13
The night she left the Capitol, Akame told herself she would never look back.
There wasn't much to look back on, granted—the Emperor's fall had literally sent the city's structure toppling. The sprawling gardens and arches that had exemplified its architecture were choked and collapsed. Now it seemed like every face of the city was layered in plaster or in ash.
So it didn't come as a surprise to Akame when she saw that the sign was covered in dust. What surprised her was the fact that she was seeing it at all.
That she was anywhere near it at all.
NIGHT BOOKSTORE, the sign proclaimed. Beneath, smaller letters crawled: Lubbock and Co.
Reflexively, she looked along the street, checking for suspicious faces. It was an empty exercise; this section of the city had never been frequented anyway, but now it had practically been forgotten. Not even the windows of the buildings were lit. She was not surprised.
With a final glance down the street, she opened the door, stepped in, and closed it behind her. She turned the lock, then just stood for a moment, looking at the store and its shelves of books.
She didn't know what would happen to this place after she was gone, and the New Empire began. Najenda hadn't mentioned it, and it had slipped her mind. They had other things to talk about.
Now all Akame could see was the dust that covered the world outside slowly creeping in; imagined cobwebs reaching their sticky fingers over the spines of Lubbock's beloved mangas and the polished wood floor.
She blinked. The wood still shone with moonlight right now—and that was all that mattered. The future would be brighter in other ways. And if she had come here, it wouldn't be for nothing.
The boards creaked as she walked over to the counter. In a single motion, Akame hopped it, flicked a hidden switch beneath its surface, and landed in the basement of Night Bookstore. Above her head, the section of floor that had swung down slowly creaked back up.
It clicked into position—and with that, Akame had returned to Night Raid's final base. There were no more weapons. No more armor. No more Night Raid.
There was, however, a library. Of sorts.
Lubbock had created it one afternoon, when jobs had been slow in coming. Apparently he'd been collecting some special posters—specifically, wanted posters, for each of them. He tacked them to the wall and sat back, admiring his handiwork (or more likely his own face) until Najenda had "tapped" him on the head and ordered him to take them down. It was creepy, she said, to feel her own eyes staring at the back of her neck.
So he'd taken them down and put them in a cabinet instead, filed neatly by member and by time. It was a museum, he said, of their reputations and their great deeds (even if an inordinate number of them—Sheele and Mein included—were accused of pillaging and raping). He'd even wondered how far it would go, how old the faces on the posters would get before their issuing finally stopped.
Now Akame stood in front of that same cabinet. She smiled to herself, a wry smile. They all knew the answer to that question now.
When her hand first closed around the cabinet's golden handle, she hesitated. Lubbock's museum was now closer to a mausoleum. She'd seen enough dead bodies in the past day alone. The thought crossed her mind—and then her grip tightened around the handle, she pulled, and the cabinet door swung open with barely a creak.
Only the smell of old paper greeted her.
And the faces of her teammates. Her friends. Akame scanned the posters before her, only lingering on the faces, not the names. There was still no reason for her to be here…but if there was, they were as close to one as possible. Pink bows. Egg-roll hair. A lion's grin.
Green eyes.
She lingered on that last face, and suddenly she almost saw it speaking, almost saw the trails of blood leaking down its face. She almost saw the weariness there, the resignation as it rasped out its final words.
(Sorry, Akame. Guess I couldn't keep my—)
Akame slammed the cabinet closed before it could say any more. She let out a breath that came out so ragged, she could practically hear the holes in it. Now she knew why it had been so important to leave this place behind. If she left now it might even be possible to leave her memories in this cellar, never to be seen again.
She started for the staircase and its hidden door, feeling like a phantom gaze was on her back the whole way. A part of her already knew that gaze would always be there, even after she had left the Capitol. No matter how far she got, it would be there. So she stopped, turned, and headed back towards the cabinet. And when Akame finally left, closing the door on that cellar for the last time, a part of it left with her.
