Work Text:
Kirimi knows he’d risk everything for these two children. It’s non-negotiable. Undebatable. The only absolute in his non-linear life. He knows it - and he hates himself for it.
He was meant to fly. To leave those connections that tether him to the ground behind and soar on that narrow, straight-line towards his promised success. He was meant to be sweet poison to deer and yet he loses sight of himself -the self that he yearns to be- with the two boys that would not give up on him.
He could never leave them, and it will be his downfall.
( His downfall. The word tastes putrid. He spits it out like a rotten oyster.)
Jeraldy was a fragile bloom. He was never meant to be hurt and to hurt like this. He was kind and ambitious and wanted to fill boots too big for his feet. He wanted to learn, to be taught and make a change in the world to solidify his legacy. (Kirimi was sure if Jeraldy knew how often he saw his face instead of his own in the mirror, he would laugh.)
Jeraldy was never meant to be driven by spite. Burning with a hatred that lasted five years- years. He was never meant to spend sleepless nights designing weapons of destruction, never meant to scream and shout through tears and insanity whenever Kirimi pushed him.
And Kirimi still pushes him.
(He may not need to any longer. The boy was losing his mind. Things were going according to plan.)
Jungle was never here for him. (He knows.) He was here for Jeraldy, and always will be. He was the one holding the other boy close whenever he broke down in tears. He was the one bringing him to bed when the other passed out on his desk after he worked late nights.
Jungle was a broken cog in Kirimi’s plans, the wild card that could break everything he had worked towards for the past five years and get away with it scott-free. Because Jeraldy loved him like a brother, and for that Kirimi loved him, and he could never hurt him. (Others could. Not him.)
There was no bitterness in his words when Kirimi told him that Jungle was a far better friend - a far better human being - than he was. It was the truth, and one of the only hard truths he’d ever tell him.
Lies, on the other hand, were much easier. He lied about everything - lied about his thoughts, lied about his whereabouts, lied about his doings, and lied about himself. The Kirimi they knew was made of lies - and perhaps the one he knew too. He could hardly recall a single genuine thing about him.
Maybe two things.
The same things that stand the cold and remain the only two truths he’ll ever willingly carry with him. The same two things that laugh and smile at him with expressions that make his heart swell and break his carefully crafted front.
They were going to hate him. He was going to make sure of it.
Kirimi finds himself in Jeraldy’s office, helping him tie vibrant red strings to pins on a large analysis board. Jeraldy is beside him, humming absent-mindedly as he stabs a pin through each of His friends’ names, each sillier than the rest. (He knows Jeraldy has them memorized. He knows how he hates every last one.)
Kirimi takes his string and ties it on the pins connecting a picture of His face, and another picture of a girl with sunglasses covering most of her face. The girl with sunglasses appears in most of the collected photos of Him, almost always smiling, a joke or a hello on her tongue.
Kirimi could almost laugh at their naive happiness. How the sunglasses girl could so easily forget who they were smiling at. Who He was. He had torn the futures of dozens and had the nerve and the gall to walk away from it all.
But if he was being entirely truthful, he envied Him. Him and His friendships. Him and His happiness that he never deserved. The happiness that had been robbed from him. He was going to pay, they were all going to pay-
Kirimi’s gaze soon fell back towards Jeraldy, who had been making away with a casual yet one-sided conversation. A piteous attempt to win a shred of Kirimi’s attention, but one he could endorse in for the while.
Shunk.
The last pin was placed down at the centre picture to complete the board.
Except it wasn’t quite a pin.
Kirimi didn’t meet Jeraldy’s eyes as he stared at the dagger thrown directly into the centre of the picture of His face.
(He knew Jeraldy was watching him, looking for any sign of praise or validation. He would smile back at him without a word, keeping his silent fear of such a powerful hatred in such a young boy quiet.)
