Bazz breathes a quiet sigh of relief as he reaches his personal room, opens the door, and peers carefully into it, taking a moment to assess things before daring to step inside. No one’s there, though, and there’s no evidence that anyone invaded his space while he was out, so… in this, at least, things are going his way.
(Fuck he really needs to get moving.)
(He can’t afford to stick around.)
He closes his door behind him and eyes his room in consideration; he’s collected a lot of junk over the centuries, and none of it is really important. He could just grab his normal mission bag and move on, but… he really doubts he’ll ever return here again. So maybe he should grab at least a couple more things.
Either way, he doesn’t have time for being indecisive, so he stalks over to his bed and heaves the bratling off his shoulder and onto the bed without bothering to warn him; given everything else, he doubts the boy can even understand him at the moment, so it’s not worth the effort.
Except when Bazz tries to step away to grab his mission bag, he can’t. He can’t, because one of the bratling’s hands is gripping his coat in a white-knuckled grip and the boy’s eyes are cracked open, blank-flat-empty stare pinning him in place.
“Oh for… I need to grab my shit before we leave,” Bazz grumbles as he tries (and fails) to pry the boy’s hand from his coat. “C’mon, let go,” he urges. “Ain’t no telling how long we got before any of those bastards show up.”
Truthfully, he’s not entirely sold on the idea of bringing the bratling with him; the boy did what he’d never been able to, but also… what’s to say that he won’t turn on Bazz the moment he regains his senses? Being an entire world away is no true escape, not from Yhwach’s successor, but maybe if he disappears now and stays away, the boy won’t think of him if he ends up triggering Auswählen.
It’s… a big maybe, Bazz has to admit, especially if Jugram is the one who finds the boy. Jugram who was Yhwach’s loyal dog. Jugram who just… just accepted someone else being promoted over him. Jugram who knows everything about the Quincy Empire, about all of Yhwach’s plans, about everything they’ve gathered and every Quincy in the Wandenreich…
(…)
(Never mind, leaving the kid behind is a stupid idea.)
(He’s impulsive, but that doesn’t mean he has to be stupid about it.)
“For fuck’s sake,” Bazz mutters as he gives up on prying the bratling’s hand from his coat and just unbuttons it to toss atop the kid instead. “Fine, have your weird comfort object,” he adds as he steps away from the bed, grabs his mission bag, and starts rifling through his things to stuff more into it.
He has no idea why the bratling’s decided to cling to him like this — he’s never even met the kid before this point! — but he doubts it will last past the boy returning to his senses: Bazz is the opposite of a comforting figure and he knows it.
(Even when they were younger, Jugram only stuck around Bazz because he had no one else.)
(…surely this bratling has someone, right…?)
(…fuck…)
In the midst of shoving some extra clothing into his bag, the hair on the back of Bazz’s neck rises and his spiritual senses blare and—
Power latches onto him, crude and blunt and desperate in a way Bazz hasn’t sensed in centuries, digging deep-deep-deep into his body and curling up and—
It’s the kid, he realizes abruptly, even as he braces himself against his dresser and breathes through the disorientation. It’s the fucking kid, clinging to his very soul like a terrified beast trying to find safety.
“You are so fucking weird!” he barks over his shoulder at the bratling who’s still on the bed, coat pulled away from his face but still clenched tight in his hands. The boy is still staring at him, eyes still glassy and unfocused but definitely aimed at him, and the boy’s reiatsu continues to burrow deep-deep-deeper into Bazz’s soul. “You don’t even know me!”
That doesn’t get a reaction either, not that he had any high hopes; the only thing he can really sense from the bratling’s reiatsu coiling through his body is exhaustion-confusion-desperation and he has a suspicion the kid is still running on pure instincts. Which is… annoying. Because how the hell is he someone to cling to? He is the opposite of calming and he’s very deliberately cultivated that over the centuries in order to get out of a lot of things.
“Geez, do one good deed and suddenly I’m, what, a puppy or something?” Bazz grumbles to himself as he pushes himself upright again and goes back to shoving things into his bag. “You are going to regret this so hard when you finally come back to yourself, kid.” Because he can feel the bond forming between them, like the noose Yhwach put around his neck so very, very long ago but also… not. In fact, the remains of Yhwach’s bond is dissolving like mist in the sun, leaving him feeling lighter than he ever has, even though his schrift remains as a brand across his soul.
