torn open tomb i fell in your cold fission bomb i fell in your war
[ Communication isn't her immediate goal. Knowing he's been given another chance, even if it means further struggle, is a rare joy that she covets for weeks, and so at first, she's content with only watching.
It takes time for the visions to gain clarity, but when they do, he isn’t all she sees. There is something else that seems to have shrouded his figure, however subtly. It seems to worsen when he’s alone. A ripple in his aura; a threat that she can’t entirely decipher, and yet it seems all too familiar. Enough to strike fear in her heart. But how to tell him? Can she? To even see him is no simple task when her abilities have been limited so greatly by Folkmore’s jailer. She is unable to astral project across realms as easily as she once could.
At first, he may occasionally notice movement out of the corner of his eye, but if he looks, Akechi will only ever find his own face staring back at him from a mirror—a window—a puddle. Then, over time, a shade may appear just behind his reflection, close enough for an embrace, but never truly there when he turns. Whether at school, at home, or even out on simple errands, there’s no rhyme or reason to these hauntings.
He may see it in his dreams, but it will always be just out of reach. The words seem senseless, but carry no malice.
You aren’t alone.
It’s when his bathroom mirror begins to crack that the whispers creep through into the waking world. The language here is archaic, indecipherable with its hiss, but the intent is far from sinister. This lasts only seconds at a time, but each time it grows, as the cracks spiderweb out to a window in passing, with the pattern spreading until it reaches the full-length mirror in his bedroom. As soon as a single crack branches across the center, there is a stretch of silence.
Stillness.
Then, the shade reappears, this time obscuring his reflection completely, with what appears to be the outline of a hand pressed firmly from the other side. The cracks again begin to circle outward with a push. There’s only a moment’s warning—a keening, inhuman howl that seems muffled. That is, until the glass shatters with another firm press, and the lurking shadow disappears.
Instead, the figure that falls through the broken mirror is a pale woman in a pale dress, with dark hair that nearly blankets her small form in her collapse. ]
[When Akechi finally awoke from that dream that was Folkmore, he'd been greeted by the persistent beeping and hissing and whirring of machines too complicated for the boy to fully understand in his near delirious state. But it didn't take too long to realize they were the very thing keeping him alive. If not for the monitors keeping track of his vital signs at all times, if not for the machine pumping oxygen into his lungs through the tube in his nose, if not for the IV drip keeping him hydrated as he recovered from surgery, Akechi wouldn't have survived the gunshot and following implosion of his father's palace, not when his body had been found somewhere around the Diet building the morning after, bleeding and barely conscious on the pavement.
But Goro Akechi did survive and now nearly a year later, he's well on his way to really living.
These days, instead of slaughtering through shadows in the metaverse, he's much more focused on his coursework in uni, which is exactly how the new presence in his life goes unnoticed at first. It's difficult to even notice anything out of the corner of your eye when your nose is buried in your laptop and phone, twenty-four seven. But eventually, the shade makes herself known to the boy, and though there's no denying the slight tremor of fear at the sight of her, there's something so strangely familiar that he keeps her existence only to himself.
Ren wouldn't understand, he tells himself (fully knowing he's completely lying to himself). Maybe it's more about what this means. That even without a persona, maybe Akechi is still special in some sense, a boy who attracts and befriends spirits now, or perhaps he just doesn't want to lose this connection by someone slapping him to his senses until she disappears completely.
Either way, the shade is his secret alone, and when he's chased Ren out of his apartment every afternoon, the boy openly speaks to her. Just casual phrases and random details about his day, quipping and venting and ranting about this or that, but it's kind of become this familiar little routine. It's special. It means something.
And then the mirror in his bathroom begins to crack. Akechi ignores it and the voices coming from the other side of the mirror completely, pretending nothing at all is wrong even when the glass keeps splintering out more and more and more. Instead, he lightly chastises the shade for fucking with him like this, maybe putting some tape over the splits in the glass, but it keeps growing -
Until finally a woman is busting through his bedroom mirror.
Akechi manages to catch her before she hits the ground, not bothered in the slightest by the mess of glass dusting them both or the shards littered across the floor around them. Instead, his full focus is on the woman collapsed in his arms.]
Ma'am? Can you hear me? Am I losing my damn mind or is any of this even real -
[ Her body feels impossibly heavy, limbs weighted with the cost of forcing her way through realms. The crossing had taken more from her than anticipated—even a goddess can be drained, it seems. Even the ancient thing within her feels diminished, leaving them both struggling to parse his foreign words. A part of Amunet recalls some of these sounds from eons past, where other archaic iterations rest, but the meaning slips away like water through cupped hands.
Still dazed from the impact, the shattered glass sparkles like starlight in her peripheral vision. The sounds of his confusion reaches her clearly enough, though, even if the words themselves elude her.
