Chapter Text
Sensation returned to Akechi’s body from the outside in. First, his fingertips, his sheets smooth beneath them. His arms, weak from disuse. His eyes, unfocused and dry. His stomach–
Akechi rolled over to his side in a panic and emptied the rotting contents of his stomach onto his bedroom floor, splattering as a stark black stain against the beige carpet. He nearly passed out again but the smell of putrefying blood and bile forced him to recoil. He groaned and collapsed onto his side, curling on himself to hide from the stench and soothe the cramping of seemingly all of his internal organs.
Dying hurt less than this.
He moaned pitifully into his sheets, long-inactive salivary glands acting up to purge the horrible taste in his mouth. He retched over the edge of the bed again, then stumbled to his feet – away from the mess – and lurched towards the bathroom.
He leaned heavily on the wall, his body breaking out in a sweat as it resumed working. A flood of memories clamored for his attention but they were subdued by the immediacy of what was currently happening. Delirious, Akechi puked again into the toilet, stumbled into the shower and turned it on.
He earned himself a faceful of freezing cold water for the trouble. He shrieked and backed away from the stream, coming back to his senses as he flattened himself against the opposite wall with his hair plastered to his face and his shirt glued to his chest. It pulled unpleasantly at his skin while he sucked in breaths and his body remembered how to be alive.
Eventually the sound of the water was louder than the sound of his own heartbeat. He spit thoughtlessly into the drain while he came to grips with the tingling in his extremities and the weakness in his limbs. Now aware of how difficult it was to stand, Akechi slumped to the floor. His pant leg soaked up the pooling water, wicking it up to his thigh and down to his sock. He scooted miserably around the cold water and adjusted the temperature, waiting until it got warm to huddle under it.
Without the freezing shock to his system, he felt his stomach twist yet again. Akechi closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to look at it and retched again, then aggressively blew his nose to get the smell out. It reeked of death and Loki’s breath.
Once his body decided it was done purging the diseased mess, at least for now, Akechi fumbled to strip. His soggy clothes clung to him and part of him flinched from the sensation of air on his bare skin, but he wanted to be clean more than he wanted to be warm. He tossed his clothes into the corner of the shower to handle later and huddled in the center of it.
He watched, mesmerized, as a sheet of brown and red seeped out of the clothes pile to swirl into the drain. How much was dirt and how much was blood, he had no idea.
Now that he wasn’t in agony, the water felt nice. He had the presence of mind to realize he was parched, so he tilted his head back, cupped his hands and drank from the spray. He couldn’t care less that it was warm. It washed away the last taste of the rot, and with it he was finally able to relax.
Akechi didn’t pay attention to how long he sat there. He closed his eyes and buried his face in his arms crossed around his knees, taking the time to organize his thoughts.
He died – horribly. Loki carried him off. He had a vague recollection of a trip to Mementos while the collective unconsciousness still believed him alive before him and Loki were both dragged into something wrong. Then he was alive again, and then he died again at his own request. Now he was here as initially planned.
Loki’s presence– no, Hereward’s presence sat heavy in his heart, grounding him. It was just a little bit less malicious than Loki by himself. Still angry, of course – he was nothing if not angry – but a bit tempered. Akechi rubbed his bare chest, letting his head thump onto his knees while he sifted through the memories demanding his attention.
When he came back in the first gasps of Maruki’s reality, Shido was under investigation. Akechi had specifically avoided finding out what exactly happened. He knew he wouldn’t be able to cope if it wasn’t what he wanted and so he settled for just having a hand in the investigation. He vaguely remembered giving his… confession. It was the only way he had left to hurt Shido, and maybe do Akira a small favor after trying to murder him.
Further bullshit on Maruki’s part led to that not having any consequences. Akechi had then spent months living as a hostage to guilt Mr. Perfect into realizing Maruki’s dream. In a different context, he might’ve been flattered to think that his life had that much value. Unfortunately, he spent most of that time genuinely afraid that Akira would try to keep him.
He didn’t know why. Maybe it was because the bastard liked to play hero. No– that was absolutely why. Everyone’s morals crumbled when tested. It was easy to play hero, much harder to follow through with unpleasant choices. Akira had never had to give up anything he wanted before.
Some of the tension in Akechi’s shoulders and jaw melted away with the cooling water.
He’d worried for nothing. Akira had done what was right and what Akechi wanted, not what his stupid bleeding heart thought was fair.
…Was Akechi really that easy to impress?
