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 aigis realised how they felt about minako on december the second, the night when ryoji tore them apart on the moonlight bridge. it was the realisation that they were scared of death, not because death seemed uninviting - it was such an alien concept to them at the time - but because they would no longer be able to protect the friends they loved so much. this was not an order they were given. if they wanted orders, they could have gone back to the kirijo group. this was their own feelings, their own emotions, that gave them fear. 

 but most of all, they felt the strong attachment and draw to minako that they’d been feeling all along. it was more than just the desire to observe death, they realised. they’d still been feeling it, very specifically, over the last month or so as ryoji had been around, that desire to protect minako. ryoji was meant to be what they were observing, so it would make sense that they’d be drawn to him, right? and yet, they weren’t. 

 it was in that moment, with that realisation, that aigis realised that she’d been truly happy these past few months, despite everything, and that she hadn’t even noticed until she’d almost died. she spent the time she was being repaired thinking about her friends and her feelings and everything. she came back fully aware of the nature of her emotions.

 she… did not deal with them well. she spent a lot of her time in her room listening to cheesy love songs and stressing out, and a lot of time feeling incredibly guilty that she had these feelings at all - of course minako wouldn’t want her. she wasn’t even sure if minako liked girls, and even if she did, aigis hardly counted, right? she wasn’t even human, didn’t have a sense of touch, didn’t have the kind of second nature that most humans seemed to have when it came to relationships. 

 she ended up binge watching a lot of rom-coms with a very concerned yukari, and realised as time went on, the exact nature of how strong her feelings were. being in minako’s presence would sometimes make her overheat, or stammer, or go quiet all together. she did the very typical thing of wanting to move her hand onto minako’s but getting too shy, or asking her to walk home really awkwardly.