more mutual friendships with others such as Allen, Krory, or Lenalee, Lavi probably feels closer and more comfortable with Kanda than anyone else among the Exorcists. His obnoxious, prodding behavior may be mistaken as mere disrespect or even veiled guile, but this would be a wildly incorrect assumption to make.
Lavi’s tendency to gravitate towards Kanda, wanted or unwanted as his presence may be, is very methodical, and broken down, makes the most sense from a strategic standpoint.
The biggest and most obvious one is that Kanda is unlikely to die. Not through injury and being a casualty of battle, at least. Even were Kanda to lose entire parts of his body, or take blows guaranteed to be fatal in anyone else, Kanda will not only survive, but recover good as new, given time. Kanda is the one and only exception in any war Lavi’s ever recorded that he doesn’t have to worry about not coming back through sheer bad luck or unfair odds. Everyone else, from the strongest General Exorcist to the weakest Finder, is only a matter of time, and a heartbreak waiting to happen.
The reasons don’t begin and end there, however.
Both Lavi and Kanda have been deeply involved and raised in war, years longer than others like Allen or Lenalee, and their involvement has been more brutal from earlier on. War more or less defines the entirety of who each of them are, having nothing else outside of that. Though they each have mentors (Bookman and Teidol respectively), and each has a greater goal outside of the Order’s goals (to succeed Bookman, and to find “that person” (before the Alma Karma arc)), they lack other things like family or other homes to return to.
Both also have a certain level of distance they put up between themselves and others as well, for largely similar reasons: the people around them die. Constantly. While time and again, they survive and keep doing what is required of them. The difference is that Kanda is more blatant about pushing others away with an unpleasant attitude, while Lavi puts up an act of closeness and friendliness to achieve distance more underhandedly.
They also share another key event, that being that each has had to destroy one of their first real friends because of the Holy War, because they had in some way lost their humanity and turned deadly. For Kanda, it was Alma Karma. For Lavi, it was Doug becoming an Akuma. Both destroyed their first friends by their own hand, given little other alternative.
Overall, Lavi relates on a personal level much stronger with Kanda than others.
He can’t relate to Allen’s martyrdom, or the experience of being abandoned and abused, then losing the only person that mattered in life, and being so devastated emotionally as to bring them back as an Akuma.
He can’t relate to Lenalee’s dependence on her brother, or on being kidnapped and imprisoned, or the way she views the Order and her comrades as her “entire world”, and being so deeply committed to her compassion for others.
He can’t relate to Krory’s existence sheltered inside a castle away from the rest of the world, or Miranda’s experience as feeling useless and without wanted skills, or many other stories within the Order.
He can, however, relate to much of Kanda and the swordsman’s particular brand of jadedness towards people overall, and he doesn’t have to worry at all that Kanda is someone who needs “protecting”. Likewise, Kanda is a capable fighter, and someone he doesn’t worry about not being able to back him up in battle. He trusts in the strength Kanda possesses to see them victorious in any fight.
Though he often goads Kanda into bordering-violent annoyance, and pretends fear often, he finds Kanda’s presence comforting because of all these factors, as well as because Kanda holds little interest in him, meaning that when he leaves the Order -- and it absolutely is a matter of when, not if -- he likewise won’t need to worry about it being difficult to break ties.
He has very little concern for Kanda becoming attached to him as others will, and considers him “safe” territory to get close to because of this, as his disappearance will be brushed off far more easily. That he so strongly annoys Kanda only further insures such outcome, as far as he sees, which is largely why he makes no effort to tone down his childish antics or refrain from calling Kanda “Yuu”.--}
