i.
He has gotten used to the smell of LeBlanc clinging thick to his clothes, his hair. Akechi shows up to school and television shoots smelling of curry and coffee and cigarette smoke beneath his cologne. The other cops tease him, the way he smells like he's chainsmoking and putting back americanos with the rest of the force even though he's just a high schooler.
They tell him, "I know you're the Detective Prince, but..."
Stubbing cherries out into metal ashtrays, saying, "You've got to live a little while you're still young."
ii.
Akechi realizes he's dead-and-then-not the way it feels when an alarm clock goes off, like a sudden stream of ice water between the shoulder blades. He remembers firing his gun and staring at his cognitive replica and the encroaching crowd of Shadows. He remembers watching the Phantom Thieves' boots disappear beneath a closing metal door. He remembers how perfect and stupid it all felt, the whole thing with the Thieves and Shido and this fake version of himself holding a gun to his head.
If it had been a mystery novel, he would've laughed at the author's contrivances.
Akechi, he doesn't remember getting shot, but he does remember opening his eyes to the sharp cold of a late December night in the Shibuya scramble.
In front of him: Sae and Akira, casting long shadows in the cross-sections of streetlamps. Sae's right hand glimmering bright, holding an open pair of cuffs toward Akira's lanky pale wrists like monsters' claws.
Seeing the two of them makes Akechi's stomach knot hot with a type of shame he structures his life around avoiding. All of the memories of moments stretching out before this one: he watches himself pull the trigger, and then. This. He imagines turning heel and blending into the Christmas Eve crowd, leaving Akira to rot.
iii.
It takes some mild theatrics on Akechi's part to convince Akira he's not luring him into Mementos to kill him. He understands; the duel was a particularly harsh first visit for the two of them, but he doesn't intend for it to set the tone. "And," he tells Akira, not lying, "it doesn't do me any good to kill you right now."
They can explore the fetid, dark corridors, free from the prying eyes of paparazzi and Phantom Thieves. Ghostly commuters queue for spectral trains that rattle loudly and puff clouds of green acrid smoke. Joker and Crow walk miles of subway tracks, alternating hot and cold, the air thick with accumulated desires (only some of which belong to them).
Akechi tells Akira he's looking for something particular, though he will not specify further. Akira trails slightly behind him. Akechi can't help but liken his slope-shouldered lanky follower to a stray dog.
Afternoon hours pass by muddily. It's hard to tell in Mementos. Crow dispatches Shadows with a maniacal glee that makes the warm curl of whatever's in Akira's stomach turn cold.
Somewhere in Chemda, Akechi clears a room and takes off his long-beaked scarlet mask. His limp brown hair is plastered, sweat-soaked, to his cheeks and forehead, framing his flushed boyish cheeks and hazel eyes. His smile is as white as his epaulets and brocades.
"Perhaps I'm not going to find it today," he says.
Akira keeps his mask on. He laughs a little, his deep voice a velvety rumble in his long pale throat, beneath the bobbing crag of his adam's apple. He smiles easily.
Somewhere, far away, a subway full of want tunnels by. Above ground, it is mid-November.
Akechi pushes Akira against the wall.
iv.
In a future that may or may not come to pass:
Akira keeps the lambskin leather glove in his possession forever. He fits his long, knobby fingers into it as far as he can, but his hands are too big. The likelihood of reclamation lessens day by day, but he doesn't want to be caught without it.
He catches khaki flashes in the corner of his eye like skittish ghosts. He still remembers the smell of the ship's guts, oil-slicked machinations and rusty sliding gates that closed like curtains on Akechi's life.
He finds himself grateful to the paparazzi for all the photographs, grateful to all the sleazy daytime talk shows and evening gossip reels for the hours and hours of Akechi footage they left in their wake. A crow preserved in amber, feathers spread forever between unmoving layers of time. He can only watch so much of it before the reality of Akechi's eternal youth is too much to bear.
But he keeps the glove from that night, remembers the way it hit his chest like a bullet and how he uncrumpled it in his hands and it was still warm from Akechi's palm.
Every day, less and less. But just in case.
v.
It is not hard for him to kill Akira.
Very few things are difficult for him to do. He is the Detective Prince, after all.
When he sees the way Akira's swollen bruised face contorts with fear and betrayal, realizing the Phantom Thieves have been used as a set of pawns, and that he's about to be taken off the board, map wiped, so to speak-well, it just makes pulling the trigger all the easier. Like euthanizing a wounded animal.
He's spent time at crime scenes the way most adolescents spend time at the movies, and, truthfully, he doesn't want to sound perverse; but Akira still looks pretty cute despite the blood and the brain matter and the hole in his head.
The cell phone Sae palmed him in the hallway buzzes dully in his back pocket. Akechi's hands are shaking too hard to check it. His heartbeat is loud in his ears. The phone keeps buzzing. His fingers spasm and his head feels hot. He staggers backwards and almost trips over Akira's splayed leg.
His hands are still shaking. That recoil. It's really something.
vi.
