Work Text:
“We know you know about the metaverse.”
Akechi can feel his world stop rotating in an instant. Everything comes to a screeching halt, no time to slow down and prevent some damage, left in ruins the second Kurusu lays that on him. Like it was nothing; he just stands there, cool gray eyes resting on him from behind thin frames, like he was waiting for a reply. An answer to an opinion. Maybe the weather, something inconsequential. Nothing about his frame suggests that, maybe, he just ruined years of planning on Akechi’s part, not even ten words to take the chess board and flip it off the fucking table, laying out his biggest secret in less than five seconds flat. Second biggest secret, if Akechi’s being honest with himself.
He wonders, vaguely, if the world can even be destroyed in five seconds. Everything crunching under the weight of the world once the spinning stops, velocity curtailed like a dying breath. It sure as hell feels like it. It takes him less than that to get his breathing back on track after it catches in his throat, temporarily stuttered.
“Excuse me?” he asks, voice honey sweet, if only to hide the surge of malice that threatens to bubble up in his throat, warring it out with the panic. Buildings and mountains forced to stop on a moment’s notice, shattered by the insufferable tone of an insufferable brat, staring at him like he has all the time in the world. Those glasses should dilute the intensity. Or that mop of black hair should be in his eyes by now, as desperate as it is for a cutting, and yet here he is, feeling every inch of an inscrutable, unflappable exterior, suffering under it. There’s no pleasure to be found in it.
Anger inches out panic and then back again, fear overwhelming the urge to snarl. It’s an out, he tells himself, for Kurusu to not keep fucking everything up for him. If he acts his way through it, they can play it off like it didn’t happen.
“We’ve known since the tv station,” Kurusu says, ignoring the bait entirely because of course he does, he’s the one who wanted to have this conversation in the first place. “And we know what you do in it. We were warned about the black mask in Madarame’s palace, and it wasn’t hard to put two and two together once we found what we did.” Akechi could kill him. His leather gloves squeak as he balls his hands into fists, a plastic smile fixed on his face, frozen and lifeless. Just like the wreckage Kurusu left in his wake. The bastard even has the gall to look amused about it, judging the weird gleam in his eyes at the sound.
“And what,” he asks, sharp and icy, “did you find?”
“We bugged your phone,” Kurusu replies coolly, and finds it in him to smile. “We know about Sh—”
Akechi lunges. Kurusu’s throat would have been a fantastic target but no, his hands come up to Akechi’s wrists just in time for the momentum to overwhelm them both. He hits the ground hard and something sickening curls with satisfaction in Akechi’s chest, but there’s no time to gloat, all he wants to do is hurt Kurusu for this. It’s all his god damn fault, he had to go and do this, ruin Akechi’s fucking plans, and he’s going to get his hands around that pretty little neck of his and leave bruises that his stupid turtleneck could never hope to cover, he’s going to squeeze the last bit of life out of him—
At least, he would, if Kurusu wasn’t so stupidly strong. His glasses are askew from the force of the impact and he’s grinning, holding Akechi at bay, and it would be an infuriatingly attractive look if Akechi wasn’t already furious. He grits his teeth and struggles to rip out of Kurusu’s grip to no avail.
Something finally roughs the bastard up, shakes up his perfect aesthetic, and he still looks triumphant. Akechi could kill him.
“So what if you know?!” he hisses, pressing in as close as he can, “so what if you’ve figured it out?! You told me, you idiot! You played your hand! And you’re all alone!” His shoulders twist painfully as Kurusu holds his arms back, but he can’t bring himself to care, not when he’s so close, if he leaned in far enough he could headbutt him. Give him a nice bloody nose for his troubles. “None of your little friends are here to save you!”
“Oh please,” Kurusu mutters, and it’s dismissive enough to almost make Akechi’s heart stop. It gets him to stop struggling for about half a second, even.
