Chapter Text
03:24
AM
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Light shown in through a slow moving large circular fan that covered the entirety of the only window in the room. There was always a constant stream of light. It didn’t matter where you were in the city, LED and neon lights followed wherever you went. The sky looked a pale gray even at night. Stars no longer shone. Life went on. The fan blade kept turning in its eternal struggle to move air around the room.
A small stick of incense sat, long since burned, at the foot of the bed. It left a stale woody smell to the room that covered the outside stench of diesel and rubber. The crowded city streets below filled the room with a dull roar of sound and the occasional tinny projected advertisement. It was a small sanctuary from the overstimulating chaos from outside
The light was bright enough for one to see a good amount of the room as if a small lamp were light. It was small. A ‘studio apartment’ that was barely enough to fit what a person needed to have a comfortable life. Everything in the apartment was compacted, put away, hidden to save space. That’s how most people in New Hama lived.
Lucky didn’t live in New Hama though. Or at least he didn’t consider his home to be there. Maybe he did, it was hard to tell now. Things had gotten too complicated for his liking as of late. He often missed his humble abode in Tech Row. Honestly, he just liked the familiarity of it. He had lived there his entire life, minus a few when he was younger and living on the streets, it was all he’d ever known. A small dirty room above the bar that his gang was affiliated with. Sometimes he’d find strangers or other gang members sleeping there. He didn’t mind sharing a resting place. Besides, life was far too cruel on those crime ridden streets to not spare a little sympathy for someone who made it through the bar unscathed.
Bar. Drinks. He could really use a drink right now. It was god only knows how early in the morning and he was still awake in bed thinking. He had done a lot of that lately. More than he’d like. Lucky glanced over his shoulder at the man sleeping at his side, white linen sheets scrunched up around him like crumpled paper. His long black hair was untied and covered most of his face. This was his apartment. Lucky had, upon his own insistence, “spent the night” as he would so delicately explain it to his boss later when he returned to the bar.
The light filtering through showed off the sleeping man’s tattoo on his left arm. Lucky had never gotten a good look at it until now. It was a swirling pattern of a blue dragon surrounded by white clouds that wrapped the entirety of his left arm. His only arm. He had removed his cybernetic arm to sleep more comfortably, at some point after they had both tired themselves out. Lucky noticed it delicately placed on the nightstand, the light reflected off of its polished metal.
Seikichi had been lucky. At least in Lucky’s opinion. His cybernetic arm was top of the line, fit with expensive metal and wiring components that Lucky couldn’t even dream of having. He was jealous. Lucky’s own prosthetic creaked as he shifted slightly. He had lost the bottom half of his leg when he was young, the pain of the memory was long faded and stored away in his mind. All that was left was a cheap rusted metal and a tangle of wires. It had served him well no doubt, but Lucky couldn’t help but think of it in distaste.
Prosthetics and cybernetics enhancements were common, especially in New Hama. Although those who had them usually ordered them as enhancements rather than actually needing them.The need for prosthetics was much more common in Tech Row and Old Town, where the people who did not make enough to buy their way into New Hama lived. Lucky found it ironic how the rich business men could brag about having the newest shiny metal implant, but spit on those who scrounged for scrap just to be able to walk with two legs. If you need it, it's trashy; if you want it, it's trendy. Someone had said that to Lucky, he couldn’t remember who. It was true though.
He thought back to one of the first times he had walked around New Hama with Seikichi. The crowds of people that passed them all had some sort of silver or gold cybernetic implant. Some were more obvious, a hand or an eye, some were as subtle as thin metallic lines running down their face. One man had stood out to him. He was in a crisp black business suit. He was walking fast in the opposite direction, briefcase and tele-com in hand. Though the first thing Lucky noticed was the black metal mask the man was wearing. It mirrored his own, although a much older design and rusted around the edges. As the man passed Lucky and Seikichi, he glanced over at Lucky’s mask and disgust flashed across his eyes. Ironic. The whole disparity between New Hama and Tech Row was ironic. Lucky figured the man didn’t even need the mask, but liked the aesthetic of how it matched his suit. Lucky needed his though.
His mask sat face up on the nightstand closest to him. Ever since he was young he had issues breathing. Asthma attacks and coughing fits plagued his childhood before he was taken under his boss’s wing. His boss, Samuel, often called Big Daddy was the one who took him in. He cleaned him up, bought him the mask, fitted him for the prosthetic leg, even named him. He was Lucky’s father for all intents and purposes. His boss- no, his father, had given him the means to survive. Yet Lucky hated the prosthetics he had provided. Hated that, in all of the technological advancements that the world had seen, he would not reap any of the benefits and would be stuck with a rusty metal leg.
He loved the man dearly. Or maybe he hated him. Life had gotten complicated recently. Samuel was his father, that he could say for certain. Even then the man had simply taken him in. Lucky sighed deeply, his breath hitching in his lungs. It seemed everything made it hard for him to breathe as of late.
