Archive of Our Own ^beta

You dream of butterflies.

Not always, and not in a recognizable pattern, but they're there, just waiting for you to come back.

Now they're in a school hallway. Now they're in a jail cell. Now they're in the void. Now in the window, the crosswalk, the screen.

They're telling you something. If only you were to listen.

You've been dreaming a lot. Sometimes it's hard to tell when you've woken up. Your dreams are vivid--all the things you're not supposed to be able to do, you do anyway.

You can read. You can count all your fingers and toes. You can feel pain.

There's a lot of pain. When you wake up, the dreams you had are fuzzy, but there's always a lot of pain involved in your sparse memories. It's worth the pain, you think, whatever you're doing in those dreams.

You feel things in the dreams, but after you wake up only an echo of those feelings lingers, and it never does for long. Everything settles back into an equilibrium.

Of course, when you're dreaming, you don't think to recall the real world. Things just make sense in your dreams, even if they don't make any sense at all.

You stare down the familiar talking cat named Mona--Morgana--as he takes point in leading you through your PE teacher's mind palace. He teaches you to fight the monsters within. You don't feel like you need to be taught.

Weren't you just thinking about something important? It slips from your grasp like everything does nowadays.

That's fine. Mona will remind you of anything important. He's already reminding you to eat, and telling you to sleep, even though you never need to hear the latter. You're always ready to fall asleep. You always have nightmares, but that doesn't seem to matter. If anything, they make you sleepier.

On Sunday, you slept in until Morgana woke you up at noon by pulling at your hair. He complained that you sleep like the dead. It took a minute for you to remember how to smile at him and make a joke out of it. 

Morgana looked briefly uncomfortable when your half-lidded stare turned into a smile. You'll have to get better at remembering to smile. You need to be seen as friendly.

You kill the shadows in your path, and you think, This is boring. You've done this already. It's nothing new.

You make the mistake of yawning where Morgana can see it. He makes a big fuss about it, and you can't tell if he's annoyed or worried. Probably both. Morgana has a lot of emotions.

You think you used to have a lot of emotions too. They're being eaten by the nightmares. 

As much as killing shadows feels right, the Velvet Room that guides you feels wrong. 

It's a crawling feeling, stuck under your skin from the moment you step through the door to the moment you leave. There's something not right about it all. It's too stagnant; inflexible.

You should probably investigate that feeling further, but you're perpetually tired. Mustering up smiles and reassuring words for your confidants is the extent of what you can do some days. 

You take every opportunity you have to sleep through class. That, too, feels familiar.

You take an instant liking to the jazz club your detective friend introduces you to. The ambient music soothes something deep within you. It's a little break from real life.

'Real life' rings in your head strangely. You don't pay it any mind.

Akechi seems happy that you like it. That's good. You don't often get the feeling that he's happy with you. 

(It's the first time you wake up and feel longing for the dreams that slip away like foggy breaths. For a moment, you can see the imprint they leave behind, but even that retreats. 

It's been a long time since you've been able to listen to music, and you wish you remembered what the song in your dream sounded like.)

You're busy all the time, and when you're not busy you're sleeping, but the jazz club draws you back. You justify it to yourself by taking your confidants there, the ones you're always so busy with. It serves a purpose.

If you spend more time listening to the background music than listening to your friends talk, that's your business. They don't look like they notice or care.

The first time you summon Thanatos in one of the deeper dreams, you turn to stare at your wardens in question. 

It settles in your heart. It does not pledge itself to him as others do--I am thou, thou art I--because it doesn't need to. You know full well he's yours.

He's yours, but he isn't you.

Thanatos was already in the big book one of them is holding; the one all your fusions end up in. The wardens look between themselves, faltering and uncertain as you stare at them.

"It- It's a boon from us!" one claims, an edge of confusion marring her tone. "I mean, you've worked hard enough for a reward..."

The other seems unsettled, looking between the Compendium and you. "Did... we put it there? Do you remember registering it, Caroline?"

"Well," Caroline hesitates, "not specifically, but it had to be one of us. No one else has access to the Prisoner's heart."

She says it so matter-of-fact that it takes you a moment to register her words.

No. You suppose she's right, no one does have access to your heart. So what's the deal with Thanatos?

