✶ destruction, resolution ✶

★ one ★

In his own mind, Akutagawa thought there to be no place for matters of the heart.

He thought it a crude thing, a mockery of the logic of a sound mind and a stable goal, thought it absurd and foolish and utterly ridiculous to even consider being controlled by such a thing, and yet-

He knew that he was nothing but the fools he's read about in books of tragedies upon miseries.

Though he knew Gin had been telling him the same over and over and over again, Akutagawa never really realized how much of him was controlled by a hungry drive until he faced the weretiger, the human incarnate of needles pressed under his nail beds, and that he was the one who revealed Akutagawa's desperation for the futile praise of a monster who'd never yield. Without him, he would have had no trouble in continuing his duties as told, as he should-

But then he'd taken up the bounty hunt, and his fate irrevocably changed as something he'd locked deep deep inside him awakened-

Emotions, deep, dark, visceral, two pronged and sharp, a faded memory he faintly remembered from when he was a small child. Hatred, disgust, jealousy that sparked in his gut and down his spine the second he saw Atsushi, irritation as he saw how pathetic his excuse for living was glowing in his eyes.

When he'd been told how similar they seemed, he nearly put his fist through a wall.

(When talking with Gin about the situation, he actually had punched through the wall, only to be scolded by her as she forced him to sit so she could bandage his bleeding knuckles.)

The mere thought of him made his lips curl in disgust, because how could he be similar to that naive child? Despite his claws, Akutagawa thought him more a puppy, tiny and yipping and irritating.

(Later, when he'd seen the spine of iron Atsushi possessed, he'd been ashamed he ever thought any different as Atsushi stared him down with a rage that could burn down a forest if he so let it, and realized he himself never had such a nerve. He'd been born to serve and to fight, not to live, and seeing how Atsushi thrived never failed to piss him off.)

Eventually, he knew that the disease of a human heart was getting in his way, making him act irrationally in bouts and slips of unprofessional anger, but only ever toward Atsushi- Gin had warned him, told him that he was wasn't being himself and that it wasn't going to get him anywhere, but Atsushi had lit a flame of animosity that made Akutagawa see red with such a desperation that he needed to see it painted all over the walls to calm the beast in his chest. He'd always been cold, empty, decisive, knowing what needed to be done and having no hesitation in doing what was required to accomplish such, but that fire made him act like a child throwing a tantrum, and he didn't realize it until he replayed those moments in his mind while talking with his sister. (He'd long lost the original intent of his mission regarding the weretiger, making it personal instead of required, a desperate need to destroy this person who undermined what he'd done with his stupid words and pleas about life.)

Akutagawa's world had screeched to a stop the day of the boat fight, when he was blinded by the need to tear Atsushi to little pitiful shreds like every other one of his opponents when Atsushi had forced his way out of Rashoumon's bindings to reveal perfect stripes of blinding silver in their wake that peeked out of the exposed skin from Atsushi's torn shirt.

He'd known immediately what they were, of course, he wasn't stupid, but the idea of him having a soulmate had always seemed too ridiculous even from when he was young that he just dismissed it, but now that it was staring him in the face in shades of black and white and silver and red and shock-stained purple-gold eyes he couldn't fathom it.