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When Kotone wakes, it’s to a sea of lights.
Above her, all around her, inky blackness stretches out in every direction, broken up only by the soft, intermittent light of what she can only describe as stars. They don’t look like any she’s seen before—glowing in every color she can think of, sparkling like jewels on a satin dress. She can’t trace any familiar constellations across this canvas, even when she wracks her brain for the really obscure ones she’s only read about in Edogawa’s class.
It’s a beautiful sight regardless. Her breath catches in her chest, hitching the same way it’s done a hundred times before when faced with something she’d never expected to encounter.
That’s when she realizes: she’s breathing.
“Hello, Kotone-kun. You’re finally awake.”
She blinks, and the panic that had been crawling up from the bottom of her rib cage dissipates in an instant.
A head of slick black hair bends over her, blotting out the stars. She sees a kind smile and blue eyes and she thinks, incongruously, of Aigis. Her head pillowed on cool metal thighs with only Aigi’s pleated uniform skirt to act as a buffer between them. Gentle words, the drip-drip-drip of miraculous tears onto her cheeks.
But what lies beneath her has give to it—tender flesh instead of unyielding steel. And the eyes watching her have a mischievous light to them, wrinkling at the corners because when he smiles he does it with his whole face, always. Even when he’s sad.
Ryoji.
“Oh,” she says, absently reaching up to cup her hand over his cheek. He folds his own hand over hers, trapping it against warm skin. “Oh, I—I didn’t think we’d see each other again.”
I didn’t think I’d see anyone again, she adds, just to herself, her mouth curling into a wry smile. Ryoji seems to guess at her thoughts—or maybe they’re broadcasting loud and clear to him via some weird telepathic connection they have she’s never noticed before—because his grip on her hand tightens, eyes shadowed as he lowers his head slightly.
“This is temporary,” he tells her. “Think of it like… oh, like on TV, when someone dies, and their neurons are in overdrive, their whole life flashing through their mind in a split second.”
“So it’s not real?”
“I didn’t say that,” Ryoji huffs. “It’s real. I’m real, and so are you. But it can’t last. Soon, your soul will succumb completely, becoming the final lock on the seal to keep Nyx at bay a while longer. I’m taking advantage of our connection for a nice chat in the meantime. It helps that it’s two-fold—once through the Death arcana, and then again through Fortune.”
Death and Fortune. They seem so at odds with each other, at a glance. She knows the others wouldn’t quite understand why Ryoji fit them both. Without the good fortune he bestowed upon her—the chance to choose her fate, to fight rather than forget that a blade was hanging over their heads until it inevitably swung for their necks—she would have died regardless. Her, along with everyone she loves. So she chose to embrace Death—her death, and only hers. To take his hand, and unravel the bonds she’d carefully stitched together around her heart until she could bind them into a chain worthy of restraining a god.
Without Ryoji, without Pharos, without the terrifying specter of Thanatos that lurked behind them both, she knows, deep down in the marrow of her bones, that The End would have come for them all.
Despite Ryoji’s mild protests, Kotone sits up to settle beside him. She takes in the twinkling, void-like space again, this time more critically. She feels… she feels like she recognizes it, even though she’s sure she’s never been here before. It reminds her, however faintly, of the world beyond the Velvet Room—outside of space and time, separate from the reality she knew.
“Is this…?”
“It’s the place you created when you sealed Nyx,” Ryoji confirms. His gaze wanders, the strange light of the multi-colored stars reflected in his sky-blue eyes. “I really like it here,” he tells her, almost sly, like he’s sharing a secret. “I don’t remember where I was before the Kirijo Group ‘created’ me. I don’t really remember what it was like to sleep inside you. I have flashes of my fight with Aigis, and that glorious month I was able to spend in your world. But, looking back at all of it, I think this is the most beautiful place I’ve ever been able to stay.”
She finds herself agreeing, turning as much as she can without letting Ryoji leave her sight to observe the star-like lights in the distance. The ground beneath them feels solid, but when she looks down it’s like she’s peering out over the edge of a towering skyscraper, her stomach bottoming out because it doesn’t look like there’s anything there. Just empty space and fairy lights strung by an overzealous hand. She decides to keep her eyes on Ryoji instead—after she has to take a few deep breaths to quell the rising nausea.