“How fucking dare y—”
“First off, there isn’t a thing you can do to me in the real world that I’m not also capable of, so don’t get on your high horse about it. Second, this room is also bugged, so if I was in trouble, which I’m NOT,” he pauses to make eye contact, and Akechi can feel the raw skin under Kurusu’s palms as he tries again to go for the throat, “I would have help. My friends trust me.”
“Isn’t that just fucking fantastic for you!” Akechi snarls, feeling the hands against him start to tremble with the strain. If he had his gun, this would be over in an instant, but he doesn’t. Not smart, not smart at all when he snapped, and now he’s got to think, push the blind outrage aside to get his bearings back. Kurusu’s going to win in a sheer contest of strength here, no question.
So he rears back, swiveling his wrists, breaking free.
And pain sears through him as Kurusu socks him in the stomach once, twice, popping him in quick succession, forcing him to double over. Just like that, Kurusu’s weight is on top of him, pinning him down to the floor, elbows trapped painfully on dusty hardwood.
“Nowhere to go,” comes the voice from above him, and he screams like a cornered animal.
He can’t stop. He thrashes, kicking out, trying to buck Kurusu from on top of him, but the rage that burns through him leaves nothing but ash behind, a broken yell and sore muscles that do nothing to displace the weight keeping him grounded. More than a few seconds, a few minutes, and all that’s left is futile struggling as Kurusu waits. Akechi keeps screaming.
He doesn’t stop. He’s not sure he ever stopped, really, not since he was a child. Not since the first night he realized his mother wasn’t coming back, that the rest of his life would be an uphill battle like this one, alone and struggling.
Ashes and ruin, all that’s left of his plans.
It’s not until that he’s left heaving for breath, throat rubbed raw by his own voice, that Kurusu speaks.
“I didn’t tell you so that I could hurt you,” he says quietly. If there was any strength left in his body, Akechi would have murdered him just for saying something so trite. Trying to placate him, now, after he’s gone and spoiled everything, lording it over him like the gleeful victor. Instead, he sneers, baring his teeth with as much contempt as he can muster. “Spare me yo—”
“No, shut up,” Kurusu huffs. “We know what you’ve done, and it’s not great, but I’m telling you because I want to make an offer to you. I was going to do it before you flipped out on me.”
Akechi spits at him. It lands on his cheek and his face contorts in disgust, and it is worth every hour of the game of cat and mouse game they played just to see it. Something that irritates him. Akechi smiles, a jack-o-lantern grin carved ugly into his face, and Kurusu levels him with a flat look.
“Gross,” he states, though he doesn’t bother loosening his grip to wipe it off. Yet more hideous satisfaction. “Anyway. I just want to say, I don’t…blame you, for flipping out, because you’re involved in some deep, deep shit and I just exposed you. I get it. You’re associated with some nasty people and I know there’s got to be a reason for it.”
“Is there?” Akechi rasps out, his destroyed throat at odds with the sweet smile on his lips. “What if I like it, Kurusu? What if I’m doing it for the money and the fame I’ll have when he becomes Prime Minister? What if it just feels good to hurt people?”
“Then you wouldn’t sound so scared when you talked to him,” Kurusu shoots back.
That’s almost enough to spark a second wind, his strength reviving in him as he pushes against Kurusu, letting out a snarl that does a number on his vocal chords. No such luck; the grip on him holds fast, and all that he’s left with is the shame threatening to burn what’s left. Will Kurusu really take everything from him? His plans, his mind, the last shreds of his dignity?
For whatever it’s worth, he has the decency to look sympathetic, though it stirs something hateful in Akechi’s chest. Like he needs the pity. “I want to know your reason, okay? I want to know why you went through the trouble of deceiving us, why you work with him, why you work with any of them. I know Shido’s an awful guy and we know, we KNOW he treats you terribly.” Kurusu’s voice is so pathetic, plaintive and seeking, and nausea swoops through Akechi at the thought. Must be from how stupid their leader sounds while he’s begging for an answer.
