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They're at the point in their strange little tradition where sitting on the floor in various states of wreck is common. Basically expected. They fight, too close and not close enough, throw in a sprinkle of 'wreck something structural' and you've got an evening date on the Ground. Two exhausted souls conjoin in the wreckage of it, close enough to crack molars but not enough to truly speak. Still finding it in them to sit for long moments and talk about nothing while they pretend their throats weren't just on the line.
Still. They don't…know each other.
Not really.
It's an easy mistake to make, when you measure connection in bruised. When your interactions are tallied in punches shared, mixed blood and the strange intimacy of shared violence. It doesn't occur that maybe you opponents life doesn't start and end at the fight.
Jabber's leaning against a busted up half wall, legs outstretched. Picking chipped polish from his thumbnail while he chats in that loose, animated way he does after fight-fueled adrenaline. Rambling and energetic with the energy still cracking through his voice.
"I'm telling you, man, this dude was not happy," Jabber gestures loosely, shaking off dried nail polish confetti flakes, "next thing I know? Whole situation gone to shit. Man's starts yellin' at me like I did something. Like bro, relax, it ain't that serious."
Zanka sits a few feet away, Assistaff gently propped on crossed legs while he wraps the pommel a few times, wiping blood off of the grooves. Still, he listens the way he usually does: half lazy interest, and half resigned to the fact that Jabber's stories always escalate into something morally questionable.
He hums.
Jabber keeps going.
"And then he starts threatening me? Can you believe that?"
"Yeah," Zanka deadpans. "He hit you, didn't he."
"A'ight, hold up, I'm gettin' there-"
Jabber abandons the thumbnail entirely so he can tell the story with his whole body. Every limb gesturing as they become part of the narrative. Voice cracking and leaping and jumping sideways as it rides the stories chaos.
"So, he's throwin' his weight around right? Acting a big man, talking 'bout he finna call somebody. Jump me or whatever," Jabber laughs a little, crooked, then hums, the sound drifting as the train of thought in his head suddenly jumps tracks and veers hard left.
"You know…my mama used to say that folks start barkin' loud when they're scared."
That one, right there.
The sentence lands so casually, just another stray thought woven into Jabber's constant stream of excitable half-nonsense. Deceptively small in Jabber's hurricane. But there's something about it, some sobering truth, that has Zanka's hand pausing mid-wrap before he's even realized it.
And, oh, it's a strange little moment. So strange indeed how his brain stumbles over the words like Jabber said them in an entirely different language.
My mama used to say.
Zanka's eyes drift over slowly, watching as Jabber continues the conversation entirely on his own, completely unaware of the gravity of that stray, run off sentence. And his brow furrows, a little, that slight crease when Zanka's brain's caught on to something entirely unexpected
Because, and this probably makes him a bad person in some philosophical sense…
Zanka has never once considered the possibility of Jabber having parents.
Not…seriously, at least.
Jabber exists in Zanka's mind the same was as natural disasters do. Jabber is rain. Jabber is sun. Jabber is floodwater. This thing that appeared fully formed from Day One, already feral and impossible to deal with and never really questioned.
And now he sits there with that one silly sentence and throws Zanka off entirely. Releasing the floodgates that set Zanka's thoughts adrift to somewhere unfamiliar.
Did Jabber grow up with someone?
Who?
Was there a house? Zanka thinks. Was there a kitchen table? Did someone yell at the door for him to come in before it gets dark outside? Is there someone, somewhere, waiting for him?
Was Jabber's mother like him? Sharp witted? Off-beat? Or was she…softer? Kind?
Did she rein him in?
Was Jabber's family as hard edged as Zanka's are?
Zanka tries, really tries hard, to picture it in his mind. To imagine someone calling Jabber 'baby,' tucking him close, scolding him. Fails, of course. Because imagining all that feels weirdly incompatible with the person currently lounging across from him describing a street fight like it's a funny little anecdote. Jabber's existence is ultimately incompatible with domesticity.
Jabber catches on and stops mid-sentence the second he notices Zanka's momentary hesitation. "What's the face."
Zanka blinks. "What?"
"You got that face on," Jabber pokes him, "thinkin' face. Don't strain yourself."
"Oh, shut up," Zanka rolls his eyes. Then exhales slowly. It's difficult to bring up his thoughts, to admit to them at all, mostly because they sneaked in uninvited. They're purely one of his minds ugly little stop signs, flashing red and blinking.
"Nothin'."
Jabber tilts his head. "Yeah, right."
"Wasn't important."
"Yeah, it was."
"Fuck off."
Jabber leans forward slightly, narrowing his eyes like he's some investigator itching for a confession.
