An Echo of You and I

Fandom: Persona 5

Word count:2497

Rating:T

Summary: When Akira wakes up, all he can see is an expanse of gray desolate world stretching far into the horizon. A pulsing echo tugs at his heart—a single thought sent to his mind: I’ll come back to you. Come hell or high water, he means to keep that promise. And so he rises to feet and follows that guiding light.

Note: This is a piece I wrote for Blood Oath: A Persona 5 Soulmates Zine.

Read on AO3.

~*~*~*~*~

Let’s make a promise, she said.

It was not unusual for them to make promises—silly promises they sometimes took as jest. But her voice was firm, her fingers tightening around his. Akira looked to his side and saw Ann staring upward, her gaze hard as she beheld the sea of stars spreading as far as the eye could see. In a voice so quiet that the wind could barely pick it up, her pursed lips parted.

“Let’s promise to meet again. However long it takes. However far apart we are. Someday. Somewhere.”

Around the wrists of their linked hands hung matching red bracelets—ones she’d bought from a traveling merchant who’d recently come to town. The sturdiest thread in all the land, he’d said. So that, should they be separated, they would still be connected.

Akira brushed his thumb over her knuckles. Once upon a time, he’d dreamed of putting a ring there. “Come hell or high water, I’ll come back to you, Ann,” he said. “I promise.” And like a seal, he brought her hand to his face and pressed his lips to her fingers. High above, a star streaked across the heavens, leaving a trail of flaming blue in its wake.

***

Before his eyes stretched an expanse of desolate world. Hard cracked earth melded with the bleak, empty sky. Akira dragged one heavy foot in front of the other, his movement sluggish and slow. How long had he been here? How far had he gone? The world had neither sun nor moon, no light or darkness. The passing of time was but a fever dream, one he’d begun to wonder if it ever existed.

At times, a pulsing echo would spread across the land, coming from the ground or the sky or within his very self. His blood would thrum, like the steady rhythm of a beating heart, sending a single thought to his mind: I’ll come back to you, I promise. But his muscles screamed, his weary bones begged for rest. Akira gritted his teeth and forced himself to move.

Just a little longer, he thought, a little farther; home is just beyond that distant crest.

But the crest never grew closer. The notion of home slowly slipped from his mind. And maybe… maybe he was trapped. Punished. Doomed to never leave this obscure plane. And because of what? He couldn’t remember.

Tripping over a non-existent pebble, Akira’s legs gave away and he collapsed onto the ground. His blood pulsed—the traces of a familiar voice whispering, Getup. But his energy was spent. Darkness crept from the edges of his vision. And just as his eyelids began to close in what he welcomed as a deep slumber, light flashed, bright and warm and making his skin tingle like a newborn baby.

Colors exploded into his mind—images, flitting and fluttering like the flapping of wings of birds taking flight. Of different times and different places, different people with different faces. Sometimes so vague he could barely grasp what was happening, other times so vivid it was as though he was experiencing them himself. And there he was, searching—always searching—but never finding.

Where are you? Where are you? I’m here. But where are you?

Somewhere beyond the void of his mind, his bracelet pulsed. The sturdiest of red threads, now tattered and dirty and gray. Its glow had dimmed, its faint pulse a feeble attempt to make him move. “Get up,” it said. “She’s out there. She’s waiting.”

Who was to know? Who was to know if he’d find her at all?

The thought settled. Whatever strength he’d possessed ebbed away. Akira drew a lungful of breath, and as he surrendered himself into the void, the last vestiges of the echo sputtered out.

***

There was a reason the North Star was used in navigation. Its nearly fixed location due north had helped countless travelers and vagabonds find their way when all seemed lost. Such was what Akira told Ann as they lay on a quiet, grassy hill a short walk away from the city. Her eyes sparkled as they followed the direction of his finger, to where a small gleaming light hung high on the star-painted sky.

“I like that star,” she said. “Can it be my star?”

“What do you mean? It’s everyone’s star.”

“Yes, but it’ll always lead you home, right? So, my star.”

Akira couldn’t comprehend that logic, but the way her smile lit up her face made his stomach flip and flop. He would do anything to protect it. So he nodded, then watched her smile grow.

