#ardentknight

So he crosses his forearms over the counter and watches his pen--his--idly swing in the space between Kurusu’s thumb to index finger. It’s a rapid, thoughtless movement; it has no right to be so charming.

When Kurusu finally scribbles in the boxes and returns both crossword and pen, Akechi scoffs. “You could have given me a hint. No need to show off.”

Kurusu’s smile is something that handsomely reads, Isn’t that usually my line?

Akechi tries not to smile back. When Mr. Sakura walks up with a phone pinned between his shoulder and cheek, he and Kurusu share a Look that means another order to-go and immediately, Kurusu moves for the disposable containers tucked above the fridge. 

Akechi taps his pen against the puzzle and hums. 

In the string of boxes, the poet of Infinitati Sacrum has been penned in Kurusu’s jagged, near illegible English (really, who taught this boy his English characters?): J-O-H-N-D-O-N-N-E.

He doesn’t know how the hell Kurusu knew that but the echo of possibility makes some, jaded part of him feel hopeful again. More importantly: written to the side, is a dark and small, I think I know what you mean.

When Akechi lifts his eyes, Kurusu is watching him with those quiet, steady eyes. He is too clever, too brilliant, for such an unassuming young man who hides behind thick glasses and a cafe shop counter.

- o - o - o -

It is England and it is Westerham and 1817 and he drank too much wine and made a fool of himself in the downstairs parlor, but it seems there is mercy yet to be found in the inoccupation of this room because damn the sounds this man’s tongue draws out of him are obscene.

In the cooling afterglow, he slips his long-awaited reply in an inside pocket of the man’s black coat, which had been heedlessly tossed over an upholstered chair. After a sweat-slick grin and teasing jibe about being more careful with the articles of his wardrobe or else people might get ideas, he straightens his cravat and dismisses himself out the servant’s halls with a, “Until next time, my dear burglar,” tossed over his shoulder.

It would not be good for him to be seen here.

They will meet again outside of Kent and then it will be strictly business. They have their roles to play after the Good Lady of Ramsgate complained about her missing silver after opening her doors for a social evening. If he wishes to uphold his post, he cannot give anything away about the promiscuous nature of his relationship with the man who is undoubtedly the culprit.

Not if he wishes to see him again in the fall.

- o - o - o -

It’s not just crossword puzzles. Over time, sudokus, word searches, cryptograms--passed from one hand to the other over LeBlanc’s counter--also become the means of their secret correspondences, the channels by which those burning things on the edges of their hearts finally have their chance to speak. Akechi would say he isn’t sure why or how he has become so certain of his and Kurusu’s strange connection, if only every time he looked at the young man, he wasn’t absolutely certain that the soul of him, even if not his face, was somehow familiar.

They start to use ciphers where well-placed puzzles and requests for help with English word searches to loop the letters R-E-I-N-C-A-R-N-A-T-I-O-N with a scribbled question mark next to it aren’t enough.

Kurusu struggles with the ciphers at first (adorable), mouth pinched and brow furrowed at the extra effort it takes to work out Akechi’s true message (also adorable). He himself doesn’t attend Shojin, so he can never watch him to verify this hypothesis, but it’s clear that Kurusu must spend some time working on his ciphers during his lectures or between his Metaverse missions because it only takes a single day for Akechi to receive each response, folded inside the cursory napkin between his daily coffee cup and saucer. 

And each time, he is forced to stifle the fluttery, warm feeling in his chest. 

There is nothing for Akechi to be affected about. Certainly not the idea that Kurusu spends at least some of his non-renewable hours and minutes thinking about him and what it is he wishes to tell him.

The happiness is silly. Foolish. It shouldn’t make him glad that a young man who he has been told should be his enemy wants to pursue these conversations, especially when Akechi makes it so difficult to do so in the first place in the hopes of keeping their written messages safe from unwanted eyes.

But their letters are a simple joy.

And Akechi does not have many simple joys in this current life.

- o - o - o -

It is Greece and it is 159 and a new shipment of papyrus has arrived when that damned thief strikes again. This time, just as the previous time, and the time before that, the thief steals more than his employer can afford to lose. At last, at last, having enough of this, the guard lays his trap.

When, by torchlight, with men at either shoulder, they corner the thief in a stone alcove, there’s something glinting in those dark eyes that, ironically, arrests him.

It is something old.

Something familiar.

And he cannot escape the wondering question: have they done this song and dance before?

- o - o - o -

It is 1816 and there are times, though they are few and far inbetween, when his burglar stays late into the night, entwined in the cotton of his sheets, and though he knows it won’t last until morning, the brush of their legs tangled together are enough to power him through centuries apart, he is sure.

“Tell me something you’ve read lately,” he whispers with his cheek pressed to his pillow. He breathes softly as his fingertips trace over the back of his burglar’s hand, following the soft ridge of blue veins under his skin.

“I’m afraid all I have for you are poems,” his burglar murmurs.

“How typical of you.”

“Is Donne too morbid for our faire?”

“If it’s recited by you, it’s perfect.”

And his burglar frowns thoughtfully, eyes askance. Slowly, he rolls onto his back and his arm twists so that his palm is up and settled beside his ear. His own hand follows it and their fingers intertwine.

