"Heard you went wandering around G-Corp, breaking into off limit wings," Lee said with a casual amiability that by now Jin could straight up read as anxiety and reprimand.

"You weren't in," Jin said. He sat cross-legged with his eyes closed, palms open on his knees. He was back on a hospital bed, with chains wrapped all the way up his forearms and biceps since he'd broken his custom-made shackles. The chains were making him drowsy, but that suited him just fine for the moment. He needed a slower pace to his thoughts as he mulled over the things Kazuya had said in that corridor full of absent murders.

Lee brushed a strand of hair out of Jin's face. Jin opened his eyes slowly.

"I was away for one hour," Lee said. His voice was low – that place between affectionate and scolding that Jin now realised he not only expected but looked forward to hearing. "I had to check up on some Violet Systems matters. I am still running a company… Please stop provoking Kazuya, Jin. He's already extending us a lot of courtesies. If he decides we're inconveniencing him too much, things could get very nasty for us. Remember we're on thin ice here. He controls the only company in the world that specialises in researching your extremely rare genetic disease."

"It's not a disease. It's a curse," Jin replied. "It's nature out of balance. Spirits have crowded to the wrong places."

Lee raised an eyebrow. "I think that's those chains on your arms talking, and the additional sedative Kazuya gave you." He leaned back in his chair next to Jin's bed and clicked out a pair of glasses.

"No. My mother taught me." Jin breathed deeply in through his nose and out through his mouth. The world felt stiller today, and more manageable. "There is an ebb and flow to this world and the other side. They move together like shadows and light through the different hours of the day." He frowned. "I have become filled up with shadows."

Jin saw Lee shiver next to him. His uncle gave him a quick smile when he saw Jin notice. Lee unfolded a few pages that had been stapled together from his blazer pocket.

"Your 'curse' is genetic, Jin. Which means it can be solved through scientific method. But, since it matters so much to you, I extended some of my own resources into looking into that Kazama ritual you were searching for."

Jin's eyes opened fully. Lee gave a distasteful grimace as he scanned the papers he had in hand.

"There's a rite based on some old Shinto technique, particular to the village you were born in," Lee continued. "It was used to cast out demons. It involves music, dance, incense… all the things you'd expect."

"You think my family's traditions are nonsense, don't you, Uncle Lee."

Lee was a little slow to answer. "I think your mother was a very wise person, capable of understanding people's psychological needs and helping them accordingly. I do not doubt that she was able to help people. She certainly helped Kazuya."

A shadow fell over Jin's features. "And yet he still left her."

"Kazuya died." Lee's eyes flashed with warning. Jin could hear that defensive wall in his voice again. Just when he thought he understood his uncle, some new depth to him opened up. "He did not leave her. He would never have left her." Lee's fierce expression relented. "Though… he did push her away with his choices in the last few months of his life. Before we knew that Heihachi lived though, he was ready to change. He was ready to let go and turn his life around. She did that. Kazama Jun knew how to get through to him when hardly anyone else could." Lee paused again and with some reluctance, corrected himself. "She could get through to him… when no one else could."

"So he ignored her. He decided to go his own path, and to leave her way behind." Jin's voice was hard. He didn't like the fond nostalgia in his uncle's tone.

"Because Heihachi was alive." A hint of irritability was in Lee's words now. "Of course Kazuya had to strengthen himself and the Zaibatsu then. He had to kill Heihachi."

"Heihachi," Jin repeated. "Kazuya has been using that name to excuse his actions for far too long."

"He killed Heihachi as much for me as he did for himself." Lee's eyes had gone steely. There was a hostility in them that Jin hadn't seen before. Usually when he picked fights with his uncle, there was a cool tenderness underlying his words. Jin felt safe being stubborn around him because his care always felt unconditional. This was the first time Jin realised his uncle was very much not on his side in this argument.

"Everyone has one reason or another to hate Heihachi. I have as much reason as either of you to hate Heihachi, but I don't use it to justify my actions." Kazuya's words from yesterday rang in Jin's head. His own justifications weren't really a whole lot better than Kazuya's. He internally prepared himself for the reprimand that was coming.

"As much reason as either of us?" That had not been the angle Jin thought Lee would go for. "Jin, your grandfather hurt you, and I would never belittle that pain, but don't you ever let me hear you demean Kazuya's suffering again. You lived a comfortable life with Heihachi until he turned on you. Kazuya lost his grandfather to him, watched Heihachi murder his mother, was thrown into a ravine by him, and then had to live under his roof for twenty more years, bearing not only his punishments, but often those he could take in my place. You are dear nephew to me, but you will not mock the actions of my brother, who did more for me than any other person on this planet, am I understood?"

