the other side of the glass

[justforthegun]

STATUS: OPEN
CHARACTERS: justforthegun (Tohru Adachi, Persona 4) & ~*YOU*~
LOCATION: A prison.
SUMMARY: You are not visiting Adachi. Adachi is visiting you.
WARNINGS: Persona 4 spoilers.
NOTES: Adachi is visiting your character, who is in prison. Why are they in prison? Falsely accused or not, should be more interesting than the other way around.

Comments

[hierophantlink]

When they'd said he'd had a visitor, he hadn't expected this. Nanako, maybe, with her caretakers - Souji, if he was lucky, down here to visit his friends and paying his damned uncle his respects because he felt he had to. What he hadn't expected was Adachi, staring at him through the glass, pen in hand, likely come to taunt him.

It hadn't been him - but what did he expect? Without Dojima, the Inaba police department's detection work was shoddy, and whoever had framed him had done a good enough job for them to be convinced. He could only hope that when - or if - the victim of the assault pulled through, they would be able to testify at the appeal and set everything right.

Still, when he sat in the chair and stared back towards his former partner, he could help but feel overwhelmingly angry. Adachi was playing with him, and he did not like to be played

[justforthegun]

"Just checking, sir," he said as he scribbled down the name, tone always matching Dojima's bitterness in apology. "Thought a little humor would cheer you up."

Adachi, of course, knew Dojima was innocent- not because he was the one who'd framed him, no- but because he wasn't an Inaba born and bred idiot. Inaba's PD was, indeed, a joke, whether the suspect they were looking for had supernatural powers or not. It didn't take a psychology degree to know Dojima had no motive or inclination, and it didn't take a fucking detective to look at the evidence and see that obviously, someone was trying to make it look as if Dojima did it, to the point where it almost ruled Dojima out as a suspect from the get-go... unless Dojima were just plain insane. But more often than not, crime was not insanity- impulsive and illogical, yes, but not insane. It was always rational, in at least one sense or another, and he'd thought even the most poorly trained policeman would know that. But as always, Adachi learned yet again that blind drivelling stupidity

and the slowest tagger ever award goes to...

[hierophantlink]

Dojima's hands wanted desperately to grip onto something - Adachi's arm, Adachi's tie, Adachi's neck - but with nothing to grip on to, they just tightened in on themselves, curling to form fists. Adachi's voice was light and airy (as it almost always was), talking as if the subject was no big deal - but Dojima knew better. He caught the snipe at his parenting skills and tried desperately to brush it off, but it clung on. Visits were supposed to be nice. This one more certainly wasn't.

"Without my--" He started. He was going to end with permission, but he knew better. They didn't need his permission. Nanako was ward of the state now, and what Dojima thought about the way she should be raised meant just as much - or even less - than what a random stranger on the street had to say about it.

There was a long pause as he grit his teeth together, trying to form the words he wanted to say next. He had a lot of them, but none of them were really aimed at Adachi.

Finally, "Have you been taken off the investigation?"

woops fixing some typos

[justforthegun]

Adachi watched the emotions play out on Dojima's face. A man who'd truly lost everything. And he didn't deserve it, no, but they never did. Dojima'd simply made a little mistake. Unable to tear himself away from the shadow of a culprit he'd never find, he hadn't paid quite enough attention to what was actually around him... and now here Dojima was. His own daughter would probably forget his face in a few years.

So Adachi decided to remember it in her stead. Once, his ability to read Dojima was a necessity. Now the flex in his jaw and the crease in his brow would be mere trivia, like the names of all the Phoenix Rangers.

"Of course," Adachi answered easily, with no hesitation. "You're my partner, after all. They don't want the investigation to be biased."

What a joke. He would've been the most objective investigator in the entire damn department- if anything, how awful Dojima had treated him over the past few months should've given Adachi's favorable results more clout.

[muscleheads]

After a while, you got sick of the smiles. Sick of them because you knew they could care less. Sick of them because you couldn't smile. Sick of them because it was a lie in the form of an expression. And if there was anything to smile about, you wouldn't be in that place.

