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The apparition floating in mid-air before him bears little resemblance to the wise old man it once took the form of. It’s something that would be impossible to describe, impossible to even imagine if he weren’t seeing it with his own two eyes - a shimmering, ghostly form - somehow coated with swirling darkness while simultaneously being bright enough to blind him. Fluorescent white lights sit in the sockets where its eyes should be, as if there’s a great power hidden there, yearning to burst out. It speaks without moving its mouth, and its voice is a distorted, bellowing cry that inexplicably echoes even within the confines of the tiny room Akira stands in.
“I am the god of control, Yaldabaoth. I had already predicted that things would turn out this way - humanity is far too selfish and corrupt to allow themselves to be saved, even when provided with ample assistance. This world will meet its deserved ruin. However… you, Trickster, have surpassed my expectations. Never would I have imagined you to be so formidable, so determined to succeed in your quest that you would surpass every obstacle placed in your way with such ease.”
Akira is tired. He’s tired of listening to people telling him about things he doesn’t understand, things he can’t understand. He’s tired of having to fight battle after battle only to discover it had been rigged from the start - only to see his efforts go to waste, see the world he’d tried so hard to improve fall into apathy. A world that had once praised the Phantom Thieves for their crusade against corruption, turning against them again so easily. Moving straight on to the next thing as if it were a matter of the latest celebrity scandal, and not saving the world from those who wished to and more importantly would destroy it completely.
Akira is so angry. He’s been burning with rage on the inside at the injustice he witnesses every day for far too long.
“I wish to propose a deal to you, Trickster. You have proven yourself a worthy successor to my power. If you are willing to forsake the bonds you have formed, you may inherit control of this world. It will be a power beyond your comprehension - one which will allow you to mold this world and everything in it to your desires, alter humanity to your preferences, grant any worldly wish imaginable. Those you call your teammates will remain trapped here, in the realm outside of human cognition, however, this is a small price to pay for the power I offer you.”
The small girl by his side clutches the book she holds against her chest tighter. “Trickster,” she whispers so softly, like a gentle chime of bells in the wind, a perfect contrast to the great bellowing voice of the god before them. “Do not allow him to fool you. We must save humanity. You are the only one I can entrust this to.”
All Akira can do is ask the question that has been on his mind since Yaldabaoth began speaking, a question that sparks just the slightest bit of hope inside him, hope that he hasn’t felt in what feels like forever.
“If I take your deal. This… power you’re giving me. Would it let me bring someone back from the dead?”
Lavenza gasps. Yaldabaoth’s face, or rather, the gaping void where Igor’s face used to be, almost looks like it’s morphing into a smile.
“Of course. Removing the constraints of human mortality would be but a small fraction of the immense power you would hold.”
“Trickster! Please! I cannot allow you to give in now! You must save them!”
Akira stands in silence, and thinks. He thinks of his friends, his teammates, trapped somewhere out of sight - of the panic he had felt when he’d watched them vanish into thin air right in front of his eyes. Of how powerless he’d felt. Of how powerless he felt over everything, how all the hearts they’d changed had led to nothing in the end, how the world demanded saving while doing nothing to help save themselves - demanded a hero then scorned him when one appeared.
He thinks of how apathetic he has become to the idea of being that hero. Of how tired he is of being expected to sacrifice his own happiness to save people who wouldn’t ever know or appreciate it. Of how tired he is of being told what to do.
He thinks of a kindred soul - one who had understood him like no other. Late nights in an empty cafe with a boy who spoke to him about philosophy and free will and the meaning of life, and made him feel as if he finally had a place in the world. He thinks of a dark metallic cage of a room, a gunshot ringing in his ears as he frantically pounded against the heavy door separating him from the other half of his soul. Of how deeply, horribly unfair it all was, for it to end that way, for such a strong, defiant, spirited life to come to an end at the hands of a man who would never even face justice for it. No funeral to say goodbye, no grave to visit - the masses who had once worshipped him forgetting his name, his face.
Akira thinks of how little time they had, how he never got to say the things he needed to say. Of his twin soul, lost to the vast sea of the dead and forgotten parts of humanity, treated as if he’d never existed even by Akira’s own friends.
He steps forward, firm in his resolve even as Lavenza cries out another plea, tries to grab onto his coattails to hold him back.
“I accept your deal.”
In the centre of the Shibuya crossing, Akechi stands and stares out at the crowds around him. He takes a step forward, then another. Looks up to the sky where tiny white flakes are drifting downwards, catches one on the tip of his finger and watches it melt. The chatter surrounding him is so loud he can barely pick out individual words, but he thinks he hears someone mention something about Christmas.
He doesn’t remember how he got here. The last thing he remembers, he was in Shido’s palace, facing down that twisted awful cognition of himself, ready to accept his death. If he thinks rationally about it, goes over the possibilities in his head - he knows it's possible that he was somehow kicked out of the Metaverse right before the cognition could deal the final blow. It's possible that he could have somehow survived and simply been left unconscious for Akira and his friends to find their way over to his side, heal his wounds and drag him out of the ship back into reality.
But he's been thrown forcibly out of palaces as they collapsed before. He knows what it feels like, and it feels nothing like this. Akechi just feels wrong somehow. Every minute movement of his body feels stiff and unnatural, like he’s forgotten how to move, how to be a person, how to exist.
The crowds keep on moving around him, paying him no mind, as if he’s simply invisible. A few days ago, at the height of his popularity following the supposed downfall of the Phantom Thieves, he had been unable to leave his home without being mobbed by fans. He’s struck by the horrifying realisation that he has no idea how much time has actually passed since then.
All he really knows is that he’s not supposed to be here. He’s supposed to be dead, and yet for some reason, he isn’t.
