Fanfiction: So Close, So Far (Zero Time Dilemma)
I have written half of the ten most recently posted Zero Escape fics on AO3. I don't care if the fandom's inactive! I can be active enough for everyone!
Here's the inevitable fic where I pair my favourite character up with everyone. I'm afraid I've gone straight back to 'Carlos gets screwed up by memories of alternate timelines'.
Title: So Close, So Far
Fandom: Zero Time Dilemma
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Carlos/Diana, Carlos/Junpei, Carlos/Phi, Carlos/Akane
Wordcount: 2,800
Summary: The problem with infinite universes, as Carlos is discovering, is that you've had sex with all your friends and it's awkward.
Four days into the Dcom project, and Diana’s convinced that Sigma’s been avoiding her since the start. It really seems to be getting her down.
“But you guys don’t have any kind of history, right?” Carlos asks, sitting across the table from her. “I don’t see why he would.”
“I’m not imagining things,” Diana says. “The first time he saw me, he just - I’ve never been looked at like that. I thought he...” She goes silent for a moment. “But now he won’t look at me at all. I think he must hate me. I just don’t know why.”
“I don’t think anyone has any reason to hate you,” Carlos says. “Sigma...” Is constantly freaking out, searching for some disease no one’s ever heard of? “Well, he’s just preoccupied.”
Diana gives him a weak smile. “Thanks. Sorry I’m just... throwing all these feelings at you. I guess they needed to go somewhere.”
“I don’t mind,” Carlos says. “If I’m living with you guys, I’d like to know you better.”
Diana’s smile becomes warmer. She reaches across the table to squeeze his hand. “You’re a good guy, aren’t you, Carlos?”
He laughs, a little abashed. “I don’t know. I hope so.”
“I just... want someone to look at me. So I can know I’m real. Does that make sense?”
Carlos has always had a good instinct for danger, and it’s starting to whisper to him now. “Well, there are seven other people here who can look at you. Six, I mean.”
Diana shakes her head. “That’s not really what I’m talking about.”
“Diana...”
“I’m sorry.” She stands abruptly, wrapping her arms around herself. “You probably think I’m pathetic.”
“I don’t,” Carlos says.
“Just... don’t tell Sigma. Or any of the others. Please?”
She looks so alone. He gets up, moves to give her a hug. This is a bad idea, his instincts whisper.
He holds her quietly for a long time. And at last she shifts in his arms to face him, tilts her head up, kisses him.
He knew it, he knew it, he knew this was coming. It feels like he’s lived through it before. And the right thing to do feels like a memory in his head; he can see himself gently taking her by the shoulders, pushing her back from him, telling her to get some sleep rather than to do anything rash when she’s upset.
It’s the best course of action. It feels like perhaps he’s already taken it, in some other world.
It’s not the one he takes now.
---
Carlos doesn’t know when Junpei’s planning to go back to Japan, whether he’s planning to go back at all. Junpei doesn’t seem to have any interest in picking up his detective business again. It makes sense; it seems like the work was rough for him, and if the reason he started in the first place was to find Akane...
Well. There’s no finding her now.
Junpei’s staying on Carlos’s couch; Carlos offered when he realised it looked like Junpei was just going to keep staying in run-down motels until he ran out of money, if the immigration authorities didn’t find him first. He wasn’t sure whether Junpei was going to accept. The motel rooms are probably less claustrophobic, less charged with the memory of what happened in the bomb shelter. But Junpei took him up on it, eventually.
The weight of all those deaths presses down on every moment between them. The drugs mean they still can’t be sure of exactly what happened; they just woke up and everyone else was gone.
But they know what happened to Q, Mira and Eric. Carlos voted for them to be executed, and he doesn’t know why.
They’ve been able to dredge up a few faint scraps of those lost memories. Junpei’s pretty sure that poison was involved, that it affected Akane more severely than the two of them. Carlos has a horrible feeling that at some point someone said six instead of three, and that was important somehow, and Sigma, Phi and Diana are dead because they missed it.
Junpei’s bitter and furious and grieving, and spending time with him isn’t exactly enjoyable. But Carlos thinks they might both need it.
When it’s too much, Carlos goes to sit by Maria at the hospital. Trades one set of tragedies for another.
