Chapter Text
"How're you feeling?" Taimi asks as they're heading into the mine. "Nervous? Any anxiety?"
"Just tired," Alba says, eyes on the dark, distant throat of the tunnel. He's been tired a lot, lately. Tired for years, it feels like. Ever since… how long has it been? Since Balthazar, since Trahearne, or longer?
He's being too dramatic. It's just… it's just the mission. Focus on the mission. Get in, lure that dumb beast out, and kill it. Put this whole chapter to rest. Then you can sleep. Then you'll feel better.
"Like, you didn't get enough sleep, tired, or like you're still feeling down?" Taimi asks, plodding along beside him in Scruffy 2.0. "If you're not feeling on top of things, we should turn back and try another day."
"I'm fine," Alba says quickly, then takes a breath and repeats it, gentler. "I'm fine, really. I just didn't sleep well. There was some kind of bird outside my tent all night, making noise."
"Yeah, birds will do that," Chul-moo says from up ahead of them. He's leading, Yao just a step behind him. Then it's Gorrik, Taimi and Alba, and Rama bringing up the rear, keeping an eye on them all.
He doesn't like that. People feel like they need to keep an eye out for him, now. It’s wrong. That's his job in the first place, protecting others. He doesn't need anyone watching out–
The tiger snarls, and he flinches. Enough. Take a breath and put it away. He does that, inhales and holds it, cramming the feeling back down into his stomach with a swallow. He's fine. He's getting better at this, all of this. Coping. Healing, as they say. It's about feeling the feeling, letting anger and rage and grief and pain roll over you for a moment, and then swallowing it all at once like a big stone that never comes back up again. It has to live in you forever in silence and you have to move on and never look back at it again. He's moving on. From all of it.
Taimi nudges his arm with Scruffy's hand, and he swallows again to get rid of the bad taste in his mouth. "Fine," he answers, without hearing her question. "Let's just do this."
He realizes that they've reached the furthest chamber of the mine, deep underground, deep in the haze. The air is thick and oily, oppressive in its weight over him. His chest feels heavy. Like his lungs aren't moving, like they're been flattened out empty, folded up, and put somewhere else. Yao glances back at him as he sucks in a forceful breath, then plays off the noise as nothing. Just clearing his throat.
They just entered the first layer. How long was he gone?
He's barely present to give any orders. Luckily, Taimi, Gorrik, and Yao know what they're doing with the Jade contraption full of his unpleasant feelings, and they boss him and Rama around; go over there, now stand here, bring that to me…
"Okay? That same button to stop. Alright? Commander…?"
"Right," he mumbles, hefting the device in his hands. Heavy. Full of burdens, not even half of what he's carrying otherwise.
"Okay," Taimi says, seemingly assured of his ability to do this. "Whenever you're ready, then."
Everyone's looking at him. And dammit, he wasn't present to hear any of it. Alba swallows, breath stale in his lungs from the filtered mask, and presses the button she'd indicated. A fog seeps quickly out of the device, hanging heavy in the air around him. "That's probably enough," Gorrik calls, after a few seconds. "Commander? That's enough?"
Alba nods to shake himself out of it, pushing another button. He's too tired for this. Taimi was right, they should try another day instead. Maybe he should have said something about it.
"Comm--Commander, the other button," Gorrik laughs nervously. Yao breaks formation to jog over and help, taking the device gingerly from Alba to stop the fog from pouring out of it. Without the hiss of the machinery, it's dead silent in the mine. Just the echoing nothingness, and darkness all around them.
"Is it–" Rama starts to ask, as the oni slams down onto the ground before Alba. He sees himself for a moment, reflected in its dark eyes. Pale, scared, and tired. No time to rest. Move your feet.
His hand finds the third button, and the oni lurches away from him, roaring in agony, to swipe at someone else. The group moves at once, swinging into action, and he has to force himself to keep up, to keep swinging his daggers, keep pulling at his bowstring as the demons of the depths come crawling after them, as his tiger snarls and bristles in his mind, as Chul-moo and Gorrik shout orders over one another, trying to maintain the control that he can't keep himself. Rama is doing something with the book, trying and failing to seal the passage behind them, as Taimi and Gorrik beat back the oni, keeping it dazed. Alba's hands have fallen still, he realizes with some delay. He's not fighting. Just standing in the midst of it all, yelling at himself from within his head to attack, dodge, blink, do something . Why won't you do something? Do you want to die here? For once he's aware of himself on the battlefield, but now he can't move ?
"Commander!" Yao shouts, and he forces his head to turn a few degrees, feeling like crying at the effort of it, but it's the wrong direction. It isn't Yao he comes face to face with. The god of fire and ware stares back at him, eyes darkand full of hatred and malice. He tries to move again. He can feel his legs, he just can't get his feet to act, as Balthazar reaches towards him, teeth bared.
"You."
