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Eishia stands right where she had been when Follo stormed out. The same goes for Zanka, although he is turned away from her now, his posture tight and stiff behind his jinki slung across his back. She can't see his face, and she's not sure she wants to. Her stomach feels wonky under her ribs, her head humming nonstop. Her eyes shift to the door, her ears strain to catch any incoming sounds outside the infirmary, anything to signal Follo's return.
But he doesn't return. Eishia isn't sure if that is a completely bad idea.
The silence that lurks in the wake of the boys' argument feels stifling. Eishia is all too used to loud voices, sharp remarks, tension that sits too comfortably in her spine. Her mouth tastes sour with this silence. Her eyes stay on Zanka, standing away.
Zanka finally moves after what feels like an eternity of staying statue-still, scrubbing a hand over his face. He still doesn't turn around though. No muttering, just a deep sigh that sounds smothered, like he's trying to hide just how weary he really is. Eishia feels like her insides are slowly fading to dust within her, helpless to do anything to change the sight before her.
Both of them had been wrong, but it feels wrong of her to say so. She doesn't really understand either of them, although she is desperately trying to. But then she just feels guilty about making her own assumptions, of most likely reading the two of them wrong, of voicing advice only for it to make things exponentially worse. It's already happened; she shouldn't have mentioned anything to Follo.
She knows that anyone else in the Cleaners would say that she has done nothing wrong, but maybe she's just thinking that to reassure herself, ward off the harrowing blame that's sure to come once Zanka turns around.
You shouldn't have healed him. You should have come to me. You should have sided with me.
But it hadn't felt like siding was the way to go at all. That is what so many people she has encountered seem so obsessed with: to hear that they are the ones in the right, that everyone around them is wrong to have their own opinions and should only listen to them. She had seen it with her grandmother, barreling through life and people with her medical knowledge. Even though it had been for their betterment, Eishia had always secretly thought that a gentler approach is best. After all, no one wants to be yelled at until they regret their own existence.
That is why Eishia tries her best to be kind, to be soft, to be quiet. Everything around her had been so scary and hard and loud and sometimes sick awful mean, not only from her family but from the outside too. No one had seemed to really see her, to consider her capable or worthy of being in their space, to trust her enough with their wounds. Until the Cleaners.
Until people like Zanka and Follo.
She wants to pay them back for this, offer assistance. The urge comes so naturally to her now that she has long forgotten if it had been originally an innate trait or a learned behavior. She takes the tiniest step forward, her sandals too loud on the infirmary floor.
"Zanka..." Eishia begins, and her voice is soft but stronger than she thought it would come out, given how hard it feels to swallow right now.
"I know," Zanka mumbles back with a heaviness to his tone that matches the slump of his shoulders. He still doesn't face her yet. What he knows, she's not sure of. She hadn't even been that clued in when she spoke his name. She decides to challenge it. Gently.
"Know what?" In every way she spins it, the reply comes off as rude, and she feels the usual flush of fear through her nerves, waiting for the punch. It doesn't come, because it's Zanka, and she knows that he won't, but it's hard to rewire habits.
"I don't know," Zanka admits, finally wheeling around but still not fully facing her. He's looking out the window, into the dark night, his reflection a translucent ribbon on the glass. His profile is sharp, but his eyes are hooded over in thought. His mouth works in the way it does. His lips look bitten; he's been digging his teeth in again, like he does when he's trying to mask the frustration he seems to feel on a regular basis.
"He's trying his best, Zanka, but his mistakes are not to be shouldered by you," Eishia finds herself saying. She dares to take another step closer.
"So you're sayin' I'm right?"
"I think you're both right about different things." It may sound like a cop-out, but that is normally the reason fights happen in the first place: a lack — or refusal — to listen to each other, to see the other person's side. She's seen it at home so many times, been too afraid to help herself when it happens to her, but for some strange, painful, inexplicable reason, she doesn't want to stand by and let others suffer in their own squabbles. Auggie tells her that some morons can't be helped — his words — but she still tries, no matter how many times she walks away with disappointment weighing her to the ground.
This time, though, she doesn't want to leave disappointed. She doesn't want to taste the bitterness between these two every time they're all in the same room, which happens more often than one expects. She needs to do this for the team.
She needs to do this for them.
"Zanka, please sit," Eishia asks of Zanka, moving forward and gesturing a hand to the cot that Follo just lay on. The blanket is still crumpled in places.
For a moment, Zanka's expression shifts, looking like he wants to reject the offer, so very tired with all of the day's events, but he resigns within a second and shifts his jinki around him to sink onto the cot, weariness evident in every bend of his body. She sits beside him, a few inches away, but still close enough that she can catch hints of his scent, clean and fresh and familiar. She glances at him. He doesn't meet her eyes. She can see the storms in those treacherous blue eyes though.
