Chapter Text
It’s been half a day, and Olivia’s not back.
Everyone still alive has headed back to the train with nothing else to do and seemingly endless questions left to ponder, but the question of “will they ever come back?” seems to have already been answered as time stretches ever onward. And Tanaka has a somber gut feeling that he will dreadfully hate the answer.
Marcoh will probably hate it even more, but Tanaka’s equipped to help him with that reality.
At the very least, since yesterday, the strange inhabitants of Prehevil and its surrounding area finally, truly dropped dead. Henryk, who had been in a daze for the past few days, mindlessly cooking for everyone in an empty restaurant, finally “woke up.” In the blink of an eye, the mist lifted, and for the first time since they woke up in this hell hole, everyone left breathed a little easier as they felt a weight lifted from their shoulders.
Finally, they felt some semblance of sanity.
In the present moment, it felt like everything could be all right, even for a bit. But Tanaka knew that, likely in the following days, everyone would have to process the nightmare they went through, and he didn’t really know what to do in the wake of..waking up from this shared nightmare? Some part of him knows that they should all stick together, he’s learned the value of sharing your troubles with other people, but he also knows that everyone has plans—he’s desperate to somehow make up for lost time himself—and they’ll likely never see each other again.
He doesn’t want to never see Marcoh again. It’s really quite a selfish desire, but in the short time Tanaka’s come to know him, he’s really become quite attached.
And in that way he’s familiar with but knows he should never act on.
That red-haired gentleman, August, has been explaining the past few days to everyone still alive, and Tanaka hasn’t been able to wrap his head around much of such esoteric concepts, but he doubts August is wrong. There was too much seen that couldn’t be explained by any law of reality, and Karin has been furiously scribbling down every word out of August’s mouth, no doubt to one day be compiled and released to the public.
He’s glad she has an outlet for the horrible things they all saw in Prehevil. Tanaka isn’t even sure if he wants to go back to his old job, as a salaryman, pretending nothing bad ever happened in his life ever. Maybe he should return to Edo, where this nightmare is far away and he can rigorously work himself to death, ignoring his shattered psyche whenever he needs.
But Tanaka doesn’t want to do that anymore. For the first time in his life, despite the living apocalypse and hell he endured, Tanaka actually wants to take a break and think about things for a while. He wants to live.
“Marcoh, what do you want to do after this?” He nudges the boxer next to him, crossed arms and head hanging low in a nonchalant, tough guy attitude Tanaka has learned is just a facade that belies one of the kindest, most caring individuals he’s ever known. Which isn’t a very high bar to clear, but Marcoh soars kilometers over what Tanaka has known regarding everything.
Marcoh stays unmoving for a bit, but Tanaka can see his brow furrow a little more in thought. He leans down next to Tanaka’s ear, warm breath ghosting, and murmurs, “I don’t know. I want to see my sister, but I’ll wait for Olivia as long as I can first.”
Tanaka nods, and without hesitation, replies, “I’ll wait with you.”
After August’s speech, Karin steps up and announces to their band of survivors that they’re all going to wait another two days in Prehevil for the souls that sacrificed themselves in that vault. It’s a unanimous decision, and Maria and Levi even urge that they’ll stay longer if Abella doesn’t come back before then. Karin agrees, they’ll all help search for their…friends?—by All-Mer, it’s only been two days—at the end of the waiting period. They will all stay longer if they feel they need to.
But if nothing comes up, then they all should leave. Keyword, should, because Rher knows what awful things lie here, but no one wants to potentially leave the four that ventured deeper into the heart of this hell.
At least the place seems safe again, and there hopefully won't be too much risk of anyone going insane. Plus, it’ll be a good time to connect with the other ‘players’ of that horrible game; he hasn’t spoken much with Levi or August at all. Tanaka can’t help but smile a bit when the little soldier boy and Marina cling to each other and joke around like the world hadn’t almost ended for them, and he figures he could learn a little bit more from August about, well, everything? He still hasn’t formulated any coherent questions in his brain.
It’d be good to talk to the other people on the train for once as well; Tanaka feels like he’s heavily burdened Marcoh by constantly getting into trouble throughout the last two days, and though Marcoh hasn’t given much sign of frustration, Tanaka still can’t help but feel a little guilty.
He likes Marcoh in a way he doesn’t like to think about, and it’s almost terrifying how close they’ve become in such a short period of time. How close they’ve all become.
