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<It is surprising that you are here>, it thinks at you, and it is. Surprising, that is. You did not expect to ever see it again.
(Yes, you did. You are floating in a void of chrome and immateriality, like you have done so many times before, and of course you expected to see it again, at some point, you have never truly believed it was gone,)
It barks out a laugh that vibrates your skin and rattles your bones. <What happened this time?>
You are not—have never been a liar, you swear, for if hope is not a lie you will not be either.
(Hope is the biggest lie of all. Hope is a lie you tell yourself when you wake up in the mornings.)
So it is not your fault you are here(yes it is), you have done everything you could(no, you haven’t), and it knows everything about you so why is it asking, and it laughs, and it stares with nonexistent eyes, and time has reversed a decade and you are falling.
———
It is the first time you have seen it, and you are eighteen in the body of an eight-year-old, and you understand the things happening around you with much more clarity than you would have liked.
You are excited! You are excited for your island trip, your parents are grinning, your mother beams at you with the smile of a million rays of light, you think that nothing could be better than this moment and it whispers to you that you are right. You don’t understand what it means and you know so terribly well what it means.
It mocks you out of the corner of your eye, and you don’t understand what the green shape you can see yet can’t see at the same time is doing amid a sea of red sirens and screams.
It is too loud for you. You whine and cover your ears and it does nothing. The plane is hotter than anything you have felt before—you inhale, and for the first time in your life and for the nth time in your life you truly understand what smoke is.
You miss your parents. Why are you missing your parents? Your parents are right here, beside you—you reach out for them—their image dissolves under your clawing, grubby hands, you are simultaneously eighteen and eight and reaching out for corpses that have long since become nothing more than memories.
You have never experienced pain like this before. You have experienced pain like this a million times before. Fuck, your limbs are cut and bruised and—that’s it. It laughs at you again when you discover their corpses, and in your eighteen-year-old-self you mourn that the blood spilled wasn’t yours.
(A few days later you find their inheritance, and the first leaf falls off.)
———
<Engaging?> it asks. You did not need that, the scene plays in your head every night until you are wailing like the same kid you were that day.
It doesn’t need eyebrows to raise, doesn’t need a mouth to smile, you see its expression in your mind clear as day and yet every feature constantly shifts, such is when you try to assign mortality to a god.
On your better days, you imagine it as a deity, and you as its favourite toy—maybe you should be honoured, perhaps, that you are the one that it has chosen to lay its eyes on.
<Well,> it smirks, <you know what comes next.>
And you do, you do, fuck you do.
———
It is the second time you have seen it, and you have just seen your best friend die in front of you.
You hate this. You hate every second of this, you wish more than anything to be beside the one person who gave a shit about you, who cared about everyone, and yet you feel your mouth twisting into a smile as you abandon your friend, lying pitifully on the floor.
You watched as your only friend died- you watched her dance in a maze of hell for a performance for you, and you, and you, this was catered for you to watch, and you hate yourself for that.
You hate this. You hate what you are forced to do, you hate this, you hate this. You hate Junko Enoshima. You want nothing more to rip her eyes out of her face, she is a beacon who shines her light into the eyes of sailors to blind them, she is a siren using her song to lure the hopeless further into despair.
She is nothing like what you stand for, she is your inverse, she killed Chiaki Nanami you hate her.
You do her bidding anyway. You do her bidding for the next few years.
You hate every second of it.
(You hate Izuru Kamukura. You hate his red fucking eyes and his bored fucking face and you kiss him in the rubble of Towa City and you hate that he saw her when you couldn’t.)
(You hate that you are the most unworthy being to hate him.)
(Years later the tiny organisation you watched so closely grew to be a beacon of hope, and caught you all, and the second leaf falls off)
———
<You realise we are reaching the end.>
Shut up. Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up. You flail at it with immaterial arms, you have no mouth but you must scream, it is dawning on you that you might hate it as much as you hated Junko.
You are its doll—it is free to disassemble you, it is the eternal child and you are but its plaything. It is free to disassemble you, but by fuck do you wish that sometimes it would take less of its liberties.
<It is not difficult to wish. Isn’t that what hope is?>
The endless, futile wish you have prayed for your whole life, it whispers into your ear, and the void is the all-encompassing truth you have known and yet refused to see.
<Hope, despair, these are all concepts. These are all useless, in reality. And those who need hope the most are those who live in despair.>
<What does that say about you, Nagito Komaeda?>
You swallow spectral saliva, and watch the most hopeless—yet hope-filled—moment of your hopeless, hope-filled life.
———
It is the third time you have seen it, and your blood waters the floor of the warehouse.
You don’t know why you are doing this. You don’t know why you are doing this. Why are you doing this?
Ah, through the haze of pain. You are doing this for her— you don’t know why she is so important to you, but you know, but you believe she will make things right.
You can barely see, the tears blur your vision so. Pink mixes with green mixes with grey and all the splotches look the same as each other.
This. Will. Work. It is all you have to go on, it is your luck- You started the killing game, you won Russian Roulette, you are the Ultimate Lucky Student. You have your luck, and you have hope, and that is all you need for this.
The rope scrapes your one remaining hand as you keep the spear in the air.
Dimly, you think back to when you were eight. When your pale skin was littered with cuts and bruises, when you found your parents that night—you wonder, will they mourn over you like how you mourned a decade ago?
(You don’t remember another time, when you had your luck and you had your hope and that was all you had as you watched blood splatter the floor. Maybe remembering it would crush you, to know that you have gone to all of this to save someone who died years ago.)
And of course you can stomach killing them for all of hope. For all of hope. They are worthy sacrifices, they will be stepping stones like you. She will bring hope to the world. She will bring hope-
The spear falls.
(Hours later, they discover your body, and they mourn, and the third leaf falls off)
———
<You are not dead.>
What? You are dead, you have to be dead, if not it was all for nothing- You are dead. There is no normal human who could have survived that.
(Then again, you have never been a normal human)
<You…> it sighs, <were supposed to remember this by now.>
Wait. Wait. Wait. Maybe you do. Maybe, perhaps, in your emaciated mind, there is the tiniest inkling-
Oh.
Oh.
<He should be coming to get you.>
Oh.
Today is a day full of surprises, it seems.
You are alive. You are alive, and the rest of them are alive, and you all are—
(She is not.)
<This is likely the last time we will see each other.>
The chrome void cracks. It opens in a seam of a brilliant white glow, and beyond that glow, you hear voices-
<Just so you know, you were always my favourite game.>
You are almost free. You are almost free.
You find your voice again.
“Fuck you.” You pause. “And- thank you.”
It doesn’t need a face to smile bittersweetly.
And you are almost—
———
You are almost certain that you are back on that plane, a decade ago, feeling that lurch in your chest again as you go spinning and spiralling down-
“Hey.”
Light! Light simply everywhere, are you free?
“Can you hear me?”
And your vision finally comes into focus to see the spiky brown hair of your closest friend and worst enemy.
And then you see his mismatched eyes.
(You don’t know what kept you from knowing it was him)
You lose yourself in his eyes, and realise your luck has been playing you the whole time.
(The fourth leaf falls off.)