Chapter Text
It starts, as it will end, with a mission.
Zanka's heart pounds in her chest as she looks up at the beast ahead of her. It was one of the new species that was centered around a vital instrument.
The problem was that it was the largest beast they had seen, and each time they were going to locate where the instrument was, the beast regurgitated the damage done, and in an odd motion, which made the cleaners all have a sense of nausea, would move it. They could see the parts that the beast was constantly moving, and after so long fighting, she could tell the others were beginning to get desperate.
Jabber was by no means a bad fighter, and when he had switched from mainly fighting people to trashbeasts (a change he did not like at all but accepted), his skills somehow improved exponentially. Even with the most powerful of the cleaners, this was certainly a tough cookie to crack.
Or that's what they had thought.
Zanka had gotten injured, the beast having taken one of the pieces swirling inside its rotten form and thrown it at her.
The pain seared through her side; the effects of exhaustion from the battle before this, along with the adrenaline threatening to fade, caused flashes of black to interrupt her vision. A piece of that looked to be what used to be a car's hood, rusted over and broken, that had cut partially through her midsection.
If it had been 15 centimeters to the left, it would have almost bisected her.
She screams, raw and ugly, something that normally Jabber would have found beautiful, not for an unfortunate fact that he wasn't the one causing it. The other cleaners' eyes widen at the change of attack style of the beast and the injury to their fellow worker.
Her hand goes to her side, and so does her father, Enjin, looking over her with worry.
"Shit, kid-"
He takes off his jacket and ties it securely around her waist. He directs her to sit on the ground.
"Hold that to your side, do not let up pressure."
Turning back to the battlefield, Jabber stands. Arms limp at his sides, he stared down before rushing over, putting a kiss and bite on his girlfriend's nose, and mumbling an apology.
Jabber had not been planning to do any of this how it was turning out here. He was hoping that if he hid the larger version of Mankira for long enough, he could get Zanka's skills up so they could fight for real.
However, when he saw the shrapnel hit her, it was as if something had overtaken him. With the raiders' relationships were something to be used for, you were merely a pawn, so, regardless of whether it is morally right or not, he had never felt fear when it came to someone's life. He hardly does it on his own. Seeing the blood that was pooling from her side and onto the ground, though, invoked that feeling, something that was long forgotten since he was a small child.
Needless to say, the feeling had caused a hole to build in his chest, fueled by the instinct to protect and the anger of something breaking what was so clearly his, causes his blood to feel like acid, Mankira forms on his fingers and sends sensations through his body that he had tried to forget just how much he loved.
Something that had initially confused and terrified the other cleaners about Jabber was his ability to seemingly break the laws of physics. Whether it was moving faster than should be humanly possible or scaling walls. It was something that caught them off guard and something he hadn't stopped doing since he joined. Of course, he wasn't doing something as silly as breaking the fundamental laws of the universe; rather, his mind works much differently than most people. At every moment of every day, his brain is running calculations. When he enters a room, he plans out five escape routes and estimates time, more recently accommodating for the bringing Zanka route. When he sees a building or an environment, he notices the small ledges and figures out what motions it would take to use that to his advantage.
It doesn't happen in a matter of moments, rather in a few minutes, Jabber had found a method he could use to cut through a piece, see if there was the vital instrument, and if not, move to the next section. It took him a few attempts; however, he eventually began to take on larger sections and effectively took the beast down.
After the beast is down, he rushes back to Zanka’s side, scooping her up in his arms and, very much not feeling anything even close to panic upon noticing that she had since passed out.
“Bro, chill, I do NOT need your innards becoming out-ards.”
He unwraps the jacket and balls it up against her side, beginning his walk back to the cleaners' facility. If, in reality, he was using his years of practice of running for his life rather than a nonchalant walk, that was his business.
He doesn’t look back to see if the other cleaners are following him; he memorized the way to get to the facility in several ways and knew the general area it was on the night of his and Zanka’s first kiss. It has a very distinct smell, oddly enough.
The cleaners, as he expected, had initially stared at the now-dead trash beast and back at him, and then followed. Enjin in particular hated following; he was a leader for Christ's sake, that's not his role, or at least that's what he would say until someone saw him drunkenly following Gris around like a puppy.
Jabber, in the most average-joe way possible (He sometimes catches himself saying that in his head, and he blames his girlfriend. Infected him with her phrases, even if it’s just a vocal stim to him.) Turns the normally twenty-minute walk into about a five-minute walk.
Once he reaches the facility, Semiu opens the door. He bows his head and walks directly into the medical center, he positions his arm further down so he can support her with one arm, sees Eishia, uses the now-free hand to move Zanka's limp face towards her, then motions at the bloody cloth on the side.
“Need a room number,” Jabber mutters out, and Eishia glances down at her paper, walks quickly into the hall, then opens the first door.
She offers to take it from there with an extension of her arms, but Jabber walks into the room and places her onto the medical bed, standing at her side and still applying pressure.
