Chapter Text
"Any news on the ten years anniversary tournament?"
"I hear Haruto Tenjo is head of the planning team. I hope they bring back the finalists from the first one."
"Me too! I'd love to see Yuma again."
Vector scoffs at the naivete of a conversation he isn’t a part of in the slightest. He keeps his gaze low, eyes unfocused on the cellphone screen in front of his face to not raise suspicion as he eavesdrops. He’d love to pretend he’s simply listening to music like the headphones suggest but they’re turned off. He’s come far too close to succeeding now. He can’t miss a single detail no matter how far-fetched his methods of gathering information are.
“I hope Shark comes back too. It seems like he just-... left?”
“I don’t think his sister even knows where he is.”
“I wonder if they filed a missing person’s report.”
‘They didn’t,’ Vector thinks. There was no point. He’d make it known if he wanted to be found even if he didn’t want to be found alive. That excludes the possibility that he’d been killed. Even then, that man isn’t stupid. He’d find a way to make it known.
“I hope he realizes how much people loved him. He was the reason my brother started dueling, you know. He almost made it to the finals of the World Duel Carnival last year.”
“I just hope he’s safe… Wherever he is.”
Safety is relative when it comes to Shark. Vector knows this, they all do. They witnessed the breakdown he had for months before any of them worked up the courage to approach him about it.
“Yeah… Me too. It seemed like he totally changed his personality before he left.”
“I know. It was insane to see. There was an article that even said he was bipolar.”
Bipolar? No.
That man had a meltdown encompassing at least three lives of grief and bereavement slammed into one person. Describing it as ‘massive’ would never do justice.
Vector remembers Emperor Nasch, his first life in a Kingdom completely surrounded by water. The palace was beautiful with its numerous, rather large windows. Each one of them had some sort of view of the sea no matter where or how you looked through them.
This version of him, Vector called his friend until he didn't.
He remembers watching through Don Thousand's eyes as the flame of Nasch’s first life was dampened until it fizzled out with the ocean when he jumped in. The news of the young Emperor’s suicide spread quickly across the world. It was expected but that didn’t make it scathe any less.
The world’s eyes fell on Vector, the direct cause.
He can only guess how relieved the world was when he died not too long after.
It was a botched suicide attempt that did him in. It took far too long and left him bleeding out on the floor of the throne room in agony in his own palace with a sword in his abdomen, alone and scared. He never saw a light at the end of the tunnel.
It was just black as tar and cold as hell.
"Didn’t he give up dueling altogether?"
"I think so. But it's been years. He has to say something!"
He won't. Vector knows this.
"He doesn't go on social media either. Like at all. His last post is from three years ago, see?"
“Damn…”
King of the Barians. Life number two. It came and went after nearly a millennia. No memories of his former life, nothing of his past. It was that way for all seven of them. They were made to believe they had always been that way, that there was no life before their false god. He hated Nasch then.
Every mention of the man made his blood boil.
Which is saying something considering that they didn't really have blood as Barians. It was more akin to cold oil, thick and viscous as it flowed from an open wound. It stained fabrics like a bitch too.
Vector killed him then too, played it off like it never happened and that Nasch and Merag simply went missing at the same time. No one suspected a thing. He was Don Thousand's favorite pet rock-... literally and figuratively.
"I know Yuma is coming back if they ask him. There's no way he'd miss an opportunity like that!"
"He has to! He made it to the finals before the cameras cut. Do you think they're going to bring back whatever that sphere field was?"
"I hope so. That was insane!"
Ryouga. Number three. He lived through a child’s eyes for years in blissful ignorance after a car wreck or something. It's unclear. Nasch and Merag never talked about it all that much. All Vector knows about it is that the kids would have died had Vector not thrown Nasch and Merag out of Barian at the right time. Could have been the wrong time too. That’s also unclear.
Vector takes his cup of coffee and stands to leave. He’s heard enough. As he walks back to his car, he turns the music in his headphones on.
After Don Thousand was finally killed, for years after, there was an odd Nasch/Ryoga hybrid, an existential crisis where he wasn't sure which one he was. Somewhere in this fucking mess, he quit dueling and dropped off the map. He bounced from hobby to hobby, from job to job, from lover to lover. They attempted an intervention of some sort but it didn't work.
Three days after that disaster of an intervention, Merag went to drag him out of bed and he wasn't there. The windows were wide open in his bedroom and the curtains fluttered in the bitter autumn breeze.
It was then, as he picked Merag up off the floor, Vector realized that it was autumn then; when he ruined Nasch's first shot at life.
When Merag called the police three days later to see if they’d found anything, they told her to get someone to sit down with her or catch her if she fell. It just so happened that Vector and Allit were in the next room over. They sat next to her on the sofa quietly as the police told her they’d found his cellphone, wallet, and bike ditched on the side of the road. Someone anonymously called it in.
