Work Text:
He’s always spoken deliberately. Spends more of his time observing than participating, mulling over his words with his eyebrows furrowed. A private person , that’s how Phinks might describe him. A thoughtful person , maybe, just not in the way most people are thoughtful. He doesn’t think any of them will ever be accused of thoughtfulness the way anyone else sees it.
Feitan takes his time when he speaks (if he speaks). Not just because of the language barrier, though that did pose a challenge at first. He still isn’t the strongest in the Troupe’s common tongue, but he finds ways to get through to them.
No, it’s not just his tenuous grasp on word order and the unnatural feeling of their vocabulary in his mouth; Feitan takes his time when he speaks his first language too. He communicates better through action, always has, and it’s easy to tell when his brows knit together during a several-seconds-long pause between sentences.
It’s interesting, so different from the way he himself speaks. So he watches Feitan, notices when he goes silent and does his best to understand why. Because he knows sometimes it isn’t the language, isn’t even his general disposition.
Sometimes Feitan gets locked out of his own head, floats away from himself and the Troupe, and sometimes Phinks is the only one who sees.
It’s happening now, he thinks.
Feitan sits on the lip of one of the tall stone stairs in their temporary headquarters with his umbrella tucked under his arm at his side. He climbed up there as soon as they got back and has been watching over the floor for an hour now, a hawk over Machi’s and Shalnark’s shoulders. If tonight had been normal, there’d be no reason to assume there’s anything wrong. But tonight wasn’t normal, and everything is a little bit wrong whether their mission was a success or not. So Phinks starts to climb and hopes Feitan doesn’t shut him out too embarrassingly.
He groans as he lowers himself onto the edge a few feet away from where Feitan is perched. Sometimes Feitan mocks him for that, calls him an old man (as if he’s any younger). He doesn’t tonight, though.
“How’s it going?”
He gives him a few seconds to respond, but there’s nothing. Not unexpected.
“Been up here a while. Too good to hang out with us down there?”
He looks over at Feitan, watches him stare down at his lap. One of his hands rests there, not grasping anything but with the fingers flexed like claws. Slowly, they both watch them relax. Feitan doesn’t seem to want him to leave, so he stays.
Tries again. “You okay?”
He may speak deliberately, but there’s one phrase that Feitan can rattle off without a second thought, could repeat in his sleep. One thing he’s rehearsed to the point of insanity just through practical use, a catchphrase of sorts. Something that, after hearing Feitan use it so many times, sounds to Phinks foreign from other people’s mouths.
“I’m fine.”
Phinks doesn’t think he’s ever said it without lying.
He isn’t delicate or gentle or anything he should probably be for something like this. But he tries. “You don’t have to be. Tonight was...”
He isn’t sure how to finish. Tonight was catharsis, pure and raw, and it hurt, and it was healing. It was a goodbye and a fuck you, and it was awful. Exactly how they thought it would be. They have more crates of priceless shit than they know what to do with, and they’ll never be the same.
Finally settles on, “Tonight was hard. Not many people would be perfectly fine.”
He patiently waits for Feitan’s response, attempts to covertly study the crease between his eyebrows and wonders whether it’s any deeper now.
Slowly, “I’m part of the spider.” Still staring at his hands, he adds, “I’m those people.”
The spider. The whole, so much greater than the sum of its parts. The only thing they have, a promise that one day they’ll be on the run with nothing, not even the entirety of their body. A family of sorts.
Phinks could try to wrestle it out of him, but he doesn’t think he has to. Thinks he knows what’s wrong without Feitan telling him.
He sits there in the quiet for another moment and then says, “The bodies were genius.” Studies Feitan’s reaction, watches for anything odd. Any reaction at all, really.
All he gets is a nod.
That must be it. It must .
They had been perfect. Some of Kortopi’s best work, amazingly convincing. If Phinks hadn’t been there for their creation, he would have believed with every fiber of his being that he was looking at his friends’ lifeless bodies. Of course the police would believe it, whoever’s left of the mob, the chain user; they all bought it. Everything was perfect.
It had been unexpectedly taxing, though, to get them ready for the deception.
Kortopi had copied the chosen members exactly as they were, largely unharmed, looking very much alive. He couldn’t endow his copies with that same life, but they looked capable of getting up and walking away. Too pristine.
So the Troupe had done what was necessary.
Phinks has killed more people than he can remember, hasn’t hesitated or deliberated over the killing blow in years. It’s more an instinct than anything, and Kortopi’s bodies had never even been alive. But they looked like his family, and he remembers the sound of his fists landing over and over, remembers how he had to remind himself he wasn’t killing the spider. He was doing what he had to in order to keep it strong. Watching Chrollo bleed, listening to the crack of Shizuku’s spine and ignoring the urge to glance over his shoulder to check they were still there.
Feitan had insisted on doing his own.
As long as they’ve known each other, Phinks is still starkly aware that he can’t be everything for Feitan. He could spend the rest of his life by Feitan’s side and still never understand him well enough to always make the right choice, always have the best advice. Sometimes he isn’t sure when he can trust Feitan’s judgment. Always? Never? Only when he isn’t covered in someone else’s blood?
They all let him do it.
They may be the spider, but that would have been horrific for anyone.
He had worked with precision, looking exactly how he always does when killing. Focused, entertained. No one had noticed anything off while he worked, after they were done, once they were gone. Because Feitan is the best at what he does; they’re all the best at what they do.
