Gachiakuta Whump Week is a 7-day whump prompt week where participants can write fantiction or create fanart based on each day's prompts, with optional settings for inspiration. (Creations are encouraged to be made ahead of time, but if you want a challenge, feel free to create each work the day of!)
On this post, you will find written versions of the above graphic for accessibility, explanations of each prompt with ideas for what you can do, and an FAQ (frequently asked questions) to clear up any confusion and make rules.
From July 12th-18th are the prompts (First page/graphic)
Sunday, July 12th: Overheating/Freezing
Monday, July 13th: Illness
Tuesday, July 14th: Kidnapping
Wednesday, July 15th: Collapse
Thursday, July 16th: Hidden Condition
Friday, July 17th: Pollution
Saturday, July 18th: Major Injury
And our setting ideas (Second page/graphic)
Cleaner Headquarters
Old factory
Suspicious town
Trafficker hideout
Raider Base
Abandoned cabin
Alice's clinic
Cleaner HQ infirmary
The Jeep
Unfamiliar hospital
Tamsy's cellar
Stranger's home
Isolated cave
Cargo train
Below are explanations of each prompts, with ideas for where to take it.
Sunday, Juy 12th: Overheating/Freezing
Focus on a character who, as a result of the environment, is suffering from the effects of overheating or freezing. The character could be wearing one too many layers in hot weather while fighting, they could fall into cold water with no means of warming up, they could be stuck in a hot room with no way out.
Monday 13th: Illness
Focus on an illness a character is suffering from. The character could be sick with the flu, the character could be suffering from a Ground-created illness. Is there medicine available? Are they somewhere where their symptoms can be easily treated?
Tuesday 14th: Kidnapping
Focus on a character who has been kidnapped. Is the character still stuck with their captor, or are they back home, suffering from the effects of their ordeal? Did their kidnapper injure them, or hurt them mentally?
Wednesday 15th: Collapse
Focus on a character who collapses or faints. How long are they unconscious for - just a few seconds, or days? Has it happened before? This could be a result of a hiding injury, a high fever, exhaustion from long work days, or maybe a condition the character has, whether their friends/teammates know about it or not.
Thursday 16th: Hidden Condition
Focus on a character who is suffering as a result of a hidden condition. This could be something as simple as an hiding an injury like a broken bone, or illness like a fever. The character could also have something like a food allergy or seizure disorder, that the rest of the team doesn't know about until it's a serious problem.
Friday 17th: Pollution
Focus on a character who is suffering from the effects of their polluted environment. This could be the classic option of the poisonous air of a No Man's Land, but could branch out to drinking polluted water, or a certain character's use of the Ground's pollutants as poisons. Can your character be easily treated, or are they stuck waiting for help as they suffer?
Saturday 18th: Major injury
Focus on a character who suffers a major, possibly life threatening injury. This could be a serious head injury that is almost completely impeding on their ability to fight, a gaping wound that won't stop bleeding, or possibly even a severed limb. Will your character get help before it's too late?
FAQ / Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What kind of content is allowed?
A: This is a fanfiction and fanart based event. There are no content restrictions, as long as your works are appropriately tagged.
Q: Do I have to tag my content?
A: Yes. Major topics and possible trigger warnings must be appropriately tagged at the very least. Make sure you tag your posts with #GACHIWHUMPWEEK2026 on Tumblr, and add fanfictions to the collection on ao3 (Gachiakuta Whump Week 2026).
Q: Do I need to participate in all 7 prompts?
A: No! You can participate in as many as you like, even if it's just one.
Q: Do I need to use the setting prompts?
A: No! The setting prompts exist for inspiration. You can use multiple in the same work, you can use the same one for each work, or you can use none of them. It’s up to you!
Q: Does it have to be Gachiakuta?
A: This is a Gachiakuta event, so only Gachiakuta related creations will be shared onto the page and allowed into the collection, but you are more than welcome to use these prompts for inspiration for other fandoms.
PS. Since this is a Gachiakuta focused event, we ask that your creations focus on canon characters, and not original characters or Y/N. Original characters are allowed to be included if they are not the focus of the work.
If you have any additional questions, please send us an ask! This event is run by @sickficideas.
ao3! 6.1k - written for @gachiwhumpweek day 7: major injury! Please refer to the tags in the ao3 link for any warnings!
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.
i wrote a fic day 6: pollution for @gachiwhumpweek !!
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
the summary ^^
He slid the mask on his face, it was almost a perfect fit, how convenient. It was loose in some areas, but it’ll work, a mask is a mask. He won't complain about that especially if luck is on his side.
He stares down at the cleaner with his stolen newfound mask, he was breathing. He could hear how the cleaner’s lungs were struggling with every breath. If he continued like this, he would no doubt die. Or he would die from bleeding out, flip a coin.
Looking around, it didn’t seem like there were any cleaners in sight either. He looked back down at the cleaner, what was he doing out here like this anyway? It makes zero sense. Usually they come in three or more, and they would never leave their own behind.
What an odd situation.
or raider zanka saving cleaner jabber but also hurting him at the same time
the dread on my tongue, the blood in my lungs, ch 1/2 - zanka sickfic/whump
ao3! 4.2k - written for @gachiwhumpweek day 6: pollution! Please refer to the tags in the ao3 link for any warnings!
“Good work. We're lucky we finished that up before it started getting dark,” Enjin says, pulling off his mask with a sigh of relief.
As they enter the parking garage at the very edge of the No Man's Land, the rest of the team follows suit.
Rudo is exhausted. That was at least a full hour of fighting Trash Beasts, and with such a large group of Givers to go against them, it was an exceptionally long time. They were large, lizard-like creatures in a No Man's Land that most of them were unfamiliar with, since it's usually out of their jurisdiction.
The air was awfully potent, thick and humid. Delmon made sure that everyone double-checked their equipment and oxygen supply. Follo and Riyo both realized their tanks were only at half capacity before they went out onto the field, so Enjin came up with a plan, and sent them off the field about halfway through to make sure no one depleted their oxygen supply. They both greet the rest of the team as they approach their company vehicles.
“You got all of them?” Follo asks, impressed, based on his expression.
“Duh,” Enjin says.
“It was at least fifty six,” Tomme reports, still with her notebook open.
“Fifty six?! You’re kidding!” Enjin says, genuinely sounding surprised. Rudo realized that it was a large hoard of them, ones that were pretty difficult to take out because of their size and slippery movements, but fifty six is a lot. “Great work, team. I think an hour’s great time.”
“Jealous I didn’t get the full action,” Riyo says, giving Enjin a high-five.
“An hour, already? We have the potential to get work done much faster than that,” Tamsy says with a pout.
“And Zanka! Damn, you took out damn near half of them!” Enjin says, apparently not having heard what Tamsy said.
Rudo's eyes follow Enjin's gaze to land on Zanka, who is walking toward the first car, the one that they came in. His full-face mask and oxygen attachment is still on. Weird, because they're safe in here, and none of them like having those on for longer than necessary. Rudo knows he definitely doesn’t, even though it looks kinda cool.
The weirdest part is that Zanka doesn't react at all to what Enjin says. Zanka would never ignore Enjin on purpose for any reason.
“Why's your mask still on, Zanka?” Enjin says with a half-way laugh, but Zanka doesn't reply.
He's standing against the car now, leaning against it with one hand keeping him steady, the same hand that's holding his staff, like he’s off balance and didn’t expect to need extra support. It starts to slip from his grip, and it clatters onto the floor beside him. It gets a few eyes on him, but with nearly fifteen of them in the garage between Givers and Supporters, most of them are focused on removing and packing up their gear before heading back on the road. It’s a two hour drive back.
“Zanka?” Enjin starts. He walks a little closer, and Rudo joins in. His eyes scan Zanka for any injuries, but he doesn’t see anything. And he was with him most of the time, he would have seen if he was injured.
Rudo watches Enjin lay a hand on Zanka's shoulder. He says something to him as Zanka’s hands move to remove his full face, but Rudo doesn’t hear it. Enjin holds the mask for him. He hears Zanka start to cough, holding a shaking hand to his mouth. It’s not all that bad, at first, but Zanka sounds like he's almost choking when he takes the oxygen mask off, and Enjin's posture totally changes suddenly at the sight of something in his hand that Rudo can’t see.
Zanka's knees collapse underneath him, hard, and he falls forward into Enjin’s arms, both his mask and the oxygen line falling to the floor with him.
Rudo's blood runs cold. Obviously, something is very wrong Zanka, but he's even more concerned about the fact that everyone is reacting the same way, when just seconds ago, everyone was minding their own business. It’s urgency. Practice. Gris and Tomme are both there within seconds as Enjin lays Zanka down on his back beside the vehicle. Follo takes Zanka’s mask and oxygen line off of the floor, and Tomme disconnects the rest of the equipment from his bag to hand to Follo.
Zanka isn’t coughing anymore, but it doesn’t sound like he’s breathing the way that he’s supposed to.
“C'mon, Zanka. Breathe,” Enjin mumbles urgently. “You hearin’ me?”
Zanka is taking shallow, shuddering breaths, like it hurts to get any more than that in his lungs. His eyes aren't focusing. He's not fully conscious, he realizes, and he sees the change happen right in front of him, because his eyes were wide open just seconds before. Rudo wants to help, he wants to do something, but he doesn't know what's happening to him and he doesn't want to get in anybody's way. He grits his teeth.
“He's breathing. It's shallow,” Gris says. Tamsy and Delmon have wandered a little closer, but far enough to not get in anyone’s way. Riyo is standing behind Enjin, a hand on his shoulder, watching Zanka carefully and holding his staff for him.
“No passing out, Zanka,” Tomme tells him, flashing a pen light in his eyes. She’s sitting at his head.
“Zanka, squeeze my hand if you can hear me,” Enjin tells him, taking his hand and waiting for a response. It takes several seconds, but Zanka's hand makes an effort to squeeze. It's weak, very weak, but the intent is there. Rudo is shocked, honestly. He doesn’t seem conscious at all. “Good. That's good, Zanka, now we need you to take some good breaths.”
Enjin takes the lead for him, taking in some deep breaths, but Zanka can't follow. Every earnest attempt he makes at a breath ends in him nearly choking from the coughs it causes.
“I know it hurts, I'm sorry,” Enjin says. His voice sounds confident, but it wavers.
“Enjin, should I call Alice? Eishia?” Riyo says quietly beside him. Rudo doesn’t hear what Enjin says back, but his attention doesn’t leave Zanka’s face for a second.
Rudo is really trying not to panic.
“What’s - what’s going on?” he mumbles. His hands are shaking. This doesn’t make any sense. Zanka was just fighting out there with them, walking back with them. Rudo didn’t have the slightest clue that something was wrong with him. Was he just not paying enough attention?
“Is his equipment broken?” Tamsy asks with a hum. “That air was extremely toxic. He'll need immediate medical attention.”
“He checked it before we went out!” Delmon confirms. Rudo remembers that. Zanka said he checked his.
“The tank is completely empty,” Follo says, just a few feet away, on his knees and inspecting all of Zanka’s oxygen equipment. Enjin’s eyes dart over, looking confused and a little freaked out to be hearing that. “I'll leak test it.”
Rudo watches him do it. Close off the valve and flush the line, bring up the pressure, and apparently, it doesn’t hold. Follo does it again and watches the line in front of him, and sure enough, he finds the issue.
“There's a tear in the tube,” Follo tells them, “the whole line is contaminated.”
He's already working on replacing Zanka's oxygen supply with his own, disconnecting his bag and mask and handing it to Gris, who starts working on situating it over Zanka’s face. He groans quietly, very clearly not understanding his situation. He sounds like he’s in pain, and he can imagine he is.
“We're close to Alice's clinic. About an hour and a half. We'll head straight there, the rest of you go back to headquarters,” Enjin says urgently. Tomme sounds doubtful about doing a drive that long, but Enjin tells her Alice is the only one that can treat this properly. So he knows what’s going on.
“I'm coming with you,” Riyo insists, still behind him.