Kirimi is in the incineration room, burning old documents in the roaring furnace flame (the flame that hurts and kills him on the inside when he stares into it) when Jungle comes to him covered in dust and bruises. His wounds are hardly mentioned at all in his rapid speech and excitable chatter that comes as white noise to Kirimi’s ears. Jungle had gotten himself into trouble again- he had gotten hurt and Kirimi hadn’t been there- he was being reckless and-
And he opens a pouch swung across his side, bearing a solid amount of rich dark chocolate.
It feels like a childish prank at first, as though maybe the sheer heat of the room and the fire had gone to his head before Jungle continues to explain - and Kirimi listens this time.
He explains how he had overheard him and Jeraldy talking about His previous endeavours five years ago, how He and a group of five others had created a brainwashing chocolate factory, and how they had speculated on revisiting the abandoned factory to see if any of it was leftover.
Jungle- he explained with a large grin- had decided to spare them the effort and had gone out himself to visit the old chocolate factory himself, miraculously finding and taking a bagful of the remaining storage.
The crackles of the fire in the background - the fire that would normally be flinched at and kill conversations seemed to hardly exist anymore as Jungle continued to talk.
His smiles and pride at his achievement and his clear eagerness to relay the news to his best friend are what make Kirimi take the entire bag from his hands and toss it into the fire, burning away into sweet nothings.
It doesn’t matter. He’ll go on his own to get more, Kirimi says, in a bitter voice that is heard by neither of them.
The same harshness comes in his words when he bandages Jeraldy’s side after a sparring match that left the younger boy in cuts and burns. (Cuts and burns that he had made. Spilled blood that had gone to his head and had made him go too far.)
He bandages Jeraldy’s side in silence, though the disappointment in his eyes spoke more than any words could.
Nevertheless, when Jeraldy began to ask for another match, Kirimi couldn’t say he didn’t see it coming. The other boy was practically itching with anticipation, his wounds and cuts not a show of harm and injury, but a symbol of failure and a means to do better.
Kirimi immediately turned down the request, his voice steady and firm as he scoffed at Jeraldy’s recklessness, and scolded him for not knowing when enough was enough. Such lack of concern for himself could get him killed one day - but his words fell on deaf ears.
He wanted another go at it, Jeraldy protested, moving so suddenly that he almost certainly tore open a few cuts. It didn’t seem to concern the avid boy at all, and Kirimi’s silence only fuelled his impatience.
Kirimi could hardly listen to Jeraldy ramble on about everything he had done wrong and his pathetic attempts to vouch for another friendly spar. He told Jeraldy he was being idiotic, and that he should drop it before he left him to tend to his wounds by himself.
And part of his knew what was coming, but none of him seemed to be able to move fast enough as Jeraldy’s blade came down on him, white-hot currents of raw energy slicing clean through his mask.
It burned.
Somebody was screaming.
Everyone was screaming.
The place was on fire.
They had to run. To escape. Before He came and took more lives before he took their lives-
It was Jeraldy’s cry of shock and horror at what he had done that had brought him back to the painful reality. He was clutching his left eye, the one that had been burned and has been burned yet again. The pain was blinding but the screaming hurt more.
Nobody was screaming. ( Then why was it so loud? )
Jeraldy was by his side, choking out apology after apology as he tried to pry Kirimi’s hands away from his face, trying to see what he had done and how to fix it. Kirimi’s mask - sliced clean in half- lay strewn on the ground, forgotten.
Kirimi spoke in a voice that wasn’t his own.
He didn’t know what he said, but he didn’t need to.
He left Jeraldy in tears as he went to replace his mask.
( He was laughing. Laughing. )
Jeraldy comes to him with a flimsy sheet of paper in his hands, an apology in the form of a baking recipe for macarons and an invitation to make them with him.
He’s long since calmed down from the incident a few days ago, and Kirimi could see his hands trembling slightly out of nervousness as he hands the recipe to him.
Kirimi doesn’t know what makes him stare back at him and agree. He doesn’t know what brings him to the staff kitchenette, what brings him to peacefully stir the macaron batter and discuss what colour filling is the most superior.
