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When Kiryu shows up on Yusei's doorstep he looks tired, worn down. Better, of course, than he had as a Dark Signer. Yusei can't see his bones through his skin anymore, and his face has some color back in it. But he's nowhere near how he was three years ago, so energetic and full of life from skirting death. And Yusei thinks that maybe this makes some kind of sense, that even if the body can be brought back the soul won't forget.
"Come inside," Yusei says. Kiryu's hands shake. But he follows.
Kiryu has no reservations about asking others to join him. It's how he gathered Team Satisfaction under his wing, the charisma enough to outweigh the crazy, the camaraderie enough to dull the red flags. But when it comes to personally asking for help, he won't do it. Just the fact that he's come to Yusei like this is unusual, but maybe dying and coming back has given him a little bit of room to grow.
He sits on Yusei's threadbare mattress, looking smaller than Yusei remembers. His hair has grown longer, but it hangs flat and greasy. His clothes look like he's been wearing them for days. Yusei kneels down to the ground as if he's approaching a wounded animal. I won't hurt you. Steady. Easy. Up close, he can see purplish circles under Kiryu's eyes, something soft next to the harsh line of Kiryu's three-piece criminal mark.
"Have you not been sleeping?" Yusei asks.
Kiryu's eyes flit away and fix on something on the floor. "I didn't have to as a Dark Signer."
"That doesn't mean you don't have to now." Yusei is, admittedly, not entirely sure how this works. Maybe the former Dark Signers really don't need to sleep or eat; it's not like there's an instruction manual. Jack goes to Carly's place nearly every night, but maybe she doesn't sleep and just keeps watch over him. He doesn't quite feel like he could ask anyone about this, other than the person right in front of him, which renders it all pretty much useless.
"I can't." Kiryu looks back up at Yusei. Stubborn as always. "You don't know what I fucking see when I close my eyes."
For a second, Yusei does. Almost, not quite, but he feels it in his teeth and in the marrow of his bones. It's a kind of violence he, too, experienced at Security's hands and in the prison facility. He understands: Kiryu's body, beaten and broken beyond repair, the searing of the flesh underneath the marker. He understands: steel-toed boots, the rough grab of bigger hands, being treated as a ragdoll. He understands: hunger hunger hunger. He understands: wasting away. He understands: death.
Yusei, too, has died, however briefly it was. It's something he can't forget, the sensation of being pulled into something below the underworld. For Kiryu, he knows, it must have been much slower, and much more deliberate in its agony. Kiryu may not want to talk about it, but Yusei's pieced together scraps and fragments that form a blurry picture of his old friend left to starve and rot. And—well, he can't not feel responsible, even if it wasn't anyone's fault except that of the cruel fate they were all born into as Satellite citizens, and the Security officers who chose far worse than an eye for an eye. If he'd been a little more convincing, back then, maybe it could've been him instead of Kiryu. Maybe things could have been different if he'd tried to stop Kiryu sooner. Maybe there could've been a better way, but if there was, Yusei never found it.
But the Kiryu in front of him will always be more important than worrying about the past. The Kiryu in front of him is pale and sick and needs to eat , god damn it, because Yusei's sure nobody's making him do it. Kiryu needs a bath and a hot meal and a good night's sleep, and Yusei isn't sure how much he can give, but he can try. If it's for his blood brothers, Yusei will move the world.
Yusei has gone downstairs, gently ordering Kiryu to stay where he is on Yusei's bed. "Get some rest, if you can," he says, and then he's gone. Kiryu's too tired to fight.
He's tired of the world, in fact. He never should have come back. Once the vengeance all burned off, there wasn't anything left, and fading away in Yusei's arms wasn't a bad way to die for the second time. Kiryu has no regrets, other than still breathing.
He imagines the look on Yusei's face, if Yusei were to come back up here and find him sitting, staring at the floor. Kiryu, he'd say, his neutral voice unable to disguise the hurt at seeing Kiryu in this state. If it's a choice between two evils, Kiryu would rather be lying down for this one. So he unlaces his boots, and curses his heart for beating again, and gets under the covers.