Rudo wants to go with him, but he knows he would just be in the way. He doesn’t have any idea what he would have done in his situation if it were just him and Zanka. He’s only assuming this is related to the toxic air of the No Man’s Land. Everyone else here seems to have dealt with this in one way or another before.
Rudo watches Zanka’s head lull to the side, his eyes closing and everything else go limp, including the already loose grip he had on Enjin’s hand. He waits a second, expecting Zanka to correct that and wake back up, but he doesn’t.
“Hold on,” Enjin says and Gris completely stops in his tracks, preparing to move Zanka into the back of the vehicle. Two other Supports have already laid the back seats down and gotten the stretcher out to lay Zanka on and transport him into the vehicle.. “He passed out. Is he still breathing?”
Enjin’s voice makes it sound almost like he's panicking, which Rudo didn't know was even possible for him.
“Zanka, come back. Hey,” Enjin stammers, his hand on his face, trying to wake him - but it doesn’t work. Zanka’s eyes stay closed. He doesn’t make any sounds at all. He isn’t breathing. There’s a wheeze, but that’s it. Rudo doesn’t think it sounds like he’s getting any air.
He isn’t breathing.
“Do we have equipment to intubate?” Gris asks urgently. “We shouldn't waste any time.”
“Dammit…dammit, you're right,” Enjin mumbles. Clearly, Zanka's condition is not good enough for him to not worry. “I'll do it.”
Rudo isn't really familiar with what they’re talking about. The Supporters that brought out the stretcher now have a box with supplies he’s never seen before. He has no clue what they're doing, or what they’re getting ready to do. It’s terrifying. Unfamiliar equipment, words and things Rudo knows nothing about, and something he doesn’t have any gauge on the seriousness of. He just knows not breathing isn’t good. And that’s terrifying.
Rudo shivers at the sudden touch of a hand on his shoulder. He didn't mean to react like that. He didn't have any idea Tamsy was behind him.
“It’s pollution sickness. Huge cause of death here on the Ground…”
Rudo knows Tamsy doesn’t mean to sound so scary, but it sends a shiver up his spine in an already scary and unfamiliar situation. He remembers hearing Enjin talk about that, hearing about Alice’s experiences, and of course, Gob’s body. Enjin knelt down next to his cot.
But Zanka can’t just…
“It's scary, isn't it? To watch someone nearly die.”
Rudo feels like he can't breathe. All he can see is Regto's blood soaked clothes, and when he looks down at his gloves to pull himself out of it, they're stained that same ugly red. He was already nearly back into these memories without realizing it, but Tamsy's words completely sent him back to that place.
He couldn't have known.
Tamsy's hand rubs his shoulder, and Rudo feels like he can take a breath. He has to snap out of it. There’s no way any of them would let Zanka die. No way.
“Don't be afraid, Rudo. There's excellent doctors here on the Ground. Your friend will be just fine,” Tamsy says. Rudo can hear the smile just in his voice, without needing to look at him.
He's right. Tamsy always knows what to say.
Rudo is pulled away from the scene. Tamsy and Delmon usher him away, with Follo and a few other Supporters. Rudo wants to stay, he wants to say something to them, but he can’t bring himself to. He knows they’ll take care of Zanka. He knows he’ll be okay. Enjin wouldn’t let anything bad happen to him.
“We can’t be in the way. And it’s not good for so many Givers to be in one place, anyhow,” Tamsy says as he sees his eyes unable to leave even the direction of the scene, hidden behind the cars. Rudo understands what he means. They can’t be in the way, sure, but even if they stood back, watched and waited, it would mean a longer time for Headquarters to have less Givers. It makes sense, he thinks.
Follo climbs in the back seat with Rudo. Rudo doesn't say anything, he doesn't know what he would even say, but apparently that's written all over his face. His fists are balled in his lap, and he tries to avoid looking out of his window as Delmon leads the car out of the garage, another vehicle following closely behind them. Don’t think about it. It’s fine. It’ll be fine.
Zanka had a tear in his oxygen equipment. The air out there was really, really toxic. None of them have any idea how long the tear was there for.
He wishes he could have done something.
“Tamsy,” Rudo starts. His voice is so shaky. He tries to steady it.
Tamsy turns his head curiously. His eyes stare straight into Rudo.
“Is…is that really enough to kill a person? One time?” he asks.
“Who said it was going to kill him?” Follo asks nervously. Delmon opens his mouth to interject, but Tamsy stops him, a finger in his face.
Tamsy sighs. “Well…perhaps, prolonged exposure in such an area could cause sudden death, especially in any person with compromised lungs. Common down here, as you can imagine. The air in that district wasn't just toxic, it was humid. Potent. The irritants could close an airway. There could be a fluid buildup in his lungs.. Could be dangerous for anyone, and Zanka is young…”
“Don't talk like that, Tamsy. Zanka isn't going to die,” Follo says sternly, but his voice shakes.
“What? I'm answering Rudo's question,” Tamsy says innocently. “Zanka's exposure wasn't enough to kill him. He was still breathing in his oxygen supply. It was just…tainted, because of the damage to his line. And slow, steady exposure is certainly enough to put a person in such a condition. The adrenaline from the fight was probably keeping him upright long enough for no one else to notice.”
It’s a little reassuring. It’s not the same situation as Gob, it sounds like. That was built up over time.
“But he has a bad habit of ignoring pain, too,” Follo points out. “We don’t know how long his equipment was damaged for.”
Rudo has definitely noticed that about him, and it makes the reassurance disappear.
“Enjin has it handled!” Delmon insists before Tamsy can shut him up again. “I know he does!”
Rudo bites his lip so hard that it almost bleeds.
…
“Don't second guess yourself,” Gris tells him sternly, but the concern in his tone is clear as day. He’s scared too.
Enjin's hands are shaking so much that he doesn't know if he can even hold anything still enough for something like this. He's watched Alice do this a few times before, he's even helped her do it, but he's never actually done it without the help of an actual medical professional. He’s never done it by himself. And this is Zanka.
He knows the risks. Placing it in his esophagus by accident wouldn't kill him as long as Enjin noticed, it would just mean he wouldn’t actually be getting an airway secured.. He has to be careful not to cause any injuries to his teeth, vocal chords or anything else.. A lung collapse is possible, but at this point, it's not worse than the fact that he can't breathe on his own.
Stop wasting time and do the damn thing.
Zanka being unconscious like this will make this a little easier, at least.
After smacking it against his palm to make sure the light stays on, Enjin positions the laryngoscope that Gris has handed to him into Zanka’s mouth. The light makes a big difference, and makes him a little less nervous about doing this, but it’s still terrifying.
He sees the vocal chords. That’s his landmark, essentially. Tomme hands him the endotracheal tube, and he doesn’t have a lot of time for deliberation, he just has to do it. Zanka gags, but it so weak that it doesn’t move anything out of place.
He lines up the tube with the laryngoscope, and inserts it into his trachea before shoving the rest in. It's rough, but necessary. It didn’t go in as easy as it should have, which probably means that his airway was compromised just like he had suspected, and doing this was in fact the right call. Enjin probably hit his vocal chords in the process, but those can heal.
Gris already has him reconnected to his supply as soon as Enjin takes the laryngoscope out, the one that Follo had leant to them, and he's closing the valve and squeezing the bag to force oxygen back into his lungs as Enjin cuffs the tube to keep it in place. Enjin watches his chest rise and fall again after Gris releases the bag. He does it again, and Enjin puts his ear right up against Zanka's mouth to make sure he can't hear any leaks. He does it twice.
“Is he breathing on his own?” Riyo asks. Her tone sounds uncertain, nervous. Completely out of the ordinary for her.
Gris and Enjin both wait a few seconds with Gris holding off on giving him manual breaths, and after a few agonizing seconds, they see Zanka’s chest rise and fall on his own.
They don’t waste any time. Gris and Tomme both move Zanka onto the stretcher quickly, and Enjin joins them in moving him into the car, his legs shaking as he stands. They need to get him to Alice’s quickly. Enjin can’t see his lungs, and that’s the most concerning part.
“Where’s Rudo?” Enjin asks out loud, scanning the area for him. The third and fourth cars are already packed with the rest of their Supporters, but Rudo isn’t anywhere to be found.
“With Eager. And Follo,” Tomme informs him. Enjin didn’t see Tamsy and Delmon take Rudo - he would have been fine with him joining them on the way to Alice, but maybe it’s better he didn’t. He thinks it would be way too anxiety inducing for him, which must have been why Tamsy thought to take him away from the scene.
There’s a pit in his stomach that’s getting a lot larger to ignore. His legs and hands are shaking despite and everything he’s doing to keep that hidden, Gris sees it. He feels a hand on his shoulder before he climbs in the car, beside Zanka. It’s basically a command to take a deep breath.
“He'll be fine. His exposure wasn't long,” Gris assures him, even though they have no way to confirm that. “Alice will take care of him when we get there. Take a second.”
Enjin tries to take a deep breath, but he can’t focus enough to do it properly. He doesn’t have any time to calm himself down.
“You did good. Relax and focus on where we're taking him,” Gris tells him.
“Freak out about it later,” Enjin says in agreement. Gris gives him a look like he’s trying to tell him that’s not what he’s trying to say, but he doesn’t know any other way to do it.
Zanka looks awful. His skin is almost completely white. He’s breathing now, sure, but it’s his lungs that are the real problem they need to worry about, and the intubation will only work for as long as his lungs are in good condition. Riyo is sitting with him, by his head, still giving him breaths of their oxygen supply just in case, it seems like.
Enjin remembers the blood that Zanka was coughing up right before he collapsed. He has to remember that they’re not in the clear just because this happened to work.
“Are we keeping this on the whole time?” Riyo asks. She disconnects and empties the reservoir bag while she’s talking before re-attaching it. Good idea, that way if there’s any of it left in his lungs, it’s getting emptied completely. “Follo didn’t have a lot left in here. But I can attach mine when it’s empty.”
“We’ll keep him connected to his oxygen until we get back. That way he's getting pure air, hopefully help filter out any crap left in his lungs…” Enjin says. “And Alice will take care of the rest.”
Enjin climbs into the back with Riyo and Zanka, and Gris closes the door behind them, getting into the front seat with Tomme.
Enjin makes sure Zanka is breathing. He doesn’t take his eyes off of him, not even for a second. Once he’s a little closer to him, he tries to shift Zanka so that he’s sitting up against Enjin’s leg, supporting his head with his hand. He remembers that it’s not good for him to be lying flat with his lungs in the condition that they’re in.
“Thank fuck you’re okay,” he whispers. He’s okay for now. “You scared the shit outta me, Zanka.”
“That was impressive,” Tomme tells him. Turning her body from where she is in the passenger seat. “I didn’t know you knew how to do that.”
Enjin breathes a sigh of relief. “Alice has taught me a thing or two.”
Honestly, though, he feels like he's going to throw up. He never wants to do that again. He technically doesn’t know how to do it, he’s never been formally taught how to, but he’s just seen it enough times to pick it up, just for an emergency situation like this.
“He’s still really pale,” Enjin mumbles as he watches Riyo push Zanka's hair out of his face.
“It’s better than before,” Riyo assures him, but Enjin doesn’t look so sure. “It is, really.”
“I’ll take care of this, Riyo. Sit down, you’re gonna hurt your back sitting like that,” Enjin tells her.
“I will and you won’t?” Riyo asks, a brow raised in suspicion, but he waves her off.
…
About a half hour passes before anything changes. It’s a mostly silent car ride. Gris apologizes for bumps along the way, he’s driving way faster than he usually does, on Zanka’s behalf. Enjin’s half inclined to make a comment on how out of place that is for him, but he can’t take his thoughts away from Zanka for more than a few seconds.
He almost died. He seriously stopped breathing for a few seconds. Enjin feels sick thinking about it.
There's eye movement from Zanka. Enjin isn't sure that he's actually in the process of waking up, because he's opened his eyes a handful of times now before just passing out again. It’s scared the shit out of him every single time, but he’s been able to breathe through it anyway, thanks to the tube.
