#timeflipped au

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Keep

He quickly learned that material goods – even so far as his deck and his robes to a lesser extent – were insubstantial, and most were apt to disappear if he reset a timeline. In fact, he was pretty sure that the only things that stayed were the basics of his Dark Signer decks, the fact that he had robes, and his memories.

It became abundantly clear that collecting keepsakes was a fruitless, meaningless endeavour. And yet he still did, out of the fool’s notion that today, maybe tomorrow, he’d be proven to that maybe this time he wouldn’t make the exchange.

Leave

There nearly always came a time when he had to go.

Sometimes he was forced out of Satellite, sometimes he left of his own accord, sometimes he simply drifted between the two areas until he had to choose, and knew that if he stayed with his old team much longer the Dragon would notice him

The longer it went on the easier it became, though. Because he knew that he wasn’t leaving his old team behind, he was merely re-finding his other team, and besides. He was only leaving to help them.

He’d still worry. Nothing would stop him from worrying.

Murder

In the beginning, he hadn’t been above fatally injuring someone – or, specifically, Security at first and then maybe Yuusei later on.

Then came the time when he thought that he couldn’t possibly kill anyone any more, when he still saw their blood on his hands and the idea of doing that to someone else filled him with a sick, dread nausea.

But more and more, he realised that if it meant the people who were important to him surviving, if there was no other way… he’d be capable. He had it in him. 

What scared him was that he didn’t think he’d regret it.

Nightmares

The first time he’d had them, they’d been crippling. Night after night, he’d wake up while the others were still asleep, or they’d be woken up by the reason his throat was hoarse.

He’d had to explain away with half-lies of how things had happened earlier in his life that he preferred not to talk about.

Later he found that sleeping further away didn’t help, while sleeping nearer to the team did.

Sleeping in his room in Old Momentum, soft if old mattress under him and the sounds of the facility settling around him, he was usually able to sleep the best.

Obon

Once a year, as long as the date came around for him and he didn’t have need of resetting before then, he celebrated the festival of the dead.

He’d take his leave, for at least a short time for the day, of whoever he was with at the time.

Often being in Satellite at the time, he’d never bothered with a yukata, preferring to change into his most formal robes. He’d light offerings on a makeshift altar, and set small bits of candle aflame onto the sea.

Not for the dead and gone, but for those who had died only in his memory, even if they were alive in front of him.

Phantoms

Sometimes it was easy to slip into the way things had before.

Sometimes this meant something as innocuous as falling straight into banter where the other person hadn’t a clue still who he was.

Other times, it was something more painful. Such as forgetting that he wasn’t that person’s good friend, forgetting that they didn’t know he cared for them, forgetting how hard it would be when he remembered that they’d completely forgotten about him, all of the memories being one-sided.

He found himself conversing with phantoms. Ghosts of past versions of people he knew. Because sometimes make-believe was easier than the life he’d chosen.

Questions

“Where’d you learn to do that?”

He’d shrug and say ‘around’.

“When could you have ever tasted that kinda food?”

They laughed, and he laughed it off as well, saying something to the effect of ‘in my dreams’ or ‘maybe I remember from when I was a kid’, even though that was too far back to remember, and no parent would feed their four year old those kinds of things.

The Dark Signers would hope to catch him slip up on when he’d died, how long he’d been around as one of them, and he was always careful. He couldn’t let anything pass.

Rage

Although he liked to think he had a tight rein on it, his temper was a terrible thing to behold. Although all he truly knew of it was, to be honest, the reactions of others.

To put it bluntly, he scared people. He scared his own friends, and those he thought of as family.

He tried not to think about it, but ultimately used it, and frequently, to his advantage.

After all, people tended not to bother him when they knew he was the scariest thing in Satellite – maybe even in all of BAD.

Ironically, it made some feel safer around him, knowing that very fact.

Sensual

He didn’t notice the loss, having been too caught up in other things to really pay attention to that kind of thing.

It first came up in conversation when one of the old gang had wolf-whistled at a passing doll – prostitute or not, it didn’t stop the others from undressing her with their eyes. He’d heard, but he simply hadn’t twigged.

Then one of them had nudged him, and he’d sent them an annoyed glance, caught up in his own thoughts.

“Hey,” he heard, “d’ya think Kyou-chan’s not interested in girls anymore?”

He’d blinked. Were they implying…?

He shook his head.

“I’m just not interested,” he said as he realised exactly that.

Teach

It started with being bored.

He’d always known that being bored was one of the least satisfying things there was. So he’d had to find ways to fill the time – weeks, months, sometimes years – between major events in the timelines.

One time it would be reading through the entire library of Old Momentum. Another he’d dedicate to learning how to repair the place. He learned how to do more than basic sewing. Sign language. Chemistry. Cooking.

