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This had been far, far beyond the realm of what Tatsuya had wished for.
The memories unfolding before him wiped away any ounce of deniability he had up until now. Those memories- something ten years too old to be new, but too sudden and jarring to be old- that haunted the deepest depths of his subconscious, to the point of becoming something like metaphysical strings puppeting him, dictating his every action and every thought as he narrowly avoided recalling them back to the front of his mind.
A driving force that pulled him away. That avoided those faces which had seemed too indistinct to belong to any memories he could possibly have retained, and yet...they had almost seemed, in their own way, like something he had seen before. A song and dance that Tatsuya had somehow knew each intricate step and syllable to, despite swearing on his own life that he’d never rehearsed it before.
But it remained as strong as anything. Those candy-sweet words Lisa would assert towards him, or that uneasy cadence Eikichi spoke with whenever something seemed to upset him- they all tugged him one way, and they became predictable, like something he knew should happen- something he had known for a long time.
He thought it was nothing. Rather, he wanted to think it was nothing. He loathed any possible alternatives, and banished them back to the depths of his mind whenever they threatened to pull him too far out of his own head.
He loathed the Alaya Shrine. For so long, he couldn’t even stand to pass by it. He loathed it the same way he loathed each time Lisa called his name at school, or when he had first laid eyes on that blue-haired lunatic in Sumaru Prison. Something was always wrong, off-putting about it in a way that Tatsuya could never put into words, but had been asked repeatedly whether or not something had been wrong.
It caught him off guard, sometimes, even now. A word or phrase uttered in just the right way that poked a visceral part of his brain. Turn around, prepare a question, and freeze up at a glimpse of her- of Maya’s face, kind and warm and somehow more familiar to Tatsuya than his own family was.
It happened when he met her, and again at the air raid shelter. The whiplash had nearly brought him to his knees.
“Tatsuya-kun, are you okay?” Maya had been quick to ask when his body froze, gaze locked on her in a way that must have appeared devastating in her eyes. “You went really pale...are you feeling sick?”
“Woah.” Tatsuya narrowly caught Eikichi stepping into view before he shut his eyes tight, attempting to block it all out so he could have a moment to think. “You’re not gonna pass out on us, are you? Is he running out of oxygen or something? What if there’s not enough of it down here?!”
“Would you stop that? He’s breathing fine!” Lisa chastised, but she sounded even more freaked out than Eikichi did. “Tatsuya, hurry up and tell him you’re fine!”
“Hey, take a step back from him,” Yukino ordered, a refreshing lack of that buzzing familiarity in her own voice, and Tatsuya thought he’d never felt so relieved for someone to sound like a complete stranger to him. “He’ll be able to breathe fine if you give him some space.”
He is breathing fine, he thought, but then again, it was hard to think at all. One moment he had caught Maya’s gaze, and it felt as if a string had snapped somewhere deep in his mind- and just as quickly as the feeling had struck him, it was gone. As if it had never been real in the first place. He opened his eyes again slowly, shying away from the eyes that bore deep into a too-vulnerable part of him.
It had been nothing. This was stupid.
“Are you all right, Tatsuya-kun?” Maya asked again, and he couldn’t bear to look at her again, not after that. “You looked like you’d seen a ghost...”
Something like that, maybe.
“I’m fine,” he insisted, taking care not to meet her gaze again as he turned to face forward again, whatever question on his mind long since forgotten. “Just wanna get out of here.”
But that whiplash had been stronger, stirring something even more visceral within him. It clenched Tatsuya’s heart and threatened to rip it from his chest to expose every last thing buried so deep, even he’d forgotten what all was there. Only, he had nothing to hide; it wasn’t like Joker said. There was nothing in his heart that was worth a damn.
And yet, he knew her. He’d seen her before. And oh, how the thought sickened him.
Because it wasn’t just a “thought” anymore. It was a memory. A real memory that Tatsuya had forgotten, and adamantly denied the existence of- something he’d selfishly, so selfishly, forced himself to forget, because he wouldn’t even think twice before sacrificing those memories of his friends if it meant blissful, ignorant, fake, scummy happiness.
