“I need to leave,” Juno mutters under his breath.
He hates himself for it - hates himself for jeopardizing the mission just as much as Nureyev seemed convinced he would, hates that this is the first thing Buddy Aurinko’s ever asked him to do and he can’t do it. Zolotovna’s party is a lot, and making a career move to ‘openly a criminal’ is also a lot in its own way - but he was fine five minutes ago. He hadn’t been seeing things five minutes ago.
“Don’t be ridiculous, our work isn’t done.” Nureyev seems distracted the way he’s been since he saw Juno in front of the Carte Blanche, said hello, and then turned heel like he had better things to do. And Juno doesn’t hold it against him, he doesn’t - it’s annoying and it hurts and Juno has earned all of it - but right now Juno isn’t sure if he can handle being dismissed.
Being brushed aside to deal with it on his own would break something in Juno he isn’t sure he can fix.
“Darling,” Nureyev says in the exasperated sigh of a put-upon spouse, “You mustn’t let yourself get worked up so - ” He doesn’t see Nureyev’s face change, but Juno can hear it in his voice. “Juno?”
Something impossible is walking towards him, and Juno doesn’t know what the fuck that means.
Maybe he’s not as okay as he thought he was. Maybe his head got fried in the desert, or Jet took a little too much when he pulled out that eye. Maybe he’s just haunted.
Nureyev turns to look at what has his attention, and if Juno wasn’t standing next to him he might not have noticed the way he freezes in place. “Who…?”
But Nureyev doesn’t have the chance to answer, because Benzaiten Steel is standing right in front of them both. He’s not a ghost; he can’t be, because Juno has already faced the ghost of Benten in his head, and the person in front of him is someone different. He’s not fresh-faced and nineteen, smiling and familiar - he’s sharper and more guarded, with scars of his own and a smile Juno doesn’t recognize.
It looks a little uncertain. That’s a strange detail to fixate on, but it’s so unlike what Juno remembers - Benzaiten was so rarely unsure of anything. “Hey, Super Steel.”
He can’t be a ghost. He can’t be a hallucination. But he can’t be here, that’s not possible. “Benten?” Juno’s voice is weak. He can see Nureyev looking back and forth between them out of the corner of his eye, but he can’t split his focus to explain right now; if asked, Juno isn’t sure he could move from the spot.
The uncertain smile quirks a little higher, and that Juno recognizes - that’s the smile Benten uses for someone else’s benefit, to put them at ease. “Been a while.”
“You were dead.” The words are emotionless, hollow - they come out like a slap, and Benten’s smile is gone in an instant. “I saw you.”
“I saw you. You… there was so much blood, Ben.” He’s pretty sure people are staring. He’s pretty sure he doesn’t care. Let Nureyev report back to Buddy that Juno is useless to them, that she made a mistake bringing him onboard and that they can drop him off in the nearest desert to rot. He doesn’t care. He’s staring at his forty-year-old twin and he can feel the sticky, tacky blood of his nineteen-year-old twin drying on his hands. “You weren’t moving, you were -”
Not dead yet, Juno remembers. He’d put that part out of his head when he thought about it, being taken in for interrogation while Benten was taken to the hospital, being told in that cold room that his brother was gone before Juno could get back to him. It was easier to tell himself that he’d been too late from the start.
“I buried you.” He’s louder than he expected to be, and he doesn’t goddamn care.
“I -” Juno waits for Ben to finish the thought, but he doesn’t seem to know where to take it. Confidence is leaking out of him by the minute, and Juno is perversely satisfied and devastated that he’s hurting him. “I’m sorry.”
He thinks of a dozen different voices saying I’m sorry for your loss and Juno wants to scream. Nureyev leans in between them; his expression broadcasts his displeasure, and that would hurt too if Juno had any more room for it. “Perhaps we should take this conversation elsewhere? Not in the middle of a party with everyone watching, for example.”
If Benten says anything - if Juno says anything - he doesn’t hear it. He just turns around and walks to the nearest door so quickly he could almost be running, and he isn’t sure it wouldn’t be better to outpace the people behind him and just keep going.
He doesn’t; he can’t. As soon as they’ve found a hallway that seems quiet and mostly-private, Juno whirls around. Benzaiten is still there, still unsure, and when Juno - shaking, when did that start? - reaches out a hand towards him, he takes it easily. Benten’s hand is solid. He’s there.
There’s something big and vengeful and overwhelming building inside Juno, and he doesn’t know what it’s going to look like when it comes out of him. For just a moment, that doesn’t matter. He throws his arms around Benten, tugs him close, and he’s warm and alive. He holds onto Juno while Juno holds onto him, and he doesn’t move while painful, wracking sobs claw their way out of Juno’s throat.
The hows and the whys, the feelings and accusations - they can all wait for a moment. Just one more minute.