His stomach twisted, for once not out of pain but in hunger. The water was getting cold anyway. Akechi groaned and shoved himself unsteadily to his feet, shut the water off and wrapped himself in a towel that smelled unpleasantly musty. He wrapped it securely around himself several times, then hobbled to the kitchen with dripping hair.
He needed to eat something before he passed out. Nobody would think to look for him and it’d be incredibly embarrassing to die of something so stupid after Loki–Hereward–one of them went through all the trouble to bring him back.
He should have some takeout from before he died. Akechi furtively checked his apartment for intruders on his way to the kitchen. On finding none, he opened his fridge, grabbed the first container he saw, then hunched over the counter to eat.
He nearly got it in his mouth before he noticed the dense carpet of mold covering what used to be noodles. He shrieked and shoved it away from himself as if alive. Technically, it was. After convincing himself not to give up food for the soon to be short rest of his life, he returned to the fridge. Almost every single container was the same way. He stuck his hand into the fridge itself experimentally. It felt cold.
Akechi gave up, too delirious to care about the why, and started making a packet of instant ramen. Once that was done, he mechanically shoveled non-spoiled food into his mouth and belatedly wondered what he was going to do now.
He had to figure out what he missed, first.
With some food inside him and being less likely to collapse, Akechi returned to the bathroom and fished his phone out of his sopping wet pile of clothes. He’d never been more grateful that he’d sprung for a waterproof case. Even so, it refused to turn on. He irritatedly wiped it against his towel a few times and jammed at the power button.
Still dead.
He scowled and carried it back to the living room, sat heavily on his couch and plugged his phone into the spare charger. The moment the screen flickered to life, he unlocked it and checked the date.
Mid June.
Akechi stared uncomprehendingly at the date, until the screen went dark. He pressed the power button again.
He’d been dead for months.
Luckily he was the type of person to pay the year’s rent in a lump sum, but his lease ended in July.
He leaned back and looked around at his near-sterile, beige apartment with its fine film of dust. It looked just like he’d hoped. Part of why he paid for his rent like that was to leave his living space as a mausoleum. It’d be months after his inevitable death before anyone was permitted inside. He’d often fantasized about his landlord finally cracking open the casket at the end of the lease, letting a bunch of faceless investigators pour over the shrine to his short life. He imagined them shaking their heads about such an upstanding young man leaving them too soon, oblivious to his true nature.
It was a stupid fantasy that he hated himself for, but he thought about it all the same.
He ignored the distaste rising at the back of his throat and glanced around. Why hadn’t anyone searched his place? Did Sae tell them not to bother since he was already dead? Would someone have put in a missing person report anyway? Maybe all his old coworkers assumed someone else already did.
He would’ve sat and stewed if not for his phone updating with a backlog of missed messages. A cacophony of notifications assaulted him – deafening in the silent space – and he scrambled to turn the ringer down, then watched the screen as they piled in. Text messages, emails, social media updates, a few threats from Shido’s contacts, more text messages. Dear God, there were so many text messages.
He started with those since they seemed the most pressing and immediately flinched away from the screen. Despite the flood of notifications, there were only about eight individual conversations with activity.
The oldest was the Phantom Thieves groupchat that they forgot to remove him from. He didn’t bother looking beyond the preview for that one, something about party planning. The next was from a classmate demanding to know where the hell he was and when he was doing his portion of the group project, getting progressively more hostile and accusing him of “having his head so far up his famous ass that he thinks he can shove all his work off onto them” until abruptly ending around New Years. The next oldest ones were inane questions from some of his coworkers and Shido’s contacts that he’d look at later. The third newest was from Haru of all people, then Sae, and finally the most recent message was from… Akira.
Akechi blinked at the screen.
Akira didn’t text people first. He just didn’t. Half the time he didn’t even respond to direct questions. It was one of the things Akechi found most infuriating about him, that he was so loved without putting in the slightest effort.
Akechi wrinkled his nose and saved that shitshow for later. Haru’s message both made him morbidly curious and filled him with significantly less trepidation than the others. He never imagined that she was capable of having an original thought, much less the conviction to reach out to him on her own. He thumbed her icon and scrolled up to the very top for the beginning of their message history. The timestamp read late February.
I apologize for messaging you like this. I doubt you will see this and I’m sorry for disturbing your rest, but I thought you would like to know, wherever you are.
You can say hell, he thought to himself and smiled at his own joke. He’d never particularly cared about Haru. Being polite and little else rarely lent itself to stimulating conversation. If anything, being around her just made him vaguely uncomfortable – like being around a too-realistic doll.
