Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Zanka was loath to admit it, but he was in way over his head.

Three years. Three years, he’d followed behind Enjin like a stray puppy followed the first person to give it food. Three years, he’d poured every ounce and every drop of sweat and every shred of motivation he had into becoming a better, stronger Cleaner. Three years, he’d desperately chased every scrap of attention and every compliment the older man had to offer him.

And admittedly, he’d started to break.

He always knew his feelings weren’t returned, and that it was impossible they ever would be. Zanka had learned to redirect his affections into other outlets. Learned how to improve himself not for his leader’s acknowledgement, but for himself. He’d learned how to grow stronger for his own benefit and the Cleaners alike, not just because he craved for the older man to tell him he was doing a good job, but because he wanted to be better.

However, Zanka wasn’t a natural talent. He wasn’t gifted. He could pour everything he had into being a Cleaner, and even as one of their supposed strongest, the gap between him and everyone else was a neverending canyon he somehow couldn’t seem to cross through sheer grit alone.

It was a stifling life to live. Whether he poured in his all for the Cleaners as a whole or specifically for Enjin’s brief recognition, it wasn’t enough. It’d never be enough.

Zanka moved through the halls of headquarters with a quiet, calm precision, his staff clutched in his arms. He was wearing simple robes for training, his skin slick with sweat, trodding through the corridor back to his room after practicing. He wasn’t really sure how long he’d been out there this time. The sun was high in the sky when he’d started, and in the time he’d been doing his drills, the sky had turned completely dark, the windows along the walls unable to show him the world outside due to the hallway lights reflecting off them.

Most people used their nights off for more entertaining things, something Zanka couldn’t join in on. Among the gifted and talented Cleaners, he was painfully average, only able to stand toe-to-toe with them thanks to raw discipline. They could afford to slack off on their free days. It wasn’t like he hadn’t taken some time to himself today anyway, he’d polished his staff, meditated, and read a book for a while. All self-improvements, all necessary, all reminders of the gulf between him and his coworkers.

Even the bone-deep ache in his joints from training hadn’t eliminated the feelings that drug him out to the practice field in the first place. Always the same, stupid anxieties. They screamed in his head relentlessly, telling him he wasn’t enough, that he was a fraud, that he didn’t even deserve to be here.

Scuffling in the hall caught his attention, and he spotted Gris walking with Follo strung over his shoulders, the younger supporter stumbling drunkenly forward with most of his weight leaned on the man. They were both dressed in street clothes, having clearly just come back from the bar. Typical. It’s not that they didn’t have every right to go, but Enjin always went with them, and that always spelled disaster. At least, it did for the tightness he felt in his heart, especially when he noted the lack of a familiar blond with them.

"Zankaaa!" Follo greeted him with a wide, loopy smile. "You sh’ld come with us nex’ time!"

Zanka’s lips tightened into a thin line. He wasn’t particularly fond of drinking, but he’d joined them on a handful of occasions. He’d been forced to stop after only a couple times, not because of the alcohol, but because there was a mountain of difference between knowing that his team leader slept around and actually watching Enjin flirt with women right in front of him.

He wasn’t jealous, he told himself. It wasn’t a secret that Enjin had eyes for women. Women with nice bodies, soft curves, pretty faces. It wasn’t a secret that Zanka had none of those things. Being jealous would be absurdly stupid of him.

Besides, Zanka was a member of his team now. He had to be sturdy, reliable. His role was not to capture Enjin’s drunken affections in late night bars. It was to support him in combat with due diligence and integrity. It was to fill out his reports accurately. It was to double and triple check their gear before missions.

Yet every single time it happened, another hairline fracture took root in his heart. And after three years he’d begun to crumble.

"To the bar?" he asked, his voice clipped. "I don’t have time for that."

Gris offered him a sad smile, adjusting Follo on his shoulders. "You always work yourself to the bone, Zanka. Of course, you don’t have to join us if you don’t want to, but you should get some rest. You were training when we left, did you only just stop?"

"I did."

"You’re a scary man, Zanka," the drunken Follo mumbled, "Always workin’. Like a robot. How d’you have the energy?"

The words hit him like a blow. A robot. Not human. Not lovable. A robot was anything but a soft and tender companion, anything but a warm embrace. A robot didn’t demand a second glance, it just did its job.

But all of Zanka’s energy came from the desperate, seething need for his team leader to look at him without skipping straight over him, to acknowledge his contributions. He’d built his discipline so high he rarely got that type of attention anymore. Enjin barely noticed him unless he did extraordinary things these days, because why would he need acknowledgement for doing what he did every day?

"It’s just discipline," he muttered, clutching his staff. "Speaking of undisciplined, where’s Enjin? I still have to go over yesterday’s report with him."

Gris inhaled awkwardly, shushing Follo before the boy could answer. "He went home with somebody, he said he’ll be back in the morning."

Oh.

Zanka rolled his eyes, feigning nonchalance he didn’t feel. "Typical. Whatever, I’ll hunt him down tomorrow. You two have a good night."

The two supporters wished him a goodnight as they went their separate ways down the corridors.

Zanka clutched Assistaff tighter as he finally made it to his room. He shut the door with a soft click and leaned his back against the frame, hugging his vital instrument to his chest. He didn’t care, he didn’t care, he didn’t. Enjin was a grown fucking man. If he wanted to go get drunk and sleep around, that was his choice. Zanka was nothing more to him than a subordinate, and he would never, ever, be anything else.

Though, deeper down, the blow cut at his fragile, chipped core. He’d been struggling through gnawing anxieties that he didn’t really belong with the Cleaners for awhile now. It was difficult to watch Rudo’s training, knowing in his gut with certainty that he was going to be surpassed by his own student at some point. Riyo had been forced to save him after their recent mission when exhaustion took him down.

He had to look at his coworkers, look at himself, and be honest. There was a wall between him and the rest of them. He didn’t fit in. He wasn’t a natural talent, and the amount of time he spent training to make up for that flaw apparently made him aloof and scary to the others.

Zanka was delusional to think he belonged here, and that fear was now undercut with a fresh, searing pain that made it hard to breathe, at times. Not only did he not belong, he was making a fool of himself by following Enjin’s footsteps like a lost puppy. Maybe it was time to face the music and admit that, although he loved being a Cleaner, Zanka looked like a total joke trying to be seen by Enjin, and joining his team had never been the way to his heart.

Somewhere out there, the man he was foolish enough to love was exchanging body heat with a complete stranger. In many ways, it made Zanka feel like he was back in that well again, clutching onto his staff like a lifeline, following Enjin’s voice like a lure.

What he wouldn’t give to be seen as a boy in love, instead of a young man shouldering responsibilities he didn’t feel like he was ready for. He was in over his head, drowning under the crushing weight of taking on more responsibilities than anyone else just to be noticed by a man who always looked the other way.