“You judging again.”
“I ain’t judgin'.”
“You always judging. You a judger.”
Zanka sighs, defeated, well and truly aware he's lost. Cursed to live with the annoying part of Jabber that digs and digs once he finds something worth clinging to.
"I guess I just…" Zanka thinks. "Ain't ever thought about it."
Jabber's pleased he won the unfair fight. "Bout what?"
Zanka hesitates for a moment, then says it bluntly and entirely too honest for the evening:
“You… havin' a mama.”
A beat. Two beats. Maybe even three beats because the world's funny like that.
Then Jabber blinks, and his expression crunches up into confusion or curiosity or offense. "Man, what?"
And Zanka suddenly realizes he's been a bit too sincere, a bit too tender for evening's after violent scraps. And sincerity with Jabber is dangerous territory.
So he shrugs. Cattily. Playful. Rebuilding his walls.
"Thought you hatched."
"Bitch?"
"Like a lizard."
Jabber cackles an ugly, truly outraged and offended and amused all in one, "shut up!"
"Maybe a little egg somewhere-"
"Bruh."
"Cracked open one day. Came out hollerin'."
Jabber giggles and throws a little pebble at him, muttering something about Zanka being dumb. Zanka dodges it easily, a faint smirk tugging at his mouth now that the awkwardness has passed and they're back to their back, forth, back.
But, underneath it all, Zanka can't help but keep wondering. The little thoughts dug in and found its nest, festering like a tumor.
The playful annoyance shifts from Jabber with two quick blinks.
"Anyway, where was I? Right! So he starts swingin-"
Jabber picks right back up from the middle, ever unbothered. He does these big gestures with his hands as he describes side stepping the blow and then feeling 'kinda bad' because it looked like it would have 'hurt real good, man'. Jabber snorts, amused at the trajectory of his own story, and this thing he's chosen to share with Zanka in this moment. It's enough to make Zanka feel a tad off about the fact that he's not really listening anymore.
Who listened to Jabber talk the same way he does now? Who watched him grow into the chaotic force he is at this moment?
Suddenly, for reasons Zanka can’t quite explain…
he finds himself a little curious about her. Jabber's mother.
And that's the problem with curiously, ain't it? Once it gets in your brain it's difficult to shift. Sits there, pawing like a cat, scratching all over your thoughts.
It's enough to have Zanka's thoughts continuously drifting sideways, brain trying to fill a picture it's never even thought to conjure before.
Jabber…as a kid.
A strange image. Somehow more visceral than blood, guts, and gore all at once.
Was he…small? One of those tiny kids? Zanka observes him, throwing mock punches in the air as he describes the fight. Jabber's pretty wiry now, all long limbs.
Yeah.
Small and loud, probably.
The type of kid that gets underfoot, racing at one-hundred miles a second, dashing about place to place. Zanka nods to himself. That particular idea works. The idea of Jabber ever being quiet feels biologically impossible.
And then, on top of that, there's some woman raising him. Dealing with all that energy.
Soft or mean or tough or kind or-
Zanka's mouth moves before he really decides on it.
"What was she like, then?"
Jabber pauses. "Who?"
"Your ma."
Jabber squints at him, sniffing a little. Twitchy at the story being interrupted again. "You still on that?"
Zanka nods. Yeah.
Then he shrugs like the question is casual, like it's no big deal. Like the question wandered off his tongue by accident. Faux nonchalance, a trick they both know well by now. But, and Zanka's horrible at the pretense, his eyes are watching close, waiting for an answer when he's not sure what to expect.
"She like…" Zanka thinks. "I dunno, read you bedtime stories?
Then, slower. More awkward. Entirely graceless.
"Or…beat your ass?"
Jabber blinks at him, then sits forward, crossing his long, long legs beneath him and running his hands over his knees.
Blink. Blink. Blink.
Then-
"Bruh."
"What?"
"Why they my only two options?"
Zanka shrugs. "Pretty common categories."
Jabber stares for another beat, then his expression shifts just slightly. Somewhere torn between incredulous, curious and darkly amused. "Did your mama beat you?"
Zanka ain't playing that game.
That 'dance around the topic' game. Quick as a wink and he's brushing dust off his sleeve like the answer might be hiding in the threads.
"That aint the topic."
Then that faux-casual tone is back. Deliberate, like he doesn't care either way.
"You, uh, look like her?" Zanka asks, squinting as a builds a picture from spare parts. "Like your ma?"
Jabber head tips sideways, a little smirk pulling the corners of his mouth as his hair falls in his eyes.
Zanka gestures vaguely. Trying to make it a tad less awkward. "Or like your old man?"
