Archive of Our Own

There’s nothing Aigis wants to admit less than the true identity of the shadow she’s been tracking throughout the Abyss. 

By the end of Ptolomea, her conclusion is undeniable, but if she says the name out loud, it’ll confirm everything she never wanted. At the same time, though… she knows that school uniform, that hairstyle, the bobby pins that glint in the light if the shadow turns the right way. 

(Aigis knows exactly how that hair feels between her fingers, helping her put it up one morning, laying her head down on Aigis’s lap on the day where her whole world had shifted. That first morning, when the dorm felt empty and silent, she’d gone into her old room, snuck a pin from her supply of them, smuggled it back to her own room. If she still wore her old uniform, it would have sat as close as she could get to her papillon heart.)

Even then, as she’s watched the form go from a wisp in between cracks in the doors to a solid-seeming figure, silhouetted no matter which direction the light comes from but still colored if she looked close enough… there’s no denying it isn’t her.

Something out there is cloaking itself in Kotone Shiomi’s skin, using it to draw them ever further into this web of interlocking dungeons, and Aigis is hesitant to admit she’d follow that face wherever it led, no matter how dangerous.

Red hair disappears around a corner of Empyrean yet again. Aigis hears Fuuka suck in a breath through her earpiece. (So she’s realized too, hasn’t she?)

There’s nothing she wants more than to follow her, dive down those stairs, fight through whatever enemies are waiting for her on the other side, but she can already hear the others breathing heavily behind her, and she’s sure if she threw Mitsuru, Yukari and Junpei into a fight under these conditions, they’d surely end up deceased. She will not lose anyone else.

Instead, she stops short. 

That means, of course, that Junpei crashes straight into her, knocking her to the solid ground of the rest floor, but Aigis barely blinks at the damage. She’s not exactly human. Taking damage is what she was built to do. Besides… she has something else to worry about right now.

“Iori…” she hears Mitsuru say from behind, clipped and certainly annoyed, but Aigis is more focused on the hand extended in front of her. Junpei pulls her back up to her feet, and she rests a hand against the clock standing in the corner. Honestly, Aigis has no clue why she does that, but at this point it feels like a tradition, a little ritual for stability before descending into the struggles below. 

“Would we all be alright to continue?” Aigis asks, knowing the answer already. “I can heal if necessary.” 

“Actually, Aigis,” says Yukari, “I think it may be a good idea to take a bit of a break. We’ve been down here all day. There’s nothing I want more than to eat something that isn’t a chewing soul, because I can only handle so many of those in a row.” 

Mitsuru nods in agreement. “I understand wanting to get to the end of these passageways, since we’ve gotten much closer since we began today, but we won’t be able to find anything at all if we throw ourselves into an unwinnable situation out of desperation.” 

Aigis leans her forehead into the wood of the clock. It’s cold, but so is she. With every second that passes the shadow could be getting further away, but Fuuka has already informed them that they’re approaching the deepest points of the Abyss quickly. Soon, it’ll have nowhere left to go.

“Alright,” she says, and turns for the teleporter to return to the surface. 

~~~ 

It always feels wrong, heading to Paulownia Mall like this. 

Aigis had never personally met Officer Kurosawa before this, and being the one buying weapons and armor from him when that was always her job felt… wrong. Still, though, the officer accepted it quickly, never questioning why his normal customer had been replaced with an inhuman robot. 

The sun shines into the mall, but it doesn’t quite feel like it reaches her, like it passes around an invisible reflective layer of her skin. It doesn’t warm her like it used to. This must be what it feels like to be as out of place as a machine pretending to be human. 

She used to wonder, sometimes, if Kotone felt as out of place as Aigis did. Personas were meant to represent someone’s true self, after all. She’d had Palladion painstakingly programmed into her circuits, bit by bit: a spear and shield, primed for heavy damage and protecting what mattered. Kotone had Orpheus, once, and then one day Orpheus vanished and Aigis didn’t see her again until Metis arrived. Kotone had an infinite stock of Personas, changing day to day sometimes. 

Aigis felt like a robot playing at being human. Sometimes, in the dark hours of the night, Kotone would whisper that she thought she was pretending to be someone at all.

She blinks away the memories, as always, forcibly terminating the program in her mind, and then counts out enough revival beads at the pharmacy to bring her stock back up to fifteen. The items are tiny between her metal fingers, and she picks one up once she’s paid and stares at it, wondering how something that small had the power to bring her friends back from the brink of death, wondering if it would have worked if she had kept one in her pocket that day on the roof of Gekkoukan. 

Probably not. Their magic was hugely limited outside of the Dark Hour. At best it would have kept her in the world for maybe another five to ten minutes, long enough for Aigis to watch her decay all over again, just like she had for all of February without a word. She’s considered this over and over, run the calculations in her mind, then stored it away deep in her memory banks. At worst, now, it’s a passing thought, something she couldn’t do for someone she couldn’t save. 

It shouldn’t be like this , she thinks, but it feels distant and detatched. 

She passes out new weapons to Mitsuru and Junpei, gives Yukari a new pair of shoes, slips more chewing souls into their shared supplies alongside everything else. The Abyss has been rough, heavily draining, but none of them have a choice other than to continue. They’ve barely rested. Aigis isn’t sure when the last time anyone slept was. It’s been March 31st for at least two days now. Her internal sensors tell her it’s been more, but even they’re disoriented inside the Abyss. She’s supposed to be reliable first and foremost and she can’t even do that.

(“A machine is created to serve a specific purpose.” She can’t even do that. )

Still, though, she descends the stairs back into the Abyss, ignores the shift of concrete flooring into open sky, ignores the strange ambience change, only looks at the final glowing door in a whole sea of identical ones. If Fuuka’s scans were right, and Fuuka’s scans are always right, this should be their very final fight before the end. They just have to fight their way down again.

Aigis clenches her fist around the handle of the door and doesn’t look back. She’s learned enough from the story of Orpheus.

