So, I've returned! Be prepared for more angst. And, AU... in case any of you forget :P

In this chapter we have; fuckeries during a certain full moon, Makoto needs more than just a hug, and... panic attacks!

Enjoy!

I: The Deceived Magician

Magician: Willpower, Desire, Creation, Manifestation

Reversed Magician: Trickery, Illusion, Deception

His mind is foggy, his head heavy and numb.

He could feel his body just fine. He isn't hurt, but he couldn't think straight, either. Every time a thought of what he was doing or where he is comes up, it would be promptly shot down and left to rot. He tries, and tries, and tries again, but the more he does, the more muddled his mind gets.

Why am I here…?

Suddenly, pain. Lightning strikes through his brain, searing the inside of his eyes white. He doubles down, the vague, distant sound of running shower barely registers into his senses. He grips his head, trying to breathe normally, as he wills himself to think through the fog. He starts with something simple; he's Yuuki Makoto… and today is July 7th.

Embrace your desire…

A voice whispers into his mind. He shakes his head, trying to get rid of it, trying to centre himself. But the more he thinks, the more pain runs through his entire body, discouraging him. But he can't allow that – something is telling him to keep trying. He has to remember.

I am the voice of your inner self… Enjoy the moment…

That which cannot be felt is merely a dream… the present is all we have.

He screws his eyes shut, curling into himself, feeling his knees pressing against his forehead. He has to think. Keep thinking, or he's going to be lost under the murky water. He can't allow that, not yet. He tries again, begging his mind to work as he tries to recall where he is, or why he's here. Tonight is—

Future is but a fantasy, memory a fabrication…

Let your desire free you from your shackles… such is my wish…

He shakes his head harder as something tries to wriggle its way inside his subconscious. He grips his head harder as he tries to will the pain away, but it's getting harder. He can't think straight – but he must.

Pleasure is what you truly want.

You stand before the doorway to bliss.

You cannot deny your instincts… embrace your desire…

He shakes his head, again, and again, and again. The pain gets sharper, cutting deep into his soul like hot knife, burning and searing its way through his mind like it's nothing but butter.

And suddenly, he's screaming.

The thing decides to stop trying to convince him, and is now forcefully prying his brain open, trying to make its way inside his head. He feels like his skull's being split and dragged and bashed and drilled, every inches of his mind crying and shrieking out in pain. He feels his body hitting something hard, but he couldn't focus on it. All he could feel is the mind-numbing burn scalding through every fiber of his being, and it hurts, it hurts—

He feels someone touching his shoulders, grabbing him gently, but he couldn't move. If he does, he's going to break into a thousand pieces. He grits his teeth so hard he could feel the ache in his jaws, but he doesn't know how else to stop screaming and ripping his throat off. White noises fill his ears, and black spots cover his visions as he tries to listen, to see, to feel something else.

If you'll not embrace me, the voice says, demanding, scornful. He feels fingers creeping inside his brain and addling his thoughts further. His hand finds something – the wall, or the floor, probably – and claws at it, the blooming stings at the tip of his fingers clearing up the murky water a little. But the fingers grip and tear and dig into him, and he could do nothing but scream as the voice hisses, with anger. If you will not embrace me, then I will take your body by force.

His body moves on its own, and his hands are grabbing something soft and warm, slightly soaked. He tries to focus, just enough to know what's happening. As if by cruel, diabolical intent, his vision suddenly clears, and his ears could pick up the choking and—

He is choking Takeba.

He is choking the life out of her.

She's looking up at him, confused, surprised, scared, her hands feebly attempting to remove his own. While her arms can handle bows just fine, it's clear that he's still stronger as his hands clamp themselves around her throat like vices. He feels someone trying to reach him, but the merciless fingers are keeping them away and forcing his body to try to kill Takeba.

