flightpen | they're just shadows searching for light

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they're just shadows searching for light

CONTENT WARNINGS: character death, character being eaten

Ren's been here for weeks now, wandering Tokyo like a ghost, poking his head cautiously through doors into other places. The people are... well, anyway, most of them treat him better than he deserves. He can talk to them, and they can see him no matter how he feels. It's good. It should be good. But no matter how hard Ren tries to put on a brave face for Akechi, he's so worried all the time.

It's just, whenever Ren walks the streets of Tokyo, he can't help but think of what's beneath him. Akechi's Shadow, everything that was torn out of him, anger and betrayal and seething hatred. Hatred of Ren. Ren deserves it, he brought it on himself, he's the reason that Shadow even exists, but he can't—he can't just let it stay there, unacknowledged. He can't ignore it. He ignored Akechi once before, and look what happened.

The Shadow is dangerous, people have said. Deadly. But Ren has all his Personas again, the ones that were meant to take on Maruki; there's a chance he'll survive. And even if he doesn't, even if he dies... no one can honestly say that would be a great loss. And he'll have died showing Akechi, all of Akechi, that he matters enough to take the risk. Because he does matter. More than anything.

Still, he doesn't want to leave the Akechi in the real world without a word. Just in case it does go wrong. So he sits through an afternoon with Akechi, quiet and distracted, and when the time comes for him to leave and find food (or at least that's what he says), he turns back at the door of Akechi's apartment.

"Hey, um. Can I tell you something?"

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"Dinner. Right." Flakes of rust tumble from his mind; he comes closer. "Perhaps I'll come with you. I can always use a cooking lesson, after all."

Ren smiles a little, at that. It's barely there, just a tiny fond expression tugging at the corners of his lips. "I don't have the stuff for a cooking lesson. We can do one tomorrow, if you want. I can get enough supplies for two people."

It's not even a lie. If he survives this, he'll cook with Akechi.

"Or we could stop by the store now. I know you're tired, but it isn't far." But he only has to look at Ren to know that won't be happening. "It's like you're hiding something from me. And you aren't afraid it will set me off, because you would just have said so.

"Are you in danger? Is that it?" All those people with a grudge. It's all he can think of. Ren always looks bleak, but something about him tonight is so odd.

"No." At least not in the way Akechi's thinking. "If someone was out there waiting to stab me, I'd just stay in."

Of course, even that Futaba hadn't tried to stab him. She'd tried to lure him into Mementos, where Akechi's Shadow is. ...Never mind that. He slips on his shoes as he talks. "Don't worry about me, Akechi. I can take care of myself."

His eyes bore into Ren, absent of their edge. "If you want to, you can. Do you?"

He doesn't feel the same way about his mother that the others do, and he doesn't say it like they would. But he is thinking of her.

"Yeah." His face softens. He can guess what Akechi is thinking of, although how he's feeling is more of a mystery. "I do."

He knows he's walking into danger, but if he dies, it won't be on purpose.

Reading Ren's face as he is, he softens in turn, though he still has a bad feeling; he's not used to walls being up with—well, truth be told, things often felt like that with Ren.

"Very well, then. Text me if you need anything. I'll try to keep the fussing to a minimum." Despite his small smile, he'll be paying attention, and he'll know if Ren leaves the building.

"I will. Thanks." With a last smile, he heads out the door.

He does stop by his own apartment, to get outerwear; he opens the door, grabs his coat and scarf, and closes it again from the hallway so that Akechi will only hear it open once. It's weird, to be sneaking around behind Akechi's back. Kind of nostalgic—but that thought makes his stomach turn over with guilt, and with dread. He doesn't know what he'll be facing with Akechi's Shadow, but he knows it'll suck.

He tugs on his coat and scarf as he makes his way to the elevator on soft feet, and from there out of the building. It won't be a long walk to the station. Nothing is, here, if you don't want it to be.

Unfortunately, the apartment building, while pleasant, is not immune to Akechi's cognition of the laws of sound and physics, nor to that of their neighbours; he hears the elevator. Suspicious, he heads out into the corridor, and trespasses in the cognition's apartment next door but one to Magpie.

It overlooks the park, and the exit of the building. He's just in time to see Ren head down the street towards the station. He lied, Akechi thinks. Muttering a curse, and not stopping for his coat, let alone the elevator, he bombs down the stairs, out of the door, and down the street at a run.

Ren will hear him coming. After all, it really isn't far, if you don't want it to be. "Ren!" he calls. "Ren, wait!"

Edited 2024-02-25 02:55 (UTC)

Shit.

But, easier to ask forgiveness than permission. And that's not just Ren taking advantage of Akechi's mental state. He used that philosophy a lot last year, when he was actually doing things. Fortunately, he's already reached Kichijoji Station; unfortunately, the station is huge. He slips under the cover of the entrance and heads for the Keio Line to Shibuya. There's a solid chance Akechi might lose track of him, or give up.

Like hell he will. Ren glances back, allowing Akechi to gain ground, but rather than turning back, he heads into the station. Akechi makes it too, a fraction of a minute later—but he doesn't need to be a detective, genius or otherwise, to know his quarry must be heading deeper into the city, to Shibuya.

