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Enjin’s nose crinkled, his nostrils full of the dry heat of the road he was oh-so-slowly shuffling down, picking his way over shifting sand and cracking mud, trying to outpace the increasingly faint wisp of antiseptic that had trailed after him ever since leaving the hospital.
Hate even the smell in the air, this far from home...
His too-dry mouth felt like something had crawled inside it and died. Even the air felt oppressive. Everything about this place felt like surface-level, skin-deep treatments of injuries with hidden infections trapped underneath the skin, wounds left to fester and rot.
(Then again, that was about what one ought to expect from a hospital run by the damn Hell Guard).
As far as he could tell, it was the morning after the morning after the utter fiasco that had been this year’s Doll Fest. He knew he shouldn’t be complaining about something as simple as the air around him. Should feel lucky to be breathing at all, after yet another narrow escape from the jaws of death and all that.
(Didn’t feel like that big of a deal, though, in the grand scheme of things. He was no stranger to those).
In spite of the fact that he was still coping with the aftereffects of massive hemorrhage, Enjin had been more or less thrown out on his ass, kicked out of the hospital thirty or so minutes earlier. He was trudging down the dusty road that led out of town, wearing a nondescript t-shirt, sweats, and hospital slippers. He held his stained and torn dress clothes from a few nights prior (and the precious item contained within them) close to his chest. The clothes had been laundered and folded by the hospital staff, but were probably impossible to fully salvage; the bloodstains had likely soaked into the dye at this point, and would prove impossible to remove, even for August.
August.
Shit.
Yet another person he’d lost track of in the fracas, the other night.
Fear grabbed his insides and tightened its hold.
Hope you’re okay, buddy, wherever you are. For one thing, I’m worried about you, but for another, your grandma will freakin’ kill me if you’re not.
His lips turned up a little, but he had no energy to spare for a laugh or even a grim chuckle. His brain felt sluggish, somehow even more tired than his anemic body. He’d been alright when he first fled the hospital, but now, all of half an hour later, he was starting to stagger through each step, his shoulders hunching in as he fought to keep his balance. An airy lightheadedness swam through his head. Even with his limited medical training, he knew the blood loss he’d experienced from using Alto’s watch must have been pretty severe. Not something you could just walk off after one night of rest. Especially when the rest hadn’t even been particularly good.
As though summoned by the recollection of his nightmares from the night before, patchy flashes of the end of the fight shot through his memory, bits and pieces of what had happened both before and after he used the watch, but mostly after:
…His neck getting sliced open by the rebound, like a knife cutting through the flesh of a ripe tomato…
…The full-body sensation of every muscle suddenly getting ten times heavier when the exhaustion of using so much anima all at once caught up to him…
…Having his head slammed against the wall so hard it left a blood smear behind…
But the worst part by far had been seeing Rudo walk toward that ticking timebomb in the back of the truck that had held Gountess. Last thing Enjin remembered thinking was not him, no way in hell am I gonna let that be him, not after all that. Vaguely remembered Rudo shouting something similar to him as he knelt at Enjin’s side a few minutes later, his hands and knees soaked in Enjin’s blood. As he had faded out, Enjin had thought that would be the last thing he ever heard or saw…
But then he had woken up. Alone. In a hospital room. In a fuckin’ Hell Guard hospital in south central.
‘Get out now,’ the orderly had said to him in no uncertain terms first thing after Enjin woke up this morning, less than an hour ago, shoving his clothes at him and half-pushing him toward the door. ‘Nijiku Kyouka won’t go easy on you if she finds you here later today.’
Enjin’s brow had knit in confusion. ‘She was the one who told the doctors to patch me up, wasn’t she…?’
‘Only so that they have a strong baseline to start from. The healthier you are, the longer she can draw out the interrogations.’
‘Interrogations, huh?’
The nurse had shook his head grimly. ‘You don’t want to know what that entails…’
Enjin really hadn’t liked the sound of that.
‘Get to the abandoned gas station just outside town, south-side,’ the nurse had instructed him. ‘I sent word over the radio last night for someone from the Cleaners to come pick you up. They’ll meet you out there—’
The sound of screeching tires alerted him to the fact that yes, both the nurse and whoever his contact was had made good on their promise. His ears registered the sound, but it took him a second or two to summon the energy to raise his head enough to look up and see who was part of his rescue party.
Once he did, his jaw nearly dropped. He had been expecting Delmon or Gris or maybe Tomme, but instead it was Zanka behind the wheel driving to pick him up. Riyo and Rudo were there as well, in the middle seats, and Amo and Fu in the back.
