Gift fic for jeauexe
To: jeauexe
From: santa-johnny
HAPPY HOLIDAYS
Title: Dreamscape
Pairing/Group: KAT-TUN, Kame/Anne
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: minor character death, angst
Notes: This fic is Inception AU-esque. It takes on several elements/rules from that universe, though with a few other ideas mixed in. Thanks to my beta and the mods for patiently dealing with me. Anyways, I hope you enjoy this, jeauexe! Happy holidays!
Summary: AU. Kamenashi Kazuya has been lost for a very long time. But everything changes when a client comes to him with a job.
Kame slips into the ballroom from the gardens, unnoticed, as what seems like enough members for a small-scaled orchestra plays a classic waltz for the glittering couples on the dance floor. The large circular dome of a room is lit brilliantly with candles, providing a glowing, magical effect. Those not dancing chat along the edges, where there are chairs and tables. Waiters and waitresses walk around holding trays laden with flutes of champagne or specially selected hors d’oeuvres.
Kame tucks a non-descript envelope into the inner pocket of his dinner jacket, smiling to himself. Once in a while, he chooses to indulge the romantic in him, especially when a target’s taste runs parallel to his.
He weaves his way through the crowd, eyes on the exit as he adjusts his domino mask every so often. The guests wear similar masks, adding a mysterious allure to the fun required of a masquerade. He checks his watch. If only he had more time.
Something peculiar catches his attention, a flutter of black hair out of the corner of his eye. He turns to get a better look, but doesn’t recognize the laughing woman. He shrugs off a peculiar sense of loss, not sure whom he was expecting to see in the first place.
A hand closes around his elbow in a firm grip. Kame stills when his target emerges from the sea of partygoers and stops in front of him, champagne in one hand and a thoughtful look on his face.
Kame nods. “Kimura-san.” Subtly, he tries to move his arm, but the lackey’s grip doesn’t budge.
The CEO moves his mask up so it rests on his forehead. “I’m afraid I don’t have the pleasure of knowing your name,” he replies lightly. He makes the slightest of nods and the guard pulls off Kame’s mask none too gently.
Kame merely bows as much as he can with one of his limbs being held hostage. “Kamenashi Kazuya,” he says.
“Kamenashi.” Kimura downs the rest of his drink and places the flute on the passing tray of a waiter. “Why don’t you come with me?” He turns and walks away.
The bodyguard nudges him in the back and Kame has no choice but to obey. The CEO leads him out to the hallway and then into a small tastefully decorated parlor with a fireplace, empty except for two more guards and a person on his knees. Kame would recognize his partner anywhere.
Nakamaru chooses then to lift his head. Only years of experience allows Kame to show no outward reaction to the bruises blossoming around his partner’s eye.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t think we share the same taste in entertainment,” Kame says coolly.
“You have something of mine. I would like it back.”
He arranges his expression to one of confusion. “I’m not sure what you’re getting at,” he replies. “I’ve been enjoying the festivities your wife painstakingly arranged.”
“You mean you weren’t just traipsing around in the garden in an attempt not to be seen after rifling through my study?” Kimura asks, pouring himself a glass of scotch.
Shit. He had been so careful. Suddenly it feels as if the envelope is burning a hole in his pocket.
The walls rumble, the furniture trembling. His eyes lock on to Nakamaru’s. They don’t have much time.
“I think I’ve been very patient.” Kimura leans against the back of a plush couch. “Hand it over, and tell me who sent you.”
Kame remains still.
The sound of a gun being cocked automatically tenses his muscles. His eyes flick over to Nakamaru to see that one of the men holding him now has a gun pressed to the back of his head.
“You are interfering in things you don’t understand. Don’t be foolish,” Kimura states. “A name.”
Another rumble tears through the room, this time more pronounced and enough to make everyone lose their balance. The shaking continues and doesn’t stop as Kame jams his elbow into his captor’s stomach, flipping him over his shoulder. Nakamaru springs into action as well, but his movements are sluggish and pained. Still, he manages to take down one guard. Kame brandishes his gun, ready to come to his aid, but then a shot rings out. Nakamaru slumps to the ground.
Kame whips around, pointing his gun at Kimura, who casually returns the gesture even as the room falls apart around them. “You should’ve listened,” Kimura says. “Now tell me what I want to know, or your family will never see you again.”
A phantom ache passes through him, though he has no idea why. “I have no family,” Kame replies. He turns his gun on himself. “And you are the one who doesn’t understand.”
There’s a perverse sort of satisfaction in seeing Kimura’s eyes widen in shock just as he pulls the trigger.
-
Kame sits up in his seat to find Nakamaru already removing the IV line from Kimura’s wrist. The CEO is out like a light. His partner barely spares him a glance. “Did you get it?” Nakamaru asks.
“Not all of it,” Kame replies, taking out his own IV line. The contents of the white envelope had not been brief, so he had only been able to glean a few valuable details.
“So no payment this time?” another voice asks.
Kame turns to the other party, taking in his slumped shoulders and long legs filling up space between seats in the cabin of their train car. His usual bright smile twists into a disappointed frown when Kame shakes his head.
“Make yourself useful, Taguchi,” Nakamaru says briskly. He drops the metal briefcase containing the PASIV device on Taguchi’s lap, and kicks his legs to force him to sit up. “He’s going to wake up soon.”
Kame rubs his wrist and stands, going over to the door. He looks both ways in the empty train corridor and back at them.
“You know where I’ll be,” he says, and then disappears.
