Togami couldn't believe what Genocide Jill had just said to him. She'd spent the last few weeks creepily gushing over how exciting it would be to add him to her victim line-up, stalking him at every opportunity with no regard for his repeated insistence that the attention was neither appreciated nor reciprocated — and now that the idea had some merit, she just changed her mind?

"Aw, come on, darling, don't look at me like that!" Jill huffed out a sigh. "Gotta say, it's times like these I really miss having Gloomy around. Not like she was any better at the whole hard conversation shtick, but at least I didn't have to deal with this kind of mess."

Togami had no idea what she was talking about — but whatever it was, he doubted it could be anything good. "No one asked you to deal with me. In fact, I'd much prefer if you didn't."

For some reason, this brought a smile springing back across her face. "And there's that fighting spirit! I knew my White Knight couldn't really be gone!"

Togami's eyes narrowed into the best glare he could muster under the circumstances. "I'm not anything of yours."

"Not right now you aren't," Jill agreed far too easily. "And if the guy in front of me now was all you had going on, you can bet I wouldn't want you. There's nothing adorable about killing someone who's ready to die." She bent sharply forward, eyes flashing. "If you're gonna end it all, it has to be spectacular."

Even the thought sent exhaustion weighing down the length of his spine, dragging his shoulders back into a heavy slump. Spectacular? He'd fought so hard to be that, in another world outside these walls… but that life was gone. It had ended the moment the mastermind had laid claim to him… he just hadn't known it until too late.

And if Jill could still look at the wreck of what he'd become and see the potential for something spectacular, then she was even more of an idiot than he'd believed. "You have no idea what you're talking about."

Jill laughed, a dark and quiet murmur that was nothing like her usual wild cackle. "I know a lot more about it than some, darling." She looked down at the newly-bare skin of her legs, and the long tracks of half-healed cuts that trailed dark and red against her pale skin. "You're not the only one who lost part of their soul."

Togami usually did his best to look at the genocider's body as little as possible — but he thought he would have noticed those marks if she'd had so many of them for long. After all the cold case reading he'd done in the past, it was easy enough to identify the purpose of the tally marks… but which of the deaths would she have added to her victim count? Not Hagakure, surely, since Jill hadn't even known Fukawa had killed him until they'd proved it in the trial. But then… if it wasn't him…

"I can still feel her in my head, you know," Jill said, in a conversational tone that didn't match the unsettling glint in her eyes. "Gloomy's last little parting gift to the better half she left behind. Every minute of the day, she lets me know how much she hated our life."

Because of course Fukawa couldn't go without giving her alter ego one last reason to go even further off the rails. Togami grimaced, his past reading on neurology flashing through his mind. He couldn't begin to guess how Monokuma had erased Fukawa's memories, but he supposed that it wasn't outside the realm of possibility that it could have caused something like what Jill described. In fact, considering that Monokuma had been involved, unfortunate side effects were all but guaranteed.

"For a while there, I was at the same place you're in now."

Staring up at her for the first few long, blank seconds, Togami couldn't understand what she meant… but when her gaze dropped down to his bandaged wrist, the answer clicked. If he could believe what she was saying… that meant she'd thought about turning her scissors on herself.

"None of it's the same, sure," she went on, voice quieter than he'd ever heard her, "but it's close enough. Neither of us has much of anything waiting for us if we get outside, not after everything that happened in here."

"Then why?" Togami demanded, the words twisting into a plaintive gasp as they left his mouth. "If you claim to understand — then why did you stop me?"

"You have to ask?" Jill grinned, tongue slithering out of her mouth in some semblance of her usual expression. "Guess you weren't listening when I said you deserve better. I'm not letting you go out like some washed-out shadow of my White Knight, so empty inside there's no difference at all before and after you're all sliced up!"

An instinctive protest against the insult leapt to Togami's lips — but he forced himself to swallow it back unspoken. After all, didn't he already know she was right? Hadn't he thought every word himself before she'd ever spoken it? There was no reason he should care more about hearing the words from someone else, especially not his murderous stalker. Her opinion didn't matter to him at all, not in the slightest, and he refused to let her force him to act as though it should.

"You," he said distinctly, his glare as cold as he knew how to make it, "do not get to make my decisions for me."

She laughed, throwing her head back as hilarity exploded out. "Sorry, darling, but I think the way I just stopped you says otherwise. I do get to decide — and I say you die as yourself or not at all. "

Togami stared at her, ice heavy and cold in the pit of his stomach as he realized just what she meant. Not only had he failed to win every battle he'd tried to fight in this hellhole of a school… he'd even failed in this final attempt at escaping the nightmare his life had become. The self-confidence that had once propelled him through life had been nothing more than ego and arrogance, and he couldn't hope to regain any measure of it. No wonder Jill had no interest in killing him any longer.

"Come on, darling, it's not like I'm doing this so I can watch you squirm — mental torture doesn't do a thing for me!" Jill tossed her braids in disdain. "I mean, where's the fun if you don't even get to see the blood?"

Togami had a dark suspicion that this was Jill's twisted idea of trying to comfort him. If so, he wished she would stop. Bad enough he'd ruined his own life — he didn't need a serial killer pitying him for it.

"I know you'll make it through this, baby," Jill said, eyes fierce and sharp. "I'll make you get through it. Anything I can manage, my White Knight can do ten times over. I'm gonna help you remember until there's enough of you back to take down whoever's running this show."

Take down the mastermind? A laugh gurgled out of Togami's throat at the thought. He'd been deluded enough to boast about it earlier in the game, yes… but he knew better now. "Nothing you can say will make that happen."

"You will," Jill insisted. "If you won't do it for yourself, then what about Makoto Naegi?"

The name slammed into Togami's chest with all the force of a sledgehammer. He wanted to scream, wanted to shake her, wanted to demand that she never even think about uttering those precious words again in his presence — but he couldn't force his body to respond to any of the actions. All he could do was stare at the girl beside him, eyes wide with shock.

"He wanted to take down the mastermind," Jill said, leaning forward. "He made that crystal clear all the time we've been stuck in here. That's what he wanted — and that's what he died for. The way a person dies matters — and it's got to matter even more when it's the person you love."

The person you love.

Naegi's face flashed before Togami's eyes — not as he'd been in those awful final moments, but Naegi at his best, all warmth and brightness and determination. Grief clawed at his heart, because she was right, she was right — he loved Naegi, loved him deeply and desperately, loved him in spite of all the reasons he shouldn't. He loved Naegi so much…

And he'd never told Naegi how he felt. Naegi had died not knowing.

"Never say that again." Togami could barely hear his own words even as he spoke them.

Jill frowned. "Why he died, you mean? But —"

"Not that." Togami clenched his right hand, dried blood from his left wrist cracking along his fingers as he forced them to move. "Don't say how I felt about him — not ever again. He never got the chance to hear it, so no one else gets to say it either."

"You never told him?" Jill asked, looking baffled. "In all this time?"

Togami glared at her. "Maybe you think a few days is enough to begin swearing everlasting devotion, but some of us require more time than that."

"How much more time do you need?" Jill shook her head. "Two years sounds like more than enough time for three words, if you ask me."

"What are you talking about now?" Togami stared at her in confusion. "What two years?"

"You know," Jill said, as though it should be obvious. "The two years you and your sweetheart have known each other."