• post-persona 5 royal headcanons

that one shuake reunion fic where akira is 26 years old and fresh out of his masters in literature degree, and he's accompanying his internship to a rural spa town where one of the publishing houses they work with is based out of, and as he's walking down the street, on call with his supervisor, an envelope of important manuscripts under one hand and grasping a cup of coffee to keep his fingers warm against the brisk autumn wind, he meets the eyes a man, sweeping gold leaves on the tiny paved road he's been following. his hair is caramel and eyes a cold, deep burgundy, and time stops, rewinds to nine years ago, when he sat in a cold blue cell, a heavy chain around his ankle, and it was the first and last dream that akira had ever had of akechi goro after the events of february 3rd, and he didn't think he could recognise him, not after all this time, but the heart remembers what it wants, and judging by how the rake stilled, allowing leaves to pass through its teeth as a gust of wind a little stronger than the last, akira guesses he's not the only one.

they've always kind of been like that, he thinks, always walking the same path and thinking the same thoughts, it's always just been the circumstances that kept them apart.

serendipitously, akira's supervisor bids farewell from the end of the line he stopped listening to about ten seconds ago, hanging up before a single sound can pass through his lips, because he's afraid to speak, as though a single sound would shatter the moment, would wake him from another dream whose ending he could never choose.

"goro-san!" an elderly woman's voice calls from the open door, and akira's heart freezes over. he watches goro's grip on the rake tighten, eyes wide, his expression guarded and overwhelmed all at once. akira's eyes dart to where the woman's voice came from, a humble two-paneled sliding door with a white frame, and matching decal that read 'orihara warmth & wellness centre.'

things i want; goro's hair, which has grown out to just a little less than halfway down his back, he usually wears it in a low ponytail, sometimes pinned and tucked into a humble low bun / goro and akira finally having the talk, the conversation about how goro made it here [he woke up in his bed at the rehabilitation center that watched over his mom, who took him in after everything fell apart in november, staring at the white ceiling in his staff dorm room, stale and quiet, realized he could make a choice, and returned to tokyo to meet with sae & the prosecutors office to sort out his punishment, his actions as shido's accomplice, regardless of how unwilling he was until the end / akira waking up in the first bed they share, the futon in the onsen/inn that his workplace booked for him for the five day stay, only to find an empty space where akechi should be, and as he's about to spring away from the covers, he looks to the partition between the bedroom & the small sitting room that faces the gardens outside, and see's goro's silhouette, hair no longer cascading across his bare back, but cropped just to where his nape begins, sitting in silence, gazing at the greens and oranges that dot the trees in front of him.

##

"your life is no worse for its own scars. your truest beauty lies within them, and i hope you tell me their stories someday." - yusuke kitagawa

akira/ while unpacking once he'd arrived at home, akira pulls out the pen that yoshida had given him. the words echo in his mind, "the new chapters you write with this pen, i'll be watching for them." he twirls it between his fingers (a skill he had long since used, not after the disappearance of the metaverse) examining the craftsmanship that had gone into carving the intricate designs inlaid in silver on its deep blue marbled surface. the colour reminded him of the darkest corners of the velvet room, murky and swirled together, somehow elegant despite the distortion.

"writing," he ponders aloud to himself. morgana, whose head is buried in one of the (two) boxes that akira'd shipped back with himself, exclaims in a muffled voice: "hmm? did you say something?"

