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sabraeal · 2 months ago

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Sic Semper Monstrum, Chapter 10

[Read on AO3]

Obiyukiweek 2024, Day 2: Foxtrot

Written not only for Obiyukiweek but also for @sepalina, the last winner of the holiday raffle! It was never supposed to take so long to finish all of these but HERE WE ARE 🤣

The Marshal’s office might be the finest under the fortieth floor, but as nice as it is, Shirayuki has to admit: she’s getting sick of it.

“Sit down.” He already is, sparing her no more than a curl of his fingers as he pores over the tablet in his hand. “I’ve taken the liberty of arranging some tea.”

Making her mug appear was magic the first dozen times he managed it, but over that last two weeks, it’s turned from treat to trick. Just another one of the hundreds of ways the Marshal can pull the dome’s strings, closing and opening curtains, making tea mugs and pilots appear out of thin air. Maybe for his next trick, he’ll saw Zen in half too.

Shirayuki takes her seat, but she declines to take a sip. A detail that draws the Marshal’s interest; he glances up, setting aside the tablet with a hum. “All business today, I see, Dr Lyon.”

“We’re both busy people.” He is, at least, and it’s not as if he can tell how many hours she’s spent staring at the drop ceiling panels rather than academic journals lately just by looking at her. “I didn’t imagine you called me in here to catch up.”

Not when he’s had her in here every other day for the last seven. Shirayuki’s gotten more oversight in the past two weeks than she’s had the whole two years she’s been under this dome, and every last bit of it’s been about—

“The report on Obi’s postmortem.” Izana shifts in his chair without so much as a creak. “I haven’t seen it yet. Was wondering where it might be, in fact.”

Her palms press to the chair’s arms, steadying her. His mouth curls, too knowing, with every stretch of her knuckles. “I’m not done with it.”

“Is that so?” His eyebrows arch toward his hairline, like two terns taking flight. “It’s been several days, Dr Lyon. How unlike you.”

“My analysis” — is protected by doctor-patient confidentiality. That’s what she wants to say, at least, but this isn’t private sector, where the most dangerous piece of machinery one of her clients could get behind is the car they drive home in. No, this is the PPDC and all these people are soldiers, rated to handle ordnance that could take out whole cities, and—

And Obi had pointed one of them right at CIC. “It’s taking longer than expected.”

And would probably never be done. One session was hardly enough to get the broad strokes of something so…complex, let alone declare whether he was mentally fit enough to climb back in a Jaeger. And Obi didn’t seem to be in any rush to put himself back in the Conn-Pod— let alone her couch.

“Then give me your opinion.”

“Excuse me?” Shirayuki blinks. “It would hardly be professional to—”

“I am not interested in your professional integrity, Dr Lyon.” No, of course not; the Marshal’s made it supremely clear that his only concern is whether there will be two bodies strapped into Rex Tyrannis when the next siren blares. “I am interested in your expertise.”

“But it— it’s all conjecture,” she sputters, an indignant flush struggling its way over her cheeks. “There’s no possible precedence for me to base an opinion on…just…just…gut feeling!”

“You sell yourself short, Doctor.” Sharks smile with more sincerity than the Marshal smirks. “Around here, they call that instinct. All those rangers— they live or die by it.”

With his three-piece suit and hair longer than the regulations that ban it, it’s easy to forget: Izana Wisteria used to be one of them. “I can’t—”

“Tell yourself we’re having a friendly chat, if you have to.” His hands fold neatly over his desk, impatience in every twitch. “But for God’s sake, Doctor, tell me something.”

Her mouth works, trying to conjure some other excuse— integrity, ignorance, anything that might buy her another day, another week before she has to label Obi a lost cause or ready for action—

But when her eyes close, the lids bleed plasma blue, just the way they had in the CIC. “If I were treating a patient in the private sector, I would say they were experiencing chronic, coherent, and vivid auditory hallucinations, possibly consistent with a trauma of some kind, either physical or psychological.”

“You think he’s experiencing a break with reality.” The Marshal doesn’t so much move as lengthen, the space between chair and desk yawning into a chasm with only a tilt of his chin. “Schizophrenic. That’s what you would call it, isn’t it?”

His teeth snap around the word, steely enough to make her toes curl.

“That’s only one out of a dozen possible diagnoses.” Though certainly the top of a very small list. “And even with a typical patient, the lack of other obvious and intrusive psychoses would make a schizophrenia diagnosis hardly past muster.”

“A typical patient, hm?” One elegant brow raises. “And what about our dear Major, then?”

“With Obi…” She licks her lips, one knee crossing tightly over the other until she half twisted in her seat. “With Obi, I’m not even certain it is a psychosis.”

His head tilts. “Explain.”

Shirayuki clears her throat, nerves making her voice threadier, higher as she says, “There is an observable phenomenon found among rangers that have drifted for a prolonged period of time with the same copilot, a…synchronicity that extends past the initial Neural Handshake and into their everyday lives. You might be familiar with the term ghost drifting.”

The Marshal’s mouth curls at a corner. “Intimately.”

