Notes:

Chapter Title: My Hands - Leona Lewis

(I'm pretty sure this is the first non-Jpop song that's ever been the feature of a chapter, but this song was literally too perfect. You'll see. As another side note, I was introduced to this song because of Final Fantasy XIII, so I can't actually claim to listen to that much English music.)

"Every time I think of the time to come, I wonder—what will Tokyo look like in the distant future? After all the sorrows and tragedies that this city has seen, does it still have one? When I think about how badly I want it to, am I being naïve?

I don't want this future to be built on fear and hatred. I want this future to be built on connections; after all, humanity survives on interdependence. If nothing else, I want that to be my legacy.

I want that to be the proof that I've lived here." —Toujou Nozomi

When the doors to the service elevator opened on the thirtieth floor, Umi was greeted by the sight and sound of a single merc talking to someone over the radio clipped over his right ear. His back was facing her as she exited the elevator quietly, careful not to make any sounds on the carpeted floor.

"No, I haven't heard from Alpha or Delta Squad," he reported into his mic. There was a pause. "Don't worry," he reassured the person on the other end. "My team's ready to go on a moment's notice. I don't know where the government squads are—not yet. I'll take care of things if Aohebi doesn't return."

Umi approached him with her bow already in position as he cut the transmission to his radio, still looking out the window to the other building. "Turn around, very slowly," she instructed him.

The merc looked over his shoulder, and she saw him press his lips together in muted panic as he took an involuntary step back, hands half-raised without even attempting to reach for the shotgun at his hip. "You don't look like you're with the government. Who are you?" he asked her, in a vain attempt to grasp at straws, though control of the situation was slipping out of his hands and they both knew it.

She ignored the query as she took another step forward. "How do I get across the bridge to the other building?" When he did not immediately reply, she added another condition to the end of her sentence. "Answer my question, and you can go," Umi said evenly, keeping the point of her arrow trained at the base of his throat.

The man looked nervously from the bow in her hands back to the elevator behind her. "Look, lady, even if I had the answer to that question, I wouldn't tell you," he stuttered.

Advancing slowly, Umi narrowed her eyes at him as he took another step backwards, until his back was practically pressed against the glass pane of the window behind him. "I've got nothing more to say to you," he spat in a sudden burst of courage as she closed in on him. "If you shoot me, my team is just through there… they'll be all over you then."

The corner of her mouth twitched at his response; she pulled the string of her bow back just a little bit more and saw him swallow once nervously. "Is a little bit of information worth dying over?" she asked him coldly. "Is Imori?"

She watched as he thought about it for a few heartbeats, warily keeping his gaze on her bow as he deliberated. "No," he finally admitted. "I suppose not." He took a breath before opening his mouth again. "Okay, look. I can give you the card key to access the outdoor foyer through the supply room. There might be more mercs still lurking around the entryway there if they haven't all headed towards Tower One—I'm not sure if they all got the new orders from Imori."

Umi lowered her bow by the slightest margin as he reached into his vest pocket, pulling out a blue plastic card and dropping it on the floor. She gave him a single nod. "Get going."

He did not need to be told twice, pushing past her on his way to the elevator. Umi did not turn her attention away from his retreat until the elevator doors closed and the floors on the display above the doors started ticking down. She bent over to pick up the card key he had dropped on the ground before her and tucked it into her sleeve.

She meandered down the hallway until she found the door labelled Supply Ducts. Tapping her newly-obtained card key on the security panel beside it, the light of the door control winked green as she pressed her palm against it.

The metal door slid open soundlessly as a gust of wind smacked her in the face, pushing back her long, dark-blue hair in messy tangles until the metal door resealed behind her.

Her footsteps echoed ominously against the steel foundations of the supply room as Umi scanned the open area for signs of movement. Finding none, she spotted a ramp going up towards the back of the room, curving up against the side of the walls and back around in a catwalk overhead of where she was currently standing.

Cognizant of the fact that there could be mercs lying in wait on the floor above, she moved as quickly as she could while making as little sound as possible. Although she made it to the base of the ramp without running into any signs of trouble, Umi reloaded her bow, just in case.

As she scaled the ramp quickly, she heard the telltale sound of footsteps that were not her own as she neared the top. The wind picked up once she cleared the shelter of the walls that surrounded the sloping ramp and she had to pause for a second before she stepped out of cover to tuck her long blue hair underneath her hood again.

