Palinopsia
5D's people on my flist, I need your help. I have this fic here and I've been staring at it too long, so what I'd like to know is what you think is going on in this fic, and if it accomplishes its intended purpose.
Title: Palinopsia
Summary: Yusei talks to Bruno. After all, there’s a lot he needs to talk about.
Rating: K
Author: Heleentje
Warnings: This fic strictly follows the events of canon, so big spoilers for everything up to episode 152.
Palinopsia
The house was empty when Yusei entered the kitchen, yawning and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He deposited the papers he’d taken with him on the kitchen table and had just opened the fridge to grab some leftover food from the previous day when the far-off noise of metal against metal reached his ear. It seemed like he’d been mistaken after all. Bruno was around and working in the garage.
“Good morning!” he shouted. The noise stopped for a second.
“Morning!” Bruno replied, voice sounding rather faint. He was probably working on the engine again. Yusei allowed himself an indulgent smile. Typical.
“Do you want anything for breakfast?” he asked.
“No, I’m fine,” Bruno said. “Did you sleep well?”
Yusei made a non-committal noise. He’d slept a few hours, but he’d spent the better part of the night puzzling over some problem he couldn’t quite figure out. He picked up his notes from the table again and read them over, frowning. The answer was floating somewhere near the edge of his subconscious, but it kept eluding him. He shook his head. Maybe all he needed was a reminder. He took his breakfast with him and moved down to the garage. From the corner of his eye, he saw Bruno move around almost shadow-like.
He picked the computer closest to the door and booted it up. There was a fine layer of dust covering the keyboard of the other one. He frowned and ran a finger through it. This computer hadn’t been used in a while. Maybe he should do some cleaning when he had the time.
First he had a project to finish, though. He read over his notes again as he started up a simulation program. The system worked, but it wasn’t nearly safe enough for its intended purpose. Yusei groaned. Everyone kept telling him the system worked fine, but he couldn’t risk a repeat of all those years ago…
“Something wrong?” Bruno asked. “Is it about your project?”
Yusei slumped. “How did you know?”
That earned him a soft laugh. “I know you, Yusei. Besides, it’s all that’s been on your mind for the last month.”
“The system isn’t safe enough,” Yusei admitted. “We’ve found a way to move the planetary gears out of the way if they get disabled, but if one gear gets disabled, the entire system becomes unstable. The other gears aren’t enough to stabilize it.”
“How many gears are you using now?”
“Three. I followed the model of the Ark Cradle.”
“The Ark Cradle wasn’t made for stability.” Bruno sounded a bit sad. “It was made to give you a chance to disable all the gears. That’s why there were only three. You want more. Maybe four or-”
“Five,” Yusei decided, already entering the new data into the simulation program. Combined with a sun gear and a ring gear, five planetary gears would bring the total number of gears up to seven. He liked seven. If there were only six, the system would never feel complete.
He smiled, satisfied, as the new simulation started running. The solution was so incredibly simple that he was surprised that he hadn’t come up with it before. Good thing he had Bruno to help him think.
Bruno went very still, and for a moment Yusei thought he wasn’t there anymore, but when he looked over his shoulder, He could still see Bruno staring at his tools, deep in thought.
“Something wrong?” Yusei asked, echoing Bruno’s earlier question.
“Ah, nothing really,” Bruno said, smiling his familiar smile.
“Do you miss them?”
“Yeah,” Bruno admitted. “I mean, they did some bad things, but they were still my friends.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Yusei said. Above all, he wished to tell Bruno that.
“I hurt you, though. I wish I hadn’t had to do that.”
“It’s not your fault,” Yusei repeated. Bruno needed to know that. It was important that he knew. “Besides, you taught me a lot.”
“You were a good student.” Bruno smiled, but his smile quickly disappeared. “I wish it could’ve been different, though.”
“So do I,” Yusei said. If only he could change the past… At least Fortune could help him keep the future safe. The simulation was running like he wanted it to, but it still felt like cold comfort somehow.
“It’s not your fault either,” Bruno said suddenly. “You shouldn’t take it so hard. No one blames you, least of all me.”
He hadn’t realized how much he’d wanted to hear that until he heard it. Yusei gave him a grateful smile. There was one more question nagging him, though. He just wasn’t sure if he wanted to know the true answer.
“If you had to choose…” Yusei started. He needed to know anyway. “If you could’ve chosen, which life would you have picked?”
Bruno didn’t reply right away, and Yusei hastened to add, “I know they were your friends, but-”
“They were really good friends,” Bruno said at long last. “But if I had to choose, I think I’d choose this life. I liked it a lot better.”
Yusei smiled. He’d really hoped that Bruno would think that way.
“How’s Fortune going?” Bruno asked. Yusei ran the simulation once more, just to be sure, before he replied.
“It’s fine now. We’re ready to start the testing process, and Clear Mind has helped me to write the operating system.”
That’s a very good use for it.” Bruno sounded proud of him. “Though you have been sleeping enough, right?"
In truth, he’d been sleeping even less than he usually did - sleep brought dreams and memories he neither needed nor wanted. With Clear Mind, he could easily go a day or two without sleep and still get all his work done. He hadn’t experienced any unwanted effects yet.
“I’ll sleep when Fortune is finished,” he said, getting up and walking over to the D-Wheel. Bruno looked at him, eyes vaguely disapproving.
“Yusei, you should sleep more.” There was a quiet sort of fading laugh in Bruno’s voice when he spoke next. “You know, next you’ll start seeing things that aren’t there.”
“Yeah, I probably should,” Yusei said, voice echoing through an empty room. The tools on the floor, cold when he touched them, were exactly where he’d left them the night before.
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Palinopsia: a visual disturbance that causes images to persist to some extent even after their corresponding stimulus has left.