Chapter Text
Flynn had always known that there was something unusual about him.
To everyone around him, he seemed normal, albeit a bit too quiet, but he knew that he had experiences that no one else could relate to. Well, it was better to say that he had memories that no one could relate to, sort of. It was difficult to explain. He remembered wisps of memory in both his dreaming and his waking mind—memories of a life he certainly hadn’t led. But it all felt and seemed so real. And Flynn never told a soul because he always had this inkling, this understanding deep in him, that no one else experienced anything like this, and that sharing would make him be seen as aberrant. He did not want to be noticed, so he was silent. If anyone else had memories that weren’t theirs, they never said, and so he kept himself in his own secrecy.
His name was not Flynn in these strange flashes. He was a young man named Mamoru—a name unlike anything Flynn had ever heard in the Eastern Kingdom of Mikado.
Most of his memories of Mamoru were when he was older, about seventeen or eighteen, but sometimes he did recall things from outside of that time window. The world he was from was one that Flynn couldn’t fathom, a world filled with alien creations and an even more unfamiliar culture. Class divide was different, the Monastery wasn’t present (although there did seem to be institutions similar to it, but not enough to be familiar), and, oddly enough, there was no monarchy.
All of these flashes were quick—brief images and scenes of this strange world that would flicker by and then disappear. Strange food and lights that were too bright to be fire, loud sounds blasting from small little cubes, and more. Mamoru, of course, was used to all of these things, being from the same world they were, so there was never a tinge of fear or disorientation in the actual memories—that was just something Flynn himself felt afterwards as he tried to parse what he saw into something he could recognize and understand. He was only slightly successful in doing so—there was just so much it was overwhelming.
The longer memories started to come after he turned eighteen himself, after he was made a samurai. It was only then that he really began to know Mamoru as the man he was. Or, a boy, because as Flynn himself was aware, eighteen was really not that old, despite it being the catch-all number for entering adulthood.
Mamoru had been freshly eighteen himself when he was recruited for an organization called ‘the Counter-Demon Force’, something which seemed shocking and strangely familiar—similar to the samurai of Mikado, even though the world Mamoru resided in was so foreign.
There were many memories concerning the CDF: combat and summoning, and while some of the weapons and equipment were unfamiliar, the methods were the same. When it came down to it, fighting was always the same, and so were demons. Mamoru had the same natural aptitude for combat as Flynn did, easing into it despite a lack of earlier life experience, and practice quickly led to him mastering several skills. He became invaluable on the battlefield rather quickly, the envy of the men and women who worked alongside him. Flynn related to that easily, thinking of Navarre and his bitter jealousy, and the ease in which Flynn had faced what Navarre had brought against him.
Flynn began to feel, now, that Mamoru, in some way, was him. He had wondered before if they were connected like that, it was easy to relate to someone when you were experiencing their memories, but it wasn’t until these longer ones, and till he became a samurai, that he was able to actually connect to Mamoru. Mamoru wasn’t some separate character—these were just as much Flynn’s memories as they were Mamoru’s. They were the same—Flynn must have been Mamoru in a past life.
Reincarnation—the very concept a heresy—was the only explanation for this thread of connection he felt. He settled so easily into Mamoru’s skin, into these memories, as if they were of a life he had led. He recalled missions and downtime, combat and laughter. He remembered a katana, a special and powerful weapon that only he and one other person could draw. He knew Mamoru’s friends and allies, all of them familiar but not directly correlating to any of Flynn’s current friends. He remembered Fujiwara, Skins, and…Akira.
Akira was someone Mamoru had been drawn to ever since they had first met. There was some kind of innate understanding between them, an immediate brotherhood; Akira’s gentle smile and subtle expressions easy for him to decipher, and his own typical silence finally didn’t seem like a barrier when Akira was around. Akira had been a leader in the CDF, high above Mamoru in rank, but Mamoru rose quickly since he enlisted, both due to natural talent and to the guidance of others. Most notably, of course, Akira’s guidance. He had been a mentor, an inspiration, and Mamoru had wanted nothing more than to make him proud.