“Tell me why I should tell you,” he hisses, staring into the silvery gaze above him. How dare he look so sad now, with no glasses to hide behind. Like the thing Akechi wanted most from him wasn’t a chance to understand what was going on behind that unshakeable calm.
“Because I want to believe you,” Kurusu says, quiet, like he’s sharing a secret. Or admitting his guilt. “I want to believe the guy who sat at my counter and told me about his past because he trusted me, I want to believe that you were being genuine. That you were real when I called you out on tv and you smiled because it was a challenge. So much of you isn’t, Akechi—I want to see the parts that are. All of them.
The evenings when you stay late, even after Sojiro has left, and you help me wipe down the tables. When you drink my coffee and you used to tell me it was perfect, but now you tell me what needs improvement. The little smile you get when you beat me in one of those little phone games you say you don’t have time to play, I want to believe these things are real. Okay? You’ve done some really horrible things but there’s a person in there, and I have to know why.”
Akechi’s mouth has fallen open and he says nothing, not with Kurusu’s face so close to his. The intensity would burn him if there was anything left.
“I have got to know why you’d do what Shido tells you when you are capable of so much more. When you could turn around from this. If there’s a way to do it, we could find it, Akechi, because we’re the fucking Phantom Thieves. I believe in you. I believe you have a real answer.” Whatever sniveling weakness that managed to crawl into Kurusu’s voice is gone, the space taken up by a vindication worthy of a leader. He locks eyes with Akechi in the same way his hands pin his body down, the way his voice forces away any scathing rebuttal of his sentimentality, resolute and unwavering. The only thing that can stand up to the mass destruction of the world around them, the only piece left on the board after its been scattered.
“Sojiro’s counter,” Akechi croaks.
And those incredible eyes blink in confusion.
“What?” he says, dumbly.
“You said your counter,” Akechi replies, “but it’s Sojiro’s counter.” He’s impressed with himself, for keeping his sandpaper rough voice even. The rapid thumping of his pulse certainly has other opinions on the matter; belatedly, he realizes that Kurusu can almost certainly feel it at this proximity. He’s already discovered the shreds of who he really is, dug through the trash of his lies to find them, one more revealed card isn’t going to change the outcome of the game.
And Kurusu can’t help the heavy sigh that escapes him, half incredulous laugh, the other completely done with Akechi’s shit, and it forces a laugh out of Akechi’s strained throat. “Please tell me that’s not the only thing you got from everything I said,” he mutters, and Akechi laughs harder.
It hurts. It feels good. It feels like he might cry.
“There is a reason,” he says, and it feels like it might choke him to say it, “but I don’t know if you want to hear it.” The weight of it, the truth, is heavier than Kurusu is. It sits on his chest, squeezing the air out of his lungs, the same fear from earlier clawing its way to hold onto it, to keep it where it could kill him. Kurusu’s mouth falls open in surprise.
“What did I literally ju—”
“I have killed people, Kurusu, you know this,” Akechi says. He’s tired, suddenly. Kurusu’s eyebrows knit together but he’s not finished. “What could I say that would be compelling enough to you? The Phantom Thieves believe in justice, do they not? Does that include killing people under order? For personal gain? Nothing I have ever done is just.”
He’s tired. He never expected to carry the guilt and stop here, in the wreckage of his revenge, and not even the goodness of Kurusu Akira can lift the weight of someone drenched in sin. Like Sisyphus, only after rolling the boulder uphill for so long, he’s finally let it fall and crush him into the muck.
Fuck, he really is being laughably dramatic. Too bad the whisper of humor from earlier has evaporated.
Silence falls over them for a few moments, harsh breaths slowed and pulse no longer thundering in his ears, though Kurusu leans above him with a tight-lipped frown. Considering his words carefully, with all the tact of someone who managed to beat him. He inhales, and Akechi closes his eyes, awaiting his judgement.
“I’m not going to try to say that’s not a big deal, because it is,” he says, stepping around his words like broken glass, “but I get the feeling it’s related to your reason. I won’t promise you a pardon for what you’ve done, and I really don’t think you want it from me. But we’ll give you a fair chance if you want to take it.”
