Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Two days after you’re beaten within an inch of your life, you get up and get on with your life, because what else are you supposed to do, just keep on languishing in bed forever?

It would be against medical advice, except the advice that Takemi had given you had amounted mostly to ‘drink water’, ‘take these specific drugs, but only when you’re sure the last drugs you took are out of your frail little teenage body’, ‘stay in bed as long as possible’, and ‘maybe stop diving into metaphysical otherworlds to conduct metaphysical heart heists that end with you getting arrested and having your head slammed against a concrete floor’. Not bad advice, all things considered, but the thing is that if you ever stop doing heart heists you’re going to die. It’s like that thing with sharks and swimming. You wouldn’t tell a shark to stop swimming or to stop moving towards blood in the water. What else is a shark good for?

You told Sojiro pretty much that too, at the peak of your delirium on the first night, right after you’d finished throwing up a sickly mixture of bile and thin watery liquid, and he’d said, “Christ, kid, you can’t keep doing this.”

You’d been too tired and aching-all-over and dizzy-with-relief at his hand on the back of your neck to filter yourself. Between gags and heaves, you replied, “But who else is gonna do it?”

It’s the truth, no matter how much Sojiro says literally anyone else and you’ve got the whole world on your shoulders, you kids, I wish you’d put it down occasionally, and I can’t stop you, but you worry me half to death. (You’re pretty sure you weren’t meant to hear a lot of that, but you weren’t nearly as unconscious as he’d thought you were and, well, maybe he shouldn’t be muttering things he doesn’t want you to hear while camped out resolutely in your bedroom.) There’s nobody else running around the flipside of Tokyo with demigod soul powers, to your knowledge—or at the very least, if they are, they're being a lot more subtle than Akechi ever was. If they are, they’re not making themselves known. If they are, they know how to be subtle—or they just don’t want to help, not at all.  

No, you’re on your own. Which is to say that you and your friends are all on your own together, but right now it really does feel like it’s you. You and Morgana, sure; Morgana’s never not with you. But also it’s just you.

Nobody else ended up locked in an interrogation cell, after all.

But that’s a bad thought, and you don’t want to keep thinking it, so you cope in the way you’ve learned to cope with most things since you moved here. You get the fuck up and you get fucking moving.

Or try to, at least.

“Are you sure?” Morgana asks you when you lever yourself out of bed, and tug your clothes on. Your neck is stiff and your back aches and it’s all you can do to get the hoodie over your head when you can barely raise your arms past shoulder level, but—hey—you manage it. You shimmy your shoulders and squirm in sideways, just like crawling through ventilation shafts. Thief skills can be applied in many situations in life. Everyone should take up phantom thieving. Or maybe they shouldn’t. “Ren—hey, Ren? Maybe you should stay in bed for another day. You really don’t look so good.”

“Lies,” you say, tugging Futaba’s favorite beanie over your hair. You can’t be bothered to comb it, and if she didn’t want you stealing it, she shouldn’t leave her shit all over your attic. You’re pretty sure that’s why she left it, anyway. “Slander, also. I look fantastic. Miss Universe Japan 202X. Everyone wants me for my soulful eyes and eloquence in the face of Shadow-based danger.”

You can’t remember if this is more bullshit than you usually spout. Everything’s fuzzy at the edges and you’re not monitoring most of the things coming out of your mouth right now. Morgana certainly doesn’t seem convinced, by the way he tilts his head and flicks his tail at you, but then again Morgana is more aware than most of all the masks you wear.

Usually you’re glad of the fact that you don’t need to pretend for him. Right now it’s just another thing that’s weighing you down on top of the million other things.

It might be easier to lie down and never get up again, but you’re pretty sure as long as you keep yourself in active motion then you’ll eventually forget how much you shouldn’t be standing upright. You’ve done it in Palaces before. You do it in Palaces a lot, actually; maybe more than you should.

Morgana tries climbing into your satchel bag like usual. It becomes rapidly apparent that this just isn’t happening—his usually-negligible weight in your bag is too much for you to manage. He weighs you down and makes you stagger and catch yourself against the railing, and he’s pressing down against a particularly nasty bruise up against your side. Neither of you are happy with this, especially when you have to sit down on your bed again, panting shallowly and clutching your chest.

“It’s okay,” says Morgana, curling his tail around his paws. His eyes are very serious and very blue. “I’ll walk.”

When you cough, your entire body rattles and every sore spot seems to flare up all over again. “Impossible. I’m your only method of transportation. You’ve never used your legs and you’re not about to start now.”

“You’re not funny,” he says, and waits for you by the stairs until you can remember where you dropped your phone last night (halfway between the mattress and the wall, half-charged) and your wallet (lying on the ground by the wall, for some reason). You hesitate before leaving your glasses on the windowsill. You’ve never actually needed them for anything like seeing, and they invite more recognition than you need right now.

Sojiro is downstairs. Sojiro doesn’t look impressed that you’ve managed to dress yourself and navigate the stairs all of your own accord, even though you fully consider it to be a monumental feat worthy of massive praise. “Get the fuck back to bed,” he tells you. You’ve never heard him quite so stressed, and you’ve never seen him look at you quite like that before. “You’re not meant to be up, and you’re absolutely not going out.”

You grin at him as best as you can, and try not to sway on your feet. “Looking like this, you mean? I’m a delinquent, haven’t you heard?”

“You’re a damn brat is what you are,” he says without bite. You blink—you think you blink—some time passes, anyway—and abruptly you feel a large hand pressing against your back, another at your elbow. You’re gently but firmly guided into a booth, and your knees buckle as you slump into the seat. It scares you a little, how easily you go. Maybe you’re still weak and tired from the interrogation. Maybe you just couldn’t say no to Sojiro even if you tried.

Morgana jumps up, pressing himself against your thigh.

“I’m fine,” you say, resting your head on your hand. “Really. I am. I’m just getting a little stircrazy. Need to get out and—stretch my legs. Run errands. I have so many errands.”

Sojiro says, “Breakfast first.”

You sigh and close your eyes. “Yes, boss.”

When you open them, he’s set a hot plate and hot mug before you. Plain white rice and green tea.

You poke at the rice with the wrong end of your chopsticks. “This feels like blasphemy.”

“Like hell I’m giving you coffee,” Sojiro tells you. “Last thing you need is caffeine in your system.”