He can smell the brimstone, even through his mask. The taste of it makes him swallow back bile. He stares unmoving at Balthazar as he leans closer, willing himself to do anything . Why? Why now, why again? He's scared. He remembers now, the cold fear that had gripped him the day he died. No one had said anything about it to him, the way he'd screamed and sobbed after coming back from the realm of the lost, then quickly shut himself up-- no one had ever brought it up to Alba's face, but he knows they talked about it later, behind his back.
Balthazar's mouth moves, but Alba can't hear him through the silence, the black noise, the rushing of blood that fills his ears and drowns out all else. He knows fear. Everyone thinks he doesn't. Everyone thinks he's unafraid, that he can face anything. That he can do it all, on his own even. That's why they send him alone all the time. That's why they don't…
Whatever thought he'd had trails off into ether. He feels himself yell, the scar on his chest aching again. That damn patch of blackened flesh, the mark that proves he died. It throbs now, the burn and stab wound through his middle. His death scar. Balthazar’s sword straight through him, into stone. It hurts . He can't see through the tears, can't hear through the pounding in his skull, can only sense the fallen god is close to him, his calloused hand curling around Alba's wrist, then his bicep, yanking him–
The tiger snaps its teeth. And he moves. Finally, he can move. A clumsy defensive maneuver at first; he fumbles and flinches, then slams the hilt of his Caladbolg dagger into Balthazar's temple, watching him stagger through his tears, enraged and snarling meaninglessly. Yelling. A lot of it, he realizes now that he can somewhat hear, as he grabs his other dagger to fight again, barely seeing what he's doing, awkward and halting in his movements. The rogue god staggers and Alba does too, but he doesn't let up, either. He has to finish this. He has to put an end to this. It has to end, somewhere, sometime. He knows he’s yelling again, but he’s unsure if he's getting any words out or just noise. Balthazar is silent, grinning at him as if impressed, and there are hands on him, grabbing, dragging. More yelling as he slashes blindly at the Forged trying to pull him and pin him down, and then something hits him across the back of the head and he's gone.
"He's awake," Rama says, sounding unhappy about it. Alba blinks groggily at the tent above him, trying to figure it out. A dream? A nightmare. Just a nightmare. Are they heading into the mine today, then? Or did it already happen as planned?
Did it go as planned?
" Don't try to move," Rama says as Alba starts trying to sit up, and his voice isn't friendly. It's a warning. Almost a threat. Alba swallows, trying to nod to show he's complying, but the movement hurts too much. He whimpers.
"Okay. Noted."
"Do you remember what happened?" Gorrik asks, from near the foot of his sleeping mat. He's not making eye contact. Gorrik isn't great with that either way, but now he's avoiding it on purpose.
"No," Alba says, partially afraid of the consequences of a yes. The other part of him still isn't sure that it wasn't a stress dream.
"Uh huh," Rama scoffs.
"Rama, please."
"What happened with the oni," Alba asks, hoping for a change of topic. They both look pointedly away from him, Rama scowling a bit. "We didn't get it," Alba surmises, chest heavy with anxiety.
"No," Gorrik starts. Rama cuts him off.
"Why don't you start by telling us what you do remember? Commander."
He's trying not to be angry. He's holding it back, just not well. Something happened. Something horrible happened. Alba glances at his bandaged right arm and hand, Gorrik’s bruised face.
"Is… is Taimi–"
"No. What do you remember,” Rama snaps.
"Is Taimi okay," Alba presses again, as the tent flap is jerked aside.
"Is he awake?" Chul-moo asks gruffly, while Rama tries to block him from peering in.
"We're not finished," Rama responds.
"He and I need to have a chat."
"What's going on," Alba asks, sitting up regardless of warnings, clutching at his pounding forehead.
"Get out here," Chul-moo barks at him.
"Stay down," Rama counter-orders. To Chul-moo, he mutters, "we're still trying to get his side of the story."
" His side of the story is that he almost killed Yao!"
"Damnit Chul-moo, can you get lost for a minute !" Rama snaps, fingers scrabbling at the front of his armor, trying to ball his fist in something grabbable that just isn’t there. Chul-moo slaps his hand aside, sneering at Alba.
"You almost killed them. They were trying to help you, and you beat them unconscious."
"I didn't see… I thought…" Alba trails off uselessly, looking back and forth between the three of them. "Gorrik," he pleads, but Gorrik looks quickly away again, ears low. "Please, Gorrik, I didn't know it was them."
" You need to talk," Rama says, pointing at him. Then he jabs his finger at Chul-moo. "And you, go see if Yao needs anything."
Chul-moo glowers at him, then at Alba. "We'll talk later," he snaps, letting the tent flap fall closed again.
The three of them are silent for a moment, and then a comms crackles and Taimi's voice comes through. "Gorrik, can you come take a look at the recollector? I could use a hand."
"Go for it," Rama says, arms crossed. "I'll stay with him."
"I'll be right back," Gorrik promises. "Just, uh… call if you need anything."
