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In an erstwhile investigation room, the leader of the Phantom Thieves scribbles on cinder block. The pencil, yoinked from Yu's schoolbag, grows dull, then blunt, until he's using graphite like chalk.
It makes sense in the abstract. To him, at least. Once he's gotten the compendium down, he can focus on Yu's Confidants—Social Links, whatever, as if there's a difference—and the year will be perfect. He doesn't have to learn any Velvet Room-ordained lessons.
His bonds burn at the back of his skull. Weak, fragmentary echoes of a life yet to occur. He has a grand total of one, one! , Rank 10 Confidant. Councilor rests on the precipice, at 9, and Justice at 7. Faith lags behind at 4.
The rest?
The rest he'd burned on the way here. Years of degradation through neglect, carelessness, and grief, each in unequal measure. Whenever he shut his eyes he could picture them: ugly, inflamed, angry. It was okay, he reasons as he breathes slowly through his nose. He could fix it. He could fix everything, bit by bit, as long as he had a little more—
From the other side of the locked door sounds a gentle knock.
Between fight and flight, Akira's body freezes.
His stomach churns, sending a wave of nausea through his limbic system. Traitorous thing it is. It clenches without command, staggering his movements until he's a choppy mess of himself.
He leans over from where he sits on the floor, tense. There's bile building in the back of his throat. There's nothing in this body for him to purge, but a primal piece of him remembers the motion. His chilled skin wears the telltale goosebumps for the presence of doom.
Stupid Runs, he thinks.
Akira doesn't know much about his situation. He's never been particularly useful with new information. He can find patterns in puzzles, and given the time, he can build a base of research from which his true speculation can begin. But there's nowhere to turn here. Akira gropes his way through the darkness and hopes in vain he doesn't wake a monster while heavy breathing bores through the metal door.
The interrogation room is cold. The floor is a hard tile, a material easily scrubbed of blood and spit. When he tries to rest, his eyelids flick to the tune of tensing up on it, then forcing his body to relax. It's a familiar texture, an unwelcome one, but an element of his situation that he knows. The room cradles his consciousness and he loves it. He loves it for its consistency, despite being sealed inside with no escape route. He loves it because it keeps him safe from that.
There's a shadow under the door. Not consistently, nor constantly. When Akira covers his nose and mouth, muffles the sound of his own breathing for no purpose at all, of course not, footsteps from the outside hallway carry to his flushed ears. There's no heart in his chest to beat, but crucially, Akira believes there could be. So it does. Heat and blood pound danger into the corners of his cranium.
The room has one entrance and one exit. For as long as Akira has inhabited this place, it's stayed firmly locked. At first, this frustrated him.
Until that thing. Then it became a blessing, and a reminder for Akira to be careful what he wishes for.
If he lies to himself, and he does so often, he'd say he can tolerate the dead bodies. He can withstand his handwriting building on the wall, running out of space and time. He can endure being trapped. He's spent more time as a prisoner than a free being: twenty years of it. He can cope with a blade digging into his skin, he can outlast and overcome anything. His soul is shaped the same as Arséne Lupin, Gentleman Thief. He's five steps ahead and always, always , comes out on top.
Yet none of that unsettles him. For all of that his shield of bravado provides, doubt trickles in. The aporetical Trickster is the experienced one, the one who hesitates. He knows when the plan has gone awry. It's a tempting chalice to drink from, but it's pure poison. Yes, dread is the death of a phantom thief.
It's a spot he alone is meant to occupy, to monopolize against his foes that stand assuredly in blinding light. He has little defense against the things that go bump in the night.
It's ice on salt in skin. The rows of tombstones in deep Mementos. The whispers from Shadows in a bleached reality. No, the Reaper unsettles him; whatever this was carried a sickness down to the very core of his soul. It is incompatible with life itself. And from under the door, a silhouette lingers. A monster waits.
