Chapter Text
He knows it’s fake. He knows even when he wakes up in the same place with the same people.
He knows, but he still remembers.
The torture he expected. The dissection was a new benefit of being a god, but he didn’t register how bad it would be until they took out his hear and put him in that accursed machine.
It set up a rescue, and then things started to change.
Neon and Michinaga helped him to rest in the salon, then Keiwa stayed and assaulted him. He kept this wide eyed face of love. Ace felt sick. He was in too much pain to move.
It only got stranger from there.
It took weeks to recover in the fake world, he had no heart and Keiwa was crazy. Still he knew it couldn’t be real. Then a fight came around, some Jyamato remanant group.
They killed Neon. Except she was back that night at home with a hole in her stomach.
That pattern continues. Grotesque parodies of his fears for them. When the same happened to Michinaga, he didn’t leave a waking corpse. Tsumuri was take. And replaced with her drone like younger self. It lasted years.
Ace knew it was fake. Perhaps that’s why only his hands turned to stone. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t fight, after that.
He didn’t want to be found. He doesn’t want them to see him. Is he even their Ace, anymore?
He tries to remember them and he remembers the fakes instead.
He wakes up to Keiwa holding him, and he shakes himself from his grip. He tries to stand, forgetting the soles of his feet are currently mangled, and he barely stifles his cry of pain.
Keiwa jumps up to help.
“Ace!”
“…Tycoon,” Ace says. He knows it wasn’t real. He can still feel the false Keiwa’s touch.
He shoves Keiwa away. It doesn’t do much. Keiwa blinks.
“Did they… make us evil, or something?” He asks.
Only you.
“No,” Ace says. He manages to get back on the bed on his own. “I asked to be alone.”
“And I’m not letting you,” Keiwa says. “Please just tell me, Ace.”
“The ones I loved were gone,” Ace says. “Or do you need more before respecting my wishes?”
“No, I—“ Keiwa sighs. “…I’m sorry. My head hasn’t been clear for days.”
“…I know,” Ace says.
Keiwa died too, in the end. It was brutal as it was disgusting. Ace imagines Keiwa must be feeling much the same as Ace felt, watching Neon rot and no one else notice, looking at how gruesome and permanent Michinaga and Keiwa’s deaths were by comparison.
Ace reaches for Keiwa. Keiwa comes. He lays his head against Ace’s chest - a place where nothing is healing underneath. Ace remembers how gently they re-dressed him while they got to the salon, how none of them could hide their horror.
He kisses Keiwa’s head.
“I will heal, and we can forget this.”
(Except that the illusion lasted a decade.)