If Only for a Moment ☓ You and Her

Out of Isolation

She's gotten used to watching you from the corner of her eye.

You're the quiet kind of pretty, always bent over a book or gazing off into the sky as if you can see something others can't. Something unfathomable.

So she watches you, in hopes that one day she'll see it, too.

She is the first to notice when you appear on the midnight channel, she's memorized the shape of you by then. When she tells the others, they say it is too soon to know for certain.

Then you're gone, and she gets a true taste of what it's like to be on the other side of the television screen - fearing that you'll never come home. But she has her power now, and she can save you.

For the next few days she doesn't have to ask Souji to bring her into the fray; he just knows. For that she is grateful, and she understands why he has been named their leader. He senses things about people without having to be told, and he has noticed how she looks at you.

She works harder than anyone to get you back. Her persona grows and strengthens at an incredible rate, a testament to her unshakable resolve. Even as the newest member of the group, it's clear she can pull her weight.

Your dungeon is dark and lonely - lined with empty cells and strewn with chains. It's a reflection of you, and it hurts her to realize that. She knows, now, the reason you are always alone; closed off from the rest of your peers as if separated by an invisible wall. As if shackled inside a jail cell.

And when they finally reach you, you are watching your own shadow with a astonishing air of calmness about you. You don't say anything as she raves on and on; you just listen. You don't even turn to look at the ones who have arrived to your rescue. Naoto wonders if you feel the same dread that she had despite how aloof you'd both appeared at the beginning. It is a powerful thing - staring your flaws in the face.

Your shadow is bound by the wrists and ankles by chains that are too long to see their origin. Her eyes are swollen with irritation and angry red tear marks carve their way down her face. She is dressed in rags and her skin is smeared with soot. She wails of abandonment, and how you'd left her to die inside your frozen heart. This weak, manic, desperate part of you that you hadn't wanted to see, so you'd locked her away inside of you and isolated yourself from anyone who might've found the key. She weeps of loneliness, and of her yearning for something more than this painful existence.

Naoto calls out your name, and only then do you turn away.

"You aren't alone." Is what she finds herself saying, staring into your eyes with an earnest kind of love. She is aware that you've barely spoken two words to each other, but she is also aware that she cares deeply for you, regardless. "You were never alone."

There is no explanation to her words, no elaboration, but all the same your shoulders seem to lift. Your eyes seem to brighten.

You smile, and she realizes that she's never seen you do it before. It's a soothing thing to behold.

Your eyes fall upon your double once more and you move forward as you've always done - seeming to glide gracefully on air. Wordlessly your arms wrap around her shoulders. You whisper something in her ear, something that your rescuers cannot hear, and suddenly it seems like the same weight has been lifted off of your shadow's shoulders, as well. She sobs in relief and happiness and takes on a heavenly sort of glow.

There is no denial; and there is no fight. You accept her willingly back into you as a bright and magnificent persona, and you lean gratefully on Naoto's offered shoulder as the investigation team leads you back home.