Work Text:
and in the next moment --
The sensation is so overwhelming, so blindingly intense, so all-encompassing that he blacks out for a few seconds before he can even identify what it is.
Then he's back, and it's back, but he remembers what it is, this feeling. He remembers what it's like to feel. Pain. Blinding, glorious pain. In his legs, mostly, and his back. He wrenches his shoulders around and gets a look at his lower half. There's a lot of blood.
And there's some kind of sound that's been droning on, a loud scream that dissolved to giggles when he turned and saw the blood, and he realizes it's coming from him. He's laughing like a schoolgirl, except maybe the tone's a little bit manic and crazed, but hell, look at it! That was his blood all over this rock (such a wonderful rock, it made him feel pain), staining the grass and his clothes. Not that it showed up much on his suit; gosh, he sure knew how to dress on a day he was gonna get blood on his pants, didn't he! That was the best joke ever told, and he laughs and laughs.
"What's it like to feel pain? Does it make you feel *alive*?"
Yes. Hell yes, it does. For the first time in ten years, he knows what pain is again. What his blood looks like. But not just that -- he can feel the grass and dirt under his palms. He raises a hand to his shoulder to feel cotton, this is cotton, this is what clothes feel like; up to his face, this is his skin, his nose, and if he licks his fingers they taste -- they *taste*! he *tasted* them! -- like grit and sweat; to his sunglasses, impossibly still on his forehead, and he wasn't about to take them off just yet; to his hair, nearly a solid mass with gel, and it would grow out now and he would need to get haircuts again, and just the thought of such a menial banality of the sort that other people, real people (but he was real too now, he was, he bled again, that was proof) did makes him cry with happiness until he's laughing and sobbing and a shadow falls over him.
"You're a real mess, you know that?"
The detective's voice sounds like an angelic chorus. Gods, he would kiss the man if he wasn't busy being crushed. He cranes his neck to see the man in his ridiculous coat and ridiculous hair and everything is ridiculous and amazing. "And you're my prince charming," he manages to croak out past the tears, but something about it, the words or the sound of his own voice, makes him crack up in hysterics again. From his peripheral vision he thinks he might see the detective shaking his head at him, for what reason he doesn't know, pity or confusion or fear he's lost his mind. Admittedly he can tell his mind isn't exactly clear at the moment (adrenaline is a lovely, lovely thing, and he can feel his heart beating like a rabbit's), but if anything, he's found it again. After forever.
He calms himself down again, takes a deep breath -- and then another and another, just for the sheer novelty of it; look at that, he needed air again! wasn't that something! -- because there's something he needs to ask, someone ... needs to be somewhere ... and he needs to ask just as soon as he remembers how words work, because it's important. "Where's...?" he gets out; maybe the detective can help fill in the blanks.
"I asked Lynne to wait by the entrance to the park," he says, turning his head to look that way. "... She got a little freaked out when the man who pointed a gun at her, then saved her life, started cackling like a maniac at the sight of his own blood." The man looks down to him with an arched eyebrow and a strange little smile.
He needs a second to connect the name to a face. Lynne was --
a detective on the sinking submarine, waiting for death together with the little girl in the cold and dark abyss
-- a little girl herself, playing in the park, listening to music and roasting a sweet potato (and now that he thinks about it, he thinks he might smell that sweet potato now, and it smells spectacular even while making his chest ache in anticipation of a future bruise). Someone who would likely be very important in the near future, as a witness of and victim to his crime; he'd get a trial now, this time around ... but that all seems so terribly far away compared to right now and anyway that's definitely not the right name to fill in his blank.
What was supposed to be happening now? If he shuts his eyes and calms down a little more -- deep breaths, and notice the sensation of cracked and broken ribs, isn't it great -- he can see it playing out on the insides of his eyelids like a faded projection, kind of tattered at the edges. First there was nothing. For a while there was nothing. Nothing but a vague echo of pain in his back. He ... woke up? if that was the term ... in a world of blue and black, with no memory, no identity. Just as he began to wonder what was going on, what to do...
