Chapter Text
Akechi hates going to the doctor.
He hates the way it shakes up his routine. He hates stepping in through the clinic door, how it reminds him that he’s mandated to be here, yet still pays out of pocket. He hates the awkward silence in the waiting room — he fucking despises the coughing baby in its ugly little stroller, he’d punt it out of a window unprompted if it meant a few minutes of peace and quiet — he hates that he can’t do that, because the system is watching him like a shark, waiting for the first sniff of blood, eyes everywhere.
He hates how he has to hear his name get called while no one bats an eye. He hates having to verbally confirm it’s him, because the idiot receptionist can’t bother to look up from his screen for five seconds — Akechi knows he’s playing solitaire, he’s not stupid — he hates how bored he is, hates the soulless artwork hung up on the wall to try and trick simple-minded passerby into a false sense of security, the disinfectant smell, the random chiming, the shuffling of feet, the sense of overwhelming dread in every click of the receptionist’s keyboard.
He hates how his doctor always notices his bad mood. He hates when people notice things about him, generally. The closer their guess is to the truth, the more it feels like there are writhing ants under his skin, clawing desperately at every bone, begging to be let out.
It’s a day like any other, completely and utterly unremarkable.
“Yes, I’ve done the exercises,” he says as neutrally as he can manage to, digging his nails into his palm, sitting in that claustrophobic doctor’s office. It doesn’t come out very neutral.
(He hopes his physiotherapist has enough functioning neurons to understand the look he’s giving him. It says, the only thing keeping me from walking out and never contacting you again are the chains imposed on me by society.
It also says fuck you for making me be here at 9AM on a Saturday.)
The doctor hums, ignorant of his rage, or perhaps indifferent to it. He’s clicking away at his computer, pulling up statistics of some kind, spreadsheets upon spreadsheets of information about him and his body. Akechi would have to strain his eyes to get a better look at them. The doctor gives him a look. He casts his eyes to the floor, knowing he’s being watched.
After a few more clicks, he finally speaks up, resting his hand on his chin — a motion he has to stop himself from recoiling at.
“Have you considered getting a cane?”
Akechi hates going to the doctor.
“Is this your way of telling me I’m not healing right?” Akechi fights to keep his face impassive. Adults and their endless indirect language.
(He tries not to think about turning nineteen all alone, standing on the roof of that 8-floor apartment building he’s living in, can afford to live in thanks to their generous subsidy, looking out at a city he despises and yet can’t escape from.)
“No, no, your healing’s going fine. But your ability to walk long distances won’t be fully restored, at least for the time being…”
Akechi knows that’s code for never. He wonders which step he missed, what instruction he’d failed to grasp. He presses on.
“Is there anything I can do to heal faster?”
“Well, get lots of rest,” Akechi visibly rolls his eyes at that one, but the doctor just ignores him, “Do your exercises daily and don’t push yourself. Remember all the steps for your scar care.” What’s next, drink water?
“I’ll keep that in mind,” is all he can say.
He doesn’t bring up the cane again, and the doctor doesn’t push the subject. Probably just some kind of scare tactic to instill discipline in him — as if he hadn’t spent over three years doing almost nothing but taking orders. Perhaps that’s the point — perhaps the doctor thinks he’s become some kind of rebellious teenager that gets kicks out of disobeying. As if he’d ever let himself become so shallow.
He snorts, imagining the Phantom Thieves bursting through the door, yelling “We will steal your heart, Doctor Whatshisname! You will end your medical malpractice! Persona!”
Then, just because he can, he imagines them all writhing on the floor under the force of Loki’s terrifying power. Well, not all of them, Joker has dodged the blow somehow, he’s always been too smart to defeat with brute force — what the fuck am I on about?
He needs to eat something. He always misses Loki when he’s hungry.
His mind snaps back into focus, the Thieves disappearing into mist as he manages to catch the last few words of the doctor’s sentence.
“… with that being said, I’m glad we were able to keep this brief. I’ve set the date for our next appointment. I wish you well,, Akechi-kun.”
He doesn’t reply — what am I supposed to say to that? ‘Thank you?’ — and instead nods, turning to leave. Why he was wishing Akechi well, he could only guess. Everyone at this stupid facility seems to be obsessed with his potential ‘bright future’. It must give them a sense of superiority, to rehabilitate the dregs of society. He feels like a particularly polished lump of coal.
He’s out the door, just about to rid himself of the last whiff of disinfectant smell, when it bursts right open again with a gust of air.
“It is you!” the girl in front of him says. “You’re alive!”
