Greetings, Everyone. Taking the plunge into the world of Psycho-Pass with a little angsty vignette to fill the space between Episodes 18 (current week's ep) & 19 (which at the time of writing this has yet to be released). I love Akane & Kougami's chemistry and tension. I continue to cling to Masaoka's words to Akane in Ep 4: "You are strangely connected to him by fate..."

I sat with this for a couple of days, letting it marinate. The editing was less thorough than usual, so please inform me of anything linguistically/grammatically weird.

~For Aerysa, who brought me into the world of Psycho-Pass~

I humbly give you "Shinkou to Kibou" (Faith and Hope)

Enjoy!

~Destinies Entwined~

"Baka..."

The young inspector clenched the letter in her fist, trying with all her might to fight back the tears of frustration. The raven-haired enforcer was the one man she trusted with all of her being. Akane Tsunemori had just been dealt the biggest blow since she started her career with the MWPSB. This recent development had hit her even harder than Shougo Makishima's escape. That had somehow not surprised her. But Shinya Kougami's defecting from his post on the force, even more importantly as her partner on this team, may have well been a punch to the gut from Shinya himself.

The petite brunette had, over the past few months, gradually placed all of her faith in the tall, handsome former inspector. She had gotten to know him, his past and a lot of his quirks, giving her a certain level of familiarity, even intimacy of a sort, with the silver-eyed wolf. Akane had believed whole-heartedly in the pursuit of their mutual enemy and, naively, in a future that would free him of his slave-like status; just to have it ripped from her in the message contained in these sheets of paper.

The tears welled in her eyes as she refused to believe their mission would end the way he had predicted. She would find a way to bring down Makishima, without Kougami having to die, if her life depended on it. For in her heart, her life did indeed depend on it. Even without considering the more personal sentiments she had begun to feel for the enigmatic agent, it came down to a simple truth: Akane needed him and, despite the mixed signals he constantly gave her, she knew Shinya needed her. With her determination now stronger than ever, the fledgling officer had to think fast.

I need to go to someone for help...who can I ask to help me find Kougami-san?

After a brief moment, the answer came to her and she ran back inside toward the office.

"Masaoka-san," the breathless young agent choked out as she rushed through the glass doors of the Division 1 office. "May I have a word with you?"

Fortunately for the both of them, the only other remaining enforcer for the division was on lunch break and the shaggy-haired Head Inspector was in a meeting elsewhere.

"Yes," the elder enforcer replied. "But not here. Let's go grab some coffee, jou-chan."

It was a silent walk a few blocks down to a local tea and coffee shop. Akane began to get the sneaking suspicion that her senior enforcer knew something. Both knowing the subject matter of the impending conversation, they waited until they were out of ear-shot to breach the topic. The two officers made their orders, took their beverages and sat at the farthest table from the scanners near the door.

"Jou-chan..." Masaoka began.

"Where is he, Masaoka-san?"

"I can't tell you," he replied flatly.

A grimace settled onto her features. Without another word, she took the crumpled letter from her pocket and handed it to the former detective as she choked back a sob. Masasoka's eyes scanned its contents with an empathetic gaze, a grimace forming on his previously straight face.

"I don't care what he says, I won't kill him. And I won't let Ginoza do it either, because no one needs to die," she declared, recalling the events of the previous evening. "Something's not right, and we all know it. Chief Kasei is covering up something, and she has Ginoza-san in the palm of her hand."

The middle-aged veteran gawked at her in surprise. He did not expect such the keen observation. In a sense, he was proud of her; but that still would not deter him from keeping his comrade's whereabouts a secret. He felt for the young lady. She obviously had emotional attachments to their lone wolf, and put his safety above most everything else. However, he believed that his departure may not be the end of their story; that destiny and this connection of fate were still in play.

Maybe, if she can cling to this sentiment long enough, she will be able to save Shinya once he's defeated Makishima.

His thoughts suddenly shifted to his son, who had been unusually quiet since last night. Worry plagued him, knowing Gino's psycho-pass level was close to borderline.

