It felt like he was being torn apart, being dragged in two directions at once.

Different possibilities reaching out to him, letting him taste their potential. Touch seemed so very far away. His vision blurred in a swirl of changing colours not unlike what he'd experienced in the depths of Momentum, but even then, he hadn't felt his very existence shatter.

Help, he wanted to cry out. Someone – Bruno, Sherry! But Sherry was already gone, and he was here, following her, when he'd been trying to save her. Was this what she had felt? Was this what she was going through, right now?

He felt a hand grab onto him, pulling him back, but it was already too late. He screamed, but no sound came out, reaching, blindly, anything anyone someone-

Because he was falling again and again and again and he couldn't stop himself, nothing to catch himself with, he'd gone too far and further than they could follow he just wanted to-

"Yuusei!"

A voice, he knew that voice. Something familiar, he clung to it, like a drowning person would.

"Don't be stupid!" he heard it say. Clarity dropped, and in desperation he reached further, further in, his mind finding the voice when actions seemed to do nothing. "You're my friend!"

Yes, that was it.

A friend.

Suddenly connected again to a body, pain became something he could feel again, and it seemed to strike every nerve on fire. He screamed, and his voice sounded off, odd, and he wondered if perhaps his throat had gone dry in between then and now. Or if he'd even simply forgotten how to use his voice.

His breathing was coming in gasps, and he heard more familiar voices asking him if he was all right – one sounded odd, though, wrong, because-

Eyes wide, he found his hands (gloved, with black material) touching cold, broken and dirty concrete. Blue jeans. Brown vests.

Blue-white hair hanging around his face.

"Oi, Kiryu! Answer me, what's goin' on? Jack got the last bastard, okay?"

Kiryu…?

No! This was… this was wrong, it was all wrong. And yet, when he looked up – there it was. His own face. Staring at him, concerned, when moments before he'd been hanging from the roof.

He remembered this.

Head swimming, Yuusei put Kiryu's hands up to his (Kiryu's) head, wishing that maybe he would wake up, that this would be a nightmare.

Instead, the only release was when his eyes rolled to the back of his head, and overcome, he fell into unconsciousness.

…

"Yuusei! Yuusei!"

It was no good. Despite the shuttle returning, miraculously, to their original destination, Yuusei still hadn't woken up. The closest to any sign of life that Bruno had gotten was the odd pained face his friend made, even though nothing was happening – that he could tell – to cause them.

He'd had to hold on, keep his balance as best he could while still grabbing at Yuusei so as to not let him suffer any further injury, while the shuttle crashed into the ocean.

The door opened again, and while it was a relief to be able to breathe in fresh air and see the familiar sight of home, it was overridden by the fact that he had to pick Yuusei up, throwing him bodily over one shoulder so that he still had a hand to balance himself with in order to get them both out.

"Yuusei! Bruno!"

That… that was them. Jack, Crow, Rua, Ruka, Aki. All of them.

"Yuusei?!"

"Oi, what's happening? Yuusei!"

Bruno could only shake his head.

"I- I don't know what's wrong. He… just won't wake up, since that time. He's alive, he just – won't wake up…"

And when the 'city island' appeared in the sky, Yuusei's birthmark glowed and protected him just as it did with the others.

Yuusei… what happened to you?

...

Waking up was a pain.

It wasn't like before, full of a world of hurt and noise and confusion, but instead he felt oddly cut off and too involved at the same time, which although preferable was still just as confusing.

He was in a room. One that, as he opened his eyes further, he could tell that he'd never been in before, although despite that it was about as familiar as the garage back home.

There were boxes of parts, some spilling out. The bed he was lying on was the same as back home. Looking at the walls on his own side, it seemed like someone had pinned up photos of him and the others – not just Team 5Ds, but impossible things, like the whole team from back in their Team Satisfaction days, and even earlier than that, too. Post-its with messages that more often than not read 'note to self' for something or other were pinned up and stuck all over the place.

There was a small bookshelf on one side, and the ceiling, up to the 'middle' of the room at least, was a dark blue-black, peppered with white dots similar to constellations. Clustering stars.

The other side of the room was an entirely different matter – everything was haphazard. A map of Satellite, already with all but one sector blacked out, had taken over the entirety of the main area of wallspace. It looked like there were bumps in places… as though it had started covering other things up.

Tools, duel cuffs, clothes, all were scattered on the floor, and there was a small pile of old videos in one corner that looked as though they were about to topple. There a box, locked and barred and chained shut.

Overall, the two sides were mirrored. But there was more to it than that – it almost looked, upon closer inspection, as though one, his own side that he had woken up in, had literally crashed into the other.

It took more energy than he'd have liked to just sit up and stand, and when he did he still felt off-balance.

The events of the day before had been coming back to him slowly, giving him context to each new thing.

But… if I was looking out of Kiryu's eyes… then where am I now? And why do I look like me again?