"It's not your fault that he keeps injuring himself," Eishia says, voice gentle. "You're a great trainer."
There is the slightest crack in Zanka's facial expression, something that indicates to Eishia that he's making an effort not to contradict her. Call it 'feminine intuition', or whatever terms her brother comes up with from wherever.
Or perhaps... she just knows him that well by now.
It feels dangerous to think, even more perilous to accept as fact, as if the existence of this very thought would trigger something that would prove the opposite.
She ignores the spiraling, her frazzled nerves, the threat of sweat under her skin. "But being too harsh with him isn't beneficial to anyone, especially the two of you."
Zanka still doesn't make eye contact with her, but after a heavy moment of nothing being said, he manages to reply in a voice that sounds like it's trying to remember how to speak: "He asked me to train him."
Eishia had known that. She had even imagined Follo joining Team Akuta for the briefest moment when she had learned of his newfound Giver status. However, he had decided to remain a Supporter, and the integrity in his promise from before had nullified any feelings of disappointment in her.
"It's not like before, with Enjin tellin' me to do it. Follo asked me. I don't even know why. There were so many other people. He coulda even asked Rudo, dammit. I mean, he's probably not that stupid, but..." Zanka's lips press together, jaw working. "I just— I guess I kinda got what I wanted."
"What do you mean?"
"I just didn't want him to see..." Zanka trails off, and Eishia remains quiet, waiting for him. She can guess what he's refusing to say out loud: Zanka wants to hide how incompetent he is.
Of course, that would be how he sees it. No one else does. No one can look at anything Zanka does and think incompetent. That self-doubt, that misinterpretation of his skill by his own warped self-judgement — it hurts Eishia more than she lets on, makes her once again rue how her healing abilities cannot reach matters of the heart and soul. If only her extension cord could do something to heal those invisible cracks in Zanka, in Follo, in the space between the two of them right now.
"Zanka, please don't be so hard on yourself." She knows such words are near-futile with Zanka, but better to have said it than to not. "Follo is just struggling in his own way."
"Yes, I can see that," Zanka retorts bitterly. The sarcasm is not lost on Eishia.
"No, really. Follo isn't like—" She hesitates; she's never really been sure about Zanka's jinki's origin. "Like me. This wasn't really sprung on him. He's been working tirelessly towards becoming a Giver, and he wasn't even sure if it would happen. I don't want to overstep, but I think you could sympathize, maybe?"
Zanka's eyes flutter close for a moment, and Eishia wonders if he's too wired from the argument, finding offense in everything now. She's ready to jump in again, to attempt at appeasing as always, but Zanka suddenly says, "Of course I sympathize. It's just that he doesn't listen to me, and I don't know why or how to make him."
"It's not about making him. Like I said, he had been obsessed with being a Giver. I think he's obsessed over it for so long, he's not exactly capable of letting it go for now." She makes sure Zanka sees how pointed the look she's giving him is. "Do you understand that?"
Zanka meets her eyes for a second, then looks ahead, distinctly more uncomfortable. Eishia feels bad for being stern with him, but perhaps it is needed? She tries not to doubt herself, ignoring the sweat rippling in her glands.
"So you need to be patient with him, please," insists Eishia. "And he needs to be patient with you. I don't want you two to stop training together; you're really good for each other, I think. Because I think you understand each other in a way that some of the other Cleaners can't. And yes, he should definitely listen to you more, but I think considering where the three of us stand as Givers, at different points with different goals, we have to be willing to listen."
"Then ya should listen to me when I tell ya you're one of our best," replies Zanka. Eishia lets out a little sigh, her version of a scoff.
"Zanka, do you understand what I'm saying?"
"Yes, I do." His tone is solemn, and his eyes cloud over in deep thought. "I guess you could say we're all lost in our own ways."
Eishia considers his words. "Maybe, but maybe we can help each other find our way."
"How sappy," Zanka gives back with something close to affection. The intimacy in his tone makes her cheeks warm.
"You're the one waxing poetic."
"Fuck no." Zanka then clears his throat rather delicately. "Sorry."
"It's alright," Eishia dismisses with a small smile despite everything. "You've said worse when I was healing you."
"Not because of you," Zanka clarifies with urgency. "Just... pain sucks, s'all. The way Follo's been wrecking himself up, you'd think he likes it. I hope to all things holy and not that he's not one of those types."
Overtaken by something inexplicable, Eishia's eyes flit down to Zanka's legs beside hers. In the back of her mind, engraved by ice-cold worry, the image of a row of neat scars lurks, too neat in the cut and placement to have been done by anyone other than oneself. She had seen it after a particularly grueling mission, a trash beast's jaws leaving Zanka with a maimed hip and alarming blood loss.
