Lee wasn't in his room. Jin sighed. A grey window beside him showed a cold morning, bleak sky, and glass was streaked with rain. Jin meandered down G-Corp corridors. He was sullen and sulking and mostly filled with guilt. He'd been afraid of himself yesterday for the first time since arriving in G-Corp. Despite all his promises to himself about never trusting others, he realised he'd placed a trust in his uncle and father. He'd trusted that under their watch that that devil part of him would be kept under lock and key. He'd let himself unwind into a slower pace of life, let himself be taken care of by his uncle, and let himself dream of getting to know his father. At the first sign that his condition was less stable than he'd thought, he'd lashed out at people who were only trying to help him.
He really had been enjoying that time with Lee and Asuka before he'd blown it. He still didn't care for shopping, but it had been something different, spending time just the three of them. It had felt easy. It had felt normal.
But those eyes. And Kazuya's voice in his head, whispering. Anger came so much easier to Jin these days than he ever remembered it doing in his early life.
Jin paused. He'd walked with his temper so far that he wasn't entirely sure where he was. The floor had turned from parquet to tile. Closed doors were all about him. He'd come to the end of a corridor with an elevator in front of him. He punched the controls, and a few moments later it rolled open. The options for floors to choose were so numerous that buttons stretched nearly from floor to ceiling. Jin stared at them all. He wasn't really aiming for anywhere in particular. He hit the very top floor.
"Access restricted. Swipe clearance card."
An automated voice came over the tannoy. Jin instead pushed the button for the very lowest floor.
"Access restricted. Swipe clearance card."
Jin muttered darkly and kept pushing buttons up from the bottom. Eventually when he hit "Floor -3" the elevator started moving. Jin kept grumbling all the way down. He twisted at the metal cuffs chafing on his wrists. When he got to floor -3, he was unimpressed. He'd been hoping for at least one nefarious, secret, corporate experiment. Instead he found more dreary grey corridors and offices. He wandered aimlessly down these, mulling over his own thoughts. He remembered walking like this through a desert after a fight that had nearly killed him. The sand had a way getting under the wraps he wore, and rubbing gritty on the back of his neck. The sun had burnt his skin and the ground had sunk beneath his every step. In that place between desperation and despair, he'd entered an almost meditative calm and thought of his mistakes. He'd thought of the lives he'd ruined to get to the places he thought he'd been trying to get to. But under the red sun, the cursed mark on his arm still stood out black. Whatever he'd destroyed, it hadn't been enough. It would somehow never be enough.
Somehow at the time it had made sense. The world felt so much less real from the top of the Mishima Zaibatsu Tower. The things he'd ordered from there… He'd never had to see the consequences. He'd not really even understood the consequences until he'd seen the people lining up at tournaments with a personal vendetta against him. They reminded him of the old newspaper cuttings he'd read about his father when he'd moved into the Mishima Estate. Mishima Zaibatsu found to be funding all three sides of current Middle East conflict; Mishima CEO rumoured to be stockpiling weapons contracts – places bid for entire island of Hokkaido; Mishima CEO to build private army and nation?; Mishima Zaibatsu claims responsibility for series of Brazilian political assassinations; Mishima Zaibatsu rumoured to be responsible for disappearance of acclaimed Russian weapons designer and scientist; Mishima CEO terrorises own staff, rumoured to be violent and unstable; Zaibatsu suspected of animal blackmarket trafficking and illegal experimentation. Jin had read that last one a number of times, because it mentioned 'officers assigned to the case' and had a small black and white print picture of his mother. Nothing much had remained of his home in Yakushima, so that paper photograph had ended up clutched to his chest on countless sleepless nights until it eventually crumbled in his fingers.
All these years spent trying to destroy the Mishimas, and in the end, his own life was starting to look not so different.
He came upon a steel door, dented in places. A security camera was above it, but hung with cobwebs. Jin tried the handle. The door stayed stuck fast. Jin sighed. He tilted his head. This dead end piqued his curiosity. He wondered if that camera was still on and if this door was really that tough… Don't be childish. And don't wreck G-Corp property. Don't give Kazuya any more excuses to come for your blood.
Jin chewed on his own thoughts for a bit. In the end he booted the door near the handle with a powerful front kick. The cuffs on his wrists felt a little tighter, and he felt some of his energy drain. This ticked him off, so drew back again and kicked the lock mechanism. He kicked again and again until the thing crumpled and dropped off the door with a clang. Jin stood panting for a moment. He pushed his fringe back out of his eyes. He supposed he might have some unworked out anger issues over being pent up here in G-Corp.
