Being at a loss for what to do next was a new sensation, and it was one Ankh was finding he absolutely hated. The popsicle stick in his hands had been shredded down to splinters, more than one of which had lodged themselves in Eiji's callused fingers. Ankh left them there, dropping what was left of the stick to the train platform when the train arrived and boarding the train with enough of a sense of dignity to make a mockery of the whole situation. He saw Hidari look uncertainly at the detective before they both followed him.
Ankh chose a window seat; the fact that the row was otherwise fully occupied had, of course, no bearing on his selection. Somewhat to his annoyance, Hidari settled next to him with the detective on the other side. Ankh grimaced, the motion feeling oddly unfamiliar on Eiji's lips. The people who'd been displaced didn't even look annoyed. Ankh crossed his arms and stared out the window at the supremely uninteresting station platform, which was then replaced with less interesting scenery. He meant to pointedly ignore both men the entire way to Tokyo, but his plan was thwarted by a hand on his shoulder shaking him awake.
"Stop harassing me, Eiji, I'm awake," he said, before memory came flooding back and he sat up straight. The something warm he'd been leaning against turned out to be Hidari, who was also the one poking at him. "Hidari," Ankh said, aiming for cold and aloof. He didn't think he'd succeeded, gauging by Hidari's suddenly sympathetic expression. Ankh shoved his way past both Hidari and the detective, not stopping until he was thwarted by the turnstile demanding his ticket before it would let him out.
"Here." The detective had caught up with him in the brief time Ankh had paused to decide to just leap over the ridiculous thing, and the infernal machine let him through. Ankh walked through the gate as though the detective weren't there, heading for the nearest exit. "Ankh! Wait!"
Ankh just walked faster, until he could see the sky above him and for the first time since finding himself in a body again he felt as though he could breathe. The sensation was abruptly disturbed by a surprisingly strong hand closing around his left wrist. Ankh manifested his own hand and yanked his arm away, spinning around to glare at the detective. "I said I'd go with you as far as Tokyo," he hissed. "This is Tokyo. Here I am. And now I'm leaving."
"Ankh," the detective said again. Ankh waited, against his better judgment, against the instinct to walk away, letting the small voice of humanity tell him that he should listen. The detective said nothing, though, his mouth slightly open for a little too long before he closed it with a snap and looked away.
Disappointment flooded through Ankh and he snarled once before shoving past the detective and stalking down the street. He didn't know what he'd been expecting to hear, but this was why he didn't waste his time on other people. People had their own selfish ideas and agendas, and trusting them with any part of the self was just another way to lose what was important. And yet, part of Ankh didn't want to walk away.
"Stop crying, Eiji," he muttered under his breath. The sensation didn't abate.
Ankh was so distracted by trying to shove away the ridiculous emotional reaction that he didn't notice he'd gained company until he reached a busy intersection and couldn't go any farther without getting run over. Hidari was somehow right up next to him, ridiculously feathered hair peeking out from even more ridiculous hat. He gave Ankh a half-smile and a little wave. "Yo," he said.
"What," Ankh said flatly.
"The Kougami Foundation is looking for Eiji," Hidari said, and Ankh rolled his eyes.
"Of course they are," he said, and then blinked. "They what?"
"If you're…" Hidari paused and made some sort of handwave. "If you're inside someone, can you see their memories?" he asked.
"Yes," Ankh said shortly, looking past Hidari at the street. It was still full of vehicles; Ankh considered walking across it anyway. He was fairly sure he had enough agility not to get hit.
"So you know what Eiji's been doing for the Foundation." Hidari glanced at the light, then at the crosswalk. As if on cue, the light changed colors and the intersection emptied of cars. Hidari started across, clearly assuming Ankh was going to go with him. The only reason Ankh didn't immediately go in another direction was the time he'd already spent waiting for this stupid light to change; it would have been wasted otherwise.
"Is that what he was doing," Ankh muttered. "Working for those idiots."
"Trying to help you," Hidari said mildly.
"Why are you following me?" Ankh stopped walking and turned to face Hidari, garnering glares from the people who now had to step around him. Hidari maneuvered them to the side of the walkway, getting his own share of dirty looks in the process.
"Ah," Hidari said. "Well, the Kougami Foundation hired me to find Hino Eiji. Which I have now done, and I've told them where you were, as of the time when my business with them concluded."
"And where was that?" Ankh asked.
"Tokyo Station," Hidari said, brightly. "I've also informed you of the Foundation's desire to set up a meeting to discuss the last several weeks of Hino's employment."
