Chapter Text
Zanka is beginning to get sick of waking up in the infirmary. Especially waking up on the verge of vomiting, feeling like there's wads of cotton stuffed in his ears. Jolting forwards on the bed, he barely has time to signal to Eishia before his insides promptly try and make themselves outsides. Thankfully, she’s an extremely attentive healer, because a bucket is handed over just in time.
“It's okay!” He hears Eishia say softly, gently patting his back as he expels stomach acid, “Just get it all out, you’ll feel better.”
Finally done, Zanka spits the lingering bad taste into the bucket and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He groans. Eishia ignores this, removing the bucket and handing him a glass of water.
“What the hell.” He asks. It’s not a request for information. Unfortunately, Zanka can remember everything that got him into this situation. He grips the blanket of the infirmary bed and places the water down on the side table, untouched.
“Seriously, what the hell?!” He grits out.
Eishia gives him a sympathetic look.
“At least you weren't injured?” She tries, wincing at the indignant disbelief on Zanka’s face, “I didn’t have to use my Vital Instrument, just patched up the cuts a little.”
“What the hell is wrong with that guy, Eishia?” Zanka can only repeat himself again. It’s seriously unfair that Jabber keeps having him end up like this.
They didn’t even get to fight this time!
It’s not like he gets migraines every day... in fact this had been his first attack in a while. At least since Rudo came to the Ground. Just how bad is Zanka’s luck that he’d run into Jabber then of all times? Zanka clenches his teeth together in rage, remembering the interaction. He couldn’t fight at all, walked away completely unscathed, yet still somehow lost? It’s almost more insulting that Jabber didn’t take the opportunity to kick him while he was down.
No. Instead, he just drugged him up and what? Left him there? How is that fun for Jabber at all?
Zanka pauses. Why is he thinking about Jabber’s fun at a time like this? He’s been drugged by an unknown substance. Again. Is it becoming so commonplace that Zanka can’t even think of questioning it anymore?
Jabber had said he didn’t even know what it would do to him. At the time, Zanka hadn’t even really thought to be afraid of that fact. He remembers being in over his head, unable to truly fight back given his already sorry state, but he distinctly also remembers that he’d been more concerned over his inability to fight, than anything Jabber was about to put in his system.
Then, after all that, Zanka hadn’t even been particularly mad about it.
It had felt amazing.
He stares down at where his hands grip the sheets. Loosening them, Zanka flexes his fingers slightly. He feels remarkably normal, aside from the nausea.
“What the hell is wrong with me?” Zanka hisses under his breath.
Eishia shifts slightly, clearly unsure how to address anything Zanka’s been saying. He almost feels bad for her. She’s not here to deal with his imminent mental breakdown.
“So, uhm,” Eishia grabs a chart from the side of the bed, not really reading it but instead fidgeting with the pages attached to the board, “I wasn’t able to find out what he got you with... sorry, uhm, we don’t really have that kind of tech here...” she trails off, before flicking her eyes around the papers, “but you should be good to go?”
“Should be?” Zanka asks.
“W-well! We don’t know what it was exactly but based on the effects...” Eishia puts the chart down, hands going to play with the power cord wrapped around her neck, “y-you were just really high? So-”
“Heyy! How’s my favorite little delinquent!” Enjin bursts into the infirmary loudly, with Gris in tow.
If he didn’t know any better, Zanka would think he was getting his third migraine in as many days. Thankfully, he does know better. This particular type of headache is completely psychosomatic, caused only by the intense embarrassment of doing something stupid in front of Enjin.
He knows it well.
Zanka balks at the description, “Delinquent?!”.
Enjin lands harshly on the bed next to Zanka’s and lets out an obnoxious laugh. Gris simply stands at the foot of Zanka’s bed, looking vaguely uncomfortable.
“Dude, you went out without permission to get high with some kid from a rival gang!” Enjin states with a smirk, “Totally delinquent behavior.”
Zanka splutters and feels himself flush.
“That’s a gross oversimplifica-”
“Ahh, I always knew you’d hit your rebellious teenage years someday-”
“I wasn’t doin’ that-”
“Gris, am I getting old? I feel like it was only yesterday Zanka was a little kid-”
“Enjin, I wasn’t-”
“Okay, you two!” Gris interrupts the pair, eyebrow twitching slightly, “I was actually worried, you know.”
