It was something like a dog: its legs retained roughly the same shape, though they were caught in long shawls of hair clumps. Its body swelled where a ribcage should be and tapered at the belly, then swelled again for haunches. Its tail, made of stardust, painted hazy shapes in the fog it left behind. And its face, while a mangled skull, looked as if a man's skull was pulled into a dog's shape. It was bereft of all but bone and a bright, leering green light that made home in an empty socket.
The shadow knew it was being chased by something violent, something unhappy. Something that would kill it if it stumbled. It pursued as it was pursued, and the streets opened into main roads. Under the predictable beacons of street lights, it spotted a warm body. It needed a warm body.
Claws scrabbled and swept over unfamiliar sidewalk until the imitation dog found purchase. It sprinted with the speed of a light-chased shadow, teeth bared, and leapt for the first figure it found: a gaunt, black-haired boy.
Destiny City had already been dangerous. Always had dogs in alleys ready to drag down unsuspecting prey. Yuuri knew this, had warned those he’d helped escape claws and fangs to be careful. Maybe he was getting soft. Or maybe he just understood the difference between an innocent civilian and… what…? Those who deserved to have their energy depleted and starseed pulled from their prone bodies?
Since when had he become the judge, jury, and executioner?
Since the beginning, spoke the quiet voice in his head.
It didn’t bother him as much as he thought it should. As much as he knew it should. He’d done horrible things as part of the Negaverse that he would have never thought to do before he’d been dragged into that alley by that dog and chose this life over a likely painful death.
He’d been distracted by his phone, by a text of what to pick up from the store. Misha didn’t need him to sit there and press the record button, and Yuuri preferred to avoid Misha’s brother when possible.
So when the scraping and clicking of claws reached Yuuri’s ears, it was already too late and he found himself at the wrong side of mutated teeth and bone.
The still cool weather and his apparent inability to regulate his own body temperature meant Yuuri was luckily wearing a heavy sweater, and his forearm caught the brunt of the youma’s bite. Yuuri bit back a garbled hiss of pain as he was knocked backwards onto the sidewalk, his knees and feet immediately trying to kick the creature off of him.
His pen was out of reach, in the pocket opposite of his free hand, and he cursed the technical limitations of being a senshi while his heart tried to escape his chest.
The aura he slavered after had guttered, leaving Faustite in an auric deadzone. The kindled youth was quick to dispatch his temporary companion, who had rounded the corner and disappeared into the cityscape. Faustite then started down the path opposite, keen on phasing through every civilian in sight range,
but the youma dog's victory howl interrupted his intentions. The General doubled back, cindered footsteps retracing his shadow hound's claw marks. Anticipation swelled his excitement; a few steps led him around the building and within sight of the youma's bounty. He approached with purpose as he witnessed a fevered struggle between a sweatered youth and the chitinous creature. The arm reaching across body meant the struggle would soon end.
The hungry General stepped on length of black hair, then pushed the youma's snapping jaws from the vicinity of the target's face and chest. He reached --
Froze --
Fumbled for words, then turned his baleful gaze on the pseudocanine. "You ******** dumb s**t dog!" he buried his fingers around the creature's neck, then dragged it toward himself and off the case of mistaken identity. "I told you to chase the senshi! You had one ******** job!"
Through seething teeth, he cursed the creature as he raised his fist and beat its bony skull to the pace of his words. It yelped with each strike, interlacing with the General's castigation to form a cruelly comical cadence. "One. Job. You waste. Of energy. Find. The --"
Crumpling, the battered and harangued youma loosed its last howl and desiccated into dust in his grip.
"Oh, ******** sake." With a resigned sigh, Faustite dusted his hand off on his pants and offered it to his prostrate companion.
"Yuuri."
Yuuri was growing increasingly tired of youma and various other monsters of unknown origins attacking him. Regardless of if he was a civilian or a senshi, the chance that they would listen to him was questionable at best. An Eternal Senshi, and he was still having to avoid youma.
