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At first, there was nothing… There were no thoughts going through her mind, no dreams playing out before her, no night terrors reminding her of the many traumas she’d been through in her life, there was just nothing. Her mind shouldn’t have even been committing the moment to her short or long term memory, it should have been nothing more than a blink of the eye before she returned to the waking world suddenly in the next morning, but before she could fully and truly slip into that entirely unconscious state? She could feel herself being pulled down… Pulled down further and further into the murky depths of nonexistence, drifting and sinking deeper and deeper until finally? Something existed .
In one short moment the empty darkness around Ren bled into the familiar surroundings of her cafe home. She blinked a few times behind her glasses, looking down to see her usual apron on and her long black hair pulled back into a ponytail. She looked up to see that she was standing behind the counter, as she often did on days where she helped her guardian around the shop, but even despite how strangely normal it all felt? She knew that she wasn’t actually awake, and as if to prove that fact? The door to the cafe suddenly opened all on it’s own, bringing her attention over to what lay beyond the doorway, not that there was much there to see.
The outside of the cafe was nothing, she couldn’t see the normal backstreets of Yongen as usual, all she could see through the glass was a blank black void of nothingness, as if the Leblanc she was in existed in non-existence… And yet, as scary as that prospect should have been? She didn’t feel any fear at all; in fact, all she felt was confusion and curiosity, feelings that only amplified when a person seemingly popped into existence right in the doorway… Strangely enough, the boy looked to be far less confused than her. His expression was one of rigid placidity, but his expression, while strange, wasn’t what confused her the most about this newcomer. The far more noteworthy thing about this stranger in her eyes was just how similar he appeared to look to Ren herself… He had similar gray-silver colored eyes, the same shade of raven black in his (admittedly far shorter) hair, and even his glasses looked to be nearly identical to her own…
While she was still processing the appearance of this stranger? The strange boy’s gray eyes looked over the cafe with an overwhelming familiarity, that was, until they finally met her own gaze, at which point his eyes instantly widened as a small but noticeable gasp filled the air, spoken in a voice that was just a bit deeper than her own.
“Huh… so you’re the one,” the boy spoke in a low, curious whisper before he approached the counter with a small and polite smile growing across his lips, “I bet you’re probably pretty confused by all of this, right?”
“Uhh…” she astutely stated with a pathetic little nod
The strange boy chuckled before sliding into the chair directly in front of her, “Venza didn’t explain it to you?”
“Who?... W-wait, do you mean Lavenza? You know her?!” she blinked stupidly at the stranger, who only chuckled even more in response
“I guess she wants me to explain it to you… apparently Venza knows that you’ve been having issues with feeling… inferior… especially in comparison to the alternate universe versions of yourself,” he explained slowly and gently before his lips twitched into a slight smirk, “Well, alternate universe versions of ourselves , I guess”
That sentence hit her like a slap to the face, and she quickly muttered out, “Wait, y-you mean… you’re…”
“Mhm,” the smile on his face widened just a bit, “I’m not sure what you go by, sometimes we have different names from what I hear, but my name is Akira Kurusu”
Hearing that name nearly made her flinch, but she held it in as much as she could while she weakly answered, “R-Ren… Ren Amamiya”
“Huh… Well then Ren, I assume it’s alright to call you that? I mean, ‘I am thou’ and all that, but before we can talk about anything? I do need to know where you are on your journey… Venza made it pretty clear that I can’t tell you what might happen in the future as apparently that ‘ breaks the rules ’,” Akira used his fingers to make air quotes with the last three words, “And I’m not stupid enough to try and break her rules”
She nodded in agreement with that notion while she folded her arms, “Well, uh… we just killed the God of Control”
“Oh yeah? How’d that go for you?”
“It was really hard but… we got through it once I summoned Lilith,” she answered as casually as she could
Akira leaned forward in his seat now, brows furrowed out of a clear curiosity, “Lilith?”
