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Her first clue that something is wrong is the bottle on Junpei’s desk. Half-full, standing tall among his scattered textbooks, within reach of his chair. Whisky. Junpei doesn’t drink whisky.
(Not yet.)
But she doesn’t have time to think about it. (She has all the time in the world.) She has work to do. Junpei will get home in exactly two minutes and twenty seconds. She sets about concealing the Soporil canister, leaves the window open to draw his attention and hides herself away, just in time.
She waits a moment. A moment longer. (A moment too long.) At last, Junpei’s key clatters in the lock, and she hears him step inside. Everything is ready, and she’s long made peace with her choice. She has to do this. Not just for her own sake, but for the sake of the entire world.
His steps grow louder as he clears the hallway. Her heart seizes as he pauses, just within arm’s reach. She dares not exhale as he sighs, trudging toward the window. She hears it slide closed, and makes her move. A button clicks in her palm, and the gas grenade under the dresser begins to hiss. She pushes the door open and steps out, ready to reunite with the boy who will save (Saved) her life.
Except what she finds isn’t a work-weary Junpei whirling around in shock and alarm. With assured, unhurried motions he is tugging a lump of rubber over his face– A gas mask of his own, shiny and fresh from its packaging. For a moment, she’s stunned. It’s just enough time for him to straighten up and jiggle the mask’s seal over his jaw. Eyes obscured by dark, mirror lenses meet her own. He throws his arms out awkwardly, like he’d gotten halfway before thinking better of a hug.
“Surprise.” He mumbles through the mask’s filter. A second passes, and his hands fall by his sides. The only sound in the world is the hissing of the gas. She can feel the pain of his smile in her very bones. “Hiya, Kanny. Long time no see.”
She’s doomed. (She’s already won.)
She’s so glad to see him again. (But not here, not now–!)
XXX
Two years later she lets go of his hand, turns on her heel and slaps him hard across the face.
“Why did you do that!?” She yells, pressing forward as he reels, nearly knocked off his feet. When he whirls around, his face is a storm of confusion, indignation, perhaps a hint of resignation… Until his eyes flash with a familiar light, and he settles.
“Oh, yeah. Guess I deserve that…” He chuckles, nursing his cheek with one hand. “Could have picked a better moment, huh? My bad. Still getting used to this whole thing.”
“That wasn’t an answer.” She stands firm. His eyes meet hers again, and the dregs of his mirth dry up. Onlookers glance among themselves, utterly lost. “Why?”
“Just… Wanted to surprise you, I guess?” He glances over her shoulder to glare at a giggling voyeur. “Only seemed fair, considering the… Kidnappings.”
She’s known him too impossibly long not to see that he’s lying.
“Shifting isn’t a toy, Junpei.”
“I know that. I’m just…” He grits his teeth, glances around again. “What’s the point in being able to do it if I still can’t…” The words dry up in his mouth again, eyes still stormy, and for the first time since the Nevada test site she realises she’s not quite sure what he’s thinking. She blinks.
“Still can’t what?” A trace of trepidation worms its way into her tone, and he looks up at her with an inscrutable expression. Anger? No, he’s clearly frustrated with her but it’s not quite there. There’s pain there too, a slight puppy-like wateriness in his eyes. (A tiny fraction of the face he wore each time he watched her die.) What’s wrong, Junpei? What’s wrong? We won, didn’t we?
“...Don’t worry about it. I’ll figure it out.” He steps past her and in her state of shock she’s too slow to stop him. Her ring brushes his sleeve as she reaches out, but he’s already gone.
Her heart tugs after him as he leaves, and she feels the familiar impulse to try the conversation again, to see how he reacts, try from a different direction. But she can’t anymore. Not with him. Not now that he’s starting to see the world the way she does.
(“Kidnappings.” Plural.)
…Just how long has he been doing this?
“Having a lovers’ quarrel across time and space, are we?” A familiar voice echoes from behind. She turns to see Sigma smiling wryly down at her, a pile of Crash Keys paperwork half-spilling from the crook of his arm.
“He’s been Shifting on his own.” She feels the urge to turn away, look back after Junpei. (An urge she’s well-accustomed to suppressing.) “Meddling with the past. And… And I don’t know why.” Sigma regards her with that quiet, appraising sort of compassion she’s come to expect from him, like he knows what to say but needs to be sure she’ll listen. His eyes flick away from hers for a moment, staring past her. A strange look clouds his features. Something wistful, nostalgic and… Proud?
“I think–” He carefully intones, “That Tenmyouji is tired of being a termite.”
XXX
Forty-five years and three hundred thousand miles away, he gives her a look that’s slightly too impish to have come from a world-weary survivor of the apocalypse, slightly too affectionate for a man who came all that way only to find the girl he’d been looking for no longer existed. (If she ever existed at all.) She sighs, smoothing out her dress to join him on the garden bench. Even in microgravity, her bones ache if she stands for too long.
“You’re doing it again.” She chides, feeling both twenty and seventy at once.
“Heh. At this point in the shitstorm I feel like that should be my line. Just one Nonary game was one too many.” He rasps in a voice scorched by decades of dust.
“You came along voluntarily this time.” She quips back, but their hands find one another anyway. His palms are rough and pitted, fingertips calloused to a hardness like eggshell. He tests the shape of her ring with his thumb– She’s had to replace the fixtures half a dozen times, but the stone remains the same. (Nothing could ever replace it.)