At least the other Cleaners were here because they wanted to make a difference, wanted to be a positive influence in the world. Zanka was just selfish. A fraud. He was never meant to be heroic like the rest of them.

It was a tough Cleanup mission with a pretty moderately-sized crew, Enjin calling the shots. A small town on the eastern outskirts was being encroached upon by the nearest No Man’s Land, and as the pollution spread closer to the settlement, the trash beast attacks had gotten more frequent and more dangerous. This wasn’t just a typical cleaning, the group would have to go into the polluted zone and wipe out as many of the beasts as possible to curb the spread of the monsters.

Their reports indicated there may be a centralized source of anima causing this disaster, a hivemind of sorts, enabling the trash beasts to plunge deeper into settled land. If the Cleaners could locate it and take it out, they’d spare the townspeople from needing to evacuate and move further inland. 

The team was already on the move, having cleared out the initial waves near the town’s borders and having begun to push deeper into the polluted zone. They split up into groups with two Givers and a Supporter each, with their designated Supporters tracking anima signals while the Givers protected them from lurking beasts. Normally, it’d be way too dangerous to split up into smaller groups, but they had a lot of ground to cover in order to dispatch as many trash beasts in the proximity of the town as possible. 

Just Zanka’s luck to be paired up with Enjin. At least they had a Supporter as a buffer for the awkwardness he felt, though he may have forgotten her name.

The man was clearly tired from the fights they’d already been through that morning, but he had a bit of a swagger to his step, his Umbreaker swinging casually in his hand as they walked. Enjin could be abrasive at times, but despite the nature of the mission, he seemed pretty unbothered today. Spending his day off drinking, and the night with hot women tended to have that effect.

Zanka tried to ignore the bitterness it brought to his heart. He hated thinking about unknown, delicate hands on familiar tattooed arms, golden eyes raking over soft curves, and the mouth that usually held a cigarette pressed against glossy, red lips.

Instead, Zanka focused his full attention on the landscape around them. It was dangerous out here, and as they drew closer to the nearby No Man’s Land, that only became more true. One misstep could cost the lives of the entire squad. These beasts lurked in the shadows, and they could truly be anywhere.

A flash of movement caught his eye, his head turning to face it and his body going alert as he raised a hand to silently signal the other two to stop.

All three of them paused in their tracks. A dark creature shot from the darkness, all scraping metal and rustling garbage. It was fast, with four legs and a powerful, catlike body, similar to most of the beasts that had been sighted around the area. They were only medium-sized, but they were incredibly quick with worryingly sharp claws.

Zanka caught the beast in the prongs of his Assistaff, pushing it away from their Supporter when it lunged at the girl. He had to act fast to strike it down, because it recovered so quickly, like taking a blow barely halted its momentum. It sprung back on its feet in moments, lunging towards them too quickly for anyone to recover from the surprise of the assault.

"Get back!" he shouted at his teammate, rushing to get in the way of the strike and bracing his staff to block it.

He grunted as the full force of the blow pushed him back, but he held his ground, even when the creature’s sweeping tail curved around and slammed into his unprotected side. A flash of gold barreled into the creature, knocking it away from Zanka and pinning it to the ground. Enjin’s anima enveloped Umbreaker, and with a strong blow from the instrument, the man finished the creature off like it was nothing, returning it to dust like it belonged.

Enjin stepped away from the beast’s destroyed form, returning Umbreaker to its usual deactivated state and walking back over to the team. He checked up on their Supporter first, scanning her up and down.

"You okay? Injured at all?"

"I’m alright, I wasn’t hit."

"Good," the blond turned to Zanka and quirked a brow, "How about you?"

"Not a scratch," he replied easily, shrugging and returning his staff into resting position. He was still breathing heavily, and his side had begun to ache from the hit he took. Damn tail, not much he could’ve done about that. Still, a small hit like that wasn’t a big deal, it was nothing compared to the usual injuries they got out in places like this.

Enjin nodded in confirmation. "Heard. We continue east."

Zanka tried to ignore the disappointment that gnawed at the edge of his skull. It was just one small beast, nothing particularly worthy of commendation. It didn’t matter that Enjin didn’t have anything else to say about it.

The trio gathered their wits and continued deeper into the wasteland, tracking the anima signals as they continued to increase. Random attacks became more and more frequent the deeper they went, and while Zanka was lucky not to take any more serious hits, the stabbing pain in his side was only increasing with every battle.

As they walked on, he couldn’t help but clutch his side, exhaling sharply when he applied a little pressure on the area and felt a stinging pain make itself known instead of the dull throb he’d been feeling before. He was starting to recognize it wasn’t just a bruise, it probably went a bit deeper.

"Zanka," Enjin’s voice cut through the silence of the wasteland, crackling through the gas mask. Immediately, he dropped his hand from the sore spot. "Something wrong with your side? Are you injured?"

"It’s fine," he shrugged it off, stubbornly walking forward.

Enjin narrowed his eyes, pausing their walk and grabbing Zanka’s shoulder. "If you’re hurt, tell me so I can adjust our formation accordingly. It would be a liability to have you on the front lines if you’re unable to fight at your fullest."

A liability. Enjin thought he was a liability?

"I said I’m fine," Zanka hissed, crossing his arms. "It’s a small bruise, I’m perfectly capable of fighting."

The blond sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I’m not saying you aren’t capable, I’m saying we have a difficult fight ahead when we find the source of this anima, and I don’t need anybody getting hurt from a broken formation. If you need to be on the back line for this one, just say so."

After everything they’d been through together, Enjin had no reason to doubt Zanka’s abilities like this. He was genuinely fine, it was just a small hit and nothing more than that. Why was Enjin questioning him like this?

Increasingly agitated, Zanka pushed Enjin’s hand off his shoulder and stepped away out of arm distance. "I appreciate the concern, but you don’t have to bench me. I won’t break the formation."

His team leader held his hands up in surrender. "Alright, just checking in. Let’s go, the others are probably close by now. We’ve almost reached the source of the signal."

Everything went to shit. And it was all Zanka’s fault.

The split-up squads all regrouped into the full team, with a clear visual of the fight ahead from their vantage point on higher ground. They’d found the center of the hive, a massive horned beast surrounded with medium-sized drones like the ones they’d already been facing. Something about the big guy was just off. Trash beasts weren’t really known to communicate, but the way they moved around the monster at the center, there was intentionality to it.

The formation was simple. The frontline would surround the infestation and push inwards, saving the big, hulking beast for last. The back would handle the small fry and protect the flank. It’d be a bit tight, and they barely had enough people to pull it off, but the sheer size of the colony was a bit unprecedented.

