Akechi couldn't decide how long he had been living up in this solitary attic, staring out the window morosely and wishing it would all go away. Watching his past replay before his eyes, hearing the sound of the gunshots that had rung out and the many anguishing hours that had passed as he sat there across from his own dead body with a bullet lodged firmly in his side. Feeling as his life faded away, as his Personas clamored for a solution inside of him, as his visor faded away to thick and messy brown hair flecked with blood. As his body seemed to move on its own into a small cell with walls that held a faint glow that he couldn't stand to look at. Feeling as he was uncomfortably lifted, taken away from that unknown dark blue prison, waking up in an attic with a group of people surrounding him.

He closed his eyes and bit his lip. He hated all their eyes on him, each and every member of the group he had betrayed. The conflict was clear in their eyes and the betrayal was apparent in their tone. They spoke with a familiar cadence, comparing him to them, never forgetting what he had done but somehow acting like they understood him and how he was feeling. He had just zoned out mercilessly and stared with dead eyes at the wall, nodded every now and then to placate them.

They had pulled him out of something called a 'Velvet Room', not that Akechi could figure what that was. He hadn't much of any idea what had happened in the last few months and no one was keen to fully fill him in yet. He knew they didn't trust him—he didn't trust them either. He was just sitting here staring blanking out the window waiting for the day when one of them brought their gun in and took him out. Or went into his mind and did what he had done to them…

…No, he admitted painfully, they wouldn't do that. The Phantom Thieves were not the murderers that he had so precisely and painstakingly worked to profile them as. They made to change hearts, not destroy them. Not like he had. It made him wonder, had he known about the Treasures and their effect two years prior, if he would've followed the same path as them. Probably not. He hadn't had a light to guide him like they did. They had Akira Kurusu to exert that comforting authority to assure them that their petty vengeance would give them nothing.

And Akechi had nothing. Just an empty cup of coffee and a window to stare out of while they waited for him to recuperate. As if he would ever do that. He knew he was just waiting out the clock to see his own sins paid in kind.

He jumped slightly when he felt a hand over his own; looking down, he saw the slate gray eyes of Kurusu. No, he remembered, the boy had demanded to be called Akira. Like they were friends or something. Like you could really be friends with someone who took a gun to your forehead without a second thought. But he could play Akira's game, he could do it as long as the other boy wanted to, because he knew it was all going to backfire on him in the end—

"Goro. The team got you something."

Akechi looked up slightly, uninterested, at the box that Akira held in his hands. He tried to squash the small feeling of hope in his stomach, the flare of warmth that spread through his chest when Akira referred to him by his first name. No one had ever done that since his mother had died. He had always been Akechi—there had been no Goro. That was a person who was hidden under shade after shade of Akechi's immaculate grooming and lies, impossible to reach with even the most desperate of measures. Yet somehow here he was, being called Goro by another person, that person having finally reached Goro.

He studied the other boy as his thin, practiced fingers unwrapped the small box. Akira had attracted his attention from the beginning. Akechi wasn't sure why. It was not like he had walked up to the boy knowing that Akira was the leader of the Phantom Thieves. No, it was more like there was something in Akira's eyes. There was a statement there, underneath the messy hair and slightly askew glasses. There was a person that he was refusing to let other people see and it reflected in those slate gray eyes. Perhaps, the detective mused, that was why he let himself become so fragile in front of Akira. Perhaps that was why he felt to pieces because of Akira. Perhaps that was why Akira, of all people, got to meet and be around 'Goro'.

He restrained a snort. As if it was some kind of prize to be around Goro.

"You want me to cut you a slice?"

"Huh?" Akechi looked up from his musings; the black haired boy had finished unwrapping the box. He let his eyes wander across the presentation—he supposed it was supposed to make him feel happy but it just brought bile to his throat. A cake. An immaculate, perfect little vanilla cake with a mocha frosting and the words 'Get Well Soon' scrawled across it in red frosting. It made him sick, made him disgusted, made him angry, made him…

….it made him feel bad.

As if he couldn't control his own body, Akechi's arm swiftly sweeped out and smacked the cake to the ground. It smashed against the ground, the frosting splattering all over the ground. The red text and the brown icing seemed to smush together, mixing and becoming a vomit inducing mess. The vanilla cake itself crumbled across the floor. Akira stared at the gift on the ground with wide, almost shocked eyes, and for a moment a rush of fear and horror ran through Akechi.

He didn't know why he felt it. He had expressed exactly how he felt about the stupid cake and the stupid sentiments of those stupid people. And yet sitting here with Akira in front of him, looking almost crestfallen at the clearly homemade cake smashed against the floorboards, a rush of self-loathing and fear induced nausea rose in Akechi's stomach. He suddenly felt almost as if he could vomit all over the other boy—as if Akira needed another reason to hate him.

As if he ever liked you to begin with, you self indulgent waste.

It wasn't until Akira's slate gray eyes locked onto the detective that Akechi realized he had said that out loud. Body trembling slightly, his mouth immediately curled into a defensive sneer. This self defeating habit he was frequently returning to thanks to these kids, the urge to drive them away by sneer and yelling and spitting and screaming and throwing a tantrum. To make them go AWAY, to make them hate him, to make them give up so he could die already.

"Do you get it now?" He said, his own voice ringing in his ears. "Are you ready to give up already and accept that you hate me?"

Akira was silent for a moment—because when wasn't the boy silent, really—then his arm darted forward to hook around the back of Akechi's neck and draw the brunette closer to him. Immediately Akechi felt his body freeze up, as if his blood as turned to pure ice and his skin to solid stone. He didn't know what to DO. Akira had yet to pull a stunt like this. So he was just left with his nose buried awkwardly against the bespectacled teen's broad shoulder, red eyes wide with confusion.

"Do you really think…." Akira whispered into the brunette's ear as one of his thumbs comfortingly massaged the detective's chestnut brown hair. "…that you throwing a cake on the ground is going to make me hate you? I've seen you at your worst. I've seen you at the end of your gun and I've seen you at the end of your sanity. And I don't care. There's nothing you can do to make me stop caring about you whether you like it or not, Goro."

Shivers ran across Akechi's entire body.

Only, he realized, it wasn't shivered.

It was sobs.

He stayed there for what felt like hours, clinging to the other boy in a way he had never clung to anyone else. His fingers dug into the fabric of the Shujin Academy uniform as he held himself closer to Akira, head burying against the black jacket as he emptied his sorrows onto the other boy. Throughout the entire tantrum, as long as it may have lasted, Akira sat with him with one hand petting comfortingly across the detective's hair. He didn't need to ask when had been the last time Goro Akechi had let himself feel his true emotions and release his true sorrows. It was clear in that moment that it hadn't been in years.

"I-I…I…you..." He managed through hiccups. He wasn't even sure if it was his state that was ruining his speech right now and preventing him from saying it, or if it was his own nerves. But it didn't matter.

"I know. I do too." Akira held Akechi tighter, almost possessively. "But next time, don't mess up the cake. Ann and Morgana spent a long time working on it with me."

And to his surprise, Akechi found he could still let out a shaky laugh at the idea of the cat, the model, and Akira making a silly cake for him. Somehow, it made everything feel a little less bleak. His fingers had loosened their grip on Akira's jacket as his eyes lidded, anger washed away with his tears and hatred purged with his sobs. Somehow, SOMEHOW, after such a long time…

Goro Akechi felt like maybe everything wasn't so bad after all.