middleofsomewhere | So Familiar a Gleam: Conclusion

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So Familiar a Gleam: Conclusion

Time to leave!

There is not much of the city left, but the park is holding together as those anchoring help those who are not voidtreckers through back to where they belong. Monsters continue to attack and a little further out there is a battle of hearts and minds being fought with the mass of colours and chaos.

Eventually, after the bulk of citizens had been evacuated everyone with SCA's on would hear Jin-Roh's voice after a few frantic beeps, as Chiff aligned everyone's SCA's. "We are almost done here, if you are with anyone not tethered to a voidcraft get them to the evacuation point, as quickly as possible."

Anan pulls out of the anchoring point to call out to any defenders in the park. "Come on! Anyone who isn't a voidtrecker! It's time to go."

Luckily those off fighting the entity headed the message and made their way to the park as Jin Roh spoke again.

"Everyone else get ready. When we call it you need to leave. If you don't have your SCA on then get to someone who does."

As the last people rushed to the park Anan calls out again, through her SCA and outloud to the park. "You need to unanchor, before you can evacuate. Everyone be ready."

She goes in again though, because there are some last people, those from the large battle, getting through as another message was called.

"Almost there. Be ready. On my command..."

Anan unanchored again. "Quick everyone unanchor."

"NOW" Jin Roh's voice came through strong on their SCA's. Hopefully those with SCA's would grab those without.

There is some outside help as well, the train pulls anyone who is unconscious or still under the entity's control, forcibly evacuating them. This includes Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji and Zagreus.

Luggage Carriage

There has been a mass evacuation before and that was crazy enough but since then the population of the train has almost doubled and now it is an extremely tight squeeze as everyone crashes into the luggage carriage at the same time.

The train jerks and rolls as they enter into the void at breakneck speed and again as they seem to slow, rather than speeding off though the void.

There's a crackling from their SCA's. "Voidtreckers? Voidtreckers come in!" Anan's voice. "Please tell me you made it..."

There's only a few moments of signal and soon they are flying though the void again, away from the strange non-world, the entity sealed for now. To new adventures, but first hopefully some time to recover from all that has happened.

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"I'm going to hold you to that!" Devero calls after him, eyes sparkling despite his fatigue.

He doesn't wait to apply himself to the food. Any intention to eat slowly crumbles after the first bite, because now that his appetite is awake it's powerful. He starts to wolf down the fish and rice like he hasn't eaten in days.

It's not until nearly two thirds of his generous meal is gone that he's able to slow down and actually appreciate what he's eating. He's still lingering over the last of it when Koumyou returns; there's a little more life in his face as he looks up from the tray.

"'Course I am," he says with a crooked grin. "I've got to make sure you eat too, haven't I?"

"I said I would!" Koumyou whines for effect, but he's glad to see Dev's perked up with the food and tea. Lady Wiggles walks in at his heels -- looking suspiciously damp. Someone had miscalculated and gotten into the shower. And someone is pretending that did not happen.

Koumyou pulls Devero's ticket out of his sleeve and offers it over, and then climbs up onto the bed, taking his usual spot between Dev and the wall without jostling anything too much along the way.

Edited 2021-08-01 02:18 (UTC)

Luckily for Devero, he knows well enough by now to make absolutely no outward acknowledgement of Lady Wiggles' ignominious condition. In fact, why not play it safe and not make any eye contact with Wiggles at all? That seems like a good plan!

He holds still as Koumyou clambers over him and settles down, and then lets his full weight tip into Koumyou's shoulder, squashing him deliberately into the wall. "I just wanted to be suuure," he whines back. "I know how you can be about food!"

"I forget! It's not that I really avoid it or anything!" Koumyou protests, be-squished. Enjoy smushing into his bony, knobby shoulder, Dev. The priest knows he's about as comfortable to lay against as the katana he'd loaned Devero recently, and he has about as much give to him, too.

