Work Text:
Nox didn’t know what he was supposed to feel.
Or perhaps it was more accurate to say that Odaka Kensei no longer knew what emotions still belonged to him after hearing Seven’s premonition of the future.
The images hovered in the air like ghosts that refused to fade, fragments of a future that had not yet happened but already felt painfully inevitable. Odaka found his gaze drawn helplessly to the moment where Fujimi stood at the centre of it all: helpless, struggling, and then slowly disappearing into the swelling mass of the Bomb Nightmare as if the thing were swallowing him whole.
His chest tightened.
Fujimi was technically his senpai, someone who had walked this road before him, someone who had offered guidance when Odaka was undercover at Paranormal Affairs. But it was way more than that.
Fujimi had been one of the few people who treated him like a normal person rather than another expendable piece on someone else’s board.
Watching him suffer like that left a bitter taste in Odaka’s mouth.
If there had been another path—if there had been even the slightest chance—Odaka would have chosen a future where Fujimi never learned about the Nightmares, never learned about CODE, never stepped foot into the tangled, suffocating politics of the whole thing.
A future where Fujimi could have simply lived.
But Odaka had learned a long time ago that the future rarely followed the shape people wished for it.
Still, even with that understanding, he hadn’t expected Seven to call him out in front of everyone. And he certainly hadn’t expected Seven to tear open the past he had spent so long burying.
The projection shifted, and suddenly, the past was there, laid bare and unprotected for everyone to see.
Odaka’s shoulders stiffened as the images flickered past like scenes from a film he had once watched and desperately wished he could forget: the cold dismissal, the moment he had been pushed aside without hesitation, discarded with the same casual indifference someone might show when removing a useless chess piece from the board.
The memory slammed into him with the force of a rising tide. The sadness, anger and desperation tangled together inside his chest until he could barely separate one from the other.
Almost unconsciously, his fingers curled around the ring on his right hand. The metal was cool against his skin as he turned it slowly, once, twice, before his fist closed around it so tightly that the edges of his nails bit into his palm.
The ring was the last thing tethering him to the person he used to be, the last fragile reminder that Odaka Kensei had once been someone who believed in saving people instead of destroying them.
And if destroying CODE meant letting that last piece disappear…
Then maybe that was a price he had already decided to pay.
“You were guiding the Nightmares, intending to take revenge on CODE.” Seven’s voice cut cleanly through the silence.
One sentence was all it took to compress years of pain, resentment, and quiet determination into something that sounded almost painfully simple.
Odaka exhaled slowly.
The Nightmares had never been the goal. They were a weapon, a bargaining chip, a necessary evil. If there had been another way—if cooperation from The Lady had been possible without them—he would have taken it without hesitation.
But the world rarely offered choices without consequences.
The projection shifted again, this time showing his battle with the Zerorider.
Odaka watched himself transform, the armour forming piece by piece, the moment frozen in the air like a decision carved into stone.
A Kamen Rider.
Once someone stepped onto that path, there was no turning around, no quiet return to the life they had before. They could only move forward, they would have to move forward.
The images changed again. But this time, the weight behind them was far heavier.
Five and Six. Both of them struck down by his own hands.
Odaka felt something inside him go still.
There was a line every person believed they would never cross: taking another person’s life was one of those lines.
But the cruel truth of the world was that once that line had been crossed—even once—there was no way to step back to the side you came from.
Five had been reckless, always rushing headfirst into danger with the kind of stubborn courage that made Odaka worry every time he saw the boy leave the classroom.
Six had been quieter, more careful, always thinking before acting.
And Seven had simply been Baku, the earnest student who stayed after class to ask questions, the boy who smiled awkwardly whenever Odaka praised his work.
They had all been his students, children and youngsters placed under his care, people he had promised himself he would protect.
Yet the future showed him standing over their bodies.
A teacher who had failed.
“To put an end to the bad dream, I had no choice but to fight you.” Seven’s voice echoed again.
Even Seven, the one who had begun to see the darkness within CODE, he still chose to stand against Odaka.
“I destroyed the traitor, Nox.”
For a moment, Odaka didn’t understand the words. They hung in the air like something foreign, something that refused to settle into meaning. Then, slowly and painfully, the realisation caught up with him.
Yorozu Baku, the quiet boy from cram school, the student who bowed politely before leaving class each evening, the child who had once trusted him.
That boy would become the one to kill him.
Odaka’s throat tightened.
Of all the futures he had imagined—of all the sacrifices he had prepared himself for—that was the one he had never wanted to see.
Because it meant that Baku would cross that same irreversible line, Baku would carry the weight of killing another human being for the rest of his life.
And Odaka had never wanted that burden for him.
Not for Baku. Not for any of them.
“You… killed… me?” The words slipped out quietly, almost absentmindedly, as though his mind had not yet caught up with his voice.
Silence followed.
Odaka lowered his head slightly.
Somewhere along the way, everything had twisted into something unrecognisable.
He had wanted to protect Yorozu Baku from CODE. He had wanted to protect Miyamoto Kureha from becoming another pawn sacrificed by people who viewed human lives as disposable.
He had wanted to prevent them from walking the same path he had been forced down.
But now—
Standing there with the weight of that future pressing down on him, Odaka realized he no longer knew which choice would save them.
Or whether any choice he made would only lead them deeper into the bad dream he had been trying to destroy all along.