"not a bad idea," he smirks. "not at all."

and so akira decides to go into writing. it's not the kind of mass communications that ohya's waist-deep into, nor is it the straight-laced literature of the countless books he'd flipped through in jinbocho. he wants to find a middle ground for himself; slightly biographical pieces that can be applied to real life, political commentary, essays, think pieces and in depth case studies. he buys a camel-coloured travelers notebook on the way home from school one day that reminds him of snow days and dress coats worn in january, and slips the fountain pen delicately into the leather pen loop sewn into it. it goes everywhere with him, is quickly filled with passing thoughts and mundane commentary which he organizes into more cohesive think pieces at the end of each month on his laptop.

akira's senior year is particularly reserved; he re-learns his hometown, discovering more about it than he ever did in the fifteen years he'd grown up within it prior (it's much easier with morgana by his side, who insists on exploring every nook and cranny of the very, very small city, and meeting new street cats to keep him company while akira attends school.) his classmates are more interested in him for his life in tokyo than his criminal record (a relief). he makes friends with a young cafe owner that recently set up shop in the downtown district after moving back to their rural furusato from tokyo. he spends most weekends there; though it's nothing like leblanc, is instead a more modern setup with white walls and stone flooring, countless plants draping from delicately set floating shelves on the walls, and thoughtful books & magazines (as opposed to the monthly tv guides stacked haplessly behind yellowing booths that became a part of his daily life), the smell of coffee brings him a sense of comfort that he had yet to find in the sterile home he'd grown up in.

with connections like sojiro, sae, and kawakami on his side, pursuing his college education in tokyo is less of a given, and more of an inevitability. he looks into intensive research programs that boast extensive foundations in literature and theory. he easily lands a seat at keio univ's faculty of letters, and chooses to focus on philosophy and both japanese & foreign literature (it's easy, when you boast erudite knowledge). though it's an obnoxiously long commute to and from campus, he finds a not-too-shabby apartment complex in yongen and decides to settle down there. morgana is *especially* happy about this; he's missed the luxury of having not one, not two, but three places to call home all within a short distance of each other.

• he frequently reads over mishima's documentary plans (as well as other manuscripts) and helps edit them. they've stayed up til sunrise far more than once, debating the intricacies of the plot, pacing, and the people they think would be best to involve in the project.
• recently, sumire's been invited to train overseas with international coaches and olympics-level gymnasts. she opted for home school/online schooling after her first year at shujin because it would make her time as a world-class athlete much more forgiving. whenever she travels abroad, she makes sure to send akira a postcard from wherever she is, documenting the lessons she's learned, new tricks, and all the new friends she's made. she insists that akira respond to her in a similar fashion (handwritten things have more meaning, after all. don't you think, senpai?). he warned her that their local zakka store only sells the same three varieties of postcards depicting his hometown. she suggested that he pick up a disposable film camera and use the photos he develops from that as his postcards instead. so akira makes a habit of taking photos of the mundanities he experiences on a day-to-day basis. whenever he snaps a good one, he's sure to develop an extra copy, and keep it in his notebook, just in case he wants to show someone else in the future.

ryuji:

• the countless hours he spends at physiotherapy are going incredibly well, but he still has a long way to go. he's ever-more eager to help his mom around the house, calling it part of his rehabilitation. he facetimes with ann twice a week, and they've pretty much mutually agreed that their best friendship is one the other could not live without.
• to his great dismay, ryuji finds out he's the only one going to school out-of-city, as he'd been accepted into a university in kyoto with an active track and field team (not the best, but not too far off either) and a great sports medicine program. his grades have improved (it's much easier to take yourself seriously in a place where no one knows you) and he more often than not emails akira at 2 am asking for another pair of eyes to read over his work. akira never rejects him, just rubs at the bridge between his eyes and tells ryuji that soon enough, he'll be needing glasses for real.

ann:

