Archive of Our Own

Something’s wrong.

Akira isn’t sure what, at first, just that something’s wrong, the feeling crawling under his skin like oh so many insects. Nothing jumps out to him initially, either, other than the pervasive sense of offness when he wakes up in his bed in Leblanc’s attic. The glow-in-the-dark stars are still there, slightly peeling on the ceiling beams. All his knick-knacks are in the exact same places, and the heater still doesn’t quite work, and the smell of dust and old wood lingers exactly as it always has.

It hits him as he’s taking stock that Morgana’s familiar weight is nowhere to be found, and he frowns, sitting up.

“Morgana?”

No one answers him, and now that he’s more awake, he can see more things that register as just left of how they should be. The room is dustier than he left it, significantly enough that he notices. The plant in the corner is wilting slightly. The heater doesn’t even seem to be on, and he can’t… remember…

When did he go to bed last night, anyway?

When had he gotten home? The last thing he remembers was the engine room, swinging over the closing bulkhead door to get to Akechi while the Thieves all shouted at him, and then… then…

Unsettled, Akira swings his legs over the edge of the bed and picks up his phone. He squints at the bright light of the screen. It tells him it’s three in the morning, which explains why everything seems to be turned off, and also that it’s Christmas .

What?

How did he lose weeks of time? More importantly, what had he missed? It’s so far past the deadline that there’s nothing he could even do about it if they missed it, but he’s also… here, at Leblanc, so he has to assume… what, exactly?

The screen goes dark again, but Akira can still feel the small December 25 staring up at him. He turns the phone back on and jumps to his contacts and then pauses.

It’s three in the morning. No one should be awake. Even if he has questions, they’ll have to wait for other people to wake up to answer them, won’t they?

He can at least ask, though. He scans over everyone he knows, trying to think of someone who might possibly be awake at this hour. Futaba, probably, or Akechi, maybe, because Akira has no idea how Akechi could have maintained the insane schedule he did if he slept a normal amount. Futaba will almost certainly be awake, though.

Akira: Futaba? Are you awake?

There’s a long moment with no response, and Akira’s about to accept defeat and go back to sleep when he sees the typing bubble appear at the bottom of the screen. Futaba types for a long time, before eventually settling on simply, Akira?

Akira: That’s me, yeah.

Futaba: holy shit

Futaba: there’s no way

Akira: Huh?

Futaba: where are you?

Akira: It’s three in the morning, I don’t think Sojiro wants you leaving the house right now.

Futaba: i don’t care

Futaba: leblanc?

Akira: Yes? Where else would I be at three in the morning?

Futaba: k hold on

Akira waits, and right on schedule, there’s a loud banging on the door downstairs. Akira pushes himself out of bed and goes downstairs, turning on the lamp as he goes. He flicks on the downstairs lights, too, and has to blink until his eyes adjust.

He unlocks the door and looks blearily out at where Futaba is standing, barely in more than her pajamas.

“Oh my god,” she says, and then bursts into tears and rushes into Akira. “Oh my god, oh my god…”

“What’s– Futaba?”

“You’re okay,” she whispers, and that earlier sense of wrongness returns.

Akira gently pulls her further into Leblanc so he can shut the door and relock it, settling into one of the booths with her. 

“I’m mostly just… Futaba, are you okay?”

“I thought you died, you jerk,” she says, and Akira feels like he’s been doused in ice water.

“I didn’t,” Akira says, even as he tries to wrap his head around what she just said.

“Akechi said,” she sniffles and buries her face into his side, “Akechi said that you died, and we all– we all heard the gunshots, and I lost your signal and I thought you died, Akira!”

He can’t remember any of that, though, which might be just waking up, but he feels plenty alive and people didn’t usually just come back from the dead. Did they? Was this a Velvet Room thing? He’ll have to ask the next time he’s there.

“It’s okay,” Akira says in the meantime, because he absolutely can’t panic while Futaba’s having a breakdown. “I’m here now, right? So it’s fine.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, you’re here now. And we can ask Mona about it tomorrow with everyone else. He might know.”

“See? It’s okay. I’m fine. I couldn’t be here if I wasn’t, right?”

“Right.” She pushes her glasses up off her face and rubs her eyes. “I’m so glad you’re back.”

“I am too,” Akira says, even though he has no memory of being gone. “Now, what’s this about Akechi?”

Futaba snorts.

“Did you know he’s actually kind of a bitch?” Futaba says. “When he’s not being all, y’know. He’s really kind of mean, it’s actually pretty funny.”

The last Akira remembers, Akechi had been fighting them, and then trying to sacrifice his own life so the Thieves could get away.

“I didn’t know you all started hanging out,” he says.

“He… sort of took over your job, when…” Futaba makes a vague gesture, which Akira takes to mean when you died. “He’s not actually all that bad, but it’s… weird.”

Akira can only imagine what it must be like for Futaba to have to work with him again, knowing he was the person who’d killed her mom. 

“I’d be surprised if it wasn’t,” Akira says. “He’s okay?”

“Yeah. He’s fine. He’s also a fucking dork, but I already knew that. We talk about Featherman sometimes. He won’t say it, because he’s a dummy like you, but I think he’s trying to make it up to Haru and I a little bit.”

There’s a distinct fondness with which Futaba talks about Akechi, and Akira wonders just what happened over the last few weeks he wasn’t present for. He would have to catch up with everyone once he got the chance.

“I didn’t know he liked Featherman.” Not really a lie, but he hadn’t had it confirmed, so it counted.

“I only found out because I got access to his internet search history in November,” she says. “He reads a lot of RedBlack fanfic.”

“I’ll have to keep that in mind.”

“He’s going to be happy to see you,” Futaba says, drawing her knees up to her chest and just leaning against Akira now. “He was devastated when we lost you. I’m pretty sure you’re the reason he decided to come help us afterwards.”

“I’m glad you’re all getting along okay.”

“I am too,” Futaba says. “He’s not actually all that bad. I still… feel weird being around him sometimes, and I don’t forgive him for what he did to my mom, and he doesn’t seem to expect either Haru or I to. But he isn’t actually the worst, and he’s not as pretentious as he acted before, and he’s kinda funny and he obviously cares at least a little bit, even though he would deny it if I ever called him out on it.”

Akira just listens to Futaba talk, trying to catch him up on everything that’s been happening since he died. Akira isn’t exactly sure how much of it to believe, at least not once she starts talking about a god of control and Mementos merging with reality, but this year has been weird enough that he can’t completely discount it.

She falls asleep eventually, because Futaba’s sleep schedule is a complete wreck and it sounds like she’s been awake for a while, so Akira moves her upstairs and sets her on the couch. Then, he sits on the edge of his bed and thinks.

He can remember the cognition of Akechi showing up. He can remember Akechi shooting the door control. He can remember panicking, flinging himself over the closing bulkhead as quickly as possible before he could really even start to think about what he was doing. He can remember Akechi calling him a reckless idiot for it. He can remember…

He can’t remember past that. Which means he died, if Futaba is to be believed, and Futaba has absolutely no reason to lie to him. But he’s alive now, for whatever reason, which meant something had to have happened, something had to have changed, and Akira… Akira…

He doesn’t know quite what that means. It probably doesn’t matter as much as he’s trying to make it matter, anyway. He can rest on it for now, wait for some explanation to come tomorrow from the others, and if that fails, he can always stop by the Velvet Room and talk to Igor about it. 

It’ll be fine. 

Morning comes with a teary reunion with Sojiro and a promise made not to disappear like that again and Futaba calling an emergency meeting with the rest of the Thieves, and then teary reunions with them, too.

The first to arrive are Ann and Ryuji, and they hug him so tightly between the two of them that Akira has to remind them he needs to breathe if they want his miraculous revival to last. They attach themselves to him after that, trapping him between them in the booth while everyone talks and eats breakfast. 

After Ann and Ryuji come Makoto and Haru, who are moderately more composed but can’t stop talking over each other to tell him how fucking happy they are to see him again. Haru brings some of her produce to share, and things start to feel a little more okay, a little more normal, when Ryuji tells some stupid joke and Makoto sighs in that tired way she always does.

