Work Text:
Radiation isn’t actually as big as a problem as she thought it would be. That really isn’t saying much, since she had assumed she would die after three days because of the poisoning, but it hasn’t been as terrible as she assumed. Her skin burns - don’t get her wrong, her skin still burns if she’s exposed to unfiltered air, but it doesn’t get through her space suit.
Usually.
Her breath fogs the helmet, and her hair sticks to the back of her neck because both the thermal insulation and the air conditioning are broken. More things she needs to fix. But she’s walking through the city/desert, air getting cleaned by the filters, and she’s doing work, so she has no time to fix it now.
She needs to find a car. It’s fairly pressing actually; the engine parts would be incredibly useful, since she has so much stuff to fix. There are incinerated bodies, mummified into carbon, lying all over the ground. No one wants to clean them up, and besides, they’ll crumble into ash after a couple more years.
She steps on one, and it crackles beneath her feet. She ignores it.
There don’t seem to be any other humans in the city. Morioh used to be absolutely full of life, but now it’s just a husk. Even in the days, weeks, months following the Event, the streets were full of people screaming, crying and dying. Ten years later, though, and it’s silent. Fuck, it has been ten years, hasn’t it? She’s nearly thirty.
Christmas is coming up. She doesn’t really celebrate it; she lives in Japan, after all, but it might be nice to do something. Maybe she’ll fix the air conditioner in the house as well as the one in her suit; that’d be a nice surprise for Josuke and the others.
There’s a car parked on the side of the road. For the most part, it’s intact, though her sensors are screaming at her because of the levels of radiation. It’ll be fine, though. Not like she hasn’t already been dosed enough to give her cancer thrice over.
She hurries over, boots crunching bones and rocks and glass beneath her. The car door is closed. She gives the handle a little jiggle. Closed and locked, it seems. Well, there are methods for that. Calmly, she picks up a rock, and smashes in the window. Makes sure there isn’t any jagged shards of glass that could puncture any more holes in her suit, and then climbs through.
It gets a little harder, from there on out. Not the hot-wiring, because Paisley Path simply floats into the mechanism and starts it for her, but getting the blaring alarm to stop screaming. She eventually gets it, though the fingers of her suit are significantly worn after she succeeds.
The wheels and rusted, but they manage to move, and then she’s driving off. It’ll be a short drive, since she managed to walk here, but it was a long walk, so maybe it’ll be a normal drive? She doesn’t know.
***
It was, apparently, a short drive. Only took her about five to ten minutes. The garage door opens for her, and then there’s the sound of air going out of a balloon for about half a minute. Then Josuke comes bounding out, a look of delirious happiness on their face.
“Yasuho! You found a car!”
“Yeah, I did!”, she exclaims, because Josuke is fucking amazing, especially when they’re happy, and seeing them happy makes her happy.
They wrap their arms around her, and she wraps her arms around them, and it’s good. It’s so very fucking good.
“Daiya and Joshuu are fighting again,” they say. Their expression is a mix of exasperated and downcast, which figures. They might not have fit in right away, but after ten years in the same house as ten other people, anyone would be attached. Attached or homicidal.
“What is it this time?”
“Daiya wants to go on more expeditions for seeds. Joshuu thinks it’s too dangerous, so Daiya took most of his memories and no one found out for three days. Now he’s pissed and Daiya is even more pissed.”
She takes off her helmet, enjoying the smell of citrus that seems to permeate the walls of the Higashikata household. It’s still humid and disgusting, but the air doesn’t smell of cheese and mustiness.
Carefully, she presses her lips against Josuke’s. It’s chaste, and sweet, because Josuke never did have a taste for anything other than innocence. Neither did she, to be fair.
“Do we step in, or avoid them?”
“Kyo is here, right? She’ll do it for us. Did you go out today?”
Josuke shakes their head, hair a halo around their head. It’s grown longer, much, much longer in the years they’ve been cooped up in here. He still wears his hat, though it’s significantly more ragged than it was ten years ago.
“I was too busy helping Norisuke tend to the plants. You know my stand is useful for stuff like that.”
She nods understandingly, and then clasps their hand in hers. “So, should we start setting up dinner?”