Vector drove her to the police station twenty minutes later. She never cried. She knew this was coming. They all did.
They're all guilty of letting this happen.
A month later Vector woke himself out of a deep sleep for no reason whatsoever and found himself packing a bag at 3 in the goddamn morning. He walked out of the back door before the sun rose, giving no notice beforehand.
At least he left a note on the kitchen counter to say goodbye.
He started there, the exact spot on the side of the freeway where they found Nasch’s things. He parked his own car just three and a half hours outside of heartland; his hazard lights on, headlights off, and keys in his pocket.
He stuck another note on his dashboard.
'Gone to get gas.'
That was a bold lie. He knew somewhere in the back of his mind it wouldn't work but it was worth a shot, worth a chance like this stupid venture.
If they hadn't found a body, there was still hope. He found it just like Nasch did centuries ago and he clung to it, used it as his lifeline. He found himself humming a hymn from his own first life as he searched the hiking trails in the nearby woods for some sign. Any deity would do.
He found a fork in the road, one trail leading left directly up a hill. The other stayed generally flat but was clearly, largely untraveled. He headed left first up the hill until it took the breath from his lungs and he was forced to stop for a minute. The bitter wind chilled him to his bones. It reminded him of something. He just wasn't sure what. He kept walking nonetheless.
In the years that Vector had been resurrected into his original body via numeron code magic or whatever, he had become accustomed to random segments of deja vu. It came and went quickly.
“Hey, Vec.”
“Yeah?”
“You ever heard of the word ‘hiraeth’?”
“Bless you.”
“It’s a word for an earnest desire or a sense of regret-...”
“What made you think of that?”
“The feeling of longing for a home that no longer exists.”
“I’m too high for this, Alit.”
The trail flattened off into a plateau and ended at a clearing in the woods. It was beautiful and in the bitter quiet of the night, Vector found himself wanting to linger. When he turned around to walk back the way he came, he debated walking the other path and whether or not it would be worth it to battle dead grass and briars.
As much as he told himself that it wasn’t worth it, he walked the path regardless.
He walked in silence and listened to the wind whip through the trees overhead. He found himself stopping abruptly at a sudden drop-off. Vector gained a steady footing and peered over the ledge. No one could survive a fall like that. Vector understood why no one walked the path before him. The trail simply ends with the dropoff and if someone wasn't paying attention, well. That would be the last time they ever went on a hike. As he left the woods that night a thought popped in his mind like someone flicked a switch.
"If you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be, Nasch?"
"As far away from Heartland as I possibly can. I like it up north where you get those thick, wooded areas where cliffs drop off into the ocean."
Of fucking course he did. It mimicked the place that the palace was built in his kingdom.
Vector turned the key and pressed the button to turn off his hazards. He pulled the note from off his dash, surprised it might have worked. He plugged the address for a random town in the general area he knew Nasch was talking about and set a course for a seven-hour drive.
He did so in silence.
Vector drove until he couldn't see straight. It was roughly twelve hours since he'd left Heartland. He found a bed and breakfast run by a sweet couple in a small town on his route. They gave him the room half off that afternoon. He must have looked positively wrecked.
As soon as his head hit the pillow, he was out like a light.
The next day he traveled seven hours farther north and stopped at an even smaller town than the day before, his destination. He was roughly fourteen or so hours outside of heartland at that point. There was no turning back now.
A year later, Vector felt closer than he’d ever been. He stopped at a cafe one morning about a month prior and heard someone talking about a guy that looked like Shark that just started renting a house outside of town. Of course, he needed more information before he knocked on the door but he found himself lingering in the sleepy little town. He got a job at a little shop on the corner selling trinkets to dumb tourists and hikers and signed a twelve-month lease on a studio apartment. It wasn't much but it was enough.
Vector lingered for other reasons too, of course. The wooded areas and quiet cafes had an old-timey charm to them. This place felt like it was untouched by most modern advances and stuck in the mid 20th century, far removed from the noise of Heartland. Vector didn't think places like this existed.
It was a hidden gem in the modern age, more comforting, more homey. So homey, in fact, that the last time he called Merag, he spoke about the possibility of signing a more permanent lease, adopting a pet from the small shelter in town. He assured her that he hadn't given up on finding Nasch but made it known that here felt like home. He still assured her that when he found her brother, he'd drag him home kicking and screaming. But the possibility that Vector could move here, fourteen or so hours away from Heartland, in a quiet town full of hipsters in their 30s and old people, was made clear.
If Merag had an issue, she never made it known.
Vector presses his foot on the brake and hits the start engine button on his car. He turns on the radio but promptly turns it off when he hears an advertisement for the tenth anniversary World Duel Carnival. He drives back to his small apartment in silence.
