Erich woke, pain-free and unbound, and had all of three heartbeats to think ‘I’m safe’ before his mind started to raise alarms.

He was not in the hospital.

He bolted upright, wings mantling and ears flattened and—

He was alone. Alone in a small room, cream walls and tatami mats on the floor and a futon with deep green sheets under him. The door was a standard sliding door, no locks or wards in sight, and there was a window on the wall to his left. The view was nothing to write home about — just an empty lot with another building across the way — but it was also unwarded.

If he wanted to leave he could just… leave.

(Where was he?)

Erich folded his wings and canted his head, straining his hearing in an attempt to place anything as familiar. No one he knew would bring him to their home instead of to the hospital or the army medical office, not after the beating Crimson Fox had given him on top of his previous injuries. No one he knew had the ability to heal either, which… left him with very few options.

(Had Crimson Fox… abducted him…?)

(That didn’t make any sense…)

(Why would the man abduct him, heal him, then leave him alone in a room he could escape from?)

He carefully pressed the pad of his thumb into his side, trying to judge if he’d been healed or just drugged, but no pain flared even when he pressed harder. Whoever had gotten to him had done a thorough job, to the point where his injuries from the battle before his fight with Crimson Fox were also gone.

The army medics had already healed him as much as they could from that.

(Damn it.)

Erich licked his lips and looked around the room a second time, scanning the walls and ceiling for any sign of surveillance and once more coming up empty handed. That didn’t rule out magic, of course, but… somehow he suspected there really wasn’t anything like that here either.

A knock dragged him from his spiraling thoughts and he turned his head to stare at the door, waiting for the person to walk in. Lack of surveillance and ease of escape aside, he was almost certain he was in Crimson Fox’s… lair? Den? Home?

(It certainly felt more like a home than a lair…)

(How… strange to consider…)

Crimson Fox had never displayed a surfeit of manners before, so Erich didn’t expect it to start now. Except… the door didn’t open.

The person knocked again. “Maa, is Griffin-san awake and decent?” came Fox’s familiar voice, more serious and subdued than Erich had ever heard it before.

“I… yes?” Erich glanced down at himself, running a hand over the golden cloth that was part of his hero costume. Since it was currently bound to his power it had healed with him, and Crimson Fox should have known that was the case.

(The fact that he was still in uniform was also odd, now that he thought about it.)

(As someone born with a hero form, his powers couldn’t be deactivated the same way other heroes could be, but… surely Fox would have tried something?)

“I’m coming in,” Crimson Fox announced. “I have food for you.”

Truth, his powers told him, though if the food was edible was another matter entirely. After all, there were many things that Crimson Fox said that he wholeheartedly believed to be true but that Erich highly doubted were factually true.

(Like his belief that Aizen was his true rival.)

(It was always distracting to sense such true falsehoods…)

The door slid open after a long moment of silence and Crimson Fox stepped in, a tray balanced on one arm and a newspaper tucked against his side. He closed the door behind him and crossed the small distance between them, settling into seiza a few paces away from the futon and offering Erich the tray.

“You’re looking better,” Fox said as Erich adjusted himself to sit facing the man. “I… apologize for kidnapping you like that.”

Erich froze in the midst of accepting the tray, confused by the apology. He’d never been kidnapped before but… apologies weren’t usually involved as far as he knew. “You still did it,” he forced out as he settled the tray on his lap and eyed the food suspiciously. Everything looked fine, but… dare he trust it? “You could have easily left me. The medics were only a building over.”

Fox opened his mouth and Erich braced himself for the inevitable teasing comment but… it didn’t come. Instead, Fox looked away and grimaced, ears back and tails tucked tightly against his legs. “I couldn’t have,” he said, voice rough. “I refuse to leave anyone else vulnerable and at Aizen’s mercy. But I still need to apologize, because he… well. See for yourself.”

Erich caught the newspaper that Crimson Fox tossed at him and unrolled it, breath catching in his throat at the picture splashed across the front page.

It was him and Crimson Fox, with Fox’s hand on his elbow and his eyes glued to the man in that moment of surprise before he’d yanked himself free. Posed like that, with his exhaustion so evident and Fox’s actions stripped of their context, they looked… friendly. Not like a hero and a villain struggling to overcome the other, but friends checking to make sure the other was alright.

Next to it, the headline ‘Griffin in league with Crimson Fox?’ made a stone settle in Erich’s stomach. His superiors wouldn’t believe it, he knew they wouldn’t, but he knew exactly how the public would react.

(He wasn’t part of Strategic Headquarters for nothing.)

(He knew how to twist public perception around, and this… this showed all the signs of it.)

Erich carefully read the article, making note of who said what; Aizen — as someone who had witnessed the end of their fight — was quoted multiple times, all of it carefully phrased to sound like he was supporting Erich but…

He wasn’t. Every word that Aizen allowed to go to print was angled to cast doubt on Erich’s allegiances and reliability.

(Why was he being demonized?)

(What had he ever done to earn that man’s ire?)

There was no indication of his civilian identity in the article, but he suspected it would come with time. His access to strategic information and the identities of other heroes would paint him in an even worse light: a traitor who sold out those under his aegis. Any number of failed operations could be incorrectly pinned on him selling information, and the public would eat every lie and distorted truth and cry out for more.

And all because Crimson Fox had decided to abscond with him instead of leaving him behind.

Erich clenched his jaw and folded the newspaper up, setting it aside and fixing Fox with a furious stare. “What. Have. You. Done?!”

“Kept you from being twisted to his will!” Fox snapped, meeting Erich’s glare with one of his own, tails bristling and ears pinned to his head. “Kept a man I respect from being turned into a monster capable of nothing more than following Aizen’s orders! I will never make the mistake of leaving anyone at his lack of mercy again!”

Truth, agreed Erich’s powers. Truth-truth-truth.

His mouth went dry and his mind darted through every record and article he could recall, trying desperately to associate Crimson Fox’s truth with anything he’d read and coming up empty. Aizen was a high-ranking military official and his name had appeared in print time and time again, but never had he been associated with anything akin to what Fox was claiming.

(But Fox believed it, believed it so strongly that he barely needed his powers to confirm it.)

The only thing that matched, the only event that was even vaguely similar, was—

“I barely kept them alive last time,” Fox growled. “And for my sins of trying to save them from the fate that Aizen condemned them to, I was—”

“Sentenced to death for illegal experimentation on heroes with gifted powers,” Erich finished, ears ringing and body numb with the realization. How could he not have known who he was facing all this time? How could he have ever felt comfortable facing this man after everything he had done? “You’re Kisuke Urahara, the worst traitor in the past fifty years.”

“I didn’t do it.”

(Truth.)

(What?!)