Work Text:
to the horizon
(i'll stay by you.)
“Falling in love, it’s really a terrible thing.”
.
.
.
“Chiaki?”
It sounds more like a question, but Kanata does not waver. They’re twelve years old, the pool is cold, and they’re drifting. Backs to the water, feet touching the floor. The shallow end. Hand in hand. Chiaki’s grip is so tight around his wrist. It’s only for a second, before their fingers intertwine, with the intention of never letting go. The intention of taking back.
“Kanata…”
Always with that tone of voice, his name is always accompanied with the fear that’s not suited for someone like him.
“Chiaki. Let’s ‘sing’ together. One more time.”
Kanata does not wait for an approval.
He starts to hum.
.
Maybe, that’s why. It’s the moment that Chiaki wraps his arms around Kanata’s waist, pulls him close, that’s when Kanata realizes–yes, this is the one. They’re out in open sea and Chiaki is screaming, paddling against the current but Kanata is so unperturbed, split between making the same kind of racket, opening up his mouth and letting the last few breaths of air go. It’s air he’s never thought too highly of, not until he’s being deprived of it. You know how it goes. Split between that and letting the current take him home. The ocean’s his mother and she calls every night, worried, fretting, her shoreline almost pushes him under.
Chiaki. He pulls him out.
He always does. He promised.
.
“Kanata.”
Kaoru always hesitates when he says his name, like it’s something his tongue isn’t used to levying. It’s funny, it really is, Kaoru was the one who insisted on informalities, so, so long ago. When he struggles with the Shin, kai, it only makes Kanata wonder why Kaoru even tries. Why he fights something as natural as the tide.
So, instead, he smiles.
“What’s wrong, Kaoru?”
Kanata presses his felt eel friend against Kaoru’s forearm, his white shirt sleeve is rolled around his dark elbow. The color is stark against his skin. He’s wearing a nice, brown leather watch. It reminds him of Captain Kunugi’s. In comparison, Kanata’s hand is pale and sickly. The eel, with its rusted sequins and worn rainbow fabric, mediates.
“I can’t win to him.” He twirls a piece of blond hair around his index finger. He’s wearing silver rings. Maybe they used to be Arashi’s. Someone must have told him he had a thing, a tell, a bad habit with his hands. Couldn’t keep them still, couldn’t stop moving them, always at the back of his neck or in front of his mouth. Or, he picked it up from a girl he liked. Or even, maybe, it’s from his favorite pilot, a memento. A token. Something to remember them by.
It is sad.
Kanata laughs. Airy and soft, eyes crinkling.
“It was never a competition.”
He thinks Kaoru is hoping for an addendum, but there is nothing but this absolute truth.
Kaoru sucks on his cigarette. Exhales a stream of smoke. Flicks it into the sleet. He gives Kanata a level stare. There’s no malice in his gaze. Only an odd sense of detachment he’s never felt from Kaoru Hakaze. He’s resigned. It’s fine, everything he does seems to scream, it’s absolutely a-ok. “Don’t worry about me” is the hand behind his neck.
"Falling in love, it's a terrible thing. Isn't it?”
Kaoru doesn't look at Kanata, his dark eyes boring holes in the fog.
"It's really, just, too bad."
It’s a quiet acceptance. Kanata smiles kindly, as he always does, and waves a hand.
“Don’t take too long to come back, okay?”
Kaoru Hakaze leaves. Kanata is used to seeing his back. He has his hair in a stubby ponytail and it rests against the base of his neck. Goodbye, Kaoru. See you soon. It’s a hopeful wish. Kanata doesn’t think being alone is all that good for either of them.
.
Kanata spent too many days alone, before Kaoru Hakaze moved to their decrepit coastal village, and before enlisting in the Jaeger academy. When Chiaki was sick, bedridden for days with colds that wouldn’t go away, Kanata was left to the sea. He waited at the shoreline, for hours on end. What he was waiting for, he couldn’t tell you now. Maybe he could offer a metaphor, or two, but nothing ever came for him.
Not until a masked boy, with an infectious grin and a hot air balloon, fell from the sky.
“It is I, Wataru Hibiki~! Your very own magician!”
.
He wonders if this wild eyed nine year old boy, with his wonderful stories and big dreams, was real to begin with.
.
When they were kids, this breach, this chasm between the three of them, wasn’t that big of a deal. There was Chiaki, there was Kaoru, and then, there was Kanata. There was only saltwater taffy and bad storytelling under ratty blankets, three children with flashlights trying to out do the other. They were twelve and thirteen, with Chiaki as their self proclaimed leader. Kanata liked that a lot. He was the red ranger from staticky sentai shows, with over the top poses and catch phrases. He was warm, and bright.