It's not like he would be the first of the Barians to move away from the Kamishiro mansion. Durbe was first. He received a full scholarship to a university halfway across the country. He'd be dumb not to take that offer. He graduated a few months back with a 4.0 GPA and a bachelor's degree in European History. Merag flew out for his graduation and stayed for two months with him. They came back together before Durbe took a job teaching in a different city last month.
Alit was next. He ended up stashing money away from odd security jobs and moving in with Kotori in an apartment by the university she was attending- or still is. Vector never cared too much. He was 18 then and still finishing high school at the time. He envied the freedom Allit had after graduating early.
This left Mizael and Gilag still in the home with her. This was good. She has some sort of constant support system on hand.
Vector parks in his spot outside of the small corner store that he lived above and sat for a few moments in silence. It had been nearly ten years since he tried to bring about an end to the world via supernatural means and the residual guilt from that weighs heavy and thick around him like a fog. He has to find Nasch whatever the cost.
His alarm blares the next morning and Vector finds himself groggy from a migraine after not getting enough sleep. He walks to work slowly and with a coffee clutched close to his chest. It’s cold, the weather finally broke, and left the warm days of summer behind like a distant memory.
Vector particularly enjoyed autumn here in the middle-of-nowhere ville. The town sat in between mountains, down in the lowest point of the valley. When the leaves changed color they left streaks of red and yellows absolutely everywhere. The smell of the crunchy leaves was almost divine.
However, something feels different about this morning. He couldn’t explain it, but something felt-...
Odd.
He shakes it off and chalks it up to the changing of the weather.As he was nears his little trinket shop he debates on whether or not to stop at the cafe on the way to grab a bagel or something for breakfast. He checks his bank account and notices that he hadsthe funds even with rent coming out this week, so he does. He opens the door and glances around at the people seated inside before he takes his place in line at the counter.
“Morning Vector! What’ll it be today?”
The barista here in her ever-cheerful personality knows him well. He stopps by here nearly every morning after all. He suspects she has a crush on him but he wasn’t too sure. Once he finds Nasch, he'll consider the possibility of taking her on a date or two just for the hell of it. Why not?
“I’m thinking bacon, egg, and cheese today, Mercy.”
“Always a classic,” she says.
“Always good too,” he replies. “That and the pork roll and cheese.”
She takes his order and passes it through a small window leading to the kitchen.
“Getting cold out there,” she remarks as she pulls her sweater closed across her chest.
“Thank god,” Vector chuckles. “It's stupid humid here in the summer.”
A bell rings behind her and she places a couple of extra napkins in the bag as she usually does. Vector just stashes them in the back room at work at this point.
“Gotta admit, it is really pretty though.”
Vector agrees and thanks her as he takes his paper bag. He hands her his debit card and glances out the window as he waits for the young woman to hand the card back. When she does, she does so with a wink and mouths the words, ‘text me’ but it doesn’t register. When he turns to walk away as he puts the card in his wallet, he notices she gave him her cell phone number. When he turns back around to protest, he finds she isn’t there. He walks out of the cafe and toys with the idea of actually following through. A simple text never hurt anyone.
He opens the store, unlocks the register, and waits in a comfy desk chair behind the counter. When he hears the bell to the store ring about an hour later, he glances up. He drops his phone on the floor accidentally as he stands to greet the person who just walked in alone. He can’t see the door well from the desk with the register. Anywhere else this would be a bad layout but this community was so small that no one really had to worry about theft. There was rarely an unfamiliar face.
“Anything I can help you find?” Vector asks as he reaches down to pick up his phone.
“The girl at the cafe a few stores down told me you worked here,” the customer says quietly.
Vector doesn’t recognize the voice but as he stands and places his cellphone back on the counter, he catches a good look at the man who just walked in.
Vector looks at him for a few seconds in stunned silence. His hair is tied back in a messy, windblown bun.
Vector practically jumps over the counter and runs to him. Half rage, the rest pure adrenaline. He is within three feet of the man when his knees begin to shake. Despite all of the words he thought he would say to him when he found him, planned meticulously during long car rides and cold showers, Vector found himself drawing a blank.
“Her name-...” He freezes and reaches out to him. His trembling hand lands on his shoulder and holds on for dear life. “It- its Mercy.”
“What are you doing all the way out here?”
“I’ve been looking for you,” Vector replies.
Nasch steps forward when Vector expects him to run away and wraps his arms around him. It isn’t the best hug by any means but it's something. It's nice to feel the warmth of another living, breathing being after so long.
