Work Text:
Zanka feels like everything is buzzing.
“Hey, sleepyhead.”
Riyo’s voice.
She’s sitting on his bed. He heard her come in, but he didn’t fully register that she was there to tell him something until she sat down.
There's a dull throb at the back of his head. Another headache. They haven’t really stopped since the poisoning.
“What time s’it?” he groans. He knows it’s not early in the morning, and it’s not time for the job yet. He feels like he hasn’t been asleep for more than thirty minutes, so why is Riyo here?
“Ten something. You totally slept through the meeting,” she tells him. She’s obviously not bothered by it, more so paying attention to a snagged nail. “Enjin figured you’re catching up on sleep, so no big deal.”
Zanka sits himself up with a sigh. He didn’t realized he fell asleep so early. Sure, he would like to catch up on sleep, but he doesn’t want to miss out on important meetings. He doesn’t want to miss out on anything. He can just try to sleep afterward. He’s not going to ask Riyo why no one came and got him, because he’s just going to hear the same you’re still recovering nonsense that everyone has been giving him since the whole poisoning incident.
“What’s up with these late night meetings anyway,” Zanka grumbles, deciding it’s not worth the argument and lying back down, staring up at the ceiling.
“Lots of early jobs lately, I guess. Late night’s the only way to get everyone together nowadays,” she says. “You okay?”
“What?” he huffs. “I’m fine.”
He hates it. If one more person asks if he’s okay, he’s going to lose his mind. He knows it’s all just concern. They don’t pity him, he knows that, they’ve said it, they’re just worried.
He still hates it.
“I’m just surprised you’re not giving me any like, why didn’t you wake me up, like you usually do,” Riyo says.
“You guys are just gonna do what you want, anyway,” he mumbles. He doesn’t like how lax they’ve been with him during his recovery, and afterward. He wishes they would just pretend it never happened, and drag him out of bed like usual. He just wants to feel normal.
“Maybe,” Riyo says. “Anyway, Zan, I’m going up stairs. I’ll see you in the morning?”
“Yeah,” he sighs, deciding to lie back down, busy staring at the ceiling.
“G’night,” she tells him.
“Night, Riyo.”
It's too early, but Zanka can't go back to sleep. He's tried to train his brain into not waking up at four in the morning, like back in his Hell Guard training days, but he’s never managed to be able to do it. He didn’t even manage to sleep well while he was supposed to be asleep.
He decides to get ready. Maybe if he gets dressed and trains outside for a while before the job, he can level his head a little, and get rid of this weird fuzzy feeling. He’s a little worried it’s the start of a migraine, but it’s not quite the same as it usually is. He’s a little dizzy after he pulls his sleeveless top on.
He’s holding the top half of his uniform in front of him. Something feels weird.
Shit.
He hardly makes it to the trash bin on his floor, and chokes up whatever scraps he picked at from his dinner the night before. Coughing, sputtering. It hurts. He can’t be sure exactly why this is happening all of a sudden. Is he sick? Is this anxiety? Is it a migraine that just hasn’t gotten to his head yet, somehow? It’s not still part of the whole poison thing, is it?
He feels like he's going to pass out, for a second.
He can't call out. He can't do it. Not this time. Enjin won't let him stay.
“Shut up. Shut up,” he tells himself with a shaky breath, pressing his palms against his eyes.
No, that isn’t true. Enjin’s made that very clear to him. It’s an irrational fear. Zanka is afraid of abandonment, that’s what he’s heard Gris say when they think he’s not listening. He’s not with the Hell Guard anymore. He needs to relax, that’s what they’re trying to get through to him, but he can’t. He just hears his sister’s words from Enjin’s face. The feelings won’t go away.
He sits on the floor for a while, leaning against his bed frame, pulling his knees up to his chest. He's just trying to breathe. In, out. Maybe he's just anxious. He used to get like this whenever he worked himself up, but this whole anxious spiral didn’t start until after he threw up.
It's the first job he's been assigned to since that whole incident, since Enjin put him out for a month to recover. He's been training. And training. And training.
He can't let them down.
