disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to a person, whether alive or otherwise, is unintentional. I (un)fortunately do not own any Persona characters mentioned in this story.

ab hinc

(For Miss Hanamura)

nulla.

"Red-eyed freak!"

She has been called worse things at school. She's still being called worse things at school. The only difference this time is that she expects to be called the worst things when she gets back to the place she must now call her home. It goes the same for today, too, when she takes her shoes off in the genkan, because since she has started to live in here, she has seen nothing else but her aunt's spiteful frown.

"…I'm home." She says, murmurs, because her aunt doesn't like listening to someone else's voice.

It has been a month since the accident. It has been a month since her birthday, and at seven years old, she learns what loving too much can make a person do.

"You took her away from me!"

After three years, she grows tired of thinking about why her parents aren't coming back. She doesn't think any more about how the person who is supposed to love her now is the one hurting her. She's too tired of trying to fight against something she doesn't understand, so she stops trying.

"She was my only family left… Why? Why did it have to happen?"

On her tenth birthday, she learns to stop hoping.

i.

"M-Ma…P-Papa—"

The world in her mind is bleak and desolate. Nothing in here makes noise, not even when the storm of needles perpetually pierces the land. There is nothing else in here until it's time for her to close her eyes. Her sleep is what blows the emptiness away like a fog. It's what makes the bridge visible to his eyes.

"Mama, I'm.. I'm scared. Where are you?"

It's what tells him that she's here, and so he looks for her, beyond the ruins of what was. She is stuck here every night. Every night, he looks for her. Every time he finds her, all he does is watch.

During the nights she cries to sleep, he pulls her out of the murky waters. He doesn't understand why it's difficult for her to get out of it altogether, until he discovers the hands beneath the glassy surface of the water, all too eager to pull her apart.

"Mama, don't leave me here. Papa please—"

One night, sometimes inevitably becomes always when he realizes that she isn't trying to save herself anymore.

'I won't.'

Despite having her parents' coffins for wings and a sword for a cane, he keeps saving her, and he doesn't mind. It's the only thing he can do for her; it's the only thing he keeps on doing for her, especially after three years when the rain still does not stop.

'I'm not going to leave you.'

ii.

"Your angel is weird." One boy in class says to her after looking at the drawing in her hand.

"Don't angels have white wings?"

She feels like crying, because how she responds doesn't matter, they always pull her hair or scream at her in the end.

"He's special," She whimpers, but he still doesn't leave her alone. "He's my angel."

"Your angel is weird."

"H-he's not—he's not weird," She just wants him to go away. "God just lost his white crayon when He made my angel."

"Liar!" The boy shouts, confused and angry, because she's drawing something with more than a pair of black wings that aren't even wings and it's everything but the image of the angel that he has always known.

"God didn't make your angel!"

The teacher cuts in between them, just in time to stop the boy from throwing his crayons at her, but too late to keep the little girl's tears from falling. Nobody talks for the rest of the afternoon, as if doing so could help deny what happened in the morning. It's the first time that the rest of class doesn't think that bullying her is funny.

It's the only time her aunt fetches her from school—crying—and hugs her until she falls asleep.

iii.

After ten years,she is finally staring right back with the damned, red eyes that never looked at him before. The pitiable girl caught in the cage of her nightmares is no more, and he meets the lady she has become when his reality becomes hers on the night of a full moon. One of his missing pieces finds her—him, but instead of gladness, he's taken over by rage because it isn't him who she calls for.

"Persona!"

Orpheus emerges from the sea of her soul and he despises him for it, for being the first to answer her call. With a resounding roar he rips the stormy skies of her mind open, he rips the tragic Fool apart to make his existence known, because she doesn't need anyone else when she has him.

It is him that she needs. It is him that she will ever need.

iv.

"Hi, how are you?" He smiles from beneath her bed's warm sheets when she turns to her side, newly sober from her shallow slumber.

She is surprised, then scared, and he finds the wild dancing of her emotions amusing. But, when her eyes widen in terror and her hands jolt to movement to clamp her mouth and stop her from screaming, he is sad to realize that the remnants of her troubled past are still there.

