Archive of Our Own

Riyo needs to tell him.

She’s sitting on the cold infirmary floor, back against the wall and knees pulled to her chest, her finger hovering over the button on her choker. She’s been in this internal argument for hours on when would be a good time to call and tell him, but she needs to do it before he gets back. She thinks it would be worse if he just happened to find out.

She clicks her choker, and waits for a response. It rings only once.

“Riyo? What's wrong?”

Riyo’s holding her hand at her mouth, biting at her nails before she catches herself. Zanka always gets onto her about doing that. She moves one hand down, and nervously fiddles with the loose strings of her shorts, but she pulls it back up to wrap her arms around her knees.

“Does something have to be wrong for me to call you?” Riyo says with a nervous laugh, leaning her head against her knees. She's trying to keep her voice down, but she doesn't know why. It's not like anything she’s doing is going to wake Enjin. They’ve been trying for hours.

“Yeah. You never call me,” Zanka says. He doesn't sound overly concerned, but definitely suspicious. Riyo wants to keep it like that. She wishes more than anything that it was just something to be suspicious about.

“You don't like being called,” she reminds him quietly. He always keeps conversations short when they’re talking over Chokers. He’s always expressed a weird feeling that he thinks they’re being listened to.

“And you respect that, so, you only call me when somethin's wrong.”

She doesn't even know how to say it. Should she explain what happened first? She doesn't even know if Zanka knew she was on a job with him. Or if anyone else has already told him, but surely he would've mentioned that already, if he knew. She should have thought this through before she just up and called him.

“Riyo? Are you okay?” he asks. He sounds concerned now. Riyo doesn’t know how long she was silent for.

“Zanka,” she starts, “Enjin got hurt really bad.”

There's silence.

Zanka knows that she wouldn't call him over something minor, that she wouldn't bother scaring him over something that she knew had an easy solution. She's avoided joking around and playing pranks on him in the past because she doesn't think his anxiety could handle it most of the time, so she knows he wouldn't even consider that she might be messing with him.

Riyo wishes she never called him in the first place. She doesn’t want to have this conversation. She doesn’t know what to do.

“How bad?” he asks.

“Um…” she murmurs. This isn't like her at all. She always knows what to say, but her voice shakes even at the idea of saying this out loud. She tries to straighten out her thoughts a little bit, but the images of his injures, the blood, and her obscured view of Enjin’s unconscious body on the infirmary cot occupy all of that space. “They can't…we can't get him to wake up.”

Zanka doesn't say anything. Riyo doesn't know what else to tell him. He has so many injuries that she couldn't possibly list all of them.

“When will you be back, Zanka?” she asks him.

“An hour,” he says quietly.

“Okay. I'll be here with him, in the infirmary,” she tells him.

“I'll come there as soon as we get in.”

The conversation ends there, and Riyo holds herself a little closer.

“Sorry I got here so late.”

Zanka's voice. She could hardly hear him past the creaking of the old infirmary door. He's careful as he closes it behind him.

Riyo’s been sitting on the chair for just a few minutes. The floor was uncomfortable, but it limited her sight of Enjin enough that it didn’t feel as real. She’s been staring at him for the past several minutes, but her eyes won’t focus. She hates that. It’s like her brain wants to protect her from what she’s looking at. She doesn’t want to believe that he’s basically in a coma.

Zanka hands are shaking as he approaches the cot. She's seen that before. Zanka thinks he's good enough at hiding those feelings, but his body betrays him more often than not. There's an empty chair on the other side for him, but he doesn't take it right away. He stands next to Riyo, staring down at Enjin's form.

“You're okay?” he asks her, his eyes darting over to hers.

“I'm fine,” she says. Honestly, she's in more pain than she wants to admit, but she doesn't need him worrying about her too right now. She doesn't think he's going to handle this well.

He sits across from Riyo on the chair that she left there for him. She's surprised he changed out of his uniform, but she’s wondering if he was looking for ways to avoid this too, for the same reasons she was. They don’t want to face this for what it really is.

Zanka doesn't say anything. He just stares at the unconscious form in front of him.

He's hurt really bad.

The head injury is what's scaring her the most. Eishia could barely get it out when she was examining him. It’s why he hasn’t regained consciousness, and it’s bad enough that they’re all concerned about his memory, even if he does wake up.