"Right," Ankh said, and shifted his weight in preparation to start walking.
"Is he going to be all right?" Hidari asked, and Ankh stilled.
"I don't know why you even care," he said. "Or why I should answer you."
"Eiji's my friend," Hidari said, shrugging with one shoulder. "I might not talk to him often, but if he called, I'd come. I think he'd do the same."
"Friend," Ankh snorted. "He's fine, Mister Private Detective, which you can also pass on to the Kougami Foundation and anyone else you care to tell."
"Can I talk to him?" Hidari said, apparently unaware of when to stop being persistent.
"No," Ankh said, and this time he did start walking. Hidari, stubborn as ever, just kept pace with him.
"Because he doesn't want to talk, or because you don't want to let him?" he asked.
"Because he's unconscious," Ankh spat. "It's not like it was with the detective."
"Izumi?" Hidari asked. "You two talked to each other?"
Ankh buried his face in his hands, still walking, and felt Hidari move him out of the way of some unseen obstacle. "You just never give up," he said, glancing off to the side.
Hidari just smiled.
"I'm going to say this once," Ankh said. "The detective and I are not friends. We were never friends. Eiji is not my friend. They were – are – bodies that I have a use for."
"But you could hear the detective?" Hidari wiggled his fingers in the general vicinity of his ears. "In your head?"
Ankh sighed. "Not at first. Later. After he got better."
"And you can't hear Eiji." Hidari was giving him a speculative look, and Ankh didn't like it. The only time he'd seen Hidari was a brief and ill-advised trip outside Tokyo to practice with the OOO Driver that had somehow ended with Eiji running into another Kamen Rider and fighting its opponent; he didn't know when or how often Eiji had seen him after that, but it hadn't been while Ankh was still alive.
"No," he replied anyway. The thought that he wanted Hidari to relay what he was saying to the detective was stamped out before it really had the chance to form. Ankh wanted nothing to do with the detective. He didn't miss him. Eiji didn't miss him, either.
"How bad is it?" Hidari asked in a low voice, sympathetic in a way he hadn't been before.
Ankh reached up to find wetness welling out of one eye. "He's fine," he snarled, and blinked to try to clear his vision. It took longer than it should have. "He's fine," he repeated.
"You want to tell that to Detective Izumi?" Hidari asked, stepping to the side so that Ankh could see the detective hovering a few feet away.
"Ankh," the detective said. "Come home. Please."
Late afternoon sunlight streamed in through the windows of Kougami's ridiculously ostentatious office, backlighting Kougami himself. He stood behind his desk, lighting an absurd number of candles on a deceptively small cake; the closer Ankh got to it, the more elaborate he could see it actually was.
"Happy Birthday," Kougami declared, and gestured to the cake.
"What do you want," Ankh said, not blowing out the candles.
Undeterred, Kougami sliced into the cake and handed Ankh a plate; it proved to be mostly ice cream sandwiched between layers of pastry and was therefore an acceptable offering. Ankh took it. "Welcome back, Ankh," Kougami said, more quietly this time.
"Hn," Ankh said, and focused on the cake. It was delicious, and he ate it slowly enough to savor it the way it clearly deserved.
"I was under the impression," Kougami said, after Ankh had finished, "that the previous attempts to repair the Core Medals had failed."
"They did," Ankh said shortly, not because he actually knew, but because he wasn't about to give out any new information.
"Wonderful!" Kougami boomed. "And yet, here you stand. Incredible." His eyes gleamed, and Ankh knew before the next words came out of the CEO's mouth that he finally had something that the other man wanted. He finally had some sort of leverage. Kougami's expression shifted ever so slightly, and instead of asking Ankh how Eiji had done it, he put a hand on Ankh's shoulder and peered into his face. "Remarkable," he said. "Please convey my well-wishes to Eiji."
Ankh did not sputter. He had more self-control than that. He gave a short nod, eyes narrowed. He wasn't going to negotiate from a position of power after all, it seemed; not that he knew what he wanted out of Kougami, if he were really going to be honest with himself.
"I'll see you when you know what your desire is," Kougami said, not unkindly, and flicked his eyes back and forth over Ankh's shoulder. Satonaka materialized out of absolutely nowhere, handing Ankh a box that was unexpectedly cool to the touch. "I'm curious to see what you're going to do," Kougami said, smiling normally now, or at least normally for him, which was what mania looked like on anyone else. "Ankh!"
Ankh's hands closed convulsively on the box. It was not a flinch. He glanced at the desk, verifying that the cake had in fact vanished.