Flynn remembered Mamoru loving Akira. Stronger than anything he had felt before, this quiet and powerful feeling suspended between them, complete belief and utter adoration. Akira was his leader and he was the enforcer of Akira’s will, and there was nothing else he could ever desire. He had his own dreams and hopes as well, of course, but Akira’s goals and his own aligned perfectly, perhaps with a little nuance, but the overall ideas always left them on the same page. It was comfortable and just…filled with a trust he had never before known.
Akira was…everything.
To Mamoru, the two things that mattered most were Akira and protecting humanity. If he never accomplished anything else in his life but protecting those two aspects to the best of his ability, so be it, he would be satisfied. Even if Akira hadn’t wanted him in the same way (which he did, so it hardly was worth considering), he felt that he still would have been content, just to serve.
And that devotion led to something Flynn couldn’t have imagined. If he still had any suspicions concerning the validity of these memories, if he still had to make sure that they weren’t just his imagination, the next flashbacks confirmed that he wasn’t. Because he couldn’t have and wouldn’t have come up with this if it hadn’t occurred.
When the world was ending, Mamoru (Flynn) had hardly needed to think. What should have been overwhelming wasn’t, because he knew what mattered to him. The only course of action was before him, obvious and clearer than anything else had ever been—he was to give his life for what mattered.
It had been somewhat shocking when Flynn remembered Mamoru’s death, an event of sacrifice, of total willingness, a complete understanding of his fate and a desire to protect more than anything else. He had known what to do and he had not feared, even though Flynn, looking through the memory as it was, could not help but fear himself, to fear this calm he felt in the face of death, a cold calm he had never known and couldn’t imagine knowing. Except now, he could—he knew what it felt like.
He remembered a brief darkness, then, a terrifying flash of pain, his vision going dark, and then…Masakado overtaking him. And they were left to stone—the ground below one kingdom and the sky above another—the Firmament.
He could visit his own grave—where he now remembered dying. Ginza, in the center square. A fallen mass of rock, Masakado’s head, severed by his transformation, lay here. Poetic, since Flynn’s own head had been similarly severed, mirrored with this demon he had given it to.
These memories though, this strange past life he remembered, it was all meaningless. It wasn’t like he could tell anyone and expect them to understand, not even his dearest friends. Even with all they had seen, especially as they descended down into Tokyo in search of the Black Samurai, this was unbelievable. And so, Flynn was silent about his remembered past and previous death, even as they walked past his own grave.
And he just kept moving forward. He found himself overwhelmed by what he was now facing, this familiar-yet-not world and the clash of what he was raised knowing and what new things he learned in this dilapidated modernity. He had very little concept of what to say when faced with Jonathan and Walter’s ultimatums, leaving him feeling like he was caught in a web, struggling and squirming, but slowly a dogma would coil around him, based on his responses, and he would be trapped in one path.
As it was, his insecurity in this left him drawn to his comforts—to what he knew, and Jonathan naturally agreed with him, leaving them on the same path, tied to the Eastern Kingdom of Mikado and to the angels through that. It was sad to be against Walter, and sadder to watch Isabeau’s uncertainty keep her from either side, leaving her alone and desolate, but the choice had been made. Flynn was tied to the path, just as Jonathan was. They had to all follow their ideals, even if that forced them apart.
But then, Jonathan was lost as well. Both he and Flynn started to become uncomfortable with what they were doing. It was slowly spreading uncertainty, a doubt in one’s core, but they were already too far to retreat or change. Neither of them was totally onboard anymore, but they had both gone too far to give up now. They had to create a world, and if they stopped now, their world would not be the one to succeed. They could not allow that to happen, a world of chaos would surely be worse than the world of peace they desired, even if that peace was not perfect.
Jonathan didn’t let Flynn be the sacrifice. This time, Flynn got to see what it was like to watch someone else sacrifice themselves for the world, rather than paying that ultimate price himself.
