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It’s been a week since Kasane Platoon moved into the hideout. Despite the somewhat rocky start their merge got off on, there’s been mercifully little squabbling while the two groups acclimate themselves to sharing a safe house originally intended to fit a single family of four, and Luka is impressed with how readily everyone has settled into the environment. Impressed, but not especially surprised - he can’t know how Kasane’s comrades felt about their opposition, but he knows that his own companions, and especially Yuito, have wanted to return to being allies from the moment they became enemies. He feels fortunate to expect to be able to go forward with their infiltration of Togetsu with no issues amidst the group.
The thought calls to mind a faint twinge of worry, and as he passes into the recreation room, the corners of Luka’s mouth tug into a frown. No issues with teamwork, at least, he amends. He does hope that his concern is misplaced, but…
“Oh, Luka. Perfect timing. I had a question for you.”
Luka pauses under the archway with a nod of greeting as Shiden addresses him. “What can I help you with?”
Shiden gestures to the assortment of weight training equipment strewn around the recreation room and asks, “Most of this is your personal stuff, right?”
“Mine and Gemma’s, yes,” Luka confirms, “but you’re more than welcome to use whatever you like. I don’t see the sense in policing who uses what in common areas.”
There’s a look on Shiden’s face that suggests he might not be so readily magnanimous were it his own items in question, but he keeps any such thoughts to himself. “By the way,” he says instead, “about your vision simulator…”
Vision simulator? Luka almost questions, but he remembers before the words come to his voice: Hanabi had pointed it out to him while showing him around the hideout’s amenities when he first joined the platoon. “We have one installed,” he confirms with a nod. “We’ve never really used it much, but you can access it from the terminal in the systems room.”
“Oh, no, yeah, I know where it is,” Shiden replies. “I was just– Hang on, what do you mean you don’t use it much?”
Luka gives a slight shrug. “Simulation training does have many unique benefits, but my personal preference is to train my body physically through traditional exercise.”
“No, not you you. I mean…” Shiden pauses, grumbles, adjusts his glasses on the bridge of his nose. “I mean,” he starts again, “Yuito seems to be using the vision simulator, like, all the time, though?”
Oh, is that the problem? “I’m sure Yuito would welcome your company, Shiden,” Luka suggests. “Or, if you’re specifically interested in running solo simulations, I have no doubt he’d gladly step away if asked.”
But Shiden’s expression stays sour. “Yeah I know that. He’s just always got this… look on his face when he’s using it, or right before or after he uses it. Makes it hard to start a conversation.”
Luka’s eyebrows lift slightly, and he draws a new conclusion, “Oh, so you mean to say that you’re worried about him.”
Shiden sputters. “Wh–? Y–! Worried?! Don’t put words in my mouth!” He crosses his arms, turns his head, and lifts his chin, features all fluster under a thin veneer of derision. “I have way better things to do with my time than worry about that pampered brat!” he says. “Like… Like training! So if you could tell your commander to give the vision simulator a rest every now and then, that’d be great!”
“Yes… I’ll see what I can do.”
Shiden’s personality failings aside, the conversation catches hold of that faint worry that’s been lingering in Luka’s mind and dredges it up to the surface anew. Actually, he can’t really remember a time when Yuito ever used the vision simulator alone. Even as a team, the platoon only ever put it to use on the rare occasion that they were unable to deploy for an extended period following a member’s injury in the field. They spend so much of their time in combat, after all - none of them are eager to spend their free time simulating yet more combat.
But, well, it goes without saying that Shiden isn’t lying, which in turn begs the question: What’s changed? Rather than stand around and speculate, Luka excuses himself and steps away from the recreation room to find and ask Yuito directly.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the place Luka finally finds Yuito is in the hideout’s systems room, a relatively small space meant for maintenance access to the safe house’s electronics. Yuito is seated in one of the few chairs that furnish the room, hand hovering over a virtual software panel, and his eyes snap to Luka as if he’s just been caught doing something he knows he shouldn’t.
“Hey, Luka,” he greets, lowering his hand, and Luka can see the ‘look’ that Shiden mentioned veiling his gaze in something heavy, something harrowed. “You need something?”