"There are ice packs in it," Satonaka said, sounding as bored as she usually did. "But try not to let it sit out for more than an hour."
Ankh did not give her a reply, but she was turning away before he could make it clear that he wasn't interested in talking to her. He resisted the urge to glare at her retreating back. "Fine, then," he said, and left, unsure who had really come out on top in what hadn't been the normal sort of negotiation.
There was a car waiting for him in front of the building; Ankh walked past it. It would just take him back to the detective's apartment, full of awkward silence and unspoken expectations. He'd spent the previous night there, sleeping on a platform bed that had clearly been designed with him in mind and just as clearly unused. Below it was a small desk, which did show signs of regular use, and a carefully folded futon stacked on a low couch.
"I didn't ask for it," Ankh said in a low voice. Hina and the detective had made a space for him and for Eiji, space that they hadn't had to make, space that didn't come easily in a city as crowded as Tokyo. The room in which the bed had been built was barely bigger than the bed itself, true, but it was still there.
Hina hadn't been there; the detective had said something about a class trip that had clearly been a lie, and gone to sleep early. Ankh had silently prowled around the not-large apartment; the space clearly marked as Hina's was full of half-finished projects and sharp pins in the floor. Ankh had wondered briefly if it was a form of defense to prevent intrusion in her absence in the midst of regret for leaving his shoes at the door.
Realizing his feet were carrying him in the general direction of the detective's apartment anyway, Ankh deliberately turned off to the side and went looking for high places. There weren't many, but he found a suitable tree in a park before the sun set entirely. Climbing it while carrying a box was a new type of fun, but he made a point of slowly eating the entire thing while the sun set around him.
The color was brilliant, reds and pinks fading to orange and then blue before the light of the city reflected itself into a golden fog obscuring the stars. In Hokkaido, Ankh had been able to see the stars. The cake gone, he let the box drop and licked his fingers carefully clean. Each sight, each sensation was so clear. He had been surprised at the clarity when he'd woken in some sort of closet, feeling the lightness of a body that didn't have the right number or type of Core Medals, and expecting the world to be at one step's remove. It had been almost painfully sharp instead, and that sharpness hadn't changed when he'd chosen to use a human body again.
Not that Ankh hadn't had a body; he'd had all six of his surviving red Cores and enough Cell Medals to revive as himself, to disguise himself as the familiar shape of the detective, or to create a new human guise altogether. He'd felt odd, as though he'd been coming back to himself for days, and this unease had driven him to seek answers.
"What did you do to me, Eiji?" he murmured, rubbing a no-longer-sticky hand against his – Eiji's – chest. He wasn't sure he wanted to dive into Eiji's memories to find out, and they weren't leaking across into Ankh's mind the way the detective's had with just a little encouragement.
Eiji hadn't been hard to find; Ankh had unfolded himself out of what turned out to be a cupboard and not a closet after all in a less than graceful manner, eyes automatically adjusting to the semi-twilight of the room with a readiness that was startling when he thought about it. He had appeared to be asleep, but no matter what Ankh had done, he hadn't opened his eyes.
Turning himself into an arm and wearing Eiji had seemed like a perfectly reasonable way for Ankh to get answers, but then Eiji had had the gall to not respond to questions asked from inside his head, either. Since Ankh hadn't been about to wait around doing nothing, and had had no desire to be tethered to one particular location, especially when he hadn't actually known where he was, he'd made the executive decision to just take Eiji with him. He'd given Eiji a chance to object, but there hadn't been an answer.
Ankh blinked down at the city, one arm loosely curled around the tree and one foot swinging freely. It was tempting to simply stay in the tree, but that wasn't going to get him what he wanted. "If I could figure out what I wanted," he said softly, "it would be easier to figure out how to get it."
The detective wasn't in the apartment when Ankh let himself in through the unlocked balcony door. On the sixth floor, the building was surprisingly easily accessible from outside if one had leased an apartment in a specific column at one corner of the building. Ankh wasn't sure whether that had been deliberate or a fortuitous coincidence, but given the extra space he'd spent the night in, he suspected it was another move that just put him farther in the detective's debt.
"Eiji?" Hina said as he blinked in the suddenly bright light.
"No," he said, finally able to see her clearly. She had a monstrous pair of scissors in one hand and a piece of red fabric slithered out of her other and hit the floor.
"Ankh," she breathed. "It's true."
"And?" he said, stuffing his hands in his pockets. Something in his chest had loosened when he'd come back to find Hina waiting; he blamed it on Eiji, but it felt nice. "I'm home," he added, not looking directly at Hina.
