Goro Akechi [TWEWY AU] (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
paysforall) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
personavelvetroomdr2023-09-14 06:06 pm
paysforall) wrote in personavelvetroomdr2023-09-14 06:06 pm
Entry tags:
whisper that the past is gone eternally
It's the Shibuya Crossing. The big, famous one, with all the crowds and the traffic and the 109 building overlooking it all.
And that's the thing.
The 109 building.
Paying no mind to the sea of empty cognitions around him, a Goro Akechi stands in the center of the crosswalk, staring up at the number-faced building with a frown. If you were looking for any Goro Akechi in particular, however, this one almost transparently isn't him. Twenty-one years of age and dressed like the masculine line of a Victorian goth brand was thrown over his head like a bucket of cold water, this Akechi stares at one of the most familiar landmarks of Tokyo like it's a river in a desert and he hasn't quite decided if he wants to take a drink.
He's back.
(Or, at the very least, he's no longer where he was. Her Shibuya was a 109 as well. And there was that strange room...)
"If the Shibuya Game has gone down the shitter again," he says, seemingly addressing nobody, or possibly the phone he's pulled from his pocket to glare at, "I am going to go after the Composer myself."
He lifts his phone. (It's the same phone he's always had. The only thing that hasn't changed, for anyone with a keen enough eye for detail. There's a new vinyl sticker on the back, a stylized skull in red at an angle, but it's the same phone as ever.) Snaps a picture. No change in the photo. Closes that, opens a different app, snaps again. His frown intensifies.
(It is, by now, a good thing that the cognitions are just filler that will continue to idle in whatever routine they're running, because otherwise he would surely have been hit by a car, right? But the crowd continues to wander around him, heedlessly.)
Finally, he lowers his phone, sends the photo to someone on his contacts, and apparently gives up, shoving it back into his pocket. The cognitions resume the flow of normal traffic, clearing the crossing so that cars can pass through, as he goes over to Hachiko to lean up against the side of the statue.
"I didn't miss the not having any idea what's going on," he tells the dog, firmly firmly and with a hint of melancholy. "Oh, if only a real person would show up with the answers right about now. Why, I'd even consider buying them a coffee for the trouble."
Despite nominally being addressed to the bronze canine, the way he lifts the volume of his voice makes it clear that it's addressed to you, onlooker, whoever you are.
[[OOC: I don't actually care what format you use i just always write introspective-y starters in prose. tldr twewy au post-canon post-death akechi]
And that's the thing.
The 109 building.
Paying no mind to the sea of empty cognitions around him, a Goro Akechi stands in the center of the crosswalk, staring up at the number-faced building with a frown. If you were looking for any Goro Akechi in particular, however, this one almost transparently isn't him. Twenty-one years of age and dressed like the masculine line of a Victorian goth brand was thrown over his head like a bucket of cold water, this Akechi stares at one of the most familiar landmarks of Tokyo like it's a river in a desert and he hasn't quite decided if he wants to take a drink.
He's back.
(Or, at the very least, he's no longer where he was. Her Shibuya was a 109 as well. And there was that strange room...)
"If the Shibuya Game has gone down the shitter again," he says, seemingly addressing nobody, or possibly the phone he's pulled from his pocket to glare at, "I am going to go after the Composer myself."
He lifts his phone. (It's the same phone he's always had. The only thing that hasn't changed, for anyone with a keen enough eye for detail. There's a new vinyl sticker on the back, a stylized skull in red at an angle, but it's the same phone as ever.) Snaps a picture. No change in the photo. Closes that, opens a different app, snaps again. His frown intensifies.
(It is, by now, a good thing that the cognitions are just filler that will continue to idle in whatever routine they're running, because otherwise he would surely have been hit by a car, right? But the crowd continues to wander around him, heedlessly.)
Finally, he lowers his phone, sends the photo to someone on his contacts, and apparently gives up, shoving it back into his pocket. The cognitions resume the flow of normal traffic, clearing the crossing so that cars can pass through, as he goes over to Hachiko to lean up against the side of the statue.
