Author's Notes: Oh dear, I had no idea that I'd get such an odd response to the last chapter. I'm very sorry to anyone who thought that I'd chosen to end things there. I promise you, I mark all completed fics as complete, so no more worrying in the future. It might help to keep in mind that this story is not being told in linear chronological order, or even Kurumi's personal chronological order. Things may seem more final than they are. Also, is there anywhere in any of these chapters that outright mentions death, funerals, tombstones or memorials? No news is no news, and absence of evidence is only evidence of absence, not death.

The book mentioned in this chapter is Forbidden Knowledge by Stephen Donaldson.

Thanks so much to everyone who's reviewed so far, especially those who've had criticisms or points of interest; there's been some useful and constructive comments and I really value them.

2003, North Senior High School, Tokyo; 2003, Koizumi Residence, Tokyo

I wasn't adjusting to the time-plane of my parents adolescence very well at all. Uncle Itsuki was, surprisingly enough, quite similar to his past self. Mister Koizumi was all politeness and smiling friendliness when he joined. In the end, I found myself far more awkward around him than any of the others. I was in far more danger of betraying myself near him. When I had the chance I made tea, tidied the room, and excused myself to the bathroom or to the library to find a book. I did not like the thought of being in a conversation with him, or the same room as him.

Aunt Yuki had always been the person to suggest novels. Not just Science Fiction, either, though she did have a soft spot for those. As my mother had been overwhelming me with her ghost-hunts and terrifying stories, Aunt Yuki had been sending me ebooks, real books and other media at very carefully chosen intervals. Since she'd been the one who helped me smuggle slice-of-life and romance comics into the house (when Mum more or less set anything not supernatural or conspiracy related on fire), I had grown to trust her taste and judgement. I had also learnt that she didn't offer her own books up to strangers.

She valued them – valued all data related technology, no matter how old – with the reverence and respect that humans were supposed to hold for their ancestors. So when I showed up, meek and afraid, after a hellish week operating under my new mission parameters, I was incredibly shocked to have a book pushed across the table towards me.

"Huh... I mean, yes? Miss Nagato, was there something you wanted me to...?" I was flustered, and had no idea how to react. I recognised the book. During my early childhood, she had kept it sealed in a glass cabinet. This was a favourite of hers. A special book. I'd never touched this copy; she'd bought me a reprint of my own when I had a large enough vocabulary to read it.

"You should read it." She said flatly. It was hard to pin-point at any given time the way that this blankness was different to the Aunt Yuki I knew, but the difference surely was there. Distant. She had a distance from me, because she had no memories or knowledge of me at all. I suspected that her normal wryly joking manner was missing, too. If it was there, it was buried deep.

"I know how to read books! I mean, more... this is your own, right? Why not just tell me to go borrow one from the library?" I opened the beautiful hard cover and turned to the page with the bibliographical information. "See? This is a first edition, and it's from when the author wasn't very well known. It's rare, and a real piece of science fiction history!"

Nagato stared blankly at me. "It is."

I couldn't tell if that had been a statement or a question. I felt like slamming my hands into fists and punching the table, but I had a job to do. I had to calm down, contain my irregular moods and hormones. I had to maintain cover, not reveal anything suspicious, especially to her.

"So you shouldn't go around loaning a book like this. I couldn't possibly presume to take it from you. No, I'll take your recommendation and go take a cheaper copy out from the library, and..."

As I spoke she flipped the cover closed – it nearly caught my fingers in it – and shoved the book towards me resolutely. "I insist, Miss Asahina. Please read this."

Well, if she was going to be so careless with my Aunt Yuki's favourite book, I might as well look after it myself, I reasoned. To the unaware Miss Nagato, I nodded humbly and accepted the book. I took great care while packing it into my bag to not bend or harm it.

"I will read it. I have heard a lot of good things about this author, so I am sure I will enjoy it."

She had no time for me after that, though. Miss Nagato walked in a precise line across the room to her usual chair. She sat down with mechanical movements and picked up a book, turned the pages quickly and regularly as she read. The sound of a vocal and energetic voice, Miss Suzumiya, came echoing down the hallway. I started at the sound, but Miss Nagato had no visible reaction. Not even when Suzumiya threw the door open and strode in screaming in eagerness and brandishing a thick laminated paper shopping bag. I was so used to being manhandled by my own mother that she'd got half my top undone before I began honestly protesting.

