Now here’s where things start to get a little different. : D
Chapter 3: Vetitive Liaison, Chapter 5: Ventral Pallidum Insomnia
Chapter 4: Antarctic Primavera
I went home to my hotel, alone. Was there anything else I could say to him, anything at all? Not necessarily to change his mind, because his resolve was set and I knew nothing I could say would change that.
I stared at my phone all night, thinking, sometimes crying. Was I ready to live in a world without Okabe? At least it wasn’t like he died violently, like Mayuri or I had. He just… ceased to exist in this worldline, and then was overwritten. Like computer data being formatted, changing the past to match the present. And he was facing it with dignity. Dignity I had once thought would be difficult for a self-proclaimed ‘mad scientist’ to have.
Damn him and his heroic qualities. There was no one in the world like Okabe Rintarou, with his energy, his intelligence, his dramatic make-believe world, his steadfast caring heart. And now there wouldn’t be anyone like him again.
Would I even remember? If I didn’t, not even that unsettling feeling, that would be best, even if my life would be more dull for it. If I did, even a little… life would be torture.
The sun rose and I was still staring at my dark phone, unable to stop trying to think of ways to keep him here. Why was he falling out of this worldline, anyway, when he’d fought so hard to bring us to it? This worldline might not contain time travel, but it was only made possible by time travel. What did it mean?
My phone buzzed in my hand; one message. I flicked it open instantly.
“Goodbye.” One word. That was all. I clutched my breaking heart and wailed. He was too cruel. How could I say goodbye back? I didn’t want to say something so final.
He hadn’t disappeared until about noon. Maybe I had time? What was I doing today? Laundry, wasn’t it? Forget the laundry. I wanted to see him again. Even if he disappeared from in front of me. Even if he vanished from my very arms.
I threw on my clothes and dashed out the door, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, running as if my life depended on it.
I arrived at the lab just before noon, exhausted, covered in sweat in the hot humid Japanese August, crashing through the door without even taking my shoes off. He hadn’t been at the laundromat. I prayed he was still here. Although… I remembered my mission, so he must be! He must be!
He was, drinking Dr. Pepper and expounding conspiracy theories to Mayuri. He turned to look at me, at my sweaty, disheveled appearance, but his expression brightened. I opened my mouth to say his name, and then he was gone. Deja vu…
Daru turned around from the computer. “Hi, Makise-shi! You look like you were in a hurry.”
“Oh…” I thought. Why had I been running? I had to see someone. That man… O… Oka…be…? Okabe Rintarou! Who no longer existed in this worldline. And my memory was intact, somehow, even if no one else’s was. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
“Tuturu! Kurisu-chan, Mayushii needs your help,” Mayuri called from the couch. “Should Mayushii make the skirt blue or gree-”
“Green,” I said. She’d chosen green last time. No need to drag out the discussion again. Even if for her, it would be the first time.
“Hmm. I think you’re right. Thanks, Kurisu-chan!”
I looked at them both. They didn’t remember. I was the one who had made the memory time leap. I was the Observer, like Okabe had been a year ago. I didn’t have Reading Steiner, but I remembered anyway.
Could I follow his last wish?
Could I forget Okabe Rintarou?
I tried. I tried my hardest. But the harder you try to forget something, whether it’s something that torments you or something you care about… or in this case, both… the more things remind you of it. Especially since I couldn’t abandon Mayuri and Daru and the others. I tried for a couple days, since it was difficult to bear being around them while knowing he would never come back, but then Mayuri called me and sounded so sad I had to go back to them.
I had until I left for America again to decide. I had a month.
The month went by all too quickly. The last couple days were looming ahead of me, the last days in which I could safely build the time leap device and use it. And… problems were cropping up in the lab. The electricity bill was through the roof, and Feyris and Ruka were drifting away. Even Mayuri and Daru spent less time there than previously.
He was the one who had held it all together. The idiot didn’t give himself enough credit.
Mayuri was the one who helped me decide. “You’ve seemed so sad on this visit, Kurisu-chan. Was it not as fun this year?”