Zanka tries to look as presentable as humanly possible. Enjin knows he hasn't been getting great sleep lately, so maybe he'll chalk it up to that. He'll get lucky. He's borrowed makeup from Riyo before, and she's even left some in his room on occasion, so he uses it to fix his complexion just enough so he doesn't look like a ghost, and fix his under eyes the best he can. He looks like he didn’t even sleep a wink, and he’s pretty sure throwing up just now has completely zapped all his energy.
He feels awful.
At least Rudo won’t be on this job. He’s out with Tamsy and Follo, from what Zanka heard. He won’t have to worry about being a decent role model, he won’t have to pay close attention to Rudo’s new and unfamiliar battle tactics. He can just run on autopilot, and that should clear him of any suspicion. He’s great at autopilot.
He throws up again, just before he leaves. Just once. Not very much. He sort of felt it coming, that time. He breathes heavy, wondering if he's making a mistake or not. He thought for a long time that he was good at hiding his feelings until he realized Enjin and Riyo pretty much knew everything he thought and felt at any moment, but he's hoping he's gotten better about it.
Come on. Lock in.
He makes it out to the garage, where they’re set to meet by the company vehicle before they leave. He’s trying to be conscious of his posture. His stomach is killing him. He probably needs to eat something, but he’s afraid he won’t be able to keep it down. Zanka doesn’t even remember who they’re set to be working with until he gets there. Enjin, of course, with Riyo, and then Delmon and a few Supporters that Zanka isn’t too familiar with.
Riyo isn’t there yet. She’s usually on time, while Zanka’s always early, and Enjin somewhere in between.
Enjin waves Zanka down when he arrives. There’s four Supporters total, which isn’t many, but more than Zanka was expecting. It’s not supposed to be a big job.
Enjin looks like he has some job-related information to share with him, judging by the folder in his hands, but when Zanka gets closer, Enjin’s expression changes, and a knot forms in Zanka’s stomach. He hates that look.
“Still not sleeping good?” Enjin asks with a pout.
That obvious, huh?
“Yeah, I'm…I'll talk to Eishia about it. When we get back,” Zanka answers quietly, gripping his staff a little tighter. He doesn’t want to talk to Eishia at all. He’s bothered her more than enough since the beginning of his borderline hospitalization.
“Good idea. We need you rested good for work,” Enjin reminds him, ruffling his hair before he walks off, a folder in hand for one of the Supporters.
Zanka's breath is caught in his throat. He's frozen there for a second, wondering what that meant.
Is Enjin calling him off the job today? He wouldn't, right?
No. He's just overreacting.
Zanka needs to sit down.
It’s a decent, quiet drive out to where they’re headed. About three hours, until they park the car in a secure lot.
A town that doesn’t allow private vehicles is where they’re headed. It’s a way for them to monitor their population. They have to ditch their vehicle and take a public bus into the town - they don’t make exceptions for anyone, not even Cleaners that the city itself hired to clean up Trash Beasts right on the outskirts.
They're waiting at the bus platform, dozens of other passengers giving them either looks of admiration or disgust, nothing in between. It's not something they're not used to, but Zanka can't deal with it right now. The bus isn't supposed to be there for another five or ten minutes, so while Enjin isn’t paying attention, in conversation with the person ahead of them in line, he dips off.
He has to go sit by himself. Just for a minute. They’re all waiting on the bus anyway, they won’t notice if he disappears for a minute.
He was nauseous the entire drive out, but thankfully not so badly that he thought he might throw up. He was hoping that he’d gotten that out of the way this morning, but now the feeling is coming back. There’s a weird, fuzzy feeling in his head too, something he would usually chalk up to the beginning of a migraine, but it hasn’t actually gotten there. His head hurts, but not that badly.
He puts a hand against his chest, and takes a breath.
Anxiety. It's anxiety, right? He paces around the bench on the other side of the little building, gripping his Vital Instrument for dear life. He hasn’t had it this bad in a long time, if that’s what it is. It used to be a daily issue, after he left Kamuatari, after he was disinherited. He’d gotten talks from Enjin about it, Gris and Semiu too, and he got to a point where he could manage it, where he could avoid these moments.
And anxiety can be fixed by being calm. Breathing normally. Easy.
Fuck. Maybe he needs to throw up again and then he'll be fine.
“Zanka?”
He has the sense not to bash his head into walls anymore, he thinks, but sometimes he feels like that's the only way to bring him back to reality.
