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Akira spends November watching Akechi fall apart.
He’s so well-practised at hiding his true self that Akira’s pretty sure no-one else can see it. Even the other Phantom Thieves: they notice some things that are off, occasionally, but they attribute it to Akechi’s deception and upcoming betrayal.
They’re not wrong, is the thing. But Akira has made an art of the study of Akechi Goro, and he’s increasingly sure that what’s slipping through the mask isn’t a sign of his insincerity, but proof of quite the opposite.
Proof of what Akira has hoped but hardly dared to believe; proof that Akechi doesn’t want to do this, that he’s desperate to find a way out of his situation, that the guilt is eating him alive.
They don’t exactly know what his situation is, but it’s clear that he’s dancing to someone else’s tune. The first few conversations Futaba recorded are chilling: Akechi talks so easily of murder, outlines his plan to set them up and stage Akira’s suicide – but it’s the later ones that stick in Akira’s mind. The ones where Akechi starts suggesting to his unknown master that perhaps the suicide plan isn’t good enough – that perhaps he should arrange something better – that if he can have a little more time, he can make sure that their victory is even more unassailable.
His acting is so good, it’s hard not to believe that he means it, that he’s thinking only of himself and his goals. Unless you know him very well. Unless you can see and hear the desperation creeping in as the days tick down to his deadline.
It doesn’t matter how good his acting is. The person on the other end of those phone calls makes him stick to his plan. And Akira starts to have doubts about theirs.
“Are you out of your mind?” Morgana shrieks when he first brings it up, two weeks out from their intended date to steal Sae’s treasure. “He’s planning to kill you!”
“No,” Akira says, sure of this at least, “this other guy is planning to kill me. Akechi is just a tool.”
“Akechi is a powerful Metaverse user who’s murdered who knows how many innocent victims!” Morgana spits. “Killing you might not be his idea, but he’s still going along with it!”
Akira wonders what would happen if Akechi refused his orders. Wonders what the cost would be, what Akechi would have to sacrifice. His pride? His ambitions?
His life?
Akira lets it go for a few days. Until Akechi stops by Leblanc for coffee, and his every smile is plastic and his every movement is weary and his eyes keep following Akira around, only to flinch aside in something like shame whenever Akira looks his way.
“He’s been lying to us from the start,” Morgana insists when Akira raises it again. “We don’t have any idea what his real motives are.”
“You really think he doesn’t want to do it?” Futaba asks dubiously. “I mean, in those calls he sounded like – like he was looking forward to it.”
“Of course he did,” Akira replies before he can stop himself, frustration and worry driving the words out of him. “That’s what he does – he figures out what the other person wants to hear – he turns himself into a mirror of whatever it is they want.”
“Then why do you think you’re any different?” Morgana demands. “If he wants you to think that he has doubts–”
“He doesn’t know that’s what Akira wants, though,” Futaba puts in. She bites her lip, and Akira feels a surge of guilt, thinks of their suspicions about her mother’s death. “I’m sure he doesn’t know we’re onto him. So he has no reason to fake that.”
“I just feel like maybe if we talked to him, brought him in on the plan...” Akira begins, then trails off when he sees their expressions.
“It’s too big a risk,” Morgana says, tail lashing. “We can’t be sure of anything with him, except that we can’t trust him.”
Akira lets it go again. The days blur and pass too quickly. They finish securing the route to Sae’s treasure, and Akechi shows off his brilliance by anticipating her last-minute change of conditions, by ensuring they have enough coins to get through the final barrier. Akira doesn’t have to fake his admiration. Even the other Thieves, usually unable to hide their wariness around their newest member, overflow with surprise and awe.
Akechi basks in it, briefly, but not for as long as he should, not when he’s as hungry for praise as Akira now knows him to be. He turns away too quickly and insists they press on to the core of the Palace, and as he walks away, Akira can see how tightly his fists are clenched and how stiff his shoulders are.
With the route secured, there’s nothing to do but wait for their planned date to send the calling card. And work on their other plan, of course – the one Akechi doesn’t know about.