Last year… hadn’t been particularly fun, with all the half-remembered and fully-remembered fear and agonizing and confusion and sometimes dying. The present worldline had been all right, I supposed, after I got over my father trying to kill me, and a mad scientist walked up to me on the street three weeks later and told me I was his assistant. But she was right. It had been more exhilarating, in any worldline, to meet him and bounce ideas off him, to butt heads and tease and collaborate. My lab in America was so much more dull, even if about a thousand times more professional. “It’s not that, Mayuri. It’s… I can’t talk about it.” I was grieving someone who wasn’t technically dead. How awkward.
“Did someone close to you go away?” she asked quietly, and I started, almost dropping my ramen, which I was eating with the fork he had given me. It was bad for me emotionally, I knew, but I really hated chopsticks! “Mayushii’s been having this feeling that someone went away. Everything seems quiet for some reason. Daru’s been feeling it too.”
I put the fork down and stared at her until she blushed and looked away. “Mayuri…”
“I-it’s just a feeling! Mayushii doesn’t know what it means, it’s just a silly thought…”
“It’s not silly,” I told her. “If I say the name Hououin Kyouma, does it mean anything to you?” I couldn’t help making my voice deep and resounding on the pompous name.
“I… I don’t know…”
“We must change the world’s ruling structure? Plunge the world into chaos? Drink the intellectual drink of the chosen? Fight the Organization?”
She looked troubled. “But Hououin Kyouma…”
“Is Okabe Rintarou.” My heart swelled painfully on saying his name again, and I pressed on before I could break down. “Okarin? You told me once you were his hostage.”
Her eyes brightened. “That does sound familiar, like something Mayushii heard in a dream! I… I don’t remember who that is, but… Okarin. Okarin… When I say the name, I feel warm inside! I won’t ask how you knew, Kurisu-chan – you know somehow, and that means that you must be right.”
“Right?”
“About Okarin! He really existed, didn’t he?”
I nodded. “He wanted me to forget, but I can’t forget. And even though you and Hashida and Urushibara-san didn’t time-leap, you remember him too, I can tell.”
“What are you going to do, Kurisu-chan?”
My grip tightened on my fork. “I’m going to bring him back. Somehow. I don’t know how. I need his help. Dammit, Jim, I’m a neurologist, not a mad scientist.”
Mayuri looked confused. “How are you going to get his help?”
“Luckily, I do remember how to build the time leap device,” I said, and couldn’t resist a mad-scientist-y “ohohoho”, which made Mayuri giggle.
I talked to the others. They remembered, too. Your mightily annoying self won’t disappear from anyone’s heart, no matter how hard you try.
I’d arrived in Japan on August 9th. Okabe disappeared on the 13th, the anniversary of Mayuri’s original death. I didn’t know if that was important, but I suspected it was. I needed as much time as I could get with him – to figure out how to get him back. I set the time leap device for the 10th and hoped he would listen this time.
I blinked and lowered the phone from my ear. It was so disconcerting, the horrible melting feeling as my consciousness moved through time, and then finding myself in a completely different place and position. Today we were at Yanabayashi Shrine, visiting Ruka. From what I remembered, I’d already given my lecture for the day in the morning.
I looked around. Mayuri was here, kicking her heels against the stone wall she was sitting on, and Ruka, dressed as a shrine maiden, was energetically practicing with the ‘magic’ sword Okabe had once given him, the ‘demon sword Samidare’. And there…
“Okabe,” I said softly, and he broke off in the middle of rambling about spirits and demons and things to glance at me, then did a double-take.
He’d noticed again. Of course he would. But he’d better not bring it up here.
“Carry on, Ruka!” he commanded in a booming Kyouma voice. “Mayuri, observe carefully and make sure that every stroke is perfect! I need to speak with my assistant about our next move to thwart the Organization.”
“Okay!” Mayuri said and giggled.
He nodded to me in a frighteningly serious way and we went around to the other side of the Shrine, where he turned to me, looming over me again. “You just time-leapt, didn’t you!” he said, trying to keep his voice down this time. “Don’t you remember how dangerous that is!? Didn’t I specifically say never to mess with time under any circumstances?”