"I didn't miss the not having any idea what's going on," he tells the dog, firmly firmly and with a hint of melancholy. "Oh, if only a real person would show up with the answers right about now. Why, I'd even consider buying them a coffee for the trouble."
Despite nominally being addressed to the bronze canine, the way he lifts the volume of his voice makes it clear that it's addressed to you, onlooker, whoever you are.
[[OOC: I don't actually care what format you use i just always write introspective-y starters in prose. tldr twewy au post-canon post-death akechi]
no subject
I have seen a vampire, however. And I've heard there are two. What I'm not scared of—[and he adds this in a similarly almost-sweet tone of voice]—is going to Minato.
Unless the TV studio is getting up my nose, that is. [True enough.]
no subject
[It's quiet, almost amused, but there's a clear friction underneath. You've seen a vampire but you aren't willing to take him at his literal word? C'mon now.
Instead, he says, quite bluntly, as the scenery around them speeds up again - ]
I haven't left Shibuya in three years. It's a term in the contract of my continued existence.
[So, yes, with Erasure on the line, anyone would be a bit nervous.]
no subject
So your story is—you died. [The words have more impact than they ought, with what he knows.] And then what? I presume you weren't in the Shibuya I'm familiar with.
Was it like this place? A cognitive copy of some kind? [And how did he die? Does this him fit more into the pattern of universes than it first appears?]
no subject
To summarize, a demigod of a sort called out for tenacious souls who wanted a second chance at life, and I was among those who answered.
[That much, at least, should be familiar territory, even if the way the elder Akechi says it might not be, brisk and a touch wistful all at once. No version of them that he knows of would give up without a fight.]
It is an alternate Shibuya, but not in the same way as the cognitive world - although I'm typically working somewhere around that level, beyond the sight of the living. Being familiar with any Shibuya at all gave me a great advantage at the time.
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A demigod? [Because after Shido, it does sound a little...] You must have been short of options, to say the least.
[Not to mention that he wants to know more.]
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[Fail, and be Erased. But those who don't play don't have the chance to win.]
But I have no regrets about it.
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Most interpretations of the afterlife agree oblivion is the best he can hope for. But he thinks about it—whether he'd take a chance like that, were it to be offered. Whether he'd choose to be controlled again.]
You make it sound like slavery. [He doesn't put his hands in his pockets, exactly; it doesn't fit his image. But he'd like to.]
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[The smile is gone. Those words are like a knife.
He's not going to defend his choices to a younger version of himself, who wasn't there and couldn't understand. Going straight on the attack instead is, ultimately, who he is.
Appeals to logic and higher emotions - those he can leave to other people. He's the one who brings chaos to the game board. That's the role he's written himself into.
(And there's no one who better knows how to get under his skin.)]
ohohoho
Question one answered, for whatever it was worth. And a potential answer underscored—that he'll die, allegedly, still trapped in Shido's service. Without his payment. Without what he has wanted almost since he knew how to want.
And, because it is his nature to attack, he spits out a question of his own.]
Is that how we're playing it? Then what killed you? [Since they aren't being nice.]
no subject
[He doesn't make any effort to hide that part of the circumstances - he died in the Metaverse, in Shido's Palace. That Shido still had a Palace at the time is answer to the almost spoken question that he doesn't even need to look to see in his other self's mind.
He failed, and died unfulfilled.
(If he hadn't already paid that price, it would surely have been his Entry Fee.)
He doesn't mention the witnesses. That the Phantom Thieves were there, and that he took that bullet for them. That that Cognition disappeared when he did, no longer an obstacle - or at least it should have. It wouldn't have taken Shido long to figure out that he was dead, at least not once he got the Calling Card.]
no subject
Again, the answer he's been given weaves itself against another. Shido plans to dispose of you. A cognition appeared to confirm as much. He resists the urge to grit his teeth.]