"Someone, please, reach out a hand to me..."
His eyes jump open in a panic. "Sissel!" Where was Sissel, he had been there -- he had -- and the girl had found him and the detective -- "Where's Sissel? I-I need to talk to Sissel!"
The detective's moved to sitting now, his pant leg rolled up as he inspects his leg wound. Surprisingly unsevere, from what he can tell from his angle -- though maybe not, if it was that meteorite that did it, maybe even just the dust could have a healing sort of effect -- and hell, it had gone straight through his leg to exit out the other side and where in the hell was Sissel?!
The detective looks up slowly at his exclamation. Gods, how was the man so calm? What was going on in that mango head of his? "Which one?" he asks smoothly.
At first the question doesn't make sense. Which one, what did he mean which one? The only Sissel they knew, his best friend, his partner, confidante, occasional willing puppet. 'Which one', what other Sissel did he know? Except ... his fiancée ... but she was...
alive.
Oh, gods. He nearly blacks out again with the revelation. He puts a hand to his face, damn the glasses, yanks them off Sissel was always trying to get him to take them off anyway, she loved it when he showed off his eyes and tremblingly sets them on the ground for a second so he can cover his face with his hand, pressing hard on his eyelids -- alive. Alive. He was alive, and she was alive, and they would get married and have three beautiful children. Or none. Or twelve. They've definitely talked about kids before, but it was over ten years and a lifetime ago, and he can't seem to remember.
He'll get to learn about her all over again. Spend the rest of their days together.
"To grow old in a society that would accept me. To die, surrounded by a loving family."
That was all he ever wanted, and he can do it now. In the most real, least artificial way imaginable. She would be there, with him, for ten years.
... She just had to wait ten minutes, first.
"The cat, I mean." The first words he's managed in a more relatively normal tone of voice. "Where's Sissel, the cat?"
Green Coat turns his head towards the clump of grass he came from, hobbles over there, hobbles back with a tiny ball of fur cradled in one arm. "I think Lynne would have kept him with her if I'd let her, but..." He lays the fur carefully near his shades, in front of his face. "I thought you might want the chance to talk with him first." Off in the distance, an emergency siren wails.
"Sissel." The word escapes him in a breath, a soft hiss, and he reaches out a hand to him (again) (for the first time) to stroke his fur. Gods, he was so tiny right now. Was he asleep? ... Was he ... breathing?
He's straining with all he's got before he even knows what he's doing, the trying like a kick in the chest before he's even realized why it feels so wrong, so empty -- nothing. He's trying to flip channels to the ghost world, to see the world in shades of blue and souls and cores like precious gems scattered across crushed velvet. To connect with Sissel, cut the path across the aether as he has so many times. It's a motion literally easier than breathing, all he has to do is -- he just has to -- but he can't. He's alive, godsdammit, and that means no more powers of the dead. No more ghost tricks, no more easy outs.
This cat in front of him, finally relievedly stirring as he strokes between his ears with his thumb the way he likes, would only ever be just that -- a cat. A plain old stray who might be a little smarter than average, but nothing more. He would never hear his best friend's voice again.
Some part of him notes that both the pistol and the meteorite were so close, it would take so little for him to get it back...
"Yomiel, we just got finished saving your life. Don't wish it away again so quickly."
A blink, and oh shit he's in hell, godsdammit after all that time spent wishing for it, pleading for someone to come judge his soul so he could finally find peace, because no amount of fire and brimstone could hold a candle -- ha -- to the warped facsimile of life he'd been going through, now they decide it's time for him to face his reckoning? When he had just gotten his head wrapped around being alive again?
"Sheesh, were you always this melodramatic? Look again, Yomiel."