He should have done more. He became complacent with where he was, how he had ended up, and never once gave even a single passing thought to what might have happened to Maya, or to Jun, or Lisa or Eikichi- none of them. Tatsuya didn’t care. He never cared. It wouldn’t have escaped him so easily if he had.
It persisted in the back of his mind, as some kind of distant reason why he never had any friends throughout high school, why he always preferred to be alone despite Katsuya’s near constant nagging, telling him to make friends and meet people and do something to socialize with people of his own volition. He always knew in those moments that there had to be a reason why he never did.
It was because he was poison. He couldn’t let something like that happen again.
“Ta-chan?” And he hated that nickname, hated the wavering voice it stumbled out of and Tatsuya couldn’t tell whether it really belonged there or not- it shouldn’t be Eikichi, it should be Yellow Owl, they weren’t the same- they weren’t the same, no matter how much these damnable memories tried to convince him they were. Yellow Owl was gone and replaced by a stranger that dared to call him Ta-chan, dared to speak in a deeper octave of his voice and wore what was probably the same face under that mask embedded so deep in his identity that Tatsuya had scarcely realized there was a face beneath it at all.
“Tatsuya? You’re...you’re crying…”
It shocked him out of the stupor he’d slipped into, touching a chilling hand to his cheek. Crying? No. No, he shouldn’t be. It was something that he’d done, something that he’d went and forgot- crying wasn’t earned. Crying seemed to imply that there was regret, but was there? Would he not give it all away again to return to that prior contentment?
He didn’t know. He didn’t know at all.
“I-”
Before he could even think to say anything that could possibly remedy this, Tatsuya let out a choked-off gasp as vicious hands wrapped around his throat- fingers digging into soft flesh, threatening to crush him right there in their grip.
“Tatsuya!”
And suddenly, he was prey to a beast far beyond anything he’s seen thus far, a swift rabbit caught in a foolish trap. Those eyes piercing his thrashing soul, so uncanny that they just had to belong to her, to Maya- to Big Sis- no, no, that wasn’t her, she had to be somewhere far, far away, safe and distant from Tatsuya, he could never hurt her again-
Tatsuya kicked against the ground in a futile effort to get away, but the hands around his neck only tightened, as if their goal was to slowly, agonizingly, snap each vertebrae in his cervical spine, if they didn’t intend on asphyxiating him first. And he didn’t want them to be, wanted to be anything but, but they were Maya’s eyes peering into him, gazing at him with hatred, such strong hatred, Tatsuya isn’t sure he’s ever felt something so strong himself.
He should accept his punishment, his atonement, with grace, but he doesn’t. He claws at the hands gripping him in an attempt to pry them away, digging into flesh he couldn’t discern between hers and his own, blunt nails tearing and shredding whatever they needed to- he had to get out, he couldn’t die here- and maybe he should, maybe he deserved to, maybe it would somehow make things right- maybe this was how it was all meant to be, from that very moment ten years ago…
Tatsuya tried to scream. He couldn’t catch his breath.
Stop it. Stop wearing her face. You can’t.
“What’s the matter? Can’t find it in yourself to hurt your Big Sis again?”
His hands had gone slack against her own. Tatsuya quickly began to desperately claw at her again, at the hands that were about to crush his windpipe like an old soda can- no, he couldn’t die here, he couldn’t die here, because-
Because...
He didn’t have time to think of a reason, because at last, the hands around his neck disappeared. Tatsuya gasped and stumbled back, holding gently the bruised, tender flesh of his neck, hands steadying his shoulders as he suddenly found himself on the ground. The jeers only continued- Tatsuya’s ears were ringing. Was she talking to him? He couldn’t understand.
He didn’t want to understand. Not if it meant it would hurt again.
He did this. Tatsuya was the root of not just his own suffering, but his friends, too, if they could even be called such a thing. Voices buzzed all around him, but none of them quite made it to his ears, and he found it almost relieving- selfishly relieving, because he didn’t deserve that, he of all people, and so much is going on and he hasn’t had even a moment to think, to understand, to breathe-
“Tatsuya-kun, we need you to stay awake!”
