Work Text:
Crack.
An eye twitch, a slight tenseness in his shoulders, his fingers feeling like claws as he nods yes once. Another request accepted. His chest feels tight, his head packed with steel. The mighty, invincible thief stands above all else as a god, but even gods can fall.
Akira’s fingers are peeling. There’s blood on the edges of his desk, dotting into the fabric of his sheets, streaking his knife handle. His mouth tastes like the inside of his cheeks and bile, tongue thirsty for nothing but blood. His stomach is unsatisfied with mere rice and soda.
He wants, no, needs more.
His dreams are filled with rivers of the stuff, not drowning him but fueling him, pouring from the cracks in his psyche and choking all those around him. Akira wants to break, to let out this pent up lust and anger. But he doesn’t relent. He’s too kind to give in, too kind to let those he cares about get hurt by him. He can’t let that happen.
The Metaverse had been able to diffuse his rage, allowing him to vent himself without fear. But it’s too much now, not even as he drives his knife into cracking bone does his bloodthirst lessen. In fact it grows deeper and darker, his lips cracked under his teeth. Akira’s fingers tighten on his knife, a growl in his throat as he rips apart Shadows over and over and over and OVER.
This is all he does. Slipping into the shadows and killing over and over again. It’s all he does, killing and stabbing and slashing over and over and OVER AGAIN. He craves something with real substance, some way he can rid himself of these awful feelings and going back to the kind hearted boy who got himself arrested for being too nice.
Maybe he was too nice.
He buys things for them, leads them, takes their punches and rolls with it, he does everything for them and what does he get? Thrown into jail and beaten until the sound of his own leg breaking haunts his head awake and asleep, until his bruises are so numbered he can’t be bothered to count them, until he can only taste food when it comes back up. Did anyone come to see him after his ass was black and blue?
No. Because all they care about is the things he does for them.
They’re all so selfish.
“Hey Akira, could I get some healing? I feel like I’m gonna explode…”
Akira’s hand clenches so hard his nails bite into his palm. His arm muscles tense, and then there’s blood arcing through the air. His bleak gray eyes have no light behind them, a kind of cold rage he’s never felt before. He watches through the mask as Makoto falls to the floor, blood pooling from a deep wound on her chest.
There’s no sound. No screams, no pleading, not even the scuffle of feet or the clang of blades. He can’t hear his gun when he cocks it, he can’t hear it fire, he can’t hear the choke of blood in Yusuke’s throat. All he hears is his heartbeat in his ears, the thrill and adrenaline pounding through his veins. His eyes are bloodstained, but there’s no way he’s done.
Pleasure slices through every inch of his body as he cleaves his knife through Futaba’s stomach, unheard cackles shrieking from his throat as the guts spill forth. Blood flings from his knife as he throws it, the blade sinking into Haru’s forehead up to the hilt. The thud vibrates his ears, but there’s no sound, the excitement too loud.
Two more gunshots. One between Morgana’s ears, the other in Ann’s pink heart. They all fall, one by fucking one, to pile at his feet. Akira smoothly slides his gun back in his holster, staring down his perfect blond beauty. His leg muscles coil, and the slick masked cat pounces on the one he loves so dearly.
The feeling of acid in Akira’s mouth is gone when Ryuji’s blood touches it, the crimson pouring onto his tongue from the bite of flesh he ripped from his love’s throat. This time the gagging, the choking, the drowning is all he hears, the noise of death. He relishes in it, licking his lips as he swallows the piece of Ryuji.
Akira’s friends lay dead at his feet. He killed them, he killed them all just to satisfy his bloodthirst. The pounding in his body eases, his feelings returning to his numb body, high leaving him. He breathes, but it is the breaths of sanity, the breaths of blood of those around him. He did this.
He did this.
At once he wakes up, gasping for air in the depths of some palace safe room, his palm still bleeding. His friends look on in concern, and while he would normally relish in it…
All he can think about is the lack of fullness. At least he doesn’t feel like he needs to kill. Not yet, no, not yet.
But perhaps soon.