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Again

He knew almost exactly what they were going to say. It wasn’t just from knowing them so well – he sometimes wished it was, because then he might be wrong – but from having been through all this before so many times that the situations tended to repeat themselves, and sometimes he couldn’t help but refer back to events that either had or hadn’t happened yet.

And… then sometimes he’d slip. Just a slip of the tongue, finishing their sentences for them, opening a door at just the right moment. Saving up the right amount of money, giving the right card…

Again.

Because

He’d never have been able to do it without a damn good reason.

At first, the reason had been simple – save the world, get called a hero whether he wanted to be one or not, and get revenge on his old team for leaving him when he needed them the most.

Then it hadn’t worked out, and he’d found other reasons. He’d wanted to find a way to make it work so that they’d all live. So that they’d get through this.

He soon realised he didn’t care about revenge any more. Just surviving, and the team was all he needed.

Care

Storming from one end of the warehouse to the other, he couldn’t think when he’d started feeling this way, but it didn’t matter.

“What the HELL WERE YOU THINKING? YOU COULD HAVE GOT YOURSELF DEAD!”

Crow stared at him like he’d grown a head, rather than just started shouting.

“What was I thinking? I was playing the part, I’m not a goddamn kid, Kiryu!”

“I wouldn’t have you on my team if you were, but- DAMN IT!”

He cared. He wouldn’t be angry if he didn’t care. Somehow, after all this time, they seemed so much more fragile than they had, and it… scared him.

  Denial

Ccapac Apu knew what was going through his Dark Signer’s head.

Kiryu Kyousuke still believed that he was, more or less, somewhere between seventeen and twenty one. That he still thought of himself as a teenager was telling at times, and all the proof a spirit would need.

Ccapac, however, was a god of journeys and of time, and the truth was that the god could see his young charge’s journey stretch on…

Further, even, than his own.

So both god and priest indulged in their own denial. One, because it was easier than accepting the truth, the other because while he knew that Kyousuke would have to learn of it later, he would prefer it to be later.

End

The idea of things ending had become more of a wishful hope than anything else. A pipe dream. Something he – they – wanted to happen eventually, in some hypothetical timeline, but sometimes doubted would ever even happen

Kiryu had to hang onto it, though. Because if he didn’t, if he forgot what was keeping him going and the reason why he reset each time, all of the vague ideas he’d always had about a future for after the war, then there wouldn’t be a point any more. They’d have already lost.

So he dreamed of timelines he didn’t screw up, and sometimes even of being alive.

Failure

Failure had long since lost meaning as the loss of a sector, the loss of a duel.

Failure wasn’t even the loss of a friend, because at least they were still alive to hate him.

Instead, it had become watching one of his closest friends die, yet again, even when he couldn’t have done enough. It was watching them suffer, when it was his fault, his fault, if he’d only not said those things.

Failure, instead of losing because he’d lost, became losing because they still didn’t understand, and even when he won, they still didn’t understand.

Failure… was unacceptable.

Guardian

More and more often, he found himself taking the role of older brother to his team, when he used to just be the leader of the gang.

It wasn’t as though he’d had no experience in the matter, either. He hadn’t exactly grown up in the kind of area that Jack and Yuusei had, not even where Crow had dragged himself up from the bottom. His kind of people hadn’t messed around, and you were looked after or dumped, quickly.

Although even then, that wasn’t the same as watching over them when they were sick, and threatening a long and painful death on anyone who’d dare hurt just one member of his team.

    Home

There were three places he tended to stay in on a semi-regular basis.

The first was his original hideout, from before the true birth of Team Satisfaction. He still came there every so often long after the team had been formed, sometimes long after he’d defected or disappeared to the Dark Signers. It was where he started out.

Then there was Team Satisfaction itself. That was more people-oriented than a place.

Then… there was Old Momentum, and his room there.

That was the thing. He always chose the same one. And even though any changes would be reset, it was still, somehow, his.

Immortal

It wasn’t a word he’d throw around lightly. It wasn’t a word he preferred to bring up even in conversation with Ccapac, even.

Immortal. Deathless. Unceasing existence – and just as, if not more importantly… living long after everyone who he knew would die.

He hadn’t needed to think on it in a very long while, since the time travel. Regardless of how his hair was more white than blue now, he didn’t think of time as having passed the same way for him.

He’d worry about that later. When it mattered.

Once it was, maybe, too late for overthinking any unintended consequences.

Jenga

One Christmas early on - although what exactly was early was debatable – he spent it with Crow and Jack and Yuusei and he’d stayed with Martha, his far less vindictive nature having endeared him to her and likely made her think he was more trustworthy to have around the kids.

He’d brought a few party games he’d told them he’d been able to loot from some site or other, but he’d actually sweet-talked Misty into getting some for him somehow.

They’d stared at him when he’d been devastated by causing the block tower to collapse just by taking one wrong piece out.