The Magpie and The Crow AU
A Princess Tutu style AU where Akira and Akechi were both birds given human form for Yabaldoth’s Game, and grew up thinking they were human. Akira was the Magpie, the trickster, the thief. Akechi was the Crow, the blessed, the ill-omen.
And Akira is the first to realise that something is chaining him down, holding him back, pulling his strings. He remembers, on accident, after a dream about free falling, of flight and freedom. Of curiosity of a life humans would experience, and a puppeteer, beckoning him and his friend forward with a deal: Play his Game, and they both could experience life as humans did.
It is a cursed deal, Akira would realise now, and he has no idea where the Crow is, until he finds him in the form of Akechi, without his true memories, and a touch more jaded than Akira in terms of their outlook about humanity than that hopeful view they both originally had.
Akira realises that once the Game ends, so does their time as humans.
He doesn’t wish for it to end.
Akechi remembers, not long after he ‘kills’ Akira. He remembers the Magpie he once flew with and Akechi ends up realising how rigged the Game is against them both. He grows even more bitter and angry and wishes for his life to end, as long as he gets to be with the Magpie again.
And when Shido makes that fated call, and Akechi enters the Ship, the Crow makes his decision and throws his lot in with his Magpie.
He then has to convince the Magpie that this had to end, when Yabaldoth offers Akira a chance to live life as a human for the rest of his life. He has to convince Akira that whatever reality that would be shaped, it would all be a lie.
It was time for them both to break free from the strings that controlled them both.