I haven’t had many of those, he thinks, and despite his eyes being closed, nothing stops the tears threatening to run down Akechi’s face. Ridiculous. Completely unwarranted, considering everything he’s done, like he’s allowed to feel bad about it. They slip free and now he definitely can’t look, can’t see what must be on Kurusu’s face. Any more pity and it might kill him. Might even be what he deserves, but like hell this is how his justice ends.
It’s too kind. His breath shudders in his chest for a moment, struggling to catch.
“If you get off of me, I will tell you,” he manages once the tears loosen their stranglehold on his breath. And being a stupid, trusting, beautiful fool, Kurusu complies.
Akechi tells him everything.
Every sordid detail, every nasty little hiccup of being an unwanted bastard orphan, it comes spilling from his mouth with none of his usual charm. Kurusu listens diligently as he describes the foster homes, finding the metaverse for the first time, the delight at having power and freedom; he might have reacted when Isshiki Wakaba was brought up, but Akechi can’t look him in the face while he says it, can’t risk the vicious swoop of defensiveness that might rise to the challenge. It already threatens to break loose every time he spits Shido’s name from his lips. Part of him shrivels at the thought of all the Phantom Thieves knowing his parentage, stricken and hateful that they might draw parallels for it. Or pity him. He powers through. He tells Kurusu the wonder he felt when he first realized that the others were capable of changing hearts without ruining minds, and the tiny, frustrating seed of doubt that was planted by it.
“But no matter what,” he rasps, “I needed to bring Shido down. When he was at his highest, at the pinnacle of his success that he couldn’t have achieved without me, I needed to be the one to drag him off his pedestal and into the filth where he belongs. And I thought I would do anything to achieve it. I would…forsake anything. Absolutely.” His voice is completely shot to hell at this point, and he’s desperately thirsty, but he wouldn’t have finished if they had traveled downstairs for water. Kurusu looks at him in silence.
“Well? You know everything, Kurusu. How does my justice measure up?” He sounds pitiful like this, throat and will utterly ravaged, with the devastated foundation of his entire life laid out in a café’s attic to the beautiful man who ruined him, who still hasn’t said anything. He feels gutted.
There’s enough left of him to be worried, though.
Kurusu hums and damn him, it’s enough to ratchet up the anxiety gnawing away at Akechi’s lungs. He raises his gaze to meet Kurusu’s eyes. He looks…
Not angry, for one thing. He has a strangely calm air, studying Akechi with less detachment than he expected, and far less animosity than he deserves.
“Sacrificing innocent lives was incredibly fucked up,” he starts, and Akechi hangs his head before he has the chance to get angry. Fair, and entirely deserved, he tells himself. “But…I can’t say that I don’t understand some of it. All of us would, I think. You were a victim in this too, Akechi, and that doesn’t forgive what you did, but it doesn’t…you aren’t a lost cause.”
“Sympathizing with a murderer, Kurusu?” Akechi spits, his mouth twisting into a nasty smile. He has no other choice like this, when the words burn worse than any demon’s Agidyne, when Kurusu offers something so fair and cleansing that it threatens to take out the last dregs of his motivation. He doesn’t deserve it. He didn’t ask for it.
Kurusu didn’t ask for this attitude. He drags a hand through the tangles of his hair, a frown tugging at the corners of his lips. “Don’t deflect,” he sighs. Part of Akechi feels adequately admonished. “We can change this, moving on from here. We can find a better path.”
“We?”
“The Phantom Thieves.” And he even says it with that damned conviction of his, staring at Akechi like there was no point in asking in the first place. It should be infuriating. It’s not.
“Odd that you seem to think they’d be willing to have me in their midst,” he replies simply.
Kurusu has the nerve to shrug, and that is actually irritating, because the least he could do is acknowledge when Akechi has a real, considerate point, born of out of stubbornness notwithstanding. “We all knew,” he says, “at least some of what you were up to. And I don’t think any of us would just throw you to the wolves after hearing all that. Believe it or not, there was some discussion beforehand that I was going to do this. I don’t just leap into action by myself.”
