personavelvetroomdr | all your mother's weaves and your father's threads

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all your mother's weaves and your father's threads

Ren hasn't seen the Velvet Room in a while.

There was at time when he was in here every week, fusing Personas to Caroline's acerbic commentary or listening to Yaldabaoth mutter ominous words of praise. It was different in January, like a lot of things, but the point is that it's gone now. He's not even sure Lavenza and Igor survived what happened.

And yet here he is, in what's recognizably the Velvet Room. But it's changed. It's not a prison anymore, even though this would be the best time for it; Ren's heart is in chains. What was it Akechi said to him? Your heart is free. Maybe back then.

Never mind that. Igor, if it is Igor, is unforthcoming. Make bonds—as if Ren can make bonds when people can't even have a meaningful conversation. He'll be returned to the moment he left—as if he wants to go there. His friends are happy, Akechi is alive, and Ren, like Maruki himself, stands outside the world. When he tries to press, Igor gets cryptic and nonsensical, and that's so fucking familiar lately that Ren doesn't bother to keep trying.

You might find him in the following situations:

1: the rockrose and the thistle will whistle as you moan

Maruki has left him alone, mostly. God's favorite. As far as Ren can figure, it's because he knows perfectly damn well that Ren finds his reality repulsive, and he wants Ren to accept it on his own. The implication there is that Maruki also knows deep down that people aren't themselves once he changes their cognition, but that's not a surprise. Maruki talks a big game, but on some level he must know what he's doing. Surely.

Anyway, like we were saying, he's left Ren mostly alone. But he loses time, comes back to himself with the coffee cold or the sun at a different angle or an awful TV show at the end of its saccharine episode. And although he never remembers feeling what preceded it, he knows. Too much despair, too much bleak hopelessness, and Maruki turns him off like a lightbulb until it's gone again. Can't accept the new world if he's too depressed. The stupid self-defeating hypocrisy of it is annoying as hell—is he meant to accept the new reality of his own accord or isn't he? But there was a time when it would've pissed him off a lot more.

He stands in front of Igor's desk, in a place he doesn't recognize, unsure where he is or what's going to happen to him, or where his friends are, or whether this is a new stage of Maruki's reality or something entirely different, and despair swallows him whole. He waits to be shut down.

And waits. And waits, saturated in misery like he hasn't in weeks. For a split second he almost finds himself grateful to Maruki for taking it away, but he flinches back from going down that road. Like this, frozen, waiting to blink and find that his legs hurt from standing too long, he's barely aware of his surroundings.

2: all the pins inside your fretted head and your muttered whens and hows

Having pulled himself together (and not lost any time, as far as he can tell?), Ren decides that the obvious first stop is the conspicuous board that stands in the strange Velvet Room. It doesn't look... Velvet Room-y. It looks like it was brought in from outside, and as he scans its bizarre contents, he realizes he's right.

The business about Akechis and Rens being fated to be together makes him feel a little sick, so he skims it quickly and moves on. Demons, vampires, okay, that's... he'll deal with that when he has to. But as he reads the list of Akechi codenames, his eyes land on one in particular. In the middle of the corvids and the predators, there's Sparrow.

The description leaves him without any doubt. His stomach sinks. Is Akechi okay? Can he even survive in a place like this? How is Ren going to find him?

3: you gently gift it to me 'cause you've no clue how to sew

In a first, helpless attempt to locate his Akechi (different enough from other Akechis, apparently, to be identified on sight... well, that's true enough), Ren decides to head into Tokyo and go looking for places Akechi still enjoys. Kichijoji is an obvious one, with the jazz bar and Inokashira Park and his apartment, the location of which he kept behind his lips the entire time Ren knew him, only to immediately invite him over in February. But instead of taking the train, Ren walks. Travel is strangely quick, and it gives him time to look at the cognitions, which the board claimed were eerie.

The board wasn't wrong. They don't even seem like the brainwashed people Ren is used to—cognitions is definitely the better term. At least the people back home have some variability in how they act, and at least they have some kind of mild reaction if you inconvenience them. Ren steps in front of them once or twice, sticks out his leg to trip one of them even, and they don't even frown at him.

