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He wants to laugh.
In the end, it was all for nothing.
All these years of fighting, of attempting to stave off his death—trying and trying to burn out everything within him so he could get away from the death that dug into his very existence like a leech—
Why did he even bother with this in the first place, if this was the result?
What was the point of waking up everyday, clambering across his empty apartment because he felt death's presence grow stronger each day and couldn't function without attempting to purge in the morning, so he could go on with whatever inanity happened in the world?
If he already knew this was how it would end?
He has nothing to blame but himself, and isn't it just ironic that the one thing that will kill him is a version of himself?
Hah. How pitiful, he can't help but lament, you can't even die at anyone's hand except your own.
As he slams the gate shut between the only bond he's ever made in his entire life and himself, he feels, surprisingly, not that different.
Unlike the hypersensitive convolution of using Loki—of feeling anything than apathetic insanity—staring into the blank eyes of what Shido conceived of him in his mind, of course that man wouldn't see him as anything but a doll.
He couldn't trick himself, let alone the man who he shared blood with.
Of all the things that the two of them would share an opinion on.
This was an end coming that he knew was to happen.
His arm trembles.
Cognitive Him sneers, something finally lighting up those doll eyes, taunting him of his foolishness in trusting Shido.
Him? Trust Shido? That's a bigger joke than his progenitor loving him.
He calls it as it is.
Then that mirror of him lights up.
Red eyes burn, the resolute grip of a gun adjacent to him turning white-knuckled.
He blinks at the sight.
Shido thought he cared about him that much?
The sheer audacity of the thought nearly topples him to the ground.
His apathy roars, but is it apathy if it feels like it's searing itself into an open wound on his body?
Is this apathy, or is he just finally turning human in his last moments?
His eyes lock onto his counterpart—of an existence of himself that only exists within Shido's mind—
Red eyes burn.
Oh.
So that's what it was.
Hah.
Turns out he was just angry this entire time.
He eyes the barrel of his cognitive self's gun, and his finger pulls the trigger of his own.
What a joke.