Work Text:
There are no oceans in Shuten. Lakes and ponds, sure, but none big enough to form a beach—or follow the cycle of the tides much, as far as Manji can tell. The only time she’s ever seen waves, natural foaming waves outside of kiddy-riddled water parks, has been in films about kaiju and pirates and deep sea adventures. CGI movie magic kind-of stuff.
(So maybe not that natural after all. Whatever.)
But the image has stayed with her. Or rather…the feeling. How it must’ve been, in the old days before the world had collapsed in on itself, to stand at the shore. You probably could’ve sensed it in the nano-carbon between your bones, the foam and water receding. Taking something shitty inside of you away with it, bit by bit. A complete refresh.
The relief that overwhelms Manji tonight as Rei sleeps beside her? Now that’s a damn tide, pulling out all of Manji’s stupid worries with such power that she could almost sob.
Almost. But they’re crushed together on Manji’s single-occupant bed, all intimate-like. She doesn’t want to disturb Rei with any noise or sudden movement.
Besides, she isn’t a crybaby. Tch.
Even in the dark, Manji can make out every dip and curve of the tiny creature passed out in the crook of her arm. Jaw, shoulder, hip, the dual commas of her closed eyelids. She’s buried her face against Manji’s side. One very polite and very petite hand lays outstretched across Manji’s stomach. (Chastely, as Mifa might say, though she and Rei have never been anything but.)
Manji, for her part, remains on her back, holding Rei close. Her cheek rests against the top of her partner’s ridiculous round head. And the realization that she is, in fact, holding Shimobe Rei—that swells up inside of her and crashes. She pulls Rei in tighter. Slowly. Until the subtle tap of Rei’s heart flickers against her ribs.
Then Manji listens. Steady breathing, still. Good. Rei will have a decent night’s sleep, with any luck. It’s what she needs. For her health after everything, you know? She deserves it. Manji repeats that to herself like a mantra, as if counting prayer beads, as if timing her thoughts to the toss and turn of the sea: deserve, deserve, deserve.
Two months ago, after Rei moved in…
She disappeared. In the middle of the night. For a few hours only, but—
When it first happened—the first of Rei’s hang-ups, as Manji calls them—all of Manji’s training drizzled down some mental drain into nothingness. Pure stupidity. She felt like she lost half a brain, or maybe half her heart. Because—technically? She knew how to handle this kind of bullshit. In fact, she’d gone through it a thousand times with her boys, some of whom were more prone to kicking around in their traumas than others. Just a part of the Security gig.
Nightmares, unseen enemies. The fresh hell of memory. Decades-old scars, faded and yet still aching. The Ministry’s game of whack-a-heretic fucked some of them in the brain. Ushitora Yugen had a high-falutin term for it, post-traumatic something-or-another, but Manji understood it as a hang-up. A hook inside your mind from the past, relentless and urgent.
Rei, though. Gone.
It wasn’t like Manji to panic, only to let herself fall into the burning sick of her own anger, but when Rei first went missing, it was as if—as if—
As if she found herself washed back into the prayer room, an audience to her Founder’s agony. No thoughts. No plan. Only the sense that she would end the night adrift with a loss she could never recover.
Next to her, at present, Rei dozes on without a sound. Clad in only her usual black shirt and thigh-length underwear, she looks particularly fragile.
Perhaps by instinct—because, if nothing else, Manji was Shimobe Rei’s dog—she sussed Rei out a few blocks down from the trailer, on that first hang-up night. Even if she remained at a loss for leads, however, she would have heard Rei, eventually. The hoarse and choked screaming. The hurried steps, hard on the sidewalk. Then: a little shadow in an overlong hoodie, fleeing into alleyways between unused warehouses. From who? From what?
“Oi—Rei!”
She told Mifa to keep watch and chased Rei down on foot. Dashed, really. This seemed personal.