Well, shit.
That’s my crew.
Those are my ‘strays.’
(‘Enjin the Stray Collector,’ Mymo had said, taunting him with it. ‘You won’t even tell them your true name…’)
As Zanka slowed the jeep to a stop next to Enjin and Riyo jumped out to greet him, Rudo glared icily at him from the middle seat in the middle row, silently boring holes into him with his gaze.
Already depleted, Enjin dropped his own gaze back to the dusty street, a grim smirk forcing its way across his face as he smiled a fuck you, too at his own cowardice (another old, familiar friend). The urge to tug Riyo’s hugging arms off him and run, sprint away from the aftermath of all his mistakes sent a frisson of painfully anxious energy running through his whole frame.
Just that one look at the fierce glare in Rudo’s eyes had told him that the truth was going to come spilling out soon, regardless of how Enjin felt about it.
Wordlessly, Enjin got in, heaving himself into the passenger seat with a stifled grunt when Zanka refused point-blank to relinquish the driver’s seat to him. (“We don’t need any more traumatic injuries ‘n’ shit at the moment,” Zanka had drawled in Enjin’s general direction a moment before, his blue eyes narrowed and not quite meeting Enjin’s when Enjin quipped back “Do we ever?”, which had gotten a muffled pity-chuckle out of Riyo, but nothing but crickets from everyone else). He had needed to grip the handlebar over the door a little more forcefully than he wanted to admit in order to hoist himself up. Once he was in, he sank back against the familiar leather padding of the seats, inhaling quietly in and out through his nostrils with his eyes half-lidded. Trying to focus on the good, not the bad.
They made it. All of them made it out. Even Rudo. A close call, but somehow we made it out alive…
“I almost died, y’know,” Zanka stated softly and rather unexpectedly as he put the car in gear, his driving as smooth as his words were jarring.
Enjin’s eyes snapped back open. He flicked his gaze left towards Zanka, then further to the left, over his shoulder, to meet Riyo’s blank stare in the middle row. Amo and Fu were suspiciously quiet, in the back seat. As for Rudo, he was still glaring daggers at the side of Enjin’s neck. The right side, specifically.
“Uh,” Enjin began, stomach souring at this unexpected beginning to the conversation. “Were you—what happ—”
“Mymo got me,” Zanka spoke smoothly over Enjin’s stumbling. He had obviously prepared his little speech on the drive here. “After he blew up you and Mildretta. Or nearly blew up. Gored me clean through,” he said, with a short explanatory circular gesture at his abdomen, though he still didn’t take his focus away from the dead-empty road up ahead. “I close ta bled out before Goka brought me t’ Eishia.”
“…Oh,” Enjin said, once again looking back at Riyo for confirmation. She still didn’t say anything, merely narrowed her vivid green eyes, looking off to one side, which was confirmation enough. “How’s Eishia? She okay…?”
“Not really. Locked herself in the bathroom for a solid five hours or so soon as we all got home. August said he heard her pukin’ n’ cryin’ in there for most of it.”
“Shit,” Enjin mumbled, rubbing his hands across his temples, noticing how the pressure building inside his head matched the unspoken pressure inside the car. “I’ll call Alice and have her come look her over.”
“Can’t call Alice,” Zanka reminded him, voice tight. “We don’t got no chokers anymore, after two nights ago, and I doubt she knows how to utilize a radio.”
“I’ll look her over myself then.”
“She probably won’t let ya. I invited her to come along with us to come get you, but from the sounds of things, she’s not too keen to see ya again just yet, after what happened. Sounds like it was a bit. Y’know. Traumatizin’.”
This time, Enjin pressed his lips together instead of answering, watching his uncharacteristically chatty protege out of the corner of his eyes. Zanka didn’t look too hot either, truth be told. His face was pallid and twisted in silent indignation. Not unlike how his older brother and sister often looked. Not that Enjin was about to tell him that. He valued his head’s attachment to his neck, recent events notwithstanding.
“Well, I’m glad y—”
“The reason I’m fuckin’ tellin’ you all this about me ‘n Eishia is because I thought it’d be nice for you ta hear it from me, yer teammate, who wouldn’t never keep secrets from ya just for shits and giggles.”
