[He wants to fight - more than anything. Wants to hear Maruki gasping for life under his hand, to hear his own harrowed breath try to gain ground. Prove once and for all that a knife through Maruki's eyes would mean nothing to him, two bullets piercing his skull with ease and-
Kurusu is out. Kurusu is here. Kurusu is alive. Kurusu breaths the same air, walks down the same steps, eats from the same plates and nestles into a corner of the kotatsu adjacent to Akechi's own spot.
Kurusu who Maruki, more than anything-]
I killed him too.
Shot him right in the face when he was most vulnerable. He thought we were friends because I manipulated him to think that and he paid for it. Shido didn't ask me to kill him - I volunteered to do it. In reality, even. I shot another worthless nobody in that cell as well - just for fun.
I betrayed Akira. I'll do it again. I'll do it to you.
They filled him with drugs, beat him mercilessly and I came in with the killing blow. His blood was everywhere. His skull shattered. Every part of him decorated that room.
It's not a bad effort. You know that I value others' lives over my own, so if I won't hate you for trying to kill me, surely I will because of who else you've killed, right?
You're worthless to me and everyone around you. Look at how quickly this reality turned against you. Your value is minimal and you'll be betrayed when your worth is gone.
When we return to our true reality, I'm killing you. Immediately. Rumi. Akira. I'll find them all. I'll kill them all.
In every reality, you're an idiot. What a surprise, truly.
I'm not afraid of anything. I never am, and never will be.
Stop looking for that sobbing child you think is me. It's not. You 'care' for a murderer. You house the heartless. You like to be hurt, so you surround yourself with those who will enact it.
[ In some ways, they're the same. Maruki wants to prod him further. Goad him into it. Tell him to really put his back into it this time if he intends to make the kill. Give him a challenge to rise up to, and then beat him at it anyway.
He doesn't. Tempers himself. Akechi can't get a rise out of him, and it's too easy to get a rise out of Akechi. It's not a fair fight.
So he simply walks out to the middle of the lantern-lit clearing not far from the machiya and waits, the rigid set of his shoulders the only thing that belies his tension.
Akechi doesn't lie. Not anymore, not to him, not about things that matter. If he thinks he killed Akira, then he killed Akira – but he didn't. Nothing adds up, and no answers will come until Akechi calms down.
And historically, there's only one way to do that. ]
It's only Akechi that stands there in view and immobile. Still as one of the many trees surrounding them.
He's calm because he's a murderer. He's relaxed because nothing about this is new. A mind clearer than it's ever been in the middle of this field because he can visualize a splatter of gore at Maruki's feet, knows it's only a matter of time before he wins this tit for tat. Maruki's strong. Akechi's strong. Maruki's stronger. Akechi's going to win anyway.
He's calm.
So he laughs when Maruki appears in the field, steady as ever. Confident as ever. Determined as ever.
Akechi will ruin it. He wants to ruin it. He wants to ruin him.]
Do you think you would survive in that prison cell? I wonder - it would be so easy to tell Shido who you are, put you in the same position Akira was. Tied up, beaten, drugged relentlessly until any confession came out. We could frame you, frankly, for any number of things. Another corrupt adult hiding at Shujin Academy - it would make the evening news and then you would be as forgotten as a dead couple in a rural town.
[ Maruki listens, to his credit. As ever, he listens. Stopped a dozen paces away from Akechi, hands tucked into the pockets of his jacket, thumbs rubbing idly over the ridged seam of the fabric.
It's all nonsense, of course. Empty threat after empty threat. Maruki has no doub that Akechi could act on them, but why would he?
What a convoluted thing to do when he could simply kill him outright. He hasn't done anything to warrant a years-long revenge scheme. After all, he's nothing to Akechi, right? ]
Those are certainly interesting hypotheticals. Are you done entertaining yourself with them?
For now, I suppose. I'll have plenty of time in our true reality to decide what to do with a piece of shit like you.
[And he doesn't move. No Loki appears behind him, despite the erratic way it shifts through his whole body - burning his chest whole. It sears. It hurts. He wants to unleash it and doesn't. Because he's learned
over and over.
Over and over.
Over and over-
That Maruki Takuto cannot be beaten with a persona.
It won't stop him.
He'll try.
Over and over.
But Akira defeated Robin Hood. Vague memories of Loki losing to that pathetic fucking team of criminal scum live on as hazy afterthoughts. That false version of him was too weak to see through what needed to be done.
Akechi Goro can. He's stronger - much stronger. Can commit. Can shoot each of them in skull and watch them rot away in the cognitive world - wouldn't bat a fucking eye.]