“Right, well, some people might find themselves reaching for a snack that they can’t stand simply because their copilot craves it, while others report a…heightened awareness of their partner’s emotions— or sometimes even thoughts— without them being expressed verbally.” There were its skeptics, of course, but most of those papers came from the private sector, from professionals who has never set foot on a hangar deck but wrote analyses of works of those who did, calling them sentimental at best and intellectually compromised at worst. The sort of baseless, armchair speculation that could be cured by five minutes in any dome’s commissary. “There’s not much independent study on the exact mechanics of it, but there’s theories based on casual observation from data collected from K-Science. That at some point the brain stops thinking of the other mind as a foreign entity but some other part of itself, and when the Handshake is over and the Pons completely disconnects, it experiences the copilot’s body as a, er…”

“Phantom limb?”

“Yes, exactly.” Shirayuki does not smile so much as relax, the corners of her mouth naturally settling more up than down. PPDC may not see much human conflict— few soldiers do nowadays, not when there’s a much more extraterrestrial threat looming on the doorstep— but it’s still military. As much as the branches might love to butt heads, jockeying to be the biggest, buffest kid on the world’s playground, amputation’s always been the great equalizer. “Except— ah, I don’t know if you know the science behind it, but…?”

Izana opens a hand, magnanimous. “Assume that I don’t.”

Ah, right. With the other branches, their soldiers still get to go home after a failed engagement. The most Rangers can hope for is for the kaiju to take them out quick before their Jaeger becomes a titanium coffin on the ocean floor. “I’m sure it comes as no surprise when I say that the amputation process is traumatic— not just for the patient, but for their body as well. Multiple organ systems are cut— bone, muscle, skin, blood vessels, and, most importantly, their nerves. They all heal over time, but it’s the nerves that take the longest. So when they get stimulated— ah, like when a patient moves, or twitches, or even just gets an itch— the sensory fibers will report what they should be feeling, rather than what they do. It’s…it’s neural feedback, with nowhere to go. No, wait, more like…with no place to come from.”

“And this…is what you think the Major is experiencing?” It’s impossible to tell what Izana thinks; his face might as well be a mirror for as much as she’s getting off of him. “That it’s all…neural feedback he’s interpreting as his dead copilots.”

“No. Yes. Ah…maybe.” Sweat prickles under her arms and behind her ears, itchy and off-putting. Distracting, which is the last thing she needs to be in front of a man who might as well be a tank of starving piranhas considering his potential to chew up her professional reputation and spit it out. “That’s all theoretical. And it certainly seems plausible, it just…it doesn’t seem to account for, ah…”

He raises a brow. “I am patient, Dr Lyon, but I don’t have all day.”

“Right, it’s just…the phantom limb phenomenon seems to explain what we see when both partners are…extant. But when one dies— especially when they’re in the drift when it happens…” Her shoulders don’t so much shrug as twitch, flinching back from the unknown. “You’ll have to forgive me, there’s not much data on this, since…”

Since most Jaegers don’t make it back home with solo pilots. And the ones that do, well— the PPDC is still military. As far as most Rangers are concerned, psychiatrists are the enemy. “It seems that what remains of them continues to…drift with their copilot. Even after they’re disengaged from the Pons.”

“Are you trying to say that there is an actual ghost in the drift?” Izana leans back in his chair, shadows gathering in the sharp, patrician planes of his face. “That Obi is being haunted by the crew of the Hachimaru?”

“Not haunted.” Her tongue tangles, science and speculation at a roiling boil in her mind before she stumbles out, “Just…what if while they were in the Neural Handshake, they never let go?”

“Does that bring us back to the phantom limb, then?” The Marshal has never posed a question that hasn’t been half an interrogation too, but even Shirayuki has to admit he seems…interested. Invested, even. “A reflexive reach for the familiar? Neural impulses with nowhere to go?”

A shrug is never an answer— it’s a placeholder, an um or a hm in physical form. A pause right before the threshold of discovery, a stalling tactic to keep from facing what lays beyond just not thinking about it. And yet, it’s what Shirayuki does now, trying to keep the rest of her from squirming under the searing light of Izana’s attention. “It’s as likely a theory as any, at least. And in line with the current conclusions being drawn in drift research. It’s just…”

The Marshal’s brow curves in an arc too elegant for a man whose office is so far below the bay it can’t even have windows. “Just?”

There’s an itch this theory doesn’t quite scratch, a niggling that won’t stop pulling at her sleeve. “I don’t know what happened with the Hachimaru. I mean— before what Obi can remember. There’s nothing in the PPDC database on it” — or at least, none that she is cleared to see— “but everything we’ve been told…I mean, child soldiers? The training? There wasn’t even supposed to be a base in Osaka. There’s no telling what was done to those kids, let alone what long-term effects it could have had on their psyche.”

Or their bodies. Or even— even the drift. The implications of who Obi is— what Obi is—

“I’ll see what I can find.”

Shirayuki jerks back as Izana rises from his desk to pace the room. “Pardon me?”

“I’m sure you know my arms have a much further reach than yours, Dr Lyon.” His mouth slants into a smirk; wry, she thinks at first, but when he turns his head, it reads rueful. “If there’s something to find, I’ll find it. And if there isn’t…”

It’s him who shrugs now, but not to say, who knows, but rather— I’ll find it even so. “Now if you’ll excuse me, doctor, I should be getting myself down to the infirmary.”

Instinct has her half out of her chair before she manages, “Has something happened?”

“Ah.” Rueful widens into amused. “So you haven’t heard.”

