Archive of Our Own

Goro stood outside the prison walls, staring out into emptiness—into freedom. It felt strange, being outside again, and yet here he was, the sharp bite of winter wind baiting each breath. His footsteps were obvious in the thin layer of snow that blanketed the city, far too warm to properly stick. It was early in the evening, still bright enough that the sun should have been shining—but it wasn’t, the sky was a bleak gray backdrop to the constant buzz of Tokyo’s bustling city.

No matter how long he stared it all seemed distant, like a world lightyears away from his. It gleamed like pyrite, scuffed and worn like the rusted bars of his gilded cage, the cage he scraped and struggled for so long to finally break free from—

For what? he couldn’t help but wonder.

As long as Goro’s lived he’s been trapped by chains, the weight of goals and responsibility heavy against his skin and inescapable. When he was a kid, it was the need to improve his mother’s life. As a teen, the need to take his revenge. In the engine room, the need to prove himself all over again to a family he tried to destroy. In Maruki’s reality, the need to escape the puppet strings of devils who think they’re gods. In prison, to serve his sentence.

And now…what? All he felt was the burning ache in his lungs, his chest. Was that the feeling of finally achieving freedom?

And all it cost was two more years. Two, far less stressful years than the three he’d worked under Shido’s thumb, but two years nonetheless. Time had passed without him, the world had moved on. He was no longer the Detective Prince, no longer Akechi, even. He didn’t exist in this world for years, and now he would have to turn with it once again.

And he did have to. Suicide wasn’t an option, not under the plea deal he took.

“Prove you’re worth it,” Sakura told him, voice tinny through the gaudy plastic phone, “take the deal and prove saving you wasn’t a mistake.”

Maybe that’s why he really took the deal. Not because of Akira’s pleas or Sae’s insistence or even Futaba’s demands. Because he knew being forced to live was a greater punishment than anything they could ever impose on him, even if he deserved to die for his crimes. And who was he to deny Misery his company?

So he would live, perhaps. It was hard to know. He regretted very little in his time under Shido’s thumb, even if he hated it. It was a funny thing he hadn’t bothered to differentiate when he was an angry, spiteful child. He could hate something and not regret it, just as he could simultaneously do both. He could despise the way he dissociated from the experience, despise himself for killing the only good things in his life (even if one did come back to life), and he could still not regret his overall actions.

He could hate killing Futaba and not regret killing Isshiki. He could hate Akira and still regret the way their lives intertwined so violently.

But it was all over. Shido was in prison, Maruki’s nepotist martyr dream was long dead, and Goro was finally out, left to stand on the edge of everything and nothing.

Proving himself to be worthy of living was such a monumental task he didn’t even know where to begin, how to go about it, if he even honestly intended to attempt it at all. How was he supposed to make his life worth something when even he believed it was worthless? What could redemption even constitute when he killed people? He’d grown up for three years convinced that the only redemption for death was death; he’d gone into his eighteenth birthday expecting not to live long enough to see the new year; and now he was being told to live as if he was even capable of redemption.

But the Phantom Thieves still saved his life, despite everything. Because they were like that.

(And hearing Futaba tell him to “phoenix up” and deal with the consequences of his actions was a little funny in retrospect.)

A part of Goro desperately wanted to run. To leave Tokyo and pretend nothing ever happened. Perhaps flee Japan all together. He knew English, and he wasn’t a stranger to forgery, so it wasn’t as if it’d be a particular challenge to leave. But...

He owed the Phantom Thieves, owed Akira, Futaba, and maybe that was enough to keep on going. He couldn’t stand the thought of being indebted to them for the remainder of his life, and even if the Futaba he knew died years ago, he owed her too. Owed amends to this reality’s Futaba, to the people he’d wronged.

So when he saw a familiar mop of unruly black hair leaning against a sleek gray motorcycle with one helmet under his arm and another on the seat, fiddling with his bangs, Goro didn’t run like he might’ve just a year ago.

And when turbulent gray eyes met his, brilliantly backlit by newborn, thin rays of sunlight streaming through the clouds, and Joker’s smile crossed Akira’s face, Goro couldn’t help smirking back.

“Long time no see, Crow.”

“As presumptuous as ever, Joker.”

It wasn’t terribly hard to pick himself up after Isshiki’s death. Maybe that made him a monster, but it was the truth. He never mourned Isshiki. Frankly, he had no reason to. He may not have remembered much after her penultimate experiment failed spectacularly, but he remembered enough.

“Look at me.” He said, quiet and cold.

She refused.

“Look at me.”

Again she pretended like she couldn’t hear him. Maybe she couldn’t, he couldn’t quite tell between Loki’s awful cackles and Robin Hood’s pleas for him to leave now before they got into further issues.

