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Too late. Togusa could let the ground open up and swallow him whole right now, he feels like such an idiot. He knows she is afraid of it. The images from her nightmares where she was more machine than person, the constant visions of being interconnected in a horrific way. And he just jumped right into the topic.

He bites the hell down on the 'I'm sorry.' "Maybe a non-issue, if we get to Vanderweele fast enough."

Her hand continues to move, and it is such a different tic that it comes off wrongly to Togusa. It's not Mariko, so he has to wonder if it's her. It is somehow disturbing, but he makes himself continue to watch as if it's some kind of sequence she has to finish.

Blink. "Why did he mention it? Ah. It's a progressive condition. Sometimes, when someone gets injected with the micromachines that make up a cyber-brain, their immune system doesn't take to it, it attacks everything instead. It leads to a progressive hardening of the grey matter of the brain, somewhat similar to the plaques of Alzheimer's."

Pause, and his hand goes right the hell back to his chest. "Togusa was investigating a charity, a group dedicated to helping people with the disease." So it did have to do with the Laughing Man. But how?

She doesn't look at him, though the corner of her mouth raises just slightly. They've known each other too long for her to miss the apology in those words. After all, she always did prefer action.

"He was trying to get to the bottom of a mystery he found. Said he stumbled upon a piece of mail on the net. Something involving a place called Serrano Genomics, about a vaccine for it. A blackmail document and then..."

She tries to make a motion, like circling a drain but her finger doesn't quite complete the curve. Instead she just furrows her brow.

"Down the rabbit hole he went, just like Alice."

Just like you, she keeps to herself.

In response, Togusa doesn't even wait for her to finish. His eyes go impossibly wide, and then his face falls as if his whole body wants to mutter 'son of a bitch.' He stands, moves behind his desk, and pulls out a blue binder.

It's different than any of his own files. And the text across the front reads 'Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare' in Japanese script.

Togusa has the world's biggest frown when he drops the binder onto the desk.

"This blackmail document?"

The smack of the paper onto the desk jars her from the train of thought she was on. Her expression catches - partly infuriated and partly just simple gawking.

"Why the fuck do you have that?"

It's a question, mostly, but she can't stop the way she feels her blood set on fire.

What makes him so special? Why does Retrospec favor him? The world their Others come from just fucking unfurls for him, but everything she's ever understood about it just brings pain.

She tries to reach up to trace the back of her neck and only manages to cover it with her fingers. Maybe this was what it was like once she got her new body. No, not her's the Major and it's not. This isn't--

"Oh fucking Christ."

His knuckles rap against the top of the binder. "This is what he got shot over. He got given this that night. It's a list of names, dates, dosages. Worked out that it had to be for some other treatment for cyberbrain sclerosis?"

But the frustration comes back and he sinks into the chair. "I just don't know why that's important at all. Why is it worth killing people over, trying to kill him over?"

To Mariko it looks easy, but to Togusa, each detail has come through so much frustration, and the over-analysis is why he has made any headway at all. He hadn't wanted to open up this door, to start this conversation with Mariko for fear of her own fears, but now that it's open? He has to tread carefully for fear of just grabbing her wrist and diving right back down after his white rabbit.

"..Mariko?" A touch of concern. A touch of Hitori returning to the conversation, belatedly.

"I'm not mad at you."

The words leave her in a rush, because it's to hard to keep straight. She's been jealous of him for ages, in little ways and little moments - the way people just do sometimes. This? Is too bitter to swallow.

He gets to know he's going to make it unscathed, while she has to accept living on borrow time. He gets to be pissy about how she can't keep Hitori and his Other separate, but every revelation about the Major just underscores how fucking isolating this is because Togusa never has answers for her the way she seems to be for him.

"I'm not mad at you! I don't want to be mad at you!"

She's being childish and unfair and damn everything - she's so tired of just moving on. It hurts but she's alive so she has to keep going.

"End of the tunnel and you get a family- a wife and kids and you get to be flesh and blood and even when it's shitty you manage to come out in one piece. And she's just a fucking robot, following orders because that's what she's there for. She picks people and collects them because she knows what they're good for."

She hears herself breath, the sharp pull of air into her lungs - even as she tries to will herself to shut up. This isn't the important part. She knows it isn't, but it hurts. It feels like a slap in the face and she's already said too much.

"I don't want to be mad at you. I'm not." She slips to Japanese that makes her tongue feels like it's creaking, familiar and poisonous all at once.

"I'm so angry and so tired and I don't understand how you do it. I don't think I can. I'm not like you, Hitori. And I'm like her. I KNOW that I'm like her. But not enough and if I become anymore like her - I'm going to lose it."

Togusa is briefly stunned, her reaction is at once unexpected and less of a slap in the face than he was perhaps preparing himself for. He wants to interject, to say he doesn't care if she is mad at him, but she continues, and he keeps his silence.

It's a memory, unbidden. His own, and he knows it, not something that Retrospec has shoved into his mind. They'd been at the house of a friend of the family, put all the kids in a side room so the adults could be free of them. There was exactly one thing in the room that was at risk of being broken, so of course it had absolutely captured little Hitori's attention: a plate with the face of a black tiger on it. One moment, he was just trying to get a better look at it, to analyze it in his way. And then it tipped over, and even now he can see every detail of the fall, the crack right down the center of it, in slow motion.

Twenty years later, and he feels exactly that same feeling, that he just passed some kind of tipping point, lost in enthusiasm, and his punishment is to watch something break in front of him.

"If you're not mad at me, then who? Her? It's not fair that her choices are echoing back and affecting you."

