Chapter Text
When Akira opens his eyes to a ceiling covered in cobwebs and a distinct lack of Morgana on his face, he spends the next ten minutes slowly working himself up to a full-blown panic attack. He ends up curled into a slightly pathetic pretzel of shaking limbs, fingers twisting in his hair as he tries to figure out what had gotten him into this predicament.
His memories are decidedly unhelpful, lining up in two discrete blocks with the first being going to bed in his university dorm and the next, waking up a sixteen-year-old delinquent on probation.
I didn't ask for this, he thinks loudly.
“I didn't ask for this,” he says loudly for the benefit of the cruel, twisted cosmic puppet-master that was in control of his life just in case they hadn't been paying enough attention. It doesn't seem to be very effective since his phone, now glaringly void of all his contacts, is still telling him that it's 2:46 AM on April 11, 2017.
To his endless embarrassment, his first instinct is to bury his face in his pillow and cry until the weight of crushing responsibility and looming dread stops threatening to overwhelm him. Not that he can really blame himself, as there is very little else that is as discouraging as having to start over from square one with no confidants, no yen, and no guarantee if he will even survive the upcoming year. If any of them will.
He takes a calming breath. Or two. Or fifty, but Morgana isn't around to call him out on it. The important part is that he eventually reaches that place of zen that he had been known for, prior to his temporal displacement.
Akira’s thumb hovers over the mocking red eye of the Metaverse-Navi and deletes it with a passive-aggressive click. Palaces, false gods, precariously averted apocalypses - bring it on.
… but just not right now, preferably.
Right now, Akira is going the fuck to bed.
Akira finds himself mildly regretting his decision to catch up on shut-eye instead of frantically diving for a pen and paper and capturing every remembered second of the future in search of some method or strategy for some kind of perceived advantage in the second round of this unjust game. Because then he might have remembered to bring an umbrella.
Instead, he is once again seeking shelter under a storefront and resembling a half-drowned cat as he squints to see through his fake glasses.
He scarcely remembers getting ready that morning, running on an autopilot of old ingrained habits as he absently buttoned up his Shujin blazer and shoveled curry in his face, all the while not looking Sojiro in the face to avoid seeing the cool, distrustful indifference there. Knowing that his closest friends and found family were complete strangers at this point and experiencing it are two very different matters and Akira needs a lot more sleep and as much alcohol as he can buy on a student budget before he thinks he will be remotely ready to face this new reality head-on.
So he decides not to. Face reality, that is. In fact, Akira is determined to spend the rest of the day in a shell-shocked stupor and go straight home to bed and sleep for at least sixteen hours. Then he’ll worry about things like saving Tokyo from non-existence.
Alas, his fledgling plans are foiled before they even get out of the nest when he spies movement next to him. He turns just in time to see a bright head of blond hair shaken loose from a white hood and Takamaki Ann is suddenly standing next to him, just as stunning as the first day he met her.
Because it is the first day he met her.
Of course, she notices him staring at her like a weirdo and Akira self-consciously flips his soaking wet bangs out of his eyes, hoping that it comes off as nonchalant rather than criminally nervous. He’s too busy reeling over his sudden and unwelcome revelation to notice that she had gone rather still, cheeks flushed with colour. Somehow, he had failed to connect the dots that today is (was?) the day that he stumbles blindly into the Metaverse and discovers his will of rebellion while ripping half the skin off his face. Akira can only conclude that he should never have gotten out of bed this morning because he is most certainly not up for any of that. Butterfly effect or not, surely things will be fine if he took a sick day? A sick month?
“Oh, do you need a ride too?”
Akira is unwelcomely wrenched from his thoughts by a sickening baritone and his head snaps up to see Kamoshida Suguru, the multi-limbed, slobbering ruler of lust himself. He blinks and the horrible image is replaced with a slightly less horrible image of a normal-limbed human wearing a smarmy grin that dripped sleaze. Akira takes a half-conscious step back in reflex and shakes his head in rejection and fights to keep a fake smile on his face. He ends up with a grimace, a grin with too many teeth and a jaw too rigid with tension.
Luckily for his mounting blood pressure, Kamoshida drives off though his eyes linger on him for a fraction too long. But just as his pulse starts to steady, it skyrockets back up again at another all too familiar voice.