Everything went to plan until it didn’t. Maybe Zanka should’ve listened to the warning. He really thought his injury was perfectly fine, but as the fight progressed, he found himself getting overwhelmed by the constant onslaught, and the sharp pain in his side was doing nothing but slowing him down and making his steps less precise. Things were chaotic, but despite his injury, Zanka was keeping pace with the formation and not letting any of the bigger beasts break through the offensive line.

That was until one of the beasts, a goatlike creature with curled horns and a battering ram for a head, barreled into Zanka and sent him flying, hitting the ground with a horrifying crack from his rib. All the air in his lungs was forced out of him upon his unfortunate landing, making him cough and struggle to catch his breath. He choked on the bile rising up in his throat, the impact having hit his stomach directly as he was thrown all the way to the backline. There was nothing he could do but scramble backwards away from jagged claws and pounding hooves as the beasts broke through the formation, and just like that, the entire battlefield erupted from controlled chaos to a hazardous minefield. With just one link down, his teammates were left unprotected from the sides and back, and the contained beasts now swarmed to get around the offensive line and overwhelm them.

A familiar voice cut through the frenzy, Enjin shouting at his team, "Everyone fall back! Regroup!"

Zanka managed to stumble to his feet, the entire world tilting and bleary through the haze of pain. One misstep and he’d fucked over the entire plan. The mission had devolved into a seemingly unsalvageable situation, and there was nobody to blame but his own shortcomings.

He fought his way through the stampede the best he could, heading for the ring of high ground that surrounded the valley, while trying to keep a visual on his team leader’s golden hair through the garbage and dust.

And that’s when he saw it. One of the unusually large beasts, rearing up an attack on Enjin’s turned back while the man was helping one of the Supporters get to safety.

Zanka was moving before he even had a chance to think about it.

He cut through the battlefield with a stubborn determination, forcing his way through the monsters that tried their best to maim or kill him before he could reach his team leader. "Behind you!" he shouted, but the sounds of battle swallowed up his warning.

He was running out of time. As he approached the beast from behind, he ran on sheer instinct, planting the end of Assistaff into the dirt and swinging his own body into the damned heap of garbage to knock it out of its trajectory. His kick connected with its skull, and he brought his staff around to take it down before it could recover.

A blaze of gold dispatched it before he got the chance, and a large hand grabbed him by the wrist moments later, dragging him through the carnage towards safety.

"What the fuck, Zanka?!" Enjin shouted at him over the sounds of wreckage all around them. "This isn’t the time to be showing off!"

"I wasn’t showing off?!" Zanka yelled back, baffled by the accusation. His body screamed in protest as he was dragged through the crowd. "It was about to—"

"You said you could hold the formation! What the hell happened?!"

"I—"

"You’re injured, get the fuck off the field and regroup with the back line!" Enjin pulled him forward, pushing him towards the edge of the chaos. "I’ve gotta make sure everyone is out, go!"

It was nothing more than the commands of a squad leader to his soldier, yet the harsh words cut deep through the agonized haze that sent the world swimming around Zanka’s feet. He stumbled through to safety, trudging uphill feeling like lead was strapped to his feet and knives were jabbed between each of his rib bones.

He fucked up. He fucked up so badly. The mission was completely compromised and it was his fault.

Guilt weighed heavier on his shoulders than anything else did when he finally made it to the peak where his teammates were checking injuries and gear. His teammates looked to him with concern, but their questioning voices sounded like background buzzing to his ears, he couldn’t make out a single word of it. The ground swayed beneath his feet, and he pitched forward like a heavy sack, already unconscious before even hitting the dirt.

When Zanka awoke, not only had the battle resumed, but the field was covered in the fallen bodies of trash beasts, and the rest of the Cleaners were battling the biggest one head-on.

Zanka sat up, feeling the ache in his side like a jabbing, open wound. Every breath was sharp and painful. When he looked down at it, he was shocked to find a lack of blood, outside of the other scratches he’d sustained during the fight. He was alone with their healer and another injured Supporter.

"What happened?" he asked sharply, staring down at the raging battlefield below. 

The medic looked startled that Zanka was awake, but he was quick to give an update on the mission status. "You’ve been out for around half an hour. Your ribs are cracked. After everyone regrouped, they went back in to finish off the nest."

Zanka absorbed the information in silence. In the distance, the large beast howled as the group brought it down to its knees. He was firmly benched, way too injured to participate in the fight, and they’d managed to handle the mission just fine without him. He watched the arcs of colored light from vital instruments as they streaked across the field, more visible than the bodies that wielded them from such a distance, but it was the gold that he followed with his eyes.

In a final colorful explosion, the beast crumbled to the dirt, defeated. The battlefield went completely quiet.

The group began trudging off the field and up the mountain, some of them clutching their bodies, some leaning on their teammates for support. Most people didn’t seem to come out unscathed. Yet here Zanka was, sitting the fight out while they covered for his weakness.

As they finally arrived, the medic quickly swooping in to start assessing the injured and tend to the worst ones first, Enjin planted Umbreaker in the ground and announced to the gathered troops, "Everyone did a fantastic job today. That was a tough mission, I’m proud. If you have any, get your injuries stabilized before getting in the transport. We’ll debrief back at HQ." As he spoke, his golden eyes scanned the group, meeting everyone’s eyes and giving them a firm nod— except for Zanka, sitting off to the sidelines watching the exchange.

Once the group broke, Enjin approached him, brows furrowed and clutching Umbreaker’s handle with his grip so tight it was white.

"What you did was reckless."

Zanka shrank under the man’s harsh gaze, trying to keep his pounding heart in line. He hung his head, muttering, "I’m sorry."

"I can’t call the shots if I don’t know the status of my team," Enjin lectured him, running a hand through his hair, which was shaken out of its usual style by the battle. "Shattered ribs, Zanka. Why the fuck were you on the front line?"

"I thought I was fine…"

Enjin’s tattooed hand ran down his face, dragging his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. "You hid your injuries from me, which led to the formation breaking, and then you ran into the chaos to take out a big one instead of retreating like I ordered you to."

"But it was going to—"

"You could’ve fucking died, Zanka! You haven’t had your head in the game recently. I trust you, I know you’re disciplined, I know you can handle the responsibilities. So as your team lead and your friend, what the hell is going on?!"

Zanka was always good at keeping his walls up. If he maintained his prickly exterior, nothing could hurt him. No one would know their words and actions effected him. Least of all Enjin. If Zanka just kept his cool, kept holding his head high with a confidence he didn’t really have, he could continue to play the role of a Cleaner who deserved to be there.

But he didn’t. He was a failure. He didn’t deserve to be there.

Beneath the gas mask, his lip wobbled. "I don’t know. I’ll train harder." His voice was meek, his response quiet. The words were barely audible over the wind.

