[Week 6, Friday: Belph]

[doublecrows]

[anyway after that breakdown, Akechi is going to find his favorite Vizier! he looks. um. not. . . well, expression haggard, gaze darting about like he's expecting someone to have followed him]

[when he finds Belph, he doesn't waste any time]

Who have you told about me?

Comments

[axilium]

... So you went with revenge instead?

[there's really only one path hate leads you to.]

[doublecrows]

I did.

[he lifts a hand and stares at it, fingers slightly curled]

That is what I have to return to when we're finished here.

[he says that quietly, almost wistfully. funny, how that very revenge he fought so hard to see through seems so so unimportant now]

It's the only thing I have to return to. The culmination of years of hard work. Years of killing, of lying, of pretending to be the charming detective prince. Of building him up as much as I could, just to tear him down in one satisfactory explosion near the end.

I didn't run.

[but maybe he should have]

But it sounds as though neither you nor I were able to escape our fates.

[axilium]

... The price for escaping mine wasn't one I was willing to pay.

[if it were just his life, it'd be fine. but hers? that's a different story.]

I don't regret the decision I made, exactly. But I guess that means my life was never meant to have a happy ending.

[...]

Do you regret it?

[doublecrows]

Seven weeks ago, I would have answered "no."

[a shrug]

Now, I suppose. . . I don't know.

[does he. . .? maybe that's something he still has yet to figure out]

[axilium]

... Heh. Finding people who actually give a damn about you messes with a lot of things, doesn't it?

[doublecrows]

[yeah]

[at that, though. . . Akechi just shrugs]