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Alchemic Anatomy of the Dying Cell -Cadence and Confession-

Summary:

A Steins;Gate alternate universe where Okabe Rintarou is a trans man, and him coming out to Kurisu. Mostly set in the Alpha Attractor Field. Takes place between Chapters 1-6 of the visual novel, about 14 episodes of the anime, so some major plot spoilers for the middle of the story! While this is just a fun headcanon, I have done my utmost research to fit it in the time, worldlines, and dates of the original Steins;Gate story, though some non-canon differences may occur. This is an OkaKuri fanfic, but I left a bit for the OkaMayu shippers too. Thank you for reading!

*note: this was written by a lesbian trans woman!

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Chapter 1: Time Travel Paranoia 

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The Akiba summer was hot, hotter than Okabe could remember in recent memory, but he wouldn’t be taking his shirt off, no matter how much the temperature rose nor how drenched with sweat the shirt under his lab coat became. After all, that would give away one of his darkest, most closely guarded secrets, and a mad scientist couldn’t very well place all his cards face up on the table, now could he? 

Perhaps the lab coat was a natural extension of the insecurities he felt about his body. A long flowing extra layer of clothing was enough to obscure his figure in a way that made him feel at ease. Okabe Rintarou held a separate identity as the insane mad scientist Hououin Kyouma, but really, that was simply the trick lock to further confuse those who wished to expose his secrets. 

A hidden drawer located inside a hidden drawer. If one finds a single secret, they are satiated and stop looking. They don’t even stop to think there could be further treasures hidden. Pull away the mask, and the detective is satisfied with the answer—they never think to check the mask beneath the mask. It was a manipulative tactic that used basic thought processes of the human mind to trick it into thinking it had achieved its objective. It was his first ever successful magic trick as Hououin Kyouma; besides snapping Mayuri out of her months-long depression, that is. 

He liked to think he was smarter than he was. For several years, that was how he presented himself: hopelessly arrogant to the world. In his mind, he had meticulously crafted this feint attack with foresight, but in reality, he had gotten lucky at how well his randomly blind decisions had fallen into place. Of course, since the nature of the ruse was secretive, he couldn’t very well brag about its genius to anyone, not even the one girl who knew. 

He was no stranger to deceiving the world. Others in his shoes might find that phrasing a bit barbarous, but for him it felt more than fitting. It was deviant, diabolical… and most of all, mad. 

Two scars across his chest, pink and still sometimes tender, even as they began to fade into the canvas of his flesh. Hououin Kyouma may have been his True Name, but there was a truer truth underneath his baited facade. Of course, people payed more attention to his chuuni ramblings than anything even close to regarding that secret, and for that, he was eternally grateful. It was a clean break from the person he used to be, which he wouldn’t change for the world. 

 

Chapter 4: Chaos Theory Homeostasis 

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While Kurisu tinkered away at the phonewave, trying to figure out what was acting as the lifter, Okabe sat on the couch faintly licking a baby-blue crunchy-kun popsicle. Mayuri had finished hers in three bites, and begged for a bite of his. A sudden cold spread through his leg. He was deep in thought. When he looked down, he realized the popsicle had dripped down onto him after it melted from the scorching heat. 

“C’mon c’mon Okarin! You’re wasting crunchy-kun! It’s so hot out and you *never* give Mayushii a bit of yours. You’re being mean!”

He could practically hear the scrunchy face emoticon in the cadence of her childish voice. 

“Fine, fine,” he sighed, deepening his voice to the Hououin register. “Have at it, young hostage. But remember, this means you’ll be at my beck and call when the time comes. The fight against the Organization could end in death, so make your choice wisely.” The ramblings came so naturally to him at this point, he could riff off of any phrase or request. 

“Of course Mayushii will! I don’t think she really has a choice…”

“Mayuri, sweetie, you always have a choice if you want to get away from this headcase,” Kurisu shouted from behind the development room’s curtain. While her voice was tense, Okabe could sense an excited banter beneath her light jabs, as if these were the kinds of back and forths she’d wished for her whole life. She had always been terrible at hiding her true feelings from them. There was something suspicious behind the girl’s curiosity. 

“Silence, Christina! Or I won’t tell you about the popsicle I left for you in the freezer.”

“Thanks for telling me.” 

She walked by them both, winking in Okabe’s direction. She unfurled the wrapped, then placed the popsicle in her mouth. When the cold hit her tongue, she twitched at the sensation, then blushed. 

“Don’t you dare say a word,” she said. 

