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Goro Akechi had come to the conclusion early in his life that he was a cursed child. That he was an unwanted child.
By the age of ten, an idea had been imprinted onto him that people didn't love him simply because of who he was. All because who he was had been too unpalatable, too troublesome, too strange and shameful.
His mother, as a result of her own revolting, disgusting line of work, had given birth to a monster, people said.
A child who could not be well-disciplined, whose incidents more often than not created work for others to clean up. A child whose presence became synonymous with dread, and among all, one of the least favored children to be left responsible for the care of.
A child who was difficult to teach to rectify his behavior in the way he was meant to, and whose pace always fell several steps behind the crowd, having to forcibly be pushed forward to keep up—until soon, he was left behind altogether.
A child who was punished for fending for his wounds, while another child cried and was nursed for theirs. A child whose interests, whose behavior, and whose personality, had naturally othered him from others.
The last child in the sand, all alone. A bastard child whose nature deemed him too freakish to play with.
Through such messages and his own deductions, he had concluded that perhaps just by existing, he would never be anything but a nuisance, a chore, and a burden to the world.
Perhaps if he never existed, his mother wouldn't have been as miserable and stressed as she always seemed to be. Perhaps a weight could have been lifted from her shoulders, had he died before she cracked under the pressure, and before her wits broke just as her neck did, under a taut rope. Perhaps it would have been better that way.
But it didn't turn out that way.
What happened in reality was that his mother died, he was passed from home to home, subjected to neglect after neglect, and Goro never was a child ever again. He barricaded all entrances and pulled shut all shutters to his heart, and sat inside a sad excuse for a bedroom where no light ever entered, rotting away.
Yet at the same time, he would never become an adult either.
—or at least, those were some of his last thoughts while slumped down against a bulkhead door, his head spinning as the alarms blared in his ears.
Goro Akechi felt as though he was drowning.
Drowning in the memory of the hem of a dress suspended in the air, trailing behind a body dangling from the ceiling. (In the place he had once called home.)
Drowning in his muddled reflection in the water the night he took his first victim, puking again and again. (In the confines of an unfamiliar bathroom, in a foreign apartment.)
Drowning in a crime scene with gloves dirtied by gunpowder, with blood—real blood pooling down a forehead, and lifeless eyes that never had and never would have a chance to see him. (In a cold, soundproof room that hollowed out even his laughter.)
"—re —o— —ay?"
And he was drowning,
drowning in his father's ship, saltwater seeping into his wounds while his life flashed before his eyes.
He took in a shuddered breath, only to find his mouth invaded by the taste of salt.
Perhaps, he felt, that he might have wasted away his life after all, chasing an elaborate plan of revenge only to have it flipped on him at the very end. The gods above must have been laughing at him, he had thought, as he faced the cruel irony of having a gun pointed at him by a puppet wearing his skin.
Of course, it had to end like this. Shido had betrayed many of his associates in the end. How would Goro be any different?
It was stupid of him to expect that the world would let anything go his way, after a lifetime of repeated rejections and failures.
"...ro—"
What a pathetic end for him.
And so his body sank with the demolition of his father's ship, alongside 18 years of memories—of wasted pain and anguish, and of suffocated fury beneath masks built upon masks. Of smiles he would never, ever see again, and of unfulfilled promises and an outstretched hand, all too late at the very end.
"...Crow."
And yet— and yet... that didn't quite happen either, did it?
Accompanied by a voice, a red glove breached the depths and grabbed onto his arm, pulling him out of the sea. It was the beckoning hand of a boy who could see past all of his masks— Right, the boy who was still alive, because—
When Goro's lungs cleared and his vision grew unmuddled, he found a tissue box in front of him, being gently prodded into his chest by one Ren Amamiya, who was kneeling and fixing him with a look of worry and—was that something akin to panic?
His heart pounded in his ears, and suddenly, he remembered where— no, when he was.
Goro Akechi never imagined that he would live past the age of 12.
Nor did he ever imagine living past 15.
Nor did he ever imagine living long past 18.
And yet on the 4th of February, Goro woke up, breathing and moving, and alive—to his panic and confusion—beyond all odds.
And yet on the 2nd of June, he received a text message from a boy who mourned far more than he should, reminding him of a 19th birthday that was never planned to happen. Never should have happened.
And yet in the following June, a year later, Goro returned to an apartment after a long day of work, only to find a dainty cake sitting atop a kitchen counter, complete with candles and frosting.
And instead of enacting any, any kind of presumably typical reaction one might have—of amusement, of joy, or of pleasant surprise—in such circumstances, he had found himself plunged underwater, drowning in a sea of his own memories.
It's been ten years, he thought to himself. It's been half of my life. I've been like this for half of my life.
Half of his life had been spent living the consequences of losing his mother.
Goro blinked at Ren dazedly, before realizing there was moisture in his eyes. Almost shamefully, he snatched several tissues from the box and pressed them to his face.
"Is this— Was this too much?" Ren's bewildered voice snapped Goro to attention. "Shit, I should have asked you beforehand. I didn't know it would be..."
