Work Text:
“It’s a shame Chidori isn’t here to witness this.”
The words are spoken so softly that Takaya assumes he wasn’t meant to hear them at all. He glances at his subordinate, whose gaze travels slowly over their surroundings. To Takaya, Tartarus has always been brilliant in its own right, holding a terrifying sort of beauty to it. And now, so close to the top, surrounded by smooth, gleaming architecture of clashing and swirling blacks and whites, Takaya thinks it’s never been more petrifying and magnificent as it is at this exact moment.
“That is of her own doing,” Takaya says blandly. He has no interest in talking of traitors.
Jin startles, as if just now realizing he spoke aloud to begin with. “I know. I was just thinking…I bet she would’ve liked this level of Tartarus the best. Sort of fits her aesthetic, you know?”
“I suppose.”
Silence returns. Soon, Nyx will make Her decent upon the world. A sort of agitated excitement thrums through Takaya’s veins; finally, after so much preparation, he’ll be able to witness the end of everything, the start of a new world. His eyes flutter closed, and he tilts his head upward in silent reverence.
“Takaya.”
If it were any other time, Takaya would be perturbed by the interruption. But tonight is different, his quickly approaching death causing something close to sentimentality to wash over him. He’s never felt anything like it before. If he weren’t so at peace with the silent and swift approach of Nyx, he’d surely be disgusted with himself. Sentimentality and attachment are two very similar things, after all.
Takaya reopens his eyes, turning back to Jin. He seems contemplative, more so than he’s ever seen him before.
“If we were both…” Jin halts himself mid-sentence, chewing persistently on his bottom lip. He seems at war with himself, turmoil etching across his features. Takaya frowns — now is no time to be bothered by such emotions. They’ve waited nearly their entire lives for this moment.
“What troubles you?”
Jin looks at Takaya with an emotion he can’t quite pinpoint. “If we had longer life spans…”
Takaya opens his mouth to interrupt, but Jin holds up a halting hand. “I know, I know, you’re no fan of hypotheticals. There’s no point in dwelling on what could have been. It’s a waste of time, I know that. I just—,” he groans, scuffing his shoes. “Forget it. I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
Takaya’s never seen him behave so irrationally. It’s off-putting, seeing him so unsettled. What’s even more disturbing is the fact that Takaya feels inclined to comfort him.
“Jin,” he starts slowly, thinking over his words carefully. “I have a confession of sorts.”
Jin eyes him curiously. “Oh?”
“It’s childish to think in such a matter,” Takaya sighs, as if disappointed by his own straying thoughts, “but I believe we may be tethered together even in death.”
Jin appears gobsmacked by this sentiment, and Takaya’s completely aware as to why. It’s the most hypocritical sentence Takaya has ever spoken aloud in his life. Attachment gives way to weakness, and the act of believing he’ll be tethered to someone if there’s a possibility of an afterlife…he can’t think of anything more descriptive of the word attachment.
He’s not attached to Jin, he tells himself. He’s never been attached to anyone, and he never will be. He’s simply trying to ease his subordinates nerves, a favor being offered after so many years of loyalty. The fact that he believes the offer of attachment is the one thing that’ll cure Jin’s turmoil is…well, frankly, that’s a separate issue altogether. A separate issue that they’ll never have the time to delve into.
“Oh,” Jin says, mouth agape and eyes wide. “Oh, that’s…yeah, I mean…tethered, huh?” he laughs lightly, a jittery, nervous sort of sound, as if he’s stuck in a state of disbelief. Under different circumstances, if the distant, lowly groans of Shadows didn’t pierce through the quiet, if the Dark Hour didn’t loom over them with an unforgiving finality, he’d find it almost amusing.
“Tethered…how?”
Takaya shrugs, a sharp, janky movement. Unnatural, inhuman. He’s quickly beginning to regret ever uttering the words to begin with.
“Takaya?” Jin says again, unwilling to take his silence as an acceptable answer.
“Feeling pushy tonight, are we?” Takaya drawls, taking note of the way Jin’s face flushes red with embarrassment. Always so quick to fluster, even in the hours leading up to his demise. “Well, I’m really not sure how to explain it, Jin.”
He seems dissatisfied by this. “Really? Not at all?”
“Perhaps it’s the experimentation we’ve both gone through. The shared killings we’ve participated in. The blood that coats my hands coats yours just the same.”
“So…we’re tethered by the blood of those we’ve killed, then?” Jin muses. “That’s pretty morbid.”
“Morbid,” Takaya repeats. “Yes, it is, isn’t it? We’re tethered due to shared circumstances. Due to death, due to killing, due to spilled blood and the drugs that course through our veins.”