He’s still frozen, paralysed, just watching the world move around him as his slow, dulled mind tries to process what could be going on and what on earth he’s supposed to do next, when he’s drawn in to a familiar face in the endless crowds, like a lighthouse in a vast, dark ocean. A beacon of light in a world of grey. In the overwhelming relief he feels at seeing Akira here, in this world that feels so unnatural, he almost doesn’t question why his presence suddenly seems so blindingly bright, why the crowds around him seem to fade into obscurity as if they’d never been there to begin with, why the magnetism drawing him to Akira feels like a heavy pull deep inside his chest that physically hurts.
Something is very, very wrong.
“Akechi!” Before he has the chance to even begin to figure out anything at all, Akira is running at him, throwing his arms around him and Akechi is left stunned by the sudden warmth, by Akira pulling him in so close, squeezing tightly around his back and burying his face in his shoulder. All his senses are overloaded, between the smell of coffee beans and Akira’s shampoo, and the hands running over his back, cradling him against Akira’s chest, holding onto him as if he’s something precious.
“You’re alive,” Akira says, muffled against his neck, and Akechi can feel the heat of his breath against his bare skin.
“I… suppose I am.” Akira squeezes tighter, and Akechi feels like he’s being crushed, but it feels good. He instinctively wants to lean into it, let himself be swallowed whole by Akira’s arms, let his joints dislocate and muscles hang lax and useless as he’s crushed into nothingness. Instead, he moves his own arms, awkwardly, hesitantly letting them settle against Akira’s back, feeling him sigh and pull him in impossibly closer in response.
It’s been so long since he’s felt human contact like this. He thinks the last time must have been when his mother was still alive, when she’d hold him in her arms and cry into the top of his head and he’d hold her back, hoping beyond hope that it could somehow make her feel better. Now, even though his mind has forgotten how to respond, his body remembers, relaxing into the warm arms encircling him, feeling tension he’s been carrying round for almost ten years dissipating, letting his mind go pleasantly silent and comfortably empty as he replaces all his anger, all his despair, all his concerns and questions and doubts with nothing but Akira.
“You’re really alive,” he repeats, and in that moment Akechi believes it. He breathes in Akira’s scent, nuzzles into his neck and doesn’t say a word. It feels like an eternity might have passed before he finally lets go.
“It’s Christmas Eve.” Even without his arms wound tight around Akechi’s back, Akira doesn’t step away. Like this, face-to-face, his gaze is so sharp and bright that it’s a little terrifying. “Spend the evening at LeBlanc with me?”
Three weeks. It’s been three weeks since the day he entered Shido’s palace with the intent to kill Akira for good this time, along with every last one of his friends. Three whole weeks that he has no memory of. He swallows around the lump in his throat, nods his head because it’s not as if he has anywhere else to be, anything better to do.
Akechi sits at the exact same barstool he always has. Force of habit, really, or maybe it’s a subconscious attempt to seek out some sort of normalcy. The train ride over here had been as eerily peaceful and undisturbed as he had felt standing in the middle of Shibuya crossing. The train had arrived just as they’d got to the station - their carriage had been mostly empty, and they’d even managed to find seats side-by-side. Akira had held his hand the whole way back and Akechi had let him, had wanted to take off his gloves to feel his bare skin against his own, let Akira hold onto him and crawl under his skin and break his bones with the pressure.
Akira pours him a mug of coffee without asking, and it’s perfect as ever. Akechi can feel eyes on him as he drinks, feels the warmth seeping into his core, feels the unnatural stiffness in his body begin to fade. The air around them is perfectly silent, save for the sharp clinks of glassware and crockery as Akira cleans up at the sink. It gives him room to breathe, room to think.
“Did you change Shido’s heart?” is the first thing he asks. He needs to know the answer, and it’s a far less difficult question than the others sitting deep down inside him, burning a hole in his chest. There are some he can’t even begin to put into words.
“I did,” Akira responds, and it makes him feel a little sick to imagine - a mindless, brainwashed version of his father, sobbing and crying and professing his guilt over the crimes he carried out with such ruthless resolve. Even though it’s what he asked for. Even though he feels a little relief at knowing that the version of Shido that he knew is, for all intents and purposes, dead at last.
“But it’s not over yet. They’re trying to cover it up, trying to make it look like he’s lost his mind, stop him confessing everything.” Akira sets down the dishes he was washing, walks down to the end of the bar where Akechi sits. “I’m going to fix it though. I’m going to fix all of it. I promised you.” He takes his glasses off, sets them down on the bartop, leaning in towards Akechi who stays frozen in place, pulse suddenly racing so hard he can hear it in his ears.
“I still can’t believe you’re actually here,” Akira’s sigh crosses the line beyond mere fondness and into something almost reverent, as he tucks a lock of hair behind Akechi’s ear. He doesn’t flinch at the unexpected contact, some mindless part of him taking over as he unconsciously tries to lean against Akira’s hand. His eyes are so bright and Akechi can’t stop staring at endless layers of darkness that draw him in like a moth to a flame. Can’t stop staring as Akira’s tongue darts out to wet his lips, plush and glistening with a warm smile playing across them. “Can I kiss you?”
All the questions on Akechi’s mind had disappeared the second Akira had stepped into his space like that, filling the room with his presence until nothing existed but the two of them. He whispers a hurried “yes,” feeling the word leave his lips, the air pushing itself out of his lungs while bypassing his nervous system entirely, skipping his brain’s input, as if his body’s natural reflex is simply to give in to Akira. His existence is nothing but warm static as Akira cups his face in his hands, leans across the bar to place the first soft kiss to his lips.
It doesn’t stay gentle for long. Akira kisses him again and again, kisses him like he’s starving for it, firm and insistent and possessive, like he wants to own Akechi, wants to meld their bodies together until they become one. Akechi can’t help but meet him with equal enthusiasm, at least until Akira overpowers him, holding him still by the tight grip on his cheeks and sealing his lips over Akechi’s own, forcing his tongue past them, licking across the roof of his mouth and the backs of his teeth like he needs to taste every inch of him. All Akechi can do is sit there and take it, absorb it and revel in it and let it consume him, and he’s never felt anything like this, never felt anything close to this state of sheer bliss. He’s so brainlessly lost to it that he feels like he might just die, might just let Akira steal his breath from inside his lungs, kiss him until he chokes from it. It’s like a high he’s sure no drug could ever provide - his head filled with billowing clouds of ecstasy, soft and warm and safe and entirely disconnected even from his own body as he vaguely registers his arms falling limp to his sides.
