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The worst part about getting old is the back and joint pain. No competition.
The second is how easy it is to get exhausted. There are nice moments– Zenkichi realises in hindsight that he never got to appreciate how awesome a 4-hour nap could be until he hit 38. But it comes with a catch, because if he’s not careful he can and absolutely will become worthless to waking society by 21:30.
The worst part about the Phantom Thieves and their weird other-world shenanigans is the fact that it is so easy to forget that he’s 44.
So, here he is, laying on the ground in a bar technically still owned by a buddy of a buddy of a friend that he hasn’t spoken to in a year and a half, trying to sleep because he’s 44 fucking years old and he just got a magical… demon… thing , that he doesn’t think he’ll ever really fully understand, and apparently that entails this bone-deep exhaustion that makes you aware of the weight of every single individual nerve, except that tired feeling is fighting a desperate battle with residual adrenaline and a twitchy-trigger-finger kind of anxiousness, hyped up like he hasn’t been since the height of his years in university, when he thought Mad Bull, Creature, and beer were good substitutes for water and didn’t drink anything else for two and a half years.
“An awakening takes a lot out of you,” the younger Niijima girl had told him, and Zenkichi noticed right then how similar she is to her sister. All in the angle of the eyes, the colour of the iris just a little bit muddier on the attorney’s, a little bit farther away from red proper. Her sister’s hair is a duller colour, and not just because despite being 24 years old, she’s already got more grey than Zenkichi. But the eye shape, the lines of the jaw, the subdued smile never really turning much bigger than slight, both tilted to the right side of their face.
Niijima Makoto would not make a good cop, his tired mind thought, sluggish and slow as he watched her gently comb through Sakura’s hair– the girl had been on the verge of a breakdown all the way through going to and getting through Akane’s Jail, voice shaking as she directed him, not making a single quip the entire time, and as soon as she got to the Phantom Thieves– mainly Kurusu, who she enveloped in a hug before even looking at anyone else– she crashed.
Her eyes were red, and she was shaking hard. She’s a quiet crier, it turns out, going silent after a few minutes of heaving sobs and whimpers.
(It’s too easy to forget she’s a kid, sometimes. Childish, sure, and tiny in only the way kids can be, but it’s easy to write it off as the high-energy, and the general skinniness she’s got, too. She’s loud and excitable, but not naïve, and when she’s not joking around she has this look in her eyes that makes you feel like she’s older than she is, like she’s seen too much shit to really be called a child, anymore. Too clever by half, too familiar with the shitty way the world goes ‘round.)
(It’s easy to forget, then, that she’s only a year or two older than Akane.)
(Easy to forget they all are.)
Niijima Makoto would not make a good cop. She’s too kind. Too trusting. She’d get flayed, in the big leagues.
But she’s got a look in her eyes, that Zenkichi can now recognise in her sister, like she knows already she’s too good for the institution she’s about to walk into, and fully intends on bending the world around her into her own image.
Zenkichi doesn’t see the merit in that, doubts it’s as possible as she wants it to be– he was a bright-eyed kid once, too, with high aspirations, even if he knows it’s not too easy to see that now. It’s a good idea, but just that, at the end of the day. He doesn’t have the heart to try and tell her again, though.
As it was, he was sitting woozy in one of the booths, trying to make his eyes work right again, because he has to help Akane he has to he has to he has to, except the damn kids kept pushing him back into his seat.
“Y’can’t force yourself, Gramps!” Sakamoto said breezily, after the fifth time he shoved Zenkichi back on his ass by pushing down on his shoulders. “Queen’s right, you gotta take a break. Know your limits, ‘r whatever.”
“Ryuuji had to give me a piggyback ride after mine,” Takamaki added, smiling and nodding along as she fiddled absentmindedly with a lock of hair. “I felt like jello for days.”
“I was in a coma for two weeks,” Sakura said quietly, the first words she’d spoken since her reunion with the others. Her voice was a little dull and nasally.
Zenkichi forgot, then, that was trying to force himself to be in tiptop shape as he digested the statement. His vision actually blurred as he chewed it over.
“Eh, you woke up a few times,” Sakamoto said, voice still bright like that conversation and its implications weren’t confusing as all hell. “Even if it was , like, five minutes max at a time.”
“The point is that you’re taking a break,” Morgana said sharply, before they had an opportunity to get further off tract.
“I need to– Akane,” Zenkichi remembers saying, trying to ignore the fact that he absolutely slurred a few syllables in there, and hoping the all of them would, too, even standing up again to make sure they forgot about it.
He was shoved back down into his seat by Sakamoto again.
“Stop resisting a-rest, Zenkichi-san,” Okumura said with a light giggle.
“You can’t save Akane running on fumes,” Morgana said at the same time. “If we go into the Jail now, in the state you’re in, you’ll be a danger to us, yourself, and Akane. So get some rest now, so we can get back to helping Akane sooner rather than later.”