-
It’s a hot evening, and Junpei is sitting on the couch, half-sprawling, staring at the wall. Carlos is sitting next to him, doing a crossword in the paper. Whatever it was that he doesn’t remember from the bomb shelter, it’s left him with a strange, urgent sense that he has to solve any puzzle he comes across.
He throws a clue Junpei’s way on occasion, just to give him something to engage with. It worries him, how much time Junpei seems to spend in his own head. He knows himself that their heads aren’t the best places to be at the moment.
“Six down, five letters,” Carlos says. “I climb on man in fight. M something L something-”
“Is this going to be the universe where we fuck?” Junpei asks.
Carlos takes a moment to go back over that in his head. “What?”
Junpei shrugs. “I realised I’d been thinking about it, so there’s probably a universe where we fuck. You know, if you’re into that at all. Might as well be this one, right?”
“Are you hitting on me?” Carlos asks. “This is a really weird way to be hit on.”
“Did Akane ever explain multiverse theory to you?”
Carlos definitely isn’t keeping track of this conversation. He was thinking about crossword clues just seconds ago; how did he get here? “I don’t...”
He doesn’t think she did. But it feels familiar. Maybe it happened in the time that’s been scrubbed out of their memories.
“Never mind,” Junpei says. “Look, I get what you’re trying to do with the crossword. Thanks. It’ll probably be a more effective distraction if you just fuck me.”
Carlos sets the pen and newspaper down on the floor, carefully, trying to think. “You’re emotionally compromised, right? I shouldn’t-”
“Shut up, Carlos.” And suddenly Carlos is pinned down against the couch, staring up at Junpei. “I’m not a fucking child. I’m going to be emotionally compromised for the rest of my fucking life. I’m not planning to join the clergy.”
The moment stretches out to the point of being painful. Carlos’s heart is beating hard in his throat.
It’s too warm. For some reason, that’s what won’t get out of his head. He wishes he’d thought to open a window.
He tries to keep breathing.
“Tell me you don’t want this,” Junpei says. It sounds like a plea. “Kick me out on the streets. Or kiss me. Just - one or the other. I can’t take every day being the same.”
I can’t take every day being the same. It’s like hearing his own thoughts, things he hadn’t even realised he was thinking until they came echoing back to him.
Carlos kisses him.
---
Carlos knows in an instant his plan hasn’t worked, he hasn’t transported himself to the past. This is the bomb shelter, and he’s pretty sure this valuable piece of alien technology hasn’t just been sitting here for ten months.
And now it’s useless to him. Damn it. He hopes there’s another universe where he didn’t screw up the alien coordinates, where he’s rescuing Akane and Junpei right now.
He guesses he should find out what his situation is.
-
Phi turns sharply from the X-Door as he enters the lounge. Carlos has come to think of Phi as unrufflable in the short time he’s known her, but she looks ruffled now.
“I thought you were supposed to be dead,” she says. Her eyes narrow. “Are you Zero?”
“No! No, I’m - wait, I’m dead?”
Phi gestures up at the board next to the X-Door, without looking at it herself. The board with the X-Passes.
Carlos’s stomach feels like it drops a foot. Not just him. Sigma. Diana. The whole of Q-Team.
Akane. Junpei.
“You’re the only one left?” he asks. His own voice sounds strange.
“Apart from you, apparently,” Phi says. Now that he really looks at her, into her eyes, it’s clear she’s been crying. “You want to explain that?”
“You know the transporter?”
Phi’s eyes widen slightly. “What, that thing actually works?”
“Not for another ten months,” Carlos admits. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. Wasn’t going to use it. I don’t trust anything to transport my body if it can’t tell me how it’s going to transport my consciousness.” She glances up at the X-Pass board. “I won’t pretend other timelines don’t sound tempting, though.”
“You know about other timelines?” Is this huge revelation just old news to everyone else?
“Yeah, I know.”
There’s a pause. Carlos looks up at the board, at Sigma and Diana’s names.
“Is it okay if I ask what happened?” he asks.
Phi shrugs and holds up the arm with her bracelet. “Don’t remember. I just woke up by the transporter and there they weren’t. Then I got the door unlocked and heard everyone was dead.” She pauses. “There’s a lot of blood in the trash disposal room.”
