Note: This is a remix of Astarael00's To Live Again: ffn/s/8252372/


samsara

for Rae


We can be partners. We can change the world.

-x-

He's the one who tells her to stop working on the antidote. "Ran says she'll wait, and you don't owe me anything, so you should do what you really want to do."

She stares at him and then at the lab equipment. He leaves. The computer hums, and the clock ticks. She remembers what her sister said the last time she saw her: Stop working on that drug, Shiho. Go find a boyfriend or something.

She doesn't know how much time has passed when she finally shuts her lab notebook and begins to clear up her desk. Not long after, the professor's quirky inventions spill into her side of the lab, and she forgets about the locked file cabinet in the corner.

-x-

She briefly wonders about samsara and karma after he calls her, his voice pitch revealing everything about the problem at hand. The Organization may have disintegrated years ago, but APTX remains like the imprint of time on the cosmos.

He brings out their childhood clothes while she pores over yellowed research notes. They joke about the new names they can use. From Doyle, with love. They discuss their options and the danger from the remnants of the Organization. Neither comment on the irony of time running out for the two people who have all the time in the world, but they see it in the aging professor's kind smile, hear it in his terrible puns.

Ran refuses to say goodbye. He says let's meet again.

-x-

They are two with no one else to hold on to. Her sister, the professor, Ran and her family, their friends. All gone with no final resting place. What does it matter to have tracked down Gin to put an end to a ghost from the past? What does it matter to have switched personas when it's only the mask and not the core they've changed?

He flips through the photos of death from time to time to remember. She watches him in silence and updates the files on APTX with the new information they've gathered from the network they've built. She stops noticing the web they're weaving and ignores the quicksand they're entering in order to stay with him.

-x-

She doesn't recognize her reflection. She doesn't remember how she got here or why. She's alone in a locked bedroom that doesn't belong to her. Only the small pill in her small hand is hers to guard.

He finds her, tells her to take the pill, and pulls her out of the house before it explodes. She regains consciousness. This has happened before, she recalls as they help each other bandage their wounds. He'll always find her. Shield her. So she decides it's her job to bring him back from the abyss now that she's uncovered the last notes on APTX.

-x-

She argues with him about his plan to "do good." She knows he once wanted justice, and maybe he still does, but he wants something else more than that. Pain is pain, someone once said. She doesn't want to lose him, and he doesn't want to lose her, but together forever is the source of their pain, not the solution.

"We can do this," he insists.

(Help me.)

"We need to let go," she doesn't say.

(To live again.)