This time, though, he's aware. His breaths start to pick up and Enjin realizes he's panicking. It’s completely possible Zanka doesn’t remember anything before he started coughing up blood, because he wasn't responsive when Enjin noticed something was wrong. He doesn't really have any idea at what point it started to be painful, or hard to breathe for him. He didn't show any signs. He was quiet, but he’s never been talkative.
Enjin realizes this might be trouble when Zanka's hand reaches for the end of the tube.
“Hold on, hey,” Enjin tells him, taking both of his hands with a firm grip, but making sure he's gentle when he pulls them down. “Gotta keep that in there. Breathe slow, okay?”
“He's awake?” Riyo asks, turning back from the middle seat to look.
“Yeah,” Enjin answers quietly, keeping eye contact with Zanka. The panic starts to fade, and Enjin thinks he might pass out again, but he doesn't. At least not right away. “Had to tube ya’, sorry. You weren't breathing.”
Zanka might not even comprehend what he's being told.
“We're taking you to Alice, and you'll be good as new by tomorrow. Got it?” Enjin tells him, squeezing his hand. Maybe he’s making too many promises. “Don’t freak out on me.”
“Is he okay, Enjin?” Gris asks from the front.
“He’s fine. Just waking up,” Enjin says. He’s still keeping a close eye on his respirations, the effort it takes to breathe, the oxygen supply. He switched it to Riyo’s not long ago, and the meter isn’t empty yet.
“Should you call Alice?” Riyo asks.
“Good idea,” Enjin mumbles. He doesn’t know why he didn’t think to earlier.
He rings her, and she answers quickly. She always does when Enjin’s the one calling.
He briefs her on the situation. The equipment damage, estimated time of exposure, the blood in his coughs, the way his airway was probably compromised and the intubation. He feels like he’s not in his own body, explaining all of that to her. He feels like he watched it from somewhere else. He’s got an awful headache right now.
“How far are ya’?” Alice asks him after listening to his explanation.
“An hour?” Enjin says. He's not sure exactly, but Tomme confirms his guess with a nod.
“Take him to a hospital. Starhe’s probably the closest one to ya’. I'll meet ya’ there.”
Enjin pauses for a second. He feels like heart rate spike, for sure. “Hospital-?”
“If ya’ had to fuckin’ tube him, he needs a hospital,” she says. “You said there was blood, didn’t ya’?!”
Riyo is glaring holes into him, and he realizes he didn’t tell anyone about the blood when it first happened. He doesn’t know why. Maybe that made it way too scary.
“Okay - okay, we’ll reroute. I’ll - we’ll call you when we get there.”
for @gachiwhumpweek day 7: Major injury! congratulations to the only whumpee enjoying this week dfldsahgg alt (old) ver form last last week and speedpaint under the cut
My submission for day 6 of @gachiwhumpweek : pollution!!! jabber is LOVING whumpweek i swear (SPEEDPAINT and all previous versions (made like, last week) BELOW)
the product of love we do not receive - hyo w/ sick zanka
ao3! 4.1k - written for @gachiwhumpweek day 5: hidden condition! Please refer to the tags in the ao3 link for any warnings!
Hyo supposes that maybe this is karma, for watching someone without their knowledge.
Now, she’s left with two choices.
Leave Zanka’s unconscious body in the woods and hope someone else finds him, or take her somewhere herself.
She slowly makes her way down the tree, using branches as leverage to climb down the tree pretty much exactly the way she got up. The way she always goes up, always comes down. She spends more time here than she would like to admit. Trees are so rare on the Ground. Having full sized, healthy ones all over the place like this is something she never thought she would get to experience, and it’s a good place to watch. Observe.
Usually, Zanka is the one she ends up watching.
She was up there when she first noticed Zanka enter the clearing below. She’s seen him there before, but had noticed from the beginning that it must be somewhere he goes to a lot, because the grassy ground is worn down to dirt in the middle, in the shape of a circle, and almost, at certain points, worn further to the exact movements he makes as he practices his form, drills and whatever else is drilled into them by the Academy.
It doesn’t seem like the ideal way to improve a person’s skills. Doing the same thing over, and over, and over. But maybe he has something figured out that she doesn’t. It’s why she’s been studying him.
She makes it down the ground as gracefully as she got up. Even if Zanka was conscious, he likely wouldn’t have heard her descend the tree.
Hyo was focused on Zanka’s movements, and while a little slower than normal, there wasn’t anything out of the normal that would have led her to assume that he would, at any point, suddenly collapse into the dirt the way he did.
She starts to take a few cautious steps over, curiously circling him once to see if there’s anything in particular that would give her a hint as to what happened here. It’s fairly early in the morning. The air is still cool. If those things weren’t true, she would have just assumed that he tired himself out with training during class, but that can’t be the case here, unless he’s been training all night. Not impossible. He seems to work himself incredibly hard.
She kneels down beside him, curiously tilting her head. He’s lying on his side. She touches his shoulder to see if she’ll get any response from him that way, but he doesn’t really budge at all.
Well, he’s definitely breathing, so he’s not dead. That’s good. She didn’t want to leave any proof that she was near him if he was dead, but now she doesn’t have to worry about that.
Hyo places a hand on Zanka’s face and turns it just enough so that she can see his expression, and he looks a lot worse than she realized he did from up high. His skin is warm. A little hot, even, like a fever. The furrowed brow, the bags under his eyes, it's showing lots of things very clearly. He's in pain. He's been struggling for longer than just since the start of the day. He probably hasn't slept.
The only problem is, she has no idea what to do with him now. There isn't anyone around, and she has a feeling their classmates wouldn't take any action if they found him like this. They're all followers. None of them have minds of their own. They don’t have an on-site infirmary or anything of the sort, which she’s always thought was strange, for a place like this.
Should she find out where he lives?
She stands, headed back toward the Academy yard. It’s early, too early for class, but she’s sure she’ll find someone training or hanging out who can tell her some information she needs, and she’s right on the money. There’s three, a male and two female students, talking against the wall of the training yard. They’re really not far from where Zanka is at all.
“Excuse me,” she says, approaching them without waiting.
The student she’s directly facing jumps. She’s not sure why. She’s staring back at her like she’s just seen a Trash Beast. Hyo turns around briefly, making sure there isn’t anything scary behind her.
“Can you tell me where Zanka Nijiku lives?” she asks as she turns her head back. No time to waste, really. She isn’t exactly sure what’s wrong with Zanka, but she knows that he needs to see some sort of doctor, and that he shouldn’t be left in the dirt with a fever of any kind.
Her face pales, as if Hyo has just asked her to help hide a body. She really doesn't understand these people, and she desperately wishes that she could.
“The…Nijiku…house?” she answers timidly. Hyo thought at first that she was confirming, but that seems to be an answer. Strange.
“And where is that?” she asks plainly.
“You don't know…?” the student squeaks back. How is she supposed to know where the Nijiku House is? Obviously, she doesn’t, and that’s why she’s asking.
“Relax, Chiyo. She's not from here, remember?” the male student behind her whispers. It sounds condescending, but Hyo is terrible at gauging emotions.
“Right, um…the Nijiku house is that huge complex in the center of Kamuatari. With the big stone staircase…”
Hyo visualizes what they’re talking about. Right. She can see that place very well from the trees. That makes sense. She's gotten the impression that Zanka Nijiku is important somehow, but the reason, she couldn't quite pin down. He's an heir to this area's ruling family, she's gathered now, based on everything she knows combined with this conversation.
“Thank you,” she says, turning on her heel to walk the other direction. She hears them whisper and chatter behind her, but she doesn’t care to pay attention to anything they might be saying. They only exist as boring background noise, and they have combat skills and personalities to match. None of them are both studying even remotely.
Once she makes it back to the small forested clearing where Zanka is, she tries to decide the best way to carry him. Ideally, on her back would be the easiest, but with him seemingly completely unconscious, she decides to carry him in her arms.
She doesn’t expect him to be so light.
He groans when she lifts him, and she sees his face twist up in discomfort, but his eyes stay screwed shut.
Hyo didn't notice it before, but as she’s inspecting his face for any sign of consciousness with the little noise he made, she notices that the redness on his face seems to have pretty odd placement. It starts in the middle of his face and spreads outward over his cheeks, in the shape of a butterfly. It’s almost raised, too, not looking like the typical redness she’d see from a fever. How strange.
She starts her trek up to what is, apparently, Zanka Nijiku’s house, and she ponders what it is that may have caused him to pass out.
Maybe he’s just overworked himself. It’s the most logical explanation.
The other students seem to think that Zanka is born with this innate ability of perfect combat skills, but strangely enough, he lets them believe it. He never corrects them, even though he’s the only one out of all of the students in their class that she ever sees training outside of their courses. He’s pretty much always here in the mornings, and Hyo has seen here most afternoons, too. If he isn’t here, he’s studying in the library room. She had never considered that he lived anywhere, because he spends almost all of his time at the Academy building.
He doesn’t seem to have any friends, either. No one at the Academy talks to him casually, and she’s never seen him speak with any of them outside of conversations necessary for class or training during class.
Even so, something about that theory doesn’t feel quite right either. His skin felt a little warm when she touched his face earlier, and he even feels warm through his uniform, now that she’s carrying him. She suspected a fever, and this confirms it. She’s noticing he’s taking pretty shallow breaths, which must indicate it’s painful to inhale completely right now. He’s stiff, even though he’s unconscious. It’s like a subconscious effort to protect himself, like he’s in pain.
He must be sick. He shouldn’t train at all if he’s sick. She thought that was common sense.
The stone staircase is certainly long and treacherous, but she considers it good training too, to carry someone all the way up. She manages to do it without breaking much of a sweat either, but she had no doubts about being able to do it in the first place.
The house certainly is something. Really, it’s like nothing else she’s seen before. It’s bigger than the Academy. She would almost call it a castle, even though it looks like none she’s ever seen or heard of. There’s two floors, but the bottom floor itself could probably house ten families, if they really wanted to. She’s not sure what any family would need so much space for. She wishes Zanka wasn’t so difficult to get a conversation out of when he’s awake, otherwise, she’d make a mental note to ask him later.
She starts to try and find a way in. Luckily, there seems to be ways around the back and entryways on the side that won’t make it a difficult task. She’d like to bring him somewhere and remain undetected, entering and exiting. She doesn’t want to be questioned or attract any unnecessary attention. It’s the logical way to go about a situation like this. Even if she’s not able to give them a history on his situation. They’ll be able to figure it out.
As she carefully wanders around the halls of the building, she realizes she’s probably going to have a hard time finding his bedroom. They don’t have bed frames or mattresses in this town, just fold-away futons that only stay out when they’re being slept on, so she decides that whichever room she finds first with enough open space to house a bed, she’ll find a futon to lay him on, and sneak out. She realizes she also probably shouldn’t have her shoes on. They don’t like that here. She keeps forgetting.
Too late now.
Her eyes peer down to his face while she’s carefully wandering around the complex. His eyes are half-lidded now, but he isn’t exactly trying to wake up, and doesn’t seem to notice he’s being carried, either. If nothing else, he just looks horribly exhausted, too out of it to make any movements or wake himself up.
She finds a room, after several minutes of tip-toeing around corners and peeking into entryways. And surprisingly, one with a futon still laid out, and the blanket lazily strewn across.
Interesting. It doesn’t match the look of this place at all. It’s like it doesn’t belong. If this is in fact, his room, he doesn’t strike her at all as this kind of person. If anything, it might be a testament to how he’s feeling.
Or, maybe, something else.
She gently lowers him down to the futon, and she hears a little groan from him again. She really thinks that he might be in pain, but she can’t tell where. The uniforms pretty much cover everything, so even if he was injured, she wouldn’t be able to see it.
These futons aren’t uncomfortable. They’re much better than most everything she grew up with to sleep on, but if Zanka is really in pain, then he should sleep on something more comfortable than this. She hears a little noise from him again as she tests the depth of the futon with her index finger.
“Nn…Hyo…?” Zanka mumbles. He can hardly open his eyes in the first place, and keeping them open seems to be a completely separate issue. It makes no difference to her if she recognizes him or not, so she doesn't answer. She only stares down at him, secretly wondering what on earth is going on with him.
He loses all of the energy he had pretty quickly, and his eyes fall shut, his head rolling to the side with a pained sound.
