Title: The Variable
Summary: Okabe wakes up in the future, but twenty years of experience has helped Kurisu grow used to it by now.
Genre: Romance/Drama
Rating: T
Word Count: 9,500

Notes: This occurs after the events of the 'Fuka Ryōiki no Déjà vu' film, so it helps to have seen that, or at least know what happens in it. Based on what Kurisu mentions in the movie during the fantastic drunk scene, Okabe doesn't contact her at all in the year since the end of the series, so I was wondering how the hell these two nerds could ever get past themselves to move beyond occasional make-out sessions between all the tsundere arguments. The only time they've ever really made any headway in their relationship is when time-travel shenanigans ensue, so I figured maybe more of those could nudge them in the right direction.

The Variable

Okabe wakes to an unfamiliar ceiling with a soft duvet bunched around his waist. On his left, there's another body in the bed with him.

He jolts upright. A hallucination! The Organization's finally been successful at programming falsified memories into a subject at a long-range implementation —

Well, it all feels real. His head's spinning a little, like he's used to seeing the world at a 45-degree angle and his eyes are trying to make up for the discrepancy.

He examines everything. He's wearing unfamiliar clothes, but they're comfortable, worn, like they're used to him, even if the feeling isn't mutual. He's still himself, but every part of him feels distorted a little: stretched in some places, cramped in others. He feels… heavier, not in terms of weight, but as though he's had a few square meals to fill out the hollow spaces of a university student's scrawny 19-year-old body. His hair's about the same length, just a little mussed from sleep, though his bangs are, strangely, about half an inch longer, brushing into his eyes. Fingernails are still stubbed short. And there's still stubble on his chin.

(Even hallucinating, he still doesn't have a beard.)

Finally, he finds it in himself to examine the figure next to him in bed.

Christina. Except — he squints in the darkness — good lord, she's older, much older. 30s, maybe even 40s? Her hair is shoulder-length, whisked around her head like a dark, fiery halo. Her right hand is curled at her hip, left hand tangled in the bangs above her forehead. There's a band on her fourth finger, a ring.

God. Before he can fully process it, he checks his own hand.

Yes, a ring on his hand, as well. Pale gold. The skin is a little tight underneath.

It needs a new fitting.

The thought doesn't seem to come from his own mind — his body just knows it, like it's been engraved on the inside of his skull, instinctual. It feels familiar and foreign all at once, like he'd been the one to think it, just not… yet.

He glances at Kurisu's hand again. There's another jolt of panic resounding somewhere around his gut. Rings don't mean anything. He doesn't want to consider — if they aren't, you know, not to each other —

He's wearing clothes, though, that's something. Pajamas. And she's wearing an undershirt. God. Okay. This means… something. It could mean nothing. It could mean everything.

What the hell's going on?

He pulls himself out of it to take stock of his surroundings. It looks like a hotel room. A nightstand, television, luggage racks near the door, sofa, some dull, inoffensive art pieces on the walls — a large hotel room, then, though a bit nicer than the ones he's used to. The clock on the nightstand over Kurisu's shoulder reads 6:34 AM, which gives him a point of reference for the weak rays of sunlight sprinkling out from behind the curtains on the right. Next to the clock is a pile of hotel stationery with some name and insignia at the top, but he can't read it from this distance in the dark.

He squints a little more, trying harder. His eyesight is terrible. He can still read the clock, but if he doesn't concentrate, the numbers are a little fuzzy around the edges, the neon red duplicating around itself. Have his senses aged forty years overnight?

He turns to the thick floor-to-ceiling curtains from under which a few streams of sunlight are escaping across the carpeted floor. He rises and crosses the room to part them, squinting.

Kurisu moves behind him; he freezes, watching her turn a little in her sleep. She doesn't wake.

He opens the curtains and peers out. The sun's rising on the left, light caught between skyscrapers. Far on the right, water stretches out into the horizon, metal bridges in the distance catching the sunlight and reflecting back to him. The buildings roll with the landscape; it's far too hilly for Akihabara, or even the general Tokyo area. Is he even in Japan? The signs on the streets below look like English. A few flicker to life as he watches — people are waking up.

"Rintarou?"

(Nobody aside from his parents has called him Rintarou in years — )

Shitshitshit. A bit softer from sleep, and lower, but it's definitely her voice. He can't turn around. She'll know something's wrong, she can read that sort of thing on his face from a mile away.

Is he… in the future? His future, or someone else's? Another version of Okabe Rintarou? Is this still the choice of Steins Gate, or — ?

"Something wrong?"

If he's learned anything in the past year, it's that he has to be honest, at least with her.

"Kurisu," he says to the window, and he's not sure whether to be relieved or alarmed at her silent acceptance of him using her given name, "don't panic, but I — I think. I'm not supposed to be here."

"…What does that mean?" A bit amused. She certainly sounds older, but that characteristic attitude is still there.

Before he can answer, she interrupts: "Wait. Is this another jump?"

"What?"

"How old are you?"

"I — " He pauses, caught off guard by her response. He looks down at his hands. With the sunlight he can see there's a faint scar on his left palm, near the base of his thumb. He hasn't looked in a mirror yet, but frankly, he's a little terrified at the thought of what he'll see. "I'm not sure."

Kurisu dismisses this. "Not how old your body is at this moment. How old are you? What year is it, last time you remember?"

He swallows. "2011. December. I'll — I'm turning twenty in two weeks."

He hears movement behind him and turns around to watch Kurisu — a taller Kurisu, more (God) developed Kurisu — toss the covers back and grab a notebook and complimentary hotel pen from the nightstand. (He swallows at the sight of her bare shoulders, and the way the nightshirt clings to the curve of her back, all parts of her normally hidden to him by shaggy jackets or stiff lab coats.) "What day?"