"Hunger's just sort of background noise, you know?" After his upbringing.

"I know," he says more gently, letting up on the pressure. He knows and it makes him incredibly sad. He reaches out and takes up Koumyou's nearer hand for a squeeze. "That's why it's my job to remind you, as much as I can. I know I have some pretty big shoes to fill when it comes to looking after you--" You know, compared to his son. "--but I like to think I'm doing okay."

Koumyou's hand is taken, and it's his turn to lean in now, restting the side of his head on Devero's shoulder. "You are."

He probably eats more on this train than he ever had in his first life, though he still looks like a starving stray cat under his clothes. All sharp bones and wiry muscle and taut scars... and he's usually okay with that. Usually.

Devero's the only one he's... shy? No, that's not quite the right word. Ashamed? Still not quite right. Concerned, worried, with letting see his state. Because if Koumyou makes one wrong move...

And he will...

He doesn't want to horrify Devero any more than he wants to scare him. Both seem unavoidable eventualities.

Realizing he's let his thoughts wander off into the dark on their own, Koumyou stirs and straightens back up, reaching into the ARMs band for a bowl of fish and rice, and a pair of chopsticks.

Devero leans his cheek against the crown of Koumyou's head and breathes in the clean fragrance of damp hair and train toiletries. He's unaware of the tenor of the other man's thoughts, and so tired he's not even trying to guess after them. He just rests quietly for as long as Koumyou leans against him.

When the priest sits up, he does too, but not before pressing a smooch to Koumyou's temple.

"It's really good," he assures him, picking up his own chopsticks for another bite of (what little is left of) his portion. "Thank you."

Edited 2021-08-01 03:02 (UTC)

"I'm glad," Koumyou does, in fact, sound a little relieved at that. "It's been a long time since I've actually cooked something for real, though most of the things in the kitchen car are about as alien to me as your exo would be.

"I think things like... modern stoves and the like, aren't unheard of even in Shangri-la, but I've never actually touched one before this place."

Life-long temple dweller that he had been. And when traveling, he'd made do with a campfire like he usually does on missions.

Edited 2021-08-01 03:09 (UTC)

"That's still so hard for me to imagine," Devero admits with a shake of his head. "I always think I've wrapped my head around the technological differences between my world and yours, and then you go and say something like you never touched a stove before you ended up on the train."

He looks over at the priest with a wondering little sigh. "You amaze me."

That startles a laugh out of Koumyou, "Why does that amaze you? I was an isolated temple brat and I eventually became an even more isolated Sanzo priest. Temples had wood stoves that we cooked on! I should know, I chopped a lot of wood as the demerit monk!"

"And yet you've adapted to being here a lot better than I have," Devero says. "You know how to use pretty much everything on the train--" (certain kitchen fires notwithstanding) "--the stoves and washers and-- and the ice cream machine. Me, I just moan about things not being as high-tech as I'm used to and then try to make or import shit from my world that barely works here."

He looks away, fiddling with his chopsticks. "You're so-- resilient. That's what's so amazing."

"I'm not really, I don't think," Koumyou argues gently, "I just don't care about those things as much as you do. Or most things."

Learning to use the ICP and the ice cream machine and the cinema car's controls... if he'd cared, he might have gotten hung up more on how strange it all was.

(Well, okay, he'd cared about the ice cream machine... until it had stopped holding his interest, at least.)

"I'm an apathetic nihilist, and you want to improve everything you touch."

"Where I come from, pretty much everything can be improved," he muses after thinking about it for a moment. "Processes streamlined, procedures made more accessible, technology refined-- there's just so much opportunity, and so many resources available to everyone. Equipment, education, supplies..."

He looks over at Koumyou sidelong, expression drooping. "You were denied the opportunities I take for granted." Rust and ruin, Koumyou had been denied food and security-- as a child! The barest of basics! He has to take a deep breath to keep from getting helplessly angry about that yet again. "But you fought, and you survived, and you became the first Sanzo on your world to successfully protect two sutras, for decades. How can you say you're not resilient, after all that?"

