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Goro is eight years old, and there’s a shadow moving on the dining room wall that doesn’t belong to any of the three people sitting at the table.
The setting sun is warm on the back of Goro’s head as he spears a bite, chewing mechanically as he watches the shadow move. His foster mother and father don’t see it - but then they don’t see much of anything that isn’t useful in the constant, sniping war between them. His foster father - Goro can’t seem to think of him as just father - makes a pointed observation about the temperature of the fish and his foster mother snaps back a too-polite comment about coming home late; Goro keeps his head down and watches the shadow slide across the wall.
It’s vaguely humanoid, although too angular to be strictly human, with long curved horns jutting up from what looks like its head. The shadow stops next to the outline of Goro’s own shadow and makes a gesture; it’s hard to make out, but it looks like it’s bringing its hand up to where its mouth would be, if it had a face.
It’s not a bad suggestion, and Goro takes another bite. He won’t eat nearly this well at the orphanage, when he goes back.
No one’s said it to him, but he knows it’s only a matter of time. When they had brought him to their home, his foster parents had told him he was going to make them a family. He had tried his best, he really had; but his best hadn’t been good enough, clearly. He had overheard his foster mother on the phone with Sawada-san the other day:
“ It’s not working out ,” she had said, and Goro knows that what she meant was ‘ he’s not working out.’
The shadow darkens, and Goro is struck by a sense of presence behind him. He resists as long as he can, but when the shadow on the wall sets a long clawed hand on Goro’s shadow’s head, he has to turn to see.
He’s momentarily blinded by the sun, but when he blinks the spots away there’s nothing there.
The feeling follows him up the stairs after dinner, as he brushes his teeth and as he climbs into bed. When the goodnights have been said and the lights are turned out, Goro waits, scanning the walls for a hint of movement. At first he thinks it hasn’t followed him, but then he sees a shadow slide across the closet doors, too large and angular to be the tree outside.
Hesitantly, Goro waves.
The shadow waves back.
Goro grins, pulling the covers up to his chin. He’s too old for imaginary friends or monsters in the dark - besides, even at eight Goro knows the real monsters don’t live in the closet or under the bed - but this one doesn’t seem to mean him any harm. His foster parents hadn’t seen it. It had followed him upstairs. That means it’s something special, just for him.
It seems friendly. Familiar, even.
Goro curls on his side, watching the shadow prowl the corners of his room until his eyelids grow heavy. He falls asleep with a the faint sensation of claws in his hair and a whisper he can’t quite catch in his ears.
Goro is thirteen, and there’s something black and white and sharp living inside him.
He’s careful to keep it contained. It’s taken some practice but he’s learned to breathe past the knives in his throat, to turn an under-the-breath curse into a witty rejoinder, to turn a scream into a smile. Still, there are times when when his fingers feel too long, too sharp - as if he could flex his hands and tear out the throat of a middle schooler who thinks the boy with no family looks like an easy target.
“You don’t even know who your father is ,” Sato sneers.
Not true, Goro thinks, but he doesn’t say it. It would sound like a lie, and Goro is careful to never sound like he’s lying. Besides, being the boy who made up a name for an absent father is worse than being the boy who doesn’t know. Better to take the hit where he can see the blow coming.
The thing inside him flexes and Goro smiles gently. “That may be true. I certainly don’t have the good fortune to have a father as respected as yours.”
Sato’s brow furrows.
“I’m sure you make him very proud,” Goro continues, folding his arms and very obviously not looking at the board with the mid-term results. “There must be three, maybe even four names between yours and the bottom of the class, Sato-san.”
Sato’s hands clench and Goro for a moment wonders if he really is going to get hit.
Then Sato snorts. “Whatever. Better than being alone in the world.” He bumps Goro’s shoulder on his way past and Goro turns with it.
For a moment he considers shifting his foot over and tangling it with Sato’s. The stairs are right there; Sato’s own momentum would do the work. He might even break something. Everyone saw Sato bump into Goro. He could say it was an accident.
The thing inside him stirs with interest, but Goro has already drawn his foot back.
There will be other opportunities. Sato is a third-rate bully; he’s not worth the effort and the administrative attention that would follow. Goro will find a subtler revenge, one that can’t be traced back to him.
The thing inside him purrs , and Goro smiles to himself.
He’s not alone. The thing inside has never left him, and for that Goro is grateful.
Goro is fifteen, and the cognitive world is a revelation. Here, he can see people as they really are, as he’s always known them to be: selfish and grasping and ugly . The cognitive copies are eerie at first, but they too are people as Goro has come to know them - sycophantic and empty, concerned only with the will of those stronger than them.
Goro cuts through them like water. They don’t matter. They’re not real.
The damage a Shadow can do is real enough, however, as he finds out when he rounds a corner too quickly and one knocks him on his ass. It happens so fast he hardly has time to roll out of the way of the next blow; the Shadow’s mace misses him by a hair’s breadth and crashes into the floor next to his head. Goro scrabbles back, pushing himself up on his hands but there’s no time, there’s no time , and as the Shadow advances all that Goro has left is fury .
