Archive of Our Own

I'll tell you where the real road lies:

Between your ears, behind your eyes.

That is the path to Paradise,

Likewise, the road to ruin.

     -Wait for Me II (Hadestown)

I know, you never intended to be in this world.

But you're in it all the same.

     So why not get started immediately.

     -The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac (Mary Oliver)

 

Ren was turning to leave. The smart thing would be to take the answers he’d been given, turn around, and walk away. After all, he’d won, right? They’d done it. Maruki had been defeated, his false world would fade away, and Ren could go home and take a well-earned nap. But he’d never really had learned to leave well enough alone, had he? Never learned how to give up on a lost cause.

“What about Akechi?” he said.

“What more is there to say about him?” said Lavenza. “He is gone. That is the deal you made, is it not? It’s a little late to go back on that now.”

“I’m not going back on my deal,” said Ren. “If Maruki were here right now I would still give him the same answer.”

“Then what is it you would have us do?” said Igor.

“Reality is weird right now, right?” he said. “More flexible, like it was after we fought Yaldaboath. Morgana said that when it was like that, we could change things just by believing.”

“Joker…” Lavenza’s voice was soft, pitying, and he hated it. He didn’t want to hear about how sad it was, how tragic, how it was too bad but there was nothing to be done. There was always something that could be done, it was just that usually no one realized, or no one was willing to do it, so it fell to him.

“No,” he said. “We brought Morgana back by remembering him, why should Akechi be any different?”

“Death is a necessary part of life,” she said. “It comes to everyone, and someday, as dark a day as that will be, it will come to you.”

“I don’t care,” said Ren, realizing that what he was feeling was anger, sudden and righteous and powerful. “You do have the power, and you owe us this. We saved the world, twice over. I saved the world, because you used me. You owe me this.”

“The world being safe from ruin could be considered its own reward,” said Igor, sounding so unconvinced and so uncaring that Ren briefly considered attempting a second deicide.

“Which is why I never asked for anything,” he said. He hadn’t even thought about it, honestly, but he couldn’t tell if it was out of altruism or because he had just been so tired. “But you used me to win this game for you. And his whole life was ruined, destroyed, for that. I know the world isn’t fair, but this is one thing that you can do to balance the scales. If you really want the world to be better than it was, better than Yaldaboath wanted it to be, isn’t it a step towards that better world if there are second chances for people who were never given a first chance?”

“I was not the one who picked either of you,” said Igor, “nor the one who decided to play a game with the fate of the world.”

“Yeah, but if you’re really that powerful, you have a responsibility to fix his mess,” said Ren, “and that means making things right with the kids he used and then threw away.”

Igor and Lavenza exchanged a long, significant glance, and then Igor nodded. “Very well,” he said. “If you truly think that Goro Akechi will allow you to save him, you’re welcome to try. But we are not the only ones you need to convince.”

“It should be possible, as long as you trust each other,” said Lavenza. “You will need to lead him out of what is left of Mementos and back to the surface. Once you leave this place, you won’t be able to look at him or touch him until you return to your world,” she said. “The only way he can return is if you believe strongly enough that he will.”

“What about talking?” he said. “Can I speak to him?” Can he speak to me, was what he really wanted to ask, but he didn't think anything was powerful enough to make Goro stop talking.

“Yes, that should be fine,” she said, less certainly that he would like. “After all, with how unstable this world is becoming, I believe that Mementos itself will attempt to turn your own senses against you. Now go. He shouldn’t be too hard to find. And good luck.” And with that he was dismissed, and Lavenza and Igor went back to exchanging significant glances with each other that he found incredibly ominous and did not particularly want to decipher.

He started towards the cells where he’d once found the rest of his friends, and it felt like so long ago now even though it had only been a few months, but before he made it very far down the corridor he saw Goro, sitting casually on the steps, leaning back on his elbows as if he had nowhere else to be. In a way, he kind of didn’t, but that wasn’t a line of thought Ren wanted to pursue right now. Couldn’t afford to pursue, if he didn’t want this to be the last he ever saw of him. He was wearing his Black Mask outfit, but his helmet was off, set on the step next to him, and somehow the juxtaposition of his face, his messily tied back hair, with the jagged lines of the armor around his neck made him look strangely younger and more vulnerable.

“Fancy meeting you here,” said Goro, as Ren drew closer, ascending the stairs to sit on the step beside him.

“What, thought you’d finally seen the last of me?”

“You know I know you’re not that easy to get rid of,” said Goro, with a lazy smirk. “Me, on the other hand…”

“Finally admitting I’m better than you at something?”

“Maybe I’m the one who wins,” he said, “by being able to disappear.”

“Is that what you want?”

“Since when has that mattered?” he said. “More to the point, this is the choice I made.”

“What if there was another way?”

He laughed derisively, lips curling in a sneer. “What, accepting Maruki’s offer ? Isn’t it a little late for second-guessing that? Not that I would allow you to do something so stupid anyway.”

“No,” Ren said. “I wouldn’t do that to you. But what if there was a way for you to survive without him, without the deal or anything? No conditions, no strings.”

“There’s always a price,” Goro said, “and if you can’t see it, that’s just because it’s too well hidden. Or you’re a sucker.”

“Only for you,” said Ren, before he could stop himself.

“Take this seriously,” said Goro. “What do you mean, there’s another way?” 

Ren tried his best to explain, though he didn’t entirely understand it himself, and when he finished his explanation, Goro was watching him, eyes narrowed, lips pressed into a thin line, and Ren couldn’t tell if the expression on his face was disappointment or something closer to interest. “Hm,” he said. “I suppose that could work. But explain to me how this is any different from what Maruki did. How am I not just trading one debt for another?”

Ren’s jaw dropped. “I wouldn’t- I’m not- I care about you!”

“I’m sure Maruki thought he cared about all of us.”

“That’s not what this is about,” he said, “and if you really want me to leave you here then I’ll drop it but please just hear me out.” He paused, heart in his throat, fidgeting with the cuffs of his gloves, trying to pick his words carefully. Not that he didn’t usually do that, unless he was being a snarky back-talking asshole on purpose, but he only had one chance at this. Or rather, he’d already used up all his previous chances: all those months ago when he’d offered Goro a place at his side instead of ending their budding relationship after stealing Sae’s heart (knowing that really what he was asking for was for him to change his mind, to not betray them, to stay with him); later, in the engine room, begging for him to stop fighting and accept that he wasn’t unforgivable and just come home; the day before when he’d tried to convince him that even if they could never take Maruki’s offer it wasn’t because his life had no value. But he wouldn’t get another moment like this one.

“I’m listening,” Goro said, eyebrow raised, sitting up and crossing his arms.

“I care about you,” he said again, quieter this time. “I think that you deserve another chance, to live your own life. To actually have a life. And I don’t want to lose you again.”

“Yeah, sure,” said Goro. “And how would your friends feel if they could hear you now? You know as well as I do they’d be perfectly happy to let me rot.”

“Clearly you’re not as perceptive as you think you are,” said Ren, “because that’s not even a little bit true. I’m not the only one who cares. Sure, the rest of the Thieves were kinda weird around you this past month, but that’s because you never spent time with us. Any time we were together you acted like you didn’t wanna be there and it’s hard to be friends with someone who’s trying so hard to be so distant. What, did you think that would make it hurt less when you died again or would it just have been too much effort to keep up the lie?” He realized that he was raising his voice, the words spilling out of him uncontrollably, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. “It wasn’t easy or fun for anyone, watching you die. No one was happy about it. We fucking mourned you.” His voice cracked, and he fell silent, waiting.

“Oh,” said Goro softly. “I didn’t think…”

“I’ve been trying to tell you,” Ren said, “but that’s your problem, you never listen to anyone else once you’ve decided you know what the truth is.” And then, quieter, pleading: “You never listen to me, not about this.”

“You’re the one person I always listen to,” Goro said. “I just don’t usually believe you. Or rather, I believe that you think you’re telling the truth and that you mean whatever sentimental shit you say about me, but none of it really means anything, other than that you have a massive fucking savior complex. That’s just not how life works. Or maybe it is for other people, but not for me.”

"Stop talking like that," said Ren. "Like you're not a person so the rules of ordinary society and relationships don't apply to you."

“Well, they don’t,” said Goro, matter-of-factly. “Since when have I ever operated according to everyone else’s rules?”

“Literally all the time,” Ren snapped, “considering how much you cared about your image.”

“Point,” he said, “but I’m still not wrong. Sure, fine, maybe you think you care about me right now, and maybe you really do. But for how long? Can you guarantee that if you save me today you won’t regret it tomorrow? Or the next day? Or a year from now? And you might say now that you have no intention of ever using this as leverage but how can you guarantee that you’ll never change your mind? And don’t say because you would never do something like that, or because you love me or whatever bullshit. I’ve seen enough of the terrible things people do despite and because of love to know that doesn’t mean anything. After all, I love you and where has that ever gotten us?”

Ren took a moment to collect his thoughts after that, feeling like he’d been punched in the gut, because of course Goro would tell Ren that he loved him for the first time in order to win an argument at his own expense.

