Archive of Our Own ^beta

When Tanjirou was a child, he was told the mountains would keep him safe and that good things came in threes.

He knows better, now.

The Kaiju have a capacity for cruelty that rivals nothing on Earth, and the Jaegers and their Rangers can only do so much. There was one Kaiju that day, and it took two Jaegers to take it down.

He vows to do better. To be better than the Rangers that failed him that day.

There is only one place to begin.

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚

He applies to the Academy directly out of school, fresh faced and still so very, very bitter but intent on doing good. He is not there for friends, but he makes acquaintances anyway, because one of them may be his co-pilot in the future.

He will need one, if he ever wants to set foot in the conn-pod of a Jaeger.

Basic human connection is the driving force between Ranger partners, so he makes it a point to get to know everyone, no matter how unlikely a connection between them may seem. He’s always been a naturally friendly person and he pushes it to his advantage now. He makes friends with all of his year mates, with the underclassmen, with the upperclassmen.

He also makes it a point to be kind, because a little bit of kindness goes a long way, especially at the Academy where there is little to be had.

Especially in an apocalypse, where it seems to be a commodity.

Many see his kindness as a weakness. Tanjirou sees his kindness as nothing but kindness; as nothing but something his mother would expect from him, even on the hardest, most grueling days.

He keeps his hurt to himself, like a barbed wire cage around his heart, buried deep down where no one can ever see it.

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚

They keep him in Japan after graduation, shipping him off to the local Pan Pacific Defense Corps Shatterdome. The PPDC is deadlocked in the seemingly endless fight against the Kaiju, barely keeping their heads above water against the giant aliens that rise up from the depths of the Pacific.

The only good news seems to be that the last time a Kaiju made it to the interior, it was when Tanjirou’s home was destroyed. A silver lining, he supposes, to be found in the rubble of his life. Now, he’s joined the fight to keep it that way. He doesn’t want anyone else to have to go through what he’s been through; doesn’t want anyone else to have to suffer the way he has.

He just has to find his way into a Jaeger, first.

He’s given a single berth to sleep in, a uniform to wear, and a ration card to use. Very few of those he graduated with came to the ‘dome with him, most of them sent to other ‘domes across the world that were in need of more personnel.

The day after his arrival, he’s told to report to the Kwoon Room for an evaluation and the first round of what he’s sure will be many drift compatibility tests.

Butterflies erupt in his stomach as he enters; he pushes them down, like he pushes everything else but the good in him down, and takes his shoes and socks off before falling into line with the other cadets.

This Kwoon Room is like the one at the Academy, but smaller: concrete walls covered in racks of staves, dark blue mats covering the floor to cushion the fall of the room’s combatants. The man who is in charge of the Kwoon Room that day is large and imposing but also, it is immediately clear to Tanjirou, blind. He thinks nothing of it.

The man introduces himself as Gyoumei, a former Ranger, as he studies each of them intently, pacing back and forth before them like some kind of prowling animal. The tension in the room mounts as he does so, silence deep and pregnant as they wait for him to speak again.

Tanjirou, hands folded behind his back, waits patiently. Mind games were commonplace at the Academy, and he has enough patience to fill a bucket.

Finally, Gyoumei begins to pair them off one by one. He is precise, exacting in his picks.
Tannjirou is paired off last, with a blond he vaguely remembers from a few classes in the Academy. Agatsuma Zenitsu, he thinks. The other young man looks terrified, rooted to the floor even as Tanjirou moves off the mat and onto the concrete so the first bout can begin.

Gyoumei bends down and says something in a low voice to the blond; it’s enough to make him jump and scamper off, to the side of the mat opposite Tanjirou, refusing to meet anyone's eyes and visibly sweating.

The first bout begins shortly after that, Gyoumei keeping score at the head of the room. Tanjirou isn’t sure how he managed it, but each bout ends in a 4-3 score; each pair is close to Drift Compatible, but ‘close’ isn’t good enough.

Still, though; close is better than nothing, especially on the first day of trials. It’s practically unheard of to find someone you’re Drift compatible with on the very first day of training. The chances are one in a million.

Finally, it’s his turn: he takes a staff off of the wall and turns, stepping onto the mat. It’s cold beneath his feet, spongy. Adrenaline courses through his veins, the heady thrum of anticipation like a drug.

He reaches the center of the mat, and waits.

Zenitsu takes a little longer, each move he makes to reach the center hesitant. His hands tremble on the staff he’s chosen, grip so tight Tanjirou thinks he may break his bones.

They bow to each other; when they rise, Tanjirou graces him with a smile and takes a defensive position. He may feel sorry for the young man, for the anxiety he’s clearly feeling, but that doesn’t mean he’s about to go easy on him.

When Zenitsu looks up, there's still apprehension in his eyes. But there's resolve there, too. Good, Tanjirou thinks. I can work with this. 

Typically in a fight, his opponents have tells before they attack. They shift their weight one way or another, a muscle will twitch, or the truly inexperienced ones will telegraph their movements the whole way through.

Zenitsu does none of these things: he strikes, lighting fast, and it’s all Tanjirou can do to jump out of the way, mind whirling. Before he can properly process what’s happening, Zenitsu strikes again.

His hands aren’t shaking anymore.

Tanjirou moves out of the way of this one, too, trying to work out what’s different between this Zenitsu and the one who was shaking like a leaf not ten seconds prior.

Zenitsu swings again, and Tanjirou decides that this is a puzzle for later: he has a fight to win. He rises to meet the blow, this time, bringing his staff up to block.

Their fight begins in earnest then, a trading of blows so brutal they go straight up his arms and make his ears ring. Zenitsu ultimately takes the first point, moving so quick Tanjirou doesn’t have the chance to keep up with him, sweeping Tanjirou’s feet out from beneath him and taking the kill point.

Tanjirou settles into the heat of battle then, mind blanking as his body goes through the movements, brain giving into muscle memory rather than trying to logic its way through and predict what Zenitsu will do next.

It seems to work to his advantage, because by the time Gyoumei calls an end to the bout, the score is 4-4 and Tanjirou can hardly believe what he’s hearing. They’re Drift Compatible.

The chances are one in a million, but he’s always been lucky.

Beside him, Zenitsu sways a little on his feet, then shakes his head. Tanjirou glances at him sidelong, but can’t really make anything out, the young man’s face hidden beneath a clump of blond fringe.

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚

The Drive Suit fits like a glove, all gleaming white and void black and so, so cold. It is not comfortable. It is a tool, meant to bridge the gap between man and machine and man again. Tools are not meant to be comfortable.

He reminds himself of this fact as he walks the bridge from the Drive Suit Room to the conn pod, Zenitsu a nervous wreck at his side, helmet tucked up under his arm, nothing like the calm and collected opponent he was for the duration of their bout in the Kwoon Room. They’re drifting for the first time today in an actual Jaeger.

They were declared Drift Compatible less than thirteen hours ago; the speed of which things are moving is a little much, even for Tanjirou. But the Marshal wants them in a Jaeger, any Jaeger, just to be certain of Gyoumei’s proclamation.

And he’s—he’s nervous. He doesn’t get nervous, but he’s nervous. Four years of careful planning, of making sure every little thing went right, and he’s finally about to see it all come to fruition.

His stomach squirms with anticipation as they’re each hooked into their individual cradles, helmets on their heads and the noise around them dampened. Zenitsu looks like he’s going to puke in his helmet, a little like he looked before Gyoumei said something to him before the bouts yesterday.

Tanjirou still doesn’t know what was up with that, but he thinks anxious might be Zenitsu’s default setting.

“Are you ready?” Tanjirou asks him as they’re sealed into the Conn Pod with a pneumatic hiss, trying to be friendly and conversational.

“No!” Zenitsu wails, finally turning to look at him. Even through the orange-tint of the helmet visor, he looks faintly green. “You gotta get me outta here! Please! Tell them there’s been a mistake!”

Oh no. This cannot be happening. He’s so close.

“It’s okay,” he soothes in his most calming voice as the HUD around them springs to life. “This is only a test run, to see if we’re really Drift compatible. We’re not actually—”

“Still!” Tanjirou’s jaw clicks shut audibly with the force of Zenitsu’s cry. “I wanna go home! I don’t wanna be here! I didn’t sign up for this!”

Tanjirou knows for a fact that they don’t conscript for the Academy, but he still files that little chunk of information away for later, for when they aren’t going to be crawling around in each other’s brains.

The LOCCENT tech in charge of their Drift test comes on over the comms. “Is. Is everything okay in there?”

“Yes!”

“No!”

There’s an audible pause over the comm. “We’re going to initiate the neural handshake in about thirty seconds.”

He can feel the tension emanate from Zenitsu at the announcement, but the blond doesn’t continue his wailing.

“Initiating neural handshake,” a disembodied voice announces from somewhere within the conn pod; it’s all the warning they get before the drop test begins.

It feels like he’s taking a bath with a toaster. Every nerve in his body is alert, each of them coming online at once. But the mental assault is worse: every memory that means anything to him, the good and the bad, assails him at once, interspersed with the highlights of Zenitsu’s life, all of them shuffled together like a deck of cards.

The very first thing they were taught in the Academy was don’t chase the R.A.B.I.T.s, and they both hold steady. They don’t traverse down any warrens after any memories, they follow the cardinal rule and forge through, to the other side of the memory torrent.

By the time they surface, some several seconds later, everything seems sharper. More in focus. He’s in Zenitsu’s head, and Zenitsu’s in his. He can feel every inch of anxiety and terror that seeps from his co-pilot’s pores, can temper it with his own coolheaded assurances that see? we’re fine. we can do this. all we have to do is move our hand and wave.

But they come to the same realization at the same time:

There’s something—or rather, someone—missing. They can’t make the Jaeger do what they want, not like this. Not with something integral missing.

As soon as the thought has come to pass, the inside of the conn pod is plunged into an eerie red glow. Alarms begin to blare, a klaxon of doom.

“Critical systems error,” the disembodied voice that belongs to the conn pod announces dispassionately. “Critical systems error.”

“We broke it!” Zenitsu wails aloud, burying his head in his hands. “We broke the Jaeger!”

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚

The Marshal’s office has fresh wisteria sitting in a vase in a corner.

Tanjirou’s never thought of them as cutting flowers, but this is the Apocalypse. He sits in a chair next to Zenitsu, across the desk from Marshal Ubuyashiki himself, steaming cups of tea in all of their hands.

Some of Zenitsu’s earlier anxiety and terror still rattle around within him, making his mouth dry and the teacup feel heavy in his grasp.

After what seems like a lifetime of silence and Zenitsu sweating bullets next to him, the Marshal smiles. “It’s alright,” he assures them, the first words he’s spoken to either of them since they’ve entered. “You’re not in trouble.”

