Work Text:
"Hey guys. I know it's been so long since I've texted any of you. I feel like my mind is about to consume me from the inside out and there's nothing I can do. Everything feels numb. I desperately want to disappear. I hope everything's been going well in the Metaverse and that you guys are all healthy! Morgana and Makoto better be keeping you guys safe :P I haven't eaten a proper meal in forever. Isn't it ironic that my own mind, the thing I searched so desperately to free from the cognition of the masses, is the thing that will eventually be my downfall? I probably won't be coming to Leblanc for a while. I can't muster up the energy to get out of bed. I'm scared I'm going to do something. Been feeling ill LOL. Anyways, take care you guys!"
You knew it was the coward's way out to text the Phantom Thieves a message like that instead of going to them in person and telling them why you hadn't been present like you usually were. Every time you tried to step foot outside of your room, though, it felt like the dark version of your Persona, the Shadow that you had worked so desperately to throw off when it came time to rip off your mask in Kamoshida's Palace, was gripping onto your shoulders and digging its claws into your skin. It felt like the winter air from Mount Fuji had made it all the way to your ears, whispering words coated with venom that you had repeated so often they didn't even feel like words anymore.
With every minute that passed by, you dragged yourself deeper and deeper into your own void.
I wonder if they've figured out already.
They probably had. No functioning, normal, healthy human being would ignore text upon text from those they considered close friends and allies.
Have I been obvious about it?
You'd like to think you've been doing a pretty good job of hiding your true feelings from your friends. You'd grown accustomed to playing your role over the past few years, fitting yourself neatly into the cogs of the machine that was society despite having joined a vigilante group that prided itself on going outside of the social norm.
Maybe that wasn't the best analogy. You rolled over onto your stomach, your eyelids falling but never quite closing as you stared blankly at the wall. You'd played your role of being happy and healthy, of being okay, of being more Arrow than you. And maybe that was contradictory; after all, Arrow was supposed to be you. Arrow was supposed to be your true self, the one that came out among like people and within closed walls away from the prying eyes of society. But you'd come to realize that Arrow was the ideal you, the glorified you that you wanted to be all the time. And now you were experiencing the dreadful burnout/Imposter Syndrome combination that so many mental health experts (including your psychiatrist) had warned about.
I'm such a fraud.
It pissed you off to no end that you couldn't fall asleep. You had gone in for an appointment just a few weeks ago to get your antidepressant medications adjusted, seeing as how you could barely make it through the entire day without almost nodding off. It had caused a few close calls in the Metaverse that you'd barely managed to explain as lack of sleep in preparations for Exam Week. However, you almost regretted getting those adjusted, since your psychiatrist had taken "I can't stop dozing off" as "I need to be awake for as long as possible so I can really get into my own head." Yeah, that sounds great!
You groaned and rolled over again, coming onto your left side this time so you could stare at the clock on your desk. You deadpanned to yourself when you saw that it was only eight in the evening. No wonder you couldn't fall asleep.
Your phone pinged beside you, and you lifted it up to look at the screen. The bright light in the darkness of your room threw you off for a second, and it took you longer than usual to struggle through the message.
Akira: Open up. This is the police.
Following that message, someone knocked at your front door, and a surge of dread made your blood feel like lead. As much as you wanted to find humor in Akira's dry text, the sheer anxiety of Akira of all people visiting you now made the laughter freeze over and plummet into the depths of your stomach. You hadn't found the motivation to shower or even change out of your pajamas for at least three days, and you were certain you looked like the Reaper right now. Briefly, you entertained the idea of telling Akira that you were out of the house, and even opened your IM app to tell him that.
Akira: Don't even try and say you're not home. Futaba's tracking your location.
Another groan left your lips. You hated the fact that Futaba had decided to exclusively track your and Akira's phones. It almost made you wonder if Akira had only decided to check up on you because Futaba noticed you hadn't moved outside of your house in days.
Actually, scratch that. You didn't have to wonder.
You mustered up enough courage and strength to get out of bed. The moment you were upright, that Imposter Syndrome came back in droves and you walked over to your closet to grab a change of clothes. You tossed on a different baggy t-shirt and a different pair of pants, got your hands through your hair to at least try and fix it, and got a drink of water before you made it to the front door. If anything, you felt a little more like a functioning human, and it was with great pain and suffering that you put a smile on your face and opened the door.
"What brings the Tokyo Police here?" you teased, leaning up against the doorframe.
Akira raised his eyebrows. "The neighbors complained that this specific apartment was devoid of life and wanted us to come make sure. We see signs of life but no hint of a life."
"Oh, har har har." You rolled your eyes and stepped to the side to allow Akira inside, but the phrasing of his sentence gave you pause. "Wait, 'we?'"