Peeking out from behind a precarious stack of crates, Umi spotted two mercs patrolling the catwalk. One was facing away from her, looking out over the darkening skyline of downtown Tokyo, while the other was fiddling with his gun. Clearly, neither of them had noticed her dash across the room below. It was as perfect of an opportunity as she was going to get.

Her first arrow pierced the side of the closer man's head almost noiselessly, the sound of metal puncturing skin and bone swallowed by the sound of the wind. It was only when his body hit the metal mesh of the catwalk floor did his partner turn around, pistol in hand as he ran up to his friend.

Umi bided her time as the second merc glanced around, angered shock evident in his expression even from where she stood. She did not want to alert any more mercenaries in the area as she drew her bow back silently a second time, and her patience was rewarded when the second merc slumped over the body of his squadmate.

As she pushed onward, Umi could feel the pressure of time pushing against her back now—she had spent far too long in the mezzanine trading shots with Imori's brother, and while she was thankful that she had ended that particular encounter on her own terms, he had been far from her primary target tonight.

Stepping over the pair of dead mercs on the catwalk, she carefully walked out onto the unsheltered rooftop of the top floor of the building. Apart from the wind, it was ominously silent and she could both feel and hear her breath catching in her throat and lungs now, partially from the smoke inhalation earlier and partially in anticipation of what she could find next.

The stiff breeze whistled against the side of the structure as she crept forward. The bridge that connected the two towers was in sight now and Umi did not expect it to be unguarded. Ducking behind a support pillar, she peered out over the last fifty or so metres between her and the bridge in question. Dark had almost completely fallen, the only orange band of light remaining of the sunset poking out stubbornly behind a gathering of storm clouds—but she could spot movement in more than one crevice.

Dropping into a crouch, she readied her bow as she inched closer to the edge of cover, trusting her dark hair and clothing to camouflage her somewhat against the side of the building. She caught a flash of a gun glinting in the light coming from the tower across from them, and fired.

A strangled yell told her she had hit her target as she moved instantly, not wanting to stay still in case the mercs thought of the idea to charge her all at once.

Something flew by her head—too large to be a bullet, but too small to be a chunk of rock—and it was not until she saw the dull flashing from where it had landed that Umi realized what one of the mercenaries had thrown at her.

She threw herself forward, flattening her body behind a wall of crates that held who-knew-what mere moments before the grenade exploded, illuminating the rooftop in a blaze of orange and red. Picking herself up instantly, she reloaded her bow and edged forward, creeping around the stack of crates and pinpointing the merc that had thrown it. He was not looking at her, too busy craning his neck from behind cover to see if his grenade had hit anyone.

Her arrow pieced his abdomen before he could react and she took the opportunity to dash forward, away from the growing flames. There was a third man crouched behind a k-rail next to the bridge, but he was easy pickings for her, too pre-occupied with the radio in his hands to respond properly to her approach.

The way to the bridge was now clear, but Umi hesitated for the briefest moment before she stepped out onto it. For a man who had thrown away a small fortune on a private military company to guard him, she knew she had run into far too little resistance for it to count as a real defence. There must be more still on the lower floors dealing with the rest of the soldiers, but this can't be all of them.

She caught sight of a khaki uniform halfway across the length of the bridge, the dark stain of blood that surrounded his body standing out against the pale grey of the ground even from where she stood. There was a sizeable hole in the concrete next to his head, and suddenly, Umi knew what—or who—was guarding the bridge. Damn it.

There was no safe way for her to make it across all one hundred meters of its length without getting hit. She would have to kill the sniper first before she could make it across, and even then, that would not guarantee her safety. She had had no radio contact with Toujou's chief of security since entering the second building. Umi gritted her teeth. But what choice do I have?

She took a deep breath of the cold night air, the chill in it somehow stilling her breathing and chasing away her momentary panic. I have to figure out where he's shooting from. Only when she worked out where the shots were coming from could she formulate a plan of counterattack. But what can I use to lure him into taking a shot?

She glanced around her immediate surroundings, finding nothing living that would serve as a sufficient decoy for movement. Umi took a second glance back across the bridge. There would absolutely no cover once she stepped out onto it and she knew the moment that she did so, she would be a sitting duck for the sniper that no doubt lay in wait somewhere on the other side. Bullets travelled faster than arrows.

