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It should’ve been Simon.
Gurren Lagann creaks at the knees; its joints moan as it stands. It’s screaming in the language of gunmen, but Kittan gets it. Despair is recognizable in any tongue.
Kamina’s body looks so small, cradled between Gurren’s palms.
Gurren Lagann’s steps are slow; careful. Not gentle, because they haven’t been able to wring any of that from the night thus far — what’s the point in starting now?
Kittan shakes his head and drives his own gunman forward. It feels like a joke. Any second now, Kamina’s gonna wake up and pull out the cruelest ‘gotcha!’ the surface has ever seen. Asshole.
So Kittan waits about a minute. He counts the trickles of water that drip down his HUD. And he listens: to the rain, and the silence, and the pained shudders of his own mecha.
It means he’s listening when Simon speaks up, for the first time since —
Since.
“Rossiu.” Simon sounds like he’s deflated; his voice tugs against the gravel beneath them, catching like an open wound. “Did you hear what bro said at the end?”
King Kittan stumbles, and Regular Kittan barely manages to keep it from tripping over itself. Did Simon — not hear? Did that ‘later, buddy’ somehow slip his mind?
Rossiu — still short of breath following his sprint from camp, locked in the coffin of a dead man — responds with, “No, I didn’t. I’m sorry.”
But someone else did, right?
… right?
Maybe they did. But like Kittan, they don’t speak up. So the moment passes, and he’s too late to save it. Again.
Bastard.
It should’ve been Simon.
꩜
And here’s the shitty thing: they’re not even, like, worth it.
All his big talk about burning hearts and manly spirit and brotherly combining and all he can come up with when it matters is a measly four syllables. “Later, buddy.” Lame as hell, if anyone bothers to ask Kittan.
(Except that Simon did ask Kittan, by extension, and Kittan was just too much of a selfish coward to answer.
Those stupid words aren’t worth this heartburn. Dead or alive, Kamina’s a bastard.)
꩜
They don’t bury him. Yoko doesn’t let them.
“Like hell!” she snaps, when Dayakka suggests it. She doesn’t say anything normally now — Kittan’s not sure how much of her is still solid and continuous, inside, that it can keep snapping. “All he ever wanted his whole life was to live on the surface, and you think we should put him back underground to rot?”
“But…” Dayakka looks around, hesitant to disagree — or do anything else — sans guidance. “We buried his dad. And so many back in Littner. What are we supposed to do?”
His only answer is the rain. But that lingers too, in its hanging fog and muted drips. It’s waiting for direction as much as they are.
When Dayakka’s scanning gaze makes it to Simon, Kittan nearly scoffs out loud. The kid’s been despondent since tripping his way out of Lagann two hours ago; besides, it’s not like he’d ever managed to collect any of… whatever overflowed from Kamina for himself. An eternity could pass, and Dayakka would still be without what he’s looking for.
Kittan, though, is done waiting too long. He steps forward and clears his throat. “I got an idea.”
꩜
It’s still raining during the funeral, cold and wet and unsettling. Kittan decides that’s a good thing; a sunny day would’ve felt like a mockery.
Most of the raindrops fizzle into steam at his feet, anyways. They don’t stand a chance against the heat of the volcano Team Dai-Gurren’s gathered around.
Rossiu’s first up. He recites some prayer from that book he never opens while everyone else stands in solemn silence. It’s a pretty stupid farce all over — can one false god grant eternal rest to another? — but no one else has any better ideas. Yoko speaks next, her voice halting and breaking over every other word, and no one who says their piece after hers does much better. Even Kittan mumbles his way through a few sentences that sound like cursing and feel like ‘we miss you’ and taste like the soil he’d coughed up for weeks following Bachika Village’s destruction.
Simon’s last.
… in theory.
In actuality, Simon opens his mouth — only to waver and close it again, clenching his fists and his face with a shudder — three times before Zorothy turns on his heel and treks down the side of the volcano.
Wordlessly, Kid follows, and Iraak does too. Everyone else takes that to mean they’re dismissed, and files back to Dai-Gurren behind them, leaving only Kittan and Simon teetering on the lip of the smoldering caldera.
Simon sniffs. He’s not crying, so it must be the cold. His jacket’s soaked through; muted to a dull grey color thanks to rainwater mixed with all the ash that couldn’t quite escape to the heavens.
Kittan waits ten more excruciating minutes. Then Simon whimpers out a sound like he’s about to hurl, and Kittan gives in to his big-brother instinct and yanks Simon away from the pit of fiery death by his shoulders.
Simon doesn’t fight back; he barely lets out a surprised huff. His resistance — if Kittan can call it that — comes in the form of tripping over his own feet as he’s led back to Dai-Gurren.
The only part of it that surprises Kittan is when his own brain whispers, He’s giving Kamina just as many last words as he heard Kamina give him.
Ugh. Kamina was right. A guy can’t get a moment’s rest around here.
