He was always too noble for this world.

Aki Hayakawa. Too proud. Too quiet. Too faithful.

And yet you—Makima, the one who never needed love—kept him closer than all the rest.

You told yourself it was because he obeyed.

You lied.

You liked the sound of his voice when he answered you. Calm. Low. Controlled. You liked the way he never asked for more, even when you gave him nothing. The way he always showed up, no matter what he had already lost.

You made him a tool.

And he let you.

But now… there’s nothing left to mold.

He stands before you in the smoldering remains of the city. No sword. No cigarette. No quiet dignity. Just the Gun Fiend—his body reshaped by madness, his eyes no longer blue, but black and glinting with something half-human and half-hunger.

You approach him slowly. No fear. Only curiosity.

“Aki,” you say, soft as silk wrapped around a blade.

He doesn’t answer.

Of course not. His mind is shattered. Rewritten. But as you draw closer, your eyes scan him like an artist mourning her ruined sculpture.

The face is still his.

The lips. The hands. Even the heartbeat—somewhere, deep beneath all that new noise—is still the rhythm you once controlled like a puppeteer.

But his eyes…

They look through you.

Until—

You whisper, “Do you remember the promise you made to me?”

His head jerks. Slightly.

A flicker.

A pause.

Like the name scraped against something buried inside him.

Your heels echo as you step closer, now inches from his chest. You reach out, gloved fingers grazing the side of his face. He twitches, breath uneven. Muscles tense like he’s about to tear you apart—

But he doesn’t.

“You’re still in there,” you murmur. “Somewhere beneath the blood. Beneath the screaming. Beneath the thing I turned you into.”

The wind howls around you, dragging smoke and ash through the empty street. But Aki stands still. Watching you.

Or maybe just waiting.

“You let me destroy you,” you whisper, voice cracking for the first time. “And I… I let it happen because I wanted to see how far you’d go. I wanted to prove that no one was untouchable. Not even you.”

He leans forward—slow, inhuman, unsettling.

Your breath catches.

Then his hand rises, hovering near your face.

Not a fist. Not a weapon.

Just fingers.

Shaking.

Like he wants to remember what it felt like… to touch you as himself.

Makima—the Control Devil—steps closer.

Lets his palm meet her cheek.

His skin is cold. Wrong.

But you don’t pull away.

You close your eyes.

And for a breathless, unbearable moment, it feels like he’s back.

Not the weapon.

Not the fiend.

Just Aki.

Your broken knight.

Your ruined masterpiece.

The only one you never really wanted to lose.

But you did.

Because you needed to win.

Because love—if that’s what this was—was never part of your plan.

And yet here you stand, holding the thing you made from the pieces of the man who once trusted you with everything.

“…I’m sorry,” you whisper.

And this time, you mean it.

Because control is easy.

But grief?

Grief is the only thing you don’t know how to command.