Akechi’s body jumps back into action when Akira pulls back, chasing after him without even realising it, feeling the vibration of a soft chuckle against his lips as he practically throws himself at Akira across the bar. They stay like that for what feels like an eternity, and Akechi understands why Akira kisses like he needs it, because once the haze of pure exhilaration begins to clear, Akechi realises he’s been starving for it too. In every challenge they proposed to each other, every brief meeting of eyes across the room, every time he had hated Akira with a burning blaze of rage he couldn’t control - he needed it. He needs it. Needs Akira. Needs Akira to need him.
“It’s getting late,” Akira whispers in between rough kisses that make his lips feel numb. “You can stay, if you like,” his voice is low and sultry and the implications are undeniable, and Akechi wants, Akechi needs him, needs more of this, always, forever.
“Won’t your cat get in the way?” It’s an idle question, half a joke, but the way Akira freezes up beside him, pausing as he places intoxicating kisses along the side of Akechi’s neck, sets off alarm bells ringing inside his previously empty head.
“No,” Akira responds, going back to blessing every inch of exposed skin with reverent kisses and licks, “he’s not here”.
As if a spell has been broken, the scene in front of him shatters like tempered glass into tiny fragments. Akechi is no longer floating outside of his own body, hypnotised by Akira’s steely gaze and his soft lips and his pacifying touch. His brain kicks into action instantly, going over all the little details and inconsistencies and analysing them for answers. Akira had said something earlier that was incredibly strange, even though he hadn’t registered it as such at the time.
“Akira,” Akechi pushes him away, feels the ache in his chest, the inexplicable force trying to punish him for separating them. “Where are your friends?”
“What?” Akira blinks at him. Akechi has to force himself to look away. “What do you mean?”
“You said you're going to fix things regarding Shido,” he slips back into familiar territory, picking out details that stand out - a slip of the tongue, an unusual speech pattern he hadn’t immediately noticed. “Do you plan to do so without your teammates?”
Akira stares straight ahead. Wets his lips again. Fiddles with the cuff of his shirt.
“Akechi,” he places a hand against Akechi’s cheek again. The touch burns. He wants to move away from it, but his body won’t let him. “It’s fine. They’re fine. I’m going to save them. I’m going to fix everything.”
Akechi’s heart is caught in his throat. “What did you do?”
“I saved you,” he answered without hesitance this time. “I brought you back.” Akira’s holding his face with warm hands, gripping him tightly on either side so he can’t move, can’t get away, can’t do anything but look into those blindingly bright eyes, luring him in, pushing him underwater, sinking down, down, down. “And I’m so happy I did. I can’t imagine having to live without you. I needed you, I need you, you can’t even imagine how much-”
“Stop it,” his voice is weak, chest tight, panic rising when he tries to pry Akira’s fingers away unsuccessfully. “Stop!” it comes out more forcefully this time, bordering on hysterical and it’s enough to shock Akira into letting go, the pain reflected in his eyes threatening to pull Akechi under again, and all he can think is that he has to go, has to leave, has to get out of here right fucking now and he’s out of the door and heading for the train station before he can think a second longer, body shaking with adrenaline and numb in the places Akira had touched him.
Something is very, very wrong, and Akechi is going to find out what. He’s going to make it right, because it’s the least he can do with this borrowed life he’s been given.
The news is all the same. He flips through the channels obsessively, staring at the overly bright TV in his otherwise pitch dark apartment until his eyes hurt. It never changes.
“Yet another high-ranking official has come forward with a confession to corruption, bribery, and taking part in ordering political assassinations. This marks the fourth since the recent-”
“Ken Kubota, 53 year old CEO of the highly successful financial conglomerate Aspire Finance, has confessed at a public press conference to a number of crimes linked to former running candidate for Prime Minister, Masayoshi Shido-”
“A psychological evaluation of Mr. Kubota found that he was of sound mind, leading to the conclusion that this sudden confession may be connected to the changes of heart conducted by the self-identified ‘Phantom Thieves’, known to have been operating over the past eight months. Despite the lack of the usual ‘calling card’-”
“The Phantom Thieves of Hearts strike again! We’re here today with the most dedicated Phanboys we could find, ready to weigh in on this latest streak of confessions from corrupt businessmen and politicians alike! It really is incredible how fast they’re working, only two days since the last-”
He switches it off. It’s been like this for days now. An endless cycle of sitting alone in the darkness, flipping it on and off and growing increasingly frustrated and desperate with every passing minute. He hasn’t been able to sleep much. He definitely doesn’t want to go outside. What little he’s seen of the outside world is horribly unsettling in a way he still can’t put his finger on. It’s like how he would imagine it might feel to have someone move all the furniture in your home a couple of inches to the left - it might not be immediately obvious, and you might question whether you’re just imagining things, but it would feel noticeably, undeniably wrong all the same.
Or maybe he really is just losing his mind. Maybe he really did die, and this is purgatory, a distorted world created to punish him for his sins.
Whatever this is, Akira is connected to it somehow, and Akechi has a good idea of where he might be. The MetaNav still sits there on his phone screen, flashing bright red and taunting him with what he knows he has to do.
He’s afraid. It’s such an unfamiliar feeling. He’s never been afraid to die, still isn’t now, he knew the risks when he started out on his path to revenge against Shido. He knew that whether it ended with Shido killing him himself, or being sentenced to death for all the lives he had taken, it was inevitable that he wouldn’t survive for long after. There was nothing left for him after that, anyway. He might have feared his plan’s failure, but it had never really occurred to him as a plausible outcome. When he was dedicated enough to sacrifice his life for this, to sacrifice the lives of so many others, how could he possibly fail?
