I feel like I should offer some sort of warning for this chapter. Um, disclaimer: My taste in humor is terrible, and my taste in moderately canon-breaking headcanons is even worse. Further disclaimer: drugged Harlock. That's all I can offer. Carry on.

I wished I could stop breathing. Not because I wanted to die, but because the rise and fall of my stomach with each breath seemed to rip at my skin. From the moment I regained consciousness, the prickling, restrictive pain that came with stitches sparked with each breath.

I struggled with consciousness the first few rounds, rousing from pain only to wonder at its source. I faded out each time before I could return to my senses. Whatever drugs I was on made me heavy and so exhausted I swore I felt tired even while sleeping. Until the pain outweighed the need to rest, I couldn't keep my eye open for more than a few seconds.

I could only guess the number of attempts before I grabbed hold of the waking world, refusing to let it slip through my fingers again. The memories returned in an instant. I could still feel the saber twisting in my gut, the way my body seemed to hang there on it. My current pain was nothing compared to that, though it was still unpleasant.

Yama was there when my eye focused. He slept in the same chair I'd placed at his side however many days before. It was impossible to tell how much time had passed.

Yama's chin dipped to his chest, his arms crossed. Frays of his hair poked up and out in all directions. The harsh breaths through his nose neared snores. He too looked exhausted in his sleep.

The mere act of reaching out threatened to tear at my stitches, but I latched my hand onto his shoulder nonetheless. His chin jerked up as a slur of incoherent words left him.

"Yama," I greeted in a voice too dry and rough to be my own. "Water."

He blinked a few times, eye focused on nothing. "Hm, sure," he said, standing. "Water." He shuffled over to the sink and filled up a glass for me. I considered requesting wine too, but I doubted he would be as willing of an errand boy for me as he was for the other assassins.

He still didn't look awake when he returned. After raising the bed into as much of a sitting position as my stomach would allow, he lifted the glass over my head. I had no means of escape as he dumped it over, icy water pouring through my hair and down the back of my neck. "Why?" I growled, my shoulders taut with irritation.

Instead of answering, Yama returned to the sink and refilled the glass. As he walked back, I finally noticed the anger situated beneath his exhaustion. Eyes half-narrowed, he clutched the glass tight enough to splotch his knuckles white and red. This time he did have the courtesy to shove the glass under my nose instead. After I took it, he dropped into his chair, arms and legs crossed. "Never again," he said. The tone of his command rivaled one of mine. There was no uncertainty. This order would be carried out without question. The only problem was I didn't know what he meant.

I cocked a brow as I sipped the water. Yama's glare sharpened. "Don't you ever pull something like that again. You are not allowed to die."

"That's not something you or I can necessarily control," I murmured over the rim of my glass. "I told you I could lose."

"No," Yama said. He kept his eye on the floor. "You won't die. I won't lose you."

Perhaps this wasn't the time to be making jokes, but I could blame this one on the drugs. "Well I can't live forever, Yama. I'm not immortal."

I might as well have offended him to the core with the look he threw me. For better or worse, he didn't acknowledge it otherwise. "If any more assassins show up and ask for a duel, I'll be the one to face them," he said. "They're my responsibility. They're here because of me."

Somewhere along the line his reasoning had derailed. "I believe they're here to kill me," I corrected. "That would make them my responsibility."

"If I'd killed you in the first place, we wouldn't have had to worry about them," he huffed. "And they're my…friends." He chewed on the word as though working out the meaning. "I should be the one to take care of them."

With my voice back, I set the glass aside, out of Yama's reach in case I offended him again. "But if they are your friends, you would be hesitant to harm them," I said. "That makes you vulnerable. Out of the two of us, my odds are better."

I realized the flaw in my statement as he poked my stitches. My eye twitched despite all attempts to hide the pain. "You're the one with a hole running all the way through you," Yama said. "Even if you are better equipped to kill them, my wounds are mostly healed. It's possible another could show up within the next few days, and I will face them."

"The next few days?" I parroted, holding a hand over my wound just in case he tried anything else. "Gaia sent the second right after the first. Why would they wait that long to send the third?" It was possible I'd already slept through a few days, and waiting around a week to send in their next attacker allowed us too much time to recuperate. The ship's repairs would be long done by then.

But Yama's eye darted away from mine. "We warped while you were asleep. Just once. Just to throw them off our location."

