Work Text:
Too Late For Me
At first, Ankh isn’t certain this stupid human heart is functioning properly. It jitters in his chest like an overexcited hummingbird at unpredictable moments, frantic beneath the soft skin of his borrowed chest when he smoothes talons there, trying to feel around the problem. He wouldn’t be surprised if it’s malfunctioning. It’s dying after all, requiring a constant stream of nutrients and what little phoenix fire he can produce from three measly cores to keep moving, the slow repair of damaged capillaries and bruised muscles barely enough to keep up.
It’s possible that this mortal frame isn’t enough to contain him. It’s a terrible suspicion to harbor, but he is a creature of cleansing fire that may not renew this fragile body as it would his own, and it could be that in his attempts to pull it back together around him like scattered cell medals he’s only hastening an end where the detective fails to rise from the ashes. It probably doesn’t help that the core of that fire is an explosive rage that batters against the soft tissue masquerading as his own, but he needs that anger, because what seethes beneath is a shivering, blistering mass of fear that forever threatens to drive him out of his stolen skin.
This body is a life raft, a hiding place, something to cling to when it can’t be helped that he is lowering himself in his desperation and it’s falling apart around him as he tries to hold it in a static moment between one breath and the detective’s last. He will survive it should it come to that, but the thought does nothing to dispel his anxiety. He can’t guarantee that Hina won’t incite Eiji to drive him out if this body fails him, if precious Oniichan can’t be saved, and he needs to stay close to OOOs if he has any hope of clawing his way back to more than this. He keeps the thought to himself and suspects Eiji knows anyway, damn him.
He tries not to think about it. Terror at the looming dissolution of himself drives the anger, keeps him moving and his words quick and barbed, a smokescreen to hide the wound beneath before the humans around him discover another way to exploit it. It doesn’t make them happy and part of him still mourns that, wanting to be praised like a pathetic pet. Wanting things to be easier, but he spent the whole of his existence in Thuringia trying to please a human and what did he have to show for that loyalty? Three cores and an endless parade of humiliations when these upstarts demand he give up more and more of himself and why isn’t he kinder while he does it?
He is drawn to Eiji because they’re the same in that, even if the idiot pretends he doesn’t feel it. It keeps the herd close, playing the part of the cheerful hero, pretending to be one of them, and Eiji seems to need that. Hiding makes them feel safe in the presence of a predator they can’t see, and maybe that makes it easier for Eiji to lie to himself. It doesn’t matter that the fool tells them that he’s not what he seems in utterly stony blandness when the lie is so convincing Ankh thinks in unguarded moments Eiji almost believes it himself.
Eiji’s had bits broken off him too, enough to lose the expectation that he deserves any of that compassion he rants about when he’s really feeling righteous. It’s a perfectly understandable selfishness that drives him to give up everything he has without a second thought if it’ll mold another one of them a little more towards his ideal. Humans have to be better than the base desires Ankh sees in them, because he can’t stand it if they’re not. He’ll make them better if he has to, and forget all about himself in the process. A numbness prickles under his stupid human’s skin, a constant reminder of the damage he’s done, can do, will certainly rain upon the lives of anyone he lets close. It’s really only luck that Ankh is probably strong enough to withstand it long enough for them to complete their work.
Ankh is falling apart, and he can’t not care when that idiot seems so able to put his own fears away as soon as someone else needs help. Ankh hates that, how easily Eiji puts aside his own misery, taking control of his own servitude like he asked for it. He hates the hope that rises hard and sharp when Eiji looks at the crater where Mizool stood and says he won’t let Ankh end up like that. Like he understands, and maybe Ankh is the bigger idiot for letting himself want that when he knows the moment is fleeting. Humans don’t pause to ask what the monster feels, what the monster fears. They’re too busy running or holding out their hands for what he can do for them. It’s what he was made for.
It wasn’t supposed to be. There was a time the King insisted that Ankh was made to protect his people, his home. He remembers that face through a haze of sepia-toned dimness, so young and painfully brittle in his ideals, in his resolve and Ankh had believed him. Let it puff him up with manufactured importance until it became a part of him, until he couldn’t see around it or let it go when the signs were all there that the King was losing himself to the pull of the medals. Ankh had been too proud to admit that in that madness, he too was disposable, and it had nearly cost him everything.
It might still.