That’s probably true. With enough caffeine, you could take down God singlehandedly—or maybe with a little help from you friends—and the thought of fighting anyone at all right now is making you feel faintly sick. You poke at the rice again. The thought of eating is also making you feel faintly sick, or maybe you’re actually hungry and it’s bad enough that you’re failing to tell the difference. Either way. You can’t remember the last time you actually ate anything.

Eating might possibly a good idea.

The clock says eleven, or thereabouts. The café should be open by now, but there’s not a customer to be seen, and the sign on the front door is flipped to closed. Sojiro watches you from the counter as you mechanically force clumps of rice into your mouth and swallow. Sometimes he pretends to wash glasses and sort bags of coffee grounds. Mostly he just keeps an eye on you. Maybe Futaba made him promise to make sure you don’t keel over on the spot or something. Seems like something she’d do. You vaguely remember her being here last night, or maybe it was the night before.

If you focus hard on the memory, you can remember the sound of her crying. Like, a lot of crying. You stop trying to focus so hard. You don’t want to think about that.

Everything still tastes chemical and sickly, with a faint aftertaste of blood from where you’d bitten your tongue raw. Even the sweet mildness of the tea can’t wash it out.

“You’re shivering,” says Sojiro. A little worried, a little disapproving. He vanishes as you swirl a finger around the lukewarm dregs of your tea, and a moment later he’s back with a thick afghan blanket that he drapes around your shoulders. “Right. Look. If you really need to go out…”

“I must,” you say, twisting your fingers into the edge of the blanket. “It is my destiny. I have many sacred errands I’ve been neglecting for too long.”

“It’s only been four days since you went out on an errand run,” says Morgana.

“Far too long,” you pronounce solemnly. The blanket is nice and weighty about your shoulders. “The city will fall without me.”

Sojiro lets out a low, soft sigh. “I couldn’t keep you here if I tried,” he says, half-to-himself, with a clear implication of but I’m seriously considering chaining you to the bed. “At least keep the wrap on. Don’t need you catching a chill on top of everything else.”

The idea of walking out the front door wrapped in a blanket is both compelling and faintly ridiculous. You are a faintly ridiculous person, so this tracks. When you tug on both sides at once it tightens into a shell. It half-feels like it’s holding you upright.

You finish your bland, mild breakfast. You can’t exactly say it’s made you feel better, but it definitely hasn’t made you feel any worse. Soon enough you’re rising slowly to your feet, testing your own balance. You make it to the door without stumbling, which basically means you can do anything now. Mementos, here you come. Except not really because holy shit that place. You’re barely up for exploring Mementos on a normal day. You’re pretty sure it’s not just you; that everyone else gets the massive creeps from being there for more than an hour, but you’ve always had the suspicion you feel it more than most. Bad juju, man. It’s a hell of a place.

Oh, right. The door. It’s right there. You should open it. You do. Door open. Time to go.

“Take care of him,” Sojiro tells Morgana. It’s always kind of funny to watch Sojiro interact directly with Mona, just because he always does it with a faint air of incredulity, like he can’t quite take the reality of magic Metaverse cat seriously.

Morgana usually finds it pretty funny, too, when he’s not being offended by the whole not really a cat! thing, but today he doesn’t seem remotely amused. “Got it, boss,” he says.

Sojiro nods at Morgana. Morgana nods back. The language barrier isn’t a problem for this sort of communication. The bond between a perpetually exhausted coffee shop owner and the technically-not-a-cat that his delinquent teenage boarder keeps up in the attic is truly a beautiful thing. You just kind of wish they weren’t misusing that bond to keep an annoyingly close eye on you.

You’re not used to having Morgana not tucked into your back, and accidentally close the door on him when you limp out the front door, head ducked against the bright light. Sojiro hurriedly lets him out after you, squinting after you with a very particular skeptical expression. It’s the I don’t think this is a good idea look, the same one he gets when you reach for an impressively wrong curry ingredient during meal prep hour. He never says anything out loud when you do that, though—just lets you make your mistake, and only mentions it when you’re done and he’s tasted your curry to confirm that you really did fuck it up and weren’t just improvising with intent.

He doesn’t say anything now, either. He lets you go so easily that it’s hard to believe he didn’t want you gone from the start.

It’s a beautiful day, despite being overcast. You breathe in the cold air, and for a moment you feel marginally more alive.

*

Walking down the street feels—strange. Everything’s a little too bright and a little too hazy, and the ache through your entire body becomes more and more pronounced with every step. It’s weirdly grounding. You’ve never felt more real than in this moment, with the city alive and flowing all around you and Morgana weaving nervous circles around your legs.

Nobody gives you a second glance, even with you half-bundled in your blanket like an old woman heading off to market. Nobody ever gives anyone a second glance around here. You’ve always kind of liked it that way. You don’t need to be the best friend or the helpful assistant or the sympathetic listener or the fearless leader when nobody’s paying you the slightest bit of attention. You can just be a ghost in the machine.

The conversations drift around you as you make your way down to the end of the street. Out of habit, you listen in. All the usual problems and all the usual gossip, flavored heavily with did you hears and have you heards about the not-so-fearsome criminal who committed suicide in police custody not a week ago.

You can’t help the low giggle that escapes as you round the corner. Morgana, keeping pace along the tops of nearby fences and low-rise walls, glances and glares at you.

“It’s not funny,” he says.

“It kinda is.” You have to keep one shoulder to the wall, just in case you stumble. Morgana promised to ‘look after you’, but there’s not a lot he can do except yowl his little head off if you collapse to the ground. It’s okay. You’re good at looking after yourself. “I’ve always wanted to fake my own death.”

“I don’t think I want to know the rest of your bucket list,” Morgana says.

“Don’t worry, it’s pretty short,” you say. “I already failed ‘make it to twenty-one without being arrested’ two times over, but I think I can still manage ‘attain immortality before forty-two’.”

“Are all of your bucket list items time-sensitive?”

“No,” you say. “I figured ‘find a combination moral nemesis and narrative foil’ was the sort of thing that I might get around to after becoming immortal so I didn’t bother putting any time stipulations on it. But as it turns out I managed that so much faster than any of the others. Funny how life works out.”

You reach the end of the road—no more wall to steady yourself against, damn—and begin the short limp towards the train station. Morgana sticks close to your heels, and you let the blanket fall looser around your body to hide him. You’ve never tried this particular method of Mona-smuggling before, but the two of you are accomplished scoundrels in all aspects of life.