Next comes Yusuke, who has Morgana with him, and Morgana immediately leaps across the booths and into Akira’s lap. Yusuke sits next to Makoto and Haru and pulls out his sketchbook, as though he’s trying to commit this moment to memory. He almost certainly is. 

Akechi joins them last, and freezes in the doorway when he sees Akira, one hand still on the handle of the door. He shuts it slowly, never once looking away from Akira, even as his face goes weird and blank and almost-frowning, like he’s not quite sure what he’s supposed to be feeling.

“How?” Akechi says, and it’s barely above a whisper but it carries just fine. 

“I think we were going to talk about that, actually,” Makoto says. “Futaba called the meeting, so I’m going to hand it over to her.”

“Thanks,” Futaba says, leaning on the back of the booth between Haru and Yusuke. “He just sort of showed up last night. I was working on a project, and I got a text, and I came over here to check if it was real, and there he was.”

Akechi slowly sits down at his usual spot, eyes still locked on Akira.

“What have you figured out so far?” Akechi asks.

“Mostly just that he seems to be real,” Futaba says.

“What do you remember, then?” Haru asks. “Maybe that’ll give us some insights.”

“The last thing I remember is going over the bulkhead door before it shut and Akechi calling me an idiot for it,” Akira says. “After that, waking up here last night.”

“So you don’t actually remember dying,” Yusuke says. “How interesting.”

“He might be like me,” Morgana says. “Because he died in the cognitive world, when the world reset it put him back where he was supposed to be.”

“It could also always be that the mysterious powers in the Velvet Room brought him back,” Akechi says, hand going to his chin. “From my limited time talking with them, it sounds like Kurusu was their favorite.”

“You were in the Velvet Room?” Akira frowns. “When?”

“While I was doing your job,” Akechi says. “Because you decided to be a hero.”

“Let’s not fight about it right now,” Ann says. “I, for one, am just happy he’s back.”

“It would still be nice to know how he’s returned, in case there’s a catch of some sort,” Akechi says, frowning.

“Perhaps this is just one of those moments of luck,” Yusuke says. “A true miracle, granted by a force we could never truly hope to understand. Akira, do you feel alive?”

“Pretty sure,” Akira says. “I’m not sure what feeling dead would be like, though.”

“Then it seems pretty settled to me!” Ryuji grins and slaps Akira on the back good-naturedly. 

“Honestly, yeah,” Ann says. “He’s back now, if we get bogged down in what-ifs we’re just going to get paranoid.”

“They’ve got a point,” Makoto says, and then the topic drops, even though Akira can see Akechi still thinking.

He doesn’t get much time over the next week to dwell on it, though, even if he wanted to, between organizing time to hang out with everyone and setting aside time to check in with his other confidants. 

Ann takes him to Harajuku to go shopping and get crepes and then hot chocolate, and she somehow even manages to rope Akechi into coming along. Ryuji takes him for a run around Inokashira, Futaba drags him around Akihabara’s various electronics stores and points out computer specs that Akira has no idea how to interpret, and Makoto takes him to get lunch in Shibuya, which Morgana demands be a sushi place. Haru brings him to the garden she’s started preparing at her house, and Yusuke brings him by to show him his latest painting. Akechi comes by whenever they hang out as a whole group, which is new, not that Akira is complaining much about it.

He seems more relaxed with the rest of the group than he’d ever been in November, but he won’t stop looking at Akira like he might disappear into smoke. No one else even seems remotely worried, just happy to have him back, but Akira can’t quite shake the feeling that they should at least make more of an effort to find out how it happened, rather than simply accepting it as fact, if only for his own peace of mind.

And then January rolls around.

There’s almost a taste to the air when Akira wakes up at what his phone tells him is ten in the morning, over-sweet and almost soporific, and his first instinct is to just go back to sleep and not worry about it. He has all the time in the world again, after all, so he might as well enjoy sleeping in for a little longer. Then he realizes that he doesn’t know where the thought came from, and it has him stumbling out of bed and toward the stairs before he’s even fully awake. 

The feeling clings to him as he moves downstairs for the bathroom, cobwebby and tangling, urging him to just go back to bed, no need to stress now, there’s no rush.

Nothing is visibly wrong when he looks in the mirror, but he still dunks his head under the sink faucet in the hopes that the cold will shock away whatever sugar-sweet, sluggish feeling has wrapped its way around his limbs. It helps some, the sharp-smooth sensation of it running down his face and trickling through his bangs, but it’s still there, just slight enough that he can’t fully ignore it.

He steps out of the bathroom and trudges back upstairs with a vague wave to Sojiro as he greets him, gets dressed, and frowns. He’s missing something again.

“Sojiro?” Akira calls as he walks back down the stairs, “Have you seen Morgana?”

“I’m right here,” a distinctly not-Morgana voice says, and Akira’s brain comes to a screeching halt. “Did you need something?”

The speaker is sitting at the counter, has black hair and the most strikingly blue eyes Akira has ever seen, and is notably not his cat.

“No,” Akira says, slowly, because Sojiro doesn’t seem to think this is weird, so it isn’t, but it absolutely definitely is. “Just wasn’t sure where you went. Sorry if I worried you.”

Morgana smiles, and it sends spiders down Akira’s spine. It feels like looking at an absolutely perfect TV boy rather than one of his closest friends.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, and Akira nods. 

“Breakfast? You got up late,” Sojiro says, sliding a plate of curry across the counter, and Akira nods to that, too.

“Thanks, Sojiro,” he says, and it feels like he’s stuck on autopilot, but he isn’t fighting the clinging feeling anymore. He’s not sure if that’s a good or bad sign.

Halfway through his late breakfast, Futaba comes in and shows off her yukata and starts talking about her mom in the present tense, and Akira decides he needs to find anyone, just one person, who isn’t treating all of this like it’s completely normal.

“You had plans to go to the shrine today with one of your classmates, right, Akira?” Morgana says next to him, and Akira has no idea what he’s talking about.

Except, no, he does, because he and Kasumi said they’d go last week–

He hasn’t seen Kasumi since November.

“Yeah,” Akira says anyway, and it feels weird and plastic-artificial, like he’s been handed a script and told to act it without getting to read it all the way through. 

“Then you’d better hurry up,” Futaba says. “She’s probably already waiting for you, dude!”

“Right,” Akira says, and takes the opportunity to get out of this weird, unreal Leblanc.

Outside isn’t much better, but at least there’s fresh air, and no sign of not-Morgana anywhere. Everywhere he looks, though, things feel too perfect, that clear-sweet sensation sticking to Akira the whole time. 

Kasumi is the same as ever, except Kasumi also thinks that they planned this a week ago when Akira’s pretty sure he wasn’t even alive, and Akira doesn't bother to correct her. There’s almost no one else there, either, and their meetup with Futaba’s group is… convenient, at best, and suspicious at worst.

And then there’s Akechi, who’s hovering outside Leblanc’s door as soon as he gets back.

“Tell me you’re just the normal amount of sappy today,” Akechi says, and Akira breathes out in relief.

“Okay, so I’m not the only one who thinks this is all weird.”

“Ann called off something we’d planned a week ago to spend time with her miraculously-healed girlfriend,” Akechi says, like him and Ann casually hanging out wasn’t just as weird to Akira as the rest of all of this, but he’d had a lot to catch up on already, and Akechi was part of the group in more than just name now. Had been for a while, it seems. “The same girlfriend who, last I checked, was still in rehab for her suicide attempt and certainly couldn’t spontaneously decide to go on a shopping trip.”

“Futaba mentioned her mom helping her pick out her yukata for the shrine today, too,” Akira says. “Haru and Makoto both said they had plans with their dads, which should be impossible in both cases. Morgana’s an uncomfortably-pretty human boy.”

Akechi is looking at Akira, eyes narrowed slightly, frowning. Calculating, contemplative, something in the middle.

“And you,” Akechi says. “You’re just as impossible.”

“I was here before everything else got weird, though.”

Akechi’s frown deepens for a moment, before his expression softens, clearing slightly.