Jeraldy is laughing beside him as he takes part in a disastrous flour battle that powders the whole table white.
He doesn’t think about the effects such comfort could have on his plans, or what else he could’ve been doing with such precious time.
But Jungle’s tentative forgiving smile as he helps take the macarons out of the oven, and how he meets Kirimi’s eyes again as the three engage in childish banter make it all come crashing down on him once again.
Later, when everyone’s asleep and the night drags on, Kirimi takes the tray of remaining macarons and throws it down the trash. The recipe lying on the table dotted with stains and flour particles is torn in half to be burned later in the morning.
They forgive too easily.
It’ll get them killed one day.
It gets a certain other employee killed.
It didn’t take much for Kirimi to move on from the death of a person he never knew very well. But the one thing that did catch his notice was who had killed them. Him.
The facility had been infiltrated by Him and his friends. Not that it was surprising - it had been weeks since their first encounter, since their first battle, and since Kirimi had last brought him closer to death than he ever had before. They were looking for revenge - something that Kirimi was well acquainted with for the past five years. No matter, no matter. Everything was going according to plan - a single loss didn’t affect anything. (Or so he deluded himself to thinking. He wasn’t blind. He knew they were getting stronger - that every one of their blows came down harder, and how giving up wasn’t a term in any of their dictionaries. They would rip each other apart before either side backed down.)
Kirimi knows they’re coming. He knows that somebody will die.
But Jeraldy doesn’t. He believes in the hope that they’ll win. He thinks it’ll be easy. Kirimi watches as he convinces himself that his confidence is justified - when he knows he’s simply overdosed on a euphoria that was five years due. Jeraldy brags and flaunts his success, it’s starting to become sickening.
(It’s a lie. Kirimi knows Jeraldy cries out of earshot. He knows Jungle is there whenever he does - he knows that he doesn’t leave Jeraldy’s office for hours, constantly there for his friend until he’s a hundred percent sure that he’ll be alright. Kirimi knows that the maidonium experimenting had rendered Jeraldy into a state of fury and the dark form of anger - and part of him is proud in such a twisted way. Proud that what he has done has broken him.)
Maybe this feeling wasn’t pride. Maybe it hurt him too. Maybe he felt a pang of jealousy whenever Jeraldy came back, red-eyed and teary but not completely shattered, who always had Jungle to help keep him together. Jungle, the cog in his plan and a wild card that was solely loyal to Jeraldy.
Maybe that was why he told Jungle to face Him when he knew that He and his friends were coming.
Because he knew that Jungle would fight.
Because he knew that Jungle would lose.
Jeraldy cries. This time Kirimi’s the one comforting him - because there’s nobody else left to.
He cries and it’s worse than it ever was. An ugly mess of tears and mucus pour down Jeraldy’s face as he sobs into Kirimi’s coat, holding him so tightly that Kirimi wonders if he’s scared he’ll disappear too. He’s hurt and he’s fragile and oh-so vulnerable, clinging onto the only thing he has left.
Kirimi wishes that he could feel the same. That he could say something kind and compassionate and mean it . Even a lie- a sweet yet fake lie- would mean nothing to both of them. Jeraldy was naive, but not stupid. He knew that Kirimi could care less about Jungle, that he never cared about him the way that Jeraldy had.
Sometimes he wishes that Jeraldy would be angry with him. Shouts and screams were easier to stomach and control than vulnerability and tears. He never knew it was this tiring to sit with somebody for hours on end, whispering sweet nothings into his ear and rubbing soothing circles on his back to calm him down and to get him to stop crying.
(Jungle knew. Jungle knew how to calm Jeraldy down - how to make him laugh when things looked dire and how to speak to him in a way that could make flowers bloom. If Jungle hadn’t-)
Kirimi stops himself. No. Jungle had died, he had long left them on their own. Kirimi halfheartedly tells Jeraldy that Jungle had died fighting for their cause. If Jeraldy had heard him, he didn’t show it. If anything, perhaps he cried a little harder.