"Uh — I don't know. It's early December. It's a Friday."

"You went to sleep on a Friday or you're waking up on a Friday?"

"Went to sleep."

Kurisu picks up a thin black box — is that an iPhone? It looks a little bigger than the models they sell in the stores — about as tall as her hand from the nightstand, presses a few buttons, and it lights up with a myriad of tiny colors and figures. Okabe watches, transfixed. She presses a few more images, swipes left and right, and there's a tiny calendar on the screen. After a few moments she's flipped to the year 2011.

"2011… The first Friday that year was December 2nd." She looks up at him for the first time, and yes, it is her, but — not. She looks like how he's always imagined her mother would look in middle age: strong jaw, signs of premature stress lines, yet soft around the edges of her face. Despite the bags below them (does work take a lot out of her?), her eyes are bright, the blue he knows, and if there was any doubt in his mind before, he's certain now that, yes, this is Kurisu, some version of the Kurisu he knows, from the way she's looking at him with a million questions that she's clearly impatient to have him answer even at 6:30 in the morning. "Does that sound right?"

Okabe nods, a little overwhelmed. He still feels sick. Woozy, like he's stood up too fast. Theorizing what's happened to him isn't making things better, it's making them worse.

Kurisu turns back to the notebook, the pages of which have begun to softly glow — for a moment he thinks it's a trick of his eyes, but no, she's writing by the light of the book itself. He slowly steps over to her side, peering over her shoulder. The page she's flipped to is divided into three columns. About twelve lines are filled in: the first two columns have scattered dates spanning from the past two decades, and the third, a measurement of time: 1HR 32MIN, 6MIN, 56MIN. As he watches, she neatly fills in another line with the dates "23 JUN 31" and "2 DEC 11." Even half-asleep, her handwriting looks perfect.

"31… Wait, how old are you, then?" The moment he says it he curses himself – it's like his mouth just opens up of its own accord and spews out whatever thought has been rattling around in his head like a candy dispenser.

Shockingly, she doesn't take visible offense. Without looking up from the page she asks, "Why, how old do I look?"

Shit, from the little he knows about women, that sounds like the biggest trap in the —

"I'm kidding. I'm 38. Happy birthday, by the way."

"What are you — ?"

"It's your birthday, in December."

"Yes, but — you've written it's June right there — "

"Not where you're from. You turned 20 in 2011, right? So you'll finally be legal. Invite me to a drink next time I come back to Japan."

His head is spinning. "Kurisu. This is really you, isn't it? I'm not imagining this."

"Of course it's me."

"No, I mean — not the you I know. Not yet. This is your older self — I'm really in the future. It's not a hallucination."

Kurisu — Christina, Assistant, Kurisu — is silent for so long he thinks she won't respond. She's never this hesitant with him like this, as if she's scared of his reaction, never, she always dives in head first — but she nods, finally. "Yeah," she says. "You're in 2031."

There's a long, pregnant pause in which they both stare at each other but neither say a word. It takes him a moment to realize that she's waiting for his reaction, while he had been waiting for her to — something. Explain? Laugh and crack a joke about his gullibility?

He has an unsettling realization that she's looking at him and seeing someone else. She's seeing him at 39 — God, he's thirty-nine years old, that's nearly two decades he's slept away over the course of a single night — she's looking at him and seeing an adult, a — a married man — who she fell asleep with the night before —

Okabe reaches to grab his phone, words already forming in his head: "It's me. The mission has taken a turn for the worse. One witness has glimpsed me — I'm not acquainted with her in this environment, but previous experience has proven her to be trustworthy, so she'll keep her silence. No need for elimination. Begin Operation Orpheus immediately. El. Psy — " His right hand grasps at the pajama bottoms, where his lab coat pocket should be, before he realizes his phone's not on him.

This isn't in your head, Okabe Rintarou. It's real.

Kurisu watches his hand, as though she knows what he'd been trying to do. She doesn't smile.

His hand slowly unclasps the fabric, settling. He lowers himself back down to the mattress and puts his head in his hands.

He's struck by a sudden burst of inspiration. "How do I know this isn't all a dream, then? Or some vivid hallucination caused by a chemical reaction from an experiment in the lab?"

She levels such an offended look at him, as though just daring him to call her a figment of his imagination. "You're free to believe that, though when they start happening more frequently, don't say I didn't warn you."

With Kurisu glaring at him like that, he's starting to feel back in his element. "You've misunderstood me, dear lady. I'm just theorizing, if I'm to differentiate between reality and dreams, I propose another experiment — "

"You want me to offer up some private information I've never shared with anybody to test against my past self to see if this is real." Kurisu is smiling in a knowing sort of way, and he frowns, because of course a 38-year-old Kurisu would know how to stomp down on a plan of his the moment it stepped out of its metaphorical front door. "You're not half as sneaky as you think you are, Chief."

Damn the woman — he should redouble his efforts and try again, perhaps bring out some familiar nicknames to see her reactions and catch her off guard, but…

But. This isn't a joke. Something about seeing her, an old (older) woman, knowing the rings on their hands had to have come with many intimate moments and promises and shared beds like these — he doesn't want to joke around with this. Even if it's all in his head, he wants to give this moment the respect it deserves.

"Rinta — Okabe." A beat. "We weren't on first-name terms back then, were we?"

He doesn't know what to do with himself, so he answers her. "You call me whatever you like, as you well know."

"Yes, well. Are you okay? Is this the first time it happened?"

He raises his head. "First time… This has happened more than once? Is that — that notebook, with those dates, is that what they mean?"

