There's something different about her—each time he comes back. Or maybe there isn't, and he just thinks something has changed.
Because he has, each time he jumps.
Each time one fragment of him is left in the past, he loses a part of himself, and another little part of her.
/
The first time it's a shared spark: the arabesque they once danced using the algorithms and equations that bound them in frightening, inescapable symbiosis.
The first time he goes back it's a little harder to connect with her, because he knows. And he wishes…he misses being able to burn up from that flame inside her.
That's the part of Kurisu he misses first.
/
The second time it's a certain pathway of thought that changes: she used to catch the words from his tongue a split second before they dropped—but now he's the one making the predictions.
"You did it, didn't you?" she states again—not a question—there's a brokenness in him that is obvious to her. She is exactly as horror-stricken as she was the first time he told her.
"Yes."
And it's still to save Mayuri.
He does it, each time to save something he can't lose…
But Okabe knows he's losing something. And he still doesn't know whether it's part of himself that's being sliced away, or part of something else-that could have been.
/
He loses track if it's the third or fourth—or the ninth or tenth time—but he starts to scare himself because he's already jumping into the past with foreknowledge of the unpreventable—but it is nevertheless something he must observe.
And Kurisu will say it again.
And Mayuri will die again.
/
Many times. So many times.
He's starting to fall to pieces inside his skin, a shell of broken skeleton and shredded muscle held inside a fragile, restless machine—
—he keeps turning the clock back—back—back.
"I'm…worried about you," she says. He mouths the words even as she speaks them.
"I don't think you're supposed to keep doing this. There has to be some other way…"
Kurisu worries about him. At least he has that.
In every World Line, he has that.
/
Give up. Give up.
No, not on Mayuri. He will save her. He will…he'll diverge from this Line and save her. And Kurisu will die.
He loves her, with whatever splinter of himself is still left, because her hesitation is all on his behalf. She's so stubbornly sacrificial. He loves that about her. He hates that about her.
"Okabe," she says, in a soft voice of real, honest, heartbreaking concern.
That particular tone of voice is the only part of the past he's ever looked forward to.
But he's still not "Okabe." It is he who is changing, after all. He is not himself. He is not himself.
He falls forward, and hides his face in his hands, and weeps.
/
But it's not about him, after all. It has never been. So it doesn't really matter that he's changed so much.
Does it. Does it.
/
It matters. Because Kurisu is bleeding and sinking and soft—she's still warm in his arms—and she says, "I'm sorry"—and he was supposed to save her—it was his only job—
He did it to her.
She bled out alongside him with each jump into the past—
And now, he sees, he's holding the knife.
/
It's not about saving the world, or saving Mayuri, or saving whatever fragile, intangible, lovely thread has bound him to Kurisu.
It's about a lovelier, more entangled web—the web of the Gate, and Time itself, and his ability (that is not his ability, but a nerveforce within humanity—to read and remember)—and his job is bigger than anything he feels he is capable of.
/
There is something different about her, this time.
The Kurisu he remembers would have tried to bite his head off by now, but this one just stares.
"You," she says, in no uncertain tone. "You," which just means, "we've met once."
"You"—he shouldn't hear the two golden words that precede them in his mind.
"You"—who have seen her live and die, "you" who have killed her and resurrected her. "You" have no right to stay here and demand more from her than she remembers.
/
But Kurisu has never been one to let a little thing like science tell her what she can and can't remember.
"Love is a messy word," she says, after their kiss.
A kiss he closed his eyes for. And maybe it's all the times he's jumped back—but it feels like the shortest, most reelingly euphoric few moments of his life—
And when she pulls back and his eyes open again, she's already blushing and stammering.
"Let's—let's just say—we work well together."
/
The last time it's a sunset they watch, stranded on an American highway—under a baking, ruthless, incandescent sky.
And he watches the sunset, and the sparks it leaves: tingling and salty on his cheeks. He watches it with both eyes, because this is one sunset that will never be repeated.
This is a moment he'll never be able to relive, and he's happy—so happy for that.