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Shindou blinks.
There's a cup of tea in front of him on a low wooden table.
He doesn't recognize where he is at first, but it's a beautiful room, tatami mats and sliding shoji doors with a soft glow from behind them. He hasn't been sleeping well lately, he knows, and there's a reason for it. He can't remember what it is, though.
How did he get here?
He blinks again. zaShunina is sitting in front of him, smiling. He tilts his head. “Shindou? Are you well?”
“Yes,” Shindou says, uncertainly. “I think so?”
“Good.” zaShunina lifts his own cup to his lips, takes a sip from it. “I've been concerned about you.”
Shindou nods. The cup in front of him wavers slightly. “Where are we?” he asks.
“You referred to this place as one of your favorites?” zaShunina says. “Is it not?” There's a ripple of disquiet on his face that few would be able to see. Shindou can. Maybe because he's a negotiator.
Maybe because he knows zaShunina.
Or because zaShunina wants him to see it.
Shindou looks around the room. It's familiar but not, like when you've been away from somewhere for a while and you return to it. You think you know everything about it, but you're wrong. The old you knew it. The new one doesn't. It hasn't been there.
“It was.” He rephrases. “It is.”
zaShunina smiles again. “Good. Why don't you drink your tea?”
Shindou takes the cup from the table, looks down at it. It's black tea.
No, it's not.
“Drink it,” zaShunina says again softly. “You need to. Then you can get some rest.”
It's black and there are lights in it. Stars in the sky that spin in it until he's dizzy and he closes his eyes and there are starts behind them too.
“Where am I?” he asks. “This isn't--”
“Oh, Shindou,” zaShunina says. “You're asking questions again. I thought we had moved past this.”
When he opens his eyes, it's the same as closing them. “No,” he says. “No.”
“Yes, Shindou. You've already accepted it. It is pointless trying to fight it.” zaShunina waves his hand and the anisotropic shimmers, changes form. The light glows purple around him.
Shindou remembers. This isn't how it went. “We—how am I?” There's a roaring in his head, memories trying to come up, but there's something that stops them. They crash against a wall in his mind and break, pieces shattering here and there. Images fragment, words fall out of order, time unravels and reforms and everything is happening all at once.
He falls to his knees, and the world shakes as he does.
zaShunina walks to him, puts a hand on Shindou's face. He looks up at him. “Shindou, I've run so many simulations as to how you would act, what you would do. Naturally, there were ones where I did not succeed in my endeavors. But I am not so blind that I cannot learn from them.”
His hand is cool on Shindou's forehead, soothing it. Scenes from hundreds of different lives fill his mind and are rifled through, some plucked out and discarded while others fit together in an order that is not clear until it is arranged.
Shindou looks past zaShunina. Above him, thousands of lights flicker. Some dim and never return. Others spiral into galaxies. “This isn't me,” he chokes out. “This isn't--”
“It is,” zaShunina removes his hand, gestures towards the constellations above him. “You were right. You are unique, Shindou. And in every universe where you were lost, there was a hole at the center of it. There cannot be a world without Shindou.”
There's something wet on Shindou's cheek “Please. Just let me go,” Shindou says and the part of him that says it gets wiped away as easily as the tears from his eyes.
“I understand.” It's terrible how gentle he sounds. “I wish it would not be so painful for you. But I have learned that each time, you are in less distress than before. Perhaps soon, you will not feel anything at all.”
It is too much to bear. His body convulses as new pathways are created. The Shindou he was is burning away and his mind cannot take it—cannot--
zaShunina's arms wrap around him and all other sensation drops away. “I love you,” he says. “I am only doing this for you. You will see.”
There is a cup in his left hand. zaShunina lifts it to Shindou's lips.
Shindou's so tired. Why was he even fighting it? He opens his mouth. The tea is bitter, cold, and he slumps against zaShunina, who holds him, soothes him through his body's final spasms, the chills that break his body apart until none of it feels attached to him anymore.
There is no need for the weaker parts. He lets them fall away.
“Thank you, Shindou.”
He nods, accepts the press of lips to his forehead, the figure that walks through his mind and maps where it needs to go next. He accepts everything.
"Go to sleep."
There is nothing.
Shindou blinks.
There's a cup of tea in front of him on a low wooden table.