Karin announces to the group that, for the rest of the day, they’re all going to wait here in the train for the others to come back. If someone leaves for a supply run or to use the bathroom, they have to bring someone with them. Tomorrow, if no survivor comes back, they’ll all search Prehevil and its surrounding areas together for any signs of life. Same thing the day after.
Marina especially urges that they should extend the days spent searching for the others to three days, maybe four, maybe a week or more. After all Prehevil had so many hidden areas, unnaturally elongated wooden halls, and who knows what else? But August places a hard cap of four days maximum for searching: there’s no point in looking for dead ghosts, especially when this place has already driven them all to some level of madness. Marina understands that—she too wants to move on with her life, even though she’s gone through such horrors.
Tanaka can’t fathom how someone so young has had to go through, has had to endure the trauma of the Termina Festival, and it makes him ache all the more for Olivia’s absence. Olivia, who was so young, bright, and caring beyond her years. She shouldn’t have had to toil through this hell; Tanaka hopes he eased her mind in some small way when they all laughed together just a night ago in the train. He hopes, more than anything, that she’s okay.
Marcoh shuffles just a tiniest bit closer to him—subtle but purposeful—and Tanaka swears he must have been thinking the same thing.
They’re both terrified.
As the rest of the day stretches forward, everyone progressively becomes more on edge. They all swap stories about the hell they endured, and it physically pains Tanaka to hear what Marina had to endure with her father. He feels an unfamiliar, deep rage when Levi mentions how that ghoulish-looking gentleman assaulted him yesterday morning, and the subtle clench of Marcoh’s fists (thumb outside, Tanaka remembers,) keys in that he’s feeling the same thing. For the time being, however, Tanaka places a hand on Marcoh’s shoulder, feeling the boxer relax under his touch.
Karin has been oddly silent, listening in on everyone’s testimonies and keeping the corner of her eye trained on the Bremen soldier still resting in the corner. When it’s her time to speak, she articulates in incredible clarity the hell she went through, her changing thought processes, and what she has pieced together so far. She jokes that it’d be nice to have Daan here for once, if only to “bitch about how wrong I am about everything,” and everyone laughs if a little bittersweet.
August pats her on the back, saying she’s mostly right, but most things that have happened are entirely nonsensical to the average person. Marina nods in agreement; she knew it was something bigger than any human could have done from the beginning. Henryk reluctantly shares his two cents, his mind being under their control for quite a bit.
“It was like…I could only focus on one thing. I could only think about that one thing; nothing else mattered…” he turns to look outside the window, in the direction of Prehevil, “I think I was lucky it was just about cooking for you all. I don’t know what I would’ve done if it were anything else.”
Tanaka doesn’t like the thought of how cruel the gods dealt his hand—he wants to believe that, at the end of the day, his choices are his own and nothing will go awry if he chooses correctly. But he knows that, even if he doesn’t fully understand what’s going on as deeply as August does, that’s not the case. Still, the mere concept exhausts him beyond reproach.
When it’s Tanaka’s turn to talk, Marcoh speaks up instead, laying out how they mostly did supply runs before Olivia led them to try and search for more. He leaves out the part about Olivia’s sister. Tanaka adds on his own little pieces to their story, how he kept getting into trouble with the townsfolk (or, technically what was left of them) and that weird clown a few times. He’s thankful beyond…really anything for Marcoh saving him so many times.
Marcoh turns his head away from him, hand covering his jaw in something of a pout, and Tanaka wonders if he said something wrong before August lets out a booming laugh, congratulating Tanaka for surviving.
When they’ve all shared their tales, Henryk declares it time to eat, so they all scatter in pairs to collect ingredients in the woods. Tanaka’s surprised that so much time has passed just…talking, but he’s thankful to learn more about his fellow ex-contestants. Even if most of what they said was absolutely horrible, he can’t help but feel like there must be something incredible about everyone to have survived up until this point.
He’s not sure if that’s much the case with him; there were definitely certain points where Tanaka was certain he would die. In fact, he feels like he should have died. He definitely would have, if not for Marcoh. And even to some extent, Olivia. She could easily survive on her own with a wheelchair—the botanist had a wisdom and natural affinity for surviving it seemed.
So, in his mind, she has to still be alive. She should be here, lecturing him and Marcoh about which plants and herbs are edible and fresher, which are best to keep for healing in case something goes awry later.
He can feel her absence in the way Marcoh stalks closely behind him, as if he’d disappear as soon as he left Marcoh’s sight. Tanaka hopes that, preferably soon, it’d be back to the way it was: walking side by side, Olivia leading them forward towards whatever goal she kept pursuing.