He didn’t listen to them over the rage ringing in his ears.

“For fuck’s sake look at me!”

Isshiki did, and for a long moment their eyes met, and all of his rage slipped away as he stared at her. Neither remorseful nor shameful to face him. Her expression revealed nothing, and her eyes were as blank and hollow as her shadow’s.

And that’s when he realized there was no point, that his wish was impossible.

That Isshiki Wakaba was going to die.

He blinked awake to a cocoon of warmth, to blurry darkness, pitch black and welcomingly empty. Strong arms were loosely wrapped around his middle, sealing the searing warmth of another body to his back. His brain was floating somewhere, only connected to his head by a thin tether that was hidden amongst the fog blanketing his head. It was impossible to think, with every attempt his mind sank deeper into the dizzying abyss of nothingness, of simplicity.

But then the reason he woke up lanced through his chest again, deep and chafing against his ribs, the once comforting warmth now choking him as each breath failed to inflate his lungs like a punctured balloon.

He couldn’t see. He couldn’t breathe. Goro struggled out of the now painful grip around his chest and stumbled through the nearest door.

Bright, fluorescent lights flickered like the sun but he was already reaching for the nearest cabinet—for the orange bottle he knew was just inside—and popped two pills in his mouth as he grabbed a glass and stuck it under the tap so he could swallow.

Goro was trembling like a leaf as he gripped the counter with white knuckles. Everything inside him wanted to curl up on the ground but he forced himself to stay standing, letting himself lean over the sink to gasp for air as the world rushed back to him all at once.

One—Breathe. Two—Breathe. Three.

He stood there for what could have been minutes or hours before he felt his breathing even out again, the panic losing its stranglehold on his chest as he let himself sag against the counter.

“You okay?” came a muffled, raspy voice to his side and he looked up to see a sleep-tousled Akira standing in the door frame.

“Fine,” he bit out.

Akira didn’t comment on his tone, didn’t even look upset. He just waited, exhausted as he was, for Goro to come to him. Like he always inevitably did. God Goro hated him so much.

“Come back to bed,” Akira murmured quietly once Goro looked like he was done having a breakdown, brushing his hands against Goro’s, unsurprised and unperturbed by the fact that Goro immediately drew away from the contact.

Goro didn’t have the heart or energy to argue, so he didn’t, even as guilt nestled deep and uncomfortable in his chest.

“Is this okay?” Akira asked as he slung one arm around his waist again, rubbing a slow and soothing thumb across the jut of his waist.

Goro nodded, brittle and jerky because he didn’t know how to explain to Akira how much he needed the physical contact, even as mind scrambled, visceral and violent and prepared to lash out at anything that so much as blinked. He couldn’t look Akira in the eye so he turned away to stare at the wall, and felt Akira shuffle behind him and then warm, chapped lips pressed against the back of his neck as Akira accommodated his shift—like he did everything. As if any of this was reasonable or justified. As if he was the one who had to change and become a better person.

“Wanna talk ‘bout it?”

“Not particularly,” he said instinctively, then winced as his therapist’s words came back to him. Communicate. If he didn’t get better at communication, stupid as it was, he might lose Akira (though his therapist had never said that part directly, Goro understood the underlying message well enough). Bottling up and shoving down his feelings would just make things worse (as if the Shido disaster wasn’t evidence enough of that). So, he needed to talk.

Just...talk.

As if it were that simple.

“I mean—” he struggled for a moment, floundering in his own inexperience.

“‘S’alright,” Akira murmured into his skin, pressing a lingering, gentle kiss against his shoulder and resting back, “take your time.”

“You’re the worst,” Goro sighed miserably, earning a light hum in response. “Why can’t you just be upset with me like a normal person?”

“...nothing to be upset about…”

“You’re exhausted. You just got off a night shift at Crossroads,” Goro argued, because that was what he did best and Akira was so stupidly blind to his own well-being someone needed to argue on his behalf.

Akira sighed, long-suffering and pained into his skin. “...too early for this.”

He was right, god he was right and Goro hated that he was right, but he was tired too and sometimes he had to remind himself that the argument wouldn’t be worth it and that it would be better off left alone.

“Sorry,” took far more out of him and far longer than it should have, but he said it.

“Apologize to yourself. No one’s allowed to badmouth my boyfriend,” Akira whispered sleepily, and Goro felt a small swell of affection twist his gut and an unwanted chuckle bubble out of his chest. Akira had a way of doing that, of turning any battle in his favor.

“‘m serious,” Akira added after a second, “say sorry to Goro.”

“No. That’s stupid.”

He felt more than heard Akira’s huff of fond amusement. “You’re so mean,” he said, and Goro couldn’t suppress a shocked yell when he felt Akira pinch his side, sharp and teasing.

