Archive of Our Own

“Those two, in paradise, were given a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative...”

― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

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She shifted, her body reacting to the stagnant, cold, air of her bedroom. Her hands instinctively reached for the covers, searching for warmth, or perhaps a place to belong. She didn’t know anymore. She tried not to focus on it too often. She tried to ignore the fact that her world was smaller now, lonelier even. Almost everyone she knew….dead…or missing.

A soft, creaking noise filled the room as the corner of Akane’s mattress sunk in. She was acutely aware of the grip around her neck - slim fingers that wrapped around her throat while she wasn’t looking, the touches gentle, careful… even fond.

Her body reacted before her mind could fully process what was happening, instantly thrashing against the unknown assailant. The grip around her throat tightened to the point that she began to wheeze, the frail noise choking its way from her throat.

Opening her eyes, she saw golden ones peering back at her, shattering any illusions she may have had about her attacker’s identity. His face was drenched in blood, the crimson leaking through his white long sleeve shirt and onto her bed sheets. There were dark purple spots lining the corners of his eyes, and his face was twisted in an expression halfway between pain and amusement. He was straddling her, his lithe thighs pressing against the outside of her own, trapping her body in place.

Drops of blood mingled with salty sweat dripped onto her cheek and streamed into her half-open mouth. Her vision blurred, her body succumbing to the deprivation of oxygen as she choked on his blood. Not once did he even blink, as if he didn’t want to miss a single movement of hers. His eyes were dead, the familiar spark absent.

Her hands went limp against his chest, her body too weakened to even try fighting back. All she could feel was him - surrounding her, forcing himself through her entire being, scattering the jagged pieces of his soul inside her until she could feel him within her very pores.

“Facing me is your responsibility.”

These were the only words he said to her.

Repeating, over and over. An endless cycle of his voice rising above the stench of blood he left on her now dirtied bed sheets.

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Akane couldn’t explain it, couldn’t even begin to truly rationalize it. She didn’t want to.

The others, she understood. She understood why a sadness would stir in her chest when she passed the training room and heard Kagari-kun’s laughter accompanied by the sound of Kogami-san’s voice. She couldn’t help let that small fleeting sense of hope into her heart every time, because perhaps when she peered inside they would be there.

But they never were.

The Public Safety Bureau no longer felt like a home to her, it felt like a prison. An inescapable, unavoidable prison where every door led to a bitter memory and every room housed a ghost.

When she walked down the halls of the MWPSB, there was an unmistakable emptiness. Ginoza-san strode beside her, and in her reverie, her eyes gazed to his hand. The metal was hidden behind gloves, clenched tight to his side.

She blinked back the sting in her eyes, and when she opened them Ginoza-san was gone. Masaoka-san walked beside her. She stopped in her tracks, overcome by how real he seemed. Masaoka-san stopped for a moment, turning to look at her.

“Something the matter, Missy?” he asked, a slight laugh escaping his mouth.

Akane swallowed hard, and shook her head, expelling the vision. She continued walking, rushing to catch up with Ginoza-san. Whether or not he noticed her behavior he did not say.

There was much he didn’t say now. The things he did say worried her.

“There is nothing good in me being alive. It’s better if I just died!”

She stole a glance at him, a frown appearing on her lips. It was her duty, as an Inspector – no, not just as an Inspector, as a friend, to look after him. She couldn’t afford to lose anyone else. She would do better, no matter what.

Yes, Akane could understand why she dreamt more and more each night. She could rationalize this. They were her friends, people she dearly missed. Her memories were all she had left of them anymore. It was only natural she saw them.

Makishima was different, though. He haunted her dreams in increasing patterns, as if he were the void itself. He was empty, cruel, utterly lacking in all things a human should have. She wanted to hate him. Part of her did hate him, but she couldn’t shake the other, smaller, part of her that was able to understand him, just as she understood Kogami-san.

His words rang in her mind.

“Facing me is your responsibility.”

This is what she told him when he first came to visit her, and she would not go back on her word. If this was her curse, she would carry it no matter what.

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“Why didn’t you kill me?” she asked him one night.

He paused a moment, gazing up at her from the book in his hand. Tonight was different, somehow. He was calmer, his clothing the familiar cropped pants he was wearing in the Nona Tower. He sat at her kitchen table, his leg lazily crossed over the other as he read.

“The gun was empty,” he said simply, returning back to the book in his hand.

She moved into the kitchen, crossing her arms as she stood in front of him.

"You still could have killed me. One last corpse before you went."

"Is that what you think of me?” he flipped a page, still not looking at her. “That I did everything solely to maximize my body count?

"No, it’s not that,” she began, stopping mid-thought. There was a beat before she continued. “I think you were always searching for answers through your crimes. I think you're still searching for answers through me. Or rather, I’m searching for answers through you."

“That’s an interesting perspective,” he closed his book. “But don’t you find it strange that out of all the dead you could see, for some reason, I’m always the one here?” he paused a moment, mulling on his words. “I thought I was ‘the lowest of the low’ in your eyes. Is it easier to accept my presence than face Kogami Shinya?”

Akane’s eyes rose by several degrees, just in time to see a mocking, saintly smile cross his lips.

“Kogami-san isn’t dead,” she corrected him.

“He may as well be,” he said evenly. “Sibyl will never forgive him for killing me.”