Akechi decides to kill himself on a whim.
He knows he's already dead, just a pale imitation of himself resurrected to play in Maruki's dreamland. It is very specifically his version of hell: a lifetime spent under someone's thumb, an afterlife spent under someone else's.
As the train is coming into the station, he grips his briefcase and strides confidently forward. He keeps his eyes focused ahead and he walks quickly and pointedly beyond the edge of the platform and into the wind tunnel created by the oncoming train. No one in the crowd of commuters reacts, and he does not feel anything. One moment he is stepping in front of the train. The next, he is back on the platform where he started. Unmaimed, briefcase still clutched in one hand. As undead as before.
It is a terrible feeling. It is claustrophobic. Akechi's shirt collar feels too tight and the back of his neck too sweaty; his guts go icy with dread and his vision goes tunneled and blurry.
Maruki has imprisoned him here. He cannot even escape by his own hand.
He feels like an animal caught in a trap.
vii.
Leblanc smells the way it always has. It didn't used to be this way, but this year, the smell strikes Akechi as horrible. There is a pot of curry simmering on the stove, and plumes of steam drift lazily through the early February chill.
"Do you think I'd be happy with this?" Akechi asks. His hands are in tense gloved fists at his sides and his voice cuts sharply over his plaid scarf. "Being shown mercy now, of all times?"
Months ago, he had told Akira he hated him, and he hadn't been lying. But they still spent afternoons in Mementos together, and Akechi became a frequent rider of the last train home with his shirt sloppily buttoned and his tie undone. It was hatred but tempered by a from-the-core desire to be friends; the realization that they were pieces of the same chess set, different sides but necessary for the game to proceed.
But after turning himself in to Sae, presenting his wrists instead of Akira's, well, Akechi, he knows what hate feels like now. Sitting in the police station, realizing, slowly, that he's been resurrected as a pawn in Maruki's softcore stakeless dreams…the hatred fomented in his heart and it became cold and sharp like a piece of flint.
Venomously: "I don't want to be pitied."
He spent his entire life making himself useful. A brilliant and talented and functional Object of Use. Very few things are difficult for him to do. He had allowed his guard to slip with Akira, but that died with him deep in the rusted hull of his father's ship.
Akira leans heavily against Leblanc's polished dark wood bar. Despite his stature, he feels particularly slight next to Akechi bundled in his winter clothes. It is hard to say if something like friendship ever existed between them, but if it did, it has certainly gone cold by now. He can't stop staring at Akechi; he takes him in greedily because he does not know how much longer reality will let him see this face.
It's not as easy for him to say no to Maruki's proposal as he wishes it was. At his most basic level, Akira, he just wants to help people. It's the whole raison d'etre of the Phantom Thieves: to make this world a better, more just place to live. Maruki's version of reality feels like a little white lie blown up huge. The truth withheld to spare feelings. It is hard to imagine seeing a world without pain and strife and angst, then saying: actually, change it back, it was better before with all the unchecked suffering and woe.
He imagines Futaba and her mom and Morgana and his handsome human body and Makoto and her happy family and Sumire and her sister and he imagines taking all of that away from them. He imagines a future where he and Akechi are friends and maybe more. Akira gets stuck on that, a future with Akechi in it.
"I'm not debating this with you," Akechi tells him. His gloves squeak as he balls and unballs his fists, exhaling hard through his nostrils. Akira's silence is making him feel the same way he did after jumping in front of the train and respawning on the platform: an animal, caged, trapped, leashed at the whims of a master whose power and control is beyond the scope of Akechi's imagination. His dark brows knit close and something crumples visibly behind his brown eyes. He tells Akira, in a voice that is small and terrifyingly honest: "Your indecisiveness on this matter is essentially a betrayal of my wishes."
A crow pinned to a square of museum foam.
A brain-dead body stuck on life support.
Akechi is trying not to cry, hot tears of frustration springing at the corners of his eyes where his long lashes meet. He does not want Akira to see him like this. He does not want Akira to see how he collapses under loss of control.
Akira extends a hand, cautiously, about to grab Akechi's wrist and pull him closer, but he stops partway and realizes this Akechi is a stranger to him and he yanks his hand back like he's been burned.
Akechi's voice, even, quiet, syllables measured caliper-precise: "I want to hear you say it aloud."
Outside, people crowd the alleys of Yongen-Jaya, walking home from the bathhouse or the train station or the bar, their breath curling above them and their hands shoved deep in the pockets of their anoraks. They don't realize they're just playing pretend. Leading their lives anesthetized, stumbling through Maruki's pranks and contrivances and never once despairing or asking why.
Akechi cannot imagine anything worse than Akira having all this power over him. Quite literally deciding whether he is forced to live or allowed, sympathetically, to once again return to the privacy of death.
The curry on the stove starts bubbling faster, thick and swamp-like. The steam darkens. Akira looks over his shoulder, starts to turn away.
Akechi tastes vomit in the back of his mouth and swallows hard. His eyes searching the nest of curls at the nape of Akira's neck, he asks, finally:
"What do you intend to do?"
viii.
