Archive of Our Own

Goro Akechi had never lied about his skills as a detective -- only about how, precisely, he chose to apply them. He saw things others missed. He could weave a narrative from the smallest overlooked details.

Right now, for example, he could tell that things were extremely uncomfortable in the back of the Monamobile.

The clues weren't hard to spot. Sakura had one of her metaverse data apps open on her laptop, but tabbed over to a subreddit called r/enoughakechispam whenever she caught Akechi peering at the screen. From the far seat, Okumura kept glaring meaningfully at him while running her finger along the blade of her axe.

The whole team was on edge already -- despite lacking any blood, bones, or gravestones, the Path of Da'at was somehow the most unnerving part of Mementos so far -- and the bad mood coming from the back seat didn't help. In the front, Amamiya, Sakamoto, and Takamaki held an overly polite conversation in too-loud voices about everyone's performance in their last battle.

"That new persona Joker got is somethin' else, man," Sakamoto said. "What'd you say his name was? Izanami?"

"Izanagi," said Amamiya from the driver's seat. "Take care not to get those confused. It's a sore spot."

"Oh. Gotcha."

Sakamoto glanced quickly at the back. Amamiya seemed to notice, and said, "I thought Crow had a decent finishing move."

"Really?" said Okumura. "I've been concerned Crow's skills are a bit rusty, myself."

"Yeah, he hasn't murdered any innocents for what, a month? Two?" Sakura snickered. "I'm surprised he can hold the sword straight."

Yoshizawa, who was in the middle row with Kitagawa, twisted in her seat. For a moment, Akechi held a vain hope that the concern shining in her eyes might be for him. Instead, she said to Okumura and Sakura, "Are you two OK? Would you like to switch seats?"

"Thank you, Violet, but I'm fine." Okumura began testing the other head of her axe.

"Yup," said Sakura. "If I ever feel uncomfortable, I can just remember that at least one of my parents wanted me."

Akechi didn't know how his hand found the hilt of his pistol. Through the red mist before his eyes, he saw half the Phantom Thieves train their own firearms on his head and chest. As Sakura hopped backward into Okumura's arms, Amamiya stomped on the van's brakes. Everybody lurched forward into the seat in front of them.

"What was that for!?" Morgana whined from the dashboard speaker, but Amamiya spoke over him. "All right, everyone. There's a platform up ahead. I'm calling a fifteen-minute break. Go to your corners and cool down."

Akechi approved wholeheartedly of the idea. Unfortunately, there were no doors in the backseat, so he, Sakura, and Okumura had to wait for everyone else to clamber out. Okumura let Sakura go first, boosting her over the middle seat; Sakura immediately summoned Al-Azif and hopped inside to sulk. Before climbing out herself, Okumura turned to Akechi.

"Remember," she said, her sweet smile never leaving her face, "the only thing keeping you alive is that I trust our leader more than I hate you."

Akechi squeezed his way over the seat. As he moved purposefully down the subway platform away from the others, he heard Niijima kill her persona's engine. "Noir, would you like to ride behind me on Agnes for the next stretch?"

"I think that would be best," said Okumura shakily. "Thank you, Queen."

"Look, everyone, he tried to kill me too, OK?" Amamiya said. "I get how awkward this is."

"Awkward is a dramatic understatement," Okumura replied.

"He took my mom," came Sakura's tinny voice from inside Al-Azif. "He would have taken you. Never forgiving him. Never ever."

Akechi had heard enough. He strode as far as he could to the end of the platform, and sat down heavily, facing yet another endless hallway of gleaming white tiles.

He could not have said, if asked, what upset him so much. He had rejoined the Phantom Thieves out of necessity, and his time with them was temporary: without Maruki's thumb on the scale of reality, he didn't expect to live long. For now, their purposes were aligned, but he had no desire to join their saccharine friendship club. Besides, none of their taunts were any different than what his own mind screamed at him constantly.

So why did it matter if Sakura and Okumura wanted to bully him? If nobody save Amamiya ever moved to defend him? Why did he keep having these stupid pangs of emotion whenever one of the Thieves seemed about to show him basic decency?

Perhaps it was his sense of fair play. He knew from his research that Kitagawa and Niijima had both blackmailed the Phantom Thieves before joining, yet they were now as thick as -- nevermind. He had not wanted friendship nor hoped for it, but was a professional working relationship too much to ask?

