Work Text:
Kim remembers entering Whirling in Rags twice, which is rather odd, considering he doesn't remember exiting the place. The detective takes two hours to come downstairs, and even after he does, he wanders around the cafeteria in a daze, inspecting everything and chatting with everyone except for Kim. It occurs to Kim a couple of times that the man doing laps around the tables and blissfully ignoring the stares of Kim, the cafeteria manager and all the patrons of Whirling in Rags might just be a very athletic homeless man who stole a blazer with an RCM logo. He doesn't comment. He's worked with worse.
"Hello, I'm Kim Kitsuragi," he says, when the detective finally turns to him. "Lieutenant. Precinct 57. You must be from the 41st?"
"I don't really know my name."
Kim doesn't blink. He can work without names.
The detective with no name is also missing his badge and gun. He hasn't removed the dead body from the tree. He threw his shoe through a window. He drank up the entire liquor cabinet. When reminded of the rent he needs to pay, he flees the scene. Irresponsibility, dangerous alcoholism and penchant for drama, notes Kim. Again, not the worst he has worked with.
Indeed, the detective is rather easy to like despite all his problems. He is good with machines. He is a great shot. He has a fun sense of humor. He doesn't leave an Ace's High hanging. His bombastic personality allows Kim to remain quiet and observe as he likes to. His unpredictably puts witnesses on edge, opening a floodgate of answers that Kim is not sure he could have gotten out on his own. He even backs Kim against a racist lorry driver in his own overly aggressive but well-intentioned manner.
Kim has already grown fond the man when he smashes his jaw on asphalt attempting to make a five meter jump across rooftops. For the first time in a long while, Kim wishes his eyesight was worse. The half-headed red mess at the foot of Cuno's shack is not a pleasant sight to look at.
***
I should have let him talk to Measurehead. He was just pretending to listen to him. We could have convinced him to open the harbor and none of this would have happened.
Kim's mind is flooding with regrets when he opens his eyes and finds himself sitting in his Kineema, back straight against his seat, one hand on the wheel and the other on the engine toggle. He doesn't remember getting off the rooftop or entering the Kineema, but he doesn't dwell on it too long. It's always a shock to see your partner die, even if you knew him for half a day. Kim was supposed to protect him, watch his back and hold him back from his worst instincts. And he failed. He must have gone to shock afterwards. No matter. Work is work. There is a body to be reported.
He reaches for the radio and dials the primeline before noticing the position of the sun. East. Morning. The sun was close to setting when his partner attempted that suicidal jump. Did he lose an entire night? Against his better instincts, he exits the car and rushes past the foulmouthed delinquents towards the gap between the shack and the harbor walls.
Nothing. No mangled body. Not even a trace of blood.
The detective stumbles downstairs to the Whirling in Rags cafeteria just as Kim runs in.
I must have dozed off at the wheel, Kim thinks with shame. Psychologists would have a field day with his detailed imagining of his interdepartmental partner. He dreamed of an eccentric, free-spirited partner who can shoot, see things, act age-inappropriate, handle delinquents and do everything Kim is not the best at, and piled him with some serious but not entirely unmanageable batch of flaws so that he bears some semblance to a real officer of RCM. Strange that the real detective and the imaginary one look so similar, but Kim must have seen him somewhere. A+ character building, Lieutenant Kitsuragi, he notes dryly.
Eager to meet his real partner for the week, he walks up to the detective and extends his hand. "I'm Kim Kitsuragi," he says. "Lieutenant. Precinct 57. You must be from the 41st?"
"I'm in-between names right now."
Kim carefully avoids showing his discomfort. Everything seems too familiar, even the autumn-leaves-and-half-digested-tequila scent of the detective. Can you even dream a scent? At very least, he did not use the exact same wording.
The rest of it is familiar as well, up to the point where the detective attempts to flip off the cafeteria manager while running from his debt. He crashes into the woman in the wheelchair and does not get up.
***
Kim reaches for his partner and finds the steering wheel of his Kineema. He doesn’t attempt to think of an explanation this time. Instead, he observes. If he acts as a proper officer and prevents his partner from getting himself killed, he will never have to consider the possibility that he might be stuck in a strange space-time anomaly. He wouldn’t have to wonder whether he had gone insane or whether the world was swallowed by the pale when he wasn’t looking. As long as he completes his simple task, he will not have to wonder the deeper implications of it.
