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eve6262 · 5 months

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happy birthday komaeda

Someone sits on a ledge in a ruined city and thinks about jumping.

The fall is deadly. His body has always been weak, frail and untrustworthy; even his own luck couldn't save him. There's nothing soft down there, harsh edges and rusty rebar tempting him into a fate guaranteed. Few things in his life have been guaranteed, and something about that promise feels comforting, like it's the one thing he'll always have up his sleeve.

In his mind's eye, he jumps. He falls. His imagination has always been lively, but for some reason, this part is blank. "I die" is the only thing he can come up with- the image eludes him. He's scared, maybe, of truly seeing it- the same thing happened when he was kidnapped, mind hazy and gone, wondering: "what happens if he forgets to feed me?" He doesn't want to remember that.

He remembers it anyway, because the one thing the cancer refuses to take his is memory.

When Kamakura looked at him, he thought he might implode. Not for the reason the others thought- something about hope and despair and a name that tastes like sweet poison on his tongue. Not because he was infatuated, even if he is. Because Kamakura looked right through him and saw whatever vines twisted a thousand times over his heart and had the gall to say, "What was the diagnosis?"

He already knew. Komaeda doesn't know why he asked. But he did, and Komaeda answered, and then he huffed, turned on his heel, and walked away.

(That wasn't Komaeda. That was Servant, someone who doesn't exist, a shell of a person.)

Are the children looking for him? He doesn't care, and they don't care; this is a moment to himself, while everything falls apart around them. Monaca could manage on her own if she wished; there's a cruel boredom to her smile, but no matter what anyone seems to think, it's different. There's something hollow about it, something lonely, something sad. Something like the look in his own eyes when he smiles in the mirror.

And Towa City is at least calm. Already destroyed in some sense, largely intact in another. So of course he ended up here. There's no battle for him to fail through or politics to ruin. He just has to sit here, and mess up whatever job given to him, and be laughed at.

He thinks of a serial killer and writer sharing a body and laughs.

He thinks about Kamakura and stops.

He thinks about jumping.

---

"Komaeda, are you sure you're okay?"

They're sitting in a room together. Outside Future Foundation headquarters, but not far- they want to keep tabs on the group, considering heavily whether they'll be let in or not. Some are a given- Fuyuhiko, Hajime, Sonia. Others are questionable- Mikan, Teruteru, himself. Komaeda isn't sure what the suits think, but he imagines Hajime will be staunch about it, and he'll be let in as the group will. Even if he's only a patient for Mikan to fuss over when there's little to do, that's fine.

He has never minded being just a body for the machine. As long as the machine is working towards good ends, he can be a nothing gear.

"Of course. Don't worry about me."

To be specifically accurate, Hajime is half-sitting half-laying in bed, blearily looking at him from across the room, as Komaeda sits at a desk on a laptop. He woke up an hour ago and wanted to be busy with something, anything as a distraction, and he keeps the apartment spotless out of the same urge. But there isn't much work anyone piles onto him, so he's just sitting here, wondering a bit aimlessly why he opened the accursed thing.

Why he woke up is irrelevant, really. People wake up at four AM sometimes, it's nothing strange.

(He remembers stale wind and red skies, and a building, and thinking about plumetting. Except, in his dream, he actually falls, and falls, and falls, and then there's a spear in his heart and-)

Hajime closes his eyes, and falls back on the bed. Komaeda turns back to the laptop, and decides that if he can't do anything productive, he can at least try to bring Hajime's files into some semblance of order.

For a moment, he thinks that's all it'll be. And then he hears the blanket shuffle, and footsteps, and he says, "Am I keeping you up?"

"No," Hajime tells him, circling his arms around his front. Breath hitches in his throat- he can't stand to look back. Disappointment could fill his eyes, or annoyance furrow his brow, or pity worry at his lip, and all three of them would destroy him like a shattered porcelain doll. So he doesn't look back, even if he does sit back in the chair a little. "I'm not really sleepy anyway."

("I'm don't get tired easily," a quiet Kamakura tells him unprompted. He's rarely responding to questions, anticipating them and answering before they leave your lips. "They wanted efficiency." Servant hears what's unsaid and stores it in the shell he's got left of what he was.)

"Did you want to use the laptop?"

