Chapter Text
March 6th, 2011
The sun is shining brightly through the curtains, the sounds of birds singing and the lively city filling the air. It’s a perfect spring day, but Mitsuru is anything but happy.
Sure, she’d been overjoyed when she finally remembered her friends, and S.E.E.S., and their reason for fighting, but she and the others had arrived at the conclusion just seconds too late; by the time they’d made it to Gekkoukan’s rooftop, Minato Arisato was already dead in Aigis’ arms.
The memories came flooding back as she blearily pushed herself out of bed and got dressed; the stitch in her side from sprinting up the stairs, Yukari’s hand in hers, catching her breath once they’d reached the top, and her heart stopping at the sight of the limp figure laying in Aigis’ lap on a bench.
He’d looked so peaceful.
Like he was sleeping.
It was the rush of sudden pain and sorrow that made Mitsuru not realize that her cell phone was ringing until she picked it up to look at the time.
Incoming call: Dr. Takayama Tatsumi Hospital
Mitsuru sighed. That’s right. Of course the hospital would be calling her; probably updating her on the autopsy results or death certificate. She didn’t like thinking about those kinds of things, but she supposed it was better to get it over with now than later.
“Hello, Dr. Takayama? This is Mitsuru Kirijo speaking.”
Like most of the island and its surrounding areas, the hospital was owned by the Kirijo group, and Mitsuru knew many people there. However, she knew Dr. Takayama best, as it was he who had presided over Minato on the night after his Persona awakened, as well as Chidori Yoshino when they’d kept her there for questioning. Every time Mitsuru had spoken to him, it was in a professional and respectful way.
However, this morning was surprisingly not the case.
“What do you and your friends think you’re playing at?!” she heard him shout. “Is this some kind of stupid graduation joke? This isn’t like you at all, Mitsuru! I thought you were more mature than this!”
His anger pulled Mitsuru straight out of her exhausted stupor. Joke? Prank?
“I- I’m very sorry, Doctor,” she heard herself say, “I- I’m not sure what you’re talking about. I-is something wrong? What happened?”
Her poor attempt at sounding alert and professional didn’t seem to work, because Dr. Takayama sounded even angrier. “What do you mean, you don’t know what I’m talking about?! Do you think it’s funny to give us a sleeping person and tell us that it’s a dead body?!”
—
Mitsuru couldn’t believe her eyes.
She had to be dreaming. This had to be fake, or a husk, a copy, one last remaining product of the Dark Hour made to rub salt in S.E.E.S.’ fresh wound– but it wasn’t.
The heart rate monitor was beeping steadily. The screens all showed vital signs of a healthy person in a deep sleep.
Minato Arisato was sleeping peacefully in a hospital bed.
“Th-this– this shouldn’t be possible,” she stammered, looking at Dr. Takayama and his assistant. “He– I saw him. I saw him die.”
Her shock and confusion must not have been enough for him, because he only continued to glower at her. “I’m not sure what kind of ridiculous joke you think you’re making here, but I can guarantee you that neither I nor any of my colleagues at this hospital think it’s funny,” he said, crossing his arms. “He seems to be in a light sort of coma, but there seems to be no external trauma of any kind. We looked at his file again, and he’s got nothing majorly wrong with him except post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. Now, you can either apologize for wasting our time with your ridiculous prank and tell us what really happened, or explain what’s going on here so we can move forward with arranging for his treatment. From what we can tell so far, it shouldn’t take too long for him to recover from– whatever it was that caused this, but you and your friends know him best, so I expect you to know what to do next.”
Mitsuru felt her face beginning to redden under Dr. Takayama’s glare. Her heart was pounding, and her head hurt with the rush of information that she’d just absorbed and the shock of seeing Minato alive. Capable and calculated as she was, she felt herself starting to unravel with the realization of how much thinking and decision-making she’d have to do so quickly in such a short amount of time, but she didn’t even know where to start– this is why we appointed him as leader, she thought quickly, anxiously tugging at the edge of her sleeve– God, what am I supposed to do first?!
“Dr. Takayama,” she finally managed to get out, “May I make some phone calls first?”
—
When Mitsuru called Aigis to tell her that Minato was alive and sleeping peacefully in a bed at Tatsumi Memorial Hospital, she thought she was malfunctioning.