He has to approach it slowly. If he rushes in, Feitan will shut him out. He’s never been very good with feelings either, and the thought of trying to stage a heart-to-heart has him feeling just slightly nauseous. So, “You’re not getting soft, are you?”
Almost nothing in response, just a soft, “No.”
Phinks leans back on his hands so Feitan doesn’t have to stare off into space to avoid his eyes. “Then what’s this act? What beat you down?”
He watches Feitan square his shoulders. “You think you are very good conversation.”
Bastard. “I’m the best damn conversation a guy like you’s gonna get around here.”
Feitan doesn’t say anything, and the air falls quiet. Not the comfortable way it does sometimes when Phinks gives him an out, an excuse to just sit. It’s just empty.
“Look, if it’s-”
“You know.”
And that catches him a bit off guard. He had been bracing himself to pry, to put in the elbow grease and wrestle it out of Feitan, now that he’s acting bitchy about it. But none of that was necessary. Feitan fell open for Phinks to look straight into, as open as he ever is.
“Ah,” he starts. “I was right.”
Feitan still won’t look at him. Softly, carefully, he says, “I’m not real.”
They’ve been through this before. Been over and under and all around it every so often for years now, and Phinks still isn’t sure what to do to fix it. But usually he’s the one to try to guide him through, and he hasn’t lost Feitan yet. Every single time, he’s been able to sharpen that faraway look just enough .
He rubs his hands together, feels the heat in them and wonders whether he should have Feitan try the same thing. Decides to start with something less involved. “You are. You made a lot of change in the world tonight. You’d have to be real to do that.”
He shakes his head, a small movement mostly concealed by his tall collar. “No. The body… didn’t do anything.” He goes silent and looks back down at his hands. Continues, ”But that is what they have, and they think it did.”
Sometimes Phinks has trouble following him when he gets like this, too in his head, thinking all these big things. It’s compounded by the language barrier they haven’t quite made it over yet, compounded again by the fact that Phinks has nothing to relate it to. He finds that he can usually deal with his own darker thoughts by swinging his fists, running a lap, doing something to pull himself out of his mind. And with him, it works. He knows Feitan can’t always do that, so he has to try to meet him where he is. Even times like now, when he doesn’t even know where that is.
“You’re not that body, though. That was a fake thing Kortopi made. Damn realistic, but it wasn’t you. You’re real.”
“As real.”
He tries to keep from sighing, but he knows tonight will be hard for the both of them if they stay on this path. “Kortopi’s copies can’t have a conversation with me like you are right now. And I really do like talking to you, the real you right here. Even though you’re an asshole.”
Feitan is quiet.
“I wish you could just do stupid shit and feel better like I do.”
I wish , what a scary thing to say. None of them say it too often. They act or they don’t, they never do something as passive as wishing . Maybe that’s why Phinks hates this thing Feitan’s mind does to him; it’s one of the few things he can only wish about.
“Come on, Feitan. Try it.” He stays calm, keeps all the edge out of his voice. Pushes himself up from the ledge, holds out his hands. “I know I’m too tall for you. Too strong, too.” And he waits for a response, some sort of protest. Feitan looks up at him, something , but Phinks still can’t read him like he wants. “But just try it.”
After a moment, there’s a soft, “What?”
“Beat the shit out of me.”
A tiny huff, the beginning of a laugh maybe. “I’ll kill you.”
“Do it,” he nods.
For a long moment, Feitan stays seated at the edge, the umbrella sticking out under his arm like a spear through his stomach. All the awful shit they saw tonight, everything they did. Worth it up until this moment; now it stings like alcohol in a shallow cut.
Someday Phinks might have to go alone. Might look down at Feitan, and he will be the body. “Come on, get up.”
The handle of the umbrella clicks against the stone when Feitan sets it down. His shoes tap and his cloak swishes and Phinks could probably hear him breathing if he tried hard enough. Feitan is real, and he’s alive, and he’s about to see it.
“Come on, you need more practice on your punches. Easy pickings for someone like me.”
Feitan’s eyebrows knit down, and between one second and the next, he lunges forward and strikes Phinks’ open palm, his knuckles pressing into the muscle there. It barely registers, doesn’t hurt at all. He tries not to smile for a few hundred different reasons.
“Do it again.”
“You like it.”
“ You like it,” he challenges.
Feitan’s shoulders rise and fall. Phinks hopes he realizes he’s the one breathing.
He rushes in again, punches Phinks’ palm and his shoulder, lunges for his collarbone and is blocked in turn. Phinks reaches out for Feitan’s wrist and misses, hears the sound of his shoes on the stone and the umbrella, feels his heart stop for just a moment when he thinks Feitan’s headed for the ledge again.
Smiles when he instead feels the tip of the blade pressed to his spine.
“You’re quick, I’ll give you that.”
“Too slow.”
Try as he might, he can’t turn to catch Feitan quick enough. He’s lightning on his feet, almost too powerful to be real. And maybe that’s it, the root of it all.
But Phinks doesn’t know for sure.
Feitan’s here now, though. Not somewhere deep in his own brain, locked behind doors heavy enough to keep them all out.
“I could kill you.” When he says it, it’s like a tiny revelation, so Phinks lets him keep it.
“Whatever.”
Whatever he needs. The real him, as long as he’s here.