A/N - Welcome back everyone!

I do ship Kogami and Ginoza, so while my previous Psycho Pass fics had some definitive hints of pre-slash, they're full on together in this one. It's not really a romance fic though - more of a whump/action type thing.

This fic will be longer than the previous ones as well. Most likely eleven, but maybe twelve chapters. I will post once a week unless I am on vacation (whole thing's already written).

In full complete disclosure I have not actually watched season three of Psycho Pass yet, and am mostly guessing at vibes based on reading episode descriptions. It's a pretty self-contained story anyways, so I hope I won't mess up anything too egregious. Since Ko and Gino are together, this would need to be a slight AU anyways.

I can't think of any big trigger warnings for the whole fic, but some chapters may get their own little trigger warnings.

Title is from "Inkpot Gods" by The Amazing Devil.


Ginoza turned on the television set into the living room wall of the apartment he shared with Kogami, waiting for the news channel and trying to ignore his stomach flipping unpleasantly.

It had been a week since Kogami had disappeared. He'd gone to pick up food from one of the few restaurants Ginoza liked, and he'd never come back home. Fifteen minutes after he'd left, far too soon for Ginoza to start worrying, his watch had buzzed with a message from his husband. It read "I love you."

By the time Ginoza had been worried enough to call him, Kogami's watch had been deactivated. No matter how many times or ways he tried to reach him, Ginoza had been met with dead ends. After a week, he hadn't come up with any better ideas than obsessively watching the news, combing through every story for any mention of Kogami.

Ginoza didn't know where Kogami had gone, but he at least had a rough idea of why Kogami was gone. And hopefully soon, he'd know where to look. He wasn't supposed to know anything, of course, but when Kogami was involved, very few things went according to plan.

Years before, when Kogami had been allowed back into Japan and started working for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ginoza hadn't thought to question it too intensely. He'd assumed that Kogami's skills were sufficient for the government to somewhat overlook his actions prior to leaving the country, and that seemed to make sense, anyway. One of those skills was undoubtedly getting away with things. It had taken a while for the whole story to come out, but Kogami had finally pointed out to Ginoza that latent criminals who were wanted by a number of foreign powers for "acts of terrorism" weren't typically allowed back into Japan, no matter how many skills they had. In order to get amnesty, Kogami had been forced to make a deal.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs did want to utilize Kogami's skill as an operative, but it went beyond the quasi-official status that most SAD agents enjoyed. Kogami was (his words, not Ginoza's) something of an anachronism, a sort of last resort the MFA planned to trigger in the very worst situations. In the event of a true threat to national security, Kogami would be willing (and ordered) to cross lines that his own department, let alone a government run by the SIBYL System, would not be. If he could complete whatever mission was set to him, and make it back to Japanese soil without being discovered, he'd receive the same amnesty as before. If he got caught, then the Japanese government would happily turn him over, citing his well-documented psychological instability and past criminal actions as the cause.

Ever since Kogami had given Ginoza the vague (and highly illegal) outline of his plea bargain, Ginoza had kept a tense and horrified eye on foreign affairs. It was terrifying, knowing that the man he'd married could be sent off to a warzone or worse with not a second of warning. The waiting was horrible - even after years, remembering the specifics of Kogami's deal and their helplessness in the face of it made Ginoza's stomach turn over. Every time there had been the beginnings of some sort of international unrest broadcast on the news, Ginoza had found himself tossing and turning, unable to get the idea of Kogami being taken away out of his mind.

And now the worst had happened. And Kogami was gone.

Ginoza wanted to have faith in Kogami - after all, he had made it back to Japan under the most impossible of circumstances once before. Maybe he could do it again. But the truth was, Ginoza didn't even have any idea if Kogami was alive right now - he knew sentiments like "feeling when your partner died" were completely illogical. If Kogami were captured or killed before he could complete his mission, Ginoza would likely never even find out where he'd been sent, and would always be left wondering what had happened. Even in a best case scenario, Ginoza knew the chances of Kogami succeeding at his mission, escaping the foreign nation undetected, and returning unharmed to Japan were very, very slim.

But Ginoza couldn't help but stare at the glowing screen, looking for any shred of evidence that he could misconstrue as hope.

Normally, Ginoza spent a few hours vaguely flipping between the various news channels he had access to before finally concluding that nothing of note had happened since he'd last been able to check. But this time, the second he turned on his television set, he could tell that something was different.

