#this is finally doneee

[cryptic-udon]

[itsagracelessdanceofepithets]

November 18th. Goro Akechi enters his father's palace, thinks of a boy who is love, and meets his mother again. "Did you know? Another one is to come tomorrow. He'll be the last. You would like him, without a doubt." This is love and, above all, evidently and incurably, this is war.

before the end of everything just posted on ao3 :D here's a 2.7k shuake one shot I just wrote, now I finally can go back to..... my finals.....

if you prefer to read it here ⤵︎

When his ivory white, unstained outfit materializes, a glove is missing.

They decided on how to send the calling card earlier today. Then, he swallowed his disgust regarding Shido's palace, as he always does, just so he could go and stop fucking thinking. And now, his glove is missing. This didn't happen previously. Following his duel with him, he simply put on another pair he had at home, and his metaverse clothes, thank god, didn't change one bit. They stayed white, and wrong, and taunting. A grand, beautiful lie on his skin, devoid of any breach. Until now.

Oh, but who is he kidding, really? As soon as it comes to him, he is fractured glass, see-through and sharp, barely kept together or sightly, and even less sensical. Barely. Just enough to, hopefully, fool the Fool. (Hah.) Akechi hates the nonsensical, after all. Doesn't he? He believes he does (he is the most nonsensical thing he knows), and this is also what everybody else would say. But they don't know Goro, do they?

Robin Hood reprimands him from the back of his mind. I am thou—

"Thou art I, I know, save it," Goro spits out. Whatever introspective exercise or moral lesson his persona wishes to give him now, he does not have the time for it. Plus, it is incredibly likely he is no stranger to its contents—only avoiding them. Which, if it were the case, he would be glad to pursue doing. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

He isn't sure if personas can roll their eyes, but it sure feels like Robin Hood just did. Even deeper in his heart, Loki guffaws, all sinister and raw. Goro ignores both of them, dashing across the front deck instead. His right hand feels naked and far too exposed, and between the irregular contacts with the smooth fabric of his attire and the air of Shido's palace—in which he swears he could taste every crime, every sin, every disdainful dismissal and each singular, revolting and oh so needed praise if only he stopped for a second—it quickly becomes unbearable.

"Why even did you appear? I didn't summon you this time," he grumbles as he halts before one of the numerous doors.

But you did, the famous thief replies, as eloquent as ever. Goro pinches the bridge of his nose.

"I assume you mean by habit? Because I spent much more time using you lately than usual?"

Another sardonic laugh echoes in the depths of his being. Robin Hood, on the other hand, doesn't really feel like anything. Not anything Goro can identify, at least. So much for "manifestations of his heart."

Perhaps a little, Robin Hood eventually deigns to answer. Mostly not. Goro really, really hates his will of rebellion. He tries shutting the conversation down, but Robin Hood's voice still echoes inside his head. You called for me—or rather, I called for myself. But for I am thou and thou art I, this is not any different.

"Get to the fucking point."

This is our last resort. If you wish to defy fate—which you do, deep in your heart—and rise as a proper Trickster, thou shall not forget the bond—

"Cut it out with the nonsensical bullshit! Are you implying that I'm having second thoughts?" Goro hisses, fingers gripped around the doorknob. "Because I'm certainly not. And if… for some incomprehensible reason you are, then I'll simply have to dismiss you until this work is done."

As if to prove a point, he opens the door and charges at the false security agents. From then on, neither Robin Hood or Loki speaks up again. They appear and attack as he orders them to, nothing less, nothing more. His attire remains identical. It's a lonely and barbaric slaughter; it's everything he is and could dream of. A neverending wrath, a one-man army taking down an entire crew, ruining everything that is to ruin surrounding the dignified monster that is his father, and the farthest possible thing from a family.

He shoots, slashes, drains himself out, and shoots again. Multiple times, everywhere he knows isn't fatal but unfailingly painful, and he sees Shido. Only once, right between the eyes, a deer in the headlights, and he sees Ren Amamiya. Checkmate, unfair and so savory (he can't allow himself to imagine another taste). Again, and again, and again, and he smiles imagining scared and betrayed eyes, and he smiles even wider imagining a matching grin, challenging him to the end. Surely, Joker wouldn't resent him for playing dirty.