When she finally lifts her head to look at him properly, everything shifts. The sight of him—alive, whole—sends a surge of energy through her cold veins. Her exhaustion doesn't vanish, but it becomes bearable, secondary to this moment of confirmation—as though all of her senses have returned. The scent of his blood rushing with alarm near overwhelms, with the thrum of his heartbeat in her ears and the vision of him now in perfect clarity.
He is real. He is safe for now.
Without a word, she reaches up to cup his face. Her fingers tremble against his skin, pale and cold but so terribly gentle. Then, unable to contain herself any longer, she pulls him into a tight embrace that speaks of months of fear and longing.
The sigh released manages to lighten her fears considerably, even if she knows better than to dismiss the very reason she had tried so keenly to reach him in the first place. ]
[Akechi can't remember the last time anything ever left him so speechless.]
Vanessa..? [Is the only thing to fall from his mouth before the woman is touching him, the coldness of her palms as familiar to him as breathing, even after all of this time. And then before Akechi even has a chance to catch himself, she's dragging him into a hug that the boy practically collapses into.
It can't be real. It shouldn't be real - But there they are, collapsed against his Tokyo bedroom floor among the splintered remains of his mirror, this woman he thought was long disappeared from his life. A pretty dream he once knew in a place he still struggles to believe was real, a mother who swooped in when he needed one most. The feel of her slender, but strong arms around him still feels exactly the same as it did back then, safety and affection and a love that he fought against believing could be real.
But she is real.
After a few long moments where Akechi does nothing but cling back to Vanessa, his frame trembling against her, the boy finally catches his tongue again, thick and useless in his mouth, and tries to speak.]
[ For the moment, words may not be enough to express herself, but they aren't necessary for everything.
Sunk into the embrace, Vanessa moves a thin hand to settle at the nape of his neck, savoring the simple joy of being able to touch him again after months of reaching through glass. Her other hand clutches at his arm, seeking a stability she rarely allows herself to need from others.
The memory she tries to share feels thick, clouded by exhaustion. Still, Vanessa attempts to pull forth images of quiet moments—him at his desk chair, speaking to what he thought was merely a shade, confiding fears and hopes alike into his mirror. She had been there, listening, helpless to respond but unwilling to leave. Whatever magic that had encouraged shared communication then seems gone, now that she has crossed that barrier completely.
Her grip on his shoulder weakens as a wave of dizziness washes over her. The scent of his blood grows overwhelming and she forces herself to pull back, though the movement lacks her usual grace. Her eyes, more shaded than normal, struggle to focus on his face—a face she had watched over for so long, now finally within reach.
She tries once more to speak, to warn him, but the words feel distant. In her frustration, a hiss escapes at the pathetic state she's in. She is useless to him like this. ]
Tears prick in the teenager's eyes, but blinks them away in favor of sucking in a sharp breath before rising up on his feet and taking Vanessa with him. She's tiny enough that Akechi can support her with little trouble, immediately striding over to his own bed to settle her on the edge of the mattress. He keeps her sitting for just a few moments longer, just long enough that he can dust the shattered glass from her hair, off of her shoulders, before he's guiding her towards the pillows.]
Lay down - I'll grab you some water, but you should rest.
[And god, the situation is so fraught with overpowering emotion, but even he can't help the slight quirk of his lips before he finishes his thought.]
[ He has always been gentle with her, even after learning of what she represents for humankind. In a different light, his commentary could also be amusing on that front—what is she, if not Death?
But then, it settles, that she can understand him. Of course someone as intelligent as he is would know more than one language. So very fortunate. Again, in any other circumstance, she could laugh at herself for knowing so many languages herself, and yet none of them modern Japanese. She should feel useless, but Vanessa is too comforted knowing she has at least succeeded in one thing—reaching him.
Though weakened, she struggles to sit up as soon as he tries to get her to relax. The shadow of prophecy may not be looming over him at the moment, but that doesn't mean she should waste time trying to take a nap. Neither that or water would rejuvenate her in the way it would a human.
But his attempt still touches her, as she holds her hand over his arm with a gentle shake of her head. ]
I can...find my own sustenance. In time.
[ She has survived far weaker than this, and for much longer than this, without blood. ]
Tell me, first. Have you been happy? Did you find freedom here?
[ After all, he had once convinced her that he had no future here. No life. Yet here he is, living and breathing. There he had been, talking to her through reflections, even when he didn't understand what was happening. And she had listened, even when she couldn't fully understand his words. There has to be meaning there. That he has been given this second chance—that she has been able to seize the same, now at his side. ]
[Of all things to be asked, of all the questions she might have regarding Folkmore or Japan or how she could have possibly appeared here, instead Vanessa asks that.
Have you been happy?