If only she could help Nobuchika...

"My son will eventually become the thing he most despises if he's not careful, jou-chan," Masaoka stated, prompting a questioning glance from his young teammate. "I know he didn't realize he was being manipulated by the chief until it was too late. But now he's stuck between a rock and a hard place."

Her amber eyes widened at her elder's revelation.

Ginoza-san is…Masaoka-san's son? That explains his hatred for latent criminals: Kougami...Masaoka...But now, he must be able to see, like the rest of us, that we have all been deceived.

"With everything that the system has taken from him: his father, his partner; why does he still seem to put her judgment above everything? Now that we know there are people who are truly evil who cannot be judged? And how on Earth was she able to change his Dominator's function with the touch of her hand?" Akane asked, bewildered by her thoughts.

"How do you explain what you are still doing as an inspector?" the wise enforcer countered.

"I...I..." Akane Tsunemori tried to justify all the reasons she joined the force in her mind, and compared them to everything she knew now. She was met with the harsh reality of the indeterminable circumstances.

Tomomi sighed, knowing that if he let her continue down this path into the 'dark abyss', she herself would meet an inevitable fate at the hands of the Sibyl system. "Akane-chan..." he called her out familiarly like Kagari would have. "For everyone's sake: Ko, Gino," he paused and considered the most-likely lost member of their team. "Shu..."

Akane frowned at the mention of Kagari. She had grown fond of the mouthy red-head. He always had a witty way about him, and got her to think about things she'd never consider otherwise. But now, she knew in her gut that he was dead and it was being covered up. "I need to help us all find true justice, and find out exactly what has been kept from us this whole time," she concluded.

Returning back to their original topic, Masaoka didn't want to take any more time, lest the MWPSB start searching the city for them via the scanners. "As for Ko, he needs to do what he needs to do. You don't have to draw your Dominator on him if you don't want. I'm not sure my son could either."

"It may be a little selfish of me, but," Akane began as she clenched her hands to her chest tightly. "I need him."

"And I know he needs you, jou-chan," he replied warmly. "Whether or not he admits it to himself, I think he knows that, too. It's why he's gone. He's trying to protect you from all of this in his own way."

"I know that," Akane replied, quietly defensive. "But who's going to save him from himself?"

A draft wound its way through the open space of the safe house and straight up Kougami's back. It fluttered the flame of his lighter as he went to light yet another cigarette. He was exhausted from thinking about how he would hunt down his target in a mere six days. A small voice in the back of his mind kept nagging him with the fact that a partner would have made this undertaking a lot easier. In turn, it brought him to dwell on Sasayama and his fists began to tighten in righteous anger. Steeling his resolve to move forward, he considered Masaoka and how well they had worked together over the years; a man he'd always equated to a father figure on the force and who, most recently, helped him break out of the cage. His hands began to loosen as a wave of sentimentality threatened to thaw the ice that had been gathering around his heart. His scowl had softened into a slight frown as his anger eased into his familiar state of loneliness. The wave swept his heart up and dropped it into thoughts of amber doe eyes with long lashes that had practically pleaded with one of the last times he had seen them.

Her words reverberated endlessly, creating such a resonance that it was momentarily impossible to focus on the hatred that had been driving him lately.

"You told me one time that you wanted to work as a detective, not a dog…It's thanks to those words that I didn't quit this job…Will you always be a detective? Could you promise me that?"

He had recalled the conversation she had been referring to, when Akane had come to apologize to him for zapping him after their first case together. A gentle smirk eased its way onto his face as the image of her bowing and thanking him replayed in his mind's eye. His thoughts led him to yesterday, when she slept in the chair next to him in his clinic room. Reluctantly, Shinya reminded himself that, once again, she had saved his ass. He felt a hard pang of guilt hit him straight in the chest for leaving her with only a letter. He had to break his promise to her. It was the only way he believed there would ever be any justice for Makashima and everyone affected by his hideous crimes. In his eyes, the soft-faced young lady deserved so much more than those broken promises. Akane had always looked out for him and stood up for him.