“I’m sorry,” Carlos says, quietly.
Phi turns back to the panel by the X-Door. “So,” she says, “are we getting out of here or what?”
-
Carlos brought a handful of cards from the transporter room, to break off the bracelet needles, but it turns out there’s no need for them. The bracelets come off after they go through the X-Door.
Phi contacts Control when they’re back at service level. “Send transport for two people and a dog,” she says, and then, over Control’s protests, “Yes, we’re aborting the project. Seven of us are dead.”
She cuts off communication before they can ask questions. Looks over her shoulder and catches Carlos’s eye. “Unless you want to explain it.”
Carlos shakes his head. “It can wait until they get here.”
“We might be arrested,” Phi says. “You ready for that? I mean, I don’t exactly have any plans, so I might as well get thrown in jail, but I guess you might still have something to stay free for.”
“There’s my sister,” Carlos says. “We’ll just tell them to search the bomb shelter. No way someone sets up something that elaborate and doesn’t leave any clues about who they are.”
Phi considers him for a moment. “You know, the Radical-6 is probably in that bomb shelter.”
“That thing Sigma was looking for?”
“We probably shouldn’t let anyone go in there. This might be a timeline where it doesn’t get loose. We’re just risking the infection getting out if they search the place.”
“So we just say ‘everyone’s dead, but we can’t tell you why or where the bodies are’?” Carlos asks. “We’ll definitely be arrested.”
Phi shrugs. Sits down on the floor. “I’m just saying what we should probably do. Honestly, I don’t know if I care any more.” She rests her arms on her knees. “We’ve probably got at least an hour to decide before they get here, anyway.”
A moment passes. Carlos wonders about Junpei and Akane, and whether he actually managed to save them in some universe. Whether, if he gets more experienced with the morphogenetic field, he’ll be able to access the memories of a version of himself who didn’t lose them.
“Are you interested in sex?” Phi asks.
Carlos’s mind stutters to a halt. “In... in general, or...?”
Phi gives him a withering look.
“Sorry,” Carlos says. Is he sure he isn’t dreaming? “I’m just surprised, I guess. I never got the impression you-”
“Don’t get me wrong,” Phi says. “This isn’t a love confession. It’s stress relief. Hands only. No talking. You get me off, and maybe, if I’m feeling generous, I’ll do the same for you.”
“Are you sure you actually want me involved? It sounds like you’d do fine on your own.”
“That’s the offer,” Phi says, leaning back on her elbows. “Take it or leave it.”
It feels a little like he’s still in the Decision Game. He wonders if this is one of those points that split the universe.
“It doesn’t seem like a good idea,” he says.
“Most of the people I care about are dead and we’re probably going to jail,” Phi says. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
---
Carlos has been by Akane and Junpei’s hotel every day since they all escaped Dcom, checking in, helping with planning for both the wedding and the anti-terrorism operation, dreading the day they head back to Japan.
There are a lot of things on his mind that he hasn’t really felt ready to address. But one day only Akane is in, and he guesses that’s less intimidating than bringing it up with both of them. Maybe this is his opportunity to talk about it.
Even if he really doesn’t know how to approach this.
He visited Sigma, Diana and Phi yesterday. (He keeps slipping into calling them D-Team in his head. He needs to stop it; that’s the label Delta put on them.) They had a meal together, and it was a really good evening. But Carlos just... couldn’t stop thinking. About Diana, about Phi. About Sigma, and whether the fact that he doesn’t remember sleeping with Sigma means it hasn’t actually happened in some universe, won’t blindside him in the future. About whether Diana and Phi might have the same memories as him, about the fact that they’re apparently mother and daughter, which is weird...
“So... this alternate-universe thing.”
“Yes,” Akane says.
“I know you and Junpei are together,” Carlos says. “But that’s in this universe, right?”
Akane nods. “There are universes where we aren’t in a relationship, yes.”
Carlos hesitates. “Are there any universes where maybe... you’re with other people instead? Like...”
“Are you flirting with me, Carlos?”
“No! No, I’m just-”
Akane laughs. “You don’t have to look so frightened. Yes, there are always different relationship possibilities across different universes.” She puts her head on one side for a moment, looking at him. “But I think you already knew that, didn’t you?”