That hope is slowly dwindling as the day stretches onward, and Tanaka catches Marcoh breathing harder than normal, peculiarly for an athlete like him.
He stops, and Marcoh bumps into him, but Tanaka stands his ground. “Hey, are you alright?” He turns around, looking up at the larger man.
Marcoh looks like he’s about to cry.
“…do you want to talk about it?” Tanaka knows Marcoh knows what ‘it’ is, and the boxer nods in agreement.
Marcoh sinks to the ground, no longer blanketed in mist and musk, and clutches onto the lapels of Tanaka’s suit jacket as he does so, bringing the salaryman down with him. He snakes his lumbering arms around his shoulders, and Tanaka can feel the tears soaking into fabric as Marcoh’s head rests in the crook of his neck, sobs muffled in his collarbone.
“Tanaka…I-I don’t think she coming back.” Marcoh’s voice was muffled. “I…I think,” he lifts his face from his shoulder and looks Tanaka eye to eye, “I think…she’s why we’re all okay right now. She—“
The salaryman cuts him off, reeling him in with a firm hug. Marcoh breaks out into sobs once more, and Tanaka can feel him shaking in his grasp. This man—who was so strong for him and Olivia during the hell they endured, who had the strength to level men and monsters alike with his fists, who protected Tanaka at every turn and saved him at every mistake—was now a mere crying, mortified child in his arms.
Marcoh was strong for Tanaka during the Festival of Termina. In its aftermath, Tanaka would have to be strong for Marcoh.
“Shh, shhhh…” Tanaka has never really comforted someone before, but he wants to try. He wants to help. “It’s okay, Marcoh, I’m…scared too…but we can’t lose hope now.”
“Tanaka,” Marcoh says into his neck, “do you think she’s…? Okay?”
He truly doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to lie to Marcoh, certain Olivia’s okay and giving him false hope, but he doesn’t want to make Marcoh feel any worse. So, he says, honestly: “I don’t know, but I believe she has done the best she can, so…I hope she’s okay. But I do believe …Olivia would want us to hope for her.” He ruffles Marcoh’s curly hair. “She would be quite displeased if she heard you gave up on her so early.”
He feels Marcoh shake a little in laughter, and his sobs quiet down. For a little while, it’s just the two of them, sitting in the middle of a forest, trying to bear the weight of existence. Throughout it, he continues to pet Marcoh’s hair (something he’s been secretly wanting to do for a while now) until the man suddenly shakes again with laughter lifting his head.
“I like it when you pet my head.” Marcoh says, looking directly into his eyes.
Tanaka is stunned for a moment, and he can feel an unfamiliar heat seep into the area where Marcoh’s head once rested, crawling up his neck. Hastily, he stands up and pushes up his glasses. “That’s-that’s good, I’ll keep that in mind, uhhh.” He puts on his ‘business’ voice, “Let’s get back to the others—hopefully they’ve found something by now, and I still have a few herbs from a few days ago. We can just tell them that, without Olivia, we’re a bit useless.” He fears that mentioning the botanist will make Marcoh sad, but the boxer smiles.
“That’s probably true, anyway.” Marcoh lingers for a bit, spacing out off to the side before standing up to his full height. “Let’s go.” Short and sweet, per usual.
The trek back is short, but both him and Marcoh are shocked to find a massive deer with an arrow clean through its head, in the process of being skinned and trimmed of everything inedible. August and Levi chat animatedly with each other, the young soldier boy radiating pride and excitement about the hunt as the older gentleman guffaws in encouragement.
Henryk, Karin, and Marina are by a small fire pit, tending to the flame as Karin collects the occultist’s knowledge and the chef’s experiences into a cohesive description to be spun into a narrative in the future. All enthusiastically swap theories, questions, and analyses as a vegetable stew bubbles in Henryk’s stock pot.
“Oh, hey!” Henryk calls out, “you guys are back, I was starting to get worried.”
“If any of you to die, or anyone else for that matter , I swear to All-Mer I will find your ghosts and beat you up.” Karin bites in addition, “Marina’ll teach me how.”
Said occultist giggles in response before turning to the two men in question, “I’m sure Marcoh and Tanaka’s ghosts won’t be too hard to find. They’ll probably be pretty close by each other.”
Tanaka doesn’t want to dwell on what that means, but he hesitates to come up with a fast enough response. Luckily, Marina’s comment seems to fly over Marcoh’s head, and he bluntly asks: “What’s on the menu?”