Akira lies awake at night imagining what it would feel like if their positions were reversed, if he were the one counting down the days until he had to kill Akechi. It’s awful, and it’s awful how easy it is to put himself in that position, as well. How easy it is to imagine being desperate enough to kill someone, even someone he doesn’t want to kill. Akira has always felt uneasy under his friends’ insistence that he’s a hero. He’s always known that there’s something in him that could become dark and dreadful if it were ever given room to grow.
Maybe that’s why he’s always felt like he understands Akechi.
“We just can’t,” Makoto says into the stunned silence that follows Akira’s suggestion at the Phantom Thieves meeting. “If you’re wrong – if we tell him the plan, and he tells his boss – or just goes ahead with the assassination…”
“I’m not wrong,” Akira insists, even though his stomach is doing flips. “He doesn’t want to do this. We can give him a way out. He can help us fake it, be our double agent–”
“We can’t possibly trust him!” Makoto retorts. “Not with your life on the line!”
“Akira,” Haru says softly, and guilt hits him square in the jaw as he looks at her. But there’s no accusation in her eyes, only a deep and troubled compassion. “I don’t like to say it… I know you care about him… but are you aware that he hates you?”
Of course she’s spotted it. Of course she would. She’s known since the moment Akechi joined them that he’s most likely the one responsible for her father’s murder. She rarely takes her eyes off him when he’s with the Phantom Thieves, and especially when he’s interacting with Akira.
“I know,” Akira replies, because he does, because Akechi told him so to his face, and Akira knew it was the truth even as he could see that there was so much more beneath it. “But it’s… complicated. I think he’d rather I was alive to be hated than dead because of him.”
“That’s messed up, dude,” Ryuji mutters.
“We can’t risk it,” Makoto insists. “We don’t have a backup plan. And this will only work if he doesn’t suspect a thing. It’s already such a huge risk–”
Her voice catches, undermining her attempt to be stern. She’s very pale. Akira looks around the circle of faces, and knows that she’s right. Maybe if he could take all the risk on himself, he could justify the gamble. But even though he’s going to be the one in the most danger, this isn’t just about him. They could so easily all be erased for the convenience of Akechi’s unknown masters.
He can’t trade the safety of seven of his friends for the hope that the eighth isn’t as far gone as he seems.
“You’re right,” he says quietly. He feels like a traitor. How ironic. “No, I know you’re right. I’m sorry. It’s just…”
It’s just, Akechi called him up yesterday out of nowhere, invited him to the jazz club, talked for an hour about his ideas of justice, like he was confessing something, like he had to get it off his chest. And for the first time, Akira understands that it isn’t hypocrisy, it isn’t an act; that Akechi really does believe what he’s saying. That were he free to follow his own ethics, he would lock himself away in a heartbeat. That he’s chosen to do what he’s doing all the same, because whatever it is that drives him, it’s worth the sacrifice of everything he believes in.
“We can try it afterwards,” Futaba pipes up unexpectedly. “Once we’ve taken down whoever he’s working for. We can try talking to him then. If you really think he might listen.”
And Haru surprises him again.
“I would be in favour of that,” she says. “If he’s truly been manipulated – if doesn’t want to do these things, but feels he must – I would like to give him the chance to defend himself.”
Akira swallows, and nods. It’s the best he can do for Akechi right now, he thinks. He’ll have to hope that it’s enough.
It isn’t.
He doesn’t know that for another week, though. Until they’ve sent the calling card, and triggered the ambush Akechi has set up, and Akira has been through hell in that underground room, and their plan has gone off without a hitch.
His supposed death is all over the news, and he’s safely tucked away in Leblanc, nursing his bruises and fighting his exhaustion with too much coffee. They have the name now, the person who’s been pulling Akechi’s strings: Shido Masayoshi. If Akira had his way, they’d start his Palace right now. He doesn’t want to give Shido the chance to uncover their plot before they send the calling card.
He doesn’t want Akechi to think he’s dead for longer than absolutely necessary.
But the others have insisted that Akira needs to recover, and he’s painfully aware of how difficult it is even to manage his daily life, let alone fight and run and summon Personas, so he’s capitulated. He’s been outside a few times, with his hood up to protect against recognition, and that’s how he has also found out that Shido is none other than the very same bastard who ruined his life.
