They can't stay here.
This version of Touto is so, so much better off then the one they left. (The one they... replaced? Repaired? … Erased?)
But it hurts to be here.
It hurts so, so much to encounter these people, to even see the strangers carrying names and wearing faces that they met and knew, that they fought against and alongside.
They thought about meeting them, and trying again, at first.
But it would be cruel.
Not just for themselves, but for the others too.
Sento and Ryuga both know full well that they wouldn't be able to separate their friends who lived there from the people who live here, and that's not fair to these familiar strangers.
It's just too hard, seeing a laughing farmer and his friends, who never had to give up their humanity so their families could live, but who can joke and cheer and relax.
(And isn't it strange that he still falls for the same girl?)
Seeing a politician and his son, who hadn't been worn down and torn to pieces by a war, but are thriving and whole.
Seeing an engineer and a reporter who didn't have their lives mapped out for them, but who got to choose their own paths.
(And isn't it strange that the dynamics may shift, but the choices are still so similar?)
Seeing a pair of goofs with a band, and a successful one at that.
(And isn't it strange, that even after endangering him, they never thought to tell Tatsuya that Sento wasn't Taro, did they? They probably should have… but how do you tell someone that? And there was no time. Just one more mistake.)
Seeing a father who runs a booming cafe.
(And they never even knew him the first time around, did they? It was never really him back then.)
Seeing a daughter who goes shopping and sings karaoke with her friends and smiles, who doesn't carry that awful weight and guilt of being used and tricked on her shoulders.
(And why couldn't they have seen sooner that she blamed herself? Yet another mistake.)
Seeing a woman who got treatment and recovered.
(It hurts so much that she won't know him – not this version of him.)
Seeing a man who never had to throw a fight.
(The monkey jokes are harsher looking back – and couldn't have been further from the mark.)
Seeing a scientist who openly loves his parents.
(Did she know it was him? Even when he didn't know who he was, did she?)
(Did she know his father was still alive, too?)
Identities are a problem, too. Sento has one mans face and memories for another two, and Ryuga has a fully-human double born seven months after him. They don't (didn't?) exist here – not in a way that fits the shape of this new world.
They have a phone that's a bike, and a mechanical dragon that hasn't woken up. (Ryuga hopes it will, someday. He grew fond of the little guy.)
They've got two belts, and two bottles – one silver, one gold.
(Neither has tried using them. It feels like it would be bad luck to try, but that it would be even worse to get rid of them.)
Sento Kiryu and Ryuga Banjou cannot stay in this Touto, which is properly a city again, not a war-torn city-district-region-country hybrid.
WAS it a city in their world? They aren't really sure anymore. Neither of them remember much of politics before the Skywall. Sento only ever really picked up (was given?) memories through Katsuragi's days in high school, and a blurry version of what happened after the possession thing. Besides, Takumi Katsuragi had focused considerable more on science than… well, pretty much anything else going on around him. Ryuuga was 13 – he was just a kid! – when the wall went up, and a lot of his youth was blurred and smudged and faded by Evolt.
(Back home, it was Quite A Day when he realized that Misora was the only one there younger than him. Kazumin called him a kid for a week.)
They can't stay here.
So. they leave.
They leave the city that they remember but don't know.
Finding work is hard when you have a past that doesn't and can't match the world you're in, and everything down to the roads just isn't the same compared to the ones you know/remember/knew.
Some of the biggest differences are to history.
They look up the past of this other Earth, to see how far back it diverged from their own. They go back 25 years, and there hasn't been anything that returned from Mars. So that's a good sign, they guess.
(They hope.)
They go back further, to make sure they don't say the wrong things, and start looking up cultural changes as well, to make sure they can pass for people who've been here all along.
They come across something weird.
It's an urban legend site, sure, and neither of them is sure how they actually GOT to that page. But that picture is…
It's a photo from the early 1970's – discolored by age and grainy from being digitized. It's off center, and crooked, and looks amateur, but there's no reason to think it's not real.
A photo of two men on a cliff, posing next to a pair of motorcycles.
Two men wearing full masks and armored bodysuits.
A photo captioned as the "first known photo of Kamen Riders 1 and 2 together."
So. That's new.
The pair who fought as Build and Cross-Z dig deeper. And as they get closer to the present, more and more warriors of justice fighting under the name (title?) of Kamen Rider show up.
There's a period after the early 1990's where the records sort of stop, and no heroes show up for a while, but around 2000 new Riders start appearing again.
Some of them are just rumors, and urban legends, but others are definitely on record as being real.
And they keep reading, and the closer to the present the more familiar things sound.
8 years ago –rumors of a Rider in black with a partner who didn't QUITE pass for human.
7 years ago – a high school that emphasized space and science, with sightings of a Rider in silver.
Ryuga has visited that school, and been rescued by the warriors in those blurry, hastily shot photos.
5 years ago – an archived copy of a website for a dance competition, that turned into monster fights, that turned into battles between team members in armor, that then just stopped updating, and was followed by accounts that describe a city turned into a war zone.
