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A few nights after they arrive in the past, Geiz is sick.
“I told you not to overeat,” Tsukuyomi says with a roll of her eyes. Overeat, such a word.
He can’t remember ever being full before.
(He must have been once, he thinks, before fleeing Neo-Tokyo as a boy, but it’s not something he remembers.)
Zi-O stares at them with his stupid smile, a little worry in his expression, though he says nothing, which is likely for the better.
Geiz resists the urge to grow and quietly marvels at how easy it is to get food here. Without living in one of Ohma Zi-O’s gilded cages.
They switch rooms, every few nights. Officially they’ve rented two, after all. It’s just too odd, not to sleep with others. Geiz wonders how Woz…
No. No thinking of Woz. Woz had lost the rights to be considered when he betrayed them.
Thinking of Tsukuyomi’s hair in his face. Of her breath in time with his as he falls asleep. The soft comfort of knowing that he isn’t alone here.
This world is not one made of dirty refugee camps, beautiful yet horrible cities, and the many short resting stops Geiz has lived in among the wreckage of this world that he’s in now. They have to be careful waking up in the mornings for that reason, for the knowing looks Zi-O’s uncle gives them, the man from a time where space is a luxury few can afford.
(He loves Tsukuyomi, he thinks, but he needs her more.)
He always forgets something basic, some stupid embarrassing detail that has Zi-O smile or Tsukuyomi roll her eyes. He’s had to flip out of traffic when he forgot about traffic lights, to go finds Tsukuyomi and remember that trade and thievery are not particularly options here.
Other times he almost wants to kick himself for forgetting what it was like in his time, when drinks water from the tap and when he finds himself taking Zi-O’s complaints about School like an actual concern.
(He hears some Ohma cities removed certain failing kids but not others, wonders if it’s based on Zi-O’s struggles now.)
Or when he and Tsukuyomi do remain in their own rooms, eventually.
He struggles with technology, sometimes, too. It’s just… so much of this should be automated. It’s annoying!
Zi-O is too nice about it, explains when he can’t do something, and he hates it.
He hates living at a disadvantage.
Tsukuyomi doesn’t say anything when she’s struggling, but sometimes he notices it, nonetheless. The door the the shop opens and her hand goes to her blaster, or she tenses when they’re near or in a skyscraper (too many of those have they seen collapse in the remains of ruined cities to trust being near one).
Geiz doesn’t say anything either, he just makes sure to expect to find himself or her in the other’s room that night.
Woz doesn’t sleep at night. Geiz tries to outlast him, sometimes, but he fails. He’s always failed at that.
It’s as comforting as it is horrible, the fact that Woz too still has those instincts, the ones needed to survive a war against a demon king with as much power as a god.
Woz has no right to still function like that, alert and caring except not, because he’d betrayed them all for…
Well, he still doesn’t know what Woz did it for, nor does he care.
Maybe choices don’t erase the past, but that applies to their new alliance, too.
He keeps getting used to it, the more he’s here, but other times…
Other times he remembers this isn’t his time.
And he hates it, for what Ohma Zi-O could do. Might do.
(But the longer he’s here, the less he can see Sougo causing it.)