The door creaked open when he pulled it. His chest filled with an excited trepidation as he looked into the forbidden place beyond. At first he was disappointed – another grey corridor, absolutely silent. Something about the place made the hair on the back of his neck stand up and tingle though.
He lifted up a foot. Beneath was a fine print of his shoe in a film of thin dust.
He stepped gingerly forward. On his left was a window into an office. The plastic blinds were all askew. Through them he could see furniture strewn about. He rattled the office door, only to find it was locked. He peered through the glass window in it. A dark red smear on the far wall caught his eye – the only colour in an otherwise grey picture. Jin swallowed. He was beginning to feel this corridor had definitely been locked for a reason.
He passed another room, this one with an upturned operating table, and instruments scattered across the floor. Old, stained brown handprints were smeared down the window looking in. Blood. Jin swallowed again. He spread his fingers and placed his palm to the print. It was reversed and on the inside of the glass. There were no bodies, but he knew with a certainty that someone had died here, just on the other side of that window. They had died looking towards where he was standing now, begging for mercy. Jin pulled his hand away from the glass, a little surprised by the sharp detail of that realisation. He decided not to touch anything else.
A door to an office lay across his path now. It had been torn clean off its hinges. A dusty silver plaque on it read, 'Dr E. Kliesen, Biomedical Engineering'. He took a large step over it and into the office. A desk had been smashed into the far wall and all its drawers had fallen open. None of its contents lay on the floor, however. Jin turned on the spot. A desk chair had fallen in the opposite direction. He crouched next to it. Its leathery upholstery had been torn open by four knife-like incisions. He hovered his hand above them – they were about the spread of his fingers apart in width. He frowned and stood. Flecks of dark on the white walls looked like they might be blood. Someone had vaguely tidied up here. The bodies were gone, whatever confidential papers that had been about were gone, but these were definitely the scenes of crimes, probably homicides. He felt a shiver down his spine. He backed out of the office and stumbled when his heel hit the door on the floor. He righted himself, but caught sight of a CCTV camera close to the ceiling. It was grimy and old like everything here, though a single small green light did still pulse under its black lens.
He should definitely leave. He definitely should not be here. Those marks in the chair had been claw marks. This was Kazuya's doing. A kind of fascinated dread had seized hold of him now though, and he found himself almost compelled to keep going. The room at the end of the corridor was much larger than the others. It contained a single, tall, cylindrical glass tank. The glass was cracked with jagged holes in a number of places, and hairline fractures ran throughout what remained of it.
Shards crunched under Jin's foot as he walked into the laboratory. The equipment in this room was mostly intact, from what he could tell. Monitoring devices caked with dust stood all around the tank. Jin was hit by the overwhelming desire to touch that tank. He didn't want to feel the things that its inhabitant had felt. He didn't. And yet… He reached out his fingertips for the glass.
"Did the locked door not give you a hint, Kazama Jin?"
Jin jumped around, fists raised. Kazuya stood in the doorway. His expression was dark and unreadable. There was danger in his eyes.
"K-Kazuya…" Jin started. "I wasn't-… I mean, I was just-"
"Just…?" Kazuya folded his arms across his chest.
Jin collected himself together after the initial fright of being caught.
"What is this place? People died here, didn't they." Jin's eyebrows knitted together in a frown. "You did this."
Kazuya just kept looking at him steadily. There was something building behind his gaze. Jin could feel warnings going off inside him like clanging bells.
"Who is… E. Kliesen?" Jin continued. "Did you kill that person? Why? Why would you kill people who are working for you?"
Kazuya said nothing.
"And…" Kazuya's silence was making Jin agitated, but he ploughed on stubbornly anyway. "And… if you have control over your devil, does that mean you did all this knowingly? You deliberately killed these people with your own hands?"
Kazuya drummed his fingers on his biceps. He tilted his head as he finally spoke.
"Is it so different from ordering an air strike from the comfort of the Zaibatsu?"
"That is not the same!" Jin fired back. "That's not the same at all!"
"Because it was remote? And you couldn't see the eyes of the people you killed?"
"No! Because I was doing what I thought I needed to in order to avert a greater evil!"
Kazuya shrugged,
"Maybe I was doing the same. How do you know? You don't know my reasons."
Jin glared at him.
"What were your reasons then?"
