Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Akechi wakes up with a ragged gasp, shooting straight up from a nest of blankets with a fist clutching his chest. His head spins, vertigo making his stomach roll discontentedly.

Where—

He chokes on an inhale, gasping breaths stuttering in and out of his open mouth. Breathing heavily, he tucks his head into his hands, hair falling forward in a tangled curtain as he tries to breathe. 

I’m supposed to be—

Akechi’s eyes clench shut while his trembling hands come up to grip his hair. The painful sting clears his head marginally, enough that the disorientated swirl of his brain becomes muted as he focuses on the pain rather than the thoughts that run like river rapids through his mind. When air comes more readily to his lungs, Akechi blearily looks up with nausea edging his throat.

It’s dark except for the soft slivers of moonlight slipping through the window curtains. It doesn’t offer much light, but as Akechi’s eyes acclimate to the darkness, his eyebrows furrow with confusion. He’s in his apartment, bare and clinical and cold. Which is confusing for a multitude of reasons, most of all seeing that he’s supposed to be—

Dead. I’m supposed to be dead.

The last thing that Akechi remembers is being pressed facefirst into the mindfuckery that was Morgana’s helicopter form, eyes trained on Joker as the palace collapsed around them. If anything, Akechi had been somewhat satisfied that one of his last moments on Earth was the sight of Joker, a gentle if mourning tilt to his lips as he looked straight at Akechi. He could almost call himself content in that moment, with a calm acceptance that he was going to die. 

Except he isn’t dead. 

Akechi realizes this, some unknown sensation washing over him. It’s not the sense of dread that had permeated through his body when he’d first had the supposition after Christmas Eve, a chunk of his memory missing and an offer to testify spilling out of his mouth before he knew it. Not the anger that had surged through him as Maruki dangled his life as an ultimatum, offering Ren his happily ever after if he just let Akechi be controlled yet again. Not even the relief that had touched the edges of his frown as Ren looked at him with wavering lips but a firm conviction in his eyes as he vowed to fight for their true reality. 

Numb, Akechi lands on finally, hands slipping from his hair to rest on the sheets bunched up around him. He feels like laughing; he wants to ask ‘why again?’ and ‘why me?’, but the urge to scream falls to the wayside in the face of the exhaustion he’s woken up to, leaving him with nothing but a tired body and a tired mind. The thoughts spiralling around his mind quiet, and his limbs feel like they’d been dunked in anesthetic. He draws his knees to his chest, a clammy hand to his forehead as he leans back against his pillows. 

His inner monologue makes Akechi let out a tired snicker, a rough sound that’s loud against the empty silence of his apartment. Clearly a third chance at life hadn’t rid Akechi of his personality if his sense of melodrama was intact. 

Take that, Akechi thinks spitefully at whatever entity has brought him back this time.

It’s with the dreadful thought of another megalomaniac trying to assert their control over the world that Akechi finally gains enough mind to take a glance at the clock. A little past midnight, the red glaring numbers tell him. With a silent groan, Akechi presses the heel of his palms against his eyes until he sees stars, tumbling out of his bed with a loud thump. Sufficiently awake and with an aching elbow, Akechi gets up to see what the situation is. 

He hisses as he turns the lights on, underestimating how bright the overhead lights are. Akechi blinks rapidly as he slams a palm against the light switch, plunging the room back into darkness. It's only that he realizes that he’s wearing a ratty shirt and shorts. It’s taken straight from his closet so that’s at least one less thing to worry over, though it raises some questions since he’d last remembered wearing his winter clothes before they went into the Palace. He stumbles around his room, narrowly avoiding running his shin straight into his chair leg as he turns on his desk lamp. 

Now what, Akechi thinks to himself. Phone, he remembers. Hopefully he still has one. At least in Maruki’s reality, he had woken pristine and whole, dressed in his school uniform with his phone placed neatly in his pockets for ease of convenience.

