Written for greatfountain, for Yuletide 2010. Beta'd by loosesocks, who also suggested the title, and then had to talk me out of calling it "All According to Keikaku" (I think I'm funny).

Contains spoilers for up through episode 48.

Akiko had always known exactly how her life was going to work out. It was going to happen to like this: she would graduate high school, work for a little bit, live on her own for a while. Then, a year or two later, she would meet a guy who was tall and handsome and cool, and she would know – she would just know, from that very first meeting – that he was the one. He would be kind, and calm, and he would like all the same things she did, and he would have a job that didn't keep him away a lot. He would give her space when she needed it, but he would never leave her really alone.

They would have their first date at an amusement park, where they would eat cotton candy and go on the ferris wheel. Then after a while – long enough for her to know he was serious, but not too long – he would propose to her under the stars, on bended knee, with a diamond ring. Both of her parents would be at the wedding, and they would be able to put their differences aside for one day to be happy for her, and she would dance with her father and he'd tell her she'd grown up well and he was proud of her.

She and her husband would move into a little house, nice but not too fancy; she would quit her job to take care of the children – there would be two, a boy and a girl – and maybe a cat, because Akiko had always liked cats. Then that would just be…it, be everything she ever wanted, and they would live happily ever after.

This had been the Plan, ever since she was a little girl. Of course some things had changed as she'd gotten older – for one thing, she no longer expected her wedding to take place on a magical rainbow with a pink talking pony as minister – but the basic idea had remained the same. And for a while, it had pretty much gone that way.

She'd gotten out of high school and had been an OL for six months, but nobody had liked her tea, and then she'd gotten fired for punching the CEO when he'd tried to touch her bum. So then she'd gone on to work at a food stand, which was even less glamorous than an office job, so she'd compensated by going on lots of group dates – only all the guys were put off by the smell of takoyaki, which lingered on her skin and hair no matter what soaps or shampoo she used.

Still, she hadn't let it discourage her. Her perfect guy wasn't going to care what job she'd had, and besides, he was going to like takoyaki.

Then, of course, it all got veered even more off-track when she'd gotten the papers for the agency, and she'd gone to Fuuto with every intention of selling the place (and maybe meeting a cute real-estate agent), only Shoutarou had turned out to be so ridiculously bad at running it that it had actually been offensive, and she'd been forced to take over to show him how it was done properly. And she'd kind of – forgotten about the Plan, for a little while, because somebody needed to keep Shoutarou and Philip in line, and at least running the agency had been more fun than the takoyaki stand.

Then she'd found out about her dad, and a big part of the Plan – of her life – had come crashing down around her. All she could think was but he was supposed to be there, he was going to be at my wedding – as though thinking that would bring him back, remind the universe that it had made a mistake and he wasn't supposed to be…gone. He couldn't be dead, because that wasn't how she'd wanted things to go, this wasn't how it was supposed to be –

Her father had always been there, when she'd thought about her future. Maybe not there, exactly, because he'd never really been good about that – but she'd always thought it would be like before, when she'd had to call to yell at him about missing her birthday and listen to a million bad excuses and apologies, but he'd still been there for her to be mad at. He'd still been a part of her life.

She hadn't really known what to do after that, except stay at the agency, partly because without her the whole place would have blown up by now, but mostly because she didn't want to be alone. The Plan needed revising, but she didn't really feel like it, because then she'd have to think about her future without her dad and she just…couldn't, not yet.

Then Ryuu had shown up. He'd been…well, honestly he'd been a huge jerk at first, but that had mostly been towards Shoutarou, and as far as Akiko was concerned, it was okay to be a jerk towards Shoutarou. He'd been – not nice to her, exactly, more sort of briskly professional. He didn't call her silly, or stupid, or a middle-school girl pretending to be an adult; he'd treated her like an equal in the field, with a kind of respect that had been distant, but there all the same.