The train is on the platform when he arrives, just in time to see a mop of curly hair vanish into the nearest carriage. No way to make it in without Ren seeing him. Quickly, and without being disturbed, acting wholly on instinct, he steps not into the carriage but onto the footstep on the front of the train, to open the door to the driver's carriage.

You'd think he'd been bouncing around subway tunnels all his days. Exchanging a smile with the white-gloved cognition, he slots into the spare seat, glancing surreptitiously back through the door to locate Ren.

Ren is distracted, glancing behind him as the doors close to make sure Akechi's not following him in. And the journey is quick, just a couple seconds, not long enough for him to look around and notice any extra inhabitants of the driver's carriage. He breathes a sigh of guilty relief when he makes it to Shibuya and steps out onto the platform.

He has to take a second then to steel himself, which would earn him irritated glances in the real Tokyo, but the cognitions don't care; they part around him like water around a rock. Like he's supposed to be there, underground. But he doesn't let himself get distracted by it—he has to go in now, before he loses his nerve. Instead, he pulls out his phone.

"Mementos," he says, using the Nav for the first time since his arrival—the first time in months, the first time since January. The app chimes in recognition, and the world warps and twists around him, pulling him into the Metaverse.

And Akechi is watching him, intending to slip through the carriage door once Ren has left the carriage. This he does, keeping an eye on Ren from the cover of the door—

But Ren doesn't move. He just stands there on the platform, pulling out his phone. What is he looking at, Akechi wonders—a map? His messages? Is he meeting someone? And then the world twists, and takes Ren with it, and

Moments later, he steps out of the train onto the platform, but Ren is gone. Akechi doesn't know what he saw, but he knows he lost time, and there's no sign of Ren. Looking this way and that, he runs up to try and locate him, but Shibuya Station is as much a maze as Mementos ever was.

And Ren could be anywhere. Pulling out his phone, he tries to call him, but it goes to voicemail. Something is badly wrong. Akechi hesitates, terrified for no reason he understands— and then he dials another number.

Ren, meanwhile, manifests in an entrance to Mementos that's just as he remembers it from before everything happened with Maruki, except without the door to the Velvet Room and its pint-sized attendant. It sounds the same; it even smells the same. Behind his Joker mask, his face crumples. He just... misses it. He misses it all so fucking much.

Before anything else, he summons Raoul. He meant what he said to Akechi; he hasn't come here to die. His Personas are quieter than he remembers them, but Raoul comes nonetheless, hovering behind him as he stands at the top of the escalator and takes a deep breath. The level below looks more menacing when he's alone, and when he knows what waits down there. But Shadows can't reach this platform. If Ren wants to meet Akechi's Shadow, he has to descend.

And so he does, carefully, every cell tingling with danger. When he gets to the first real floor of Mementos, with its tiny Shadows fleeing his arrival, he calls out: "Akechi...?"

Nothing happens. Ren lets out a shaky breath and tries to turn his mind away from the flutter of relief he feels. "Fine," he says, and pulls out his phone again. "If you're gonna be stubborn, I'll just go floor by floor—" But when he opens the Nav to travel to the next rest stop, his eyes fall to the very last travel point, right at the bottom of the list.

Path of Da'at, Area 16. Maruki's cognitive control room. And the option is greyed out.

Eyes narrowed with a new suspicion, he taps it anyway. His phone vibrates harshly in his hand. Area inaccessible, his phone informs him.

"Why?"

He gets no answer, of course, so he taps the travel point again. Area inaccessible. And if Akechi's Shadow was anywhere, where else would it be?

As soon as he arrives in the next-closest rest stop, the earthquake drops him to his knees. His heart flips over with dread. But he's made it this far; he's not going to be turned away by something as trivial as the ground shaking. Baring his teeth, he drags himself upright again, and this time, when he calls Raoul, it's easier.

There aren't many Shadows, and the ones that are there are easily spooked, uninterested in fighting. With every floor Ren progresses, the earthquake gets stronger and the Shadow population gets smaller, until he reaches the very last floor, which is almost desolate. As he stumbles along the heaving tracks there, thinking wistfully of the Monabus, he starts to become aware that the earthquake is slowly dying down.

That's more frightening than anything that's come before, more frightening than the earthquake itself. But he can do this. He can be brave. He failed at it when it mattered, but he can do it now. He repeats this to himself as he makes his way, as the shaking of the corridor subsides into stillness. And then he finds the final elevator.

I am with you, Raoul murmurs in his heart. For some reason, Ren's eyes sting with tears. He blinks them impatiently aside and ascends the escalator.

The moment his ego set eyes on that guy, the Shadow sank to his knees and screamed. Before long at all, he lost his form, but he didn't stop screaming; never even had the choice. Every quiet word, every grey-eyed glance burns like acid. Every moment that guy lives and breathes, talks in his ear, looks him in the eye is a moment the Shadow wants him dead.

At least, it would be if he could think at all. Instead, he screams, unending, because he can do nothing more, and the deepest parts of Mementos tremble at his word. Until, one day, he wakes.