She stands, carefully not to stir him, but there’s a new problem. Footsteps.
“Where? This way?” The voice asks. Deep. Female. Hyo needs to hide.
She pushes the wood framed paper door on the other side of the entryway out of the way, opposite from where she came, and moves against the wooden wall so that her silhouette can’t be seen from the other side. The footsteps seem to pass the room. Two sets. One returns, though, and Hyo is presuming that she’s been caught - but they must have seen Zanka.
“When did he come home?” The voice says after a pause.
“I didn't see him enter, I'm sorry, ma'am…” A squeaky voice says.
“The instructor didn't tell me he was ill,” the woman huffs in frustration after a few seconds.
“I don’t…know that classes have even started yet, ma’am…?”
“They haven’t. They start at seven,” A different voice. She must have heard the footsteps incorrectly. This one is male. Deep as well.
“So, did he ever leave…?” the squeaky voice says, but it trails off, and there’s a silence once again.
The wooden frame door opens beside her.
This woman is good. Hyo didn’t hear her footsteps after that point at all, and she’s fairly certain that she wasn’t close enough to open it without moving her feet. She’s noticed Zanka has similar skills.
The woman approaches her, calmly, but with a stern rage in her eyes. Hyo isn’t afraid of her. She won’t kill her, they don’t do that here. And if this gets her arrested for some reason, it’ll be an interesting experience, at the very least. And she’ll just escape when she’s bored.
Not much different from what she’s doing here, really.
She’d like to stay a while, though. Zanka is interesting.
“What are you doing on our property?” The woman barks.
This woman. She's seen her before. Never inside of Kamuatari, but the slums, absolutely. Her striking red hair is a difficult thing to forget. She didn’t recognize her resemblance to Zanka before, but she isn’t wearing any makeup right now, and that could absolutely be why. They almost look like they could be twins.
Interesting. She didn’t know Zanka had any siblings.
“I got lost. My apologies,” Hyo says plainly.
“Lost?” she scoffs. She’s not buying it.
Hyo just stares back. Her stern expression doesn’t waver, not even for a second, but Hyo still isn’t afraid of her, and this woman seems to be counting on the fact that she can make it that way.
“You brought him here,” the woman says.
She waits for Hyo to answer, to admit it, but she doesn’t budge.
“You’re in the Academy,” the woman notices, her eyes peering down to her uniform. Hyo wonders if she’s going to threaten to have her removed. They certainly have that authority. It doesn’t matter to her, though, she’ll find work elsewhere.
She’s not sure she’ll find someone as interesting as Zanka.
“Don't tell anyone about his condition. Act as if you never saw him,” she tells her.
Hyo finds that strange. She seems to imply that this has happened before, but Hyo surely can’t pry on this, at least not now, not with this woman. She’d prefer to keep a low profile if she can, and getting involved in this family’s drama, or any drama for that matter, is not something she’s interested in.
She can’t seem to take her mind off of Zanka, though.
…
“Goka, I don’t need you here. Please go prepare for work.”
She hears him hesitate before he agrees to leave, begrudgingly so. Kyouka doesn’t turn to look at him, but she hears his footsteps trail out, following behind the maid that she sent out earlier. She’s busy checking Zanka’s pupils, making sure he doesn’t have a head injury of some kind, because he’s clearly out of it. It must be from a fever, though.
She doesn’t need anyone in the way here.
“What happened?” Kyouka says. She’s stern, but quiet. It’s obvious he isn’t well, and while she would like a full explanation for this, scaring him won’t do him any good, either.
Zanka looks like he's afraid to answer. He’s lying against his futon, still in his uniform. One of the maids had mentioned that he hadn’t folded it back up before he left that morning, which was awfully unusual for him, but Kyouka instructed her to leave it. She’d make sure he knew not to make a mistake like that again, and not to create extra work for their staff.
“Think I didn' get…enough sleep,” he mumbles. He sounds breathless. She listened to him breathe for a few moments to make sure. He’s not in a good condition at all, but she won’t call the doctor this time. She won’t hear his diagnosis again. Her brother is not weak, not frail. He can't just be broken. There’s a way to fix this. There has to be.
She rests a hand against his warm cheek, examining the redness on his face. She's seen this before. It hasn't gone away while he's been in here this morning. That odd shape, spreading over his face, the way it's raised, almost. She had hoped it was from over-exertion, and that it would fade now that he’s lying down, but it doesn’t seem to be the case. His skin is still warm, too. This fever hasn't gone away.
He had a fever last night, too. She saw it when he was there for dinner. She didn’t say anything, and he didn’t say anything to her. She just knew.
A fever the night before, just like last time. She bites her lip.
“You know better than that, Zanka,” Kyouka says, “balance your training and your sleep. This won’t do you any good at all.”
That’s it. That’s why he’s unwell. He needs to be more diligent, that’s all
He nods carefully. It seems he wants to say something, but she won't have any more excuses, and he knows that.
“Sit up,” she tells him.
She watches him nearly whimper at the thought of doing that, but she can't let him fall to a weakness like this. He uses his elbows as leverage, and just as she suspected, there’s pain there, too. His joints. They said that was one of the biggest tells of the diagnosis, but she won't believe it. He’s too young to have issues like that. She knows he trains a lot more than his classmates do, but she never had issues like this, and neither did Goka. He just needs to work harder.
He manages to push himself up so that he’s sitting, but there’s still more than enough proof something is wrong.
Even if this is some kind of illness, some sort of condition, she can’t have that. He has expectations he needs to fulfill. He can rest for now and build up his strength, but needs to train past this. It can’t happen again.
“You need to have some water,” she tells him. That is something he's always been terrible at, keeping himself hydrated, especially when he's been unwell.
Another shaky nod, but no words.
Recently, he's been much more hesitant about communicating with her. She doesn't like it. It makes her nervous that he's distancing himself from his family.
“Let’s remove your uniform, at least.”
…
“This looks like Lupus,” Alice says, her face hanging over his.
Zanka blinks back at her. He’s lying on his back on one of the cots in her clinic, and he’d like to sit up to hear her diagnosis, but he doesn’t have the energy. It hurts too much.
He's been feeling sick for about a week, now. Mind-melting fatigue. He couldn't stay awake for meetings or gather any energy to train, but even if he was awake enough to do that, everything just hurts. He tried to train, but it’s even become a chore to put his uniform on. Then there’s this awful redness on his face that everyone keeps poking fun at him for, wondering how he got sunburnt when that isn’t the case at all. He thinks he has a fever too, which would explain some of these things.
He was doing pretty good at hiding it, at first. He’d go hide and rest in his room and everyone thought he was off at some secret training location, but on their last job, the pain he’s in was obvious to Enjin. When he was struggling to open the car door, that set him off. He caught him with a fever by the end of it.
Enjin tried to make sure he was resting and taking medication the best he could in the days following. His pain seemed to be the most concerning part. He had medications he could try or tricks to help the pain, but Zanka knew none of them would work, because he’s tried everything. He's dealt with this his whole life.
The moment Zanka mentioned his chest pain before he decided he was going to bed, he was being carted off to Alice.
This has happened before. It didn’t used to be as bad, either. When he still lived in Kamuatari, it happened every now and then, but not for several days at a time. He just chalked it up to the air quality for a while, since leaving that place, and assumed that’s why he’d been feeling off, every now and then. Sick, in pain.
Alice has done all sorts of tests on him. Zanka feels awful. He wants more than anything to sleep peacefully, and he doesn’t often choose that over a training session in the middle of the day.
“Lupus?” Zanka repeats. He’s never heard that word before.
“Auto-immune disease! You've had this your whole life, I bet.”
Zanka lowers his gaze. He just shrugs. He has no idea what any of that means, but it sounds like she’s implying that all of this really is connected, like he’d thought. He decides that maybe he’ll nod. He doesn’t know what else he’d do.
His first inclination is to think she must have that wrong. Surely, if he had some sort of condition, the doctors in Kamuatari would have figured that out. Kyouka never let Zanka speak to any of the doctors, tell them directly what he was feeling, what was going on with him. She said all they told her was that he was frail. That he needed to build up his strength.
He starts to feel nauseous, thinking about the possibility that maybe she knew all along. And just wouldn't tell him.
Because that meant something was wrong with him. Something she couldn't train out of him.
“Really?” Enjin says.
Zanka turns his head. Enjin is standing close by, his arms crossed over his chest, evidently worried. Zanka hates that. He feels like he’s wasting his time.
Zanka feels his chest tighten.
Enjin must not believe him. Why would he?
“Can't imagine they let this fly in your house, huh?” Enjin says with a sigh.
Zanka's eyes turn up to meet his. There's an unfamiliar look in his eyes. Sympathy or something similar, he isn't quite sure, but he doesn't look angry. Or disappointed. He was expecting some sort of sour look at the very least, but Enjin is treating this like a minor inconvenience.
“Not…really,” Zanka murmurs. He's trying not to think about it too much. His eyes burn, wondering if Kyouka had really kept this from him. He doesn't want to believe that she would do something like that, but he knows that if it served her idealized view of him, that she would.
“Well, we’ll figure something out,” Enjin says. “I'm sure you've got some sort of plan for a treatment, Alice?”
“Antimalarials are a hard find, but the best bet,” she says, shuffling through a book on her over-crowded desk.
It’s so casual. Like it means nothing. He knows that’s not the case. Enjin very much does think it means something, otherwise he wouldn’t have driven him here a mere hour outside of midnight.
But the difference is, he’s not treating this like a problem, or something to hide.
And just for a second, the words that his sister drilled into his skull start to fade into the background.
Hello ! *Cough cough* So here is my drawing for Day 5 - Hidden condition !
TW DRAWING OF A NAKED BODY !!!
Sooooo ~ here is a Tomme drawing as an Intersex représentation !
An idea that emmerged with Amo telling Tomme she would be a good mother, but what if she can't birth a child ????
I choose to keep a féminine apperance and give her genitalia altération, some people that are intersex might have longer clitoris, that with mimic the Anatomy you might get on testostérone (for someone who is FTM for exemple).
But most of the time, bieng intersex lower the chances to be fertile. You might not have an utérus for exemple, or only one ovary ! Lowering the chance to be pregnant !
I choose to use She/Her bc she feel more confortable not to explain her conditions. But she feels She/They sometimes and struggle with gender dysphoria.
I tried my best but I am not intersex myself, so if anyone concerned wants to add their own expérience in the comments : please feel free to spread awarness ^^
if you're in hell i'll go there too - rudo w/ riyo and zanka whump
ao3! 4.2k - written for @gachiwhumpweek day 4: collapse! Please refer to the tags in the ao3 link for any warnings!
Rudo feels like he still can’t breathe properly.
Take a few breaths in for a few seconds. Was it five? Ten? Zanka is the one who taught it to him how to do breathing exercises in the first place, but he can’t remember right now, and now is definitely not the time to ask. Everything’s totally scrambled. His vision is swimming, rocking back and forth. His adrenaline is completely through the roof. He decides he’ll just breathe in for however many seconds he can, and decides it’s a good distraction from the current situation as he trudges through the cave, Zanka following behind him.
“Here’s fine,” Zanka says from behind him, and Rudo stops walking. Turns around.
It’s awfully dark inside the cave, aside from a few glowing stones that Zanka once described as near-radioactive, but his frame, and Riyo’s unconscious body in his arms, is still very clear to him. Rudo feels himself holding his breath again. It’s safe here inside the cave from the Trash Storm, but without any idea of how long they’ll be trapped here, he’s honestly terrified. Riyo is badly injured. Their Chokers aren’t working. They have no idea where Enjin and the others are.
What are they going to do?
“You got somethin’ to make a fire?” Zanka asks sternly. He takes Rudo out of his thoughts.
Rudo nods fervently. He has a little lighter that he’s sure he can turn into somewhat of a fireplace with 3R. Using his Vital Instrument for non-combat related situations is something he’s been working on with Zanka, actually. He can do something to help.
“‘Kay, that’ll be your job, then,” he says.