The cat does not pull his punches. What’s worse is that Zenkichi knew he was right.
“We should all get some rest,” Niijima said. “We all want to be at our best to save Akane-chan, and it would be foolish to waste our time twiddling our thumbs while Zenkichi-san is resting. A nap would be good after the day we’ve had, don’t you think?”
A few eyes darted to Sakura again, since she was clearly the one most in need of some shut-eye.
And that’s how they ended up laying on the floor, coats and jackets as pillows and blankets because resisting arrest and running away from the police seems to have the unfortunate side-effect of not getting to pack first.
Zenkichi is laying close to the stairs, next to Kitagawa who’s next to Sakamoto, who monologue in their sleep and snore like a dump-truck, respectively. It sure as shit isn’t helping his current bout of insomnia.
He’s taken off his blazer to support his head and regretting all of his life choices because sleeping on the floor is already fucking with his back and he’s sure it’s going to get exponentially worse later on in the day.
And he’s awake.
Very, very awake.
Which is why he hears the door open. And the footsteps from the ground floor, and the carefully muted steps down the suitcase, clearly trying to make as little noise as possible.
And Zenkichi is– well, he’s wired and he’s tired, which is not a good combination if you’re looking to make good decisions, but more importantly he’s the only thing standing (well, currently, laying) in between this obvious intruder and the group of brats that somehow managed to weasel their way into Zenkichi’s heart. These kids, the oldest of which is 19 , not even able to drink yet, who have seen more shit than most people twice, thrice their age have seen and somehow still have the soul to keep going.
So he does the only thing a dad (however mediocre) can think to do in that situation, and he gets ready to fight tooth and nail for these kids.
He doesn’t know how those Jail-Metaverse things work, exactly, but he remembers that the swords and guns they use in there are, in fact, fake in this world.
So he grabs the only real weapon he can get without leaving these sleeping, snoring teenagers alone and defenceless, and takes Kurusu’s certainly-illegal butterfly knife, and its sharp blade that would feel far more decorative, what with its rainbow colours, if Kurusu hadn’t demonstrated himself to be scarily efficient with it, playing that stupid game where he stabbed the blade against the table in between his fingers to the tune of a stupid song, or tossing it in the air and catching it idly while he’s waiting for somebody or spinning it in his hands deftly when he’s either tuning out a conversation he really ought to be listening to, or snooping in on conversations he really shouldn’t.
By the time Zenkichi’s got the knife pointed towards the stairs, the person’s already towards the base of it, creeping down the last few steps carefully, slowly.
“Don’t move,” Zenkichi says, trying to make his voice threatening and unwavering.
The intruder stops.
Zenkichi’s too tired and stressed, so he takes a few seconds, trying to think of something appropriately intimidating, but he doesn’t find anything good before–
“Ouch, Gramps. What a warm welcome,” Kurusu’s voice says, with all the careful nonchalance of its owner. “Can I at least put my stuff down?”
“…Kurusu,” Zenkichi says, and the figure takes the last few steps down so the low light can reveal the messy black hair and glasses over too-sharp grey eyes a few steps away, carrying his weight’s worth in cardboard boxes.
“Is that my knife?” Kurusu asks, tilting his head slightly. “Threatening me with my own weapon. That’s a new low.”
“Kurusu,” Zenkichi repeats, tension pouring out of his body. “Fucking hell, kid.”
He puts the butterfly knife back down on the counter and walks over to Kurusu, grabbing some of the boxes and taking them off Kurusu’s hands– fuck , that’s heavy.
Kurusu blinks at him, slow.
“Thanks,” he murmurs, quietly and unsure, like he’s caught off guard at the minimal act of kindness.
Zenkichi almost feels like asking why he’s so surprised that someone helped him without being asked would essentially be stepping on a landmine, and he hasn’t slept in close to two days and these boxes are heavy . So he walks to the only booth close enough to the door that they can move to it without stepping over someone to do so, and makes a valiant effort to keep the noise to a minimum as he sets down the bricks that Kurusu must have been apparently lugging around on the table, then pushes them back towards the wall and shuffles to the side so Kurusu can set the rest of his stuff down.
“Don’t scare me like that again, kid,” Zenkichi says to him. “Thought you were the fuzz.”
Kurusu gives him a dry look. “Thought the worst pain would be you pointing my own knife at me. But that cuts deeper than any dagger ever could, Gramps.”
“Buzz off, you know what I mean.”
A small smile, and Kurusu pads off back to the counter to pick up his butterfly knife that Zenkichi had set down. Completely soundless, now. Zenkichi wouldn’t know he was moving if he weren’t watching Kurusu.
He slinks back, in that silent way like he’s just shadows moving, making Zenkichi wonder if the fact that he heard the door open and the footfalls on the stairs at all were just because the kid was carrying enough to block his vision and displace his weight.
