Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

-5 [Loser] -

He can’t imagine what it’s like.

To have people who love you. Who care about your health. Who care about your worries and your hurts - unless you have meaning. Unless you have worth. What was it like to wake up, knowing you had a home? Knowing there was a place you could always return to when you were feeling at your worst? When you just needed time to sit - and think - or maybe not think at all - and just lie down?

What was it like?

He can’t imagine it.

Because it’s not deserved.

Rain pours heavensdown to barren earth.

Remnants of a dissipating trash beasts break apart to blackened filth and sift to nothing but wet dust. He breathes out through his mask, eyes falling closed, as he works to remember how to breathe in again. His hand goes to his left of his gut. Warm blood spills through the dark of his clothes. He is not yet a Cleaner. Just a trainee, who had silently joined that night when the man called Gris had asked if he wanted to tag along.

A routine clean-up, something so mundane, and Zanka with his newly-turned vital instrument, hadn’t done a single thing but be overwhelmed, and need to be saved. What was he expecting a stick that could only turn into a bigger stick to do?

He guessed it wasn’t loved enough.

He presses down on the injury that slowly grows in weeping, as if the press is enough to staunch the wound.

Footsteps run up behind him.

"Zanka! Everything alright?"

Zanka lowers his hand and turns, his wooden staff, a smaller stick again.

Dark hair kept tame beneath a cap, goggles splattered in the drops of the water rain’s quiet storm.

Follo.

He thinks that's what the Supporter's name was.

The older boy searches Zanka’s face, for what, Zanka doesn’t know - before his concerned gaze goes to the carnage of fading away trash beasts on the ground. A tiny whistle. "All of this with a stick? Wow. That’s impressive. I only got a few swings before I almost got downed." Sheepishly he slings his hammer into the belt of his waist and adjusts his cap. "I think we would’ve been done for without Gris and his charm. They said there were only a few beasts wandering around but this was way more than we were told."

Zanka looks at him, saying nothing. 

Follo's eyes move from their surroundings back onto him, and suddenly, much more carefully, much closer than before, he studies Zanka's face.

"...You didn’t get hurt did you?"

"...It’s just loud," Zanka answers. "The rain. I’m not used to it."

Follo’s eyes go to his hand. "Zanka, there's blood-"

Gris’ voice calls out beneath the rumble of the storm. To the few other supporting Cleaners who had come out for the patrol - he lets them all know it’s time to pack-it-up, and head back home. The falling rain is going to get much worse.

Everyone helps each other get together and start to move.

Everyone but Zanka and Follo.

Follo's amber gaze does not move from Zanka's lifeless own. "You’re bleeding," Follo says. "Let me see it."

"It’s not mine," Zanka lies, and if he sounds cold, and if he sounds like he wants the matter dropped, like he doesn’t want to be concerned, it’s because there is no need for attention for anything this small. "I didn’t get hurt."

Follo doesn’t move. He doesn’t reach out and grab Zanka, but it feels like that’s what he wants to do, so intent is his stare. "Trash doesn’t bleed," he tells Zanka.

"You’re right," Zanka tells him back. "It doesn't." 

Follo looks at him stunned.

Zanka doesn’t stick around for any more talk. He straps his vital instrument along his back, and joins the other Cleaner Supports as they pass, falling into disassembled order behind Gris’ larger steps.

Follo doesn’t try to walk beside him.

No one really does.

Zanka’s footfalls press steps into earth not yet tread upon, alone, their imprint unlike the uniform boots of the others he walks among.

He doesn’t bother to think about his wound.

From the claw of a trash beast, maybe the pain as it heals will remind him to dodge better next time around.

~x~

It’s a longer journey than he remembers it being back to base. The thirty minute venture feels like an hour. An hour upon an hour more. By the time they’re granted entrance back in, by the time the orange warmth of the dingy dwelling touches skin, and rain is shaken off by all those returned - Zanka cannot feel hands or legs.

Semiu, at the front desk, greets them each, taking stock of them as much as Gris. Gris, who regards them all with kind words for an unexpected extra job well done.

Enjin is there too. 

Leaning on the desk, dressed-down, casual. He must’ve gotten back from his own personal assignment while the rest of them had been out, as he hadn’t been back to the headquarters for almost a week. He greets Gris, comments something with half a smile Zanka can’t hear through muddled ears; through the douse of a mind sunken down in a well of it’s own self-make.

He doubts it has anything to do with him.

Because Zanka has realized something. Has begun to feel something. That finding a place here, might be impossible after all. 

To the dining hall, to the showers, to their rooms. The gathered Supporters separate, yawning, stretching, chattering among one another - companions and friends.

Zanka hadn't made those here yet. 

He starts to walk. 

A hand gets in the way, and holds out gauze his way.

It takes Zanka a moment to process that it’s there; to recognize that the hand belongs to Follo. Follo who for some reason, had come back to him, beside him, , mouth pressed thin, bottle of antiseptic in his other hand.

"I don’t care what you think," the older boy says. And what was that Zanka had heard about Follo being nice? "If you’re not going to ask for help, then at least take care of it yourself."

In the new lighting, away from the gloom of the storm now rumbling beyond the walls of base - now buckling, now pelting rain-  Follo looks nothing like the green-horn youth the older Cleaners liked to look after and train. But someone tall and wise and grim, experienced, full of knowledge - and of certain knowing.

Zanka detests it.

What does a stranger like Follo know?

Dismissively, he pushes the first-aid back towards Follo’s chest with fingers numb and cold; growing colder still.

His eyes drift, away from where they stand, to the right, to track the few slower members of the Cleaners ambling down the darkened hall that led towards his own temporary place of rest. He waits until enough distance is made between himself and them before he follows their path, leaving the brighter, exposing light of the base’s entrance behind - his steps as slow, as quiet, as the murmurs of nothingness in his mind.

He pretends he does not feel the few sets of eyes from those gathered at Semiu’s desk, on the back of his head.

He wonders if Gris had seen how poorly he performed; if he’s telling Enjin that the kid resolved to join them as a Cleaner, was really just a hopeless case with a stick after all - that they shouldn't have let him in.

In his barren, barren room, not yet personalized, with nothing personal to give, he unstraps his vital instrument and rests it by the door. Then he goes and sits on the side of his made-bed.

And sits, and sits.

Corvus had told him he could stay as long as he pleased. If even Enjin had vouched for him, Zanka must be a trustworthy asset to join their ranks. Though Enjin had told him not to jump right into it; not to commit so wholeheartedly right away. After all, what if this turned out to not be what he wanted to do with himself?

Better to wait then to lose what he had.

But Enjin wouldn’t know that Zanka had already given up all he had.

The moment he chose the stick off the table. The moment he clutched onto it, tied it back together, committed to its care.

Because the embarrassment of going back and admitting to his peers and teacher that it was a mistake - that he had made a mistake - was too great a step to fall down.

He had chosen the stick on purpose. That’s what he told his sister. That’s what he told his father, that what he told his brother, his classmates, his instructors. He had chosen it to prove that even with a stick, he could rise to take the Golden Throne.

All they had to do was watch.

And they had all watched.

As he was disowned, dismissed from Hell Guard and clan, for when his measly stick began to respond to his will, it was simply another notch on the wall of disappointments he had built himself for all those around him to see. And when he had decided to lean all his future into that mere stick - because he had fallen too far into the pit of his own making - of course, of course, he was told to take the path he so chose - and walk.

Away from the only home he had known.

The home he had given everything of himself to stay in and be a good enough part of.

No.

He hadn’t told Enjin a thing. No one here a thing at all.

He was Zanka Nijiku, the youngest son, a gifted Giver, who decided unlike the rest of everyone else in the Hell Guard, that he would be so shittily different, he’d be great.

He stares at the ground beneath his feet. It grows dim and dark. His hands, resting on his legs, are paler than he thinks they were before, stained more red than he thinks they should be. The sheets where he sits are growing red too. Dark, with a pungent smell of iron and rot.

Odd.

He brings his hands to his stomach, far more drenched in blood than it was minutes before.

How long was minutes before?

He absently tries to pinpoint the number as he tries to keep all the red escaping outside of him, inside where it belongs. Huh, he wonders, and wonders some more. It’s not stopping. Such a minor wound from a tiny thing like a pile of trash pretending to be a dog?

Huh.

Oh.

Maybe he does need the gauze from Follo after all.

He stands. Takes three steps.

And meets the ground.

~x~

Consciousness.

It’s the least peaceful return he’s had to the realm of the living in a while.

An unbearable pain squeezes around his gut, like there are fingers in his gut, digging around, pulling around, for the sake of messing around.

"rotting atrophy-"  he hears. "-should be able to pull it all out-"

"This fucking kid."

Enjin. That was Enjin, wasn’t it?

Zanka has never heard him sound like that before. Pissed. Disappointed - in him.

"Enjin." Gris.

That’s Gris too isn’t it?

Zanka can’t cling to the awareness, although he struggles - to defend himself - to admit he was wrong - to run away. Maybe he should run away again.  

Something touches him - a soothing hand - warm.

He’s pulled back down into sleep, wondering why he wants to cry.

~x~

It's hours later, hours later, when he wakes again.

His senses tell him it’s night, the inborn clock that has come to know the very feeling of the day based on muscle memory alone.

He’s in his room as if it’s never been left, flat on his back, head slightly raised, covered in two more blankets than he’s had before. Shadows and shadows and one dim light. A glow, lantern-light, the color of a hearth, the size of a lamp, on the thing supposed to be a desk beside his bed.

Follo sits in a rusted chair.

Gazing at him.

He hasn’t changed from his uniform. It should be dry with the amount of time that has passed, but it looks oddly damp like he had been out in the storm again.

It takes Zanka a long minute to understand what’s going on.

Follo lets him have the time. Then without a word, reaches out a hand.

Zanka braces himself for a hit. He doesn’t know why. No one had ever struck him for failures back at home. The only one to hurt him for his screw-ups was himself. But Follo’s hand does nothing heinous of the sort. It merely brushes over Zanka’s head, beneath his hair, underneath his tousled, sweaty bangs, to rest against his forehead.

With care. 

"It’s good you’re up," Follo says, and that same grim expression he had been looking at Zanka with earlier on - when was earlier on? - is there. He drops his hand and sighs, and gets up, setting his hand on Zanka's chest and easing him back to lying-down. 

Zanka wasn’t aware of when he’d even sat up.

But looking down, he realizes how void of clothes he is, chest stripped bare; wrapped and wrapped from the stomach-to-waist in gauze clipped with pins. 

On the desk, a bowl of water and a rag. Follo takes rag, gives it a squeeze, and places it where his hand had been on Zanka's forehead before. It’s an unbearably cool relief from a clammy heat Zanka hadn’t fully registered devouring him until now. "That was reckless," Follo tells him. "And stressful. Don’t do it again."

Wearily, Zanka looks as lamplight flickers dark across the supporter’s face. "...How'd I get hurt?" he asks, and it’s dry and rasped and weak.

Follo furrows his brows. He leans back. "I don’t know. You tell me. You’re lucky Gris came to check on you after I told him you were hurt. You could’ve died. Cleaners have died from less."

"..was jus' a scratch," Zanka mutters, tongue thick in his mouth.

Maybe Follo notices the difficulty. Maybe he doesn’t. He doesn’t make a move to give Zanka the glass of water sitting next to the bowl and rag on the desk. "A bleeding wound untreated can cause rot," is what he says instead. "Like breathing in toxic air for too long. Our uniforms and gear are thick for a reason."

Follo stops talking. For a good stretch of a moment he doesn’t speak a single word.

Then, deadly serious he says:

"I’m not going to pretend to understand know you; to understand the reasons for the things you refused and the things you said. But you came here for something, like everyone else. It can’t have been to die."

It hadn’t been.

But in moments like this, in darkness like this, sometimes Zanka thinks it'd be fine to.

If it happened by chance. 

Follo’s eyes go towards the door, and Zanka’s travel there too.

Follo is looking at his bandaged stick still leaning there in rest.

"...You’re fortunate to have a gift others only wish they could have."

The Supporter's expression shutters, his own memories falling in. It's impossible to tell what they are. Only that they hurt.

"...I can tell you care. A lot. And I can tell... you don’t think it’s enough. Maybe it’s not - for what you want. But for now," Follo brings his eyes back to Zanka, and they are molten amber, a marble, clear. "Know that it’s enough."

Follo hands him the glass of water, steadies it between Zanka’s own two hands which he folds around the cup, and the older boy's calloused, warm hands give Zanka’s a squeeze - a single one, firm - before letting go.

Follo leaves.

~x~

In the week that follows, Zanka is welcomed back into the working rotation of the Cleaners, as a trainee still, for on-the-job training and continual field observation.

He’s reminded by a number of Supporters more times than he can count to properly strap his mask to his face, to be attentive of the various shapes trash beasts take on, to be mindful of his ordinary loose and layered clothes that can easily snag and get snagged in attacks, to stick close to them; to not venture far.

