Prompt: Souji/HumanForm!Fox. Written 2010 as an anonymous comment. Persona 4 belongs to Atlus.

You don't expect it to self-destruct.

It's your own carelessness that puts you in the center of the blast—your golf club digs into the Shadow, punctures it, and then suddenly the Shadow tears open from the inside and there is hot air and fire and the room is turning and that is terrible and then it stops turning and that is worse.

Strangely enough, it doesn't hurt, even when someone (Yousuke? Chie?) grabs you by the arms and hauls you against the wall. Yukiko bends over you, puts her hand on your chest and closes her eyes. Dia. You've seen this before, felt it—bones knitting together, charred flesh lightening to pink—but it's always odd, feeling life return to you so quickly, so blatantly cheating death. If it weren't for your Persona, you'd have died a million times over by now—no, a million times a million—

And then Yukiko pulls her hand away, trembling, and you realize that something is wrong and then you realize you can't breathe.

That's strange, you think, as the darkness swallows you.

Wake up, she whispers, and you know you'll never be able to fall asleep with her breath tickling at your ear, so you open your eyes.

The Tatsuhime Shrine is beautiful in the sunset. The dying light casts the world into sharp relief, lending a quality of unreality to the peaceful scene—like the image floating on a puddle of water, you think lazily. More real than real, somehow. More like the shrine than the shrine could ever be.

You begin to drift off...

Hey. Wake up, I said.

Her voice is louder this time, closer, with a note of exasperation in it. You open your eyes again—see her gazing down at you. Thank goodness, she says, once she's sure you aren't going to fade away again, and her lips curl up into a relieved smile. I was worried, you know—really worried—

Thought you'd gone away for good, maybe.

You're not sure what she means by that (not sure what you're doing here, lying across the shrine steps with your head in her lap), but you're pretty sure you're not going anywhere, so you open your mouth to say that—

Shh. She places her finger across your lips, something like worry flickering across her face until she's certain you won't speak—you decide, right there, that you don't want to see that expression again. Shh. Don't talk, okay? Keep your energy. We'll be done, soon, if you just wait...

You think: But I don't want this to be done.

And then, even before you even think about it, you reach a calloused hand upwards to touch the side of her face—

Yousuke says you almost died. That they managed to find the fox just in time, get one of those weird leaves—

Yousuke says you started petting the fox, even while you were conked out. He says it was really weird.

He says the fox was acting kind of weird, too, practically nosing against your face. Like it was worried, or something.

"Scars," you say.

"What?" Yousuke says.

"Nothing," you say, and run your thumb against your fingers, where the memory of her skin still remains.

"Nothing at all."

(That night, you had a dream.)

(You dreamt you were alone and hurt, half-blinded by the fog as you wandered the streets of Inaba. You could hardly walk for your wounds, and no matter how loudly you shouted, no one answered.)

(Suddenly, a girl in a red dress appeared. Where she touched you, your bones knitted themselves back together, and your flesh became whole.)

(She took you to the Tatsuhime Shrine, and the two of you sat side by side on the shrine steps and watched as the sun came out.)

(...)

(...)

(...And then she put you into a half nelson.)

(You smiled all the way into the dirt.)