Chapter Text
~Ren~
It had been about three days since Ren Amamiya, also known as Joker, the leader of the Phantom Thieves, had escaped from the clutches of the police after being brought into interrogation during a failed mission.
Thanks to his friends and fellow thieves, he had been able to narrowly escape his death. Although alive, the ordeal had Ren feeling as though he was still walking a precarious line between life and death. A strange sensation of cognitive dissonance.
The betrayal from his rival Akechi, although it had been expected, left Ren feeling hurt. Despite knowing what the detective had been planning ahead of time, Ren had grown fond of their exchanges. He had considered the brown-haired detective a rival, but he also had grown to like him as a friend. And yet, had he not swapped with his cognitive self at the last moment, his real self would have been the one to meet Akechi’s eyes, only to be shot point blank with a silenced gun.
Looking at his old TV set, it appeared as if the only news that networks found worth broadcasting since his escape was the supposed suicide of the Phantom Thief leader while he had been in police custody.
It was weird, seeing his own mugshot displayed on the television screen while scrolling text and headlines announced his death.
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…Three days prior…
Ren had been floating in and out of consciousness for a while now, but he had no way of knowing how long he had been in such a state. He vaguely recalled being cuffed and slammed into a police cruiser. The officers had jeered at him, trying to get a rise out of the leader of the so-called Phantom Thieves. Ren had known better than to respond to their taunts. It would only make things worse for him.
They arrived at the police station not long after, where he was led through a series of stairs and hallways. He had then been unceremoniously shoved into a dimly lit interrogation room. Ren was pushed into an uncomfortable wooden chair, before an unseen officer suddenly appeared behind his right side and jabbed him in the shoulder with a syringe. As the serum was painfully injected, his vision dimmed, and he fell out of consciousness.
When Ren started to regain the bare minimum of his senses, he heard a cold voice echo in the small interrogation chamber.
“Guess the drug was too strong.”
Ren tried to focus on the figure that was speaking, but his mind was still too cloudy to accomplish such a feat.
“Wake him up.”
The cold voice spoke once more and despite his diminished cognitive state, Ren could still feel the icy flood of dread rush through his veins as he internally shuddered at the words.
Another black fuzzy figure seemed to materialize to Ren’s right side, and before Ren could process the new presence, the blurred mass on his right was throwing something directly into his face. The something; which Ren now identified as cold water, doused the face of the semi-conscious Phantom Thief, shocking him awake.
Though his vision was still a bit cloudy, he looked up to his tormentor. The man who had been speaking had sharp features, pale skin, and icy brown eyes. He wore a gray suit with a black tie, and had polished black leather shoes. As soon as Ren had been able to process the man’s appearance; the cop’s booming voice pierced his ears once more.
“No dozing off.”
A rush of adrenaline pumped through Ren’s veins and his heart raced, his pulse echoing in his skull, as he realized the grim reality of the situation he found himself in.
He went to lift his hands only to find they had been cuffed behind the chair. He tugged at his bindings in a panic, hoping by some miracle they would break. They did not.
Cold brown eyes met Ren’s as the interrogator leaned in. The previously blank expression worn by the interrogator was replaced by one of sadistic glee as the captive thief met his eyes. “You still don’t get it, do you?”
Ren sharply inhaled, as in the next moment the man screamed out, “Give it up!” before slamming the heel of his black leather shoe into Ren’s abdomen. A pained groan left his lips unbidden as the chair he was tied to flew backwards at the force of the interrogator’s kick, sending Ren crashing into the wall with a resounding crack before landing sideways on the cold cement floor.
Without missing a beat, the interrogator drove his heel into Ren’s temple, painfully twisting the sole into the side of the Phantom Thief’s skull. The man gave a cruel chuckle, and his next words echoed painfully in Ren’s skull. “Come on, cooperate. Or what? You want another shot?”
‘Fuck… No… Not again,’ Ren thought desperately. His eyes darted around the room wildly looking for some kind of help, or escape. All the officers present only met his pleading gaze with either blatant disdain, or a sick sense of satisfaction at his suffering. Ren then noted the security camera in the interrogation room. He looked up at the device.