“Blood pressure possibly significantly collapsed, sepsis possible due to likely damage to intestinal damage,” Jabber says, eyes oddly unfocused as he looks at Zanka.
“I don't know exactly how your powers work. After you fix bleeding and intestinal damage, you need to give her- no, she already has that, ok-”
Eishia sees his rambling and offers a kind smile.
“If you wouldn't mind leaving the room, I can get started. It frightens some people.”
Jabber shakes his head. Eishia walks up to him and takes his place, applying pressure.
“You can stay if you would like. I just need to focus.”
Jabber moves from the side of the bed Eishia is on and to the other side. He knows he can't hold her limp hand; the electricity would begin to go through him, rather than Zanka. While it would still help, it would prioritize him, and he doesn't need that.
Eishia places a hand over the cloth on the wound, observing the blood and planning in her head.
“Can you tell me what you're doing?”
Eishia nods, taking off her gloves, she opens a cabinet next to her, pulling out an alcohol wipe and cleaning her hands.
“As you know electricity is how I use my power,” Her voice is small but he nods along as she takes off the jacket, slender, cool fingers are placed over one side of the wound, “Due to most things that conduct electricity well being things that sterile gloves can't be made of, often times I just clean my hands before starting."
The wound doesn't magically seal up, but her words make Jabber hum.
“What about the like uh cleanliness of the wound, infection stuff.”
She nods, “There are a few points there, however, with how it is now, the most important thing is stopping the bleeding. I am making it so the blood near the surface has an easier time clotting. For most people, using stitches would be the main thing here, as well as ensuring that the environment was clean, as you said. Lucky for Zanka, here we are not constrained by that.”
“As long as she doesn't do any strenuous activities, she should be fine here. If this is a scenario where she keeps reopening it, then we may have to do stitches.”
Jabber watches as the deep red of Zanka's wound slowly comes together, the blood doing as she said, and clotting. After a few minutes, the bleeding stops.
“Hm.” They sit in silence until Zanka seems stable. Not good. But not dying anymore. Her breathing is at an even rate, rather than the raspy half-breaths she had been using before.
“If you want to, you can stay with her. I'm going to tell Enjin he can come in as soon as I leave and finish the admissions sheet.”
Jabber nods, and after Eishia returns the motion and walks out of the room, he lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding. His legs hurt, he realizes he had been locking his knees the whole time, and he pulls the chair up to the side of the bed, picking up her weak wrist and interlacing their fingers gently.
He squeezes around her wrist carefully with the other hand, breathing a sigh of relief at the stable beat. Letting himself relax in the chair, he laughs softly to himself and begins talking.
"Ya know, when Eishia started talkin’ about gloves, the first thing I thought about was the phthalate ester. Like using them to make some methyl anthracite, your bitch ass would NOT drink that.”
He looks at her face and down her body, not in a hungry or wanting manner, simply looking over his girlfriend. His eyes unfocused and he gets to go down the lovely rabbit hole of ‘man her clothes are heavy soaked, dude so are the sheets- I hope someone changes her, why don’t I just- no last time she got real bad boo-boo and I did that she got like all spacy, that shit is not cool, mm do I call Eishia back in here?’
“Is she doing ok?”
Enjin's voice interrupts his thoughts, and he leans against the door in a motion that, for some reason, pisses him off. He doesn’t truly know, but something about his stance shows casualness; he always tries to act nonchalant, and it makes Jabber want to commit a felony.
“She is no longer dying.”
Enjing nods at that and walks further into the room, glancing down at their intertwined hands, resisting a soft smile.
“I don’t like how you decided to actually help until your girl was hurt. Part of what we value most here is teamwork.”
He pauses.
“But I do appreciate that you saved her. I talked to Eishia before I came in. Good chance she coulda died if it had gone any slower. You have some respect for that. An extremely small amount, but nevertheless still there.”
"I'm gonna pretend I care about what you think of me and not just what keeps her safe and as happy as I can make her."
Jabber gives a cold smile, pressing his lips into a line, and he nods his head, drawing a laugh out of Enjin.
"Holy shit, we have the same intentions, it seems!"
Jabber rolls his eyes. There are times he wonders how this man of all people is the father of someone so.. amazing.? lovable.? as Zanka is. There are others where it is very clear. Zanka always wears the smug looks and says the shitty one-liners so much better than he does, though! So technically, it shouldn't count.
However, Jabber may be a little biased when it comes to his lover; he practically worshipped the ground she walked on. When he thinks that he is hit with visions of Zanka treating him as if he's worthless and slapping him, so he decides, for the insurmountable amount of.. eugh.. respect for Enjin he has, ending this thought process may be a good idea.
"It's getting pretty late. You should be heading to bed."
"M planning on sleeping in here, prolly gonna ask Eishia to change Zanka's clothes before I do, though."
Enjin's eyebrow raises slightly, but he nods, moving to leave the room before pausing and talking again.
"Go get dinner and what you need for the night. I'll go talk to Eishia about that."
