#writeinktober 2018

day 2 (#TarotofMagic): ace of planets - fate

don’t you think it’s funny, morgana says one day, after all of it is over, after akira has returned to the home that is not his home, only to count the days until he can leave again.

what? akira asks. he isn’t paying much attention, idly stirring his coffee as he watches the rain outside the kitchen window. the storm leaves tear-streaks across the glass, each one swallowed up by more rain.  

i was just thinking, morgana continues. i was just thinking about all of it.

reaching over to pat morgana on the head, akira says, you’ll have to be more specific.

morgana, who really was, had always been, the most in-tune with the metaverse and its fickle, unyielding desires, replies, you. you and akechi.

akira’s hand freezes over the tips of morgana’s ears.

arsene and loki. a trickster thief and a trickster god.

akira sighs. i thought we’ve been over this. yaldaboath? was a thing? remember? played us all like a fiddle until i shot him in the head?

『faces, doorways, masks, smiles — just say you’re a fake bitch and go! 』

akechi does not expect to summon a second persona. he hadn’t even thought it possible, because the man in the velvet room had said your persona is the manifestation of your rebellion and in the haze of confusion and pain he had assumed —

robin hood is first, and the white of his clothing burns sun-bright in the back of akechi’s eyes.

“pick your poison,” izaya says, lips curling into a smile, all teeth, all power. “or don’t—i don’t really care.”

akechi buries it underneath his smile. he shoves it down his throat and into the bird-cage of his heart, because such things are not to be seen and not to be heard. let it burn instead. the smoke will shear his lungs and cloud his eyes but anything is better than the crushing emptiness of defeat. keep your friends close and your enemies closer, they say, but akechi has no friends to speak of and more enemies than he can bother to remember — so instead, he opens himself up for the taking.

what he offers is not loyalty and is not kindness, but they don’t have to know that.

akechi gathers his righteous fury in his bloody hands and locks it away in his chest, hidden underneath a lifetime’s worth of injustice. transparent, if anyone had ever bothered to look. his fingerprints are wine-red against the white of his ribcage.