Chapter Text
In a time yet to come, on the far reaches of the galaxy, Oikawa Tooru was lost.
The blue hologram map in his hand was stuck on one language and unfortunately, it was not one of the three he spoke. He shook the source of the hologram, a thin disc in the palm of his hand, which only made the projection flicker from blue to red. With an internal curse, he turned off the device and began to wander.
Like the hologram was supposed to do, the signs in the halls shifted between languages, showing ten at a time. Going one at a time would mean you would be standing for several minutes waiting for a language you recognized to come up. He figured you could still end up waiting several minutes if you were unlucky. He was not feeling particularly lucky today, or particularly patient, so he headed down the hall without a clue where he was going.
They said that not all those who wander are lost, but he was most definitely lost. There were humans and aliens all around him, some in crisp jumpsuits, others in uniforms. Workers, he figured, with colors and symbols denoting their departments. Then there were the travelers, humans and aliens alike in casual clothes, following their maps that actually worked. Then, walking towards him from the other end of the hall, he saw him.
It had been years since he last saw him.
Oikawa had not attended his graduation ceremony from Apollo Academy. He didn’t display photos of his squadmates, or any photos from his time at the academy, which would surprise anyone who knew him from that time. He was not stuck in the past. He forgot it, except for when his leg ached and it was impossible to forget, and he so badly craved something he should not have.
Now, that man was walking towards him, the same resting bitch face, the same haircut, the same brand tennis shoes, the same everything. It felt like he had been rocketed back through time.
“Ushiwaka,” Oikawa muttered under his breath with all the hate in the world and more because there was always room in him to hate Ushijima Wakatoshi just a bit more. Only a handful of people could cause such a violent, guttural reaction in Oikawa and that man was one of them. He instinctively balled his hands so tight at his sides, the hologram cracked, piercing his palm, and his hand began to bleed.
Ushijima’s eyes met Oikawa’s and, to his credit, Ushijima did react. Ushijima was surprised to see him and Oikawa found some childish joy in surprising him. Most people probably wouldn’t see a reaction in that bland, unmoving face. For their first semester together at Apollo Academy, Oikawa saw nothing, too. Then he began to work with him in classes, and fight against him during exercises, and he had to learn to read his body and mind. It was hard to forget a language once you learned it so thoroughly.
“Oikawa,” Ushijima said. “Am I dreaming?”
“Do you usually dream about me?” Oikawa asked, revolted.
“I thought it was an expression?” Ushijima’s eyes flicked down to Oikawa’s bleeding hand. “You injured yourself. May I touch you?”
“Excuse me?”
Ushijima’s eyes rose back to his face. “I am a surgeon. I can determine if you need stitches.”
“You’re not allowed to touch me no matter what, you hear?” Oikawa snapped.
Ushijima said, “If that is the case, please make your way to the Med Bay and have one of the nurses in the Infirmary look at it. Our nurses are very skilled. You will be in good hands.”
Oikawa once made a list of One Hundred and One Insults for the Unbearable Ushiwaka, and he recalled the majority of them to this day out of pure spite. If this was easy, he would say one or two of those insults. If this was easy, he would be able to meet Ushijima’s eyes. If this was easy, he wouldn’t hear Shimizu’s voice in the back of his head telling him not to do anything he would regret.
“Tell me where it is,” Oikawa said. “My hologram broke and I don’t want to spend another second with you if I can avoid it.”
“I will take you there. If you do not have a functional map, it can be quite complicated.”
“I’m not an idiot.”
“I do not mean to insult your intelligence. I heard from Kuroo that after a short break, you completed your PhD at a private institution and received a postdoctoral position at an esteemed university. Congratulations.”
“Just tell me where the Infirmary is,” Oikawa said through his teeth.
“I will take you there.”
“So, you’re still stupidly stubborn, huh?”
“You were always more stubborn than me, though,” Ushijima said dully.
Oikawa glared at him, then waved his bloody hand in a grand, over dramatic gesture and said, “Lead the way, Ushiwaka.”
Ushijima began to walk and Oikawa begrudgingly followed.
“Three thousand twenty-nine,” Oikawa muttered under his breath. “Three thousand twenty-nine, three thousand…”
The Infirmary in the Med Bay was a shiny silver with air that smelled of hand sanitizer. For a space station as large as Asteria 5, Oikawa expected the Infirmary to be packed, but it was empty except for a tall skinny man with copper hair. The man wore pale blue scrubs with yellow rubber ducks on them. He had his legs kicked up on the reception desk and was tossing a ball straight into the air.
