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 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."

I want to know and love all of you.

Koumyou doesn't realize his eyes are swimming with tears until he glances over and up at Devero through his bangs, and the sight of him is blurry.

He blinks them away, and twists a little to better burrow against Devero's side.

"I don't deserve you," he says quietly, a little choked, "but I'm grateful for whatever time we have together."

Before, you know, Devero heals enough to move on. That's just a given.

"Hey," he murmurs, suddenly a little choked up himself. "Come here." He twists too, gathering Koumyou against his chest.

"Listen. I don't give a shit what you think you deserve," he says, just a bit of a rumble in his voice, "just like you don't give a shit what I think I deserve. Right?" Because all the virtues in the world know he feels like he doesn't deserve someone as amazing as Koumyou.

"Let's... let's just agree that we're terrible judges of our own character, yeah?" he says. He's revealed by the quaver in his voice as he suggests it; his own virulently hateful self-conception is nearly as deeply rooted as Koumyou's. But he's got some space from it now, has fought his demons to claim every inch of that ground since he arrived on the train. He knows he's right, even if the beaten dog in his brain howls that he's wrong.

And how many of those inches did Koumyou help him gain, usually while Devero was actively fighting him? Devero shifts, enough to try and tilt Koumyou's face up to his. "Koumyou, you've been the reality check I didn't even know I needed until I ended up here. Trust me to return the favor?"

Face tipped up, Koumyou's expression is stricken.

"I'm a failure at everything but killing," Koumyou tells him softly, and he's voicing what he thinks is a simple fact. "Why would this be any different?"

He ducks his head again, buried against Devero's shoulder. "I just... need to not fuck up too badly until you don't need me anymore. And I'm terrified I won't even manage that...!"

"You are not," Devero tells him, more emphatically than anything else he's said since he got back onboard the train. "How can you say that, knowing you showed your son the only kindness he's probably ever known in your hell of a world? Do you think that little shit would have wasted a moment of his time on you if he didn't think you were worth it?"

He lets Koumyou hide away against him, and wraps his arms around the priest as tightly as his depleted strength can manage. As close as they are, Koumyou will feel the way his breath catches when the priest mentions need. 'Until you don't need me anymore.' "Koumyou, I'm not with you because I-- because I need you, I'm with you because I love you."

Koumyou doesn't have words to respond with, so he just breaks down crying into Devero's shoulder. Ugly, wracking sobs, sharpened by a fear that goes down to his bones.

"Oh, Koumyou," Devero breathes, and holds him that much closer. As the priest has done so patiently for him in this little sanctuary of theirs, Devero lets him cry. Occasionally, he strokes a hand down the sharp planes of his back. Occasionally, he murmurs softly into his hair: "Let it out. I've got you. I'm here."

And he's not planning on going anywhere.

Koumyou tries, but eventually when he stops it's not because he's reached some kind of catharsis, but because he's just too tired to keep crying. So it eventually winds down, and all he can do is slump against Devero, damn near rag-doll save for the shaking arm he lifts to wipe at his eyes with his sleeping robe's sleeve.

Devero releases him enough to snag the towel he's still got over his hips, wriggling a little as he drags it out without jostling anything else on the bed too much. He finds a dry spot and starts to clean the priest's face, again as Koumyou so often does for him.

"I've got you," he says again, leaning in to press his lips to Koumyou's forehead above the chakra.

Koumyou certainly doesn't resist, letting his arm drop back down and shutting his eyes, which are still slowly leaking tears that he's too tired to stop.

By the time Devero's done mopping his face, he can tell that Koumyou's not done with this cry. It's just. Interrupted.

"I'm going to clear the bed off," he murmurs, and disengages to take care of that quickly. The dishes and tray he just down on their tiny table, and takes a second to pull on his own pajamas since he's up. He's actually winded by the time he's done with just that, though, his motions sluggish and heavy as he climbs back up on the bed.

Regardless, Koumyou still needs him. "ARMS band, please."

The priest has pretty much run out of energy. It's not like he's not physically tired from their mission, he just isn't as wiped out as Devero from it.

Mentally and emotionally, he's running on fumes.

Mutely, he shakes the band down off his arm under his gi and robe, and offers the thin wrist it's now draped around like a gaudy magical bangle bracelet.

Devero takes that bony hand in both of his and lifts it to kiss the back of it before he removes the band. Reaching inside, he pulls out a water bottle for him and one for Koumyou. "Here," he says, putting it in his hands. "Drink some of this before we sleep, please."

Koumyou uncaps it and drains the bottle in one long pull. Not because he's super thirsty, but just to get it all into himself with the least work.

Only once it's empty does he re-cap it and hand it back, and then he scoots down on the bed, moving like he's aged a few decades in the last few minutes.

Sometimes he really does feel like a sad, middle-aged old man. This is one of those times.

Devero empties his with a similar single-mindedess, then tucks both of the bottles back into the band and sets it aside. He slides down into the bed as well, pulling the covers up over them both and then gathering Koumyou up. Assuming the other man doesn't resist, Devero will curve his whole body around his partner, making a bulwark of his broad back between Koumyou and the rest of the world.

Koumyou does not resist, of course. All he does is take a double handful of Devero's pajamas, and curl into him.

And he's quiet, for a while.

So quiet.

Until--

"...Did you try to pet the Seiten?"

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