"It’s not about training!" Enjin snapped at him, kneeling down to his level and looking him in the eyes. "You’re human, Zanka. You have human limits. I’m just asking for you to acknowledge that for once. When you push yourself like this, it comes at a risk for everybody."

Enjin was right. No matter what Zanka did, it was absolutely pointless to deny it. He could work ten times harder than everybody else and still be leagues behind. Being lectured by the person whose opinions he mattered the most to him was devastating, a knife that wrenched deep in his gut and hurt so much worse than his stupid broken ribs ever could.

Worthless.

He shrank back, wishing the ground would just swallow him up.

When Zanka didn’t answer him, Enjin stood up, dusting the dirt off his knees. "I’m taking you off duty for the remainder of the week. Take some time to recover. My door is always open if you need anything."

Yeah, and it was open to other people too. People who were better, stronger, prettier. People who didn’t nip at Enjin’s heels like a lost dog for attention and reassurance. People who were reliable, people who could give Enjin what he needed and keep the man satisfied, people who weren’t more demanding than they were worth.

Enjin’s retreating back felt like a final nail wedging itself in Zanka’s heart. The cracks were more than showing, and he was about to break.

Even after his physical wounds were healed, the mental ones dug deep. Just walking around headquarters left him feeling paranoid, like everybody was watching him, daring him to fuck up again. In the days since that battle, Zanka completely shut down. He didn’t leave his room except to grab food from the mess hall, and for the first time in his life, he didn’t even train. He didn’t light his incense, he didn’t meditate, he couldn’t even focus enough to read. He just sulked in silence, with the locked up part of his heart begging for his team leader to notice and come knock on his door.

But Enjin never showed up.

Zanka didn’t like to cry. Nijiku’s don’t cry, that’s what he was always told as he grew up. But the tears rolling down his face just wouldn’t stop, a pitiful display, a reminder that he was just a boy masquerading as a man. He never would be the one thing he kept faking. Not in the Cleaners’ eyes, not in Enjin’s eyes.

As he shuddered just to breathe, he made his decision, one that he thought he’d never have to make again. He thought he was done with running away from his problems when he was fourteen. His own weakness was unprecedented.

He rarely acknowledged his human limits like he was asked to, but right now, they were telling him that he couldn’t be next to the man that consumed his thoughts any longer.

That night, Zanka packed up a couple pairs of simple street clothes with his wood polishing wax and slung Assistaff over his shoulder. Other than that, he left everything behind. All of his possessions, all of his uniforms, his book collection, his incense, his communication bracelet. He didn’t need any of it where he was going.

Anywhere away from here. Anywhere away from the disappointed looks. Anywhere away from the training field. Anywhere away from Enjin’s dimples when he smiled at other people in the bar. Anywhere that didn’t smell like imported cigarettes and woodsy cologne.

If he could, he’d rip his traitorous heart right out through his ribs and leave that behind too.

He started to leave a note behind, just something scrawled on a ripped sheet of paper from his journal, but he realized after writing it how stupid it was. Nobody was going to come looking for him, and even if they did, they’d eventually realize it was pointless. He wasn’t worth searching for.

Enjin was aware that Zanka was going through something. That boy kept his defenses a mile high, but it was really hard to miss his jarring absence in the past several days. Zanka wasn’t in any of his usual spots around headquarters. He wasn’t lounging with a book in the common room, he wasn’t filing reports in the records room, he wasn’t eating with Riyo and Rudo, and he hadn’t even been going to the training field like he usually would to blow off steam.

The two younger teammates both expressed their concerns about it, but Enjin cautioned them to just give Zanka some space. He was confident that if Zanka wanted to discuss whatever he was going through, then he would approach Enjin on his own terms, in his own time. He’d always been diligent, but pressuring him for answers or, goodness forbid, a little bit of emotional vulnerability, that was a terrible idea.

Still, something didn’t sit quite right with him. He’d been a little harsh after the battle a few days ago, but Zanka had nearly gotten himself killed. Enjin didn’t like to raise his voice, but the sight of him sprawled in the dirt nearly getting run over by a stampede, clutching his ribs in pain, it just made Enjin feel a pit in his gut. When he saw the younger man grappling with one of the biggest beasts on the field while he was already heavily injured, with that thing rearing up about to crush him, Enjin just couldn’t think. He acted, he did what he had to do, and he would be the bad guy and play the role of a harsh commander if that meant saving the younger man’s damn life.

If anyone could take the scolding and bounce back from it stronger than before, it was Zanka. The recent silence was concerning, yeah, but Zanka had a tough spine. He understood why Enjin raised his voice. 

Zanka was always by his side when he was needed. The kid was reliable, endlessly diligent, stubbornly responsible. But he was also quietly observational and coolheaded. He was intelligent. His dry humor and sarcasm perfectly complimented his analytical nature. And moreover, that boy paid a lot more attention than he let on, even when he pretended like he didn’t care.

Enjin really couldn’t think of somebody else more fit to be his second-in-command. Zanka was more than just a soldier to him, he was an incredibly close friend, even when he kept his guard up. That’s just how he was. The thought of losing Zanka on the battlefield was more than just painful. Enjin couldn’t really fathom it, a life without Zanka in it.

Of course, he was terrified to lose any of his kids. They were all family. But there was just something different about his relationship with Zanka, something that went beyond familiarity and respect.

It was the middle of the day and Enjin had just finished discussing a recent report with Semiu when Rudo and Riyo ran up to him in the middle of the hall, both grabbing him by his arms with panicked expressions.

"Zanka’s gone!" Rudo exclaimed, his words coming out in a stumbled rush. "He’s not in his room! We’ve been looking everywhere—"

"But he’s not in headquarters at all!" Riyo continued, "He never showed up to get breakfast or lunch, so we tried to bring him a tray—"

"And his room was empty!" the younger boy finished, panting heavily just like Riyo, as if they’d just ran a marathon.

Enjin’s brows furrowed. There was no reason for Zanka not to be in headquarters. He reached for his choker, about to call the younger man, but he froze when Rudo held up a familiar communication choker, way too small to fit on anyone’s neck. He only knew of one person who preferred their comms as a bracelet.

"We already tried to call him, but he left this on the bed," the boy explained, his agitation only increasing. "If he was just going on a walk or something, why would he leave it? Assistaff was gone too."

Riyo nodded in agreement. "Something’s wrong, we need to send a search party to look for him or… I don’t know! Something!"

The two’s nervous energy was starting to infect him, but the concern that shot through him went beyond just that. How could Zanka just up and leave? And why?

Had Enjin been too harsh on him?

"You’re sure he’s not anywhere in the building?"

"We’ve been looking all day," the girl told him, anxiously bouncing her weight back and forth between each of her heels. "We’ve been asking around too, nobody has seen him. He’s just gone."

