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

[flightpen]

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.]]

Comments

[flightpen]

It's not lost on him that Akechi ignores the question. He shakes his head.

"It is my fault, Akechi," he says quietly. "I've tried to explain it, but at home you just think I'm crazy, and then you forget about it. Here you'd probably have another... thing."

[pheasantboy]

"We've never thought you're crazy." It seems far more natural, still, to think of himself as a we; he squeezes Ren's hands. "A little disoriented, that's all. A bit of a blind spot." The sort he considers normal, in their world; the sort that's led to much of the work he thinks he's done, when he thinks about it.

But he sighs. "It's true, though. That's the exact problem I've had. Nobody can explain what's going on to me, because"—he swallows—"I forget."

[flightpen]

"You blank out. That's what Crow called it. And then when you come back, you've forgotten?"

That's what it looked like a few minutes ago. Like what they'd said was erased; like Akechi had been reset to an earlier point in the conversation.

[pheasantboy]

He nods. "Everyone hates it, too. They expect memory to be far less transient than it is."

It's possible this isn't something they've ever discussed. And how would Ren know, otherwise, what Akechi's perception of memory is?

[flightpen]

"Um."

How can he say this? Should he say this? He hesitates.

[pheasantboy]

And Akechi just stares at him with big eyes, struck with an awful misgiving. "What?"

[flightpen]

"...It's like that. For me. Memory. Everyone else at home... Our world isn't..."

He doesn't want to get into I used to be normal for our world, actually, but then everything changed. That sounds like a great way to make Akechi blank out again.

[pheasantboy]

It's like he shrinks a size inside his clothes. "That can't be right," he says, almost pleading, misunderstanding what he's seen back home. "It's not just that we don't see you. You go away too. It seems very much the same thing others describe here with me."

[flightpen]

"I..."

Fuck, how can he say it when Akechi looks so distressed? He stares up into Akechi's face, helpless.

[pheasantboy]

But the thing is, Ren doesn't have to say it. Akechi stares into his face, looking stricken as the pieces come together, and none of the gold traceries in his mind break and save him.

He turns away, feeling sick, still holding Ren's hands. "I see. But, you know, when I first arrived I didn't understand what was happening either. It took time for me to retain enough of what I learned."

This is, in fact, not quite how it was; his memory of his own experiences is not reliable.

[flightpen]

He squeezes Akechi's hands in apology. Somehow, despite being out from under Maruki's thumb, he feels as wretched as he's ever felt back home. Maybe worse.

"What have you learned?"

[pheasantboy]

It's a distraction, of course; he brightens at once. "I can tell you, of course. But what if we go through to the kitchen, and I'll make tea, or reheat the soup? You might want to wash your face, too."

Ren is, after all, still sitting at his feet.

[flightpen]

Ren doesn't want to move. He wants to sink into the floor and stay there. If he were at home, Maruki would have flicked the switch and shut him off by now.

"Okay." He lets go of Akechi's hands. "Sure, if you want."

[pheasantboy]

"Okay," he agrees, getting to his feet. "Come on, then."

He takes the two mugs through to the kitchen, which is small and dark as its northern exposure suggests. Ren is just so... stuck—in the moment, in the past. It seems so unnatural, and he seems so convinced that it should be that way.

But what would it imply, if Ren was right? If everyone else is correct, and Akechi is wrong? Humans form bonds based on shared experience. If there's no one you can share that experience with... Who had said that to him?

"What do you think? Tea, or shall we try this soup again?" Talk of little things helps, sometimes, before they return to the serious business.

[flightpen]

"Which one do you want?"

Ren does not care at all. He's focusing on staying in the present and not dissociating—because that's an increasingly common problem; it's not the same as Maruki switching him off but it can get in the way of things—but maybe he can make Akechi happy for a moment.

[pheasantboy]

"I'm not the one who needs cheering up." He turns to look at Ren, with a sad little smile; it's like him to think more of everyone else when he's in desperate need.

[flightpen]

Fuck.

"Uh. Soup?" Reheating soup seems like less effort than making tea.

[pheasantboy]

"All right." That's easy enough. The two identical mugs go into the microwave; he checks the level of them both so he can tell them apart later.

[flightpen]

Ren leans against the counter and watches Akechi work. Something is niggling at his brain.

"Before we talk about what you learned," he says slowly. "Can I ask you something?"

[pheasantboy]

He fishes out a spoon, waiting for the microwave to beep. "Of course."

[flightpen]

...Now he has to think of a way to ask that won't upset Akechi. Shit.

"Um. You can... see me a lot better. Than when we were at home."

That's not a question, but it'll have to do.

[pheasantboy]

He's not unaware that Ren is sometimes hard to see at home. "Do you think so?"

[flightpen]

"Yeah. Back home, when I was upset—I mean. When I was like this, more or less. You all kinda forgot I was around until I got it together."

[pheasantboy]

He knows that's true; he thinks he might even remember discussing it. But when? And with whom?

Unfortunately, he's about to reply when the microwave beeps, and his face clears at once. Pulling out the mugs, he stirs them both then hands Ren's back to him, leaning on the counter in turn.

"Here you are. What were you saying?"

[flightpen]

"Thanks." He wraps his hands around his mug, like he did before. This is not the worst thing that Akechi's actualization has done even today, so he takes it more or less in stride. "Um. Just that back home, people forgot I was there when I was obviously upset until I could hide it again."