Ghibli music, I've found, is one of the best things to listen to while writing.
Time Travelers
In all our wrongs
I want to write him,
in a time
where I can find him.
Before the tears
that tore us;
when our history was
before us.
~Lang Leav
Yosuke remembered once, a long time ago, when he went to see a fortune teller. It was back in Naha, just before he moved to Inaba.
He wasn't really sure why he had gone; something about a dare and no one to hang out with. The old lady he'd met wasn't exactly inconspicuous either. He didn't even really remember all that much of what she had told him. He had assumed almost immediately that it was all some bullshit and forgot about it.
There was one thing, though, that had stuck in his mind, regardless of how he occasionally wished it wasn't.
The Magician.
The card's ultimate meaning was something about having one's life in their control. Yosuke had scoffed at the idea—still did, though less with the skepticism than with the irony. Control. He was an adult—hell, he was a superhero—and where was the control in his life? Evidently, with his parents.
But no, he supposed that wasn't really true. It belonged to the God, the one the crooked-nose guy had called Philemon. He was the one who chose upon whom to bestow the power of persona, so He or one of His shitty immortal friends was no doubt the one in control of Yosuke's fate.
Yosuke wondered what the point of trying was, when everything was just going to repeat over and over again because apparently he couldn't get it right.
His dreams were constant reminders of that.
"Yosuke… you idiot…" A raspy, wet cough. Blood was everywhere. His hands, his clothes, his floors; all mixing in with bitter tears and a stupid, idiotic, grinning Chie.
"Yosuke…!" Sticky fur, a big smile. It didn't belong with that hole where his arm was supposed to be. "I believe in you!"
Kanji's too-weak punch, meant to be reassuring…
Rise's idol gimmick, trying to cheer him up…
Yukiko's kind smile… Naoto's nonsense sounding too logical to accept…
"…Promise you won't forget, partner?"
How could he forget? How could he, when they haunted his dreams every night and stared back at him at every waking moment, standing there in his peripheral vision, just out of sight. Watching, always watching.
The others pretended not to notice, pretended not to see the twitches or the flashbacks or the escapes he made every time a panic attack came along. Yu didn't say anything when he woke up screaming, covered in cold sweat on the lumpy dorm beds, or when he spent every morning retching into the toilet. They never said anything, not out loud. He knew they wanted answers, but he also knew they wouldn't try to pry it out of him before he was ready. He also knew he wouldn't—couldn't—tell them. Not for a long time at least.
Yosuke picked absently at the strings of his beaten up acoustic, not really in the mood for making music but not having anything better to do. Yu was out and about—really, the guy never seemed to just sit down and take a break—and the others were either working or off doing their own thing.
To be honest, though, Yosuke didn't mind it as much as he might once have. After a going through life and death experiences a few times over, he'd learned to appreciate the quiet. He couldn't believe it himself the first time he realized that he missed the simplicity of Inaba. Tokyo was loud and large and bright, and there was never a shortage of things to do. And that was often the problem.
Yosuke remembered a time when he could spend hours lying back on the grass and staring up at an endless sea of stars. He felt small, staring up at the slowly rotating sky, little pinpricks of light shining on the earth from billions of lightyears away. The earth was so tiny compared to Jupiter, the largest planet, which was nothing next to the sun. And the sun was only one of billions of stars, a completely average ball of fire, a piece of cosmic dust next to Betelgeuse and other giants. And that wasn't even taking into consideration other planetary systems, and even entire galaxies. Compared to all that, what was he? Nothing. Just a miniscule little piece of consciousness sitting on the edge of the universe.
Thoughts like those helped Yosuke put things into perspective, especially on the bad days. In the grand scheme of things, his big problems really weren't so big after all. It became his comfort, after Saki. It made his own sorrows seem a little less sorrowful.
But in the city, the stars were far away, and life was always right up in your face, ready to remind you of everything. In the city, you weren't allowed to take a break, to sit and watch the earth rotate in its predestined place. Everyone and everything was always on the move.