Kurisu nods slowly, as though she's not sure how to tell him a piece of bad news.

"How did — how does something like this happen?"

She pauses. "I have a theory… You said you went to sleep on a Friday, right?"

"Correct. Does sleeping have something to do with it?"

She's back to her analytic self in a nanosecond. "I'm not sure if it's a necessary factor, but the switch does seem to happen more when you're asleep. You've told me a few times you may've just nodded off before coming back; as far as I know, you don't just snap to and fro walking down the street. It's like when your brain just shuts down… it accidentally opens a new tab in another time."

There's too much in her speech for him to sort through, so he latches onto the most immediate thing he can parse: "That's… not how brains work."

"Who's the neuroscientist here?"

"My assistant is impressing that through no fault of its own, my mind has rocketed itself into the future due to the naive experiments I undertook with a time machine at the tender age of 18." He shakes his head, mock-solemnly. "It would be tragic if I weren't so fortuitous to awaken next to a familiar presence to explain my predicament. You're telling me this is the will of Steins Gate?"

Kurisu looks baffled, and somehow frustratingly amused despite herself (as through twenty years has made her forget a mad scientist's act — shame on her, indeed). She seems to decide that he's making fun of her, and her tone grows quite impatient. "I never said it makes sense the way we know it. I'm starting to think we don't know half as much about time as we think we do." She rubs at her eyes. "Not time travel, but just, time in general, and other universes. I think maybe our minds between all of them, or what constitutes 'us' as we know it — Makise Kurisu, Okabe Rintarou, the 'you' that you recognize — it may be all there, somehow, at every moment, every possibility of one's self existing in our minds at any given time."

That explains… a few things. Okabe frowns, intending to question her, but Kurisu continues:

"Tapping into all of it is the difficult part. To be honest I'm not sure if we could survive knowing all that at once. The dividing barriers between your mind are just a little sensitive, hence your Steiner ability. We're still theorizing on whole déjà-vu, alternate world-line thing. It's not like we can experiment."

"We?"

"When we find a spare moment or two, yes, we. I'm not even sure I should be telling you all this, actually."

"Come now, who would I deign to share this information with?"

They both know the answer to that.

"So I don't stay… in the future, here, forever, then."

She softens at the tone of his voice. "Of course you don't. We live normal lives. You're okay."

He shakes his head; that wasn't what he had been asking. "How does it work, then? When do I go back?"

"I'm not sure. They don't even happen chronologically, as far as you can tell."

"As far as I can tell?"

"From what you've gathered, they started after that incident with the R world-line. You remember."

He does, but vaguely. Thinking about that time is like recalling a childhood dream; sometimes he's not sure if it really happened. "When I was fading out of the Steins Gate world-line? That was barely six months ago…"

She looked a little uncomfortable at the mention of it, avoiding his eyes. "Yes, well, that. You don't like to talk about it. I don't push it."

You'd think, Okabe considers, by the year 2031 he'd have learned to trust her enough to share his experiences when these sort of things transpire, but apparently not.

Well it's not like he's any better, back in his own time. In the six months since the R world-line fiasco, has he once contacted her, like he's promised himself to do at least every fortnight? Has she once contacted him? He'd last seen her, talked to her, at the airport before her flight back to America. He doesn't even know where she's staying now that her university has let out for the winter holidays.

(In his lonelier moments, Okabe imagines she hasn't contacted him because she's found someone else, someone smarter, with a future, and he can't even bring himself to shoot off a text to tease her about the possibility. At the very least, she hasn't reached out to break the news: either to spare his feelings or because she's forgotten all about the idiot she left behind in Japan — he doesn't have to know which it is to keep himself imagining the worst.)

After all of this, and all the time-leaps to save Mayuri without a thought to turn to someone, anyone else for assistance, is it really so impossible to imagine even his future self wouldn't turn to Kurisu to share his most private thoughts unless it was absolutely necessary? Does he trust her so little?

Perhaps some parts of him (the worst parts of him) remain consistent into adulthood, after all.

Kurisu sighs, still watching him, and her next words seem to confirm one of his newest, but deepest fears: the blasted woman can indeed read a man's thoughts, or at least guess what he's thinking in that unnervingly accurate way of hers. He's not sure which is worse. "It's not that you don't trust me. I think you're just worried that telling too much may cause a world-line shift. Even the telling may affect something. I don't blame you. I understand."

Okabe's not sure what it means when he can feel his heart weigh a little heavier at the thought that this older, wiser Kurisu knows him well enough in this future to interpret even 19-year-old Okabe Rintarou's thoughts at a glance.

He can't stomach talking or even thinking about this anymore. He switches tracks: "Does this... mental jumping, does it ever stop?"

"I'm not sure. Once in graduate school around 4AM I got an international call from you insisting you were your 63-year-old self. Apparently Steins Gate had sent you back in time with a mission to tell me that I shouldn't eat my mixed berry yogurt in the fridge on account of it being expired, but I couldn't tell if you were joking or not."

His own ridiculousness surprises him into grinning. "About the yogurt or being 63?"

"Either. I didn't have any yogurt in the fridge at the time anyway, so I figured you were just screwing around. Especially since you called me a 'young whippersnapper.' I woke up later realizing that's probably the fakest attempt at a prank I've ever heard."

She smiles as Okabe laughs. It feels jarring to hear a deeper, lower laugh than he's used to, but it's the first time he's managed to find amusement in the situation, and he's relieved to know he can at least keep ahold of his good humor in the future.

