Despair / Tristitia
Extreme, overwhelming sadness and depression, often to the point of suicidal ideation and "self-murder."
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12/26/2015
I wake up at 1:00 PM.
The whole affair with The Matador and my Persona left me beyond exhausted, so after learning what the hell a Kingdom was I decided to just shuffle back in the house, fall on the couch, and sleep for what felt like years.
When I go upstairs I find her awake, staring out the window of my room, sitting at my desk.
It's a blank stare, almost as though she's staring through everything outside, not at them.
"Kana?"
She blinks once, twice, then turns around to face me. "K-Kazuya."
For a moment, only a moment, she looks at me the way she did when I visited her house again. Scared and uncertain and hesitant. But she makes herself look stronger, keeps her eyes firmly on me. Though she tries her best, the more she tries, the more she looks so sad.
Three of the fingers on my left hand begin twitching. "You've eaten breakfast?"
She nods. "You've been sleeping a lot more lately..."
"There's a lot on my mind."
"Mine, too," she nods. "Listen, I, uh...I need to tell you, that..."
"You're leaving in a few days. Right?"
She lets a little smile come through, "Yeah. I am. Your dad told you?"
"Yeah."
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you earlier."
"You didn't have to."
She looks at me, more confused than anything. "No. No, I should have, I—" she gets up out of the bed, walking over to me, "—there's, I know I haven't, I haven't been—"
I put my hands on her shoulders, and look her right in the eye. "I understand. Okay?"
"...okay."
"I know it's been difficult for you. I can't imagine it'd be any other way. All this time, you've just been doing what you've had to. So I understand."
Her brows furrow as she tells me, "Recently I've been hearing you shout at night. Outside the house. I could never hear exactly what you were saying, but...it's been hard for you, too, huh?"
"No, but...no."
"Yeah."
I take her by her hands and together we walk over to my bed. I'm first to sit down and she follows soon after, and I tell her, "Do you remember what I said to you a year ago? After I told you I liked you?"
"What do you think you're doing, Kazuya?"
"Do you remember what I told you?"
She shakes her head. "There were a lot of things you said to me after you told me you liked me."
"I told you that you weren't a burden. Do you remember?"
It takes her so long before she finds it in herself to say, "Yes."
"I told you that I chose to help you. That it was my decision. Do you remember that?"
"Yes." She actually manages to chuckle a little, "I didn't want to let you know how it felt to hear you say that."
"How it felt...?"
"For the longest time, I thought you were kind of an asshole, you know?" She says that so suddenly and when she does her eyes grow dull and dark. She starts running a finger along the lines of my twitchy left hand and I can say and do nothing. "Only reason you wanted to help me and Masako was because you went through the same thing she did. You talk a big game and you know so much, but you can only reach a hand out to people when they relate to you. So really, what good are you?"
And I just look at her.
But she's not looking at me at all.
"I don't know what love is. I told you that day that nobody can really be sure about who they love or like or whatever. And you kept on pushing because you were so certain. And I believed you because why the hell not? Bet you regret it now, don't you. And I know what you're gonna say. I regret so many things, but not meeting you."
What the hell is even happening right now? "Kana, I—"
"Did you know I stuffed Masako into a garbage can?"
Yes I do. Damn it all, I do. "Kana—"
"Wasn't just one time, either. Two, maybe three or four. Lost count, and you didn't know at all. Mom didn't know, either. And you were both workin' round the clock to help me and her without knowing a single thing. I thought you were supposed to be smart."
And her nails dig into my hand, agitating the scar tissue and the tooth marks—"Kana, I...!"
"You could change the world with how much you know and what you want to do, but instead you waste all your time telling people you don't even know how much you love them."
I rip her hands off mine and jump off the bed. Blood drips down from the palm of my left hand and in an instant I see her change. She's not looking away from me, not looking past me; her eyes pierce into mine, and they're clearer than they've ever been.
The world around us shifts into darkness, and I see her in purple robes, her body below the head bereft of its skin. In her left hand she holds a baby's skeleton wrapped in red linen.
