Chapter Text
"Before we start: everything here stays strictly between us. Nothing will be shared unless you pose a threat to yourself or others."
You nod. You can barely find it in yourself to speak. Chibana, the therapist, looks understanding in a way that you haven’t seen in a really long time. No one else seems to get it. Not even your friends.
"To begin, I read through your personal statement, and you mentioned that you made an appointment because you feel like you're losing your grip on reality. Would you care to elaborate on how it started?"
Her kind expression and gentle tone make your tongue unglue itself from the roof of your mouth. She’s here because you requested her assistance, after all. You should at least try.
If not for yourself, then for him.
"It's a long story. Is that okay?"
She smiles. Maybe this isn’t so bad.
"We have forty-five minutes. You can talk for as long as you need."
"Okay. Let me start with his mother’s favorite place.”
The little pocket of nature Goro takes you to is pleasant. Wind rustling through the leaves, clouds gently moving overhead, distant chirping of birds in the trees--it feels like society can’t touch you here. You can pretend you and he are more than two broken teenagers hanging onto life by a thread, less than Arrow and Crow. Right now, you are just two third-years on the cusp of something.
“What are we doing here?”
He casts a look in your direction, not quite amused but also not quite serious. Maybe a mixture, like he always looked around you. “Can I not just take you somewhere peaceful and spend a few hours with a friend?”
It’s naive hope that makes you think his voice catches on the word “friend.” Even if he weren’t so absorbed in his detective work, you wonder if he would understand how deeply you yearned to be more than just that. To be worth it to him in a way that you’d never been worth it to anyone before.
He calls your name. You forget how to answer. A tugging in your stomach reminds you of the first time you met him. Did he feel the same?
He calls your name a second time. This time, you flinch and draw yourself out of your head. He has the decency to look concerned this time, leaning forward to get a better look at your face. “Are you ill? Was it a bad idea to invite you along?”
“No, no,” you say, hurrying to salvage this and make sure he understands that there is nowhere else you would rather be. To avoid his look, you focus on a flower in the shrubbery, a lone stalk growing high above the grass surrounding it. A red spider lily. Higanbana. You wonder if Goro knows the meaning behind the flower. “Sorry, I just got lost in thought.”
“Ah.” He gives you a half smile. “A common occurrence.”
You purse your lips and nudge him with your elbow. When he doesn’t move away, you’re gratified by the reminder that he doesn’t shy away from physical contact with you like he does the other Phantom Thieves. “That wasn’t an insult, was it?”
His lips curl into a wider smile. “Only if you take it as such, I suppose. The secret of being boring is to say everything, yes?”
“Voltaire.”
“So you have been keeping up.”
For you, I would do anything. The words almost leave your mouth, had you been anyone braver. It makes you wonder if perhaps you don’t feel that strongly for Goro, being so reluctant to voice your true thoughts, but you remedy it by insisting that your silence is a marker of your adoration.
“I can’t have you one-up me in everything.” You hide a smile behind your hand and focus back on that red spider lily. “So far, my only victory over you has been in darts.”
He pouts. “I was going easy on you that time.”
“As if. You hate to be patronized, and you hate acting that way to others.”
His face morphs into surprise, as if shocked that you’d noticed that. He would be even more surprised to know just how much you understood about him: how he pinches the tips of his hair between his fingers when he gets nervous, how his tongue presses against the inside of his cheek during games of chess.
How he only lets you call him by his first name, and no one else.
How he naturally gravitates toward you during conversation and always stays on your left side.
“Perhaps you should have been the detective, not me."
You let out a huff of laughter. “I don’t think I would’ve been able to keep up with that life.”
“As if I can.” Neither of you comment on how flat his half-joke fell. “To think, you asked me a question and we got this side-tracked. Perhaps we hang out too much.”
Fear grips your heart in a vice at the thought of straying from his side, but you swallow it in favor of familiar sarcasm. “Please. You wouldn’t be able to survive without me.”
“I will neither confirm nor deny the truth of your statement.” You exchange a quick smile with him, but his expression almost immediately falls as he turns back to fully face the back of the grove. “This was her favorite place.”
Your brow creases. “Her?”