One of her systems must have collapsed or rebooted wrong after powering down on the night of March 5th, twisted by all of the powerful emotions she had felt that day after watching her special one die in her arms. The Plume of Dusk in her must be manipulating her senses, causing her to hear Mitsuru incorrectly, but deep down, she knew that none of those things were true.
She couldn’t have rushed to the hospital faster.
Everything felt like it was moving in slow motion around her; the train, the passengers, the crowds of people enjoying the weather, or going through their morning commute, her cell phone rattling around in the mostly-empty messenger bag that Minato had bought with her when he took her for a walk (a “date”, as humans called it) at Paulownia Mall just two months before.
It had been one of the things she’d gotten with her friends that she kept close to her in the span of time when she’d been trying so hard to remember everything– she knew that she was a machine built for battle, not human like her classmates, yet still she felt an underlying desire to attend every day, to see something or someone that she desperately needed to, yet the reason for why was just barely out of her reach. By the end of each school day, her mind felt as foggy as ever, but when she returned to her room and saw the various random items– things like a CD by Minato’s favorite band, a celebrity tabloid magazine, a small keychain with a plastic blue flower attached to it, a stuffed Jack Frost doll from a crane game machine– that served no real useful purpose– it felt like the sun briefly shining through the clouds on a foggy day before disappearing again.
Small things like those were some of the first memories that came flooding back– how could she have forgotten when Yukari had shown her the gossip articles in the magazine so she could be “caught up” with the reality TV show she had been watching? Junpei had been so excited when he finally caught the stuffed doll from the crane game that he’d immediately let her have it– her confusion at his excitement (and then learning that these types of games were extremely popular among humans) was something she was determined to never forget! Fuuka’s dedication to the rooftop garden, taking Koromaru for nighttime walks, drinking tea with Mitsuru, sparring with Akihiko (and trying her hardest not to seriously injure him), Ken’s determination to appear “mature”, Minato gently taking her hand on the school’s roof and telling her that he loved her too, reassuring her that he loved her despite her being a machine, telling her that she was beautiful and promising to stay by her side…
She’d been so furious with herself.
How could I forget about the one that I had sworn to protect?
It was for these reasons that she’d nearly sprinted through the hospital’s main doors and up the stairs (the elevator would be too slow) to the hallway where Mitsuru said she’d be, her desire to see for herself that Mitsuru hadn’t been lying, that Minato was really alive, overpowering everything else in her mind. If it really was true, nothing would stop Aigis from seeing it for herself.
Mitsuru-san is standing outside of room number 719 on the third floor, she thought to herself over and over as she speed-walked down the halls, remembering to slow down so as to not injure anyone passing by, Minato’s face becoming clearer in her mind with every step she took. If she had a heart, it would be pounding out of her chest, especially now as she spotted Mitsuru standing outside of a room at the end of a hall. The worried look on her face became clearer as Aigis approached, and although she knew it was considered socially unacceptable not to greet someone when you met up with them, Aigis didn’t care. She needed to be in that room.
She needed to see him.
“Is he here?” she asked, looking Mitsuru directly in the eyes. “Is he in that room?”
Mitsuru nodded nervously. “I know it’s impossible, but I swear–”
Aigis ignored her and pushed the door open, stepping inside the room, pushing past the annoyed-looking doctors towards the bed next to the window, and she knew it as soon as she heard the heart monitor beeping and saw the figure sleeping peacefully in the bed that Mitsuru hadn’t been lying, that it was true, that her special one was alive.
She felt herself drop the bag she was carrying and take one of Minato’s hands in hers. Aigis could hear Mitsuru and the doctors talking to each other in the background, but she didn’t care what they were saying. All she cared about was placing a hand over his chest and feeling his steady heartbeat, seeing his face twitch slightly and hearing him sigh in his sleep.
The mixture of blind shock and excitement coursing through her body made the rest of the world seem very far away. Aigis wasn’t sure how long she had been standing next to the bed when she heard something besides muffled conversation and her own shaky breaths; the beeping of the heart monitor was slightly increasing, and Mitsuru and the doctors’ conversation became louder and more frantic, and suddenly Minato’s eyes began to flutter and he raised his head ever-so-slightly and blinked.
Aigis felt frozen in place.
This was impossible. She’d held his hands as he died in her arms on the school rooftop.
and yet,
“Aigis,” he murmured, the ghost of a smile hanging on the edges of his words, “It’s okay. I’m here.”