“- screw that perverted teacher! Who does that bastard think he is? The king of the castle?”
Akira takes a deep calming breath and runs in the opposite direction. Or he would have if his stupid body would listen to him instead of shaking like a newborn foal. Instead, his body just makes an aborted sort of jerk as dismay spreads across his face since he isn't ready for this.
Apparently finding his existential crisis offensive, Sakamoto Ryuji regards him with far more aggression than he has ever directed at him before.
“What? Are you going to rat me out to Kamoshida too?” he growls and Akira is too stupid to do anything else besides on staring blankly at him in horror.
“Kamoshida?” he hears himself parroting because he's stupid. Unfortunately, he must have picked the wrong dialogue option because Ryuji looks like he wants to lunge for his lapels and slam him into a locker.
“Don't play dumb! That's a Shujin uniform, ain't it?!”
Akira wracks his brain, trying to salvage the situation.
Shujin? I don't know her.
Sorry, I just transferred here today.
Ryuji, I'm a time traveler.
Akira opens his mouth to explain but all he ends up saying is, “oh shit,” when the Metaverse-Navi pings and reality warps around them.
Before Ryuji can ignorantly provoke the armored shadows, in one swift motion, Akira clamps a hand around his friend's loud mouth and drags him further into the Palace. He is moving more or less on autopilot, guided by déjà vu and a spiteful refusal to succumb to the trials he had once successfully faced.
In a maelstrom of fire and blood, Arsene comes to him again and then it's child's play to slip between their blindspots and tear away their masks, unerringly striking at weaknesses. Despite all his time outside of the Metaverse, he eases into his Personas like a second skin and he can pretend that nothing had changed.
(Because nothing has changed. Except for him.)
And it pains him, far more than he could have expected, to see the unquestioning awe on Ryuji’s face and hear the peppering of questions that he could not answer. Other than that, the infiltration goes well, with Akira and the ignorant Ryuji inching ever closer to the treasure that they couldn't have known about.
Everything is happening too quickly and all Akira can do is keep pushing forward, past his own fears and doubts because once he stops to think, he might not have the will to keep going. He wants answers, he wants to go home, he wants--
“A monster cat--?!” Ryuji yelps at the same time as pure, unadulterated relief flooded Akira’s body. The cell door rattles noisily from how quickly he had thrown it open but Akira doesn’t care because he is too busy crushing Morgana to his chest in the clingiest hug he has ever given in any timeline.
Eventually, he is forced to let go, partly from Morgana’s indignantly horrified squirming but mostly because he can see a threatening glint of sharp claws. He steps back with a neat flourish of his coat and his hands held passively behind his back like he hadn’t been doing his best to button-mash his delightfully soft head.
Ryuji rounds on him in disbelief. “What the hell do you think you were doing, man? That… that thing could have had rabies!”
Akira smiles vaguely while the furry personification of humanity’s hope sputters in apoplectic rage. “I just really like cats.”
Unwilling to give himself away, now with Morgana’s more suspicious eyes in the picture, Akira hides his proficiency. Or tries to. But the third time a Pixie knocks him back on his ass, he pumps her full of dream needles with a grin that is probably closer to crazy slasher than a righteous phantom thief.
He needn't have bothered anyway. With Ryuji’s enthusiastic eyewitness account of Akira’s awakening and Akira’s first-class skills at playing dumb, Morgana doesn't question why he's frighteningly good at dodging shadows and climbing up banisters. If anything, his praise for Joker seems to be twice as admiring, his grudge from being button-mashed completely forgotten. Maybe, Akira thinks for the first time with something like hope blooming in his chest, maybe this time Morgana will respect me enough to let me decide my own bedtimes.
Everything goes perfectly right up until they arrive at the exit.
“This is where we part. I have other things I need to investigate.”
Akira stares blankly at Morgana’s retreating figure while Ryuji jumps for the duct behind them, feeling his throat constrict and suddenly all of the jokes they had made about Morgana having separation anxiety aren't at all funny.
“Wait,” he calls out, darting forward to catch his shoulder. His best friend, the literal personification of humanity's hope and his best and only hope of figuring his way out of this mess. Not to mention portable space heater.
Morgana turns and shoots him an odd look.
Don't go! I love you, space heater!
Morgana, I'm from the future.
Let us repay you for saving us.