Aren't you going to attack? Or do you plan to wait until I shoot Akira's skull in again to act?
You would like that, wouldn't you? If I retaliated for this absurd story you're spinning about a death that never occurred in our true reality?
[ It was staged to look like a murder-suicide rings through his head, over and over again. It was a faked suicide, Maruki knows that more certainly than anything. If Akechi was in on that, then he wouldn't be pretending the death was real. Both sides would have been staged.
It's not fake you moron. It happened - I did it. I enjoyed it. I'll do it again and again and again until he stops coming back to life. Do you really hate Kurusu that much? My, maybe you want him to die. Maybe-
[Fury rolls through his heart and incitesLoki, an ever constant presence ready to attack. Yearning for it. Fingers twitch against his sides, but he doesn't move. A gun pressed to his hip. A knife beside it. He can't temper his voice and doesn't want to - this piece of shit is just as worthless as everyone around him. ]
You want someone to kill him. Do your dirty work because you're pretending to care about some trash that will never remember you. Why don't you put him in an ideal world for awhile? Force him to live out your fantasy - you did enjoy that.
[ Akechi lashes out, and it makes contact with its intended target. A festering wound at the most vulnerable part of his underbelly. One only Akechi knows exists. He strikes like a viper, aim unerring and deadly.
Maruki blinks.
Breathes.
Perhaps there's a twitch in the muscle of his tightly set jaw, or the brief clench of his fists in his pockets. But that's it.
He'll ache over that later. Now isn't the time. ]
I don't want any harm to come to Kurusu, just like I don't want any to come to you. But what you've told me doesn't make sense.
[ The most startling, confusing night of his life spent living with Akechi thus far nags at the back of his mind. ]
Are you certain that you killed him? In the true reality?
[Nothing. Nothing. Nothing makes him react. He talks.
And talks.
And talks.
And Akechi can win. Akechi will win. Akechi must win to prove that harms exists within him, that he will always do anything to win and-
Are you certain you killed him?
A vile, bitter laugh falls from his lips.
Loud. Demanding. A palm smooths out the hair on his forehead, like thick viscous matter will stick to his gloves.
As if he'll feel the cool sensation of blood streaking across his forehead.
As if they were one and the same and two people died in that room instead of one.
Maruki doesn't want him any harm to
to come to them.
Them. Them. Them.
And Akechi wins, in that moment. In that revelation. In that passing comment that sounds like complete utter shit.]
Everywhere. [It was everywhere.] I did it. [He did it.] Kurusu Akira is dead by my hand. [Isn't dead. Might be alive. Akechi hopes he's alive - because his rival would be alive and he could kill him again and again and again and again.] He must be dead.
[Nothing works -
So he tries something new.
Pulls a gift from his side and puts the barrel to his own skull - a single second, two, three and-
Long enough to surprise. Long enough to distract. He keeps his finger heavy against the trigger, presses down with some pressure and feels -
Alive and-
A distraction. A second to drop the guard of a man who never lets down a wall and-
Peels it away just as fast to aim and shoot for Maruki Takuto.]
cw suicide, gore i guess, gun violence, near death experience ha ha yay
He knows this. He's had to come to terms with it. He's still coming to terms with it. If Akechi fails in his plan to kill Masayoshi Shido, he will die. If he succeeds, he will die. And Maruki has wondered, from time to time, if he won't simply take care of that latter possibility himself. After all, what will he have left to live for? He can see it so clearly in his mind's eye: Revenge exacted all for the sake of a woman who did the best that she could, his life's mission achieved, and then a gun turned on himself.
It plays out before him as if in slow motion. The very gun he gave to Akechi raised, the trigger depressed, and Maruki will lose him, he will lose him–
He can't lose him yet. ]
Akechi, no–
[ He feels the shot before he hears it.
He hears the shot before he sees the gun turned to point toward him.
He sees the gun turned to point toward him before he shouts.
It all happens so quickly. Too quickly. The distraction worked.
Maruki hits the ground.
