They'd left her alone so she could rest, but that was impossible. Now that nothing was happening around her, all her thoughts tumbled forth and begged coherence. The most important was how two of Okazaki Ushio – two of her – would live in the same world. How would Nagisa react to seeing another version of her daughter – the daughter created from the original timeline, before it diverged? And could she call her timeline the original one at all? Just because her father recognised her, remembered her – did that make this world the false, dream one?

But her father had called the world they'd come from, that snow-covered world with an eternal winter and the yellow lights of happiness and hope, his dream.

Did he think she was a dream too? He hadn't said much to her at all, said nothing to her calling him her father, except for the nod and flash of doubt before the words had exploded out of her –

And he had another Ushio now, an Ushio who had grown up and known both parents instead of just the one, and even then for a hair's breadth of a time before she'd fallen in the snow from the same illness that had claimed her mother's life. And this Ushio was spirited and full of energy, untouched by that cold white world but running, instead, in a world full of laughter and colours. An Ushio that called him "Daddy" too…

What now? Was she supposed to pretend he wasn't her father, give him up to the other Ushio and be content to watch from a far? Give up the only company she had ever known in the snow-filled world, after all her other memories had faded away into the ice-cold drops falling to the ground?

She stared hard at the Garbage Doll, who hadn't moved at all since…it felt like forever, but it could only have been a few hours since she'd found herself in this world, with the other Ushio waking her. It had stopped moving at some point, when she'd lain in the snow unable to move and the drift had begun to cover her. The yellow lights had faded away too: risen too high for her to see, or vanished entirely – she couldn't be sure of that.

'Daddy?' she whispered to the robot. 'Are you still there?''

The Garbage Doll didn't move at all, and she hadn't expected it to. Her father's soul was gone from it after all, and it was just a robot she'd found in the snow and repaired. Her father was somewhere else in the house, with the other Ushio – and no-one had called her Ushio for so long, it felt like she was stealing a name away.

A name…and a family, because this was that other Ushio's world, not hers.

'We wanted to come to the other world…but this is the wrong world.'

She choked back a cry of despair into her pillow. She'd wanted the world she'd left behind, not one that had replaced her completely. And as the tears returned a new, that thought sunk in. She'd been replaced. There was another Ushio, an Ushio that wasn't her. And the way her father had looked… She didn't belong in this world.

The Two Bays
Chapter 5

'Something's bothering you,' Nagisa said, giving up on the pretence. She'd realised it out on the porch, but had let Ushio drag Tomoya to play with her a little first. He'd come into the kitchen while she had a bath and Nagisa made dinner, and she gave him a little extra leeway in setting everything up before she spoke. Now, the curry bubbled along in the pot behind her only to be stirred every now and then, and the rice slowly steamed, to be drained when done.

'Nothing's bothering me.' Tomoya smiled, but Nagisa wasn't convinced.

'You try that look too many times.'

He looked appropriately abashed.

Nagisa took off her apron and sat beside him. 'Did something happen at work?'

'Work was great,' Tomoya said truthfully, and it usually was. He'd hadn't been offered another transfer since the one before their engagement had fallen through, but that was all the better for all of them. Tomoya had, instead, worked his way up in the company that had taken him under his wing, and couldn't imagine working in another place. While once the pay had struggled to support two people, now it comfortably managed three. And he'd long since found a place for himself there: understanding co-workers – some like Yoshino who'd been there since he'd started and some other new ones, and work he could look forward to every morning.

'Then what's wrong? The girl Ushio brought home?'

Tomoya's hand twitched. 'I…' he began. Nagisa would get an answer out of him somehow. She always did, even if she was never forceful, always kind. But he didn't think he could ever tell her about that other timeline, where she'd died, or the world of snow that had been so sparse and desolate…

'You have that look on your face.' She touched his cheek lightly, and he relaxed. It was easy to relax when the reminder of her warmth was so tangible. It had been a long time in between, before he'd gone back to the point his life had crumbled into emptiness, that he hadn't felt that warmth. The time in which she'd died in one timeline and survived in another had been far too long for him. 'It's like you've lived a hundred years more than me, sometimes.'