He felt like home.
He was there before Kaoru was even a concept, holding Kanata’s hand and pulling him forward. Chiaki smiled and the world shuddered. The sea would split open first before it could take away Kanata’s sun.
The streets were their earth, their kingdom. Ugly, mismatched brick castles and rowdy parades through the fog. The skies were more often downcast than not, and whenever there was sun, they would find themselves down by the shore, feet digging into the sand. Living by the coast had its pros and cons, Kanata guesses, but there’s still the sense of fear that mingles with that sense of familiarity.
The ocean was his home. His mother, the tide.
Everyone he knew did not feel the same way. They cursed the sea for bringing the monsters, and he sat there, hands flat, pressed against his stomach. He laughed, and laughed, while Kaoru twirled a butterfly knife between elegant fingers and Chiaki jutted his chin at the newest group of “evildoers.” Anyone who crossed Kanata, they both announced, was the worst kind of person. Kanata didn’t need the protection, he thought this then and he still holds this to be true now, years after his service as a Jaeger pilot.
It wasn’t a big “deal”.
He was kind of tired of other people making decisions for him.
It was easier to drift, go along with the current, but that wasn’t always a viable option.
.
Kanata sighs and thumbs through worn out photo albums, elbows propped up on a lab table. He’s leaning over the surface, feet on the ground, completely hunched over. His lab coat is draped over the back of the chair. His assistant, Souma Kanzaki, bids him farewell. He was relegated to fieldwork and research after the biggest scandal in recent piloting history. It must be a heavy burden for the Kanzaki family jewel. Souma didn’t smile anymore. Kanata was more used to a furrowed brow paired with a scowl, or a determined expression, anything but the dead gaze that seemed to plague everyone Kanata ever felt any attachment towards.
“Do you need me to lock up, shinkai?”
Kanata smiles, and shakes his head. Souma nods and shrugs off the white coat, hangs it on one of the hooks, and does not look back.
“Good work today, Souma.”
The pictures behind the plastic are yellowing. There’s some signs of age here and there, and when Kanata gets to the last section, he furrows his brows. It’s supposed to be a chronicle of their first days at the Citadel, but some of the pictures are missing.
He presses two fingers against the last picture before the disparity.
Chiaki with the biggest grin, it’s something that stretches from ear to ear. Kanata’s expression is calmer, but there’s something glittering in his own gaze that he hasn’t seen in a very long time. Arms over each other’s shoulders, their drivesuits are a perfect fit. Shiny and new.
The newest set of pilots. Finally ready to fight against the Kaiju menace. Chiaki Morisawa (he was always first, he was their leader—48 drops, 48 kills) and Kanata Shinkai (the year’s underdog, better marks in academia—48 drops, 36 kills.), pilots of the “Pleiades Chaser.”
Maybe it was a lesson in irony. the five pointed star Chiaki loved so much, the star he would never be able to reach. Why bother with constellations when he was as bright as the sun?
The littlest things set Kanata off. He clenches his fist over the page, already forgetting about the missing photographs. It wasn’t fair what the system did to them, what he did to Chiaki, but god. it was “necessary.”
The field marshal. Chiaki Morisawa. With his red gaze and stern expression, recruits all around them, they whispered. Did you know, rangers in training murmur, he lost an arm in the war? Got it torn right off, the one he has right now, it’s totally fake. Bubblegum pop. Yeah, totally, he wears a glove on his, ummm, left hand, right? Totally fake. Narukami said that he brought an entire city to its knees. Saved a bunch of people, my mum included. If it wasn’t for him, my baby brother wouldn’t be here, y’know. They say the most absurd things about Chiaki and Kanata stands in the hallways like an annoying ghost. Eyes closed. Lips curled into a smile. That’s him. Recruits shift their attention to the blue wing’s scientist, he’s mad, completely and totally, did you hear, did you hear? How did Morisawa drift with such a basket case? Totally obsessed with the sea. If we don’t watch out, he’s gonna drag us all in, all of us.
If someone had to play the “villain” to Chiaki’s “hero”, Kanata is sure that Chiaki would have preferred a long list of other people. A plethora. An overabundance, god, Chiaki would have begged him, anyone else but you—sometimes it’s crueler to be “kind”, and kinder to be “cruel.” They were born to walk side by side but now they avoided each other in their one hundred mile prison. One unholy wall to one unholy wall. A sky made out of splintered glass and eternal rain. The resignation letter is archived somewhere far away, tucked in a huge filing cabinet deep in the Citadel. Maybe it’s framed behind the president’s head. High up on the wall, with a vintage tint. Eichi Tenshouin’s greatest failure. Their disbandment brought the Jaeger program to a screeching halt, sent the academy into a frenzy, every ranger desperate to fill the gaping void they left behind. Open heart surgery when the patient was already dead.
