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This is how the reversal works: when the card is placed on the platform, there is a flash of light, and a person materializes on the far side of the machine. It's not unlike summoning a monster, except that this is not a duel, and these are not monsters but people.
Some are familiar faces. Some are not.
"There is a bunk prepared on the second floor for you," Ruri says. "Look for room 215." Do you have family?" The woman nods. "Please go over to where Yuto is, and he will see about locating them for you."
"Thank you, miss," the woman says. "If you— if you have a moment. My son, he was still in our house when—when it happened. Do you know if—"
"There is nothing left of the Heartland City you used to know, Takeda-san," Ruri replies. "Please, go to Yuto. We will do everything we can to help."
After the war ended, Academia's carding technology was turned over to Xyz. With aid from Synchro and Standard the infrastructure of Heartland City was restored, and gradually, people are returning to their former lives. Gradually, things are going back to normal.
This building— small, flat, wider than it is tall— was fashioned after the Resistance bases, built on the grounds of what used to be Heartland Academy. It is a halfway house for the displaced, to allow them to recover and regroup before they return to the city. Heartland City is strong, and protects its own, but even so it is not easy.
In the meantime...
The next card gives Ruri pause; she places it anyway. A flash of light and the man appears; wavy red hair, green eyes, a beauty spot beneath his right eye. He blinks, the expression on his face turns to surprise. "Ruri...?"
Ruri ignores it. "Your name, your age?"
Dennis blinks and then gives the information. She finishes writing, hands him the more detailed demographic survey. "Turn it in whenever you're done. Men's housing is on the third floor; there is a bunk prepared for you. Look for room 301. Do you have family?"
"No," Dennis replies.
"That's all then. Here are your keys and a temporary ID card. If you need anything, let me know."
"—Thank you," Dennis says. He looks like he's about to say something, but then he shakes his head and walks away.
Eight bunked beds in a tiny room. Six are already taken; the occupants are sitting at the table in the middle of the room playing some kind of dice game. Dennis watches for a moment, and then drops his things on the lowest bunk nearest the door and joins them.
Later, Dennis excuses himself from dinner and returns to the room alone so he can have time to think and settle in properly. As he unpacks, there is a knock at the door.
"Dennis," Ruri says. "Can we talk?"
He nods, and leaves his things in half-disarray and follows her into the garden.
The reparation work hasn't reached the nonessential areas, so the garden is still piled high with rubble, and there are small weeds growing between the pieces of brick and mortar. Ruri pulls a green stem from the wall and twists it through her fingers. "Yuto is concerned," she says. "I have to ascertain that you are trustworthy, you understand."
Her eyes are sharp, assessing. She doesn't wear suspicion well; smiles suit her better, he thinks, but it's not his place to say anything. "Very well," Dennis says." "What do you need from me?"
"What are you doing here," she says without preamble. "Why were you a card. And why weren't you with Academia."
Dennis thinks about what happened, and then thinks about how to say it; the way he tells this story will determine whether he is allowed to stay here. He tells her about Sakaki Yuya and the Lancers, and about meeting Tenjo Kaito and Sakaki Yusho. Just the bare facts; she didn't ask for his life story.
The sun has almost fully set, and in the rapidly failing light, he can't read her expression. Somewhere during the telling she had clicked on a voice recorder, and now she clicks it off and stows it back in her pocket. For a long time she doesn't say anything.
"... And me?" she whispers eventually. "Why did you lie to me, Dennis?"
Dennis is about to say: it wasn't you. It was the Professor and my mission and it wasn't you, it wasn't personal. But then he looks at her and thinks, it was.
"It wasn't all an act," he says quietly. "I did it for the wrong reasons, I know that. But everything I said to you, it was real."
"How can you expect me to believe you now."
"I don't. I don't have the right to ask you to believe me, or even trust me. But you asked for the truth, so I told it to you."
Ruri is already walking away, back in the direction of the building. "Time tells," she says. "Time tells."