"Ahh, no! Miss Suzumiya, I..." I tried to fight back, but I hadn't started early enough and she already had my shoulders pinned. I cast a desperate glance over to Miss Nagato, but she simply kept reading as if the situation had nothing to do with her.

"Please, stop! What are you doing?" In the hysteria of the moment it was hard for me not to laugh out loud. I knew that look in her eyes. If I hadn't caught a glimpse of her face, I'd have been able to smell it on her, she was so close. Freshly washed fabric and thread. Ironing and sewing, is what she smelled like. She had some stupid costume in her bag for me. Probably stupid alien inspired fashion or a character costume. I'd suffered them my entire life. I had guessed this might be coming.

But then the doorknob clicked open. Kyon was there, struck motionless and agape. I gasped. I fell still, and Suzumiya kept on wrestling my clothing off for a split second before she realised anything had happened.

"I...I..."

The photograph had been bad enough, but this was worse. Because Kyon had just been the medium of my humiliation that day; this time it was entirely different. I'd attracted enough looks from other boys in the last few years that I knew it when I saw it. He was... no, he was going to be my father... and he was staring at my... at my...

I felt faint and wrong inside. I wanted to do what Suzumiya was doing, yell and scream and kick him out of the room. But I couldn't do anything more than draw in gaspy painful breaths and shriek as I was pushed half-over the desk. Suzumiya stripped me mercilessly, ranting all the while.

"Boys. I don't know, Mikuru-chan! Jeeze they make me mad! What did he think he was doing, just staring at you like that? You can't even undress yourself now!"

I formed half-hearted replies in my mind. She was the one who hadn't locked the door, and if she'd asked me to cosplay for her I probably would have, and it really wasn't Kyon's fault that it was so awful for me – it was all my own, for wanting this assignment and thinking that I could know my father, cheat time and... and it all just came out as weak sounding half-words and gasps. My eyes were a little wet and stinging, but Suzumiya didn't notice. I bent my head, let my hair fall between us as I took over buttoning up the dress.

It wasn't, after all, what I had expected. A too-short and far too fetishistic costume, tight in the wrong places for someone with my self-confidence. Suzumiya wasn't the experienced seamstress she would become in her adulthood; the seams itched and sat a little wrong. It was restrictive and hard to move in properly. But it was far from the worst thing that had happened to me all day, so I just went along with it.

I don't... really want to talk about what happened next. When I try to think about it now I laugh a little, but recounting it like this makes me feel a little disgusted and violated even till today. I have to do it like this instead, a brief short list of what happened. Kyon came back in. Haruhi made him take photographs of me. She pulled open the top of my costume, and... they took more photographs. I tried to play down my emotional reaction at the time, but that moment has left a scar deep within my heart that lingers to this day.

I think that was the moment that I started growing up. Seeing the people in my life not as reliable loved ones, but unpredictable elements who were just as wrapped up in their own lives and dramas as I was. Suzumiya and Kyon could not sense or see their genetic relationship with me. My Aunt and Uncle were not guiding forces in my life. I felt struck suddenly by my own frailty and ignorance; I hadn't known about the potential instabilities within Suzumiya – my own chronology – before I came here and read the dossiers. I hadn't known the true purpose of my assignation until I had been activated, as it were, from being a sleeper agent. It was possible that there was more that I was unaware of. The rules against forming romantic or strong relationships while embedded made complete sense now. It wasn't about cruel separations, but about the unknown. Time paradoxes.

I was aware enough, but were they? When Suzumiya was done with me, I gathered my clothes and bag. I went home as early as I dared, and showered, washed all of it off me. I cried until I could feel my sinuses and skull hurt from the pressure, and then I sat damp and dehydrated and exhausted in my bedroom. I needed to escape, and I had nothing better to do, so I got myself a glass of water and sat down to read the book Nagato had leant me.

I had read it before. The book had been part of the literature data-dump I had received before coming on my mission. I could refresh the text in my memory any time I wanted to. But touching base with something so familiar and recognised from my childhood might help me. Heal me. It had been one of the stranger books to be included, but now with my heart broken the way it was the whole thing made sense. Not just the book itself, but the whole series it had come from. All of them, on my required reading list.

I had just caught myself up with the over-arching plot and was getting into the suspense of it all, when the bookmark fell out from between the pages and into my lap. Like always, I was so busy hating the character of Nick Succorso that I was torn between reality and fantasy. I wanted to keep reading right to the end of the series, to see the bastard shamed and beaten and dead. But there was writing on the bookmark. Clean tidy writing. Nagato's handwriting? No. It wasn't... regular enough. And there was no way that Nagato could have known to put the bookmark in this book, at that page. Nagato would quite absolutely never have known which colour to write in, a lovely purple. This was from Aunt Yuki!

