When Jin awoke, there was no pleasant bed, and no coffee machine, and no Lee Chaolan talking to him in calm, soothing tones.

There was only more darkness.

When he moved, he heard chains rattle. There was stone beneath him. His body ached with old bruises and stiffness deep in his muscles. A musty, mossy smell was in the closeted air. He felt with his fingernails along the cracks between stones in the floor. His fingers hit a wooden bowl that slopped with water. He leaned down with difficulty and put cracked lips to the water. The water felt so good and his throat so achingly dry. When he sat back up, water ran down his chin. He felt forward again with his fingers, trying to find a wall or door. Before he could find either, he found himself snagged to a stop. There were chains shackled to his wrists and ankles and wound around his limbs stopping him from going any further. He sat down on the cold floor. His arms clanked as they hit the floor and hung heavy at his sides.

He tried to think. He had been upset. His father and uncle had been arguing so fiercely, he'd thought they would come to blows. The things afterwards were hazy, slipping in and out of recollection. He remembered the terrifying sight of Kazuya in his devil form. He remembered chains dragging him down, binding him to the floor so that he couldn't defend himself from that monster. The rest was blurred.

He sat for a long time, feeling all the distinct aches in his muscles and a rumbling hunger to match his thirst. His wrists were raw from the chafing shackles on them. He wondered how long he had been here. He wondered how much longer he would have to stay here. In the faceless, inky dark, he begun to wonder if he was really awake at all. Perhaps he was still in the back of his own mind, and that devil was controlling him,… making him do unspeakable things.

He noticed a single red dot up high above him. He got a sudden shiver in the damp chill. He tried to wrap his arms around himself but again the chains didn't give him the space. He looked up at that dot.

"Father?" His voice was thin and parched. As he called out, another recollection hit him. He remembered fractions from just before he blacked out. He remembered calling Kazuya 'father' and the look that had passed over Kazuya's face. He remembered the way the red had died down in his father's eyes. He remembered the way Kazuya had immediately released him and the confusion and shame even that had showed in that demonoid face. He remembered the howl of pain that had filled the air when he shot Kazuya in the chest with a beam of light.

And the betrayal in his eyes.

Jin's composure wilted.

"I'm sorry!" he called into the darkness.

There was nothing. Only silence.

Jin could feel a dragging torpor running through him. There were a lot more chains than just his usual cuffs. His whole body felt heavy, like he was traipsing through thick undergrowth in a dawn that would never quite break. So tired. He tried to focus on the texture of the hard stone beneath his knees and the crackle of old flames and burnt wood about him. He blinked. Not there. Don't think of there. Inhuman footprints pressed into the mud. Broken glass and pottery cracked open around him. The collapsed remains of his home, torn and shattered, spread like bones on a heath. He brought himself back to the stone prison. Stay here. Stay present. Stay focussed. Smoke stung his nostrils and rain splattered on his cheeks. Water mixed with beads of blood on his forehead and ran down the lines in his face. He blinked and shivered and watched the way waxy leaves bent in the wind and rain.

He shuddered as he slipped in and out of memory and nightmare, unable to summon enough strength of will to order his thoughts. The uncomfortable chains kept him just this side of consciousness and unable to slide into welcome nothingness.

Everything was beyond his control. The rain was washing away the story of the scene about him before he could muster the strength to move. Droplets collected on his face as he lay on the ground, rolling down his nose and dripping off his chin. The weight of a new kind of loneliness was on his eyelids and heavy on his lashes. He knew without looking that she was gone. He could feel her absent not just from nearby, but from everywhere. His mother was removed from the world. Erased. Like she'd been a mark on a page that could be lifted off, and not the very earth beneath his feet: his foundations, his rock, his strength, his world. He lay trembling, unable to move, trapped in that paralysis with terror washing over him. He felt like a carcass washed up on the shore, all decaying and empty, buffeted by the ebb and flow of the tide, slowly disintegrating as the elements rolled over him.

He was on the stone floor with heavy chains and a heavy thirst and heavy weariness. He was in the mud under a lightening cracked sky and the rain tasted salty. He was shivering with cold and something was filling the echoes with small unhappy noises like an animal in pain. The wind was bending trees over backwards and tearing at the clothes on his back. There was old blood on his lip that tasted a little like rust. His eyes were so tired. If only he could sleep. If only he could rest forever.

The door creaked open and let in a blazing line of white light that spiked through Jin's eyes like a nail. He tried to raise a hand to block out the light, but it felt so heavy. He only succeeded in shifting his chains with a slow clink.