Teeth snapping at his face and a boot on his hair made him second guess his ears. It had been so long since he’d heard that voice, he thought his mind was just supplying what he wanted in place of reality.
But the youma was pulled off of him, and all Yuuri could do was stare disbelieving up at the young man with an all too familiar face and dark, burning eyes and glow.
The yelling and violence of battering the youma into dust startled Yuuri further, but pulled him closer to accepting that this wasn’t an illusion. He knew the youma wouldn’t actually die once returned to the Rift, but it was disconcerting nonetheless.
An offered hand and his name uttered seemed to crack the last of Yuuri’s doubt.
“Faustite,” he choked, already finding it a little too difficult to find breath. He reached up to take the offered hand, expecting it to disappear when he touched him, but it was hot. He allowed himself to be pulled up to sit, but couldn’t find the strength to stand just yet. The wounds from the youma were already forgotten, even if teeth mangled his already battle scarred arm.
“You’re… okay? I…” Yuuri did what he could to fight the wave of emotions that tried to drown him, but the tide was quickly rising.
Faustite stared, consternation writ in scrunched brows. He recalled that each of them were separated during the mission, but their estrangement wasn't long enough to justify tears. "Faithless," he scoffed.
He paced, and his eyes wandered over his companion. Tattered sweater, flecks of blood. Disheveled, but Yuuri lacked other obvious wounds. Those tears would dry with the rivulets of blood. The fireborn General squatted, arms at rest over his knees, as he looked sidelong at Yuuri. "I wasn't gone that long." Weeks, maybe a month, he'd estimated. Long enough to get acclimated to the Rift, but not long enough to forget how to function in Destiny City.
"Let me look at that." Faustite poked a sharp nail toward his friend's aerated arm.
He felt the air pulled from his lungs when Faustite scoffed, Yuuri’s eyes were wide with confusion now as he tried to blink away the tears that filled them.
Not that long?
It had been suspected that Faustite was frozen at his age, but seeing him now pretty much confirmed it. He didn’t look a day older than when Yuuri had last seen him. Yuuri, on the other hand, had lost some of his already little weight, his hair was about six months late of needing a cut, but it was just so much of a hassle to sit and let someone do it.
And when Yuuri relented, held out his injured left arm, and pulled back the punctured sweater sleeve, it revealed a set of bloody teeth marks to add to a variety of other scars along Yuuri’s forearm, a couple spreading to his upper arm still hidden by the sweater. He’d obviously chosen to sacrifice his left arm as a means to protect himself if necessary.
The last time he’d seen Faustite, there were no scars on his arms to show, and his Senshi outfit was sleeveless under the outer robe he often took off when it was too cumbersome.
Yuuri was still trying to process how two years was not that long and didn’t comment on it yet. Maybe Faustite really didn’t think it was a long time, but to Yuuri it felt like forever.
"We were chasing a senshi," he explained as he first straightened Yuuri's arm. "Super stage, poorly trained. Good enough for a starseed. Was working up a spell when that worthless youma blanched at an order. Tucked its tail between its legs instead of interrupting him."
Slowly he rolled the sleeve up, folding cloth over itself to prevent it falling back into wounds. "Used some kind of blinding magic. Slipped out and powered down." He lowered his friend's arm into the orange glow of his internal light.
Yuuri's arm was a battlefield of raised bumps and ridges. Each as random as the last, they dotted the landscape of his arm, forming an alien language of pain and self-defense. It wasn't simply their prevalence that took him aback, but their state of healing -- many were nothing more than milky white scar tissue. Wordlessly, Faustite reached back and wrenched one of the lengths of split cape from the back of his uniform. He wound the length about Yuuri's bone-thin arm with his thumb pressed to its origin.
The cindered General gave his handiwork a tug. When nothing came loose, he rested a hand on Yuuri's shoulder. "Up to finding that senshi?"