But this isn’t a fear of death. This is the fear that there may be a fate far worse than death waiting for him.
Akira had said that he’d brought him back. Not just rescued him from Shido’s palace, got him out in time before he succumbed to his injuries, but brought him back, and he’s been trying to avoid thinking about what that means. About what that will mean, for his future.
He’s afraid, but he refuses to become a coward. Refuses to let himself rot in this room any longer while the entire world around him could be in jeopardy. He’s never been a hero, that was simply never a path available for him to take, nor does he care if those who blindly followed Shido are punished for it. But as far as he can tell, he’s the only one who can see that there’s something not right about this world. The only one capable of doing anything about it. He wonders idly whether this may be fate. Much as he’s always despised the concept, it feels fitting, to be given an opportunity to give something back to the world he’s taken so much from. Equilibrium. His own life for those he took, going down fighting whatever this malicious power may be, the least he can do to attempt to rebalance the universe.
As soon as he sets foot inside Mementos, he can sense that something is wrong here, too. It takes him a moment to notice the thick, silver chains wrapped around the subway turnstiles, similar-looking pieces of metal embedded in sections of the walls. But even placing all that aside, he can feel the change in the air - where it had once buzzed with static electricity in a way that had been most difficult to adjust to on his first few trips down here, it is now eerily still. Calm, silent, but with a distinct weight to it that makes it hard to breathe.
He performs a preliminary scan of the areas he has access to, detecting a vague presence somewhere in Akzeriyyuth. He has to descend further and explore the individual floors himself to actually find Akira - Loki’s navigational powers were developed via necessity rather than being innate, and aren’t nearly as advanced as Sakura’s or the cat’s. It’s ironic, that he’s only now beginning to realise how much of a disadvantage he’d been at by completely dismissing the notion of accepting help from anyone else. Not that he would have been able to find anyone willing to help him on his murderous crusade regardless.
Akechi comes across him somewhere around the middle of the section, on a floor eerily devoid of shadows, almost as if they’re avoiding Akira, scattering in fear. As Akechi draws closer to where Akira - where Joker stands, facing off against a human shadow he doesn’t yet recognise, he almost feels like doing the same. Joker has always had a strong presence in the Metaverse, glowing with an aura of immense power, but now, it’s utterly oppressive. The Persona that materialises behind him is an enormous monstrosity of a demon, vast black wings spanning the width of the tunnel entirely, gold horns on its head which appear to be corroding, the same darkness that envelops the rest of its body creeping onto them in patches of ebony.
He couldn’t come any closer like this even if he had wanted to, so he waits, watches Joker as his Persona strikes the shadow down with a single blow, as it collapses to its knees and barely has time to beg for its life before it dematerialises, vanishing into black static, Joker grabbing the tiny orb of light it left behind. He whips around, masked face breaking into a wide grin as he sets his sights on Akechi lurking in the shadows.
“Good to see you here, Crow,” he looks him up and down with that sharp gaze, and Akechi feels oddly exposed, as if he’s being put under a microscope and examined by a scientist in a lab. “I like this outfit better. Looks good on you. It’s a relief, not having to hide anything, isn’t it?”
Whether it’s an attempt at provocation or not, he doesn’t care. He chooses to ignore it regardless.
“What was that Persona?”
Joker shrugs casually. “It’s just my Persona. I don’t know its name. I don’t need to know.”
“What happened to the others?” When they'd fought alongside each other, even before then as he'd watched from the shadows, Akechi had seen Joker rotate through a seemingly endless stream of different Persona in battle. Calling out name after name, wielding each one as if he was one with it, as if he knew it perfectly.
“Gone. I don’t need them.”
Akechi feels the need to check just to make sure, but both Loki and Robin Hood still reside within him, their presence clear and seamlessly part of him as ever before. He grits his teeth, decides to try a different question.
“So you’re the one who’s been causing all those changes of heart?”
“Of course,” he tosses his dagger up into the air, watches it spin before deftly catching it with a gloved hand. “I told you I was going to fix this.”
“Your friends still aren’t with you.” Akira’s presence is somehow still intimidating even like this, even though he looks the same as ever.
“I never imagined you’d be so concerned about them.” The glint in his eye is teasing, that spark of friendly rivalry Akechi has seen from him so many times before. It’s unnerving now.
“Akira,” his voice comes out as a hiss. He’s so frustrated with all of this, the dodging of questions, the attempt at friendly banter, the flirtation and care and kindness Akira shows him as nothing more than a distraction. “Tell me what’s going on. Something isn’t right. You’re not right.” The air feels thicker than ever as he struggles to gasp in desperate breaths between words. “I’m supposed to be dead, aren’t I? Why am I alive, Akira? What did you do to me? What did you- do to your friends? Tell me. Tell me- what this is.”
It doesn’t hit him until he’s already there that he’s stepped forward into Akira’s space, grabbed hold of the lapels of his coat, clutching desperately at the fabric as if his body can’t bear to be away from Akira. It’s horrifying. His hands are shaking. His legs feel like they will collapse from underneath him if he lets go.
“Akechi,” Akira sighs, hands trailing along his arms and coming to rest at his shoulders. He hates the way it instantly calms him, quiets the tremble in his limbs and fills his weakened body with energy like a shot of adrenaline straight to his heart. “Goro,” it’s the first time he’s heard his given name spoken like that since his mother was alive. Spoken not in a mocking tone from some overly-familiar disgusting old man he’d been introduced to by Shido, but with care and delicacy, as if it were something beautiful. “I’m sorry. I should have told you.” With one hand, Akira effortlessly lifts the top of his helmet off his head, runs gentle fingers through his hair. Akechi feels like he’s going to collapse again, like his whole body has turned to jelly, soft and pliant and useless as he leans his weight against Akira.