It was annoyance and venom that caused Kirimi to pry Jeraldy away from himself to look him directly into his eyes to take his words seriously, not love or concern. Jeraldy is reluctant to leave his embrace, but Kirimi’s seriousness scares him. ( More than usual .)
Kirimi stares Jeraldy in his eyes, his words firm and fake as honey as he reminds Jeraldy that He and His little clique are still here, and he’s accomplishing nothing by sitting here and whining about it.
Jeraldy’s still shaking (he’s scared-), but he stops crying (he’s upset), looking pathetic as ever as he stares back at Kirimi, a thousand unspoken words whirling behind his face. Kirimi recognizes grief, sorrow, anger, and hatred - but all of it not for him. In front of him isn’t a powerful company leader, isn’t the head of the most progressive company in the Gapanese empire, not even Jeraldy Maziango - he’s just a scared boy. A terrified boy who has lost the one person he had ever treated like a brother and was buckling under the weight of everything that had happened during the past few weeks, clinging to the one person he had left as though he might lose him.
Little did he know he might’ve already had.
(Kirimi wondered what Jeraldy would say if he knew that he had sent his best friend to his death.)
(He wonders how he’d react if he told him he didn’t regret it.)
Kirimi watches with Jeraldy by his side as one of his clones is torn to shreds by Them. The fire roars in the background as years worth of science and engineering breakthrough combusts on the spot, the doll below is slashed and beaten at all angles, before being kicked into the fire.
They don’t know it’s fake. Everything explodes. But it doesn’t surprise either of them when They remain unharmed, the one with the green potion bottles and gloves taking initiative to make sure that everyone is safe and accounted for. A few of them cheer out in success, while He stands in the centre of them all, looking back out toward the unattended fire. Where Kirimi had died.
He hoped that dying hurt.
Because if it did, it would mean that Jeraldy could care less about him, as the boy watched silently while the mirror image of his former teacher got ripped to shred and burned alive.
Kirimi hoped Jeraldy hated him.
But it would be amusing if he didn’t.
Jeraldy is dead.
He had lost the battle and had plunged into the sea with Sigma’s purple streak of feathers and wings. ( He hoped they both died.)
It was all for nothing. Five years, wasted and gone. Jeraldy and Jungle had died for nothing, and Kirimi was as good as dead. But if it was any consolation they had died fighting, fighting against the one that they had sworn to kill for five years.
Kirimi could pretend to be surprised. He could pretend to be upset. He could pretend to cry and lie about how much he missed them and how he mourns them nightly. But that would just be what it was - lies and pretend. Pretending was for the delusional. (Kirimi wasn’t delusional- he knew that he had lost, even if he hadn’t died. Recovering from a loss of this magnitude would take a miracle. But he knew how to work miracles.) If he lied to himself he would only be distracting himself from his current course of action.
Perhaps there was a point in time where he’d have traded his life for theirs. A time where he’d laugh and smile with everyone else, playing songs to raise morale and speaking the truth in soft tones so as lay it on lightly.
He didn’t care anymore.
He thinks about the charred remains of the chocolate that Jungle had brought him. (He’s replaced it with his own. But he never got the promised euphoria he expected from retrieving them.)
He thinks about the macarons and the torn recipe. (He didn’t expect to care so much. He didn’t expect to care at all.)
He thinks about all the clones he had discarded in the process of making an army of them - all of them deemed dysfunctional and broken whenever they showed a shred of sentient emotion for the two boys that had died. (Kirimi was scared. Terrified of facing the truth. Terrified of the images of himself that carried the truth in fearful eyes.)
(He was terrified of himself. Those abandoned clones left to rot in the incinerator were far more whole than he ever was.)
He had lost everything now. He had nothing left to lose. He was invincible now. It was lonely at the top, but that was what made him strong. He was in control now.
His laugh was as empty as his words.