A sunny smile spread across Hina's face as his words registered. "Welcome back!" she cried, and started toward him. He flinched back, knowing exactly what her hug was going to feel like. She stopped, uncertain, and put the scissors down sheepishly. "Sorry," she said, and stepped forward again.
There was no pain this time, when Hina hugged him, although after a moment Ankh found himself unable to breathe. I don't need to breathe, he thought distantly, and then realized that he was light-headed and that breathing was probably a good thing to keep doing. He staggered when Hina finally let go of him, and she steadied him with careful hands.
"Is something wrong?" she asked.
"I still don't think you're human," he told her. Instead of getting offended, a delighted laugh escaped.
"It really is you," she said. "Ankh. You're back."
There wasn't really anything to say to that other than repeating the obvious, so Ankh stuffed his human hand in his pocket and went looking in the freezer. There was a box of popsicles in it, but he left it alone, closing the door and leaning on it. A deliberately casual glance over his shoulder told him that Hina was still staring at him, and he didn't know what to do about it.
"Ankh," she said again. "Are you okay?"
It was the first time anyone had asked him first how he was holding up, instead of focusing on Eiji. Ankh ignored the little feeling of warmth and glared. "Rude," he said.
Hina's eyes narrowed. "Asking if my friend is all right isn't rude," she said.
"Who said I was your friend?" Ankh didn't want friends, didn't need friends. All he wanted was… was…
"Well, fine, then." For a moment, Ankh thought she was going to leave him alone, and he didn't know if he felt relief or the beginnings of regret, but she just grabbed him by the back of his collar and dragged him into the center of the room.
"Hey! Hey!" Ankh staggered, arms windmilling in an attempt to remain upright. "I'm trying to fix this body, stop trying to make it worse! You haven't changed at all."
"Of course you are," Hina said absently. She'd picked up the scissors in her other hand. "Stand there," she said, gesturing. One eye on the wickedly sharp blades, Ankh stood where she pointed as though it were his idea. Hina held up the length of red cloth against him and nodded to herself before cutting it into two pieces. Ankh edged away. "I'm not done," Hina said.
"I don't see why that's my problem." The door was only a few meters away. He could probably make it past Hina and her ridiculous superhuman strength, but then she'd only chase him down. Ankh didn't have enough resources to waste any unnecessarily; fleeing from Hina would be a pointless expenditure of both energy and time. The very small voice in the back of his head that wasn't Eiji was humming happily at the idea of doing nice things for someone he liked. Ankh pretended it didn't exist. He didn't have to listen to crazy talk, no matter where it was coming from.
"You're my model." She carefully put the two pieces of red cloth in what appeared to be entirely arbitrary places, picked up a tape measure, and approached him with it. Ankh manifested his left arm in self-defense, holding the most durable part of his currently fragile body between himself and the clear threat. "Stop being so dramatic, Ankh."
"I'm not being dramatic," he said.
"And stop sulking."
"I'm not sulking!" He tried to glare, but it was ruined by her determined efforts to get his overshirt off. "What are you doing?"
"I can't measure you while you're wearing so much," she said, as though it were perfectly reasonable and he shouldn't have had to ask. "Take it off."
Grumbling, Ankh took off the overshirt, leaving just the t-shirt and jeans behind. Hina gave his left arm a significant look, and Ankh let Eiji's skin show through again. "Happy?" he asked.
"Hold still." Hina kept scribbling things as she held the measuring tape across more parts of Eiji's body than Ankh felt was strictly necessary, making notes in a notebook already full of them.
"Who was going to do this for you before?" he asked.
"One of my classmates," she said. "You don't know him."
"So let him do it." Ankh blinked as she reached toward his neck. Instinct kicked in and he moved backwards, bringing his left arm up again before she could strangle him with the ridiculous piece of numbered tape.
"Ankh," Hina said, in a tone of voice that he'd heard used on misbehaving children. "Relax. It's not going to hurt."
"Tch," he said, and watched her warily the entire time. Hina paid no attention to the sharp talons hovering near her defenseless midsection, just gently positioned the tape and took more notes.
"I'm not going to have to make too many modifications," she said from behind his right shoulder. "Tanaka's pretty close to Eiji's build."
"Wait," Ankh said, the thought that she wanted more participation than standing there right that minute suddenly occurring to him.
Hina appeared in his field of vision, eyes wide, and scissors gone. "I'm presenting my midterm project at the end of June," she said. "You're not leaving before then, right? Right, Ankh?"