When Manji caught up with her, Rei started to…howl? Yeah. That was the only way Manji could describe it. Howl. An otherworldly noise beyond human or droid. In desperation, in pain, as though someone Rei loved had torn her apart and left her to die. She’d backed herself up against a dumpster, her eyes wild, fingers twined in her hair. A thin patina of sweat and saliva coated her face.
“Rei, what the hell are you—”
“Help me help me help me help me—”
Except that no one was around. Manji lived pretty far off the city grid for the peace and quiet. In her quick and unusually terrified assessment, she noticed no sign of stalkers, muggers, rapists, heretics, general civvie lunacy. This little industrial area had long since fallen out of use by just about everyone.
Another monstrous sound, now, one that twisted something hard into Manji’s gut. Rei lifted her head to the sky, the moonlight forming a sick rim on her dilating pupils.
“—they’re burning me they’re burning me I didn’t have enough time please give more time I’m sorry I’m sorry—”
The circulation of Virus and its sister drugs had all but dried up after the whole angel incident. Rei hadn’t mentioned an unusual injury or attempt on her life, nor did it seem like she’d taken up an Inugami-like hobby. This wasn’t chemical, this was…
Just a part of the Security gig.
Yet Manji couldn’t recall what to do about it, suddenly.
(Everything’s fine. Manji’s going to ensure that. At any cost. She can’t imagine why she’s losing sleep over all this garbage.)
Manji reached out with both hands. “Rei—c’mon! You’re fine, you’re fine—look at me, princess—”
What had she expected? A romantic swell of music as her Founder—no, as Rei—no—as her first and last love returned to her senses? As Rei realized that her oh-so-loyal Manji, guardian of her life and her soul, had come to rescue her? Oh, how darling. Oh, how beautiful. Oh, how…Kokushikan Honoka.
Bullshit! Of course not. Rei retched, unrecognizing, and darted away.
As she pores over this wreck of a memory, Manji rubs the bridge of her nose, then imagines the tides again. In. Out. In. Out. Pull yourself together, moron. She’s really, really not anxious that Rei will have a hang-up again tonight. Really. Anxiety’s for little girls obsessing over their cup size or whatever.
This? This is a real issue. This is a real possibility. Manji’s just borrowing preparedness from the future. That’s why she keeps thinking about it. Problem-solving. As a minister of Shuten does. No one’s going to get hurt again without her permission. Or—die.
Why would Rei die? Manji asks herself. Seriously. Rei’s not gonna die. Are you stupid?
She closes her eyes and lets herself fall into the sensation of Rei’s beating heart. The relief passes through her once more like a stream, but it only lasts a moment.
It took an hour to capture Rei, back then. Not for any lack of skill, because Manji could snatch a grain of rice out of the air on a snowy evening—or, well, that’s how Mifa would’ve hyped her up, and she tended to agree with him. Rather, it seemed like Manji had borrowed some of Rei’s mysterious fear.
(All of it, actually.)
It made her dumb. Drowning in terror, frenzied, hysterical, Manji couldn’t pull together a real course of action. She only ran and begged and ran again, panting hard, as Rei dodged her touch. The night smelled like blood, somehow.
For only a moment, Manji stopped to catch her breath. Those fucking angels. They’re killing her. They’re still killing her. They’re killing her someplace I can’t kill them back. She focused on that hatred. They’d done a number on Manji’s girl. Left hooks all along Rei’s psyche. And there, in between the shaky inhale-exhale, clenching her fists against her dread, the Minister of Security found her inspiration.
She didn’t have tranquilizer shots with her and didn’t have time to retrieve them from her armory, nor did she want to risk knocking Rei’s lights out. A combat droid could take a hit like nothing, but Manji had far more strength at the moment than Rei did. Anyway, Rei had undergone total reconstructive surgery just a few months ago. The thought of messing her up so badly again…tch. Manji couldn’t dwell on it.
Instead, Manji followed Rei’s exhausted pleas for mercy—she sounded so small, so frail, it hurt to hear it—and found her pacing near a busted-up loading dock. Then Manji located the nearest fire hydrant just a few yards away.