Enjin had to be the adult here, he had to be reassuring and keep them both together. Even if his resolve was wavering. "It’ll be alright, I’m sure he just went for a walk and left his comms here by accident. Let’s go tell Corvus, and if he doesn’t show up soon, we’ll start searching for him."

The teens nodded, breathing out shaky sighs of relief and agreeing to go talk to Corvus.

Zanka never turned back up. After a full day had passed, the Cleaners sent out missing person reports. They plastered posters with Zanka’s face all over the town nearest to headquarters, but they didn’t get a single call that someone had seen him. Within days, they’d managed to get in contact with the news to broadcast a search, which prompted the Hell Guards to reach out and help with the search too.

Despite the amount of resources piled into looking, their efforts had been fruitless.

It’s not like the team didn’t often get split up. They went on separate missions all the time, and some deployments could last a week or more depending on the nature of the cleaning. But this was no deployment. Zanka was just gone, and the headquarters felt empty without him in it. Like an open wound that refused to close.

Enjin leaned back in the bench that looked out over the empty practice field, his drink long empty beside him, currently smoking his sixth cigarette of the night.

It’d been a week already. A week without Zanka’s dry humor, a week without getting nagged on, a week without the familiar scent of incense, a week with no swaying blue tassels. The training field felt incomplete without Zanka in it. Enjin could almost delude himself into hearing the familiar thwack of Assistaff ringing through the open pavilion. How many times had he found Zanka out here at this same time of the night, busting his ass when everyone else was asleep? The kid was always working so fucking hard.

Enjin didn’t need to be told. He knew it was his own fault.

Zanka ran away because of him.

He’d scoured the boy’s room multiple times since he left, searching for clues as to what happened or where he went. But everything was exactly where it should be. His bed was made, his uniforms were neatly folded in his drawers, everything he owned was exactly where it usually belonged. As if it was waiting on him to come back.

On his second search, he’d found exactly one clue in the form of a shredded sheet of paper, torn pieces sitting on the top of the trash can. Enjin had laid them all out on the table and carefully rearranged them, praying for any kind of answers. But the note was only four words, scribbled quickly despite Zanka’s usually neat handwriting.

"Don’t look for me."

It was a punch to the gut Enjin hadn’t been ready for.

Still, he didn’t give a single damn what the note said. If Zanka didn’t want to be found, he was going to have to explain himself face to face. When he wasn’t stuck on Cleaning missions, he spearheaded the efforts to look for Zanka. When no one was awake to catch the phone, he stayed up just to watch it, on the small chance it rang. It never did.

He’d gotten better about smoking a pack a day in recent years, having cut his cigarette habit down to the point he could stretch one pack across three, sometimes even four days. But the old habit returned in full force. Enjin had already gone through nine packs since Zanka’s disappearance.

Handling the situation was a weight Enjin wasn’t really sure how he was supposed to carry. He had to put on a strong face for his young team members, but all three of them were struggling with the ordeal, and he could admit, he wasn’t hiding his bad habits resurfacing all that well. He’d barely been sleeping and it showed.

Was it just that one lecture? No, that couldn’t possibly be the case. Zanka was too disciplined, too rigid, too growth-minded to be so deeply bothered by one incident. But then… what was it? What else could’ve caused Zanka to make such a drastic decision as to completely vanish from his life?

Enjin had pushed away his right-hand man, and he didn’t even know why.

The guilt and uncertainty was a constant, gnawing aggravation in the back of his head, chewing him out for his apparent mistakes. If Zanka was struggling, why didn’t he just come talk to Enjin? Was he not inviting enough? Did he not seem like he cared enough?

"Thought I’d find you here."

Enjin pulled the cigarette from his lips, exhaling a heavy cloud of smoke into the night sky. With his throat clear of the smog, he turned to the source of the interruption, unsurprised to find Gris at the entrance of the field. The Supporter crossed over to the bench, taking a seat on the opposite side after moving aside the empty glass that had once been full nearly to the brim with a concentrated whiskey.

"You can’t keep beating yourself up like this," the other man told him earnestly, leaning forward, his voice laced with concern. "I know you’re worried about him, but this?" Gris gestured at the glass and the cigarette, "This isn’t going to help bring him back."

Enjin ran his hand over his face, his own voice deep and heavy from smoking so much. His eyes were bloodshot, his head not really screwed on fully anymore in spite of his high tolerance. He’d definitely been surpassing his usual habits lately. "I’m a damn fool, Gris. I’ve been wracking my brain all week, and I still can’t figure out why he did it. What am I missing?"

Gris gave him a pained look, one that suggested he knew more than he had been letting on.

"What?" he asked, his voice still rough from all the shouting he’d done, calling out one single name over and over again during the searches, "Spill it."

"Enjin. You probably didn’t realize, but that boy lights up whenever you enter the room," Gris sighed, patting his coworker on the shoulder. "When Semiu needs him not to argue mission details, she tells him Enjin said so and he listens. He looks up to you."

"I– I know he looks up to me," Enjin sputtered. He knew, and yet, he didn’t even notice these details. Some team leader he was. "Was I too harsh on him?"

The Supporter offered him a sad look. "I don’t think it’s how harsh you were. When’s the last time you told him he was doing a good job?"

Well, of course he told Zanka he was doing a good job. He knew how dedicated his subordinate was. He was well aware of the extra training hours, the unnecessary additional gear and safety checks, the way Zanka consistently swept through missions even a veteran would struggle with and come back barely shaken. But the last time he actually acknowledged it out loud? He wasn’t really sure, honestly.

"He knows I trust him more than anyone else," Enjin deflected without a clear answer to give. "I mean— I basically raised that kid. I thought I knew his needs better than this. Why didn’t he just tell me?"

Gris sighed, holding his hand out, silently asking for the cigarette. He handed it over, expecting the other man to take a hit off of it too, but he put it out against the bench instead, much to Enjin’s chagrin. It still had a good amount left on it, damnit. "Look, Zanka’s heart is something only he knows. But this behavior isn’t going to get you any answers. Get inside, get some rest, we have a mission tomorrow. We can take some time to stop at the nearby town and search afterwards."

"Fine," Enjin groaned, forcing himself to stand. Intoxication made the world sway beneath him, but he’d be damned if he let it knock him off his feet like he had no experience. Gris led the way to the exit, watching as he stumbled behind, but he didn’t say anything about Enjin’s unsteadiness.

"We’ll get him back," the Supporter told him, nodding with firm confidence. "We won’t stop looking until we find him."

Zanka learned pretty quickly that running away this time was nothing like the last time he did it. When he left the Hell Guard, he had somewhere to go. The Cleaners took him in with open arms. His skills were useful. And more than that, he had Enjin looking out for him, a mentor and guiding figure, protecting him when he needed it.