~~~

The shadow isn’t Kotone. It’s not her, it never was , and Aigis feels a flare of panic that she hadn’t felt in weeks as Athena appears behind the figure wearing Kotone’s face.

Maybe it was her. Maybe, like Metis said, this was all that was left, and when Athena had vanished from Aigis’s very soul and was replaced by Orpheus maybe this was where she went. Maybe they’d traded, and Aigis had somehow managed to steal from her wildcard beyond the grave.

Then, though, it brings out Isis, and Artemisia, and she’s too focused on defense to make the obvious connections. She will not let this impostor take anyone else down with her, no matter how much it pains her to order Odin to send a Thunder Reign in the shadow’s direction. 

God, she just wants to go back in time. Just a month would be enough. At the end of February, Kotone had still been alert enough to go through the motions of her days without anyone noticing anything wrong. Aigis had noticed her slipping, but that was Aigis, whose memories were so tightly interwoven into her brain that for them to be removed the rest of her existence would have to go with them. At the end of February, she’d kept her distance, but at the same time, they’d both been alive.

But, then, of course, the shadow of their former leader crashes to the ground on one knee and screams , high pitched and agonized, and Aigis has to physically force herself to keep from sending a Diarahan in the direction of Kotone’s fallen form. That’s not her. It never was.

Still, though, it doesn’t make the shadow’s horrible death hurt any less. It almost seems to properly solidify into Kotone’s face for a second, real enough that Aigis thought she could reach out and touch the girl she cares so much about. Then the shadow fades back into darkness and tears itself to shreds , layer by layer, until butterflies flutter in the air and nothing else remains .

She can’t watch. She can’t look away. God, at least the first time it had been peaceful. This one makes her feel like she’s choking, and she can’t even physically choke. 

The darkness fades into light. The shadow is gone, vanquished deep in the Abyss. It’s Metis who calmly explains that they’d all done this to themselves, and it’s Aigis who can’t tell why everyone seems so calm, why she seems so calm, why she wants to cry but can’t cry at all.

If Shadows, capital-s Shadows, were just Personas without users, Aigis is pretty sure she can tell whose had just fallen at her hands.

~~~

Her key hangs behind the ribbon around her neck. It’s the closest she can get to her heart, both the place where a human’s would be and the literal location of her papillon heart. 

It’s like having a little piece of her with Aigis wherever she went, even if it was just a fragment of the whole Key. It feels delicate in her metal hands. She wishes she had proper pockets to keep it safer. 

SEES is scattered to the corners of the dorm, splintered into their own smaller groups. Aigis hasn’t seen this much venom in Yukari’s eyes since… never, she believes. The team of her and Mitsuru will likely be the toughest opponent in this fucked up Colosseum they’ve raised from the Abyss. 

Aigis and Metis, sisters alone versus the world. If she’d been told about this just a day earlier, back on March 30th, she would have laughed at it. “I do not have a sister,” she would have said. “I am the last remaining Anti-Shadow Suppression Weapon.” Then Metis had flung herself into all their lives, disrupting the world in the process, and even though Aigis is still deeply suspicious of the android she can’t deny that it makes her feel just that bit less alone.

Now, she’s her only ally remaining, and Aigis has two options in front of her.

She slides down to the floor in the corner of the lounge, behind the counter, next to the window and the Door that led to the mall. That way she can’t see the others: the glares Yukari shoots over at Ken and Akihiko, the silent argument the latter is having with Mitsuru, Junpei and Koromaru off on their own, Fuuka alone. She feels like a failure of a leader, a pale imitation of what Kotone once managed, because she would never have let this happen.

Well, of course she wouldn’t. This debate all started with her death.

There’s a part of her, not a small one, that wants to head upstairs and open the locked door at the end of the third floor. Going back, being able to change it all, saving her life… Aigis would gladly throw her own down in return. At the very core of her programming, she’s a protector, and even her own name reflects that. From the ground up, she was built for a singular purpose. 

At the same time, though, the rest of her argues that this was the exact opposite of what Kotone would have wanted her to do. Her leader had made that choice for herself, and there was clearly nobody else that could have taken that place. It would be denial of her final wish to change the past, but Aigis couldn’t just move on and leave it all behind. Kotone was a part of her, quite literally now, with the very personification of her soul at Aigis’s fingertips now.

Two locked doors. Two choices. One key, one use. 

The mantle of leader rests heavy on her shoulders, and she wonders if Kotone felt that way as well. Aigis thinks she could have done more, helped her relax more, extended her own aegis over the girl she cared about so deeply and shielded her from the destruction. She’d always seemed so happy, but Aigis knew probably best of them all how much of a façade that was. 

Two doors, one key. Her makeshift necklace hangs heavy under her new armor. 

There’s no time for her to sit and process. She’s taken enough already. As much as it pained her, the shadow was not the first friend she’d have to take down today. 

Maybe she needed to upgrade Metis’s axe again. 