Kurisu continues: "It all exists on the same world-line: no exchanging universes, just mental time-travel. As long as you don't go running around wrecking up the past, I don't think that will change. Ever since that summer, I think you've stayed on this world-line. You remember how we managed to lock your mind into this world-line by giving you a — er, a memory to distinguish it from the others?"

He nods.

"As far as I can tell your mind's still in one world-line. I think. I don't have your Steiner ability, so I can't tell, but I don't get any memory flashes, and you've never given any indication that these jumps are changing the past. You're kind of quiet about it, honestly, I think you don't want to share too much for fear of changing things. But I think this is just another after-effect of all your time-leaping in 2010. Instead of your mind flashing to different world-lines, since we locked you into this one in 2011, your mind makes up for it by jumping to different times. That's my theory, anyway."

"I don't…"

She bites her lip. "Think of it like several strings of thread, parallel to each other, but never touching. In July 2011 your mind was hopping you from one string to another, but because the other strings have been cut away now, without any time machine, you have no choice but to remain on this one. Now you've got one string, one world-line, but your mind is still used to the jumping, it's still got residual effects of the toll it went through in 2010. It's restless, it wants to move. But with the other strings cut, it's got nowhere to go except forward and back on the same world-line. Hence these jumps. No matter what you do during these jumps it won't — or shouldn't — change anything. At least I don't think so. You've never really wanted to try it.

"Anyway you call them 'time flashes,' for lack of a better name. Some last a few minutes, at most maybe a couple hours. A few years ago in London there was a slight crisis where your 23-year-old self stayed for five hours, you were panicking in the restroom because you had a presentation to give on quantum levitation and you didn't know the material yet, but that was the longest jump I've known."

He swallows. "What happened?"

"Oh, you switched back and did the lecture just fine. You were irritated you lost the time to prepare, but since you obviously knew it would happen I don't think it was that big a deal."

"And then… where are we now?"

"San Francisco. We're here for a conference. I have a presentation to give at 1, but I can take the morning off if you'd like to talk."

"What happens to my original conscious when the new one comes?"

"No idea. I've never been with you the moment it happens, and the few times I've asked you wouldn't say. You could just be blacking out momentarily. I have a working hypothesis that maybe your minds just switch places for a few minutes, but I suppose we'll have to wait longer to see. Your older mind would know what was happening and probably wouldn't advertise it to the new environment."

She looked at him oddly for a moment, then smiled. "Weird to think you'll eventually live on to explain all of this to me in your future. I can't believe this is your first time… Usually you're the one calming me down about it. I still don't understand it all myself. I have a feeling you're keeping some aspects of it secret from me."

Okabe doesn't feel amused anymore, or even curious like she seems to; he just feels nauseous. The enormity of his reality seems to be pressing back down on him again, lurking like a heavy fog. This entire thing — all of these time-jumps existed on one world-line. This was in his future. Kurisu is — they would be —

The thought is unexpectedly thrilling and simultaneously paralyzing.

"Do we — " He decides against addressing the elephant in the room, then in another moment, reconsiders the wording instead: "I mean. Are we, um."

"This isn't an affair, if that's what you're thinking."

His head shoots up. She's not smiling, but there is a warmth to her expression that he doesn't see often with her younger self.

Swallowing, he tries for casual: "I'm sure I'd never think that of you, Christina."

Okabe pauses, not sure if he's offended her — they're married, apparently (Christ), what if she's told him to cut the teasing out of their banter? — but she seems to take this in stride.

"I always forget you used to call me that," she says mildly.

"Do I stop calling you Assistant, too?"

"You call me other things. As I do you. It never ends. I don't think we'd like it if it did."

He suddenly finds it in himself to grin. "Am I still known as the great — "

"You still insist on that ridiculous name, yes, but only on special occasions. For Suzuha, and all." Kurisu looks thoroughly exasperated and fondly amused with him all in one. He's used to both reactions from her, but rarely together; he thinks he likes that expression, and for a moment he hopes desperately that his future self sees it often. "She's rather attached to you, you know."

"As she should be."

"So — you did know who Suzuha was from the beginning?"

Kurisu is frowning; her eyes are glinting in that successful look she gets when she's put two pieces together. Okabe has the distinct impression he's lost a round against her that he had no knowledge he was playing. "What?"

"Amane Suzuha. You've always been fond of her, and Daru never could figure out how you knew his daughter's name before he announced it to the rest of us. You outright lied to us when we asked if it was about another world-line. Said you'd just predicted it of the names they were considering."

Kurisu looks annoyed; worse, she looks hurt. Okabe swallows.

"So you understand," she says slowly, "if, at 19 years old, you know Suzuha's name six years before she's conceived, I'm now wondering what else you've lied to us about."

His mouth is suddenly dry. "This sounds like a conversation that would best be held with your spouse, and I'm afraid he's unavailable at the moment, so if — "

"Do not blow me off, Okabe Rintarou. Even as a teenager I trusted you to respect me more than that." She's not shouting, but she may as well be. He can't help but be disappointed in himself at that look.

"If… you're really upset about Suzuha — "

"I don't expect you to share everything about the beta world-lines," she says. "I knew about Suzuha myself from the R line fiasco. No, I'm not upset about Suzuha."

He's bewildered. "Then what in the seven hells — ?"

"Okabe, I'm talking about you. I'm talking about lying about what happened, lying about the trauma you went through. I'm talking about how long you plan on hiding your PTSD."

It's odd how quickly it happens. As before, the thought is immediate, like his body has planned for this conversation and prepared a notecard to flip to in advance, a mental note from the future that reads:

As long as it takes.

With sudden clarity, he understands the bits of him that didn't make sense to him earlier this morning. Why he could confess his feelings in a universe that was about to be erased, only take the initiative to kiss a girl he loves before he disappeared from living memory: because he's a coward, and it's the easiest thing in the world for a coward to do nothing.