“It’s fine if you never want to see me again after we return,” Ren said. “It’s your life, and you should get to decide what to do with it. Yeah, I would prefer to be part of it but that’s- I’m not doing this because I want some mindless puppet boyfriend with your face. If I were that kind of person I would’ve taken Maruki’s deal and you’d be right to hate me for it.” He started to reach out to take his hand, but Goro’s hand balled into a fist against his leg, and the spikes on his knuckles were as clear a don’t touch signal as Ren had ever seen, so he shoved his own hands into his pockets instead, trying to shove down his desperation and blink back the tears in his eyes. “Please, I don’t know how to convince you that I just want you to have a chance to be happy but… I promise that’s all that’s happening here. I know, I know, you don’t trust that kind of thing, but have I ever broken a promise to you before?” His voice broke on the word promise and he couldn’t even bring himself to feel embarrassed about it.

“No,” Goro said, thoughtfully. “No, you haven’t. Maybe you truly are an exception. I suppose if anyone could change my mind it would be you. Or maybe I should say, change my heart.” He paused, looking a little self-satisfied about the incredibly obvious double meaning, but before Ren could respond he said, “Don’t get defensive, I know that’s not what you’re doing. It’s just that it’s much easier to trust someone’s intentions when you know what they want.”

“I want whatever you want,” Ren said. “I want to know what it is that you really want, if you have a chance to actually want things for yourself. I want you to have a chance to figure that out. You deserve that much, and more.”

“Since when does anyone get what they deserve?” he said, voice hollow, and he looked, abruptly, so incredibly tired. “The world isn’t fair, or hadn’t you noticed?”

“Why do you think I almost died trying to make it just a little bit fairer?” Ren said. “Why do you think I killed a god, if I didn’t notice that there was something wrong with the world that I had to try to make right, at least a little bit, however I can? And now the thing that I can do is make sure you have a second chance-”

“You already gave me a second chance,” Goro said, “and a third, and I threw them both back in your face.”

“That’s not how I remember any of that,” Ren said. “It wasn’t your-”

“If you say it wasn’t my fault I swear I’ll-” He stopped himself halfway through the threat, as if he realized what he was saying, and he was glaring but Ren didn’t think he was the one Goro was angry at.

“Anyway,” Ren said, when he realized Goro wasn’t going to say anything more, “the point is, this is something I can do, and it won’t make everything right and it won’t make everything fair but it’s a start, and you can say it doesn’t matter all you want but it matters to me. You matter to me.”

“Is that so,” he said, a strange note in his voice that Ren couldn’t quite read. “You really think that you can do this, huh?”

“That we can do this,” Ren corrected. “What, now you’re deciding that I’m not good enough to be your rival? Or are you the one that you’re doubting?”

Goro laughed at that. “Fine,” he said. “So that’s how you want to play this.” And then he stood up, flashed Ren a competitive grin, and said, “Let’s get started.”

Mementos looked different than it had even earlier that day, with Maruki’s tentacles running through it, different than it ever had before, and Goro liked to think he knew the depths of Mementos better than anyone, even Ren. After all, he’d had it to himself for years, and for years it had been more his home than the sterile studio apartment in his name paid for by Shido’s blood money.

But now it was… glitching, almost, or that was the closest way he could think to describe it, like a first-person game where the map hadn’t loaded yet, as if there were patches of wall or ceiling or track that didn’t exist anymore, with nothing behind them except more nothingness. And it kept shifting. Not moving, or at least it didn’t feel that way, but if he took his eyes off of the ground in front of his feet, it was different when he looked back. The only thing that stayed constant was Ren, and only when he really concentrated. If he let his focus slip even a little bit, the black of Ren’s coat started blurring and fading into the darkness around them, and even though Goro’s legs were just as long as Ren’s it was still somehow a struggle to keep up, but he refused to ask Ren to slow down.

As if he knew what Goro was thinking, or maybe he just realized how much space there was between them, he said, quietly, almost like he didn’t really expect an answer, “Are you still here?”

“What, you thought I would give up that quickly?” said Goro.

“I know you better than that,” Ren said.

“Is that so?” he said, because picking an argument was easier than admitting that Ren was right.

“Yeah,” Ren said. “I’ve never known you to give up on anything, even when it would be the safer or healthier option, so I really don’t think you’re going to stop now.”

“Ren, I just tried to convince you that I’d be better off if I stayed dead.” Just for an instant, he was back in the engine room of his father’s ship, alarm echoing off the metal walls, and he tasted blood. And then he blinked, and shook his head, and brought himself back to the present. Ren was right, partially. He was only functional when he had a goal, and ‘stay alive’ was too vague to be much use in that regard.

“Yeah, but now that you’ve set your mind to it, I think you’re too stubborn to give up.”

“Hmph,” Goro said, not arguing the point any further, as if to prove to Ren that actually he could drop something.

They walked in silence for a few minutes, or hours, he honestly couldn’t tell. All he knew was that he didn’t know where they were, and he should have, and he absolutely hated it, but he assumed Ren somehow knew the right direction to walk or they were both fucked. Ren had an annoying knack of seeing the truth of a situation, either because he was incredibly perceptive or absurdly lucky, so Goro figured he could probably get them out if anyone could. It was getting even more difficult to focus, though, and he was finding it harder and harder to see. It wasn’t that it was getting dark, exactly, but like they were walking through some strange thick fog, shifting and swirling so that when Goro blinked he was never sure he was still going to see Ren in front of him when he opened his eyes.

“Hey, Goro?”

“Yes, I’m still here,” Goro snapped.

“I know,” Ren said, so hurt that Goro felt bad for immediately getting defensive. “That wasn’t what I was going to say.”

“Oh,” he said, feeling off-balance without his usual conversational scripts to fall back on. Without playing the part of the television-ready child prodigy or the unfailingly obedient employee, all that was left were the sharp edges of a maladjusted wreck who didn’t know how to interact with anyone who wasn’t either a mark or a threat. “What is it?”

“I just want you to know that-”

But Goro didn’t get a chance to hear whatever Ren wanted him to know, because as he was speaking a shadow, big, ugly, and menacing, appeared between them—how had they gotten so far apart again, Goro thought he’d closed the gap more than that—and he said, sharply, “Joker. Don’t move.” He said it as he raised his gun and clicked the safety off, which he realized almost immediately wasn’t the most comforting thing to say in that context to someone he had shot at for real multiple times. But he wanted to attack first, before the shadow got in any hits on Ren, before Ren tried to turn around to defend himself, so he didn’t let himself think about it too much and took the shot.

Ren flinched as the shot rang out, though he couldn’t tell if it was the gunshot or the sudden splatter of blood on the back of his neck. “Thanks.”

“Anytime,” he said, and then, as an inadequate afterthought, as if he wasn’t trying to patch over things that no simple apology could even begin to fix: “Sorry.”

“You’re fine,” Ren said, with a shaky laugh. “Little more warning next time might be nice, though.”

They walked on in silence for the next few minutes, long enough for Goro to realize that they weren’t walking in silence. In the shifting mist around them, he could swear he heard voices. At first he couldn’t quite make out the words, just vague impressions of sound in the approximate rhythm of sentences, and then he began to recognize the voices. His voices, or close enough that he could tell that’s what they were meant to be, all of them so shallow and vapid, like the facades he had used, as if he was hearing himself the way other people heard him. Which, he realized with a jolt, was probably exactly what was happening. Mementos was fueled by public perception, after all. And oh, how the public had perceived him.

“Look at me, pretty enough to be an idol.”

“But I think it’s funny when girls break their hearts over me.”

“Smart enough to be top of my class and stupid enough to think that actually means anything in the real world.”

“So righteous and good and just. Almost too good to be true.”

“Definitely too good to be true. I wonder if anyone will be able to figure out what I’m hiding.”

“Solving crimes and uncovering evil, all while going to high school. Who do I think I am, Sailor Moon?”

“Pretty enough to be a girl. Of course people are starting to wonder…”

“Shut up,” he said, swinging his blade pointlessly at the mist. “Not you, Ren.”

Ren’s neck stiffened but he didn’t turn around. “Yeah, I figured.”

“It’s the… do you hear them too?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I was hoping you didn’t. I thought this was supposed to be my test.”

“When will you learn that not everything is about you?” He said it instinctively, with a bitterness he didn’t really feel, that he truthfully hadn’t felt in months. He knew Ren didn’t ask for any of this, any more than he had. Less than he had, in fact, and that Ren had just made the best of the situation in a way that Goro had never been allowed to.

“Obviously, everything should always be about us ,” said his voice, in the conceited tones of the Second Coming of the Detective Prince. “We’re the star of the show.” Goro ignored him.

“When I stop being singled out for impossible tasks by powerful beings beyond human understanding?” said Ren.

“You have a point,” said Goro. And then, with curiosity, along with the need to distract himself from the voices of the shadows, getting the better of him: “Are they the same for you as they are for me? For me it’s just… myself, kind of.”

“I hear myself, too,” Ren said. “I think it’s us as they see us. The media, the cops, our fans, everyone who hates us. Shared cognition or whatever.”

“Disappointing, isn’t it?” Goro said. “Can’t believe we’re on some fairy tale journey from the underworld and the best this place can throw at us is the supernatural equivalent of reading our Twitter mentions.”

“Don’t,” said Ren. “Don’t try to make a joke of this. We- they sound awful. People really hate us. They think you’re-”

“Oh, I know what they think,” Goro said, with a humorless laugh. “I’ve always known.”

“Does knowing they’re wrong about you make it any easier?” said Ren. “It didn’t, for me.” Of course it wouldn’t. Ren had worried, constantly about whether or not he was doing the right thing. Of course no amount of self-confidence could erase the doubt he felt when the public hated him for everything he sacrificed for them.

