Chapter Text
The gun is pointed at his forehead and Akira slowly lifted his eyes to meet Akechi’s, auburn eyes bright with mania.
“Case closed. This is how your justice ends." Akira felt himself mouthing the words along with Akechi at the end. Rage alights across those fine features, Akechi seizing the front of Akira’s shirt and pulling him up so their noses nearly touch. This was new, Akira was pretty sure, but everything was so unclear in the fog of drugs. The gun is jammed against his temple, hard enough to bruise. “Do you think this is a joke Kurusu?”
“No. I know you’ll shoot me. You’ve done it before.” Akechi is confused by that, who wouldn’t be? It was probably not the first time Akira thought he might be the insane one, and he doubted it’d be the last. He’s thrown back into the chair, wincing as it toppled over and he fell to the ground.
“Whatever they gave you must have ruined your mind. No matter, I’ve still won. I beat you.” It’d be simpler if that was the truth, the gun clicking as Akechi trained it back on Akira’s head. He met it unblinkingly. “I don’t regret a thing.” Akira knew it was a lie, from whispered confessions of other lives.
“I’ll save you next time.” The gunshot is deafening, but only for a moment.
“Do you know how many times you’ve done this now?” Goro’s features are soft in the moonlight, a finger idly twirling one of curls of Akira’s hair around his finger. He had come clean with everything this time around, as soon as it came to him, sprinkling in private truths learned from dozens of journeys to earn credibility.
“I’ve lost track.” Akira admitted, shivering despite the warmth of the heater next to them. He told all truths but one, the reason why everything seemed so perfect in the new year only coming to him on his last day. Perhaps he hadn’t wanted to see it, able to enjoy the few months of having Goro to himself as if it had finally all worked out this time. The lingering exhaustion in his bones spelled otherwise, he still didn’t get it quite right.
Goro hummed softly in response, pulling Akira just a little closer. “There’s something you aren’t telling me. You remembered something else, didn’t you?”
Akira let loose a little sob, wishing he could burrow into the warmth that was Goro Akechi and stay there forever, hang this moment in the stars. “I won’t wake up here tomorrow.” Goro tightened his grip as if he could keep Akira by his side by pure force of will. But he knew better from Akira’s stories, from shaking him awake after nightmares where it all went wrong.
“Then we best enjoy it for what we can now.” Akira wished he could, that the exhaustion that would claim his consciousness could be put off a little longer. To be able to see February 3rd for the first time in years.
“I’m tired Goro.” The admission feels like weakness but Goro lifted him anyway, sitting up in the center of the wooden floor so Akira’s head rested on his chest. His steady heart beat thrummed like a promise.
“I know you are.” Soft fingers, gloves discarded, pulled through messy black tangles. “I know you’ll find me again.”
“I will. But I still don’t know how to save you.” There’s a slight tug as Goro’s finger caught a particularly nasty knot.
“If there’s something I know about you, it's that you never give up. You’ll figure it out, I know you will.” There’s a gentle kiss pressed to the side of Akira’s temple. He wished he could get his mouth to open but his tongue doesn’t cooperate, feeling like lead. Goro seemed to know this and didn't push, instead resuming his gentle comb-through of Akira’s curls. “Rest for now Akira. I’ll see you again soon.”
He can’t fight it, and he’s swept under once again.
Akira doesn’t even remember Akechi, his mission, this time around until the screams of his friends echo in his ears, pain blossoming from his center. Kaneshiro’s gun smoked, his threats a dull buzz in Akira’s ears as he pulled his hands from his midsection.
Red.
He fell to his knees, then his side as the blood flowed out of him, unable to react as Ann shook him, Ryuji screamed for him.
He died, again, again, again.
The memory came too late this time, Akira’s fist just a second too slow as it bounced off the metal of the bulkhead. Akechi was on the other side, would die on the other side, and Akira would be useless again.
He screamed his throat bloody as Akechi died, the shot flaring pain in his chest, inconsolable as he’s dragged from the Palace, back to Leblanc.
He didn’t speak a word to the other Thieves, leaving his phone turned off as he lay awake in bed that night, plagued with should have beens.
He doesn’t wake Morgana as he jimmed the stubborn attic window open, grabbing his phone and slipping clumsily out. He barely registered the pain in his ankle from the botched landing, heading straight to the Metaverse.