"Will do," Rama says.
"Just across the road," Gorrik clarifies, then hurries out of the tent. Alba watches him leave, afraid to look at Rama.
"Can you tell me what I did?" He asks, eyes back on the canvas of the tent wall.
"I can," Rama says. "But I'd rather hear from you what you think happened first."
Alba doesn't answer. "I'm good at waiting for answers, Commander," Rama reminds him. "I used to be MinSec, remember?"
"I don't know what happened," Alba says. "I just… I couldn't see them. I don't know what it was."
"Look, you were yelling some stuff down there that makes me think you know exactly what you saw."
He feels sick. His eyes burn. And his head is pounding, more than usual. "Commander," Rama says, as he blinks back tears in silence. "Alba. Come on, man, I'm sick of playing bad cop. Just tell me."
"I," Alba starts, and hiccups. "I thought--Balthazar was there , and I couldn't move, I thought…"
"The god of war. That Balthazar," Rama asks to clarify. Alba nods, shudders and lets out a sob that feels too loud. He clamps a hand over his mouth. He shouldn't be allowed to be so noisy about his pain. He never has before. Rama watches him for a moment, then lets his arms unfold from the stern posture and closes the distance to sit down to his right, on the floor of the tent. Alba shakes, and Rama pulls him into an awkward, one-armed hug that makes him sob again, harder.
"It's okay, Commander."
"H-how bad is Yao…" He has to drop his shaking hand to ask, and grabs onto Rama instead. His fingers slip off the fabric of his robe, come back harder to curl and dig into it, clutching for security.
"They're okay. Just kind of bruised and sore. I think they're helping Taimi right now."
"I was so afraid, Rama…"
He feels like garbage. The worst of the worst, making someone else hold him through it. He grabs onto Rama, leaning into him, pressing his face into the other man's shoulder as if trying to hold it in by force. Rama pulls him closer, petting his bruised back with one hand. Awkward, but he's trying.
"I don't–I don't know what to do," Alba admits, voice quaking.
"You're gonna have to say sorry to Yao, and deal with Chul-moo for a minute. But the rest of us will be there too."
"No," Alba chokes, "I don't know what- what's wrong with me, why I can't… I'm so tired , Rama, all the time." And the blackouts…
"Hey, that's just what hitting your thirties does to you. Happens to the best of us." Rama pauses. "How old are you, anyway? Thirty... one? I'm really good at guessing–"
"Twelve.”
"Sorry?"
"Almost thirteen. Next month."
Rama falls silent, hand stilling on Alba's spine. He shudders with the effort of taking in a breath, aware that he’s only succeeding in getting Rama’s outer robe damp and wrinkled. He just can’t stop the tears; the thought of hurting poor Yao, the solid thud of his pommel against the engineer’s temple, the bandage on Rama’s hand where he awkwardly pats the back of Alba’s head… Any one of them could have died because of him. The oni and the other demons in the mine could have overwhelmed the group while he distracted them from their objective. Not to mention they would have had to carry him and Yao both out, keep them safe while they were unconscious. The guilt of it all is so overwhelming, topped off with the guilt of crying over it when he should be making things right. What happened to you, Alba Moonseeker? Weren’t you a good person, at some point? When did that change?
He knows when. He knows what he did to kickstart all of this, back in the deep heart of the jungle, back in Mordremoth’s domain, back when Trahearne had asked, no, told, ordered, no, begged him to kill him to ensure it was over. One mercy kill to make sure they were finished and everything was tied up neatly. Want to or not, he’d done it. He’d done it.
He thinks that’s when it happened. Maybe it was sooner. Maybe his pod was just bad. Damaged, somehow. Maybe he never was good. The tiger growls, somewhere in the corner of his consciousness. He shushes it, muffles that line of thinking. It isn't helping.
“Look, Commander,” Rama says, as he hiccups and cries, fists balled in the bladesworn’s robes over his shoulder blades. “I’m not saying you gotta stop crying or anything, but we do need to get down to the bottom of this. Everyone’s pretty, eh… pretty on-edge, alright? Chul-moo is obviously the worst at controlling his emotions about what happened, but I mean, we’re all freaked out.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You said some stuff, man.”
Alba sniffs wetly, blinking at the shadows on the tent wall from the light of day outside. He’s afraid to ask what he might have said. “I’m betting your head hurts,” Rama says, starting to peel away from him. “You’ve got a goose egg back here from where he bashed you.”
Alba nods, wiping his face and looking away as Rama moves to stand. His head does hurt. More than Rama knows. "I'll grab you something for pain, okay?"
"Thank you," Alba says hoarsely. He keeps his eyes down, aimed at his boots, slumped by the tent wall, as lifeless as he feels. "Please don't tell them that I cried."
Rama pauses and sighs. "Alright, sure," he says, sounding somewhat irritated with that request as he turns to go. The tent flap drops shut behind him, leaving Alba alone in his thoughts.