Chapter Text
When Gen opens his eyes, the last thing he expects to see is a lazy smile curling across purple lips. He nearly falls out of his bed with the surprise of it, but Stanley’s firm grip on his shoulder keeps him steady.
“Mornin’ kitty-cat.” The soldier drawls, honey-brown eyes crinkling slightly the longer he gazes down at Gen’s blanket-swaddled form. Sunlight pours across the light blue covers; bright and cheerful. The thought appears that this is the latest he’s been allowed to sleep in since breaking out of the stone.
“Ah... Stanley-chan, what a lovely urprise-say to see you so early this morning!” After a beat of silence, Gen’s sleep-fogged brain finally clears up enough for his typical overly-cheerful facade to take over. Stanley’s expression only grows more amused as he speaks, and, much to Gen’s confusion, he turns around and walks out of the room without another word. Gen doesn’t even have the time to process the strange circumstances of his awakening before the large woman he’d met the day before slams the door open and drags him bodily to his feet.
They’re halfway down the hallway before Gen remembers that he’s still in his underclothes and convinces the soldier to let him dress before having breakfast. Unsurprisingly, he’s not taken to a cafeteria or mess hall; rather, he’s led down a narrow flight of stairs and through a maze of identical steel-walled corridors into what seems to be a lounge of sorts. The room is fairly small in comparison to the cathedral-ceilinged monstrosities he’d caught glimpses of yesterday (seriously, either one of the two leaders had claustrophobia, or Xeno was compensating for something). There’s a circular table in the back, positioned directly beneath two skylights and accented by matching wooden chairs.
Maya (he never got her last name) pulls out his seat with a dramatic flourish, and he has to suppress a flinch at the sudden movement. He covers the lapse with an equally dramatic show of lowering himself onto the chair and smoothing out his haori that makes his guard snort. She’s surprisingly chatty for someone watching over a potential spy/hostage, but Gen can only be grateful since her inane babbling distracts him enough that he can actually choke down the tasteless food on his plate: a palm-sized muffin that tastes vaguely like cornbread, strips of meat likely cut to resemble bacon, and a half-filled cup of milk. Practically a feast.
His guard doesn’t seem to notice or care about the waves of nausea that roll through his body as she drags him all across the massive castle on what can only be described as the worst possible tour in existence. They scale terrifyingly thin ladders only to descend perfectly usable flights of stairs directly after, enter rooms seemingly without rhyme or reason, and greet every. single. person. who crosses their path. Despite his best efforts to lose himself in her enthusiastic (if irredeemably frivolous) chatter about the notable occurrences that took place in each place they pass through, the high, sloping walls of Xeno’s fortress only worsen the violent swooping of his stomach. It hasn’t even been a day since he’d left Senkuu behind with the rest of their allies, and yet his mind can’t help but fill with high-saturation watercolors of them bullet-ridden and bleeding out on the half-submerged deck of the Perseus. The more citizens they encounter, the worse the illusions become. Suika’s little watermelon bobbing on the surface of the river, the glass ovals shattered. Kohaku’s hair rope slipping away in a stream of rust-colored water. Taiju’s back torn open from countless wounds as Yuzuriha’s glassy eyes stare up at him, never to close again. The back of Ryusui’s skull blown off from the force of a bullet’s impact with Francois’ hands still covered in his brain matter. Ginro face down in the water, Kinro left eternally reaching for his brother. Ukyo’s fear. Matsukaze’s confusion. Tsukasa’s fury. Senkuu.
They are back in the same room they used for breakfast by the time the sun reaches its zenith. Gen eats mechanically, smiles mechanically, laughs mechanically, breathes mechanically. He tries very hard to forget that not a single person they saw on their tour was Stanley Snyder. The man who woke him with a smile. The man who said he could kill Gen’s friends, and meant it. When Maya pounds his back, howling in laughter at some small joke he cracked, something bursts.
Alarm bells blare loud and insistent as his whole body rolls forward, hand coming up on instinct to cover his mouth as bile rises hot and sharp up his throat. Gen thinks he sees Maya stand through the tears gathering in the corners of his eyes, but the sensation of saliva flooding his mouth while every single muscle in existence seizes in preparation for the contents of his stomach to empty themselves right back out onto his plate distracts him from noticing much else. He tries to focus on drawing air in through his nose instead, scattered thoughts trying to reshape themselves around the clanging panic that radiates across his skin in electric waves.
Gen is white-knuckling the table edge when the bottom of a bucket fills his vision. Relief doesn’t even have the time to turn up the corners of his mouth when his gag reflex spasms and the measly remains of his breakfast coat the sides of the grey bucket. He heaves again and again until tears are streaming down his cheeks and he’s coughing up little more than blood-flecked bile. His arms tremble so badly that when Maya moves the container out from under his chin, he almost faceplants directly into what’s left of his lunch.