Morgana says, “What else was on the list? Say something normal, please.”

You shrug lopsidedly. “‘Get a cat’.”

“I’m not a cat,” Morgana says immediately. A second passes. His tail twitches. “Don’t get another cat.”

“With friends like these, who needs cats?” you say, and then you’re in the station and down at the platform and there’s not a lot of time for talking. When you board the train, multiple people go out of their way to make sure you have a seat, which makes you think you’re looking about as good as you feel right now. Morgana dodges feet and grudgingly takes up a spot on your lap, and nobody questions that either, which means you also look traumatized enough to warrant an emotional support animal, or maybe the fine people of Tokyo just don’t give a fuck about cats on trains. A man’s head exploded on television just last month. The police talked some scared wide-eyed kid into committing suicide just last week. (You would know. You were the kid.) Cats on trains are the least of their problems.

The ride over to Shibuya feels longer than usual, but you forgot to bring a book with you. You content yourself with messing around with your phone and ignoring the welling headache. You keep one hand in Morgana’s fur, and Morgana doesn’t protest.

And then you blink and you’re standing in the shadows of Central Street and you think you can vaguely remember getting off a train, but the details are fuzzy. Morgana is perched atop a ledge, eyeing the crowds behind you, and he doesn’t seem that concerned, so you must not have been too terribly obvious with—whatever that was. He says, “What’s the plan, Joker?”

You blink, and then right yourself. There isn’t really one. You’ve been reflexively checking your phone all the way here, but nobody wants you. In the hang-out sense, that is. All of your friends want you carnally. (Akechi also wants you carnally. So much it makes him look stupid. He looks so fucking stupid right now and he has absolutely no idea just how much. You win.)

Most of your recent messages are get-better-soons and stay-in-beds and next time you fake your death do me a favor and let me know in advance so I don’t go into unnecessary mourning (a surprising amount of these, from the most unlikely sources). The ones that aren’t that are the cruel, uncaring call of capitalism. Your friends and acquaintances may not want you, but your half-dozen part-time jobs sure do. The beef bowl shop in particular, uncaring of your current state of mortality, has gone from promising extravagant bonuses in return for last-minute shifts to swearing death and dismemberment on you if you don’t show up to work.

You could go to work. You could force yourself into a stupid little uniform and accept the stupid overtime pay and smile at stupid customers for several hours. Even when you’re feeling like hell and barely processing every third word anyone says to you. You could manage it just fine and nobody would know the wiser, not even the customers. You really are that good at wild bullshitting.

It’s just that…

You really don’t want to do that.

You’ve earned the right to be a little selfish. Probably.

You don’t want to be working and you don’t want to be lying in bed and you don’t think you’d be hanging out with your friends even if they were available and not in school right now (but it would be nice to know that they wanted to), and you don’t really know what you want. You just want to be—outside. Allowed to walk around. Allowed to stretch your hands as high as they can until it feels like the distant clouded-over sunshine is catching in the palms of your hands.

You want to be useful again. You want to be left alone forever so nobody has to rely on you. You want to feel like you’re worth something. You want to not feel broken anymore. You don’t want to wait to not feel broken.

You say, “Uh, I was going to return some DVDs?”

“You didn’t bring any with you,” Morgana says, unimpressed.

“I’ll go buy a book, then,” you say. “For the ride back.”

You haven’t been to the bookstore for a while now, and there’s a fair amount of new pickings on the shelves. The owner doesn’t give you a second glance, or even appear to recognize you—the lack of glasses is doing wonders, apparently—and nobody gives Morgana a second glance either. It just makes sense for a cat to be in a bookstore, really.

Nothing seems appealing, but you settle on a crime thriller that sounds like something you’d appreciate when not in seventeen hundred different types of pain. You think that Morgana will approve of it too, the way he tends to approve of any book involving heisting or thievery, but when you hold the blurb down to him to inspect, he just makes a weird little noise. He doesn’t seem to be in the mood for tales of thieving or heisting at the moment.

You leave the store. Morgana says, “Ren, you’re looking really bad. Maybe you should head back home.”

You say, “Ah, come on, I only just got here. Let me walk around a little further.”

Central Street is wide and open and busy and when people on the street talk to each other, you can’t hear it echoing off the walls and into your skull. Sure, you feel a little bit like you’re dying, but if you have to climb back into your bed in your creaky attic room and lie there until the bruises fade you might just go to sleep and never wake up again.

You’ve got to keep moving.

Morgana says, “Ren? Ren—jeez, slow down! How are you still faster than me?”

You catch a glimpse of Yoshida through the window of the beef bowl shop, eyeing his meal and looking fairly downtrodden, and you’re violently reminded of how many people you haven’t told you’re alive yet. Shit. One more thing to worry about.

One thing that you can rectify right now, though.

You rap on the window lightly as you pass. Yoshida looks up, looking frustrated—then sees your face, and you get to see puzzlement, then joy erupt over his weathered features. He makes as if to get up, nearly knocking his bowl over in his enthusiasm, but you shake your head hurriedly, pressing a finger to your lips, and hope he gets the idea. Not now, just saying hi.

Yoshida loves to talk. Most of the time it makes it easy for you to just stand there and listen and not do much of anything. You don’t really need to keep up any sort of façade when you’ve got a campaign sign hoisted in front of your face, after all. But you’re not so sure you could hold up to his undivided attention right now.

Thankfully, he sits down. He’s still beaming. He waves furiously at you as you drift past the window and out of his sight, and you manage to remember to wave back.

“You probably shouldn’t let too many people know,” Morgana says, springing up to silhouette himself against the light of the window. He cuts a scampering path to the edge of the window, and waits there for you to catch up.

“He can keep a secret,” you say, and tap your nose. Ow. Even that hurts. “Plus, you like Yoshida-san, don’t you?”

“He pets me the wrong way,” says Morgana sulkily. “Makes my fur feel all weird for hours.”

“But he gives you tuna.”

“He does. But he doesn’t know how to pet—uh, animals right.”

You make a noise, maybe. It might be in the vicinity of skeptical.

“Humans count as animals, too!”