Akane didn’t respond. She had no response for that. She believed one day she would be able to meet him again but what Makishima said was undoubtedly true. The nights that Makishima didn’t visit her, Akane dreamed of Kogami-san. More specifically, she dreamed of changing his mind - stopping him before he became a murderer. Her heart beat against her chest at a feverish pace as she ran and ran and ran……and ran…but she never caught up with him, ever. She heard the gunshot every time. She was never able to change it. She accepted this, though. She knew the only way to go was forward, and no matter how much it ate away at her she had to keep going.

“Anyway, it must mean something. Dreams can be considered a window to the unconscious. Perhaps yours are prophetic, like Raskolnikov,” he laughed, and Akane was sure he was intentionally teasing her. “Are you the mare, and I the whip?”

Her forehead creased, lips pursing as she recalled the disturbing themes surrounding Raskolnikov’s dreams in Crime and Punishment. She opened her mouth, ready to argue with him, but at the last second she decided not to entertain his whims.

“You didn’t answer the question,” she said, determined not to let Makishima drive the conversation.

She took a step toward him, closing the gap between her and the table. He set down his book and placed his cheek against his hand as he looked up at her.

“I recognized something in you, I suppose. You evolved. You’ve changed much from the first time I met you, and in such a short span of time. I have witnessed countless others who are unable to claim the same.”

“You mean the people you killed when you got bored of them?”

He narrowed his eyes, smirking at her freedom with words.

“I replaced them because they disappointed me. They outlived their usefulness and I disposed of them. But…” he paused. “Your mind appeals to me.”

Her mouth went dry, unsure if this was the answer she was looking for – worse, if this was the answer she wanted.

He uncrossed his legs, placing both feet on the hardwood as he leaned closer to her. 

Noticing her reaction, he asked, “Does that unsettle you?”

“No,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady.

He gave her an annoyingly smug look, letting her know she was a terrible liar.

He stood, rolling the lean muscles in his shoulders back as he stretched. He strolled past her and began surveying her entire apartment.

Goosebumps prickled up her arms and she swallowed hard, suddenly uncomfortable - as if there truly was an intruder poking through her most private space. She followed him into the other room, keeping her arms crossed tight against her chest.

She watched as he came to a stop in front of her (probably insufficient) bookshelf. There wasn’t much there, mainly old textbooks and academic studies from the days when she was writing her thesis at the Ministry of Health and Welfare. Akane doubted he would be interested in any of these things. He surprised her, though, plucking a book from the shelf.

"Game theory and statistics in relation to the Sibyl System's legal philosophy," he flipped the book over, reading the back as he spoke. "Interesting."

"You've never read it?" she asked.

"Have you ever heard of a prisoner's dilemma?"

She nodded. "It's analyzed in game theory; it's an analysis of why two people might choose not to cooperate with one another despite it being in their best interests."

"Wouldn't you say we're all trapped in a prisoner's dilemma, then?"

She held back a moment, watching as he turned to face her, waiting for an answer.

"I-” she hesitated, unsure where he was going with this. "What do you mean by that?"

His metaphor was a little loose, but that was just her personal assessment. Having written a thesis on the subject in school she was probably taking him too literally. She knew Makishima had a tendency to twist themes to suit him; he played with words and fit them to situations as if it were his art.

He closed the book, neatly placing it back into its original spot on the shelf.

"The puzzle illustrates a conflict between individual and group rationality," he said.

"Yes, the research has indicated that a group who pursues solely self-interested aims will end up worse than a group who cooperates."

"Cooperation is contingent on the idea that humans would rationally go against their own self-interest," Makishima replied.

"It's a choice between selfish behavior and altruistic behavior," Akane added.

"But is it? Benefiting oneself is not always wrong.”

"What are you trying to say? What does this have to do with Sibyl?"

"It has to do with you," he said. "Sibyl wants the benefit of your help without any cost to themselves. You want their destruction without any cost to the rest of society. You should know the likely outcome is betrayal on both sides. It’s human nature.”

"No, not exactly."

"Hm?" he raised an eyebrow.

"Research has always pointed to cooperation between the prisoners being the most fundamentally sound decision. Even if, as you say, it’s human nature, I don’t believe that. I believe there is always another way. Humans are resourceful, we can adapt.”

“There is a difference between wolves and sheep, Tsunemori. If you, if the whole of society, bends to Sibyl, wouldn’t you be demeaning the very same society and law that you have sworn to protect?”

She opened her mouth to speak, but the words died on her tongue. He gauged her reaction, nodding to himself, as if he’d won some kind of victory over her.

“What you would suggest? Your way? The price is too high,” she whispered.

“You can’t truly believe a society is sustainable under the Sibyl System.”

“I already told you, crime will still continue regardless of whether I worry about what I know,” she said.

“Then you are content to be a slave of Sibyl?”

“That’s not what I said. I’m not like you, Makishima. I will find another way,” she said firmly, trying to put an end to the conversation.

He waved his hand, dismissing her words as he returned to the kitchen table. She knew Makishima wasn’t the type of person who took kindly to being cut off - when he had something to say he expected people to listen to it. (Whether they wanted to or not, apparently.) 

“Your theoretical assessment of Sibyl as it stands is all that is keeping you valuable to them. They fear you for the thought you wield, but they also desire you for this very same thing,” he picked up the book from the table, flipped to a page, and began reading.

“‘Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth – more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid.’”