I showed no anger or disapproval on my face. I didn't need to. Yama understood already that he'd done something wrong. He cringed as I stared him down. "Who approved this?" I asked.

"We put it to a vote of the bridge crew and engineers. It was unanimous."

"How is the Arcadia?"

"We did a rush patch job to hold things together." He breathed a sigh through his nose. "It didn't, but no one was injured. The dark matter generator is running again to fix the damage. Bulkheads are sealing the worst area at the moment."

"You punched a hole in my ship," I said.

He rubbed his hand across his forehead as though fighting back a headache. "Yes, that's true, but Gaia knew our location. If we remained there, they could have sent a collection of their best ships after us. And with you unconscious-"

"You were in charge," I cut in.

"You say that like the crew would listen to me without you around. You know they still don't trust me completely."

That was almost a valid excuse, but I didn't accept excuses. "If you are making smart decisions and leading them well, they will follow. You can't simply skirt your duties because you're unsure of yourself."

The exhaustion returned to his face, weighting his eye and his shoulders. "I know," he said. "I still don't think we made a bad decision. At the very least, we're all still alive for the moment." A weak smile cracked onto his face as he turned to face me. "I liked you better when you were high as a kite. You were much nicer then."

I froze. He had to be joking. Yama was a terrible liar, but none of his usual ticks showed through here. "This is the first time I've woken up," I said.

A silent laugh escaped him. "We didn't know if you were going to make it until you woke up. I couldn't make sense of what you were saying the first time, because you'd only speak in German. The second time you just told a lot of stories."

"About what?" Whatever they were, they were better off untold.

"You talked about Emeraldas mostly. About how she used to kick your ass and you were the third wheel for her and Tochiro." Yes, these things were definitely better left untold. "You kept going on about how Bainas was her reincarnation, and you killed her reincarnation. You were very upset about that."

It took all my willpower to avoid covering my face with my hand. "What happened to Bainas?" I asked to divert the topic.

All amusement faded from his face. "We sent her out in a coffin before we warped and scrapped her ship for parts. The doctor wanted to do an autopsy to check what Gaia might have planted on her, but I limited him to a scan instead. It looks like she had the same implant as me." He reached up and tapped at his eye patch.

I was more interested in his diversion of the doctor. Only allowing a scan was such an odd thing for Yama to do. It was respectful, certainly, but innocent at the same time. I couldn't imagine anyone but Yama requesting such an action.

I wondered how much he'd slept and how long he'd stayed at my side while I was unconscious. Despite everything he faced, he was the most naïve person I'd known in some time. For the moment his usual boundless energy was replaced by exhaustion and frailty. Beneath the sadness marring his eye was fear, fear of whichever assassin had to die next. In that moment, I hoped his warp did give me enough time to heal because I wanted to face them instead of him.

"There are four left?" I asked.

He nodded. His eye closed to hide the pain that seeped into it.

"You were close to them?"

"Some of them," he breathed. "It's not important. No matter how close we were, I don't want to see them dead." Then he looked to me as though it hurt him, as though he could feel my wounds. "But I can't see you dead. I just can't Harlock."

He stood. His trembling hand came to rest against my cheek. Whatever his intent in that moment, it vanished as he sobbed a laugh. His hands returned to him to cover his face as he attempted to hold it back. But snorts and snickers morphed into wheezing laughter no matter his attempts. "I'm sorry I poured water on you," he gasped between his barking. "You're so wet. Oh my God. I will get you a towel."

I wasn't sure how else to respond, so I waited until he retrieved the towel. Instead of handing it to me, he dropped it on my head and ruffled my hair dry. Tufts of it flared out in all directions by the time he was done, so I patted it back down. He didn't need another thing to laugh at me about.

"It's about time I changed your bandages too," he sighed, a smile lingering on his face.

"Why you and not the doctor?" I asked as he went to grab them from the cabinet.

"If you think getting water dumped on you is bad, you don't want to see what the doctor will do once he finds out you're coherent. He was not happy when he found out you were run through. Now do your best to sit up."

Sitting up meant putting weight on the wound, and I had to grit my teeth to ease the nausea rising in my throat. Sweat broke out across my face within seconds as my insides twisted and writhed in protest.

"But don't kill yourself," Yama said as he returned. He sat beside me on the bed and put his arm around my shoulders to pull my weight against him.

"Where are my clothes?" I asked as he cut through the old bandages. If the next challenger showed up while I was stuck in this bed, I would need something to change into.