“Don’t start something you can’t finish Kurusu,” Goro responded, feeling himself smile even as he pinched Akira back far more harshly, and only earned a bright laugh in response.

“You’re…” Akira trailed off, his next words too soft to hear properly.

“I’m what?”

“Adorable. I love you.”

The words soothed something needy and raw in his chest, just as much as they electrified his skin. It’d taken months before Goro let Akira say the words, even longer before he stopped wanting to run away at the comment, but even now it wasn’t quite real in his mind. As if every muscle in his body was waiting for Akira to be smited for uttering those words.

But he never was, no matter how many times he said them.

Goro untensed, letting himself relax back into Akira’s arms.

I don’t deserve it, would result in another pointless argument they were both too tired for, even if it was true. Instead, he said, “what about Sakura?”

“‘taba?” Akira mumbled like he wasn’t even awake anymore.

“I killed her mother.” I killed her. “Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

Akira was silent, for so long Goro almost wondered if he had fallen asleep, before the grip around his waist tightened. “Of course it does,” Akira whispered back, like he was making a confession, “but it’s not my pain to forgive.”

“And Futaba’s okay with that?”

“She made her peace with my feelings a long time ago.”

It felt simple, it felt too easy, that it would just work itself out, but he was tired of watching things go wrong, so he just placed his hand over Akira’s and squeezed back.

“Do you want her to hate you?”

“She should,” he answered reflexively.

“But,” Akira nestled even closer somehow, voice stern, “do you want her to?”

It was a messy thread, hand-woven and complex and somehow irreparably tangled in just one step along the way. They didn’t talk, this Futaba hardly knew him outside their interactions during Sae’s and Maruki’s palaces, and even then those tended to be infrequent and impersonal. He didn’t blame her for avoiding him ever since he got out of prison. He wouldn’t have been so kind in her shoes.

And yet, he could still see her huddled on one of the chairs in Issiki’ssafe room, could still hear how animated and excited she was whenever the newest Featherman episode came out. She was the only thing he could clearly remember during that period of time in his life.

Her shaking, sobbing form with the barrel of a pistol to her head, pleading with him to spare Isshiki’s life.

“I don’t know.”

Akira didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then, “you care about her.”

It was hard to deny, impossible even, and maybe Goro didn’t want to deny it anymore.

“I do.”

Akira didn’t question the admission, didn’t say anything about it, in fact, just hummed. “Then the only thing you can do is give her time.”

Time. Was that the price of redemption? Something he never thought he’d have an abundance of and now he didn’t know what to do with. Perhaps one of the very few things he could readily give her. But that hardly seemed like enough to redeem himself, much less earn something as pathetic as her forgiveness.

As consciousness slipped from him once more, he couldn’t help but wonder: did he even really want her forgiveness?

It was as if nothing had changed, like Goro hadn’t shot Akira in the head just days earlier. And here he was, alive. They stared at one another, for a long, breathless moment.

And even when Goro began to speak, Akira didn’t disappear. His demeanor was too serious to be a dream, eyes too bright and alive to be a nightmare.

It was real.

“If only we met a few years earlier…”

Akira—not Joker, because Joker wouldn’t look like his heart was about to break—stared back at him with a burning twist of awe and regret, like there was so much more he had to say that he didn’t, if only for Goro’s sake.

He hated Akira for it, and as he his eyes drifted back to Sakura, partially shielded by Niijima and Okumura at the back of the group, the familiar, dull blade of anger lanced through his chest.

Meeting earlier didn’t change anything for her.

“But there’s no use talking in hypotheticals.” He dragged his gaze back to where Akira stood, bright like the sun.

Nothing would have changed, he thought despite himself. Monsters don’t get happy endings.

Learning to live with and without the Phantom Thieves was perhaps the most challenging part of Goro’s pathless pursuit of redemption. For the most part, he avoided them, and they avoided him, and he was fairly content to leave it that way.

Unfortunately, there were a few that were simply impossible to avoid.

Morgana wasn’t a significant problem. He’d lived with Akira in the wake of Goro’s imprisonment and though he mentioned that he didn’t particularly like that Akira showered Goro with as much affection as he did, after a month of being back and forth between Goro’s apartment and Leblanc he’d apparently had enough and decided to start living with the Sakuras.

It was more of a relief than anything else, and perhaps a compliment in Morgana’s own strange way. At the very least he seemed to believe Goro wouldn’t snap and kill Akira one of these days. He wasn’t sure some of the other Phantom Thieves were so convinced.

Sumire, however, should have been easily avoidable. She should have become no different than any of the other Phantom Thieves. If anything, he expected her to find herself relegated to the same role Takamaki assumed: that of an overly friendly friend of a friend who occasionally tried to reach out to him only to be thoroughly rejected at each turn until she got sick of his antics and physically cornered and bullied him into a crepe outing.