"I am not here to make friends," he said aloud to the subway tunnel.

"Mission accomplished," said a soft voice behind him, making him jump. "May I join you?"

The boy sat down beside him without waiting for a reply. Now this is unexpected, thought Akechi.

He ran over the dossier in his head. Fox, real name Yusuke Kitagawa, an art student at Kosei Academy. Recruited to the Phantom Thieves during their campaign against Ichiryuusai Madarame. In addition to fighting alongside them in the metaverse, he served as the artist for their calling cards. He was also known to be perpetually short on funds. Perhaps he had come to ask to borrow from Akechi's share of their Mementos money? But if he needed funds, why not go to Okumura?

"Can I help you?" Akechi asked.

Kitagawa stretched out his legs in the void over the tracks. "Joker is busy talking with Oracle. He asked for someone to come check on you, and I volunteered."

"Why bother? I know you're close with Oracle and Noir, with Joker. You must despise me as much as any of them."

"Joker does not hate you. He doesn't hate anybody, not even your father. I asked him directly, once, how he could manage to forgive Shido. His response was: the Shido I hated no longer exists."

"How noble," said Akechi. "I'm so moved to be placed in the same category as the gallery of rapists and murderers whose treasures you've stolen."

"I'm shocked that you care."

"I just object to being compared to monsters like Shido and Kamoshida. I'm a different kind of monster. I would not assault a girl."

"I believe Oracle would say: would you like a cookie for that?" Kitagawa said dryly.

Akechi growled. "I notice you don't deny that others hate me."

"Oh, they do," said Kitagawa, in the same tone he might have used to select Burnt Sienna over Umber. "So do I. But the true artist must see the world with both eyes open. And there is something uniquely compelling about you that I cannot ignore."

"And what is that?"

For the first time, Kitagawa looked at him, the eyes of his fox mask appraising Akechi in a way that gave him chills. "You claim not to care what the others think of you," he said, "yet you clearly do. I would like to know why."

Akechi sighed. He supposed he should have expected someone to notice.

"I don't care," he said, hating how childish it sounded. "I'm just concerned for the stability of the team. We're on a dangerous mission together. The shadows here are stronger than any we've faced before, and if we slip up once, Maruki will control the world unopposed. I don't want to jeopardize the fabric of reality itself because Oracle and Noir can't get over their grudges."

"Grudges," Kitagawa repeated, then fell silent for a while. Just as Akechi was considering finding somewhere else to sit, the other boy said, "Do you know what happened to Oracle after you killed her mother?"

"She was taken in by Sojiro Sakura."

"Before that."

"I'm afraid I don't. Why don't you enlighten me?"

"Sojiro and Oracle are not blood relatives. Thus, he was not the first choice for her guardian. The state first attempted to place her with several different family members. Most of them shuttled her on to the next home as soon as it became clear they could not help her with the depths of her grief."

Life as a ward of the state: it sounded quite a bit like Akechi's own childhood. He wondered if Kitagawa hoped to get him to sympathize with Futaba Sakura. If he did, he would need to tell Akechi something he didn't know.

"Eventually, she landed in the care of an uncle, a man so cruel and warped that Joker had to change his heart last year. This uncle had no interest in Oracle except as a bargaining chip to extort money from the state. She was not given a bed, nor permitted to eat meals with the uncle and his wife. She had to ask permission to use any water from the taps. Eventually, she gave up bathing altogether, and only ate food when she could steal it at night."

Kitagawa reached beneath his fox mask to scratch an itch on one of his cheeks. "Did you ever read those children's books by Lemony Snicket? Beautiful illustrations, and the wordplay translates surprisingly well into Japanese. Oracle's life was like that, without the jokes, or the supportive siblings."

As if I ever had time to waste reading children's stories, Akechi thought.

"And never forget: she felt certain she deserved all of it, because your associates told her she had killed her mother. Even I cannot comprehend how utterly alone she must have felt. Though I faced the pits of Madarame's depravity, at the very least, I almost always had another disciple to commiserate with. Futaba -- Oracle -- had no-one. Had we not stolen her heart, she would still be sealed in her bedroom at Sojiro's home."

"Do you have a point?" Akechi said bitterly. "We all have tragic backstories. I found my mother's corpse hanging in the bathroom of our apartment when I was five years old. None of this assuages my concerns about this team's ability to do its job."