It hadn't come all at once, like she'd expected it to. There had been no fireworks, no choir of angels bursting into song, not even a special little tingle up her spine when their eyes had first met. Instead it had been a kind of…dawning, almost, slow and gentle as a sunrise, and no one had been more surprised than her to realize it.

Ryuu wasn't what she'd expected, what had been in the Plan. Okay, he filled the tall and handsome part, and he could be pretty cool, and he looked great in leather pants – but she had wanted someone who would be sweet and hopelessly romantic, who would spend his time thinking about her, and how to make her happy. Ryuu spent his time thinking about revenge.

It was like a fire inside of him, burning low and furious, and then sometimes flaring up into a white-hot explosion of pure rage that scared her, really scared her, not for herself but for him. If he kept going like this he was going to burn himself out, go up in a puff of smoke like a candle being snuffed out. He would be like her dad, not knowing when to quit until the very end, when it was already too late.

It wasn't like she didn't understand, she did – after the numbness had come the pain, every time she thought about her life without her father in it, and with the pain had come the fury. If she could find the person who had killed him, if she could take out all of this anger and use it to make them pay – she had almost done it to Shoutarou, first for not telling her, and then because it was his fault, even if he hadn't meant it; it was because of him that her father had died.

What had stopped her was knowing that if she had done – something – then Shoutarou would have let her, because he knew exactly how she felt, only he had nowhere to direct that rage, that hopeless feeling that someone had to pay for what had happened, except onto himself. It had made her realize that she wasn't the only one who had lost someone, and it didn't make her pain any less for it, but she didn't have to be alone in it, either.

But Ryuu was trying to go through it alone and it just wasn't working for him, he was pushing himself too far and too hard. If she could just show him that she could be there for him, that he didn't have to be alone either, then maybe…

"Ryuu-kun," she said to him once, one of those times when Weather had gotten away and Ryuu was tight-lipped and furious afterwards. "You know that we're here for you, right? You're not alone."

Ryuu had looked at her like he hadn't known who she was. So she'd tried again. "We've all lost people," she said. "You and me and Shoutarou-kun, and even Philip-kun. None of us have families, but we –"

"Don't," he said, sharper and harder than she'd ever heard him. So she had left him alone, because even she could tell that he wouldn't listen to her, not then.

It was Trial that scared her the most. It had been bad enough seeing Ryuu nearly kill himself trying to get it in the first place, but when she'd found out what Shroud had done…she'd thought this is it, this was going to be Ryuu's last stand, one last big explosion, and she was so afraid for him –

And it had been, in a way. All of his rage had blown out, the fire burning bigger than ever, but instead of killing him, it had just…left, all of it thrown away in his last attack.

"Did it help?" she asked, afterwards, as they stared at the black dust that had once been Weather. She wasn't being patronizing, she really wondered – did it make the pain go away? Did it really end everything? But Ryuu just looked lost, like he didn't know what to do now, now that it was finally over.

Finally he said, slowly, "He's not going to hurt anyone ever again."

The part of him that had scared her so much was gone; with it went the paralyzing fear that her future, her Plan, would not include him. She was determined now to make him understand, to make him see that he wasn't alone, that there were people who were here for him. She especially was here for him.

That next weekend, she showed up at his apartment unannounced. He was there, as she'd known he would be; in fact, he didn't look like he'd gone out since the last time she'd seen him.

"We," she said, the moment he opened the door, "are going out. On a date," she clarified, when he frowned at her.

"We are?"

"Yes. Get your coat on," she ordered. Akiko had not been raised to be subtle; she had been raised to get what she wanted. "We're going to the amusement park."

"We are?" Ryuu said again, doubtfully, but he did get his coat.

It was cold, and it had rained recently, so the park wasn't crowded. Akiko insisted on paying for the tickets, because she had been the one to ask him out; Ryuu looked sort of bewildered at this example of Modern Feminism, but he let her, and said nothing as she complained about the prices and whined about how Shoutarou had refused payment for their last case because he was an idiot. "Honestly," she grumbled, "I don't know how they didn't starve before I came here, because when he does get paid he spends it all on brand-name clothes. Do you know, Philip-kun won't wear anything but Windscale now? He's been corrupted!"