Rudo watches Zanka carefully lay Riyo down, like she’s fragile, like she’ll break apart with the slightest misstep. Words he’d never use to describe Riyo, but she’s totally unconscious and bleeding a lot. And Zanka hasn’t been able to get her to wake up.
He isn’t sure how it happened. The three of them were out in a valley in a near-No Man’s Land with Enjin, Gris and other Supporters, and a Trash Storm seemed to start out of nowhere. Rudo had assumed that it was just a run-of-the-mill Sphere dropping their garbage situation, but the near sideways winds made it clear that this dangerous situation was already really bad to begin with. According to Gris over the Choker, before they lost their connection, this wasn’t in the forecast at all, or in the Sphere’s usual trajectory. That sort of thing has been getting more unpredictable lately.
By the time Rudo managed to get to Zanka, Riyo was already in his arms, bleeding from her head, her chest, and Zanka was shouting at him, ushering him inside the cave, his own uniform soaked with her blood.
Rudo takes off his vest, and gestures to it as an offer to lay under her head. Zanka takes it from him and gently lifts Riyo’s head to slide it underneath. He watches Zanka click the Choker on his wrist, and even Riyo’s, and curse under his breath when there's nothing but static.
“Get to it,” Zanka huffs, and Rudo realizes he’s talking to him, “she’s gonna lose body heat fast with all this blood loss.”
“Right - yeah,” Rudo says back, shuffling around in his bag for the lighter he thought about earlier. Sometimes hard to find little things in there with the clunky gloves. He finds it.. He holds onto it for a few seconds, staring, wondering if maybe he can have some sort of input in what it ends up making in a situation like this. Something warm. Something that gives off light. And after a few seconds, the gloves do their thing.
It looks like camping gear, almost like something he’s seen Gris pull out of one of the company vehicles before. It’s about the size of one of his gloves, and it’s already warm as he’s holding it. He places it down on the cave floor, his eyes trailing around over the ceilings now that he can see everything from the warm glow the flame is emitting. The glowing, radioactive stones have changed color to a blue, now that they’ve been exposed to light.
Zanka’s opened his bag and emptied it beside him, facing the fire so that he can see everything. There’s lots of first aid materials. Rudo knows all of them are required to carry that sort of thing, but Zanka seems to have a lot more than the rest of them. He’s not sure if he has an interest in that sort of thing, or it’s just because he’s a very well prepared person. He wanders a little closer, not to get in Zanka’s way, but to see how bad Riyo’s injuries are. She still hasn’t made any movements. Not even a twitch.
“She hit her head really hard,” Zanka murmurs, “and there’s a puncture here…and here.”
Rudo watches Zanka’s hands trace along Riyo’s chest and abdomen, two spots that are completely smothered with her own blood, so much so that he can’t completely pinpoint the exact injury. That at least, hopefully, means they aren’t terribly deep.
“Is she still bleeding?” Rudo asks meekly. His eyes wander over to Riyo’s unconscious face. She’s taking in pained breaths through her mouth, and her skin has paled a lot from how it usually looks.
“Not s’much as before,” Zanka tells him.
Zanka takes off the outer top part of his uniform too, and starts to tear off one of the sleeves. Rudo notices that it’s pretty much soaked with blood, too, probably from carrying Riyo. Zanka presses the torn fabric against the seemingly larger wound on Riyo’s abdomen, and still without any movement from her.
He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Zanka like this. He’s usually really level headed, even in situations where one of them is injured, but he realizes, looking back, that he seems to rely on Riyo’s positive attitude a lot, even if he’s not doing that on purpose. Riyo always seems to be at his side when he’s struggling, physically or mentally, and to have a pillar of support like that lying in front of you, covered in blood -
Rudo takes in a breath, and tries with everything he can to push the image of Regto out of his mind.
“Riyo,” Zanka mumbles, “‘s not funny.”
He knows she isn’t joking. Riyo is genuinely unconscious, but he’s holding onto some impossible hope that she might be messing with them. Rudo is starting to wish the very same.
“Check the entrance,” Zanka tells Rudo without taking his eyes off of her, still holding pressure against her abdominal wound. “N’try your Choker.”
Rudo nods, and stands. There was a lot of rubble piling up at the very front when they first got in here, and he imagines it’s been at least half an hour now. He runs, over back the way that they came, using the radioactive stones to guide the way, leaving the fire with Riyo and Zanka.
Once Rudo gets close enough, he knows that right now, there’s no chance. There’s still garbage and rubble flying in at high speeds at least twenty feet into the entrance of the cave, and he can’t get any closer without risking an injury. He tries his Choker without any success, and inches a little closer to try again, before nearly getting run over by an air conditioner, crashing into the cave wall and causing it to start to cave in on itself.
That’s not good.
He runs back, trying to rationalize their next steps. Waiting isn’t an option.
“We might lose the entrance,” Rudo says, breathing heavy, standing a few feet behind Zanka. Zanka doesn’t turn around. He’s listening closely to Riyo’s breathing.
“I think she punctured a lung,” Zanka mumbles. He doesn’t acknowledge what Rudo has told him at all. “You c’n tell by how she's breathin'.”
Rudo listens carefully, though, and he's hearing exactly what Zanka is talking about. It's a slight wheeze, every time her chest rises to take a breath. Rudo had picked up on it before, but he didn't understand the implications of it until now. Zanka's already situating her oxygen mask back over her face.
“I'll go out. And find someone,” Rudo tells him. Everything he's seeing about Riyo's condition is telling him that they need to get help right away, and with the Chokers completely useless, the only way is to leave. They’re going to lose that entrance sooner or later, and from then, the only options would be to move the rubble or find another way out through the cave system.
Zanka finally turns his head, and stares at him for a few seconds.
“And die?” he snaps.
Rudo shrinks back.
“This ain't a normal storm,” Zanka reminds him sternly, “s'not rain, or ju’s wind, somethin’ you can push through. If you get crushed, you're dead. Somethin’ as little as a shoe can kill ya’ if it's goin’ fast enough. But if you wanna go out and die trying anyway, n'leave her behind, be my guest.”
Zanka’s voice breaks at the very end of it, and Rudo sees his eyes shine with tears for a split second before he turns his head away, and his attention back to Riyo.
Rudo doesn't answer him. He doesn't think he should.
“Sorry. ‘S just…” he mumbles. He’s so quiet all of a sudden.
“I get it,” Rudo answers back quietly. He sits down where he’s standing. “You're right. It's a stupid idea.”
Zanka rubs at his eyes, and he doesn’t say anything else to Rudo.
He must feel responsible. Enjin is their team leader, sure, but Rudo has noticed on several occasions that Zanka seems to feel responsible for the safety and wellbeing of Rudo and Riyo when Enjin isn’t in their immediate vicinity. He doesn’t know if it’s part of an obligation to Enjin as their team leader, if it’s because Zanka is the oldest of the three, Rudo’s teacher, or something else - but it weighs on him, and especially, right now.
But it shouldn’t have to be that way. Zanka is only a year older than Riyo, and only two from Rudo. They can help each other. There has to be something Rudo can do to help.
And this was a complete freak accident. He shouldn’t feel responsible for something that isn’t his fault.
Rudo doesn’t have any way to keep track of time. He doesn’t have any idea how much time passes while they’re inside the cave, waiting out the storm, and there’s no natural light coming in to help him keep track of it, either. He sneaks over to the cave entrance once or twice, and it’s covered with heavy piles of garbage and rubble, impossible to move by himself. Rudo looks around for something that he could use his gloves on to get them out of there - but there’s nothing that can be super useful, and he only has one use left for today. He has to use it wisely.
That, and, the storm hasn’t stopped. Even if he can clear the opening, they’ll be crushed to death outside.
Zanka seems to have been able to stop Riyo’s bleeding for the most part, but she’s still unconscious, breathing and wheezing through the oxygen mask. Zanka sits beside her, on his knees with his hands folded in his lap, watching her the whole time and not really moving or speaking outside of that. He only moves to take Rudo’s offer to drink some water, but only really takes a few sips. He doesn’t let Rudo see his face.
“I can switch with you,” Rudo says quietly, but Zanka doesn’t turn his head, nod, agree - nothing. He just stares forward. He’s concerned about Zanka sitting there like that this whole time, and he’s sure at the bare minimum, three hours have passed since they’ve gotten here.
“Someone needs t’watch the fire,” he mumbles back.
“I can do two things at once, y’know,” Rudo reminds him. He’s not really sure why Zanka’s acting like the fire needs to be watched - it’s not being fueled by wood, it’s gas, lighter fluid, or something else, but he thinks he just isn’t thinking that far ahead. All of his thoughts are on Riyo.
Zanka still doesn’t take Rudo’s offer. He doesn’t move at all.
Maybe he needs to meet him where he’s at, then. Zanka isn’t the type to accept help if he thinks it makes him look weak, if he thinks he’s leaving something unfinished - especially, taking into consideration, Riyo’s condition.
So, Rudo decides to change his approach, and he stands up, walks over so he’s beside Riyo, and sits down across from Zanka.
He doesn’t react to that either. He’s just staring at her face, his eyes heavy with whatever he’s feeling right now. Zanka is someone he looks to for help and advice, even if he’s a dick about it sometimes. Right now, though, Rudo’s painfully reminded that they’re not all that far apart in age, that he has a lot of the same pains and feelings as Rudo does.
Rudo’s eyes trail down from Zanka’s face to Riyo’s, but in the process of that, his eyes catch sight of the blood stain on the hem of Zanka’s pants, and the nearly invisible stains on his black undershirt. Rudo remembers seeing Riyo’s blood there earlier, but he didn’t think there was that much of it.
“‘M scared she's gonna die, Rudo.”
The vulnerability in Zanka’s voice is painful. He doesn’t sound like himself at all. His expression doesn’t change a whole lot once he says that, but his brow furrows a little bit, and his face scrunches up just a little, like he’s trying to hold back tears.
“We're not gonna let that happen,” Rudo tells him, “no way.”
Zanka starts to stand. The first time he’s really moved in hours. Rudo stays sitting, watching him take his staff and use her for leverage to stand up off of the cave floor, and he wonders what he’s going to do.
“‘m gonna go out and look,” Zanka says.
Rudo stares back at him.
“Zanka?” Rudo murmurs, deeply confused. He’s pretty sure he’s been telling Zanka each time that it might not be possible for them to get out safely, and the last time, he told him he’s pretty sure that they’re closed in completely. Was he not listening? “We’re…closed in. Remember?”
“I’ll move th’stuff,” he mumble.
What on earth is he thinking? Sure, Lovely is a crazy versatile weapon and he definitely believes in Zanka’s abilities, but he can’t possibly move all of that stuff, not without collapsing the cave system or hurting himself in the process. It’s not like him at all to be this irrational, especially after he got onto Rudo for the same thinking a few hours ago.
His concern for Zanka’s sudden derailment is heightened by a lot when he notices that Zanka can’t really stand without the help of his staff. His legs are shaking, and his face completely gives away that he’s in some kind of pain, but he doesn’t let any of that stop him, and he turns around.
And then, the stains that he thought were Riyo’s blood follow his footsteps, and drip onto the floor.
“Zanka?” Rudo starts again, standing up to follow him. His chest feels tight again. “are you - is that blood?”
He's been injured this whole time?
“‘S fine.”
It can’t be Riyo’s blood. It’s been hours by now, it would have dried, because he hasn’t been holding her, and her bleeding has stopped. The most concerning part about that is not that Zanka’s injured, but that he’s still bleeding.
“Wait, don’t you think-”
Zanka takes one misstep where he nearly lands on his ankle instead of his heel, and that’s enough to completely throw off his balance, to send him collapsing down to the cave floor with his staff clattering alongside with him. There isn’t any urgency on his part to get up, or even to break his fall before he gets there. Rudo clambers over to his side right away. Maybe he just tripped. He’s okay. He has to be okay.
“Zanka, wait, are…” he starts, shaking his shoulder carefully, but he comes to the horrifying realization that Zanka’s not conscious anymore. He passed out. Rudo doesn’t understand how he kept himself conscious this long if he was bleeding this entire time - while it’s not totally pooling on the ground beside him, it’s definitely already staining it with this blood.