Don't we say all is fair in love and war? And this—forbidden since he first died, six years old and following his mother—is love. He touched it in the intrigue of a handshake, in the reassuring press of a shoulder against another; he felt it in his hair on a summer afternoon; he watched it from afar aimed at others, watched it spilling right from melted metal into his own eyes; finally, he found it lingering on himself, late at night in his bland apartment, thinking about Ren Amamiya and not the Phantom Thieves leader, next major target. Thinking about how he aches for a real fight with him, how unpredictible he can be at chess, how the mere sight of him pains Goro, how insufferably and easily he makes words fall from his lips, how no coffee is ever going to come close to his. (How he didn't waver at Goro's confession of hatred, caught his glove nearly reverently, and buried whatever he clearly was about to say. Isn't this unfair?)

This is dumb, this is who he is killing tomorrow, and this is the closest he will ever get to "love". Shreds and unfinished battles. Goro is all too aware, he made peace with it—as much as he can make peace with anything.

His right hand shivers. He shoots down the last standing shadow in the hall, misses by a few centimeters: the bullet only grazes its head. So he pulls the trigger once, twice, thrice, and he loses the count, even when the gun is since long empty. With every shadowy carcass now dissipated, the only, temporary proof of what happened are the stains on his clothes: dried blood and black sludge. He thinks, as he dissects them with his eyes, that he'd rather have them follow him back to the real world.

This is love and, above all, evidently and incurably, this is war. He knows Ren will understand that much. But will his eyes still offer him this scintilla of recognition, in the instant when no hesitation will be allowed? Will his forgiveness, and his strength, and his love and all his unsaid words ooze out of him, red and accusing, still-warm and irreversible?

Goro doesn't allow himself to hope anymore, but he likes to imagine they will.

(What a waste it'd be, otherwise.)

𖦏

He goes on and wipes off another floor of shadows, and another, rinse and repeat, until there is nothing left for him in this awful place. Still, he can't bring himself to leave just yet. Fitting, right. Fucking hilarious.

But at least, in here, not a soul can find him. At least, in here, he can understand Shido better—he can despise him outwardly, in his very heart. He made tests already. Tried seeing if anything he pronounced in this palace or told the cognitions had any impact. It really doesn't, and since he came to this conclusion, he gladly discarded any pretense. He discovered, among other things, that this place makes for a pretty decent outlet. He yelled and yelled a bit more, to the point his throat began to hurt. He barked out questions the cognitions either had no answer to, or downright refused to give him. He roamed these halls and corridors relentlessly, looking for a trace of his mother. He came out empty-handed, because of fucking course he did, what on earth did he believe.

Today, he ignores what he is here for.

Oh, but this is dishonesty. When will he learn? A being so used to artifices, they follow him everywhere—stick to his skin, melt through him, poison his bones. He is the corpse already, isn't Ren joining him merely logical? The sole answer, truly.

If Ren was here, he'd probably get the truth out of him with a single look. Gunmetal gray piercing through him, leaving him bleeding and happy with it for a shameful, real instant. Goro would tell him that he is still looking for his mother, that he is still hoping to get something valuable out of Shido, that he doesn't want tomorrow to come, just yet. He is bleeding, would he tell Ren that? Probably not, he'd hide it for as long as he could, and Ren would have this confused, ridiculously concerned and poorly concealed look on his face.

Shit, he really is bleeding. Hastily, Goro crouches down behind the nearest pillar to assess the new wound decorating his thigh. It isn't pretty to look at, a huge scratch likely given by a shadow earlier that tore the cloth as well. Thankfully, it also isn't nearly deep enough to warrant stitches. He doesn't even remember getting it, or feeling it afterwards at all. Which means, he needs to get the hell out of here.

Of course, this is the moment Shido's cognitive goons choose to enter this room. Goro grabs the first healing item he finds in the infinite pockets of his trousers—a Recov-R that Ren insisted he kept, of fucking course—before proceeding to get up and deal with the newly spawned horrors, when his own voice freezes him in place.

"So, you said there is an intruder. Again." His voice that is not his requires, ice cold and mechanical. The goon eagerly confirms his words.

Goro heard about this nightmarish thing from the other cognitions. At first, foolishly, he felt some sort of pride about having his own in Shido's mind. He quickly understood, however, that he'd rather never cross paths with the imitation—for safety purposes, and for his own sanity.

Seems like it's even worse than he feared.

"Let's find and eliminate whoever it is that dares to defy the captain, then. Although… I believe I have my theory on who that might be," the caricature chuckles, tone mimicking the one Goro adopts in interviews, yet nothing like it—too much of an empty shell, even compared to the original. "This is what we are here for, I hope you haven't forgotten. The captain shouldn't be disturbed by such meaningless matters," he finally spits out in disgust.

