Chapter Text
Ren's head hung low as he brought up the rear of the group trudging through the waters flooding a transformed Shibuya. When Ryuji turned around, playfully telling him to pick up his feet a little, Makoto scolded him for not considering that Ren might understandably be fatigued, having just summoned a skyscraper of a Persona, and both slowed down a little to make sure Ren didn't fall too far behind.
When Ren swiped his sleeve across his face, Ann frowned and asked if he was okay, and Haru asked if he needed to borrow her handkerchief. "Don't need anything," he answered dully. "It's fine. 'M fine."
Yusuke and Futaba had their attention on him too now. Any other time and they would have worked as a group to figure out why their friend sounded so lifeless straight away. But then in the next instant, the water they'd been wading through crystallized and shattered into brilliant pieces carried away by the air. The massive skeletons towering over the city began to disappear. And Morgana, too, was disappearing, his whole body glowing with light. With the hopes of the people. He looked at his friends with clear, tranquil eyes, and told them how all the world was cognition and that, as long as they stuck together and saw things through as one, they could get through anything. He was being taken away from them, fading into the very air, but his expression was calm with acceptance.
Then Morgana's translucent eyes clouded. "Joker?" His peaceful expression twisted. "Hey, wait--Joker--" He reached down with one paw futilely, far too out of reach.
Everyone's eyes snapped to Ren. His head was still hanging low, heedless of Morgana calling him. He listed to his right, seeming as though he would go off-balance any second, but he didn't move to correct himself. He didn't seem to be moving at all.
There were tears trickling from his eyes. Thick, black, putrid-looking tears.
He toppled.
"JOKER!"
Morgana's cry was cut off in a flash of light. In an instant, he was gone, and Shibuya was returned to normal. Pedestrians crowded the pavement, murmuring with various shades of concern and curiosity as they maneuvered around six teenagers hovering over a seventh sprawled on the ground.
They moved into a protective circle quickly, Ryuji squatting down and turning Ren onto his back to get a good look at him. He was met with open but blank gray eyes that stared through him. "Ren. Renren?" He leaned down over their friend before his head jerked up to Makoto. "Yo, he ain't breathing...!"
Makoto was reaching for an Angel Tart before she remembered they were no longer in the Metaverse; the Metaverse was no more. There was no convenient spell or item to revive Ren. "I--I'll call for help!" she told Ryuji, fumbling for her phone in her pocket. She punched 119 and brought it up to her ear as she tried to take stock of the situation. Could a hospital even do anything? Black tears--the last time she had seen black tears like that had been Kunikazu Okumura's televised mental shutdown. No one could fix a shutdown. But a shutdown only happened when someone's Shadow was killed, and as a Persona-user, Ren always had his Shadow with him, so...so...what had happened to him? Why did it look so much like a shutdown? A voice started to speak on her phone, asking something, and Makoto responded instantly. "Yes, hello? We're at the Shibuya station crosswalk. My friend collapsed, he isn't breathing... Unconscious? Possibly, he's not responding to anything--"
Her eyes flicked to Ann as she realized the blonde had joined Ryuji on the ground. Ann touched Ren's neck for a few brief seconds, and then she put both her hands on Ren's chest and pushed down. And pushed again. And again.
Chest compressions. "His heart stopped?" Makoto asked, and the look Ryuji gave her, wild-eyed and desperate, was answer enough. Ann didn't say anything, grunting as she pushed down repeatedly in a rhythm Makoto recognized. The brunette shut her eyes, willing her voice to stay steady as the operator asked more questions. She needed to remain calm, needed to shut out Futaba's wailing. Haru was holding the younger girl close to her, murmuring rambling reassurances, but Makoto could tell from the sick look of fear on Haru's expression that she was barely keeping her own composure. They both knew what this looked like, too. Yusuke's voice rang out, deep and strident, as he ordered those who gawked to move along and not crowd them unless they could offer assistance. Ann had moved on to tip Ren's head back with a gentle touch on his chin and forehead. She pinched his nose shut and covered his mouth with hers, pushing a breath into him two times, and then turned her head to look at his chest.
