Work Text:
Seeing a blue door while walking out of the local grocery store was not what Tatsuya had planned but it seemed that Philemon didn’t care about letting people run errands. Before approaching the door he prepared himself to punch a god yet again, it wasn’t the first time he had done so, and surprisingly it seemed to be a fairly good strategy.
Hadn’t he and his family been through enough to please the stupid bet the gods had on humanity?
It was bad enough that they hadn’t been able to keep Akira in Sumaru and then had only found out that he was a “Wild Card” after hearing that their son had committed suicide on live TV, he didn’t need some asshole taking Jun from him as well. Philemon hadn’t kept his promise so like hell was Tatsuya going to keep his, the god could suck his dick for all he cared.
Admittedly he did miss Nameless and Belladonna though, so with more apprehension than was probably warranted he approached the eerie glowing door in the middle of the street. The door opened on its own, startling him slightly before he remembered how bullshit the laws of the universe were on the Other Side.
Wonder if I could figure out a way to have zero gravity while on the other side so I can punt Philemon and see him bounce around the room.
Walking through the rift was just as disorienting as he remembered, floating while awash with the sense of not existing while also existing too much at the same time. As the room started to show itself to him properly he was concerned to find that he stood in a cell, the only thing distracting him from how unpleasantly cold it was being the ajar door to the cell.
Stepping through took a significant amount of convincing himself with the thought that finally got him to cross the boundary being that if he could both see and enter the room then something was probably terribly wrong with Akira.
Wild Cards, and by proxy their links that were also persona users, were never able to assist another on their journey in any way. Mitsuru, bless her heart, had tried with Akira but was not able to do anything beyond leaving a couple of Soma for him to find, in the hopes that they would be helpful but that they would never be needed. Everyone from the Kirijo group, which now included SEES, the Investigation Team, and the Sumaru group had wanted to help the Phantom Thieves (it was obvious they were using some aspect of the unconscious world, and Elizabeth had confirmed that they were led by a Wild Card on their journey) even before they had learned that Tatsuya and Jun’s son was the leader. The persona users that had come before even the Sumaru group were designated as backup for extreme cases only and had been titled “Revelations”. Tatsuya had asked at one point where the name had come from but no one had had even the slightest idea as to why they had that name.
No one should have ever had to deal with all of this, especially not kids that had been forced into fighting for their lives to end up killing a god that wanted control over humanity.
He was able to remember Aigis, in particular, being incredibly distraught over the fact that there was a new group of persona users apparently she felt as though she owed it to her late girlfriend Minako to assist Wild Cards whenever possible.
Jun had been so worried when they had found out that their son was the leader of the Phantom Thieves, and of course, it had to be right before his interrogation as the suspected leader began.
They both still woke up from nightmares about what they had gone through themselves as teens, but now the death of their son had joined the visions that haunted their every step.
The beautiful sound of Belladonna’s singing lured him to a large room with an odd assortment of themes and items. It was obvious the room was a mashup of all of the velvet rooms that had come before it with the horrible curtains, piles of clocks along with what looked like an elevator door, a license plate and limo bar, and what looked like a bunch of chairs that had been dragged in from the outside world (it wouldn't surprise him if Akira had been the one responsible for that, none of them matched but they all had horrible flower prints that would have made even Jun falter).
It was this glance around the room that showed him Akira sitting on a three-legged chair looking like he had just seen a ghost (knowing the life of a Wild Card it wouldn’t surprise him if his son had seen a specter, honestly there wasn’t much that could bother most of the people aware of the cognitive world). Walking over to the slumped boy while avoiding what looked to be a go-fish game using multiple decks of tarot cards was surprisingly more challenging than Tatsuya had expected, but reaching Akira and pulling him into a tight hug made the entire trip to his own personal hell worthwhile.
“It’ll be okay, eventually. If I was able to get Jun and everyone else back then you can get Akechi back too. I’ll help you punch Philemon if it comes down to it, all of the rest of your family would probably help too.”
Belladonna and Nameless watched on as the two hugged each other, content with knowing that they had been able to help the young Wild Card that their former guest loved so dearly.