It’s the sort of thing that’s bound to happen in any testosterone-soaked environment; get some young men together, force them to compete for a few coveted opportunities for promotion— and, most importantly, recognition— and it’s inevitable that tempers flare. The Academy’s major export is big egos, and the dome is the pressure cooker the PPDC puts them under, trying to see which will crack first. That Obi’s gotten himself in a dust up now isn’t so much a surprise as it is that it didn’t happen before, but…

She didn’t think it’d be Mitsuhide who put him in the infirmary.

“They’re both there, if you want to get right down to it,” Yuzuri informs her with no little relish, warming up for what will undoubtedly be an entertaining— if not extended— bout of complaining over commissary chicken and rice. “Lowen may have gotten in the harder hit, but I gotta say, that guy gave as good as he got. The major’s covered head to toe in bruises, and none of them are in comfortable places.”

“Is there a comfortable place to have a bruise?” Suzu asks around a mouthful of pudding— eaten first, no matter how many times Shirayuki’s insinuated dessert is supposed to be a treat for finishing a meal, not just sitting down to one. “I’ve gotten a couple in some pretty inaccessible places, and I don’t know, they always seem to hurt more than just like, my elbow, or even my leg.”

“That’s not the point, Suzu.” Yuzuri flicks her ponytail over her shoulder, unconcerned by how much of him is caught in the spray. “There’s not a single guy under the dome that hasn’t thrown down with the major and been dismantled for the trouble, and here Obi goes, deciding to go bare fists against him with no ref, no rules. He should have been wheeled out of the gym in a body bag, but the guy doesn’t even have a concussion.”

“Woah.” His eyes blow wide, mouth rounding to match— or at least, it tries; Suzu snaps his teeth shut just as they all are reminded that pudding isn’t liquid or solid, but a third, utterly different state of matter, beholden to its own rules. “I’ll have to tell him—”

“Don’t you say a word about it!” Yuzuri waggles a warning finger at him; her implied menace more effective at stopping Suzu in his tracks than if she’d laid hands on him. “Sure, I’m impressed as hell, but if that guy gets one whiff of positive reinforcement on this, he’ll be unlivable, and you know it!”

“Aw, but—”

“Nope! You figure out some other way to make your bromance blossom or whatever” She huffs, taking a desultory bite of the world’s saddest salad. “I refuse to have him hovering around, asking me to tell him how cool he is again. I’ve got my hands full just convincing him he can pee without me holding his dick for him, god.”

The fork jitters right out of Shirayuki’s fingers, landing on the tray with a clink they might be able to hear all the way in the hangar. “Is he really that bad?”

“Huh? Oh, no.” Yuzuri waves her off, scraping out a laugh. “If that was the case, I’d be enjoying this nearly food-like meal in a doggy bag at my desk. But they’re both fine— Obi just likes to see how far he can push this whole invalid shtick before I kick him out for a little peace and quiet.”

Suzu blinks. “How long do you think that is?”

“Twenty-four hours on the dot.” She spears a tomato, letting it bleed all over lettuce and croutons before she puts it behind her teeth. “If he hasn’t fallen into a concussive coma by then, he’s not my problem.”

“Unless he finds another way to hurt himself,” Suzu offers, thoughtful. “The Rangers are pretty good at that.”

Yuzuri sighs hard enough her bangs flutter. “Don’t remind me.”

“But he’s all right?” Shirayuki clears her throat as they turn to stare at her. “I mean, both of them. They’re…fine?”

“Well, obviously I can’t say uninjured, but it’s all just bumps and bruises.” Yuzuri’s shoulders twitch toward a shrug. “They’re in the infirmary more out of an abundance of caution than any real concern. And in Obi’s case, well”—she snorts, shaking her head— “he’s enjoying the idea of being waited on hand and foot. I’m just lucky the Marshal wanted a word, otherwise I’d be fending off spoon-feeding requests all dinner.”

Shirayuki blinks. “The Marshal’s still down there?”

“Oh yeah.” There’s a vengeful slant to Yuzuri’s grin, enough to send a shiver down her spine. “He told me to take a whole hour before coming back. And to smell the roses on the way down.”

Suzu lets out a long whistle. “Someone’s in trouble.”

“Multiple someones,” Yuzuri corrects. “Big trouble.”

Shirayuki’s stomach twists, tying itself not just into worried knots but discovering wholly unknown polygons of anxiety. It’s hard to handle Izana seated, even at his friendliest, but Obi— Obi’s stuck in one of the infirmary cots, the Marshal no doubt looming over him, unleashing the full force of his wrath. Oh, she’s run the gamut of Izana’s displeasure in the year and change since she’s come under the dome; she’s weathered his frustration, and impatience, and sometimes downright civil hostility. But mad?

She swallows, nearly choking on the heart lodged in her throat. Mad is something else entirely.

“Too bad,” Suzu sighs, finally scooping up a spoonful of rice. “I’d been hoping to stop by his office and show him the new projections. Now that we’ve solved the rounding error—”

“Wasn’t it a variable?” Yuzuri reminds him, too sweet. “A whole number you completely left out of your precious—”

“—ROUNDING ERROR that Ryuu discovered,” Suzu continues, undaunted, “I think we’re really starting to see that there’s a marked decrease of interval length, followed by an increase of kaiju—”

The table rattles as she stands, half-eaten rice making a liar out of her even as she says, “I think I’m finished.”

