Chapter Text
Wow it’s cold…
That was the first thought that crossed Akira Kurusu’s mind as consciousness slowly returned to him.
No, it was freezing.
Was his second one.
It was as if everything around him had been dunked into a vat of arctic water and then been left there to float into an unending abyss, never to feel the warmth of the sun again. Onwards into cruel consuming cold forever and ever.
Where?
Where was he?
He slowly peeled his heavy eyes open, only to see much to his surprise:
Nothing.
It was just him, feeling like he was floating, there in an inky darkness that was all consuming around him. What had happened? He went to sleep just like normal last night, back in his less than ideal home town with Morgana after their little road trip. He’d tucked himself into his bed, Morgana quietly curled up on his chest and the two had drifted off to sleep together as they had always done since Morgana came into his life.
And now here he was in this strange limbo, everything around him dark, freezing,
Isolating .
It felt familiar to the feeling he’d gotten from the Velvet room when he’d first started visiting it during his early days in Shibuya, where it had constantly felt like there were eyes on him from every direction. Except this felt so much more draining, like every moment here was eating away at a part of him he hadn't even known previously existed.
“ My Trickster. ” A voice echoed from seemingly everywhere around him all at once, the voice familiar, and yet distorted as if he were listening to the voice through a straw. One end wide for them to speak through then the other end twisted, crumpled, and small allowing only partial words and sounds to come through.
“. ..your present…..me and my master… ” The voice continued. Akira could tell there were missing words here and there from…whatever was being told to him. “ Our thanks…third false god….this is….you get .” It continued. “ One chance .”
One chance? One chance for what?
“Your bonds….the….find the pieces….of your heart….box… ” Again the voice went on and on much to his confusion seeming to rush through this speech of theirs as if they were running low on time themselves
“Where?” He tried to ask but his mouth felt full of cotton as if he’d just had his wisdom teeth removed and the strength to even be able to voice anything else at all seemed like a nearly impossible task..
“Fear not….wildcard…remember…world….stay hidden…do not fail us…. We beg…” Suddenly a small almost insignificant light began to glow in the distance, only catch his eye for being the only thing different from the rest of the inky blackness
Akira turned towards it staring at it intently,
“Now go…they await.”
They? They who?
Suddenly the small insignificant light no longer seemed so small and insignificant, instead it seemed to grow exponentially, rushing forwards at him as if aiming to consume the very darkness he found himself floating in. Eventually it grew overwhelming and Akira had to shut his eyes as the light only grew brighter, and brighter, and brighter around him. Squeezing his eyes shut as tight as he could to fight back against the blinding painful light before
A loud low in pitch whistling noise erupted around him.
Akira gasped softly as he sat up, eyes shooting open as he glanced around at the faces of strangers sitting across from him on the train. Train? What…Where was he? He quickly glanced out the window to try and get some semblance of what the hell was going on. Watching as a large city expanse flew by before he instead looked up at the signs hanging from the roof.
One word stood out immediately and he couldn’t help but stare:
Shibuya.
“Ladies and Gentlemen thank you for riding with us today.” An automated voice suddenly rang throughout the train. “We will be arriving in Shibuya shortly. This is the last stop for this line. Please transfer here for all subway lines. The doors to your left will open.”
Akira sat stunned. Shibuya? Why was he suddenly back in Shibuya? He quickly moved to look at his bag and ask Morgana what the hell was going on when he found his bag shockingly catless but more than that, he caught sight of his outfit. The familiar red and black pattern of his pants staring back at him as if trying to taunt him for his confusion. He was wearing his Shujin uniform, the uniform he hadn't worn in over a year and a half now. Here on a train to Shibuya.
“Are you for real? A mental shut down?” The voice of a girl around his age suddenly caught his attention, saving him from his racing, drowning thoughts.
“It’s the truth!” The other girl across from her gasped excitedly shoving her phone to show the other girl. Oh God, the overwhelming sense of Deja Vu he was getting right then should have been illegal.
“To a person though? That’s gotta be a joke. You really love all that occult stuff don't you” It was the exact same conversation he’d overheard well over a year ago when he’d first moved into Leblanc, when he’d first heard about mental shut downs, before he learned anything about the metaverse before he had met his friends. He quickly snatched his phone out of his pocket staring at the date in a way anyone looking his way might be somewhat concerned from the sheer look of shock littering his face:
April 9th 2016.
As if in a trance he swiped his phone open, quickly typing in his password, before staring at the app of a red eye ball that seems to stare right back at him, through him, just like it had all those many months ago, before the jails, before juvie, before Maruki’s reality…
What the hell. No way…t here was no wa y… Lavenza had told him time and time again that everything was set in stone, that there were no retries, no do overs, that he would have to live with his regrets, accept the people he couldn’t save and face the fact he had willingly sent Goro Akechi to an early grave a second time. This shouldn't be possible
And yet.
