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It’s April.
The first thing he does, of course, is track down Kurusu.
“If Maruki,” Goro hisses, beneath the dim cover of the overpass he’d dragged the other boy to, “intends this to be some kind of do-over, for us, then he is about to think again.”
“He doesn’t,” Kurusu assures him, fingers busy fixing skewed glasses and ruffled shirt buttons. None of his precious girlfriends are around to see him - why would he bother now? Only to delay giving Goro any kind of real answer, he’s sure.
When he finishes and finally deigns to look up, Goro narrows his eyes at him. “And how, Kurusu, do you know that?”
“It’s not him,” Kurusu insists. Despite his attempts at fixing himself his glasses are still skewed, and though they’re effective at hiding his eyes they do nothing to disguise his little smile. He’s grinning, what is he so damn amused about?
“What’s so funny?” Goro presses, through gritted teeth. Kurusu hasn’t been taking this at all seriously - he’d simply been lounging at Leblanc’s counter this morning, eating breakfast, when Goro had been up all night trying to figure out if Maruki had goddamn time manipulation powers on top of everything else.
“You,” Kurusu answers, and this time the glare Goro fixes him with is a hell-frozen kind of frigid. His rival’s typically lukewarm to Goro at the best of times, unwilling and rocky as their partnership was, but being actively lackadaisical is a new low.
“You, Kurusu,” Goro bites out in response, when even his worst glare has no effect on Kurusu’s grin, “are the most insufferable, incompetent, pathetic wet rag of a partner anyone could ask for. If you’re not going to help me, then I’ll just do it all-”
“It’s a reset, Goro,” Kurusu says, and the shock of hearing his own first name without any form of honorific is enough to temporarily blot out the rest of his words - but not for long. “I’ve done it before. We’ve started over, and now we’re going to do it all again.”
“What,” Goro says. His own name still rings in his ears, making it even harder to process what he’s hearing. “Kurusu, what,” he says again, because Kurusu is still grinning at him like this is the best joke he’s ever told, and it has to be. It doesn’t make sense. He’s just fucking with him.
“You’ve never remembered before,” Kurusu tells him. Now that smile’s more devious, more smirk-like. And then, in a voice that’s all Joker, “This is gonna be fun.”
Goro does not accept this.
Kurusu alone had been the one he’d trusted in Maruki’s last reality; perhaps that was the twist of this one. Maruki had learned that together they were a threat - Goro hadn’t thought himself so foolish as to be misled by a constructed Akira Kurusu, but there’s simply no way his rival would’ve fallen like this. Perhaps Maruki’s plan was to separate them and run Goro off on a wild goose chase with some flimsy cognitive double. That meant the real Kurusu would have to be held somewhere in the madman’s Palace to prevent him from interfering. Yes, that must be it.
Kurusu was idiot enough to get captured. Goro will be sure to flaunt that when he rescues him. The fact that he temporarily fell for the cognition’s ruse is irrelevant; he won’t mention it.
There are no hits for Takuto Maruki on the MetaNav. Or in his search history, recent or otherwise.
The app icon is red again, as he’d noticed before. Digging even deeper into his navigation history reveals it greatly reduced, and were he forced to say, he might place the most recent hits as lining up quite well with what he’d been doing last year. To be precise, in early April of last year.
There’s a text message on his phone with a name and several vague details, as well as a rapidly-approaching deadline. Goro looks up the name - spiteful of his own memory, which has already provided him with the answer - and finds the man’s occupation to be in the Tokyo metro service. Specifically, as a subway conductor.
Goro does not answer the text, and he does not enter the name into the MetaNav.
Goro still does not accept this.
He needs to regroup. Spend some time thinking, away from the false Kurusu and any of Maruki’s tricks. There’s one place that’s good for that in any reality, and so he takes his usual solo seat at Jazz Jin and probes this fresh new hell of a world.
“We’ve just got a new aloe vera seltzer in from the usual supplier,” Muhen offers, when prompted for any observations, any strange happenings, anything out of the ordinary at all. “I’m thinking I’ll pair it with the Aomori apple juice, maybe something more. Speaking of, you down to be my taste tester?”
Goro acquiesces with his usual agreeableness. It takes three rounds of changing proportions when Muhen decides to add the splash of lime, and then when Goro takes a sip it’s just as he remembers.