But the beast is gone. Whatever stands outside casts a shadow with human legs. Gentle knuckles rap against the door. Something with bone wrapped in something like skin.
Akira's sure it's a trick. There isn't another soul here, wherever it is he inhabits. It's been months of retreating into the room when he cannot be beside Yu.
Why knock? Why now? He wasn't stupid enough to open the door for it.
"I know you're listening." The thing has a voice. It's a high voice, airy and trill, though decidedly masculine. "I'd like to propose a truce."
It hangs in the air. Akira's chest is tight, and he can't breathe. He's gripping his jaw, hooking a finger to keep his nose closed. Anything to muffle the sound, to hope it passes on unabated. It's unsustainable. He still can't breathe. He's buried alive, kicking up at the dirt above his own coffin, but if he can just breathe. . .
He swallows and the weight abates. His fear disappears to a deeper part of him, locked away.
"Okay," Joker says. It's automatic. Akira isn't in his body. He can handle it better as Joker, because Joker can handle anything. "Why now? You're not exactly the negotiating type."
The chuckle makes his skin crawl. He adds an addendum to his nightmare: insects. There's ants in the coffin crawling over him. They're trailing across his skin, the carnivorous type he can't touch or he'll be swarmed and eaten whole.
"Because I suspect it's the only way you'll listen." Like a petulant child. As if Akira's in trouble and the stranger is a chiding parent.
(How long has it been since home?)
Reticent to agree, he stalls. "Let's keep talking and see where it goes."
"Hmm. No."
The word is sharp and shutdown harsh, though the tone is anything but. Akira flinches from where he sits, a sad pile of rags clinging to a composed state. His suggestions are supposed to work. There's no person of sound mind alive who he can't coax an ear to listen out of (a caveat there, true, but a crucial one, one he wouldn’t even realize).
"No talking around it, or through it, or negotiating. We speak as we are or never again. If you lie or mislead me, I leave."
It's a bad idea.
And god, Akira's so lonely. Curiosity grabs him by the nose and pulls headfirst into trouble on the best of days. He's far from those here. He crawls forward and comes to rest his weary head against the door.
There's a definite presence there. Flutters of doom bestill his circulatory system. Cold leeches from the metal and stays in the pit of his being.
He must take too long to respond, because there's a sigh at the door. The voice is pretty in a familiar way Akira can't place. He has an ingrained weakness for beauty in all forms. Preferably the kind he can catch in his hands or chase until it's tired. He swears he's heard it sing before. It's lovely enough to crush in his fingers.
He's had worse ideas before.
He finds his lips moving, and he's not sure if it's himself, Joker, or something worse. Something raw and real. "Okay. You go first."
This laugh is bitter.
"I wasn't aware this was on your terms. You go first, Akira."
The thing knows his name.
He's grateful for the pressure of a smooth surface as his teeth chatter. The entire world, this single room, shakes around him.
"How do you know my name?" It slips out before he can stop it. His mouth slams shut on his second thought: We're not that close.
"You've made quite the name for yourself. How wouldn't I know you? The infamous leader of the Phantom Thieves? It seems Tokyo owes you a debt of gratitude, as well as the Velvet Room. Don’t they? Do you make them proud?"
That's too much information at once for him to process the implications. All he wants to slap his name out of the stranger's mouth. "Don't call me Akira."
"I'd call you Kurusu, but we both know you'd enjoy it too much." Akira hates how soft he says it, and how sure.
There are a number of issues he could refute. Especially the last statement, loaded as it is. Akira's been having a bad day for half a year, but he hasn't so much as uttered Akechi's name during it.
This someone knows.
"Don't call me Akira," he reiterates.
"Would you prefer Joker?"
Akira nods. It doesn't connect that the thing shouldn't be able to see him. Nevertheless, he responds, “Of course.”
"Alright then, Joker. Introduce yourself and list your grievances."
