Title: hello; goodbye
Fandom: Persona 3 Portable
Characters: Ken/FeMC, Ryoji/FeMC

Ken has this dream. He calls it a dream because he thinks he's asleep when he sees her in his minds eye, calls it a dream because he's still too young, too lukewarm, the baby fat still in the curve of his cheek, the swell of his lips. Minako is blinking down at him, all warmth, all forwardness, all his. In her hand, he sees the scar across her palm. On her finger glints a ring.

"Hello," says dream-Minako, offering her other hand, tucking the other behind her back, neatly, where he can't inspect her fingers.

"Hello," says Ken.

This is dream number one.

There's a game she often plays. When, half the time, he talks for hours on end and she still manages to say the right things with so few words, he calls it love. She calls it play pretend.

They're on a beach, this time. Yakushima, she tells him. Another memory he'll never share with her, in another time. He digs his heels into the sand and watches as she scoops some water with her palm; it passes through the spaces between her fingers without a sound. Everything in this place is -

"So cold," Minako says, rubbing her arms. Ken would offer her a blanket, but in this large space of land, there's nothing except for Minako and Ken and too much time, too little closure.

She'd held his boyish heart in her hand with the same ease, the same sadness. The quality of her passivity irritates him to no end.

He'd kiss her, if he were older. If she asked him to. If he had enough strength. If -

If, and nothing else.

Iwatodai Strip Mall, this time. It feels the same way it did ten years ago, in Wakatsu, before it went out of business and the Strip Mall was converted into an apartment complex.

Ken tells Minako this as Minako pokes at her bowl without bringing even the smallest grain of rice to her mouth. Once, he would have watched her without thinking of how her tongue would curl around the tip of her chopsticks, or how her teeth would scrape across the blunt edge. How dangerous, to think of her like this, to want things he can never have.

"It was unavoidable," Ken says, clearing his throat, as if to control his thoughts. "There was too little space and there were so many people, so... they didn't really have anywhere else to go, you see."

"And what are you doing here, Ken-kun?" Minako says this with little conviction, with the kind of honest cruelty that makes him wonder if she is his conscience.

"I'm dreaming," says Ken, leaning forward to cup her jaw. Absently, he thinks that his palm looks larger and his legs feel longer, this time, "aren't I?" This isn't real you aren't real nothing can hurt me not you not this not even Death but it is just so lonely -

Her lower lip is bruised and her smile is gone; he pulls away, bowing his head.

"I'm sorry," he says, "I couldn't help it."

Her mouth, his tongue. It tastes like defeat.

She cleans his ears in dream number four, as if dream number three never existed. He rests his head against her lap, her bones like branches insistent against his cheek. Her knuckles graze his forehead, the slant of his brow. When she hums, he thinks of his dead mother. Both of them, dead, but the greatest loves of his life.

"You remind me of her," Ken says. "I wasn't strong enough to protect her, then."

She says nothing; his toes curl, stretching the fabric of his socks. When she inspects his earlobe, he thinks there's some strange sort of gentleness in there, too. How did she look at me, he wonders.

"I couldn't protect you, either," he continues, voice hushed. This is no epiphany; this is fact. "I'm a failure, aren't I?"

So many insecurities; so little meaning in words of consolation. You were only a child. There was no helping it. I did it to save you.

"I don't regret it," is what Minako finally says. Ken swallows, shifts his head to hide what is left of feeling. Her breath ghosts over his ear; the cotton swab lays on the wooden floor, near the tips of Ken's fingers.

"You will grow to be strong, too," whispers Minako, and Ken shuts his eyes.

Her room is the same as always - barely lived in, and would anyone notice if she went away? He stands, awkwardly, in the center of her room, and she watches him from her perch on her bed. There's a faint buzzing noise that persists in the back of his mind, and he feels like he's forgetting something, a ringing in his ear, a sharp pain in his gut. But there is Minako to deal with, above all things.

"What do you want to hear now, Ken-kun?" Minako asks, quietly, and Ken's heart clenches. What did you want me to say to you, then?

"I wanted," so many things, "you to tell me you loved me, that was all." Swallow the trepidation in your throat, but never look her in the eye when you say this. No regrets.

Minako folds her hands in her lap, considers something in her palms. She stands, and something in Ken's mind throbs; hurts like a bitch, but it's a familiar kind of pain, isn't it?

Isn't it, Ken-kun? Minako mouths, but when Ken blinks his eyes, she hasn't moved a muscle, no sign of a twitch in her lips, no eyes that light up with curiosity.

He thinks he can hear Yukari-san, in the distance, and he strains his ears to listen but it hurts his head too much and he can't think.

Minako raises her head, as if to look at something beyond her door. "She's calling for you," says Minako. "I think she just called you an idiot."

"She called you that, too," says Ken, wincing as he rubs at his forehead. It's the pain that makes him more daring, the ache that grates at his nerves and makes his insides coil with - jealousy? No, not that, something more selfish and less sexual, he hopes, because - because -

"You're bleeding," says Minako, and when did she get so close? Her fingers brush against Ken's ear, and he pulls away, flinching. The tips of her fingernails are red with his blood. "I guess this means you have to wake up soon."

I'm awake, aren't I? Ken wants to say, but Minako brings her hand to her lips, and it distracts him.

The ringing won't stop.

She drinks sake from a cup as he sits on top of the slide. He barely fits, given his size now. He isn't the boy in the first dream now; tonight he is older and wiser but still a jumbled mess of half-hearted apologies and uncertainty in her presence. How strange that men would fall to her feet for less. How strange and fitting.

"If you drink from this," Minako says, "I think you can go back now. It should be the right time, for you. I just know it."

"Then why can't I take you with me?" Ken asks, sounding torn. "If it's so powerful that I can stop dreaming about you, then why...?"

But Ken knows it's a foolish question; there's nothing in there except for imagined longing and empty notions of regret, no balm of life or plume of dusk to save her life. It's impossible.

"One day, you will forget me," Minako says, lifting the cup, a parody of a toast, "but I can treasure my farewells."

"I don't want to forget you," says Ken.

"And I hope," says Minako, pointedly, "you will."

She offers the cup to him, once she has had her fill, and he takes it with trembling, unsure fingers.

"I'll come see you again," says Ken. His mouth is dry and his voice is rough but it is the only thing that reminds him that this is all a dream, "I promise."

Minako smiles, shakes her head. "I'll be waiting."

She touches the nape of his neck as he tosses his head back and shuts his eyes. The sake is warm and intangible in his throat, but her palm is soft and her fingers hot against the base of his skull that he can't help but wonder if everything is all just a dream.

He wakes up with sand on his cheek, the ghost of a kiss. And there is always a memory of something that never existed, but it tides over the ache until the end of his days.

omake:

The honden flickers like static; taut, and rigid, only to disappear with a touch of Minako's fingers, as easy as dispelling a memory. Ryoji materializes on top of a disgruntled komainu, playing with an ema with his slender fingers. He tosses it to her, and she catches it with a small, disapproving grunt.

"A gift for the wedding," Ryoji teases, and she stares at the bold strokes of worst luck. The smile on her face stretches, and thins.

"Thank you," she says, coughing. She brings up the sleeve of her jacket to hide the parting of her mouth, and Ryoji respectfully looks away.

"Was it necessary?" Ryoji asks, hooking his thumbs around the loops of his belt, skin brushing against the metal clasps of his suspenders. "Talking to him in his sleep, I mean." There will be parts about relationships that Ryoji will never understand; there are still some parts of her he has no hold over. In this place, there is only one god, after all.

"No," says Minako, and he lets her be selfish, just this once.