Author's Notes: Greetings and salutations, all. I come again bearing gifts.
Ramix: Thanks for the review, I'm pretty proud of that scene myself. Good music and a willingness to break things up makes for some sweet scenes, no? Glad you liked it, and if it his a chord in you, then stay tuned; there's more to come.
Octamis99: Tell you a secret? I'm a sucker for a good happy ending. It has to be earned and natural, of course, but I always feel like someone deserves a good payoff if they've put the work in. I won't spoil future chapters, but you can rest assured that I'm keeping that idea firmly in mind. Cheers!
B1ackAshes: You say the nicest things, you know that? I'm glad you liked Akihiko's ascension to Caesar, it was a pretty fun piece to write, but I also got a lot more out of Ken and Koromaru than I expected to. It was a great experience, and if it piqued your interest and drew you in, then I'll call that a win. Enjoy the chapter; if you've liked things so far, you won't be disappointed.
Now then, onto the main event. Enjoy!
Chapter 19 - Corps-à-corps
Mitsuru ended the call with Abe-san and set her face in her hands. She was learning now that the grandson of one of Father's associates had called the dorm when she'd been out. The man had apparently run afoul of Akihiko when he was in a bad mood and took offense to being "spoken to in such a way by a teenager!" Abe-san had bluntly told her that she didn't need the aggravation right now, that the matters of the Kirijo Group needed to wait until she was in a better frame of mind to handle them. She'd protested at first, knowing that there would be a list the length of the Yangtze river of things she had to look after, and she'd wanted to be moving and doing something since Father died.
It was finally catching up with her. No matter how many hours she put into her work there were never enough to cover everything. She'd finally told Father's associate to leave her alone until she called upon him, and when he yelled and fumed at her, she hung up. She looked at the list of things that still needed her attention, and it wasn't until she realized she'd been staring at it and nodding off, eyes burning, that she wasn't getting anything done.
She sighed, trying to rest her eyes without slipping into sleep that was pulling at her every move. She just needed some more time. She needed to keep going, just a bit longer and things would work out. If she worked harder, things would turn out for the best.
Mitsuru smirked. That line of thinking. How familiar. How nostalgic. Maybe she hadn't learned her lesson yet.
Those thoughts reminded her of Mother. One year she'd been healthy and vibrant with life, the next she was in intensive care with the best medical professionals stumped over her condition. A rapid degenerative disease, they'd called it, but only half could agree on even that much; the other half stood around arguing about what to call the disease.
Mitsuru had been too young to appreciate those details. She only knew her mother was dying on the other side of the viewing glass, tubes and wires everywhere, curtains drawn to keep her from seeing the worst. Doctors would only speak to Father, the nurses gave encouragement that grew more hollow each day, and Mitsuru was left alone to try and understand what was going on. When she wasn't at the hospital praying her knuckles white just so she could hear that voice again, she was in the family library. The medical books she read were far beyond her understanding, but she didn't care; she just wanted Mother to get better.
When Mother died, Mitsuru crashed into her studies. She grew obsessed with righting the wrong of Mother's death, and all of Father's insistence that she wasn't handling it properly fell on deaf ears. Mitsuru would figure it out where the doctors hadn't. The answer was out there and she'd just failed to find it. A smarter girl would have answered the problem. A stronger girl would have saved Mother's life.
She'd do it with her own strength. She'd find her answers without relying on scientists or medical machines or God.
One visit from Grandfather focused her path completely. He'd always been a distant figure in her life up to then, someone whom her parents didn't invite over very often. He'd found her in the library and told her he admired her drive. He encouraged her to keep studying, but he had an experiment he wanted to conduct. If things went well, he promised, she would be able to do things far beyond what normal people could do, like those doctors who had allowed Mother to die. "It will be difficult, but you will become stronger in the end," he'd promised.
"Strong?"
"Yes."
"Could I have helped Mom? Would I be strong enough to protect Dad?"
"Without a doubt."