It smells like Yusei. Overwhelmingly so. Kiryu could never forget Yusei's smell even when they were apart, the motor oil and exhaust fumes and sweat that cling to his clothes, and the persistent lingering scent of fresh air and rain on concrete underneath it all. Kiryu does not deserve to taint this bed with the rotting stench of death that clings to him, doesn't deserve to take comfort in the reminders that Yusei lives here. That Yusei exists here. That Yusei is alive, here.
(Jack and Crow, too. Even if they're not home, Kiryu knows; both of them have left indubitable traces of their presence much like Yusei has. All of Team Satisfaction under one roof again, but this time the windows aren't broken and there are real beds and electricity and heat. All of Team Satisfaction, except for one.)
Kiryu doesn't cry—Kiryu doesn't think he even can cry anymore, but he still feels the catch in his throat and the ringing in his ears. It's not as though he cried often before, but somehow the inability makes it feel all the more hopeless, like he's forced to hold the ugly feeling inside.
He pulls Yusei's blankets over his head and inhales deeply. Even if he can't get comfortable, and even if he can't sleep, the time has to pass one way or another. Even if he can't pretend things are alright, he can close his eyes and breathe in Yusei, and eventually he'll think of nothing at all.
Having good-quality fresh vegetables on hand is new to Yusei, as is having an actual kitchen. In Satellite everyone took what they could get, and Blitz even had a decently sized vegetable garden inside the abandoned subway station. But Zora had insisted on Yusei and his friends having enough to eat, and on having their fridge fully stocked. The options are… a bit overwhelming. Out of the three of them, Crow is the one who can actually cook, but Yusei can pull something together. Probably.
Removing his jacket and gloves, Yusei sets to work gathering his materials: an onion, a handful of carrots, a large pot, a knife. That doesn't seem like enough for soup, so he circles through the kitchen again. There's a bag of potatoes he could probably use, and shoved into a corner of the fridge he finds a torn-open package of bouillon cubes with only one missing. That was probably Jack; these don't seem like they even need to be refrigerated.
Onion, carrots, potatoes, broth. It's not much, but it's a start, and basically what Martha used to make. Yusei might not know the specifics, but he often helped Martha as a kid, and it can't be too hard to chop the vegetables and simmer them with the bouillon cubes. The prep work is relatively mindless once he gets started, which is in itself a blessing to Yusei. Small piles of diced onion and carrot rounds accumulate on the cutting board, and Yusei's thoughts can safely wander elsewhere.
Why did Kiryu come back? is what he keeps returning to, his mind circling the question over and over. The former Dark Signers vary in what they remember of their un-deaths; Aki's told Yusei that Misty more or less recalled everything when Aki returned her locket, but according to Jack, Carly seems to not remember a thing. Kiryu could be somewhere in the middle, but if what he's said to Yusei is anything to go by, he's deeply troubled by what he does remember, haunting him enough to hurt.
But does he know? Does he know how Yusei felt, holding his fragile dying body? Does he remember saying this won't satisfy me and fading away and tearing a hole in Yusei's heart all over again? Does he know how Yusei felt when he realized Kiryu was alive again, how relieved he was to see Kiryu whole, how grateful he is to have Kiryu here instead of out on the streets? Will he— can he ever know?
Having finished with chopping the vegetables, Yusei fills the pot with water from the sink and dumps the cubed potatoes in. Always make sure you add plenty of salt, Martha says in his memories, and Yusei nods to himself. He is, admittedly, not sure of the right order to add things to the soup, but the bouillon package reads one cube per 200 ml water and that seems like an alright start. It's not going to be perfect, but if it's Kiryu, it doesn't have to be.
Very gradually, very slowly, Kiryu becomes aware of a scent besides that of Yusei's bed. It smells like… food. Onion, specifically, and other savory notes surrounding it. Kiryu forces his eyes to open, annoyed at how difficult it is; he hadn't meant to fall asleep here, if a short nap could really be called sleep. Hunger carves into his stomach, followed by a rolling wave of nausea. It's faint. It smells so good. Kiryu feels sick all over again.
