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In another universe, Akira would have sat there, numb and speechless as Goro shot himself—the cognitive version of himself, at least—and then the door, trapping himself in. He would have let Goro do this, because not even the wounded Goro kneeling on the dirty, rusty floor of Shido's Palace would have just let Akira save him.
No. Goro would have rather cut off his own hand than let Akira save him willingly. (Goodness knows that's why he walked out on Akira, several months later). So Akira sat back and watched him as he self-destructed—comfortable in the knowledge that he would have died happy.
Yeah. Not this one.
Akira stands there, helpless as he watches something with Akechi's face walk up to him and point a gun in his face. The miasma curling around the cognitive double thickened, coalescing into Shadows all around them—cutting off any exit points, and more importantly, there were too many of them for Akechi to take on alone.
Not while he's injured like that. Not even with both of his Personae working in tandem and at full strength.
"Joker," Haru whispers, near his elbow. "What do we do?"
Here's the funny thing about masks: wear them long enough and the person you play becomes you, just a little bit. You tear off the mask to get through to the inner self underneath. That's the whole damn point of a Persona. The problem is, Akira's been playing Joker–confident, self-assured, and more importantly perfect–Joker long enough that he thinks everyone's forgotten that he isn't Joker. Crow hadn't been Akechi, not even a little bit.
So why is Black Mask any different?
Akira's not here to play judge, jury, executioner. If he had, he'd be where Akechi's standing now. Two sides of the same damn coin.
He reaches for the gun. Does it so slowly that the cognitive double wearing Akechi's face doesn't even notice, too preoccupied by the captive prey in his sights. Akechi—the real one—is still hunched, small like he could try and disappear in a moment of weakness, and Akira knows that if it were up to him, Akechi wouldn't want his help. Akechi would kill himself trying to rise above whatever it was that threw itself in his path. Cognitive puppet version or not.
Unfortunately for him, Akira thinks penance should come from the living.
"I'll take the blame for our captain," the cognitive smiles, all perfect white teeth. "I'll die for him too."
Before Akechi can react, Akira shoots the double. His aim's not always been great, he asquiesces, but he's really been working on it, has been attending all those hangouts with Oda and—even ironically enough—playing darts a whole metric fuckton. It's helped. Even when Akechi made him play 701 and smoked him a whole lot in that too, it helped him.
Because the bullet flies true and lands itself directly in the center of the double's chest. Instantaneously, two things happen: the shadows freak out, coalescing to form distinctive shapes: their true forms, or whatever's been hiding under all that black goo-mass, and Akechi cries out in shock. The cognitive screams. Writhes in on itself, not dead-yet. Akira calls for Raphael, calls for a diarama, watches as Akechi's face transforms.
The Thieves, bolstered by their leader's bold play, fly into position around him. Makoto on his flank, Ryuji at his right. He's got no real strategy other than just to aggro them all and hope that works–because that's pretty much what's worked for about seven Palaces running–but it seems to have done the trick, because the shadows switch their focus.
They're descending on the Thieves, howling in rage. And they're ignoring the still-slumped form of Akechi behind them.
Why isn't he getting up yet, Akira thinks, in the midst of throwing a stray ziodyne. Is he still hurt? Was he affected by something else?
Behind the Forneus he's currently fighting, the cognitive is still standing, clutching at the space where Akira'd shot it. It's almost odd and hypnotic to watch: it doesn't bleed red, not like Akira did, sluggishly trailing a black goo that bleeds into miasma as soon as it touches the air. It only has an expression of annoyance on its face over getting shot. No pain, no fear. The perfect puppet: never able to feel anything other than mild distaste and crawling, unthinking subservience.
If this is how Shido views Akechi, Akira thinks, he's not been looking properly.
The double sneers down at Akechi. Who's rising to his feet, slow and sure, like he's testing the limits of his body so soon after Akira healed him. "No matter," it says, in Akechi's voice, without any of the tonality or inflection Akira's grown to recognize. "You will still die. Today or tomorrow, or after the election. You think you will be free because you have your little friends?"