Walking through Central Street is more muscle memory than anything else. You have a tried-and-tested rota of stores you cycle through on sheer force of habit, just to make sure you don’t miss out on any essential equipment or any of the small fridge’s worth of snacks you know all of your friends favor. You just manage to stop yourself from stopping in at every store you pass. You don’t need to stock up on pharmaceuticals today. There is no Palace to enter. You don’t need to pick up strawberry wafers for Ann or disgustingly neon energy drinks for Futaba, because you aren’t going to see your friends until your face stops aching every time you try to force a smile.

You definitely also don’t need to pick up replacement weapons, on account of the aforementioned lack of Palace. But you’re quickly realizing that you don’t know what else you want to do. You can’t stay out in the open too long, because even your lack of glasses and big bulky blanket covering most of your upper body and face can’t account for someone seeing you and thinking hey, isn’t it that kid from Shujin and accidentally passing the message along and next thing you know the police are knocking on your front door and Akechi has a gun pointed at your head again.

And to be fair, you’re already thinking about what you’ll say to him when he eventually has you at gunpoint again, because it feels like a downright inevitability at this point. But you’d really rather it be later than sooner. It’ll be hard looking like a cool and worthy opponent when you’re stumbling and tripping every third step.

Your feet, unreliable as they are right now, carry you out of the buzz of the crowds into an alleyway off the main street. It feels like coming down off an adrenaline high, the sudden dimness of noise and light. Your ears ring. Your eyes are watering, and when you raise an arm to scrub across your face, you end up just keeping it there.

Someone calls your name. Wait. No. They’re not calling your name, because your name isn’t inmate.

You pause midstep, and look up at Caroline, frowning down less-than-benevolently at you from the top of her translucent glowing door. “Warden,” you say, half-ironically. “What’s up?”

It’s unusual for the twins to greet you on the street unless they really, really want something from you. Usually they stay in the periphery of your vision, haunting your waking and sleeping nightmares in flickers of electric blue until you commit fully to hauling your own ass to brain jail. Sometimes you nod and smile at them as you pass. Once or twice, you’ve actually seen Justine nod and smile back.

Caroline doesn’t say anything—just keeps looking at you with one unnerving golden eye. A quick glance behind you reveals that Morgana doesn’t seem to be paying attention at all. Despite every better instinct, you take a step closer to the door.

Justine, from around waist-height, says, “You’re hurt.”

What you want to say is, you’re usually the ones slapping me around and kicking me through dimensions and beating at my fingers with your sticks. Why do you sound like you actually care now? You’re not quite that stupid, though. “I spent so much time dreaming about that prison of yours, I figured I might as well get myself locked up in a real-world one to compare notes.”

Caroline looks a little less upset. Maybe she’s pleased at your initiative. That would be a first. “Hmph. And?”

“Turns out that real-world prisons don’t have anything fun like guillotines, electric chairs, or chainsaws bigger than the wardens are.” You shrug. “I think I like your version better.”

Not that drugs, truncheons, and boots are much better, all things considered but at the very least Caroline and Justine never used the chainsaw, electric chair, or guillotine on you. They’ve even been a bit more lenient on the kicking-and-hitting thing, lately. Maybe you’re growing on them. Maybe it’s the other way around.

Caroline springs down to the ground with an inhumanly lithe leap, and swiftly paces around you, inspecting you from all angles. All you can do is stand there and wait for her to get on with it. Soon enough, she circles back to stand besides Justine, and says, “You’re of no use to us like this, inmate. Hurry and get better so your rehabilitation can recommence!”

You incline your head. Maybe you shouldn’t find it as funny as you do, but it’s a lot harder to take the twins seriously out here, in the dreary openness of the real world. They seem diminished, somehow. Half-remembered daydreams rather than chainsaw-wielding nightmares. “Got it, chief.”

“But don’t hurry back,” Justine adds, a bit too quickly.

Caroline hits her with the butt of her baton. Justine yelps and immediately whacks Caroline back with the flat of her clipboard. The two of them glare at each other, yellow eyes flaring.

Caroline snaps, “You can’t just tell him not to—”

Justine retorts, louder than usual, “We’re in charge of him! We can adjust our schedule accordingly, now that—this!”

They descend into a near-inaudible argument, their tiny heads pressed claustrophobically together as they gesture and glare at you, and you have a feeling you’re pretty much unnecessary for whatever this is supposed to be. Time to go.

“It’s good to see you two,” you say, and almost totally mean it. You’re definitely growing on them, or they’re growing on you, or something in the neighborhood of that.

Caroline breaks off from the argument, scowls, and takes a swipe at you with her baton. You’re not unused to that from her, but you’re a little—well, a lot—off your stride today. Usually you can dodge. Today, it’s only the fact that Justine catches her by the arm that prevents any extra damage being dealt to your person.

You realize, belatedly, that you’ve cringed back. Without your consent, one of your arms is half-raised, protecting your face. Your body is prickling with cold sweat and desperate adrenaline.

Justine says, “Caroline—”

Caroline says, “Shut up. I know.”

“We should—”

“I know, Justine.”

You slowly lower your arm. Your breath comes short and sharp, painful in your chest, but you don’t know what to say. Caroline just stares at you. Her single yellow eye is very bright.

She says, “Get out of here, inmate.”-

“Love you too, Caroline,” you say, and turn away.

Morgana says, “Ren? What are you staring at? Hey! Talk to me!”

Most other people seem to experience your brushes with the Velvet Room as very mild absence seizures on your part. You’ve never especially tried to disabuse them of this notion. I have frequent acid trip dreams of a prison I can never escape from, and a really freaky old dude with an improbably long nose ranks high on the list of most insane things happening in your life.

“I’m just thinking about how I’m really glad you can talk,” you say instead. “Because you can actually tell me when you have a headache and I can do something about it. Most cat-shaped beings probably have headaches all the time and no way to let anyone know. Do you ever think about that? I think about it all the time.”

“I think you should sit down somewhere,” Morgana says, tail flicking nervously.

Upon brief consideration, you find that you actually agree with him. “I know just the place.”

Chapter Text

The door to Untouchables jingles tunelessly as you limp in. You remember, at the last moment, to hold the door open for Morgana too. He trots in after you with dignity, like a furry Victorian gentleman. Going everywhere with Morgana is a lot easier when he’s riding along in your bag, you’re beginning to realize.

Iwai looks up, aimlessly at first, and then actually does a double take. “The fuck,” he says.

“I lived, bitch,” you say, leaning heavily against the front desk. When you grin, you’re aiming for triumphant and charming over strained and pained but you’re not sure you’re really managing it. Whatever. It’s the thought that counts.

