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"...People's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn't matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They're all just fuel."
— Haruki Murakami, After Dark
+++
The party is still in full swing when he returns. Trash Tribe members both old and new celebrating everything they've managed to accomplish before Zero inevitably comes in to rain on their parade, to remind them that even though they've gotten this far they have so much further to go before they've won anything worth winning.
Only Q has noticed he's returned, clocking him the moment he comes in the door, his attention like a physical weight against his shoulders.
Hell, probably only Q had noticed he'd left in the first place, so maybe it was only to be expected that he would be the one watching for his return.
Before he's ready Q is beside him, standing too close, eyes soft with concern.
It takes everything in him not to flinch away from him.
This Q who is and isn't his.
"What is it?" Q asks, voice a murmur, soft enough to not be overheard by the other members of Trash Tribe where they carry on with the celebration across the room, oblivious to everything be knows to be true.
"Not..." He paused, unsure how to finish. Not here? Not now? Not ever?
Every word feels wrong, too much and not enough to bridge the distance between them, to convey a truth that steals the breath from his lungs, the steel from his spine, and has snatched his bleeding, broken heart from his chest.
Q not Ojiro.
Ojiro is....
Q shoved his hands into his pockets, his expression pensive, the wrinkle between his eyebrows screaming his confusion in a language only Kazuki has ever been able to understand.
He's gonna be sick.
So he does what he's always done.
He runs.
Sneakers squeaking like a record scratch against tile as he turns on his heel and dashes for the bathroom, slamming in through the door and into the closest stall, barely reaching the toilet before he's wretching up everything he ate at the celebration and more besides. Until there's nothing left but bile and the foul acrid taste of regret.
Too slow.
Too cautious.
Too late.
Minutes or hours, Kazuki drags his aching body off the floor and over to the sink, scrubs his hands clean before cupping his hand beneath the faucet and bringing water or his lips in a vein attempt to rinse the bitter taste from his tongue.
No one comes in after him, of course.
He knows without looking that Q is out there waiting for him, guarding the door so none of the others could come in even if they wanted to.
Watching his back.
His eyes burn and he can't bring himself to meet them in the mirror, to see what face he's making as he stuggles to tap down the panic, the rage tearing him apart.
He's him.
But he's not him.
He remembers leaving Chiyoda.
Remembers his arm, crushed and broken, his pride bruised, his heart left somewhere behind him with Ojiro because that part of him had always lived and breathed for him. Could never leave him.
And now he's the only one of them that remembers that.
That remembers any of it.
He stared at his collarbone in the mirror, at the hint of a bruise there which would fade soon enough, another trace of Ojiro gone forever.
Failure.
Idiot.
Fool.
Why hadn't he gone after him right away? Chased him down, pinned him to the ground or a wall or something, anything, made him listen to reason.
Guilt squeezed tight around his lungs like a vise, regret shadowing every step he would take from now until forever like a curse.
He gripped the porcelain of the sink in aching hands and pressed his forehead against the cool glass of the mirror, closed his eyes and struggled to breathe within the reality of yet another failure he could not change, a loss he could never accept.
+++
When he finally emerged, Q was there. Leaning against the wall beside the bathroom door, as he knew he would be, his gaze soft and as perceptive as ever. Kazuki stepped around him and then fell back against the wall beside him, letting Q stare at him, unsurprised to find that whatever Zero had made of him, he was still able to see straight through him.
The question, when Q finally voiced it, wasn't really a question at all: "Wanna get out of here."
"Yeah," Kazuki answered anyway, reaching out to catch Q's fingers with his own before he could hesitate or think better of it. Q's skin was as warm as it had always been, and when he angled his gaze towards him, he could see the other question on his eyes. The same question from earlier, unspoken and edged with despair lingering like an unvoiced scream between them. He could see what it cost him not to ask it again and he was grateful enough that he answered it anyway: "It doesn't matter."
Because it didn't, not really, even if it did, because whether he was Ojiro or Q or someone in between, he was still his. And that was all that really mattered.
He didn't know how to lose him and live through it, he never had.
Later in the room the siblings had arranged for them to use, he mapped every inch of Q's body anew, looking for differences, unsure whether he was disappointed or relieved to discover there were none to find.
He knew every inch of him, the feel and texture of every scar, every wound, every bump and curve and bend. He had memorized long ago the taste of his skin, the way his breath caught when he was trying to hold himself still and silent and avoid alerting any of the others to what they were up to.
He knew him.