Something wasn’t adding up, and Yuuri could feel his heart working overtime to try and compensate for the onset of panic he felt. He tried to breathe properly but drew in quick, quiet gasps instead. He was used to the overwhelming feeling of dread and closed his eyes to try and center himself. To focus on things that would bring him back to breathing normally, to calm his heart.
He heard the words Faustite said, but he couldn’t find his voice to respond.
Ah, he needed to thank Faustite for tending to him. He needed to say yes he would happily assist in any way possible.
Thoughts of a dark creature with antlers hiding behind trees in the fog, and the panic he felt after, knowing he wouldn’t be able to ask anyone for help when he desperately needed it came to the forefront of his memories.
“I thought--” he tried. Damnit, he was trying. His voice caught with each quick breath and he silently cursed himself for reacting like this. Yuuri tried the age-old practice of pressing his hand against his chest, as if doing so would keep his heart in place, as if doing so would remind his lungs to pull in air properly. “I didn’t-- ...you were gone. I… I tried looking…”
There were no reports made of their whereabouts. None that General King Axinite would admit to having at least, if he did have any. For all Yuuri knew, he was completely alone, and all that was left of his once team. Even his General had disappeared into the abyss.
Yuuri held up his free hand to indicate that he just needed a moment. He would be okay in a moment. He didn’t want to burden Faustite, but he needed just a moment. To breathe. To process. To try and understand.
Faustite's irritation sent a ripple through his upper lip. He flung his arm open toward the empty street. "That senshi's long ******** gone by now and you want to have a conversation? I needed that starseed to fight that damn thing and you want to sit on your a**, in the street, and whimper about how you wrote me off as dead?"
Faustite rose in heat and flame, and with his grip tight on Yuuri's arm, he pulled the coal-haired youth with him. "You think I can't survive for a couple weeks on my own?" His expression softened, his snarl mitigated in an unpleasant memory's wake.
"I'm better at it than I used to be."
Yuuri winced from the force in which he was pulled to his feet, the heat of the hand against his arm, but other than casting a weary glance in Faustite’s direction, he said and did nothing about the rough treatment.
He still had his hand against his chest, and by sheer will he remained standing.
“Not dead…” he shook his head, because he’d hoped that there was a chance. If there was any chance, and until there was proof of death, he refused to accept it as a possibility.
“Faustite…” he tried to breathe again, still trying to understand what was going on. “It’s been… almost two years. It’s twenty twenty-one…”
Did Faustite really think it had only been a couple weeks…?
Faustite curled his hand against his hip as he waited for Yuuri to spit out some sentences. Sentences never came, but their stunted fragments told enough story for Faustite to be left without a response.
He assumed he heard wrong. Two years wasn't within the realm of possibility. He understood his own inability to age, but he should feel two years passing. He should recognize it in the Rift's eternal changes, in the faces of the agents who wandered in as far as he did. He wanted to laugh at Yuuri's joke. He wanted to tell the shy boy that he became an excellent actor in the past weeks.
But the firebound General read the passing of time in Yuuri's face, in its gauntness, in the length of his hair, in the scars that he'd never noticed before. Weeks couldn't be long enough for those scars to grow pallid.
Two years?
"Wh… What?" Faustite squinted. Then he looked about, frantically. Then he looked back at Yuuri, over his shoulder, and up at the stars, and around the haunted buildings as they loomed with dull, sallowed lights in their windows, and he was loathe to think what events had passed in those two missing years. He couldn't begin to consider what his teammates went through, what the Negaverse accomplished, what became of his troubles in that empty stretch of time.
"I don't — Yuuri, I didn't mean to be gone for two years."
He could see it slowly registering for Faustite, the truth behind the time that had passed since the last time they spoke. It didn’t settle Yuuri’s nerves, but at least he didn’t feel as though he was going crazy. That everything he’d done in the months after the last reports came in wasn’t just a figment of his imagination.