“What is all this stuff, anyways?” Zenkichi asks, trying to pretend like he’s not surrounded by a room of walking red flags, like conversation with these brats don’t make sirens blare in his head every other sentence, like he doesn’t look at Kurusu and see a living, breathing list of symptoms for PTSD, like he doesn’t want to grab him by the shoulders and ask who hurt you because he knows it would be so much faster to ask who didn’t .
Kurusu cuts open the cardboard with his knife as he shrugs his shoulders.
“You’re fighting with us, you need weapons,” he says simply. “The ones you get with your awakening, they’re… not the best. So I got you an upgrade. And armour.”
Zenkichi eyes the mountain of cardboard.
“That explains maybe one or two of these boxes,” he says dubiously. “What about the rest?”
Kurusu somehow silently extracts bubblewrap, a feat Zenkichi previously thought impossible.
And then he pulls out a bedset.
Then a second.
He spots Zenkichi looking at him incredulously, and shrugs again with a small smirk tugging up on his face.
“Didn’t really get enough time to grab our stuff,” he says. “We’ll need replacements, until we can get the RV back.”
Zenkichi watches as Kurusu forgoes the zipper on the side of one bedset cover and slices straight through the plastic, pulling out the blankets and going over to the mess of limbs that is his teammates so he can one-by-one cover them back up.
It’s a very careful thing– how he bundles up one duvet and gently lifts up Sakamoto’s right leg and setting the blanket under his ankle, making sure it rests just so, or how he brushes Sakura’s hair out of her face, pulling strands out of her mouth, after he manoeuvres a pillow under her head and puts her at an angle that makes her snorting softer, or the way he fixes Okumura’s hand so it’s not crushed under her own head, or how he manages to put Morgana on a blanket of his own instead of curled up against Okmura’s side, giving him enough room to stretch out and fall on his side while remaining completely asleep, sighing as he finds a way to get comfortable.
He picks up the mess of jackets he’s replaced and folds them all so they won’t get more wrinkled, setting them out on the counter neatly.
Zenkichi watches it all, watches Kurusu teeter on the line between love for his friends and a visible, pathological need to feel like he’s helping.
Once the Phantom Thieves are all bundled up and looking less like fugitives and more like kids at a sleepover, Kurusu’s padding back over, stepping over limbs on his tiptoes until he’s back to Zenkichi.
“I have more. For you,” he says, stepping past Zenkichi and grabbing his knife again (spinning it in his hands once, of course, because he’s a showman before anything else) to pick another box out of the pile and split it open.
“…kid, I need to ask you something,” Zenkichi says, focusing on keeping his voice neutral.
But Kurusu seems to recognise the fact that Zenkichi’s wanting to have a serious conversation, and there’s a ripple of discomfort across his shoulders before his posture straightens out the slightest bit, though he still works on unpacking the bedset even with his attention more clearly focused on Zenkichi.
Zenkichi exhales. “What store’d you get all this from?”
A pause.
“Sophia’s,” Kurusu answers hesitantly. “We get most of our supples buying online. Costs a bit extra for same-day delivery, but…” a shrug, “them’s the breaks. Not too hard to branch out to things like toothbrushes and blankets.”
“Online,” Zenkichi repeats. “Uh-huh. How’d they ship ‘em to you? How’d you pick this up?”
Another too-long silence.
“…I, um. Had them send it to a postal box a block or so away. Waited until the boxes were in and picked the lock. So that they wouldn’t see me.”
Zenkichi is picking his battles. He is picking his battles . He is not commenting on that, because that is not part of the point he’s trying to make. He’s picking his battles.
“So, lemme get this straight,” Zenkichi says, and Kurusu stiffens more. “You are wanted by the police, and instead of staying inside where you’re safe, you ordered weapons off of Amazon and walked out in broad daylight– it’s, what, 14-hundred?– and committed a literal crime in order to obtain said weapons, because waiting for the deliveryman to leave was just about the only real precaution you put into place.”
Kurusu opens his mouth, and closes it again.
“I have another question,” Zenkichi continues. “Did you tell anyone about this plan of yours? Because I don’t remember hearin’ about any of this, since I sure as shit didn’t know you even left. And since I’m the only one awake, I don’t think anyone was staying up waiting for you, either, which they absolutely would’ve if they knew.”
“It was just a quick trip–”
“You know just as well as I do that things can go wrong in the time it takes to go up a block and back.”
Kurusu flinches at the sharp tone his voice takes, and Zenkichi curses himself in his head.
When Akane was younger, when Aoi was still alive and he and Akane were on okay terms still, she got in trouble in the way all kids do. And she didn’t do so well with the yelling, so Zenkichi and Aoi always had to approach it differently. Calm and collected, and upset, sure, but not angry, even when they were furious.
Zenkichi’s looking at an eight-year-old Akane, covered in mud and back from a schoolyard fight.