It felt like he had always known him, and this... the person beside him and beneath him, the person he clung to... was still his Q, even if it was not all of him. The changes in him weren't physical, they were instead in how he reacted, in how much more free he was with each movement, each kiss, each touch, each gesture, and flinch and wince. He could see the whole array laid out before him, as he had no doubt Zero had known he would be able to, a latticework stretching out, bridging the gaps of every memory that had been stolen, overlaying everything he was and would have been in the changes in how he reacted to the world around him.
He couldn't help but think he'd have been able to see the same in all the others Zero had resurrected if he'd known them as he had knew every version of Q.
After they'd cleaned up and put back on boxers and pants and stripped the soiled sheets, they had curled up on the bed together. And here was yet another change, another shift as Q slid in behind him, curling a broad arm around his middle and pulling him back against his chest. Holding him close the same way he'd held Q hundreds of times in the months since that last XB battle at Chiyoda.
The more things changed, the more....
"Don't go where I can't follow," Q murmured suddenly, breaking the silence between them as he pressed his face in against the back of his neck.
Kazuki scoffed at his words, a harsh sound that felt like a sob even though it wasn't, "Isn't that my line?"
"Maybe it used to be, but I think it's mine now," Q replied, tone serious, but he could feel the press of that wry, barely there smile of his against his skin.
"Fair," Kazuki whispered, closing his eyes to shut out the neon lights beyond their window. Neo Chiyoda, alive and kicking, even though he wasn't the least bit sure it was worth what they'd sacrificed to save it.
"Would you want them back?" He asked sometime later as he lingered on the cusp of sleep, restless as ever, the question apropos of nothing. It wasn't as if he could give what he'd lost back to him, even if he did, and he wasn't enough of a glutton for punishment to truly want the answer.
And yet, he had asked the question anyway.
Q hummed thoughtfully, to signal that he'd heard the question, but otherwise remained silent for long moments. He was glad he didn't answer right away, that he thought it through, that his voice when he finally did speak was soft, but sure, "Yeah, I think so."
"The guilt was eating you alive. It's probably why...." He began, slow and hesitant, working the thoughts out as he spoke, only to trail off as Q suddenly moved, quick as lightning, letting him drop back against the bed and shifting to hover over him, eyes going dark with the power within him.
A thrill ran up his spine, his heart kicking into gear as adrenaline surged through him in answer to the sudden move.
Apparently that hadn't changed.
The kiss Q dropped on him a moment later was sudden and harsh, teeth biting at his sore lips and tongue stealing whatever words he would have said before he could speak them.
It was easy to yield, to surrender to that, to him, it always had been.
It had been Ojiro who made the first move to seek something more between them when they were teenagers, bumbling in the dark, trying to figure out what they wanted, needed, from the world and from each other. He'd always been too cautious, too in his head, whereas Ojiro had been willing to just leap, confident in Kazuki and himself in a way Kazuki had never been.
In those last months before Ojiro had shut him out entirely, they'd found quick, guilty pleasure together between sessions, in the dark and in the shower rooms, massaging each other's aches and pains before making them worse beneath Tenshin's watchful, judgemental gaze.
They'd found similar pleasure as adults, after the battle, after the old man was dead and gone, but those times had always been... softer, tempered by all the ways they'd hurt each other, by their guilt at not being able to hold onto or save each other in any of the ways they had wished they could.
And now... now only one of them was still holding onto that guilt, clinging to it like a lifeline.
Only one of them hesitated to bruise the other and if this went on, it would be the end of them one way or another.
"I don't give a shit," Q rasped finally, breaking the kiss to meet his gaze, fierce and unyielding, as if everything between them since the moment he'd entered Hina's cafe had been one long conversation and that kiss had been a particularly compelling facet of his argument. "And it doesn't matter. Whatever he took, it got me back to you. Whatever I did and for whatever reason I did it, it would have been something I needed to do so I could come home to you. I don't need those memories of who I used to be to know that. To know that sometimes you have to make sacrifices for what's really important, what really matters. That I would have done whatever I needed to do so I could move forward, with you, without the past holding me back. Don't you dare think for a second it was anything else."
He opened his mouth to reply, but Q just continued to glare at him like he could read every thought in his head.
Like he could see right through him.
Still.
Always.
"And stop thinking what happened was your fault or that you could have stopped it. For such a smart guy, you're a real idiot sometimes."
He supposed he was.
Kazuki pushed his fingers into Q's thick hair, held his face still so he could stare into it in return, so he could memorize it anew. "Okay. You and me. To the end of the line and beyond."
Q's lips quirked up into one of those wry little smiles, though this one was without the fear and sadness that had always cast it's shadowed upon them, "Damn right."