“Repay me?” Morgana asks with just a hint of suspicion as Ryuji lets out a horrified “You want us to what ?!” behind them.
“We couldn’t have made it out without your expertise,” Akira butters him up shamelessly, still remembering the desolation on his furry face when he thought himself unneeded. “At least let us treat you to a meal.”
“Dude, I can’t believe I’m the one saying this but,” Ryuji hisses, “we have school! And you’re talking to a monster cat! What are we supposed to feed it, human souls?!”
Of course, Ryuji possesses the unique power to get under Morgana’s skill in every timeline and he predictably bristles and is either going to launch into a tirade or run out of Akira’s life forever so he smoothly interjects, “What about sushi?”
“Su… sushi?!” yowls both Ryuji and cat, although one sounds a lot happier about it than the other and that's how he successfully lures Morgana to his attic days ahead of schedule.
(Akira makes a quiet promise to buy him as much sushi as he can afford for the rest of his life.)
(He also spends all the savings he doesn't have on fatty tuna before he remembers that he and Ryuji are supposed to be in class.)
That night, there's a familiar weight pressing against his chest and Akira sleeps soundly. Until an evil cup decides to drag him out into the realm between the conscious and the unconscious. Akira opens his eyes when his uncomfortable mattress turns even more uncomfortable and finds himself looking stylish in prison stripes and shackles once again.
He continues to lie there, catatonic.
A bubble of hysteria rises up into his throat and he bites his lip to hold it there, hidden beneath the layers of his skin and flesh. To think that after all he's been through, after he even received the World, his heart is still a prison.
In the city where he first tasted freedom, surrounded by his loved ones, he has never felt so trapped before.
“On your feet, inmate! Show some respect when you are in our Master's presence.”
Ah, there it is, Caroline's dulcet tones accompanying the harsh rap of her baton against the bars. But the idea of letting his poor, sensitive feet touch the cold stone floor is not an appealing one. Especially not when it will be Fakegor’s bloodshot eyes glaring at him from the other side of the desk.
Akira draws a deep breath and listens to it rattle in his lungs. If there wasn't a non-zero chance that his continued non-compliance could mean that the holy cup would lose patience and end the world early, he would just continue to lie there.
He pulls himself to his feet, dragging them like he's walking to his own execution.
Kamoshida goes down, falling helplessly onto his knees as Ann stands before him, haloed by fire and rage like a goddess of vengeance. Everything plays out almost perfectly as if following a script. There had been a moment of tension when Ann had hesitated just a bit too long and Akira had panicked, bracing himself for the stench of searing flesh. But Ann had always been the best of them and the flames singe walls instead of Kamoshida’s face.
They tentatively celebrate their victory as Akira stares down at the medal clenched too tightly in his hand.
Another prisoner, back in his cell.
Triumph tastes of ashes but he forces himself to smile, banishing the dead-eyed phantom of Kamoshida’s shadow self.
Afterward, things slot into place like clockwork.
During the day, he lives an honest student life. Eating curry for breakfast, napping through his classes, working as many jobs as he can, and slowly reconnecting with his former confidants. But meetings that once brought him joy now feel like empty, useless motions with his progress undone and his friends once again trapped in their old uncertainties. Everything is both easier and harder the second time and he loses track of how many times he nearly said something he shouldn't have known.
Akira wonders if he is as much a cog in the wheel of fate as an overworked robot employee in Okumura’s palace.
He had once faced insurmountable odds, armed with a dagger and a smug grin on his face, but now, knowing exactly what lies around the corner makes the days long and the nights longer.
“Hey, hey,” Morgana calls from what sounds like the other end of a long, narrow tube.
Some days, when the sky is overcast in muted shades and the air is filled with grey static, Akira wonders if patience is a finite resource and if there will come a time when his will finally dry up. He wonders how many more hours are still ahead of him and how many more hours he can bury himself in the mundane and avoid the inevitable.
He would give anything for it to come now, to face the false god at the height of his power. Boredom and an ever-increasing sense of futility, on the other hand, is a far deadlier foe, a slow erosion of one’s will and sanity.
“Akira! Shouldn't you be paying attention?”
Akira shrugs noncommittally as his head droops another inch lower, tilting with just enough proficiency that the piece of chalk sails harmlessly past his head.
He goes right back to sleep, ignoring the tittering of his classmates. Some days, reality is just easier to bear from within a dream.
