the thing about. okay so when i first got into dr i was like ‘i think i prefer an outcome where they ultimately cant wake the other ten members of their class and its just the five survivors because then the deaths meant something yknow’ and while i still think that that kind of thing has. yknow. merit and value. i have actually come around to preferring them being able to do it. with one massive caveat.

it takes forever.

it takes at least a year and a half, two years maybe, before they (lets be real, hajime) even gain the knowledge of the system, work out its quirks, beef up its security and tech, connect it to enough power, and build the proper technology to manage something like this, and even then, each person is going to need a unique plan of action. its going to take ages. i think its best if they start from the first death through the last, which has the added benefit of waking the impostor first and gaining a good moral compass and grounding presence. but… i mean. its almost two years before they even manage the first dive into their brain. two years of living alone, just the five of them, of building each other up of building a dynamic, one that works, and of changing and growing because they have no other choice.

so when it comes down to them actually attempting to wake the first person… theres some anxiety. theres some worry. theres a lot of ‘this is going to radically alter how we relate to each other and everyone else’. theres a lot of ‘this is going to make things weird’. theres a lot of ‘theyre not going to understand a lot of things at first not only because its been two years since we all went under and everything has changed in that time but also because the five of us have a fundamentally different relationship now with each other than we will have with anyone else we wake up. thats going to cause conflict’.

and i dont even necessarily mean that in a romantic relationship sense (though if you know me you know im deeply unwell about kuzuhina and also an absolute sucker for polycule shit so yeah i do also kinda mean it in that way), but just that their bond is so strong. living alone on an island in the middle of nowhere for two years with just four other people will do that. they know each other in fundamental ways that the others may never manage. fuyuhiko may get peko back, but her relationship with him will never be the one he has with hajime, or akane, or kazuichi or sonia. sonia will get gundham back, but despite them definitely regaining their romantic relationship (after an adjustment period, of course), there will be an odd dissonance in how well hajime and akane know her in ways gundham doesnt. akane will get nekomaru back in her life. but he will never be the person she goes to with the things she goes to hajime with.

this isnt necessarily entirely negative, of course. relationships are always going to be different with different people because theyre. yknow. different people. but i think theres going to be a period of time, maybe even the rest of their lives, where the ten sleepers in the vault will understand, intrinsically, that the relationship the five survivors has is never going to be fully understood, and will always be special and different from what they all have as a group.

hajime, fuyuhiko, kazuichi, akane, and sonia all faced arguably the hardest parts of the healing process, the stumbling blindly with no hand to hold except the others with an equal lack of sight, together, and that. does things. to a relationship.

they will all manage the healing process, and they will all struggle through it. but never in the same way those five did.