Luckily, Akechi thinks to himself as he shuffles over to his bedside table, whatever being brought him back to the land of living was kind enough to both give him his phone as well as charge it. He unplugs the device, immediately dimming the screen brightness to a comfortable ‘awake past midnight’ level. And then freezes as he looks at the date. Specifically, the year.

2016, it reads up at him. 

Akechi only remembers to blink when the screen automatically turns off. He turns it back on again.

2016 it still reads. More specifically, April 9, almost a year before Maruki’s deadline. 

What the fuck? is Akechi's first thought. Then: How?

There’s something else that niggles at Akechi’s brain at the date, but somehow time travel is still a step too far in the cosmic joke that is Akechi Goro's life, past the ridiculousness that is manifesting a physical form of your rebellion, or manipulating the public’s minds by dungeon crawling through the collective consciousness of the masses located in Tokyo’s public transit. He’d thought he couldn’t be surprised anymore after that, but life just loves finding new ways to prove him wrong. Absolutely unbelievable. 

Akechi scrubs a hand over his face, smoothing out his scowl. The exhaustion that’s been steadily making him more dizzy as he struggles to stay awake drags their claws into his brain, scattering most of his higher thinking abilities before he can make sense of his thoughts. This sense of fatigue seemed to belong to his body of a year ago, and now that he’s focusing on the state of himself, he can feel the tell-tale aches that speak of a particularly hard run in the Metaverse. Working with the Phantom Thieves had truly spoiled Akechi; ever since Akechi had tasted what it was like to be able to depend on an ally for healing, he rarely came out of the Metaverse feeling battered. Well, other than their recent (apparently now future) battle with Maruki, but that battle was draining in a couple other ways that he didn’t feel now, so it was logical that he was experiencing the afteraffects of something he did then, today. 

What was he doing on this day a year ago? Akechi sits down on the edge of his bed, unlocking his phone to scroll through his notes. As good as his memory is, he still kept meticulous notes and important details written down, both as a personal planner and as evidence, all located in a nondescript looking file on his phone, locked and encrypted, that was also kept in a physical copy in a notebook in his attaché case. He kept them as vague and bland as possible, in the case that Shido saw the need to snoop through his phone. If the man ever asked, then it could just be explained away as keeping his tasks and responsibilities straight. 

It takes little time to locate the log for April 8; it’s one of the more recent entries near the top of his notes. There’s a list of scantly worded sentences written in it.

Interview at 12. 

Sushi w/ Sae at 7.

PsyD in Aiyatsbus. Conductor. 

There’s a name tacked on beside it and a list of other tasks from Shido below that, but the first few words are enough to jog Akechi’s memory. Yes, he remembers this; Shido had been targeting the Minister of Transport at this time and ordered a psychotic breakdown on a conductor in order to use public pressure to get him out of office while bolstering his own popularity for his campaign. There were extensive injuries, he recalls, though no deaths. 

Akechi had been run particularly ragged that day. Since the conductor was located on the second floor, he had thought it would be an easy job to finish before getting to the targets on lower floors. However, a lucky forget spell and a narrowly avoided swipe from the shadow left him with a large gash on his side before he could cast Call of Chaos. It left the rest of his time in Mementos extremely difficult as he haphazardly patched up the wound with a few bandages and protein bars. Every battle was ten times harder, making him slower to react and requiring him to shield his side. By the time he had gotten home, he had been dead on his feet, physical wounds from the Metaverse gone but the ache fresh in a mind that didn’t understand he was no longer injured.

But that feeling in his mind still persists, telling him he’s forgotten something else. Akechi closes his eyes to think and nearly falls asleep a moment later, catching himself as he tips to the side. Slow and addled as he is from exhaustion and sleep deprivation, it’s a study in futility as he attempts to drag the forgotten memory from the crevices of his brain. Akechi eventually gives up, plugging his phone back in and tucking himself back under his blankets. 

