No One Can Answer

[madimpossibledreamer]

...I wrote the title and then forgot to post or fill out the rest.  this has been sitting in my tabs overnight.  there has been too much going on and I do not have enough spoons.  i'd be juggling them if I had any but I do not

Main Points:
Persona 2/Persona 4 crossover (Broken Hero)
Chapter Summary: The Alaya Shrine is as ominous as ever, even for a dungeon.
Word Count: 1869
Rating: Teen
Warnings: Lovecraftian/Silent Hill esque ambient locational malice?  canonical Sudou creepiness?  Jun finally losing his temper?  I feel like I should warn for this part but don't know for what exactly.
Pairing: mild in this part, but Tatsuya/Jun

         It’s clear the children have picked up on his unease, approaching the shrine, because they’ve all slowed down to match his pace. It’s not simply following his footsteps, though—at least, he’s fairly sure it’s not, because the air of oppression is heavy, and he’s pretty sure it’s not just in his head.
         And as they approach, the shrine and surrounding grounds all burst into flames, the ice sculpted into unwavering, steady fire all around them. When he sees the group of children’s ice statues around the shrine, he instantly knows what’s being depicted here without having to look or touch anything, and the feeling is like an icy spear through his own heart.
         “What is this?” Hanamura-kun whispers, completely at a loss for words, but Jun merely moves forward.
         He’s seen this a thousand times, but rarely ever as it had been in reality. True, this will exaggerate parts, but—it’s more likely to be accurate than the lies that had made him Joker.
         He goes and puts his arms around the shoulders of all of them. From here, he can see the sneers on their faces. He knows that’s not what any of them looked like, that they all believed their plan would work because they were children, but to a small, frightened child yelling out that they could not, that they should not do this (maybe he listens to you about morality and legality more than you think, after all, Katsuya), the fact that they were set on this path and would not listen must have been terrifying. He’d felt that too, in his own twisted memories of reality, where it’d been him instead of Tatsuya.
         “can never leave me,” Lisa hisses, honestly sounding a little like a yandere at this point, touching on the same topic as her appearance in Seven Sisters.
         “…terrible Boss,” Eikichi argues, contemptuous, and that wouldn’t hurt as much if Jun didn’t know Tatsu-chan as well as he did. That all of this is cruel barbs targeted right to Tatsuya’s soul, that he’d confided, after his confession, that he was unsure about his own leadership ability and didn’t want to let all of them down. That he’s the type to hold to his own morals, but with all of his friends against him would have questioned himself regardless.
         “no place for one who can’t keep his promises” Jun’s voice sounds so calm and uncaring. Like he’d just discard Tatsuya as a friend because of that.
         At this, the anger he’d been holding back breaks free in complete and utter rage. It had hurt the first time, to know that, as the Joker, he had brought so much pain to his friends. The fact that another facsimile of himself is doing the same once more, digging into Tatsu-chan’s already bleeding heart, is too much. “If anything, he’s the only one who kept his promise! We’re the ones who—” he chokes on the words, soundlessly calling on his Persona. “Out of my way!” Chronos blasts them all out of the way, and they shatter, but this time it looks like blood oozes out onto the ground. He doesn’t pause, and doesn’t even bother with the door, either, blowing it completely off its hinges. Somewhere behind him he hears the children call out, but he doesn’t bother with that, either.
         “Tatsu-chan! Where are you?” he calls, only to find the small child, hugging his knees, tucked into a corner of the shrine. Maya-nee is next to him.
         Carefully, with tears in his eyes, he drops to his knees instantly, hugging them both as well as he can.
         “be all right,” Maya comforts him, and that’s unusual enough compared to all the voices that he suspects this is something very similar to what actually happened, with Maya-nee desperately pushing down her own fear to comfort Tatsuya.
         “I don’t want you to go.” It’s the voice of a child, oh-so-nostalgic. “They all hate me now. Without you, I’ll be—nothing.”
         Knowing Maya-nee, she probably says something else reassuring, something like “Of course they don’t hate you,” but he doesn’t get to hear that, because she’s already said her piece, and there’s a terrifying laugh he recognizes, even as the other two statues break again. He runs back outside, knocking over some of the children who had followed him.
         Jun throws a flower at the figure instantly when he sees it, not wishing to approach, which is apparently enough to set it off. “All witches must burn!” it calls, laughing amidst the screeching about voices.
         Tatsuya’s ice sculpture is lying on the ground. Sudou is standing over him, katana stabbed into his back, and Jun never knew about this. Tatsuya had never spoken of this day, never mentioned the scar on his back, never mentioned that he might have died and Jun might not have known or cared, not with the poisonous lies whispered in his ears—
         Maya-nee lies on the steps. The flames rise ever higher. And then something happens that makes Jun and the audience he’s entirely forgotten gasp.