These scars line down the side of Zanka's right thigh, their number unknown since Eishia hadn't had time to count before Zanka had stirred out of his daze to jerk away from her, nothing but shame on his face. She hadn't said anything then, not knowing nearly enough about Zanka to have the right to advise him. Eventually, when she had found her voice again, she had asked if he wanted her to heal those suspiciously straight scars. He had said no, and she left it at that.
It has never come up since then. It hadn't really come up then either. But now she's thinking of how Follo had requested to leave the scars on his face untouched, much more ragged than the ones Zanka hides. Knowing Zanka, he doesn't seem to enjoy pain, but rather has a very unhealthy relationship with it. The same goes for Follo, although he is more readable to Eishia, all things considered. She doesn't necessarily understand much anyways, and it makes her ashamed of how much she wants to be a part of their lives, beyond the role of nurse and patient. If her grandmother heard that, she would whip her into next week with a verbal lashing of maintaining professionalism and prioritizing the job and whatnot. For the hundredth time that month, Eishia is thankful that she is far away from such stresses. This place may have its own, but there is something about seeing herself overcome these stresses and discovering new sides to herself.
For instance, she had never imagined that she would be the one trying to patch up a relationship. Physical bonds are her thing, emotional bonds her brother's area of expertise.
Although, perhaps she is getting a bit ahead of herself, because Zanka is still sitting here, face perplexed. Follo is still somewhere else. And Eishia is still unsure if anything she is saying makes a difference here. But she needs to try. She owes it to them.
"I don't think he's 'one of those types', as you put it. I think he's just gotten his chance, but in a way, he doesn't really realize that he's got it. Subconsciously, it seems like he's so used to working towards getting that chance that he's still doing just that: working towards that chance. Like, he wanted to be a Giver, so he worked towards that. Now he's a Giver, so he's so hardwired from before that he is still operating like he needs to get something after that because this strife is all he knows, I guess? I mean, of course, just because you become a Giver doesn't mean you just give up. Like, when you see it from Follo's perspective. He just— This has been his goal, and now that goal is something that I— I— I don't know what I'm saying."
Her rambling ends rather embarrassingly, and she avoids looking at Zanka, who sounds like he's stifling a laugh. Her face heats again.
"I think," Zanka declares firmly, "that it's been a very long day for all of us. You've been healing, Follo's been hurting, I've been yelling. I think we all need to rest."
"Yes," Eishia finds herself admitting. "Rest is very important. And so is—"
"Listening, yes. Look, we're all beat, so maybe a good night's sleep will help." Zanka rises from the cot and Eishia scrambles to her feet, her body feeling very heavy all of a sudden, as if the attention brought to their drained energy levels finally allows her body to recognize just how truly tired she is. Her eyes beg for sleep, and the world moves somewhat surreally around her. The thing that grounds her is the hand Zanka places on her shoulder. She looks up at him with wide eyes, unable to speak.
"I'm sorry to put ya through all this today." His eyes soften as they look on her. "I'll talk to Follo. Don't worry about us, okay?"
I can't help it. It's who I am. Instead of saying that, she manages to reply with, "Okay."
With a brief, but genuine, smile, Zanka lets go of her shoulder and walks out of the infirmary, gait slow with the weight of the day. Eishia looks towards the cot they had just been sitting on, at its mussed blanket that she would need to fix before the next patient.
But she's too tired for that, and it'll be there tomorrow. She leaves the infirmary as well.
The next day, Eishia wakes up early to take care of the duties she shirked off last night. She enters the infirmary, everything the same as before.
Then, as she comes closer to the cot to take the blanket off its corners, she catches a glimpse of movement in the frame of the window. She draws near and sees Zanka and Follo standing in the courtyard, facing one another, chatting far more amiably than they had been last night.
Eishia blinks. Did Zanka go to Follo right after leaving the infirmary? The haste in this resolution doesn't really make much sense to her, but maybe her grandmother had a point that one time: men are simple and therefore unsurprising creatures. Eishia doesn't know if this counts as evidence for that, but she recalls it nonetheless.
It's nice to see them getting along again, Follo laughing with his eyes closed in that laidback way of his and Zanka shaking his head in a way that can only be translated as fondly. Eishia feels that knot of worry in her chest come undone.
Eishia probably stands at the window for too long because Follo manages to catch sight of her. He tosses a wave in her direction, which makes Zanka look over too. It takes all of Eishia's strength not to shield herself from view with the blanket in her hands. Instead, she offers a small wave in return. Zanka nods at her in recognition. Eishia smiles at him, at both of them, and hopes they know how much this means to her.