Eiji doesn’t look like much of a threat when Ankh meets his eye across the café, hunching guiltily when Ankh catches him staring through the kitchen window, ducking to hiss in hushed tones at Hina just out of sight. Ankh can’t help but think bitterly that if he had more of his cores, if he were whole it wouldn’t take any effort at all to hear what they were saying with the range of a hawk restored to him, and the most frustrating part of that wistfulness is that it’s only getting harder to remember what that felt like. He’d only been allowed his full senses for a moment before they were gone.
It’s galling to strive for a thing he can only imagine, that feels as fleeting and fragile as this stupid battered body, and it’s more irritating still when Eiji finally stumps out of the kitchen with a tray in hand, all scared rabbit shiftiness until he squares his shoulders in determination. Eiji still looks like an idiot with his hair sticking out in all directions and his shirt billowing around him as he moves, nothing of the commanding presence of a king, until something in his posture changes, demeanor shifting with a frighteningly familiar righteous resolve and Ankh wonders who he really was before all this. This vagabond traveller bullshit is just as much as a smokescreen as Ankh’s bitterness.
He doesn’t realize he’s hunched lower in his seat, shoulders slumping and head tipping in defiance until Eiji pauses, sighing. He watches as Eiji visibly forces the anger down, and that won’t do at all, soft and inexplicably open when he finally speaks.
“Hina-chan wants you to eat something.”
He presents the tray like Ankh needs proof of his intent, and Ankh tries not to let the alarm show on his face, lets it mute into revulsion instead. The gentleness in Eiji’s voice isn’t real. It doesn’t quite reach his eyes, like that brittle, forced smile, less trying to be kind than it really is trying to seem that way in front of the girl pretending not to listen in from the other room. This is a function of his compulsion to take on her concern for the detective, for poor sad damsel in distress Hina, because heroes are supposed to worry about these things. Eiji probably read it in a fucking book somewhere.
They’re all supposed to care, Eiji keeps telling him, spitting swelling anger at him like he can’t tell Eiji’s just as angry at himself. He manages to fake his way through a stalwart righteousness that’s really, truly hilarious when they both know he’s only going through the motions to protect his own selfish heart from the guilt he’ll feel if he admits he doesn’t, that he can only half feel it anymore around the numbness. This is the script that hides that away, the one where Eiji pretends to reach out a hand that Ankh will slap away in disgust so it’s clearly reestablished who is the hero, who is the villain, and everybody sleeps soundly knowing they’ve got it all figured out.
Except it’s never that simple. Ankh slapping at Eiji gives him exactly what he wants. They understand each other enough to have that score settled. Maybe in another life, where he didn’t need his rage to keep him moving and Eiji didn’t need the satisfaction to reassure himself he’s on the right path, Ankh wouldn’t bother. But what does it matter in the end?
He’s failing as surely as this stupid human body. It’s only a matter of which one of them will give out first, and Ankh is keenly aware that these humans only hope he lasts because the detective can’t breathe without him. He can’t afford to waste time wishing things were different.
He’s stared too long, lost in his own thoughts, because the tray hits the table with a clatter and Eiji is suddenly too close.
“Is it a Yummy?“ Eiji jogs his head at the front door.
Ankh’s talon slaps down onto the tray, picking up his chopsticks with a roll of his eyes and trying not to look too carefully at what’s in this soup as he mutters, “No, moron. Not every waking thought in my head is about that.”
Eiji’s eyebrows raise beneath his bangs, surprised for a moment, but he rallies soon enough and seizes on the opportunity to be nosy. “Really?” he challenges, “That’s not what you’ve been saying. What else is there?”
There’s a childishness to the question that rings true with the echo of that emptiness in Eiji. It’s the curious little twinge of whoever the hell he was before that wishes things were different, that maybe they weren’t just pretending to be partners because neither one of them knew what the fuck else to do. It makes Ankh’s cores shift uncomfortably, reminding himself not to be that pathetic, that he can’t afford to care even if it’s a little too easy to lose entire moments staring hard into Eiji’s shifting features as the beginnings of a smile actually light his eyes.
You, Ankh could say. Hina. This stupid body. Really in the end he thinks about how much the world around him has changed and yet there still doesn’t seem to be a place for him in it. It fuels the desperation all the more because if he can’t rise above it he’s doomed. The thought of it sits like a lead weight somewhere around the detective’s borrowed stomach, making his heart flutter uncomfortably again.
It’s a reminder not to stray away from the mask, and he scoffs, because it’s expected. Because it’s safe, and stuffs the regret down when Eiji shutters down again in disappointment.
“As if I’d tell you.”