Enjin schools his facial expression slightly from the playful look he usually sports, into something a bit more serious. Sensing the change in atmosphere, Eishia silently excuses herself, leaving the chart behind for Enjin to flick through.
Zanka scowls at a particularly dark spot on the opposite wall.
“Seriously kid, what were you even doing-”
“I went out for a fuckin’ walk, is that not allowed?” Zanka snaps. He instantly regrets the tone, normally he’d never speak to Enjin like this, but for some reason he can’t deal with it today.
Neither Enjin nor Gris react to the outburst. Somehow this just pisses him off more. Zanka wants to get angry, wants someone to be mad, here! He can’t even really put his finger on why.
He’s sweating, a little.
“Zanka, you’re allowed to go out whenever you want,” Enjin states, calmly, “but you know that your head ain’t fit for purpose only a day after a migraine attack.” Casually, he looks down to the chart left by Eishia. “Especially one that bad.”
Gris shifts slightly and adds, “I found you completely alone in a polluted zone, high, and blabbering on about that Raider after Semiu told me you were just having another migraine.” He shifts his cap lower on his head in want of something to do with his hands.
Zanka raises an eyebrow in question. He knows what happened; he was there. It’s fuzzy in the more detailed areas, but he knows the events that happened.
“Yeah, he got me again.” Zanka deadpans, fingers twitching to clench into the sheets again. Enjin and Gris exchange a look.
“Zanka, kid, work with us here.” Enjin sighs and runs a hand through his hair.
“Am I missin’ something?”
“Okay, looks like we gotta say this bluntly,” Enjin leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees, “did you go out looking for...” he takes a second to find the right words, “alternative pain relief?”
“You think I went and found Jabber on purpose?!” Zanka cries in disbelief, voice cracking from the pitch of it.
“Woah!” Enjin holds up both his hands in a surrender-like manner, “Nobody’s saying that, Zanka-”
“This shit always happens to me!” Zanka spits, unable to hold back the waves of frustration sweeping up his spine, “I always got somethin’ wrong with me! I always get hurt! I always end up in here!” He throws his arms up in gesture at the infirmary bed. “I can’t even go for a fuckin’ walk without it comin’ back to bite me.”
Gris steps forward slightly, trying to placate him “We’re not trying to accuse you of anything, Zanka. It’s just some of the stuff you were saying in the car ride back was...”
Abruptly, Zanka feels the overwhelming need to get out. Not out of HQ, he’s not risking that again, just out of the infirmary. Away from the searching eyes of Gris and Enjin.
Swinging his legs over the bed, Zanka tries to stand. Immediately he finds himself fighting through a wave of dizziness and a swoop of nausea pooling low in his stomach. He fights it off.
“Eishia said I was good to go, so I’m goin’ to my room.” He says, stomping past the two men. At the doorway Zanka pauses, “I’m going to my room,” he emphasizes, “not to find people who want me dead so I can get high.”
“Again, no one said that-” Enjin’s voice fades as Zanka stalks down the hall.
It’s not until later that night that Zanka really starts to feel guilty for talking to Gris and Enjin like that. He’s not even really sure what triggered the response.
Sure, Zanka isn’t exactly known for his stellar ability to control his temper, but he can usually avoid completely snapping at people older than him like that. It's a type of respect that was drilled into him from a young age.
It’s why he decided to stay in his room for the rest of the day. Something in Zanka’s bones had been itching. For a fight? Just generally itching?
He couldn’t tell. So, he avoided everyone, just in case.
Lying here, though, trying to sleep, Zanka can feel it. It’s like every muscle in his back is being pulled taught by invisible strings. Behind even the usual brain fog that comes post-migraine, he feels listless. Distracted and irritable beyond the degree he would consider normal.
He tosses and turns, pushing his hands into his eyes and tries his best to form some kind of coherent thought about... literally anything.
He wants to stop sweating, so he throws his already thin sheets from his bed. He wants his heart rate to slow down, so he tries some deep breathing exercises. He wants...
He wants to know what it is that Jabber gave him.
Not for anything bad. Or recreational. Or rebellious. Just as a reassurance. The absolute relief from the pain was incredible, like nothing he’s ever felt before. If he could just know what it is then the next time...
