What's Holding Me Back

[madimpossibledreamer]

??? Okay, anyone wanna explain to me why the Joker used a flower symbol of a yellow iris? The hanakotoba I’m getting from multiple sites are ‘loyalty, good news’, and occasionally some other positive things? The closest thing is maybe knowledge, like, seek enlightenment and after you find it I’ll take my revenge, or mayyybe at a stretch ‘finally my day of revenge has come, this is good news for me’, but, like??? From its place in the story I always kind of assumed it was a similar meaning to the orange lily.

Main Points:
Persona 2/Persona 4 crossover (Broken Hero)
Chapter Summary: There aren't Shadows in the Aerospace Museum, either, but it seems more dangerous than the police station, all the same.
Word Count: 2620
Rating: Teen
Pairing: Jun/Tatsuya (only really past in this part), hinted also possibly past Jun/Sudou?

 

          Jun’s starting to feel like some sort of tour guide as they approach the ‘seaside’. And the silence is ominous, and his own thoughts, particularly with his concern about Tatsuya, aren’t helping. He may as well play the part. “This is the Aerospace Museum. It’s pretty popular for class trips.”
          Amagi-chan, of all people, claps her hands. “Does it have a working fighter plane?” ...He may be slightly concerned about her. Perhaps they have a little more in common than he’d previously surmised.
          “I don’t believe so, but it did have a working blimp on the roof, according to rumors.” She looks intrigued, and it actually seems like the children may be catching on to the ‘rumors becoming reality’ thing faster than Eikichi had at the time, not that he’ll mention that to his friend at any point.
          Hanamura-kun jogs a little to examine the front of the building, like this really is some sort of school trip after all. “New exhibit: Failure. That’s not ominous at all.” Hanamura-kun’s sarcasm as he reads the sign is ridiculously thick. But then, given his own Shadow, he’s probably sensitive to this sort of thing.
          They all startle as the door closes, though—none of them had even noticed it wasn’t fully shut. Jun and Seta-kun exchange glances before Jun rushes forward, grabbing the door handle, and he’s not prepared for what he sees on the other side.
          It takes him a moment. That’s Tatsuya, though in the dim lighting he looks more like a ghost than an actual person, but he definitely doesn’t remember that red motorcycle jacket, and his childhood crush looks too young—
          Wait. Red?
          “Tatsu-chan! Wait!” he calls, reaching out a hand like it’ll do any good from this distance, but the ghost or whatever it is doesn’t even glance backward, just takes a deep breath, unsheathes the katana, and strides forward into the darkness with the determination Jun remembers.
          “That might be a trap. Don’t rush off,” Seta-kun instructs—like Jun doesn’t know that. He shrugs off the urge to snap. Seta-kun is only doing his job as leader, after all. Instead, he nods politely, with a smile on his face, and readies the flower, just in case this particular location happens to have Shadows inside.
          The layout on the inside is nothing like what he remembers, so perhaps he won’t serve as such a good tour guide, after all. The entry hall resembles the area they had met Philemon and Nyarlathotep, with the columns and circular structure. Fortunately, the door behind them has not disappeared. Carved ice pathways lead off in the other three directions, though there’s no thought to safety through hand railings and the entire structure, like before, seems to be located over a void. Instead of the usual exhibits Jun remembers from multiple visits in his youth, there’s yet more ice sculptures, though these are clearly set up as dioramas, with the usual rope separating them from the pathway, although given how far they are from the path and the fact that they, too, are suspended in the void, it’s a rather useless feature. They aren’t close enough to make out much of the specifics, however.
          Seta-kun swallows, clutching the katana harder, and for good reason. Perhaps he’s afraid of heights, or perhaps he’s simply reasonable about the whole thing—Jun has no fear of heights, and even so his stomach feels a little queasy, staring at the abyss with no way of knowing how long he’ll fall, or if there even is an end.
          “Hey, how many of those Goho-Ms do we have? I want one,” Satonaka-chan suggests, making a face, and that’s a really good idea.
          “Four. I’ll keep one and hold Yosuke’s hand, and you and Yukiko can do the same,” Seta-kun decides, working out the math and logistics in his head. For someone who’s new at being a leader, he’s already showing such promise. “We fall, we take it instantly. No point in testing that out.”
          “You won’t catch me arguing,” Hanamura-kun agrees with a shudder, accepting Seta-kun’s hand without a single protest. It’s somewhat adorable, really.
          Jun accepts his with a smile, a murmur of thanks, and waits to ensure all of the children are, in some way, protected. As anxious as he is to continue, to complete this entire ordeal and rescue Tatsuya from his suffering, he doesn’t want to sacrifice anyone to achieve his goal. Rather a change from his time as Joker.
