The Show's Over(?)
Akira was deep in thought on the rooftop during lunch when Minako sat down next to him. It wasn't the productive kind of thought, rather, it was the aimless kind where it went nowhere. He noted the beautiful spring weather of the new year like one observes window dressing—oh, look, the trees are pink again.
Minako was a beautiful side-effect of stealing the hearts of everyone. Joker—could he even call himself that anymore?—eyed her on the side, watching like a boy half in love as her hair was tossed around in the spring wind. He didn't entirely understand, despite a month of swapping stories, but apparently getting rid of Mementos had led to freeing Minako Arisato from her duty as some sort of capital-S Seal.
His not-girlfriend noticed him looking at her, and tilted her head to meet his gaze with a smile. "What's up?" She asked, pausing her hands from unwrapping a pair of bento. That's right. It's lunchtime, isn't it? His stomach rumbled, making the girl beside him giggle.
Her ruby eyes twinkled. That was a treasure he could never hope to steal.
"Akira? Are you okay?" Her voice was concerned now, which meant he was fucked. Minako was not famous for letting her friends hide their problems...at least that's what Akihiko-san told him at a brief meeting a while back. The Trickster sighed.
Her left hand grabbed his right, and she rubbed circles on the back with her thumb. It was a soft feeling, but damn it, what part of this girl wasn't soft? Still failing to answer, Akira readjusted his glasses with his free hand.
"Akira?" She asked again. A squeeze. He flinched, still not knowing himself what was wrong. Damn it, Kurusu, You need to get it together. Sometimes, ever since he met the other Wild Card, he felt so, so damn weak. This girl had watched her friends die. She faced Death itself, and sacrificed her life. Then..when he revived her, or whatever, she had to live in a world where almost her friends had grown up without her. And what was Akira? Some flashy adjacent-criminal who arrogantly wanted to stick it to the man and got his kicks from robbing banks and museums.
In his heart of hearts he knew it wasn't like that, but he couldn't help but feel like an unremarkable guest sometimes.
"Hey, can you please tell me what's going on?" Her smile was missing now—great fucking job, Kurusu, you brought down the mood like a Palace, didn't you—and she wasn't allowing him to break eye-contact this time. So finally, he managed to say words like a normal human being who was good at communication.
"Erm." Oh, god. Was all that training with Yoshida for naught? Was he not Joker, a smooth criminal who could make shadows swoon for him, gratefully turning into his masks? This was indeed a girl next to him, the same principle should apply, yes?
The problem was that Minako was not just any girl. "Y'know, for someone who uses a mask to summon their Persona, you're pretty bad at hiding things. Please, Akira? Talk to me?" She forced a grin. She was so strong, damn it. Akira pressed his lips into an increasingly thinned line.
"Hey, I resent that, I'd like to believe I'm a very mysterious criminal, for your information. I steal hearts in more ways than one, miss." The quip came out despite his feelings, but it was hard to be completely upset around Minako anyways.
She returned his rueful grin with a smile that could only be described to be made out of rays of sun. She let go of his hand for a second, winding back slightly before completely wrapping her arms around his own right, snuggling up to him. "Oh, I know, Mr. Phantom Thief. You took mine, after all."
Akira nearly choked on the breath he didn't know he was holding in. This girl. Quite literally a gift from the gods.
"So why don't you actually tell me what's going on, then?" Her voice was insistent, but it was the good kind of insistence where she was allowing him to breathe and collect his thoughts before he would speak. And he did. Alright. This is Minako. She'll get it, yeah? She's cool like that. Sometimes Akira wished he was more adept at summoning the mask of Joker—He got nervous at the worst of times.
"Um. have I told you about my hometown yet?" A dumb question, the answer was no—Akira wasn't keen on mentioning anything about his life before Shujin, he viewed it as just a tad unmemoriable for an origin story of the leader of the PT, he could barely remember anything about his childhood anyways. But…
...There were certain things, in light of recent events.
For a brief moment, Minako's voice switched from concerned to excitedly curious. "Oh? Ooh, spill the details, Joker!" The end of her sentence was a little teasing, which helped ease Akira's nerves. He always did wonder at her curiosity into his life, but at the same time he supposed that if he was dead for more than 7 years he would be curious as to how everything in the world worked.
He smiled despite himself as he spoke. "I'm from Inaba, which is a town that's pretty much in the middle of nowhere. I don't know why, but life there never really suited me. City life here in Tokyo always felt more natural to me." He took a breath, watching her nod from the corner of his eye.