“I’ve been remembering some... strange things,” Carlos admits, scratching the back of his neck. “I just wanted to know if they were real.”
“If it helps you decide,” Akane says, “I think I might remember some of them as well. You have a tattoo on your back, right? A butterfly. It represents Maria.”
One of the few unnecessary purchases he made after Maria got sick. It felt necessary to him, at least. He remembers explaining it to Akane, lying in bed one morning, a few months after they escaped the bomb shelter. The sole survivors, in that timeline.
She remembers that? So that’s... real, that’s not just Carlos’s imagination straying in strange directions?
She remembers that?
He finds he suddenly can’t meet her eyes any more.
“Don’t worry,” Akane says, amusement in her voice. “I’m used to it. You’re not the only friend I’ve slept with in another universe.”
“It doesn’t... make things awkward for you?”
“I think there’s a point where you have to accept that that’s what friendship means for you,” Akane says. “If the potential for sex exists in a relationship, there’s probably a universe where that potential is fulfilled. Most people who can access the morphogenetic field have to deal with this.” She shrugs. “So, no, it doesn’t really bother me that a version of me might have slept with a version of you. It’s not the worst universe out there.”
“Thank you,” Carlos says after a moment, uncertainly. “So, uh, what do you do if it’s not just sex? What if...”
What is he doing? He can’t talk to her about this.
“Oh,” Akane says. “Oh, you poor thing.”
He has to look away from her again.
-
There’s one thing that stands out to him, when he thinks over his more intimate experiences from other timelines. He never made the first move. All those universes, all those possibilities, and he never made the first move, not once.
What he wants doesn’t matter, because he’ll never act on it. He’s always thought of himself as the kind of guy who takes action, but maybe that’s only in life-or-death situations. This is apparently an area of his life he’s incapable of taking into his own hands.
It doesn’t help that he always felt like a replacement. For Sigma, for Akane, for Junpei. Phi’s the only one who didn’t seem to be actively thinking of someone else, and even she wasn’t interested in Carlos as a person.
What are you supposed to do when different versions of yourself have gone off and fallen in love with a load of different people, and then dumped all those feelings onto you at once?
Nothing. He knows himself so well by this point, every version of himself. And he knows he’s going to do nothing.
Here's the inevitable fic where I pair my favourite character up with everyone. I'm afraid I've gone straight back to 'Carlos gets screwed up by memories of alternate timelines'.
Title: So Close, So Far
Fandom: Zero Time Dilemma
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Carlos/Diana, Carlos/Junpei, Carlos/Phi, Carlos/Akane
Wordcount: 2,800
Summary: The problem with infinite universes, as Carlos is discovering, is that you've had sex with all your friends and it's awkward.
Four days into the Dcom project, and Diana’s convinced that Sigma’s been avoiding her since the start. It really seems to be getting her down.
“But you guys don’t have any kind of history, right?” Carlos asks, sitting across the table from her. “I don’t see why he would.”
“I’m not imagining things,” Diana says. “The first time he saw me, he just - I’ve never been looked at like that. I thought he...” She goes silent for a moment. “But now he won’t look at me at all. I think he must hate me. I just don’t know why.”
“I don’t think anyone has any reason to hate you,” Carlos says. “Sigma...” Is constantly freaking out, searching for some disease no one’s ever heard of? “Well, he’s just preoccupied.”
Diana gives him a weak smile. “Thanks. Sorry I’m just... throwing all these feelings at you. I guess they needed to go somewhere.”
“I don’t mind,” Carlos says. “If I’m living with you guys, I’d like to know you better.”
Diana’s smile becomes warmer. She reaches across the table to squeeze his hand. “You’re a good guy, aren’t you, Carlos?”
He laughs, a little abashed. “I don’t know. I hope so.”
“I just... want someone to look at me. So I can know I’m real. Does that make sense?”
Carlos has always had a good instinct for danger, and it’s starting to whisper to him now. “Well, there are seven other people here who can look at you. Six, I mean.”
Diana shakes her head. “That’s not really what I’m talking about.”
“Diana...”
“I’m sorry.” She stands abruptly, wrapping her arms around herself. “You probably think I’m pathetic.”
“I don’t,” Carlos says.
“Just... don’t tell Sigma. Or any of the others. Please?”