The interrogator saw Ren’s gaze and followed it before looking accusingly at the limp thief on the floor beneath his foot. “What about the camera?” he remarked before reaching down and grabbing Ren by his disheveled-looking raven locks.
Ren bit back a pained scream as his head was violently tugged upward by the roots of his black curls.
“Are you thinking it can get used as video evidence?
The pale devil, tormenting Ren, scoffed at the naive little thief in his grasp. Ren did his best to simply glare at his suited tormentor in response.
The slight bit of defiance from Ren caused the interrogator’s face to twist into a displeased scowl as he shoved the thief’s face into the ground once more before bending down so that his lips almost grazed the thief’s ear. “Didn’t you hear my question?”
Ren shuddered at the frigid voice before the man released his grip on his hair. Ren’s relief was short lived however, as the man proceeded to brutally kick him in the stomach, causing Ren to cry out in pain despite his best intentions to silently take the abuse. The cruel man gave Ren no time to recover before shouting, “Answer!” and delivering another blow to Ren’s abdomen.
Ren let out a pained cough before a barely audible “Nngh!“ As he tried to draw in a breath, he wheezed, startled by the sharp pain that now accompanied every drawn breath. ‘Must’ve broken my rib,‘ Ren deduced gloomily. Though he was proud of how much he had trained, and how sturdy he was, Ren knew he wouldn’t be able to take much more of this without ending up with serious long-term or irreversible damage.
Ren’s tormentor retreated from him for a moment, and he looked up to see a clipboard in the pale officer’s hands. The interrogator paced back and forth in front of the thief in an almost theatrical fashion as he read from the papers on the clipboard.
“Obstruction of justice, blackmail, defamation, possession of weapons.”
The man paused, before his sharp gaze honed in on the thief on the floor. He slapped the clipboard once, continuing to speak, while his gaze never left Ren.
“Manslaughter too, yeah? Talk about the works. To think all these crimes were led by a punk like you.”
The interrogator waved the clipboard around for emphasis before coming to stop before Ren, once more leering over him, practically spitting his next words.
“And you seemed to be enjoying every second of it… huh?”
Ren just laid there silently, not wanting to further provoke his violent tormentor. Despite that, the interrogator appeared to take his silence as defiance.
“You should know your place,” the man sneered.
Another man in a suit approached the thief curled up on the floor and easily removed the handcuffs that had bound Ren to the toppled chair on the ground. The removal of the cuffs revealed dark bruises around Ren’s wrists. He rubbed them gently, trying to regain some blood flow back to the places where his circulation had been restricted for who knows how long.
The cold man that had been interrogating Ren shoved a clipboard and pen into the thief’s hands, his voice as sharp as a steel blade that sliced away at what remained of Ren’s rebellious bravado. “Sign here. It’s a confession under your name.”
‘Not again…’ Ren thought dismally as he recalled when he had tried to save a woman from a drunken assailant. He would once again be charged for crimes he had not committed. Though some of those charges were potentially valid, that last charge was undoubtedly false. The Phantom Thieves didn’t kill.
Ren tried to push the clipboard away, but his wrist was seized by the interrogator and held in an almost bone-crushing grip.
“I see. I need your hand to sign this, but-” The man smiled that sadistic smile once more before slamming the heel of his leather shoe into Ren’s leg with considerable force. “I don’t care if you end up losing a leg,” the man proclaimed coldly, the cruel smile never leaving his face.
At this point Ren was tired. He knew no matter what he said, these people wouldn’t listen. All odds were stacked against him. At the end of the day, these men just wanted him to take the blame and end this case. No truth, no justice. With that grim realization, Ren took the clipboard.
The tormenting officer pulled out a pen and brought his face close to Ren’s, sneering. “Don’t expect to walk out of here in one piece. We’re going to make you understand.”
‘Understand what? The fact that the police force is clearly overrun by corrupt assholes?’ Ren thought bitterly to himself.
Unaware of Ren’s internal response, the interrogator continued, “One must take full responsibility for their actions.”
‘Damn hypocrite,’ Ren thought, knowing full well that this man would likely never be punished for his excessive violence. After all, Ren was a Phantom Thief, a mere lowly criminal, so surely this man would be praised for his sadistic cruelty.