Property damage? Yes. That was Manji’s M.O. Shimobe Rei damage, though? No. Never again.
A kick. A squeal. A flash of water—pressurized. It would leave (fake) bruises, but this much Rei could certainly handle, at least. The hydrant’s spout threw Rei against the wall of the warehouse as she wailed and turned out of its trajectory, coughing and sputtering. Gracelessly she fell toward the pavement into a hunched shape resembling a discarded coat, if coats could sob and whimper.
Droplets danced against Manji’s cheeks when she approached the ragged little woman. Arms curled beneath Rei’s knees and torso, she scooped up her unresponsive…partner? That sounded right, though she had a nervous flutter in her stomach when she rolled the term over her tongue. Whatever they ended up calling the red knot between them, they really were partners, like it or not. Bound by something as endless and all-consuming as the sea.
She told Rei that everything was going to be okay, now. Because she’d force the issue. For the rest of her damn life. This was just a hang-up. Shit happened. No big deal.
Rei, in response, only curled tighter against her.
From there, carrying Rei home bridal-style was its own kind of calm—each of Manji’s steps a rhythmic comfort to herself as Mifa gently rolled along beside them. When they returned to the trailer, Manji drew Rei a hot bath.
The room seems too small, suddenly, and too warm. That smell of blood—the same nasty scent from the night of Rei’s first hang-up—drapes in the air, heavy as a fist. It’s something Manji knows intimately, and knows also that she’s totally imagining. From stress, maybe? But it’s still there.
Ugh.
A walk. Manji needs a late night walk. To clear her mind, etcetera. That’ll fix things right up. She’d prefer a ride, but she doesn’t want to wake Mifa, and the sound of his engine might disturb Rei’s sleep. No, no, she’ll slip away for just a moment. Stealth’s not something she likes to use—she’s far from an ambush predator these days, if only because beating down prey in the open is fun as hell. But she’s damn good at getting sneaky when she has to be, and she’s still fully dressed in her uniform from the day’s work.
(Briefly, Manji wishes Shuten had shorelines to tread.)
She inches out of the bed without a sound—disentangling herself from Rei oh-so-carefully—then turns to watch Rei’s unconscious form in the dark. Fondness wells up inside of Manji’s chest again, and breaks, and crashes, and becomes…
Fear? A high alert, ten-red-flags kind of fear? Sick-to-her-stomach, migraine-intense fear? Rei’s gonna die somehow and she won’t be able to do anything about it because she’s ultimately useless, Fushicho Manji, piece of shit, sniveling dog, minister of monsters, murderer—
—cut her to pieces and send her away into the dark forever on a series of balloons—
—fear?
Manji’s eyes sting by the time she leaves the trailer.
“Um. Sorry I’m a pain,” Rei said from the tub.
She sounded tired. Which…was to be expected, really. It was four in the morning and Rei did spend much of that first flashback screeching in terror. But tired, at least, meant alive.
Manji, sitting on the floor outside the bathroom, glanced up from the admittedly boring Security report she’d been reading. Nothing interesting ever happened in Shuten these days besides the odd robbery (fun) or domestic dispute (sad). Her new crop of Security boys could generally handle those on their own, but they were stupid beyond all belief, so she made them fill out more paperwork than they needed. Mostly so they knew what they did.
Quiet days. What she had always wanted. A chuckle escaped her.
“Manji?”
Maybe the odd Rei hang-up, then, wasn’t such a bad thing. Kept Manji on her toes. At least, that’s what she’d tell herself, and not that it freaked her the hell out. She wiped the sweat off her brow. Her legs ached bad.
“Eh? It’s whatever, princess. Sorry for the bruises,” Manji replied. Even if said bruises weren't exactly legit—one of the many bodily illusions of combat droid life—they still probably stung awfully.
“I guess what you did got the job done. And they don’t hurt that…wait, are you right outside the door?” A slosh. Rei grumbled. “I can bathe myself, you know.”
