Chapter Text
There’s noise coming from Takumi’s bedroom.
Problem is: he is not inside his bedroom, and he lives alone.
It’s just before 8 p.m. when he steps into his dark, and supposedly empty apartment, after a quick grocery run. But from where he’s standing in the entryway, he can hear muffled movements coming from the back.
Someone’s here.
Is… he getting robbed?
Or maybe it’s something worse; it could be the unlikely survivors from Futurum, or their supporters, waiting to attack him. People who might despise him from what he’s done, for all that happened. Someone who holds him responsible, as the somewhat known leader of the human forces, and would want him to pay for it.
There’s a lot of possibilities going through his mind. Takumi could leave now that he knows danger is near, quietly slip back out, call the police or go find help, and wait a safe distance away. That would be the more sensible choice.
But ever since coming back to the artificial satellite, Takumi has been rotting in this apartment, unable to shake the weight of the war enough to let himself pretend to have a shot at a normal life once again. So, if this is it, and someone has finally come to confront him, then maybe that’s the out he’s been unconsciously waiting for.
A chance to face anything that can make him believe he can atone, if even a little bit.
Still… If it turns out to just be some petty criminal, he should be prepared, shouldn’t he? He sets the groceries down quietly on the floor as he makes his way to his little kitchen, opens a drawer and closes his fingers around the handle of a knife.
It feels wrong in his hand – it’s not the same weight, it doesn’t balance the same as the blade he got used to carrying. This is a kitchen tool, not a weapon, but the thoughts come too quickly: how would it cut through the invaders, how it could kill, how it could-
He gets distracted by the faint line of light that spills from under the bedroom door. Someone is definitely inside.
Heart hammering in his chest, Takumi makes his way over with steps as light as he can, and grips the doorknob. And then, before his mind can talk him out of it, he yanks the door open, knife extended forward.
What he sees, as his eyes roam around the room and finally lend on something, no, someone, is a familiar figure.
“…Omokage?”
The name escapes him before he can process it, but it’s him, there’s no mistaking it.
His dark roots are grown out, and he’s not wearing the eyepatch Takumi had come to associate with him, but it’s him. Yugamu Omokage, sitting in the chair in Takumi’s bedroom.
For a second, it’s reminiscent of their time at Last Defense Academy. There’s a little memory at the back of Takumi's mind of the other slipping into his room just to toss a flirty one-liner his way.
Takumi’s mind blurs over past and present for a moment, a sort of heaviness weighing on his chest. They haven’t seen each other in years by this point, Takumi hasn’t seen most of the other students in a long time, he can’t face them, can’t bring himself to-
Then reality catches up with him, his eyes coming back into focus, as he realizes just how wrong this situation is.
“ Oh my god, Omokage . What’s going on?”
Yugamu Omokage is in Takumi’s chair, yes, but he looks like he’s barely holding onto it. He’s shirtless, swaying a bit, and more importantly, there’s a giant gaping wound in his abdomen.
Now that he’s looking more at the surroundings, Takumi can see the blood beneath the other, a giant pool of red that keeps spreading and soaking into the wood. Takumi’s breath stutters.
This isn’t just bad, this looks like everything here is on the verge of collapsing.
Yugamu lifts his head slowly, like just this small motion costs him. There’s sweat beads running along his forehead, blood smears under his nose and yet, he grins when he spots Takumi.
“You sure know how to greet a guest,” he says, as if this is an ordinary reunion.
Takumi finally snaps out of the shock, dropping the knife and letting it clatter to the floor as he crosses the room in quick, uneven strides. A million questions are piling on top of each other in his mind but more than anything else he needs to act, now, and fast .
But the closer he gets, the worse it looks. Yugamu’s stomach is, as simply as he can put it, cleanly sliced open. The wound looks so deep that it’s a wonder that he hasn’t fainted from the pain, or from blood loss.
“Shit.” The world slips out of Takumi, panic clawing its way up his throat. “We need to call an ambulance!”
He makes to turn around and go search for his phone, but a hand catches his arm.
“No-” Yugamu interrupts him, voice raw and all wrong , as he keeps his grip on Takumi at a weird angle with his left arm.
Wait, his left arm? This makes Takumi turn back fully, and his eyes now spot the blood dripping from his right shoulder, which is hanging uselessly at his side.
God. God! What the hell happened to him?!
“Sumino-kun,” Yugamu coughs, “Just… Get me your medical supplies. It’ll be enough.”
Like hell it will be! Takumi opens his mouth to argue, but Yugamu is clearly having a hard time just speaking, so he can’t waste time on that. He could simply not listen to him and call for help still, but…
The operation that saved Ima’s life, in the first timeline. The self-made surgeries, his weirdly extensive knowledge of the human body, the way he continued to step in to help, when no one else could.