He enters Whirling in Rags and proceeds as normal.
"Hello. I'm Kim Kitsuragi," he says, extending a hand to the detective. "Lieutenant. Precinct 57. You must be from the 41st?"
"My name is Raphael Ambrosius Costeau."
Kim raises an eye. It is not the detective’s real name, but it is an anomaly. Perhaps he will know not to die this time as well.
The hope is quickly snuffed out when the detective steps outside and immediately decides to kick a mailbox for some reason. The kick breaks his toe and the shock of it gives him a heart attack.
***
It takes Kim a considerable amount of effort to remain as composed on the fourth iteration. He introduces himself and watches the detective forget his name, fumble around with Garte and do damn near everything he did the first time, all without moving a muscle in his face. He is giving the universe another chance. That is how much he doesn’t want to consider a space-time anomaly.
To his relief, he doesn’t need to stop the detective from kicking random inanimate objects. He even manages to guide the detective all the way to the harbor without getting him killed. It is exhausting to pay attention to every damn movement of the man. He never walks in a straight line, preferring instead to run in waves and circles. He is fascinated not just by mailboxes, but by ties, stop signs and trees—none of which would have worried Kim if the detective didn’t have the physical integrity of a cheap cigarette in the rain. He talks far too often of speed and alcohol; Kim hates to be the nagging mother of a man who is probably older than him, but he doubts the detective’s liver can handle a pilsner if his heart can’t handle a broken toe.
And after all that worry, the detective still has a heart attack after sitting in an uncomfortable chair.
***
Was he not supposed to have let him sit in a chair?
Kim is fuming by the fifth iteration. He is fuming so terribly he shuts the door of his Kineema a little too hard upon exiting. Immediately, he turns around and pats the side of his motorcar, wordlessly begging for an apology. His Kineema never hurt anyone. His Kineema did not break space-time. And even if it did, Kim would probably still love it.
He finds the detective and repeats his customary introduction with a little less gusto this time. Perhaps the case of repeating time was meant to be solved by two.
"Detective, I believe--"
He stops himself abruptly. What would he say? "Detective, I believe we are stuck in some sort of time loop?" Or, "Detective, I believe that time, which has so far only ever flown in one direction since the beginning of the universe, is bending backwards over and over to prevent you and you alone in this world of billion people from fucking up?" Sure, it sounds like something the detective himself said over and over, in addition to declaring himself the reincarnation of Kras Mazov, but Kim Kitsuragi is not him. He is not a distinguished officer with over 200 cleared cases and 18 years of service under the legendary Ptolemy Pryce. He doesn't look like the detective. He is Pinball Kitsuragi to his colleagues and a "foreigner" or "monkeyfucker" to the people he serves and protects. He fought twenty years for respect and a second's mistake could blow it all away. He doesn't have enough years left in his life to gain it all back.
So he shuts up.
The detective dies trying to punch a child this time.
***
At one point, Kim considers turning the motorcar around and driving back home to his boyfriend. It is so terribly lonely and he needs someone to talk to--someone who is not a coworker. Eventually, he decides to try, not to abandon the case per se, but to test the boundaries of this space-time anomaly. As soon as the Kineema loses sight of Whirling in Rags, it is back, parked at its side like nothing happened.
He is alone.
***
Prudence: Swallow your pride. Talk to your partner.
Fantastique: Just admit it’s the pale. The world is doomed.
Sixteen times. It takes sixteen times before a piece of his mind detaches from itself and starts talking to him. Death after death after death. It’s clear the universe wants the detective to stay alive and do his job. Kim needs to know nothing else. He doesn’t need to know how time broke so completely or why the universe doesn't erase his memory like it does everyone else's. He doesn’t need to think the world is ending. He doesn’t need to express that to the detective. He doesn’t need to sound like a lunatic. All he needs to do is let the detective know that he needs to stay alive and do his job.
And he failed. Sixteen times.
He leaves his car and goes to greet the detective regardless. The universe gave him a job for whatever reason, and Kim Kitsuragi always completes his job.
They make progress this time. The detective manages to talk to Evrart Claire without melting down or having heart attack. Claire calls him Harry, and Kim knows instantly that it is his real name. The name feels strangely familiar. It’s a shock and a burn, followed by warmth.
