Chapter Text
The path to recovery did not run in a smooth, straight line. Recovery ran much like a winding river, lurching forward, cascading backwards, diverting into a little gully you didn’t know existed before you ran right into it. Akechi hated the process of recovery as much as he liked it, the two emotions scrambling in his chest as the days passed into weeks, as weeks passed into months. Sometimes, recovery was good. Sometimes, it was sitting at home with a coffee and just breathing, accepting that you were alive for better or for worse, that you had a future, that you had a small circle of friends and a therapist and some college courses and that your father was rotting in jail forever. Sometimes, recovery was bad. Sometimes, it was remembering every single person you murdered, their voices cacophonic in your head, your mother’s ghost hovering behind you in a mirror and asking if it had been worth it, had it all been worth it and skipping meals for days when you couldn’t rustle up the energy to pick up your phone, let alone use it to arrange for delivery.
Sometimes, it was just sticking to the routine, it was recognizing spirals and walking forward anyways, making it to the next class, the next therapy session, the next visit to Leblanc. Things weren’t necessarily easy, but that was normal. Things were better even if they didn’t always feel that way, even if the regrets weighed down Akechi’s shoulders, even if the doubts in his head whispered that he should have died on that ship, should have stayed dead through Maruki’s reality, should never have come back at all. That it would have been so much easier for others, if he had just disappeared forever, his revenge finished by the hands of those who should have despised him. Those thoughts led down spirals, spirals that ended in thoughts about how all Akechi brought was death and ruin and despair, and it was when he mentioned that during one therapy session that the idea came up.
His therapist was court ordered, but not court appointed. The court system, in spite of the rampant abuse of it by those who knew about the Metaverse, did not know any specific therapist who knew of the Metaverse that wasn’t already entangled in it. Sae, in one of her many, many moments of kindness, took the time to help Akechi find a therapist who wouldn’t run off the first moment Akechi mentioned the Metaverse, and took the time to make sure Akechi attended those first few meetings. She even provided extensive documentation that Dr. Kaname had no ties to Takuto Maruki and had never met the man, a fact that Akechi appreciated more than he could ever say.
This particular session occurred about a year after Akechi began therapy with Dr. Kaname, approximately a half hour in. Long enough for the normal exchange of pleasantries to be over and for the discussion of skills and techniques, for the dissection of the past week and the past year and the past decade to truly begin. Akechi sat in his chair, his chin propped upon his hand as he mused about his worth and Dr. Kaname listened, her brown eyes never leaving Akechi. She hmm’d as he finished his sentence and set her pen down. “Maybe,” she said quietly, “Maybe you should get a plant. Something small to care for, so you can see that you don’t bring death to everything you touch. Something that’s not a person, so you don’t have to worry about their thoughts.”
“I have never owned a plant.” Dr. Kaname’s office drowned respectfully in plants. Akechi counted five. Two on her desk, short squat little things, a pot of leaves on the shelf by the door, a taller grouping of flowering plants by the sole window, and a giant monstrosity that looked like the one in Leblanc’s attic if it escaped, ate ten other plants, and then got hit by Godzilla’s radiation. That one dominated an entire corner, squatting like an angry, overgrown pomeranian.
“There’s a first time for everything,” Dr. Kaname replied, her hands still folded. Akechi resented her placidity sometimes, how nothing rattled her composure. “You won’t know until you try, Akechi. The worst thing that happens is the plant dies, and then you can try again.”
“It’s going to die,” Akechi muttered under his breath. He knew his track record with living things. Things died around him if he tried to care at all. It was easier to not care, to wall himself up and just--
Dr. Kaname gave Akechi a look and he shook his head. “It may die,” he corrected himself. “But it might also live, and I won’t know until I try.”
His therapist nodded. “I think it will be a good thing for you to try. Here. You can have one of these; they’re called succulents. I’m told they’re almost impossible to kill.”