-
Dream extraction is a tricky business, but Kame knows he’s good at it. The best, in fact. Failure happens on the rare occasion. The thing is, there have been more strikes than home runs recently, and it kills him to admit that his pride has taken its fair share of blows this past year.
He just hasn’t felt like himself in a long time. It seems like an empty reason at most, but it’s the truth. It’s as if someone came along, took everything in his life and mixed up all the pieces. Now nothing fits quite right anymore. Something’s missing.
And he has no idea how to find whatever it could be.
-
“We have a job.”
“You have a frowny face,” Kame comments, idly flipping through the daily newspaper. “Why the frowny face?”
“I’m not sure how wise it is to be taking on clients,” Nakamaru replies. He looks out over the quiet seaside from the terrace perch. It’s one of a few safe houses Kame keeps, though none of them are home. “When you’re... distracted.”
Kame lifts the silver coffee pot. “Coffee?” he offers.
Nakamaru frowns, grabbing an empty glass from the side-table and pouring himself water. “You know very well I don’t drink coffee,” he retorts, taking the empty seat across from him. “Don’t ignore this.”
It’s no surprise that Nakamaru has picked up on it. Kame wonders why he didn’t say something sooner. “What should I do instead? Put my life on hold and have a journey of self discovery?” He scoffs. “The last job didn’t go particularly well, but the one before that was a piece of cake. It even set us up for a few months.”
Nakamaru twitches ever so slightly.
“What?”
The inner debate is comically plain on his partner’s face, but when Kame raises an eyebrow in expectation, he sighs. “This job, if we succeed, wouldn’t set us up for just a month or two. This could be the nest egg we’ve been waiting for.”
Kame doesn’t feel any particular kind of excitement at the news, even though he knows he should. He’s more interested in the job itself, at the puzzle it will allow him to solve. It’s so much easier focusing on another person; that way he won’t ever have to look at himself.
“Set up a meet for tomorrow,” Kame says.
Nakamaru’s frown deepens.
Kame turns the page of the newspaper he’s not actually reading. “Do that often enough, and your face will stay that way,” he comments.
A strange look crosses Nakamaru’s face. “You sound like a dad,” he says quietly.
Kame shrugs. “I do deal with Taguchi and Koki the most.”
“Right.” Nakamaru’s peculiar expression vanishes with a blink and a shake of his head. “I’ll call the client.”
Kame detects relief in his voice, as if he actually wanted Kame to take the job in the end. Odd. Perhaps Nakamaru really needs that nest egg.
If it will help his partner, all the more reason to go through with it. “What kind of extraction is it?” he asks.
“What he wants is…” Nakamaru’s lengthy pause already tells Kame everything, “… unique.”
-
“I don’t want you to extract. I want you to… recover.”
Kame studies their client from behind a pair of glasses. The man’s casual attire - a sleeveless shirt, cargo shorts and sandals - may be a contrast to the more elegant ambience, but it’s clear he is completely at home in the lush parlor of his mansion, surrounded by the comforts of one who can afford a higher style of living. When Kame and Nakamaru had first arrived, there were servants always at hand, whether it was to take their coats, fetch refreshments or answer a polite question or two. They were left alone with him only because he then ordered the servants away.
Ueda Tatsuya is a man used to getting what he wants, and Kame has no intention of disappointing him.
“Nakamaru tells me your memories were stolen,” Kame comments, gesturing to his partner sitting beside him. “Pardon the question, but how do you even know?”
“Stolen, lost… all I know is something’s missing. Everything is fine one moment, but in the next, there’s a gesture or an action that tugs at me, faint sensations that speak of loss but for no reason I can figure out. As if there are black patches scattered throughout my life.”
Kame leans back in the oversized velvet armchair, calm expression belying the sudden tenseness in his frame. It’s too eerily familiar.
“That doesn’t tell me why you think they’re memories,” he says with an unintended bite to his words. Kame considers himself an expert on matters of the mind. Why had he never asked similar questions of his own situation? He ignores Nakamaru’s cough and subsequent kick to his foot.
Ueda returns his stare with a steady one of his own. “I ignored it, at first, thinking perhaps the fault lied with my flawed memory,” he admits. “But then I found the photo.” He reaches into his back pocket, pulls out a folded picture and hands it to Nakamaru.
Nakamaru opens it carefully, and the creases in the photograph give away the numerous times it must have been handled, like it had been studied and looked at again and again. It’s a minor detail that Kame only absently notes because all of his attention is captured by the woman in the photograph.
Her almond-shaped eyes are a dark brown, her eyebrows lifted in a playful expression. Her long black hair is tossed over one shoulder, revealing the elegant curve of her neck as she tilts her head to the side against a grinning Ueda. She has her arm slung over him in an affectionate embrace as they both make peace signs at the camera. But it’s the beguiling, wry smile on her lips that makes Kame take notice.
“She’s beautiful,” he whispers.
“She is.”
Ueda agreeing with him snaps him out of his daze, and Kame finds Ueda studying him with a sharp eye. On top of that, Nakamaru seems troubled so Kame reluctantly turns over the photograph without further comment.
“I had this photograph stored away in a special place of mine.” Without looking at it even once, Ueda tucks it back in his pocket. “But I have no idea who she is, why she warrants such safekeeping.”
How could you forget someone like her?
Kame feels a headache forming, even as he’s filled with a sense of urgency to right such a wrong. “You can never truly forget anything,” he says, “or so the theory goes. The memories are all there, simply tucked away in the farthest and deepest parts of your mind. It’s possible to find them, just don’t lose yourself in the process.”
