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Chapter Text

Akira dreams.

He’s in Leblanc, the café illuminated by the soft and warm colors of the sunset filtering through the windows. Despite still being a couple hours from closing time, the café is silent except for the gentle whirling of the coffee machine and the steady ticking of the clock.

Sojiro had left to get groceries, so Akira raises his eyes to look at the only other person in the place. “What are you reading, detective?” he asks, his voice sounding too loud for the stillness of the café, yet not loud enough to drown out the heavy thumps of his heartbeat.

Akechi jolts slightly at the noise, but gathers himself quickly and gives him a small smile. “The Hero with a Bow,” he says, tilting the cover in Akira’s direction. “I thought it’d be a good idea to do a little reading since I’m the newest member. I wouldn’t want to slow the team down.”

Akira remembers the way Akechi had flipped through the air and defeated two enemies mid-air just earlier that day, the way Akechi sometimes twirls his gun around dramatically before shooting Shadows in the face, and thinks that Akechi’s continuous desire to prove himself is just a little bit endearing and a whole lot unnecessary, because the Phantom Thieves all know that he’s planning to betray them in a couple days, and because the Phantom Thieves all know that their leader somehow knows all this and is enamored with the detective anyway.

Akira wipes his hands on his apron and leans on the counter. “What’s the book about?” said leader asks despite having read the exact book on the way to school just a week ago.

“Hm,” Akechi says in a way that makes it obvious that he has a lot of opinions on the matter. “I’m not that far into it, so I’m not sure how accurate of a summary I could give.”

 “Anything’s fine,” Akira shrugs, and he means it, because it’s not like he’s going to pretend that listening to Akechi’s voice isn’t the goal of this whole thing. “Serenade me, detective.”

Akechi hesitates for a second, but then launches into a passionate ramble which is honestly impressive for someone who seems to have only read the first quarter of the book. Akechi’s voice normally has a tint of snark when he’s in public that is noticeably absent when he sits in Leblanc and drinks Akira’s coffee and serenades Akira with tales of filling out paperwork, and the sound never fails to make Akira smile.

He’s still smiling with he gets the sudden feeling of Futaba’s listening bug somehow radiating waves of disappointment and disapproval in his direction, so he shoots a half-hearted glare somewhere in its general vicinity and goes back to staring dreamily at Akechi’s mouth as it moves to form unintelligible syllables.

A couple minutes later, Akechi finishes making all his points and takes a deep breath, face a little flushed. He looks at Akira expectedly. “What do you think, Kurusu?” he asks.

Akira blinks at him, and Akechi stares back patiently. It is a good thing that all his friends have come to understand that sometimes it takes him a little while to respond, which comes in handy in this situation as his mind scrambles to pick a suitable answer despite not comprehending anything that has been said.

“I think,” he says after a bit, drumming his fingers along the counter. “That he was a hero, in the end.”

“Interesting,” Akechi says, putting down his empty cup and folding his hands, resting his chin on top of them. Akira wants to reach out and hold them. “Many people would say that he’s a villain, no?”

Akira shrugs nonchalantly, stirring the coffee pot just to have something to do with his hands, but he makes sure to meet Akechi’s eyes when he says, “You can be both a hero and a villain at the same time, can’t you?”

Akechi stares at him in surprise for a couple moments before letting out a small laugh. It’s not the laugh that he does on television, all sweet and lovely and superficial, but it isn’t the self-deprecating laugh that he does when he talks about his past either. Akira hasn’t heard this laugh before, and wishes, not for the first time, that they had more time together so that he could decipher it.

Outside, the remaining sunlight filters through the window, the sun setting on yet another day counting down to the deadline of Sae Niijima’s palace. To the day of the Phantom Thieves disbandment. To the day Akechi shoots him in the face.

But inside the café, time seems to have frozen, the dim lighting of Leblanc illuminating the soft edges of the two boys comfortably conversing near the counter. Akira leans down slightly and copies Akechi’s pose, receiving a small quirk of the lips in return, and wishes just this once, to any god that might be listening, for this moment to last just a little bit longer.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Akechi says, smiling slightly. “You really are fascinating, Kurusu.”

And then he snaps the book shut and slaps him across the face.

Akira blinks his eyes open and sees Akechi peering down at him in disapproval. “Don’t slow me down.”

He can still feel the sting of the slap on his left cheek, the hollow emptiness as the peaceful dream of Leblanc disappears from his mind, and he manages a crooked smile. “Going easy on me, detective? Thought you said you’d use your left hand from now on.”

Akechi narrows his eyes and opens his mouth, but whatever he had been planning to say gets cut off as Sumire launches herself into his field of view.

“Senpai!” she calls, and Akira notes with vague disappointment that Akechi has turned to retreat to the safe distance away from the group that he often holds himself at while they’re not in battle. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” he yawns, feeling the remaining traces of the sleep spell still lingering in his body. “Sorry about that. I’ll be more careful next time.”

“He didn’t have to slap you that hard,” Ryuji mumbles behind him. It reminds Akira of the time when Ryuji had barely dodged a brainwashing spell only for Akechi to slap him in the face by instinct anyway. There had been a lot of stink eye on the way back home.

Akira hides a fond smile behind his hand.

Ann hops over and nudges him gently in the ribs. “Good dream?” she teases. “You were asleep for awhile.”

“Leblanc,” he shrugs, not really in the mood to reiterate his sad fantasies about a certain detective while said detective was only a few paces away, and that seems to be a good enough of an answer for her anyway.

They continue through the palace, the white rooms starting to blend into each other. They’ve made decent progress today. Akira does a quick sweep around and notes that the rest of his team has started lagging a little. He wonders if the endless monochrome feeling that makes the palace seem too eerily perfect is starting to wear on them a bit.

“This is why you should never use light mode,” Futaba murmurs under her breath, eyes darting around. “Joker, there’s a safe room ahead.”

“Got it,” Akira nods. “Let’s check this area one last time and then call it a day.”

A chorus of agreement meets his statement, the rest of the Phantom Thieves already chatting excitedly amongst themselves, discussing plans to do after they get back to the real world. Akira sighs tiredly and tries not to think of easier times, when Goro Akechi was just a smiling and interesting detective who just happened to be plotting Akira’s murder, compared to the layers and layers of complex feelings masquerading as a human being that he was now.

Akira scans the area and notices a well-hidden treasure chest behind a couple of bookcases. He gestures to the rest of the team, and without looking behind him to check who is following, makes a beeline for it. He wants to get this over with, and he won’t admit it to anyone other than himself, but the palace has been draining him to the point where he’s gotten careless enough to be hit by low level sleep spells.

Whether it’s from the immense relief he feels every time he sees Akechi not dead, or the crippling guilt he feels when he sometimes sees the Phantom Thieves stare vacantly at nothing and mourn what they could’ve had—what Akira stole away from them—he’s not sure.

He kicks the treasure chest open and feels a presence hovering near his left shoulder, close enough to touch but never touching. It’s Akechi, then. Akechi, who used to say that he was the most amazing and interesting person in the world at least five times a conversation. Akechi, who used to do a rather endearing little stilted dance every time after a powerful attack, and then pretended not to notice the rest of the Phantom Thieves rolling their eyes behind his back.

Akechi, who no longer pretends anymore and is staring at him with narrowed eyes as Akira fishes out the treasure from the chest. “I’m amazed you saw the chest from all the way over there,” Akira hears an Akechi from the distant past say, all flowery. “You always exceed my expectations.”

“Are we done here?” is what Akechi really asks, looking bored and disinterested.

“Yeah,” Akira hums. And then tacks on, “Jazz club tonight?”

Akechi lets out a huff that sounds way too annoyed for someone that has been accepting the invitation every night anyway. He opens his mouth, probably to ask like he does every night if Akira really has nothing better to do, but then he notices the treasure that Akira’s still clutching in his hand.

He grabs at Akira’s wrist and stares down at the pair of ruby earrings. “That’s,” he says, his voice sounding rather forced. His mouth snaps shut.

“Akechi?” Akira prods worriedly. There is a look in the other boy’s eyes that Akira isn’t sure he likes. It’s not sadness, but it’s not exactly… pleasant, either.

“Akira,” Akechi says. He still hasn’t looked up from the earrings. “I—”

Whatever he was about to say gets cut off by a loud yell behind them. “Shadows!” he hears Futaba yell, and Akira feels himself effortlessly melt back into his Joker persona. The hand on his wrist falls away as he pulls out his daggers and jumps into the fray, already barking out orders.

The fight doesn’t last very long, thanks to the combined efforts of Haru and Makoto dealing the final blow. Akira watches the two girls laugh and hi-five each other and feels an overwhelming amount of pride well up inside him, at all of them, who had lost so much yet kept fighting.

“Joker!” Morgana’s poking at his leg, his eyes shining excitedly. “What was in the chest? Was there anything good?”

“Yeah, these.” He holds out the earrings for Morgana to coo over. “Hey, Akechi, are you oka—”

He turns around and stares at the pile of Akechi’s clothes laying on the floor next to the bookcase. There’s something squirming inside, and Akira can see a small tuft of brown hair peeking out from above the opening of the shirt.

“Akechi?” he says a little too loudly, catching the attention of the rest of the thieves. He ignores their hushed questions and walks over a little too fast to be considered normal. “Are you hurt? Why are you in regular clothes again? Are you—”

Akira stops dead in his tracks and stares. Behind him, he can hear the other thieves gasp in surprise when the pile of clothing squirms around some more and a small head pokes out.

“Hello,” the boy says, looking no older than eight. He is absolutely swimming in Akechi’s clothes. His eyes dart between all of them, fear evident behind his gaze, and does his best to give them all a wobbly sort of grin. Akira has worked with enough children to know that it is a telltale sign of someone trying to appear brave.

“Hello!” Ann recovers first, her voice coming out too loud and forced. Akira frowns as the boy noticeably flinches, his eyes watering up. “What’s your name?”

The boy looks down at the black gloves that form a blanket over his small hands. “I’m Goro,” he says softly. “W-where am I? Are you Mom’s friends?”

Chapter Text

Goro dreams of the past.

He sees someone who looks like an older version of him. He has the same crimson eyes, the brown hair, except all of Goro’s features look so much better on the other boy. When he leans across the table, he looks composed and dignified. When he speaks, his voice is smooth and stutter free. When he smiles, he looks handsome and his teeth are perfect.

Goro tongues the gap between his two front teeth and feels self-conscious.

Across for him sits a boy with messy black hair. He looks rather normal compared to the other boy, slouching slightly as he leans down to suck on the straw of his drink. The kind of boy that doesn’t stick out in a crowd.

But Goro doesn’t miss the way the black-haired boy looks at the other one, the same way his mom used to look at him, full of warmth and compassion and understanding.

His mom doesn’t look at him like that much anymore.

“Well?” says the brown-haired boy. “What do you think?”

“It’s nice,” the black-haired boy says. “I can see why you like it here.”

The brown-haired boy laughs softly. It sounds nice and pretty and not at all like the hyena laugh that Goro’s classmates say he has. “I’m glad to have your approval. To be honest with you, you’re the first person I’ve brought here.”

The black-haired boy blinks and tilts his head slightly. “Are you free tomorrow night?”

The brown-haired boy places his left hand under his chin in a cool looking pose. Goro tries to mimic it. “I believe so,” he says. “Is it more Phantom Thieves business?”

“Nah.” The black-haired boy sits back, and Goro realizes that the boy’s eyes are gray rather than black. “I was thinking I could introduce you to a place too. A secret for a secret.”

The brown-haired boy looks startled. “You don’t have to,” he says. “You’ve already shown me the bathhouse in Yongen Jaya. And of course, nothing could ever repay Leblanc.”

The corners of the black-haired boy’s mouth quirk up. “Well, that just means that you’ll have to pay me back with other new places too,” he says smugly. “Better start researching, detective.”

The brown-haired boy stares, and then hides a smile behind his hand. “Well, I could never back down from a challenge,” he says lightly. “I endeavor to do my best to live up to your expectations, Joker.”

The black-haired boy opens his mouth to say something, but the door behind Goro suddenly slams open and a hand grips the hood of his sweatshirt and drags him backwards. “Please,” he says, reaching out, but neither of the boys seem to notice him at all. “Please.”

Please let me just stay here a little longer.

Please don’t take me back to the empty house.

Please let me ask the brown-haired boy if he’s happy.

But whoever is dragging him away doesn’t listen, and Goro finds the door slammed in his face.

Goro curls in on himself. There are so many people in weird outfits and strange masks crowded around him and he doesn’t know any of them.

He was just alone in his house, a bowl of cold rice in front of him as he watched the clock waiting for his mom to come home. He doesn’t understand how he ended up here.

A girl steps forward and smiles at him gently. Her hair is big and poufy and similar to the cotton candy he always watches other kids eat, cotton candy that he’s never tried before because it was too expensive for a household that could barely afford basic necessities. “Yes, we’re friends of your mother. She asked us to keep you safe,” the girl says.

He can’t stop himself from flinching back violently. Images flash through his mind, of his mom bringing home someone new at night, of his mom telling him to cover his ears whenever they had a visitor over, of his mom looking so sad and defeated every time a ‘friend’ left.

“Goro-kun?” the girl tries again, looking rather worried.

It’s the wrong thing to say. The only thing he can hear is a deep masculine voice ringing in his ear, a Goro-kun, your mother was so good to me last night. You like your new clothes, don’t you? Would you like new toys? I’ll make sure to get some for you if you tell your mother to call me again tonight, okay? She’s a dear friend to me, after all.

The rest of them are huddling around him and he squeezes his eyes shut and tries to will himself invisible. They’re whispering in hushed voices, like the neighborhood kids always whispered, calling him a bastard child and throwing rocks at him and laughing at him when he cried.

“I’m sorry, I thought it’d help,” says the girl with the cotton candy hair. She sounds miserable. Goro wonders if that’s his fault. It’s always his fault.

“Not your fault, Noir,” comes another voice.

“Maybe masks off?” Someone else suggests. “Not that they don’t look badass and all, but it’s probably scaring him.”

“Whoa, Skull grew a brain overnight.”

“Hey! I may be dumb, but I’m not stupid!”

“Akechi,” calls a voice that is vaguely familiar. He peeks up between his fingers to see a black-haired boy. He has removed his black and white mask and is looking over worriedly.

Goro remembers him. He’s the same boy from that weird dream, the one who had smiled at an older version of him and willingly spent time with him and looked at him like he was the most important thing in the world.

Goro doesn’t know who he is, but he reaches out for him anyway.

The boy is hovering near the edge of the group and looks a little surprised when Goro peers at him hopefully, but he crouches down next to him. “Are you cold?”

Goro thinks about it, scrunching up his nose and biting his lip. He is a little cold and he can feel the little goosebump things prickling up on his arms, but it’s always this temperature in his house and his mom always tells him not to complain. “No,” he shakes his head dutifully.

The boy frowns slightly, reaching down to pick up the scarf and loop it around his neck. Goro is proud of himself for only jumping a little bit when the boy’s warm fingers brush against the cold skin of his neck. “Is this okay?” he murmurs.

Goro stares at him with his eyes wide, nodding. No one other than his mom has ever taken care of him like this, and even she only did so on her good days. The thought makes his heart hurt a little.

