Sometimes we don't change the future

[unrelenting_rhapsody]

Who: Dera, Yama, Chrome? Kinda!
When: After...everything.
What: A brainworm from Plague. Plague's fault.

Alternate timelines were a bitch, ad one reason he really fucking hated time travel. Didn't hate the Bovinos for their ability, JUST THE ABILITY ITSELF, because when it was possible, mapping was possible. Where mapping was possible he should have done it, just as he'd figured out how to help the Tenth not die when they were kids there should have been a way around this one.

Who cared if 'this' hadn't even been a mafia problem?

If this hadn't even been an Italy or Japan problem?

HE SHOULD HAVE SEEN IT.

Worlds were...fragile things. The joint project launch platform initiative was greenlit by the UN in 2028, a better way they said, to assemble colony ships and make the first real push for the stars. Both Earth's dwindling resources and the limited success of colonizing both the moon and Mars made humans feel they were ready. Like any good opportunist, well, the mafia was right there with the rest, supply, engineering, etc etc. Hell Tsuna had even sent him and Spanner to aid in completion protocols. Vongola could out-design most people on the planet. Lock them up in a space box with the few they couldn't? And beautiful things happened.

It still took Skype calls to make him remember meal times, and he picked up Spanner's candy addiction since he couldn't smoke, or justify the light stick (dynamite, not an option in space no), but he, no THEY were doing good. Actual, bonafide, complicated GOOD.

It felt really fucking good.

The real fucking bitch was being in the design box, in rotation around the original I.S.S, when the platform, and the neophyte colony ship were sabotaged. Just a touch too damn late on punching a shuttle to the main edifice and...hell fire rained from the sky. His transmission of "GET TO THE FUCKING BUNKERS!" may or may not have made it.

When he and the scientists finally managed to cobble together something to get them planet-side it was...a disaster zone. Of course it was a disaster zone. Even these eight months later. It had taken a while to make something without compromising life support systems. Hell, if he could have talked himself into a 90% die off rate among the remaining scientists he'd have built a god damn teleporter but...Spanner was part of the calculations and fucked if he'd risk the man unduly.

Eight months later and parts of the world were still smoking. Continental plates had been cracked as far as he could tell from the hellish elevator ride down, and the sky was going to be black for years at least. Welcome to the new ice age, probably. Those parts that weren't going to keep burning anyway.Italy had been sunk, the Mediterranean sea flooding up as high as Austria, the family estate was gone, the bunkers empty.

It took too damn long to get to Japan.

Spanner was probably ready to strangle him for the intensity. Or the lack of sugar available now. Either or, strangling was on that guy's agenda.

Japan, like Indonesia, had lost several islands, but really that hadn't stopped the natives really. They were fucking stubborn as shit, even digging into fucking volcanoes to pie to warmth to the greatly reduced islands. He recognized the innovation honestly, it was one of his old, idly jotted ideas after he'd watched too many Iceland documentaries. God bless Tenth, he'd fucking made his tech blueprints freeware.

Namimori bunker was also empty. Or rather converted into fucking hydroponics tanks where thin, hungry looking people worked in the hopes that they'd manage a harvest of the alfalfa and other greens before vitamin deficiency killed them. Likewise additional nooks had been carved in the stoneworks to grow fish; to be honest those fish might be the last of their kind unmutated and safe. Rising ocean levels led to desalinization, led to die off or mutation so...

...yeah.

The plaque said 'In honor of Tsuyoshi'.

Fuck.

Long story short he caught up with Tenth in the damn makeshift hospital. He'd been running in dying will flame since the hit and it was...hollowing him out from the inside. Chrome had layered defenses on the bunker against a stray hit, the strain had stopped her heart. Ryohei had burned Sun on every person he met when the bunker opened, dropping after healing a whole damn city. Hibari was never found, but Namimori school was pristine, everyone could take a fucking guess. Lambo had joined a traveling info caravan, people dedicated to traveling and setting up necessaries for food and shelter...

...and Yama had picked up Chrome's body and simply walked off.

He found a carved headstone next to Takeshi's mother, Yama's sword by the rock and a badly decayed body.

Fucking hell.

Fuck.

Ing.

Hell.