“The fuck are you doing here, kid,” says Iwai, more incredulous than you’ve ever heard him. “Holy shit. Your face—”

You nod. “Everyone loves my face. I know. I also love my face, so I can’t blame them.”

He reaches for you with a kind of stuttery panic, like he isn’t really conscious of doing it. Unfortunately, he goes right for your face—of course—which isn’t something you really want anyone anywhere near right now. You can’t help the full-body flinch, and you see that he sees it by the way he freezes halfway, looking honestly stricken.

“Ah,” you say, holding yourself upright against the counter, “I see that you also love my face. Understandable, really, but could you maybe—”

He stands up properly, and presses a rough palm to your forehead, which shuts you up way too fast. Your mouth snaps shut. Morgana leaps to join you on the counter. Whatever Iwai’s getting from you right now is making every stress line on his forehead tighten and deepen, and you really, really need him to stop doing that.

“See,” you say, and your voice cracks embarrassingly. “Face. So beautiful. Too good for this world. Current hypothesis: that’s why the police broke my nose first.”

“They fucking did what.”

“It’s because it’s so beautiful. Such a perfect face. They broke it because they were jealous they’d never be as cool and handsome as I am—”

Iwai doesn’t let you finish. He hauls you around the counter—a really gentle haul, all things considered, and just like Sojiro you can’t figure out how to resist—and into the back room. It’s a little cramped and dusty in a way that makes your nerves tingle unpleasantly, but there’s a window high above that’s spilling watery warm sunlight down to the ground, where there’s a beanbag back there that’s usually reserved for his son. It’s your turn today, apparently, because he points at it and says, in no uncertain terms, “You. Sit.”

“Hey, only because you’re asking nicely,” you say, and collapse. You might black out a little, but it’s a very gentle blacking-out and you’re not gone all that long because you’re perfectly aware of the moment Morgana crawls onto your chest and loafs there, right over your heart. “I’m fine,” you tell Iwai, but he’s not there to hear it anymore.

“You’re all such bad liars,” Morgana says. “You, Ryuji, Ann… all of you. How did you get away with this for so long?”

“I really am fine,” you say, and bury your hands in his fur again. “Just need a moment.”

A moment turns into several, and then into twenty minutes, and just when you think your heart is starting to settle back into a nearly-normal resting rate, Iwai comes in with a none-too-gentle slam of the back room door, shocking you out of your doze. He leans down, shoves a still-cold can of soda into your hand, and crouches in front of you, glaring, until you sigh and crack it open and take a sip. It stings at your tongue and throat, but it helps. A little.

He says, “Do I need to call your parents?”

You make a face. “Definitely not.”

“Jeez, kid,” he says, and slides down to the ground so his back is to the wall, his long legs nearly knocking into the opposite wall. “Are you ever not in some sort of situation.”

It’s not really a question. Which is probably a good thing because you don’t really have an answer for it. “I’m like a shark. Chasing a car.”

His lips tighten, and he looks at you like he doesn’t get the joke. It’s a shame. It’s pretty funny. “Sharks don’t chase cars.”

“Which is why I wouldn’t know what to do if I caught one.” You laugh. It’s a bit wild. “It also means that whenever anyone looks at me, they’re all like, whoa! What the hell? What’s a shark doing chasing a car like that? Gotta keep everyone on their toes.”

“Are you running a fuckin’ fever or—”

“Almost certainly, yes,” you say, and duck his hand again as he reaches for you. “Get off.”

“I’m going to call that café owner of yours. What was he thinking, letting you out here like this?”

“Probably if Ren throws up one more time in LeBlanc, I won’t have customers for the rest of the day, get this guy out of here, stat.” You swallow. “Uh, ignore that. All I’m saying is, it’s probably a good thing I left.”

“You’re throwing up,” he says flatly, with a distant hint of murder. “How often. Since when.”

“Not anymore,” you’re quick to assure him. It’s not really a lie. You’re a little nauseous—you haven’t stopped being nauseous since last night—but the more you sit down and stay put the less your stomach sloshes uncomfortably and the more you can pretty much ignore it. “Don’t worry. Your storeroom will remain sanctified.”

Iwai grunts and shoves aside a massive crate of BB pellets with one impressive kick so he can look at you properly. “And you came here because—”

“My emotional support cat was bullying me about sitting down, and I didn’t feel like getting my ass kicked in a metaphorically-charged prison otherworld.”

“Meow,” says Morgana without enthusiasm.

Iwai spares a glance at him, then says, “I really can’t tell if you have a concussion or if you’re trying to be more annoying than usual on purpose so I’ll leave you alone.”

“Probably a little bit of both,” you say, and close your eyes. “I won’t stay too long. And I’ll work double-shifts all week when I’m back on my feet.”

He opens his mouth to reply, but the door in the main shop rings with the arrival of a new customer. You both glance up. Muscle memory means you almost get up to go man the counter yourself, but you don’t manage even an inch up from the ground before your body reminds you just how much it would rather be slumped in a beanbag right now.

“Stay here,” says Iwai finally. “As long as you need to. And yell if you need anything. Soda. Drugs. Whatever.”

“So you are dealing drugs to kids, just like everyone’s always suspected.”

He rolls his eyes at you. “Shut it, Ren.”

You shut it. He goes to see to the customers. You stay exactly where you are, as ordered. You’re disappointed in yourself for so easily caving to the whims of authority figures. So much for your whimsical and rebellious nature. You stare up at the ceiling, and for a moment, you swear you can see a flicker of blue, fluttering about the dingy storeroom light. Then you blink, and realize you’re only seeing spots in your vision because you’ve been staring at the light for too long, like a moron.

While you’re contemplating the frail and hollow reality of the truth you’ve built your current personality around, your phone buzzes.

“You should answer that,” says Morgana when you do nothing in the ways of reaching for it, and it buzzes again, and again. Morgana loves micromanaging your social life. In another universe, he’s your personal secretary, with a clipboard and pen behind his ear and a tiny electric car with a bumper sticker that says ‘I commit traffic violation atrocities for sushi’.

For the most part, you let him—if he wasn’t doing it, you’d probably forget about most of your obligations. Right now, you think—wouldn’t it be better if you just… didn’t? Just let it be for a change. Took the being-dead opportunity to not be on-call, switched off your phone, and let everything stop for a day. Or two. Or three.