“I’ve already lost myself,” Ueda replies. “I don’t see how I can lose myself further.”
“In Limbo, there’s always more of yourself to lose,” Nakamaru explains, using his professor voice from the teaching degree he never completed. “It is infinite raw subconscious, a shared space with no specific Dreamer. Anyone can create, anyone can fill it. It can reach into places that your conscious is normally guarded against.”
Kame leans forward with his elbows on his knees, putting all his strength in his voice. “Ueda-san, I’ve been there. Once. I can take you there, but you’ll have to trust my team and I.”
Ueda reaches out and shakes his hand to seal their agreement. “I’ll do whatever it takes to find myself again.”
Kame understands the sentiment perfectly.
-
The plan is simple enough. Go down three dream levels, the maximum possible. Anything more than that results in unstable dream environments. Then sleep in level three to manually enter Limbo. With various team members as Dreamers for each level and Ueda as the Subject populating the dreamscape, the team can uncover his memories by finding the projection of the woman.
Before Ueda found the photograph, he had not been consciously aware of the woman’s existence. But now that he is, his projection of her is sure to pop up on the various dream levels, prompting the trickle of lost memories. Limbo should provide the final key.
Kame focuses on plans and contingency plans, letting the others handle the details. He’s here to do a job and to see it through to its success. He tells himself he’s not curious about the woman, about her relationship to the client. After this job, she won’t matter.
Liar.
-
Koki, often recruited mainly as a Forger but at times also a Chemist, places the PASIV device on the table in the middle of Ueda’s study. He hands two IV lines to Shige, Ueda’s most trusted servant, who then takes them to Ueda and Junno. Koki takes three and hands the first to Nakamaru, the second to Kame and keeping the third for himself. All five of them are spread in a lopsided circle around the table, seated in chairs and couches.
“Are you ready?” Kame asks Ueda, who sits across from him in an identical armchair.
Ueda leans back to get comfortable and nods. “As I’ll ever be,” he replies.
While Koki goes over one last minute check with Shige, Nakamaru leans forward in his seat to speak quietly with Kame. The space next to him on the couch is empty, while Koki and Junno are to share the one opposite. “I told Ueda-san already, but I wasn’t sure if you wanted to know,” he says.
“What?”
“I found out her name.”
Kame stills. “What is it?” he asks.
In the background, Koki nods and Shige presses the infusion trigger just as Nakamaru answers.
“Anne.”
Then Kame slips away.
-
Up and down, up and down, up and down…
Kame sighs and leans his head against the pole as the colorfully painted wooden horse he’s perched on repeats its movements, going round and round. The carousel plays a jaunty tune, its bright lights accompanying the rest of the animated festival rides. He turns to glare when Taguchi’s laugh booms from right behind him.
Taguchi waves at him enthusiastically. “Kazuya!”
Koki is on the horse next to him and lifts his hand, looking as resigned as Kame feels, but even more self-conscious. “Hey,” he says. He jabs his thumb towards Taguchi. “I kicked him already, if that helps.”
Kame nods, though he’s already wondering if it would really be that much of a loss if Taguchi just so happened to disappear.
“We need him,” Nakamaru’s voice calls out.
Kame spots him and Ueda leaning against the railing, though they quickly go out of sight when the carousel does another turn. When he and the others make their way around again, the amused expressions on Nakamaru’s and Ueda’s faces have him scowling. Though the scowl fades when he spies a green balloon being held by a child a few horses ahead of him.
“Green! It has to be green! ‘Cause we’re turtles, right?”
The sudden pain in his chest nearly bowls him over, and he inhales sharply when there’s another throbbing at his temples. He rubs the spots in circular, soothing motions once he gets off the ride, grimacing as he joins the others. He waves off their questions and asks one of his own to Taguchi.
“Did you build off real memories?” Kame asks.
“Not mine,” Taguchi says with a shrug. “I only used elements of the Subject’s.” His attention wanders around, fascinated by all the projections. “Like you taught me.”
“Would you pay attenti -” Out of the corner of his eye, someone tucks their hair behind their ear just so. He nearly gets whiplash swinging his head around to zero in on her walking away as his headache worsens. “Got her.”
Kame darts after her with the expectation the others will follow. The projection, too, moves with a purpose and it takes him some time to catch her by the game booths. Forgetting all protocol, he reaches out and grasps her upper arm. He knows he should expect it, but still, the very real feeling of skin on skin contact manages to throw him off balance, and he’s again amazed by the limitless power of dreams.
It leaves him ill-prepared for when she looks at him over her shoulder with no trace of surprise at all, as if she’s been expecting him this entire time.
“Who are you?” he whispers.
She smiles and his chest aches. It’s the saddest smile he’s ever seen.
“This isn’t enough,” she says, her pleasant voice a low murmur. He can easily imagine that honeyed voice lulling a person to sleep, evoking only the sweetest of dreams. “It won’t work here. You have to go deeper.”
She makes a move like she’ll break away, and his grip tightens, unwilling to let her go. “No.”
She lifts her free hand like she’ll touch his face and he closes his eyes.
Nothing. His gaze snaps open. She’s gone.
“Kame!” The others crowd around him.
“Well?” Ueda looks expectant, but not at all as anxious or strung out as Kame feels.
Koki already has the next PASIV device on hand, and Kame takes the metal briefcase from him. “We have to go deeper,” he says. “We don’t stop until we reach Limbo.”
