#elpsyched

[kongrisu]

               “  —— Okabe.”  Her approach from behind could be considered stealthy. She reaches out to him before he can react to her voice, pressing a cold can of Dr. P against the back of his neck in an attempt to make sure she grabbed his attention, fully intending to startle him. She’d been standing there watching him for longer than she’d be willing to admit... and although one could play it off as her trying to figure out what in the world could be going on in his head, the truth is that she’s worried.

               She rounds him and comes to stand in front of him. It’s her way of demanding his presence back down on earth, so to speak. This time, she holds out the can of soda more peacefully.  “Why are you doing this to yourself?”  Her tone of voice lacks the usual bite as she stares up at him, unflinching. She’s sympathetic, when she knows it’s needed. Gentle, even. And as much as she loathes to admit it, she feels guilty, too. There’s only so much she can do. It’s weighing on her mind  —  how many times has the worldline changed? How many times has he enlisted her aid and how many times has she failed to make a difference for him? And Mayuri?

               “You should try talking to them, too, this time. There’s no need for you to suffer alone like this...”

@elpsyched.

[kongrisu]

‘ i am so glad we were born during the same lifetime ’

POETRY.

↪ @elpsyched.

               If he were anyone else, she would have called him cruel. Had she not been told the truth of the world they found themselves in, she most definitely would have. Instead, her jaw sets and her fingers twitch. But when they do, her skin brushes against his own and it makes the hurt she’d felt starting to pool in the pit of her stomach slowly spread into an intense, painful ache in her chest. Her hand is close enough to touch his. She hadn’t even noticed until right then and now she wishes she hadn’t. It isn’t because she doesn’t want him there. No, it’s because she knows that no matter what she does, he won’t be there forever, whether she wishes him to be or not. She swallows her pride, inconsequential now more than ever, and reaches to close the distance between them on the bench. Her hand is trembling when she grabs his, her fingers lacing through his own and gripping onto him so tightly, she knows her knuckles are white and he might find it uncomfortable. She doesn’t care.

               “I’m…”  Sorry. She almost apologizes, but she catches herself before she does, her teeth bearing down on her bottom lip before she can get the words out. What is she meant to apologize for? For being born at the same time as him? For existing in this world alongside him, forcing him to fight for this world that has decided he is unable to remain with them? If she hadn’t crossed his path, he would have never had to choose between her and Mayuri in the first place. They would have never spent that time together and he never would have met her. Her death wouldn’t have mattered. Mayuri would have been enough.

               But at the cost of what? He loves her. He’d told her that. She hadn’t understood, for the longest time, but now she wishes she could get in a time machine and go back just to kick herself for not taking him at face value from the start. She’d wasted so much time. Doubting, analyzing, walling herself off even when she’d believed him. She’s stupid. She’s so stupid!

               “I’m glad... I met you.”  Of course she can’t apologize for that. No matter how cruel this is, she can’t take that away from him, or herself. Regardless of their circumstances, she could never trample over those feelings: not his and not her own. For better or for worse, he loves her  —  and she loves him. They’ve been in love for a long, long time. Longer than she can remember, in worlds and realities her mind still could not recall the pieces of. Nothing is worth losing that. And when she thinks of him disappearing, it makes her feel sick. Her hand is squeezing his so tightly now that she knows there’s no way it can’t be painful, but she can’t help it.  “I exist because of you. If we hadn’t met… If we’d been born at different times, or if we had never crossed paths… if none of those other world lines had ever happened…”  To feel regret that any of this happened would be the same as erasing those feelings for him. She can’t do that.  “I would miss you.”

               She did miss him. She does miss him. She will miss him. The question isn’t whether she would, it was a matter of when had she. And he’d fought her and fought her that entire night, but even still, in that moment, she thinks of how unbearable that longing is. She can’t lose him. She won’t lose him. Not after everything he’d suffered, not after all he’d done for her. Not when they were finally here, together  —  it’s too cruel. How could he be so unfair, making her feel like this, asking her not to do anything to protect him? He’d spent so long fighting for her. She doesn’t want to miss him. She wants to save him.

               She promises him. In the depths of her heart, she promises she will save him, even if she herself doubts it, even if she can’t say it to him aloud. Hououin Kyouma had spent so long trying to save everyone else, it was his turn to play the damsel in distress, whether he liked it or not.

               “Okabe, I...”  She wonders, in the back of her mind, how many times she’s failed to tell him her feelings. It could’ve been one other world line, two, or thousands. She hates every single version of herself who couldn’t reach out to him and tell him how important he is to her, that she would walk in his shoes and descend into a battle across time for him the same as he had for them, given the chance. If she had, maybe he would have more faith in her. Maybe he could see why she needs him. She needs him here, she needs him to exist. How can he not understand? After everything he’s done, how can he be that oblivious?

               She loves him. She doesn’t want to forget that. In the back of her mind, there’s a nagging voice calling her a hypocrite, because somewhere in her memories, she knows he’s parroting something she’d once told him, in a world line now far beyond their reach. But she doesn’t care. Amadeus had become Salieri.

