Chapter Text
Akechi can tell Joker has been pushing it to meet the deadline for Maruki’s palace. While he doesn’t exactly mind the prioritization of the mission, something has been bothering him about it. He watches as Ren takes another long swig from a thermos of leblanc coffee, knowing full well that he shouldn’t be anywhere near tired enough to warrant the waste of potent restoration items.
There’s something else that’s been going on behind his eyes, something dragging him down as they continue fighting deeper into Maruki’s heart. It’s been there since Akechi approached him at the beginning of January, though throughout the month it’s steadily become more apparent, as if Joker has been losing the strength to hide it.
It makes him wonder what happened between December and now, when he supposedly took on and brought a god to its knees. He knows the way his expression twisted with shock as Akechi had slithered out of the crowd to step between him and Sae- there was a shine there as if something had knitted itself together in him at that moment. Akechi remembers the way he had to crush his own response to it, something long dead inside him stirring at the joy and relief in Ren’s eyes.
For a moment he considers the chance that Ren knows. Akechi hasn’t exactly gone out of his way to hide the truth from him, but between everything else…
“I don’t think I could have done it without you,” He suddenly says, breaking the amicable silence between them. Akechi looks up from his drink to raise an eyebrow.
“Do what, exactly?”
Ren looks uncomfortable, shifting in his seat. “Woken up my friends…When I went around to talk to all of them, I couldn’t get over the feeling that I didn’t belong in their lives anymore. But they all seemed so much happier.”
Not for the first time, Akechi finds a familiar burning in his chest when he looks at Ren like this. Maruki must have known the kind of effect seeing his friends’ wishes would have on him- no, he fully relied on it. It was a disgustingly blatant attempt at manipulation.
Akechi scoffs. “That was all Maruki’s doing. In the end they came to their senses anyway, what exactly did I have to do with it?”
Ren looks so small like this, hunched in on himself with his bangs falling loosely over his eyes. Akechi is reminded of the way Atlas bent under the weight of the globe on his back. “Not with them waking up, no, but…I don’t know, maybe it’s stupid.”
“The fact that we have to put up with this in the first place in stupid.” It gets the corner of Ren’s mouth to twitch upwards and Akechi feels a conflicted satisfaction by it.
“If you hadn’t been there to keep my head on straight, I’m not sure I would’ve had the guts to go back into the palace. So, thanks.”
Akechi expects many things from people. False praise, platitudes, guilt trips, backhanded compliments. Ren never gives him those. Hearing such earnest gratitude from him for something as trivial as Akechi being present makes him want to claw at his skin.
And yet something about the wistful tone makes his stomach twist. If Akechi weren’t here, would Ren give in to Maruki’s desires? Should that matter to Akechi, who wouldn’t even be alive to experience the betrayal?
“Please,” He huffs instead, refusing to meet Ren’s eye. “You’re not nearly that spineless.”
He still doesn’t know if he’s ready to face that answer.
He watches as Joker blinks lazily up at one of the cultish posters and begins to step forward to snap him out of it when he feels a sharp strike against his back.
“Shit!”
A group of Hasturs rise from the shadow’s amorphous mass in a circle around their group. Oracle’s voice crackles in the back of his mind, frantically grasping to get them the upper hand.
The first Hastur twirls as it powers itself in preparation to attack and Akechi curses under his breath, raising his sword to block strikes from the others. Panther has a hand to her mask and Fox is frozen in a guard stance, Akechi takes a narrow opportunity to attack the biggest threat only for it to remain standing.
Pain rips through his body as the concentrated Hastur summons its eyes to assault the party with almighty magic. Akechi hisses as he’s forced to drop to one knee, one hand clutching his side where the attack seared him. Shit. Fuck. He needs to get ahold of himself, get up, and move before-
Akechi makes the mistake of taking his eyes off the shadows to check Joker’s state. Behind the domino mask there’s a glazed film over his eyes, he looks too relaxed, too hesitant, what the hell is he-
Oracle screeches in his ear and Akechi half opens his mouth in a shout as another Hastur moves in to follow up its companion’s attack. Joker’s eyes seem to widen only the slightest amount before its tendril shoots out, ripping through the air.
Akechi hears the sickening squelch of torn flesh before he registers what he’s seeing. And once he does, he sees red.
