my montage of lost things, my shining trinkets of grief

[willowandoak]

((cw: hallucinations, panic, the general poor mental state of someone with a Palace))

Ren is not exactly at his most presentable. Like, yeah, he's clean and dressed, but that's about all you can say for him. His hair is a snarl of tangles, his skin is unhealthily pale, he holds himself rigidly, and the shadows under his eyes are so dark that it looks like they might never leave. And he knows he looks bad, but by now he's beyond caring. With everything that's happening to him, someone judging his hair is the least of his fucking concerns.

He doesn't usually like to go out, these days. A lot can happen when he's out of his apartment. Too many things he can't control, and too many places that remind him of home, which lately is to be avoided at all costs. But his apartment isn't much better. There's nowhere he can look where he hasn't seen Shido, or Akechi, or Shido and Akechi, or his parents or his orphanage directors or fuck knows who else. There's nowhere he can sit where he hasn't heard their voices. And when he's not hallucinating, he's alone with his thoughts, which is worse.

All that is to say, there was a whole thing earlier where he felt like he couldn't breathe, and it sucked, but it's over now! He's fine. Still, it made him want to get out of his apartment. So here he is, out in Shibuya. And outside has turned out to be as vertiginous and full of danger as he was afraid of, but, well. At least it's different.


1. all the things that i ran from i now bring as close to me as i can

He stands with his back to the wall of a storefront and searches the constant stream of passing cognitions. His expression is fraught. He knows he hasn't really been seeing people from his past, he's not stupid, but the idea of being blindsided by a hallucinatory Shido or orphanage director amidst the crowd is terrifying enough to keep him rooted in place, watching endlessly.

2. gripping hotel sheets with gritted teeth

He's finally escaped the crowds. Curled up on the grimy concrete in a Shibuya alleyway, his knees to his chest and his back once again pressed to the wall, he tries to calm down. Akechi made him breathe, that time when he freaked out in his Palace. He tries to match the rhythm he remembers, but it just makes him think about the Palace, so he abandons that plan almost at once and goes back to waiting out the terror. He'll be fine if he just grits his teeth and endures it. That... usually works, anyway.

Comments

[willowandoak]

"I don't know. Talked to you, I guess. It wouldn't have really been you." He sounds more bitter than he realizes, saying that. "Just whatever people think the leader of the Phantom Thieves is like."

[lakebrat]

"So in fact, I would have been... you?" The thought makes him want to punch things, a little. He is Ace, at this point; it's come to define him more than is often comfortable. "That seems to be the rule. There's me, and Crow, but Crow is different again."

He gets the door into the Velvet Room. Come on, Ren.

[willowandoak]

Ren steps through it, giving Igor a brief but venomous glare. Still, it lacks his usual energy.

"That still hasn't stopped being weird. Me leading the Phantom Thieves. You'd have crashed and burned halfway through Kamoshida's Palace if I'd been in charge."

Akechi as the black mask is stranger still, but he doesn't want to bring it up.

[lakebrat]

Igor watches them as they turn to head back through the door. Goro stares back at him with eyes of purest ice.

"You'd have done better than you think. People like you. I know you think that's because they don't know you, but...." He sighs, stepping through the door onto the alley outside Leblanc. "Nobody knew me, either. I mean, they still don't."

[willowandoak]

"They'd still like you if they knew you, you know."

Ren has been in the company of the Phantom Thieves enough to be sure of that.

[lakebrat]

Maybe they would, but that's not the point. Goro pauses, with his hand on Leblanc's door, before glancing to Ren with an odd look on his face.

"What do you think? Food first, or straight to the bathhouse?"

[willowandoak]

Ren considers the question for a moment and fails to discover a preference. Everything is still empty and hollow, except for a small glimmer, now, of concern.

"Whatever you want." He tilts his head. "They would, though. I think they'd be happy."

[lakebrat]

It's good. It's a good thing that Ren is coming out of himself. And yet Goro feels put on the spot. He smiles, and it's almost his normal smile.

"I'd like to think so." He turns to go inside. "Come on. If you were sitting in that alley all day, you could at least use some soup." It's like the Wizard of Oz, after all. Pull down the curtain, and what remains?