The bond the kid is forging is both heavier and lighter than Yhwach’s noose ever was; it doesn’t feel like it’s going to choke the life out of him at any moment, but it’s also permeating his body in ways Yhwach never bothered with. He feels… he feels powerful. Awake. Drugged, almost, like the world has suddenly snapped into focus after centuries of blurry darkness.
(It feels like freedom.)
(Fuck.)
Bazz runs a hand over his face and then through his mohawk, taking a moment to gather his scattered thoughts and to shove the heady feeling aside; no matter how the bratling’s connection is making him feel, it’s just another noose around his neck, and if it is strengthening him, then… then he doesn’t want it. Just like he never wanted Jugram’s strength all those centuries ago, bolstering him when he had no idea what was happening.
(He can do it himself, damnit!)
(He’s not a fucking weakling!)
“You are so much more trouble than you’re worth, kid,” Bazz declares as he closes his pack and slings it over one shoulder. “Luckily for you, I don’t give a shit,” he adds, turning around and stalking back to the bed and the near-insensate kid sprawled out on it. He narrows his eyes as he considers his options, then sighs and reaches down to grip the kid around the waist again in order to haul him up and over a shoulder.
The kid whines at him, dejection ripping through his reiatsu — and thus through Bazz — like a river in flood, nearly knocking the breath from his lungs in the process.
“Oh you have got to be kidding me,” Bazz says, eyes squeezing shut against the weight of the kid’s emotions. He can already feel the kid pulling the bond back, centimeter by reluctant centimeter, withdrawing back into himself in the process and that’s… that’s exactly what a part of him wanted, and yet… and yet…
(Fuck.)
He heaves another sigh and carefully tucks all the annoyance, all the frustration, into the depths of his soul; he doesn’t know if the kid withdrawing from him will kill him or not, which is a very important reason to not chase the brat out of his soul, especially now that his old link to Yhwach is no more. He’s never been entirely clear on the whole… Quincy Progenitor thing after all: can a Quincy exist without some sort of link to a progenitor? Is it just a way to strengthen them, or is it more? Do their very souls rely on some external connection that most of them are entirely unaware of?
He’s not willing to risk it.
And as an entirely separate matter, if he wants the kid to return to coherence at any point in the near future, he suspects he needs to play spiritual anchor. Which means not rejecting the bond even if he wasn’t uncertain about his ability to live without it, no matter how much a part of him despises strength gained without effort.
“Right, get back here,” Bazz mutters, patting the boy awkwardly on the back and doing his best to project acceptance at him in the process. Which… he probably manages? Or at least the kid stops retreating, stops whining, and stops flooding him with so much dejection he can’t breathe for it all.
(There is no way that’s normal, or healthy, or sustainable.)
(People can live on spite, live on anger, long past the point they’d otherwise falter, but dejection?)
(He can’t see that turning out well at all.)
He’ll… get used to it, he supposes. At least this connection doesn’t feel like the bratling can use it to strangle the life from him just yet, so he’ll take what he can get.
Mind as settled as he can make it after the shitshow that the day’s turned into, Bazz strides to his door and cracks it open, peering into the hallway to see—
Nothing. Or, he acknowledges as his ears catch the sound of voices and movement down the hall, nothing yet. They’re about to get visitors real soon and Bazz doesn’t want to tempt the odds, not while trying to carry a deadweight over his shoulder the way he is.
(He’s done.)
(His goal is completed and he’s done with everything.)
(With the Quincy, with the Shinigami, with yet another war…)
(He’ll kill anyone that tries to drag him back, but other than that?)
(Fuck all of them.)
Carefully, gently, he eases his door closed once more and steps back into the center of his room; there’s no reason to bother running, not when the entire fortress is going to be hunting him and his burden soon enough. Instead…
“Hold on tight, this isn’t the most comfortable method of travel but it’ll get us out of this shitshow without a fight,” Bazz tells his passenger, even as he sweeps his free hand out and then in, gathering the shadows in his room and dragging them towards him, dragging them over him, over the kid, and…
Flees.