The monotony comes to an abrupt end when he trips, of all things.
Lost in thought as he was, Akira had neglected to give the important task of ‘putting one foot in front of the other’ the attention it deserved. Consequently, the universe decides to remove the ground beneath his feet and Akira goes flying.
So much for Joker’s charisma.
But his uncharacteristic clumsiness isn’t the issue. The real issue is that he had been standing at the top of a set of stairs and he still has Morgana in his bag. Akira’s eyes widen as he finds himself weightless. His body lurches forward and he scarcely has a moment to brace himself for pain before he feels a sudden pressure around his wrist.
It jerks him backward, painfully out of gravity’s treacherous hold.
“Are you okay?” a pleasant voice sounds in his ear and it hits him way harder than the concrete would have, knocking the air from his lungs and the sense from his brain.
The world empties; bustling subway tunnels turning red and bare as wretched screams fill his ears. But the moment passes as soon as it arrives, leaving him stunned and breathless and half-draped against a dead boy who plotted to kill him. A dead boy whose chest is warm and solid, whose gloved fingers are still loosely encircling his wrist. Akira forgets how to breathe, standing stock still against the phantom while the heavy sound of his own heartbeat reverberates in his ears.
he can't be here, he can't, he's not ready, he'll never be ready
“Excuse me?” that voice speaks up again, as gentle as before but with a nearly undetectable twinge of impatience seeping out from the facade and the overpowering familiarity of it is what forces Akira to yank his arm away and run.
He doesn't (refuses to) look back and misses the way those garnet eyes flash with surprise.
It’s not like he has eidetic memory like Futaba or has some kind of GameFAQs cheat guide telling him every single action he took on every single day of his life. So he forgot a few things. Sue him.
(Actually, please don't sue him. That's what got him stranded here in the first place.)
To be fair, most of the important things had worked out, the first time around.
Aside from minor hiccups like Haru’s father dying, personally experiencing a traumatizing amount of police brutality, Akechi Goro dying alone on the other side of a barrier to save them... for the most part, things had worked out okay.
Akira buries his face in his pillow and breathes deeply until the world stops spinning. Eventually, he sits back up and pulls out a pen and paper, resigning himself to weeks of sleepless nights.
Akira had spent a very long time thinking about Akechi Goro. In the days after Shido’s palace, throughout the months after Yaldabaoth’s defeat when he sat in his cell, and in all the quiet nights that came after. The pain of regret hadn’t so much as faded as it had become a part of him, seeping into the fabric of his soul in a permanent imprint. He had lost count of how many times he had replayed their encounters, wondering with morbid fascination just what he could have done differently. If there had been a correct dialogue option he could have chosen to magically make everything right.
Perhaps they could have become real friends without all of the smoke and mirrors they had both hidden behind. If he had been smarter, or if he had just been quicker, maybe he could have dragged Akechi through before the floodgates fell. In the end, he was merely fooling himself with what ifs and hypotheticals. The dead could not be resurrected.
But Akechi isn't dead. Not now. Not here. Here, he still has time to plan, to act. To rewrite the ending to their story that goes beyond Shido’s palace.
The thought fills him with as much elation as it does with dread.
It is only when Morgana wakes up with a startled yowl that Akira realizes he hasn't slept and that his room had transformed itself overnight from ‘shabby but livable’ to ‘lair of a mental hospital escapee’. He had run out of paper sometime between 2 and 3 AM and decided the walls would be a good enough substitute.
“Joker!? What's going on!?” Morgana cries out, spinning around on his paws to look at the fruits of Akira’s manic brainstorming. “Did you even sleep!?”
“It's nothing,” he deflects, badly, as he hides the sharpie behind his back to try to look less guilty. “There was a problem I needed to work out…”
“Pulling all-nighters is bad for your health!” Morgana says crossly and Akira is pretty sure his days of staying up past nine are over. “And Boss is going to kill you for vandalizing his attic!”
Impending death by Sojiro or not, Akira feels quite accomplished as he drags himself down the creaky steps to get himself presentable for school. It had taken him all night, dozens of simulations and flowcharts but he finally had something resembling a workable answer.
He glances up from splashing water on his face and despite his new collection of dark circles, his eyes don’t look lifeless for once.
Akira tries out a smile and Joker grins back at him.