Archive of Our Own ^beta

Goro’s meticulousness is a matter of pride and principle, but after a while his insistence on keeping a calendar gets the better of him and he stops. It’s pointless, not to mention horribly depressing, to strike off dates in a place like Mementos. As if he needs even more reminders that he’s stuck forever on the other side of the mirror. Obviously the public’s Palace is constantly in flux, but the thing about Shadows and pathologies is that they’re trapped in time, and so everything that’s changing is just a cheap mimicry of the shifts in the ‘real’. 

It’s worse when Mementos reflects the changing of the seasons and he has to think about cypress he’ll never see again, or the way the heat cuts across vision like a knife in summer.

It’s the worst when even Shadows held at gunpoint dissolve into tripled, full-bellied laughter, when slicing them down the middle reveals a heap of shopping vouchers with the expiry date set for a December in the next year.

“Was that,” Goro says in the driest voice, lightsaber out, pointed uselessly at a blackness departing in haste along an emptied corridor. “The Reaper.”

Gee, Goro, even the Reaper has his holiday, is what Mementos’ grisly silence returns, punctuated as it is by the fading clanks of chains that sound uncannily like jingling.

This is how Goro finally knows it’s Christmas up there for sure. 

What it means, as Goro grumps routinely down the floors without finding a single Shadow in the mood for a proper punch to the face, is that he can’t even hate Christmas properly. Goro almost misses December 25th, along with everything else he no longer has, but then the damnably jolly denizens of the collective unconscious also show up to remind him why he hated it in the first place. There’s nostalgia in this bitterness, tempered by the fact of his demise. In the real world, anyway. 

*

Solitude drags him through his bones, a solitude he deserves if only for his belief in equivalent exchange. The deal struck with the gods is this: in exchange for not completely bleeding out in the bottom of Shido’s ship, and for the rest he’s done, Goro must watch the world in red down here for the rest of his days. 

But what’s new. What’s new. 

Goro’s been hollowed out for hours before he remembers , and curses, and descends again for more, this time with a purpose to his step. By the time he pulls himself back up, heavy with palace loot to his base at the subway waiting room along the Path of Aiyatsbus, he knows he’s been late — a long time — for a surprise he has forgotten to expect.

The waiting room’s a miracle of lights in this intestinal dimness, even from afar, fairy strings in sparking abundance across every glass pane. A ridiculously ornate Christmas tree stands to the side of the narrow doorway, blinking in leafy greens and reds. And as Goro stops at the over-brightness before him, eyes stinging, he still wonders if he’ll wake up in his nightmare alone once the match is blown out. It’s been so many times but he keeps on half-believing that they’ll stop coming; living in Mementos has a way of doing that to him, with everything but an ever-shifting trick of light and shadow. 

“You’re late,” Akira’s voice says, produced from somewhere within an approaching Santa suit three sizes too large and a beard  just as corpulent. And of course Sumire is in tow, also swimming in the same scarlet. Goro just stands there. Nearing, they both see, both know, the look on Goro’s face that says more than he needs to. 

“We’re here now, hm?” Akira whispers, then pulls him into their mess of arms and plants a kiss on his scowl. 

“Merry Christmas,” Sumire greets dutifully, her cheeks already a furious shade of red when the night — and the drinks — have barely begun. Goro knows what’s decked out in the mini-fridge they somehow smuggled in for him months ago so he wouldn’t have to live off the vending machine. He can see, even from here, how its door is barely closed. 

He finally finds his voice. Gestures at the lights, the sheer madness of them. “You didn’t ransack Shibuya streets for all that.” 

“W-Well! It was a couple of illuminated trees at 4AM, and I tried to stop senpai, but…”

“My idea, yes, but we really have Sumire to thank for this,” Akira smirks. “She vaulted and took down the decorations next to Hachiko along with a whole pile of branches and leaves, which I’ve woven into a wreath over your ‘No Smoking’ sign, by the way.” He waggles his hands as he steers him in through the sliding doors. A florist’s hands as much as a thief’s. Also a lover’s. 