The soldier’s palm rubs gentle circles against his back as he sits there, frozen and trembling, unable to get his body to do anything except breathe. He can’t even bring himself to open his mouth; the memory of flower petals vomit weighing down his tongue and sealing off his voice. Gen doesn’t know how long they stay like that. It could be minutes, hours, seconds. Maya only moves away when his shaking finally abates, taking the bucket of his mess away into a connected room and returning moments later empty-handed.
“Feelin’ better kiddo?” She asks, furrowed eyebrows somehow audible in her tone. Gen blinks once, twice, trying not to swallow as he nods. He’s still staring, motionless, at his half-eaten plate of food, but the alarm bells in his head have quieted significantly, so he feels safe moving just enough to return the guard’s worried gaze.
“Fine now. All the recent traveling hasn’t helped settle my stomach is all.” It’s a pathetic excuse, but Maya buys it, and that’s the only thing he has enough space in his mind to care about right now.
Maya’s hand wraps carefully around Gen’s arm as she helps him to his feet. The pace they set is noticeably slower as the woman leads him out of the meal room and back into the maze-like bowels of the castle. Neither of them speak much, though Maya still makes a point to greet everyone they pass with higher levels of enthusiasm than Gen has felt since he first saw Senkuu create artificial light. Still, in the silence, a question gnaws on Gen’s thoughts.
“How were you able to retrieve a sick bucket for me so quickly?” he asks after they’ve turned right five times in four minutes.
“Oh, that? Doc Xeno had us put medical shit damn near everywhere in this place. I had to install wall mounted cots in practically every damn room on this floor alone! There’s sick buckets and first aid kits every few feet ‘cause of him, but thank god Snyder talked the Doc out of throwing a cot in the cow pens too or I think there would’ve been a mutiny,” the guard’s laugh is boisterous, echoing down the narrow hallways. She seems to have a good deal of respect for both Stanley and Xeno. It’s clear to Gen that control of the colony wasn’t decided through might alone.
“Why did he want medical equipment everywhere?” the question slips out before he can think better of it, but Maya doesn’t seem upset. On the contrary, she looks just as unsure as Gen is.
“I’d tell ya if I could, kid, but the Doc never really gave any concrete reasons. He’s a terrible liar and he knows it, but he’s always sincere about making us better shit, so we don’t bother questioning stuff like this much, y’know?” Gen thinks about the lightbulbs again, how they were made to further the scientific capabilities of Ishigami Village. Then he thinks of the Christmas tree Senkuu built despite the fact that the two of them were the only ones who would find any meaning in it. The ramen that allowed Senkuu to earn the villagers’ trust; the ramen Byakuya Ishigami took to space. How strong one must be to only allow themselves their wants by using them to fill a need.
Gen suddenly feels as though he understands the mysterious Doctor Xeno just a little bit better.
“I know,” he murmurs back, even though Maya likely wasn’t looking for an answer to her question. “He sounds very kind,” Gen says, and surprises himself with his own genuity. Maya just chuckles again, opening yet another door and ushering him through.
“Well, you’ll be able to decide that for yourself tonight. The Doc said the two of you have dinner plans,” inside the door is a room similar in composition to the one he’d eaten his meals in, but very different in quality. A giant floor-to-ceiling window makes up the entirety of one wall with two leather sofas positioned perfectly to soak up all the afternoon sunlight that streams in through the glass. A low coffee table holds down a plush grey rug in front of the two couches, a multitude of half-dead plants ringing the three other walls.
Maya lingers by the doorframe but motions for Gen to make himself comfortable, so he does, taking a seat on the couch angled the closest to the window. The view is nice: miles of cornfields rippling gently in the breeze. Walking through the fields themselves with Stanley was certainly eye opening, but only from this high up can he actually see the true scope of the farmland. Already he feels his fraying nerves relaxing.
“I’ll be back in a minute. Just gotta let the cooks know to prepare you something lighter for dinner tonight. You shouldn’t be bothered by anyone in here: it’s the lounge Snyder’s unit uses, and all of those guys are out working right now,” never mind. Gen’s stomach cramps up again at the mention of Stanley’s absence. He fights to keep his breathing even, his expression calm. He is a hostage in an enemy base. Just because his guard is nice does not mean she will hesitate to snap his neck at the first sign of a betrayal.
He forces a soft smile, letting the sunbeams fall over his face.
“Ounds-say good! I’ll be here soaking up the view,” the soldier grins back at him, closing the door as she leaves the room.
It takes every last bit of willpower in Gen’s body to not flinch when he hears the lock click shut behind her.