Zanka says it kind of clinical, like he's puzzling it together with duct tape and scattered details.
Jabber studies him, face twitching like he's a little amused. "You real interested all of a sudden."
"Just observin'."
"Just nosy."
"Fuck you. Answer the question."
Jabber snorts softly. Then his gaze drifts toward the sky as he searches about the cutter of old memories for an answer.
"Mm…"
Then, he gestures vaguely, lazily. "She weren't gentle exactly. But she weren't mean neither."
Zanka hums, Jabber keeps thinking.
"I look like her, though, I think," Jabber says, gesturing to his face, "I got her eyes," his hand drops lower, "and 'er fucked up teeth."
He grins. An overcrowded and crooked mess of angles.
Zanka huffs, amused at the visual.
The image forms easy enough: a woman with crazy eyes and screwed up teeth.
Maybe the world ain't so complicated after all.
Jabber's smile fades into something more thoughtful.
"Its real hard to remember, though."
He stretches out, adjusting so he's sitting more comfortably.
"She died when I was eight," Jabber counts on his fingers. "Yeah, eight. Pretty sure."
The sentence drops into the space between them. Tossed into the air the same way Jabber says everything else. Like it's a fact and not a wound.
Oh.
The curiosity drains out of Zanka's face all at once.
He hadn't known. Of course he hadn't. Jabber never speaks about that kind of stuff.
"'m real sorry," Zanka says, cause it seems appropriate to say. It comes out automatically, the default when a sadness surfaces.
Jabber furrows his brows. "What you sorry for?"
Zanka blinks. "Cause your…mama…died?"
Now he’s the one sounding unsure. Why is he questioning the basic rules of human condolence all of a sudden? Why does Jabber bring that out in him?
Jabber's face scrunches like the math ain't mathing.
"You ain't kill her."
That throws Zanka completely of. And he just stares at Jabber for a second, mouth open like his brain just skipped a step in the conversation.
"That, that ain't-"
Zanka processes, Processes Jabber's puzzled expression, processes the way his face ain't mad or even sad, it's just confused.
"It's just…something people say," Zanka finishes.
Jabber hums, sways back and forth a bit in some kind of stim. Half thinking, half restless energy spilling out in every direction.
"That's weird," Jabber says finally. "Sayin' sorry for something you didn't do."
Zanka exhales, "it ain't about blame."
"Then what's it about?"
The answer should be obvious, but saying it feels weird. Like navigating a minefield. Walking about a trash heap and trying to avoid the needles sticking out of the pile.
"I dunno, man. It's about…sympathy."
There's this heavy pause where Jabber processes the words and Zanka's fairly sure he's about to get his shit rocked for even thinking of speaking the 's' word aloud.
Then, nothing.
Jabber scratches lightly at his jaw, he's got small, spiked hairs coming through at the slope and Zanka’s already halfway through figuring out how to tell him to shave without sounding like he gives a damn.
"Huh."
Jabber considers it a second longer.
"That's dumb."
Zanka laughs, situation diffused once again. "'Course ya think that."
"Forreal," Jabber says, his genuine disbelief almost endearing. "If someone apologizin' to me, I'm gonna assume they did somethin'."
"Well, most folks understand context."
"Most folks dumb as fuck," Jabber mutters. "Just sayin' shit. Then get all weird when I dunno what it means."
Zanka shakes his head at that. He can't even disagree with it . Jabber's way around it is all sideways, sure, but the logic itself? It's clean. If someone apologizes, they probably did the hurting. That's a real simple equation.
The strange part is the way Jabber talks abut the loss itself.
There's no tightness in his voice or hesitation. No careful pauses. No little hitching breaths that come when things are too difficult to talk about.
To Jabber, it's a thing that happened ten years ago.
And that doesn't mean he doesn't care, Zanka understands that about him, but it does mean he's got a real funny way of looking at the world and people and things that happen around them. A real funny way, indeed.
Zanka takes in Jabber's words, and his next question comes out quiet but more genuine than before, maybe even more careful. "You remember her much?"
Another shrug, easy. "Some stuff, I guess. Was a long time ago."
Jabber squints up toward the sky like he’s digging through a drawer in his head.
"She'd yell sometimes," Jabber says, kinda thoughtful in a way Zanka's not used to hearing. "Kept me alert."
Jabber pauses.
"But then she'd-she'd-"
He snorts. "She'd sing when she thought I was sleepin'."
Jabber seems more into it now, stretching out so he can tell the story in full as it comes to him. It's like the memory's been unlocked, somehow. And he's just settling in to let the thoughts come out as they please.