Jabber's immediate instinct is to hiss at the man, however he feels as if that won't help in this particular situation. The thought of leaving Zanka alone in such a vulnerable state, to put it bluntly, makes him want to claw his skin off, and not in a good way.
"Fine."
He reminds himself that this is her father, and plus if he does something bad to her, because of the lie he made up in his head, he should be allowed to kill him before he kills himself. Allowing himself one look back at her, his chest does something weird, he squeezes her hand in his and stands, practically forcing himself out of the room.
The entire time he is out of the room, he feels as if his skin is attempting to crawl off of his skeleton. He wishes that his brain could let him free of this feeling via the little mode that makes him feel like a fleshy Roomba that's made to eat and nibble on his girlfriend. However, life refuses him these small mercies, rather he gets to be hyper aware of each step he takes (He estimates that Bro and Guita are standing 25 steps apart, 20 off from what Bro typically prefers.) as he does what Enjin told him to. The fact that he is obeying Enjin makes him even more off.
Dinner is bland, the chicken that was cooked is overdone and dry, and how someone fucked up what he can tell is canned green beans is something that shocks him to his core, muttering some statement about white people cooking before heading back up to his room, before stopping and choosing to go over to Zanka's instead.
Zanka's room was a place that felt safe to him. He hates, with all his being, feeling something that the cleaners have been trying to pry from him, emotional vulnerability. Jabber didn't have what people would consider a 'good' childhood, or teenhood, or homelife, or just life in general- before he met Zanka, that is. It was always one high to the next because that's all he knew. After he had looked into it (stealing textbooks from college kids), he learned that people can become addicted to cortisol and adrenaline, and rather than trying to.. fix himself, he chose to go all in for it and basically center his life around it. Which.. as one may be able to tell, is not the best for one's mental health.
There was one time he had cried from something other than physical pain in the last ten years, and that one time was in this very room. Zanka wasn't there, and he is very grateful for that because he doesn't want to have to talk about any feelings, then the ushy-mushy boundaries shit he is required to have so he can keep dating Zanka.
Jabber realizes he was daydreaming and snaps back into reality, picking up a zip-up hoodie that smelled like a lovely mixture of Zanka's room and himself, thanks to being abandoned in her musty-ass closet for approximately two weeks. He had kept a sleepover kit in Zanka's room, and he figures that if he just brings that, he should be fine.
He picks up the black drawstring bag and puts the jacket over his shoulder, walking down to the medical center. Granted, he would never admit it to Mr. Fuck-face, aka Zanka's father, but he did feel better.
He wonders just how bad having to stay in a dingy hospital room for days will be on Zanka's mental health.
"Wassup, girl!"
He says to a still very unconscious Zanka as he walks back into the room. Smiling at the fact that she is now at least in what looks to be a hospital gown, and the sheets under her don't look to be soiled in blood anymore, he sets his bag down and walks over, placing the hoodie over her.
"Imma take a little looksie,"
He lifts up the thin covers and sees a hole in the gown around where her wound is, it now being covered in a white patch of gauze; he nods.
"Yeah, hoe yan't allowed to die!"
He glances out the small window of the room, seeing that it is effectively pitch-black, and as the strain of the day finally takes effect, he decides that Jabber gets to sleep.
Staring at the table and at the little kit he has, he tries to form a plan. He knows that he still wants to be touching Zanka in some way, but also does not want to be on the bed, lest he fuck up her healing somehow. Moving the chair next to her, he pulls the side table to be about where his knees would be and takes a fluffy blanket from the kit. It was a crocheted thing, Zanka had gotten it for him for his birthday a few months back, she said that the purple, black, gold, and red yarns used reminded her of him, nowadays they mainly used it as a makeshift mattress, for when Zanka gets overstimulated during their cuddling time and shoves him of the bed to sleep on the floor.
"Bro Imma fucking genius."
Normally, Zanka would scoff and tell him that he was pretty dumb for a genius, and he would giggle and shake his hips at her. She does not do so.
He lays the blanket over the chair and stretches it over the side table, opening one of the drawers and closing it onto the blanket to keep it there, before taking out a thinner one. Zanka knew that Jabber sweats a lot in his sleep and basically got him soft sheets when she went shopping for him a while back, and laid them on top.
Looking at her for a moment, he sees her bare hands and gently kisses her before picking up delicate hands and sliding two of the rings back.
"I love you, Zanka."
This part was very normal though, Zanka always has a hard time saying those words, through tears one day she had mentioned something about it meaning weakness, and that's why she was scared, but meh, she said it sometimes and even though she pretends that he's the bane of his existence, she proves she loves him in actions, and according to Gris that's all that matters. Once Jabber gets in a good position for him, horrifying for others, where he has both hands on Zanka's uninjured side, because he is hanging his top half basically off of the hair and has his legs tucked in so they rest hardly on the table he had put down, as he thinks about how Zanka would probably comment about how they would burn him at the stake back in the salem days for this, he lets sleep take him.