Oikawa walked towards the skinny man and cleared his throat.
“How can I help you?” the man said in a picture-perfect customer service voice without looking at Oikawa or Ushijima.
“Hello, Nurse Hanamaki,” Ushijima said.
Hanamaki’s ball went flying across the room. It hit something metallic with a long-lasting ring that only made the situation ten times worse and ten times funnier. Hanamaki hastily tugged his feet off the desk and turned his chair to look at them with the wide, fake smile of someone that just got caught doing something they shouldn’t be.
“Dr. Ushijima,” Hanamaki said. His eyes flicked over to Oikawa, then down to his bloody hand. “Oh, that’s not good, is it?”
Just as Hanamaki stood to come around the desk, the door to the Infirmary opened and a peculiar looking man came in. Oikawa figured his top was supposed to be a white chef’s coat, but it was spattered with blood that matched the color of his hair. He had cheekbones sharper than a razor blade and a wild look to his eyes. Oikawa thought if a weapon had come to life, it would look like that man.
“Just who I wanted to see!” the man shouted happily. “Miracle Worker Wakatoshi!”
“Hello, Tendou,” Ushijima said.
Hanamaki sighed and asked, “What’d you do this time?”
“I was trying to show the new guys in the kitchen that the knives weren’t sharp enough. They weren’t sharp enough, but they still managed to slice through my finger.”
Tendou held up his hand to show where a single finger was missing.
“Did you bring the finger?” Hanamaki asked, like this was a totally normal occurrence with this man. For some reason, Oikawa was not surprised. Tendou gave off the same energy as a tornado during a fire storm.
Tendou nodded, then said, “Hey, Wakatoshi, who’s he?” while looking at Oikawa like he was the strangest person in the room.
“Ah, excuse my manners,” Ushijima said, monotone and unapologetic. “This is Dr. Oikawa Tooru.”
“Oh, cool. Hey, Doc, catch this for me.”
Tendou lobbed his finger across the room. Ushijima said, “He is not a medical doctor, Tendou,” and Oikawa caught the finger with ease.
Of all the Alliance military academies, Apollo Academy was the softest. The other academies called it the Geek Generator. Rather than hardened soldiers, it produced doctors, and researchers, and all other kinds of intellectuals. They taught them how to use guns, and to be soldiers, but everyone knew people graduating from Apollo Academy would only be on the front lines to clean up the mess everyone else left behind and to collect samples to research in the safety of a lab.
So, despite his brief experience in a military academy, when Oikawa caught the detached finger, he promptly passed out.
“Wait, what kind of doctor is he, then?” Tendou asked. “Who did I just throw my finger to!”
Oikawa woke to the sound of an overhead light buzzing and scratchy hospital sheets against the exposed skin on the back of his neck. Sitting on a stool next to the bed was Ushijima, who was reading a magazine with a look of intense concentration. Oikawa wondered if he still read the advertisements the way he used to at Apollo Academy.
“Why are you sitting there?” Oikawa asked. “Did I wake up as you were about to smother me with a pillow?”
“Why would I smother you?”
Ushijima carefully set the magazine on the bedside table and stood. He reached out for Oikawa’s hand, but Oikawa yanked his arm away. He looked down at his palm and saw near invisible stitches where his palm had been sliced open. His palm did not hurt, which would not surprise a normal person, but did surprise Oikawa, who lived with pain.
In the blink of an eye, Oikawa shot out of bed, wrapped his fists into Ushijima’s white lab coat, and shoved him up against the wall. He used less force than he did back when they were the academy together. He wasn’t capable of the same raw strength he had then, his carefully crafted muscles worn over the years. Ushijima was still solid and unmoving, and he still did not fight back. He never fought back unless they were fighting in a graded exercise. His lack of response always made Oikawa’s fury worse.
“What did you give me?” Oikawa said, his voice growing in volume with each word until he was shouting. “Ushiwaka, what did you give me?”
The door to the room flew open. Nurse Hanamaki came in, yanking on Oikawa’s shirt to dislodge the two, but Oikawa did not release his hold on Ushijima. The two of them tumbled back together, Oikawa’s legs knocking painfully into the bed. He fell back onto those scratchy sheets and dragged Ushijima with him. He turned them, pinning Ushijima beneath him and straddling him across the waist, his hands white and shaking where they were balled into his coat.