“No,” Goro said. “What makes it easier is knowing that they were right, because I wanted them to be.”

“Yes, because we always get what we want,” said another version of himself, this one snide and arrogant.

“Goro…”

“Don’t,” he said. “I know how that sounds.”

“It sounds like you’re lying to yourself,” said his voice, smugly, and if it had a face Goro would punch it. No wonder none of his classmates could stand him, if that’s how he sounded in real life. “I would know.”

“No, it’s not that,” said Ren, suddenly standing still, and Goro had to stop short not to run into him. He wondered if that would count as breaking whatever deal Ren had struck. Better not to risk it. “I mean, that too, you can’t use your self-hatred as an excuse to avoid actually dealing with your problems forever, but…”

“Ouch,” Goro said. “Why don’t you tell me how you really feel?”

“Sorry, that was harsh,” Ren said, “but…”

“Not inaccurate, though,” said one of the voices, and Goro, for once, agreed with himself.

“It’s just,” Ren continued, “I can’t see the way forward anymore.”

“Metaphorically?” said Goro. “Because that sounds like a question for a counselor, an actual one, not Maruki, or maybe a parent, if you happen to have parents you can talk to about that sort of thing. I wouldn’t know.”

“Goro, I literally cannot see in front of me,” said Ren, and he felt a little guilty for being flippant once he heard the edge of panic in Ren’s voice.

“Ah,” Goro said. “I… understand.”

“I take it that’s just a me problem, then?”

“Looks like,” Goro confirmed. “At the very least, it doesn’t seem to have affected me yet. But it could be centered on you because, as you said, this is your trial.”

“I think I would be able to see behind me,” said Ren, “if I looked back. I can see a little, out of the edges of my vision.”

Part of Goro wanted to suggest trying to maneuver so that they could both turn around and go back the way they came. Maybe there was another way to the surface. Even as he thought it, though, he knew that was ridiculous. The only way out of Mementos had only ever been up, unless you were Ren and a god plucked you out for his own reasons, and with the sadistic dream logic that had taken hold of the place today, he wouldn’t have been surprised if the only direction Ren would be able to see was toward Goro. The only thing he would be allowed to see was failure.

“Can you tell me where to go?” Ren said. “You can see the way forward, so you can just tell me what to do.”

“Of course,” said Goro, instead of what he wanted to say, which was, how can you just say that like it means nothing to you, like it costs you nothing to ask for help from someone you shouldn’t trust at all, let alone with your life? But what he really meant, or would have, if he’d said it, was: if it were the other way around, I don’t think I could let anyone lead me, not even you.

“Right,” Ren said. “Okay. We can do this. Is it safe to walk straight ahead?”

When is it ever? “For about two steps,” said Goro, “and then there’s a bit of a turn, and I can’t see clearly beyond that.

“It would be so easy to lead him astray,” said his own horrible, pretentious voice from the shadows. “No effort at all, really. After all, in order to lie convincingly to one’s friend, one first has to lie to oneself. And we’ve always been rather good at that .”

“Not like we haven’t done it before,” said a different version of his voice, this one dismissive, like he thought he was too good for anyone. “We’re always lying, to everyone. Even our adoring fans. They were so betrayed when it turned out we were wrong about the Phantom Thieves. It wasn’t hard to figure out we had some kind of hidden agenda. After all, we told them over and over again how clever we were, how perceptive. Either we were lying about that and we were actually a fool, or we were truly despicable and without morals.”

It was fair, probably, that a significant section of the population saw him as someone who never shut the fuck up, but that didn’t make it any less irritating.

“Just a little further left,” Goro said, and then, hastily, when Ren almost stepped forward directly into the wall. “No, further than that.”

“Thanks,” said Ren, narrowly avoiding clipping the wall with his shoulder. “What next?”

“Kind of gradually back to the right,” Goro said. “But the path is getting much steeper.”

“Maybe we’re getting closer to the surface?”

“Maybe,” Goro said. “Watch your head, the ceiling gets lower here.”

“Of course you’re not getting closer,” said a more mocking version of his voice, smug and unpleasant. “There’s no way out. There never was.”

“There’s a fork ahead,” said Goro. “You’re going to need to veer left again, it looks like the right path leads back down. No, further left. Right now you’re heading directly toward the wall in the middle.”

“Good to know,” said Ren, overcorrecting and turning too sharply.

“Now you’re a little too far left,” Goro said.

“Oops,” said Ren. “This better?”

“Yes,” said Goro. “Just go straight.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that before,” said Ren, and Goro, startled by the joke, snorted inelegantly.

“Believe me,” said Goro, strangely emboldened by the knowledge that Ren couldn’t turn around and see the look on his face, “that’s not a request I would make of you in any other circumstances.”

“Ha,” Ren said. “I would hope not.”

“What’s the point of this?” said the shadows. “He knows there’s nothing real about us worth knowing, let alone liking.”

“In about five steps, you’re going to take another right, and the ground is going to level out,” said Goro, studiously ignoring the voices, which were sounding less and less like the ways the public perceived him and more like the ways he perceived himself. Well, he was technically a member of the public. And he’d spent more time in Mementos than anyone, so maybe it made sense that his thoughts had more influence on it than anyone else’s. Or maybe it didn’t make sense, but it was happening anyway. Dream logic, and all that.

“Cool,” said Ren. “You know, in a way it’s kind of nice making someone else call the shots.”

“Is it?” said Goro, who always assumed that Ren led the Phantom Thieves because he liked being the one in control, or didn’t like having anyone else in control of him, which wasn’t the same thing even if Goro liked to pretend it was. Not that Ren ever lorded his authority over anyone else, but it was there nonetheless in the way the others looked to him before making a decision, the way they listened when he spoke and oriented their movements around him.

“Yeah,” said Ren. “It is. It’s not that I mind giving advice or helping people, I do like it, but sometimes I get so tired of having to know the answer.” He said it quietly, like a confession, like admitting to something he didn’t think he should be allowed to feel.

“He’s trying to say he’s tired of helping you when you’re so ungrateful.”

“No, I’m not!” said Ren indignantly, and Goro thought for a moment that he could hear Goro’s voices too, in addition to his own. “Sorry, it’s just frustrating to hear your own voice lying to you.”

“We’re used to that, though,” said the shadows, helpfully, so that Goro didn’t have to.

“He’s trying to say that I don’t want to help you, and I need you to know that’s not true,” said Ren. “As much as it’s sometimes a relief that you ask so little of me, at first, I think I felt kinda threatened by that. Like, if you didn’t need me to help you, then I had to find some other reason for you to keep me around. And so, the whole rivalry thing. Now, I just kind of wish you’d let me help you because I care.”

“I know,” said Goro. “But you know why I couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t?” Ren said, and Goro could picture the small, hopeful smile that went along with that tone. “Not can’t?”

“We’ll see,” Goro said, “if we make it back to the surface. Left turn, forty-five degree angle.”

“Thanks,” said Ren. “We will.”

“We won’t,” said Goro’s voice, smug and cheerful. “How could we? We don’t even want to be saved, and not just because we’ve always wanted to do everything ourselves. Just give up and turn back now, instead of dragging out this farce any longer. He’s resourceful, he’ll find his own way back, and it will probably be even easier without you distracting him.”

“Or,” said another, harsher voice, “you could keep him here with you. Why should he survive if you can’t?”

The voices of uncertainty, almost definitely part of the test that they had to pass to escape together and alive, might’ve been more convincing if they hadn’t been his. Didn’t whoever designed that realize how powerful a motivator spite could be, or how much Goro hated the versions of himself they were trying to use against him? They were him, or parts of him, and he knew that and he accepted that but it didn’t mean he liked the people he had been.

Even with the spite, though, there was still part of him that was tempted to give in. Not because he believed any of the bullshit they were telling him, but because he was so tired. He didn’t know who he would be, without any of the obstacles he’d been defining himself in opposition to, and it just sounded like so much effort to figure out a different person to become. He’d been fighting for so long, against foster families and teachers and societal expectations, against Shido and Maruki and the Phantom Thieves and his own better impulses, and he didn’t know how else to live.

If that even truly counted as living. If that’s all life was, he wasn’t sure he wanted it. After all, it hadn’t exactly turned out well for him, or anyone around him, the first time around. But if there was a chance there was more to life, something he couldn’t even imagine, something he’d only ever play-acted at, caught tiny glimpses of during his time with Ren and his friends, didn’t he owe it to himself to try to find out?

He wasn’t in the habit of repaying debts to himself unless they involved revenge, and even that one had been a failure and a disappointment, but maybe he could give it a try. When they got back to the surface.

“Yeah,” said Goro, “we will.” And then, when Ren’s steps faltered: “Another right turn, approximately thirty degrees.”

“I know,” Ren said. “I can see it. I think we did it. Whatever that was meant to prove, we got through it. Also,” he added, and Goro realized with a sharp pang that he wished he could see the satisfied grin on Ren’s face that usually accompanied that tone of voice, “it’s more like twenty-five degrees.”

“Shut up and walk,” said Goro.

“Whatever you say.”

“You know I forgive you, right?” Ren said, after a few moments of semi-comfortable silence. Even though his vision had returned, he still couldn’t see especially well, and it was taking most of his concentration to keep finding the way forward.

“Do we have to do this now ?”

“What, are you busy?” Ren sighed. “I guess I’ve just been thinking about how close I came to missing my chance to tell you that. Mostly because you wouldn’t let me.”