Seemingly satisfied, Makishima shut the book and took two small steps forward until he was standing directly in front of Akane. He gazed down at her petite form, a curious expression on his face as he scrutinized her. If she didn't know any better, she would think he could hear the wheels turning in her head and decipher every thought and reaction taking place within her mind.

“You say you aren’t like me, but you are. It shouldn’t have taken me so long to realize it. The fact that you can keep a straight face despite everything you know speaks volumes, Inspector.”

“You don’t know me, Makishima,” she spoke quietly, averting her eyes from him.

“We’ll see,” he said. “I still have other things I want to show you.”

She felt a light touch at her wrist as he slid the book into her open palm. She gripped it, fingers bending around the spine of the book. The contact of his skin against hers disappeared.

Akane shifted her gaze, and her eyes scanned over the cover. Why Men Fight. She looked up, but Makishima was nowhere to be seen.

Akane opened her eyes.

“Good Morning! It's 8:15 on April 22nd,” her holo jellyfish’s sing-song voice said.

She groaned, rolling over.

“Tsunemori Akane-san's Psycho Pass Hue this morning is powder blue!”

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It always started the same. Soon, she became used to it. She expected it, even. The nights just weren’t the same without it.

His grip tightened, and his breath came out in barely audible, disjointed gasps. His eyes were calm, though. He stared straight into hers, relaying the story as if he’d told it a hundred times. As if he weren’t bleeding all over her sheets, bending his form across hers, etching a pattern of decay and rot and lost moments and opportunities into the curve of her neck.

“Ever since I was a child, I struggled to understand why my Psycho Pass never changed,” he began. “I would put myself in situations, deliberately, to try and force a change.”

His hands were harder this time. Gone was the previous night’s detached and impersonal observation. An overpowering feeling of panic broke inside of her, collapsing the inner walls of her psyche as she felt his hand grip the skin of her throat tighter, pressing down against her trachea.

She gasped - a squeaky, unpleasant noise in the otherwise silence of her room. There was a subtle savagery in the way he clutched her throat. An almost brutal delight in the way he brought his fingers around her pulse, flexing and unflexing his palm against her pressure points.

Akane’s mind shut down. She was submitting to the pain threading its way through her, formlessly taking hold in each artifice of her body. There was a sense of anticipation, though. She was desperate for release, for a breath, for a lull in the mundane. She was desperate for her loneliness to dissipate.

He loosened his grip, allowing her a moment’s respite.

“It was frustrating, agonizing even, at first,” he chuckled, the strangled noise forcing its way from his throat in a derisively cold manner.

She sharply drew in a breath, attempting to use his mercy to her advantage. In a fury, she reached out and clawed at his face and neck. He narrowed his eyes, but Akane couldn’t tell if he was angry or pleased with her actions. Her fingers met with the slick blood on his face, coating them crimson as she clawed her nails at his cheek and throat. Her legs flailed, clumsily, still trapped beneath his. The blood smeared across his upper eyelid and over his cracked and peeling lips as she struggled against him. He shifted his upper body, eager to dodge further advances from her but not lose his position of power.

Without missing a beat, he reached out, surprising Akane when he seized the back of her head with both hands. His fingers tangled in the strands of her short hair, running his nails against her scalp before he yanked. It happened too fast, too hard, and Akane winced in pain when she felt locks of her hair being torn out as he jerked her head back. She was level with him now, her upper body straightened and facing his, her eyes to the ceiling as he held her head back. She breathed in and out, unsteady, shaky breaths, trying to regain her composure.

“This reminds me of something,” he mused. “Does this remind you of something?”

Bile rose in her throat and a sick, creeping feeling entered the pit of her stomach until her vision was so clouded all she could see was the face of Yuki.

“You’re a monster,” she said.

She could taste an acrid tang on her tongue, the anguished memories she had of Yuki too close for comfort in the presence of her murderer. A sudden trill of rage ignited in her heart. Her flesh went hot, the sensation coursing across her arms and down her chest like paper being exposed to flames.

She ripped her head from his hold, shoving the edge of her flattened hand hard against his jugular. His vision momentarily seemed to ebb, caught unawares by the force of the strike and the ferocity in her eyes. She wrapped her hand around his throat, her fingernails digging deep enough to scrape skin. He recovered quickly, mimicking her actions by taking hold of her throat.

“That was good, but your technique and application could use a little fine tuning,” he said, coughing slightly as he attempted to regain his breath.

As she squeezed her hand around his neck, the deadness in his eyes gave way to life - a depraved exuberance in his expression.

“We’re the same, you and I, Tsunemori Akane,” his laughter filled the room, like he was privy to a joke she hadn’t had the pleasure of hearing.

She was still locked beneath his legs, their position awkward and uncomfortable. He was pressed against her upright body, their hands clenched around each other’s throats like a current of energy that flowed between them and sparked each of them to life.

She glared back at him, eyes hard.

“I’m nothing like you,” she grit out, clenching her free fist in the fabric of his bloodied shirt.

“No? Every morning when you wake up your Hue is powder blue. No matter what I do to you at night, every morning it’s the same. Tell me, why is that?”

She pushed back with her hand against his chest, using his body as leverage to thrust her legs up. It sent him off balance for a moment, but he responded quicker than she anticipated. He locked his legs around her smaller form tighter, his knees pressing into the mattress, weighing her down. The white of his bangs fell forward as he leaned over her, pressing her back into the bloodied sheets, obscuring his eyes from view.

