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WHO: Minato and Tetsuo!
WHERE: Nonah #005 probably?
WHEN: Today!! Gasp.
WHAT: Parole check in.
WARNINGS: None.

[ Minato belatedly realizes he should perhaps do his job. He's only heard encouraging things about how Tetsuo's been doing from Ken, who surely of anyone would know, given their past history and the fact they're living together again... but his conversation with Mr. Edgeworth had pointed out to him that he should be more proactive.

All the insanity of the occupation this month had put that off, but Minato is here finally, letting himself in and seeking out Tetsuo. If he's not here today, well, he's just going to try a different day. That's the sort of person Minato is. ]

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[ The whole crowd of Persona is as well-behaved as before, not so much as pacing restlessly. Minato doesn't have them caged or restrained in any way; they're a mute, neat line, first chairs in the orchestra, watching in perfect stillness. Sentinels.

Minato lets him adjust, having no idea what this whole experience is like from Tetsuo's end but suspecting it must be disorienting.

Yes. Show me? ]

[Unnerving. That's the best description for the uneasy twist in his gut. Nonetheless, Tetsuo concentrates on that feeling, trying to bring it to the forefront of his mind. Instinct screams at him, curling around fear into a steady mantra - 'no, don't, he'll see'...

But if Tetsuo backs down, he's a coward. Even if that's true, no one can know that, either... and somehow, it's a worse feeling than the terror of what he's doing.

Minato might take a while to recognize it if he's never felt the feeling before, but it'll grow in intensity until it acutely surrounds them both. Nothing feels quite real, like wandering through fog, not quite awake. Everything in here is just as real as everything outside is; every subsequent day merging into each other until it blends together like a lucid dream, where sometimes he can influence things.

Or...

Things just happen, and he watches. Sometimes he wills it. Sometimes, he doesn't. Sometimes, it's a waking nightmare he can't get out of, sometimes, it's a dream he genuinely doesn't want to wake up from. And underneath it all is a sense that he's already dead, and all of this is in his head. Or dying somewhere, lying on harsh pavement, listening to Kaneda as the world slips away... that'd explain why it always hurts.

Because time never progresses back home... and it does hurt, when it never did before that accident.

The only thing that absolutely feels real is the pain; it comes and goes, but it's a constant companion nonetheless. Somewhere, he knows it's there. But it doesn't usually come from an outside source, only enhancing this effect.

You feel it? That sense ... that's what I mean.

He's not sure if confirmation is worse, or better. Either easily confirms this bias.]

[ Oh, Minato recognizes it. He'd only spent ten years living in a fog much like this one, drifting from family to host family, from school to school, and finally from dorm to dorm when no one wanted to take him in any longer. Or the first couple months here, struggling to accept that he really was alive, a battle Minato had only resolutely won almost a year later.

Disassociation. The thought floats back to Tetsuo without Minato quite meaning for it to. I understand. And he does, with the sad, clear certainty of a low resonant bell.

He doesn't understand exactly why Tetsuo feels this way, but the feeling itself, its connection to death-- drifting through life because you're not sure it's really happening... Surely that's enough to be going on. But Minato doesn't have any easy answers for this. The only thing that had punctured through that for him was SEES, and Persona, and finding his team. He doesn't know how that could translate for Tetsuo.

You have to find something that's real. To you. Something important enough it makes you focus. It doesn't matter what it is.

Minato deliberately flashes a scene from Tartarus, a pressure behind it indicating he has hundreds of others like it: the sweeping dark architecture of the tower a backdrop to bizarre Shadows, Minato jumping forward to intervene between them and a downed team member. (Yukari? Ken? It shifts and shifts.) ]

[A life of psychoactive substances doesn't help anchor him, neither do hallucinations after the operation, or a power like he ended up with, where thought becomes reality. Nor the fact that in his dreams, awake or asleep, he's always falling apart or away. Death haunts him even when he's alive.

Tetsuo's never been the most mentally healthy. All that takes an eventual toll.

But he's not self aware enough to analyze any of that. All he really knows is how he is right now, shoving away anything that doesn't match to deny how bad it might be.

Still... There's a word for it?! He'd been so certain there couldn't be.

That's the problem. Aren't you listening? Nothing is!