Only when Kame is slumped against the wall inside a trailer, the dream drug slipping into his system, does he realize that his headaches disappeared the instant he touched her.
-
The next two levels - a moving train, and then a castle - are much the same, where he is again the one to spot her and she slips away, urging him to enter Limbo.
Whispered vows. Laughter. “Promise it’ll be like this forever?”
Anger. Tears. “Stop! Just stop. Talking. I told you I don’t want to remember!”
Each time he is haunted by what feels like the ghost of a memory, but whenever he tries to focus, it escapes him.
The others are left behind one by one on the level where they act as a Dreamer. By the time they reach Limbo, he is left alone with their client, and is more than frustrated with him. Ueda’s desire to find the woman - Anne, her name is Anne - doesn’t seem to be as pressing for him as it is for Kame.
There’s something else at play here, but Kame can’t bring himself to care, not when it’s the first time in a year he feels closer than ever to recovering some tattered part of himself.
And he’s sure as hell going to follow it through.
-
In the middle of a crumbling city in Limbo, they find a barren park with winding stone pathways and drained lakes. Instinctively, Kame knows it had once been covered in green, with hedges of assorted flowers and gigantic leafy trees. He goes in no particular conscious direction; his feet seem to know the way. And when they lead him to her, he knows without a doubt that she’s meant for him. He pauses and waits for Ueda.
“There she is,” Kame says. She is sitting beneath a tree, sketching, though her face is turned away from them.
Ueda shades his eyes against the glare of the sun. “Maybe you should return that to her.”
Kame finds himself holding a yellow hair ribbon. He glides the satin between his fingers. “Who is she to you?” he asks.
“An old friend,” he says, “who’s been waiting a really long time.”
Kame looks at him questioningly. “But what about-?”
Ueda waves him away impatiently. “I know my way back. Go.”
Slowly, Kame walks over, twisting the ribbon tight around his fingers. He stops behind her, watches her hand move over the page, sketching the park as it was meant to be, as it was before. “I’m sorry, but is this yours?”
She looks up from under her floppy sun hat, clutching onto the back to keep the wind from blowing it away, and smiles.
“Oh, thank you.”
Her smile is the same as she pats the spot next to her. “Thank you.”
Kame sits down next to her, holding it out. “Is this deep enough?” he asks.
“You tell me. Is it working?” She turns so that he sees the back of her head. “Do you mind?”
Kame reaches out to loop the ribbon through her silky hair, struck by the familiarity of having done this hundreds of times before, of the important first time he ever did. “I’ve done this before,” he says, a hint of amazement in his tone.
She reaches behind to touch his knee. “It’s how we met.”
Kame finishes tying off the ribbon at that exact moment, and he’s flooded with a myriad of emotion, color, sensation. Memories rush up from some unfathomable abyss. Of a beautiful woman in a park with a dazzling smile, of a life they build for themselves chasing dreams and creating worlds.
Of how they then make something even more precious, the best thing they’ve ever done. They give up a life of dreaming in order to live the dream. But they’re only granted a handful of perfect, heavenly years before it’s taken away. And in their grief, they escape back to the realm of dreams, going further and further until they’re adrift in its deepest parts.
It’s easy to run away from grief, to bury it all. But it’s always there in the back of their minds and they can’t move on, tension and resentment growing. Instead of supporting each other, they turn on one another, screaming and yelling things they don’t mean, things they can’t take back. And then they lose sight of each other.
Kame gasps, harshly taking in gulps of air as he curls in on himself. “Anne.”
Everything feels raw, as if his insides have been ripped out. He very nearly breaks when she wraps her arms around him.
“What happened to us?” he asks, squeezing his eyes shut to stop from weeping.
Anne hugs him as tight as she can, and even in his pain he treasures her touch, greedily takes it all. “I got so mad when you started mentioning him all the time, again and again, and I didn’t want to hear it.” She rests her cheek on the top of his head. “I didn’t want to hear anything.”
“I didn’t know. I swear to you. Down here it all just works so differently, the rules don’t apply in the same way. I took away our first meeting - this meeting,” Anne confesses, agonized. “I made you forget. And if you didn’t meet me, everything after never happened.”
He never happened.
Kame chokes. “Fuku’s favorite color was green.”
She pulls back to look at him, and there are tears streaming down her face. She smiles like her heart will break. “We’re turtles, right?”
Kame brushes her cheek with the back of his hand, just like he used to every morning when he woke up beside her in bed. “We’re turtles,” he whispers.
Anne holds his hand, keeps his touch on her face. “I couldn’t undo what I did in the real world, not right away. Your mind had to heal so I made sure the others were watching, taking care of you.”
“Ueda was never the Subject.” Kame shakes his head. “I’ve been the one populating the dream space. And you’re hooked up to the PASIV device right now, aren’t you? You’re not just a projection in my head.”
Anne nods, biting her bottom lip. She ducks her head and starts whispering again and again, and he has to strain to her. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she cries. “I’m sorry that I did this to you, that I made you lose your way.”
“I don’t care how I got lost.” His heart bleeds at the thought of their son, of how they ended up losing each other in the wake of it. He gathers her close, presses his forehead to hers. “You helped me find myself again.”
Kame raises the ground underneath their feet, makes it so they’re several stories high. He stands and pulls hers up, keeping their hands clasped tight. Anne follows him to the edge readily, and they look out over the dreamscape of Limbo. There’s so much left to talk about, to figure out, but right now, all he cares about is that this time, when the dream ends, she’ll be there when he wakes up. She’s real.
“Let’s go home.”