He elbowed her arm at the joint so hard she felt as if her bones cracked underneath the pressure. Her arm went limp, falling from his throat to her side. She opened her mouth to speak, to argue with him, but he shoved two fingers inside. Her eyes went wide and she immediately gagged, infuriated and disgusted. His fingers were unwashed; a thin layer of dirt from the fields where he died caking them, the soil still caught between his fingernails. She bit down as hard as she could but he didn’t even flinch. Her eyes rolled back in her head as she tried to focus on anything but the intense discomfort and the fact that she would rather throw up than have him anywhere near her mouth.

“Could it be you’re just as cold-hearted as I am?” he smiled down at her.

He was a twisted, cruel person. There was a darkness in the recesses of his heart that she couldn’t truly fathom. In the dim light of her room, with the shadow of his body craning over hers, Akane was reminded of the time she struggled to remain above water.

Safety wasn’t something many people living under Sibyl fretted over. It wasn’t something Akane worried about growing up - until the day she did. One day her parents turned their backs on her for only a second, and that was all it took.

Just one second.

She fell in the lake, and as she struggled and fought to stay above water, Akane realized that only one second is all it ever takes. One second, and people can be forgotten. Forever. It was that day she realized her life wasn’t as protected as she originally believed. If her mother hadn’t come to pull her out of the water, she could have died.

It was funny, perhaps, that someone who couldn’t even swim would be so fascinated by the ocean - her entire apartment was almost exclusively decorated in this theme. Ever since that moment, ever since she felt what it was to truly struggle, she realized something. She hadn’t been able to put a word to it before or even a coherent thought at the time, (she had only been a child, after all) but as she grew up her wonder in the ocean did not end. It was beautiful and endless. Full of possibility.

But there are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.

If only she had understood that before.

Akane distinctly and vividly remembered the sensation of drowning. She never guessed she would feel it again in the comfort of her own bed. She never guessed she would feel it in the sharpness of his hands wrapped around her throat or the ruthlessness of his slender fingers assaulting her mouth. He was hollowing her out, stealing the comfort of her solitary peace night after night. He cut into her, butchered her, and mutilated her, as if he hoped her heart would look like his in the morning. Perhaps, she vaguely thought, he was the ocean personified. Serene and mercurial. Tranquil and deadly. Pulling Akane down with him, and drowning her beneath the inky blackness of his heart.

She wondered if she would ever reach the bottom of him - if there was a bottom at all. If she learned anything from her experience, Akane learned that water was greedy. It didn't know how to give. Only take. He was parasitic in that way too. It was a precarious and delicate balance of pleasure and pain, because as she continued to drown, Akane somehow remembered what it meant to be alive.

She let her head fall back against her pillow, letting him do his worst. After all, none of this was real, right? She was beginning to doubt even that. The previous morning, she could have sworn there was a redness around her neck - as if he’d left his mark on her from beyond the grave. That wasn’t possible, though. It couldn’t be.

Makishima Shogo was dead.

Yet, he visited her every night.

She knew he would have something to say about that. He was not the type to put stock in the existence of supernatural phenomena. He was not a ghost. He was a memory, a formlessness that took hold in her and wouldn’t let go. But didn’t that mean he was alive in a sense? Didn’t that mean he was alive through Akane’s own will?

She couldn’t help but feel troubled by this.

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The rain beat against her back like bullets as she ran, each droplet stinging her to her core. She ran, and ran and ran. She trampled mud over concrete, trying desperately to ignore the water falling from her eyes, trying to desperately hide it in the rain. In the haze of her feet pounding against the pavement and the sound of her blood pumping, Akane could lose herself when she ran. She had her sight set ahead of her, and everything was clear. If only for this brief time when she ran, everything was crystal clear. So, she ran. She ran so she could fight another day. She ran so she didn’t have to think about the past for at least a little while, so she could ignore the fact that her tears wouldn’t stop no matter how much she wanted them to. She ran. Maybe if she just kept running she could forget about today, somehow put it behind her.

Another tear fell. She would probably never forget the way Ginoza-san looked at her, that beaten, absolutely torn look as she left him at the Public Safety Bureau. He was different, now. Harder, somehow. Not in the way he was before, not in the self-assuredness that came from seeing the world in only black and white. No, he was harder in a different way – the kind where the rug was pulled out from under his feet and he was forced to accept that life was never going to be fair and there were never going to be any easy answers. The world just wasn’t built in black and whites.

Akane’s breath caught in her throat and she skidded to a stop, keeling over on bent knees. Nausea surged through her as the rain continued its endless downpour, the wind and rain whipping across her warm skin – each cool drop hissing at contact. She began to dry heave, and reached out to grip the handrail of her apartment’s steps for balance. Her entire body was trembling as she continued to retch, involuntary spasms tearing at her insides. She slid down to a seated position on the steps, riding out the last heave, thankful the streets around her apartment were empty.

Akane leaned back against the steps, closing her eyes, and let the water wash over her. She let the water splash inside her open mouth as she wiped the last traces of her own water from beneath her eyes. After a few minutes, she moved to stand, trudging her exhausted form into her apartment.

When she stepped inside, Candy greeted her, “Welcome back, Tsunemori Akane-san! What’s your room preference?”

“Nothing for now,” Akane said half-heartedly.