His eyes snapped open and he instantly pulled himself away from whoever had been holding him upright, barely catching himself with a trembling arm against the freezing cold floor. Blood stained the undersides of his fingernails, and it looked so horrifically right, as if it had belonged there this whole time, completing the grotesque painting of his likeness that’s felt more akin to an unblemished lie until this point.
“Are you with us, Tatsuya-kun?”
The voice...?
He almost didn’t dare to look up, but his awful, morbid curiosity won over- before him stood two different Maya’s, each of them staring him down with something different- concern and contempt, tenderness and animosity- a reflection so obvious and lacking subtlety that he could have laughed, if he could find his breath, if he wouldn’t rather cry instead-
“You’re undeserving of her forgiveness.”
The voice- the one he’d found so strange, a misplaced memory more gaping than the others- so far removed from what it had once been, from what Tatsuya had thought he knew...
No. No, it couldn’t be.
Don’t make it worse than it is.
“That isn’t true,” Maya spoke so softly, so gently, even to someone so awful- no, not awful, he wasn’t awful- he wasn’t Joker. This was a lie. This wasn’t how this was supposed to happen. “There’s nothing for you to be scared of anymore. Please, Jun-kun, don’t fight with Tatsuya-kun anymore.”
“Shut up- shut up, you’re lying! It’s Tatsuya’s fault! It’s all Tatsuya’s fault!!”
He must have been terrible. The awful one had to have been Tatsuya all along, while he had lived ignorant to all he had done- to what he had done to his friends. To Jun. To the big sister he’d loved so dearly, who he had vowed to protect like the innocent, eager kid he had once been, the kid who had burned to the ground with that shrine and the memories he held.
Tatsuya wasn’t that kid. That kid was dead. Their friend- who donned the red mask, who kept pleading with the others not to put Big Sis in the shrine, who sobbed as they turned on him, too- he had perished in the very flames that had birthed Tatsuya the cynic, the lonely boy who couldn’t make friends, who wouldn’t make friends, who was fueled only by anger and spite and hatred towards that very same boy who had lived a selfish life and died in the inferno.
And now, he’d been revived again, and stuffed into the too-big shoes of the Tatsuya born from his mistakes.
Tatsuya never cared about them. He didn’t care that Maya and Jun would be gone forever. He recognized Joker’s voice, a voice so distant that it circled back to being so near, and his vehement denial was worthy of death. He denied responsibility for a pain so strong. He had nothing to do with it. The boy who did it had been dead.
What a wretched existence it was. The unending misery of being alive now, of living for so long, when he should have allowed Tatsuya Suou to die for good in that shrine.
“Can you still fight?”
Yukino’s voice remained a vastly unfamiliar comfort to him still, pulling him just enough out of his horrifying stupor to register that there was still danger, to remind him that there would always be a fight, and no matter how much he loathed his own complacency, that only bad things would come out of inaction. There persisted the cold shock that there wasn't any choice but to fight, and that it was less of a question, and more of a reminder.
Still, a puppet with the face of his friend was still a flawless illusion- it wasn’t Maya, it wasn’t Maya, but there was something horrifying about a monster wearing her face and jeering in her voice and attacking the same way she did, and if Tatsuya hadn’t already messed up everything until this point, he’s unsure whether he would have been able to continue wielding his katana.
Was it a matter of redemption, or something else? He didn’t know. He couldn’t think about it, either, because there was something far more terrifying than proceeding to live with the weight of these sins; abandoning everything all over again, leaving it and everyone else behind for some false sense of accomplishment, fleeing like a coward from a past he couldn’t change, couldn’t erase, and allowing himself to die all the same.
It was sickening to watch it move. The way it fought and attacked just like her, dared to mimic every last detail of her that Tatsuya had grown to find so familiar, so comforting-
And why was that? It’s not a good reason.
The monster’s shriek as Tatsuya sliced it pierced his ears, and he couldn’t shake the fact that it sounded just as Maya had on that day. His blade fell out of his hands and onto the ground in front of him with a loud clang, and he vaguely wondered if his hands would ever stop shaking enough for him to pick it back up again.