“Mhm, she’s my Second Awakening Persona?” her own voice had a bit of a confused tone to it in response to his confusion
“Huh… we had different Personas then, my Persona that killed the God of Control was called Satanael,” he explained before looking her over and shrugging, “But I guess it shouldn’t be too surprising that we have different Personas, considering all the other differences between us”
“‘ Satanael ’? Your ultimate Persona is Satan?” she cocked a slight brow at him, getting another chuckle in response
“Heh, I don’t think you really have a leg to stand on there, Lilith ,” he instantly shot back with a wide grin
She couldn’t help but giggle slightly in response, “Fair enough…”
“Right, so, next? What about your teammates? Who’s all on the team? Venza said that sometimes we have different teammates,” he asked next, almost making this feel like an interview of sorts to her
“Uh… well,” she held up a finger for each of her teammates as she said their names, “We have Morgana, Ryuji, Ann, Shiho, Yusuke, Makoto, Yuuki, Futaba, Haru and Akechi”
Akira looked a bit curious about some of the names, but he fully flinched at that last name, his eyes shooting open as wide as saucers as he gasped out, “A- Akechi?! ”
“Yeah…” a slight bittersweet smile came across her face as she leaned back against the bean dispensers, “We nearly killed each other in the engine room but… he saved us, he risked it all so we could all get out together and then helped us beat Shido and the false God”
A slight silence came over them, her mind drifting a bit to the memory of her rival, of how he’d turned himself in, but before she could drift too far away? Akira spoke again.
“So you… You actually managed to save him…” she looked back at her counterpart to see him casting his gaze down at the counter, his eyes clearly unfocused as he was lost in his own mind, “So it is possible for him to survive…”
She frowned at that, remembering loud and clear what the Velvet Room inhabitants had told her the night that duel had occurred…
“We simply wished to let you know that what you and your bonds accomplished on this day was quite rare and equally so deserving of praise”
“Yeah…” she paused for a moment, unsure of whether or not to ask the question she wanted the answer to, but seemingly that was entirely unnecessary, as without any input? Akira answered the only question on her mind
“In my journey? We also almost killed each other in the engine room. We were all down to our last bits of strength, but he… he shot the controls for the bulkhead… he trapped himself with a cognition of himself and a handful of guards just so we could escape…” his eyes closed tight, his whole body seemingly tensing in on itself at the memory, “And then we heard one last gunshot… Oracle said his lifesigns were gone after that…”
“I… I’m sorry-”
“Don’t be,” he instantly cut her off, letting out a deep breath to release the tension he was holding as he opened his eyes back up to look at her with a bittersweet smile of his own, “My journey ended about four years ago in my universe, so I’ve… made peace with the loss. And now, knowing that out of the countless, endless repeats of this sick game? Knowing that in at least one universe he didn’t have to die in that Palace? That some version of me was able to accomplish what I couldn’t? That’s enough for me…”
She knew that he was only saying that for her, she could see clear as day that he still hadn’t fully made peace and moved on like he claimed, but she also couldn’t exactly blame him for that either, nor could she say or do anything that would help him finally move on… So instead? She tried to move the conversation elsewhere, “I assume Shiho and Yuuki also aren’t part of your team? Lavenza told us it was uncommon for them to be Thieves”
“Yeah…” Akira huffed out with another breath, instantly looking a bit more uncomfortable than before, “We… weren’t fast enough to save Suzui…”
“Not fast enough?” she echoed as a cold chill shot right down her spine, “You mean that she…”
“We were still debating on if we should actually take down Kamoshida’s Palace or not, we didn’t know if it would kill him, but… then Suzui jumped off of the school’s roof,” she gasped at that but the boy kept speaking, “She survived the attempt but… At that point? Well, it was hard to give a shit if we killed Kamoshida or not…”
“Shiho… jumped?” she quietly whispered in a horrified tone of voice
“Her legs were… completely shattered… even now she still needs help walking for long durations,” Akira grimaced for a moment before he looked back up and cocked a slight brow at her, “What happened in your universe though? Were you more decisive? Did you take down Kamoshida’s Palace before it could reach that point?”
“We… We took her into the Palace with us after Ann’s Awakening. She wanted me to help convince Shiho to avoid Kamoshida and when that failed? We brought her into the Palace…” she answered in a distant, barely-present voice
“Ann’s Awakening was before Suzui could jump in your world then… huh…” her counterpart muttered to himself, arms crossed and brow furrowed in concentration, “It sounds like things went very differently in your journey”
“Y-yeah…” she shuddered at the memory, averting her gaze from the boy as she whispered out her next statement, “I think… I-I think it was probably because Kamoshida, uh… b-became very fixated on… m-me…”
The energy in the cafe changed in an instant, she could practically feel the rage coming from her counterpart even without looking at him.