It’ll come back to him once it does, he reasons to himself, screwing his eyes shut with his lips pursed. There’s no point tiring himself over this and rendering himself even more useless. 

Even with his body aching with wounds his mind only subconsciously remembers, Akechi surprisingly drifts easily into sleep once he settles down. 

In the dreamlike haze of sleep, the impression of a blue room and prison bars winks in and out before dissolving into darkness accompanied by the sound of rattling chains.

‘Trickster… You must… Strive to create… The bonds necessary… To preve—’

A young girl’s voice resounds in his head, muddled as though speaking through water. Her words are faint and trailing with a slight echo before they halt abruptly midword. The silence created by the absence of the voice is replaced by a quiet but steadily increasing sound of humming metal. It climbs louder and louder, crescendoing into a loud, screeching cacophony that screams on and on and on until all of Akechi’s senses are overloaded, until there’s only pain and pAIN AND PAIN AND PAIN—

Akechi wakes up. 

Akira’s eyes slowly blink open to the low, ever-constant murmur of the subway, tilting his head up from where he had slumped over in his seat. His neck slightly aches, and he brings one of his hands up to remove his glasses to rub at his eyes. 

He sits up straighter, rolling his neck side to side as he tries to remember the disorienting dream he just had. The memory of it is quickly disappearing, slipping through Akira’s fingertips like sand in the wind, but the strongest impressions are still present. Fighting monsters alongside a group of eccentrically dressed strangers. A fight against a god. Another god. A prison bathed in blue light. A talking cat.

A boy with sharp, red eyes with an equally sharp tongue.

Akira rubs his chest with a frown as a staggering sense of sorrow threatens to overcome him. 

The announcement over the intercom calling for Yongen-Jaya jolts Akira out of his pensive daze. He stands, following the crowd of people as they get off the train, head swiveling left and right and trying not to feel overwhelmed as he looks around the station. 

Akira eventually manages to get directions to the neighborhood, and a strange sense of deja-vu washes over him as he looks around him at the little shops and streets around him. A woman in a long white lab-coat and short hair rushes past Akira quickly, and the oddest urge to call out for her rises in him. There’s something familiar about her though he’s sure he’s never seen her in his life. He’s sure he would remember someone with such a distinctive appearance.

The feeling of deja-vu persists through his questions for the Sakura household, through the directions for Leblanc, through the words that pass through his lips and the answers he receives from the residents. A sharp sense of relief pierces through Akira as he takes his first step into Leblanc, the chime of a bell ringing to announce his presence. His shoulders relax and nostalgia rises in him, even though it’s his first time he’s ever seen the quaint interior of the cafe. A man dressed in sakura pink and wrinkles lining a weathered face looks up at him, and the frown that creases his face causes fondness to well up rather than the wariness it should provoke. 

Sakura Sojiro, the man introduces himself as gruffly. Akira nods, introduces himself, and follows the man up into the attic. It’s messy and dusty, but something about the cobwebbed attic makes him feel like he’s returning home. Sojiro leaves him to his new home for the foreseeable future, and Akira makes himself busy as rolls up his sleeves and tackles the mess. By the time Sojiro comes back up, there’s dust under his nails and probably in his hair, but it’s starting to look more like the start of a habitable room rather than a storage area. 

When Sojiro finally locks up the cafe after telling him about Shujin, Akira tumbles gracelessly onto the bed. It’s hard, as expected from a mattress on milk crates, but Akira can’t complain. 

Akira sighs, a deep gusty noise that lifts some of the dust he hadn’t gotten to. He sneezes, before pulling up the thin blanket and closing his eyes.

Chapter Text

Akechi wakes up a few minutes before his alarm with his breath caught in his throat. What was that, he thinks, swallowing harshly. A blue prison… Was that the Velvet Room? And the girl’s voice sounded eerily like the strange girl who warned them of Maruki’s plans. Lavenza, he recalls. 