It didn't make sense. Neither did how he felt like he should, somehow, know what had happened. He was just missing a few pieces of the puzzle.

Maybe if he had a look through Kiryu's side – because really, who else could those things belong to – he might understand a bit better.

It only took a few paces to reach the middle. The division between the two was invisible, but at the same time the effects were obvious – the floor was different, the walls changed drastically. He reached out his hand, and gingerly touched the space in between the two.

At first, it was like touching treacle. Like trying to force two resisting sides of a magnet to touch. Something was pushing him back, and it felt like it was doing as much as it could to keep him out. Yuusei frowned, unaware and unable to think of anything that could be doing such a thing, and what harm it would do if he just-

…

"Well, this is new."

Kiryu had thought that things had gone back to normal since he'd come to. He'd been helped up by Yuusei and Crow, Jack having been dealing with that one last gang member. They'd told him he looked like he'd gone completely crazy, like his head was about to split open or something.

He barely remembered any of it, so he'd tried to pretend that it hadn't happened, and that it wasn't a big deal.

And now, there was a voice in his head.

A… very familiar voice. So much so that he'd ended up turning to Yuusei, only to notice that his friend was looking like he was in one of his 'quiet and pensive' moods, not up for talking.

So, who had he heard?

"Aa. Sorry. It's confusing for me, too."

There it was again. Was he really going crazy, or something?

The fact that he thought he heard laughter in the back of his mind certainly didn't help matters.

"No, you're not crazy. I think I'd be able to tell. Since, well. I am in your head, after all."

Oh. Great. Great. Whatever was going on, the voice-that-sounded-like-Yuusei was in his head. Well, that was nice.

Now, couldn't it just get out again, that'd be the thing.

Then they could all go back to living normally like normal people. Hopefully without the splitting migraines.

"Sorry. I can't. If I could, I would. But I don't know how. How to get back, that is – the pain was probably just a one time thing. I hope."

Any more of this, and he'd be getting a headache the more normal way. Couldn't he keep any of his thoughts private anymore?

He found his face heating up from anger, frustration and embarrassment. He couldn't believe he was taking this all so seriously. He couldn't believe he might end up being sent to the some psych research unit if someone heard he was talking to the voices in his head.

"No, I- I think this is my fault. I stepped into your soul. I didn't understand what I was doing, until I heard what you were thinking, and started seeing what you were. I don't know if it'll go back to normal, but-"

Well, it'd damn well better!

For a good long minute or so there was silence. Yuusei, sitting across from him in the hideout and tweaking with the duel cuff that'd been put under so much strain, looked up.

"Kiryu. Is everything all right?"

Even with everything that'd happened, he couldn't help but laugh and lean back.

"Oi – shouldn't I be asking you that, too? You were the one we ended up saving, after all!"

Yuusei nodded, clearly still concerned. "But you…"

"I'm fine," he said, waving it all away. "You weren't planning on sending for some doctor, right?"

He punctuated the last bit with a good poke in Yuusei's direction. He did not need some doctor. He was just fine. A bit messed up in the head, maybe, but fine all the same-

And he did not just hear an amused huff from the back of his mind. He did not. This couldn't be happening.

"No, we didn't. We're going to keep making sure nothing else happens, though," Yuusei said. "If it does, then we'll get Martha."

Kiryu let out a long groan.

"They won't be satisfied until they know you're definitely all right, you know," the voice said, amused.

Far too similar to Yuusei for his liking. And he was far too used to Yuusei's voice to know that the one in his head was laughing at him.

"Mn. Confusing as it is… you might as well start calling me that, you know. After all, there are two of us now, until I can figure a way back."

Two of Yuusei.

Two of him.

And one was in his head.

He groaned again, and the Yuusei he could at least see clearly smirked, thinking it was due to the conversation-come-argument they'd just been having.

I'm going to go insane.

He knew it. There was no way he could keep his sanity. Or maybe, he'd already lost it.

"No. You haven't done that. And if it looks like you might, I'm here. I won't let you do anything you'd regret, th-"

Eh? What was that, that feeling like the sentence had been cut off? What was that chill he had from that?

And why did the Yuusei in his head think he'd do things he'd regret? He was just joking around, really… so then, why?

"Nothing you need to worry about, Kiryu."

He snorted, and his eyes darted over at the Yuusei who'd gone back to tinkering with the cuff. Yeah… as if he'd be satisfied with that for an answer.

But from the mental silence, it looked like he wasn't going to be getting a better one, at least not for a good long while.

...

AN: I first started writing this several months ago, and it began as a simple plot idea. Then it was a hundred-odd word mini fic idea (set later in the timeline). Then, recently, an anon on Tumblr brought it up not long after I'd thought 'hey, that's a cool one', and so we have a beginning for it at long last. This chapter was originally posted in two parts on Tumblr.