"Whether you like it or not, we're going to finish that time machine," a voice called out to her. "That damned Resistance isn't coming for you anytime soon, darling."

She shook in her chains, trying to keep her eyes closed from the painful truth. She was destined to be here; as long as the Alpha worldline existed, SERN was always going to win whether she liked it or not. Mayuri got shot whether she liked it or not. Okabe... he was dead, whether she liked it or not. She cursed herself for being so careless with her research on the time machine back in Okabe's lab, if she was at least any more careful with how they conducted their experiments, she wouldn't be enslaved to work for SERN, Mayuri wouldn't have died on that fateful August day in the lab raid, they wouldn't have been captured by SERN and used to build a time machine, and Okabe wouldn't be dead because of his role in trying to bring the fight to SERN. She prayed, she hopelessly prayed that Daru was able to complete the time machine before SERN completed one, that he was able to send Suzuha back once more. She then felt something cold press against her forehead.

"Looks like the times have changed," her captor just got off the radio with someone else. "We no longer need to pick your brain for anything else. It's time we say goodbye now, dear."

She heard the cocking of a pistol. She now understood what was going on. She had always wished for death, but she never expected that it'd be at the hands of her own captors. The gun fired, pain split her head, then darkness.


Date: November 13, 2036

Divergence: 1.048596* (Steins Gate)

*Worldline shift in 2020 - Not the exact same worldline as it was before the shift.

Time until Overwrite: ?

Kurisu awoke with a start, sweat dripping down her face and covering her back. Her breathing was ragged and shallow and it felt like she was suffocating in her own room. She quietly shifted out of the covers as to not wake the sleeping Okabe and shuffled her way to the roof of the building they were able to rent.

The California sky was clear tonight, but since there was so much light pollution to begin with, the stars weren't as clear, a luxury she had gotten used to in her time at Akihabara. Sure, downtown Akiba was always lit like a Christmas tree, but those back alleys away from the light, that's where the stars were able to shine and show their true beauty. She leaned on the railing overlooking the city and took a deep breath still trying to shake off her vivid nightmare. The roof reminded her a little bit of the top of the Future Gadget Lab back in Akihabara, maybe that was also the reason why Okabe would come up here each time he needed to calm down or each time he was up here just for the sake of being up here. Okabe explained to her what her dreams meant, that they were her memories from other worldlines, but her most recent ones have always been about her dying at the hands of SERN; as if there was no way she was going to survive in the Alpha worldline. He had told her about the convergence points in that worldline, that Mayuri dies in August of 2010, he forms the Resistance, and SERN controls the world, but she never believed him until she started having those dreams.

The 44-year-old let out a sigh, she knew she was getting too old to deal with fighting the good fight, but she knew that she had to stand alongside Okabe as a figurehead of the resistance against the evil that was out there in the world. She didn't know how Okabe was able to handle it all without even stressing about it, that's how strong he was. She remembered when in 2019, Okabe thought the incident in Tanegashima with those two robots had something to do with SERN so he had asked Daru to look into it. Ever since that year, time just hasn't seemed to slow down for any of the lab members. Faris had started a franchise with May Queen NyanNyan and had expanded worldwide being the first to succesfully implement maid cafes outside of Japan (she provided the funding for a lot of things), Mayuri and Luka were visiting third world nations trying to provide aide to those in need, Moeka had taken over the Braun-tube workshop and modernized it to provide the most recent technology at a lower price than her competitors because she believed everyone should have access to it nowadays, Daru worked as a network engineer for some unknown company, but his true job was as an anonymous hacker who lurked the Dark Web (he even managed to save the world from the Year 2038 Problem well before anyone started worrying about it), and then there was the doomed duo, Okabe and herself. The two moved to America to Dr. Leskinen's request because he thought Okabe showed a lot of promise and just the right amount of crazy since he had chosen to date her (Leskinen certainly got a berating after revealing the second reason why he took interest in Okabe). The two now worked with Maho in the Institute of Neuroscience now that Dr. Leskinen had chosen to retire and live somewhere away from Victor Chondria University. One could say that the three individuals represented all the different steps of the scientific method: Okabe represented curiosity and hypothesis, Maho represented experimentation, and Kurisu represented the analysis of the data that Maho brought forth. Together, the three were able to make many scientific breakthroughs, such as Amadeus and memory storage which even awarded Maho and Kurisu Nobel Prizes in Medicine of all things. Okabe didn't care for the prizes, he just did things in the name of science and often didn't care what others thought. The damned kid even plays as Hououin Kyouma whenever the mood strikes him and, while it's insanely cute of him to do it, it somtimes got in the way of her research with Maho.