She pushed forward one of the squat little ones on her desk. Its leaves blossomed out like a squat rose’s, petulant and awkwardly green. No flowers adorned the plant, and when Akechi pinched one of the wax sheened leaves, they sort of puckered. Dr. Kaname smiled. “Just water it once a week and it should be fine. It can be your homework.”
The succulent died within six months. Akechi wasn’t sure how; he watered it like Dr. Kaname said and left it alone in his apartment. But six months later, he stood forlornly over browned leaves and wondered where exactly he went wrong and how he would tell Dr. Kaname. Akechi plucked at the leaves, withered and dry, glaring at them as if that would convince the dead tissue to reinvigorate, reanimate, and return to the state that he’d gotten it in. His first thought was to make some sort of excuse, that he’d tried so hard but oh the plant fell out a window and gotten hit by a car, so sorry Dr. Kaname, what a weird, freak accident of nature.
Terrible really. It wasn’t even a good lie. Besides, Akechi rarely opened his windows even in the summer. People could hear him if he did or they could see him doing his physical therapy exercises, and the thought gave him hives. So it was out the window with the out the window excuse. His gloved finger stopped poking the leaves and began poking the soil. It felt nice and wet. He’d watered it once a week and left it alone the rest of the week. That was what Dr. Kaname told him to do. The watering at least. Maybe he’d underwatered it? Possibly; who knew how much water succulents needed. The guide Akechi briefly read had agreed with Dr. Kaname on the fact that succulents were impossible to kill. Furthermore, it stated that you just needed to keep the soil wet. Seemed simple enough.
But now the plant was dead and Akechi couldn’t let anyone know. How could he admit to murdering a supposedly near immortal plant?
Akira found out about it that evening. Akechi didn’t mean for it to slip out during his biweekly ritualistic visit to Leblanc for coffee, but Akira had a way about him. Akira always had a way about him. It was infuriating how he could turn those soulful grey eyes towards Akechi and suddenly Akechi would confess the stupidest cockamamie fact that had happened in his entire life. Thankfully, now that they were older, Akechi didn’t have much of his youthful asininities left to cover and was now relegated to idiotic confessions like how he hated group projects with the fury of ten thousand dying suns and how he committed plantslaughter.
Akira (damn his all seeing eyes) took everything in stride for some reason. Akechi wasn’t sure why the other man still spoke with him after everything that happened when they were teenagers. To be honest, Akechi didn’t understand why most people who knew him as a teenager still spoke to him, but Dr. Kaname said that was their choice to keep doing so and that Akechi shouldn’t disparage them for choosing to do so. He tried his best, but sometimes that was hard. Especially when one of those people was the man he’d literally shot in the head. Well, had shot the cognitive version in the head, which was just as bad no matter what Akira said. Akechi intended to shoot Akira, shot an Akira look alike instead, and wasn’t about to deny what he’d done. Not that they talked about that day in particular very often, as it was hard to talk about for a variety of reasons, and not just because of semantic arguments on the definition of murder.
In any case, no one else was sitting in Leblanc as Akechi spilled his guts about committing plantslaughter. Thankfully. Akechi had some dignity left, some self awareness, and still remembered that making a fool of himself in front of people not named Akira Kurusu was unacceptable. Not that it was acceptable to make a fool of himself in front of Akira either; Akira just reduced Akechi to foolishness. No, that wasn’t right. Dr. Kaname said that Akechi had to take responsibility for all of his actions, and that included the moronic ones.
Like this.
“I don’t know what I did wrong,” Akechi hissed for the fifth time. Akira remained blissfully silent as he cleaned the counter. “I watered it! Put it in the sun… that’s all plants need right? Water and sun? Some soil, but it already had that. It came with that.”
“The amount of light and water depends on the plant,” Akira said quietly, and Akechi resisted the urge to groan.