The boy seems pleased by his answer, though, and reaches for his left arm to fold the sleeves of the coat up. When he’s done, Goro voluntarily sticks out his right arm and is rewarded with a small but genuine smile, and he can’t help but to return it with a slightly wobbly one.

“Whoa, he likes Joker,” says a girl who looks like an alien. Joker must be his name, then. But since it’s not like any of the names he’s heard of before, it’s probably a nickname. Goro nods proudly to himself, happy to have solved that mystery.

He has a lot of nicknames too. Stuff like “whore’s child” and “good-for-nothing brat” that the neighborhood kids and their parents like to call him. But Joker sounds so cool.

“Well, Joker was the closest to Crow out of all of us,” says the scary looking woman. Goro thinks back to the warm dream he just had, the comfort and security he felt, and maybe it wasn’t exactly him in the memory, but he tucks it safely in his heart anyway along with the very limited amount of other happy memories that he has.

Joker finishes tiding up his clothes and ruffles his hair, the same way his mom does on her good days when none of her friends come over and they have enough money to buy more than two slices of bread for dinner. “Can you walk?”

“Yes,” Goro says, almost tripping over his large boots in his hurry to stand up and prove himself. He then remembers his manners and carefully clasps his hands together and bows. “Thank you very much.”

“I think I like him better like this,” says the boy with blonde hair. “Ow, Queen, I was just joking! It’s not like I’d actually—oh shit.”

Goro looks up and freezes, watching in horror as two yellow boxes float in their direction. “C-coffins don’t move on their own,” he whispers in horror, pinching himself. He rubs at his eyes. They’re still there.

The alien girl shoots him a look before climbing into a spaceship that appeared out of nowhere. Goro pinches himself again, feeling close to crying. Everything is so weird and he still doesn’t know where he is and he wants his mom. “These two Shadows are high level. Don’t let your guard down. Mona, can you look after Crow?”

“Fine,” says the cat. The cat! Goro feels close to hyperventilating. Why is the cat talking? “Hey, Akechi, let’s go and hide over—”

Whatever the cat wants to say next gets cut off as the front lid of one of the coffins opens slightly and lets out an earth-shattering shriek. Goro watches as an arm slowly emerges from the darkness, and all he can see is him trying to make himself smaller in the closet, hands pressed tightly against his ears in a useless effort to block out the sound of his mom and her friend.

His legs are tumbling backwards before he’s had the chance to think about what he’s going to do, and then he’s running.

“Akechi!” he hears Joker shout, and then one of the others telling him to go, don’t worry about it, they’ll handle things here. Goro keeps running, doesn’t stop even though he doesn’t know where he’s going, takes turn after turn in an effort to get as far away as possible.

He runs down the stairs and trips, falling all the way down. He lands on the bottom, a jumbled heap of limbs. His knees are scraped and he hit his head on the side of the staircase and it hurts, it hurts, he’s so scared, and he can’t help when big fat tears start rolling down his cheeks. He hates crying, because on good days it always made his mom sad, and on bad days it made her yell at him for being ungrateful.

But even his mom isn’t here. Maybe she finally got fed up with him and abandoned him in this strange world. He’s all by himself in this white place and he doesn’t know where he is and there are scary monsters and he feels so alone.

He hiccups and manages to hide himself under the stairs even though everything hurts. He wishes his mom was here to patch him up the same way that she did when some of his classmates pushed him down the playground slide. He wishes his mom was here to give him a hug and tell him that everything was alright despite looking thinner and more exhausted than she ever had.

Goro’s wished for a lot of things in his life. For just a little bit more food on the table, one bowl of rice not nearly enough for two people to share for dinner. For his father to come back, to tell Goro that he didn’t want to leave, that it was the hardest thing he’s ever done, but he’s back now and he loves him. For his mom to be happy, to see her smile more than once every two weeks if he’s lucky.

But Goro is a cursed child. And he knows that no one grants the wishes of monsters like him.

“Akechi!” he hears, and then he sees a black blur run past in the corner of his eye. For a second, Goro thinks that even Joker will disappear and leave him alone in this unknown world, but he must be crying louder than he thought, because the other boy skids to a stop and makes a beeline for him.

“Are you okay? What happened?” There’s a foreign look of relief and worry in Joker’s eyes that Goro’s never seen directed at him before.

“H-hurts,” he whispers, ducking his head in the direction of the stairs. A wave of realization and horror washes over Joker’s face, and Goro thinks that this is it, this is when Joker realizes what an idiot he really is, so stupid that he can’t even walk down the stairs by himself, and then abandons him.

But instead, Joker simply says, “Diarahan,” and suddenly his head doesn’t hurt and his knees don’t sting anymore. He looks up, wide-eyed, and sees a glowing beautiful woman fading into nothing behind Joker. “Is that better?”

“Yes, thank you.” Goro nods eagerly, and then points a shaky finger at where that woman was standing. “W-what was that?” he asks, when it becomes clear that Joker is more interested in wiping his tears and checking to make sure all of his injuries are healed rather than explain what just happened.

“Hm?” Joker says. “Oh, the fairy looking thing? That was Titania. She healed you.”

“Titania,” Goro mouths. “From A Midsummer Night’s Dream?”

Joker looks a little surprised, but then smirks. “You’re pretty smart for your age, huh?” Goro can’t help but puff out his chest proudly, which makes the other boy laugh. “Yeah, that’s her. You could say she’s one of my powers.”

“You have powers?” Goro gapes at him. “L-like a superhero?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Joker smiles at him. “I can show you some of the others if you want. But first I need to make sure you feel okay.”

“Yes,” Goro sits up straighter and wipes at his eyes. It’s not a lie. He does feel better because Joker is a superhero and healed someone like Goro and nothing hurts and everything feels warm. “I’m sorry for the trouble I caused. I-I didn’t mean to…”

It’s the wrong thing to say, and Joker frowns at him. “You didn’t cause any trouble. I was just worried about you. Understand?”

“Yes,” Goro says, even though he doesn’t, because no one other than his mom ever worries about his wellbeing.

Joker is still frowning, but when Goro shoots him a look full of excitement and expectation, he sighs and smiles a little. “Alright, these are called Personas. There are many different kinds and they take on different forms. Gabriel!”

A huge angel appears out of nothing, its huge wings of glittering light stretching across the hall. Goro feels his mouth drop open as the angel leans down and flutters his wings protectively around Goro once before disappearing.

“Another one!” is out of his mouth before he can think. He adds quickly, “Please.”

Joker laughs and then shuffles through his list of powers. There’s this water horse that nuzzles Goro’s hand, a cool looking warrior holding two swords, and even a green cylindrical thing on a chariot that he doesn’t get a good look at because Joker mutters, “Maybe not that one,” and quickly dispels it.

By the end, Goro’s cheeks hurt from smiling so much. He can’t remember the last time that happened.

“One more,” Joker says. “Not the most powerful, but he was my first so I’ve kept him around. Arsène!”

A figure clad in red emerges, wearing a tall top hat. His two black wings unfurl and he lets out a laugh, deep and rich and soothing. He bows dramatically in Goro’s direction.

Goro tugs on the sleeve of Joker’s uniform. “He’s my favorite,” he whispers.

Joker laughs, sounding a little self-conscious. “Quite the charmer, isn’t he?”

“He’s like Arsène Lupin! I read about him in a book before,” Goro says proudly. “He’s a thief of justice!”

“Yeah?” Goro watches in regret as Arsène fades to nothing. “You think he’s a hero?”

“Of course,” Goro nods eagerly. “Even though some people think that he’s a bad guy, I think it’s very noble for him to go fight the super evil villains.”

“Well said,” Joker says, standing up. “You’re a very smart young man.”

Goro thinks about the tattered library books he’d bring home, the nights flipping through the books on an empty stomach in an effort to do something, to do anything, to become more useful to his mom. His classmates always laughed at him, calling him nerd and bookworm and no-life idiot and teacher’s pet, that’s why no one likes you.

But Joker called him smart.

“You can call me Goro,” he says shyly, picking at the hem of his coat sleeve. “People who are nice to me usually call me Goro.” He doesn’t mention the fact that there is only one other person currently residing in that camp.

Joker looks surprised, but he recovers quickly and smiles down at him. “Alright, Goro,” he says, and it feels a bit weird to hear someone who isn’t his mom calling him that, but it doesn’t feel unpleasant. “You feeling up to going back to where the others are?”

“Yes,” Goro says, and then remembers his shameful behavior from before. He wonders if the others still want anything to do with him after he ran out crying like a loser. He bows low at the waist. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to run away.”

Joker sighs. “Goro, I have an assignment for you. You can think of it like a special mission that only you can do. Is that okay?”

Goro nods. Assignments are familiar to him. Assignments like being put on bathroom cleaning duty for a whole month, or assignments like letting his classmates copy his homework every day. He wonders what sort of assignments superheroes give.

“I want you to stop apologizing, alright?” Joker says, crossing his arms. “None of this is your fault and no one blames you for it, so I don’t want you to blame yourself.”

“I’m sor—” Goro’s eyes widen and he quickly slaps his palm against his mouth. He can’t believe he failed a special mission so quickly.

To his surprise, Joker simply laughs. “We all get one,” he shrugs. He jerks his head in the direction of the door. “Ready to go?”

The rest of the fancy dressed people are waiting anxiously in a room at the top of the stairs. When they spot Joker—and Goro, walking slightly behind, his short legs doing their best to catch up to the older boy’s longer strides—they all rush over. To his surprise, some of them even make a beeline toward him.

“Goro-kun!” says the girl with a red cat mask. “I’m glad you’re okay!”

There are very few people in the world who are glad that he’s okay, and Goro’s managed to triple that list just in the past hour. “Thank you, Miss Pretty Cat,” he says, feeling himself pink a little.

Miss Pretty Cat blinks at him. “You think I’m pretty?”

Goro nods seriously. She’s pretty in the way that his mom is, on days when she doesn’t have any friends over and doesn’t need to draw all over her face. “Yes, I think you’re very beautiful.”

“Oh god, we have another Inari,” the alien girl murmurs.

“Panther is objectively beautiful,” the blue fox boy says, looking scandalized. “My intentions are entirely pure.”

“Uh huuuuuh.”

Miss Pretty Cat blushes a little and laughs. “I see you started sweet talking people already.” She ribs the blonde guy next to her. “Skull, you could learn how to talk to girls from him.”

“Hell no! He’s like five!”

“Seven,” Goro corrects, holding up the appropriate fingers. His seventh birthday had been his favorite so far. His mom had saved enough money to buy a small chocolate cupcake that they had shared, and then they had spent all night building a pillow fort and whispering secrets to each other, just the two of them.

He hopes that his eighth birthday is just as good.

“You’re very mature for your age, Goro-kun,” the scary looking lady says, smiling at him. He used to hate being called mature by his teachers because of the bullying of jealous classmates that would always follow. But it doesn’t feel as bad here.

They go around and introduce themselves, some of them always trying to speak over everybody else while others content to not say much at all. They remind Goro of the neighborhood kids that he watches wistfully from afar, laughing and joking and having a good time together.

His mom had told him, on one of her bad days, that those sorts of relationships don’t exist in the adult world.

When they all stop talking and look at him expectedly, he asks, “Why do you all have three names? Like Miss Panther Ann Takamaki-san.”

“Holy shit, do you think he actually remembers all our names?” Skull Ryuji Sakamoto whispers. “I couldn’t understand half the mumbo jumbo coming out of Oracle’s mouth.”

“Shut it, Skull.”

Noir Haru Okumura crouches down next to him. “The first one is our codename,” she says kindly. “Because we’re thieves of justice!”

“Like Arsène Lupin!” Goro says excitedly, and then the rest of her statement catches up to him. “Codenames? That’s so cool!”

“Oh my gosh, he’s too cute,” Panther says.

Goro peers at Joker hopefully. So Joker wasn’t just a nickname, it was a codename, the same codenames that spies always used in those super cool action movies. “C-can I have one too?”

“Sure,” Joker says easily. “Want to be Crow?”

“Crow?” Goro thinks about it. It doesn’t sound super cool like some of the other ones, and he’s not sure how Joker got that name by looking at him. But it’s a name that someone else thought up for him, that someone else deemed worthy for him. The thought makes him feel warm. “Okay.”

“Huh, really?” asks Skull. “I thought little kids would like something flashier, like ‘Lightning Rod of Destruction’ or something.”

“That’s only because you haven’t grown up yet,” the cat says, and then turns around to look at Goro. “I didn’t mean to scare you earlier.”

“It’s okay,” Goro says. The cat looks much cleaner than the strays that loiter around the shack he lives in, the strays that run away whenever he approaches, because even they can tell that Goro is an unwanted child. He hesitantly reaches out. “Is it okay if I…?”

The cat—Mona, he had said—bristles a little, but then lets out a resigned sigh. “Just this once,” he says. Goro picks him up gently and cuddles him in his arms.

“Mwehehe, picture get! This will make millions,” Oracle snickers softly.

“We should get going,” says Joker. “Goro, you’re tasked with protecting Mona. Got it?”

Goro nods and salutes him the best he can while still holding the cat. “Yes sir!” he says, giving Joker a toothy grin. He can hear the sound of camera shutters going off behind him and a lot of cooing. They must really think that Mona is cute.

Joker leads the way, and the rest of the team follows. Queen and Noir walk in front, the latter excitedly chatting about what sounds like vegetable gardening. Panther and Violet walk next to him, talking about nothing in particular, but they keep glancing over and giving him small grins when he catches them looking.

In his arms, the cat purrs and allows himself to be pet.

“Shadow up ahead!” Oracle calls, and the team instantly switches from the laidback atmosphere to battle stances. Goro has never seen anything so cool before. “There’s four of them, but they’re pretty weak.”

“Skull, Fox, Queen, with me,” Joker orders. “Panther, can you…”

“Got it,” Panther says, and then shimmers closer to Goro. They must be afraid that he’s going to book it again, but he has no desire to run anymore.

He wants to see what kind of cool superhero powers Joker has.

When Joker pulls off his mask, the same way that he did before when he was showing Goro all the powers, he can’t help but grin widely and yell the same way that Joker did. “Persona!!”

What follows is a long and uncomfortable silence. Goro’s eyes dart around, his smile dropping from his face as he worries at his bottom lip. “D-did I do something wrong?” he asks. Joker is still staring at him with an unreadable expression. Goro wonders if he’s mad that someone like Goro ruined his super important moment.

“Persona!” Oracle mimics, but it doesn’t sound like she’s making fun of him. “Goro Akechi’s special move. Max cuteness. Super effective on Joker. Heals all emotional damage and gives you the fuzzy wuzzies.”

“Shut up, Oracle,” Joker says, turning back to the Shadows, but the tips of his ears are pink.

The battle resumes and Panther leans down to whisper in his ear. “You should do that every time,” she says.

Goro nods and does as instructed as they make their way back to the entrance. He cheers along whenever Joker switches through his powers, and sometimes when the other members do too. He wonders briefly if he’s being too annoying; his classmates had always complained that he liked listening to the sound of his own voice too much.

But Joker merely gives him a smirk every time he does it and starts swapping through his personas more often, and Goro finds that he doesn’t really want to be thinking about his classmates when he’s having so much fun.

