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All but one of the Phantom Thieves were circled around a table in their favourite cafe in Tokyo, the other’s absence palpable in the air. Sojiro Sakura had just called them down from the second floor before leaving the cafe, allowing Niijima, their tactician’s sister, to break to them the news about their leader's situation. Just as Sae was preparing herself for the best way to phrase his injuries and how she might soften the impact when they finally saw him, she felt a sense that her time was up…
Just then, the door to Leblanc opened with a bell. “Look who’s here”, announced Sojiro, coming through the now open doorway, supporting the man of the hour with one arm.
The rest of the Thieves rushed over to him, Futaba slowly approaching from behind, warily trying to judge his face and body language for a sense of his true emotions behind that mask he always wore.
There, just as Ryuji reached around to give him a friendly jab to the shoulder in greeting, she noticed a barely imperceptible flinch as a darkness overcame the soft gaze of his beautiful, grey eyes. It almost felt as though he was expecting something worse than the blonde idiot.
Gone as quickly as it was there, Ren forced a gentle smile to his face as his airspace was filled with their friends and the noise of greetings, well-wishes, and sympathy. It hurt to see his evident pain and trauma, but what hurt more was that nobody else could see it, what hurt most was that he felt he even needed to hide it…
What the fuck did he go through in there? I mean, we knew it was going to be awful, but no matter how many times I thought about it and had nightmares about my brother in that place, this was beyond imagining.
Shaking off her own, comparatively insignificant, inner turmoil, Futaba quickly whipped out her phone and typed a message out to Ren, she had a sneaking suspicion (especially based on his lack of responses to their friends) that he wasn't in much of a mood for talking. She always found it easier to use a phone for communication when she was like that, particularly in the time after Wakaba had her accident.
Clearing her throat loudly but gently, Futaba made her way through the throng and motioned everyone to give them both some space. As the rest all did so, most looking rather puzzled, she rotated her phone to show Ren the message and saw his eyes refocus as he took it in before turning a questioning gaze to her.
'What do you need?'
She typed out a slightly longer message and tried again, glad to see a glimmer of understanding in his face this time;
‘This has been a long time coming, and we both know that they needed this, that we needed this. But I can tell this is overwhelming you, and I'm sure I can only see a fraction of what you're feeling.
Not "what do they need", "what do they want", or any of that self-sacrificial bullshit of yours, think about yourself, what do You need?’
Softly easing the phone from her hands, he typed out a response:
‘Quiet?’
Her eyes met his, and she nodded, purposefully. Sliding over to Sojiro, Futaba twisted her phone to show him the conversation before she turned back to Ren and held out her hand to him, knowing that her father would know what to do with the Thieves and how best to corral them.
As Ren finally managed to clasp his hand in hers, Futaba felt her heart break for him yet again at the faint shuddering she could feel running through his body, the emotions and pain he was struggling to hold back, and she gently led him through the cafe to the back where the stairs led up to his room.
Turning around, Futaba could see that the cafe was emptying. Sojiro certainly knew what he was doing, and she softly questioned Ren;
“You still don't need to talk, but if you can nod and shake your head, it's probably quicker than typing out a conversation for quick questions. Do you want me to come up with you?”
After the briefest of hesitations, the dark mop of hair knocked forward as he nodded gently and allowed his surrogate sister to lead him up to his room.
Upon their arrival in Ren's room, Futaba escorted him over to his bed; before scuttling over to his desk, pulling over his chair, and perching on it, studying him closely. Relatively satisfied with what she saw (given the circumstances), she grabbed her phone again, holding it towards him;
“If you still can't trust your voice, or maybe you just don't want to, I don't know, and I won't try to push. Do you wanna use this? Is there anything else you want or need?”
In response, Ren pushed the phone down and gently opened his arms to her, offering her the touch he had seemed so frail for and wary of before. Metaphorically leaping at the offering, she slowly eased toward him, terrified of triggering any negative reactions from her brother, before she finally reached him and softly encircled him with her arms, careful not to apply any pressure to his body where she may not be able to see the damage caused by those bastards in the police force. As soon as she was settled, however, Ren seemed to lose any emotional guards and gain some bodily ones as he collapsed into her with a force that surely should have hurt him from the way he'd been limping before. Tears streamed from his eyes as he crashed into his sister's shoulder. He broke down completely as the exhaustion of the mental and physical strain of his past 48 hours plus finally caught up to him, and before she knew it, his hearty sobs had settled into a gentle snore.
Futaba smiled, as he finally seemed at peace. She gradually allowed him to lie down into his bed before she circled around to keep herself as his guardian overnight; she'd keep herself protecting him as long as he needed her to, or even wanted her to. Always.