“What would Okarin say anything about??” Mayuri asked with a puzzled face. 

“Why, I think Christina had a dirty thought just now, and judging by the starlight red of her cheeks, I assume I guessed correctly. So shameful, to have such perverted thoughts in my lab!”

“Ugh, you’re the perverted one, virgin boy,” she said with a pout, then stuck her blue tongue out at him

“Takes one to know one. Is this your scientific superpower?”

“Shut up before I stick an electrode into your hippocampus. It’s back to work for me. While your fantasizing about God knows what, I’ll be unlocking the secrets of this little machine. Later.” With that, she vanished behind the curtain. 

When she spoke with him, even making jokes at his expense, her eyes glistened in a way they did for no one else. He could tell that, like him, this genius girl was hiding secrets from them. Maybe that underlying mystery was what drew him to her, and her to him, despite the tumultuous circumstances of their meeting. Could it have something to do with the way Part-Time Warrior hated her when they first met? Was she a deadly assassin, a mole for The Organization, a fraud who had plagiarized her way to success?

No, none of those fit in his mind. She was simply Makise Kurisu, Japan’s acclaimed teen-girl genius, not to mention a well-kept beauty and witty retort as well. Something about her reactions with the lab mems seemed genuine. Perhaps it was because Okabe, ironically, could read beneath the surface more than most people realized, but he couldn’t sense any sort of betrayal or malcontent beneath her hardened demeanor. If anything, that was all an overcompensation for buried insecurities, a feeling he knew all too well. 

She was the foil to his mad scientist, a girl who had risen through the ranks through talent, hard work, and perseverance. In many ways, she was everything he was not. She had no time for petty chuuni games, even if her @channeler second life hinted at a more nerdish side than she ever wanted to admit. No girl who knew that many memes could be a surface level normie. He filed it in the mental notes for another time, to ask about that hidden geekish side of hers. Some of the references she made were anime or manga based…. was she a closet otaku as well? The thought of such a scandal would make front page news! The mad scientist, Hououin Kyouma, brilliantly disrobes the fake genius prodigy Makise Kurisu for the degenerate pervert she really is! It could be the start on his path to world domination. 

No, he could never do that. 

He was a mad scientist, but he wasn’t heartless. 

He loved to tease her to her face, but a public humiliation that caused her actual pain would be going way too far. He liked seeing her flustered, but he never wanted to see her in pain. When she was angry at him, the first time he really badgered her and she cried, he took it to heart. He still had morals—they were just sometimes twisted ones. 

Mayuri floated her face up beneath his popsicle with a feminine grace, then nommed a quick but sizable bite from it, her eyes wide and glossy like a moe kind of fish. They blinked twice, then she swelled and smiled, her eyelids closed in the cutest expression. He’d give her as many popsicles as she wanted. He just couldn’t let her know that, or she’d take advantage and he’d be so broke he’d be late on rent. 

His mind triggered by the bottomless secrets of Makise Kurisu, Okabe thought back to the history of his own secret, the one most of the Lab Mems, besides Mayuri, had no idea about. 

***

Shiina Mayuri knew Okabe Rintarou when he was a girl. His name had been Okabe Rinako, a blessed child with a quiet, simple life and loving parents. They used to take baths together, walk to school together, even have sleepovers at one another’s houses. They were the two best friends, and their parents had them spend as much time as possible together. Of course, all of that perfection changed when he changed. 

The terrible fever during the year 2000 had been a metaphorical cover story, the excuse his parents gave to friends and his school. In actuality, young Okabe had refused to leave his room as the changes started. He had never been attached to his body or clothing before; they seemed inconsequential, but as his body changed rapidly with curves that seemed foreign to him, he began to reject the flowing sundresses and breezy skirts for a traditional masculine, yet slightly unkempt style. Pants and dress shirts, more boyish ties, a shorter, messier hairstyle not unlike the kind of a manga protagonist. Somehow it came naturally to him. 

Strangers must’ve thought he was a delinquent, looking so ragged. In actuality, he was just a chuuni nerd. 

His parents had been perplexed, but they did allow him to go with it. Soon he was dressing in a lab coat and laughing maniacally around town. When his parents wouldn’t let him change his name to Rintarou, he demanded they call him a completely new name—Hououin Kyouma, and only then did they acquiesce to his demands. 

He had worn a binder for so many months that the worst summer sweat barely phased him any more. That was why when lab mems complained about there being no air conditioner, he bragged that if he could handle it even underneath his lab coat of evil tricks, they certainly could.