"You cannot stop what is coming. If you want to live your life free of this madness, then abandon every delusion you have of saving me."
I blink. And I see Kana, smiling genuinely for the first time since the day I met her.
"I don't want you to save me, Kazuya. I don't even want you to love me. I just want the whole world to forget I ever existed."
.
.
.
That day, just before Kana's mother attacked us, I knew exactly what I would've told her. As she sat there, holding her head in her hands, crying alongside her daughter over how I'd nearly murdered a man for her.
I would've asked her what she would've done if our roles had reversed. Would she have allowed me to be smacked around, in the middle of the street, by a violently drunk man who almost certainly would have injured me if given the chance? Obviously, she'd have said no. She'd have called the police, or tried to fight back against him herself, to defend me.
If that didn't work, I would've told her she had done everything she could at the trial. The judges had themselves decreed that it wasn't enough, but it was hardly her fault that that was the case.
If that didn't work, I would've asked her if she'd have blamed her mother for failing to provide ample enough testimony to sway the judges' final decision. She would've said no, because she couldn't blame her mother for such a thing-and I would have asked her why she was blaming herself for it.
And if none of that worked at all, I would've just told her that I love her. And all that mattered to me was that she was right by my side again, after a year of being without her, and she didn't need to blame herself for anything.
How could I have been so stupid?
In the middle of the night I stand right outside my house, the cat at my feet. "I'll be able to do it?"
"Absolutely."
"You're sure?"
"Hundred percent."
"Is my...Persona really that strong?"
"Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes. What more do you want from me?"
"Well. I dunno. Just...more context I guess."
"Into what?"
"Is it...normal for Personas to be—?"
"No."
"No?"
"Especially your initial one. I mean—it's supposed to be awesome, don't get me wrong, but, a starting Persona isn't normally anywhere near as strong as yours is."
"Lucky me, then."
"And all your wounds healed up too!" it laughed. "Look at you, it's like you were never hurt!"
"You said we were in a region with weak Shadows. Guy who knocked you flat on your side didn't seem very weak, did he?"
"Look, I dunno where that guy came from, but he just straight-up didn't belong where we were. Shadows there typically shouldn't be able to harm us the way he did."
"Where could he have come from?"
"Obviously, another region of Mementos. Though it's odd...Shadows typically don't leave wherever they've come from. You got any idea why he attacked us? Was knocked out for most of the fight."
I remember talk of a Candelabrum. "No idea."
"I see. In any case, your Persona can totally handle Kana's Shadow as well as her cognition of you!"
"To be fair, I failed to kill the Matador. My attacks barely even hit him..."
"Honestly, he's on a completely different level," Cat says. "Comparing him to the cognition of you—the two aren't even close."
"How much stronger is Kana's beast, you think?"
"No, The Matador was way more powerful."
I laugh, very loudly, "You sure!?"
"Positive."
"I don't know about that. Between the two of them, one breathes fire and honestly would need like a thousand missiles to—"
"Not exactly! He may be bigger, but he's slower and dumber and honestly looks like he's on the verge of death all the time. And besides, I can feel the difference in strength. You can kill that thing no problem, with your Persona!"
"What do you mean, you can feel the difference strength?"
"I just can! I know you can kill it! If you survived the Matador, you'll definitely survive against Kana's cognitive version of you! Prolly even put it down!"
"Is there another term for it? Because cognitive version is a little mouthy."
"Fine. Manikin."
"Mannequin?"
"No. Manikin."
"...okay?"
"Yeah. It's what I call 'em. Had a feeling you didn't want to hear another word that wouldn't have made sense to you at the time."
"Did you just come up with that now?"
"Maybe?"
"Maybe?"
"Part of me felt they were always called that, I guess."
"Another one of your lost memories?"
"I suppose. But anyway! A Manikin—a cognitive version of someone—doesn't hold a candle to a Persona as powerful as yours! Even if it's big and has seven heads and is scary as all hell!"
"Will killing it have any lasting effects on her psyche?"
"Actually, probably not."
"Probably not?"
"If you kill it, it actually has a chance of coming back."
"Oh come on."