His heart left to sit peacefully in his throat, his eyes welling with tears.
Was this Maruki’s doing? It had been well over 6 months since the false reality… or had it, had everything with Sophia and Zenkichi been fake? Was he sitting in the false reality the whole time, had they lost? Had they never left? Did that mean Akechi was…
Not completely accepting the reality that was around him he hesitantly clicked on the Metanav, quickly navigating to the search history. Perhaps he could find answers there but no it was empty. Unlike Maruki’s Metanav that had all of their past excursions, this one sat empty, ready to be filled.
This was Yalgabath’s nav …
And that conversation with the girls across from him, he’d never once told Maruki anything about his time before getting to the school aside from Shido’s… everything. He’d have no way of being able to replicate something that specific that he never knew about right?
Back in time…
He really truly was back in time. Holy shit.
HOLY SHIT.
Akira just barely contained himself from jumping out of his seat in excitement. Holy shit. That was the only way he could think to describe this situation at the moment as he sat there staring at his phone with a wide grin on his face. He was being given a second chance, that had to be what the voice in the cold had been saying. Attempting to explain to him that he got to try again. The voice in the cold..that reminded him of Lavenza.
Suddenly the excitement from before was quickly drained away when a few other pieces suddenly slotted themselves together in his mind. The reasoning why the voice had seemed so distorted, as if struggling to speak, if he was back in time…it meant Lavenza had willingly let herself get separated again, had willingly let Yalgabeth back into the sanctum of her master. Because she knew him, trusted him enough to believe that he would make the right choices again and save them all.
And he would…
With a few changes here and there.
He was going to save them all this time.
Everyone…
Or at least a specific someone…
Akira turned to look out the window at the city as it flew past, knowing somewhere out there the boy he could never get off his mind, LIVED, breathed, existed. And they would meet again soon.
His heart soared.
He was coming.
He’d be home soon, Akechi.
Goro Akechi shot up in his bed screaming, clutching desperately at his chest as he did. The nightmares, the nightmares were back again…of course they were…the cold overwhelming darkness as the ship had slowly sank into the inky darkness below, the puppet with his own face aiming a gun exactly where he knew it would be lethal, his victims clawing their way out of the ground, grabbing his legs, arms, anything they could reach to drag him down into hell with them.
He groaned miserably letting his hands come to lie flat on his face for a moment, as if hiding himself from the world around him, before slowly sliding them down rubbing at his eyes as he did. The roof above him was a familiar comforting sight as he let the warmth from the covers slowly begin to lull him back to sleep.
The cream color of this room was a stark contrast to that of the hospital rooms he had been waking up in for the past few months, chained to his bed, cold, alone, stared at by Doctors and what remained of Shidos people. He’d grown used to the ever lingering color but this morning he felt strangely warm, and it was nice.
He lay there floating for a while just on the edge of unconsciousness, humming contently, before he moved to brush his hair out of his face. This time when his hand came up without resistance something finally clicked in his half awake brain and all semblance of tiredness vanished in a split second, adrenaline rushing through his veins. Akechi slowly let his head turn to look over to his wrist and froze when many things pieced themselves together all at once:
- He wasn’t handcuffed.
- He wasn’t in that overly revealing “Hospital gown” as they had deemed it.
- He was warm, for the first time in months he felt so, so warm.
- That was his closet in the back of his vision, not the blank over sterilized wall of a hospital room.
- He was laying in a bed, an actual bed, not the harsh concrete slab that they had called a hospital bed.
- For the first time since he could remember his time in February he was alone in the room, no cameras, no doctors, no “Scientists”, and none of shidos men.
His hand shot to his chest and slid under his nightshirt and every vein in his body ran cold as ice. The raised puffy patch on his skin from an entry wound scar of a bullet that had very nearly ended him was gone, as if it had never existed to begin with. The skin there was soft, flat, without resistance as he ran his fingers over it again and again and again.
Wait…
WAIT
Wait what the hell
WHAT THE FUCK
Panic flooded his veins once again, information, he desperately needed information. A grasp on the situation, anything. Instantly he was kicking the covers off himself with his legs, desperately trying to get to his feet. He however was more tangled than his half operating brain could process and he gasped as he stumbled out of his bed, nearly face planted into the ground as he went.
It was like waking up in Maruki’s reality all over again except this time there was no pleasant suppression of his memories of dying or the panic that was weaving its way through every fiber of his being, no comforting sleeps devoid of nightmares, and no strange fuzzy lightness to the world.
It was however the same disorienting confusion but this time it was so, so much worse.
*SHIT SHIT SHIT WHAT THE FUCK*
He wished he had a more eloquent way to arrange his thoughts at the moment but those were the best he had as he scrambled his way to his mirror, yanking his shirt off as he did flinging it to some unknown corner of his room long forgotten as he caught sight of his chest in the mirror and froze as he stood there.