"They're not my friends," Akechi says.
"They would risk death for you," the double says to him. "Is that not friendship?"
Akechi tosses his head. Akira downs the shadow, and watches as Akechi pulls out a gun—his gun, the one Joker gave him—and shoots the double in the head. Just to make sure. "What would you know about it," he tells the body of the double, once it slumps to the floor and doesn't get up. "You're just Shido's cognition. He can't comprehend anything like that."
"Akechi!" Akira calls. Tosses him a Takemedic pill from his pocket. "Catch!"
Catch it he does. Akira sees his hungry, hungry eyes swivel from him and onto the high arc of the little capsule as it flies to his hand. When he snatches it out of the air, his movements aren't any less sure than they are normally. That's Akechi for you. You'd never know that they'd just duked it out in an all-holds-barred, drag-out fight not even ten minutes ago. Akira loves that about him.
"Joker," Akechi calls back. He summons his Persona—the other one, not Robin Hood—a great big thing that makes Akira dizzy to look at it too long. It grins and smiles at him, and swings a sword the color of flame, or iron freshly tempered in the forge. "What have you gotten yourself into now?"
Akira's missed that voice. When he pretended to be dead he'd missed Akechi's sarcasm, the biting quips he could never keep away from his cute Detective Prince mask, bleeding over like oil into water. It was a strange dichotomy that Akira'd picked up on, once he spoke to Akechi for longer than about ten minutes, and he missed it: being able to joke and argue and debate with Akechi and draw out all the sharper, hidden edges underneath that fine demeanor. Even when Akechi'd fucking shot him.
"Who, me?" he says, swinging sharply to the left to avoid a dazzler thrown his way. He's smiling, can feel it quirking the edges of his lips and coloring his voice. God he hopes Akechi doesn't notice. Can't hear the relief in his words. "Nothing, Akechi-kun. You coming?"
Akechi demolishes the battlefield like it's a damn art and a half. It's always incredible to watch. He's brutal and efficient, has always been even when he was just playing as Crow, but as Black Mask he's stronger. The metaphorical left hand has been drawn. He calls for laevateinn, flattens a Cerberus and turns to Akira.
"What do you think you're doing," he asks. Flat. "What was your plan, Kurusu?"
"That doesn't sound like gratitude," Akira says.
"It's not," Akechi says. His stoicism cracks as Akira flings himself bodily at a Titania. Downs her with a simple slash and swing. "Are you a fool?"
"Should I have just let you die," Akira says to him. "Were you just bluffing, then, about your challenge?"
"My challenge," Akechi dodges a bufudyne swung his way. "You saved me after everything because of my challenge?"
"You promised," Akira tells him. He levels another Cerberus and holsters his gun. "I still have your glove."
Akechi's looking at him like he's frankly lost it. They finish the battle, cleaning up any scrapes or wounds along the way. Akira checks on each of the Thieves, dispensing diaramas and Takemedic pills as he sees fit, making sure nobody's too injured to need to sit out (because frankly Akira doesn't think he can handle another major thing going bad today). He gets to Akechi, who's still staring at him.
"Do I have something on my face," Akira asks. Tucks his hands in his pockets so Akechi can't see how badly they're shaking. Akechi's removed his mask. He's got his bangs in his face, slightly damp with sweat and his hair's sticking up from that helmet-contraption Black Mask wears as a goddamn costume. It isn't attractive. Akira insists on this.
"Joker, you're a damn idiot," Goro Akechi says. Ah. Well. What could he have expected. His shoulders are shaking, too. Akira grows actually concerned when the look in Akechi's eyes slips from confusion to something closer to manic. "Why did you do that? I was already dead, and you…you decided to throw yourself in too? Give Shido a two-for-one deal?"
"I know how to haggle," Akira says instead, like an idiot, because he's maybe also a little hysteric himself, and he doesn't know how to tell Akechi the entirety of it. The enormous elephant sitting on his chest that he can't even mention.
"Kurusu."
"Look, you can't defeat Shido if you're dead," Akira snaps. "What were you thinking? Showing up here so soon?"