"Wh—Who are you?!"

Her words only come out as a frightened squeak even though she calms down when moments have passed and he doesn't move, doesn't hurt her.

"We've met before." He chuckles, mistaking her wariness for something less fearful.

He tells her the truth, but it's only his truth, because he realizes that she doesn't know the things he has done for her. She doesn't remember how he has been there for her for the last ten years.

She doesn't recognize him, and all he thinks when it's time to tell her goodnight is how can she not recognize him?

v.

"You've prevailed yet again."

The boy always smiles. She thinks he smiles too much, and she is not comfortable with how he makes her want to believe that there's at least one thing in the world that she can do well. He is making it easier for her to delude herself into the idea of giving hope another chance, and she isn't sure whether or not she's ready to.

Lately, she's been laughing and smiling so much, and she worries about it once she's left alone. There must be something wrong, because people are looking out for her and are making her happy. They are making her want to believe in herself and not the other way around.

"I… Can we be friends?"

She has come to fear being too happy.

"Friends?" He asks and his smile disappears.

"I-I mean only if it's—"

It makes her heart drop and she immediately scorns herself for being selfish, for even thinking of something so selfish.

"We already are."

She isn't comfortable with how he effortlessly dispels her cruel anxiety with words that never come easily to her, and she wants to shout at him that it's unfair how she's a wreck yet he could somehow make her feel better about herself. Then, she sees him smile again, and it's all that takes to make her cry and admit that all this time she has only ever wanted a friend.

vi.

"Hello."

He crawls closer to her, but he is careful to not get too close. He knows her; he knows what could distress her and he avoids them.

"What are you doing?"

She knows he does, and it's scary and comforting at the same time.

"I'm reading," She is staring at him, but he doesn't notice it because he's preoccupied by the bundled parchment on her lap. "It's, uhm, about mythology."

"What is mythology?"

She's glad he's there, but she knows nothing aside from his name, and she starts to think that maybe he's simply a part of her imagination, a delusion she has yet to outgrow, perhaps a hopeless wish she can't let go of. She notices that the pattern on his garments before darting her red eyes downwards, she doesn't like the idea that he could be her years of sadness given form and she is his living cage.

"It has stories about gods and…things like that."

"It seems interesting," She could see the genuine interest in his eyes, and she doesn't understand why he's fascinated with every other little thing she does. "Do you have a favorite?"

"Pharos—"

He could be a lie.

"Are you real?" She simply blurts out when the pressure of her thoughts become too much.

He's smiling, and she doesn't like it because it could mean yes. She doesn't want him to say yes, but she doesn't want him to say no either. She then just hopes that he doesn't say anything at all because she doesn't know the answer she's looking for.

She doesn't get her answer until four months later.

vii.

"Hello."

Instead of finding her reading one of her mythology books, she is lying on her bed, unmoving inside her shell made out of blankets. She has done this before, albeit for a different reason a long time ago. He knows that she cannot hear him or anything from underneath, but he's simply relieved to find that she isn't holding her breath.

Castor—I knew about Castor—

Until he hears her. He hears her unspoken words, her thoughts that are tightly wrapped around in someone else's name with intricate laces of regret.

Why couldn't I do anything?

"Hey, I'm here, and I'm staying," He reaches up to the hill of fabric from the edge of the bed, where he is kneeling and waiting for her until she remembers this is the time that the people she has come to love need her more than ever.

"They are, too."

A wave of sadness washes over him and the memories trapped in it makes him stumble backwards. Each one is heavy, each one is painful. Every memory strikes on the heart that he is sharing with her until it starts to rain again.

He knows what it is.

Loss.

"I'm right here, you know that, right?"

I couldn't help him—I couldn't—

"I'm still here."

She has lost someone precious to her again, and he could only watch.

"I'll always be here."

viii.

He finds himself in a cramped alley instead of the bridge when she cries herself to sleep, and like before, he searches for her the moment she closes her eyes. He doesn't find her until his fourth hour inside of the damp maze, the fourth night of her quiet nightmare.