“Of course you know about plants, Kurusu. Is there anything you don’t know?” Akira opened his mouth to speak. Akechi jabbed a finger in his direction. “Don’t answer that.”
Akira nodded, setting the rag aside. “I’ll make you more coffee.”
“Thank you,” Akechi said, because while he was a jackass, he wasn’t a rude jackass. Akira smiled, setting about pulling out the right beans. Akechi watched, propping his cheek against one hand. “I don’t know how I’ll explain this to Dr. Kaname. She seemed so certain that I could actually take care of something.”
“You don’t think you can?” Akira set the mug down before Akechi and swiftly assembled the pour over kit. Akechi was a creature of habit in regards to his coffee and Akira knew it. Akira once commented that Akechi’s coffee order was engraved upon his brain, stitched onto the folds like an old incantation. It made Akechi sputter for some reason, and that made Akira smile even as he fidgeted with his forelock.
Nevertheless, Akechi waited to speak until the set up was complete and the beans were set in the filter. Akechi didn’t want to distract Akira; he wanted his good coffee and not half assed, distracted coffee.
“I couldn’t raise a succulent, Kurusu, and from what I’ve researched and been told, those are the easiest plants to maintain. It does not bode well for my caring skills if I can’t manage to keep one alive.” Akechi traced the fine curve of Akira’s fingers as they coiled over the handle of the kettle, as Akira adjusted the filter and grounds one final time before he began to pour. Akira’s fingers remained slim and fine, the scars of the Metaverse faded over the passing years. Very much unlike Akechi’s, where the scars on his hands and body crisscrossed like thorns on a briar stem, hidden by cloth and leather, a constant reminder of what happened, of what he’d survived, of what he’d done.
“I think you could.” Akechi flicked his eyes away from Akira’s fingers to meet Akira’s level stare. The other man met his gaze solemnly, barely glancing down at the pour over as he tilted the kettle just right to ensure a proper flow. “You just need the right incentive.”
“Incentive?” Akechi asked, intrigued in spite of the alarm bells that began to toll in the back of his head. Akira smirked, the bad sort of smirk where the corner of his lip turned up as an idea blossomed. The Joker sort of smirk, the kind that led to fist fights on skyscrapers with god therapists, that led to duels in the bowels of the public cognition, that led to plots that shouldn’t work and yet somehow did.
“Yeah.” Akira finished pouring the water over with a fine flick of his wrist and returned the kettle to its place on the counter. “You need a challenge.”
“I do not! I can do things perfectly fine without a challenge.”
“Mhmm,” Akira waited patiently for the water to continue to drip through the grounds. “I never said you couldn't. I just think the right incentive will help you do better.”
“Oh? Pray tell me Kurusu, what do you think the right incentive is to get me to not kill a plant?” Akechi scowled, directing his irritation at the mug. What did Akira know anyways about Akechi’s ability to care for things? It wasn’t like he watched Akechi’s attempt to take care of the damn plant. He hadn’t told anyone else about the plant before this.
Akira hummed to himself as he kept a close eye on the draining water. “I’ve been thinking of getting a new plant for a while. The one upstairs is getting lonely, and could use a friend.”
“Plants don’t get lonely Kurusu, they’re not sentient.” At least, Akechi hoped they weren’t sentient. He didn’t know if he could deal with sentient plants.
Akira shrugged one shoulder, his fingers deftly detaching the drip from the top of the mug. “Maybe so, but I have been thinking about getting another plant. And I think that it might be fun to turn it into a sort of competition.”
Akechi would not bite. He was not eighteen, he would not sink to Akira’s level. He was older and experienced and his emotional well being did not depend on showing up his rival.
“What sort of competition?” Akechi asked, stretching a hand forward to pince the handle of his mug between his fingers.
“Whoever can grow the best plant by the end of the year has to pay for dinner. Not together or anything, but at some point.” The last bits of the sentence were tacked on uncommonly fast for Akira.