The first broadcast that started playing was showing footage of some sort of riot that had broken out in a small country that was part of the Eastern European Nation Agreement. EENA was much larger and much more sparsely populated than Japan, as far as Ginoza knew, but the city that was being shown in the broadcast, where the rioting had started, looked to be as large as the city Ginoza had grown up in. According to the newscaster, the rioting had started less than an hour ago, but already over one hundred thousand EENA citizens were thronging the streets, many armed.

Getting that many people mobilized that quickly? That had Kogami written all over it. But Ginoza still didn't know why there was rioting in the west - technically, it could be just a coincidence. It could even be related to the same instability Kogami had been sent in to solve, but not actually related to something Kogami had done. Kogami could be yet to make his move.

Ginoza swallowed nervously as he changed the channel. He realized that his metal fingers were digging into the meat of his thigh, as they often did when he was stressed, and he made a conscious effort to release them.

This channel showed much the same: coverage of the EENA riot. Ginoza turned up the sound and leaned closer, willing the broadcaster to say something that he could trace back to Kogami.

"-the riot erupted after the assassination of a local politician. During an address to the crowd, Yuri Deniken was shot, apparently by an enraged citizen. Further news-"

Ginoza wasn't listening anymore. He knew the name of the politician who'd been assassinated, and he very much doubted that he'd actually been killed by an impassioned local. Relations with EENA had been growing increasingly more tense recently, in part due to Deniken's public denunciation of the SIBYL System. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs had been aware of the situation, but as of yet hadn't attempted any action.

Apparently, someone with a higher clearance than Ginoza had received information that he didn't have, and had decided that it was time for Deniken to go. Kogami was being used for a political assassination.

Bizarrely, as soon as Ginoza realized he was sure, his stomach relaxed and he felt something approaching calm for the first time in a week. He knew where Kogami was and what he was doing. Now, it was time to figure out what he could do about it.


Kogami half-leaned, half-fell against the wall of the office building, listening to the sounds of the riot outside. The sudden sound of broken glass made him flinch, then yelp softly in pain, but it was coming from down the street. The window that Kogami was propped next to was still intact, at least for now.

Adrenaline still pounding through his body, Kogami let himself slide down the wall until he was huddled on the floor. With shaky fingers, he touched the handle of the knife that was currently buried in his stomach.

The mission had been going well. Ever since Deniken had started making public speeches about the SIBYL System, Kogami had vaguely expected to be called to hold up his end of the deal. He hadn't even really been that shocked when an unmarked van had started tailing him on his way to the restaurant, although he wished he'd had time to send a longer message to Ginoza. When they'd finally briefed him, leaving him blindfolded and handcuffed to a chair, Kogami had mostly been relieved that all the government wanted from him was a single political assassination.

He tried not to think too hard about whether or not Deniken deserved to die, or any of the other moral implications of this action. When Kogami had signed the plea bargain, he'd traded his ideals and his morality both for the chance to recreate the life he'd left behind. At the time, he hadn't been so sure if it was worth it. But now, that life included Ginoza, and Ginoza was worth more than anything.

Deniken seemed pretty unpopular, at least amongst the working class. Kogami wasn't expert on the political situation in the EENA, but that had to mean he needed to go. Right?

Either way, what mattered was the assassination had been successful. He'd shot Deniken through the window from an abandoned building across the street from where he'd been holding a rally. He'd loaded some extra bullets, and he'd shot a few extra times afterwards - careful not to hit any of the civilians who had been in attendance. He'd hoped this would make it look like a random lucky shot rather than a hit by a trained sniper. A bomb probably would have been even harder to attribute to him, but he would have risked hurting innocents.

Which…mattered to him, for sure. It only mattered to him so much, and if he really didn't think he'd be able to pull off the sniper shot, he would have done it. But he'd thought he could, and he'd been right. So there was no need to wonder about what might have been.

Kogami didn't speak the local language, but he'd carefully memorized the local revolutionary slogan syllable by syllable, and practiced until he was sure he could pronounce it right. He didn't know what it meant - he couldn't spell it to find it in the dictionary he'd brought, and his shitty transponder couldn't search things. But he'd yelled that out the window as soon as he'd made sure the bullet had hit home, and then he'd run.