Her decision was made. Father was dead against it, but Mitsuru pushed herself to be ready for the experiment. Grandfather had set up the tests and trials and she walked forward without flinching. Those days taught her where her limits were, and how to break through them. She learned to fight and endure. She learned about fear and pain. The stakes were higher than she could comprehend back then, but she rose to the challenge every time until she was taken to Tartarus and awakened Penthesilea. In that moment, she knew she was on the right track. Here was what she wanted, what could have saved Mother.
A healer stronger than modern medicine. A detector of things well beyond cutting-edge machinery. An immortal being shrouded in ice that feared neither foe nor injury, and a warrior without peer.
Kirijo Mitsuru could fight and heal now. She could protect Father. And she would never lose someone close to her again.
One more lie from a man whose every breath carried them.
When the Kirijo labs were destroyed by the Shadows, she knew she'd been misled. Grandfather's intentions had always been about power, not about her, and what he'd been trying with her had been something much worse than she could have imagined. All her strength wasn't even an atom against the bigger picture, and it only hurt her more; feeling the Shadows raging, all those people die – even from kilometres away – kept her up for nights at a time.
Her power had been granted by a man who saw her as expendable, and it wouldn't be until years later that she would wonder if she was even meant to survive those trials. Had he really seen potential in her, or had he just wanted to use her against Father? Would he have spared her if she'd been at the labs that night, or in the event his experiment had succeeded? But as much as Father hated the man, Mitsuru found that she couldn't. Grandfather's experiments on her had shaped her, but they'd also given her power that let her see the larger threat. He'd used her, but she'd gotten something out of the exchange. She became strong enough to defend herself and lead the others, to explore the Dark Hour and fight Shadows where she wouldn't have been able to if she'd been normal. And with this strength, she'd be able to protect those closest to her.
That thought cracked and pulled her into the present, chasing her heart into a sprint for safety.
"But you can't save them, can you?" her doubts asked. "Just like before, you can't save anyone."
She couldn't shut the voice out. In the dark of fitful sleep, it came from everywhere. Covering her ears didn't help. Shouting back helped even less. All she could do was watch her failures cascade past her eyes like a film reel.
Mother. Takeba's father. Forty staff members, countless children; all Grandfather's victims.
Shinjiro, cold in a casket.
Father, bleeding out in front of her.
"If only you'd had your hands free," it mocked. "If only you didn't need an Evoker, like Sakaki or your precious Minato-kun. But you do, don't you? Even though it was the most important person to you, you couldn't do anything."
"Be quiet," she whispered.
"Why? So you can pretend it's okay, pretend you have things under control? You don't, back then same as now. Never mind SEES, why are you putting on a show for the Kirijo Group?"
The words stuck in her throat.
"You know they can't help you. Remember that call? Some little shit wanted to buy you up like market stock and you bit your tongue – you apologized to him! What good is your control if you can't even look after yourself?!"
She had no answers, no denials. When she'd heard that pompous idiot talking down to her, speaking ill of Father, she'd wanted blood. She'd wanted to storm his office and burn the whole thing to the ground, to give them some small idea of how she felt. She'd deferred it to Abe-san so she didn't say something she'd regret later, but the whole event was caught in the back of her throat, too big to swallow.
"Will you bottle it up when it really matters? When the others need you?"
"Of course not..."
"Except you've failed every time so far. Who will you fail next?"
She shook her head, tried to push the voice away.
The SEES members appeared before her eyes, cast in red light and darkness. "You can't save them. You know that. Worse, you might be the reason they die."
"That's not true..."
Arisato, with blue eyes full of mischief and hair she always wanted to play with, formed before her. Soaked in blood.
"You would do it, wouldn't you? Use them for the greater good? If it meant killing the Shadows, wouldn't their sacrifices be a small price to pay? Wasn't Amada's suffering easier to deal with than... your own guilt?"
"That's not –"
"Shinjiro wouldn't have died if you'd paid attention. You live here. You run SEES. Is that for nothing? Shinjiro would still be alive if you'd done something. Why didn't you see it?"
Why hadn't she?
"And Ikutsuki? How did you miss him? Months of knowing him, all the chances in the world – and he's just a normal person compared to a Persona User – but you missed every single clue. And now what?"