"God damn it." He settled on his knees, painfully covering the body and shifting to start adding another name to the stone. Everything.

Everyone.

Punching the rock barely even registered honestly.

Fine.

FINE.

They'd left...

...he'd wait.

Lambo still had that damn bazooka, he liberated it and disappeared, off to his lab as the world tried to find a new ideal of balance. He had the bazooka, and it's data, which meant he could fucking project energy probabilities now couldn't he?

He damn well could.

Huh.

His lovers energy signs showed back up in a few years...

...could he wait?

Fuck.

Fine.

He left the lab, locking it beyond what anyone else should be able to unlock, tucked Uri in his hood and with a sword and boxes in his pack. He'd need to make sure they could fucking survive in the world by that time so they weren't reborn as fucking lizard people or something.

Gokudera wasn't a savior.

Spanner wasn't a people person.

Together they drifted, re-engineering cities after the end of the world until Dera could find his balance again. With luck they'd pop back up as energy signatures when they tapped into their inherent flame abilities...

...he had no fucking clue what he'd do if he met them as babies.

Comments

[kuromu_dokuro]

"This world is... what we know, now, but if you want to fix it," she shrugged, "I don't think we're too attached, really."

"You don't understand, Dera," Yama tried to explain, "not having you there has been like a hole in our entire lives. It's like I can think for the first time without part of me looking for you."

Chrome nodded. It was like that for her too.

[unrelenting_rhapsody]

He didn't understand? The pained, empty look? Yeah. Eighteen years and some months. He knew.

Like he'd said, Idiot.

"I guess we take some fucking time to think then."

[kuromu_dokuro]

Chrome and Yama both nodded, Yama blushing. He hadn't thought before he spoke.

Chrome shifted to kiss Dera again, hoping for more engagement this time, but did pull back enough to say, "To think and debate, and plan together."

[unrelenting_rhapsody]

It was less a case of engagement as it was the sudden, deep hunger of years. The only reason she managed to pull away for talking at all was the fact he was trying not to cling...

...but he did shift to kiss Yama when she withdrew. Talking did NOT prevent him from pulling her into his lap though. Thinking later.

If he thought too hard right now he'd peg and measure each tiny difference from how they should be, and if he was cracking that empty shell of ice, well, best not to do that.

[kuromu_dokuro]

Best not to do that, indeed. Chrome settled into his lap, and Yama kissed him deeply...and they were perfectly willing to shower him with their physical affection.

Later, probably much later, Chrome curled up against 'Dera's naked chest and said, "Whatever else we do, I hate farming."

[unrelenting_rhapsody]

He was, indeed, far too thin, intense and whipcord, definitely been burning far too much Sun flame over the years but gods it was good to just have them back. And if there was crying again, well, that was just life sometimes.

Especially recently.

He'd forgotten how to be with people, especially intimately, but he wasn't hesitant. He couldn't be and still live with himself in the morning no...

"...fuck farming. I teach people to set up tanks and leave," he laughed a touch raggedly, finally.

[kuromu_dokuro]

They didn't mind if he cried. Oh, they held him, and soothed him, but they understood to a degree. There was no blame.

"Good," Yama said, drowsy and content, "because she can kill anything green in a day or less."

"Sometimes it takes longer," she said defensively, "but I am really bad at it." Hated it because she was bad at it? Bad at it because she hated it? Who knew?

[unrelenting_rhapsody]

"No farming," he agreed, voice thick, from crying and overuse today probably but who fucking cared at this point. "...fuck we gotta get up," he growled at last. Mainly because there were legs dangling off the bed and Chrome squashed against the wall and it was not going to work tonight.

"We'll get both mattresses on the floor." And nest that shit.

[kuromu_dokuro]

Yama made a mildly complaining noise at having to wake up enough to move the mattresses, but Chrome appreciated not being smashed into a wall. Once the bed was a proper nest, Yama fell asleep pretty quickly.

Chrome, however, rested her head on 'Dera's chest and drew light circles with her finger - just hard enough not to tickle - as she checked on his thinness. "I've got to start cooking for you." she said softly, "You're too thin, tesorino."

