Work Text:
the first time is when ankh wakes up to silence, and he doesn’t say welcome back.
that’s what tips him off, actually, despite the fact that the memories are entrenched in fog that has done nothing but ensnare him for ten years. it’s ridiculous, really, to be able to remember how eiji should act in detail when he can barely grasp the feeling of dying from the time spent as nothing but a ghost of something playing at being alive , but those thoughts don’t change the outcome.
doesn’t change the way that eiji isn’t smiling at him like he’s ever smiled before. doesn’t change that it’s wrong.
and it’s - it’s enraging, and it’s horrible, and ankh feels something red hot inside him different than any way the medals have burned before. it’s childish, the thing that he’s holding onto, tighter than anything else. childish, when he’s never been a child, never had to be something quite so vulnerable as human children or the imposter pretending to be one.
he didn’t say welcome back .
ankh narrows his eyes, and draws his hand back from where someone else (not eiji, the words snarl in his head) left another outstretched.
he - it tilts its head like it’s confused, and ankh bites back a laugh. disgusting, really - and embarrassing, for eiji to let something else puppet his body around pretending to be him. at least ankh had the dignity not to wear someone else’s skin like it was for him alone.
there’s a “be nice!” sent at him from that woman (the memories are still soaked in something blindingly white, enough that it obscures faces, though they’re drawn out with time. something that started with “chi”, though it was never one ankh committed to memory in the first place), and something smart and barbed from the other birth, and ankh almost bares his teeth.
they don’t know. why don’t they know? are they so idiotic that they wouldn’t figure it out?
ten years.
how long has eiji been there with them? it burns again, ruthless, feeling like it will hollow out his chest until there’s no air left for fuel. how long has eiji not been himself?
is it so easy to replace him?
the feeling cries at ankh to claw out, to drive each talon into the mask of eiji until it tears away, but he doesn’t, and he doesn’t know why he doesn’t. some sort of traitorous heart didn’t die with him, and has only waited for him to return so it could continue to impede him when it’s most inconvenient.
he gets out a sharp “you owe me an ice for taking so long,” just to watch its face contort in a smile that isn’t the same, isn’t as tired, isn’t right . ankh’s returning sneer is half-hearted, and he stalks away into the depths of this rundown hell of a base.
the girl. hina. her eyes catch his own as he moves. what does she want? is it still the face he’s using, the unconscious familiarity he didn’t have a say in? he’s too consumed by that burning feeling to dignify it with a response.
(later, he’ll realize that she hadn’t moved either, hadn’t said a word against ankh, when she would normally be the first to tell him off for not acting in that preordained way humans wanted him to. he’ll realize it later, but hina’s eyes are much like his own in that moment, that cold fury in her eyes for once not directed at him.)
it’s looking off into the distance when ankh sees it next, outside of whatever they’re calling a ‘home’ in terms that make ankh roll his eyes. how could it be? shoving aside the circumstances - they don’t matter, not when war is nothing new to him, when this is more familiar than anything in that one year he spent almost-living - it’s a pretend show. a monster playing house, without even the decency or the self-respect to rip off the veil.
“oh, you’re back,” it murmurs when he moves to stand next to where it’s sitting, somehow fond in its voice. it’s pretending to be eiji, mimicking the words in ways he’s done before when he was first figuring out what it was to be thrust into life, but he’s never been one for rationale and so it ends with ankh scowling.
he’ll never let eiji live this down, he thinks, and then something twists, just as red-hot and new and offputting as the first time. he keeps thinking about when eiji comes back - because he’ll get eiji back, and ankh refuses to let any part of him linger too long on the when that it becomes an if . he’s not something so inconsistent, and eiji’s something stubborn enough that he couldn’t die even when he wanted to.
“eiji,” he says, low and sharp, just to see how it reacts.
it turns its head with one of those smiles a second too late, and ankh’s scowl deepens. (it’s been ten years, something reminds him. it wouldn’t be the same anyway. you’re grasping for an eiji that doesn’t exist.)
(if the thoughts are barbed, he doesn’t feel them. it will exist, because it’s eiji , and eiji won’t change before ankh lets him.)
it sighs when it sees ankh’s face, turning back to the distance. its eyes are unfocused, and that, actually, dredges up something familiar. how fucking pitiful , for this to be the closest an imposter’s come to perfect mimickry - how pitiful for eiji , for this shallow attempt at life to be something ankh remembers most -
how pitiful for ankh, to stay and watch.
“...you’ve been acting differently,” it says, like it would remember. ankh refuses to meet its eyes, but he doesn’t tear his gaze away from the something almost like familiarity. “have i done something?”
ankh laughs, hollow.
“ you haven’t done anything.” and then, before he realizes, he repeats it. slowly, again, “you haven’t done anything.”
it’s not an if, it’s a when, but if he wants to say something packed with flimsy human hope -
ankh bites his reconstructed tongue and hopes to tear through it.
he wants to be full of venom. something that could gouge out whatever stole eiji, ripping through the guise of his memories until the emptiness ankh will never forget remains.