It’d be more annoying if Zanka doesn’t know he deserves it. The micromanaging and the scrutiny; the lack of trust.

It’ll take time to build it again.

Time to show that he can be a useful Giver among the Cleaners again.

Gris checks on him after every excursion they go on together, and it’s every excursion Zanka finds himself on that Gris is there for, because they must’ve decided that the only way Zanka can go out and about in the world with their reputation and their name attached to him, is with a dedicated sitter to make sure he doesn’t die.

The problems it would bring from his clan and the Hell Guard would probably be great.

That's likely the reason for everyone's pestering. 

He gets to know Tomme, who earnestly throws herself into each client request with all her heart. He gets to better know Follo, who swings his hammer with a fierceness, a dedication that makes Zanka realize the weight of the words the Supporter had spoken to him nights and nights ago - how some people wished they could be a Giver with all their might - that Zanka was lucky; needed to know he was lucky for this.

And Zanka was lucky.

Lucky that Enjin hadn’t told Corvus to kick him to the curb.

Lucky that Enjin deigned not to be on any sort of small commission that Zanka or Gris or any other ensemble of Cleaners involving Zanka was on.

Not a problem.

This was the best way for Zanka to grow. He had gone through it with his elder sister who he admired. With his elder brother who stood above him, stalwart and great. Turned shoulders in the wake of disappointment was nothing new. Zanka had always ended up performing better in the absence of their stares, anyway.

It was better Enjin stayed ignoring him with a ten-foot pole. 

~x~

"He’s not ignoring you," Gris tells him one day, in the middle of the day, of an off-day, in the busy dining hall.

The strong stench of canned spray and thick ink wafts like a cloud and sits and sinks and burns into his eyes and nose like a flashbang of an assault, so it takes Zanka a moment to focus on what Gris is saying. Someone has put music on. "Who?"

Gris cuts into a plate of pizza with a fork and knife and Zanka is trying his best not to stare with the judgmental judgment he feels within, because he knows all about manners and carrying them out, but this is Goka-levels of bizarre.

"Enjin," Gris says. "He’s not ignoring you. He’s been busy with a matter in a No Man’s land at the boss’s request."

"Oh," says Zanka. He picks up his own pizza, slimy with cheese, piping hot, with his bare hands and it’s seriously fucking hot -

When he drops it back down, Follo chowing down on food beside him, passes him a fork and knife without even bothering to look.

And Zanka takes them. Like a scrub.

"Wasn’t thinkin' bout that," he lies. He stuffs a cut chunk of pizza into his mouth and pretends the surlish twist to his face comes from the food burning his tastebuds to smithereens and not the non-existent-relationship-of-mentorship-and-guidance from the man he had left his home behind for.

He’s noticed that girl, the redhead, tags along with Enjin the most.

That Enjin lets her without protest.

Quite the student-mentor-thing they’ve got going on themselves.

"That’s a pretty scary look on your face," Gris comments. "Why not speak with Enjin when he gets back? I believe he’ll return by the weekend."

"No need," Zanka gripes. He adds in a mutter, low. "...nuthin’ to talk about really."

"EXCEPT A CHANGE OF CLOTHES!"

Suddenly, August is there sitting beside Gris, hands splayed on the table, in loud, boisterous excitement.

"Zanka! I’ve finally finished! It took a hundred, thousand years to make your uniform you - but I’ve outdone myself this time, I certainly have, with all the comforts of home! Come take a look!"

He doesn’t wait for a response. Just snags Zanka by the front of his robes and hauls him over the table with enough force to actually kill him.

"Hey, ow, wait-!"

He nearly swallows his fork.

~x~

All the comforts of home.

It wasn’t wrong.

The uniform flows like the wear of a Hell Guard, with all the protections for outdoor ventures unique to a Cleaner.

"What do you think?!" August shouts with the power to blow up a car. He zips and zaps around Zanka who’s trying to remove himself from the center of the whirlwind that is that, and as he does, Follo takes the time to study and poke at Zanka up close. 

"What’s this for your hand and arm?" he asks.

Reluctantly, Zanka shares.

"...A protective guard sleeve, used to defend-"

"-you can probably hide something up these other sleeves. Do you think your staff will fit?"

"-why would I put my staff in there -?"

"-by the way, your feet look oddly huge but small in these shoes - "

Zanka maybe starts to strangle Follo where they stand.

Gris separates them.

Zanka takes a moment to collect himself while Follo pretends to cough for his life and Gris asks:

"Well? How does it feel?"

And Zanka, bearings regained, with all the questions and sense he has, says back, "It’s fine, I guess." 'Fine? Just fine?!' August shrieks. "But I don’t understand. Ain’t I just a trainee?"

"I’m pretty sure you stopped being one a month ago," Gris comments.

Follo, straightened up, regards Zanka with both eyebrows raised. "Don’t you remember? The party we threw for you with all that confetti and those balloons that turned out to be bombs?"

"Because you filled them with gunpowder lit them on fire," Zanka points out. 

Honestly, Zanka had thought it was a collective-group-murder-attempt from the Cleaners-Anonymous to him which they tried to cover up as a welcome celebration with food and drinks - because he’d been at the headquarters for weeks and weeks before that - why throw him a party then? 

But if he had a uniform - and this was his uniform - this was his .... then-

Didn’t that mean... ?

"It’s a real nice uniform," Gris tells him straight. "It’d be a shame for you not to stick around."

- 4 [Inertia] -

A thwack and clap of light.

A chorus of angels as they lift his soul above - then toss him down to hell.

"Oh my god, sorry!"

The frantic apology is about the only thing Zanka hears for a while after getting clubbed in the head. By the hammer. Follo’s hammer. Though there’s no one to blame except Zanka himself.

"Zanka, you up for a spar?"

"Fine by me. Real weapons, only. There’s no way to get good playin pretend."

In other news, he was an idiot.

But that wasn’t actually new. In fact, he was starting to let the other Cleaners know it a bit too easily at this point how poor his decision-making skills were. Two months since gaining his official uniform, since being assigned to taking point with Gris on mission requests, since going all-in on his stick-of-a-weapon to the point its wood could kill a man - and-

"You okay?" Follo asks, tight and urgent, hands not on Zanka’s conked skull like something needed to be, but on his shoulders instead, and it’s only then Zanka recognizes that those hands are the only things keeping him from hitting the concrete earth.

As it is, he’s just fallen face-first into Follo’s shirt.

"Am I dead?" he wonders, a muffled, unintelligible thing. Follo’s hammer, fallen by their feet, doesn’t look stained in blood for as bloody-cracked as his head feels it should be.

He bends down to get the hammer.

It feels light in his hand, and he tosses it up and down in his palm twice, admiring the balance, before offering it to the Supporter who had somehow become Zanka’s closest thing to real-life friend. "Thanks," he says.

Follo looks at him, mortified. "For what."

Zanka doesn’t know. "You know."

"No I don’t," Follo says. "Where are you going?"

Zanka doesn’t know. "Somewhere," he thinks he says aloud. Coolly, because he’s a cool-sort-of-fellow - he raises his hand behind him in farewell as he walks towards who-knows-where.

Off the training field, out of the sun, to the assortment of weapons and junk sitting on racks by the graffitied entrance leading back inside.

He picks up a mace and holds it.

Holds it for a long time.

Drops it on the ground.

Where’s his stick? His trusty stick? The only stick he’s ever had?

It’s handed to him.

"Here you go."

He takes it in both hands and holds it close to his chest, warmth bubbling within him, smiling small and real and fond.

"Zanka, right? We met you in that well."

He certainly had been in a well at some point in his life. Maybe all of it.

He’s dizzy. His hands and his stick are much closer to his eyes than he remembers. Touching his stick, actually. And actually, the boots of his feet are kind of getting closer too.

"Uuupp. Careful there."

"Hold on, let me help!" 

He’s grabbed under both arms, his sagging weight held. Follo! his mind cheers.

His secret friend to his left.

A bunch of red hair, sinewy muscle and lithe weight, to his right.

"We haven’t gotten a chance to go out together yet," the bunch of red hair poking into his eye says. "I’m Riyo."

Neat name, he admires. He gets a little miffed after. She's the one always hanging out with Enjin.

"Let me carry him," Follo says.

"It’s fine," Riyo-red-the-girl says back. "We’re just going to take him inside and get him checked out. Fun little fight you guys had while it lasted," she comments as they do indeed start dragging Zanka and his loose, limp legs indoors.

The grungy shade of their base envelops Zanka like a blanket of comforting, sleepy warmth.

His cheek is pinched, sharp, and pulled.

"Try and stay awake, Zanka. We’d be in a bad place if you fell comatose." A small huff of amusement. "You’re getting scary with that hammer, Follo."

"I really...really... didn’t mean to hit him."

"Ha. Don’t sound so bad about it. It was a real nice feint. Trash beasts outside aren’t gonna apologize when they do us in."

They’re talking and he hears them and he wants to disagree, that maybe Follo should feel a little bad about bludgeoning him, that maybe a trash beast would apologize for hurting them if they nicely asked, but the world is too many colors and too many lights and can they please stop swinging him around?

"Stop... stop, stop," he utters, insistent, gasping and he struggles, trying to go down on his knees and curl into a ball and lie down.

They let him go and he does sink down, palms cradling his eyes against the filthy and cold stone. It’s so filthy. The floor is filthy and he’s inhaling the footfalls of dusty, dank boots up his nose. He doesn’t weep, but it’s a damn near thing. Why is the floor moving when his eyes are closed?

What kind of torture is this?

"I wonder if he’s ever been hit like this before," the voice of the girl muses above. "Man, Follo, you’re one of a kind!"

"Please stop making me feel bad, I feel awful!" he thinks he hears Follo starting to sob.

A new set of feet approach somewhere near Zanka’s face-down, tucked-down head. Casual, thick and heavy. A much older, much, much more familiar voice joins in.

"What’s this?"

Enjin.

"Concussion."

"Trainin’."

"I’m so sorry,"

- leaves all three of them at once.

Though Zanka’s answer goes straight into the ground, like any semblance of self-respect and decency already buried in the ground.

He hasn’t seen much of Enjin around.

Even after officially joining, it was occasional check-ins from the man. Things like: ‘you settling in?’, ‘good clean-up?’, ‘how have things been with your vital instrument?’, but nothing particularly great. Nothing about the time he almost died to a trash beast a week and a half after coming to the Cleaner's base.

"Al…right? Riyo?" Enjin checks.

It makes sense. He trusts her words more than anyone else’s of their gathered group. Like how Enjin trusts Follo’s words more than Zanka’s. Which also makes sense, seeing how far below on pole-of-capability-totems Zanka was on.

He lifts his head and blinks away fuzzy blips of circles and dots and lights.

Enjin isn’t frowning or anything. He’s simply looking down at Zanka. Waiting.

Zanka stands up, with all the feeling of a floating noodle and thoughts of frustration from a brain too bruised to try and stay frustrated for long. "Don't look down on me," he grouses. "I don’t like it."

Enjin doesn’t react.

"Zanka took a nice hammer to the head," Riyo shares. "He says he’s alright though. So I guess he is."

"So I guess he is," Enjin agrees, not bothering to lend a helping hand. Not that Zanka wanted one.

Since he was fine.

He holds his stick for dear life and straightens up, straight as can be. The man he strove to be like gazes at him, not with concern, but... what is that?

Zanka can’t make it out.

"Good timing," Enjin says then, looking away from Zanka to those beside him. "Follo, Riyo, I could use your assistance out front."

"Sure," says Riyo already leaving Zanka’s side.

"Is there a problem?" Follo asks, still glued by Zanka’s side. His hand is grasping the bottom of Zanka’s left elbow, steadying him.

Zanka would sink into it - wants to sink into it - but he resolutely does not. It’s nice of him, Follo is nice, but it’s not needed.

"You could call it a problem," Enjin answers. He turns to go and Riyo goes with him. "Are you coming?" Enjin asks towards Follo. "It looks like Zanka’s got this on his own."

Got what on his own?

Zanka wasn’t aware he was supposed to be doing anything, but if Enjin said it, then he guessed he was.

Follo hesitates as he leaves.

Hesitates the entire six steps it takes for him to catch up with Enjin and Riyo. Then he walks with them, and he too leaves Zanka behind.

Sort of.

He turns his head around twice, and each time, without looking Enjin reaches out and turns Follo’s head back around front.

It’d be comical if the sight of them leaving didn't sting. If the dismissiveness of Enjin wasn't crushing the stupid fragility in Zanka's already paper-thin sense of self-worth.

Zanka rolls his shoulders, tilts up his chin.

Uses his vital instrument, for all the stick it’s worth, to help him walk himself ahead.

He doesn’t have a plan of where to go or what to do, but he should find it.

He takes two steps, hits the wall - and retches the morning’s breakfast up.

The footsteps stop ahead.

Follo's voice is the last thing he hears, worried and upset. 

"Zanka!" 

