There was a time when all that he would dream about were explosions. Grit in his teeth. A ringing pain in his ears. Air tasting like dirt. The charred smell of plastic and oil. They didn't smell anything like fireworks.
Fireworks. Another thing he couldn't watch without flinching, even when Hina held his hand so hard it hurt. Nothing hurt in this dream, and the worst part is that he can't remember if it hurt back then. Did he just never notice the scrapes and bruises? The shockwave tearing at his skin with heat enough to scorch? It had to have hurt when he shielded himself from the debris, but all he could think about was whether there were pieces of her body in the dirt that pelted him like hail. She had been crying when she died and that made her death seem even more unfair.
He still dreams about her, but not every night.
Now he dreams about falling, and that is somehow both better and worse. A moment suspended in a sky still warped purple, the void that had been Dr. Maki leaving a scar that faded only reluctantly.
Falling.
It seemed an impossibly long way down. Enough time for a life. Certainly enough for a death. Two deaths. A kind of ending, maybe even a kind one. Saving the world had been within his reach after all. Their reach.
The slap stings, and this time the hurt doesn't make things better. It makes things worse. More real. More memory than dream.
"Eiji, wake up." There was a bird sculpted on the glove that was Ankh's hand, Ankh's arm, but he had never imagined that it spoke. The voice always came from elsewhere, like a whisper from a stagehand you couldn't see. A very annoyed stagehand. "You're gonna die."
Of course he was, that was why he was looking at the sky and not the rapidly approaching ground. But words needed to be said, even in a dream, so he answers with a smile. Maybe of relief. Maybe because even in his dreams the hand is a welcome sight. "Oh, it's fine, I don't think there's much I can do about that. And besides, you're…" Dead. Gone. But in his face all the same.
"Don't worry about me, I got what I wanted." Just a hand, like at the start. No host body. No smirk. No smile either. Too few smiles.
"You mean life? But if you die…" What was the use of getting what you want only to lose it right away? He had never managed to figure that one out. Ankh seemed get it. But then Ankh always seemed like he knew it all, even when he was flailing in the dark like the rest of them.
"You're right. Thanks to you all, a pile of medals like me can die. I don't think I could ever find anything more satisfying."
You sound like Dr. Maki, is what he had wanted to say. Only in the end are things complete. Such bullshit. The end is the end and there was nothing great about that. Nothing sad either, or so he would have thought, but that was regarding his own end, and this was different. Different enough that the words stick in his mouth and he remained quiet as Ankh's hand gestured empathically in his face.
"Picking you worked out for me in the end, no doubt about that."
No doubt. How could he say that with such conviction and then just float away. Could hands even look back? In his dreams he tries to grab him anyway, but his reach is too short. Like always. Too short for the thing that he realized too late mattered the most.
"Hey… where are you going?" He knows where, but he asks anyway. Maybe one day the answer will be a different one.
"I'm not the hand that you need help from anymore."
Sometimes he wakes up then; sometimes he keeps falling, keeps flailing, keeps trying to swim after the fading hand. The shoulder turned on a sandy beach, Ankh walking away. Not looking back. Never looking back.
Eiji wish that he could learn that trick.