He tries to straighten himself out, but he can't look at Riyo. He's sure everything he's feeling is written all over his face.
Riyo stands next to him for a second, probably expecting him to at least react to her presence, but he doesn’t. “You, uh…you look like you're about to puke.”
“I'm fine,” he says, quickly, because he's trying to breathe. She's interrupting him. “Jus’ anxiety.”
It's easier to admit that than being sick. They've already accepted that's a flaw he has, and has had for a long time. Being sick is not acceptable. There's no quick fix for it. Enjin will be pissed if he finds out this late into the job that Zanka is sick, because he's strict about that. Taking care of yourself is the priority, he always says. He won’t let Zanka work if he has a headache or a fever, even if it’s unrelated to being sick. And especially not now, not after what happened.
“Okay, well, let's sit down then,” Riyo says to him, laying a hand on his shoulder and bringing him down to the bench. He's so unbelievably nauseous. He swallows. “What's up, huh?”
He can't say it. He doesn't want to. Maybe a month ago, before all this shit with Jabber happened.
“Please don't tell anyone,” he mumbles.
“Don't tell anyone what?” she asks quietly, turning her head to get a closer look at him.
Zanka can't say it. Why can't he say it? Riyo, out of everyone, would keep a secret.
“Zanka? You're kinda freakin’ me out, man.”
“Everything okay over here?”
Enjin’s voice nearly makes Zanka jump out of his skin. He was so focused on Riyo’s eyes that he didn’t even hear his footsteps.
“Yep. Zanka dropped an earring.”
He looks over, and sure enough, she’s holding one. Did it fall? Did she take it off? He doesn’t remember her doing that at all. Enjin looks confused too, because they didn’t walk near this platform on the way over, but he seems to accept the explanation.
“‘Kay, well, our bus is almost here.”
Riyo definitely saved his ass there, and she doesn’t even know the half of it.
The bus ride is torture.
He sits beside Riyo towards the back. Cars arn’t as bad, but the rare times he has to get on a bus or a train are torture for motion sickness, and it’s just another thing to add to the list of crap that’s making him feel awful.
It’s hot as hell, too, and no one else seems bothered by it. Zanka tries not to let it show, but he unzips the front of his uniform just a few inches to make it so that he’s not smothered, at least.
It’s not a fever, is it?
Riyo doesn’t bug him about anything, and she usually doesn’t. She doesn’t like to be bothered either when something’s up with her, and the mutual silence between the two in those situations is respected and appreciated.
He slips away to the bus restroom, which is probably disgusting enough by itself to make him throw up on a good day, but he just stands, leans against the door, and breathes. He doesn't want it to happen. It burns. Everything already hurts. The nauseous feeling is getting to his head, reminding him of his recovery from the poison, and for a few seconds, he feels like he can’t see. Can’t breathe. He gags, thinking for a second that he’s going to throw up. He holds his head over the tiny bus restroom sink, but nothing else happens. He can’t hand anything left in his stomach. He hardly did to begin with.
“Fucking…get it together,” he mumbles to himself, his voice shaking so much that it makes him cringe as he leans back against the door. What is wrong with him? Surely he wouldn’t have reacted this way to being sick a month ago. It’s never bothered him this much. He rubs his hands over his face.
He comes out quickly enough to avoid any suspicion, but Riyo is already giving him looks.
“Zanka,” Riyo whispers, tapping his shoulder.
He turns his head.
She has a little notepad on the pull-out table, and a nearly empty ink pen. They’re supposed to use those if they need to take notes during a job, when Scribes aren’t around.
u ok? talk to me
He bites his lip. He doesn’t want to do this, but Riyo will hunt him down until she gets an answer, one way or another. He takes the pen.
Don't feel good
Riyo raises an eyebrow.
i can tell
Riyo scribbles something else.
u sick then or what?
Zanka groans, laying his head back against the headrest. He doesn’t want to admit it. He can’t.
She rubs his shoulder for a second, comforting, before she flips to the next page to write something else.
pretty sure enjin would've been fine w u staying back
Zanka understands the sentiment, but he can't even consider the option. He needs to work. He wants to help. He hates sitting at home.
the whole poison thing probably fcked ur immune system
Zanka takes the pen.