“If you’re ever lost or couldn’t find your way, just look up at the sky and find my star. You’ll find your way home.”

***

It was an odd sensation—the way consciousness returned. One moment, Akira was stuck in limbo as the remnants of his dream faded; the next, he realized he was staring at the backs of his eyelids. Dread crept into his heart—that he was back, and he had been denied his eternal slumber. But a twittering of birds filled his senses, then a crawling heat on his skin and brightness just beyond his sight. When Akira finally opened his eyes, what greeted him froze him into place.

Bright endless blue stretched as far as the eye could see. No sign of the hazy gray sky. Nothing to say of the endless wasteland. Above him, boughs of a great maple tree provided an all-encompassing shade, and beyond them were puffs of silvery clouds drifting past in a breeze that felt cool and ticklish.

Where was he?

Akira pushed himself off the ground, bones creaking and muscles straining. All around him, greens spread in a mixture of plains and rolling hills. Was this another one of those visions? Was he still in another dream? The questions came in quick successions, when suddenly, footsteps approached from behind. He leaped around, hand going to his hip on instinct for a sword that wasn’t there. But the face that stared back at him stopped him short.

“You’re awake.”

Blue eyes twinkled between voluminous golden hair. The face was sharper, the bones more prominent. A foreigner, one might say, and yet he could not deny the familiarity he felt. And her voice… His tears came unbidden; Akira choked on a lump at the back of his throat.

“Ann,” he croaked. Home. He was home.

Ann’s eyes widened, then after a heartbeat, a tiny smile graced her lips—very much like the one he remembered, and yet…

“Ah, yes, you would know me by that name.”

He blinked. What do you mean? He wanted to say, but his throat was too parched. He could only manage broken grunts and groans.

Ann’s features warmed. She turned around and, nodding for him to follow, said, “Come.”

She led him down the hillslope to a lone little cottage in the valley. Up a short flight of stairs and past a single wooden door, he entered a cozy interior with a table and chairs next to a bubbling pot of what appeared to be stew above a fire. Ann—or, the woman appearing like Ann—moved to the cupboards and reached for a bowl.

“Care for stew?” she asked. She didn’t wait for his answer before she ladled a spoonful or two of the steaming gruel into the ceramic bowl.

Akira watched her set it down on the table before placing a matching spoon beside it. Then, she went back to the water pitcher on the counter and poured him a glass. Crystal clear, the water seemed to sparkle even without the sun hitting the glass.

“Drink.”

It was too good, too much. Fate had never been this kind to him.

“Is this a dream?” he asked.

The woman stared at him before directing her gaze to the water. “Almost a thousand years have passed since the last time you spoke. Drink, lest your throat hurt even more.”

A thousand…

“Who are you?”

“I am who you say I am.”

“But…” He swallowed past the dryness. “You said you’re not her.”

“I am her—or, a fragment of her that still lives in your mind.”

Maybe it was the fatigue, or the hunger and dehydration. The woman was not making any sense. A thousand years he’d journeyed with not so much as human contact. This brief interaction had drained him of what energy had prompted him to follow her. She seemed to notice it, because then she pulled a chair and asked him to sit.

A part of him struggled against it, but his feet moved on their own accord, and before he knew it, he’d settled on the wooden chair, the glass of sparkling water in his hand. Drink, the woman said.

Itwas the fatigue. No water had ever looked this appetizing in all his life. It glistened as though diamonds were sprinkled all around it.

Drink, she said, so you can meet her again.

And against his better judgment, he did.

***

The stars were never in their favor; it had taken him long to realize that. Not when they branded his father a traitor and stripped him of his title. Not when they executed him and he and his mother had to flee the city. And when his squire came to him with the gravest of news, Akira’s faith that Fate would someday be kinder to him crumbled away.

“They’re persecuting them, my lord—the Takamaki Family.”

It didn’t take long for him to grab his sword and grab his horse, riding past raging rivers and dark, overgrown forests to where the city he once called home stood at the foot of a mountain. The smoke blasted his senses just as he neared the Takamaki manor, his horse rearing at the sight of the blazing inferno.

Ann!came the gut-wrenching thought screaming in his mind.