Maybe Chihaya has a point about fate, after all.
He’s avoiding the television and news websites, tired of hearing Shido’s insincere promises, sickened by how quickly everyone seems to have forgotten his own alleged suicide, and afraid that at some point he’s going to hear Akechi’s voice, have to listen to him lie his way into the nation’s hearts. He can never tell what’s really going through Akechi’s mind when he’s on TV. It’s too easy to believe in the mask, with the screen putting distance between them.
So he has no warning, when footsteps thunder up the stairs, and Futaba bursts into the attic, her face as white as a sheet, as white as someone struggling not to throw up.
“What is it?” Akira bolts upright. “What’s happened?”
His phone vibrates, then again, then again. He glances down at the screen, catches just a glimpse of a text from Ann – oh god I just saw the news – and then Futaba is flinging herself across the room, flinging her arms around him, sobbing into his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she wails. “I’m sorry, oh I’m sorry, you were right, we should have– we should have–”
Panic is crackling through every inch of Akira’s body, and his phone is buzzing incessantly, the notifications cutting each other off as he’s presumably bombarded with messages, but he can’t reach it, not with Futaba attached to him like he’s the only solid object in the world.
“What’s happened?” he repeats, looking at Morgana. Morgana shakes his head, as lost and alarmed as Akira. “Futaba, please! What–”
Futaba sobs harder, but she disengages one shaking hand to pull out her own phone. She unlocks it and hands it to him without a word, and he looks at the headline on the screen, and everything just… stops.
He reads the article. It’s short, and it feels like not a single word is sinking in, and yet every single ounce of its meaning strikes him between the eyes like the bullet he didn’t take. It’s breaking news, so it’s brief, but three facts, it seems, are clear:
1. That Akechi Goro, Detective Prince, has released a statement, sending it to every news website and police contact he has, ensuring that it cannot be buried or ignored.
2. That the statement is a confession of multiple crimes carried out at the instigation of Shido Masayoshi – including the murder of the leader of the Phantom Thieves – complete with links to hard evidence, enough to bring down Shido and his network of cronies.
3. That the confession is framed as a suicide note, and that police are looking for his body.
Futaba’s phone falls from Akira’s numb fingers. He doesn’t know if it lands on the floor or the bed, doesn’t care if it’s damaged, doesn’t have space for anything in his head except a ringing sound like his eardrums have burst. For a scream he can’t give voice to, the absolute horror of knowing he should have fought harder, should have stuck to his instincts, should have reached out to Akechi before it was too late…
He’s dimly aware that Futaba is still crying. He lets her, sits there like a statue, unable even to put his arms around her and try to comfort her. He hears Sojiro coming up the stairs, demanding to know what’s happening, and he can’t say a word. He hears Morgana’s exclamation of horror – perhaps he’s read it on the fallen phone – Akira doesn’t know. Doesn’t care. Something in him has simply ceased to function.
Something in him has broken in a way that even torture couldn’t manage.
He was wrong, he realises distantly. He was wrong before, when he thought he could imagine how Akechi would feel about being responsible for his death. There’s just no way to fully conceive of this sort of pain. There’s just no way to anticipate what it feels like to rip your own heart from your chest and squeeze until it bursts.
Time passes in broken fragments over the next few days. People come and go around him. The other Phantom Thieves huddle in shared guilt around a table in Leblanc. He fades in and out of the conversation, hearing himself respond sometimes to questions as if reading from a script, words he has no memory of choosing. The others keep telling him it’s not his fault. All he can do is nod, and know that they’re wrong.
Even a master manipulator like Shido can’t survive this level of scandal, but he’s trying anyway, trying to reframe the narrative as a smear campaign, trying to redirect attention in any other direction. He doesn’t care who he guns down in his attempts to save himself. They’re still going to have to go into his Palace, the Thieves decide, and Akira agrees, but he already knows he won’t be going with them.
His spirit of rebellion has died a silent death, sometime in the last few days, left him an empty shell of guilt and regret. His heart is a prison again, and this time he has no inclination to rattle his cage.