That first armored rider helped get Sento to Ex-Aid's world. To what might be THIS world.
Neither of them have wanted to talk about the nagging worry they've both had the past month, living here on this other earth.
3 years ago –a temple that has never gone out of their way to confirm the rumors of a Rider in black and orange, but has never gone out of their way to deny them, either.
The concern about what happened that brought them here, alive. What brought them here when neither expected to come out of that last battle with Evolt.
2 years ago – news footage and reports from this worlds Seito, about a digital viral outbreak and the Riders that fought it – and the eventual press conference covering the aftermath, led by a doctor with a face that appears in two sets of memories in one persons head.
The fear that "they didn't get it right."
7 months ago – News articles about a resurgence of the virus and a giant mechanical hand reaching to the sky.
That "maybe they didn't fix anything."
7 months ago – terrified social media posts about another earth in the sky, one that had a jagged red scar.
That "maybe they just left home."
7 months ago – still frames collected from amateur videos of two Riders fighting a gear themed enemy.
That "maybe they just took themselves out of the equation."
7 months ago – two riders, a constant and an unknown,
That "maybe they left everything behind -
7 months ago – a rider in gold, with a name and reputation to put to the mask,
"- left everyONE behind -
7 months ago – and a rider in blue and red, never seen before or since.
"maybe everyone else is gone and the people here – these same-but-different people we know-but-don't – are just the alternate versions, not merged or remade or saved, but just preexisting familiar faces that will never, ever replace the ones that I just ran away from and left behind to d-"
And Sento didn't even know he was talking until he couldn't get the words out, until he was choking on fears and doubts and grief and guilt, and sobbing at things that were "all his-and-my fault and he-no-I did this and brought so, so much suffering and then I just ran away and I didn't even have the decency to remember-"
And Ryuga grabs him, holding him close in almost a death grip to keep this stupid, egotistical, terrified genius from shaking himself to pieces – physical, mental, emotional, whatever. And he's shaking too, because he hasn't wanted to think about these possibilities, either.
Hasn't wanted to think about how maybe they messed up – that he's the one who messed it up, because if nothing else, the other him shows that black-hole bastards or no, he is consistently a more of a fighter than a thinker, and if anyone that was there that day screwed up the creation of a literal world it would be him…
So, he keeps saying quiet, ragged reassurances to his best friend – only friend now that the others are strangers again – both of them red-eyed and hoarse and SCARED, because they just. Don't know what really happened in and after that gap in reality where space and time and energy were colliding and tearing apart. And that not knowing, that's terrifying for both of them, but neither have dared bring it up for just this reason. It's so, so terrifying to have so much information and yet still have nothing but questions.
He hasn't said anything about it, doesn't say anything now, but he can see. It's awful for Ryuga, the not knowing. But 'not understanding' isn't really NEW to him – confused has kind of been his default state since they met and he hasn't hid that at all – but for Sento? He always refused to admit it, and now he can't help but let it show.
Sento Kiryu had really only existed for a year before they met at a factory and a fight, and been manipulated and lied to. He kept trying to find himself and kept coming up with nothing. He made so much of his identity rely on his smarts and on Build and just hid away anything that didn't fit the person he was or might have been or could be – anything that didn't have a place in the puzzle of his past and present. He took whatever he couldn't make room for and buried it behind the mask of a grinning nerd and the helmet of a warrior for love and peace.
Then they were thrown into war, and so, so many awful things had happened, and Ryuuga hadn't said anything back home, hasn't said anything here and still doesn't, but he's been seeing it for months. He's seen his friend shouldering worry and stress and doubt until he broke and then hid that behind the same smile and behind his work and the fighting. The war dragged on and grew and got worse and more personal and Sento had just kept taking the responsibility and blame on himself and bearing it and breaking and kept going anyway.
This is definitely not the time for them to talk about their terrible coping strategies, or for the talk about the mysteries they had and still have, or what happened during the war. It's very much not the time for anyone to bring up that half of those fights… that both of them kept going to the battlefield with no plans to make it out.
It's not the time for that, because they're at a park, the one they stayed in last night, and they should probably find somewhere less public for this because they're two sobbing wrecks who can't explain this to anyone else. They can barely explain it to themselves.
"We're out of our element here, aren't we? Listen, man, you can't lose yourself to this, okay? Who else'll be the brains of this outfit? Pretty sure we're both screwed if it's me."
He chuckles, half-hearted and hoarse and so tired. Looks like he'll have to take the lead for a while.
"This is messed up, I know. So just… take your time and breathe, okay? When you're ready, we can go and… I dunno, find some of these other Riders, maybe? And we can try to get some answers.
"Just don't go, okay? We're in this together, Sento, we have to stick together.
"We're all we've got."
(first chapter originally posted on September 2, 2018 on my tumblr, Sailor-Cresselia. This version has been edited for grammar and to be part of a multi-chapter fic.
Cross-posted to my Ao3, SailorCresselia)