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Akechi throws his glove at Akira, and it’s a promise of a rematch. They’ll fight again: of course they will, they’re rivals, but it’s a promise anyway, because this time Akechi wants to win against a wildcard, even knowing Akira’s potential.
Akira will spend time (hours, minutes, days?) staring at that single glove afterwards, wondering about the exact details of that promise he’d made when he’d taken the glove, stuck it in the pocket of his coat in the cold November air. In the time since then, he thinks the promise has changed.
It’s gone from the promise of a rematch to I will see you again, and he doesn’t even mind. Akechi hasn’t messaged him once since the fight, and he assumes the other teen is waiting for them to infiltrate Sae Niijima’s palace before doing anything else.
(And yeah, maybe he’s stalling on going in because he knows when it all ends he’ll never see Goro Akechi again, for better or for worse. The Phantom Thieves will break up and the best thing he’s had in a long time might just dissolve.)
So yeah, maybe he’s kept this glove a bit longer than he should have, but Akira can’t bear to make himself throw it away. It’ll always be a promise.
(The next time either of them fights the other, Akechi’s holding a gun from the other side of the interrogation room table, and he’s not aware the Akira he’s killing isn’t the real one.)
~~~
“I’ll hold onto your glove,” says Joker from the opposite side of a sealed bulkhead, resting his own gloved hand against the metal. The rest of the Phantom Thieves stand behind him silently, watching.
We will see each other again.
Akechi chuckles on the other side, trapped in a standoff with his own cognitive self. Neither of them is making it out of here alive, and he knows it. “Heh, after all this, that’s what you have to say? Seriously, you really are…” sentimental, a fool, too trusting, too believing. Clinging onto memories of a time long gone.
They’d fought again, and Akira had won again, but he hadn’t wanted it to end like this.
A gunshot goes off, and then another. Oracle quietly says his signals are gone. Joker refuses to believe it, though. After all, he’s still got the glove.
~~~
On his very last day in Tokyo before going home, Akira stops by Jazz Jin one last time, just to look at it.
The club is closed that day, and the owner stands out front, turning customers away. That was alright. It wasn’t like he had the time to sit down for a drink or listen to some music, or the ability to invite the one person he’d want to share it with.
Muhen asks him if they were friends, and Akira swallows down the lump in his throat that forms as he says no. Friends wasn’t nearly a strong enough word to describe their relationship. The man clearly takes it the wrong way, though.
“Huh? But I remember when the two of you came here last. It was rare to see him with another person. I haven’t seen Akechi-kun in a while, I’m kind of worried about him.” He pauses, contemplating. “Do me a favor. Next time you see him, tell him to come by again.”
Akira digs his nails into the leg of his pants as he nods. There will be no next time. He’d given up on their promise months ago, not long after he’d been forced to trade Akechi for all of existence because of Maruki’s plans. There were only so many times that one person could come back, and seeing as this time he’d caused the ripples in the fabric of the universe himself, he was sure this time it would stick.
There’s something in his pocket, though.
He sticks his hand in, meeting fabric he doesn’t remember putting in there. It only takes a flash of black fabric before he realizes.
It’s the glove.
This isn’t over yet.
Muhen’s still talking, but Akira’s already made up his mind.
“I’ll let him know.”
~~~
The next day, Akira catches a glimpse of a familiar coat outside the window of the train as it pulls out of the station.