His model gun is heavy in his hand, unlike it is in reality, as he pulled it out, letting his phone clatter uselessly to the ground. He wouldn’t need it again this time around.
Not since he failed.
Akira’s hands didn’t shake as he pressed the barrel to the center of his forehead, magnetized to the spot that had killed him so many times before.
It was time to try again, from the start.
He pulled the trigger.
He sobbed silently when he woke back up on the train, not knowing why.
“I didn’t realize you were insane, Kurusu.” He found himself at the door to Akechi’s small apartment, pretending the familiar, barren walls didn’t unravel even more inside of him. “Did Sakura-san give you my address?”
“No, you did.” The truth slipped out unbidden. Akira hid his shaking hands in his pockets.
“I think I would’ve remembered something like that.” Akira shook his head, tampering the flow of thoughts, of memories, where they made promises to paint the place something more lively- to shove another person into the place and build something new.
“May I come in?”
“Since you came all this way it would be rude to refuse.” He stepped aside and Akira forced himself over the threshold. He never came here without being invited before, at least he was pretty sure. It was hard to parse through the memories at this point, coming full force earlier than ever before.
He barely stopped himself from taking a right down the bedroom hallway- sweet whispers and deliciously bruising marks calling- settling instead onto the couch. Akechi sat on the opposing arm chair, a splash of color in the otherwise drab apartment. Akechi’s mother’s favorite shade, he recalled. Akechi sat just a touch too rigid in the chair, legs crossed at the knee. He pressed his hands, gloved, hiding, together under his chin.
“Are you ready to tell me what this is about?” Akechi leaned forward slightly, a nervous tick of his when he worried over a plan. “Is it about Sae-San’s Palace tomorrow?”
The cuffs clicked around Akira’s wrists at the memory, shoved to the ground before the nightmare that was the station. Subconsciously he dug his nails into the wounds, pulling his mind back from the past and future.
“No.” The word fell thick from his mouth and Akechi’s eyes narrowed, looking to Akira’s lap.
“Kurusu! What the hell?” The swear slipped past the careful prince facade they were still stuck pretending with, showing his shock. Akira dropped his own eyes, seeing the bright red blossom of blood from where his nails worried at pale skin, covering scars only he could see.
“Oh.” It was a stupid thing to say, lifting his hand to marvel at the way the blood ran down his forearm. It was better than the last time he hurt himself, gun in hand as he prayed, selfishly for it all to end.
“Is that all you have to say?” Akechi echoed, suddenly at Akira’s side and snatching down his hand. There’s a small first aid kit on the floor beside him and he carefully set to cleaning the gashes on Akira’s wrist with medical grade precision. Practice, Akira knew, from Akechi first solo attempts into the Metaverse.
“You don’t have to do that.” Akira mumbled, wincing only slightly as Akechi’s grip tightened, pressing the gauze harder than necessary as the red slowly claimed white.
“Of course I do, can’t have our dear leader hurt after all.” There’s a slight catch to the words and Akira knows no one would notice, not unless they spent the last years of their repeating life learning each of Akechi’s little tells, his stories, his secrets.
“It’s okay.” He pulled his hand free with a sharp tug, blood rushing anew at the sting of the fresh air. He buried it against his lap to keep the couch clean. “You don’t have to lie.”
“Kurusu, what had gotten into you?” Akechi glared ruby daggers into him but Akira was far too numb of it all to care.
“You’ll kill me after tomorrow anyway. The cuffs alone will do much worse when I’m arrested.” The way Acheki’s jaw fell open in a momentary loss of control was still one Akira could find a little joy in, still a rarity in his re-lived life. It was quickly pulled back under control with grit teeth, wrist wretched none to gently back for Akechi to continue treating. Akira let him.
“Be that as it may, I still need you for tomorrow.” The smile held the same joy as a snake baring its fangs before striking and Akechi pulled the banaged tight enough to cut bloodflow. “Though if you know that I’m not sure why you chose to go through with this all until now. Or foolishly come here instead of running away, letting me at least get the satisfaction of killing you.” He pulled off bloodied gloves one finger at a time as he spoke, tossing them aside as he closed the medical kit. His eyes never left Akira, appraising.
“I’ll still go to the Palace tomorrow.” Akechi shook his head, looking disappointed as he stood up.
