Archive of Our Own

He thinks he’s forgotten everything about Rei except the feel of his hands around his throat. Big. Too big. And somehow soft - still soft, even as they strangled the breath away from him. He remembers what Rei said, but he thinks he’s lost the sound of it. The feel of the syllables as they’d strung themselves together against the tune of his voice.

Until he hears his name called out across swarms of Legion. Across a vast expanse of empty space. It pierces through the cacophony of cries with more force and speed than a crack of lightning, and as soon as it hits his ears, he knows that he’d never really forgotten it at all. Had kept it hidden and buried somewhere, locked away tight in the dark recesses of his mind. It sounds just the way he remembers it best. Angry, still, even after all this time.

And that’s right, he thinks. That’s fine. It wouldn’t have been right if this voice were mournful or scared or desperate or pleading. It’s a gift he’s been given – this anger. One he thinks that he hardly deserves. He doesn’t cry (once, he’d thought that he might, if he ever heard this voice again, but now that he has, even the thought seems too distant to touch); he doesn’t mourn (the time for that had been years ago – is so far past that the sadness has gone stale, hardened into rock). Somehow, he feels better now than he has in years. He’s been living in purgatory, waiting for his final judgment to come, and it has at last. Now, he has a purpose. Now, he can move.

“Rei,” he whispers back to that call. “I’m coming for you.”

Two men in uniforms come holding a letter and Rei tells Shin to go play in his room before his mother has a chance to send them both away. She would. He knows she would, and he doesn’t want her to have to hear this alone.

They give her their letter and they tell her that only one of them can rejoin the Republic, and she doesn’t have to say it. Rei already knows that she wants that “one of them” to be Shin. It doesn’t bother him – he wants that too, but Shin is too young to take care of himself, especially with the Republic the way it is now, and so “one of them” just isn't enough. “I’ll go,” he says. “You take care of Shin.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, you’re a child.” She snaps it at him, but her voice comes out almost in whisper, and Rei realizes that she’s trying not to cry. Not in front of him and not in front of the men from the army - they’re not even trying to feign sadness or sympathy, look bored more than anything, while his mother’s hands shake around the letter, unopened – superfluous. He wants to argue, but more than that, he doesn’t want to see her break and so he doesn’t. But he thinks, that’s why I want to go. I’m younger. I’m stronger. I’m not old enough yet to be responsible for -

She agrees to enlist, and he wants to tell her not to. Wants to beg her to stay with them. To shrink back down to Shin’s size so that he can hug her and cry and maybe just maybe she’d listen. But he’s too old for that now – too old to beg and too young to argue – all he can do is stand sentinel while she makes this decision and clench his fists at the unfairness of it.

For some reason, when he thinks of her, he pictures the only time he ever saw her cry. She’d thought no one was looking, and she was weeping silently – fist in her mouth to stifle the sobs that wracked her body, and it scared him so much. It scares him still. Because if she could cry, then what does that mean for him?

Shin can read the book himself by now, but Rei reads it to him anyway because Shin likes when he does the voices. He looks up with a grin as Rei finishes and closes the book.

“Hey, when’s Mom coming back?”

Never. The thought sneaks up on Rei like a ghost in the night, and all he can do is try to banish it with a smile.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe soon.”

“Ok,” Shin says, nodding. “I’ll be big and brave until she gets back, like Dad said.”

It haunts him. He wants to say, No. He wants to say, I want you to stay small. I want you to stay scared, like me.

He doesn’t remember his father crying, and maybe that was worse. Tears had glassed his eyes, but he’d stuffed them down, going a little red with the effort of it, and Rei thinks, that’s what I’m supposed to do. He thinks, I’m supposed to be strong. I’m not supposed to be scared. I’m not supposed to cry.

“Imperial garbage!”

“If it weren’t for you none of this would’ve happened!”

Rei sees them closing in on Shin and he’s far, too far, but he’s running anyway. And then he’s barreling into someone. Scrambling to his feet. Dodging a punch. Throwing one. He’s never been in a real fight before and he has no business trying to win this one, but losing it isn’t an option, so he’s a desperate whirl of elbows and fists and –

“Rei! Rei! They’re leaving! Are you ok?”

Adrenaline is still ringing a discordant tune in his ears. He’s not ok. He’s not ok. He’s not –

“Yeah,” he smiles at Shin. “I’m fine, are you?”

It’s like falling down a hole so dark and endless you can barely tell that you’re moving, but you know that you are and as much as you don’t want to find out what’s at the bottom, you can’t help but want so badly to stop -

If I hug myself tight enough, can I make myself smaller? Can I crush myself out of existence?

No. I can’t. Because Shin –

The men in uniforms give him a letter and they tell him it’s five years and then he’s out, as if it matters. As if he has a choice. They lied to his father, and he died. They lied to his mother, and she’s died. And now they’re probably lying to him, but he has to believe it anyway because if it’s a lie –

Who will protect Shin?

(This is not what he thinks first, but this thought tries its best to wrap itself around the first one – tries to hide it under black-hole armor so that no trace of it can escape – but the first thought is too massive; it’s too intense to be contained and so it bleeds out in a pale, dull red that sneaks around the edges of the unselfish thought that he wishes had come first: Why can’t someone protect him?)

Shin doesn't understand.

“Rei, are Mom and Dad not coming back?”

He's run out of words to explain. Or maybe they're there, but they're just out of reach - if he could bring himself to lift his hands, he might grasp them, but his hands are boulders - hard and heavy; it's too much weight for him to lift.

"I can't hear Mom's voice."

It's not just his hands - his whole body is stone; it's dead - it should be dead, or better still, never alive in the first place, but somehow he's still breathing, and Shin is still asking -

"Rei, why did Mom die?"

He wants to run and he wants to hide and he wants to cry and he can’t do any of those things, but the feelings are too big; they just won’t go away, and he can’t –

“Because of you!”

No.

“It’s all your fault!”

It’s not.

He’s too ashamed to say “sorry” right away. He had one job; he was entrusted with one thing – and he's failed, and the failure drapes him in shame, and it's worse than falling and it's worse than hitting the bottom; it's worse than sinking straight through and it's worse than falling through dirt and it's worse than falling through rock. Nothing physical could be this heavy or this suffocating. Even the weight of all the emptiness in the universe couldn't compare.

By the time he works up enough courage to try to dig himself out, to try to lift himself up just enough to look Shin in the eye again, it’s too late.

And now he has no choice. He has to survive. In five years he can say that he’s sorry. In five years he can tell him that –

He's bleeding, and he can tell that it's far too much blood. He can't feel his arms and he can't feel his legs - can't feel his anything, and he can see that it’s over; it’s all over and he won’t get to say “sorry” and he won’t get to apologize and he won’t get a chance to try to explain – but he still hasn’t learned how to be sad yet and so –

There’s no voice calling his name now, and the absence of it is the closest thing to silence that Shin thinks he will ever get. He looks at the mangled Dinosauria in front of him and he almost wants to ask it –

Are you happy now, Rei?

Do you forgive me?

But he knows that the dead can't forgive.

Shin finishes his drawing and hands it up to Rei with a big grin on his face. Rei takes it and smiles back. It’s a knight in shining armor, and Shin’s taken extra care to draw in the sparkles.

“Is this me?”

Shin nods emphatically. “My big brother!”

Rei ruffles his hair. “That’s right,” he says. “I’ll always take care of you.”