#okay. nightly haunting of themes and concepts done. I need to sleep.

[krshush]

I need to finish my post-canon fic of Akira going back to his hometown. badly.

Just. To go on the hero's journey, but then make a home and family out of the journey... just to leave to go 'home' again. But like every hero's journey, you can't go back home, never again like it was.

To know, truly, what you're worth now and compare it to how quickly you were thrown aside for a crime you didn't commit, and have to return to the parents who did so? To have them still probably see a criminal after all the Phantom Thieving is said and done?

The nightmares you can't explain: blood rain and towers of bone and the pain of nonexistence. The nightmares of Everything Is Perfect And Your Friends Are Hollowed Out. Of the engine room. Of the gunshots. Of the interrogation room. The 'cat' you bring home and refuse to turn out (as if Morgana would ever leave now) despite their distaste. The disappointment on their faces. Another new school because there's no way you can go back to the one before this, before Shujin. And yet like Shujin, the rumors follow in the new place. Quieter, intimidated, but several can see your face in Joker's last calling card. A few more know how to look up the mugshot, the fake report of death.

Joke that you're retired if confronted about it, and keep a set of lockpicks on you anyways. Text your friends, actual friends, miss them when they're busy. Miss them even when they're not. Just wait out another day in another year, and that'll be enough.