She was protecting another kid, but she still threw the first punch.
He remembers that, instinctually, he knew the look in her eyes: she wasn’t sorry for what she did, but she knew she was in trouble, since she started it and was therefore technically in the wrong. A bullshit rule, but a rule nonetheless. He knew she wasn’t going to apologise, but she thought he and Aoi were going to make her.
Skittish, nervous, afraid.
He sees it in Kurusu’s posture now, tense like a piano wire.
Calm and collected. Upset but not angry.
For all his posturing, Kurusu’s never been anything but just a kid, covered in mud and knowing there’s a difference between ethically and technically right and having a preference on which one to adhere to.
Zenkichi sighs.
“Kid, what would your friends have thought if they woke up and they realised you were missing?”
“I wasn’t going to get caught,” Kurusu says, still not relaxing, like he’s waiting for Zenkichi’s temper to slip again and for him not to school it back this time.
“Sure, you didn’t plan to, but that’s not a guarantee,” Zenkichi says. “But let’s put a pin in that argument for now, and consider the idea that someone would’ve woken up before you got back. Gone to the bathroom, done a headcount, and you’re just gone? How’d you think they feel, with no note or nothing?”
“Sophia knew,” Kurusu says weakly. “She helps me buy stuff online, so she knew what I was doing and where I was going.”
“Yeah?” Zenkichi says. “How’s she gonna explain that to your friends if she’s in your phone, in your pocket?”
“…my phone is charging,” Kurusu says, looking like someone just force-fed him a lemon, obviously knowing he just admitted to something way more worthy of reprimand.
“So you left as a wanted national fugitive in midday without even your phone ?” Zenkichi says. “Kid.”
“I was at 15%,” Kurusu justifies weakly. “Sophia gets all loopy at low battery.”
“Then wake someone else up.”
“You guys are resting.”
“You should be, too.”
“I can’t sleep,” Kurusu says, and then hastily adds, “during the day. I can’t sleep during the day .”
He ducks his head farther away when Zenkichi fixes him a look.
“I know you’re a better liar than that, kid,” Zenkichi says. “What’s wrong?”
Kurusu starts rifling through the box, pulling out the next bedset and opening it, taking out the entire thing at once.
“I’ll take one of the smaller blankets, if that’s alright,” he says. “Other than that, the rest is yours. I thought it’d be best for you to have a few more, for back support. Gramps.”
“No,” Zenkichi says. “Kurusu, tell me what’s happening.”
“You’re tired and you just got your Persona you need your sleep,” Kurusu says quickly and flatly, almost like he’s panicking. “Let’s just go to bed, I promise I won’t sneak out aga–”
“I’m not going to sleep until you tell me what’s eating at you, kid.”
A pause.
Kurusu looks at him.
“Is that… a threat?”
“A statement of fact,” Zenkichi says. “I’m a father, and you’re a child. Knowing something’s wrong but not knowing what it is is like my kryptonite. I’m already having trouble resting ‘cuz of my kid, knowing there’s another that I maybe could but am not helping is going to exacerbate the issue by a lot.”
Silence.
Kurusu looks away again, scratching nervously at the already-chipped black paint on his nails.
“…are you okay?” he asks quietly.
“Huh?” Zenkichi says. “The– that ‘awakening’ wasn’t that bad, kid. I’m fine.”
“I’m… not talking about your Persona.”
“Then you’ll have to elaborate.”
Kurusu fiddles nervously with his fingers. Swallows.
“…you got arrested for us,” he says simply, carefully.
He goes silent again, so Zenkichi nods and confirms; “I did.”
It takes a while for Kurusu to find his voice again.
“You got arrested,” he states again. “And… and you got… interrogated, too, right?”
Zenkichi remembers all at once pouring over the files on the Phantom Thieves. Remembers the strangely empty lack of real evidence on the leader’s last and official arrest– motive, maybe , stuff like proximity to the changes of heart, both to the targets and those effected by them, and their pièce de résistance , a signed confession.
And Kurusu Akira’s initial arrest that had landed him probation, the max punishment possible for the slightest smear of blood on concrete (there were quite a few pictures of it, like they were trying to thicken up a case file they knew was far too thin to pass, what with the “victim” having his name inked out, and only a paragraph and a half as testimony).
But, the most unnerving by far, is the initial arrest of Kurusu as the leader of the Phantom Thieves. An on-site arrest and over 12 hours’ worth of no reports of information. If it weren’t for the timestamps, one would think Kurusu shot himself before they even picked an interrogation room to put him in. But, no, just the longest gap in anything until the report of “suicide”.
The Phantom Thieves all have scars. Physical ones, not just the mental ones you can feel in how they carry themselves or where they come from. No, they have nicks. Bruises. Burns. They look like they came out of war.
