Naegi knew that crying wouldn't help him now. All it could do was squander his limited strength, depleting the inner resources he so desperately needed with every breathless sob that rattled in his chest. He knew that… but he still couldn't manage to stop. Even after his dry, aching eyes had long since refused to produce any further tears, even when the sobs caught rough and painful in his throat, he couldn't stop.

Because even with the television monitors dark and empty above him, all he could see playing over and over in endless repetition was the moment Byakuya took a pair of garden shears to his own arm.

Had the other man truly given up on any chance of escaping the killing game? Or worse… was it that he'd been so hurt by everything he'd endured that it had seemed like the blades were a better option? How could he have felt so driven into a corner?

How could Naegi not have known it was happening?

He should have known. He should have done something, found some way to stop it, made sure Byakuya knew he wasn't quite as alone as he'd believed.

Except… it wouldn't have been true, would it? Not when Naegi knew what had happened to the Togami family, the relatives and the heritage that had mattered so very much to the heir. Yes, Naegi himself was still alive… but how could that weigh against all the rest of what had given Byakuya's life meaning? In many of the ways that would matter to him, Byakuya really was alone. Could Naegi really have done anything to convince him otherwise that wouldn't have been a cruel lie?

He would never know. However Byakuya might have reacted, Naegi had missed his chance to find out — he'd missed everything. He hadn't noticed any sign of what was really wrong, completely misreading the behavior of the one person in the world he should have known best. What good was it if he could find clues to throw around in those awful class trials — if he was just going to fail miserably when it counted?

"Aw, don't make a face like that, sweetie!" A hand rested lightly on his shoulder, fingers patting a slow, soothing rhythm. "You can't go blaming yourself for something that isn't your fault!"

But it was his fault… or at least partly his. Naegi didn't know what the final tipping point for Byakuya's decision had been, but he knew where it had started — it began in the moment Naegi had chosen to let the execution take its course.

"Seriously? Come on, you should know that isn't how it works." She propped her head on one hand, his blurred vision multiplying the motion until there seemed to be an army of pigtailed girls beside him, looking back down at him with a sad kind of sympathy. "You don't have to be responsible for what anyone else does. You aren't supposed to fix every single problem for all your little friends. Their decisions are their fault."

That… that sounded almost right, actually. There was a familiar kind of echo to the words, as though he himself had said something like that to one of his friends in the past. Not quite the same way, of course… there was something about those words that he wouldn't have wanted to say… but it was very close.

Somewhere in the few corners of his mind not consumed by fear, that last thought didn't sit quite as easily as it should have. But he barely had time to notice the sense of unease before Junko's voice tore him away from his thoughts.

"It's not like you even did anything wrong," she went on, her hand resting on his shoulder with a pressure so gentle he could barely feel it. "Kinda the opposite, really — you did so much more right than I thought anyone could. You believed in your friends when it should have been impossible, and you fought to keep them safe when you had the whole world against you. You did everything you could to make sure they had a chance to get out of this alive. It's not your fault they decided to give up on that chance instead of seeing it through."

Give up…? But no, no, that couldn't be right, could it? They couldn't have given up on surviving just because they thought he was gone, could they? He didn't want to believe it… but he couldn't stop the memory of that blade against Byakuya's wrist.

"It's not like it's their fault either, though." Junko's soft, soothing words sliced through the terrible images in Naegi's head, shielding him from the full horror of it. "They can't help not having the strength to stick it out for the long haul. People can't do what they can't do, and that's just the end of it. You can't expect anyone to be more than they are, in the end."

Was that right…? Naegi wasn't sure anymore. How could he be, after seeing the man he loved make choices so driven by despair? The knowledge that Byakuya had somehow ended up so very broken stabbed through Naegi's heart more powerfully than any knife…

But it wasn't Byakuya's fault. It wasn't. Even Junko agreed on that. Naegi would have fought her tooth and nail if she'd try to argue that it was… but she'd known better than to blame him.

"I know they all tried hard to be better than this," she murmured, almost as if she knew the thoughts running through his head. "They wanted to be better… just like you thought they could be. But they couldn't manage it in the end. They couldn't be what you needed them to be. It isn't their fault… and that's what makes all of our friends such disappointments."

Disappointments? That was a term Naegi wouldn't have thought to associate with any of his friends… but maybe it was as good a name as any for the sick twist of grief and regret that tangled through his veins. Not what he would have called it… but not quite wrong, either.

"You're not the only one who sees it that way, you know." She leaned closer, as if confessing a secret. "All the people I love are the ones who disappointed me the most."

Naegi tried to focus his blurry gaze on Junko's face, expecting to see some deceptive expression of obviously false grief… but the lie he'd been prepared to avoid wasn't there. All he found was an emptiness staring back at him through her uncharacteristically solemn eyes, multiplied into infinity by his wavering vision.

Then if he couldn't see any deception… did that mean she wasn't lying about it? But how could that be right? He knew she'd been lying to him all along, so surely she wouldn't change her mind after all this time. She wouldn't suddenly decide to be sincere with him now… would she?

"We both know how it feels to be so disappointed in the people we love." She still faced him, head tilted downward with her hand resting on his shoulder… but her eyes seemed to look straight through him, off to some far away place that existed only in her own mind. "We've both been let down so badly. It isn't fair that something like this should keep happening to us, over and over again."

Naegi didn't have to wonder for a moment whether he ought to agree with that statement. Of course none of this was fair, that much went without saying. But… but even if it wasn't… why was she

"And if it could just stop… just once, if the disappointment would stop… I wonder what I'd do." A hint of a self-deprecating smile touched her lips. "If someone could really do that for me… they'd be the only real friend I've ever had."

And in spite of himself, Naegi could feel a softening in his heart at the simple, honest words. She sounded so lonely when she said it… and surely no one in the world deserved to be so very alone as that. She shouldn't be so sad when she was trying to comfort him, when she'd seen him in pain and done her best to ease it.

Wait… was that what was happening…? Naegi wasn't sure, he couldn't be sure. Not without a minute to think about what was going on around him…

"But whatever — it's not like anything like that could really happen, right?" Junko's voice snapped back to a parody of her old liveliness, brittle and too bright in a desperate attempt to mask the emptiness. "It's not worth hoping for."

And that wasn't right — it wasn't. Naegi wasn't entirely sure what was happening around him now, but he knew he couldn't let one of his friends keep thinking something so horrible and wrong. He opened his mouth to tell her so —

But before he could speak, another voice drowned him out.

"So much for the disappointment of the family."

He knew that voice — he'd heard it over and over since waking up after the last trial. That was Junko's voice — but it hadn't come from the girl beside him. Naegi's eyes shot up, toward the source of the voice —

And he could see images flickering to life on the monitors that moments ago had been black and cold. There was Junko on one of the screens, grinning up at a monitor of her own — a monitor where another girl fell to the ground with an avalanche of spears piercing through her. A girl whose curly pigtails and fashionable clothes didn't match her face. A girl he knew.

Mukuro.

And the sound echoing through the room around him was Junko's laughter… in the moment that she'd murdered her twin sister.

The horror of it sank into Naegi's mind, dragging him back to a reality that was crueler than he'd wanted to remember. Junko had done that. The girl sitting beside him, offering him comfort in his grief and talking wistfully about having real friends, had laughed as she'd betrayed the sister who'd loved her.

He couldn't look at the monitor showing that image, not for another second. He tore his eyes away, to the next screen down the line —

And Naegi found himself staring up into Alter Ego's brave, determined eyes.