A/N: *sobs*
"Have we … met before?"
His eyes are beautiful, you think. You hardly notice how your mouth has fallen open and now you're simply ogling him, but you can't find the will to care about that. The female students in the classroom are glaring at your back, but after spending so much time around Akihiko, it feels less like you're being flogged and more like cotton balls. You hardly even register Aigis radiating murderous intent.
Because your chest is on fire and your whole body seems to finally breathe. The tension that has mounted during the last couple of months has suddenly disappeared. When you remember that he is waiting for your answer, and you see Junpei giving you an odd look from behind the transfer, you force yourself to speak.
"I … don't think so?" It definitely sounds like a question. Something in the dark part of your heart is telling you to grab him and never let go. It scares you a little, because even if his nervous smile is achingly familiar, you know no one of the name Ryoji Mochizuki.
As you leave school that day, head filled with the images of blue eyes and full moons, you feel as though you should know him.
You can't seem to pinpoint the reason for your attraction to him.
It's strange and keeps you up for several nights. It feels like there's a red string tied to your navel when you're near him, keeping you tethered. He seems to gravitate towards you just the same. You've known him for a week, and yet if feels like years. Already the flirting has gone past casual levels, and Junpei can hardly keep his giggles contained when the three of you have a class together.
Aigis' dislike for Ryoji hasn't diminished. You think it may have intensified when she sees him following you like a puppy, and how you're more than happy to let him come along. She's pulled you aside more than once to lecture you on the dangers of Ryoji Mochizuki, but it's more amusing than anything as she can't give a clear reason as to why not.
The others in your dorm can't keep their smiles hidden when they see you two interacting. You're like an old married couple that is still smitten with each other. It reminds you of Bunkinchi and Mitsuko so much that you eventually drag him off to the bookstore just to see how they react. As you suspected, Ryoji is as charming as ever, and the two elders fuss over you both and tell you how adorable you two are as a couple. Neither of you bother to correct them, because you think it's a marvelous idea. It only takes a quick glance and a crooked smile to confirm.
But it still keeps you up at night, and not for the right reasons. The right reasons are because you're too busy squealing into your pillow and fantasizing like a normal high-school girl.
Instead, you stare out the window and wonder if it will last.
Sometimes you can't keep your eyes away from his.
It's isn't healthy, the way you dream about the color. Fractured glass and bruises, or maybe winter ice and dark nights, or something else that's violently poetic. For someone who acts so sweet and innocent, he has eyes sharper than a blade. What would they look like in the sick, green light of the Dark Hour? You know that they hide so much behind the thin veil of cheer and innocence, just like yours do.
You see that the mask he wears rivals your own. You see right through it. He sees right through yours too. Some nights you remember striped pajamas and death omens, and those wide, wide eyes. Other nights you see feathers and fire and steel.
And, some nights, you want to see him splayed out on the ground, watch his cooling blood shine in the moonlight, and lose yourself in his open ribcage.
Or maybe you want him to do that to you.
(Maybe he already has.)
You think these thoughts should scare you.
But they don't, and you can't look away.
Their voices have faded into the background.
The words are like white noise, but you understand nonetheless. It does not surprise you; maybe you've always known. Aigis' cold hand is still gripping yours, but she is without strength. You can see in her eyes how afraid she is.
"Thank you," you whisper to her, as everyone is too preoccupied with him. Her blue eyes widen, and her mouth opens to say something, but her energy runs out and she falls still.
Your movements are not hurried as you stand up and brush the dust off your knees. Everyone is staring at you in shock – because she carried Death himself inside her. A small portion of your mind, probably one of your Personae with the Lovers Arcana, points out that there could be an innuendo there.
You look at the literal incarnation of death, and all you see is a scared boy. There's so much guilt and pain and love there, and you feel it like it's your own. He's close to tears, and his voice is horrified, at himself.
It's not fair – you think silently, as he falters – that you're human enough to care. Your arms catch him before he hits the ground, and you run your fingers down his back in habit. You're sure that the others likely think that your reaction is delayed, you're in shock, or something, and you do nothing to dissuade this. There isn't a way that they can know what you're thinking, what you're feeling.
After all, they've never loved their killer.
You're distracted and quiet at school the next day.
It's like middle school all over again. You're left at the edge of your seat, anxiety chattering away under your skin. The voices in your head are especially loud, but they speak in unison: telling you to go home, to him. The only thing that keeps you from running out the halls is the thought that he is waiting for you, only this time he isn't just a shadow in the mirror.