Maruki's reality is still new. Maybe this is where everyone is going to end up; automatons, puppets, walking around like video game NPCs. His skin crawls. He stands to the side of a busy road in Shibuya and watches, stomach churning.

[[ooc: This is the Ren from

pheasantboy's universe.]]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There's a strange bird that hangs out in Shibuya and doesn't usually wander far.

In this case, he's spotted another Akira/Ren wandering around, looking lost, but also looking intent on finding something. He's not rude enough to scan - with as slim as the picking are for company, even by Reaper standards, he prefers to try to find things out with his mouth.

So at some point when Ren pauses on the streets of Shibuya in his quest, he will be able to spot an Akechi - but pretty clearly, not one that's his. The good boy known as Sparrow would never dress like he's been trawling the goth clubs, and this one's too old besides.

He comes up to Ren with his hands in his pockets and a casual expression. "Looking for something?"

Ren's mouth opens and closes a couple times as he takes in... all that, not checking Akechi out so much as trying to process what he's seeing. (Would Akechi have dressed like that in a couple years, if Ren had left everything alone...? —No. He'd have been dead. Stupid fucking question, Amamiya.) He swallows.

"Uh. Yeah. I think my Akechi is here somewhere...? Do you know an Akechi called Sparrow?"

"Ah." There's something more to it than the noise - he looks this Ren over a bit more obviously, trying to take in the details. "We've met, yes. I'm assuming you've seen the board, then?"

He offers a hand to shake. "Shrike, at your service. I admit, I've been a bit concerned about your counterpart."

"Shrike? You're the..." The reaper. Ominous. But he shakes the offered hand anyway, because Shrike the reaper has information about Ren's Akechi. "Why? What's wrong with him?"

There's nothing about the hand that appears to be anything other than a normal human hand, at least. Not in this plane.

(But, if Akira looks down properly, Shrike's gloves are black with red palms - a memento for himself that's transparently obvious to any Phantom Thief that sees him.)

"He's operating under a strange sort of delusion," Shrike very deliberately doesn't say cognitive distortion, just in case this Ren is affected by mentions of the cognitive world the same way his Akechi is. His tone, as he goes on, is light but legitimately concerned. "To him, nothing bad ever happens in the world, and when it does, he appears to shut down and restart like a particularly problematic computer. Several of us have observed this behaviour, and we've been trying to figure out how to help him - but this in itself makes him uncomfortable. He's told me himself that he's afraid that being 'helped' would change him, force him to be forever standing on the outside of the world around him."

Oh.

That's... a lot of... Ren doesn't know how to respond, or even what to think, for a long moment. He just stares at Akechi, pale and glassy-eyed. It's a struggle to pull himself together enough to answer.

"Uh. Yeah. Crow told me about... how he does that. And what causes it. At home, I could say stuff about Personas or whatever, and he just thought I was crazy until he forgot about it. So I don't know what's happening here."

It's harder to think about the other part. Forever standing on the outside of the world around him. Ren is already there, and there's a part of him that wants Akechi there with him, he's so fucking tired of being alone—but he knows what part of himself that is. He's listened to it once already. "About getting him help, maybe we should." He winces a little at the hypocrisy of what he's saying. "Listen to what he wants. He has the right to..."

He can't even finish that sentence, it's so hypocritical. Fuck. "It sounds bad," he says instead, softly. "What he's worried about."

"It does," Akechi agrees readily. "A bit like solitary confinement, really. Other people might be there, but to be unable to reach out to them..."

Truthfully, the word he would use for it at this point would be 'hell,' not simply solitary confinement. He'd rather go back to being unable to lie, to be forced to tell his every thought when someone asked him a question.

"So you understand," he says, wielding a concerned look like a scalpel, "why I would be concerned about what being in that situation would do to you. Even Sparrow is concerned, in his own way - the plight you've managed to land yourself in is the only negative thing he seems able to acknowledge for any length of time. So allow me to ask honestly: Are you all right, Joker?"