Though it was still only Zanka who had spoken, the mood in the whole entire car went dank after that statement. And it only got worse as Zanka continued, still in his same slow and steady drawl, his blue eyes fixed on the road as he drove:
“Newsflash for ya, Enjin. It doesn’t exactly feel nice and peachy to get called into the boss’s office at six am in the damn morning and told that not only does your dumbass team leader have a secret Vital Instrument he never bothered to tell ya about, but that said leader also somehow landed himself in the middle of a goddamn Hell Guard hospital as a result of usin’ said Vital Instrument, and that no one even knows exactly what injured him in the first place.”
“So that’s what this is about, huh?” sighed Enjin, stomach twisting as he scooched down a little in his seat, though the slump made his back hurt (there were still bruises all across his upper back and shoulders from how hard he’d hit that wall, or perhaps from the first blast, it was hard to tell). “A man’s not allowed to keep secrets from his subordinates?” he said, laying a tiny bit of extra stress on the final word to emphasize his point.
“Not when it has to do with Vital Instruments,” Riyo piped up from the middle seat, her voice laconic and seemingly unbothered, but just pointed enough to contain a veiled threat of consequences if he didn’t respond to it seriously.
“Which is kind of important information t’ have when making battle plans ‘n shit,” Zanka said with a nod. “What with people layin’ their lives on the line an’ all.”
“Especially when it comes to Vital instruments from the Watchman series,” said Rudo, speaking up at last, his voice sharp with a world of accusation. He sounded a lot less like Rudo the Cleaner at the moment and much more like Rudo the Kid Who Fell From The Sky With A Chip On His Shoulder The Size of A Trash Beast.
“Amo is curious, too,” said a much softer voice from the backseat. Enjin didn’t bother to turn around. Didn’t want to risk making eye contact with her or the permanently-bug-eyed Fu seated next to her.
He sighed through his nose instead, head starting to clang. Knew this would be uncomfortable, but I thought they’d maybe give me five minutes to settle in first.
“Look, I—”
“You practically died right in front of me,” Rudo interrupted him, his voice somehow hot and icy at the same time, the way it had been back in the parking garage the last time they’d seen each other. A well of barely contained mistrust and rage. Tone brittle and terse, teetering on the edge of outright unkind. “You’re such an asshole, Enjin. After what happened with Regto—”
“It’s not like I meant to—”
“You didn’t even explain anything, just suddenly you were there, bleeding, and Eishia couldn’t save you—”
Rudo broke off hoarsely, a strangled noise coming from his throat.
Woah. Shit.
“Aw, come on, man,” Enjin blinked in surprise, heart sinking into his churning stomach as he turned himself around just in time to watch Riyo wrap an arm around Rudo’s shaking shoulders. The angry fire in Rudo’s eyes had already disappeared, to be replaced with a deep well of grief; the kid was almost crying just looking at him. Shit shit shit. What the hell was Enjin supposed to do with that.
“Did you—not trust me enough, Enjin? Was that why you didn’t say anythi—”
Again, Rudo choked hard on what sounded like half a sob, then started scrubbing at his eyes. Riyo made a tiny soothing sound, rubbing her hand across his upper back as he buried his head in his arms and hid his face from sight.
Enjin felt sick.
Shit…
“I, uh… I didn’t…”
He didn’t know what to say. Didn’t have the first idea. Being at a loss for words was never a fun time, but right at the moment, it was compounding all the other crap he was feeling, too. The terrible hospital food from earlier (eggs and granola for breakfast this morning, and some sort of shitty rice-gruel concoction yesterday) was suddenly souring in his stomach. Hard.
For a split-second, Enjin just didn’t know what else to do, so he sent a pleading look over at Zanka, who gave him a split-second icy stare in return. Fix your shit on your own, the snap-look said in plain terms.
“I… apologize,” Enjin said, for lack of better ideas, forcing his way through each word. “I’m sorry, Rudo. All of you guys. I suck at, like—”
They went over a bump in the road, slow enough not to jostle the other passengers too badly (Zanka’s driving was like everything he ever did, smooth and skilled and seamless), but enough to suddenly trigger Enjin’s nausea, sending him all the way to the brink.
“Oh, fuck. Pull over, Zanka.”
“What?”
“Pull over.”
“Is this just you tryna get outta—”
“Pull over now before I puke on the—”
Zanka pulled over just in the nick of time. Enjin threw his door open before the car had even fully stopped, vaulting from the front seat. Stumbled away all of two feet before he fell forward, hands braced on his knees, coughing and choking and heaving everything in his stomach into the dirt.
“Enjin, what the hell…?”
He staggered away from Zanka’s outreached hand, weak as shit. He didn’t want them to see him like this, any of them, but it was too fucking late for that now.