Akira gestured behind him. You were surprised you hadn't caught the bright orange hair sooner. "Uh, hi."
Your gaze softened at the sight of Futaba. Judging by Akira's little cough and barely concealed smirk, he'd noticed it happen, and you gave him a death glare. "Hey, Futaba," you said. "You're more than welcome inside, seeing as how Mister Joker over here's already done that in spades."
Akira didn't say anything and set a plastic bag down on the coffee table. "I just came by to drop this off," he explained. "It was actually Futaba who wanted to chat."
It was your turn to raise your eyebrows this time. "Oh, really?" You turned to Futaba and put your hands on your hips expectedly. "What did you need to talk about?"
"N-Nothing that concerns Akira!" she exclaimed, turning to glare at Akira with a pronounced pout. "Go on, use a GoHom and make like a tree! Get, get!"
Akira laughed and held his hands up in surrender. "Alright, alright. Don't do anything stupid, you crazy kids."
"We're in the same grade," you complained. Akira's lips curled up in a familiar smile, and despite the cloud hanging over your head you managed to return it. You thought you had it down to a fine science, but you saw Akira make eye contact with Futaba from over your shoulder with barely hidden concern. That alone almost made you grab Futaba and toss her outside with Akira, but you couldn't bring yourself to do that to Futaba. "Get outta here, you're making Inkling Girl nervous."
"Don't call me that!"
You shut the door behind Akira and turned to Futaba. Now that Akira was gone, there was a perceptible shift in the mood; the amusement had disappeared and there was an odd and undeniable tension between you and Futaba. You hated that it was there, but you supposed it was a given, considering the fact that you had went MIA with no explanation, despite promising Futaba all those months ago that you wouldn't leave her by herself if you could help it. You could only imagine how much Futaba hated you, or at least her anger with you.
"Well, what did you--"
You cut yourself off as Futaba moved forward without any warning and wrapped her arms around your waist as tight as she could. The surprise and shock left your hands hanging above Futaba's shoulders, just barely ghosting over the skin revealed by her loose-hanging coat, and she began to tremble, mumbling something. Her warm breath fanned across your torso, and it felt like someone had pressed a hot pad against that specific part of your body.
"Stupid," she was saying. "Stupid, stupid, stupid! You're an idiot! A big, dumb, stupid...stupid idiot!"
"Whoa, careful with that advanced vocabulary," you teased, trying to keep your voice from breaking. It had been so long since someone had held you like this, since someone had called you out on your bullshit so bluntly. "Why am I an idiot, exactly?"
She shook her head furiously, refusing to move from her safe haven. A part of you wanted to make a quip about her glasses getting smudged, but the distinct tremble in her voice made that all die down. "Because you thought I--we wouldn't notice! Maybe Ryuji and Mona would be slow on the uptake, but, well, I've been there before. I already have all of the cheat codes and walkthroughs memorized when it comes to dealing with all of that stupid mental illness crap. I've lived through this stuff, you idiot, and you thought I wouldn't see clear through your schemes? You're the worst super boss in the world ever!"
Although her remarks could be perceived as mean-spirited and downright hurtful, the dampening of your shirt from her tears begged to differ. You were stunned into silence, your hands still hovering above her skin.
"And, well, you're usually one of the most active members of the Phantom Thieves, but your excuses have all been that you're too exhausted or sick to infiltrate a Palace of all things," she continued, beginning to lose steam the longer you went without saying something. "We had an emergency meeting earlier before Akira and I came over here because all of us could tell that something was off with that copy-and-paste message you sent us. Seriously? A message? You couldn't even, like, call us or show up to Leblanc--well, I know you wouldn't have been able to, but still! I was worried sick. I thought you were going to do something and that was your terrible way of--of saying...goodbye!"
She hiccuped and shook her head again. The static was starting to take over your mind again, but she held you tighter and instead the numbness traveled all the way down to your stomach, leaving your mind free to think and process what she had just said.
"S-Say something. You're making me nervous. I can't have the game glitch out when I'm this close to--"
It was her turn to cut herself off with a squeak as you wrapped your arms tightly around her shoulders and let out a choked sob.
"I'm sorry," you mumbled into her shoulder, shaking your head. "I'm so sorry for worrying all of you. I'm so sorry..."
"Hey, quit it," she whispered, bunching the back of your shirt up in her hands. "Now you're really starting to sound like a glitched NPC. Am I gonna need to hack your software and fix some programming issues?"
"I wish it was that easy."
She fell quiet. "Yeah, me too."
You moved over to the couch and Futaba followed in your steps. To your surprise, rather than keeping the few inches you were accustomed to, her right knee bumped against your left knee. You trailed her gaze all the way up to her face and noticed that she was almost completely red.