"But it'll take a while! It'll come back as long as the Treasure's there! Get rid of the Treasure, get rid of literally everything else! But first we gotta get rid of the monster! It's the only one standing between us and the Treasure!"
"What if Kana's Shadow won't give it up? Would killing her be—?"
"Okay that's bad. Don't kill her Shadow, no matter what. That will absolutely kill her."
I glare at it, "Tell me now, huh?"
"As long as we get the Treasure, I'm sure she'll be fine!"
"And if she won't let the Treasure out of her hands—?"
"We will. We have no choice but to."
"What if we can't take it? What if, even if we do manage to get it, she won't let us leave?"
"Then we destroy it!"
What? "So killing her Shadow will cause problems, but destroying the source of her desire won't?"
"As long as it disappears, it'll be alright!"
"Yeah. But she's unstable as she is. Will probably be more trouble than it's worth."
"That's our last resort. We deal with it as it comes."
I face my house.
I face the night sky.
I think of everything we've been through. Of how much of a lie it had all been. Of how little I knew her and how little she must have loved me. Of everything I could have and should have tried, to save her before it was too late.
Everything I should have known.
"You couldn't have predicted any of this," the cat says. "She wouldn't tell you. Not even a little."
"She didn't think I was worth telling."
"I can't know for sure. Neither can you. But we can assume that she didn't want to burden you."
Too late. "You ready to go now?"
"Are you?"
"I feel more alive now than I've felt in the past two years. If I let this momentum go down in any way I'll be wasting everything. We go now."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. I have a plan."
"A plan?"
"I'll tell you. Come up with anything better, if you think it sucks."
"Lay it on me."
"How fast can you go when you're a car, and how good is your grip?"
.
.
.
"You're absolutely insane, you know."
"If anything, I have to be."
"You realize that that could easily get you killed, right?"
"Can't afford to fight that thing head-on. Getting Kana's Shadow as far away from it as possible's our best bet."
"If this doesn't work, you're dead."
"And if it does, the Treasure's yours."
"Good that you know how to speak my language."
When we march right back into Kana's Palace everything is as it had been left.
But the large, seven-headed monstrosity is now glaring directly at me. In fact, judging from its stance, it must have kept its heads locked on the spot I've arrived in, even before I made my re-entry.
And this titanous monstrous disgusting thing, this beast that Kana thinks is me, is hunched over and standing still, in the middle of this godforsaken nuclear wasteland. Even though surrounding us are hundreds of walking dead and dying, even though tall ruins of buildings hang over myself and the cat and the rotting Manikins, I know it's looking directly at me.
She stands atop the fourth head, the baby bones in her arms. Again, despite the distance I see her so clearly—and she bears a face unlike any I've seen out of Kana before.
As the towering monstrosity nears me, lurching absentmindedly as it does, its mouth opens wider and wider, and I stare it down because all I can think of is how I can obtain the Treasure, how I can destroy this monster, and how I can escape this place without dying.
So that I may at the very least leave her with the chance to be free.
"It's now or never!" exclaims the cat.
"Now."
The cat morphs into a bus as black fire consumes my bones. I should be feeling pain, I should be screaming out in abject agony as I feel an abomination seep into my veins, but I feel nothing. I can feel the tendrils sinking into my skin, into my pores, into my ears, into my nostrils, into my nails, into every orifice of my body except for my eyes.
My coat and the vest I wear underneath is slick black leather, but the pants are kind of baggy, ruggedly stitched together and lightweight. My shoes are a little pointed but they don't impede my movement at all, and over my hands are a pair of blood-red leather gloves.
Over my eyes a white mask forms, and through this mask I watch as the beast charges, its sixteen massive pillar-legs coming at me faster, faster than a creature its size has any right to be.
"Kazuya, get in!"
So I get in the cat bus and drive forward, charging past the walking fallout victims and we drive on and on and on for a hundred more miles as the distance between us and the monster closes and it bellows, it bellows so loudly I feel as though my eardrums are full to bursting and its fourth head starts coughing up blue fire.