Unfortunately, Sumire was far more fucking tenacious (insane) than even he knew how to handle.

Which was how he ended up drinking cheap whiskey from the bottle at a shockingly high-end tattoo parlor while she used a large crayola marker to draw along where her most revealing leotard showed skin.

“What the fuck am I doing here,” he muttered into the palms of his hands.

“Good question!” Sumire chirped unhelpfully, waving vaguely to draw his attention back to where she was struggling with the marker, “help me get my back.”

“This is so fucking stupid,” he said, even as he obliged, setting the bottle down to take the marker from her before she accidentally ruined her outfit. “Why are we doing this?’

“Because I won’t be able to compete if the tattoo shows anywhere.”

“Not that,” he rolled his eyes,gesturing vaguely with the marker in hand, “this, at all.”

“Oh!” she clapped her hands together, jostling her position slightly which almost fucked up the line he was carefully drawing.

“Stop moving,” he grumbled, only because she couldn’t see him glare.

“Sorry senpai~” she laughed, subdued but light in a way that carried itself proud and melodic across the room. “Anyway, I’ve been thinking about getting one for a while and I finally decided that it was about time I just went and did it.”

“You have?” he cocked one brow in equal shock and bemusement. Quite frankly he couldn’t imagine her with a tattoo. No matter who she thought she was, she seemed like the preppy good-girl type. Although, the fact that she wasn’t making this decision on a whim and, instead, had spent ‘a while’ (i.e. at least a year) overthinking the decision until she finally caved to her desires.

“Mhm. Ever since Maruki, actually.”

Goro didn’t freeze, he just paused, giving himself a moment to breathe so the line remained steady when he continued, finishing the circle around her back. “I see,” he handed the marker back, grabbing his bottle and taking a long, burning swig as he stepped away without prompting so she could get changed.

“I’ve thought about it a lot,” she admitted through the curtain separating them, “what he did to me. Mostly whether or not he was actually right. That I really wanted to be her…”

“Of course you didn’t,” he sighed, taking another swig in plain sight because what were the employees gonna do? Kick him out? Frankly that’d be a blessing at this point. “He decided what was best for you and brainwashed you into thinking that way too.”

“I know, I know. It’s just hard not to wonder. I think I’ve finally got it, though. Maruki got it wrong, but I think I finally get why he did what he did.”

Goro had to give himself a moment to properly filter his words before he responded. Empathy still wasn’t easy, even when he didn’t want to hurt the person he was talking to. “You sympathize with him.”

“No,” she corrected, a little too quickly, “I mean, a little, but not really. More like, I think I figured out why he specifically chose to turn me into Kasumi, rather than bring her back.”

Goro didn’t point out the obvious answer of, he couldn’t, because even if he couldn’t at the time Maruki had shown quite clearly that he could later, and still chose against doing so.

“I’ve always admired Kasumi,” she continued, “I was jealous of her for so long but I always admired her. After she died, I kept thinking about how I should have died in her place, how awful it was that the useless sister was the one to live. I think he interpreted that as me being suicidal, which I might have been, but I don’t believe I ever really wanted to die: I just wanted Kasumi back. Or, at least, to not have to live in a world where I was responsible for her death.”

“Your point being?”

She giggled, a little like she used to back when she was desperately trying to get Akira’s attention like a damn puppy. He would’ve been offended if he didn’t know she had a girlfriend now.

“That he misjudged me. He wanted to improve my condition and make my wishes come true. He didn’t want me to die, so he kept my body alive, but he effectively killed my personality, replacing it with what he thought Kasumi’s was, who I thought Kasumi was. Honestly, my interpretation of Kasumi was really bad now that I think about it.”

“His damn god-complex simply made him believe that he’d fixed you, when in fact he did exactly the opposite. He destroyed your sense of identity at his own whim because he thought it was more appropriate than naturally developing the strength to heal from your trauma,” Goro summarized, because if there was one thing he was good at it was bad-mouthing Maruki, even if Akira still struggled to hear it some days.

(Really, Akira was too much of a martyr for his own good. He’d sworn off therapy too and yet he still defended Maruki.)

“Basically,” Sumire agreed, “I guess it just took a while to let myself really think about why everything turned out the way it did.” She threw open the curtain dramatically, dressed down in shorts and a sports bra and sitting back down on the bench. “I forgive him for what he did to me. I hated him, honestly, for years, but I’ve decided to forgive him. No matter what, I’m proud of what I managed to create of myself in the aftermath.”

There she goes, ever the optimist. Forgive, huh, he wondered idly, looking back down at his drink and swirling it in the bottle, how ridiculous.

“He doesn’t deserve your generosity.”