Yuzuri glances down at her tray, mouth pursing as she takes in what’s left. “Are you sure? The food actually looks halfway decent tonight. Better than this salad, at least. Should have just taken the lumps with those calories instead of—”

“Yeah.” She can’t eat when her stomach taking more tumbles than an acrobat, no safety net on this bout of nerves. “I just…”

Don’t know what a concussion will do to someone like him, is what she wants to say— what she should say as a professional, as the person who’s being pinned handle his condition long-term. But what she means is, I can’t just let him deal with Izana all on his own.

“I have a thing,” she says lamely. “And some paperwork. I’ll, uh, come back later if I get hungry.”

“Uh-huh,” Yuzuri hums, utterly unconvinced. “Sure.”

Suzu only nods as she slips out from the bench, adding, “Say ‘hi’ to Obi for me.”

Worry dogs her heels with every stride she takes down the quiet corridors, the metallic echo of her steps chasing her around every corner. It’s eerie at this time of night; the dome buzzes at most hours, day and night having no meaning without windows to help mark when one rises and the other sets, but with dinner served up hot and ready, only the PPDC’s most essential personal stay at their posts, waiting for the next shift to relieved them.

Shirayuki should be relieved too; going toe-to-toe with the Marshal is the sort of event that some enterprising officer could sell tickets to. With halls this bare— and the only spare set of eyes being Mitsuhide’s, who could probably make a career out of taking other people’s secrets to the grave— she’s practically guaranteed to keep this tête-à-tête private, and yet—

Yet she turns the last corner, and suddenly her slip-ons’ soles might as well be magnets for all struggle it takes to lift them an inch off the floor. It’s impossible to keep forward momentum, to do anything but stand still and wait, and— and—

Interrupting’s the right thing to do— she feels it, deep in her gut; the same place Rangers say they know when someone will take their hand in the drift, or whether a Kaiju’s going to fight to the death or cut and run once they’re against the ropes. It’s what she’d hope someone would do for her, if she was stuck playing wave breaker for Izana’s storm, but still, still—

She’s not sure she’d thank them for it. It might be nice dreaming of the rescue, but when someone actually rides to it, when they take the whole situation out of her hands and tells her to take a back seat, well…

Shirayuki’s known enough princes not to find that charming. Or at least the ones that think they are, taking choices right out of her hands and calling it kindness. The last thing she wants is Obi see her stride in and think, here we go, another person who thinks they can run my life better than me.

Her fingers curl, nails biting into the fleshy part of her palms. She could go in there still, just— just sit beside him as he took his lumps, but it feels too passive, too much like she’s just acting as witness rather than support, like this whole thing is an official part of his treatment, and she— she—

She sees someone idling down the corridor, just across from the infirmary door. A familiar someone, pale hair flopping as he runs his hand through it, looking just as tortured each time he reached for the door, only to flinch away, like it burns.

“Zen?” His name falls off her tongue before she can swallow it, lips too numb to do more than let it stumble out, more habit than question.

He startles, eyes wild as they dart up, looking for all the world like he’d rather have been caught in the women’s locker room than found here. “S-shirayuki! I wasn’t— I mean, I was just” — hanging around in the hallway, it seems like— “I’d been passing by and I thought I’d, er…”

His chin jerks down the junction of corridors; not the way she came, or the way directly opposite where the hangar sits, but the third option, leading back toward— “You were coming from the women’s bathroom?”

“What?” Zen’s neck swivels, chasing grating and plate all the way back to where the sign reads RESTROOM, a clear stick figure and skirt painted next to it. A strange sign to have in a facility where ninety percent of the population elects to wear BDUs regardless of gender, but Shirayuki supposes it makes its point. “No! I, er…”

It’s habit to wait him out, to let him finish composing his thoughts before she makes any attempt to guide him— but impatience wins out, this time. “Were on your way to the infirmary?”

“Ah…yeah. That’s it.” Red blooms over the tips of his ears, like he’s seen too much sun. “I just heard that Mitsuhide was down here, so I thought that I would, you know, check up on him.”

Her head tilts, and oh, she hopes it looks more curious than confrontational. “You’re here for Mitsuhide?”

“Well, you know, it’s just weird for him to get caught up in something like this.” He scratches at the back of his neck, and Shirayuki would bet dollars to donuts that if she could see under his jacket collar, it’d be sunburn red there too. “A fight, I mean. He’ll spar with the other guys of whatever, but they don’t, you know…”

End up in the infirmary. Rangers are tough by design, not easy to break; once they roll out the Academy doors, they’re combat rated and ready, eager to take down monsters a hundred times their size. A man head and shoulders taller doesn’t give even a cadet pause— not until they end up flat on their backs, wondering how they mistook strength for slow.

But Mitsuhide— Mitsuhide is careful too. He might be a decorated combatant, a seasoned killer of kaiju, but when it comes to squaring up with humans, he might as well be fighting with kid gloves. She’s seen him on the mats before, carefully feeling out the edges of what his partner can take, making sure their spar is a challenge but not a rout.