         A Persona rises from Tatsuya’s form. Logically he knows it must have been Apollo, but what appears this time looks nothing like Apollo’s red armor. Unlike all of these ice statues, it feels hyperreal, more present, even, than Jun and the children watching—because it’s not made of ice just like that echo of Nyarlathotep, Jun’s mind analyzes, chilling in its conclusion. The Persona is covered in a cloak, what looks like snow swirling around it, and underneath the hood Jun catches just the slightest glimpse of eyes that actually might be twin balls of clear ice. Flames of ice appear on Sudou’s face, and he shrieks, turning and stabbing the same spot once more before he moves off, with the same jerky movements, into the underbrush.
         “What Persona is that?” Seta-kun, at his side, seeking battlefield knowledge as befit a leader, and even his authority-filled tone hushes as the Persona turns to look at them, alien eyes full of—
         It’s not malice. Malice can be fought. It’s not even acknowledgement. It’s the total indifference of hypothermia, the awe and desolation of those places on Earth where the ground never sees the light of day, buried under ice and snow that may not have been trodden by human shoe. And then it blinks out of existence, which is even more troubling.
         If he’s not mistaken, that’s Nova Kaiser, but the skill had only ever belonged to Apollo. It does, essentially, prove that the Persona is Tatsuya’s, but he’s never seen this one and he’s fairly sure no one else has, either.
         When they had been drawn into the Joker’s schemes (as if he has the right to talk about this pain he caused his friends as if it wasn’t at his own hands), like the others Tatsuya had only had Apollo, so this scene wasn’t even quite accurate, portraying something that isn’t even due to the skewed point of view of a Shadow—but what could it mean? Why is it real, unlike almost everything else in this icy hellscape, on its own, with no trace of Tatsuya in sight?
         “I’ve never seen it before,” he admits, voice still quiet as if they could be overheard (as if whatever it was would care). “And Tatsuya had me help him when it came to fusions. He was a genius, but I’m not sure he ever trusted his own instincts completely, only defaulted to his own council when he felt he had no choice. I saw most of the options Igor offered at the time. It’s possible he’s picked it up since. He’s worked on his own for a long time.”
         Amagi-san and the others join them, Teddie-kun a little out of breath, somehow, which is odd for a being without lungs. “You don’t think so. You think it has something to do with all of this.”
         It’s not as though it’s impossible for Tatsuya to end up with a Persona with a Bufu skill. Hell, with Skill Cards, such a skill could be added to any Persona whatsoever. But that innate connection to the cold, as depicted by this dungeon and the wordless expression of the feeling Tatsuya has that he’s had this Persona for forever, by its presence in this diorama for them to view? Tatsuya’s cold, distant, frozen, unfeeling persona he presents to the world, as if nothing matters to him anymore, solely because he’s one good tap away from shattering completely? Whatever devil’s bargain he had made to allow this world to exist?
         He nods grimly at her. “I’m almost certain.”
         Hanamura-kun joins them, gingerly holding out a higanbana flower like he’ll disintegrate on the spot simply from holding it. “All right, I’m guessing this doesn’t mean death for once.”
         Jun’s smile in return is reflexive, nothing more. He takes the red spider lily carefully, reverently, another message specifically for him from the man he loves. “If it is, it is merely metaphorical. The innocent child he had been dying and becoming replaced by the sullen teen—or, perhaps, that leader choosing to kill himself, sacrifice everything he is, for another who could protect everyone. In this case, though, I would suspect abandonment and lost memory to be prominent, given the relevance of the shrine for us all. We all forgot what happened here for so long…” But, of course, Jun didn’t get to live in blissful ignorance as long as the others, memories twisted by hate. Even then, though, he’d categorize it as forgetting, albeit a malicious kind, one where he’d willfully forgotten his own sin to blame it all on the others. “Maya-nee was moving away, and we didn’t want her to leave. In our childish simplicity, we believed locking her away in the shrine would prevent her from leaving us forever, and since Tatsuya refused to agree, we locked him in too.”
         “And then the arsonist came…” Satonaka-chan gasps, and Jun nods solemnly, acknowledgement of his own crime, perhaps, atoning if only in some small part with his easy confession.
         “We never learned what actually happened, not as children, but then, why would we look? The shrine burned down, and we believed locking them in would keep them from leaving.” The slight sob catches even him by surprise, and he follows that up with a “My apologies,” as if hearing an upsetting story is on any level with their sin, innocent though it was.
         He feels something nudge at his elbow, and turns to see Teddie fishing around in his innards, only to pull out an object to help proudly. “Ta-da! A hand-ker-chief!” he announces in a way that can only make Jun smile, despite the circumstances.
         “Thank you, Teddie-kun,” he acknowledges, accepting it solemnly.
         “Where to next?” Hanamura-kun asks, dancing in place in his restlessness, and Jun considers the question solemnly, even while knowing there can only be one answer.
         “Mt. Katatsumuri,” he answers, before feeling something inside twinge. That seems wrong, even as he could not possibly have gotten the name of one of the most famous mountains in his hometown wrong. Still, the children seem not to have noticed, as they follow him once more without hesitation.