There is a broken light post at the end of the alley, and its flickering light helps him identify a pet bowl dirtied in dark streaks of red and scattered cigarettes across the pavement. Beyond the remains is her, a teenager hugging her legs to her chest and burying her face in her arms, doing little against the drizzle of pinpricks and the harsh bite of nearing winter.

"I've been looking everywhere for you."

"…I'm sorry."

He doesn't like what starts to bubble in his chest, what starts to rise in his throat, because what he is feeling is different from what she is feeling and it has never happened before. As if he is becoming his own person, who could hear her silence and understand it as the most deafening prayer he would ever come to know.

"I'm sorry senpai."

The puddle of water makes known to him his brown eyes and the perpetual scowl on his face through the moon's light. This isn't him. This is her thinking that she has failed. This is her asking for forgiveness she should not even ask for. This is her believing that she deserves to lose the people she cares about.

"It's not your fault," He breathes, kneeling in front of her and pulling her into an embrace. "It was never your fault."

ix.

"Is my existence something you are unable to accept?"

His smile is sad, and she would tell him that his smiles are bound to lose their meaning if he keeps on smiling even though he isn't happy, but she doesn't. He understands her better than she understands her, better than anything she could conjure together with her clumsy way with words.

"Stay." She simply tells him, because this isn't the time to think about the day he has to leave her side.

She's too afraid to think he ever would.

She is surprised to discover the sound of two heartbeats when he moves to lie beside her, and how warm he feels against her cold hands when it used to be the opposite. She is tired, but nonetheless, she smiles and curls closer to him as he wraps an arm around her shoulders.

Thank you for not giving up on me.

x.

It is in the morning of the fourth of November when she opens her eyes and almost cries, because sunlight is pouring into her room and all she could think of in that moment is how grateful she is for another morning when last night could not be any longer.

"Pharos," She beams at the boy beside her, who's looking up at her with his bigger eyes and a small smile. "Good morning~"

"You're happy."

She somewhat giggles in response. "Aren't you?"

"I am. You've made me happy," He just smiles at her with tears she has never seen before in his eyes. "You've made me really happy. Remember that, okay?"

It's the first time she wakes up to find him still there with her.

When he whispers her goodbye, she never fully realizes it to also be the last time.

xi.

"Ohhhh," Junpei seems to know the girl sitting at the corner, the one that catches his eye, because Junpei is suddenly doing his best to keep her out of his sight. "No, not her man, she's off-limits."

"Oh no no no no, you are not going to—" But even before Junpei could rein him in, he's already going across the room, towards her. "O-Oi, Ryoji!"

Junpei's loud voice makes her lift her head from her book and it gives him an opportunity to properly see her. His plan and any trace of it soon perish, and he finds himself slowing, eventually stopping altogether. Hello, I'm Ryoji Mochizuki. He is supposed to say, but instead of charming words, it's a nervous chuckle that escapes his lips.

"Uhm… Have we met before?"

xii.

The train will be arriving shortly…

"?!"

Her breath hitches when she feels a hand brush above the hem of her skirt, only milliseconds away from stopping the scream that almost jumped out of her throat. She's torn between letting it out and continuing to bottle it in when the hand lingers for more than an unwanted second, when she hears a low grunt from behind and the unpleasant touch disappears.

She turns around to find Ryoji's fingers cuffed around the wrist of an aged man in a suit, who does not bother to hide his dissatisfaction.

"Let me help you," He guides the man's hand up in the handles with a smile and does not let go until the man reluctantly grips one of the two hovering above them, realizing that lashing out would only make him prove his guilt.

"There you go, sir."

Her impossibly red gaze meets his blue for the second time and he moves a few inches closer, but nothing more than what is comfortable for her. He doesn't try to sneak an arm around her to comfort her, or start showering her with the sweet, empty promises Yukari warned her about. He simply smiles at her, and it's a gentle smile.

So, she gives him a smile of her own, the one she should've given yesterday.

"Thank you."

xiii.

Aigis' eyes are hardened into a glare as she stomps her way towards them and pointedly looks at Ryoji.

"I will not allow him to walk her home!"

Junpei groans.

"Akihiko-senpai's staying late, so it's obviously better than making her travel alone. Didn't we just talk about this?"