And the footsteps run back.

~x~

Once when he was five, he’d twisted his ankle falling off the engawa. The simple wooden stretch of a porch winding around their clan home’s dwelling, a foot above the ground, and his foot had somehow misjudged the step-off, and he’d hit the white pebbles of the garden on the other side.

Goka had come across him nearly thirty minutes later, back from the academy, books tucked his arm, a frown on his face. "What are you doing?" his elder brother had asked.

"I fell," Zanka had said.

Goka hadn’t said anything after that; had simply stood there frowning some more in wait, until they had waited several minutes in total silence, and Goka had said -

"You won’t get up?"

"I can’t. My ankle hurts."

His elder brother had glanced around them, still frowning that same old frown. His elder brother had cautiously, carefully, set his carried books back down, as if he was doing something grievously wrong.

And he had knelt before Zanka, and he had turned his back, and glanced over his shoulder.

"Get on."

"What about your books?" Zanka had asked, already slipping his arms around his elder brother’s neck.

"I'll come back and get them," Goka responds. "...You should watch where you walk. What if I hadn’t passed by?"

Then Zanka would still be on the ground. This, at least, he had understood well.

His forehead had come to rest then, tucked in the crook of Goka’s sweaty neck. For someone who was always so distant, so serious and cold, Goka ran the warmest of them all.

More than studying books, he must’ve been running drills in the academy. For hours.

That’s right.

Once there was a time when they mattered more to each other than expectations, clan or duties. Though they had responsibilities that kept them a lot in different places, in different spaces - they were family.

And that meant something.

Before they grew up. 

~x~

"Are you trying to choke me?"

He’s carried on the back of a stronger man.

Zanka keeps his head buried in the neck it's in. Firm and broad. Tattooed in ink. The skin is cold. It’s a relief for his spinning eyes that spin and dip and swoop even when closed.

He can’t help it. How hard his arms squeeze around the one that holds him.

Letting go is hard.

He’s always been poor at it. 

"Sorry." He wonders who he’s apologizing to. "I didn’t mean to fall."

Enjin says nothing to that. Zanka tightens his squeezing arms, til all the strength he has within him is gone - then he goes limp.

Defeated and loose.

He’s not a kid, he’s basically an adult. Why are his only impressions given to Enjin are ones so poor?

"I can walk," he mumbles.

"You can’t," Enjin says.

It’s a conversation Zanka’s had before, twelve years before.

"You got hurt."

"You're hurt. You should take care not to be injured so easily again. If no one came around, you’d have been left there."

So Goka had said.

That truth was the same truth as the time he had put himself in the well.

Maybe, eventually, Zanka would have pulled himself out of it.

But the truth of the matter was - no one else had actually come to pull him out of it.

Not his brother. Not his elder sister. None of his peers, who were just that - not friends - but his peers.

He had been gone back then for three whole days.

Hadn’t moved, hadn’t pissed, hadn’t done a thing but sit there, stick in hand, waiting for something else to do him in, because he was a coward who would never end himself, a coward who waited for better things to come, who wanted to crawl away and die away and quit existing, quit making mistakes, quit fucking up, quit being a fuck-up, no one had come looking for him -they must’ve felt the same -

"There’s nothing wrong," Enjin tells him, breaking thought and loathing. "With being hurt."

They walk and walk to somewhere Zanka doesn't know.

The halls of the base are long.

Riyo and Follo aren’t there. They must’ve gone off somewhere, maybe to fix the problem Enjin had mentioned about.

It could have been because they weren't there, that it happens.

Because there was no one else to see.

Because his body was more tired than his mind, and because his mind had gone somewhere else, to a time and place somewhere else, where he wanted to eventually be found. 

The tear is hot. 

The few that follow after come out before he can tell them to stay the hell inside. 

He feels Enjin continuing to walk more than he sees. Hears when Enjin's says: 

"I could've sworn Follo told you before, didn't he? To let other people help you when you can't get back up. What's the point in struggling? Who are you doing it for? It makes me wonder, Zanka. If this is what you dragged yourself out of that well for. To stay unchanging, or to try and change yourself?" 

Zanka doesn't answer, feeling terrible - for having a sense of what to feel terrible about. He doesn't tell Enjin that the reason he dragged himself out of the well was because Enjin had given him a flicker of belief that he had some worth left.

He doesn't tell Enjin that the reason he joined the Cleaners was to be by Enjin's side. The stranger who had no reason to see Zanka any differently than a clump of dirt beneath his shoes. 

It's frustrating. 

How humiliating.

He thought he had decided to longer beat himself down. To embrace the worse parts of him to make a better start of him.

...Concussions were the worst. 

His tears stay wet and small. Squashed between himself and Enjin, kept quiet, painful and warm.

It hurts to cry and it hurts to feel.

How hard had Follo fucking swung that god-damned hammer?

What kind of seventeen-year old got concussed from a goddamn fucking hammer?

....But Zanka knows the truth.

Follo had just been faster.

In that instant, moved swifter, switched the hand he swung with; changed his grip without changing momentum, and Zanka simply hadn't adjusted to it time.

That was it.

He could already tell Follo would surpass him in leaps and bounds. Just from their spar, just from the look in Follo's eyes. Someone who had never given up on himself - not yet. Who would forge ahead and forge forward like a hammer forging steel, until a shape was born.

"I'm not gonna coddle you for the choices that you make," Enjin speaks, unyielding, certain and firm. "I'm not going to tell you you're right. I'm not going to tell you you're wrong. But I'll tell you that we're here to help. All of us are. If you need help, I'll help you. If you ask for help, I'll help you. When you're too stubborn to admit you need it, I'll still help you, until you get it through that head of yours that needing help is okay. You didn't have the sort around before who were willing to reach out and drag you from that well. It wasn't my place back then to physically drag you out and force you from that well. It can be different now. Do you get it?" 

He adjusts Zanka's weight; holds him more securely in both hands to not let him drop down even an inch.

"Speak up. Shout it out. Or cry. Let it out like that too. You've got nothing to prove among us here. But without a purpose you'll find it hard to be here too. Someone like you seems to need an ideal. When you find it and start to chase it. That might be the day when you quit putting yourself down and start to change."

His words shake Zanka to the core.

"So think about it, Zanka," Enjin calmly demands. "What is your ideal?"

Zanka thinks about a girl with piercing eyes and snow-white hair.

Thinks of his elder brother.

His elder sister.

At the end of it -

The only voice that spoke to him from above the well.

It's you, Zanka thinks.

The strength in him is gone.

Enjin.

This useless ideal I want to chase is you.

~x~

He's left to rest in the presence of several others in the lounge.

Vaguely he notices someone with a really big hat with hands by his head. A giant man and a kid with a binky and a kid dressed like a dragon curiously watch in.

A concussion is still a concussion but by the end of whatever healing session Zanka has undergone, he's no longer so miserably out of it.

Rather he leans back on the couch, hand on his forehead thinking of nothing, too tired to think much at all.

Eyes on the cracked ceiling, he lets his empty mind sit.

Enjin relaxes in the sunken spot beside him, manspreading, playing cards with Gris and that guy with the kids - Bro Santa?

The hell? 

"Zanka," Gris muses, setting down a card as Enjin scowls and Bro Santa worries his lip from what looks like a soon to be loss. "Speak to Follo when you get the chance. He thinks he's killed you."

"He's good with his hammer," Zanka says, eyes still glued to the ceiling. He thinks about that moment before the older boy clocked him over the head.

The shift in the air, the minor pressure of disorientation, something that had pressed against his anima like a mallet battering a shield. Startling him enough to misstep.

Now that his head is clear - he's realized what it is.

"He'll probably be a Giver."

Silence at his words.

For so long Zanka takes notice and drags his gaze down from above.

He doesn't know why they look so surprised.

"What makes you say that?" asks Bro Santa.

"His hammer," Zanka tells them. They hadn't ever noticed? "For a moment it felt like a vital instrument."

~x~

There's lingering embarrassment in the days that follow, followed by bouts of reflection, and a lingering sense of acceptance.

He stops trying to be good enough to get noticed, stops trying to think how others see him perform, and thinks about what standard he wants to meet instead.

He should really hate the few terrible times Enjin seen him at his worse, but all he can really think is how Enjin had made him realize the foley of his own mistakes with just words two times now, and -

That guy is really fucking cool!

"What are you crying about?" Riyo questions in the training field one week later.

Zanka, caring for his stick with a little too much enthusiasm, looks away from her. "I'm not!"

"That concussion totally changed you. Should we be concerned?"

"It wasn't the concussion."

"Oh right." Riyo looks off, smile sly with teasing eyes. "Must have been Enjin then."

Zanka doesn't deny it, because he can't. 

~x~

He and Riyo get sent out with Follo, Gris and several other supports later on.

They work well together.

Semiu takes note.

"Efficient work. They paid us extra."

She tossed them pouches of coins.

"There's a few other jobs that could use more offensive work from Givers like yourselves. You interested?"  

- 3 [Crossing] -

They’re in a town nearby, enjoying the respite from a task-well done. Dusk washes pretty, dark and calm, purple, black and blue.

Riyo walks alongside him as he walks alongside Follo, their steps unsynchronized, sounding off on the cusps of near-unison. Five other Cleaners, all Supports, meander close-by, taking time for themselves to enjoy the night.

Follo’s nearly salivating at the mouth, amber eyes eagerly searching around.

“I never want to fight trash beasts in musty, dark tunnels again,” Zanka darkly grumbles.

Zanka, who had fallen into a trash can. The trash can being one of the trash beast’s mouth. He reeks like rotten bananas and sewer stench.

Riyo snickers. “You’re gonna need a week-long shower, Zanka, to even begin washing that smell out.”

Zanka wallows.

Follo and Riyo stick by him regardless of his trash-riddled stench, unbothered and nonplussed.

Follo’s more preoccupied anyhow with the greasier, enticing smells of fried and boiled food. “Hold on, I’ll see if I can get us something,” he says, before running off, energy in step. An odd sort of habit that had formed in their collections of jobs.

Sometimes Follo got snacks and shared. Sometimes Riyo picked up a bag. Sometimes Zanka, mullishly, counted coins and anguished for too long over what exactly those he was with would want after a tough job. The other Cleaners, assigned with them on those jobs, also sometimes joined in.

He wasn’t used it.

…But it wasn’t bad.

Riyo looks after Follo with interest, in the direction of crowded food stands he dives into. “He’s definitely got an appetite.”

“Yeah.” Zanka isn’t surprised. With the amount of hard work Follo puts into everything, refueling energy via copious amounts of food isn’t anything unusual.

All of them had a tendency to devour food like a bunch of monsters after a good fight. 

“I still haven’t figured out what you like eating the most out here,” Riyo muses. “What is it anyway?” 

“I don’t know,” Zanka says. “Whatever’s good.” 

“Lies. There’s definitely something.” 

There was.

The food he used to eat back at home. 

He and Riyo head a little ways-away, to a stand full of toy trinkets like two-sided drums, plastic flutes, and beaded charms.

He’s about to smile at how utterly enamored and enthused by a particularly hideous doll Riyo is, when the universe’s foot finds Zanka and decides to step on him again. 

“Zanka? …Oi, Zanka! Is that you?”

Riyo pauses in her gushing. Zanka turns, fingers stilling on the silly mask he’d had in hand.

It takes him a good second to understand what he’s seeing.

The uniform of the Hell Guard.

Official ones.

Two faces, familiar to him, wearing the gear.

A youth with gray hair. Another with a ponytail, and dark undercut beneath. Their matching dark eyes show amazement and disbelief.

Entitled, they stride up to them, like they had asked to interrupt and break into the space of fun shopping Zanka would never actually ever admit aloud was ‘fun shopping’.

“Man!” one exclaims, hand going to rub at the back of his neck. “I almost doubted my eyes, but you’re easy to pick out in a crowd. Especially with the company you keep.” He drops his hand and draws back a bit. “Sheesh. Did you fall in something? Smells like trash.”

Riyo’s no longer smiling. Her eyes have gone flat and cold. “Sorry,” she says. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

“Oh, we definitely wouldn’t have,” the other youth - the one with the dark ponytail - smiles. There’s nothing nice about it, despite how nice it appears. “We don’t make a point to get involved with Cleaners or Givers unless we have to. Different standards and all that.”

He blinks, as if thinking, and peers at Riyo with curiosity.

“...You are Cleaners, right? Must be, with the clothes you’ve got on.”

“If you already knew, why ask,” Zanka, at long last, speaks up.

He doesn’t like the way they look at Riyo. It’s like how they had looked at Hyo when she had first joined.

The girl from the slums who had somehow made her way into their academy, something settled in around them, better than them, in every way.

“Well, we never know with you,” the first youth with gray responds. Amicably. As if they were ever friends. “Half of the class just assumed you lost your mind and went off somewhere to die after getting kicked out.”

They laugh.

Like they’re old buddies with Zanka, joking around.

Beneath Zanka's skin a heat begins to warm.