[unrelenting_rhapsody]

Dera draped an arm across Yama's waist, still keeping track of people yes. He'd missed touch, so much. He was awake enough to follow Chrome's finger though, idly adding equations to the arcs and doodles in the back of his head. "Hnnn?" Oh.

Right.

"Fussy."

[kuromu_dokuro]

"Spanner deserves a break." she murmured. Yama was curled up against 'Dera's side, much the way that Chrome was so that they bookended him. She was pretty close to wide awake, and worrying. It was her thing.

[unrelenting_rhapsody]

He stroked her hair, fingers tangling a few times just to reassure himself, "you should sleep too." Spanner...would do what Spanner would do. He'd given up on trying to order the man around after the first two years really.

[kuromu_dokuro]

"I will." she promised, "when I'm tired. Right now I just need to hold you." and not let him wander off, decide he fucked up, and run away. He looked a little like he might rabbit.

[unrelenting_rhapsody]

"...alright," he smiled slightly, fingers settling just behind her ear. Mainly she was on his chest so listening to her heartbeat wasn't so much an option, but he could count the pulse point there. Just a steady sense of her existing! "Fucked if I'm qualified to be the fucking sleep police."

At all.

[kuromu_dokuro]

"You never have been." she agreed, laughing a little into his chest. It was light, it was easy, it was still a little fufufu that sounded perfectly normal; she laughed like that all the time. Her pulse was strong, firm. Stronger than when she'd been Nagi, sure she was a hint malnourished but she was whole and could therefore get better nutrition from what was around.

She was quiet for a while, then, "Do you...want to talk about it?" the past eighteen years alone. Yama and her new lives. Anything.

[unrelenting_rhapsody]

"No." That was firm and unyielding. He could NOT talk about it tonight, he'd pick apart the edges of things and tear himself apart. He knew that. "Not tonight. I don't know when I'll be able to fucking handle that." At least he was honest?

[kuromu_dokuro]

"That's fine, then." she said nodding, "I'll make sure Yama doesn't bring it up either." There was time. They'd deal with it when they dealt with it. She settled back into quiet, willing to doze lightly until he fell asleep or started talking about something else. She wouldn't go all the way down, but she'd doze.

[unrelenting_rhapsody]

"No, don't try to avoid shit either. Talk...fucking normal if you both can." He'd try too. Avoiding shit just brought things into focus more and...

..."I don't make a lot of sense do I?" he laughed softly.

[kuromu_dokuro]

"You never really have," she said, laughing a little as well, "but then neither have we. Vongola, we don't do sense. He's still Yama. Just so you know." She'd noticed the lack of name calling.

[unrelenting_rhapsody]

"...but we do. Did. It's insane but all patterns in the fucking chaos, Vongola made sense. This world though..." Not so much and he was beating it into some semblance of shape rather literally.

But was he Takeshi?

"I'm trying not to shatter it all."

[kuromu_dokuro]

"I have to admit that I never really understood the madness. Just a little of how to navigate it."

He was not Takeshi. But maybe that, at least, would help a bit.

"Maybe..." she said slowly, "Maybe it needs to be. It's been too long for the bazooka...but maybe you can find a way back anyway?" she hated to see him so broken.

[unrelenting_rhapsody]

"It's just thinking in intersecting parabolas instead of linear assumptions," he mumbled, knowing, knowing that didn't help most with grasping the logic in the insanity but...

...it was the truth.

"Shatter all of this, not just me and everyone's dead. I can figure that shit out, I can, but it doesn't change here and now, it just fucking...ends." A timeline dying off, pruned away.

[kuromu_dokuro]

Chrome was very quiet for a while, then she sighed, "It's still something to think about, tesoro. Some timelines don't deserve to be. Maybe this is one of them. I don't know, I'm a little on the amoral side."

She always was.

[unrelenting_rhapsody]

"I'm always thinking about it," he admitted quietly. How could he not be? "Last time...last time Tenth decided. I don't have that right." He COULD lead at need, yes, but he didn't choose to.

And he wasn't the most moral either, that's why he tried to refrain from the biggest decisions.

[kuromu_dokuro]

"Something we'll have to talk about, then." she said, turning to kiss his chest lightly. "Later, though. We can talk about all that later."