He doesn't say anything.

"I'm a neuroscientist," Kurisu says thickly, and he looks up at her in alarm to see her face is screwed up. For a terrible moment he thinks she's about to cry. "It's not psychology, I'm not a therapist, but I know mental stress when I see it. I knew this was affecting you more than you let on. Why on earth didn't you say something?"

Okabe opens his mouth before he realizes he has no clue what to say.

"It's fine, I know why," she continues. "Because you get like this, you do this, you bottle things up until the very last possible moment and let them fester till they combust and I just — " She shakes her head. "What am I supposed to do, if you don't tell me anything? How am I supposed to help?"

"You're not."

"Excuse me?"

"That's — " Dammit — "That's not to say I don't want you to. I — it's not because I…" Because he what, he doesn't trust her? Believe in her? Care?

"You know, we wouldn't be here if you hadn't stepped forward in the desert and told me you loved me," Kurisu says, and she's not crying, but her head is in her hands now, the edges of her hair brushing her wrists. He can't see her eyes. "You don't have to do it all yourself. I can meet you halfway. Can you just — reach out to me halfway, Rintarou? Please. I don't expect the world of you, but I need you to give me something. I need a place to start, especially when I'm younger. Telling is the hardest part, but you've done it before. I can take care of the rest."

He doesn't have an answer for her. He suspects he won't have an answer for her for another twenty years. Now, though, he at least owes her a response.

He reaches out to pull her left hand away from her face and gently brings it to his lips. It seems the husbandly thing to do, and he hopes desperately it doesn't come off as ingenuine or uncomfortable for her, knowing a 19-year-old version of her spouse may be treading on intimate ground better left for his older self.

Kurisu lowers her other hand from her face, and with her thumb she rubs her ring finger where he'd kissed it. She squeezes his fingers back, and then, slowly, as if approaching a frightened animal, she leans forward and presses her lips to the corner of his mouth. He doesn't move, unsure what to say or do or where to put his hands or lips or face, but it's over before he can decide. She's pressed her forehead against his now, lids half-closed.

He's a fool of a man, but perhaps the universe will let this fool hold on to this pathetic sliver of hope he's stumbled upon this morning.

Okabe lays back on the bed with his unoccupied hand behind his head. The tense atmosphere has dissolved, but he's still cautious after listening to her lay out his private thoughts and fears into words so easily, as though his problems can be condensed into language so simple. Surprisingly, though, he's not mad or embarrassed. Acknowledging his residual issues — the flashbacks, night terrors, PTSD, whatever it is — has always just made him feel unyieldingly tired.

He's never shared it with anyone. As far as he's concerned, he's the one who put them through all of that nonsense, so he should shoulder the consequences. But perhaps…

Okabe closes his eyes. "Do you still… remember anything from those other world-lines? Or do you just remember my telling you?"

He imagines her mouth twisting as she looks down at him and answers.

"No," she sighs, "I still get flashes sometimes, but new memories stopped coming a while ago. I think the older we got the more the divergence number shifted. We'd be closest, mentally, to those other versions of ourselves when we were younger, so as we grow up, our minds would veer off in different directions, so unless I focus all my efforts, I don't think I'll see anything more. I could try, I don't think it's impossible, but… I feel this is for the best."

Okabe doesn't respond to this, but privately, he can't help but agree.

"We don't have to talk about it. But just. Consider what I said. Please. You need it, back then. I don't know how much good it will do, but I wish I had been there. I wish I'd known."

He opens his eyes to meet her blue and nods so she can see.

Kurisu looks content, and then glances around, as if to search for a visible change in topic. "You're… coming from December, right? Your first flash." She rubs her thumb over his finger. In 2011, her hands are so small against his, but here, they're fully grown and weathered, comfortable fitting with his own. "We were still in school then. I don't really remember what I was doing in December 2011…"

"You're in America studying… something."

"I'm always in America studying something." He can hear the smile in her voice. "You come to study with me, you know. Oh that's right," she says, and her voice lights up a little, but still quiet, as though she too is nervous about treading lines too fast following a dispute. "Arizona, I remember. There was a facility out in the desert I got to work with over break."

A comfortable silence descends over them, and Okabe settles back into the duvet again. The disagreement seems to have taken energy out of him. From this angle he can see Kurisu leaning against the headboard upside-down, looking out the window as she reminisces twenty years back.

"You don't want to see 2030s San Francisco, do you?" she asks suddenly. "I should probably keep all of this a surprise, but I figure if we don't do anything too crazy, maybe it'll be a nice send-off before you go back. Just between you and me. Do you want to?"

Not particularly. Half of him wants to squeeze every bit of information out of this older Kurisu that he can — what his life is like, is he happy, is she happy, how are Mayuri and Daru and Faris and the others, how long are they away from Japan — and the other half is impatient go back to his own time to talk to the Kurisu he knows, ask her if she's doing well, what she imagines her future will be like, if she's ever thought about visiting San Francisco with him, maybe, some day. Mostly, though, he's just tired.

He doesn't say any of this, however; he just shakes his head.

"Okay."

An odd weight moves over his head; fingers? He cracks an eye open. She's… running her hand through his hair. Gently, like she's scared of putting him off, but in a way that suggests familiarity enough to be calming. She must do it often. (Mad scientists keep their hair cut short lest it all be burned to the roots in an experiment, but he can understand, now, why he would grow his bangs out. Just a little.)

"We should probably stay in for breakfast. America's becoming more bilingual, but it's still better to know English, and I suppose you won't remember learning. That's thanks to me, of course."

