ɪᴛ·s ᴀʟᴡᴀʏs ᴛᴡᴏ sᴛᴇᴘs ʙᴀᴄᴋᴡᴀʀᴅs

[lotusbloom]

Every now and then, Keito has the same dream: he's sitting in a chair in an hospital room that looks decades out of date, a book in his hands and his own voice in his ears as he reads a story to the blond boy laying in bed. Logically, the scene is wholly unfamiliar to him; emotionally, he knows that he's been there a dozen times before and will return a dozen times after. He also knows, with that surreal omnipotence typical of dreams, that the boy in the bed is Eichi Tenshouin.

But of course, that's absurd. He and Eichi were born in separate cities belonging to separate factions, decades after the two factions split apart. The odds of them having known one another, let alone well enough for Keito to visit him in the hospital, are non-existent. He tells himself it's just his brain trying to make sense out of nothing, trying to reconcile the cold, clever, haughty young man with the one he found nearly passed out in the hallway one day.

Nevertheless, the dream makes frequent reappearances at the strangest of times - like right now, while he's napping on his way to his latest scouting mission. Only the alarm on his nav computer altering him that the end of his journey is enough to wake him - and even once he's awake, the lingering cobwebs of sleep aren't completely cleared away until he's descended through the atmosphere and started his scouting mission in earnest.

His timing couldn't have been better, though, because now there's someone shooting at him. His immediate thought is, So much for a new base. Then he has to focus on the fight and conscious thought stops being an option. The fight is short but fierce. In the end Keito wins out, sending his opponent's ship careening to the snowy hills below... though really, it looks more like the pilot managed to make an emergency landing. Whatever reputation for cool efficiency that Keito's developed for himself, blowing up a downed, defenseless figter doesn't sit well with him - and there might be information he can gather from the pilot or his ship.

More pressingly, Keito didn't get out of the fight unscathed. He's not sure how much further he can push his own fighter, and that's enough to decide his course of action for him. Kiryu or Kanzaki would probably do something fancy like program the ship to land, then jump off it directly onto the other pilot's... but Keito isn't as flashy as them, so he sets his ship down on a ledge above the other. Then he jumps down, weapon drawn and flight helmet still on. He doesn't bother shouting for whoever it is to open his cockpit (it's not like he'll be able to hear him anyway) but when he sees that the pilot is unconscious he realizes he'll have to do this the hard way.

It doesn't take him long to find the release latch on the cockpit (one advantage to their factions previously being one in the same is that their ship designs aren't too divergent from each other) and even less time after that to locate and remove any sidearms he might have on hand. Dragging the pilot himself out of the wreckage isn't an option, however, so Keito reaches out to start jostling him awake instead.

"Hey. Wake up." Before they both freeze to death.

Comments

[finethanks]

It's that same dream again, isn't it? The one where he's in the hospital, and instead of being completely alone, there are words being read to him by a boy his age. One that he recognizes far more than he should. He knows that it's Keito Hasumi, the one from the faction his own faction had split from all those year ago, and he knows that he can count on him to always be there in the end, no matter what...

But that's not right?

It's never right. He's alone, isn't he? Alone out here, doing everything he can to make things right. To win a place in this world. Going against other factions, against fate, against this twisted body.

Something jostles him, and he realizes that the voice he just heard wasn't part of that strange dream, but reality. Reality, where a freezing chill hits the rest of his body, suddenly, and he twitches in his pain. That's right... He'd just been in a fight. He'd just lost a fight. Even if he'd managed to crash land properly, that was all too much on his body. He's aching all over, and that voice still stuck in his head— is it really reality, or just memory? That can't be... who he thinks it is, standing there, can it?

Well, it hardly matters. A soft groan escapes him before he can even hold it back as he'd like, and his head tips to one side just slightly. He can't move properly, not as much as he'd like. But his eyes open after some struggling, blearily darting this way and that before they focus in on the source of that familiar voice.

It's him. He doesn't know how he can properly tell, with their helmets on, but he can feel it. The voice was spot on. It is him. Talk about coincidences. Certainly not anything like... fate...

He doesn't respond. It's a waste of energy to, anyway, and what could he say? No? He's in a bad position here. It's likely that even if Keito had shown him brief kindness that year or so before, that he's forgotten him by now. His own desperate dreams were just attempts to fill the void, to imagine himself as included in something greater, nothing more. Needless to say, he's going to need some more jostling.

[lotusbloom]

That soft groan isn't nearly enough for Keito to know that this pilot Eichi, yet a sense of recognition stirs in him anyway. He's quick to brush it aside and pretend that it doesn't bother him. Apparently, this guy isn't able to get up and leave under his own power, which leaves Keito to reexamine the idea that manually removing him 'isn't going to happen'. Once again, just leaving him here isn't feasible. Not only is there a chance he might alert someone to Keito's presence, he's also likely to freeze to death.

