Archive of Our Own

Mitsuru had dreams, sometimes.

Most of the time, she dreamt of that in-between, the limbo of the Dark Hour clinging to her clothes, her skin. Nights spent awake, tossing and turning, staring at her ceiling while a tableau of errors played against her eyelids. It happened more often than not. When that happened, she'd just go downstairs and sleep on the couch.

But there was a universe in which the end had not come so soon for the world. It wasn't the one she lived in.

She still dreamt of it. Those nights were always a lot heavier to bear than others.

Always the same place. A river, a tunnel underneath the bridge, an emerald moon. There had been a door–not a light at the end of the tunnel, but a door–and a figure sat, limp against it. A keeper. A seal. Of course, she knew who it was. She'd be blind to not know.

"Minato," she said. Blue eyes opened in the dark. Still bright as ever.

And then she'd wake up. Rinse and repeat, ad nauseam.

Well, she never really could talk about it. It wasn't like it was happening outside of her mind. She had this little notebook that she'd write every dream in, with a hot cup of tea and her favourite fountain pen, every other night. It didn't really help, but it wasn't like anything other than time would. And she didn't have time, so she would just settle for the next best thing.

She took the pills the psychiatrist gave her, the little blue ones. When she felt raw at the very thought of getting dressed, at donning the coat and mantle of her household, she took one. Sometimes two if needed. There was a hole–a raw, jagged hole inside of her, a missing vital piece that was numb on most days but ached when it got cold. In winter she'd lay in bed for days, not eating or sleeping. It felt like she'd been frozen in time.

The hole didn't close. She could put her hand inside of it, feel the holes where something else was supposed to fit inside, but it was sharp to the touch and she withdrew her hand before it could cut her. It'd already done enough damage.

Mitsuru had been engaged, once. Three whole years ago. An arranged marriage of convenience that fell through when she took control of the family's fortune. It had been to a man who was two years older, conceited as anything, and lorded his own family's status around like it would make a difference in how she would treat him. When she looks back on it, the only thing she regrets is that she didn't cut it off faster–like a festering limb, or a bad graft that the tree should reject. Back then, her only escape was to quite literally run away–drive for hours on her bike around town, until the scenery changed from familiar to the strange and new.

She'd been young, and free enough to desperately want more of it. She missed those days fiercely. The people that worked for her family had always been delicate with her, even moreso than her father, while understanding what she was to them: a meal, a job, a way to live. She couldn't fault them for it. A bird in a glass cage may not see the cage but will certainly know it's there, if it tries to leave.

Nowadays, offers of marriage are waived around a lot to her: floated at dinner with business associates, letters of correspondence, even brought up casually with her advisors and board of directors. As if it should matter whether she had a ring on her finger or not. She refuses them all out of hand. Once upon a time, she would have been weak enough that she would have said yes. She'd have wound up unhappy, but she would have done right by her family, and that would have been justification enough.

A shackle is a shackle no matter how gilded it is. Takeba once asked her if she was happy while she laid next to her in Mitsuru's king-sized suite, running her fingers up Mitsuru's arm while she spoke. Wearing Mitsuru's shirt, splayed out on her thousand-count sheets.

Sometimes Mitsuru was envious for the way Takeba was endlessly comfortable in her own skin, as if she'd been born without a self-conscious bone in her body. She thought she'd been envious, anyway. It was sort of hard to tell. When it came to Takeba, Mitsuru's standard brand of logic–a simple, standard point a to point b–didn't really work.

She thought other things, too. Some were uncouth, full-bodied and heavy. Some were worse. On those occasions, Mitsuru'd go outside on her balcony and smoke until she felt less nauseous. It helped a little. Takeba didn't like it much, but Mitsuru had never been able to quit.

Happiness. No one had asked it of her before. So she'd stayed still and silent, trying to understand. Takeba'd gotten up, quiet as a cat as to not 'wake' her, and went to take a shower. Mitsuru could hear the water running in the ensuite as Takeba scrubbed off the sweat and grime from the day, and thought quietly about what it was supposed to look like. Her happiness. Her therapist, a kindly-faced man that Takeba'd found for her, had told her it should only be an exercise she could engage in when it no longer distressed her. He'd meant well. She knew that. Once upon a time she could have approached that thought without a healthy dose of diligence (read: thoroughness, or something a lot of people have told her could just be called 'neuroticism' instead) but she's older now.

Diamonds are made under pressure. Mitsuru has not always been the way she is now. She listened to Takeba turn off the showerhead, and she thought about how sometimes she felt like she was as transparent as a pane of glass. Sometimes she didn't really feel human anymore. More like a patchwork doll, a steel statue with a face that only looked and moved and acted like her.

Mitsuru knew real strength. She knew how to hold up to examination, do well by herself. When her peers fell in the rat race of life, she stood and did the work that needed to be done. She did everything right. People relied on Kirijo, a figurehead and a leader. But Mitsuru by herself was different. And she didn't know how to explain that. Without her strength, she didn't have anything at all.