“First of all, this trailer’s got all the square footage of my left hand, so there’s nowhere in here that isn’t right outside the door. Second,” Manji said, “you had an evening and I just want to make sure you don’t slip out of the tub and break your stupid face. Lemme keep watch.” She knocked her elbow against the wall, thunk, to punctuate her point.
“Eek!” A surprised yelp followed, then a snort of amusement. That woke her up. ”Alright! I believe you.”
“You better. ‘Cause if you crack your head open, it’ll get everywhere. The world’s biggest brain omelette. Tch—like my Security paycheck of nothing-dollars-nothing-cents could get all that cleaned.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Rei said, but she laughed weakly as she did. The most wonderful of Shimobe sounds. To Manji’s constant disbelief, she had the ability to bounce back from apocalypse-level situations with pep in her step. A sunny disposition, in Mifa’s terms. Must have been that whole new-mind-old-soul thing. Even after the angel incident, even after her full reconstruction, she’d been smiling at everyone around her within hours, the brightest light in the room.
You couldn’t help but crave the power to keep her safe without fail. Desperately. Like lost breath, and with all the same pain in your chest.
Manji decided she was tired, too.
Shit. If she has to cry, she’s going to let it out now. Away from Rei, away from Mifa. Out of the public eye or whatever. She doesn’t need their questions, their pity.
Manji shouldn’t cry at all—and she never does. It’s the kind of nonsense brats with skinned knees do when they want attention. But the last few months have softened her. Rei’s presence, too. Sensitivity isn’t a trait suitable for a Minister of Security, and she intends to purify herself of it as soon as she can. Let it flow away. Especially if she’s going to stand by Rei’s side, stone-dependable.
First, though, she has to release it all, so she does, crouched behind her trailer. Her body shakes, her hands tremor, and she sobs, silently, in the moonlight. For some reason, she can’t bring herself to run or even walk, and yet her heart pounds violently against her ribs.
The tears don’t help, obviously. They never do. She feels like she’s choking on her own adrenaline. It’s so damn hot outside. Above, the cloudless sky seems particularly endless, too big, too wide, too deep.
As Rei toweled her hair off, she explained that this first hang-up had been the worst it had gotten. It being—junk code in her system, leftover from that damn angelic spyware. Open flames made her uncomfortable, sure, and she’d thought she caught glimpses of those winged parasites at the corner of her vision…maybe, maybe. But she could breathe through it, usually. Go about her business.
Still, she’d had the sense that it would all beat down on her one day—or one night. So she'd sought help from the best.
Ushitora Yugen, Minister of Health and her endlessly irritating self-appointed personal doctor, had taken a close look at her a few weeks back and determined she had no physical damage to speak of. The hallucinations, he’d told her, were something called a trauma response. Algorithms brought to the surface during moments of duress. Yadda yadda. In other words: not real.
“But I couldn’t get through to myself when it happened. Even now, I’m—ugh. I’m not gonna think about it too hard,” Rei mumbled. Suddenly, as if struck, she caught Manji’s gaze, eyes wide. She always had this adorable look like she’d been found stealing from a candy apple cart. “Y-you’re not teasing me.”
Manji tossed her paperwork onto the coffee table and then herself onto the couch she (sort-of generously) called a bed. “Wouldn’t dare. This is a Ministry of Security special. I see it with the boys all the time.” She snickered, or tried to. “Yugen didn’t fix you? Should I go fix him?”
The little smile, then, that wormed its way onto Rei’s face—so perfect. “There’s medications, but fatigue’s one of the side effects, and I’m already tired all the time…maybe I should have just taken them.”
“You need a better bed.”
“Oh—well. There’s no room on the floor for an air mattress—”
“Shut up, shut up. Just—” Manji’s stomach fluttered, same as it did a few hours before when she considered the word partner. She waved her hand as if to push the feeling away. “Just…sleep next to me from now on. Up here. I’ve got the sharpest senses in Shuten, princess. You won’t go far, even if you’re havin’ a meltdown.”