As his resolve became more resolute it seemed the only thing left to do was make the biological change. So, with enough poking and prodding, the newly born Okabe Rintarou was given testosterone. His development was rapid. The stubble came quick, the lanky height and limbs grew more pronounced, and his voice quickly deepened. It alienated almost everyone he knew. His parents moved to a different neighborhood, to help give him anonymity and a fresh start. 

The only constant in his life during this time was Shiina Mayuri, shining star that she was. 

When Okabe first told Mayuri that he was a boy, and he would be referring to himself with those pronouns, and that his name was Rintarou now, he expected her to react just as the others did, and never speak to him again. Her answer surprised him. 

She tilted her head, eyes wide, said “Okay!” And then curtseyed. 

“You don’t have any questions?” He asked her. 

“Hmmm, I guess I do have one. What do you want to get for lunch today?”

And Shiina Mayuri never brought the subject up again for as long as they were friends. 

***

That was one thing he saw in Rukako. Even if he wasn’t—or, sorry, she wasn’t like him in her mind, truly yearning to be a girl, there was a kinship beneath the surface. He knew what Ruka needed most was confidence and a push, and so he gave that to Ruka. He couldn’t tell if she actually wanted to be a girl or she just had trouble grappling with the feelings she had for him. No one could truly know the heart of it but Ruka, and that was not his to judge, so he granted his disciple’s wish with haste. No matter what they ended up choosing, he would be there to support them, boy, girl or anything else. He chose his disciples carefully indeed. 

It had been a useful experiment. Although at first he’d thought it didn’t work, the D-mail to Ruka’s mother somehow changed enough to turn Ruka into a girl. It was the most proof they had of the butterfly effect in action. One change to the past could cause a rippling effect. True causality was beyond human understanding. Even quantum physicists couldn’t predict how particles would react with certainty, and though he was a mad scientist, he considered those geniuses almost on his level. 

Maybe that was Reading Steiner. Maybe his gender was connected to shifting worldlines, or timeleaping, and that was how he gained this seemingly rare ability of enhanced deja vu the likes of which allowed him to continue on. 

There were still the occasional family members who slipped and called him Rinako-chan, catching themselves as soon as they’d said it and apologizing profusely with a bow, as it was easiest if his secret was kept, but he did not mind. He had gotten out easier than most people in his position would.

Even now, sitting beside him, she had the power to tell everyone his secret at any time. To blow his cover, maybe even destroy his friendships if the people he’d surrounded himself with turned out to be truly judgmental. 

Yet she still hadn’t said a word about it all these years later. To her, he was Okabe Rintarou, the mad villain who had captured her. Nothing more. 

And he would do anything, anything at all, to repay her kindness. He would do anything to protect her, and for now, that meant keeping her out of this business with the time machine. 

 

 

Chapter 6: Metaphysics Necrosis 

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He had been running for weeks. The process had killed almost every part of him, and he could feel the grip on his identity slipping. Was every choice he’d ever made a mistake that led him to this moment? 

Was that change part of the cause? 

Was his biology a butterfly effect that had resulted in Mayuri dying? Even though the prospect seemed unlikely, at this point, after all the deaths of hers he’d seen, it seemed like all threads of fate led back to being the fault of his hubris. 

When he fell into despair as he realized his true calling in life as a boy, Mayuri was there for him. She snapped him out of it. So of course, it was only natural for him to do the same for her when the time came. He owed her an infinite debt; the girl who had inadvertently saved his life, acting so nonchalant about it all the while.

He was doubting his will to go on. 

So, he decided to tell someone. Not just the tragedy he’d been through, but the mask behind the mask, the facade he’d carefully disguised all these years. 

Kurisu had come to find him after several worldlines of Mayuri dying. She had known something was up, and so he spilled his heart out to her for the first time. But he was still holding back. So to properly come clean to her, he felt the honestly bubble up underneath him, uttering the simple sentence that could make or break her presence in his life. 

“I used to be a girl.”

There was silence buried beneath the cicadas, and for a moment, Okabe wasn’t sure he had actually spoken the words at all. As he looked up at Kurisu, he could tell the expression on her face was indeed different than before he had said the words, so unless his memory was playing major tricks on him and timeleaping had corrupted his sense of reality, they had left his mouth and caught her ears. Of course, he couldn’t be sure she’d understood it. After all, like the fiery-haired girl herself would say, the human body’s senses are forever subjective and cannot be relied on as proof of empirical evidence. And yet still, she said nothing. 