“‘S not your fault, Zanka,” Riyo’s soothing tone reached Enjin’s ears, and a moment later, her cool hand on his forehead, then against his back, same as she had done for Rudo a few minutes ago. “There’s a reason Enjin’s always the driver, if you didn’t already know.”
(They couldn’t really be blamed for not knowing, since Enjin did his best to hide it at all times, but being the driver was the only way he ever avoided severe car sickness. Even short trips could trigger a bout that left him incapacitated for hours. He suspected it might have something to do with spending a few too many car rides in the swaying hold of an airless cargo truck when he was a kid, his hands chained together, helpless to brace himself against the walls—)
Even the memory made his stomach twist and contort all over again. He pitched forward and hurled, hard, wet flecks of bile spotting the hospital slippers he was wearing over his feet.
“That’s it, let it go,” Riyo said softly, her hand on Enjin’s aching shoulder as he ducked his head further toward the dirt, stomach contorting involuntarily. “Let it all come up, just get rid of it, and then you’ll feel better.”
Riyo…
“What did I ever do without you,” he mumbled his gratitude at her between increasingly harsh, violent heaves, unsurprised when she answered with nothing more than a thin snort of amusement at first.
“…I dunno, get fucked up over car rides through enemy territory less than two miles in, and nearly kill yourself with a hidden Vital Instrument I didn’t know about?” she added a bit later, after he had stopped throwing up for long enough to catch each and every word. The look on her face said she was almost but not quite teasing.
Oh.
So she was still kinda pissed about that, too.
“Not gonna cut me a break just yet, huh?”
“I’m not the only one, either,” she warned him fondly but starkly, bobbing her head towards the rest of the crew. The others had all filed out of the jeep as well, and were forming a sort of half-circle around him now, pinning him in place against the side of the vehicle with their glares, vaguely intimidating in the same way a litter of kittens baring their teeth and claws at their target ball of yarn might be vaguely intimidating. Enjin just wished he were feeling slightly less nauseated; he wouldn’t usually mind being their ball of yarn, but at the moment…
“Are you sick or something?” Rudo demanded. He looked up at Zanka at his side for guidance. “Should we go back to the hospital?”
Unlike Riyo’s earlier one, Zanka’s answering snort was in no way thin. “Fuck no. I’m mad at him, but I’m not that mad at him.”
“But if he still needs medical treatment—”
“They’re gonna fuckin’ torture him if we take him back there, Rudo,” Zanka said shortly, right to the point. “Only reason he’s not gettin’ the hot irons and shit at the moment is cuz of that orderly givin us timely notice so we could get him outta there before my sister got her hands on ‘im.”
“But—your sister, she wouldn’t do that, she was nice. In fact, she was a lot like y—”
“She would do it in a heartbeat,” Zanka cut in again, his voice sharper than the metal points of his jinki. “Don’t be a fool. Jus’ cuz she didn’t do nothin’ to you don’t mean she wouldn’t do any damn thing she wanted t’ him. All she cares about is answers.”
Slowly, Rudo’s eyes went wide, same way they always did when he realized he’d been unspeakably naive about something.
He’s not wrong, Enjin thought with a grimace, bracing himself with one shoulder against the side of the jeep. He was sliding slightly down, his body still so weak from losing so much blood less than 36 hours ago that he could barely stand. He let his eyes drift closed, feeling the blood drain from his face in a way that told him he was probably going to pass out once he finished throwing up.
(Hopefully it would be after he finished, anyway…).
He felt so sick, he was pretty sure he was about to collapse right in front of all of them. None of them were going easy on him, though. Sobering glares caged him in on every side. He closed his eyes to them, except that then he had nothing to pull his attention away from the fact that his stomach was still churning like after a night out barhopping with Semiu. Felt slightly naked without his choker. Hadn’t been without it in years. Having her voice a press of a button away was more reassuring than he had realized.
As his stomach surged again and his head grew fuzzier and fuzzier, he did his best to concentrate on grounding himself, breathing slowly in and out through his nose, but it was difficult with Fu hovering nearby, dancing from foot to foot and making his standard annoying nervous-humming noise. Amo was glaring at Enjin as well, her familiar smile fixed on her features. Enjin mentally cursed Zanka and Riyo or whoever it was who had decided to let these two come along on the Pick Up Enjin Before He Gets Tortured Into Insanity field trip. It was already overwhelming, trying to figure out what to say to his own team, his normal people, when he was feeling this shitty. Adding in the two newbies had him reeling, weak inwardly in a way he hated to acknowledge, let alone admit.