[willowandoak]

And Ren doesn't have the energy to chase after him in pursuit of... whatever it is he would get if he did. Agreement, an argument, something. In silence, he follows Akechi into the café, which is thankfully free of annoying catlike beings.

[lakebrat]

And Goro heads to the fridge, not for the leftovers that are always in there (still curry most of all), but for the doings for miso soup—fresh, if you please, and not out of a packet. It's one of the first things he learned from his mother. He sets them down on the counter as he talks; there are more of them than you might think.

He has a familiar sense of being put on the spot; it vibrates against his skin. "I'm glad you're feeling better, anyway," he says, closing the fridge door and looking for a pan. "Hey, do you mind if I ask you something?"

Ominous.

[willowandoak]

Standing on the other side of the counter, gazing down at it as item after item appears, he makes a little hm noise. It... probably means Akechi can ask.

[lakebrat]

With the pan on the stove, he pours dashi into it—from a container, made earlier. He sets it on a low heat, then comes to the counter with a board and knife, and some scraps of vegetable—ginger, garlic, cabbage, carrot, daikon—which he juliennes with unnerving expertise.

He looks up with either no regard for his fingers, or infinite confidence. "What happened with Magpie earlier?"

[willowandoak]

Ren has a lot of confidence in his knifework too, though in a somewhat different context. He gets it. The question comes as kind of a surprise, though.

"Magpie? He was... you know. Why?"

[lakebrat]

"I just wondered. You seemed surprised he'd told anyone what happened." Which, admittedly, Goro's surprised too. He scoops the ginger into the pan.

[willowandoak]

With a sigh, Ren finally takes a seat. "He knew about the Palace. Which I knew would happen," he can't help but add, sullenly. "He kept saying shit to try to make me fight him, and then he pretended to call you. I think he liked that I didn't want him to but couldn't do anything about it? I didn't know he was lying till he started talking about ice cream to whoever was on the other end."

There was other stuff after that, too, some of it pretty offensive, but that's what stands out the most in Ren's memory. The bleak, awful powerlessness, like standing in front of Shido, only for Magpie to be fucking lying all along. Not even calling Akechi, just making him feel like that because it was funny or something.

[lakebrat]

"Ice cream? Seriously?" What the hell was that supposed to be? He's come to expect very little from Magpie, but that is strange. "Was he still trying to provoke you?"

[willowandoak]

"Who the fuck knows, Akechi. Maybe he really did just want to bring home some ice cream."

[lakebrat]

"Maybe. Who knows? Who can fathom the mind of that guy?" Goro can't help but grin, momentarily wicked and sharp as the knife in his hand. The carrot and daikon vanish into perfect white and orange strips.

"He did tell Crow, though. Enough for Crow to contact me."

[willowandoak]

"Yeah. It's weird." Ren stares moodily at Akechi's knife as it flashes through the air. "He seemed pretty pissed off by the end. I wouldn't have thought... I don't know. He was probably worried about Crow."

[lakebrat]

It's difficult. Given what Goro knows happened between the two of them, he can't imagine Magpie was feeling forgiving. "Technically, Crow said his mysterious informant wished to remain anonymous. That was after I said it's Magpie, right."

[willowandoak]

He glances up. "Then it could've been anyone. Half the people here showed up at one point or another. But most of them wouldn't care about staying anonymous, I guess."

[lakebrat]

"But all the people here know you spoke to them, right? That is, that you know they know." He shreds the cabbage, and sets the board aside, giving the pan a neat whisk with chopsticks before he returns.

"Did anyone else you saw have a reason to say don't tell them it was me?"

[willowandoak]

"I guess not." His eyes remain on Akechi's hands, for no particular reason except that something about them is soothing to watch. "You know, he told me one time talking to me is like talking to Shido?"

Ren's not even that mad about it, all things considered. But he remembers it.

[lakebrat]

Goro's eyes narrow abruptly. The words spreading out beneath his feet, on the steps into the Palace. You know, talking to you is like talking to my boss.

He tries not to sound as shocked as he is. "He said that?"

[willowandoak]

"Yeah." Ren has no idea what Akechi's thinking about. "And today he wouldn't stop saying shit just to be a dick, so I was like, 'What's that thing you said that time, about how talking to me is like talking to your boss?' And he hated that." His mouth twists. "Like he's the only one allowed to say it."