“Yeah,” Jin nods. He looks happier than Takaya’s ever seen him, and something about it makes his chest ache, although he has no idea why. “Yeah, I think so too. It’s a nice thought.”
“It is,” Takaya agrees, but frowns at his own words. Why is it such a nice thought? Why is he entertaining hypotheticals at all?
Jin seems to sense his rapidly increasing turmoil, and attempts to cover up the hypocrisy of it all. “Of course, it’s no fault of ours that we’re connected like this. It’s sort of like…I don’t know, fate? Or, something like that.”
“That sounds…” Takaya chokes out a laugh. Even in the face of death, they lie without remorse or hesitation. “utterly ridiculous.”
“Yeah. It does, doesn’t it?”
For a brief moment, they stand side by side, soaking in the quiet. Something creaks in the distance — what a shame it’d be if the tower collapsed, caving in on itself right before Nyx’s decent.
“You should go to the top. The very highest point, I mean,” Jin announces suddenly. “That group of idiots will be here any time now. I’ll hold them off for you.”
“That large of a group against one person is hardly a fair fight. They’ll kill you.”
Or worse, they’ll wound him and leave him to die slowly, painfully, too pitiful and afraid to kill him quickly. Takaya’s spent countless hours examining the group, picking apart their intentions and weaknesses, and he has no shred of doubt that each and every one of them is a coward. Afraid of killing, afraid of blood, afraid of carnage. Fear grips onto them with cold, unrelenting claws. Death is inevitable, and yet they strive to live as long as they can — they aren’t afraid of death in and of itself, Takaya thinks. They’re afraid of dying prematurely. Afraid of dying before experiencing what they’ve always set out to do. They want to live their lives to the fullest, and they won’t be able to do so if Nyx destroys that opportunity.
Takaya finds it all incredibly foolish. His life was stolen from him as a child, bestowed with a power he never asked for and never wanted. His life has been filled with so much torment, such unrelenting agony, that he often wonders what the point of him being born was at all.
“That’s alright,” Jin says, bringing Takaya’s thoughts back to the present. “You deserve to witness it more then I do.”
Takaya looks at Jin, who’s lost his prior sense of agitation. In the dreary glow of their surroundings, he looks almost serene, and Takaya becomes abruptly aware that this is the last time they’ll ever see each other. This should’ve been obvious from the very beginning, and yet the prospect itself is difficult for him to grasp.
“I would’ve preferred to witness Her descent with you by my side,” Takaya sighs, sounding more disappointed than he intended to let on. “Your loyalty throughout this has been commendable. Though, I suppose…”
“It’s alright,” Jin repeats. “I always knew it’d go down like this, you know?”
“Perhaps you truly can win,” Takaya says. “Massacre them for me and join me at the top, will you?”
Jin laughs. “Yeah, like that’ll be an easy feat. They have a fucking robot on their team.”
“It really is rather ridiculous, isn’t it?” Takaya agrees. “Such a foolish little group…”
“Nyx is going to destroy them. It’ll be a bloodbath.”
“A well-deserved one. Incompetence should be punished.”
Jin nods, adjusts his glasses, and tightens his grip on his briefcase. “I guess this is it, then.”
“I suppose it is.”
For a moment, they simply stare at each other in silence. Right now, they are alive, albeit barely. Even if Nyx weren’t to descend tonight, they’re both running on borrowed time. Neither have discussed it in full, but both are aware that Takaya in particular has very little time left. He knows his body is close to giving out, that his heart is becoming tired of beating in his chest. Jin’s health has been decreasing as well, and while it hasn’t been doing so as rapidly as Takaya’s, it’s a blaring sign of his diminishing lifespan. He’s becoming shaky, unsteady, and he’ll often spend his nights curled into a ball, shivering uncontrollably. His teeth chatter no matter how many blankets he piles atop himself, and while Jin never says so aloud, Takaya knows that the coldness that prickles under his skin is undeniably painful.
Soon, they’ll both be gone, and that’ll be it. It’ll be over, and there will be no more shared sleepless nights or meaningless small talk. This is the end, and even though they’ve always known it’d be like this, something about it feels different than expected. Chidori is already dead, and Jin is acting as a sort of human sacrifice to stall a group of high-schoolers; Takaya will be alone when Nyx descends. This shouldn’t trouble him, not even remotely. And yet, none of this feels nearly as euphoric as he expected it to be.
“Good luck,” Jin says. He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. A simple phrase in the face of a dire situation. It’s spoken with a sort of calmness, as if they’ll somehow see each other again after everything ends. They both know they won’t.
“Goodbye, Jin.”
And as Takaya watches him walk downwards towards his demise, a part of him wishes, for just a moment, he’d taken the chance to say something more.