In this place no one is made to work who does not want to, but everyone does so anyway because it will make the restoration go that much quicker. When Dennis asks how he can help, he gets handed a datapad and a tall stack of paper records retrieved from the ruins of Spade School. Trying to recover a census of all of Heartland is a daunting if not impossible task. But this— this is a start.
Todoroki, the guy who has the bunk next to Dennis's own, notices Dennis idly spinning his pen as he works. "Hey, Dennis, man. That's cool. Can you teach me to do that?"
And that's how Dennis bemusedly amasses a small audience of second and third floor residents: men, women, children, all amazed when he vanishes coins and rubber bands and then pulls them from under tablecloths and behind their ears. They produce dice, plastic cups, keyrings, ping-pong balls, and Dennis collects it all and builds a little magic show from them. Bring smiles to people's faces. Dennis can do this. It's the least he can do.
Some people have cards— ordinary playing cards, since none of them carry dueling decks any more— and that makes Dennis hesitate but he takes a deep breath and shuffles, cuts, deals anyway.
(He's waiting for the day their wary eyes turn to suspicion, realization, rejection. But they don't. Days pass, and they still crowd in the doorway of his room to see his show.)
Two weeks later on a rainy Wednesday after lunch he goes to room 302 where an audience has already gathered. Drops his backpack on the floor and sets up on the large folding table. Tosses six dice in the air and smiles. "It's showti—"
Ruri is standing in the doorway.
"It's showtime," he says, more quietly. The dice clatter to the table. He looks down at them, and at his shaking hands. Then he picks the dice up and keeps going.
Ruri still comes to watch, sometimes. She stands in the middle of the crowd and just looks, never says anything, never smiles. When he invites volunteers, she never steps forward.
It's horribly, horribly like the way it was before.
"Hey, Dennis," someone says, "weren't you one of Sakaki Yusho's students before? Do you know how to entertainment duel?"
"Ehh, really?! Kurosaki Ruri was a student of Yusho too, wasn't she?"
"Ah, Ruri! Do you and Dennis really know each other? You should perform together."
"Oh, Yusho's students were the best in the whole city. If they began putting on shows again, it'd make people very happy, you know..."
They push Ruri out of the crowd and towards him, and he takes one look at her and quickly turns back to defuse the situation: we're all tired, it's been a long time since either of us performed, we don't have the materials or equipment to do something like that, please don't put us on the spot...
But later, when the crowd disperses, Ruri stays behind. "So, they said, we should perform together?"
She is watching him very carefully.
"I think we should do it," he says, more confidently than he feels. "Although, only if you want to, of course."
She thinks for a long moment, and then nods. "I have to go now but we can talk again later. Think of a routine or something."
That evening after work, he throws together a draft: a fairytale with a twist, where the rescued princess finds out the prince is her enemy and the dragon was protecting her all along. It's a story he has had in his head for a long time and never had reason to put to paper.
Ruri reads it over and nods, and Dennis thinks all those scriptwriting classes in You Show paid off after all.
She places a deck and a duel disk in his hands. "When we went to Clover we found a couple of the performance decks still intact. After practice, you return them to me immediately. Yuto is watching—" she glances at the security camera— "and the duel disk is tracked, so don't bother trying anything."
"I won't," he says. He wonders if his word even means anything to her.
"Ruri, are you sure you want to do this?"
"I'm sure. You said it yourself, Yuto: we need to know if he's trustworthy."
"Ruri, I know you can make your own decisions and judge for yourself. But promise me you'll stop at once if anything goes wrong."
"I will, Yuto."
For the next three weeks, they practise four hours every evening in the common area after everyone else has retired to their rooms, with either Yuto or Kurosaki to chaperone. It is time Ruri has to take away from working, and she makes up for it by skipping lunch and breaks, so during the day Dennis brings her sandwiches from the mess hall.
It's not unlike like old times in You Show when group practices ran long; Dennis wasn't involved but he'd do the dinner run for everyone anyway ('ah, it's fine because I get to see you, Ruri. Don't work too hard, all right?') He still remembers the condiments she likes, how she takes her coffee. He still remembers sitting in the empty audience stands, the sole applause at the curtain call.