And they leap.
From: santa-johnny
HAPPY HOLIDAYS
Title: Dreamscape
Pairing/Group: KAT-TUN, Kame/Anne
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: minor character death, angst
Notes: This fic is Inception AU-esque. It takes on several elements/rules from that universe, though with a few other ideas mixed in. Thanks to my beta and the mods for patiently dealing with me. Anyways, I hope you enjoy this, jeauexe! Happy holidays!
Summary: AU. Kamenashi Kazuya has been lost for a very long time. But everything changes when a client comes to him with a job.
Kame slips into the ballroom from the gardens, unnoticed, as what seems like enough members for a small-scaled orchestra plays a classic waltz for the glittering couples on the dance floor. The large circular dome of a room is lit brilliantly with candles, providing a glowing, magical effect. Those not dancing chat along the edges, where there are chairs and tables. Waiters and waitresses walk around holding trays laden with flutes of champagne or specially selected hors d’oeuvres.
Kame tucks a non-descript envelope into the inner pocket of his dinner jacket, smiling to himself. Once in a while, he chooses to indulge the romantic in him, especially when a target’s taste runs parallel to his.
He weaves his way through the crowd, eyes on the exit as he adjusts his domino mask every so often. The guests wear similar masks, adding a mysterious allure to the fun required of a masquerade. He checks his watch. If only he had more time.
Something peculiar catches his attention, a flutter of black hair out of the corner of his eye. He turns to get a better look, but doesn’t recognize the laughing woman. He shrugs off a peculiar sense of loss, not sure whom he was expecting to see in the first place.
A hand closes around his elbow in a firm grip. Kame stills when his target emerges from the sea of partygoers and stops in front of him, champagne in one hand and a thoughtful look on his face.
Kame nods. “Kimura-san.” Subtly, he tries to move his arm, but the lackey’s grip doesn’t budge.
The CEO moves his mask up so it rests on his forehead. “I’m afraid I don’t have the pleasure of knowing your name,” he replies lightly. He makes the slightest of nods and the guard pulls off Kame’s mask none too gently.
Kame merely bows as much as he can with one of his limbs being held hostage. “Kamenashi Kazuya,” he says.
“Kamenashi.” Kimura downs the rest of his drink and places the flute on the passing tray of a waiter. “Why don’t you come with me?” He turns and walks away.
The bodyguard nudges him in the back and Kame has no choice but to obey. The CEO leads him out to the hallway and then into a small tastefully decorated parlor with a fireplace, empty except for two more guards and a person on his knees. Kame would recognize his partner anywhere.
Nakamaru chooses then to lift his head. Only years of experience allows Kame to show no outward reaction to the bruises blossoming around his partner’s eye.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t think we share the same taste in entertainment,” Kame says coolly.
“You have something of mine. I would like it back.”
He arranges his expression to one of confusion. “I’m not sure what you’re getting at,” he replies. “I’ve been enjoying the festivities your wife painstakingly arranged.”
“You mean you weren’t just traipsing around in the garden in an attempt not to be seen after rifling through my study?” Kimura asks, pouring himself a glass of scotch.
Shit. He had been so careful. Suddenly it feels as if the envelope is burning a hole in his pocket.
The walls rumble, the furniture trembling. His eyes lock on to Nakamaru’s. They don’t have much time.
“I think I’ve been very patient.” Kimura leans against the back of a plush couch. “Hand it over, and tell me who sent you.”
Kame remains still.
The sound of a gun being cocked automatically tenses his muscles. His eyes flick over to Nakamaru to see that one of the men holding him now has a gun pressed to the back of his head.
“You are interfering in things you don’t understand. Don’t be foolish,” Kimura states. “A name.”
Another rumble tears through the room, this time more pronounced and enough to make everyone lose their balance. The shaking continues and doesn’t stop as Kame jams his elbow into his captor’s stomach, flipping him over his shoulder. Nakamaru springs into action as well, but his movements are sluggish and pained. Still, he manages to take down one guard. Kame brandishes his gun, ready to come to his aid, but then a shot rings out. Nakamaru slumps to the ground.
Kame whips around, pointing his gun at Kimura, who casually returns the gesture even as the room falls apart around them. “You should’ve listened,” Kimura says. “Now tell me what I want to know, or your family will never see you again.”
A phantom ache passes through him, though he has no idea why. “I have no family,” Kame replies. He turns his gun on himself. “And you are the one who doesn’t understand.”
There’s a perverse sort of satisfaction in seeing Kimura’s eyes widen in shock just as he pulls the trigger.
-
Kame sits up in his seat to find Nakamaru already removing the IV line from Kimura’s wrist. The CEO is out like a light. His partner barely spares him a glance. “Did you get it?” Nakamaru asks.
“Not all of it,” Kame replies, taking out his own IV line. The contents of the white envelope had not been brief, so he had only been able to glean a few valuable details.
“So no payment this time?” another voice asks.
Kame turns to the other party, taking in his slumped shoulders and long legs filling up space between seats in the cabin of their train car. His usual bright smile twists into a disappointed frown when Kame shakes his head.
“Make yourself useful, Taguchi,” Nakamaru says briskly. He drops the metal briefcase containing the PASIV device on Taguchi’s lap, and kicks his legs to force him to sit up. “He’s going to wake up soon.”
Kame rubs his wrist and stands, going over to the door. He looks both ways in the empty train corridor and back at them.
“You know where I’ll be,” he says, and then disappears.
