Work Text:
There's something just so great in violence.
It can grant you a lot of things. A gateway to freedom. Power strong enough to inflict fear. Control, maybe. Understanding of someone or yourself, depending on how events unfold. Whether you're the one initiating or the one falling victim to it doesn't particularly matter — you still get something out of it, something besides pain. The outcome just varies.
Loyalty, too. Loyalty is another good one that he learned from Zodyl — the only person to ever defeat him, the only person to ever show him what defeat feels like. Because a person is just a collection of traits, and ultimately it all comes down to whether you're strong enough or not. Either you can surpass the obstacles and restrictions that life imposes on you or you can't. That's all there is to it, really. Forgiveness is still earned through violence, and so is leniency. Even compassion and kindness are a double edged sword in which one finds solace and another finds a freshly made gravestone tailored personally for them.
And ambivalence brings too many uncertainties that in the end go down the same familiar route.
“That's a rather grim way of looking at it, hm?” He drawls, leaning closer to Zanka's face. Zanka's listening — his eye darts to look at Jabber and his eyebrow twitches, as if he's trying to frown. He fails, clearly, still immobile.
It's interesting. Zanka isn't in control over himself or his surroundings, not currently at least, but he isn't weak. Temporarily restrained at best. And Jabber doesn't feel like he has won. Not at all. There's a slowly growing absence of something inside his chest, an unyielding sort of excitement bordering on annoyance. He won, yet has lost, and now he has to wait.
“Patience, Jabber,” he murmurs, getting back up to his feet with a sigh, “And mission. Mission first.”
Mission first, mister Bad Attitude later. Something is telling Jabber that he is full of surprises, and he's oh so eager to bear witness.
He yearns to be understood. It gets lonely on the top of the winner’s staircase.
There's sand and dust and a tiny little rock stuck between his teeth.
Oh, it hurts.
But it hurts differently. Hurts stronger, hurts better, visceral only in a way someone equal parts talented and desperately angry can inflict on you.
Zanka Nijiku, Jabber realizes, is a special, special boy.
Zanka Nijiku stops Mankira with his teeth. Zanka Nijiku slams his Lovely Assistaff directly into his ribs with its blunt edge with so much force Jabber’s bones snap with a loud creaking sound. This, this, right there, isn't even a last ditch effort to get away from him, no, this is genuine and pure spite. Jabber's lungs sing with joy under the threat of being pierced by several fractured ribs.
“I'm being completely serious,” Zanka declares as his fist collides with Jabber's freshly acquired wound and sends him flying a good dozen meters sideways. It hurts. It hurts so well. Jabber offhandedly wishes he could condense this sensation into another poison as he slams face first into the cold hard ground.
Ah, what a precious, fragile feeling that rips apart just as easily as tendons in a human body do. It strains and then it snaps with an audible sound, and something inside you unwinds. Every cell in your body sings with excitement, alert and impatient to act.
And act you do.
You're the wind, you're the razor's edge, you're a patchwork of every injury you've ever sustained, you're someone's death sentence, you're a tightly knit framework of muscles burning at their limit — you stop being a person and become a feeling. Humans are devoid of actual instincts as species, and yet your every movement is guided by a feeling you cannot quite pinpoint. Intuition, maybe. Something primal and natural at the very back of your head at the bay of the cesspool that is your subconsciousness. It beckons you to drown in it — and Jabber dives into it head first. He always does.
He always wins. Mankira sizzles with both venom and strength.
A single slash across Zanka’s calf is all it takes to snuff out his anger. Just like that, his opponent is gone. The fingers that he digs into the wound slip and go limp, sliding away from it. His facial muscles strain, instead; a contorted smile shows off his stark white teeth and perfectly healthy gums around them. His eyes look dead and bleak but he laughs, he whispers, words slurred into something far from comprehensible. He's having as much fun as a man on the brink of death that doesn't realise he's dying can have. That's a man that doesn't get up to break more of Jabber's bones, no matter how much he pleads. That's a man he overestimated.