She's begging, her voice hoarse, her hands trying to pry his fingers apart. But with each passing second, her strength seems to slip away, her grips slacken, her eyes dazed and unfocused. She's dying—

She's dying because of you, the cruel voice mocks as it forces him to strangle her harder.

He can't, he can't allow that—

He uses all the willpower he has to push himself away from her, and the burning pain is back in his head as he stumbles back, hitting the wall. He grips his head and shakes it, trying to get rid of the crawling inside his mind as they try to take control, again, and again, and again—

He sees Takeba sitting up, coughing, a hand on her throat. She's looking at him, first with frightened gaze, then with concern and worry. She gets up, unsure on her feet, and tries to reach out to him.

You will be the one to kill her, and you will be the one to face the consequences.

His body is going to move forward again, and he can't allow that—

In his muddled mind, he could still think enough to find a solution. If he can't force his body to stop doing what he doesn't want it, then he has to stop it from moving. He wrestles the control of his own body back by sheer resolve as he stumbles and reaches for his sword. He doubts the thing will care if he's in pain, because he couldn't even control how hard he's strangling her, so much so that his fingers are numb and his hands are cramped up.

He needs to stop himself from moving altogether, by whatever means necessary.

With a sharp, resolute movement, he cuts his right Achilles tendon with the blade, forcing his leg to give out under him and stopping himself from even walking.

The voice hisses at him, but soon retreats away into the dark. The pain slowly subsides as he breathes hard, his thoughts still addled and confused. He tries to ground himself, his hand – he's somehow ripped his nails off of one hand – finding whatever he could and holding onto it. There are footsteps getting closer to him, and the voice he thought was gone is back, stronger, fiercer, angrier.

"Don't," He gasps out as his body tries to move on its own again, but it ends up stumbling and falling forward as his right leg couldn't move due to his well-planned cut. The voice hisses, and he grits his teeth, trying to keep his control. He looks up just enough to see Takeba's bare feet not too far from him. With a groan, he murmurs. "Don't come any closer."

The voice lets out a sharp shrill before it slithers away and out of his mind again, leaving him cold and dazed. He blinks and crawls towards the nearest wall before sitting himself up, both hands covering his face as he tries to gather his shattered thoughts.

Then Yamagishi's voice cuts through the nearly impenetrable fog, clearing his mind a bit more. "Yuuki-kun! I could finally reach you! Are you okay?"

No, "Yeah," He murmurs, not looking at Takeba as he hears her footfalls again. He puts up a hand to stop her, not trusting himself enough. He looks at his bleeding leg – he's cut himself deep enough to completely severe his Achilles tendon, it seems. "What happened?"

"There is another Shadow," She says. He could surmise as much – nothing else could've crawled their ways through his head like that. He closes his eyes and focuses on Yamagishi's voice as she continues. "It took me so long to reach you because it was interfering with your thoughts. I got to Yukari-chan first, but it seemed like she was attacked, just now—are you two ambushed?"

He finally looks up at Takeba, her neck sporting ugly bruises, shaped like fingers – his fingers. He chokes down a whimper before answering Yamagishi while keeping an eye on the archer as she just looks at him with unreadable expressions, except for one – fear. "Something like that."

She's afraid. Of him.

Of course she would. You just tried to strangle her to death.

"I've already contacted the others. The Shadow is still in the same room. Please regroup immediately!"

"Roger," He murmurs, still trying to get rid of the feeling of her life slowly being snuffed away by his own hands. His hands, just like ten years ago, with his mother and everyone else—

"…Can you stand?" She snaps him out of his thoughts with a low, unsure voice.

He doesn't answer right away, not quite sure of what to actually say or do. He looks down at his heel, still bleeding profusely, the deep gash stinging, making itself known. He closes his eyes and calls for Ganga before slowly reaching for his Evoker. He glances at Takeba again before saying. "You go ahead. I need to heal first."