They make it to the front door, and Goro is surprised to find himself wishing that this could have lasted a little longer. He wants to ask if they can go back into this white place and fight some more enemies so he can watch as they dance around effortlessly and laugh whenever they trip over themselves trying to perform impossible moves.

But Goro knows that it would only cause trouble for them, and he’s been taught not to ask for unnecessary things, so he keeps quiet.

“Ready to go back?” Joker asks, tilting his head toward the door. The look in his eyes reminds him of the look he had in that dream, full of understanding and free of judgment. The same way his mom had looked at him, huddled under the blanket fort on his seventh birthday, whispering gently to him, Goro, I’m so glad you were born.

Goro nods.

Chapter Text

Akira dreams.

He’s standing in a large room, brightly lit and loud with commotion. The place is crowded for a Wednesday school night, the sound of darts hitting the board and the clank of billiard balls bouncing into each other filling the background with noise.

In his little corner, all the sound melts away, an isolated bubble home to a friendly competition. Akira’s been here with all the other Phantom Thieves at least once already, but this time it feels different. There’s no friendly banter, no gentle ribbing, no comradery amongst friends.

Instead, there’s only one other person with him tonight. His rival, standing to the side, eyes too sharp as he surveys the dartboard with interest. His rival, who had presented the photos and smugly blackmailed his way onto the Phantom Thieves. His rival, who had spoken calmly on the phone plotting Akira’s demise, as if it was just normal to be planning to shoot a friend in the head.

But, Akira supposes, there’s nothing really normal about either of them.

“That reminds me. What is happiness to you?” Akechi asks suddenly, as if the dartboard somehow gave him the conversation idea.

Akira is in the middle of lining up a shot, so he glances over. “We’re supposed to be working as a team,” he reminds him. “Stop trying to sabotage me with philosophical questions.”

“I assure you that was not my intention,” Akechi says, holding up his hands in a non-threatening way. It does little to reassure Akira when he knows that those hands will be wrapped around a gun pointed at his head in two weeks’ time. “But go ahead, take your shot first.”

It’s a bullseye again. Akira goes to retrieve the darts from this round, glancing at the score counter that is barely over halfway there despite the third round already finishing. It doesn’t come as a surprise; Akechi had been the one to suggest this game after all, giving a sugary and sweet I’m sure we can win if we work together, Akira.

It doesn’t feel bad, working with Akechi. But even when they’re on the same team, it feels like Akechi is still constantly trying to defeat him.

“So?” Akechi prompts, apparently hitting the maximum time limit that he can go without having a deep philosophical discussion. Akira’s noticed that that time limit is significantly shorter when it’s just the two of them. “What’s your response?”

Akira turns back toward him, darts in hand. “Doing things I like, spending time with friends,” Akira shrugs. “I don’t know. It doesn’t take much to make me happy, I guess.”

“Oh?” Akechi says, tilting his head to the side. “It sounds like you’re saying that you’re happy.”

Akira contemplates. “Well, some things could be better,” he admits.

The things he’s referring to laughs lightly. “Well, your ideal situation probably doesn’t include a detective blackmailing you.”

“When I said friends,” Akira says, making eye contact, handing over the darts and making sure to brush against the cool leather of Akechi’s gloves. “I was including you.”

Akechi’s face contorts a bit before he forcefully smooths it down into one of practiced nonchalance, turning away to face the dartboard so that Akira can’t see his expression.

When Akira doesn’t get a response, not that he expected one, he continues. “But overall, yeah, I think I am happy. What about you?”

“I get by,” says Akechi, and pretends that he didn’t evade the question by stepping up to throw a dart.

Akira sighs. “We can talk about it, you know,” he offers, even though he already knows what the answer will be. “I can try to help if there’s something troubling you.”

“I do find myself oversharing when it comes to you,” Akechi agrees, and then claps when Akira’s last dart hits the board. “701 on the dot. We make a good team, you and I.”

“Yeah,” he says, and then allows himself to dream of another world. Of a world where they’re just two normal high school boys, part of the nameless masses, living normal and simple lives.

Of a world where everything is mundane and boring, where there are no personas and neither of them are special and maybe they never meet, but a world where Goro Akechi is happy.

When Akira opens his eyes, he’s standing in front of the palace, back in his regular clothes. His newly re-emerged glasses are barely doing much to block the cold winter wind. Goro is looking around rapidly, his head a tiny thing peeking out from the top of his clothes and his mouth in a perpetual open state of wonder. Akira hides a small smile and wonders if he has anything at home that would fit him.

“I’m taking him back to Leblanc with me,” he says, and everyone agrees easily enough. Being the closest to Akechi aside, they don’t know how long this will last, and it’s not like he’s eager to see what will happen if Goro transforms back when he’s alone with one of the other thieves.

It’s easy to forget when everyone is cooing over this younger version that there are still a lot of unresolved feelings with the older one.

“Haru, can you take Morgana for the evening?” Akira asks.

“Yes, of course!” Haru smiles. “Mona-chan, I’m going to feed you so much sushi!”

“Haru, you’re the best!” Akira pretends he does not feel Morgana pointedly step on his toes before hopping happily into Haru’s arms.

“I’ll walk you to the station,” Makoto says, hiking her bag up her shoulder. She offers them a small smile. “See you all tomorrow. Akira, keep us updated.”

“Will do,” Akira says, nodding to each of them as they say their goodbyes and disperse. Goro is standing next to him, nose slightly scrunched up as he puts all his effort into waving as hard as he can.

Akira kind of wants to adopt him. Is that weird, wanting to adopt your crush? Maybe if he stops thinking about it it’ll be less weird.

“Inari, walk me home!” Futaba demands, ignoring Yusuke’s protests. She whirls around and points a finger in Goro’s direction. “I’ll come over later. You want me to bring toys, level 1?”

Goro perks up a little bit. “I-if that’s okay,” he says. He still looks unsure whenever he asks for anything, though Akira is pleased to note that he looks less like a scared animal now and more like a hopeful child.

He remembers finding Goro under the stairs, curled into a ball and crying into his knees, his small face flooded with tears. No seven year old kid ever deserved to look like that.

Akira pats his head. “You have anything in particular you want?”

“No, I don’t,” Goro says a little too quickly, and Akira frowns at him. “F-Featherman?” he tries again.

“Sorry, don’t have that,” Futaba says.

Yusuke looks at her sharply. “Yes you do. Besides the figurines that I aesthetically modelled for you, I also saw the tapes on your bookshelf and—”

“Agh! Inari, I’m going to leak your porn history!”

“I have told you many times, I watch those videos for inspiration,” Yusuke says, looking seriously offended. “There is nothing more beautiful than two people willing to bare it all to each othe—”

“Anyway,” Futaba says, pushing Yusuke out of the way. “Fine, I’ll bring them over. But you better be careful with them, level 1! Those are limited edition figurines that I had to hack into the server to get!”

Goro worries at his bottom lip. “It’s okay, I don’t really need—”

“Nope! Too late, no takesies backsies!” Futaba grabs Yusuke’s arm and drags him off. “See ya later, noob and noob jr!”

“Bye,” Akira laughs, though the two of them are already long gone. He looks down at Goro, who still looks troubled. “Hey, don’t worry about it. Futaba’s an elitist when it comes to those things, so the fact that she’s willing to lend them to you means she likes you.”

“B-but what if something happens to them?” Goro asks. “Won’t she be mad?”

Akira shrugs. “Then she’ll whine a lot and then buy some new ones.” Goro is looking at him in disbelief. “What did you think would happen?”

Goro clasps his hands in front of him and looks down. “W-well, whenever I do something bad at school, I get yelled at,” he says softly. “Because someone like me shouldn’t be causing trouble for others.”

Akira frowns, the sentiment hitting a little too close to home, and then crouches down to his eye level. “Well, that’s not going to happen here, okay? No one’s going to be mad at you. Now, I’m going to bring you to a place with all-you-can-eat curry, and you can have as much as you want. Does that sound good?”

“All-you-can-eat curry?” Goro repeats, looking amazed. “Does a place like that really exist?”

“Yeah, the owner’s a big softie.” Akira tilts his head in the direction of the main street. “Want to go? You can ask me questions on the way back, if you want.”

Goro nods eagerly and they set off. Akira notes fondly that Goro’s legs are pumping as fast as they can, determined to match his longer ones without slowing him down. The smile slides off his face when he realizes how skinny they are, the boy clearly underweight.

“W-where’s Mom?” is the first question Goro asks. “You said you were her friends?”

Akira remembers Goro’s reaction, his obvious flinch and then curling in on himself. It was the wrong thing to say, but it seems too late to take it back now. “Yeah,” Akira says, deciding to just roll with it. “Do you not like your mom’s friends?”

“No,” Goro sniffs. “They’re scary and they make Mom do things she doesn’t want to do, and she always cries after.” He pauses. “But I like you, Joker-san.”

The warmth he feels at the last statement is barely enough to cancel out the anger from the ones before. “We don’t want to hurt your mom,” Akira reassures him. “She was just worried about you and asked us to take care of you for a couple of days.”

“Really?” Goro peers up at him, eyes shining brightly. Akira nods. He’s not sure if Goro’s mom even exists in this universe, and if she does, where she is, but he hopes that whatever it is that’s going on will revert itself before long. “I didn’t know Mom had friends like that.”

Seemingly content with this answer, Goro’s feet gain a pep in their step, and he starts humming what sounds like the opening to Featherman quietly under his breath. Akira frowns, recognizing the action as someone trying to keep as quiet as possible to avoid troubling everyone else.

Akira thinks back to the bathhouse trip, the quiet admissions of being lonely and friendless, and wonders if even now, despite being the Detective Prince with hordes of fans and adoration, Akechi still felt the lack of love and compassion his child self clearly yearned for.

Goro tugs on the hem of his sleeve. “Your clothes changed,” he says. “When we left the white place.”

“That’s so we keep our powers a secret from the general public,” Akira smiles at him. Understanding dawns Goro’s eyes and he nods as if he’s been entrusted with an important secret, pulling an imaginary zipper across his lips. “And the white place was the villain’s lair, so we used our powers there to try to defeat him.”

“Oh,” Goro says. “It looked very nice for a bad guy’s hideout.”

Akira sighs. “That’s the problem.” He doesn’t particularly want to think about Maruki, not when he spends every day thinking about if they’re truly doing the right thing, if he deserved to play the executioner on his friends’ happiness.

They walk along the main street toward Yongen Jaya, the place filled with many passersby who don’t spare the two of them a glance. Akira discovers that Goro talks a lot, though he needs to be constantly prompted to continue, to be reassured that there’s nothing wrong with showing the world his personality.

Akira watches Goro gasp in amazement at simple things like the decorations on the streetlights and thinks about the older Akechi and how heavily filtered his life was. He wonders what he would see if he peeled away all those masks. He doesn’t know. He’s been trying. But every time, he manages to break through a wall only to find another one underneath it.

This is a deal. We have no need to see each other after this, Akechi’s voice echoes in his mind. You have plenty of friends, Akira. Surely you won’t miss my company.

He thinks to himself, you’re so stupid Akechi. You’re so, so stupid.

“Oh!” Goro notices something and points, and Akira feels something inside him drop when he looks over at the shop and comes face to face with a familiar ray gun. “That’s—”

“Proof of justice,” Akira says, swallowing. His throat feels dry. “Right?”

Goro stares at him, wide-eyed in amazement. “Yeah! Wow, you know so many things, Joker-san.”

Akira shrugs, and tries not to stare at the spot on the ground in front of the store window, the spot where just two months ago he had sat and prayed for hours for Akechi to be safe and happy and alive.

Goro doesn’t seem to realize that the spot he’s currently standing on probably has a whole reservoir of Akira’s dried tears ingrained into it. “They made a tenth edition already?” He blinks. “I-I thought they just came out with the first one.”

“Come on,” Akira says, pushing open the door to the shop. He can see another little boy eyeing at the box and they don’t tend to keep too many of these in stock. Akira knows, because he watched four different kids purchase four separate boxes before a store employee had put out a SOLD OUT sign the last time he was here. “Let’s go get it.”

“Oh,” Goro hurries to follow him in. “I didn’t know you were a fan too, Joker-san.”

“Hm?” Akira says, patting his back pocket to make sure he still has enough money. He’s glad he had the hindsight to work at his part-time job just earlier that week, because despite how much he likes spending his evenings with Akechi at the jazz club, their outings aren’t exactly very good for his wallet.

“C-can I watch you when you take it out of the box? I’ll be quiet.” When Akira blinks at him, Goro’s face falls and he quickly backtracks. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”

Akira firmly picks up the box and places it into Goro’s arms. “It’s for you. Open it yourself,” he says, and watches as tentative, hesitant hope blossoms on Goro’s face. “And I said no apologizing.”

“But—” Goro starts, and then hurries to catch up when Akira simply turns around and heads for the counter.

He’s pretty sure the store owner recognizes him as the weirdo crying over children toys in front of her shop just a few months back, and he steadily doesn’t meet her eyes when he takes out his wallet. He hopes she doesn’t say anything.

And it’s like Yaldabaoth decided to resurrect just this once to screw over Akira one last time. “Apologies if I’m overstepping,” the owner says after she takes his money and starts counting his change. “But are you feeling better? I saw you outside a couple months ago and…”

Akira thinks back to a cold winter night, a long awaited yet unsatisfying reunion, a he won’t need to turn himself in if the true perpetrator does, and manages a small smile. “Yeah,” he says, and for the first time in a long time, his answer to that question isn’t entirely a lie. “Thank you for asking.”

Soon after, he and Goro are back on the main street headed back to the warmth of Leblanc. Goro is turning the box around in his tiny arms almost frantically, and Akira smiles at him. “Are you that excited to open it?” he teases gently.

Goro shakes his head. “No, I’m…” his eyes sweep across the box and he seems to find what he’s looking for when his eyes widen and his face pales. “Eighteen hundred yen,” he mouths.

Akira frowns. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I…” Goro raises his head and Akira sees a determined glint in his eyes. “I won’t be able to return the money right away. B-but please give me a little time. I can… I can collect the bottlecaps around the playground and sell them. So please,” Goro bows so low that Akira’s afraid he’s going to tip over. “Please don’t bother my mom.”

“Goro,” Akira says sharply, and Goro jumps to attention. “I didn’t get that for you because I wanted you to pay me back. It’s a gift for you. I got that for you because I wanted to make you happy.”

“Why?” Goro asks.

Akira frowns and crouches down next to him. “Why what?”

“Why do you want me to be happy?” Goro whispers, eyes shining with unshed tears. “I don’t understand.”

Akira remembers a brightly lit room, the sound of other high schoolers fading in the background. He remembers the tired sigh of a detective as he slowly removes the darts from the board from the previous round. He remembers the words of someone who won’t even look in his direction, the small moment of weakness, the I’m not sure why you still want to hang out with someone like me, Akira.

Akira reaches over and wraps his arms around the younger child. “Because you deserve to be,” he says firmly. “And if anyone ever tells you otherwise, I want you to remember what I just said.”

Goro doesn’t say anything in return, but Akira feels the shoulder of his jacket dampen with tears. He ignores the way the corner of the box digs into his chest, ignores the way the other passersby look and whisper at the two of them, ignores everything except for the trembling form of a small Goro Akechi as he runs a soothing hand down his back.

