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Jin had tears in his eyes, standing against a wall of a tiny, abandoned house in the middle of the forest, far enough away from the city to not attract the attention of any of the newly formed monsters. It was just him and Lucia, alone. They decided to rest here for the night, since it would be safer than sleeping under the stars, even if the floorboards near the small table were starting to rot and water leaked in from the door and windows.
She was standing right next to him, fiddling with the wooden button that pinned her cloak together. He almost wished he could just mess around with something near him and be soothed, but that would probably make his mind wander more than it already is.
He wished he could run laps until he reached at least 10 kilometers (Trey didn't have a leg) or maybe do 1000 push-ups right where he stood (Trey had a leg now). Maybe sit-ups, and just keep going until his core hurt so much that he wouldn’t be able to move it without being sore for at least a week (Trey was no longer human).
He needed some sort of punishment, some kind of discipline, to ensure he never trusts someone like Everett again. He never should have trusted him, and he was a fool to have in the first place.
He sniffled quietly and saw Lucia turn her head to look at him. He looked away, he didn't want her to need to deal with this… mess. This situation was a mess. He was a mess. He's almost crying thinking about something as small as which self-inflicted punishment he should be given.
Lucia should be allowed to cry. She fell from nearly 50 stories up, hit the ground and somehow managed to live. That's traumatizing (what part of today hasn't been), especially when it was done by Guildmaster Rock, someone that earned that trust and had been Guildmaster for years. How could she have known that he would turn into a terrifying beast of a monster, snarling and growling at them.
Jin pictured Everett grabbing Alf by the throat, only to try and disintegrate it with his claws. He thought it was cruel that just this morning, he saved a man from this same kind of agony. That was this morning. Jin tried to ignore it, but it stayed at the front of his mind.
They saw the sole survivor belonging to team Echo. Everett killed him. He would have if Everett didn't. He was prepared to. They fought the Horned Primate. Everett lost control. Trey lost his leg. Everett battled Alf so gruesomely that it was difficult to watch.
A single tear fell from his eye, the one further from Lucia. He was able to swipe it away before she noticed.
Lucia fell from the sky and she should have absolutely died on impact. Trey's leg grew back so monstrously that he wanted it gone. Jin agreed and removed it for him, and his screams were so shrill and agonizing that he nearly wished he didn't. Everett returned and made Trey a monster anyway.
“Saving him” my ass.
He never realized the kind of damage Trey could do to him if he had that kindness and background and experience together removed (by Everett). He remembered him saying, “It’s either my way, or death,” and that one sentence scared him more than most things today. It meant so much more than the words alone conveyed. It held all of the broken trust between them. It held the monster inside of him, the same one it let free. You either become the thing that we signed up to kill, or you die for my cause of keeping them alive.
Tears were dripping from his eyes, slow but consistently. He turned even further away from Lucia. His mouth was locked in a grimace, trying to stop how his lips trembled and jaw shook.
Jin felt a tap on his arm and jumped, still not looking. There was silence for a moment or two. “Are you okay?”
Tears instantly started to fall faster, because no! No, he's not! He was so far from okay, and he had no idea when he might feel okay again. He said nothing.
“Jin?” Lucia said. Her voice was filled with warmth and love. It was soft, and gentle, and altogether kind. It was so kind.
Jin swallowed, trying to dislodge the frog in his throat before speaking. There was a pretty high chance his voice would just sound so wrong and shattered that Lucia would be able to tell that something was up instantly.
He took a shaky breath as quietly as he could. “Yeah?” he said. His voice didn't break, but it sounded so close. The tears and snot made it sound so sad, and so unlike his usual voice.
“It's… alright if you're not okay. I-” Lucia cut herself off when her voice broke. “I know I'm not. It was a lot.”
Fuck. Her voice was so shaky and scared. It only made Jin feel more angry with Everett, more angry with Guildmaster Rock, and more angry with himself.
She grabbed his hand and he had to swallow down what would have been an audible cry. “Can I hug you?”
Jin didn't trust his voice at all. He knew at this point it would be completely shattered (Like the glass that fell as they ran) well beyond recognition. It would be as shaky as Lucia’s and sound as scared as he felt. He nodded, answering Lucia's question.
She wrapped her arms around his chest, both underneath his own arms. She shoved her face into his shoulder, her warmth filling him slowly. He could feel a few tears soak through his shirt, and she was shaking slightly, but it wasn't as bad as it could be.
Lucia always wore her heart on her sleeve. But her best friend didn't die. Her best friend wasn't turned into the thing he hated the most. Her best friend didn't turn into the thing that he was told only a few hours earlier to kill for him if he ever saw it.
He didn't want to think like that (It made his chest ache and burn). She went through a lot too. Everyone did.
A shaky breath left Jin’s lungs. Actually, his whole body was shaking. Lucia had to have known, with how she was as close as she was in her embrace.
Jin wrapped his arms around her and pulled her even closer into the hug, unable to find the will to slow his tears anymore. This was the worst day of his life. It beat their village being torn to shreds. It beat long runs when he was on the brink of passing out. It beat his father dying. It beat everything else.