Edited 2024-02-04 23:42 (UTC)

It's pretty clear that he's not all right, from how he flinches and stumbles through half his sentences, and the fixed, haunted look he takes on in the middle of conversations—in answer to Akechi's earlier comments, even. He's self-aware enough to know it's obvious.

But the question, asked as honestly and bluntly as Akechi promises, still freezes him in place for a long moment. It's not that people haven't asked if he's all right lately. It's just that they'd never be able to understand the answer, and they forget after a moment anyway. He doesn't... He doesn't like being where he is, but he's gotten used to going unseen there, and now he's being seen. And he doesn't know if he likes that, either.

"It doesn't matter," he says in the end. His voice remains steady, for the most part. "It's my own fault."

"Of course it matters." Compassionate but blunt, like shoving an arm back into a socket. "Even if you choose to disregard me as a bystander from another world, it matters to him, and no doubt to the rest of the Thieves back in your world."

He folds his arms, canting his hips slightly to the side to emphasize the motion. "If you've made a mistake, then you still have time to fix it, as long as you're alive. And seeing as I'm a subject matter expert in life and death, I assure you that you are."

"The Thieves don't notice, and it's. Way too late to fix anything." And anyway, if he did fix things, Akechi would die. Even now, after everything, Ren doesn't know if he has the strength to make that decision. If anything, he's weaker than he was two months ago.

(Is it even strength he needs? Would that even be the right decision? He doesn't know. The world is a horror show, but how can he let Akechi just...)

But. That last part. He opens his mouth—and stalls there for a moment. It takes all his courage to speak. "Um. But if you can... tell that kind of thing. Whether people are alive. Can I ask about..."

About his Akechi, he means, of course. He's sure his Akechi is alive. He's sure he's real. He is. Especially now that he's heard that he has a Shadow, apparently? It's just that sometimes, he thinks—what if Akechi's some kind of, of toy Maruki made for him? And then he cancels all his plans with Akechi, and Akechi is sad for a bit but then he gets over it.

"He's as alive as you are." It's not hard to figure out how that sentence trails off. If it was anyone else, Shrike might have been tempted to ask, why wouldn't he be?

But he knows all too well, in this case. He stared down the barrel of that gun and saw the trigger pulled, and afterwards he woke up in the crowds of Shibuya and watched them pass through his body like he wasn't even there. He knows like no one else Ren is likely to meet.

Ren stares at the ground as the relief of it washes over him. Everything is still fucked, but at least Akechi's... at least he's not...

It'll help a little, maybe. Keep him from losing his mind a bit longer. "I don't feel very alive," he tells the concrete, and then he freezes. Why the fuck did he say that? Much less to some guy he just met? "Sorry. Um."

"Yes, that would be a symptom of the psychological effects of isolation." He sounds dry as a psychology textbook, and it's intentional. Come on, Joker, you're not stupid. "You're a living, breathing human being, and humans are social beings. Even I, a person who is no longer alive, need someone to confide in and talk to. Refusing to allow myself that is... Well, I can take a guess to why you asked, and ultimately, my inability to trust was the reason. Nothing you did or could have done differently."

If you want to be absolved, Joker, this is your guy. He'll beat it into you if he has to, but it would make him feel bad. The person in front of him is beaten down enough already - the question is just whether he's hit rock bottom yet.

Ren wants to believe that so badly. So fucking badly.

"I was stupid," he says instead. "There was an—an announcement and everything. 'The door is closing.' If I'd figured out what was happening instead of. Standing there like an idiot. Then... I guess none of this would have happened."

"If it was me - and while your world might have some differences, unless they were substantial, it was close enough to me - I wouldn't have let you." Gentle, but merciless. He knows himself, has had three years - a lot longer than the Ren in front of him - to reflect on how it all went wrong. "And even if there was something you could have done - who does it help now, to wallow in guilt about it?"

"It's not about..." He struggles to find the words to explain it. "He didn't want me to—choose what I did." He can't meet Akechi's eyes as he says it. His skin crawls with shame. "He was really... It hurt him. So I—I can't just. Decide not to feel bad. I owe it to him. He deserves that from me. I could've stopped this from happening at so many points, but I just. Didn't."