Akira stares at the top of the boy’s head while he cries, and wonders if it’s possible to convince the older Akechi of the same thing.

“He better not be yours,” is the first thing Sojiro says when the two of enter Leblanc a little while later, Goro’s left hand firmly in Akira’s and his right hand doing his best to angle the ray gun box so he can stare dreamily at it while he walked.

Akira laughs, a little self-conscious, twirling his bangs with his free hand. Sojiro rolls his eyes. “I’m not even going to ask why he looks like a miniature version of that coffee addict,” he sighs, and then points at one of the booths. “You’re lucky we’re closed already. Take a seat. I’ll make the kid something to eat.”

“Thanks, Boss,” Akira says, feeling an overwhelming amount of fondness rise inside him toward the man who leapt over so many hurdles and kept so many secrets for his sake. Sojiro just grunts in return.

Goro’s staring wide-eyed around the café as he slides into one of the booths, placing the ray gun box gently next to him. “This is the nicest restaurant I’ve ever seen,” he says, amazed.

“I know it’s not that much to look at,” Sojiro says gruffly, hand awkwardly scratching the back of his neck, but Akira doesn’t miss the way his eyes soften when they look at Goro’s little smile.

“No, Mister, this place is so fancy!” Goro nods eagerly. “I would come here every day if I could!”

“Well, aren’t you the little flatterer,” Sojiro laughs, moving away to busy himself with the coffee beans. Goro beams at the compliment.

Akira, however, frowns when he remembers the forlorn look in Akechi’s eyes whenever he used to talk about his childhood, and thinks that Goro is not actually trying to flatter anyone, but simply telling the truth.

Goro’s legs aren’t quite long enough to reach the floor, so he’s swinging them around animatedly as he talks about a similar looking café near his house that he always admired from outside the window. Akira smiles and snaps a couple pictures while he talks, and notes that the only signs of Goro’s tears from earlier are the slight redness that still remain in his eyes.

Sojiro slides a plate of curry in front of him. “Eat up, kid,” he says. “And let me know if you like it.”

Goro’s eyes widen at the sight of the steaming plate of food in front of him, and he glances around quickly, as if someone was going to jump out and laugh and tell him that it was just a prank. When nothing happens, he reaches hesitantly for the spoon and scoops up a small mouthful.

Akira steadfastly ignores the accusatory look Sojiro is shooting in his direction, and instead decides to focus on Goro’s face.

Goro’s eyes light up in wonder as he sticks the spoon in his mouth, barely chewing before swallowing in one gulp. He shovels a couple more spoonfuls into his mouth before something similar to realization dawns in his eyes, and he carefully places the spoon back on the plate and then pushes it away.

Sojiro frowns. “Sorry, do you not like curry?”

There’s a little bit of sauce left on Goro’s mouth and he’s trying to discretely lick his lips to savor the last of it. “No, Mister,” Goro looks at him, wide-eyed. “It was very tasty.”

“Huh?” Sojiro looks confused. “Then why did you stop?”

“Because I already ate too much,” Goro mumbles, looking down. “I-I need to save it for tomorrow.”

“Akira,” Sojiro says, and there’s a hint of warning and a whole lot of alarm in the word.

“Hey,” Akira says, pushing the plate back toward Goro. “I told you that this was all-you-can-eat curry, didn’t I? If you’re hungry tomorrow, Boss will make you another plate.”

“B-but I don’t…” Poor Goro looks so confused. His hands grasp the edge of the plate, trembling slightly, as if unsure whether he should pull it toward him or push it away.

“My customers say that I make the best curry in town,” Sojiro says suddenly. “But I guess it can’t be that good if you can’t even finish half a plate, huh?”

“No, sir,” Goro shakes his head vehemently. “Your curry is really tasty. The tastiest thing I’ve ever had!”

“Well, I believe you,” Sojiro chuckles, lifting a hand to pat Goro’s head. Akira doesn’t miss the way Goro leans into the touch. “But I don’t know if my other customers will. So do you mind doing me a favor and finishing the plate, so they can see that it’s as good as you say it is?”

Goro hesitates for a second, but then bites his lip and nods. “Okay,” he says, and then he’s shoveling spoonfuls of curry into his mouth with gusto.

Sojiro gives him a tiny smile. The smile drops from his face when he turns to look at Akira, who is doing his best to shrink down into the booth seat. After a couple minutes of awkward staring, Sojiro sighs. “There’s a box upstairs with some old clothes. You can see if any of them fit him.”

Akira nods, and he hopes Sojiro can sense how thankful he feels.

“Ahoy! I have arrived!” The door slams open and Futaba tumbles in, clutching several figurines in her arms. Goro’s in the process of licking the remaining curry straight off the plate, but he quickly puts it down and waves at her shyly. “It took a long time to undo all of Inari’s work, but I have cleared the quest!”

Sojiro manages to take the empty plate away right before Futaba slides into the booth and deposits the figurines on the table. “Tada! My precious babies.” Her eyes zero in on the ray gun box. “Ooh, new toy?”

“Joker-san bought it for me,” Goro says, putting it on the table for display. “This way, even someone like me can become an ally of justice.”

“Fancy,” Futaba says, arranging her figurines so that they’re all dabbing in a circle around the box. “Just make sure not to point that thing in Akira’s direction.” Akira frowns at her and she cackles. “Just kidding!”

“I would never do that!” Goro exclaims. “Joker-san is a hero!”

Futaba opens her mouth to say something else that is probably entirely inappropriate, but Akira cuts her off. “Isn’t it past your bedtime, Futaba?” he says, glancing pointedly at the door.

“Hey! He’s like, half my age! Why am I the one you’re babying?” Despite her words, she stands up and dusts her pants off. “Level 1! I’ll promote you to level 2 tomorrow, so you best rest up and prepare for all your new responsibilities!”

“Okay,” Goro nods, sitting up straighter. “What level are you?”

“Four,” Futaba says, looking way too proud for someone making up numbers on the spot. “That’s because I can already go outside without Joker. You can’t do that, can you?” Goro shakes his head. “Mwehehe, prepare to face my wisdom tomorrow.” And then she’s flying out the door, calling loudly over her shoulder, “Sojiroooo, help! I forgot my keys!”

Sojiro sighs. “That girl is so much trouble,” he mumbles, and then turns to the two of them. “Remember to lock up. There are extra ingredients in the fridge, so make the kid something to eat if he gets hungry, okay?”

“Of course,” Akira says, cutting off Goro’s protests about not needing more food.

“Good,” Sojiro says, and then hesitantly ruffles Goro’s hair one last time. “You’re a good kid.”

“T-thank you,” Goro says quietly, and then looks down to hide his smile.

It turns out there were clothes in the box in the attic, but they’re still a little big on Goro’s body. Akira comes back up the stairs after washing his face to see Goro bouncing lightly on the bed, wearing a long-sleeved shirt with a cat print on it and some worn sweatpants.

“I-I can sleep here?” Goro asks, looking a little uncertain. When Akira nods at him, he stares dreamily at the mattress. “It’s so soft!”

Akira’s mattress is old and being propped up by literal crates and definitely nowhere near soft. “Come on,” he says instead of asking, because he doesn’t want to think about Goro sleeping on the floor with a thin layer of blanket every night. “Let’s get you tucked in.”

Goro nods eagerly and lies himself perfectly flat on the bed. Akira pulls the covers over him, and notes with fondness that the ray gun they unboxed earlier is lying on the windowsill next to the bed.

“Oh,” Goro says, his tiny head peeking out from the top of the blanket. “I had a dream earlier. Before I woke up and saw everyone in that white place.”

Akira sits up straighter. They still don’t know anything about how he managed to regress over a decade in age, and even Morgana had said he had never seen anything like this before. “Yeah?” he asks.

“We were in this really nice place,” Goro says, scrunching up his nose the way he does every time he thinks. It is a trait that the older Akechi didn’t have, and Akira wonders if he forced himself to grow out of the habit, considering it undesirable for the image of the Detective Prince. “There were two people. It was you, and someone who looked like an adult me!”

“Yeah?” Akira teases. “I bet he was handsome.”

“He was,” Goro says, blushing slightly. “I hope I can look like that in the future too.”

Goro continues his story, detailing the soft music and the bright colored drinks. Akira instantly identifies the place as the jazz club, though he can’t tell from the story which visit it was, having been there with the other boy so many times. Not that it matters, since the retelling seems to be an amalgamation of many different conversations anyway.

“It was weird,” Goro says, pulling up the blanket even higher. “Even though you were the same, I was much older! And it felt familiar, even though I’ve never been to a fancy place like that.” Goro worries at his bottom lip. “And…”

“And?” Akira prompts gently, sitting down at the edge of the bed.

“He looked happy. The adult me. He was smiling a lot and I could tell.” Goro places a hand above his heart. “It…it gave me hope. That if he was really me in the future, then maybe I could get a happy ending too. I-I could never think of one for myself before.”

Akira feels his heart break, and Goro unknowingly drives the knife in deeper when he peers up at him hopefully and asks, “Do you think he was happy?”

Akechi’s voice rings loudly in his head.

Jazz club again? Don’t you have more important things to do?

We are not friends, Akira. We’re working toward a similar goal, that’s all.

You don’t need to pretend to care. I can take care of myself. I always have.

I don’t know, Akira thinks miserably. I tried my best, but I don’t know if I just caused him more pain.

“Yeah,” he says instead.

Goro absolutely beams at him, and Akira feels his heart sit heavy in his chest.

Chapter Text

Goro dreams.

He’s in a park this time, the grass clean and cut, and the streets empty of litter. It is very different from the park near his house that he sometimes goes to when he’s feeling sad, a dirty little thing that is too small and too quiet.

This park is nice and lively. There are pretty flowers blooming beneath his feet that he’s careful not to step on, birds chirping in the trees, and so much green here, so warm and colorful compared to the hues of gray he’s used to seeing in his empty and desolate house.

He can hear people chattering around him, friends who laugh and walk by without noticing him. There’s a pair of boys sitting near the back of the park, each holding some kind of food. The black-haired boy says something quietly with absolutely no expression on his face. It makes the brown-haired boy laugh.

Goro is prepared this time.

He walks over as fast as he can and stops in front of the two. He waves a hand shyly in front of their faces, but like last time, it seems that both Joker and the older him can’t see him.

He takes a moment to look at the brown-haired boy. His face is smooth and clear and unmarred, not at all like the blemishes that are starting to appear on Goro’s skin. Goro knows he shouldn’t feel jealous if this is what he’ll look like in the future, but he can’t help but feel envious anyway.

Maybe if he looked like that now, people would want him around.

There’s a little bit of space on the bench next to Joker, and Goro sits himself down, swinging his legs. Even if the other two can’t see him, he feels like he’s hanging out with them all the same, sharing a precious moment among friends.

It feels nice, to feel included.

“Mmrf,” says Joker, taking a bite of his food. It looks like a wrap, but it has a bunch of weird things in it. Goro spies a strawberry, some flakey things, and a lot of whipped cream. He extends a hopeful finger to poke at it, maybe he can try some himself, but unfortunately his finger goes straight through.

The older him laughs. His food thing has brown stuff and bananas inside it and he hasn’t taken a bite yet. “Is it that good?”

“Yeth,” Joker says, and then takes a moment to chew. “I expected a lot since Ann recommended the place and she’s a crepe fanatic, but this is somehow even better.”

Crepes, Goro mouths to himself. So that’s what they’re called. He wonders if he’ll ever get the opportunity to try one. It looks so good.

The older him looks down at his crepe and nibbles on the edge of it. He takes care with each bite, to make sure to eat as neatly as possible.

Joker, on the other hand, just gobbles down half of his crepe in one bite, whip cream everywhere on his face. Goro giggles and tries to wipe it off for him, even though his hand meets air.

“This is rather sweet,” the brown-haired boy says, putting down the crepe after only four bites. Goro tries to imagine what the brown sauce tastes like. Is it chocolate, or more like peanut butter? “I’m surprised you could finish it.”

“I’ve had a lot of practice,” says Joker. “I thought you liked sweets? I think one of your food posts said that.”

“You follow my blog?” the older him says, looking surprised. When Joker merely raises an eyebrow, he laughs, a little self-conscious. “Well, a lot of things I say on social media tend to be for my brand. To make me… to make it more desirable.”

Joker frowns. “Sorry for forcing you to get one if you didn’t want it.”

“Oh, no, I don’t hate sweets or anything,” the older him says, quick to reassure. “This was delicious. “

They eat the rest of their crepes in relative silence. Afterward, they stand up and head back to the station, walking too close to be considered strangers. Goro follows them and barely manages to squeeze himself in the gap between the two boys.

Even though his hands go right through, Goro slots his left hand in Joker’s and his right hand in the brown-haired boy’s.

He smiles. In a moment of wistfulness, it feels like the three of them are a family.

When he wakes up, there’s warm sunlight shining on his body and a soft pillow under his head and his feet are cold and peeking out from the bottom of the blanket, so he curls himself into a small ball and tries to burrow into the warmth.

The nice feeling of the dream washes over him and he remembers the older version of himself and a black-haired boy, chatting in the park. He remembers the bubble they had sat in, separate from the world, a moment they had shared that somehow wasn’t lonely or oppressive despite the relative quietness of it.

He remembers Joker.

Goro sits up quickly, eyes darting around the room. He had been afraid that yesterday had been just a dream, the warm touches and hugs just something that his desperate mind had conjured up to compensate for the lack of affection in his life.

But he’s still here in this place above the curry restaurant, wearing the clothes that Joker had given him. The ray gun is still on the windowsill next to him and he presses the trigger lightly, giggling when it gives a pew pew in return.

There are footsteps walking up the stairs and he instantly tenses, mind whirling on different possibilities of who it could be. Maybe it’s one of the teachers from school, coming over to tell him to stop getting in fights, even though he’s always the one getting bullied. Maybe it’s one of Mom’s friends, the one from last week with the glasses, who had demanded that he make breakfast and then yelled at him when he couldn’t even scramble an egg right.

It’s Joker, balancing two full plates of curry and a cup of hot liquid in his hands. He’s still wearing his pajamas and he yawns, but he smiles when he notices that Goro is awake. “Sleep well?” he asks, placing the food on the table near the couch.

“Yes,” Goro says. “I-I dreamed about you again!”

“Yeah?” Joker laughs, sounding a little self-conscious. He points at the couch and Goro scuttles over. “Sorry, there are probably more interesting things to dream about.”

Goro shakes his head vehemently. His dreams usually consist of him being bullied, trapped in an empty box for hours all alone, or chasing forever after a silhouette that resembles his father. The Joker dreams are much nicer than any of them.

“You were in a park. I sat next to you!” Goro says excitedly. We were like a family! he thinks but doesn’t say, because Joker probably already has a family that wonderful and amazing, and he doesn’t need someone like Goro, who destroyed his own family just by being born, in it.

The smell of food hits his nose and he looks down to see a whole new plate of curry, just like Joker had promised him. Goro hears his stomach growl and his hand inches toward the spoon, but he still glances over at Joker for permission. When the other boy simply nods in encouragement, Goro reaches down and shovels a whole spoonful into his mouth.

It’s as good as it was yesterday. So he didn’t dream up the taste either.

Goro remembers to chew and swallow before asking, “What’s that?”

