#shibaemon

He looked at ... himself. His yellow-eyed self. His true self, apparently. It hurt to admit, especially in front of these people he barely knew. "I ... I guess they all know my embarrassing secrets now," he mumbled. The Shadow nodded; at least he had the decency to look similarly ashamed.

All the things he hated about himself, the things he tried to hide. His arrogance, his impulsiveness, his greed and selfishness and laziness and vanity and envy and bitterness and immaturity and temper and perversion and weakness and fear, and his frantic desperate yearning for somewhere to fit. He could see the years of bullying etched into his Shadow's face, the downcast eyes of someone who would always see himself as an outcast and a fuck-up, always watching for the moment of rejection no matter how accepting the people around him claimed to be. He despised himself for those feelings, but ... seeing someone else feel them, even if that someone else were also him ... it was confusing enough that a bit of compassion sneaked around the mountain of self-loathing.

He was never very good at expressing his feelings out loud. The words got in the way of themselves. All he could think to do was reach out and pull his Shadow close, to give him a place he could belong, if only for a moment. It was enough. The tears he was always ashamed of flowed freely as the two reconciled and recombined. And then all that remained in his arms was a tarot card, The Moon. Creativity, trickery, and false faces ... it fit. And in his mind, a figure appeared: Shibaemon. A beloved tanuki musician whose mistakes cost his wife and himself their lives. That ... also fit, if painfully. He held the card to his breast and nodded solemnly.