In a future that may or may not come to pass:
They take a trip to the shore. The water's still cold in mid-May, but Ryuji swims in up to his waist and splashes Ann and Futaba and Sumire, and they shriek and throw their wet jackets back on shore and laughingly brainstorm the perfect revenge.
Akira made this decision thinking about other people, but to live with it, that's the thing he can't do: think about other people.
"Do you dare submerge yourself within the sea's icy throes?" Akechi asks, pressing a cold soda can against the back of Akira's neck.
Akira laughs and takes the soda in one hand and Akechi's hand in the other. They sit on a beach blanket in comfortable silence. Akechi leans his head against Akira's shoulder, and his brown hair fans out into the hollow of Akira's collarbone.
Futaba carefully picks her way through the sand and grins huge at the two boys. "You guys are seriously turning me into a fujoshi," she says. She steals the soda can from Akira and pops the tab. Taking a swig, she shakes her orange hair and continues, "but you lovebirds should really come help us figure out how to take down Ryuji."
Akira, he remembers the way something broke inside Akechi as he turned and said, "The deal's off." The way he left Leblanc crushed by the realization that he'd been sentenced to reanimation in perpetuity.
Akechi doesn't remember, though, and that's the only part that matters.
ix.
Reporter Takegawa: We're really so honored to have you here at Sunset Evening Report, Goro Akechi-san. Or do you prefer to be called the Detective Prince?
Goro Akechi: Thank you, thank you. I'd be remiss if I didn't make it clear the pleasure is all mine. I'm truly indebted to those who take time to interview me, so, again, thank you, Takegawa-san.
RT: Ah, you truly are a prince! Always so polite, so charming.
GA: You really may call me that if you wish. (laughing) I don't mind. But I do fear my ego may become overinflated one of these days.
RT: Any sense of pride you feel in yourself is well-deserved, I assure you! But let's get to the heart of things this evening, Mr. Detective Prince. Would you mind explaining to our audience what it means when the Phantom Thieves-
(the crowd's reaction, evenly-sized waves of boos and cheers crashing against each other, causes Reporter Takegawa to pause. He waves one hand, palm down, to quiet the live audience)
RT: It's clear our audience this evening has some strong feelings about the Phantom Thieves! I suppose everyone in Japan has an opinion on them at this point. But, listen, what I'm asking: when they steal people's hearts, what does that mean? Is it like (he cartoonishly pantomimes a heart attack, with his heart beating wildly outside his body and being yanked away by a thieving hand) or something more psychological?
GA: Well, while it's still unclear as to whether the Phantom Thieves are responsible for any fatalities, I can assure you it's purely metaphorical. The hearts, at least. They really are stolen, but we aren't talking about organs. It's the more whimsical notion of the word.
RT: Ah, of course! The heart, like the heart and soul! Doki doki! Beating in our chests, fueled by passion or love or courage!
GA: Yes, actually quite like that-think about it as a deeply emotional source of motivation. Something precious to you. Perhaps something secretive or formative or bestowed upon you by a loved one. If that was taken away from you, it's very easy to imagine how your perspectives and desires could quickly and radically shift the way we see in victims of the Phantom Thieves.
RT: Taking away someone's reason for being is a pretty serious move! The Phantom Thieves have to really, seriously believe what they're doing is just!
GA: Personally, I don't believe any human should have power over someone's desires like that. Forging your own path is perhaps the most crucial aspect of the lived experience. Having your spiritual compass tampered with...there's nothing just about that.
(the audience responds with a mix of applause and jeering, with smatterings of "Akechi-kun!" and other squealing adorations. Reporter Takegawa again quiets them with an easy arm wave and a bright smile)
RT: Right, right. You can't replace the experience of going your own way...No one should be told what to do in matters of the heart! Speaking of that...if the Phantom Thieves were to steal your heart, Mr. Detective Prince. What would that look like?
GA: Excuse me?
(Akechi seems uncharacteristically taken aback. His smile falters on one side and he brushes his hair behind his ear)
RT: If the Phantom Thieves were to break into the Museum of Goro Akechi and steal your heart from it, what would that look like? If it's a representation of the things that mean the most to you, what would that be?
GA: Ah, I-I suppose I've never given that any consideration.
RT: Because your security system is too good, right? (the audience laughs)
GA: To be quite honest, Takegawa-san, there is nothing there for them to steal.
x.
Joker has never been able to see past his opening gambit.
He goes doe-eyed at sacrifice and his defenses fall immediately. He falls prey to the Queen's Gambit, to the King's Gambit, every time. Beholden to the sacrificial pawn.
It is no surprise that he doesn't sense Akechi's betrayal behind the ankles brushing beneath hightop jazz cafe tables and the waking up with limbs splayed together in the dusty Leblanc attic. It is not hard for Akechi to spend hours beside him on the battlefield or at the bathhouse, building the ruse. It is not hard for him to put bullets in the heads of his father's targets.
Very few things are difficult for him to do.