-
Dream extraction is a tricky business, but Kame knows he’s good at it. The best, in fact. Failure happens on the rare occasion. The thing is, there have been more strikes than home runs recently, and it kills him to admit that his pride has taken its fair share of blows this past year.
He just hasn’t felt like himself in a long time. It seems like an empty reason at most, but it’s the truth. It’s as if someone came along, took everything in his life and mixed up all the pieces. Now nothing fits quite right anymore. Something’s missing.
And he has no idea how to find whatever it could be.
-
“We have a job.”
“You have a frowny face,” Kame comments, idly flipping through the daily newspaper. “Why the frowny face?”
“I’m not sure how wise it is to be taking on clients,” Nakamaru replies. He looks out over the quiet seaside from the terrace perch. It’s one of a few safe houses Kame keeps, though none of them are home. “When you’re... distracted.”
Kame lifts the silver coffee pot. “Coffee?” he offers.
Nakamaru frowns, grabbing an empty glass from the side-table and pouring himself water. “You know very well I don’t drink coffee,” he retorts, taking the empty seat across from him. “Don’t ignore this.”
It’s no surprise that Nakamaru has picked up on it. Kame wonders why he didn’t say something sooner. “What should I do instead? Put my life on hold and have a journey of self discovery?” He scoffs. “The last job didn’t go particularly well, but the one before that was a piece of cake. It even set us up for a few months.”
Nakamaru twitches ever so slightly.
“What?”
The inner debate is comically plain on his partner’s face, but when Kame raises an eyebrow in expectation, he sighs. “This job, if we succeed, wouldn’t set us up for just a month or two. This could be the nest egg we’ve been waiting for.”
Kame doesn’t feel any particular kind of excitement at the news, even though he knows he should. He’s more interested in the job itself, at the puzzle it will allow him to solve. It’s so much easier focusing on another person; that way he won’t ever have to look at himself.
“Set up a meet for tomorrow,” Kame says.
Nakamaru’s frown deepens.
Kame turns the page of the newspaper he’s not actually reading. “Do that often enough, and your face will stay that way,” he comments.
A strange look crosses Nakamaru’s face. “You sound like a dad,” he says quietly.
Kame shrugs. “I do deal with Taguchi and Koki the most.”
“Right.” Nakamaru’s peculiar expression vanishes with a blink and a shake of his head. “I’ll call the client.”
Kame detects relief in his voice, as if he actually wanted Kame to take the job in the end. Odd. Perhaps Nakamaru really needs that nest egg.
If it will help his partner, all the more reason to go through with it. “What kind of extraction is it?” he asks.
“What he wants is…” Nakamaru’s lengthy pause already tells Kame everything, “… unique.”
-
“I don’t want you to extract. I want you to… recover.”
Kame studies their client from behind a pair of glasses. The man’s casual attire - a sleeveless shirt, cargo shorts and sandals - may be a contrast to the more elegant ambience, but it’s clear he is completely at home in the lush parlor of his mansion, surrounded by the comforts of one who can afford a higher style of living. When Kame and Nakamaru had first arrived, there were servants always at hand, whether it was to take their coats, fetch refreshments or answer a polite question or two. They were left alone with him only because he then ordered the servants away.
Ueda Tatsuya is a man used to getting what he wants, and Kame has no intention of disappointing him.
“Nakamaru tells me your memories were stolen,” Kame comments, gesturing to his partner sitting beside him. “Pardon the question, but how do you even know?”
“Stolen, lost… all I know is something’s missing. Everything is fine one moment, but in the next, there’s a gesture or an action that tugs at me, faint sensations that speak of loss but for no reason I can figure out. As if there are black patches scattered throughout my life.”
Kame leans back in the oversized velvet armchair, calm expression belying the sudden tenseness in his frame. It’s too eerily familiar.
“That doesn’t tell me why you think they’re memories,” he says with an unintended bite to his words. Kame considers himself an expert on matters of the mind. Why had he never asked similar questions of his own situation? He ignores Nakamaru’s cough and subsequent kick to his foot.
Ueda returns his stare with a steady one of his own. “I ignored it, at first, thinking perhaps the fault lied with my flawed memory,” he admits. “But then I found the photo.” He reaches into his back pocket, pulls out a folded picture and hands it to Nakamaru.
Nakamaru opens it carefully, and the creases in the photograph give away the numerous times it must have been handled, like it had been studied and looked at again and again. It’s a minor detail that Kame only absently notes because all of his attention is captured by the woman in the photograph.
Her almond-shaped eyes are a dark brown, her eyebrows lifted in a playful expression. Her long black hair is tossed over one shoulder, revealing the elegant curve of her neck as she tilts her head to the side against a grinning Ueda. She has her arm slung over him in an affectionate embrace as they both make peace signs at the camera. But it’s the beguiling, wry smile on her lips that makes Kame take notice.
“She’s beautiful,” he whispers.
“She is.”
Ueda agreeing with him snaps him out of his daze, and Kame finds Ueda studying him with a sharp eye. On top of that, Nakamaru seems troubled so Kame reluctantly turns over the photograph without further comment.
“I had this photograph stored away in a special place of mine.” Without looking at it even once, Ueda tucks it back in his pocket. “But I have no idea who she is, why she warrants such safekeeping.”
How could you forget someone like her?
Kame feels a headache forming, even as he’s filled with a sense of urgency to right such a wrong. “You can never truly forget anything,” he says, “or so the theory goes. The memories are all there, simply tucked away in the farthest and deepest parts of your mind. It’s possible to find them, just don’t lose yourself in the process.”
