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He doesn’t come back smiling, and as he forms, he stumbles.
Yuusuke runs to hug him, and Tsukasa takes a step back.
“Tsukasa?”
“I’m sorry, Yuusuke,” Tsukasa says. “I’m so sorry…”
Yuusuke just hugs him, and Tsukasa collapses. Natsumi joins then, and they sit on the grassy hill, Daiki following after.
There’s still more fighting to do, but Tsukasa just needs a moment to breathe. He hasn’t had one of those in roughly 8 months. A tremble wracks his body, and he lets it.
Then it passes, and he does smile.
“This is nice,” he says, a little too soft for any of them to process, but full of enough snark to be undeniably Tsukasa .
He’s himself, and he’s alive, and he’s a little too scared of what this means. If it means he…
“You did it, Tsukasa,” Natsumi says, as though reading his mind.
“And now it’s one last fight, and we can take a nice vacation,” Daiki adds. Tsukasa nods, shoving aside his shaking, his relief at a body that no longer aches warring with a strange exhaustion.
One last fight.
He wakes up that first night, no sound leaving his mouth, and he tries to not cry too loudly. He always made sure to hide before he collapsed, or cried, from exhaustion or hunger, loneliness or longing.
He thinks he lost himself, buried deep under Decade, somewhere between the third month and the fortieth kill.
So many Riders.
He doesn’t go back to sleep, he just stares at the ceiling, tries to process it all. He’d spent so long prepared to die that life feels wrong.
(He doesn’t think he’ll ever be the same. Event be a hero again. That’s not for him.)
Dawn breaks, and Daiki awakens, quickly noticing that Tsukasa is awake, too.
“Morning,” Daiki says. “Feeling better?”
Tsukasa nods, slowly. He’s not sure what he’s supposed to be, now. It feels like he’s floating, most of the time.
“The sex was good,” he manages.
“Damn right,” Daiki says. “Who do you think taught the poor repressed country boy that used to be me?”
Tsukasa smirks. Yeah, he figured. He doesn’t want to say more, though. Daiki’s jumpy on a good day, and he wants Daiki here, he really does. He’s so tired of being alone.
Daiki brushes a hand across Tsukasa’s face.
“Why are you crying?”
“Don’t make me be all sappy and go ‘it’s having you here’.”
“Maybe I want to hear that,” Daiki says. “If it’s true.”
Tsukasa sighs.
“It is,” he says. “This is all I dreamed about. Thank you, Kaitou. For taking care of Natsumikan.”
Daiki smiles, just a little.
“Of course.”
The days pass, and Tsukasa clamps down on the easier things. The obvious nerves, and how much he’s gotten used to someone trying to kill him. Yuusuke’s not having this problem, at least.
He doesn’t sleep, doesn’t seem to need it, and it helps him avoid the nightmares.
Mostly, he just tries to remember who he is.
…it’s a work in progress.
“You know,” Natsumi says. “They’re still, you know, your photos, but they’re getting better on a technical level.”
Tsukasa grabs the one in her hand.
“I’m just more aware of how they tend to warp,” he says. “And preparing for it.”
“Still,” Natsumi says. “You found a loophole in a curse. I’d say that’s pretty impressive.”
“Not ‘revive the dead’ impressive,” Tsukasa says. Natsumi pauses.
“N-no,” she says. “But I’m glad I did. You’re going to be okay, Tsukasa.”
“It’ll never be the same.”
“And I refuse to abandon you again,” Natsumi says. “Things change. The fact that I care about you won’t.”
Tsukasa… really wants to believe her.
Yuusuke has no right to be so forgiving. Tsukasa put him through hell, after all. The Rider War was his own fault, and Yuusuke keeps acting like it isn’t.
Like Tsukasa was the victim.
He just… can’t understand it. He’s forgotten how to understand the world as anything but a consequence of his own actions, and most of all, Yuusuke refuses that message.
In fact, he’s leaning against Tsukasa on the walk back from a fight, humming some pop song horribly.
(Tsukasa is slowly finding his identity again. It’s harder to find that light he got when he gave a speech, though. The one that made him feel like he was worth something.)
Tsukasa stops, catching Yuusuke, who almost trips. Yuusuke blinks.
“Tsukasa?”
“Why don’t you hate me?”
“Because you did so much,” Yuusuke says. “So that everyone else could go home. And you succeeded.”
“I caused the Worlds to merge—”
“You had no one to help you,” Yuusuke interrupts. “Not with Dai-Shocker, and not when all of us were trying to kill you. So all I see is the one who saved my World, three times .”
…Yuusuke is too good for the Worlds.
“I don’t think I can go back,” Tsukasa says. “Maybe… a different angle might help.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the Destroyer of Worlds did save them all once,” Tsukasa offers. “Perhaps that’s how to do it right.”
Being a hero isn’t for him.