"I am truly sorry," Fox said. It even sounded true.

For some reason, the red tide behind Akechi's eyes rose even faster. "You can't be," he snarled. "You understand nothing. How dare any of you compare your pain to mine? Oracle now has more family than she knows what to do with. And look at Noir -- she's been handed everything from the day she was born. The night her father died, she cried herself to sleep in a featherbed larger than any my mother ever saw without serving a client."

"Remind me," said Fox, "precisely what property of a featherbed soothes the pain of seeing one's father brutally assassinated on live television? Is it the softness? Or perhaps the thread count of the sheets."

"Make your point, Fox, if you have one. I'm getting tired of this conversation."

"Very well. You are correct that you're no different from the rest of us. It's precisely this fact which makes you unforgivable in the others' eyes."

Akechi had no immediate response. Far up the platform, the faint voices of the other phantom thieves echoed against the oppressive silence of Mementos.

"Say what you mean," he told Fox at last.

"I've never done otherwise. Oracle and Noir hate you not just for what you took from them, but because you took it needlessly. You could have turned away from your path at any point, but time and again, you chose to stay your bloody course."

Akechi fought down the desire to draw his blade and make Fox eat his words. He would not contribute to the problem. He could withstand the Thieves' derision -- he had withstood far worse. "What makes you so sure," he said instead of striking, "that I ever had a choice?"

Fox gestured back up the platform to where the others sat. "Each of us stands as living proof. We are a ragtag band of children in mourning, clinging together as though in stormy seas, and never once has it occured to us to use our powers to get revenge on the world. Our leader even believes you still have kindness in you."

"Your leader is an idiot," Akechi spat. "He spent the first sixteen years of his life as a normal child in a loving home. So what if he had one bad year? I've had a life of bad years. He only wants to reform me so he can win yet another trophy. Because somehow, despite all your constant fawning, he doesn't feel sufficiently worshipped yet."

"It is not a contest," Fox said. "Since you claim to value logic and rational inquiry, answer me this: do you believe that Joker has ever, even for one day, one hour, felt as alone as you claim to feel every moment?"

Akechi thought of the time he had spent with Amamiya before that day in the courthouse had changed everything. At first, he had been surprised that the leader of the Phantom Theives had nothing better to do than play billiards with his fiercest rival. Then, so gradually Akechi had barely noticed, his thought processes had become dependent on Amamiya's resistance. He found himself looking forward to their time together, even wishing -- with a sincerity that pained him now -- that he had met the boy before his path had crossed that of Masayoshi Shido.

I saw myself in him, Akechi thought. That same loneliness.

"I can't deny it," he said.

Fox nodded. "Then he had the same choice as you, and chose the opposite path."

"So my rival surpasses me once again. A truly awesome display of will. Would you please leave me alone?"

"Further, I do not believe you're unaware of this. You take pleasure in the role of the born villain because it frees you from responsibility for your actions. Robin Hood and Loki were poor choices -- your personas should have been Iago and Richard III."

To the emptiness, Akechi muttered, "I am determined to prove a villain, and hate the idle pleasures of these days. Knowing my luck, I'd have been saddled with Don John."

"I had rather be a canker in a hedge," said Fox, "than a rose in his grace."

Akechi looked at him. "You've read Shakespeare?"

"Only in Japanese. My English is nowhere near as good as Panther's. But his works have inspired a multitude of artists since his time. I myself am working on my own impressionistic Prospero and Miranda, based upon Sojiro and Oracle."

"Which is she?" asked Akechi. "The wizard, or the wide-eyed girl?"

Fox considered this. "A fair point. Perhaps she could be both -- her and her shadow. And it's just occurred to me that Joker could be a model for Ariel."

"And I'm sure you wouldn't mind being Ferdinand," Akechi said.

He smirked to see Fox looking off-kilter for the first time. "You know, the position of Caliban remains open," the artist grumbled.

Akechi contemplated Futaba Sakura, once Futaba Isshiki. He had known of her existence at the time he'd caused her mother Wakaba's death. He had not known what Shido's men would tell Futaba afterwards. But if he had, would he have cared? Or would his "born villain" have suppressed all that?

"I hope you don't expect me to apologize to her," he said to Fox.