Having now fought those weird shadowy monster things himself, it’s easier to see where they got most of it. Claws and swords and guns and magic explain away most of the marks on them. The Lichtenberg figure down Niijima’s spine is attributed now to the lightning some of those creatures summoned, the burns like from bleach or acid on Kitagawa’s arm are perhaps form those blasts of white-hot energy like miniature nuclear bombs, the gnarled scar Okumura wears on her thigh could match any sharp sword or fang or claw.
Knowing what they fight makes it very obvious how often they do.
But there are some scars that Zenkichi knows aren’t from those Jails. The long scar down Sakamoto’s thigh Zenkichi’d bet money was from surgery, or the long-since-healed marks on his back oddly reminiscent of the buckle of a belt and the burning side of a cigarette, or the cut on Kitagawa’s eyebrow that he usually keeps hidden behind his bangs. The only scars on Sakura being the lines on her arm.
But none of them come close to Kurusu’s plethora of wounds.
He has scars like barbed wire around his wrists, a product of skin rubbed too raw by handcuffs and now a different colour and texture than the rest of his arms. The difficulty holding things too tightly in his left hand, since there’s nerve damage in the pinky that makes it so it doesn’t always bend properly. The stiffness in his right leg that he doesn’t always manage to hide. The marks on his arm that could only be explained by syringes being put in hasty and wrong. The scar like splintered glass in the centre of his forehead marks a gunshot wound.
Zenkichi’s no stranger to what happens in police interrogation. He doesn’t doubt for even a second Kurusu went through Hell 10 times over in that room– just hopes it wasn’t quite as bad as his head’s making it out to be.
(He’s done too much shit in there, himself, on the other side of the “interrogation”. It makes him sort of sick, thinking about how many people he decided it was okay to hurt, just by listening.)
“I’m really okay, kid,” Zenkichi says. “They roughed me up a li’l, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle. ‘m right as rain, see?”
Kurusu worries his lip.
“I handled it , too,” he says quietly. “Didn’t– doesn’t mean it wasn’t still bad.”
There’s a pause after that, because Zenkichi has nothing to say to that– what could be said to that, what could anyone say to half the shit Kurusu’s been through?
Kurusu plays with his hands a little more before swallowing and beginning to take out the bedsets again, still hurried but tamer and controlled, this time. He unzips one and pulls out exactly two blankets that he sets aside, farther away from Zenkichi, and the rest go towards him in a loose attempt at a pile.
“I– I think I may have gotten a few too many,” he says softly, but quick as ever. “Better that than too few, though, I guess. Um– I’ll– I’m gonna. Turn in. For the night. Day. Whatever.”
His voice gets quieter and quieter with each syllable. For someone as aggressively controlled and contained as Kurusu, there’s something slightly unnerving about this genuine nervousness, this small hint of vulnerability that’s showing in the darkness of the bar. Kurusu’s bad hand seems shakier than normal, and he almost (but not quite) fumbles pulling out the last set.
He puts it down without unzipping it before snatching up the blankets he put aside for himself, darting away to run from this conversation.
Zenkichi acts without thinking.
On instinct, thinking only of this desperate need to not let this moment pass unchecked, he reaches out and grabs Kurusu’s wrist to stop him from running away.
It’s a bad move.
Kurusu flinches, spasms into a full-body recoil that leaves him crashing into the table loud and hard and fast. The noise is strikingly loud and jarring, almost painful in its sudden intensity. It takes half of him not to cover his ears.
Niijima, among some of the other kids, stirs a little bit away from them. She must be the closest to awake, because she hums a confused, questioning noise before shifting and going back under. Morgana makes a quiet chirping sound, but seems as knocked out as ever.
Zenkichi puts his hands up like he’s signalling surrender, shuffling back a half-step. He’s not sure how else to tell Kurusu he means no harm, not quite sure how to put into actions nor words this strange feeling of somehow being more willing to pull out his own teeth than ever hurt any one of these kids.
“Hey,” he says, slow and soft and coaxing, almost like he’s talking to a wild animal than he is a child. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you, kiddo. It won’t happen again, I promise. I’m sorry.”
Kurusu’s looking every part the rabid critter, pressed against the table and curled in on himself. His eyes are blown wide and he’s searching over Zenkichi for signs of a threat without ever, Zenkichi thinks, actually looking at him.
So Zenkichi keeps talking quiet and kind, even if it’s just repetitive, useless shit as long as it keeps his tone nice and comforting. He doesn’t move except for that, and, slowly but surely, it works. He watches Kurusu’s eyes focus back into awareness, first as a trickle and then a snap as he remembers himself, and just like that, it’s the leader of the Phantom Thieves in front of him again, not a scared little kid too startled to keep playing strong.
He straightens himself out so his slouch is nothing but casual, his eyes narrow down as his brows furrow until finally his face evens out to its characteristic blankness, he shifts his footing so it’s more open again. All at once, he’s not Kurusu Akira but Kurusu Akira , for all that means and more.