“LOKI! LAEVATEINN!” He shouts as he turns all his attention to the Hastur, who’s retracting tendril is red- so red-
Loki’s blade cleaves through the Hastur’s middle, dissolving it into smoke. Akechi wastes no time ripping his mask off again.
“MEGIDOLAON!”
He barely registers Panther’s agonized cry as she catches Joker on his way down, or Yusuke’s shout for Gorokichi as he tears through the remaining shadows. There’s red on the floor, it’s the brightest color in the room. Akechi’s heart doesn’t stop pounding even as the ringing tension of battle fades. He whirls on his heel to see Joker limp in Panther’s arms.
“Somebody get us out of here, now!” He shouts, and it doesn’t take long after the command for one of the reserve thieves to pull out a goho-m and crush it in their hands, pulling them all back to the entrance in a dizzying whirl.
As they all scramble to take stock of the situation, the first thing Akechi notices is that Joker’s mask is gone. The second thing is the dripping crimson hole in the side of his torso. Panther doesn’t seem to know what to do, standing on trembling legs as she stares pale-faced at the body in her arms.
Akechi rushes over to her side. “Set him down on the floor, let me see the wound.” She does as he says without a word, letting out a squeak of panic as blue flames lick across his body, leaving behind his plain school uniform. Akechi doesn’t waste time with the implications, he undoes the dark blazer and pushes the turtleneck (which is soaking in red red red) up to reveal the gaping hole in Joker’s side. Several of the thieves gasp and a few of them make choked gagging sounds. Immediately Akechi rips his gauntlets off and presses a hand to Joker’s throat.
After a few tense moments, he feels the weak pulse against his fingertips. “He’s still alive, just unconscious.” He says. Mona is quick to act and calls for Diego to cast samarecarm. Meanwhile Akechi’s head is spinning- Joker had taken worse hits before and stayed standing, and these Hastur were no more threatening than they had been in the rest of the palace, so how?
He can’t get that momentary glimpse of Joker’s expression out of his mind. Joker, even for all the time he spends flaunting and risking himself for the sake of flair, has always been measured and on guard. Akechi knows this for a fact from the time he spent studying his fighting style in Sae’s palace, Joker simply doesn’t allow himself to falter. So why, just before going down, did Joker look like he was surrendering?
“We need to leave and regroup, staying here won’t do us any good,” Mona says firmly, and Akechi for once agrees with the cat. He steps back to let Panther and Skull lift Joker up on their shoulders, and he still hasn’t opened his eyes, hasn’t even stirred. Someone activates the nav and Akechi shuts his eyes until the nauseating vertigo of traveling between realities passes.
When the group finds themself standing outside the Odaiba stadium, Ren is still unconscious. There’s an uneasy silence stretched between them as the thieves exchange panicked glances. Yoshizawa steps up with a confident puff in her chest despite the way her arms tremble.
“We should go back to Leblanc, right? That way we can talk and- and Ren-senpai can…rest,” Her words seem to jog some awareness back into them as they all begin moving and chattering amongst each other. Akechi can’t be bothered to tune into it until someone asks if he’ll be coming with.
“I’d like to stay updated on our plans going forwards, so yes.” He responds dryly, and that’s the end of that part of the conversation. Not long after, the group begins moving towards the station while Sakamoto carries Ren in a piggy-back hold that would be amusing if he weren’t akin to a ragdoll.
Along the way, the thieves agree that Takamaki and Sakamoto should go together to take Ren to the local clinic, just to be safe, so they enter Leblanc three members short and settle into their usual places with unease. The owner looks at them strangely, but agrees to give them the place to themselves. Akechi is left wondering how much of his generosity is natural and how much of it is Maruki pulling strings to make their meeting more convenient.
“Um…has anything like that happened before?” Yoshizawa asks. Nijima seems to snap out of her thoughts as she looks over at her.
“Ah, there have been a couple of times when one of us has gotten so tired after an infiltration we sort of pass out, but it always passes after a long rest,”
“He didn’t really pass out though,” Sakura mumbles under her breath, “he got downed. That’s never happened before.”
Nijima looks uncomfortably at her hands folded in her lap. “Right…this is an unexpected turn of events.”
“Unexpected?” Akechi speaks up and their heads snap to him. “You don’t mean to tell me you all don’t have plans in place for if this happens?”
