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Part I: Zanka - The Weight of a Name
The training ground was empty at this hour, which was exactly how Zanka preferred it.
His muscles screamed as he pushed through another set of strikes, Lovely Assistaff’s weight familiar and unforgiving on his arm. Sweat dripping down his face despite the cool evening air. The dummy before him was already half-destroyed, stuffing leaking from a dozen precise hits. He didn't stop. Couldn't stop. Because stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant…
"Pathetic. Do it again."
He struck harder. Faster. The memory of Kyouka's voice was like acid, burning even now. They'd shared the same blood, the same training halls, the same weight of family expectation pressing down on their shoulders, it should have made them friends, or at the very least allies. Should have been a bond forged in understanding. Instead, she'd wielded their shared suffering like a blade, cutting him down every chance she got. At least when their brother ignored him, it was passive. Kyouka's cruelty was an art form she'd perfected.
“How dare you carry the Nijiku name with such deplorable form?”
His biological sister had perfected the art of the casual cruelty, the offhand remark delivered with a tactical tone that made you question whether you were allowed to be hurt by it. She'd known exactly where to cut because they'd shared blood, shared history, shared those brutal early morning training sessions where failure meant shame for the entire family. And their brother had watched, silent, complicit in his indifference.
"Yo, Zan-zan! I think you killed it about an hour ago." Zanka's grip tightened on his weapon. Riyo was at the edge of the training ground—when the hell had she gotten there?—making an exaggerated sweeping gesture at the training ground's worth of destroyed dummies. "Look at its brothers and sisters you already turned to pillow stuffing. Have mercy!"
"Go away, Riyo."
"Mmm, nope." She materialized closer, perched on a broken pillar with that infuriating cat-like grace of hers. The training ground's dim light caught her hair, that distinctive red that made his chest tighten for just a second.
“You disgrace everything our family built.”
For a heartbeat, he was twelve again, flinching from Kyouka's presence.
But no. Riyo's red was different. Brighter, almost crimson where his sister's had been darker, more subdued. It was longer too. Always woven into interesting shapes as if she wanted to see how much she could test gravity before the red strands started fighting back. More than that though, he’d come to associate this particular shade of shade with irritation, yes, but also with the specific brand of annoyance that meant someone cared enough to bother you. Comforting, in its own weird way.
"You've been out here for like, what, four hours? Five?"
"I'm training."
"You're spiraling." She tilted her head, green eyes gleaming in the dim light. "There's a difference."
“I said—” He spun toward her, ready to snap, ready to unleash all the frustration that’s been building in his chest all afternoon.
But Riyo just grinned at him, lazy and unbothered. "Ooh, scary. What're you gonna do tell Enjin on me? He’ll agree with me you know. You look like the ‘before’ picture of a spa ad.”
The anger deflated, just a little. Because that was the thing about Riyo, she teased, she poked, she was absolutely relentless in her needling. But it never felt like his sister's words. Never had that edge of genuine contempt, that desire to make him feel small.
"You're annoying as hell," he said, but the venom was gone.
“No, I'm the ‘after’ picture," Riyo corrected, playing with a strand of her hair. "And you're coming inside before you pass out and make Enjin do his disappointed dad face. You know the one." She mimicked Enjin's expression with exaggerated solemnity.
Despite himself, Zanka's mouth twitched. "That's not even close."
"You smiled! I saw it! You might just have hope yet.” She hopped down from the pillar. "Come on. Rudo found some kind of weird-ass candy in the market and Enjin's pretending he's not going to eat half of it. If we don't hurry, there won't be any left."
Zanka looked back at the destroyed dummies, at the training ground where he'd been trying to beat the memories out of himself. Then at Riyo, who was watching him with those sharp eyes that saw too much but never used it to hurt him. He felt himself come back into his body, as the exhaustion pulled at his very being, till he was slightly leaning on Assistaff.
"Fine," he said. "But only because that candy is probably terrible and I want to see Rudo's face when he realizes it."
"There's the Zanka I know and tolerate!" Riyo slung an arm around his shoulders, completely ignoring how sweaty he was. ”You know, you're actually pretty decent when you're not being all broody and intense."
"I'm not broody."
"You're the broodiest person I know. You make trash storms look cheerful."
She supported a bit of his weight on their walk, without him realizing, as they bickered all the way back to the main building, Riyo's commentary getting progressively more ridiculous. And somewhere in the middle of arguing about whether his hair was due for a cut or he was pulling of the “ragged, tortured raider” look, Zanka realized something.