Just anxiety, not sick
Riyo huffs at him. She's not buying it, but Zanka's already decided he's digging this grave. He doesn't fully believe it himself, but it's still a more acceptable answer than the truth.
“Passing notes in class?” Enjin half-laughs, peering over from the seat in front of them.
“Girls only,” Riyo says, flapping the notebook in his face before taking it back into her bag. She always says that when the two of them are whispering because it catches Enjin off guard, and sure enough, it starts another conversation between the two of them. Zanka stares at the seatback in front of him. He can’t hide this for much longer.
Everything is shifting around him.
He realizes he’s made a huge mistake coming out here, but it’s too late to back out, in the middle of active combat.
He’s somehow able to keep himself steady with the help of his Lovely Assistaff, and he’s pretty certain he wouldn’t have been able to make it this far without her. He’s fighting off the active threats in front of him. They’re not obscenely large Trash Beasts, and they aren’t too fast, either - goat-shaped, with horns. He’s able to take a few out with just a few swings, but there’s so many. He can’t see between all the dirt and dust they’re kicking up with their hind legs, Riyo and Enjin are, and Delmon is off with other Supporters further out.
Zanka feels horribly light headed all of a sudden, and it’s just a second of distraction that was long enough for a Trash Beast ram right past Zanka, tear off his mask and graze the side of his head with its horn, knocking him backwards and sending his staff flying behind him, deactivating as soon as she left his hands.
He’s so stunned by the sudden attack, and his failure to properly react, that he’s frozen. A hand touches the side of his head. He’s not badly injured from what he can feel, but the bright red blood covering his hand is enough to tell him he’s bleeding a lot. He’s so dizzy that it looks like his hand is moving when it isn’t.
He got really lucky. If it were only a few seconds later, that Beast would have plowed right through his head.
Zanka realizes it was the only one left, because as soon as Riyo is out of his line of sight, there’s silence. She must have taken it out.
She takes off her mask once Zanka sees her again, and her concerned expression right away is enough to tell Zanka how off his game he is. He wants to wave it off, but he realizes he doesn’t have full cooperation of the rest of his body. He feels like he’s going to pass out.
“Zanka, you good?” Enjin asks. Zanka can’t tell right away where his voice is coming from, but his eyes suddenly appear right in front of him. “You're bleeding. It just grazed you, right?”
He's pretty sure, yeah, but he can't tell. He stands up with some difficulty, autopilot, and Enjin takes his forearm to steady him. Zanka’s staring at the blood on his hand, staining Enjin’s sleeve.
“Whoa, you okay?” Enjin asks, concern slipping into his voice. “Can you stand?”
Zanka can't steady his breathing. His chest is burning. He feels like he’s on fire. He doesn’t know why it hurts so much. He still has his oxygen mask on. He tries to say something, because at the very least he should be apologizing, but nothing comes out right. Enjin’s going to be furious. Zanka is so angry with himself. He could have gotten someone hurt. He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be here at all.
“Hey, talk to me,” Enjin says, but he can't. He stumbles as he tries to take a step forward and his knees collapse underneath him, and Enjin manages to catch him and steady him before he falls to the ground.
He hears them talking around him, Enjin laying him down and pressing a hand against his forehead. Their voices start getting fuzzy.
Zanka doesn't even think he felt this bad when he was recovering from what Jabber did to him.
Zanka practically collapses into Enjin’s arms. Riyo had a feeling this was going to happen, so she was careful to make sure she was watching Zanka’s back the whole time. But clearly, not careful enough.
“What the hell is going on?” Enjin breathes out. “Did he hit his head?”
Riyo shrinks. She’s holding Zanka’s staff. Enjin’s going to be pissed when he finds out that she sort of knew all along.
Enjin is very careful with him, wary of his head injury, as he lowers him down to the ground. Zanka doesn’t show any sign of being conscious, not really. Riyo doesn’t think he was hit head-on at all, but she’s pretty sure the fever she suspects he had just slowed his reflexes, and once that thing knocked him over, all of the adrenaline he had saved up collapsed with him.
Enjin turns Zanka’s head to inspect his injury, and looks confused, because sure enough, it’s nothing worse than a scrape that bleeds a lot more than a usual scrape, being on the head. Nothing bad enough to make Zanka pass out. He turns his head back, makes sure all of his equipment is attached, and that his oxygen mask is sealed. His hand lingers there for a second, before he presses it against Zanka’s forehead.