“Amo would like to offer her help,” said the girl with a side-tilt of her head and a warm smile that nearly made Enjin puke all over again. “This scent is called sea salt. Tomme-san shared it with Amo. Tomme-san said the smell is from a long time ago, a time that Tomme-san read about in a picture book when she was small. The book had a picture of an ocean, which is a sort of gigantic watery place…”
Too dizzy to think straight, Enjin slumped down to the ground, totally drained, letting Amo’s words wash over him as his head spun ever so slightly more slowy.
“Ooo, it’s nice, Amo,” said someone admiringly nearby, maybe Riyo or Rudo, it was hard to tell. He was still so close to fainting, it was impossible to track the voices of those around him.
“Amo is glad you like it~”
Actually…
Well, Enjin wasn’t about to risk opening his mouth to tell her so in case more vomit came up, but there was a sort of nice smell hitting his nostrils. Grounding. Made him dig his fingers into the dirt underneath his palms.
Sea salt, huh…
Maybe Riyo or whoever it was had been onto something after all, letting Amo come along. He wasn’t exactly sure how Fu’s presence was supposed to help anything. But Amo’s power over scents and using them to heal was…
Well, it was pretty damn impressive.
“…a smell that has many uses,” Amo was saying. “According to Tomme-san, it’s said it was once used by the ancient people to help with stomach troubles, and to drive out bad thoughts…”
“It's soft and kind of… soothing? But deep, too, if that makes sense…”
“It’s kind of, what’s that word? Notaralgic.”
“I don’t think that’s a real word, Zanka.”
“Sure it is. It’s like when yer missin’ home an’ shit.”
“Nosorthotic, you mean.”
“That ain't the word either, Riyo.”
“Nostalgic…?”
(That voice belonged to Rudo. Full of the quality the others were struggling to name).
“Yeah, nostalgic,” conceded Zanka. “Tha’s what I said.”
“Hmm,” hummed Riyo skeptically, her presence at Enjin’s shoulder once again the first thing he was fully aware of as his stomach gradually settled and the white-grey cloud in front of his vision finally began to clear. For a moment, he let his head loll to the side, resting his cheek against the crown of her head, until the angle began to pull uncomfortably at the stitches in his neck under the bandages.
(Fuckin’ neck wound coulda just killed me instantly, but no, of course we had to do things the hard way...)
As the others continued to argue, he took a few more deep breaths, mustering up his strength and resolve for what he knew he needed to do.
“I’m better,” he announced a few moments later over the top of their argument, still with his eyes closed. “I can drive us back now.”
“Like fuck you can,” said Zanka with his usual amount of tactful tolerance for other people’s bullshit, kicking Enjin’s knee with his boot (Enjin didn’t even need to open his eyes to know it was him).
Enjin just held his hand up, palm open. “Gimme the keys.”
“M not givin’ ya the keys.”
“Fu,” Enjin said, finally cracking an eyelid open to look up at the ex-Raider, relieved to find he wasn't nearly as dizzy from doing so this time. And as much as he hated giving the little gerbil any direct orders and overriding his free will, maybe just this one time… “Don’t let Zanka drive us back. Make him give me the keys.”
Fu’s eyes went wide, and a moment later his spine went ramrod straight. “SIR, YES SIR!!” he saluted.
“Get the fuck off me, ya piece a shit!” Zanka snapped as a smirk slowly curled across Enjin’s mouth at the sound of a scuffle breaking out between Zanka and Fu. “I ain’t relinquishin’ the damn keys! Enjin can’t drive, alright?! He’s currently incapacitated as fuck, in case it somehow escaped your notice!!”
“Sure I can,” Enjin argued, his eyes still pressed closed due to the overwhelming dizziness that still hit him whenever he so much as cracked them open.
“Like fuck ya can, Enjin. Yer so white in the face, ya look like Rudo if he dipped his head in white paint.”
Enjin could almost hear Riyo cocking her head to one side, next to him. “Wouldn’t anyone look white if they did that?”
“Yeah, but Rudo moreso, what with him bein’ all white to start out with.”