“Yes, there’s something I wanted to speak to you about,” Luka replies, and he pulls shut the door behind him. “I spoke with Shiden just now, and he seems to have complaints about how often you’re occupying the vision simulator.”
“Oh, for real?!” Yuito immediately stands. “Crap, I just assumed that since our platoon didn’t use the simulator much, it’d be the same for Kasane’s… I should apologize.”
“I believe Shiden would have taken the matter up with you personally if he was genuinely that put out by it,” Luka reasons. “We can easily install a second instance of the software if need be, but before doing so, I’d like to confirm something with you: Why have you taken such a sudden interest in the vision simulator?”
Yuito tucks his chin down. “Well, you know. I…” He frowns, hesitates, and then inspiration flashes across his features and he continues, “So like, we can expect Togetsu to fight tooth and nail to stop us from getting to BABE, right? But I don’t have all that much experience fighting against other psionics, so I thought I should put in the practice while I have the chance.”
“Combat preparation, then. I see,” Luka says, and he knows he’s warned Yuito that he’s a hopelessly transparent liar, but he doesn’t say anything about that now. “In that case, perhaps I could give you a few pointers. Will you let me join you for a round?”
“Oh, uh… Sure. That’d be a big help, Luka, thank you.”
It’s almost baffling. Yuito is always so sincere about sharing what he thinks, so heartfelt and unabashed no matter how difficult the conversation. Luka’s never known him to hide something like this. He’s worried. He’s worried, but if it’s something that Yuito wants to hide to the extent that he’d betray his own open nature, then Luka can’t help but be reluctant to ask. He knows very well the feeling of wanting to hide something, after all - as well as the feeling of having it laid bare against his will.
“All right, then. I’ll find something suitable for the two of us,” Luka says as he calls up the interface for the vision simulator. He switches briefly to the usage log to see what simulations Yuito has already tried and how he’s fared in them, but the data he finds there sinks his heart down into the very pit of his stomach.
Nagi Karman, the log’s most recent entry reads. Mission results: Aborted. Personnel fatality detected.
Nagi Karman, the next entry reads as well. Mission results: Aborted. Personnel fatality detected.
Nagi Karman, the entry under that reads, and under that, again, Nagi Karman. And it goes on, and on and on and on, for dozens of entries: Nagi Karman - Mission results: Aborted. Personnel fatality detected.
All at once Luka knows the name of the specter that haunts Yuito’s features, that hangs like lead from his limbs and hides the light from his eyes.
It’s grief.
“Luka?” Yuito prompts, breaking the silence that’s stagnated between them, and Luka shakes his head in dismissal.
“It’s nothing. I suppose it shouldn’t come as a surprise, since these simulations are built from our own memories, but I was stricken by how few there are available of psionic opponents.”
Perhaps it’s just Luka’s imagination, but Yuito’s shoulders seem to relax. “Ahh, yeah, I know, right? There’s simulations from those couple of times we fought Kasane’s platoon, though. How about one of those?”
“Right…” He presses his lips together, frowns, steels his resolve, and makes a selection. “Let’s get started, then.”
With little other warning, the hideout’s systems room falls away as the vision simulator renders in a new environment on top of it, and in the next moment, Luka stands in the middle of Suoh’s empty main street, Yuito at his side and a single opponent waiting under the pedestrian overpass ahead: Nagi Karman.
Yuito’s face blanches, his brow pinched and his lips parted with a shock and confusion that he struggles to articulate, “W-Wait, this– Why is–?!”
“Because I saw the usage log,” Luka admits, and his grip on the handle of his hammer draws tighter. “I apologize for tricking you into this, genuinely,” and he hopes, prays that he isn’t doing something cruel, “but if there’s something you need from his battle so badly that you would revisit it dozens of times, then I want to help you find it.”
There’s a tautness to his shoulders and to his expression that suggests that Yuito has more that he wants to say, but he has no time to say it before a chakram comes whirling between them, driven by a wind that could cut just as sharply as the blades themselves. A second and third come quick behind it, each more accurately aimed than the first, and Luka grabs Yuito’s wrist and teleports off of the road before they reach their marks.
