Work Text:
Goro Akechi's palace is a clockwork machine consisting of twelve floors worth of cogs and spinning wheels, all of which fit together in perfect, crushing harmony. The drone of metal clicking and grinding is incessant and haunts Akira's waking moments in the real world. In his dreams, he sees the smudges of red and bits of skin and hair in the corners of the cogs, where the pieces that didn't align with the machine were crushed into complacency.
Shido's conspiracy in motion. A thousand cogs and all the cogs' teeth in intricate, interlocked order. The parts that are not used are crushed. And at the center of the machine is Goro Akechi's treasure.
Specifically, the treasure is a large metal bolt through the chest of Akechi's shadow that pins him to the cog at the heart of the clock.
It's rusted to his school uniform. The bolt spins dully through the shadow's ribcage; there's the quiet tick of the bolt's threading catching on the shadow's ribs. Blood bubbles slowly from the hole and collects with the rest of the dried, crusted blood.
Only Akira, Morgana, Ann, and Makoto go in. The rest of them stay with Futaba to calm her down. Even still, Makoto pinches her nose and tries to breathe through her mouth. Akira doesn't see the point: His throat tastes like iron either way.
"I was right the first time," Morgana says slowly, peering up at the shadow pinned to the cog with the same hesitancy that someone looks up at the sun. "It's... not like anything I've seen before... but that's the treasure, all right." He points directly at the metal bolt that stakes the body to the central cog. Akechi's shadow looks down at them with silent disgust. "If we want to change his heart, we'll have to take that bolt."
"You can't," says Akechi's shadow suddenly. "Or I'll die of blood loss."
All of them jump. The shadow hadn't reacted the first time they'd come in, or even blinked when Futaba threw up. "Are you insane?!" Ann cries. "It's killing you!"
"It'll kill me faster if you pull it out," the shadow says coolly.
The bolt, still rotating slowly in the shadow's chest, grinds unpleasantly and loudly against bone. Ann looks like she wants to heave. "Oh god, Joker, we have to take it out—"
"He's right," Makoto says quietly.
She's biting her lip, but she looks certain of herself. "From the look of it, that bolt is the thing that holds this entire clock together. The entire machinery might fall apart if the cog is removed. But there's a reason why we're told not to remove weapons from puncture wounds in first aid class, too. Taking the bolt out would just leave a gaping hole in his chest, and..."
The shadow grins unpleasantly.
"...and all the blood will just drain out of the open wound," Makoto finishes. She looks for a long moment at the size of the bolt. It's almost as big as Akira's whole hand with his fingertips splayed out, and it's slowly grinding directly through where the shadow's sternum would be. "We can remove the bolt and dismantle the entire clock in one go, but I don't... think he'll survive."
"Why on earth would that be his most precious item?" Ann asks in disbelief without apparently wanting an answer. Akira doesn't offer one.
Now the shadow's looking directly at Akira, making Akira hyper-aware of his clenched fists and tight jaw. "How does it feel, Joker?" the shadow asks. "To come all this way through my palace, only to find that it was for nothing?"
Akira crosses his arms and says nothing. It's not his business to converse with a figment of Akechi's psyche. It's his business to change Akechi's heart.
"It's about time you learned what a pyrrhic victory felt like. You and your charmed life. Your disgusting hopefulness. Your unbelievable naivety." The shadow's lips grow redder and redder with blood, his perfect idol-white teeth stained with it. "You know what I hate the most about you, Akira Kurusu? It's that the world lets you get away with it. Rewards you for for your insane belief in the goodness of other people.
"You know what happens to the rest of us, when we're stupid and naive and hopeful?" the shadow asks. "It crushes us into the rest of its machinery. For the rest of us, it's join the machine or die. For the rest of us, acting out of line gets you put back into your place."
Even as the shadow's voice grows softer, Akira can still hear it clearly over the whir and grind of the machine's cogs. The shadow's voice is soft, like skin breaking.
"It's about time that something in this world crushed you," the shadow promises. "Even if it's got to be me."
"We'll find another way," Akira tells the other three. Calm and decisive. "Let's go."
"There is no other way," the shadow replies. "You pull me out of Shido's conspiracy, Kurusu, i will die faster before you can even comprehend what you've done wrong."
"Joker?!" ann says worriedly. "We're just leaving him here?! He'll—I know he'll die if we take it out, but he'll die if we leave him too—!"
"It's just cognition," Akira replies, and puts his hands in his pockets. "He doesn't believe there's a way out, so there isn't. But that doesn't mean there isn't another way in the real world."
"That's because there isn't," says the shadow.
"We're done here," Akira tells the thieves.
"There isn't!" the shadow snaps at him. The force of effort sends another sheet of blood trailing down his chest. "You hear me?! Give it up, Kurusu! It was over before you ever started! I was dead before you ever met me! Kurusu!"
Akira holds the door open for the girls and Morgana to exit before him. "There is no way out!" the shadow screams. "You can't prove me wrong! Don't you dare!"
Akira does not bother to give it one last look. "Akira!" its voice shrieks after him, and then the metal door grinds shut, and he bolts it easily and without regret.
Skull is giving him a nervous look. "Uhh... the hell was that? You okay, man?"
Akira nods. He is not concerned. He is not even bothered. Giving up on akechi was not ever an option. There is only one way, and it's forward, and if it bothers Akechi that Akira still has faith in happy endings, then that's his problem and not Akira's. "We'll find another way," he announces, and nobody questions him at all, least of all himself.