Work Text:
It's bitter every time.
Vitriol. Frustration. Disgust. Other such terrible feelings that make you want to punch a brick wall until the skin of your knuckles gives way to bone, then leaves you with some morbid compulsion to stand and stare at what you had done to yourself. It's sickening, is what it is. And a bit mind-numbing.
They don't know each other well enough for Jigen to feel this way. They don't know each other well enough for Jigen to keep doing... this. This nonsense, nearly every heist, simply because he-- Lupin-- had gotten bored and wanted to try something exciting. Or dangerous. Or downright stupid.
And yet, every single time, despite the unabashed selfishness of Lupin's actions, something somber always tugs and twists around in the pit of his chest. Makes his throat dry. Makes his heart beat a little too quick to be comfortable. Makes him wonder if this time, in spite of all the others that came before, will finally be the last. Lupin isn't going to get back up, and he'll have to go back to the violent, boring, lonely way things used to be a year ago. Jigen grieves.
But it never lasts, because what comes after is too much of a goddamned chore to let the bitter melancholy meaningfully settle.
How many mortician's tables is he going to have to stand over? How many times is he going to have to identify his friend's body? To have to lie through his teeth? To sneak around and dig him out of the ground in the dead of night a few days later when the coast is clear? One to two times a month, apparently.
That grin he sees every time he pries the lid off of Lupin's casket haunts his wandering thoughts, and the way Lupin laughs to himself as Jigen gives him a hand out of his own grave always makes his chest twist in a different, far more unsettling way that he can't quite pin a word to. He could never begin to know what the dead man finds so funny about all of this.
Jigen does not know why Lupin does not die. He does not know what he is, or how he's come to be this immortal, incomprehensible being, a mockery of the human form, doomed to be dragged back to the land of the living over and over and over again. He never asked, nor does he plan to. Mostly because all previous attempts led to frustratingly vague non-answers.
But he can certainly speculate.
He must be some kind of wraith, maybe. Or a ghoul. Or some kind of thrall. Not a vampire, because those require blood in at least some capacity; Lupin doesn't have a drop of the stuff in his body, not his own or anyone else's. Jigen had seen the ichor that fuels him before, black and viscous like lamp oil, ooze from his eyes and ears and pool within his mouth, in far too visceral detail. He'd been thrown off of a rooftop that time. Walked it off a day later. Jigen had never heard of ghouls that run on ichor, much less survive the rituals of priests that are meant to keep dead men dead and in the ground.
Fire, it seemed, was a weakness of sorts, as Lupin insisted that Jigen do everything within his power to make sure that he is never cremated. But Jigen could never get Lupin to answer whether fire would kill him for good, or if being turned to ash would just make the reanimation process take all the longer. That would spoil all of the fun, Lupin had told him. Same as every other question Jigen had dared to ask that might stray too close to what he truly was. The whole situation was a real headache.
The trickiest part is that there is a corpse. Lupin really does die. To knives and arrows and poison and bullets and drowning and a broken neck and blunt force trauma. And lightning, that one time, as absurd as that whole situation was. Mad scientists were something else.
Sometimes, if the city he dies in is advanced enough, like London or Paris, they will even prepare the body before burial. It just never seems to stick, is the issue. None of the damage and none of the post-mortem treatments seem to, either.
And when he is alive, he doesn't quite seem to be all there. His too-perfect movements, the thinness of his skin, the way his eyes stare right through to the truth of you. How there isn't a speck of light-- the shine of life, in either of them, like he's already been dead and gone for a long, long time.
And yet he breathes, and eats, and sleeps, and partakes in all of those other fun human bodily functions that the living get to indulge in on a regular basis. He enjoys basking in the sun and narcissisticly preening over his reflection in mirrors and entering places he has most certainly not been invited into. His smile even reaches his eyes, though the lack of a mischievous sparkle within them always makes Jigen more unsettled than amused, his discomfort so obvious that Lupin has taken to closing them when he does so. Professional courtesy, Jigen supposed, even though he was the one being rude.
Beyond all that, there isn't much more to assume. Whatever is wrong with him is probably demonic-- a pact his family had made three generations ago to keep them bound to this mortal coil. Hell, maybe there never even was three of them-- just the same man deciding it was time for that version of himself to die so that the tally at the end of his name can tick up one more notch. Jigen had ruled out everything else a good while ago, and unless any new truths come to light, for now, that is what he will keep telling himself is the most likely case.
But whatever Lupin is, he makes for a damn good partner, and by working together, Jigen can keep a roof over his head and food in his belly, along with some other self-indulgent creature comforts to boot. Like good booze and cigars, and constant upkeep on his rifle. That's good enough for him.
All Jigen wishes is that Lupin would be a bit more careful with himself. Having to wait for him to quit being dead so often is starting to get less bitter and more tedious. That, above all else, was what made Jigen well and truly concerned about his and Lupin's current circumstance.
If the time ever did come, as unlikely as that felt with each passing day (and death), it would be a shame if he couldn't bring himself to mourn his one and only friend.