“Do what you must, Yuito,” Luka says as the wind whips at the pavement and rattles the windows of the simulated storefronts. “Whatever that may be, you will have my support.”
“…Okay.” Though there’s resolve in Yuito’s voice, it doesn’t replace the apprehension and unease that shadow his eyes as he watches Nagi spin his chakram around his fingertips. He takes in a long, deep breath, exhales slowly, and says once more, “Okay.”
He takes a step forward, and then another, and as Nagi reels back and throws out his chakram, the wind lashing violently across the street, Yuito’s feet find their sureness and he charges in with a skillful dodge.
“I need to borrow you, Luka,” comes his voice over brain talk, and as Luka barely flinches at the familiar sting of the SAS connection engaging, Yuito vanishes in a blur of green and reappears at Nagi’s back. Without an instant wasted, he catches Nagi’s arms in his own and locks his elbows, but the gambit fails. Nagi twists and thrashes against Yuito, and the wind stirs at their feet, whirls, swells until it’s enough to rip at fabric and slice at skin. Yuito’s grip falters, and Nagi leaps on the opportunity to raise a column of wind around him that tears Yuito away and flings him into the air. Luka reacts the moment Yuito’s feet lift from the pavement, teleporting in to get a hand on his ally and then teleporting them both safely to the ground.
“Thanks,” Yuito says, his voice barely more than breath and his eyes poring over their surroundings as the glow of his psychokinesis outlines his hands. His gaze locks to the opposite sidewalk, and he grabs hold of the post-and-rope barrier set up thereupon and throws it towards Nagi, manipulating the rope to tangle it around his legs.
But before Nagi can be effectively ensnared, he shifts the air around him and twists it into a whirlwind that catches the rope barrier out of midair, tears it from Yuito’s grasp, and hurls it back. Yuito tries to recapture it, but the wind pushes harder than his psychokinesis pulls.
“Yuito–!”
The barrier whips violently through the air, and Yuito barely manages to raise his arms in defense before the endmost stanchion comes slamming down upon him, its base striking his forehead with force enough that he cries out, reeling unsteadily backwards as he gapes for breath and presses a hand to the wound.
For a moment, Luka’s whole body prickles with alarm - just for a moment, just until he reminds himself that it’s only the simulation of an injury and not yet more damage heaped onto a brain that’s already suffered so much of it. But there’s still a notice blinking in the corner of Luka’s vision - Warning: Critical personnel casualty - and he connects to brain talk, “Are you all right? Should we abort and take a break?”
“I’m fine,” Yuito assures, and he brushes the back of his hand across his eye and smears away the blood running down his face. “It stops hurting when you remember it’s not real.”
Luka’s not confident that the vision simulation software functions in such a way, but since he doesn’t hear any strain in Yuito’s words, he chooses to put his doubts aside. “Pain or no, you won’t be able to sustain another hit like that,” he cautions. “We’re just going to get worn down if we don’t go on the offense. Yuito, what’s our plan?”
Yuito frowns, his features tense, but his sword stays snugly in its sheath even as Nagi casts his chakram out in another gusty barrage. “I don’t want to hurt him,” he replies as he dips and weaves out of the way. “I just want to disable him. I want to restrain him.”
“Restrain him?” Luka repeats, bewildered by the response. “To what end?”
“I just… I want to know that it was possible.”
The answer invites yet more questions, but in the brief moment that Luka is distracted by his confusion, Nagi closes the distance and drives his arm straight and swift towards Yuito’s chest, the wind gnashing like fangs from his fingertips. Luka’s power activates by reflex, and before the blow can connect, he appears by Nagi’s side, takes a fistful of his sleeve, and teleports the both of them to the opposite side of the street. Nagi jerks and yanks his arm against Luka’s grip, but Luka holds fast.