Akechi’s stomach somersaults, landing with an unceremonious plop. It is no longer an unremarkable day.
You see, he has invented his own stage of grief, tentatively named the I have shit to do stage — which is different from denial, as he’s completely aware of his situation. In fact, he could recite it front to back with his eyes closed, if he wanted to. He is just exercising a very important adult skill — prioritization.
It is a very productive way to cope. He can parry his therapist’s concerns flawlessly. He’s doing everything correctly — taking joy in his hobbies, sleeping at socially acceptable hours, eating three meals a day. He’s even made a couple of acquaintances on an online forum dedicated to discussing all things Featherman. He goes to his doctor’s appointments, he’s put together a five-star resume of all his various qualifications, he’s thinking about his future prospects and job opportunities.
There’s always that one thing, however.
Sumire Yoshizawa looks barely any different from the last time he saw her in Maruki’s false reality. Her hair’s a bit longer, reaching down to her chest, her clothes a lot more casual — she’s barely out of pajamas — and she holds herself up on two crutches, her left foot wrapped in gauze. Everything else is the same. Same eyes, same face, same naive, pleading stare.
That’s the one thing — Akechi appreciates being in control of things, and his life is much easier to control with only himself as a variable. There is a numbered list of tasks that he must carry out to finally escape the watchful eye of the system. It’s a plain, observable fact. Avoiding confounding variables is a completely reasonable thing to do.
Of course, he wasn’t the type to hold onto vain idealistic hopes. He knew this moment would come eventually, he’d even started drafting a mental plan for encountering each of the Thieves, pondering the exact things to say to push all their buttons and make sure they never contacted him again. I killed your mother, I killed your father, I deceived your sister, I shot you in the head twice, all the classics, all the hits.
He’d just never considered Yoshizawa could be the first to find him, much less that she’d be staring at him outside a physiotherapy clinic with a look a little in between “witnessing the wonders of nature” and “being held at gunpoint”.
“Yes, it’s me,” is all he can come up with, in the most disinterested voice he can muster. “I have to leave now, if you’ll excuse me,” he adds, his tone somewhere between polite and passive-aggressive. How nostalgic.
“Oh…” She breaks eye contact, shifting a little in her crutches.
For a brief, merciful moment, he dares to hope she’ll leave him alone — let him go home to sit on his tiny couch, eat his frozen microwaveable lasagna, and watch the new Featherman remake while he waits for fatigue to knock him out. His hope doesn’t last.
“Wait —“ she yells, almost as if it just dawned on her, “— How are you alive? Akira said you were—“
Oh, god. Fuck. He doesn’t have a plan for further questions.
“Woke up from a coma January of last year, slowly regained my ability to walk and talk, found out I’ve miraculously left no record on the justice system, ended up in some rehab facility for ‘victims of the cognitive realm’—“ He breaks off his numbered list when he sees Yoshizawa’s bewildered face.
Fuck, this is a disaster.
He did not mean to rattle off all the notable moments of the last year or so in a single breath. He didn’t think his ability to lie on the spot was this severely impaired — now that he thinks about it, when was the last time he had to do such a thing? — regardless, he’s apparently rusty enough that a single earnest, hopeful stare can render his cognitive capacities useless. He blames Akira Kurusu.
Yoshizawa stares at him awkwardly, like she’s trying not to scare off a stray cat. She opens her mouth several times before the words finally tumble out.
“Um, I meant—“
“If you’re asking about the bullet.” He lets out an irritated sigh, because of course that’s the part she wants to know most about. “I don’t know. The doctors said it should have killed me. My survival is a ‘miracle’, apparently. There you have it.”
He glances around, looking for excuses to end the conversation as quickly as possible. She won’t give chase if I take off running, he figures, but just thinking about testing that theory makes his knees hurt.
Just as he spots someone about to exit through the clinic door, Yoshizawa sets aside one of her crutches to grab his arm and shuffle him to the side. He wrenches his arm away from her grip almost on instinct, and her crutch falls to the pavement. She makes no move to catch it.
“Bullet?” She’s staring at him, leaning heavily on her other crutch, looking even more confused.
“Yes? The bullet my cognitive double shot at me,” he hisses. Some kind of hives is spreading in his lungs. He wants to scratch it. “You know. In Shido’s Palace? The cruise ship? When I—“
Yoshizawa utterly bewildered stare makes his words trail off.
Oh my god, he thinks, with a mixture of awe and bitterness. They haven’t told her anything.
Suddenly, he feels the urge to laugh. Of course they haven’t. Of course.