As the silence between you stretches, you remember that your wardens, too, are confidants. You quickly sit down and smile at them. Your voice is low. "So I'm getting gifts? Is it my birthday?"

Is it? It's hard to keep track of the date, day to day. Even if someone tells you, the information falls through you like a sieve while you sleep. 

There's a brief jolt to Caroline before she recovers, and they both relax infinitesimally in response to your body language. You're good at this. You're practiced. 

Thanatos croons something within you, but your focus remains on your current Strength Persona as you interact with your wardens.

The days pass, and the danger increases, and you don't mind it.

Even when things go wrong and people start dying, it's hard to mind. You can put on a face for your confidants, you can mourn with them, as long as you don't let on that you don't care. This is right. This is exactly where you're supposed to be.

You're going to die too. You're not sure how you know that, or why it doesn't inspire fear--though, few things do, nowadays. Thanatos starts humming sometimes, soothing tones that never make it out of your soul, and you think you know why.

When a plan is drawn up, you'll be the bait. You accept this without question, and when others try to question it, you gently shoot them down.

You keep sacrificing yourself, again and again. You don't know how to do anything else anymore. You don't know what to be, if not a martyr.

You miss your headphones. You had headphones at one point. Didn't you? Thanatos tries to be soothing like they would manage to be, but mostly he sounds sad. 

You start waking up with music in your head that doesn't wane like every other song up until now has. That music is yours. Real life is a sensory deprivation chamber, and you can't hear a thing, but you know what it sounds like, ringing through your head.

You can't remember where you first heard this music in the long dream, only that it's yours. 

The butterflies are waiting for you. 

Your body is heavy and clumsy in the dream, and any important thoughts fall away, but that's familiar enough. You know what's going on. You usually do, even if it makes no sense.

When the familiar interrogator starts asking you questions, it's easy to go along with it. It's always been easier to go along with what others want, whether inside the dream or out of it. 

You're not usually this aware of the dream, are you?

"Do you hear music?" you ask her, in the pause between one question and the next.

She only looks irritated, and fires back, "Are you hallucinating?"

The hallucination stays, even as you keep your story on track. It soothes something deep within you. This is familiar, too. You've experienced this often. Maybe you're just that practiced at hallucinating. 

If this is a dream, what is real life supposed to be like? Are you supposed to know? You don't--all you find when you look for memories is a gaping blackness. You're probably not supposed to know.

She gets you out of there, and your fate is delayed for another day or fifty. 

"No."

Maruki looks taken aback, then determined. "If you need some time to process-"

"I said no," you repeat.

"You heard him," your friend backs you up, his lethal glare aimed at Maruki. 

"If that's really how you feel," Maruki says, troubled, "then I'll see you tomorrow, in my Palace. We'll have no choice but to fight if you meet me there."

You take out his calling card. "Don't forget this."

"Yes, of course." Maruki seems sad.

When he's gone, your friend turns to you.

"Funny, isn't it?" Akechi says, in a tone that suggests it isn't funny at all. He's smiling, though. "I'd expected you to waver at least slightly. I didn't even have to step in to convince you. Of course, I prefer it that way."

"It's not that I don't care that you'll die," you say, before you realize you don't want to lie to him right now. It surprises you. 

Akechi tilts his head at you expectantly. He looks like he's ready to be disappointed.

"It's not personal," you tell him. "I don't care about anyone."

This also feels like a lie. You frown to yourself as you search for a truth to voice. You've never really done so before, and it's unfamiliar, and it doesn't feel right, but you want to do it.

Maybe Akechi can sense this, because he doesn't interrupt you even as you lapse into silence. 

"It's what I'm supposed to do," you say finally. "There's always a sacrifice. Usually it's me. There's no point in trying to fight it."

Thanatos croons something, but it sounds like he's crying.

Akechi stares you down with an unreadable gaze. "You've been here before."

"No," you say. You hesitate then, because you barely know what you mean, yourself. "I don't think so."

Akechi doesn't understand, but that's fine. You don't understand either. 

You tell him, "I just follow the butterflies."

There's only ever one wild card.

You're it. 

You've had a thousand dreams of butterflies, and you'll have a thousand more. They all start like yours did: with a signed contract agreeing to your fate.

They've always been there, but they didn't start mattering until you became immortal in a vaccuum.

There's nothing else left to you.