Against the better judgement, Takumi nods.
“I-It’s all in the bathroom. We should move you there, it’ll be easier. I’ll help you up,” Takumi says as he moves at the same time, already sliding an arm around Yugamu’s waist while trying to not put pressure on it. The other leans into him heavily.
Yugamu is alarmingly unsteady, and red flags flash in Takumi’s mind. Surely, he’s not going to die in his bathroom? He can’t, there’s no way.
Takumi can’t lose anyone else, not now, not after everything, not like this…
Not you , he doesn’t allow himself to think for more than an instant.
By the time they make it to the bathroom, Takumi has a hard time keeping the other up for much longer. He lowers Yugamu carefully onto the stool he’s glad he kept in there, keeping a hand on the other until he’s sure he won’t topple over.
Yugamu's eyes are closed, now. He’s breathing, but it’s a shallow thing.
“Omokage…” Takumi’s voice catches. No, he needs to focus right now. “ Omokage ,” he tries again, firmer, “You have to stay awake. Tell me what to do, I don’t know how to fix this, you’re still bleeding-”
Yugamu’s eyes flutter open, his gaze is glassy at best. “Sumino-kun… sometimes I wonder if the Revive-O-Matic will come for me, even here.” There’s a dry, delirious laugh that escapes him. “Death has become so uncertain in my mind since the war. I fear that I’ll never die, or I won’t realize it when it happens. Isn’t that sad?”
Takumi thinks that if his heart starts beating even faster in his chest, he’ll be the one passing out.
“Please,” he’s begging, truly and earnestly, before he even realizes it. “ Please , you can’t die here. Tell me how to help you. I can’t-” I can’t be responsible for your death .
Something in that seems to snap Yugamu back enough. “Ah… Do you have a medical kit?”
Takumi immediately scrambles to his small cabinet, yanking out the metal box stuffed with supplies. Gauze, needle and thread, antiseptic… Thank god he made sure to fully stock up.
“Okay. Talk me through it,” he says as he kneels next to Yugamu to get at a better height to see the wound. “Tell me how to stop the bleeding.”
“You need to apply some pressure… And then stitch it,” Yugamu says in a weak voice, stripped of any of the usual jokes or remarks he would’ve made in this situation, which only makes Takumi panic more. “You have to clean it first. Alcohol.”
Takumi fumbles to get the cap off the antiseptic with his shaky hands and applies the cold liquid to the wound. This has to burn, the stings of it should make the other react, but Yugamu barely moves. Takumi doesn’t know if it’s because of his freakishly high pain tolerance, or because he’s one the verge of losing consciousness, still.
“Stay with me, Omokage.”
“Wouldn’t miss your medical inexperience for the world,” he slurs.
“You better not,” Takumi snaps back, more to cover his own fear than anything else, reaching for the needle. His own stomach churns at the sight of it.
He threads it with fingers that won’t stop trembling and begins to sew. He tries to focus on this foggy memory he has of Karua once taking up sewing as a hobby, years and years ago, and dragging him into it. Fake memory or not, the knowledge must still be inside him deep down, right?
His work is ugly, and rushed, but every pull of the thread makes Yugamu look more aware, like he’s doing his best to admire the handiwork, which is seemingly more interesting than the blood seeping from his body.
One stitch, then another, and another, until finally, he pulls through the last one. He ties it off, lays a clean layer of gauze over the entirety of the wound as best as he can, and tapes it down. For a moment, Takumi lets himself breathe, just a second of relief.
Then it hits him, again. “…Your arm. What’s wrong with your arm?”
He glances up. Yugamu hasn’t moved his right arm once. Takumi’s eyes scan it quickly, and the answer hits him like a punch would.
At the back of his shoulder, there is a hole. Torn skin and blood all around it.
It’s a bullet wound. He’s been shot .
“Oh my god,” Takumi stumbles upright, reaching for the kit again as fast as he can, yanking out the tweezers in it with hands that don’t feel like his own.
There’s a bullet in there. What happened? What the hell were you doing?
“Sumino-kun.”
Takumi freezes. Yugamu’s voice is still quiet, but it’s a little steadier. There’s a hint of colors coming back to his face; he still looks pale, and absolutely sickly, but it’s something.
“You need to breathe,” he says. “Whatever you do, it won’t hurt more than this already does. It’d take a lot more to finish me off,” he chuckles. Takumi nearly snaps.
“That’s not funny,” he says sharply, “You’re bleeding out in my bathroom.”
Yugamu only chuckles again, and Takumi bites back whatever he wanted to say next, as he leans back near the other. “…Just hold still.”
