Chapter Text
All his life he'd been told the fight would never love him back, but the way his heart rate soared as fear and adrenaline hit his nervous system was the closest thing to love he'd ever known. He chased it like he couldn't live without it because he wasn't sure he could. Over the years, as he fought bigger, stronger, faster, better people again and again, it started getting harder and harder to find. He never wanted to be the best. He just wanted to feel. Something, anything.
There was an emptiness at his core. A yawning abyss he sometimes felt like he'd been built to contain, to keep it from swallowing everything around him. Sometimes, the only thing that could cut through that empty chasm of nothing was the bright flare of pain. So he chased it, because it was the only light he had.
Mankira had been with him since he was a kid. He couldn't remember much of the woman who'd given her to him. He remembered her smile, the warmth of her hand as it wrapped around his much smaller one, and then fear in her voice. He wouldn't forget the way his hands shook when he took the rings off her, hours, or days, or weeks later. The way his back hurt from sitting, scrunched up with his knees to his chest, beside her, long after she was gone. Mankira was the last thing that tethered him to a time before all he could feel was static. A time where he'd been alive.
He didn't really give a fuck about the Sphere or the Spherite. Zodyl offered him a fight if the achieved their goal, and Zodyl was the kind of man who could break Jabber Wonger like a fuckin' pixie stick. Zodyl didn't get it. He was devoted to something different. But he didn't need to get it, he just needed to win.
He was pretty sure no one was ever going to really get it until Zanka Nejiku, the flunky hellguard bit Mankira. Teeth met metal, and Jabber saw that love for the fight that would never love him back etched in the curl of someone else's lip. Still, there was chasing the fight for a cause, and then there was chasing the fight for the love of the game. It wasn't until Zanka started laughing, high put of his mind on pain and poison, that he really knew someone else fucking got it.
Zanka had a fire in him that could probably burn the world if he'd let it, but he kept stifling it. Whoever convinced him it wasn't a strong enough flame had obviously done some serious damage, because even after Jabber unleashed Mankira's real form, he held back, pulled punches. The way he looked at Jabber made him wonder if the fire might be enough to light him up too.
But he wasn't going to survive long enough to find out. So Jabber took him by the ankles, and buried the thought. He had a sacrifice to make, and Zanka may have held back, but it cost him the victory all the same. Maybe he understood, maybe he didn't. What mattered was that today he didn't want the fight bad enough.
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Cthoni regarded him with a resigned apprehension that made Jabber respect her more than anything else. She was small, quick, and scrappy in a way that assured him she wasn't weak. She was devoted to survival the way Zodyl was devoted to resenting the Sphere though. She wouldn't fight him unless she had no other option, which wasn't the kind of showdown he was interested in. Outside of missions, a fight wasn't worth it if his opponent didn't want to take him down.
Her status as his handler hadn't warmed her to him any noticeable amount. Mostly, it just added a layer of weariness to the apprehension she approached him with. The first time he'd knocked himself out testing a poison after joining the Raider's he'd woken up to her crouching over him. He wondered if she was able to get in because her portal was focused on him, or if she had to visit the places she portaled to. Whatever the case, he'd never given her a key. He should probably have worried a lot more about the idea of her sneaking around in his apartment.
"We need you in working condition if you're gonna work with us.:
His brain was foggy with exhaustion and toxins. Lifting his hand to wave despondently in her direction felt like lifting an anvil.
"Fuck off Cthoni. I don't care about the team, or any of that togetherness bullshit."
"You really think this is the kind of team that gives a shit about togetherness? This is a gig that let's you fight people that can actually land a hit on you. I don't really give a fuck why you chase pain like a dog and a frisbee. I just care that you want it bad enough that you don't kill yourself before I get what I want."
Jabber turned his head, lifeless eyes meeting hers.
"And what exactly do you want Cthoni?"
"None of your business. Just focus on staying alive long enough to fight that psycho Cleaner you left cackling."
When Jabber looked at Cthoni, sometimes he saw someone he could have been if things had gone a little differently. He hadn't exactly lived a charmed life. He could understand the kind of life that made someone see a manhole as an escape route. If he hadn't lost everything he'd lost, and started seeking out self-destruction like the concept owed him money, he might have been her. Sometimes she said shit like that, and he'd get the feeling she could understand him too. In those moments, he questioned if he really wanted someone to know him that well.
He turned his head back to the ceiling as the sound of her portal opening and closing cut through the quiet apartment. He idly wondered what she'd do if he didn't wake up. But there was something about the way Zanka had looked at him that tempted him more than an end to the dull and constant buzz of static in that place where something should be.