There’s injuries to his spine, too. They can’t tell exactly where, but it was obvious enough to Gris when they tried to lift Enjin onto the stretcher. Gris suspected his neck. They don’t have any capability for radiographs at the infirmary headquarters, it’s always something that they’ve had to call Alice in for with her portable unit.

Spinal injuries mean possible paralysis. So in the event that his head injury isn’t anything more than a concussion, he might not be able to move again.

Eishia is completely beside herself. She tried for hours to heal him, to wake him, but she couldn’t do it.

Riyo had to step away. She tried to comfort her, but at some point, she felt resentment building in her chest, and even though her mind knew it wasn’t fair to Eishia, her heart wouldn’t take it.

She’d healed people before, so why couldn’t she heal Enjin?

The resentment was turning into anger. Riyo had to work really hard to push it down.

Tomme took her out of the infirmary hall, and said the two of them would go get Alice. Riyo has no idea how long that will be, but she’s not getting her hopes up. Alice is hard to get ahold of, and she’s a doctor, not a miracle worker like Eishia. All she would be able to do would be diagnose the problem. Confirm if Enjin is paralyzed, if he won’t remember them, if he’s ever going to wake up.

Stop.

“When's…Eishia getting back?” he mumbles.

“It's a day drive from where Alice is,” Riyo answers quietly, overcome with a sense of dread at that reminder. Zanka already knows that Alice isn't in town, either, but she wouldn't be able to do much for him anyway.

“Eishia couldn’t…”

“No,” Riyo mumbles.

Zanka’s eyes scrunch up. Why?

She wonders if he feels that same anger. Or if it’s just her.

“I think…too personal, maybe,” Riyo mumbles. That’s the only explanation she has. Eishia has been able to heal major injuries before, even when it’s taken her a few days, but with Enjin she made almost no headway. Her anxiety got in her way. Enjin is her team leader too, but she’s known Enjin way longer than the rest of them. He’s more family to her than anyone else on the team.

She doesn’t know if Zanka knows any of that, though.

Riyo needs to take that into consideration, too. It’s not fair to blame her, but her chest still feels tight, thinking about it.

She watches his grip tighten so much around his staff, laying in his lap, that his knuckles turn white.

“You said he won’t wake up?” he asks. His voice is unsteady. He’s obviously trying really hard to keep it together.

“Yeah,” she nods. She doesn’t have anything left in her to comfort him. They’re both in the same boat. The least she can do is spare him the rest of the details, but this is bad enough. Seeing him like this is bad enough, even without that.

Zanka stands up from the chair.

“I'll…be right back.”

He rushes past her, and she doesn’t say anything, doesn’t turn her head. She's sure he's left to throw up. Something like this would absolutely send his anxiety through the roof. He's never done well with stuff like this.

Enjin’s just one of those people. Everyone has a reason to care about him. To lose their minds if something awful happened to him.

She watches his face scrunch up and twitch, the hands at his sides twitching for just a few seconds again. This has happened a few times, and each time, it leaves Riyo with her breath caught in her throat, hoping he’ll finally wake up this time, but he doesn’t. Tomme saw it too. She said that based on what she knows, it could be completely involuntary on his part, or that his brain is starting to send signals again, and a sign he’s waking up.

It’s interesting that this happened right as Zanka left, but she thinks it’s just a coincidence.

“Wake up if you want him to come back,” she mumbles hopelessly.

Riyo didn't even see it happen. She never has to look back and make sure Enjin is okay, because he's always okay. She doesn't think she's ever seen him with anything more than cuts and bruises, even. She doesn’t have any idea where he got that huge scar on his head, and he’s a pro at dodging questions about it.

She heard him get thrown, and he was unconscious when she found him, bleeding profusely from the back of his head. It was bleeding around him so much that Riyo had already assumed he was dead, but he was breathing, wheezing. He wasn’t conscious by that point anymore.

Zanka wasn't there. He was on a different job with Team Child, and Gris told Riyo from the beginning that she shouldn’t call Zanka to tell him until they had a better idea of what was going on with him, until they could get him back to headquarters and have Eishia look at him.