He doesn’t know how long he’s been standing there, fighting back tears and trembling, but he hears a sigh leave Nasch’s lips, feels the man’s shoulders relax and the cold tip of his nose as he stands on his tiptoes to pull himself closer in. Vector never thought he was a particularly warm-blooded person but Nasch is freezing despite being bundled for a blizzard in the middle of autumn.
When Vector pulls away, he grabs Nasch by the arm and sits him on the desk chair he practically kicked through the wall behind him when Nasch walked in. He, in turn, hoists himself up to sit on the wooden countertop. He swivels the space heater under the counter to face Nasch more directly too and he leans into it.
“Do you have my sister’s number?” He asks. “I tried calling her months ago but it keeps going to voicemail. The texts I sent got read but there wasn’t a reply to any of them.”
Vector doesn’t hesitate to pull his phone out of his pocket and hand it unlocked, with Merag’s contact information open to Nasch.
Nasch takes out his own phone in turn. It’s much nicer than the one he had a year and a half ago despite the cracked screen protector. Vector double-checks the contact’s number with the one he has. He notices the multitude of outgoing missed and or rejected calls in the history under the number. Nasch sighs as he realizes they have the same number and calls using his phone. He puts it on speaker.
- The number you are trying to reach is no longer in service. Please hang up or try a different number. Goodbye.-
He sighs again and it falls out broken in two. Vector furrows his brow and takes his phone back from Nasch. He then does the only logical thing he can think of. He calls Merag right then and there, puts it on speakerphone too.
She answers.
“Merag?” Vector asks.
“Yeah. What’s up? You never call me this early,” she replies, a slight chuckle in her voice.
“I found Nasch. He’s right here in front of me. He’s okay.”
Silence.
“Merag?”
His heart sinks into his stomach when he realizes she hung the phone up on him.
Vector glances down at Nasch with a confused look on his face. Nasch shifts uncomfortably in his chair, crosses his legs and leans forward. Neither of them know what to think, let alone what to do. Nasch goes to stand but Vector reaches out for the other man’s cell phone without a word which is placed willingly in his hand. Vector taps at the keypad on the screen and hands it back to him.
“It’s Durbe. He doesn’t live in Heartland anymore but-”
Nasch hits the green call button at the bottom of the screen and presses the phone to his ear. Vector notices as Nasch’s hands start to tremble, pinpoints the moment his anxiety spikes, and takes note of the tears that well up at the corner of Nasch’s eyes that he blinks rapidly in an attempt to will them away. Vector feels it too, that feeling of unfamiliar territory. Nasch said he tried to get in contact with his sister. He showed him proof that he did. He tried and was shot down. In a matter of seconds, Vector somewhat understands Nasch’s decision to drop off the map.
After what feels like an eternity, Durbe picks up the phone.
“It’s Nasch,” his voice cracks. “I’m okay.”
Nasch puts his phone on speaker and places it on the counter in front of him. He rubs at his eyes and swallows down cries.
Vector hears Durbe sigh in relief.
“Fuck, Nasch. I’m so happy to hear your voice.”
“I need you to try and get a hold of Merag for me. I’ve been trying to get a hold of her for months but she blocked my new number. Vector tried calling her and she hung up as soon as he mentioned me.”
“Vector found you?”
“Not on purpose but he’s here.”
“Can he hear me?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve got Merag. I’m gonna book a train ticket as soon as we hang up. She still live with Miza and them?”
“To my knowledge,” Vector chimes in.
“Cool. And Nasch?”
“Yeah?”
“Stay safe. Save my contact. I’m here if you need me.”
“Okay.”
After Durbe hangs up the phone, the two sit in silence. There are so many things both need to say but now is not the time. Vector hands Nasch an unopened bottle of water and slides the box of tissues towards him. Nasch ignores the tissues but grabs the water readily. It takes a few more moments for Nasch to regain himself. They exchange numbers and set a date to grab a cup of coffee and some breakfast at a diner across town. As Nasch walks out of the door to the shop, Vector silently prays to gods that have been long ignored that Nasch holds true to his promise.
The rest of the day drags on slowly. In the middle of the night he is added to a group text message created by Alit.
“Baddest Barian Bitches,” Vector reads out loud. He laughs too.
Then he notices all seven accounted for. Nasch’s new number at the top of the list. He waits for someone else to send a message first and falls asleep as he does but he wakes up to roughly fifty unread messages in the morning. He scrolls through them quickly but pauses on the photos Nasch sent.
He finds one of Nasch holding an obscenely large cat that looks to be about half his size. He looks like he just rolled out of bed with his hair tied back in a messy ponytail. He’s grinning ear to ear though.
‘Foofie came with the house. The daughter of the former owner thought she was lost for good but two weeks after I moved in, she ran up to me when I was getting the mail. She’s a brat but I love her.’
Vector saves the photo.
“Cute,” he says to no one.