• after weeks of deliberating and long conversations with her parents, shiho, and makoto, ann decides to leave tokyo to study abroad in italy. her other options were london (too hectic and expensive), toronto (she's finnish, but still fears the cold), and florence; she decides to go for the latter. her parents have close friends in milan, and are often in the city anyway for work-related purposes, and the distance between the two isn't offensive, so they approve immediately. haru visits her twice, once on her own, and with shiho on the second. they explore the city together, take tons of polaroids and pictures on their phones, eat more gelato than the weight of the whole male volleyball team at shiho's new high school (there's a boy she's very interested in on said team, and ann is aggressively invested in their happiness).
• after her semester of studying abroad, she returns to shujin and graduates with mishima (futaba, yusuke, makoto, and haru all attend graduation. she's incredibly upset when ryuji doesn't show up, only to find him waiting outside of her apartment with a giant edible bouquet and an obnoxiously large red-and-grey balloon arrangement, complete with inflatable diploma scrolls, exclaiming "where the heck have you been!? i swear the sugar was about to melt right off of these strawberries because i've been sitting here so lon-OOF!! ANN! GET..GET OFF OF ME... I CAN'T.. SEE.. you're.. going to ruin....... the fruits...")
• she goes abroad for the year after graduation as well, and chooses to travel around scandinavia to not only experience her heritage but also meet the independent brand and fashion owners in major cities her parents frequently work with, often times accompanied by them. they grow closer than ever, and one day her father exclaims "our ann, when did you grow up so quick?"
• one fateful day, she meets a japanese boutique brand owner in stockholm, they discover they have a joint vision, and ann finds herself back in tokyo as the exclusive model and co-creative director of "celestine", a sophisticated brand that is newly launching out of laforet. of course, she came up with the name herself.

yusuke:

• what with his skill (and admittedly, his looks), fame comes relatively easy to kitagawa yusuke. he delves even deeper into his passions and inspirations, and realizes that while friendship is a major influence in his life and art, it is the places where those friendships were born that inspired him and allowed him to grow. so yusuke turns his attention to the ways his skills in the real world can help others.
• though he rejected kawanabe's advances (and continues to, to this day) he offers himself instead to the programs that kawanabe has developed under his organization to help troubled youths gain access to the arts as a form of expression and to cope with their circumstances. he volunteers with the organization three times a week, teaching classes to a variety of age groups throughout his last year of high school and even into university.
• he attends t-kyo un-versity of the arts, having been offered a scholarship to their prestigious painting program-- though he's taken a keen interest in sculpture as of late!)
• yusuke is the only one of the pt, aside from futaba, whose growth did not require him to move/go elsewhere (if not only due to his personal circumstances). as a result, he becomes a frequent occupant of the last booth, closest to the door, at leblanc. he even considers moving into the attic that akira once occupied, and was so close to convincing sojiro to agree to it, until one day he receives a call from sae nijima, who tells him that in response to one of the charges claimed against him (general misconduct and mistreatment of legally-bound minors) madarame is entitled to paying yusuke for the money that he earned as profits from the work that yusuke painted for him. it's nothing that would make him an instantaneous rich man, but it's quite the pretty penny, and once nijima had hung up on her end, futaba nudged him playfully with her elbow. "congrats, inari! sounds like now you'll be able to afford grilled mackerel with your instant miso soup every morning."

##

akechi:

• what really happened to him? when he was knocked out at shido's palace, he woke up in the rain, downtrodden and aching in places he didn't think could hurt (basically just read the first couple of paragraphs in the prompt below and that's what happens to him lmao) except that instead of being flown out of the country, he's taken into custody immediately. he tells sae everything, and she makes the decision to not have him arrested or taken to juvenile detention. (she has this conversation on the phone, right in front of him: 'akechi's a special case, there's a lot that we need to know that he's willing to tell us, and i don't want to risk anything happening to him... we know how the justice system here operates... if we haven't flushed out all of shido's goons, who knows if we'll be risking conclusive evidence... we need him to win. okay, got it. thank you. let me know when things change.')
• when he awakens, after watching maruki's glass palace shatter into the night, giant iridescent shards that danced with the snow like massive snowflakes, his last sight of joker being his body splayed across the ground, hand desperately clinging onto maruki, relentless and incapable of giving up, after he's engulfed by a brilliant white light... he's alone in his sterile apartment. shades of muted grey that blend together in lonely confinement, the tiny square-shaped studio that shido tossed his way as 'thanks for his efforts.' he hates it, hates it as much as he hates hospital rooms, as the sound of a loose tap drip-dropping into hot bath water. his hands wander to his face, to his wrist (he checks his pulse; he's... alive?). immediately he reaches for his phone, where it always is in his left jacket pocket, and calls niijima sae.
• "i'll do whatever you want, sae. i'll tell you everything, i'll go anywhere... but just promise me that you don't tell him. don't tell him i'm alive. don't tell makoto, either. this stays between you and i, otherwise i am walking out of this door right now." "fine. but why are you so afraid of him? after all he's done for us??' akechi tightens his fist, encased in leather, and he can hear his fingers tug at the fabric, making it squeak. (it's unfamiliar, and soon enough goro grows uncomfortable with it, swaps over to wearing only one glove on his left hand.) "because i'm afraid that he'll come after me." (it's cryptic but tl;dr goro does not want akira to find him because he knows what akira will ask for, and it's something that goro, being from this world and this reality and having done what he has done, cannot give him.)
• he considers changing his name altogether, wiping the existence of 'akechi goro' from the world. then, he stops, for it would be a betrayal of the true reality he fought to bring back. nonetheless, he chops off most of his hair (no more sweaty masayoshi shido minions to tell him to guard his appearance, suggesting he appear soft & approachable, that he 'looks like an idol') and, ironically, starts wearing fake glasses.