What a sad, pathetic existence he lived.
“Tatsuya-kun?” Maya’s voice was so soft, a tenderness he still didn’t deserve, and yet he flinched away from it as if it held him at a gunpoint. “It looks like you’re bleeding...are you okay?”
He didn’t dare to look her in the eye, but when he saw her hand extend towards him, he pulled himself far, far away, the touch a deadly venom to both of them. “Don’t”, he gasped, holding his own hands out in some kind of useless attempt to keep her a safe distance away. “Don’t come near me.”
She listened to him, thank the gods, but Tatsuya made the mistake of looking her in the eyes- seeing a strong, familiar pain, a worry planted so deep inside her that it radiated from her entire being, and Tatsuya could sense it, could feel her misplaced fear for a boy who couldn’t care less about her or her own well being- much less those around them, the others who she tried so hard to protect as a big sister- what a foolish, insignificant sentiment that had been. Tatsuya wasn't the one who needed protection.
“She’s...she’s right, Tatsuya, your neck…”
He grasped at his neck, feeling warm wetness slick his palm. A residual ache lingered from when Maya- the doppelganger, not Maya, that wasn’t Maya- had crushed him in her own hands and he winced, flinching away from his own offending touch. “It’s fine. It’s nothing. We need to go.”
He was almost offended by the fact that they felt they could afford to be patient right now. Tatsuya tried to push past them, ducking his head beneath their mortifying gazes, letting his mind blank everything out aside from their next goal, what they needed to do and where they needed to be- this was nothing but a minor setback, a small detour, but they really needed to get going now, Tatsuya knew-
There was an utterance of something that might have sounded like his name, and something wrapped around his wrist.
“No!” He yanked his arm away and clutched his hand close to his chest, very intentionally avoiding looking into Maya’s strong, intense stare. He couldn’t bear to look at her, couldn’t bear to treat her as something like his equal, not after everything. It offended her very existence, and glorified his own. “Don’t touch me- I’ll hurt you!”
It wasn’t meant as a threat, but Maya took a step back regardless. Tatsuya wanted to throw up. The ghosts of memories he’d long yearned to forget roared loud in his ears, only amplified by the presence of Maya and her too-sweet demeanor, acting as if Tatsuya hadn’t done anything wrong, as if he wasn’t just as, if not even more wretched than that very same Joker they’d been tracking down.
“Because you’re me. And I’m you.”
“No.” Tatsuya shook his head, digging already bloodied nails into the skin on his hand. “It’s not true. It’s- it can’t be. I’m not…”
And how dare he have the audacity, the nerve to call Joker a thing such as wretched when Tatsuya had been the one to create such a thing in the first place. His sins, those memories, his selfishness that pierced a hole through all their hearts, his own aversion to confronting the agony that left them all writhing on the ground-
“Stop yelling, Tatsuya-kun. Take a deep breath.”
A firm, grounding voice, and a pair of shoes he could somehow still recognize as belonging to Yukino. He flinched again when a hand landed on his shoulder, but obliged with its careful guidance backing him up until his back hit the cold cavern wall, and aided him back down until he was sitting up against it.
“Shit, is he okay?” And what a thought-provoking question that was, because it sucker punched Tatsuya in the face with the reminder that they had no time to waste on something stupid like this, they had more important things to do, things that couldn’t wait for Tatsuya to get a damn grip already- because this really was stupid!
“He’s fine,” Yukino assured, close enough that the words managed to register with Tatsuya, too. “I think he’s just shaken up.”
“We can’t,” he tried to choke out, tried to convey the urgency they seemed to forget. “We need to go. We don’t have time.”
“Slow down. We’re not going anywhere until you do.” It was an order, not a request. Tatsuya swallowed down another flurry of words he threatened to choke on, a trembling hand fidgeting in a sick pantomime of his lighter.
He couldn’t touch it. He couldn’t infect that, too. It was all he had.
“Tatsuya?” That voice was Lisa’s, he could tell. Her voice always dropped down to that softer tone when she was worried- was he really worth that to her? “It’s going to be okay...we’ll figure everything out together, yeah?”