“I don’t have the physique to hold onto him for but so long,” he says, and he lowers his center of gravity to keep his feet firmly planted as a sudden gust buffets his bangs across his eyes and rakes at his clothes, “but if we can quickly force a SAS overload on him, then–”
A chakram whirs through the air like a blur, and its lethal edge catches Luka across his throat and tears out an arc of bright red that spills down his chest and splatters his feet. At once his vision fills with a bright, flashing warning notification, and his hand reaches up and hovers over the wound, unwilling to touch, as he struggles more and more to draw breath. He hears Yuito shouting something to him, but his mind has gone blank, his head is spinning, his legs are losing strength, folding in on themselves…
Personnel fatality detected. Aborting mission…
When the message disappears, so too do the streets of Suoh, the simulation falling away and leaving the two once more in the hideout’s familiar systems room, Luka’s heart beating just a little quicker than it usually would.
Yuito heaves a heavy sigh and drops himself back into the chair he stands beside, propping his elbows on his knees, joining his hands, and letting his forehead rest against his thumbs. “That scared me,” he says after a pause. “I’ve gotten killed in the vision simulator a few times myself, but it’s a whole different experience watching it happen to someone else…”
Luka loosens a tension from his shoulders that he didn’t realize he was holding and replies, “Yes… Harmless though it may be, it certainly is unnerving.” It’s frustrating, maddening even, to hear Yuito abbreviate his dozens of ventures in the simulator down to ‘a few times,’ particularly knowing that each attempt came to a similarly unpleasant conclusion, but he holds off on remarking on that fact and says instead, “I’m willing to continue lending you my assistance, Yuito, but I’d like to better understand your goals first. Personally, I think restraining him would prove much easier if we first exhausted him through combat, but if you’re averse to taking an offensive approach…”
“Yeah…” Yuito responds slowly, and he just slightly raises his head, brow deeply furrowed and eyes locked to his lap. Eventually, finally, he continues, “Fighting Nagi, making him use his power so much and overtaxing his brain like we did… I know we didn’t have a choice at the time, but it’s hard not to feel like that’s what killed him.”
“Hence endeavoring to end the fighting as quickly and non-violently as possible,” Luka concludes, but the explanation doesn’t satisfy him. “But in that case, won’t it be even harder on you to know that we might have been able to prevent his death? Isn’t it better to believe that we did the best we could have done under the circumstances we were given?”
“No, well… I mean… Maybe.” Yuito settles a hand on the back of his neck with a complicated frown. “But,” he says, “when Nagi asked what he should have done differently, I couldn’t answer him. Kaito used him against me because he thought I wouldn’t fight back against my friend, but I don’t want that to mean that it was all Nagi’s fault for becoming friends with me. I don’t want to think that being friends with him was a mistake.”
“Of course it wasn’t,” Luka replies, and he steps away from the door and towards Yuito, trying but failing to catch his gaze. “If it was any single person’s fault, it was Chief Sumeragi’s for using your close friend as a tool to manipulate you without any regard for either of your lives.”
Yuito’s hand falls back to his lap, his fingers linking tightly, tautly. “I know my brother is the one who was ultimately at the root of it, but still, what if I could have stopped Nagi? I’m sure Major General Fubuki would have helped find a way to undo the personality rehabilitation if I could have just gotten him out of the city safely somehow…”
“But what good does entertaining such a possibility do for you now?” Luka presses. “It almost sounds as if you’re just searching for an excuse to blame yourself for what happened.”
“That’s not it,” he denies immediately, emphatically, but unconvincingly. “It’s not. I just… want an answer, you know? For Nagi.”
“Yuito,” Luka carefully begins, “I don’t believe there is an answer. We can say that you should have tried to stop Nagi without fighting, or that Chief Sumeragi should have been more humane, or that Major General Fubuki should have taken action to prevent Nagi’s personality rehabilitation more quickly, but when all is said and done, losing friends is part and parcel of being an OSF soldier. No one will ask you not to mourn, but–”
“I know that!” Yuito interrupts with a forcefulness, an anger in his tone that startles Luka. “Our job is to fight against monsters that want to kill us - of course some of us are going to die, and we all just have to brace ourselves for it and try to move on! But that’s not what happened to Nagi! That’s not what he died for!”