She studied the area across the bridge again. There were a few lights on in the windows beyond the landing, enough to let her see by. If I were a sniper, what spot would be the safest for me to shoot from? There were two support columns on either side of the entrance into the other building, joined by a platform. If there was a way onto the platform, she could not see it.

A gust of wind tugged at her hair again, and suddenly, Umi had an idea.

She turned back the way she had come, making sure to conceal herself in the shadows. Within a few minutes, she had located the body of the merc who had thrown a grenade at her again. Finding the rest of his grenades tucked into a looped belt, she retrieved it, holding it in her spare hand before making her way back to where she was hiding just before the bridge.

Pressing the detonator on one of them, she threw it as far as she could off the side of the bridge, expecting a reaction. She was not disappointed—the bright flash of a sniper shot was immediately outlined in the scant lighting as it hit the falling explosive, which exploded in midair, rocking the foundation that she was standing on back and forth slightly. The fragments that remained of the grenade would not be any threat to the passerby below.

More importantly, however, she had all the information she needed now. Thanks to the giveaway shot, she had been able to roughly pinpoint from where the sniper was shooting from and now that she knew where to look, it was just possible to spot the gleam of a dark metal barrel in the dim lighting coming from the tinted glass windows.

She gave herself a single shot to do what she needed to do. It was impossible to move a heavy sniper rifle across the platform the merc was shooting from without catching her attention and she suspected that the sniper would stay in place, banking on the fact that her tossed grenade was an accidental miss.

Umi readied her bow before she stepped out from behind cover, pulling back the string until it was taut with tension. She took a single step out from behind the column, releasing the arrow with her right hand the same moment the merc fired again.

She dashed forward onto the bridge as she felt the heavy bullet pass over her head, disturbing the air and blowing a hole in the concrete behind her. The fact that no continued shots came her way meant that she had hit her target.

Seconds later, panting slightly, she arrived in the cover of the support pillars on the other side of the bridge.

There were no mercenaries in sight as she stepped into the lit room. Splashes of blood and used ammo decorated the sparse furniture of the reception area as Umi climbed the stairs at the back of the room to the winking green light of the elevator.

As she palmed the elevator control, she caught sight of the dead sniper on the balcony outside. She closed her eyes for the briefest moment before the ding of the elevator behind her announced its arrival. Mercifully, it was empty.

Stepping inside, it resumed its silent ascent as Umi checked her stock of arrows. It was low, but she did not anticipate much more resistance before she reached her destination—she remembered the building plans that Toujou's chief of security had shown her the day before and knew that the elevator she was currently riding arrived more or less at the doorstep of Imori's office.

True to the building plan's words, the moment the elevator doors opened again, she was greeted by the sight of several gun barrels before they relaxed, having identified her as a non-threat. She spotted the security chief in question halfway down the hallway a moment before he spotted her. He beckoned her over with a hand.

"Imori's techs jammed our signals," he offered as an apology as she approached him. "I apologize for the lack of communication, though it appears you didn't need the help we could've offered." He looked her up and down once.

Umi shrugged with one shoulder. "I didn't run into that much resistance," she replied. "Except… his brother."

The glint of immediate understanding in the security chief's dark brown eyes was all the confirmation she needed to know that he too, knew the implications of her simple sentence.

"He's dead, I take it?"

She nodded once.

He gave her a grunt of acknowledgement before he turned back to the end of the hallway. "Imori's through here," he told her. "He's locked the door, but, well, it won't take long for our techs to get through it. After he threw so much money at some merc company, I figured he'd have something special for his door." His last sentence was a low mutter, and Umi was not entirely sure if it had been meant for her ears.

One of the men down the hallway gave a sudden shout. "Sir, we've got the door open now!"

The taller man opposite her gave her a significant look. "Would you like to go in?" he asked her.

Umi met his gaze. "Yes," she replied without hesitation.

He nodded. "Bring that bow. Just in case."

Imori's office was softly lit by moonlight, the antiques that filled the shelves lining the walls touched to a delicate silver, giving them an otherworldly, beautiful appearance that did not seem like it could ever belong in the same room as a man whom Umi knew had commissioned so much death.