“You don’t need to say it,” Goro said. “I’m not- it’s not something I’ve been waiting for.”

In the aftermath of- everything that had happened to him at the end of November, Ren kept getting caught up on details that were, or should have been, insignificant. He couldn’t stop wondering if Goro had realized he wasn’t real before he pulled the trigger. On one hand it shouldn’t matter, because he’d done it anyway. But on the other hand, if he didn’t know, why didn’t he know? Ren was aware that probably wasn’t the question he should be asking himself after his ex-boyfriend (Had they even properly been dating? They’d definitely been going on dates, but they’d both always danced around actually trying to define what they were to each other.) tried to kill him. Still, he couldn’t help but feel a little bit offended, in some strange way, that someone he’d tried so hard to get through to didn’t know him well enough to tell the difference between the real thing and a cognitive copy made by someone who barely knew him at all.

Then again, was it really Goro’s fault for not knowing him, when he’d always gone so far out of his way to avoid being known? And did he have any room to judge Goro for his facades and his constant performance, when Ren was doing the same thing himself? Different methods, different motivations, but the end result left him lonely all the same. For Ren, it was about trying to be whoever the person he was with needed him to be, because without that there wasn’t much about him worth knowing, just a plain, boring kid from a plain, boring town and a plain, boring family. It wasn’t true, obviously, and his friends were trying their best to show him that he was wrong, but half a year of friendship couldn’t undo half a lifetime of neglect. What it could do was make him realize just how much better it could be, how much better he wanted to be, even if he hadn’t quite gotten there yet.

So he had forgiven Goro for that first, and after that, he realized that he could forgive him for the rest of it too. Too bad Goro wasn’t to hear that.

“Yeah, well,” said Ren, “too bad. I’m forgiving you whether you want me to or not.”

“Don’t I get a say in this?” Goro said. “We are talking about me , after all.”

“No, not really,” said Ren. “You don’t get to tell me how to feel about you.”

“I thought you liked it when I told you what to do?” said Goro, and Ren could practically hear the smirk in his voice. “Kidding. It’s just, you know how particular I am about, well-”

“Everything?”

“Yeah,” Goro said. “I was going to say ‘my image’ or maybe ‘how people perceive me’ but you’re not incorrect. You know, it was easier before, when I thought you just liked me because I wanted you to. I told you I was your ally, and you agreed and kept me close. I told you I was pleasant and thoughtful and just damaged enough to be interesting, and you brought me even closer. And then I told you that we were enemies and you…”

“And I said, fuck that,” Ren said. “And you’re not giving me nearly enough credit, just so that you can, what, make yourself look worse? I knew what I was getting myself into with you. And like I said, you don’t get to tell me that I’m supposed to hate you. I don’t, I never did and I never will, and you’re just gonna have to get used to it.”

“I suppose I will,” said Goro. “Well, I guess there will be time for that.”

“Yeah.”

The walls were shifting around them, and it was once again growing more and more difficult for Ren to see anything clearly. Before, everything had gone dark suddenly, so he was pretty sure it wasn’t the same thing happening again. Also, they’d make it through that test, and surely a nightmare realm had to be too creative to pull the same trick twice. If he didn’t know better, didn’t know that the weirdness was the result of being in a rapidly collapsing alternate dimension, he would’ve thought the strange fog clouding his vision was because his glasses were dirty.

“You’re seeing this, right?”

“Not seeing, more like,” said Goro, his voice sounding distant and muffled. “It’s getting foggier for you too?”

“Yeah,” Ren said. “I’m not sure if this is a good sign or not.”

“Me neither,” said Goro. “Nothing to do but go forward, I guess.” The fog was thicker, and Ren was no longer sure if he was hearing Goro’s footsteps over the sound of his own footsteps and the beating of his heart, frantic in his chest. But he had to still be there. There was no way he would’ve stopped or turned back, not now. But what if he’d been swallowed by the fog, or taken a wrong turn, or been dragged away by a shadow, and Ren hadn’t noticed, hadn’t stepped in to help? What if he was in trouble, and all Ren had to do to find out was turn around and look for him?

But he didn’t. He couldn’t. If he trusted Goro, and he did, he had to trust him to be able to find his way, and he had to trust that when Goro said he would follow him, then he meant it.

And then Ren took another step, and another, and with each step the fog seemed lighter, and Goro’s footsteps sounded louder behind him. “Does it seem lighter to you?” he called back. “I think we’re getting close.”

“A light at the end of the tunnel?” said Goro, and his voice definitely sounded closer: more real, less echoing, like it originated from an actual human mouth instead of drifting vaguely out of the darkness. “How original.”

“I’m serious,” Ren said. “And we’ve been walking for-” he didn’t actually know how long they’d been walking for, but it felt like a long time, long enough that if time and distance had any actual meaning they ought to have reached the surface by now. But Mementos didn’t obey the rules of what was physically possible at the best of times, and disintegrating after months of warping under the control of a wannabe god was not the best of times. “Anyway, I think we should probably reach the top soon.”

“Is that what you think,” said Goro, “or is that what you want to happen?”

“Why can’t those be the same thing?”

Goro let out a sharp exhale that might’ve been laughter but didn’t try to argue, for once. He didn’t say anything at all, for long enough that Ren was worried that the footsteps he was hearing were just the echoes of his own, until: “This once, I think you might be right. I can see the sky.” There was a note of something soft and fragile and hopeful in his voice, and for once Ren didn’t want to look at him out of a desire to give him privacy to experience unfamiliar emotions in his own time, unobserved, after spending so much of his life under an unforgiving microscope of scrutiny.

The fog was clearing faster now, and Ren stopped walking, no longer trusting the ground beneath his feet as what used to be Mementos crumbled, faded, the normally quick transition back into the real world gradual and stuttering. He blinked, trying to clear the haze from his vision, and when he opened his eyes again he could see a familiar skyline, still shrouded in mist—normal city smog or residual Mementos weirdness, he couldn’t tell—and silhouetted in the rosy dawn light. That couldn’t possibly be right. It had felt like ages since they’d left the Velvet Room but they’d gone into Maruki’s palace so early in the day, and he was tired but not ‘walked all night’ tired. But here he was, squinting into the sunrise, an ordinary concrete sidewalk beneath his feet.

“We made it,” he said, and then, when Goro didn’t immediately respond: “Right? You’re still here?” He wanted to turn around and look, to be sure, but he was so afraid.

“I’m still here,” Goro said, softly, like he couldn’t quite believe it himself, and Ren had never heard anything so beautiful. “I’m… alive?”

Ren squeezed his eyes shut, to resist the temptation to turn around, to look, just in case it was too soon, or it had all been a trick and he’d never been there all along, only his voice to taunt Ren and make him think he had hope. “We did it. We did it.”

“We did it,” Goro agreed, still sounding a little dazed, and Ren heard him approaching, heard his voice growing louder and his footsteps drawing nearer, and then he felt a hand take hold of his own, and Goro said, “Open your eyes.”

Ren looked at their hands first, at their gloved fingers laced together, and then at Goro’s shoulder, as the stripes of his Metaverse costume flickering and solidified into the soft beige of his winter coat, still too afraid to look at his face, taking him in piece by piece as if trying to look at him directly would break the spell. Then his hair, soft and smooth and highlighted with pink and gold as it caught the light of the sunrise, and then, finally, his face: lit by the soft glow of the sun, the hint of a smile on his lips as he turned his face towards Ren. “Oh,” Ren breathed. “You’re here.”

(x)

“You’re not rid of me yet,” said Goro, grinning, and Ren smiled back, squeezing his hand affectionately. Or he tried to, but he was having trouble feeling his fingers, and instead of Goro’s hand wrapped in his, he felt his hand close on empty space. Panicked, he looked down, expecting to see Goro fading away, thinking that they’d messed it up somehow, he’d messed it up, wasted Goro’s last second chance by looking back too soon. But Goro’s hand still looked perfectly solid, and it was his hand that looked strangely transparent, his body that was becoming increasingly less solid, and the tentatively hopeful smile on Goro’s face was replaced by raw panic. “Ren- you-”

“I don’t know,” said Ren, and his vision was blurring again as he tried desperately to keep his eyes focused on Goro’s face. “I’m so sorry, I thought-”

“So did I,” he said, and Ren hated how resigned he sounded, how quickly their moment of happiness, of triumph, had faded. All he could see was static, the faint impression of a face, and Goro’s voice sounded like it was coming from far away, as he said, “Ren, I-” and the rest was lost as his vision went grey and he was gone.

“Fuck,” said Goro, standing alone on the cold sidewalk, staring at the space where Ren had just vanished. “What the fuck.”

He took a minute to collect his thoughts, to glare at the empty stretch of pavement where Ren was supposed to be, but he needed to be doing something, even if he didn’t fully understand what was going on, why whatever deal Ren had made had gone sideways like this. And if Ren wasn’t here to help him figure it out, then at least he knew where he could probably find the next best thing.

The bell on the door jingled as he walked into Leblanc, which was unfortunate, because it meant that all of the Phantom Thieves, gathered around two of the tables in the otherwise empty cafe, all looked up to watch him walk in, which meant he got to see the looks of hope and then shattering disappointment on each and every one of their faces as they realized that it was him and not Ren who had returned to them. He almost turned around and walked right back out the door, but he didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of thinking they’d scared him away and besides, they were the people who were most likely to know where Ren was.

