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He wakes under the weight of the blue sky. It's brighter than he's ever seen it, the clouds lighter, the sun warmer, and no where is the sight of grey, bricked in walls. He turns his head and finds his partner's smiling, welcoming face.
"Philip," he says, reaching out to touch his hand. "What happened?"
He remembers the fresh autumn days, crisp wind and the scent of earth beneath their feet.
"Let's go," he says. "I want to see them, the survey corps!"
Philip follows him, mouth twisted in subtle disapproval, hand clasping tight when Shoutarou twines them together and tugs him along.
"They're amazing," he says. Philip shakes his head.
"Shoutarou, do you really think that? Look." He points, to the stained bandages, the tattered cloth, the bruised and tired eyes.
"Yes," Shoutarou says, eyes bright, and twinkling hard in the early twilight of the sun setting just beyond the walls.
"I found a book," he says, when summer's wrapped them in new beginnings. He's holding a thin, battered old book and grinning. "In Oyassan's basement. Did you know there's a giant lake out there? Bigger than anyone could cross on their own. It's called the ocean. Don't you want to see it?"
Philip turns his head away.
"I read it," he says. "It's fascinating. But that's all it is. Stories. The only thing on the outside of the walls is them."
Shoutarou makes a frustrated noise.
"You don't really believe that. I know you don't."
"It doesn't matter what I believe. It only matters what's true for us. There might be an ocean out there, but it's not ours. Not now. Maybe not ever again."
Shoutarou flops back onto the grass.
"God, you're depressing," he complains.
He wasn't supposed to be in the basement. He knew he wasn't; it was old, creaking, ancient cracks leaking murky light, covering forbidden knowledge like a moth-eaten blanket.
He misses its first appearance, the female Dopant, the cracks of its teeth, and the red of its tattered lips, stretched below lidless eyes and the shriek of laughter as the wall crumbles under the heat of its touch, melting away like scalded snow.
The ground rumbles and shakes, and when he looks up dust falls in his eyes, blinding him as he coughs and sneezes.
There's a screaming groan of abused wood and Shoutarou throws himself on the ground, covering his head with his hands.
Nothing happens, and he blinks up with blurry eyes at the silhouette framed above him.
"Get out of here," Soukichi barks, face twisted as he heaves under the weight of the fallen beam. Shoutarou scrambles out of the way and Soukichi drops the beam. It lands with a crash, and there's another ominous rumble as cracks race up the walls. "Go," he snaps, and they run.
He sees it before his legs stop running. It's four times his size, and when it turns its empty gaze on him his legs give out, buttery and numb. He slides in the dirt, settled like an offering under the shadow of its reaching hand.
Soukichi picks him up by the back of his shirt, choking him when it pulls too tight against his windpipe, but they're up. He hauls him over his shoulder, gritting his teeth and running between its legs. His boots pelt the cobbled stone, and the Dopant turns ponderously.
“This way,” Philip says, appearing before them, at the entrance to an alleyway. “The streets are narrower here. We can get through.”
Soukichi drops to his knees before him, shoving Shoutarou into his arms.
“Take him and go. Keep him safe,” he says. “And find her. Find your mother. They're alive, boy. They're alive.”
“Wait,” Shoutarou yelps as beside him Philip makes a soft sound of punched out pain. “Where are you going?! Come back!”
Soukichi grins under the brim of his hat, the white flash of teeth out of place in the screaming chaos around them.
“Go,” he says and Shoutarou finds enough strength to stand, but not enough to step towards him, not enough to follow him, and when Philip wedges his body under his, he forces him forward with shuffling, stumbling steps.
He sees the flash of a great eye, low to the ground and peering at them from the alley way as Soukichi lands on the back of its neck, but it's reaching for them, reaching for them, and it will crush them--
The walls smoke with evaporating blood, hissing from the severed limb. Soukichi jumps, twists away, but it's not enough and it catches him in its other hand.
Shoutarou screams, but it doesn't change a thing when its teeth clamp down.
He remembers the monotony of grueling training, of rain and sun and the quiet quilt of snow. The first time he flew. The first time he stood on his own, with Philip standing quietly at his back.
They work better as a pair. The whole facility knows it. There's no sense in separating them, Philip doesn't like it and Shoutarou feels like he's missing a limb. They do it anyways, grit their teeth and go along with it. Philip has an easier time, but still, it's obvious that when they're paired together it's like they're coming home. Partners.