Mistakes happen, she knows. Too much force behind a swing or fumbled footwork could send anyone to med bay, looking for a bandaid or a cold compress. Even Mitsuhide’s had his bell rung once or twice, too focused on keeping his opponent on their feet to watch how close their jo came to sweeping his. But for both of them to end up on a cot, well…

It’s concerning to say the least. Especially when the other body in that bay is supposed to be—

“I heard it was Obi in there with him.” Zen shrugs, but it doesn’t look casual. Not a smooth motion, but two pickets rattling up and down by his ears, never quite settling back to where they shoulder. By the pink spreading over his cheeks, he’s well aware. ��I just thought that I…I don’t know, that I could…”

Talk to him. He doesn’t say it, but he doesn’t need to: the words are scrawled across his face, written in bold-faced print for anyone to see. Fix something.

“Would you like to talk about it?” It’s reflex to ask, really— one she doesn’t even realize she’s done until his eyes blink wide, jaw slackening to match. “My office isn’t too far down the hall.”

He hesitates, eyeing her warily before he asks, “Unofficially?”

“Of course. As friends.” That’s what she’d meant anyway, she thinks. “If that’s what you want.”

There’s another, longer pause; his eyes shifting away from her to the door and then back again before her nods. “Yeah. I think I do.”

Her fingers are already reaching for a pen, palm pressed right against the soft cover of her notebook when Zen says, “You promised.”

The pen rattles back into the holder, knocking aside its mismatched brethren before settling into place.

“Habit,” Shirayuki laughs, suddenly all too aware of herself in space, of how she’s practically hanging over her desk. Of how desperate she looks to categorize his thoughts into neat little boxes, like somehow it might make hers more orderly too. “It won’t happen again.”

“Are you sure?” The corner of his mouth hitches up, a smirk she knows all too well. “I am about to be really interesting, you know. You’ll be itching to put it in my file.”

It would be entirely inappropriate to say, I know. “I promised,” she says instead. “Boundaries are important. For both professionals and clients.”

“Is that what I am now?” He’s smiling still, joking, but there’s no humor in it. “Your client?”

“No, you are what you’ve always been.” It stings as she smiles, folding up her legs beneath her, but sweetly. “My friend.”

His smirk falters into a frown, that direct, almost challenging stare of his foundering to the floor. “Really? I don’t think I’ve been a very good one lately. Not to you.” He sighs, leaning into his hand. “Hell, not to anyone, I guess.”

“Is that what’s worrying you right now? That you’re not being a good friend?”

Zen snorts, sending her a wry look. “You’re doing it again. The therapist thing.”

“Ah! Er…” Heat prickles at her cheeks, and she doesn’t have to see Zen’s grin to know it’s a blush breaking out over them, just as obvious as any of his. “Sorry, force of habit.”

“Don’t worry about it. Honestly, I think it’d be weirder if you didn’t try,” he admits, letting himself relax into the couch cushions. The way he used to before, when it was just him and her and a way to steal time under his brother’s nose. “I don’t really care about the friend thing. No wait, I don’t mean—I do care about being friends, and er, being a good one, but that’s not really my biggest problem right now.”

“It isn’t?” Her head tilts, an invitation. “Then what is?”

He stares at her wearily. “Really?”

“Oh! I really…” Her hands clap to her cheeks, but it does nothing for the heat radiating beneath her palms. “I didn’t meant to that time. I just…it’s Obi, isn’t it? You’re worried about him, even more than Mitsuhide.”

Zen lets his head drop back, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It’s kinda hard not to be. I mean, if you’d seen what I saw in there…”

“You mean in the drift?” Electricity zips through her fingers, chasing her nerves up her spine, and she pitches forward, struggling to keep the eagerness from her voice. “Can I…can ask what happened? When you were in there, in his…?”

Mind. Memories. There’s hardly a difference either way,

He doesn’t lift his head, but she sees the muscles of his neck move, the furrow of his brow implied rather than implicit. “You don’t know? I thought you and Obi had some sort of postmortem or whatever. I figured he’d be your favorite patient by now.”

“No. We never got past broad strokes. I don’t even think I could call him a patient.” It’s strange how relief floods her as she says that— not my patient— and how quickly guilt twists her stomach right after. He should be her patient, she should be helping, she just— just—

Doesn’t want to. Not like that anyway. From the outside. Professionally. But she’s not being given much of a choice. “I think it was too difficult for him to get past all the…commentary.”

“Yeah, I can see that.” He eyes her, almost speculative, before shaking his head. “It’s confusing in there. I don’t even know how he manages to walk and think at the same time, let alone mouth off the way he does. But you know about…?”

“Osaka, and the Hachimaru,” she confirms, the fabric of her skirt dimpling between her fingers. “That there were unauthorized experiments going on with the number of pilots in a Jaeger. That they were all…” Children. She can’t bring herself to say it. “You probably know more than me.”

“Maybe. Not enough. Too much. I don’t know.” Zen sighs, his head rocking forward, bowing over his knees. “It’s just…I don’t want to go talking about stuff that’s really his to tell. But…yeah, there was something with Osaka’s program. Some lack of oversight— or maybe everyone was purposefully looking away, who can tell? But there was seven of them, all packed into one Jaeger, in a big row like— like sardines in a can, and their commander, this woman, she—”

He rubs at his arm, teeth grit. “Let’s just say, she wasn’t a good mother figure.”