I told you that I couldn’t forgive you for what you did to my father. I’ve had some time to think since you passed, and I realized something. I think I may be jealous of you.
Akechi’s eyes widened.
I wish… I really, truly wish that I could hate my father like you hated yours. It would be easier. It would make more sense.
The next message was sent over ten minutes later.
My father was a very bad man. He probably hurt even more people than you did. It was my responsibility to stop him, but I didn’t know how. I was just… me. I didn’t know how to do anything. He never taught me anything.
When he died, I felt nothing. People kept asking me if I was okay. They congratulated me for being so strong and I just wanted to tell them all that I wasn’t being strong. I was scared wondering what was going to happen to me, but I wasn't sad. I wasn’t putting on a brave face.
He SOLD me and he raised me to never question it.
Akechi curled around his phone, clutching it like his own heart removed from his chest. The smile was long gone from his face.
The others have been telling me that I need to live for myself more, that I should put what I want first. I didn’t know what I wanted. I’ve never actually wanted anything before, but then I thought about you and I realized that I want to be angry. I want to hate him.
Or… maybe I don’t. Maybe I just want to feel nothing about him? You didn’t seem very happy either.
Maruki tried to give me my father back to make me happy. You saw him, right? That he wasn’t even recognizable as the same person? I didn’t care. I just wanted a dad to take care of me. I didn’t actually want him.
Um. Anyway, thank you for letting me vent to you, though I suppose you don’t actually have any say in the matter. I’m sorry about what happened to you. I forgive you. I’m still angry, but I think it’s because I wish I was you.
Thank you for everything you taught me, even if you didn’t mean to.
Akechi felt like he was in freefall, the floor dropping out from under him and leaving him to flounder. He scrolled up to read the conversation again from the beginning. Again. He read it twice more before sensation returned to him, feeling present in his own body instead of a passenger. He swallowed hard and rubbed his sternum, surprised to find that his heart hadn’t hammered out of his chest.
The vomiting was worth it just to read that.
God, what were the other messages about? He unfocused his eyes so he wouldn’t have to read the preview for Akira’s latest message before he was ready and quickly clicked on Sae’s, then repeated the motion of scrolling back to the first unread message. That was harder since they’d been in direct communication before, but he paused once he hit December and then scrolled until his own messages ended. Unlike someone , he bothered to respond to people.
I know everything. If you turn yourself in, I can try to get you a lighter sentence.
Akechi nearly laughed out loud. She always tried to bargain with the worst people. Whether her superiors, difficult suspects or coworkers, she seemed to enjoy banging her head against a brick wall. The next message came two days later.
Don’t ignore me, Akechi. I know you’re hiding somewhere. It won’t work. I will find you. It will be easier if you give yourself up.
A few more days passed before she sent the next message, shortly before New Years. He stiffened on reading it.
Akira is going to go to jail if you don’t speak up. I need a statement to pin Shido. He’s the only one that can testify besides you.
I know you want to take down Shido more than anything. This is how. I’ll help you. We’ll make sure he NEVER sees the light of day again.
Two hours passed before her next message.
Are you really so hateful that you would let him take the fall for you?
Akechi sighed, low and irritated. The next message wasn’t until February.
You really are gone, aren’t you?
A few more weeks passed. The next set of messages came over the course of a few hours, starting near midnight and stretching into 3am.
I always hated you, you know. It was hard enough dealing with those dickheads at the station that didn’t want a woman around, but then a goddamn TEENAGER stumbled into the position I’ve been fightign for my entire life. Complaining about them to you was the only thing keeping me sane but you weren’t much better. You got credit for everythign you did. They RECOGNIZED youre hard work. You were even better than me. It’s not fair.
And now I can’t even be mad at you because it wasn’t even your fault.
I’m sorry I didn’t realize what was happning to you sooner. I didn’t notice Makoto pulling away either. I’m a real shitty sister, aren’t I? I should’ve asked questions about why someone so young was in your position. Who put you there. Why? But I didn’t because you were an annoying little shit and part of me hoped you’d piss off the wrong person and go missing, and then you did, and now I feel like shit because I should’ve done something.
God, Makoto was right. I never should’ve gotten into law enforcement. I haven’t done a single goddamn good thing since I joined. At least you and I have that in common.
I know we weren’t friends. I still hate you. But I’m still sorry I wasn’t there for you.
The next message was dated for the next morning.
I can’t believe I drunk texted a dead kid. I’m sorry, Akechi. That was disrespectful.
