#like wow your parents aren't terrible I don't understand why you feel sad

[ridiasfangirlings]

Sarumi get hit by a Strain's "walk a mile in someone else's shoes" power, which is basically a combination of time travel and bodyswap. They'll experience the each other's most impactful, formative memories from their other person's perspective. So Fushimi's lonely, abusive home life and pronounced fear of Misaki abandoning him is on full display to Yata. Yata's sense of not belonging before meeting Saru and joining Homra is emphasized just as much to Fushimi.

Maybe this happens post-ROK and helps them finally bridge that last bit of gap between them, like say they've been trying to rekindle the friendship but everything is still kinda tentative and awkward because they can't quite manage to come to understanding. Fushimi's also being really evasive about the real reason he left Homra and it's getting Yata frustrated, like you promised to say it how come this is so hard. It's during this time that the two of them are called to deal with a Strain situation and they end up going together, they're hunting down the Strain when it manages to get the jump on them and attack.

The moment the Strain power hits they both black out for a moment and their bodies collapse. The way the Strain power works is maybe it kinda 'fast forwards' through the other person's important memories and lets you feel what they feel in that moment. For Yata I'm sure this would be a little traumatic, seeing all the shit Fushimi endured from his dad – just imagine Yata still trying to grasp what exactly is going on and he's only just realized that he's 'hitching a ride,' more or less, inside the body of tiny Saru when Fushimi goes to check on his anthill and sees it on fire. Yata gets to feel all of Fushimi's sadness and his own anger spikes so hard, like he knew Fushimi's dad sucked but he didn't realize the extent of that suck. He gets to see how Fushimi was neglected by his mom and abused by his dad as well as eventually discovering to his shock that Fushimi was afraid of Mikoto, which Yata never knew at all. And he gets to feel how lonely and despondent Fushimi gets when they join Homra and Yata seems to be moving further and further away from him, how Fushimi really wants to cry himself when the betrayal happens but won't let himself because he's resolved to destroy the only thing he loves rather than deal with the pain of it breaking (and in the midst of all this too Yata gets to feel how really truly happy Fushimi was for the first time when they met and became friends, and he realizes for the first time just how much Fushimi truly did treasure having Yata by his side).

Fushimi meanwhile is viewing all Yata's life and feelings and I feel like what would make more of a mark for him wouldn't be Yata's abandonment feelings but how strongly Yata still felt for Fushimi through all of it. Like he does feel what Yata feels and so he's aware of Yata's feelings of not belonging but at the same time to Fushimi, who really does know what being abandoned by your family is like, he can't quite fully understand these feelings at all because to him Yata's life is amazing. But then he gets to see how Yata suddenly starts feeling more like he belongs somewhere the moment he meets Fushimi, how to Yata nothing quite fit until Fushimi was there. And when they join Homra Fushimi's expecting to feel Yata only being interested in Mikoto and nothing else, so he's surprised when he discovers that Yata was actually thinking of Fushimi all this time too – that Homra was a family to Yata but that Yata always thought of it as a family for both of them, and how that mark that Fushimi always took as 'Homra's pride' was in Yata's mind 'mine and Saruhiko's pride,' because all along Fushimi never stopped being important to him.