Gris seemed so calm, so level headed about the whole thing, but he cried the whole time. The tears didn’t stop. His face was stained with Enjin’s blood between holding pressure against that awful gash on the back of his head and wiping the tears off of his face. His gloves were so soaked with blood that he threw them off and abandoned them on the field, even though they’re not supposed to do that.

That honestly scared Riyo the most.

Semiu, too. She was practically shouting at them over the Chokers for more information on Enjin’s condition, and her usually calm and collected voice was shaking with fear. Even to the point that she was choking up. She was there the whole time that Eishia was trying to heal Enjin.

Semiu said she’d try to get in contact with anyone else who could come take a look at Enjin. Tomme and Eishia were on the way to get Alice. A few other Supporters, including Follo, did everything they could to urge Gris to rest, because his eyes were bloodshot from the whole situation.

Riyo said she would stay. She can never sleep anyway.

Zanka comes back. She’s relieved to hear the door open, and she only knows it’s him because of the way his staff hits the floor after his footsteps.

He’s slower, this time, and doesn’t say anything to Riyo, probably hoping that she’ll ignore his brief disappearance. She was honestly almost wondering if he could even come back, or leave her here alone like everything else has.

She bites her lip. No. Stop thinking like that. Everyone had a perfectly good reason to leave.

She’s the one sitting here, completely helpless. Useless. Angry, for no reason.

“You okay?” she asks Zanka after a few minutes. He’s been sitting in the chair, completely silent, staring at Enjin’s face.

Zanka looks back at her like he's been caught, his eyes wide. He lowers his gaze back to the caught.

“I…yeah,” he mumbles, “sorry.”

“Don't apologize,” she tells him.

“Your clothes are covered in blood,” Zanka mumbles, his eyes scanning over her uniform. Her jacket was tossed out in the field. She tried to take it back, but Gris didn’t let her. He was using it to hold pressure against Enjin’s wound.

“Not mine,” she says.

She watches his shoulders sink.

“Oh.”

There’s a brief silence again, where Zanka doesn’t look at Enjin.

“You should change, Riyo,” he says.

“Can’t leave,” she tells him, pulling her legs up onto the chair, her heels on the lip of the seat.

“’m here.”

“Not leaving you by yourself either.”

Zanka doesn’t argue with that, because he seems to know that he wouldn’t be able to handle being alone here. She wouldn’t do that to him.

Besides, she doesn’t care about the blood. It’s the easiest part about this whole situation, but she couldn’t ever explain that to Zanka.

Riyo wakes up, and there's light filtering in through the windows.

She doesn’t remember falling asleep. The last conversation she had with Zanka was about changing her clothes, but she doesn’t know if it really was the last and she doesn’t remember, or if she fell asleep shortly after that. She blinks several times, rubs at her eyes, panic seeping into her chest because Enjin is still on the cot, he’s still unconscious.

But at least Zanka is here.

“I didn't mean to fall asleep,” she mumbles, rubbing at her eyes. Her shoulders are already sore from how she must have been positioned. Did she fall asleep with her arms around her knees? She’s done that before. Holding herself. Zanka’s made comments about that before, that it’s some self-comforting thing. She said that’s not why she does it, but he said it’s subconscious.

“I'm glad you did. Ya’ never do,” he says back quietly.

She huffs a laugh through her nose. True enough.

He’s still sitting in the same spot, but he looks totally exhausted. Riyo doesn’t remember at all what time Zanka came back to headquarters at last night, but the clock is reading nine thirty right now.

Enjin looks the same. There’s a cooling patch on his forehead now. Riyo didn’t think he had a fever last she checked, but maybe it’s some sort of last ditch effort on Zanka’s part to wake him.

“Brought you a change of clothes,” Zanka says, nodding his head in the direction in a stack of neatly folded clothes on the opposite cot.

Is it weird that she doesn’t want to take these off?

“Anything…” she starts, her eyes drifting back to Enjin. Surely, if he had shown any signs of waking up, Zanka would have led with that.

“No. Nothin’,” Zanka murmurs. “No one can get ahold of Alice. Semiu can’t find anyone who’d come out here ‘n look at him either. And we can’t…move him.”

Riyo hates the feeling in her chest.

Enjin won't die from this, but right now, the uncertainty is killing her.