“Is that all?” He asks, leaning closer to his face. Zanka isn't listening, and Jabber pulls away. He watches blood pooling around Zanka's leg with genuine disappointment.
He puts his hopes and dreams into Zanka’s hands and yields no results.
Frustrating. He won by definition, and yet he feels defeated.
“Maybe I would've had more fun fighting a different cleaner.”
Maybe that's why he just lets Riyo shoot him instead of dodging. Maybe he got too distracted with his grievances over a boy who held up a decent enough fight, but not for long enough. Maybe it's a little bit of both.
Riyo is fascinating, but she doesn’t understand. Rejects his beliefs the same way Rudo did and walks away, braided hair gently tap-tapping against her shoulders with every step. The bullets in his limbs itch. It doesn't hurt the way he wants — it's just annoying.
He cradles his broken rib with a sense of wistfulness he hasn't felt since he was a child.
He needs to— No, he must be the one that triggers the true awakening. He must be the catalyst for Zanka’s full potential. Zanka is smart, Zanka is diligent. Jabber can teach him all the things he needs to know, all the ways Mankira moves and strikes in, all the hidden sides of himself that he hasn't yet discovered himself. To tear, to tether, to unwind.
He must be the one.
He must be.
Because Zanka will understand.
Jabber dreams of Zanka.
In his dream, his ribcage is shattered into tiny, sharp bone fragments that dig into his lungs like glass, breaking through the defensive numb wall that neurotoxin sets up. They're pin prickling and Jabber is ticklish, so he laughs. There's salt on his tongue. Salt and metal and an unsaid monologue that dissipates in the cesspit of physical sensations. He bargains with his mind for control and he's denied it. As if his muscles melt and ooze out of him with the blood that trickles down his chin. He writhes and his fingers twitch. Movement offsets something and a new, powerful wave of pain washes over him, hot and angry and pleasant. He's warm all over and he's freezing. Another laugh claws its way out of his throat.
“Is that all?” The dream Nijiku asks. Jabber can't see him, only his slender fingers out of the corner of his eye. His hands are somewhere, seeking for either a pulse or another bone to break. Jabber doesn't mind either option.
Oh he is so, so charming. Lithe and lethal and every other adjective in-between. Jabber’s consciousness threatens to slip but he forces it back down, grounding it in the dream, in the ocean of sensations no one has been able to grant him before.
“Zanka,” he drawls, “Zaaaaaanka.”
Zanka scoffs, and his distaste and disgust are oh so unabashed. So sweet, so clear, an open threat and discontent. Jabber can almost hold it in his hands. He—
He wakes up, unharmed and devastated.
Does Zanka dream of him? Oh, he better be. He should seethe with unfathomable anger while awake, livid and eager.
The extra polluted air scratches a deep seated itch at the bottom of his lungs nothing else does.
“Put your mask back on,” snaps Cthoni, burning holes in him with her gaze.
“Ever so considerate,” he smiles, throwing his hands wide open, “Deep breathing is part of a warmup.”
Zodyl levels him with a stare. Jabber begrudgingly sits down and waits.
It's painful to wait, and not the fun kind of painful. The time stretches on and loops around itself. The wheels of both of the cars spin too fast and too slow and Jabber couldn't care less about the Informator they're chasing, because that's not who he will be pursuing today. He'll—
He squints at the other car, leaning halfway over the rolled down window and twisting his head sideways. Frowns. Scans the crowd but to no avail. Riyo pointedly glares at him, shifting the sharp edge of her jinki in his direction.
It dawns on Jabber then, that Zanka isn't here. Zanka isn't here, and Riyo doesn't understand, and Rudo is underwhelming.
Underwhelming, underwhelming, underwhelming. Boring and tedious. The race becomes a chore.
Orostor breaks his nose and it doesn't hurt the right way, only becomes mildly entertaining for a good five minutes before even that faint sense dissipates. And Jabber is bored.
And Jabber goes home disappointed.
Violence is a lot of things. A love language too, maybe.
He needs to pick Zanka apart.
He needs to know if Zanka feels it, too.