“It’s not about him,” she shook her head, and it suddenly dropped on Goro that she probably wasn’t talking about Maruki anymore, “it’s about what I deserve.”

Something between panic and resignation settled cold in his heart. “You deserved better than you received.”

“And I wish that I could change that,” she agreed, her tone resolute and crystal clear, “but I can’t. And it would be an insult to Kasumi’s memory to let that destroy me.”

Goro watched her, really looked at her for a long beat as she enthusiastically called to the nearest employee. She didn’t physically look much different than she did back then. Her hair was a little bit different, always either braided or in a bun now, her body a little more muscular, but she looked the same way she always had.

“Is that why you’re getting a tattoo?” he asked.

“Kasumi changed me, just as Maruki did, for better or worse. I lost years of my life because of them both,” she smiled warmly, “but because of them I think I’ve managed to make something I’m finally proud of. I’m not who I was before, I won’t ever be that Sumire again, but I’m okay with that.”

The answer was obvious. It almost felt like it was mocking him, like God had cursed him since the day he was born. Since the day his half-sister was born.

His half-sister, who he’d orphaned.

It felt like a cosmic joke, too fitting to be true. They’d treated one another as siblings, yes, but it was only because they shared no blood that he approached her at all, that he was so desperate to convince himself that maybe they were family, even if blood didn’t bind them.

But fact was stranger than fiction, because staring him in the face were the documented results of a paternity test Isshiki had performed without Shido’s knowledge.

Fuck.

When he had to tell Akira he couldn’t join their infiltration of Sae’s palace the next day, the burning shame of appearing weak didn’t outweigh the monumental weight of his newfound knowledge.

Knowledge that wouldn’t change anything. That couldn’t change anything.

That he would never tell Futaba about.

“Checkmate,” Goro smirked, watching a little gleefully as Akira frowned down at the black and white board like he wasn’t sure how he found himself in this position.

“Again.”

Goro obliged readily, even if he let himself be a little mean about it. It would be disappointing if his rival let him win so easily. “My, my, you sure have a masochistic streak,” he chuckled to himself, only to be startled back into focus when Akira grinned back slyly.

“Only for you honey~” he shot back with an obnoxious wink that Goro had long ago accepted would make his heart flutter irrationally.

“Flattery gets you nowhere,” he hummed drily, smiling with far too many teeth to be attractive, “and it certainly doesn’t give you permission to wake me up at five in the morning just because your plant started to flower.”

Akira winced, glancing up apologetically only to be waved off with a slight gesture. Sorry, Akira’s eyes offered.

Shut up, Goro glared back, and a dopey smile crossed Akira’s face as he picked up their banter without a beat of hesitation.

“What can I say? I love waking up to pretty things.”

God he was lucky Goro loved him or else he might actually deck him for that one. Hell he might still—if he weren’t convinced that Akira would absolutely love a real-world reenactment of their mementos duel.

Maybe they should do that this year, he wondered contemplatively, it was about time he took his glove back.

The sudden jingle of Leblanc’s bell broke him out of his sentimentality, but it wasn’t until he looked over and met the eyes of one Futaba Sakura that the cold rush of reality hit him like a brick.

She shouldn’t be here.

He glanced at Akira who just shrugged, looking just as confused, if a bit more enthusiastic that Goro felt, which quelled one of the immediate accusations that rose to mind. Not something they both planned to torment him, then.

She took one of the counter seats across from their booth, feet firmly planted on the ground as she muttered out a disgusted, “ew. Stop flirting with my brother.”

If her sudden, unprovoked appearance was a brick, then her statement was a full fucking mountain dropped on him all at once. He froze, mouth dry and voice pathetically empty as he stared at her, all of his years of practiced neutrality and politeness disappearing in one fell swoop.

Does she know? Flew through his mind, a tsunami of how and why ricocheting through his skull in a millisecond. It wasn’t on birth certificates or any documents, obviously, because there was no way in hell Shido would ever let anyone get away with that. And, surely, Isshiki hadn’t told Sakura that Shido was her sperm donor—she was far too reclusive and reserved to do that. Besides, if Sakura knew beforehand she would have mentioned it when they were fighting Shido’s shadow, right?

She couldn’t—

Akira’s fond “aww,” jerked him back into reality, and Goro turned to see an affection grin quickly overtake the mild surprise in Akira's expression, “you know you can just say you care you know. No need to give me the Sojiro treatment.”

“If I didn’t you’d get an ego about yourself, and we can’t have you turning into a brooding silent anime protagonist,” she threw back with a slight smile that fit awkwardly on her face, not quite matching the tension in her posture.