This has been an issue in the past. Either something Eishia wasn’t able to fix, or she wasn’t around, and Alice couldn’t be contacted, either. There are very few people that they can allow inside of headquarters because of security, meaning they couldn’t let almost anyone else inside, and doctors and healers from other branches are hard to get ahold of. They’re usually at least a half day drive away, anyway.

This situation is especially bad because they can’t move him. The risk of worsening his spinal injury is way too high.

“Feels like there’s nothing we can do,” he mumbles.

Every time his eyes shift over to Enjin, he looks back at Riyo, or something else in the room. He can’t look at him for more than a few seconds. Riyo wonders what he was doing the whole time she was asleep, then, but it’s a question quickly answered when she notices his eyes are red.

“Maybe we should just…take ‘im somewhere,” Zanka says quietly, “might be okay if we’re careful.”

Riyo doesn't know what the right move is.

Zanka manages to convince Riyo that if it’s their only option, it’s better than waiting hopelessly on an answer from Alice or Eishia. The only problem is, neither of them are any good at driving safely. Enjin isn’t exactly the best teacher for that sort of thing. His method would have a healthy spine broken in the right circumstance. So they’ll have to ask someone else.

Tomme comes around about an hour later, and Zanka stands, and presents his plan to her. Take Enjin to the West Branch hospital, which is about ten hours away from headquarters by car. It’s safe for Givers and Cleaners. They need a driver, which would be Tomme, or Gris.

Tomme doesn’t seem to agree that this is something they should do.

“It's not a good idea,” Tomme says. “I don’t think it’s worth risking making his injury worse, Zanka. Even if we drive as safe as humanly possible, there’s too many variables that could change things. Trash beasts, trash storms…”

Zanka’s eyes dart down to the floor. He knew that answer already, she can see that in the look on his face.

Gris appears. He has food for both of them, but no good news. He hasn’t heard anything new about the search for Alice.

Neither of them touch the food, or even look at it. They can’t. Honestly, Zanka looks terrible, and she wonders if he thinks the same thing about her.

Riyo knows it’s day time. It’s light out, but she doesn’t care to look back at the clock. It doesn’t matter what time it is.

“Both of you need to go rest,” Gris says after a minute or so of staring at Enjin. Riyo pays close attention to his eyes for any sign that someone might think Enjin won’t wake up, that he won’t be okay. She’s always concerned about adults keeping information from them. It’s what they do.

She can’t tell with Gris, though. She thinks he’s just deeply concerned about someone he loves.

“I’m fine.”

“We’re fine.”

They both speak at the same time. Gris is surprised to hear their synchrony, brows raised.

“I guess I can’t expect the most stubborn man I know to raise a reasonable team,” Gris teases.

Riyo tells Gris about what she’s noticed. His hands twitching. Noises he makes that might be pain, might be reactions to things around him, but she can’t tell. She knows it could mean improvement for him, but so far, he’s pretty much doing the exact same as when they first brought him here.

“Semiu is trying to get in contact with the boss,” Gris says. “If he knows a way to help.”

Zanka perks up a little bit at that, but to Riyo, it’s all the same. What would Corvus do differently? He’s not a healer. He’s not a doctor. Would he know anyone better than Eishia or Alice, anyway?

It feels like everyone just wants to feel like they’re doing something to help, instead of making a difference for Enjin.

Riyo bites the inside of her lip. She has to stop thinking like that.

“Riyo?” Zanka mumbles a few hours later.

He doesn’t look good. Riyo was thinking the same last night after he got sick, but she just chalked it up to it being a result of that, and maybe he’d feel better with some time. It never really went away, though.

“Mhm?” she says.

“C'n you tell me if I've got a fever?” he asks, the back of his own hand against his forehead, apparently not getting a good enough reading. He sounds exhausted. Riyo doesn’t think he’s slept at all since he got here, which means he hasn’t slept since before his job yesterday. A fever sounds perfectly reasonable after all of that, considering it’s him.

“I can tell you that from here,” she says with a sigh. His skin has definitely paled since yesterday, but she stands and lays her palm against his forehead anyway, and his cheek, for good measure. “Feels like a fever to me.”

Zanka groans.

“This always happens when you're stressed,” Riyo reminds him, patting his head even as he tried to pull away.