His biological sister had been cruel in ways that were calculated, designed to leave marks that didn't show. She'd known exactly where to cut because they'd shared blood, shared history, shared the weight of the Nijiku legacy.
But Riyo knew him too. Knew how to defuse his anger, knew when he was pushing too hard, knew exactly how to carry his weight without making him feel weak for needing the help. She teased him relentlessly, but never about the things that actually hurt. Never about being thrown away, never about not being good enough, never about the family that had discarded him.
She knew him, really knew him, and still chose to drag him to rest. Still treated him like a brother.
They found Rudo and Enjin in the common room, exactly as Riyo had predicted. Rudo was indeed holding a bag of something that looked questionable, while Enjin sat nearby with a book, that he was definitely just using to impress Gris, radiating that particular brand of amused patience he'd perfected.
Follo was sprawled in the corner, tinkering with something mechanical and grumbling under his breath.
"Zanka! Try this!" Rudo immediately shoved a piece of candy at him. "It's sweet and spicy at the same time!"
"Don't do it," Follo called out without looking up from his work. "I already made that mistake. Tastes like shit."
"You still ate three pieces," Rudo pointed out.
"Yeah, well, I'm an idiot."
"That sounds disgusting," Zanka said, but he took it anyway.
It was, in fact, disgusting. Rudo's face lit up with vindication while Riyo cackled.
Enjin looked up from his book, and his expression did something complicated when he saw Zanka, satisfaction, maybe, or relief. "Finished training?"
"Riyo dragged me away."
"I rescued you from yourself," Riyo corrected, stealing a piece of candy then gagging at the taste. "You're welcome."
"Good girl, Riyo. Rescue mission accomplished," Enjin said with a smirk, then turned to Zanka with exaggerated concern. "And look at you, actually listening for once. I'm impressed. Sit your butt down before you keel over and make me explain to Gris why I let you train yourself into the ground."
He shifted over on the worn couch, making space, but his eyes were glinting with amusement.
And Zanka did, settling between Riyo's relentless teasing and Rudo's infectious enthusiasm, with Enjin immediately pushing the candy bag toward them. "Come on, try the green ones. I want to see if they're as bad as the red ones were." His grin was almost mischievous. Gris passed by at some point, ruffling Rudo's hair and exchanging a look with Enjin that was far too fond and that Zanka pretended not to notice.
His biological family had shared his blood, his name, his duty to uphold the Nijiku legacy. But they'd never known him. Had never wanted to.
This family, these people who'd all been thrown away like trash, who'd crawled out of the abyss and found each other, they knew him. His sharp edges and his softer moments, his pride and his fears, his need to prove himself and his desperate desire to belong.
They knew him, and they loved him anyway.
Riyo elbowed him in the ribs. "Stop looking so emotional, you're ruining your whole 'tough guy' image."
"I'm not emotional."
"You're doing that thing with your jaw. The clenchy thing."
"I will throw you off this couch."
“Right now, you couldn’t move a plushie if you tried.”
Yeah. This was his family. These absolute disasters were his real siblings.
And for the first time in longer than he could remember, that felt like enough.
Part II: Riyo - The Weight of Being Human
Riyo had learned a long time ago that sleep was for people who didn't have ghosts.
She lay in her room, staring at the ceiling, counting the thin cracks in the plaster. Twenty-seven. Same as last night. Same as the night before. The moon painted silver shadows across the walls, and somewhere in the building, she could hear the old pipes settling, Follo's quiet snoring from down the hall, the ambient sounds of people at rest.
She'd never been good at rest.
Her fingers twitched with muscle memory, the phantom weight of a gun, the ghost of a hundred different kills.
Her hand moved to The Ripper at her side, fingers curling around the familiar handles. The cool metal sank into her palms like an anchor, grounding her. She pulled the scissors free, opening and closing them in a slow rhythm —snip, snip, snip— the quiet sound oddly soothing in the darkness. It was a habit she'd developed somewhere along the way, this fidgeting. The Ripper wasn't a killing tool, but the weight of it, the motion, the control it settled something restless in her chest.
She'd been made into a weapon before she'd learned to be a person. Had memorized the angles of human vulnerability before she'd understood the concept of friendship.
They had taken a child and carved away everything soft, everything human, until all that remained was efficiency. Purpose. The perfect tool.
