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The scream catches and strangles in Tsukasa’s throat as he reaches out towards… something.
The scream turns into a desperate snarl until he can’t scream more, and then he keeps going anyways.
Death was soft. The aftermath is not, as he drifts.
He breaks apart. It should be quick. It should be calming.
He understands that, somehow, it should feel like acceptance. He does not know how he knows this.
(But he did not want to die. In the end, he broke character. In the end, death is screams said as soft admittance in the arms of his home and his soul, electric jolts from a broken driver and Ruby red blood staining an already red shirt, and all of it layered with a bloody sense of loss.)
This is his fate.
Something is ripped from him, nonetheless, a sparkling, multicolored film of dust, resembling the veils, fading from his form…
Except he has no form.
Those beings which can inhabit this space use forms for convenience, not necessity.
(He does not know how he knows this, either.)
But Tsukasa is a lense, and he looks out into this not-space. The dust fades away, and he knows he will never be whole, but the Worlds are saved. Something was ripped from him to forgive what power he lost.
He looks down at his hands and finds 4 clawed and darkly furred hands back. As he drifts, he realizes this is still him, but more.
And he understands another thing: for those with forms, they wear their most powerful ones here.
He must look like his parent, one he still only remembers barely, shadowy monsters of untold power whispering through fractured memories, in flashes.
He drifts, and he watches, and he does not want to die.
Two of these beings who exist alongside him come closer. The pain has not stopped, but he is held together.
He does not think it will last. One of these forces has tied his existence to the Worlds, and this one is angry.
Tsukasa is a lense, so as the forms come closer on both sides, he watches them both.
I expected your… “sister”, says the formless one. They are the first, Tsukasa knows. They are the one who cursed him. Or Soul.
You know why I’m here, father. You’re the one who chose to break a soul.
The second is different. Like Tsukasa, she has form. There is blood on her dark skinned face and her too-sharp-too-wide mouth of teeth. She has too many eyes that see too much and yet look like a mirror to Tsukasa’s.
(He stopped checking a mirror some weeks ago. Understanding left something broken in his gaze.)
He is in the middle of a fight between gods.
(He’s killed several gods in the span of two months.)
Are you not a third of the one bogged down in her siblings’ work?
Well who left us all alone with the dead?
Tsukasa listens. He observes and he analyzes like he always does. Even in pain. Except…
Perhaps it is not just pain. Perhaps it is awareness.
He realizes he is not whole because this domain is his now.
So what is it you want from me, then?
The elder has no eyes to turn to him with, but the not-woman deigns to bother turning her center eyes to him.
Father has sacrificed your soul, she says. But you are not gone.
I hear that’s called being stubborn, Tsukasa says. Should I let go?
She doesn’t need to move, or say, that the answer is no.
Your Rider Worlds, she says. They are not father’s anymore. That was the reward for your suffering.
He understands: he is one of them now.
He understands: the thing ripped from him is his very soul, and the soul ripped from his body holds knowing beyond what he can think. His soul will tear at him to put it all into place. He is no longer Kadoya Tsukasa, he is Decade, made of the Worlds.
(Destroyer. Rebirther. God. Nothing left of him , not really. A remnant of the hero he wanted to be and the monster he truly was, twisted into one being that only knows how to fix things, but does he even remember how to do anything but, after these long months of the war?)
He understands: the elder can no longer touch him.
(The elder meant to keep the Worlds merged, for Tsukasa knows in that way he knows everything, now. The elder knows endless expansion is tiring, so he seeks to limit it. Tying Rider Worlds to a boy with impossible power, a sense of the liminal space.
Gods play games until the piece comes alive.)
They’re calling to you.
I know.
He shouldn’t go back, when has that ever helped one of—
When have you cared?
He remembers, for once. A god, who was broken. A god who, like this, he could speak to without words.
(He looked more human than any here, a simple black turtleneck and soft auburn hair. A tormented gaze of convicted thoughts.
A rare time Tsukasa can remember from before and think I understood. )
Once, and only once, this God spoke of his father. He spoke of an arrogant man who did not care for cultivation, only creation. Who could not imagine this God’s fight with his twin brother on the nature of creation and power. Who told Tsukasa he felt like one of the twin’s eldest creatures as much as he felt like the god’s humans.
(The god called him opposite to Agito and spoke of demons in an odd voice.)
He doesn’t. He doesn’t care. Isn’t that sad?
There is a call, and a photo in light. His own eyes stare back into him, but beyond it, there is love.
It will not be all of you!
He knows.
Tsukasa looks back at the two for only a moment. He is still aware, even as his souls spreads and morphs. It wants the same as him.
For the first time in months, looking at this glowing portal home , he… he feels a glimmer of hope.
I am always all of me.
One step at a time, he re-forms into himself. He feels it all pull together. Three tethers guide his steps as dozens of other memories fill his new form.
The agony dulls as he walks closer. He forgets, some, of the conversation.
The scream is in his head. It turns into a shout for joy.
He is alive. He won.
Three people hold a picture to the sky and pray for a miracle.
They do not know what gods heard them that day. They do not know one of them smiles back at them that night.
It is enough.