“No i’doesn't,” he mumbles. He’s trying to ignore her, what she’s said. He was probably hoping she would say no, and that he could chalk up how he’s feeling to this whole situation with Enjin.

“Mhm, okay.”

She has to stop herself, bite her lip again. Enjin always gets onto him about this, and she almost caught herself saying something he’d say. Maybe it’d only make him angry, but she knows he’s only going to feel worse if he keeps this up, so she’ll see what she can do to convince him.

“You should go rest,” she tells him as she sits back down in her chair.

Zanka’s eyes soften, drifting down to Enjin again.

You’re just gonna leave too. Everyone does.

“You’d listen if Enjin told you,” she says.

She’s not sure where this feeling in her chest is coming from. She doesn’t know why she’s thinking any of this. Part of her wants him to leave, not even just because he isn’t feeling well, and she has no idea why that even is. The other part of her wants him to stay, even though she knows how selfish it is, but she has no idea which part of her is genuine. What she really feels. What her own true thoughts are.

Zanka’s the one who’s stayed the whole time. He’s one of the only people she feels like she can really trust.

“Cold,” Zanka mumbles to himself.

She doesn't want him to leave. She doesn't know why she's making him go, and why it stings when he does.

And why she's angry when she hears the door close.

Twenty-four hours, since they got back with Enjin. That’s what Gris said.

Riyo hasn’t moved. Her arms are crossed over her knees. Her whole body is sore. Her injuries sting every time she moves. She should clean them, but she can’t bring herself to do it. Her stomach hurts, she knows she's hungry and she knows she'll feel better if she eats, but she can’t bring herself to eat. Same with water.

She wishes Zanka would come back. He didn’t say much when he was here, but it was good to have him there, at least. His presence somehow made her comfortable enough to fall asleep.

Gris won’t let him come back, though. He thinks it’s bad enough that he’s gotten sick because of how stressed he is, and sitting with Enjin and worrying about him for hours on end will only make him feel worse. Riyo doesn't think it's going to be any different for him being out of the room, though. He's always been that way.

Riyo shouldn’t have told him to go. She selfishly wants him back. She’s thought about leaving to go to him, but she can’t leave Enjin.

Even though that seems to be Gris’s plan.

“Please don’t make me leave,” Riyo mumbles. She doesn’t turn around when she hears Gris walk back inside, because she knows that’s his plan. She can’t do it. She won’t leave. Everyone else is leaving. No one will stay with him. She knows they can't all be here with him, she knows they still have to function like normal, work, sleep, eat - but she won't do it.

“I wouldn’t do that to you,” Gris says, “but I need you to think about your own well-being, too.”

Riyo takes in a shaky breath. She won’t talk back to him. Enjin wouldn’t want that, and she knows that he can hear her.

“Riyo,” Gris says gently, walking behind her and placing a hand on her shoulder. It has the same warmth that Enjin’s does. It keeps it there for a few seconds, but he changes his mind, and crouches down beside the chair, looking up at her instead. “Will you eat something, at least?”

Riyo won’t take her eyes away from Enjin.

“Please look at me,” Gris tells her, not losing that gentleness in his voice. Riyo doesn’t want to. Her eyes are burning and she doesn’t want to cry. She knows she will if she looks at him. She’s just going to see Enjin’s blood staining his face, even if it’s not there anymore.

She turns her head, her eyes meeting his for just a few seconds before she screws them shut. She sees his expression for long enough to see the unbearable pain in his eyes, and she feels that too, even if she won’t quite let herself. She hates this feeling more than anything. She won’t cry.

Gris stands, then, wrapping his arms around her and even though she knows she’s putting herself at risk for opening those floodgates, she hugs him too. She decides that maybe he needs it more than she does.

“He’ll be okay,” Gris says quietly, “you know him.”

Riyo’s holding her breath.

“He wouldn’t ever leave you behind.”

Riyo realizes she fell asleep again. She doesn’t know what time it is. She’s sitting on the floor, her arms folded over Enjin’s cot. She’s surprised this has happened more than once, she’s not usually the kind of person to let sleep take over her like this. She has better self discipline than that.

Her hands feel warm, though. One is tucked under her other arm, but the other has a hand laying over it.

Enjin’s.