Irritation. Bleeding with the beginnings of humiliation. He doesn’t need the dirty laundry of his past airing out around Riyo.

Her face hasn’t changed since she and Zanka had been interrupted. It’s the flattest expression, the most impassive he’s seen in all the time they’ve worked together.

What must she think, hearing a bit more of the truth?

That Zanka hadn’t left the Hell Guard in good relations to chase his own path. That Zanka had been removed for choosing to chase this path.

He can't tell.

Her green eyes sit on his old classmates - and sit.

“Well. Looks like I’m still alive,” is what Zanka settles on saying, “-doin’ well as ever.”

And he turns to go.

Gets several steps away with Riyo at his side, before the arm of his old classmate drapes around his shoulder from behind.

Riyo keeps walking.

Zanka keeps walking.

His old classmate with gray hair stays clinging on.

“Aw c’mon don’t be like that. We were just joking, didn’t mean anything by it. You’re still so serious.”

Zanka stops walking.

“You know, Hyo left too. I guess the Hell Guard wasn’t the place for her either. Which is crazy - I mean we were all so sure she’d rise up in the ranks.”

Like we thought you would. It goes unsaid.

Zanka looks over his shoulder, with probably too much of a glare because his classmate lets go of him immediately and backs away.

They’re next to the building of a restaurant now, a few small tables filled with chattering people outside. The uniforms of the Hell Guard catch a few of their eyes.

The uniforms of the Cleaners don’t. And why would it?

They’re an amalgamation of personal ambitions and cluttering ideologies, near lawless in comparison to the upholders of the actual state of law the Hell Guard are.

It doesn’t matter how much they as Cleaners do. At the end of the day, the ones most seen are the ones with the badge to show it.

…He didn’t know Hyo had left.

“Where is she?” he asks.

“Hyo?” his old classmate, dark-ponytail, asks back. “Not sure,” he shrugs. “It was kind of better for us when she left anyway. More opportunity, y’know. Anyway, it’s been long enough that we don’t remember.”

“You…don’t remember?” Zanka says, in mild disbelief.

“Should we?" Gray-hair asks. "I mean, no one really mentions you anymore either. You got disowned and stuff. Pretty standard not to spend time remembering things that no longer belong.”

There must be something on Zanka’s face then. Something not great. Because his old classmates smile small between themselves at it.

He wonders if they’re so comfortable being honest about their thoughts and feelings because there’s no repercussion hanging over their head.

Zanka is a Nijiku but no longer of the clan. They don’t have to give him false smiles, false respect, false interest.

He'd been a thorn to them all.

Maybe he should have thrown these two harder into the ground in the old days when they sparred.

Gray-hair tilts his head and points.

At Lovely Assistaff strapped across his back.

“Nice you’ve kept that stick though.”

Murderous intent.

For a moment Zanka can't tell if it comes from Riyo or himself.

Then hammer flies between them.

Bursting wood.

Lodging into the wall of the restaurant beside their heads.

His old classmates, who very nearly got their skulls caved in, yelp and leap back.

Those outdoors the small, cozy restaurant don’t much react, watching with interest instead as they eat. As a familiar Supporter of the Cleaners apologetically jogs over.

“Oh, sorry!” A sheepish smile; Follo rubs the back of his neck, sharing a small glance with Riyo, before reaching in between all of them to yank his hammer out of the wall. “I saw a really ugly bug so I thought I’d hit it, but I guess I missed.”

“Are you crazy?!” Zanka’s old classmate sputters, dark-ponytail, his eyes nearly bugged out. “That could’ve killed us!”

Follo holds his trusty hammer, inquisitively, in both palms as he regards them. He’s in front of Zanka, not so much in front of Riyo, and he tilts his head, in a mimicry of how Zanka’s classmates had done so to Zanka just moments before.

“A little hammer like this? I heard the Hell Guard were made of much tougher stuff. My bad. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You didn’t scare us. We were just caught off guard,” gray-hair scowls.

“Must’ve had a long day at work,” Follo sympathizes. “Walking around.”

His old classmates glower.

“Don’t be silly,” Riyo finally speaks, a smile back on her face, eyes alight with some sort of hard-to-define glow. It’s not amusement, but it is a certain kind of pleasure. “Walking around is nothing for these guys. It’s practically all they do. They’ve gotta be really good at it!”

She turns towards Zanka and Follo.

“We’re the ones left to do the real dirty work. All the hard and unsavory stuff only Givers can do, right?”

“Sounds about right,” Follo agrees, despite the fact he’s not a Giver himself.

It doesn’t matter, he understands more than those indoctrinated in the tenets of the Hell Guard ever will. Follo stows his hammer; gives Zanka’s old classmates a kind, if not pitying look and tells them:

“Not everyone is able to properly cherish important things. Much less fight for it.”

Zanka’s classmates don’t say a single thing. They look hella pissed though.

Follo’s stomach rumbles.

Zanka meets his gaze. “...All that time and you didn’t eat?”

“There are so many things here, I got distracted.”

They leave then.

They leave his classmates behind.

~x~

Their words stick in his head, even as they walk back to the main street, even as they poke around at different stalls taste-testing various, curious, greasy meats and snacks on toothpicks and in tiny paper cups.

Follo and Riyo had been quiet.

It’s after they find the other scattered Cleaners who’d been exploring the nearby shops, after they all gather and begin venturing the rest of the main street in the life of night together - that Follo speaks to him.

“Who were those guys anyway?”

Zanka keeps his eyes ahead, the dizzying lights of the market blinking sunspots and flickers in the very imprints of his brain. “Fellows from a past - who never learned to keep their mouths shut,” he gripes. “...Nuthin’ to waste time thinkin’ about."

Though he does.

Follo sighs.

He walks beside Zanka, close enough that his arm starts brushing up against Zanka’s own with every step. “Alright. But I’m seriously starvin’. I wasn’t sure what to get; there were too many options, and the prices were high as heck. We should ask Semiu if we can start getting half pay for jobs in advance.”

Zanka agrees. He doesn’t voice it aloud.

“That just depends on how trustworthy they find us,” Riyo replies. “It happens sometimes with repeat clients.” Her elbow hasn’t removed itself from where it had lodged itself into his rib on his other side.

It’s familiar, Zanka thinks, of how they've found themselves often walking when they’re in each other's company. In all the times they’ve been sent together out on jobs. 

Comforting - in a way he won't say aloud. 

“I’m not in the mood for eyeballs tonight,” he says. It comes out random. 

“No?” Follo muses, going along regardless. He rubs his chin, eyes searching the golden-lit streets. “They’d cost too much anyway.…What about a few drinks instead? They give free snacks with them.” 

“We’re not legal,” Riyo reminds him.

Follo glances at her. She glances back.

Zanka, in between them, catches how absolutely onboard with the idea Riyo is despite her words.

She spins on her heels, hands clasping behind her back - and she regards the rest of the Cleaner crew meandering a few paces away from them.

“How about it?” she smiles. “There’s no bed time for any of us.” 

The gaggle of Cleaners, only one older than Follo, exchange looks. 

They break out into equally large grins.

“We’re totally going to get in trouble!” one yahoos. 

“I just turned seventeen!” another brags. “Follo’s an old man anyway, so it should be fine.” 

“I’m nineteen?” Follo argues, concerned beyond belief. 

“Zankaa....” Riyo's arm slings comfortably around his neck. “You don't have to join in on the drinking, truthfully I won't,” she says low enough, calm enough for her words to stay just in between them. “But join us for the company? Don't sit outside alone. Besides, I'd like to hang out with you some more. We don't get the chance to outside of commissions once or twice a week.” 

No, Zanka thinks, feeling reckless.

“No,” he says aloud. I'll join. I could use a drink.” 

“Look at you, sound all grown,” she praises in tease. Something more serious rests quietly behind her gaze nonetheless. “Don’t worry. I’ll look out for you.” 

~x~

There’s a rinky-drink karaoke dive tucked in the corner of the most degenerate gathering of establishments and broken-windowed shops. If they put all their coins together they can rent out a room. Inclusive drinks and snacks. It’s a no-brainer.

Their driver of the night, the one Cleaner older than Follo, tells them he’ll do his best to stay sober so they can get back to base in one piece - but honestly - it was a lost cause from the start.

Belted songs, sloshes of ale and sweet drinks and beer, microphones torn from speaker boxes, bowls of free nuts and chips and pretzels over the tables, over the lumpy, gray couch - it’s loud, it’s crowded - it’s completely irresponsible - and Zanka to his own chagrin - falls completely into it.

Horrifically, having fun.

He and Riyo share a duet of the most girly-pop song to ever hit his ears. He and all nine other Cleaners sing horribly a banging chorus of rock. Follo starts crying in the middle of a solo ballad, before Riyo puts on rap and he starts rapping through the grief.

Zanka hides his laugh.

When the others starting fighting over the only working mic left, Riyo drags Zanka to the corner of the couch plops down.

She enthusiastically encourages him to share his best moments from his time in the Hell Guard, asks about what sort of place he lived in, the size of the rooms, the secrets of the town, their rituals -

“What kind of place are you imaginin’ it to be?!”

Eventually, it winds down.

Mostly because everyone is too wasted to make much fuss or noise.

Riyo casually scrolls through the songs options on the grainy, vibrant karaoke screen, ankles kicked up on the table.

Zanka, now on the floor, in the corner on the other side of the small room, sits there and watches, a bit absently-minded, peacefully buzzed.

This sort of thing was unthinkable for him. Even only one month ago.

How the mighty have fallen.

…He hated how easily he let fodder of the past dig insecurities and doubts up from his mind.

There’s a dented, tin mug in his hand. Held a little too loosely to be secure.

“Don’t mind them,” Follo mutters.

He’d been sitting next to Zanka in equally reflective silence. Until Zanka had muttered something about never wanting to set foot in his hometown again. And then muttered that he wanted to go back. Maybe once. That he hated being kept away. That he hated the sort of choice they’d made when he made his own.

“Can’t imagine any good reason to disown someone for having a gift in something else,” Follo murmurs.

Zanka snorts, derisively, peering down at his warped reflection in the questionably yellow dark of his drink. “You heard ‘em. It’s not what they are, so it doesn’t belong. Looks like no one cared anyway I was told to get gone. S’fine. Nuthin’ much for ‘em to care about.” He starts to tilt the cup, wondering how much of it he can get down without throwing up.

Follo holds his wrist, stopping him - for a moment - from taking another drink. His eyes sit on Zanka, importantly.

In their tiny tucked corner in the mess of the room as some sort of unserious song called ‘Candy Mountain’ starts to play - Riyo’s choice - Follo tells him: “You’re wrong.”

He squeezes Zanka’s wrist. Carefully so.

“They should care. If they cared about you, they would care.”

Zanka confusedly blinks. “...Yer not makin’ any sense,” he slurs. He tries to look away from the intensity of Follo’s stare.

But Follo follows his gaze and reclaims it.

Holding it.

“People who care, don’t easily let go. And they don’t forget who you are. Do you remember the names of those guys you ran into?”

Now that he actually thinks about - no. He had just remembered them by…their hair.

Follo smiles small. “Don’t let others who never cared, determine your self-worth. You will always be more than what they choose to believe.” His hand over Zanka’s wrist burns like a heat, branding belief into skin.

When Follo lets go, the warmth does not go away. And the older boy averts his gaze, cheeks tinged by alcohol and likely the very same embarrassment Zanka feels right now at being looked through and at so clearly.

“...That’s what Gris told me once. When I was beatin’ myself up. For not feeling like enough, though I wanted a lot. You don’t havta listen to me or anythin’,” he mumbles, speech rougher, less refined.

“...I don’t get it,” Zanka says, unable to tear his eyes away from the Cleaner next to him. Alcohol makes for an incredibly loose tongue. “What did I do to make you care? I can’t be worth that much.”

Follo rests his chin down on his arms crossed over his knees, eyes on nothing in particular ahead of them. “Sometimes you just like someone. Want to get to know them. Want to be their friend. Doesn’t have to be a reason why.”

Zanka thinks about those words.

Thinks about Enjin.

About Follo and Gris.

About Riyo. Someone else he spends the most time with, but still knows near nothing about.

“Oh.” Zanka says it simply then. As if it all makes sense. “I like you guys.”

He hadn’t liked a single person in his class at the academy.

They were classmates he sought to prove himself to. That was it. People he was told to put trust in, though the threads of what was false-made trust between them had always been translucent and thin.

A bit goofily, a smile spreads across his face. It makes him laugh the tiniest amount for all of its ridiculousness - for the first time among any of the Cleaners - aloud.

Follo looks at him, startling, chin lifting off his arms. “Zanka? You good?”

“Nev’ better,” Zanka responds. He tilts back the cup in his hand and attempts to swallow it all down.

His mouth is completely missed. 

~x~

“-was everyon’ in your class so awful?” Follo wonders some amount of unknown time later.

They’ve made it to the table, splayed in trash and cups and bowls.