He knows. What's the point in sharing if he knows? Akira could start anywhere, but there's no easy answer; from the beginning would take too long and there's too much to start at the end. He's flashing through a thousand ways to conduct this conversation, but none of them fit. He's never encountered this.
He's half a breath into starting his sentence before he's cut off.
"Not like that."
"Impressive, considering I haven't said a word."
"I know when you're about to lie."
"By how I breathe?"
"It's just the same."
Once upon a time, he wouldn’t have dreamt of swearing. Now, far from a fairytale, Akira mouths a fuck off at the door.
"That's far from kind of you, but I'm not going anywhere."
He's about to roll his eyes when he stops. No one's hearing is that good. "Can you see me?"
"That certainly is a question."
He shuts his eyes. Anger knits between his shoulder blades as he forces out a breath. It's a rigged game, a confessional with answers and an order he can't predict. There are many aspects of himself that could be considered unlikable. There are so few he can pin down from the stranger.
"It's not complicated. I'm asking for the truth."
He could cry at how ridiculous it is. It would be easier for him to pry out his own teeth barehanded. Terror taints each word he thinks. But if anyone can do it, Joker can. This boy is talking to Joker.
Joker and the truth. On the surface, that's not inherently incompatible. Joker and a rigged game? He’s won those hundreds of times over.
Eventually, the words do come.
"I know you're watching me. Even here, even if I'm supposed to be "dead", you don't give me a second to myself."
There's a hum of agreement. It spurs him on, and Akira relaxes a touch.
“And I’m not dead . Whatever you’re waiting for or preying on isn’t going to happen. This is temporary. It’s hard enough being back in Inaba. It’s even harder to figure out what I’m supposed to be doing w-without” –his teeth chatter and Akira curses his nerves then the fact he relaxed at all–”being watched by another supreme entity.”
One comfort, Akira supposes, is that this is a new entity. Not Yaldabaoth or Azathoth, with his own hounds that drive Akira to a fear of the dark.
“Is that all?”
“Yes.”
There’s a long breath. “My turn.”
It sounds like Makoto when she’s about to lambast his studying habits. Akira, thinks briefly, oh no. I’m about to be destroyed.
“Joker, Phantom Thief of Hearts, Wildcard-never-meant-to-be, you are the most selfish soul I’ve ever met. You refused to accept two separate, reality-altering deals that could give you what you want. For most, this would be a commendable test of fortitude. However, you cannot accept life as it is. Instead of making a firm choice, you waver in the ambiguity of holding time itself hostage. With it, the universe. Your love itself is a force of ruin.”
(Collateral damage. Striking unrelated objects.)
"You assume. You’ve assumed your role in Inaba, and any correction or hint otherwise to your place you disregard. Off of incorrect assumptions, you've built a tower of destruction. You equate doom and death. It’s impressive; I've never seen such a fundamental misunderstanding of the Arcana. An entire reversal of the Fool’s Journey for–”
("When did this become about the Arcana?")
"–a notion of the perfect year. A year that has never existed, an amalgamate of your regret and personal failures. It would be one thing if you'd built it alone. A tragedy, a terrible waste of an otherwise brilliant mind, and perhaps an eventual parable told to other Persona-users, far in the future; beware the man that builds up and away from his friends. His prize is divine providence and a handful of broken promises."
It’s a fruit salad of nonsense. There’s no truth to it that Akira can see, and in a way it brings comfort. False alarm, his conversation partner has devolved into the incoherence of an insane man.
Suddenly, a thought strikes Akira like a match.
"Time out. Can I ask a question?"
"You did right there."
He continues. "What are your pronouns?'
A beat passes. Then two.
". . . what?"
"It's not a big deal. I realized I kept calling you a boy in my head and it's a bad habit. Pronouns are—"
"I know what a pronoun is, Joker."
"I should have asked."
The stranger, honest to one billion gods, stumbles over his response. “You’re fine. Thank you?”
“No problem.”
There’s an awkward pause.
