Work Text:
Everything stills for a brief moment - the air shakes around him. He can see everything at once, the destruction of the Overlords to everything that transpired within the bounds of Zawame City. All the mayhem and the joy. It doesn't register to him; there are memories, experiences of things he went through but all he knows is peace now, and the understanding that there can be no more time spent here. He turns to go when a voice calls to him, a girl that looks like Mai beside him. He knows it's not her though - the body lies on a metal table, while Kaito is nothing more than golden wisps in the air. Where there should be grief, there isn’t anything in him but an eerie calmness.
Begin again , the voice whispers to him and he almost does. He doesn't feel the same grief he felt moments ago that had torn through him like a knife, and he doesn't understand why his feet are rooted into this spot as opposed to walking into another world. He takes not-Mai's hand within his and he almost goes until another voice cuts through the air directly into his hear.
Make a miracle , she says. He lets go of not-Mai's hand and undoes the past.
She doesn't dance like she used to. It feels odd to - her legs don't move the same way anymore, the way her body felt like a hummingbird, ready to take flight, to dance, to make something of the emotions that spilled out of her. Now, she feels like a marionette that's been cut off, all of her hurts too much - her legs, once strong and graceful, seem to have one thing in mind: running from danger as if to make up for the fact that once she was too slow, too dumb to put together that she was lead as a lamb to the slaughter. She can still feel the knife run down her body, the sharpness cutting into skin that was painful until it wasn't. It wakes her up in the mornings, a gasp wrenching out of her. She looks down as she changes shirts and doesn't see a scar that runs down grotesquely, except for a faint white line that lies right in the middle of her sternum.
It feels odd to stare at it, a reminder of something that did and did not happen to her. She knows the feeling of darkness, how it crept up from the corners of her eyes to overtake her; she knows when her eyes looked up to meet Micchy’s, had seen Ryoma when he came to her for the fruit. It sends a shiver down her spine, to realize that they had waited all along just to put the fruit inside and cut her open for it. She shies past the cut up persimmons, her own breath quickening even as she sees the note that her mother left her just before she went to work. She chooses to go into the back with a shovel, make a hole, and throw the persimmons in.
She walks in the park. Even though she feels the energy through her legs, the desire to move is one that makes her break out into a spring than a dance, but she still goes directly to her friends. The Beat Riders beam when she arrives and don't pay any attention to the fact that she isn't joining them up on the stage but it's fine - they're learning to dance in ways that interest them and want to show her. The Baron team appears too, with Zack at her elbow when she doesn't move up ahead. He stares at her like he wants to ask a question, but is pulled onto stage by Rica and Rat. The rest of the Beat Riders don't mind that she doesn't dance, but she knows their stares. She waves a hand as she turns to leave, breaking into a dead sprint.
A piercing pain through Kaito's back is all that haunts him of a day that doesn't exist. His breath quickens, and he slaps his hand against the wall before he goes to the Baron building. It's still in the same place it was left, Azami a savior to set it up for their team before she left. The rest of Team Baron is somewhere with Mai and Kouta's team. They don’t spend time at this building as much as they used too, the town square their preferred space. It’s better for him - he doesn’t like to answer too many questions when there are phantom pains that catch him unaware. He can sense when Zack is too close to understanding the situation before he cuts in with a question about Azami. He does care about the old leader, but not as frequently as it seems whenever he asks him - if Zack is aware of it, neither of them say anything about it.
One time he thinks he caught the other guy wiping tears; bad memories , he laughed it off, clapping him on the shoulders. Kaito feels both incredibly older than he feels and more tired than he should be when he nods and watches Zack disappear. He feels odd to go follow them, a silent shadow, even if it is too check on Mai. A part of him knows she’s okay, Zack mentions her every day as the two of them work on dances apparently.
“ Well, she doesn’t,” he says and Kaito holds the bottle to his lips as he cocks his head. “She doesn’t dance with us. She’ll give us notes but she isn’t on there like she used to. Honestly, it kind of sucks, she’s a far better teacher than I am.”