Jonathan died.
Merkabah rose in his place, luminescent and brilliant, a marvel unlike anything Flynn had ever seen. The awe almost made him fall to his knees before him—the knowledge of the fact that he stood before both the Lord’s Chariot and the only remaining vestige of his dearest friend overwhelming him. He did not kneel.
Merkabah followed him, a glowing holy shadow that made everyone who saw them shrink away in reverent fear. Flynn had always learned in worship that one should fear the Lord, but seeing the reality of it, the flashes in people’s eyes, how quickly they prostrated themselves on the ground, on their hands and knees, their faces pressing into dirty and grimy floors—it was unnerving. It made him, for the first time, truly doubt the validity of his own faith. Doubt the honor in serving God.
Doubt that the sacrifice of his dear friend was worthwhile.
Flynn felt a deep discomfort in his heart, conjured by these thoughts, a darkness that increased with each step he took through the all-too-familiar Tokyo. But, this was the path he had walked. He had come too far to stop, he had watched everything fall. Walter became Lucifer, tall and repulsive, completely different from the man Flynn had known, unreconcilable with his friend. Isabeau had stood in his path and forced him to make a choice he didn’t desire to make, a choice that hadn’t really been a choice at all—he was tied and doomed to follow this fate too far. Flynn didn’t have the will to escape. It was too late.
It had been almost too easy to hit the kill switch in this empty world.
Isabeau, bleeding out from her throat, a wound she had given herself. Walter, a monster unrecognizable, standing before Flynn as a foe. And Jonathan himself. Jonathan, hardly anything left of him in winged angelic beauty. And, finally, himself. Flynn, the one with strange memories and an inability to make choices, a powerful force who felt undeserving of it all. The man who could tip the scales, but he had no concept of which way to take them. He could not judge the world or his friends.
Flynn watched impassively as his unclean world was consumed with Jonathan and himself at its core.
Then, he opened his eyes. Not dead, and it took him mere seconds to determine that this wasn’t an afterlife of any sort.
No. The world had simply reset somehow, placing him at the Rite, watching as Issachar dejectedly left the plaza. It was if the life he had just led, where he had followed the path of Law, had just been a fantasy that took up the span of a single blink. And now he was back, to live again, but this was different than his memories of Mamoru. Flynn remembered everything, and he knew it was real, immediately. This was…something else. Not remembered memories, but an actual relived life.
And it was all repeating, just as before, and no one was the wiser. No one said a word, asking why things were reset, and no one was different than they were before. It was like watching a play, except that this was no fiction, and Flynn himself stood, the only aware character on the stage. He was left with two unknowable secrets: his memories of a life he didn’t live and the repetition of a life he did.
Flynn decided that this time wouldn’t be the same. He wasn’t caught in a web yet, wasn’t forced to act in a certain way, and so he could be different. He warded Jonathan away. It was easy, Flynn couldn’t even look at him without remembering the samurai’s occasional doubt in the law and his desire to not sacrifice anything at all, and the discomfort he had felt, alongside Flynn’s own, when it had been too late to change. Flynn, whenever he glanced at Jonathan, could only see Merkabah. And, when he looked to Isabeau, all he could see was her, on the ground, sliding her knife across her own throat, her blood spilling over her chest and down her torso, staining her uniform. Blood, deep scarlet, dribbling from her lips.
And so, he looked to Walter.
Walter’s death was the easiest to forget—Lucifer had been so unlike him, and Flynn had not seen the transformation as he had seen Jonathan’s. It was easy to divorce Walter from the concept of Lucifer, to pretend that he would not end up becoming Lucifer, that Flynn was not trapping himself down a path that might end up worse. He couldn’t think about that. He had to keep moving.
Walter’s dogma was a relief to engage with after Jonathan’s, although like Jonathan’s, Flynn could not entirely subscribe himself to it. But it helped Flynn feel better, to embrace the chaos of Tokyo, to love the new world they entered, the one that was so familiar with his past memories. Even if he had only known it before the Ceiling had formed (being the one who created it), he still felt an inherent connection to the city and its people.