She grins, teasing, but he just looks up at her.

"Sorry," she says, looking a little sheepish. "I'm trying to act like how I remember I used to. I know this is difficult for you."

Her hand is still in his hair. From behind his head he extracts one of his own and grasps her fingers. Her hand is warm. "I'm just glad I woke up to catch my bearings next to a familiar face."

"…Why, you were expecting someone else?"

By the look on her face, Kurisu hadn't expected to say that next, either. She freezes, then backpedals: "I mean — just in general, were you expecting — "

"It's good to know your foot-in-mouth syndrome still hasn't run itself dry after twenty years."

"Shut up," she says, but she's smiling. "Well. I'm not sure how long you've got till you leave, so maybe it's best to stay in anyway." She hesitates. "While you're here, though, I want to ask you something."

"Mm?"

"Are you okay?"

His eyes are heavy, but he opens them to meet hers.

"I've asked you this so many times and you never give me a straight answer," she says quietly. "I mean, I gathered you were stressed about your body's mental reactions to… all of this, so I didn't want to ask directly in case you were embarrassed. I suppose now this is a second chance. If you want to talk about it…"

He swallows.

"It's fine, if you're not okay." Her voice is soft, like the time she'd spoken to him in the lab that afternoon as the rain poured outside the blinds and his hippocampus restructured itself around his new definition of the word 'significant' when his mouth met hers. Soft like how she'd thanked him in the street that day in Akihabara, when they met by fate or by chance; soft like how she'd invited him into her motel room when they were stranded in the California desert and told him that their history together, including his affection for her, was nothing more than a dream she wasn't sure she wanted to understand.

"I just want you to know, I'm here to talk. Not just here-here in this moment, but. Anytime. I didn't tell you this often enough when we were young. I'm not very good with reaching out first either, but if… if you want something to bring back with you, you should know that, in December 2011, I'm sitting in my hotel in Arizona wondering what to get you for your birthday, and how to apologize for not checking in with you after what happened that summer. I'm a coward too, Rintarou. I wanted this to work out without having to make the first step. I spent ages wondering if some other crisis would happen that would force us to acknowledge what this was really about. And there's still so much we don't know about world-lines and time travel… and who we are, how we exist beyond the memories we have available. We can change, though, we can make a difference without messing with the past. I know it can seem like there are no options left, but there's always something. You're proof of that."

"So just… don't feel pressured about it, okay? There are no options for a do-over, but it's important to me that you understand that's all right. It means that we just work around the constants to get things the way we want them. And it's you who does that, you know, not Hououin. Talk to me. Don't push yourself away from Mayuri when it gets rough. It's easy to want to travel back to the past, and pick and prune at the details until they're perfect, but we're okay without that ability. It's not going to be perfect, but it's still something good. You taught me that. We're okay. Just let me know if that ever changes."

As he feels himself nodding off, he recognizes she's done the impossible again, given him a new phenomena to categorize without offering a word to do so. He doesn't think there's a word for it, this impossible 7AM pillow talk that could only happen on a California summer morning in 2031, with one of the participants twenty years too young and the other twenty too old. Any word he would reach for seems to be escaping him, really, when the bed's so comfortable and her fingers brush his ear like that.

He's too tired to respond, but he hopes that the next time he wakes up on this morning, he's the Okabe Rintarou she'd expected to greet to half an hour ago, the one she'd said yes to. He hopes she's said these things after he's told her everything he didn't say now. He hopes she knows without having to be told.

Around them, above them, below them, people are waking up, making breakfast, driving to work, and starting their mornings on a sunny California day in June of 2031. Inside, however, Okabe Rintarou starts to fall asleep.

He next wakes at the computer in his apartment to a midafternoon sun blazing through the windows. He's sitting in the desk chair, one hand resting on the keyboard, as though he'd simply nodded off.

He checks his watch. 3:21 PM. The calendar on the wall behind the desk is flipped to "December 2011," and the 2nd is marked off with blue ink.

Thank God.

He doesn't remember falling asleep at the computer, though. There's an email box on the screen, cursor blinking after the last letter, as if he'd just finished composing a message. Last he remembered, he had browsed 2chan before heading to sleep around 3 AM on the couch, not sat up late composing mail, but there's at least five solid chunks of paragraphs on the screen that don't look remotely familiar.

Warily, he begins to read.

FROM: hououinkyouma (a) fgl . net
TO: kmakise (a) vcu . edu
DATE: 3:11PM December 2, 2011
SUBJECT: Updated Procedures with the Future Gadget Lab

Kurisu,

This communication will no doubt come off as uncharacteristically saccharine when compared to our history of ignoring each other across the Pacific Ocean, but I owe it to the both of us to properly warn you of the oncoming storm, for which I hope you will prepare yourself by following my instructions below. You'll read this while in Arizona; I apologize, as there's no doubt I've interrupted your research on some crucial collaborative Yank paper you must be working on to improve the memory capacities for Amazon tree frogs or whatnot, but I hope you'll allow a mad scientist from across the world a few minutes of your time.

I have received disclosure that the Organization has traced the locations of some of my closest associates and plans to launch assaults in the near future. As the only Future Gadget Lab Member with a frequently used passport and no doubt a plethora of frequent flyer miles, I trust you to take care of your own travel expenses to flee your immediate area if you suspect your movements have been detected. For now, I am of the personal belief that my personal assistant requires protection that the other LabMem, under my watchful eye at our home base, have no need for. Thus, I write to provide you with a list of helpful tips to prevent your exposure to our enemies for the sake of upholding the lab's safety and its international reputation.

