Mori's hands trembled as he held Armor's face, thumbs brushing over cheekbones that didn't quite match the boy he remembered, but the eyes underneath them hadn't changed at all.
⠀
It's Vijemo.
⠀
"You're taller than me now," Mori said, half a laugh and half a sob tangled together. "That's not fair. You're not allowed to be taller than me..." His words trailed off into a stream of tears as he smiled at his old friend.
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"Been ten years, hermano. Things change." Vijemo pulled back just enough to look at him properly, still gripping Mori's shoulders like he was checking he was real too. "You cried just as ugly back then, you know. Some things don't change."
⠀
"I thought you were dead." The words came out cracked, smaller than Mori meant them to. "I told our parents... I told them you... fell... and you're just—you're just standing here in a suit of armor calling yourself Armor like it's nothing— It's my fault. I let go... I—"
⠀
"Hey." Vijemo's voice dropped, all the teasing gone out of it at once. "Hey, look at me. You didn't let go, Mori. The building did. Ain't the same thing, no matter how many times you told yourself different."
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Mori shook his head, unable to argue and unwilling to accept it either, and Vijemo just pulled him back in, tighter this time, one gloved hand cradling the back of Mori's head the way an older brother would.
⠀
"I fell a long way," Vijemo said, quiet now, into the top of Mori's hair. "Don't rightly remember most of it. Woke up somewhere I didn't recognize, in a body that wasn't all the way mine no more, and it took me the better part of a decade just to feel like myself again. A group of Fixers found me somewhere in the middle of all that. Gave me a job n' a reason to keep gettin' up in the mornin'. Wasn't lookin' for you, Mori. Didn't even know you were still out there... But God's got a funny sense of humor, sendin' me down that same damn hole you crawled out of, huh?"
⠀
"You knew, though," Mori said, pulling back to look at him. "This whole time. You knew, and you didn't say anything."
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"Wasn't sure. Not all the way." Vijemo scratched at his soul patch, sheepish for the first time since the helmet came off. "Kept catchin' little pieces of you that felt familiar and talkin' myself right back out of it. Figured a face like yours, grown up and older, showin' up a hundred floors under the Ring, as a Fixer? Seemed too cruel a coincidence for the world to actually hand me. Didn't wanna get my hopes up and be wrong."
⠀
"You could've just asked..."
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"And if you'd said no? If ya'd looked at me like I was crazy?" Vijemo shrugged, something old and tired in the motion. "Some doors, you leave shut till you're ready for whatever's behind 'em. Figured this was one of those."
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Mori laughed, wet and unsteady, wiping at his face with the back of his hand. "You're still an idiot."
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"Takes one to know one, lil' hermano."
⠀
They sat like that a while, Vijemo perched on the edge of the hospital bed, Mori cross-legged against the pillows, trading stories of years back and forth in fragments too big to hand over all at once. Vijemo talked about the Fixer group who took him in like a man talking about old family. The Gunsmith Office. One of the offices of the Ring that manufactures their own bullets. Mori talked about Antollio, about Yuhuan, about a rifle made of black flame he still didn't fully understand, and Vijemo listened to all of it without once looking away, nodding along like none of it surprised him half as much as it should've.
⠀
"There's somethin' else I gotta tell you," Vijemo said eventually, straightening up, something businesslike creeping back into his voice despite himself. "Part of why I'm here, actually. Gluttony sent us all here."
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"Gluttony? Isn't she against Antollio?"
⠀
"Was. Past tense." Vijemo hooked his thumbs into his belt loops, the wild-west cowboy silhouette a lot more visible on him now without a hundred pounds of armor in the way. "She and your director had themselves a little sit-down after everything that went down at Adjunct-13. Decided fightin' each other over those Eyes wasn't gonna get nobody anywhere."
⠀
"Those... Eyes? You mean—?"
⠀
"The Eyes." Vijemo tapped his own chest, right about where Mori had felt that golden light detonate against Alighieri's. "The rest of the Hundred Eyes of Argus. Whatever you did down there with that one Eye, it apparently got some folks a whole lot more interested in findin' the rest. Bashnya wants 'em. Directorates want 'em. Turns out two people wantin' the same thing works out a whole lot smoother when they stop tryin' to kill each other over it."
⠀
Mori sat up straighter, something bright cutting clean through the ache still sitting in his chest. "So we're... partners? You and me?"
⠀
"Looks that way, hermano." Vijemo grinned, wide and easy, all the years between them folding away for just a second. "Argus and Bashnya, joined at the hip till the job's done. Ain't that somethin'?"