Luka struggles, fails to find the words to argue. Brace yourself and try to move on - it’s advice that many an OSF veteran has shared with new enlistees processing their first experiences losing an ally to an Other’s appetite, but Yuito is right. What happened to his best friend is far and away from the noble death in battle, falling while protecting those unable to fight to protect themselves, that the OSF warns its soldiers to prepare for. What comfort is there to offer to someone grieving a loved one who was torn apart by the very government he served, who was pieced back into some mangled and misshapen shadow of himself, strung up like a puppet, and then left to die just as soon as he stopped dancing on his strings?
“It’s not fair,” Yuito says through breaths that hitch in his throat, through features twisted with heartache and bitterness and scorn. “It’s not fair. Nagi volunteered. He was going to help people. He was going to save people. And just look at what my own country, my own family did to him for it!” He pulls his hand into a fist and drops it against his knee, his brow deeply creased and his lashes heavy with tears not yet ready to fall. “If that’s how it was going to end up, I should have just let him take my head off! At least then he could have lived, and hell, it probably would have taken care of the Kunad Gate too!”
“Absolutely not,” Luka hotly retorts, and he pushes a hand against Yuito’s shoulder to force him to straighten his back and meet his gaze. “Under no circumstances whatsoever would that outcome have been preferable. Nagi resisted his orders to kill you so desperately that his brain tore itself to shreds - I can’t even begin to imagine how much he would have suffered if we’d found a way to undo his personality rehabilitation after he’d already taken your life.”
“So then what, I should be happy he died?!” Yuito snaps as he bats Luka’s hand away, tears at last overspilling upon an expression so badly full of hurt and so desperate for justification that it makes Luka’s chest ache. “I should just be glad that it didn’t turn out worse than it did?!”
Luka shakes his head, softens his tone, “Of course not, that’s unreasonable. But it’s also unreasonable to fixate on what choices might have changed an outcome that’s already immutable.” He hesitates, wrestles against the professionalism that’s always so strictly dictated how he interacts with others, and then he swallows down his apprehension, puts his arms around Yuito’s shoulders, and holds tight. “It’s unreasonable to try so hard to hate yourself just for being alive. Nobody wants you to punish yourself like that. Not me, and certainly not Nagi either.”
There’s a soft, shuddering sob against his chest, a tug at his back as a fingers curl into the fabric of his jacket and hold, and Luka remembers with sudden, lurid clarity that for all his maturity, Yuito is still every bit the sixteen-year-old child he appears to be - a child whose circumstances have afforded him almost no opportunity at all to grapple with the loss of a loved one and with the guilt of being left behind. And it stings to know that there’s little more Luka can do than be someone for that child to cry on, but it stings even more to know that while he vaguely sensed that the things that happened with Nagi and with Chief Sumeragi were weighing on Yuito’s shoulders, it took until now to check in on him properly. It stings to know that he let his friend suffer alone when he so badly needed support.
But even if he’s already suffered alone for this long, he can at least be stopped from carving any deeper into his own wounds.
“Yuito,” Luka says gently, “let’s delete the memory data of our fight with Nagi from the vision simulator’s bank.”
With a start, Yuito pulls away, eyes red and wet and wide with incredulity. “Delete it?! But… Then–!”
“Then you won’t be able to see him anymore,” he follows, “and I know that that must sound objectionable, but that simulation can only show you the Nagi that the government brainwashed into trying to kill you. You can’t let that be how you remember him.”
Yuito drops his gaze, presses his lips into a frown, and Luka adds, “It doesn’t have to be right this very moment. It can wait for as long as you need to, though I would appreciate if you wouldn’t run that simulation anymore in the meantime.”
“…You’re probably right,” Yuito says, his voice small and still aching, and he swipes the back of his hand across his eyes. “I don’t want to remember him that way. They call it personality rehabilitation, but what they did to him… They might as well have erased ‘Nagi’ completely. They destroyed every bit of who he was.”
Luka can hear the what-ifs and if-onlys gathering back up again in Yuito’s words, see them clouding his eyes and sagging on his shoulders, and pulls one of the room’s other chairs closer, takes a seat, and prompts a distraction, “I didn’t have the opportunity to meet Nagi properly. What kind of person was he?”