But that wasn't all, with Okabe of course being a brain scientist wasn't enough for him. The two usually teamed up with Daru to find out if any progress in the time machine had been made by anyone, but ever since 2015, their search widened to a group known as the Committee of 300 which Okabe had christened as the Organization. They all knew they were playing with fire when they first discovered the Committee's involvement in trying to rule the world, and Okabe was hesitant on contuining to fight. It took a lot of convincing from Daru, but the hacker was able to get the mad scientist to fight, becoming the leader of Valkyrie in Daru's stead. Their mission always being to bring chaos to the Committee's plans

The cool November breeze interrupted her train of thought and she shivered a bit. She cursed herself for not brining a blanket or anything warm out with her, but she still chose to have her arms resting on the railing and continue taking in the city. Sure, she may get a cold, but she still needed to forget everything that happened on that other worldline. She closed her eyes and hunched her shoulders, the breeze was going to stop anytime soon. Except it didn't. Instead, she felt a blanket draped across her back by no one other than him.

"It would do us no good if my assistant were to catch a cold now would it?"

That smugness in his tone, with that underlying sense of caring. It annoyed her, but she always found comfort in it.

"We've been at this for 26 years now, Okarin," she responded without turning to him. "I'm not your assistant and I never will be."

That man, even though he was 44-years-old going on 45, he was still such a child. He let out a chuckle and leaned on the railing with her in a blanket of his own. He had aged wonderfully, a couple gray hairs were present here and there, but his face didn't show too many signs of him being the age he is other than his ID. She looked at him and took in his features. This man was her husband, of all the fish in the sea that she possibly could have gone with, it just had to be this insufferable manchild who saved her life at the Radio Building. Something was wrong though, he hasn't talked ever since he came out, usually having conversations with him is like playing catch with a bomb, but it was oddly quiet and this silence wasn't peaceful. She looked over at him once more and saw a sad smile that said so many things at once and she couldn't quite understand it.

There was only one way to find out what was going on. "What's the matter, Okarin?"

She turned to him with a frown of confusion on her face and crossed her arms while leaning on the railguard.

He stood there looking out at the city. "He's coming soon."

That only served to confuse her even more. "Who's coming?"

"You had another nightmare about the Alpha worldline, didn't you?"

He just completely avoided the question, it frustrated her, but she didn't want to trigger anything for him. Hearing about how he had to endure experiencing Mayuri's death over and over meant that he was without a doubt still traumatized by the whole ordeal. She turned back to look at the city, horns blaring in the distance, sirens wailing, pedestrians still out on the streets. She never thought that downtown Los Angeles would be so lively so late at night.

"Yeah," she chose to respond to his question. "I died in this one too, shot without a chance to speak for myself."

She hated being blunt about what she had to go through in the Alpha worldline, it was almost desensitizing, but that was the only way she could express herself right now. She shivered, not from the cold, but from remembering the nightmare itself. Chained up like a dog whose opinion didn't matter; killed as soon as she had outlived her usefulness.

Did such a worldline really exist?

She looked back over at Okabe, he still had that sad smile on him. That smile hurt her, he was suffering from something and she didn't know what. Who did he mean when he said "He's coming soon."?

"Okarin, if I can help you, let me help you," she tried to not sound too forceful with him. "I'll always be there for you no matter what happens, you can always rely on me."

He let out a sigh and faced her for the first time since he came out to the roof, his sad smile replaced with a stern face.

"I don't think I have much time left here," he said. "It's up to you to guide him down the path we created."

"What do you mean?"

"I had a dream about another worldline myself," he explained. "This one didn't feel like the Alpha worldline though. I had one just like it 26 years ago, it was a barren wasteland and Mayuri and Suzuha were there. It looked like a tough ordeal, but I think he survived it. He'll be back, I feel it."

"Who are you referring to?"

She didn't need to ask, she knew the answer, but she wanted him to tell her that it was someone else that he possibly knew.