He can’t die here, he can’t; it’s absolute bullshit that as far as he’s come, now that he has a purpose , that it should all be taken away.
It’s not fair.
It’s not right .
As the Shadow rears back to swing again Goro bares his teeth at it, and the only thing in his head, in his bones, in the very fiber of what passes for his soul is NO .
The world seems to slow, and then stop. A deep voice chuckles in the back of his head.
I’ve been waiting a long time , it says.
Something inside him shifts, unfolding in his chest and expanding until it presses against the inside of his skin, like he’s going to burst apart.
Are you ready? To seize the power inside of you, to wield it without hesitation?
Are you ready to take what you deserve?
There is only one answer to that, there has only ever been one answer to that, and Goro hears the echoing laughter in the back of his skull even before he snarls, “ yes .”
Time speeds up again as something tears open in his chest and he’s enveloped in dark flames that lick at his skin but don’t burn. A glowing sword swings over his head and cleaves the Shadow in two and Goro looks up to see a huge, angular, and above all familiar shape peering down at him.
“Loki,” Goro breathes, and it grins, wide and jagged. “Hello.”
Hello , Loki replies, and Goro can feel it scraping over his nerves, echoing in his bones.
Loki extends one giant hand down and Goro takes it, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet. His clothes have changed, he notes as he dusts himself off. That’ll be useful. He’s not sure how much bleeds over from this world to the one he comes from, but it would be best not to be recognized or remembered. The flames have barely dissipated, and Goro breathes them in, filling his lungs with fire and darkness. He feels alive , like he never has before, like he’s been waiting for this moment all his life. Like he was meant for this.
Another Shadow rounds the corner and starts as it spots him; Loki shifts behind him, within him, and Goro realizes that he’s waiting for a command.
Goro is glad to give it.
The Shadow falls before him - how can it not, when he has fire in his veins and Loki at his back - as does the next, and the next, and all the others who get in Goro’s way.
Goro is seventeen, and the world is unraveling around him.
“Damn it!” He drops to his knees, holding his side. He hadn’t thought - he’s been doing this for years , and yes, there are more of the Phantom Thieves than there are of him, but to think he’s been outclassed by a bunch of fucking amateurs -
They’re talking now, talking at him, giving him a bunch of useless platitudes that don’t mean anything; the only thing that might have meant something is watching him from behind a bone-white mask, silent.
“Even if you think people hate you, or don’t want you around, that’s -” Mona is saying, and Goro wants to scream .
“Shut up shut up shut up!” He can barely feel the impact of his fists on the floor through the ringing in his head.
He needs to make them stop . They can take their bullshit offer of friendship and shove it - they don’t know what they’re talking about, they don’t know what he’s like , they don’t know anything.
“Teammates? Friends?! To hell with that!” He pushes himself back up to his feet, the rage giving him new strength - because it had all been a lie, hadn’t it? Makoto, Ryuji, even Akira - they had been pretending at friendship just as much as he had, waiting to meet his double-cross with their own. None of it had been real. They had been playacting at being friends, stringing him along until they got what they wanted from him. Just like everybody else.
Loki stirs inside him, restless.
Goro has done everything right - grades, public appearances, interviews - everything that had been asked of him and he’s still here, swaying on his feet in front of - in front of a goddamn criminal and his group of misfit followers, who think they know anything about how the world works.
It’s not fair. It’s not right .
“How can - a worthless piece of trash be more special than me?” He’s screaming now, but it doesn’t matter, just like it doesn’t matter that Joker’s eyes widen before he frowns and takes a half step forward.
“That’s not the case,” he says, and Goro has had it up to goddamn here with useless platitudes. Joker can take his fucking pity and choke on it. He has no idea what he’s talking about, no fucking idea -
Goro’s breath catches as the idea occurs to him.
They claim to know him. They don’t .
But he can show them.
Crow had been useful but - Goro doesn’t need him anymore, does he? He doesn’t need any of them.
It’s so simple, he almost has to laugh. “Here,” he says, leaning back and sucking in a breath. It tastes like engine fumes and fury, Loki’s flames already stirring around his feet. “I’ll show you who I really am.”
Loki is never more than a breath away, as close as Goro’s own shadow. It takes less than a thought to call him, and he bursts into being at Goro’s back in a whirlwind of fire and darkness. Shedding Crow’s clothes for his own feels like stripping away a lie he’s outgrown; but he’s never outgrown this, never outgrown Loki’s voice echoing in his head and his strength coursing through Goro’s veins, ready to be used on Goro’s command.
Loki is - the one thing that’s stood by him, that’s never left. Goro should have known he was all that he could rely on, in the end.
“Justice? Righteous?!” The laughter bubbles out of his throat unbidden and hysterical. “Keep that shit to yourselves.”
Justice has never kept Goro warm at night. Righteous has never stopped anyone from leaving, from tossing him aside the moment he ceased to be useful.
To hell with that. The only thing that’s ever gotten Goro anything in this world is power .
It’s time to use it.