“Hm?” Joker looks down at his cup. “Oh, coffee. Have you tried it before?”

Goro shakes his head. He’s always been curious about the taste. But his mom spent the last of her hard-earned money on a couple bottles of coffee and beer, and she had always clung to them as a lifeline on hard days, and he didn’t want to be selfish and take that away from her.

He already took so much away from her just by existing.

“Probably a good thing.” Joker rifles under the sofa, pulling out several weirdly colored drinks and setting them on the table. Goro peers over at them. “Instead of coffee, I was thinking we could try some of these. The vending machines here sell all types of things.”

Goro blinks. “These are sold legally?” They look like poison.

Joker smirks. “Ever the detective.” Goro mouths the word, confused. He’s not sure why Joker calls him nicknames like detective and Crow. “Want to try some?”

Goro nods, because he is a little curious. He tries to read some of the labels to see what flavors they are but finds out that he can’t. “Fire… fire…” he tries, and then frowns.

Joker laughs. “Don’t worry about it. Most of these aren’t real words anyway.” He points at the one Goro’s looking at. “That one’s firewood ashes, I think.”

Goro makes a face, and Joker laughs even louder. It feels good, to have someone laugh at him when it’s not because of how dirty his clothes are, or how hungry he looks at lunch when he can only afford an apple. “D-do you do this often?” he asks.

“Sometimes, if I can find a willing victim.” Joker shrugs, and then holds one out to him. “You up for cardboard box?”

Goro nods and takes a sip. It takes serious willpower to not spit it out, and he forces himself to swallow it down in order to not be wasteful.

Joker is snickering softly at his expression, popping open a can and taking a swing. The label seems to say something about sweat. “Bleh,” he says instantly, wrinkling his nose. Goro instantly feels a lot better when he laughs and Joker shoots him a wounded look.

Goro stares down at his open bottle of cardboard box flavored liquid. He doesn’t want to drink it anymore, but it would be wasting Joker’s money if he didn’t finish it.

However, when he finally musters up the courage to bring the bottle to his lips again, Joker grabs his wrist and pulls it down. “No need to force yourself if you don’t like it,” he frowns. “Try something else.”

“But…” Goro glances down at the bottle, still almost entirely full.

Joker shakes his head and pries the bottle from his grasp. “I probably spent fifty yen total for all of these combined.” Fifty yen is a whole afternoon’s worth of collecting bottle caps in the local park, but Joker must be super rich if he can afford to live above an all-you-can-eat curry restaurant and throw money at weird drinks.

Before Goro can stop him, he tries some of the cardboard box flavored drink and makes a face. “Probably fifty yen too much,” Joker murmurs to himself, capping the bottle and tossing it to the side.

Goro stares at him. At Joker, waking up early to make him breakfast. At them sitting side by side, trying out weirdly colored drinks. At the small attic and the comfortable atmosphere and the normalcy of it all, and then he feels an overwhelming amount of sadness creep up inside him. He looks down at his hands and wishes he could do something to keep the uninvited voices of his classmates from entering his thoughts.

He remembers them saying: You know what I heard? He was an accident. Not even his mom wanted him!

He remembers them saying: Don’t get too close to him. People will think that you’re a freak too.

He remembers them saying: Tanaka-kun stole his lunch food and he got a stomachache! Don’t touch him, or you’ll get cursed too!

He remembers his mom crushing him against her fragile body, the whispered, “Goro, you’re the one light in my life. I’m so thankful I have you.” He remembers his mom a week later, chugging three cans of beer, yelling through her tears, “Why? Why do you exist? Why can’t you just go away and leave me alone?”

He remembers Joker wrapping his arms around him yesterday, his grip surprisingly firm as he whispered “You deserve to be happy” fiercely into his ear.

He knows he should push Joker away, tell him that Goro’s a cursed child who ruins the lives of everyone he touches. Even his mom, the most wonderful person he knows, is starting to look at him in disgust. A few glares on her bad days, a whispered, “You remind me so much of him.”

But then he remembers the warm touches, the hair ruffles, the happiness he’s felt ever since he’s met Joker and his friends. And he can’t bring himself to do it.

I’m sorry, he thinks miserably to himself. I’m sorry I keep taking things from other people. I don’t know how to stop being selfish.

Joker hands him another one. “It says woodchips,” he says, wrinkling his nose. “Do you want to try this one?”

Goro shakes his head. “No thank you,” he says quietly, and thinks about all the times the neighborhood kids had pushed him down the slide and thrown woodchips in his face. He stopped going to the playground after that.

“Good decision,” Joker says, making a face at the taste. He hands Goro another bottle. “This one should be safe. Peach applesauce.”

Goro tries it. It’s way too sweet and he can feel a coat of sugar line his teeth, but it doesn’t taste that bad. He takes another sip after that and is rewarded with a small smile.

They sit in silence for a little bit, Goro taking tentative sips from his peach applesauce bottle while Joker flips through the selections as quickly as he does with his masks. He occasionally tries to make conversation, but Goro’s still stuck in his thoughts, still thinking about the poison coating his skin, the ugly monster growing inside him.

“Mom,” he had whispered one day. “I-I’m still hungry. Do we have any more?”

She had started crying and he felt his heart weigh heavily in his chest. “I don’t understand how you can be so selfish,” she sobbed, and Goro had wanted to cry too. “I’m doing everything for you but you’re always so ungrateful. You’re just like your father.”

The sound of footsteps pounding up the stairs tears Goro out of his thoughts, and then a second later Skull pokes his head into the attic. “Yo!” he calls, waving a couple bags around. “We brought snacks.”

“Ah, fabulous,” Fox says, making a beeline for Goro. He’s holding some kind of board. “I was hoping that the effects weren’t reversed yet. I want to paint this mysterious phenomenon.”

Panther stares down at the bottles on the table. “Please tell me you didn’t make him drink these, Akira.”

Joker shrugs. “Thought it’d be fun.”

“Sure,” Oracle says, fiddling with something near the television. “If you have the emotional maturity of Skull, maybe.”

“Hey! I actually brought normal snacks,” Skull protests, emptying the bags and flinging bags of chips across the table. Goro notes that the other three and the cat aren’t here and wonders where they are. Did they go back to the white place again? Or are they just trying to avoid him?

“Level 2,” Oracle says, and Goro perks up. He doesn’t really know what the title means, but it must symbolize his progress, right? And since it’s gone up since yesterday, that must mean he hasn’t messed up that badly yet. “Every heard of Featherman Fighters?”

Goro shakes his head. He’s seen his classmates play video games on their GamerBoys before, but of course he’s never been invited to join in. No one wanted to be seen near him, after all.

“What does level 2 mean?” Skull asks. There are two bags of chips open in front of him and he has a hand in each of them.

“The level after level 1,” Oracle says, tossing a controller into Goro’s hands. Skull rolls his eyes. “I’m going to teach you the controls, and then we can do some co-op.”

Co-op meant… as a team, right? Goro bites his bottom lip. “A-are you sure?” he whispers. No one ever wanted to be teammates with him. He was always the last one picked in gym, and he can still remember the teacher pulling him aside one day and asking, there’s an odd number of people in the class and no one picked you, so you don’t mind sitting out, do you?

“I must agree,” Fox says, and Goro feels his heart sink. So he was right; no matter how nicely they treat him, they don’t want him on their team either. It hurts, but he understands. The only thing he’s good at doing is dragging other people down. “He will move around too much for me to draw. I’d prefer a more peaceful game.”

Goro blinks.

Oracle rolls her eyes. “Not everyone plays like you do, Inari.” She mimics something that looks like a flailing octopus, and then plops down heavily into the chair next to Goro. “Everyone else here sucks,” she whispers loudly to him. “So you’ll have to do.”

Panther sits down next to him and smiles. She has really pretty nails, he notices. His are all jaded and uneven because he always bites them when he’s sad, and he’s sad a lot of the time, but hers are pink and nice and sparkly. “I like your shirt,” she says. “The cat’s cute.”

“Thank you,” he says, looking down at it. The cat print stares back. He isn’t sure why Panther keeps complimenting him, but he doesn’t want her to stop either.

Oracle runs through the list of controls and he does his best to listen, determined not to drag her down. Panther sits next to him, commenting every so often on whatever Fox is painting, but she always gives him a smile whenever he glances over.

He can see Skull and Joker sitting together in the corner of his eye, the former doing his best to stuff as many chips as possible into his mouth. Joker nudges him in the side and laughs when a couple chips come flying out.

It makes his heart hurt a little, to see how all of them managed to find a family in each other despite being strangers, while his own blood related father didn’t even want him.

Oracle starts the game and Goro does his best to follow her instructions, but he soon figures out that he can’t keep up with the game speed. His hands—soft and girly, his classmates had always snickered—move too slowly and he can’t think up the controls fast enough.

In his head, his classmates’ voices are stuck on repeat. Aw man, we’re stuck on a team with him? We’re definitely losing now.

The GAME OVER screen flashes on the television and Goro bows his head. He can hear Skull teasing Oracle, and the girl yells something back. She sounds angry because of how poorly he did.

“I-I’m sorry,” he mumbles. The room instantly goes quiet, and he fidgets. “You lost because of me.”

Oracle pushes up her glasses. “You’re doing the salty trash talk wrong,” she says. “Let me teach you a pro gamer move. First, you gotta say, ‘I would’ve won if the game didn’t lag!’”

“Huh?” The game hadn’t lagged. In fact, the video game looked better than any of the games he remembers his classmates playing. “But—”

Oracle raises an eyebrow. “Are you questioning my orders, level 2?”

Goro shakes his head and scrambled to correct himself. “I-I would’ve won if the game didn’t lag.”

“Correct,” Oracle snickers, and then picks up her controller again. “Time for round 2.”

They play a lot more rounds. Each time they lose, Oracle gets angry and yells something in Skull’s general direction, but her anger completely vanishes when she turns to look at Goro. Each time they lose, she teaches him something new to say, something that sounds ungrateful and rude, but no one ever gets mad at him for repeating it.

Each time they lose, they start the level over, again and again, with no consequences. No one gets mad and Goro doesn’t get punished, despite his trembling fingers still fumbling over the most basic of actions.

They finally clear the level a good half hour later, and Oracle gives a loud woot of victory and holds out a fist. It takes a while for Goro to recognize what the action is, and even longer for him to tentatively bump his fist against hers.

“That,” she says, grinning at him. He gives her a small smile in return. “Was pure skill.”

“What?” Skull is lying on the ground, tossing a bouncy ball in the air. “Game decided not to lag that time? Kind of strange if you think—OW, get off me! You’re heavy for a NEET!”

Joker laughs and slides into the seat Oracle just launched out of. “You have fun?”

“Yeah, I did!” he says, smiling. He didn’t like smiling at school, because his classmates always made fun of the hole between his two front teeth. But Joker seems to like it when he does.

Joker opens his mouth to say something, but he’s interrupted when Fox stands up so fast he knocks his chair over. “I have completed it!” he announces, and then he flips the canvas over.

Goro’s jaw drops as he comes face-to-face with a drawing of him. He’s sitting in the middle of a pile of weird colored drinks and there’s a controller on the ground next to him. He’s even wearing the cat print shirt. A perfect memento of his day.

But what stands out the most is the face. Picture-Goro has a huge smile on his face, bad teeth and all, and he looks so happy. There’s so much life in the picture compared to the reflection he sees every morning staring back at him. And even though it’s just a drawing, Goro can almost hear his ugly laughter coming out from the canvas.

Goro doesn’t realize he’s crying until Panther’s leaning over and petting his head. “What’s wrong?” she asks gently.

“N-nothing.” He wipes his eyes quickly and goes back to staring at the drawing. He wants to look at it forever. “I’m… I’m really happy right now.”

Fox’s smile widen. “Good! I’m glad someone here appreciates art!” He removes the paper from the canvas and holds it out. “Please take this as a thank you for being such a wonderful muse.”

Goro stares at him and reaches out hesitantly. “But it’s yours,” he says.

“Drawings can be replaced. Emotions cannot. Let that be a reminder for you.” Fox sets his seat back upright and glances over. “Now Ann, can I finally convince you to model nude for me today?”

“I love you Yusuke, but no.”

The conversation moves on to different things. Oracle drags Skull in front of the television, and the two of them engage in a competitive one-on-one battle. Goro gets tossed around between the others. Fox teaches him the basics of drawing, Panther paints his toenails and Joker shows him how to make lockpicks.

The drawing never leaves his hand.

When night comes, Goro waves goodbye to all of them sadly as they promise to stop by again tomorrow. He tucks himself into bed and stares up at the ceiling, waiting for Joker to finish closing up the store downstairs.

He replays the memories from the day, the warm feelings he felt tucked gently in his heart. From the weird drink testing to the video game levels to the spontaneous juggling competition that they had. They hadn’t done anything special, hadn’t gone back to that white place to fight off the bad guys, but it had still been so much fun.

Goro wonders if this is what it feels to belong.

When Joker comes back upstairs, Goro is already asleep, the picture of an innocent and happy Goro clutched firmly to his chest, and an identical smile plastered on his face.

The next couple days pass in a blur.

Goro wakes up and is fed until he’s full, the food sitting comfortably in his stomach, a wave of warmth washing over his body. Then Joker shows him around the city, to the park, the batting cages, and even a fishing pond.

They are often joined by other members. Sometimes it’s Fox, teaching him the different types of fish in the aquarium. Sometimes it’s Violet, showing him how to do a cartwheel near the lake. Sometimes it’s Noir, guiding him through the different types of plants in the greenhouse.

He never goes back to the white place again.

Sometimes it’s just him and Joker. The other boy doesn’t talk as much as others and always does weird things, like buying jewelry from a merchant in an alley or lugging his dirty laundry around the city to sell off. Goro is often reminded of his mom on these afternoons and he wonders how she’s doing, if she misses him and looks forward to his return.

He hopes she misses him.

Recently, though, he’s noticed that Joker does not smile as much anymore. He’s always frowning when he thinks Goro’s not looking, glancing down at his phone with a scowl. He wants to know what’s wrong, was it something that he did, but he doesn’t know what to ask and he isn’t sure that Joker will tell him either.

They’re back in the attic after a long day walking around the park with Queen and Mona. Goro’s hunched on the ground, scribbling furiously on a piece of paper with a crayon.

Fox had told him that art was meant to capture emotion. He looks at the drawing of himself and feels happy. So he’s trying to do the same thing so that he can make whoever looks at his drawing happy too.

Joker crouches down next to him, and he quickly hurries to cover it up. The other boy smiles at the gesture, but the expression slides off his face and he holds out something. “Hey Goro,” he says, sighing. “Does this look familiar?”

Goro peeks over and sees a pair of earrings. “Those are Mom’s!” he gasps.

Joker frowns a little. “And you’d definitely recognize them?”

“Yes,” Goro says, nodding eagerly. “She wears them when she has to come to a school event. And also that time we went to a museum together. And also on my seventh birthday, when she sang happy birthday to me and danced around the living room.” He realizes he’s rambling and stares down at his hands. “I’ll always remember them. They’re my only happy memories.”

“I see.” Joker pockets the earrings, his face neutral. Goro’s not sure why he’s asking, or how he got his mom’s earrings in the first place. “Thanks.”