Imori himself was sitting behind his desk, chin resting on his joined hands as the government force filtered in through his door. His expression could have only been described as serene. "So you made it," he acknowledged in a quiet voice. It was flat, the words coming out as offhanded as though they meant nothing.

In the dim light, Umi could see that the man in front of her vaguely resembled the dead assassin that lay in the mezzanine of the other building. They had the same sharp, narrow cheekbones and even if it had not been for the silver hair on the president's head, she would have said that the way he carried himself, even in the face of imminent arrest, was uncannily similar to the arrogant confidence of the man she had killed an hour or so ago.

"You're under arrest," Kouchou said from somewhere ahead of her. Umi understood that whatever happened now was out of her jurisdiction—she had absolutely nothing to do with government policies and no say in the man's fate; she had been granted the permission to be where she stood because of the role she had played in taking down his mercenary force, and nothing more.

"For what?" Imori asked. There was no hint of fear or hesitation in his voice as he addressed the chief of security. In fact, if she had been asked, Umi would have said that the tone of his speech could be described as amused. She narrowed her eyes.

"A very long list of crimes," Kouchou answered him firmly. "I'm sure that you know them as well as I do. You were the sponsor behind the factory outside of Tokyo's boundaries, as well as the instigator behind the riots, were you not?"

To her utter surprise, the smile on the older man's thin lips grew as he pressed them together. "Ah… I see. However, I don't think I feel the need to answer to our current government. You're free to arrest me if you want, of course, but if you look through my files—as I am sure our young head of state will ask you to do—you will find that all of my actions are merely the product of a plan that was devised long ago between President Tenjoin of Osaka and our previous district ruler."

Umi stared at him, unable to speak as shock froze the rest of her muscles into place.

What?

Eli strode up to the district building with a purpose.

It was the middle of the day, the late August sunshine beating down harshly on the back of her neck as she made her way through the busy grounds, but she had a particular goal in mind that day and she knew she wasn't leaving until she accomplished it.

Umi had come back from her mission tight-lipped and unwilling—or unable—to disclose what had happened while Kotori had fussed over her inventory of injuries in her hospital room. All her blue-haired friend would say was that something had happened, but if she wanted the full details, she would have to speak to Toujou herself.

Eli had a nasty suspicion it was because it wasn't safe to discuss the matter where they were; she had never known Umi to withhold information from her on purpose, but there was nothing she could do about that.

It was also highly suspicious that Toujou hadn't called her—or gotten Koizumi to call her—as she'd said she would. A few months ago, it would've worried her that she put so much emotional investment into something the violet-haired woman had said to her in passing, but today, after everything that had transpired between them, Eli was genuinely concerned about what could possibly have happened within the span of the last ninety-six hours.

According to Maki, Toujou had also cancelled her press conference the previous evening without notice. If nothing else, that was what worried her most. She thought she knew the district ruler well enough by now to know that that wasn't something she did for anything less than a significant reason. The topic of the press had come up once or twice in one of their discussions, and Eli knew that Toujou was both aware and well-versed in the power of the media. Something has happened. If Umi can't tell me what it is, then she's the only other person who can. The thought instilled a certain sense of uneasy anticipation underneath her skin, hanging onto her like fog clinging to thick ferns, unable to let go even though sunlight penetrated through the upper levels of the forest.

It was convenient that Maki had also decided to let her go that morning, having decided that since Umi had been confined to their apartment for the next few days by Kotori as a live-in chaperone, she could be trusted not to engage in risky behaviour. Though the skin on her back still felt tight because the stitches had yet to be removed, she wasn't in pain anymore and could move around with relative ease.

Eli ducked around the milling groups of politicians, picking up on their nervous speech as she passed them. Normally, she would've stopped to listen to them for a few moments, but today, their anxious chatter meant next to nothing to her as she entered the doors of the district building.

Koizumi picked her out from the crowd the moment she stepped through the entrance of the foyer. The brunette's mouth opened and closed more than once as Eli approached, as though she was at a complete loss for what to say. They ended up staring at each other for a full minute or two before Koizumi pressed her lips together for the last time and took a breath. "G-Good afternoon, Ayase-san," she stammered. It was clear from the way the secretary looked at her that she knew why it had been some time since she'd last visited the district building, but to Koizumi's credit, she didn't voice it aloud. "W-What can I do for you?"

"I need to see Toujou-sama," she replied, keeping her voice matter-of-fact.