Carefully folded, of course.
"You…you did find a family. You found Night Raid."
The words sent a near-physical shock through Tatsumi, and he found himself staring, his gaze frozen on Akame. But he wasn't really fixated on her face—not even her brilliant red eyes. He found himself staring at the tear that was rolling down her face. It seemed more like the melting of a glacier, considering all the emotion the girl had shown so far. Even then, a part of him understood he was witnessing something momentous.
Night Raid.
Memories raced through his mind, nagging doubts which he'd forgotten. The dream—and his place in it alongside this girl. The nightmare—the sight of his own face leering savagely up at him from yellowed paper, covered in blood and guilt. He'd found a faith in the life he lived now, until she had come to tear it all down again.
Then, Tatsumi laughed.
"You aren't going to do this."
This time, the look of shock flashed across her face. Akame's eyes were glimmering with the hint of more tears, but all Tatsumi could think of was what she had done to him—and what she had just tried to do.
"You think saying something like that will make me forget what happened to my friends?" Tatsumi spat. His face had bared into something very close to a snarl. "Don't call me part of that band of murderers. You'rethe only murderer here." Tatsumi expected the budding tears in her eyes to brim over—and he expected to enjoy the sight. It was what this girl deserved.
What he didn't expect was a complete explosion.
"Your friends were murderers, and so are you!" Akame shouted. The cold indifference that had been in her eyes had been replaced by a burning rage, something almost close to killing intent. For the first time, Tatsumi realized he had never truly seen her intent to kill before.
Not until now.
"Don't talk to me about revenge," she hissed. "You want revenge for killing innocent people? For killing family?" She whipped Murasame from its scabbard. "I'll give this sword to her," she said, pointing behind him. "And you can apologize right before she uses it."
Her eyes stayed on his the whole time; deadly, full of fire. But he, at least, had to look away. Tatsumi turned to see the little girl from before standing behind him. They made eye contact for an instant before he turned back.
What was she trying to gain from involving this little girl? "Keep her out of this," he said. "If you're going to use her to get to me…"
"I'm not the threat here." Akame's eyes narrowed. "Or did you forget that, too?"
"Whose fault is that, huh?" Tatsumi yelled. "Don't ask me about something that you fucked up. If you know so much about me, then I bet you know what happened to my head!"
Akame was quiet then, although her eyes remained narrowed. She seemed to be considering him—whether as a victim or as a target, Tatsumi wasn't sure. "You're wrong," she said, finally. "I don't. About any of that."
"Then who does? Who left me for dead on that road?"
He'd asked himself the same question over and over and over since this life of his had started. Even at his most secure within the Group, he'd always wondered what he had belonged to. He'd always tried to find something to explain the feeling that had never completely left him, that nagging sense of dissatisfaction that suggested things had been better in some mysterious before. If there was even a chance of getting an answer, he was going to take it. Even anger—even revenge—could wait, in the face of this.
And, to his surprise, it seemed like one was coming. Akame lowered her arm, a thin scrape sounding as Murasame's tip met the floor. "Tatsumi," she said, softly, "you were dead."
Tatsumi almost leapt forward to punch her, Demon Sword be damned. "You—"
"No," Akame said, and something about her tone and her look stopped Tatsumi dead in the hallway. She was focused on him, yes, but her eyes were also far away, as if she were also seeing something in the past.
Something before.
"You didn't die on that road," she said, and now her eyes weren't focused on him at all. "And no one left you anywhere. We were all too busy dying."
All he could do was gape at her. "We…?"
Her gaze snapped back to him. "Yeah. We," she said firmly. "Call Night Raid what you want. We never cared about a legacy. But all of us went into the Capitol that day ready to give our lives, and most of us did." She closed her eyes briefly. "All of you did."