"Forget me glitching out, you look like you're having a software reset," you teased.
She shook her head furiously. You were tempted to ask her if she was Alt-F4'ing everytime she did that.
"I'm...I don't know. I-I think I'm having some kind of p-problem."
You cocked your head to the side. "What do you mean? It's not, like...my problem, is it?"
"No, not this time." She looked down to her lap and twiddled her thumbs. "I was talking with Akira on the way over here. And, well, you kinda came up in the conversation. He asked me...what I felt when I thought of you." A high-pitched and strained laugh left her lips. "What a stupid question, right? A-And I told him I felt like I was melting every time we made eye contact, and t-that sometimes I started shaking so much I felt like I was a ticking time bomb, and apparently"--her voice dropped to a whisper without any warning--"that's not something you f-feel around friends, is it?"
You were caught completely off guard by her indirect and unprompted confession. You were no feeling to your own feelings for Futaba, however distant they may have been. When you first met her, way back when Medjed was still a perceived threat, you had immediately thought of her as someone that needed to be protected. Your heart broke when you uncovered her history and you swore, both to yourself and to her (later on), that you would do anything to make sure she was safe. Somehow, she had warmed up to you the fastest, and it took a while for her to be comfortable without either you or Akira around to guide her. (You remembered her telling you that she was still a little anxious if you weren't by her side.)
You had no idea when your feelings turned from platonic protectiveness to something more. You had a feeling it was during one of your one-on-one hangouts, when Futaba had asked you to accompany her to a nearby tech hardware store and she had turned around with the most innocent and carefree sparkle in her eyes as she asked if you could spot her some money to buy a new video game that had just been released. Or maybe that feeling had come on at a different time, when Sojiro had mentioned he wouldn't mind another child to take care of after seeing Futaba fall asleep against your shoulder while you were studying.
You opened your mouth, and for a second a positive affirmation of her confession lilted on the tip of your tongue. However, you remembered what you had been through in the past however many years, however many months, however many days. You remembered how much you had hated yourself, how much your mind had been numb to anything and everything, how most of your nights were spent either sleeping too long or sleeping too little. You remembered that you still had a long way to go before you could consider yourself okay again.
"It's not," you admitted. "Futaba, it sounds like you l-love me."
"Love..." She cleared her throat and pressed her lips into a thin line. "W-Well, yeah, I guess that's...what I feel? I don't know, I'm really bad at...all of this." She gestured wildly between you and her and lowered her hands back down to her lap tentatively. "I-I guess the most logical course of action would be to a-ask how you feel, but I don't know if I have enough points in my Confidence stat to directly ask you."
You sighed and reached over. You took her hand gently and sandwiched it between both of yours. Out of nowhere, you felt more tired than you had been in ages, like the weight of the world were pressing down on your shoulders. "Futaba, I really am honored. I know I feel the same way about you. I know that, someday in the future, I'd want to take 'us' further than just friends." You let out a tired and strained laugh. "Futaba, I know that I love you."
She perked up, but her eyes saddened as she fully processed your sentence. "I can tell there's a 'but' in there."
"I can't promise myself to you like this before I can say with full confidence that I'm okay," you said, trying to keep yourself from sounding too choked. "As much as it hurts me to say that, it's not fair to either of us if I can't give all of myself to you. Call me weak or stingy or whatever for being so contradictory, but...I need to take this slow. I can't date you right now. For both of our sakes." You squeezed her hand tightly and began to bring yours away.
To your surprise, she grabbed back onto your hands and pulled them back. "I can do that," she said hurriedly. "I-I'm not max level in any of this either, believe me! But I...I don't want to quit just yet. I can wait. I promise."
Tears rose to your eyes, but you blinked them away before they could fall. "Are you sure?" you asked softly. "It might be better in the long run if we call it quits now--"
"No way!" she exclaimed, the heat rising back to her face at her sudden exclamation. "Mom and Sojiro didn't raise a quitter. You promised me that you'd always be there for me. You promised me that you'd do your best to keep me safe, no matter what. What kind of Phantom Thief would I be if I couldn't promise the same back to you without any terms and conditions?" She squeezed your hands and made confident eye contact with you, despite the growing redness of her face. "I'll be here however you want and need me to be. If it's just as friends, I can do that. If it's something more, excuse me melting and not being able to function, but I can do that too."
You stared at her. For the first time in ages, a genuine (if not tiny) smile came to your face. The numbness and cloud were still there, but it felt like you could breathe again. "If you're so confident, then I don't mind. In fact, I'm glad. Just remember what you signed up for, okay?'
"Futaba Sakura never forgets." She surprised you again by freeing your hands and scooting closer to melt into your side. "I want to stay by your side forever. That's what I signed up for."