He doesn’t speak, though, even as he puts his arms down so he’s no longer hugging himself like it’s the only thing keeping him all together. He’s breathing so loud Zenkichi can hear it, and he can certainly hear how horribly shallow it is. It sounds like he’s been stuck underwater for a while, like he’s not used to fresh air.
He doesn’t speak, so Zenkichi waits, not speaking either. He doesn’t move. Just watches Kurusu pull himself together. The way he stops making noise all at once would be impressive if it weren’t miserable and terrifying .
“…um,” he says softly, eventually.
“Welcome back, kid,” Zenkichi says, because that’s as good a cue for that as any. “We’re going to need to talk about that.”
And just like that, he’s curling in on himself again. This time, there’s a flush to his face that’s visible even in the dark of the room, spreading down his neck and up the shells of his ears.
“Or– we could… um… n…ot?” he says.
He looks, for once, less than his age. More 11 than 17 (and shit , he’s 17 ), more like a tyke who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar than a teenager who just had what was obviously a panic attack.
Zenkichi stares at him.
“…please,” Kurusu adds into the weight of the silence. Zenkichi feels like he’s still trying to catch his breath, to feel his feet on solid ground. “I can’t– I really can’t do this right now, s– Gramps. Gramps.”
There’s a long silence in which Zenkichi can’t think nearly enough to talk back.
“What’d they do to you, kid?” he hears himself say out loud. He doesn’t mean to, really. Barely means to think it, and certainly doesn’t mean to say it.
He does, though, and Kurusu hears it. Hears it and hikes his shoulders up and frowns.
“That doesn’t matter,” he says, matter-of-factly. Not even a deflection, or at least not an obvious one. The way he says it, the look in his eyes, the stance he’s got– he dismisses it like he really, genuinely believes it. That’s almost worse than anything.
Zenkichi opens his mouth, closes it.
“…kid,” he finally manages. “It matters wh–”
“I-I’m over it,” Kurusu lies. “What matters is what happened to you. I-I know better than anyone else here that they can be– um. Cruel. So… are– are you hurt, Gramps?”
The answer is that Zenkichi’s glad professionalism demands he wear a full suit– long sleeves, long pants. He’s glad that he’s a known name in the force, knows that the people in the room had names and faces and families to worry about when they asked him their questions.
Not everyone’s so lucky.
“I’m fine,” he says.
Kurusu is silent.
“Gramps,” he says, pained. “Either they hurt you and you’re lying to me, or you’re telling the truth and I was hurt in a way that no one is ever going to be able to relate to. I don’t know which idea I dislike more.”
(There’s something there, about how Zenkichi telling a little fib about an injury is on equal footing with a horrible disconnection with humanity at large due to physical and emotional trauma. How not helping with something minor– at least in the grand scheme of things– is the same as being essentially tortured.)
(He can’t say it out loud, though, can’t bring attention to it. Too little, too late, in this too dark room surrounded by these too hurt kids.)
“What do you want me to say, kid?”
“What did they do to you ?”
“Excuse me?”
“The cops. What did they do to you, in– in– in the interrogation? Tell me.”
Despite it all, his voice sounds somewhere close to pleading, anxious and embarrassed and over all of that, begging.
Zenkichi wonders just how bad it would be to describe exactly what happened to Kurusu, to undoubtedly bring back memories this kid really doesn’t need to have to handle again.
Then again, Kurusu rubs his arm anxiously, glasses glinting in the low light, and Zenkichi wonders next how much worse it’d be to let this go.
So, despite his better judgement, Zenkichi talks.
He goes through it, step by step– what happened when he was arrested, then the process of being transferred to an interrogation room. During it, Kurusu slides into the booth seat and stares straight ahead, listening, nodding along at certain intervals– though Zenkichi couldn’t begin to guess whether it’s with understanding or empathy .
Zenkichi skims over the initial round of questions, and Kurusu looks back up to him, and asks for clarification with sharp eyes for his blank expression.
He seems to be able to tell every single time Zenkichi tries to be light on details, strangely aware when he’s being given anything less than Zenkichi’s exact memory. If he says he was hit, Kurusu asks where. If Zenkichi says he was asked some questions, Kurusu asks what, by who, where in the room.
Zenkichi’s a quick study, at the end of the day. He stops skirting on details pretty early on, and Kurusu falls into silence again to listen, arms wrapping around himself loosely at some point with his blankets sat in his lap, staring at a space somewhere in between the laminated fabric of the booth’s seat and the fifth dimension.
Zenkichi stands an arm’s-length away, and talks, and talks, and talks, never looking away.
He watches with a morbid sort of interest the way Kurusu’s eyelashes first flutter languidly, shoulders relaxing next until he’s slumped in his seat, and only then do his eyes properly slide shut.