“I believe you,” he managed, even as he swayed on unsteady legs. His heart was still racing in his chest, feeling as though if he blinked, if he looked away, that Faustite would disappear again.
The only consolation Yuuri could glean from this was that it seemed as though Faustite hadn’t run into too much trouble. That time had passed quickly for him.
“I was afraid I--...” he started, pausing to force breath into his lungs, and hiccuped a small sob in the process, even if the tears didn’t yet flow freely. “-- I’d never see you again.” One hand was over his heart, the other lifted to cover his mouth to hide the trembling of his jaw, feeling weak from the torrent of emotions that he couldn’t explain. Relief? Fear? Despair? He felt like he wanted to grieve and rejoice at the same time, and it ached so much that he couldn’t see straight.
Instinct had him take Yuuri's shoulders in his hands to bring him close, and sense had him stop halfway. The gesture was broken off into a pat on the back. It felt empty — halfassed for what was almost too difficult for his friend to endure. The time he'd spent felt nothing like two years, but the time Yuuri spent felt nothing like a few weeks. How could they meet in between?
The starseed was long gone; there was nothing for it now. More would surface over the coming weeks — weeks he would be wise to spend outside Metallia's eldritch nightmares. Weeks that would prove more fruitful with someone to help him hunt.
Two years. Faustite knew the depth of that statement would overwhelm him in the coming months. He knew it best to focus elsewhere, to reroute the journey of their conversation so his friend didn't collapse under the weight of his feelings. Already had he wrapped himself in his own hands, and Faustite was too aware of the dangers he posed to others to help.
"What about the others? I didn't find any of them after we were split up."
After spending the last two years hoping and trying to obtain any information he could on the whereabouts of his team, his allies, his friends, or at the very least learn their fate, standing in front of Faustite now was both a dream come true and a nightmare that Yuuri felt plunged into once more. Because Faustite coming back after two years meant it was still possible the others would as well.
He felt the heat of hands on his shoulders, the pat on the back, and the question that burned into him with the guilt of being the only one who’d made it back.
But Kamacite wouldn’t have survived the Rift on his own. The only saving grace he had was the number of times he’d been dragged there with Wolfeite, and somehow he’d stumbled across the way out.
He wished he would have stayed inside. Maybe if he had, he would have found the others. Instead, there were failed rescue attempts with no knowledge of where the others were, no closure. With the promise of being updated if any new information was received, Kamacite was forced to continue his duties, to not waste more resources.
And now…? How did he tell Faustite that he’d somehow managed to drag his way out on his own? He had strong magic, but was physically the weakest. Even with the relief that Faustite made it out, the blackness that ate at him for months and months started to resurface. Even if he refused to believe the others were dead, it didn’t matter if they were trapped, thinking years were mere weeks.
Slowly, Yuuri shook his head, his eyes wet. “I don’t know anything about the others,” he sobbed quietly, muffled by his hand.
Faustite did nothing to stop the smile that contorted his seriousness, nor did he conceal the mumbling, sardonic laugh that followed. Yuuri's words delivered freedom of a sort, and bitterness to accompany it. He supposed it was only a survivor's privilege to know this hateful liberty. Hands on hips, he turned away from Yuuri, wandered a few steps from the newsbearer.
To his left was a weathered plastic trash can, the kind with a spherical plastic lid and a coarse texture. The kind that loosed a loud, hollow thump as Faustite kicked it in a fit, and it repeated those thumps once, twice, thrice, as the General worked it over. Enough repeated kicks burst the material, and they were both greeted by the stench of rotting food and toiletries. Its ooze spilled over Faustite's foot, but no matter how he shook it, the stench clung to him.
Pungent as it was, the trash juice overwhelmed Faustite's rage with his disgust. In a breath, half his split cape returned and the stench left him.