Ryuu remained silent, although he did look down at his own clothes a little guiltily.

In fact, Ryuu said very little throughout the entire date, which made Akiko nervous that he wasn't having fun, so she compensated by talking as much as possible. She talked about the park, the rides, the weather, her clothes, other people's clothes, everything she saw. She regaled him with tales of previous amusement park hijinks – "Although," she said, as though she were telling him a secret, "this is the first time I've ever been to one on a date." – and then, when those ran out, stories about the latest idiotic thing that Shoutarou had done or Philip had gotten obsessed over. She talked nearly non-stop for over an hour, before her throat got sore and she graciously allowed Ryuu to buy her a drink.

"You know," she said, as she fiddled with the straw. "You can leave, if you want to. I kind of dragged you out here and all because I thought it'd be –" Good for you. "—fun, but, I mean, if you're not having a good time…"

Ryuu blinked. Once her voice had trailed off completely, he said, "What makes you think I'm not having fun?"

"Oh." Akiko stared at him. "Well. You haven't said anything."

"You were talking."

"Oh," she said again. Ryuu didn't seem to have meant it in a bad way; he was just stating a fact: she had been talking, so he had not. "I guess I could…just not say anything?"

Now Ryuu looked even more confused. "But," he said. "I like listening to you."

Ironically, this left Akiko completely speechless. Ryuu seemed to find her sudden silence disconcerting, because after a moment he added, "You're a very interesting person, Chief." Then, when she still failed to respond, "Um. Are you okay?"

"Oh, Ryuu-kun," Akiko gushed, "that may be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me!"

"That's kind of weird," Ryuu said, but she wasn't really paying attention. Half-remembered thoughts about a Plan resurfaced in her mind, and she glanced around the park, scanning it with all the ferocity of a wild beast searching for prey.

"Oh, look, Ryuu-kun," she said brightly, clutching at his arm. "A ferris wheel! And cotton candy!"

It was as they were enjoying their cotton candy – or rather, she was enjoying hers, while Ryuu stared at his like he didn't quite know what to do with it – that Ryuu spoke again. "You were right," he said, and Akiko paused mid-candy-devouring, wisps of fluffy pink stuck around her mouth.

"Of course I was," she said – but the way Ryuu was looking at her made her straighten up and wipe at her face with the back of her sleeve. "About what?"

"About – not being alone." Ryuu had turned faintly pink, which clashed with his outfit, but he was still meeting her eyes. "About all of you. All of us. I thought it didn't matter, but… It does. It means a lot to me." He shrugged self-consciously, and now he did look away from her, instead staring into his uneaten cotton candy like it would tell him the right words to say. "You mean a lot to me."

For a moment all Akiko could do was stare at him, her mouth opening and closing like a fish, and then she leapt on him and hugged him as hard as she could.

"Um – Chief," Ryuu said, sounding desperate. "Your shirt –"

She'd forgotten about the cotton candy. Well, so much for that part of the Plan.

The ferris wheel bit didn't go as well, either, because as she was washing the candy off her shirt, a Dopant decided to show its ugly face and start blowing up rides. Of course then Ryuu had to transform and Memory-Break it, a process that ended up decimating the ferris wheel, and then they all got kicked out by management anyway, and there it was – her first real date, utterly ruined.

But then Ryuu offered to take her to dinner to make up for it, and even though it wasn't a really nice fancy place like she'd always imagined her first dinner date would be, and actually it was a Denny's near Ryuu's apartment, because he'd lived in Fuuto for four months already and still didn't really know his way around …well, it was still pretty nice, not in the least because he gave her his jacket to cover the stain on her shirt.