Fox shook his head. "I would recommend against that with her and Noir both. I wish I had better advice for you, but I will say this: they both take their jobs very seriously. Neither would ever put a personal grudge above the safety of the team. They know we cannot hope to equal Maruki without combining all our strength. You may have noticed that in battle, Oracle is as ready with her praise for you as she is for everyone else, and Noir is willing to coordinate her attacks with you."

Akechi mumbled something inane to hide that he had not, in fact, noticed that. When in battle with Loki, he went into a frenzy, hardly noticing his surroundings or hearing what his teammates told him.

"They take their frustrations out on you because that's all they can do," Fox finished. "If you like, take their harsh words as a sign of their commitment to our success."

"So, outside battle, I should just let them abuse me?"

"More or less. You will not catch me feeling sorry for you, at least not in this case. But I hope this has helped." Fox smiled beneath his mask. "Perhaps we should reconvene. It seems Joker has managed to coax Oracle out of her shell."

Akechi looked over his shoulder. Al-Azif had returned to the ground and revealed Sakura's fall of bright orange hair. Akechi left Fox behind, but something possessed him to hide behind the support pillar and listen for a moment as voices echoed across the subway platform.

"Are you sure you're good, Oracle?" Amamiya asked.

"Yeah," Sakura replied. "Sort of. Not really. That was a shitty thing for me to say."

"You know you don't have to be OK with him," said Amamiya. "We need him here, but I've never asked you to like it."

"I know. I just can't believe I got so mad that I'd say something like that. Thinking my mom didn't want me -- it's what made me go shut-in to begin with. I don't give a crap what Crow hears, but I shouldn't have said it."

"I feel the same." Okumura's voice. "Every time I look at him, I can't help but say something awful. Then I feel disgusting afterwards. It isn't helping anyone."

"Look," Amamiya said, "I've spent more time with Crow than any of you. I can tell you one thing for sure: however much you detest him, it's nothing compared to how much he hates himself. If you want him to suffer, the best thing you can do is keep quiet and let him stew. Punish him with his own company."

"Joker..." said Okumura. "You really do feel bad for him, don't you?"

"Nothing can ever justify the choices he's made," Amamiya said firmly. "I just can't look at him without thinking that if things had gone a little bit differently, if I hadn't had all of you to keep me sane, that could have been me. If I'd been alone when I fought Kamoshida, I might have killed him. And there's no telling where I would've gone once that door was open."

"I don't buy it," Sakura said. "You wouldn't have had it in you."

"Oracle, I have the power of several actual gods at my command. It is really, really important that I never forget I'm capable of anything. If I lose my anchor, then forget Crow -- I could be the next Yaldabaoth, the next Maruki."

"I'll be your anchor," Okumura said. "I promise."

"Me too!" said Sakura.

Akechi didn't want to hear any more. His eyes burned. He shoved his hands under his mask and rubbed them viciously, stifling the feelings with pain. Somewhere amid the haze, Kitagawa laid a hand on his shoulder, one Akechi lacked the energy to swat away.

"I can't forgive you," he said, "but nobody should ever have to suffer like you suffered."

He patted Akechi's shoulder twice, then stood up to rejoin the others, leaving Crow mired in yet another fight to the death with his own reflection.

For the rest of the journey, he sat in the back seat. When Noir and Oracle rejoined the others in the bus, nobody spoke to Akechi, but at least the silence no longer felt like an oppressive weight.

I am here, he thought. At the very least, I am here.

The June after the year he was a Phantom Thief, in a warm season bright with sun and profligate with greenery, Yusuke stacked cardboard boxes by the door of his room. In a few minutes, his friends were due to help him move to a larger room in the upperclassman building across the Kosei Academy grounds. Haru had already installed a stocked minifridge over his protestations, and Futaba was there now, setting up a high-speed internet connection.

When Yusuke lifted the doormat to place it atop the pile of boxes, his eyes alit on an envelope. It must have been slid under the door and gotten stuck underneath. Curious, he set the mat aside and stooped to turn the envelope over. It was completely white, with no address, return, or stamps.

He broke the seal, slid two fingers inside, and removed a single piece of paper. He recognized it at once: a torn page from a Shakespeare omnibus translated into Japanese.

"Othello," he said aloud, an icy suspicion creeping into his soul.

A single couplet had been circled in red pen. Demand me nothing. What you know, you know. From this time forth I never will speak word.