Stop.
"Shinjiro's dead. Ikutsuki's gone missing. Everything's fallen apart..."
Don't say that!
"And Father died because of you."
It wasn't–
"–my fault!" she shouted, jerking awake in her chair. She didn't realize she was at her desk, and nearly toppled over before she could regain control of herself. It took half a minute before she got her bearings, and she stood on trembling legs when she did.
The dorm. Still fractured and leaderless, lacking direction ever since that night at Tartarus. The others were doing terrible.
She should do something. She headed SEES, she should be with them, but... What could she do? How could she make any of this better? She hadn't left her room for more than Kirijo business in... what day even was it? She couldn't find her phone in the dark, and after groping around she gave up.
More nightmares. She'd tried a different tea blend this time, but it hadn't kept them away. Nothing had helped, maybe except for seeing Arisato. Even if he was in terrible shape and clearly suffering – he'd gone through something even she couldn't imagine – at least he was getting out of his room and talking to Akihiko. Encountering him had brightened her day and kept the pain at bay. For a while.
She'd talk to him again. Maybe encourage him to talk to her. Maybe then, she'd... he'd...
She was asleep again before she could finish that thought. Asleep and twisting to get away from the nightmares. Fitful as her rest was, it was deep enough that she slept through dinner, through Takeba and Yamagishi knocking on her door, and through three calls from the Kirijo compound, even though her phone was right by her hand under some papers. And Akihiko's text wasn't enough to pull her from her sleep.
What did wake her up was the crash of thunder that shook the dorm to its bedrock. She came awake in a disoriented flash, tumbling into an undignified heap on the floor. She braced against her desk, certain this was an earthquake, but the noise stopped after a few more tremors. Her phone bumped off her desk and fell next to her, showing her the missed calls and affirming what she knew immediately. It was the Dark Hour, and the nauseating wrongness offered familiarity. For the first time in days, she felt anchored. She stretched and cracked her neck, feeling mildly more rested than before. She didn't look it, though; when she looked in a nearby mirror, she recoiled from the exhausted, bag-eyed creature staring back at her. Her skin was sallow, her lips were cracked and split, and– good heavens, her hair! Had she ever let it become like this before?
She hadn't had the presence of mind to wonder about what she should do now that she was awake, or what the source of the thunder and tremors had been, when her door cracked open and someone knocked perhaps ten minutes later. "Are you awake, Senpai?" Yamagishi asked softly.
"I am now," Mitsuru replied, straightening and trying to project confidence. "How can I help you? Is something wrong?"
"I'm not sure," Yamagishi began as she came in. "I got Akihiko-senpai's text from before, and I didn't think anything of it, but that thunder we felt, it didn't come from outside."
Mitsuru checked her phone to read the text in question. It sounded like him, but what was his explanation? She looked at her teammate. "It didn't?"
"It happened after the Dark Hour started, so normal weather patterns shouldn't happen. And Akihiko-senpai has been quiet all day. I went to the boys' floor to see if something had happened."
"What did you find?"
"Well... Akihiko-senpai and Minato-kun are gone."
Mitsuru blinked blearily. Yamagishi didn't elaborate, and it wasn't unusual for Akihiko to go out at night. He probably needed to vent, and taking someone with him would be the safest option. "They would have their reasons for going out. Maybe they're hunting Shadows?"
"That's what I thought Akihiko-senpai meant, but I'm not sure now. You see, Minato-kun's door is... broken."
It took three repetitions for Mitsuru to grasp what Yamagishi meant. Even then Mitsuru still had to go down and see to really understand the situation. But understand she did when she saw it before her: a destroyed door, boot imprints down the split middle. The room behind it was vacant, and Arisato's Evoker was gone. It made sense that the boys had decided to go out and fight Shadows together, but the way Arisato had acted when she saw him, and how Akihiko had been barely holding back during that exchange, gave her a different idea.
After all, if one were offering an invitation, why kick someone's door in?
By now, Takeba and Amada had joined them, both dressed in sleepwear and looking exhausted. Both sobered when they saw the damage done to the poor, innocent door.