You could lie at the bottom of the river like a beached shark and stare up into the endless currents until it all goes black around you.

Or you could just answer your damn phone because what if it’s important and someone needs your help right this moment. Okay, then.

*

*

Morgana says, “Hey, Ren? I like antagonizing Ryuji as much as the next guy, but—are you sure you should be joking about that?”

You say, “If anyone’s allowed to make police brutality jokes, it’s me.”

Iwai’s baby beanbag is a little too small for you and your stupid skinny long legs, so your head is knocking against one of the storage racks as you hold your phone as high as you can over your head, squinting at the screen from under your eyelashes. You’ve turned the brightness down as far as it can go, and it’s still a little too bright. Whatever. You can manage. This is the first thing that’s made you smile properly in days.

Morgana loafs on your chest. His claws come out, but only a little bit and only for a moment. “Ren. You’re shaking.”

“With laughter,” you say. “Because of how funny I am. You should be laughing too.”

“Ren.”

“You’re just jealous,” you say. “Of how funny I am.”

Whenever you think about seeing any of them in person, your stomach twists weirdly. Even the idea of Futaba seeing you last night—if she even was there, you can’t really remember—makes nausea swell. You really don’t want to throw up all over Iwai’s storeroom, so you do your best to shove it out of the forefront of your mind.

You can’t look them in the eyes right now. At least not until the swelling goes down.

Texting is fine, though. It’s easy to text. It’s fun, even. As long as you’re texting and goofing around and being an endearingly smarmy piece of shit, everything’s fine and normal. You can put a little piece of yourself into your phone and make that piece laugh and dance and joke, and that piece of you is totally fine and doesn’t hurt at all. Not in his body or in his mind.

Your phone buzzes again, and you close out of Ryuji’s texting chain to see who it is.

“See?” says Morgana, entirely too smugly.

Ah, fuck.

*

*

Well, shit. You’ve actually made Ann upset for real. And now she’s calling in the big guns. Not even a minute after she issues the threat, your phone buzzes. Not with an incoming text. An incoming call.

You wince, and cancel the call. Seconds later, it comes in again. You aren’t winning this one. You accept the call, offering up a tentative, “LeBlanc abortion clinic speaking. Out of the womb, into the tomb. How can I—”

“Go home.”

Fuck. That’s the Queen voice. That’s the voice she pulls out right before she sends a fist flying through a particularly obstinate shadow’s face, or drives her flaming soul motorcycle off a flight of stairs to inflict maximum airborne damage. The I am not remotely fucking around voice. You swallow, hard. “What if I told you I was already at home, and Ann is totally lying about me being at gun right now—”

“I know what Ann sounds like when she’s lying,” says Makoto flatly. “Her voice goes up approximately half an octave, and she starts giggling randomly mid-sentence.”

That’s very true. You didn’t know she paid as much attention as you did to that sort of thing. “And your point is…?”

“We weren’t worried when the news said you’d committed suicide in custody,” she says, and to her credit her voice stays rock-steady in the way that anyone else’s wouldn’t, “because we knew it was all part of the plan, and we knew you were home safe. But now? Now we’re scared, Ren. You’re acting erratic.”

“Acting erratic is a crucial part of my personality,” you argue weakly. “If I stay inconsistent and do weird, totally-out-of-left-field things every so often, my enemies will never see me coming.”

“Ren.”

She always defers to you when you’re trekking through the Metaverse. No matter how bad your calls are. No matter how weird they are, or how little they seem to make sense, she just—trusts you. In a way that makes your chest tighten if you think about it too hard. She trusts you to make the right call. To call it quits after a long day at just the right moment, to withdraw from danger or to keep on fighting when you know it’s necessary. They all trust you like that. Nobody can trust you like this.

“I just needed air,” you say. It comes out weak and pitiful. “I just—needed to stretch my legs. I just.”

“Ren.”

If you were back in Sae’s palace, she wouldn’t question you. You just keep thinking that over and over. She wouldn’t question you. Nobody would. If you were in charge right now, nobody would be worrying about you, because there’s no time to worry when you’re in the midst of a crisis and trying to get a job done.

You want to be in charge again. You’re nowhere near well enough to be in charge again.

Oh, fuck your stupid delinquent life.

“I just couldn’t stay,” you say. “I couldn’t. I’m sorry. I had to get out.” You close your eyes. “I’m safe, I promise. I’ll go back eventually. I just—”

Morgana is curled up at your chest. The weight is somehow both comforting and stifling.

“—I couldn’t.”

The truth is that it scares you. The truth is that the longer you stay in Leblanc, injured and aching and too exhausted to keep up a blank and brave face, the quicker Sojiro will get sick of it. Sick of you. He’d stayed up all night—possibly two—sitting at your bedside and taking your temperature and muttering indistinctly at you while pressing glasses of lukewarm water into your hands because anything colder than that made you shiver and shake like you were falling apart. There’s only so much of that anyone can take until they start to resent the person they’re taking care of. It’s all warm blankets and green tea and fresh-cooked-rice until it isn’t. You’re doing everyone a favor, but especially him, by giving him some breathing space.

The truth is that you never wanted him to see you like that. Actually, you never want anyone to ever see you like that. Not now, not ever. The truth is that some days you wish you could change out your skin the same way you change out Personas. Your skin is too soft and too breakable and too easily bruised. It’ll take weeks, months maybe, to pull yourself back together to the point where people won’t look at you and wonder what terrible street fight the delinquent got himself into this time.

Makoto is silent for a long moment. You can hear the strained crackle of her breathing over the line. You can easily picture her taking those deep, measured breaths of hers; evenly timed ins and outs like she’s counting them off on a stopwatch. “When you said that you were ‘at gun’—”

There’s nothing for it. You’re not allowed to be hilarious anymore. “I’m at the gun shop. You know the one.” You gnaw at your thumbnail absently, ignoring the sting. “I know the owner, he’s letting me crash in the back. Just for a bit.”

She sighs. It’s measured, too. “And I suppose staying in the back room of a gun shot is better than staying in the attic of LeBlanc.”

It’s not. It is. It’s whatever. You don’t want to talk about it. “I’m fine. Mona’s here too. He’s keeping an eye on me.”

“Hi, Queen,” says Morgana, somewhat less-than-cheerfully. “He’s not fine.”