“I’ve already lost myself,” Ueda replies. “I don’t see how I can lose myself further.”
“In Limbo, there’s always more of yourself to lose,” Nakamaru explains, using his professor voice from the teaching degree he never completed. “It is infinite raw subconscious, a shared space with no specific Dreamer. Anyone can create, anyone can fill it. It can reach into places that your conscious is normally guarded against.”
Kame leans forward with his elbows on his knees, putting all his strength in his voice. “Ueda-san, I’ve been there. Once. I can take you there, but you’ll have to trust my team and I.”
Ueda reaches out and shakes his hand to seal their agreement. “I’ll do whatever it takes to find myself again.”
Kame understands the sentiment perfectly.
-
The plan is simple enough. Go down three dream levels, the maximum possible. Anything more than that results in unstable dream environments. Then sleep in level three to manually enter Limbo. With various team members as Dreamers for each level and Ueda as the Subject populating the dreamscape, the team can uncover his memories by finding the projection of the woman.
Before Ueda found the photograph, he had not been consciously aware of the woman’s existence. But now that he is, his projection of her is sure to pop up on the various dream levels, prompting the trickle of lost memories. Limbo should provide the final key.
Kame focuses on plans and contingency plans, letting the others handle the details. He’s here to do a job and to see it through to its success. He tells himself he’s not curious about the woman, about her relationship to the client. After this job, she won’t matter.
Liar.
-
Koki, often recruited mainly as a Forger but at times also a Chemist, places the PASIV device on the table in the middle of Ueda’s study. He hands two IV lines to Shige, Ueda’s most trusted servant, who then takes them to Ueda and Junno. Koki takes three and hands the first to Nakamaru, the second to Kame and keeping the third for himself. All five of them are spread in a lopsided circle around the table, seated in chairs and couches.
“Are you ready?” Kame asks Ueda, who sits across from him in an identical armchair.
Ueda leans back to get comfortable and nods. “As I’ll ever be,” he replies.
While Koki goes over one last minute check with Shige, Nakamaru leans forward in his seat to speak quietly with Kame. The space next to him on the couch is empty, while Koki and Junno are to share the one opposite. “I told Ueda-san already, but I wasn’t sure if you wanted to know,” he says.
“What?”
“I found out her name.”
Kame stills. “What is it?” he asks.
In the background, Koki nods and Shige presses the infusion trigger just as Nakamaru answers.
“Anne.”
Then Kame slips away.
-
Up and down, up and down, up and down…
Kame sighs and leans his head against the pole as the colorfully painted wooden horse he’s perched on repeats its movements, going round and round. The carousel plays a jaunty tune, its bright lights accompanying the rest of the animated festival rides. He turns to glare when Taguchi’s laugh booms from right behind him.
Taguchi waves at him enthusiastically. “Kazuya!”
Koki is on the horse next to him and lifts his hand, looking as resigned as Kame feels, but even more self-conscious. “Hey,” he says. He jabs his thumb towards Taguchi. “I kicked him already, if that helps.”
Kame nods, though he’s already wondering if it would really be that much of a loss if Taguchi just so happened to disappear.
“We need him,” Nakamaru’s voice calls out.
Kame spots him and Ueda leaning against the railing, though they quickly go out of sight when the carousel does another turn. When he and the others make their way around again, the amused expressions on Nakamaru’s and Ueda’s faces have him scowling. Though the scowl fades when he spies a green balloon being held by a child a few horses ahead of him.
“Green! It has to be green! ‘Cause we’re turtles, right?”
The sudden pain in his chest nearly bowls him over, and he inhales sharply when there’s another throbbing at his temples. He rubs the spots in circular, soothing motions once he gets off the ride, grimacing as he joins the others. He waves off their questions and asks one of his own to Taguchi.
“Did you build off real memories?” Kame asks.
“Not mine,” Taguchi says with a shrug. “I only used elements of the Subject’s.” His attention wanders around, fascinated by all the projections. “Like you taught me.”
“Would you pay attenti -” Out of the corner of his eye, someone tucks their hair behind their ear just so. He nearly gets whiplash swinging his head around to zero in on her walking away as his headache worsens. “Got her.”
Kame darts after her with the expectation the others will follow. The projection, too, moves with a purpose and it takes him some time to catch her by the game booths. Forgetting all protocol, he reaches out and grasps her upper arm. He knows he should expect it, but still, the very real feeling of skin on skin contact manages to throw him off balance, and he’s again amazed by the limitless power of dreams.
It leaves him ill-prepared for when she looks at him over her shoulder with no trace of surprise at all, as if she’s been expecting him this entire time.
“Who are you?” he whispers.
She smiles and his chest aches. It’s the saddest smile he’s ever seen.
“This isn’t enough,” she says, her pleasant voice a low murmur. He can easily imagine that honeyed voice lulling a person to sleep, evoking only the sweetest of dreams. “It won’t work here. You have to go deeper.”
She makes a move like she’ll break away, and his grip tightens, unwilling to let her go. “No.”
She lifts her free hand like she’ll touch his face and he closes his eyes.
Nothing. His gaze snaps open. She’s gone.
“Kame!” The others crowd around him.
“Well?” Ueda looks expectant, but not at all as anxious or strung out as Kame feels.
Koki already has the next PASIV device on hand, and Kame takes the metal briefcase from him. “We have to go deeper,” he says. “We don’t stop until we reach Limbo.”