“Seven of them?” She’d heard of three— Crimson Typhoon and its triplet pilots— but more than one report had said they were like one mind in three bodies, rather than the other way around. That there was something wrong with them from drifting so often so young. Seven completely different children, forced to link mind in some unregulated daisy chain since before they were even in puberty… “How many of them are…?”

“They’re all in there,” he says, toneless. “Like they never left. Just a whole Con-Pod filled with…”

Ghosts. Shirayuki never was one of the girls who would shiver at a scary story, or see faces in the dark— no point in inventing horrors when there were plenty more real ones lurking just off shore. But there’s no better term for this, these leftover impulses that stalk Obi’s brain stem, or…whatever they were.

“I wish…” Zen doesn’t have Obi’s sharp jaw or Mitsuhide’s square one; his muscles don’t stand out in relief when they flex, but she sees the tension in his throat, the swallow. “I wish he’d just talk to me about it, you know? He saw all my shit and just took it, and now that I’ve seen all his…”

His hand scrapes through his hair, tugging at the ends. “He knows I’m not afraid of him, doesn’t he? That I don’t care? I just want…”

She thought she’d known what yearning looked like on his face, what harsh planes even the briefest touch of it could carve, but she sees him now, mouth twisted so tight it carves new fissures into his cheeks, biting runnels into the corners of his eyes, and she knows— however much he’d wanted her, it doesn’t come close to how much he wants this.

“I don’t know. We’ve talked, but Obi hasn’t really told me what he’s thinking.” And by now, Shirayuki knows better than to guess. “But I think…I think he does. He just…isn’t ready for that right now.”

For being known. For being accepted despite it.

“When he is though,” she adds, carefully picking around the words. “You should tell him.”

“I’m trying,” Zen sighs, sliding further onto her couch. “I’m trying.”

#obiyukiweek24 #obiyuki #akagami no shirayukihime #snow white with the red hair #pacific rim au #my fic #ans #man there is a scene i have been dying to get to for CHAPTERS but i keep realizing that it's not TIME #it's COMING and temporally in the story it's not far #but like...so much stuff has to happen to get there #SO MANY POVS #but think we're only like...two chapters away at this point #maybe three #and then a lot of things happen very quickly #and ohhhh i am very excited for it 🤣

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sabraeal · 5 months ago

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At Your Command, Chapter 2

[Read on AO3]

They’ve got two guards at the gate— well, two that he can see, though he doesn’t doubt there’s a dozen more posted around this entrance, up on parapets and spying through towers, yucking it up each time some courtier acts out the inciting event in one of those puppet shows in the market. There’s a younger one— fair as any prince, at least by the etchings in the paper— his hat just scarcely too large to sit above his ears. An idiot, by the looks of things. An easy dupe.

The other one, though—

“Revoked?” The older guard sits back in his hips, eyeing the Marquis’s order— and his scar— with a hefty amount of skepticism. “Out of nowhere.”

Out of all the expressions he bends his face into, patronizing smile isn’t part of his regular vocabulary. It’s a real tussle between the muscles and teeth to keep it there instead of gritting down to a grimace. Gate guards aren’t meant to question noble couriers, especially not ones that come around flashing royal seals and dropping titles with more history than the palace itself, but here he is, standing in front of the only soldier with more than two thoughts to clack together to make a spark. Any minute now, this guy’s going to bark out an “Explain!” and he’ll have to dance the dangerous edge between obeying the letter of the law and defying its intent.

Or at least he would, if he wasn’t wearing this nice little uniform.

“Enough.” His teeth snap around the word with every ounce of authority the Marquis’s crest lends him. It’s not much this many rungs down the ladder, but it’s more than these chuckleheads have. “No objections.”

Oh, he makes a good show of barking and gnashing, but he might well be one of those little pillow dogs the ladies keep for all the good it does him. Now even the dupe’s got a wary look in his eyes, jaw setting the way it does before people start asking him things like, can I see your credentials, and what did you say your name is again.

Ha, he’d heard the Elder Highness ran a tight ship, but this is something else. Daddy might have let his lords throw their weight around, bullying the poor boys on door duty as if it were one of those divine rights passed down to them on high, but it seems at least this apple got flung far from the tree. Part of him’s impressed, he’s got to admit, but the other part—

The other part’s got a job to do. And, if this goes on any longer, a real nasty itch to scratch.

“Please try to understand”— he’s a study in softness now, pressing a hand to his heart, shoulders taking the same pleading tilt as his brow— “how this decision must have pained His Highness.”

The dupe’s all eyes now, wide and trembling, real taken with the idea of some princeling’s struggle with his tender emotions. But the older guard shifts his weight, arms crossed, and frowns. It’ll take more than a few tears and tugged heartstrings to get this guy to swallow a story.

Good thing he doesn’t have to. All he’s got to do is lean close, squinting down at the elegant sweep of the Marquis’s signature across the page, and he sees it too: it’s legal. However the hero here feels about this particular little prescript, putting it to question is well above his paygrade. At least so long as it’s the old king’s cousin who’s got his name slapped on it as co-signer.

“Well.” The scroll snaps shut in his hand, and he flashes the hero the sort of grin found on a knife’s edge. “That will be all.”

It’s new to him, walking away like this— lofty chin and step so springy he might looking into a high horse when all is said and done. A guy could get used to this sort of thing, no to mention the weight of his purse and the promise of enough food to fill him. All he’s got to do now is get back to His Grace and—

“Wait!” the older one shouts, giving him one hobbled step before he adds, “Get back here!”