It lasts a little longer than either of them are comfortable with.
“You really are one in a billion, aren’t you?”
Akira’s sure it’s not a compliment. “So statistically, there’s six more out there like me?”
“You’re not funny.” The response is unusually harsh. "Especially since you seem insistent on deifying yourself."
He wants to laugh. Him? A god?
"Do you know who I am?—
("Do I know who you are? You actually said that.")
—I'm the god-killer. There's not a lot of this I understand, but I'm not a god."
There's a memory playing in the back of his mind; a discarded DVD of Justine and Caroline eating in LeBlanc. It's faint, faded from a decade of the same year overwritten again and again.
He shuts his eyes. Last he saw Lavenza, tiny hand gesturing over his own and eyes shining in belief of his ability, would've been eleven years. That is, if time had been permitted to pass properly.
"That's interesting. I wasn't aware humans could vanish from the world's collective consciousness as a whole. I wasn't aware humans could endure death and decide to keep going."
"Are you talking about December?"
"Among other things, yes."
"No one worshiped the Phantom Thieves."
"Not even your cult of personality? The Phan Club?"
His disgust spills out before he can stop it, "I hate that name."
There was a time when he didn’t. But there were lots of times, here and there and once.
"It's fitting. Besides, worship is worship, whether you find the medium appropriate or not. It was collective belief that brought you to ruin, and the will of the people’s hearts that connected you to the demon lord “god-killer”.”
Akira really doesn’t like that.
“That doesn’t make me a god, though.”
“It puts you on the same level as a false one. A false one that was able to hijack one of the biggest cities in the world.”
Akira's agreement with the statement is at a solid zero. Putting it mildly. However, there isn't a retort he can muster without an easy fallacy.
It takes too much time before he realizes he's not arguing nor listening. It takes even longer before he realizes what he's just heard.
"Humanity deserves inerrant kindness. I do believe that. It's why I'm speaking to you at all. No matter how highly you put yourself or the power you obtain, you are unfailingly, wonderfully, irritatingly human. That same kindness is your right."
Akira thinks of the sea of Shadows in Mementos. The hatred and inerrant vileness as black as the rubber that runs them over. He conceives of a world that throws teenagers into costumes as its sole defenders. He can see the circumstances that create Kamoshida, Madarame, Okumura, and Shido.
He watches his hand disappear before his eyes. He watches the friends he'd carried there scream to an uncaring world.
He remembers a painting in Ueno, once in an every year. Of the darkness in desire, and the light shining through.
For the first time in a forever, he thinks of Sakura Futaba. He remembers cleaning her room. Carrying her home. Running to the convenience store. He thinks of her shutting out the world and rotting in a crypt of her own making.
He recalls what a terrible person she believed she'd become.
“I can't say you’re without kindness yourself. Not even at your lowest. Selfish? Yes. Capricious? Absolutely. Wantonly gleeful at destruction?”
Akira chuckles.
“There you have it. Though I will say, now that you're listening, I have a question. You were aware of the creature outside the door, right?"
"Yes."
"But you haven't attacked it, or attempted to do anything other than avoid it. Why?"
He thinks of his newest Confidant. The only card at Rank 10 in his deck.
Hope.
"I had a friend who said he was a monster."
A beat passes.
Then, a musical sigh. Even his exasperation sounds enchanting.
"I wish you wouldn't do that."
Akira's back shifts against the door. "What?"
"I dislike disliking you."
"People say I'm easy to love."
"You're not making this easy by any metric."
"You could make it easier." By disappearing , he doesn't finish.
"Of course I ache for you. Every drop of humanity in my body compels me toward guilt and shame. I dislike metaphor, but it truly is like watching a cat run across a highway. I know he's doomed, everyone does, except the cat. He seems to be ignoring the truth in front of his eyes."
Akira envisions the Inaba motorway. There, with its biker gangs and constant noise, slow on the fastest of day when the weather is hot and the air smells of gasoline fumes.
