Work Text:
When the last of Ankh’s consciousness dissolves, he and Eiji are falling. He lets go, secure in the knowledge that there are other hands reaching out for Eiji, strong and sure and gentle enough to bear him back safely to earth. That will have to be enough.
Then, for a time—he doesn’t know how long—there is darkness. The dark is warm somehow, and peaceful, and for a while he is content to drift, unthinking, untethered to existence. After what might be an eternity, he notices something. Something which he dismisses at first as a trick of the mind.
There, flickering faintly in the endless blackness, is a light.
The light, pale and barely there at first, like a distant star, seems to glow brighter the longer he stares at it. It pulses gently, as if it were a beating heart. Impulsively, Ankh reaches toward it, and as he does so, realizes that the light—impossibly—seems to be moving closer. Even more impossibly, for one wonderous instant, he could swear he feels fingertips brushing against his own, and he knows with a certainty that crashes into him like a physical blow: Eiji is reaching out to him, Eiji is in danger, Eiji needs him.
Gripped by a sense of sudden urgency, Ankh reaches with all his might toward the place where he knows Eiji is waiting for him, and the light expands in response, engulfing him.
He comes to in free fall, Eiji’s hand clasping his tightly.
It takes less than a second for his instincts to kick in, wings bursting open in a shower of iridescent crimson feathers, to slow their fall and deliver his reckless, beloved, idiot human safely to solid ground.
Eiji gazes at him for a long moment, tearful and awestruck, until Ankh can’t take it anymore and snarls, “What kind of imbecile jumps out of a building when he can’t fly?!”
The lack of self-preservation shouldn’t come as a shock anymore, but it galls him all the same. Eiji, for his part, at least has the sense to look abashed.
“I, uh. I didn’t—there wasn’t time to think.”
Unbelievable. Ankh wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until his bones rattle. Then, Eiji smiles sheepishly at him, and Ankh wants to grab him by the shoulders and kiss him senseless.
Eiji interrupts him, however, before he can act on either of those urges.
“Anyway, you can scold me later. We’re short on time right now.”
Ankh scoffs and rolls his eyes, but a lopsided smile threatens to escape confinement.
From there, it's easy to fall back into the rhythm of fighting alongside Eiji, either supporting him from the sidelines or fused with him as part of the Tajador combo, but as the battle wears on, Ankh starts to feel weak and overextended. It dawns on him, inexorable, that whatever power brought him back won’t be able to keep him here indefinitely. He wonders if Eiji feels it too—that their time together is limited—if that’s what’s pushing him to fight so hard, to steal one more moment of peace for both of them in the aftermath.
Then, as soon as it began, it’s over, and he’s standing face to face with Eiji again. Eiji, who beams at him, dimpled smile like the sun, but Ankh can feel the void slowly eating away at him. Their time together will be up soon.
“I’m sorry Ankh, it’s been so hectic today that I haven’t had time to buy the ice cream I promised you.”
The apology is genuinely contrite, as if Ankh could be angry that Eiji hadn’t had the forethought to buy ice cream during the apocalypse. As if Ankh had been thinking of ice cream at all before now. His chest aches, right where his heart might be if he were a human, and he’s struck by the need to say something, or do something, in the little time they have left.
It must show on his face, because Eiji takes a hesitant step forward and carefully lays a hand on Ankh’s shoulder.
“Hey, Ankh, is everything alright? Are you—”
He never finds out what Eiji was going to ask, because Ankh throws all caution to the wind, seizes the front of Eiji’s shirt in his clawed hand, and pulls him into a desperate kiss.
Eiji makes a muffled noise of surprise against his mouth, and then he’s kissing back with a tender yearning that makes the ache in Ankh’s chest all the more acute.
He kisses Eiji until he can no longer feel the softness of his lips, and then reluctantly pulls away. Touch and taste always seem to be the first senses to go.
“Eiji...” he starts to say something, but the words form a painful lump in his throat. Saying goodbye seems at once like too much and not nearly enough.
“Ankh...” Eiji’s expression is stricken. “You’re fading away again.”
He smiles wanly as the colour begins to bleed out of the world.
“Ankh, listen to me, okay?” The conviction in Eiji's voice is strained, as if he’s trying to reassure himself as much as he is Ankh. “We’ll see each other again, I know we will. There’s a future for both of us, together, someday...”
“I’ll meet you there.” says Ankh, as he drifts off.