          Teddie protests that as he has no muscles, he probably couldn’t even make it work and therefore wants to stay at the entrance, here. Which means they have a spare, but Hanamura-kun doesn’t insist he takes it, content to let Seta-kun continue to hold his hand, and the same occurs with Amagi-chan and Satonaka-chan. Jun ensures that they know how to use it and it’s fairly secure before they continue.
          At least the walkway isn’t slippery like actual ice, or this might be a more dangerous appearance than any actual Shadows the dungeon might throw at them. The first to the right is an intricately carved figure that Jun takes altogether too long to recognize—it’s him, or rather, it’s him wearing the Joker mask and outfit. It’s his own actions that haunt him, but then, he hadn’t spent too long staring at a mirror. It makes perfect sense that Tatsuya would remember such detail—and he’s fairly certain it is Tatsu-chan actually remembering this, rather than being a quirk of the dungeon itself. Perhaps he hadn’t been merely being polite, when he’d said he might have become Joker in Jun’s place, rather than hating him. Jun...had been in a dark place, back then, but he’d actually longed for Tatsuya to declare his hatred, to legitimize it in some way, for if even Tatsuya couldn’t forgive him, then his own self-hatred was justified. He was, of course, grateful afterward, though he had also not taken it well in the aftermath of the breakup.
          “With the clown motif, this is you as the Joker?” Amagi-chan asks, curious, not judging, and Satonaka-chan inches closer to her, perhaps unconsciously.
          “Yes,” he admits quietly, reaching down to press the watch into his skin as if it’s going to slip off his wrist and fall into the abyss. And—hmm, that’s an interesting point. He hadn’t actually worn the watch as Joker. Perhaps it served as more of an anchor than he’d thought.
          To the right is a familiar masked figure suspended in repose, a butterfly midflight circling, and yet the more he looks odd details emerge. Like, for example, what appear to be hands reaching out of the nonexistent base clutching at the figure, and isn’t that the imprint of another of the hands on the figure’s own arm, and—
          Wait. The butterfly mask looks as if it could slip off at any moment, and between the outline of a cheek visible and the torso—what the hell. That’s Tatsuya, behind Philemon’s mask. That makes no sense, but—well, at least that might explain why the grudge toward Philemon, given the self-hatred his Shadow had displayed on the TV, but while it might hold some sort of meaning for Tatsuya directly, Jun is entirely clueless, and the statue itself holds no further answers.
          “And that’s Philemon, I believe. The master of the Velvet Room, though I haven’t seen him for some years,” he continues, and Seta-kun looks closer, interested—but then, he’s the only one of the children who can apparently even enter. They’d tried, Hanamura-kun becoming more and more frustrated with every failed attempt.
          As expected, Hanamura-kun scowls. “I still don’t understand what the hell that place even is—” He’s interrupted as he takes a step and something crunches. He lifts a foot carefully, Seta-kun watching with concern (for his balance, most likely), and then, gingerly, with his free hand retrieves...a mask? “Neo Featherman?” he asks blankly, and—yes, based on the shape, that is indeed a Featherman mask carved in ice, although the fragments had made it difficult to place at first.
          “The original, of course. Featherman R. One of the games we played when we were children,” Jun corrects, voice a little choked up, and Hanamura-kun nods, carefully setting the mask back down and stepping around it.
          They have to walk, carefully, a decent way before the next statues come into view, and Jun gasps. To the left is another moment captured crystal clear, as if from memory, but Maya’s never been stabbed, has she? Jun’s head hurts a little. Yet she lies there, a mockery of the Pieta, Maya dead or dying in a crying Tatsuya's arms, all the more gruesome for the lack of color. This, to Jun’s recollection, has never happened, and yet, if it had, he can guarantee he would never shake off the image, and Tatsuya has been haunted by it for so long. The children don’t know who she is, of course, but even they quiet past their already disturbed hush. Jun has to look away.
          It’s Satonaka-chan who steps on and breaks a mask this time, though she makes no effort to retrieve it and her apology seems more instinctual than purposeful.
          Unfortunately, the other side isn’t much better, a twisted version of one of Tatsuya and Katsuya’s senpai at the police station, a woman named Miyashiro. Half of her body is normal and recognizable—in fact, Jun had a conversation with her as she discussed her younger brother graduating university not too long ago. The other half of her body is deformed, larger and more hunched, any trace of clothes ripped away, but the hair is much longer, wrapping around like choking vines.
          “Who are they?” Seta-kun asks quietly.
          “Maya-nee and Miyashiro-san, but the last I saw them, both were fine. I’m not sure what any of this means,” Jun confesses, feeling a hint of guilt as if he’s supposed to have all the answers. He’s also experiencing the urge to throw up, and while he could do so, as it’s highly unlikely any janitorial staff would be required to mop up the void, it’s probably for the best that they simply hurry on.