Feeling an abrupt smack of alarm and shame, he shook his head. No, it's not you, he wanted to say. Never could be you.
After several moments more of silence between them, Goro made the move to grab the tissue box and get up—causing Ren to inelegantly lean backward to get out of the way—to make his way to the sofa.
As Goro continued to clean up his face, he saw Ren tentatively approach and vaguely motion to a spot next to him on the couch.
"May I...?"
He nodded, and Ren chose a relatively distant spot from him to occupy, leaving between them a noticeable amount of space. It was probably out of consideration for him, Goro surmised. It was almost... frustrating, how Ren was always too kind for his own good.
He really, really didn't deserve him.
"Look, uh... we don't... we don't have to talk about this, if you want?" Despite sounding composed, Ren's restless hands told a different story. "I can eat the cake, if you don't want it, and—"
He groaned, holding his face in his hands. "It's not the cake, Ren."
Well, it was, but it also wasn't, not really.
"...Okay," Ren replied, and waited.
Awkwardly, Goro realized he wasn't quite ready to have this conversation. He placed the tissue box down. "Hold on," he said unevenly, taking in a shuddered breath. "Just"—he stood up—"give me a moment."
Without waiting to see or hear Ren's response, Goro went to the kitchen and retrieved a glass of water for himself. For a moment, he stared hard and long at his reflection in the glass—momentarily reminded of cold February evenings and arguments over the fate of the world—before downing a third of the water to wash the taste of bitterness and salt down his throat.
Upon sitting down again, he exchanged the glass in his hand for the box of tissues, which he immediately got to work at repeatedly pulling from and bundling up to keep his hands occupied. If Ren had anything to say about the wastefulness of the action, he did not comment on it, simply opting to instead continue to wait until Goro was ready.
Goro wasn't sure if it was the weight of Ren's unwavering gaze or the eventual emptiness of the tissue box that sooner pressured him to speak, but he did.
"I shouldn't be here," was the first thing he found tumbling its way out of his mouth, and he immediately winced. That definitely was not a good way to start a conversation, considering the way it made Ren's eyes widen.
He cleared his throat and tried again. "I mean— I never expected to live up to this point," he unhelpfully clarified. Which might have arguably been a worse starter.
"Goro—"
He raised a hand before Ren could retort.
"You know, Ren. No one ever apologized to her for what they did to her. No one ever apologized to me for what happened, either." And oh, the words couldn't help but to keep hissing out now, could they? "None of my foster parents, none of the teachers, and"—he gritted his teeth—"definitely not Shido."
When his mother died, it felt like Goro's world had been thrown into turmoil forever—even more so than he had already thought to be possible.
He gripped tightly onto a bundle of tissues in his hand. "But I said it once before, hadn't I? That it's no longer possible for her to gain any closure. So then—" Feeling acid coat his tongue, he briefly paused to take another sip of water. "So then, what about me?"
Throughout his adolescence, he had seethed with anger, so much unbridled anger. Hatred towards those who wronged them, to those who branded his mother, and by extension, her son, as subhuman. Bitterness towards all systems' failures to ensure them safety and protection, to ensure that his mother could live without feeling trapped or shamed or miserable, and to ensure that Goro could find a loving and caring family after he had lost his only.
Resentment towards the justice system, for its repeated failures to uphold the values that it had oh-so preached, and for being stained with corruption to the point that someone as despicable as that man could succeed at getting away scot-free for his deplorable actions, while Goro's mother was treated as nothing more than the dirt beneath someone's shoes, and whose existence was easily forgotten by the world.
His fists shook. "In the beginning, I had foolishly thought, that by taking justice into my own hands, I'd be able to give myself that, even if not her. I had really believed that."
He took in deep, trembling breaths, before putting the glass to his lips again for relief.
"But of course, I later realized that things could hardly be that simple," he dryly said.
Because being able to make Shido pay for his crimes wouldn't be enough to heal the wounds in Goro's heart. Seeing his father in jail (or seeing him dead, like he originally planned) would never be enough to completely make up for a lifetime of pain. It was a better justice than none, one might say, but in truth, it would never, ever truly be enough for him. He only wished that was all it was.
"Ren,"
Ren turned to look at him.
"Have you ever felt like... you weren't meant to be born? In this world?" His fingernails dug into tissue, and he dared not look Ren in the eyes. "That from the moment you took your first breath, the gods above you decided to make every breath you took the most labored?"
Goro ground his teeth and continued. "That every time your peers looked at you, you just knew— You just knew they didn't want you around."
He shut his eyes tightly.
"Like you weren't meant to be, that you were just something alien, that you weren't worth enough to be anything. Not even the filth underneath their feet when playing in the mud." His voice drew to a whisper, and for a moment, he shrank into himself, feeling like he was nine years old all over again. "I don't know if I was ever human in anyone's eyes."
A glass of water was picked up for the last time, and down the last soothing dredges went. He opened his eyes.