“Sorry for starting without you,” said Ann, the first to recover her senses. “We weren’t sure you were gonna make it. I mean…” Or maybe she was just the one most willing to put her foot in her mouth, but she kept talking, kept trying to salvage the interaction. “I mean it’s nice to see you! A nice surprise! Right?”

“Yeah, nice to see you!” said Sumire, while Makoto said, doubtfully, “Sure, but how…”

“Does it matter?” said Ryuji. “The important thing is that he’s fine, and now that he’s here he’s gotta have some kind of idea about how to help Ren.”

“What happened to him?” said Goro. “All I know is that we were-” together, he brought me back, he was holding my hand “-just out of Mementos and he suddenly disappeared.” I thought it was me at first, it was meant to be me, it was always meant to be me, leaving him first, never the other way around .

“He’s in prison,” said Ann gently.

“He was arrested,” said Yusuke, rather less gently.

“My sister said they needed someone to testify against Shido, and that meant revealing himself as a Phantom Thief,” said Makoto, almost apologetically.

“But I don’t understand,” said Ann. “He didn’t have to before.”

“Yeah, but maybe that was just because of Maruki’s whole wish thing,” said Ryuji. “Like, he didn’t wish for himself to be in prison so it didn’t happen.”

“I don’t think that’s quite it,” said Goro, realization dawning. “The reason he didn’t have to turn himself in last time is because I did in his place.”

“But you didn’t actually go to jail,” said Sumire. “I know we were all kind of out of it but we would’ve noticed that .”

“They let me go after a few days,” said Goro, waving his hand like it didn’t matter. It had felt like it mattered, at the time. “Some more of Maruki’s dream bullshit, but that’s not important right now. What’s important is-”

“Wait,” said Futaba, and everyone froze and fell silent at the sound of her voice, including Goro, who flinched, expecting some kind of recrimination that she definitely deserved to give him but that he wasn’t sure he could take right now. “If that’s what happened last time around, why are you here now and not him? Why didn’t you do that in reality? Unless-”

“It doesn’t matter,” he tried to say, hastily, but everyone was watching her, glued to her every word, which he supposed was fair enough since she was right.

“You were actually dead this whole time,” she ended triumphantly, pointing a finger at him like a prosecutor in a video game.

“Then how are you here now?” said Haru. “I thought that everyone brought back by Maruki had disappeared.” Her tone was flat, even, unreadable, but it was impossible not to hear an accusation there, all things considered.

“I don’t know,” he said, shrugging: a lie. “I’m as surprised as you are.” The truth.

“Yeah, I don’t buy that,” said Ryuji, because of course it was Ryuji, who believed Ren could do anything. “Ren did something, didn’t he?”

“ Apparently ,” said Goro, “there are moments when reality is more malleable than usually, and in those moments it’s possible to alter certain details. And since I never technically died in the real world, we were able to- look, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that Ren is in trouble.”

“Like when we brought Mona back!” said Ann. “That whole thing about, like, the real world being affected by cognition too.”

“Then why can’t we get Ren out of prison through whatever cognitive bullshit?” said Ryuji. “How does that even make sense?”

“That isn’t how cognitive psience works,” said Futaba. “It’s not as simple as just imagining something really hard.”

“It’s not fair,” said Sumire. “He doesn’t deserve any of this.”

“Yeah, hasn’t he been through enough?” said Ann. “Not that this has been fun for any of us but…”

“But especially for him,” said Makoto.

“Alright, fine,” said Goro, when he had heard enough, when he was tired of listening to the rest of them worry and complain about how unfair it was instead of doing anything, how could they just stand there not doing anything when he felt just about ready to jump out of his skin, he turned to leave. “It doesn’t look like you’re going to be able to do anything, so it seems that it’s up to me.”

But before he could walk out the door he felt a hand grab his wrist and tug him back, and he wrenched his arm away, instinctively about to smash his elbow down on the forearm of whoever was holding him and stopping just in time to avoid breaking Ryuji’s arm, remembering just in time that he was among, well, if not friends then at least not actively enemies.

“Sorry,” Ryuji said, backing away, holding his hands out with his palms up, voice gentle like he was soothing a frightened, wounded animal so that it didn’t lash out, and Goro hated being treated that way but more than that, he hated that he’d earned that, that given how he’d acted right before he died and how carefully he’d avoided letting any of them actually get close to him in the past month—except Ren, who always found a way in no matter how hard he tried to keep his distance—it was no wonder they treated him with this horrible mixture of pity and caution. He didn’t necessarily mind when people were afraid of him because at least it meant they took him seriously, which the Phantom Thieves categorically did not do since they’d already seen him at his worst and weakest.

Except none of that was entirely true, and maybe a few months ago he would’ve dismissed the expression on Ryuji’s face as pity and reacted accordingly—or with anger, anyway, which might not be the appropriate response to pity but it was the one he always found himself reaching for—but now he recognized it for what it was, and that shook him even worse. It was one thing to know that Ren cared about him. They were rivals, equals, two sides of the same unfortunate coin, and after an entire summer of dates and a winter of baring their souls to each other in a variety of mortifying ways, it was reasonable to care about each other. Ren knew him and understood him and liked him anyway, and he had made his peace with that and was perfectly willing to accept that Ren was the only exception.

Ryuji, though. Ryuji had no reason to care that he was alive, no wildcard solidarity, no red string of fate tied between them. Honestly, he would’ve expected Ryuji to care in the opposite direction and wish Goro dead as retribution for what he’d done to his best friend, but he’d come to realize in the past month that that just wasn’t who Ryuji was. Goro had seen his wide sunny smile and his obvious devotion to Ren and assumed that he was just Ren’s thoughtlessly loyal sidekick. It didn’t occur to him until much later that he’d misjudged him, and even later than that to realize that he’d been jealous.

“Sorry,” he said- mumbled, really, refusing to meet Ryuji’s eyes as he said it. And then, petulantly: “Fine, I’ll stay, if that’ll make you happy.”

“It will, actually,” Ryuji said. “Come on, sit down, have some curry, Boss made a bunch and there should still be some left.”

So he stayed, and let himself be steered toward a table with a bowl of curry shoved in front of his face, and Ryuji hovered anxiously, which Goro thought was a fairly transparent attempt for him to make himself feel better about the current situation, clumsily trying to help Goro since he couldn’t help Ren.

“You can still talk to people, probably,” Makoto said, picking up the thread of the earlier conversation. “Ann is going to talk to their homeroom teacher and see if she can get at least some of the faculty to make a fuss, Sae still has some legal contacts who might be willing to help…”

“I still have some influence with some of the company investors,” said Haru, directing her words toward Makoto even though Goro was the one who was being brought up to speed, which was fair and understandable—he couldn’t really blame her for being unhappy that he was the one who had been wished back to life and actually stayed alive when her father went back to being dead—if a little inefficient, “and I know it doesn’t feel especially ethical to use inherited wealth to subvert the criminal justice system-”

“The justice system subverted itself,” said Ryuji, “and kinda doesn’t deserve to be called that anyway.”

“-but it’s for a good cause!”

“Yeah, if you have all that money, you might as well use it to help people, right?” said Ann. “Like, ideally you could make it so that no one would be in prison but Ren is a good start!”

“Anyway,” said Makoto, cutting into what seemed to be a well-worn argument, “if there’s anyone you can think of who might be able to help…”

Goro opened his mouth and then closed it again before he could point out that he was legally dead, largely forgotten about, and had very few contacts who would still want to talk to him and could be trusted not to kill him, Ren, or both. Instead, he said, “He has that friend who’s a reporter, right? She gave me her card once, so maybe I can talk to her.” She interrupted us on a date, he didn’t say, because he didn’t know how much Ren had told his friends about them and he was too tired to deal with defusing that particular bomb today. That could be Ren’s problem, once he got out of prison. They were, after all, his friends.

“Great!” said Ann. “So that’s settled then! You can go track down that reporter, she’s a good person to know!”

“Great,” he echoed. “Can I go now?”

“As long as you’re not going to do anything stupid,” said Ryuji. “You’re not, right? Ren would be pissed. Also, what kind of friends would we be if we let you get yourself in trouble?”

“Hmph,” said Goro, but there was a strange sort of warmth in his chest that stayed with him even as he stepped back out into the cold winter morning.

They were all there, waiting for him, when Sojiro brought him home, and how strange it was to have a place that feels like a home and friends who feel like family, despite being the attic of a cafe and a collection of delinquents of whom his parents would almost certainly disapprove. Sojiro had asked, hesitantly, skirting around the edges of Ren’s trauma, if he’d wanted to see his friends right away, and Ren appreciated both the offer and the hesitation. Left to his own devices, he wouldn’t have told anyone, instead preferring to hide for a little while longer inside his own head, but he also knew that if he were allowed to do that he’d never want to re-emerge, so even though he didn’t know where he would find the energy to hold a conversation, wasn’t sure if he could even remember the words and the motions, he told Sojiro to invite everyone over.

He gave Sojiro his phone, almost smiling when he imagined Sojiro attempting to participate in the wild experience that was the extended Phantom Thieves group chat with his old man typing style and his limited grasp on the concept of emojis, and the way that Futaba would tease him relentlessly. Futaba, at least, would definitely understand his desire for space, and would also understand that it wasn’t always healthy to be given as much space as he thought he wanted. All of his friends would be understanding, would try their best to do whatever he needed, but still he was concerned, wasn’t sure what he would say to them when he saw them again. What could he even say? Last time they saw each other he was beating up his therapist with his bare hands to return them to a reality in which most of their parents were once again dead or absent, and then he spent a month in jail—or two, depending on how you counted—and he was sure that none of them would be able to avoid thinking about what had happened to him last time he’d been arrested.