“He’s burning,” Enjin says with a huff, “has he been sick the whole time? Is that why -”
Riyo’s lips are pressed into a line. There’s no point in hiding it now.
“You knew, didn’t you?”
“Well, he didn’t really tell me, but -”
“Okay, we’ll talk about this later. We need to get him into town if he’s so sick that he’s passing out on us” Enjin says sternly, snaking one arm underneath Zanka’s shoulders and the other under his legs to carry him. He’s angry, but not with Riyo, and not with Zanka. Riyo can’t really tell what that means.
When he wakes up, he's staring at a ceiling that isn't familiar to him.
It's old, flickering light panels.
He's on a cot in a hallway. By himself. He sits up, brings his knees to his chest and pushes himself against the wall.
He can't breathe.
He doesn’t completely understand it, right away. All he knows is that he’s in a strange place and there’s no one familiar around. He’s still in his uniform, and he touches the side of his head, which is now bandaged - okay, that was real. Maybe he’s been treated for his injuries. It smells like a clinic - disinfectant, mostly, but where is everyone?
They wouldn’t leave him, right?
“Hey, hey. Don't breathe so hard, you're gonna hurt yourself.”
Enjin's voice comes out of nowhere, but the sudden hand on his back is what grounds Zanka back into reality. He wouldn't leave him. He wouldn't.
Enjin is holding two water bottles and a pack of cigarettes, and he smells like smoke, too, covering up the disinfectant he was smelling seconds ago with something familiar. He’s not as nervous with Enjin here, but Zanka is missing pieces. Did he pass out on that job, really?
So Enjin has to know he’s sick, right?
His breaths start to pick up again and he feels light headed. He’s not ready for this conversation. He’s so nauseous, all of a sudden. He presses two fingers onto the inner part of his wrist, a nausea pressure point he knows and really just a last resort, and Enjin seems to notice.
“Zanka, listen to me,” Enjin says, rubbing his shoulder, “you’re just gonna feel worse if you’re breathing like that.”
Zanka’s eyes are burning with tears. He fucked up. Enjin is going to be so angry with him.
“Zanka,” Enjin says again.
Zanka’s hands cover his face.
“I’m not your sister. Okay?”
He stops breathing, for a few seconds, frozen by those words.
He knows that. Of course he knows that. The tears spill from his eyes. He’s reacting so poorly to this that Enjin has to tell him things he told him three or four years ago, when he just joined, when his anxiety was so bad that he only ever assumed people around him had his sister’s intentions.
Everything hurts. His chest feels like it's on fire.
Why can’t he just get it together?
Enjin sits beside him on the cot, and rubs his shoulder, for a few minutes. Zanka’s trying to gather his thoughts. Breathe slower. Not so hard. Enjin says you’re going to hurt yourself like that. It’s so hard, but he keeps it up long enough that it doesn’t burn so much.
“You with me?” he asks gently.
Zanka nods. The tears streaming down his face dot his uniform.
“Took you to a local clinic up here. Riyo went with Delmon and the Supporters to finish the job on the other side,” Enjin explains.
Shit. He's completely dead weight. Enjin's the best one of them, easily, and he had to sideline himself to take care of Zanka's sorry ass.
“Don't think these guys're real doctors, but…thankfully I kinda know what I'm doing,” Enjin says, a hand on the side of his head where he was injured. “We're good here though. They said you can stay here ‘til you're feelin’ okay enough for us to leave.”
Zanka's breath is caught in his throat. He hates this. He rubs at his eyes. The tears won’t stop. He’s always like this when he has a fever, and he hates it.
“Riyo said you were throwin’ up, too?”
He wants to bash his head into the wall.
How did she even know that? Did she hear him, this morning?
“Listen, Zanka. I…I thought we talked about this.”
They have. A hundred times. Zanka bites his lip.
“Are…am I -”
“I'm not kicking you out. And you're not in trouble, okay?” Enjin says, answering Zanka’s biggest fears right off the bat. “I wouldn't kick you out for something stupid like that.”
Stupid. Of course he wouldn’t. Enjin has said that a million times too. It’s not your fault if you’re sick. But you need to be responsible.
And he wasn’t.