“My mother. Akechi Hisako. ‘Child of long life.’ Isn’t that ironic?”
He’s told you about his mother before. A sex worker with a heart of gold. A woman with a child borne out of wedlock, who tried her best to keep her two-person family afloat. A mother who took her own life and left behind a child whose father never wanted him.
You wonder if Akira knew about her.
“Did she ever take you here?”
He nods, almost reluctantly, as if wanting to keep this one part of Hisako to himself. You don’t blame him. “Just once. We had a picnic.”
Although his wording is brief, you have a mental image: a woman who looks like Goro, but older and more world-weary, with distinctly feminine curves and long brown hair braided over her shoulder. A red-and-white picnic blanket that matches a slowly blooming red spider lily in the distance. Goro laying across her lap, bright-eyed and laughing, crumbs around his mouth.
“She made me promise that I wouldn’t take anyone here that I didn’t trust with everything I have.”
Your breath catches in your throat. The world grows a little brighter as you and Goro turn in unison. He looks pained, as if wanting you to reassure him of something, but you don’t understand what that “something” is.
He opens his mouth.
You pounce first.
“Goro, what do you think you mean to me?”
It is a loaded question that makes Goro’s face go through a whirlwind of emotions. He settles on a politely neutral and curious one as he asks, “Why?”
“Because I don’t think you do.”
Your words are sharp and pointed. He closes his mouth and looks over your shoulder. His mouth presses into a thin line. If you’ve gone too far by asking that, you cannot find it in yourself to care.
It’s minutes before he speaks again. By then, his voice has grown hoarse, and your legs are beginning to ache from standing still for so long. “I don’t know.”
You nod. “That’s a good answer.” Bracing yourself for the worst, you step forward and put your hand out. He almost acts on instinct, it seems, reaching out for your hand and allowing you to interlace your fingers through the gaps between his. Your hands fit like two puzzle pieces, and although neither of you do anything more to close the gap, it almost feels right.
“Why?” he asks again, voice soft instead of rough this time, but the look in his eyes makes it seem like a matter of life-or-death. “Why must you do these things?”
“Because words cannot express how much you mean to me. How much I would be willing to take apart the world and put it back together in a way that would give you the happiness you deserve.” You take a deep breath and shake your head. “It’s silly. It’s even childish, it seems. But I...want to be there for you, always.”
“You’re not understanding the question.” He clears his throat when his words come out choked. “Why do you think of me so highly? Why do you promise these things when you don’t know if you’ll be able to follow through with them? Why are you still here?”
You look up to the sky. The sun’s beginning to set, painting the world in hues of fire and passion.
How would he react, if you were to tell him what you truly felt?
That you understand the world a little better when he’s around?
That you would not only take apart the world for him, but you would forsake it as well?
That you would be the villain in another person’s story if it meant he would look at you the same way?
Or that somewhere along the line, you had started seeing him in the stars.
Yes, if you were a braver person, you would say all those things.
“Victor Hugo once said, ‘The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather loved in spite of ourselves.’”
His breath catches. “Love?”
“I am only human, after all.” You give him a small smile and let go of his hand. “Do with it what you will. But let me care for you in the only way I know how.”
He stares at you. Did his eyes always reflect the light like that?
“Okay.”
You dip your head and hoist your bag higher over your shoulder. “I’m glad. Let me know if you need anything. I’ll see you around, Goro.”
He doesn’t offer to walk you back to the station. You’re almost glad that he doesn’t.
Chibana types a few notes into her computer and passes a box of tissues to you. You take one, if only to give your hands something to do.
“What you're feeling is perfectly healthy and valid. Grief is not something to be ashamed of."
Huh, grief. Such a simple word for an emotion that will never be simple.
"Have you discussed any of this with anyone else?"
“No. I...don’t think they’d understand. Goro wasn’t really on good terms with most of our friends.”
The tissue becomes paper mache in your hands. She doesn’t comment on it.
“Not even that Akira character?”
“We did talk. For a while, after...things happened. There were things about Goro that I don't think he would have understood. So I never got to work through everything."
Chibana nods slowly and turns her full attention back to you.
“How have you been coping, then?”
You can’t meet her eyes. She takes that as answer enough.