But he didn’t fully love it either—there were still too many holes in this chaos—too many innocents left to suffer in the wake of power. A world of chaos was a world where no one could be defended, where the word ‘protect’ became meaningless, and Flynn…didn’t like that. It struck him, somewhere deep and integral—chaos was not right. Flynn did not want a world like this, but he knew he didn’t like the reverse either. Peace or Freedom, no compromise and no balance. Just as he had seen in Jonathan’s world, Walter’s was just so…ugly. A world where no one protected the weak meant that children died. It meant that the powerless were consumed. It meant that only those with power were free and that everyone else would die or fall in line.
Walter chose to die, before even seeing what his world would quickly become. Freedom turned to fire and blood, an ugly awakening of a beautiful ideal.
It was almost a relief that Walter was mostly dead for this. The transformation into Lucifer had been grotesque. Skin splitting and stretching, turning an unworldly pallid white. His body growing taller, gaunt, towering with throbbing claws and appendages that were just a little too long to belong to a natural body. His eyes flipped to black and he, overall, exuded a sense of malice and power, a cold conniving nature—after all, he was the only one who could stand up to God’s forces.
Lucifer followed Flynn, just as Merkabah had, his steps over the ground loud and echoing. Everyone seemed to know to get away before he approached, streets emptying and people scurrying into corners, hiding their faces in their knees, shivering. Lucifer walked behind Flynn in a lordly way, not subservient, which made Flynn seem even grander than the fallen angel. A leader who deemed it right to follow a leader. Surely, the one in front must be powerful to deserve such treatment.
Flynn did not feel great or worthy or even happy, but he was trapped here in this role, hopeless, just as he had been before, and so he made himself embrace the chaos, and embrace being a harbinger of Lucifer and his will. Even if it was against what Flynn wanted, it was what he had to do now. A world of Freedom that wasn’t free at all.
Only then, once he had embraced his internal despair, had given up on this world being what he wanted, did Flynn feel a sort of demonic smile grace his features as a cloud, soft, overcame his mind. It was suddenly easy to forget and to do as everyone willed, except himself. To give birth to this chaotic world. It became a haze of fire and violence and Flynn lost himself to it. Even when Lucifer spoke to him, saying that this world would need a leader, it hardly registered to him that he had been intended to fill that role.
He didn’t remember anything after that--a single mercy granted to him in his desponding, his undesire to create the worlds of both Law and Chaos.
Perhaps, he thought, it was hopeless. He was destined to create a world, but was doomed to worlds he despised, worlds that took his ideals and twisted them until he wanted to believe in nothing at all because everything was awful. And then, he realized—that was a choice.
The White had been whispering a solution to him since the very beginning. They told him of the great nothing—of letting the world fall into a nonexistent abyss. Of killing the entire fifth humanity so that God could no longer make them suffer—to be out of His reach without being under his heel or hated in his gaze.
Flynn could escape all of this. Just like how he had with Merkabah, but sooner, in a way that would destroy Mikado as well as Tokyo. This time, he would be quick and alone, and a great black hole could swallow everything. Flynn himself first of all, and then Tokyo, and then, finally, the broken paradise of the Eastern Kingdom of Mikado.
Another thought, the White could even be the cause of these loops he was experiencing, repeating the suffering until their solution was chosen by him. He asked them that, when he met them, but they didn’t seem to understand, and their responses were vague and directed, as always, towards leading him towards Nihilism. Little did they know, he was already there, alongside their ideals, brought to them by his own experiences and his own mind. He wanted, in his heart, to protect, but both of the worlds available to him were meaningless, hopeless, and there was nothing he felt that he could do to change them. If he could not protect, perhaps he could at least end it, a darker protection—at least humanity would be out of reach.
Perhaps, this time, it would truly end.
He destroyed the reactor.
Everyone died.