Agonizing seconds pass without any response from Zanka at all. Rudo shakes his shoulder again, this time, without any regard for hurting him further.
“Zanka…” he mumbles.
Rudo’s breaths start with a quicker pace. He’s trying not to breathe so fast, he’s trying really hard to calm himself down, but he can’t do it. Zanka is the person he looked to, to get them out of this situation, and he’s not just passed out, he’s hurt. It’s bad enough that Riyo was badly hurt.
And all he can see is the blood pooling around Regto’s body.
It’s hard to breathe. The air feels thick. Rudo’s eyes dart around and lock onto the tunnel leading to the cave entrance. He has to do something, and he can’t do it here. He has to make sure all of them get out of here alive. He has the ability to make it happen, and he doesn’t care if he gets hurt in the process.
Rudo stumbles to stand back up, and does everything he can to run quickly back to the cave’s entrance.
Rudo’s mind feels totally fuzzy and his eyes can’t catch up with what they’re seeing, his vision spotty and swimming with every movement his eyes make, and as he looks back behind him, seeing the faint glow of the fire illuminating the other end of the tunnel, he realizes very quickly that they’ve made a huge mistake. They’ve been breathing in fumes from the fire this whole time in a closed space, and it only hit Zanka faster because of the blood he’s lost.
That’s why he’s been weird. That’s why he wasn’t making any sense.
He’s sure those radioactive stones have something to do with it too. They’ve changed color to a deep purple, even all the way over here.
He has to do something. That means he has even less time.
He stands at the cave entrance and shouts like a maniac, but every panicked breath he takes in makes it even more obvious what he’s been dealing with this whole time. He grabs his mask, tries to situate it the best he can over his face, but the intermittent beeps tell him there’s not much left in the little tanks they can take with them, and he’s already taken in a lot of those fumes.
What can he do? He digs through the garbage at the entrance, trying to think of anything he could use to move the stuff out of the entrance, and he sees a snow shovel.
Something he hasn’t seen on the Ground yet. He isn’t even completely sure that it snows down here, and if it does, it’s probably poisonous or polluted like everything else, but this is definitely from the Sphere. Rudo’s very familiar with snow. If he can make this into something big enough to push all of this out of the way, he could get them out.
Except, he’s a fifteen year old kid. He doesn’t have the strength to move an air conditioner, let alone all of the rubble and garbage in front of him, especially on the verge of passing out with all of the crap he’s been breathing in this whole time.
And then, just underneath it, he sees something much more useful.
An unopened firework packet.
Essentially, a bomb.
Rudo reaches out for it, his gloves ready to do their thing as soon as he lays his hands on it.
…
“Not so loud. He’s still sleeping.”
Enjin’s voice.
Rudo groans, pulling whatever’s laying on top of himself over his head. It’s too loud. Too bright, he can see it through his eyelids. He wants to go back to sleep.
“Lemme talk to him.”
“What’d I just say? He’s still sleeping,” Enjin whispers back at the other voice in a whisper-shout.
“No he ain’t. I could see his eyes.”
Rudo is hoping that that voice isn’t Zanka like he thinks it is, that he’s not about to get scolded for something he can’t bother to remember right now, but he feels someone lift the sheet away from his face, and he realizes there’s no hiding from whatever this might be. He groans again, his eyes blinking to adjust to the light, peering up at Zanka, who does not look happy at all to see him.
“The hell were you thinking?”
Zanka looks pissed.
Rudo is deeply confused. He tries to sit himself up, rub at his eyes. Zanka’s not wearing his uniform, and Rudo realizes he isn’t either.
“Huh?”
Except, it’s all coming back to him. The look on Zanka’s face has totally brought him back to it.
He used that firework as an explosion to collapse the cave entrance, and somehow, he managed to get lucky enough for there to be an opening, to get out, to get help. He doesn’t remember much after that, but he knows he did that, at the very least.
Something.
“You could’a died! Using a bomb in a cave? You could’ve gotten yourself killed, and Riyo would’ve died too, ya’ brat -”
Rudo’s face scrunches up with anger. He thinks Zanka is totally in the wrong lane here. “You could’ve died! You’re the one that was bleeding the whole time and didn’t tell me!”
Zanka rolls his eyes at him. “Ugh, it wasn’t even that bad!”
Rudo can tell underneath his anger, there’s genuine concern. Rudo very much understands that he could have died, that he could have easily gotten all of them trapped forever, but it was his only option, and a risk he was willing to take if it meant saving someone. If he did nothing, they all would have died. He’s sure of that.
“I shouldn’t’ve used something with an actual flame,” Rudo mumbles, his eyes shifting down to his gloves. He didn’t see anything wrong with it at all, even though, looking back it was a ridiculous idea. He doesn’t understand how he didn't catch it until he was a problem. “Think that was my first mistake.”
“I didn't think about it either. It’s not your fault,” Zanka says with a sigh. He crosses his arms over his chest.
“If you guys are playing the blame game, technically, all of this is my fault as your team leader,” Enjin chimes in. He’s standing at the foot of Rudo’s bed.
Zanka looks like he wants to interject right away, assure that there’s nothing Enjin could have done to get them out of that situation safely, but he seems to know that already.
“Listen. This kind of shit happens, alright? And there’s no point in trying to figure out whose fault it was, ‘cause it’s never that easy,” Enjin says, “I’m just glad you’re all okay.”
“Maybe I should’ve worn a helmet.”
Rudo didn’t realize that Riyo was in the bed next to him. She smiles over in his direction once he turns his head.
Her voice sounds awfully hoarse through her joke, and he realizes that her forehead is bandaged. She’s wearing a hospital gown, unlike the two of them, and there’s a pole holding a fluid bag and a pump next to her bed. He can’t tell if she’s connected to it, but he follows the line down to her arm. He thinks that means Eishia hasn’t been here yet.
“Riyo, y’not supposed to talk,” Zanka says, uncharacteristic concern flooding his voice, as he sits on the edge of the cot in front of her, inspecting her IV port. Rudo noticed a limp from him when he walked over. Riyo waves her free hand at him as a sort of, I’m fine, don’t nag me, but Zanka doesn’t seem to care at all.
“I don’t remember anything, but it sounds pretty badass,” Riyo tells him, ignoring the way Zanka grabs her hand as a reminder to not speak. Rudo can’t really piece together why her voice sounds like that, but he realizes his throat sort of burns himself. Was it the fumes, smoke? He imagines for Riyo, maybe a combination of that, and her supposed punctured lung.
“None of that was badass,” Zanka groans, folding his head over the hand of Riyo’s that he’s still holding onto. Riyo pets his hair with the hand that still has the IV port in, not seeming to care much about keeping it too intact, but she’s careful anyway, “you scared the shit out of me. Both of you. Jeez.”
“Welcome to my life, by the way,” Enjin says. “Way more fun when you’re conscious for all of it. Try it next time.”
Zanka’s head shoots back up to stare back at Enjin, looking offended and embarrassed at the same time. Riyo laughs, but as soon as they turn into coughs, Zanka’s attention turns back to her.rubbing her shoulder and making sure she’s okay.
Rudo lays back down on the bed, stares at the ceiling for a few moments. He’s relieved that worked out in his favor. He’s glad everyone’s okay.
Now would be a good time to smile. He’ll figure it out for next time.
ao3! 5.8k - written for @gachiwhumpweek day 3: kidnapping! Please refer to the tags in the ao3 link for warnings!
It was the water. It has to be.
Zanka can’t see straight, leaning against a wall for support and gripping Lovely Assistaff tight enough to hurt, but he can’t feel his hands. Not good. He tries to run through all of the options in his head that could get him out of this situation, safely or not - making himself throw up would be the easiest, but he’s losing consciousness quickly, and he’s never been good at that anyway.
The Supporters he was with don’t know that he’s here. They were busy helping civilians out at the impact zone where the Trash Beast he had just pulverized had nearly blow through the entire western sector of the town - but Zanka had managed to redirect it and take it down in the same swing. He’s a little impressed with himself, honestly, he didn’t think it would work - it was all his staff, really.
A grateful civilian had offered him water, and Zanka graciously accepted. He doesn’t keep water on him, unlike the Supporters, because it’s an extra weight that he can’t usually account for when he’s fighting - it throws off the littlest things, whether it’s a full water bottle or empty. Zanka had told Gris and Follo, mainly, that he would head back to the town center where their client was while they handled the rest.
“Dammit…” he breathes out. How could he have been so careless? It’s been an awfully hot day, even out in the desert, but he knows not to take things from strangers.
Why did something have to happen the one time he made an exception?
Follo had offered to come with Zanka. He wishes he hadn’t rejected the idea, but he insisted that his help would be way more useful making sure civilians were okay than chapparoning Zanka. He really wishes he were here now.
“There you are. You’re hiding?”
A chill runs up his spine, and at the very same moment, his body goes limp, sliding down the stone wall in the alley before he falls sideways, his hands lying over each other, his face in the dirt. He can’t see more than blotches of color, and all he can make out are boots in front of him, and orange and white stripes hanging down behind them. He can’t tell if it’s one or two people, but the pattern is enough to tip him off.
Traffickers.
He has to think fast. He doesn’t know if he’s going to pass out or not, but it feels like he doesn’t have a lot of time. They won’t kill him, not right away, there wouldn’t have been any point in drugging him first and waiting to pounce on him while he was alone if that were the case. They want him for something.
The best course of action is to leave his Lovely Assistaff here, as much as it pains him to leave her in the dirt. It's the best shot he has at someone even finding out he’s missing. There's pros to her just looking like an ordinary stick. Even though they know Zanka is a Giver, they're not inclined to suspect the stick he carries with him is anything more than a stick.
If Gris and Follo wonder what’s taking him so long, they’ll likely take this same route to go to the town center and find her here, but he doesn’t have any idea where they would go from there.
He feels his body shift, and suddenly he’s lying against wood, and his body is covered with a sheet. He can’t even tell if he was lifted up by a person or dragged up here, because he can’t feel anything. He can twitch his fingers, move his hands a little, but he can only tell based on the way the fabric over him moved. He can’t feel it. He can hardly see it, but the more he tries to focus on them and what the extent of his situation is, he notices something.
They don't know about the Chokers. If they did, they would have removed his. It’s still on his wrist.
Riyo is around. She's in the area. She'll find him. She’s the last person he called, and if he manages to click it again, it’ll open the line to her. He won’t be able to speak to her in this state, but she’s smart enough to catch on.
If he keeps the Choker line open, and Riyo hears what's going on, she'll be able to track him down easier. She’ll come after him. He knows she will.
No one looked for him the three days he was in that well, but at the very least, he knows Riyo and Enjin won’t leave him behind.
He hopes.
“You're Nijiku, ain't ya'?”
One of the figures speaks. Zanka realizes from the way he’s being jostled around that they’re in a wheeled wagon, something Traffickers are often known to use.
His head is swimming. He had a feeling this was intentional targeting. They were looking for him specifically, not just any victim - and this is exactly why he should have been more careful to begin with.
“Y’ain't g'na ge’nothin’ f’r me,” Zanka mumbles. He can hardly get the words out. The numb feeling is starting to turn into pain, but he’s starting to wonder if it was pain all along.
“Oh, no. Bargaining chip's all I need ya’ for.”
Zanka recognizes this peron's accent. They’re from Kamuatari. They’re not speaking the language, but it’s obvious enough that they don’t need to..
He can't hold his eyes open anymore. He feels horribly nauseous out of nowhere, and it’s entirely possible there’s saliva dribbling out of his mouth, but he can’t feel it.. Whatever these people used is going to make him lose consciousness very soon. He needs to call Enjin. Riyo. Somebody.
All he manages is to click the choker before he passes out.
…
When his eyes start to open again, he’s on a mattress. He feels that underneath him. He can’t remember exactly what happened at first, but there’s a warm wave of pain that slowly takes over his body, reminding him of his situation.
He can’t move. His body won’t cooperate, but something is keeping him in place, too. He tries to tug his arm away, but he can’t feel enough of any sensation to be able to tell exactly what’s holding him.
“Stop struggling. You already bruised those little wrists of yours.”