"You want me to wait for a month-" Ankh started, and then froze, because he could suddenly feel Eiji's sleeping mind. Hina, he said, and then, Ankh. "Eiji?" The pen fell out of Hina's hands and hit the floor, but Ankh didn't hear what she said. He was trying to listen for any sort of purposeful response, but there was nothing else.
"Ankh!" Hina's voice finally penetrated his awareness, and Ankh looked down at her.
"He's in here," he said, surprised at the roughness of his own voice.
"You didn't – he wasn't – oh, Ankh." Hina reached toward him, and Ankh flinched violently away. The last thing he wanted was anything resembling sympathy. "How is he?" she asked, voice a little too even.
"Asleep," Ankh said shortly, and then stalked toward the balcony. He needed air. He wouldn't have admitted it, but he took care not to step on anything as he made his way across the living room. He could feel Hina's eyes on his back until he pulled the balcony door closed behind him and the lamp-lit sky filled his vision.
Ankh dreamed, that night, of cold water around his throat and sand underneath his toes. He remembered dreams, when he woke with the feeling of something pressing against his chest. The sensation faded, and he took in a shuddering breath. His right hand was pressed against the outside of his leg, searching for a pocket that wasn't there. Ankh uncurled his fingers and pressed his hand flat against the mattress instead. The narrow window at the top of the wall was still dark, but he could see well enough out of it when he sat up. The city lights were disorienting from a stationary perch so high off the ground, but Ankh couldn't look away until the grittiness between his toes faded.
"It wasn't there," he said, out loud to the strip of glass. "I took everything, when I left, and it wasn't there." He'd taken the Core Medals, absorbing the ones he needed and keeping the rest in his pockets until he knew what he wanted to do with them. He'd absorbed the few Cell Medals that were mixed in with the myriad Cores, and he'd worn Eiji's clothes. He'd made sure the OOO Driver was safe. He hadn't noticed the lack of an extra pair of underwear, not even when he'd acquired new clothing and transferred the belongings of Eiji's he'd wanted to keep.
Had there been some sort of stick? Ankh's memories of the 21 months he'd been gone were hazy at best. He'd stuck close to Eiji, not entirely present but not really wanting anything to change, content to simply be for a change. He shuddered now, at the lack of drive and motivation, but it was still better than nonexistence. He thought he remembered a stick, though, from which Eiji had hung the boxers. It hadn't been there, either, or he would have recognized it. He would have discarded it, but he would have known what it was. It hadn't been among the possessions Eiji had had.
"What were you doing?" he asked, not expecting the answer that didn't come.
The days after that fell into a sort of non-routine. If Hina was in the apartment at the same time he was, odds were that he would spend time as a dummy modeling whatever she was making for her midterms. The detective took to eyeing him cautiously, and making a point of making himself available on the rare occasions that he was home long enough to do more than eat and sleep. Ankh tried to spend as much time away from the apartment as possible.
It was just that he didn't quite know what to do with himself; he'd wanted to live, and he'd gotten it, and now he had no further purpose. The human world hummed along around him, full of people doing human things. Ankh didn't want things. He'd seen what that had gotten his fellow Greeed. Curious acquisition killed the cat, so to speak, and the shark, and the insect.
Sometimes Ankh wandered into and out of buildings, getting on and off trains at random intervals. After the first time he was rudely interrupted by an overly officious person in a uniform at a train station, the detective handed him a little plastic card and told him to use that if he was going to travel by train. Ankh rolled his eyes, but accepted the card. It made things smoother. None of it told him more about what it was that he wanted, although Eiji seemed happier if Ankh felt like he was going somewhere.
"Do you want to come with me?" Hina asked one morning.
"What?" Ankh looked up from the tea she insisted that he drink. She had a lot of opinions about what he should and shouldn't be eating and drinking, which he took great delight in ignoring when she wasn't looking at him. It wasn't as though he strictly needed food, as a Greeed. He just liked it, and it did provide energy he was using, but he could ignore it entirely and still be fine. Hina had been unimpressed with that particular line of reasoning, which was why Ankh found himself eating and then somehow making breakfast before Hina went to class and the detective went to work. He didn't think he was particularly good at it. Hina claimed he was improving.
"To some of my classes," Hina said. "I mean, I have a meeting with my professor to show my progress, and it would be easier if you were there, but you could stay afterwards, if you wanted."
"Are you asking me for a favor?" Ankh put the tea down and smirked at her.
Hina smiled sweetly at him, and Ankh suddenly remembered that she had done a great deal for him, and that she and her brother were still making sure that he had everything he needed that they could provide. It didn't occur to him that such a thing wouldn't have mattered, before he'd spent so much time with them and with Eiji.