She looks so alone. He gets up, moves to give her a hug. This is a bad idea, his instincts whisper.
He holds her quietly for a long time. And at last she shifts in his arms to face him, tilts her head up, kisses him.
He knew it, he knew it, he knew this was coming. It feels like he’s lived through it before. And the right thing to do feels like a memory in his head; he can see himself gently taking her by the shoulders, pushing her back from him, telling her to get some sleep rather than to do anything rash when she’s upset.
It’s the best course of action. It feels like perhaps he’s already taken it, in some other world.
It’s not the one he takes now.
---
Carlos doesn’t know when Junpei’s planning to go back to Japan, whether he’s planning to go back at all. Junpei doesn’t seem to have any interest in picking up his detective business again. It makes sense; it seems like the work was rough for him, and if the reason he started in the first place was to find Akane...
Well. There’s no finding her now.
Junpei’s staying on Carlos’s couch; Carlos offered when he realised it looked like Junpei was just going to keep staying in run-down motels until he ran out of money, if the immigration authorities didn’t find him first. He wasn’t sure whether Junpei was going to accept. The motel rooms are probably less claustrophobic, less charged with the memory of what happened in the bomb shelter. But Junpei took him up on it, eventually.
The weight of all those deaths presses down on every moment between them. The drugs mean they still can’t be sure of exactly what happened; they just woke up and everyone else was gone.
But they know what happened to Q, Mira and Eric. Carlos voted for them to be executed, and he doesn’t know why.
They’ve been able to dredge up a few faint scraps of those lost memories. Junpei’s pretty sure that poison was involved, that it affected Akane more severely than the two of them. Carlos has a horrible feeling that at some point someone said six instead of three, and that was important somehow, and Sigma, Phi and Diana are dead because they missed it.
Junpei’s bitter and furious and grieving, and spending time with him isn’t exactly enjoyable. But Carlos thinks they might both need it.
When it’s too much, Carlos goes to sit by Maria at the hospital. Trades one set of tragedies for another.
-
It’s a hot evening, and Junpei is sitting on the couch, half-sprawling, staring at the wall. Carlos is sitting next to him, doing a crossword in the paper. Whatever it was that he doesn’t remember from the bomb shelter, it’s left him with a strange, urgent sense that he has to solve any puzzle he comes across.
He throws a clue Junpei’s way on occasion, just to give him something to engage with. It worries him, how much time Junpei seems to spend in his own head. He knows himself that their heads aren’t the best places to be at the moment.
“Six down, five letters,” Carlos says. “I climb on man in fight. M something L something-”
“Is this going to be the universe where we fuck?” Junpei asks.
Carlos takes a moment to go back over that in his head. “What?”
Junpei shrugs. “I realised I’d been thinking about it, so there’s probably a universe where we fuck. You know, if you’re into that at all. Might as well be this one, right?”
“Are you hitting on me?” Carlos asks. “This is a really weird way to be hit on.”
“Did Akane ever explain multiverse theory to you?”
Carlos definitely isn’t keeping track of this conversation. He was thinking about crossword clues just seconds ago; how did he get here? “I don’t...”
He doesn’t think she did. But it feels familiar. Maybe it happened in the time that’s been scrubbed out of their memories.
“Never mind,” Junpei says. “Look, I get what you’re trying to do with the crossword. Thanks. It’ll probably be a more effective distraction if you just fuck me.”
Carlos sets the pen and newspaper down on the floor, carefully, trying to think. “You’re emotionally compromised, right? I shouldn’t-”
“Shut up, Carlos.” And suddenly Carlos is pinned down against the couch, staring up at Junpei. “I’m not a fucking child. I’m going to be emotionally compromised for the rest of my fucking life. I’m not planning to join the clergy.”
The moment stretches out to the point of being painful. Carlos’s heart is beating hard in his throat.
It’s too warm. For some reason, that’s what won’t get out of his head. He wishes he’d thought to open a window.
He tries to keep breathing.
“Tell me you don’t want this,” Junpei says. It sounds like a plea. “Kick me out on the streets. Or kiss me. Just - one or the other. I can’t take every day being the same.”
I can’t take every day being the same. It’s like hearing his own thoughts, things he hadn’t even realised he was thinking until they came echoing back to him.