"Let me—"

"Please," He begs. He couldn't allow her to get close, not right now, not tonight. He couldn't trust himself enough to not do something like that again. His hands are trembling as he holds his Evoker in them. He could feel his own fear, and those tiny little voices calling him monsters crawling and ricocheting inside him. When she doesn't move, he says again, a little louder, a bit more broken. "Just go."

"No," She states firmly.

He doesn't look up as he pulls the trigger and calls Ganga to his side, focusing on healing the wound just enough for him to continue fighting. "I'll be fine. Just go."

She says nothing, but also refusing to leave. The warm light is slowly stopping the bleeding, but he can't waste too much of his psyche to heal a wound this big completely. He methodically picks out the tendons and forces his Persona to heal just that part, so that he would be able to move. He still couldn't look up at her, so he chooses to look down at his own hands, shaken and cold and sweating.

"Yuuki-kun," She says again before coughing slightly. He doesn't look up – not until he feels her hand on his wrist and pulling him up. The wound is taken care off enough for him to move again, so he puts Ganga away and turns to look at her. She's frowning. "It isn't your fault—"

"Isn't it?" He almost growls at her, his nails digging deep into one of his palms as he pulls her hand away from her throat, revealing the evidence that he had come so close to murdering her. "If you hand been weaker, or I had been a second slower, I would've choked you to death."

"I—"

"Let's just go," He murmurs with finality, pushing all the uneasiness and fear back down to the pit of his soul as he opens the door. The quicker he can kill that thing, the better.

He couldn't trust himself anymore. Not after what he's just done.

His leg hurts like a bitch, but the boiling anger (and the soul-rending fear) is keeping him focused.

He dodges and hacks away at the Shadow's limbs as it moans and growls, its unsightly body being flung around from one side to the other, Junpei and Sanada doing a spectacular job at keeping its attention divided for him to chip away at its body and limbs.

He ignores Takeba's gaze as he tries to get close and finish the job. Ducking past the sweeping tentacle as it knocks a pane of glass down and shatters it, jumping to the side to avoid fireball being spat from its mask. Once he's almost face to face with it, he puts the Evoker to his head and—

"Yuuki-kun! It's going to use Marin Karin!"

He couldn't switch his Persona in time—

The pain is back, the crawling fingers numbering in the thousands as they dig and crawl and bury their ways into his head. He hears himself screaming as he falls down, hitting the ground hard. There are some panicked voices calling out to him, but they are rendered into nothing more than white noises. Then, that damn malevolent voice is back, stronger, louder.

You're mine, now.

"Get away!" He bellows, trying to force his hands down as much as he could, but the fingers are too much, too overwhelming, as he feels himself struggling under the invisible force. His body is putting the Evoker to his head, and he knows he can defeat everyone on his own, because they'd hesitate, but his body would not.

"Yuuki!" Kirijou tries to reach him, but the Shadow sweeps the ground before her, stopping her advance. He could feel his finger tightening around the trigger. He has to make a call.

"Takeba!" He commands, panic lacing his voice as he forces himself against the excruciating pain radiating through his limbs. He has to buy them time somehow. "Shoot the Evoker out of my hand!"

She looks torn. She's hesitating.

"Come on!" He calls, louder. "Shoot!"

The arrow comes flying, piercing his hand through and through. He loses his grip strength, and with one swift motion, he forces himself to fling the Evoker away into a far corner. The Shadow hisses into his head as it forces him to grip his blade tighter, and before he knows it, he's facing Takeba again.

She raises the bow to defend against his strike, and even if he's attempting to regain control, the close proximity with the Shadow and its growing anger are making any sort of voluntary movement impossible.

"Makoto!" He hears Junpei calls. He knows he can't get out like in that room, because even if its control is strong, the distance made it easy for him to resist. But right now, it's only a few steps away from him. He's their field leader, and he's the first to fall to enemy's command – how utterly unsightly.

