Chapter Text
Ren returns to a home that isn't a home and pretends to be a normal person again. Before he went to Shujin, he'd been a quiet child, unsure of himself and his place in the world. He went with the flow not because he was in any way laid back but because he held no true expectations of the world, nor any strong desire to go one way or the other. Even after he'd come to that woman's rescue, he hadn't known what had possessed him.
Now he's a man with a clear vision, who knows himself and his path in life. He's no longer quiet but aloof, no longer laid back but confident. That day in Kamoshida's castle, when the future held a boy he barely knew dead before him and he decided he wasn't going to accept that, he figured it all out. Every step since then has only been a realisation of that enlightenment, turning thought to action to reality.
Akechi's death threw him off for a while, reminded him that while he'd struck a balance, that balance could easily be upset. But he regained it, thanks to the nurturing attentions of his friends and though the waves of grief keep coming, he always comes up for air after.
He's a man who's felt grief and joy, profound victory and resounding loss, who's stared at the abyss of the human heart and knelt down and reached out his hand.
His parents see none of that. They comment on his grades improving, but only in the context of hoping that it'll shut up the neighbours still gossiping about the Amamiyas delinquent kid. Beyond that they barely seem to notice he's back.
But that's just fine because all through last year, Ren barely noticed they were gone either.
He gets a small motorcycle license and a used bike from his share of the money they made as Phantom Thieves, and a job as a courier. Saves up enough to afford a small flat, and just as they were willing to let him move to Tokyo for his probation, his parents sign the consent form with barely a second glance.
He texts his friends a photo of the signed lease, just as a way to keep them up to date. Makoto, Yusuke, and Ryuji show up to help him move. It's overkill and then some, considering all his belongings fit in three large boxes. He repacks to make four, so no one will feel left out.
They go out for food afterwards, catch up and it's ... it's good.
Really good, to see his friends again. He was afraid they'd start drifting apart, that their bonds would weaken, but if anything distance really has made the heart grow fonder. When they sit together in that small restaurant, it feels like they're secret agents, the only ones in on a big secret.
"It's truly good to see you smiling again," Yusuke muses over dessert. "I admit I had worried Akechi's unfortunate demise would change you irrevocably."
"Yusuke!" Makoto hisses, while Ryuji makes exaggerated nix-it gestures, and whisper-shouts across the table, "Dude, we agreed we wouldn't mention you-know-who and you-know-what!"
Yusuke blushes, delicately covering his open mouth.
"O-oh. I forgot ... Please, forgive me for reminding you of the death of your lover!"
"Yusuke!"
Ren laughs for the first time in months, and feels yet a little more human.
In the immediate aftermath of Maruki's defeat, he hadn't known what to do with himself. In one fell swoop he'd saved the world, again, and spared Akechi a fate worse than death which was to live in chains. But he'd also given up everything he'd come to cherish, and was thrust back into a world that increasingly pushed him to become everything he hated. Be a salaryman, pay taxes, read the news and then jump off a bridge by the time he's thirty.
He can't see himself holding down any regular job for long, but other than his friends he doesn't believe he can change the world without magic either.
But then, as he sat on the train, watching the people pass by, it had come to him. Just a flash of inspiration, from where he didn't know.
Akechi would hate it if his rival surrendered to the mundanity of adult life, and so he won't. If the metaverse insists on closing its doors to him, well, he's a thief, isn't he? Going where he's not supposed to is who he is.
He'll take a page out of Sumire's book and carry the one he loves with him. He'll live as Akechi would want him to, and make their dreams come true.
Step one is saying his proper goodbyes.
He already abandoned him once in life, he won't do so in death. If it's the only thing he can do, he'll make sure there will always be fresh flowers on Akechi's grave.
Ren doesn't get as far as step two, because step one is proving to be a son of a bitch to complete.
In his mind it'd be a few phone calls and a train ride on the weekend. But not only do the bureaucrats of Tokyo seemingly go out of their way to be as unhelpful as possible, it also quickly becomes clear that Goro Akechi barely existed.
Oh, there's dozens of hours of television footage, and people vaguely remember the Detective Prince. It's not like he's been erased from reality forward and backward. But all Ren finds of Goro Akechi, the human being, is a birth certificate, a school registration, and a years old form signed by the director of an institution for delinquent boys who took Akechi into custody for some time after his mother died.
Like Ren, Akechi should have needed some kind of consent form to live on his own, as he told Ren he did, but the last social worker he can connect to Akechi says she hasn't signed any such paper and to her knowledge, Akechi simply aged out of the system. She hasn't seen him in two years.
Aged out of the system at fifteen? Could be Akechi messed with his own files. He was certainly clever enough to pull it off.
But short of working down every street in Tokyo and looking for "Akechi G." on the doorbell, he won't be able to find out where he lived. A landlord or neighbour might have told him where they took Akechi's body, but again his only recourse is official channels.