It was said lightly and partially in jest, but it was close enough to the truth, and sometimes Tomoya wished it was enough to just let the whole story flow. That way he could get it off his chest – but that was such a large burden to place on anyone. And Nagisa was so innocent and sweet, not at all cynical like him.

But the new timeline had destroyed that in him – no, that wasn't right. Ushio had destroyed that, when he'd realised how he'd abandoned her and started living with her again, getting to know her like he should have since her birth. But Nagisa's death had destroyed something profound in him, something the then five year old Ushio had managed to heal, once he'd let her back in. And then Ushio had died as well, fallen in the snow trying to walk to the place they'd finally come together again…

And then they'd both been in the other world, the world of eternal snow, and neither of them had recalled much of the past at all. His soul had somehow been transferred to the Garbage Doll and she'd grown older: taller, paler and less full of light. And he could only move and follow her: not talk, and his communication had been cut to guiding her places he'd found while she slept. Food, water, materials – anything he could do to minimise her forays in the storms where she was more likely to freeze to death than the makeshaft shelters she found.

But even those shelters hadn't been enough in the end to stop her falling in the snow a second time.

'Tomoya?' Nagisa's warm fingers interlocked with his. 'When you look like that, it's like you're thinking about a nightmare you won't share.'

That summed it up pretty well, he thought. 'She…' But what could he say to her that wouldn't worry her. 'She reminded me of that nightmare I used to have.'

She understood which nightmare, even if she knew very little of it. He'd told her about the snow, about the endless, desolate world and the yellow lights that floated up to the sky and they chased like people chased snowflakes in this world. But he hadn't told her about his voiceless, restricted form. Or about the girl who'd held his hand and walked with him – or he'd walked with her. Whichever it was.

'Why does she remind you of that?' she asked. Of course she would ask; she could see no link between them.

He hesitated. She guessed. 'She looks like someone in that world?'

He couldn't deny that, even though it was a gross understatement.

'It's the dress,' Nagisa mused, standing up to stir the curry pot. 'Thin and white, and her pale skin – it almost does look like she came from a world of snow: a world without the sun.' She hummed a little to herself, as she stirred. 'I guess that's why you looked as though you'd recognised her,' she said. 'I was hoping you had; the poor dear doesn't remember her name or where she came from at all.'

Tomoya looked at the table. He knew she'd lied when she said that – in a sense, because at the same time there was another Ushio in this world, that was his daughter –

Nagisa chattered about how they'd call the police and keep her until they could find her parents – but he knew that wouldn't happen. He was the father, but in another timeline, another world. The mother was Nagisa – but that Nagisa had died on a snowing day more than five years ago. What was the Ushio from the snowy world thinking, he wondered. Was she as confused as him? She'd called him "Daddy", but did she see him as the little Ushio's father as well? How did she see Nagisa? And little Ushio, the Ushio born from the Nagisa who'd survived that childbirth…

And what did Ushio think of this world? They'd tried to leave the snowing world, to cross over into the world the orbs of light rose into – but that had been the timeline they'd come from, not this one…even though he'd always had that deep desire to see a world where Nagisa had lived on and his happily ever after could come true.

But Ushio, who'd never known her mother, had looked towards another world. That past world where she journeyed with her father up north where the yellow fields were, and lived with him in a tiny apartment cramped with all the stuffed dango he'd brought her deceased mother years ago. Because she hadn't known a life with a mother; she'd only known growing up with her grandparents, then living with her father those few months before illness had claimed her too. That was the world she'd dreamt about as it snowed outside her shelter. That was the world she'd looked at chasing those yellow orbs of light.

How had she come to their world? And what did it mean?