Still, I meant most of that. I know it doesn’t mean anything to you now, but I promise to do better. I won’t ignore suspicious situations just because it’s convenient. I won’t let people like you slip between the cracks. Someone has to care.
I hope you’re at peace.
Perhaps he should’ve stayed dead. Clearly his death had a better effect on the world than his life ever did. Akechi massaged between his eyes, debating whether to throw the whole phone out and start over.
As childish and emotional as he was, he was still a bit more pragmatic than that. Akechi let his head thump against the back of the couch, his hair wetting it, while he entertained the fantasy. He could be homeless. He could join the Yakuza, maybe. He could also go run around Mementos if it still existed and live out his days in the subway tunnels. He could throw out his phone as soon as he set foot inside and make the impulsive decision to never leave again, effectively committing suicide.
He groaned and leaned forward again, swiping out of Sae’s messages and going to Akira’s. He frowned reading the preview.
I really liked the version of me that you–
Akechi took a deep breath, then clicked on the conversation. A veritable wall of text filled his screen.
I really liked the version of me that you made up. I wish I was him. The version of me in your head would go home and make new friends. He’d remember his rival fondly, and sadly, and look out the window at the full moon and be cool instead of laying in bed all day wanting to die.
“What the fuck…?” Akechi whispered.
I don’t even know why I miss you so much. We weren’t actually friends.
I wish we were friends.
Akechi barely even heard his own voice and started swiping to find the beginning of the conversation since he died. None of the messages sent during Maruki’s reality persisted, so he should just have to get to December and start there.
He caught flashes of messages as he scrolled, weeks separating them despite the daily catalog.
Happy birthday! I didn’t get you anything. We should go out instead.
-
I thought I saw your Shadow today. If you don’t want me to find you, please just tell me.
-
After a solid thirty seconds of scrolling, Akechi had only made it to May.
“What the fuck?!” he repeated.
-
My school has a jazz club. They’re not very good. You’d hate them.
Did you even like jazz or did you just make that up?
I think you liked it.
I wish you’d tell me.
-
Could you at least give me your other glove? I look like even more of a jackass than usual with only the one on.
-
Mementos is different now. It’s nice. I wish I could show you sometime. It goes out instead of down. There’s even a park.
-
You lived alone, right? Do you know how to get the internet set up? I’ve been using my phone’s data this whole time and I don’t want to bother Sojiro.
-
Futaba’s the only one that knows. I never told anyone else about how much we hung out, before you tried to kill me and all. I was afraid they’d get jealous if they knew I dropped everything when you called.
-
I hate y–
Akechi scrolled faster.
-
I got my own coffee pot. If you want some, just come over.
-
That cafe you liked is doing well. They got a new singer.
Did you actually like that cafe?
-
I forgot to tell you that my parents finally got divorced. They were going to wait until I was eighteen but figured there was no point once I got arrested. They had to sell the house. I got my own apartment closer to school. Here’s the address. Come over whenever.
-
Please?
-
Meet me at the billiards place on Saturday for a rematch.
-
You’re not even there. I’m sorry. The last thing you wanted was someone else to decide who you were and every time I think about you, I’m doing the same fucking thing.
-
I beat you three times now. Doesn’t that make you mad? Why don’t you come do something about it?
-
I wonder when they’ll shut your number off. I feel bad for whoever ends up getting it. Maybe they’ll be a lonely shutin and enjoy the conversation. Would that be messed up or what?
-
I had a dream we were playing chess together. You were so happy.
Actually I think it was a nightmare. You don’t know how to be happy.
-
I did what you wanted. You’re really good at hurting people. Did you know that? Does that make you happy, wherever you are now? You can’t even die without hurting people.
I’m glad you trusted me to do that for you though. You deserve to get what you want for once.
-
Akechi gave up and put the phone down. He felt for his own pulse to make sure he wasn’t still dead and just having one of those intense hallucinations dying people often did. Maybe he was in a coma instead?
Strangely, no, his heart still pulsed under his fingers. He tentatively accepted this reality and closed Akira’s lunatic ravings, holding his face in his right hand. He’d… figure out what to do and feel about that later. For now, he still needed to find out what happened.
Literally all of the new text messages were in those conversations. Akechi put that aside for now and poured through his email and encrypted messages for anything important. Shido apparently had been arrested like Sae promised and several members of his council had frantically messaged Akechi wondering what happened. A few tried to threaten him. He had another notice reminding him that his lease would not be renewed, so he’d have to find another place to live – somehow. He was supposed to be dead and he doubted Sae or Shido’s lackeys would turn a blind eye to him just wandering around.