When their eyes meet, he offers a conciliatory look she can’t quite decipher.
“We’re bound together now.”
Kotone’s head tilts, curiosity giving way to amusement as her expression softens. “Weren’t we always? I kept you nice and safe in my heart for all those years, didn’t I?”
“You did.” Ryoji smiles, and there’s something almost… childish flirting at the corners of his mouth. For a moment, she sees Pharos in front of her, grinning with his hands twisted into the fabric of that awful prisoner’s uniform he’d worn for so long, eager and bashful in equal measure. “But this is… this was a choice you made, Kotone-kun. One you walked into willingly, eyes wide open. I hope you understood what you were doing, but—“
“I did,” she interjects, softly, but with a hint of the steel she’d tempered within herself to brave Akihiko’s admirers. She may not have grasped the finer points of things—when the last ounce of her life force would wither away, or what it would feel like to have her heart stop beating in her chest with Aigi’s nimble fingers combing through her hair. But she’d known. The moment she’d stood back up in that fight against Nyx, and ascended into the sky to dive headlong into the moon’s gaping maw, she’d known how things would end.
She trusted herself to win, no matter the cost.
She trusted her friends to live on in her stead, whether or not they ever came to forgive her for leaving them.
“This isn’t the same thing,” Ryoji goes on after a moment, sighing. “You’ve died, but you’ve also become the seal that chains Nyx to the darkness she originated from. And as her avatar, naturally I’m along for the ride. She’ll try to stir eventually, Kotone-kun. And she still—has a hold on me, as her herald.”
“I’m already dead,” Kotone reminds him, and it’s a testament to how not quite right the both of them are that neither of them flinches. Kotone actually laughs, and it’s a bright, bubbly thing, so much lighter now without the weight of all her fear and her anxiety draped across her shoulders. “She can’t hurt me anymore, Ryoji. If she tries to fight, even if she acts through you, I’m gonna make sure she stays knocked down. Just like every other Shadow I’ve ever kicked the crap out of.”
Ryoji’s brow furrows, eyes searching her face. He looks like he wants to believe her. He also looks like she’s asking him to swallow a handful of thumbtacks.
“There’s no going back, Kotone-kun,” he reminds her, and there again she hears Pharos. Gentle, uncertain Pharos, who warned her of The End long before either of them knew what form it would take. Pharos, who wanted a friend above all else, who delighted in the idea of Kotone having the power to sway fate even as the danger of it ate away at his resolve.
She’d looked into his name once. When the pieces started to click together—Tartarus, Shadows, Personas. Everyone in her life shared some connection to Greek myths, at least before their Personas evolved; surely, she thought, Pharos would be the same.
Her research didn’t amount to much, just snatches of time spent idling in the library while Saori shelved books. She thought it would be obvious, at first, like Junpei’s Persona, or Akihiko and Shinjiro, or Ken. But the only mention she could find of Pharos came from a book on the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Pharos was—is?—an island off the coast of Greece, where the famous Lighthouse of Alexandria was built. She’d wrinkled her nose at that revelation, unsure where it fit in the pantheon of gods and heroes she’d surrounded herself with.
Months later, though, when Ryoji revealed himself to her, she’d felt that information twist and turn in on itself to settle neatly into the final blank space of the puzzle she’d been carefully putting together since May.
What better way to describe Pharos—to describe Ryoji—than as a beacon in the dark, guiding her through dangerous currents towards a far-off shore? Beckoning her home.
“I know,” she says, shuffling sideways on her knees until she’s pressed against Ryoji, from shoulder to hip. She rests her cheek on his shoulder, nuzzling into the warmth of his scarf. The action seems to startle him, his frame tensing like the string of Yukari’s bow, poised to let an arrow fly, but he doesn’t push her away. “I know, Ryoji.”
“Your friends will be disappointed,” he points out in a whisper.
“But they’ll live. That’s enough for me.”
“And Aragaki-kun?”
Low blow, Kotone thinks, tempted to twist her fingers into that soft scarf and yank as hard as she can. She refrains; it wouldn’t do anything to make her feel better. The hollow pit that opened in her stomach when she heard Shinjiro’s voice alongside her other bonds won’t suddenly be filled just because she lashes out like a little kid. She spent two months dragging her exhausted, beaten down body to the hospital to sit at his bedside, holding his icy hand between her own and praying to whatever gods might actually listen that she’d get to see his eyes at least one more time, before the inevitable.