“Just admit your metaphor doesn’t make any sense, Zanka…”
Enjin sank back, listening to Fu attempt to grab the keys, and Amo laughing lightly as she intensified the scent of sea salt in the air, and Riyo and Zanka bickering relentlessly back and forth. I really am sorry, he thought up at them all, resolving to say so out loud at the first opportunity, knowing he wouldn’t manage to do it in spite of his current determination. I didn’t mean to almost die on you. I’m not stupid. I know that for some reason, you guys think you still need me…
Gradually, he made himself blink his eyes back open, searching for the person who’d been silent since the word nostalgic, who happened to be already staring him in the face, but whose red eyes went to Enjin’s bandaged neck the moment Enjin met his gaze.
Lay it on me, Rudo. Lemme have it, and don’t hold back. I’m a piece of shit. I lied to you. I hid the watch from you. I’ve never even told you my real name. I was gone when you needed me most, keeled over like a sack of bloody potatoes, useless when you needed my help against Kyouka…
“Give it to me,” came Rudo’s voice from about a foot away as he knelt across from Enjin and extended his hand.
His actions silenced all of the others, drawing everyone’s attention to the two of them.
“What makes you so sure I still have it?” Enjin stalled for a few more ticks of the clock. (He did have it. Hadn’t let it slip out of his keeping for even a split-second at any point in the last fourteen years, ever since Alto had first handed it to him, which just so happened to be the first time Enjin had laid eyes on the tiny little runt now kneeling across from him).
“I know you. You wouldn’t give up something so important.”
Mouth twitching, Enjin drew himself up enough to cross his arms over his chest. “It’s not yours, Rudo.”
“I know,” came the surprising answer. “It’s ours. We’re going to take turns with it. Same with Amo’s boots. Same with any of the other pieces of the Watchman series we come across. It’s too much for anyone to bear alone.”
Enjin felt his forehead crinkle. He looked up at Rudo, and then Zanka, and then Riyo, and then Amo and Fu.
I’m sorry, all of you, Enjin thought at them, hiding behind his eyelids like a coward for a moment. But I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
When he opened his eyes again, all five of them were still staring back at him unblinkingly, all of them dark-eyed and determined.
Damn. I can take them on one at a time, but all five at once…
It was once again Rudo who spoke first, interrupting the stream of Enjin’s thoughts with a recital of information that sounded more like an accusation:
“When we were leaving to go to the information broker’s, you said to me and Corvus that you didn’t care what price we had to pay. That if a price had to be paid, you wouldn’t mind paying it.”
“And I stand by that. I don’t mind—”
“But we mind, Enjin,” Riyo put in before Rudo could say anything.
This time, he couldn’t bear looking, not at any of them. He was certain he’d see the same expression in their eyes he’d had in his own the last time he’d seen Alto Surebrec in the flesh. Remembered how hard he had shook his head back then, trying to mute the sound of the word of deterioration from his ears before it could permanently lodge in his brain.
“I’d do it again,” he said to Rudo.
“I know,” said Rudo, answering solemnity with solemnity. “That’s why we all decided we’re confiscating it.”
Enjin caved; he had already known he was going to from his first look at Rudo’s face. Slowly, deliberately, Enjin turned his own face towards Fu. “Hand me my pants, would you?”
“SIR YES S—”
“And stop shouting, for the love of garbage,” Enjin snapped, pinching the bridge of his nose tiredly as his dress pants were retrieved from the front seat of the jeep above him and deposited in his lap before he could finish his complaint. He dug around in the pocket until he found what he was searching for.
Fingers froze around the familiar band, thumbed the round, flat edge of the surface of the display.
Things always come full circle, he thought at the distant memory of the man who had saved him from certain death all that time ago. Mouth quivering, he made himself pass the watch to that man’s child, feeling a hard shudder wrack his frame as it left his possession at last.
(The loss of it was worse than the rebound had been two nights before, hitting him like an implosion, like a thousand stab wounds through his heart, all at once—)
“…You’ll be alright,” Amo cooed softly, spreading more of that soothing sea salt scent through the air. “Amo doesn’t want your friends to worry about you, Mr. Enjin, so for that reason, she will make sure you’ll be okay.”
“Considerate of ya, Amo-chan,” Zanka snarked, taking the open hand that had held Enjin’s Vital Instrument a moment before and wrapping his other hand around Enjin’s bicep to help haul him to his feet.
In spite of himself, Enjin had to swallow down a choking sob of relief. The emptiness in his hand a moment before had burned. The strength in Zanka’s cold grip was almost enough to drive out the deep-seated terror that I almost died, y’know had placed in Enjin’s bones twenty minutes earlier.
“Ready ta go?”
“And then some,” Enjin answered.