Heard it. “I know! But you’re going to disappear at noon on August the 13th, and I need your help to stop it!” I backed up before he could grab me and shake me.
“What do you mean, disappear?”
“You’re going to vanish into thin air in front of my eyes, in front of everyone’s eyes, and the worldline will immediately pretend you ever existed. But I can’t forget. I tried. You told me to. I can’t.”
“And what happens when you try to stop it and you fail?” He was hissing, trying not to let his anger and fear get the better of him. At least he wasn’t shattering in front of my eyes this time. “If it’s the will of Steins;Gate that I vanish, then that’s how it is!”
My temper flared back at him. “You think that Steins;Gate can’t branch and become not-Steins;Gate anymore? Once someone develops time travel, the worldline becomes fixed, with the future all plotted out beyond time. In Steins;Gate, at least, time travel is never developed, despite all the wrinkles in continuity last year, so we can’t know the future, if it’s fixed or not. Steins;Gate was the only worldline to navigate the convergences of my death and Mayuri’s death without anyone dying, but you think that it’s set in stone from then on? You yourself said the one thing about Steins;Gate was that the future was unknown here, that it had infinite possibilities. So you can’t tell me not to find the future that has you in it!”
He took a step back, looking stunned. “Kurisu…”
I shook my head angrily, trying not to cry. “You’ll fight for me, you’ll almost die for me, but you won’t let me fight for you? That’s not fair at all. I’m an adult, not a glass doll you saved from breaking once. And if the others knew, they’d all agree. You were there for us. Can’t we be there for you?” It was the same argument all over again, but I had much more conviction on my side this time. He had to listen. He had to.
“Even if you have the means, the past must not be changed. You must not turn chance into reality! It doesn’t matter why, even to try to save me!”
“You’ve told me everything. I’ve considered it carefully. The stakes aren’t as traumatizing for me as they were for you. You’re not dying violently in front of my helpless eyes. But if you think I’m just going to live my life without you while remembering that you were here, you have another think coming, because you’re completely mistaken. Even the others can’t. I talked to them before I came back. I can’t. I can’t.”
His face settled into unhappy lines. “What happens when someone else dies because of something that changed? Could you live with that?”
“I know the risks,” I said. “I don’t want to change anything. You said last time that the world never changes in a way that’s convenient for you. So I have to think around that. And I need your help to figure it out.”
“Last time… how many times have you time-leaped so far?”
“Only twice.”
“Even though I asked you not to? Even though this is my fate, for daring to change the world?”
“You don’t believe in fate!” I exclaimed, clenching my fists. “That’s why you broke your heart and soul over and over and over again for my and Mayuri’s sake! And just because I love you doesn’t mean that I’m just going to do whatever you sa-” My eyes widened and I clapped my hands over my mouth, my face flushing bright red.
He looked startled as well, amber eyes wide as saucers, mouth hanging open, frozen in place.
“…That’s the first time I’ve said that properly in any worldline, isn’t it?” I mumbled through my hands.
He nodded slowly, finally remembering to breathe. We both dropped our gazes to the ground. Why? He’d already told me in California that he loved me, that he’d love me no matter the place, time, or worldline. Why should he be embarrassed?
I squared my shoulders, mustered my courage, and faced him again. “Well. It’s true. I love you. And that’s why I’m going to save you.”
He looked like he wanted to argue more, but I’d won this time. And it only took an L-bomb. With an effort, he schooled his emotions back under control, then glanced at me with a hint of teasing. “I always knew you were madly in love with me.”
I whapped him in the arm. “Don’t push it.”
His smile became resigned, and a little bit sad. “Sorry.” He reached out to touch my face, to caress my cheek, and I couldn’t help but lean into it. “I’m terrified for you, but you’re a strong, stubborn woman. I don’t want to, but I… I’ll help you. If I can.”
“Thank you.” I reached up to cup the hand that was stroking my face, and suddenly we were in each other’s arms, clinging to each other fiercely.
Chapter 3: Vetitive Liaison, Chapter 5: Ventral Pallidum Insomnia