This time, he was alone.

It’s not that Zanka struggled with solitude, he had always been an introvert, and for a while, he was able to treat this as a solo mission. But sometimes he found himself reaching for the band of his communication device and it wasn’t there. Sometimes he found himself missing the training field or the comfortable lounge chair in the common room and the chatter of his coworkers while he was reading. Sometimes he found himself really missing Rudo and Riyo’s antics, even if he always claimed to be annoyed by them. Sometimes he found himself missing Enjin’s boisterous voice, which always greeted him after a mission or complained about filing reports.

He hit the ground running as soon as he left, able to score quick transportation by volunteering to guard merchants from trash beasts as they travelled from settlement to settlement. He thought that the further away he got, the freer he would feel. But as the weeks stretched on, the pit in his stomach only grew, making him feel restless and agitated at his own lack of resolve.

He decided to run westward, towards one of the easiest places he could think of to disappear.

Bridge Town was one of the biggest cities on the ground. The settlement was built over a series of rivers a long time ago, but the Sphere had polluted all of them, turning their former pride into a toxic danger running through the city like veins. Still, in spite of the water quality, the city was huge and stubbornly prosperous, with an equally stubborn population. It wasn’t really known for being friendly, especially to newcomers, but when it came to disappearing, it was basically the best place to go.

He was lucky to be able to get into a cheap apartment with the cash he’d brought, but making rent was another matter entirely.

The streets were loud and crowded as Zanka walked back to his place after his second shift of the day. The sky was dark and half the people stumbling along were drunk or on something worse he didn’t really want to think about. He’d always pushed himself to a very high physical standard, but after a couple months of working two jobs, he was basically dead on his feet as he made the trek back home.

Working in a warehouse was a painfully bland and repetitive experience, but waiting and bussing tables until closing was actually soul-crushing. He didn’t really think about the fact he’d be handling food when he could barely afford it for himself, like some kind of punishment by fate. By the time he was finally done for the day, he was miserable and starving. Maybe it wouldn’t be so unbearable if he at least had friends among his coworkers, but he didn’t even slightly fit in among either crowd, so he kept to himself and tried to keep his head down.

And at the end of it, he got to return to his cramped apartment, with barely any utilities, mold on the walls, and paper for soundproofing. Affording clean water was a nightmare in this place, it ate up half of one of his paychecks entirely on its own.

Admittedly, Zanka was starting to wonder what the fucking point of this was.

As he walked, he passed a telephone pole covered in flyers. His own face stared back. Usually, he tore the missing person posters of himself down, but he didn’t even bother this time. He didn’t have the energy for it. He just turned away and kept walking.

Why the Cleaners bothered with putting up all these missing posters, he really didn’t know. He wasn’t exactly exceptional at his job, and he certainly didn’t feel like it now. He really was just some average joe scraping by to make it to the next day.

He finally shoved the heavy, squeaking door of his apartment open, collapsing against it and sliding down the wall, burying his face in his knees. His whole body ached. Somebody yelled at him today for their food having an ingredient they never asked to be taken off. His leg and side still hurt from being knocked over while carrying a heavy box in the warehouse a few days ago. None of it was too major on its own, but it all built up, wearing his edges down piece by piece like sandpaper over his soul.

He thought removing himself from the Cleaners would fix everything. He thought that, with some distance and time, the cracks in his heart would eventually heal. He thought he’d feel better if he didn’t spend his days around a man he loved and couldn’t have.

He was stupid to love Enjin in the first place. He was stupid to delude himself he could ever be anything other than the man’s subordinate. He was insane to think he ever meant anything to Enjin at all.

Zanka could admit it. He wanted to go back. He missed his life, he missed his friends, he missed it so damn much. Assistaff was collecting dust from disuse and he could feel his body deteriorating from the exhaustion and pollution in this place. He left everything behind, even himself. If he could go back, he would.

But he’d have to face Enjin.

And he was a coward.

He was such a fucking coward.

It’d been over four months and Enjin was counting each day.

Headquarters had mostly returned to normal as the time passed, and Enjin hated that more than anything. Zanka’s absence was still an empty, bleeding wound for him, and yet most of the Cleaners had gotten along with life anyway, in spite of the fact they were missing someone so vital. He knew they were just doing what they had to, he knew life needed to go on, but he just couldn’t pretend to go along with it. He couldn’t stop searching until they found Zanka, even if it took years for him to turn up.

Enjin needed answers.

Enjin… needed to apologize. For whatever he did.

Enjin needed Zanka back in his life.

He was stupid. So, so fucking stupid. He didn’t mind doing extra reports, he just didn’t realize how many of them Zanka used to cover for him. He didn’t mind delegating training regiments, he just didn’t realize how much time Zanka poured into devising them. He minded the recordkeeping a bit, being basically unfamiliar with how they even filed the damn reports, it really forced him to realize how much effort Zanka poured into keeping that place organized. Zanka was so much more than his right-hand man, so much more than his subordinate. He was helping keep the whole place running.

Picking up Zanka’s old tasks helped him take his mind off the absence and gave him something to do other than smoke and drink all day when he wasn’t blowing steam off decimating trash beasts. He didn’t go to bars anymore, it was a waste of time anyway. A distraction, something that kept him from seeing the pain he was inflicting on his team member. On his friend. Still, he couldn’t help the drinking. He basically didn’t walk around headquarters without a bottle in hand anymore. If he wasn’t working, he was looking for Zanka, and if he wasn’t actively looking, then he wasn’t sober.

The buzz invaded his head while he sat alone in the dim light of the records room. He’d been in the middle of organizing new folders when he picked up a simple list of the contents of the shelf he was working on. It was Zanka’s delicate, smooth handwriting, penned in blue ink. He always used blue ink pens. It was a small, unnoticeable habit, but Enjin always noticed how Zanka’s blue pen clashed with his whenever they were completing reports. He’d borrowed one of Enjin’s basic ballpoint pens once and complained about how crappy the ink flow was. Enjin didn’t really care about minor details like that before, not really understanding the point of being so particular about stationary, but now he had to cling to every detail that reminded him of the younger man. He had to admit, after stealing one of the pens from Zanka’s room in his absence, they were a lot better.

He ran his thumb over the faded ink, lost deep in thought, imagining what was going through Zanka’s mind when he wrote it. It wasn’t even important, it was just a damn list in the records room. And Enjin was just the damn fool trying to fill the shadow he didn’t realize he cast until the sun was gone.

The door opened slowly, flooding the dimly lit room with light from the hallway. "You know, you should probably stop trying to organize these. I always have to come in after you and fix the order," Semiu told him with crossed arms and a raised brow.

"The organization system in this place is bullshit," Enjin muttered, setting the list down and facing her.