"Fine," he said, sighing in resignation.
"Thank you!" Hina bounced up from her seat to give him what he was sure was going to be a very painful hug. He was right.
"Stop manhandling me!" he growled, but she didn't even bat an eyelash.
The meeting involved a lot of standing there with half-made pieces draped bizarrely over him and not saying what he wanted to say every time Hina's idiot professor opened his mouth. Hina listened and nodded as though he were saying something valuable. Ankh stared at the wall fixedly and concentrated on not rolling his eyes; if he was going to do something, he was going to do it well.
"Thank you!" Hina said, finally, packing away the last of her project. Ankh gave the professor a measured look and followed her out the door. "Ankh," she hissed, as soon as the door closed. "You could have been more polite."
"He's lucky I was so well-behaved," Ankh said. "He's an idiot."
Hina sighed, and looked as though she were rethinking her offer to try to show Ankh something new. By the time they'd been inside two separate rooms full of idiots asking stupid questions, Hina looked frustrated. She stopped outside the third room, turned around, and pulled him outside the building by his wrist.
"Is something wrong?" Ankh asked innocently.
Hina didn't answer him until they'd gone three blocks over and he was sitting on the back of a chair with ice cream on a stick in his hands. He looked at it dubiously. Body language had definitely indicated that Hina was angry about something, and in Ankh's experience, angry people didn't hand out treats. He looked at Hina.
"Ankh," she started. "You can't just… say that."
"Tch." He took a bite of his ice cream. "I'll say what I want."
Hina opened her mouth, and then closed it, looking thoughtful. "Is there something you want to know more about? Something you want to learn about?" she asked.
"I already know everything I need to know," Ankh told her.
The face Hina made very eloquently expressed her skepticism without her ever saying a word.
"Are you forgetting how long I've been around?" he said, leaning backwards.
"You spent most of that time frozen in a box," Hina said tartly. Ankh nearly lost his balance. When he regained it, he glared at her. "I was talking to Mr. Goto," she said, and the sudden light tone of her voice put him on edge.
"No," he said.
"You don't even know what I'm going to suggest," Hina said.
"No, but I already know I don't like it." He stabbed toward her with the popsicle stick for emphasis.
"You'd get Cell Medals," Hina said, and Ankh blinked.
"Cell Medals?" He didn't have many; Eiji hadn't had many, and with no Greeed running around making more, they were a little difficult to come by. Ankh had considered and discarded the idea of making his own Yummy more than once; only the desire to avoid a lot of unnecessary ruckus had stopped him. That, and he honestly wasn't sure he could stop the Yummy once it had ripened. He didn't want them running berserk forever, after all, and it wasn't like he had Eiji around to transform into OOO. There was also the minor detail of not being entirely sure he could generate a Yummy.
"The Foundation," Hina said, and Ankh rolled his eyes.
"Them."
"Them," Hina agreed. "Eiji sent them a lot of useful information." She tilted her head sideways. "Do you… do you know what he sent?"
She was trying to find a kind way to ask him if he had Eiji's memories, Ankh knew that much. He looked at her for a long moment, and she nodded slowly.
Sifting through memories wasn't supposed to be difficult; it wasn't supposed to be painful, and it wasn't supposed to be something he was reluctant to do. Ankh had been telling himself for weeks that he wasn't avoiding it, but he couldn't lie to Hina. He took a deep breath and reached.
Some of Eiji's memories were more vivid than others; Ankh tried to sidestep those, but he was out of practice. For a moment, a pit opened in his stomach, dragging his heart downwards. Ankh stilled, reaching through the sensation of crushing weight to pull himself free. He was more careful after that, touching as lightly as possible to determine whether or not a memory would be helpful. Association led him to what Eiji had learned in Beijing, and in India, and in Brazil.
"Mass spectroscopy," he said, and when Hina frowned at him, Ankh realized that the words hadn't been in Japanese. "All of this is in Portuguese," he growled. "Or Mandarin." His cheeks were wet, somehow, and he scrubbed them dry only for more to spill over and undo his hard work.
"Are you – um," Hina said, and Ankh could see the wheels turning in her head as her face showed worry and then sympathy. "How many languages do you speak?" she finally asked, which was not the same question as how many languages Eiji spoke, or half-spoke.
"All of them," he said, just to see her reaction. His traitorous eyes had stopped leaking, and he blotted them with a napkin.