The police haven’t found Akechi’s body yet. There’s a brief period where Akira almost starts to hope that Akechi had the same idea they did, that he’s faked his death to incriminate Shido. But soon the tabloids are spewing the details, the witness statements: a lot of people were on the bridge across the bay that morning. They all saw him jump. It’s just a matter of time before the sea gives up what it’s claimed.
Akira doesn’t sleep much, even though he doesn’t feel like he’s awake, either. He spends a lot of time lying in his bed, staring at the ceiling, imagining what was going through Akechi’s head as he stood on the rail. Finding it once again all too easy to put himself in that place. Finding it unnervingly compelling.
Eventually, somewhere in the waking nightmare, he must sleep for real, because he finds himself in the Velvet Room. He doesn’t bother to stand up from his bunk, even when Caroline strikes the bars and shouts at him to pay attention, but Igor seems to know he’s listening regardless.
“A most ingenious plan,” Igor says, chuckling, and Akira hates him all of a sudden, hates him for starting all this, for nudging him along the path, for his cryptic comments and his smug satisfaction. “To arrange matters so that your enemy dies in your place. To trade his fate for yours. Magnificent.”
Akira blinks, and blinks again, and suddenly his eyes are full of the tears he hasn’t been able to shed since he saw the news. He rolls over suddenly on the bunk, the manacles heavy on his wrists, curled in on himself, silent sobs wracking his body like they’re going to tear his bones loose.
“Inmate?” he hears Justine try, soft and uncertain. Then, under her breath, “Caroline, I don’t think–”
“And yet, you have lost the game,” Igor continues, and there’s something new in his voice, something inhuman and terrible, and Akira doesn’t care, doesn’t care, doesn’t care. “A pity, to have come so far and sacrificed so much, only to fall at the final hurdle. A pity, but not unexpected.”
“This… this isn’t right,” Caroline murmurs, somewhere very far away. “Justine, was it supposed to be a game?”
“I knew from the start that you would fail.” It hardly even sounds like Igor now, echoing and booming, a voice like the tolling of bells. “That humanity could not rise above its own weakness. That the chains could not be broken. But I confess, I thought that he would kill you, not the other way around.”
“No game should have stakes this high,” Justine says to Caroline. “No game should gamble life and death…”
“He was all rage and hate, a broken thing of bitter blades, and you were too quick to forgive, too ready to open your heart, too eager to love. He should have destroyed you, torn everything you care for asunder and left you in rags, and yet!”
The laughter is the falling of the executioner’s blade.
“And yet!” Igor crows with profane delight. “You took your love and you strangled him with it and left his corpse to swing from the rope!”
It’s all true. Akira can’t deny it. Can’t break free from the chains of guilt now choking him towards welcome blackness. Can’t pretend he didn’t know, can’t pretend he didn’t see, can’t pretend he wasn’t trying to reach Akechi, trying to change his mind – change his heart – can’t pretend he didn’t want to believe that his death would be more than Akechi could bear…
… and still he kept to his silence and his schemes, and he put the weight of it on Akechi’s shoulders and walked away.
“This isn’t right.” Justine sounds terrified. “Master… what have you done…?”
“I have won the game,” Igor replies simply.
“Inmate!” Caroline cries. “On your feet, inmate! Answer for yourself! Did you mean for this to happen? Did you choose this fate?”
“No, that’s not the right question.” Justine speaks like the quiet at the heart of the hurricane. “Inmate? What did he choose? This other, this rival, this mirror of you… what was in his heart, that led to this?”
Akira finds that he has stopped breathing. That there is nothing in the world except Justine’s question. That there is nothing in his chest except his answer.
He chose not to play the game anymore.
He takes a huge, painful, ice-cold breath, and swings himself upright, and staggers to his feet.
In the middle of the Velvet Room, Igor is floating in mid-air, his eyes gone white and glowing, power crackling around his form. Justine and Caroline are pressed back against the bars, both their heads turned to look at Akira with their uncovered eyes.
There are chains wrapped tight around Akira’s chest, his throat, his hands, but he knows how to break free of chains. Arsene bursts out of him on a wave of blue flame, shatters the cold iron into a thousand useless pieces. Justine and Caroline spring aside, and the cell door is the next to go, blasted off its hinges and clanging uselessly away across the room.