“So that’s why…” despite the rage he was clearly feeling? His voice still sounded overly gentle, placid even, “He fixated on you which meant that Suzui wasn’t pushed to her breaking point…”
“Mhm…” she nodded, closing in on herself a bit more as she considered her next words carefully, “He tried to… do things to me,” she instantly continued when she felt the anger in the air spike, “H-he didn’t succeed! T-the others all showed up and stopped him in time but… then he… outed me to them…”
She finally risked looking back at Akira, seeing the faint flickerings of that anger in his expression, and if she wasn’t mistaken? She could have sworn that for an instant his eyes almost looked… red? She didn’t question it though, she just stared at him and saw the gears turning behind his eyes, clearly processing just what she meant with that last statement, before it seemed to click for him, “...oh, you’re gay?”
“Uhh… bi actually but that’s… not exactly what I meant…” she inhaled a long breath, held it for several seconds, and then gently exhaled
Come on, he’s another version of ME, there’s no way he’d react poorly…
“I-I’m uh… trans,” she eventually, finally, muttered out
“Oh!” he looked genuinely surprised by that for whatever reason, “And here I thought you were the cis version of me…”
That of course made her eyes instantly widen out of shock, looking her counterpart up and down as if she was seeing him in a whole new light, “W-wait, what? You too?”
Akira chuckled, giving her a wide and cocky smirk, “I’ll take the fact that you couldn’t tell as a compliment… Well, if your Thieves are anything like the ones I know? Then I assume they hopefully didn’t react poorly to your identity”
“Heh… yeah,” that finally brought a smile back to her face, “They’re all amazing…”
Akira then swiftly gave her an almost teasing sort of smirk before he asked his next question, “Well, that brings me to my next question then… how close are you with your team?”
Of course, as soon as the implications of that question connected together in her head? She felt her cheeks burn with a bright red embarrassment, which only made Akira laugh even more heartily.
“Ah, so there is someone then?” he was clearly enjoying this like the traitor he was, smiling even more genuinely than before, “Come on, no need to keep it a secret from me, I am you after all”
“U-uhh… w-well… uhm…” she lowered her head, looking down at her feet to avoid having to see her counterpart’s teasing expression, “Th-there’s more than one… I’m actually, uh, dating e-everyone on the team except for Morgana, Futaba and Akechi…”
The boy froze at that, seemingly taken off guard by her answer, before after a few moments?
“Damn,” Akira whispered and she looked back up slowly to see the slightly wide-eyed looking expression on his face, “And I thought I had game”
She wanted to fade into nothingness in response to that embarrassment, squeezing her eyes shut tight once more while the boy across from her laughed at her dismay, “I-it’s not like that! Th-they’re mostly dating each other as well!”
“Oh really? So it’s all above board then?”
Her eyes slowly opened once again, but the fiery heat on her face hadn’t even begun to calm down, “M-mhm… it’s called, uh… polyamory…”
“Huh…” he muttered, placing his chin in his hand in thought, “Interesting… well, it’s at least nice to know that you’re not a cheater, that would really put a damper my ego to know that another me could do something like that”
She blinked slowly at Akira, feeling ever more confused by his nonchalant attitude.
“Now then, as for me?” he spoke back up before she could even finish processing his prior remark, “I’m not actually seeing anyone at all in my universe, although some of my teammates did get together in the years after our last mission”
“Really? I’m… surprised that you’re not with anyone,” she gently remarked
“Heh, I know, right? Hard to imagine a stud like me being single,” he grinned back at her for a moment before his expression once again sank ever so slightly, “Well, sorry to disappoint, but… it’s just that… I guess I don’t quite feel ready to put myself back out there like that, you know?”
“I understand…” she softly answered, fidgeting just a bit with the green fabric of her apron
It was all so much for her to process, she had so many questions on her mind, so many curiosities of how things had gone for Akira, how he handled it, how he led his version of their team, it was all so much, too much for her to process before her counterpart had spoken once again.