               Kurisu turns towards him as much as she can and leans forward, her body collapsing on top of his without letting go of his hand, still held in vice grip. She only raises her arm so both of their hands are resting over her heart. It takes her a moment to steel herself, but pride is nonexistent as she uses her free arm to grab hold of the collar of his lab coat, yanking him down in a movement swift enough to likely take him off guard  ...  but she doesn’t want to lose her nerve. So she raises her head in time to meet him halfway. It is not the first time she has kissed him. It is not the first time he had kissed her. Constants, variables. Whether God or fate or this world itself willed it or not, it wouldn’t be the last.

               And yet, for all the pompous confidence and desperate promises, when she slowly releases him from her grasp and opens her eyes to stare up at him, she finds her vision has still blurred once more.  “Please don’t go.”  Her voice is so quiet and fragile, one could wonder if she’s the same person who often spends her time yelling at everyone in the lab. He can’t control it. She would  —  will  —  walk his path to ensure that somehow, some way, that would change. But it didn’t stop her from begging something, anything, to let him stay. Right there, right then. Don’t take him.  “You can’t just leave me, Okabe. I can’t accept this. I can’t. To me, you’re the most... I love——”

               She wants to tell him. She does, but not like this, god, not like this.

               “I want you to  —  I need you to stay with me...!!”

[kongrisu]

❛ you are never here. you are always almost there. ❜

A SOFTER WORLD.

               The eyes are like windows into the soul, or so people say. There’s no scientific measure for something so abstract, or even any way to prove that something that vague does exist. These are the situations in which her analytical mind can, at times, put her at a disadvantage. There is a disconnect between the two of them that seems to put them worlds apart and although she cannot begin to put her finger on why that is, the look in his eyes is enough to give even a blunt girl like her pause. She’s sure she can count the number of times someone has looked at her like that on one hand. Every other time, it was in dreams: a blurry face of someone she can’t place, someone she had always assumed not to even be real, just a construct of her imagination to soothe her when she’d have those nightmares.

               Countless times, she’d died in those elaborate fantasies she had pushed to the back of her mind. And even more times, she’d felt someone reach out to her, hold her while she was fearful and in pain, screaming for her with a level of agony that nearly matched her own. None of that is real, she tells herself, but there’s a deep anxiety pooling in the pit of her stomach, along with an uncomfortable, unfamiliar warmth.

               What does he mean by that? Why does he look like he’s about to cry?

               “I’m right here.”  She barely knows anything about him. He sounds like a crazy person, but there’s something holding her back from giving a more disapproving response. Something about this entire interaction feels wrong. There’s a prickling in her brain, a sensation she has no idea how to describe, and the more uneasy she grows, the tighter her chest feels. Some part of her, buried deep down, tucked away, forgotten, wants to reach out and meet his hand. She wants to comfort him. His eyes, the trembling in his voice, how tired he looks… all of it hurts her, because she knows that it’s her fault. There’s no way for her to know how or why.

               Few people understand how much of a slave she is to her own emotions.

               Without much thought behind the gesture, she ultimately does reach out to take his hand in hers. It makes her heartbeat quicken, which causes her to squeeze his hand out of reflex, as if the sensation had startled her. She has no reason not to write off whatever he’s saying as gibberish, to treat him as a stranger and turn away from him with a huff. She does not make a habit out of comforting people she doesn’t know, nor entertaining their sick ideas of a joke.

               But she knows him, she does. Her heart knows him, whether she realizes it or not. The hand reaching out to her hadn’t been that of a phantom’s. Who is he, really? She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know, but she does. And she doesn’t want to see him suffering. She’s so tired of seeing him in so much pain  ——  it’s like she’s seen it a million times before, and yet not at all.

               “I’m right here,”  she repeats, with more conviction, not noticing the subtle tremble in her own voice. But just like the space in her memories that he occupies, lost to a phenomenon she doesn’t even know exists in this world line, her words lose meaning without context. She’s reassuring him without knowing the fate she cannot change, reaching out to a man who knows that she is there now, but she may not be in an hour’s time.

               There’s a dream, a memory, clawing at the back of her mind. A warning of what’s to come, an empty promise from someone who loves her. Someone who would tear himself to pieces and leap through time to rearrange the world for her, although she had told him not to.

               She blinks and, in a twist of irony, she’s the one who feels something warm begin to trail down her cheeks. She feels her heart swelling and breaking, all at once. She doesn’t know who he is, or why her soul remembers him, but it does. And if she were the type to make promises she cannot keep, she would tell him that she would be there, in that exact spot, forever, if it would finally save him from suffering.

[otomates-a]

               “It’s you, isn’t it?”  He’s spent enough time observing this world  —  or, rather, all of these worlds  —  to be able to make that guess. Nhil had pointed him in the right direction at first, but if anyone knew how to keep their distance in order to examine an individual’s actions throughout resetting timelines and entirely separate world lines, it would be him. He realizes approaching out of the blue like this may seem strange. The time had come, though. He couldn’t just watch anymore, not when it was affecting her too. So he addresses him again, softly, as if afraid to breach the subject,  “I... I'm sorry. But you... you're the one who’s been... resetting this world?”

@elpsyched.