“Your clients will love it,” Goro praises, turning down Muhen’s offer to stay for the new performer’s show; he’s already heard this one.
Masayoshi Shido is on the swelling upswing of his power, wielding influence, charisma, and greed in equal parts to shape the world around him - and this, at last, makes Goro accept it. In no world, faithful recreation attempt or otherwise, would Takuto Maruki ever allow the continued roughshod rampage of the man who ruined his academic career. Benevolent god though he’d proclaimed to be, Maruki could forgive all but slights against himself.
It’s with another unshaking grip on Kurusu’s uniform collar that he once more repossesses his rival from amidst his daily life, dragging him away from Shujin’s gates to a more respectably shaded alleyway.
“Fine,” Goro admits, unwillingly, and Kurusu laughs. Time travel must have addled his sense of humor - Goro never remembered him being quite so giggly before. “We’re in the past. We’ve started the year over. Now you’re coming with me, and we’re beating the shit out of Shido.”
“I don’t have my friends yet,” Kurusu points out, in the first valid contribution he’s offered since the start of this whole mess. Surprisingly, it’s his only objection - Goro had been prepared for a bloodbath of an argument, the same battle as always when it came to convincing his rival to do anything.
But honestly, Goro hadn’t even given thought to the possibility that Kurusu’s friends might have remembered as well. If he has Kurusu’s help it won’t matter; at the stage they both were at in Maruki’s Palace, the two of them should be more than enough.
And they are.
The persona Kurusu calls upon first is a distinctly unfamiliar one - Goro grudgingly acknowledges that Kurusu hadn’t been taking this as laxly as he’d first assumed. On the contrary, he’s had quite the upgrade.
The newest facet of Kurusu’s soul is a towering red and silver swordsman who bears a name with entirely too many parts. A mocking jeer is locked and loaded, perfectly crafted to bait the higher limits of this new form’s arsenal out of Kurusu, but in an utterly uncharacteristic display of showmanship his rival simply gives it to him.
The other boy tears off his mask, the swordsman’s blade rises and whirls, and with a mighty crack the heavens open and a sky-shaking beam of almighty energy tears down. The Chimera is a disintegrated pile of ash after the first blow; the two more that follow, each equal to the first in devastation, are a cruel comedy.
Goro stares. With Robin Hood’s paltry defenses, he would’ve fared no better than the Chimera against one of those beams. With Loki he might’ve withstood two; Hereward shifts, restless and unsettled, in his mind.
Kurusu never displayed this kind of power before, not once in the course of their duels and not even against their mutual enemies after they’d joined forces. Had he not trusted him even then? Goro had suspected as much but to have it proven so solidly was a slap in the face. What was different about now? Was this meant to be a warning to Goro? A threat?
“Why didn’t you use that against Maruki?” is what he settles with, instead of dealing with any of that. Kurusu’s been watching him rapt all the while, as if he’d been waiting for his response. As if Goro’s response to anything was something Kurusu would care about.
Kurusu, in keeping with his new apparent sense of humor, only laughs.
Goro’s already learned to live without his revenge once, willing or otherwise. It still hurts when his father, defeated and forced to his knees and begging for mercy, doesn’t even remember his mother’s name. It makes the apology they wring out of him feel hollow - like it didn’t matter. Like it never would have mattered, with the woman it was meant for dead and gone and unable to hear it.
But even though he already learned once, the lesson this time cuts another identical jagged, empty hole in his soul.
“Hey,” Kurusu says, on the park bench beside him. Goro’s not sure why he stuck around; it’s not like there’s much interesting in watching him stare blankly at a legislator’s pin for half an hour. When Goro doesn’t answer, Kurusu nudges him with his shoulder - the contact knocks him right out of the dizzying, endless sinkhole in his head. Since when did Kurusu, aloof, apathetic Kurusu, nudge people when they didn’t respond to him?
“What,” Goro says. He can’t deal with the pin and Kurusu’s new tactics at the same time, so he shoves it into his pocket and looks up at his rival. There’s something on the other boy’s face but sure enough, in a flash, it stretches to a grin.
“So,” Kurusu asks him. “Got any plans after this?”
It’s a new angle, teasing him for his isolation. Kurusu had known about it before but he’d never sunk so low as to rub it in his face - Goro had assumed he didn’t care enough to bother, but apparently a fresh start had made his rival meaner.