“I sing the progress of a deathless soul,” his burglar hushedly murmurs and for not the first time, he finds himself marveling at the man’s perfect, rote memory. “Whom Fate, which God made, but doth not control, placed in most shapes; all times before the law yoked us, and when, and since, in this I sing…”

Angels know he could listen to the rumble of that quiet voice forever.

- o - o - o -

The ciphers, admittedly, get out of hand. What starts as, Do you believe in past lives? You probably think I’m crazy and You’re too good at chess to be crazy; I will see what I can find in the school library turns into You seriously need to better your handwriting and I can tell the news station the Detective Prince drinks his coffee here anytime then I have a geography test coming up that I am NOT looking forward to and Have you been sleeping well? You’ve been looking exhausted lately.

They start writing about anything and everything in between. The latest celebrity gossip from the news on the ancient TV with the crooked antenna in the cafe’s corner to their personal likes and dislikes. You can call me Akira, you know, and Very well; then call me Goro. They share childhood experiences both good and bad and dreams and, Have you ever thought about what you might do after your probation year is finally over?

It’s a question Akechi has always longed to ask as someone who has never fooled himself into thinking he might live past the age of eighteen.

He would be lying if he tried to claim that he didn’t look forward to their notes.

They talk over the counter, as a regular and barista so often do.

But it’s so nice, he thinks, so very nice, to have this one good, hidden thing that he can take home and read alone and know the secret message within is meant for his eyes only. He wonders if there is anyone else in the world so lucky as he is to receive an encrypted message in such a scratchy and slanted font.

- o - o - o -

Eastern Han period, China. 768, Egypt. 1511, Italy. The lives and the motif of their stories blur together in a vague idea of memory. They are not sure how and why everything first began. Ask either one and the answer will be a shrug or a turned-away head, beleaguered by a small smile. Have they always been an ill-fated pair? Has their star-crossed story always been that of a thief and a hero? But who is the hero and who is the thief, because Akechi isn’t quite sure he knows anymore.

If the hero is supposed to be the one who saves the day, then he already knows the answer to their age-old riddle. 

In this life, anyway.

- o - o - o -

It’s done. 

Things are as they should be. Maybe how they were meant to be.

Akechi lays in a pool of his own blood, sirens blaring around him, and stares at the steel ceiling of Shido’s ship and knew, somehow, in the center of him, that it would come to this. 

“Great Destiny the Commissary of God,” he whispers and it’s funny, isn’t it? It should be funny. A 1601 poem being somehow relevant and applicable four hundred years later. Akechi supposes that’s what happens when you have two lives who are again and again and again remembering old things and experiencing new ones but are never able to change the repetitions of their fate, these damnable roles they were meant to play.

“That has mark’d out a path and period for everything,” Akechi murmurs and touches the blood pooling over his chest. He lifts his hand above his face and watches the way his own blood webs between his fingers. “Where we of-spring took, our ways and ends see…at one instant…” 

He thinks of Kurusu, which might be precisely what summons him. He can hear the others’ indignant, pitched cries of, “Joker!” as he jumps onto the top of the bulkhead door. With a graceful leap, arm extended, he grabs the railing that lines the walkway along the side of the partition and flips down. Elegant. Stunning.

A fool.

“What…” Akechi coughs and doesn’t get to finish his question. Kurusu’s knees push under his head, red-gloved hands clutching at his shoulder and pulling him up--up--and suddenly there is screaming pain that whites out his thoughts. “Don’t! Don’t…that hurts.”

“Good. Because you’re supposed to live.”

Kurusu is not one to often talk so when he does, it feels like all of nature snaps to attention. Akechi lifts his head in surprise, which is when Kurusu takes the opportunity to press his fingers into the lining where his dark helmet meets the neck of his suit. Akechi opens his mouth to say something like these costumes aren’t supposed to work like that in the Metaverse, idiot, but then Kurusu yanks up and the helmet slips free and--well--shows what he knows. 

Maybe he’s the fool.

“Stay with me.” 

Kurusu’s hand is new and startlingly warm on his cheek. Akechi decides he likes it.

“Thou knot of all causes, thou whose changeless brow ne’r smiles nor frowns.” Akechi laughs and coughs and murky, red spittle dots his lips. 

“Stop it.”

“I always thought that part described you rather well.” 

“You weren’t supposed to be a murderer, Goro.”

Oh.

Akechi sighs and with it, he feels his strength ebb. “You think so?”  

“I know so.” There’s something in Kurusu’s voice that sounds like anger and it is surprising. It is comforting. It is enough to hear it. “You never have been before. You--you have always been brilliant and clever and just, but Shido took you and made you this when we could have been friends. I won’t forgive him for it.”

“Good.” Akechi’s stomach spasms against his will and the pain is near enough to make him black out. It’s time. “Then get him for me, won’t you, Akira?”

“I will.”

“Who knows. Maybe in our next life, we’ll have better luck.” 

Kurusu tilts his head close and leans in. They have never, not once, shown any intimacy but somehow the feeling of those chapped lips against his brow isn’t in the least bit foreign, nor unwelcome. It is all Akechi has ever hoped for.

“I’ll find you,” Kurusu promises and the words seal like a vow in his chest. “And this time, I won’t let them change you.”

- o - o - o -

Memory blurs, that’s the point. If memory didn’t blur you wouldn’t have the fool’s courage to do things again, again, again that tear you apart.