“Do not call security,” Ushijima said, looking at Hanamaki, not an ounce of worry in his tone.
“But Dr. Ushijima, he’s—”
“I did not give you any pain medication, Oikawa,” Ushijima said. He turned back to look at Oikawa, whose fists eased but did not release completely.
“Not even ibuprofen?” Oikawa asked.
“No.”
“You swear?”
“I would not lie to you about this, Oikawa.”
Oikawa breathed. It did little to help. He released his grip and slowly stood. He could not look at Ushijima. He did not want to know what kind of expression he had. He did not know which would hurt more, an expression with emotion or an expression without it.
Ushijima rose to his feet, did not look at Oikawa, and said, “My shift begins in twenty minutes. Nurse Hanamaki, please check that he has not torn his stiches.”
Then, he left.
“C’mon, doc’s orders,” Hanamaki said, gesturing towards the bed. Feeling very stupid, but refusing to let it show, Oikawa sat on the bed and let Hanamaki look over his hand. Hanamaki asked, “How long have you been sober?” with such bland indifference that Oikawa was startled.
“Did he tell you?” Oikawa asked.
“No,” Hanamaki said. “Just figured from that conversation.”
Oikaw said, “I’ve been sober for three thousand twenty-nine days.”
“And for someone that isn’t a human calculator?”
“A little over eight years.”
“Well, damn. Congrats.”
“Would have been higher if I didn’t relapse a few months after I got out of rehab for the first time.”
“I’m not an expert here, but I don’t think recovery is a competition," Hanamaki said. "Do you mind me asking what it was?”
“Pills,” Oikawa said, “and sometimes other hard drugs that were more fun, but mostly pills. I went to Apollo Academy with Ushiwaka and there was this training exercise… It was for the pain at first. Then, it wasn’t for the pain.”
Hanamaki didn’t ask anything else and Oikawa didn’t say any more.
“Well,” Hanamaki said, “your stitches still look okay. If you have any issues, let me know. Do you want a numbing cream for the pain? That’s what we gave you so it wouldn’t hurt, by the way.”
“I think I’ll be fine.”
“Okay, just come back if it starts to hurt too bad, yeah? Or if it feels hot to the touch or looks inflamed. And if you need it, there are pamphlets on the station’s anonymous meetings on the nurse’s station near the exit. I think we just have a general substance abuse meeting, but maybe that’s changed? Akira will know.”
He knew Hanamaki was just doing his job, but Oikawa already felt his iron-clad walls creeping up as he made his way out of Infirmary as quickly as he could. He did not keep his recovery a secret, especially when it mattered, but it was not something he was eager to talk about. He was not ashamed of his recovery; he was ashamed of the person he was before he reached this point.
The moment he left the Infirmary, he was completely and utterly lost.
“Would you like assistance reaching your quarters, Dr. Oikawa?” a synthetic male voice asked.
Oikawa startled. The voice certainly didn’t sound like it came from something that was alive. He looked around, not seeing any robots, then spotted a small glowing kiosk. He approached the kiosk, which read AKIRA beneath the screen in clean bold letters.
“Are you the station’s interface?” Oikawa asked.
“I am the artificial intelligence system programmed into the ship. You can call me Akira. Do you need help or not?”
“Touchy, aren’t you?”
“Artificial intelligence means personality,” Akira said dully. “My programmers must have been grouchy.”
“Could you show me a map to where I need to go? I need to find my room.”
“The Residence Sector is here.” A map showed up on the screen, a red line moving through the layers to show him where he needed to go. “You can access my systems at any kiosk at any time, if you get lost again. You seem to get lost a lot.”
“Have you been watching me?”
“I watch everyone. It’s my job.”
Maybe a few hundred years ago, that would have been unsettling, but even Oikawa’s home growing up had an advanced state of the art interface system. The interface lacked personality and independent thought, but it was always there, ready to respond with the time of day or the weather.
He had never met a real AI, though. They were fully sentient, their choices independent of statistics, with fully-fledged thoughts and feelings. The Alliance developed the first AI over twenty years ago and since then, only a dozen had been created. Asteria 5 was the gem of the Alliance, the largest intergalactic travel hub, and the only non-warship outfitted with an AI.
“Thank you for the help, Akira.”
“It’s why I was built.” When Akira paused, it was accompanied by the soft scratch of static. Then Akira said, “Welcome to Asteria 5. Try not to get lost again.”