He steps over the threshold, feeling his mask settle on his face and his long coat flare out behind him.
“Foolish,” Igor says. “I am the god that all of humanity has chosen. You are just a puppet, just a pawn. Your choices mean nothing.”
And as if in answer, a sound like a thunderclap rings through the chamber. Akira turns towards its source, and sees for the first time that there is an exit from this place. It’s never been visible before, from inside his cell: a door locked and sealed as tightly as a bulkhead, like it cannot be permitted to allow even one atom of the air in this place to escape.
It shakes from the impact of a second thunderous blow.
“What–?” Igor sounds more furious than surprised. “Who dares–?”
And maybe it’s just one last desperate thread of hope. Or maybe something in the back of Akira’s mind is working at the speed of light. But either way, he is suddenly, agonisingly, utterly certain that he knows who’s on the other side of that door.
He races over to it and grabs the wheel that seals it shut, straining against an impossible force, trying to spin it even a little. Another of those world-shaking blows lands on the door, and the wheel gives a little under Akira’s hands.
“Stop!” Igor commands. “The game is over, and you have lost–”
There is a sizzling sound like energy zapping through the air, and a startled cry from Igor. Akira glances over his shoulder, sees Caroline and Justine defending him, sees Igor reeling back from some reflected attack.
“Open it!” Caroline shouts.
“This is not our Master!” Justine cries.
Another blow lands on the door from outside. Akira uses it to finally get the wheel moving properly. He throws his whole weight into it, spinning it as fast as he can, and at last – at last – he feels the latch click free.
He jumps back as the door swings open. Beyond, he catches a glimpse of a place that has to be Mementos, but is unlike any part of Mementos he’s ever seen: a neverending wall of cages filled with listless prisoners. But even its strangeness can’t hold his attention for more than a second, his eyes drawn to the figure on the threshold.
It’s not what he’s expecting. He’s expecting white: he sees black. He’s expecting red: he sees deep blue. He’s expecting the princely attire and the swirling cape: he sees the claws and the spurs and the sharp, vicious helmet.
For a moment, he thinks he once more hoped in vain.
And then he meets Akechi’s eyes through the red glass visor.
“You’re alive,” he chokes out, just as Akechi whispers, “You’re alive?”
God, Akira wants to laugh. He wants to cry. He wants to fall to his knees and beg forgiveness. He wants to grab Akechi by the shoulders and shake him. He wants to throw his arms around him. He wants to kiss him until neither of them can breathe.
Instead, he grabs Akechi’s arm, yanks him into the Velvet Room, turning so they’re both facing the floating monster that once called itself Igor. The twins are holding their ground, tiny but immovable, a certainty in their faces that Akira hasn’t seen in all the time he’s been dreaming of them.
“He claims he’s a god,” Akira tells Akechi. “He says he’s won the game, and we’ve lost.”
Akechi’s lip curls behind his mask, a sneer that Akira has never seen on his face, betraying a fury that fills in yet another missing piece in Akira’s understanding of him.
“According to whose rules?”
“You know what?” Akira falls into a fighting stance, slips his dagger from its sheath and twirls it between his fingers. “I don’t care. Let’s break them.”
Akechi huffs a laugh full of the promise of violence.
“My thoughts exactly.”
They fight.
They can’t destroy it. Not here, not now. But they drive it out of the Velvet Room, and the twins beg Akira to fuse them with the guillotine, and from their union comes Lavenza, childlike and wise and weary and fond.
“There is still more,” she tells them. “You have done much to change the cognition of the masses, but it will not be enough, not without defeating the false god’s champion on Earth, and plundering the stronghold in the depths of Mementos.”
“Fine,” Akechi snarls, “let’s go.”
“Not yet,” Lavenza tells him, gentle but stern. “First, rest and heal your hearts.”
The door swings open again at her gesture, but this time, it leads to a familiar alley in Yongen-Jaya. Akira can see Leblanc in the pre-dawn light. He wonders dizzily how this works, if he vanished from his bed in the night, if Morgana has noticed and is freaking out.