The others skirt around you, all of them with a question on their tongue, but fear of the answer keeps them silent. Maybe it's the way your eyes are heavy and sharp (like frozen blood, fractals shining cruelly), the way they are in the midst of a risky battle.
You all rush back to the dorm as soon as school is let out. The sense of dread is overbearing, oppressing. Looking at him sitting on the far couch, slouched as though he's trying to make himself disappear, breaks your heart more than you thought it could. You want to curl around him and smooth the trouble from his features, make those beautiful eyes light up once more…
He opens his mouth, and delivers your death sentence.
When he makes to leave, you stand abruptly and shout, "Pharos!"
He hesitates, but only for a moment, and then he is gone.
The others don't dare speak.
You hate feeling alone in a room full of people.
That's what this feels like. You're off balance – incomplete. Even when he left you the first time, he never went far… but now, all you can feel is this empty space at your side. Every time you look around, there's something missing. You expect to find it in the corner of your eye, but you never do, and you're left with a sense of crushing disappointment, a hopeless emptiness that spans across your every waking moment.
The silence is deafening.
Drowning out the quiet doesn't work.
Your classmates note that you're going to make yourself go deaf with how loud your music is, and the teachers are equally unimpressed. It's nearly impossible to explain to them that they help you get through the day and without them you feel boxed in and restless. Without something to pacify them, all your personas begin to scratch at your skull in unison. They want you to paint the town red. You're tempted to let them.
School is now a special kind of Hell.
You're losing yourself in grief. Everyone quietly avoids your presence, unsure how to comfort you, especially when they hold no sympathy for the situation. They're all scared little children – and you want to snarl and spit at them, cursing them in languages you don't even know – but you're the one who sits in the corner, making drawings in crayon.
If you continue to run with that metaphor, you're the one no one knows how to deal with, the one no one wants to play with, so they don't even try. You're the one drawing the bodies of the people you've lost.
And your favorite crayon is blue.
They finally ask you why you called him Pharos.
You break down crying.
The girls who used to gossip about you and Akihiko now talk about how you look like someone with Apathy Syndrome.
The reason you're still walking is that Orpheus has taken the wheel.
The mornings after you visit Tartarus, there is blood on your skin and in your clothes.
Yukari brings you to the bathrooms before you leave for school, lest you arrive looking like you walked away from a murder scene.
(She's stopped asking what's wrong when you start crying. She already knows.)
(You had tried to summon Thanatos.)
Aigis asks you to kill Ryoji.
Your decision has already been made, and you wish you could feel guilty about it. Everyone around you agrees with it, but their conclusions had not been easy, not like you. You could never harm Ryoji. You would be killing a part of yourself.
(Though in the end you think suicide might have been easier.)
(Pointing the barrel of a gun at your head – or what looked like one – makes you feel alive.)
Maybe that makes you selfish. You consider it briefly, but ultimately decide that it doesn't matter. What matters is that these are the people you love, and even if they're in pain, you want to remember them more. Besides, everything will be over soon.
You don't grudge their reasoning though, the indecision.
They've never had to kill their lover.
"Hey," he says softly.
"Hey," you mirror back.
Ryoji sits on the edge of your bed neatly, his hands folded in his lap.
"I won't kill you," you state.
"I know."
The sad acceptance in his voice enrages you.
In two heartbeats you're across the room and melding with him, hands wandering as you breathe desperately into his mouth. His fingers dig into your skin and his frame shakes, but not nearly as much as yours.
Wetness spreads across your cheeks, and you pull back far enough to see the tears slipping past his eyelids. "I'm so sorry…" he breaks.
Placing a kiss on his temple, you cradle his head to your chest as he sobs.
You make the most of your last few hours.
The movement is slow, languid, memorizing. Both of you are crying just as much as you are sighing. Oddly enough, for the first time in a month, you feel at peace. Your breathing is easier, though it's labored.
Being in each other's arms is the closest you can be to being one again.
His eyes will be your unmaking, you think.
You wish to see them once more, those eerie blue things that watched over you since he clawed his way inside you, all those years ago. Looking up into that empty mask, you can almost see a likeness, but it continues to elude you.
Your lips taste like ashes and earth.
Unlike Orpheus, you don't look back.