He didn’t have anything else to distract himself from the inevitable. Akechi took a steadying breath and opened his internet browser, then started searching through the news.
It happened exactly as he feared.
He found a video of Shido’s public breakdown, opened it, closed it before it started playing, grit his teeth so hard they squeaked and opened the video again.
Shido kept his composure well at first. The moment he spoke about his stupid fucking heart, Akechi closed the entire browser.
Akechi stuffed the knuckles of his right hand into his mouth and bit down hard while he retraced his steps to get back to the video. He watched, seething, as his father confessed his sins on live television. He obsessed over every moment of it: the way Shido’s voice wavered, how his eyes skirted away from the camera. His face crumpled and he clutched the microphone in prayer. At the end, he begged to die.
Akechi unclenched his jaw from around his own hand and watched it again.
He envisioned the agony in Shido’s broken soul having to feel what he’d done. Was it anything like what Akechi had felt after his first kill? Did Shido go and vomit in his prison cell after the authorities dragged him away, shaking in fear at the blood on his hands?
No, there were still a few weeks where the public refused to condemn him. Was Shido under house arrest, then? Cowering, surrounded by everything he’d gained through blood money? Every single item in his goddamn house was tainted. Could he even look in a mirror? Would he punch through it and watch his own red seeping onto the broken glass, debating whether to plunge the largest shard into his own forearms and finish the job?
Unlike Akechi, Shido couldn’t harden himself anymore. The Phantom Thieves had successfully stripped that from him. Shido would feel that same remorse forever.
Akechi replayed the last few seconds of the video when Shido broke down into hysterics right before the crew managed to cut the feed, an unfamiliar feeling welling in his chest. He’d never seen Shido so emotional. He didn’t think it was possible. Shido had never felt bad about anything – not rape, not murder, not driving his mother to suicide – and the only way left to hurt him was to make him fear.
Akechi shut the video down and hurried to read a more recent article. News reports claimed that Shido made at least two suicide attempts while in custody – neither successful.
Akechi’s face twisted into a smile of its own accord. Shido had nobody. He was an utter disgrace. Sae-san had done such a thorough job incriminating him that no sane person would stand by his side. He was left to rot with the worst of the worst, forever haunted by his own conscience.
This was worse than death.
Akechi still yearned to be the one to do it, to grind his father’s face under his heel and make him beg, but even he had to admit that this was more effective than his methods. He never would’ve been able to make Shido hate himself.
He let his phone slip from his limp hand and collapsed backwards onto the couch, staring at his white ceiling in a daze.
It was over.
He still wasn’t happy. Akechi felt mostly empty, but empty was better than crushing despair and rage. He won. It wasn’t exactly how he envisioned it, and he didn’t do it himself, but he won.
He allowed himself to bask for a few minutes before he worked up the nerve to go searching for his own name. In every article he was little more than a footnote. There was some speculation that Shido had him killed, some less serious speculation that the Phantom Thieves killed him, but nothing public about the truth. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
Akechi put his phone in his lap and looked around at this silent apartment, suddenly aware of how barren it was. Truly, he loved this apartment. It was his. No foster parent could threaten to rip it away from him for mouthing off or being annoying or because they just didn’t like him. There was a contract in place. So long as he had money, he had a consistent place to sleep and sulk and lick his wounds.
For that alone it was the best home he’d ever had, but he’d never… planned for what came after. He didn’t decorate. The only furnishings he had that didn’t come with the apartment were some extra towels, a dartboard to tape a picture of Akira to in a fit of mania and an old Featherman toy he liked to emotionally torture himself with. Why would he nest if he didn’t expect to live?
Silent, empty and locked in the past, it felt like a mausoleum more than ever before.
Akechi sighed and rubbed his face with both hands. That would have to wait until tomorrow. The emotions of the past few hours left him feeling like a walking corpse – ha – and he wanted nothing more than to sleep. He left his phone on the charger and made his way to the bedroom.
He opened the door, took two steps inside, then doubled over and gagged at the stench. He had forgotten about the beginning of his new lease on life and the unpleasantness of restarting a dead body. He moved his towel to cover his nose and flicked on the light, intending to clean the mess, and mistakenly got a better look at it. It looked reminiscent of what he’d slipped in in Shido’s Palace. The shattered glass from his visor, his own blood turning brown, the fine chunks from–
Akechi dragged his pillow and a sheet from his bed, took them to the couch and locked his bedroom door behind himself. That’d be someone else’s problem once he moved out.
For now, he had to figure out the rest of his life.