A blush reddened Rei’s cheeks. She covered her mouth with the towel, but Manji could tell she was grinning even harder, now. “I don’t wanna be a bother...”
“Oi—I had you move in here for a reason. You’re a matter of national security. And if you manage to get past me and scramble off into the city at one in the morning,” Manji said, “I’ll be your lighthouse.”
That, at the very least, was in her power. That was something she could have never done for—
—the Founder?
The Founder, there behind the trailer with Manji. The Founder, her body split open like a clam-shell, her insides splayed out. A dark pearl where her heart should be. Fish-eyed. Manji can see her, this sacred corpse in the dirt at her feet. Manji can smell her—rot and sewage and flesh, grace gone to its grave.
She’s dead—the Founder’s dead, fucking dead, and in every moment she remains dead, and in every moment she will continue to be dead. The center of Manji’s loyalty, the core of her power, each pillar in her foundation. Gone. Water from her palms.
It’s Manji’s fault, too, entirely. No denying that. She grips the trailer’s hitch beneath her, her focus wheeling in and out. As she weeps, she gets the sense that something massive and faceless has been dragging her forward, and she’s always been too weak to stop it.
After Manji had captured the suffering Rei, and as she’d carried her soggy and miserable ward home…
There’d been something Mifa had said. Unasked for, as always. Damn talking bike.
Of course, my lady…to love, I think, is to accept the possibility of loss.
Terrified, she’d only replied: Puh-lease. I don’t have to accept anything.
Then it stops—it stops, as suddenly as it all washed over her. Low tide.
The sky seems to close, the dirt is just dirt. It’s spring again, early spring, and the two A.M. air smells vaguely like orchids. Not even a hint of decay. Or anything out of place? Thankfully. So she calms, fast, Minister-of-Security-fast. Her vision clears. Manji’s throat expands again, and she takes deep, gulping breaths, holding her chest with one fist. A light breeze pours across her skin and it’s almost…chilly. She’s been sweating like hell.
Also, she’s laying on the ground, staring up at the stars.
Okay. So she has a hang-up of her own. Whatever. Tch—she’ll figure it out. Even if, somewhere low in her gut, she knows she doesn’t deserve to fix any of it. If she’s suffering, she should suffer for everything she’s done. But Manji has to shape up and ship out. For Rei. Who can never know about this.
This conviction, unfortunately, lasts only about ten minutes.
When Manji returns to the trailer, Rei’s awake and sitting upright in the couch-bed, knuckling one eye halfheartedly. For a brief moment, Manji sends a prayer of gratitude out to the universe that all the lights are off. However disheveled she’s gotten outside, Rei can’t see it, can’t comment on it, can’t get worked up about it.
“Oh, there you are,” Rei whispers, and her sleepy tone is almost too lovely to handle. “Wondered where you ran off to…I thought maybe you got called in, but usually you leave a note. On my forehead.”
“It’s a big forehead.” Manji forces a laugh and grins wide, even if her partner can’t make it out. “Eh, had an adrenaline rush. Still pumped from the day. Everything happens and my body wants to keep movin’.” She’s talking too much, but she can’t stop. “Went for a run, that’s all. Real quick. But I kept the door locked from the outside for you juuuuust in case. I'd hear you if things started going sideways. Were you worried?”
“A little. Is that too much...?”
Oh, shit, that gentle sincerity in her voice—Manji can’t stand it. A wave of affection passes through her, over and over: swell and crash, swell and crash. She steps forward and tousles Rei’s hair. It’s soft and warm, and she can feel that even through her gloves.
Rei adds, suddenly: “I mean—I always worry a little. About you.”
“Well, don’t,” Manji replies, trying to sound tender. Her hand trails down under Rei's chin. “Worry about Shimobe Rei, huh? I can handle myself.”
“I know, I know. I’ve noticed.”
