Title: Faces In Windows
Fandom: Persona 5
Rating: PG
Length: 1,020 Words
Content Notes: No warnings apply.
Author Notes: Considered making this a pairing story, but introspection felt more appropriate.
Summary: Haru and her Persona take a little time to reflect.

* * * *

Midnight. There is no one at the office, and Haru is not supposed to be there, either, but she is a Phantom Thief, and she can come and go as she pleases. She feels a need to be alone there after spending day after day surrounded by the company and the cogs in its human machine. She needs to walk through the place and see how it feels when it is not stuffed to the rafters by the people who make the wheels of the company turn.

Cold. Impersonal. Concrete. Glass. Carpet. The building does not breathe like a house does. A house is alive because it has a family inside, she has decided, and there is no family at Okumura Foods. There never has been. There never will be. The only hint of life is her reflection in all of the windows she passes in the darkness of the top floor.

And I'm a Phantom, aren't? A Phantom is a ghost, isn't it? The Haru in the glass looks back at her, eyes slightly unfocused. Exhausted. Every day brings a raft of things to do, things for the school, things for the company, things for her friends. She loves to do things for her friends, and for her garden, but it is all so exhausting, and she can only hide it for so long. I already feel like a ghost. How long until I risk becoming one?

She smiles, and her reflection smiles back. She can maintain the appearance of good cheer. Around her friends, she genuinely feels it, but they are starting to guess that she is reaching the end of her strength. So are they. They are closing upon their enemy, and that enemy must fall, but it has been hard upon all of them, and they are tired, too. So she does her best to share her cheer, at least for as long as it will last.

Haru passes by another window, and the reflection in the glass is that of Milady.

Her Persona says to her, lips not moving, "You're human. You can't do this forever. That's why you have me. I still have secrets you don't know, strength you've not seen. I can carry the weight when you're too tired to do it yourself." She is gentle, Milady, but there is steel in her voice, too. "You couldn't have brought me out if you didn't have those reserves of anger, though. You know there's still work to do. As long as it's yet to be done, you won't give up. I won't let you. I'll never stop believing in you, Haru."

Because you're me, Haru reminds herself, continuing her stroll down the hallway, and you're everything that's best about me, too. You'll never be a stranger. But Milady still looks at her from the next window she passes, too. What is it? What's left to say?

"You're worried about what happens afterwards," Milady says. "You're worried you'll lose everyone, your Phantom Thieves." This time, she sounds like a mother. "You're worried you'll all go your separate ways after you disband. They've become your family, the only people you can trust, and that means more to you than you think they realize." Scolding, if only a little. "But all of you understand loss. All of you are missing little pieces of yourselves, and it's those chinks in your armor that have made you who you are. Those are the things that will keep you all together when all's said and done."

I can't help feeling that way. The main office, the place that used to be the throne room for her father in the days he held court at Okumura Foods. I'm human, like you said. I'm always afraid people will drift away, even if I know I've got what it takes to keep them.

The window behind the big chair where her father used to it. Milady appears there again, saying, "You love them all, don't you? They haven't been in your life for very long, but you'd give everything for any one of them. You think that's childish. Naïve. You want them to love you, too, but you're afraid to ask them if they do. That's how selflessness can feel. You think asking anything of them will make you look selfish. It won't. It's just another step in a direction you've never explored."

And ... I'll get there, one day. One day soon, hopefully. Haru sits at the desk. The surface is bare, making it seem impossibly large, and the moonlight that shines through the window behind her makes the shadow she casts seem ten times her size. I know I can't dither about it. I'll tell them. I'll show them all what's in my heart, and ... they'll accept those feelings. I've got to believe that they will.

"You make it sound like a love confession," Milady teases, her face appearing in the gloss of the desk. "Really, you don't have to say anything at all. I bet you they already know. It doesn't have to be said. They'll be there for you when you need them to be. They'll even be there when you don't. That's what friendship is."

I know. Haru closes her eyes, feeling so small at the desk that she feels like she might vanish. I know. Just ... a few steps more. We can do that, Milady.

"You can do that," Milady says before fading back into the recesses of her soul. "Because you know what I say. I am thou, thou art I, and all that. Keep the faith, Haru. Look at how far you've come, and know that the worst of it is behind you."

Silence, then, in the office. Haru looks up again, looks at all of the windows surrounding her. In them, she sees only her reflection again, multiplied many times over, each of them looking back at her. Alone. A little frightened. But there is still that last little reserve of strength that she has yet to tap in all its fullness.

Haru smiles, and the multitude of Harus smiles back at her.

END.