Akechi raised an eyebrow. What was that supposed to mean, not together or anything. What was going through Akira’s brain? Something, but Akechi rarely understood what, even after knowing Akira for so long. But the free offer of dinner was tempting, especially if it meant… “If you make that curry of yours, I’ll consider it.”
Consider, not accept. Akechi still had some dignity somewhere, buried deep in his hole of a soul. He took a sip of his coffee and hummed happily to himself. Akira truly made the best coffee in the city. Nowhere else made it right, and so Akechi never went anywhere else for coffee. Not that Akechi would ever admit that to Akira. He had a shred of dignity left still.
Akira watched; Akechi felt the weight of the other man’s eyes as he cleaned up the drip and disposed of the used beans. Akechi hoped he hadn’t dripped coffee into his collar. Why else would Akira stare so? Akechi opened his mouth to ask why Akira was staring, but Akira beat him to speaking. “Of course. I won’t make you cook for me.”
“A wise decision.” Akechi hadn’t killed anyone with his cooking. Yet. But Sae informed him that he was young, and Akechi knew anything was possible with the current streak he was on. “What are the parameters for winning?”
Akira held up three fingers. “One, the plant is alive. Two, the plant is healthy. Three… well, three, maybe it’s grown a little? I don’t know much about succulents.”
“Aesthetically pleasing perhaps? Who would judge?”
“Haru could. She knows a lot about plants.”
“Hm.” Akechi and Haru rarely spoke. Part of it was due to past choices. Akechi had, after all, murdered her father in relatively cold blood on his own father’s orders. The other was that Haru Okumura worked as a CEO and kept herself busy. But Akechi trusted Haru enough to be impartial or at the very least brutally honest in her own polite way and Akira wasn’t wrong. Haru did know a lot about plants, far more than either Akira or Akechi knew. Of the three of them, she’d taken courses and owned her own garden. Whatever Akechi and Akira did was child's play compared to her forays. “Acceptable. We buy the plants together though, and the base supplies. An equal start.”
“Of course.” Akira nodded, pulling his phone out of his pocket. His fingers curled and splayed about the phone, cradling it. Akechi assured himself it was perfectly normal to watch Akira’s hands as the other man flicked through his calendar, nimble fingers cradling and flipping through the phone as though it was a dagger. “I’m on shift for another three hours, but if you’re free after that, I have time. Morgana is staying with Futaba today.”
“I don’t have any classes today,” Akechi confirmed, and that was how he and Akira ended up at a small plant store four hours later. It was a shop that only Akira would end up finding, tucked away down an alley off Central Street and geared towards hobbyists. It was exactly the sort of place Akira would work at if he still did his five million part time jobs. Thankfully, he didn’t; Sakura made a deal with Akira about college. If Akira didn’t want to go to college, he would work full time at Leblanc to learn the tricks of the trade. Not just the coffee making, but the bookkeeping, the licenses required, everything. All of this left very little time for other jobs, and so Akechi knew that Akira didn’t work at this little flower shop.
Akira walked around it like an old pro, never hesitating. Akechi squinted at the various pots and soils, his hand curled around his phone in his pocket. While Akira worked, Akechi researched. He wasn’t going to mess up this time. This time, he was going to have the best plant. He wouldn’t kill it; he couldn’t afford to. After all, Akira wouldn’t kill his plant. Akira didn’t kill things. Living things. Non-Mementos, non-cognition things. Akira already owns a plant, he took care of Morgana, he took care of everyone around him no matter how much Akechi chided Akira to take care of himself.
It was a stupid competition. One that Akechi would surely lose. But they’d already begun the competition, and had already set the terms. Backing out now was not an option. The research would help him; Akechi didn’t have Akira’s natural talents, but he was an old pro at dragging his body over the proverbial finish line. That determination got him to this point and it would get him to his grave, whenever that happened. It would get him to some sort of victorious living plant that would definitely overshadow Akira’s.