"I suppose what I meant to say, is this: I never imagined I would turn 20 years old. Or 19, for that matter. I built my entire life just for that one purpose of taking Shido down, just for that purpose of proving that I could be someone, but beyond that, I didn't fucking care what would happen to me afterward, Ren. I didn't expect I could have anything close to a 'normal' future, because my life was never something normal to begin with."
If all it took for Goro to earn closure was to make his father repent for his crimes, then perhaps he wouldn't have been prepared to die in that ship several years ago, to entrust his goal to someone else and die with the rest of his hurt. Perhaps he would have instead planned for an "after" in his life, where he was finally able to drop the pretenses and feel as though he could let himself heal.
But Goro didn't plan for such an "after"; it was never any part of his grand scheme. What "normal" could he imagine himself deserving when he had become a monster in his blind and selfish pursuit of revenge? And what "normal" could he imagine himself having when simply by existing in the first place, he was deemed abnormal from birth?
He much would have rather selfishly died with his trauma than allow himself the opportunity to recover from it, and yet...
"Yet, you're here now," said Ren, who had moved closer to Goro's end of the sofa.
"That I am. And I— I still don't know what the fuck I'm supposed to be doing now, to be honest." His eyebrows furrowed. "Let alone the question of what closure even entails for me anymore, I can't even answer the question of what it should mean now for me to live, and to heal."
Goro had believed, once upon a time, that what he wanted to hear the most was an apology, from every person and every system that had ever wronged him or his mother. But just as it had become pointless to apologize to his mother, he realized such apologies to him would be almost as equally meaningless.
After all, who was there to receive the apologies anymore, when the child who needed them the most died with the last smile that tugged on his mother's lips?
Was it the teenager who carried the weight of those memories? Or the young adult who was continuing to live the long-term consequences, for whom an apology wouldn't change a thing?
"I don't know," Ren replied. "I doubt there's a single correct way to go about it. But, knowing you..."
Suddenly, there was a hand tentatively brushing up besides Goro's. He flinched, but he made no attempt to shy away from its touch.
"You've repeatedly asserted before that you determine your own path. I don't imagine this would be any different."
Ren offered up his other hand.
"You're not under anyone's control anymore. Not Shido's, not Yaldabaoth's, not Maruki's—and certainly never mine, I'd hope. So whether you decide to stay here or leave—regardless of what you choose, Goro, I'll always respect it."
Ren brought his voice to a softer tone. "But... just know that however you choose to carve your future"—his eyes widened as Goro took his hand in his grasp—"you don't have to be alone anymore, okay?"
Goro's left hand was interlaced with Ren's right. No gloves separated the two. There hadn't been a need for them in a long time.
However, somehow, that sensation, with those words...
Goro seldom cried. He didn't cry when he died the first time, and he didn't cry when he died the second time. Let alone in public, he never could comfortably even cry in the private space of his previous apartment, because what sense of safety or comfort could he afford to feel when said unit was paid for and supplied by the man who ruined his life?
Yet in his current residence, for the second time that June 2nd, Goro felt safe enough to do so.
In the aftermath of cleaning up after Goro's messy crying session involving many scraps of tissues, followed by Goro retrieving another glass of water from the kitchen, Ren decided that he would be a (frustratingly endearing) nuisance.
"So, just a quick question," Ren began, pretending he wasn't going to ask the same question for what was possibly the fifth time. "Do you still want the cake?"
Goro felt a smirk tugging on his lips. "Yes, Amamiya Ren, I still want the damn cake," he insisted.
And, just to rile him up, he added, "I expect it to be the best cake I've had in my life, or else we're breaking up. I expect nothing less from my rival."
Ren placed his hand on his chest in a dramatic gesture of mock hurt and disbelief. Aha. "You can't just— You don't even know how to cook!"
He smiled.
Truth be told (and they both knew it), Goro would have enjoyed the cake regardless of whether it was the best or worst cake he ever had in his life. Because it was from Ren.
"You're wrong, by the way," Ren said in the middle of one of Goro's laughable attempts to pick up a stray piece of cake from the plate with his fork.
"About what?"
"You've always been human in my eyes."
Some part of his heart twisted in something like yearning. Of course, Ren, being the sentimental person he was, would say something like that. And yet...
"Well," he replied after placing cake in his mouth. "that sentiment is mutual."
...
Goro Akechi never thought he'd live past the age of 18.
Yet there he was, having a mundane celebration on his 20th birthday, eating cake made by Ren, who made it for his sake—
And he wasn't alone.
Perhaps he didn't have to be anymore.
If he closed his eyes, he could see in the distance, a young child in a playground, crying all alone while dreaming and waiting for a hero to save him.
Goro wondered if it would someday, be possible for him to become the kind of hero that child needed, even if just for a moment. He imagined crossing that distance to the playground, ignoring the stares of all other children, and giving that small child a big hug.
"I'm sorry," he wished he could whisper into the boy's ear. "It must be so hard."
Perhaps then, and only then, by doing so, he could ease just a little of that child's pain, and give him, even for just a short while, a long-deserved, long-awaited rest.