“T-that was before!” Goro says before he can stop himself. He doesn’t like seeing Joker like this, a layer of sadness in his eyes. Why is he sad? Is it something that Goro did? “I have a lot of happy memories now! Like the cotton candy near the park! Or the boot we fished up at the fishing pond!”

Joker stares at him for a bit, and then finally smiles. “I’m glad,” he says, squeezing his hands. “We’ll make enough happy memories to replace all your bad ones.”

When Joker goes downstairs a little while later, Goro resumes his scribbling, putting the finishing touches on the Joker mask that he’s drawing. He hopes that Joker will see the drawing and feel even a fraction of the thankfulness that Goro currently feels for him.

He finishes the drawing a little later, holding it up to admire. His lines are childish and untidy and not at all beautiful the way Fox’s are. He bites his lip, having second thoughts about showing something this ugly to Joker, but then he remembers that the other boy has been downstairs for a long time and still hasn’t come back up.

He quickly folds the paper up and shoves it into the desk drawer and creeps toward the stairs.

He can see Joker sitting at one of the booths facing away from the stairs, Mona next to him. Across from them is a man with glasses that he’s never seen before. The man is smiling calmly, and Goro wonders what sort of expression Joker’s making.

“I see,” the man says, his voice oddly soothing. He’s holding a red card in his hand, and Goro can make out some kind of logo on it if he squints. “I’ll be waiting then. If you don’t show up, I’ll assume you have accepted my reality.”

“What?” Mona says, sounding more tense than he’s ever heard him. “I thought we made it clear that we weren’t going to.”

“Kurusu-kun hasn’t,” the man says, still smiling. “Do you regret how it ended with him?”

There is a long silence in the café. Joker has balled his hands into fists. Goro wonders who the ‘him’ in this conversation is.

“What do you mean?” Joker asks finally, his voice hoarse.

“You know what my power is,” the man says smoothly. “It was a shame what happened to him. But it doesn’t have to happen.”

“What.” Joker says.

“Didn’t you enjoy your time with him?” the man continues. “It doesn’t have to end. You don’t have to say farewell to him again.”

There is another long silence. Joker doesn’t say anything else. The man continues to smile sympathetically. Goro is beginning to sense that something is wrong.

“Please leave,” Mona says at last. The fight has gone out of his voice. “You’ll get your answer tomorrow.”

The man nods and stands up. He looks at Joker, who is doing his best to stare at the table. “I’m sorry that things turned out like this.” He sounds earnest and kind, but Goro doesn’t think that someone who could make Joker act like that could be anyone other than a villain.

The bell to the café jingles quietly as the man leaves. “Akira,” Mona tries, prodding Joker’s arm with his paws. There’s no reaction. “Let’s talk outside when you’re ready.”

Goro retreats to the bed, mindlessly arranging Oracle’s Featherman figurines and a couple of Noir’s potted plants, his mind still replaying the conversation downstairs. He’s not quite sure what happened. but he still can’t get the image of Joker leaving Leblanc out of his head, head down and shoulders hunched like he was shouldering the whole world on his back.

When Joker comes back upstairs half an hour later, Goro has tucked himself in, positioning himself to face the wall so that Joker can’t see that his eyes are still wide open. Mona isn’t with him anymore. It’s quiet and Joker doesn’t wish him a goodnight. Goro curls himself into a ball.

Joker turns off the light and then lays down next to Goro, though neither of them sleep. He keeps turning—on his back, his side, his stomach, and then on his back again. Goro doesn’t know how long this goes on, but he listens to the sound of his own heartbeat and realizes he can’t sleep either.

He wonders if Joker’s still replaying the strange conversation from before. He wonders what he’s thinking. He wonders who the other person is, the one who Joker cared so much about yet still went away.

Goro’s never lost anyone before. His father left before he could remember him, and he’s only had his mom for as long as he could remember. He listens to Joker’s labored breathing and wishes, just this once, that he could be helpful to someone, that he could help lessen someone else’s burden.

He tries to imagine himself in Joker’s shoes, and the mysterious person suddenly blossoms into an image of his mom.

He thinks of his mom, who spends so much time working different part-time jobs so that he can have a happier childhood. He thinks of his mom, who has been betrayed by so many people that she isn’t able to trust anymore, yet she placed her life and happiness in his hands.

He thinks of his mom, who had smiled at him with unshed tears in her eyes and whispered, You taught me how to live.

“I think,” Goro says quietly, and Joker flinches at the noise. “That the other person appreciated everything you did. You must be important to him too.”

Joker is quiet for a long time and Goro thinks he must have fallen asleep. He’s closing his eyes and drifting away himself when Joker whispers, “Thanks. That means a lot to me.”

Goro smiles, and then falls asleep.

The next morning, Akira Kurusu wakes up. He looks at the lump on the bed, the little line of drool, the soft snores of the occupant filling the room. He smiles, and then takes a deep breath.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. There’s no answer.

He turns and leaves the café before he can feel the familiar weight of regret grip his heart.

A couple hours later, in some attic in Yongen Jaya, a certain Detective Prince reawakens in time for the last sunrise of a perfect world.

Chapter Text

Akechi dreams.

He feels the familiar wave of the metaverse wash over him, replacing his outfit with his regular coat. His mask melts away, his face suddenly so exposed, and he quickly puts a metaphorical one back up. Akira steps out next to him, hands stuck deep in his pockets, eyes glancing back over his shoulder at the palace.

Akechi knows that the other boy is thinking about Yoshizawa, the teammate they left behind. But he can’t get his mind off what Maruki said, the sight of Sumire transforming into Kasumi etched firmly into his brain.

He tosses the theory around, of a sinking ship and a cognitive double and a dead body. The power to turn wishes into reality. If his theory is correct and he died on that day—lost his life in Shido’s palace, one last thing that man took from him—that means that someone else would’ve had to wish him back to life. And there’s only one person he can think of that would be foolish enough to do something like that.

“Want to get something to eat?” The fool asks, turning toward him. “There’s a new place in Kichiouji that just opened up recently.”

Somewhere not Leblanc, goes unsaid. Leblanc, where a woman he had killed with his own hands sits with her family, a picture of happiness that could’ve been reality in a world where Goro Akechi wasn’t born.

“We don’t have time for that,” Akechi says, and watches Akira’s mouth twist into a small frown. “You should try to convince your team to join us.”

Just in case I vanish, goes unsaid. He isn’t quite sure how long this actualization thing works on deceased people.

“I can convince them and hang out with you at the same time,” Akira sighs. “You know my number. You can contact me whenever you want.”

“Fine,” Akechi says, having no intention of actually doing that. “I’ll look into Maruki in the meantime and uphold my end of the deal.”

“Deal, huh,” Akira smiles. “It’s nostalgic.”

Akechi sneers at him. “I was pretending the whole time. There’s nothing nostalgic about it.”

“Maybe not for you, but they were precious bonding moments to me.” Akira gives him a Joker-esque smirk and cocks his fingers back in an imitation of a gun. “Even this.”

He can’t stand this guy. He can’t believe Akira heard him plot his murder in gruesome detail and saw him turn himself berserk in a pathetic last-ditch effort for victory and still wished him back to life anyway.

“You’re a fool, Akira Kurusu,” he scoffs.

“Sure,” Akira agrees easily. “But you’re the one who is rivals with this fool. So what does that make you?”

Akechi rolls his eyes and turns away. “I’ll contact you in a week,” he says tersely. “Do try to convince those friends of yours, though my expectations aren’t particularly high.”

“One sec,” Akira calls out before Akechi can walk away, rifling through his coat pocket. He finds what he’s looking for, pulling out a red glove that is as gaudy and showy as the one he wears as Joker. “A glove for a glove.”

“Ugh,” says Akechi, recognizing the gesture immediately. Akira is such a sentimental, dumb fool.

Akira smirks at him and then presses the leather against his cheek. It’s softer than it looks. “Round 2, detective,” Akira says softly, something akin to determination dancing in his eyes. “Your move.”

Akechi opens his eyes and stares up at the wooden ceiling. His body feels sore and foreign, his mind is bombarded with unwanted memories from a decade past, and the milk crates below the mattress dig up into his back painfully. “This sucks,” he mumbles to himself.

There’s the heavy sound of footsteps as someone runs up the stairs, and Akira Kurusu bursts into the attic a second later. “Goro!” he calls, looking frantic. His eyes widen when they slide over to Akechi’s form. “Akechi? You’re back?”

“Ugh,” Akechi says in lieu of a greeting. His neck creaks in agreement. He feels stupid wearing this cat shirt that is twelve sizes too small.

Akira drops down at the edge of the bed, hands hovering awkwardly. Akechi pointedly does not think of the fact that those same hands ran through his hair and wiped away his tears a couple days ago. “I’m glad,” Akira whispers.

“That makes one of us,” Akechi says, sitting up. He kind of wishes that he had just been willed out of existence while he was still in child form. To just return to the land of the dead while he was still ignorant and oblivious.

It feels bad, sitting here and counting down heartbeats until his death.

“I’m surprised you went through with it,” Akechi says. The childish wish that he made when he saw those earrings, the I want to go back to back then that tore out of him uncontrollably, had been reversed already, so the Phantom Thieves must have pushed through against all odds and defeated Maruki. It would only be a matter of time before the wish that tethered him to the land of the living was reversed as well. “I thought you’d have second thoughts.”

“I did,” Akira admits. “I really, really didn’t want to do it. But I thought of how unfair it’d be to the other thieves after all I made them go through. And of how angry you’d be, once you came back.”

“Good,” Akechi says, smirking just a little. “At least you have a brain inside that head of yours.”

Akira is silent for a bit, and then asks quietly, “Did you know?”

Akechi doesn’t need to ask what he’s talking about. “I had a hunch,” he says. “I don’t remember what happened after that stupid engine room, and the next time I woke up I was already in this distorted reality. It was not a big leap in logic to assume.”

“Were you trying to spare my feelings?” Akira won’t look at him. “Is that why you didn’t tell me?”

Akechi rolls his eyes. “You have a savior complex the size of Tokyo,” he says. He’s not sure if he was trying to take Akira’s feelings into consideration, or if he was simply making sure that Akira didn’t have second thoughts about breaking through this false reality. Maybe it was a mixture of both.

His lack of emotion seems to annoy the other boy. “Aren’t you, I don’t know,” Akira looks frustrated for once, wringing his hands around at nothing before settling with balling them into fists. “Scared? Of dying?”

“Of course I’m scared,” Akechi says lightly. “But considering I’ve been scared for eighteen years now, this is nothing new.”

Akira stares at him blankly. Akechi smiles back.

“I,” Akira says, and to Akechi’s horror, he starts crying. He swipes at his eyes angrily and does his best not to acknowledge the river of tears running down his face. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you back then, even though I told you I would if you ever needed help.”

“I made my own decisions, Akira. It’s not your responsibility to bear the weight of the consequences of my actions.” Akechi turns away. “And if I can’t apologize, you can’t either.”

Akira looks surprised, as if he hadn’t expected Akechi to retain his memories of the past few days. “About that—”

“We’re not talking about it,” Akechi shuts him down immediately. He kind of wishes he didn’t remember. Memories of his mom resurface, of her warmth and her kindness and her laugh, a sound that had faded away and long been forgotten after being apart for more than a decade. It feels like ripping open an old wound.

He thinks of seven year old Goro, still full of innocence and hope and happiness, who has had a difficult life but still naively believed in the goodness of the world. He thinks of that same Goro, who will come home on his eighth birthday to the sight of a dead body in the bathtub and the cracks of a world tumbling down around him.

He wonders if his wish brought his mom back to life for a short period of time. He’s glad that they didn’t run into each other. Just thinking about her now is painful enough and brings back feelings that he has long thought himself unable to feel.

“Is he okay?” Akira asks. His eyes flicker over to the ray gun still lying innocently on the windowsill.

“Well, I certainly don’t remember being transported to a mysterious place and kidnapped by weirdos when I was seven,” Akechi says, and Akira cracks a small smile. Both of them are doing a very good job of pretending Akira’s not still crying. “I doubt he remembers anything. But he probably appreciated it. What you did.”

Akira scoots a little closer. They’ve positioned themselves so that they can’t see each other’s faces, but Akechi can feel the warmth of Akira’s arm press against his, can feel Akira’s fingers hesitantly reach out.

In a moment of weakness, Akechi allows his hand to curl around Akira’s.

“Hey Akechi,” Akira’s voice is soft. He sounds more scared than Akechi feels. “Are you… are you happy?”

“I don’t know,” Akechi says honestly. “I haven’t been happy in a long time. I’ve forgotten what it feels like.” There’s a moment of silence, where only the sounds of Akira’s muffled sniffles echo across the room. He sighs, and then admits quietly, “But I can tell you that the times we shared together were the rare instances I didn’t regret being born.”

Akira ponders over his words for a bit, and then lets out a shaky laugh. “You can’t just say that. I hate you,” he says.

“Took you long enough,” Akechi replies. Light is starting to filter through the window, the sun rising on another day, the first one back in their reality. A reality where the Phantom Thieves fade into obscurity, nothing more than old urban legends. A reality where Akira goes to college and maybe gets married and has kids and continues on with his normal, boring life. A reality where Goro Akechi dies in the engine room, a fitting backdrop to a sad, depressing life.

It’s his last sunrise.

Akira squeezes his hand. “For the record, I don’t believe you.” Akechi raises an eyebrow, even though the other boy can’t see him. “You’re known for being stupid.”

“Really,” Akechi deadpans. “Even though it took eight of you just to outsmart one of me?”

“I don’t think you’re actually dead,” Akira continues, as if he didn’t say anything. “I’m going to keep looking for you, whether you like it or not. So if you don’t want me ‘wasting my life away on a dead man’, you better come back as soon as you can.”

Akechi stares at the wall. It’s not that he particularly wants to be dead, but it’s the only logical conclusion he can come to. The memory gaps. The convenient resurgence. The alternative reality.

But his logical conclusions have been foiled again and again by the Phantom Thieves, by Akira himself. By a group of people who had saw him at his lowest, his ugliest, and somehow didn’t look away.

Don’t let yourself get too close, his brain whispered.

Akira needs to die for this plan to work, his brain whispered.

He’s just using you, just like you’re using him, his brain whispered.

Maybe, just one more time, he can be wrong again.

Akechi sighs and reaches over and grabs his coat, pulling out a thin piece of fabric from the pocket. He runs a finger down the leather and then sighs, dangling it next to Akira’s face. “Fine,” he says. “I’ll be keeping this for now, then.”

Akira stares at the red glove. “I’m going to start crying again,” he says, his voice hoarse.

“Don’t.” Akechi folds the glove carefully back into his pocket. “You saw me cry once. I saw you cry once. We’re even.”

“You were a cute kid,” Akira says, and he sounds way too smug for someone currently sporting red eyes and a wobbly smile.

“We’re not doing this,” he says, even though he knows that despite being ‘kind’ or ‘understanding’ or whatever other adjectives the other thieves use to describe him, Akira rarely ever listens when Akechi tells him to do something.

“Remember when you fell into the pond when you were trying to fish?” Akira says, sounding like they’re reminiscing about their long forgotten childhood rather than about an event that happened just days ago that Akechi wishes he could scrub from his mind. “Or when I bought you cotton candy and you instantly tripped and faceplanted on it?”