A foreboding, feminine voice. He feels like he recognizes this one from when they took him, but he can’t be sure, anymore.
That horrible, nauseous feeling from earlier hits him with full force, and he barely manages to turn his head to choke up bile onto the mattress. It burns so bad. His eyes are burning. They travel up to the Choker around his wrist - all he can make out is that striking red, and all he can do is hope and pray that he managed to click it when he meant to. He can’t now. His arms are tied down.
“You really don’t like my drink…,” she complains. Zanka would do anything to kick this woman in the face, but he can’t tell where she’s coming from. His eyes can sort of make out a figure when he turns his head again. It seems like he’s on a mattress on the floor, and that he’s sitting on a chair, but the single light fixture is illuminating her from behind by chance, and every time Zanka tries to look, his eyes turn from that bright light.
Another person enters the room. Zanka hears the door creak open.
He groans involuntarily, but also to see if he has any ability to speak. There’s no gag in his mouth at least, that would have made it really difficult to vomit, but he thinks whatever they used in that drink has temporarily destroyed his motor functions.
The voices above him chatter for a while, and two others enter the room - two of them have that pattern indicative of Traffickers, including the woman on the chair. She doesn’t move from there until she’s offered a hand, and Zanka is able to piece together that she can’t see very well. He tries to keep that in mind.
“The uniform will sell for something,” a deep male voice says. Zanka feels his body tense up. “He’s worthless otherwise.”
“Worthless?” The woman says.
“He’s a Nijiku,” a male voice says. It’s the same one from earlier, from Kamuatari.
“He’s not with them anymore. He wouldn’t know nothin’, and they wouldn’t do a thing to save his hind, either,” the deeper voice says. Zanka ears start ringing. He hears them mention something about the Cleaners, but everything else just sounds like mumbling in the next room over.
All of a sudden, he sees the woman right in front of his eyes, just inches from his face. He freezes completely, staring back at her, her face the clearest thing he’s been able to make out ever since this happened.
“Don’t fight back,” she says. Her hand moves to unzip his uniform from the top zipper at his neck.
Zanka uses the little energy that he has left to do just that. It sounds like all he’s good for to them is the clothes off his back. They aren’t even made with anything special, and he doubts they would be worth enough to even be worth the trouble of kidnapping him.
Was it really any trouble, though?
Zanka still remembers drinking that water. It was so cold it burned. Sometimes drinking water in the desert feels that way.
The cold wall he fell against. The wooden floor of the wagon.
He didn’t put up a fight, and no one was there to give them a hard time, even remotely.
He somehow manages to get his leg up over his abdomen and kick the woman with near full-force away from him. There wasn’t nearly as much power behind it as there would have been in any other situation, and his aim wasn't great. She just falls against the man standing behind her. They didn’t tie his legs down, but he very quickly realizes that they don’t have to. The man only takes a few steps forward before, with every ounce of power in his body, he slams his boot straight down on Zanka’s chest.
He can’t even tell if he’s screaming, or if it’s completely caught in his throat. He’s broken bones before, but during fights against Trash Beasts, where the adrenaline is working in his favor long enough for Eishia to heal him, or to, at the very least, treat a break for long enough before Eishia can get to him.
This is complete agony. It’s worse than anything he’s felt in a long, long time. He’s certain several pieces of his ribcage have broken off, and it hurts so badly that he can’t tell if it’s his right or left side, or both.
“Your sister took away the only thing that ever mattered to him, y'know,” the woman’s voice tells him, once again so close to his ear that it’s almost as if she’s inside his brain, “least you can do is give me this. Behave.”
He hears her unzip the front of his uniform just before his vision fades out completely, and all he can hear is the casual chatter of the people above him while he’s in a complete state of despair. He tries so hard to focus on his breathing, but all that comes out is wheeze. Wheeze. It burns.
“Do you really think he'll get you anything?” the male’s voice says, stabbing through his subconscious, like it’s telling him this is something he needs to hear.
“I’ll get money out of him either way,” the woman says.
Zanka’s body tenses up.
“Do you know how much money some people would pay to f̸̨͓̗̭̠̫͎̜̤̪̭̞̗̩̹̣̥̜̣͉͔͉͖̻͖̲̃̓̑͐͂̋̈͂̽͗̂̀̇̈́́͌̓͝ͅų̵̨̛̗̞̞̪̯͍͔̟͖̦̣̬̘̜̳̗̦̦͖̳̲̝͎̦̒̀̎̄̓̓͂̈͐̋͌̐̆̐̉̊̄̄͗́̚̚̚͜͝c̵̛͕̼̿̏͐̏͗̓̓̄͛́͒̚͝͝k̶̡̡̛̻̤͇͉͚̠̘͔͔̤͖͚̙̰͖͓̩͔̞̰̣͕̮̱͚͆̏̾͌̄̓̔͂̆̾͐̀̈̈́̍̅͌̎̐̌̊͗̏̆̑͜ͅ a Nijiku?”
…
When his eyes open again, he’s immediately hit with sharp pain. It’s dark. Every vein feels as if lava has been poured into them and has been circulating through his nervous system for hours while he’s been unconscious. He can’t help but cry out in pain, but it just echoes back at him, making his ears ring and making everything worse. He coughs involuntarily, painfully reminded of his shattered ribs. Excruciating. It’s cold, but the pain makes him feel so hot that he doesn’t notice it.
He doesn’t know if it’s the same thing that they drugged him with the first time, just later effects, or if it’s something new entirely. He remembers a tingling before, but now it’s just straight up painful. It burns so badly it brings tears to his eyes, but he doesn’t let them fall. He doesn’t know if they’re still around. There’s a blindfold over his face now, something that wasn’t there before. He wonders why. Is it to hide their identities? He couldn’t really see them in the first place with how fuzzy everything was.
He tries to tug at his restraints, but it’s useless. The pain he’s in is sapping his energy and making it really difficult to make any confident movements. All he can do is confirm he’s still restrained, and when he tries to move his legs, he’s met with the same realization.
“Riyo…” he manages to choke out, begging and pleading to whatever forces are out there, the very few that ever seem to work in his favor, that he clicked that Choker, that she can hear him, but there’s no response. He’s holding onto some hope that maybe she is there, she’s listening, she just knows not to speak because they’ll find out someone is coming to save him.
But he’d do anything to hear her voice. To know someone is coming. Because it's entirely possible that he's been forgotten about.
Again.
His chopped up breathing starts to turn into sobs, and it hurts. It hurts so much.
“No one is coming for you, sweetheart,” the woman’s voice says, honey sweet. “You know how much of a risk you are. It’s safer for them to leave you in the dust.”
Zanka can feel his head spinning.
He doesn’t know how much time passes before he feels almost completely numb again.
What’s going on?
You need to know how to protect yourself.
He doesn’t know why he’s hearing his sister’s voice right now. His memory plays tricks on him sometimes, making him think she’s there when she isn’t. Her voice is so clear that he really believes for a moment that she’s there.
Honestly, he isn’t sure if he would even want her to rescue him.
Would she, even?
She didn’t go looking for him when he was in the well. Three days, no one went looking for him.
Would anyone do that for him now?
In this line of work, it’s your own responsibility to keep yourself safe. We are a unit, but in a landscape as dangerous as this one, it’s every man for himself.
He’s already done a terrible job at that.
If you’re weak, you’ll be left behind.
His face is pressed against the mattress. Someone’s hand is pressing hard against the back of his head, but Zanka doesn’t make any movements to try to understand why, or what’s happening past where he can see.
You can’t listen to crap like that. We don’t do that here.
Enjin’s voice.
Zanka’s eyes flood with tears.
Even if everyone else gave up, I’d still come after you.
Riyo. Riyo would.
…
Zanka feels numb.
He's staring at the ceiling, unable to comprehend anything that's being said around him. His blindfold is gone, but his eyesight is so cloudy that he can’t see anyway. He doesn’t know if it’s tears, because he can’t feel anything on his face. He can only tell that he’s blinking because everything goes dark for a split second.
He's trying to recall the events of the past few hours, but he can't. It's like his mind won't allow for it. Either everything repeats at once, or his focus forcefully shifts to something else.
He thinks his mind is trying to reset multiple times. Every time he manages to close his eyes, his surroundings have changed just enough to make him recognize that he’s not closing his eyes, he’s passing out. He doesn’t know why. Is it the drugs? How long has it been since they took him here?
He groans, but when he does, the echo he hears tells him that there isn’t anyone else inside the room anymore.
Will Riyo hear him if he speaks.
“Riyo…” he murmurs. His eyes close. He doesn’t have any way of knowing how long they close for, if he’s losing consciousness for several minutes, hours, or just blinking.
“Don’t move, okay?”
Riyo’s voice.
Zanka stays where he is. He doesn’t know if it’s real or not. Maybe it’s coming from his choker. Maybe it’s his mind being cruel to him, and feeding him old memories like before. He can hardly handle that. He’d rather smash his head to pieces than be fed false hope by his own brain right now, and he can’t even do that against his godforsaken mattress.
No, wait.
Red. He sees red. Right in front of him, right in front of his eyes.
Green eyes.
The tears that suddenly flood his eyes completely impair his vision.
“Hey, Zan…” she says gently, her expression warm and comforting, making him almost forget about his predicament. He can’t see her as well as he would like to, but her face is the clearest thing he’s seen since this whole thing happened.
He hears the sound of her scissors snip each restraint.
One. Two.
Three, four.
But he can’t trust himself to move, even knowing she’s freed him. There’s a complete disconnect from his mind and his body right now. All he can do his stare forward, lock his eyes onto Riyo, who’s staring down at him patting his hair back out of his face.
She says something to him, but Zanka doesn’t hear her.
You found me.
You went looking for me.
You think I’m worth looking for.
She holds him really close. Zanka can’t tell if she sat him up, or if he’s still lying down. He flinches at the touch, but he melts into it, because he wants more than anything to be in the company of someone who he knows is safe. Someone who values his life.
He had never been hugged by anyone before joining the Cleaners. At first, he hated it. He didn't like being touched at all. The first few hugs he got made him nauseous, and he didn't have any idea why. Was it a weird sense of obligation to have to return that comfort? Did he just not like being touched? He didn’t know, and still doesn’t know why. Even handshakes were a weird thing to get used to. But the more he felt the care, the genuine warmth from the arms of other people, the more he craved it.
Kyouka would think he's absolutely pathetic.
“I'm sorry it took me so long,” she tells him, one arm around his head, holding him as close to her as she can. He realizes he’s sitting up, because the pain is starting to seep back into his chest. “I'm sorry they hurt you, Zanka.”
He tries to say something back, but all he can do is groan from the pain, a shaky hand hovering over the left side of his body. His ribs. That’s what hurts the most right now.
“Here?” she says, a gentle hand hovering over his own to make sure she understands where his pain is. Really, everything hurts, but this part is the worst. “Your ribs, huh?”
“Riyo,” Zanka murmurs. His brain is all of a sudden pushing images of his staff to the front of his brain. He left her in that alleyway. He’s praying someone found her. He’s praying it was Riyo, that it helped lead her to him. He doesn’t know what he’d do if it was all for nothing. Lovely isn’t useless like he is.
“Don't talk. You should save your energy, ‘kay?” she says, her voice only softening. His ears ring as if Riyo has suddenly blasted an airhorn right next to his ear, rather than speak softly to him.
“Y’found…” he manages between pained breaths. He needs to know.
“We have her, don’t worry,” Riyo assures him. “Gris found her. You left her there on purpose so we would find you, yeah?”
Zanka wants to nod, confirm that her existence is what saved his ass here, but the way the pain has crept up to his neck, his arms, his stomach, makes it awfully difficult.
“Let’s get you out of here, okay?”
He feels her shift to be beside him, take an arm over her shoulders with a hand on his waist to lift him, but it’s the wrong side. The hand pressing against his waist when she tries to lift him is so close to his broken ribs that he Zanka cries out in pain, and gently lowers him back down those few inches.
It's a white hot burst of pain that comes out of nowhere and hits him like a truck. His whole abdomen feels hot, centered right at that spot.
