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No one else remembers.
He tries to remember how he used to be - it was yesterday.
Seven was someone else, yesterday.
His sister worries over him. He thinks he manages to pretend.
There’s blood on his hands.
He wakes up in a nightmare. He wins. He reaches for Nem, and that’s how he knows.
“Nem,” he says. “How are you here?”
“Hmm?” Nem asks. “I’m your damsel.”
She’s real. She’s not his.
He trips on a vase. Fujimi stares at him.
“Should you be up?” He asks.
“I need to get to the roof,” Seven says. He needs to look at the sky. All of it. Every inch, so he’s sure he didn’t imagine a red moon above him. A door. How deep?
Is this still a nightmare, is this his second door?
Formulaic, practiced.
(He didn’t have time to see if the children came back in time. Somehow, he doubts it.)
He stumbles. Nasuka catches him.
“Don’t be an idiot,” she says. He remembers her agonized screams, when Six died.
“We’ll help, then,” Fujimi says. “If you answer some questions.”
Looking. Across the sky. There is a white moon in the sky, but it’s daylight. Is it hiding angles? There was a white moon in his base. Lies.
He is a good agent, built that way by people who killed him. He is a monster. He has to fight, anyways.
“I don’t believe it,” Nasuka says.
“You have to be lying,” Fujimi says.
“Maybe I am,” Seven says. He looks at them and grins. “An agent must have his secrets.”
He looks in the mirror - gold eyes, red hair.
Zero is here. Seven transforms. Maybe… surely he remembers, right?
“[Are you okay, Seven?]” he asks in English.
“…I don’t speak English when I’m awake,” Seven says. “Didn’t I say that already?”
“…Ah,” Zero says. “You did not. It’s okay. I’m here to help you.”
“You’re a bike,” Seven says. He hopes it sounds shocked enough. He’s just tired, but sleep will bring him no rest.
“I remote control it,” Zero says. “You must have questions.”
He slips out of the cuffs like they’re not there.
“Eh?” Nem asks. Seven hands her an Iris, not a rose. He thinks about when he really fell in love with her. She was in a dirty prison uniform and he promised find Nem.
“There are bigger problems today,” he says. “I’m not the real criminal. I’m a dreamer, like you.”
She takes the Iris.
“Then you know nothing matters.”
Seven wants to take her hands, hold her close. Find her body in that soft white dress and wake her and bring her home.
“Everything matters,” Seven says. “Especially you.”
Her eyes widen.
“What are you?” She asks. Seven smiles softly.
“The same as ever,” he says. “You can call me Seven.”
He transforms. He jumps and pins Nox to the wall. He doesn’t hesitate. He’s stronger in every way.
“You would do this to someone who loves you?” He asks.
If he doesn’t think, he doesn’t regret doing the same thing - as he searches for answers, he needs his missions. So Zero trusts him. So he can befriend Nem.
“I would do anything,” Nox says. “To end the true evil.”
“And what’s that?” Seven asks. “Someone who betrays the man who loves him.”
“Killing me won’t save him,” Nox says.
Seven hates that he’s right.
Five and Six find him. Five pins him to the wall. Six stands, arms crossed.
“You could have fucking stopped that, man,” Five says.
“I need it,” Seven says. “Go home, if you have one. Six, go to Nasuka.”
“You let a Nightmare escape,” Six says.
“I have one mission that matters most,” Seven says.
Find Nem. Find the truth about Code.
Don’t let anyone innocent suffer, this time.
Not even if it takes killing someone.
(Fujimi will not remember this. Fujimi stood and defended Nox as he killed innocents and agents. Held Nasuka back when she screamed at him but acted like it was an act of mercy to not fight him for killing the man once known as Odaka. He is a good man, Seven thinks, but not an innocent.)
“You changed,” Six says.
“So can you,” Seven replies.
“You sound like Nox,” Five says.
Seven grins a clever, calculated thing. He trained that smile in dreams and mirrors until he noticed the broken moon in the sky. It’s real, now.
“Maybe that’s a good thing,” he says. “As long as Code protects the world, I won’t end it.”
He doesn’t get to dream. He wishes he did.
Maybe, if he had his own dreams again, he could see his Nem.
He’ll save her just the same.