On other nights she might have suggested architecture in the vein of Art Nouvea, something moving and visceral like Casa Batlló or her usual Hôtel Tassel, but she wasn’t in the mood. The blank canvas of her apartment in this state seemed to fit better. She went to her shower and grabbed a towel off the rack. Akane turned to face her mirror and began squeezing the excess water out of her hair and into the towel. When she looked up at her reflection, she was mildly shocked by what she saw. Her eyes were bloodshot from crying, dark circles had formed under them, and the skin around her face seemed gaunt. She frowned, moving closer to examine herself.

In the back of her mind, she could hear the high-pitched laughter of the Sibyl System and the last words they said to her. “Tsunemori Akane...fight...struggle…so that it may lead us to evolve.”

She dropped the towel to the floor, and fell to her knees in front of the mirror. Her head knocked against the glass as she leaned forward.

“Is this… what it means to be an Inspector?” she laughed, but there was no merriment in it. There was only an aching sense of defeat and helplessness.

The case started off rather simple. The MWPSB was tasked with discovering who was behind a small string of seemingly random murders of males aged 28-45. As they continued their investigation, a pattern emerged. Each man who was murdered recently lost a child, and it seemed the murderer believed their deaths were the only thing sparing them from unhappiness. The culprit behind the murders turned out to be only a young girl. She recently lost a sibling of her own, and it sent her already widowed-father into a tailspin. His Hue became too cloudy to be allowed outside, and he was summarily sent to a facility for therapy and deemed a latent criminal. It broke his daughter, and her Criminal Coefficient skyrocketed without warning. When they finally cornered the girl, she was preparing dinner for one of the recent marks she’d met. She killed them by poisoning their meals, using her own story of loss as a way to bond with them.

Akane closed her eyes, remembering her last moments with her fellow Inspector.

“Shimotsuki!” Akane grabbed her arm. “What are you doing?! I told you to wait!”

“You saw her Psycho Pass!” Shimotsuki pulled herself from Akane’s grasp. “Sibyl judged her a threat, I was doing my job. Nothing more.”

“She was only sixteen…” Akane replied, looking at the disfigured lump on the floor in shock.

“Oryo Rikako was only two years older than her and caused just as much damage,” Shimotsuki bit out. “Age has nothing to do with it.”

There was a determined look in Shimotsuki’s eyes, but underneath Akane could see her struggling with herself - with the decision she just made. There was something left unsaid, an unspoken grief that she still held deep in her heart for the loss of her two friend's lives. This wasn’t like her at all. Since starting at the MWPSB she hadn’t acted so rashly, so impetuously. The Inspector walked past Akane, not looking back at the body on the floor as she strode out of the room. Kunizuka-san breathed an audible sigh, placing a hand on Akane’s shoulder.

“Don’t blame yourself,” Kunizuka-san said, patting her on the shoulder. She turned and left.

Ginoza-san was leaning against the wall, his arms crossed. Akane glanced over at him and he simply shook his head.

“She’s right, there was nothing we could do,” he said, as if it were just that simple.

It was never that simple. Not to Akane.

“That’s naïve, Tsunemori. If the girl put herself on the MWSPB’s radar and allowed herself to be caught, then it’s no one’s fault but her own,” Makishima’s voice broke through Akane’s thoughts. “It’s just an act of foolishness.”

Akane angled her head and saw him casually leaning against her kitchen counter, his hands in both of his pockets.

“You don’t understand,” Akane stood from her position on the floor and plopped down in one of her kitchen chairs. “I negotiated with the Sibyl System to let me keep the dominator they gave me, the one that’s always in paralyzer-mode. I could have helped her, at least seen if there was hope for her Criminal Coefficient to drop. She was just…so young.”

“And if there wasn’t any hope? Would you have gone back and killed her yourself?”

Akane shuddered, caught off guard by the mechanical logic in his words.

“No,” she whispered.

Was this the system she was working for? Was this the society she’d sworn to protect? How could she possibly hope to change anything when her every move was limited by what the Sibyl System deemed right or wrong? She exhaled hot breath, rubbing at the back of her neck in an attempt to work out some of her tenseness.

She heard his footsteps move closer to her, and caught sight of his oxford shoes near her chair. He bent over, and she felt his fingers slip under her chin. Akane tried to jerk away, alarmed by the contact. Her body had become accustomed to sensing any touch from him as a threat, especially in that area. He seemed to perceive her uneasiness, because he gripped her chin tighter and with as little force as possible he tugged, lifting her eyes up to meet his. She glared at him, but he did not return the malice. Nor did he let go of her face. His hand rested gently against her flesh, letting his fingers splay out against her left cheek. It was silent for a moment between them, and Akane suddenly became aware of the fact that she was freezing. She still needed to change out of her wet clothes.

“What are you doing?” she asked, troubled by the foreign tenderness in his palm.

He did not let go of her even then. She gazed into his eyes, a slight apprehension in her own. The touch of his hand was warm against her cooled cheek.

“You feel that, then?” he asked after some time had passed.

“Of course I feel it,” her tone softened. “But... that doesn’t explain what you’re doing.”

The edge in her glare dulled and her shoulders relaxed when she realized he was acting different from his usual self. It was probably unwise of her to do so, but she didn’t have the strength to care. She was exhausted beyond measure.

“You seem tired, Inspector,” he tilted her head in his hand, zeroing in on the blemishes under her eyes.