“We were all awful,” Zanka insists back. He’s sitting on someone’s face-down body. He’s not sure whose it is. “Least my class was. ‘Cept for Hyo.”

“Hyo?” Follo’s brows pinch in concentrated thought with no actual thought behind it. “Who’s that?”

“Som'one else on the list of people who beat my ass.”

Follo frown and frowns and frowns, and frowns at Zanka some more, until he says: “I beat you with a hammer, am I on the list?”

And he sounds so hopeful, Zanka throws a handful of broken pretzels at his face and relishes in the floundering and scream as Follo flies back into the couch. 

~x~

Zanka wakes on that couch after blacking out.

His mouth feels sticky as his eyes, as his hands, as his uniform. He clutches his vital instrument like a stuffed toy to his chest. His head pounds so hard it feels like it’s breaking out of his skull.

Riyo plays with his hair.

His head is in her lap.

“Hey, Zanka,” she greets, “you ever think about switching this up?”

He mumbles, unintelligible, nausea in his throat, seeing but feeling blind.

“It’s in your face when you fight. We should figure something out.”

“Could be worth trying,” says Enjin.

Enjin.

Resting his arms on the back of the couch, looking down.

He’s dressed in uniform, Umbreaker in tow. All Zanka can think is that Enjin’s not supposed to be here.

Enjin gazes at him, as if reading his mind.

Or maybe there’s some sort of expression of terror on Zanka's face, matching the inside terror he feels.

“I’ve been keeping an eye out on how your missions have been coming along, self-missions and missions together, since the boss asked me to put together a team for him. Didn’t expect to find you all like this.”

He leans back from the couch. He doesn’t look particularly bothered; not even upset.

He looks at Riyo, pointedly. “You’re not old enough to drink.”

"I didn’t,” Riyo smiles.

Enjin’s eyes roam across the utterly trashed karaoke room and the bodies of the Cleaners flopped more than lifelessly around. Like a crime-scene.

“None of these guys are legal.”

“Follo and Miguel are,” Riyo says like that changes anything.

Enjin sighs.

And sighs again.

“...There’s not enough room in my car. We’re gonna have to call for another to come out. Gris is gonna give me an earful,” he utters.

He walks around the couch, stepping over Follo’s comatose body.

He peels Zanka off the couch.

Zanka nearly hurls at the motion. He’s slung over Enjin’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes in what must be an obvious punishment for their illegal excursion.

Then Enjin stoops and grabs a hold of Follo with his spare arm, carrying him under the arm like a piece of laundry.

Riyo nudges a few of the less-plastered Cleaners away; grabs a few of the ones near-death by the back of their collars and lightly drags them as they all depart.

“...Zanka,” Enjin says, after they’ve hit the street.

As the fresh, hot air of the busy dark still vibrant in the early hours of the darker early morning hits his bleary, inebriated face.

“You have a good time?”

“...Don’ wanna do that again,” Zanka weakly gets out.

“Oh good.” Enjin hoists him up a bit, with a toss, the motion nearly causing all of Zanka’s alcohol-poisoned innards to spill out. “Guess I can save you the lecture then.”

A chuckle, deep, rumbles in the older man’s chest.

“No promises about Gris.”

~x~

Back at base they’re all communally dumped in the showers, clothes on, cold water spraying down.

It makes something of a commotion.

As they fight back headaches and shivers, miserably-wrapped in towels and huddled in the barren dining room, Gris indeed does stand before them, and speaks to them for hours.

Until they want to die. 

- 2 [Rendering] -

It starts as a cough. 

Small and inconsequential. Something so minor the night before at dinner, Zanka is sure everyone dismissed it as slight choking over a bone.

They had been pretty small. 

But no. Zanka knows the signs pretty well. The ache in his throat, the bodily exhaustion, the once-then-twice sniffs.

Yet waking the next morning is the first official mission of the newly-formed Team Akuta of which Riyo, Zanka and a choice few others had been chosen to join for their offensive and defensive capabilities as Givers. 

Capabilities. Zanka was capable in their eyes. 

He could raise his chin high at that. 

At Lovely Assistaff, the staff that had become his greatest asset. Resolved in his intentions to prove himself great, from splintering wood to unbreakable steel. 

He sneaks a few congestion pills and swallows a bottle of water before leaving his room for the task-at-hand.

It’s nothing unusually different than the other tasks Zanka had been sent out to handle with Riyo, not from what he can tell based off of the information Semiu gives.

A disturbance within an abandoned city twenty-five miles from their base. 

When Enjin pats the side of his beige vehicle and beckons for them all to get in, Zanka tries not to look so obvious in his fast walk to get to the passenger seat. 

“I see better from the front,” is what he says to Riyo, 

Her mouth curls like a cat and eyes slant in humorous indulgment. “Whatever you say. It's all yours.” 

But it doesn't matter, because when Zanka gets around the car and opens the passenger door - there's already someone else there. 

He yelps and flies back. Back into Riyo who lightly catches his weight before nudging him off and helping herself to the backseat. 

“Oh yeah,” Enjin says, already sliding into the driver's seat. “This is Eishia. She's a part of Team Akuta too. One of our most vital members, technically as our only healer. You've met her plenty of times before, haven't you?”

He sticks the key in the ignition, and strange pop disco music Zanka would've never expected such a tough-looking, cool guy like Enjin to play, comes blasting out the stereo. 

When Zanka stays standing - eyes not quite returned to their normal settled place in his head - heart beating fast, thudding hard still at the scare, Enjin furrows his brow and looks past their team healer to reiterate: 

“Eishia. Reliable a healer as you'll ever get. She helped you out with your concussion a few weeks ago. Do you…not remember her?” He looks far too concerned about the state of Zanka’s memory for Zanka’s liking. 

“I remember,” he lies.

Not a whole lie.

...So she had been the one with the big hat.

Right. 

Zanka fiddles with his stick. Slings it across his back.

“Nice ta meetcha.” 

The girl with the big hat he definitely now remembers seeing around the base in the past few months, and now definitely, vaguely, remembers helping him with bumps and bruises and cuts from trash beast encounters and non-related combat incidents - glances up from her lap.

Quickly her eyes move towards him - and hold his gaze.

“Did you want to sit here? I can move to the back if you'd prefer.” 

Was he some kinda asshole?

Zanka shakes his head, feels a headache at the motion, and plasters on a smile. “No worries! I didn't see you, that was my mistake. I'll just go to the back. I see best from those windows anyway.” 

“Thought you saw best from the front?” Riyo calls up. 

Zanka glowers in her direction, a glower she can't even see from her laid-down position in the trunk. 

“Zanka,” Enjin drawls, somewhat impatiently, mildly confused, yet equally entertained, drums his fingers on the wheel. “We've got places to go. Get in.” 

~x~

It's a long twenty-five mile ride. 

Zanka wasn't sure what he'd been envisioning riding in Enjin's car would be like, but it definitely hadn’t been the horrifically, bumpy journey and tailspins of death to a playlist of old school mixtapes and synthesized dance beats. 

It was like being thrown into an alternate dimension. 

The Cleaner's base often bounced to music during off hours of the day, hangouts and meals. But this? This? 

He'd been given to Gris the night they'd gotten drunk as hell at karaoke to ride in the older man's car. Now Zanka understands that Enjin had actually been giving him a mercy back then, not ridding himself of Zanka's drunk self because he hated him. 

“Hm? Zanka?” Enjin wonders - after Zanka nearly throws himself out the car once they park in the midst of the abandoned ruins marked on their map. “You get carsick easily?” 

Zanka, on his hands and knees, sucking in oxygen like a madman through his mask, debates on whether or not to tell his new team leader the truth.

What if he got kicked out of the team? 

“You're stressing over weird things again,” Riyo chuckles, coming to stand beside him. 

Riyo, Enjin’s number-one-companion, probably wouldn’t get it. 

Eishia places a soothing hand on his shoulder, and soon Zanka is up, falling into step among their team, at Enjin's heels.

The adrenaline brought on from the journey-of-hell between base to here soon dwindles. Eishia's eyes linger on the back of him as she walks close behind him, although he's not too sure why.

He doesn't think he's done anything to get on her bad side or draw her extra attention. 

Was this about the passenger seat?

Was she actually the scary, quiet sort to hold grudges?

…Did she carry tiny knives? 

As he contemplates whether or not to hide his exposed back from their team healer, Enjin and Riyo continue to fall into deep conversation in front of him.

Something about the chances of this request being a lure towards a trap targeting them, or whether the mission request was being completely truthful about the dwelling of a hideous trash beast among this place, gargantuan, like a kaiju. 

“If there is one, it's awfully good at lying down,” Enjin observes. “D'you think they sleep?” 

“That'd be interesting,” Riyo responds, also taking a glance around. “They’d look a more harmless belly-up. Like a dog. Maybe we can teach them to play fetch.” 

“Oh?! Good idea. That would make cleaning them up a whole lot easier.” 

…Were these the kinds of conversations Riyo and Enjin normally had together? 

Zanka had come to learn in all his time with Riyo together that she was far more talkative and expressive than he assumed. Much brighter, for how laid-back she was too.

Bits and pieces he had picked up from her in between their clean-up assignments together. Enough to know that just like Zanka, Enjin had saved her from where she had been. 

It made sense they were close. Apparently Riyo had been at Enjin’s side for years.

In comparison, Zanka was…

His thoughts drift off - and stop. Lovely Assistaff trembles between his shoulder blades. 

He draws it in an instant.

Enjin and Riyo’s attentions are caught.

But he’s not looking at any of them.

He hurls his stick through the gap between Enjin and Riyo, anima sparking, blazing blue. 

Straight into a large heap of garbage stacked before a collapsed building entrance. The spinning staff, transformed, blasts the trash apart. 

And pings off the corner of a ginormous black-steel horn. 

Quickly, Zanka watches where his staff flies off, where it continues to burn, stuck in the dirt upright along the desert-earth among all the pieces of flung trash. 

Enjin's hand pushes him back, and Enjin follows the push, Umbreaker opening as a sudden slew of acidic sludge is spat their way.

His umbrella hisses.

Riyo has already moved to a position of defense beside Eishia, both behind Zanka. 

“Well.” Enjin’s mouth wryly quirks. “Look at that.”

Peeking from around the curve of Enjin's vital instrument, Zanka catches sight of it. 

The trash beast they were sent to eradicate. The one that had apparently been evaporating any and all poor souls who set foot into this isolated place in search of shelter, goods or rest. 

A singular eye.

The head of a serpent with a hissing tongue - and it's really fucking large.

The rest of its body - 

“Think it's in the building behind it or under the ground we're standing on?” Enjin asks. He continues to stand before Zanka, one hand still against him guarding, Umbreaker in the other, as the trash beast lifts its head. 

Its plan to attack in-ambush exposed. 

“My bets on the building,” Riyo decides. Her gaze is on a window high up on what must be the forty-second desecrated floor of the building that-once-was. 

Zanka sees why right away. Its tail is now sticking out of it, rattling madly in the furious warning of a next attack. 

“Zanka”, says Enjin. “Nice job identifying the threat. But you've lost your vital instrument.” 

And - that's fair - Zanka's too on edge to take a proper hold of the two-sided card of criticism and praise Enjin has given him, his mind on high-alert. He’s never tasted death like this before on his tongue.

But now that he has, it is foul. 

The serpent beast cracks open its fanged maws - and unleashes a rattling bellow. 

"Prepare yourselves," says Enjin. "We're going at it."

~x~

Zanka gets his staff back eventually. 

After nearly a quarter of the city ruins have been permanently destroyed. 

After Enjin has taken a chunk of rock to the head, and Eishia heals him up, and Riyo nearly gets run through by the serpent's horn - Zanka takes the risk and draws its attention from their team leader currently downed. 

Spat sludge burns through the cloth of his leg, scorching skin. 

He takes the pain, sweeps his staff along the ground, and bullets a path - in a flash - zigzagging the further spat globs of skin-melting spit.

Put this thing down. 

The desperation. The fury. The reality that even with those as capable as Riyo and Enjin and Eishia at his side, they can still die. 

He wasn’t sure when he had forgotten that.

Lovely Assistaff is a catchpole, a mancatcher in all its exemplar, and the irony of it being the most used weapon by authorities chasing down lawless is not lost on him from the origin of his clan's glory. But his catchpole is as blunt as it is large. 

Blunt force won't cut through this beast's skin and scales.

Won't wound it. Won't make it bleed or hurt, as it needs to be hurt for them to live. 

He leaps above the monster's sweeping tongue, hooks his legs around its singular horn and drags his weapon up, upside-down, for all he's worth. 

His vital instrument responds. 

Blades and spikes.

Splitting reptilian skin.

Zanka has a moment to recognize his instrument's change to his will, before he seizes the momentum and rakes Lovely Assistaff through the serpent's hissing mouth - and through its left eye. 

Blinded, it thrashes. 

He rolls along the expanse of its wide, flat head and brings his weapon down through its other eye. 