“I suppose that’s true,” he says. “It’s still something to keep in mind going forward.”

Akira nods, pushing open the door to Leblanc, and fails again to fight off the pervasive, clinging wrongness that’s haunted him since he woke up in December.

Kasumi calls him the next day because she sees something weird in Odaiba, and Akira calls Akechi about it, and they all three meet up outside the stadium construction and stare at the semi-translucent tower that’s appeared there.

“Well,” Akechi says, and Akira can hear the faint bafflement in his voice. “This is new.”

“It looks like the building Kurusu-senpai and I found a few months ago,” Kasumi says, and Akechi glances at Akira for an explanation.

“We did find a Palace,” Akira says, “But I have no idea who its ruler is.”

“Didn’t one of you check the app for a keyword when you got out, then?” Akechi looks between the two of them for an answer.

“We tried,” Akira says.

“It was my phone,” Kasumi says. “The MetaNav wasn’t there when we got out, so we couldn’t check.”

“Check now,” Akechi says. “Just in case.”

Kasumi pulls out her phone and frowns.

“It’s there in the history, with Niijima’s, but…”

“But what?” Akechi leans over to see.

“There’s no name.”

“I don’t like this,” Akira says, staring off at the Palace. 

“Me neither,” Akechi frowns. “I say we investigate.”

“We don’t have any of the others with us right now,” Akira says. “We don’t know what’s waiting for us in there.”

“Don’t tell me you’re scared now, Kurusu.”

“I’m not. Just… cautious.”

They weren’t as untouchable as they liked to think they were, after all. They’d learned that the hard way, even if Akira couldn’t really remember it.

“I wouldn’t be sending you in there alone,” Akechi says. “Don’t be stupid. I just don’t think it would be wise to leave this be, considering the way the rest of your friends have been acting.”

“They’re your friends now, too.”

Akechi doesn’t grace that with an answer.

“You’re the one with the Nav history, Yoshizawa,” Akechi says. “Why don’t you do the honors?”

“Oh!” Kasumi nods. “Right.”

Usually, going into the Metaverse gives Akira a little bit of a headache, reality stretching-pulling around him. There’s always the little background buzz of static under his skin afterwards, always a little bit of a sense of unreality to it all.

When Kasumi activates the MetaNav and sends them into this Palace, it feels like he’s been stabbed, the usual stretch of reality turning knife-sharp against his insides. The usual static-tingle of the cognitive world becomes much more insistent, a building pressure inside his bones, and he waits for it to burst and tear him apart from the inside, ripping through his chest until there’s nothing identifiable left, just bones and blood across the Palace floor.

And then it stops, reality snapping elastic against his skin, and he’s standing in front of the Palace. Akechi and Kasumi are both looking at him with matching frowns.

“Senpai?” Kasumi asks. “Are you okay?”

“Perfectly fine,” Akira says, even as nausea coils in his gut from the echoes of that tearing feeling. 

“You didn’t look it,” Akechi says, then shrugs. “But you’re back now, so I guess there’s not much to do about it.”

Akechi is in the Black Mask outfit, and Akira is tempted to comment on it, but Akechi turns and marches toward the Palace doors before he gets the chance. Akira follows him, happy to have someone else take the lead for once while he’s still trying to figure out his own situation.

The Palace is filled with cognitions of people who are unnervingly happy, wearing smiles wide enough to make Akira feel vaguely threatened. Motivational posters line the walls, promoting a quest for joy above all else, and academic posters fill standing boards in the big entry hall they enter into, invariably about the pursuit of happiness from a cognitive psience standpoint.

All in all, it feels cultish, and Akira wants to leave.

He’s also getting the creeping feeling that he knows who the Palace ruler is, at this point. Maybe it’s denial that drives him not to share, but with each room they pass through, Akira feels more and more confident. With that confidence comes a building pressure in the base of his skull, some intangible thing wrapping its way around the tip of his spine and trying to pull, wanting to drag him back to the entrance.

Whether or not Akira’s guess is correct, the Palace is trying its hardest to deter Kasumi, at least, from proceeding. Akira may not know what, exactly, it is he’s seeing, but he can make some guesses: Kasumi told him she lost her sister, and the video they came across seemed targeted at her, and Akira’s been to funerals before. 

It seems to hurt her, too, Akira moving to help her up when she stumbles, and Akechi looks between the two of them.

“Yoshizawa, are you okay to proceed?” Akechi asks.

“Yes,” Kasumi says. “I’m alright. I just… it surprised me. I don’t know how the ruler of this place would know about Sumire, but… but I’m okay to continue.”

“So long as you’re sure.” Akechi turns and waves them both forward. “Well, come on, we haven’t got all day.”

It doesn’t get better.

“Sumire!” A cognition of Kasumi’s sister says, grinning brightly from a stage on the floor below them. “I did it, Sumire!”

The next shadow they encounter Kasumi throws herself at without warning or care, and Akechi steps in and obliterates it (obliterates, and Akira knows he had a crush before but damn) before turning on her. 

“You,” he says, “need to be more careful. Joker had a point about caution earlier, and if you cannot manage that you will be leaving.”

“I’m sorry,” Kasumi says. “I’ll be more careful. I just… I want answers.”

“Are you sure?”

The voice doesn’t have a source, seemingly spoken directly into Akira’s brain, bypassing his ears entirely. It’s familiar, too, and Akira’s heart sinks as he places it. Of course it would be Maruki. Of course it would, because Akira’s life can’t be simple.

“Of course I am!” Kasumi shouts. 

“Seeking answers will only lead you to further heartbreak and pain,” Maruki says, projects directly into Akira’s skull. “I don’t want that for you. Won’t you please return to the current reality?”

“I’m sick of the high-and-mighty voice-behind-the-curtain act,” Akechi says. “I don’t feel like doing that, so why don’t you come talk to us yourself and stop being a coward?”

Maruki sighs, and the pressure in Akira’s head suddenly disperses and he stumbles slightly from the force of it, overbalancing as his attempts to pull against an invisible string tied to the place snaps and the tension all releases at once.

“Alright,” Maruki says. “Head on down. I’ll meet you.”

Kasumi’s the first to leave the balcony they’re standing on, and Akechi watches her go.

“How exactly did you meet her, again?” Akechi asks. 

“A bunch of convenient run-ins, mostly,” Akira says. “Why?”

“No reason,” Akechi says. “We should probably catch up to her.”

Things rapidly go downhill from there.

“I can’t believe that bastard locked us out,” Akechi growls, kicking at the ground outside the Palace. “You’re a fucking coward, Maruki Takuto!”

“Shouting at it isn’t going to convince him to let us back in,” Akira says, frowning at the slightly-translucent structure. 

“Maybe not, but it’ll at least make me feel slightly better,” Akechi says. “Out of the kindness of his heart—what a fucking joke.”

“He thinks it is,” Akira says.

“You’re awfully calm about all of this,” Akechi says, eyes narrowed. “Not even a little annoyed that your school therapist turned out to be a megalomaniac?”

Akira shrugs.

“It isn’t like this is the first sign that something was maybe a little wrong with him,” Akira says. “I just wasn’t really expecting it to end up in world domination.”

Akechi looks at him for a long moment.

“I suppose it is a rather outlandish thing to expect from someone,” he says. “Given the typical limitations humans have as far as their worldly influence goes. The savior complex nearly rivals yours, Kurusu.”

“Uh-huh. I never tried to take over the world.”

“You tried to save everyone in it.”

“And from the sound of things, I didn’t exactly fail, either.”

Akechi opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, continue their back-and-forth, but he doesn’t follow through. Instead, he turns from the Palace and walks away.

“Come on,” Akechi says, terse, short. “We’ve got research to do.”

“On what?” Akira says, following along. 

“Your friend up there, for one,” Akechi says. “Second, since I see it being something you’ll be concerned with, what the hell sort of wishes he granted for the rest of your friends.”

“Not curious what he gave you?”

“Do you see me mindlessly accepting all of this as normal? No. I didn’t get any wish fulfilled, don’t be ridiculous.”

“There has to be something you wanted, other than revenge against your shitty dad,” Akira says, hands in his pockets, and watches Akechi’s hands ball into fists at his sides.