In the other reality, Ren had explained the basics of the Velvet Room and its attendants, which sounded ridiculous until Akechi thought about his prior experiences within the Metaverse. According to Ren, the Velvet Room made itself known in times where humanity was near ruin, and to aid who Ren called Wildcards on their journey.

So, why was Akechi dreaming of it now? The phantom sound of the discordant screaming that had rattled through his mind near the end of the dream is also worrying.

Deeply unsettled, Akechi turns off the alarm and rolls out of bed, carding a hand through his tangled hair as he trudges toward his bathroom. He’s never been a morning person, despite what his chipper appearances on morning talk shows suggests. But routines are what got him through practically all his life, so Akechi will cling onto them until he figures out what to do.

As he’s brushing his teeth, he thinks about his plans going forward. There’s no guarantee that he’s the only person brought back to the past. Immediately, his mind jumps to Ren, who during their time in Maruki’s reality, was the only other person with his mind unaffected by the counsellor's meddling with reality. Somehow Ren always managed to land himself in the center of these things, Akechi thought sardonically. If there was another person Akechi would expect to be involved in this mess, it’s him. Akechi has half a mind to call him, but his phone contacts contain only the numbers he had in April, of which Ren’s name is conspicuously absent from. An easily solved problem, since Akechi could just pull his number from police records. Though, if Ren doesn’t remember, then that conversation was bound to fall through. 

Akechi finishes washing his face, clipping up his bangs and beginning the first step of his morning routine. He’s touching up his face with makeup when his phone rings from his bedroom.

Akechi tenses, because he recognizes that specific ringtone. Akechi comes out of the bathroom and heads to his bedside table, looking down at the caller ID with an unreadable expression.

A year ago, Akechi wouldn’t hesitate to answer. Not because he was ever eager to speak with him, no, but a year ago, Akechi was as efficient as any teenage hitman could be, and he was very good at compartmentalizing just about anything that distracted him from his revenge. 

But then the Phantom Thieves happened. Or more specifically, a quiet boy with perpetual bedhead and intelligent eyes happened. And now he’s stalling because he thought he was done with this when he’d sacrificed himself in the engine room and woke up in a world where Shido was already locked away. 

Funnily enough, it’s not until this very moment that Akechi realizes what it truly means to be back in the past.

Akechi lets the ringtone loop twice before he summons the will to answer, a familiar bitter loathing in his throat as he listens to the voice of the man who ruined his life once more.

“Akechi,” Shido says in lieu of an actual greeting, as disinterested as he always sounded when speaking to him. “Have you finished your tasks?” His tone is curt, and Akechi has to fight down the surge of hate as he’s once again being talked down like he’s a child.

Akechi swallows down the words he wants to spit to this Shido, not yet affected by a change of heart. “Of course, sir,” Akechi says instead, the edges sanded and beaten down into careful blandness. “You’ll see the results soon.”

“Good,” Shido says brusquely before cutting the call.

Akechi hisses as he lowers the phone from his ear, holding the case in a white knuckled grip. He takes a few minutes to simply breath, deep and slow, before whirling around to continue getting ready for school.

“Did you hear?” A girl asks her friend as they walk under a shared umbrella. “About the transfer student?”

They both stop to wait for the crosswalk light to turn green. Her friend shakes her head, and the first girl huddles close with a hand over her mouth like she’s imparting a secret, even though her ‘whisper’ is nowhere near quiet, “Apparently he’s starting class today. Here’s the kicker though, I heard that he’s some sort of delinquent and got kicked out of his town for assaulting someone!”

Akechi glances up from the ground, tilting his head subtly to look at the two girls. They’re both wearing Shujin’s distinctive uniforms, and the second girl's eyes are wide as she looks at the first. “Really?! What was the school thinking, admitting someone like that?”

“Who knows? In any case, I’m just glad he’s not in my class.” A sudden gust of wind nearly knocks the umbrella out of the second girl’s loose grip, and they yelp as they scramble to shield themselves from the rain. 