Riyo rolled onto her side, pulling her knees up. She'd had a name before, probably. A family, maybe. But those had been scooped out like they'd never existed, replaced with missions and targets and the cold satisfaction of a job well done.
She hadn't known she was supposed to mourn that loss. Hadn't known there was anything wrong with being a gun in human skin.
Until.
Until Enjin had looked at her not as a weapon but as a person. Until Zanka had gotten mad at her for taking stupid risks, like her life was something worth protecting. Until Rudo had made that information broker apologize to her for getting her hurt, his face serious in a way that said he wouldn't let anyone disrespect his family, not even Riyo, who could handle herself just fine.
Her restlessness peaked, crackling under her skin like electricity. The small sniping noise was no longer enough to comfort her. She needed to move, needed to do something, needed to outrun the memories of a childhood that had been systematically dismantled to make her better at killing.
Riyo slipped out of bed, silent as a thought. Breaking into Zanka's room was easy, she’d done it a hundred times at this point, usually to steal his snacks or move his stuff around to irritate him. Last month she'd spent two weeks shifting everything on his desk exactly one inch to the left each night. It had taken him embarrassingly long to notice. The door didn't even creak.
"I can hear you breathing," Zanka said without opening his eyes.
"Your security is shit. Anyone could break in here."
"Only you would break in here." He sat up, rubbing his face. "It's the middle of the night, Riyo."
“Wow, congrats on knowing how to tell time." She padded over and dropped onto the end of his bed without invitation. "Can't sleep."
Zanka studied her with those sharp eyes of his, and Riyo resisted the urge to squirm. She’d always been good at masking, it was what she was built for. But somehow Zanka always saw through it when it mattered.
"Nightmares?" he asked quietly.
"Memories. Same difference." She picked at a loose thread on his blanket. "You ever think about how fucked up it is? That we all just... accept this? Living here, fighting trash beasts, pretending this is normal?"
“Ain’t nothing about us normal," Zanka said. "But we're here."
“Profound. Really philosophical."
"I'm trying to be supportive, dipshit.”
"Try harder." But she smiled when she said it, just a little. "I was thinking about before. Before I had the Cleaners. I don't remember it. Not really. Sometimes I think maybe I had a mom who sang, or maybe that's just something I made up because it seemed like the kind of thing people should have."
Zanka shifted, making more room for her to sprawl. "You don't have to remember it to deserve better than what they did to you."
"I know." And she did know, intellectually. But knowing and feeling were different things. "I just... I was a kid, Zanka. I should have been learning to play games or whatever normal kids do. Instead, I was learning where to shoot to make someone bleed out fastest."
"You're still a kid," Zanka pointed out.
"Am I?" Riyo looked at her hands small, delicate, deceptively innocent. Hands that knew a hundred ways to kill. "Sometimes I don't feel like one. Like there was supposed to be something before this and I just... missed it.”
"Well, you're really annoying, which is pretty childish."
"Rude."
"You broke into my room at two in the morning."
"Fair point." Riyo flopped backward, staring at his ceiling. "I'm hungry. Want to raid the kitchen?"
"You just want me to come with you so if Enjin catches us, you can claim I was the instigator."
"Obviously." She poked his leg with her foot. "Come on. I'm restless and you're awake anyway. May as well make it everyone's problem."
Zanka sighed, but he was already getting up. "You're a terrible influence."
“Nah, you just fold too easily."
They crept through the darkened building with practiced ease, though Riyo suspected "crept" was generous, Zanka had all the stealth of a particularly loud brick when he was tired. But it didn't matter. This was her family's space, her home. She didn’t even need to sneak around, but a part of it made her feel like a fully-fledged kid, so she kept peeking around each corner.
The kitchen light was already on.
"Oh good, you're here," Rudo said around a mouthful of something chocolate. "I found a secret candy stash, and I’m not about to be the only one in trouble."
“Is that the good stuff that Enjin gets from the South Ward?" Riyo vaulted over the counter. "Rudo, you beautiful criminal. Move over."
"There's a secret candy stash?" Zanka looked betrayed. "And neither of you told me?"
"I just discovered it like ten minutes ago!" Rudo defended. "I couldn't sleep and I got hungry and then I found it and it was my destiny."
"Destiny is just a word for luck with better PR," Riyo said, already unwrapping something that looked promising.
They spread out across the kitchen like a small invasion force, Rudo at the table with his haul, Zanka leaning against the counter with reluctant participation, Riyo perched on said counter because sitting normally was for people who hadn't been trained to maximize escape routes.
