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“You’re spacing out again,” Seven nudged Jack gently on the shoulder, then looked apologetically at Zoffy. The commander had been patient with Jack’s odd behaviour ever since his sudden return from Earth, but Seven could tell that Zoffy’s patience was starting to wear thin. If Jack could at least have the sense to take medical leave...
“I’m fine,” Jack insisted, a bit more of a bite to his words than usual, as he straightened his back and looked to Zoffy, “You can continue.”
Zoffy merely sighed and continued the briefing. They were supposed to be discussing Ace’s deployment to Earth, but even Ace seemed more worried about Jack than about his new assignment.
“He passed his examination, right?” Ace approached Seven after the meeting had ended. They both turned to look at Jack, walking slowly, aimlessly, in a direction that led to nowhere he was supposed to be.
“Yeah but there’s clearly something wrong with him,” Seven replied gruffly, crossing his arms, “I told him to go get properly checked out, y’know, more thoroughly than the basic shit they do when you return from deployment, but he just keeps insisting he’s fine.”
“Well he’s not,” Ace frowned.
“Obviously. But he’s never been good at taking care of himself. He’s reckless.”
“So are you,” Ace teased. “Try talking to him again.”
“I suck at that,” Seven scowled, “He hasn’t even been drinking lately...how am I supposed to talk to him if we’re both sober?”
“Drink alone then,” Ace shrugged. “He seemed upset about me going to Earth, start with that.”
Seven shook his head. It didn’t matter where he started. The real problem, the one he had been doing his best not to let any of the other Brothers know, is that conversation with Jack was beyond impossible. He wasn’t just spacing out occasionally; he’d stop mid-sentence and just stare blankly ahead. Sometimes he’d forget what they were talking about after only three minutes. He’s had to ask Seven who countless people were, even if he’d known them for centuries.
It was all Seven could do just to cover for Jack enough that he wouldn’t get dismissed, which would likely just confuse and upset him at this point...
“You have to realise what’s going on,” Seven sat in Jack’s living room, empty beer bottles from his search for courage scattered on the coffee table. Jack was next to him, sitting in the somewhat stiff manner he usually did, but there was something missing in his eyes.
“No...I don’t,” Jack said slowly, his mouth twisting into a frown as his voice grow more agitated. “I...I really don’t.”
“Yes you do!” Seven grabbed Jack’s shoulder, shaking it. “How can you not?!”
“I don’t know!” Jack jumped back from Seven’s touch. “Everything feels confusing!”
“Then talk to me! Or Ace, or someone!” Seven grabbed another beer and took a long gulp. “Get your shit together already! You’re gonna get dismissed at this rate.”
“Oh fuck off Kishida,” Jack swiped the beer from Seven’s hand, then paused.
“Who’s Kishida...?”
“I...I don’t know...” Jack stared at the beer in his hand. “This makes me more confused, take it back.”
“You’re the one who stole it,” Seven mumbled, resuming his drinking. “I think you should try remembering why you left Earth though. Maybe that’ll help.”
Jiro was alone.
Painfully, completely, alone.
His sister and brother were gone, and Go...he was barely ever awake, and when he was, he might as well have been dead.
Go would mutter strange things Jiro didn’t understand. There was someone called Seven, someone else called Nackle. Other times he muttered things Jiro did understand, but he wished he didn’t. Hearing Go mention Ken or Aki just made the pain worse.
He wished Go had died too. That would be easier to deal with.
Jiro brought put another glass of water on the table next to Go’s bed. He briefly hoped Go would forget how to drink it.
“It shouldn’t have caused any problems!”
Jack’s pleading insistence still rang in Seven’s mind the next day. He agreed, it shouldn’t have. He asked Mother of Ultra too, and Hikari, both said that an Ultra detaching from their host should be seamless.
But Jack was...not Jack anymore. He wasn’t getting worse, at least, but he wasn’t getting better either.
At first Seven had thought it was from trauma – he sometimes got strange flashbacks and memory gaps too – but this was different.
“I had to!”
Jack had been barely coherent, but that was one thing he had been able to recount clearly.
He had to leave Earth, he had to separate himself from Hideki Go. He had to. If he had stayed, more would have died.
After that, he had gone back to babbling.
“We shouldn’t go back there.”
“We only make things worse.”
“Bonding with humans is wrong.”
“Zoffy was right.”
Jack had always been one of the strongest supporters of bonding with humans, and living on Earth to get to know them. What had given him guilt so strong he was fearful of the very idea now?