He cleans the wound as best as he can, ignoring how this one runs deep, too. With his free hand, he grips Yugamu’s arm firmly, steadying him and anchoring himself. The tweezers sink into the torn flesh, and Takumi swallows hard against the nausea that rises when he feels metal slipping under skin. He moves the tweezers around until it finally catches onto something solid.
It must be agony. Yugamu doesn’t flinch once.
Takumi’s hold on the other’s arm tightens strongly enough that he’s sure this is going to leave a mark, and slowly, with all the care he can muster, he draws the metal tool back.
“I got it,” he whispers, as he pulls the blood-covered bullet out of the wound and lets it drop carelessly on the floor with a little ting . He hears Yugamu exhale.
Takumi disinfects the wound again, presses gauze once more, and wraps it tight.
He only realizes the scene they’ve made when he stands up again. There’s blood everywhere . On Omokage’s face, running down his arm. But also all over the floor, and some in his bedroom. A lot of it on Takumi’s own clothes and hands, sticking to him with a warmth and scent strong enough that it makes him want to gag.
But Yugamu’s still alive. He looks better than he did when Takumi first found him.
“…You’re not going to die,” Takumi says after silence has taken over the room. He won’t .
“Oh, but wouldn’t it have been romantic?” Yugamu says. “Although, you have terrible interior lightning, this would be a horrible place to go.”
And somehow, despite the weirdness of the situation, this feels like no time has passed. Yugamu speaks the way he did two years and some days ago, it’s banter they’ve traded time and time again. For a moment, it feels no different.
But then Takumi looks more at the other, and the illusion doesn’t hold.
Now that he’s not actively panicking and Yugamu not actively dying, he can see the other more clearly, and lingers more on the details he missed: Yugamu looks tired , the kind of tiredness that doesn’t fade easily with rest. Takumi recognizes it because he sees it in the mirror.
He’s a bit thinner, his edges a bit sharper. His hair’s grown out slightly, and there are more piercings adorning his face and upper half that Takumi remembers him having back at LDA. It might be awful to say after he nearly bled out, but it suits him, Takumi thinks.
His left eye really is uncovered. Takumi doesn’t recall a single moment, or a single person, who had seen Yugamu without his eyepatch at Last Defense Academy. He’s curious about it, of course, but looking at it feels like he’s trespassing. He glances away.
“You’re going to make me feel self-conscious with all that staring,” Yugamu mutters after a bit, his tone light but with something pointed under his words.
“Oh…Sorry,” Takumi says a bit sheepishly, “How are you feeling now?”
“Could be worse” Yugamu says, like he didn’t just nearly succumb to a life-threatening injury in the middle of Takumi’s apartment. Speaking of which,
“How- how did you get into my apartment?” Takumi asks, before fumbling to add, “…Sorry, ignore that. We should clean up the blood and I’ll let you rest.”
He doesn’t know how to navigate this. He hasn’t spoken to any of the SDU members in months, or more than a year, for most of them.
He had thought, naively, that getting back to the satellite with Nozomi alive and well would have led to him getting back to a normal, and happier life. But the truth of what happened is harsher: the responsibility and guilt he still feels over what happened to Futurm, to the lives of his friends lost in battles that keep replaying in his head, drown out the fact that he brought most of them home.
After living those hundred days twice , it doesn’t seem like he can adapt to anything else.
He still counts the days when he wakes up. And in some of those days, he can’t help but have the terrible thought that it would be easier to be back at Last Defense Academy, where everything was awful, but at least familiar. Where tragedy was sure to come, but had yet to play out.
He hasn’t faced the others out of fear of how he’ll react, and the shame he feels by how terribly he’s handling all of this.
So, he hasn’t had any contact with Yugamu in a long while. Ignoring the circumstances it’s not… unpleasant, to see him here, but it is awkward.
“I can spare a minute to chat,” Yugamu says, answering the unspoken tension in the air. His voice is coming back to something truly stable. Good. Takumi feels his own lungs loosen a little more.
“I asked Nozomi-chan where you lived a while ago, and you happened to be the closest to me at this instant,” Yugamu says, “it was kind of urgent, so I let myself in. Sorry about that.”
Kirifuji… She’s the only one he still somewhat had contact with, and even then, he hasn’t answered her calls in the last months. There’s another layer of guilt there, about how he still cannot help but associate her every move with Karua, even when he knows…He knows -
Takumi starts feeling ill again.
“It’s…Fine. I’m glad I made it back in time,” he sighs, and then looks back at the other. “Omokage… What happened?”
Yugamu stays silent for long enough that Takumi starts to believe he’s simply not going to answer him. But then, after a bit,
“I left my family,” he finally says, “told them I was done with the assassin business.”