Together. They wouldn’t leave him the way he had to them. Of course they wouldn’t- that wasn’t like them at all.
Maybe he lacked faith in them. Maybe he’d never believed in them at all.
“Of course, Ginko can be tactful when it’s for you, Ta-chan.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?! I can be tactful when I wanna be!”
Tatsuya blinked, swiping at his eyes with an unsteady hand. Maybe things didn’t have to change like that, just because they remembered- that child who died in the shrine, whose ghost wept for the friends he had slaughtered, couldn’t return that easily. Couldn’t replace him now.
He opened his eyes. Yukino watched him with a sincere smile, her eyes flashing a noticeable relief. Lisa and Eikichi weren’t far behind her, and they smiled at him, too- despite how he thought they should be afraid. Maybe Tatsuya had been the wrong one after all.
His eyes darted over to Maya, standing further behind, watching him with an expression Tatsuya found impossible to read. He held her gaze for a few moments before she turned to look at Yukino, taking a few steps forward until she stood dangerously close to him. “Is it okay if I talk to him for a minute?”
Tatsuya almost dared to reach out when Yukino stood, almost found it in him to plead with her to stay close by if Maya were to talk to him, to remind her that anything could happen- but he didn’t. “Go ahead.”
His gaze turned again to the ground when Maya crouched down in front of him, trying to grab hold of his attention again. “Tatsuya?”
He shook his head again, pushing himself impossibly further back against the wall of the cavern, as if he could phase through it and never be near her again. “Don’t. I don’t want to hurt you again.”
“I’m not scared of you hurting me,” she spoke softly, impossibly soft, a tone that Tatsuya decidedly didn’t deserve. “I’m more scared that someone will hurt you.”
Something soft pressed against his neck, and he looked up to see Maya gently wiping at it with her sleeve, a gesture stuffed full with so much more care and affection than Tatsuya felt he deserved. It was so strongly reminiscent of back then- back when he had called her Big Sis, when he had vowed to protect her and her infectious smile- maybe he had been bad at that. Even now, the one who needed to be protected...
“Are you mad?” He sounded so much like a scared child that it made him cringe. He expected Maya to laugh, and he isn’t sure why he’s surprised when she doesn’t- Maya wouldn’t do that.
“No. There’s nothing to be mad about. Nobody’s mad at you.”
Nobody except for Jun.
“There’s plenty to be mad about.”
“Mmm…I don’t think so.”
And she just continued to wipe away at the scratches on his neck, the same way a big sister would tend to her little brother after he fell and scraped his knee. Tatsuya suddenly recoiled away from her, putting a defensive hand between hers and his neck, stupidly attempting to put back up the walls that had been thoughtlessly crumbled to ash. “I hurt you. I hurt everyone.”
Maya sat back ever so slightly, pulling her hand from where it hovered in front of him. “Tatsuya…”
“Jun, he- it’s because of me, Maya, he wants revenge on me-”
He tried to recoil away when her hands landed on his shoulders, but she held firm. “You can’t blame yourself for that. I’m positive there’s more to it.”
She couldn’t know that. She was lying. Foolishly trying to make him feel better.
But Tatsuya was tired. So, so tired of fighting, of arguing, of trying to prove something that Maya would keep on stubbornly refusing to budge on. They could easily be here for hours.
Her hands smoothed down his shoulders, holding his arms in a much more tender grip. Tatsuya found himself leaning forward- and before he knew it, her arms were wrapped fully around him, holding him so close and so dear. It was nostalgic- the same type of nostalgic that had given him whiplash so many times before, nearly knocked him off his feet, made his heart race in his chest…
This wasn’t like that. This was warm and gentle, a comfort he hadn’t known for years. Something he’d nearly forgotten- something he had forgotten, for a time. Swaddled in a warm embrace. Nowhere could possibly feel safer.
“It’s going to be okay,” Maya whispered, and Tatsuya wished that time could freeze right there, and he could remain here as long as he could possibly want. “Everything is going to be okay.”
And as selfish as it was, he chose to believe it.