He's still attuned to the things others most want. He knows when that attention is bent on him, and he knows when it's close. And it's close now. Cogniscient for the first time in weeks, he stops long enough to listen, and the quaking earth slows to nothing.

Ren, he thinks. And, with an effort not of will but of its soul-sibling desire, he coalesces for the first time in what seems like a lifetime. In every way, other than his accusing yellow eyes, he resembles Akechi as Ren saw him last.

Edited 2024-02-25 06:58 (UTC)

It takes Ren like a kick to the stomach. The eyes, the expression, the outfit—he exhales lips parting in regret and horror and longing and despair, all of them swirling together and tangling around each other in knots. Bare-faced, with Raoul behind him, he stands at the top of the escalator and meets the gaze of Akechi's Shadow in silence.

He probably should have thought of something to say before he got here.

The Shadow takes a step closer—definitely stepping, rather than blinking ahead. While he spares Raoul a yellow-eyed glare, the bulk of his attention rests on—

"Joker. Returning to the scene of the crime?" Low and malevolent, his voice, Akechi's voice with barely a trace of distortion, will sound in Ren's ear as if they were embracing. And it will be clearest of all that this, rather than anywhere else, is the place that broken confidant bond is anchored.

Ren takes a shaky breath. Raoul doesn't move, but a phantom hand on his shoulder steadies him nonetheless.

"I just. Wanted to meet you. That's all."

The splintered shards of their shattered bond are almost tangible. If Ren reached out, he could cut his hands on them.

The Shadow's face screws up in disgust. If he had a pulse, he'd feel it pounding.

"Bullshit. You came down here to see your handiwork. To play your pitiful piece-of-shit guilt games with me!" He takes another silent step closer, on the control room's polished floor, feeling himself threaten to yawn wide open.

"What is it, am I your conscience now? Do you like what you see?" He throws his arms wide. "Do you have even the first inkling of what you did to me?"

Before he got here, he would have said yes, he knew. Now, he's not so sure. His instincts are screaming at him that he's in danger; he swallows hard and ignores them.

"Tell me, then. If you want."

Does Akechi's Shadow exist at home? It must, right? Everyone has a Shadow, unless Maruki's reality has changed that. Is he just like this? All the time?

Very well, then. All at once, lips twisted with hate, he raises his hands in Ren's direction. The black of his gloves—or are they gloves?—moves, with a vicious, viscid shimmer.

Thick ropes fly out of him, jet black and oozing, like the shit Shadows leave behind when they die. Faster than the eye can see, they make a beeline for Ren.

And Ren is on edge, expecting an attack, but the misery of seeing Akechi like this weighs so heavily on him that his reaction time is just a little slower than it could be. He twists to the side but only manages to fall against the—ropes, tentacles, he doesn't know—whatever they are, they cage him in on either side, restricting his movement.

Trapped, he calls on Raoul, and a riot gun cascades down from the ceiling in a burst of golden chaos, targeted not at Akechi but at the black things keeping Ren in place. At the same time, he draws his dagger and tries to slash at them. His body thrums with adrenaline and fear; a sharper, more painful fear than he's ever felt in the Metaverse before, except for one time in December, in the engine room of Shido's Palace.

But the black ropes the Shadow shot from his heart last only long enough to make his point; with a loud, snapping sound as they cut through the air, they retreat back into him. He comes closer, spitting rage, scratched and barely caring.

"You see? You're as blind and as stupid as you ever were! I spoonfeed your answers to you, and you ignore them! Or you kill them, which is the same, isn't it?" His lips have drawn back, and his teeth, rather than looking human, have a metallic gleam. Three metres separate them now, no more.

"What do you think Maruki did to me, when he had me in Mementos? How do you think he controls that puppet you made, that has my face?"

Ren holds his dagger in a white-knuckled grip, balanced on the balls of his feet to ready himself to dodge again. His heart races with fear, and as Akechi talks, that fear only grows.

"I don't—I didn't know," he manages, aware as he says it of how utterly inadequate it is. But it's all he has to offer. His skin crawls at the image Akechi's Shadow presents. "I just thought... But if that's how it works, why hasn't he. Changed back, or something? Now that you're not..."

It isn't lost on him that the Akechi aboveground is different than he is back home. But he's more different still than he was before Ren made his decision. If Akechi's Shadow has to be... puppeted, or something... to make him that way, shouldn't he have changed more?

The Shadow's whole face twists with loathing. "What happens to any stupid animal, when you train it? Before long, you don't have to train it any more."

He steps closer. All the while, he's never looked away. "I wish I'd known before. What it feels like to be a Shadow. It's like I'm a frame for nothing at all. A pretty void with a shell of skin. Or maybe that's just me, hm?" he adds, with a sour little laugh.

"Maybe it's not surprising, after I came here. After all the shit Maruki skewered me with was gone. That must have left a few holes." And, very close to Ren now, he finally looks down at his hand, as the black leather shifts and twists, as it lazily elongates and contracts in place. "I'd say you're lucky I'm not vindictive, but we both know that's a fucking lie."

Edited 2024-02-26 00:11 (UTC)

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