It was so unfair. Why did he have to leave everyone like that? They were all counting on him…he saved them, and the cost didn't really bother him personally (they had all accepted that they would probably die in the confrontation), but…everyone else. He just…ditched them. He wished he had kept his eyes open, or at least not have just died right there, and Aigis! He couldn't imagine how she felt…but, maybe she had known. Maybe that's why she was crying, even though she had found the answer she was looking for.
…it was pretty empty being dead if you weren't used to it. Which, despite carrying Death in him for a decade, he definitely wasn't. There wasn't much to do. This couldn't really be all there was to the afterlife, right? Dying, especially for the sake of the rest of humanity, should yield more results than just…nothing.
"Hey."
Then again, maybe this wasn't nothing.
The familiar voice made him turn; he was pretty surprised to see Shinjiro, of all people, since he hadn't really seen much of anything up until this point, much less anyone.
The blunet was silent in response to the greeting. What could you really say? "I'm sorry you died"? Yeah right.
The gruff senior took this silence as an invitation to approach. He was quiet too, for the most part. Finally, a hand came out of his pocket, and it was set atop the head of midnight hair. "…did good out there, kid," Shinji complimented noncommittally. "Surprised it's just you and me up here. Got a hell of a soul there to pull that off."
He didn't really have any words, even when the other deceased started talking. He seemed to be speaking more than usual, but then again, if Shinjiro's "afterlife" was anything like his own, Shinji hadn't had anyone to talk to for quite some time.
Hands back in his pockets, the elder Persona-user now had his gaze cast off to the side somewhere -- exactly how he was used to seeing the senior student. "…you know you have to get over it," the brunet grunted eventually. "They can move on. You moved on from me."
He knew that was right. There wasn't anything he could do now; SEES would just have to pick up the pieces in his wake. That wasn't a fair duty to saddle them with, but being dead and all pretty much rendered him incapable of helping them (especially considering his death was what broke everything in the first place).
"Akihiko misses you."
"Aki can suck it up. He still has a life to live; he can't waste time dwelling on mine. Same for the rest of them." Shinjiro's reply wasn't exactly surprising. "We've got as long as we want up here. They have to make do with what they have."
"So do we," he interjected quietly. And what did they have? Each other and infinity?
"Then make the best of it," demanded Shinji, also unusually quiet in tone. Silence fell in a thick fog over the two of them before the taciturn blunet started towards Shinji.
He had to make the best of it, after all.