Silence meets him. Anxiety frays at his heart- what's Hajime thinking? Is he waiting? Hoping he'll come back to bed so he can make sure Komaeda is sleeping enough for his condition? That's Mikan's job, to worry over his health- he hopes Hajime isn't back to that old haunt that Kamakura used to take up when the two of them were in Towa City. To this day he isn't sure what about it drew the man in.

"You should tell me what it was," is what Hajime settles on.

Komaeda smiles. It's an instinct, like a deer in headlights; if something's too prying, smile and wave it away. "Nothing, really. Just couldn't sleep."

"...That's not true," Hajime insists. But there's sleep still stuck in his throat, thick and syrupy; if he plays his cards right. maybe Hajime will decide he's too much trouble and go back to bed.

("You're trouble," Kamakura states. It's not a question and doesn't sound like a complaint, and it's not like Servant could respond to such a thing while bedridden. There are more words, but sadly, his consciousness fails him, and they all sound like static.)

"...It's nothing I can't deal with myself. You should go to bed- you sound tired."

Hajime just makes a noise, properly bending down into a hug. His arms tighten, and Komaeda almost wants to look back, but doesn't. Now it feels like cheating, peering at an answer he's supposed to solve himself. And he's never been opposed, but the shame curls around him like a serpent.

"I'll join you in a minute," Komaeda promises.

"...I wasn't having a great dream either," Hajime tells him, and course he knew the whole time. It doesn't take a genius to have figured that out. But he was hoping it could be kept in its box where it's contained, not growing, simply existing. A therapist would tell him that's a bad idea, but Komaeda thinks he knows his own brain well enough to cope nowadays. "It was about Towa City."

"Ah."

"You were standing on a high rooftop. I was across the street in a building, watching from a window."

Komaeda puts a hand on his, tentatively and slowly, in case it'd be rejected. Hajime takes it in his, tight and secure. "You were looking down. And I couldn't move."

"And then?"

Hajime pauses. "And then I felt cold, so I woke up. I don't know what was going to happen."

"I see."

"But I think Kamakura does."

Komaeda says nothing. Kamakura's powers of observation are second to none, and of course the husk that Servant was never cared to hide anything he didn't need to. If Kamakura had looked at him for even a nanosecond while he was up on a building, he'd probably see the image in his mind.

(They're on top of one such building. Servant is staring at the edge in lieu of disgracing Kamakura with his eye. He does not notice the arm moving until it's already around his shoulder, tugging him closer. He assumes, in this moment, that Kamakura is cold, or maybe that he thought the ground was going to collapse that close to the edge.)

"You were thinking about jumping," Kamakura states plainly.

"Yes." Hiding from Kamakura is silly. It's like trying to socialize in a hospital bed. "Back then, anyways."

"Come to bed," he states plainly. "It is worse alone."

Komaeda obliges, because he knows there isn't much getting out of it. He shuts the laptop and gets up, Kamakura trailing him into the bed. Laying down is awkward, unsure of what Kamakura wants- which turns out to be fine, because he doesn't care much about taking it for himself, burying his face in Komaeda's neck and pulling him close.

It's warm. With whichever one of them- Hajime, Kamakura, both if they'd prefer that thought- it's hard to think about that moment, because in the memory it is cold and dry and distant and lonely, and now there is a beating heart so loud in his ears it's hard to think.

"...I am glad you never did," he says. "While I was there I would have stopped you. But there were moments you could have."

"There were," Komaeda says. And, truthfully, he thinks that black void is the reason he didn't. The lack of an idea, the sudden fear of the plunge when he imagined the end- Servant could only do things he could imagine, and he couldn't imagine the final moment. Even in the end, he was scared- it would make him hysterical if not for the calm, collected beating heart he feels under his hands. "...That's over now."

"Even if it isn't," Kamakura tells him, "I would rather know you are safe."

He thinks about saying something in response, but they really were tired. After a few more moments, their breathing evens out so suddenly he thinks Kamakura must be able to enter REM on command- the thought is almost funny.

But, really, it's hard to be distracted by anything when there's a beating heart so close to his own.

#danganronpa #writing #nagito komaeda #happy birthday komaeda #love studying you and your weird lil brain #my son <3 he has every mental illness #hajime hinata #izuru kamakura #hajime and izuru are different people in the same body #because it was convenient and poignant #reads either way though so go nuts #no beta sorry I cranked this bitch out in like 2 hours

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