Right, Goro reminded himself, forcing himself to untense as he leaned back in the booth seat. To her and the elder Sakura, Akira had practically become family. Brother was referring to him. Despite the fact that he relaxed, the comment unearthed something inexplicably somber in his chest, something he hadn’t thought about in years. Something that he immediately shoved back down into the tar pit of his chest where he hoped it would rot with the rest of his feelings.

Fuck communication right now he just needed to get out of this conversation alive, which, now that the false alarm had been dealt with, brought up another extremely important question: why the hell she was here at all, much less here willingly in the same room as him.

And, more importantly, why the fuck was she staring at him like that. Needles prickled Goro’s skin as he felt the weight of her heavy stare, directly into his eyes like she could see through him, like she knew.

“Did you want food?” Akira asked as the only actively socially competent person in the room.

“Mm-mm,” she mumbled, “I could just get some ramen if I really wanted. I was actually wondering if you wanted to try out Super Feather Fighters with me. They brought out some new dlc characters I wanted to kick your ass with.”

Ah, okay. That’s why she was staring at him. It was a covert way of telling him to get the hell out. Goro could do that, actually he would prefer to do that, so he quickly moved to clean up the chess set, eager to take an obvious hint and get away from whatever the fuck was going on and back to his apartment. If necessary, he could always message Akira later (though he rarely had to) to see if he still planned to come over once he was done.

Any and all train of thought was abruptly halted before he could even step foot out the door.

“Where are you going?” Sakura called out, loudly. “Everything’s still in the attic.”

He glanced back, and though she wasn’t looking at him, he did meet Akira’s eyes, and the way they brightened like the sun made him want to run.

Fuck.

“My apologies, I didn’t realize you meant to include me,” he said, falling right back into old habits even as, from the corner of his eye, he saw Akira frown at his tone. You get what you deserve, a petulant part of his brain insisted, even as the rest of him agreed with the sentiment.

“Of course I meant you. I’m not such an NPC I’d just say that right in front of you and not include you.”

Oh yes you absolutely would. “Regardless, I have work I need to get to,” he used as a half-assed excuse.

Akira shut it down so quickly he didn’t have time to blink. “Oh come on Goro, you can play at least one round, right? Or are you just scared of losing?” Goro gave him a look because that kind of bullshit didn’t work so easily on him anymore.

Akira shot that look right back at him, furrowing his brow pleadingly as he moved to tug insistently on the sleeve of Goro’s coat. It wasn’t so firm that Goro couldn’t slip free, that he couldn’t walk right out the door if he really wanted, and he knew Akira would let him—he was just as terrified of trapping Goro as Goro was terrified of being trapped.

Still, Goro was stuck, and before he knew it he’d somehow been dragged up to Akira’s not-so-dingy-anymore-but-still-full-of-cobwebs attic where Futaba had promptly taken it upon herself to set up the game.

“Just give this a chance,” Akira murmured in his ear as he moved the couch so they could sit in front of the TV.

“Give what a chance?” Goro sighed.

Akira shrugged helplessly but he was still smiling like he’d won the lottery, “you know what I’m talking about.”

What? Pretending that I didn’t kill her mother just so we can both make you happy? Pretending we have a bond that we don’t? That the Futaba I knew didn’t die with Isshiki—

Akira wasn’t cruel, he had to remind himself shakily as a controller was shoved in his hands, Akira wouldn’t do this if he knew. It was one of the few things he had yet to share with Akira, and he’d lie and say it was out of pride but he’s always known why he never did, because it was completely unjustifiable. Because it was the one act of violence, of all he ever committed, that proved him to be monstrous. If Akira knew...then there was a chance he’d finally decide he’d had enough. Leave like he always should have.

Goro wasn’t ready to let go of Akira yet, not now (not ever).

Which was probably how he ended up in this situation. Alone in Leblanc’s attic with Sakura silently beating up his character in Super Featherman Fighters, praying for Akira to come back soon before one of them (probably him) spontaneously combusted.

Though, the thought itself was already hopeless. The awful excuse Akira had given about needing to double check that Raoul, his stupid cactus that he left in Goro’s apartment, was watered and brief look Akira and Futaba shared as he left said enough to their intentions that he knew there was little hope he would receive any kind of rescue.

So now he was stuck here. In the same room as a girl he orphaned—not just a girl, Isshiki Wakaba’s daughter of all people.

The silence made his skin crawl.

“You’re so bad at this it’s almost boring,” she sighed, throwing down her controller and fixing him with a hard stare, “you’re like a level 1 mob I’d find in the starting area right now. I thought you’d at least try.”

And here it went. “Right,” he responded, trying to keep his voice steady and empty as he avoided eye contact.

She sighed, and when he glanced back at her she’d moved to tuck her knees into her chest. And he felt some, stupid little part of him relax at that. She was nervous too.

“I know who you are,” she said without preamble.