Nijima looks caught. “I-I’d suggested it once before, but-” Morgana leaps onto the table in front of her and fixes Akechi with a glare.
“It wasn’t a possibility worth worrying about! Joker is our leader, so protecting him is always our highest priority. Between all of us, something like this should never have even been able to happen!” Akechi grits his teeth, it’s even more evidence suggesting that something else has gone horribly wrong.
“But now it has, so are you saying you’ve all failed in that duty?”
From her corner of the booth, Okumura gives him a withering look that might have shaken him if he had a weaker will. Sakura looks like she might be sick, covering her mouth with her hands. Nijima refuses to meet anyones eye, staring down in shame. Kitagawa looks firmly at him, but there’s a look of pained awareness in his eyes. None of them have anything to say back.
Takamaki and Sakamoto return looking like kicked dogs with Ren still unconscious. Sakamoto moves past them to carry Ren up to the attic while Takamaki stays behind and catches them up. “Takemi looked over the wounds, it seems like they all healed fine. She says he’s probably just in shock and should wake up on his own if we let him rest…”
There’s too much uncertainty to it. Akechi has the partial urge to rush back into the clinic and demand a more thorough examination but knows better that no typical doctor would be able to fully gauge damage done in the metaverse.
Sakamoto comes back down the stairs with a grimace. “Can you guys believe he even sleeps on that sucky futon every night? I felt bad putting him there, but its better than that stiff couch…”
Okumura still looks rightfully worried. “So the revival spell worked fine, that’s a relief.”
“Of course it did! I would never skimp on my healing!” Morgana raises his hackles, but his voice lacks the usual edge to his self-preening.
“I had my eyes on his vitals the whole time, his hp got topped up no problem,” Sakura says, adjusting her oversized glasses. “All things considered he should’ve woken up right away, but…”
Akechi catches the look of deep concentration on her face. “You all saw it, didn’t you? Joker’s mask and outfit disappeared while we were still in the palace.”
The thieves shift awkwardly as if they’d been trying not to think about it. Yoshizawa wrings her hands. “Is that unusual? He did get knocked out, after all…”
“No, he’s right,” Morgana says stiffly. “Even when we get downed, our will of rebellion is there to protect us from further harm,”
“Then…did something happen to his persona?” Takamaki asks. A ripple of discomfort passes over the room.
Morgana’s ears twist back. “That shouldn’t be possible, but…”
“But that’s exactly what was happening with me, wasn’t it?” Yoshizawa looks guiltily at the floor. “I was having trouble keeping my persona because I wasn’t sure of myself or what I was fighting for…”
“Ain’t no way that’s it!” Sakamoto huffs, “Ren’s always been the one fighting the hardest out of all of us, he’s never second guessed himself for even a second!”
“Then doesn’t that make it even stranger that this would happen all of a sudden?” Akechi suggests. “Regardless. If Joker has lost access to his personas, then he’s effectively out of commission. We can hope that this is temporary, but until we know for certain then we have to focus on restrategizing.”
Nijima nods, taking back her certain posture. “That’s right. We still only have a few days until the deadline. Our priority should be figuring out what to do next.”
Kitagawa, who had until now been eerily silent, stands fully to attention. “It is now that we must push ourselves more than ever, we cannot let down our leader again!”
The statement is encouraging, and does it’s duty to rile the thieves back into action. Akechi can’t help the bitter feeling of dread in the back of his throat however.
They play back and forth with the information they have for a while until it becomes clear that no solid plan of action can form without more intel. They need to know more about Ren’s condition. The best case scenario would be that he wakes up in the morning better than ever, but the likelihood of that is slim to none. So instead they need to work on changing their approach.
They disperse under the decision to gather as much information as they can individually and regroup the next evening. Akechi is the first to leave once the meeting is over, and he looks forward to being left alone to think until he hears hurried footsteps behind him.
“Akechi-senpai!” Yoshizawa gasps as she catches him just outside the station. Akechi turns and gives her a displeased look. “Um, we take the same line from here, right? Let’s go together!”
It’s maybe the most transparent excuse Akechi has ever seen, but he doesn’t have the energy to fend her off so he simply turns back and keeps walking, letting her decide whether or not to follow.