“Not to dredge up more bad memories, but… I have to ask… the interrogation?” her immediate wince told Akira all he needed to hear, as right after he added, “You don’t need to go into any details, in fact, I don’t want to know any details, I just… I’m trying to get a feel for how things have been for you…”
“I-it was…” she shuddered, gulping down all of the horrible bile of rotten memories that lingered in the back of her throat, “A nightmare…”
“I know what you mean…” Akira grimaced, his own face looking to be a bit pale for a split-second, “So is that why?”
“W-why what?”
“Why you feel inferior to me, to all of the other versions of you, of us ,” he explained, his expression once again regaining that placid, neutral look while his intense gaze remained locked on her face, “Venza didn’t give me all that many details… just said that you felt like you were lesser, so… I guess I’m trying to figure out why ”
“Right…” she let out a long sigh, lowering her gaze to look down at the floor, “Well, it was way before the interrogation… it started pretty much as soon as I was told about the alternate realities actually… as soon as I heard about it? I figured that the other versions of me had to be… better”
“Why?”
“I… I just figured they had to be…” she shrugged and crossed her arms tight across her chest, shifting her weight from foot to foot with a near boundless nervous energy, “I mean, I’ve never really been worth a damn before, so I just… hoped the other me’s were better…”
“Why?”
She raised her gaze, cocking a brow at the other version of her as a slight bit of frustration bubbled up inside of her chest, “What do you mean ‘why’?”
“I mean ‘why do you feel that way?’,” he calmly stated, leaning back a bit in his seat, “Because from my vantage point? You’re doing pretty damn good”
“You don’t know all the details,” she hissed, unable to look at him any longer
“No? Then enlighten me Ren,” he instantly shot back, a bit more forcefully than before, “Because everything you’ve told me leads me to believe that you’ve saved more people than I did”
“That doesn’t prove anything… I stumbled my way into all of that…”
“ Stumbled? ” Akira laughed, his voice becoming even more stern, almost annoyed, “Suzui didn’t attempt to end her own life, I bet your Mishima didn’t become distorted since he’s on your team, and you even saved Akechi, and even more shockingly, you got him to join you … are you seriously trying to tell me that all of that was just, what, dumb luck?”
Her mind immediately scrambled, grabbing hold of the first possible excuse she could think of, “You and I are different from each other… which means our versions of our teammates are different from each other too… I’d give them far more credit than me”
He huffed out another annoyed laugh, “And there we have it”
Her gaze shot up once more, expression creasing in frustration, “There we have what? What the hell are you talking about?!”
“You’re giving the credit for any possible success to everyone and anyone but yourself, but I bet if the roles were reversed and you were the one in my seat? You’d blame only yourself for not being able to save them,” he let out a slightly bitter laugh, “I should know… because that’s exactly what I’m feeling right now”
That gave her pause, whatever venomous, self-hate filled remark she had died on her lips. She gawked at Akira, making no effort to hide her confusion as she dumbly muttered out, “Wh-what?”
“I was wondering why, out of all of the countless versions of us that exist, why did Venza send me to talk with you?” he huffed out a small chuckle, shaking his head to himself, “I sometimes forget how well she understands us…”
“I… don’t understand…”
“She wasn’t just trying to help you… she was trying to help me as well,” Akira looked back at her and for the first time since he’d arrived? She could see the true and genuine pain lingering behind his eyes, “I’m sure you didn’t buy my little lie earlier… I haven’t ‘made peace’ with any loss at all, far from it actually… I’ve been a wreck these last few years. I don’t talk to anyone, I haven’t talked to any of my former-teammates in over two years now… I don’t leave my apartment except to go to work, and when I am home? I just… sit there… I sit there and I obsess over every little thing that I did wrong, every possible thing I could have done to make things turn out better… Everything I could have done to save him …”
She didn’t know what to say to that, but Akira just kept talking, not minding her stunned silence in the slightest…
“And now? After four years of that sorrowful existence I’ve led? I meet you… You, who accomplished everything I couldn’t. You, who managed to actually do the very thing I’ve been dreaming of since that god damn engine room. And what do I find? I find that you’re just as sad as I am, just as full of self-blame and inferiority… it’d almost be funny if it wasn’t so frustrating…” his shoulders slumped, a few small streaks dripping down his cheeks that he made no effort to hide, “Maybe that’s just our curse… Maybe that’s just what makes us who we are…”
“Akira…”
“I’m fine,” he cut her off, finally wiping at his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt, “Or well, not fine, but… you know what I mean…”
She nodded, not letting the concern leave her expression for even a moment as he looked back at her.