Acid. 

It splashes over his hands, singes the sleeves of his arms - burns along his neck.

In anger, the beast rears back its head, and bleeding purple wet from its blinded eyes, strikes him with the side of its head. 

Violently, he's violently thrown into a nearby wall.

It craters at his back.

Rupturing something in him, breaking bone. 

Blood explodes out his mouth. 

When he goes down, he goes down, and doesn't get back up. 

Dizzily, he catches sight of Eishia running his way, her visage blinking in and out of sight - speaking to him - hands on him.

Behind her, is a glimpse of Riyo and her red hair - as she takes the lead - and absolutely begins tearing into the belly of the beast with the kind of gifted finesse only something trained from birth could ever hope to have. 

Her scissors reap an upwards massacre of scale and flesh, and she meets her instrument high up in the sky to hook her feet into its hold and swing-sling the cutting blades through the monster's neck.

Decapitation. 

Acidic blood rains down. 

“Eishia,” Zanka gurgles out, reaching out, attempting, trying to pull her down beneath him. 

She'll get burned. 

The shadow of an umbrella shields them both.

“I’m still here.”

Enjin. He crouches at their sides. His hand, steadying and firm, momentarily grasps the side of Zanka's face, squeezing in assurance, before letting go.

“Well done.” 

Zanka's not too sure if Enjin had witnessed what had actually happened- him getting thrashed by the snake - but he's not going to not take the compliment.

Not in this banged-up state. 

It'd be nice to believe, even if it wasn't true, that he hadn't been the worst part of Enjin's brand-new team. 

~x~

Lovely Assistaff bears his name. 

Enjin sits across from him in the dilapidated remains of disintegrated walls of places that were once places people called home, and tells him the meaning. 

“Looks like it's evolved." He inhales the cancerous stick between two cupped hands, before relaxing back and letting the smoke blow out. “With your own capabilities - and growing strength. It happens sometimes, to Givers highly in-tune with their instrument. It accommodates, and reshapes.” 

He looks mildly pleased. 

But Zanka doesn't know. Had he gotten stronger? He had ended up on the ground again despite it.

Eishia finishes healing Riyo from her burn wounds and comes to join them, carefully taking a hold of Zanka's acid-bitten arms and beginning to get to work. 

Enjin was right. 

Zanka thinks it as he watches his injuries lessen in severity, then clear; as the pain that comes with it, dulls, then goes away. 

Eishia sure is vital. 

Without her - wouldn't they be so out-of-commission in the fight, they'd be dead? 

Riyo had destroyed the trash beast on her own. Enjin had granted them their shield. Zanka had... thrown his staff at the thing, poked its eyes out, and gotten slapped. 

...Yep. That checks out, he morosely agrees to himself. 

“Um.” Eishia speaks up in the calm silence that had befallen them all. She tends to his face, glancing into his eyes, glancing away to his burns, and back to his eyes. “You move quite well. It's impressive how fast you are with a vital instrument that looks so heavy from top-down.”

Heavy? 

Zanka hadn't thought about his weapon as being heavy.

It was weighted, at most, but not so weighed that he couldn't toss it around and hurl it along the ground. It was the anima present within him, the same anima that made the impossible possible among animated monstrosities made of literal trash, that ignited his core; granting strength on a level ordinary non-Givers would never be able to attain. 

So he bore the weight of his staff, that staff that had in turn become the most vital part of his soul. 

The simple re-wrapped stick. Broken, fixed, broken, abandoned, broken, loathed, and broken again as it was despised. As it was cared for. Apologized to. Studied. Practiced with every day, near every night, in moments of silence, in moments of waking work. 

Work to understand; to comprehend - why this stick was his.  

His family looked down upon those who tied their dependence to useless junk, but Zanka in his acceptance - of his past - of his choices - of the people around him he silently decided to make his home - had come to take pride in it. 

The useless junk that revealed his true self, and still became something in the hands of his true self. 

And now, according to Enjin, it had leveled up again, in a different way. Something great bearing his own name. And... 

Zanka’s eyes fall on his vital instrument resting along his lap. He gazes at his name.

...

His name. 

Not the name of his clan, of anyone great - of any legacy that came before. This stick born from his failures and missteps, busted and taped for any and all to see, had come to realize itself fully in the rotten depths of his soul.

Like the luminescent sea-glow blue of anima, leagues lighter than the natural dark sapphire of his eyes. 

“...I guess I practiced a lot,” is what he says after an eternity of silence. “Thank you. For the healin’. We really couldn't be without you.” 

“It's nothing. I'm glad I could help." Eishia's mouth curves slightly down. “...By the way. ...Did you want any medication for your fever? I can't heal you from that.” 

Zanka looks at her, confused. 

Riyo and Enjin look at him, twin eyebrows raised.

Smoke drifts from Enjin's cigarette.

Eishia doesn't look away. 

Zanka’'s not sure why he thought she was the sort to shy away. In all his times speaking to her, never once has her gaze wavered away. “I'm... it's not a fever.” 

“I'm quite certain it is,” she softly disagrees. “I noticed it earlier this morning by the car. You were pre-symptomatic last night. My big brother kept talking in the lab about how often you coughed and blew your nose. He made a song out of it before I mentioned you might be unwell. Looking at you now, your skin is clammy, your face pale, your eyes unfocused in the direction of my voice. Your pupils often wander and struggle to return. I really am impressed you were fighting like this.” 

Zanka opens his mouth. Nothing comes out. 

Enjin gets to his feet and exhales from the effort, joints audibly creaking, heaviness heard. “Alright.” His cigarette is put out on a jutting piece of tall stone. His golden eyes rest on Zanka in light exasperation. “Back to the car. You can sleep on the way home.” 

Home. 

The simple word registers first in Zanka's fog-addled mind before the part about having to drive back twenty-five miles with Enjin's driving sinks in. 

He wonders how feasible it is to make camp and wait for Gris to come get him the next day instead.

~x~

The car rattles like the rattling of the trash beast they’ve destroyed, but there's nothing violent about it and nothing dangerously frightening about leather seats stained in grime and dirt. 

Enjin plays the music low. 

He eases over bumps; doesn't fly over them to make the car lift and soar. 

Zanka doesn't know when his eyes glued to the outside passing landscape of cracked earth and dirt becomes the sight of utter darkness, but by the time it does, Riyo's fast asleep against him, and he can't quite manage to drag his eyelids open again. 

That's right...

Riyo must be even more exhausted than him. The feat she had accomplished was crazily great.

He slouches back against her; slides down a bit in their now dusty, dirty seats. 

He would never fall asleep like this back at the academy. Not in the classroom, not in his home, not even in his room. 

When did he get so used to it? 

This new kind of thing Enjin liked to call home?

~x~

They're greeted with the smiles of Gris and Tomme, arriving coincidentally, at the same time from a missive of their own. A couple of other Cleaners are with them. 

Zanka, rubbing sleep from his eyes, faintly recognizes a number of them. 

He'd gotten drunk with them after all. 

Had a few meals with them in the days that had followed after. Trained with them a little. Gave a few pointers on how to utilize their weapons. Started reading while they played games among themselves in the lounge. 

They clap him on the back in welcome as they pass and ask him to join for dinner.

“Sorry, this guy has a date by the name of his bed,” Enjin steps in, clapping a solid hand onto Zanka’s shoulder before he can start to wander off with them. 

Riyo yawns beside them, stretching her arms up high. 

Gris takes a good look at them all. 

“I take it, it went well.” 

“Oh yeah.” Enjin takes his hand off Zanka's shoulder and ruffles his hair - mindful. Like he can tell in the arrival back to base, how fast and deeply Zanka's general sense of well-being was plummeting to the ground. “Zanka here's got a hell of an eye. I had a feeling why months ago you started having him take point, but it was nice to witness it firsthand.” 

Zanka furrows his brows.

Is he hallucinating? Enjin sounded awfully proud. 

Had he sounded like that when it ever came to Zanka before? 

“Observation and strategy. Finding enemy weakness and understanding how to exploit it to our advantage. I've told him how great he's done on our first mission as a team, but maybe he needs to hear it from his original leader first.” 

“I’m not a leader,” Gris responds, but he smiles small at Zanka nonetheless. Warmth in his pale eyes, satisfaction in his tone. “Sounds like you make for a valuable asset to the team. You'll be great in the future missions ahead.” 

“Uh-huh,” Riyo chimes in, yawning loud and large again. “He sure will.” 

Her arm falls over Zanka's shoulders. It's a familiar thing he's gotten used to. He lets her drag him off and she tells them all:

“Now it's time to go to bed.” 

~x~

When the fever hits, it hits. 

He's visited in his bedroom in the days that follow by Eishia who offers pills and soothing salts. By Gris.

By Riyo - who's caught his sickness - and makes sure he knows it she crowds into his bed. 

“You have enough room, scooch over!” 

“Your elbow’s in my rib, in my rib!” 

Pillows and blankets get tangled, smushed and tucked under arms and legs.

Zanka gives up or doing anything about it. They share sickly talks about the random things of The Ground, The Cleaners and each other's personal likes, dislikes and habits. 

They eat with Tomme, with several other Supporters, with Gris. 

Follo joins them over the weekend, sharing tales from his own ventures with Gris and the others of their crew. 

“You know, I was intending on coming here to give you a piece of my mind about going out while sick,” Follo admits. “But then I realized you probably didn't realize yourself how sick you'd gotten. Since you're bad at that.” 

“Thanks,” Zanka responds. 

“Well as long as you know now.” Follo offers a crookedly hitched-up grin, handsome and pleased. “I'm just happy you let yourself get treated without a fuss. Makes me feel good you're getting taken care of.” 

“Don’ hafta be so weird about it,” Zanka grumbles, scratching his cheek, looking away. 

Follo’s smile grows. 

Riyo, lounging at his side against the same pillow with her ankles crossed, asks them both, “Did you want me to leave the room or…?” 

Follo sputters. 

Zanka doesn’t get what she’s getting at, just thinks Follo slathers him with too much appreciation and praise for doing the bare minimum.

But he gets what Follo means at least. 

And a part of him is a bit happy about it too. 

That he seems to be doing something right - a lot more things right - though he might not be fully aware of what they are. 

~x~

Enjin makes an appearance in full uniform the day Zanka feels full strength returning - walking in on the middle of Zanka getting folded like a pretzel by Riyo who's teaching him a complicated technique to break out of a grapple. 

“You two have a lot of energy,” he greets as he helps himself inside Zanka’s room. “Nice to see you getting along.” 

“We've always gotten along,” Riyo comments, releasing her air-cutting hold on Zanka's throat and rolling off. She offers him a hand, which he takes, as he staggers to his feet. “You've been gone for a while.” 

“Sure have.” Enjin lopsidedly grins and holds two crimson chokers on the fingers of a hand. “Had to get these repaired after our tussle. Zanka, I've added my blood to yours as well. In hindsight, that should’ve been done before we headed out. That was my fault.” 

Yeah, Zanka had forgotten about that. Hadn’t even thought to ask about it as their team headed out that day. 

But... Enjin’s blood is on his communicator now? 

It shouldn’t make Zanka so creepily enthused, but it does. 

Despite probably being able to read Zanka’s thoughts loud and clearer than whatever morphed expression of bizarreness has taken over Zanka’s face, Enjin still smiles at him; still tells him like he means it: 

“Good to see you up.” 

Zanka doesn’t know what to do with that. 

It’s not like there’s any sort of actual friendship between them. They’ve barely begun to interact beyond a weekly basis. But he guesses it’ll be different now that they’re on one team.

It already is more different.

I mean… Enjin’s here of his own will, speaking to me in my room. 

That’s a change.

Enjin holds out Zanka’s choker closer to him when Zanka doesn’t move to take it like Riyo had with hers.

Cheeks warm, a bit unsure, but stupidly pleased nonetheless, Zanka takes the smaller choker meant for him and clips the communicator around him. 

Its weight is a comfort. 

He rubs his wrist beneath it, gently feeling his own pulse with his thumb. It flutters quick and strong.

…He wonders when the Cleaners around him had noticed how much he disliked having it around his neck like a collar, choking out his breath.

They couldn’t know about the fears and gasps and silent tears from helplessness, frustration, and time spent alone in his room back in the town he was from, cursing himself, beating himself up - in the depths of the woods beside his house; at the bottom of a well. 

It had always been hard to breathe, to suck in the air he needed to live. 

To remind himself he still wanted to live. 

“It’ll be important to keep it on you at all times,” Enjin takes a minute to remind Zanka and Riyo both. “Moreso with this new team arrangement. You’ll still be handling tasks on your own, not like that’s going to change. I know when you’re out with Gris and the others, you tend to stay in packs, but you never know when a call might come in from me or the boss. When we’re needed as a team to move out, we’ll move out."

It sounds too good to be true.

"In our trusty rover.” 

