I come bearing a wholesome Dan Moroboshi fanfic snippet 😬
This is a bit from an eternally unfinished fanfic of mine and it is set in the manga timeline some time after the New York incident. There's a lot of (unwritten) plot beforehand which ties into the lucid dream Dan is having in this excerpt, and which involves a couple of original characters and explains the "importance" of the lamp and the "phantasma", but since this can be read as a standalone as well, I'm not going to shove that on you. Instead, enjoy a bit of brotherly wholesomeness. And if it tickles your fancy, you can read the extended edition with the original characters over at AO3.
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 one of his sons, 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.
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