“Well, I haven’t seen anything of the sort since January started, so the obvious answer is that I didn’t get anything. Can we move on, Kurusu?”

“Sure,” Akira says, because he can still at least tell when it’s time to ease off. “Still, seems pretty shitty of him for neither of us to get anything.”

“It certainly isn’t going to be a problem when we get rid of his stupid ‘ideal reality,’” Akechi says, and continues to walk. 

Akechi gives Akira the task of breaking the other Thieves out of their bubbles of gifted joy, and Akira is pretty sure it's because he doesn't feel comfortable trying to actually connect enough for it to work. Akira is mostly fine with this, except for the part where with each passing day it becomes glaringly clear that none of their perfect realities really… include him at all.

Futaba gets her mom back, and barely even spares Akira a glance when he comes by to talk to her. Yusuke gets a supportive father figure out of Madarame and is succeeding in the art world on his own merit. Ann gets Shiho, untraumatized and healthy. Ryuji is on Shujin’s track team and getting accepted for running scholarships, Morgana is human and has a truly full social life, and Makoto’s family life never fell apart when her dad died, because he’s still alive. Haru’s dad is, too, and he finds her standing on a Kichijoji street corner discussing cafe placements with him.

And Akira… Akira isn’t a part of any of it. 

Everyone knows him still, sure, but he really isn’t part of their lives. He feels like a ghost, drifting from person to person with no real sense of the passage of time, nothing beyond his meetings with people to anchor him. He has the morbid thought, halfway through talking with Haru with his attention drifting to her father standing beside her, that maybe he is. None of this is real, anyways, so what about him?

He brings it up to Akechi while they sit in the back corner of Big Bang Burger, stealing fries from his plate.

“What if,” Akira says, “What if I’m not part of their lives because I was never supposed to be.”

“Well, for someone who supposedly had such a soft spot for you, that would be a rather mean-spirited move for Maruki to pull,” Akechi says, glaring at him as he shoves his stolen fries in his mouth.

“He brought back Futaba’s mom and Haru’s dad,” Akira says. “Who says he couldn’t have–”

“You were here before January first,” Akechi interrupts. “I think that’s evidence.”

But what if it’s not, Akira thinks. What if I’m the same as them.

“Or would you just be sad if I disappeared one day,” Akira says, reaching to take another fry off Akechi’s plate. Akechi smacks his hand away.

“Good riddance,” Akechi says. “You are, by far, the most annoying person I have ever had to deal with.”

“More annoying than Shido?”

“Shido was just awful. You like to needle and prod and stick your nose where it doesn’t belong and talk me into doing things I really shouldn’t be doing.”

“Like getting dinner at a shitty fast food chain with me,” Akira says.

“Yes, exactly like that. Now stop,” he says, pushing Akira’s hand down to the table, “Stealing my food, please.”

Akira snickers but withdraws his hand anyway.

“You love me too much to say no to me,” Akira says.

“I absolutely do not,” Akechi says. 

“Uh-huh.”

The thought that he doesn’t belong here follows him, though, even through Maruki’s Palace at the end of the week and even through the other Thieves snapping out of their own miracle realities and even through Okumura and Wakaba’s disappearances. It clings to him when Akechi’s phone rings during a Thieves meeting and a girl Akira doesn’t recognize but everyone else does says she needs to meet with them and to find her at Shujin’s nurse’s office the next day.

It’s the first sign that his existence isn’t a Velvet Room creation, he realizes, when the girl who appears from a butterfly is dressed in the same deep blue that covers the Room and has the same white hair and gold eyes that the wardens did and introduces herself as Lavenza and calls Akechi Trickster and won’t meet Akira’s eyes while she lays out the conditions of the end of the world.

“Let me get this straight,” Akechi says. “We left a power vacuum, this madman filled it to grant impossible wishes, and his meddling with reality is going to cause Mementos to merge permanently anyway in a month if we can’t stop him.”

“That is exactly correct,” Lavenza says. “I’m sorry to place this burden on you all once again, but there’s not much my Master and I can do from our positions.”

Akechi sighs deeply, rubs at his eyes, and then nods.

“Alright,” he says. “We’ll take care of it, Lavenza.”

“Thank you, Trickster,” Lavenza says, and very pointedly does not look at Akira.

He brought people back from the dead, Akira thinks, and according to what everyone else has been saying, I died.

None of the other Thieves seem to have noticed anything off about the interaction, but when they’ve all filed out of the nurse’s office and prepare to go their separate ways, Akechi is giving him a look, like he knows something’s wrong.

He doesn’t address it until after school, cornering him at the train station and dragging him into the bathroom, jamming the door shut behind them.

“You noticed something,” Akechi starts with, and Akira debates the merits of lying and decides it probably isn’t worth it, because Akechi will probably find out anyway. 

“Nothing I’m certain of,” Akira says, because even if he isn’t going to lie he’s certainly not going to come out and say I think I really am actually dead.

Maybe that’s less for Akechi’s sake and more for his own, though.

“Share your thoughts anyway,” Akechi says. Akira glances at the door.

“I’m really not–”

“Kurusu.”

Akira winces from the venom in Akechi’s voice and dares to actually look at him. He looks pissed, but more than that, he looks worried, and Akira doesn’t think he’s seen that expression on him before.

“Akechi,” Akira says cautiously, slowly edging his way toward the door. “I’ll tell you, but I want to be sure before–”

Akechi moves smoothly to cut off Akira’s escape route, backing Akira slowly up against the sink counter.

“Reality is broken and if you have a lead, Kurusu, you need to tell me, especially if you won’t take over your little crew now that you’re back.”

Am I?

The certainty sinks into his chest ice-sharp, slow and cold and real. I didn’t make it out of that room.

He still can’t remember it, of course. He still just remembers: cognitive Akechi, laying out his threats; real Akechi, making eye contact with Akira though his busted lenses and aiming a gun at his head; the moment he realized Akechi wasn’t going to shoot him, was going to do something worse, and he had to stop it from happening; flying over the bulkhead door and landing in front of him; Akechi calling him an idiot with a martyr complex bigger than the sun.

It goes black, weird and empty past that, and he can’t remember if the trigger was pulled, if he made it out. He doesn’t think he did. Futaba had said, hadn’t she, she lost his signal and Akechi had said he’d died, there shouldn’t have been any way out of it for him–

He didn’t, is the obvious answer. Joker never made it out of that Palace.

“I don’t want to scare you,” Akira says, switching tactics slightly, because the certainty that he’s dead he’s dead he’s been dead for a month is bitter acid in the back of his throat.

“Too late,” Akechi says. “You scared me the moment I walked in that fucking cafe and you were sitting there like I hadn’t watched you bleed out from a gunshot wound I should have taken.”

“Akechi,” Akira says, the edge of the counter digging slightly into his back. “I don’t think now is a good time for this. Or place.”

“I don’t care,” Akechi says. “I’m already doing your job and I’m doing it blind. Give me something to work with, Kurusu, dammit.”

“I never met Lavenza,” Akira says, the words tumbling out in a rush, because he can’t think of any other way to say it. Any other way to make the words leave his mouth. I never came back through the Velvet Room. I never really came back at all.

“You… but you should have,” Akechi says, frowning slightly. “If you came back through the Room like Morgana suggested…”

He trails off, the realization seeming to hit him, and Akira can’t miss from this close the way he pales or the way his eyes go wide, ever-so-slightly.

“No,” Akechi says. “No, but that doesn’t make sense, you came back before the new year, you shouldn’t–”

He backs up, and Akira has some space to breathe.

“Akechi,” he tries, and Akechi’s eyes shoot up to him like Akira hit him.

“You’re not real,” he says, voice edging on manic. “Of course! Of course not, I watched you die, I know what I saw, I knew it was too good to be true as soon as I saw you but I let your little gaggle of hopeful fools talk me into hoping right along with them, but of course not, why would anything good happen around me?”