They sit in unhurried silence for a while. After all, there’s nothing that needs doing, not in the here and now, at least. How lucky they are, to finally have the luxury of time.
“...How did you even get here?” She twists to fix him with an inquiring eye. “Even I can’t jump this far without any warm-up.”
“I took the long way around.” He stares straight ahead, smiling faintly. “It was hard, but… Worth it. Even if I didn’t always remember why I was doing it. Taught me a lot.”
For a flash, she’s back in Nevada again. A betrayal beneath the full moon. A flash of recognition in his eyes as she darts toward him, the needles of the bracelet in her hand shining. His body takes over, hand darting for her wrist, but he’s too slow. The needles sink into his neck, flooding his veins with oblivion. He’ll forget. He’ll play his part. He has to. (He did.)
She doesn’t feel guilty about it. She doesn’t think she’s even capable of feeling guilt anymore, to be honest. But despite that, she feels her grip on his hand tighten, like he was little more than sand about to slip through her fingers. She remembers what it was like, living out her first few lifetimes. She’d learnt a lot too. Useful skills, significant dates… Obscure factoids. He’s surely picked up skills too, and she should be happy about that. They still have work to do back home, after all. (She has no home, but the term feels right.) A world to save, a wedding to plan, and then whatever comes next. His years spent scavenging and surviving will definitely prove useful. And yet…
“Most importantly of all, I think I’m finally starting to get you, Kanny.”
There it is. The moment she’d been dreading.
“When you lay it all out, like…” He gestures vaguely with his free hand. “Like a tree. All the branches, all the choices, all the timelines– They start to feel, uh… Less real, right?” He doesn’t dare turn to see her reaction, not before he gets the words out. “Everything that can happen is happening somewhere, somewhen, so why does it matter? You’ve just got to find the right one, the one you want. And then when people get in the way and you have to work around them, watch them do the same things over and over again, they start feeling less real too, like puppets. Or dolls. And after that, when you remember every possible outcome…” He trails off, then picks up again, a touch quieter. “You start feeling less real too. I mean, it’s tough to define yourself by your choices when you’ve already chosen everything, right? You’re just doing what you have to, to get what’s best for everybody.” A grimace crosses his face as an age-old memory of gore-matted carpets resurfaces. “Almost everybody. Everybody who deserves it.”
Finally he meets her gaze, and despite his ramblings his conviction is etched into the lines of his face like words into stone. “So if I’m feeling that after just a few decades of it… I hate to think of what you’re going through.”
“I’m used to it.” She’s telling the truth. (But it wasn’t always the truth. It may not always be the truth.)
“Still fucked up.” He grouses. “And this bit I’m not quite so sure about, but…” His face twists. “Maybe after long enough, it’s… Comforting? Knowing everyone else is on rails, knowing that you can get them exactly where you want with the right nudge.”
“Jumpy–” There’s something in her voice that makes his face harden. His free hand flicks over something in his pocket, then curls into a determined fist. He meets her eyes at last.
“I’m not a doll, Akane. Not anymore.”
For the first time in aeons, she’s truly, truly terrified.
“...No. You’re not.”
Her heart feels fit to tear in two as she feels his hand slip free, but then he turns, wraps his arms around her, rests his chin on her shoulder and lets the bony warmth of his chest radiate through hers.
“But I’m still yours. Heh.” The stubbly surface of his cheek scratches a smile against hers. “Still your Jumpy. Don’t think I could ever stop, really.”
She snakes her arms around his chest and holds him as tight as this body will let her. He’s still hers. Still hers. Is she crying? No, no, she’s not. (But she could.) Maybe she should…?
“I just wanted you to know all that. To know that I get it. That I’m starting to get it, at least.” An awkward chuckle rocks his back. “God, I sound like a damn teenager. Would you believe me if I said the apocalypse didn’t leave much time for dating?”
“Hah.” She gasps, in relief more than amusement. “Well, you seem to have fatherhood worked out, at least.”
“Hmm…” He squeezes her in turn, hands sliding a little lower before he peels himself away, touching his forehead to hers. His eyes are aglow with fondness, shining out from the pitted shell of his body. She hopes she’s the same. “And we’ve got plenty of time to figure out the rest, right?”
His lips part slightly. They’re already so close, and he leans closer still…
She stops him with a finger. “Mmm-mmm. Nope. Not here. Besides, I know you raided the bar in the lounge. What happened to going sober?”
He leans back, groaning aloud, and all of a sudden the grey-haired grandpa beside her looks every bit the petulant boy that on some level he’ll always be. “What, we’re counting that junk across timelines now? I know you left my favourite out on purpose.”
“All part of the plan.” She lies.
“It always is with you, isn’t it? Urgh…” He grunts as he slides from her grip, moving to stand on his creaky knees. “Well, since you’re stuck with me now, I’ll try not to be so much of a spanner in the works.”
“I’d like to see you try.” He offers his hand, and even though she doesn’t need the assistance she takes it anyway. Gosh, they’re both so very old now… “You still have a lot of catching up to do.”
“Something tells me I always will.” He muses as he pulls her to her feet. “But at least this time I know what I’m signing up for.”
“Do you?” She feels the corners of her eyes wrinkle as he glowers her way, and a dry chuckle escapes her. The paper-thin layer of animosity in his expression burns away in an instant, replaced with resignation, determination, the warmth of a billion shared sunsets to come.
“Yeah. I do.”
(And he’s absolutely right.)