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]

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."

[lakebrat]

He doesn't like this slowly building awareness of Magpie's importance to the Palace. "Shido's that bad, huh?"

To be honest, he doesn't like that either. Shido's nature as abhorrent, and not merely appalling, is already something of a gaping wound inside him.

[willowandoak]

Something in Akechi's tone tells Ren maybe he shouldn't emphatically agree and start telling stories about how much Akechi's dad sucks. "Pretty much," he says, and leaves it there.

[lakebrat]

With a weird quirk of his mouth, he goes to the simmering pot and gives it a stir, lowering the heat a touch before he returns to meet Ren's eye.

"When this is all over," he says, "we're going to take him down together. And we'll never have to think about Magpie again. You'll be stuck with me." It's a joke.

[willowandoak]

It's not going to happen that way, Palace or no Palace. But he's so tired, and they've had the same argument about that twenty times. Maybe he should let Akechi keep his illusions while he can.

"Someday, someone's gonna take you seriously when you say that stuff."

[lakebrat]

"Some day, yes." That is, some day he'll say it and Ren will believe him; will believe in himself enough to believe it. He heads to the stove to start whisking miso into the pan.

"Hey, do you want to come back here and set out a couple of bowls for this? It's almost done."

[willowandoak]

As he passes Akechi on the way to fetch soup bowls, for a split second, the face he sees out of the corner of his eye is caked in black blood. He flinches hard. Fuck, he thinks, heart pounding. Lucky he wasn't carrying anything.

The omnipresent whispers gain volume. His parents are absent for now, but he recognizes other voices, other threats. Orphanage directors, of course, and various others as well, who've seen him as someone to subdue or eliminate over the years. He presses his lips together and pulls bowls and soup spoons out of Leblanc's cabinets.

[lakebrat]

Without fuss, he moves the pan to a back burner, and turns halfway. "Hey," he says, before reaching to touch Ren's arm, if he can.

[willowandoak]

"It's fine." He sounds strained, but at least he can still use his voice. With effort, he looks at Akechi. Maybe he'll look... like that... but Ren at least wants to know.

But in the event, Akechi looks normal and alive, if concerned. Ren lets the hand rest on his arm, taking comfort from its solidity and warmth. The voice of his first orphanage director competes with the hangure boss who threatened his life, early on before he was established. No one will even look for you, kid. But they don't get any louder.

"Thanks," he adds belatedly.

[lakebrat]

Goro reads his posture, his face, feeling it all at the base of his throat and in his gut. He runs his hand firmly up Ren's arm to his shoulder, before taking the bowls and spoons with a smile that doesn't reach his eyes.

"Come on," he says. "Let's get this dished up. You've earned it."

[willowandoak]

It's such a bizarre claim that Ren lets out something that kind of sounds like a laugh. "What the fuck are you talking about."

[lakebrat]

He glances back again, with the ladle in hand. "All that sitting outside Iwai's place. You definitely earned something, and"—he turns back to finish pouring—"I say this is it."

[willowandoak]

He stares in bewilderment at the side of Akechi's head. The fuck does he mean, Ren earned soup by collapsing in an alley? "I earned a kick to the head, is what I earned," he decides to say in the end. "I'm lucky we aren't back home." He wanders back around the counter and plops down in the barstool again.

[lakebrat]

Goro follows, setting down bowls, spoons and chopsticks on the counter with his usual flair. "But we're not at home. And rather than kicking you in the head, I've chosen the way of soup."

He watches, though, in a depthless sort of way; he knows how it works, though he'll never know as much about staying safe as Ren.

[willowandoak]

"Leader of the Phantom Thieves," he says, for reasons even he only half-understands. "Thanks for the food."

The soup is good. He knew it would be, because Akechi made it. Ace, Phantom Thieves ringleader and soupmaker.

[lakebrat]

It's the same soup his mother used to make, when he was tiny and they lived in that one room in Shinjuku; when she had all day for him, and they made do with next to nothing, besides what they could steal. When he was happy because he knew no better, except when he was scared the way an animal is scared.

He's developed the recipe over the years, of course, added spice to the dashi base and blended the flavours, so that he's able to put it before Ren now. He sets to himself, though both of them need a lot more than soup. Maybe after the baths.

Picking out some vegetables from the bowl, he thinks about what Ren said. "Leader of the Phantom Thieves. I wish I could make the claims for virtue for myself that you think."

He's just a vigilante, after all, at the end of the day. Nobody forced him to do any of what he's done, technically; he chose. More or less.

[willowandoak]

With his mouth full of soup, Ren pauses, frowning sidelong at Akechi. He chooses his words as he swallows.

"You don't think you're virtuous?"

What the fuck?

[lakebrat]

He glances up from his own bowl, which he's cradled in one hand. "I'm not going to say there's not a continuum. We're on different places on it. But virtuous is such an awful word, don't you think?"

Crap, it's enough to make him laugh. He sets down his bowl. "It makes me sound like I sit on the PTA. Or the student council. Makoto is virtuous."

[willowandoak]

"You're a better person than Niijima."

And he drinks some broth. He doesn't even hate Niijima. Niijima is fine. But that doesn't mean he doesn't have thoughts.

[lakebrat]

"Makoto hasn't been without her struggles. You know enough about Niijima-san, I'm sure. But I know what you're saying."

He picks up his chopsticks, fishing out another nest of carrot and daikon, warm with ginger. "I don't do what I do because I'm a good person, Ren."

[willowandoak]

"Why, then?"

It's easy to be present in this moment. The voices are quiet, and the shadows remain at the edges of his vision, swirling and unformed. He likes thinking about Akechi.