Zanka shakes his head and rolls over, banishing the thought. It's just pain, he can deal with it.
He’s been dealing with it since he was thirteen. Migraines aren’t ruining his life, they're just something that his body does to him occasionally. Fantasizing about getting drugged up by an insane sadomasochistic lunatic-
Oh shit. That's actually what he’s doing.
“Fuck my life...”
Another few weeks go by, and Zanka remains reassuringly migraine-free. He even managed to make another, this time much less eventful, trip to the nearest town for Rudo’s apology candy. However, Zanka supplemented that trip with apology treats for Enjin and Gris, too.
The three haven’t talked about Zanka’s outburst beyond that, and for that Zanka is grateful. He’s been chalking up that behavior in his own mind to the postdrome phase. He always gets a little more irritable after a migraine, as well as fatigued. He refuses to believe the drugs played even a minor role.
He can’t blame Jabber for all his problems. He has to take responsibility at some point.
It’s been this mindset that has been carrying him through his last few Cleaner jobs. Migraines put him on his back, sure, but making up for his weaknesses through hard work has always been his style. This is no different.
It’s difficult, though, to shake the fear. Zanka’s own brain wants him dead (sometimes, in more ways than one). Working past that challenge is a little more than just training. It’s an unavoidable fact of his life. Once he’s reminded that his brain is capable of messing him up that badly, it’s like it’s all he can think about for days after, just waiting for it to happen again.
Managing symptoms until he forgets. Having another attack. Then, managing them all over again.
But, at the end of the day, it’s Zanka’s own body that is to blame. Not anyone else, and certainly not anything that Jabber did to him.
In fact, and this is the part that Zanka hates the most, Jabber had probably helped Zanka more than hurt him in their last encounter. It’s not like he trusts Jabber to do it again, far from it. And he’s certainly no longer thinking about running into the Raider for an interview about it. The curiosity eats at him, though.
He just wants to know what it was.
Still, there's no way he’ll get the opportunity to ask. He has to let it go.
They’ve been called out for yet another larger scale cleaning job. There’s been massive amounts of activity in a town a few hours drive from HQ. An almost suspicious amount, according to the description Semiu had been given of the beasts.
The town is nice, for the Ground. It’s known for its food, if Zanka recalls correctly. There are a plethora of bars and restaurants dotted about the winding streets, accompanied by even more street food tents with fried delicacies being loudly advertised by the vendors.
As the team walk around, Zanka can understand why trash beast activity here would be a cause for concern. The town is only so abundant because it’s far away from truly polluted zones, and even farther from a No Man’s Land. There’s trash outside of it, of course, but trash beasts at the scale of what's been reported should be next to impossible.
Eventually, they reach the edge of the town after being directed by the person who called in the job.
“Rudo,” Zanka growls, holding the kid firmly by the back of his uniform, “we can get sweets on the way back. Do the damn job first!”
“But, I saw so many I’ve never tried before...” Rudo replies, mouth clearly watering from the thought of all the new sweets. Gross.
Zanka can feel his eye twitching already.
Thankfully, Enjin comes to his rescue, patting a firm hand on Rudo’s shoulder and redirecting him to the task at hand.
“How’s this?” Enjin smiles and leads the group to the area the trash beast was last spotted, “We get this cleaned up in... less than twenty? And I’ll get ya so much candy you’ll be throwing up nothin’ but sugar for days.”
Apparently, that's all the encouragement he needs. Before Zanka can even instruct him properly, Rudo is rushing ahead towards the piles of trash that border the city. Zanka starts jogging to catch up.
However, just as the group reaches the nearest pile, a rumbling sound greets them. The ground beneath their feet destabilizes and suddenly, Zanka finds himself having to use Lovely to keep balance, driving the end of her staff into polluted dirt.
He looks up just in time.
A great, snake-like trash beast bursts from a mountain of trash, letting out a horrible screech as it does. The stench is unbearable, leaving Zanka scrambling to fit his mask on properly in order to fight it. He’d been expecting at least a little more time to prepare.
He sees Rudo and Riyo sprint forward towards it, both leaping into the air and activating their Vial Instruments. Zanka readies himself to join them, just as another, equally as large snake beast ruptures from the trash to his left.