Seven thought back to how he had found Jack – flying away from Earth as fast as he could – he had been so upset he had barely recognised Seven at first, and he wasn’t even flying in the right direction to reach M78. If Seven hadn’t already been on his way to check up on Jack he might’ve never found his way home. He hadn’t sensed any alien presence back then, but now he wished he had done more to investigate.
He had just been so worried.
He was still so worried.
Jiro watched Go leave him. It wasn’t the same as dying. He was just going to a hospital. Captain Ibuki said that he’d be allowed to visit, but he didn’t want to.
Whenever Go was in the hospital, he always tried to cheer Jiro up. Then he’d escape the hospital somehow and be a hero...Aki would get upset at him, Ken would laugh.
That wasn’t going to happen this time.
Jiro just wanted to stop remembering all these things.
“I’m going to ask Aunt Marie to look at you,” Seven told Jack. He had finally convinced his friend to take a leave of absence, but he could tell Jack was just doing it to placate him, and was fully intending on still sneaking off to try and work.
“No you aren’t,” Jack replied, staring angrily at a cabinet he had opened. “Where the hell is my lighter?”
“Your what?”
“My lighter. I want a-”
“You don’t smoke, Jack,” Seven sighed. He had gotten used to Jack’s confusion, but not the painful, sad twist in his stomach that came with it.
“Oh...right...”
“And yes, I am. Unless you’d prefer Hikari.”
“No.”
“Didn’t think so,” Seven almost laughed. For a moment he had his friend back, but seeing Jack standing, not sure what to do next, brought him back to reality. “Come over here.”
This was all Seven could do now – sit with Jack, listen to him talk about whatever he could remember, and hope it would get better.
Mother of Ultra explained everything, but all Seven could hear was “irreversible”.
How could this happen? Was it even possible for a human and an ultra to become that close? And if Jack hadn’t separated when he did...would the line between Jack and Hideki have disappeared entirely? Was Jack lost even before the separation? What was the point of no return? Was the Jack he rescued from the Sun the Jack he had always known, or had he already changed?
“This is just who he is now,” Mother of Ultra said softly as she turned to Seven, “He won’t be getting any worse, but...he tried to separate something that had become inseparable. I’m afraid the damage has been done.”
“What about the human...”
“He’s probably in a similar state, or worse. Human minds are more fragile.”
Seven nodded. He wondered how much of this Jack understood, but seeing the look of worry on Jack’s face, he knew that Jack at least understood that he had possibly hurt the very person he had been trying to protect.
“I’ll check on him for you,” Seven said, “I’ll make sure everyone’s okay.”
A strange man approached Jiro as he sat on the swings. He knew Jiro’s name, and claimed to be a friend of Go’s, but Jiro was sure he had never seen him before.
“I’m not very good with kids,” the man apologised as he sat in the swing next to Jiro.
“That okay, I’m not very good with adults,” Jiro replied coldly, pushing off from the ground as he started to swing.
“Heh, I can see why he liked you,” the man smiled, but Jiro thought he sounded sad. “I have a son...he’s a lot like you.”
“No he’s not,” Jiro was annoyed now. Everybody has been trying to be his family. None of them were. “He has a father. I don’t have one.”
“Well...” The man’s voice trailed off, then he cleared his throat. “Anyway...I wanted to talk to you about Hi-”
“I don’t see Go anymore. He’s gone.”
“He’s not gone, he’s at a hospital-”
“He’s gone.” Jiro insisted. The person at the hospital wasn’t Go.
“He is...isn’t he...”
There was a long pause before the man started talking again. He sounded sadder now.
“The reason that Go’s like that...it was an accident.”
“I don’t care.”
“He thought that Go would be okay.”
“I don’t care.”
“But he’s not okay either.”
“Who’s he?” Jiro stopped the swing to stare angrily at the man. He had been told it was an accident with a kaiju attack. If someone had done this to Go...
“A friend of mine,” the man winced, “He was friends with Go too. He tried to save Go but...he hurt both of them.”
“Well that was stupid,” Jiro started swinging again. “I don’t like him.”
“I don’t know if I like him either...”
The man got up from the swing and walked away.
He could be lying. Nothing he said made sense.
But Jiro did like having someone to blame, someone who wasn’t Go. He would blame this man’s friend.
The anger he had for this stranger was the first real feeling he had felt for a long time.
Seven lied.
He told everyone else to lie.
He created a world for Jack where his sacrifice made sense, where it helped, where it saved those he was trying to save.
In Jack’s world, Hideki and Jiro were happy, Ace didn’t need to go to Earth, and humanity never had to deal with the fallout of the Land of Light’s conflicts ever again.
Seven wished he could live in that world too.