"Put me out of commission!" He orders as he feels himself striking into the same spot again, and again, and again. Takeba is about to take a knee, and her bow will break at any second now. He glances over, and sees that Kirijou is the closet to him. A surgical strike. That's what he needs. "Kirijou-senpai! Strike the wound on my heel again!"

She's level-headed enough to understand the significance and the urgency of his order. With a nod, she runs up to him while Sanada pushes the Shadow back with Polydeuces. Pain then sears through the same spot he's cut himself, and he falls to his knee.

But then the damn thing forces him to move again, even though his leg is screaming and bleeding. It's not enough, not this time.

Somewhere else, he needs to be struck somewhere else that would put his body out of the picture for good. He has to –

It's a gamble. But I have to, before I kill Takeba.

He looks over at Kirijou again, who hides her own horrified look quite well. He's… going to be tricking her into doing this, because if he doesn't, she will hesitate, and he'll be killing Takeba within the next swing—

"Senpai! I can heal myself, so do whatever you have to and push me off her!"

The truth is, he can't. That damn spell makes the registration of anything else that's happening slow, but he knows it has already drained his psyche empty. He can't heal, and he knows Takeba can't, either. However, he, at worst, might die doing this, but the archer will if this continues any longer.

"…Got it!" To his relief, Kirijou nods and practically rams him with Penthesilea. The air is knocked out of him as he skids across the floor, the shattered glass cutting his skin a little (a lot), and his ribs creak and groan, cackling as he breathes. The fingers crawl all over and under his skin, forcing him up despite the pain (it hurts, it hurts), and he's throwing himself against the Persona again.

This time, Penthesilea encases his lower half and both of his forearm in ice, stopping his movement completely. He doubles over when the Shadow hisses furiously inside his head, but yells at Kirijou when she attempts to walk to him. "Get rid of that thing first!"

Kirijou gives him a resolute nod before she dashes off to join the others, leaving him panting inside the ice as the voice gets louder and louder, tearing and clawing at his head like there is no tomorrow.

He ignores Takeba as she wavers, her eyes remaining on him.

He closes his own. All he could do now is wait.

The Shadow is surprisingly tame, combat-wise.

It doesn't take long for the others to finish it off. When it goes down, the persistent call at the back of his mind is gone, and he sighs in relief.

Kirijou apologizes with her expression as she undoes the ice, and he promptly falls face-first into the floor, all the pain and the exhaustion finally catching up to the slowly receding adrenaline. He pushes himself up with Junpei's help. The other puts his arm over his shoulders and helps him stand, the sting from the cut tendon making itself known once again.

"You should heal that," Kirijou says with a frown. "And… sorry."

"It's necessary," He says with a small smile and a shake of his head. He then frowns before plucking the arrow still stuck in his hand off with his teeth, earning himself a surprised yelp from Junpei (sorry). He then looks down at his leg as it's dragged along the floor, leaving a long trail of red behind. "…I'm out of gas, so healing isn't going to happen today. Sorry."

Her face turns foul in an instant. "You lied."

"It's necessary," He repeats himself, rubbing his temple with his free hand. "Head hurts."

Kirijou and Yamagishi wince a little. He spies Takeba frowning at him from the corner of his eyes, her hand flying up to her throat. He ignores it as Yamagishi comes a little closer. "Are you sure you're okay? Its control over you sounded and felt really… taxing."

"It wasn't that bad," He murmurs (he lies). "A good night's sleep should do, I think."

"Let's take care of the wound first before you rest, and I'll call the school tomorrow," Kirijou says, arms crossed. "You take the most damage out of all of us combined, so I'm giving you a day off."

"Appreciated it," He mumbles, feeling Junpei taking most of the weight off of his feet (foot, rather). He doesn't complain, too hurt and too tired to care.

He just wants to sleep and forget the feeling of his fingers around Takeba's throat as he's suffocating her life into nothingness.

You're a monster! You killed your own parents! Monster!