          The next two aren’t quite so visceral, and Jun actually recognizes the one on the left again—a model of the Grand Cross, with the planets marked by crystal skulls. He probably would have no idea what it was if he hadn’t been so obsessed with it as the Joker. He does flinch a little as a mask crunches underfoot, although from the feel it’s entirely shattered, so there’s no point in even thinking about retrieving it, if there’s any use for them in the first place. On the right, though—vats full of something, breaking and spilling out, and an angry dragon curling around and ready to attack? If there’s any parallel there, and going by the exhibit name of failures, they’d...failed to stop it? But that’s not true.
          “Man, I knew a bit from the stories, but I’m really glad the weirdest we’ve had to deal with is Shadows and a world inside the TV,” Hanamura-kun whispers, and Satonaka-chan nods fervently.
          No point in worrying overly about it. Perhaps the entire dungeon is designed more for Tatsuya’s torment than for any outsiders to understand. The precise wording of the Shadow’s broadcast might have been intended for Jun, specifically, but nothing had gone out of its way to fill in any gaps for any potential outside audience. Perhaps it’s best to move on.
          As they enter the area, there’s an audible crunch, and Seta-kun casts an apologetic glance Jun’s way. Which should mean there’s one mask remaining intact. He dutifully looks to the left. A tower in miniature, with little design consistency. It’s possibly Tartarus, given Katsuya’s description and the fact that Jun knows Tatsuya had been deployed to help in a Persona-related incident, then.
          On the right, again, is another situation Jun has no context for, a teenager he’s never seen before mid-gesture performing what is probably some kind of spell using their Persona, though the Persona isn’t visible and it’s not one the kadōka’s familiar with, either. It’s likely one—or maybe both, given some of the symmetry with the other ‘exhibits’—are other incidents for which Tatsu-chan felt guilty, but at least for these he suspects it’s due to the fact they probably occurred after Tatsuya had begun working on his own. He merely shakes his head at Seta-kun’s questioning glance.
          As they keep walking, as if to shatter Jun’s expectations, it opens back out on another room, if larger than the entrance hall, with a giant, intricate sculpture taking up the entire half opposite the entrance. At least there’s much less chance of anyone falling off. On the left is Nyarlathotep, thankfully not in his Kashihara form, and on the right is a tall figure in robes with three eyes of different colors in a vertical line on the face, which he doesn’t recognize. At Nyarlathotep’s feet are the shards of a broken mask, all too small to piece together into a cohesive whole.
          And then something else happens that’s completely new, because Nyarlathotep starts moving and taking on color and they’re nowhere near the statue. “Do you wish for answers, Jun?” It...still sounds like him. Like his father, who’s alive—
          why had he thought him to be dead—?
          He’s about to speak up, to loudly declare that he needs and wants absolutely nothing from the creature masquerading as his father, when the specter of Tatsuya appears in their midst, again, this time within arm’s reach, glaring and refusing to yield an inch. Next to Nyarlathotep, a ghost of Sudou appears, laughing. “How many times I gotta spank your ass before you cry quits, brat?” he taunts, sneering. And he doesn’t sound like the statues, either, fractured and incomplete.
          “I never will,” Tatsuya responds, casual and firm. “I exist to burn you and everything you stand for to the ground.”
          “The True Joker will return to me,” Sudou continues, and the way Tatsuya’s face twists in disgust mirrors the feelings in Jun’s heart.
          Loathsome. Repulsive. Had he really encouraged such feelings in Sudou? He’d like to think not, that he hadn’t betrayed Tatsuya’s and Maya-nee’s memory in such a way, but with his memories twisted and Tatsuya being framed as Maya-nee’s killer...perhaps he had.
          “The Joker you knew was an illusion conjured up by none other than Him, with Jun trapped into playing a part,” Tatsuya’s voice is level, controlled like the blade he wields, and Jun’s head snaps back up, breath caught in his throat. “I’ll never let you nor He get your filthy hands on him ever again.” And then he actually turns to Jun, whose heart catches in his throat. “You may want to run, but don’t worry. I won’t let you fall.”
          He may be seethrough, but somehow this Tatsuya is more present, more real than he’s been in years, and Jun’s eyes fill with tears. “Tacchi,” he breathes, and the man he loves meets his entreaty with a smile.
          “This isn’t for you, but if you want to continue, you’ll need this.” He hands over an orange lily, and the parallels to his actions as Joker burn. It’s probably good that he clarified it wasn’t meant for Jun, though. While the kadōka has little doubt he was not actually meant to follow, no matter what the Shadow said, declaring him an enemy and swearing hatred and revenge would be a little too far. “Now go!” he yells.
          “There’s fire!” Satonaka-chan cries out in alarm, and Seta-kun takes one last look at Sudou and Suou beginning to trade blows before abruptly retreating.