“I made a deal. It’s kind of a long story but- there was this god, Yaldabaoth, and he offered his powers to me.” He says it so casually, as if becoming a god is as inconsequential to him as making eggs for breakfast. “I used them to bring you back. You- you really did die. And I-” Akira looks like he’s about to cry. Akechi feels like screaming. “I couldn’t stand it. You deserved so much better. So much more.” The hand in his hair suddenly feels like a leash, a tether, something to trap him rather than comfort him. “The others are… well, they’re trapped somewhere, for now. But I’m going to get them out eventually. I can do anything now. I can feel it, this power, it keeps getting stronger. Every time I-” He lifts the treasure he holds in his hand to show Akechi, a bright ball of white light. A piece of someone’s soul, ripped away from them by force. It was probably another one of Shido’s associates. They probably deserved it.
Looking at the treasure, at the determined look on Akira’s face, like he holds the entire world in his hands, still fills him with dread.
“You abandoned your friends,” his voice is weaker than he wants it to be. He’s always far too weak when it comes to Akira. “Just to save me? Just to- fuck, just to stop me from making the only fucking choice I ever had that was truly my own? To save the murderer who killed your friends’ parents? How far does your fucked up saviour complex go? You’d- you’d let them die, just to what, change a few hearts on your own? Keep all the glory for yourself? What happened to you?” Even as he snaps and screams at Akira, letting the rage burning deep within consume him, digging sharp metal claws into his shoulders, he still can’t force himself to step back. Still can’t bear to let go.
He remembers a conversation the two of them had, one that feels like it happened an eternity ago now - standing outside the billiards club in the chilly darkness of a November evening. “Why not join me instead? All you’d have to do is abandon the friends you have now.” It had been a test of Akira’s convictions, he’d told himself. That rationalisation hadn’t prevented part of him from hoping Akira would say yes. From hoping that he had been able to see through the metaphors and code-talk, hoping that he would say “I know exactly who you are and what you’ve done, and I still want you by my side.”
He wanted this. He wanted Akira all to himself. Wanted him like he’d never wanted anything else in his life.
“Come on, you know me better than that.” His half-smile looks almost a little sad, and Akechi doesn’t know whether he’s imagining that, simply projecting human emotions onto something that’s no longer human. This version of Akira feels nothing like the one he knew. “I never cared about saving people. This has always been about doing what’s right. About making bastards like Shido pay for what they’ve done.” Akechi sees the very moment his eyes light up, a fire burning behind them that he knows can’t simply be him seeing what he wants to see. “I’m just like you, Goro. We’re the same. That’s why I couldn’t let you go.”
Akira’s lips are on his again before he has time to react, and Akechi loses control, clutching at Akira’s back desperately, allowing himself to be devoured and trying to devour Akira in turn. He can’t control the way his hollow chest aches, can’t control the soft moan that spills from his lips into Akira’s mouth, the way it makes Akira kiss him harder, like he needs to consume him, claim him, take everything from him.
His head spins with thoughts of nothing but Akira Akira Akira - Akira wants me, Akira needs me, Akira wanted me so much he gave up everything for me, Akira sacrificed the whole world for my wretched life - and god, it’s everything he’s ever wanted and he can’t stand it. He’s shaking all over and his eyes are watering with the threat of unshed tears and still he can’t stop kissing Akira. He doesn’t want this. He’s not worth this. The world outside is wrong, wrong in a way that he knows could destroy it, and it’s all because a boy became a god to save him from himself.
It’s all Akechi’s fault. And this is so much bigger, so much worse than anything he’s ever done before.
It had seemed like the logical choice to make, the first time. He had been calm and assured in his decision as he’d secured the rope around the ceiling rafters, tightened the noose around his neck. He’d always thought that this would be the simplest way to do it, if he had ever needed to. No mess, no witnesses, a high chance of success, and the pain before losing consciousness was nothing he couldn’t handle.
Especially since he had to do this. It wasn’t that he wanted to die, not really, but this would set things right, he had told himself. Rebalance the singular irregularity beginning all this. Snap Akira out of his delusional state of mind.
But even after thrashing around at the end of a rope, choking and gasping for air as his hands acted of their own accord, desperately grasping at the tightening noose to try and loosen it as the pressure in his head grew and grew until he felt like his eyes were going to pop out of his skull, even after finally slipping into unconsciousness, feeling the relief that it was all over at last, he had woken up again. Lying on the hard floor, body aching all over, the rope still secured around his neck, but no longer attached to the ceiling.
It had just been an unlucky coincidence, he’d told himself, trying to settle the panic rising up within him.
The next time, he had tried to do things differently. Sitting in the scalding hot water in his bathtub, he took a sharpened knife blade to his wrists, cutting deep along the veins on each side, watching the water turn pink and feeling the blood slowly drain out of his body.
The same way his mother had gone. It felt poetic.
As he’d felt himself grow tired and faint, the fear that it might not be enough had set in, and with the last bit of energy he could summon, he’d brought the blade to his neck, gritting his teeth against the pain as he forced it as deep as he could manage, severing the artery and watching in horrified awe as blood painted the tiled wall beside him.
That image, burned into his retinas, was the last thing he remembered before waking up in darkness, feeling returning to his numb body, shivering in the ice-cold water. He had checked his wrists, felt the residual pain lingering there, but had seen no marks, not even a healed wound or a scar. The tiles beside him were clean and pristine white.
Now, as he stands on the subway platform at Shibuya station, it feels less like a logical decision to make in an attempt to fix reality, to right his wrongs, and more like the last desperate cry for mercy from a tortured soul who should have been dead a long time ago. Insanity is repeating the same action over and over and expecting different results - a quote so ingrained into human consciousness that its original source is ultimately unknown. Akechi knows this to be true, but still, he keeps trying, because he can’t do anything else but try.
