Chapter Text
Enjin woke up in a med-bay bed, achy and exhausted, vision blurred, every muscle in his body (even the ones in his crusty eyelids) fatigued beyond anything he had ever experienced before.
Well… guess I DID push it a little harder than usual, this time.
Memories of the fight with Mymo shot through his mind like strobing flashbulbs: Mymo’s nasty leer, obscured by the gigantic hood of Rudo’s transformed wolf pajamas. Thick blood from the crack on his skull running into his eyes. The too-loud ticking of the watch on his wrist, cuffed to him like a chain, reminding him of each unrecallable second.
What…
What happened…
It was only a moment or two before he became aware of Riyo, talking quietly at his bedside. He was pretty sure she was talking to Eishia, and maybe Gris or Corvus too, going by the height of the silhouette and the depth of the voice of the one-word responses, but he couldn’t get his eyelids un-taped or his ears to un-cotton themselves in order to ascertain for sure. The only thing he could hear clearly was the uncharacteristically animated urgency in Riyo’s voice as she turned towards him, eyebrows knit together:
“…Oh my god, he’s waking up!” she exclaimed fiercely, choking on half the words. “Eishia, look, he’s, I think he’s blinking—”
“Enjin?!” gasped the little blonde. “Can you hear me?”
Kind of. He kind of could. Eishia was pressing her fingers against his forehead, and he could kind of feel that, too, kind of see her pale blue eyes squinting at him, searching for something he wasn’t sure he could offer. Too dazed to focus. It felt like he was sliding back underwater again, like he was about to conk out harder than he had that time right after an eighteen-hour drive with Gris at his side and a cooler full of energy drinks they had both had too much of…
“Enjin, don’t fall back asleep yet, ‘kay? Stay with me…”
He tried to. Could hear in Riyo’s voice and the talon-sharp grip of her hand around his how much it mattered to her. But it was hard. Everything was all blurry, a big haze of nothing in front of his open eyes. They were asking him how he felt, and he couldn’t answer. Couldn’t speak at all.
Vocal chords won’t work, he tried to explain in a series of mouthed-whispers and increasingly-less-effective grunts. It was weird. Like he had to re-learn the shape of the words. Can’t speak right.
“…That’s to be expected,” said Corvus from somewhere near Enjin’s shoulder, with calm warmth in his familiar, clear, rumbling baritone, a warmth that transferred immediately to Enjin’s core. “He’s a tough cookie, but it’d certainly be surprising if he just jumped out of bed after an almost-three-months-long coma.”
Say what.
In spite of his blistering desire to stay above the surface of sleep, he drifted in and out of consciousness a few times over the next hour or so. Every time he came back to awareness, Eishia reassured him that it was normal, and that he’d be able to stay awake soon, if all went well. He tried to nod back, offer some reassurance in return that he was listening, and wanted her to keep speaking even if he kept falling asleep in the middle of her explanations. But his muscles were all atrophied, so apparently he shouldn’t expect to be able to get out of bed, or even sit up, or even write to communicate, or even nod his head. Not for some indeterminate length of time, anyway.
On the surface, he must have seemed accepting of that, since he couldn’t really do much to convey any sort of disagreement.
But inside, he was fighting tooth and nail to react. He was dying to know about the end of the battle with Mymo, obviously.
Riyo could undoubtedly tell that much just from having known him so long, since she launched right into an explanation the first time he managed to stay awake for five minutes straight:
“Mymo is dead,” she informed him with cold satisfaction glowing in her eyes. “Mostly thanks to you and Rudo. Gountess is alive and well, again thanks to the two of you. Recovering, of course. He uses a wheelchair to get around, but he can push himself now, for the most part. Too Lily is here too, if you can believe it. We’re all hella shook. She’s cool, though. She’s the one who looked after him at first. I guess they were childhood friends. Crazy…”
And…?
“And Rudo is fine, thanks to Eishia,” she continued, hurrying on, shifting her weight from one side to the other side in a way that for anyone else, would have belied nothing but restlessness, but for her, it spoke of inexpressable anxiety under the paper-thin veneer of calm. “He bounced back quickly, within about a week. He went out cleaning with Follo today. I’m sure he’ll want to see you as soon as he gets back. Everyone will, probably, but Corvus said to try to keep it on the down-low, for the time being. Almost nobody except us knows you’re still alive. Corvus said it was safer that way. So far so good. Believe it or not, Rudo can keep a secret when he wants to.”
…AND?
“…and Zanka is—w-was—”
Her voice went wobbly and strained, her eyes those of a child on a razor-thin balance beam of their own turbulent emotions.
A painful stretch of silence ensued. Riyo’s face paled as she fixed her gaze on the spot where the wall and the floor met, like she could no longer raise it to meet his. The longer she stayed silent, the more she began to blink, and the more urgent Enjin’s need to know became.
Tell me.
Even if it’s bad news.
Goddamnit, Riyo.
Just tell me already.
He wanted to shout at her to spit it out already, but even with the desire burning in him, he couldn’t really say anything. Even grunting hurt his throat.
“…Zanka was taken into police custody by the Hell Guard at the end of the fight,” Eishia spoke up gently, pressing an unexpectedly heavy hand against his shoulder. “They have refused all requests regarding information or visits. We don’t know where he is, or if he’s… if he’s even…”
Shit.
She left it unfinished, but it was not hard to fill in the blank:
If he’s even still alive.