“Tell me why you didn't say anything,” Enjin asks. “Riyo knew, and she should've told me. But it's your responsibility to know when you're not fit to fight.”
That's just it.
There never was a not fit to fight, for him.
Zanka went to class every day, all day, without fail. It didn't matter if he had the stomach flu and he couldn't keep water downt. It didn't matter if he'd misstepped the day before, and a bullet from his sister's gun had lodged into his shoulder. It never mattered. His family was always breathing down his neck to make sure of it.
He always did it. He always survived through it. And he’s always thought that was the only option, and it didn’t matter if he didn’t feel well, because he always got the job finished. It didn’t matter if he got hurt, especially something as minor as this.
He can't get it through his head, that someone cared whether or not he got hurt. It didn’t make any sense to him.
“What do you think would've happened?”
“I don't…I don't know,” Zanka murmurs through increasingly panicked breaths. The tears won’t stop, either. He doesn’t have an answer. He doesn’t know. “Stupid…irrational bullshit…”
“Zanka, did you think I was going to punish you?”
Zanka swallows.
“Is that why you didn’t say anything?”
Zanka doesn’t nod, but he doesn’t shake his head, either. He doesn’t want to admit that. Enjin always says don’t work sick. Don’t work injured. Zanka understands that. It makes perfect sense. But it’s so drilled into his head that he has to work though anything, that by the time he can admit to himself that something is wrong, he’s already on the battlefield, and already broken Enjin’s rules.
“I have these rules because I can't trust you to fess up when you don't feel good, but I guess it backfired,” Enjin sighs, “it's making you not tell me at all. Think you get too in your head about it, huh?”
Zanka doesn’t want to admit it. It’s probably true.
“It’s my fault, too. Shouldn’t have painted broad strokes when you guys are all different. The rules work for Riyo and Eishia, but shouldn’t have assumed the same for you.”
Zanka wants to apologize, but Enjin keeps talking before he can.
“If you told me you weren't feeling good before we left, the least we could've done was take you to Eishia and get you some medicine,” Enjin says. “It doesn't always mean we need'a take you out of combat. And if it did, it’s not a problem. This stuff only lasts for a few days. Once you’re feeling better, you can do whatever you want. We can make things work, but I need you to be honest with me first. Because you know I’m not punishing you for shit that isn’t your fault.”
Zanka lowers his head. He feels like he can finally breathe, at least.
“How are you feeling right now?” Enjin asks, ruffling his hair.
Zanka's first instinct is to tell him he's fine, he feels okay, but he doesn't. His head is pounding. Everything feels weird and fuzzy, like his brain isn't fully comprehending what his senses are telling him. His stomach still hurts, but he doesn’t feel like he’s going to throw up anymore, at least. He should really say all of it out loud to Enjin, but he's not there yet.
“Not…great,” he mumbles. It's the best he can do. “Think I can leave, though.”
“‘Kay, if you're sure,” Enjin says, laying the back of his hand against Zanka's forehead for good measure. “Let's get you out of here, then.”
Enjin helps him off the cot, keeps him steady enough. His head is swimming, he can’t really stand straight, but he can make the most out of his staff this way, at least. Enjin looks a little concerned about him walking with how dizzy he is, but he’s able to hold himself up after a few steps. Enjin walks close beside him, just in case.
He can’t wait to lay down in his bed.
Zanka rubs his eyes.
There’s a familiar head of hair at the edge of his bed, attached to someone sitting on the floor.
“How long y'been in here,” Zanka mumbles.
“Riyo told me to watch you,” Rudo mumbles. He’s got something in his hands. Some sort of electronic piece and a screwdriver. He’s been doing that a lot more recently, keeping himself busy.
“Wasn’t my question,” Zanka replies.
“Two hours,” he says.
Zanka groans. He’s probably earned to be watched, with what he pulled yesterday.
He stares up at his ceiling. He doesn’t feel as bad as he did before, at least, but he could still certainly go back to sleep.
“Maybe you should take your own advice,” Rudo says.
At first, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but he quickly recalls telling Rudo the same things Enjin has told him. Don’t fight sick and don’t fight injured, if you can help it. Rely on your team. Take responsibility. It is good advice, and Rudo’s done good following it, too.
“Brat,” Zanka grumbles.
“Just saying.”