The next words are slow-spoken and deliberate.
"I don't know what you mean."
Unbridled fury radiates through the small barrier between them. As soon as it kick-starts into existence, it sputters out. Instead, melancholy drifts in his response. "You've grown too comfortable around hate. I said I'd leave if you attempted to lie. Goodbye, Joker."
Earnestness burns through Akira like little else. "Are you going to leave me alone now?"
"Oh no. It's too late for that. For the record, before all of this is over, I believed you were too far gone for Narukami's help."
"Narukami's help? I'm helping him!"
Nothing.
"I'm sorry you don't understand this, but my friends are worth saving, no matter what the cost is."
"You're not supposed to lie."
"That's not a lie!"
"You're good at pretending, Joker, but you're not that good. To begin with, you wanted time. Then you wanted companionship. You walled yourself off in isolation, starved the bonds freely shared with your soul, and promised yourself you could endure it. Now that it's too late, you're still acting like a martyr when you don’t know a thing about the subject."
"At least I want something. You don't care about anything at all!"
The next word is like ice: brittle, beautiful, cold,
"Oh."
Akira flinches.
"Oh. Oh, no. How would you know what I care about? I don't care?"
For a moment, Akira believes he's the loudest creature in existence. His heartbeat pounds in his ears, deeper than concert bass. His tongue rests wetly atop the bottom row of his teeth.
He realizes the room is quieter than any place he's ever been. More silent than nothingness, as empty as a void.
It breaks as the person speaking to him wails. He sobs hard enough that Akira can hear the tears through the door. It builds, and builds, until it's a continuous scream.
His conversation companion is weeping.
In an instant, there’s a dry spot in the back of Akira’s throat.
Silence.
He feels–he truly, deeply feels–the stranger’s head tilt. It’s more of a threat he’s ever faced in this simulacrum of the Velvet Room.
"I'm done," he says stilly. “Open the door.”
There's so much authority and power in his voice Akira nearly follows on instinct. His hand hovers in the air. The spell breaks a moment too soon and he grabs his own wrist, slamming the traitor back down on the tile where it belongs.
Whoever it is must see it. It's the only way the next events follow a line of logic.
"Give him back," he snarls. Akira's impulse is to question and prod—
Force slams into the door. Akira doesn't realize until it's too late, when his head is on the floor, ears ringing.
—there's blood in his mouth. It tastes of iron, a wound between prisoners.
He scrambles. The grip of his boots slides on the floor, and the direction
"Give him back! You heartless thief, give him back! You'll never understand the damage you've done!"
Joker's boots kick against the floor. He turns and fumbles for his connection to Yu.
A blessed blue butterfly rests on the table. He stills as he sees it. The pounding feels muffled, far-away. It isn’t Lavenza–it’s a less ornate species.
"Please," he utters in prayer. "Help."
Whether it hears him or not, the way forward is clear. He can feel another Wildcard’s presence as another heartbeat in his chest. He reaches out, but not before his surroundings stab into his stapes one more time:
"You'll doom them all! Fate isn't as forgiving as he was!"
He stumbles into Narukami's bedroom, sweat down his spine and breathing like the living. He finds the couch, shivering, and sits. His Shujin uniform fabric is a rare yet welcome sensational difference from cold leather.
There is a square clock ticking in the bedroom. Akira's never noticed it before. Now, it’s loud enough to make him twitch at the ticks.
From the futon, a monotone, tired voice calls, "Akira?"
"Go back to sleep, Yu. It's good for you."
The covers shift. There’s a sniff, and then it’s only Akira, accompanied by each passing, obvious second. He sighs, safe for the time being.
His mind refuses to let go. It picks at itself, even as his body is too heavy to move. For the first time in all the Runs, in each step that brought him here, Akira allows himself to doubt.
And surely, steady, as natural as a final breath, dread creeps in.