Mindlessly continuing his report, Zenkichi sees the kid flag, and by the time he’s gotten to Niijima’s defense attorney sister, Kurusu’s breathing is even, and his head lolled slightly to the side and away from Zenkichi.
He fell asleep to Zenkichi describing getting beaten like he was being read a storybook.
Zenkichi does not share his mad dash back to the bar in the desperate hopes of this might be the last place those kids are safe anymore , because that part of the story will fall on deaf ears, with the way Kurusu’s chest rises and falls in a steady rhythm, and if Zenkichi really, really listens, he can almost hear Kurusu’s breathing, which is a lot more than anyone can get when the kid is lucid.
He glances away and doesn’t continue, because after he got to the bar, Sakura knows the story as much as he does, and it doesn’t really matter if he takes this time to explain it when he knows they’ll be able to once they’re all up again. It doesn’t matter, what happened before, and it’s not half as important as Kurusu snuffling awkwardly, shaking his head out to find a more comfortable position.
The kid needs his sleep. He’s been through enough to at least deserve a night where he can rest.
They all have.
(Zenkichi wonders once more where Akane is. The real her, not the… the… the caricature that screamed at him with a hate that was far too real, dressed like a magical girl anime’s idea of a thief, with glowing yellow-gold eyes and teeth bared in a smile. Wonders whether she’s asleep, or awake.)
(Hopefully, if she’s the former, she’s at least sleeping well.)
He stares out at the sea of sleeping kids just past his feet, and tries to take in what they look like like this. The incredible– if not terrifying– thing about sleep is that there’s not much connection between your habits when you’re unconscious and the ones you adopt in the waking world. You can’t control anything when you’re asleep. There are no defenses a human has that lasts, when facing the totality of sleep. With all of them resting, there’s no real way to tell what they’re like, as people, no real way to see the things that scare Zenkichi if he thinks about them too long, their habits, their routines, their quirks.
Being around the Phantom Thieves for long enough, it’s easy to see that they’ve been hurt before, in a way Zenkichi’s never going to fully understand. It’s the way they think and how they verbalise that, how they go through problems; the things they speak up to, and, much more notably, the things they don’t . The way they walk into rooms, the way they move through crowds, how they navigate conversations and stand when idle and down to even the basic necessities– Kitagawa eats with the quiet yet palpable haste of someone who’s afraid their meal is going to be taken from them, one that knows that showing they’re scared of that is the quickest way for it to come true. Okumura is never the first one to eat, always sitting prim and proper until someone says something to her and implicitly or outwardly allowing her to pick up her chopsticks or spoon, to the point she asks whoever’s closest before even drinking water.
The both of them sleep ike normal children. Kitagawa mumbles nonsensically and tosses and turns, kicking around, and Okumura curls in the centre of a mass of blankets, cradling air close to her heart and snuggling around it.
They all sleep like normal children. Takamaki chews on the knuckle of her pointer finger, Sakamoto hugs a pillow to his chest.
Even when Zenkichi looks back to the booth, Kurusu is sitting up to sleep– more or less– and he’s always been the one that’s the… the scariest. What has to happen to someone for them to turn out the way he has? What in the world could you even do to a person to make them act the way Kurusu does, how long does that treatment go on and how early on does it start , for Kurusu to be so carefully aware of the world at 17?
What makes a person– makes a child , makes a kid – so constantly worried about making noise, to the point that the only time Zenkichi can hear him do something as simple as breathing is when he’s exhausted and unconscious, and even then only barely, even then seemingly trying to swallow down snores in an instinctual way, like even his subconscious mind is afraid of what will happen if he’s heard, like he’s constantly and consistently hiding from something none of the rest of them can see? What instilled to him that it was so important to never make sound, to only speak when spoken to, to say exactly what people want to hear and not a word more or less of it? What created the anger that lives just behind the exterior, leaking out of him through his eyes even when he’s smiling, and what do you have to go through to make it so even boiling rage and vitriolic hate stays cool in the form of cold glares and sharp words, yet never raises your voice or bares your teeth? What is it someone can go through that requires a persistent control over the way you present yourself, that only exhausted and terrified can you talk about it, and even then sent into a panic attack for it, at being touched when vulnerable, not even off your feet? What do you have to experience to feel relieved at being able to listen to someone describe being beaten and battered, because you feel more comfortable knowing it than being left with a vague details?
Kurusu is terrifying. The implications of Kurusu’s existence and posturing are frightening.
But, more or less, he sleeps just like any old kid would.
Zenkichi reaches forward and grabs the blankets from Kurusu’s lap, taking care to make sure he doesn’t touch Kurusu at all, worried even the slightest graze will wake him up for good again, and unfolds it to put it over Kurusu’s body.
He sighs into it, and a very thin wrinkle in the centre of his forehead eases, if by a fraction.
He’s terrifying, that Kurusu. All of it is terrifying.