“You’re a perfectly good teacher,” he’ll reply back and Zack beams at him. Kaito doesn’t know, but he feels a sense of satisfaction at putting the smile on his face. But he also notes how Zack’s eyes constantly stay with him when he walks around their old members, the feeling of being watched not unwanted to him now.
Kouta almost falls twice because he forgot to eat food. Once is at work, where Bando looks at him oddly and makes him a parfait. The oranges are sour against his tongue, too much acid that he pushes them around as opposed to eating. It feels odd, remembering when the Lockseeds had taken the place of food and even Mai had stared in concern at the belt. He had waved it off then but he realizes now, there was a lot of power entrusted to kids who didn’t know better.
The second time he forgets to eat is with Akira, when he is in the middle of moving from their small apartment to a bigger one. His sister mentions Takatora’s name in passing, a way of telling him that she was promoted and he grins widely at her and at Takatora’s kindness. It’s probably guilt , a voice that sounds like his own pipes up in the back of his head that he ignores. A promotion is a promotion, and anything that lets Akira do more things that she wants to do, like painting in a larger space, is good. She’s worked too hard for him all his life, he sometimes wishes he’d kept the money from the Inves games to help the moving costs.
He falls over, fatigue and vertigo fighting over control of his senses. He can barely hear a yelp from Akira before he realizes that she had dived over a box and caught him before he fell, laying across her lap. He’d always been protected by Akira, he thinks deliriously. He almost could have protected her if he hadn’t taken the Lockseeds so carelessly.
“What’s wrong?” She cries out before she bodily drags him, half of him over her shoulders and half of him being pulled as his feet move through the floor.
The emergency room she takes him too says that he is dehydrated and malnutrition, and she blinks at him twice before she gets her mom face on. It’s almost funny before he realizes she’s got tears at the corners of her eyes.
“Why haven’t you been eating?”
“I forgot,” he says weakly, wrapping a hand around her wrist while the IV drips the vitamins he needs to him. She inhales sharply, wrapping her own hand around his.
“I will throw you into the ocean if you do this again. I’ll get you some chicken when we get home.” He doesn’t know how to tell her that food tastes like rubber to him, foreign and plasticky in his mouth, but he knows his sister’s distress is worse as she kisses the top of his head and takes a seat besides him.
It’s been 72 days since she last danced. Not even Zack’s attempts can get her to move though she wants to; he’ll call Azami when they schedule their odd video call, with a lot of blushing that the others wolf whistle or cheer when he does. She smiles, remembers Kouta and Kaito and how they have all kept a careful distance away from each other since the day the soldiers left Zawame, and the smile fades from her. She sees Kouta when they stop by Drupers, but he’ll look like he’s in a different world, his smile a lot less brighter. She wants to hold him and keep him close, to rake her nails through his hair and hold him tight in the city square but she can’t seem to find the courage. Kouta positions the box of fruit in between them and she feels hurt, oddly enough.
He’ll still beam at her, and touch her arm and they’ll exchange a few words like:
How are you?
It’s never been better than today. The sky may be gray but it’s still warm. What about you, how are you?
I’ve started running now.
That’s good. Sorry I haven’t called you more, I’ve been working all kinds of jobs as a courier around the city.
That’s okay, we should still hang out when we can.
And that is that where they look at each other with a gaze that knows there’s things they should talk about. Kouta looks at her with a fierce gentleness that she wants to wrap her arms around him, but he’ll turn so fast, and she’s left with phantom feelings of distress, and she’ll think it was in her head. They just carry what they don’t say inside.
When he is removing his jacket, he’ll catch a glimpse of blood staining the front rapidly, his eyes moving quickly between his hand and the shirt to see absolutely nothing.He wonders about his death and the earth taking him, the dirt filling in his senses. He inhales sharply, looks around before he realizes it’s not actually happening.
He feels like a ghost as he wanders around the city and really looks at the places. It’s so different to see Zawame from what it used to be, a small village with a priestess who danced, to a rapidly expanding city as construction took over the expanses of green and replaced them with steel buildings, molding the village around it. When Zawame was quiet and under siege and there was no one except the dance teams and various motherfuckers from Yggdrassil, it was surreal to see it without the people. Now with the people moving back in, the city seems to come alive once more.