I hereby suggest the following:

A) Immediate suspension of all current offensive nicknames with the postulate that future nom de plumes must undergo rotations to avoid detection from the aforementioned Organization. Code-names will be allowed no more than ten uses each before expiration, forcing the user to provide a consistent creation of new handles to both exercise one's imagination and throw off investigations into our private affairs.

B) Agent #002 has proposed an operation for disguised reconnaissance in the form of a group cosplay at an upcoming convention, the details of which are TBD. Your participation in this investigation of the Organization's affairs with the rest of the lab will take place during your next trip to Japan and is decidedly mandatory.

C) At your earliest convenience, the scheduling of a private rendezvous with the founder of the Future Gadget Lab, the purpose of which is twofold: to exchange data collected over the past few months and to follow-up with the recuperating of events that transpired in August 2011. I suggest disguising this conference over the simple guise of a meal in a public place so that the assembly may dissolve without delay if it turns south, either due to the Organization's interference or issues of internal affairs. The dress code for this arrangement is left to be decided on the dining place of your choosing.

Your immediate response is required so I may know if these terms are agreeable to you.

Constant vigilance and the best of luck to you, Assistant Kristen —

Yours Sincerely,

Lab Member #001, Okabe Rintarou

PS — I am of the opinion that "El Psy Congroo" is losing its dramatic luster when delivered in appropriate exit scenes. I suggest the introduction a new password, for use strictly between the two of us for our private communications, so as to ferret out imposters who have hijacked our personal effects. Thoughts?

The mouse is hovering over the 'Send' button and — Okabe realizes with a jolt — since he awoke, his hand has been poised, index finger ready to click.

So he does switch with his future consciousness when he flashes in and out. Or someone broke in, typed this nonsense onto the computer screen, physically arranged him at the keyboard, and disappeared. (Well, it is the type of crap Daru would pull, but as he's out of town visiting his parents for the holidays, more than likely — )

God, future him is a dick.

He's suddenly stricken with another bout of nerves. What's he meant to do? Kurisu said as long as he doesn't change the past too much, the world-lines wouldn't differ and they would end up as they had — were? will be? — in his… flash? Vision? Possible future?

Maybe that's all it had been, just a vision. A dream, or a very bizarre hallucination. He's seen weirder. He could've written this the night before in a frenzied state of sleep-deprived mania. It would explain why Kurisu knew so much about him, his thoughts, his private life – it had all been in his head. He had genuinely believed it was 2031, accepted all the new aspects of civilization she had mentioned and her would-be uncharacteristic tendencies, but then, you always believe these things in dreams.

The only way to be sure, it seems, is to wait two decades and wake up in a laboratory in Tokyo as a single 19-year-old when he should be 39 and married in San Francisco. But Okabe is a little tired of waiting, if he's honest with himself, and the message is still blinking at him, waiting to be sent, edited, or deleted altogether.

A paralyzing thought comes to him, and he forces himself to entertain a theory that he hasn't seriously considered before: What if Steins Gate isn't a single world-line, but an attractor field? Each composed of realities in which Mayuri and Kurisu don't die, but the details of their personal lives may branch off in different directions… If this isn't a dream, what if, being there, he hadn't flashed to the future, but also crossed to another world-line? If what he'd seen isn't his future —

She's alive. Kurisu is alive in this world-line, he reminds himself for the thousandth time in a year. That's what matters. What she remembers, where she goes, who she decides to — the rest is inconsequential. As long as she survives July 28, 2010, he is content.

Kurisu had told him not to change the past too much. She'd also told him not to stress about it; these two pieces of advice seem unfairly contradictory. Meanwhile, the future Okabe Rintarou had left this message waiting for him. Perhaps to say that if he sends it, he'd set himself on a path leading to the future he'd seen. But maybe — if he tweaked a few words here, got rid of a few others, maybe erased option C, deleted that PS (how dare he suggest sacrificing the password for some romance, bah) — would that change much? Would the Butterfly Effect kick in and cause their futures to veer off into parts unknown?

Maybe he's meant to make changes. Maybe tweaking it a bit is the correct thing to do, to get to that hotel room in 20 years.

Or! Maybe he's supposed to decide against it, and isn't supposed to send anything — and with this thought, he calms down a bit, hoping perhaps he's stumbled upon the correct answer. Perhaps things would work themselves out as he'd seen without any drastic change in the status quo on his part?

— No, that's exactly the kind of thinking that rewarded him with 12 months devoid of any communication with Kurisu. If he wants to end up like — like that, with her —

…But does he? The thought is (he has to admit to himself) unexpectedly thrilling, and some deep, private part of him feels carnally satisfied, at peace with the idea that they (could) (might) (probably) end up married and travel the world and still argue like twelve-year-olds, but still agree enough to come back to the same bed every evening.

If he waits it out, she'll find someone else. He may mope and pine in his private moments then hide it all behind curtains of dramatic bravado, but really, that's what he's been assuming would happen all along, and what he figured, until now, would be best for everyone. If she ends up with someone else, he won't disappoint her, too.

(She hadn't seem disappointed, though.)

He closes his eyes and shoves his hands into his hair.

(She had to have said yes to him in the future. It must have been mutual.)

She'd regret it eventually. Probably.

(She didn't look like she'd regretted it.)

Would the current Kurisu regret it, though? She's a different person. She isn't 38 years old yet. What if he makes a mistake he hadn't in the future he saw, and the world-line deviates, and they don't end up together, and he —

God. If his future self took the time to sit down and type this damn letter out, he could've pressed 'Send' while he was at it to spare him the trouble of making the decision.