“You’ve done everything that I thought I was too weak and incompetent to accomplish, and yet you still feel the same way that I do… and I think that’s exactly what Venza wanted me to see… the grass isn’t greener at all… even if things were different? I’d still be the same way you are, and the only way to move past that? Is to accept it… To recognize that he’s gone and there’s nothing I can do about it, but I can’t burn my entire life out of grief… the only way things get better is if I make them better…” he gave a slightly bitter sounding laugh, cocking his head back to look up at the plain ceiling of the cafe, “And here I thought the Velvet Room stopped caring about us after they were done with us… but I guess Venza at least never stopped caring and worrying about me…”
“I… I don’t know what to say,” she muttered out, but her counterpart didn’t seem to mind, simply keeping his gaze locked up on the ceiling for a few moments longer
“You know, it’s almost funny…” his eyes dropped down to once again meet her gaze while a sorrowful but free looking smile graced his lips, “I thought for years that if I had just done things a little bit differently? Maybe I wouldn’t be stuck in the state I’ve been in… Maybe all that false bravado and confidence and cocky charm could be real if I’d actually backed it up with accomplishments… but seeing you now? That idea sounds almost laughable… Because you can actually back all that up, and yet you don’t…”
Akira leaned forward in his seat, resting his elbows on the counter and tenting his hands in the middle so he could rest his head atop them.
“If you’re going to learn anything from this little meeting of ours? Let it be this: Don’t do what I did… Don’t obsess over things you can’t change… I’m not saying that you shouldn’t feel bad about making mistakes or that you shouldn’t wish that things turned out better than they did, that’s all perfectly normal to feel but… don’t let those emotions control your life…” that same smile grew just a bit more more genuine, a bit less sorrowful, “You owe it to yourself, to your accomplishments, and to your friends and bonds, to take some happiness from what you’ve managed to do. Be proud of yourself Ren, have some faith in your own abilities, alright? Because you’ve accomplished a lot , and even if your teammates absolutely deserve plenty of credit? So do you .”
She froze for a moment, yet again uncertain of what to say in response to that… It’d be so easy to brush him off, to argue that she didn’t do much, but this wasn’t just anyone telling her that, he was her… That fact alone made it much more difficult to just brush aside, in the same sort of way that it was harder to brush La Maupin’s statements aside…
“I’ll… try my best,” she finally muttered, almost so softly as to be inaudible, but she knew that he heard her, “I can’t make any promises… I know you know how stubborn we are, but… I’ll try…”
“That’s all I ask,” he grinned back at her
As soon as he said that though? A loud, thundering rumble began to shake the entire cafe around them. She could see and hear the cups and plates jostling, as if an earthquake was threatening to split the entire place apart.
“Ah, looks like our time is up,” Akira chuckled, unphased in the slightest by the rumbling
“What? Already?” she mourned, frowning to herself as cracks of glowing blue began to rip through the furniture
“I mean, I can’t imagine this meeting was easy to set up, let alone hold together for as long as it has… honestly? I’m surprised things didn’t start breaking as soon as two dimensional counterparts met,” he stood up out of his seat with a chuckle, extending a hand out for her to take, “I doubt we’ll ever see each other again, but regardless, I’m glad to have met you Ren”
More and more blue light began to overtake every little thing, ripping through the area in a chaotic and violent manner while she gently reached her hand forward to grab hold of Akira’s, smiling at the man even as the small space was falling apart, “Likewise… I hope you can reconnect with everyone back in your world”
“Heh, I’m sure they’ll be excited to see me again,” a huge, cocky grin came across his face, “And you make sure to watch out for Akechi, alright? You saved him, so make sure that he doesn’t screw things up and squander that chance!”
“It’s a promise!” she giggled, having to shout to be audible over the rumbling and collapsing of the space
As soon as their hands pulled apart from one another? The entire cafe gave way. Everything fell back into that empty black space of nonexistence. And as Ren felt her consciousness slowly melting back into that state of sleep? She couldn’t help but smile to herself, feeling more thankful than ever for Lavenza’s meddling…