Chapter Text
Death is inevitable, but remember that you must live.
Her consciousness is muddled, like she’s at the edge of dreams and reality. Her limbs feel heavy, but somehow not as heavy as her eyelids. She indistinctly hears voices. They sound close and yet far, a contradiction that she is too tired to dwell on.
It sounds like they’re bickering, and it stirs something in her, something she isn’t able to identify. Flashes of blue and gold come to her mind, and she’s sure it means something. She doesn’t have the energy to grasp the thought as it forms, so she lets it go. Eventually, the voices get further and further away, until she can no longer hear them. She sleeps.
When consciousness comes back to her, it’s much clearer than before. She can feel a cold, hard surface under her back, a balm against the burning sensation under her skin, seeping through her bones. She feels like she can actually move her eyelids this time around. They’re still much heavier than they should be, for some reason she can’t fathom.
After a few minutes, she eventually manages to open her eyes, revealing a serene night sky. She blinks slowly, eyes riveted on the stars above. The noise of chirping crickets reaches her and it’s… nostalgic, somehow. Her mind is delightfully blank while the wind ruffles her hair and clothes.
She doesn’t know why it’s delightful, exactly. She isn’t about to question it, not when everything is peaceful and all she feels is lava in her veins, melting her insides and she can’t move. It doesn’t hurt as much as it probably should, probably because everything is still so very distant.
She watches the sky and waits. She’s exhausted, but her entire being is rebelling at the mere thought of closing her eyes for longer than a blink. Eventually, her limbs stop feeling like they’re on fire and settle into the familiar ache of very sore muscles. She doesn’t think she’s ready to move just yet, so she waits some more.
Suddenly, her mind isn’t quite so blank anymore. Memories are hazily coming back to her, disjointed. The clearest one is a green sky hanging above blood and death and impossibly blue eyes. Then, there are faces flitting through her mind, some blurrier than others. They slowly come into focus and after a few more moments, she can put a name to each of them.
She learns — remembers — that these impossibly blue eyes amidst a green sky and blood and death belong to an android — not quite a girl — called Aigis. Thankfully, she now also knows that her own name is Minako.
Events play out in her head, sometimes briefly, sometimes lingering like coffins in the street. Everything is jumbled, not following any kind of chronological order and she’s trying to piece it all together.
She doesn’t know how long she takes to organize her thoughts, because time has stopped having any meaning for her since she felt Erebus clawing at her back for the first time. Nope, not gonna go there, she thinks as she promptly dismisses the thought of those particular memories.
Now that her mind is more or less functional and no longer fragmented, she turns her attention to her body. The thought of moving isn’t particularly appealing right now, but she knows she has to do something, at least to figure out where she is.
Her index fingers can move just fine, which is already something, she supposes. She tries lifting her right arm and is mostly successful, even if her muscles groan in protest. It’s a good thing she’s gotten so used to being in pain since that fateful night, because this probably would have been much harder. Silver linings and all that.
She manages to sit up after a few tries, during which she realized that yes, even her abs are sore. Some part of her brain wonders if she’s kept her muscle definition from all these floors in Tartarus and this really isn’t the time. She shelves that thought for later.
She takes a deep breath and raises her head to take stock of her surroundings. She has to resist the urge to laugh hysterically, because of course she’s in a graveyard and of course she’s sitting down on the slab of stone above her coffin. She cranes her neck and sees her name carved on the tombstone behind her. If she hadn’t remembered her name by now, at least it was there.
She also can’t help but notice that the graves next to hers don’t look nearly as elegant. She thinks it’s a bit much, but then again Mitsuru did — does? — like to be extravagant for her friends. She probably even had to be talked out of making the grave any fancier. She laughs fondly at the thought, and she makes a mental note to thank whoever convinced her.
She takes a few more moments before she tackles the hard part: getting up. It’s a very slow and wobbly process to ease into a crouch. She counts to three and pushes herself up using the combined strength of her arms and legs.
She’s able to stand for one glorious second before her legs give out under the weight they haven’t had to support in… however long she was in there. Her sluggish reflexes, coupled with her sore muscles, don’t do her any favors and she topples forward. Thankfully, that means she ends up face down in a patch of grass, and not on stone. Anything below her torso wasn’t so lucky, but it’s not like those parts are susceptible to a concussion, anyway.
She huffs into the ground, just because she can. She then decides to crawl to the tombstone, little by little. It’s not easy, but if high school biology taught her anything, it’s that it’s practically a miracle she can move at all considering her muscles should be atrophied, so she soldiers on.