I am aware of your mission, as is Koizumi. Our purposes are best served collectively. Please proceed to the address listed in your file on Koizumi this evening.

I had no idea how she'd sent it to me at the time. I was so overcome with the week and day that I had had that I forgot the mission data I had obtained on my first day. I completely forgot about Nagato's atemporal synchronicity as I jumped up with renewed energy and scanned my memory for the address, matched it to the public transport timetables, and shoved my keys in my pocket.

On my way up the stairs to the old and large semi-detached that Koizumi's family lived in, the chill of the night air and the respite of the trip over finally let my own mind catch up with me. I stood for a moment, feeling sheepish and stupid. Of course Aunt Yuki had written the letter, planted it. She was atemporal. She could synchronise with past and future selves at will, and then revert. It was far less surprising, in fact, than anything else that had happened that day. I found myself introducing myself to Koizumi's parents curiously, wondering how Aunt Yuki – or Nagato – had explained everything to Koizumi. His ESPer abilities obviously left him with a head-start in figuring it all out. The organisation he was a member of was dubious, and I was supposed to be minimising contact with him, but I was curious. I had questions.

Mrs. Koizumi ushered me into Koizumi's bedroom with a plate of biscuits and a tray of tea. It had three cups, but only Koizumi was in the room. We exchanged pleasant enough greetings.

"Well, I'll show Miss Nagato in when she arrives. Good luck with your revision, you two!"

"T-thank you, Mrs. Koizumi."

Koizumi smiled brightly and moved to shut the door. "Yeah, thanks Mum."

Koizumi rubbed the back of his neck as he turned around to face me. I realised that for him, this was the first time we were truly meeting. He'd always been in my family, so in a way it was a first for me, too. I laughed awkwardly.

"Nagato said she had to wait for Kyon. We've decided to enlist his help a little, to keep Suzumiya busy and occupied. She should get back soon."

"I... see." I sat down awkwardly on the floor, and pulled a textbook out of my bag, to make the room look like it was really hosting a study session.

Koizumi joined me, crossing his legs and resting his back against his bed. "Look, I know you have files on me. And you know I'm an ESPer, which is probably making you awkward." He smiled in a way that wasn't as brilliant as usual, but softer and more welcoming. "Yeah, I've picked up a bit from you, but I've been more concerned with Suzumiya and Kyon. I only really know that you're uncomfortable around all of us, and that you don't like using our given names. So let's do this the old-fashioned way and just talk it out. Hi, I'm Itsuki."

I bit my lip and poured the tea into cups for something to do. "I... I don't know if I can call you that, I'm sorry. It's too... soon. You do know that I am from the future?"

He nodded, smiling. "Yeah, and it's pretty cool. I mean, Nagato is a little cold and clinical. I'm excited, I'll be able to ask you about all sorts of things!"

I shook my head. He was being too nice, too polite, chattering away happily. "No." I said more firmly. "I mean to say, that Asahina Mikuru is not my name."

I didn't have to say my real name aloud. I could tell from the way his eyes widened and his mouth went slack that he'd caught the words that echoed so loudly in my head. Nothing is louder than your own name, I recalled, from an essay I had written in middle school, in a day and age when ESPers were out in society and generally accepted.

"That... so... you know what happens?"

I shook my head sadly. "No. And I have no idea really why I've been sent here. My current mission is to observe Suzumiya and report back regularly, but I keep getting updates and small side-missions that seem to make no sense. Go here, do that." I sipped my tea and took a moment to think carefully and as subtly as I could about how to phrase what came next.

"I've... Mum has photographs, in an album." I found myself confessing abruptly to break the silence. "Her, you, Aunt Yuki, Kyon... and me. All my life, I wondered who on earth that woman was. Kyon and Mikuru were missing, all those years, and then when I came on my mission, I..." I set my cup aside and held my hands apathetically in my lap. "I didn't know how to react, but it all made sense then. I share my high school years with... well, it's easier if I call her Suzumiya-san."

Koizumi nodded, and then snorted. "Aunt Yuki? Oh, that's a laugh! Does she know how to smile in the future?"

"Not really, no. And don't laugh too much, Uncle Itsuki."

He half-choked on his tea. "N-no way? That's mad! So what about Kyon, then?"

The smile died on my lips. "He... disappeared. Before I was born. I've never known him as a father, just here."