He looks at Akechi. Akechi looks back at him.
“I do have a lot of questions,” Akira admits.
“So do I,” Akechi replies quietly.
They step through the door together. It’s very quiet when they emerge, just the sound of birdsong in the surrounding gardens, barely a murmur of traffic in the distance. Akira finds himself barefoot on the asphalt. He looks at Akechi again, finds him in his school uniform, that distinctive pale coat that so many witnesses saw on the bridge. For a moment, Akira can’t breathe.
He doesn’t know which of them moves, or if both of them do. He doesn’t know which of them makes that soft, broken noise. All he knows is that he’s never held onto anyone as hard as he’s holding Akechi, and he’s never been held so tightly in return. He can feel Akechi shaking with silent tears. He finds that his own seem to have run dry, and all he can do is hang on, his face pressed to Akechi’s shoulder, his hands like claws in the back of his coat.
The sun is fully up before they manage to let go long enough for Akira to find the spare key to Leblanc in its hiding place. The jingling of the bell seems unbearably loud, but no-one comes rushing to investigate. Morgana must still be asleep after all. Without asking or offering, Akira pads over to the coffee siphons and sets to work. Akechi slides onto one of the stools, and watches him, and for a while they don’t say anything at all.
It’s only when Akira has poured the coffee into two mugs that they start to talk. That they swap the pieces of their pain back and forth, cutting themselves and each other anew – but sometimes, Akira thinks, you have to cut away scar tissue to let it heal properly.
He tells Akechi everything, their plan to deceive him, how they used Sae’s Palace to pull it off, how they spied on him to learn Shido’s identity. How they knew all along that he would betray them. How they turned his own plot against them. How they never gave him a chance to choose a different side.
In return, Akira learns that there is just, just barely time to activate the Metaverse Navigator between jumping from the bay bridge and hitting the water. That a fall like that is far more survivable in the Metaverse. That Akechi didn’t know, all the same, if it would work. That he did it anyway.
“It was better than carrying on living like that,” Akechi whispers, staring down into his half-empty mug. “I killed you.”
“I’m sorry,” Akira replies, reaching for his hand.
“That’s– why are you apologising–? I murdered– what is wrong with you?” Akechi demands, and–
He’s right, it’s ridiculous. Akira starts laughing, can’t seem to stop, a hysterical edge to it that he doesn’t try to muffle. Akechi stares at him, then grabs his hand, holds it tightly, bows his head over it, his shoulders shaking in a silent echo of Akira’s desperate mirth.
“How did you find the Velvet Room?” Akira asks finally, when he can breathe again.
“I knew there was something down there,” Akechi tells him. “When I went into Mementos alone, I’d hear the shadows whispering sometimes. Talking about a prison and its prisoners, talking about the invisible puppetmaster who kept them there. And after you– when I thought you were–”
Akira squeezes his hand. Akechi takes a shuddering breath.
“The only clear thought I had was that I was bound in chains of my own making,” Akechi finishes. “And then I wondered if I’d truly made them at all. If I could hold even Shido responsible. So I decided to see how many of them I could break. And when I heard that there was a door in the depths of the prison, and that behind it was the most dangerous prisoner of all…”
Akira shakes his head in wonder.
“You fought all that way, alone, to break the door down.”
Akechi takes a shaky breath.
“I never expected you to open it for me.”
“Do you still hate me?” Akira asks, feeling strangely light, as if his bones are full of bubbles.
“Intensely,” Akechi responds without hesitation. His fingers are still entwined with Akira’s. “Irreparably. Everything I’ve tried to do, you’ve found a way to undermine–”
Akira kisses him. Akechi reaches out with his free hand to grab hold of Akira’s t-shirt and pull him in closer. It seems to go on for a long time.
“Can we agree on one thing?” Akira asks when they finally part for air.
“That depends on what it is.”
“From now on we play our own game. No-one else’s.”
Akechi smiles, and Akira thinks maybe it’s the first honest smile he’s ever seen from him: a little bit dangerous, a little bit broken, a little bit alight with the fires of freedom.
“It’s a deal.”