And we drive we drive fast enough such that we're only about a couple yards away as the six other heads open their maws and spit and spew nuclear sparks and they blare out their rays like they're fucking Godzilla but by the grace of God we manage to get under its belly before any of the blasts can hit us.
I'm all but certain now, though, that I've contracted cancer from proximity alone, don't freak out, don't lose it, don't piss and bitch and moan now, you fucking stupid piece of shit, this is your last chance.
We make it past its sixteen pillar-legs, past the thousands of cow udders spewing blood down, down, down upon us, and though the cat tries to steer clear of the infected sludge he still slips and slides and careens all around because it's all just so goddamned gross and vile—
"Faster."
"Goin' as fast as I can—"
"FASTER!"
The beast is slow and dumb and though its many legs stomp around in an attempt to crush us, they're never able to smash into us directly. Its naturally bow-legged stance, coupled with the fact that each leg's packed with thousand-pound muscles, means that it can't exactly arc its legs inward in any quick or straightforward manner. Some of them even crash into each other trying to get to us and in all the madness the feet crash down like thunder, causing craters and booming noises that blare all around me, the beast's seven heads roar in fury and make my head shake, I breathe heavily as my spine seizes up and all my nerves tingle and shiver and I realize far too late that I've been laughing for God knows how long—
"Kazuya, now!"
Catbus poofs back into its regular old bobble-headed self and the momentum carries us a few more meters, tumbling and rolling in the filth for a few seconds, and obviously it hurts like hell, but I pry myself back up quick enough and I see that we're exactly where we need to be.
A couple dozen miles behind it.
"Persona!"
Too slow to turn around. Too dumb to think of what I'm planning.
"No time to lose!" cat jumps on my back, "We've only got—"
"One chance."
So Satanael erupts from my head as blood pours down my eyes, and through my bloodstained gaze he looks larger, fiercer, even more glorious than I could've ever envisioned before. In a motion I leap upward, far higher than I have any right to, enough such that I can get a firm grip on the back of my Persona. His six wings flare outward and I let myself laugh again as we take to the skies.
If the thought of it sounds crazy, you weren't crazy enough to begin with.
Kana's Manikin of me barrels throughout the world but has no understanding of it. Can barely put two and two together, and even when the obvious glares at it right in the face, it takes far too long for everything to sink in.
Satanael doesn't fly as quickly as I'd have liked. But he's going a helluva lot faster than the catbus ever did; within seconds we pass the same distance it had taken a minute to charge through just earlier, and by the time I'm even able to recognize how quickly we've flown I see—
I see her.
I see her scowling eyes, I see her holding the linen close to her chest, I see her purple robes billowing outward and I see that she's coming right up.
"READY!?"
We divebomb with all the force of a kamikaze pilot and as the seven heads finally realize what I've just done and as rear upward to reach me with their jaws and I have Satanael disperse into black flame—
"NOW!" I cry out.
I stretch out my arms and the cat leaps up into the air, sticking its hind legs directly into my hands, and it reaches its own front paws just far enough.
"Treasure."
The second the cat's able to grab her by her hair it explodes out into a bus again, Kana and I stuck in the back seat.
"Both of you hold on! Crashlanding in T minus NOW!"
And before she can do anything, I hold her close, closer than I ever had in the real world, and brace for a world of hurt.
But by the time I wake up, I realize I feel no pain.
Though that tends to be a bad thing, especially when both your legs are bent in ways they shouldn't be.
Everything's gone. My body, my clothes, I'm myself again. I'm wearing a white shirt with black pants the same white shirt and black pants I entered this place with where is the power I've been given where is my power the creature the monster is right there.
"Kazuya!" Cat limps up to me. One of its massive eyes is dangling from its head like a keychain. "You alright!?"
"You're asking me?"
It just stuffs its eye back into place. "Everything on me hurts, but I can manage, your whole body's—!"
Its words fade into background noise the second I find Kana's Shadow remaining tucked in my arms. Her eyes open soon after mine do. And after everything she's remains strong, clutching the linen to her breast tightly.