"Forget what he 'deserves.' No one gets what they deserve in life, good or bad." His tone is definitely harsher than it has been thus far. No matter where you take Goro Akechi, he will always be Goro Akechi.

Sparrow, too, is proof of that.

"If you're going to righteously claim that you're doing it all for him, then what about what he wants? Because it's not your suffering like this. Not the person he is now, and I don't think the person he would be if he could remember properly could stand to see you in this state, either."

The Shadow of Sparrow, by all accounts, hates Ren for what he's done. But the Shadow isn't the whole self, either. If it was, 'Sparrow' wouldn't exist. The reality of what 'Goro Akechi' would want exists somewhere hanging in the balance between the two.

Shrike can't say with certainty, but he doesn't think that 'Akechi' would be able to stand the person in front of him - not out of anger, but out of pity and disgust.

"I bet he could," Ren mutters. He still remembers the look on Akechi's face that night before he left. He presses his hands against his face for a second, and sighs as he lets them fall.

"I can't give Akechi what he wants from me. He wants me to be part of Maruki's reality with them, and I—" He shudders. "I try to... to fake it. Being, you know, endlessly happy. He gets worried otherwise, because he can't see me, and—I try. But I can't always make it work."

He could've done better, before.

"Even in the distorted state his mind is in, he's sensitive to the feelings of others," Shrike observes. Hypervigilance, of course, not that Sparrow has any reason to think of the term. Does it even exist, in that nothing-goes-wrong world. "I'm sure he can tell you're bullshitting, and that would only worry him more. After all, with all the objectionable parts of us sanded away, what's left is a boy who once wanted to be a hero."

It's more somber, almost melancholy of a thing to say. A younger him wouldn't have admitted to it. Perhaps that's why Shrike can't simply dismiss Sparrow as being wrong the way some of the others in this place have. The thing about that idealized world is that it has to have just enough truth to sell itself.

"What happened to that spirit of rebellion of yours, Joker? You're not the kind of person who just takes something like this lying down."

"Um." He twirls a lock of hair around his finger and looks away. The question stings, but he has it coming, probably. "I can't think about rebelling at home. I only noticed it here, because I couldn't... think about it. At home. But honestly, I don't... I think that whole thing was exaggerated. They got the wrong guy. Like, look what happened when people trusted me to be like that."

"...I see." He'll refrain from pushing on that point, then, at least for now. It's clear Ren needs time to adjust.

But at the same time... "However, if anything, that is evidence for my point. If you were the wrong guy, why exert so much influence to keep you in line? Surely it would be easier for your mastermind to hollow you out, like they did him. Instead, he's chosen to torture you into hopelessness, first. What other message could that send, except that hope, and your hope specifically is dangerous to him?"

"I'm not... being tortured."

It sounds almost like he's defending Maruki, but that's not what he's thinking about. He swallows. "I'm just. I made a decision and now I'm—living with it. Of course he's in danger if I have fucking hope," he adds, with a brief display of bitter anger. "Or despair, I guess. For some reason. But. ...Sorry, I don't know where I'm going with this."

"You are, effectively, in complete psychological isolation. Prolonged isolation is a form of torture. Hence the international push to make solitary confinement illegal." Shrike folds his arms. "In addition, you have no power over your situation and are subject to the whims of a coercive force within your very thoughts. That it is without precedent in form does not stop it from meeting the more plain and simple parts of the definition."

Ren stands there, staring like an idiot as Akechi's words wash over him. It's not that he doesn't take them in; he does, he understands them, he can't think of anything to say to argue against them. It's just.

Torture. The word has such a presence, grim and spiked, larger than the sum of its syllables. Ren associates it with beatings and druggings, not with standing in comfort behind the counter in Leblanc while his friends crowd around a booth, ignoring him.

He searches for a reply. All he finds, dredged up from the back of his mind, is, "...Oh."

...It seems it was not merely denial, but a genuine lack of realization. Shrike's expression softens, very faintly, and the tension in his shoulders falls.

It seems like he may have given Ren more food for thought than his stomach can hold, right now. So he simply says, "Even in a world where people get what they deserve, you don't deserve that."

all your mother's weaves and your father's threads

3 Shibuya edition

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