Goro sits up on the bench, turns to face Kurusu. Studies his curled lips, his ashen eyes peering through the skewed glasses he must’ve forgotten to fix, his hand pressed over Goro’s on the bench in some mockery of what Goro will never have. He refuses to let Kurusu see how hard his strikes land, so it’s with that determination that his mind seizes on the first thing he can think of.
“That teacher at your school,” Goro asks, brain working, rearranging his newly wide-open schedule. “Have you handled him yet?”
“One of us now, huh?” Kurusu teases him. The fake Olympic medal’s in one of his rival’s hands, and the other is inching closer to Goro on the couch they sit together on. “Acting outside the law? Changing hearts in secret?”
“I’d rather have just shot the bastard,” Goro counters. Suzui might’ve been saved in this world with their early intervention, but one victim fewer does not lessen Goro’s disgust for the scum of society. There’s an affronted ‘hey!’ from Morgana and a ‘woah, dude,’ from Sakamoto, but Takamaki is notably silent.
Kurusu notably isn’t, and that smug grin is even louder. He’s been nothing but smiles since he’d dragged him along to their little victory celebration in Leblanc’s attic. “Yeah, I bet,” he snickers, like it’s a horrible inside joke between them. “Welcome to the Phantom Thieves, Goro.”
And the familiarity; he’s not once gone for the abrupt, dismissive ‘Akechi’ he favored before or even the more begrudging ‘Crow’ in Maruki’s Palace. And he’s never been more touchy - patting him on the back after a battle, pulling him into a victory side-hug after they escaped the falling castle, his leg brushing up against Goro’s under the table now. The hole in his soul aches a little more when his rival’s around and it’s only gotten stronger with Kurusu’s new game; Goro can’t let him know.
“I’m not part of anything with you, Kurusu,” he bites back, to keep him at a distance. The others might not have their memories, but Goro’s different. He knows Kurusu, knows this playful teasing is just a front for the cold barely-present tolerance beneath. Goro won’t fall for it. He won’t be toyed with; not like this.
It’s quiet in the attic for a second. He’s getting a lot of wide eyes alongside the typical smirk from Kurusu, which is odd - Goro had never bothered with the prince act in front of them this time around, and he’d snapped at their leader plenty before in the castle.
“Dude,” Ryuji says, “What’d you call him?”
It’s so stupid of a question with such a confused tone to it that Goro’s taken aback. He’s completely lost for a second…and then his wits return and Goro realizes the reason. “His name, Sakamoto,” Goro asserts, bitterly. “Contrary to whatever Kurusu believes, we are not on a first-name basis-”
“Uh, Akechi-kun?” Takamaki interrupts. “That’s not even his last name.”
In the wake of that, Morgana even has the gall to add, “I thought you two were close. But you don’t even know his name?”
While Goro struggles to reconcile this sudden, bizarre hallucination with his understanding of reality, Kurusu smoothly steps in. “It’s alright guys,” he assures the group, sitting up and scooting in so he’s pressed closer to Goro’s side. And more, even closer. What the fuck. “It’s just a nickname he calls me.”
He has the nerve to turn to Goro, slipping his hand into Goro’s own limp, unresisting one. Kurusu - Kurusu? - winks at him. “Isn’t it cute?” he says.
He doesn’t understand. It’s Kurusu, it can’t be anyone else - who else could it even be? The same prim, straight glasses -
he leaves them crooked
- the same blank, unreadable exterior -
he’s smiling every time I see him
- the same attitude, that frosty barely-concealed distaste for him, the contempt, the coldness -
…his hand is warm.
His rival’s presence in his life feels warm, like his body next to Goro’s, like his smile as he looks at Goro through skewed glasses and watches him with pure, simple, open affection.
Ryuji’s voice breaks the surface of the swelling feeling of fullness in Goro’s soul, but it couldn’t cut through it, not even as the meaning of what he says sinks in. “Man, that’s weird,” Ryuji complains, clearly baffled. “How the hell do you get ‘Kurusu’ outta ‘Ren Amamiya’?”
How indeed, had he looked at this person and seen someone else entirely? This was no cognition built by Maruki to trick him, but Goro was still very much the fool.
“I don’t know,” Kurusu - Amamiya - Ren says. He squeezes Goro’s hand and it’s warm, warm, warm.
And then, he says, “But I’ve always thought it was funny.”