Kazuraba is around the city - it’s hard to not be aware of the man who still shines long after he’s given up the lockseed power, his presence a kind of homing beacon. As someone who knows how to put distance between himself and others, Kazuraba looks a lot like he used to the one time he almost walks in on Mai and him having a conversation. It looks strained though; Mai’s once exuberant energy dimmed down, Kazuraba’s good nature finally catching up to him to dim the light in his eyes.
He wants to walk towards them but he can’t - finds himself rooted in place while the after image of blood stains his memory. He walks away and goes towards the beach, to get away from the trees around the sitting. It causes more claustrophobia than anything anymore; he used to be able to spend hours in solitude, practicing under the green canopy of the trees. The crash of the sea against the shore calms him instead, the sound of various people reminding him that they are no longer under lockdown. Now, it takes everything to not look at the trees and will himself into understanding there are no more Inves and they will not attack him.
Still, the muscle memory remains, so he ends up at the beach more often than not.
Her legs - they burn with energy - but it’s not the same kind of energy she used when she danced. Her dad had called her a little hummingbird when she was younger, that she moved between her steps so quickly. He laughed and called after her to be careful, and she had nearly sprained an ankle at the tender of age of 9. It was agony to her then, and she remembers the same agony of being cut open and the golden fruit inside of her, the vines taking root inside of her. The pain seizes her throat and she can barely scrabble at it with her hands, the feeling as if something lodged its way in there. She tries to gag, but it burns instead, while she clutches at her sides in the middle of her run, scaring a nearby couple into coming closer. Her throat closes in and it gets harder to breathe. The woman stands beside her as she holds one of her arms as the other woman calls for an ambulance.
“I’m a nurse, tell me what’s wrong,” she says, firmly.
“I can’t breathe,” she hiccups out, the air passing through her lungs painfully. She holds her wrist firmly and she knows her heart rate is jackhammering wildly. How much of a messed up way it would be if she died now because she remembers a past death she wonders
“I need you to look at me and take in a huge breath,” the nurse says to her. Mai gives her a confused face as her hand holds closer to her neck.
“You’re going through a panic attack,” she says gently and Mai nods. She inhales, the process painful for her, and the woman says for her to release it. She stays with her as she walks her through more inhales and exhales until the vines inside of her let go and her throat unclogs again. Unshed tears sting at the corners of her eyes as the woman stays with her until the ambulance comes by. It doesn’t matter though because when her throat opens, she takes the water bottle she runs with and downs half of it. She thanks the women and she runs as fast as she can, the shame of being caught by a panic attack over something so silly burning through her.
Her legs want her to run as fast as she can and so she does, banishing the phantom spectres of Inves at the corner of her eyes and runs further from the trees around the park and towards the beach
While he is left alone with his thoughts, he remembers Kouta holding him in his arms, a tranquility settling over him (and that's something he's not going to look at too closely). He remembers the rage when Kureshima revealed what he'd done to Mai. And something suspiciously close to grief enters his heart at random points, he’ll tear out of whatever place he is at and take to the streets, right to the square where the Gaim team practices. His eyes search for the twin pigtails but finds nothing, more panic shooting up through him. It'd be a particularly fucked up trick of fate if he came back and Mai didn't, that someone like him got a second chance. But then he sees someone stand, a curtain of black being pushed slightly, and makes direct eye contact that he knows it can't be anyone but Mai. He also knows that he looks a fool for coming here quickly but Mai holds her hand up and instead of turning away like he would,, he stays as she comes forward.
"Hi," she says, moving to stand beside him. He wants to reach out to her, to see if she's real, but he worries if he touches her, it'll reinforce his belief it's actually all in his head, that this is one extended trip to hell. His overthinking is averted by the fact that she touches him first, a hand touching the back of his.
"Mai," he says, unsure of what to say - what there even is to say.
"Do you want to go somewhere else?" He lets out a breath and nods, following as he follows her. Mai looks the same as she does - or does she? Her hair isn't pulled back in those pigtails he always wondered what would happen if he tugged on them once. The smile she gives him doesn't quite reach her eyes, and it looks sadder almost. He follows her as a silent shadow while Mai turns to him almost as if he would disappear. He wants to press on her - to tell her to spit out whatever is on her mind so she can snap at him in her kind way, where she'll chide him about his behavior - but he can't bring the bite, or even the intention to speak, into the words. It feels wrong, as if dying had taken up all the anger inside of him that kept him going and replaced it within a void.