Carlos kisses him.
---
Carlos knows in an instant his plan hasn’t worked, he hasn’t transported himself to the past. This is the bomb shelter, and he’s pretty sure this valuable piece of alien technology hasn’t just been sitting here for ten months.
And now it’s useless to him. Damn it. He hopes there’s another universe where he didn’t screw up the alien coordinates, where he’s rescuing Akane and Junpei right now.
He guesses he should find out what his situation is.
-
Phi turns sharply from the X-Door as he enters the lounge. Carlos has come to think of Phi as unrufflable in the short time he’s known her, but she looks ruffled now.
“I thought you were supposed to be dead,” she says. Her eyes narrow. “Are you Zero?”
“No! No, I’m - wait, I’m dead?”
Phi gestures up at the board next to the X-Door, without looking at it herself. The board with the X-Passes.
Carlos’s stomach feels like it drops a foot. Not just him. Sigma. Diana. The whole of Q-Team.
Akane. Junpei.
“You’re the only one left?” he asks. His own voice sounds strange.
“Apart from you, apparently,” Phi says. Now that he really looks at her, into her eyes, it’s clear she’s been crying. “You want to explain that?”
“You know the transporter?”
Phi’s eyes widen slightly. “What, that thing actually works?”
“Not for another ten months,” Carlos admits. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. Wasn’t going to use it. I don’t trust anything to transport my body if it can’t tell me how it’s going to transport my consciousness.” She glances up at the X-Pass board. “I won’t pretend other timelines don’t sound tempting, though.”
“You know about other timelines?” Is this huge revelation just old news to everyone else?
“Yeah, I know.”
There’s a pause. Carlos looks up at the board, at Sigma and Diana’s names.
“Is it okay if I ask what happened?” he asks.
Phi shrugs and holds up the arm with her bracelet. “Don’t remember. I just woke up by the transporter and there they weren’t. Then I got the door unlocked and heard everyone was dead.” She pauses. “There’s a lot of blood in the trash disposal room.”
“I’m sorry,” Carlos says, quietly.
Phi turns back to the panel by the X-Door. “So,” she says, “are we getting out of here or what?”
-
Carlos brought a handful of cards from the transporter room, to break off the bracelet needles, but it turns out there’s no need for them. The bracelets come off after they go through the X-Door.
Phi contacts Control when they’re back at service level. “Send transport for two people and a dog,” she says, and then, over Control’s protests, “Yes, we’re aborting the project. Seven of us are dead.”
She cuts off communication before they can ask questions. Looks over her shoulder and catches Carlos’s eye. “Unless you want to explain it.”
Carlos shakes his head. “It can wait until they get here.”
“We might be arrested,” Phi says. “You ready for that? I mean, I don’t exactly have any plans, so I might as well get thrown in jail, but I guess you might still have something to stay free for.”
“There’s my sister,” Carlos says. “We’ll just tell them to search the bomb shelter. No way someone sets up something that elaborate and doesn’t leave any clues about who they are.”
Phi considers him for a moment. “You know, the Radical-6 is probably in that bomb shelter.”
“That thing Sigma was looking for?”
“We probably shouldn’t let anyone go in there. This might be a timeline where it doesn’t get loose. We’re just risking the infection getting out if they search the place.”
“So we just say ‘everyone’s dead, but we can’t tell you why or where the bodies are’?” Carlos asks. “We’ll definitely be arrested.”
Phi shrugs. Sits down on the floor. “I’m just saying what we should probably do. Honestly, I don’t know if I care any more.” She rests her arms on her knees. “We’ve probably got at least an hour to decide before they get here, anyway.”
A moment passes. Carlos wonders about Junpei and Akane, and whether he actually managed to save them in some universe. Whether, if he gets more experienced with the morphogenetic field, he’ll be able to access the memories of a version of himself who didn’t lose them.
“Are you interested in sex?” Phi asks.
Carlos’s mind stutters to a halt. “In... in general, or...?”
Phi gives him a withering look.
“Sorry,” Carlos says. Is he sure he isn’t dreaming? “I’m just surprised, I guess. I never got the impression you-”
“Don’t get me wrong,” Phi says. “This isn’t a love confession. It’s stress relief. Hands only. No talking. You get me off, and maybe, if I’m feeling generous, I’ll do the same for you.”