Akira found the succulents first. They sat in their own little corner, a series of racks that rose up to Akechi’s eyes. Akira smiled as he poked and prodded the various succulents. Akechi scowled at the meandering rows. Each little plant crouched in what someone would describe as a cute container, the edges painted lightly in swirls of blues and greens, each barely larger than the plant that contained it. They’d have to be replanted if Akechi had any hope of his plant growing bigger and he mentally calculated the cost of a pot and soil. Not unmanageable, but…
No buts. He couldn’t afford to slack. Akira certainly wouldn’t. Akechi squinted at the rows of plants, each silent beneath Akechi’s gaze. Too small. Too crumbly. Too large. Akechi swept down each row, mentally poking and prodding each specimen. No, no, no….
A particularly pathetic specimen caught Akechi’s attention. Leaves that grew in pairs at the end of each bifurcation pocked the stem, drooping pathetically. If Akechi remembered his frantic research correctly, this was a member of the crassula ovata species. This particular specimen was on its way out, abandoned in the back corner of the display. Akechi tried to move on from it. He would need a better specimen to defeat Akira, one that wasn’t half dead, one that he wouldn’t murder in a month. Akechi required every advantage he could get.
Akechi picked up the stupid plant a second later, cradling the pot between his hands. Akira lifted a brow at Akechi’s choice before quickly smoothing it away.
“What?” Akechi snapped, bringing the stupid plant close to his chest. “Go on, Kurusu, make a choice. Or are you worried your selection won’t beat mine?”
“Never,” Akira replied quietly before reaching out to pluck a squat, many petaled monstrosity off the rack. An echeveria, though Akechi didn’t know which species in particular. He’d only been able to do so much research in the three hour wait in Leblanc. Its leaves were green, tipped with some faint lilac purple tones that stood out against the green of the rest of the leaf and it squatted in its little pot with vim and vigor. “Do you want to buy a bigger pot and some soil?”
Akechi picked out a pot. A reasonable pot, not too big or too small. After all, his crassula would be lucky to survive the month in its current state. It would need all the help it could to get to the next month. Akira flitted around between the choices, mumbling something about brands and something about soil nutrients, before he finally dumped a bag into Akechi’s arms. “It’s only fair we start with the same things, right?” he murmured.
“Of course,” Akechi replied, juggling the soil into the crook of his arm. “What else would you like to start with?”
Akechi left with a small pot, a drip tray, soil, some plant nutrients Akira swore by, and of course his crassula. The subway proved to be a minor nightmare, but nothing untenable. Akira accompanied Akechi to the station before splitting off for the line back to Yongen. They stood near the gates, their arms full.
“In six months, you won’t believe what you see. You won’t recognize my plant at all,” Akechi informed Akira, attempting to hide his internal despair at choosing the plant he felt bad for rather than the one that would grant him a surefire victory.
Akira smirked, the corners of his lips turning up in the way that Akechi hated. That horribly distracting way that scrambled his insides and distracted his thoughts and left him thinking about Akira’s mouth. Awful. He needed to focus, not think about how Akira’s lips curled up like a cat. Akechi would do anything to knock that smile off Akira’s face but he would also do anything to see that smirk, and--
Focus, Akechi chanted in his head. Focus, focus, focus.
“I would expect no less from you,” Akira replied. A look entered his eyes, one of those strange looks that Akira got every so often, the sort that Akechi could never read. Akira paused, his grey eyes inscrutable. “We should take a picture. So we know how the plants started.”
Akechi nodded, averting his eyes to stare down at his plant. Anything was better than that gaze that left Akechi confused. “We should have done this before we left. There’s no place to put them down for comparison.”
“If we hold them against our chests, it should be fine. After all, it’s not like I’m going to grow any taller.” Akira grinned crookedly, digging in his pocket for his phone. Akechi didn’t know how he managed to do so with the rest of his purchases in his arms. “C’mere.”