If he had to guess, he’d say her expression most reminded him of those early days of them bouncing equations and theories off of the Lab’s white board in an attempt to solve the impossible Rubik’s cube of time travel. A puzzle on her face, those cogs turning in her brilliant and hard to follow head. The tempered excitement he could parse from the goosebumps blooming at her soft wrists as she scribbled out another incorrect solution. 

Wasn’t she freaked out? 

“Well, aren’t you going to say something?” he burst out. “You do realize I’m pouring my heart and soul out to you, woman.” 

“What?! don’t blame me, I was thinking of what to say!”

“Thinking about what at a time like this?! I’m confessing a secret and you’re spacing out daydreaming?!?!” It was all going wrong, telling her had been such a mistake. 

“I wasn’t daydreaming, for your information, and I don’t ever space out. What you said had me thinking about Heraclitus.” 

“Hera… who?”

“He was a greek philosopher. He believed that you could not step into the same river twice, that all of time and space is in such a constant stage of flux that change was the only constant known to mankind.”

“You aren’t…. Weirded out…? You, the one who constantly derides me for everything about myself.”

“Hey, your chuuni delusions are nothing like what you just told me. It’s hard to believe, but I guess I could see it… I know after the fiasco with Ruka, this isn’t the type of thing you’d joke about, and you seem so serious you look like you’re about to cry, so by process of elimination I have to believe it, even if it’s the last thing I’d expect.” 

“Don’t you have questions or something? Your calm demeanor is throwing me off guard. I’ve never seen you so relaxed around me.”

“Maybe it’s because the more I get to know you, the more I realize there’s a human being underneath the Hououin Kyouma act. Are you saying I shouldn’t? It’s not like I’m being overly generous for a reason or anything! I’m just a nice person.”

“No, it’s… relieving. Also, nice tsundere there.”

“I’m not a tsundere! Geez, and here I am trying to listen to your problems.”

“You jab me, I jab you back. That’s how it’s always been between us. For some reason, it feels like a comfortable place for us to be. Less like we’re fighting and more like we’re sparring, or debating.” 

She adjusted her stance. Okabe couldn’t believe she wore tights and a light coat in the summer heat… until he realized he was still wearing the stupid labcoat from his persona. It seemed to mock him with its presence. 

Kurisu stepped forward. “Well, maybe after this conversation, I’ll go a bit easier on you next time. But only if you do the same, okay?! This isn’t a charity.”

“Of course it’s not.” Okabe smiled to himself. “Honestly, I don’t want to be treated any differently than I am now. I like where we’re at, even if it’s a bit unconventional.”

“Forgive me if this is prying too much, but…. so you took testosterone?”

“Firstly, it is prying too much, and secondly, yes I did, shots and all. You get used to them for a while. The syringes they gave me really help with the mad scientist act. Got surgery on my chest too. I’m surprised you knew about it.”

“D— don’t lift your shirt up or anything, I believe you!”

“Wasn’t going to, but it’s nice to know that pervert mind of yours wanders so easily.” 

“Just so you know, I know about this stuff because it’s some of the most pressing gender debates in the field of neuroscience. That our brains control who we are more than anything else. There’s many theories out there, but none of them proven. It’s like a catbox in that way. We don’t know the answers, yet they exist as the result. Us brain scientists are trying to reverse-engineer the answers.” 

“If we’re gonna get any more philosophical, I’m gonna need to walk. How’s about through Akiba and back to the lab?”

***

They passed by where Mayqueen used to be. Inside, girls in over the top maid outfits with tall cat ears should’ve been serving drinks and chatting with bewildered otaku. Instead, it was populated by tech nerds slurping ramen. Okabe was nowhere near a hardcore otaku, but it had still been one of his favorite places in the city, even with his arch rival Faris NyanNyan running the place. The void left in its disappearance—and the lack of any moe culture around in Akiba—was a reminder of how isolated from the rest of causality he’d become. 

“You know, sometimes I think I’m unnerved by Faris because she loves being a woman more than I’ve ever seen anyone enjoy it. The attention, the outfits, the stardom, the male gazes, the pervy, seductive personality, the sultry jokes. Me, I knew that would never be me, but for her, it’s like she’s stepped into the perfect starring role of her own personalized script. I could never imagine her as anyone else. I’m sure in twenty-five years from now, she’ll still be the same plucky catgirl no matter what. It’s eerie.” 