“I never took you for suicidal, Kurusu. Still, this won’t spare you. Is that what you came for?” Akira sighed, dizzy from the feelings of drugs flooding his system. Trapped however he was in this loop the fleeting memories had great power, body reacting as if trapped in the worst moments.
“No. I never thought this would be the right one.” He wasn’t sure one existed anymore, even as each time he accepted Igor’s offer to try again. Even if there wasn’t a way to save himself and Akechi he couldn’t give up, not when he promised Akechi, Goro then, so many times not to. The thoughts of nights like those, tangled together in truths, ached worse than any wound, joy far less permanent than the pain.
Akechi’s bare fingers snapped in front of Akira’s nose and he realized, dimly, that he was swaying. Only Akechi’s other hand, white knuckled, kept him upright on the couch.
“What do you mean, this being the right one?” Akira had little to lose, nothing that he hadn’t already lost. He was still as tired as he was when Maruki pulled him into a coma and out of a happy ending in a fake reality.
“The one where we end up okay.” Akechi recoiled as if Akira struck him, emotions flitting over his face too quickly for Akira to catalog which were from the present and which he already lived.
“There is no ‘we’, Kurusu.” The word is hissed, low, and it felt like falling. Akira barely remained upright as blood bubbled in his throat, coating his tongue. “I’m not sure where you got that foolish notion but-”
“Your mother’s name was Nozomi. You took her last name.” He swallowed the blood back, willing his insides to reknit together around the bullet wound left by cognitive Akechi, whether this one was the past or another future. “She believed in soulmates and Shido took advantage of that.”
Akechi went white as a sheet at his words, a moment passing before the hit came as it did before. Akira let it connect, tasting fresh blood as his lip split, Akechi hauling him half off the couch in a shaking grip of his shirt.
“How did you learn her name?” Despite it all Akira was glad he at least got to see this side of Akechi, it felt worse when he died before breaking through the Princely lie.
“You told me.” He replied simply, letting himself fall to the floor when Akechi threw him, numb to the way his body screamed.
“You had Sakura look it up, you had to! Is that how you found out I was going to kill you too?” Akira slowly scrapped himself back together and sat up, letting his head rest on the soft green of the chair.
“This was her favorite color, it’s the only thing you let yourself keep. You couldn’t let Shido know the truth until you could take everything from him.” Akechi’s body was still stiff with violence but he could see the way he built a wall around it, holding it in like a dam about to break.
“I’ve never told anyone that. How am I supposed to believe I told you?” Akira doesn’t answer right away, instead tugging on his curls to keep himself present. It’s hard, when Goro’s soft voice beckoned with soft secrets and a lonely childhood. It was something Akira could relate to.
“You’ve never told anyone. How else would I know?” Akechi let it sit in silence, slowly letting the fight fade from his shoulders as he settled back onto the couch.
“You’ll have to prove it, Kurusu.” Akira can’t help but perk up at a decidedly new challenge, this string of words spun in a new context for the first time. Perhaps it was the stress of Sae’s Palace being tomorrow, the pinnacle of Akechi’s plan resting on a razor’s edge where Akira was neither dead or alive in his eyes. The promise of something new drains the other pains from his body, for a moment.
“Okay.” His nerves buzzed with the focus of the present, even the pain of his wrist and face feeling good instead of bad. Akira stood, a new, crazy idea already forming. “Let’s go.” He held out his hand as instinct, watched the battle play out over Akechi's face. The brunette ultimately decided to bat the hand aside but he still moved to follow. Akira can’t contain the giddy grin, leading the way out to the streets. Akechi looked less than pleased by this turn of events as Akira took the turns to get them to the train station, stepping onto the platform for Kichijoji and paying for both their tickets.
“I do hope you have a plan beyond darts or jazz music.” Akira’s answer is a wink and a nod, blood fizzing under his skin. The trains at the time of night are mostly barren and Akira is grateful for the quiet as hope dared to bubble in his chest for the first time in many attempts. Akechi kept quiet for his part too, the picture of a pout in the seat one down from Akira, arms crossed and head turned to the window.
The time between their locations is barely a blink, Akira up as the train stopped and waving Akechi to come follow. There’s a light drizzle in Kichijoji but he paid the rain no mind, welcoming it even as it kept other people, as he headed towards the Promenade.
“Kurusu-” The name is sharp with warning, the threat making him near delirious with it all.