He starts calling hospitals, one after the other, asking after a boy matching Akechi's description who may have died there. Eventually, despite confidentiality policies, he gets all of them to confirm that Akechi was never brought to any hospital.
He calls morgues and funeral homes with similar success, or lack thereof. People talk to him when they shouldn't, but they have nothing useful to say.
What if he's still lying somewhere? If he was killed in a palace, and that palace was destroyed, would there even be a body?
And, more importantly, where else does he look for it? Even without a body, everyone is buried eventually, but no one's even reported Akechi missing.
The lack of progress weighs on him, makes him feel as if he's failing Akechi every day he doesn't come up with answers. When he's worked down the list of funeral homes with no more avenue to pursue, he sits in his little apartment and wishes he could enter the metaverse just to have some shadows to beat up.
Morgana curls up on his lap, tail slapping rhythmically against his shins.
"Maybe it's time to call Niijima-san," he says.
It's not the first time he made the suggestion, and Ren's just as reluctant to heed it. His relationship with Sae Niijima has never been harmonious. She thinks kids should leave everything to adults, and that being Phantom Thieves was a noble but ultimately silly thing. He in turn doesn't exactly have a track record of respecting authority figures. The manifestation of his innermost self is literally the greatest rebel in history, they were never going to get along.
And that's not even getting started on their respective opinions on the law and the redeemability of the same.
Still, Niijima said if he ever needed help, he could call. She must have some contacts left in the police force, even if she works as a defense lawyer now. If anyone can find a missing boy ...
...
... well it isn't going to be the police, but barring any other options, he might as well give it a try.
Niijima is happy he called, and even, surprisingly, happy to help him. She really does feel indebted to him, and sends him everything she has on Akechi, promising to make inquiries with old colleagues. They don't like that she works for the enemy now, but if there's one thing they have in common, it's getting what they want.
She sends him Akechi's last known address, and the next free day he has, Ren gets onto a train to Tokyo. Knowing the others will want to meet up, he waits with texting them until after he's done what he came here for.
Akechi's flat is a sad, impersonal little thing, containing nothing of true value.
Clothes, neatly hung up in the closet. A phone charger by the bed, school books on the cheap but modern desk. The food in the fridge has gone bad, mostly healthy stuff Ren would bet his bike Akechi didn't actually like. Fake plants, beige furniture, picture frames with images of sunsets have gathered half a year's worth of dust. The sole concession to individuality is a plastic tabletop christmas tree, the star on top replaced with a cardboard cutout of a gun.
Ren chuckles until he realises what that means.
No one's been in here since before Christmas. During Maruki's altered January Akechi would have lived here, thrown out the tree, bought new food. But those events have been undone, gone as if they never existed. He died on 17th December. They never kissed, never slept together. Akechi never knew how much he meant to Ren.
His ears ring with a noise from far away, his whole body trapped in that realisation, like it's a physical place. That dinner they shared on Christmas never happened, they never fought, he never held Akechi's hand. He's standing in a dead man's home and he can't move.
Can't breathe, can't speak, he's drowning because Akechi's dead, and he's died before he ever knew someone loved him, and for all the terrible things he did, no one deserves that.
"-en ... Joker!"
He snaps back to reality so quickly it leaves his soul whiplashed.
Morgana's paws dig into his thighs, face as close to him as his little body can reach, his blue eyes wide with concern. He blinks, wonders where he is.
Still in Akechi's kitchen, kneeling on the ground, panting as if he ran a marathon. Morgana's tail slaps worriedly against the table leg.
"Are you okay?" he asks. "You weren't listening when I called your name."
Something was screaming too loud in his head. It's still screaming, but now he can control it, pull himself together.
He nods, pats Morgana's head to show he's alright. The depths of his soul are bleeding and so he forces them back and lets his surface desires handle it.
Cleans the food out of the fridge, and packs up the clothes and handful of personal items in boxes he brought for the purpose, not knowing why. It's not like Akechi will have any more use for them, or that he could ever bring himself to sell or donate them.
He gives the landlord his number and address without knowing why either.
Sojiro offers him his old room in the attic for the night, but Ren doesn't intend to stay that long. He only stops by to catch up, have a chat with Futaba and ask her about school.
She shows him a project she's working on and, although fully intending to drop in on the others before going home, one thing leads to another and by the time the trains stop for the night, he's still elbow deep in craft materials and halfway through the construction of a circuit board made mostly of aluminium foil and cardboard. It's covered in glitter and paint-dipped paw prints.
The most insane part of that entire project is that Futaba can make it do simple math.
He stays at Leblanc's after all, knowing the hell he would catch if he told any of the others he was in the area without visiting.
Dropping by Yusuke's in the morning he barely avoids modeling for his newest work, though with the abstract bent he's on lately Ren's really not sure what he needs a model for. He visits Haru, and gets his hands dirty with her latest batch of plants.