Because if he doesn’t at least have control over this, what else is there? If he can’t even die on his own terms, he’s fated to live a life carved out for him by someone else. He’s never been suicidal, but it’s always been there in the back of his mind - an option, a way out, if things ever went horribly wrong or got so bad that there was no salvaging it. The way his life comes to an end has always been his to decide.
Maybe it will be different this time. Crowds form around him, waiting for the train to arrive. Maybe Akira’s powers can heal his wounds, reverse bloodshed, return life to his dead body, but can they really fully undo a suicide with close to a hundred witnesses? Altering cognition on a mass scale, erasing and adjusting memories, putting the pieces of his mangled, dismembered corpse back together like some sort of sick Frankenstein’s monster.
Akechi doesn’t know the answer, but he hopes. And when the tracks rattle with the sound of the oncoming train, wind whipping through the tunnel, he throws himself onto the tracks without a second thought, hearing a cacophony of screams and feeling the impact crush his bones to pieces too fast for his nerves to react, for him to even feel any pain.
He wakes up in his bed, choking on the air that fills his lungs, drowning in the throbbing pain behind his eyes that radiates down the length of his spine, leaving his body paralysed until it slowly melts away, replaced with nothing but the numb, empty feeling of being whole again. He lifts his hand, and it responds. Clenches his fist and smashes it into the bedside table beside him with all the force he can manage. It throbs and burns, shooting needles of hot agony down the length of his arm. His throat feels dry and closed off. His eyes burn.
He still feels. Still hurts. Still lives.
Akechi never got to see the moment of Shido’s public confession. He had been dead at the time, after all. But Akira has told him about it, in those brief moments of weakness when Akechi still goes to visit him, when he gets tired of hiding out in his apartment just living and breathing and doing nothing. When he misses Akira enough for it to become a need, because as much as he doesn’t want to be around him at all, he does still miss Akira every second they’re apart.
But as it turns out, he will get to see the trial where he’s sentenced to death for his crimes. It’s televised, for some reason, like it’s some fun public spectacle for people to gawk at and not one of the most powerful men in the country being tried for ordering the deaths of hundreds, and ruining the lives of far many more.
No, he knows exactly why it’s happening this way. It’s Akira. It’s always Akira.
He watches as Shido is brought out to testify by the dead-eyed, hypnotised, soulless robots that are the court bailiffs. The judge has the same look in his eyes, as do the crowds sitting in the stands, the attorneys, every one of Shido’s co-conspirators who has testified before him. It makes him want to look away. To hide from what Akira’s done, what he’s done. He doesn’t.
Shido stands before the packed courtroom, visible tears welling up in his eyes before he’s even spoken a word. It’s disturbing. Akechi couldn’t even imagine what it would look like, Shido crying, showing genuine remorse. The person on the TV screen bears no resemblance whatsoever to the proud, ruthless, cunning man he once knew. He hates it. He’s fantasised about making Shido cry and beg for forgiveness on his knees for so long, and yet actually having it is nothing like he’d ever thought it would be.
As much as he had despised the way Shido would talk about murder in casual conversation with a smug smile on his face, as if it were all just entertainment to him, Akechi misses it now. He would much rather see that than whatever this is. This isn’t Shido. It can’t be.
He looks about two seconds away from breaking down completely through his entire speech, as he talks about how he used an unnamed assassin to order the deaths of so many people - Wakaba Isshiki, Kunikazu Okumura, some names that even Akechi doesn’t recognise. He stopped keeping count a while ago, learned to switch off his brain and disconnect his victims from their humanity. Never remembering their names, their faces. Each one just a shadow dissolving into black sludge when he put a bullet in its skull. He half wishes he could still do the same now, looking at the soulless beings calling themselves human. Wishes it didn’t feel like being stabbed through the chest with every breath.
Shido doesn’t mention his name. Nobody asks who this mysterious assassin is. Akechi wants to punch a hole through the television screen. How dare they try to erase what he’s done? Like it never mattered. Like he didn’t kill all those people with his own two hands. Like it was never a choice he made out of his own free will. Like all that death and suffering and pain is simply inconsequential, utterly unimportant as long as their unrepentant murderer gets to stay free and alive.
He hates Akira more than he’s ever hated anyone in his life. Possibly even more than Shido.
It’s hard to feel anything anymore, looking at the pathetic, snivelling wreck of a man sobbing about how deeply he regrets everything he’s done. He’s spent three years working towards something just like this, and now that it’s happening, it’s so deeply unsatisfying. He doesn’t think he’s ever going to feel satisfied. It really was all for nothing.
His fingers itch with the need to do something, something more than just watching as everything his life had once been dedicated to falls apart in front of his eyes. He picks up his phone and sends a message. Tells himself he’s just doing it as a test, just trying to figure out the extent of Akira’s powers. Not that the knowledge will help him much. Not that he can even do anything to change any of this.
I want Shido brought here.
He watches it happen in real time, as the live broadcast is cut short by the bailiffs ushering Shido out of the courtroom urgently. He stares unblinking at the screen, even after it goes dark completely. His heart is racing, his breathing too loud in the empty silence of his apartment. He can’t quite believe it’s actually happening. Akira had told him he could have anything he wanted, that his powers belonged to Akechi too, but he had rejected the idea wholly out of principle. Even if he still went to see Akira, even if that itself already made him a hypocrite, he certainly wasn’t going to go as far as to actually encourage him in abusing this power any further than he already was.
He still opens the door when he hears the knock. He has to know. Has to see it for himself.
Shido is already on his knees in front of him, wet red-rimmed eyes gazing up at him pleadingly. It’s jarring, disconcerting, hideous. It makes every muscle in his body tense up, sends a shiver down his spine, raises goosebumps along his arms.