"I had a hunch," Akechi says. His head's tilted slightly to the side, in that way he does when he's being pensive about something, when he's thinking. His eyes are so dark, full of promise, alive. Shido's cognition could only dream up a pale facsimile of what Akechi actually was. "Call it a detective intuition, if you will."
"So you decided to show up here on a suicide mission?"
"If I'd killed Shido today and died for it, it wouldn't have been a suicide mission," says Akechi. "All my life I dreamt of killing him. Ending his crimes. Cutting his strings, watching him slump to the floor in a pool of his own blood. What a fitting end, then, that I do it from the inner mechanisms of his palace?"
"Akechi…"
"But you showed up, Joker. You, the proverbial wrench in the works, the boy who should be dead, and you saved me for the inconceivable reason that you'd want me to live, after everything that I did?"
"You know," Akira says, quieter. Scratches his head a little. Watches Mona jump to try and tackle Ryuji, roughousing across the dirty galley floor. They're running short of time, but even now, the Thieves behaved the way they always did, and it brought something like relief to his throat. They'd be okay. No matter what. "I would have helped you enact your revenge, Akechi."
"You? Good-boy Kurusu? I refuse to believe that."
Akira ignores Akechi's disbelieving eyes on him. "We could change Shido's heart. We will change his heart. End his crimes. Cut his strings on society… all the people he's hurt, abused, held control over…"
"You can't kill him," says Akechi. "You wouldn't. You can't."
"No," Akira allows. "I wouldn't. But I can steal the treasure. The Thieves would be busy. What would you do, then, Akechi?"
His eyes grow to the size of dinner plates. The moment feels electrified, just between the two of them, like something Akira doesn't have a name for. And then Akechi laughs—really, truly laughs, not the manic laughter he'd exhibited during his breakdown earlier, not the controlled polite laughter of the Detective Prince. Not Crow, not Black Mask. Just Akechi. It softened his face, made him look younger and unrestrained.
"You're insane," Akechi tells him, sincerely, through peals of laughter.
They're attracting attention. Most of the Thieves are idling around, ready to go while their leader is having the most surreal and serious conversation of his life with his maybe-murderer that tried to kill them not an hour ago. Ann's looking at Akira, something curious and knowing in her gaze.
Girl's always been too smart for her own good. Akira forcefully ignores the significant gazes being thrown their way and reaches out, grasps Akechi by the shoulder. Akechi shrugs him off immediately, but Akira's not deterred. "I mean it," Akira tells him. "If you'd fight with us. The offer's on the table."
"Very well," Akechi speaks. He breathes, slow and controlled, and then puts his mask back on. "I accept."
Akira cheers internally. "Right," he says instead, quirking the corners of his lips up in a not-smile. He can pretend to be cool and unaffected. "To the treasure, then. We need to find it before—"
"The calling card, yes," Akechi says. "Believe it or not, I do pay attention." He buckles the holster of his gun to the opposite side—it'd been on his right, and now it's on his left—and motions for Akira to go on. "Well?"
Later, outside of the Metaverse, when Ann asks him what he'd so willingly proposed to Akechi in the engine room Akira has to pause. He can't tell her about the deal. Akira doesn't murder people—that's not what the Thieves do—but Akechi needs to do this, needs to move on. For his happiness, Akira tells himself, watching the last rays of the sunset cast its fingers over Yongen-Jaya. They stop under the awning of Leblanc.
He's never been particularly good at being a moral compass. That's what he has Mona for. Who didn't talk him through this and therefore has no idea what he'd promised to Akechi.
So Akira just—fucking lies. "Just promised him his duel," he says, after a pause. "You know how he is."
Ann doesn't believe him. He can see it in her eyes, and she knows him too well by now to fall for something like that. But miracle of miracles: she doesn't press, which Akira is thankful for. The inherent trust the Thieves extend to him, day after day, is amazing. He just wishes he deserved it.
It's not a full lie, anyway. Akechi would demand from him his promised challenge. As Black Mask, as Crow, both of them. Akira would make sure of it—would make sure Akechi lived to see it.