There's been nothing but time and physical distance separating them for far too long, but Akechi's connection to Vanessa feels as strong as it ever did back in that other place, this woman sweeping in and accepting that wretched teenager just as he was - broken and rotting and full of poison - and even now, she's barely had a moment to catch her breath before she's asking after him. After his happiness.
Oh, his next therapy session is going to be an emotional one.
Without even thinking, Akechi's hand finds hers, pressing over it, and when his red eyes flick up to meet hers, the emotion within him is obvious. He nods, a soft, huff of a laugh already at his lips.]
I am. [And wouldn't that version of himself be so startled to hear that?] Not always, but more than I ever allowed myself to be before. I shouldn't have lived, but I did. And I've gotten better at accepting that as the gift it is.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reunion } tares above my kingdom come
i fell in your
cold fission bomb
i fell in your war
[ Communication isn't her immediate goal. Knowing he's been given another chance, even if it means further struggle, is a rare joy that she covets for weeks, and so at first, she's content with only watching.
It takes time for the visions to gain clarity, but when they do, he isn’t all she sees. There is something else that seems to have shrouded his figure, however subtly. It seems to worsen when he’s alone. A ripple in his aura; a threat that she can’t entirely decipher, and yet it seems all too familiar. Enough to strike fear in her heart. But how to tell him? Can she? To even see him is no simple task when her abilities have been limited so greatly by Folkmore’s jailer. She is unable to astral project across realms as easily as she once could.
At first, he may occasionally notice movement out of the corner of his eye, but if he looks, Akechi will only ever find his own face staring back at him from a mirror—a window—a puddle. Then, over time, a shade may appear just behind his reflection, close enough for an embrace, but never truly there when he turns. Whether at school, at home, or even out on simple errands, there’s no rhyme or reason to these hauntings.
He may see it in his dreams, but it will always be just out of reach. The words seem senseless, but carry no malice.
You aren’t alone.
It’s when his bathroom mirror begins to crack that the whispers creep through into the waking world. The language here is archaic, indecipherable with its hiss, but the intent is far from sinister. This lasts only seconds at a time, but each time it grows, as the cracks spiderweb out to a window in passing, with the pattern spreading until it reaches the full-length mirror in his bedroom. As soon as a single crack branches across the center, there is a stretch of silence.
Stillness.
Then, the shade reappears, this time obscuring his reflection completely, with what appears to be the outline of a hand pressed firmly from the other side. The cracks again begin to circle outward with a push. There’s only a moment’s warning—a keening, inhuman howl that seems muffled. That is, until the glass shatters with another firm press, and the lurking shadow disappears.
Instead, the figure that falls through the broken mirror is a pale woman in a pale dress, with dark hair that nearly blankets her small form in her collapse. ]
no subject
But Goro Akechi did survive and now nearly a year later, he's well on his way to really living.
These days, instead of slaughtering through shadows in the metaverse, he's much more focused on his coursework in uni, which is exactly how the new presence in his life goes unnoticed at first. It's difficult to even notice anything out of the corner of your eye when your nose is buried in your laptop and phone, twenty-four seven. But eventually, the shade makes herself known to the boy, and though there's no denying the slight tremor of fear at the sight of her, there's something so strangely familiar that he keeps her existence only to himself.
Ren wouldn't understand, he tells himself (fully knowing he's completely lying to himself). Maybe it's more about what this means. That even without a persona, maybe Akechi is still special in some sense, a boy who attracts and befriends spirits now, or perhaps he just doesn't want to lose this connection by someone slapping him to his senses until she disappears completely.
Either way, the shade is his secret alone, and when he's chased Ren out of his apartment every afternoon, the boy openly speaks to her. Just casual phrases and random details about his day, quipping and venting and ranting about this or that, but it's kind of become this familiar little routine. It's special. It means something.
And then the mirror in his bathroom begins to crack. Akechi ignores it and the voices coming from the other side of the mirror completely, pretending nothing at all is wrong even when the glass keeps splintering out more and more and more. Instead, he lightly chastises the shade for fucking with him like this, maybe putting some tape over the splits in the glass, but it keeps growing -
Until finally a woman is busting through his bedroom mirror.
Akechi manages to catch her before she hits the ground, not bothered in the slightest by the mess of glass dusting them both or the shards littered across the floor around them. Instead, his full focus is on the woman collapsed in his arms.]
Ma'am? Can you hear me? Am I losing my damn mind or is any of this even real -
no subject
Still dazed from the impact, the shattered glass sparkles like starlight in her peripheral vision. The sounds of his confusion reaches her clearly enough, though, even if the words themselves elude her.
When she finally lifts her head to look at him properly, everything shifts. The sight of him—alive, whole—sends a surge of energy through her cold veins. Her exhaustion doesn't vanish, but it becomes bearable, secondary to this moment of confirmation—as though all of her senses have returned. The scent of his blood rushing with alarm near overwhelms, with the thrum of his heartbeat in her ears and the vision of him now in perfect clarity.