The sound of his name in that voice stirs something in him, and he looks again. Everywhere is red and black and he's standing up and doesn't feel the pain anymore, but this can't be hell, can't be the afterlife, because Sissel's here, and any god that would stick the cat in hell or himself in heaven would have to have an extremely twisted sense of humor indeed.
"Sissel," he says again, this time less in relief than bemusement, because he's starting to grasp where this place must be, but that can't be, it wouldn't make sense; if this was his spirit-link, he'd have to be...
"Mhm. Guess I'm dead." The tip of his tail twitches behind him, curling and uncurling rhythmically. "Looks that way at least, doesn't it? Twice in one night; I'm starting to understand how Lynne must have felt."
No. No. "No." He can't tell when he says the word and when he only thinks it. The moment he gets around to wondering how?! or why?, the answer fills itself in: it had gone straight through his leg to exit out the other side, and where the hell was Sissel. The exact same fragment that had pierced his heart ten years ago -- "So I killed you again. Twice in one night." Save the detective from being a killer, but it looked like him murdering his best friend was inevitable. So much for changing the situation. So much for averting fate.
The cat shakes his head, one of the human gestures he'd picked up in his years -- and only now does he notice the bandanna around his spectral neck, and the notable size difference compared to the body that must still be under his real hand. His soul is ten, with the body of a kitten. Forever. "You didn't do it, Yomiel." He really doesn't deserve the reassuring feeling that shivers up his skin every time Sissel says his name. "It's not your fault, okay? No one's fault. And there's no use beating yourself up over something you can't change." The words have a weight to them, like he's not just talking about his death, but presciently thinking of all the things he'll have to beat himself up over once his thoughts slow down and he gets a second to reflect. "Besides..." He rubs up against his ankles with a purr, as he has (countless times) (never) before. "It might not be so bad, being something more than a 'plain old stray'."
He shakes his head now, taking a step back from the nuzzle even while every muscle in his metaphysical body aches with the longing to pick him up and never let him go. Because he needs to start making sacrifices, needs to start working off the veritable mountain of bad karma he's got piled up, and he sure as hell doesn't deserve the affection. "No, Sissel..." There's pain in his voice, fear and a profound sadness ten years in the making. "No, it is. It's awful." Which is an understatement several levels deep. "Living -- 'living' -- with that godsforsaken thing..." He rubs at a temple with his thumb, ignoring the obvious futility of the action. "You can't sleep. You can't feel. You can't bleed." Can't escape from the consuming regrets that form a deep rut in the soul, a downward possessive spiral. "There's no respite. Ever."
A flicked ear and a twist of the head, impressively conveying the expression of a raised brow for a form without visible eyebrows. "Eh, I slept too much anyway." If it was meant to get him to crack a smile, it didn't work. "I'll trade 'never getting hurt' for not feeling stuff. And ... why would I want to bleed?" A pause. He stretches his ghostly legs in front of him. "You might not have noticed, but I'm a cat. We're not really known for the whole 'regret' business."
"No!" There's vehemence in the word, and he doesn't bother asking himself who he's so angry at: it's himself. It always has been. "I..." He can't find words for his thoughts, so he lets his thoughts speak for themselves. How there wasn't ever a single day that passed where he wouldn't have traded all his useless 'powers' to have his fiancée back in his arms. How the endless wanting for what he could never obtain overwhelmed him. How the meteorite, the cause of his undeath, had been the bane of his nonexistence for ten full years, and he could never live with himself if he put his best friend through that worse-than-hell.
Sissel sits on his hindquarters, skimming the words unsaid like a dragonfly across still water, wind flowing over glass. He leaves time enough after he finishes, nothing more to think that wouldn't be a retread over the same ideas, time enough in silence that he considers saying something just to break it, when Sissel speaks up again.