But when she faces me, when her blazing golden eyes look into mine she's shocked and appalled. Too late I find that streaks of blood pour from my mouth; that most of the bones on my left arm have shattered upon impact, that I haven't even the strength to sit myself up. And I see her horrified expression but somehow I find myself taken back.
I'm on the rooftop of our school again and she's requesting I help her study. I'm in her home reading a book to Masako as she watches from a distance. I'm walking around Ginza with her and I'm in a train car, so close to holding her hand. I'm in her living room telling her I like her and that she isn't a burden.
"Why?" Kana pleads, tears streaming down her golden eyes. "Why would you do this to yourself...?"
I laugh at her, coughing out blood. "If anybody knew you like I do, they'd do exactly the same thing."
But then as I'm telling her these things I look at a large looming shape, lumbering right for us.
I am on the ground and I want to get up I need to get up I don't even feel any pain how am I not getting up. How am I not getting up. How am I even staying still, why can't I feel anything. Why. Why am I like this.
I lift my head up and I see that my limbs are bent in all manner of directions and they are bleeding in ways that would render anyone else dead and dead and dead like I'm gonna be if I don't get up and find a doctor find anyone to fix me heal my wounds I don't wanna die I don't wanna die.
I have to see Kana. I have to see her. There's a world out there without her mother or her father or her daughter I'm all she has left and she's all I've ever had. Everything else, all the money, all the privilege, all my studies, none of them matter. None of them have ever mattered.
She's told me she's a curse, but she's a curse I'm willing to bear. She's told me she's a bad person, but if that's the case then if she's bad I don't wanna be good. I told her promised her meant it that I would never leave her for anything else in this whole wide world because she is mine.
I'm making a mistake. And I don't even know it. I should be getting up and out of here right now. But I'm on the ground. I can't feel my legs. I can't even talk because there's a mass in my throat as big as a baseball and I can't breathe and my throat hurts and I can't feel anything but agony.
I say something, something I hear in my mind, Victory Cry.
Then I hear the cracking noise. Arms. They creak and crack and sound like rattles as they reform. My right arm and right bicep start piecing themselves together, a thousand little black arms all thinner than a blade of grass gathering them from my wounds and acting as living breathing organic stitches made out of black chaos. The pain is blaring through me now and I'm feeling it it's almost too much to bear like my body is being skinned open I grit my teeth and endure it and make myself feel all of it because it is what I deserve. As my other wounds begin healing and once my leg reforms I stand myself up and I glare at it I glare at the monster and I tell it it won't take Kana Kohaku away from me, tell it with my eyes, through the agony of my bones and through the grrrinding noises my unsightly body makes as it reforms itself—
I think of my Persona but it's hard to think when blood's gushing out of all of you, I think I make myself think but can't remember, I can't remember a single goddamned thing about me at all—t he thousand-foot tall Manikin keeps its seven heads locked on me and the cat and I see through the blue flames and I can feel malignant tumors popping up all over my body just from the proximity of it; even though I'm shielded, even though there's a giant abominable body shrouding my own, I feel the burn and I feel the pain and it starts searing through my skin like I'm in Hiroshima, in Nagasaki—
My body's bent in all manner of directions and it's bleeding in ways that would render anyone else dead and my whole body's coated in sores and boils and cancers that are gonna kill me and even if I survive this I'm gonna be dead, if I don't get up and find a doctor find anyone to fix me heal my wounds I'll be dead and I don't wanna die I don't wanna die I don't wanna die—
It's coming closer its mouth is burning brighter again again again again it'll fry me it'll make me into nothing make me melt I can't feel anything anymore I'm healing but will it be enough? I'm suffering but can't it ever stop? I'm still alive and my body'll fix itself but will it last just as long as I need it to?
I have to run but I can't run I can't run. Kana, Masako, Dad, I can't do it. I thought I could but I can't. I'll die here and I'll die for nothing. The cat's pulling me and I have Kana's Shadow right in my arms, right in my hands, and I can't do anything for her!?