For the first time, they manage to see the other bank of Martinaise. They find a sunken blue car in the ice and wait. Kim sits with the detective on the rusted swings, waiting for him to realize that the car belongs to him. He wants to tell Harry that he is valuable and worth others’ time, even after all he lost and destroyed. No words in the universe can make something so hopeful sound true. Kim knows it, so he says it with his time and presence instead. The sixteen loops, for all the grief they caused Kim, allowed him to keep a human being alive—a human being whom Kim could even be friends with if they escape this insanity.
It goes downhill from there.
Harry remains moody throughout the day. Unable to find leads on the other side of the coast, he and Kim reluctantly return to the Hardies. Kim knows exactly how to pressure them—you simply needed to hit them where their pride is, as with most men—but before he could say as much, Harry declares that he has an idea and that idea involves Kim’s gun.
Kim makes a mistake. His ideal partnership requires trust. The only thing he hated more than pinball back in the juvies was being treated like the delinquents he brought in--never trusted, never listened to, never consulted. Harry died many, many times, but usually only by accident. He is self-destructive, but only in pursuit of hedonistic pleasure. Sure, the man died to a mailbox and a chair, but he knows how to handle a gun. He knows not to die. He knows that Kim cares.
He shoots himself in the goddamn mouth.
Contrary to popular perception, a bullet in the head is not always immediately lethal. Your heart can beat and struggle for life up to thirty-eight minutes after a gunshot wound in the head. Kim has a moment to watch the blood pool on the floor behind the detective’s mangled skull.
***
Kim does not leave his Kineema this time. Instead, he rests his head on the steering wheel and thinks of staying there forever. Not even turn around and leave, but just stay. A stationary point in time and space, calm and soundless, until it withers.
He doesn’t remember the first time he heard of the pale, no more than the first time he heard of hunger or death. Yet he remembers countless of nights in his youth—back when he had space in his mind for the fantastique—where he would lie in bed and think about why. Why does he do anything in a doomed world? It’s frightening to think that the world doesn’t need him to do anything. It actively doesn’t want you to, since all you create is just more for the pale to destroy. Kim is used to being needed. He doesn’t want to think that whether he died at two or seventy, the world would reach the same endpoint: a shroud of gray with none of the people he met, helped or loved.
Over the years, the same question became more sophisticated and more painful. Why does he want people he can’t have? Why does he protect a city that will never consider him its own? Why does he keep alive someone who wants to die? He will be a slant-eyed foreigner regardless of whether he dies in the line of duty or returns to his old childhood home and drowns himself in pilsner. His partner will keep dying whether he gets out of his car or not.
Joie de Vivre: But it would be awfully boring if you spent the whole time in that car, wouldn’t it?
Compassion: You don’t need to save anyone. But you can care for them
Kim has never seen more than three days past the first, but it feels as if he has spent a month with the same partner—the eccentric partner with a broken heart who can see things Kim can never do.
One more time, Kim tells himself.
The pale consumes, but once in the history of the universe, it created.
They last for five days. They unravel Klaasje’s deceptions, they hunt cryptids, and they use a 2mm hole in the world as a bass boost as they dance. At the end of it all is danger. Two officers armed with nothing except mass-produced, muzzle-loaded junk guns face against three professionally-trained mercenaries in ceramic armor. It’s a bloodbath. Of course, Harry gets shot in the middle of it. Kim tends to him in the middle of the fight, desperate and terrified, having completely forgotten the third mercenary. After all this…after all this…
Harry says something Kim cannot hear. He raises his hand, but Kim doesn’t look where he is pointing to.
The pale consumes but it created. The nature of the universe is not always set in stone.
For once, Kim doesn’t watch Harry die. A 9mm bullet pierces through his skull before he can.
***
Kim jolts awake in his car, skull fully intact. His hands are shaking on the wheel. His glasses should be covered in blood. For some reason, he never thought the universe would rewind for him as well. It feels as wrong as it is comforting.
He enters Whirling in Rags for what feels like the millionth time, dazed and shaken, barely sure that he'll be able to sputter out his own name. He doesn't need to. The detective rushes down the stairs three steps at a time, sweeps past the puzzled cafeteria manager and locks Kim in a tight embrace.
“Kim, oh god, Kim.”
“Harry?” says Kim. An unprofessionally close form of address, but it feels appropriate. Just this once.