Henryk cuts him off, “Did you bring anything back we could add?”
“Tanaka’s got some herbs in his briefcase.”
The salaryman in question sheepishly bows his head a little. “If they’re of any use.” He opens what’s left and presents it to Henryk, who nods and picks out a few for the soup and for reserve later.
“Good,” the chef nods, “I tried these guys earlier and they bring a really nice spiciness to dishes. Seems like that botanist girl taught you two something.”
Tanaka can tell Marcoh’s a little…on edge about Henryk, presumably because of how the chef treated Abella their first day. But Henryk is being helpful, so Tanaka just pats Marcoh on the back a little and is surprised as the tension from Marcoh’s shoulders drops quickly.
August and Levi hand over a good few kilos of deer meat, and Karin sarcastically asks where the hell they’d store the rest when a massive…wolf???? Dog?? Greets them all from the shadows.
Tanaka nearly falls back, barely being caught by Marcoh as August cheerfully introduces “Moonless” to their band of survivors.
“Oj, don’t look so scared, she doesn’t bite!” August reassures, but his grin is a little less certain than usual. Karin doesn’t look scared of the creature, but she cocks a brow at August’s blatant lie.
It’s weird to see Marina jump up in glee and beg August to let her pet the dog, as if it were a little puppy and not an oversized beast, but the mere sight of Marina’s girlish enthusiasm calms Tanaka’s nerves enough that Marcoh sets him down and steps a bit away.
Tanaka feels a bit guilty lamenting the cool night chill that he feels in Marcoh’s absence, but it’s forgotten somewhat as he watches Marina, then Levi, enthusiastically rubbing the beast’s belly. It’s too big for even the two of them, but August lifts Levi onto his shoulders to pet higher, and Prehevil has never felt so warm.
Marcoh leaves his side to help Marina “be the better dog petter!!” while Tanaka sits down by Henryk and Karin, chatting idly about the scenery, the weather, anything to keep their minds from shattering.
It works. For the first time in, perhaps a long time in his life, Tanaka can say he’s truly content. He doesn’t know what will happen after this, but he isn’t scared of the future for once.
The dinner is incredible, as per Henryk’s standards, and they all bask in an aura of calm for once. Prehevil’s trapped game had isolated them from the rest of the world, but only now does it feel like truly nothing else exists but them.
As Moonless picks meat off of the bones of the deer before then devouring those bones in an incredible display, they all wind down as the stress from today eats away at their exhaustion. At August’s insistence that he and Moonless will “stay up and keep guard, just in case,” the rest of them all settle into the train for the night. Karin too insisted on staying up, if only so she could interrogate more answers out of August.
Tanaka can hear Marina, Levi, and Henryk passed out, snoring softly near the front of the car. The idle chatter of Karin and August can be heard, muffled, from outside. The salaryman hopes that their story will get out someday, and though people may not believe him, at least Karin will ensure them all that, yes, this did happen.
And that’s enough.
Tanaka feels Marcoh roll closer to him, and he turns to face the other man. In the dark and without his glasses, he can’t see Marcoh at all, but the warm breath on his face tells him enough.
Now, Tanaka doesn’t feel scared for his future, but he won’t lie that there’s a bit of fear regarding his and Marcoh’s future. If there even is one.
But he’s tired, and he’s become self assured enough to admit that, yes, he’s very lonely, so he pulls himself closer to the boxer and buried his face in Marcoh’s chest.
He’s relieved when he feels arms wrap around his shoulders, and quickly afterwards, Tanaka falls asleep.
Dreaming of a network of people in a sea of green. Dreamlessly.
“Tanaka, I’ll be fine! Keep some vials for yourself—I already have too many!”
“Just take my briefcase, Olivia, I want to make sure you’re 100% prepared to go in there.”
“We have Daan, we’re basically 1000% ready to go, I’ll be fine!”
“…oh, alright. You’re already stronger than both of us anyway. I want to say ‘be careful,’ but that’s obvious. So, ‘take care,’ Olivia. Come back soon.”
“…I will. Thank you, Tanaka…for everything…”
“Olivia, are you sure you’ll be fine by yourself?”
“Marcoh, I’m with Abella, O’saa and Daan. I’m not ‘by myself.’”
“…do you have to go?”
“Reila’s in there. I have to see my sister. And you have to see your sister too, Marcoh. I know you get it. I have to do this.”
“…”
“Take care of Tanaka, ok? I’ll see you guys soon. Goodbye!”