Work Text:
The blasted subway is the bane of her existence. None of her friends, including those who regularly fight through the manifestations of other people’s sick minds with her, can believe this, although they too live in Tokyo and some of them are even female. To get them to truly understand she’d have to mention what she’s afraid of, or acknowledge it when it is mentioned, and she won’t do that.
Since it is such a blight on her existence, Rin does what one should never do, not even the leader of the Phantom Thieves, tracking down the notorious in Mementos by herself, searching through the Phansite, hunting down leads, and then beating the literal hell out of rapist’s shadow selves in that otherworld. It goes pretty well, although sometimes she shows up at the hideout with mysterious bruises, cuts and scrapes, and her friends begin talking behind her back. Like she won’t hear. Or sometimes (more and more often these days) she arrives home and Sojiro gets mad, and jealous, wondering if she’s dating some rat bastard of a boy. No, she’s making endless miles of subway somewhat safer for people like her.
One day, months into her lonely endeavour, she catches a train in the real world, because she must in order to reliably get anywhere in the mega city, only to be almost shocked right back off it. It’s not rush hour, so she can see the floor, and the floor is covered with flowers. Wildflowers and soft grass. Passengers, sitting in relaxed poses along the walls, have taken off their shoes and rest their weary feet in the yielding turf some mad lad or addled organisation planted in a whimsical flight of fancy. A cynical attempt to bolster the unsafe reputation of the public transport system, or an act of rebellious joy? Is it a cry of ‘screw the tyranny of the clock, screw the perverts on the trains’? Rin, who is cursed with a resting bitch face whatever she may be feeling inside, decides it was the latter, taking a seat and unzipping her boots, her pet ‘cat’ purring his heart out.