But it was fine, he was fine, he was alive, no one had beaten or drugged him this time, and now he was free and alive and he was going to see his friends again and he was going to try not to worry them too much.

Ryuji and Ann and Sumire were at his side right away, with cries of “Renren,” and “Joker,” and “senpai,” as soon as he stepped through the door, but none of them reached out to touch him first until he wrapped around all of them wordlessly, and he felt Morgana wrap around his ankles as Yusuke, Makoto, Haru, and Futaba close behind them, closing his eyes and leaning into the comfort of the group hug. There was someone missing but that was, well, not fine but what did he really expect? Did he really think any of that had been real, anything more than a dream or the last remnants of a fading wish?

And then his friends stepped back to let him breath, though Ryuji kept an arm around his shoulders and Morgana stood loyally between his feet, and there, hovering awkwardly behind Ann and Sumire, he saw him.

“Hey.” His voice caught in his throat, and he gave an awkward little wave.

Goro’s mouth twisted into a strange, sideways smile. “Hey.”

“Fancy meeting you here,” he said, mouth running on autopilot, brain overwhelmed by a swirling buzz of how and is this real and am I dreaming and Maruki fucking lied cut through with the desperate frantic heartbeat of he’s here he’s alive he’s here he’s here he’s here .

“Oh, just stopping by,” said Goro, with an unconvincing stab at nonchalance. “You know how it is.”

“Do I?”

“Yes, well.” He shrugged. “I, uh, it’s good to see you.”

“Yeah,” Ren said, painfully aware of just how stilted and awkward this was, but what were you supposed to say, when you hadn’t seen someone in months, when the last time you saw them was bringing them back to life through the power of emotional vulnerability, and now you were exchanging small talk in front of friends who seemed to be getting along with him well enough at this moment but Ren didn’t know how much he’d told them—previous experiences with Goro and sharing things about himself suggested not much —and he didn’t know what to say, and he had so much he wanted to say to all of them, so much time he wanted to spend with them to make up for the lost month and his upcoming move back to his hometown, but he hadn’t parted from the rest of them in circumstances that were anywhere near as fraught.

Someone coughed awkwardly, breaking the long, embarrassing moment, and Ann—bless her—said quietly, “Let’s give them some privacy,” because she was a good friend and Ren loved her for it very much, and then she winked and elbowed Ryuji conspiratorially, because she was also the kind of friend who would never pass up an opportunity to tease Ren about his hopeless crush, and he loved her for that too.

Morgana rubbed his face encouragingly against Ren’s ankles one last time before following the rest of the Phantom Thieves toward the front of the cafe while he followed Goro toward a booth in the back.

“So,” he said, forcing himself to sit down and fight back his instinctive urge to offer Goro something to eat, or at least something to drink, just for a way to occupy his hands and relieve some of his nervous energy.

“So,” Goro agreed, folding his hands together on top of the table.

“Are we going to talk about this?”

“We probably should,” he said. “Although after all that, what else is there to say?”

There were, probably, so many more important things that Ren needed to say, about forgiveness and trust and the future, but when he opened his mouth what came out instead was, “Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day.”

“So it is,” said Goro. “Not really a holiday I’ve ever had much cause to celebrate, but impressive that you manage to keep track of what day it is.” A few months ago Ren would’ve thought he was being sarcastic but now he wouldn’t be surprised if Goro hadn’t known what day of the week it was, let alone the exact date. To be fair, Ren only knew because he’d asked Sojiro on the car ride over.

“Do you wanna, like, hang out or something?” He cursed himself silently, for doing this in the most inelegant way possible. It wasn’t like they hadn’t gone on dates before. To be fair, those had been under the cover of plausible deniability, of well, I just happened to have these extra tickets to the aquarium exhibit or we need to keep an eye on each other because of our respective schemes or what a coincidence that I happened to run into you here, haha .

“Not like I have many other plans,” Goro said. “No one’s lining up to buy chocolates for a dead disgraced idol.”

He bit back his immediate reaction of, you’re more than that, don’t say that about yourself , partially because he didn’t want to start a fight, and partially because he knew they both knew it wasn’t true, and Goro was just deflecting, so instead he said, “Then I get to have you all to myself.”

“So sure of yourself,” he said, light and teasing, still deflecting.

“You came back to life with me,” Ren said. “I get to be a little smug about that. I mean,” he added quickly, before Goro could object, “I know it wasn’t just about me. I know. But-”

“But you certainly helped,” Goro said. “I don’t know if it’s so much that I couldn’t have done it without you as that I wouldn’t have, which I suppose amounts to the same thing in the end.” He was fidgeting now, kept clasping and unclasping his hands like he couldn’t figure out what to do with them, and Ren wanted to reach out and hold them. “I’m grateful. No, I know how that sounds, so professional and impersonal but I do mean it. I’m just… not very good at this, I suppose. At saying what I mean, without acting. Although in a way everything any of us ever do or say is an act, but that’s neither here nor there.” He grimaced. “I’m doing that thing I do again, aren’t I? It’s just that I don’t know what I’m doing with any of this,” he waved a hand to encompass Ren and Leblanc and their friend waiting for them nearby and the fact that he was alive again, “and I don’t know how to not know what to do.”

“It’s okay,” Ren said when he fell silent. “It’s okay. You don’t have to know, we can figure it out.” Together , he wanted to say, but he didn’t know if that would be too much.

“Together, huh?” said Goro.

“Yeah,” he said, and finally he did reach out and take Goro’s hands across the table. “How about we figure out tomorrow, tomorrow? Let’s go make sure our friends aren’t getting into too much trouble without us.”

“As if we don’t get into plenty of trouble with you,” said Goro.

“We?”

He shrugged, standing and offering Ren a hand to help him up. “Helping to get someone out of prison is a fairly effective bonding experience. They wore me down.”

“I’m glad,” said Ren.

“Me too,” said Goro, and he didn’t let go of Ren’s hand as they made their way over to the rest of his friends.

“So what are you two doing tomorrow?” said Ryuji, giving them both significant glances and elbowing Ann like he was saying something very clever and innuendo-ridden instead of just a perfectly normal question in a teasing tone of voice.

“We’ll figure that out later,” said Ren, sliding into the booth next to Ryuji, still holding onto Goro’s hand so he was pulled down alongside him. “First I think I have a lot of catching up to do.”

They did not, in fact, figure out what they were going to do later that day, either while they were hanging out with everyone at LeBlanc or afterwards, when Goro went back to Sae’s apartment where he’d been staying and kept texting him about things he’d done while Ren was in prison, books he’d read or movies he’d watched or places he’d gone with Ryuji or Sumire or Makoto or Ann, or even the next day, and by the time Goro arrived at Leblanc again in the early afternoon neither of them had come up with a single thing even vaguely resembling a plan. In Ren’s defense, any restaurant that was open had been booked for weeks, and there weren’t any good movies coming out, or even movies that were bad enough to be fun, and anything more elaborate would be too hard to pull together on such short notice. So instead Ren took Goro’s coat, and Goro teased him about trying to put the gentleman in gentleman thief , and Morgana made some excuses about hanging out with Futaba and Sojiro, and he put the first episode of some trashy space opera on the TV and called for delivery.

He’d offered to cook, had even gotten as far as putting on his apron, but Goro insisted that he should relax too. Ren tried to argue that making food for people was his love language, which was true, but Goro had just raised an eyebrow and said, “Or maybe this is about your need to be doing something for someone else in order to justify your presence,” which was also true.

It was well after the last train back to the Niijima’s neighborhood by the time either of them realized how late it was, and Ren shrugged sleepily and said that Goro was perfectly welcome to stay the night, and even borrow a spare t-shirt of Ren’s to sleep in, and he fell asleep to the familiar sounds of distant traffic outside and the less familiar but equally comforting sound of Goro’s breathing settling into something more at ease and eventually resolving into gentle snores. The bed wasn’t quite big enough for two people to fit comfortably, but Ren slept like a log, and even in sleep, Goro held himself very carefully still.

Ren woke up the next morning momentarily confused to not be alone. Judging by the thin, weak quality of the light, it was still early, earlier than any self-respecting high schooler should be up. Goro was already awake, sitting on the edge of the bed, taking off the shirt he’d borrowed to change back into his own button-up. It was a little bit formal for what their plans had been, but at least he hadn’t worn a tie, and Ren wasn’t going to fault him for clinging to the trappings of professionalism that he’d used to give himself a semblance of legitimacy.

Ren, still laying down and head fuzzy with sleep, just watched him for a moment, studying the sharp edges of his spine and ribs, the scars of old wounds that he didn’t have the right spells to heal, and then felt guilty about watching, like seeing something he shouldn’t and he squeezed his eyes shut. As if Goro could read his thoughts, or maybe he just heard the change in his breathing, he said, “You know you don’t have to look away, right? We did go to the bath house together, this is hardly the first time you’ve seen me shirtless. Besides, you also know more about me than anyone else, and that’s a much more terrifying form of intimacy.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know,” Ren said, “it’s about the context. Bath houses are normal, but you told me most of your secrets in life-or-death circumstances and those aren’t meant to be normal, so I thought it might be different now that we’re just…” Normal teenagers , he wanted to say, but he wasn’t sure if it was true, if they’d been through too much, done too much, to ever really be normal. The metaverse was gone, but Joker wasn’t.