"You are dangerous."

Ryoji is unfazed, even though Aigis has done nothing but make her strong dislike for him crystal clear. He deflects Aigis' hostility with a solemn nod, knowing she's most likely to swat his hand away if he does more than that. It doesn't make her worries go away, but she nonetheless lets them go when Junpei looks at her disapprovingly and she stalks out of the room.

"Sorry about that, Aigis loves her too much sometimes." Junpei mutters once Aigis is out of sight and he starts to shove his notebooks inside his bag.

"She just wants her most important person to be safe, I understand that." Ryoji replies, feeling a pang of something unknown as he watches the handsome senior in the red vest and the girl with the red eyes, smiling by the classroom doors. "But I'm not dangerous at all."

Junpei snorts, not wanting to comment on the somber glances Ryoji unknowingly throws at his best friend.

Love can make anyone dangerous, he thinks, when he looks at the biggest smile he has ever seen on the local heartthrob's face. And it's always better to have it be you than the guy you're up against.

"Good luck with that."

xiv.

He watches how easy it is for Junpei to approach her, to trap her in a friendly hug that later sends them laughing when they walk through the halls. At first he thinks he's jealous of the unbreakable bond that they have, but he realizes that the way he and Junpei looks at her are different.

What he feels isn't jealousy, but he isn't sure how to call this curious, wordless hope that she would catch him watching and smile.

"She's taken, Romeo." Yukari calls on him, once, during lunch break. "So go flirt with someone who isn't."

He stays silent even after Yukari leaves, because he already knows. When he tucks his hope behind his smile and keeps it away when he comes back to class, he should have known that it wouldn't last.

Fate is cruel for making them meet and letting him fall in love.

xv.

"We'd have sight-seeing tomorrow. I'd want to walk around with you but…"

Her bowed head does not let him see the momentary wince she makes when his hand reaches her cheek. She eventually relaxes to his touch and he takes it as permission to come closer, but it isn't until their noses brush and he has her completely hidden away in a corner that she places her hands on his vest to push against him.

"I know." She smiles without meeting his eyes when she notices that the chain of Shinjiro's watch is dangling from his pocket. "I'll be fine."

He catches her hand when she tries to move past him. She understands he doesn't like it when she disappears to go to places he doesn't know, places he cannot reach. He's just as afraid of losing anyone in the blink of an eye, but she now knows that they did not lose those important for them to learn to live in fear of the past.

They hear Junpei's voice from around the corner, and only then does he let her go. She cups his face in her hands and whispers, "I'll come back."

She is only four, five steps away from him when the yellow trail of a scarf catches his eye.

It's the five steps he let her take from completely walking out of his life.

xvi.

She's unusually calm for someone who had fallen into the river and is now being kept at a nearby clinic.

"Your face is scary." She mumbles as she lifts a finger to poke the space between his brows.

"Is it?" He smiles when she lets out the giggle he thought he would never hear again, and he eventually lets an airy chuckle of his own. "You should've seen my face when you fell, then."

Their fingers are intertwined and there's nobody to give him a look of warning, something that would tell him he's chasing after something he shouldn't be chasing after. Her hand is cold, letting him know that the last time he held it still lingers in her mind. She worries he would let go, so he does his best to give her a gentle squeeze to let her know he's there, that he would stay.

"Your hand is cold."

"I'm sorry." He chuckles. "I can't seem to help it."

"Were you that scared?" She jokes even though her voice is shaking, and it takes him by surprise because she rarely ever does.

"Of losing you?"

She looks at him, and he immediately thinks that he would always be ready to jump into anything to save her. He would always, always be ready to put his life on the line for her.

"Of course."

xvii.

"Aigis!"

The first thing she does is run when she sees the hint of white against the darkness of the Moonlight Bridge. She runs before anyone could stop her, runs until she reaches what is the mop of golden that could only be Aigis, who lays like a fragile, ragged doll too eagerly thrown away by a girl who has found something better.

"… I have failed you…"

"You didn't fail, Aigis, you didn't fail—" She fights back against the lump that grows in her throat, the tears that simply do not stop from escaping her eyes, especially when she comes close enough to see what has become of Aigis, and it takes her everything to hold the friend she does not want to lose in her trembling arms.