And here I thought it was going to be some bullshit line about the power of friendship. [He wouldn't do that to me, whispers a small voice in the back of his head, a voice that flips his stomach over and threatens to drive him to his knees. He needs me. He's smarter than that. For half a pin—a fucking pinhead—Akechi would put a bullet in that voice.]
So what is this, you're looking to... change your past? Undo your mistakes? Because you must know already that the chances we're from the same world are remote. [But then, where would that gun be pointing, if he shot it? Who's the real idiot here? Oh, he knows.]
no subject
[Goro Akechi is not a good person. If he pretended to be so, then it would only be pretending, and it would be obvious to the both of them. So he doesn't.
You don't have to be a good person to perform a good act, though.]
Change, or face Erasure. That's the philosophy of the Shibuya I call home.
[And it is his home now, so much more than the one of the boy in front of him - face to face with himself, he can't lie about it.]
You have the chance to change your fate. Whether or not you do it is up to you.
no subject
Do you know, the main reason I question the reality of all of you is that all of you are so intent on making me change my ways.
[It already haunted him—the idea that he might not be able to do what was coming. As if he's been picked up, dropped in a wrong dimension, and put face to face with his worst fears.]
i'm sorry he wouldn't shut up
[It really is that simple when you cut it down to the bone, at least for him.
In contrast to his younger self, the older Akechi does walk with his hands at his hips - less in his pockets than with his thumbs hooked on the upper edge of his belt, but close enough.]
I'm not going to preach to you about being a 'better' person. That's not who we are. As far as I'm concerned, you could get home, go into his Palace, and shoot him in the head. Set the Thieves up to take the blame. Get off scot-free, because who would believe them when they say the real culprit for all of it is the public's beloved Goro Akechi? That'd be a change, too.
Or you could do nothing at all, and accept the consequences of that. Walk the same road with your eyes wide open.
[The scenery around them seems to pause, for a moment, at an intersection. The thing about the whole thing being a cognitive construct is that someone adept at manipulating those constructs can make use of that.
One side is the wide-open road, the main street, the road more traveled. The other is a dim alleyway, its end obscured.
For his part, the elder Akechi turns off into the alleyway. Whether or not his younger self follows, the cognitive travel speed skips into place again. The conversation and the journey will both take as long as they need to.]
shh i love he
He doesn't know. Death; or prison, with death at the end. He made his peace with that one long ago; skipping out on what he's done has never been for him. All those cage bars, all the puppet strings, all those expectations lifted, once and for all. Finally.
Or perhaps it will be as the others say. Ren will be what Akechi hopes for, for one shining moment. He'll fight back. He'll survive, and get into the Palace—the Palace, the only one that counts. And Akechi will follow. Only to die there, with all those payments come due?
You either play by the rules of a rigged game, choose not to play—which isn't an option—or you hope that something knocks the table.... But Akechi plans to do a little table-rocking of his own. And if there's some secret, some clue, some forbidden data point that will change his future—he wants to hear it.
He ducks into the alley in turn, catching up with older-Akechi, falling easily into place at his side.]
I think you know there's no walking the path I was on, any longer. Knowing what I do now inevitably changes my course. [Ship metaphors, Akechi, really?]
no subject
(It almost makes him miss the Game. There wasn't much time for arguing, there. Or is that just his own memory, as flawed as any other human's?)]
You'd be surprised. Plenty of people keep doing the same thing over and over again anyway, even when they know it's going to backfire on them.
[This is an Akechi who hasn't had to behave for the cameras for a couple years... So he doesn't bother to hide the disdain he has for people who just continue down the same road anyway.]
no subject
So here's a question for you—and I'm assuming here your life wasn't unlike mine. What would have made you choose to break your chains?
[He means it in the literal sense, of course—those inner and outer bars that trap him. But he also means Call of Chaos, which they should both share. Which is the purest expression of what he is, and also his greatest temptation—or has been.]
