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The Year 2020

Summary:

It's the year 2020 and a missed flight plus a few blizzards lead to Yosuke and Souji getting stuck in Portland, Maryland. And it's just bad luck that the city gets locked in a quarantine just before the next flight to Japan is scheduled to board. But it's not as if things can get any worse, right?... Right?

Notes:

I blame Ch. 31 of Angevon's Days Without Nights for this. I tried a liiiittle too hard to imagine Yuri Lowenthal's voice cracking and ended up imagining something else entirely...

Also, forgive me if my chapters and/or paragraphs are kind of short. I haven't written anything in ages. It's going to take a while before I get back into the swing of things. >_<

Chapter 1: Patient Zero

Chapter Text

"Partner?"

Souji glanced at him.

"Why on earth did I agree to go with you on this trip?"

The silver-haired man shrugged. "You had nothing better to do?"

The brown-haired man groaned and hit his head on the chair in front of him. He muttered muffled curses into the fabric as Souji laughed.

"I only have two weeks of paid vacation," Yosuke groused. "My boss is going to kill me..."

"Well, there's nothing you can do about a quarantine. We just need to wait it out, and hope for the best."

The 26-year-old kept grumbling. He wished dearly he still wore headphones everywhere, but he'd stopped that a long time ago, maybe as early as his third year of high school. Now, he brought earbuds if he wanted to listen to something in public, but those had been lost at that other airport in Europe after going through the metal detector. Particle detector. Puffer machine. Whatever it was called.

(He wasn't terribly sure which airport it was, either - English, French, German, all of the languages in the Roman alphabet looked the same for all he cared, and he didn't feel like asking.)

At any rate, music would be a great distraction right about now. Then he wouldn't have to think about the insane number of angry voicemails he'd have to sift through when he got home; his vacation had ended yesterday, or today depending on which timezone you went by, and who knew how many more days he'd have to stay here?

Souji sighed. "Come on, Yosuke. If we're going to be here a while, we need to get some food while we still can. I can hear your stomach growling from here," he added, and it was true.

Yosuke punched his own gut in retaliation. "Traitor," he accused.

The two of them gathered their things and stood. As they headed for the food court, they spotted a small crowd forming.

"Hey, what's going on over there?" Yosuke asked, stopping to glance at the commotion.

"I don't know. Let's go check it out."

As they drew closer, they heard crying. Or, rather, it wasn't just crying; it was sobbing, loud and pained and distressed in a way that didn't seem like it should have been caused by a missed flight. The two pushed their way through the crowd, finding surprisingly little resistance, until they reached the cause of the commotion.

In the center of the crowd, they found a young woman, shuddering and vomiting blood between sobs.

There they stood, transfixed and baffled, before Yosuke shook himself out of it and said, loudly, "Well, don't just stand there! Someone needs to call an ambulance!" before walking up to the woman himself and, ignoring the blood, scooping her up into his arms. Souji, meanwhile, translated Yosuke's words and parted the crowd, giving the other man a clear path.

Yosuke walked until he found the nearest restroom, doing his best not to flinch or falter when the woman vomited on him. Twice. Not caring which sex it was meant for, he went in and pushed a stall open. As he tried to set the woman down, she coughed, sending specks of blood into Yosuke's face. The man winced, but wiped off what he could and kept holding the woman as she retched, trying to comfort her as much as he could.

It felt like ages passed before Souji came into the room, though it was probably mere minutes; the blood just kept coming, and the woman's continued sobs, devolving into weak whimpers, were disheartening. Souji wordlessly passed him a water bottle, and he tried futilely to get the woman to take a sip between episodes, but she couldn't do it. She didn't have the strength to do anything but bend over the toilet and cry anymore.

"They called the ambulance before we got there," Souji explained. "They couldn't get through."

"Well, they should have kept trying!" Yosuke snapped. Shaking his head, he stood. "Keep an eye on her for me, will you? She coughed earlier and a little blood got in my eye; I couldn't just leave her to wash it out..." 

Seeing Yosuke keeping one eye tightly shut, Souji nodded and let him pass.

Yosuke waved his hands under the faucet and brought a handful of water to his eye, blinking in it and letting the water fall back into the sink. He did that a few times, watching the faint red stains disappear before scrubbing the rest of his face and drying it with a paper towel. He could hear Souji's voice, and he could faintly hear the woman. He hoped she was quieting because she was getting better, and not just because she lacked the strength to even whimper anymore.

He returned to the stall, where Souji shoved his phone back into his pocket, a frustrated look on his face. Yosuke moved back to the woman's side, trying to get her to sip from the water bottle. As she finally complied, some drops ending up on her chin instead, he asked about the situation.

"It's not good," Souji admitted. "Turns out she's not the only one. There are people collapsing all over the airport, and no ambulance on its way. I even called with my phone, just now; I got through, only for them to tell me one wasn't coming after I described what happened. The hospital's got too many patients with the same thing. They can't take any more patients."

Yosuke grit his teeth. "What the hell? Can't they at least send someone to help?" Souji shook his head. "They've got their hands full. And when I asked around earlier, to see if someone knew how to help... No one, not even the handful of doctors I found, knew how to treat it. They called it a viral hemorrhagic fever, but it's not Ebola. It's worse. A lot worse. And a lot faster."

"Fuck..."

And then the woman shuddered again, and the retching felt a million times worse because Yosuke now knew help wasn't coming. He had to sit here. And let her die. The woman grew paler and paler, her skin vividly contrasted by the blood now streaming down her cheeks and out of her ears. And Yosuke would never forget, never forget the frustration he felt as he realized it was 2020 and people still died from diseases like this. It was 2020 and this woman, who probably had someone waiting for her back home and a job and her whole life ahead of her was dying of some disease no one knew how to treat. Some disease no one had ever discovered before, some disease that sprung up from the cracks when no one was looking and took all of them by surprise. It was 2020, and this woman whose name he'd never gotten to learn was suffering all alone in his, a stranger's, arms, not a friend or relative in sight. It was 2020, and Yosuke would never forget how it felt when the woman in his arms vomited her life's blood before taking one last, shuddering breath. Never forget her face, streaked with tears and blood, as it relaxed from the crumpled expression of pain into a smooth expression of peace. Never forget when her warm body finally stilled and slumped in his arms. Never forget the sensation of her warm, limp body growing stiff and cold.

It was 2020 and Yosuke Hanamura and Souji Seta were stuck in Portland, Maryland, where a woman died in Yosuke's arms, and there was nothing anyone could have done about it.