With that thought comes the sudden realization that she hasn’t actually completed high school. She lets out a long-suffering groan and shelves that with the rapidly growing list of things to think about much later. Staying positive is a hard-learned skill of hers and she’s damned if she’s going to let an overgrown… cat… thing take it away from her.
When she reaches the tombstone, she uses it to reach a sitting position. She leans back against the cool stone and looks at the moon in the distance. Looking at it with the knowledge that it will never look fluorescent green ever again fills her with warmth that she thinks might be joy. Or maybe relief, she’s not exactly sure.
Her traitorous brain whispers, Is it really going to stay like this if you’re here?
She shelves that too. She’ll cross that bridge if she ever gets to it. Right now, she just wants to enjoy the view of a peaceful Tatsumi Port Island in peace. She lingers long enough to let her limbs recover and prepares herself for her second attempt at standing up.
It goes much more smoothly, thanks in no small part to the tombstone she’s using to prop herself up. Her situation right now is already so ironic, why not add a bit more?
Once she’s sure her legs won’t give out again, she scans the graveyard for the exit. It’s a little ways off but it’s probably nothing next to the distance she’ll have to walk to get somewhere familiar. She hopes the city hasn’t decided to remodel all of the parts she knows, because that would be really inconvenient. It’s also incredibly unlikely, but then again, she’s just risen from her grave, which is probably in the top three of most unlikely things to happen.
She starts walking while debating if she counts as undead in her head and stops immediately. She feels something jostle in her right pocket and oh, she’s wearing her Gekkoukan High uniform. She probably should have noticed sooner, but the thing jostling in her pocket is more important.
She digs inside the pocket while silently thanking the genius who added pockets to their uniform skirts for the umpteenth time. She finds a simple key, attached to a piece of paper with elegant handwriting. She can’t make out much else, because the clouds have decided that blotting out the moon right when she needs it is a good idea.
She keeps the key and paper in her hand and finally makes her way out of the graveyard. She stops under the nearest functioning lamppost and reads the writing on the paper. It turns out to be an address on a street she knows and she’s thankful that Theodore and Elizabeth at least had some sort of plan. It also helpfully provides what she guesses is an apartment number, along with a 4 digit code.
She maps out the trajectory in her mind and starts her journey. She’s relieved to find out that the layout of the streets is almost the same as it’s ever been. Something inside her is urging her to walk as fast as her tired muscles will allow, which doesn’t amount to much. She has to take frequent breaks by leaning against a wall and she hates it.
Finally, she reaches a small apartment complex matching the address she’s been given. The small flight of stairs is a struggle to get through but an elevator is mercifully waiting for her through the doors. She enters the code on the paper and that’s when the fact that it’s her birthday hits her.
She has to take a moment because, really, SEES is a bunch of sentimental dorks and she’s absolutely not going to let them live this down. She enters the elevator with a slight spring in her step — it probably looks like she’s having a spasm, really — and presses the button for the 8th floor.
The doors ding open and she comes face-to-face with the apartment number she’s looking for. She feels obligated to triple check it, because the apartment seems to span the entirety of that side of the hallway. She doesn’t think the Velvet Room attendants would have the budget for that, even taking into account the ridiculous amounts of money she’d funneled into their services.
She shrugs the thought away for later. She walks up to the door and hesitates a moment before knocking twice, just to be on the safe side. There is no response. She’d try to knock louder if she wasn’t showing up at some god-forsaken hour, but it is what it is. She looks at the key in her hand and slowly slides it in the keyhole. She opens the door with a barely audible click.
She enters the apartment, illuminated only by the moonlight, and instinctively starts removing her shoes. It’s a slow process because of the exhaustion permeating her body, but she manages. She looks around at the furniture and interior decoration. It evokes a cozy feeling in her, which means she’s definitely not at Mitsuru’s or Akihiko’s. She loves them both dearly, but their taste in interior decoration leaves – left, she corrects herself numbly - much to be desired.
She spots a kitchen to her left that seems disproportionately small compared to the number of rooms she can see further in the apartment. Not that it’s actually small in any definition of the word, but it’s still bizarre. Then again, there’s the telltale signs of stairs leading down and Minako decides that she’ll wrap her head around the apartment spanning two floors later.
Soft footfalls interrupt her musings and she instinctively lowers into a battle stance. She doubts that the Velvet Room attendants sent her somewhere dangerous, but Elizabeth does love her practical jokes. Better be safe than sorry.
As the footsteps approach, they’re accompanied by sleepy grumbling about not expecting anyone to come home today and she should at least have called beforehand.
Minako smiles, because this is such an undoubtedly Yukari thing to say that she can’t help it. She hears a sharp intake of breath and hopes she’s not going to be knocked unconscious for trespassing. All that happens is that the light is switched on and she’s looking at Yukari.