If this wasn't through thoughts, the self delusion would stay just like that. But an image comes to mind anyway, of a messy-haired teenager all in red and orange with an infuriatingly cocky grin. Tetsuo hasn't pulled back enough to hide his subconscious. And therefore, his self delusions are undermined by his own instincts.

Consciously, he doesn't want to hear it; any answer scares him enough to block it. But the rest of his mind knows immediately - the only thing he knows he didn't make up has to be the person he knew from before.

The only one who ever truly matters.]

[ If Tetsuo hadn't thought of it himself, Minato was going to bring up Kaneda, anyway, so this just saves him the hassle. The drugs he has no experience with whatsoever, has no idea how to handle that-- but disassociation in general and the solution thereof, he has a better grasp on.

Human connection. Something meaningful.

And sure enough, he asks: What about Kaneda? He's never turned away from you... has he? Minato would be surprised if he had. It doesn't match his character.

Someone who feels that strongly about you-- that's not something we can make up. ]

[...

He did!

And there's memories alongside - Kaneda telling him to live his life, and stay out of his after a confusing argument when Tetsuo first got here. Shooting at him in a gas-hazed building. The showdown at the arcade. Trying to break his first bike here. Seeing Ken wearing the same jacket he's got on now through a furious lump in his throat... and Pan's voice whispering that Kaneda already found someone better than him. That he wasn't ever going to be good enough for, or loved by anyone but Pan.

Time and time again that the first things Kaneda said - there doesn't have to be a me vs you- sounded like nothing more than hollow, bitter lies.

But there's more - Kaneda holding him during a psychotic episode induced by the ninth hour of the seminar, threading fingers through his hair, whispering daijoubu until he came back to himself again. Pulling him back to awareness after a nightmare. Hugging him tightly, still coated in blood and grime accumulated from the Neverland jungle - 'I don't want anyone else! I just want my brother!!' Passing notes under his door in Nonah 05, complete with small narwhal drawings, giving him back the gun Rick gave him - Tetsuo reminding him he wouldn't need a bullet to attack anyone there, but promising he'd never turn it against Nonah 05.

Leaving him takeout for his birthday shortly after they had that first fight; his wrist is bare of the resonator that he got in September. Crouched anxiously over his twitching body on a street back in District 17, yelling at him to hang on as the world faded into pain...

Giving him that same bike he'd crashed.

A much younger Kaneda shoving a toy robot back to a crying Tetsuo alone on a playground, sniffing back blood. 'This is yours, right?'

There's so much more than the one narrative Tetsuo focuses on. It's easy to believe the most pessimistic answer, that he only cared again after Tetsuo died, but even Tetsuo's memories betray him. And this time, as they play out, he has nowhere to hide from them.

Kaneda didn't-

Give a shit. Give up on him. Care what was happening to him. Leave him.

Replace him.

There's too many endings to the sentence, in a branching path. Fears blend with reality until none of it makes sense.

I don't know!!

Minato's still right. He couldn't make this shit up.]

[ This is all a bit overwhelming, even for Minato. He has to retreat into his own mind further to watch this, so it's more like a video in full color and surround sound than something he's experiencing himself; but retreating is something Minato is good at, removing himself, distancing himself, so he manages it. His Persona steady him.

In the end it takes him a while to reply, sorting out all these tangled threads, trying to understand what Tetsuo, himself, doesn't.

What he ends up saying is:

Do you think it might be this complicated for Kaneda, too? I think... he cares a lot about you, but you've hurt him, too. Kaneda-san can't carry everything on his own. He needs your help. ]

[It doesn't matter how long it takes Minato; Tetsuo won't notice. There's too much for him to deal with, too. But it's his own head, and he can't escape it. The rage, the frustration, the need to be close, or validated... or loved. It's always been too intense.

But when Minato replies, all of those thoughts and conflicting memories and beliefs pause, giving way to one question. Kaneda never needed help. Even when he did.. he stood on his own. No matter how much Tetsuo had wanted anything from before to be equal, it... wasn't.

Minato couldn't have picked better words to get Tetsuo's attention, and keep it.

My help....? How?!

He can't help anything. He couldn't even save himself...]

[ Okay, so he seems to be going the right direction with this. Good, because Minato has no clue what he's doing, and is just moving forward by feel, like a man in total darkness might stretch out his hands and tentatively pick his way across a room.

