Haze   von lunaoscuradork
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                                     Haze
                                     ----


After the battle is before the battle. 
Back from New York Dan imposes a strict training routine on himself, claiming he
still feels rusty after being out of commission for so long, but in reality
it’s just so he doesn’t have to deal with dealing.
Fuji chides him, suggesting he should be gentler with himself, but being gentle
with himself doesn’t stop the dreams from coming. Though, if he’s being
honest, neither does the training.
 
Evenings are the worst.
When there are no urgent assignments and Fuji has locked him out of the training
room, the solitude of his quarters weighs especially heavy, though nothing has
changed compared to before.
Except that the space where that tiny glimmer of hope has dwelled all those
years is now empty and cold.
Dan knows he needs to find a distraction, lest that it gets worse, but he
can’t muster the motivation. His body is tired from training, but his mind is
far from it and if he gives in, there will be dreams.
I’ll just rest my eyes for a moment, he tells himself. And afterwards he’ll
find some cases to distract himself with.
A few minutes won’t do any harm. Only that he’s out like a light as soon as
his head hits the pillow.
 
It‘s one of those realistic dreams again; one where he can smell and feel. He
wakes in a familiar room, though it‘s not his own, not one at the SSSP either.
Sun floods the bedroom through half open windows, white curtains swaying gently
in the breeze. Outside he recognizes hazy city shapes, buildings towering like
tall sleek giants. It‘s his home planet, he realizes, but the memory
doesn’t fill him with despair this time, but with a swelling feeling, a bubble
in his chest.
 
The air smells of warm linen and wood and a tiny bit of dust, like on one of
those lazy days from his childhood, when they’d stay in bed playing or reading
until their mother called them for lunch. Coincidentally he can hear the
clinking of dishes through the open bedroom door.
Someone is preparing a meal.
 
With a start he wonders whether he‘s about to meet his mother, but this is not
his family’s apartment, it‘s similar but not quite right. And this isn‘t a
child‘s bedroom either and he‘s also clearly grown up.
„Baby, don‘t you want to get up?“ A woman, swathed in a loose tunic and
barefoot, appears under the door.
She seems familiar with her long brown hair, but also oddly shapeless with no
concrete face attached.
The concept, the idea of his wife, he thinks automatically.
 
„Rei and the kids will be here soon“, she continues. „and you‘re still
in your pajamas.“
„I‘m coming“, he says and she shakes her head in amusement, before
disappearing back to the kitchen.
But he doesn‘t get up right away, paralyzed by the revelation that his brother
is here, too. His brother with his family. 
It dawns on him, that maybe this is the future they could‘ve had, if things
had gone differently and the thought both terrifies and excites him.
 
Eventually, curiosity and the warm fuzzy feeling win and he pads barefoot
towards the noise in the other room.
The wife-phantasma sets the table in the spacious living room, that‘s probably
only spacious because it is barely furnished. Other than the table there are
only a few scattered white drawers and a huge white leather couch, that looks a
tad too run down for his taste. But before he can inspect the room any further,
the doorbell brings everything to a halt.
Dan even can feel himself holding his breath in anticipation (or is it
apprehension?) of what he will encounter.
 
But then Rei enters the room, the grown-up Rei he has seen in New York, though
this time it is really him. His loving, gentle brother with the kind eyes and
the unruly black hair. After him trails his family, ambiguous and blurry like
the
wife-phantasma, but the two kids unmistakably his with the same unruly
hair. The sudden wave of fondness for his brother chokes him up; mechanically
he takes his seat at the table, never taking his eyes off him.
 
Sitting at the table, Rei tells a story Dan can‘t comprehend, but he
recognizes his brother in every move, every grimace, every gesture. And right
now, he doesn‘t want to wake up ever, wants to stay in this perfect future
forever, the future they could‘ve had, but will never have. The awakening will
be painful, but right now this is good, this is warm, this feels like home.
 
The kids play games in the background while the adults sit and talk over the
cluttering of toys and shouts of excitement from Rei’s boys and the bubbling
noise from something cooking on the stove. Then the wife-phantasma declares the
food to be ready and Rei calls the children to the table but is not successful.
 
“Hey”, he says and gets up from his chair. “Put the ball away and come sit
at the table. No, no throwing! You’re going to knock down the lamp!” He
hastily catches his son before he can throw the ball at the ceiling, which is
greeted with wailing and complaining. Dan looks over to where Rei is wrestling
his kids, ready to lend him a hand in restraining these rascals but his eyes are
captured by the aforementioned lamp swinging dangerously over his brother’s
head.
 
It is the most hideous lamp Dan has ever seen. 
Like someone had thought it a great idea to wrap an old rug around a metal cage
and shove a light bulb inside.
The lamp is in fact so butt-ugly that it simply pops his dream-bubble, because
the next thing he becomes aware of is the paneled ceiling of his room at the
SSSP. 

He waits for the inevitable, the hard realization and the feeling of loss, heart
racing, gasping for air, shaking...but it doesn‘t come this time. He listens
inside himself for the faint roar of approaching desperation, but again
there‘s nothing there.
Instead, the warmth he has felt in his dream still lingers in his bones like a
fever, saturated and heavy, pinning him to the mattress.
 