The scar was gone, completely and utterly, as if it had never even existed in the first place.
As if he hadn't been shot by a puppet wearing his very face, as if nothing there had happened at all. He took just one more moment to really stare at him, letting his fingers run over the skin absentmindedly as his brain ran a million different scenarios through his head all at once.
He was dead and this was hell
-Unlikely as he wasn’t being punished for his life of sins. And his current situation was far kinder than his previous had been so it seemed that one was out.
He was dreaming and would wake back up in the facility soon enough.
-A likely answer though Akechi had never once dreamed this vividly, sure his nightmares could seem real at times but this FELT real.
He was back in Maruki’s reality
-Also unlikely but not impossible, he’d still had his scar in Maruki’s world, a constant reminder to himself that it was unlikely he’d see past February 3rd…considering what had followed the past few months, sometimes he’d wished he hadn’t…
He had somehow traveled back in time.
-Preposterous, like something out of an episode of Featherman, a literal cartoon for children. That couldn’t possibly be the answer
He quickly shook his head as if that would suddenly arrange his scrambling thoughts into something a bit more coherent before sharply turning and rushing for his phone on his night stand, yanking it off the cord without care if it would damage the thing or not. As he clicked on the screen he froze. There staring at him was the date, right front and center.
9 April 2016
Akechi blinked, turning off his screen and then turning it back on.
9 April 2016.
The same date stared back at him as the time ticked on 7:52 am. He turned the screen off again.
9 April 2016…..
He restarted his phone.
9 April 2016….
Nothing he did would make the date change but it was as if there was a wall between him and acknowledging it. It couldn’t be real.
9 April 2016….
9 April 2016….
9 April 2016….
9 April 2016….
9 April 2016….
9 April 2016….
Akechi stared at the number for what felt like hours, mesmerized, as if he stared long enough then maybe just maybe it would change, it would go back to where it belonged but no….no it stayed right there. Overwhelming and solid against his plane phone lock screen. Akechi doesn’t know what to do with the feelings that are welling up inside him at the concept, the energy bubbling just beneath his skin and he begins to pace his room, running a hand through his hair before trying to tug at gloves he isn’t wearing.
It was 9 April 2016 and Akechi hadn’t been shot, hadn’t fought Maruki, hadn’t made sure his father suffered, hadn’t derailed a train, hadn’t killed Kunikazu Okumara, hadn’t met Akira Kurusu…
The thought pins him in place, his rival, the man who knew him better than he may even know himself…
And yet he would be so easy to avoid now, to avoid those pesky thieves, to pretend to Shido he didn't know who they were…But to lose his only friend, it felt like someone had reached into his chest and yanked his heart out tying it into a knot before shoving it rudely back inside.
His heart…
Panic then flooded him again for a different reason, his head and his heart felt so….empty still. So much quieter now than it had been on this day when he’d lived it before. He took a shaky breath. If he was back in the past then Robin Hood and Loki should be…but even at the thought of their name only silence greeted him.
No…no. No. No. No.
He couldn’t lose his personas, not like this. He didn’t want to be alone.
He took one more steadying breath to try and calm himself from his 5th emotional meltdown today and closed his eyes. Looking inwards, towards his heart, they had to be there. They just had to…
He reached out for them.
…Silence
…more silence
Akechi could feel heat pooling in his eyes
Please
He was about to give up, throw something, anything, sob, break things and then flop on his bed and accept that he was truly alone again when suddenly he felt it. Something like a door, he just had to open it.
There, he just had to keep reaching.
Closing his eyes tighter, the world around him faded away until it was nothing but darkness around him.. There he could feel 2… No…3 presences standing before him.
3?! Could it be?
When he opened his eyes again, he could feel the small tears welling in his eyes, there they stood. Loki to the left, Robin to the right and there directly in front of him stood Hereward, large and imposing and yet comforting at the same time. The persona he’d only had a single night to get to know but seemed to be a piece of his soul he hadn’t known he had been missing. All three were staring at him as if patiently waiting for… something. Akechi let the silence sit warmly between them for a while as he simply basked in the comfort that was the constant presence of his personas back in his heart once again. The feeling of loneliness that had settled into his very bones the past few months while being held captive slowly seeping away to be replaced with this warm fuzzy feeling instead.
Eventually Akechi couldn’t help the smile that came to his face as he looked between the three of them, all staring back at him smiling (At least that was the closest he’d ever seen Loki get to smiling when it wasn’t for a bloodthirsty reason he supposed.).
“I missed you.” He spoke to the three before him genuinely letting all the emotions he was feeling right then bleed into his words.
“Heh…I believe the term was Sentimental fool?” Loki sneered at him but it lacked any of its usual bite and for the first time since he woke up in this crazy world, Akechi felt like he was home again. He figured anything else could wait until tomorrow.