To his disdain, she does. Akechi doesn’t bother taking any of the obviously available seats, he’d be damned to accept even the smallest of handouts from Maruki, so Yoshizawa is left standing awkwardly beside him as the train starts to move.
They’re both silent for a while, but Akechi can see Yoshizawa fidgeting and glancing at him in his periphery.
“Um, Akechi-senpai…” She finally speaks up, “I just wanted to thank you for acting so quickly today…I’m sure Ren-senpai would be thankful as well if he were awake.”
She manages to make tenuous eye contact with him as she puts on a weak smile. Goro doesn’t keep in his sigh. “Is that really all you wanted to say to me, Yoshizawa-san? That sentiment could have easily been conveyed over text, or earlier during the meeting.”
Her smile turns into a look of guilty embarrassment quickly. “Right, sorry, I’m just not sure how to start a conversation with you most of the time! You always seem so…”
“Unapproachable?” He finishes for her.
“Not quite. More like…a prickly cactus, or maybe a hedgehog. Something that seems spiky and unpleasant, but really only does because it needs to protect itself, but inside there’s a lot of good stuff!”
Akechi gives her an unimpressed look. “The good stuff is precisely what those examples are trying to protect, given that it can be food for predators.”
“Well not everyone is a predator! The birds that feed on nectar from cacti play an important role in pollination and spreading seeds. Without that, the cactus would die out!”
“I think your analogy is starting to fall apart,”
“That’s- not the point! What I’m trying to say is,” Yoshizawa worries her lip for a second, “Is that…you don’t have to keep it locked up all the time. I know you actually care about Ren-senpai, even if you pretend you don’t. You’re not the only one who’s worried about what happens next.”
Akechi feels his carefully placid mask twitch in frustration. Sometimes, and more often than he would like, he forgets that Sumire is and has always been far more observant than she lets on. It’s one of the things that makes her uncannily similar to Ren in a way that makes Akechi itch.
But much like with Ren, that doesn’t mean that he has to entertain it. The last thing he needs after all of this is for someone to try and pry him open for an unwanted psychoanalysis.
“Thank you, Yoshizawa-san, but I’m fine.” He says plainly, looking away from her downcast expression. “Your energy is better spent on those closer to you. You and I are barely more than strangers.”
The train doors open on the stop he needs to transfer at, so he steps forwards onto the platform. As he does he swears he hears Yoshizawa mutter something else under her breath, but it’s taken by the wind as he leaves her behind.
They have three days until the deadline for their infiltration route. Akechi wakes the next morning with a crick in his neck after spending the night at his desk pouring over old notes on the metaverse and his phone is cluttered with notifications from the phantom thieves’ chat.
Oracle: status update! ren still hasnt woken up but he doesnt seem to be doing any worse than yesterday. sojiros gonna go up and try to get him to eat and drink ilyk how it goes
Queen: That’s good to hear. Keep us in the loop, Futaba.
Oracle: (O=O)ゞ
Violet: Make sure he gets all the right nutrition! We don’t want him getting sick on top of his recovery
Fox: Ah, that reminds me of a place I want to visit with our leader once this is over, hopefully we will get the opportunity…
Oracle: you could make anything about eating, huh inari…
Fox: It’s good to have things to anticipate that keep one motivated to move forward, however small they may be.
Skull: damn rite!! i always do better on my workouts when i think about getting a bite to eat after!
Queen: That’s all well and good but let’s not forget our objective today. Keep an eye out for anything that might help us deal with Maruki if Ren doesn’t wake up in time.
Panther: Yes ma’am!
From there it’s all menial chatter which he marks as read and markedly does not read. The sprawl of notes and documents on his desk all presents to him as unintelligible garbage after scanning it so many times in the false hope there would be something new and useful in them, so Akechi stands to the sound of a crack in his joints and decides to do some in person reconnaissance instead.
Traversing the surreal environment of Maruki’s reality never ceases to unsettle him. Akechi would never call himself well informed on what real happiness looks like in a person, but he is all too familiar with the contours of a fake smile. Not a single expression of joy plastered on any face in the city strikes him as earnest, each person walking around like they’re being carried on conveyors to every destination.