꩜
They never should’ve let Simon go scavenging for food. Now they’re all hungry and Kamina’s gonna kick Kittan’s ass in the afterlife.
“I’ll check the south.” Yoko snaps her shades into place, punctuating her decision. “You head north.”
“Hey!” Kittan protests. “Which one of us is the leader here?!”
But Yoko’s already marching away from him, her back ramrod straight.
“Ugh” Kittan sighs, loud enough for her to hear. It’s not loud enough for her to turn around — in fact, she might’ve even sped up — and when Kittan turns north, he spots peaks in the distance, and realizes why.
Twenty minutes later, Kittan finds Simon exactly where he expects to.
“Hey, Simon,” Kittan says. “You uh… find some food all the way out here?”
Simon doesn’t answer. He doesn’t acknowledge Kittan at all — he just stares at the nodachi and sodden red cape ahead of him, eyes empty and unblinking, even as the tips of his too-long bangs drip onto his lashes. He looks so damn small like this, soaked to the bone and hugging his knees tight to his chest.
Maybe that’s what prompts Kittan to try again. “I, uh… got three baby sisters.”
No response.
“Only one of ‘em is related by blood. An’ sure, I haven’t known Kinon and Kiyal as long, but that doesn’t make ‘em any less family, ya know?”
Finally, Simon breathes a shuddering inhale. When he speaks, his voice protests its use. “… what?”
Kittan rolls his eyes. He’s got half a mind to take that stupid drill the kid wears around his neck and use it to clean out his ears. Maybe they could’ve avoided this situation altogether if Kamina had tried that!
Instead, though, Kittan plops down next to Simon. He grimaces at the uncomfortable squelch of mud trying to swallow him whole… before realizing that might be a better fate than the rest of this conversation. “If I ever bite it, I’d want them to hear what I had to say.”
There’s shuffling beside him, and Kittan turns to see Simon’s looking his way. The shadows under his eyes rival Yoko’s, and his pallid cheeks… well, Kamina’s. “What do you mean?” Simon asks.
Kittan gulps. He folds his lips between his teeth, and tastes ash.
“He was just sayin’ goodbye.”
Simon’s eyes flick up to meet Kittan’s.
“‘Later, buddy.’ Those were Kamina’s last words. He was saying goodbye. I heard ‘em over the comm, but… you’re the one he was talkin’ to. Figured you should finally hear ‘em.”
Then Kittan braces himself. If Simon wants to rail at him for keeping his mouth shut for three days, well… he probably deserves it.
But Simon doesn’t even seem to consider it. “Why?” he asks. “Why’d bro say that?”
Kittan shrugs. “Dunno. I don’t think any of us could ever understand the mighty Kamina, really.” It’s supposed to be a joke. “But… if it were me, I’d say goodbye if there was nothing else. Like, I try to tell Kiyoh ‘n’ Kinon ‘n’ Kiyal that I love ‘em and I’m proud of ‘em every day. They already know all that; no point in sayin’ it again. There’s only one thing left they need to hear.”
Simon’s quiet for a moment. Then he shakes his head, in probably the most deliberate motion Kittan’s seen from him in three days. “I wish he’d told me how to be more like him,” he admits, “instead.”
Kittan claps Simon on the back — gently, he knows the kid’s a little fragile — then climbs to his feet. “Don’t we all.”
꩜
Rossiu picks up halfway through the first ring. “Simon!”
“Hey,” Simon sighs. He lets exhaustion underline his voice — he’d switched his comms off after the anti-spirals’ universe collapsed, so only Nia and Rossiu and Lagann can hear. He’s allowed to sound tired with them. “Is Kinon with you?”
“Wh — uh — yeah, yeah she is.”
“Are her sisters?”
“… no.” Even through the fuzzy signal, Rossiu’s suspicion is clear. “Why do you ask?”
Simon ignores the question. “Can you find Kiyoh and Kiyal, and get them all together? And like, be discreet about it.”
For a moment, Rossiu doesn’t respond, and Simon’s sure he’ll say no. Then, “Simon, what happened?”
Again, Simon keeps quiet. Blissfully, Nia does too. He holds her tighter and looks out to the great big universe in front of him — humanity’s universe — and thinks about how small it actually is. How lucky he has been, to have made pebbles of planets, and specks of volcanic ash into stars.
Rossiu’s smart enough to answer his own question, so Simon doesn’t have to sigh in relief when he eventually agrees. “Sure. I’ll go find them now.”
“Thanks.”
A beep signals the call’s ended, but Simon doesn’t put his phone away quite yet. It’s a short trip home, and he still needs to figure out what to say.
He doesn’t need to tell them that Kittan was brave to the end. Kittan was brave in the beginning, and in the middle too.
He doesn’t need to tell them of Kittan’s spiral power. Dying suns always burn brightest as they spin towards extinction; it’s a fact of the universe.
It’s a fact Simon’s familiar with.
And… well, there’s his answer. He reaches for Lagann’s handlebars, ready to return a seven-year-old favor.
Because he had an older brother once, too.