Was it possible? Could she go so far as to make this up, to try and distract him further? True, the sorrow on her face was hard to ignore. But Tatsumi remembered those bloodstained faces, the gleeful bloodlust in their eyes. For their owners to sacrifice themselves…
She must have read the disbelief on his face, because Akame just smiled grimly. "It doesn't matter if that sounds like Night Raid," she said. "But you know it sounds like you."
How many times had he faced impossible odds with the Group, and thought to himself that it would be okay to give his life to save it? And before—Sayo, Ieyasu, and him: they alone had volunteered to leave, to journey along bandit-infested roads and Danger Beasts to find their village fortune. Always, he'd gravitated toward people ready to pay that ultimate price.
And if Night Raid had really been such a group of people, then maybe…
He couldn't face the intensity of her eyes anymore, not when it felt like every thought in his head was at war. Tatsumi looked away. But as he did, he noticed the hint of a shadow behind him, the hint of another presence. He whipped around—only to find that the girl from before had been standing in the hallway the whole time.
"What the…"
She flinched back. Her eyes flicked to some point behind him almost automatically—making contact with Akame, Tatsumi realized, a split second before he understood.
Only minutes before, he'd wondered if this girl was some kind of hostage, a way for Akame to threaten him. Now an inkling of another situation came to him. What if, in this situation, he was the threat to her? He looked at the girl again, saw her fear. He saw the way her eyes were always focused on him, only ever flicking to Akame before shooting back to him. What he had thought was timidness, maybe incited by Akame, now presented itself in a far more sobering light. This wasn't timidness; it was terror. Of him.
Enough that even a monster like Akame would seem like comfort.
"What did I do to you?" Tatsumi whispered.
In response, the girl turned and ran. He watched her fly down the hallway before stopping at a room and running into it, slamming the door in her haste. Tatsumi saw all this, open-mouthed. This was a far more distracting—and hurtful—shock than Akame could ever provide.
He turned back to her gingerly, feeling absurdly like anything too drastic would scare the little girl even more. "I…"
There was no anger in those eyes anymore. Akame just looked resigned. Tired. She looked at him mutely, and when Tatsumi opened his mouth to question, to protest, his voice died. Endlessly, he kept watching the little girl run from him, kept hearing her door slam shut. A part of his mind was already whispering the words that had been written in her every action.
Murderer. You're a murderer.
Then Tatsumi shook his head violently. Had he forgotten who he was dealing with? Whose power he was in? This was a real killer, one he knew to be one for sure. She had made her life and her living as a cutthroat, with deception and tricks ten times more shameless than this one. She'd probably started as a kid, maybe younger than the one that had just run away, the one that was probably laughing behind that door right now—
You know real fear better than anyone, idiot. And you were just face-to-face with it.
But then when—how—had he managed to hurt that little girl like this? He had never forgotten killing those men on the road, their cries of terror and agony. He knew when he'd killed.
Didn't he?
He stared blankly into nothing, guilt and anger and disbelief raging in an endless circle inside him. Tatsumi was drowning in it all, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to sink or swim. What would Sayo say? What about Ieyasu? What would any member of his village think of him? He thought of the sword, imagined the girl plunging it into his chest. Maybe I'd deserve it, he thought, a surge of guilt winning over the other things in his head.
But it wasn't enough for him to miss the sound of the first floorboard creaking behind him. Tatsumi half-turned, wondering if the girl had come back to do exactly what he'd been imagining. What would he do? Did he have the right to stop her?
Then, she sighed.
"What a mess."
He whirled around, staring at the voice's source. This was no little girl. Exactly how many people—and how many ages—did Akame have crammed into this place? White hair framed the newcomer's face, finely braided, flowing past the wrinkles in her skin. And—
Tatsumi's eyes widened. What he'd thought was some strange fashion statement or uniform was actually a metal arm.
"You never were the best at this part," the woman said, ignoring his shock and taking one more step toward him. Although her eyes appeared to be fixed on his face, Tatsumi somehow knew that her true focus was currently behind him.
On the girl standing there.
