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Jabber wasn’t supposed to die first. It broke all the unspoken rules of their twisted universe.
If anyone had asked Zanka, he would have said with absolute certainty that one day they would either kill each other, tearing one another to shreds in a fit of rage, or he—Zanka—would lay down his life like a true warrior, covering someone's back. Possibly even his. But Jabber? That toxic, slippery bastard, made of pure, unbridled survival instinct? He was supposed to dance on the ruins of this world, laughing himself hoarse.
Zanka thought about this as he stared blankly at the motionless body sprawled in a puddle of thickening, unnaturally dark blood.
Somewhere in the distance, beyond the twisted metal structures, the battle still raged: trash roared, weapons clashed, and the sparks of other people's Jinki flashed. But here, beneath this broken archway, time had stopped. It hung still, like the air right before a thunderstorm.
Zanka's staff slipped from his suddenly weak fingers, clattering loudly against the concrete.
"Get up," his voice cracked, sounding pathetic and dry.
Zanka dropped heavily to his knees, right into the spreading puddle. He felt no pain from his own injuries; he didn't even notice the bleeding gash on his side. His entire world had narrowed down to a single point.
Jabber's hand—scarred, forever smelling of chemicals and metal, the very hand that would reach for him first in a frenzied brawl, aiming to rip out his throat, and then touch him entirely differently in moments of stolen, desperate silence—now lay lifeless, palm facing up. His fingers were half-curled, as if trying to grasp at nothingness.
Zanka covered it with his own. Ice-cold. The frantic, erratic pulse that had always thrummed beneath Jabber's skin, like a high-voltage current, was gone.
"You can't do this," he whispered into the filthy collar of the other's jacket. "You hear me? You always... you were..."
Fucking chaos. A chaos that had suddenly, defying all logic, become his personal order.
Zanka's strict discipline and sense of rightness had always shattered against Jabber's sheer unpredictability, yet it was in that very collision that he had felt truly alive for the first time. And now, that chaos had been snuffed out. Only a ringing, deafening emptiness remained.
Jabber would have smirked if he saw him like this. He would have bared his teeth in that manic, wide grin of his. He would have said something sharp, something venomous that struck as hard as a backhand slap. Or... or maybe, when no one was watching, his gaze would lose its manic edge. He would awkwardly, almost timidly, brush his fingers against Zanka’s cheek—a gesture that would shock anyone else, but was so intimate and deeply familiar to the two of them.
Now, the only answer was silence. No mockery. No barbed remarks. No venom.
Zanka leaned down further, pressing his forehead against the rapidly cooling shoulder. A sharp lump formed in his throat. A sob tore from his chest—a short, ragged, ugly sound. He would have blamed it on coughing from the dust, had anyone dared to ask. But there was no one left to ask. His perfect posture, his fierce pride—all of it crumbled to dust over the body of a man he had once hated so fiercely that the feeling had somehow mutated into something unbearably vital.
"I never even told you..." Zanka shuddered, taking a ragged breath that tasted of ozone and copper, but his voice gave out anyway.
There was nothing left to say. He was out of words. And what was the point of them anyway, without the only person who knew how to read between the lines, who could grasp the truth buried beneath their endless bickering and aggression?
Zanka squeezed the dead fingers until his own ached, intertwining them with his. He squeezed his eyes shut, feeling something hot slide down his cheek, washing away the grime and soot.
He remained there, unmoving, until the sounds of the distant battle faded completely. And then, he stayed even longer. Until the footsteps of those searching for them finally drew near.
He stayed, simply to ensure that no one in this damned world would dare to think they could just walk up and take Jabber away from him for good.