"Why couldn't you sleep?" Rudo asked her, offering a piece of sour candy.
"Brain wouldn't shut up." Riyo accepted the candy. "Why couldn't you?”
"Sometimes I wake up and forget where I am," Rudo admitted quietly, focusing really hard on unwrapping a piece of candy. "Just for a second. And then I remember Regto isn't..." He trailed off, then shoved the candy in his mouth. "But then I remember you guys are here. So. Yeah." He chewed aggressively to avoid having to say anything else.
Zanka's expression went soft in that way it sometimes did when Rudo was being honest about his grief. "Yeah. We're here."
"Group therapy session at 2 AM," Riyo announced. "Love that for us."
“Three insomniacs walk into a kitchen…and rob me blind, apparently.” Enjin's voice came from the doorway, and all three of them jumped.
"Enjin!" Rudo immediately looked guilty. "We were just…”
"Raiding my candy stash, I know." But Enjin didn't look angry. He looked tired and amused and fondly exasperated, which was pretty much his default state around them. "Can't sleep, any of you?"
"Nope," Riyo said cheerfully.
"Not really," Zanka admitted.
"Mmfph mffs," Rudo said around a mouthful of candy.
Enjin surveyed his collection of insomniacs with something that might have been affection, if Riyo knew what that looked like (she did, now, she was learning). "Alright. Well, if we're all awake, we might as well commit to it. Zanka, make tea. Rudo, grab the good blankets from the storage closet. Riyo, stop sitting on the counter."
"You're not the boss of… okay, you're literally the boss." Riyo hopped down. "Where are we committing to this?"
"Common room. If Gris wakes up and finds us, I want plausible deniability that this was a structured team-building exercise or something."
"Is Gris going to wake up?" Rudo asked with interest.
"Gris sleeps like the dead," Enjin said, then paused. "Don't tell him I said that."
Twenty minutes later, they were piled in the common room like a nest of particularly unruly birds. Zanka had made tea that was somehow both too sweet and too weak. Rudo had grabbed every blanket he could find, creating a fort situation. Riyo had stolen Enjin's favorite spot on the couch, forcing him to sit on the floor with the rest of them.
"This is stupid," Zanka said, wrapped in three blankets.
"You love it," Riyo countered.
"I tolerate it."
"Same thing."
Rudo giggled, that bright sound that was becoming more common lately. Enjin had started telling stories, ridiculous ones about his early days in the Cleaners, about the time he'd tried to fight a trash beast with nothing but a broken pipe and sheer audacity, about his terrible cooking attempts before they'd banned him from the kitchen. His voice was low and steady in the quiet hours, warm with amusement at his own past stupidity.
And Riyo felt it settle in her chest, warm and unfamiliar and terrifying.
This was what she'd been missing. Not the childhood she couldn't remember, not the family that had let her be taken, but this. These people who knew what she'd been made into and still wanted her around. Who saw the weapon and chose to see the person too.
Before she was taught to be alone, to need no one, to exist as a perfect instrument of death. But here, wrapped in stolen blankets at 3 AM with her makeshift family, Riyo understood something they'd never wanted her to know:
Being human meant being known. Meant letting people see your worst moments and your 2 AM restlessness and your desperate need for connection that you'd been taught to cut out like a tumor.
Being human meant family. Not the one you might have lost, but the one you built from the wreckage of your worst days.
"Riyo, you're doing the thing," Zanka murmured.
"What thing?"
"The emotional thing. Your face gets all weird."
"My face is not weird, jackass.”
"Weirder than usual."
She kicked him gently. But she was smiling, and her eyes were burning, and when Rudo dozed off against her leg and Zanka's breathing evened out into sleep and Enjin just kept talking in that steady voice, Riyo let herself relax.
Let herself be known.
Let herself be loved.
Part III: Rudo - The Weight of Joy
Rudo found the memorial stone on a Tuesday.
Not found, exactly, he’d always known where it was. Had placed it there himself, with Enjin's help, in the small garden behind their building. A smooth piece of stone, marked with Regto's name in careful letters.
But today, there was something new beside it.
A small gear, polished until it shone. The kind of random trinket Riyo picked up on missions and somehow turned into something cool. She must have left it there sometime this morning, while everyone else was still asleep.