You painted quite the vivid image, there. You must have thought about it often. Why didn't you do it?
no subject
Because I didn't think it would change anything. As I'm sure you know all too well, even if we want to go it alone, society isn't designed for that. Better to paint on the acceptable face and survive.
[It's a cognitive journey, so the road seems darker. This one, though, he's not doing intentionally. It's just the effect of a powerful psychic presence in a Mood on the environment.]
'If nothing's going to change, then what's the point of taking the risk?' I wanted to live. Even if that meant gritting my teeth and bearing the unbearable.
[He pauses, and adds,]
Besides, you're mistaken. At the time, I didn't think much about it at all. I've had three years to think about everything I could have done differently, both for better and for worse.
Why didn't I do it? Because the chains on my mind that said I couldn't had to go, first, and getting rid of those is much easier on the other side.
no subject
"I'm surprised you never came to terms with death. Considering all we've done, and the inevitable outcome. I may not know the details of your situation, but I like to think I have a little perspective on bad deals by now."
Turning other-Akechi's words back on him? Sure he is. They've called one very particular chain to mind, a razor-sharp one snarled around his throat and heart, the one that drove him from the kitchen in Inaba. The unarticulated thing that's driven him on, when his hate and cruelty might have flagged. I want him to be proud of me....
cw some discussion of suicidality
It's plenty easy to talk about coming to terms with death when it's in the abstract. But actually getting there changes people - is one of the things known most for changing people. The media loves a good story about people who reformed after a near-death experience. If they had access to the number of people who reformed after a death-death experience, they'd eat those up, too.
"It's the same for suicides, isn't it? Most of the ones who survive the attempt talk about how they realized that they didn't actually want to die at all. And then my job gets the same from the ones who succeeded - people who stare at us in shock like I wasn't supposed to actually die when they've jumped off a building or what have you."
He knows what a fraught subject suicide is, for them. His tone isn't light and loose like it has been, as he talks about it. It's not outright saying any of the things implied by his past self as good as saying, I didn't want to not die.
"Besides, I was presented with prima facie evidence of my own desire to live, afterwards. That I don't deny it any longer is also a benefit of hindsight."
me? alive? surely not
A failure of imagination, of lateral thinking? Perhaps. But he has thought so often of ways to break his chains, and he sees none he dares to take.
no subject
"My advice instead... Consider every path laid before you. Not for what's most or least likely to happen, but for what the worst outcome of that path is. Then choose whichever of those you're okay with happening."
They're a pessimist to the core, after all. No amount of thinking about nice things that could happen will be able to overcome the bitter expectation that they won't. Therefore, pick the least-bad option.
The alleyway has gotten far too gloomy and long, and he wants his sushi. The Reaper Akechi does the cognitive equivalent of kicking the engine to jumpstart it, and in the next block or so, they emerge from the alleyway back onto the main streets, only a block or two from their destination.
no subject
He does, eventually, hook one thumb into his blazer pocket. Just one, almost so you wouldn't notice. "You think I don't already consider all the paths? That isn't the problem. It's more that so often, there's only one. Or none."
Ginza is very bright at this time of day, and the cognitions milling around stink of performative wealth far more than their real-world counterparts did. He ignores them, aggressively.
no subject
It is, perhaps, sharp and a little cutting. But he didn't promise to not be an asshole, he promised sushi and no power of friendship speeches.
"Though I'll admit you've harshly limited your sympathy pool if you've already killed Okumura. You've done that, haven't you?"
He's testing the waters.
no subject
They've arrived at the entrance to Takazakaya, with its gilded arch and its immaculately dressed windows; the closest entrance will take them through the beauty department. Akechi takes it, ignoring the fussing cognitions nearby. The sushi concession, strictly invite-only, is on the top floor.
He makes his way past branded makeup counters, glancing at the skincare displays as they go. "Getting myself killed wasn't an option. Cutting things short wasn't an option. I take it we're not here to judge my priorities."
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