“I gathered.” Makoto’s voice is drier than Futaba’s pyramid Palace. Which had been pretty fucking dry. On account of all the desert. “Do I need to come and pick him up?”

“Please,” says Morgana, just as you say, “Don’t do that.”

Makoto makes a noise.

“I’m serious. I’m—okay, I might not actually be fine, but I’m safe. Nobody’s going to come after me in the back room of a gun shop, and even if they did…” You make a wide, expansive gesture that she can’t see. “…It’s not like I’m starved for defensive material.”

“I’m not worried about you getting attacked, Ren.”

“You should be,” you say. Your arm has abruptly started aching. You draw it back to your chest, settling it there. “My enemies are many and numerous. My last stand will be here. In this storeroom. With only Mona as backup.” Your brain catches up to what your mouth is saying. “And you shouldn’t be worried because Mona is really good backup and will go to incredible lengths to avenge me if I should die. Which I will not. Because I’m too cool to die.”

Makoto makes the Noise again. “I’d be reassured by how ridiculous you’re being if I didn’t know you get worse when you’re actually not okay.”

You sigh. You give up. But only a little bit. “I’ll get the gun shop owner to drive me home. I’m his favorite part-time employee.” You’re absolutely not going to do that, but Makoto doesn’t need to know.

She says, “I don’t believe you.”

“That’s very hurtful, Makoto. But you’re right. I’m only his second-favorite, at best.”

She snorts, but at least there’s a tinge of humor to her voice as she says, “And now I don’t believe you even more.”

You smile faintly, despite yourself. “I’ll head back to the café in a bit. Promise. I just need a little time. Morgana will sit on me until he’s sure I can get back all right. Right, Morgana?”

“Yeah,” says Morgana, subdued, then, “Yeah, I’ve got him.”

“Good,” says Makoto, not sounding entirely satisfied, but finally (probably? Hopefully?) willing to let it drop. Then she says, abruptly, “We all love you, Ren. You know that, right?”

You close your eyes against the light. Blue lights are flickering at the corners of your vision again, and they’re making you feel sick. “Yeah. I love you all too.”

I’ll be better soon, and you can all stop worrying about me. I know this sucks, is what you don’t add, but you have a feeling that adding it would just make this conversation stretch out even longer, and you kind of really want to take a nap now.

Thankfully, Makoto ends the call there. Presumably she’s going to go tell Ann and Ryuji and everyone else that you haven’t actually died under (even more) mysterious circumstances, but you can hardly bring yourself to care right now. You feel utterly wrung-out and strangely miserable about it.

Your neck aches tremendously without anywhere but the storeroom wall to rest it—but so does the rest of your body, and there’s no fixing any of that either, not without the strong sort of painkillers that you sure as hell don’t want in your body right now. If you have to feel more fuzzy and distant from yourself than you already do, you might actually throw up.

There’s not a lot of comfortable ways to lie down right now. Curling up on your side, cat-like, and allowing Morgana to do the same along the curve of your body produces halfway decent results, though. Through the thin storeroom wall, you can hear the low drawl of Iwai’s voice as he negotiates with a particularly impatient customer. The high, inconsistent flicker of the faulty light just to the right of the door. You think the minifridge hidden behind the shop counter might be right on the other side of the wall, because its hum sounds louder than usual.

You don’t sleep. You’re too tired for that. But you do nap and doze for several hours, and Morgana seems pleased with the effort, so you try not to let on that you’re still just as tired as you were when you settled down.

By the time you emerge from the back room, the day has slipped by without your consent, slick and indistinct through your trembling fingers. Iwai sees you to the door with a grim expression, and keeps you steady as you waver into the dusky-twilight of early evening. “I can drive you home,” he says.

“No, you can’t,” you say. “You’ve gotta pick up Kaoru from after-school clubs.”

“He’ll understand,” says Iwai. “Come on, don’t make me admit I’m worried outta my mind about you, kid.”

Your gaze drops. “Kinda sounds like you just did.”

“Guess so,” says Iwai.

The silence lingers between you. You know you should just turn around and start walking if you really want this to be over. If you leave without another word, odds are that he won’t follow you and he might not even follow up on this the next time he sees you, and everything will be the better for it.

You can’t force yourself to start walking. You know you’d feel his eyes on the back of your neck, all the way down the street.

“Look. I’ll take the train back,” you say, relenting. “But you can walk me to the station. If you really want to.”

Without another word, he flips the sign to closed, and locks up behind him. Like a baseball-capped guard dog, he shepherds you down the street, maintaining an impressive glare. In terms of staying low-key and unnoticed, having the local arms dealer escort you to the train station is probably not your greatest move, but what are you going to do, say no?

And besides, you think even Akechi might think twice about sneak assassination attempts when Iwai’s stalking down the road, glaring like that.

He gets you all the way to the stairs leading down to the subway itself, and then stops, crossing his arms. “I don’t feel good about this.”

“You’re right,” you say, trying not to sway on your feet. “I’ve never ridden the train before in my entire life. This is a terrible opportunity to try it for the first time.”

“Kid.”

“You’re right again. I’m far too young to ride the train unaccompanied. Anything could happen. Vicious phantom thieves could attack me. I could be held up by armed robbers.”

“Kid.”

“All right, all right. You can hug me goodbye if you really want to,” you say, secure in the knowledge that it’ll only make him swear under his breath and roll his eyes at you and finally leave you alone.

He says, with a totally straight face, “Sure, if you’re offering.”

Shit. You miscalculated how much he’s willing to fuck with you, straight-faced. He’s calling you on your bluff. You have no option but to counterattack. You grin with as much look at me, I’m a little shit energy you can manage, face in the state it’s in, and open your arms wide. “Okay, old man, bring it in.”

You may have bluffed too hard, because the thing is: Iwai actually does hug you. It’s sharp and sudden, and it’s dizzyingly gentle in a way you wouldn’t have assumed he’d be capable of. You are briefly caught in a very careful bear trap. He smells unpleasantly of oil, gunpowder, and cigarettes. Something deep in your chest feels warm and brittle and guilty, all at once. You wonder if he hugs his son like this, too.

Probably not. You can’t imagine Kaoru ever gets beat to shit the way you currently are. There’s no need to be this weird and gentle about it, with Kaoru.

“Forget about the double shifts,” he says when he steps back a split-second later, and you can’t remember what he’s talking about. Probably some bullshit you spouted while half-conscious. “Just get better. And don’t let me see you back here until you can at least pretend you’re not about to keel over.”