But that did nothing to ameliorate these circumstances. Black hands covered his face. It was Faustite that sighed, but the part of him that still called itself Eion was the progenitor of it.
Finally the hands dropped. "If it's been two years, then there's nothing for it. We're in a war. People die." He knew how stilted it sounded, but he didn't care. What good would it do Yuuri if he said he suspected a setup? What benefit would he get from hearing that his General owed no allegiance to the sovereigns? It was a best fit explanation, though one for him alone.
"Walk you home," he offered over his shoulder. It was a small favor that couldn't hope to balance the two years of injustices done to his friend.
Yuuri jumped in surprise when Faustite kicked the trash can, and even took a step back away from the smell and debris. His hands were no longer pressed against his chest and mouth but instead wrapped around himself. He wanted to reach out to Faustite, to insist that there was no proof that anyone had died. Faustite was standing in front of him now, so wasn’t that proof enough that it was possible everyone else survived? Maybe they found another way out. The youma didn’t just escape the Rift through the Hall of Shadows, after all.
But he couldn’t say it. Yuuri knew his optimism was likely foolish, but he would hold onto his beliefs. It was what helped him get through the past two years, so why give up now?
“Wait,” he said quietly. He wiped the lingering tears from his eyes and took a deep breath to steady himself. He then reached into his pocket for his pen and powered up into Kamacite. His shadow black hair and sunburst robes barely settled before he was powering down again. He just needed to grab a few things from his subspace pocket, and that only took seconds.
He held his hands out to Faustite. A starseed he’d collected and stored for emergencies, since he could always get another, and a bag of jerky and a pack of crackers. He didn’t even know if Faustite liked those things, but he at least had options.
“Since I distracted you from that senshi. I’m sorry. Thank you for wrapping my arm,” he offered the starseed, and then the food, because Yuuri had no idea when the last time Faustite ate anything. “It’s not much, but… if you’re hungry. Where will you be staying?”
Seldom did he watch the transformation process -- Aue often spoke poorly of it -- but what came after caught his eye. He had forgotten the ornateness of Kamacite's eternal outfit, having seen it so rarely, and its speckled starbursts and tempestuous purples ever caught his eye. It was an outfit that drew attention as much as Faustite's physiology, and he oft wondered how frail Kamacite coped with that.
He turned back and opened his mouth to ask, but the words were swallowed back instantly when Yuuri offered him food.
Food. Real, genuine food. Not the shitty trap food they had in the Rift.
"You have food?" He smiled, and he wanted to hug Yuuri again because jerky and crackers and having his friend back were three joyous affairs that deserved celebration. He was already thinking about how the jerky would taste, and how he often thought all jerky tasted the same as a human and how despicable it was that he had such an unrefined palette as a spoiled rich kid. In automatic response, he first took the offerings and disappeared them in a smokey whorl to subspace, then reached to hug his friend.
"You're the best."
“Just provisions. Things that won’t spoil easily. If you haven’t eaten, I can get you better food,” Yuuri quickly explained, knowing his offering wasn’t the best. It was just supposed to be for emergencies. He’d been taught well on how to survive for as long as possible, given his lack of physical prowess. Luckily, being on the smaller side meant needing less calories.
The hug that was offered was easily accepted, although perhaps without enough forethought. The heat from Faustite was scalding and Yuuri hissed a little in pain as he quickly drew back, patting out the embers of his now singed, but already ruined, sweater.
“I’m okay,” he promised, not wanting Faustite to think he was ungrateful for the show of affection. “Are you staying in the barracks? I want to be able to see you again. Make sure I’m not imagining tonight,” Yuuri admitted quietly, because at times he still felt like he could blink and wake up.
Yuuri's hiss was hint enough — he knew better than to touch anyone as a half youma. It surprised him that that much of his human sentiments remained, and that he still resorted to them without thinking. The sweater was already ruined and Yuuri seemed unburdened by it; an apology meant little by now.
