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Kaitou Daiki thinks he finally knows how it feels to be trapped by fate.
It’s not something he should care about. What good is fate next to his own selfishness? Meaningless. That’s what he’s always told himself.
He is the normal one. He is static. He is…
He’s stupid. The boy is so small. He hasn’t started dying his hair yet - it’s deep violet and so very cute, unkept as he sleeps. Daiki could scoop the boy up, carry his treasure away and never explain why time has been altered in the world of heroes.
But for the first time in his life he can taste the story, knows the hell he ran off from to get here is…
He’s a good father, now.
He wouldn’t have been, then.
Daiki isn’t the type to look back, but maybe the little one will enjoy the simple treasure.
He goes home.
“Messing with time?”
“DGP fuckery has enough give for a 20 year jump,” Daiki replies. He doesn’t try to hide it - Tsukasa has been putting the pieces together, and to watch Michinaga, to watch…
To watch their son become a destroyer. A player of a villain…
Tsukasa isn’t stupid. Unfortunately.
“You went back to him,” Tsukasa says. “But not for him.”
“I think I understand now,” Daiki says. “It’s too late to go back, isn’t it?”
“It’s never too late,” Tsukasa says. “But that’s his choice, not ours.”
I want to change.
I don’t know how.
I don’t know how you live like this, Tsukasa.
Instead of saying any of that, Daiki falls into Tsukasa’s arms. It still feels like going backwards. Like how he leaned on Great Leader, not the tense trust of Tsukasa, of Kamen Rider Decade who took “destroyer” and turned that into the title of a hero.
“How long did you know?” Daiki asks.
“I suspected,” Tsukasa says. “You had a name for if we had a boy. Never brought it up for Lime, or Navy.”
“It might have fit the little menace,” Daiki says. “They’re both angry. But Navy’s a mountain cat, now isn’t he?”
Not a buffalo.
“You’re deflecting.”
“So are you.”
Tsukasa sighs.
“My Kaitou—” Daiki flinches. Tsukasa stares, and that’s worse. Daiki always hates being under his lense, even as he begs for it. “…I see.”
“I couldn’t know,” Daiki says. “I couldn’t know, and I was alone. He was better far away from me.”
Great Leader talked about kittens. I think he meant Navy, now. I thought I was crazy.
You called me Kaitou.
Tsukasa kisses his head. They’re sprawled on the couch together. Daiki feels like crying but he doesn’t know if he knows how.
“You made the right choice, then,” Tsukasa says. “I knew the moment he survived. Because when he came back I felt it.”
“Felt what?”
“Your fear,” Tsukasa says. “And guilt. You’re not a man who shows regret often. So I looked into it.”
Daiki looks away from him. Damn Tsukasa. Damn his inability to leave well enough alone.
“And what did you find?”
“He’s using my power,” Tsukasa says. “Warping it to fit him with something in that system.”
He’s mine. Probably.
They can never know for certain, but relief Daiki didn’t know he would feel fills him. Despite the fact that his son is being played with in a death game, despite the ways he failed that boy…
“Will he be alright?”
“I think he’ll find the ending he wants and needs.”
It’s not a yes, it’s not a no.
Daiki’s run out of care to give, for the moment.
He sets a small and fluffy pink spider next to Rosie’s bed, and one of his baby girls he has the chance to raise stirs. Daiki hastily pets her head, and she purrs softly.
“Mm..” she says, grabbing at his hand. “Papa…”
“That’s right,” Daiki says. “Papa’s home.”
Maybe someday he’ll find out how to bring his first treasure home, too, and right the wrongs wrought on Great Leader’s sons.
Someday, but not today.