Disclaimer: I do not own Persona 3—or any version of the Persona series, really. I just own this rather shameless piece of work.

Other Notes: Nameless "she" point-of-view. Many apologies. She hasn't been named yet (in-story; I have a name picked out already after much trial and error), so it'll be a little confusing for a bit. And while this and the next chapter focus on her POV, this story will actually heavily focus on Minato's. I just suck at writing kids so I'm unashamedly glossing over those growing years here.

Symbiosis

Chapter Two

It was like waking up in the middle of drowning.

Granted, it took her a while to realize just what the hell was going on. She woke up in some dark space that felt completely empty and yet totally surrounded her, like water.

It was disorienting to say the least and even when she moved it did not feel natural. She felt sluggish and everything felt hazy, like when she slept for too long. The fact that her vision remained dark even when she "opened her eyes", so to speak, did not help matters at all.

Where was she?

The space around her flickered, but she was too disoriented to really react. It was only when she heard a quiet, almost shy, "Good morning" that she froze.

She did not know that voice and yet it was so familiar. She turned, or tried to, to find the source. No one appeared, but she did manage to find something else out of the endless darkness.

It looked like a very wide screen, only it was more ovular than rectangular like she was used to. It was also much larger than she was judging by how it towered over her even as she approached it. The image in it was of the interior of a car, taken from the backseat. Two people sat up front, a man and a woman.

That was… strange. And worrying. She didn't understand what she was looking at or why she was being shown it. So why…?

"My name is Minato Arisato," the voice continued eventually, still hushed like a whisper and yet so very clear. Though she still could not see the owner, the tone and pitch told her that it was a young boy. "It's nice to finally meet you."

She stumbled back when the woman in the screen turned around in her seat, peering around. Her eyebrow was raised and she had a stern little frown—the same kind she had gotten from her mother when she was getting scolded. "Minato? What're you whispering about back there? You should be asleep."

Oh god.

The woman was looking at the screen, at her, but wasn't addressing her. The woman was talking to the boy—to this Minato—and, behind the screen in that dark void, she was… she could see what he saw?

She turned around in the dark space and was met by emptiness. There was nothing there but her and the screen and yet she felt like she was already making the connections—even though she really did not want to.

Don't worry, it's okay, said Minato, but outwardly, through the screen, she could also hear him reply, "Nothing, Mom."

You just woke up, so you're just groggy, he continued in this other voice. It echoed against the blackness, not sounding like it came from any one direction but rather all of them at once. Don't worry, I'll explain everything later.

She felt like freaking out, could feel a hysterical scream bubbling up in her throat, but there was something about this boy that kept her from releasing it. That odd familiarity. It was like it was telling her that he was safe. That she could trust him.

And then the new side-image of a bridge through a car window went green and she felt herself blanch (as much as a mental construct could blanch).

She knew that image of a green-tinted world. She had loved it as much as the idea of it terrified her.

The Dark Hour.

The hidden time between one day and the next. It lasted much longer than an actual hour and plunged the waking world into a time of Shadows and despair. The only ones capable of traversing the Dark Hour with their consciousness intact were those that had "the potential" or some sick scientific experimentation done on them to simulate the talent.

She still didn't know exactly what was going on, but from what she deduced she was stuck in this kid's head and—

Minato.

He said he was…

"Minato," she said, voice trembling. The void—his mind—flickered around her with what she felt was surprise. She didn't want to think about what it meant to be able to read his emotions like that. "Minato. Minato… Arisato… you are…"

She knew him. Information flowed from his mind to hers, surrounding her and adding to her outside knowledge. It should have felt like an invasion, or at least something foreign, but it was a seamless transference. His mind to hers, like they were one in the same.

He was Minato Arisato. His parents were Seiichi and Midori Arisato, but Minato only ever called them "Dad" and "Mom". He was six years old. He attended Port Island Private Elementary. His grades were average. He liked taking naps. His favorite hobby was reading. He liked dogs. His favorite color was blue. His current favorite food was oden; his least favorite was tamagoyaki—

There was so much information that it was almost overwhelming, but she was fixated on one thing.

He was Minato Arisato. He was six and he was experiencing the Dark Hour in a car on a bridge.

"Oh my god…" She felt sick. Could he hear her? Please, let him hear her! "Minato. Minato, get out of the car. Get out of the car now."

"Why?" Minato asked, sounding puzzled. The screen, his vision, moved to show her the outside and she flinched at the sight of the green, green world and random puddles of blood. "We're on the street. That's dangerous."

Her thoughts whirred.

Persona 3 started when its protagonist was around sixteen or seventeen, instigated by Death leading him back to Tatsumi Port Island, where he used to live. The game's plot specifically stated that the time of the Dark Hour officially began ten or so years prior to the game's beginning, when Minato was about six or seven. He lost his parents in a "car accident" during the Dark Hour, due to them getting caught in the crossfire in a fight between Aigis and Death, who escaped captivity an unknown amount of time after it had been split into twelve other Shadows in the incident that turned Gekkoukan High School into Tartarus.

Minato had to be there, but he had to survive.