Who on earth would want to tell a traumatized high schooler that her probably-dead acquaintance was a supernatural hitman for the biggest government scandal in decades? It doesn’t matter, right? He’s already dead. He’s already dead, and ignorance can’t hurt anyone.
God, they learned nothing from Maruki.
Yoshizawa raises her voice again, bringing him back to the present. He’s almost thankful.
“That’s… That’s not what I meant,” she stammers out, her doll-like cheeks reddening. “I— I meant… Why haven’t you told anyone?”
“I have,” he answers truthfully. “I’m legally alive, registered with an active bank account. I don’t keep that a secret.”
Mercifully, it’s a question he can sidestep without outright lying. Not that he wouldn’t prefer to be untraceable — but he’s learned to count his blessings. Blessing one, not in jail. Blessing two, food on the table and a roof over his head. Blessing three…
“…But what about the Phantom Thieves? Don’t they deserve to know?” Her voice is quieter now, almost contemplative.
Akechi wishes he were anywhere else in the world right now.
“Do they?” He raises his eyebrows. “I deserve to be in jail for my crimes, and yet here I am. We don’t always get what we deserve.”
“Jail?” Yoshizawa’s eyes widen comically. Her crutch wobbles. “Crimes? What… wait, is it a crime to have a Persona?”
She looks so terrified. All because of her sweet ignorance.
He picks her fallen crutch off the ground and hands it to her, letting out a deep breath. He doesn’t consider himself a particularly altruistic person — perhaps this is just another of his petty retaliations, or some kind of childish desire for pity — but on some level, he believes he owes her this knowledge.
“It’s not a crime to have a Persona.” He says his next words carefully, as if he’s speaking to a child. “Yoshizawa. I have killed people. Many people.”
Fittingly, Yoshizawa looks like he just told her Santa isn’t real.
“Huh?”
“I was a Metaverse assassin.” He speaks like he’s reading off a teleprompter. “I worked for the politician Masayoshi Shido. The Thieves called me the ‘black mask’.” He pauses. She doesn’t seem familiar with the epithet, which is fine, because it’s a stupid epithet. “I killed several important people, including the principal of Shujin Academy, the CEO of Okumura Foods, and Wakaba Isshiki, Sakura’s mother.”
The last name makes the ugly itch in him spread further, further, into the tips of his fingers and the ends of his brain wrinkles, crawling like a drop of ink in a glass of water.
“Wait — the principal?” Yoshizawa shakes her head, as if enough movement will help her process what she just heard. “Haru’s dad? Futaba’s mom? Why?”
“Why?”The question’s so simple, so plain, it’s threatening to steer him off course and into the endless gunk of his memories. It’s more than he can handle, which is fine, because he’s just about to be done handling it. “For revenge.”
“On who?”
“My father. Shido.” That piece of shit.
“The man giving you orders?” She’s tilted her neck so far towards him, he has to take a step back.
“Yes.”
That drop of ink is now a current, threatening to break out, promising to swallow everything in its path. He pushes it down hard. Focus. Yoshizawa has nothing to do with any of this. She’s barely even a Phantom Thief. He bites his lip hard enough to draw blood, a technique which has never failed him (disregarding the times it did), and prepares for the inevitable judgement.
Yoshizawa casts her eyes down, clearly ruminating on everything, focusing hard, trying to make heads or tails of the plain fact that Akechi is a terrible person. It’s nothing surprising, really, just the usual agony — that death row-esque feeling of waiting for someone to come to the realization that there is nothing in you worth saving, there never has been, and they were a fool for even trying. He’s eaten more last meals than he can count.
Then she says something that makes his jaw unhinge like the world’s angriest moray eel.
“Do you have any proof?”
Akechi can’t believe what he’s hearing. Surely, it’s some practical joke being played on him by yet another uncaring god. Surely, he did not just hear Sumire Yoshizawa ask him for proof of his crimes.
“What the… What do you mean, proof?” he finds himself stuttering. He sounds like a hysterical child — but Yoshizawa is the truly childish one in this scenario, isn’t she? Demanding evidence, as if she don’t know full well that murders in the Metaverse are untraceable. She should have learned that from the moment she…
Right. She wasn’t there when I killed Okumura.
He wants to break out into a maniacal laughing fit. He wants to be crushed and mangled into a fine coffee powder someone might brew a good drink out of. He wants to let out a scream so guttural that he vomits innards crawling up from his insides. He wants to leave.
Yoshizawa backs away from where she stood previously, something almost fearful in her eyes. “Well… I mean, considering… You spent all that time pretending to be the Detective Prince, and when we got to Maruki’s Palace, Akira said that wasn’t your real personality at all…”
Akechi ignores the first name basis. He ignores it so hard that the sheer force of his ignoring twists up his insides in its image. Because of how hard he’s ignoring it.
