The True Self 3 - I'll Face Myself

Margaret of the Velvet Room once said, "A broken bond isn't the end of the world. But depending on who you are, it could be even worse than the end of the world."

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"That night... I learned that no matter how much you cried... There are some things you can never get back..."

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Takashi Natsume's body had been dominated by his Persona.

The pale thin boy stood with his head hung low and a monster growing out of his back. Usotsuki Izanagi stood in a pale gray coat and a black metal mask, tightly gripping onto a weapon that was not quite a sword and not quite a spear. The human and the Shadow were indistinguishable both inside and out. Takashi Natsume and Usotsuki Izanagi were a single entity. That was how bad things had gotten.

He looked weary and exhausted. He stood on four legs, still and quiet at the end of the hallway. It was somehow darker there than it was in the rest of the dungeon. His glasses had fallen off and lay broken by his feet.

The six-person party stood at the entrance: Yosuke, Chie, Yukiko, Kanji, Teddie, and Rise. They stared at their injured friend with anticipation and anxiety.

"Natsume."

They began to step forward.

"AAaaaaauuuuugggghhhhhhhhhhHHHHH!"

Natsume lifted his head and screamed like he was stabbed with a red-hot poker. At the same time, he frantically swung his giant knife through the air, each slash creating a shockwave. The party was blown backwards and struggled to stay upright.

"Get away from me!" he screamed. "Don't look at me! All of you... LEAVE ME ALONE!"

He made one more attack. The shockwave sliced across the ceiling and cut through the blocky pixels. Debris fell down between Usotsuki Izanagi and the team.

Kanji indignantly cried out, "Hey, watch it! It's us, remember? We came here to rescue you, dammit!"

"You saw everything!" Takashi yelled. "You saw what I see!"

Takashi was fully aware that the team saw his memories. The dam had broken, and Takashi's suppressed feelings forced their way out towards the others. It was only for one floor of the dungeon but it was a much more intense experience than with any of their other Shadows.

It was the same when the rest of the team's suppressed selves exposed their inner thoughts. The difference was that Takashi and his Shadow were one and the same. The line between conscious and subconscious was all messed up. That's how badly broken Takashi had become.

It was Takashi himself who was out of control, not just his Shadow.

"You looked into my heart! I didn't want you to see my secrets! I should have, but I didn't! I'm not okay with this! I saw all your secrets but I still kept things from you! I'm horrible! How dare you?! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!"

In a pathetic attempt to protect himself he tried to block out everything, including his own thoughts. He was rejecting reality.

Without aiming he attacked anything within reach. Gashes appeared in the walls, floor and ceiling. The team was forced to stay out of his range - they couldn't even get close to him.

"Natsume!"

"Natsume-kun!"

"Senpai!"

"Natsume-Sensei!"

Eventually, Usotsuki Izanagi's frenzy ended. He stood still and panted heavily.

Rise cautiously stepped forward. "Senpai, it's us, your friends. It's okay now. Everything's gonna be okay... You couldn't tell anyone about yokai before, but we believe you." The team accepted the existence of yokai relatively easily because they had already seen the TV world and Shadows. "I know it didn't come out the way you wanted, but now we understand... Isn't that better?"

"SHUT UP!" Takashi shouted. "What do YOU know?!"

He flipped his weapon around and slammed the handle into the ground. It created an earthquake and cracked the stone floor. The rumbling made the entire party fall down.

"You think this changes anything?! Do you think that just because my secret's out, there's no more problem?! We'll just go back home and be friends and everything will be fine forever?!"

No one could answer him.

"I don't want your halfhearted friendship! I don't want to get close to you if I'm just gonna leave Inaba someday! Nothing good ever comes from getting involved! You think you 'understand'?! You say you'll 'be there for me'?! Those are just words! None of you can see yokai, so you can't even do anything to help me, so just back off!"

He launched another attack and turned more blocky pixels into broken debris. The group stayed where they were, out of his range, crouching low on their hands and knees.

"The murder investigation was all I had! Once we bring Mitsuo to the police, there'll be nothing left for me! My life will just go back to being foster families who don't give a shit, monsters nobody else can see, and being around classmates that I have NO IDEA how to be honest with!"

Takashi looked at the ground and hugged himself.

"I knew..." Takashi spoke quietly for the first time. "Deep down, I always knew you would believe me about the yokai... Why wouldn't anyone who's been to this world believe me? ...I wasn't hiding it because I thought you wouldn't accept me. I hid it just because I always hide everything! Just because THAT'S the kind of person I really am: I'm a liar in mind and body!"