Kanata carefully closes the photo album, and leaves it on the table for his assistant to take care of when he came back the next day. He doesn’t remember where he found it. He doesn’t think about the missing pictures. There’s only one place they could be. He doesn’t think it’s good for him to go looking for something that’s doing such an incredible job at pretending to be lost. Kanata runs a hand through blue hair, hair the color of the sky, hair the color of ether, and leaves it at that. His coat will be here for him tomorrow. He picks up his bag and slings it over his shoulder, doesn’t forget to lock up. Not this time, maybe next week, and definitely last. The corridors are empty, sprawling, and leave him dazed momentarily. He doesn’t remember the last time he felt like he couldn’t breathe. The Citadel was suffocating, but he could only imagine the Shatterdome was worse. At least, here, he was safe from rangers’ prying eyes and accusing gazes. Whatever safety meant. Kanata wasn’t too familiar with the context, the application, and hasn’t been for a very long time.
He tries not to laugh, and whatever giggle echoes out, he quickly hides with his hand. There is no one to reprimand him, but it is custom. A moment to inhale, a moment to exhale, one, two, three—there, continue. Kanata presses forward, into the abyss.
.
The first night was the worst.
Nosebleeds, that was something modern medicine was still unable to counteract.
“Tilt his head back!”
“No, not back! Forward, don’t be fucking stupid, Morisawa! He’s going to die!”
“Shut up, Kaoru! We’re trying to get the blood to stop going out, right?”
“It’s going to be a goddamn twenty-four car pileup if the blood rushes back. Just, move!”
Kanata doesn’t remember who was yelling at Chiaki, or anything about their first night. The first night after their first kill. Kill. They killed something that night. A monster, they keep having to remind him. It’s really important he makes the distinction, they tell him, underneath the bright lights. Someone shoves a flashlight in front of his face, they turn it on and off, and try to get a reaction. Kanata, he sees stars and comets, stretched out across the metal and iron. What’s going on. He opens his mouth but he’s a gaping fish. Lips flap uselessly. Someone’s shouting but the ringing in his ears is deafening. He feels like he’s underwater. The water fills every orifice, pumps out lungs and organs until he is nothing but brine and salt. He is a piece of coral. Maybe a starfish. Cut him up, and he’ll only come back.
His drivesuit, once shiny and pristine, it’s covered in blood and in black sludge. Oil?, at one point, probably. Someone’s got their hands on his shoulders, and they’re shaking him. Back, and forth. Back, and forth. Kanata’s head is pounding. He doesn’t like the color red. It’s not a good color. It’s not a good color. It’s all over his hands and face and it’s in his eyes, he can’t see, he can’t see—when does he start screaming. The screams drown out everything else. Someone tells him to stay calm, that it’s going to be okay, that they’re with him, and Kanata prays that it is Chiaki.
His friend, holding his hand.
His best friend.
(His only friend.)
(That’s silly, Kanata. The ocean is your friend. Every single rockfish and sea anemone. Kaoru is your friend! You have so many friends but the one who’s desperately begging you to come back, he’s so much more. He means the world to you.)
(Home is his arms, and he’s so, so convinced you’d desert him for the sea.)
Someone drags him out of the Jaeger. Pleiades Chaser is a hundred billion dollar coffin and Kanata is not going to die today. There’s an exchange. Arms to arms, and Kanata, he’s so small. Tall, wiry. Thin. He fits against their chest, and curls into the embrace. Silence. Silence is warm and comfortable. He can drift forever in this touch.
“What are they going to do with him?”
Kaoru Hakaze, covered in fresh blood and in Kaiju guts, he watches Wataru Hibiki take Kanata Shinkai away. Chiaki Morisawa does not answer his question. He throws his helmet off and breaks into a sprint. He chases after his co-pilot. Even he knows when something is rhetorical. The masquerade was only starting, and Kaoru did not want to be there when the spectacle pulled the rug from under their feet. He barks orders at rangers, demands the area clears, and he follows Akiomi Kunugi out. There were damage reports to write, finances to sort out. A battle this immense was bound to leave a particularly nasty scar on the coast.