Goro doesn’t know what to say. 

“You both look absolutely stupid,” is what he eventually returns, setting his bags down, unable really to take his eyes off the extravagance they’ve been making in this cramped, seat-lined, lesser version of a shoebox. His miserable not-home that’s… never looked so much like a normal one. 

“I... suppose that is kind of the point?” Sumire does her nervous, bespectacled laugh, getting plates and rummaging for food, while Akira plops a similarly droopy hat down on Goro’s head. 

“Exactly. So do you now.”

Goro supposes he’s lucky to not be divested of his clothing and forced to don another Santa set there and then. He’s even luckier to have this whole frivolous fanfare for a boy who deserves none of it. Most certainly not Sumire’s chicken dish that he’s certain is organic or air fried or something and tasty to boot, in place of the KFC that was the only thing close to anything Christmassy he’d ever shared with a mother. A mother he’s technically just as dead as.  

“Ta da!” Sumire gives a flourish. The chicken glistens on a pan in a sea of candy canes on the table in the center (also imported furniture). Goro grimaces. 

“I did say, you don’t have to go to any of this trouble.” To being here, he mentally adds while settling himself into a seat, and Akira joins him with a leg lounged across his. “You never have to. Cup noodles are just fine, and the vending machine gets Coca Cola’s new shrimp bisque. It’s festive enough.”

Akira’s wearing that look of mortified pity, like he’s imagining Goro downing canned soup alone down on the train tracks to ‘Nights in White Satin’.

“You know,” he remarks, “your fondness for cup noodles is probably a genetic trait you share with Futaba. Although she’s stopped eating them. Might lead to balding. Just look at Shido, she says.”

“Oracle believes this shit?” 

Come to think of it, what, pray tell, are Akira and Sumire doing here instead of spending Christmas with the rest of the Phantom Thieves? He hadn’t wanted them to know he still existed, in a manner of speaking. He still doesn’t want to see them. Doesn’t want them to forgive him.

Sumire has a carving knife in hand and has been energetic with it, doling out slices and dishing them before she glances up. “Cup noodles aren’t real food.” She sounds almost like Coach Hiraguchi when she means business; Goro’s seen her workout videos. “You, more than either of us, need a better diet than surplus sodium and too little protein. We don’t have to keep saying this...” 

“And it’s Christmas,” Akira adds gleefully.

As if that’s helpful or means anything at all. Goro fights down the conflicting need to both smack and make out with Kurusu Akira — preferably at the same time — and takes a bite from the piece that’s been slid onto his plate. “Not bad,” he says a moment later, his tongue lingering around the done-right crispness of roasted skin, “Yoshizawa-san.” 

Sumire adjusts her glasses. Looks flushed and a little, just a little, put out. 

“Alright. It’s the best I’ve ever had down here. ...Or ever,” he admits.

“Sumire,” Akira has to remind him. 

“Oh.” He tries again, in spite of himself, and the stupid sensation behind his eyes. Pepper, or something. Maybe. “Thank you, Yo - Sumire.” 

In fact, as Sumire’s face widens into a smile, he feels like he’s choking up. The curse of Christmas, the facile organum tunes Akira’s managed to get plink-plonking around their heads, all of this affected cheer — it’s getting to him as it does for everyone, it’s why he hates the day, isn’t it?

Nineteen years and it’s an excuse he’s never found cause to make, until now. 

“Thank you,” Sumire returns, her face aglow from the pleasure of cooking and the pride of having its skill acknowledged, so rarely glimpsed. It means a great deal to her, he realises far too belatedly, as much as this home-cooked warmth that’s so new to him, still strange on so many levels. He keeps his face still as she reaches to put her hand on his for a moment before turning to Akira. A stage whisper. “Progress. ” 

“I’d say we’ve succeeded in mellowing out Goro’s ruthlessness by the end of the year,” Akira responds, curling a finger under Goro’s chin as Goro gnashes like a snap turtle. “Let me tell you what’s what. That bag of loot he lugged in is full of Christmas gifts.”