"I… am… sorry."

She lets herself break down in quiet sobs when Aigis responds no more after she stretches out her hand for her to take.

"Who's there?"

He forces himself to smile when she finally notices a streak of yellow and she sees him. I'm sorry are the only two words that he could think of when she looks at him with reddened cheeks and tired eyes. The confusion drawn across her face becomes surprised worry when he stumbles—falls—because he has failed to notice the scrap of metal beneath his feet.

He never did see anything else, did he? It has always been her.

"Ryoji!?"

Every time Aigis had called him a danger comes back to him, and he almost cries when he realizes that Aigis had been right.

It's his fault.

Every time is his fault.

xviii.

"I love her, you cannot possibly understand that."

Ryoji doesn't answer, doesn't look away. He doesn't even try to move under Akihiko's grip, because he could not care enough about where they do this for as long as she isn't anywhere near them—as long as she isn't anywhere near him—and is safe, and just lets Akihiko interpret this however he wants, even as a form of surrender.

"I do." He says, almost as softly as a whisper. "I have loved her for ten years."

Ryoji just looks up at Akihiko, he doesn't try to fight, doesn't give the senior a reason to raise his trained fist against him.

"Can you possibly understand that?"

xix.

He knows she's crying. He knows that each tear is for him, for what they could've been. He has hurt her by leaving, but he's going to hurt her even more if he goes up to her room, if he even thinks of stopping. They both know he can never go back there anymore, back in her life, back to her, because they just couldn't be.

They simply were never meant to be.

"I am not going to lose anyone else."

She shouldn't be crying over him. She shouldn't be wasting her tears on someone like him.

"I am not going to lose you."

But she is.

She is crying over him, even though he once had taken everything from her, even though he will take everything away from her.

And it's what's tearing him apart.

xx.

"I—" Akihiko starts, hesitates, and just stops.

Ryoji is smiling, but it's a sad smile (as if to say that at least, at least Akihiko has the opportunity to live). It's the one he does not dare to let her see. The one he does not want to see and cannot afford to let her see.

"Please." He begs through a smile, and Akihiko hates it because he doesn't have it in him to not listen. Not after trying so hard to deny what is so painfully obvious.

"Take care of her."

Akihiko nods, reluctantly, just as he hears Junpei's fist make contact with the wall without Yukari to berate him. No, not this time, because they are all thinking that saying goodbye cannot be helped, and at the same time they're thinking that this isn't how goodbyes are meant to be.

"Thank you," Ryoji keeps his smile intact. "You're very kind, Sanada-senpai."

He finally understands why Akihiko is her first love when the Emperor tries to do the same, not just because it's the only chance any of them would ever have.

"No…" Akihiko finally understands him in return. "No, I'm not."

Ryoji broke his own heart when he broke hers.

xxi.

There is no word to describe the sensation of their limbs slowly being pulled apart, the sound of their bones threatening to break while they are grasping and suffocating in something that isn't there. There is no way to describe how death feels like when it's lying right beside her, just waiting for her to close her eyes.

I'm scared, she admits to herself as she stares at Nyx. But not of you, because she still remembers how Death had once upon a time been the boy who loved her, and how loving him was the greatest thing that made her feel alive.

With the last of her strength, she smiles and raises her hand.

xxii. from here on

Eternity comes in the form of great gates of gold, much bigger than the gates of the castles from the stories her aunt used to read to her. It is heavy on her shoulders, but as Ryoji smiles and takes her hand and whispers 'my dearest', eternity becomes something beautiful. She cannot help but be utterly thankful despite all that has happened—especially after all that has happened—and smiles.

"You're here."

Tears start to well in the corner of her eyes as she breathes, and it feels like the first time she has done so.

"Of course I am." He almost chuckles, and he presses his lips onto her forehead in sweet comfort.

Their unspoken words are completely understood and they stay wrapped in each other's warmth. This is eternity, together, just as the ring promised. They are ready when the gates beckon, and they never let each other go.

Not anymore.

the end.