“Akechi,” Akira tries again. “This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“How the hell are you so calm about this?! You’re–” 

Akechi gets stuck on it, too, and Akira steps forward as slowly and cautiously as he is able to and takes Akechi’s hands in his own. Akechi flinches from the contact, but doesn’t draw away like Akira had half expected him to, which is… interesting. It’s interesting.

“We’ll figure it out,” Akira says, even if he knows that figuring it out probably means he’s going to disappear like everyone else Maruki brought back from the dead. He can… worry about it later. Or just avoid worrying about it entirely. 

“This is what I get,” Akechi says. “This is what I get for daring to hope the world would cut me a break for once.”

“This is why I didn’t want to say it,” Akira says, and immediately knows it’s the wrong thing to say from the way Akechi sharpens, pulling his hands out of Akira’s. 

“Oh, so you would have preferred– what, to just let me believe in your madman therapist’s reality? The way you refused to let your friends?”

“That was unnecessary.”

“Was it? Was it, Kurusu?”

“Getting mad at me for this isn’t helping, Akechi. I had as little say in it as you do. Get mad at Maruki, if you need someone to be mad at.”

Akechi looks like he’s going to say something else, going to snap at Akira again, but he doesn’t. Instead, he sighs and drops his hands to his sides.

“Fine,” he says. “You’re going to go tell all your little sycophants, then, I take it?”

Could he? Could he even do that? Go up to any one of them and tell them he really did die? It would be heartbreaking for any of them, but, fuck, could he do that to Morgana? To Futaba?

They’d never leave, end of the world or no. They’d be trapped here forever and he wouldn’t even find it in himself to blame them.

“No,” Akira says, and doesn’t elaborate even as Akechi stares him down for answers. After a moment, he deflates, and then picks himself back up into something approaching his usual demeanor.

“Alright,” Akechi says. “I don’t care. Do whatever you want.”

Then he turns and leaves the bathroom, slamming the door on his way out. Akira sinks down against the wall and tries to rally himself into going home and facing Morgana and Sojiro and Futaba.

Fuck.

Akira wakes up the next morning to his phone ringing, and he doesn’t stop to look at who’s calling him before he answers.

“I think we should figure out whose wish you are,” Akechi’s voice greets him before he even has a chance to say hello, straight to business. “Then we can try and talk them out of their faith in this bullshit reality.”

“Good morning to you too,” Akira says, sitting up and glancing at where Morgana is curled up at the end of the bed. “Can I ask why?”

“What do you mean, why? I had assumed you wouldn’t want to be a plaything of this reality any more than–” Akechi cuts off, and Akira wonders what he had been about to say. What he’d been about to admit to, maybe.

“I mean,” Akira says, slipping out of bed and moving downstairs so he doesn’t wake Morgana up with this conversation, “Do you really want me gone again that badly?” 

He’d meant for it to come out teasing, but it mostly sounds sad to his ears.

“That isn’t the point,” Akechi says. “The point is that I don’t… look. The longer you’re here, and the more control Maruki gets over reality, the more likely… the more likely it becomes that he’ll be able to make you act in ways you wouldn’t. I don’t trust him remotely not to do something to you once he decides you shouldn’t be allowed to make your own choices regarding accepting or rejecting his fantasyland for your own ‘happiness.’”

He… does have a point.

“What about you?” Akira asks, and there’s a pause. 

“What about me?”

“I don’t want him to do anything to you, either.”

“The man had never met me before we went into his Palace. He has no reason to care what I do. Beyond the fact that you seem to care about me—”

“I do,” Akira says.

“—Fine, that you do care about me, he knows nothing about me. If anything, I’m a liability to you, who he’ll probably still be going to about his ridiculous little paradise. After all, if you accept his offer, you don’t die. Seems like a pretty good deal.”

“I’m not the only person who has to live with that choice and you know it. I can’t do that to everyone else, and I can’t do that to you, so–”

“Which is exactly why we’re in this situation in the first place, Kurusu, or did you forget how you died?”

“Can we not fight about this right now?”

There’s a beat of silence.

“Fine,” Akechi says. “I wanted to know where you wanted to start looking. You know your contacts better than I do.”

“Is your plan really to just go ask everyone I got to know while I was in Tokyo until we find someone?” Akira asks.

“Do you have a better idea?”

“Do you even know if the rules are the same for me?” Akira shoots back. “I appeared before January first. Maruki seems to have been fighting for me to be here since you all created the power vacuum he took advantage of. There is absolutely no guarantee that just… finding the person who wished me back and breaking their immersion is going to do anything to me.”

“It’s still worth a try,” Akechi says. “If nothing else, it might distract him from putting up real roadblocks in the Palace.”

Akira sighs.

“It can’t be any of the other Thieves,” Akira says. “I already saw what their wishes were, and we already broke their immersion. It can’t be Sae or Sojiro, because I’ve already seen their wishes, too. Takemi isn’t here, so I’m fairly confident it isn’t her, either.”

“Great. That only leaves, what, half of Tokyo?”

“Not quite.”

“I know that, Kurusu, it was–” Akechi cuts off, and Akira smiles a little to himself.

“Was that supposed to be a joke?”

“Just forget it,” Akechi says, tone clipped, which Akira takes to mean yes.

“Okay, relax,” Akira says. “It wasn’t bad, I just wasn’t expecting it.”

“Kurusu.”

Akira snickers.

“Okay, okay!”

“I think we should go talk to at least a couple of your contacts before our infiltration this afternoon,” Akechi says. “If that’s alright with you?”

“Sure,” Akira says. “Morgana will probably end up coming, though.”

Another pause.

“How come?” Akechi asks.

“He always comes with me,” Akira says. “It would be a lot weirder if I told him he couldn’t come at all.”

Akechi sighs.

“Fine,” he says. “I’ll meet you at Leblanc. See you then.”

Akechi hangs up, and Akira stares at the screen for a moment before he lets it drop to his lap and rubs at his face.

This was going to be a long month, assuming he even manages to exist through to the third of February, as himself or otherwise.

When he eventually goes back up to the attic, Morgana is up. He turns toward the staircase as Akira makes his way up and sighs in relief.

“I was wondering where you went,” Morgana says. 

“Sorry,” Akira says, grabbing clothes for the day. “Didn’t mean to worry you.”

“You didn’t,” Morgana says, haughty as ever, even though Akira can see his tail flicking in concern and his ears flicking back and forth. He doesn’t comment on it, though.

“We’re gonna go do some stuff with Akechi today before the infiltration,” Akira says, and Morgana tilts his head.

“Huh? Where are we going?”

“Not sure yet.” Akira’s probably going to have to decide, though, since Akechi doesn’t actually know where his contacts tend to hang out. If he did, he probably wouldn’t have even told Akira what he was doing.

Akira’s not sure whether that would have made the whole ordeal better or worse.

It isn’t Iwai or Shinya, though Akira didn’t really expect it to be either of them. It can’t be Ohya, either, which would have been weird, really, and it’s not Chihaya or Kawakami or Yoshida, either. It’s not Hifumi. It’s not Mishima. The more time they spend looking, the more sure Akira gets that he knows, though.

He won’t say it out loud, not until he thinks Akechi might actually listen to him. He had considered not saying anything at all, but that seemed... mean-spirited, maybe. Unfair. A brand-new sort of betrayal.

The Palace is a bitch and a half to deal with, and Akira doesn’t think they’ve ever seen Shadows this frustrating to fight before, either. Akechi is angry, and devastating, and completely, utterly done.

Sumire re-awakens. Akira’s proud of her, smiles at her when she looks back at him with her giddy grin, and tries not to feel too sick from being inside the Palace for the stretches they’re doing. Akechi doesn’t let up, drives the team even further per visit, maybe, than Akira used to when he was in charge. He’ll look back at Akira sometimes, like he’ll answer whatever strategic puzzle Akechi has run into now, but he doesn’t try to get Akira to take over. 

The tug he’d noticed the first time they were here isn’t as strong, but now that he’s looking for it, now that he’s pretty sure he knows why he was feeling it and neither of the others did, it’s somehow more noticeable. He could trace it back to the entrance, he thinks, Ariadne’s thread to his Theseus. Or maybe that’s Akechi, the living hero with something to fight for, a home to go back to, determined to rid the maze of its monster one way or another, so sure that the thread’s owner will be there waiting for him when he’s done.