“Akechi,” in that same voice he’s heard speak his name with firm, demanding insistency - Shido now croaks it out like just saying it is causing him physical pain, killing him from the inside. “I’m so, so sorry. I’m so sorry for what I did to your mother, to you, I never should have left you, you’re, you’re my son, and I just… abandoned you.” He sobs, loud and ugly and awful, burying his face in his hands as his shoulders shake with every ragged, gasping breath he takes. Akechi can’t move. He’s stuck where he is, staring at some spot on the floor far behind Shido, vision blurring as his consciousness leaves his head. “I love you, Akechi. I’m so proud of you. You’re so much better than I ever was, you’re smart, and successful, and you’re kind. I made you do so many horrible things but you’re not like me, you’re not like that at all, you never wanted to do any of it, did you? But I made you, and I’m so sorry, I don’t deserve your forgiveness, I know that nothing I do can ever-”
He turns around, refusing to listen to another word. Heads straight for his bedroom, for the case he keeps hidden under his bed. The gun Shido gave him. The one he had brought into the Metaverse on every mission - capable of actually killing a shadow rather than simply weakening it like the fake model raygun Akira had given him. Capable of killing a real person in the real world.
Shido stays on his knees as Akechi points the tip of the barrel directly between his eyes. He doesn’t try to run, doesn’t plead or beg for his life, doesn’t even look afraid. He just stares up at him with empty, sad eyes.
“Don’t you ever act like you know who I am. You have no fucking idea. Don’t you dare tell me what I wanted or didn’t want to do.” His hand is shaking. He concentrates everything he has on holding it steady. “I wanted to do it. I chose to kill all those people. Nobody forced me to. You. Don’t. Know. Me. You don’t know what I’m capable of.”
Shido opens his mouth to respond, and before he can get a word out, Akechi pulls the trigger. It’s the first time he’s ever actually killed someone outside of the Metaverse. Not a shadow, nor a cognition, but a living, breathing human being. He’s not prepared for the hard recoil, the ringing in his ears from how loud the blast is. He’s not prepared for the way Shido’s brains splatter across the wall behind him, blood black and purple more than it is red, lumps of grey brain matter and fragments of yellow-white bone obliterated into tiny flecks. A powerful wave of nausea crashes over him. He pulls the trigger again, just to prove to himself that he can. His aim is all off, with Shido’s body being slumped backwards now and his own hand trembling too violently to possibly keep it on target. The bullet goes through one of Shido’s blank, dead eyes, exploding it into a bloody mess of viscera.
He barely makes it to the bathroom in time before his stomach is lurching, convulsing, forcefully expelling its contents in painful retches that burn his throat, making him feel like his whole body is being torn apart from the inside, some malevolent force reaching deep down inside him and ripping out his organs. It feels like it goes on forever, a fire burning from his abdomen all the way up to his throat, dry heaving over and over long after his stomach has emptied itself completely. His whole body is shaking now. His eyes watering from the exertion. It hurts. Everything hurts. Some part of him likes that. It feels satisfying. It feels right.
It’s hours later when he finally manages to gather the courage to leave the bathroom, to face the mess outside his front door again. He hates himself for being so cowardly. For proving Shido right. He may have killed hundreds of people, but he’s never been a killer by nature. He wasn’t built for it. Everything in him tries to reject it.
When he opens the door, however, he’s met with an empty, clean hallway. No dead body staring up at him with its singular eye. No brains splattered across the wall. No bloodstains seeping into the carpet.
Part of him wants to call Akira and scream at him down the phone for taking this away from him too. For erasing every horrible thing he’s ever done, for not letting him make his own mistakes, be the person he chooses to be, face the horrors he’s created as he deserves to. Part of him silently thanks him.
Akira is staying over at his apartment again tonight. He’d said no, the first few times he’d asked. Refused to let him come over at all for a long time, and even though Akira knew where he lived, even though Akechi wouldn’t have been able to stop him, would have turned weak and docile the moment Akira had been at his door, he had respected it. Akechi preferred going to see Akira instead on his own terms, the knowledge that he could leave whenever he wanted, stop going altogether and never see Akira again, had been one of the last little fragments of control over his own life that he still had to cling to.
But at least, like this, he doesn’t have to leave his apartment. Doesn’t have to go outside, walk alongside reanimated corpses masquerading as human. Brainwashed zombies chattering endlessly about the fantastic Phantom Thieves and how they have saved the world. He doesn’t watch the news anymore either. He’s tempted sometimes, but it’s like a slow form of torture. He already knows what it will be, anyway. Knows that Akira is changing hearts at an increasingly rapid pace, having criminal after criminal come forward and confess, dozens of them per day. His powers have clearly grown stronger. If Akechi had ever had any chance at stopping him, it’s probably gone by now.
Probably.
He’s not sure whether he wants to anymore. Whether he even cares. He’s just so tired. Just wants it all to be over. The rest of the world can go to hell, they all fucking asked for this anyway. But something inside him, the same spark of rebellion that had blossomed into the raging, destructive inferno that is Loki - the part of him that had been furious about being treated like dirt, walked all over, abandoned and cast aside - it still keeps on urging him to fight back. To do something before it truly is too late.
While Akira is making him dinner (making them dinner, because there’s a them now, and it’s so sickeningly domestic and normal that it makes him want to tear his own eyes out) - he slips into the kitchen beside him, feigns interest in whatever vegetables he’s got sizzling away in an expensive-looking wok he’d insisted on bringing over himself. That aura Akira has is so overwhelmingly powerful now that he almost forgets himself, almost gets drawn in by it and changes his mind right then and there, but he resists. He fights back, because he’s been fighting back his whole damn life, and giving up now would be giving up everything that makes him who he is.
He grabs the sharpest kitchen knife he has from the drawer while Akira isn’t looking, slides it up his sleeve. It’s the same one he used to try to kill himself, however long ago that was now. It seems fitting.
It’s hard to keep his breathing steady as he sits back down by the table, nothing else to do but wait. Wait wait wait and feel every agonising second pass by, every tick of the clock like a knife in his own ribs. It won’t work, he repeats to himself over and over. It can’t be that simple. Akira is a god. He’s not sure whether he’s trying to talk himself out of it or give himself the courage to go through with it. Not sure whether it would be worse if it does work, because what is there left for him, after that?