All bubbling warmth and gushiness blooming flowers in Zanka at the certainty that this team, his place in the team, is certified for certain - gets swiftly trampled over-foot. 

Regrets the small part of him that thinks, despite how awful it can be when Enjin doesn’t care to drive with care, it somehow makes Enjin that much cooler. 

He doesn't know how he's going to survive Enjin's rides of death.

But if there was a will... he would, somehow...find a way.

Riyo preens at his side and gives his back a few clapping pats. “There, there, we’ll get you a bag. We’ll write your name on it too!” 

“I don’t need it,” he refuses, holding pride and lie for no reason. 

“Wow, you look so excited! I guess it must be true. You interested in going for a ride right now?” Riyo offers in amazement. 

“N-no need for that. I’m still recovering.” He coughs into his fist, very lightly. Very fakely.

Whatever.

It’ll make some kind of point. 

“Too bad then,” Riyo smiles. “How about the next time we go, when you feel better, you can sit up front and enjoy the ride as much as you want.” 

Zanka gives her the dirtiest look in human existence.  

She throws up her hands and looks away, smirking, smugly, smug. 

Enjin glances between them.

Considering something.

Maybe reliving something from another time and place, an unreadable look in his eyes. Softly, a sincere curve of fondness tugs at his mouth. 

“Well,” he says, “Here's to all our future successes, Team Akuta.”  

- 1 [Reset, Wishing] -

They’re asked to save a girl. 

A girl kidnapped for being a Giver among a settlement of the poverty-stricken poor - in the middle of a crime-run city, without order, a place of trouble the Hell Guard had not yet purged. 

The rooftop is a battlefield. Ice locks his legs in place. His weapon breaks it apart.

He moves - towards Eishia - as the man who kidnapped that Giver, that little girl, launches an attack at their team healer.

He shoves her out the way.

He tanks the blow, staff flipped swiftly in his hands - over his shoulder - to stop the swung-down icepick meant to break his bone.

The reverberation shakes him head-to- toe.

Teeth grit, it takes all of his strength, to push back and up and throw the man’s icepick off.

Quick as lightning, a downwards cut and sweep, in an attempt to knock the bigger man off-balance, if not off his feet. But the man is bigger, broader, heavily scarred, and all he does is drop his thick boot down on the flat of Zanka’s blade, trapping it in place.

Zanka curses in his head.

An icepick a vital instrument - now as large as a frosted nail. The man doesn’t bother to use it. The back of his arm catches Zanka on the chin, staggering him.

He’s kicked across the roof next.

Zanka flies and tumbles and rolls, palm skidding, scraping across rooftop stone. 

They’ll be paid handsomely if they bring this dangerous man back alive.

The close-knit community of gathered orphans rescued from trader rings, watched over by their elder, weathered guardians. Wanted the man - to give him a terrible punishment. 

But the one who had taken the girl is a Raider and he’s strong.  

So Semiu had grimly shared in their debriefing.

Raiders. Givers with their own agenda; an agenda not known to their organization of Cleaners yet.

In other words - a threat Zanka had never encountered before. But they’re rotten people, Zanka knows. And that’s enough for him, to show not an ounce of mercy to the Raider at hand.

If he even gets the chance. 

He gets to a knee, stick supporting his weight.

His breath coalesces, tongue tasting frost, throat frigid as his lungs. Bangs in his eye, scowling, glowering, he breathes and breathes, breathes for air and tries to breathe. 

“Zanka!” his name is shouted, urgent, loud. 

Follo.

Zanka quickly lifts his head. 

A curve of jutting ice rips upwards from the ground, towards Zanka still downed on his knees.

He throws his arms up. It’s a useless defense. The jutting ice breaks it apart and throws him hard.

Eishia’s arms try to catch him. It’s Follo behind her who bears the brunt of their tossed weight. They slide to the edge of the roof, a collective of yelps and grunts and oofs.

They hit the edge of the roof and stop. 

Hastily they struggle to disentangle.

“Follo! Zanka!” Riyo calls out from the roof of the building next to the one they’re on.

Enjin steps in front of her, and like a bulwark, tanks a blast of blinding light as Umbreaker opens up.

The little girl forced to fight, is who they’re up against.

Such a powerful Giver.

Her capabilities pushed to the extreme, her own anima tearing her apart.

Zanka can see her across from Enjin and Riyo, tattered cloak and broken chains around her ankles - clutching a plastic star-shaped wand in hand -holding back tears.

She’s hurt and hurting; he can hear her voice in his head.

The words she must’ve carefully spoken many times, now cried aloud.

“Shining Star!”

Thousands of lights like gathered stars spread over the sky.

A dome beneath the night.

The stars fire down.

Follo tackles Zanka and Eishia beneath him as the roof is torn apart.

They’re going to die.

“What was she doing before?” Zanka asks about the girl to Enjin as they pile into the car. “As a Giver?” 

“From reports?” Enjin contemplates. “Healing others. Miraculously, from near-impossible ailments. People who couldn’t walk. Coughs that couldn’t stop. Finding lost items for townsfolk lost for years.” 

“If someone like that was out there, wouldn’t we have heard of them before?” 

“I wonder about that. If she’s only just become a Giver, no. And if reports of her being a child are true. Well…” Enjin’s eyes briefly wander towards Riyo relaxing in the backseat. Maybe Zanka’s not supposed to see it. Enjin brings his gaze back out front. Starts the ignition. “What circumstances would it take for someone as young as that to care so much about an object that is has that kind of strength?” 

He’s serious for a moment. Much more serious than usual. 

“Follo, Zanka, I’ll trust you with the defense. This’ll be a full team effort. It could get ugly fast.” 

A shield and it raises over them all.

Gris.

Did he jump over from Enjin and Riyo’s roof?

It doesn’t matter.

The roof is blasted apart.

Six stories of pure cement. Among bone-breaking rubble, they plummet down.

Enjin yells for them.

For Gris. For Eishia.

For Follo and Zanka.

It’s the last thing Zanka hears. 

Ringing white.

In a white and ringing space. 

He's in a well, sitting down, smaller than before.

His stick is a stick.

He looks up.

He wishes he’d be good enough to be found.

Good enough to sit on a throne.

"What does that get you?" the girl with snow white hair and crystalline eyes asks. She doesn't join him down the well. "What does that mean to you?"

It doesn't mean anything.

Above the well, the hands of his brother and sister reach down.

That's right. The Golden Throne means nothing. It never meant anything to him.

But having it would at least mean…

He continues to look up.

Ah.

He’s too far down below.

His siblings hands don’t reach.

He can't be seen.

Zanka wakes facedown, in a puddle of murk and filth.

His head pounds. Pounds and pounds and throbs. He must’ve only blacked out for a minute. He can hear the sounds of combat happening far, far up above.

Is it Enjin?

He struggles to think.

Is it Riyo?

He struggles to move.

It must be. Since he’s fallen down here.

These tunnels underground the city, the unstable earth the poor buildings of the poorer city had been carelessly built upon. Dark and damp. Wet and cold.

He lays there for a moment. His body feels like a bruise. Then he forces himself up. His hands buckle beneath him. Fingers squelching in disgusting filth, he pushes himself back up. 

Eishia…

The safety of a healer took priority above all else. He glances around.

She’s there in the shadows, nearly ten feet away, on her side, unmoving, battered, and small. Gris’ hulking body wraps around her. Next to his head, the giant slab of a rock that must’ve knocked him out cold.

Zanka struggles to understand the sight - then realizes one of them is missing. He looks around again - he looks behind him.

“Follo-”

Follo on his back, bleeds from behind the head, hat knocked off.

Uncannily still.

The little girl stands beside him, in petrified distress, clutching at her plastic wand. “I’m - sorry,” she gets out, her breath scared and young and young.

It’s not her fault.

Is Follo dead?

“I - don’t - want to - hurt -”

It’s not her fault.

Is Follo dead?

Mind full of noise, Zanka staggers to his feet. An ocean, and it roars, thundering in his ears. His body quakes with the pain of a fall from far, far away. He stares at Follo, and stares and stares, uncomprehending, not accepting.

"I'm sorry - if it hurts." A trembling whisper among the tumbling in his head. "I can - make it - go away."

The girl speaks it as if being commanded to from another miles above, shaking, weakly weeping. 

That was what the Giver who had taken her had been forcing her to do. Using her as a weapon to make real people go away, evaporated to dust - by a wish of oblivion forced upon them. 

Zanka isn't hurt.

Not hurt like Gris, or like Eishia or like Follo.

But he had seen a wish regardless. Known that wish that had never happened.

There are stars above. Beneath a night sky that shouldn't exist where they are. They force his eyes up to witness their lights. Their twinkling lights.

The wondrous sight of their infinity holds him still.

"Please...." shakes her voice, quieter than before. Begging. "...death."

Her words drag his gaze back down.

He resists the pull of the stars above.

In the dredge of the tunnel, he looks at her. Looks at her.

She's barefoot. Her feet are dirty and small. This close he can see the imprint of harsh red in the shadow of the broken chains shackled to ankles sallow and underfed. Mangled, strands of golden wheat hair.

Gray eyes, full not of the world's wonder, but of it's filth. 

Maybe once she had used her gift to grant others things they wished to have the most; to be able to find what they lost; to be able to feel a nearing hope.

Not anymore.

Was this what she wanted now too? To forget? The painful things that hurt her. The painful things she couldn’t forget. If she could just get rid of them, she wouldn’t feel pain again. 

He understands it.

He takes a step forward. Then another.

And another, his vital instrument in hand.

She doesn't try to run away. Small hands twisting over her vital instrument, just a children's toy, she stands and flinches, waiting, for a blow to come. 

"...I saw somethin'," he rasps out, stopping in front of her. Beside Follo's body. "When I fell."

"It was your wish," she whispers. 

"...Yeah. It was." Zanka lowers before her. His eyes rest on Follo as he kneels, gazing at the body laid out - until he sees the stilted, unsteady breaths of the barely breathing chest.

He's alive.

"What's your wish?" Zanka asks. 

"...It doesn't matter," the girl whispers again. 

" 'Course it does." Zanka, with his hands, grasps the shackles on her ankle, and pushing, forcing his own energy into its steel, forcing it to bend - makes it break apart.

The girl doesn't move. Zanka throws them away, as far out of sight, as they will go. When he lifts his head and looks up, the girl's frightened eyes are wide upon him. He holds her gaze.

Like Eishia wouldn't, like Follo wouldn't, like Enjin wouldn't - he doesn't look away.

He thinks about the lessons learned among the Cleaners.

Those who have helped him. Changed him.

Taken the time to understand him.

It pushes him to tell her; to let her know, though his body hurts and his head feels unwell.

"...If it hurts it’s okay to say it. If you’re angry, that’s okay too." He thinks about her small hopes; what she must've been forced to endure. He tells her, sincerity, fierceness, in every word. "You don’t have to pretend. That’s what makes it hurt the worse. Take it from The Ground's biggest pretender around."

Gris' kindness. Eishia's persistence. Follo's care.

"If you wanna beat the brakes off that Raider who took ya, just say it too. Shout it out you want him gone, and I'll do it. But don't hide it - how you really feel. Let us help you, now that we're here." 

Her legs tremble. Her knees knock.

Her eyes spill with tears.

"A big sister said wishes were enough to change the world. I wanted to stay home. He took me from home." She throws back her head and sobs. The star illusion above them breaks to falling dust. Snowing down. "I want to go back."

She falls back on the ground, sitting, and crying, crying loud.

It hurts in him to hear.

He listens to it anyway - to understand.

Her wand has lost its shimmer. Dull, yellow plastic, dirtied, cracked and bent.

Zanka gazes at it.

Wonders if it was given to her by that big sister.

Wonders where that big sister has gone.

He stands up and looks up.

The sounds of fighting above the earth, high up on the rooftops they had plunged down from, have stopped.

Does that mean Enjin and Riyo have won?

...It's funny.

He huffs to himself, despondent, worn, relieved, suddenly feeling weak.

....Standing down here... feels like standing at the bottom of a well.

He lowers his head.

He needs to help Follo. Needs to check on Eishia. Needs to wake Gris. Then they need to get back above, take this girl with them, meet back with Enjin and 

His chest is cold.

Strange, he thinks.

He hadn’t heard a thing.

The girl's falling stars twinkle fall as he sways.

As his hand comes to his chest, where his heart is, where a chunk of ice stabs through. Blood stains the front of his uniform. Drips from the corner of his mouth. His throat is full crimson wet he can’t keep down.

Frost and it clings to him, neck and clothes and skin.

Strange.

The girl in front of him screams.

The man behind him yanks his icepick out.

Zanka topples forward.

He still can’t hear a thing.  

~x~

Riyo doesn’t kill anymore.

She goes for the throat anyway, and gets a side knife partway through the Raider's neck before Enjin yanks her by the back of her jacket - behind him - away. 

Blood sprays.

Not enough of it.

Enjin fist puts the man's face straight into the ground. He doesn't get back up.

Because this is what had been asked of them.