“That one’s mine!” He calls out, not waiting for confirmation before launching into his own attack. He thinks he hears Enjin and some supporters shout back as he runs, but his ears are already pumping with the song of adrenaline.
It’s only a few hits later that Zanka starts to feel something off, with the beast. Usually, if enough of one is destroyed, they crumble to dust instantly. This one just won’t seem to go down, no matter what he does.
Zanka lands not too far from Riyo, who also looks a little worn out.
“I think this is another one of those weird ones,” she calls to him, still analyzing the beast she had been fighting, “we gotta find it’s weak spot if we wanna kill it.”
“Well, we better start lookin’ then!” He calls back, already running into the fray once again.
Before he gets far, though, he spots them. Several figures silhouetted by daylight, on a hill of trash. Zanka squints, trying to figure out-
“What?!” Zanka hears Rudo shout somewhere behind him, and turns to look, “Raiders!?” Rudo shouts, face and voice both furious.
Zanka whips his head back to the figures and, sure enough, he begins to recognize them. His eyes go wide, but before he can make a move to fight them (fight one of them, really), Zanka finds himself having to dodge the strike of a barbed and deadly tail.
Right. The trash beast.
There are three of them now, scattering themselves about the hills of garbage, drawing each of the Cleaners away from one another. Zanka grits his teeth and watches as the Raiders descend their own look-out point, unable to do anything to stop them. He’s too busy trying to track down the snake’s weak point.
Taking a running leap, Zanka drives Lovely Assistaff into the side of the snake and uses the momentum of the hit to launch himself higher into the air above it. It’s back is covered in spines that could kill him instantly if he fell onto them, but right at the base of where it’s skull would be, nestled between two of the spikes, Zanka spots it. A glowing area that can only be the beast’s weak spot.
“Gotcha.” He mumbles and descends upon it with pinpoint precision.
Or, he would have, were he not intercepted midair.
Zanka grunts at the force of the human body that hits him, then again at the impact of both of them hitting the ground. He manages to kick off the assailant after landing, drawing up Lovely to greet them.
“Phew! Good catch Zan-zan!” Jabber rolls over and stands a couple feet away, claws already out to their full potential.
“Fuck you, I nearly had it!” He spits in response.
“Well yeah, why’d you think I stopped you?” The Raider snorts, like Zanka had said something funny. “Can’t have the Boss’ pets goin’ to waste.”
Zanka seethes, and runs forward to strike him. Ever since Jabber had left him stranded before, he’s been itching to get another hit in. The embarrassment from their previous encounter had bene weighing heavily on his mind.
At least the first time, when he had lost, there had been a fight to begin with. That last time, Jabber hadn’t even considered it worth it. Well, this is Zanka’s chance to prove him wrong.
Zanka isn't weak. That last time was a fluke. His own brain betraying him. He can be someone that can beat Jabber, this time.
Jabber’s claws meet Zanka’s staff in the middle, the force of the impact causing both to jump back slightly. Shoes make scuff marks in dirt.
“Wait, you ain’t even gonna talk?” Jabber cries, grin still stretching his face. “I got questions for ya, you know”
Zanka swings again, Jabber dodges.
“Since when do you talk?” Zanka shouts back, another swing and a miss, he’s dancing in circles here “I thought you wanted to fight?”
Jabber whips his arm towards Zanka, throwing the heavy weight of Makira’s full form towards him. Using Lovely to vault the claws, Zanka finds himself having to immediately shift his dodge mid-air. The snake trash beast’s jaws nearly catch him before he does. His landing is less then graceful as both the trash beast and Jabber leap over him.
“’Course I wanna fight, now that you can actually hit back!” Jabber responds, “But we left off on such a boring note last time, man! I wanna know what the good stuff did!” His eyes are wide and feral looking. Zanka feels like they're piercing his soul.
Irritation wells its way up his throat again.
“You know what it did, ya psycho!” Zanka grits out through a few more exchanges of blows, “You were there!”
The snake dives into a nearby pile of trash, causing the ground to shake again. Not expecting the sudden unstable footing, Zanka gasps as he rocks back on his heels, scrambling for balance. Too late. Jabber is already pouncing, Mankira once again aiming for his head in an eerie repeat of their last real fight. He panics as he feels Lovely get knocked from his grip.