But he wasn't, and Lincoln knew that if he was on the outside looking in instead of the other way around, he'd be smiling too.

His mouth twisted into a frown, and he leaned forward, the chains hanging from his wrists making that obnoxious sound that reminded him how free he wasn't.

"Come on man," he mumbled, barely bothering to open his mouth as he spoke. "You know who I am. And I didn't kill that guy. I already told them this. What're you here for, anyway?"

sorry this took so long- had to research your canon a little. thanks so much for tagging!

[justforthegun]

'A lie in the form of an expression.' That was the truth of it, wasn't it? Adachi rarely lied with his words; it was all in his face, in the lazy slacking of eyelids and the careful tightening of lips. A lie honed and perfected by years of necessity. He wore it now, quite simply, because it was his first line of defense. That it happened to double as offense at times was by chance rather than design

It's all good. And I couldn't not tag it. IT WAS TOO PERFECT.

[muscleheads]

"I already told you--" It didn't take much for Lincoln to lose his patience (if he ever had any to begin with); he was always so angry, so stubborn. And when he was right, he was right. He knew it. Knew he was innocent, knew there were people behind all this (the murder, the execution).

Beyond that, though, he understood nothing. Not a damn thing. He didn't understand why they chose him. Some pothead thug. Pinning it on him was easy, with a background like his (after all, everyone did believe it). But that couldn't be the only reason this murder was attached to his name. After all, there were guys around with records worse than his.

"I didn't kill Steadman. Guy was already dead when I got there. The evidence was crap, this whole thing is crap." He shook his head, leaned back, and looked away from Adachi. So far, he hadn't even really been looking at him. More than anything, he was looking past him. Looking through him. "I was gonna...but someone else got there first

sorry for the latest tag in the history of lateness

[justforthegun]

Inmates rarely continued to plead innocence. Once the reality of their situation set in (that they were convicted, that they would stay convicted) they quickly saw the appeal in giving up.

So, why? That was the question Adachi was expected to answer in this paper. Was this man (who still hadn't told him his damn name- he'd have to look it up later) truly innocent, or under the impression that if he stuck to his story, he'd eventually be exonerated?

One thing was for sure- this man (ah, "Burrows", he finally caught the name when Burrows leaned back and scribbled it down, right beside "Steadman", "already dead", and other pertinent bits of information he caught from Burrows's rambling) was adamant about pleading innocence.

Adachi found it all a little hard to believe ("already dead when I got there"? how cliche could you get?) but... well, like he said, he hadn't even known Burrows's name when he came here. His assignment was clear: he had no choice but to coax the full story out of Burrows as best he could

[undiminishing]

He was sure he could feel his skull flattening against the metal table; it had been so long since anything had happened to make him lift his head from it. It must have been a day that he'd been sitting here, just waiting and wondering what in the world he'd done that was so wrong. Or at least, what he'd done that deserved this kind of punishment. He was used to the locals not rolling out the welcome mat every time he landed, and he didn't exactly blame them for not wanting him around either, the Keyblade Master had a pretty bad reputation to people who knew of the legend. It brought to mind the vivid memory of King Triton wanting nothing more but to dropkick his fins right out of Atlantica when he first arrived. (Fishmen with giant, laser-beam shooting spears can be surprisingly terrifying.)

Still, he never would have expected to be cuffed and forced into a sterile, spartan room feeling like he was somehow the bad guy. He was just doing his mission, he was protecting people! This might have been the first time he'd ever felt

I LOVE YOUR TAG LOL. well-written + great premise lmao. WELCOME TO REALITY, SORA.

[justforthegun]

"Sora," Adachi repeated as he scribbled it down. No last name, he noted...a normal kid would've rattled off his full name and address and begged to call his parents, all in the same breath. But this kid was anything but normal. They found him beating the daylights out of some poor shmuck with an ornate pole. If that wasn't enough to indicate Sora was Crazy with a capital C, the kid was yelling nonsense at the stuffed animals he had with him... almost as if he seriously thought they were alive.