The light turns green, and Akechi walks past them with a pensive expression on his face. So that was the thing he was forgetting. He dodges a frazzled businessman rushing through the crowds with a phone tucked close to his ear, flashing him a pleasant smile when the man gives a distracted nod of apology. If it was Ren’s first day at Shujin, then today must be the day the other boy first stumbled into the Metaverse. 

Akechi needs to find a way to contact Ren. Even if Ren somehow doesn’t remember, it wouldn’t hurt to make early contact with the Phantom Thieves this time around. Last time, Ren had only appeared on his radar after they had completed Madarame’s Palace during his social studies visit to the TV station, and Akechi had unknowingly already fucked up his first impression by responding to Morgana. He brings his hand up to his mouth to cover the aggravated curl of his lips, smoothing his expression out into something less annoyed.

If he had his way, Akechi would never be repeating that same mistake again. 

It’s slightly strange to go back to attending school after skipping all of his classes during January. The students are the same faces he'd seen since his first year and the general atmosphere of his classes unchanged, yet Akechi feels like an entirely different person as he listens to his teachers talk about subjects he’d already learned about the last go around. 

He heads to the courthouse as soon as he finishes his classes, turning down an invite to hangout from one of his more persistent classmates with a remorseful smile and a promise for ‘another time, perhaps when I’m less busy.’ 

Sae’s hair is distinctive as she stands before the steps leading up to the courthouse, and her eyes narrow at Akechi as she taps her foot impatiently. “You’re late,” Sae says as she goes back to tapping furiously on her phone, waving at him to follow her into the building.

“Only by a few minutes, Sae-san. Besides, there was the delay with the trains,” Akechi reminds her, nodding his head in greeting to nearby people as they pass by.

Sae nods sharply, “Yes, that’s what I called you over to discuss.” Sae lets them into a small conference room with a scan of her ID, immediately going to pull out her computer and a stack of files from her bag. 

Akechi places down his attaché case on the ground and settles down in a chair across from Sae, raising an eyebrow at the amount of files Sae has placed on the table. “Sae-san?”

“The conductor is definitely a psychotic breakdown,” Sae opens a manilla folder and thumbs through the papers until she finds the correct page, turning it over and tapping it with a painted nail.

Akechi picks it up, listening to Sae continue to speak as he goes through the police report. It’s a testimony from the train conductor soon after he was admitted into the hospital. 

“Everything he says lines up with what we know of them, though that’s not what I’m focused on,” Sae shuffles through the files as she marks down pages for later review. “What I want to know is the connection between a random train operator and the rest of the victims. I’ve been primarily focused on finding common ground between them to see if there’s a criteria for being targeted, but perhaps that’s too narrow. I want to see if there’s a thread between the people affected by these breakdowns and shutdowns.”

Sae’s already tapping away on her keyboard as Akechi begins to remember the reason why she called him the last time with dread. He tries for a smile, and it comes out more like a grimace. “Sae-san, are you saying…?”

Sae looks up at him with the spark in her eyes that conjures memories of long hours sitting at a desk squinting at endless files and reports. “Get to it, Akechi,” she says with a grim smile. “The faster we start, the faster you get to go home.”

Akechi manages to wrangle himself out of the courthouse a few hours later with a promise to continue looking through the files at home and a comment about her not ‘overworking a poor student, are you?’ She’d begrudgingly agreed and let him go after dumping a portion of the files into his arms. 

Sighing, Akechi brushes a strand of hair out of his eyes as he checks his phone. It’s currently early evening, and he has a bit of time to kill before his train arrives. Like his stomach knows, it suddenly growls right then to remind him of its neglect.

As the cashier at the convenience store rings up his bento box and a few snacks, his eye catches on one of the coffee machines. Since he hasn’t had a reason (or a plan of action) for going to Leblanc, Akechi has had to satisfy his caffeine addiction through other means. The worst thing Ren has done to him is thoroughly hook him with his coffee and utterly ruin Akechi’s ability to drink coffee not brewed at Leblanc. Absolutely horrible.