Mai wants him to be his irritable self with her, to call her silly, or a dreamer, so she can verify that it's one very odd dream and that she just dreamt of the version of her that had blonde hair and wore white was just one really long lucid dream.
"I feel....odd," she says when she takes them a distance away. It's not the same tree from their childhood. He sucks in a breath. "Like I died somewhere and now I'm alive, but that can't be because people don't come from the dead. Isn't that weird? We saw some weird creatures from the other world but you can't bring someone back from the dead - that's pushing it." She's rambling, and they're both aware of it. They also both know that whatever happened, did happen because they saw the madness that went down in Zawame that multiple saw. They don't talk about it as much now, and for good reason. They were seconds away from being destroyed. She leans back against the tree, hitting her palm against the bark. "Can you get a shared hallucination? I feel like that's what happened because no one else thinks it's weird that I'm around."
He lets out a breath. "Shared hallucinations aren’t a thing, but I also died."
"Oh no," Mai looks at him, a sadness overtaking her eyes. "No, that wasn't supposed to happen." He looks at her and she stares back at him, and the horrible weight of their deaths hangs between them. She pulls him in towards her and he goes easily, their foreheads touching as his hands wrap around her waist. He didn’t see her die; he had Kouta with him at the end, but she was alone and they cut her open. His hands tighten around her waist, pressing her into him. He doesn't want to lie to her, but Mai's smarter than he gave her credit for.
"Was it Kouta?" she asks and he doesn't know why he'd ask her, she's the one that knew everything from the future.
"Knowing Kazuraba, probably," he scoffs. She pulls back to stares at him admonishingly and he only has half the good sense to straighten his back. It's not like he doesn't hate him for bringing him back, but he does mind that Kazuraba doesn't even bother looking for them. It’s like they went through that whole ordeal for nothing. She holds onto him as they walk out of the forest and towards the beach.
Mai says she runs, and he looks at her oddly. She stares back at him with an unimpressed look as if to say ‘ I know all the darkest parts of you and you don’t intimidate me anymore .’ He’s a little bit proud, but he banishes the thought away. Mai’s always been one of the strongest people he’s known. He and Mai are inseparable, but quiet. He puts his arm in the hand rest between them, pressing up as much as she’ll allow while Mai keeps her hand on his wrist, two hands wrapped around where the heartbeat. He does the same when he realizes she’s still getting used to … existing. They’re at one of the dance practices again and he keeps meaning to ask why she isn’t up there on stage, where the hell Kazuraba even is because. He’d become accustomed to his presence that it feels like a piece is missing without the man’s eternal optimism. It feels a little bit like he’s being deprived of a warm summer day, which again, he doesn’t want to get into too deeply. Mai sitting beside him brings a sense of balance; the earth keeps spinning, their dance groups still dance, Mai exists on this earth therefore it’ll turn out okay.
“I run because I don’t want to be scared,” she says. To the stage she calls out, “You need to coordinate more. You’ve got good stage presence but your footwork is sloppy, try a four count.”
“Does it work?” He asks, his eyes never leaving the side of her face.
“Not even a little bit,” she replies back.
“So why do it?”
“Because it reminds me that I’m still alive,” she sits back into her chair. He tries to think of something that reminds him he’s alive and finds he comes up with these moments with Mai, where he isn’t pushing the Baron team to its limits and watches as they laugh with Mai’s team, jumping on each other like they won’t injure themselves doing that.
--
There’s a stray cat that stays by Drupers now. Kouta sees the bright white creature when he’s taking out trash; it looks well enough that he’s certain someone’s feeding the cat but it stares at him so pitifully, he can’t help but go back inside to find something edible to give to a cat. In the end, it turns out the only thing he can give is part of his lunch. Akira had made him a lot of dumplings and packed it with him, taking the hospital’s suggestion so serious, he had too much food with him at all times.