He can't feel the ground. He can't feel anything. Can. His whole neck burns white hot, radiates pain up into his skull. Did Akechi shoot him through the head? He can still see. He thinks he can still see. The sky above is so dark. He can still breathe. Can he? He can't feel the ground, can't feel anything, can feel everything, sensation flooding in and dying just as quickly. Is he dying? There's a hand at his neck. Whose hand? Akechi's– no, Venat's– no, Eren's– no, Akira's– dangling high above Odaiba– it's his own hand. His own blood. He smells it before he feels it, tastes it coating over his tongue, thick and viscous metal that starts to choke him. It's his blood? It's Akechi's blood. No. His. O negative, the universal donor. Tries to press his hand to his neck, fails. It's shock or it's blood loss or it's both and he's dying, isn't he, and he's
not going to see Rumi again and
alone and
Akechi stands only a few feet away and
cold and
it's the coldest day of the year and the wedding is months away and the snow is as white as the dress she refuses to show him and he's so terrified of saying the right things to her parents and they play cards around the kotatsu while her mother tells him about flower arranging and he understands all at once where her love of a garden started and there's strawberry cake waiting for her birthday and one day when their children have children of their own this home will be theirs and the quiet of the countryside will settle around them like the snow blanketing the window that shatters and
darkness closes in and
she screams and
he tries to scream and
he will lose her and
an aurora forms in the sky above him. ]
No.
[ Not shouted, not spoken, not whispered. Barely mouthed. His lips can't move. He can't move. He can't–
Breathe, sudden and rattling as the life stream that flows between he and Azathoth surges in all at once, synapses firing and nerves flooded with all the sensation that shock robbed of him. Tears prick and sting at his eyes as the pain settles in hard, fast, it was his neck, Akechi shot him in the fucking neck, the Tentacle of Healing is pouring everything it has into him and he knows, knows innately at the base of his skull that's steadily lighting itself on fire that this is the only chance he has. This will take everything from him. Any harm that befalls either of them after this will be theirs to live with or die by; Azathoth can wrench him to safety while he has one foot in the grave but it will be able to do no more, and Akechi won't stop
can't ever stop
neither of them will ever stop.
Maruki cannot let him get another shot. Not at him, not at himself.
He's still trapped flat on his back, clutching at his neck as blood slips through his fingers and stains his sleeves from a wound that can't heal rapidly enough to staunch it, when the ball of pure almighty light begins to coalesce in the sky.
Tyrant Chaos strikes. Maruki is blind to anything but his own grim grip on life, and Azathoth is blind to all, but he has faith that their aim is true. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Would you like to settle this the old fashioned way? It's been a while, and Kurusu is out.
cw: violent thoughts, murder
Kurusu is out. Kurusu is here. Kurusu is alive. Kurusu breaths the same air, walks down the same steps, eats from the same plates and nestles into a corner of the kotatsu adjacent to Akechi's own spot.
Kurusu who Maruki, more than anything-]
I killed him too.
Shot him right in the face when he was most vulnerable. He thought we were friends because I manipulated him to think that and he paid for it. Shido didn't ask me to kill him - I volunteered to do it. In reality, even. I shot another worthless nobody in that cell as well - just for fun.
I betrayed Akira. I'll do it again. I'll do it to you.
ALRIGHT. OKAY.
And yet, from where I stand - which you've already confirmed is farther along than where you stood – he's alive and well.
Explain to me how that works, Akechi.
CW: murder, gore, drugs lmao
Do you think I spared him in secret?
They filled him with drugs, beat him mercilessly and I came in with the killing blow. His blood was everywhere. His skull shattered. Every part of him decorated that room.
I remember it often. Nothing made me happier.
no subject
It's not a bad effort. You know that I value others' lives over my own, so if I won't hate you for trying to kill me, surely I will because of who else you've killed, right?
cw: murder
Akira looked pathetic up until the very end. He didn't fight back - there was nothing left in him that could.
Perhaps I'll recreate the scene for you tonight. You can see what that that 'gut feeling' truly causes.
no subject
I welcome you to try.
cw: brainwashing talk lmao
It's working, so he continues. It's working, so he keeps going.]
I wonder what happens when you shatter a mind that's been rewritten. I've been fascinated with the idea recently.
Rumi still lives in Tokyo, doesn't she?
no subject
Does it help, Akechi? Hitting every button you can reach in the hope that one will get the reaction you want?
cw: murder
You're worthless to me and everyone around you. Look at how quickly this reality turned against you. Your value is minimal and you'll be betrayed when your worth is gone.
When we return to our true reality, I'm killing you. Immediately. Rumi. Akira. I'll find them all. I'll kill them all.
no subject
In every reality, I care about you. Even when it could or does get me killed. This one is no exception.
Stop wasting time. Are you afraid?
no subject
I'm not afraid of anything. I never am, and never will be.
Stop looking for that sobbing child you think is me. It's not. You 'care' for a murderer. You house the heartless. You like to be hurt, so you surround yourself with those who will enact it.
You're so pathetic.
no subject
no subject
I hate you. I can't wait until you're a goddamn corpse. When I kill you, it'll feel better than shooting Akira.