"Please, Minato! You have to get out—" A roar interrupted her and it was all she could do to not panic further as Minato's gaze swiveled around to locate it. "Oh my god."

She saw it before he did, not much more than a blur in the distance. When Minato focused on it, she could see the incomplete Death hovering over the street, sword in one hand as it flew in their direction. Aigis was in hot pursuit, opening fire whenever the opportunity was presented to her.

It happened so fast, two inhuman forces clashing and, before she knew it, Death was knocked into the air, swiftly falling in their direction.

No, Minato had to survive! He had to get out!

"Minato!"

Minato gasped as he opened his eyes. Shakily, he looked around, wincing at the pain at his neck and sides. He paled when he faced forward and saw flames dancing over the crushed front of the car, just beyond the cracked and broken window. The boxes were gone and his parents were back, but…

"M—Mom?" He reached out, shaking her arm gently. She didn't respond. When he pulled away, his hands were red and sticky. His breathing hitched as he looked to the driver's seat. "Dad…?"

No answer.

Whimpering, Minato curled up. What should he do? What could he do?

In the back of his mind, his Other let out a shaky breath.

"Other!" he cried, relieved. "Other, Mom and Dad…! They're…!" He felt his eyes burn with tears and tried valiantly to wipe them away. "They're…"

There was a moment of silence from his Other before she said, "…I know. I know, Minato, but… you've got to get out of the car. Don't think about them right now, just—just get out of the car, okay?"

Minato didn't reply and stared ahead, unfocused, at the unmoving bodies of his parents. A tendril of worry trickled through from his Other.

"Minato? Minato, please move…"

Mechanically, reluctantly, Minato obeyed. He fumbled with his seatbelt and unlocked it before reaching blindly for the door handle, unable to look away from his parents. His body ached, but he was relatively unharmed, somehow. The door was hard to push open, but he managed.

He stumbled out, backing away from the car at his Other's urging. The flames were mesmerizing, but he found his gaze drawn away when distant sounds caught his ears.

It was the blonde girl and the ghost—the thing that killed his parents. They were still fighting.

Only now the girl was losing. Badly.

His Other made a choking sound. "Minato, I'm so—sorry."

He was about to ask why when the blonde girl turned, the ghost following her, and zoomed straight towards him.

Just before everything went dark, Minato was swept away in a horrible feeling from his Other that he couldn't quite describe.

(Much, much later, Minato would recognize the feeling as resignation.)

The fact that Minato was not awake during the sealing of Death was both relieving and utterly terrifying.

Relieving, because for all her morbid fascination with the art of sealing eldritch abominations into little boys, she probably would not have been able to stomach watching it happen up close.

Terrifying, because the moment Minato passed out, she lost contact with the outside world, too. The long time in the dark scared her beyond reason that something had gone wrong. And even though it had been a good way of learning that she could stay awake while Minato was not, and that time flowed differently in his mind, she would have appreciated it a lot more if she had simply been knocked out as well.

She had never been good at the waiting game.

Still, the break gave her time to analyze her situation more thoroughly, so she supposed she couldn't complain too much. While "waking up" from what she thought was a simple sleep only to find out that she had gotten herself locked in the mind of a fictional little boy wasn't exactly a nice revelation, she found herself accepting it with a calm that surprised even her.

Honestly speaking, what bothered her most about it all was that she couldn't remember how she got into this situation in the first place. If she had been reborn, or meant to be reborn, how had she died? All she could think about was the wide gap that separated her past from the present—the last memory she could recall was walking the path from her university to her car and then… she slept and woke up.

It was almost clinical, the way she thought about it. Just "Oh, I'm not in my body anymore. Okay. And oh, I now inhabit the body of a boy who shouldn't really exist while he's still inhabiting it, too. Okay."

…She knew she was more of a passive individual, but wasn't there a limit to that?

She couldn't find it in her to care much more than that, though. Maybe reading all those rebirth fanfiction helped ease her into the idea. She had always loved the concept of the fantastic being secretly real, of other worlds existing, so maybe this proof was all she really needed to convince herself she wasn't simply going crazy.

Regardless, she decided not to dwell on the subject much more, content to let the knowledge slip around her freely and keep her pride on not freaking out. Since she knew where she was and whose life she was (technically) inhabiting, there were many more things she had to worry about than past lives and the cycle of rebirth in the afterlife.

And so, she focused her time and energy on getting used to her new surroundings.

It was probably a good thing that she had first woken up when she had, when Minato's mind contained just her and itself. It gave her a base as to what belonged and what… didn't.

Like the door that sprouted up some time after Minato passed out, ominously chained up with the Roman numeral XIII printed prominently in white on its sleek black surface.

She couldn't feel anything from it right now, but she was quite certain that it was the seal on Death. It was nice to know that there was at least some form of barrier between Minato's mind and the Shadow. She didn't want to think of what would've happened if it had been allowed to roam around, trapped but unhindered.

Death's door (and wasn't that a funny thought?) was the only thing that popped up while Minato was asleep and, after carefully examining it, she was satisfied that it wouldn't spontaneously collapse or break open at an inopportune moment. She knew that as Minato grew, Death's seal would grow weaker and allow it to influence his subconscious mind to convince him to return to Tatsumi Port Island, but the chains looked sturdy enough to hold for a while yet.

