Work Text:
Utsutsu has been keeping a log.
There are more awkward silences after Hajime makes her sacrifice. She was a beacon before, unwavering and unrelenting, bright scorching energy that would curl your edges and set you alight - she's still like that, but now there are rests. Enough time to catch breath. Her face gets drawn sometimes, a little vein beats in her forehead, and she loses her train of thought in the middle of a conversation...
Utsutsu always whispers Hajime's last words back into her ears and Hajime laughs, says sorry, Berg-Katze was saying something silly. Afterwards she will tuck her chin against her chest and scold it in her fond voice, it should keep quiet when she's talking to Utsutsu!
Utsutsu looks at Hajime's tired eyes and shaking hands and aches to help. She could pass more life into Hajime; enough life to double her, could hollow herself out and let Hajime live for centuries, and she would do it too - if it would help. Hajime's problem isn't a lack of vitality. Hajime's problem is the captive lurking inside her, caged in the chassis of her bones and her flesh and her soul, doing its best to poison her from the inside out.
Utsutsu doesn't doubt that Hajime will prevail over it eventually, but it will be a long fight. There's going to be many more awkward silences, and that dreamy distant expression, and the creeping doubt.
'Is it always talking to you?' she asks Hajime one day.
They're sat in Hajime's front room making bracelets. The sun is streaming in and flitting its beams through Hajime's hair, so that her hair glows auburn; she's flickering her fingertips through the little drawers of glass beads, smiling as though she hasn't heard Utsutsu's question.
'Not always,' she says eventually.
'But most of the time?'
'It's a silly old thing,' Hajime says, picking out the green beads and threading them onto strips of leather. 'I take it out everywhere and it still sulks like a little baby.'
Utsutsu takes hold of her hand, twisted up in leather strips, and squeezes very gently.
'You're so brave,' she whispers.
Hajime laughs. Coming from anyone else it would be mean, or airy, but from Hajime it's a relief. It's her regular untainted laugh. She doesn't laugh quite as much as she used to before Berg-Katze came, Utsutsu realises, which makes her stomach draw tight.
Hajime's grip on the leather strip falters and beads scatter everywhere. Rainbow drops spill like candy rain all over the table, in the gaps of the tatami. Utsutsu scrambles to pick them up. Hajime sits where she is, apologetic, knuckling her own forehead.
'It's just something that needed doing,' she says, as though anyone else on Earth would grab an alien's soul and thrust it into her chest. As though Hajime's guidelines for common sense extended outside herself. 'Anyway, I think I'm getting through to it. Any day, now.'
What if you don't get through to it, Utsutsu wants to ask, but doesn't.
She knows part of her chagrin is selfishness. Their scarce time together has been fractured further; now every outing is accompanied by Hajime doing the tuck of her chin, the little sing-song words get distributed evenly between Utsutsu and the thing in Hajime's chest. Utsutsu doesn't want to admit to jealousy, but she is jealous. And the jealousy comes to a head when Hajime comes into HQ one morning and announces she is leaving.
Sugane laughs at her. A practiced laugh, to show that he can be fun too, he recognises what a joke is. When she carries on smiling without further reply, he hesitates. His smile diminishes.
'You can't be serious though,' he says. 'We've got work to do. And you're...'
His sentence hovers in the air for everyone else to finish with worried expressions and held breath. Hajime isn't a leader, exactly, but she is the most important thing to them. The one who works hardest and shines brightest, their inspiration. She's the one who united them all for the cause after they'd all lost hope. They aren't ready to give her back up again.
'You'll be fine,' Hajime says, spreading her fingers in the air dismissively. Her smile has widened to compensate for Sugane's lack. 'You've all been doing great work without me so far, haven't you? I didn't do anything at all last week. And besides, I have a mission to take care of.'
More than one pair of eyes darts to her chest. Her hand is clenched tightly over it, as though she's holding something down. Utsutsu feels the first stirrings of panic.
'You're not being fair,' a quiet voice says. It is Utsutsu's.
Hajime crosses the floor and stands in front of her, hands on her hips, crouching ever so slightly so she can look Utsutsu in the eyes. She spreads her arms out wide and waits for Utsutsu to move towards her. Utsutsu does not move. Hajime, undeterred, closes the gap between them herself. Her front is very soft and very warm. Her arms hold Utsutsu very tightly indeed.
'I know I'm not,' she says in a soft voice. Loud enough for everyone to hear, quiet enough for it to feel as though the message is for Utsutsu alone. 'This is just something I need to do.'
'I don't need you to do it,' Utsutsu mutters into Hajime's chest. She is determined not to cry. 'Why do you have to do it? Why can't you try to help it here, where all of us are?'
Hajime makes a little humming noise and hugs Utsutsu closer. It's not much comfort.
'There's not enough here,' she says after a long, unconvincing pause. 'It's just one bit of the world, y'know. I don't think Berg-Katze can really feel all the goodness humanity has to offer if it's just stuck in one corner of it, don't you? I thought about taking it onto the internet, but that only takes you so far... Then I thought, what if I travelled with it? And I suggested it to Sugayan and he thought it was a good idea--'
'Hajime!'