But Sora was young, and Adachi didn't make it a habit of provoking people, crazy or not. He was fascinated by the boy. Seriously, what made this kid snap? What made him spike his hair up something awful before running out into the streets bludgeoning people at random? The key came in Sora's explanation:

"He wasn't human, you say?" Adachi knew better than to pause to write everything that interested him. He looked Sora in the eyes as he wrote the note down blind. "What do you mean?"

[undiminishing]

[ ooc; asfk;jksjkkl; thank you very much! ♥ Your Adachi is faaabulous and the written introspection even more so. ;A; also holy balls this is long s-sorryyyyy. ;; ]

Sora nodded when the man echoed his name, noting with curiosity the pen and notepad in his hands. Admittedly this wasn't the first time he'd been arrested before, he probably had quite the petty theft record in twenty odd worlds by now, so he wasn't yet concerned about being locked up and held in the station, just sort of annoyed. What he was unused to was this whole interview process, the odd practice of getting an account from the mouth of the criminal before throwing them in the slammer. Most of the time the palace guards were a little over excited to find some clueless strangers to put their dungeons to use and didn't bother to exchange words beyond, "Get in the cell, brat!" and "Oh god stop beating us, kid, we're sorry!". This modern approach threw Sora off a bit. He mistook a formality and impersonal intrigue for compassion

[justforthegun]

((OOC: WOW THIS TAG IS FOREVER LATE I AM SO SORRY. Feel free to drop. I loved your tag but y-yeah obviously it took me a while to get back to it.))

The darkness in people's hearts? Sounded about as ridiculous as that rumor he'd heard about seeing your soulmate on TV. But that rumor had the flavor of an urban legend; Sora's had the makings of a children's after school adventure. Only he and his friends could save the world from the hearts of darkness with their magic swords! Sure.

Problem was, Sora wasn't just a kid anymore. He was still a boy, but he was fifteen-- nevermind that he should've gotten over playing with dolls and playing make-believe years ago-- he was plenty strong enough to bash a guy's skull open

[foolreversed]

At first, Adachi kept his eyes down. He really didn't care who it was on the other side of the glass and he didn't even have to look to make a good guess. Only a tiny handful (if he was lucky) of people would bother to visit him, most of those people being involved in the case, so it really wasn't that hard to figure out. Regardless of who they were though, the question wasn't could he look into their eyes but rather, did he even want to.

The answer was, quite simply, no. No, he didn't. No matter who they were.

But that changes when he hears the other's voice. He has to look up then. Because that voice is his own.

At first all he does is blankly stare back at the glass, wondering for a split second if it transformed into a mirror when he wasn't looking. But soon enough he realizes how foolish that idea is; not only are their positions different and not mirrored at all but his "reflection" is not wearing the same uniform he is either. The clothes aren't even the same kind he wore before his arrest. But he does recognize them. He

[justforthegun]

"No," Adachi lets a laugh slip. "Guess I just love to hear the sound of my own voice."

How many times has he done this? With each familiar stroke he remembers, vaguely, the pride of first learning to carve his name into the world. That was when he, like his name, was fresh and new. Clean, sharp, clear. Before everydayalways filled his place on the wall, packed the dirt in and wore down the edges until he could hardly tell he'd ever been there at all.

Now his pen traces the design, but it's a word said too often; it stops making sense to him. Tohru Adachi. Tohru Adachi. His body remembers; his fingers and tongue have no problem with it. What's gone missing is the why.

But he doesn't think the man before him knows, either. After all, he is him. He was him, before he was caught, and now he is him, because he is caught. The man before him knows with the certainty that comes with struggling the futility of knowing the truth. Was the glass between them the thinnest point between two alternate realities? Or a mirror, warped along the

I THINK I JUST BEAT DOJIMA FOR SLOWEST TAGGER AWARD

[foolreversed]

Everything drops as soon as he sees that hand on the glass. His smile. His face. Every single remaining trace of his masks. All that's left is an exhausted, empty man who's really lost everything for good this time, even the things he never realized he still had.