Koumyou picks at his food with his chopsticks, half-eaten. He's been slowly working at it while they've talked, and his eyes stay fixed down on it.

"I just wasn't willing to die, that's all. At least until the alternative was too high a price for me."

Watching his son die instead... he simply couldn't do it. Duty said he should have. He should have done a lot of things differently, according to his duty. Koumyou should have trained his successor properly, should have let the young boy do his duty and die to protect the sutras, as any monk in the temple would have without a second thought.

But, he was a failure. The demerit monk, right to the end.

He can feel the way the mood has sobered, see it in Koumyou's downcast eyes. He tucks his arm through Koumyou's elbow and squeezes. "There's more to you than that," Devero says intently, "even if you can't see it from where you are."

"I don't like what I do see."

That's putting it very mildly.

Koumyou is also full of festering, rotten wounds inside, some older than Devero has been alive. And this is a very large and very deep one:

He hates himself.

"I know." He doesn't yet know just how widely spread and deeply rooted Koumyou's self-loathing is, but that doesn't mean he's oblivious to it. "But I do. And I-- I hope, in time, that I can help you to see what it is I see....

"The same way you want to do for me." Yeah, he's not unaware of that parallel between them. He takes his arm out of Koumyou's and puts it around his shoulders instead. "If you get to be my cheerleader, I get to be yours."

Koumyou just leans into Devero's side and is quiet, because if he speaks he's going to say something horrible. And it will either frighten or anger or upset the other man, and he doesn't want to do that.

It will happen anyway, of course. It has before, and it will again, and next time there may be no coming back. The longer he can put it off, the better.

Selfishly...

The longer Devero likes him, the better.

Devero can tell that this is not a happy silence, and were he in a better state himself, he'd pursue it. He wants to pursue it. But he also doesn't want to upset his Koumyou, not when he's so worn out and knows he'd bungle it if they get into another one of those fights.

So, selfishly, he doesn't break the silence.

He's just going to Koumyou against his side for as long as the priest will let him (or until the stillness and silence make him doze off, whichever comes first).

And the silence stretches on for a while, until Koumyou feels the pressure behind his throat go down, and he can take a deep breath and straighten back up a bit. Not pulling away per se (not that there's really room on this bunk, huge though it may seem compared to the single bunks), but not slumped anymore either.

He has to ask something that... he's worried about.

"Did I frighten you, on the mission? When I killed all those monsters."

He's aware he hadn't done quite that much murdering in front of Devero before. It had been a lot of crunching, snapping bones and tendons, torn limbs, fire. The screams of broken and burning monsters.

Water manipulation's always come easiest to Koumyou, but he can't create it out of thin air. Fire and lightning, though, that's just energy.

And once he'd started murdering, he hadn't stopped until nothing monstrous was still moving but himself.

Devero's in a dozey state of partial-awareness when Koumyou shifts and speaks next, that foggy place where his body wants to sleep but his mind is trying to stay awake. He pulls his arm back and rubs the shoulder automatically as his brain processes the question; the moment he parses it is clear by the way he goes still beside Koumyou.

In the time since Koumyou had annihilated the monster horde, Devero has been too busy and too focused on the evacuation to think about what he'd witnessed. And since returning to the train, well. He's been out.

Koumyou's words bring it crashing back in on him: the grim realization that he was going to die along with a lot of people who wouldn't magically come back; the whiplash of hope he'd felt when Koumyou had arrived on the scene like one of his gods had delivered him there. The sounds of pure butchery and pain, the smell of blood spilled, the acrid taste/scent of flesh and hair burning, the spatter of blood across his exposed skin; the sight of this man he loved, who could be so tender and sweet with him, mowing down the attacking creatures with cold-eyed ruthlessness.