His mind begins working out ways to get himself out of this situation, but yet again, it slams into a solid wall of fear-shaped bricks. There must be something, anything I can do, he frantically reasons. Something to bargain with so she won’t tell the others. Just the whiff of a blink of the slightest loosely-imagined scenario where that happens is enough to make him want to topple over and never get back up. This is him putting his mental health first, if you really think about it.
I just have to keep her talking, he decides. If she keeps talking, I can keep thinking, and if I can keep thinking, I will solve this, because if there is one goddamn good trait I have in my black hole of a personality, it is my intelligence.
“Go on,” he says.
“Um. I’m sorry if this sounds rude… But if you spent that long lying about every aspect of your personality, why should I believe you?”
Oh, so now the one who pretended to be her dead sister for a year wants to lecture me on deception, Akechi thinks but doesn’t say. He needs her to keep talking.
He can admit it’s not a bad point, all things considered. He would not trust himself to tell the truth either — for all Yoshizawa knows, this could all be some cruel joke he’s pulling on her for his own amusement. Besides, given her previous situation, it’s wise to ascertain if this is some cognitive trick or not before believing him.
Something in him wants to deride her for her stupidity in not being aware of his plain and obvious evil — something that sounds suspiciously like his younger self — but his rational brain can admit that making a judgement of his moral character without sufficient evidence would be just as brainless as making the wrong judgement.
His brain seems to be winning, at least for now.
“You’re right. I am a liar.” He takes in Sumire’s stunned expression before adding on, “But the Phantom Thieves aren’t. And yet, if you ask them, they will say everything I just told you is true.”
Yoshizawa frowns. “The — even that you killed Futaba’s mom and Haru’s dad?”
This again. “Yes.”
“Even if I asked right now?”
He can feel a headache building up behind his eyes. “Yes. Though I would much prefer it if you didn’t.”
Yoshizawa seems to acquiesce to that, for now, nodding. She looks more curious than horrified. Maybe she does have an antisocial streak. More likely, she just doesn’t see things that occur in the Metaverse as being part of reality in the same way that, say, stabbing a man on the street would be. She’s only seventeen, after all — maybe eighteen at the most. Being a seventeen year old with homicidal impulses doesn’t seem to be the norm, in his experience.
He’s just began contemplating the prevalence of homicidal thoughts in the general teenage population when Yoshizawa speaks again.
“Um… I hope you don’t mind, but…”
Please don’t say you somehow telepathically contacted the Thieves and informed them of my exact location.
“…I have so many questions.”
Akechi lets out a breath of relief. This, he can work with. As long as he plays nice — well, as nice as he can be nowadays — and satisfies her curiosity, she will probably give him some opening, some kind of leverage.
The thought of blackmailing a girl like Yoshizawa gives him pause — it stirs up some kind of sludge in his stomach, like a dislodged piece of caked up mud, threatening to fall off its cliff at the next storm. He is tired enough as is — he doesn’t want to find out what will happen if it falls. He decides to use positive reinforcement.
“Ask away.”
“Well, first of all… Why aren’t you in jail?”
Akechi snorts. He didn’t even think of this one. It’s almost adorable watching someone have so much faith in the justice system — she’s like a kid petting a wild leopard.
He shoots her a question back.
“Why isn’t Maruki in jail? He tried to brainwash all of Japan.”
“Well, it’s because everything he did got erased when we…” He watches the realization dawn on Sumire’s face in real time. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” he says, a mocking grin sneaking into his face, “oh.”
Akechi notices his regular, everyday self returning, slowly thawing out of the glacier of fear it was trapped in when he saw Yoshizawa at the door. Why was he so afraid in the first place? It’s Yoshizawa. He could tell her aliens built the pyramids, and she’d probably believe him, if he spoke with enough confidence.
He crosses his arms, leaning slightly against the wall. Yoshizawa hums, before finally settling on her next question.
“If you’re really that bad a person, why would the Phantom Thieves collaborate with you?” she asks. “It doesn’t make sense. They’re supposed to be allies of justice, right?”
Oh, this one’s easy. “We had a common enemy in Maruki. Anyone can say they’re an ‘ally of justice’, but at the end of the day, if your goals align…”
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” She twirls one of her crutches around, deep in thought. “It’s kind of like that, right?”
“Precisely.”
Yoshizawa hums. Of course, just as he foolishly dares to think he might be off the hook, she asks the worst possible question.