Or maybe he’s picking the wrong Greek myths; Orpheus seems fitting, here, somehow, even if Akira doesn’t think he was ever really fit for it. He knows he’d have looked back, if he were in Akechi’s position, and anyways, none of those stories really considered a case where their doomed lovers weren’t really lovers at all, or what it would mean if they were doomed by each other rather than the gods, or if that would even change a thing.

Or, honestly, maybe he’s just in this mood because of Maruki, and his damn Palace, and all its god-complex imagery, and it’s making him think in metaphors rather than how badly he wants to join Akechi in tearing it all into little ribbons, his own living status be damned.

Akechi would probably find some way to tell him he’s being an idiot, if Akechi weren’t so laser-focused on finding any single one of Akira’s confidants who could have wished him back to life. As it stands, with every failure, Akechi is just getting more and more frustrated.

More and more desperate, maybe.

“There’s got to be someone we’re missing,” Akechi says, pacing back and forth along the street outside of Shujin Academy.

“Nope,” Akira says, mentally double-checking his own list of friends and helpers. “There’s... Maruki, maybe, but something tells me he wouldn’t go out of his way to grant his own wish before anyone else.”

“No, he’s got too much of a martyr complex for that,” Akechi mutters. “Self-aggrandizing bastard.”

And Akechi himself, of course, but Akechi wouldn’t hear it, even if Akira felt like he had the strength to say it instead of continuing to keep it to himself.

And, besides: Wakaba and Okumura had both disappeared nearly as soon as their respective people had realized, after all. Who’s to say Akira wouldn’t, too, right before Akechi’s eyes, like some sort of terrible hologram?

Maybe that part’s a little selfish of him. He’d like to keep existing, even if it was just for a little longer. Just long enough to actually come to terms with it.

February sneaks up on them, unseasonably gentle and with a sort of anxiety Akira hasn’t really felt since they first changed Kamoshida’s heart, when they still weren’t really sure what they were doing or whether they’d even done anything. They still haven’t managed to get a calling card to Maruki, after all.

“If he’s going to come get it,” Futaba says, kicking the back of the booth seat she’s sitting at with a regular thunk, thunk, thunk, “It has to be tonight, right? It’s the second already.”

“Yeah,” Ryuji says, frowning. “He said he’d give us a shot, at least.”

“Honestly, he knows how this works, I’m not entirely sure why his Treasure needs a calling card to manifest at all,” Akechi says. He’s been tearing a napkin into tinier and tinier pieces over the course of the last twenty minutes, and Akira sort of wants to tell him to stop, because he has to be the one to clean that up, but he doesn’t. As far as Akira can see, it’s the only thing keeping him from launching out of his seat and out the door to kill Maruki and ending things that way, calling card or not.

“I think it might be because he is expecting a calling card first,” Morgana says. “Think about it: Regardless of whether he’s actually seen how we steal hearts, he knows that the calling card gets sent first. He’s probably more aware of that than why the calling card is a part of the process.”

“That’s true,” Akechi says.

“Kind of makes me wonder what would happen if one of us got a Palace,” Ann says, “Other than Futaba, who didn’t know exactly how it worked at the time, anyway.”

“True,” Futaba says. “We probably won’t ever find out, though.”

“And it doesn’t really matter to the current discussion, which is: What are we going to do if Maruki doesn’t show his face to claim his card?”

Akira bites his lip.

“He will,” Akira says. “He hasn’t gone back on his word before, has he? He’ll just be... annoying about it.”

Akira has a feeling he knows how, too.

“Do we still think he’ll come here for it?” Haru asks. “We made that assumption because Akira’s here, but Akira hasn’t... exactly been leading us through the Palace.”

“If we’re both here,” Akechi says, and Akira shakes his head.

“He might try something if it’s more than just one of us,” Akira says. More than himself, at least, because Maruki could probably leverage the fact that he’s dead with any of the Thieves. He may be Akechi’s wish, but that doesn’t mean the others wouldn’t be heartbroken, either. Akechi narrows his eyes at Akira anyway.

“I’m not going to cave to whatever petty manipulation he tries,” Akechi says. “You know that as well as I do.”

Does he? Akechi has refused to even entertain the idea that he got something from this reality so far. Would that somehow maintain if it were Maruki telling him Akira was his wish?

“Okay,” Morgana says. “The three of us can stay here and wait, and Maruki has Akira’s number, at least, so if he wants to meet somewhere else, he can get in touch.”

Akira doesn’t think this will end well.

“Alright,” he says anyway.

And, well, Maruki shows up, calls ahead oh-so-politely as though any of them really believed he would do something else, and watches Akira descend the stairs with Morgana in tow while Akechi sits at the booth across from him and glares.

“Sorry for the last-minute visit,” Maruki says, as though this were an ordinary social call on an ordinary day.

“Can I get you something while you’re here?” Akira offers, in part because it’s polite and he tries to be a decent host, at least while he’s still here, and in part because he wants to provide Akechi with something hot he could throw in Maruki’s face if need be when he breaks the news, a little bit.

“Coffee would be great, thank you, Kurusu-kun,” Maruki says. Akira silently looks at Akechi, who glances at him and just as silently nods.

Okay. Well. This was already going poorly.

“I’m sure you know why I’m here,” Maruki says. “And I understand you seem determined to end this with a fight, but I was wondering. Is there really no way we can solve this peacefully? No chance that this reality has appealed to you yet?”

“Not after you brainwashed all of his friends,” Akechi cuts in, pointing at Akira. “And don’t you dare think about pulling the he’s-already-dead card. We both already know.”

Morgana, on the back of the booth seat, freezes. His gaze flickers between Akechi and Akira. Maruki sighs.

“I had a feeling,” he says. “You two are both exceptionally clever. It’s rather admirable, actually.”

“What do you mean,” Morgana says, slowly, “He’s already dead?”

Akira focuses on not messing up his pour-over. 

“I can’t remember anything after I jumped the door, which I told you back in December,” Akira says, and it sounds like the voice he used when reading off Shadow weaknesses to himself, matter-of-fact and detached, “And Akechi remembers seeing me die, and I came back in the middle of the night almost a month later without having actually lived any of that time.”

Morgana’s tail flicks in distress, ears pinning back.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone after you knew?” Morgana asks, voice quiet, whispery.

“He didn’t want to panic anybody,” Akechi says, almost mocking, still engaging in his silent staring contest with Maruki. “He didn’t want you all to decide that his life was more important than fixing reality. How noble of him.”

How selfish, Akechi doesn’t say, but it hangs in the air like he’d shouted it anyway.

“You don’t think that?” Maruki says, and Akira doesn’t look at them.

“I think what you’re doing to him is a cruel mockery of benevolence,” Akechi says.

“Tell me,” Maruki says, like he were asking a question in one of their sessions, “Did you both ever figure out whose wish Kurusu-kun is?”

When Akira sets their cups down in the silence, he sees that Akechi’s hands are clenched tightly enough into fists that the leather is creaking around his gloves.

“...No,” Akechi says. “We didn’t.”

“Is that what you were doing all month,” Morgana says, still shocked, still upset. “I didn’t... realize.”

“Did you, Kurusu-kun?” Maruki asks, and Akira feels Maruki’s eyes on him now, too.

“I did,” Akira says, after a moment. Takes a step back. Puts his hands in his pockets. Traces the shape of the calling card there, wonders if he could accidentally cut himself on it and hand over something imperfect as some sort of additional statement to Maruki when this conversation ends. Is that self-destructive? 

Does he care, hours from ceasing to exist, one way or another? It’s not like he can imagine Maruki really letting them continue to run around and cause problems in his perfect world.

Akechi turns to stare at him now, too, brow furrowed.

“You didn’t say,” he says. An accusation, then.

“I’m sure he had a reason,” Maruki says. “Well, should you say, or should I?”

Akira hates that this is the choice Maruki is giving him. Akira looks between him, and Akechi, and Morgana. Back to Akechi. 

Off at the wall behind him.