Eli didn't miss the momentary flash of panic in her lavender gaze as she glanced backwards nervously, fidgeting in her seat. "Uhm, I-I don't think today is a good day, Ayase-san. W-Would it be okay for you if you came back tomorrow?"

She placed her hands on either side of Koizumi's desk, holding the younger woman's gaze in an effort to convey the seriousness of her request. "Please," she said. The monosyllable sentence held tangible weight and Eli knew Koizumi felt it too, though she did her best to hide it with an awkward fidget.

There was silence between them for a few seconds before the brunette dipped her head. "L-Let me go see if she's willing to make an exception."

Eli crossed her arms as she waited, unwilling to let herself give into the nervous energy eating away at her limbs. She felt uncomfortably restless and alive at the moment—the solemn, haunted expression on Umi's face wasn't easy to forget and it chased around her brain like a threatened, cornered animal; the sensation of it unearthing something that Toujou had said to her in the past from the back of her memories.

"The truth, Ayase-san, is both beautiful and terrifying. Some people spend their whole lives searching for it and never find it, not because they don't look hard enough, but because it is something they cannot accept."

She was sure that that look on Umi's face had been mirrored on her own the first time Toujou had said those words to her.

But Eli didn't have time to dwell on her thoughts further, because Koizumi reappeared at the end of the hallway, a worried expression on her face as she nibbled on her bottom lip. The brunette rearranged her features into something that resembled passivity as she approached, though the attempt was so obviously forced it was almost transparent.

"T-Toujou-sama told me that if you're sure it's really important, then she has the time to see you now. S-She's in the conference room," Koizumi informed her once she'd returned to her desk. She opened her mouth again as if to say something more, but closed it hastily, clearly having decided against it.

Eli thanked her before brushing past her desk, escaping the noise and density of the lobby of the district building as she followed the familiar route to her destination. The upper floors of the building were deserted, her footsteps echoing and lonely against the perfectly polished walls.

She paused outside the doorway to the conference room. The door itself was ajar, but a wave of trepidation seized her hand before Eli could knock. She willed herself to calm down—she knew herself well enough that she wouldn't get anywhere if she had no control over her own mentality—and it was a few minutes before she was able to wrest the fine tremble of her fingers down to a minimum.

Knocking softly on the door once, she waited.

There was no reply, but this time, Eli knew that there would've been no reason for Koizumi to lie to her about the head of state's whereabouts. She gave Toujou a minute to compose herself before she opened the door and let herself in.

She picked out the slender form of the district ruler sitting alone in one of the chairs at the end of the room almost immediately. Toujou looked up when she entered, and Eli caught her fleeting expression of desolate listlessness before the violet-haired woman collected herself.

"Good afternoon, Eli." Her voice held the hint of a tremor as Eli settled herself on the edge of a chair opposite her. "What can I do for you today? Koizumi said you sounded insistent, although I must admit I didn't expect you to be coming right from the hospital." The ghost of a smile twitched at the corner of her lips, but it was empty and cursory at best.

It wasn't hard to see that there was a storm lurking underneath the surface. Toujou just happened to be sitting in its eye, a false calm in the centre of a hopelessness that saturated the environment around her, whether she wanted to pretend it existed or not.

Eli decided it would be more beneficial to them both if she just said what was on her mind. "Umi told me that something happened two nights ago. She wouldn't tell me what it was, and told me that if I wanted to know, I should speak to you myself."

Toujou regarded her in a curious sort of way, as though she couldn't work out where her words were coming from. "Sonoda-san didn't tell you anything?" she asked, mild surprise evident in her tone as she delicately raised an eyebrow at her.

"No," Eli answered. "She said that it was better if I heard it directly from you." Unconsciously, her right hand moved up to grip the armrest of the chair; she wasn't sure if it was because she needed the support from it, or because she needed something to do with her restless fingers.

A more genuine smile formed on the district ruler's lips, but there was more than one emotion lurking underneath it that she couldn't immediately read. "Then I'm afraid I can't help you. Unfortunately, this isn't a matter for you to concern yourself with, Eli."

"No," Eli repeated. She was surprised by how steady her voice sounded, even to herself. "You can't do this. You're the one who wanted to be friends—you can't just arbitrarily decide when that is the case and when it isn't."