She stares back at him, wide eyed, like she's caught in a pair of oncoming headlights - but it's just his warm eyes. She wonders for a second if she’s just lost her mind, but several blinks make her realize this is really happening. Enjin’s awake, looking at her. He’s smiling, too.

She can tell he can't do much else. If he had the energy to speak, he surely would have by now, but this was all he could do to tell her that he's awake. And she had to be sleeping.

“Took you long enough,” she jokes, but her voice cracks half-way through, completely betraying her attempt to play it cool like she always does. He almost tries to turn his head to get a better look at her, but he winces from the pain that causes. “Careful, don’t - you hurt your spine.”

It takes him a few seconds to recover from that, before his eyes relax enough to look back at her again.

She’s trying to think about what she should do first - if she should go find Gris, or Zanka, call someone on her Choker - who should she even get first? What’s the most important order of business? She clicks on her Choker to call Gris, but something catches her attention before she speaks to him.

She feels Enjin’s hand brush against her arm again. He has almost no energy for it, Riyo can tell, but his hand lands against an injury she has from that fight, one that she didn’t bother getting looked at. She was so covered in his blood that she didn’t even notice until she washed her hands, and enough of it came off to reveal that cut.

She realizes Enjin thinks it’s something else, though, and her heart feels heavy.

“It’s just from the fight,” she says quietly, “promise.”

It looks like he feels better, hearing that, but Riyo’s chest feels tight all of a sudden, remembering times that he’s caught her tearing into her own skin. It’s been a long time. It hasn’t crossed her mind in a while, and she hadn't even realized it until now. Enjin must not remember most of that fight before he was injured.

His face won’t ever leave her mind, though, the last time he caught her. Like he thought it was somehow his own fault, or thought there was some way that he could have prevented it, even when it had nothing to do with him.

Those complicated feelings. It’s all she knows, and she hates more than anything to pass them onto other people.

“Promise I didn’t even think about it,” Riyo tells him, but she realizes she’s mumbling, and he might not even be able to hear her. He’s such an idiot, worrying about her when he’s the one who almost lost his life - he’s the one who’s has people literally worried sick about him, crying over him and wondering if he’ll ever wake up.

He lays his hand over hers. He seems to try to make some attempt to hold her hand, squeeze it, but he’s not quite there yet. He’s still prioritizing comforting her, even though he can barely move.

For some reason, that’s what does it. She doesn’t have any say in her own emotions before she feels her eyes burn, and tears trail down her cheeks.

“Don’t do that to me,” she mumbles as she starts to sob, shoving her face into the cot mattress and refusing any more eye contact with him. “You can’t just…can’t just take me here, and then leave.”

She never thought she would care this much about a person again, and she's so angry with herself for it.

Gris appears only moments later. Riyo tries with everything she can to hide her face, to make sure he doesn’t know that she’s crying, but he’s not as gullible as Zanka is. He knows, but he doesn’t bring attention to it. He just rubs her shoulder, comforting and caring like he always is.

Semiu and Gris both work together to examine Enjin as best as they can, between checking his vitals and his pupillary response. It doesn’t seem like anything bad, as far as they say out loud, anyway. Enjin absolutely can’t move his neck, and it seems like any back movement below his neck causes a huge amount of pain, too. She watches the color drain from his face every time he tries, his breath hitching, biting his lip so hard she’s sure he’s tasting blood.

“I can’t get a look at your head injury, then,” Semiu says. “We’ll see what Eishia and Alice can do once they get here. Should be just a few hours.”

“Hoping Eishia will be able to heal you now that you're awake,” Gris says.

Riyo is wondering the same thing. Maybe knowing he's okay, awake and not in any danger of never waking up again, knowing she can't hurt him any further will make it easier for her to use her power.

Enjin obviously hates this more than anything. Staying still is absolutely not a specialty of his, but she can’t imagine how it feels to not be able to move, or at least, not without intense pain to go with it.

“Do we have a neck brace somewhere? To at least make sure it doesn’t get any worse?” Gris asks, his eyes trailing around the infirmary room. None of them are super familiar with what they have. The supply closet is kind of a hodge podge of things that they’ve been able to find over the years, and most of them are scared to go in there.

“I’ll go take a look…” Semiu says with a small groan. She’ll be lucky if she gets out of there without getting crushed.