All the the other Phantom Thieves too - they're on a list to be murdered soon. I wonder how many losses you can really take before you snap entirely.
no subject
no subject
no subject
He doesn't. Tempers himself. Akechi can't get a rise out of him, and it's too easy to get a rise out of Akechi. It's not a fair fight.
So he simply walks out to the middle of the lantern-lit clearing not far from the machiya and waits, the rigid set of his shoulders the only thing that belies his tension.
Akechi doesn't lie. Not anymore, not to him, not about things that matter. If he thinks he killed Akira, then he killed Akira – but he didn't. Nothing adds up, and no answers will come until Akechi calms down.
And historically, there's only one way to do that. ]
cw: violent thoughts! DRUGS! MURDER
calm.
There's no Loki. No Robin Hood. No gun or knife.It's only Akechi that stands there in view and immobile. Still as one of the many trees surrounding them.
He's calm because he's a murderer. He's relaxed because nothing about this is new. A mind clearer than it's ever been in the middle of this field because he can visualize a splatter of gore at Maruki's feet, knows it's only a matter of time before he wins this tit for tat. Maruki's strong. Akechi's strong. Maruki's stronger. Akechi's going to win anyway.
He's calm.
So he laughs when Maruki appears in the field, steady as ever. Confident as ever. Determined as ever.
Akechi will ruin it. He wants to ruin it. He wants to ruin him.]Do you think you would survive in that prison cell? I wonder - it would be so easy to tell Shido who you are, put you in the same position Akira was. Tied up, beaten, drugged relentlessly until any confession came out. We could frame you, frankly, for any number of things. Another corrupt adult hiding at Shujin Academy - it would make the evening news and then you would be as forgotten as a dead couple in a rural town.
no subject
It's all nonsense, of course. Empty threat after empty threat. Maruki has no doub that Akechi could act on them, but why would he?
What a convoluted thing to do when he could simply kill him outright. He hasn't done anything to warrant a years-long revenge scheme. After all, he's nothing to Akechi, right? ]
Those are certainly interesting hypotheticals. Are you done entertaining yourself with them?
no subject
[And he doesn't move. No Loki appears behind him, despite the erratic way it shifts through his whole body - burning his chest whole. It sears. It hurts. He wants to unleash it and doesn't. Because he's learned
over and over.
That Maruki Takuto cannot be beaten with a persona.
It won't stop him.
Over and over.
But Akira defeated Robin Hood. Vague memories of Loki losing to that pathetic fucking team of criminal scum live on as hazy afterthoughts. That false version of him was too weak to see through what needed to be done.Akechi Goro can. He's stronger - much stronger. Can commit. Can shoot each of them in skull and watch them rot away in the cognitive world - wouldn't bat a fucking eye.]
Aren't you going to attack? Or do you plan to wait until I shoot Akira's skull in again to act?
no subject
[ It was staged to look like a murder-suicide rings through his head, over and over again. It was a faked suicide, Maruki knows that more certainly than anything. If Akechi was in on that, then he wouldn't be pretending the death was real. Both sides would have been staged.
Nothing adds up. Not at all. ]
I won't give you what you want. Try again.
no subject
[Fury rolls through his heart and incites Loki, an ever constant presence ready to attack. Yearning for it. Fingers twitch against his sides, but he doesn't move. A gun pressed to his hip. A knife beside it. He can't temper his voice and doesn't want to - this piece of shit is just as worthless as everyone around him. ]
You want someone to kill him. Do your dirty work because you're pretending to care about some trash that will never remember you. Why don't you put him in an ideal world for awhile? Force him to live out your fantasy - you did enjoy that.
no subject
Maruki blinks.
Breathes.
Perhaps there's a twitch in the muscle of his tightly set jaw, or the brief clench of his fists in his pockets. But that's it.
He'll ache over that later. Now isn't the time. ]
I don't want any harm to come to Kurusu, just like I don't want any to come to you. But what you've told me doesn't make sense.
[ The most startling, confusing night of his life spent living with Akechi thus far nags at the back of his mind. ]
Are you certain that you killed him? In the true reality?
[ There's a weight to those last four words. ]
cw: SUICIDAL SOMETHING, MURDER, VIOLENT THOUGHTS
And talks.
And Akechi can win. Akechi will win. Akechi must win to prove that harms exists within him, that he will always do anything to win and-
Are you certain you killed him?
A vile, bitter laugh falls from his lips.
Loud. Demanding. A palm smooths out the hair on his forehead, like thick viscous matter will stick to his gloves.
As if he'll feel the cool sensation of blood streaking across his forehead.
As if they were one and the same and two people died in that room instead of one.
Maruki doesn't want him any harm to
to come to them.