Takumi’s heart plummets.
“What…?” he manages, over the buzzing ringing in his ears. “So…Your family…You-They…?”
“Sumino-kun,” Yugamu starts speaking again, but Takumi doesn’t hear him. Everything starts to sound like he's underwater.
It’s not the fact that he left that guts him, or not even truly that his own family is probably responsible for these terrible injuries, but it’s…
“This shouldn’t have happened,” Takumi mutters, his voice barely above a whisper as his gaze blurs more.
There are memories flashing rapidly through his mind, of different conversations he remembers having with Yugamu at the Academy. About the other boy, and his weird family, and his wish to distance himself from it all.
Memories about the hopes he had shared with Takumi for the future, and his doubts about facing the Omokages. Takumi remembers himself being there, listening, and telling Yugamu, when he asked if Takumi would agree to be here with him when that happens, that he’ll be by his side.
He remembers looking at the other back then, and thinking to himself, I’ll help you . And believing it wholeheartedly.
Except he couldn’t handle the return to normalcy after the war, so he ran away. He ran and forgot about anything and everything he had planned in this supposedly perfect future.
His choices never fail to lead him to the worst of outcomes, even now.
“It would’ve happened anyway,” Yugamu says in the heavy silence of the room. He’s not looking at Takumi, his gaze fixed somewhere further away. “Maybe it would’ve been worse if things played out differently. Honestly, I don’t wish for you to meet my family, it was but a childish fantasy.”
Maybe it was. But Takumi can’t help but think that maybe it was also his shot at fixing all of this, and he missed it.
His eyes drop back to the freshly closed wound on Yugamu’s stomach. Now that the urgency has passed, he sees all the scars over the other’s body – some are old and faded things that prevailed through the years, but others look far too recent, in different stages of bruised and healed, blooming in shades of red, purple and yellow.
Takumi, for what feels like the hundredth time tonight, feels his heart shatter.
“I’m so…so sorry,” he says, voice unsteady. His hands are still stained with Yugamu’s blood.
Yugamu doesn’t answer to his apology. Instead, he says: “Sumino-kun, I’ve been worried about you.”
Takumi truly wants to cry. What are you saying, you’ve been worried about me? Look at yourself right now.
“You want to know why I came here, out of anywhere else?” Yugamu continues, and his tone forces Takumi to look him back into the eyes. “Because I knew you’d help me. Because you said you would, and you are , right now.” He gestures loosely to himself. “I’m here, because when I got out of that house half-alive, the first thing I thought was ‘ Ah, I want so see Sumino-kun .’”
This is worse. This is the worst.
“How poetic of me, isn’t it?” he adds with a little smile. It looks incredibly off. “But listen. If I had wanted you to be there for the fight, I would’ve reached out. As I said, I did get your address from Nozomi-chan. I didn’t come here to accuse you of anything.”
Takumi doesn’t agree with the logic, but the words do seem to break him out of his spiral, if just a little. “How…How is she?” he asks, instead of all the things he wants to say to the other.
It makes Yugamu’s smile widen a little. “She’s doing well. Better than us both, for sure. She’s teaching kids in the district over; got a class full of little troublemakers, apparently.” A little snicker. “And you, how are you?”
“I’ve had better nights,” Takumi admits, with a humorless chuckle. He knows what the other truly wants to know, but he doesn’t think he can answer that properly. “…How are you feeling now?”
“Like I’ll have two beautiful handmade scars in a while.” He’s also evading the bigger question, which is fair. “Shall we clean up the blood?” He says, looking back at the wreckage in the bathroom. He doesn’t seem to want to talk about what happened any longer.
“…I’ll handle it, you should rest. Let me just help get the blood off of you, first.”
“Always the gentleman, aren’t you?” Takumi doesn’t rise to the joke.
Instead, he helps Yugamu into the narrow shower, turns on the water and lets it run over them both as they face each other, not bothering to remove his own clothes. Streams of crimson swirl down the drain, and Takumi watches it with a kind of grim fascination, guilt still eating at him. “How’s your arm?” he asks, over the sound of the running water.
“I can’t feel much of it, but it’ll come back. Don’t worry yourself about that,” Yugamu answers too easily.
“…Alright.”
Takumi starts to zone out after that, so he feels, rather than truly sees, Yugamu’s head dropping on his shoulder. They’re both still under the water, soaked and quiet, and Takumi can’t see the other’s expression. This feels unavoidably intimate.
“Sumino-kun,” Yugamu says after a bit, so quietly that Takumi is afraid he has misheard it, “thank you.”
At the words, Takumi feels the tears finally break free and fall down his own cheeks. He aims the shower over his head to let it take the blame.
They stay silent, after that.