So... fine. Keito will have to do this the hard way. He checks Eichi over one last time for weapons, then unstraps Eichi from his seat's safety harness. It takes a bit of maneuvering, but after a moment he has his feet braced on either side of the cockpit and his arms slipped under Eichi's shoulders, and from there it's just a matter of bracing himself and lifting.

Whoever this pilot is, he's lighter than expected, so not even Keito has too much trouble dragging him out of the cockpit and onto the nose of his ship. From there it's much easier to lay him out and check him over properly - though step one is removing their helmets. So Keito reaches out for Eichi's first, figuring that making sure whoever his new 'friend' is can breathe is a solid idea.

[finethanks]

He can't move much at all, but he's got to think of something. To push himself into movement, before he's killed. Is that what's happening here? No, then he could have just been left to starve. He's trying to think in between a couple of slips of consciousness during Keito's dragging, but by the time he reaches for the helmet, fear jolts him awake.

His helmet is removed successfully, blonde hair falling back mostly into place, but he reaches out immediately, grabbing at one of Keito's wrists, his blue eyes cold. He's clearly trying to get a grip in that would give him control, but his grip is weak and useless, and his second arm misses Keito's other wrist as he clicks his tongue.

No words, just desperate actions. He has to save his energy.

[lotusbloom]

Keito gives a start when Eichi grabs a hold of him, tension racing through him. Then Eichi misses his second grab, and that lets Keito realize how weak his grip actually is, which lets his guard down slightly, which lets him realize...

"Tenshouin?" It comes as a nasty shock, though maybe it shouldn't. When they'd been in school together there was a universal, if rarely acknowledged, understanding that they were enemies. War hadn't broken out yet back then, but it was never far away and every last one of them was well aware of it. Knowing that they were all more-or-less destined to be enemies one day is why cross-faction friendships were so rare.

So it shouldn't be a shock, but it is. A very unpleasant one, at that. Eichi shouldn't be here, he thinks. He should be-- somewhere else, where he won't get hurt, but as soon as Keito thinks that thought he realizes how strange and out of place it is.

He'll deal with it later. For now, he yanks his hand away from Eichi's then reaches up to pull his helmet off. Maybe if Eichi realizes who he is he'll calm down - which is another thought that makes no sense, but Keito acts on it anyway.

[finethanks]

If he could angle himself and steal Keito's weapon, then maybe— but no. His grip is weak and pathetic. If he can't manage to hold his wrist, there's no way he can manage to grab his weapon and wield it. The hand is yanked away so easily, and any semblance of hope fades with it. He knows who this is, somehow, in his chest...

And yet when the helmet is removed, something like relief washes over him. He doesn't understand it.

He does, however, understand that Keito went for his own helmet rather than his weapon, which means that it's not violence that he's aiming for. Why? Is there something to be gained here from keeping him alive? Eichi's breath is shallow and his eyes focused, tensely staring at him, occasionally flicking down to look at his weapon.

"Hasumi..." He breathes it out, shoulders slumping just slightly. He feels close to collapse again, worked up like this. "Keito Hasumi, wasn't it?" As if greetings matter, right now.

"For you to trouble yourself to come down here with me... What do you want?"

[lotusbloom]

Eichi's in no state to be trying to wrestle away someone's weapon, and once again Keito is overtaken by a thought like, Even I could fight him off without trouble. So Keito doesn't let himself be troubled by Eichi glancing at his weapon, even though Keito knows that Eichi wouldn't hesitate to kill him.

So why is he so relieved that Eichi remembers him, too?

"That's right." He doens't think about it, making himself focus on the subject at hand. Like why he didn't just blow Eichi up and leave, which definitely isn't just because he's too soft to kill a downed enemy. "You may have lost the fight, but you still damaged my ship. I need yours to repair mine." Everything is entirely practical over here, yes sir. And... he'll leave it at that. No need to hint at how important his own scouting mission was, and how suspicious it is that Eichi was sent to the same place on the same day.

[finethanks]

"You need my ship."

There's something strange about this encounter. There's tension in the air that you'd expect. The intensity of a man backed into a corner, wanting to survive, and the coldness of the one who hunted him down. But what more is there? A spark, some sort of interesting trail... A string? It's something that he wants to reach out and grab, metaphorically, and he can't make sense of it at all. Especially when he feels that, grabbing it or not, it's already so thoroughly tangled around him.

For the moment, he doesn't do anything rash. He just focuses on breathing, the heaviness of it lasting too long, even in this weather.

"Not me." He lets that linger for a long few seconds of staring before he adds more. "Don't tell me that you're acting in some sort of sympathy? Just like in school... Haven't I told you before that such foolish decisions could easily end your own life?"

Why does he care enough to scold him, instead of just taking advantage of it? He doesn't know. He has no idea what's going on. But it's hard to breathe, and he's cold, and... and he doesn't want to be alone. Running off right now seems so hopeless. All of this does. He's been caught, so is he going to be used for something, too? A bargaining chip? Should he try to off himself?

He doesn't know what's right. "Hurry up and kill me, if that's all it is that you need."