There was a shift in weight at his side that drew him out of his thoughts. Lucky glanced back down to his side and saw Seikichi sit slightly up, propped up on his left arm. The pair stared at each other for a moment. The only sound between them were the soft wheezes from Lucky.
“You should put your mask back on,” Seikichi said, his voice deep and slow from being woken up mid sleep.
Lucky quietly scoffed. Trust in Seikichi to forever be the subtle type.
“Did I wake you?”
A pause. He had definitely woken him up.
“You keep moving,” Seikichi said matter-of-factly.
“Sorry. Can’t sleep.”
Seikichi fully sat up, leaning back against the headboard alongside Lucky. His arm had started to ache from the angle at which he was leaning on it. Looking over he caught Lucky fidgeting with the joint where his knee met the jagged metal of his prosthetic. That must have been what was bothering him. The man looked worn, not tired which was to be expected, worn. His short dark brown hair was plastered to his forehead covered in a thin sheen of sweat. Seikichi was trained in noticing people’s body language. It was helpful in combat and obtaining information, but he never had to try around Lucky. The man was an open book no matter how hard he tried to hide his feelings. Anyone could see that something was bothering him.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Seikichi nudged him slightly, trying to ease the tension.
Lucky had lost himself in thought again. Drawn away by the sound of electronic ads that blared outside the window. The muffled English intermingled with Japanese reminded him of something.
“Hm? Oh, it’s nothin’.”
“You are fidgeting.”
“Guess I am,” His eyes wandered around the room while Seikichi looked intently at him.
“Lucky.”
“What?” He turned back, greeted by Seikichi’s intense dark stare, “C’mon drop it, we don’t have to do this.”
Lucky didn’t get attached to people. At least that’s what he told himself. At the very least he didn’t stay up talking to whatever partner happened to be at his side, talking about the darkest things that kept him awake. Maybe that was before he met Seikichi. Everything had been different lately, so maybe this could be too. At the very least Seikichi was stubborn, more stubborn than himself. He had a way of convincing Lucky what most others could not, Lucky wasn’t sure what to call it. So here they were.
“You can keep your secrets if you stop moving around then,” Seikichi said, he started to shift as if he were going back to sleep, knowing Lucky would break eventually.
Lucky smirked, “My knees killin’ me, happy now?”
Seikichi sat back up looking at him out of the corner of his eye with a satisfied look, “So take a painkiller,” He gestured towards a drawer on the far wall which houses all of his bottled medicine.
They both knew it wasn’t painkillers Lucky was after.
Lucky stared down at his leg. He had kicked the thin linen sheets off some time ago, he told himself that the room was so hot it made him sweat. But the room wasn’t hot. Something really was bothering him. He wasn’t even sure what it was. He flexed his calf, or what would his calf if it wasn’t a rusted piston that creaked when he did so. The sharp metallic sound cut through their silence.
“Have I ever told you how I got this leg?” Lucky asked, not looking up.
“Briefly. You said your father had it made for you,” Seikichi slightly leaned on Lucky’s shoulder, trying to be of some comfort for whatever the man was fighting in his mind.
Lucky shook his head, “When Samuel picked me up, must’ve been 8 or 9 I can’t really remember, I had one of those scrapped robot legs.”
A siren sounded off somewhere in the city.
“Figure you wouldn’t know about that, having to scrap for parts. But a lot of us kids had too, if we were missing parts ourselves.
“Well Samuel let me run around like that for a few months. I’d go off and run whatever they wanted me too- drugs, weapons, information, whatever. It was fine for a while.”
Seikichi absentmindedly grabbed Lucky’s hand, running his thumb over Lucky’s rough fingers.
“I’d get into scraps too- used to be real wily when I was younger. The other kids would usually leave me alone because they knew about my breathing problem, it wasn’t worth it to rough me up if I could actually die because of it.
“This one kid though- can’t remember his name. Buster or Bucky, somethin’ stupid like that. This big kid, husky I guess, with a face like a bulldog. He fuckin’ hated me. Don’t know why really, it had something to do with the kid’s boss having it out with Samuel or something like that.
“Anyways, I remember I was specifically running this box of rigged card decks to this casino. It was raining really hard so I had to be quick and careful to not get the box too wet. And the kid came up behind me and kicked the back of my good leg, the fucker.”
Lucky’s grip tightened around Seikichi’s hand, his green gaze was set on the wall in front of them as he told his story.
“He laid me out in that alleyway not sparing a lick of mercy on me. I had black bruised ribs all the way up. He was yelling at me the whole time, sayin’ things I couldn’t really understand, not that I could really focus with him trying to kick my ribcage in.
“When he was done he spat and said, now I’ll never forget what he said, ‘You fucking cripple.’ I don’t know why that stuck with me, now that I say it, it sounds stupid. But he said it with so much hate. He just fuckin’ hated me, and I didn’t even know his name.”
Lucky sighed deeply, taking a moment to pause before continuing.
“I must’ve been out there for a few hours before anyone came looking. I remember how the rain came down and stung my eyes as I laid on my back. The rain lit up the neon lights in the alley, so I just focused on watching the colors instead of how bad my ribs hurt.