This time, though, Zanka doesn’t need to duck. The claws don’t aim directly for his head, but rather land on each side of his neck, effectively caging him between the floor and Jabber’s looming form above him.
Zanka scowls and turns to face Jabber, then freezes.
Jabber’s eyes are carefully blank, face showing none of his usual glee.
“I wanna hear it from you, though.” He says, voice flat. His eyes search Zanka’s. It’s incredibly unnerving.
Something about the tone causes Zanka to twitch with embarrassment. Jabber knows it felt good. Zanka had even said so, at the time. He knows, he just wants Zanka to, what? Admit it?
A chill goes up his spine.
“Hear what?!” Zanka asks, incredulously. He wants to draw his hands up to push Mankira away, or punch Jabber in the ribs again, or something. But Jabber isn’t actively trying to kill him, despite having him pinned. The lack of usual behavior keeps him frozen to the floor.
“It felt good, right?” Jabber asks, voice low, and still not blinking.
With nothing else to do, Zanka draws his arm back as much as he can and punches Jabber square in the nose. It doesn't dislodge him at all, but Zanka hadn’t been expecting it to, he just wanted to send him a message.
Blood drips onto Jabber’s lips, and he throws his head back in breathy laughter.
“C’mon, gimme details!” Jabber squirms above him in excitement, bearing down even harder with Mankira.
Suddenly, Zanka realizes that this could be his opportunity to find out what the substance was. If Jabber’s so eager to interview him, maybe he can ask right back.
“What even was that stuff anyway?!” Zanka tries to play it off as anger. It’s not entirely difficult, he is angry. Just... not really as angry as he should be, he thinks.
“Ah-ah!” Jabber pouts and shakes his head, “I asked you first, Zanka!” He leans forward, blood drips onto Zanka’s cheek at the proximity, he the warmth of the blood as it draws closer to his lip.
“Tell me how good you felt.”
Flustering at the sudden change of tone, Zanka draws his knees up on instinct, trying to kick Jabber off of him. It doesn’t work.
“Get the fuck off me!” He yelps, punching Jabber again, in the stomach this time (he ignores the moan that gets in response). With Lovely being discarded a few feet away, Zanka feels the panic rising in him. He tries to reach his arm to the side to reach her. His fingers barely graze at the very end of the staff.
Jabber clicks his tongue, feigning disappointment.
“You really bad at conversations, y’know.” He leans back slightly, but Zanka feels no opening to escape his grasp. “It’s why I call you Mr. Bad Attitude. But that’s okay, I can respect it.”
Jabber giggles a little, face flushing slightly, “You’re so eager to beat on me that-”
Jabber’s voice is drowned out by the volume of the trash beast’s roar as it rises once again from the mounds of rubble. The ground shakes, giving Zanka just enough wiggle room under Makira to lean sideways and reach his own Vital Instrument.
His hand wraps around the end of the staff, and Zanka uses the momentum from pulling her closer to swing the spiked jaws down on Jabber’s arm, finally dislodging him from the Raider’s grasp. Jabber screeches in pain, being flung back with the force of the blow.
The scramble up from the floor is about as graceful as Zanka can make it, because soon once more Zanka is dodging the giant snake, as well as Mankira. It’s like the two are taking turns at him. It’s all he can do to keep leaping out of the way.
As the snake rises from the mound, Zanka sees an opening and begins to run up it’s long back. He dodges both spines and claws, zeroing in on the weak point he’d spotted earlier. Jabber follows close behind him, making sweeps at Zanka’s legs as he runs.
Using the jaw’s of Lovely Assistaff for leverage, Zanka drives her forwards into one of the snake’s back spines, pole-vaulting into the air and away from Jabber. From here, he finally spots the glowing target again and bears down once more.
He hears Jabber call something behind him, but for once, the Raider is too slow. Zanka lands with all his force on the point, activating Lovely’s spikes to drive into the center of the glowing mass. Immediately, the beast begins to thrash and crumple as it disintegrates, causing both Zanka and Jabber to have to dive off of it to safety.
During the fall, Zanka sees another opportunity. He should have guessed that, as a Raider, Jabber wasn’t used to fighting trash beasts, but never had Zanka seem Jabber so caught off guard.