Riyo’s eyes move back over to Enjin, who is watching Semiu leave. His eyes dart between Gris and Riyo once or twice before they scan the room, like he’s looking for something. Riyo tilts her head, wondering what that could be. Maybe Umbreaker? It was leaning against the wall last she checked, but Enjin obviously can’t move enough to look.

“Are you-”

“Wh’s Z’nka?” he somehow manages to say. It’s so slurred together, but she recognizes it right away.

Of course. Duh.

“He’s been asleep for the past…twelve hours, probably,” Gris tells him. That’s news to Riyo. It doesn’t totally surprise her, though. He can sleep forever, any place, any time, but he hates when people let him. That explains why he hasn’t come by, then.

“You scared him so bad that you made him sick,” Riyo teases, “so don’t do it again.”

“Don’t stress him out, he just woke up,” Gris scolds.

“He stressed us out for twenty four hours,” Riyo reminds him. Enjin looks horrified to hear all of this. He hates making people worry, but especially Zanka, who seems to be extra sensitive over stuff like this, especially involving Enjin. And then, Enjin’s the type to sleep all night and wake up thinking it was just an hour, so being in a near coma was probably a surreal experience for him.

"It's been...more like thirty, honestly."

It’s not very long until Riyo hears the infirmary door open again. Gris said he’s not letting anyone else in, so Riyo had assumed Semiu found a neck brace, but Riyo can already tell who it is by the cadence of his footsteps, before she hears the staff against the floor. It seems like Enjin can tell too, because he’s smiling, his eyes following his figure until he’s right by the cot.

Zanka’s eyes trail over to Riyo first. He’s holding something for her, looks like a fruit of some kind, but his eyes dart over to Enjin as soon as he notices that his eyes are open.

“Y’broken?” he croaks, half-chuckling at himself. Zanka is certainly frozen in place, mouth half-open. It definitely seems like no one had told him that Enjin’s awake yet. Riyo was just thinking he looked like he felt better, but all of the color is gone from his face for a few seconds before he manages to say something.

“You…no, I just, you -” Zanka mumbles, his eyes already flooded full of tears that he furiously wipes away with his sleeve. He lost that fight a lot quicker than she did. “Since when…”

“Gris said you were sleeping,

“Why would you guys even…let me sleep for that long,” Zanka mumbles under his breath, scanning over Enjin. “Are you…you’re…”

Since Zanka can’t seem to get the words out to ask any solid questions, Riyo explains what they know. Enjin’s pupillary response seems normal, aside from the fact that it seems painful, which Semiu thinks is probably more due to his head injury reacting to light than any neurological problems. He hasn’t lost feeling anywhere, he just can’t really move his neck, back, or anything involving his spine because of the pain. Gris added something to his IV about twenty minutes ago that should be working soon, and will probably make Enjin super tired.

And it does. He falls asleep not long after Zanka gets there, almost like he was holding out for him to show up, and now that he knows he’s here, he can submit to sleep, in a less scary way. Zanka still looks like he’s going to pass out, watching Enjin fall asleep again, but Riyo tries to assure him it’s nothing to worry about anymore.

He’s okay. He’ll be fine.

“Sorry I left you, Riyo,” Zanka says after a while. He’s sitting on the chair, a little closer to Enjin, this time. He handed Riyo two apples. He knows that she likes those. They’re stupid hard to find, and expensive, too. She wonders if this is supposed to be an apology gift of some kind. There he goes, feeling guilty about things that aren’t his fault.

“I'm the one who told you to leave,” Riyo says after taking a bite from one. The first thing she’s eaten since she got back. She feels like she finally can.

Zanka sighs. “Ya’ didn't mean it, though.”

“Did too. You're sick,” Riyo reminds him.

She really did want him to rest. She doesn’t know why she was feeling that selfish pull to want him to stay, and she hates that he even managed to pick up on that. Embarrassing thoughts she doesn’t want to think about. Creating tension where it shouldn’t exist.

Zanka seems to decide it's not worth the argument, because Riyo isn't up for discussing feelings like that. It makes her chest hurt just thinking about it, and she'd never let Zanka know that.

“You handled it way better than I did,” Zanka sighs.

Riyo has to resist the urge to laugh.