"The 'me' from the worldline where you died," he turned back to face the city and let his head bury deep into his arms. "He's going to overwrite me at some point and I'm not ready, I'm not ready to leave."

Okabe just sat there with his head buried in his arms and Kurisu didn't know what to do for the first time. He told her how his "Reading Steiner" worked and how he was the only person who could observe worldline shifts because memories from previous worldlines would overwrite his memories of the new worldline. She remembered he hit a massive depression in 2025 because he thought he'd get overwritten in that year, but he got through it just fine. His second doomsday was in 2036, but he seemed oddly optimistic about the whole thing. That was how it was before tonight happened. She wasn't ready to lose her husband, the man she had made so many memories with, the man who loved her unconditionally, the man she could always rely on.

Tears started welling up in Kurisu's eyes.

"Dummy Okarin," she sadly stated. "You'll always be here."

He looked at her as she pointed at her heart.

"And who knows, maybe you won't be overwritten," she tried remaining optimistic about it. "You never explicitly saw the 'you' in that worldline survive, right? Maybe your assumption was just wrong, humans do tend to focus on the negative at times and maybe you're just giving into your base human instinct right now. Or maybe your temporal lobe is just being overactive and is making you remember memories that may not have even happened in other worl-"

She was interrupted by his embrace, he didn't exactly tower over her, but it felt like she'd drown in his being.

"You always try to find a scientific explanation to everything don't you?"

She freed head from his chest and looked up at him. "I'm a scientist, of course I'd look for a scientific explanation."

She saw him hesitate a little bit, even after being married for 13 years he didn't go out of his way to do anything romantic in fear he'd come off as perverted.

"Hey Okarin," she whispered to him. "Kiss me."

She stood on the tips of her toes and she caught Okabe's lips with hers. She had to give it to him, Rintaro Okabe was a good kisser, she usually felt complete whenever they kissed and it was all his fault that he was just so damn suave whenever he left the childish side of him behind.

Their lips separated and she resumed burying her head in his chest. He rested his chin on the top of her head and just sat there with her. She couldn't hold back the tears any longer, the situation felt hopeless for some reason, as if the fact that Okabe dreamed it meant it was etched in stone. Her body started shaking again, she couldn't stop shaking, she was scared. How was she going to explain 26 years of Okabe's life to an Okabe that never lived it? The memories that they had made, she was going to be the only one that remembered them. Their failures, their successes, their time together, all of it would be erased as if none of it never happened for him. When was it going to happen? Tonight? The next day? The next week? The next month? She wanted to be prepared for it, but she knew that no amount of preparation would help her let go of her husband.

They stood there for what seemed like an eternity, Kurisu was finally able to get the shaking under control,but tears still flowed freely onto Okabe's nightshirt. Then she heard Okabe's breathing hitch and felt his body tense then relax, was he about to cry too? She hated seeing him sad, but she knew he couldn't help it.

"Kurisu?"

Strike one. There was no reason for him to call her by name right now.

"Kurisu, I just have one question," he silently asked, his tone shifting to a worried one. "Where's Mayuri?"

Strike two. She tried burying her head even further into his chest. She didn't just hear him ask that question. He knows exactly where Mayuri is right now, everyone does, everyone keeps tabs on each other nowadays. He's just playing a joke on her right, trying to get a rise out of her like he usually does?

"Oh god," he gasped still quiet. "Did I send us back? But wait, if we're back in Alpha then why..."

She didn't want to listen.

"Okarin!" she shouted at him. "You better be playing a joke, I swear I'll hate you forever if it is, but please, this is a joke right?!"

"Oka...rin?"

Strike three. The truth became apparent to her. Her husband is gone. Her Okarin has been overwritten.


A/N: Alrighty, I hope that was somewhat enjoyable for my first attempt at a Steins;Gate fanfiction. I tried staying as true as possible to the original creation and took a couple liberties with some aspects since they were never explained in canon (such as the location of Victor Chondria University). I plan to make more chapters of this every week so don't expect this to be the end. Yes, it may be a work in progress, but I'm not going to leave it unfinished like most other WIPs are. Feel free to critique this work, I did as much research as I could surrounding the SciADV universe so if I got anything wrong, feel free to rip me to shreds. Expect Chapter 2 next Tuesday, it'll be a fun ride, I guarantee it. -Quil