The usually unshakable Raider was, well, not floundering exactly, but clearly struggling to gain his bearings at the sudden disappearance of his foothold.
Zanka uses the chance, shifting his feet against the trash to gain momentum as he falls. With hundreds of jobs under his belt at this point, the way that a trash beast falls apart is something he is intimately familiar with. It doesn’t turn to dust all at once, gradually breaking apart into smaller and smaller pieces. He uses that knowledge to gain on Jabber midair.
He uses Lovely like a battering ram, first swinging her upwards, connecting directly with Jabber’s head as he falls backwards. It sends him up in the air a few feet, and Zanka finds himself grinning in satisfaction.
He uses another piece of falling trash to kick up from slightly, meeting Jabber that few feet higher, then with as much force as he can manage, drives her down into Jabber’s skull once more. A sickening crack accompanies the hit, and Jabber plummets to the ground.
Zanka lands quickly in a crouch, swinging Lovely Assistaff as he rises in order to prevent Jabber’s own counter attack. Miraculously, she connects with Jabber’s head again, sending him back several feet into a pile of garbage. Zanka laughs, breathlessly; he might be winning this. Not wanting to give any leeway, Zanka pounces again, using Lovely’s jaws to pin Jabber, making sure to keep the Raider’s arms against this sides. At some point in the fall, Jabber had reduced Mankira to her smaller size, likely to aide in his balance. Now, it just meant Zanka could get closer.
Jabber is being... surprisingly pliant. Zanka leans over him, expecting to see him passed out, but he isn't. He's just lying there, slightly dazed and smiling. Zanka huffs in annoyance, any previous satisfaction draining from his body. It doesn’t count like this. Jabber is surely holding back on him, for whatever reason.
With Jabber on the ground like this however, Zanka gives himself one more opportunity to get the information that's been plaguing his thoughts.
“What was the stuff you gave me?” He asks, panting with exertion. “No funny shit, just tell me.”
“Damn, must’a been real good if you wanna know that bad,” Jabber says, still dazed from the several hits to the head, “you didn't interrogate me about the hallucinogen I gave you.”
For some reason, Zanka finds himself wanting to justify himself.
“I’m not a fuckin’ junkie, okay?” He responds, not able to make eye contact with Jabber, “It just... made my migraine... better.”
It’s a stupid reaction, he shouldn't care what Jabber of all people thinks of him, but it strikes a nerve. Especially after what Enjin and Gris had accused him of. Jabber is someone Zanka wants to work hard to beat, he can’t have him thinking he needs drugs to do it.
Or something. The excuse is flimsy even in Zanka’s own mind. He shouldn’t really be telling the Raider anything, justification or not. But still, it would irk Zanka if anyone thought he was just looking for some kind of fix, even Jabber.
Jabber’s face turns considering; he raises an eyebrow as best he can with the rapidly swelling black eye.
“You get migraines often?”
It catches Zanka off guard. The question wasn’t asked with any level of concern, but it also didn’t seem like a taunt. Just a simple pry for information, like Zanka is some kind of interesting plant that Jabber wants to learn about.
“Why the fuck do you care?!” He responds instead of answering.
As if he’d just disclose one of his weaknesses to the enemy like that. Though some part of Zanka knows that wasn’t the reason Jabber was asking, either. So, not a taunt, not concern, and not an exploitation. He can’t figure out what the real reason is, though.
Zanka’s moment of hesitation is a mistake. He feels the effects before he feels the cause, but by then it’s too late. In his moment of distraction, Jabber had nicked Zanka’s calf with Mankira’s smaller form. A burning feeling travels up his legs and down his arms.
A keening noise comes from his throat, completely out of his control, and Zanka sinks to the floor. For some reason, he feels Jabber holding his arm as he goes, softening the impact of the landing.
It burns where Jabber touches, though. Whatever he’d gotten Zanka with this time is awful. Similar to the neurotoxin the Raider had given him in their first ever fight. It’s completely disabling, like molten lava stewing in his blood vessels.
Zanka can only twitch on the ground. He can barely feel his fingers.
Jabber crouches beside him and smiles.
