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It shouldn't have happened.
Joker's head feels heavy, hazy. A Dizzy ailment?—no, no, that's not it.
His ears are ringing. The last Maragidyne had hit him almost full force, his dodge unsuccessful—Morgana or Futaba would have chided him for that, were they here.
He's on the ground, his dagger slack in his fingers. Joker tries to adjust his grip, but before he can, something else closes around his collar and pulls.
Joker twists his shoulders as his weapon slips out of his hand, and he tries to break free, tries to call up his Persona, but instead of the resonant roar of an answering name, all he hears are muted murmurs, as if from behind a curtain—
Focus, focus, he has to get up—
A hand—if it could be called a hand—presses against his neck, the points of its claws close, too close to his jugular.
Joker breathes in once, holds himself very, very still, intimately aware of how the Shadow could slit his throat as easily as a hand cutting a deck of cards.
Ah. He's facing the wrong side of the battlefield. Instead of the Shadow he had been fighting, it is Crow he sees.
Crow, who now straightens up from a half-crouched pose, his chest rising and falling rapidly with quick breaths, his legs shifting into a battle-ready stance as he swings up his sword.
"Give him back," Crow hisses, taking a single step forward. The venom in his voice cracks through the air like a bullet. His eyes are cold as ice while Loki behind him is wreathed in flames, the dancing silver of a gathering Megidoloan.
The Shadow above him—the Shadow, which one was it?—tilts its head. The Missionary of Depravity, Joker recalls—strong against curse and physical attacks, no weaknesses to any elements—he had switched between three Personas to discover that—
When it speaks above Joker's head, odd polyphonic tones ring out behind gravelly words, tinged faintly with perplexed curiosity. "This is how you would return our lord's hospitality? To the kindness that our Ruler would extend to ones such as you? Listen to sense—all our master truly wishes for is a better world for everyone's sake—"
"I don't fucking care," Crow says, peeling back his lips to show teeth. "I have no need for such revolting kindness or hospitality. Him, on the other hand—I need him. Do not try my patience."
The Shadow's hand is still there, the pressure of it tangible. Think, think fast—what weapons does he still have on hand—?
His right hand twitches. The already-tight grip around his collar tightens even more.
Careful, a voice whispers, in the back of his mind.
The fatigue in his limbs is still too heavy, the pacing of his thoughts still too muddled. Careful. It wouldn't do to be rash.
"A pity," the Shadow sighs. "There is no need for such unpleasantness. Violence is inconducive to a place of healing. I have to ask you to abandon your weapon."
"Asking? Or ordering?" For a second, Joker almost imagines that he sees Crow's eyes flicker down towards him, before focusing back onto the Shadow.
Loki is still suspended in the air at Crow's back, deep silver and black shifting around his limbs. But he hasn't attacked yet, hasn't unleashed any shrieking battle cries reveling in blood and havoc.
"We will escort you to wherever you wish to go. Even to our Ruler, if that is what you ask for. Of course," the Shadow adds, a certain craftiness bleeding into its words, "there are no requirements that either of you must be awake when we take you to him."
Crow doesn't respond.
The silence is—disconcerting. In battle, Crow spits out mockery, insults, threats—whatever he wishes against his enemies, but he is never, ever silent.
Oh.
He's silent now because Joker is—. Joker is a hostage.
"I ask again: won't you abandon your weapon?" The Shadow speaks now with a calm, clinical tone, an unusual contrast with its hulking figure, its curved claws and sharp-pointed trident. "And a healing item, to refresh my appearance. We may take you anywhere you like, afterwards, peacefully. Our master's domain is meant to be open to all visitors."
And Crow—merciless, mercurial Crow—lowers his sword.
It lands on the floor at his feet, the clink barely audible against the tiles. Wordlessly, Crow pulls out a tiny bottle of medicine, the one Joker had given to him before they had entered, and tosses it at the Shadow.
"Well?" Crow says, stepping away from his sword and taking another step towards the Shadow, "I'm waiting. If you are too incompetent to know the way—"
A sudden yank backwards, the motion none too gentle, and Joker bites back a hiss.
Crow stops moving.
"Ah," the Shadow says. "Did I say weapon? I meant your weapons. I should have specified. Your gun too, visitor."
Crow's chest rises and falls for a moment, before he withdraws his gun, and tosses it to clatter next to his sword. "Fine. Satisfied?"
His voice is flat. Deliberately smooth and featureless, like a pane of glass. As if out of nervousness, the fingers of his left hand extend and start to tap over the side his leg.
One. Two. Three.
One. Two. Three.
Middle, index, thumb.
Crow moves forward, takes one step, then another when the Shadow doesn't stop him. Close enough now, that Joker can see the jagged shape of his horned helmet, the reflective red glass over his eyes. "Let him up," Crow says, sharply, jerking his chin towards Joker. "Unless you intend to drag him all the way there to your master like some pet dog."