“Boyfriends or whatever,” Goro said.

“Oh,” said Ren, who felt this was entirely too early in the morning to redefine a relationship.

“Is that not what you wanted?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t expect you to be okay with saying it,” he said. “You never wanted to, before.”

“Before, when we were going on dates because we were both stupid enough to think that keeping your enemies closer was a good strategy? Of course I didn’t want to be your boyfriend, I meant to be your murderer.” He shook his head, as if trying to shake loose those particular memories. “Also, normal relationships have never been something I’ve known how to make space for.”

Goro turned back towards him as he spoke, twisting his body so that Ren could see his face, serious in the cold early morning light but not hardened with anger or pain, and the concerningly deep shadows across his ribs—Ren remembered him talking about eating a single apple for lunch and nothing else, and resolved to make sure he always had the opportunity to get enough to eat, if he wasn’t going to feed himself properly—and also the scars, more remnants of Metaverse injuries that hadn’t been healed immediately, faded top surgery lines, and something new that hadn’t been there that time they’d gone to the bath house together: a sunburst scar on his chest, directly over his heart. It looked strange as a scar, but he recognized the shape and size of it easily enough. It was just that injuries like that, left by a point blank bullet to the chest, didn’t generally tend to heal.

He lifted his hand toward it without thinking and then froze, wanting to reassure himself that Goro was real and solid and warm and alive but not wanting to scare him off. “Oh, this?” he said, following his gaze. “Shot in the heart. At least my double had an appropriate sense of theatricality. It’s nothing, I’m fine now.”

“I know,” said Ren. “I know, it’s just… you were dead.” Dead, and forgotten, magazine covers once emblazoned with his face dissolving in the rain where they had been dropped, unwanted, on the sidewalk, while Ren haunted places they’d gone together like he was the ghost of whatever their relationship had been.

“Allegedly,” Goro said dryly, and then relented: “If it’s any consolation, I don’t remember any of it and it hardly hurt at all,” his smile tightened like it did when he was lying, but Ren didn’t call him on it, “so it’s almost like it never happened.”

“I remember,” said Ren quietly. “It happened for me.”

Goro grimaced. “I didn’t mean… I didn’t think about it like that. I’m sorry.”

“Can I-” Ren started reaching out again, not sure what else he could possibly say in that moment.

“Let me,” Goro said, taking Ren’s hand and bringing it up to his throat, just under his jawline where Ren could feel the beat of his pulse. “Feel that? I’m here.” What Ren felt, beyond just his presence, real and alive, was how fast his pulse was racing, the tension in the lines of his throat like he was holding himself in place.

“Do you want me to stop?”

“No,” said Goro, bringing their hands down to the scar above his heart, the reminder of how close Ren had come to losing him. It felt like any other scar, the skin raised and uneven, and beneath it Ren could feel the steady beating of Goro’s heart. “This is fine.” He sighed, and Ren felt the rise and fall of his chest, another physical reminder to cling to as proof that he was really and truly alive. “It’s not the touch that I mind, not really,” he said. “It’s more… there’s so little that’s ever been mine , so I admit I’m a little bit defensive over anything that is. Especially something as personal as the physical reminder of my death. I guess you could argue that my death belongs to other people, from everyone who had a part in killing me to everyone who tried to bring me back, but it’s easier to think of it as the results of my own choices, and those are mine.”

“Goro…”

“That’s what Maruki never understood, I think,” he said. “That he was taking something from me when he erased my mistakes. Because those, more than anything, are mine.”

“It wasn’t just you. We’ve both paid for plenty of other people’s decisions, not just yours.”

“I know that,” Goro said. “Of course I know that. But it’s easier to see yourself as the one choosing to do all those terrible things, because at least then you’re a person with choices, instead of a tool, or a victim, with no agency and no way to make different choices if you wanted to. If I’m the one making decisions, I could make different decisions. I wouldn’t, of course, because it wasn’t that simple, but it sometimes helped to pretend I was doing everything I did because I actually wanted to. Better to tell myself I didn’t need or want sympathy because I didn’t deserve it, than to look for it and have it denied.” He laughed, harsh and humorless. “Remember when I said that I was fine with being hated because I was the one controlling the narrative? Not in those exact words, but that general sentiment? That isn’t true. It never has been. Telling myself that made it bearable but honestly? I was miserable. But it was always worse whenever I got too close to admitting just how helpless and trapped and in over my head I really was.”

“I get it,” said Ren, who did, because if there was anything he understood, deeply, in his soul and guts, it was the need to be able to do something , anything to make himself feel like he had any agency at all, even if it wasn’t safe or healthy or constructive. It wasn’t a particularly healthy outlook to have, especially not when taken to extremes, if he was understanding the professional consensus correctly, but they could work on that.

“But you still disagree,” Goro said.

“I think,” said Ren carefully, “that both can be true. You were put in a situation where all of your choices were bad ones, and that wasn’t your fault, but you were still the one who chose, and some of your choices were, uh, you know. Probably not the best choices you could’ve made.” Goro snorted at that extremely euphemistic way to describe committing multiple premeditated murders, and Ren shrugged like, hey, what am I supposed to call it?

“I suppose that’s a fair assessment,” said Goro. There was a pause, and then he said, “This probably isn’t a conversation normal teenagers are supposed to have when they’re trying to figure out their relationship, is it?”

“I killed a god and you’re a retired hitman,” Ren said. “I think that ship sailed a long time ago.”

“Regardless,” said Goro, and he was looking away again, which was how Ren knew that what he was about to say was going to be important. “I want this to work, but I don’t know what that even means for someone like me. Sometimes I think that I wasn’t built to be loved. Or maybe it’s something that everyone else learned in school, but I was home sick that day, taking care of my mother, and I missed out on my only chance.”

“Let’s start with this,” said Ren. “What do you want?”

“I want,” he started, stopped, swallowed nervously, and then continued, deliberately, choosing his words like he was back on stage again. “I want you to love me but I don’t trust myself to be able to accept it.”

“Okay,” said Ren. “Conveniently, I already do love you, so we can work with that, right? We’ll figure it out.”

“I suppose,” Goro said. “Sure, fine, you win this time. We’ll figure it out.”

Goro was standing on a beach somewhere in the northwestern United States when he realized he was homesick. He’d left Japan a few days after the older members of the Phantom Thieves graduated high school, when they’d all set off on their road trip. They were supposed to be returning Ren to his parents’ house in whatever boring suburb he’d come from, but Goro knew as well as any of them that Ren wasn’t going to stay there, that Sojiro had given him permission to stay at Leblanc for his final year of high school, that they were just swinging by his parents’ place to grab some more of Ren’s belongings so he could make the move a little bit more permanent this time around.

“This was the worst year of my life in some ways,” Ren had told him once, softly, when they were supposed to be sleeping, “but I can’t stand the thought of leaving. You know?”

Goro, who had never left Tokyo and loved and hated his city in equal measure, said, “Yeah.” And then, after a pause during which he thought Ren had fallen asleep: “I’ve been thinking of leaving, though.”

“Oh,” Ren said. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense.”

“You’re not surprised?”

“Sorry, babe,” Ren said. “That’s what happens when you let someone get to know you. It makes it harder to surprise them.”

“Disgusting,” said Goro.

“Gonna have to try harder,” said Ren.

“Yeah, just you wait,” said Goro. “But I was serious.”

“I know.”

“I just… it’s not you, you know that, right?”

“Of course I know that,” Ren said. “It’s not like you’re breaking up with me. You’re not, right?”

“Of course not!” he said. “But I think I need to take some time to myself, to figure out who I am anymore.”

“And you need to do that alone,” Ren said. A few months ago, Goro might’ve called his tone unreadable, might’ve mistaken it for accusatory. Now, though, he could hear the understanding, the resignation there.

“Sorry,” he said. “But yes.” He generally liked who he had become, the part he was currently playing, but he couldn’t only be Ren Amamiya’s boyfriend. He had to know that there was more to him, had to know that he could survive without Ren if he had to, that he was real. Because there was still, creeping up in the back of his mind when he wasn’t careful, the horrible suspicion that the reason the past few months had felt too good to be true is because they were. “I promise I’ll come back,” he said. “I swear.”

“I know you will,” said Ren, but he sounded relieved to hear him say it out loud. “I’ll be here.” And that was a relief to Goro, something he hadn’t even realized he was so worried about it until he didn’t have to worry about it: having someplace to rest once he’d found himself out in the world, or even if he didn’t. A safe place to land.

“Not going back to your parents?”

“Absolutely not,” said Ren. “I want to spend a year in Tokyo when I can actually appreciate it. This is the only place I’ve ever felt alive, like a real person. I can’t go back to my hometown. I wasn’t myself there, and I don’t want to be that person again.”

“And you don’t have to be,” he said, suddenly angry on Ren’s behalf, that his parents did appreciate how fucking amazing their son was. Not that Ren’s parents even knew that they had a son, but that was a different, albeit related, issue. “Your family is here.” Because Goro might not know much about families, but he knew that Sojiro and the Phantom Thieves were Ren’s.

“They are, aren’t they?” Ren said. “And you will be.”

“Yeah,” Goro said. “I will.”