 

“You know that saying, that all the cells in your body die in seven years, and so after that time you’re no longer the same person? It’s false pop science, really, a crude version of the ship of Theseus problem for use in self-help books and talk shows, but there is some truth buried in it.”

“You’re saying I am no longer the person I was, and that person died, and so my biology is different.”

“Well, I don’t know all the minute specifics of your situation, if what you’re telling me is really true and you’re not just messing with me. But no, actually not.”

“Then what?”

“Time moves, whether we will it or not. The second that just passed is not the same as the second that’s about to pass, or the one that we’re in now. Our bodies age no matter what. They move spacially, they are effected by the sun’s and universe’s radiation, and they march closer to death. Even with the time-leap machine, this fundamental theory doesn’t change. From your body’s aged perspective, things are stagnant, but from your mind’s perspective, you’ve moved forward, and you are right back in the stream of time. Or course, this is just going on the current theories we have.”

“How can you be so sure of all this?”

“I’m not, really. Parmenides had a different approach. He thought the universe was made of uncuttable unchanging stuff. As time progressed the theory of flux seemed to take more prominence, but recently when we discovered the atom, we realized he may not have been so far off from a universal truth. After all, the big bang theory necessitates that the universe will always have the same amount of matter in perpetuity. Atoms were proof of this. Then we found a way to split the atom, and Japan knows the harsh realities of that legacy more than any one else.”

“I appreciate the advice, Kurisu, but I didn’t exactly come to hear you run laps around me in philosophy.”

“I was getting to it, Einstein… wait, did you just call me Kurisu?”

“Huh, I guess I did. Seemed most appropriate for the moment.”

“So you’re never calling me Christina again?”

“Heh, fat chance. But please grace me with this advice of yours, oh studious Zombie.”

“I should’ve known it was too good to be true… well, anyway, the body you were in was fated to change regardless of what path you took. You just chose the one that made the most sense to you, and now here we are. The truth of your biology doesn’t even really mean anything. After all, the current theories going around are that these types of things have no categorical basis, and a dichotomy we’ve chosen to make. A social construct, if you will. But think about it, we could’ve just as easily divided people based on personality types, or physical features like eye, hair, or skin color. It’s hypothesized that gender is more something we do than something we innately are. Of course, those are just some of the new theories.”

“Getting your reading done in America, I see.”

“You know, they can really suck about a lot of things, but they’re much more open about these issues than here.”

“So I’m a man in flux, you say. Dare I call myself a flux capacitor? Ha ha ha ha!”

“I swear, if you ask me what the hell a jigowatt is, I’ll time-leap you into the head of an infant.” 

The silence stood, a valley between them. The weight of the conversation had taken its toll.

“Thank you… Kurisu. Really. I’ve never told anyone that before.”

“Not even Mayuri? But you two grew up together!”

“We did, and she was there for all of it, but it barely even registered for her. She was calling me a girl one day, then a boy the next, as if the change hadn’t even happened. I couldn’t tell if she was that oblivious or she thought the best way to support me was to never bring it up. It’s one of the many reasons I feel so indebted to save her now.”

“You’re a good friend, Okabe Rintarou, even if you can be a bit creepy at times. Beneath the plotting to take over the world when you’re still on a strict diet of cup noodles, the borderline harassment, and the pretend kidnapping roleplay, I can tell you’re a great guy.”

He didn’t know how to take that one. It was so out of character for her, he didn’t want to believe that it was the truth. However, Makes Kurisu would never speak words she didn’t mean; she wasn’t that kind of girl. Unless those words were denying her being an @channeler and closet otaku, but semantics were beside the point. 

So she did think of him as a guy still. The affirmation brought a strange warmth to his heart. It was not the response he expected, but a completely different one entirely, all Makise Kurisu every second. He watched her walk away, back to her hotel, and couldn’t help wanting to feel his fingers run through the fateful embers of her flowing hair. 

He wanted her to come back to the lab for the night, for them to work side by side and then fall asleep leaning against each other from exhaustion. He wanted all nighters and to talk in the park like this with her every night for the rest of his life. 

But no, she could never go for a guy like him. She’d said as much so many times the past two weeks. Even now, if Mayuri died again, he would have to jump back to a worldline where the conversation hadn’t happened. His secret would be safe once more, and it would be his choice whether to tell her once more. 

Maybe one conversation was enough. She could never go for a guy like him. That conversation may have been playful and heartfelt, but it wasn’t flirtatious… was it? This Kurisu couldn’t be interested in him; it would defy all logic for such a logical woman. 

Perhaps not on this worldline, but the next.