The platitudes do nothing to ease Tanjirou’s nerves, and he’s certain they do nothing for Zenitsu’s.

Tanjirou was never hauled into the Principal’s office, but he imagines that this is what it must be like. The general unease of not knowing what’s going to happen next, the general disappointment in himself. The feeling that he could have done better, somehow. Been better.

Like all of this is his fault, in some way. Like he wasn’t enough.

The Marshal—as blind as Gyoumei—takes a sip of his tea before setting down his cup. “Gyoumei has never been wrong. Not when it comes to this.”

His words seem to be meant as a comfort, but instead they send Tanjirou into free fall.

Someone is always wrong, at some point in their life. They can’t be right one hundred percent of the time; it’s just not possible.

He and Zenitsu have ruined Gyoumei’s perfect record, as if he needed something else to feel terrible about.

“But we—“ he begins to argue, then falters at the look Ubuyashiki sends his way.

“There’s another explanation,” the Marshal says. “One the two of you must have entertained, even for a split second within the Drift. You would have been fools not to, with compatibility this high.”

Tanjirou shares a sidelong look with Zenitsu; it’s the first time they’ve looked at each other since they’ve drifted. The first time since the walk of shame back to the Drive Suit Room, where they stripped in shame and silence and put their PPDC issued jumpsuits back on and were summoned to Marshal Ubuyashiki’s office.

“Is neither of you going to speak up?” he prompts, bemusement lacing his voice.

“There might have been, just for a moment, a thought . . .” Tanjirou begins, hesitantly. As if the suggestion of the thought he and Zenitsu shared might have been wrong or bad, somehow. As if it were taboo.

“We need a third person,” Zenitsu blurts, almost spilling his full, cooling cup of tea everywhere. “Tanjirou and I aren’t enough!”

Hearing it out loud is like a knife, right between his ribs and straight to his heart. He can’t not be enough.

Not again. Never again.

“It’s okay,” the Marshal soothes, leaning forward and placing his elbows on his desk. He narrowly misses his tea cup. “Three Rangers in one Jaeger isn’t unheard of. We had a triad retire a few years ago, in fact. It might take some time to get them back here to train you, a little time to get their Jaeger back up to snuff. You see, the bond between the two of you shows promise. But there are markers—a gap, if you will—that indicate a third is needed. The interface detected that gap and, since that Jaeger wasn’t built for three, panicked insomuch as an AI can panic.”

“Wait.” Zenitsu calms slightly. “So we didn’t break the Jaeger?”

A faint smile graces Ubuyashiki’s features, scrunching up the scars around his eyes. “No, Agatsuma. You did not break the Jaeger.”

The sigh of relief Zenitsu lets out is visible, whole body relaxing.

But Tanjirou does not; he had thought he finally reached his goal, grasped the stars, only to have them wrenched out his hands at the last minute.

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚

They’re doomed to waiting.

They learn more about the Jaegers as a whole, how to repair them, what makes them tick. How they work, inside and out. They learn the basics of the Operations Center, about how they predict Kaiju movements, and they spend a week in Research and Development scrubbing the floors after someone decided to crack open a Kaiju specimen and send the contents spilling all over the floor.

But most of all, they train. They strengthen their bond.

They wait for their missing limb.

They meet a Jaeger tech named Shinazugawa Genya, a tall, scary-looking man about their age assigned to what is to be their Jaeger. Tanjirou feels a connection with him immediately, but it’s a thinner version of what he feels with Zenitsu: watercolors compared to oil paints, and he knows that Genya is not what’s missing.

“Besides,” Genya says to him one day, when the three of them are triple checking the wiring harness of one of the Jaeger’s knuckle joints, “I think my brother would be pretty pissed if I decided to get into a Jaeger now.”

Because they’re missing a vital piece of their formation, they’re stuck in the twilight zone between Ranger and Cadet; here nor there, they belong with neither group. They stand in the hinterlands, ostracized by most by virtue of the need for a third to run a Jaeger.

Tanjirou doesn’t mind; he’d rather not interact with the other Rangers for as long as necessary.

They’re given a large berth with three single beds, one of which sits empty and stripped for now.

It does not feel like home. Nothing, he thinks, will ever feel like home again.

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚

Three months, and there is a new arrival in the Shatterdome.

Tanjirou feels hope flicker in his chest, and he snuffs it out quickly. Hope is a dangerous thing, after all, hard to hold on to; hard to let go of.

The worst part is, his hope keeps growing over the week that he doesn’t spot the newcomer. He’s a Ranger cadet, shipped here for Drift Compatibility tests, and he’s tearing through the available cadets in the Shatterdome like they’re made of paper.

On day eight, he finally takes Zenitsu by the hand and drags him to the Kwoon Room just to see what all of the fuss is about. Curiosity, he tells himself, is what’s driving this decision. Nothing more, nothing less.

There’s a crowd already gathered there, nearly spilling out into the hallway. He and Zenitsu have to squeeze themselves through curious onlookers just to get to the third row deep, and even then they have to stand on the balls of their feet to see over the heads of the people in front of them.

On the mat is one of the cadets they came in with, one of the few who has yet to drop out of the Ranger program after months of not finding a suitable partner. It’s likely, Tanjirou thinks, that they may be shipped to another ‘dome to begin their search anew there.

Their opponent, on the other hand, is far more interesting.

He’s stripped down to the waist, first of all, PPDC issued jumpsuit tied off around his hips. In either hand is a full sized staff, instead of using just a single one. His black hair is scraped back into a ponytail at the crown of his head, some of it coming loose around his face as he grinds another opponent into the mat.

The cadet crows victoriously, throwing his full hands into the air so that the training staffs collide with a thwack. “Next!” he yells, turning in a circle, as though his next opponent may come from anywhere.

His next opponent steps up, nerves written across his face; it’s clear to Tanjirou from the first telegraphed movement that it’s a losing match, but something gives him pause.

“Zenitsu,” he says, coaxingly, “grab a training staff. And one for me.”

“Against that beast?” His drift partner is thoroughly aghast at the very idea. “I think not. Nope.”

Adrenaline is already thrumming in Tanjirou’s veins in anticipation of the fight he wants to have. Plans are folding and unfolding in his head, strikes and counter-strikes embedded in his muscles jumping to life. “We have to.” Three words; an explanation that Zenitsu only half-understands. And then: “Trust me, please.” Three more words, which Zenitsu has never been able to say no to.

The blond liberates two training staves from the wall as Tanjirou sidles up to Gyoumei to plead their case, body held taut and contained as he keeps one eye on the carnage taking place on the mats.

Tanjirou barely has a chance to open his mouth before Gyoumei says, quietly, “I was wondering when the two of you would come to take a chance.”

On the mat, the score is already 2-0, in favor of the stranger.

Tanjirou smiles his most pleasant, people-pleasing smile and says, “So we can?”

“You may.”

He bobs a slight bow to Gyoumei, then goes to the side of the room to meet Zenitsu, whose hands are shaking as he hands Tanjirou a training staff. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” he asks, voice wavering with the question.

Tanjirou smiles at him, mouth soft at the edges. Something about it seems to put Zenitsu at ease, because his hands stop shaking just as the bout on the mats comes to an end, final score 3-0.

They step onto the mat together, not quite in sync, just as the defeated steps off. The newcomers gaze snags on them almost immediately, curious, as though he doesn’t quite know what to make of this development initially.

“Two on one?” The young man’s grin is blood-thirsty as he lowers himself into a crouch, clearly ready for the challenge. “This should be fun!”

Even though Tanjirou is ready for the first blow, it still shudders up his arms and into his teeth. But he knows, from that very first meeting, that they are meant for each other, just like he knew with Zenitsu. It’s a certainty in his bones, steady and warm.

It feels as though he finally found the puzzle piece hiding under the table, and he’s managed to slot it into place just in the nick of time.

Zenitsu willingly steps into the fight, then, and Tanjirou loses himself to the rhythm of the battle, to the steady click-clack-click of their staves meeting, to the heavy breaths and the shouting.

Gyoumei calls the fight at 3-3-3, citing the fact that he’s seen quite enough.

“Huh?” their opponent asks from his place on the ground, the tip of Tanjirou’s staff against his neck and Zenitsu sprawled out across his legs gracelessly. “But I wanted to win! Let’s go again, and see if the results are any different!”

Zenitsu crawls off of his legs, and Tanjirou removes his staff; the young man hops to his feet immediately, pointing first at Tanjirou and then at Zenitsu. “Right? Right? You’re both up for another fight, right?”

Tanjirou and Zenitsu share a glance, a wordless thought passing between them with a look:

We’re going to have our hands full, if this works.

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚

The Drive Suit Room hasn’t changed in the three months since they were last inside. But this time, there’s three of them. And this time, they aren’t doing a drop test in a random Jaeger; they’re doing it in the one they’ll be drifting in, together, from now until they either die or retire.

It’s a sobering thought.

The polycarbonate drive suit itself is still uncomfortable; Tanjirou doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to the weight of it, both physical and metaphorical.

“This thing’s givin’ me a wedgie,” Inosuke, their missing limb from the Kwoon Room, announces once they’re all geared up.

Zenitsu titters nervously just as Muichirou, Ubuyashiki’s assistant, comes in to usher them onto the bridge that connects to their Jaeger’s conn pod.

They walk three abreast on the bridge, and Tanjirou makes the mistake of looking over and down; it looks like half of the ‘dome has assembled to watch their drop test today, has come to watch them fail again.

His hands tighten to fists around his helmet; they will not fail. Not this time. He’s sure of it. He can’t afford to fail again. The sting of the last one is still fresh, even if it wasn’t technically their fault.

The inside of the conn pod of this Jaeger is different than the last one he was inside of. He and Zenitsu haven’t been allowed inside of this one, no matter how much work they’ve done on the Jaeger itself; entering and seeing it for the first time takes him by surprise.

There’s three cradles instead of two, for one thing; he expected this, but actually seeing it is another thing altogether. Two of the cradles are set up side by side, a couple of feet apart like they would be in a regular Jaeger; the third sits a few feet back, situated between the two.

Zenitsu claims it immediately, jamming his helmet on his head. “It just seems safer back here, you know?”

Inosuke bounds to the left cradle, hopping into it like he was born to it. “I call the left!”

Which leaves Tanjirou on the right. He’s fine with that. He goes to the cradle, gleaming and brand new, and hops into it and waits for one of the technicians to hook him in.

For a moment, it’s just him and his two potential Ranger partners in the conn pod of the Jaeger, the future unknown and stretching before them. Behind him, Zenitsu looks like he’s going to be sick again, even though this is a path they’ve tread before with less kind results. Next to him, Inosuke is practically bouncing in his cradle, excitement rolling off of him in waves.

