Chapter Text
Ren’s day was going horribly.
The Phantom Thieves were at the depths of Mementos, they had found the Holy Grail, they were this close to destroying the gaudy thing and saving the world. It took an absurd amount of energy, doing all that damage as fast as he did, but Joker didn’t want to give the thing time to pull any cheap tricks.
It had pulled a cheap trick regardless. The veins that connected to it pulsed with an ugly light, and the cracks the thieves had worked so hard to spread across its surface healed near instantaneously.
Joker tried again, tried to hit harder, to outpace the healing. It didn’t work. The Holy Grail sent them back to Shibuya Crossing and made him watch as each and every one of his friends turned to ash like the shadows they killed. Was this their revenge? Everyone was gone, leaving Joker downed and surrounded, completely and utterly alone. He couldn’t do anything through the agony of his limbs slowly turning to ash. Then, and only then, as he lay under the rain of blood, did the Grail erase Ren Amamiya from existence.
Nonexistence was hellish. Ren couldn’t feel anything, but he could still think. He was still conscious, but he couldn’t actually do anything. Did he even have a body? It was hard to say. None of his personas spoke to him. Were they even there? Even harder to say. The only positive was the fact that Ren couldn’t feel the agony associated with disappearing from existence. For all the good that did. him. After a while he started to miss the pain, the sensation sounded a lot better than eternal nothingness.
Ren didn’t know how long he’d been stuck in nonexistence, it wasn’t like time really passed there. It felt like seconds, it felt like decades, it felt like millenia. Which one was it actually? Ren couldn’t be sure. Trying to count the seconds was meaningless, while Ren knew he was conscious his thoughts weren’t exactly clear. Just a jumbled mess of emotions and ideas. Looping, eternally stagnant. How many times had Ren felt the same fear-grief-anger-guilt wash over him? How many times had he wished he’d tried harder-stayed out of mementos-told Sojiro thank you? It just kept going and going and-
‘Trickster…’ A voice. A sensation. Clarity. Ren clung to it. ‘You are trapped in the space between realities, but you have not yet lost this unjust game. The Holy Grail has banished you and your companions from your own reality, but you may yet seek refuge in another. Please, do not give in.’
The sensation did not stop after the voice did, but it got further away. Ren couldn’t allow that. He needed the clarity, it was the only thing to change in this hellhole, he couldn’t just let it go. He chased after it, it became the blue of a familiar butterfly, wings flapping against the nonexistent air. Ren’s reached out, the gloved hand of Joker taking form, fingers oh so close to the insect, please don’t leave yet-
He touched it.
And Ren became real again.