Utsutsu's voice is so high and strained. Hajime isn't going to take her seriously with a voice like that. She swallows and tries to get it back under control. It's hard, though, when her hands are tight little fists and her knees are shaking, and more than anything she just wants to back down and agree with her, because Hajime makes agreeing with her so easy. Even now she can sense the mood of the room turning.
Sugane is hovering at the edges, awkward and impotent as ever. 'Travel does sound like it might...'
'Yeah.' Hajime is nodding. O.D nods too, and then Rui.
'No,' Utsutsu says angrily.
'Utsutsu,' Hajime says.
'No!'
'Oh, Utsutsu,' Hajime is saying into the top of her head. She is rocking her gently from side to side. Utsutsu absolutely refuses to be lulled into calm. She shoves Hajime, hard, so that they break apart, so hard that Hajime has to totter backwards and almost falls over.
Then she feels foolish, and silly, and spoilt, and everyone is looking at her, so Utsutsu turns on her heel and flees. She can hear Hajime making excuses for her, and Sugane's agitated voice - she hears him say the word 'selfish' in a frustrated voice - and soon the others are all squabbling and Utsutsu is the epicentre. Except no she isn't, because if Hajime didn't have her silly rotten hero complex...
Hajime finds her later in the garden, sullenly plucking flowers from their beds and then rerooting them. She sucks every drop of life dry and then recompenses. It's a nervous habit. She hasn't done it for a long time.
'Utsutsu,' Hajime says very softly. She takes hold of her hand - her right hand, Utsutsu freezes up and tries to tug away, Hajime holds fast. Her hand is a brace. Utsutsu is the one who tucks her head to her chest this time, so her eyes are heavily covered by her hair.
'I'm being selfish, aren't I,' Utsutsu says.
'No, I don't think so.'
'Stop being so understanding,' Utsutsu says. Her fingers clench harder around the stem of the flower, crushing it, breaking the systems for good. She drops the flower, startled and afraid. She didn't mean to do that. 'I just... I don't... If you leave it might go back to how it was here, before you came, and I don't want it. I'm scared.'
'Hm,' Hajime says in response to all of that.
Utsutsu waits. Sure enough, Hajime tucks her head down in silent conversation with the thing inside of her. Utsutsu turns her own head away, sick of it. Impressive, really. She keeps thinking it can't grate on her any more than it already does, but it always outdoes itself.
Hajime sits next to her and puts a hand on her shoulder. Utsutsu wants to shrug it away but does not. They sit in tense silence until Utsutsu relents and drops the entire weight of herself against Hajime's side. Hajime holds strong. Like she always does.
'I'm coming with you,' Utsutsu says all of a sudden. Her eyes flash, ready for the argument – she can already hear Hajime's unintentionally condescending voice saying 'Utsutsu' like it's the world's worst disappointment – then she deflates again when Hajime just clutches her tighter.
'Oh, but they need you.'
Utsutsu nearly laughs in surprise. It comes out like a cough.
'They don't!'
Or rather – 'They don't need me like they need you. If you leave then I'm going too.'
Hajime closes her eyes, still smiling, but for a second she looks horribly gaunt. It's not like she's really malnourished, her cheeks are actually as round and plump as ever, her breasts and soft belly a series of inviting hillocks, but the shadows loom heavy and thick on her face. She looks exhausted, Utsutsu realises, and the anger inside her galvanises into something hot-cored and dangerous. For a second it feels like she might summon her G-suit from sheer anger alone.
'That is a bit selfish,' Hajime concludes.
Utsutsu puts her arm around her like she has wanted to since they started having this silly debate. Hajime shivers against her skin. It seems so suddenly, desperately unfair that Hajime has to do everything all by herself, even if she has the energy and the disposition. Utsutsu, who has neither, can't even imagine how gruelling it would be.
'Let me help,' Utsutsu says stubbornly. 'It's like...support. I'm supporting you. While you do this solo mission.'
'It's not a solo mission if we both go, silly,' Hajime says.
'Sugane used to do solo missions all the time and he was rubbish at them. Jo always showed up at the last minute. Or O.D did. I never bothered.'
Both of them laugh. It fills the air for a minute, and a tension that Utsutsu didn't even know she had been carrying begins to ease. The last rays of dusk sunlight warm her arms, her cheeks, the tops of her knees, while Hajime stays clung to her side as though someone soldered her there.
Utsutsu steels herself and lifts her head. Hajime turns her head at just the right time, and Utsutsu gets to see her eyes crinkle in delight before she closes them. She always imagined that Hajime would be the one to kiss her, for some reason, and that Utsutsu herself would be the one closing her eyes. It does seem fitting though that they would kiss now, when the sky is swallowing the dying light of the sun and the stars are beginning to prickle through the velvet sky, with goosebumps on her arms rubbing up against Hajime's, with something scary and uncertain lying ahead and their only weapon against it to do their best, to help each other do their best.
Hajime breaks the kiss and immediately initiates another one, right on Utsutsu's cheek. Utsutsu's eyes feel raw. She could cry now, but won't.
'Take care of me, then,' Hajime says brightly. She takes Utsutsu's hand and places it on her own chest, the prison with the creature behind it. For a moment Utsutsu thinks she can hear it – and then she can hear it, clear as day, yelling its idiot babble of insults. “Take care of both of us.”
Utsutsu nods.
It's a promise.