He stares at that hand, so close but unattainable. He can't hold it, can't so much as touch it. The glass between them is like the "4th wall" that used to separate them. Only this time instead of disappearing to let them become aware and interact with each other, it simply... Thinned and became translucent. Letting them see, hear and talk to one another but nothing more. That hand is a tease. A cruel one.

But it's better than nothing.

Raising his own hand he presses it back against the other's on the screen, but of course he only feels the cool, hard glass. Not long after he slumps forward, pressing his forehead against the screen as well. He doesn't say anything, just sighs. Heavily.

[justforthegun]

He watches the masks on the other's face crack, slip off, shatter silently by their ankles, and knows that his had done the same, those many months ago. There is no change in his expression now because change has already come to him. His face was not a mask when he walked in here today. It was the weathered, exposed remains that he, at times, twisted back into the shape of old masks out of necessity or habit or nostalgia. But it was not the same. He needed no more proof that the glass between them was not a mirror

[a_false_ending]

"Seta Souji."

The voice was calm as always, relaxed and soothing. Like water on summer days. At one time it might have been the type to lift those around it, to bring hope and succor. Not now. And not for a long time now. Now it was all slithering snakes in dark dry places.

Amused snakes at that. Silver dollar eyes looked up from staring at his shoes, the old metal chair squeaking as he shifted to look at the man questioning him. He wasn't the first, he wouldn't be the last. But when his eyes locked with the man in the suit a flicker of emotion finally showed beyond dull amusement.

Shock.

He covered it up well, he thought. Maybe a relitive he didn't know about, or a coincidence. Or he'd finally given in to his own insanity. Either way it promised to be more amusing then the last few times.

[justforthegun]

Someone who knew both their stories and the similar role they shared would likely have thought that Adachi should have been amused at this turn of events.

But he wasn't. He wrote Seta's name with careful indifference (though for Adachi, "indifference" looked like what most would call "kindness") on his face, but everything about this irritated him. The way Seta's natural teenage charm had matured, twisted, rotted into the man before him...and the way they were both on the wrong side of the glass

[a_false_ending]

The widening of his eyes was tiny, the black of his pupils eating just a tiny bit more of that dull silvery-gray. As much as Adachi had studied Souji, Seta himself had studied Tohru. And the mimic of the younger, brighter self was almost perfect. He had grown up about the way Seta had expected. Slouching and scraggy and dim eyed. (Not so much now. But he had seen it before he had switched, filed that away for later) The uneven tie was a detail that called his gaze most strongly, and he stared at it while he thought.

This should be impossible, he knew. But he knew in the way a blind man knew what a rainbow was: through the knowledge of others. In his own warbling mind such things didn't seem that strange at all. Tohru was here, a good 5 years plus older, and it didn't really matter if it was impossible. It still was.

He smiled at this Tohru-not-Tohru, his own masks going up. Less the madman and more the approachable detective and friend.

"Tohru, of course I know who you are."

[justforthegun]

Despite his better judgment, Adachi frowned immediately at the familiarity. Tohru. Did anyone call him Tohru besides his own mother?

And the change irritated him, too. Seta had clearly been set to play the indifferent prisoner... but as soon as the man recognized him, he slipped on a smile, smooth as silk. He'd compare it to his own if there wasn't something sickeningly self-assured about it. (Adachi's was much more about absent-mindedness than self-confidence.)

"Yes. Detective Tohru Adachi, Inaba PD." He looked back at the form- it would guide him. His ability to keep a front wasn't quite as important as it usually was- nothing would change the fact that Seta was somehow on that side, and he was on this side. But that was not exactly the game they were playing right now, and Adachi fought hard to suppress the irritation, the strange tight vicarious emotion he felt in his chest. In channeling his alternate universe teenage hero self's strength, he'd also channeled his weakness