Harry doesn’t answer. He simply bursts into loud, undignified sobs. Kim never liked being hugged--he had a sensitive nose that hated the smell of the other person, he never knew what to do with his body, and hugs just weren't a part of what he knew as love--but he didn't have the heart to break away. After a while, he didn't want to. There is something strangely soothing and warm about being so close to another person. Tears seep into Kim's jacket. Kim's first instinct is to pat the detective's back--comfort him, make it right--but his arms are still clamped to his sides, and he can't do anything except breathe. Breathe, detective. Follow my breathing.
In time, Harry calms down enough to talk.
“All this time. All this time, you remembered every stupid thing I did,” says Harry. “I figured I could repeat everything with no consequence, so I did. I didn’t even think you were real the first few times. But for god’s sake, after all this time. I told you a million times about this being some kind of looping purgatory. Why didn’t you ever respond?”
“You also believe the Insulindian Phasmid is real,” says Kim. His next words are sincere. “I’m sorry, detective. I didn’t know if you believed in those theories or if you simply wanted to provoke a reaction out of witnesses. I shouldn’t have doubted.”
"So you didn’t hear me. Just like you didn’t hear my warning," says the detective, finally letting go. "I couldn't do anything. I couldn’t do anything to help you. Did it hurt?"
"Detective, you died many more times than I did." Kim pauses, taking in the detective's red, tear-soaked face. "I mean no. It was quick."
"Look, I know I fucked up a million times and you handled it all with far more grace than this, but..." The detective takes a deep breath, "I'm a fuckup anyway. Not much of a loss to the world. But you…I’ve known you so long. You believed in me. You remembered me. You’re only one who does. You can't die."
"I can't be the only thing in your world, detective," says Kim quietly.
“Alright, then.” The detective sighs and steps back. Whatever his other faults are, he isn't blind to emotions. "I can be without you. But I'd rather not. Please."
Everyone in the world likes to be needed, Kim included. Kim has always been needed--to drive his precinct partner to work, to bring groceries and fluoxitine to his elderly aunt, to defend his Mesque sergeants from the same racist idiocies he knew too well, to give one more unearned chance to delinquents prowling the Seolite slums of his childhood. But to be wanted, to be loved, to be missed...Kim was about to forget what it felt like. If he was capable of showing any more emotions, he would. But for now, a smile will do.
"Of course," he says. "Stupid of me to write the other mercenaries off so quickly. Let's solve the case, shall we?"
It ends that turn.
***
Kim wakes up once again in his Kineema, dizzy and nauseous, filled to the nose with a strange longing. He barely holds in a scream of frustration before noticing that his hands are not on the wheel or the toggle. They are resting on him as he lies in the backseat, bobbing up and down with each pothole. He turns his head. Before the Kineema are a road at night and the lights of his city, moving ever towards him.
“Lieutenant Du Bois, are you driving my car?”
“Shit.” Lieutenant Du Bois—Kim’s new partner in 41, he remembers—brakes violently, throwing Kim out of the seat. “You gave me a scare there. Are you alright?”
“What happened?”
“The fucker must have been holed up near a former Doloran church. It was a bigger breach this time and you tore right through it.”
The pale brings longings of the past. It splits a mind.
Kim pushes himself up back to his seat. He picks up his glasses from the floor and cleans it in an attempt to delay answering questions. “I was fine until that stop. Is the Kineema alright?” He doesn't wait for a response before stumbling out of the back and ejecting Harry from the driver's seat as fast as is polite. He checks the engines and the exterior and relaxes only when he's back with in front of the steering wheel with Harry sitting beside him.
"Are you good enough to drive?" says Harry. "Look, I've been through all that pale shit, but I don't assume you've been. It's not good to drive under the influence. You know that better than me. You might have to write yourself a ticket."
Kim takes his hand off the engine toggle. The road ahead is dark and shaky. The lights wobble in and out of his vision. Something behind calls for him, wants him back.
Prudence: Have you learned nothing? Talk to your partner.
Kim sighs. “I think the pale made me relive a certain case many, many times.” He pauses and adds with a smile, “It was our first case.”
“Do you remember your name?”
“Kim Kitsuragi.”
“Do you know what money is?”
“Now you’re just making fun of me.” It's a fond and familiar rebuke.
There are many different kinds of trust between partners. Kim always trusts Harry to do what is best for the case, even if he doesn't understand Harry's methods completely. But would he trust Harry with himself? Would he trust the detective to take care of him when he cannot do for himself? At some point, he'd have to.
"You're right, detective," he says, letting go off the wheel. "I might be over-radiated. Don't crash the Kineema."