“Are you sure you actually want me involved? It sounds like you’d do fine on your own.”
“That’s the offer,” Phi says, leaning back on her elbows. “Take it or leave it.”
It feels a little like he’s still in the Decision Game. He wonders if this is one of those points that split the universe.
“It doesn’t seem like a good idea,” he says.
“Most of the people I care about are dead and we’re probably going to jail,” Phi says. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
---
Carlos has been by Akane and Junpei’s hotel every day since they all escaped Dcom, checking in, helping with planning for both the wedding and the anti-terrorism operation, dreading the day they head back to Japan.
There are a lot of things on his mind that he hasn’t really felt ready to address. But one day only Akane is in, and he guesses that’s less intimidating than bringing it up with both of them. Maybe this is his opportunity to talk about it.
Even if he really doesn’t know how to approach this.
He visited Sigma, Diana and Phi yesterday. (He keeps slipping into calling them D-Team in his head. He needs to stop it; that’s the label Delta put on them.) They had a meal together, and it was a really good evening. But Carlos just... couldn’t stop thinking. About Diana, about Phi. About Sigma, and whether the fact that he doesn’t remember sleeping with Sigma means it hasn’t actually happened in some universe, won’t blindside him in the future. About whether Diana and Phi might have the same memories as him, about the fact that they’re apparently mother and daughter, which is weird...
“So... this alternate-universe thing.”
“Yes,” Akane says.
“I know you and Junpei are together,” Carlos says. “But that’s in this universe, right?”
Akane nods. “There are universes where we aren’t in a relationship, yes.”
Carlos hesitates. “Are there any universes where maybe... you’re with other people instead? Like...”
“Are you flirting with me, Carlos?”
“No! No, I’m just-”
Akane laughs. “You don’t have to look so frightened. Yes, there are always different relationship possibilities across different universes.” She puts her head on one side for a moment, looking at him. “But I think you already knew that, didn’t you?”
“I’ve been remembering some... strange things,” Carlos admits, scratching the back of his neck. “I just wanted to know if they were real.”
“If it helps you decide,” Akane says, “I think I might remember some of them as well. You have a tattoo on your back, right? A butterfly. It represents Maria.”
One of the few unnecessary purchases he made after Maria got sick. It felt necessary to him, at least. He remembers explaining it to Akane, lying in bed one morning, a few months after they escaped the bomb shelter. The sole survivors, in that timeline.
She remembers that? So that’s... real, that’s not just Carlos’s imagination straying in strange directions?
She remembers that?
He finds he suddenly can’t meet her eyes any more.
“Don’t worry,” Akane says, amusement in her voice. “I’m used to it. You’re not the only friend I’ve slept with in another universe.”
“It doesn’t... make things awkward for you?”
“I think there’s a point where you have to accept that that’s what friendship means for you,” Akane says. “If the potential for sex exists in a relationship, there’s probably a universe where that potential is fulfilled. Most people who can access the morphogenetic field have to deal with this.” She shrugs. “So, no, it doesn’t really bother me that a version of me might have slept with a version of you. It’s not the worst universe out there.”
“Thank you,” Carlos says after a moment, uncertainly. “So, uh, what do you do if it’s not just sex? What if...”
What is he doing? He can’t talk to her about this.
“Oh,” Akane says. “Oh, you poor thing.”
He has to look away from her again.
-
There’s one thing that stands out to him, when he thinks over his more intimate experiences from other timelines. He never made the first move. All those universes, all those possibilities, and he never made the first move, not once.
What he wants doesn’t matter, because he’ll never act on it. He’s always thought of himself as the kind of guy who takes action, but maybe that’s only in life-or-death situations. This is apparently an area of his life he’s incapable of taking into his own hands.
It doesn’t help that he always felt like a replacement. For Sigma, for Akane, for Junpei. Phi’s the only one who didn’t seem to be actively thinking of someone else, and even she wasn’t interested in Carlos as a person.
What are you supposed to do when different versions of yourself have gone off and fallen in love with a load of different people, and then dumped all those feelings onto you at once?
Nothing. He knows himself so well by this point, every version of himself. And he knows he’s going to do nothing.