Tanjirou takes a deep breath to calm himself; at least one of them has to keep their wits about them.

“Initiating neural handshake,” the AI announces, emotionless.

He braces himself.

It’s less like taking a bath with a toaster this time and more like just taking a bath with too-hot water. His nerves still yell at him, each of them on alert, but the shock of it fades quicker. He finds himself in a warren of memories, some of them his own, some of them with edges he only vaguely remembers, most of them shiny and new.

He does as he did the first time and lets them wash over him in a deluge, each memory crashing against him like a wave beats at a rock.

Inosuke—Tanjirou thinks he must have gone to a different academy, or might have been in the class behind them—does not chase the R.A.B.I.T.s.

They come out on the other side, three minds twisted and tangled into one hive mind but still distinct and separate. Tanjirou still feels calm, despite Zenitsu’s anxiety buzzing under his skin and Inosuke’s excitement thrumming at the base of his skull. He’s calm, despite everything.

They make the Jaeger move. Make it raise one hand and wave, and then the other. It’s easy, it’s effortless, and for the first time in a long time, it makes Tanjirou smile just for the sake of smiling.

It feels like a victory, no matter how small.

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚

Inosuke moves into their berth that night, taking the last remaining bed on the very end of the room, leaving Tanjirou in the middle.

He brings a single duffle bag with him, much like both Tanjirou and Inosuke did when they first moved in. But his looks lighter, thinner, like his life doesn’t take up as much room as he does.

There’s no awkwardness, like there was the first few nights of bunking with Zenitsu. Inosuke makes himself at home immediately, unloading his duffel into the empty locker reserved just for him, then makes his bed in the worst possible way, like he never actually paid attention to the bed making course in the Academy.

Tanjirou takes pity on him at that point, scooting off of his own bed and fixing Inosuke’s rising corners.

Something in his heart pangs mid-motion, a longing he hasn’t felt rising up within him in a long time. He ignores it, pushing it down before he can properly label it.

It’s in the past, and the past is dead.

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚

Their training starts the next day

The triad Marshal Ubuyashiki promised has yet to arrive, but they’re assigned an experienced Ranger pair to shadow until they do. Muichirou delivers them a message in the morning—they’re to meet the assigned pair after breakfast in one of the spare training rooms.

Tanjirou eats at his regular pace; Inosuke scarfs down his food at a pace so rapid they’re afraid they’re going to have to attempt the Heimlich; Zenitsu doesn’t eat at all, too nervous to even lift his spoon.

Muichirou has left Tanjirou with a piece of paper listing directions to the training room they’re to report to, so he leads the way through the warren of the Shatterdome, out of the Mess Hall and through various halls, down three floors and well below ground.

He stops in the entrance of the training room when he catches sight of their trainers, insides turning cold. The paper with Muichirou’s careful writing on it flutters out of his lax grip, his Ranger partners colliding with his back at his sudden stop; Inosuke shouts in surprise.

It draws the attention of those already in the room to the circus going on in the doorway.

“So you can follow directions,” Shianzugawa Sanemi drawls, lazily twirling a training staff in one hand. “Fuckin’ neat.”

Tanjirou’s foot slides backwards, out of the room, colliding with one of his partner’s. His heart upticks into a frenzy.

“Well? Get your asses in here. We ain’t got all fuckin’ day.”

“No.” His voice, to his surprise, is firm. No part of him feels firm; he feels watery at the edges, like he’s a puddle.

Shinazugawa raises an eyebrow, scars on his face moving with it. “No?”

“No.” His hands ball into fists, the cold in his belly igniting into something meaner, hotter, something he had thought he had buried.

Something that was born the day most of his family was killed.

Something sparks in Shinazugawa’s eyes, like he was looking for a challenge that day and has just found it. “Now listen here, you little shit. I’m not doing this willingly, and it looks to me that you need me as much as I need you right now. So get your ass in here and pick up a fucking staff and get over yourself.”

“It’s not you I have a problem with,” Tanjirou clarifies. “It’s him.” He tilts his head to Shinazugawa’s Ranger partner, lounging in the corner of the room like he’s part of it.

It throws Shinazugawa for a loop. He looks first closely at Tanjirou, then at his partner, then back to Tanjirou. “What did he do?” he asks, a sharper edge to his serrated knife voice.

Tomioka Giyuu finally rises to his feet, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jumpsuit. He’s wearing a sweater over the top of it, something gray and well-worn and oversized; it makes him look smaller. It makes him look innocent.

Tanjirou knows he’s anything but.

He had thought, last night, that the past was dead. Buried. That he wouldn’t have to worry about any of this; that he could avoid this particular Ranger pair for his tenure at this Shatterdome, that they would think about retiring or be killed in the line of duty before Tanjirou crossed their paths.

And to think, he thought was the lucky one.

The words feel like razor blades, cutting up his throat even as he forces them out of his mouth. “My family lived in the mountains, where that Kaiju was taken down four years ago.” He has to brace himself before he says, “They’re dead now. Because of him. Because of what he failed to do.”

Shianzugawa visibly bristles. “What he—”

But Tomioka lifts a hand, waves off his defense. There are circles under his eyes, faintly visible even in the harsh fluorescent light of the room. “The first thing you have to understand about being a Ranger,” he says, “is that there are times you’re going to fail someone, no matter how hard you try. But that’s just life, Ranger Kamado. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for your loss.”

“It took you three months to say that much to me!” Shinazugawa shouts, half-enraged.

The words themselves don’t mean much to Tanjirou. But becoming a Ranger, exacting revenge against the Kaiju—that’s what matters. If he has to train under Tomioka Giyuu, even for a little bit, he’ll have to learn how to stomach it.

He steps into the room, his partners behind him.

It’s time to get to work.

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚

That night, within the confines of their berth, they do not talk about it.

They’re sore from a day of Shinazugawa’s harsh drills, each of them curled up on their individual beds and rethinking just what it is they’ve committed to. It’s far too late to back out now; the PPDC is short enough on Rangers as it is. To lose them now, even in the infancy of their bond, would be a harsh blow.

But the other young men have both been in his head, have seen fragments of his life, have known bits and pieces of what has come to pass. They knew, logically, that most of his family was dead before they walked into that room today. They knew it was during a Kaiju attack that it had happened, which was a common enough occurrence.

It just isn’t often that you happen to meet the Ranger who failed to kill the Kaiju that killed most of your family in time. Tanjirou honestly thought that he could go the entirety of his time at this Shatterdome without running into him, but fate has a cruel slant to her.

His stomach is still in knots from even being in the same room as him. Tomioka Giyuu was not what he expected; he seemed smaller, in person. Softer. Anxious in a quieter kind of way than Zenitsu is. For he could tell, now, that it was anxiety and not indifference that made him seem cold in interviews.

He had expected someone different. Not some sweater wearing goof who actually looked sorry for what he had failed to do. Who looked like his actions and the consequences thereof dogged him every step of the way.

Tanjirou rolls over in bed, blinking up at the dark ceiling. He hopes, if he lives through his first, his second, his third drop, that he doesn’t live to be like Tomioka Giyuu.

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚

The next day, they report to the same training room as they reported to the day before, every inch of their bodies screaming for mercy.

Shinazugawa and Tomioka wait for them; Shinazugaw’s hands are empty, this time. Tanjirou thinks this doesn’t bode well, a pit forming in his stomach.

Zenitsu grabs his hand, and it’s all he needs to know that the blond doesn’t seem to think so, either.

“Field trip!” Shinazugawa announces, clapping a hand on Tomioka’s shoulder and practically draping himself over the man. The wedding band on his ring finger flashes gold in the fluorescent lights of the room, something Tanjirou hadn’t noticed yesterday as the other man was beating them into the mats.

To his left, Zenitsu looks terrified. To his right, Inosuke looks excited. Tanjirou finds himself straddling the fence between the two, unsure of how he should feel. He settles for casual curiosity, waiting to see where the men lead them before making a judgment.

Up six flights of stairs and to the Jaeger Bay is his answer.

He and Zenitsu have spent plenty of time within the cavernous space, working on the Jaeger the three of them are to pilot before Inosuke was ever named in the equation; he’s familiar with the beat and rhythm of the space, with each of the Jaegers that make their roost there.

Shinazugawa leads them to the foot of the Jaeger earmarked specifically for the three of them. Tanjirou doesn’t think he’ll ever get tired of looking at it; he hopes that every time he sees it will be just like the first time.

This time is no different. Seeing the Jaeger up this close is exactly like standing next to a colossus, black plate metal absorbing any light that dare come near it. It started as a Mark-1, heavily plated and lumbering. Over the past few months, they’ve managed to upgrade it to a Mark-3, still nuclear but lighter, less armored but no less protected. Lighter, quicker than it ever thought of being.

They have yet to properly test it, but every algorithm ran on it speaks to the hard work the techs have put into it the past few months, bringing it up to snuff from its stint in an unmarked storage location somewhere.

Shinazugawa jerks his thumb over his shoulder as he stands at the foot of the colossus, indicating the Jaeger as a whole. “You fight until you die in that thing,” he explains, rictus-like grin on his face. “You get back in it again, and again, and again, until you get unlucky enough that a fucking Kaiju rips you apart.”

Giyuu looks on dispassionately, plucking at the loose threads of his sweater sleeve.

“Uh. I thought we could retire?” Zenitsu asks quietly, barely audible over the ruckus of the Jaeger Bay.

“Your death is more likely than your retirement,” Shinazugawa says, having heard him despite the noise. “Retirement typically only happens if your Ranger partner dies, or if you’re horrifically maimed in combat, or—”

Tomioka mumbles something under his breath, too quiet for him to hear, but Shinazugawa seems to be close enough to hear him because he quiets immediately, narrowing his eyes at the three of them.

“Fine,” he grinds out after a second. “Retirement is a possibility. Sure. If you make it that long. Which I don’t think you’re going to.”

Tomioka buries his forehead in his palm and—there, Tanjirou sees it now. A wedding band on his finger, that he’s sure matches the one on Shinazugawa’s finger.

Huh.

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚

Shinazugawa is a harsh taskmaster.

He makes them run around the Shatterdome until the air in their lungs is brittle and burning, the muscles in their legs jelly-like and weak. Until they think they can’t take it anymore; then he makes them push through that barrier, makes them keep going until they do drop, chests heaving and bodies covered in sweat, water wrung out of their bodies like old rags.

He lets them break for lunch at that point, even though they would much rather like a nap. After that, he’s back to barking orders at them, making them fight each other in the spare training room that seems to be singularly theirs now. Tanjirou understands that it’s to strengthen both their stamina and the bonds that are between the three of them, but he honestly thinks there should be a better way to go about it. Especially when he thinks about how terrified of fighting Zenitsu is, and how in love with fighting Inosuke is.

