Work Text:
There’s something about time.
Time passing.
Existing outside of humanity.
They’ve done what they could to reach out. To stay human, but sometimes…
“We’re not,” Mai says.
“But he can be,” Kouta replies. Mai sighs.
“I don’t know what he’ll think of the offer,” She says. “Even if we did figure out how to bring him back.”
And she knows. Knows the how and why of the miracle was watching time be unwound. A time of… freedom, of innocence.
Their “sister” says they should talk about it. Mai just feels sick, because they still weren’t whole. Kaito was still pulled into Helheim’s control, and she’d faded even before Kouta had left.
She doesn’t want to think about him, alone. She doesn’t want to think about Kaito, alone. All she has ever done was to make sure four people were not alone, and every time she has failed.
To think there was a boy who could rewind time and fix it, where she had merely been taunted and suffered as she watched… it hurts to imagine.
“He won’t accept charity,” Kouta says. “Or anything that reminds him he lost.”
It’s true. Mai sighs.
“I want him back,” She says. “Alive.”
“Then let’s do it.”
Mai shakes her head.
“No,” she says. “There’s too many pieces opening up on the chessboard. You watch over Kureshima-San and our friends, and I’ll talk to Kaito.”
“Are you sure?”
“It’s not like he’d ever hurt me.”
That is not on the list of his sins.
She’s visiting Kaito, sitting on a branch of his tree and glowing and incorporeal, which is always the easiest way to visit earth.
“We think we can revive you,” Mai says. “Is that something you want?”
Kaito huffs. He looks up at her with fondness, and amusement, almost?
For him, at least.
“Who wouldn’t want another chance at life?” He asks. Mai frowns. She knows it’s not that simple. He wanted to win or lose, he was a monster by choice, and she thinks he’s as content with his existence now as she is with hers, which is to say accepted, but not happy.
And that’s without the conversation Ex-Aid had with some of their friends. It wasn’t even as far away as it should be.
“Some people would,” Mai says. “Some people are content with their life, or their death, and ready to pass on.”
But Kaito is here. A ghost of war in a city now at peace. Not gone, not forgotten… or forgetting.
Mai wonders if that was always the key. A balance. Darkness, destruction, balanced with hope and love. And her, to watch them both.
“...well, I don’t see a reason to refuse,” Kaito says.
Mai supposes that’s a yes, from Kaito’s hesitant lips.
Mai thinks about fate. About hope. About the dance of Baron and Gaim, a bloody fated battle that could only end one way, and about the bond of Kouta and Kaito, who so very loved and trusted each other by the end, in their own strange ways.
She thinks about the war she watched, between Gaim and Baron on some mythic stage. A war she could not stop or fight in.
If she’d taken the belt that day, what then? Would she have been Gaim, destined to fight so desperately to save humanity and only somewhat win? Would she have had to fight Kaito that day? Could she?
Or would she still be the woman of beginning, out of lockstep with the dance of fate that is Kouta and Kaito, would she be still unable to choose fate?
She doesn’t know; she just wonders… what the dance will be now. Now that Kaito doesn’t need to fight.
Have they finally won?