“They’re going to send him to the best doctors we have. But if Shinkai’s condition worsens…”
Kaoru does not listen to what his superior has to say. His glasses glint in the artificial night, and he runs his hand through his graying chestnut hair. He is tired. Everyone is. Everyone knows. You can’t pilot a Jaeger without the two pilot synchronicity, all the bullshit Kaoru managed to skip out on. So, instead, he busies himself with another cigarette, and ignores Kunugi’s sharp glare. Shut up. The caravan heads toward the red wing. The Shatterdome is a cacophony of sights and sounds but the excitement will die down, and will leave nothing but stillness in its wake.
When Kanata wakes up, the sky is clear.
The curtains are pulled open, tied with electrical wire because they haven’t gotten proper ropes for them in the last four years. Budget cuts. Dr. Kanzaki keeps saying she’s going to put the work order in soon. No one really minds, or wants new curtains, but it makes the place feel more professional. More like an infirmary and less like a morgue. Kanata understands the “why” but not the “how” or even the “when”—that’s not particularly important to him. He feels groggy and sick, his mouth is dry and his throat is sore. Raw. He feels like he’s been sliced in half, and sloppily stitched back together. He feels for his drivesuit but he’s been stripped clean. Hospital scrubs. Bright green. The color of summer grass and “ephemeralness.”
“Hello, my old friend.”
Kanata blinks, one, two, three. Tilts his head to the side. His face goes soft, expression relaxed. Fingers wrapped around the emergency call button.
“Wataru.”
The man behind the man. He’s never seen him in person, not since they crossed paths so, so many years ago. At twenty and twenty-one, Jaeger pilot and the president’s left hand—there would be better ways to meet again. Kanata was not counting on this to be their next encounter. Maybe it was going to be their last. Wataru smiles, and tucks a strand of long, long hair behind his ear. He pulls out a yellow rose from his sleeve, and props it up against Kanata’s pillow.
“Eichi sent me, to observe. Are you doing well?”
“I am doing ‘better’, but the tide makes me feel uneasy.”
Wataru nods.
“Sometimes a performer needs an extra push, before they can really blow their audience away.”
He is not as bright as Kanata remembers, and Kanata remembers his friend as a distant star. Brilliant. Burning. Orbiting around his universe. Too far away to reach.
To see him now was like seeing the dead rise.
There’s a commotion behind the door, and Wataru diverts his attention to the incoming procession. Someone must have informed the rest of the company that Kanata was awake. Wataru looks back at the boy, because even at twenty, he’s still a boy, and presses an index finger against his lips.
“The great Wataru Hibiki has one more act.” He winks.
A disappearing act. Kanata applauds politely.
Chiaki finally breaks through the barricade, and collapses at his bedside. He practically throws himself over Kanata, ignoring the IV needles and the tubing, his face buried in kanata’s chest, arms wrapped around his neck. He’s apologizing, one thousand words a second, they all spill out of his mouth, and all Kanata can do is press a hand against his cheek. His cheeks are wet with tears and it’s not a look he is used to. He leans forward to kiss him.
That’s the kind of codependency everyone warned them about.
The kiss is messy, awkward, Kanata catches half of his mouth, and Chiaki only registers after the fact, what’s happening, and what’s expected of his snot covered self. He tilts his head up way too fast, they bump foreheads. Chiaki is apologizing again. The word “sorry” becomes a part of Kanata’s vocabulary that day. Try again. Lips sloppily pressed against each other and limbs tangled, Chiaki pulls the IV at one point (only moments after they try again, and a solid two seconds before Doctor Jin Sagami pulls Chiaki off of Kanata and Kunugi prepares for a mile long tirade.) But, Kanata loves the way Chiaki’s hand feels against the small of his back. The way he runs his fingers through his hair, and the way his laugh sounds in his ears. Doctor Sagami keeps Chiaki held back, he’s still in his dirty drivesuit, but the look in his eyes is fire, and Kanata burns.
Kanata would not be able to explain what “love” means, but what he felt, he could only express with the brilliance that accompanies lower deities.
.
But.
He gave it all up.
He didn’t mean to, really.
It was a matter of “fate” and “consequence.”
.
Five drops. Five successful battles.
The fifth is almost a failure.
Of course. Everyone knows, one can’t ride on Lady Luck for so long, there’s always a moment where everything falls apart. Chiaki and Kanata are twenty-five, twenty-four, they’re rockstars. The Citadel’s best, Yumenosaki Corp’s most dangerous duo. Plastered across every billboard in the mainland, they were heroes. They were winning. Accolade after accolade, no one would have ever guessed that the street rats of the century would be the ones with an express ticket to the glories of heaven.