Only when Kame is slumped against the wall inside a trailer, the dream drug slipping into his system, does he realize that his headaches disappeared the instant he touched her.
-
The next two levels - a moving train, and then a castle - are much the same, where he is again the one to spot her and she slips away, urging him to enter Limbo.
Whispered vows. Laughter. “Promise it’ll be like this forever?”
Anger. Tears. “Stop! Just stop. Talking. I told you I don’t want to remember!”
Each time he is haunted by what feels like the ghost of a memory, but whenever he tries to focus, it escapes him.
The others are left behind one by one on the level where they act as a Dreamer. By the time they reach Limbo, he is left alone with their client, and is more than frustrated with him. Ueda’s desire to find the woman - Anne, her name is Anne - doesn’t seem to be as pressing for him as it is for Kame.
There’s something else at play here, but Kame can’t bring himself to care, not when it’s the first time in a year he feels closer than ever to recovering some tattered part of himself.
And he’s sure as hell going to follow it through.
-
In the middle of a crumbling city in Limbo, they find a barren park with winding stone pathways and drained lakes. Instinctively, Kame knows it had once been covered in green, with hedges of assorted flowers and gigantic leafy trees. He goes in no particular conscious direction; his feet seem to know the way. And when they lead him to her, he knows without a doubt that she’s meant for him. He pauses and waits for Ueda.
“There she is,” Kame says. She is sitting beneath a tree, sketching, though her face is turned away from them.
Ueda shades his eyes against the glare of the sun. “Maybe you should return that to her.”
Kame finds himself holding a yellow hair ribbon. He glides the satin between his fingers. “Who is she to you?” he asks.
“An old friend,” he says, “who’s been waiting a really long time.”
Kame looks at him questioningly. “But what about-?”
Ueda waves him away impatiently. “I know my way back. Go.”
Slowly, Kame walks over, twisting the ribbon tight around his fingers. He stops behind her, watches her hand move over the page, sketching the park as it was meant to be, as it was before. “I’m sorry, but is this yours?”
She looks up from under her floppy sun hat, clutching onto the back to keep the wind from blowing it away, and smiles.
“Oh, thank you.”
Her smile is the same as she pats the spot next to her. “Thank you.”
Kame sits down next to her, holding it out. “Is this deep enough?” he asks.
“You tell me. Is it working?” She turns so that he sees the back of her head. “Do you mind?”
Kame reaches out to loop the ribbon through her silky hair, struck by the familiarity of having done this hundreds of times before, of the important first time he ever did. “I’ve done this before,” he says, a hint of amazement in his tone.
She reaches behind to touch his knee. “It’s how we met.”
Kame finishes tying off the ribbon at that exact moment, and he’s flooded with a myriad of emotion, color, sensation. Memories rush up from some unfathomable abyss. Of a beautiful woman in a park with a dazzling smile, of a life they build for themselves chasing dreams and creating worlds.
Of how they then make something even more precious, the best thing they’ve ever done. They give up a life of dreaming in order to live the dream. But they’re only granted a handful of perfect, heavenly years before it’s taken away. And in their grief, they escape back to the realm of dreams, going further and further until they’re adrift in its deepest parts.
It’s easy to run away from grief, to bury it all. But it’s always there in the back of their minds and they can’t move on, tension and resentment growing. Instead of supporting each other, they turn on one another, screaming and yelling things they don’t mean, things they can’t take back. And then they lose sight of each other.
Kame gasps, harshly taking in gulps of air as he curls in on himself. “Anne.”
Everything feels raw, as if his insides have been ripped out. He very nearly breaks when she wraps her arms around him.
“What happened to us?” he asks, squeezing his eyes shut to stop from weeping.
Anne hugs him as tight as she can, and even in his pain he treasures her touch, greedily takes it all. “I got so mad when you started mentioning him all the time, again and again, and I didn’t want to hear it.” She rests her cheek on the top of his head. “I didn’t want to hear anything.”
“I didn’t know. I swear to you. Down here it all just works so differently, the rules don’t apply in the same way. I took away our first meeting - this meeting,” Anne confesses, agonized. “I made you forget. And if you didn’t meet me, everything after never happened.”
He never happened.
Kame chokes. “Fuku’s favorite color was green.”
She pulls back to look at him, and there are tears streaming down her face. She smiles like her heart will break. “We’re turtles, right?”
Kame brushes her cheek with the back of his hand, just like he used to every morning when he woke up beside her in bed. “We’re turtles,” he whispers.
Anne holds his hand, keeps his touch on her face. “I couldn’t undo what I did in the real world, not right away. Your mind had to heal so I made sure the others were watching, taking care of you.”
“Ueda was never the Subject.” Kame shakes his head. “I’ve been the one populating the dream space. And you’re hooked up to the PASIV device right now, aren’t you? You’re not just a projection in my head.”
Anne nods, biting her bottom lip. She ducks her head and starts whispering again and again, and he has to strain to her. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she cries. “I’m sorry that I did this to you, that I made you lose your way.”
“I don’t care how I got lost.” His heart bleeds at the thought of their son, of how they ended up losing each other in the wake of it. He gathers her close, presses his forehead to hers. “You helped me find myself again.”
Kame raises the ground underneath their feet, makes it so they’re several stories high. He stands and pulls hers up, keeping their hands clasped tight. Anne follows him to the edge readily, and they look out over the dreamscape of Limbo. There’s so much left to talk about, to figure out, but right now, all he cares about is that this time, when the dream ends, she’ll be there when he wakes up. She’s real.
“Let’s go home.”
And they leap.