To bring this scum-of-a-man back alive.

Zanka doesn't have a pulse.

Enjin has him, is turning him over, is stripping him of his uniform jacket to get to the wound underneath. Zanka's blood is dark. Thick, like molasses, rich and slow as it bleeds out - staining the canvas of his skin.

Enjin tells her to get Eishia, to wake Gris, and Riyo goes to do it, his voice muddled words heard from underwater above her head.

Gris wakes first.

Splattered in mud; disoriented, but not disoriented enough that he can't tell something has gone straight-to-hell. He's on his comms, stirring Eishia, and Riyo turns once she sees that, to go back to Zanka's side.

Follo must've woken up at some point while her back was turned, from the girl's screams.

Although the girl is dead silent now - in utter shock - staring at Zanka's corpse.

That's what it looks like to Riyo. A corpse.

She's seen a lot of them.

Made a lot of them herself.

Eishia comes over to help the body whiter-than-white itself. Enjin's bloody hands lift from the gaping hole in Zanka's chest. Her smaller hands fill the space.

Skin stitched, sutured, blood stilled. Things are put back together, with a hideous scar from the immediate treatment, but Zanka still doesn't breathe, and still doesn't move.

Because that's what dead bodies do.

They don't move.

She thought they were going to have more time together.

Her and Zanka.

She was really starting to like him. The guy older than her, who had stuck himself down a well to die, climbed out, still wanting to die, until Follo's hammer had given him a good enough whack to the head and Enjin showed him that if Zanka wanted to be left behind, then he would be left behind.

Zanka's classmates at his Hell Guard Academy didn't know a thing. It was nice Follo had stepped in before she had made a move herself.

Someone like Zanka forgettable?

Someone like Zanka, with nowhere to belong?

Eishia shocks his heart. Follo's hands press compressions into the chest, pressing his ear to bloody chest, not caring about the mess.

Enjin's on the Raider, stepping on the unconscious Raider with one foot, very casually. He leaves the work to Eishia who is better equipped, but his eyes are on Zanka, and they don't look away. Watching the efforts. Something as blank on his face, as Riyo feels inside. 

Gris steps up behind her.

Relays something from Cleaner's HQ. About back-up. About support.

They don't exactly need support now.

Everything's already done.

Eishia speaks. Follo moves back. She attempts to jump-shock Zanka's heart back to life for the fifth time.

Zanka breathes out.

A clot of blood.

For a moment, they all still.

A noise, weak.

A struggle, to fight.

His chest deflates, his lungs deflates, his breath stutters again, too weak for air. Follo's hand slides instantly to the curve of Zanka's neck. Without hesitation - he bends over and down - and presses their mouths together, breathing life into lungs so intent on letting life slip away.

Eishia sources the problem.

Right lung puncture. Blood inside.

The icepick missed his heart; it's vicious frigid anima from the weapon that had crept and tried to cage itself around his heart instead.

Zanka breathes on his own. Continues, battling, to keep breathing on his own.

It's enough.

Follo pulls away.

Zanka watches him, eyes barely open, hand twitching, trying to lift off the ground.

Follo grabs it - and looks for a moment in his utter relief- like he'll bend back down.

He doesn't.

Eishia tells them:

"He needs more advanced treatment."

"I know where to go," Enjin speaks. Clearly, for the first time, it seems - to Riyo's ears. "I'm driving. Let's go."

Gris picks up the girl Zanka had saved, carefully, noting the chains from her ankles tossed away, as she hiccups in silent grief.

Zanka's jacket is half-pulled over him, a bloodied mess.

August will be over the moon to fix it back up.

Enjin cradles Zanka secure. Leaves dragging the knocked-out carcass of the Raider to Riyo, who does so by gripping the greasy hair of the man hard enough to rip it out. 

Next time.

She'll be fast enough to save Zanka's life before he dies.

~x~

The dining hall is loud.

Zanka, seated at a table unoccupied in a corner away from everyone else, pushes a bent metal spoon around in his plastic container of jello. His old robes, his casual ones for resting, drape over his shoulders.

It's really, really loud.

Music shakes the walls and floors. Food spreads over the tables. Remnants of confetti litter the floor, colorful and shiny, in perfect little squares. He's not particularly hungry, but he's here nonetheless.

Feels like he has to be.

They're celebrating his survival after all.

The memory he has is scattered - too scattered to recall the full picture. Like a story that had happened in another life, to someone else.

He was told by Corvus that they had been paid extraordinarily well. Because apparently what had happened was so out-of-the-ordinary it warranted a visit by the boss himself to explain the few things that had happened while Zanka recovered in a long, long rest.

Regardless, money in their pockets.

Not by the rundown city they had further destroyed in the battle of his death - but by the Hell Guard.

For eradicating a major threat and allowing the Hell Guard to take the first steps in disassembling the syndicate that had begun amassing influence and power within.

Kyouka had signed the letter.

She hadn't written anything about Zanka; hadn't written anything to Zanka. Of course, no one in the clan had.

If he had actually died, he knows at the very least they would have collected his body.

A pride thing.

Or something.

The girl they had saved.... the Giver...had lowered her wand. Brought back to her community, her family, her home, Corvus told him that the Giver who had quickly rose to recognition in pockets of The Ground - had stopped her healing, wish-giving sessions.

"Perhaps one day, she'll return to it," Corvus had said, with the barest impression of a smile. "But for now, it seems she's intent in taking time for herself to heal." 

She had sent him a letter.

He had tucked it away in the folds of a book Gris had gifted to him months ago.

'He took a lot. I'm angry. I won't forget, so I can remember my first wish again.' 

She thanks him after for still being alive.

If their paths will cross again, he doesn't know.

His own path seems better set in stone.

It'd been told to him Eishia would be pulled back from the direct front-lines. For practicality's sake. August had delivered the news personally whilst making fixes to Zanka's bloodied uniform.

He had also tried sticking a defibrillator into it's stitchwork which both Eishia and Zanka had to fight to get out. 

"Zanka, you were here after all! I told them you'd probably hate the noise, but I'm pretty sure now this was just an excuse for them to be able see you."

Zanka doesn't look up as Enjin takes the seat on the bench across from him.

It'd been a solid month.

A whole long month since he had died and been brought back to life. 

Half a year total since Zanka had joined the Cleaners, after turning seventeen, and leaving from home.

He feels like it's been a thousand years longer.

So much he feels has changed.

"I don't blame 'em," Zanka replies, still pushing at his jello, still looking down, still distantly distracted by his own thoughts. "Pretty sure they thought you guys were jokin' about me bein' alive."

"We'd be sick as hell in the head for that."

Finally Riyo's hands - from where she stands behind him, half over him - still in his hair.

She hums, leaning her weight over his shoulder.

"What do you think?" she asks Enjin. "We've been trying new styles all night. Something that says 'cool' without looking like he's trying as hard as he is."

Free to look up, Zanka raises his chin and makes a grumpy face at her. Enjin tilts his head in consideration.

He makes a motion with his hands.

"Rather than going for the gel-up like mine, why not try pushing his hair together - " he indicates Zanka's bangs in a V-down shape. "- like this."

Riyo tries it.

His hair is styled into place.

She leans away with delight.

"Looking fresh, Zanka! How do you feel?"

"Normal," he flatly responds. He reaches up anyway and touches at his hair. "...Not bad."

Riyo smiles. Enjin does too, for a different reason maybe. He rests his arms on the table, and gazes at Zanka, speaking of something else.

"Zanka. I didn't tell you when you woke, wanted to give you space to recover. But you gave us a hell of a scare. All of us. For future reference, don't do it again."

"It wasn't like I planned it," Zanka grumbles.

His cheeks heat regardless.

Enjin had visited more than once in between Zanka's bedrest and self-confinement to his room. Had brought him things. Snacks. Magazines. Immunity drinks in tiny bottles.

A few of those visits he had even stayed longer than to just drop things off.

Never for as long as Riyo did, never for the sort of conversations Zanka ended up having with Gris and August and Eishia who took time out of their days to frequent by.

But Enjin came.

And that was enough to fill Zanka with supremely idiotic happiness for years.

The only one he hadn't seen at all was -

"Oh Follo, you guys came back in time," Enjin welcomes the Supporter crew.

Follo, in full Cleaner uniform, hat in his hand, moves through the shuffling dining hall crowd, drawing near.

There's a pinched look on his face; a knit to his brows - a troubled, troubled light in the dark of his eyes. Gris calmly follows behind him with Tomme.

There's the smell of sweat and hard work from the desert outdoors, flushes of exertion well-spent across their cheeks and jaws.

Tomme gives Zanka a small smile, genuine in its sincerity. "Are you enjoying the party?"

Well no one had set any balloons with gunpowder inside them on fire this time.

So.

He gives his uneaten jello a look, and takes time to think. "If everyone else is enjoyin' it, I think it's fine."

"That's a real typical thing you'd say," Enjin muses, getting up.

Abruptly, very abruptly, Follo takes his place, sitting down with a thud. His clenched fist holds his hat in a near-bunched ball on the table.

Enjin's eyebrows raise.

Gris comfortably folds his arms.

Riyo snickers, quietly, very quietly, at his back.

Zanka feels a small frown start to tug at his lips.

They all in on something or what?

Never mind the fact that the other Supporter seemed to have all but vanished from the base whenever Zanka glanced around for him -

"I'm sorry I kissed you!" Follo suddenly exclaims.

Loud enough over the music it turns a few heads.

Zanka stares. 

"I'm sorry, but I'm not sorry you're still alive," Follo goes on. "I would do it again to save you, I don't care. So -" he stops talking, horribly flushed, frustrated and red.

Zanka stares some more at him.

And more.

What?.

"What?"

Enjin coughs and coughs and hides a poor laugh. "Follo.... I think that might've been one of the few things Zanka forgot."

It's a slow horror that creeps over Follo's face, before seizing his entire body still.

He doesn't move.

Riyo offers reassurance with frankly - an evil smile - horribly, horribly amused. "That was a kiss? I thought you were giving Zanka the CPR he needed to breathe, but it turned out this whole time it was a really long kiss. Hey, isn't that interesting?" she glances towards Enjin, who grins, and says:

"Man, it sure is. I wasn't going to say anything at the time, but I guess it's out of the bag. To be young and full of love again!" 

Enjin bursts into cackles.

Follo covers his face with his hands.

He might be crying. It's hard to tell.

Still.

"Is that why I never saw you?" Zanka asks.

"No," Follo denies, doing his best to sink into the floor and never again return. "...Yes."

Zanka's not too sure why Follo's getting all twisted up about it. CPR sounded exactly like what Follo would do in a situation like that.

And no, he doesn't remember it.

But what he feels towards the Supporter is calm feeling unchanging.

Gratitude.

"Thanks," he says.

Enjin and Riyo quit snickering like twin demons.

Gris' smile spreads.

Follo lowers his hands, ever-so-slightly, from his face.

Finally, finally, Zanka tells him what he had never said the very first day they'd been sent together out into the field.  

"I owe you. For saving my life."

Things go back to normal.

As normal as normal gets in The Ground.

In the Cleaner's HQ.

Among their crew.

He goes on jobs alone. He goes on jobs with others. He eats sometimes in large groups, and eats sometimes in the company of only himself.

He trains. He reads. He walks.

If Riyo joins him, it's fine. If no one does, that's fine too.

They get busy.

There's an usual uptick in trash beast activity.

Enjin spends more and more time on his own in No Man's Lands. Zanka spends more and more time running a hand along his staff, thinking about his victories, his defeats, his eagerness to get back out and try again.

Eishia explains to him when he asks about different treatments for an injured body. August, eavesdropping in, pops in to give his own 'expert' opinion.

Follo keeps a distance, and Follo lingers near, and Follo is Zanka's first savior; first friend, and that is something Zanka will not forget.

He takes care to look after Follo from afar; sometimes directly, with bags of snacks and miscellaneous-bought store items - like Enjin had given him.

They sit in the same space, and if they talk, they talk. And if they don't, they don't.

It's comfortable all the same.

"Do you still have nightmares?" Follo asks.

"They come and go," Zanka grudgingly admits.

They do.

An odd sort of collection of dreams where stars fall and claws drag him to a grave of ice, and he bleeds while his elder brother and elder sister look down - down at him - drowning - in the bottom of a mud-filling well.

"Talk to me about them," Follo says. "I'll listen."

Follo listens.

Riyo asks.

Enjin never asks. He manages to find Zanka, regardless, no matter the hour or the time, when they surfacing nightmares come at their worst.

He tells Zanka the most random stories of happenings across The Ground. Most so boring, so mundane, Zanka falls into a black and fuzzy sleep.

He still hears nothing from the Hell Guard.

It's as expected.

Two months pass.

Zanka starts to forget the coldness of death.

Then Enjin finds a kid and gives him to Zanka.

A kid from above - from above - fallen like a rotten wish he never asked for.

Rudo.

It doesn't take long for Zanka to know the touch of death again.