"A few years ago, when I was in grade school, there was a string of murders across two months. People would end up dead, strung up on telephone poles. No body harm, no sign of poison, they were just dead. Today, the murders are known as the Hanged Man killings."
Minako gasped. She clenched onto his arm even tighter, already guessing where this was going.
Akira sighed again. "Well, as you can probably guess, the guy who did all that was caught by a group of Persona-users. I found this out last week at home when I met their Wild Card. He recognized that I was one too, and we swapped stories."
The Messiah tightened her grip on The Trickster. "Akira…"
Yup, this conversation had been done before. Joker really was a broken record.
Still, his voice hadn't weakened yet. "Narukami-san is one of the most charismatic people I know, actually. Second to yours truly, of course." A joke with no humor. Minako didn't laugh, simply leaning into his arm further, trying to comfort the boy. He didn't react, simply continuing with his story.
"Apparently, the killer was a close friend of his—Narukami-san's uncle is a detective, and the killer was the man's partner. Almost like...Akechi, actually. But that's another story, I guess." Akira gulped down his nerves, allowing himself to fall onto Minako's weight.
"It got so bad that Narukami-san's own sister was targeted, and she died, briefly. I don't know all the details. It was hard for him to talk about, and—" He stopped himself, suddenly realizing that it may have been way outside his boundaries to tell this story to his companion.
Reading his mind, Minako nudged him. "Akira, please tell me? I'm sure he wouldn't mind if you told another Wild Card. Besides, I like it when you tell me things, you know?" I want to help you was the message between the lines, and Akira took it.
"—Alright. Well, the god his group needed to deal with was planning to turn all of humanity into shadows. He described it as a giant fog monster, and uh, he told me to 'beware of gas station attendants' before he walked away. I caught him during a busy time, see. He's working to become a detective under his uncle, continuing to provide justice to this world. He seems so cool, and capable, of course he'd become the Wild Card. Completely different from—"
"Akira. We've talked about this before, right?" On instinct, Minako unlatched one arm from her motherly grip to reach over and push his glasses up. They had nearly fallen as his voice grew more and more unsure. Standing up, she brushed her skirt and readjusted her ponytail. She moved to face the boy, who wouldn't make eye-contact with her. Crossing her arms, she started tapping her foot and made a face. "You know you can't—"
He held up his hands, stopping her mid-sentence. "I can't discount my own experiences by comparing it with yours, I know! But it's hard, it's really fucking hard, Minako! What you did, what he did, Sometimes it just hits me that maybe I'm just a kid playing superhero! Especially since…"
The next pause was deafening for Minako. Akira almost never burst like this. She took a certain ironic pride in being able to draw reactions from him that nobody else could. A particularly fruity spring breeze blew between the both of them, not doing anything to improve the mood at all.
"Especially since what?" She coaxed.
Akira took a deep breath in, exhaling a second later. "Especially since...I don't even know if I was supposed to be the Wild Card."
Minako blinked. "...What? You lost me." This was a new development.
"You weren't...supposed to be the Wild Card? I don't get it." It really didn't make sense—he knew who Igor was, he signed a contract, he had a habit of referring to his friends as tarot cards—really, he had all the makings of a Wild Card.
In the midst of his darkening mood, he still appreciated that her confused face was very, very cute. That ray of light allowed him to continue with his explanation. "The velvet room was taken over when I awakened to my Persona, Minako. The Igor that chose me was fake. The contract I signed called my ordeal a game. Yaldabaoth made me a Wild Card because he knew I was strong, but also because he knew I could lose. The game was rigged against me because a god bet against me. I know it's dumb and weird to think like that, but it gets to me sometimes."
Ah. Minako smiled brightly. Mentally smirking at the blush that lit up on his cheeks, she reached down to hug him, rubbing the small on his back. He immediately went stiff in her arms...some things never change. "Hey, Akira? I really don't thank you enough, you know?" She softened her voice, mouth almost intimately close to his ear.
She could feel his face burn up beside her—what a dork. "H-huh?" He asked, confusion breaking through his gloom. Minako hugged him tighter.
"You freed me, dummy! You did something only you could do! You released humanity from their want for death, which was supposed to be my job, but you are a Thief, aren't you?" Her voice was full of laughter, but it was the serious kind that displayed sincerity.