As always, he falls right in the middle with those two. Odd, how that keeps happening.

They seem to belong to Tomioka after dinner; Tomioka, who draws them through katas wordlessly and has them meditate before bed.

By the end of it all, Tanjirou just wants to sleep for a year.

But he gets up the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that, and before he knows it nearly two months have passed since he and Zenitsu went head to head against Inosuke in the Kwoon room; two long, arduous month have passed since they were passed into Shinazugawa’s and Tomioka’s care.

Two months, and they haven’t been allowed back into their Jaeger for fear that they weren’t yet ready; that their bond wasn’t yet strong enough. And Tanjirou understands—with all of the ‘training’ they’ve been doing, they haven’t exactly. Well.

Bonded.

Sure, they know how each other fights. But they don’t really know how each other thinks. Tanjirou knows that Inosuke snores and that Zenitsu mumbles in his sleep and takes longer than necessary showers.

But the three of them refuse to even broach the past, or even scrape the surface of each other, and he knows that that could prove to be a problem. Rangers have to trust themselves with every last inch of each other; they’ve only been in each other’s heads once, months ago, and he has no information to make sense of the bits and pieces that he saw from each of them.

It’s a bit like having the pieces to a puzzle, but not having the picture of what the completed puzzle is supposed to look like.

There’s a pounding on the door of their berth, and Tanjirou blearily hauls himself out of his bed to answer it. It’s a good two hours before breakfast, and anyone who’s awake at this hour must be out of their mind.

He hauls open the door to find Shinazugawa and Tomioka on the other side, both of them still in sweats.

Yeah. Out of their minds.

“Good morning,” he greets with a yawn. He can’t help it; he’s exhausted still, and it’s a good hour before he absolutely has to be up. What torture could they possibly want to inflict on him at this hour?

“Morning,” Tomioka greets back; he’s almost grown on Tanjirou, these last two months. Tanjirou may never bring himself to be able to forgive the man, but he finds that he’s able to get along with him at the very least, the rage that once ignited in his stomach at the sight of him no longer holding the incandescent heat that it once did.

Shinazugawa, on the other hand, just snorts in reply. Then he frowns. “Wait.” He moves his head to look better over Tanjirou’s shoulder. “You shits get singles? We got fucking bunk beds. BUNK BEDS!”

His shouting wakes Tanjirou’s roommates, both of them coming to varying degrees of wakefulness with different speeds.

“Can I help you with something?” Tanjirou prompts, not wanting to hear about the trials and tribulations of trying to make the logistics of bunk beds work for whatever Shinazugawa had in mind.

The white haired man’s expression sours faster than it normally does; it’s clear he isn’t used to being up this early in the morning, either. “We’ve got new cadets coming off a transport in fifteen, and Ubuyashiki wants us there for some unknowable reason. You can go in your pajamas for all I care! We fuckin’ are.”

Which is how he finds himself alongside Zenitsu and Inosuke, trudging through countless hallways and up several flights of stairs to the tarmac above to watch a handful of cadets disembark from the transport at the crack of dawn, just as the sun is rising over the Pacific.

None of them speak in the cold of the morning, missing the warmth of their beds. They beat the transport to the tarmac by seconds, the helicopter touching down and sending more chill to their bones with the wind it whips up.

This group of cadets consists of seven; there’s a single young woman among them, back straight and chin jutted out at a proud angle. Her hands are balled into fists at her side, black hair braided down her back, gradually turning pink as it approaches her waist.

She looks like—

Tanjirou dashes the thought against the rocks in his head before he can complete it. That’s improbable, he thinks. There’s no way the PPDC would—

The young woman turns her head, as though she can feel Tanjirou studying her like he studied for his final exams.

Her eyes are light pink, and there’s a thick, ropy knotwork of scars around her thin neck.

It’s all the confirmation Tanjirou needs that his sister has made it through the Academy and has landed at the same Shatterdome as him.

She seems to register the same thought, because her serene features twist into something un-Nezuko like at the sight of him. Just further confirmation, confirmation that he didn’t need.

Another reminder that the past does not, in fact, die; another reminder of his past failures.

He digs his hands into the pockets of his flannel pajama pants, pursing his lips as Nezuko turns her face away from him and walks away with the rest of the cadets.

It’s heartbreak all over again, but he’s used to it.

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚

Two more weeks of Shinazugawa’s harsh ‘training’ pass; Zenitsu, Tanjirou can tell, becomes even more terrified of fighting, especially against Inosuke. Inosuke does not have an off switch. He does everything with one hundred percent dedication, which can be a little problematic.

They’re a mess, the three of them, and Tanjirou has tried to tell Shinazugawa only to get the reply, “You’re fine.”

But he knows that they’re not fine. They’ll never be able to take down a Kaiju, not like this; he knows, from his time at the Academy, that the bond between the three of them should be growing, strengthening. Instead, it feels like a frayed rope, a phantom thing, barely there.

He has not seen Nezuko since that day on the tarmac. It’s better this way.

He’s in the middle of trying to keep Inosuke from terrorizing Zenitsu and keeping Zenitsu calm while trying to fight both of them, the calluses on his hands used to the staff he holds, when someone clears their throat in the doorway.

Everyone freezes simultaneously; Tanjirou’s eyes slide towards the open double doors.

Four people stand there. One of them he recognizes immediately as Tengen Uzui, talk show host. There are three women with him, each of them as beautiful as the next.

It’s Shinazugawa who makes the first move, stalking from his place at the front of the room right up to Tengen so he stands just a few feet away from the man. “Finally here to apologize?” he asks, a hard edge to his voice.

Tengen smirks. “Of course not.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Then Shinazugawa decks Tengen, right in his pretty face, and plunges the room into chaos.

One of the women who accompanies Tengen screams, hands coming up to cover her mouth. One of them reaches out to steady Tengen. The third lunges for Shinazugawa, who’s already stepping out of her reach, laughing.

“I can’t believe you’re still mad about that interview,” Tengen grouses, nursing his broken nose once the calamity has calmed. “I was just doing my job!”

“You were being an asshole!” Shinazugawa shoots back from the other side of the room. He’s positioned himself in front of Tomioka, as though to protect him from the talk show host.

“Boys!” one of the women who accompanied Tengen—the one who lunged for Shinazugawa—says, raising her hands in the air. Her bangs are blond. “Take it somewhere else, would you? Some of us have a job to do.”

Tanjirou watches as Shinazugawa sneers at her but actually listens, leaving the room grousing with Tomioka and Tengen, who leaves a spattering of blood on the mat as he goes.

The women watch them go, the one who told them to leave shaking her head. “Men!” she grouses, throwing her hands up in the air. Then she turns her attention to Tanjirou and his partners, her gaze softening somewhat. “You three, on the other hand, look manageable. Go on then, show us what you’ve got.”

Tanjirou, Inosuke, and Zenitsu do not move, their confusion evident not just on their faces but in the way they hold themselves.

The woman heaves a sigh. “Did no one tell you we were coming? Did no one tell you who we are?” She rubs at her forehead. “I’m Makio. That’s Suma—” She motions to the woman who screamed, with her shoulder length black hair, “--and that’s Hina.” The woman who rounds out the trio wears her black hair in a ponytail. “We’re here to train you.”

That’s when it clicks for Tanjirou. These women are the triad Ubuyashiki spoke of, all those months ago. These women piloted the Jaeger that they’ve pulled out of storage and upgraded. These women are the blueprint for what he and Inosuke and Zenitsu are. These three women carved the path that they are to walk, and they’re finally here to show them the way.

Something like relief washes over him.

“Right!” he says brightly, turning to his comrades.

They spar for all of three minutes before Makio calls them to a halt, saying she’s seen enough. “You’re certainly drift compatible,” she says. “But that was abysmal!”

“Terrible!” Suma asserts.

“What have you been doing these past few months?” Hina asks, folding her hands across her chest. “Napping?”

“Shinazugawa’s been—” Tanjirou starts to say.

Hina cuts him off with a scoff. “Of course he’s been the one training you. I should have known. He doesn’t know anything about anything.” She sighs. “We’re going to have to start from scratch! Everyone, in a circle! Sit, sit!”

Tanjirou finds himself sitting between Inosuke and Zenitsu on the floor in a circle, legs crossed, reminding him of primary school. The women sit across from them, and it’s hard not to ignore how in tune they are with each other. It’s obvious to him just from the way they move.

He thinks again of how broken he and his co-pilots are, of how frayed their bond feels, and he feels almost ashamed. He’s supposed to be a Ranger. He’s supposed to be killing Kaiju in a Jaeger. That goal seems very, very far away right now.

“Wild guess,” Suma says; she sits next to Zenitsu. “You’ve been meditating, right? But you haven’t really been talking to each other. You haven’t been bonding.”

Makio says, “Shinazugawa’s been so busy focusing you guys on the physical part of being Rangers that he’s completely neglected the mental part, which is the most important part when you’re just starting out. You need to know each other, inside and out, to strengthen the bond between you. A strong bond outside of the Jaeger means a stronger, steadier neural handshake. So! Have at it! Talk about anything! Your childhoods, your families, your interests! Give it a go!”

Tanjirou stares at the women like they’ve each grown a second head. They’re not what he expected, first of all. Secondly, when he thinks of ‘training’, he can only think of what Shinazugawa has had them doing; not this. Not talking.

He hates talking about himself. Hates being perceived. Talking about the past is like opening an old wound, ripping himself open so others can see his scars.

The three of them stay silent in solidarity, staring wordlessly at the triad before them.

“Okay,” Suma says, drawing the word out with a laugh. “This is going to be a little harder than we thought. But that’s okay! Why don’t we just. Stop for the day and pick this back up tomorrow?”

“Better yet,” Hina says, “why don’t the three of you do this part in your berth?”

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚

It feels like an ax is hanging over his head.

They’re each sitting on their separate beds, silent as a tomb and very purposely not looking at each other. They haven’t had homework since the Academy, and Tanjirou was always punctual about getting his done on time.

But this? This is something he absolutely does not want to do.

Zenitsu, bless him, is the one who breaks the silence. “I entered the Academy to get out of debt.”

Tanjirou and Inosuke both look at him as he tells the story, haltingly, of how he married a girl who maxed out his credit cards before divorcing him to run off with some guy. Of how the Academy, if you do become a Ranger, will write off your debts because of your service to the cause. How he was terrified the whole way through because of the uncertainty of all, because of the knowledge that even if he did become a Ranger he would die in a Jaeger because he was a coward.

He’s crying quietly by the time he finishes, fat tears rolling down his cheeks.

Tanjirou moves immediately to sit beside Zenitsu on his bed, their thighs touching just barely. “If you’re going to die in a Jaeger,” he says softly, “you’re not going to die alone.”

