Disclaimer: I don't own Kamen Rider Kuuga. I just adore it. Seriously, one of the best super hero shows from anywhere at any time.

Author's Note: This is going to be a series of three one-shots that are loosely tied together, set after the series. The second two are with my beta, but given the scarcity of free time I have I figured I'd get this one up and then throw the other two up when I get them back. Fair warning: the first two focus on rather tertiary characters; the third will be a main character piece. Hope someone enjoys!

Sakurai

He's the first one to go through it.

That stings, sometimes, though the shame lessens as time goes on and most of the others go through something similar. After all, it's not like he actually broke. Not like he did anything wrong, or even failed to do something right. It just… hurt.

Hurt more than it should, more than he remembers it hurting, seeing the body. A twenty-one-year old male, average height, average weight, killed in what someone at least wanted to look like a botched robbery attempt. He's seen worse injuries, worse deaths before. The victim was only stabbed three or four times, and his blood is polite enough to stay mostly in a pool on the floor. No garish decorations on the walls and ceiling, like stabbing victims often leave.

He's seen so much worse, before. That's what detectives do, after all. They respond to the most terrible parts of someone else's life. After all the things the Grongi did, all the things he's seen in the year-plus he's worked on the Unidentified Lifeforms Task Force... for heaven's sake, he watched a fellow officer die not a hundred yards in front of him, heard him screaming and watched the beautiful, awful arc of aortic blood as the Grongi slaughtered him.

And yet this man, this man that everyone else is walking around nonchalantly, as standard a murder case as Japan can get, this man's death is more wrong, is more incomprehensible—

He stops thinking after that. Or, more aptly, stops feeling. It's something he did during his first four responses to the Unknown Lifeforms, and even though he hasn't done it in a year, falling back into the old pattern is easy.

Just take things second by second, step by step. Determine what needs to be done right now and then do it, and don't think about any other task until it's done. Fire at the enemy. Evade the enemy's attacks. Put tourniquets on the injured. Report what occurred.

Huddle in a corner later, when no one else can see, and scream silently about everything that's happened, because the world isn't making any sense anymore.

It's Sugita who finds him, long before he has to figure out whether he's going to cry or scream or not about a case that shouldn't be bothering him as much as it is. He should have noticed the other detective enter the room. He should have been able to look up and smile and nod, maybe give one of Godai's strange little thumbs-up, but he's still running on autopilot. Still processing what's right in front of him, putting far more effort and energy into the paperwork than it probably warrants because that is the task to be done now, so he's not really surprised that he didn't notice anything else.

He certainly manages to surprise Sugita, though. Diving to the side and going for his gun is a somewhat drastic reaction to a soft tap on the shoulder.

"Sakurai-san?" Sugita's own hand falls from his gun slowly, his suit jacket sliding forward again to hide the weapon.

"Ah." Standing with as much dignity as he can muster, he straightens his own suit out. "Sorry. And good afternoon."

"Good afternoon." Sugita takes the cues to pretend the strange little episode didn't happen in stride, settling down on the table next to the paperwork and glancing over it. "Just thought I'd say hi, give you a break from paperwork for a few minutes, see if you needed anything. Murder case already, huh?"

"Yeah." Settling back into his seat, he avoids looking at the older man's eyes.

"Bad one?" The sympathy in Sugita's voice isn't feigned, he knows that, but it still makes his cheeks burn.

"Not particularly." Which means he shouldn't be reacting like this. It shouldn't hurt like this, any time he actually stops acting and just starts processing what he's doing. "From the looks of it, a drug deal gone bad. We're just waiting for our lead suspect to come home so we can pick him up. Give forensics a few days, and I think we'll have this wrapped up."

"So… everything's all right then?" It's a vague question, an open question, and an open invitation to talk if he wants to or needs to.

That's not what's done, though. That degree of weakness isn't allowed, even in front of other taskforce members, these people he knows better than anyone else in his life. Besides, he doesn't even know how to articulate what the problem is. Doesn't even really know what the problem is, other than that everything about this case is wrong. "Everything's fi… it's fi…"

He needs to say it. Needs to believe it. There hasn't been a Grongi sighting in three and a half months. Everyone's back in their old divisions. Human life goes on, just like it always has, with people hurting each other for small, pointless reasons.

People killing each other for small, pointless reasons, and that's what's so wrong with this case. After everything that humanity has been through, all the people that were lost, all the people who were injured, all the people that had lives ruined, nothing's changed.

Humans perpetuate the same horrors on each other that the Grongi did.

"I think you need a drink." Sugita's hand on his shoulder is firm, an anchor to a reality that makes sense, where only monsters kill people and there are heroes surrounding him on every side. "I was already thinking of getting a group together tonight. Want to come?"

"Ah. Sure." His smile isn't entirely feigned. The thought of getting to spend time again with the people he practically lived with for over a year is enough to ease at least some of the tension in his gut. "I've got to work on this, but I should be free later."

"Great. See you at seven, then." The other man smiles, heading for the door. He pauses before opening it, though. "And Sakurai-san… it really is all right. Whatever's troubling you… just… we survived. Godai-san survived, even. And as long as we're alive, and we can smile… everything has to turn out all right."

The smile that had been growing fades. There are so many ways that isn't right. So many things that both of them have seen, so many people they've seen killed, so many people they've seen grieving that speak to being alive and smiling just not being enough to fix the world.

And yet… it saved the world. That simple, powerful ability, to smile and believe despite all the evidence, saved the world.

So he forces the smile back into place and holds out his hand in a gesture that no one on the Unidentified Lifeforms Task Force is ever going to forget. Sugita returns the smile and the thumbs-up before slipping out the door.

The case still hurts, hurts more than he remembers it hurting, but that's all right. It should hurt. Someone dying senselessly, pointlessly, someone who still had a lifetime ahead of them… it should hurt like hell, even if it was their own bad choices that put them in that situation.

And it should hurt more that people can be just as monstrous and destructive to each other as the Grongi were to humans.

But it doesn't change anything. It doesn't mean that people are anything like the Grongi, not as a whole. It doesn't mean that the Woman with the Rose Tattoo was right about their kind. It doesn't cheapen what Godai did, what they all did. The fact that humanity's not perfect doesn't make its value less, or the blood price they paid for it far too high.

Nothing, nothing in this world or any other, can tarnish the courage and compassion and awesome strength he saw displayed too many times to count… saw displayed so often that he started to forget the horrors he originally signed up to fight.

He drinks to humanity that night, along with a dozen other members of the Unidentified Lifeforms Task Force, in what ends up being the first of many reunions at the bar. And somewhere between the alcohol and the memories and the simple camaraderie of being with people who've seen as much as he has, the sharp pain of disappointment and the feather-soft hope of what could be find a way to coexist.