Riyo was at his side a second later, ducking under his arm and helping him stabilize himself so he wouldn’t fall when Zanka peeled away to return to the driver’s seat. “No more puking? You got it all up?”
“Think so,” Enjin mumbled out around a small nod.
“Amo will sit next to Rudo in the middle if Enjin wants to lay down in the back this time.”
“Nah,” sighed Enjin, rubbing at his eyelids with one hand as he swayed against Riyo’s shoulders. “It’s worse if I can’t see where we’re going.” And it’d be twice as bad if I have to sit next to Fu the whole way back. “I’ll be fine if I just keep my eyes forward—”
“Enjin,” interrupted Rudo. (Shit, still with that dead-serious look in his eye). “Before we get going, can I talk to you for one second?”
No one moved.
“Alone, if you don’t mind.”
“…Sure,” sighed Enjin, sliding his arm out from around Riyo and carefully picking his footing so he wouldn’t stumble as he crossed away from the jeep a few feet. Shoulda known he wasn't gonna get let off the hook that easy. “What the hell. Why not.”
Better get this over with.
I trusted you, each of Rudo’s footsteps away from the jeep seemed to say. Tell me it wasn’t a mistake. Tell me I wasn’t wrong to do so.
Enjin plodded along in his wake, trying not to fall over, trying not to think too much about the kid’s dead father. Rudo might have red eyes and white hair, but he was a mini-Alto all the same. Same stern frown. Same little lines around his mouth, like he was holding in so many things he wanted to say…
“‘Kay, Rudo,” Enjin stated when his tired legs warned him he wasn’t going to be able to go any further without risking falling flat on his face. “I think this is far enough.”
As though he’d been waiting for Enjin to speak, Rudo swiveled around and turned to face him, his face crumpling with an intense flare of anger as he frowned and bit his lower lip.
…Man I can’t even take him to get something pierced to make up for my screw-up, the way I did with Zanka and Riyo.
(Rudo had never yet asked about it in the first place, never even hinted at wanting one. But then again, Rudo was fifteen, and rebellious, and deeply wounded. Of course he wanted a piercing, even if he hadn’t said anything specific about it yet).
Instead of getting mad at him, though, Rudo shook his head like a wet dog getting water from its fur, then scuffed the toes of his boots against the ground, sending up a thin trail of dust, and then darted a single quick look up at Enjin.
“I just wanted… to say thank you,” he said, shocking the hell out of Enjin with those seven words alone. “For what you did. I still don't really understand what you did, but I know I woulda lost without your help.”
A number of responses nearly passed Enjin’s lips before he bit down on the top one so that he wouldn’t blurt any of them out:
What the fuckin’ hell.
Are you sure about that.
You want to thank me for hiding all that shit from you?
I’m sorry I fucked up so bad.
I shoulda told you as soon as I knew what I had.
I’d do it again, though, like I already said.
Your dad did it for me first.
I’m just repaying a debt.
…Instead, he stuck his hand in Rudo’s hair and ruffled it up, trying but probably failing to disguise the fact that he’d chosen to do so in part to keep from falling over.
“Anytime, kid.”
For a moment, there was just silence between them, and the weight of the stares from the others waiting over in the car.
Enjin nodded his head back toward the jeep, as an invitation for them to get going again.
Rudo didn’t say anything.
Just stared up at Enjin, as though waiting for something.
Smart little goober, Enjin thought with a sigh, swaying slightly as he searched for the right words to say.
“Uh… to be fully honest with you, though, I’m not sure I deserve your gratitude just yet,” he finally forced out.
I never should have lied to you or hidden the watch from you. He could feel the words in his chest, but he still couldn’t quite get them to his lips. It was wrong, and you’ve got every right to be mad at me about it, even if I did it to protect you.
Rudo glared up at him, a sharp angry glint in his eye as though he were following the progress of Enjin’s unspoken words. “It’s a gift. Take it and treat it as such.” There was a brief, uncomfortable pause as Rudo scanned the ground seemingly in search of something to say, then spat out, “Treat it like you treated me when I was important to you.”
“You’re still—hey, Rudo, come on, what the hell!”
“Then why did you act like I wasn’t!” Rudo finally erupted. “Why didn’t you tell me what you had, or what you had planned. Why did you throw your whole life away just to beat Mymo, like it was nothing—”
“I didn’t do it to beat Mymo, kid!” Enjin interrupted quickly, feeling a strange flush creep over his face. “I did it because if I didn’t, he was gonna kill you!”
Rudo’s head shot up.
He stared at Enjin with wide, increasingly watery eyes.