“Why?” Akechi groused, stepping closer. Akira chuckled and lifted an arm, letting Akechi sidle right up to him. Akechi fumbled with his plant, shifting the soil til it sat awkwardly under the arm away from Akira.
“Would be easier to get both of us in the shot at once. Smile?”
Akechi didn’t smile, but neither did he frown as Akira pulled him close and lifted his phone. He merely stared at the camera and tried to ignore how close Akira was, tried to ignore how warm Akira was and how Akira shifted his arm to bring his own plant into view, jarring Akechi’s side. The shock rippled through Akechi, but he refused to acknowledge it. Instead, he focused on his plant, on turning its best side to the camera to be immortalized forever. Akira hummed to himself, examining the photo before proffering the phone to Akechi.
They stood close in the photo, Akira grinning wide, his shoulders loose as he easily juggled everything in and under his arms, Akechi an almost too studied neutral beside him. Years of being the detective prince couldn’t be erased after all, and neutrality remained the best option for photographs that included his face. If the hint of a smile lingered at the corners of Akechi’s lips, he would deny it. But the plants were the main focus, both clearly visible and judgeable in the center of the frame, Akechi’s sad and Akira’s overgrown, alive and in the hands of their owners.
“Acceptable,” Akechi said, and Akira laughed, pulling the phone to tap at the screen. Akechi’s phone beeped a minute later. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Are you still down to come with us on Saturday?”
Akechi sighed, shifting the plant and the soil and everything else in his arms. “I don’t really understand why you all want me around, but yes. I’ll never hear the end of it from Yoshizawa, Takamaki or you if I don’t.”
“Everyone does like you, you know. You’re our prickly cactus.”
Akechi grimaced. “Goodbye Kurusu.” He ignored Akira’s calls behind him. He was not a cactus. He was not remotely cactus like. He was… Akechi’s grimace deepened as he boarded his train and his phone began to vibrate. He was something else. Something meaner. Akechi stole a seat and arranged his spoils in his lap. It freed his hands enough that he could pull out his phone and read the long chain of text messages from Akira.
The photo led the charge, which Akechi saved, and then a series of messages followed that made Akechi furrow his brow as Akira explained how Akechi related to cacti and their nature. Akechi didn’t know how to reply beyond saying that he was not a cactus. It was the obvious answer, but he was also aware that it was a petulant response and unfitting as a reply in its simplicity. Akechi turned over the comparison, trying to find a way to deny it in a suitable fashion. In the end, he merely texted “I’m not a cactus,” which only prompted more inane texts from Akira. Akechi answered each one. In spite of certain juvenile leanings, Akira was an intelligent person and Akechi liked talking to him.
Not that he would ever admit that out loud. It would give Akira ideas, and Akira didn’t need any more ideas.
All too soon, Akechi stood in his apartment, the crassula and its supplies spread out over the small table that masqueraded as a dining table. Beside it sat Akechi’s laptop, opened to a website on proper plant transplanting, with three other tabs opened on proper care of crassula.
Akechi took a deep breath in through his nose and exhaled it out his mouth, just like Dr. Kaname taught him. Then he took another, and then a third.
“Shit,” Akechi swore to himself, before he started on transplanting his plant from the tiny pot it came into the larger one he’d purchased. After all, it was going to need a lot more room once Akechi was done helping it.
If he could help it. Akechi stood over the crassula, his crooked hands buried in the soil, taking in the sad leaves and thin stem. What if he killed it? What if it died in a week and Akira won before he even needed to do anything? What if it disappeared, having decided--
No. “You better not fucking die,” Akechi informed the plant, settling it into its new home. “If you die, I’ll have to kill you.”
The plant remained silent, accepting its fate with a poise and grace that Goro Akechi could never possess. For a moment, Akechi hated it. But he gave up on that hate a second later; he needed the plant to live to win this stupid competition, and so that meant giving a damn and caring about the idiotic thing.