Part of the wrongness, he thinks, is in the impersonal nature of their joy. Each person goes around in their own personal bubble of idealism, a sense of blissfulness that never intersects with anyone else’s. There is no exchange of kindness or pleasantries between anyone, friend or stranger, as they go about their daily lives. In a way it’s no different than the world as it was before, just with a shinier coat of paint.
It isn’t until he gets the notification of Niijima summoning the thieves to Leblanc that he realizes he’s wasted the day wandering and observing, gaining nothing of note save for reaffirmations of how sickened he is by Maruki’s plot. He grits his teeth and shoves it down as he boards the train to Yongen-Jaya.
He arrives last to find the thieves idly chatting with one another. They stop at the signal of his entrance, heads turning to face him as if he’d walked onstage to a play he didn’t belong in. Niijima clears her throat and smooths out her skirt before calling attention to herself.
“Now that we’re all here, we can begin,” She says succinctly. “I checked with the boss, Ren is still unconscious and hasn’t shown any signs of waking up yet. However he did say he managed to get him to eat and drink in small amounts.”
“That’s a relief, I was worried he wouldn’t be able to in that state,” Yoshizawa says as she wrings her hands.
“If he keeps it up he should recover quicker, right?” Takamaki asks. Her voice is level but she keeps worrying her lip.
Morgana speaks up from his place on the table, “I’ve been by his side all day and he doesn’t seem to be getting any worse, so that should be a good sign.”
Niijima nods, “That would be ideal, yes. Still, let’s go over what we’ve all managed to gather today.”
Takamaki is the first to come forward. “I asked around with some of our classmates about Maruki and they seemed weirdly evasive about it, like they didn’t really want to talk about him.”
Yoshizawa’s eyes widen slightly, “I noticed something like that too! I asked my dad about my first sessions with him and how he found Maruki in the first place and he said he couldn’t remember!”
“So he may be trying to remove his presence from the general public’s awareness?” Akechi muses.
“Why would he want to do that, though? I mean, doesn’t he want to be a savior of the world? Why would he try to stay out of the spotlight?” Sakamoto butts in with an irritated look.
Kitagawa seems to ponder it deeply for a moment, “Artists and writers especially will often adopt a pen name to differentiate themselves from their personal lives or to preserve anonymity with their audience. It may be a similar motivation with Maruki.”
“Like hell, he acted plenty proud about it back in the palace when he was talkin’ to us!”
Niijima puts a hand up to pause Sakamoto’s rant. “It’s likely that he wants to be seen in a different light to the general public than with us. He may believe that acting with humility is more becoming of a benevolent savior.”
A familiar perspective that leaves a sour taste in Akechi’s mouth.
“Does that really help us figure out how to deal with him, though?” Okumura says softly, “Knowing how he’s presenting to the public doesn’t really serve much purpose when we’ve already seen his true feelings for ourselves…”
Takamaki shrugs and leans back in her seat. “I guess not, but it is weird,”
Niijima turns her attention over, “What about you, Futaba? Did you manage to find anything?” The thief in question jumps slightly and looks up from her laptop with a wide look.
“Oh, uh! Well!” She looks around frantically before a guilty look crosses over her face, “Sorry, I know I usually have some big scoop, but this time all I got were a bunch of dead ends. Suspicious dead ends! But still dead ends.”
The rest of them look disappointed, Akechi bites his tongue. What use are any of them anyways if even their supposedly unmatched hacker can’t get anything useful?
Yoshizawa gives her a sad smile and a pat on the shoulder, “It’s okay, Futaba-senpai, I’m sure you tried your best!”
They continue around, each thief offering equally pointless testimony until they’ve exhausted all topics. Akechi would feel some sense of pride if he wasn’t bringing an equal amount of nothing to the table. Niijima on the other hand looks tenser with each abandoned lead, Akechi almost wants to applaud her ability to look like she still wants to seem composed.
“It seems we aren’t getting anything from investigating up here, then. I suggest our next step would be to return to Mementos to see if there’s anything we missed.”
Sakura doesn’t look so sure. “If there was anything new or suspicious down there that we missed, I would have picked up on it last time we went down to train. As far as I’ve been able to tell the only thing down there is Maruki’s big surveillance center.”