He nods, and gives her a peck on the cheek. The air hisses again as they open the airlock into the living room, but they pay it no mind, because it, like the many other groans of the house, has become routine.
***
Here’s how it happened; America and Russia re-entered the Cold War, this time with China and North Korea tacked on. America was first to fire, Russia enacted revenge protocol, China fired off because everyone else was, and North Korea’s missile never even took off, malfunctioning and blowing half their country to shit.
No bombs were dropped directly on Japan, or Australia, or Sweden, because the three had declared themselves neutral as soon as possible. Unfortunately, it didn’t prevent radiation from seeping everywhere in the world. Electronics were hit by a fairly strong EMP, which shut them off for a while - long enough for riots in near every country and the destruction of the global economy.
The death toll was in the billions; the survivors ravaged by radiation. Global Warming, already a significant problem, managed to catapult itself to the point of destruction on the same level as the original bombs.
Here’s how she survived: she was with Josuke, down by the pier, when Paisley Path alerted her that the American President had decided to fire the missiles. Paisley Path had been connected into every important computer in the world back then - the stand still was, even though the amount of computers (important or otherwise) was much lower.
She grabbed Josuke and Tsurugi and hauled ass to Norisuke’s house, told the head of the family the news. Norisuke called Jobin and told him to come back to the house from the office, and then they brought as many plants as possible into the basement.
They stayed like that, huddled in the basement (ten people!) for three weeks, before Norisuke procured enough materials for Yasuho to weld/duct tape together a rudimentary EVA suit, and she ventured back out into the house, grabbing any canned foods and electronics she could.
They kept going out, building new equipment, until they reclaimed the entire house. Radiation was filtered out bit by bit, and now they were mostly safe. Mostly.
***
She and Josuke - they both share a bed. Joshuu had, for the first year, bitched and whined and took several attempts to either seduce Yasuho or kill Josuke before realising that actually no, he was more mature than that, and finally growing up.
But they share a bed. It’s unbearable on the more hot days, but during winter (and the winter is glacial, when it occurs) it’s wonderful. Right now, it’s summer, so they lie on opposite sides of the single bed and avoid touching any skin whatsoever.
They’re both filthy. Josuke is covered in dirt from where he was helping Norisuke with his now thriving farm (it can no longer be called a garden), and Yasuho has dust and oil grease and grime and sweat sticking to her skin. Their sheets are just as disgusting, and they smell more often than not, but showers are a once every two week thing, because of the scarcity of clean water.
The fan above them creaks around lazily, powered by the incredibly unsafe generator Yasuho has running in one of the many hallways of the caved in underground passages. It’s a pathetic attempt to push air down at them, but it’s one she appreciates anyway, mostly because it’s her who put it together.
Paisley Path is hovering by the bed, singular eye staring glassily down at her. Soft & Wet doesn’t make many appearances when it doesn’t have to (as soon as she noticed she started teasing Josuke for being shy), but Paisley Path pops up to guide her where it thinks she needs to go.
It’s one of the most autonomous Stands she’s ever seen; it seems smarter than her at times, seems to be able to access any information, even the future. It scares her, sometimes, whenever it pushes her down a path she doesn’t want to take.
All Stands have personality; some more than others. It seems her Stand happens to rank on the more individualistic side of the spectrum.
“Hey Josuke?”, she murmurs.
“Hmm?”
“I love you,” she whispers, and turns to hug their back. They’re so lithe, tall and strong, but so lanky at times. Like a big long cat.
“I love you too, Yasuho. Love you so much.”
Despite the heat, she snuggles closer. Her hands brush their breasts, and she can’t help but cup them. Look, she’s not in the mood for sex, but her partner is just so beautiful, so wonderful, she can’t help it.
The apocalypse is pretty shitty. There are days when she wants to die, when the scars on her wrists tingle, when she wants to see her mother and father, wants to give up, but Josuke pulls her out of it. There are days when Josuke wants to give up, but she pulls him out of it. They balance each other, make the horror bearable.
This house has become her home - this person has become someone she loves. And, despite everything, she’s happy. She’s really, truly happy, in a way she never thought she could be.