Chapter Text
Daisuke stumbled into her office asking for painkillers.
Anya hadn’t spotted him at breakfast beforehand (she figured he was sleeping in, though he didn’t seem the type to let a routine slip), but now he stands under the glaring white lights and she sees his puffy eyes, uneven shirt, the way he moves like his legs are seconds away from giving out under his own weight. She’s so used to his usually boisterous presence, that it feels so inexplicably wrong when he speaks and it comes out quiet, timid, like it hurt to put the words together. Nothing like him.
Then he says between staggered breaths, scared, cornered, and Jimmy, and Anya feels her blood run ice cold in an all-too familiar way. Her stomach drops as she remembers seeing him in the lounge bantering with the co-pilot before she headed to bed, the two of them surrounded by empty cocktail glasses with Swansea sitting on standby a few feet away. She swore he was still there when she left, she’s sure he was, he must’ve—
She should have seen the warning signs, should have recognised it, should have done something. But nobody does, her brain unhelpfully supplies. Nobody ever does.
The poor kid clearly doesn’t entirely understand what he’s just been subjected to. Daisuke somehow manages to keep inserting half-hearted quips and empty jokes between his own sobs as he practically falls to pieces in front of her, trying his hardest to explain but only half-finishing every sentence, as if the rest is just too horrible to give voice to.
His body language speaks the volumes his voice cannot. Daisuke paces, shifting his weight between his feet, and Anya tries to ignore the tightness in her stomach as he double-checks that the door is locked behind him. He eventually sinks to his knees in the corner beside Anya’s desk, arms wrapped so tightly around his torso that she can see the way his nails dig deep into his shoulder and back, latched there, secure and protective, as if there was anything that could do for him now.
She thinks back to a time where she was all too familiar with this position. Terrified and shaking like a leaf, feeling nothing less than irreversibly changed and violated, no longer safe in her own fucking body, the one place she couldn’t physically escape. Screams falling on deaf ears, unable to stop remembering the press of dirty palms, staining her skin, no number of showers ever enough to wash it all away, powerless no matter how much she begged or fought to stop him from taking, taking, taking—
Except, back then, she responded by keeping to herself. Tried to keep up appearances, act like everything was fine; the Tulpar needed its only nurse in tip-top shape, after all. No time for distractions, so she let her work distract her instead. No need to make a fuss about it, so she hid it away in the back of her mind, and ignored the panic that invaded her chest whenever he spoke or set foot in the same room as her. Ignored the nausea welling up inside her stomach when he looked at or stood to close to her. Ignored the way she’d sooner willingly combust into flames on the spot than let his hand rest on her shoulder.
What would they have said, if she told them? What would they have done about it if she did? It was lonely before, being the only woman on board, but that loneliness had soon become terror and she was more alone now than she’s ever been.
Curly was friendly and charming, sure, but he was inattentive, and too close with him. Swansea she considered telling, but they aren’t very close, and her perceptiveness can’t pierce through the walls he puts up. And Daisuke? He was just a kid. He didn’t need to know, didn’t need that kind of pressure weighing him down, not like it did to her.
Daisuke. She looks down at the boy—curled in on himself, shut down, the opposite of what he's meant to be—and feels sick. Sick at the thought of what the man must have done to him, and of what he did to her, but above all that she’s sick at herself. Disgusted for feeling so relieved that she isn’t the only one anymore.
Before, they had those game nights. He was so happy just to be included as part of the team and bond with the rest of the crew, let alone win majority of the games they played. Before, he looked at the others with the warmest respect, innocently hoping to win them all over in time, co-pilot included. Before, that beaming smile of his only served to tease Anya when she lost time and time again, but she couldn’t stay mad when he celebrated like a little kid and wished her luck on the next round.
Before. Before, before, before.
She wonders if he’ll ever smile like that again.
The dam breaks, and her head spins. Anya presses her back against the wall nearest to Daisuke (curled up behind her desk, where he can see everything but still feel hidden) and slides down to a sit, one hand cupped over her mouth as she looks somewhere else, chest aching like her heart is about to give out. She couldn’t bear to look down at him any longer.
“I’m s-sorry,” he blurts out, voice thick with tears. “I shouldn’t-… uhm, shouldn’t be bothering you with this, I just…-”
“Daisuke.”
He looks across at her, wide eyes red and puffy, face a mess of snot and tears. Anya never would have let herself be seen by anyone like this the way he’s letting her see him now—fragile and vulnerable, practically in pieces, like shards of glass scattered across the tiled floor—but here Daisuke is, falling apart before her very eyes, cracks in the shell betraying the visage of a scared, hurt kid. She honestly thought he would have told Swansea before anyone else, with how close they’d grown.
Does he also feel safer with her because she isn’t another man?
“Everything’s going to be okay,” Anya says, and it feels wrong. Not because her voice trembles as she says it, but because she has no way to guarantee that. She wishes she could. So she says something that she can be sure of. “You’re… you’re not alone, okay? I believe you. We can figure something out. We’ll be okay.”
She tries approaching carefully, shifting to kneel as well so she mirrors him. Anything to make him feel more safe, understood. “Did he hit you anywhere?” She asks, and feels like a stupid question to her—because of course he did, she knows he does more than take—but she has to know if there’s anything to treat. That’s her responsibility as a nurse.
Something about the way Daisuke tenses at the question fills Anya with an unsettling dread. His fingers pull together and stretch out the fabric of his floral shirt for a moment before he resigns to shuck it off, half-heartedly balling it up and setting it down in his lap before slowly lifting the hem of his uniform tee. What he reveals lying beneath is a nauseating array of blue and yellow-green bruises that paint the tan skin along his sides, his hips, up to his ribs, and Anya is sick to her fucking stomach. No wonder he asked for painkillers first thing.
“I’ll-…” she starts, once more covering her mouth with a hand for a second, before she lowers it and holds it out to him instead. “I’ll get you some ice. And those painkillers. Okay?”
Daisuke blinks at her with something like recognition. She wasn’t sure if he felt safe enough yet to touch, the offer of her hand to hold being only a tentative first dip in those waters, but instead he sniffles and meekly asks, “…can I have a hug?”
If he’d just started to collect himself before, he goes back to square one almost immediately as Anya’s arms encircle him, taking care not to touch his sides; barely a second’s passed before his shoulders begin to shake again, face buried in her coveralls as she rubs comforting circles into his back, and he wails.
“He said- he said he could help me,” the boy cries, shaky hands clawing at her back and bunching up the material of her uniform in his fists, all the while struggling to fill his lungs with new air. “He said he would take care of me, Anya, I-…”
Anya gulps down a knot of nausea at hearing the same words she’s already been told so many times. “He does say that, doesn’t he?” She sighs softly, carefully, taking in a deep breath in hopes he’ll do the same. “…I’m so, so sorry, Daisuke. I’m so sorry. You didn’t deserve any of this.”
She hears him open his mouth, only to hesitate and close it again (maybe she’s assuming too much, but Anya thinks she knows why). A few seconds of silence follow before he finally croaks out, “I feel gross.”
”Not your fault,” Anya shakes her head. “It’s not your fault, okay?”
She doesn’t remember when she started slowly rocking back and forth with him, but it seems to be helping, and Daisuke gradually falls silent. They stay there together, on the floor, for minute after wordless minute until she feels him slowly stop shaking. Then he says, so weakly, so quietly, defeated and hopeless in a way that shatters Anya into a million pieces—
“…He said I look like a girl.”