She had time to prepare, in the case that Death's eventual release would result in her untimely (second?) demise.

Grim acceptance in place, she decided to ignore Death's door for now and instead concentrate on Minato. Despite the appearance of Death's door, his mind remained stable enough. There were occasional flickers of emotions while he slept, and something told her that if she focused hard enough she could reach a deeper level of his mind where he dreamt, but she refrained from prying. He had been through a lot, so she would let him rest as much as possible without her experimenting.

It was a tense wait, though. With her presence in his mind, she had no guarantee that something hadn't gone wrong with the sealing anyway. It would be horrible to find out that she caused him to go into a coma trying to house multiple entities at once—although, Minato did have the "potential" and, even more, was deemed worthy of the power of a Wild Card. Perhaps even as a kid he was naturally inclined to hosting multiple beings in his mind and soul.

Those thoughts did little to comfort her, though. It was only when Minato finally woke up to find himself in a hospital room, which she judged to hopefully be only several hours later, that she breathed a sigh of relief.

"Other?" he whispered. He sounded so small and frail.

Now that she could think of it better, she wondered why he called her that. But it was a question she could save for another time.

She did her best to convey a smile to him. "Hey, Minato."

Minato didn't say anything immediately, instead looking around at his surroundings. She watched as he took in the sterile hospital room, gaze not lingering on anything in particular. She listened with him as he heard the beeping of heart monitors, one in his room and others echoing from rooms down the hall.

Then he laid back down and closed his eyes and—

She blinked when he appeared, almost popping into existence before her as if it was completely natural. She didn't have time to question him or his ability to enter his own mind, however, when he spotted her and, after a moment's hesitation, ran forward. He was hugging her in the next instant, his form barely taller than her waist.

His mind flickered around them, pouring in feelings of such desperate, heartrending grief and fear that she sank to her knees. She couldn't see herself in this dark world, but he apparently recognized her easily enough to take comfort in her presence, crying openly in her arms. His sobs echoed strangely in the outside world, hidden by his closed eyes.

She held him as gently yet as firmly as she could, anchoring him and feeling utterly useless.

It took a while for Minato to calm down, his tears slowing only to pick up again as he thought of his parents. She waited patiently, and was grateful for the lack of true form in the mindscape, as kneeling for so long probably would've resulted in numb legs if she had a physical body.

Eventually, he settled and unwound from her, stepping back as he tried to stem his own tears.

She wanted to say something, anything, but could only think of the standard responses. The useless questions like "Are you okay?" or "How are you feeling?" as if it wasn't obvious.

Sighing, she decided to settle for petting his little mind-self's head, hoping that the comfort she was trying to convey got through to him.

After a few moments more, Minato was the one who broke the silence. "Other, what're we gonna do…?"

Hell if she knew.

She wondered what she could say to put it lightly that she had no idea. She had an inkling of what he would go through based on what she could remember the game saying about his past, but there were no concrete details as far as she knew.

The protagonist of Persona 3, no matter the name he was given, was rather… undeveloped as a character. He was meant to be empty, so players could fill in their own ideas of who he was and how he acted. There were manga, sure, and movies she hadn't read or seen, but it seemed universal that his most defining characteristic was, ironically, having no character at all. Or so his character description in Persona Q had jokingly claimed.

That was "Minato Arisato". Or "Makoto Yuuki". The already grown protagonist with a mysterious past on a path set for him by something far bigger than himself.

But this Minato was, at the moment, none of that. He was still at the beginning of that road, which she had a feeling she wouldn't be able to fight with Death's door literally at her back. But there was still so much uncertainty. He was malleable.

"Well," she said lightly, "you'll probably be taken in by a relative…" Or was it just straight to the orphanage? "Some people might ask you questions about what happened before you get to leave, though."

The boy tensed, and his emotions trickled in all around them. They overlapped and mixed, muddling together until she couldn't pick them apart from one another. But she got the gist of it, boiling it all down to reluctance and an emphatic no.

She petted his hair more, letting him settle back down, before gently shooing him off to rest. "You need it, Minato. Go sleep."

He mumbled something in a half-protest, but she had a feeling that his little catharsis had more than tired him out. The mental emotional purge, coupled with just waking up from such a traumatic incident, must have left him exhausted.

As he faded from sight, she found it interesting how she could feel his mind and emotions so clearly, but not any physical sensations like pain or tiredness. Though they technically shared a body, or so she believed, she seemed to be completely locked in his head. If she tried, would she be able to influence the outside world through him? Or was she strictly limited to his mindscape?

"One step at a time," she murmured, sighing. If ever. The thought of trying to control a little boy's body like a puppet made her kind of sick, actually.

A wordless thought drifted to her, questioning.

"Go to sleep, Minato."

There was no actual reply, but she caught a slip of feeling that was probably meant to be a bidding of goodnight. Like the mental equivalent of incoherent mumbling.

That thought, despite her situation and despite his shaky future, made her smile.