Chapter Text
The last time Akira ever saw her, Mama cried. He didn’t know when it was, or where, though he thought he recalled feeling like they were in a cell with no bars — all he remembered was that Mama cried. That stuck in his head because Mama never cried; she had always been his pillar of strength and kindness, in a tiny child’s world where strength and kindness were otherwise hard to come by. Whenever things got bad, she protected him. As far as young Akira was concerned, his mother was the embodiment of everything good and pure in the world.
The last time he saw her, she cried. She kept apologizing and showering him in kisses and telling him how much she loved him, and she was so sorry, and she’s come back for him as soon as she could. Akira cried too, because he didn’t understand why she was saying such awful things. He was too young for the words ‘divorce’ and ‘custody’ to mean anything to him; the reality of why she had to leave, likewise, fell on uncomprehending ears.
For the first couple of years he was mad at her. He still didn’t understand what had happened — he trusted her, and then one day she was gone like a phantom. If she had ever really cared, she would have stayed.
Later, he grew up and realized who he really should have been mad at: the judge who somehow got it in his head that his scumbag father was a better guardian for Akira Kurusu than her. He realized why, too. Though they lived in a small town, his father was well-respected among the populace, a member of the city council. Akira’s last name commanded attention back at home because it was a tether to the other Kurusu, the well-respected community leader Kurusu. It was built on deception and lies, of course, because the reach of corruption was all-consuming — there was no way that his mother could have won against someone like that. She had to leave, because he would only ruin her life further if she stayed.
(The day Akira realized that was also the day he learned to stop getting upset, and start getting angry.)
And the promises that she’d return someday, sweep him onto her white horse and they would ride off into the sunset together; they were only daydreams, he knew, fantasies that were only possible on the television screen. Not in real life. But still, he couldn’t bring himself to give up on her, because that still felt like its own sort of betrayal somehow.
And besides. When Akira looked down at himself, all grown up, wearing a black-and-white mask and a leather coat and packing ten different knives in every pocket… he didn’t look like something from real life either. Joker the Phantom Thief could have walked straight out of a kaitou anime, but he was real — so maybe there was some merit to those other childish dreams, too.