Chapter Text
Light had made a new habit of brushing his hand over the light switch as he entered his bedroom after dusk, since Aoi was slower to pick up the habit of announcing his presence for Light’s convenience. Letting out a sigh to relax his shoulders, he followed the wall to his closet doors, unbuttoning his shirt with his other hand due to yet another habit. At the ends of a day, Light tended to perform most actions one-handed, whether or not he had shed the weight hanging from his left shoulder.
He had an awkward shape for his preferred dress: buttoned shirts tended to be made of woven fabrics, which had no stretch, so his long, narrow torso swam in a shirt cut for someone about three-to-five inches wider around than him. That made it easier for him to wriggle and slide out of his shirts after loosing the first two buttons, rather than run all the way down the buttons. He dropped them into the laundry basket that way as well, and threaded a hanger into and out of the shoulders as they were when they came out of the dryer, and then slid back into them again.
The rush of fabric against his ears momentarily deafened him to softer sounds. He let the silence linger to readjust his lower threshold for noises, scratching absently at the base of the implant in his left arm that connected him to his prosthetic. An itch to play the harp, perhaps after a short repose with a book, made him hesitate in pressing the switch to detach his arm, and then he heard something.
It was harder for him to describe in concrete terms what he heard after years of associating every sound with a real-world phenomenon and a location. What he understood was person in room. Only after another second of retracing his thoughts could he determine that what he had heard was the sound of breathing, unobstructed by and reverberating off of the walls.
Though he had not heard the sound well enough to determine its exact position, it came from the general direction of his bed, so it was likely Aoi, or possibly Clover, asleep. That would explain the lack of response when he entered the room and began undressing, as well as the lack of lighting. In case the sleeper awoke, he found himself a soft T-shirt, perfect for lounging and easy access to his arm, should he later lose himself in his reading and lose his present desire to practice music.
As he came closer to the bed, he tuned into the sound of breathing, hoping to determine on which side of the bed his guest had made their home. Instead, he paused. He had carved out a special place in his memory for the sounds of his sister, and as of late, he had become quite familiar with how Aoi breathed while asleep. This breathing had the depth and timbre of Aoi, but it did not have the heaviness or the slow rhythm. It barely had a rhythm at all.
“Hiding in plain sight?” Light asked softly.
That was definitely Aoi’s sigh.
“If you wanted to be left alone, you could have just said so,” Light said, taking a tentative step back from the bed and already thinking of the harp to which he would retreat as soon as Aoi gave the word.
Aoi did not give that word, or any other words.
“I’m lacking visual and aural cues, dear.”
He sighed again. His clothing rustled with his small movement. The young man who ordinarily could not keep from making some kind of snarky reply did not say a word even when prompted.
Light took a step towards the bed before he had guided his own impulse into moving forward instead of backward. With this awkward gait, he reached the foot of the bed, brushing against it with his palm to ascertain his sense of place. “Is something wrong?” he asked.
His hand traced up nearly the full length of the bed without finding Aoi’s legs. He jumped when he felt a palm on his shin.
“Lookin’ the wrong way, dumbass,” Aoi mumbled in a weak voice.
Light dropped himself to the ground. He had not heard the mattress springs or the bedsheets when Aoi moved earlier. Aoi was not on the bed; he was on the floor, sandwiched between the bedframe and the wall in what Light’s hands found to be a tightly curled ball. He brought his folded legs away from Light’s touch and closer to his chest.
“D’you ever just,” Aoi said, his voice breaking between a whisper and a high, thin sound, “just get yourself stuck in a morphogenetic murder reel of all the ways you’ve ever died?”
Though he had backed off when Aoi recoiled from his touch, Light grasped Aoi’s hands before he had finished speaking. “Ground yourself,” he urged. “Five things you see, four things you—”
“Stop, stop, I’m fine,” Aoi growled. “I ain’t stuck. I—I’m stuck, but I’m sticking myself there. I’m fine. I just…” He sighed again, such a heavy, sad sound. “Do you ever do this, too?”
Light frowned. “Purposely recall my own deaths across multiple timelines, you mean?” he asked.
“Yeah. Like it’s… satisfying, kinda. Just…”
“We need to go find Jumpy and the others,” Akane urged. “We have to tell them what we found.”
“Very well,” said Gentarou fucking Hongou, shambling mass of subhuman slime. “You two can search for Junpei, Lotus, and Seven. I will return to the central staircase to retrieve Clover, and we will join you.”
Like hell.
As soon as he gleefully took off, I shot a nervous look to Akane to tell her where I was going. I didn’t wait for a response. Her eyes were blank and glazed. Her fever had been acting up all throughout our nauseating charade through the captain’s quarters where literally everyone knew exactly how to solve the damn puzzle but nobody wanted to reveal it.