He is real. He is safe for now.
Without a word, she reaches up to cup his face. Her fingers tremble against his skin, pale and cold but so terribly gentle. Then, unable to contain herself any longer, she pulls him into a tight embrace that speaks of months of fear and longing.
The sigh released manages to lighten her fears considerably, even if she knows better than to dismiss the very reason she had tried so keenly to reach him in the first place. ]
no subject
Vanessa..? [Is the only thing to fall from his mouth before the woman is touching him, the coldness of her palms as familiar to him as breathing, even after all of this time. And then before Akechi even has a chance to catch himself, she's dragging him into a hug that the boy practically collapses into.
It can't be real. It shouldn't be real - But there they are, collapsed against his Tokyo bedroom floor among the splintered remains of his mirror, this woman he thought was long disappeared from his life. A pretty dream he once knew in a place he still struggles to believe was real, a mother who swooped in when he needed one most. The feel of her slender, but strong arms around him still feels exactly the same as it did back then, safety and affection and a love that he fought against believing could be real.
But she is real.
After a few long moments where Akechi does nothing but cling back to Vanessa, his frame trembling against her, the boy finally catches his tongue again, thick and useless in his mouth, and tries to speak.]
How did you even find me?
no subject
Sunk into the embrace, Vanessa moves a thin hand to settle at the nape of his neck, savoring the simple joy of being able to touch him again after months of reaching through glass. Her other hand clutches at his arm, seeking a stability she rarely allows herself to need from others.
The memory she tries to share feels thick, clouded by exhaustion. Still, Vanessa attempts to pull forth images of quiet moments—him at his desk chair, speaking to what he thought was merely a shade, confiding fears and hopes alike into his mirror. She had been there, listening, helpless to respond but unwilling to leave. Whatever magic that had encouraged shared communication then seems gone, now that she has crossed that barrier completely.
Her grip on his shoulder weakens as a wave of dizziness washes over her. The scent of his blood grows overwhelming and she forces herself to pull back, though the movement lacks her usual grace. Her eyes, more shaded than normal, struggle to focus on his face—a face she had watched over for so long, now finally within reach.
She tries once more to speak, to warn him, but the words feel distant. In her frustration, a hiss escapes at the pathetic state she's in. She is useless to him like this. ]
How I have missed you.
no subject
Tears prick in the teenager's eyes, but blinks them away in favor of sucking in a sharp breath before rising up on his feet and taking Vanessa with him. She's tiny enough that Akechi can support her with little trouble, immediately striding over to his own bed to settle her on the edge of the mattress. He keeps her sitting for just a few moments longer, just long enough that he can dust the shattered glass from her hair, off of her shoulders, before he's guiding her towards the pillows.]
Lay down - I'll grab you some water, but you should rest.
[And god, the situation is so fraught with overpowering emotion, but even he can't help the slight quirk of his lips before he finishes his thought.]
You look like Death.
no subject
But then, it settles, that she can understand him. Of course someone as intelligent as he is would know more than one language. So very fortunate. Again, in any other circumstance, she could laugh at herself for knowing so many languages herself, and yet none of them modern Japanese. She should feel useless, but Vanessa is too comforted knowing she has at least succeeded in one thing—reaching him.
Though weakened, she struggles to sit up as soon as he tries to get her to relax. The shadow of prophecy may not be looming over him at the moment, but that doesn't mean she should waste time trying to take a nap. Neither that or water would rejuvenate her in the way it would a human.
But his attempt still touches her, as she holds her hand over his arm with a gentle shake of her head. ]
I can...find my own sustenance. In time.
[ She has survived far weaker than this, and for much longer than this, without blood. ]
Tell me, first. Have you been happy? Did you find freedom here?
[ After all, he had once convinced her that he had no future here. No life. Yet here he is, living and breathing. There he had been, talking to her through reflections, even when he didn't understand what was happening. And she had listened, even when she couldn't fully understand his words. There has to be meaning there. That he has been given this second chance—that she has been able to seize the same, now at his side. ]
no subject
Have you been happy?
There's been nothing but time and physical distance separating them for far too long, but Akechi's connection to Vanessa feels as strong as it ever did back in that other place, this woman sweeping in and accepting that wretched teenager just as he was - broken and rotting and full of poison - and even now, she's barely had a moment to catch her breath before she's asking after him. After his happiness.
Oh, his next therapy session is going to be an emotional one.
Without even thinking, Akechi's hand finds hers, pressing over it, and when his red eyes flick up to meet hers, the emotion within him is obvious. He nods, a soft, huff of a laugh already at his lips.]
I am. [And wouldn't that version of himself be so startled to hear that?] Not always, but more than I ever allowed myself to be before. I shouldn't have lived, but I did. And I've gotten better at accepting that as the gift it is.