You could pretend right now, if you wanted to. You’re just lazy. You mumble something indistinct, wave goodbye, and disappear into the bustle and chaos of the subway on a weekday evening.

Morgana trails after you, dodging feet and legs and doing an impressive job of keeping pace. He sounds way too judgemental when he says, “You know, you can just ask people for hugs normally.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you say, trying not to trip over your own legs. The warmth-and-guilt in your chest hasn’t quite faded. You don’t know if you want to hold onto it or not. “I totally won that social interaction.”

“Sure, Joker.”

You almost don’t get a seat on the train, but you look just pathetic enough that a cute little girl riding with her grandmother jumps up to let you have her seat. Any other day, you’d refuse, but sure, you’ll take a pity seat from a child, why not.

 You hold your phone away as far as you can from your face, propping it up on Morgana’s back, and send a series of surprise! I’m not dead, texts to all of your friends and acquaintances. Any other day, you’d take the time to write each message out in turn, and wouldn’t dream of copy-pasting the same thing to every one of them. Today, you just type out a vague I’m okay. Won’t be at school/the district/the church/etc for a while, still recovering. Can’t keep a bad bitch down, see you soon, and send it off to all of your trusted contacts.

None of them keep you waiting.

Through a mystical string of emojis and long strings of ellipses, Chihaya reveals that she knew already. She follows it up with a strong assurance that she’s still very glad you made it out, seeing as you’ve proven many times her predictions aren’t exactly accurate. Hifumi calls your scheme an ‘admirably devious strategy, worthy of a great military general’ and then spends several paragraphs calling you an idiot for not warning her via vivid, incomprehensible metaphors. Mishima is near incoherent with joy. Shinya wants to know when you’ll be back at the arcade, Kawakami tells you not to even think about homework so help her god, and Ohya says that you’re driving her to drink, which is a lie because she’d be drinking anyway no matter the occasion. Still, you appreciate the sentiment.

“You made some good friends,” said Morgana from underneath your phone.

“They’re pretty great,” you say, rubbing at your eyes. After a second, you send a heads-up to Lala-chan, too, even though you have no doubt that Ohya will spill the beans the moment that she slinks into her usual spot at the bar. Your job at Crossroads is one of the few part-time endeavours you actively try not to get fired from.

Instinct nearly drives you to fire the same text off to Akechi. His name is still sitting there in your phone. Your last conversation was a request from him to meet up for an ‘important conversation’. You’d told him all your conversations were him were important to you, and you were offended that he didn’t feel the same. He’d called you ridiculous and then told you not to be late.

You’d been five minutes late to your Mementos fight to the death. He’d laughed at you and called your poor timing eminently predictable, and then he’d told you to fight him with everything you had, and you’d said something like okay, predict this, before blasting him with three chained consecutive Megidolaons. You thought you were being hilarious until he told you how much he hated you. Which, yeah, you’d kind of known that already with the whole plotting to betray you to the police thing, but it stung more than you’d expected.

At that point, you’d still been halfway hoping he wouldn’t really go through with it.

Anyway, you don’t text Akechi, because no matter what some people might think, you do actually have a functional self-preservation instinct. Plus, it’s too soon. It won’t be funny if you do it right now. You’re turning the idea over and over in your head, and you’re thinking the perfect moment to let him know you’re alive is five minutes before the Phantom Thieves drop their next calling card.

Honestly, you’re just sad you’ll never get to see the look on his face when he realizes just how good you are at this.

But you’re still at least twenty minutes from home, and there’s one other person you haven’t texted yet. She probably deserves to know how not-dead you are more than anyone else in the city apart from all the people already know.

And Akechi. Akechi deserves to know. If only so he can finally understand just how bad he is at this, compared to you. But you aren’t thinking about Akechi right now.

Definitely not thinking about Akechi right now.

*

*

Kasumi’s phone glitches out so consistently that you could probably measure time by it. You’ve gotten used to late-night and early-morning conversations with her ending abruptly and unceremoniously, and equally as used to picking up another conversation hours later with no connection to the previous one. It adds an exciting sort of spontaneity to your texting chains. It’s like a constant game of communication roulette.

Having seen the state of her phone—cracked like someone drove a truck over it—you can’t find yourself entirely surprised. She does seem like the sort of person who’s way too busy to go buy herself another phone.

Still, you find yourself oddly disappointed at the loss of the contact. Kasumi knows about the casino—knew about the heist and mad dash out into the real world; probably heard about the arrest after the fact. But she doesn’t know how bad it is. She doesn’t know about the sickening discoloration all across your face, cheeks. How there’s still a boot mark bruised on your stomach and how your hip has started clicking when you walk—not painful, but horrifying in a totally different sort of way.

You hadn’t been planning on texting any further. Really, it’s probably a better idea to put the phone away and stop giving yourself an even worse headache—but just as you’re about to, you see that Maruki’s responded, a little later than anyone else.

Anything for a distraction, right?

*

*

“He’s right,” says Morgana. “You should talk to someone.”

You lower your phone. “I thought we agreed that he’s a fairly nice person but a shitty therapist, and any advice he gives me is well-intentioned but probably not psychiatrically sound. We did agree that, right?”

“We did,” Morgana confirms, “and it still stands; he definitely doesn’t have a medical degree, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be right once in a while. Especially when it’s really, really obvious how badly off you’re doing.”

Your phone buzzes sharply. You ignore it. Betrayed. Betrayed by your not-cat. You just can’t trust anyone anymore. “I’ve been talking to tons of people,” you say. “I talked to Iwai. And Makoto. Also you.”

“You’re not talking, you’re just making an endless string of unfunny jokes while everyone gets upset at you about them.”

You frown. “Isn’t that just what conversations are?”

“No.”

Around you, several people are giving you weird looks for talking to the cat on your lap like he’s a real human person. Your phone buzzes again. You ignore all of these things. “I’m pretty sure that’s just what conversations are. I think you’re wrong.”

“You don’t have to be okay,” says Morgana quietly.

You swallow. Your phone buzzes three times in sharp succession, then once more, as if for good measure. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Your phone rings, with the default melody. Which is strange, because you always keep your phone on silent. Except with the friends you have, it maybe isn’t that strange at all.

You say, “Sorry, I have to take this.”

“Ren—”

*

You stare at your phone. Your vision is swimming again.