There was another long quiet. The only sound was glass cracking under Jin's feet as he shifted his weight. He thought for sure that Kazuya wouldn't answer that, so he was surprised when he heard:
"G-Corp betrayed me. They sent an army of Jack units to kill Heihachi and I. The Dr Kliesen who's office you found was instrumental in persuading the board of directors that I was going to be more a menace to them than an economic asset. She encouraged them to strike at both Heihachi and I and rid G-Corp of two potential problems in one fell swoop. It was a good plan." He shrugged again. "But they failed to kill me, and so faced the consequences of their choices."
"You… killed them all." Jin said slowly, still with a kind of disbelief. His skin was crawling. This ghost corridor full of silence felt loud in his ears.
"With far more justification than anyone who's died at the hands of the Zaibatsu whilst it was under your leadership. You launched drone strikes and missiles indiscriminately. You don't even know the faces of the people you've murdered."
Jin's face went hot and his veins pulsed with fury.
"You know nothing about me! And you will never understand the differences between us! I didn't do any of that for revenge!"
"No… Which sort of makes it worse really, doesn't it," Kazuya said calmly. "You weren't even invested in their deaths. They were just inconsequential numbers to you."
"They were not just numbers to me! You have no idea what they meant to me!"
"Still…" Kazuya ploughed on as if he hadn't heard him, "it hardly makes any difference to the victims. They don't care if they've lost their kin to Kazuya's revenge or Jin's noble plan to rid the world of evil. To them, dead is dead. What are your aims and morals worth to them, when they hold those they loved, dead in their arms?"
Jin bared his teeth, temper seething. Enormous shadows of his own magnificent guilt unfurled full inside him. The shackles on his wrist felt tight.
"Shut up! Why are you saying all this?! It doesn't change the terrible things you've done here!"
"Because you need to take responsibility for your own actions," Kazuya said sharply, suddenly no longer casual and languid. "You cannot condemn others whilst holding yourself to a lower standard. You were reckless and childish with the Zaibatsu. You did not even seek to target those more deserving of punishment. You struck at random."
"I thought it would be more fair than judging people!"
"It was stupid. You were not only callous and cruel, but bad at business."
"I don't have to hear this from you of all people!"
"Yes, you do, because you're not listening to anyone else. You need to sort yourself out. This is not the man Kazama Jun raised you to be."
Jin's eyes dilated to animal yellow and the shackles on his wrists burst open. They fell to the floor with a loud clang. Kazuya stepped back immediately, arms unfolding, alarm in his face.
"You daretalk about my mother?" Jin could hear his own voice, low and scratched with emotion. He felt his teeth ache as they extended into points. "You know nothing about her and what she was to me!"
Kazuya looked much less complacent and comfortable now, but his voice was still level, if also tipped with annoyance.
"I dare. You got to live with her for fifteen years. Fifteen years I was robbed of. You should know better. I know she wouldn't recognise you and the things you justify to yourself today."
"You don't get to lecture me on this of all things!" Jin spat. "Your morality is as empty as this corridor. Everyone that used to fill it is dead or driven away by your own hands! Even Uncle Lee can't stand you - your own brother!"
Kazuya's face was perfectly impassive.
"I never claimed not to do terrible things. I embrace the decisions I have made. Unlike you. You either need to admit that to yourself, or change your actions. You cannot have it both ways, Jin."
Jin's hatred for Kazuya just then was so monstrous that he felt, more than saw, the tattoos writing themselves onto his skin. His breath came shorter.
"Calm down," Kazuya's voice was imperious. Jin didn't want to calm down, he wanted to tear this impertinent man apart, along with all his arrogance and truth. "Jin!" Kazuya said sharply, and Jin was glad to hear there was concern in his father's voice now. He'd been afraid a lot during the last few weeks, it was time Kazuya got to feel a little of that fear. "Be calm." Kazuya's shoulders untensed and he cleared the anger from his words. "Be still."
Jin's chest was rising up and down fast. His nails had turned to darkened claws, just like the ones that had raked that office chair. He heard the clothes on his back tear open as wings pushed themselves through his flesh. A shadow fell over both of them as black feathers reared tall above and blocked out the laboratory strip lighting. The room swam into darker shades. A red light bathed Jin's face as a third eye opened in his forehead.
"You dare," Jin whispered, but his voice resonated with timbres that weren't his own.
"Jin…" Kazuya took a step forward.
"Don't come closer!" Jin snarled, "don't you dare try whatever you did before! Stay out of my head!"