"You know Zanka made it, right?" She shook her head, walking over to him. "It was a mess in here before he got here. He spent a good year taking everything out and rearranging the whole system. It’s very specific."

"Yeah, well, he was always fussy," he mumbled, lacking any malice behind the statement. He actually appreciated how detail-oriented Zanka could be, even if he teased the boy about it a lot.

"No kidding. I’ve seen him blow up on people just for putting records on the wrong shelf. When he wasn’t biting people’s heads off for annoying him, he was being obstinate about mission details or making other people regret scheduling their training at the same time he was out there."

Enjin winced, frowning at her. "That’s a bit harsh."

"It’s true," she shrugged, stepping into his personal space with a stare that could cut glass. "He was prickly, untrusting, stubborn, and antisocial. And yet, when it came to you, he suddenly turned into the most agreeable person I’ve ever met."

"Don’t talk about him like that."

"Why not?"

He couldn’t meet her stare anymore, so he turned his head away, forcing himself to focus on the shelves and the neatly-written labels on each of them. "He was doing his best. Don’t… don’t talk about my kid like that."

"Your kid? Is that how you see him? Is that all he is to you?"

"What do you mean all he is? I basically raised him!"

"And you still treat him like the fourteen year old you found at the bottom of a well who needs your protection."

"He is a kid!" Enjin snapped, turning on her with equally fierce eyes.

"You wanna know what I saw in him?"

"What?"

Semiu dropped her arms from being crossed, stepping out of his space and leaning on the shelf beside them. "I saw a young man who busted his ass to be seen as an equal by you. You, Enjin. He wanted your approval. Desperately." She tilted her head, squinting her eyes in annoyance. "And you’re a loud, foul-mouthed, drunken moron who couldn’t see him then and still can’t accept his decisions now."

Enjin froze. He… didn’t have anything to say to that. She was completely right.

And that hit him like a punch straight to the gut, squarely landing on his own mounting guilt from the past four months.

"Are you," he whispered, his voice shaking, "Suggesting we stop looking for him?"

She shook her head. "No, I’m saying that you need to rethink your own reasons for looking for him. If you’re planning to bring him back and everything to go back to the way it was, I hate to break it to you, but it’s not gonna work like that. You can’t go back to relying on him while he thanklessly covers half your damn workload."

"I’m not trying to bring him back because of the workload! I’m worried about him out there! I fucking miss him, Semiu!" Enjin was definitely feeling the intoxication that settled over his brain in a prominent buzz. This conversation wasn’t just riling him up, it was fueling his grief. "I miss watching him practice. I miss bothering him in the commons while he tries to read. I miss calling him in transport after missions. Headquarters doesn’t feel the same without him. My team isn’t the same without him. The smell of incense in his room is fading and I don’t—" he heard his own voice break while the words kept filling the room, his endless thoughts bouncing audibly off the walls and reaching Semiu, despite his attempts at keeping everything to himself. "I don’t know how to— he’s just gone. What’s out there that’s better than here?"

"Enjin."

"Yeah?"

"Why have you been drinking so much lately?"

The question took him off guard. "Uh, I don’t know."

"No, you do know," Semiu corrected him stiffly, "And I want to hear you say it."

A moment of palpable silence passed. Enjin’s voice quieted, and he softly mumbled, "I don’t know how else to deal with missing him."

"It’s how you run away," she finished for him. "Is that better than the alternative? Is stumbling around drunk all day a better way to live than sobriety?"

"No," he admitted, hanging his head in embarrassment. Where was she going with this? Why was she trying to make him feel worse?

"It’s just how he’s dealing with his feelings," Semiu told him, her tone finally softening. "I won’t pretend to understand why he made the choice he made, but I could see his heart. I hoped he would tell you that he was cracking under the pressure by himself, but well, like mentor, like mentee. Maybe fix your own habits before you go trying to fix Zanka’s."

Enjin’s throat closed up. The people around him knew, and he’d been blind. He’d been so focused on getting Zanka back, he hadn’t really stopped to consider the implications of it. The implications it’d have on their relationship going forward. Would the younger man even agree to come back?

He’d been so obsessed with the idea of returning back to normal that he didn’t realize things wouldn’t go back to the way they were before. And he wouldn’t want them to. He was a fucking jerk to Zanka.

No wonder he didn’t come to Enjin when he was struggling.

Something tickled his face, lightly tracing from his eyes down his face. He reached up in confusion to brush it away, confused when his fingertips came back wet. The realization finally broke four month’s worth of tension. He held his arm up over his eyes, brushing the tears back the best he could as they started to run.

Lithe, sturdy hands wrapped around his back, pulling him in for a hug. Enjin all but collapsed into Semiu’s firm embrace, drunken and broken with grief. The world was unsteady, but at least his friend was here to slap some sense into him and pick up the pieces after.

"I miss him, Semiu," he choked out, voice thick with emotion. "I’m selfish. I wanted him back so bad I didn’t even think about what it’d take for him to forgive me. I’m a fucking jerk."

Semiu patted his back. She was never one to hold her tongue or baby her friends, but she wasn’t ever mean without reason to be either. "Acknowledging it is the first step to fixing it," she told him, "We’ll get him back. Let the rest of us focus on that. You need to pull your act together so that you can actually look him in the eye when we find him."

He exhaled a shuddering breath, out of words to say. He was tired. He was a wreck. Something had to give, and it wasn’t Zanka.

Enjin had to turn his own questions inward. What was he running away from?

It was the middle of the night, and Zanka was dead asleep in bed when the alarms started blaring through the city. He sat up, the thin sheets sliding off his body as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. Annoyance flashed through him first, because fuck, he’d just gotten to sleep and he had work in the morning. The fact these were emergency alarms took him a moment to recognize.

A monotone voice came over the alarm system, clearly prerecorded.

"Emergency. Trash beasts have breached the walls. Evacute to the nearest shelter. Emergency. Trash beasts have breached the walls. Evacute to the nearest shelter."

The alarms resumed, interspersed with the same message at regular intervals.

Trash beasts? Inside the walls? But this city was incredibly far from the Cleaners’ headquarters, and they built their defenses to compensate for that lack of protection. In the three years he’d worked for the Cleaners, they had to visit almost every settlement at least once a year. Bridge Town though? He couldn’t remember a single call coming from here. He was positive they had Givers, but a designated defense force? No, this was Hell’s Guard territory. Their security was consumed with the crime inside the walls, not the beasts outside of it.

He glanced over at Assistaff, propped in the corner, just begging him to let it do its job.

Zanka was bone tired. Worn completely out. If he was honest with himself, he had a lot of passing thoughts about jumping into the toxic river when he crossed the bridges to get to work in the mornings and drag himself back in the late evenings.

This blaring alarm was messing with his ability to think.

But instinct beckoned him.