In the countryside, in Inaba, with its grassy hillside and bright, bright stars, the lack of control he had over his own fate seemed trivial, unimportant. Everything had its own place in the world, where things were supposed to go. The control he wanted wasn't so important, when everything ran on the same timeline. But in the city, it was either control or be controlled. And Yosuke was always stuck with the latter.
He hadn't even realized he'd been aggressively playing to a Linkin Park song until Yu came in, interrupting the temporary peace of the dorm. The taller boy carried takeout from Aiya's (they really did deliver anywhere), but today was one of those days for Yosuke where he was usually too queasy to have an appetite.
"Are you alright, Yosuke?"
Yosuke grinned; it was still jarring every time he had to plaster a fake expression on his face. He hated it.
"Yeah, just bored. You know how it is." And that was the thing. Yu didn't know. There were times when Yosuke wanted to tell him. He wanted to tell him so badly, but every time he tried the words never seemed to come out, getting stuck somewhere in his throat.
But Yu just nodded, setting the bag down on his immaculate desk and pulling out the two bowls, still steaming. He didn't offer Yosuke one of the bowls, just took one for himself as sat and broke apart the cheap wood chopsticks. It was these little things that made Yosuke grateful to have Yu of all people as his best friend. He didn't ask the awkward questions that never got answered, and he saw the signs, knew when certain actions would or would not be appreciated based on Yosuke's own mood.
Yosuke continued picking at his guitar while his roommate ate, though now conscious of the other presence, he made sure not to stray too far into his thoughts, glancing at the scribbles in his journal. He always made sure to memorize every song he wrote; he never knew when some precious piece of info would be lost to him. It was better to be safe than sorry. It helped to rewrite it into new journals, though he really didn't need to. But it was comforting, he supposed. Some facsimile of what control he had.
"Chie wants to go on patrol tonight." Yu always spoke softly, quietly, but still with a sort of resonance that befitted him. Yosuke hummed an absent-minded acknowledgement. "Are you working today?"
"Nope," he replies, popping the p.
"Are you feeling up to patrolling?" And there he went, always considerate. Yosuke shrugged.
"Sure." What he didn't say was that patrol was a comfort; it kept him from sleep a little longer. And when he did finally get back to his bed, he was often too exhausted to dream. He suspected Yu knew though. He wasn't the only one with nightmares, after all.
Yosuke was amazed at the ingenuity of their system every time he went on patrol. It was always in groups of four—their leader being the one ever-present figure in the constant rotations. The other three slots were decided based on work/school schedules, pertinent injuries, previous outings, and whether an enemy's weakness was known beforehand or not.
Tonight it was Yosuke, Chie, Rise, and Yu (as always). Sometimes, on nights where crime rates spiked, Yukiko, Teddie, Kanji, and Naoto (or whoever wasn't in the main group at the time) formed a secondary group that went around looking for more petty crime, often staying nearby in case of needed backup.
A typical patrol didn't usually require everyone though. (A mission, on the other hand…) It was a routine check, scouring the city for shadows. Either Rise or Teddie was always a part of the main team, scanning the area for them, as the two were the only ones able to actively sense the various Shadows that often came out in the dark. When people were scarce, their abandoned and suppressed thoughts were all that were left behind, particularly in congregated areas. Those were Shadows, the True Self. And they were dangerous.
But it was supposed to be business as usual when they encountered a group, and Yosuke easily slipped into a battle stance. It was easy to, having been doing it for years.
A guttural battle cry escaped from his lips as he shredded one to wisps of darkness with his kunai, another extinguished by Jiraiya. It was business as usual.
The sound of a cry broke through the haze of adrenaline, a sound that shouldn't be as familiar as it was, and it twisted Yosuke's stomach in a sickening knot. He whirled around, watching Yu fall to his knees, and there was blood coating his back.
He didn't understand how Yu could let a shadow sneak up on him like that; how he could let himself be caught off guard, but most of those thoughts were swallowed up by a rush of oh my god he's gonna die he's gonna die he's gonna die again and I can't do anything to stop it.