Inosuke vaults over Tanjirou’s bed to join them, practically pouncing on the two of them and making Zenitu’s bed creak. He sits on Tanjirou’s other side, pressing his thigh flush against Tanjirou’s and leaning into Tanjirou’s space.

“Who said anything about dying, anyway?” he demands hotly. “We’re going to be the best. We’re not going to die.”

Zenitsu laughs wetly, dabbing at his eyes with the back of his hands. “But—”

“No buts!” Inosuke interrupts, his shoulder pressed up against Tanjirou’s chest, crown of his head brushing the tip of Tanjirou’s chin. He smells faintly of the detergent-like soap they all use. “We just gotta figure out this bond thing, is all.”

Tanjirou gets the feeling that it’s easier said than done, and that it may be his fault.

“I entered the Academy because I wanted to kill Kaiju,” Inosuke says, still in Tanjirou’s lap. “They look like fun to fight! And I want to fight one!”

Tanjirou’s hands fist in the rough fabric of Zenitsu’s blanket as he thinks about why he joined the Academy. They’re expecting an answer out of him, now that they’ve shared; it’s obvious, social expectation.

He doesn’t want to share, but these are the two he’s going into battle with. The two whose brains he’s going to be hooked up to, whose minds he’s already been inside of at least once. The two he’s supposed to rely on, when things inevitably go south.

The truth is, he hasn’t opened himself up to anyone in a very long time. Not since his family died, since the one he shared most of his secrets with pushed him away from the side of her hospital bed.

He swallows, the words lodging themselves in his throat like bricks. He hasn’t talked about it with anyone: not the crisis counselors, not the Academy counselors, not the grief counselors. He’s worried that if he does start to talk about it, he won’t be able to stop. And the truth is, there’s really only one person he does want to talk about it to, but she refuses to speak to him.

“I—” Even now, the words are difficult to get out. “I want to protect people from going through what I’ve gone through. No one should have to know this kind of suffering.”

Zenitsu lays his head on Tanjirou’s shoulder, and Inosuke fully commits, leaning into Tanjirou’s chest.

There’s a wetness on his cheeks, but he can’t bring his hands up to wipe the tears away; he’s trapped by the affection of his comrades, trapped by a physical affection he hasn’t been shown in years.

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚

That night seems to be a turning point for the three of them. Before, they treated each other like acquaintances who were forced into sharing a room and every other breathing activity, acquaintances who were forced to fight each other on the daily.

This morning looks different to Tanjirou. Zenitsu offers him a smile when he sits up in his bed, blond hair a mess; Inosuke actually says, “good morning,” instead of grunting at them.

It’s progress, or something like it.

The three of them report to their training room as a squad only to find it empty.

It’s fifteen minutes before Hina, Suma, and Makio come slinking in, clearly not used to being up so early in the morning and still blinking blearily. Suma carries with her a board game; Tanjirou blinks in surprise when he sees that it’s Monopoly.

“Take a seat,” Makio tells them, waving her hand airly. “Whatever it was that Shinazugawa has had you been doing these last few months clearly hasn’t been working, so we need to take a new approach.”

Suma lifts up Monopoly at that point and shakes the box, smile on her face. “You boys need to learn how each other thinks, not just how you move! But you won’t be playing against each other.”

“You’ll be a team.” Hina explains, taking a seat and motioning for them to do the same. “You’ll play against the three of us, who will also be playing as a team. Every decision you make has to be unanimous.”

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚

Tanjirou never really had an opinion about Monopoly; he was always indifferent about it, having played Monopoly Junior with his younger siblings time and time again. He always knew the regular version of Monopoly took about an hour, realistically.

Playing as a team, with every decision having to be unanimous, makes the game last nearly five hours. Each of them has a different play style, as it turns out. Zenitsu wants to be conservative with their money, double guessing every move they make right down to how they roll the dice. Inosuke wants to spend their money as fast as they can, lobbying to purchase every single property they land on and then some—Tanjirou isn’t sure he’s ever actually played Monopoly before. Tanjirou is the happy medium between the two.

Needless to say, coming to a unanimous decision on how and when to spend their gains is very difficult. It takes them twenty five minutes just to agree on a token, and it just gets worse from there. The only ‘easy’ part is that, after the first three rounds of them switching who rolls the dice, they decide that Tanjirou should be the one to roll the dice every time.

It saves them a bit of time, but only a little.

By the time they’ve mortgaged every property they own and are in deep, deep debt to their opponents and their pockets are empty, dealing Zenitsu some severe psychological damage, Tanjirou decides that he really, really doesn’t like the game Monopoly. He would much rather be under the tutelage of Tomioka and Shinazugawa again, thank you very much.

Their teachers look pleased at the end of the game, victorious as they are.

“You three can go and have lunch now,” Hina says as Suma packs up the game, “then come back here.”

They trudge off, defeated, to eat.

When they return, it’s to find the women with staves in their hands waiting patiently.

Suma says, “The main mistake that was made was that you were fighting each other. Not literally, because how else are you going to train, but metaphorically! I know fighting can be terrifying! But the good news is, it can save your life. And you’re not fighting alone.”

“It’s important that you learn how to fight together,” Makio tells them. “Not just for your bond, but for the Jaeger. The Jaeger isn’t going to listen to you if two of you are telling it to do one thing the third is telling it to do another. As with the game earlier, it’s about knowing how each other thinks. It’s hard enough when there’s two of you in a Jaeger, but with three?” She snorts. “Things get tricky. You’re fighting for dominance when you should have known three moves ago who was going to do what.”

“The whole sharing minds inside of the drift helps,” Hina tacks on, twirling her staff in a circle. “But even the drift needs help. It’s why your instructors at the Academy were always going on about bond strength and other ridiculous stuff.”

“We don’t expect you to become mind readers, of course.” Suma digs the butt of her staff into the ground.

“Or finish each other’s sentences.” Makio stretches languidly, raising her arms above her head; her back pops audibly.

“You just need to know each other on a level no one else does. It’s probably why divorce rates among Rangers and non-Ranger spouses are so high. Can’t compete with their partners.”

Tanjirou shifts uneasily on his feet. He’s never thought about marriage, or dating, or having a family; not since his own died. And he probably never will, what with the mortality rate of Rangers being so high: he doesn't want to leave anyone behind, not if he can help it.

“Anyway!” Makio sings brightly, dropping into a crouch. “Fight us!”

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚

They lose, miserably.

Tanjirou and Inosuke keep running into and tripping over each other, neither of them able to predict where the other is going in their haste to attack the other triad while still protecting Zenitsu, who stands at the edge of the mat shaking like a leaf.

Tanjirou wonders, in the space between breaths, whatever happened to the Zenitsu he fought in their Drift compatibility trial. The one who moved like lightning and struck like thunder; the one who wasn’t afraid of getting hit.

They probably could have used that Zenitsu today.

The three of them limp to dinner and then back to their berth, thoroughly defeated and sorer than a training bout with Shinazugawa could ever think of making them.

“Do we have to go back?” Zenitsu asks in the safety of their room, struggling to get out of his jumpsuit. “I don’t want to go back.”

“They are. Formidable.” Inosuke says from where he lies face down on his bed, boots still on and jumpsuit on half off.

“We’ve come this far.” Tanjirou treads gingerly towards their bathroom, intent on at least taking a lukewarm shower—there’s no hot water left in the ‘dome, not at this time in the day. “We can’t give up now.”

“But we could! It would be so, so easy! We just go into the Marshal’s office and tell him that we, you know, changed our minds!”

Tanjirou turns and leans against the door jamb of the bathroom, smiling faintly as his comrade. “There’s no turning back. Not for me.”

“Nor for me!” Inosuke roars, forcing himself up on his hands. His arms shake with the effort. “I still haven’t killed a Kaiju with my bare robot hands!”

His arms give out then, sending him crashing back into his bed with an ‘oof’.

Tanjirou smiles openly then, stretching muscles in his face that haven’t been used in months.

“Well,” Zenitsu says. “If—if you two are all in. Then. Then I guess I am too!”

The declaration startles him; he looks at his co-pilot with wide eyes. The blond won’t look at either him or Inosuke, his hands fisted at his sides and his gaze heavenward, the very statement clearly taking a lot out of him.

Inosuke sits up properly this time, as owl eyed as Tanjirou feels. “Really?”

“You can’t make the Jaeger work without me,” Zenitsu says, voice decreasing in volume as he speaks. “So, uh, yes? I guess? If I have to?”

Inosuke lets out a loud whoop and somehow finds the energy to launch himself off his bed, nearly tackling Zenitsu to the floor as he wraps the young man into a hug. The blond brushes crimson, a fetching color on him, and laughs.

Tanjirou turns and heads into the bathroom, closing the door behind him with a quiet click.

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚

A week and a half of mornings of board games and afternoons of trying not to get their asses handed to them leads Tanjirou to think that they might actually be able to do this. ‘This’ being the whole Ranger thing. It seems to be in reach again, the stars just within each once more.

He and his partners aren’t entirely in sync, exactly, but they’re in better coordination now than they were a week and a half prior. He knows what they’re going to lobby for in Uno and Monopoly and half a dozen other board games, and he’s well on his way to knowing why. He and Inosuke collide on the mats half as much as they used to when they team up in the afternoons, and Zenitsu’s slowly working his way away from the edge of the mat and into the fray.

It’s progress, slow and steady and visible to him. And if it’s visible to him, then he knows it’s visible to their trainers.

Their trainers, who smile prettily at them one day and tell them, “Meet us in the Jaeger bay after lunch.”

They get no further explanation, leaving the three of them to trudge curiously to the Jaeger bay once they’ve had their fill.

The elder triad stands in front of their former Jaeger, studying the colossus with their hands on their hips and their necks craned backward to look up.

Suma notices them first, removings her hands from her hips and turning towards them with a grin. She jerks a thumb over her shoulder at the Jaeger. “Have you boys gotten to take her out yet?”

The three of them shake their heads in the negative at the same time.

Suma deflates slightly, while Makio, without turning to look at them says, “That’s another mark against them. The three of you should have drifted together more than once by now, even if it was just in a SIM. No wonder you gave such an abysmal showing that first day. We’ll talk to Ubuyashiki and get that straightened out, but for now, we just wanted to see what’s been done to our baby.”

Hina rolls up on the balls of her feet and looks away from the Jaeger and to her trainees. “The upgrades look solid enough,” she says, “but you won’t really know until you test them, will you?” She smiles. “I guess I just never thought I’d see the day Echo Hydra came out of storage.”

Tanjirou blinks at her, but it’s Inosuke who speaks. “Echo Hydra?”