Get away from me! Don't touch me!

Murderer!

He chokes back down something that's threatening to crawl up his throat.

He doesn't want to feel.

He doesn't want to remember.

Fingers clamping around soft, warm, slightly drenched skin. She struggles under his fingertips as her life slowly ebbs away. The light in her eyes are dimming, the strength of her hands fading. She's trying to say something, but in the end, all that made it out of her mouth is a word, so quiet one would've missed it if they are not listening.

"Why?"

And soon, everything stops.

He wakes with a start.

He's covered in sweats, his hands cold, the feeling from yesterday lingering in them. He looks down, his fingers trembling, his palms clammy, his breaths ragged. He gasps, trying to force the fear back down. Clasping his hands together as if he could force the tremor away (he can't), he focuses on his breathing, drawing in slow, steady breaths, again, and again, until his body stops shaking.

The clock says it is way past noon already, and the sunlight is scorching his skin as he remains on his bed, still panting, slightly dazed. He shakes his head before forcing himself up, the wound in his Achilles tendon and his back making it almost impossible for him to stand without aid. He'll get all of those fixed tonight, so he's not worried much, but he still needs to walk around. He grabs at the crutches Kirijou brought to him yesterday and uses one of the pair to help him trudges around his own room.

After a while (and a lot of pain), he finds himself in the lounge, the crutch forgotten on the floor, his hands clasped together, shaking uncontrollably. His breathing is fast, and he's starting to see things he shouldn't have, hearing things he shouldn't be able to—

He's drowning. Someone's pushing his head down under the water, his eyes facing the sky as the sun burns bright. A hand on the scruff of his neck. He tries to fight, hands gripping on something warm. He clenches his fingers around it.

He's pulled out, and he keeps his grip there, harder, ignoring the voices around him until—

Stop! What are you doing!? Why are you choking him!?

He's dead! He's dead!

This must be how he killed his mom and dad! Choking them to death!

Monster! You're a monster!

"It wasn't me," He murmurs as the memories of time long past start flooding back in. The memories he thought he had already forgotten. The feeling of asphyxiation as fresh water rushes into his windpipe is back, and he's choking, he's drowning, he's dying.

He gasps.

"It wasn't… I was just trying not to—"

You strangled him! Look! There are still finger marks on his neck!

"He started it—"

You killed him! He's done nothing to you! Nothing!

"I was just trying to protect myself…!"

You monster! You are a monster! Just die already, you murderer!

"Please… believe me…"

MURDERER!

"I didn't… I just…"

The car is burning. She's saying something. Then flame engulfs her completely, mercilessly. He hears chains clinging. Cloak flying in the night sky. Screech fills the air. The shadow stops.

She's dead.

"Mom, I'm sorry…"

Fire rises into the sky, pillars of orange blaze surrounding the house. She's screaming. He sees her. But he doesn't do anything as her skin's burnt off and charred and she's choking on the smokes.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry—"

"Yuuki-kun," She chokes, as his hands cut off the air, crushing her windpipe. She's clawing desperately as his fingers strengthen their holds. "Please… stop…"

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—"

Eyes are getting hazy, the light dying down, voice quieter and quieter, hands moving slower as he crushes and squeezes at her neck harder until—

He gasps and coughs, violently hurled back into reality. He's drenched in sweat, he's panting, he can't feel his arms or legs. All he could feel is the feeling of being forced under water, of his hands trying to squeeze someone's life out of their bodies.

He can't trust himself.

He can't trust himself not to kill someone again.

It's proven before, by just how many times he's been sent back to foster care, by how gleeful his caretaker, his mother's own relative, is when she realizes he's invited into the dorm.

By how he's murdered someone he loves by leaving them as they're burnt to ashes.

By how he's murdered someone with the same method he's about to use on her.

He's a monster.

And nothing will ever change that.

Woot woot! That's done! How was it, folks? Lemme know!

See you again next week!