“Still,” Niijima insists, “We don’t have many other options, if there’s anything down there that could help us then it’s worth taking another look,”
Akechi digs his nails into his arm. “With all due respect, Sakura-san has a point. We can’t afford to waste time combing over areas we’ve already explored, we need to find a new avenue or else we won’t have enough time to enact whatever new plans we come up with.”
“Come on man, we’ve still got, what, a week left?” Sakamoto asks and Akechi sends him a glare.
“Actually, excluding today, we only have two days.” His jaw snaps shut at that and he looks awkward before shrugging.
“Well there’s no way Joker’s gonna stay asleep for that long, right? This is just a backup plan incase shit doesn’t work out-”
Akechi stands abruptly, his hand hitting the table with a harsh thump as he leans over Sakamoto’s slouching form. “I’m not sure if you’ve forgotten the stakes, but we cannot afford to be brazen about this. If we fail, the world as we know it will cease to exist, replaced by one entirely under the control of that man. I suggest that if you really care so much about the fate of society, you start taking this a bit more seriously.”
The room is silent as Sakamoto chews on his inner cheek and glowers back up at Akechi. “Geez man, don’t hav’ta kill a guy for trying to look on the bright side a little, yeah?”
Akechi’s eye twitches with the creak of his gloves as he struggles not to ball his hands into fists. “We don’t have time for bright sides when everything we’ve worked for could turn out to be for nothing!” Something brushes against his shoulder and he jolts violently away, his head snapping to see Yoshizawa cower and pull her hand to her chest.
“Oh, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to- um-” She stammers, but Akechi can barely hear it over the blood in his ears. Do any of them actually care about stopping this? Or are they all just spineless sheep without their illustrious leader to instill them with any real sense of ambition?
Everyone is staring at him in silence and it reminds him too much of the expressions of pity they wore back on Shido’s ship when he-
He can’t be here. The roaring in his head drowns out his thoughts. They’re looking at him like he’s a sick animal they have to kill. He needs to run, leave before they swing down the axe on his head. He stumbles backwards until the edge of the counter presses into his back and with it he can breathe again.
Morgana breaks the silence, standing with as much confidence in his posture as a feline can muster. “Well, Mementos is our best shot then, yeah? Let’s all meet there tomorrow and work from there!”
The thieves all nod and give their own halfhearted rallies. Niijima’s shoulders drop and her expression lightens considerably. “Alright. Make sure you all get plenty of rest tonight so we can make the most of our trip down.”
They file out of Leblanc one by one, none of them looking Akechi’s way as they pass by.
Okumura is the only one to make eye contact with him, and her look is by far the most venomous, “We all have much to lose in this fight, Akechi-san. It would be appreciated if you could have a little more faith in us.”
Maybe she’s right, but he can’t get the taste of bile out of his mouth for the rest of the evening.
His doubts are validated when he spends all of the next day stationed at the top of mementos, and not a single other soul arrives.
He should have expected. Maybe this was a ploy to get Akechi out of the picture while they scheme something else, he wouldn’t blame them after his pathetic display yesterday. Maybe they’ve secretly already agreed to accept Maruki’s reality behind his back. Wouldn’t that be a sickening ironic twist? For those phony thieves to ditch their loyalties at the last minute to pursue their own selfish interests.
Akechi presses a hand to his face under his mask and lets out a dry cackle. That’s right, how was he ever fooled into believing they were any better than the rest of the world? He really was pathetic to think they would let him worm his way back into their clique like the parasite he is.
And not just himself, but Ren. Are they turning their backs on him as well? Their so-called illustrious and infallible leader that they adore so much? He knows, he knows Ren wouldn’t allow this. No matter what he’s said, Akechi knows better than to think for a moment that Ren would ever give in to such an obvious scheme of power and greed.
Well, he didn’t need their idealistic facile platitudes anyways. Dead men need no allies.
He mutes his phone when he exits the subway. He doesn’t need to hear any of their excuses when he already knows better. The bitterness churning in his stomach makes his head spin as he stalks through the Shibuya streets like a zombie (hah).
It reminds him of the way he would wander aimlessly after a successful hit during his assassin days. Akechi would leave mementos with an exhaustion permeating his body, a dense fog settling over his head. He would tune out the world around him and stumble through crowded streets until he either came to his senses or blacked out somewhere, usually ending up back in his apartment when he woke up.