Today was awful.
There was no reason to try and pretend that it wasn't.
Jin squeezed Lucia even tighter, just for a moment. Jin sucked in a wheezed breath, and it was pulled out of him in a quiet, but not inaudible, cry.
Lucia pulled back slightly to look up. She saw a reddened face, blotchy and irritated. The streaks of tears were trying to clean his face of the mud (from their hunt) and the blood (from the massacre). His jaw was locked in place and looking into her eyes, his own vision so blurry, he couldn't breathe.
Her mouth opened, her own face marked by a few tears, as she observed him with horror. This horror, just as quickly as it appeared on her face, changed to compassion.
“Oh my god, let's sit down,” Lucia pulled back just a bit more to get Jin to release his hold on her. Just as he did, she took his hands in her own and tried to bring him to the ground with her. He didn't feel like he could even try to oppose her lead.
Lucia sat with her legs out to the side, and tried to use her elbow to wipe off dirt that dried into her dress. Jin sat with his legs crossed beneath him.
He removed a hand from Lucia’s and rubbed away the tears on his face, currently being replaced by even more. Lucia pushed his hand down and held his cheek, wiping away whatever tears fell within her grasps. He sniffled back the mucus clogging his nose.
They stayed like that for a while, one hand interlocked with the other’s, Lucia's other wiping tears from Jin’s cheek, and Jin's laying limply in his lap.
Jin closed his eyes as he let Lucia do whatever she wanted. If she betrayed him, then he would accept that death in an instant. She was the only one he trusted now. He couldn't bear to throw it away because Everett threw that trust in his own face.
After a few minutes, Jin assumed, Lucia shifted to pull him into a hug. He kept his eyes closed as her hand moved to his neck to place it in the crook of her shoulder.
“I’m sorry… I'm so sorry about Trey.”
Jin let out a sob into her shoulder that felt like it was trapped in his chest since he first saw him on the stretcher.
He felt sick. His stomach was tied in knots and his heart felt like it didn't want to work how it should. It beat so hard in his chest it felt like it might explode.
She ran her fingers through his hair, scratching at the nape of his neck. He didn't know how Lucia could be so… solid. He felt like the world couldn't touch him here. Everything was bad, but it was less so now, for however long this lasts. While she's letting him cry, holding him close, combing her fingers through his hair, everything bad was paused. They could figure it out later. Right now was the only thing happening.
Lucia pushed the red bandana up to rub his head a bit more easily. He sniffled, thinking about how his matches with Trey’s. It was an award of competence from their Master. She made a trial where a blindfold would cover their eyes, and they would have to strike their enemies based on sound alone. They were allowed to keep the blindfold, with both of them wearing it as a headband, pushing their hair out of their eyes as it grew out longer.
He would have to tell his mom about this.
His nose burned so much more than it did previously as he dug his fingers into Lucia's cloak, burying himself as close as he could. A loud sob tore out of him, followed by even more.
He would have to tell their Master that Trey died. It was easier to think of it like that than to think of him as a monster. There was nothing of Trey left in that.
He saw the red bandana, ripped in two, laying on the floor of the infirmary as he and Lucia ran from the monsters flooding the city.
“Jin, please tell me what's going on. I don't know how to help you,” Lucia softly admitted.
He curled his fingers into her cloak more. “I- I,” his voice was barely recognizable with how wet and broken it was. He could hardly tell what words were coming out of his mouth with how much his tears blocked his throat. “I need to tell my m-mom.” He sniffed into her neck.
“Oh… okay?” She said, obviously confused.
“She- Master. Our master,” Jin sobbed, “Need to tell her.”
Lucia pulled his body closer to hers as he sobbed deeply, shoulders shaking.
Her voice sounded strained, “We’re gonna be okay.” She took a heavy breath. “It's all gonna be fine.”
Jin wished he was able to just grab that ripped bandana. He wanted to hold what remained of Trey until he was able to give it to their Master. Jin whined at the thought.
“We’re- We’re okay,” Lucia trembled, her voice becoming more watery.
Jin nodded, needing to let her know that he's hearing this. The state of everything around them was too much to be able to do much else.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’re okay,” Lucia tearfully giggled. “We’re okay.”
Jin released his tight grasp on her cloak as he transitioned to just hugging her instead of grappling for some sort of hold to keep from thinking she would leave him too. Jin’s sobs ebbed, though tears still poured from his eyes.
They would need to make a plan. They would need people to fight back. They would need power and adaptiveness and, most of all, courage. They couldn't just hide while monsters overtook their entire guild. Well, more than it already had. But everything he thought about would be a task for tomorrow and the coming days. They couldn't afford to plan while still fragile, cracked, broken, shattered, by everything that happened that day.
Jin let Lucia fall into his shoulder this time, her tears forcing weak sobs from her chest. He leaned his head against hers, savoring that calm before the inevitable storm on their paths.
This was a comfort they could only afford for tonight, and he wasn't going to let that opportunity go to waste.