"Thanks, Dennis, you're the best," Ruri says absently as he places the food on her desk, and then she looks up and her eyes go cold.
The night before show day they rehearse even longer than usual. Yuto stifles a yawn behind his hand, and Ruri notices at once and tells him to go, it's just one more run, they'll be fine.
A third of the way through the run Ruri missteps on the stairs and barely manages to catch herself before she falls. She recovers quickly, but it throws off the timing, and Trapeze Magician has to pick her up from halfway up the stairs instead of at the top, and that means the flight trajectory is wrong and--
Dennis keeps on with what he's doing but he knows a dud run when he sees one and he braces himself for the other shoe to drop.
"Let me down, Dennis. Let me down."
Dennis makes a cutting motion with his hand and Trapeze Magician descends, deposits Ruri gently back onto the floor. She doesn't get up. He crosses the room to get her water; the acoustics of the empty room amplify the click of his platform shoes. "I'll get Yuto," he says, and turns towards the door.
"No. Stay here."
He turns back around, and walks to her side and sits cross-legged beside her. For a long time she just stares at the opposite wall, doesn't move or speak. The room is very bright, very silent, and Dennis wonders if the uncertain harmony they'd arrived at over the last four months will come crashing down after all.
"Ruri?"
"You know, Dennis. For a very long time all I could think about was how much I wanted you dead. And then when I heard you died, all I could think about was how I wished I'd been the one to do it."
"Sorry you didn't have the pleasure then," Dennis says. "You know, if you still want to. I won't stop you." He sets the duel disk down between them.
"... No, I don't think I will." She isn't looking at him. "Yuto said you told them where I was and then carded yourself. What's it like, Dennis? To live knowing that you did all those things to Heartland City?"
"Awful enough to jump off the prow of a ship and card myself, I guess."
"When I was there," Ruri says. "Locked up in that tower. For months and months. I hated myself for being alive, when everyone else was dead."
Dennis thinks of that first day when the bright light faded and he saw Ruri looking back at him; of men playing dice around a table, and the people who go to room 302 on Wednesday afternoons to see his show. "Everyone is alive again now," Dennis says quietly, "It isn't easy, but being here, it helps. Todoroki, Takeda-san, everyone, they'll be all right. And what you do, it helps."
"—Are you saying that to make me or yourself feel better?"
Dennis laughs. "As long as the outcome is right..."
"You know, Dennis? Don't you dare go and try to die again. You bring smiles to people's faces, and Heartland needs that more than ever."
"Then I won't. I'll keep performing for as long as I live."
"—Is that sincere, Dennis Macfield? I was with you so long but I could never ever tell whether what you were saying is true, you know."
"It is. If that's what you want, Kurosaki Ruri, then that's what I'll do. I'll spend the rest of my life making it up to you. Whether you believe it or not, well, that's up to you, isn't it? But it's true."
"—Get some rest, Dennis," she says, with a softer expression than she's shown him in a long, long time. She stands up and gathers her things; he follows suit. "Big day tomorrow, right?"
He nods. "Big day tomorrow," he echoes in reply.
The next evening, backstage, Dennis says, "We don't have to do this if you don't want to."
"I'm not doing this for you," Ruri says, resumes applying her makeup. "I'm doing this for everyone."
Dennis nods. "You look beautiful, Ruri."
"Thank you."
Everyone in the facility has gathered here to see their show, and they walk onstage hand in hand to the blinding spotlights and the thunderous applause. By now Dennis knows their routine thrice over by heart, doesn't have to think to remember his lines; he can do it forwards and backwards and in his sleep. But precisely because the entertainer acts so well, no one will ever believe he is sincere.
This isn't redemption, or even forgiveness. And Dennis knows; how he knows it isn't. But Ruri is here tonight, performing at his side, and that alone is far more than he could have asked for and far more than he deserves.
Far above, Trapeze Magician lets Ruri go, and when she falls, Dennis is there to catch her.