He glanced back at her, narrowing his eyes as he took in her words. Which identity she was referring to wasn’t hard to guess, but he wasn’t about to give her ammunition she didn’t have. “Do tell.”

“You’re my brother,” was loaded as hell, and for a moment he couldn’t breathe before she added, “my half-brother anyway. On our unfortunate sperm donor’s side.”

The mounting dread in his chest spilled over.

“Oh.”

She looked almost as uncomfortable as he felt. “Yeah.”

Silence.

“You knew too.”

“I do,” he agreed, not meeting her eyes.

“Since when?” It didn’t sound like an accusation, even if he instinctively wanted to bite at her as if it were. If anything her voice was fragile, like a bone just on the verge of fracturing.

“Since I shot Akira in the head.”

She let out a shuddering sigh, something like relief slumping her posture as she leaned back, letting her feet slip down in front of her. “So you didn’t know when you killed her.”

“It wouldn’t have changed anything if I did,” he answered honestly and the burning weight of her gaze made him want to die a little.

“Really?”

“Of course.”

Her face pinched into a frown, and her eyes narrowed darkly. “How do you know that for sure?”

“Because…” he trailed off, throat closing at the idea of trying to explain Isshiki’s palace, of Futaba, of how he’d had her as a sister before and it changed nothing.

“Because why?” She parroted, devastatingly sincere even as long withheld rage shadowed her eyes.

“Because I knew you even when I killed her,” he murmured, looking up, “not you, but your mother’s cognition of you. In her palace. We were...friends. And even then I still made the choice to shoot Isshiki. Knowing we were related wouldn’t have changed anything.”

“That…” she paused, her initial shell-shock hardened to calculate confusion, “that doesn’t make sense. You…” she stopped suddenly, eyes becoming as wide as dinner plates as she continued, conviction growing with every word. “No, it doesn’t make sense if you were just an assassin, someone who entered her palace only to kill her. But you weren’t. You’d entered her palace many times before that. Not because you were just a hitman, but because…”

He braced for the inevitable.

“You were her test subject.”

Goro couldn’t say anything to that, didn’t need to, it was obvious. She was right. At the very least that confirmed that she had access to and had looked through Isshiki’s research. The obvious question there being, just how much Isshiki’s physical documentation indicated about the nature of her experiments.

“If you read her research I assumed it would be obvious,” he chuckled half-heartedly.

“I just…” she trailed off, “I don’t know. I guess I just hoped it wasn’t you.” She settled back in place, quiet and eyes still wide with empty amazement, mind visibly turning at a frightening speed.

Then, she spoke. “Tell me about her.”

He paused, staring back blankly for a moment. “What do you mean?”

“Her experiments, her palace, just...her,” she whispered, “I’ve been trying to find her test subject for so long. “I want to know. The good and the bad.”

He glanced away. No matter how he felt about Isshiki, it wasn’t his place to destroy Sakura’s image of her, no matter how much it hurt to hear within the bowels of her hell.

“You don’t really want to,” he said slowly, carefully, drawing the sentence out long enough to sound calm and collected.

Her eyes flashed with the challenge, and where Futaba would have backed down and offered a few needling jabs to try and get him to change his mind, Sakura stood up, meeting his eyes with barely restrained anguish as she said, “no. I do.”

“You don’t know—“

“Don’t assume what I want or know,” she demanded, the hard look in her eyes softening at the edges as she sat back down. “I’m not a child. I should know.”

It was only then that it struck him how similar they were. Not identical, evidently. Though Isshiki’s interpretation wore the same face and had the same interests and shy tendencies and loud excitement, he’d always been aware of how different they were. What Futaba would have said when Sakura spoke.

Maybe he’d underestimated Isshiki’s observation skills.

Or maybe they were damned to mirror one another.

So, despite himself, he told her. Not everything, but enough. How he met Futaba in her palace by chance. How she kept him company during Isshiki’s...longer experiments. How he listened to her plead for her mother’s life and shot Isshiki anyway.

To her credit, she didn’t react too harshly—certainly with the skepticism or disgust he expected. Not even when he told her about her replication of the Kirijo Group’s experiments. She simply took the information in, knuckles white with restraint as she listened, asking questions as needed but doing more than he expected to mask the shakiness of her voice.

He could respect her for that, even if she probably hated him. At the very least he hadn’t tried to sugarcoat Isshiki’s crimes.

She simply nodded when he finished, and her exhausted expression said more than her lack of tears or words ever could.

“You knew the majority of this already,” he stated, because it was true.

She nodded, hesitant but obvious. “I didn’t want to believe most of it was true.”

“You’re taking everything well.”