"It's not fair that even she hasn't gotten what you wanted."

A pause. "If you had your say." I mean, if I had my goddamn choice, you know what I'd like to be? "For either life, what would you want most?"

"Stop."

She says it for herself and for him. A slidelong glance is all she can manage, but her gaze is clearer than it's been for maybe a little while now.

"That answer isn't for you." She's closing the door on him, but it lacks her characteristic archness. Hell, once upon a time, she might have even teased him with that sort of answer.

"If we keep going like this, we're going to teach each other apart."

The answers won't be worth it, without anything to show for it. It won't be worth it if they hate each other by the end. So one of them has to draw the line.

"I don't think we can talk about this in person right now."

Edited (Loading cut off my tag) 2019-03-01 05:02 (UTC)

Crack.

Now comes the words that are like a punch, and he can practically see the line cracking in the middle of her face. His spirits absolutely fall, and his gaze casts back down to the glasses. His vain attempt to hold together their real relationship in the midst of this.

I didn't want this, it's not about me, I'm sorry I ask these questions when I want you to answer it for yourself, I'm sorry I poke at every god damn thing until it yields an answer, even if that answer is breaking in two. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

Togusa numbly nods, every bit a chastised child for his overenthusiasm in this moment. Words don't come at first, they will not come. He has to focus and refocus and swallow hard before they will.

"I thought this was more fair. Than to keep avoiding the topic entirely."

Something was broken, but there was something necessary in it.

"It was more fair. You're the most fair person I know."

Mariko looks at Togusa for a long moment, before reaching out. It's clumsy and takes more effort than it should, but gently she turns his head back towards her. It's such a soft thing, unlike her - or maybe what she would have been like, if she hadn't devoted herself to armoring her heart against such pain.

"You weren't wrong for trying, Hitori."

She knows he's going to beat himself up anyway, once she's gone home, but she doesn't bother stifling the urge to try and protect him for once.

"I think because you were learning so much, I wanted you to have The Answer. And that was unfair of me."

With a sigh, she looks at her glass again. They're good at finding answers together, but this was never just a case. And they were stupid to try and pretend they could keep their feelings out of it long enough to crack the case. She shoots him another sidelong glance, almost smiling.

"If you weren't around, I'd probably be someplace way the hell off. In the woods or some goddamn place. You're the only reason I'm around, practically."

Togusa is startled, but he doesn't find himself leaning in or away from her. Don't flinch away, as strange as the movement is, but don't reach out for more, no matter how badly he wants it. The touch, it is more tender than Mariko truly is, at least with him, and it fills that damn need of something undefinable that he feel starved for. As his face is tilted up, with words oh so kind being offered, it's all Togusa can do to not break down right then and there.

"I hoped you didn't have The Answer. I hoped we could still find it together. I just hoped that it didn't hurt when we got there."

Her attempt at a bandaid is a lie, and he knows it. One she tells herself, but it is out there. One he has to smile and pretend to buy, which he does, with a nod. The words between her words, this is all really for you, do you know that?

"I wouldn't have gotten nearly this far if some upperclassman hadn't taken me under her wing and showed me how to survive so far away from everything I'd known. Would have run back to Japan years ago."

For me and him both. There is a part of this that is all for you. Which is why the validation from Mariko reaches right into his chest and touches the both of them. Mending one, only one, of those cracks in his heart with a thin line of gold.

His response is heartfelt and touching and Mariko has to stifle the laugh because, well, it’s kind of dickish. It’s amusement and relief tangled up in itself.

“Hitori, when have you ever known me to be so mushy?”

Okay, she is laughing but only a little.

“You’re important to me, yeah. But I’ve never been that good at talking about feelings. That last bit was all Salinger.” A beat, as she tries to play off her own sincerity with a shrug. “Even if it was appropriate.”

With effort, she rises from the chair and the movement is so stiff, she’s sure Hitori can hear the creaking.

“I offered a piece of His obsession on a platter and you’re the one who answered. Even with everything you’ve gotten back.”

Her stance is unsteady and she knows that she should ask him to help. But she’s had her fill of leaning on Hitori and she’s not about to start now.

“I need you to get the door for me. Now that I know for sure that my body is going to change, I think the cyberbrain is having difficulty processing...a different body.”

She clears her throat, trying ease her own embarrassment and stifle the urge to cry again.

“When I couldn’t clench my fist, I knew and I couldn’t just glance over the implications from the dreams and her memories. So I have to figure this out, for me, before we talk about this again.”

A scoff.

“She’s in charge and I’m your elder —I should have my shit together for once in my life before we go down this road again.”

The laugh surprises him, bringing a puzzled look to his face, and then she gives up the game, and he cannot believe he missed it. For a moment, Togusa is laughing, too. "Of course. Sally." Holden's own tiny obsession in the book.

But her explanation is another mending line, just the smallest offering of hope. Hope that maybe he isn't as far gone as he'd like to believe. Maybe. Maybe Zee's plan can still work. Maybe he can hang on to himself.

Togusa automatically stands up with Mariko, and again, he notices something is off about her motions. Just like with her hand.

Oh no.

He can keep the sharp inhalation of breath silent. It's still her, but it's as if she's gotten the software upgrade before- the hardware one. It is disgusting to think of it that way, but it's precisely what is happening. Togusa's hand out to the side of Mariko's arm is gentle.

"Okay." With all of the intonation of 'I'm here for you.'

"If you're- comfortable with it," she likely isn't, but he will make the offer, "Isamu could take you home? He'll do all the driving for you." It's how Togusa had planned to drink at the office and still make it back to his own bed. A practical suggestion, nothing else.

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