He finally melted in her arms, laughing ever so slightly. "Yeah, I guess I am. Also…" His cheeks went pinker still. "D-don't get the wrong idea, I don't regret it. It felt good, shooting that stupid god in the face, and, uh. You."
She laughed. "It felt good shooting me in the face? That's—"
Immediately, his posture shot straight up again. "That's not—shit. I didn't mean that, fuck. I meant meeting you. Killing the god. Meant I could meet you. And uh, I like you." Really, was my flirting ability destroyed along with the metaverse? He wasn't normally like this.
It still worked, but Akira didn't need to know that. Minako felt her cheeks warm slightly, and she was speechless for a few seconds. "That's...nice of you, Akira. I'm also glad to have met you." His stone cold stare into the distance behind her let her know that he hadn't heard a word of what she had said. Which was fine, she wasn't about to repeat it, either.
"Besides, The Shujin uniforms are so much nicer than the Gekkou ones. I mean, Look at this!" Minako twirled around in front of him, checkered skirt billowing in the wind. He smiled, and she laughed again. Got him out of that funk. "I like it in the future—all my friends are older, and everything, but that doesn't change anything. Well, it does mean the leader of the kirijo group is now my adoptive older sister, but that's more a plus than anything. She gets really protective of me. It's cute."
Akira smirked. "Hey, we older siblings are like that. I'm like that with Futaba. Although, I guarantee you neither one of us could hold a candle to the things Sae would do for Makoto."
Before Minako could retort—Akira had not seen what Mitsuru had done a month ago when a boy looked at her once when SEES was out to eat, she was pretty sure that boy was actually still behind bars—the bell rang.
"Crap, I haven't even touched the lunch you made for me!" Akira panicked. He slapped his hands together, and predictably started wolfing down on the bento. Minako tried to stop him before he got an upset stomach, but within seconds the meal was finished. He didn't even break a sweat.
"Are you okay?" Minako was in awe.
He pushed up his lenses, light obscuring his eyes from her vision. "Big bang burger. I'm a trained professional, see."
"...I see."
The Phantom Thieves of Shujin were no more, at least, not in their old form. Makoto and Haru had graduated, leaving Ann and Ryuji alone at the school. That's not to say they weren't completely completely alone, no, far from that at all. They had three new members in their group, along with two returning members, actually.
The school was surprised, and some of the teachers were a little miffed, to see the infamous transfer student Akira Kurusu make an encore at Shujin Academy. They didn't question it, but if they had, they would have found out that he simply told his parents that Inaba simply didn't have the opportunities that Tokyo had. That he had a job in Tokyo that would allow him to pay rent at Sojiro's.
(That was a lie. He didn't have a job, he had like five. And it wasn't like Sojiro would make him pay rent after everything.)
Morgana simply came along for the ride.
Futaba was the youngest member of the Shujin Phantom Thieves, having decided to start high school the year after the Phantom Thieves killed Yaldabaoth. She was still very nervous and had a hard time talking to people, but she had her surrogate older brother to guide her through it all. Akira was proud to see her make friends, and she even reconnected with her old Kana-chan!
As for the other two new members, there was Aigis, for one. Upon Minako's revival and subsequent enrollment to Shujin Academy, the (android?) of SEES immediately followed suit, despite having graduated from Gekkou years ago. She still acted a little robot-y at times, but she had heart, Akira could tell. Minako definitely needed someone like her to grow up with in her last year of highschool.
Futaba, upon meeting the android for the first time, started openly fantasizing about pulling Aigis apart to study her. That made Aigis more than a little uncomfortable, to say the least.
Finally, there was the Messiah herself. Minako was a princess in Akira's eyes, although he somehow knew she'd protest that kind of name. His feelings for her hard gradually evolved from confusion as to who the heck this girl was to confusion as to who the heck this girl was. Really, things had wildly changed since they'd first met.
"Hey, uh, is Joker ok?" Ryuji said, waving his hand in front of Akira's face. The six of them were standing outside the gates of Shujin Academy, school having just ended. Akira was, to say the least, entranced. Minako had dashed forward in front of them, having noticed Mitsuru's sleek, black car on the road. She was turned around, now, preparing to say goodbye.
The smile on her face was what made the Phantom Thief freeze in his tracks. It wasn't anything new, not at all, but that's exactly what made him pause. Maybe it was the way the sunlight highlighting her chocolate brown hair, or the way her eyes twinkled as she watched Akira stare at her.