Being Chiaki’s co-pilot is like piloting with a black hole. He’s too much. Every motion is too exaggerated, every breath is hitched, like he wants to be on the edge of his god forsaken seat, Kanata spends half the time they’re trapped in Pleiades Chaser playing catch-up, working so, so hard to keep Chiaki from completely mauling himself. He’s screaming in his lovely, lovely voice, and Chiaki’s laughter bounces off the titanium.
“It’s going to be okay! We’re heroes! We’re going to be legends!”
“Don’t associate me in something you obviously only mean for yourself,” Kanata wants to say, but instead, he punches in a sequence. Pleiades roars. Their secret weapon is a lance, did you know, Chiaki? Maybe if you stopped spending so much time boasting—Kanata is their fighter, and Chiaki does his best to match his pace. Everything Chiaki says, everything he thinks, it’s pounding through Kanata’s skull, we’re going to be legends we’re going to be heroes we’re going to be the world’s best—they’re gonna be screaming our names, they’ll remember us forever!
Kanata’s wondered, once or twice, with a flick of his wrist, the lance twirls and drills a hole through a eye the size of the moon, if Chiaki can even read him. Before he can think about it too much, there’s always something, there’s never a chance for reflection. Not in times of war. There’s a monstrous shriek that fills the air and snaps Kanata out of Chiaki’s reverie, and even Chiaki, brave and stupid, brave and wonderful Chiaki flinches. Fine, Chiaki shouts back, with his terrible grin and windswept, bloodstained brown hair. Guttural. Beastly. In that moment, he is no longer human, and Kanata’s never felt a connection that word, not in a very long time, but what Chiaki does, it makes him want to tear his own heart out.
He’s the one that Kanata has to look over in white walls, tucked under regulation hospital bed sheets. He suffers alone. He sleeps alone. He wants to pilot alone. Chiaki’s hand clutches Kanata’s, like when they were kids, so many years ago. But Chiaki doesn’t let him in. He doesn’t let him see what’s behind the bravado he’s built around himself, out of a desperation to be the hero that others could rely on. To be someone that doesn’t worry others. They knew each other’s brains, lived in each other's memories, found resolve in the ridges of rib cages, and gray matter but Chiaki kept his head up and said: I didn’t wanna be a burden.
All Kanata wanted to do was help him. There was no need to be a martyr, Chiaki. There was no need for anyone to die.
Especially not me, but especially not you.
Chiaki is dreaming about his funeral, grandiose and opulent and all Kanata can do is keep him grounded. None of that matters if Chiaki doesn’t wake up. Nothing matters, even when Kanata learns that they won. Launch five is considered a success. The president sends his regards to his most promising, most celebrated pilots.
He’s tired of being a tether, when he wants to be an anchor.
.
Kanata doesn’t tell him his plan. He turns in his resignation papers. The contract termination, and the permission form to transfer to laboratory research.
No one else will be able to match him, to drift with him.
It’s the only way he knows he’ll keep Chiaki alive.
It feels like the ultimate betrayal. Sealed with a “kiss.”
.
Chiaki wakes up, rubs his eyes, and asks--where is my head.
One year.
Two years.
three years.
Four years.
Kanata presses his fingers against his mouth.
He doesn’t feel the blood, but he tastes the iron on his lips.
Maybe it’s a dream.
They’re still drifting in the dirty community pool, twenty years into the past. With hands held tight. Thinking about martyrdom and glory. Concepts far too lofty for little kids to truly understand. The price of ‘life’, the value of ‘death’.
The meaning of ‘love’.
.
.
.
after.
The new batch is promising. Kanata is in charge of their psychiatric evaluations, and Souma works with them on hand to hand combat. He wipes the floor clean with a bamboo practice sword.
One boy, he stands back up. He’s got fire in his eyes, it’s dancing on his tongue. he juts his chin and goes back into a fighting stance. Kanata takes notes. Solid build, steady resolve. Refuses to falter.
“Tetora...please…” Another boy, he was knocked out earlier in the tournament. A boy blessed in every way, but overtaken by a cowardice surprising for someone so far into the training. His eyes are aquamarine, and there’s only fear in there. Four weeks before the final tests, and this giant was still amongst the batch. To survive this long, it was miraculous. They’re blood thirsty, this year.
“Midori, watch me! I’m about to send the captain home crying! Ossu!” He lets out a battle cry and Souma deflects him. Tetora charges right back. They rally. The other rangers, start to shift their interest to the battle at hand.
Promising was a good word.
“Chiaki, take ‘care’ of them.”
It would be a shame if history repeated itself.