He sits with that memory for a moment and tries to pick apart what he's feeling. He finds a queasy sickness engendered by the horror of the spectacle. He finds a general sort of incomprehension of the brutal skill on display. He finds uneasiness in the face of Koumyou's ability to commit such violence without pause or qualm and turn immediately to smiling and fussing after. He finds relief that Koumyou had eliminated the danger so decisively, shame that he feels relieved by so many deaths, and... concern, realizing only now that he'd been trying for killshots of his own, every time he fired that blunt-nosed revolver.

What he does not find is fear of his Sanzo.

"No," he says finally, his expression distant and still thoughtful. "It was... overwhelming, and I wish it hadn't been necessary, but you didn't frighten me."

Koumyou sits patiently and quietly while Devero thinks. He's often been the one to go quiet for a few moments when asked something that takes some mulling, so he's certainly prepared to wait when Devero does it.

Really, he appreciates this. If Devero had shot off a response too quickly, he'd have had a harder time believing it when--

Well, when he says no.

Koumyou's relief is dizzying, and a lot of tension he didn't know he was holding in his back and shoulders just... runs out of him. "Good. Okay, good. I'd... I'd really worried. I know what I..."

Am good at. Am good for.

"What I'm like. And while I have no sense of normal, even I know I can be a... a lot in that kind of situation."

As Devero had pointed out earlier, he's the Sanzo who has protected two sutras for multiple decades. There's a lot of dead people in his shadow, and most were far more sapient than those creatures had been.

He couldn't even promise that they'd all had it coming. Swallowed up so thoroughly by 'hold nothing', he hadn't really cared.

Devero hates that Koumyou is the kind of person who can kill that easily, that brutally. It makes him uncomfortable and forces him to face uncomfortable parts of himself.

But he doesn't hate Koumyou. He knows that if they're going to last, he has to come to terms with this reality of his partner's.

"It was a lot," Devero says frankly. "It... it makes me a little sick to think about. But those creatures... they craved violence, didn't they? They were... hunting us, weren't they?"

Is he trying to justify the fact that it doesn't bother him as much as he feels it should, that they all died? Or is he trying yet again to come to terms with the fact that there are people and things in the multiverse that are truly, unequivocally evil?

"I won't pretend I only murder when it's kill or be killed," Koumyou says quietly, "but in this case, yes. That group wasn't the only one I took down, and the victims weren't always still... save-able."

Some were still alive, but. Considering the monsters had been chowing down on them, it had been more merciful to not leave them that way.

This was the sort of thing a Sanzo priest was kind of used to.

But Koumyou isn't trying to hide what he is, even though he's avoided showing it so explicitly before.

"I killed some of their victims... what was left of them. When I saw them coming after you, and Kouryuu, I knew I couldn't let any get away."

And it would have been a quicker death for all the monsters if he'd just fully-fired the Seiten sutra and took them all out in one fell swoop, but he'd been mad. He'd wanted to feel bones snap, hear screams, and smell the burning of the creatures who had dared to target the two most important people to him.

"So I... won't lie and pretend everything I've ever killed has been justified like that, but in this particular case, it was."

"I don't want you to lie to me," Devero says quietly, "not about what you've had to do in your life. You are who you are and you've done what you've done, and I want to know and love all of you."

He folds his hands on the lap tray in front of him and twiddles his thumbs together. "You saved us. All of us. We were-- going to die." He has to pause there, eyes going hollow and distant. As gentle as his world is, even when he's been doing his most dangerous work he's never been afraid of dying during it. Even on Erda, when he'd thought everyone from the train had been killed around him, he hadn't seen his own death, only a furious need to revenge himself.

Standing in the door of that gas station, while Genjo screamed defiance at the horde closing in? That's the first time gentle Devero has had to look his own death in the eye.

Remembering the feeling now, he shudders, and continues, "I'm grateful for what you did, even if it-- was a lot."

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