Akira sets down two bowls in front of him, sits beside him on the floor, tucks his hair behind his ear so gently and kisses him on the cheek, and it makes his stomach flutter and his heart hammer inside his chest and it’s all the resolve he needs because he can’t stand this any longer. He pulls Akira into a tight hug, arms wrapped around his back, breathing in the scent of coffee and peppermint just like he had all those months ago, and it makes his muscles lock up, his chest constrict painfully, his eyes sting.
In one fluid movement, he grabs the handle of the knife from his right sleeve, slips it out and plunges it into Akira’s back with planned precision, sliding effortlessly between his ribs and straight into his heart. Akira’s body goes still, for just a moment, and Akechi can’t breathe at all. He’s stuck there holding him, eyes squeezed tightly shut, jaw clenched, trying to block out the sticky squelching sound it had made, the scent of blood filling the air.
Then Akira begins to shake in his arms. It takes him a few panicked, breathless moments to realise that he’s laughing. Akira pulls back from his hold with ease, Akechi’s limp arms falling to his sides, and he’s smiling so brightly when he cups Akechi’s face in his hands, touches their foreheads together. The knife stays stuck straight through him, protruding out of his back, blood soaking into his shirt and dyeing it a deep red.
All the fight drains out of his body at once, leaving him cold and aching and empty. He’s never felt so helpless. He wants to scream, scream for help that he knows will never come, scream simply so he can feel himself scream. He hates Akira, hates him for doing this to Akechi, to the world, to himself. Mostly he hates himself for the fact that seeing Akira still alive and breathing even with a knife through his chest is like a soothing balm of relief against the aching hollow inside him.
“I hate you.” He hates Akira for everything he is, for everything he could have been, for what he did and what he failed to do. For deciding that becoming a god and keeping the entire world enslaved and under his control was a better choice than letting Akechi die as he should have, as he deserved to. “I hate you so fucking much.” He chokes on the words, chokes on his own breath as he sobs, loud and ugly and awful, body shaking with it, eyes burning as hot tears stream down his cheeks uncontrollably.
“That’s okay,” Akira whispers against his lips. “That’s okay, because I love you, Goro. I love you so much. You can hate me all you want, but it’ll never change that. Nothing will.” It hurts. He hasn’t cried like this since his mother died. Hasn’t let himself. He’s never felt so vulnerable, so delicate, so desperate and pathetic and utterly helpless to give in to Akira. He hates, hates, hates that Akira’s lips on his are the sweetest thing he’s ever tasted. Hates that surrender feels like happiness.
He knows now, that part of it is simply the influence Akira's powers have over him. Knows that even without trying, Akira is pulling him in constantly, hypnotising him against his will. That anyone would be unable to resist being dragged under, in the presence of a god.
But Akira has always had that effect on him, hasn't he? Even before. Some part of the way he always sinks into Akira's touch, yields to his warmth, basks in his glowing presence, is all Akechi.
Akira loves him. Akechi didn’t even need to hear him say it to know, he’s more than proven it with his actions already. All he’s ever wanted was for someone to love him, someone to want him, someone to need him. Someone to love him so much they destroy themselves for it. It’s wonderful, glorious, it lights up a fire inside him and fills the hollow void with warmth and light.
It makes his body ache with every desperate hitching sob. It makes him wish he was dead.
Akechi lives with Akira now. Not in his apartment, but in some ridiculous giant mansion Akira must have created simply by willing it into existence. The halls are vast and ornately decorated. It has a swimming pool, tennis courts, a home cinema, a game room with darts and billiards, even a perfect recreation of the jazz club in Kichijoji he loved so dearly. It’s everything he’s ever wanted, so far above and beyond anything he ever could have imagined as a kid sharing a bed with his mother in a cold studio apartment, a teenager living in a group home with all the other abandoned unwanted remnants of society, living in fear of being beaten by kids and adults alike if he were to step out of line.
It’s so empty. There’s not a single other person in sight. He hasn’t left the confines of the mansion’s grounds in what must have been months now. It’s not that he can’t. Akira would let him do whatever he wanted, go wherever he wanted to go, leave anytime. But there’s nothing for him out there. There wasn’t before, and there certainly isn’t now.
He’s sure Akira’s powers must be strong enough to bring back his friends by now, but when Akechi last asked him about it, he was met with a blank look and a dismissive comment. He hasn’t brought up the subject since.
Akira is away during the day. He’s out changing more hearts, Akechi assumes, though he wonders how many can really be left at this point, wonders how far Akira has to go before he’s finally satisfied. It’s not as if it matters to him either way. Not as if there’s anything he can do to stop it.
He leaves perfectly prepared meals in the fridge for Akechi, so he doesn’t have to do anything for himself anymore. He’s thought about seeing what would happen if he refused to eat, if he let his body waste away to skin and bones, whether that would finally kill him, whether Akira would force him to eat or simply restart his heart over and over every time it stopped. But the food always looks so good, and nothing will ever really change, so there’s no use in making himself suffer for it.
Akira comes home at night, kisses him lovingly but fucks him rough, over the edge of pleasure and into pain, because he knows it’s what Akechi needs. He knows exactly what Akechi needs, all the time. Their bodies fit together as if they were made for each other, Akira whispering sweet words in his ear, filling his mind with honeyed poison, always Goro Goro Goro. He never calls him by his last name like he used to, so Akechi clings on to it, holds his mother’s name close to him, refers to himself only as Akechi and never Goro so that he won’t ever lose this last piece of his identity.
Sometimes he wonders whether it’s only a matter of time until he gives in on that front too.
He falls asleep in Akira’s arms every night, silently wishing that maybe, possibly, if he hopes hard enough, this night might be his last.
He still wakes up alone every morning.