Fandom:: Persona 3
Pair:: Takaya/Jin
Note: Slight/mild spoilers
Under cover of emerald moonshine we stole through the dark streets seeking out whatever we needed. Crowbars and stray bricks dealt away with windows, hammers broke doors and allowed free reign to ransack the city as we saw fit. No sirens, no alarms, nothing to halt our progress. We would survive. We would play the twisted hand fate had dealt by any means they had. Self-preserverance came above morality in a life like this.
Takaya kept me close entering different stores, shoveling backpacks full of food and other supplies. I stood blindly in a corner and waited for our leader, I didn't dare move about the bloody rooms. It was best to just let him guide me until I had the eyes to see again. Bony finegrs seized my wrist and tugged me through the dark halls to stop further inside the store. He ran my fingers over a rack of reading glasses, starting at the bottom and working up in strength. Pair after pair yielded slightly better results. My heart raced at the notion of clear sight. It was amazing to me how people took eyesight for granted.
Finally the platinum haired, pale-skinned body of our leader came into focus before me. I blinked a few times. This was no illusion. I could see! Honestly and truly see! The coffins and bloodflows that littered the streets would have terrified anyone else but I had never been happier to see them. I turned to a mirror, pleased to find they complimented my inner nerd.
"Can you see?" Takaya heaved the backpack on his shoulder.
"Yeah.. I can."
"Good," he motioned for me to follow, "the Hour grows late. We need to get back before they come for us."
"...They?" I followed our leader back into the main thoroughfare. He was silent while we walked, picking up Chidori in a clothing store nearby before heading back towards the industrial district.
"The Shadows... creatures that walk this Hour. We have our persona for protection but... well, we're not on the best terms with them." Takaya's voice was bitter.
"You certainly did your research." Chidori glanced up at him.
He shrugged. "I just listened. I'm not much better off than the two of you."
Takaya led us across the waterfront by Iwatodai station, pointing across the blood sea. My heart froze. There were no words to describe the tower that loomed from where Gekkoukan High stands in the daylight. Massive and ominous over the city dripping fountains of blood from balconies and windows. Twisted faces inset in nightmarish garbles of walls and staircases. There.. there was no description for it but utterly terrifying.
"W-What is that?!" Defying fear I moved closer to get a better look.
"The Tower of Demise." Takaya replied.
"What's it do?" Chidori seemed far less interested in the massive structure.
"Nest of darkness. Home to the harbinger of the end." He grinned. "Where it all will succumb to the Fall."
I looked back, "The Fall?"
"The end of civilization.." his eyes grew dilated, nearly maniacal. Chidori fled to my side, watching our ragged leader gaze in awe of the demonic tower.
"The world will end?" I whispered.
"Yes...." Takaya nodded. "As all things do. We.. we will end as well. Don't you feel it? Feel it in your bones, your blood. Your entire body slowly fading from your grasp. Writhing and withering with each passing second? That is our fate!"
Pain. When didn't I feel pain? Every waking moment I spent suffering with the ache of the persona eating me inside out. He was destroying me.. I could feel it in every inch of me. Fading.. dying... it was horrifying to consider. That I might know the day I die. Accursed foresight.
"We will find purpose to continue.." Takaya brushed my cheek. Skeletal his touch was, but yet... comforting. He understood our pain. We could trust him. I trusted him. I reached out to hold his arm and his hand curved around my cheek. His other hand joined the first and drew us so close our lips near brushed. A jolt lit my heart, a jolt of something I didn't understand. Raw power oozed from the piercing stare swallowing me in their depths. I owed everything to him. He took me from the darkness and held me here, on the sea wall above the swirling crash of blood waves, telling me I was going to die. He gave me the greatest gift all others, my own parents included, had denied me. I was hopeless and lost and he was a ray of hope. False hope, perhaps, but that was far better than nothing. It was inconceivable. It was fate.
I belonged to him.
Pulling away the jolt fled my chest but I was no longer lost. He took us by the hand and we blindly accepted the courses he took. It was the nature of our understanding. He led, we followed. He spoke, we listened. He guided, we would live. Without Takaya there was no life.
"Tomorrow morning we will find a means to support ourselves." The factory door swung shut with a thud as midnight blue returned to the skies. "I trust you two will do well."
I knew we three now had a purpose in life. A dark, morbid purpose. A purpose thrust upon us from which there was no escape but honestly we didn't care enough to question. As long as we served a meaning of any sort we were content.
We would see the world Fall together.