Akane shrugged her chin away from him and pulled her knees up to her chest in the chair, placing her arms above her knees. She rested her head atop her arms as she glanced up at him.

“You still haven’t told me. Why am I here?”

“Because,” Akane closed her eyes, unexpectedly feeling very self-conscious. “Because you’re the only one who knew the truth of Sibyl. It’s… easier this way. I don’t know.”

“You don’t think it’s selfish of you to keep this information to yourself?”

“I can’t tell anyone, Sibyl said-”

“That sounds like a convenient excuse,” he shot back.

“It’s not an excuse!” Akane opened her eyes, raising her voice slightly. “Why would you care anyways?”

“You’re a detective, Tsunemori. Like Kogami. Surely you’re more resilient than this,” he pulled out a chair opposite her and sat down.

“Don’t tell me you expect me to believe you actually care,” Akane gaped at him in disbelief.

“As you said, I’m here because we share knowledge over what the Sibyl System truly is. Contrary to your beliefs, I am more than capable of understanding your frustrations."

“You don’t understand,” Akane muttered.

She knew Makishima was incapable of feeling empathy for other people, so why he was even bothering to pretend was beyond her. Akane pressed her cheek into her arm, closing her eyes again as she breathed in and out of her nose. She wasn’t sure why her mind continued to play tricks on her with images of him, but she was growing tired of it.

“I’ll do better tomorrow,” Akane said to herself. (Or to him. She wasn’t sure.)

“Yet, you still refuse to admit it is because you are like me, because your Psycho Pass remains clear, that you are afforded these opportunities. The average person in this society does not get as many chances as you.”

Akane dropped her knees from the chair and stood, hands balling into tight fists.

"Which means you had the same chance as me!" she was shouting, the events from a bad day at work and her irritation with Makishima’s continued presence in her thoughts getting the better of her. "You turned your back on people, it’s no one’s fault but your own!”

He stared at her blankly and sighed; as if he were a bored professor listening to a student he'd repeated the same lesson to numerous times.

"You don't feel anything, do you?!" she yelled, not bothering to put a damper on her rage. "You said you wanted to see the splendor of people's souls, but there's nothing in you! No joy, no happiness! Do you even know what it feels like to care for another human being at all?"

Akane couldn’t help but notice the brief moment of indecision, the brief second of uncertainty that betrayed his otherwise calm and calculated demeanor. Only it was gone too fast - replaced by heated eyes that flicked to meet hers, narrowing to a dangerous thinness. She felt a distinct shift in the air, and her breath caught in her throat. The scene changed before her and she was unable to stop it.

Her dream became a nightmare before her eyes.

"Despair. The absence of hope. It can be a very useful teaching tool."

Akane reached out, trying to grab hold of him before he disappeared, but darkness embraced her. She was thrown back, and fell into a cocoon of never-ending black. She landed on a tiled floor with a loud thud, and in the dark she could see a tiny strip of light. The door across from her wasn’t quite shut, and she could hear voices on the other side. As she moved closer, the voices became distorted, the cacophony growing louder and louder. She heard Kogami-san’s voice rise out of the din, yelling her name just as he had when she was in pursuit of Makishima. Akane reached for the handle of the door but it evaporated into smoke before her very eyes. She spun around, urgently looking for another exit, but there was nothing.

The voices grew louder - so loud they became deafening, and the noise drove her to delirium. It was uncompromisingly debilitating. She clutched her ears, trying to deaden the sound, as she fell to her knees. Her vision burst into fragments - splotches of purple, yellow, and black geometric shapes that bore down on her from all corners.

She passed out.

When Akane came to, she could feel the cold, hard earth beneath her. Above her, dark clouds and canopied trees swayed. She found her footing, and stood, brushing the dirt off her shorts. She was at the edge of a vast jungle, overlooking a cliff. A great wall of vegetation curtained the top of the forest, the trees rising clear past her line of vision. The forest was disturbingly quiet, an eerie muteness in the enormity of such a place. Dark green moss and a mass of plants surrounded her in every direction. Akane looked over the edge, into the pit of hell itself. There was no drop off, nor even a single light to speak of - only a vast darkness.

In the immenseness of such a place, Akane felt quite small.

The ground began to shake beneath her feet. She looked down, and cracks began forming in the depth of the soil. The cracks began to grow deeper, and surged towards her. She turned on her heel and sprinted away, through the undergrowth and deeper into the jungle. Branches whipped at her face, roots snaked up to capture her but she did not stop even once. She ran until she could run no more.

On the other side of the forest, Akane saw a girl. She was kneeling on the ground as if in prayer, her back to Akane. Shoulder length hair framed her face and hid it from view. There was a soft scraping noise, like metal upon metal, and Akane caught sight of the glint of a silver knife in the girl’s hand. It was lined with blood. She raised it above her head and back down. Over and over. Metal hitting metal.

“Hey…” Akane approached the girl slowly, not wanting to surprise her.

She did not respond.

Akane, against her better judgment, continued moving toward her. Over the girl’s shoulder, she caught sight of something gruesome. It wasn’t metal against metal. There was a slimy substance on the girl’s hands as she pulled apart what looked like intestines.

“Wait!” Akane made to grab at her shoulder, but recoiled when she saw the girl take the matter and shove it into her mouth.