She did that sometimes. Left him things. Never made a big deal about it, never expected thanks. Just small treasures that appeared in his space like magic: interesting rocks, broken watches, pieces of colorful glass. Little reminders that she was thinking about him, even when she was out in the dangerous parts of the Ground.
Rudo picked up the gear, feeling its weight in his palm. It was warm from the morning sun peaking through the polluted air.
“You like it?” he said quietly to the stone, then felt stupid for talking to a rock. But whatever. "You think it’s cool, right? This gear thing. You always liked... mechanical shit."
The stone, predictably, didn't answer. But Rudo liked to think maybe Regto could hear him anyway. Liked to imagine his dad was somewhere watching, seeing how far Rudo had come since those awful days after he was dropped into the pit.
"So, uh, I've been training really hard," Rudo continued, settling cross-legged in front of the memorial and immediately feeling weird about it. "Zanka's been helping me with 3R. He's... he's really intense about it, you know? Like, scary intense. But yesterday I finally landed that combination he's been teaching me, and he did this tiny smile. Barely even a smile. But I saw it, and he said 'not bad, kid' and I think that's basically the same as him throwing a party for me."
The garden was quiet except for the sound of the building waking up behind him, Follo arguing with Tomme about breakfast duties, Gris's distinctive laugh, the general chaos that meant his family was starting their day.
His family.
Rudo turned the gear over in his hands, thinking about how that word had changed shape in his life. Once, it had just meant Regto, his pseudo dad who'd protected him, taught him, loved him even when they had nothing. Regto had been everything.
And then Regto had died, and Rudo's world had shattered into pieces so small he'd thought he'd never be whole again.
"I miss you," Rudo said, and his voice cracked embarrassingly. Shit. "Every day, I… It's stupid, but sometimes I forget for a bit. Like when Riyo does something ridiculous or Enjin's explaining some weird trash beast he saw. And then I remember and it's like…” He wiped his nose with his sleeve. "It's like getting punched in the chest all over again. That you're just... gone."
A hand settled on his shoulder, warm and heavy and familiar. Rudo jumped.
"Jesus, Enjin.”
"He'd be proud of you," Enjin said, settling beside him in the grass like he hadn't just scared the crap out of him.
"You didn't have to come out here." Rudo wiped his eyes quickly, hoping Enjin wouldn't comment on it.
"I wanted to." Enjin looked at the memorial stone with that expression he got sometimes, sad and understanding and old beyond his years. "Besides, I have a theory that Regto's spirit is judging my leadership choices. Want to make sure he knows I'm taking good care of you."
Despite the tears threatening to fall, Rudo laughed. "He would be judging you. He'd probably have opinions about my sleep schedule."
"Yeah? Good. I could use the accountability." Enjin smiled crookedly. "What brought you out here this morning?"
"Riyo left this." Rudo showed him the gear. "She's always doing stuff like that. Leaving me little things."
"She cares about you. Has trouble saying it directly, so she says it in trinkets and terrible jokes."
"Yeah." Rudo turned the gear over in his hands. "Zanka too…he always makes sure I've eaten enough. Won't say anything, just... shoves food at me if he thinks I've been training too long. And when I land something he's been teaching me, he does this thing where he tries not to smile but I can see it." He said it without thinking, then realized he was rambling. "I mean…”
"And you notice," Enjin observed quietly. "You pay attention to them the same way they pay attention to you."
"Is that weird?"
"It's family," Enjin said simply. "That's what family does. They know you. Your favorite foods, your fears, what makes you laugh. They carry those details because you matter to them."
Rudo was quiet for a moment, watching the morning light shift across Regto's name. "I used to think... after Regto died, I thought I'd never have family again. That it was just going to be me, y’know."
"But?"
"But then there was you. And Zanka and Riyo and everyone. And it's different from Regto, obviously. But it's still…” He struggled for the words, his face heating up because this was embarrassing as hell. "It's still real, I guess. Still...you know. Family stuff."
Enjin pulled him into a sideways hug, easy and comfortable. "Regto would want this for you, you know. Would want you to have people who care about you, who push you to be better, who make you laugh even when everything feels heavy."
"You think so?"
"I know so." Enjin's voice was firm. "Dads don't stop wanting their kids to be happy just because they're gone. They want you to live, Rudo. Really live. Not just survive."
The tears came then, hot and fast, but they didn't feel like the drowning grief of before. They felt like release, like finally being able to hold both things at once, the loss of Regto and the love of his new family.