Akira leaped off his horse and rushed into the masses. The air reeked of the stench of burning flesh. All around him, servants of the House lay on the ground, coughing and wheezing and moaning their wounds. But none of them were the Lord and Lady of the Takamaki household. None of them were Ann.

“Lord Akira?” a voice called over the clamor. A familiar face peeked from beneath a familiar helmet. One of the guards carrying a limping elderly man emerged from the gate.

“Hiro!” Akira ran toward him, helped him as they set the man down on the ground. “Hiro, what happened?”

“They’ve taken His Lordship, my lord. He’s in custody.”

“On what charges!?”

“The same ones they charged the late Lord Kurusu with.”

It didn’t make any sense. Whatever foul play had happened behind those doors, Akira had thought they had specifically targeted his father. Hence why, when he and his mother fled, they had cut off all ties with their close relations. Except… he had made that promise, and they had still exchanged letters. Had those people found them?

Akira made to bolt into the flames, but Hiro caught his arm.

“Don’t, my lord, lest you want them to find you inside and drop more charges onto His Lordship. Your being here already endangers yourlifeand House Takamaki.”

Akira gritted his teeth. “But Ann—”

Hiro’s grip on his arm tightened, so hard that it grounded Akira and cleared the desperation from his mind. He was not, however, prepared for Hiro’s grim expression.

“The Young Mistress is missing.”

It was like a bomb that robbed him of all reason.

“What…?”How?

No one knew. After Lord Takamaki’s arrest, no matter how futile it was, Ann had been doing everything she could to prove her father’s innocence, even as the situation grew more despondent each day. But one day, she’d come out of her room, looking excited, and said she’d found a lead. She’d left for the town, but never came back.

“We’ve scoured the entire city and surrounding areas, but nothing.” Hiro pursed his lips. “Not even a body.”

Akira curled his hands, nails digging deep into his skin to keep him sane.

“So, please, my lord, find her.”

If this had started from their letters… If he had caused this tragedy…

No, he would not let himself think that. Ann was out there, alone and cold in the wilderness, with no knowledge of navigation safe for the North Star he’d told her when they were children.

Come hell or high water, he’d find her. He’d promised.

***

Akira gasped, tears spilling from his eyes as he gazed at the murky haze of his desolate sky. The vision had dissipated, but the scorching heat was still fresh in his mind, the smoke suffocating his lungs. And Hiro’s grip…

Find her.

“Have you remembered?”

Her voice. How much he’d missed her voice.

A sob escaped him; Akira shuddered as he took a breath. “Is this my punishment?” he asked. “Because I failed her?” High and low, for miles across, he’d searched for her. Into the deepest oceans, over the highest mountain. But nothing. Not even a body or a trace of blood. As though she’d disappeared. As though she’d never existed. The stars had never been in their favor.

“Of course not,” came the voice’s reply. “It wasn’t your fault. It never was. You were only caught in life’s events. And maybe Fate had not dealt you the best odds, but you were so fixated on your guilt, you’d let yourself believe that is what Fate decreed. But nothing is farther from the truth than that. The stars have always been in your favor, Akira. You need only know where to look.”

“What do you mean?”

A single pulse echoed from his wrist. Akira peered at his bracelet, red and glimmering in faint light.

“I am the bond which binds you. As long as I am here, know that you are still connected. Look, the clouds part.”

He didn’t believe it, yet he found himself raising his gaze nonetheless. And there, indeed, the haze dispersed, and beyond stretched the blanket of blue and black. A single star shone, twinkling in the darkness.

If you’re ever lost, just look up at the sky and find my star.

Could he dare to hope? After an eternity of this desolate place, walking countless lifetimes without finding her, could he hold out and hope once more?

The star sparkled in the distance, and.in his mind, he could see her face light up with that brilliant beam. Akira! she’d call him. His bracelet pulsed, sending strength he had thought long lost to him. A hand, warm and gentle, enveloped his.

“Get up.”

For the first time, Akira felt a smile breaking through his lips. Slow, but sure. He pushed himself off the ground, fighting against the fatigue weighing down his bones. The star glinted in the distance, promising him that this time, he would find his home.

“It might have taken me a thousand years, but come hell or high water, I’ll come back to you,” he whispered to himself. “I promise you, Ann.”

~ END ~