He can still see the way Akechi’s face pales in front of him as his silence says more than any one name could have.

“No,” Akechi says. “No,” he repeats, angrier, this time directed at Maruki, “No, no no no. He can’t be my wish. I didn’t fucking get a wish, I was aware of this whole sham of a reality from day one, he’s not–”

“Akechi,” Akira starts, and stops when Akechi turns back on him.

“You agreed!” Akechi says, and now he’s yelling. Morgana’s ears press back further, backing toward the wall. “You agreed that you weren’t! Why the hell would your madman of a therapist give a single shit about me?!”

“You don’t regret how things ended for you, Akechi-kun?” Maruki asks. Akechi digs his fingers into the back of the booth seat, glaring daggers at Maruki.

“You don’t fucking know me,” Akechi growls. “Was this a fucked-up way to get your own little best friend back, doc? That’s it, isn’t it? Just a means to an end. Well, you got him, and he’s telling you your reality is bunk, even if it means he’ll die again, so you failed!”

Maruki doesn’t so much as flinch, waiting patiently for Akechi to finish.

“That’s not why,” he says, hands resting around his coffee cup. “I... have an idea what the two of you meant to each other. I’m sure I’m missing some of the nuance, and a number of the details, but I do know that the relationship you shared was something very special.”

“You don’t know a damn thing about ‘the relationship we shared,’” Akechi says. “Pick your next words carefully.”

“You respect each other,” Maruki says, “Challenge each other, care deeply about each other. This wasn’t something built out of hate, but a deep mutual–”

“That does not give you the right to animate his fucking corpse.”

“But you didn’t want him to die.”

“No shit I didn’t want him to die!” Akechi shouts, standing up, bumping the table hard enough to spill both their drinks, at least a little bit. Maruki pulls back his hands, shaking off the hot liquid and grimacing. “I did everything I could think of to keep him from dying down there, and the self-sacrificing moron jumped over anyway! That doesn’t fucking give you the right to bring him back special and then dangle his life over my head! Did you have a good time playing God? Did you have fun fucking with people’s lives for the hell of it? Futaba just started healing from what I did to her, Haru hasn’t even gotten a real chance yet, and you think that I’m the person you could get to break?”

Akechi is shaking hard enough Akira can see it, something panicked and prey-animal in his eyes. It’s familiar, enough so that when Akira sees Morgana dart up the stairs, he doesn’t begrudge him for it. 

“Akechi-kun, please just,” Maruki starts, and Akechi slams a hand down on the table.

“Joker,” Akechi says, holding his hand out. “If I could.”

It’s icy-calm, and Akira just looks at Maruki and then hands the card over to Akechi. It bends at the corner when Akechi grabs it. 

“I am going to go to your eyesore of a Palace tomorrow, regardless of whether Joker’s gang of fools decide to follow me or not,” Akechi says, “And I am going to tear it to the ground, brick-by-brick if I have to. Do I make myself clear?”

“Ake–”

“I said, do I make myself clear?”

In some ways, in a lot of ways, this is more worrying than either the manic rage or the sugar-sweet falseness would have been, if only for the fact Akira hasn’t seen this before. It’s a sort of restraint Akira hasn’t seen, and he’s not sure whether when it breaks Akechi will explode or just run.

“Yes,” Maruki decides on, maybe making the same observation that Akira had or maybe Akechi had just intimidated him enough. In one sharp motion, Akechi holds the card out to Maruki, who gingerly takes it.

He gives Akira one last grief-stricken look before nodding.

“I’ve heard your calling,” he says, and Akechi stares at his back until he’s left the building. 

And then, he just crumples in the seat. 

“Akechi,” Akira says, and the glare Akechi fixes him with looks on the verge of tears.

“Why are you still here,” he hisses.

“I live here,” Akira tries to joke, but Akechi’s mouth just twists up into something closer to tears than Akira thinks Akechi ever wants anyone to see him.

“You knew,” he whispers, and then laughs, something a little bit manic but mostly sad. “You’ve known for a while, haven’t you?”

“I did,” Akira says. “Or, at least, an idea.”

Akechi twists in the booth, aggressively swipes at his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Akira says. Akechi chokes out something that sounds close to a sob.

“I tried so hard,” he says. “I tried so hard to kill you, and then as soon as I didn’t want that anymore, you. You endured– torture because of what I did to you, you did die because of me, why the fuck are you–”

Akechi cuts himself off, choking back another sob, pressing the heels of his hands hard against his eyes.

“I care about you,” Akira says. “That’s why.”

“You’re a goddamn idiot.”

Akira shrugs, even though Akechi isn’t looking at him.

“Maybe.”

“I hate you,” Akechi says, and it’s equal parts hollow resignation and the most honest Akira thinks he’s ever been. “I hate you and all your little friends and your stupid fucking Metaverse costume and your bullshit fake glasses and– and– and you’re dead and I’ve been trapping you here this whole time and every time you suggested it I didn’t even think–”

Akechi loses his words again, leaning against his elbows on the table and covering his mouth with one fist, presumably to keep Akira from hearing him cry, but it looks like a losing battle. Akira pushes the still mostly-full coffee cups off to the side of the table, taking a napkin and wiping down the table loosely where coffee had spilled earlier. He balls it up, sets it off to the side with the cups.

“I didn’t hate it,” Akira says, “Spending time with you. If you were worried about that.”

Akechi laughs, a weird, cut-off teary thing, and wipes at his eyes again. 

“I don’t even know if it’s really you,” Akechi says, voice getting a little weird, a little high-pitched. “I don’t know how real any of Maruki’s wish-fulfillment puppets were. I don’t even know if I’m actually getting to say goodbye to you or not, or if that’s just part of the whole– the whole wish-granting bullshit, is that I get– get a chance to–”

Akira... hadn’t thought about that. This is probably a weird time to start, though. 

“The fucking cat’s not still here, right,” Akechi says, and it’s just put-together enough and just disgruntled enough it makes Akira snort. Akechi glares at him.

“Sorry,” Akira says. “Yeah, Morgana’s gone.”

“Good,” Akechi says. “He’d never let me hear the end of this.”

“Probably not,” Akira agrees.

Akechi doesn’t say anything else for a long moment, just sits in the booth seat and stares at his hands and makes a valiant, if pointless, effort not to cry, and Akira gets up and gets him a tissue and then a few more and doesn’t say a thing about it. 

“You’re really alright with this,” Akechi asks at one point, weird and hollow and exhausted, grabbing Akira’s hand before he can drift off to somewhere else in the cafe again. “I realize I never did ask.”

“With dying?” Akira asks, and Akechi looks away and nods and he’s never looked more his age, more just another teenager handed a shit hand in life like the rest of them, than he does right now.

“I realize,” he says, “I probably should have asked, before just trying to find a way to force you to disappear, because I was scared of what Maruki would force you to be if we didn’t, but in light of realizing I never really considered... this, I never really asked what you thought of it, either. I guess I never really asked if you were alright with anything.”

The words sound stilted, over-formal, maybe, if it were any situation where they weren’t also hollow and so deeply sad that Akira almost wants to say no, if only to spare Akechi from having to go through that, but:

“I made my peace with it,” Akira says, twisting his hand so he can hold Akechi’s better, leaning his other hand on the table. “And I never disliked anything we did, either. I had fun.”

“Even though you knew I would try to betray you eventually,” almost a question, but not quite, just the barest hint of an upturn toward the end.

“Maybe especially,” Akira says, and Akechi finally turns to shoot him a disbelieving look. “Hey, don’t give me that. I... I liked the back and forth. I liked being rivals. I liked knowing the stakes were there, honestly. I wouldn’t have changed any of it. I still would have saved you if I got the chance again, too.”

“I didn’t fucking deserve it,” Akechi hisses, some of the light sparking back into his eyes. “I didn’t deserve to replace whatever you would have been if you hadn’t done that. Some gaudy star, burning out for everyone and everything around him because his heart is so big.”

“Maybe,” Akira says. “But I wanted to save everyone I love, and that includes you. I don’t regret it.”