And while he basks in the feeling, staring at his ceiling and being thankful for
the lack of ugly lamps, it hits him.
The apartment, he realizes, is based on his family’s apartment on their home
planet, where he has spent his whole life until that very fateful day. No wonder
it has felt like home.
But the rest, the furniture, the decorations, even the windows are a different
layer; a newer one, that has no business being in his dreams. But it is there,
because it carries the same feelings of home like the other: the warmth, the
lazy mornings, the peculiar sound and smell of shared meals. The same feelings
with which his pain-clouded brain had so generously provided him at Karizma’s
apartment back then.
 
(On closer inspection, the faceless woman even shares resemblance with her - a
thought he vigorously shoves away as soon as it surfaces.)
 
It’s the hideous lamp that has tipped him off.
Of course, there was no way he would forget about that lamp after staring at it
for hours. And he could justify it like that, the impression of the lamp being
so memorable that it followed him into his dreams, but deep inside he already
knows that’s not the whole truth.

(Just as he knows that the faceless woman in the tunic is indeed inspired by
Karizma, bustling about the kitchen wearing an oversized shirt and nothing
else.)
 
He hasn’t had these feelings of warmth, of home, of family in a long time -
precisely since that day. And then there comes this random incident that leaves
him vulnerably stranded at a stripper’s house and it must’ve shocked his
brain in all the wrong ways, because there is no logical reason why this place
should feel like home and yet it did.
 
Of course, his brain being the traitor it is lately would play it back for him
at the most random and inconvenient times. Though, he thinks, he should be
thankful that it was that kind of dream instead of the usual disturbing ones.
However, the conclusions that loom in the back of his mind leave him unsettled
nonetheless, hence why he pushes against them with all his willpower. He would
like to go back to his straightforward, sharp-witted self, but he just knows
neither of these feelings will let him. Especially not if he keeps pushing them
back into the deepest dark of his consciousness.
He will have to sort through them, just as Fuji has told him to.
 
Ugh.
 
The idea that pops into his head is probably a very bad, very wrong one, but his
hands have found the piece of paper before his head can rationalize it, and then
they proceed to grab the phone and dial the number.
 
Dan receives a reality check and a small heart attack when Karizma answers the
phone and there’s a slight pause before he can speak.
“Hi Karizma, it’s Dan”, he manages.
 
This time the lapse happens on the other side of the line, and he wonders
whether she has had the same happy shock moment. Probably, because when she
speaks, he thinks he can hear her smile all the way through the phone.
“Hi, it’s so good to hear from you! I was so worried! How are you?”
“I’m fine”, he lies. “I’ve meant to call sooner, but things got in the
way.”
- “Yeah, I’ve seen it on TV.”
“You have?”

He can’t remember any cameras pointed at him in New York, but that doesn’t
mean there weren’t any. It has been the last thing he was paying attention to
at the given moment.
“Everyone knows that the Ultramen were in New York.” Karizma sounds mildly
amused and it dawns on him, that of course she knows, that she can do the math
after so casually having found out about his secret identity. He just keeps
forgetting, because she never mentioned it again, just as promised I swear on my
flamingo pink Pleasers.
 
The bubbly feeling in his chest is back as he thinks of the silly pledge and he
catches himself smiling at the phone like an idiot. Which Karizma can’t see
of course.
“Dan, are you still there?”
- “Yes, sorry I was… just thinking of something. Uh, are you working
tonight?”
“No, you caught me on my day off. Night off”, she corrects herself. “Why,
you thought about showing up at the club?”
“Uhm, no actually…”
He has no fucking clue what he was actually thinking about doing, he realizes
just now. “I just...wanted to call, I guess. Let you know I’m still
alive.”
- “Ah.”
“Yeah.”
 
How hard can it be to say what he actually wants to say? The answer is: very. 
Slicing through enemies with his katana or telling Shinjiro that he’s a
weak-willed idiot is one thing but telling this woman that he wants to see her
so badly requires a whole new level of straightforwardness.
In the heavy pause he can hear her draw in a deep breath and readies himself for
the call to be over, just because he can’t hold a conversation tonight.
 
But no such thing happens.
Instead, her next words make his heart jump and he can’t believe his sheer
dumb luck.
- “Hey, would you like to come over for a while? I’d love to see you. I
mean, if you’re not busy saving the world and don’t mind me in all my
unkempt, sweatpants-wearing glory.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t be wearing the suit either.” 
- “So, yes?”
“Yes, I’ll see you in 15”, he says, already getting up from the bed and
reaching for his shoes, before he can think twice about what he is about to do.
 
The drive goes by like on autopilot, but the streets are thankfully deserted at
this time of night.
Dan still feels like walking through a slightly unreal haze when he climbs the
stairs to Karizma’s door. The staircase already feels intimately familiar with
its chipped paint, cracked stone treads and the various odors coming from the
apartments.
The doorbell finally brings him back to reality, where he is now painfully aware
of how fast his heart is beating and how shallow his breathing has become.

But when the door swings open a little too vigorously and Karizma stands there,
just as promised in sweatpants, with messy hair, no make-up and a smile like a
solar explosion, it all fades away.
The next second he’s kissing her hard on the doorstep and they can’t stop
for several moments, before they clumsily stumble inside, not wanting to let go
of each other.

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