“I'm sorry,” Riyo tells him gently.
He doesn't even know what's causing the pain to be like that, but the more it spreads, the more it starts to center in the lower part of his stomach, he starts to connect the dots. He’s breathing heavy and he feels like he's about to throw up, and he's glad he manages to move out of the way fast enough to choke up whatever is in his stomach.
The memories flood back into his mind, and it’s so intense that he can’t see for a moment. His body forces up more bile and stomach acid, coughing and nearly choking, as if it’s trying to distract him. His eyes are burning hot with unwanted tears. He starts to curl up against her, eventually landing with his head against her thigh, and her hand on his head, patting him. She's talking to him, but he can't make out any words. It's reassuring, though. She's still there. She's really there.
He can't breathe properly, though. He's breathing fast, and he can't figure out how to slow down. It hurts so badly, the pain is bad enough to make him throw up on its own, but all he can do is retch between breaths. Is he hyperventilating? Is this really from his pain? Maybe it's just his anxiety. Nothing happened to him. He's fine. The broken ribs, sure, but he can't accept the rest of it.
They didn’t…r̴̡̨̛͖͈͚̪͉̳͇̻͙̤̙̜̙̥͔̥̝̄̈́́̿͑̈́́̽͂̾̀̀͊̀̈̈͒̄̒͗͛̊́͂́̈̌̆̀̌̍̽̿̋̓͒̊̈́̈͠͝ą̶̧̧̜̜̹̹͙͙̤̬̠͍͕͙͚̭̺͚͙̻͍̖̀̑͐̉̒̓̓̄͂͂̿̚p̸̢̨̨͉̰̬͇̥̼̱̩̫̯̗̯͙͖͕̺͍͓͈͎̻̠͉̙̦̹͖̺̹͕͍̩͚̅̎̅̈́̄̔̏̉̋̍́́̋͂̈́̑̎̃̾̏͆͌̔̇̐͌̏̓̐̇͆͒̇̈́́́́̎̍̈̚͘͘͜͝͝͝ͅé̶̢̨̢̞͓̤̥̻͓̲̹̣͈̤̟̳̺̬̼̫̘͖̙̼̺͈͉͇̠̖̩̦̳̼̲̰̹̥͉̟̮̙͕͖̲̞̓̉͑͂͊̀̀̒̄̽̑̌̓̕͜͜͜ͅ him.
That can't be what happened.
…
Riyo is sitting in the hallway, examining the split ends on the end of her braid. It's time for a trim, but she's spent the last few hours pulling apart the split ends instead. One strand at a time. Something to do. Something else to think about.
She should have killed those people when she had the chance.
“You're still out here?”
Enjin always seems to appear when she's having thoughts like that. Like he knows.
Surely he would've made an exception though. If he knew what they did to Zanka.
Right?
If she had only gotten there sooner. Then…
“Riyo,” he says, and she realizes she's spacing out, she's gone on too long without giving him a verbal response. She let it slip.
“Nothing better to do,” she insists casually, focusing on the split ends of her hair. Her eyes trail down to the short, stranded pieces on the floor.
“Well…sleep, is something better to do,” he says.
Of course, he's no better than she is. He leans against the wall and slides down to sit beside her. It's four in the morning, and he's been hanging around the infirmary ward the whole time, same as her. The smell of cigarettes clings to his clothes. He's gone in and out to visit Zanka, but he tries not to crowd him. It's a hard line to walk.
Riyo has stayed outside. She'd rather not walk the line at all, right now. She thinks that seeing her will just act as a reminder for him, and she won't go in unless he asks to see her.
“Did you talk to Gris?” Riyo asks him.
“Yeah. Wish I didn't,” Enjin murmurs. She can imagine why. He already felt responsible for Zanka going missing, because he hadn't sent anyone with him. That was before they knew he was kidnapped. Injured.
Worse.
“Think I've gotta take him to Alice. Eishia can't get him to talk,” Enjin says with a small, defeated sigh. He smells like fresh cigarette smoke. “She's got his ribs in order, though.”
“Words aren't her strong suit,” Riyo says.
“Yeah,” he says.
Zanka's definitely not well, right now. He's always had problems with anxiety, ever since she first met him. It was way worse back then, but sometimes he slips back into it. And now would certainly be one of those times. He can't breathe right, can't keep down anything, not even medicine.
“Riyo,” Enjin starts.
Riyo lowers her braid. She knows what he wants to ask her. What his original intention was.
“It’s not my place to say, okay?” she tells him. She can't even be stern with him. She understands why he wants to know, why it's important, but she can't betray Zanka's trust. She can't share that information without him knowing.
“I know,” Enjin breathes out. “Could you, just…at least, tell me, if -”
“Enjin,” she says, interrupting his question, because he knows exactly.
Enjin leans his head against the wall. He can't get through her defense.
She thinks that even though she's refused to tell him, that he's understood exactly what she heard, because of her refusal to tell him.
“Dammit,” Enjin breathes. “Fuck.”
…
Zanka has to ignore the way his shoulders flinch when Eishia opens the door. He has to stop being so damn jittery. It's not going to make this any easier.
She's carrying something - a tray with dinner, probably. He really wishes she hadn’t. He can’t eat anything right now and she knows that, but he understands why she wants to have it available for him. She leaves it on the side table as she walks in, but Zanka doesn’t pay attention to anything that’s on it. He’s not going to eat it anyway.
His eyes follow her instead.
“Has the medicine helped your headache…?” she asks meekly, standing beside the bed, her hands crossed in front of her. Zanka can’t bear to keep the eye contact with her, so he stares down at the sheets on his bed.
No. It hasn’t gone away since Riyo saved him. He doesn’t think it’s ever going to. He nods, though.
“Are you…sure…?” she asks, obviously not convinced. She had turned the lights off for him earlier to try and help, but the curtains still bring in a decent amount of light, even when closed.
For the third time today, he feels his eyes start burning, and tears that he couldn’t have possibly prepared for slip from his eyes and start to dot the sheets in front of him. It doesn’t make any sense. He isn’t thinking about it. He’s not remembering anything or wondering about it. This just happens out of nowhere, like his body is completely disconnected from his brain. It’s the first time it’s happened in front of Eishia, and as much as he wants to rub his eyes and pretend nothing happened, she definitely saw it. And he knows he won’t be able to make it go away.
“Sorry. It’s…I’m fine,” he mumbles, rubbing at his eyes, but the tears don’t stop. He tries to take in a few breaths to regulate this anxiety a little bit, because that must be what it is, but it never works when he wants it to. His chest hurts so much. He hates crying. He hates it more than anything. “This keeps happening ‘n I don’ know why. ‘M not even thinkin’ about anything…”
His breath hitches.
It’s embarrassing, at best, but at worst, he feels his sister’s glare against his neck. His face feels hot.
“It’s okay,” Eishia tells him gently, moving a little closer and sitting on the edge of the bed, something she very rarely does. Her eyes are focused on him, her gloved hand landing in front of is, as a show of comfort but not close enough to cross a boundary. “It’s something that can happen, after…traumatic…experiences.”
He wishes she wouldn’t say that. He feels sick.
He’s fine. Breaking his ribs is not a traumatic experience.
Idiot.
All of the feelings swirling around in his head right now makes him think the only thing that will relieve the pressure is cracking his head open.
“I know you’re used to meditating, and, that can be useful, for things like this, but…it’s hard to clear your mind from things like this so quickly,” Eishia says. She’s right, honestly. He’s tried it several times, any time he’s been alone in the infirmary. He is usually really good at it. He prides himself in it. But there’s so much right now that he can’t get himself to do it. His focus always breaks. “I have something else, though…?”
Zanka tries to take a solid breath and lift his head to see if he can get the tears to stop with determination, but it doesn’t work. They just fall right back. He’ll probably have to take Eishia’s advice.
“Can you name…five things you can see?” Eishia tells him.
Initially, he’s insulted more than anything. He doesn’t think Eishia would ever try to do that on purpose, but he’s not a little kid, and she doesn’t need to play a game with him to get him to stop crying, but he starts thinking about her question in earnest, even so.
Five things he can see. Well, Eishia, obviously. The infirmary beds.
Lovely Assistaff, of course. She’s leaned against the foot of the bed. Zanka had asked Eishia if she’s put her there earlier, when he was half asleep. He just wanted to make sure that he could see her when he woke up, and not have to wonder where she is. Like before.
No, no. That has to be defeating the purpose of what Eishia is trying to help him do. His eyes dart up to the wall.
There’s canvases on the wall in between each set of beds. Zanka thinks Gob painted them, but he’s not really sure. He doesn’t know that the guy has ever used a proper canvas. He’s wondered if he’s the one who did Enjin’s tattoos, but he’s never thought to ask.
The floor. Does that count?
“You’re supposed to say them outloud, but - ”
Zanka feels his ears get hot. “Oh, sorry, I-”
“No, it’s - it’s okay! I wanted to say, um…if it works better for you to just say it in your head, that’s okay too,” she says with a little smile. She seems to be glad that she got him to do it at all. “There’s more steps, though, is…that okay?”
It must be a counting down thing, with other senses. He feels like he’s heard of this before. He nods.
It’s not the worst thing ever.
“Four things you can touch…?”
…
Zanka can smell the cigarette smoke before he sees Enjin. He feels like he’s been smoking a lot more the past few days.
“Ready?” Enjin asks him. He’s standing outside his room as Zanka opens his dorm room door. He doesn’t close it behind him yet. Maybe it’s good to have a foot in the door, literally, in case he wants to give up.
Zanka doesn’t want to go. He likes working. He really does. And he has nothing against working the week after his…ordeal, but he doesn’t want to work with Enjin.
Zanka nods. He’s making sure his uniform is straightened out in the mirror. He doesn’t usually care about that, but he’s trying really hard to avoid eye contact with Enjin.
“Is it…okay if I talk to you about something?” Enjin asks him.
Zanka hates that question more than anything. His stomach hurts. He feels like he’s going to throw up. He probably would have if he had eaten breakfast like he was supposed to. Zanka wishes more than anything that they would just let it go. Pretend it was nothing. He's fine with that.
“We can report this to the Hell Guard,” Enjin says. His voice is gentle, and he’s sure Enjin has good intentions, but he’s not even remotely ready for a conversation like this. Especially because he’s fairly certain that Enjin doesn’t know.
Unless Riyo told him.
Zanka’s stomach twists.
He shakes his head.
“Zanka,” Enjin starts. There’s pain in his voice. If Zanka knew it would get him to leave, he would close the door in his face. He can’t do this right now.
“Did Riyo tell you?” he asks, his voice shaking. It’s the only time he looks Enjin right in the eyes. Probably the only time he has all week. He can’t have Enjin know. Enjin’s the first adult who’s ever respected him, taken him as he is. If he knew he’d been -
Enjin’s brow furrows. “No. No, she didn’t tell me anything.”
“Nothing?” Zanka almost snaps back. He doesn’t believe it.
“Nothing,” Enjin promises.
There’s a pause between them that feels like it lasts forever. Zanka has to gather his thoughts.
“It’s my choice,” Zanka mumbles quietly, tucking his hands in his sleeves and pulling at the skin around his nails out of sight. It’s gotten so bad that his nail beds are bleeding. He’s tried to keep them covered with bandaids. “Right?”
Enjin bites his lip. “Right, but-”
“Then I don’t want to,” Zanka says sternly.
Enjin’s shoulders seem to deflate.
“Zanka, I get where you’re coming from, but this isn’t-”
“Nothin’ happened to me,” Zanka mumbles, “broke my ribs. Ain't even worth reporting.”
He's firm on that, even though his voice breaks at the end of it like his own body is betraying him, even though he knows that Enjin can tell he isn't telling the whole story, but he has to stand his ground. He can't let the Hell Guard, and by inevitable extension, his family find out about this. They may not even believe him, and that would be worse than them just knowing the truth.
Zanka doesn’t even really remember what happened. And he doesn’t want to. Reporting this means he has to face it.
The look on Enjin's face isn't one he recognizes, and he doesn't know why. It's not quite pity, but something else.
Zanka stands, turns to leave, without another word between the two of them.