Despite a roughened mutter that sounded suspiciously like ‘could’ve fooled me,’ Kurusu presses on. “This is our justice. We wanted to give you a chance to explain yourself, at least, and you did. And I know you’re not an idiot, so when I offer you a chance to take down Shido that doesn’t involve digging way more than two graves, I think you’ll take it.”
Akechi’s fingers dig into the fabric of his dress pants, and he hides his expression behind the curtain of his hair. It pisses him off a little, that Kurusu is so right, so smart to know him and call him out like this, even when his rebellious streak calls for him to throw another fit. He could just outright reject him and his lofty ideals, mock him and move right on with his plan. He could find his gun and put a bullet through the leader of the Phantom Thieves’ head early.
How. How can he do that, when they have the upper hand? When he’s already been dragging his feet on a plan steadily set in motion, when he’d rather be nursing a weird little friendship with the barista that serves him overly bitter coffee? When this is an easier alternative to pushing that boulder uphill yet again, waiting for it to fall back down on him?
“Come on, Akechi.” Kurusu’s voice breaks through the fog, soft with a commanding edge he has no right to wield. “You want to take him down, make him pay? So do we, and we know how to make him really suffer for it. Wouldn’t it be so satisfying to pull the wool over his eyes, take him down after snipping away at the branches of his corruption? You already brought him here, now’s the time for his reckoning. It’s time to wreak havoc on him, and we can help you. We’d gladly do it.”
Sisyphus must be tired.
He is too.
“What do you have in mind?” he says, feeling himself break a little more with each word.
“Rehabilitation,” Kurusu responds, and if Akechi was looking at him from behind the veil of chestnut hair, he’d see the self-satisfied smile at a private joke. But by the time he lifts his head, the smirk has softened into something sweeter. Something genuine.
Akechi thinks that maybe, if someone had looked at him like this before, if he thought that he had earned it years before this, it would have been just what he needed. A sweet, stupid thought, but Kurusu has had that affect on him for months.
“Alright,” he croaks, and if Kurusu could just stop smiling at him like that, it would be just fucking dandy. “Rehabilitation. I’ll play by your rules, Kurusu.”
“Akira.”
“Akira.” He has to say it through gritted teeth, trapping the wretched bubbling in his chest, the sudden sting of acid on his raw throat, an unfortunate cocktail of emotions threatening to erupt. One incredibly draining outburst a day is enough. “I’ll follow your lead. But I’m warning you now, my motivations have not changed. Shido will suffer by my hand.”
“Sure,” Akira says easily, impressive in his acceptance. “We’ll make him pay for what he’s done, that’s fine by me. It’s going to take, uh, some planning, because we found about what he was going to have you do to Okumura’s father, but I think we can make this work. I think we can make a plan.”
He offers a hand forward, and it’s almost laughable. The offer of redemption, rehabilitation, like the foolish ideal of changing hearts could reach him where Akechi is, two personas sitting safely in his soul like a bulwark. All those hours screaming for the shadows of the Phantom Thieves in the depths of the subway stations proved that it was futile. The idea of giving it to him in the first place feels wasteful, even.
He takes it anyway.
“Your atonement in exchange for bringing Shido down. We have a deal, then,” Akira says, almost crooning. “Welcome to the team, detective.”
Akira’s hand is warm. He could get used to this. No way he’ll let himself, but he could.
“Tell me one thing first.” His voice is a scratchy whisper, the sound two stones grind out when scraped together. “What did it? What gave me away?”
There’s a moment where Akira’s intensity breaks, the fearless, victorious look fading into something else. Embarrassed? Does he have the capacity to be embarrassed? “It was, uh,” he starts, “pancakes.”
Akechi’s free hand squeaks into a fist. It’s more polite then demanding Akira tell him what the fuck that’s supposed to mean.