Ren hesitantly took the pen, staring at it for a moment, before looking over at the cold-eyed man. With an internal sigh, Ren lifted the pen above the clipboard before signing his name in a quick practiced motion. Though he did his best to hide it, Ren failed to conceal the faint tremor in the hand that he had written with.
Without another word, a couple of the officers that had been on stand-by in the room sat Ren back in his newly righted chair, courtesy of the wordless signals given by the icy-eyed interrogator. Ren absently wondered who had been the person to actually set the chair back upright. Beaten and still not fully cognizant, Ren found himself staring down at the surface of the glossy white wooden table he had been placed in front of. He hardly even noticed when the officers and interrogator wordlessly shuffled out of the room.
Ren took a shallow and shaky breath and started internally counting backward from one hundred. A habit he had picked up after learning about the simple mental exercise from the school counselor, Maruki. The simple task helped Ren focus enough to keep himself conscious and it aided in distracting him from the pain that seemed to wrack every inch of his body.
At the sound of the heavy wooden door of the interrogation room opening, Ren looked up to see a surprisingly familiar woman walk in. Silver hair, a business suit, and fair skin were all defining traits of one Sae Nijima. Sae also happened to be the sister of Ren’s comrade and fellow Phantom Thief, Makoto. Sae had actually been the most recent mark for the Phantom Thieves, and it was in her Palace that the police had somehow managed to arrest him.
Despite the slight weariness in the prosecutor's expression, she looked as pristine as ever in her immaculate business suit, with a briefcase Ren could only assume was full of files. Sae let out a quiet sigh before taking the chair across the table from Ren. “I didn’t expect it would be you. You’ll be answering my questions this time.”
Ren simply continued to look at Sae, his gaze unfocused as his vision warped and swam.
Sae appeared puzzled for a moment at the distant look in Ren’s eyes, before she looked to the floor. Her eyes glimmered in realization as they seemingly fixed on the empty syringes littering the floor. A grimace replaced the poker face she had been wearing since she arrived in the interrogation room. “Those bastards… Can you hear me? It seems you’ve been through a lot.”
Ren simply nodded to Sae to indicate he heard her, finding that verbally responding was too much effort in the moment.
Sae sighed before gazing directly into Ren’s eyes. “Almost anything can happen here, and I can’t stop them,” Sae admitted, before swiftly continuing her pitch. “That’s why I need you to answer me honestly - I don’t have much time either.”
Ren could almost sense the prosecutor’s rushed desperation in her words. Still he found he could only respond with silence.
Sae, not deterred by the thief’s silence, pressed on. “What was your objective? Why did you cause such a major incident? I didn’t think it was a prank from the get-go, but I couldn’t assemble a case for prosecution.”
‘Of course you couldn’t,’ Ren thought to himself. There was no way Sae could assemble a case without knowing how the Phantom Thieves triggered a change of heart. At least, that is what Makoto had assured him.
“Then again, there is no way I could be convinced of such a ‘world’ just by reading the reports,” Sae continued.
Ren gave a noncommittal “Mmhm” in response to Sae’s rambling, but Sae appeared satisfied enough with that response.
With her gaze directly meeting Ren’s eyes, she stated, “It seems you’re coherent.”
Ren continued to hold her gaze in response, giving a small nod, which he instantly regretted as it made the world spin a bit.
Either not noticing Ren’s regrets, or not caring, Sae continued on. “When and where did you find out about that world? How is it even possible to steal another’s heart? I need you to tell me your account of everything.”
‘Everything? This is going to take awhile. Where do I even start…?’ Ren thought, finding words were still too much of a struggle to verbally form.
As if Sae could read his mind, she prompted Ren once more. “Start from the very beginning…”
It suddenly felt as if time had stopped, and a small voice echoed inside Ren’s mind.
“You are held captive. A prisoner of fate to a future that has been sealed in advance. This is truly an unjust game. But if my voice is reaching you, there may yet be a possibility open to you… I beg you, please overcome this game, and save this world. The key to victory lies within the memories of your bonds - the truth that you and your friends grasped.”