“I'll do it. I'll make sure this city never cries again. No one else will die under my watch.”
The other recruits laugh at him, at his idealism. Even Philip has his reserves, urging him to caution.
“You're nuts,” says one of them, their brothers and sisters in arms. “Absolutely barking mad. I wouldn't want to get caught within a hundred meters of you and a Dopant with a mindset like that.”
The others laugh and Shoutarou shakes his head, running his hand through his hair, cropped shorter than he likes and naked without his hats, but there's not place for any of that vanity here.
“It doesn't matter if you believe me,” he says. “I'll do it. I've got your back.”
He remembers his face as his body disappears down a Dopant's throat, leaving the rest of him behind, dangling bloody from its gargantuan hands.
Shoutarou lets out a roaring scream and leaps at it, body tugged through the air by the harness and the whirl of his fan. He cuts it down with tears in his eyes, running into his grimacing mouth, stabbing like a knife in his gut, the twist of reoccurring failure and the quiet acceptance of its truth.
When he looks up from its smoking body he sees Philip. There's a Dopant in front of him, looming. Phillip reaching out to it in fascination, eyes wide like he recognizes it, and the Dopant is reaching back.
Shoutarou fires a burst of gas, flying towards him as fast as he can. He hits him like he's running into a wall, catches on him for a moment, sends him flying, but then he's stopping, his momentum failing.
“Hey,” Philip says, and in his memories he's waking him from a dream. “Are you alright? You were screaming.”
“Ah,” he says. “I don't remember.” But there's a woman's face in his mind, her face obscured in bandages and determination. He can't remember what she said, only the liquid flash of colored glass and the burn in his body.
Everything inside of the Dopant is heat, overwhelming and boiling, and maybe that's why he chooses then to remember it.
Either way, when he sinks beneath the waves, he only has one thought left to give.
“Philip. Don't die. I don't care about me anymore. But please, don't you die.”
He dreams of sitting with his mother and his father. They're eating dinner, and he's looking down at his plate, pushing the food around without much interest. His mother touches his hand. Tells him to eat, because even here meat is scarce.
He wants to go down to the inner walls today. He wants to meet him again, but he knows if he mentions it, they won't let it happen.
He swallows his food, tasting like iron, and runs out the door, his mother's disapproving voice chasing his heels as he runs.
Philip meets him at the gate. He has a small piece of pastry in his hands, rolling it around like he thinks it's fascinating.
“The baker made it,” he says, when Shoutarou reaches him. “He showed me how.” He holds it up. “Try some?”
The red of the raspberry filling drips down the side of his arm when he tilts his head back to swallow his piece whole.
“Hey,” Philip says. “Do you remember when we first met?”
“Huh? Yeah? Why are you bringing that up now?” He asks. Philip looks at him oddly, his head tilted, a frown on his face.
He looks strange, with his lips splitting open, peeling like rotten leaves.
“Do you remember,” he says again. “You saved my life. You and Soukichi. They would have killed me back then. But they didn't, because of you.”
His breath smells like the rotten dead and Shoutarou takes a step backwards, sleeve over his mouth as he gags.
“Philip,” he says. “There's something wrong with you--”
“Stop,” Philip says. “Don't you remember him? He's not one of them. Leave him alone, you don't have to hurt him too, keep taking them down. You can do it, please, Shoutarou, stop. You said you didn't want to make anyone else cry. Was that a lie?”
“What are you talking about?!” He grabs him by the shoulders, shaking him. The rest of the pastry drops down, splattering red that sinks into the cobbled stone. Passerbys are watching them now, eyes dark and shadowed.
“Dopant,” one of them hisses, pointing behind her hand as she whispers to another stranger and Shoutarou can't tell who she's looking at, himself or Philip.
“Dopant,” someone else agrees, and pretty soon it's a cacophony around them, people running, their mouths gaping as they scream, eyes wide and hands filled with tools turned to weapons.
Shoutarou fires himself into the air, Philip following him without a thought. They run, through smoking ruins and the lumbering husks of the Dopants, stretching towards them with pathetic lethargy, until they reach the bulk of the wall.
“Philip,” he repeats, shading his sore eyes from the over-bright light. “What happened?”
Philip smiles down at him, his hair blowing in the light breeze. Shoutarou barely notices the strain in it.
“Nothing, Shoutarou. We're free.”