Chapter Text
Goka sets Zanka down against a building gently, with years of staying his hand and waiting for signals keeping him from rushing. He sets his brother down, and he bites his own bottom lip ‘til it bleeds.
Administering first aid to an unconscious person is no great difficulty, under normal circumstances.
It’s harder when they’re wearing Mama’s face, with Kyouka’s eyes and Papa’s nose. It’s harder to check a mirror’s pulse. He’s beside himself with worry, and he can’t do anything about it but hold his hands steady.
So he does.
Goka confirms a pulse, cooling blood seeping down to his shoulder through his uniform, and he feels crisp, caustic hate well up in his heart for the situation he’s been put in here, even as Zanka’s living blood beats steadily beneath his hand.
He forces back tears of relief with the same strength of will that kept him from screaming when Zanka was hit, and pulls his hand away from Zanka’s neck without snatching it. He is perfectly composed. A Nijiku does not recoil.
“You’re a fool,” he moans bitterly, bowing his head. “Zanka, ya absolute dolt. Didja think bein’ a Giver made ya invincible or somethin’? You’re a human bein’, you’re not—…”
He swipes a hand down his dry face in despair, still refusing to cry over something dumb like this.
He said before that a wound like that wouldn’t kill a Nijiku, but Zanka didn’t even actually consider himself one of them anymore.
So who knew if he’d kept up his constitution, his training or his resistances, or even been eating enough. Anything could have been happening to him with those strange people, things he’s never worried about before.
Because Kyouka always said he must be off getting weak, shirking his talents, as well as dishonoring the Guard, dishonoring the Clan.
…But he’d thought she was worrying needlessly, like she always did, pestering the absent concept of Zanka because she loves him, like she still pesters Goka. He was a native speaker of the language of her abrasive love, and the sweethearted fondness she regarded them with came out in her every action if you could read them.
So sometimes he blames himself. Maybe he was too gentle or too silent with Zanka, before. He never let Zanka learn the rhythm of the blows she uses to say “I love you.”
He cut that gentleness out all of today, not even smiling once at the sweet little monster costume Zanka had been put in, ruined now with bloody tears.
He had always offered the steady reassurance of a shade tree in what became a replacement for Kyouka’s sunshiny love, liable to burn, but maybe he didn’t need to, because it was there.
She was the one to impart that unfailing initiative on him, the one he engaged even during today’s battle… he thinks. Even to his detriment.
So maybe he should have stepped back, and let boy genius Zanka, Kyouka’s little talent, thrive under his brilliant elder sister’s wing.
…But then, where would he have fit, in her life or Zanka’s? He wasn’t a genius like they were, not even close. He was only durable, and dutiful, and they were both that in spades and then some, before.
If Kyouka had gotten to keep Zanka, would she have ever looked his way again? Would she have retained her philosophy of an equal distribution of good qualities?
Or would she have only been drawn away from her first little brother by the “inexhaustible flame” of the second?
Some days, the thought lingers to taunt him, makes him sick.
He feels, first, disloyal, like an unbeliever. Kyouka has never done anything but dote on him, and he tells himself her rough, bottomless love, love that reaches for Zanka even when he’s so far away from them, could never have let go of him.
But then he feels a mortally deep terror that that unconditional, enduring love could never be for him.
That that’s not love for any brother, but for the one like her, a born talent with a ceaseless work ethic. Goka’s ceaseless work ethic has no such talent behind it, and never has. If you ask him, his versatility is algorithmic, his aptitude context-dependent, and his capacity and talent both firmly capped far below either of his siblings’.
And then he feels disgusted with himself for competing with his little brother, who he loves across space just like Kyouka does.
And then disloyal to Kyouka again, because she could go too and he would still love them both, so his greater sister must be just as capable of that far-reaching love. Especially considering that thoughts like this would never dare to poke at her characteristic certainty.
And now, having cycled through the pain of that familiar thought process again, he just feels defeated. He looks at his brother and drowns in sorrow.
“How couldja..? Why didja..? You’re so stupid. I was right there, and your damned Cleaner friends were, too. It shouldn’t… You shouldn’t…”
…Zanka’s just so small, when Goka looks at him.
Goka grew up learning about what they know of the Old World, like everyone born into the Hell Guard did.
They were taught about stars, lights in space that burned far away. They were grand and brilliant against a dark night sky.
The only place you could see them on the Ground was in the far Northeast, where the Sphere hardly ever went. The air pollution thinned until you could see. And what a sight, yeah?
They lived in the West Ward, so it was quite a distance. Each graduating class at the Academy took the long trek together, on the same route as every class before them, and Goka had never forgotten the brilliance of the sight, the way it outshined every textbook he’d ever seen.
They were unimaginably huge, the textbooks said, but from so far away, they appeared vanishingly small.
How, then, did they light up the sky, and steal the breath of class after class, year after year?
Easily, for they numbered in the billions.
And that was the lesson.
As above, so below. So, too, would the Hell Guard bring cleansing light to the Ground, through widespread individual expertise combined with sheer numbers.
Theoretically.
…Now, he thinks the reason Zanka’d fallen from so high up when he was dashed from the sky is because he’s a star. And he’s vast, always glowing, but he’s so, so far away.
So when Goka looks at him, the distance — and the time difference, even at light speed — means he’s small, still.
He’ll see a roundfaced little baby boy, meeting the world with bright-eyed intelligence, for years to come, and he’ll want to cradle him, although he certainly can’t anymore. It’d be improper.
It’d make him want to be improper, sweet and soft and fraternal and enabling. But he’d be none of the things he needs to be if he was everything he wanted.
While he thought, he didn’t realize his hand had traveled to Zanka’s hair, gently ruffling it.
Improper.
He can’t bring himself to pull away.
This is his flesh and blood, near him again for the first time in so long. He feels burning, basic love well up in him now, and it hurts so much worse than the hate did.
“Why am I such a bad brother until you’re injured?” he laments. “And why’s Kyouka so good until you’re injured? Oh, Zanka. I’m sorry we’re no good at this.”