That’s how he first found Jazz Jin. In one of his dissociated stupors he wandered Kichijoji until music crept its way into his awareness and dragged him along on its somber melodies. He’d entered the small hole-in-the-wall bar before he knew it, and Muhen had noticed his sorry state and offered him a seat and drink on the house.
The interior of that place felt so far away from the rest of the world, like it existed on the cusp of another reality entirely, that Akechi had slowly been able to wake up from his daze and felt a sense of peace.
Since then it became the only place he could go to find that sort of serenity amidst misery, and so it’s where he finds himself approaching again now.
In this twisted reality, Jazz Jin is somehow the only place that feels relatively untouched. Maybe its hidden enough for Maruki to overlook, maybe its his own cognition of the bar as a place of respite that shields it from the discomforting air of Maruki’s world, but whatever the reason for it Akechi feels like he can breathe here.
He orders the night’s special and settles in his usual seat, one inexplicably always left open for him when he arrives. There’s no singer tonight, just soft instrumentals. The crackle of the outdated equipment adds a nostalgic layer to the music that takes him back to the sound of vinyl records through old dusty speakers.
One of his happiest untouched memories of his mother is when she would put on her favorite album and hum along in their small kitchen. Sometimes she would take Goro by the hands and lead him in a clumsy dance to the swinging rhythms, laughing when he stepped on her toes. It happened less and less often as her emotional state deteriorated, but it was always when she seemed to let go of the world and let herself feel an unshackled sense of joy.
Something settles in his chest as he soaks in the atmosphere and the memories. A calmness foreign to him yet welcome all the same. And all within that moment it becomes clear what he has to do.
He leaves his payment on the table and embraces the chill of the air as he steps out of the bar.
The next day is the beginning of February, and the last chance they have to deal with Maruki’s palace. Akechi wakes with no urgency, pulling on his coat and looping a scarf around his neck and making his way to Leblanc.
The door rings unceremoniously upon his entry. There are no customers, only the old man behind the counter.
“Oh, it’s you,” He says with a tone carefully trained to show no affection nor disdain. “The kid’s upstairs if you want to see him.”
The casual remark would almost have him believe that Ren is awake and well. But much to his lack of surprise, he climbs the stairs to find him lying on his side facing the wall in his sorry excuse of a bed. Morgana is nowhere in sight.
As he approaches, it becomes clear that something is very wrong. Ren’s limp figure under the sheets isn’t still, its trembling. He’s curled inwards in an almost fetal position as if struggling to conserve precious body heat. Akechi sets down his case and leans over his form. For a sickening moment he expects to see red staining the sheets, dripping onto the floor, marring his skin with lashes. He has to blink away the hues of crimson to inspect him closer.
Ren’s eyebrows are pinched in an expression of discomfort. Shudders roll over his body every few breaths he tries to take, and those breaths are uneven and shallow. Akechi frowns and tugs one of his gloves off to rest the back of his bare hand over Ren’s forehead.
He’s burning up. Akechi grits his teeth. Has no one noticed the state he’s in? Has no one even checked?
The moment Akechi touches Ren’s face however, the expression on his face softens and something pangs agonizingly in his chest. He sits down carefully on the edge of the mattress.
“Ren,” He murmurs softly. He looks so deceptively human like this. Reduced to such a pitiful, vulnerable state. No one in their right mind would imagine this fever-ridden boy ever danced through humanity’s heart with a dashing smile and unbreakable confidence. No one who didn’t know better like Akechi did.
“Is this really how you’ll fall?” He says around the tightness in his throat, “I never imagined you as the type to let sickness get the better of you like this.”
Of course, sickness isn’t to blame. The same instinct in Akechi’s chest that’s screamed at him this whole time tells him that this too is something that has gone horribly wrong in a series of misfortunes that may or may not have been orchestrated.
Akechi’s hand moves to cup Ren’s cheek. He’s imagined doing so countless times before- while Ren was awake of course. His skin is soft and delicate under the calloused pads of his fingers and something inside of Akechi aches.
Ren’s dark lashes flutter for a moment, a twitch of his eyelids that freezes the air in Akechi’s throat.