"I wasn't going to." Kazuya's face was craggy in the twisting light and shadows. He raised his hands, keeping them open so that Jin could see them. "Jin… You don't want this. You aren't like me. Let it go. This isn't who you wish to be."
Jin's face contorted in rage. The shuffle of black wings blotted out the light and Jin's anger was so colossal that he could feel his control viscerally sliding away.
"It is!" he screamed in Kazuya's face. His lips pulled all the way back and he bared his teeth. He clashed them in animal fury. His breath came as a hiss between them. "I hate you!" Black markings spread their curling tendrils like a thick ivy over his skin. "I hate you more than anything else! I wish you were dead! I wish you'd never given me this curse! I wish I'd never been born!"
Kazuya's brow twitched and his lips moved wordlessly. His eyes creased as if at some invisible pain. There was a moment of silence that felt like an eternity to Jin. Kazuya took a step forward. His eyebrows were still twitching, like some great confusion was bubbling out from under his calm façade. He reached out a hand slowly towards Jin.
Jin's nostrils were flaring and his body was shaking. His wings ruffled in the air and single black feather fell between them. Kazuya's fingers touched his cheek.
"You don't wish that."
Jin's fury pooled in his eyes. Raging things were colliding in his chest. A war was shattering his breath and tugging his mind in seething directions, churning ups his innards like plunging water. The things he'd done, the things he'd justified, the death and suffering he was responsible for… and all for what? He'd been wrong. He'd been wrong from the start. He'd been wrong about that prophecy, and wrong about whether it was worth it, and wrong about pushing people away. The true magnitude of what he'd done was a thing he kept at arm's length, a thing that if it got too close, would crush what little remained of his willpower. He couldn't face that guilt, he couldn't let himself own his own crimes. The part of him that did was locked in a screaming cell of his soul along with all those urgings that had been with him for some years now. The urge to give up, to end this misery, to just stop, for everything to just stop, to be nothing. The blissful release of nothingness always called to him so strongly.
Kazuya's hand cupped his cheek. Jin's eyes fluttered shut.
He could hear his own ragged breath in the filmy silence of the broken laboratory. There was only darkness, a musty, dusty smell, the clatter of his breathing, and the rough, calloused palm of Kazuya's hand, warm against his face.
A tight compressing stranglehold inside him released. Suddenly Jin was gasping out air like he'd just surfaced from a long dive in a deep, dark river. A trembling wracked his body. He stood still, eyes firmly shut. He saw the room grow brighter through his eyelids as his wings shrunk away. He swallowed and drew in a shaky breath.
When he finally opened his eyes, he knew that he was back in control. Kazuya was looking at him. There was a strange expression on his face. Jin wasn't sure what it meant or conveyed. Kazuya started to draw his hand back. An unhappy noise came from Jin before he could stop himself. Kazuya paused, touch still very light on Jin's cheek. Jin tilted his head and bowed his forehead into Kazuya's palm. He used the opportunity to stare at the ground and try to collect himself. Kazuya let him stay close.
Jin wasn't sure what to say. He didn't want to be alone then. Not with his thoughts, and the things he'd done, and the thing he could become.
"Let's go back upstairs," Kazuya said after a long pause. He drew away. Jin's insides clenched at the loss, but he said nothing and stayed still. He hung his head. Kazuya's footsteps crunched on broken glass.
"I understand now." Jin's voice sounded small to his own ears, like it had been stretched thin and grown tired. Kazuya glanced back at him over his shoulder. "I never understood what she saw in you before. I understand now."
Author Note: As Anrim correctly predicted – it was big guilt trip time ;) Thank you all so much for your reviews, comments, kudos, faves, and general love! I'm very glad you're enjoying this unplanned ramble through Jin's disastrous emotions. I have an end in sight now – not quite all pinned down, but I'm thinking about 20 chapters or so. I have nearly 18 written, and am tweaking them as I go. I'm glad for all the positive feedback on Asuka too: I know there are people reading who like her a lot, so I'm glad her characterisation is still up your street even though I took some liberties with how I interpreted her. Honestly, tough-talking streetfighter, heart-of-gold jokester, straight as an arrow morals, feels like it could have been done much better in canon than it was. I'm enjoying working out a place for her interacting with Kaz, Lee and Jin.
Oh and I spent a while thinking about Emma Kliesen and the timings added up, so I decided she would die in the G-Corp takeover. We're never given a reason for her death in game, but Kazuya is pretty practical with who he kills and why, so this made sense to me.
Remember you can follow me on Twitter for chapter updates (Erenaeoth)!