"Very well. We will gladly escort you as welcome patients. The center appreciates your cooperation."
The tapping of his fingers stop, hand opening flat and empty against his side, and Crow lunges forward.
"Joker!"
Joker flattens himself to the ground.
He rolls forward. Snatches up his dropped dagger from the ground, and slaps it hilt first into Crow's waiting grasp in one fluid movement.
Easy. Easy. He had caught on to Crow's hand signals after all.
A hiss in the air, a thud, a shriek—and Crow is now at Joker's side, his left arm and hand wrapped tightly around his back, lifting him up, Joker's face pressing into Crow's shoulder with the movement—
Crow screams, "Loki!—"
The swell and burst of an attack, silver sparks behind Joker's closed eyelids, and it is over.
"Dammit, where are we heading to—? Can't you even walk two steps without falling—Joker!" Crow's voice is sharp, and he lets out what sounds like another swear as Joker half-stumbles around a corner.
"Safe room. Next left." The words are hard to pull from his throat. Like forcing out stuck pins in a rusted lock.
Crow makes a turn, shifts an arm—Joker sags on his shoulder for a moment, as he reaches out a hand. A click, a creak and they both stagger into the safe room.
The scrape of a chair over the carpet—and he sits. Akira breathes out, slowly, intently. Lays his hands flat on the table. Red gloves bright against white plastic.
He can't let himself falter, not now—Yoshizawa needed him. His friends—Morgana, Futuba, Ann, Ryuji—everyone, everyone was out there, outside of the Palace walls and waiting—
"Joker." Crow's voice is quieter than it had been in battle, almost hoarse.
In their past visit to this Palace, in his blue-black guise of Loki, Crow tended to stand further away from him in any rooms they had stopped in, leaning against a sideline row of shelves or lockers, his demeanor switching at the toss of a coin between quiet calculation and restless energy.
He's not standing nearly so far away now.
Crow—Akechi, Akechi—is in front of him, one of his knees slightly bent to make up for the height difference. Facing Akira directly, instead of looking away.
Odd. This attentiveness, here and now, was reassuring somehow.
Something about this feels like muscle memory—Akechi standing behind him like an honor guard, as he did during what seems like a lifetime ago in Leblanc's attic, a hand laid over the edge of his chair, mere inches from Akira's shoulder.
Back then, Akira had willed his head not to turn around too often to glance at Akechi, to study his expressions. Reminded himself to keep his eyes focused on the plans the Phantom Thieves were discussing or on the vase of flowers on the table—a sweet cluster of jasmine, a freebie from his part time job at Rafflesia—
How does that saying go?—'a flower on a high cliff'—something beyond his grasp—but he's a thief, a thief down to his bones (in his mind, Arsène laughs, with mockery, with triumph). He knows too well how to sneak and slip by and climb and fly to anywhere, to anyone, nothing too locked away for him to free—
"Can you even keep up with me, the way you are now?"
Akira withdraws his hands from the table, shifts in his seat towards the sound of the voice.
Akechi's left hand reaches out, curls around the right side of Akira's chair. The other rises to push up the visor of his helmet, no longer shielding his eyes behind red glass. The vitriol in his stare is truly impressive. "If a pitiful attack like the one from before was enough to slow you down...I won't hesitate to leave you if you aren't quick enough. Don't expect me to play nurse for you either, Joker."
As he speaks, Akechi holds out a single finger in front of Akira's face. His eyes narrow, scrutinizing Akira's expression as he moves his finger from the left to the right.
"You would have taken damage from that attack too, if it had hit you," Akira says. "And I don't have a concussion."
At Akira's reply, Akechi's lips thin and pull down. A deep frown. "In the state you are in, it wouldn't be surprising if you did. Healing. Now."
"I've got it," Akira says, and squeezes his eyes shut for a moment as the lights above flicker on-off for a heartbeat.
The strain of the past six—seven?—battles must have been getting to him.
Fighting with just the two of them—just him and Akechi—made battles a little trickier. Not insurmountable, but trickier.
When Akechi had come back—he had come back—when he had appeared to both him and Sae on the streets of Shibuya—Akira almost mistook it as a fever dream.
Akira had gone back to Leblanc, thought and thought and thought, and texted Akechi. Once, twice, and once more for good measure in case he hadn't seen the previous two.
No reply. No reply. No reply.
The relief that flooded through him when Makoto mentioned Akechi again to the rest of the Phantom Thieves a couple days later—told them that her sister had seen him, spoken with him, was recording his testimony—was dizzying.
Makoto knew he was alive.
Sae knew he was alive.
Akechi was alive.
He was alive. Alive and real.
Real, fake. Fake and real, masks and true faces—find the red ball beneath the cups, the left, the center, or the right? Quickly, quickly—swift fingers and sharp eyes. Deception, betrayal, a murderer or martyr? In the attic, Akira had rifled through his past experiences with Akechi with a cold jeweler's gaze—like he was in Madarame's palace again, judging two paintings both alike in dignity.