Checks in on how Ryuji's rehab is going, and is volunteered to join him for dinner at Makoto's place. Her sister will be there, and Ryuji could use the moral support.
If there's anything worse than a prosecutor, it's having a former prosecutor for an inlaw.
Ryuji says it without thinking, and then spends the entire subway ride over backtracking on the 'inlaw' part, even though he assures Ren this thing with Makoto is actually going well, to everyone's surprise, including both of theirs.
The dinner, all told, is pretty good. Makoto, it turns out, can cook, she just gets stagefright when she has to do it for people who aren't family, and tends to bungle it up. Ren doesn't say he's touched that Makoto doesn't get stagefright around him and Ryuji anymore, but his smile must say enough, because she blushes and spends the entire meal backtracking on the 'family' part.
After dinner, during the long goodbye, Niijima takes Ren aside and tells him what her inquiries have yielded about Akechi.
Nothing, which in this case isn't the same as no results.
"No one's reported him missing," only confirms his own inquiries but "There is no body" does come as a surprise.
Shouldn't there have been something? What does happen if you get trapped in a Palace as it comes down? He doesn't know what to do with that information, and so puts it away for later, thanking Niijima for her effort.
Before he heads out, she holds him back again.
"I'm sorry for your loss," she says, not without sympathy. "But remember that he attempted to kill you. Some people ... just aren't worth mourning."
Ren doesn't bother replying.
When he returns to Leblanc's to pick up the boxes for his trip home, they've been opened.
"I thought they were presents," Futaba says chagrined.
Ren accepts the apology, though he does feel irrationally violated on Akechi's behalf. At least she didn't go through his things once she realised what they were. He refolds the light summer jacket and lays it gingerly on top without a word, watched intently by Futaba and Morgana.
"This isn't something weird, right?" Futaba asks eventually, when Ren has sealed the boxes properly again.
He asks her to elaborate with facial expressions alone.
"I mean, what're you even going to do with this stuff? You're not like, I don't know, building a shrine or something, right?"
His flat look makes her laugh, and him forgive her for the question. Futaba's right to question him. He figures he should probably tell someone at some point. About the thing that makes him do this, and that he doesn't understand.
"I see him everywhere."
Futaba stills, and so does Morgana. He asked Ren before about why he sometimes stops moving in the middle of the street, or why he jumps at nothing. Everything's fine, Ren has said everytime, but it's not.
"He's a face in the crowd. A reflection in a window. Sometimes there he is, just ahead of me, and then he turns a corner and is gone."
He was on television in a storefront. Looking straight at Ren, his lips were moving and he'd stood there trying to figure out what he was trying to tell him. He thought, as long as he didn't move, he'd stay right there. Then someone asked him what he was looking at and Akechi was gone and the TV was just a black screen.
He's halfway to losing his mind over this. It's not just strangers resembling Akechi in broad strokes, or the tan of his coat sticking out of every crowd like alarm colours. He's there, even on second glance and third, and if Ren holds still he remains long enough for him to be sure, absolutely sure that's Akechi across the street or just behind him in the bathroom mirror. Except when he turns or tries to cross the distance, he always disappears.
Futaba doesn't tell him he's crazy. But she does tell him he's imagining things.
"I heard mom's voice all the time. I still do, sometimes." She plays with the hem of her oversized jumper. "There's this voice actress in an anime I like, who sounds exactly like her. I still think, maybe it really is her, and she did some voice acting under a pseudonym. It's silly, but I don't even want to look it up because ... it makes me cry to hear her, but at the same time being sad about mom makes me feel closer to her, too.
I think ... um. I think it's okay if you want to keep Akechi's stuff close by. It even kinda smells like him, doesn't it?"
Deep down Ren doesn't think what he's experiencing and what Futaba's experiencing are the same thing. But he doesn't say anything because her words do make him feel better.
The boxes end up in the back of his closet, never touched except for the bottle of cologne Akechi used to use. Like everything about his public persona it was carefully selected to convey a certain image, and like everything about his lies, Akechi likely hated it with a passion. But the scent still reminds Ren of him, and when he ends a day having chased after Akechi all day, unable to make himself stop, he opens the bottle, for just a single breath, to remind himself what's real.
It really doesn't help that there's no body.
From the day he learns that even the police couldn't find him, Akechi follows him into his dreams. Dreams, nightmares, both, neither. It doesn't matter what Ren is dreaming, whether it's episodes from his everyday life or fantastical journeys based on the last book he read or even abstract lines and colours. Akechi's there, and much more often than Ren can handle longterm.
He thought he was getting better, learning to deal with the grief and the guilt. He'd started to believe himself when he said he had no regrets.
But Akechi's there, lips moving, hands extended in pleading gestures. Begging Ren to save his life, and he doesn't know how.