"There you are!" Riyo's voice cut through the moment. "We've been looking everywhere… oh." She stopped when she saw them, her expression shifting. "Sorry. We can come back."
"No, it's okay." Rudo wiped his eyes. “C’mere."
Riyo approached cautiously, Zanka trailing behind her with his arms crossed. They both looked uncertain, like they were intruding on something private.
"I found the gear," Rudo said, holding it up. "Thank you."
Riyo shrugged, trying for casual and not quite making it. "It was just some junk I picked up. Thought you might like the shine of it."
"I love it." Rudo stood up, brushing grass off his pants, then immediately felt like an idiot for saying it like that. "I mean…Thanks. For thinking of me and stuff. All of you." God, why was he like this?
"Getting sappy before breakfast," Zanka muttered. "That's a new low."
"Shut up, you love us," Riyo said.
"I tolerate you at best."
But Zanka's eyes were soft when he looked at Rudo, and there was something protective in the way he stood, like even here, in their own little garden, he was ready to defend them if needed.
Rudo thought about Regto, about how he'd been ripped away without warning, without choice. Murdered. But before that, before the end, Regto had spent every day trying to give Rudo a future. And Enjin was right. Regto would want him to really live that future, not just drag himself through it.
This was living. This chaotic, loving, slightly broken family. Riyo with her nighttime visits and her trinkets. Zanka with his gruff affection and his relentless training. Enjin with his steady presence and his terrible attempts at cooking. Gris with his quiet support. Follo with his complaints that always ended in helping anyway.
They knew him, his grief and his joy, his nightmares about losing people and his dreams of being strong enough to protect them. They knew his favorite candy and his training struggles and the way he sometimes woke up with an uncontrollable rage from dreams of the day Regto died.
They knew him, and they loved him anyway.
"Can we eat breakfast out here?" Rudo asked suddenly. "By Regto's stone? I want..." He paused, trying to find the words. "I want him to be part of this too. Even if he's not here."
Enjin smiled, warm and proud. "I'll get the food. Riyo, help me carry things. Zanka, grab blankets."
"Why do I gotta get the blankets? They’re so far.” Zanka complained.
"Because you’ve got the longest legs," Riyo said sweetly, already heading back toward the building.
As they dispersed to gather supplies for an impromptu memorial breakfast, Rudo knelt down one more time by the stone. He placed the gear carefully beside it, a small offering from Riyo, a symbol of the family he'd found in the wreckage.
"I'm okay, Regto," he whispered. "I'm actually okay. Which is weird to say but…” He laughed, watery and broken. "I think you'd really like them. They're disasters. Complete fucking disasters. But they're mine, y’know? My family."
The wind rustled through the garden, and for just a moment, Rudo could have sworn he felt it, his approval, his love, his joy that Rudo had found a way forward.
When the others returned with food and blankets and the kind of cheerful chaos that had become Rudo's new normal, he was smiling. Really smiling. The kind of smile that Regto had always wanted to see on his face.
They spread out around the memorial, turning grief into something shared and bearable. Riyo stole food off Zanka's plate. Zanka threatened to stab her with his fork. Enjin told a story about Semiu that made them all laugh. And Rudo sat in the middle of it all, surrounded by people who knew him, really knew him, and loved him because of it.
To be known was to be loved.
And Rudo was so, so deeply known.
Epilogue
That night, Gris found them all asleep in the common room again, a tangle of limbs and blankets that suggested they'd started out in separate spaces and gradually collapsed into one warm pile. Enjin was half-sitting against the couch, Rudo tucked against his side. Riyo had claimed Enjin's other side, her head on his shoulder. Zanka was sprawled across the floor with a blanket that had definitely been stolen from someone else, one hand loosely holding onto Rudo's sleeve like he was afraid the kid would wander off in his sleep.
"They're going to have terrible back pain tomorrow," Gris observed.
"Probably," Enjin agreed without opening his eyes. "Worth it though."
"Sap." But Gris said it fondly, and when he draped another blanket over the pile, his movements were gentle. "You know Follo's going to be insufferable about being left out."
"He fell asleep in the workshop. His own fault."
"I'll tell him you said that."
"You wouldn't dare."
"Try me."
Their soft bickering faded into comfortable silence. Gris settled into the chair nearby, making it clear he was staying, standing guard over this family they'd somehow built from broken pieces and second chances.
Outside, the Ground continued its eternal churn. But inside, in this small space carved out of the darkness, five people slept peacefully.
Known. Loved.