(there it is again, a sneer not his own and yet only in the back of his own thoughts. you wouldn’t even know, it laughs, if the emptiness remains there. is that why you swear it’s a doll instead of accepting any truth has changed?)
(do you still want him to be empty?)
maybe that’s why he can’t sink his talons in until the fake rots, inside to out. what’s happened to him? if it had been any other time - he’d take eiji down himself than let him be puppeteered like this. he should strike first, rather than standing here, staring at how its eyes aren’t the same shade of brown ankh saw sink into purple.
they’re lighter, like some curse has been lifted. it doesn’t deserve that.
“have you seen a ghost?” it asks. ankh doesn’t dignify that with a response. it’s a bold attempt to try and throw him off balance - he isn’t scared.
he’s not hesitating because he’s scared.
“are you done?” ankh shoots back. it hums a wordless reply that does nothing to stop ankh’s talons curling in and out, as if they’d move without his input.
“do you want to be rid of me so soon?” it’s nothing but answerless questions, a conversation filled with cotton fluff, tasteless in a way that’s a memory ankh wishes to forget. and he’s circling, letting the questions be continued because he doesn’t want to answer.
fuck. It’s meaningless. a hypothetical problem with an imaginary consequence. he’s never been one for this. when did -
the answer’s always the same, when it comes to questions like that.
‘when you ended up living’.
“i don’t know,” and the words are less a sharp beginning to a reply and more of a half-hearted ending. he’ll grit his teeth and push through, but “are you going to keep pretending to be him?” feels less like an ultimatum than he wants.
it smiles, and places a hand next to where it sits, beckoning ankh to sit down.
he can’t muster up that burning feeling, can’t pull himself away from autopilot, until it’s two of them side by side pretending like it’s something else.
“who are you, under that?” flimsy. each edge is paper-thin.
“what do you want me to be?” it - it meets his eyes, then, light and hazel and bright and nothing at all like what he should see there. what he wants .
“not this,” ankh hisses, and it turns and laughs some sort of humorless song.
“but you don’t mind it, do you? if i gave you the answer right now -”
ankh recoils, unconsciously, instinctual with how his talons scrape along the rocky hill. its eyes that aren’t the right color flicker down to match, and that mocking smile that would never be mocking on eiji’s face stays perfectly centered.
“that’s right.”
this time,
hina grabs him by the wrist, staring at him with that harsh sort of chill he’s never seen in anything else.
“you see it too,” and the words match the feeling, cold enough that he feels the stream rise off them. “why aren’t you doing anything?”
“why aren’t you, then?!” he’s tired of his words feeling weak in his own mind, but hina still wavers.
“i can’t - i won’t -” and then a sigh, weary in a way that’s new. “he’ll listen to you,” she relents.
ankh blinks. a hah ? and then a why are forming on his lips, but she turns and leaves without a second thought, and ankh’s left to deal with the still-biting temperature.
this time.
this time, he doesn’t look at its eyes. doesn’t look at the face, ill fitting, like borrowed clothes, yet still eiji in appearance. doesn’t think about how it’s changed.
“ what are you.” the question is flat, cutting off the cycle there and then. it replies with nothing but a sigh in his voice, running a hand through its hair.
it - it hasn’t always been purple at the ends. ankh holds onto that enough that it’s sharp. he remembers eiji, will always remember eiji, it’s not like the idiot left him much of a choice in the matter. he was always with eiji whether he wanted it or not, and the features are inscribed on each and every cell medal making up this facsimile of a human.
the facsimile that eiji fought to get back for him.
ankh holds onto it tighter, and reaches out, and curls around its shirt and pulls . they’re face to face, and it smiles, and ankh - he doesn’t wish he could, because what a stupid desire that would be. but he resents, he hates this thing for coming between them, cold and empty but not in a way that ankh would ever dream of attempting to light.
the light reflects off those bright eyes in a way that makes them look hollow.
“he did it for you,” it says, far too close to ankh, and he watches it mouth each syllable.
ankh drops it. he doesn’t intend to, not really, but the grip loosens before he notices and eiji’s body hits the ground with a dull thud.
the pointed edge should form in his throat, the you have five seconds to explain that before i burn you out of him , but it sticks there, digging into him rather than being spit out.
he says something noncommittal, not a question but almost. it’s dull. it’s nothing.
why does it feel like this? why does it feel like ankh’s been forced out of his own body, instead of watching a fool who gave up his?
ten years.
“he wanted you back more than anything,” it says with a wave, and ankh -
ankh puts his own ill-fitting head in his hands and laughs .
of course. of course!
ten years, and he couldn’t get a proper desire. ten years, and he couldn’t get it through his thick skull that ankh was still, annoyingly, by his side. ten years, and he, and he went back on the promise.
it was supposed to be a tomorrow with both of them.
ankh laughs, and it watches.
“we’re both here now, aren’t we?” hollow eyes with a hollow voice and a hollow face. ankh’s disgusted.
it’s the most eiji-like it’s ever looked.