Akechi doesn’t answer immediately, but he also doesn’t let go of Akira’s hand, and he also doesn’t quite look away. Akira watches the way tears well back up, slow and sluggish, before Akechi finally looks away, swiping hard at his eyes with his free arm.

“Good,” he says, an attempt to get back to his usual cadence that falls just short of success. “Because if...”

Akechi trails off, stares hard at the surface of the table, doesn’t let go of Akira’s hand.

“If you told me you did,” Akechi says, quiet, reverent, maybe, if Akira really thought he were capable of it without wanting to crawl out of his own skin, “I would have really thought about it. You know, I think I might really love you too much to say no to you, and it scares the shit out of me, Akira. I don’t know what you did to me.”

It sits between them for a moment, before Akira feels his own tears well up, and he just sets his forehead down against the top of Akechi’s head and squeezes his hand.

“I’m sorry it turned out this way,” he says, and hears Akechi sniffle.

“I know you are,” he says. “I’m going to miss you. And the rest of your friends will, too. I’m going to have to be the one to tell them about this. You’re heartless.”

“You’ll have Morgana.”

“I’m sure Morgana will be a great help with that, he just found out tonight.”

Yeah.

“Keep an eye on them for me?” Akira says. “I don’t want any of them to blame themselves, either, and I don’t want you to be alone. For me?”

“I just said I couldn’t tell you no, didn’t I?” 

It’s almost sarcastic, if it weren’t clear he’s still crying, and Akira wraps his free arm around his shoulders in an awkward little side-hug that Akechi takes as permission to pull him down into the booth with him and just hold him and cry, silent and buried in Akira’s shoulder, until he runs out of tears.

Akira wonders, a little distantly, when the last time he hugged someone was.

He’s not quite sure when they fall asleep.

The next day, they go to the Palace and fight and win, and at the end of it all, Akira watches from a dissolving platform as his Thieves escape for the last time, fly away in what must be the last miracle of Maruki’s reality. 

He shuts his eyes.

It’s an unseasonably nice day in early December, though not as bad as it could be. It’s probably better when it isn’t just Goro alone against the elements, if he’s really thinking about it. Frost still crinkles lightly against the dead or dying grass that’s still stubbornly peeking through the sidewalk cracks, and he barely hears it over Futaba and Morgana bickering about something, Sakura behind them chuckling to himself.

“Goro,” Futaba says, very seriously, “Tell him he’s wrong about Red Hawk being a pushover.”

“He’s not wrong,” Goro says, raising his eyebrows. “I thought we covered this already.”

“Hah!” Morgana says from his weird perch on Goro’s shoulder(and when had Goro started letting him do that, again?), sticking out his tongue.

“Traitor!” Futaba announces, drawing a few looks from others around them. 

“Yes, yes, I know, I’m terrible,” Goro drawls, which earns him a half-hearted kick to the shin.

“He’s lost every one-on-one fight he’s gotten stuck in,” Morgana says. “I’m not saying Red Hawk isn’t a good leader, I’m just saying–”

“You’ve only watched the first season!”

“And in the first season, he’s a pushover!”

“Take that back! Gorooo–”

“What happened to, ‘I’ll never forgive you, wretched–’”

“I don’t need to forgive you for you to have better Featherman opinions than Mona, those are two entirely different things. Now let me at him–”

Goro pushes Futaba away from him while she, now blindly, reaches for Morgana on Goro’s shoulder.

“Save it for when we’re home,” Sakura says, finally deigning to intervene on the newest little spat. He walks ahead of them and turns down the street toward their destination.

Futaba and Morgana get quiet, then, somber, really. Morgana leaps down from Goro’s shoulder to walk ahead, and Futaba’s shoulders rise up toward her shoulders. She takes a deep breath. Goro offers a hand.

After a moment’s deliberation, she takes it.

She holds herself like Akira, these days, even though he’s not quite sure how she picked it up without him here. Just a little bit, but it’s enough to make the ache pick back up when paired with the Shujin uniform and the way she bites at the tip of her thumbnail, even if Goro’s reasonably sure he picked that one up from her, anyway.

It still hurts. It’s been three years.

The therapist(‘grief counselor,’ Makoto says while they sit in the waiting room together because their appointments are at the same time) Sae had finally strong-armed him into going to see a few months back says it might not stop, in either case he’s reluctantly talked about. Which is fine, she also says, because it’s evidence he loved them.

Goro, personally, thinks that’s a needlessly kitschy way to put it, but Akira probably would have gotten a kick out of it, so. Whatever.

They still wash their hands and follow Sakura wordlessly to where Akira’s grave is, and Futaba doesn’t let go of his hand, and Morgana doesn’t stop glancing over his shoulder, as though making sure they’re still following, and Goro still thinks his monthly, traitorous, you self-sacrificial piece of shit.

Their visit is routine, steps that Sakura largely moves through, and Goro thinks, well, it’s not like Akira’s the only person he and Futaba come here for, and then he shuts it down if only because he thinks Akira wouldn’t appreciate it right now.

“We should have brought him curry,” Futaba says, quiet, as she helps Sakura lay out offerings.

“He can’t eat curry in the afterlife,” Goro says. 

“He would appreciate the gesture anyway,” Futaba says.

He probably would.

Goro has probably been here to visit Akira more times than he’s really thought about visiting his mother, if he’s thinking honestly about it, even if that’s because he’s moderately sure his mother didn’t even got a grave in the first place, and he never found out where it may have been if she did. No one saw fit to tell him that. But Sakura and Futaba drag him out here twice a year at least, and even if they didn’t, Goro would have felt like he was avoiding if he didn’t make the effort once in a while.

And then they stand there, Futaba still holding his hand in a vice-grip, long after Morgana says he’ll give them space and long after Sojiro tells them he has to get back to the cafe.

“Hey, Akira,” Futaba says in a near-whisper. “I’m graduating this spring, did you know that? I’m going to college, too, but mostly because Sojiro said I should for the professional credibility. Mona and Goro and I are keeping the spirit of the Thieves alive. No one’s safe from us.”

“There’s still no Metaverse, otherwise I’d come look for you,” Goro says, and ignores the way Futaba looks at him for it. “I don’t believe for a second that you’re not floating around in there somewhere, stubborn weirdo that you are.”

“Yeah,” Futaba agrees after a moment.

And then they stand there until their legs go from hurting to numb and the incense Sakura brought burns down and the sun starts to set and they realize they have to leave or else the trains will stop, and they’d rather not try to arrange alternate transportation back to Yongen. 

“See you when I graduate,” Futaba promises, and then they leave, and Futaba’s grip on his hand eases up somewhat.

They’re halfway to the station when Goro actually asks.

“I don’t know why you still bring me to these,” Goro says, near-silent. It still doesn’t really feel right to speak any louder.

“Because you cared about him,” Futaba says, just as quietly.

“I’m not your family, though,” Goro says. “In fact, there’s a very strong argument for why you, of all people, shouldn’t take me along to grieve with you.”

Futaba’s brow furrows for a second, and she bites her thumbnail again, thinking.

“Maybe. But I don’t... I don’t have the dialogue tree for this.”

Goro waits for her to gather her words as they stand awkwardly outside the station entrance.

“I think,” she says, slowly, “That it’s what Akira would have wanted, for you to come with us, because he loved you a lot, and he didn’t love you like he loved me, or Sojiro, or Morgana, but you were... I think you were the most important person to him, next to us. And I don’t want to exclude you from that because you killed my mom. And you lost your mom, too, and I don’t... forgive you, still, but I don’t think I have to in order for me to care about you. Does... that make sense?”

“I think so,” Goro says. Futaba breathes out in relief.

“That’s good,” she says. “I’m not great on the fly.”

“You’re doing just fine.” Better than he was doing, at least, when he was her age, and they both know it.

“Talking about feelings is exhausting,” Futaba announces, and then marches into the station. “Let’s go get curry.”

“Alright,” Goro says, “You’re not going to wait for Morgana?”

“Morgana knows how to ride a train, he’s probably back home already.”

That... was true enough, actually.

“Now let’s go,” Futaba says, and Goro lets her pull him, and thinks, maybe, maybe this is enough, just to try.