“What, you thought I was just doin’ it for funsies?” Enjin pouted at him. “Throwing myself in the line of danger because I get off on thrills and adrenaline?”
“I… I, uh…”
“Jeez, Rudo, I’m dumb, but I’m not that dumb.”
He had said it to get a smile out of him, but it didn’t work; Rudo looked like Enjin had slapped him. His face paled like he was about to be sick, or maybe start crying again.
“Enjin, I didn’t… I didn’t r-realize it was…”
“Didn’t realize it was what?”
“…My fault,” Rudo said, almost inaudibly.
In spite of the literal pain in his neck, Enjin threw his head back and scowled up at the sky, at the Sphere somewhere far above. Directed his thoughts and his condemnation at the man he’d looked for up there for years on end.
This is your fault, Alto, not mine, not his. You never shoulda trusted a screw-up like me with a busted-up old umbrella, and a watch that tries to kill you if you use it, and a kid so precious and important.
But there wasn’t time to rail at the sky above, or at people long dead. Rudo was standing in front of him right now, shoulders starting to shake, a handful of tears once again tracing a slow path down his face.
Crap…
Not for the first time when staring down at the stammering little Sphereite, Enjin asked himself the question, What would I have needed, when I was fifteen years old and someone older than me was deadset on taking care of me, for some damn reason, in spite of my best efforts to reject their help…?
Which did give him one idea. Hopefully it'd work.
“Alright already, fuck off with all that feeling guilty crap and bring it in, you little twerp,” Enjin said, a small grin and an involuntary chuckle escaping him at the memory of how much of a shit he’d been to Alto at their first meeting. He shuffled forward a few steps towards Rudo with arms outstretched, though doing so sent a hot jolt of pain through his bruised shoulders.
A pause ensued.
A very long pause.
“Come on, man, don’t leave me hangin’.”
…An incredibly long and awkward pause, punctuated by Rudo scrubbing the tears from his face scrunching up his brow and repeating the word ‘twerp?’ under his breath in a puzzled murmur, but marked by the total absence of any form of reciprocal embrace coming from Rudo and aimed in Enjin’s direction.
“In your own time, Rudo,” Enjin said as his arms began to tire.
Rudo was still just staring blankly at him, his small face an inscrutable mixture of confusion and suspicion.
Laughing his way through his nervousness about his attempted peace offering being rejected, Enjin spread his arms even wider, like he was exposing his guts for an evisceration. He made the mistake of glancing over at the car for a second and found Riyo watching them from the side window, her hand over mouth, no doubt hiding a cheeky grin. Zanka was pointedly not looking at them at all. Enjin returned his eyes to Rudo quickly. He still didn’t want to risk making eye contact with either Amo or Fu.
“C’mon kid,” he pleaded, stretching his elbows out a bit wider and dropping his chin. “You can’t tell me they don’t have hugs up in the Sphere.”
“Oh!” Rudo exclaimed softly. “I, uh—”
Rudo made an uncomfortable motion, something like a scared or startled shrug, then sort of fell into Enjin.
Finally, Enjin grinned harder, returning the gesture.
“It wasn’t your fault, Rudo,” he wheezed out as Rudo nearly squeezed the life out of him. A big hug, their first one ever. Very short and tight and to the point. In fact, Rudo hugged him so tight, Enjin felt his stomach protest all over again, but luckily there really wasn’t anything else to throw up at this point. “Don’t do that to yourself.”
“Then don’t do that almost-dying thing to me,” Rudo glared at the ground as he broke off the hug, almost shoved Enjin away, and took a few steps back towards the jeep. “I don’t wanna watch someone I care about bleed out all over the ground ever again.”
“So I’m someone you care about, huh…?” Enjin said, his pleased grin widening. “If you really cared about me, you’d convince Zanka to let me drive back instead of him—oof, ow!”
Rudo’s foot had shot out, connecting hard with the side of Enjin’s leg. “I’m not suicidal, unlike some people.”
“Alright, I get it, no need to kick me about it…!”
“Someone’s gotta kick some damn sense into you…”
No promises, kid, Enjin thought again as he genuinely grinned for the first time all day, slipping a hand onto Rudo’s shoulder for balance as they walked back to the car, to Riyo’s unveiled smirk and Zanka’s fingernails tapping impatiently against the steering wheel and Fu fairly wilting into the overwhelming aroma of Amo’s sea salt scent. I don’t mind. I’d do it again. For you, or for any of them.
(Well, maybe not Amo or Fu…)