“Did—” Makio spins on her heels, hair flying. “Have they seriously not told you the name of the Jaeger you’re to pilot?”

“Nope,” Inosuke answers. Zenitsu shrugs his shoulders, while Tanjirou looks up, as though seeing the Jaeger for the first time. It’s still just as terribly beautiful as it was the first time he saw it, but now it has a name. It has meaning. It has purpose, rather than just function.

“What has been going on here since we left?” Makio demands, looking from Hina to Suma and then to the three men that stand before her. “This place is falling apart!”

None of them can give her the answers she seeks.

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚

They find themselves back in the Drive Suit Room in less than an hour, geared up and ready to go. It’s been months since they were in the polycarbonate suits, months since they were truly linked together by technology they only somewhat understand.

Tanjirou feels ready. He feels like he’s about to crawl out his skin if they don’t get hooked into their cradles and drop soon, like the bond between the three of them that felt phantom and frayed just a week ago feels more tangible now, growing and solidifying.

This time, Zenitsu isn’t shaking like a leaf on the walk from the Drive Suit room to the conn pod. This time, Inosuke is still a bundle of energy, but it’s more contained. They still walk three abreast as they follow the lead tech, Tanjirou in the middle.

They hook him into the cradle, and something inside of him stills with anticipation. He’s on the right again, Inosuke to the left and Zenitsu behind them in the middle. This is our formation, he thinks. This is how we’ll fight the Kaiju.

“Initiating neural handshake,” the AI announces, her voice quickly becoming familiar to Tanjirou.

Tanjirou doesn’t brace himself; he just lets the drift wash over him, this time, and it’s easier than the other two times he’s gone through it. He lets the drift wash over him like some holy rite, coming out on the other side with some deeper understanding of his comrades than he had going in.

Their bond is steady; he can feel the strength of it, deeper in the drift. There’s something warm and growing between them, something soft and—

He shuts the thought down immediately, throwing up a wall made of brick and barbed wire. He doesn’t have time for softness. He needs to get out to the Pacific, needs to get out and fight.

“Neural handshake holding at ninety one percent,” a LOCCENT tech informs them over the comms.

It’s a good indication that their bond is strong, that their drift compatibility isn’t just some fluke, but Tanjirou feels as though it could be higher. That they could easily reach one hundred percent, if he wasn’t holding part of himself back. And he knows that the fault for this lies at his feet; he feels every emotion, every thought coming from Inosuke and Zenitsu.

Knows they would never hold anything back, because it could compromise the integrity of their drift bond.

The test lasts for another ten minutes before they’re allowed to unhook themselves from their cradles and exit the conn pod, Tanjirou leading the way. Inosuke and Zenistu follow at a more sedate pace, walking close together and talking quietly with each other.

Tanjirou doesn’t let it bother him; it’s a common enough occurrence, after all, when they aren’t fighting their trainers or playing board games.

He changes quickly in the confines of the Drive Suit Room, saying once he’s dressed, “I need to go and clear my head.”

Inosuke grunts in confirmation, still struggling out of his suit as Zentisu helps him, the blond only half dressed himself.

Tanjirou leaves without another word or backward glance, headed down several flights of stairs without any real destination in mind. He passes people in groups, others just walking by themselves, some walking like their heels are alight, others going at the same pace he is, as though the very world drags at them.

He isn’t really paying any attention to where he’s going, head a mess. Every thought is a jumble, like he’s playing Jenga and losing every time on the very first move.

He’s wandering for almost forty five minutes when he makes a fatal mistake, not watching where he’s going and bumping into someone shorter than he is. His eyes close in surprise, mouth moving on instinct.

“Sorry,” he begins to apologize, rubbing at the back of his head. “I didn’t—”

The woman he ran into makes a disgusted noise, and he opens his eyes.

It’s Nezuko.

His stomach drops uncomfortably; he glances over his shoulder. They’re alone in the hall, not a soul in sight.

Up close, he can see that the wound on her neck healed well, the scar silvery and thick. It’s low, close to her collarbones, but it was still life threatening when it happened. Still enough to consign her to the hospital, what with all of her other injuries.

That one is just the most visible.

She moves to get past him without a word, pink eyes shuttered as if she doesn’t register that he’s her brother. As if she doesn’t care that her only living relative is standing in the hall with her, within arms reach.

HIs heart breaks just a little more. “Nezuko, wait,” he says, reaching out to take her hand.

She jerks back, eyes coming to life with anger. “No,” she snaps, stepping backwards and out of his reach. “You don’t get to talk to me. To touch me. Not when you weren’t even there.”

It feels like she’s slapped him in the face. “Nezuko, I—:”

“Don’t ‘Nezuko’ me! I told you, you’re dead to me. I don’t want you to speak to me. I don’t even want you to look at me. You disgust me, and I wish you never existed. You dishonor the Kamado name; Mom and Dad would be disappointed in you if they were still here. Don’t ever come near me again.”

She storms off, leaving him a husk. The last time she chewed him out, it was from her hospital bed, five days after their family had been killed. Her voice had been a wisp then, barely there but still biting. The vitriol in her eyes had been unlike anything he had ever thought her capable of, nothing like the Nezuko he knew and loved.

He doesn’t know how long he stands in the hallway, trying to process the encounter. His feet begin to move of their own accord at some point, navigating their way to the only place in the ‘dome that he knows he’s going to find comfort: in the presence of his Ranger partners, whom he knows must be in their berth. It’s where he left them, after all.

His mood begins to lift slowly the closer he gets to their shared room, at the very idea of just being around his compatriots soothing his wounded soul.

There’s a sock on the door handle.

It gives him pause. It isn’t like he’s unfamiliar with the concept, of course; all of the rooms in the Academy were shared, and his roommate there liked his privacy.

But something inside of him breaks at the sight of the slightly dirty white sock. He had known something was growing between his partners, something he couldn’t touch. Had felt the tangibility of it in their drift bond.

He just hadn’t thought it would hurt this much, to not be part of it.

He turns and goes back the way he came, blindly navigating the halls and staircases of the ‘dome, mide blank.

Eventually, he finds his way to the roof.

He goes to the very edge and sits, legs dangling in the salty open air, looking out at the Pacific. He supposes the ocean is still beautiful, even if giant aliens do come out of it. The sky is clear, quickly turning tourmaline as the sun sinks toward the horizon.

Closing his eyes, he breathes in deep; the air smells of fish and motor oil, of salt and determination.

He nearly falls off of his perch when Tomioka clears his throat and asks, “Can I sit?”

Looking over his shoulder, Tanjirou finds that the other Ranger is wearing one of the ugliest sweaters he’s ever seen today. “Sure,” he says, politeness winning over yet again.

The other Ranger sits next to him, legs thrown over the edge, one hand toying with the sleeve of his ugly sweater. Tanjirou wonders who picked it out—him or Shinazugawa.

They sit in awkward silence, watching the sun slowly set; Tanjirou’s too emotionally exhausted to feel anything but drained from the events of the day.

Finally, Tomioka says, “I come out here when inside gets to be. Too much.”

Tanjirou’s grip on the lip of the roof tightens, metal biting into his palms. The words spill out of him before he can stop them, to the last person he wants to talk to. “My sister is here.”

Tomioka looks at him sidelong, as if to gauge what to say next. “I believe she’s the one Gyoumei had to restrain from attacking me several days ago.”

Tanjirou hadn’t heard about that particular incident. “Probably. She, uh. She doesn’t like me anymore.”

He’s noticed, over the several months that he trained with both Shinazugawa and Tomioka, that Tomioka likes to chew on his words before he says them. Weighs every one of them with care before they come out of his mouth, as if each word is a gift. “Family can be difficult.”

Tanjirou barks out a sharp laugh. What an understatement. “She never used to be like this. She was kind, once. Now she’s just . . .” He takes another deep breath. “She’s filled with rage.”

Once, he would have blamed the man sitting next to him for that. Now, he’s not so sure that it’s his fault.

“But,” Tanjirou continues, swallowing, “she’s all I have left.”

“Not all. You have your co-pilots. They’re your family now, too.”

The mention of them makes Tanjirou flinch, just slightly, as the sock on the door handle flashes through his mind.

He looks down at the ground, hundreds of feet below, and it almost makes him dizzy.

He must be quiet for too long, because Tomioka actually tries to prompt him again. “What’s wrong?” he asks.

Tanjirou’s never had an actual mentor; plenty of the teachers in the Academy tried to take him under their wing, but he resisted politely and carved his path all the way through. He bites down on a laugh, both at the question and at the thought that Tomioka Giyuu might actually be filling the role of mentor for him.

“There was a sock on my door handle, earlier,” he says, wind carrying his voice away as it whips around them.

Tomioka seems to hear him anyway, frowning at the horizon as the world around them turns to night in the blink of an eye.

He’s quiet for a long time, and Tanjirou looks down toward the ground again; it’s so dark and so far down he can’t see it, the flood lights that light the ‘dome yet to kick on.

“It’s not uncommon for Ranger partners to get. Involved,” Tomioka says at length. His fingers are playing with his wedding band rather than the sleeve of his sweater. “I can’t imagine how it might complicate things, being a triad, but. They might surprise you, Kamado Tanjirou. You just have to let your walls down.”

Tanjirou hates being perceived; hates that this man, this man who failed to protect his family, can see right through him so easily.

Tomioka continues, “I know it might be hard. You are not undeserving of love. You don’t have to punish yourself for things that had nothing to do with you, or faults you might think you have. They’ve been in your head. They’ll understand, if you choose to open up. They’ll accept you, anyway you are.”

He sounds as though he speaks from experience, like he’s plumbing the depths of his soul and offering it to Tanjirou as a road map to absolution.

But Tanjirou’s not so sure it’ll be that easy.

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚

When he goes back to the berth, the sock is, mercifully, gone.

But the awkwardness of the knowledge lingers like bad fish as he settles in for bed that night, insides in a roil. His brain races at a rapid clip, the events of the day seeming like they spanned several.

He doesn’t know why any of this is happening to him, or around him. He couldn’t look Zenitsu or Inosuke in the face when he came back into the room for bed after he choked down his dinner.

He just knows that tomorrow, the awkwardness will be worse. He’ll have to tiptoe around a new, budding relationship he has to pretend isn’t there for his own sake and hope that it doesn’t end in flames and completely wreck their drift compatibility.

Everything is going to be fine, he thinks, just for the sake of soothing his nerves. Everything is going to be just fine.

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚

And everything is fine, for a while.

They eat together, they train together, they drift together, and Tanjirou wanders off by himself to get his comrades some alone time every now and then.

He somehow finds himself up on the roof of the ‘dome more often than not, Tomioka already there sometimes, Tomioka joining him after the fact others. But sometimes he ends up up there for hours just by himself, staring out at the horizon, mind furiously worrying at things until they’ve smoothed over in his brain.