His vision went fuzzy and bright as the world tilted and warped, and he gasped, one hand clutching onto the front of his own shirt like a lifeline. At any minute, he would feel that pull at his navel, feel the pounding headache like his head was splitting into fragments, and he'd wake up to find himself back in his bed in Inaba, a high schooler again, trying to figure out where he went wrong only to do everything again and again and again and again—
"Yosuke!" The sharp sting of his cheek was a new one, and Yosuke blinked at Chie's face glaring at him with an anger betrayed by the worry in her eyes. She wasn't mad at him, (though she often had a funny way of showing it) and from the looks of it, he was starting to scare her.
He took a deep, steadying breath, only briefly surprised at how easy it came before speaking in a voice far steadier than it really should've been.
"Thanks, Chie." Her scowl disappeared as she nodded, still looking faintly worried but nonetheless leaving his side to join the others once more.
The shadows were gone (at least for now), and Yu was sitting on the ground, his wound already rapidly healing. Rise was fussing over him, but he was giving Yosuke a look—a knowing look, oh god what did he know, had he figured it out—as his shoulder was disinfected and bandaged.
Yu didn't say anything (yet), and they all agreed that it'd be best if they ended it there. Chie and Rise left first, leaving Yosuke and Yu to amble slowly back to their dorm, sticking to the shadows until they found a safe place to change into civvies.
"Are you alright, partner?" It slipped out of Yosuke's mouth before he even registered it, hyper-aware of the way his friend hissed when he stretched his arm the wrong way.
"I'm alright. What about you?" Yu gave him that look again, and Yosuke didn't answer until they were both safely sitting in their respective beds in the darkness. Yosuke tried to match himself to his friend's steady breathing, taking a deep breath in, a deep breath out.
"…I'll be okay." He muttered, because that was the closest he could get, because how were you supposed to tell your best friend—the same person that had risked their life for you a hundred times over—that you were not okay, because you had seen him die a hundred deaths, a hundred different ways, and that last time had been way too close for his liking.
Yosuke closed his eyes, and another time played out upon the back of his lids like a movie.
"Senpai, NO!"
Blood covering his back, caking it, wet and sticky and the shadow was gone, but he wasn't moving wasn't breathing wasn't
Yosuke opened his eyes, meeting Yu's sharp gray eyes in the darkness.
"Are you sure?"
Yosuke hesitated, but he knew enough. He'd been through so many things no one could ever know about, no one ever would (Yosuke couldn't tell them, couldn't let it end the way it had the last time he'd said something) and while there were the nightmares and the bad memories and the pain (God, so much pain), there was also the good memories, the warm and fuzzy ones that brought a smile to his face.
"Ah—! Wh—What the hell?!"
"Huh. There's nothing inside."
"Oh, weird! How the heck does it work?"
"Ah! Thanks a lot, nice guy!"
"Yo, dude, does anything rattle you?"
...
"Hey! If you don't like my legs, then don't look at them!"
"Narukami, what do you think about this?"
"Her legs are fine."
"Ah!"
"What? No! …Dude, on this, we disagree."
...
"Look, I really suck at making friends too! But who gives a shit?!"
...
"This is what the world is like. This is what it is always like, no matter where I am. It's not just about what I wanted to be, but what I can be. What? This is just… up to my heart, isn't it?"
...
"But if you don't acknowledge that that's who you are, too, you can never change, right?"
...
"…Promise you won't forget, partner?"
Yosuke opened his eyes once more, not quite realizing when they had closed. He could feel Yu still watching him in the darkness, but the silence wasn't quite so suffocating anymore.
He couldn't tell them, not now, but maybe someday. Someday when they were much older, when everything was past them and the timelines all stopped, because they would live, and there wouldn't be any more timelines, and Yosuke wouldn't dream of death anymore. It would just be him and his friends and the stars watching the earth rotate in its predestined place.
Yeah, he would be okay.
I relate to Yosuke so much you have no idea.
This is a sort of side fic to the stardust in our veins. I'll occasionally be posting oneshots and/or twoshots like this, which delve into the POV of the other characters. Yukiko is the next one I've been working on, but we'll see if I actually finish it soon or not. :P
But yes Yosuke time travels, because he is the Magician and this won't be in the main plot but it's totally a thing.
Also some of those quotes at the end are from Persona 4 (the Animation, I think). They're not original, except for the last one.