When his eyes adjusted, he could see Kazuya. He was stiff, like something pained him. His face was wreathed in shadows, but Jin saw enough to note a calculating, callous look on his face. His red eye glowed dimly in the dark.

Jin looked up at him. His words had to roll from somewhere in the back of his head to get off his tongue. He felt consciousness lurching this way and that as it threatened to depart him.

"Sorry…" His voice was rough and scratchy. He wondered again how long he'd been here. "I didn't mean to do what I did. I wasn't in control. Sorry." He tried to bow in apology, but his body more just hung limply on its chains.

Kazuya said nothing. Jin wanted to ask where he was, and why he was in here. He wanted to say he was cold, and that in the darkness his fears kept coming to him like he was fifteen years old again. Instead he tried to pull himself together. He pushed himself to kneel more upright and inched forward until his arms were dragged out either side of him by the taught chains. He had no shirt he realised now, and the rest of his clothes were suffering as they always did post a transformation. "Please, say something," he said to the silhouette.

"You will be remaining here until my research on you is complete." Kazuya's voice was different: colder, more distant,… hurt, Jin realised.

"Here?" Jin tried to keep the panic from his voice.

"You are a danger to yourself and to others."

"We can use more chains! We can use more chains and I can go back to the laboratory-!" He couldn't stay here, not in this place where past and present merged and he wandered freely through horrors he tried to forget. He couldn't calm his own thoughts and the chains weighed on his mind like a tonne weight, pressing him down into drowning waters.

"You are staying here."

Jin tugged on his chains and defiance flared up in him.

"You-… you can't! Uncle Lee-"

"Your uncle has become surprisingly compliant now that I have you in my keep in a place beyond his knowing. He's even been so kind as to return my missing data to me and is now heading up the research division on your genetics."

"You're-… you're blackmailing him?... With me?"

"And even your cousin Asuka has agreed to do her part. She's donating some of her most interesting Kazama blood for G-Corp to study."

"Why are you doing this!?" Jin tugged at his chains. "The ritual is ready! We can perform it any time! If you just let us go, or gave us the resources to do it…!"

Kazuya took a menacing step forward.

"Be thankful I haven't resorted to taking that gene from your dead body!"

"Father,… please…"

"Don't call me that!" Kazuya snapped.

Jin wilted. He looked through his fringe at the man above him. The cold light lit up the lines of Kazuya's cheekbones and the deep cracks of the frown in his face. His eye spilled an unearthly red light onto his features and sharpened the black shadows in his expression.

"I'm sorry," Jin whispered. "I didn't mean to hurt you. I didn't mean-"

"Hurt?" Kazuya scoffed, "as if you could. You are weak, Kazama Jin-"

"I wasn't in control! I promise you I wouldn't have done that to you if I was! I would never-"

"Oh? You weren't in control? As if your devil self would call me 'father'. That's a manipulative trick you've been employing just as regular Kazama Jin. You can't fool me, brat!" Jin could hear the guarded tone in Kazuya's voice beneath the layers of scorn. Kazuya had pulled back from hurting him. Even through the devilish features snarling beneath him, he had heard Jin's voice. Jin hadn't fully had time to process how much it must have hurt his father to then have been attacked after showing that mercy.

"I was wrestling for control! I was there, but not in control! I did call out for you, but it wasn't me that acted after! I wasn't trying to manipulate you... I wouldn't do that! I wouldn't ever-"

"None of that matters now," Kazuya snapped. "I should have chained you like the animal that you are from the very start."

"I wasn't trying to manipulate you, please believe me. When you call me 'son' it…" Jin struggled to put into words the things that happened inside him whenever Kazuya was gentler with him. "… It means a lot. It means a lot to me. I want to see was she saw. I want… I wanted to be close to you. I wanted to know my father. Don't do this. Don't shut me out because I made a mistake! Don't hurt Uncle Lee and Asuka because I got it wrong…"

"I will return when I have the results I need to extract my devil gene from you," Kazuya said coolly. He turned his back on Jin and walked into the bright, obscuring light.

"Wait! Don't leave me here!" Jin panicked. He saw Kazuya pause. He pushed his opportunity whilst he could. "I can't stand it! Everything is so loud in my head. Memories… With these chains on I can't-…. I can't-… Don't leave me here alone… Please…"

When Kazuya turned back, he had that unpleasant half smirk on his face. He thumped his fist into his open hand.