He was never a worrier, before. He used to think that if he was positive enough, if he just smiled his way through things, then everything would turn out okay. Everything would be fine.

But ever since his family died, ever since Nezuko forced him away, he’s found it harder and harder to be positive all the time. To will the bad away instead of leaning into it, exactly like his parents didn’t want him to do. Oh, he can fake the positivity well enough, but he doesn’t feel it. Not in his bones. Not like he used to.

Maybe Nezuko was right; maybe their parents would be disappointed in him, but not for the reasons she thinks. But he can’t help but think that if they would be disappointed in him, then they would most certainly be disappointed in her as well.

Not that he’ll ever tell her that to her face; it’s a thought he’ll keep close to his chest, tucked away and safe where no one can reach it. It’s where he keeps all of his other thoughts, the ones he doesn’t feel safe saying out loud or letting rip in the drift. The ones he’s built a careful wall around, a wall no one could scale or dig their way under even if they tried.

He cries, sometimes, when he’s on the ‘dome roof and no one’s there to hear him, up where the wind will rip the tears off of his face and take the salt back to the sea. It’s the only place he can find any privacy, anyway, for the most part.

Tomioka doesn’t say anything when he finds Tanjirou there, eyes red-rimmed from crying. He doesn’t say anything at all, really; just takes a seat with his legs dangling into nothingness, face tilted into the wind, sweater sleeves ragged from him picking at them for an indeterminable amount of time.

They rarely speak to each other, but they always leave the roof together. Tanjirou doesn’t know how he feels about it, just that he feels less alone.

So. Everything is fine, for a while.

Until it isn’t.

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚

Makio, Hina, and Suma finally deem them ready to go on a patrol some three months after they arrive, certain that they won’t kill themselves when navigating the Pacific in Echo Hydra. There’s a single caveat: they can’t patrol alone, rookies as they are. They have to go with a senior Ranger pair, and they get stuck with Tomioka and Shinazugawa again.

All of their comms are linked through LOCCENT before they even leave the ‘dome, pulled by tanks into the ocean so they don’t accidentally squash any of the ‘dome personnel.

He and Inosuke glance at each other before taking the first step after Fatal Flame into the ocean, as though to make sure they’re on the same page even though their minds are linked. It’s a nerve-wracking exercise, controlling a twenty five story colossus with two other people.

The second step is easier, followed by the third; Zenitsu, locked into the back, doesn’t really have to help with the movement of the jaeger. He had taken the position that dictated a majority of Echo Hydra’s weapon’s array.He had caterwauled at the realization, long and drawn out, and begged either of them to switch places with him. When he was reminded that then he would have to physically think about what to do in a fight against a Kaiju, he rescinded his request.

All in all, their first jaunt out in Echo Hydra goes flawlessly. They follow Fatal Flame for ten miles along the coast and back again. All of the jaeger’s systems work perfectly, the readings staying in the green for the entirety of the time they’re in the water.

They don’t speak much between the three of them, thoughts passing at a lightning clip in the drift. They don’t hear from Fatal Flame, either, besides Shinazugawa barking an order here and there if he thinks they could be doing something better.

They’re thoroughly exhausted by the time they get back to the Shatterdome, not used to the physical energy they have to exert to move a colossus, or to being inside of the drift for that long of a period of time.

Tanjirou ends the experience covered in sweat and not entirely sure he’s in the right body, stepping down from his cradle weak in the knees and more than a little nauseous. A look to his side shows that Zenitsu and Inosuke don’t fare much better, the blond swaying slightly on his feet while the black haired young man is more dramatic about it, actually bent double with his hands on his knees.

They didn’t warn us about this part in the Academy, he thinks. No one warned them about this part at all; not Shinazugawa and Tomioka, not the other triad the Shatterdome currently employs, not any of the other Rangers that they’ve seen in passing.

It’s a good three minutes before Tanjirou can move properly without seeing double, his other partners in crime shuffling toward the door of the conn pod after him.

They reach the Drive Suit Room eventually, nausea fading with every step he takes. Tomioka and Shinazugawa are already there, half out of their drive suits, Shinazugawa just as quiet as Tomioka for once.

Tanjirou and his co-pilots begin to peel out of their own drive suits methodically, understanding how the technology molds to their bodies after weeks of practice.

He’s mostly dressed in his PPDC issued jumpsuit again when a cheer from the Jaeger Bay goes up, deafening, loud enough to hear from the Drive Suit room. He looks to Inosuke and Zenitsu, both of them half-dressed and looking just as confused as he does, then to Shinazugawa and Tomioka.

Shinazugawa snorts and says, “Drop test must have worked.”

Tanjirou wasn’t aware that there was a drop test scheduled for anyone today. These things get around, in a base that likes to gossip.

“You’ll see,” Shinazugawa says at the confused look on his face.

It’s a matter of minutes before the participants of the drop test come marching into the Drive Suit room, one of them chattering excitedly to the other.

The excited chattering turns into angry silence at the sight of Tanjirou.

Nezuko glares at him, some battle maiden in her void colored Drive Suit. He never thought he’d see her in black, never thought to see her in anything but bright pinks.

Never thought he’d see her in a drive suit.

It’s like a punch to the gut, among the many he’s had over the course of the past few years.

Gyoumei stands behind her, also in a drive suit, dwarfing her; he places a hand on her shoulder at the silence, at the anger radiating off of her, and says something to her in a low voice that Tanjirou can’t hear.

Nezuko curls her lip and turns away from the crowd in response, stalking off to the farther corner of the room.

Tanjirou sighs and leaves, exhilaration from the day sagging at his bones, any joy he might have had from his first foray in piloting Echo Hydra sapped from him.

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚

The Kaiju alarm goes off in the middle of the night, two days later.

He jolts upright, heart pounding in his throat. Their room is bathed in the red glow of the emergency lights; he looks to his right to find Inosuke’s bed empty. He looks to his left to find that the other young man has curled into bed with Zenitsu sometime in the night, the two of them a lump under the blanket, beginning to stir at the sound of the alarm.

Tanjirou’s heart pangs, but he pushes the emotion away. They’re happy, he thinks. I should be happy for them.

Instead, he feels like something inside of him is irreparably broken and unfixable.

Someone from LOCCENT comes on over the ‘dome’s loudspeaker, and if the entire Shatterdome wasn’t awake before, they are now. “Fatal Flame, report to your Jaeger. Echo Hydra, report to your Jaeger.”

His heart plummets from his throat to his stomach. They’re being deployed. Just as support, more than likely, but still.

They’re being deployed.

He scrambles out of his bed, leaning towards the combined InoZen pile and shaking whomever’s hip he touches first. “Wake up! We have to go,” he tells them as gently as he can.

Zenitsu groans, but it’s Inosuke who sits up first, nearly bonking heads with Tanjirou.

It takes a little more coaxing, but they’re out into the hall in less than two more minutes, all of them still in their pajamas. They join the stream of people heard toward the Jager Bay, feeling like fish in a stream. But Tanjirou feels more than the urgency of the crowd he finds himself in, taking the hands of his co-pilots and cutting a quicker path toward the Drive Suit room, excusing all three of them as they go.

They make it three floors up by the time they catch up to Shinazugawa and Tomioka, who are taking a much slower approach to things, just going with the flow of the crowd.

Shinazugawa’s sweats are on backwards; Tomioka is missing his sweater, in a ratty old sweatshirt instead.

“You better not fuck this up,” Shinazugawa tells them when he realizes they’re there, three floors later, doors to the Drive Suit Room in sight.

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚

They do not mess anything up.

The Kaiju makes it past the Miracle Mile and onto land, into what Tanjirou knows is a restricted area, disabling Fatal Flame and slipping past Echo Hydra like an eel because Shinazugawa had told them to stay put or they’d just get in the way.

They’re a little slow on the chase, their colossal Jaeger a lumbering beast rather than the sleek killing machine Fatal Flame is. But they do catch up with the Kaiju before it reaches civilization proper.

He can feel, through their bond, Zenitsu’s fear. Inosuke’s thrill. His own resolve, reflected back at him like a mirror.

The battle is unlike any of the SIMs he’s ever been through. The specter of death dogs their heels with every move they make; any slip up, and they could perish. Any slip up, and the Kaiju could move into Japan proper and wreak havoc until more Jaegers were deployed.

It’s up to them. This is what they’ve been trained for, all these months. This is what their bond is for.

The battle passes in a blur; they take several hits, each of them knocking the air from Tanjirou’s lungs and leaving him reeling as the biofeedback system of the circuit suits beneath the Drive Suits do their job, properly linking them to the Jaeger and making them feel every hit their behemoth battle robot takes.

Eventually, they manage to strike a critical hit on the alien, killing it. It’s Inosuke’s fist that gets stuck in its hide, nearly sending them to the ground with it as it falls. Once they manage to extract themselves from the carcass of the alien, they all look at each other.

Warmthjoyrelief floods through their drift bond; Tanjirou allows himself to bask in it for all of five seconds before he throws his walls up, cutting himself off from it.

“Kaiju kill confirmed,” a LOCCENT operator informs them over the comms. “Echo Hydra, you’re cleared to head back.”

Tanjirou sees Inosuke shoot him a look as they turn to head back to the Shatterdome, but the young man shows considerable restraint in not saying anything. Tanjirou can feel through their bond that he wants to.

He almost wishes he would.

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚

It rains for three days after that, a downpour that could rival anything Tanjirou’s ever seen. He can’t hear it in the confines of their berth, buried deep in the heart of the Shatterdome as they are, but goes up to the tarmac every couple of hours just to stand in the eve of an entryway to close his eyes and listen to the thunder of raindrops on the ground and the metal plating above him.

It’s peaceful, under the awning.

At some point, Shinazugawa and Tomioka join him, neither of them saying a thing beyond a cursory greeting. Shinazugawa’s arm is tossed around his husband’s shoulders as the three of them stand there, listening. Watching.

Tanjirou bids them farewell after nearly twenty minutes, turning to go. He makes it halfway down the hall before he realizes Nezuko is standing in the middle of it, glaring at him.

The seconds stretch out between them, long and thin. He wonders what barbs she has for him this time, what knives she will draw across his skin.

He says, “Mother loved the rain.”

Nezuko flicks her eyes to the ground, as if she had had the same thought, as though she was headed to the entrance for the same reason. When she looks back at him, she’s just as angry as she’s been since she woke up in the hospital four years ago. “Mother is dead,” she bites out, each word a bullet. “And you should have taken that Kaiju down before it reached land. You’re a failure, Tanjirou. Just like Tomioka Giyuu. But it’s no wonder, is it, when he’s been training you.”