My legs—I turn to them and I see they're still painful the pain is still insurmountable and horrible and agonizing and I can't move move you stupid idiot—You promised her, you promised you'd be there for her, promised you'd never leave her, everyone else she has is gone and you're the only one left the blue is burning burning get up GET UP GET UP!
"SATANAEL!"
Black robes swallow my body as his six wings bloom like the rays of the sun, spanning the whole of the skies. His giant arms spread open in an almost welcoming gesture, as though himself crucified. His red eyes flows cleanly and freely and he scowls at the beast with pride, and as I gaze upon him all I see is me.
Another word that makes no sense charges in my mind, and when I say it it rolls right off my tongue: "Megidolaon."
Something white and black and all manner of colors flashes in the air, right on the creature's seven mouths for less than half of a second—and then all I see is red. Like several waterfalls all spilling downwards at once, blood rushes down from the open maws of the creature as pieces of black and red and dark meat crashes to the ground. The seven heads howl out a sad, horrified, torturous wail that is loud enough to be heard on the other side of the universe. The creature staggers, tries to stand, its front legs trembling. The towering monstrosity lifts what's left of its head up one last time before it too crashes to the ground, kicking up rocks and dirt and clouds of dust higher than any skyscraper in all of Japan.
I stare through the smoke, through the dark clouds filling the red skies.
It's one thing to see a corpse of yourself. It's another entirely to see a seven-headed, thousand-foot tall monstrosity with what used to be your face on all its heads, now reduced to stumps at the neck.
And seeing it there, dead like a beached whale...I feel good.
"Why would you do this to me?" I turn to her, and she stares at what's wrapped in her arms so sadly. "I am damned. Everything I touch turns to ash. Why do you want to take me away from her?"
"Kana."
"I've said so many terrible things to you."
"It's okay."
"I never trusted you with anything."
"I understand."
"I just keep on hurting you."
"I was never hurt. Not even for a second." And I raise my left hand, newly-healed as if it'd never been hurt at all, I raise it to her face and cup her cheek. "Do you remember what I told you, that night I told you I liked you?"
It takes her so long to answer me, and she doesn't even look at me when she says it.
"You said...that I and Masako were special to you. That you wouldn't trade either of us in for anyone else."
In my arms I share the red linen with her and raise my hand to peer away the cloth. She doesn't stop me, not even as tears streak down from her golden eyes.
I see Masako, sleeping peacefully, as beautiful as the day I first saw her. Making little cooing noises and muttering little Mamas.
Kana's Shadow lets herself sob then, and she shudders and wracks her head 'round in shame and anguish and everything that she's kept inside herself, "I'm sorry she was ever born."
"I know."
"You terrify me. You repulse me...," She leans her head into my shoulder, "and I love you." And I pull her in an embrace, as she keeps Masako close to her and me and all three of us. "I love you, so much."
"We've gotta go!" shouts the cat. "Palace is crumbling! Take out your phone!"
So I take Masako and the red linen in my arms, and rise up from the ground. Kana's Shadow remains kneeling in the dirt.
The world begins to shake and tremble then; first slowly and subtly, growing more violent and enraged. In my right hand I hold Masako, and in my left I whip out my phone. The last I see of Kana's Shadow is her holding her face in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably as the rest of the world collapses into itself.
"Please take care of her," is the last thing she tells me, as a blue light forms around her and takes her to pieces.
The last thing I tell her is, "Until the day I die."
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NoRoleModelz Chapter Notes:
Advanced all the dates a year later because I can't do math
• Palaces in this story can evolve into Kingdoms if the person who bears distorted desire recognizes that desire, internalizes it as a part of them, and willingly allows their obsession to consume their identity.
• Alternatively, a person can recognize their distortion and let go of their desire, in turn obtaining a Persona without the baggage of a Kingdom. All Kingdom Rulers have Personas, but do all Persona-users have Kingdoms? That remains to be seen.
• If you steal the Treasure from a Kingdom Ruler, they'll die, as their distorted desires have been made a conscious part of their identity.
• The more distorted a Kingdom Ruler's heart is, the more powerful their Persona.
• The Metaverse is now called the Vortex World, and Manikins are what cognitive versions of people are.