Fandom: Persona 4
Wordcount: 3014
Ships: None
Warnings: Canonical but unpleasant themes; Adachi being gross as usual; read at own risk
Beta: No
Notes: Set post-Ultimax so potential spoilers for that; I wanted to explore what Adachi meeting Naoto a year or so down the line might be like, because I find the idea of those two interacting interesting. I might continue it, but for now it's a oneshot.
A Pistol Never Fired
The guard steps aside as he taps his watch, and he will tap it again in half an hour. Shirogane will emerge thinking their time together was twenty-five minutes too long, no doubt, but free time is all Adachi has left. Considering everything else she and her friends took from him, the kid is lucky he's willing to give it.
They have been instructed to keep the conversation in Japanese – so the guard can understand every last word between convict and visitor. Shirogane's school taught English while Adachi's offered Korean, so he's a little tempted to ask if she'd try defying that rule for a laugh.
But Shirogane isn't here for that, seated primly on the opposite side of the glass with her set shoulders and straightened back. She means business, but was there ever a time when she didn't?
The last time he saw her, the kid really was a kid — all plump cheeks and hips that hadn't filled out properly. Imagining his nails sinking into puppy-fat flesh would still be a little satisfying, but now she sits before him a woman, shirt straining over breasts she'd been ashamed of before. Her hair looks new because there's so much more of it, longer, designed for fingers to thread through and knot and tug. There's no cap to distort a face glowing with youth.
He must just look terrible.
He isn't dwelling on it; prison life is no pageant regime, but it's still demoralising. They took his hair and tie, when the most he had to look forward to was leaving a devastatingly handsome corpse — but that's another thing Shirogane's investigation team ripped from his lacklustre grip.
"What do you want?"
"My greetings to you as well, Adachi-san."
"I know you're not here to make conversation. Wasting your breath on formalities is your thing, I know, but I'm such a busy guy these days."
"I will remind you that you agreed to see me."
"I agreed?" Expending the energy to lift a questioning brow is really a hassle, so she'd better be grateful that he does. "I was told. You don't get much say about turning down a request from the prefectural police in a place like this."
"You were informed, then," she says, and the lack of alteration in her expression is almost funny. Her staunch code of morality apparently doesn't extend to prisoners being coerced into receiving visitors – because any poor bastard in his position would not usually only be allowed to see anyone outside their bloodline.
He doesn't know how she pulled those strings, but he can figure it out. She's got her own family name and the leverage of having caught Adachi in the first place, so what is this, really? The hottest new detective dropping by to coo over her last captured animal? Maybe she's going to make a habit of visiting all her victories, get off on being the only woman to drop by.
Shirogane turns where she's seated to reach down, though he can't see what she's doing past the solid oak desk. He notes just how precarious the middle button of that shirt is, and his eyes flicker to her plush lips when they purse in concentration: it stirs something in him, which is hardly new. There's only dull familiarity, hunger pains, what he got his kicks from on the outside – but he had no anchoring point for it and now he's in prison.
A life of concrete and guards makes a guy's libido desperate enough to find Shirogane viable.
There is a grill between them, a matrix of holes and metal to carry their voices through. In other visitation suites, it's one fixed thing, but this one moves when Shirogane grips a handle on her side of the glass and pulls.
Next thing he knows, several laminated sheets of paper are being pushed in towards him.
"These are for your temporary use," Shirogane says, and he can't tell if it's curiosity or boredom that makes him willingly pick them up. As he's thumbing through them, she goes on, "You must have plenty of spare time, so asking you to review them shouldn't be putting you out. Of course, I considered the possibility you might be unwilling to co-operate, so if that's the case I will request you pass them back to me."
They're documents of various kinds: one is a grainy surveillance camera photograph, and one is a list of names labelled as a register, and when the words Chisato Dojima catch his eye, he starts to get the picture.
He lifts his head, and Shirogane is still all business, of course – but the air of anticipation surrounding her befits her age. She watches him with deliberate eyes while her hand stays hovering on the grill's handle.
"This is – that's Nanako-chan's mother, right?"
"Yes."
"So what is this? You're taking the case?"
Shirogane's mouth makes a thin line, kept momentarily still before she replies, "There is a possibility."
"Shit, I don't care. I have no axe to grind with Dojima-san, but he's been working on finding that guy for years — what makes you think you'll do any better? You're so arrogant, kid; keep it up and you'll be stepping on my toes here."
Another pause. Shirogane looks unimpressed, as she well should be. This is turning out to be more fun than Adachi expected.
"Dojima-san did not have access to the information I do."
"Oh, man, listen to the hotshot here! You're been granted some kind of secret-agent clearance? Maybe you're putting all that puberty to good use by sleeping your way to the top."
