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Aoi is angry.
It is a hidden rage that seeps up into her thoughts from her subconscious when she isn’t paying attention, chokes her smiles before they can break all the way onto her face and leeches the flavor from everything she eats into a bland paste. It takes her a long time to figure out what the problem is; she thinks she’s sick, at first, and only gradually realizes that she’s not sick at all, she’s bone-deep furious.
Aoi had always been a nice girl. Even when she hadn’t been herself, when she’d been lost and confused and forgotten alone in the dark, she’d been a nice girl. Now, when all she wants is to rage and scream and break things, she suspects she isn’t so nice anymore.
It was a waste of two years. Two years she could have been running and playing and making friends with other girls her own age, years she could have been living and growing. She’ll never get those two years back, and for what?
For the chance to huddle, blind and cold, in the endless dark while waiting for the footsteps of a man who’d been her only company, her only link to the rest of the world? A man she’d thought was family, but who had lied to her and hurt her the minute things hadn’t gone his way?
For the sake of Natsume, the brother she’d adored, who’d patched up her scrapes and told her funny stories to make her laugh when she was scared? Nastume, the brother who hadn’t even wanted to leave the school – the prison – that had held them both captive for so long? The same brother who now turned his back on Aoi just because some girl he’d met was stuck at Alice Academy, too?
For her mother, maybe, who’d died the minute she could possibly get away from them all? Her father, who’d given up on his dangerous children the moment the Academy doors shut behind them? Her father had always been a little afraid of their power, even if he’d tried to hide it. Aoi knows part of the reason he’s so glad to have her back is because she’s lost her Alice of Flame.
And for that, Aoi spent two years in the dark – lost to the world and lost to herself.
Aoi could have been outside. Those were two years she could have felt the wind on her face, she could have been seeing, she could have been learning. She’s two years behind in all her classes now. All the other kids think she’s stupid because she can’t do the most basic math problems and struggles with reading simple sentences.
Aoi is so angry.
In her better moments, and there are fewer of those than Aoi would like, Aoi can see through the rage clearly enough to remember that she also loves.
She loves her father, in spite of his weakness, and she knows he loves her, too. He’d taken her back with tears of joy, and he watches her with a kind of awed desperation when he thinks she’s not looking. He looks like he’s afraid that the Academy will announce it was all a mistake and snatch her away. Whenever she catches him doing it, Aoi tries to summon a comforting smile for him, but half the time the smile dies before she can form it and whenever she actually manages one it makes her face feel stiff. She hates that her father never seems to notice the fakeness.
She loves Natsume – he’d always tried to protect her. He’d actually given up his freedom on the off chance he could find her and they could escape together. Before the dark, Aoi had had the strength to smile and laugh because Natsume had always been there for her, and she’d believed he always would be.
Until one day he hadn’t.
Intellectually, Aoi knows that it wasn’t his fault. If it was anyone’s fault (apart from Persona’s and Alice Academy’s), it was her own. She was the one who’d picked up the stone that poisoned her; she was the one who’d lost control and burned more than half the town to ashes. She was the one who got dragged off by Academy goons while she was still delirious with fever. She’d left him, and he’d spent the next two years of his life searching for her frantically. He’d even dragged his best friend after him into hell for her sake.
Sometimes, though, Aoi wonders if he’d really looked that hard, and then she hates herself for wondering. But still... Aoi had been a blind girl locked into a school basement at an Academy that Natsume attended. How hard could it possibly have been to find her? It wasn’t like she had been going anywhere.
And then when he finally did find her she almost wished he hadn’t, because he was two years too late.
And that brings her to the final person Aoi loves: Persona. Oh, she’s angrier at him than words can possibly describe – angrier than she’d ever dreamed she could be, once upon a time when she’d believed the lies Natsume told her about how everything would be all right – but Aoi also understands him now.
She hadn’t, before. Oh, she’d thought she did. Persona was her one link to sanity, back in the dark where there was nothing to do but wait and listen, and the waiting and listening stretched on and on and on, and the only thing she could hear was her heartbeat and her own ragged breathing until Aoi would start to wonder if maybe she wasn’t really real, or if she was real then maybe there wasn’t really a world outside of her own skin—
Persona chased all that away. His footsteps would echo faintly, reaching her ears a few minutes before he arrived, and Aoi would latch onto his voice with ecstatic joy. They talked for as long as he could spare, simply enjoying each other’s company. Persona described things from outside – birds on the wing, the color of roses in sunlight, the crazy people he met over the course of his days – and Aoi smiled and laughed, encouraging him to add details. If Aoi was very lucky, she’d manage to tease a soft chuckle or two from Persona before his somber facade dropped back down and he had to return to his masters, leaving Aoi’s ears to strain after his footfalls until he passed out of hearing range.
Persona, she knows, was as happy to speak to her as she was to speak to him. She’s never doubted it. She heard it in his voice, and she knows his voice better than she knows her own. That was why she’d believed him when he lied and said he was her brother and he wanted to cure her. That was why she’d believed when he said he would protect her.
That was why she’d believed when he said he loved her.
Because it was true.
Aoi didn’t recognize it then, but Persona is lost in the dark just like she had been. Months after escaping, and she still hears his voice in her mind – it’s branded in her psyche forever – and what she hears, now that she’s free of the dark (funny, how she feels more trapped now that she’s out than she felt when she actually was caged), what she hears is that her voice and Persona’s sound the same.
Persona was grasping at straws as desperately as she had been, and he needed her just as badly as she’d needed him. He’d hurt her because he was trapped and alone and furious about it – furious just like Aoi is, rage bubbling just under her skin that tells her to destroy things, smiles, people (because people are weak like Aoi had been weak), destroy anything and everything, destroy the people she loves –
She could do it. Oh yes, Aoi understands Persona now.
But it isn’t true, that Aoi learned nothing those two years she spent in the dark. She learned how to listen and she learned how to wait. Most importantly, she learned that she couldn’t depend on anyone else to rescue her. Aoi has to conquer the dark herself.
With careful, steady hands, she lays out wood. With careful, steady hands, she stacks it neatly and arranges the oil soaked cloths. With careful, steady hands, she strikes a match.
Aoi destroys the darkness by making light.