"He didn't use a Persona, did he?" Takeba asked.
"If he had, I think the whole wall would have been destroyed," Yamagishi answered.
"His text didn't say anything about this?" Mitsuru inquired. Having a crisis in front of her, however small, offered a sense of familiarity. This was something she could see and deal with right here and now. "He didn't say anything about going out tonight?"
"He hasn't said much of anything to anyone," Takeba pointed out. "And Minato-kun's said even less than that."
"But they'd be okay on their own, wouldn't they?" Amada asked. "It's Akihiko-senpai we're talking about."
"I'll see if I can find them." Yamagishi stepped away from them and summoned Lucia. Within a few minutes, she let the Persona fade away. "They're coming back from Tartarus. I think they were fighting, but they're different."
"Different how?" Mitsuru asked.
"It's hard to explain. Akihiko-senpai feels like he's... more there than before. And Minato-kun seems... lighter than he has."
Yamagishi couldn't elaborate on that point, so they were left waiting in the lobby until the door opened. Mitsuru's icy silence thawed a little when she saw them. Akihiko looked haggard and worn out, but also stronger in his presence. She couldn't attribute it to anything specific, but the space around him in the Dark Hour seemed greater than even the last time they'd fought together. Arisato looked worse than she did – looking wrinkled and ragged and worn through to tearing – but he also seemed to have strength in his stride that hadn't been there earlier in the day.
"Why're you all here?" Akihiko asked, stretching his arms.
"You kicking Arisato's door down woke us up," Mitsuru told him coolly.
"Ah."
She clenched her fists. "That's all you have to say? Without leaving us a message or giving an idea of what you were up to? Why on earth did you kick his door down in the first place?"
"It was necessary," Akihiko responded. "Last-minute plan, and I couldn't take any chances. I'll explain tomorrow."
"You can explain it right now."
"No, because you're going to be busy in a minute." Before Mitsuru could ask what he meant by that, Akihiko walked over to Amada. "You've been working toward getting your Persona back. Sounds like you're having trouble. Let's talk about it; might be something I can help with."
The boy perked up. "Y... you mean it?"
"Yep. Tomorrow morning or right now, I'm free if you want to practice or ask more questions."
"What do you mean I'm going to be busy?" Mitsuru questioned, bridling up for an argument. She hated it when he ignored her!
Akihiko cleared his throat and looked back meaningfully.
Arisato shuffled forward, taking a bracing breath. "Could we talk, Senpai?"
Mitsuru's ire blew out like a candle. Damn Akihiko for being clever; he'd obviously planned this. She turned and fought the urge to turn away; she knew she looked a wreck. "I think we can speak here. What would you like?"
"I mean in private. It's... kind of personal."
Mitsuru couldn't keep the blush down, glancing at the other girls.
"Don't mind us," Takeba told her with a negligent wave of her hand. "You two need your time, and if Akihiko-senpai and Ken are doing male bonding stuff, we'll get out of the way. Besides, it's late."
"I didn't mean..."
"I know, and it's all right. We'll talk when you have the time, okay?"
Mitsuru nodded, feeling lighter. "I'd appreciate that."
Takeba glanced at Arisato next. "She's gone through a lot; you'd better not screw this up."
"I won't," he promised.
"Good. C'mon, Fuuka."
Yamagishi smiled and followed, nodding encouragingly to Mitsuru as they left. Akihiko and Amada were sitting on the couches in the lobby, already in discussion. Mitsuru fidgeted as Arisato stepped up next to her. "Um... if the matter is personal, we could talk about it in my room," she offered.
"That would work."
She wasn't sure how long it took to get to her room, minutes, seconds or hours. They didn't talk on the way up. She wanted to, but what could she say? Now that her ire toward Akihiko had subsided, a nagging voice in the back of her head pointed out just how poorly she'd handled Arisato's reclusiveness – if all it took to help him was kicking his door down, why hadn't she done it herself? Why had she let him suffer? Wasn't he important to her? Why had she let those opportunities slide?