He’d gone to the airport alone, because he wanted to prove to himself that it was something he could do. Sure, he’d never flown before, but how hard could it be? He was a functional adult who could exist in the world, with a bank account full of ill-gotten, untraceable money and a forged passport. He could handle a little bit of airport security.

He’d picked America mostly because English was his best language after Japanese, and because Ann had sung the praises of New York and L.A. as soon as she’d found out he was traveling abroad. He’d started on the east coast and worked his way back west. New York was like Tokyo, if the streets were dirtier and the buildings were taller, but there was enough to do—foods he’d never tried before, people to watch and eavesdrop on, tacky souvenirs to buy, overpriced theater tickets to spend Shido’s money on—that he wasn’t bored. There was something comforting about the crowds, the anonymity, the familiarity even in the newness, something enjoyable about learning his way around the streets of a new place, as he learned to recognize buildings and street names. But it was a city, and he was a city boy through and through, finding comfort in the way it never got fully dark or fully quiet. He finally convinced himself to leave, since the point of the trip was going places that were different, getting out of his comfort zone, and there was so much more of the country to see. Besides, New York was expensive and while his bank account was full it wasn’t unlimited.

He’d been shocked and appalled by how inconvenient and inefficient it was to travel across the country by train. He would’ve thought a country this big would’ve prioritized people being able to get around it easily and relatively cheaply. A bit of quick research had informed him that the only way to get around the United States was by car, due to the stranglehold the automobile and oil industries had on the government, because of course the answer was government corruption. Unfortunately for him, he’d never learned how to drive. Had never had time, and had never really needed to, living in Tokyo his entire life with no opportunity or reason to leave.

He took buses instead, because they were cheaper than trains, and watched the flat scenery—deep green trees quickly replaced by endless seas of grass—roll past crammed up between overly talkative strangers and the rattling bus window. Once he got tired of the east coast, the smog and the stifling humidity, he headed west, picking city names more or less at random, since he’d never heard of any of them. He had never seen so much of the sky, and it made him strangely anxious, exposed, no wall at his back, nowhere to slip away and hide, only the vast empty blue of the sky, the hot dry cornfields stretching out in all directions to a yellow-green horizon, wavering in the heat, the unforgiving lidless eye of the sun staring down at him through dust and haze.

Nights were worse, when he spent them in a motel instead of on an overnight train: too quiet, too dark, too still. He felt like there was something watching him, waiting for him to slip up, though he didn’t know what he was supposed to be doing. And maybe that was part of the problem too, that he wasn’t really supposed to be doing anything. In his least forgiving moments, he would’ve said that he wasn’t meant to be alive, but the rest of the time he just felt sort of directionless. He’d spent so long as a weapon that he wasn’t sure what to do when he wasn’t being aimed.

So he wandered. He browsed used bookstores and ate too much greasy diner food and eavesdropped on strangers going about their lives. He texted the Phantom Thieves, too. Although he supposed they weren’t really thieves any more, as far as he knew, though he wouldn’t completely rule out any of them picking up more mundane methods of thievery, and he should probably just start thinking of them as his friends.

Ann wanted pictures from everywhere he went, of both any landmarks he saw and of the food he was eating, because she was never going to let him forget that she had been a fan of his food blog, and at first he had just sent her a few lazy shots to get her to stop pestering him. But she always responded so earnestly, with questions about what he was doing that sounded like she genuinely cared about the answers, and then with pictures of her own from around Tokyo, which were always somehow just the right thing to curb the worst of his homesickness. So he started putting more effort into his pictures and messages to her, and began to realize that he enjoyed talking to her. He remembered her as being easier to get along with from the beginning than some of the others, and he didn’t mind spending time with her when Ren was there, but it was strange to realize that somehow she’d become his friend as well.

It wasn’t just Ann, either. Ryuji’s messages often seemed incomprehensible at first glance, out-of-context updates on the others’ antics—usually Ren, Morgana, or both—and memes with the caption ‘it’s you’ and complaints about his schoolwork, which sometimes came along with pleas for help. More often, though, it seemed that Ryuji just wanted someone to talk to, and he was inventing reasons to start a conversation, and Goro found that he didn’t mind nearly as much as he thought he would. Because of the time difference, when Ryuji was texting in class instead of paying attention, Goro received those messages in the middle of the night, when he was having trouble sleeping anyway, and he was grateful for the company, even as he continued to be baffled that Ryuji, brash, tactless Ryuji, had been so quick to welcome him into the fold.

Yusuke and Makoto messaged less frequently, usually with either non sequitur artistic questions and reminders to get enough to eat and sleep, respectively, and Sumire kept him up to date on her gymnastics progress, though she was very busy. Haru only ever interacted with him in the group chat, which wasn’t really surprising, and honestly, it was probably better that way for both them, but one day Futaba, out of the blue, messaged him to yell about the latest episode of the Featherman reboot, which he took to mean she knew about his secret, non-verified twitter account where he’d tweeted about it the day before. Since then, they’d been talking fairly regularly, almost exclusively about Featherman, though they’d recently branched out to arguing about anime as well. He’d truly never expected that development, but once he’d gotten over how incredibly weird it was, for all the obvious reasons that they talked about once and then never again, talking to her was surprisingly fun.

Ren, obviously, messaged him every day.

The beach where he realized he was lonely was cold, even in August, a damp chill that settled over him with the light spray of rain blowing in off the ocean. It was beautiful, despite all that, or maybe because of it, the slate grey sky and the steel grey sea, the sanded down stones of the beach hard through the thin soles of his shoes, dress shoes more suited for a child pretending to be a serious businessman than any amount of serious walking and then worn even thinner since he’d been travelling.

He stood at the edge of the sea, wishing he’d thought to bring his scarf, his hands stuffed into his coat pockets, where he felt something, a piece of paper maybe? He didn’t think he’d put anything into his pockets recently, but then again, he hadn’t worn this coat in a while, had only added it to his luggage as an afterthought when Sae texted him to ask if he needed anything for his trip. The paper was nothing special, just a receipt from the last time he got ramen with Ren and Ryuji and Yusuke, but suddenly he wanted nothing more than to be back there, laughing at whatever dumb shit Ryuji and Yusuke were saying to each other while Ren tried to fend off Morgana with his chopsticks as Mona tried to steal a piece of pork from his bowl. At the time he thought he felt awkward, a fifth wheel, but now, looking back, he had really just felt happy to be included.

And now, standing on this beach, deserted except for some impossibly large logs of driftwood at the edge of an impossibly large ocean, he felt so incredibly small. His friends were just on the other side of the sea, and he just wanted to reach out across it and tell them that he did miss them after all, but the distance was too great. He wondered if Ren ever stood at the shore and thought the same thing about him. He had gotten as far as taking out his phone to message Ren to ask him that, as sappy as it was, before realizing that he didn’t have cell service out here. No messages would disturb his reverie, and the thought was as peaceful as it was lonely.

He felt like he could stand here forever, watching, listening, waiting, dwarfed by the sea and the driftwood and the clouds. He could stay still, close his eyes, let the moss grow over him, let himself be smoothed over by the surf. He wanted to stay forever. He wanted to go home.

It got dark, while he was standing there. It was hard to tell, at first, but the clouds were definitely taking on a darker, bluer cast, and the world was growing blurrier, making it harder to distinguish between the shore and the sea and the sky. His fingers were numb, his toes were numb, and he knew what he was going to do.

He stayed in that town for three days, drinking coffee that wasn’t as good as Ren’s from a paper cup as he walked along the beach in the rain, finally letting himself miss his friends, letting himself realize that he was lonely, that he might not know how to accept love but that didn’t mean he was meant to be alone. And then, the next morning, he got on a shuttle bus bound for the airport and bought a one-way ticket on the next flight back to Tokyo.

The only person he texted when he touched down was Sae, because he didn’t think any of the former Phantom Thieves would be able to keep their mouths shut, and Sae met him at the airport, helped him load his suitcase into her car, and very helpfully told him where Ren was going to be.

Jazz Jin was fairly empty this early in the evening, but a singer was on the stage, crooning away into her microphone, and the few customers who were there were giving her their full attention, including someone that Goro would recognize anywhere, even from the back of his head of nondescript, messy hair. The door creaked slightly as he closed it, as it always did no matter how quiet he was trying to be, and Ren turned around, and saw him, eyes widening at the sight, and the rest of the world blurred, faded, melted away into a swirl of warmth and light and color until all he could see was Ren’s face.

Distantly he was aware that the song had ended, and the rest of the audience was clapping, but Ren wasn’t paying attention to the stage anymore, he was standing, walking towards him, eyes still locked with Goro’s.

He looked… good, though Goro had always thought that about him. But he stood up straighter now, moved with a confidence that previously Goro had mostly just seen in the Metaverse. He wasn’t quite Joker, didn’t have the cocky smirk—or the mask—but he did have a bit of the swagger, and he was wearing a dark high-necked tank top that would not have looked out of place underneath his unnecessarily swishy coat.

Goro wasn’t consciously aware of walking forward until he found himself in the center of the room, meeting Ren halfway, and wrapping his arms around Ren in a tight, wordless hug as Ren buried his face in Goro’s shoulder.

“You’re early,” said Ren, his voice muffled as he spoke into the side of Goro’s head.

“I missed you,” said Goro, closing his eyes for a moment and breathing in the familiar scent of Ren’s shampoo, feeling the beat of Ren’s heart against his own ribs. “But I’m home now.”