She's so much tougher than she looks.

He exhaled a cloud of smoke and squashed the unfinished cigarette on the cement floor with his foot. The rogue enforcer lifted the garage-like door to the morning sun and imagined what she would be doing right at that moment. He knew she was probably hurt by his actions, yet he knew she understood his reasons deep down.

Hell, she seems to understand me better than anyone on the team, well except Pops…

The steely-eyed man, dubbed a lesser human being by the status quo, felt a sense of warmth in knowing there was a strong woman like Akane who believed in him. But he had betrayed her, and now felt so incredibly unworthy of her support. He hoped against all hope that he would be able to defeat Makishima and unearth the secrets that were being kept from him and the rest of his teammates concerning Kagari's fate and the correlation thereof with the truth about the Sibyl System. But mostly his blood boiled at the thought of Makishima getting away with more murder and manipulations.

He caught himself as he thought of Akane once again, as she had throttled Makishima with the helmet and protected him from losing his life. She had also been the one to think on her feet the night before, stunning him in his leg when the chief had somehow caused Gino's Dominator to switch to Lethal Eliminator, threatening to kill him.

She…protected ME.

His eyes slid shut, under the heavy weight of moisture collecting there. Somehow those recollections made his heart a little lighter. But the calm and collected former officer snapped himself from his emotions and brought the goal back into focus. After a careful weighing of everything swirling through his mind, his chance of his survival, however slim, suddenly gained much more importance, for the simple fact that he wanted more than anything else to continue to protect her.

His gut warned him that she may attempt to find him. Kougami knew her well enough to know she would probably not settle for not getting the final word. But he hoped to hell that Masaoka would be able to deter her.

"Akane…" he breathed aloud as the sun rose over the skyline to shine on the harbor. Swallowing hard, his stormy gaze paused to take in the reflection on the calm waters. Shinya released a breath he hadn't even realized he had been holding, ever so slowly. It was the first time he ever let her name pass so familiarly through his lips. He dwelled on how he attempted in the letter to gloss over how he had truly begun to feel for the steadfast young woman. A low sigh escaped, betraying his stoic demeanor as he allowed his mind to ponder the best outcome of the circumstances. He'd defeat Makishima, but not before figuring out why the chief fiercely attempted to protect him. And even if the city fell apart around them, he wanted nothing more to gather her into his arms and keep her close.

"I hope you forgive me…"

Her breath ragged, Akane awoke in a sweat in the middle of the night. The glare of her alarm clock screamed in a bright green LED: 2:05 a.m. Her dreams had kept her tossing and turning all night, plaguing her with visions of violence. She recalled both running to someone as well as from someone. The exhausted young inspector rubbed her forehead as she tried to clear her mind's eye when his face came into focus, bloodied and barely conscious as she'd seen once before.

Her caramel-colored eyes snapped open as she gasped. Suddenly the rest of her dream came rushing back to her, as well as the tears that accompanied it. The nightmare had been part recollection and part anticipation: Blood, a vacant pair of sterling eyes, a panic exploding in her chest. Akane cringed in the pain of considering she may lose Shinya completely within the next 5 days. The only solace she found was in lying back down and trying to imagine finding him before it was too late.

In the theatre of her mind, Kougami would smile somberly down at her and take her into his arms. She wanted to know how her head would feel, resting against that amazing torso of his. Just thinking about it sent a shiver down her spine. The distraught brunette turned over onto her side and sighed; trying to hear his voice as he simultaneously chastised and comforted her in her dream:

"You shouldn't be here, Akane…" he reprimanded before pausing to gaze down quietly at her. "But I'm glad you are." His lips lowered gently to her forehead and lingered there.

The relief Akane felt spread onto her face as the pleasant turn she got her thoughts to take allowed her drift back off to sleep. She would need all the rest she could get, for little did Inspector Tsunemori realize just how difficult the next few days would truly be.

~OWARI~

PS: I love cookies! Leave me some nibbles! ^_~

Here's to the impending epic last 4 episodes...may our OTP be in tact at the end.