Akane skirted around the girl, and finally saw what she was holding. A human brain. She was stabbing it over and over, mangling it beyond identification. The girl looked up at her, and began laughing in a frenzied glee. Akane cringed in shock, bringing her shoulders in as she backed away several steps when she saw the girl’s face.

It was her. The girl looked exactly like Akane when she had longer hair.

The gyrus in her mouth squished as she bit down, and blood came out. Akane watched, horrified, as her double continued her motions, her hands digging through the brain like an animal scavenging for food. She cut the amygdala from the brain and barbarously tore into the almond-shaped nuclei with her teeth, chewing and swallowing.

“Stop! What are you doing?!” Akane tried to grab her double’s arm, but she evaporated in a shroud of darkness.

When the darkness dissipated, Akane saw herself again. She was beaten and bloody, her body twisted in a grotesque misshapenness. Her limbs were trapped under her stomach, the left side of her cheek pressed into the dirt. The double’s eye was open, staring lifelessly back at her. Vultures swooped down and began picking her off, rupturing her skin with vicious claws and beaks. They clawed at her legs, her neck, and her face - anywhere they could reach. The blood ran down the forest floor.

Akane screamed.

The scratchy fabric was tied tight around her head and the handcuffs cut into her wrists whenever she adjusted her position. She was bound and blindfolded. There was a rustling sound from across her. She was aware of being back in her apartment, and her ears perked up at the sound of footsteps against her wood floor.

An unpleasant, screeching noise resounded in her ears as the chair she was handcuffed to was dragged across the floor. He recklessly threw the chair forward, and Akane had to balance herself so she didn’t topple face first.

"To truly overcome yourself, you must be willing to accept the chaos and destruction of life. These are all valid experiences. You must embrace them, Tsunemori.”

He was murmuring the words in her ear, standing far too close in a way that was deceptively kind but unmistakably threatening. He was purposefully invading her personal space and examining her behavior. Sometimes she wondered if everything he did was based on some internal experiment he was conducting in his head - testing her will, her drive, her motivations. She knew, at least on some level, he was testing her limits, waiting to see what her breaking point was.

“Do you know what Sibyl is? I don’t mean the room of countless brains pumping power like we’re stuck in a parody of Plato’s Republic. I mean what it truly is.”

His fingers pressed through her hair, winding through her fine brown strands. She bit the side of her mouth, chewing at the inside of her cheek in a futile attempt to calm her frayed nerves. He gripped her hair firmly, and she involuntarily flinched in anticipation. Seeing her grimace, he waited a moment, loosening his hold ever so slightly. Akane was not fooled so easily, but, all the same, she was not expecting it when he pulled on her hair with such a tremendous force and urgency it caused her neck to hit the back of the chair. She groaned as sharp needles of pain shot through her.

He bent next to her ear, eyeing her as he whispered, “It is the degradation of everything that necessitates life. It does not create, it does not progress. It is a life void of any meaning and bliss, for it has deteriorated the very meaning of life.”

He released his hold on her head, ungentle in his movements as he dropped it forward. He began to pace in front of her.

“How can anyone feel in a society that is so sterile and colorless? This happiness you speak of - it is artificial.”

“Does this monologue have an end?” Akane jerked at the handcuffs around her hands, wincing when they sliced into her wrists. “Or do you just really love the sound of your own voice?”

He seemed amused by her sarcasm. A small, quiet chuckle elicited from his throat before he continued speaking.

Clearly the latter is true, Akane thought in mild annoyance.

“‘And that is the secret of happiness and virtue – liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny,’” he said, pausing only a moment before continuing. “Have you read Huxley? I think you’d find it illuminating. It’s rather similar to our society. You should read it. After all, it's not like it will affect your Psycho Pass.”

His fingers pressed against her eyelids as he pushed the blindfold up to her forehead, finally letting her see him. He curved his spine, leaning over until he was mere centimeters from her. Strands of his white hair fell over his shoulder, tickling her face.

“But you already know this, don’t you, Akane?” he asked, a half-smile forming on his lips.

She glared at him, still hesitant to admit the truth of his words.

"Don't call me that," her voice dropped, threatening.

"Hm?" he made a noise. "I would have thought my presence in such an... intimate place would be enough to tear down customs."

He backed away from her, and she watched as he unbuttoned the right cuff on his long sleeve dress shirt. He folded the cuff inside out and rolled the sleeve up to his elbow. He did this deliberately slow, taking his time with the other sleeve, letting her anxiety grow. When he was done he smoothed down the vest he was wearing and made an obvious show of pushing his hand into his pocket, sliding out his straight razor. He opened the blade, smiling at the familiar sharpness of it. He flicked it closed, and then open again, back and forth as he circled Akane’s chair. Akane looked up at him from half-lidded eyes in plain disgust. She was tired, frankly. She was tired of these nightly encounters and tired of Makishima’s never-ending games.

“Shall I get started?” he asked.

Akane's lips parted - a clever reply just on the tip of her tongue waiting to be unleashed - but he deftly brought the blade down upon her back, striking her with lightning quickness. Akane bit down on her lip and bruised it purple, using all her power to refuse the cry in her throat from escaping. The strap on her shirt was shred to pieces, exposing her bra and more of her flesh.

The blade cut into her skin like a kiss once more, stinging her sweetly, opening narrow fissures. She could feel the blood seeping through the slit, moving over the surface of her soft skin, pooling on the floor beneath them both. Akane's breath came out hot. She hungrily panted, gulping and gasping for air as she tried to control the tremors of pain rocking through her body. Any slight movement sent her reeling, the cuts opening deeper inside her, the wounds possessing her and marring her like wildfire.