“It’s different,” he argues, “once you’re actually in a Jaeger. Once you’re in the field. Things can go awry, Nezuko. Things don’t always go to plan.”

She laughs bitterly, then shakes her head. “That’s just an excuse. But what happens next time, Tanjirou? What happens when you let the Kaiju get past the Exclusion Zone and into the cities? What happens when you inevitably fail?”

Her words needle and barb, critical hits.

Everything inside of him is already broken. He just can’t pretend to be okay anymore, is all. This? This is the final straw.

He pushes past her, hands fisted at his sides, sadness and guilt clouding his vision in a haze. He sets off at a dead run toward the only place he can ever be alone anymore: the roof of the Shatterdome.

His thoughts create a storm inside of him, a storm that won’t abate. It rages, just like the one that he opens the hatch to outside, rain lashing at him. He’s soaked within the first few seconds he’s on the roof, chilled to the bone within three minutes.

But still he stays, legs tugged up to his chest and arms curled around him.

The Pacific looks like he feels, gray and washed out, churning. Whitecaps rise up and crash back into the surf and repeat again, the motion soothing even as he starts to shiver from the cold.

Behind him, over the sound of the rain, he hears the hatch to the roof open. Tomioka, then.

“Tanjirou!” Inosuke calls.

Tanjirou startles, one leg slipping out from his grip. He looks over his shoulder to find his partners looking at him, halfway between the edge of the roof and the hatch, quickly becoming just as soaked as he is.

He rises to his feet and turns, every inch of him itching for something he can’t quite name.

“Tanjirou, come back inside,” Zenistu asks of him, motioning to the hatch behind him. “Please.”

“No,” Tanjirou says, the urge to argue rising in him like the tide behind him. “You go back inside. I’m fine out here.” Alone, he doesn’t say. But the word is obvious enough, unspoken as it is.

“You’ll catch your death out here,” Zenitsu insists, taking another step closer. “Please, just come back in so we can talk, or, or. Something.”

“I don’t want to talk!” he shouts, running his hands through his very, very wet hair. “I just—can’t you leave me alone? Don’t you have anything better to do! Don’t—“

He slips.

There’s shouting as his arms pinwheel, his heart stops, he’s going to die, he’s going to die, you deserve this, his brain whispers as he thinks about the ground that’s so, so far below him that he can’t even see it, most nights.

He realizes, in the space between thundering heartbeats, that he doesn’t want to die. That everything isn’t as bad as it seems, that most of it is fixable if he would just talk to people rather than smile and wave it away.

Hands grab his. He’s jerked to a stop, top of his body hanging into empty space, head tilted back toward the surf, rain dripping into his open, panting mouth. One of his feet is still firmly planted on the roof of the Shatterdome, the other hanging in open air with the rest of his body.

Slowly, he raises his head.

Inosuke has one of his hands, Zenitsu the other. Both of them have a good grip on either of his forearms as well. Both of them are pale as ghosts, whites of their eyes visible, speaking to the abject terror they feel.

How they managed to make their way across the roof of the Shatterdome to reach him in time, he doesn’t know. What he does know is this: there is love and tenderness in their eyes, as well as fear, and for the first time he realizes it isn’t only directed at the other.

It’s directed at him, too.

They haul him in carefully, as though he’s been through too much already for a lifetime. As though he’s the most precious thing on this rooftop.

They all stare at each other for a long moment once he’s got even footing, none of them letting go of his hands.

“Let’s go inside,” he says, once he finds his voice.

“That’s the best idea you’ve had all day!” Inosuke says, letting go of his forearm and squeezing his hand.

“I’m cold,” Zenitsu grouses with a shiver.

Tanjirou laughs softly, his heart still thundering in his chest from his brush with near death.

“I’ve never felt the cold in my life!” Inosuke brags, even though all three of them know he’s lying; his teeth are clattering together right now.

They go off the roof together, down through the hatch and into the slightly warmer Shatterdome, dripping water everywhere they go. They get a few weird looks on the way to their berth; Tanjirou’s certain they look like a trio of drowned rats, all of their hair clinging to their skulls as it is.

He’s shivering by the time they reach the door to their room, feeling returning to his extremities just enough to make out the callouses on Inosuke’s hand the softness of Zenitsu’s. They’ve left puddles in their wake, a clear indication of where they’ve come from.

Once inside of their berth, they fight their way out of wet boots and jumpsuits, leaving all of their clothes in a pile on the floor. His skin is cold and clammy, nail beds turning blue, and perhaps sitting outside in the cold rain wasn’t such a great idea after all.

He crawls into his bed to find warmth once he has his pajamas on, hair still wet. He’s barely got the blanket tucked up to his chin when it’s pulled out of his hands and back by Inosuke, who doesn’t wait for an invitation to crawl into bed with him, feet cold against his shins.

“What are you—” he starts to say, only to be cut off by Zenitsu squeezing in on the other side and pulling the blanket up over the three of them. It makes for a tight fit, all three of them in one single bed; someone’s bound to fall out and crack their head open on the floor, he’s certain.

“Shut up and take it,” Inosuke grumbles, burying his face in Tanjirou’s chest.

“You’re not alone, Tanjirou,” Zenitsu says on a more serious note, wrapping his arms around him from behind. “We just wanted to remind you of that.”

He starts to cry; he can’t help himself.

He feels safe, and loved, and soon, warm.

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚

He wakes in the morning in a tangle of limbs and wonders, how in the world did we all fit in my bed? He’s still firmly in the middle of Zenitsu and Inosuke, one set of arms around his waist and another around his chest.

For a moment, he feels peaceful. Comfortable. Loved.

And then he remembers that he can’t have this. That this isn’t—this isn’t his to have. Inosuke and Zenitsu are happy together, and he can’t get in the middle of that, literally or metaphorically.

He moves cautiously to extricate himself from the tangle, hoping he won’t wake either of them too much. Unfortunately, Inosuke tightens his grip.

Zenitsu wakes up enough to adjust his, muttering, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

And so Tanjirou finds himself stuck, wide awake and stuck between his co-pilots, heart breaking all over again.

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚

He makes himself scarce after that morning.

He finds the forgotten corners of the Shatterdome, the places where people don’t like to travel that are filled with cobwebs and flickering lights. The places where the heat only kicks on half the time, where no soul travels unless they’re forced to. He avoids training with his partners, avoids the roof, eats at off times, and only goes back to the berth when he knows they won’t be there or if he absolutely has to.

It lasts for about three weeks, this game of cat and mouse.

Until Tanjirou walks into their room when Zenitsu and Inosuke should absolutely be training and they walk in directly behind him, closing and locking the door so he can’t escape and looking at him like he’s in serious trouble.

It’s like they planned it; they probably did.

Tanjirou, half out of his jumpsuit, zips the garment up to his chin as he turns to face his partners, gulping at the stern looks on their faces.

“Hi?” he says, a little awkward. He hasn’t seen them since that morning they all woke up in a tangle in his bed; he had fled the room the second he could, back then.

Zenitsu, without a mean bone in his body, glares at him. “Where have you been?” he demands.

“Around,” Tanjirou hedges, eyes flicking towards the door of their room. He wonders, idly, if he could feasibly make a run for it.

Probably not, if the way Zenitsu is glaring at him is any indication. The blond looks like he would hunt him for sport in this moment.

“We were worried!” Zenitsu shouts, throwing his arms up in the air. “We thought we were going to find your body in an air duct or something!”

We, we, we. The word rattles around in his head, reminding him again of why he’s been avoiding them.

But there’s something distinctly different about Zenitsu, today. “What has you so worked up?” Tanjirou asks, morbidly curious.

“You!” Zenitsu shouts, jabbing a finger into his chest. Tanjirou blinks at him, startled into submission. “You, who have been making it extremely difficult to talk about any of this!”

“Any of . . . what? Exactly?” He’s so confused right now.

Zenitsu and Inosuke share a look, one that Tanjirou finds that he can’t read, no matter how strong their drift bond is. He feels left out in the cold, all of a sudden, and is reminded again that there’s a bond that only they share. A bond that he can never be part of.

Then Inosuke shrugs, and both of them look back at him.

“This,” Inosuke says.

Then he kisses him.

Tanjirou relaxes into the kiss for .02 seconds before he realizes what he’s doing and pushes the young man away, heart thudding in his chest and breaking, breaking, breaking all over again.

He looks over to Zenitsu immediately, who is . . .

Beaming?

“I—I don’t understand,” he says. “What’s going on?”

“We love you, Tanjirou,” Zenitsu says, reaching out to take one of his hands. “We have for a while.”

“But—but the two of you—“

“We never wanted it to be just us,” Inosuke says, taking Tanjirou’s other hand. “We always wanted it to be us and you. Er. You and us? You and me and me and him? Me and you and you and him? Me and—oh, dammit.”

Tanjirou thinks he might be getting the gist of things, now. That the warm, soft thing he felt in the drift wasn’t just Inosuke and Zenitsu for each other, but Inosuke and Zenitsu for him, too. That he hasn’t had to be distant this whole time, giving them space, but could have been in the middle of it all instead.

He smiles at them, laughter bubbling out of him because he simply can’t stop it.

He was always told that good things came in threes.

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚

He finds Tomioka on the roof of the Shatterdome, overlooking the surf, and takes a seat next to him.

They haven’t spoken, not since that day in the eve of the awning. Not since Tanjirou nearly fell to his death off of this very roof.

Tomioka glances over at him as he takes a seat very carefully, holding on to the edge of the roof for that extra degree of safety. They sit in silence, as they normally do, for several minutes before Tanjirou decides to go against the mold and break it.

“Thank you,” he says, raising his voice to be heard over the wind.

Tomioka looks at him, as though he doesn't understand what he’s being thanked for.

“For finding Inosuke and Zenitsu, that day. For sending them after me up to the roof.” He had pried the story of his co-pilots a few days ago, wondering how they knew to find him on the roof after his small confrontation with Nezuko.

The corner of Tomioka’s mouth curls up, barely enough for Tanjirou to even notice. “We overheard you and your sister and thought you could use some help. Sanemi and I both know how difficult family can be. Taking down a Kaiju on your first drop is no easy feat, and you and your co-pilots performed admirably. You couldn’t have done anything better. In time, your sister will come to understand that. We can’t help what the Kaiju do, or when, or how. We can only be here when they come, and hope to stop them when they do and hope that, someday, this all ends.”

The man who has become his mentor, of sorts—and when could that have happened, up on this rooftop where they wallow in their grief—falls silent then, done with dispatching wisdom for the day.

Except for one last piece of advice, it seems: “Except. Maybe try counseling.”

Tanjirou sits with him for fifteen minutes more before he carefully gets up and steps away from the edge.

He turns away from the sun, headed back into the ‘dome through the hatch.

There’s work to be done.