And that—
(Founder, I love—)
(—I know. I noticed—and I love you—)
—fear—
—she’s stumbling over the coffee table, she’s hitting the wall. Something hard and hot is wedged in her heart. She’s been shot. She has to have been shot. Heretics surrounding the area. No, her own boys from Security. They know she killed their leader, that she betrayed them all. They’ve found her. The room’s closing in again, and the dark is getting darker, more urgent, more final, it’s thick as water, it’s—
“Manji! Ohmigod!”
She can’t find her words. Her mind’s gone white with anxiety. Now’s the part with my dead Founder, show me her body, show it to me massacred, show me what I did—
“H-hey—are you alright? Manji!”
That voice, and two hands over her own. Manji adjusts her eyes, panicking, and sees not the decimated corpse of the Founder, but the shadow of a very-much-alive Shimobe Rei. They’re both on the ground—Manji slumped by the door and Rei on her knees, distraught. And Manji’s crying again. Big idiot sobs like she’s dropped an heirloom off the side of a boat. She's not even injured.
Great. Good stuff.
Still, when Rei pulls her into an embrace, she allows it. More than allows it. In fact, she curls her entire body around her partner, arms and legs entwined, ear to Rei’s chest. She doesn’t have the strength to fight right now, and she’ll deny every part of this later. But in this moment, she’s listening to Rei’s heart, nesting in the rhythm, keeping it all to herself.
Rei, of course, can’t just leave things be.
“I…I really wish you’d tell me about this stuff,” she whispers against Manji’s scalp.
“Shut up.”
“Can’t I want to take care of you, too? I-is that so wrong?”
“Please shut up.”
“Isn’t that what—what being partners is about?”
That word. It hits like a slap to the face, but…pleasantly? Somehow.
Manji lifts her head and meets Rei’s gaze. As much as she can in the middle of the night, anyway. The hint of gold-green in Rei’s eyes catches the moonlight and it’s like autumn leaves at the bottom of a stream. She looks so damn sweet that she narrowly avoids annoying the piss out of Manji with her unending chit-chat. The girl’s irresistibly charming—what can Manji say?
“Maybe partners isn’t the right word,” Rei admits. “It’s just a push and a pull, like…”
“Ocean,” Manji manages. The stress still has her feeling stupid.
“Yes—yeah. Exactly. Sometimes it’s me, sometimes it’s you. The lighthouse. We can keep going together. I just, um, I want you to know that.” Rei pulls back a little, as if she’s afraid of what might come out of her own mouth next. But she’s watching Manji closely. Their eyes never part. “W-would now be a bad time to tell you that I love you?”
It should be, but it isn’t.
It's the missing piece of Manji’s mind.
They’ve kissed before, sort-of. Pecks on the cheek and on the forehead, when the time and privacy allowed. Real storybook-level cartoons-for-kiddos kind-of stuff. All sweet and pure and fine by Manji, actually. But even if Manji tended toward the horndog end of the spectrum—she’d have waited forever. Let Rei take the lead. It felt like a sacred gap she shouldn’t and couldn’t cross without a tiny unscarred Shimobe Rei hand reaching out to make the first move.
A thousand imaginary bad ends always stopped Manji from even thinking about necking. Except now.
Now she needs to kiss Rei on the floor and she does.
There’s a muffled squawk from the other end of said kiss, and then—Manji’s entire body, her entire being, lights up when Rei returns the favor. It’s furious and it’s awkward and Manji throws all her passion into it, every ounce of adoration she can muster. Rei tastes like salt but Manji probably does, too. There’s a lot of bumped noses and a lot of flustered grabbing.
Before long, though, they settle into it as if they’d been born for it. Rei’s arms hook around her shoulders, and Manji holds the back of her neck. Their torsos practically meld. There’s no start and no end, no division, between their bodies. They’re alive! Alive! Manji feels their pulses lining up. They’re truly wrapped that tight in each other—a flow of trust. It’s good. It’s so good. It’s going to take everything shitty out of both of them, Manji’s sure of that.
Bit by bit, they’re going to shine a light in the dark for each other.
They’re going to tread the sea.