(when asked about it, he says that someone taught him it's a perfect disguise that doesn't require changing much about yourself at all.

in some ways, it's a silent memento, a secret promise to never forget the afternoons that bled into evenings in kichijoji with a certain someone.)

the first thing he does when sae relieves him, is leave. he goes as far as a shinkansen can take him, and whisks himself away to kagoshima. there, he hides away in a small rented service apartment for two months, contemplating change (of the self?) and his responsibilities. he can't stay here forever; he struck a deal with sae, to further implicate shido of his misconduct, to take the DNA test, to tell her everything he's done. "you won't walk away from this scot-free; you know that right? oh, who am i kidding, you know your circumstances better than anyone, maybe even me."

so the only way to win is for him to submit himself to change? /what will be, will be./

akechi goro returns to tokyo on march 15th. the air is stale, with quickly aging remnants of winter still lingering in the atmosphere. he steps off of the shinkansen and is met by two men in dark suits; akechi can see the small lapel pins on their collars from where he stands, still in the train. a prosecutor and a defense attorney respectively, most likely sent by sae niijima herself.

"mr. akechi, we've been waiting for you." "no need for the formalities, gentlemen. please, take me to where you need me to be. i have nothing more to hide." he follows their backs aimlessly down the platform when all of a sudden, a shock runs through his body; like a shiver, that's got him tingling from his toes to the tips of his fingers. the ground rumbles, and the train beside him departs the station. he stops in his tracks, and a feeling of (sickening) hopefulness pierces through his body. he turns around slowly, careful not to catch the attention of the two men he's meant to be following, and sees... nothing.

nothing but the backend of the bullet train that had just departed the station, second by second growing miles away.

#authors notes#

• the pen that yoshida bought while he was still 'a corrupt politician' then gifted to ren is gaudy and tackily flashy as a representative of how distorted his idea of wealth was at the time. both morgana and goro think it's abhorrently ugly, but they put up with akira's penchant for it because he loves it so much... and mysteriously never seems to run out of ink.
• think of ann's "Celestine" brand as a style nanda of sorts, wherein ann is k-ng sora. she's THAT level of exclusive. their designs are also in a similar vein; casual and flashy at the same time, with a lot of elegant accents thrown in (bc they're targeting mid 20's-older women. it causes a shift in ann's appearance and modeling skill, too, as she's been forced to portray a less youthful look. it's easy for her, though! she's grown, a lot.

##

• (shuake, canon divergent) | the private life of a private detective

Three months after Shido's confession and Akira's release, Goro Akechi attempts to rewrite himself in the Czech Republic.