Finally dropping the grill, Shirogane takes delicious physical offence – and it's just so good to have something to laugh at again, even if the sound is throaty and brief from disuse. But his eyes soon drift to the apparently secret documents he's been given, an adjective that makes him really question what the hell the kid is thinking by giving copies to him.
"I," Shirogane sniffs, once she's composed herself with just the slightest brush of red across her cheeks, "am extending more respect to you than you deserve, Adachi-san. I would therefore appreciate it if you could at least pretend to give the same to me."
"That's cold. And here I was, thinking you wanted to see me because you missed me – but now you're telling me I even have to work in prison?"
"No. As stated before, this is an optional request. However, I will not believe you if your excuse is truly that you're too busy."
His mouth falls open ever so slightly, but he realises he can't really argue with that.
It's funny; before the incident with Sho Minazuki, there'd been a part of him convinced he'd get out of this — a fairytale ending where the killer walks free. His treacherous survival instincts. If nobody proves the big bad wolf can talk, how can it be asserted that he said all those horrible things? If nobody proves the crooked cop throws people into televisions, how can anyone call the whole Inaba affair wrapped up?
She doesn't know where he's going, and he can tell that from the way she looks at him. Death row is a solitary place, so visits from Dojima are his only respite from routine; they're limited, now, with the weight of his sentence and the disapproval of self-styled authorities. That's why it had been a real pain when Dojima couldn't look him in the eye, hardly capable of conversation while lamenting over how disgraceful it was and he'd never supported that kind of penalty anyway and seriously, won't you think about appealing the sentence?
But Dojima doesn't know what it's like to see a girl heave and writhe when there's a suffocating hand over her whore's cavern of a mouth, and he's never been able to get his head around the plain fact that Adachi has. The familiar contempt Shirogane is eyeing him with is almost a breath of fresh air.
"You're right," he settles on saying, with a conceding shrug. "But that doesn't mean I'm so desperate for something to do that I'll just wade into this for consultation. Why didn't he come here to show me this?"
Her loathing gaze briefly flickers away. "This visit has been undertaken in secrecy."
That's as good as confessing Dojima doesn't know jack.
Adachi grins, and his mouth is dry, so his tooth catches his lip to keep it distorted. He's heard some ridiculous things from this girl in the past (he worked with her at one point, after all) but this really takes the trophy. It's like she hasn't realised that good intentions are only useful for paving the way to Hell, and when Dojima finds out, he's going to flip – which still won't affect Adachi in any way, comfortably confined as he is.
"I get it," he says, without bothering to remove melodic amusement from his tone. "You think I'll be able to help you piece together what Chisato-san was doing before she got hit? So this is what desperation looks like."
"That was the plan." She ignores his mockery to add, as something of an afterthought, "I also don't underestimate how capable you might prove to be."
"That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."
"Will you help me, Adachi-san?"
Now there's a question. The records he's been given are mundane things, but they're all the more morbid because of it: a paper trail following the last leg of a woman's life. Not the kind of thing Inaba PD would be able to dig up, but Shirogane must've made some friends in high places – perhaps literally, in their surveillance state towers.
He knew Dojima well, and he still does, even if Dojima is only just getting to know the truth about Adachi in return. He remembers enough anecdotes about Chisato's life to do something with the papers he's been given, which only confirms his long-held suspicion that Shirogane is fucking sneaky.
"What have you been doing lately?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Deaf and dumb now? I want to know what investigations you've been working on. You must've done something pretty impressive to even organise this."
Sneaky is as sneaky does, and Shirogane won't even flinch. "I simply solved the cases I was requested to solve. I find that earns more respect than a life sentence for murder."
Goddamn bitch; he's almost excited to feel a flare of anger at that. Still, slamming a hand against the window just to see her flinch would only stop him getting dinner tonight, because he's aware of the guard's wary sight fixed to his back. He's always been good at seeing things people would rather he didn't, and what he sees when he regards her again is that she's not being evasive for the hell of it.
She's got something to prove.
Empires aren't built in a day and neither is confidence. She's shifting upon her seat again, and he picks up on it with a faint measure of curiosity. She knows she's good, and whatever it was about being a girl that bothered her before is gone — but this is the man who evaded her, the first case in which she really had to try. Now she's asking him for help and it must be difficult, a blow to whatever mass of pride she's accumulated over the last couple of years.
He could say something disparaging. He could just dismiss her. There might be glass between them but he still wields a degree of power, knows exactly the right acid to let drip from his tongue.
Instead he says, in a wash of calm apathy, "You're really going places."
Because so was he, once.
It's not much of a compliment.