“Ugh,” Akechi says, channeling all his disgust and spite into one word. It only makes Akira snicker even harder.

The memories are still there, as much as he wishes they weren’t. He can remember him and Akira, sitting in Leblanc, doing crossword puzzles together. He can remember impromptu pillow fights, the rest of the thieves treating him with far too much kindness for someone who had stolen lives in an effort to make his own have meaning.

He remembers the words spoken in the engine room, pleading but without hope. If only they had met earlier indeed.

Akira finally stops snickering, reaching down and putting something in his hand. Akechi stares down at the pair of earrings, red and beautiful and so full of life when his mom wore them. “For the journey,” Akira clarifies. “To keep you company.”

Akechi stares at them wordlessly, and then nods. Outside, the sun continues to rise, the light filtering in and causing the ruby earrings to sparkle. He wonders what dying feels like, if it’ll be like that awful feeling he felt in the dark and dusty engine room, staring at the horrible face of his cognition double, collapsing on the ground alone.

Maybe it’ll be different this time around, when Akira’s not on the other side of the wall.

“Akira,” he says, and then stops. He’s trained himself to talk through every scenario, to bullshit his way through everything, but somehow, he can’t find the words to properly express all the feelings welling up inside him at the moment.

Akira seems to understand though, and gives his hand a gentle squeeze.

Akechi squeezes back with one hand, and clutches the ruby earrings in the other. He takes one last look at the rising sun, and then closes his eyes.

The sunrise is beautiful.

It’s the last day before he returns to his hometown, and Akira’s frantically trying to cram everything into the remaining boxes. His things barely fit into the three large boxes that he ordered, compared to the one tiny one he had arriving in Yongen Jaya. His eyes scan through the room, feeling a wave of nostalgia and bittersweet wash over him.

The Jack Frost plush that he and Futaba had won together.

The chocolate fountain that Ann helped him pick out.

The potted plant that Haru helped him take care of.

The rest of the Phantom Thieves are scattered around the room in various degrees of helpfulness. Ann is trying to drain the chocolate fountain by eating all of it. Ryuji is trying to teach Sumire how to do a pullup on one of the ceiling planks. Makoto is flipping through all the overdue library books he has piled up and shooting him accusatory glares.

Akira looks around his attic and smiles. He is going to miss all of them.

Morgana hops on his shoulder and sinks his claws painfully into his shirt. “What are you standing around for? You still have a lot you need to pack!”

Akira sighs and moves over to his desk, pulling open the drawer only to find dozens of completed lockpicks still scattered about. He’s not sure what he’s going to do with them now. He has no need for them anymore, yet it feels like saying goodbye to a part of himself if he threw them all away.

He tosses them into the box. He tells himself that they don’t take up that much room anyway.

In the top left corner of the desk, there’s a folded piece of paper. Akira reaches for it, wondering if it’s from an old instruction manual that he forgot to throw away.

“Done with this box,” Ryuji announces, plopping down heavily onto the floor. “Man, I don’t know how you even got half the things in here.” When there’s no response, he looks over at him. “Joker?”

Haru glances over his shoulder and quickly covers her mouth with her hand. “Oh Akira,” she says sympathetically

The rest of the thieves pile over to see what he’s looking at, but he pays them no attention. His eyes trace through the paper, where each of their masks had been carefully drawn and colored and brought to life.

He looks at the Futaba mask, eyes disproportionally large compared to the rest of the mask. The words penned underneath in a seven year old’s handwriting: Likes Featherman! Like me!

He looks at the Yusuke mask, the most cat-like fox he has ever seen. Drew me very pretty!

His eyes continue to scan through the paper, reading through the little tidbits of insight that Goro had left behind. Scary but nice! A pretty ballerina. A (talking!!!) cat.

His eyes end up at the bottom of the page, and he comes face to face with his own mask. The lines are shaky and the colors are off, and he can just imagine Goro crouched on the ground, tongue peeking out from the corner of his mouth in concentration as he pressed the black crayon down to the paper and colored the mask in.

The picture is worth more to Akira than any of the treasures they’ve found in palaces.

There are only two words written underneath the image. Akira carefully traces the letters with his finger, takes a deep breath, and allows himself to smile.

My hero!

The first thing Akira does when he gets home is hang the picture up in his room.

He frames it right above his desk, in a location that he can see as soon as he wakes up. Next to it is the small sketch of Goro that Yusuke drew, something that he found tucked safely under the pillow in the attic, an important relic left behind.

Underneath the two pictures is a small panda plush from Makoto and a ribbon bracelet from Sumire. Next to the desk is a new potted plant, cared for diligently with Haru’s fertilizer.

All around the room are little trinkets from his time in Tokyo, bringing life to a room he once considered his prison cell.

The glove doesn’t leave his pocket.

Akira sits on the bed and sighs. His parents are out, always too busy with their jobs to spend much time with him. The house is silent and it’s only been a week, but he misses his friends, misses the soft chatter of Leblanc, misses the bustling of the streets of Tokyo.

“Akira!” Morgana calls from another room. “There’s something addressed to you!”

Akira raises an eyebrow and heads to the kitchen. He’s not sure who is writing him letters, when all of his friends have his cellphone number and have been texting him rather relentlessly. He picks up the white envelope and flips it around, noting that the return address is Leblanc.

His eyebrows shoot up. Sojiro has been sending him emails every day about the café, and Futaba can just hack into his phone if she really wanted to get in touch with him. Neither of them would ever send him a letter.

His curiosity piqued, he rips the envelope open, ignoring Morgana’s yowl to be more careful. There’s one thin sheet of paper inside, with only a couple words written on it. Akira quickly scans over the contents, hears his heartbeat thud loudly in his ears, rereads it twelve times to make sure he isn’t hallucinating, and then feels a huge smile blossom on his face.

Inside him, Joker laughs.

“What are you smiling about?” Morgana asks, padding closer. Akira tilts the paper in his direction and watches a look of understanding wash over the cat’s features. “I’m happy for you, Akira.”

He’s so happy too.

There’s a phone number written on one of the pieces of paper, and five words penned underneath. There is no signature indicating the sender, but there is no doubt who it was from.

Round 3, thief. Your move.

Chapter Text

The fishing pond is quiet when they arrive, a little after ten on a chilly Wednesday morning. He’s wearing one of Oracle’s old Featherman sweatshirts, big and warm and comfortable and green. One of Noir’s gardening hats sits on his head, and he feels a little self-conscious with how awkward it looks on him, but Joker had said he looked dashing, so he kept it on anyway.

There are crates of boxes near the water, and Goro peers over them curiously and gasps when he can make out tiny little fishies swimming just below the surface. The only fish he has seen before are the tiny goldfish that his class from last year used to take care of. But these fish are so big!

Joker’s talking to the old man sitting near the corner, and he comes back holding two fishing rods, a bucket, and some other supplies tucked under his arm. He hands one of the fishing rods to Goro and then plops down heavily onto one of the crates, setting the bucket of water down gently and then dropping everything else messily around it.

Goro hurriedly sits down on a box next to him. “What are we doing?” he asks.

Joker raises an eyebrow and waves around his fishing rod. “Fishing,” he says. “It’s fun. I come here sometimes to relax.”

“Oh.” Goro gnaws on his lower lip, and then asks quietly, “But won’t it kill the fish if we do that?”

Joker shakes his head. “We’ll release them after we catch them,” he says. “They won’t get hurt at all.”

“Okay,” Goro says. It’s good that the fish won’t get hurt. He once poked a butterfly’s wing and then cried when his classmates told him that he killed it.

Joker helps him set up and explains a bunch of things to him, but most of it goes over his head. The basics of it seem simple enough for even someone like him to understand though, and he grips the pole tightly with both hands, waiting anxiously to feel a nibble on the other end.

And then he waits.

And waits.

And waits.

Goro can’t help the loud yawn that escapes him, and he almost drops the pole trying to cover his face in embarrassment. That gets Joker’s attention, and he looks over at him and smiles. Goro gives a wobbly little grin back.

And then he feels the tug of the fishing rod.

“T-there’s something pulling on it!” Goro says in awe. Joker instantly drops his own rod and is by his side before he can even blink, a warm hand pressed against his hip to offer support. “I-I… what do I do?”

“Start reeling,” Joker instructs, and Goro does his best to spin the circle thing as fast as he can. “Keep pulling at the same time. You don’t want it to—”

“Yo, Joker!” Goro hears someone who sounds like Skull call out. Joker’s arm around him falters as the older boy turns to look at whoever called out to him. The movement startles Goro, and he turns around to look as well, but then he feels an intense pressure on the other end of his line. “I didn’t know you were going to be here today—”

Skull cuts off abruptly. A second later, Goro feels the fishing rod drag him forward, and suddenly he’s stumbling, flailing wildly into empty air. He hears panicked yells behind him, can feel the phantom of Joker’s hand reaching for him, before he tumbles face first into the pond.

He lets out a gasp instinctively, and then water fills his lungs. He squeezes his eyes shut, a memory resurfacing of a quiet school afternoon, three boys crowding around a smaller, trembling one.

“I’m sorry,” Goro had said quietly. “I-I can’t do your cleaning duties today. I promised Mom I would be home early for her birthday.”

“Hah? Who cares?” One of the boys had sneered, thrusting out a mop. When Goro hadn’t taken it, he had laughed, cold and ugly and jeering. “Well, too bad for you, Mama’s Boy, but we’re not really asking, are we?”

He remembers getting pushed over to the fish tank in the corner of the classroom. He remembers looking down at the tiny goldfish, trapped to forever swim in a small fish tank, yet somehow with more freedom than Goro ever had.

He remembers getting his head held in the tank for thirty seconds, the grip in his hair firm and unyielding. He remembers thinking I’m sorry Mister Fish for flailing around helplessly in the water, interrupting their peaceful lives.

The goldfish hadn’t answered.

Goro is torn out of his memories when a strong arm curls around his waist and propels him out of the water. He coughs, still feeling the bitterness of the pond water in his mouth, and shakes the water out of his eyes enough to see Joker, who is clutching him tightly.

Joker, who is looking at him with concern in his eyes. Joker, whose hair is wet and glasses are askew. He must have jumped in after Goro immediately.

Of course he did.

Because Joker’s his hero.

Goro leans forward and buries his face into Joker’s neck, willing himself not to cry. The older boy is rubbing soothing circles on his back, quietly whispering “It’s okay. It’s okay” while waiting for Goro’s frantic breathing to return to normal.

He really wishes Joker had been in his life earlier.

Skull’s laughing when the two of them return to dry land. “He got fished by the fish!” he snickers, looking very proud of himself.

“Ryuji,” Joker warns. He sets Goro down gently, checking his body for injuries. Goro starts to squeeze the water from his sweatshirt, and he hopes Oracle won’t be mad that it got wet.

Skull comes over, looking properly chastised. “Hey, uh, the old man over there gave me this towel,” he says. “Said this happens a lot, so don’t feel too bad.”

It does make Goro feel a little better to know that he’s not the only one.

Skull looks a little unsure, holding the towel awkwardly, but then mutters what sounds like “screw it” under his breath before he’s moving forward, placing the thin piece of cloth on Goro’s head and toweling his hair dry.

It feels nice. Only his mom has ever done this for him before, and she always had to be careful that she didn’t chip her carefully painted fingernails when she did. Skull’s hands are strong and firm, but not painful, and Goro finds himself leaning back into the touch.

When Goro’s relatively dryer, he remembers to go back near the crates to pick up Noir’s hat and put it back on his head. Skull snickers at the sight, but when Goro turns to look at him, he gives him a big grin and a thumbs up.

“Alright,” Joker says, squeezing his own jacket. “Let’s get out of here and get some clothes.”

There’s a small shop near the fishing pond that they go to. There’s not that many clothing options, and even less when considering his size, so Goro walks out of the store wearing a ‘I ♡ Japan’ long sleeve shirt and sweatpants that say ‘Tokyo’ down one leg.

Joker, who looks like a walking advertisement for Coca Cola, jerks his head in the direction of the basketball court. “I think Ryuji’s over there,” he says, holding out his hand. Goro nods, slotting his hand in Joker’s, and they set off.

Skull’s dribbling a ball aimlessly when they arrive, and he lets out a loud snort when he sees the two of them. “Dude,” he says. “You couldn’t pay me enough to wear that.”

Joker shrugs, looking down at Goro. “What do you want to do now?” he asks. “Do you want to go home?”

It takes Goro a bit to realize that home meant the cafe place, and he feels a surge of warmth. Home.

Before he can answer though, Skull cuts in, holding out the ball. “We could shoot some hoops.”

Joker raises an eyebrow and pointedly glances downward at Goro.

“He’ll be fine,” Skull says. Goro tentatively takes the ball when it’s thrust in his face. “Try shooting.”

Goro does, using both his arms to push the ball as hard as he can. To no one’s surprise, the ball doesn’t go very far, landing on the ground seconds later with a sad plop.

“That was close, dude,” Skull says, even though it was nowhere near the hoop. Then he suddenly turns around and crouches down in front of Goro. “Here. I’ll help.”

Goro stares down at his back, unsure of what he’s supposed to be doing. He glances over at Joker, who just shrugs, looking as confused as he feels.

“Sit on my shoulders,” Skull says when nothing happens. “I’ll boost you up.”

“Is this really a good idea?” Joker asks, frowning. “It looks dangerous.”

“It’ll be fine! You can stand behind him or something and make sure he doesn’t fall.” Skull rolls his eyes. “You’re turning into Makoto.”

“This must be what Sojiro feels like,” Joker mutters under his breath, but he moves to stand protectively behind Goro anyway. “Do you want to do this?”

Goro doesn’t know the answers to these questions. He’s never experienced many of these seemingly ordinary childhood activities, so he doesn’t know if he’ll enjoy them.

But if Joker is asking whether Goro trusts him to keep him safe, then the answer is yes. He nods.

Joker helps settle him on Skull’s shoulders, and Goro barely has time to grab onto Skull’s hair before the other boy stands up abruptly. “Ow,” Skull says. “Lighten up on the death grip, will ya?”

Goro clutches Skull’s hair a little less hard and peeks down. He’s so high! He must be at least twice as high as he normally is. He wonders if the future version of him was this tall too.

Joker’s holding the basketball and he’s still looking rather concerned, but then his voice drops and he talks into the ball like a microphone, speaking with way too much excitement considering the fact that his face is completely blank. “Kurusu has the ball. He passes crosscourt to the team ace, Goro Akechi.”

Goro can’t help but giggle at the antics, and Joker’s eyes soften as he places the ball gently in Goro’s hands. Skull walks closer to the hoop, hands gripping Goro’s legs, and Goro stretches as far as he can and tries to put the ball into the basketball hoop. It’s so close, but he can’t seem to bridge the remaining distance.

Somewhere below him, he hears Joker say, “You can do it, champ.”

With renewed motivation, Goro stretches out his fingers, leans forward so much he almost topples over, and wills the ball in.

The ball slides through the net.

Skull lets out a loud whoop of celebration, and he almost drops Goro in his attempt to do a ridiculous victory pose. Joker barely manages to rescue him and return him safely to the ground before Skull comes bounding over, grinning and holding his hand up for a high five. “Slam dunk,” he says proudly.