"Of course you got it," Akechi says, in a perfectly even tone. "Joker's always got a strategy for everything. So please tell me: whatever would would have possessed you to waste your energy on a Diarahan for me instead of pushing for a final attack?"
Akira lifts a thermos of coffee from his pocket to his lips. Tilts it up so he can sip at it carefully.
He's not answering Akechi's question right away, he knows.
Once the last drop is gone, Akira licks his lips. Summons the energy to cast a healing Diarahan on himself, and looks back up to meet Akechi's eyes.
"You would have done the same for me," Akira says.
Akechi opens his mouth. Closes it.
There was a shrine Akira had read of once, a particular one in the Mie Prefecture—it had aged, was torn down, rebuilt, aged, torn down, rebuilt—years and years down the line, each time in accordance with its previous materials and measurements. Did it matter how often it had been rebuilt? It was still real.
Even with his ulterior motives, his own cat's-paw agenda—the words Akechi had spoken to him, had confided to him, his hatred and envy and feelings and longings—were real.
As they were now, without any pretense between them, their promise was—
"Would I have, really?" Akechi's voice is scathing. "I can't decide if your continued belief in me is touching or just means you're touched in the head—and with a lack of solid evidence as a basis for saying such things—"
Akechi pulls away his hand from Akira's side, shifts his weight on his heels as if readying himself to take a step backwards.
Seemingly of their own volition, Akira's fingers reach out, fold around Akechi's wrist. His glove is a stark splash of color over Akechi's sleeve.
Caught red-handed. The thought flashes through his mind for a moment, and Akira wants to laugh.
"You would have done the same," Akira repeats.
Akechi stops speaking. Doesn't say anything more, but merely tilts his head down to look at the hand on his wrist.
Slowly, slowly, he sweeps his gaze up, and stares at Akira.
An exchange from The Great Thief rises up to mind, unbidden—"She was looking at me, Ganimard, and I loved them. Do you fully understand what that means: to be under the eyes of a person that one loves? I cared for nothing in the world but that. And that is why I am here, in this prison.”
Another memory—that Christmas Eve, the biting wind against his chapped lips, Akechi's crisp, clear syllables cutting through the chattering crowd—"I offer myself in his place so I can confess what I know of Shido’s crimes. Is that all right with you?"—
Even Arsène had been caught once—for the sake of—
He watches Akechi breathe in. Out. In again. Restrained, measured—as if he was afraid if he didn't hold back, he would have drawn water into his lungs instead of air.
That look he wears now is a rarely-seen surprise the whites visible around his eyes, the line of his mouth twisting the way it does when he appraises Akira's preceding move in billiards—with just the slightest tinge of wariness.
Fight or flight—but Akira hasn't let go of him yet.
More lines float up, snatches off a page he had flipped through in Jinbocho—"But first I'll turn all in your arms, into a wild wolf / but hold me fast and fear me not and I will be your one true lo—"
Focus. Focus.
Akechi hasn't shaken him off yet. Is still watching him, waiting, waiting for Akira's next move.
"You should have this too," Akira says. His right hand tugs carefully on Akechi's wrist, pulling him forward a step, and he brings up his left hand to cover Akechi's open palm.
Akira lifts his hand. The wrapper crinkles as Akechi's fingers clench around the packaged food item.
"It works better if you eat it," Akira says, when Akechi continues to not say anything, and releases his right hand from Akechi's wrist, drops it to his side. An empty hand—unarmed and harmless.
Akechi glances sidelong at him for one second. Two seconds. Decides against picking up their last argument in favor of tearing apart the package in hand, and polishes off the Soul Food pack in three neat bites.
"By the way," Akechi says, after swallowing the last bite. "Don't be so careless with this for a second time."
Akira moves his eyes from Akechi's face to his hands.
He's holding something else between his fingers now, a slim, shining thing.
It tumbles through the air between them in a graceful arc—like the downward flutter of a butterfly.
Akira's hand darts into the air. It falls, lands—his palm closes around the hilt of a familiar dagger.
That's right. Akechi had been holding on to it, hadn't he?
Whenever Akira had used his weapons in Mementos or Palaces, they usually returned within reach once the battle was over.
This one must have stayed with Akechi this time, because Akira believed he had need of it.
"Thank you," Akira says, "for looking after it."
Akechi holds Akira's gaze, their eyes locking for a heartbeat longer than was perhaps necessary. "If it's that important to you," Akechi says at last, "don't lose hold of it so easily."
He reaches up and lowers the top of his helmet; becomes Crow again.
Akira stands from his seat; is once more Joker, dashing and daring, insouciant and fearless. "Let's go."
We'll be all right, Joker thinks (Akira thinks).
Akechi is the one watching his back, after all.