After a minute, Akane managed to find her voice and in a weakened tone asked, “Why…are you doing this? What do you gain?”

“I want to punish you, Inspector. I want to punish you,” he brought the knife down again, “And I also want to free you.”

She cried out in pain, and a look of pure, unabashed delight colored his face. He smiled at her, wickedly, the devilish grin reaching almost to his eyes. Without waiting for her to catch her breath, he sliced her again.

Again.

Again.

“Makishima…” she moaned in pain, barely even able to articulate his name.

She opened her mouth to speak, to tell him to stop, that this wasn’t necessary, but his hand came to cover her mouth.

“Don’t speak,” he placed his other finger against the pulse of her neck, idly measuring her heart rate. “Not until you’ve learned.”

In the haze of his composed violence, Akane lost herself. The knife brought Akane closer and closer to the edge each time. It brought her closer and closer to some apex of release, closer and closer to some place where this insanity would finally make sense, closer and closer to some place where all her questions would finally be answered. The pain was intoxicating in a way, because it had to be. It was the only way she could handle it.

“You know, Sade said it was always by way of pain that one arrives at pleasure,” his resounding laugh was soft and airy - almost charming.

He placed the edge of the knife on her arm, just close enough so it barely touched her, and ran it down her elbow. The cuts were not as deep here, only wisp-like. He was simply toying with her. He grabbed her chin roughly, bringing his knife to her cheek. He let the side of the cool blade touch her skin, but did not cut her.

“Would you agree, Akane?” he asked, running the tip of his thumb against her lower lip.

She met him with a fierce, angry stare, but she did not speak. He placed the blade at her throat, tilting his head as he watched her struggle to still herself. She tensed, afraid if she moved the blade would slice across her skin. He seemed to thoroughly enjoy watching her come undone and it made knots twist and compress in Akane's stomach. She was unsure how far Makishima planned on going with this, and was starting to wonder if anything would be left of her at the end.

He raised an eyebrow, as if he expected her to answer him. He dug the blade closer to her throat until it drew blood. Akane simply continued glaring at him. Makishima narrowed his eyes. A silent war waged between them, but she had no doubt he intended to be the victor.

In one fluid motion, he dropped the knife from her neck and grasped her by the top of her hair. He shoved her head to the side and slashed her, deep, across the shoulder.

The scream Akane unleashed was dreadful, and chilling. Her entire body was trembling and moist with sweat. Blood covered her back and the area around her chair, and the blood from the cut on her shoulder was gushing out, streaming down her chest and back, painting her entirely red.

After a few seconds passed, Makishima gently let go of her. Her head fell to her chest, and she bit her lip again to keep from crying. He was in front of her, nonchalantly wiping the blood from his favored knife on one of her kitchen towels. He cleaned it thoroughly, examining each side until he was satisfied. He was the picture of restraint, his bones poised effortlessly - even elegantly - when he stood in front of her like this. Akane knew better, though. He was deceivingly vicious, his elegance completely stripped away when faced with his utterly savage inhumanness.

He bent down next to her chair, seemingly oblivious and unconcerned with the pools of blood, squatting to his knees so he could peer into her face.

“I just want people to live like human beings. You have a responsibility to the dead, Akane. You are bound to us. You must never forget that or else," he said.

“‘To do otherwise would be to approach the border where justice begins to die,’" Akane repeated his words back to him. "I remember. Don't think I've forgotten. You still haven’t answered my question, though. The question that started all of this in the first place.”

He exhaled, his eyes straying from hers as he stood and circled back behind her. The handcuffs were unchained from her hands, and Akane brought her wrists forward, rubbing at her raw skin. He handed her a fresh towel, and Akane pressed it to her back and over her shoulder, trying to stem the blood. Makishima’s hands came to rest at the back of her chair, and Akane twisted her neck slightly – wincing with pain as she did so – to look at him.

“To tell you the truth,” he closed his eyes, and for a moment, Akane could almost believe he was human. When he opened his eyes, there was a barely perceivable tinge of anguish in them. “I did not discard warmth, Akane... It discarded me.”

There was a strange thickness in his voice as he struggled to get the words out, and it unarmed Akane - took her off-guard. He peered down at her, and her brown eyes locked with his golden ones.

Her vision of him warped.

His face contorted, and his entire body was consumed by a dense, black smoke. The smell reached her nostrils - suffocating and enveloping her completely. The red glow from the flames surrounding him reflected in her eyes, searing the image into her mind forever.

Makishima smiled at Akane, and she was surprised by how archaic it seemed in appearance. There was an impression of world-weariness in the way his lips only slightly curved, but she felt it was the first time she’d seen a genuine smile from him, and it left an odd, bittersweet feeling in the center of her heart. His bones collapsed to dust before her eyes, and the dust was carried away by the wind, fading from her view.

She opened her eyes.

“Good Morning! It's 8:15 on May 8th,” her holo jellyfish’s sing-song voice said.

Akane lay there, eyes glassy and unblinking as she stared at Candy’s avatar, the memory of her dream fresh in her mind.

“Tsunemori Akane-san's Psycho Pass Hue this morning is powder blue!”

Powder blue, she thought. It’s always powder blue isn’t it…

And for once, this did not frighten her at all.