~~~

The proper Key fits into the new keyhole perfectly, not even loose enough to wiggle in the hole as Aigis turns it. After this, they’re all free. 

Erebus, the towering smoky mass of humanity’s collective desire to annihilate itself, towers high over the group, but not as high as the door he crashes into. And, of course, because today hasn’t been enough of a rollercoaster yet for her, Aigis can instantly recognize the statue chained to the opening, arms spread wide, every bit the savior she sacrificed herself to be. 

For one heartstopping moment, she wonders if Kotone could see her like this; if she was aware in there, against all odds, if the stone that now composed the girl she cared for above all else was looking back. 

Then she has to throw herself sharply to one side in order to dodge one of Erebus’s massive paws, slamming down where she had just stood. Her fight’s not over yet. Kotone’s may never be, not anymore, but Aigis can relieve her burden just for a moment. 

She makes sure a bullet goes straight through one of his eyes when he finally falls. Aigis doubts it hurts him as much as she wants it to. 

The smoke clears and leaves the remaining members of SEES staring out into the emptiness of space, and it reminds Aigis eerily of the day she’d lost her. There’s still ground under her feet, this time, but she thinks the pattern of the stars might be the same. 

But, of course, the stars are interrupted behind her by the door to Nyx. 

It’s massive, towering far taller than a human could ever reach. Chains crisscross its height, holding it firmly shut, and at the middle of it all is Kotone Shiomi.

Aigis has never been more glad that she wasn’t created as a human. 

It takes her full effort to shove against the ground, shape this pocket of reality to her wishes. Her creators made her as humanoid as possible, but they still needed a weapon, and a weapon was much less useful if it was stuck on the ground. Aigis was created for nothing if not being useful . 

It doesn’t occur to her until she’s staring the only person she’s ever loved in the eyes that this will be her final goodbye, once again. 

Here is what Aigis was not created for: she was not meant to love. She was not meant to get attached to humans, to laugh with them, cry for them, care for them. That’s why she feels herself tearing up when she touches the stone of her girlfriend’s cheek and finds it warm. That’s why she doesn’t know how to react, never has and never will. Her chest hurts. 

I’m sorry, she thinks but does not say. I could have taken your place, she thinks but knows is untrue. 

I love you, she thinks, not for the first time and not for the last. 

There are no proper words in a human language she knows that could express the things she’s feeling right now. So, of course, she settles for a far simpler form of communication.

If Kotone’s hair wasn’t stone, settled into place permanently, she would have brushed her bangs aside like she always used to. Even then, it doesn’t stop her from cupping the statue’s cheek with one hand and leaning in to place a gentle kiss on her forehead. 

Aigis hopes, if Kotone is still aware of her surroundings in there, that she’d accept it for all the things Aigis could never manage to tell her and a goodbye, all rolled into one. At the same time, for her own peace of mind, she hopes Kotone isn’t. She hopes the imagined eternity of staring off into space is just that: imagination, and nothing more. 

There’s no way for her to know any of this, though. Stone eyes cannot blink, and stone lips cannot move, and stone wrists do not resist the chains holding them spread. All Aigis can know for sure is that she’s helped her love’s eternal battle, even just temporarily, and that’s all she can do to protect her now. 

~~~

When she wakes back up that night, Aigis unlocks the door to Kotone’s room.

A thin layer of dust coats every surface, something she’d never have allowed. Aside from that, everything is exactly the same. Her bed is still unmade. Pictures of Kotone and her friends line the shelves. Aigis finds herself staring at the picture from their Kyoto trip, her arm around Kotone’s shoulders, Ryoji captured mid laugh like he didn’t even know there was a camera, all of SEES frozen in a single moment forever. 

November had been a simpler time. Aigis wouldn’t go back to it for anything. 

She runs a finger over everyone’s faces, wiping the dust off the glass. The first of April is sunny, but the beams of light don’t meet the photos. They fall across Kotone’s old desk.

She doesn’t need to look at the papers still laying there, a facsimile of life. It’s her homework from the end of the school year. Kotone’s old room is a life paused in a single moment at its end. 

Aigis doesn’t close the door again when she leaves. If there’s anything Kotone deserves, it’s some fresh air.

O