"She'd smack me when I tried to eat something glowin'," he adds. "Which, y'know-"
He gestures to himself, to the scars and marks on his arms from years worth of experimental doses and questionable substances.
"-Kinda got me wondering what she'd think 'bout all this."
Zanka blinks as it goes on, taking on Jabber with this new understanding in every word. There's no clean tragedy, and there's certainly no clean love. What Jabber's describing is messy, closer to human than Zanka would ever typically allow him to sit. The world likes to label things. Categories. Good parent. Bad parent. The parent that reads stories or the one that raises a hand. But that's too messy for the place they live.
He imagines a tired looking woman, and he can see her now. A tired woman in a world of rust and broken crap. On her back, pulled close, is a kid that never stops moving. Never stops talking. Never quits wiggling and dancing and putting glowing objects in his mouth. Food is scarce, and danger is around every corner, and there's little margin for mistakes in a world that doesn't care how little the child on your back is.
Sometimes the parent that swats, quick, clean, with a hairbrush because the little one won't stop wiggling in the seat, is the same one that stacks scrap around a hiding place, and says in a quiet, gentle voice:
"Stay there, and don't move 'till I get back, you hear me?"
Did she care about you?
Yeah.
Did she protect you?
'Course.
Did she scare you?
Sometimes.
And all are true, all exist at the same time.
Zanka imagines a woman with Jabber's crazy eyes and crazy teeth doing her best in a world designed to break people. And thinks, with an achy feeling blooming in his chest, that she was probably stronger than he is.
"You miss 'er?" Zanka asks and this one's genuine. Full, undivded attention with no teasing to speak of. Purely because he has no idea, not a single one, what the answer might be.
Jabber hums.
Then, "nah…not really."
Zanka blinks. And Jabber carries on, waving his hand like it's so obvious, like there's something Zanka just doesn't see.
"I mean, like. She ain't gone-gone."
Oh. That's real sad.
Zanka knew Jabber was unwell. It's not a secret. But hallucinating his dead mother-
Jabber holds his hands out, so all the rings glint in the dim light. Mankira. Heavy and ornate across each finger like a crown broken into bite sized fragments.
"I take care o' her," Jabber says simply.
Zanka looks at the rings. Turning the statement over slowly in his mind. Then back up at Jabber's easy, pleased expression.
"She gave 'em to me," he adds. "So they mine now. And I keep them real close. Real safe."
Zanka studies his face carefullly.
There’s no grief there, no complicated edge. To Jabber, this is the continuation. She gave him something. He holds onto it. That’s the thread that stays connected. Like she passed a baton and he’s still running with it.
Jabber doesn't consciously process. Not like most people do. He doesn't sit in grief and pick it apart and wonder what it means. He doesn't think about how much he misses her. But Zanka looks at this and he understands, to some degree, what's happening here. Attachment doesn't shift just because you don't have the language for it.
A small kid, eight years old, loses the adult that keeps him alive in a world of garbage. She gives him the rings with that one last instruction: keep them safe.
And Jabber does.
Because they're important.
Because they're hers.
And with that, he survives. And years pass. And every time he climbs a pile of scrap metal, or gets his shit rocked in a street fight he denies starting, those rings sit on all fingers. Not just jewelry. They're body language. Shaping how he moves through the world.
Then, oh then, one day that emotional imprint crystallizes into something bigger, stronger than any words could speak. And the rings awaken. No longer keepsakes but tools. Powered by the soul.
A Vital Instrument.
Suddenly, his ability to survive, fight, and exist in that brutal world is channeled through the one object tied directly to the person who taught him how to survive in the first place.
A woman who's mean.
A woman who's kind.
A woman who's tired.
A woman who loves.
A woman whose legacy apparently packs one hell of a right hook.
It's strange logic, sure. But it clearly makes sense to him. To Jabber.
It's unsettling to get the new perspective and realize Jabber wields his love as a weapon. Maybe Zanka could be cruel, could question how something Jabber's mother gave him can become a tool of violence. To look him in the eyes and ask if he kisses his mama with that mouth?
It's useless, though, because in Jabber's world there is no contradiction.
Love.
Fear.
Respect.
Dependence.
Anger.
Gratitude.
All live in the same place.
Those rings mean she trusted him, and he kept them safe in that, and now they keep him safe. That's some eye for an eye type of bullshit. The circular kind of logic Jabber thrives on. Clean and logical, like all of Jabber's weird thoughts end up being in his point of view.
It's a strange kind of love, in a world build from garbage.
And Zanka just, Zanka just-
Nods, slowly.
"I see."
Jabber drops his hands back onto his knees, satisfied.
“So it’s cool.”
Zanka nods again.
“Yeah.”
Another quiet moment settles between them.