Jin sat up straight.

He stared at Lee.

"Kazuya was thrown into a volcano, not a ravine..."

"I'm not talking about the second Iron Fist Tournament. I meant when he was a child."

Jin shook his head, uncomprehending.

Lee took a deep breath. He ran his hand back through his hair. Jin could see weariness in the gesture. "He was five at the time. It was before I knew him. Where did you think he got all those scars?"

Jin shook his head again. He felt something strange inside, like the last pieces of a puzzle were falling into place.

"N… no one ever told me."

"Kazuya doesn't speak of it. I doubt he's ever told anyone but your mother."

"Mother knew?" Jin felt his insides crumble. "She never told me either…"

"And why would she? Kazuya was dead. His story wouldn't change his legacy. You must know his death broke her apart. She fled not just to Yakushima but into the mountains. She'd lived in the village before that. She couldn't be near other human beings after she lost him... We each fled to our separate islands..." Lee said with slow reflection, almost just to himself. "… The only people who'd ever really been close to him. When he fell, his empire came down with him, and everyone who'd been near him was Heihachi's target."

"No one's ever spoken to me about then: no one told me anything. All I knew about my father was from newspapers and Heihachi." Jin sat looking down at his own hands, thinking about the two people who had made him. All his life he'd only thought of himself as having a mother. When he'd inherited the devil curse, he had to come to terms with the fact that he had a father – a tyrannical, dead, business magnate who'd left him with nothing but this terrible, alienating power. Now though… now that he could see Kazuya's life laid out before him with its years of struggling and suffering: now he didn't feel only like the son of Kazama Jun.

He thought back on all Lee had just said.

"Wait… did you say that-… his mother? My Grandmother? Heihachi… killed her?"

"I don't know all the details, but Kazuya intimated as much. I believe he saw the moment it happened, or soon afterwards anyway."

It didn't go any way to justify all Jin knew of him, but it did make a difference. Jin could start to understand why that man was the man he was. He could start to understand that Kazuya had built himself of many things, but down at the foundations – Jin knew exactly what those were. He knew the person he'd been when at fifteen when he lay in the mud and flames of his broken home, with his mother dead and the world beyond his control and this pain and loss and loneliness so terrible that it filled him up only with hollow empty things. Hollow empty shadows. He touched heart.

"He's like me," Jin's voice cracked open with a quiet pain.

"He's a lot like you," Lee was soft and gentle again, with all the antagonism replaced with affection. "And a lot different, too. But he wasn't always like he is now, you have to understand."

"He's still the brother you knew." Jin set Lee with serious eyes. Lee paused. He looked a little taken aback by the intensity of Jin's gaze. "He helped me. When he did, he didn't feel like Kazuya – he felt like how I used to feel with my mother. He had calm all around him, and he let me be a part of it. He hasn't forgotten those times. They're just hidden away. Buried. Not gone."

Lee's face twitched with a flicker of hope. His features hardened again quickly though.

"A lot has changed since those days." Jin could hear the sigh in his uncle's voice that always preceded a closure of the topic. Lee stood. "If you keep fighting those chains, they'll drain your energy even faster. Sleep now, Jin, and when you wake, a substitute for the chains should be ready, and Asuka will have had a chance to look over these ritual notes."

Jin frowned. Lee was always doing that. He walked a tightrope between being the eccentric uncle and the serious parental figure, but as soon as conversation touched places where he was personally vulnerable, doors slid shut on every side. Jin only ever had glimpses into the person he was behind all those solid walls. Now that he knew what he knew, he could see the paranoia and violence that had stormed into his own life after Heihachi shot him, magnified ten-fold in the lives of Kazuya and Lee. Lee and Kazuya had seemed so different to one another at first glance, but this caginess and reluctance to let people close to them – really close to them – that was as clear as day to Jin now. From the way Lee spoke, there had been a time in the past when he and Kazuya had let each other in on their secrets, and been close in some capacity. Jin didn't understand the details of what had happened, but he didn't miss the hurt and bitterness in Lee's voice that lingered there just as much as the tenderness and defensiveness he had for Kazuya.

"Uncle?"

Lee turned to him and gave him a brilliant smile, tossing his head so that his silver hair flipped out of his eyes.

"Yes? Anything you need?"

Jin looked at him, standing proud with his hand on his hip and his clothes all radiant, mask perfectly in place.

Jin returned the smile.

"Nothing. Never mind."

Lee gave him a thumbs up before he left the clinic.


Author Note: Something a little quieter and slower, in which Jin realises he himself is still changing but that his uncle and father are bound to the past. Thank you for your continued support! I received some more short story prompts, so I will continue posting some short stories soon on Archive of Our Own.