“Could you add a cup to my items? Oh, a regular size, please. Thank you.”

Akechi sips from his cup and tries not to wrinkle his nose at the overly bitter yet bland taste as he leaves the store. Oh, Leblanc had truly spoiled him. Looking up at the darkening sky, Akechi’s reminded of the time. Pulling out his phone from his pocket is a struggle; with coffee in one hand and his attaché case and a plastic bag in the other, Akechi really should have expected what happened next. 

He stumbles back, dropping his coffee and nearly falling over as he looks up with an apology at the ready. It dies on his tongue when he sees just who he bumped into. What the hell are these odds, Akechi thinks to himself, stunned into silence. No, seriously. Out of all of the people in Tokyo, why did it have to be him?!

 “Oh…” Ren’s face is impassive as ever, his response entirely lackluster after having coffee spilled all over the front of his uniform. 

“...Ren?” Akechi almost blurts out without thinking, the shock at unexpectedly meeting the other boy scrambling his thoughts. He bites his tongue before he does. Instead, he immediately apologizes, his expression appropriately remorseful, “I’m so sorry! I wasn’t watching where I was going.” 

He produces a handkerchief from a pocket with his now newly freed hand, handing it over to Ren, nonchalant in the face of his apology but nods his thanks as he goes to dab ineffectively at the spreading coffee stain. Luckily, most of it had gotten over his black blazer and the ground instead of his white turtleneck. Akechi peers at Ren’s face inquisitively as he continues to apologize repeatedly. The other boy’s eyes are downturned, half-obscured by the clunky glasses that he hides behind. 

Akechi can’t tell if this is his usual stoicness or if he recognizes him. 

“I apologize again,” Akechi frets, biting his lip and fidgeting with his hands. The mask of the Detective Prince slots into place as naturally as breathing, and yet Akechi still feels suffocated. It’s a little aggravating to be acting like this in front of Ren once again, but he’s always liked to err on the side of caution. 

Ren shakes his head, offering Akechi one of his small smiles, and Akechi has to suppress the pang of disappointment as Ren looks at him with all the familiarity of a stranger, “It’s fine. You can barely see it anyway.” 

He makes to hand back the handkerchief, but it’s Akechi’s turn to shake his head. “Keep it. You can throw it away later if you want.” 

Ren raises his eyebrows, but shrugs, folding it once to cover the parts soiled by coffee before tucking it in his pants pocket. 

Silence falls between them as Akechi’s ever turning mind stalls in the face of meeting Ren so unexpectedly. “If you want, I could take it to the dry cleaners?” Akechi blurts out suddenly, not knowing how to keep Ren there for longer. A strange sense of anxiousness fills Akechi. He knows that if things go how they will, Akechi will meet Ren again sooner or later, be it at the TV station on his social studies field trip or at Leblanc, but seeing the other boy in person is doing something to his impulse control.

Unfortunately, Ren shakes his head again, “No need, there’s a laundromat near where I live.”

“Oh, I see,” Akechi says dumbly in lack of anything else to say.

Despite his disappointment, Akechi reluctantly finds himself amused at Ren’s typical reticence. Ren has always subscribed to the saying of less is more. Now that Akechi is talking to him, if this awkward back and forth could even be considered such, he finds himself aching as his eyes flit across his rival’s face. During their time in Maruki’s reality, Akechi had unwittingly become used to Ren’s presence, especially since the other boy seemed to be inviting him out to the Jazz Jin every other night for one reason or another. It probably says something that despite all Akechi’s protests that they were wasting time, he dutifully met up with Ren anyway.

Ren nods politely at him before moving past him, and Akechi feels bereft as he stands in the middle of the sidewalk staring at Ren’s back until he disappears beyond his vision. Akechi shakes his head at his own foolishness, picking up the coffee cup on the ground to throw away on his way to his train.