"That's very impressive." Hina sipped at her drink for the first time, which had started out life as an impressively fluffy concoction and had now melted into three distinct layers. She made a face at it and set it aside. "So you know what he was – he was actually doing research?"
Something about Hina's expression made Ankh laugh; she just looked so surprised. It was at least a distraction from his unexpected physical reaction to reaching for Eiji's memories.
"What?" she said. "I expected him to figure out how to put the medal back together, I just didn't expect that he'd actually…" She paused. "Learn anything science-y."
"How else would you put a Core Medal back together?" Ankh let one of the Core Medals materialize in his hand and held it up. "They weren't made by magic."
"Well, no," Hina said. "But." She reached for it, and Ankh pulled it away. She made a hurt face, and he reluctantly handed it over. She turned it back and forth in her hands. "Is this the one?" She sounded dubious.
"You know it isn't." He put it back where it belonged, with the other five. Six Core Medals out of the ten he was supposed to have meant that he would never be complete, but the nagging sense of a void was all but gone. Sometimes he even forgot that there had been more to begin with.
"Can I see it?" Hina asked, almost too quietly for him to hear.
Ankh hesitated for a long moment, but he couldn't bring himself to pull out the Core that held everything that he was.
"It's okay," Hina said. "I understand."
She didn't, not really, but she was trying. Ankh let it go.
"Oh!" she said, a few seconds later. "I almost forgot to tell you, Date's coming home for a few weeks."
"Date?" Ankh honestly couldn't place the name for several seconds, before the image of an obnoxious grin surrounded by barely-there-why-do-you-even-have-it facial hair surfaced. "Oh, him," he said. "The one who kept stealing my Cell Medals."
"He wasn't stealing – Ankh," Hina said. "He's been in Sudan for months."
"Better there than here, the thief," Ankh said. Hina smacked him, and then immediately apologized when he nearly fell off the chair again. Ankh slid down to sit on the seat of the chair where it was marginally safer.
"We're going to the café tomorrow," Hina said, and the inflection she gave it meant a very specific meeting place. "Are you coming?"
The way she put it, Ankh wasn't sure he actually had a choice in the matter.
The first sign that things were going to go irritatingly sideways was – well, technically, Ankh supposed his first sign that things were about to go wrong was walking in the door at all. Hina hadn't specifically said or done anything that Ankh could put a finger on, but he still found himself following her through the doors of the Cous Coussier with a vague sense of misgiving.
Chiyoko did nothing to dispel that sense of misgiving. "Eiji!" she said, and swooped in to give him what would have been a bone-crushing hug if Ankh hadn't been used to Hina.
"Um," Hina said, and pulled the older woman off to the side.
Chiyoko returned with a slightly different smile. "Ankh," she said, "welcome back. I'm glad you're here."
"Tch," Ankh said. "Whatever."
"Ankh," Chiyoko said, with a very familiar expression. "The appropriate expression is 'it's fine.' I know you haven't spent that much time in Japan, but I'm going to help you with your language skills."
Ankh wasn't sure whether or not she was entirely serious, particularly when she sashayed off, giggling like a B-Movie villainess. It was, however, known territory, and he felt the same sort of release of tension that he sometimes did when Hina smiled or when he climbed far enough above the ground.
The sense of warmth and relaxation didn't last long. Goto came in, followed shortly by Satonaka wearing ripped jeans and boots. Ankh stared at her; he was used to such a specific set of aesthetics that what seemed to be casual Satonaka on her own time looked like a stranger. She saw him looking and frowned.
"Is there something on my face?"
"Shut up." He turned away, just in time to nearly walk right into the detective.
"Ankh," the detective said with one hand steadying Ankh's shoulder after Ankh made a graceful dodge to one side. "Have you seen my sister?"
Ankh pointed her out among the crowd that wasn't there. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Goto coming towards them, and he avoided the potential conversation by ducking into the back of the shop and slipping up the stairs.
The room he'd slept in with Eiji was full of boxes again, decorations for the themes Chiyoko had switched out a few times a month. The couch he'd made Eiji hoist up higher than anything else in the room was still there, although now it was full of plastic versions of some sort of plant. Ankh pushed them aside and sat cross-legged on the couch.
It was – he wasn't sure what he felt, sure only that he felt something somewhere between pain and relief. It pricked at the insides of his eyelids, and he was suddenly hyperaware of Eiji's quiet presence just below the surface of his mind. "This isn't what I wanted," he said, not sure if he was talking to Eiji or himself. The window he'd climbed in and out of was closed, blocked by a stack of containers, and the room was unbearably stifling. Ankh threaded his way through the maze of decorations, reaching for the window, when someone snuck up behind him.