Them. Them. Them.
And Akechi wins, in that moment. In that revelation. In that passing comment that sounds like complete utter shit.]
Everywhere. [It was everywhere.] I did it. [He did it.] Kurusu Akira is dead by my hand. [Isn't dead. Might be alive. Akechi hopes he's alive - because his rival would be alive and he could kill him again and again and again and again.] He must be dead.
[Nothing works -
So he tries something new.
Pulls a gift from his side and puts the barrel to his own skull - a single second, two, three and-
Long enough to surprise. Long enough to distract. He keeps his finger heavy against the trigger, presses down with some pressure and feels -
Alive and-
A distraction. A second to drop the guard of a man who never lets down a wall and-
Peels it away just as fast to aim and shoot for Maruki Takuto.]
cw suicide, gore i guess, gun violence, near death experience ha ha yay
He knows this. He's had to come to terms with it. He's still coming to terms with it. If Akechi fails in his plan to kill Masayoshi Shido, he will die. If he succeeds, he will die. And Maruki has wondered, from time to time, if he won't simply take care of that latter possibility himself. After all, what will he have left to live for? He can see it so clearly in his mind's eye: Revenge exacted all for the sake of a woman who did the best that she could, his life's mission achieved, and then a gun turned on himself.
It plays out before him as if in slow motion. The very gun he gave to Akechi raised, the trigger depressed, and Maruki will lose him, he will lose him–
He can't lose him yet. ]
Akechi, no–
[ He feels the shot before he hears it.
He sees the gun turned to point toward him before he shouts.
It all happens so quickly. Too quickly. The distraction worked.
Maruki hits the ground.
He can't feel the ground. He can't feel anything. Can. His whole neck burns white hot, radiates pain up into his skull. Did Akechi shoot him through the head? He can still see. He thinks he can still see. The sky above is so dark. He can still breathe. Can he? He can't feel the ground, can't feel anything, can feel everything, sensation flooding in and dying just as quickly. Is he dying? There's a hand at his neck. Whose hand? Akechi's– no, Venat's– no, Eren's– no, Akira's– dangling high above Odaiba– it's his own hand. His own blood. He smells it before he feels it, tastes it coating over his tongue, thick and viscous metal that starts to choke him. It's his blood? It's Akechi's blood. No. His. O negative, the universal donor. Tries to press his hand to his neck, fails. It's shock or it's blood loss or it's both and he's dying, isn't he, and he's
not going to see Rumi again and
alone and
Akechi stands only a few feet away and
cold and
it's the coldest day of the year and the wedding is months away and the snow is as white as the dress she refuses to show him and he's so terrified of saying the right things to her parents and they play cards around the kotatsu while her mother tells him about flower arranging and he understands all at once where her love of a garden started and there's strawberry cake waiting for her birthday and one day when their children have children of their own this home will be theirs and the quiet of the countryside will settle around them like the snow blanketing the window that shatters and
darkness closes in and
she screams and
he tries to scream and
he will lose her and
an aurora forms in the sky above him. ]
No.
[ Not shouted, not spoken, not whispered. Barely mouthed. His lips can't move. He can't move. He can't–
Breathe, sudden and rattling as the life stream that flows between he and Azathoth surges in all at once, synapses firing and nerves flooded with all the sensation that shock robbed of him. Tears prick and sting at his eyes as the pain settles in hard, fast, it was his neck, Akechi shot him in the fucking neck, the Tentacle of Healing is pouring everything it has into him and he knows, knows innately at the base of his skull that's steadily lighting itself on fire that this is the only chance he has. This will take everything from him. Any harm that befalls either of them after this will be theirs to live with or die by; Azathoth can wrench him to safety while he has one foot in the grave but it will be able to do no more, and Akechi won't stop
neither of them will ever stop.
Maruki cannot let him get another shot. Not at him, not at himself.
He's still trapped flat on his back, clutching at his neck as blood slips through his fingers and stains his sleeves from a wound that can't heal rapidly enough to staunch it, when the ball of pure almighty light begins to coalesce in the sky.
Tyrant Chaos strikes. Maruki is blind to anything but his own grim grip on life, and Azathoth is blind to all, but he has faith that their aim is true. ]
cw suicide, gore, gun violence, murder, emeto, suicidal ideation
cw gore, blood, emeto, ha ha yay new icons just for akechi threads
cw gore, blood, emeto, suicidal ideation maybe
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cw needles
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cw violence gore etc
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i'm going somewhere with this i swear
even if u weren't do u think I care kill me in one shot or ten
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hehehe cw just. gross medical shit
awwwww mamaruki CW: gross shit
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