“Okay, I’ll tell ya what it was, since you technically did answer my original question.” Jabber pokes Zanka’s cheek, the fiery pain radiates along his jaw, “Pay attention, okay?”
Zanka wants to bite his damn fingers off, but he can barely open his mouth.
“It was a crazy potent mix of benzos and triptans,” Jabber rattles off with a flat tone, “super boring, but explains why it helped your head.”
Trying to curl in on himself against the pain, Zanka can only listen as Jabber continues.
“If I added opioids to the mix you’d have been fucked. Lucky for you the guy I stole it off of knew his stuff.”
Suddenly, Jabber grabs Zanka’s jaw and forces him to make eye contact.
“I’m sure you can get it off any ol’ street pharmacist,” Jabber says, intense eyes boring directly into Zanka’s “but if you want more, I’ll give ya a hit for free.” Jabber’s grin seems to stretch on forever, “All you gotta do is fight me for it.”
Slowly, as if drawing out the moment, Jabber swipes a thumb underneath his steadily bleeding nose. Zanka can see the movement before it even happens, but the pain in his arms doesn’t allow him to pull away as Jabber smears the blood on the choker clasped around Zanka’s wrist.
Then, gently, Jabber swipes that same thumb across the cut on Zanka’s leg, drawing it to his own choker and sealing the connection.
Jabber drops Zanka back to the ground and stands.
“Well, the beastie’s dead so I gotta go.” The Raider says cheerily, turning and waving to Zanka’s unresponsive body with a smile, “Call me for that fight, kay?!”
Pain washes over Zanka in waves. Crackling, then molten, then burning. Every nerve feels like it’s on fire. It’s so intense that he barely hears it when the sounds of fighting die down around him, signaling the defeat of the other snake beasts and the departure of the Raiders.
Footsteps approach him, fast paced and urgent. Then-
“No way, again!?”
“Riyo, not cool! Help him up.”
“Right, my bad.”
Zanka is seriously sick of passing out and waking up in the infirmary, so despite the absolute agony, he refuses to pass out. His assisted walk back to the city is accompanied by groaning sounds of pain he didn’t even know he was capable of. But still, he makes it to the car.
He also makes it all the way back to HQ, still wide awake in the back seat, despite Gris’ driving. Whatever toxin was coursing through him had finally worn out, leaving him fatigued from fighting off the pain.
On his way to his room, ready to crash from the day’s events, Gris stops him.
“Zanka, I just wanted to apologize for a few weeks ago.”
Zanka freezes, looking up at the supporter with wide eyes. It’s not like he and Gris aren't close, far from it in fact, but it’s not often the man approaches him with such sincerity. It’s usually Enjin leading these kinds of talks, Gris’ attention devoted to Follo or Rudo.
“Uh,” Zanka can’t really find the words, but he also can’t pretend to be oblivious to what Gris is apologizing for “I get it, you were tryna look out for me, it’s fine.”
Gris sighs, his kind eyes meeting Zanka’s.
“It’s really not.” He says, “I was the one who went to Enjin, thinking you were doing something reckless that’s completely out of character for you. I know we’re not that close-”
“That’s not-”
“-but I shouldn’t have accused you of drug-seeking from a Raider just because you said things while under the influence.”
“Wait, you thought what-”
“I just jumped to conclusions. But after seeing you in pain today, I realized you’d have to be crazy to-”
“What did I say while I was high-”
“-seek out someone like that just for pain relief-”
“Gris!” Zanka yells slightly, distressed. “What the hell did I say that made you think that?!”
Gris freezes, then smiles. Then, after patting Zanka’s head in a way he can only find patronizing, Gris simply turns to walk down the hall, waving to Zanka over his shoulder.
“Perhaps it’s best if you don’t know.” He says, still smiling, “I have to talk to Enjin about something. Get some sleep!”
Unable to process the conversation through his exhaustion, Zanka decides he’ll do just that. Sleep sounds amazing right now.
He’ll be migraine-free for three weeks tomorrow, almost beating his record of a month. Sleeping well will help keep up that streak.
Collapsing into bed, Zanka finds sleep crawling against his consciousness almost immediately. Still, against all odds, his conversation with Jabber comes to mind.
“Benzos and triptans...?” He mumbles to himself, “where the hell do I get those...”