The prayers went unanswered, obviously. But she doesn’t regret a moment of the time she spent with him.
“He’ll live,” she says again, quieter but no less sure of herself. “He’ll wake up some day, and he’ll have Akihiko-senpai and Mitsuru-senpai with him.”
Selfishly, she hopes he doesn’t even remember her. He didn’t make the same promise as the rest of SEES—to find one another again when the Dark Hour disappeared, to hold onto the memories they’d made fighting against a never ending tide of Shadows. Shinjiro had wanted to forget it all, anyway, and lead as normal a life as he could manage. It would be for the best if he—
“Don’t lie, Kotone-kun,” Ryoji murmurs, brushing her fingers through the flyaway hairs clinging to her temple. “Not here, not with me. And not to yourself, either.”
She squeezes her eyes shut. “I want him happy,” she insists. Her voice has gone hoarse, and she can only blame it on the tightness that’s seized her throat. “I want him to want to live. If he remembers me, he…” She nearly chokes on the words—they feel far too big for her mouth, tumbling like rocks against the backs of her teeth. She can’t force them out, so she hopes Ryoji gets at least some of what she’s trying to convey. “God, I sound totally conceited, don’t I?”
“Because you think he’ll be hurt by your death? Seems like a pretty normal reaction to losing a loved one, as far as I understand it. Admittedly, I’m still not the best at parsing human emotions, but—it doesn’t sound conceited in the least to me.”
Kotone sets aside her shame, and her regret, and the fear that’s trying to hitch a ride on her shoulders again. None of it’s productive—none of it matters anymore, not when she won’t be able to right any of the wrongs she’s committed against the people she holds most dear to her. She made her choice, but she isn’t the one who has to live with it. And that’s… okay.
She has faith in her friends. She has faith in Shinjiro.
Blinking the tears from her eyes, she leans more of her weight into Ryoji. He doesn’t budge except to slide his arm from between them so he can wrap it around her, drawing her into the curve of his body. He’s pliant against her now, the tension she’d felt before no more than an echo of dream, half-remembered.
“I’m tired, Ryoji,” she says, because suddenly it’s true. She’d been wide awake when she came to in this strange, twinkling place—full of more energy than she had been in months. Now, though, her eyelids droop as though they have cement blocks hooked to them, and her body feels heavy the way it does when she’s on the verge of slipping into a deep sleep.
It’s familiar, this sinking sensation. This is her second time falling like this.
The water’s slowly closing over her head, and she imagines herself floating, her clothes waterlogged, dragging her further down into the depths as she watches the light gleaming on the water’s surface grow dim and distant.
The stars blur into shapeless, bokeh patterns.
Ryoji shifts, turning his head towards her. His breath is warmth on her skin, his lips even warmer where they press a lingering kiss to her forehead.
Her eyelids flutter—a desperate bid to keep awake for a few moments longer.
Death is kind, she thinks. Kind enough to hold her close as her vision starts to fade, obscured by harmless shadows and the remnants of tears.
“I’ll be with you,” he promises, just like Aigis had. “For now and always, Kotone.”
Aigis had kept her safe in those final moments on the rooftop. She’d offered her warmth, and comfort, and assurances that she’d done well. That she had earned this right to rest.
Ryoji slips his hand into hers, slotting his fingers between hers, and does the same.
“I’ll keep watch,” he says—and whether he means he’ll watch over her, ready to wake her should Nyx begin to stir, or he means he’ll watch over the others in her place, she lets the truth of it wrap around her like an achingly familiar coat, a pleasant heat sinking into her as her eyes finally slide shut.
She wants to thank him. She wants to apologize for not keeping him company longer. She wants to ask him all the questions he’d dodged when they were both, seemingly, human and alive.
But this is enough for now, she tells herself. It’s enough.
Ryoji knows, anyway. She’s more sure of that than almost anything.
Just before the darkness swallows her whole, she hears a soothing whisper at her ear:
“Thank you for looking back, my dearest Orpheus.”
Kotone falls asleep with a smile on her face—for the second, and the last, time.