It’s the sort of shout that could be for anyone— hell, he’s half convinced it’s not even him, up until his heels start sticking to the pavement, not so much holding him in place as making it a real hassle to saunter off with any style. Give the guy a few years and maybe he’d get enough gravitas to haul him up short, but as it is, he’s an annoyance rather than a threat. The kind that’s got him gritting his teeth to keep that servile smile on his face. “Excuse me. Is there—?”

“We’ve got to tell the prince.” It’s the younger one who says it— whispers it, really, the way mummers do on stage, loud enough to be heard all the way in the eaves— eyes anxiously aimed at his superior.

It’s a miracle he manages to grit out, “Tell the prince what?”

“It’s Lady Shirayuki,” the older one replies, not possessed with the same sense of urgency as his partner. In fact, he’s downright leisurely when he adds, “She forgot a book in the prince’s office and came back to get it.”

“It was just before you came, sir!” The idiot’s practically biting his nails down to the quick just thinking of it. “She’s already gone through!”

This job was supposed to go off without a hitch.

There’s no wiggle room for mistakes in this business; not when the difference between a good grift and a shallow grave is balanced on a blade’s edge. All it takes is a glance too unsavory or a word misspoke to see a man clapped in irons, dragged off to dungeons so deep even his own mother would forget his name. If he had one, that is. Men like him usually don’t.

Oh, not every job’s determined at knife point, draw blood or be bled, but the point still stands: there’s no such thing as a do-over when the coin you’ll pay with is your life. No amount of almosts will fill an empty belly, or a keep a body warm at night on the Port City’s streets. In a world where everyone’s fighting for scraps, it’s the ones who walk away that win. And he—

Well, he’s built a career out of being the one that does. Too bad this prince-chaser chick hasn’t gotten the message.

She’s probably skipped her way off to His Highness already, none the wiser. Makes the timing of this whole order a little sticky, but it’s nothing he can’t straighten out once she’s out of the pretty prince’s eyesight. Nothing like a royal decree and a frog march with a few guardsmen to really sell the story, after all.

But when he whips around, searching the scene through the gate, and— there, a flash of red flitting through the arcade. Ha, so the idiot hadn’t lied when about her coming through just before he got here. And just his luck, she’d stuck around long enough to hear her golden ticket get revoked.

His hand clenches on his shoulder, barely dulling the ache. Well, isn’t this nice? In the time it’d take him to convince the guards to get up off their duffs, the little gold digger’s going to have gotten her teeth sunk into the prince.

He’s never been much for plans. Contingencies, sure— nothing wrong with stacking the deck in to make sure he stays in Lady Luck’s favor. But when at any given moment a casual remark can drag his day to grinding halt, it’s his wits he’s learned to fly by. Wits and a good dose of sheer animal instinct, since when he tracks that cardinal weaving between columns, he’s already up on his toes, ready to give chase.

Not on her heels like some wet-behind-the-ears footpad on his first follow— that would take him through too many people, guards and nobles alike, all of them used to giving commands and expecting to be obeyed. No, he’s a half dozen steps past the gate when he finds his first foothold, vaulting himself up onto the shifting thatch of some outbuilding. It’s only a skip and a jump— maybe a harrowing leap or two, but who’s counting— before he’s up on the castle’s roof, tiles clacking and clattering beneath his boots. Not his usual ones, worn in and worn down, silent as a whisper, but the new ones His Grace’s bootblacks had shined to gleaming, made more for stirrups than streets, and certainly not for rooftops.

These tiles aren’t made for walking either, but he’s no stranger to making do— even a slip off the gutters is better than being brought to his knees by some young court flower, shocked at the impropriety of a man passing by her too quick. They might shift and slide, their smooth surfaces slick beneath a pair of boots too fine for friction, but his stride is still longer than some little miss, and his path far straighter. Oh, she might know all the twists and turns between the gate and the west wing, but he—

Well, all he needs is line of sight.

Plans might not be his forte, but his one contingency is tucked up against the tower— a library maybe, or some royal offices, he’d never bothered to check— caught against the rough patchwork between one hall’s straight roof and the curve of the tower’s. The quiver’s untouched, bow still safe in the shadows even under the mid-day sun, and it’s nothing to string it, just—

Just this damned coat doesn’t fit. One pull to full draw and he’s got shoulders up to his neck, practically drowning him in wool.

“Ha.” He’s careful to set the bow down gentle, leaning it against the fancy balustrade they’ve got rigged up round this place, even though there’s not even a door to get out to it. “Should have known. Noble messenger was never gonna sit easy on these shoulders.”

There’s no time for a full costume change, not when he can see her dodging the west wing guards idling in the arcade, but he’s got enough to shuck off his shell of respectability, letting it crumple to the tile. Hopefully whoever His Grace lifted it from didn’t expect it back— he sure wouldn’t be carting it through the gutters to make it happen.

Strung and nocked, the bow sits easy in his hands, not even a tremble on the draw. She’s not quick enough to make aiming a challenge, cutting a path without a single dodge or weave save for where she needs to skirt passerby. If he let it loose right now, he could stop her right in her tracks, let her bleed crimson all over this spotless white, but—

Don’t harm her. His hand jerks, curse curled around it, loosing the arrow wide, burying ash in stone rather than skin. He grins, draw hand flexing at his side.