“Someone picked me up eventually, not sure who it was exactly, but next thing I know I’m on the doc’s table and Samuel is at my side cursing and a-yellin’ at the doctor as he was patching me up. He said I was lucky I didn’t have an asthma attack or I would’ve been dead. He was always telling me that I was lucky.
“Figure that’s where Samuel got the name from. Anyways when I came back around, Samuel was sitting by my side. He looked real serious, mind you I couldn’t have been any older than 10 at the time. He says to me, ‘Boy I need to tell you something. That son-of-a-bitch that did this to you is going to pay. But it ain’t gonna be me.’ He said it with such conviction that I understood what he meant. I had to get revenge, whether I wanted it or not.”
Before Lucky continued, Seikichi interrupted, “All of that while you were a boy?”
Lucky laughed softly, “Don’t say that like you haven’t been through worse.”
They had already had that conversation, at that point that question was more patronizing than concerning. Seikichi sighed, he was being sincere, he had detached so much of his own childhood that hearing someone going through something similar at such a young age was genuinely surprising.
“Sorry, didn’t mean that to sound like it did. The kid though, Bucky or Buster, once I got my new leg he never stood a chance. I could actually run now, I wouldn’t fall over from some son-of-a-bitch kicking me in my good leg. So, I waited in some alley where I knew he would be. He walked past and I followed him until we were alone.
“I beat the shit out of him,” Lucky almost sounded remorseful, “I made sure he wasn’t gonna walk on either of his legs again. It… It was like a dream, I wasn’t all there. I just remembered how Samuel said it had to be me. Over and over in my head I told myself it had to be me.
“No one really messed with me after that. Especially not the kid. I heard he ended up chair-bound from how badly I had fucked his legs up. Samuel and the rest of the gang congratulated me, respected me, praised me, but I felt sick for weeks after that.
“I had a new leg at the price of the kid’s.”
A heavy silence filled the air. They both watched the dust particles fall slowly in the filtered light from outside. Another siren flew past, neither flinched at its loud wails. Lucky’s wheezing grew more ragged, most likely from the strain of talking for so long without much pause. Yet, he didn’t reach for his mask or for the small black box of medicated cigarettes that lay on the floor in one of his pant’s pockets. Maybe it was his way of paying respect to the kid he had caused so much pain to. Maybe not.
“I’m sorry.”
Lucky looked up, surprised. He met Sekichi’s sympathetic gaze.
“I’m sorry he made you do that, you did not deserve to have to go through something like that at such a young age,” He looked down at Lucky’s rough hand- at all the tiny scars that covered it like scraped stone.
“Ain’t that just it though,” Lucky sighed.
“Hm?”
“Everyone has some shit they, ‘didn’t deserve to go through’. It’s fucked up.”
He swung his legs over the side of the bed, which was only a few feet from the ground. Everything in Sekichi’s apartment was low, in true New Hama style. Lucky reached down for his pants, digging around in its pockets for his pack of cigarettes. The little black metal box was sleek, sporting a glowing blue line along the side of it. He pulled out a matching black medicated cigarette, lit it with the burner end of the box, and took a long drag. It calmed his wheezing and filled the air around him with a thick blue-gray haze that smelled like camphor.
“The world isn’t fair,” Sekichi said quietly, almost to himself.
Lucky stared at the small glowing end of his cigarette. Damn right. If the world was fair he’d have both legs and be able to breathe the city air without his lungs attacking themselves. If the world was fair Sekichi would be with his family and have both of his arms. If the world was fair they wouldn’t know each other, wouldn’t be comforting each other in the middle of the night.
“We cannot make up for that,” Sekichi moved to sit beside him again, trying to catch his gaze, “We can only trust in our friends and stick together.
“You are not that hurt little boy anymore Lucky. You do not need to torture yourself over something you can not change.”
He rested his hand on Lucky’s thigh. Lucky was still hot. Fever crossed Sekichi’s mind, but he chalked it up to the man being stressed and the room being hot. It still wasn’t. It didn’t matter, in the morning they’d both agree on what a hot night it was.
“Yeah… Guess I’m not.”
Lucky sat back, leaving his still burning cigarette on top of the metal case to burn out. Neither of them were the scared little kids they once were- for better or for worse. At least they had each other. Lucky was grateful for that, but he wouldn’t admit it for a long time. He wasn’t used to being tied down to anyone, but he’d be damned if Seikichi didn’t do a good job of doing just that.
Their conversation faded into the night, becoming just another long forgotten sound in the endless white noise of the city. Lucky had resigned to laying on his back, he told himself it was for his wheezing, but didn’t complain when Seikichi shifted to his side to lay on his chest. No, that wasn’t bad at all, even when his arm fell asleep long before he did.
Life went on in New Hama. Cars sped past, rain began to drizzle, and the non-stop advertisements yelled out into the night. The cigarette eventually burned out, leaving an ashen filter behind. The medicinal smell was still present in the morning, the only remainder of the conversation from the night before.