There was a part of her that told her she should stop before she went too far, but Eli ignored it. Talons of equal parts desperation, equal parts frustration clawed painfully at her diaphragm in her need to make her point heard, because she had finally recognized the expression eating at the corners of Toujou's features—she had spent years staring at it in the mirror in the morning.

You're doing what I tried to do. I tried to keep everything to myself. I told myself that it was impossible for other people to understand how I was feeling, so I was better off solving all my problems on my own. It didn't get me anywhere, because the more I bottled up, the more demons came to haunt me until there was a point where I couldn't deal with it all anymore.

Don't make the same mistakes I did.

Toujou's emerald gaze widened as she raised her head to finally, finally, fully meet her gaze. Eli held it until the other woman's expression softened, the tense, resolute set of her jaw relaxing by the slightest margin.

Finally, she spoke. "You're right," she acquiesced at last. She did not elaborate, but Eli didn't push her for an answer. She had learned the hard way that some things had to come out on their own time.

Eli moved her hands to the tabletop, lacing her fingers together to give them something to do as silence enveloped the space around them once more.

It was awhile before Toujou spoke again, getting up from her chair and making her way over to the window until she faced the sunny grounds outside. "Have I ever told you about my father?"

Eli quashed her surprise at the question, knowing that there had to be a point to where she was going with that particular question. "No," she said.

Toujou hummed quietly in acknowledgment. "What do you know about him?" she asked in a soft voice, turning her head toward her as if to gauge her response to her question.

She thought about it. "To be honest, not much," Eli admitted truthfully. When the senior Toujou had been in power, it had been a time when they'd still been struggling to make ends meet. With Maki and Alisa still in school, it had been up to her and Umi to somehow come up with the money to live off of—she had spent most of her nights working for a various assortment of clientele and most of her days sleeping as a result. "I... We weren't in a position to be interested in politics at the time."

Nodding once, Toujou looked down at the carpet beneath their feet for a moment before she raised her head to stare out of the glass of the window again. Her voice was muted, but there was a purpose to it as she continued.

"When I was little, my father was the rock-solid centre of my world. Everything that he did fascinated me, from the decisions he told me he was making for this city, to the plans he told me he had for its future. As you might expect, my political education started very early." She paused, her verdant gaze far away as she spoke from her memories. "He told me he believed in the power of the human race—that if we had enough knowledge and if we could create enough resources and strength for ourselves with that knowledge, we could accomplish anything."

A shard of sorrow settled somewhere near Eli's heart when she realized she knew what came next. "But instead, we created Edenra."

Toujou smiled, the expression sad and genuine. "Yes. It was like everything that he'd ever believed in came crashing down around him. There were times where I didn't think I recognized him anymore, because he was working so hard to become this district's head of state. On the rare occasions that I did see him, he told me it was because he wanted to make sure that humanity still had a future. He told me that he would do anything to make that future a reality. Even when he created the outer districts for the Edenra victims, he told me that it was so he could preserve what was left of humanity so that it was possible for us continue forward. At the time, I believed that he truly had our best interests at heart."

Eli did not miss the bitterness that corroded the end of her sentence. "What happened?" she asked gently.

"The future he wanted was one where he wiped out all the Ceresis on earth by force," Toujou told her, her voice chipped and as emotionless as glass. "To make that future a reality, he realized that he had to turn the citizens of this city against the victims of Edenra so that they would approve of a plan to build a railgun module. Along with President Tenjoin of Osaka, he planned to move this railgun to the moon so that after they had destroyed the Ceresis, they would be able to use it against the other countries that still remain in this world. If Bloody Valentine had never happened, I'm sure that he would have found a way to make this future come to fruition much sooner." Her mouth quirked, and she looked away.

Finally, Eli knew what Umi must've heard from the errant businessman at the top of his business tower, understanding why her blue-haired friend had been reluctant to share what she had learned. This story… was not hers to tell me. She knew that.

"Is that what you found out a few nights ago?" Eli asked her quietly. She knew the answer to her question, but it felt wrong to leave it vulnerably unaddressed and out in the open.

When Toujou looked back at her, her eyes glittered.