“But it wasn’t like that for Akira, was it?”
A wave of acid washes over him, so cold it burns, or maybe so hot it feels like it’s freezing. His posture suddenly feels stiff and awkward, a little too tense to be genuine.
He has to play this one carefully. Succint, straightforward, with no dwelling on the past, or at least the minimum possible given his current predicament. His esophagus is closing up fast — surely, another new feature of his malfunctioning body — so he has to act now, decisively.
He’s not too fond of the look Yoshizawa is giving him.
“Kurusu,” he begins, and he can feel himself already failing his second objective, “is a sentimental fool. His opinion on people’s character is worthless, because it’s not based in rationality. He founded the Phantom Thieves on pure impulse, out of a childish desire to ‘change people’s hearts’. Our rivalry was just the same, juvenile,” he says, pursing his lips, “on both ends.”
Yoshizawa has the gall to give him a half-smile. “I feel like you’re not being entirely honest with me, Akechi-senpai—“
“Don’t call me that,” he snaps.
“—Akechi,” she continues, undeterred. “You keep calling Akira irrational, but… With all due respect, you don’t seem like the most rational person, either.”
His teeth are clamped down so hard he can feel the pressure in his skull, holding back a torrent of derision. You try being rational with the god of chaos in your brain. “And how would you know that?”
“Because I’ve been there.” Yoshizawa looks down bashfully, as if ashamed to admit it. “And I’m not… I wasn’t the biggest fan of the Phantom Thieves’ methods, either.”
She clears her throat, clearly embarrassed to have said so much to someone who is essentially a stranger. Akechi’s jaw relaxes, as if feeling some kind of kinship.
“Well, I’m glad we can agree that the whole ‘changing hearts’ thing was deeply invasive and ultimately unnecessary,” he says. He hadn’t recalled Yoshizawa’s opinion on the Thieves before now. Maybe she wasn’t as simple-minded as he’d initially judged — which was bad news for his plan.
Then again, this could just have been her following public opinion — a vocal faction had remained opposed to changing hearts as a method. Perhaps she identified herself as within their group.
“Yes, but.” Yoshizawa perks up again, lifting up her crutch as if to get an invisible crowd’s attention. “Akira’s intentions were good. The whole team’s intentions were, and isn’t that what really matters?”
He stares at her incredulously.
“You say this after we all were manipulated by a well-intentioned man with benign, wholesome motives.”
“That’s not — Maruki was different…”
He shakes his head, images flooding his brain faster than he can hold them back. Pressure builds up in his ears. He cannot believe what he’s hearing.
“As if I needed any further proof,” he says, through gritted teeth, “that the entire ethics of the Phantom Thieves is broken. You say you want to fix society, but you can’t even fix up a coherent enough framework for yourselves. You say the system is broken, yet you target individuals. You say you condemn brainwashing, yet you’d brainwash those who you deem your enemies. You say you want to save people, yet you couldn’t even…”
He trails off, acutely aware of Yoshizawa’s stare. “Akechi, the Phantom Thieves don’t exist anymore,” she says quietly.
It’s a constant of his life — you let him talk for long enough, and he’ll start digging his own grave.
Akechi can’t tell if she’s mocking or pitying him — he doesn’t even know which one would be worse. This conversation is quickly getting out of hand — he needs to salvage it now, before he can spit out any more word vomit he will end up regretting as surely as he regrets ever stepping foot in this particular clinic.
“This isn’t about them—“ he sputters, scrambling to defend himself, grasping at any word he can find, “—this is about ethics. The ethics of rebellion, the ethics of justice, this deontological framework of yours that can never be applied to real life in any sort of useful way…”
“You sound like my philosophy teacher.” There’s a hint of laughter in Yoshizawa’s voice. “I wish I could talk about this stuff as easily as you do…”
Akechi’s eyes widen ever so slightly. He remembers a few things.
It’s the end of May, meaning that the end-of-year exam season is fast approaching. A layman might think an athlete like Yoshizawa wouldn’t have to worry about grades, but he knows better than to make such a mistake. Solo gymnastics skews young even for the average Olympic sport, so it is likely that Yoshizawa is under a lot of pressure to decide what career she will focus on afterwards — she’ll have her college entrance exams in just about a month.
Combine that with her injury, and you get the perfect opportunity to catch up on studying — something that she would normally not have a lot of time for, considering the time-consuming nature of professional athletics. It seems to be more than a sprain, judging by the gauze. That kind of lesion requires mandatory rest, especially for an athlete. He estimates it will take days, if not weeks.
Forget that embarrassing slip-up. He’s found his opening.