She saw Akihiko at Kyoto. The man's gotten broader, stronger. It's a good look on him. Mitsuru's happy for him–he'd been broken, once, and reforged himself. He was not the Akihiko she'd once known. Akihiko has always carried grief like a grudge–held onto every person and fall as if it was a personal duty, always so loyal, took it upon himself like Atlas would shoulder the world. She didn't know how he did it.

That day, he asked how she was doing in that overly earnest way of his, and she hesitated. It felt wrong to be there, without Shinjiro or any of their other friends for company. She could have told him. She could have told him the truth. Instead, Mitsuru lied and changed the topic, asked him about himself. Some things were better unsaid.

Sometimes she wishes she was a man. Of course, this is an absurd thought. She didn't have any compulsions to act any more masculine, didn't like the thought of having a male-shaped body, would have been uncomfortable with the idea. No. It was more about the ease with which her peers navigated the world, happy and comfortable in their skins. Even when asleep, Mitsuru couldn't seem to escape.

From childhood, she'd always felt like her body was at odds with her mind, foreign desires and thoughts invading the perfect rhythm she'd worked out for herself. If she could have, she would have taken scissors to herself–cutting and pasting the good and bad parts of herself, glued everything together until she got one whole person.

Well, wishing was futile. Takeba had told her as such. So what if Mitsuru regretted things? Life would move on without her. The world kept turning, long past its due. So Mitsuru tried, really, she did. People needed her. She couldn't spend forever dwelling on the what-ifs–she did what she did best: rolled up her sleeves and got to work.

The emerald moon had a face. It shifted a lot. It looked like Ikutsuki, sometimes, and other times it took on Takeba, Minato, Metis. Sometimes it was her father.

Mitsuru would sit on the pavement, dressed in her old S.E.E.S regalia, and stare at it. It talked to her. Spoke in their voices. Regrets, rage, old sorrows. That was the hard part. There was a story about a sailor and sirens, and staying to hear their song, which is what Mitsuru was doing, staying so long night after night.

She'd not seen her father since the night he'd died. And she would have told Takeba, really, except Takeba would just worry–they don't see each other enough for Mitsuru to be speaking about her fragmented worries like this. The dreams were just part and parcel, now. She knows Takeba gets nightmares, gets them herself. It would be a waste of breath to keep talking about it. Besides, this wasn't a nightmare, not really.

Sometimes Mitsuru saw Artemisia. Not in the moon–beside her, or down the street, she'd look up and see the familiar shape of her Persona again. When Mitsuru summoned her in battle, Artemisia'd been larger than life, easily dwarfing her with her size. In the dreams, Artemisia was smaller, only about an inch taller than Mitsuru herself–without the size and exaggerated proportions, Mitsuru could have just mistaken her for another girl.

She'd asked her once what Artemisia was doing here. Tartarus was gone, and Mitsuru's evoker was quietly gathering dust in her study–hidden in a holster within a briefcase placed carefully in a drawer.

Artemisia smiled, beneath her mask, and told her that she was Mitsuru, so why wouldn't she follow? Mitsuru didn't have a response to that. So they'd turned back to the moon, watching as it sung a long, low note. Like whalesong, or a tuning fork's shiver after resonating.

This is her life, now. She's twenty-four and she sees her friends when she has the time, smiles and laughs with the rest of them. Takes her pills to stave off the coldness in her bones that seems ever-present. Sits at her desk with her tea. Goes to meetings. Does the work.

Was this the ending she should have envisioned for herself?

If you're happy, Takeba told her, Then I won't ruin it for you. Ruin. Yes, that's right. Yukari had left to go to Europe for an indefinite period of time, and she probably wouldn't be coming back. And in that time, Mitsuru meditated, worked, breathed until it felt almost normal. It would have been gauche to mourn something that almost was, and not something that had been. So off Takeba went. And Mitsuru stayed.

Time seems to pass too fast, these days. It felt wrong. She'd been eighteen, and nineteen, and twenty. All those ages she'd spent awake and alive, but the memories blurred together in her mind like they'd been smudged watercolor from the beginning. Is that all that she was? Memory? It felt like she was trying to keep ahold of something that was slipping through her fingers, overtly fast, like grains of sand.

That's part of growing older, her therapist said, when she'd told him. You will feel like life changes fast. You get used to it.

I don't know if I want to, Mitsuru said.

Well, all we can do is try and get used to it, he said, gently, like she was a spooked animal. Sometimes these things happen. Given what you went through, I'm not surprised change feels drastic.

Drastic. She downs two more pills and brushes her teeth, spits in the sink. Turns out the light.

One day she wakes up and she's twenty-five. She stares at the ceiling, can hear the bustle of the kitchen downstairs. A wishful thought, she'd once entertained the fantasy of moving out: living in a tiny shoebox studio apartment, no one to look after, no company to run. Working a dead-end job. Going home to a warm body in her bed. It was a pipe dream.

She's got one meeting today, at noon. Mitsuru breathes, slow, and rolls over. Goes back to sleep.

It can wait.