//

when he comes to, there's rain dripping down one side of his face, mixing with the blood and spit dribbling down his chin and staining the perfect white of his uniform-- soaked, ripped in most places, nothing like the pristine detective prince he had worked so hard to become. it smells moldy, like old trash, almost stomach-curling, but goro's become a part of the mess, his back slouched sloppily against the brick wall of the dark alley he woke up in, hands cold and gloveless in the rain.

his mind is still elsewhere, his ears numbed by the blare of distant sirens and white noise. he might have given into the lure of the heavy weights upon his eyelids had he not been nudged back into consciousness by a perfect leather shoe that juts him in the ribs, sending a stream of pain shooting through his entire body. he tries to groan, but it comes out as a splutter, the heavy taste of blood filling his mouth to the brim as it escapes his lips, joining the pool of rainwater that streams down his chest, bleeding through his clothes. goro looks into the eyes of niijima sae, who stands tall above him, sharing her umbrella with his downtrodden body.

"look at what you've become, akechi goro." he barely registers her voice, scoffs once he deciphers her words.

"what do you mean? i've always been this-- this..." <i> worthless.</i>

ideas / its against everything sae stands for, and goro hates it, hates being an exception, being treated like a special case, but just as he feels the anger and bile raise into his throat, sae scoffs at him, tells him not to get cocky, that she owes someone a favour, that she made a promise. (is it makoto or is it haru or is it akira?)

"go," she tells him, her head turned away, eyes distant, as though she just wants to get this over with. "go and rediscover yourself. the real you." it's finally then that sae turns to goro, catching him straight in the eyes, her gaze cold and precise, like the edge of a knife, the one she reserves for courtrooms and nasty politicians. "you've been given another chance. take it, and don't come back until you're satisfied."

"why do you trust me? you don't know what i could do, what if i got there and i just en-" "because you aren't a coward. well, not anymore. am i wrong?"

the silence is painful. he's been given so many chances, none of which he deserves. he wishes he never woke up, that he ignored the pressure of sae's boot on his ribcage, that the last thing he saw was akira, the butt of his gun, and the cold, hard floor of shido's cruise ship.

goro closes his fists in anger, the feeling of skin against skin unfamiliar. he bites down on his bottom lip until he tastes blood. the silence is sickening-- everything about this is. he closes his eyes, hisses when the pain finally catches up to him.

two days later, he leaves for the czech republic.;

goro arrives in prague, all cobblestone and sepia walls and intricate carvings that see through him and all of his guilt, and all the coffee shops with white ceilings and glass walls that look nothing like leblanc but smell just like him, and goro’s chest hurts like the embers of a fallen flame on skin, but his fear of admitting it scares him more than getting burned; his rehabilitation begins, but he's pretty sure he's doing it wrong-- he sits in his apartment, paid for each month by sae (through roundabout means he'd surely understand if he tried, but thinking about himself and his wellbeing and how little he deserves it makes him sick, exhausts him, so he doesn't) painted an unnerving, sterile white, with pale wooden floors and see-through white curtains, overlooking a small cobblestone square only a few paces wide, a single potted plant on his windowsill to keep him company in the silence; something urges him to move, so he finds a coffee shop, its named barry's and barely sits more than 10 people at once, but they make a cheesecake unlike anything goro's tasted before, reminiscent of the cakes he'd bitterly, pitifully bought for himself on special days like his birthday, or scoring within the top 5 in an exam... little, stupid, mundane things, and the satisfaction he found in reveling in said things was even stupider. so why did he keep going back?; it takes some time to get adjusted, but there's a heavy sense of comfort that comes with knowing you are unknown, that you have no responsibilities, that you can come back when you're ready, that you aren't even obligated to. but as he walks across charles bridge, crispy fall air nibbling at the tip of his nose and his face awash with the colours of the sunset, he reminds himself that longing is a feeling that exists, that somewhere inside of him, he remembers. but it isn't time yet, he's not ready to turn around-- so he walks forward.

it's been four or five months since he's last breathed tokyo's stale air. nobody remembers him, but that's the least of his problems, is more of a relief;