“It’s been years,” she murmured, “I knew from the day I read about her recreation of the Kirijo Group’s experiments. I didn’t want to believe it, obviously, but there was a lot I didn’t know about her…” she glanced back up at him, “and I’ve had time.”

“How do you feel?”

“About you or her?”

“Either.”

She sighed, long and low as she slumped back against the hard frame of the couch, making no move to actually sit on it despite how uncomfortable it must have been.

“She’s my mother,” she started, “and she’s done some terrible things—things I hate about her, but she’s still my mother. I still care,” she whispered miserably. “I don’t know how I feel about her.”

“Neither emotion is mutually exclusive,” he pointed out simply, staring into the empty space of the title screen. “Akira’s affection for me is proof enough of that.”

That startled a laugh from her, breathless and short. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

For the first time in years, perhaps his entire life, Goro felt weightless, like he’d finally scraped out a vile, rotten wound that had been festering in his gut only to find that without it there was nothing left. It hurt, the way stitches did.

Would stitches even work if there was nothing left to heal? He glanced down at Futaba’s curled form, and couldn’t help but wonder if this was nothing but an elaborate dream, Freudian and subconscious but even if it was maybe that didn’t matter.

For once, maybe, it felt like he could put that Futaba to rest, now that the other knew.

“I don’t forgive you for killing her,” Futaba started, so abruptly he would’ve been startled had he not been half-expecting this conversation to come up at some point.

“Good.”

“But,” she cut in, “I don’t hate you either.”

“You should,” he said reflexively, then, out of curiosity, slowly added, “but you’re an adult, so rather than pointlessly debate the subject, I’ll ask one question: why don’t you hate me?”

“I thought pointlessly debating stuff was your speciality,” she needled, poking him in the shin petulantly.

“I’m too tired for my own bullshit right now.”

She didn’t laugh this time but he could audibly hear her smile as she said, “that’s a first.” It faded as she continued, though, “I did hate you at first, though. I hated you for years, the whole time you were in prison and a while after you got out. I was so upset with Akira for dating you.” She didn’t sound...ashamed, per say, but she didn’t sound happy with herself either. “But after a while I realized something. Hating you doesn’t do me any good. It doesn’t make me feel better because I’m not going to take revenge or anything, and it was hurting my relationship with Akira.”

She tilted her head back to look up at him, her eyes almost purple in the cold, dim light of the screen. “It just got so exhausting,” she murmured, “I hated myself just as much as I hated you. I hated who I was becoming because I hated you.”

He smiled mordantly, because he knew exactly what she was talking about. How hard it was to focus on the anger and the anger alone, how much it hurt when it was all you ever felt.

How lonely it made you feel.

“You’re far more intelligent than I was,” he told her honestly.

“I can’t give myself all the credit. I just eventually realized I didn’t want to become what you did.”

Goro didn’t say anything for a long moment, before he felt himself smile again. Good.

“Besides,” she added, looking back down and twisting the sleeves of her hoodie, “I’ve already lost one family member. I don’t want Hate to take away another before I even really got to know them.”

The room turned cold again. “What?”

“I’ve never had a brother before Akira,” she muttered into her knees, “I don’t wanna give up another so easily.”

“Is that what you want?” He finally found the words, staring at her like she was a ghost come to haunt him.

She nodded. “You‘ve already stuck around this long. I’d be a bad sister-in-law if I didn’t at least try.”

“Don’t force yourself to say something you’ll regret,” he told her, neither unkind nor gentle.

“I’m not doing it because of Akira—” she paused, then amended, “mostly not because of Akira. Obviously he’s a factor in everything, but ultimately it’s my decision. Not yours, not his. I want to be able to live properly again, and I want to try this sibling thing, even if it doesn’t work out.”

“I see…”

She glanced back up at him, eyes neither fragile nor firm. They were vulnerable, in a way that was as prepared for rejection as it was for acceptance. “Do you want to?”

What’s the worst that can happen? He wondered to himself, answering the question just as quickly as it came, someone ends up shot and dead again.

But something deep in his ribs ached to say yes, longed for the relationship he’d never properly been able to foster with her cognition.

“Yes.”

She visibly relaxed at that, body slumping to the side, leaning her weight against his legs as she murmured, “cool.”

The silence between them was just as exhausted as they were, aimless and tentative and so easily shattered, but drained of the energy to fight back, to fight fate as they knew it. And still they did, still they somehow managed to look Yaldabaoth in the eye and tell him to fuck off and no matter how world-weary or work they were now, that undercurrent of rebellion was still strung, vibrant and alive somewhere amidst the quiet, gray attic.

“What do we do now?” She asked.

Goro glanced back to the character selection screen brilliantly displayed in front of them. “Why don’t we play a game, and see where it goes from there?”

The look she had, small and tentative and smiling, shone as bright as the sun.

“I’d like that.”