He can see the moment where they open. The fever washes away with Akechi’s touch and their eyes meet in a blazen glimmer of vulnerability and understanding. Ren lets Akechi pull him to his feet and greets him with a breathless exhale of his name. The fire in Ren’s eyes reignites the cold embers in Akechi’s heart, and together they bring the world to ashes in their fury. In that moment, they are the only ones alive and real in this universe of lies and false pretenses.
But Ren’s eyes stay shut. They relax back into the quiet, undisturbed silence. Ren slips through his hands back into the cold water and Akechi is left powerless as the last star in his sky flickers out, his light of hope gone.
Steeling his resolve, Akechi makes an oath. “I refuse to accept a reality where all I’ve done amounts to nothing. Where who I am is warped by someone else’s vision. I’m going to fight until the end, or die trying.”
As he pulls away and leans back, his eyes catch on the windowsill and everything stops. There, just within reach, is a single black leather glove. The very same Akechi had thrown at Ren in a moment of blinded fury, when all he could think about was the incriminating pounding in his chest.
He has half a mind to take it back in the hopes that Ren will forget such a mortifying display from him, a foolish lapse in judgment that left Akechi cursing his own impulsiveness for weeks on end. Yet…
It’s laid so purposefully, as if carefully placed each time its been set down. There is no visible dust, dirt or grime. Only the unpolished wear of use.
The tangled well of things rising in Akechi’s chest is indescribable. He is affronted with humiliation, indignity, resentment, wonder, admiration, grief,
And rage. Because this is what Maruki wants to take from Ren.
On the second of February he enters Maruki’s palace with his sword drawn and Loki’s name on his tongue. Crimson licks at the seams of his suit as fury takes hold of him. Akechi knows that he’s dead, and has been all this time. It won’t stop him from fighting like his life depends on it.
He cleaves through shadows with the serrated edge of his blade, relishing in the tearing of their amorphous flesh. Red permeates his vision, stoking the fire in his chest, he cackles at the catharsis until his throat gives out.
He climbs the floors on a tower of bodies, shadow and cognition alike, a beacon of carnage and a personal invitation for Maruki to deal with the massacre with his own hands. Akechi doesn’t know how much time he spends in the bloodbath, he can barely feel the screaming ache of his own limbs.
“Come out and face me you son of a bitch!” He screams into the pale white halls. “I’ll make you regret every moment of your miserable, pathetic life!”
The shadows don’t stop coming, Maruki doesn’t stop watching as Akechi slaughters them as quick as they come.
“This? This is nothing! I’ll crush anything you throw at me!”
But his exhaustion is plain as day. He heaves insults between rugged breaths and forces his body to move against its own weight. Every blow he takes hits him harder than the last, he can only taste blood in his mouth.
When he falls to his knees its against every burning will inside him telling him to stay standing. He drives his sword into the ground and braces himself on it, shouting for Loki’s spells to cover him.
He can feel the cold eyes on him, the watchful gaze of the ruler on his glass throne. It burns into his skin and makes him want to rip out his lungs.
“Quit watching from your high horse and fight me you fucking coward!”
He lands on his side and rolls onto his chest, the pounding in his ears is louder than his own voice. Something cracks when a shadow above him strikes down. His body is hot and cold at once.
He digs his claws into the tile floor and pushes against the stabbing pain in his lungs to snarl, “Maruki!”
“Don’t you dare for a second think you’ve won. I will stop at nothing to destroy you!” Akechi can’t breathe without choking on blood. “I will drag myself out of the depths of hell just to take you back down with me! I’ll destroy anyone who stands between me and judging you personally for all you've done!”
The silence hanging above him is crushing. “Do you hear me, Maruki?!” He screams, even as his voice begins to wane. “Live the rest of your life in terror, because the moment I get my hands on you I’ll-!”
He can no longer feel his arms. His vision is fading rapidly into darkness.
“I’ll-!”
The floor beneath him is crumbling, he’s falling faster than his mind can keep up with. His body tries to shock his heart awake to no avail.
It feels like being plunged into water. He’s surrounded by black, pressing in on him from all sides. The sea is freezing, seeping into his skin. He knows that he is dying. He tries to scream, only for ice to pour into his lungs. He thrashes against the tides. Not like this, not like this, he chants to whatever titans dwell below.
I won’t let it end like this.
He doesn’t have the strength to open his eyes, but he swears for just a moment, somewhere in the emptiness, there is blue.
And then there is nothing.