The cat meows at him pitifully, and he barely restrains the snort as he tosses one of his dumplings to the cat. Minimum wage jobs aren’t exactly the peak of existence, but there’s a sense of order to inspect fruits to make sure they aren’t rotting and to toss them into the compost area. The oranges bring a sense of dread now, an odd feeling. He hasn’t henshin’d in about two months, but the muscle memory sticks within, the hand that holds the knife strict and deadly in its movements. He’ll realize it when he’s about an inch away from chopping off his own finger that the pace he set was too fast, that he’ll put it down and move towards other areas of the kitchen. Drupers’ is a safe area to be in because the manual labor is mind numbing, it keeps his own mind from wandering to Kaito and Mai and seeing if they’re okay.
“Was I selfish?” He asks the cat; the creature licks its mouth and leans forward, butting his head with his own kneecap from his squat. He used to take a sense of pride in leaving things better than he found them in, but after everything that occurred, he’s not sure if his involvement actively worsens things. It’s one thing to decide the fate of the universe; it’s another to undo the lives of your closest friends due to the fact that you couldn’t let them go.
“You can’t answer me,” he rubs at its head. He should figure out how to break it to them and he only hopes that they can forgive him.
The cat watches as he stands, pulling in all his courage to face the two people he cares most about.
They decide to sit at Drupers; by they, it’s Mai, and Kaito’s trying this thing where he doesn’t immediately reply with a cutting remark. He’s softened in these past few weeks; she’s so used to seeing him keep the world and her at arm’s length that it’s different to see him without his jagged edges as armor. He’ll occasionally even lift the corner of his mouth when Rica has made a witting cut at Zack and her back is turned. It’s Kouta who seems to be avoiding them, that they need to draw him out.
Kouta looks at them - he smiles at both of them but there’s a quizzical look aimed at Kaito as he finishes up. Despite the fact that they had just averted a crisis, it seems that Druper’s has regained its clientele as if it never occurred, if not more because of Jonouchi coming in constantly to talk menus and complementary palettes.
“Do you think he’ll agree?” Mai turns to Kaito. He just shrugs.
“Hi,” Kouta says, and he stares at them intently, like his vision is tricking him. She can relate, the constant sense of feeling that these are just tricks they’ve done so they could adjust. It’s been a while since they really looked at each other; her and Kaito don’t make direct eye contact in favor of sitting side by side, their proximity alone enough of a confirmation. Neither of them was able to hold Kouta for long as he’d always go into the back of kitchen hurriedly, and he was constantly bringing in boxes of fruit in and out.She only feels slightly queasy when she sees grapes.
“Kazuraba,” Kaito turns his best stare at him. He feels Mai kick him under the table, her own foot jostling against his too. “So we’re all alive, what’s there to confirm?” He looks at Mai. Normally, the words would be angry, full of snark, but he genuinely seems to be asking what next.
“I just need to know why,” Mai says. “Why this second chance? Why did I come back if I was always meant to die, if Kouta was to be the winner? How - for Kaito, when he said he died?”
“I had a choice to make,” Kouta says, dropping into the seat across from them. There’s an honest look in his eyes as he holds their gazes when his head looks to be tilting down, as if he can’t see them. She leans across the table to hold his hand with hers. “And I thought about it, about making a new world with people who we could teach them to be good and that betrayal doesn’t have to exist. But it wouldn’t have been me there, and I wouldn’t have had you guys with me.” Kaito grips the edge of the table as he leans forward. She turns her head to look
“So why avoid us?” Kaito adds.
“Because I didn’t know how you’d feel about me making that choice to bring you back? I got us into this, and I had to get us out,” Kouta says, a quizzical look in his eye.
“You’re still probably the dumbest man I know,” Kaito exhales. “No one’s going to look a second chance away if it’s possible.”
“But you were -,” he starts as Kaito narrows his eyes. “I made my choice then and I’d do it again if it was the only option available, but it wasn’t. So thanks.” She nods, gripping Kouta’s hand closer as she leans up to take Kaito’s.
It’s been 100 days since she last danced. On the beach, with Kaito and Kouta staring into the fire pit while sitting with each other shoulder to shoulder, she feels the rhythm sweep through her body and she dances once more.