By that point it was dark out, so he drove her home on his bike, and she got to hold on tight and snuggle into his back the whole way there. When they reached her building, he did not kiss her – her perfect date idea always ended with a shy first kiss at the doorstop – but he did let her hold on to his jacket, or at least he didn't demand it back.

"Ryuu-kun," Akiko called out, as he headed back to his bike. "Do you like takoyaki?"

Ryuu stared at her. "…Yes?" he managed, when she offered no explanation.

Akiko smiled, and did not answer his questioning look.

He proposed to her the morning after Philip died.

(Not died, she reminded herself, he'd – returned to the Earth, or whatever – but what difference did it really make? He was gone, and that was the end of it.)

They'd both spent the night at the agency, which probably wasn't good for him, but Akiko had been so, so scared of leaving Shoutarou by himself and she didn't know what she'd do if something happened – it wasn't like Ryuu was in a better position to do anything, since he was still wheelchair-bound and half-covered in bandages and could only see out of one eye, but…

She hadn't even needed to ask. Shoutarou had come back and she'd taken one look at him and known that it had happened; she'd called Ryuu and tried to tell him, but she hadn't been able to get further than Philip's name before all the tears she'd been holding in since this whole mess began just came pouring out, all over the phone.

"I'll be ready," was all Ryuu had said. And he had been, when she went to pick him up; she hadn't thought they'd let him check out, but they'd just handed her a big bag of medication and let her wheel him out.

Now she was making breakfast, or her best attempt at breakfast, at five in the morning because she couldn't sleep. It felt like a kind of triumph, making it through the night, like one night meant they would be able to get through the rest of them. She knew that wasn't true, she knew that the pain didn't really go away or get any easier, you just got used to it – they all knew that, all four…all three of them. But she needed to tell herself that, because she couldn't think about the future right now, she just couldn't.

Shoutarou had slept in the hangar, which had worried her – and still worried her, a little – but they'd set the Gadgets to watching him, just in case, and she'd thought maybe he did need some time to himself. Not alone, but just…by himself.

Ryuu was awake, too, because he needed to take his medication every four hours, and it was just as well she hadn't been able to sleep because he couldn't do it properly on his own. It was as she was cleaning up, putting everything back in the bag and getting ready to get back to breakfast, that he said, "Will you marry me?"

The way he'd said it, he might have been asking for a piece of toast. It took a moment for the words to register, and when they did, Akiko shrieked so loudly that Mick fell off the chair he'd been sleeping on.

Ryuu cringed, because she had been awfully close to his ear, but he continued anyway. "I've been thinking about it," he said. "Since even before – Utopia, and everything. This whole thing made me think, it's not really just having other people, it's having…everyone here, in this city, in this place." He didn't seem to be saying it the way he wanted to; he sighed in frustration, and tried again. "It's not just about not being alone. It's about being with you, and being there for you. I want to be with you, Chief."

"Oh," she said, a little stupidly. Some part of her brought back half-forgotten dreams about starry skies and diamond rings, but right now, none of that seemed to matter. "I. Okay, sure."

Okay, sure. Well, it wasn't how she'd always imagined her acceptance of a proposal, but Ryuu seemed satisfied with it. He smiled, and winced as it pulled at his injured face, but he didn't stop smiling.

"I don't have a ring," he admitted, as Akiko turned back to the toast, which had gone room-temperature while she'd been ignoring it.

"It's fine," she said, and for a moment, she was actually able to believe it. Not about the ring – she didn't even care about the ring, which surprised her a little, but she didn't. It was…her life, Ryuu's life, even Shoutarou's life; it was everything, and even if she was still kind of lying to herself, it was nice to be able to believe, however briefly, that everything really would be fine.

Her dad wasn't going to be at her wedding, and neither was Philip, and neither was Ryuu's family. But they'd gone through this kind of thing before, all fo – three of them. It wasn't any easier this time around, and she didn't know if Shoutarou was ever going to be really, truly okay again – but now she had Ryuu, and he had her, and Shoutarou had both of them.

It was going to work out, somehow. She didn't know how, but it would.