Kiryu cannot remember the last time he had a home-cooked meal, or even a meal at all. Most of his experiences with food lately have been scraps, prepackaged 100-calorie breakfast bars or the dredges of 100-yen menus. Things that are freeze dried and concentrated and reheated in dirty industrial kitchens, just enough nutrition for a boy to drag his own corpse around a city still rebuilding itself.
Yusei really is living better than either of them ever dreamed.
With stiff, aching muscles (don't think about it don't remember rigor mortis don't think about what dying felt like), Kiryu pulls himself out of bed. His vision darkens, and he has to sit back down and wait for the ringing in his ears to subside and for the large black splotches across his field of view to disappear. His body staggers forwards; his hand grips the railing of the staircase tightly. At the bottom of the stairs is the kitchen, which is where Yusei must be. Lightheaded, Kiryu manages to make it all the way down, and sure enough there's Yusei, standing by the stove and tending to a large pot.
Having Yusei in front of him again still feels wrong. Yusei is a memory from Kiryu's youth, a scabbed-over cut, the betrayed and not the betrayer as Kiryu had thought for so long. He looks up at Kiryu with a caring familiarity in his face, something so angelic and domestic with one hand wrapped around the handle of a wooden spoon. "Kiryu, you're awake," he says warmly, and though his expression may not change much Kiryu knows exactly how much affection lies behind it. It's undeserved, to Kiryu, and it's sickening. "I'm making soup," he adds when Kiryu doesn't respond.
"Yeah," Kiryu mutters. He lingers in the doorway, unsure whether he should sit down at the table or move closer to Yusei. Both options would just spread his death across more of Yusei's home, uninvited.
"Actually," Yusei says, and then pauses. "Can you look at this?"
Kiryu steps forward. One foot in front of the other, one at a time. The food on the stove smells like the kind of home that people who aren't Kiryu have. Like Yusei asked, Kiryu looks; the broth is simmering and steaming, and Kiryu can see carrots and potatoes and translucent pieces of onion tumbling around. He stares, then raises his head to look back at Yusei. "I don't know what I'm looking at."
"Does it seem thin to you?" Yusei asks, all serious and earnest.
What? "It looks like soup. …Did you add too much water?"
"Yeah. I think so. I thought I could fix it if I added some noodles, but all we have is Jack's cup ramen."
Kiryu knows all too well how Jack is about his cup ramen. If he heard Yusei talking like that, it'd be more than likely Jack would start throwing punches. The thought might have made Kiryu laugh, if he still could. "It doesn't really matter," he says instead. "It's soup. It's fine."
Yusei makes a small noncommittal noise and begins spooning the soup into two bowls. Two bowls. One for him, and one for Kiryu—it must be, since there's no one else here. A tiny spark of anger flares up in Kiryu, then just as quickly fizzles out. Yusei's trying. Yusei wants him to eat. It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to share food with Yusei one more time, no matter how impossible it feels.
Kiryu seems smaller when he's sitting at the table with Yusei, his already-skinny frame hunched over his soup like he half-expects someone to pull it out from under him. He eats quickly, but doesn't finish the bowl. Not for the first time, Yusei wonders what it felt like, the terror Kiryu's body endured. Not for the first time, Yusei doesn't want to know. Each spoonful of broth that passes Kiryu's lips is a victory far more satisfying than learning something so horrible would be. Kiryu is eating now, and that's enough for Yusei.
Soon Kiryu will leave, and Yusei won't know where to find him again. Kiryu has always been a drifter of sorts, moving from place to place if there's nothing tying him down. Now that Satellite isn't Satellite anymore, there's no room left for the Kiryus of the world—the ones who make their own justice, who don't take kindly to authority and landlords and cops, who refuse to play along with the system. Yusei wishes he would stay. They both know he can't.
But when Yusei goes to bed that night, he finds his sheets smell like Kiryu always did when they slept huddled for warmth on cold nights, and a few strands of white hair still cling to his pillow. Proof, undeniable, that Kiryu was here. Yusei just hopes that wherever Kiryu is now, he's sleeping comfortably, and that he's safe.
Somewhere, there's a place for Kiryu to call home. And Yusei is sure he'll find it.