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Goro Akechi stopped at the entrance to the side-street Leblanc was on. He could see the bright light shining from its windows. A warm glow cutting through the snowy January night. Ren was still awake, then. Reading or cooking more curry for tomorrow's venture into Mementos or...more unpleasant things. Like entertaining one of those damned leeches he called friends.
Akechi squared his shoulders. No matter. Ren would give him the time. He wouldn't deny him now, not after weeks of being pushed away, not after he still came back every time and hoped Akechi would say yes this time. It was too easy to see the hope in those grey eyes. Too painful to deflect yet another inquiry into what he planned to do "after".
He had to stop this nonsense. He had to tell Ren the truth.
Akechi took a step forward.
"I don't think that's the best idea," said the voice of his current tormentor. Akechi whirled around to see the man who'd come up behind him and glare daggers at that madman Maruki, who took his anger with a patient sigh.
"And what makes you think I care about what you think?" Akechi snapped.
Maruki leaned back against one of the buildings. The road behind him was clear of passersby. For all Akechi knew, Maruki could have pulled them into some sort of pocket dimenson; it wasn't as if Ren had explained the precise powers of the god who'd reigned over the Metaverse before Maruki. The only thing of importance to the two of them was that he wasn't invincible.
Not that the man looked like much of a god now, Akechi observed. He was wearing a lab coat rather than the white suit he'd been wearing in his Palace. He could have been working at the clinic Akechi could see over his shoulder. Off-handedly, Akechi noted his relaxed posture and just how easy it would be to take him down. Drive a fist into his face. Take this entire miserable reality and shove it down his--
"You're working under a false assumption, Akechi-kun." The bastard had pity written all over his face.
"You don't know what I'm--"
"Umm. See, I...."
A chill ran down his spine.
"I kinda...do? Know what you're thinking, I mean." Maruki shrugged and crossed his arms, hugging himself against a physical cold Akechi barely even felt over the icy waters of his heart. "Not all the time, that'd be exhausting for me and a total breach of your privacy--"
"Get to the point!"
"...You're going to go in there," Maruki said, softly, like every awful adult who pretended to care, "and tell Amamiya-kun that you died last month. You think that if he has to face the truth, you'll disappear like the other people I brought back for his friends."
He can't stop himself from flinching. He'd found it harder to keep up the mask of the Detective Prince in this saccharine world and without it, he couldn't hold back his rage, his disdain, or his...anything else.
"But Akechi-kun.... Amamiya-kun gave me the power to stand up to the brutal reality we were born into. What do you think the first thing I did when I gained this power was?"
Akechi glared, but had no answer. He didn't know this man. He didn't want to. He didn't even want to be listening to this. He'd let him talk himself out then stick to his plan.
"I looked into the hearts of his friends and comrades. Amamiya-kun would never tell me what he himself would want out of an ideal world, so I looked at him from every angle I had available. His doctor, his homeroom teacher, his guardian, his boss at the airsoft shop, his boss at the flower shop, his boss at the beef bowl shop-- He really works too much, we should have discussed that--"
"And what did you see?"
Akechi grit his teeth. Cursed himself for engaging with this villain's monologue. But. But....
Maruki looked at him again with that damnable pity. "I saw him grieving. Over and over again. Silently. Alone. He's so young. You all are. Too young for all the suffering that world placed on your heads. So the first thing I did, before I even knew what I was doing, was to try to take that grief away."
He smiled over Akechi's head, down the small street at the warm glow shining as bright as ever.
"It worked. I knew it did immediately. And that was fine, for a while. Then he didn't want to accept this reality when I actualized it into being. But I still didn't want him to suffer. So I took on the weight of his wish myself."
Maruki looked back to him. Turned away from the light of Leblanc, he looked more like a shadow than a person. Akechi half-expected to see yellow eyes.
"He's not what sustains you. This reality is. I am."
Akechi flinched backwards. Slammed against the opposite building. Heart racing. "You...You...!" He clutched at his chest and screamed, "You won't control me! I won't let you!"
"I don't want to!" Maruki quickly said, waving his hands. "I promise I don't! But you won't return to...to how you are in that reality unless they steal my heart and end this one."
Deep breaths. As controlled as you can while not looking like you're starting to lose feeling in your fingers. He would not panic. He wouldn't, he could calm himself down, he was still in control!
"And why--" His voice hitched; he glared the man into silence as he took an obviously steadying breath. "Why should I believe a word you say?"
"Because you care for him."
His fingers tightened in his jacket. Over his heart.
"I know you don't want to hurt him. Telling him about your fate.... All it will do right now is cause him unecessary pain."
"You don't know me as well as you think you do. I don't care! I'll tell him I'm dead, he'll be disappointed he couldn't save me, and that will be it! It won't mean anything to him! It won't change anything!"
"Do you really believe that?" Maruki put his hands in his coat pockets. "Even if you did think you mean nothing to him, you know what guilt does to a person. I...I'll have to tell him." The man's brows furrowed and he glanced back to the glow. "He should know everything he has to give up if he goes through with ending this reality. Informed consent is a cornerstone of ethical science."
Akechi scoffed--Maruki and ethical weren't in the same universe. It was ignored.
"But I won't tell him before I have to. I'll save him that pain."
"You're nothing but a control freak and a madman! I won't let you be the one to tell him and hold it over his head! He'll be fine. I'll show you!" Akechi pushed off the wall and stormed down the road, closing the distance betwee himself and Leblanc's lights.
He looked through the glass of the door. Ren sat at the counter, one seat over from where Akechi usually sat, a book in hand. His cat was curled up on top of the counter, probably asleep, if Metaversal cats slept near as much as real ones did. Ren leaned back a little as he turned a page, and then he looked up at the door and--
Akechi saw the unhidden surprise and delight on the face of his rival, his friend, his victim, his equal.
Something in his heart clenched painfully at the thought of that smile turned down. Of that same surprise twisted with guilt as Akechi revealed the truth.
Ren had always managed to see through his lies anyway. Just telling him wouldn't be a challenge. He'd already said some far too revealing things back when he'd first realized it himself, surely Ren had caught on once more. He...He didn't have to bring Ren more pain if they were just...silently agreeing to act like everything would be fine? The cat would blab to everyone else instantly and he'd be subject to so much intolerable pity and Ren was soft enough to care that he'd hate that....
Ren had to know already. He knew, he was keeping up a brave face, and Akechi just couldn't see through it like he couldn't see through his plan to escape the interrogation room alive. So that already proved Maruki wrong! Telling him would change nothing because he already knew!
That had to be it. He opened the café's door and stood there, letting the cold air pierce the warmth of the shop.
"Is it...too late for a cup?"
Ren grinned and hopped off his chair, not even bothered by the cold. "For you? It's never too late."
Akechi crossed the threshold and closed the door on the now-empty street behind him.