"Sorry we woke you up," Arisato told her, breaking through her barrage of self-blame. "You and everyone else. I don't think anyone could have slept through Akihiko-senpai getting that angry."
She chuckled, surprised she could manage the show of levity. "You might be wrong about that; Iori didn't join us when Yamagishi came and got me."
He smiled, and the sight chased her doubts away. "Point taken."
The rest of the walk to her room was much more comfortable, and she walked closer to him in comfortable silence.
When they were in her parlour – similar to when he talked to her about Shinjiro, she noted – she asked, "What did you want to talk about?"
He cleared his throat, speaking slowly like he was trying to recite a poorly practiced speech. "First off, don't be too hard on Akihiko-senpai. He... well, he did break my door down, but he had a good reason for it."
She raised an eyebrow. "There's a good reason for destruction of property?"
"There is in this case. I needed a kick and he gave it to me, both here and at Tartarus. Whether that excuses him or not, that's up to you, but I'm not sorry he did it."
"Did it help?"
"Yeah. I was... I had a lot going on and I wasn't in a good place. He called me on it and told me what I needed to hear."
"There's more to it than that."
"Sure, but this isn't about me right now."
"I'll take your wishes and circumstances into consideration then, thought it still doesn't excuse him. But what do you mean this isn't about you?"
"I had a lot of stuff hit me when I fought Aigis. Something I thought I'd buried and left behind, turns out it wasn't buried at all."
"I thought as much, especially when you manifested that Persona. Was that spontaneous or has it always been there?"
"It's always been there, and that scared me. It still does, because it's different from my other Personas... but that's not what I wanted to talk about. My point is that when everything hit me, I cut you and the others off. I felt like no one could understand what I was going through, and I shouldn't have done that.
"I shouldn't have left you alone when your dad died, Senpai."
The fragile frame of mind Mitsuru had reassembled cracked in spider webs.
"I felt like it was my fault he died. I could have healed him if I'd pulled back, or if I'd fought Aigis off, or–"
No no no "no it's not your fault," she rushed out, trying for a smile but creaking like fatigued metal beams. "You were fighting when the rest of us couldn't, and with Ikutsuki and everything..."
He smiled – a familiar, haunted expression. "I'm not off the hook that easily. I'm still working it out, but at the very least I owe you an apology."
"For what?"
"For leaving you alone. We're partners – we're together – and I ditched you. I didn't give any thought to what you and the others were going through. My own problems don't excuse that, so I'm sorry."
"It's okay, don't feel like you have to do that."
He took her hand in his, firm and solid as his eyes cleared. "It's not out of obligation. I ran when I shouldn't have, and I'm not doing it again."
She was immediately glad to hear that, but then fear blossomed in her stomach. She could hear the intention behind his words and she tried to pull back. "What... are you saying?"
"That I'm in this with you until the end. That I won't run away. That I won't leave you again." That fear sent her into trembling. When she tugged her hand back, he pulled her close and embraced her. "We're in this together. I promise you that."
Don't don't don't. "You can't say that," she protested, wanting to break free even as her fingers clung to him for something solid. "You can't make that promise; we don't know what's out there."
"I don't care. Whatever comes, I'm fighting to stay here, with you and the others. I won't let it get in my way again, and I'm not going anywhere."
She shook her head against him. "Don't say that," she begged. Everyone broke that promise. They left her or they died. No one who said those words kept to them.
He tightened his arms. "I will say it, because I mean it. I'm not going anywhere, and I'm not running from whatever happens next. I'll be here, and we'll face it together."
"Don't," she begged, "please..."
"I promise you, Senpai. I swear it."
The maelstrom hit. Everything from Father's death, from Ikutsuki and Shinjiro, all the way back to Mother's last smile shattered the dam and overwhelmed her. She wept into his shoulder and couldn't keep track of what she was saying. She tried to deny his promise, tried to let him go, but he held on tight. Exhaustion, guilt and pain blended together and rushed around her; he was the only thing holding her to reality. She wanted to break free of that hold and let it all go. She wanted the pain to stop, wanted no more impossible promises. She cried herself sick and wanted it all to end.
