...but none of us are ever truly unconscious. Far away in time and space, in those cast-iron certainties that turned out to be so malleable, the coffin burns in the Shadow's awareness, at the end of the hairsbreadth silver chain that is all that's left between them.
What is it, to be a Shadow? If only he knew, when once he was so sure he knew it all. A repository of things chained and things denied? Sure. A place the forbidden goes to die? Ha, if only. Mainly all he knows is hunger, endless, ravening, driving through his days and nights like a hot poker. Something missing, something gone. Something he couldn't feed with Midnight's ridiculous cake—though she did feed him.
Even now, he laps lies from the palms of the others who visit, like he's as much a cringing dog as his pathetic ego surface-self. Even aft
He remembers himself, slowly, in pieces. Enough to coalesce into his human form, just as he was when the snow above Yongen-jaya gave way to the stars. Drawn in on himself in a corner of the Cognitive Control Room, his room, Maruki's room, he almost refuses to leave. Know your enemy? Sure. But he also can't look away from the cables all around him—from the knowledge of his past, of his inevitable future. From the horror that always, forever, he can only escape in death.
His ego's perpetual sleep allows him some limited peace. Even now, the Shadow knows what's going on around him—but all he sees is blackness; all he senses are thick, enclosing walls and the smell of pine and dust. His ego is shut up in a box, perhaps buried alive in a coffin. And long may it remain so.
* * *
Needless to say, it doesn't remain so. He is not best pleased when the lid of the box cracks, when faces masked and unmasked lift out his ego's lifeless form. He senses it again—panic, then awareness, then understanding, before the ego chains itself, never knowing it's done it. It's like a death every time.
Throwing back his head, losing his form entirely, he screams. Mementos shakes around him. And, perhaps ironically, he doesn't think at all; he just goes; he acts; he is. He coalesces behind the team, eyes on the prize, on the thing outside its box that he can now finally kill, to put an end to both their misery; to save them from that life of endless torture that he cannot stand. He shivers, blurring to strike in the blink of an eye—
Except then he senses Makoto. Who looks human, but isn't human. It buys them all seconds as he opens his mouth to whine, as his contorted features startle into a remarkably human frown.
"What the fuck. What the hell are you? How dare you?"
Something that looks human, but isn't human. Not at all.
2/2
What is it, to be a Shadow? If only he knew, when once he was so sure he knew it all. A repository of things chained and things denied? Sure. A place the forbidden goes to die? Ha, if only. Mainly all he knows is hunger, endless, ravening, driving through his days and nights like a hot poker. Something missing, something gone. Something he couldn't feed with Midnight's ridiculous cake—though she did feed him.
Even now, he laps lies from the palms of the others who visit, like he's as much a cringing dog as his pathetic ego surface-self. Even aft
He remembers himself, slowly, in pieces. Enough to coalesce into his human form, just as he was when the snow above Yongen-jaya gave way to the stars. Drawn in on himself in a corner of the Cognitive Control Room, his room, Maruki's room, he almost refuses to leave. Know your enemy? Sure. But he also can't look away from the cables all around him—from the knowledge of his past, of his inevitable future. From the horror that always, forever, he can only escape in death.
His ego's perpetual sleep allows him some limited peace. Even now, the Shadow knows what's going on around him—but all he sees is blackness; all he senses are thick, enclosing walls and the smell of pine and dust. His ego is shut up in a box, perhaps buried alive in a coffin. And long may it remain so.
* * *
Needless to say, it doesn't remain so. He is not best pleased when the lid of the box cracks, when faces masked and unmasked lift out his ego's lifeless form. He senses it again—panic, then awareness, then understanding, before the ego chains itself, never knowing it's done it. It's like a death every time.
Throwing back his head, losing his form entirely, he screams. Mementos shakes around him. And, perhaps ironically, he doesn't think at all; he just goes; he acts; he is. He coalesces behind the team, eyes on the prize, on the thing outside its box that he can now finally kill, to put an end to both their misery; to save them from that life of endless torture that he cannot stand. He shivers, blurring to strike in the blink of an eye—
Except then he senses Makoto. Who looks human, but isn't human. It buys them all seconds as he opens his mouth to whine, as his contorted features startle into a remarkably human frown.
"What the fuck. What the hell are you? How dare you?"
Something that looks human, but isn't human. Not at all.