“Let’s just fucking kill him right now,” I had whispered to Akane when he snuck away to murder Musashidou.
I should’ve. The feeling in the pit of my stomach told me this timeline wasn’t going to work out our way.
I kept my steps light as I followed him down the stairs from a distance, peering over the side of the banister to watch his pace. His deep voice echoed up from the base of the stairs as he said, “Clover, good, please come with me. We’ve finished with our door.”
“Oh,” she said in a dead, defeated voice.
God, I wanted to tell her everything. He was okay. He was safe. I put him somewhere safe, where Hongou couldn’t hurt him.
He gestured back up the stairs and let her pull ahead of him, holding his other hand behind his back. Like fucking hell.
I almost didn’t make it there in time. He was so quick and thoughtless to raise the gleaming pocketknife over his head, the knife that Kubota had pointed at Clover once before. She was stunned when I appeared from around the corner and raced past her, screaming, “No, you fucking don’t!”
He looked scared for a tantalizing moment before I got a chest full of knife.
It feels like fire in the best possible way. My body writhes with the pain and it doesn’t even feel like it’s mine anymore. Everything’s over, finally over. I’m sorry, Clover, Akane, everybody. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to end, but God, I just want it to end.
“You’re suicidal.”
The words came out of Light’s mouth before he fully returned to his own body after the strongest resonant event he had ever felt with Aoi. Although the flashback had cut off before Light had to see Clover inevitably felled in the same way, he was already shaking.
“No, I’m not,” Aoi groaned, shoving Light’s hands away. “I mean, maybe, but I don’t—I ain’t gonna kill myself, I ain’t gonna do anything. I just… wanna fucking die. I dunno.”
His voice died down to something very quiet again. It was a terrifying sound.
“So you’re reliving death,” Light uttered.
“Yeah. On purpose, kind of. I think.”
Light could balance on the balls of his feet no longer. He slid out of his crouch to take a seat on the floor in front of Aoi and tried to control his breathing.
“Fuck, I’m sending it to you, ain’t I?” Aoi realized.
“I believe I saw something from the Nonary Game,” Light said. “The second one.”
“Shit. Sorry.” His voice was muffled by his knees. “Shit, your sister was…”
“I didn’t see that part.”
“Me either.” His voice came from deeper within his huddle. “Sorry. You should just go. Sorry.”
Light swallowed through the lump in his throat and shook his head. “I’m not going to leave you alone like this.”
“Light, for fuck’s sake, I ain’t gonna fucking kill myself. I swear to God. I’m fine.”
“Are you going to hurt yourself?”
Aoi was silent for too long after that question.
“Have you hurt yourself before?” Light whispered.
“No,” Aoi snapped, “and I never tried to kill myself, I’m fine, I just wanna fucking die and I’ll be over it in an hour or something, so just leave me the fuck alone before I—”
—heard a wet squish and a crunch and a choking sound behind me.
The manacles kept me chained to the chair, but I had enough room to turn around to see red, deep red, and pink. The first thought that gripped my stomach was that something had happened to her, but no, of course, she was the one who did this, because someone had killed the one she loved the most. Akane knew this was going to happen, and she still let out a shriek when it did.
“Clover!” I screamed, rattling the binds on my wrists and ankles. “What the fuck?! What the fuck are you doing?!”
She stepped in front of me so I could see her empty eyes when I died. The axe, coated in Seven’s blood, wobbled as she raised the heavy blade over her head.
“For my brother,” she whispered.
I winced and closed my eyes when the axe came down, but I didn’t feel it. I just felt warmth. This wasn’t Clover’s body falling against me. This was—
“Akane,” I whimpered.
The rest was blurred by tears. I tried to move my arms to hold her as she sank against me, oozing something warm and wet against my shoulder.
Her sacrifice made Clover hesitate before giving me the final blow. I knew I was going to die, so I said the only thing I could say to die without regrets.
“The truth-had-gone note,” I croaked. “It’s right and left. For the buttons on your bracelet. That’s the code, in the chapel. Right, left, right, left, ri—”
I spoke even as I watched the axe rise and fall again. For a terrific instant, I could feel the overpowering shock of sensation when the blade drove through my skull and cleaved my brain in two.
“When?!” Light demanded, his face hot. “When did she—?!”
“Fuck, you weren’t supposed to see that!” Aoi moaned. “Fuck! Fuck!”
Light grabbed Aoi’s bare shoulders, which shook even more violently than his hands. “How did this happen?!”
“It didn’t happen. Forget it,” Aoi pleaded, wrestling pitifully against Light’s tightening grip. “Forget it, forget it, forget it, forget it—”
“What happened to her?! Aoi!”