"Perhaps," she replies – while tucking a strand of hair back behind her ear. Geez, is she going to be all coy now? "Though I'm currently between cases, which makes for an ideal chance to look into this one. I accept enough time has elapsed for new information to be scarce, so if we can't find a lead, then it's merely unfortunate… and I assume you can at least keep my intentions in confidence."
He can, but not for Shirogane. He can for the stubborn rural cop who insists on calling him a friend.
For now, he sits all bent and broken, ankle-on-knee with laminated papers stretched over his lap — and the guards here are so worried about Adachi killing himself before they get the chance that this is honestly hysterical. I could always papercut myself to death, you know? What an oversight.
His mind is made up for him. He sinks expectantly into his seat, says, "Tell me what you've got so far."
Shirogane is still a raging disappointment, when she gets down to it; she doesn't have anything particularly new to tell him. At least, it's nothing he can work with from in here. She thinks she's found a number of potential witnesses, investigations in the field that she'll have to undertake alone for glaringly obvious reasons, but she can always report back.
Whatever connections she has are clearly doing their best to humour her.
But it leaves him uncomfortable, his core just that much colder, to think there's really a part of her willing to trust him. What he did to Sho was inconsequential, but it shouldn't be a surprise that he didn't teach these kids a damn thing.
She hasn't produced anything like autopsy photos, if those were even taken, which he'll be glad of later when he's reviewing this shit in confinement. The food here makes him queasy enough without having the sprawled, dead flesh of Dojima's wife exposed to him, like a mockery of the regular jail cell pin-ups. When Shirogane recounts what is known of Chisato's death – how long it took, rather, for her to die – Adachi wonders if death is following him.
He would ask the kid, just to watch an uneasy look creep across her face, but that's about the time the guard sees it fit to end their meeting. He taps his watch (thirty minutes) and Adachi takes a bite of amusement from how quickly Shirogane is on her feet again. Getting to leave this place must be nice.
"Hey," he says, by way of farewell as the staff begin unlocking the doors. "You're between cases, right? How long are you going to work this one for?"
"As long as it takes, I imagine. I'll contribute whenever I can." Shirogane pushes a waterfall of hair back over her shoulder, and the faintest hint of a smile graces her all-business lips. "It is unfortunate that I have to rely on you for personal insight, but I can at least be sure that your time isn't otherwise occupied."
Shit, he can feel in his bones how that isn't quite true.
He doesn't blame her for being unaware: he told Dojima not to open his mouth about it, and no, it's not a good idea to tell Nanako someday soon. He won't even be told his date of execution until it's too late, and maybe the rope will feel like home around his neck – but then.
It's strange, that Shirogane's friends in high places didn't mention it to her when she pushed for this. He knows her type, and she's still a woman with a streak of cowardice: if she'd heard about how his sentence is the opposite of life, she wouldn't even be showing her face. He wonders if he should be hoping for something precisely because she doesn't know, like this is some subtle sign there are forces at work about to change his fate. This is all far more draining than being pushed through a shitty television.
Should he call this wishful thinking? Hell if he knows and Hell if he cares.
He could tell her before she's gone, he thinks in passing, if he condensed it to a snappy soundbite. Surprise! We're all falling into graves and I'll be getting there first – but saying it to someone who isn't Dojima will somehow make it real, and he's at least got enough thinking space here to waste time on it later.
It occurs to him, with all the flavour of pitiful weakness, that he wants to see if she'd feel sorry for him. It also occurs to him that he already knows she wouldn't care.
The decision is out of his hands when the door is pushed wide, anyway. The guard will make to lead him off, down the clinical white corridor to his clinical white cell. She, embodiment of that timeless magic ticket, will step out into a stale, savourless world that's down one killer thanks to her, so it's all he can do to glance back at her with a wry approximation of a grin – to set her mind at ease, lest she thinks he's domesticated. Lest she thinks this place is affecting him at all.
"Heh. Before I forget. You owe me a favour, now, you know? You've got to pay your debts."
As he tucks the documentation beneath the arm of his garishly green prison uniform, Shirogane adjusts the collar of her distracting shirt, offering him a disinterested glance. It's funny how the little things have started reminding him he's alive.
"Your meaning being?"
"Humour a guy who doesn't even have a cellmate. You think you can wear something cut even lower, next time?"
Startled, Shirogane looks swiftly down at herself – and the last thing he hears, ushered through the door with no trace of grace, is something like a squeak.
He doesn't enjoy it as much as he thought he would, though, takes only nominal amusement from her discomfort. And it will take a return to the four walls of the room he now calls home to remind him that they're all out there, finding futures; they have no business visiting a remnant of a past they can't shake off.
Next time. He knew the moment he said it that he doesn't want there to be any such thing.