“Almost there.” He tugged Akechi’s sleeve as he took the sharp left into an alley just before they reached the Promenade, the eerie blue of the Velvet Room door casting Akechi’s face in a soft glow.
“An alley? We came all the way for this?” The memories of Yaldabaoth calling them equal but different echoed in Akira’s ears.
“Just walk to the end with me.” Akira tightened his hold on Akechi’s sleeve, carefully avoiding skin, and waited until shoulders fell in acceptance.
“Very well.” Akira took careful steps to the cell door, glad it was one of the few nights Justine kept watch instead. She said nothing about his plus one, watching impassively as the door swung open to them both. Akechi’s eyes widened, confirming the hopeful suspicion. “There’s a door?” Akira nodded, pulling gently.
“We’re going in.”
Reality twisted around them as the Velvet Room established itself, Akira toppeling off the prison bed made too small for two with his chains rattling. He made sure to capture the look of bewilderment on Akechi’s face as he found himself in the cell beside Akira, at a loss for words, before turning to the disguised Yaldabaoth and his two tiny jailers.
“What is the meaning of this Inmate? You were not permitted to bring a guest.” The false God’s voice is low, vibrating through the halls. Akira had called him out before the Grail was discovered a few times, but it had never ended well before. Before he was always alone.
He called Joker to him, and the Personas with, settling into his second skin as the bars before him shattered.
“I’ve decided to change the rules.” He answered with an exhilarated laugh as Arsene’s flames snapped the cuffs around his wrists as well.
“You can’t do that Inmate! You’re a Prisoner!”
“Hush Caroline, I’m doing this for you as well. Don’t you and Justine miss being Lavenza?” The girls clutch their heads in pain as their former self tries to assert herself and he focuses on the fake Igor before him. “You can leave now, Yaldabaoth. I have need of Igor, not his Pretender.” Akira felt Akechi at his back, and the confusion, as the balding man rose from the chair, and then higher, levitating over the table.
“The Game isn’t over yet Trickster, yet you’ve figured it out.” The room shook as the power beneath his feet swirled. The false God’s eyes narrowed. “I see, this isn’t your first time playing the game.” He looked past Akira, to Akechi, and Akira instructively raised an arm in front of the other like he could shield him.
Yaldabaoth let out a chuckle at the action. “I see, just how many times have you died trying to get the future you wanted?” Akira felt his insides twist, countless deaths and injuries clamoring to the surface with the god’s power. He gasped, feeling blood trickle down his face, over his wrists and chest. Shaking, still he stood.
“Kurusu… What is he-?” Even Akechi looked horrified when he spotted the blood, recoiling a step back in shock.
“Is he really worth all of this?” The pain twisted, intensified, and Akira couldn't help but fall to his knees. He vaguely felt Akechi behind him, muttering curses as his warm coat is pressed over an injury on Akira’s back- from when he was torn apart under a Ceberus’s claws on the other side of the engine room’s door. Akira grinned, licking the clogging blood from his teeth.
“Without a doubt.”
“We’ll see.” The God’s laughter faded as he left, adrenaline bleeding out as surely as his blood. Akira fell to the side, vision hazy as he tried to pull the injuries back inside, lock them back into memories.
“What was that thing talking about?” Akira can hear the concern, the worry, the anger in Akechi’s words, his hands spotted in blood as he moved his coat to press over the old bullet wound on Akira’s forehead. The blood smeared over Akira’s face, sleeve covering half of his vision. It wouldn’t be enough with Akira struggling to hold himself together, a victory may be so close but lost due his careless other attempts.
“H-help the girls. Lavenza can explain.” He was frustrated by the way the words fumbled from uncooperating lips.
“You’ll bleed out if I leave.”
“Happen… anyway.” He tried to push Akechi’s hand away but only managed to smear more blood from wrists over the other’s hand.
“If you help us, we may be able to save him.” Justine’s voice sounded a little far away, small. The sleeve is moved from over Akira’s eye and he’s able to see the worried panic set into Akechi’s face.
“Fine.” Akira doesn’t protest as Akechi lifted him up, pulled him over to the wall and propped him up against it. He pressed the coat instead to the growing spot of blood on Akira’s side- the gift from Kaneshiro. “You better hold on, I intend to get my answers from you.” It’s punctuated with a harder push tha strictly necessary, Akira watching through half closed eyes and the guillotine blades slammed down and Lavenza was formed.