"Want me to knock you out cold so you're less afraid of the dark?"

"Yes!" Jin looked up at him desperately. Kazuya's smirk faltered. There was a pause.

"Fine." Kazuya was blank and emotionless. He raised his fist and stepped towards Jin.

The way he looked just then, fist pulled back, with the white light behind him, walking purposefully forward, took Jin back to a startlingly similar recollection. The lucidity of the present faded, and in that moment all Jin could see was Heihachi. He shrunk back. The similarity was uncanny. Or maybe it was the chains and the exhaustion. Or maybe the light playing tricks. He shook his head and tried to bring back the present. Heihachi still walked towards him. It was unmistakably him – his swagger, his build, his pride, his coldness. Jin tried to pull back from him, but Tekken Force soldiers gripped him and held him still. He was looking down the barrel of that gun for the thousandth time.

No, no, no. I don't understand what I did wrong! I did everything you asked! Why isn't it enough! Why aren't I enough? Grandfather! Don't-!

Or maybe he didn't just think that. Did he say that out loud? It didn't matter anyway. He knew how this ended. Sometimes he wondered if he really remembered what that bullet entering his skull felt like, or if he'd reconstructed the feeling from relived nightmares. He had a distinct sensation of cold, cold metal. It never splintered the bone, but rather made it cave in, like a collapsing black hole, sucking his mind into a funnel, where events and consciousness folded together and ran into one, sliding away like sand through an hourglass until-

Nothing.

No amount of pleading ever changed those events. He could hear his own voice even now, begging Heihachi like it never had a chance to in reality. In dreams it was always slowed down. His tears had time to form and dread had time to pile into him until he was so laden with terror that his whole body was shaking. Nothing he'd learned since did enough to explain why what had happened that night had happened. Heihachi was dead now. He'd never hear from his Grandfather's mouth why he'd done what he'd done. He'd never know if the years he'd lived with him had had any genuine affection in them, or were just one long messed up prelude to what would come after.

The confused place between here and then began to slowly recede.

He was cold again and shivering.

The heavy, heavy weight of those chains had decreased. It was still dark. He wasn't sure if he was alone again, or if he had been shot, or if he was in that void place that devil pushed him to when it took over. A calloused hand brushed his fringe out of his face. There was warmth next to him. Jin clung to it. He could feel the silken fabric of a shirt under his cheek.

"I'm not him. I'm not Heihachi." Jin could hear a deep, quiet voice. It was so uncharacteristically gentle, that it took him a moment to recognise as Kazuya's. "He's gone. He's dead. He can't hurt us anymore." The words were murmured like a distant lullaby.

Jin lay still, gradually drawing his senses together: piecing together that he was still on that stone floor, that the chains were gone, that he was collected tight into Kazuya's arms, that he was so cold his teeth were clattering in his mouth, that the steady drum in his head was his father's heartbeat coming strong through his chest.

That hand ran back through his hair again, repetitive and calming.

"S-sorry," Jin said through chattering teeth. "A-about before-"

"Hush."

Jin hushed. The darkness didn't feel so lonely now. The past and present were finally separating back into their correct places. Without those cursed chains on him, he could finally take charge of his thoughts and fears and order them. He kept his eyes closed and drew his breath in, deep and even, then out slowly. He felt the arms around him tighten as if afraid that he'd slip out and be lost.

"I'm not like Heihachi."

Kazuya didn't sound very certain as he said that. It sounded more like a question than a statement. Jin pressed his face into his father's clothes instead of answering. It felt warm and safe and right in a way that nothing had since he was fifteen and his mother was with him. It felt like a home that he didn't even know he'd been looking for. Nothing could hurt him here. The terrible choices he'd made could be forgiven. The burdens he carried could be shared. The trust he needed to give to someone could still be received.

A long silence passed.

"I'll let you do the ritual," Kazuya said quietly as he held him. "Then you need to go. Go far away from here and from me. When you are near, this same weakness that I felt around her is with me. I can't do all the things I need to when I'm being dragged down by these… these feelings."

Jin said nothing. The future didn't matter so much to him just then. He had all he wanted in that moment.

Author Note: chaining your son in a dungeon and blackmailing your brother isn't a great look but hear me out he held him in the end ok.
The full draft of this story is finished :) We're ramping up to the climax now, and I still have some surprises in hand for you.
Thanks again for the comments and love! I also put up another short story in Iron Fist and Iron Will on AO3 :)