Chapter Text
When he had been very small, Akihiko had dreamt about the faceless figures of the parents he would never know; of sunny days and playing in the ocean with Miki, and other things he barely remembered as an adult. He had stopped remembering his dreams after the fire, after a nightmare about a burning world and screams he’d never actually heard. He’d never missed them, and he still woke up sometimes with brief flashes of images and lingering impressions hanging in his mind; feelings that he usually had to consciously put aside or risk starting his day in a mood he wouldn’t be proud of. He figured that was close enough.
When he’d been in high school, when they’d been wrestling with the world-ending crisis that they hadn’t even begun to understand until it was too late, he’d woken up frustrated more often than not. He’d roll out of bed with heat burning at the base of his skull that would only dissipate after a long jog and a cold shower. When he’d finally managed to get Shinji to rejoin the effort, the frustration had abated—he hadn’t really noticed at the time—but then October had hit and the sound of gunshots and the copper scent of blood had chased him awake for years.
The fear, sorrow, and pain that had followed him to wakefulness had taken more than a simple workout to dispel. With Shinji in the hospital and even Kirijo’s best medical specialists pessimistic of his chances, Akihiko had needed to seek out a new level of discipline to keep the guilt and pain from making it impossible to get out of bed in the morning. He’d shifted his entire focus to getting strong enough to help save the goddamned world and Caesar had been born of his cold, hard-edged determination to be better the next time he was needed.
And then they’d fought Nyx, and though they’d all done their best and fought their hardest it had taken Minato making the ultimate sacrifice for them to win. Akihiko had known it for the awful, self-absorbed thought it was the second it had popped into his head, but with the whole group reeling from Minato’s sudden passing and the constantly looming possibility of Shinji slipping away overnight too, Akihiko had needed to do something, because he obviously hadn’t been strong enough.
He’d left Japan less than a month after Minato’s death. He’d stayed at first because they’d all been made closer by their grief, then he’d tried to force himself to keep staying for Mitsuru’s sake, but she’d stayed strong and he’d been left to his own devices too often. He’d made the decision to leave the country one day when he’d been sitting at Shinji’s bedside, and he’d only told Mitsuru that he was leaving. She hadn’t said anything, and she hadn’t seen him off at the airport, but she had sent him a satellite phone by courier in time for him to pack it. The note with it had said “Just in case”.
The thing had sat at the bottom of his bag for a little more than two years. He’d dutifully pulled it out, checked and charged it every time he was somewhere with electricity, but he’d never once even thought about using it to place a call. It had more or less become a reminder that he might one day go back and try to pick up the pieces of his life again, even though he wasn’t sure he’d know what they’d look like if he did.
One day, it rang.
He’d been passing through Myanmar on his way to Thailand from India. The Yangon nightlife had been shocking after weeks of small villages and dirt roads, but not as shocking as the mechanical trilling coming from his pack. Mitsuru had been trying to get a hold of him for a little more than a month, but thanks to the monsoons that had been interfering with telecommunications along wide swathes of the countryside, she hadn’t been able to get through.
Shinji had woken up. He was well on the road to recovery. He’d been weaned off of the Persona suppressants while he’d been out. He was getting strong enough to start working on controlling Castor properly.
Akihiko booked a seat on the next flight to Japan.