No. 39-year-old Rintarou had written the message and left it waiting for him for a reason — likely for the same reason he had signed it Okabe Rintarou, not Hououin Kyouma. He hadn't sent it without his 19-year-old permission. It's up to him, in the now, not the future Rintarou, to decide what would happen. There's no trick to it, no cheat code to find the right path to lead him to the future he wants. Kurisu had told him not to stress on it. Apparently, he just needs to be himself — something he's at least barely self-aware enough to recognize that he's not all that great at.

Kurisu and Mayuri are both alive and well. Their deaths won't trigger any world wars, or signal the rise of future dystopias. There are no time machines to monopolize or change the past in this universe, and yet, his being here is the result of one — the result of several, really. Even in a world without them, his existence here, at this moment, couldn't happen without time machines, or D-mail, or his experiments; it couldn't have worked without Okabe Rintarou, the variable, the wildcard, the self-designated loose cannon mad scientist. His own actions led him here, to the universe he wanted. Maybe Steins Gate existed without him, parallel to the others, or maybe it was crafted, sprang into being the moment he saved Kurisu. He doesn't know. Honestly, as long as they're all alive, he doesn't care. He's a mad scientist, not a philosopher.

This isn't a decision that'll trigger the end of the world or anything. Just chemistry.

He's always loathed the theory of fatalism. He doesn't want to know what happens in the future unless the knowledge also comes with an opportunity to change it. Even if he doesn't take it, he wants to know it's there.

Okabe reads the third requirement again and, grimly, acknowledges that this is likely that very opportunity.

He's thinking too much. The mouse hasn't moved — he should just press down on the damn thing and get it over with. She may laugh. She may dismiss it as a prank; maybe she'd think he'd say it to get into her good graces only to mock her for it later. There's really no way of telling.

Just like that, though, the full weight of his reality hits him. The possibility of a million futures with and without her open up to him, like a spiderweb branching out in his mind, and he knows one thing, clearly: his morning with her, in June of 2031, was worth the chance. Will be worth it. He's just got to make it happen, and try his damndest to be the person she'll want to make it happen with.

Okabe reads the letter over again, and then once more, just in case.

He makes one edit.

PS - I am of the opinion that "El Psy Congroo" is losing its dramatic luster when delivered in appropriate exit scenes. I suggest the introduction a new password and/or codename for yours truly, something to suggest the respect appropriate for your head mad scientist such as "Captain" or "General," for use strictly between the two of us for our private communications, so as to ferret out imposters who have hijacked our personal effects. Thoughts?

He clicks 'Send' before he can think too much about it. The mail rushes off with a ping from the computer, and without his thoughts firing madly around his head, the room seems somehow empty.

It's nearly 4 PM. He should eat. Maybe there's some cup ramen in the pantry.

Kurisu's reply flicks on his computer screen ten minutes later, after he's managed to splash carrot bits on his jeans and sit through a round of some reality cooking show on the television. He swallows the rest of the noodles caught between his chopsticks and, mentally preparing himself for battle, opens the email.

FROM: kmakise (a) vcu . edu
TO: hououinkyouma (a) fgl . net
DATE: 3:34PM December 2, 2011
SUBJECT: RE: Updated Procedures with the Future Gadget Lab

For the eyes of Future Gadgets Lab Member #001,

Your email comes at my convenience, as I've actually just finished my portion of my team's project requirements and I have a bit of time to reply to personal mail, even if that includes your inane gibberish.

I'm not quite sure how you'd gather my location has been traced or whatever, and the only danger I'm in most days is running in on my roommate and her boyfriend having private make-out sessions in storage closets across the lab here, but I'll do my best to look out for that. Any other trouble you may suspect is likely a product of your overactive imagination.

Out of respect for the level of detail you took to write your previous message — and likely because it's 11pm and I've been awake for nineteen hours so I'm clearly too tired to think straight about this — I've decided to indulge you tonight and reply to your concerns individually.

A) I propose limiting the counted uses of each asinine nickname to five. This includes both verbal speech and written communications, including but not limited to text messages, letters, emails, Skype calls, smoke signals, and Morse code messages. With those addendums, I agree to the aforementioned conditions.

B) Given the severe unlikelihood of stumbling upon a dastardly Organization plot at a moe convention, I will (grudgingly) agree upon attendance to the event if necessary, but I feel justified responding thusly to the cosplay: Absolutely not. This is no longer up for discussion.

C) After careful consideration I've decided to accept your proposal to a covert meeting when I next come to Japan. I'll even allow you to pick the location, on the single condition that our dress code for the appointment bans the wearing of lab coats for the entire duration of our engagement. Apologies for the inconvenience, but the Organization is more likely to spot a mad scientist in his standard regalia than in the attire of the commonwealth.

Do respond at your earliest convenience so I can shoot down any ridiculous stipulations you're no doubt going to insist on adding so we can get this nonsense out of the way as soon as possible.

Best,

Lab Member #004, Makise Kurisu

PS - Keep dreaming, Chief.

There's a thrill of excitement gathering somewhere in the pit of his stomach as he recalls the morning's conversation with an older woman twenty years away:

"You're not half as sneaky as you think you are, Chief."

It could mean nothing. It could mean everything.

Before he can decide how to respond, another email pops into his inbox. There's no subject line.

FROM: kmakise (a) vcu . edu
TO: hououinkyouma (a) fgl . net
DATE: 3:36PM December 2, 2011
SUBJECT: (no subject)

By the way, how the hell did you know I'm in Arizona?

The words that come to him are instinctive, almost as though he'd rehearsed the lines for a play:

Well I'd be remiss if I didn't keep tabs on my assistant's whereabouts…

Okabe takes a deep breath, feels his mouth twitch in amusement, and begins composing his reply.