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"That's amazing!" Mori's face split into a grin of his own, bright enough that Vijemo actually laughed at the sight of it. "Wait—how many Eyes are even left? We found one. That's ninety-nine more, right? How are we supposed to find ninety-nine hidden—things, across the entire Ring?"
⠀
Vijemo opened his mouth.
⠀
Closed it.
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Shrugged, both hands raised, palms up. "Hell if I know."
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"That's it? That's the plan?"
⠀
"Gluttony didn't exactly hand me a map, kid. Just told me to come get you and tell you we're partners now. Figured the details'd sort themselves out eventually. They usually do." He clapped Mori on the shoulder, entirely too pleased with himself. "Ours not question why, ours but to do and die."
⠀
Mori stared at him for a long moment, then laughed, the sound catching somewhere between disbelief and the particular, giddy relief of having someone back in his life he thought the world had taken from him for good.
⠀
"All right, philosopher," he said, throwing the blanket off his legs. "Let's go tell the others, then. Yuhuan's gonna—"
⠀
He didn't get any further than that.
⠀
The moment his feet hit the floor and he tried to push himself upright, his legs buckled, and he went down hard, catching himself on one palm before his face could follow.
⠀
"Whoa—hey!" Vijemo was already crouched beside him, hands hovering, unsure where it was safe to grab.
⠀
"I'm fine," Mori bit out, though his arms were shaking too now, and his fist came down against the tile in frustration, once, useless. "I'm fine, I just—I can stand, I just need a second—!"
⠀
"Hey, hey! You spent a month and a half not usin' those legs for anything but walkin'. Give yourself a damn minute!"
⠀
Mori's jaw tightened, stubborn, and he tried to push himself up again anyway, and got exactly as far as his knees before his arms gave out too, and Vijemo, without another word, simply hooked him under the arms and hauled him back up onto the edge of the bed.
⠀
"Stay put," Vijemo said, already heading for the door. "I saw one of those wheely-thingies parked down the hall. Consider it your chariot."
⠀
He came back a minute later wheeling a wheelchair, and Mori, too tired and too embarrassed to argue further, let himself be lowered into it without complaint.
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"Comfortable?" Vijemo asked, already pushing him toward the door.
⠀
"This is humiliating."
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"It's just temporary, brochacho." Vijemo wheeled him out into the hall, whistling something tuneless and cheerful under his breath, entirely unbothered by the indignity Mori was stewing in.
⠀
The lobby, when they reached it, looked less like a hospital waiting room and more like the entire cast of Adjunct-13 had simply been poured into it. Cots and wheelchairs lined every wall, Viscoso medics weaving between them with clipboards and IV stands, and it took Mori a moment to pick out familiar faces among all the unfamiliar ones.
⠀
He found Yuhuan first, seated near the far window, head bowed low over his own wrist, watching the Quantum Serpent sleep in a loose, drowsy coil around his forearm with the quiet, careful attention of a man guarding something fragile.
⠀
Yuhuan looked up.
⠀
For a second, he simply stared, like he wasn't entirely convinced what he was seeing was real. Then he was on his feet, nearly knocking over the chair he'd been sitting in, already shaking Saoirse awake from where she'd been dozing against his shoulder.
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"Wha...? Whazzat...? Is it dinner...?" Saoirse blinked blearily, Stuffy and Arnold both drooping half-conscious in her lap.
⠀
"Mori's awake!"
⠀
That did it. Saoirse was up and sprinting before the sentence had even finished leaving Yuhuan's mouth; both puppets were suddenly very much alert and screaming something incomprehensible and joyful while Saoirse spun around like a ballerina. They reached the wheelchair at almost the same moment, Yuhuan pulling up just short of tackling him entirely, Saoirse showing considerably less restraint.
⠀
"You're okay! You're okay, you're okay, you're—" Saoirse had both arms around his neck, nearly toppling the chair, Arnold shrieking something about missing him terribly directly into his ear.
⠀
"I'm okay," Mori managed, laughing despite the crushing hug, despite everything. "I'm okay, I promise, just... my legs decided to take a vacation, that's all—"
⠀
Yuhuan's eyes finally slid past Mori's shoulder to the man standing behind the wheelchair, and his expression shifted back to its neutral look.
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"...Who's this?"
⠀
Mori twisted around in the chair, grinning so wide his eyes shut on their own. "Yuhuan. Saoirse. This is Armor."
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Vijemo tipped an imaginary hat, grinning just as wide.
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"Howdy!"