It was so very still. Makoto felt the frustrated sob Ann choked back burning in her own throat. Ryuji pushed her on through another set of chest compressions--"You gotta keep trying, c'mon, he needs you--" and then, as Ann attempted another rescue breath, encouraged Ren--"Ren, c'mon, just breathe, buddy, you know how," absolutely babbling, and--
Ren's chest rose under the thin layers of his two shirts before sinking back down. Ann gave him one more breath before sitting back with a loud sigh of relief, her hand gently brushing over his chest to feel that it kept filling with air. "He's breathing again," Makoto told the operator. "Can you still send--? Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'll stay on." She moved the phone away from her mouth to tell the others. "An ambulance is already on its way. It should be here in a few minutes."
"Futaba, he's breathing," Haru told the girl still crying into her blue coat. "Futaba?"
"He sh-shouldn't have stopped!" Futaba yelled. "And--and even if he's breathing again, he still--is he--Ren...?"
"Hey, give him a few," Ryuji told her. "He's alive, but he's totally out of it. Eyes aren't focused at all."
Makoto wondered if Ryuji hadn't realized what Futaba was afraid of, or if he was just stubbornly refusing to give it any thought. The bleached blond seemed to be calming down now that Ren was breathing again, but the thought of a mental shutdown was keeping her on edge. She knelt down at Ren's side next to Ann to get a closer look at him, then dug a tissue pack out of another pocket with her one free hand. Opening the pack, she carefully wiped any traces of black off of the boy's slack face. "Ren, can you hear us? Please, say something."
Ren's lips pursed, an encouraging sign. They worked for a second before they managed to push a word out. "...Something."
Makoto's hand paused mid-wipe on his cheek. Even Yusuke's voice faltered as he looked back. There was a beat of silence, and then Ryuji barked out an awkward but relieved laugh. "Hol--Holy shit, Ren, you can only crack stupid jokes like that because you're already flat on your back. You see Ann's face? Makoto's?"
He wasn't seeing either of their faces at all, his eyes still staring lazily toward the sky.
"Anyone else would be a dead man," Ryuji said, shaking his head. Ren didn't answer, and the corners of Ryuji's casual smile gradually turned downward again. "Ren. Come on. Say something, for real this time. You feeling okay?"
"Something...for real? This time...you...okay..."
It wasn't a mocking imitation at all. Ren mumbled the words back with no inflection besides faint confusion, as if he truly didn't understand what was being asked of him.
"Ohhh, okay," Ann said. Her face was white, with a splotch of inky black on one cheek where she'd picked it up from Ren. "Let's not ask him questions right now. He--he needs to rest, you know? Just stay with us, Ren."
He didn't respond at all to Ann. Makoto watched his chest to make sure he was still breathing before she registered how much Ann was shaking and wrapped an arm around the blonde's shoulders, drawing her close and brushing away the black residue on her face with a flick of the thumb. Her own face felt warm despite the winter chill. She'd started crying, too. Even Ryuji was blinking fast, though he seemed determined to push back any tears with the scowl now fixed on his face. Yusuke placed a hand on his shoulder as he backed up and stood next to him, unable to stop the throng that was forming around them, though he was still trying to keep some moving along by answering questions--their friend had collapsed but would be fine, emergency services had already been called and were on their way, please, let them have space--
The growing din was pierced by an approaching siren.
Futaba kept her face pressed into Haru's shoulder, unable to deal with the sheer number of people close by, but Makoto could still hear her muttering. "Satanael. How does someone control that much power? He doesn't. Overload. Over--"
Haru shushed her. Ryuji's voice joined Yusuke's, louder and angrier, as he whirled to his feet and told people to back off so the ambulance could get through. The crowd started to thin, and Makoto could see a uniformed paramedic making his way to them. "They're here," she told Ann, and then Ren, "They're here, Ren, you'll be all right...!"
He didn't respond to that news, either, and she was afraid she might have lied. This might not be a shutdown, but Ren's mental state obviously wasn't normal.
What if Futaba was right? What if summoning Satanael had come with a cost?