“Nice,” he murmurs, watching the girl stare at the shaft that’s sprouted from the wall in front her. “Couldn’t have done it better myself.”

There’s a message bound on the shaft, a pretty bit of ribbon he’d snagged from a passing pigtail, but he doubts she’ll see it, never mind bother to read it. The arrow’s enough, most times, for people to pick up that they’re not wanted. This is the part of the job he likes most— in fear, everyone obeys with the same haste as he does.

But not this girl. The ribbon’s half unfurled from the force of the shot, and she lets it trail between her fingers as she unwraps the rest. To our dear red-headed guest, it reads, a clever bit if he says so himself— but even with the spyglass, he’s too far away to appreciate how her eyes must widen, how all that brazen greed must give out to fear. His one regret keeping his hands so clean on this one, since—

Since she just rips is out of the wall and runs. Not out, the way any reasonable person would, but in. Not to safety but toward—

Toward the prince. The prince, and this whole little debacle going entirely tits up.

Make sure she goes home. The command itches like a pulse beneath his skin, one he can feel all the way to his fingers. And for once, he doesn’t resist.

Little Miss Pushing-Her-Luck careens around the colonnades' corners, boots squealing as she slips past another pair of promising guardsmen, too confounded by her speed to do more than shout out, “Slow down!” before her back disappears.

The command nips at his heels, trying to sink its teeth into enough sinew to hobble him— that’s the real danger being out in the streets; this curse likes to turn caltrop whenever his ear catches a raised voice— but he’s old hand at dancing out of arm’s reach. A few hops across a convenient balcony and a tip-toe across a balustrade sees him safe, whatever weak tether those words have snapping as he drops down onto a tree branch. His feet plant, back to bark, as she races through the halls around him, arrow still clutched in her grip.

“Welp,” he sighs, cold metal sliding between his knuckles like old friend. “I tried to be nice, but looks like the only way to get rid of a leech is the old fashioned way.”

He lifts his arm, letting his curse set his aim—

Just to catch himself as a mop of silver-white rounds the corner, trailed by a giant and a goddess, both with blades at their hip— and the casual coiled strength of people who know how to use them. His Highness and his aides— the younger one. “Shirayuki?”

Well, damn. Steel presses cold to his palms as he pockets them. Looks like he’s run out of chances.

He expects the girl to hole up; after all, what better way to cozen up to a prince than to convince him her life’s on the line? His Grace might have told him to keep the carpets clean when it came to dislodging this particular pest from the palace, but it’ll take more than a little discouragement now that she’s gone to ground. No way she’ll just walk out here and let him have another chance—

And yet, that’s what she does. Slips right out of the prince’s office— empty-handed, he notices, stomach sinking down to his knees— and down the colonnade. Like she were any other guest. Like she didn’t just survive an arrow flying in her path.

This girl’s either the bravest woman he’s ever seen, or the stupidest. And he doesn’t have time to decide, not before she takes two steps and comes face to face with the one person who can make this situation even worse: his boss.

His fingers dig right into his shoulder, trying to ease the ache. It’s not his business, whatever they’re talking about. Not unless His Grace had a mind to make it so, which doesn’t seem likely when—

Ah, when he’s drawing his blade. And holding it, right there, at the young miss’s throat.

Protect your client. His breath catches, old words gripping him like a mother cat does its kitten: with jaws around its neck. Even at cost to yourself.

“Ha.” The laugh slips through the space between his teeth. “Guess there’s no getting around that one.”

It’s not easy to climb his way over— the trees here are ornamental, meant to sway prettily in the breeze, not hold weight, and spaced to encourage soft-soled nobles to stroll between them. A scoundrel swinging from branch-to-branch is straight out.

And yet, with a few more gravity-defying leaps than he’d like to think about, he makes it to the one just beneath the second floor’s balustrade. Fingers gripping tight, they hauling him up, his arms giving one good tremble before he spills himself over the stone. Ah, maybe he shouldn’t have turned his nose up at that breakfast. Looks like he could have used it.

He glances up, ears perked to hear just what sort of drama has unfolded in his absence—

“Fine, if you’re right, and I’m not supposed to be here” —the girl steps forward, the blade so close it dints her skin— “then it’s your duty to take that blade and cut me down.”

—and somehow it’s gone and got worse. Ah, if only his shoulder would let up on him, maybe he’d be able to think this through. At least before His Grace went and did his job for him.

“Stop, girl!” The naked blade trembles, catching the barest glint of the afternoon sun. “I won’t hesitate.”

There’s a moment where the girl startles, eyes blinking wide, first to His Grace, then to the sword between them. This is where anyone else would balk, where they would shuffle back and try to save face, but she—

She only smiles, letting the point dip so close it’s luck that keeps it from drawing blood. “Be my guest.”

#obiyukibingo24 #obiyuki #akagami no shirayukihime #snow white with the red hair #ella enchanted au #my fic #ans #it's been years but the bingo gods delivered this to me on a silver platter so HERE I AM #i was hoping to actually get to the place where obi and shirayuki meet #BUT HEY #what's a little more obi acting shady for our pleasure here #next chapter-- whenever it happens-- should have some real lore drops for the careful reader 😏

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