"I don't know what to say that would convince you that my 'new future' won't turn out that way. Or if anything would." A casual scratch behind the ear. "Maybe it will get boring and repetitive, eventually. But until then, I'll be watching. Learning." He meets his shaded eyes coolly, obsidian slits contracting inside rings of topaz. "Last night, I had the chance to realize how much I don't know. I learned about things like hostage, kidnapping, execution..." The litany of vocabulary is almost funny; it sounds more like he's seen a crime show than spent the night getting personally acquainted with the concepts. "Music boxes, rugby balls, torpedoes... I want to know all the things you guys know. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to fill up a few sleepless years just with that." There's a catty smirk in his words. "Maybe I'll even learn to read."
Sissel paws forward, but he takes a reflexive step backwards, still not quite ready to accept his affection. His black ears droop at the action. "... And... I might not have a 'fiancée'," he says quietly, "but I think I have someone just as important." And before he can comprehend the words, there's a flash of not-quite-light, and he's looking at ... himself. His red outfit, black sunglasses reflecting the same, but there's a smile on the face with a warmth he's sure hasn't been seen in his own expression in a long, long time. "You." And he takes advantage of his shock to wrap his arms around his chest in an awkward hug, the kind that might be given by one who's seen the gesture performed but never been given the opportunity to try it out.
He's frozen for a few moments, before he gets his wits about him and returns the embrace, squeezing the man-- cat-- spirit with such force it might have taken his breath away if he had any. "Oh, Sissel..." He really didn't deserve this. He didn't. But he would be selfish, just this once.
"Selfish...?" Sissel pulls away, keeping his arms around his neck, and laughs melodiously. "Yomiel, you cared for me for ten years. A little hug is the least I can do to pay you back." He returns to the embrace, and the two remain for a time uncountable in a realm where breaths and heartbeats mean nothing and the environment is forever unchanging.
Eventually (eternity and a day) (far too soon), the two slowly release again, at the exact same time, as if on cue. He lifts a hand to wipe away a tear under his glasses, and laughs slightly. "I might have mentioned this before, but... Thank you, Sissel. I'm so glad I met you."
Sissel takes his other hand by his waist and entwines his fingers with his own. "Believe me, Yomiel. The feeling is mutual." He stays that way, rubbing one of his fingers with his thumb in quiet contemplation. "Before that, you said that in this new future, it will be like we never met. But that ... can't be true, for me. Even if we don't see each other for years, even if..." He frowns, looking down. "Even if our paths don't cross, and we never see each other again..." He looks back up. "I'll always remember those ten years we had together. I'll always remember you."
He clasps his other hand around his and smiles. "Believe me, Sissel. The feeling is mutual." A thought hangs in the air, ringing loud and impossible to tell from whom it came: I love you.
"... Are you ready to go back?"
"... Not ... not yet. Let's just sit down and talk, okay? You can tell me all about your adventure. I want to hear everything."
"Haha, okay. Should I start from the beginning, or skip straight to the good bits where Lynne got crushed under a giant chicken leg? Oh, and I was kind of wondering myself what you were thinking when that helmet smashed right into White Coat's face that one time..."
The two lean back to back as Sissel recounts a tale of dandies and doughnuts, lighters and leaflets, Missiles and Minos. They lie down like stargazers while he tells his own version of events, lingering on the part after he left the superintendent's office but before getting to the port, where he returned to his fiancée's grave one last time, and buried the cat's body with her. And when he's using his jacket as a makeshift pillow and Sissel's long since returned to cat form under his fingertips, whispering nonsense nothings because he asked -- didn't ask, only thought that he wanted to keep hearing the sound of his voice...
Yomiel falls asleep with a smile, and dreams whispers of couldhavebeens and neverwas, echoes of possibilities.
"... Who are you?"
"Me? I don't know. I'm a cat. Who are you?"
"... I don't ... remember. Am I a cat too?"
"I don't *think* so... You reached out a hand to me. Thank you."
"... You're welcome, I guess."
"... Will you be friends with me? It's just... I'm so lonely..."
"Friends? ... Sure. Let's be friends."