Kogami had never started a riot before. If that hadn't worked, he hadn't really had any other ideas, and even though he'd succeeded at the assassination, he probably would have been caught.

But it had worked. A riot had broken out almost instantly. Kogami had wiped his gun for fingerprints and abandoned it - he didn't want to be associated with it. He'd pulled his backpack of food and supplies over his shoulder, left the building he'd spent the last few days camping out in, and tried to lose himself in the rapidly-expanding crowd. It hadn't been hard. Kogami wouldn't have been able to start a riot if one hadn't been brewing anyways, and the unrest had bloomed faster than he'd predicted.

He just needed to make it out of the city, find somewhere where he could lay low for a few days or maybe a week, and then hitch a ride back to Japan. Everything had been going…well, this sort of situation never went well, but it had been going fine, at least. But then he'd gotten stabbed in the stomach, by someone who he didn't even think knew his face. He was a casualty of his own escape plan, and now he was going to pay the price.

As soon as he'd taken the knife, his chances of making it back to Ginoza had plummeted. It hadn't been great odds before, but Kogami was used to that. It was almost familiar. Now, it had gone from unlikely to almost impossible.

Before being stabbed, he'd been trying to make his way through mob violence, with both riot officials and angry citizens taking their rage out on the other, all without leaving a trail (blood or otherwise). He still had to do all that, but now he also had a knife in his stomach.

Kogami shuddered involuntarily, then bit down on his lip to keep from moaning aloud as he shifted around the knife. It hurt. Kogami had been stabbed…more times than he cared to count right now, and he was still always surprised by just how painful it was. And beyond that, terrifying. Kogami was familiar enough with emergency field medicine and anatomy to know both that the knife hadn't punctured anything important, and that he'd received far worse injuries in the past. But that didn't take away from the animal terror that something was inside him, something sharp, something that didn't belong.

Kogami's breathing was speeding up. He cut it off sharply, and forced himself to breathe even and slow, no matter how hard it was. He couldn't afford to panic.

Similarly, he couldn't give up. Taking the knife was bad, and it made things more complicated, but he was still thinking clearly (enough), and he was alive and free (for the moment). But if he wanted to remain that way, he had to move. The office building he was crouching in was in the thick of the riot, and when the violence calmed down, it would be one of the first places searched. He had to get out of the area, and get somewhere he could actually hide.

And that meant first aid. Not much, not here. He couldn't waste any time, especially not now that it would take him so much longer to move through the city. Just enough to keep him upright, and to stop him bleeding so badly that it would be impossible to miss his trail.

Kogami's fingers hovered around the hilt of the knife, then dropped to the supply pack next to him.

He couldn't pull it out. The wound wasn't too bad, and Kogami would be able to stop the bleeding given time, but he didn't have it. Not here.

Kogami opened the backpack and pulled out a roll of heavy duty duct tape. He'd originally intended to use it to repair any rips or tears in his gear, but it would work just fine for this, too.

He supposed that in a way, this did qualify as a "rip or tear." Kogami chuckled quietly, then stopped and forced himself to take another few deep breaths. It wasn't that funny, and he didn't want to go into shock.

Kogami used his shirt to wipe the blood off of his skin as best as he could. It was hard, because every time he successfully removed some of the blood, more would bubble up around the knife. But he managed to get his stomach pretty clean and dry, and then he carefully wound the duct tape around his middle, keeping the knife in place. Once that was done, he added a few extra layers of tape around the knife itself. He really didn't want it to move. He knew it would be impossible to keep the knife completely still, and it could still be ripped out by a bad fall or something like that. But if it was jostling around too much, cutting up his insides every time he tried to move…Kogami didn't even really want to think about that. So he secured it as best as he could, and hoped that that would both slow the bleeding and keep the weapon from doing any further damage to him.

Kogami had a bottle of painkillers in the first-aid kit too, but he decided not to take any. He wasn't completely sure whether the medicine or the pain would dull his reflexes more, but he could always take the painkillers later if he felt he needed them and he couldn't exactly un-take them. He really needed to find somewhere safe where he could rest for…a day or two, at least. He needed to take medicine, clean his wound out, stop the bleeding.

But he couldn't do that until he escaped the city. While he was in the city, and the riots were still going on, nowhere was safe. He'd been in the same place long enough, and there was nothing more he could do right now.

