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Woz is used to being alone, by now. He was alone among the Quartzers, with Ohma Zi-O, even with…
He’s used to being alone. It’s just a shame about the injury. Another Kuuga has been… a challenge.
And he cannot go near Sougo, not as is. Cannot alert the boy whatsoever.
Unfortunately…
“You’re pretty bad at hiding, for a spy.”
“Geiz?!”
Geiz leans against a wall, no hurry as he looks Woz over.
“You look like shit,” he says.
“Yes, that does happen when one has been grievously injured,” Woz replies lightly. “Can I help you?”
“You can start with why you’re clutching your stomach like that.”
“I was punched. Hard.”
“Oh please, I know you aren’t human enough for that to—”
“By an Another Rider.”
“…How the fuck??? Shouldn’t they be GONE???”
“Apparently, not so,” Woz says. “And I haven’t a clue where to locate Kuuga.”
“You never did tell us where you brought W and Kuuga from.”
“I doubt you would believe me.”
“I’m reincarnated because Sougo became a demon king over my death,” Geiz says. And it’s Sougo now, how unfair. Woz sighs. He should probably go somewhere else, now, but even the effort of teleportation sound painful, perhaps even exhausting.
“You did ask him to do that,” he asks. “I won’t deny it, I was quite surprised. I had accepted that Sougo would follow his own path.”
“You didn’t answer my question.
“No… I suppose I did not.”
Geiz isn’t moving. Why won’t he leave? Even if things are… even if Woz is no longer truly alone, there are things he can never take back. Choices he made in good faith that proved useless or even into simple regrets.
“Come home,” Geiz says. “Sougo is worried. Isn’t your job to watch over him?”
“It is,” Woz replies. “But as I am, I cannot return yet.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake then I’ll do it.” Geiz says, stepping closer. “Just let me see your chest—”
“No!”
Geiz blinks. Woz wraps his arms around himself, book covering his chest.
“I do not want you to see me bare.”
“Why?” Geiz asks. “Nothing new there.”
It’s true. Kind of.
“It is just bruising,” he says, as though he doesn’t know there’s internal bleeding. Geiz sighs, hand over his face.
“Just tell me the thing,” he says. “Sougo is wondering why you’ve been gone all week.”
Woz sighs, staring up at the sky.
“There are secrets I still cannot tell,” he says. “But if you truly feel the need…”
He sets the book down. Slowly uncrossing his arms to unbutton the coat and slipping his coat from his body. Under is a clean tank top, now. Though at first had been the same ragged t-shirt he had by then worn for two years.
The scars are healed, mostly. They had disappeared like the words in the book.
(No matter how that meeting had gone, Woz suspects, he would never have been able to move from the Resistance to Ohma Zi-O unharmed.)
Unfortunately…
One rather large scar remains.
“I thought you said it was just bruises.”
Woz looks down at the near-hollow indent in his chest. Invisible under layers, like it had never happened.
“I did,” he says, “this is from the past.”
“Did Ohma Zi-O—”
“This was not by his hand,” Woz says. “Now, the current injury?”
“Right,” Geiz says, trying and failing to hide his worry. “You know if there’s any internal bleeding?”
“I believe there is,” Woz replies. “Though this should be survivable.”
Geiz nods, looking over the bruises, eye continuously going back to that indent.
“I think,” he says. “The options are to go to the medics or wait and see in your ten—go to the hospital or hide in your room.”
“Or stay here.”
“Absolutely not.”
“I could leave.”
“You’re too injured to.”
This is, unfortunately, true. Woz huffs.
“You truly will not leave me?”
“No,” Geiz replies. Woz nods.
“I’ll return to my room,” he says. “As long as you insure the Overlord does not see me for the next few days.”
“Sure, why not,” Geiz says. “It’s not like I want you dead.”
Woz nods.
(He has been dead before, he carefully does not think. But then, so has Geiz.)
“…it’s retribution.”
“What?”
“My betrayal, the injury was retribution, of a sort,” Woz says simply. Geiz sighs.
“It’s in the past,” he says. Woz nods, stands up… and immediately loses consciousness.
Geiz catches the taller man, staring down at him. Staring at the chest cavity, at least 10 cm in diameter. When had that even happened…
But no, it doesn’t matter.
He’s here to take Woz home.