He blinked, or maybe passed out, and she was at his side with a cooling hand to his head.
“Oh Trickster, your pursuit has hurt you again.” He smiled at her, ignoring the lurch of pain. She sighed. “I’ll do what I can until my Master arrives.” The soft glow of healing magic ebbed through him, soothing the worst of his injuries and knitting wounds back into scars.
When he opened his eyes again Akechi was there, auburn eyes boring into his own.
“Why-” Akechi’s voice shook and Akira ached to push back chestnut bangs. “Why am I remembering things that didn’t happen?” Akechi had a hand to his head, wincing it seemed as the memories flooded in. “What did you do to me?!”
“Akechi-kun please, be calm. You are in his Velvet room, as the corruption was cleared it allowed the room to assert its influence.” Lavenza glanced back to Akira for a moment. “His influence. What you’re seeing are the lives he lived trying to find a way to save you both from an unshakable fate.” She stood, dusting herself off and moved away, to give them space and prepare the space for Igor’s return.
“But that would mean-”
“It all happened Akechi.I saved the world but I couldn’t save you. Igor decided to grant me a deal, a retry until I was either satisfied or I gave up. I don’t know how long it’s been, but that’s how I knew your mother’s name, and everything else.”
Akechi shook his head, his eyes bright with tears he refused to shed.
“Why should I believe you? Why would you go through all of this?” Akira closed his eyes and took a breath, the injuries may be healed but the pain remained, it always did when they were too close to the truth.
“I couldn’t leave you behind when life was so unfair. I had to give it at least a shot.” Akira reached forward to move Akechi’s hair, paused, and shoved his hand back to the ground. “I didn’t anticipate falling in love with you though.” Akechi wrapped his arms around himself, holding himself together.
“Ha,” The laugh felt jagged in Akira’s chest, like a thousand knives. “Why not? Everyone else left me.” Akira let tentative fingers brush his cheek, stealing away an escaped tear.
“That’s exactly why. I refused to be like them. Even as it killed me.” Akechi leaned forward to the touch just slightly, letting his arms fall.
“I remember so many things. I remember killing you, more than once, holding you,” He cut off for a moment, regathering. “You kept coming back and I never remembered. What makes you think this time will be any different? We already tried to call off the force and not go into Sae’s Palace.”
“We can’t do anything but try? I refuse to give up. I’ve never gotten this far before.”
“You mean I’ve never truly remembered anything.” Akechi’s hand shook as he reached to try and wipe away the blood from Akira’s forehead. It didn’t work. Akira caught the hand, pressing a careful, slow kiss to it, mindless of the blood.
“But you did this time. This time I’m not going crazy alone.” A small laugh, more like the Goro’s he shared his nights with then the ones who wanted to kill him
“We’re just going crazy together.” Akechi rubbed the scars on Akira’s wrists through the mess, familiar with their location more so than any lifetime before. “I can see the scars now, were they always there?”
“Only to me.”
“And that’s what you were scratching at early?” Akechi asked, collecting himself and standing. He offered Akira his hand and Akira didn't hide the smile as he took it, standing only a little unsteadily.
“When I get caught in what happens sometimes they act up… usually only I can see it. Whatever did seemed to blend it all together and I couldn’t close the gates fast enough. Especially since cognition is stronger here.” He shook some extra blood droplets from his hand, splattering the ground. “It should also disappear once we leave.”
Lavenza gave them a small wave and they limped towards the door, scrubbing at the desk like she could remove Yaldabaoth’s touch from the wood.
“So we get back,” Akechi helped him back into the cell, exhaustion dulling his reflexes. “And then?”
“I’d like nothing more than to curl up with you in bed.” The words tumbled out from a simpler past, but Akechi doesn’t seem to mind behind a faint blush. Akira coughed. “Of course we need to figure this out us, this, first though.” They stepped back into reality, the soft splash of rain. The scent of blood was gone.
“And how to keep you alive this time, that would be good.” Akechi’s hand gripped Akira’s forearm, turning him towards him. “This is going to be the last attempt Akira,” He tried not to melt at the use of his name, at the way Akechi’s face scrunched a little like it did every time he first said it. “You won’t be alone anymore, and I won’t forget again.” Akechi’s, Goro’s, other hand took his hold of Akira’s other forearm, holding their eye contact.
“I think you might be right.” And this time he meant it.