"Your shirt is gone," Yama said. "Not much we could do for that, but everything else is clean."

The longer I stayed against him, the closer I pressed, until my cheek rested against his shoulder. My nose brushed his neck, and with each breath I took in his scent – subtle, human, soft, and with just a hint of flowers from the storage room he'd formed into a greenhouse.

Usually when we were this close, he smelled of sweat, sex, and whatever alcohol led us to that point. How many one night stands could we have before they stopped being one-night stands?

His hands worked in a smooth rhythm, wrapping around my abdomen to cover the fresh, ugly scar settled among those that had healed long before. He wasn't firm enough with it. The wrap could have done to be tighter, but I couldn't mind the gentleness.

Maybe it was the occasional brush of his fingers on my bare skin or his smell or just those damn drugs, but I wanted him. Like when alcohol tinted our worlds with warm hues, I found myself drunk off being close to him. Of course, the thing that brought me here was the thing keeping me from my desires. I nudged my face closer to his neck, intoxicated by him. His hands hesitated for an instant, but he continued on without a word until he was finished. "Harlock," he murmured then. "What are we?"

I didn't know. I was too tired to know. Sleep was returning to claim me. "We're pirates," I said. It was all I could think up as an answer.

"No," he sighed, though I could hear a smile in his voice. "I mean what are we to each other?"

Still, I didn't know the answer. Perhaps we were master and protégée or rivals. In some strange way, we may have been friends. I couldn't say what we were to each other for sure, but some part of my mind told me in a whisper that he was mine.

My protégée. My rival. My traitor. Mine.

But with no clear answer for him, I avoided answering altogether. "Why do you ask?"

"Because I hate to see you hurt," he said. "And I can't stand the thought of seeing you dead." He was more honest than me. One of the most honest people I'd ever met – an assassin and spy. It was no wonder he'd failed those tasks.

My arms drifted up on some strange whim of their own. They slipped around his small form, and I held him. I had no reason for it, only more maybes and excuses. "I have no plans to die just yet," I said. "But you can't die either, so whatever assassin comes, you must beat them. I don't care who they are." I raised my head and stared into his eye. "You have to win because I want you alive."

We were little more than an inch apart, so it didn't take much to lean forward the rest of the way and kiss him. It was simple, a few seconds of being close to him. In some ways, that was enough, and yet I wanted more. When I pulled back, I felt so tired I thought I might fall asleep right there. Then I saw his face, the soft dusting of a blush across his cheeks and the aversion of his eye.

My hands slipped up to hold his face, to pull his attention back to me. I wanted his focus on me, only on me. As soon as he looked my way, I kissed him again. I kissed him until his lips parted and I could taste the wet heat of his tongue. I felt him stifle a moan with a whimper and brushed my thumbs against his cheeks, feeling the softness of his skin along with the smooth, raised scar tissue. One of his hands tangled in my hair, pushing me closer.

What were we? Even then I didn't know.

Nothing. Something. Everything.

Maybe.

But no matter what we were, he was mine.

I woke to the warning alarm screaming overhead. Kei's voice cut through before it finished. "We've got another fighter approaching," she said. "It will probably be like the last one, but be prepared for anything."

By "prepared for anything," I assumed she meant "be prepared for something to blow up."

Despite the doctor's orders, I rolled out of bed and to my feet. He could yell at me later. I wasn't dead yet. I needed to greet my guest.

The clothes Yama left for me were from so far back in my closet I'd forgotten I owned them. I hadn't worn a button-up shirt in years, but Yama refused to bring me any of my usual clothes, worried the tight, harsh materials might aggravate my wound. Once dressed, I did look as though I was about to formally greet a guest. I would replace the outfit as soon as possible.

Men threw questioning glances my way as strode through the hall. Ignoring them, I kept my eye ahead and fought through any signs of a limp. I wasn't sure my insides weren't ripping apart, but I wasn't bleeding yet. Gritting my teeth, I walked on with my shoulders back and my chin up. It felt like I was dragging a knife through my gut.

Yama stood at a communication console when I arrived, Kei at the opposite. Judging by the sound of silence, it appeared everyone on the bridge held their breaths, waiting for the new arrival. They didn't notice me until I stood between Yama and Kei.

"Captain." Yama's voice held a warning. "You're not supposed to be out of bed."

Kei stared at my bare feet, amusement creeping into her expression.