And that's why his new name was Usotsuki Izanagi.

"It doesn't matter if I am a human or a Shadow... There is no true self with me!"

If Takashi never came to the TV world, his feelings probably never would've amounted to anything more than a mild irritation beneath the surface. But this was the world that turned suppressed selves into monsters. Takashi's heart was torn inside-out through exposure to this world.

"What is the point of trying to get close to someone when you can't tell them anything about yourself?! That's why I'll never be real friends with you!"

He made a shockwave that shook the whole room. The dungeon hallway was breaking down more and more, turning into a disaster area.

"When I was little I told everyone the truth and they said I was lying. Then I learned to lie and acted like everything was fine and no one suspected a thing. No one cares about the truth! No one listens to the truth! No one ever listened to me! No one wanted to be around me. I had to lie - and smile - and pretend I was normal and happy - or else they'd send me away. I had to become a liar because I didn't want to be alone!"

Yosuke stared at Takashi.

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"You just play the role of happy-go-lucky 'cause you're scared of being alone!"

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Yosuke rose to his feet, leaving his daggers on the ground. There wasn't a trace of indecision in his mind.

He marched over the uneven ground straight towards Takashi.

His teammates called after him. "Yosuke-kun, what are you doing?!"

"Senpai?"

"Watch out, he'll cream you!"

Yosuke acted like he couldn't hear them. He only looked at Takashi.

Takashi looked back like Yosuke was a monster. "Stay back! Don't come near me!"

Usotsuki Izanagi made another wild flurry of attacks with his blade. The shockwaves went in random directions, making new cracks and craters in the walls, but Yosuke ignored them all and walked straight ahead. One strike grazed his shoulder, but he didn't stop. He didn't even flinch.

He was about halfway down the hall, getting ever closer to Takashi.

"I mean it... Don't come near me..." Takashi told him. "I'm not your friend. I'm a liar. I-"

Yosuke decided he was close enough now. He started running the rest of the way. He built up force and momentum as fast as he could.

Yosuke punched Takashi.

He put all his weight into the punch and hit him right on his cheek. The force was somehow enough to send Takashi's two connected bodies crashing to the floor.

The team was shocked. "Yosuke..."

Takashi rubbed his cheek and looked up at Yosuke in surprise instead of pain.

"Did that wake you up yet?!" Yosuke yelled down at him.

Takashi stared at him and silently blinked.

"Listen up, Natsume: You are not special!" Yosuke put a hand on his chest. "You're just like me!" Then he gestured to the rest of the team. "You're just like all of us! All of us were lonely! All of us desperately wanted to find someone who understood us! And we did find someone... It was you! So don't say things like we can't be friends or we can't understand!"

"You don't get it!" Takashi shouted back. The human-Shadow fusion rose back to his feet. "It's not that easy! Just because you know about yokai doesn't mean I'll be able to tell you how I'm feeling! We are never going to have a normal friendship or an honest relationship... because I don't know how!" He winced. "I just don't know how...! I've been lying so long I don't know how to stop. So I can't tell you the truth, Yosuke. I-"

Yosuke stepped forward and hugged Takashi.

"That's okay. You don't have to tell the truth," Yosuke said quietly.

Takashi's eyes widened.

"You don't have to tell the truth," he repeated. "You're my friend, Takashi. You can tell me anything you want... No matter what it is, I'll listen to you."

He'll listen to me.

Tears streamed down Takashi's face.

What I want... to say...

What he's never been able to say.

Takashi winced again. He grabbed Yosuke's back, his fingers digging into his shirt. The tears came down faster. His breath hitched. And he said...

"My mom and dad are dead."

Usotsuki Izanagi disappeared. The Shadow-like extension of his body simply faded away, leaving only the human Takashi Natsume.

He cried.

He dropped to his knees, pulling Yosuke with him. The rest of the team rushed over, the five of them surrounding Takashi and holding him, talking gently to him, trying to reassure him.

"I want my daddy! I want to see him! I miss him! I miss my daddy!"

He cried like that for a long time. He cried and screamed and sobbed until he nearly threw up. And his six friends stayed by him the whole time.

"It's okay, Takashi... Cry until you feel better." Yosuke hugged him tightly.

"We're right here."

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Author's Notes: (6/15/2016) Without apologizing, I based this very heavily on Atoli's breakdown from .hack/G.U. This is the end of the Natsume's Shadow arc, but there'll be more to the story sometime in the future (I'm not promising any deadlines).