Somehow, Goro feels like the cognition is aware of his presence and adressing him directly—him, the meaningless matters. He doesn't think he ever felt so humiliated. But he is exhausted, both mentally and physically, and he still possesses an ounce of common sense, so he uses a Goho-M to teleport back to the entrance.

For once, the boy who doesn't hope or believe prays. He prays, desperately and to himself, that he'll never have to face this thing that wears his skin and uses his voice.

He has never been fond of counterfeits.

𖦏

In this sinful, sinful night preceding the death of everything, Goro Akechi meets his mother again.

She's looking back at him, just here, trapped in the mirror of his dim bathroom. Her hair is shorter than in his memories, because it's his own. Her practiced and delicate smile seeps through everytime he breaks a little more (carefully tries to recreate humanity), just like when he passes on TV. Her exhaustion, that made her look older than her actual age, paints him too. He could pass for dead tonight, and he wonders if he looks like her in her coffin, at the ceremony he was absent from.

The reflection laughs a little at the thought, shakes her flower-crowned hair, says don't take offense, but I fear I was prettier. The corners of his eyes don't crinkle at all. He sees her do it anyway: her genuine smile, the one that allows her dimples to appear and that uses her eyes, too.

He doesn't wonder if he has that smile, because he knows he doesn't. Or, if his face can create such a honest, harmless thing, it ignores how to. Even now, possessed by what might just be her ghost, or his own insanity, it ignores how to. He doesn't know. He doesn't know anything, he is six years old and he misses his mom, shouldn't she be in the bathroom? This is where he last saw her, this is where—

You could, she protests, pulling him back in. Her eyes anchor him in reality. Darker than his own, round and sharp in all the same ways, warm like coffee. You did, she insists when he averts his eyes away.

This time, it's his turn to burst into laughter. He thinks he tears up a little, too, as droplets fall onto the ceramic surface. He looks up again and forces his eyes to see himself, not her. It works the same way it always does: she leaves, but never entirely—they are too alike for this.

And what a horrible sight that is.

His foundation is full of crevices, more dust than anything else. His facial muscles are oddly contorted, like a classical sculpture of some tormented half-human thing. His uniform is spotless, and it wants to choke him. His hair is all tangled, stained with invisible, unwashable blood. His entire face is. Red eyes rendered even redder by the emotion, stolen from his mother, then sewn into his skull and tainted by their victims.

Shido and him, together. This is what they achieved.

"Did you know?" he murmurs to the glass, to where she hides in the back of his mind. "Another one is to come tomorrow. He'll be the last." Goro thinks of summer evenings, coffee cups, and too many masks, and Goro misses the real thing, smiling warm and his. "You would like him, without a doubt." He shakes his head, crowned with nothing. "I won't back down. Not when this is the ultimate hindrance before we win." His voice fractures, and he knows the last snap is soon to come. "I'm so excited. Truly, I can't wait," he shouts, if shouts weren't so loud and if they were broken in every place. His own tongue tastes like poison. "I hope you're glad, too. At least a little."

Utter silence answers him. She is gone.

"Oh, but you would hate this, wouldn't you?" he raises his voice, cackling again. "Right, you totally would. What was I thinking." He wipes his tears away, faces the mirror again. "I won't apologize." A gun is now in his hand, it's too late—"that wouldn't change shit"—it's already loaded. "But, for what it's worth…"

The glass shatters into a thousand pieces. There is no use talking to corpses.

He smiles, grand and for the cameras, with that faux-honest fabric that shows the teeth. Does she know? He is his father's son, too.

And this—this is the only way he can stop being so.

𖦏

It's the 19th of November and Joker catches up to him, a few steps ahead of everyone else: "Ready?"

Diamond meets dried blood, and Goro descries love. He wishes Ren would put him to death right there and then, just so he wouldn't have to behold such a sight anymore.

"Ready," he affirms, with a smile that could as much be his mother's as Shido's.

Ren nods, chokes on his words again. It's so painfully evident, and a pity that Goro won't have time to dig them up, wrench them from him with his own hands. Or to thank him for being his way out, in a game of chess or with his fists—not that he would, but it'd be nice to have the choice.

Until the very end, Ren Amamiya will have been love, to Goro Akechi. Isn't he to everyone? The lowest kind, the one Goro doesn't get and never held, flying far too high for him. (He can't help but wonder what he could have been to Ren, were things any different.) In his periphery, Goro can see the boy's worried stare. Is it because he can see the shards of glass on his face, on his arms, stuck in between his ribs? Can he see his mother as well? Can he see Shido? (Goro likes to think that he wouldn't entirely hate it, if he could. Him, or Ren? Both, of course.)

They enter Sae Nijima's palace for the last time.