He didn’t have a mask, he didn’t have gear. If the walls were breached, he’d end up in the polluted zone outside if he tried to fight. The air would probably kill him. But who knows how many people inside the walls would die before the Cleaners could make it? The distance would take days to travel, even with a direct transport.

Well… he’d rather go out fighting trash beasts and protecting people like he spent his life training to do than throw himself in a toxic river. He’d left the Cleaners, but he couldn’t abandon his calling when it stared him in the face.

This was what he trained for.

He forced himself out of bed and grabbed Lovely Assistaff. She thrummed with life in his palm.

If he was going to kill himself, he’d like to die fighting.

He ran in the opposite direction of the evacuating crowd, pushing through until he reached the site of the breach. The city’s security force was there trying to contain the beasts that had already gotten inside the walls, but he didn’t see a single Giver among their ranks. And they were getting demolished out there.

These beasts were on the larger side. They were an unusual build, insectoid, with big abdomens and sharp pinchers. As Zanka ran towards the ongoing fight— more of a manslaughter— he ran a quick profile on them. There were six inside already. The pinchers were definitely their main weapons, slicing clean through a man’s stomach as he watched the blood spray. He’d have to be quick to avoid those. They moved slow, but those claws were quick and snappy. He wasn’t sure if the mandibles were dangerous, but he’d try to avoid them anyway. The abdomen seemed like a decent target, but if he could get to these things’ back and strike at the segments, those were probably their weakest points.

The breach was large, a crumpled section of wall stemming from the weak point where one of the rivers flowed out of the city, but not many trash beasts had gotten inside yet. The terrain wasn’t ideal. It was an open area surrounded with a temporary barricade of officials, but the river would be a problem, slicing the battlefield in half while the beasts seemed to be able to cross it easily with their long legs. He’d have to start with the ones on the closer side of the river and hope more didn’t cross over. He had no back up, this was a solo containment mission.

Bring it on.

With the barest hint of a plan in mind, he activated Assistaff for the first time in months and sprung headfirst into the fight.

The Security at the perimeter yelled at him to stop and get out of there, but he tuned them out, forcing himself to focus. He was rusty, he was sore and hungry, he had barely slept in weeks, but he had a lifetime of training, muscle memory, and stubborn discipline at his back. Using Assistaff again was like having regrown an amputated limb, it was an extension of himself he’d severed.

And it wasn’t the only piece of himself he’d severed in the past several months.

How long had it been now? More than half a year. He was losing track of the days.

As he dodged those pinchers and swung himself onto the creature’s back, slamming his staff into the weak point between its thorax and abdomen, he could delude himself into believing that his teammates were beside him. The sounds of the chaos around him narrowed into a sharp, single-minded focus. This was what he trained for. Maybe he could prove to the Cleaners, to Enjin, to himself, that he deserved to be one of them.

The beast reared, trying to grab him, but he held on tight and dodged the claws, channeling his anima into his staff. Its body split in two, crumbling beneath him, but he sprung off of it in a heartbeat, the thrum of adrenaline in his ears. He carried that momentum to the next beast, ducking the snap of its pincher and slamming Assistaff into its side, knocking it down into the dirt where he could slam the end of his weapon into the skull and finish it off.

A scream echoed to his side, and he turned to see one of the officials pinned beneath a beast, seconds away from getting sliced. Zanka was moving before he registered it, throwing his body against the creature and following it up with a solid strike on its back from his staff. It was at least three times taller than himself, but he succeed in catching its attention, beckoning it towards him while it clicked mechanically at him, its mandibles flaring in apparent anger.

"Get back!" he yelled at the Security officials on the scene, bracing himself for the next blow.

One of the officers helped their coworker off the ground back to safety. Another yelled back at Zanka from behind the barricade, "You need to get out of here! This is a restricted area!"

Zanka was unable to reply, darting to the side when the beast’s pinchers swiped through the space he’d just been standing. He brought his staff around to meet it, shearing the claw off and causing the beast to let out a ferocious mechanical roar.

"I’m a former Cleaner!" he told them, not bothering to turn to face them. "I have formal training for this and I don’t see any other Givers in your ranks! Let me handle the beasts so you can focus on sealing the breach!" His voice was firm and unwavering, not leaving any room to argue. Spoken like the leader Enjin was training him to be.

Without waiting for permission, he twirled his staff and lunged towards the dismembered beast, using its lack of defense on one side to score a direct hit at the base of the thorax and cleave the monster in half.

Three to go, only one left on this side of the river.

He whirled around to face it, but the beast was faster, knocking him backwards. He barely registered the empty air underneath him when he toppled backwards into the frigid water, immediately closing his eyes from the sting. The toxic waste seeped into his plainclothes, and it was putrid, so much worse than he imagined when he’d previously considered throwing himself in it willingly. All he could do was clutch onto Assistaff trying not to lose it to the depths below.

Strong hands grabbed him and pulled him up from the water. Two officers leaned over him, asking if he was alright, but his ears were ringing and he could barely hear them. All he could focus on was the crumbling defenses as the city security was forced back by these raging trash beasts.

He was soaked in polluted water and he was the only one here with no mask. Exhaustion tore every one of his joints and seeped into his bones. 

This wasn’t the time to be dragged down by human limits.

He wiped the water from his eyes and face and stood back up, twirling his instrument and launching himself back into the fray.

It was do or die.

One way or the other, he knew he was going to die.

The wasteland outside the walls of Bridge Town was a field of debris and wreckage. Dust hung so heavily in the polluted, toxic air that it formed a thin veil over the scene. Under the suffocating blanket of midnight, the only light illuminating the scene came from the amber-tinted industrial floodlights that lined the city walls.

In the midst of the battlefield stood a lone boy. He was a nobody, someone who could fit in among the city crowd without drawing attention. In his soaked haori, with overgrown hair covering his face, caked in grime, and bleeding from too many wounds to count, he didn’t look his age. He looked older. He looked tired.

But he was also at peace.

He jammed the head of his staff into the skull of the final beast in the proximity. How many waves he’d fought through, he didn’t know.

His lungs hurt.

He’d lost feeling in his body long ago.

His head wasn’t functioning anymore. Muscle memory alone guided him forward.

The anima swirling around his staff weapon dissipated, returning it to an average stick in his shaking hands. He clutched it tightly, even when he stumbled to his knees and fell.

Even as city officials ran out to retrieve his fallen body, he felt satisfied. The people in the walls were safe. The threat was contained. The breach had been sealed. He could die like a Cleaner. He could die like he deserved to be one of them, after all.

His vision faded, his body going numb. But he could still see the blond hair and the oversized jacket he’d chased all his life, the bright golden eyes and the dimpled smile beckoning him forward.

Would Enjin be proud of him?

He wanted to think so.

For once, he could allow himself to think so.