"This wasn't an interrogation," Akame said quietly. Tatsumi itched to turn around, to see what she was doing, but he didn't like the idea of taking his eyes off this woman.
She stopped only two paces from him. Now the mechanical arm was moving, the metal squeaking slightly as the woman reached for something inside her jacket. Was there another Demon Sword in front of him?
A glint flashed as something caught the light, and Tatsumi tensed—only to watch as it clicked and a small flame shot up. The other hand came up to her mouth with the metal one…and then a cigarette was in her mouth, lit, its tip flaring slightly as she took a drag. Slowly, she exhaled, smiled tightly, and said, "Maybe not for you."
He was staring again, Tatsumi knew, but not from any kind of disapproval or even disgust. No. With the cloud of smoke swirling up gently around her, and the still-glowing tip of the cigarette reflecting gently in the polished sheen of her metal arm, Tatsumi realized that this woman was familiar. But how? He remembered the elders from his village. None of them had ever sported metal arms—or, for that matter, a cigarette.
"It's very rude to stare, you know," the woman said, and with a jolt Tatsumi realized that those purple eyes were finally meeting his now. "Even if, I'm sure, I look better than my pictures." More smoke wafted up.
"Your…" Something was tugging at his mind's eye now, telling it to go back over an old memory. Pictures, this woman had said. Pictures—
"Then do better, Najenda," Akame said, and even as Tatsumi whirled around, the force of his shock almost physically turning him on his feet, he still saw the face behind him. In his mind, it lost its braid, lost the years and weariness, gained a little more light in the eyes…and suddenly he could see the face was on a yellowed piece of paper, with the words WANTED emblazoned above it.
Najenda. Leader of Night Raid—and something else.
"…jenda says…solo mission. She says you're ready."
He barely heard the laugh from Najenda, focused as he was on the memory. This made no sense. The faces on all the posters had been young. Bloodthirsty, yes. Malicious, yes. But young. No matter how lively this woman was, she wasn't.
But the Najenda on those posters had been.
"So then, Tatsumi," the current one said from behind him, interrupting his rather unflattering chain of thought. "I'll answer your question. Perhaps you'll answer some of mine."
"I'm not selling out anyone."
"This as a trade," Najenda said, in a sweet voice that made her sound every bit the well-meaning lady. "And I'm not interested in your Group. I'm interested in you." She paused. "More importantly—so are you."
"What?"
"You made some things pretty obvious just now, interrogation or not. Who could blame you?" Najenda chuckled. "It only takes a wild night I can't remember and a hangover to rattle me. I can't imagine what it's like for you." Her voice took on a glint that Tatsumi didn't like at all. "And you had one wild night."
The little girl's eyes flashed before Tatsumi's again.
"Let me show you I'm serious." Footsteps sounded from behind him, and before Tatsumi could fully react, both Najenda and Akame were standing in front of him now. "You get the truth about that little girl, free of charge." This time, Tatsumi didn't doubt that her attention was fully on him. "Then," Najenda said, "we move on to the truth about yourself."
Murderer. You're a murderer.
They stood before him, two lives only known for the deaths they'd caused. He could run, or he could fight. His instincts screamed for him to do both. But if he did either—if he ran, and got away, or fought and died here to a demonic sword—if he did either, he would never find out what he needed to. That, at least, he somehow knew for sure.
"Fine then," he said. Anger would have to wait. If they wanted to play this game, he would beat them at it. "Tell me about Tatsumi."
As always, thanks to you all for reading, and thanks to Shadow-Shinobi66, TeQwo CoNViX, Western White Tiger, Ginocide02, HankRocks, Vinystark, ianarcher33, Draconic, and Top Succ (nice) for reviewing the last chapter! Your reviews help me write my stories, but more importantly, they help me know how they're being read. It's also reassuring to see the patience you guys have in waiting for new chapters of this story. Thanks for that—and to any person who reads this story and is kind enough to repay me with a review.
We're getting there, guys. Don't finish the nachos yet.