"Yes." There was tangible pain in the violet-haired woman's voice as she curled one of her gloved hands into a fist, pressing it against the windowpane. Toujou shook her head once, pressing her lips together in a thin line as she continued. "I… don't know what's worse, you know? Finding out that my father was the one behind all of the problems I have at the moment, or the fact that I look like a fool running around trying to solve all of the problems he created." She laughed softly, the sound twisted, but Eli could hear the anguish behind it. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do. For the first time since I've inherited his position, I don't know what I'm supposed to do."

Wordlessly, Eli stood up. Walking over to the window, she stopped when she was a few feet away from the district ruler. She was close enough to see that she was crying.

Pity tightened around her throat in a thin, constricting wire, but she didn't have the felicity to express the emotions weighing down on her chest like a ton of bricks, the viscosity of the mortar that held them together swallowing the syllables that she wanted to say. I know how this feels. I know what it feels like to not know how to regain the slightest bit of control over the situation in front of you, and to feel so completely helpless that you don't even know where to begin.

But if Toujou was anything like her, then Eli knew that she wasn't looking for her pity. The fact that the most powerful person in the Tokyo District was crying in front of her barely registered in her mind as she took a half-step forward, enough to allow her to gently put a hand on her shoulder. The awkwardness between them that had been present the last time they'd been this close in terms of physical proximity had been melted away by the moments of vulnerability that they had inexplicably shared. "Hey… You know, it's okay not to know what to do," she said gently.

Toujou looked sideways at her, the back of her hand pressed against her mouth in an attempt to control her emotions. "But I'm supposed to," she replied, her voice slightly muffled through the fabric of her glove. "All the problems that he's left behind… it's supposed to be my job to fix them all. That's my responsibility as the ruler of this district."

Eli shook her head once. "If we were born knowing how to solve all of the problems we would ever encounter, then what's the point of living?" Her voice carried her own pain—of the times she knew she would've given anything to have the single chance of doing them over, of all the times that she had sat in front of her laptop, unsure of what the right thing was to do and yet afraid of the unknown consequences of her choices—and of all the time that she had wasted because she had been too scared to admit that she didn't know what to do. "We can't go back to change the past," she murmured, "no matter how much we might want to. It's okay not to know what we should do for the future. What's not okay is to be so afraid of not knowing what to do that we don't do anything at all."

Toujou brushed away the tears that clung to her cheeks. "That's… easier said than done, you know," she said, a hint of her usual tone returning to her voice. "But whatever I choose to do now, regardless of how I feel, will have an effect not only on the people who live in this city now, but everyone who will live in this city in the future. I might not like what I've heard, but my advisors will all have read the report containing Imori's confession. You know as well as I do that there are more than a few of them who would aim to push the agenda that they've discovered. What do I do then?" she asked her, finally allowing tenebrous despair to creep into her words.

"Tou—N-Nozomi," Eli began, the syllables of the first name feeling strange and unfamiliar on her tongue—though to her surprise, she found that it did not deter her from continuing. "I don't have the answer to your question. Not because I don't have an opinion, but because my opinion shouldn't matter. I think you know what you still want to do, but you're afraid of what might happen because of what you decide." She paused, taking a breath that felt like she was inhaling pinecones, as it did little to calm the erratic pounding of her heart and the rising surge of emotion against her sternum. "What other people think doesn't matter. You said it yourself—at the end of the day, the decision is ultimately yours… so the only thing that should matter is how you feel about it. That's it."

When she finished, Eli found that the district ruler was looking at her intently, the wild, barren ache in her green gaze having been replaced by a bold, tranquil understanding.

Neither of them spoke for a long time, the silence between them stretching out into long minutes no one was counting. It was as though time no longer mattered. The concept of a world waiting for them outside the room they were standing in had vanished.

Finally, the violet-haired woman moved from where she was half-leaning, half-sitting against the table beside her until they were standing face to face. "I know," she admitted softly. "I'm sorry—I should have known better. But… I think… I needed to hear someone say it out loud before I was willing to accept that that is what I have to do."

A small smile tugged at the corner of Eli's mouth. "Then, I'm glad I could help."

The district ruler took a step towards her. "Thank you." The words were simple, but impossibly gentle in their delivery. They were so close that Eli could see how her throat still worked to swallow the unshed tears.

Then, she leaned forward and pressed her lips to hers. It lasted only a second, perhaps two, but Eli couldn't move, her limbs frozen into place by the blank, tumultuous storm in her head. The other woman pulled away before she could.

"I wanted to do that. Just once," she said before she turned and left the room.