Hina was absolutely unfazed by Ankh's hand striking toward her throat, probably at least in part because Ankh pulled back before he so much as grazed her skin. He left his hand where it was, though, red scales dim in the shadows. "You don't have to stay if you don't want to," she said. "But Date's here, and I thought maybe you'd want to say hello."
"That medal thief," Ankh said, and the words came out a little more roughly than he'd intended.
"You're not competing with him anymore," Hina said, sounding almost resigned.
"Whatever." Ankh pushed his way past her and moved lightly down the stairs. Date was at the center of the small knot of people, looking tan and healthy; no lasting effects, then, from the bullet that had been dug out of his brain.
"Hey!" Date grinned when he saw Ankh and maneuvered his way to standing in front of him. "Hina told me you were here. It's good to see you."
"She did tell you I'm not Eiji," Ankh said, resigned to having this conversation yet again.
"What, like I couldn't tell by looking?" Date folded his arms and nodded. "Give him my best, though, would you?"
"He's asleep," Ankh muttered, half-willingly.
"Well, when he's awake." Date looked him over, critically. "Anything I can help with?"
Caught off-guard, Ankh could only blink. "Help?" he said finally.
"You were healing the detective while you were possessing him," Date said. "If you're in Eiji, there's something wrong. If you wanted, I might be able to lend a hand."
No part of that had been something Ankh had seen coming. He blinked again. "You can look at his medical file, if you want," he said finally. "The detective has it."
Date nodded. "I will." He clapped Ankh on the shoulder, and Ankh felt a vague need to explain further. He shoved it down, but it refused to stay there.
"You wouldn't get much out of talking to him, anyway," he said.
"Ah," Date said. "Well, if you ever want to talk to someone about it, I'm here for a month, and I always answer my phone."
Ankh narrowed his eyes. He knew that last part was blatantly untrue; he'd heard Goto complaining on the one or two occasions the other man had been around the detective's apartment. "No, you don't," he said.
Date threw his head back and laughed. "No, but I'll call you back," he said, eyes sparkling. "How's that?"
"Whatever."
Having let himself get cornered by Date, the only way Ankh could really have avoided Goto would have been to leave, and he was reluctant to do so. He didn't actually want to talk to anyone, but it was nice to have a group of familiar faces in one place.
"This isn't really my job," Goto said, which was never a good start to a conversation.
"So don't do it," Ankh returned. He was only a few steps from the door. He could probably make it there before Goto could catch him.
Goto sighed. "I don't mind," he said. "Besides, I'm kind of on call anyway."
Ankh tried to convey that he couldn't care less without saying a word. Goto took his expression as encouragement to explain instead.
"I have the Birth Driver," he said. "Just in case."
"Of course you do," Ankh said, sidling toward the door as unobtrusively as possible.
"Mr. Kougami knows you and Eiji have a number of Core Medals," Goto said.
"What of it?" Ankh was only carrying nine, so to speak; the rest were in a small pouch clipped unobtrusively to his belt. He'd seen what happened when too many Core Medals were absorbed; he had no desire to lose himself in chaos.
"No one is trying to take them away," Goto said, hands clearly visible as he assumed a non-threatening posture. It was a nice effort, but there really wasn't any way Goto could present himself as harmless. Especially not after dropping the information regarding his Driver.
"I didn't say you were," Ankh said. "But he can't have them," he added, just in case.
"I can't say the CEO doesn't want them," Goto said, lightly. "But they're yours. He has a different proposition for you."
"I already talked to him," Ankh said.
"He'd like to speak with you again," Goto said.
"Does this have anything to do with whatever Hina was talking about?" Ankh crossed his arms, shifting his weight to take him slightly farther away from Goto. Apparently without realizing it, Goto just edged closer to maintain the same distance of personal space. "Something about Cell Medals."
"In a sense." Goto paused for a moment. "The Foundation has identified what went wrong with the reconstituted Core Medals, and is fairly sure it can make new ones."
Ankh froze in the act of subtly reaching for the door. "Kougami wants to create new Greeed?"
"Not exactly," Goto hedged. "But he'd like to speak with you about the results of his experiments."
"Fine." Ankh narrowed his eyes. "You can tell him I'm willing to talk."
"Great." Goto reached out and clapped him on the shoulder. "It's nice that you came," he said, out of nowhere. "I'm glad to see Eiji, too." He had an odd expression, eyes searching Ankh's face.
"He can't hear you," Ankh said, but no heat was in the words despite his intentions.