"Scanning Akira's vitals now." Aigis stopped talking as quickly as she started, apparently "scanning his vitals" or something. "All signs of life are present. Blood pressure and temperature are at normal levels."
"I think we could all guess that, Aigis. That's not what Ryuji meant." Ann deadpanned.
But Aigis hadn't heard the girl, or she wasn't listening. "However, His heartbeat seems...abnormally quick." damn, she's not a robot for nothing. Joker hoped that she would not reveal why his heart was beating so fast. He didn't know either, but the longer he stared, he was quickly figuring it out. Was he scared of the answer?
Minako laughed. "Dork." She whispered.
Fuck.
"Ah, it seems to be increasing exponentially." Thanks, Aigis, very cool.
The Messiah started clutching her sides now, Mitsuru's car completely forgotten.
Futaba, Ann, and Ryuji were now visibly panicked. "A-Akira! Are you okay?" Futaba timidly spoke up from his right. If his voice wasn't so dry right now, and if his legs didn't feel like they weighed 100 pounds, he would have moved to reassure his little sister. But alas, he was in the presence of the Messiah, and he could not move.
Morgana was suspiciously silent in his bag.
"Dude, you're not gonna die on us, are you?" Thanks, Ryuji, you're really helping Futaba's mental state right now. Keep panicking, it's helping.
"Joker's not gonna die!...Right?" Ann, so glad you're here as well. Futaba's got the best role models.
Amid the chaos of the panicking Phantom Thieves, Akira had not moved and Minako was still laughing. However, she managed to get herself composed enough to walk up to his face. "Hey," She whispered, only for him.
Fuck. His favourite word today, hmm? At this distance, He could see nearly every freckle of the girl's face. She was adorable, he decided. "Uh, yeah?" he answered, mouth dry.
"Thank you." Somehow, her voice was even quieter with this whisper.
Then she leaned in to hug him. At this point, the other thieves and Aigis were completely silent. This wasn't just a goodbye hug, he knew. She was determined to pull him out from his funk from lunch. He returned it, at damn, it felt good.
"See you." She waved, walking away towards Mitsuru's car.
Suddenly, an impulse seized him. "Wait!" Don't sound desperate, don't sound desperate. He grabbed her hand, forcing her to turn around to look at him.
"Ah! Yeah, Akira?" Her voice was still quiet, but this time it was the meek kind. She had no idea what he was gonna say. Suddenly, it felt like a spotlight had been cast on him.
And for someone who liked to boisterously declare that It's showtime, that feeling was a little unnerving.
Nevertheless, he pressed on. "Um. Sunday. There's uh, a movie theatre in Yongen. Want to, um, come with me?" Not exactly debonair, but whatever. This is Minako we're talking about.
Her unsure frown immediately flipped upside down. The smile she gave was blinding, which was wonderfully typical. "Of course! Oh, you have no idea how long I've been waiting for you to say that!" Quick as zio, she leaned over to kiss his cheek. It felt...very nice. That was something to explore in the future. He was unable to tear his gaze from her as she skipped away from him.
"Damn, Akira, let's go!" A Ryuji response if he'd ever heard one. He slapped the Trickster's back, which was something the boy didn't feel at all—he was drained from the amount of Joker charm he needed to say what he did.
"Wow, you really leveled up there, bro." Futaba, never change.
"It's only natural that our charming leader would be great with the ladies. You two need to stop being so ametuer." Morgana, maybe change.
"You damn cat! What'd you say to me?" Ryuji, please don't. Ann, now would be a good thing for you to say something, damn it.
"Oh, would you guys just shut up! Akira just got a date, be happy for him, would you?" Thanks, Panther, what a pal.
After a beat, Joker realized he hadn't heard anything from Aigis, so he turned around to look at her.
She was staring directly into his eyes.
"You are a threat." She said, quite simply.
...Why did he feel a chill crawl down his spine?
Babybabybabybabybabybaby!
No, I swear this isn't crack. I use the same fix-it that habenria_radianta used for their own akira/minako fic over on ao3, "When One Door Closes" in this, the destruction of mementos means that humanity's heart has changed to where they no longer desire death, so the p3mc/femc no longer needs to be a door. That borrowing is also the reason why I used Akira over Ren and Minako over Kotone as the names, I felt it was important. From there it's just a matter of fanfic bs magic and bam, you got a ship.
So I explore what makes their relationship unique: both of them are wildcards. This has been explored by other ships between persona protags, but it's still worth doing. I hope y'all liked it.
DFTBA,
Nate