(What can you even do to fix that? Where do you start? What could ever make any of that less insurmountable, less daunting? How could you ever make someone like Kurusu feel anywhere close to okay again, what could Zenkichi ever do?)
(What is he even good for, if he can't do something as simple as make a single kid feel safe?)
(Can Kurusu really be called a kid, anymore, after everything? How much can a child go through before they stop being one? How long does a person have to endure before they stop being a person? At what point does it become hopeless? Sometimes he sees Kurusu watching the world around them like he has no recognition of it. Is it too late, now, to help him? To help any of them?)
Zenkichi breathes. He’s not going to get anywhere trying to swallow all this down, not when there are so many other uncertainties floating in the air, so much it feels like strangling him. There’s no point in finding a way to tackle all of this now.
(Akane might be awake, after all. He wonders if she’s scared. Then he wonders; would it be better if she wasn’t ? She’s a smart girl, if she’s awake and somewhere no one can reach her, she has the sense to be afraid. If she wasn’t, it means she wouldn’t be capable . If she’s not scared, that means something bad enough to make her unable to has happened to her.)
He needs to sleep. He needs to rest so he’s able to fight for Akane, and he’ll get her back, and she’ll at the very least be safe. Everything else can come after.
He takes the blankets left over, and quietly walks back to where he had been laying before, biting down a groan as he lowers himself back on the floor.
With the better half of a bedset, it’s a bit easier to find something approaching comfortable . Not actually easy, necessarily, but Zenkichi’s dealt with worse conditions. He needs to sleep, to be at his best, so sleep is what he’ll do.
Sakamoto snores loud enough to drown the entire world out. Tired, and scared for the rest of the lives of these stupid kids, it’s almost relaxing. At least there’s one thing that hasn’t been ruined for at least this one child, at least one of them feels safe enough to sleep unrepentantly. At least their lives aren’t all terrible. At least there’s something manageable about this situation.
He breathes in time with it, and methodically clears his mind of everything, thinking a whole lot of exactly nothing until for the first time in literal days, he’s able to drift off into a deep, yet dreamless, sleep.
He’s woken up by Morgana, of all… people(…?) (He does not remember what , exactly, is the deal with Morgana, but he does remember it being… appropriately insane) sometime a little past 3 hours later, feeling marginally better, and no sooner is Zenkichi given a paltry attempt at breakfast– a slightly stale energy bar that tastes like ash and blueberries when he bites into it– before they’re being herded up and to getting ready to go into Akane’s Jail.
Kurusu makes no motion to say anything about the conversation earlier in the day when they pass by, but he does notably turn a genuinely impressive shade of red when he first makes eye contact with Zenkichi, from the shells of his ears and down his neck, before spinning away to face the wall like an upset toddler.
It’s almost funny– Kurusu Akira, the leader of the Phantom Thieves, and one of if not the most socially adept people Zenkichi’s ever seen, a terrifying exercise in control, of both the self and others, is fundamentally and entirely incapable of dealing with embarrassment.
He is 17, after all. No matter how he tries to hide it.
It is remarkably less funny when Kurusu, without ever being able to look him in the eye, assigns him to the vanguard immediately– which is appreciated, because Zenkichi wants to be doing all he can for Akane, but also is horrible , because Zenkichi is 44 years old and running on three hours of sleep, throwing himself into battle after battle trying to keep up with kids who rest comfortably between the categories of “excitable brats” and “active soldiers”.
He laughs to himself as Takamaki bandages his arm, taking a swig of some kind of juice that he has been promised will give him a bit of health and energy, even though it takes like apple, and he says to no one in particular, “You kids are actually going to be the death of me.”
Sakamoto laughs around an anpan he’s half-shoved into his mouth, and says with it still unchewed and unswallowed, “I swear, Gramps, you get a year older every single time you open your mouth.”
“Shut it, brat. Back in my day, you’d get whapped upside the head for sayin’ shit like that to someone like me.”
“Not helping your case,” Takamaki says helpfully as she ties the bandage off.
The conversation continues on, and Zenkichi looks around at the loose group of kids around him.
They almost seem like normal children. If it weren’t for the costumes, for the way Okumura is cleaning a burn on Kitagawa’s side with motions too practiced to have been done anything else than 1 000 times, for the bandage on Kurusu’s cheek, for the tired looks already set in all of their faces– if it weren’t for the signs of war, the easy conversation and uproarious laughter wouldn’t be out of place at a shopping mall or a café.
They’re still kids, after all. Even Kurusu. At the end of the day, they’re just kids, kids who battle monsters the same way they fight over seconds of rice, but kids nonetheless, and despite the world trying, even sitting in another world and patching wounds, it seems that there’s nothing that’s ever going to be able to take that from them.
There’s hope for them, yet.
He sighs again, and feels a smile, worn and tired, pull up on his face to match his company.
These kids were really, really going to be the death of him, someday.