So with a grunt of pain, Kogami shoved himself upright. The world spun around him - he'd lost more blood than he'd realized, it seemed. And he really might be going into shock. But he managed to stay standing, and when he tried to take a step forward, he managed to do that too.

The knife hurt. He was in so much pain that he actually had to force himself to breathe, concentrating on expanding his chest despite the agony it put him in. But he could breathe, and he could walk, and that was…that was mostly all that mattered. Things were looking very dire, but he had a shot, at least.

Kogami stumbled forward and headed for the rear entrance of the building, refusing to let himself pause any further. He could rest when he'd made it to safety.


The news was still on in the background, and Ginoza tried to listen to the broadcast as well as he could while he walked through the apartment. He didn't think that he'd receive any new information, but every little bit would surely help.

His hands, even the metal one, were shaking. Ginoza could calm his right hand with an effort, but he had less control over the prosthetic, and it would be shaking no matter what he tried to do about it.

Ginoza didn't bother to put the effort in to stop either hand from trembling. It didn't feel important anymore, not now that he'd finally received an idea of where Kogami was. That was all that mattered, now.

Ginoza was going to help him. This time, things would turn out differently. Kogami wouldn't disappear into a foreign country, leaving Ginoza to wonder forever what had happened to him, whether or not he was still alive.

Ginoza knew that technically, he had no confirmation that his husband had even survived the riot. Kogami could have been killed in the rising unrest, or even quietly captured by the local government, and they hadn't seen fit to release that information yet.

But he didn't care about that. Ginoza certainly had more information now than he had a week ago, and that was enough to get started. He wasn't interested in remaining here, watching the news for more scraps of information while Kogami fought for survival all on his own.

Ginoza dug through the kitchen cabinets, looking for the protein bars that Kogami often ate to tide himself over between meals. He found a box, read the flavor to determine whether or not it was something that he could stomach, decided that "lemon cake" sounded unpleasant but ultimately manageable, and transferred the contents to his bag. The bag was an "emergency kit" that Kogami had installed under their bed, for (as he said) "unforeseeable circumstances."

At the time, Ginoza hadn't had any idea what that meant, or why either of them might need water rations, a first aid kit, an ultra powerful glo stick, a flare, or an emergency blanket (among other things). He still wasn't entirely sure what use a few of the items could ever have, but he didn't really know what he was planning on getting himself into, and he supposed that those circumstances were truly unforeseeable.

Ginoza used his watch to message Akane that he would be leaving for a few days, possibly as long as a week, and asked that she come over to feed and walk his dog. Technically, he had no idea how long he would be gone, but he didn't think he needed to say that to her. The less she knew about what was happening, the better. If she ended up having to watch his dog for longer, that would probably mean that whatever had happened to him had made it to the news. In that case, Ginoza trusted Akane to figure out she needed to keep watching his dog. She was a smart girl, and wouldn't just abandon him.

Ginoza didn't exactly have a plan yet - plans came from information, and that was still something that he simply didn't have very much of. But a vague plan to at least obtain the information was starting to take shape, and it was both dangerous and very, very illegal. It was possible he wouldn't be back to this apartment for a long time.

That didn't matter. Ginoza had abandoned Kogami when Kogami had become an Enforcer, and that was the last time he intended to abandon Kogami ever. Ginoza didn't know if he would actually be able to help Kogami now, but he was absolutely going to try. He detested breaking the law, but he detested the thought of losing Kogami more. He would risk jail time if it meant he had a shot at bringing Kogami home. He would risk…anything.

Ginoza dragged the gun Kogami had brought back to Japan out from under their bed. It was in a big plastic case with hard black sides. Password protected, but Ginoza knew all of Kogami's passwords, and he was sure he could get into it. He didn't exactly know how to fire this particular sort of gun - he'd never done it before, and he wasn't familiar with the model. But honestly, Ginoza didn't think that mattered much. Guns looked pretty threatening, even before they started going off.

Ginoza kept checking in with himself. He had expected to be awash with anxious nausea, but he felt pretty much fine. He was flooded with the sort of cold determination he had never quite managed to possess as an Inspector. His heartbeat hadn't even sped up. He had always been calmer when he actually had something to do, and this was no exception. No matter what he had to give, he was going to help Kogami.

There were no other acceptable options.