Koizumi looked like he'd been slapped. He rubbed a hand over his face, and his eyes took on a sad strained look that was familiar to me. Except unlike Uncle Itsuki, who laughed it off and carried on, this Koizumi sat frozen as tears welled in the corners of his eyes.

"Oh. Oh, that's just... I know she likes him, but a guy has to hope, right? When she smiles at me, I... and I've been watching her, inactive, for so long now... I always hoped..."

I couldn't contain my disbelief. "You mean that... you, and Mum, you...? Oh my god, Uncle Itsuki never said a thing! And Dad was gone, he could have done something... never did..."

Koizumi met my eyes, and we just looked at each other. I felt like I had broken something myself, and it was the least I could do for him, to be a witness to his pain and loss. After what felt like an eternity, the sound of the front door downstairs being opened interrupted us. He looked away, I picked up my cup and took a bolstering sip of lukewarm tea.

"Well," his voice shook a little, "I guess that by then I just got over it. Maybe it will be easier this way..."

The bedroom door opened, and Nagato walked inside. She shut it behind herself, turned to take in the sight of the two of us huddled on the floor, and said simply, "Initialising synchronisation." She tilted her head upwards, and to my augmented vision the connection with the Data Sentient Entity looked like data transfers felt inside my head. It was like synaesthesia, all glittering colourful sounds and things that looked like ideas sounded in my brain. It was punctuated with odd alien chirrupy bits.

It mustn't have had that effect on Koizumi, because he sighed as if bored and returned to our conversation. "Do you think that might be why you were sent back? To prepare me, or prevent any intervention in your own conception?"

I frowned. "Maybe. Though I don't think we usually send agents out to anticipate things that aren't recorded. I mean, some things are just immeasurable. And we try to avoid rewriting history, we just work on stabilising the malleable parts to prevent catastrophe."

He looked at me curiously. "But maybe, yeah?"

I shrugged helplessly. "Maybe..."

It was Aunt Yuki that spoke from behind me. "No. Koizumi, I did explain to you about this earlier. Asahina-san does not know herself what her superiors are going to order next. It is her mission to complete objectives, not to be aware of what implications her actions might have."

Aunt Yuki had hit the nail on the head, though it was a sobering thought. It didn't stop Koizumi, though. He turned to look up at her beseechingly. "She doesn't know, but you can! You can synchronise with your future self, I know you can!"

Aunt Yuki frowned, and the skin around her eyes tightened. I could tell this wasn't an easy conversation for her to be having. "I require approval and confirmation from the IDSE to initiate a synchronisation. I do not have permission to access that knowledge currently."

Koizumi accepted it with a defeated sigh, but I could tell from Aunt Yuki's behaviour and expression that she hadn't even bothered to check. Whether or not she could access that information, she was sure as hell not about to tell Koizumi.

With a nod of thanks at me, she picked up a teacup and took a calm sip. A little unsure of how to go about it all – Uncle Itsuki had always been the one comforting me after upsets and accidents – I mirrored what he did. I put a hand on his shoulder as gently as I could, and turned towards him so that my face and eyes were open, accessible, if he needed the human contact.

"Love doesn't always have to end in a relationship," I said eventually, when he was showing no signs of recovering, "and like I said, Kyon disappears. I never get to know my father. But Uncle Itsuki – you – were – I mean, are. Er, well, will have been. You will always be there with us. With her. We are a family together... you never technically lose her."

He nodded, and took my hand in his own. "I'm sorry. You're probably facing the worst of all of us, and here I am being like this..."

Because it would make Aunt Yuki smile, and because I'd never get away with it if it was Uncle Itsuki in front of me, I poked Koizumi in the forehead with my index finger and then shook my head. "It's just nice that I'm not the one cradling a bruised ego in the corner for once. Trust me, I'll pay you back and then some when I get my turn."

"She will, that is confirmed." Aunt Yuki said. Koizumi blinked away his tears and stared past my shoulder at Aunt Yuki.

"I... thought you said she didn't smile..."

I craned my neck to see the upwards quirk on Aunt Yuki's too-young face. "If I'd said 'yes', would you have believed me?"

Koizumi hung his head, nodding and laughing. Impatient now that the issue had been dealt with, Aunt Yuki moved in beside us on her knees and offered the biscuits around.

"I will have to revert soon. Kyon may contact me; I must only synchronise with the self that Asahina knows when it is absolutely necessary. We must conspire while we still have time, tonight."