The high five stings a little bit, but Goro beams back anyway.

“Whew, I’m beat,” Skull says. “I’m going to get something to drink from the vending machine. You two want anything?”

“Water’s fine,” Joker says, glancing over at Goro and smiling. “We’ve had enough of the weird drinks, right?”

Goro smiles back and nods. It feels like they’re sharing a private joke.

“Alright, be back soon,” Skull says before sprinting in the direction of the vending machines.

And then it’s just the two of them. Goro kicks at the basketball court with his new sneakers and catches Joker frowning down at his own Coca Cola shirt. He can’t help but giggle at the sight.

He wonders if Joker would allow him to sit on his shoulders too.

He glances hopefully at Joker, and then away, and then back again. Joker catches his gaze and he seems to understand immediately. “I’m not as strong as Ryuji,” he says, sounding a little self-conscious, “so I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

Goro nods, a little sad. He understands. But then he remembers that just this morning, Joker had told him to ask for anything he wanted, even if he thought it was an inconvenience to other people.

“Super special mission for Goro Akechi,” Joker had said. “Have more confidence in yourself.”

Goro tentatively holds up his arms and waits.

He watches as Joker’s face flips to shocked, and then worried, and then finally resigned. With a huff and a small smile, he crouches down in the same position that Skull had been in. “Hop on,” he says.

It takes a little more maneuvering this time when there isn’t a third person to help Goro up, but the two of them manage somehow. “Ready?” Joker asks. Goro grips Joker’s hair and nods.

And then he’s shooting upwards, and he can’t help the small squeal that tears out of him when his viewpoint suddenly gets higher. He accidentally knocks Joker’s glasses off his face on the way up, and the other boy has a near death grip on his legs, chanting “Don’t drop him. Don’t drop him” below him.

Goro peers around him at the world, the same yet so different. He always used to stare at his own feet while he walked, pretending not to notice the dirty glances his classmates gave him.

But now, up so high, there’s so much more to see.

The wind brushes against his hair, and he beams happily at the sky.

He feels so free.

The Wilton Hotel buffet is the same as before, bright and rich and tacky. Goro is standing next to him, eyes wide in awe as he takes in his surroundings, mouthing the words “all-you-can-eat buffet” under his breath several times.

“Aw man!” Ryuji says, a bit too loudly. He’s staring at the board above the cashier. “It says that ages six and under can eat for free.”

“Nothing we can do about that,” Makoto says, doing her best to make sure Yusuke doesn’t trip in his excitement to peruse the area. The attempt is appreciated but not all that successful.

“Why couldn’t the age reversing spell have put him back one more year?” Ryuji moans. Ann elbows him in the ribs. “What? That’s a 5,000 yen mental lapse in judgement there!”

“That’s true,” Ann says. “With the metaverse disappearing again soon, this might be the last time we get to eat at a place like this.”

Ryuji lets out a loud groan, but then perks up. “Hey,” he says to Goro. “You should tell them you’re six.”

“Ryuji!” Makoto says, looking scandalized.

“What? It’ll be fine. It’s not like they’ll know.” He grins. “You in?”

Goro looks a little unsure, but he nods and tells the cashier that he’s six whole years old when he’s asked.

Ryuji, Ann and Yusuke all make a beeline for the food once they’re inside. Makoto sighs and mutters something about finding a table first before heading off. Akira’s about to follow her when he notices that Goro is still nervously biting on his bottom lip.

“What’s wrong?” Akira asks, frowning.

Goro hesitates, and then peeks up at him. “Is it okay to lie?” he asks. “I… I thought only the bad guys do that.”

Akira can feel his willpower crumbling very rapidly and he mentally curses Ryuji for coming up with the idea and then leaving without taking responsibility. “You’re right,” he says. “Let’s go back.”

Several minutes later, a much happier Goro and a much poorer Akira make it to the table.

There’s a bunch of plates lined up already. Yusuke seems particularly engaged in a war against an oyster he can’t open. Ann perks up when she sees the two of them approach and pats the seat next to her. “Hey, I got some for you guys,” she says.

Goro climbs onto the chair and sniffs the food tentatively, eyes wide open in appreciation. His stomach gives a loud grumble and he flushes red. Ann laughs and nudges a couple plates toward him. “Try some!”

Goro carefully picks up a knife and fork and cuts his food, and Akira smiles when he realizes that despite how much Goro’s hands are obviously trembling in excitement, he is still trying to be polite.

He finally cuts the food into small enough pieces and pops one into his mouth. He chews for a bit, eyes lighting up, and then he exclaims, “These pancakes are delicious!”

Across the table, Ryuji spits out his soda.

There is a lot of frantic yelling after that, several napkins flung everywhere in an effort to mop up the mess. Goro is still in his seat, his eyes comically wide, one forkful of pancake frozen halfway to his mouth as he stares at the ensuing mess in rapidly growing horror.

Akira snickers and nudges him. “Let’s go check out the buffet,” he says, jerking his head toward the food. “They can clean that up by themselves.”

Goro looks unsure, but he puts down his food and takes Akira’s hand when it’s offered.

The two of them wander over to the chocolate fountains, and Goro peers at them curiously. “What’s that?” he asks.

“Chocolate fountain.” Akira dips a marshmallow in the chocolate as demonstration. “Open wide.”

Goro obliges almost immediately, his eyes going a little starry-eyed when Akira places the chocolate-covered marshmallow into his mouth.

“A teenage parent?” he hears someone scoff behind him, and Akira barely holds back a sigh of exasperation. Thankfully, Goro is still fully entranced by the fountain and doesn’t seem to have noticed anything. “They really do let anyone in here these days.”

Akira turns around and stares at two very well-dressed middle-aged women. He tries to channel Akechi’s interview smile, the one that’s all plastic and superficial and sweet. “May I help you?” he asks.

It obviously does not come off as intended. The two women frown down their noses at him instead of the swooning treatment that he knows the Detective Prince used to get. “Mind your own business,” says one of them, and then they leave, but not before throwing accusatory glances over their shoulders at him.

Akira sighs and then turns back to Goro, who is still excitedly poking a marshmallow into the fountain. “Having fun?” he teases.

Goro nods and places the marshmallow on his plate. “C-can we make more?” he asks hopefully.

“Sure,” Akira says, and feels a certain warmth flood inside him when Goro’s eyes light up. “Make as many as you want.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Ryuji says when the two of them return ten minutes later with three towers of chocolate marshmallows. Even Ann is staring at the plates in slight horror. “You know they charge for leftovers, right?”

Akira thinks about the fact that his wallet is now empty after the 5,000 yen he spent on Goro’s admission. “Yeah,” he says thoughtfully. “Better start eating.”

There are several groans around the table. Makoto in particular looks like she wants to strangle him. But then Goro plops down onto his chair and sticks two marshmallows into his mouth so his cheeks puff up like a chipmunk’s, and everyone stops complaining.

(They somehow finish the whole thing anyway.)

DestinyLand is not too crowded for a weekend afternoon, and Akira manages to spot Futaba arguing rather loudly about something with Yusuke in front of the souvenir store.

He navigates him and Goro over, and the younger boy gives the two of them a shy wave in greeting. “Hello,” Yusuke says in return. “It is good to see you both.”

Futaba doesn’t even greet them before whipping something out and jamming it onto Goro’s head. “There,” she says, looking satisfied. Goro tentatively touches the dog ears sitting in his hair. “Puppy Akechi. His fans will go wild.”

Akira leans over and flicks one of the ears. The fabric is softer than it looks. “It’s cute,” he says, and Goro flushes a little before muttering a quiet thank you under his breath.

“Do your best dog impression,” Futaba says, phone already out and poised to take pictures.

Goro thinks about it for a moment, his nose scrunching up slightly. And then he leans forward a little, hands curved like claws, baring his teeth in a way he probably thinks is intimidating before letting out the world’s cutest “Grrrr.”

Akira almost has a heart attack.

Futaba is guffawing loudly, finger rapidly jamming against the photo taking button. She gets unceremoniously shoved aside by Yusuke, who takes her place and frames Goro’s image with his fingers.

“Perfection,” he breathes out. Goro dutifully holds still, and Akira kind of just wants to hug him and squeeze him close. “Oracle, do take some reference photos for me. I wish to draw this later.”

“That’s what I was doing, Inari!” Futaba yells, and then shoves him back in return.

Goro is fiddling around with the soft ears on his head when Panther shows up, squealing when she notices the accessory. “Oh my gosh,” she coos. “He’s the cutest thing ever.”

“They look good on you!” Violet says, popping up from behind Panther. “Do you like dogs?”

“Yes,” Goro nods eagerly. There had been a stray white dog near the place where he and his mom lived, and it came by to see them almost every day.

On one of her good days, his mom had sat him down on her lap. “Dogs are precious things,” she had told him. “They can do things that humans can’t.”

“Really?” Goro had asked, eyes wide.

“Yes. They’re able to love unconditionally, Goro.” She pinches his cheeks. “Human beings aren’t honest enough to do that.”

He never asked her what she meant, and he still doesn’t know what unconditional love is. But if it is a feeling that surpasses what he feels for his mom, what he feels for Joker, then dogs must be very amazing.

His thoughts are interrupted when Fox’s and Oracle’s shoving match ends up with Oracle crashing into a passerby behind her. “O-oh,” she says, mumbling and looking down. “I’m sorry.”

“Watch where you’re going,” the man scoffs, barely sparing her a glance before continuing on his way.

“Futaba,” Fox says gently, placing a comforting hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Are you alright?”

“Y-yeah, ‘m fine,” Oracle mutters, still trembling a little. “Sorry. I thought I was over this.”

Goro remembers being in her position before, scared and helpless. When he had gone home hours after getting his head dunked into the fish tank, and his mom had held him and cried. When he had brought his mom to school for Parent’s Day, and his mom had stood tall and proud behind him, linking their pinkies together in a small show of support.

When he had just met Joker and the rest of them, and the older boy had allowed him to clutch onto the long fabric of his jacket and stumble his way through until he was comfortable.

Physical touch. A reminder that you weren’t alone.

Goro thrusts his hand out.

Oracle stares at it like it’s a foreign object, and Goro is beginning to wonder if he did the wrong thing when the girl grasps his hand tightly. “Thanks,” she mutters, and Goro smiles back and does not bring up the fact that her palms are very sweaty.

“Ooh,” Panther says, leaning in. “Can I hold your other hand, Goro?”

Goro does want to hold her hand. He’s only ever had his mom’s to clutch, and he had always been self-conscious about his empty right hand, the hand that a father would’ve held if he had one. The fact that there are two more people that want to fill that role despite not being blood related makes him feel things that he doesn’t really know how to describe.

But he only has one free hand open. He glances at Joker.

Joker quickly turns away, but not before Goro sees a self-satisfied smirk appear on his face. “Well,” he says.

Panther pouts. “No fair! Stop monopolizing him.” She jabs Joker in the stomach and the boy recoils slightly. “Besides, I told you that we girls wanted to dress him up. No peeking.”

“Fine, fine,” Joker says, still rubbing his stomach. He glances down at Goro. “You okay with that? I’ll be waiting right here with Yusuke.”

Goro nods, grateful that the restroom isn’t too far away. Panther smiles kindly and offers her hand, and this time he takes it and receives a small squeeze in return.

She and Oracle try to lift him up between them on their way to the restroom. It doesn’t work very well. They almost fall over multiple times. But Goro has so much fun he can’t stop smiling.

It might not be unconditional love. But Goro thinks it must be something close to it.

“Tada!” Haru says behind him, and Akira is still recovering from the sight of Goro with dog ears and is not at all prepared to see the sight of Goro in a yukata. “How does he look?”

“Breathtaking.” Yusuke rematerializes next to him in a yukata of his own. Both of them are wearing the same dark blue yukata, though the sleeves on Goro’s cover most of his hands. “We match now.”

Yusuke sticks his foot out and spreads his arms dramatically. Akira’s not really sure what he’s trying to go for, but a second later he thanks whatever god that’s listening for Yusuke Kitagawa and his beautiful, weird mind when Goro attempts to mimic the pose and nearly falls over trying.

“Let’s go to the lake,” Haru says. “They will be releasing the sky lanterns soon.”

“Insider info,” Akira responds, and tries not to look too smug when Goro drifts over and attaches himself to his hand again. Ann is glaring daggers at him that he pretends he does not see because his stomach is still smarting from earlier.

The lake area is filled with staff setting up for the event, but they allow the Phantom Thieves through when they see Haru among them. Goro stares at the sky lanterns in wonder, and then nearly drops his when Sumire places one into his hands.

“What are these?” he asks, peering down at his own.

“Sky lanterns!” Haru says excitedly, handing more out to the rest of them. “They’re typically used at the end of the year, but DestinyLand holds a sky lantern event at the end of every week!”

“You release them like this.” Sumire demonstrates. “And it’s not tradition, but I like to make a wish when I release mine. Just in case the Sky Lantern God is watching!”

“Does that actually work?” Ryuji snorts.

“Well, I’m happy with where I am now,” Sumire says, smiling at all of them. “So I guess it did!”

The DestinyLand staff give some sort of signal, and then all the lights near the lake are shut off. Akira can see the dim faces of his precious friends, his Phantom Thieves, glimmering from the lights of their lanterns. He can feel Goro moving closer to him, clutching his own lantern, a determined look on his face.

Really, there’s only one thing to wish for.

A staff member releases the first sky lantern, and all his friends follow suit. Soon, the sky above the lake is filled with glittering lights, small boxes of hopes and dreams and wishes, and Akira thinks that humanity maybe doesn’t need an all-powerful god with actualization powers when all they needed was each other.

He can hear Ryuji whooping somewhere to his right, and Futaba and Yusuke arguing about whose lantern is rising faster. Akira turns to the boy next to him, who is watching the sky with innocent and childish delight that fits him so much better than the terror from when they had first met.

“Isn’t it pretty?” Akira hums, staring up at the sky.

“Yes,” Goro breathes out, and then seems to ask before he can help himself, “What did you wish for?”

Akira nearly laughs at the nosy curiosity on his face. “For you to be happy,” he says, and then watches Goro’s face contort slightly.

“But I’m already happy. You wasted your wish!” Goro stammers, looking slightly panicked. “I-if you wish again, maybe the Sky Lantern God will grant you another one.”

“That’s okay,” Akira says. Maybe some things in his life could have been improved. Not getting cognitively shot in the forehead by his rival was one. Not getting sued by said rival’s bastard father was another.

But he’s gotten so far without wishes. He has amazing and supportive friends, who hang out with him despite just being a plain nobody.

He has an amazing and wonderful coffee dad, who had taken him in despite his criminal record and cared for him anyway.

He has an amazing rival, who is blunt and jarring and never makes things easy for Akira, but he wouldn’t have it any other way.

He has an amazing young child next to him, so innocent and pure and way more polite than Akira ever was at that age.

And he finds that if this is his life without the power of wishes, then he doesn’t really need them.

“What did you wish for?” Akira asks, watching as the paper lanterns fade into small specks of light in the sky. Behind him, he can hear the girls giggling about something and Morgana yowl about being too short to see anything, and he smiles.

This is his home.

Goro looks unsure about whether to answer his question, but then he seems to make up his mind. He gives Akira a large toothy grin and says, “I wished that I could be like you!”