The question had Faustite looking at the floor for answers. Belatedly, he nodded. "The barracks, probably." There was time to change his mind — time to find some hole in the Rift, or sequester enough Mauvians to cover his aura (as if they were an infinite commodity and of no particular use). He could not consider the Castle, and nowhere else would afford him any safety. Couldn't ask to stay with Yuuri. Couldn't ask to stay with anyone.
Faustite shifted his weight to a hip, his narrow wrist bent obtuse to the jut of his bones. "You can always visit me, especially if you bring food." He ran his teeth over his lip, tasted his opportunities. "But…" He looked at the crackers, the jerky. "Can we get food now? Food that won't last for sixty-five years."
It seemed like such a foreign concept that Yuuri could go and see Faustite whenever he wanted, provided that Faustite was actually in the barracks. But even if he wasn’t, he could leave snacks for him whenever he returned.
Because he had returned. Against all odds that others thought were possible, but Yuuri never once fully gave up hope.
Maybe he was stupid or naive, but it paid off at least a little.
“Of course,” Yuuri agreed quickly, not one to deny his friend food. “Anything you want,” he promised. He bent down to pick up his almost forgotten phone and brushed it off before tapping a quick message to Misha that he would be late, and that he’d run into an old friend. He was sure Misha would bombard him with a million questions since, well, he’d been under the impression that Yuuri had no friends. No friends around at least.
“What do you feel like?” he asked once his attention was back on Faustite.
"Food," he answered earnestly. As he thought about it, as they walked, he realized he couldn't explain why his answer lacked particulars. Being part youma altered preferences as much as his physiology, but how could he expect Yuuri to know this?
"That is --" his hands turned with his words, and his gains were banished to interstitial spaces as he spoke with his hands as much as his words. "most things… Taste the same? Anymore, anything tastes like burnt charcoal. Some things, I remember the taste. Sometimes that memory supersedes the taste.
"But that doesn't matter, since I'm always hungry. Anything tastes good." His hands found his sides again, and they curved against the rungs of his cage as the cusps of smoke curved against their shared silhouette. He wondered if his explanation would mean anything but something to pity, if Yuuri would read his experience as something different, something changed rather than a loss. But so many elevated humanism above all else, the pinnacle virtue, the paragon aspiration.
He couldn't say. So he bowed his head and flame-licked curls brushed over an iron-framed shoulder. "Sorry it's been so long."
That was a fair answer, Yuuri thought as he slid his phone into the back pocket of his pants. Any food after being in the Rift for so long would be better than no food at all.
“You’ll have to let me know if you’re ever craving anything you remember then,” he said quietly, as his voice normally was. He was still trying to process the emotions he felt standing beside Faustite. It was still surreal. Yuuri would never claim to understand youma or half youma, but he knew he wanted his friend to be treated well.
“Come on, you’ll have to stay outside so you don’t attract attention, but I can get some food from anywhere still open,” he offered, but paused and shook his head at Faustite’s apology. “You’re here now. That’s all that matters.”
Faustite nodded his agreement to the plan. "Even if it's raw meat, I can still eat it." Whatever Yuuri dredged up at this late hour was more than enough -- even if he had to idle for it.
A boy was going to get him food. Pity the simple delights that stoked the General's ever-burning heart. He smiled, close-lipped, to himself.
"Whatever you need. Steal you some money, if you need it. And if nowhere's open, we can teleport into a grocery store. Get us anything, and you can use me as a grill." His hands chased the edges of his words as they walked. "Just no oils until after, okay? They get in the cage, and then they smoke and smell for a week, and I always taste it in the back of my throat…"
The extended silence of two years had caught up with him. Two years, and Yuuri would endure the deluge of words that he saved up over that span. He would face it for days to come, so long as he was accessible for it.
In days to come, Faustite would feel the heavy absence of friends come down on him, and would rely on his friend all the more.
Guine