Goro stands. Empties a bottle of cider over Akira’s shit-eating grin as Sumire yelps, and watches it soak into his hair, that beard, over the plastic seat beneath. A lot has changed but he’s still petty, and vindictive, and will still pretend he doesn’t enjoy the way Akira gets under his skin. The way Akira is mostly (always) right. Sumire squeaks about the forgotten chicken but what Akira does is lope out his longish arms, haul them both in so they’re collapsed half on top of him, legs hanging over chairs meant only for the lengths of laps. They make a wet, breathy, giggling tangle in their own island of bling, anchored in a universe of shadow. 

“We should really try bringing a bed in, shouldn’t we?” A murmur.

“Won’t fit.”

“I’m perfectly comfortable.”

“Maybe if you got that damned beard off…”

Eventually Goro slides off them and onto the floor, head against the seat, looking out through the glass and the lights into the darkness beyond. When his vision doubles and blurs over it's easy to believe that that’s the night sky, that the city’s lit up garishly before them, that the moistness on his hair and face are from the gentle white of flakes. 

“We have the entire Mitsukoshi down here from monster drops, by the way,” Goro says at last, his voice catching. “Great stuff. Didn’t have to spend a single cent.”

Akira’s leaning down to kiss away his tears, then Sumire, and yes, yes, it’s snowing. 

*

In the morning, or what passes for morning here, the fairy lights are nearly empty. December 26th (probably): already Christmas is beginning to pass from the public’s consciousness, and the shadows will go back to normal. Here, the glass walls have become a cobweb of open twigs and sputters, the effect reminiscent of the tendrils that infiltrated Mementos in January. A January in which the three of them found themselves alone  in a dreaming world and determined after that none of them should have to suffer that again. 

Sumire is the first to shift among the makeshift sheets and strewn party debris. She sits up, straightening her hair out with her fingers. “Oh, I might be late!” she gasps, pulling crumbs out of long strands. “I’ve got gym practice…”

“Day after Christmas?” Goro mumbles.

“Exactly !” 

“Don’t worry. Go, I’ll stay to clean up,” Akira responds lazily, his hand trailing fingers up and down Goro’s back while one leg kicks out to stop Sumire from lunging for a garbage bag. They’re still nestled there together across the collection of sleeping bags and cushions that make up the slumber corner. “There’s time before Sojiro expects me.” 

“But you said it’s your turn to cook today— it’s so much—”

“You did yesterday.”

“I’ll make it up to you, senpai!” Sumire’s racing through all the motions of morning prep with the briskness of an athlete. “Oh, and Goro-kun, I’ll be late for dinner — I’m sorry!”

As if Goro’s going to know the time. From below, his response is automatic: “You don’t have to —“

“Shut it! No more of that from you.” She pecks him on the lips now, bolder and wickeder each time, apparently, and tucks her glasses into her leotard. And is done. As the sliding doors close behind her she shifts fully into Violet in a whoosh of dark fabric, zipping up the frozen escalator and into the broiling mess of Mementos.

Goro turns to Akira. “You go with her. I can manage this. It’s not like I have anything better to do.”

“I’m better,” Akira says, and pulls Goro closer as a phantom train rattles past, its glow making one section of the lights come momentarily to life. 

Not for the first, or last, time, Goro considers the irony of it: a season constructed by the masses in replication of timelessness, yet so quickly steamrolled over in anticipation of the next. He’s the one who’s forced to experience it, hunting Phansite targets or the shadows of Shido’s cabal while Akira and Sumire resume real lives. It is so much, too much, sometimes, to keep faith in their returning and re-returning, in the idea that they can live in two worlds and that he’s as much part of theirs. They have to keep re-teaching permanence, while he shuts his eyes tight against it so that its brightness sears the inside of his eyelids, enough to say,

“Later, then.”