But through it all, he held her. Amidst the storm, he remained firm, and his words persisted in her ears. She feared her doubts would creep in and torment her, that even Arisato would fail under the weight of her inadequacies. But the voices didn't come, held at bay by his solidity and warmth. When she ran out of recriminations and tears, when she'd wept herself empty, he was still there, and before she could say anything else, she'd drifted into untroubled sleep.
Minato shifted on the divan. Just like when he'd held her after Shinjiro-senpai died, he'd wound up cramped on what should have been a luxuriously soft piece of furniture. Instead the couch arms were digging into his side and his hip was going to kill him in the morning.
That was unimportant though. Mitsuru-senpai was finally resting. He continued stroking her hair and holding her, letting her have some measure of comfort. Akihiko-senpai had told him how she'd been pushing herself, how little rest she'd been getting, and Minato could believe it. If his discomfort was all it took for her to sleep properly, he'd suffer it gladly.
Her resting let him take stock of things for the first time since Akihiko-senpai had dragged him from his room. He'd rather he hadn't had that opportunity: He was a mess. He'd been drowning in the mire of despair up to tonight and hadn't had the energy to do very much. His fight with Akihiko-senpai against Thanatos had left him drained, and even before that, he hadn't bathed in days. His clothes stuck to him even without Mitsuru-senpai's tears drying on him, and he couldn't imagine what he looked like right now.
That brought a dry chuckle to his lips. She didn't look much better. In fact, half the reason he'd been able to talk to her tonight had been because she looked so terrible: creased clothes, pale skin, missing meals showing in her thinner frame, and her hair a frizzy, unkempt mess that probably hadn't seen a brush in days. Either she'd looked better earlier today, or he really had been stuck in his own head, because to not notice her appearance was a colossal oversight.
He leaned back as much as he could, staring at the gloom of the ceiling. There was no running from one clear fact: he'd run from her, and he'd hurt her more than anyone else in the dorm could have. He'd pulled back from the brink and gotten through to her, and yet he still didn't know if he'd done anything of merit, or if it would be enough. His own wounds were raw; how could he help Senpai with hers? Would he be able to follow through and help her stand when she needed it? He didn't have any insight into this problem with the Shadows, even though he knew the fight wasn't over, and they were directionless despite their best efforts. What could he offer that the others couldn't?
Senpai squirmed against him in her sleep, then settled. He rubbed her back and sighed. This had to stop. These recriminations and doubts, the same spirals into inadequacy, were where he'd been stuck for days. He wasn't sure if standing by her would be enough – given how little he knew about being a boyfriend, he was certain it wouldn't – but it was all he could do. It was something that he hoped would bring her some peace and help her through this, and it was something only he could do.
He held that fact tight. Beyond everything else with the Shadows and Ikutsuki, the Appriser and Igor and Thanatos and Sakaki, helping Mitsuru-senpai was something he could do right now. And though his failings weren't easily brushed aside from one fight – no matter how intense – he knew he would have to shoulder them and move forward. Because it wasn't just about him; SEES and the rest of this city needed him. Because now that Thanatos was under his control and he could remember his family clearly, their memory had become too precious to tarnish. And because these guys in the dorm who had become his friends, and this girl in his arms who was so much more than that, deserved the best he could do.
"I'll fight for them," he murmured to the empty room, and just saying the words made the reality possible. "For all of us." He'd do what he had to and face whatever the next full moon offered, and he wouldn't lose sight of Akihiko-senpai's lesson to him.
Mitsuru-senpai squirmed again, curling up closer against him. He stroked her cheek and smiled at how she turned her face into his touch.
"For you too, Mitsuru."
In the midst of this vow, between strokes of her hair and thinking of the future, he too nodded off into undisturbed slumber.
And as reality returned, in the darkest hour, the clouds cracked and revealed a lone glimmer of starlight.
Author's Note: I'm curious, whose Shadow hit you harder? Mitsuru's or Akihiko's? Or perhaps Ken's, now that we have a few to compare? Let me know in a review.