"I want to see who's come to kill me," I said. Though if I was being honest, I'd come to see who Yama would fight. As the seventh of seven assassins, he was already ranked weaker than any of them. Had he fought Bainas, the match would have ended within seconds. Yama had nowhere near the skill or training of even the assassin directly above him. I told him he couldn't die, and yet I was allowing him to go on with this suicide of a duel.

"They're within range," Kei said. "Requesting communication link."

"Go ahead," Yama answered before I could. As the new assassin appeared on the overhead, I watched the color drain from Yama's face. His hands shook no matter how tightly he gripped the console in front of him. If the utter loss drowning his eye was any indication, this was a friend whether he would admit it or not.

No one spoke right away, neither Yama nor the man I turned to find glaring at me from his cockpit. I would have spoken, but for once I found myself at a loss. Gaia could be fools, but they weren't stupid. They should have known better than to send a man I'd fought before as an undercover agent against me. Granted, the "undercover" part didn't matter at this point, but it was strange that they'd ever considered Warrius Zero at all. He was one of Gaia's generals now. The whole of the crew knew of him. I'd blown up a ship he captained back when he was in his 20s, spared him only because he fought to protect the civilians we didn't know were onboard. Though to be fair, our duel never ended with a clear winner or loser.

Yama was the first to speak, all eyes on him except for Zero's. "Are you here for a duel?" Yama's voice wavered either from anger or sadness. With his head down, his hair hung in front of his eye. The last time I'd seen him show such weakness in front of an enemy, his brother was standing over him.

Zero's eyes remained on me as he answered. "Yes, I have been assigned to kill Harlock."

Yama's jaw was taut. The trembling of his hands infected his shoulders. "I am Harlock's successor. I wear the brand that marks us as equals. You will duel me in his place." As his chin jerked up, resolve strengthened his gaze into a glare. But Zero, the man who'd stared me down the same way years before, winced and glanced away.

"That's fine," he said despite the pain in his eyes. "As long as I kill one of you, my mission is complete. Gaia sees you as an equal threat because of your position."

"We'll duel in the hangar," Yama said. "Kei, open the doors to let him in."

Her hand hovered over her console as though she feared touching it. Even as she gave in and tapped out the command, her movements were sluggish.

"Very well," Zero answered. "I wish you luck." He never once looked directly at Yama.

Once the feed shut off, Yama's fist smashed into the top of his console. Half the bridge crew jolted against the noise. "Not him," he choked, raw pain eating at his voice. "They weren't supposed to send him. He wasn't one of us."

That made more sense. "Then why send one of their generals?" I asked.

"He was the one who trained us because he'd dueled you before. He's Gaia's best swordsman."

Yama would die. Quickly. Without question. Regardless of Zero's rank, Yama was coming apart at the seams. He held himself up against the console, fighting away tremors that wracked his form. He couldn't win any duel like this.

Then he continued, with the broken whisper of a lost child. "He's my uncle. He took care of us after Mom died. I can't lose him too." He looked up to me with pain bleeding from his eye, as though he wanted me to find some solution. But there was none. I had no reassurances, and I couldn't encourage him to kill his uncle.

"He's the last family I have left," Yama pleaded.

"Will he kill you?" I asked. "Would he kill his nephew?"

"I don't know." Without warning, Yama spun and ran for the door. "I have to talk to him," he gasped.

I followed in as quick of a gait as my stomach would allow, catching the doors just before they closed and slipping in after him. As we started down, he collapsed his weight against the wall. "Harlock." His voice sounded lost on a breeze, empty and far away. "This doesn't make sense."

No, it did make sense. It made sense for Gaia. They knew this would tear Yama apart. They wanted to break him. They had the means to do it, and they would use them.

As he clutched his shirt just above his heart and bit back tears, I burned with a resurgence of hatred for them. It was a hatred I hadn't felt in ages, the kind that made my mouth taste bitter. If there was any chance I could get both Zero and Yama out of this alive, I would take it.

There was one solid option.

Yama said he didn't want me to die either, but Zero was something to him. Zero was the last one he had left. Zero was everything.

Yama loved Zero. Perhaps Zero loved Yama as well.

I didn't know if I would die for that love, but I would be damned if I didn't do everything in my power to keep it in tact.

If you like this trash fic (are you okay?) or if you think I am trash (it's true), you can leave a review letting me know if you feel like it. I use them to feed my ego. Also, fun fact I am honestly kind of bitter Carpe Noctem is so much more popular than this fic.