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 so much. Everything has been so much. But Akechi is asking it of him, and after what Ren did, he can't just say no because it's a little stressful.

"Okay. Um." He speaks slowly, putting words together as he thinks of them. "Everyone in our world used to be like me, but someone decided to change that. You and me and our friends opposed him."

[pheasantboy]

Well, he doesn't blank out, at least. What a ridiculous state to be reduced to.

"I think I knew that at some level," he says. "Or perhaps I was just afraid to admit it. I'm as I am here because I don't belong, so logically... you were as you were at home because you didn't belong."

But what a thought. He wasn't always like he is. The world wasn't always how it is. Why would he want that? "Why did we oppose him? I mean—if our world was like the ones I've heard described, surely it's better now? Why don't you like it?"

[flightpen]

He gives Akechi a look that can only be described as anguished. But Akechi said he wanted to push, wanted to take the risk, so he tries to explain anyway.

"People don't have—real emotions. It's always the same fuzzy undirected happiness, and if that's not what you feel naturally, you're made to feel it. And no one remembers anything, and no one has a conversation that means anything, and no one accomplishes anything, because no one has to work for anything, so no one grows, and—and people get changed. If they don't fit this guy's idea of who should be in a perfect reality, he just. Makes them different."

[pheasantboy]

But, he thinks, looking puzzled—he does accomplish things. Didn't he just finish high school, and hasn't he done all that work with Sae? His work with Shido wasn't exactly an accomplishment, but...

His thoughts neatly shift track, just as Ren mentions people being made different. And then, as if on cue, his eyelids flicker and he's gone. A few seconds later, when he returns, he presses his palm to his face.

"Has it been happening this often all afternoon?"

[flightpen]

"No. Until the..." Not the thing about the notebooks. "...the time on the couch, it was just the normal selective attention stuff."

[pheasantboy]

"The normal selective attention stuff," he echoes. "You make me sound like a zombie."

Like the cognitions in the street, that he recognises now are not quite like the people at home. No wonder people don't like him.

[flightpen]

"I'm sorry," he says immediately, his eyes widening in remorse. "I don't mean... Didn't you say you thought it was normal, though? Not to pay attention to bad things? When we were talking about me."

He's not so much looking to poke a hole in Akechi's argument as he is trying to comfort him.

[pheasantboy]

"It's not what you said," he objects. "It's the way you said it. Like something quite normal, the whole way the world is, is a dreadful imposition on you.

"I can't even consider the possibility that you are mad, not seriously. The way everyone here has reacted to me is proof to the contrary."

[flightpen]

...It really is like that, isn't it. He did this to Akechi, to the entire fucking world, and now he's acting like the wounded party when things turned out the way he asked for them to. He swallows.

"Sorry. I—sorry. I'm just tired."

[pheasantboy]

And Akechi reaches for his hand again. He hasn't been able to hold on to his outrage at what he learned—much of which he's retained—and now he just feels desolate. "No, I'm the one who should be sorry. I should never have said such a thing.

"Have you thought about where you'd like to stay? It would be good to have you close by. The apartment next door is empty, or the one three doors down." In other words, the one Yoshizawa-san isn't in. "Either that, or the last time I was at Leblanc, it was empty. It's a shame to see the place neglected."

[flightpen]

He lets out a long breath.

"Next door sounds good." In a city populated by cognitions and only a few actual people, Ren doesn't want to be isolated. And he can't stand the thought of staying in Leblanc's attic, after the time he's spent there the past couple months.

[pheasantboy]

"Come on, then." He goes to fetch Ren's soup from the kitchen, whisking it up and quickly returning with it. "There'll be some unpleasantness once we're in there, I expect, but I'll take care of that."

[flightpen]

"Unpleasantness?" He follows Akechi with a frown. "What unpleasantness?"

[pheasantboy]

He doesn't look back, stepping back into his shoes as he gets the door. "The existing tenant."

He knows he just said the place was empty, which it technically is, but... it's so hard to think of it that way.

[flightpen]

"Oh." He processes that for a second. "Is it a cognition?"

[pheasantboy]

And then he does look back, in the corridor, feeling guilty that he doesn't feel more guilty. If it comes down to a random cognition or Ren, Ren is always going to win. "So they say."

With that, he knocks on the door to the neighbouring apartment, and steps inside.

[flightpen]

Ren follows, curious despite himself about the unpleasantness to come. The apartment itself has colorful art on every wall and faded, comfortable-looking furniture. A kotatsu sits in front of a television. And that's all that Ren sees on a first glance.

[pheasantboy]

But Akechi, who's rather more used to this and slightly taller to boot, heads for the armchair facing away from the door, towards the TV, where he crouches to address the elderly cognition sitting there. He takes her hand. "Good afternoon, obaasan. I'm sorry to intrude."

oh that's quite all right welcome home dear.

"My friend would like to stay here. He's not well, you see. So if you don't mind..." It doesn't take much more of this before the cognition is tottering out of the front door, still smiling. Akechi watches her go for a moment too long.

[flightpen]

Ren watches her as well, with curiosity, but only for a moment. "Huh."

He wouldn't describe that as unpleasant. It went about as smoothly as any interaction with a cognition can go. But he glances at Akechi's face and hesitates. "What's wrong?"

[pheasantboy]

He rubs the back of his neck, still staring at the door. "It's just not nice, you know. It was her home. I know, I know, they aren't real."

But they seem so familiar, even if they aren't quite like him. They're unlike him the same way he's unlike the others here, the same way (it turns out) he's unlike Ren. Who is he to say what "real" is?

[flightpen]

She'll vanish, Ren expects, or else find another home and then it'll be like she was always there. But he has a feeling that won't comfort Akechi.

"Thanks," he says instead. "For doing that for me."

[pheasantboy]

"You're welcome." It was sad, but he would have done far, far more for Ren, and for all that he's retaining more, most sadnesses still don't linger. He looks around at the room—at the faded upholstery, the old wallpaper, the tiny TV.

"Are you sure this will be all right? It's a little..." Shabby. He doesn't think it's like the places he grew up, just that Ren deserves better.

[flightpen]

"It's homey." That, at least, he can say and mean wholeheartedly. It's not new and shiny, no, but it looks comfortable. Not like it came out of Maruki's lab.

[pheasantboy]

"All right," he nods. "I'll drop you off some food, at least. What would you like?"

[flightpen]

"Oh. Um. I'm not hungry. Thanks, though."

He just wants to hide. He wants it to be over. It's never really over, but sometimes it can be over for a little while.