Yuito draws in a long breath and lets pass a sigh as he joins his hands idly in his lap and bows his head, his sights set somewhere distant, somewhere far and away beyond the hideout’s walls. “Nagi was… bright,” he says slowly. “He lit up any room he stepped into. He was a loudmouth who always had some kind of joke up his sleeve, always some kind of random nonsense he wanted to drag me into. Anytime I said I’d owe him a favor, he’d use it to rope me into going along to hit on girls.”
Luka’s eyebrows abruptly raise. “I… don’t believe I can picture you hitting on girls.”
The barest ghost of a smile tugs bitterly at the corners of Yuito’s lips. “Well… I just kind of stood nearby and watched. Nagi was always saying, ‘Just follow my lead,’ but it was way too embarrassing. I figured he’d get fed up with me right away, but he didn’t. Kind of the opposite, actually - he started inviting me to hang out more and more often, and eventually it got to the point where we were practically always together. I don’t know what ever inspired him to talk to me in the first place, but I’m glad for it.”
“You may not be aware of this yourself, Yuito,” Luka offers, “but you have an earnest, amiable personality that makes you quite approachable. It comes as no surprise to me that Nagi would take an interest in you.”
But Yuito shakes his head. “I mean, I’m flattered if that’s how you see me now, but it definitely wasn’t the case back then,” he explains. “I put up a lot of walls, I think. Practically everyone who looked at me just saw Chairman Sumeragi’s son or Chief Sumeragi’s little brother, and it made me pull away from people. Even when I volunteered for the OSF and entered the training academy, there were all these rumors about how I was getting preferential treatment and how I’d be handed a cushy promotion as soon as I graduated into the force.
“Nagi,” he continues, “didn’t pay any attention to what anyone said or how they acted around me. He just… talked to me normally. Treated me normally. I had no idea how lonely I’d really been until there was finally someone beside me. If I come off as approachable now, it’s probably because Nagi made me realize how much I wanted to reach out to others.”
“I see,” Luka responds, and he remembers Yuito speaking once before on his feelings of inferiority when comparing himself to his brother, but he never knew, never even expected that he had been vexed to such an extent by his family’s prestige. “I’m glad that Nagi was someone who could do that for you,” he says sincerely. “It sounds like he was a splendid friend.”
Yuito’s voice falls almost to silence as he replies, “…Yeah. He was the best.” His head dips down, down further, his brow deeply creasing and eyes squeezing shut. “I’m really… never going to see him again, am I? He really doesn’t exist anywhere in the world anymore, does he?”
For all the years that he’s served in the OSF, all the times his rank has bade him act as a mentor, all the times some young recruit has needed guidance, Luka has never wished more for his brother’s charisma, for his ability to pinpoint the exact words the other party needs most and to say them with conviction enough to drive them like a spearhead through whatever doubts stand in their way. But Luka’s not his brother, and he knows that if he confessed to feeling that his own thoughts, his own words, his own sincerity weren’t enough, Yuito would tell him at once that they were. He puts his faith in that and speaks.
“You won’t see him again,” Luka says, “but he still exists. He exists in the kindness you’ve extended to others because of the kindness he extended to you. He exists in everyone who’s received that kindness - in me, in our allies, in all the strangers you raise your sword to protect. He exists in your vision of a future where no one else endures the injustice he suffered, and he exists in every step you take towards that future. He’ll always exist, Yuito.”
Yuito tents his fingertips, bows his face against the slot between his palms, and doesn’t move, doesn’t say a word, doesn’t make a sound. And Luka waits, patient and present, until he finally responds, “Yeah.” His shoulders round and then sink with a shuddering sigh. “Yeah,” he says again. “Sorry, can I, um… Can I be alone for a little bit?”
“Of course,” Luka agrees, standing as he does, but before he moves away, he gently asks, “Are you all right?”
“I’m all right,” he confirms, and he raises his head enough to offer a faint, bittersweet smile. “I’ll be all right.”
With barely a trace of his earlier hesitation, Luka reaches out his hand and tousles Yuito’s hair, returning the smile in kind. “You’ll be all right,” he echos, and he can believe now that those words are true, knows that Yuito won’t secretly swallow it down if ever they somehow lose that truth. He steps towards the systems room’s door, pulls it open and then shut again behind him, and hopes, wishes that the future Yuito envisions is one that will be kind to him as well.