And Flynn woke up again, right where he always was, staring at the gauntlet that had just accepted him. And, just like before, no one knew what he had done in the previous cycle. No one knew that he had doomed them all to blackness without choosing a side.
A horrible guilt welled up in him, consuming his heart with an acidic corrosion just as hopelessness gripped his lungs with vices of hard ice. His breaths were shallow as his chest burned. There was no escape from the cycles. There was no ending where he could succeed. He was frozen in place, his feet unmovable, his shoulders tense, his fingers curled into lose fists. This, he realized with a slow-growing horror, was true Nihilism. The White had no idea.
‘Your actions will create a world,’ they had said. But no world was good, and none would last.
Twice more Flynn accepted the White’s words, becoming listless, hoping in despair that this time the death of the world would take and that he would never again open his eyes. But, each time he ended it, he awoke, and it became clearer that Nihilism was just as distasteful and awful as both Law and Chaos. Nothing was right, and Flynn didn’t know what to do. He longed for another way, for a world he would like, a world with both Tokyo and Mikado, a world of humans without subjugation to angels and demons, but he couldn’t see a way to make such a thing possible. He found himself despairing once more, but he couldn’t give into it anymore—the White were powerless, even more than he was.
He felt like Isabeau, unable to decide, caught constantly between all sides and disliking them all. Even if the loops never ended, if he at least found a world he loved—a world he wanted to protect—it would all be worth it, even if he was doomed to endless repetition. Flynn could live for a dream—and die for it as well.
He remembered Mamoru then, his previous life having been forgotten in his desperation. He had already died to protect a world—a world he had loved. He had done it for the people, for himself, for the fight against God, and for Akira.
Oh, and if only he still had Akira. This would all be bearable if he could have that much, if he could depend on Akira, if he could speak to him, something. But he was alone in this, Akira long lost to Tokyo (he had to be, or Flynn surely would have heard of him).
He remembered his death still, vividly. The darkness that had covered his vision as Masakado’s head began to engulf him, the fear and apprehension he had held back just enough to stay motionless, the pain of the teeth separating his head from his body. Death.
But, he would do that again in an instant for the people. To protect them all. For Akira.
He would die, again and again, for Akira. To give Akira the chance he needed to create the world he envisioned. He wished that Akira was here now, he would know what world to make in this desolate situation. Flynn felt that he was meant to create situations that Akira could benefit from, or that he was meant to protect Akira with his life so that Akira could build a world of his own. Flynn himself felt unfit to create a world, as despite his best efforts, he was led into failure. Into giving up.
He was meant to give his life for others, that was who Mamoru told him he was—and without Akira Flynn was…lost. He just didn’t know what sort of actions to take to make the best possible world. And he was getting so, so tired.
He had to do something though, there had to be another way. Akira would want him to find that way, to not give up as he had done. To push forward for humanity. Grasping onto those memories—onto his quiet talks with Akira, onto their devotion and dedicated love—with all the willpower he could muster, Flynn began to search.
It was hard to look at Isabeau ever since the first time she had died before him. But now, he forced himself to look to her. And she was indecisive just as before, stuck in consideration, and it made him think that maybe there was another path—he just had to keep thinking to reach it. If he avoided clinging to both Jonathan and Walter, not to mention the White, maybe a fourth option would reveal itself and he could find another way, another world he could create. Perhaps he could find it with her, for he knew she didn’t desire the worlds of Law or Chaos either. He wasn’t as alone as he had thought. And so, he could continue to consider where this new path lied.
One thing Flynn did love was the people of Tokyo—the hunters especially. Perhaps Mamoru’s memories were making him biased, but he still felt it—a kinship and care for them that was betrayed in each path he took. Akira would feel tied to them too, as they were who Akira would be with if he was still present in this world. Flynn followed them, saw their will to live above the Firmament, thought of how Mikado and Tokyo could be united, and…
He thought for himself and kept things even and slow and the fourth path opened and—
He had reached Neutrality.