But there's really only way this makes sense to him. His view is limited, he's aware. Minato is not that good at interpreting emotions, not his own, much less other people's. Yet he's gained some comprehension over the past year or two in a very narrow field-- and it just so happens that it is this one, of people platonically needing each other to function in a hostile, uncomprehending world. What he'd learned with SEES, and here.

You don't want to be alone... right? I'm sure neither does Kaneda. I don't know what I'd have done without Ken-kun here. I need... direction. Someone to focus on, to keep going.

He carefully pushes across a sense of being lost and desolate, almost bleak, just waiting until the time he can go back to death. What he's talking about is purpose.

Ken-kun and Jaime and everyone else saved me from that. Kaneda isn't like me, but he does need someone, to keep going forward with. And you're his most important person. ]

[There it is again. The most important person... It's complicated, full of the fear that the next day, he won't mean anything at all. That being important is a temporary thing that can be lost -

--why else would he still be wearing this jacket? If he takes it off...

But it's not the first time he's heard it by now, in a way he can't shrug off. Ken Amada said that, too - he can feel those words in his mind just as clear as Minato's. The concept echoes and builds, further and further.

'I don't WANT anyone else!' Kaneda's own words echo in his mind alongside the others.

Tetsuo didn't use to really understand that feeling. He was too intensely locked to his very personal struggle, with no thought of future or consequence, no question about goals. Now, he's rarely felt anything so strongly as that feeling of drifting through life, without any direction. The circumstances are different, but it's the same.

What if he's fine without me?

It's not a new question. It's not one he hasn't asked before, and every time he does it grows a little less. But the fear's still there, sometimes worse than others.

He's said he needs me. Ken said that, too. But I can't see it.]

[ But Minato is only puzzled by Tetsuo's lack of understanding here. He reflects a light question back.

Why do you think he's so different from you...? Kaneda-san can't feel that differently. Maybe he's wondering what he'll do if you're fine without him.

Not that Minato knows Kaneda that well, but he's a human being, and he knows how strongly he feels about Tetsuo. ]

[There's a part of him that's certain what Minato's saying is true, under the insecurities. There's no small amount of genuine love for him there, more than most would ever get to find out Tetsuo's capable of. That part needs little convincing- Kaneda is his friend, no... His older brother...

But it's easy to get lost to irrational thinking and let it all twist around. It's easy to get wrapped up in pain. It's not easy to admit any of this, but Tetsuo is all reaction now, without his buffers and walls. It's not the first time he's had to confront this, and it never gets easier.

Look- I wanted to be! But I'm not... That's the difference, he's good at everything and all I'm good for is-

A hand through his back in a forest...]

[ As someone who's also good at everything and is frequently mistaken for cool and above it at all, Minato has no difficulty disagreeing with that.

More firmly, trying to dispel that bloody image, Tetsuo. Everyone has to find their own meaning in their lives. For Kaneda, you'll always be part of it. Things like 'what I'm good for' don't matter.

An image of Shinji and Akihiko back when he'd first known them, estranged, Shinjiro living on the streets and Akihiko insistently going out to visit him, not letting him drop out of his life completely no matter that he's left SEES... Akihiko pounding his fist on the table at Shinji's memorial after he'd died... Vowing to live for him. ]

[He has to think about that for a while.

Is that enough? To have meaning in the most important person in the world's life... especially when he's unsure about his own future. 'Always' may not be always.

He's never really faced death, or known what it's like to lose someone. He's been lucky in that regard.

But important people here have vanished into their own worlds again, and no one discusses them anymore. Someone like Thomas, who taught Tetsuo how to properly use telepathy and trained him to better prepare for mental invasion. Someone like Wanda, who first reached somewhere deep into his soul and whispered he wasn't alone as he slowly blacked out at the August Swear-In.

Those people have worth and value to Tetsuo, and they're gone, vanished without a trace. One day, it's quite likely that he'll be one of those, and not just here...

His mind flashes to another memory, lying anxious and scared with his back to Kaneda, whispering:

'Do I turn sixteen at all?'
'I don't know. Maybe.'

Kaneda sounded apologetic.

What if I don't find meaning?! If there isn't anything I'm - how I'm-

It's hard to shake those images, as they cut through his thoughts and scatter them. He'd lived on the streets, both here and in Neo Tokyo. He'd been that person, and maybe he'll leave Kaneda like that, too.

He can't even know for absolute sure what happened. Not even Kaneda could answer with certainty.

How long is always? ]

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