“Back when we first met you, we were talking about where to go shopping and one of us said something about a pancake shaped building. You must have heard him because you brought it up. The thing is, you, uh, can’t hear what he says if you haven’t been to the metaverse.” The smile he gets in return is oddly pacifying, a condolence, a consolation prize for the fool who couldn’t have known better.
It’s infuriating. He was dead on arrival, damned by a deck stacked against him from the second the game started, and there was no way for him to have known. Stupid. “Right,” he spits, and there’s that bile rising in his throat, “well. I hope you don’t exactly have lofty expectations for my atonement, because I’m not here for penance. All you did was find me out. I won’t get on my knees and grovel for your forgiveness. I don’t need anything from you, hardly even your help, and I will not debase myself because you think I need your paltry blessing to be redeemed.”
“Don’t be cruel. It’s not going to make you hurt less, Akechi,” Akira growls, a warning shot. Akechi knows that everyone will hear this, might already be hearing it, and Isshiki’s daughter thinking of him as a remorseless monster for it is both fitting and a little bit sickening. Yet there’s their leader, giving him an out. Let’s offer the killer a chance to feel bad about it.
“Goro,” he says, because apparently, he’d rather soak himself in gasoline than put out the fire.
Akira’s eyes narrow dangerously, and for a nauseating second, Akechi thinks he’s going to take it all back, leaving him in a spiral with no bottom. He’ll have to change everything, start everything all over again with no resources and no hope, running against a ticking clock with the Phantom Thieves ahead of him, a winning hand already in place for them. He’d be ruined right out the gate.
“Goro,” Akira repeats, and it’s softer than he deserves right now. “I promise we want to help you get what you need. All that I’m asking you right now is to be honest with me, and that you trust what I’m saying to you, and you’ve been doing a great job of it so far. I know enough of you regrets what you’ve done because you’re still here with me.”
“Do you know anything about me, at all?” Akechi asks gently. He hadn’t expected that hearing his first name would wreck him so thoroughly, for once not having it thrown at him in disgust. It stings like disinfecting a wound.
“I know enough,” Akira replies. “I’m pretty perceptive. And smarter than you give me credit for.”
Akechi laughs and sniffles, irritated by the sudden thickness in his throat, the prickling of returning tears that hold his composure hostage. “For my own ego, I’ll choose to believe that,” he says, bowing his head in defeat. It’s about time that he’s lost his false crown, the mantle of an imaginary prince falling to the feet of his victor. “Very well. I will do my best for you and your team, Akira, if only because you asked so nicely.”
“I’m holding you to that,” Akira says lightly. He offers his hand again and when Akechi takes it, it’s more than just a handshake. It’s unnervingly intimate, the way he holds the leather-clad palm in his, squeezing soothingly.
“Work on it with me, Goro. I’m not asking you on behalf of the Phantom Thieves, okay? It’s just a promise between me and you. We’ll work on it together. I’m not asking you to be perfect right now.”
That’s a statement rife with possibility, but Akechi is worn thin, stretched out like a frayed string ready to break, so he just nods. “Good,” he sighs, “because you’d be sorely disappointed. I do apologize for what I said, though. It was…” rude, not entirely inaccurate, bitter as all hell, “uncalled for.”
Akira nods in return, and the hold on Akechi’s hand doesn’t let up. “Working on it,” he echoes. “So. Can I say it now? Are we partners?”
“For better or worse,” Akechi says, squeezing Akira’s hand in return. When he tilts his chin up to look at him straight on, Akira’s gaze is vibrant, gleaming steel in the sun, every bit as clever and resolute as a dagger in the right hands. It could hurt him, being looked at like this. It’s entirely too appealing for it.
And Akira grins, and how could he have been so blind to it before? The leader of the Phantom thieves is here, no longer hidden by an unassuming delinquent student, and he’s holding Akechi’s hand like he means something to him. The softness of his grip does nothing to tamper his wild card smile.
“Welcome to the Phantom Thieves.”