#of note: ryoko and mikan are not in this chapter

[aparticularbandit]

Of A Fatal Captivity: Day One (I)

Summary: When do they decide that she can’t leave? That they’re going to keep her there no matter what she wants? That’s the day her captivity begins. Is that today?

Some of you will think that this beginning is a gimmick. Up to you! Think what you want! (It’s not a gimmick more than anything else in writing is a gimmick, which is to say, of course, it’s a gimmick, because that’s all writing is, really, isn’t it? A bunch of gimmicks? Some of them more successful than others? Isn’t that why we have tropes? The trappings of a Tragedy to tell us whether that’s really what the story is or not? (Do you know the story you’re in?))

Enough games.

You’re here for something better than that.

Or: Junko Enoshima’s factory reset may or may not be going as planned, and Ryoko Otonashi has plenty of things to say about that. Or will, once she realizes what’s going on.

Chapter Rating: M for Graphic Imagery. Fic Rating: M for Danganronpa reasons.

TW for Graphic Imagery.

AO3

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Book One

Four FIVE Days Ago.

Day Ten (of an….  Oh, who cares anymore?  It’s over.  It’s over.)

Kyoko stares up at stars winking at her through a sky far blacker than anything she has ever known and takes a deep breath of thickly polluted air and feels despair.

It’s an odd sort of feeling.

Not that she’s never felt it before – she has – but it’s different this time.  Like something ice cold – the way a corpse feels, maybe, when she comes across it far later than she should, when all of the warmth has drained from its body and it’s just starting to turn – pools in the center of her chest, just where her heart should be, and spreads out slowly through her veins, as though it might reach her already aching fingertips.  She can’t breathe through the ice beneath her skin, can’t breathe staring up at a sky she’d thought she would never see again, can’t breathe as the rocket-fueled mecha Monokuma disappears like the twinle of a winking star into that same sky, black on black on black.

Despair.

Kyoko knew she couldn’t save Junko from Byakuya’s mind wipe.  She arrived too late for that; she and Toko both knew Byakuya would already have started whatever literal mind game he was playing with Junko before they made it, before Kyoko even got through the door.  That was expected. It wasn’t an acceptable loss, but it was at least an expected one, one from which they could recover.

What wasn’t expected was a giant mecha Monokuma exploding through the roof.

What wasn’t expected was a girl Kyoko barely remembers stealing Junko away.

What wasn’t expected was—

Interfering with the memory erasure could lead to permanent brain damage.  Wasn’t that what Byakuya said?  And what could be more interference than a giant mecha Monokuma dropping down from the sky and literally ripping Junko out of her cradle?  There’s no coming back from that, there’s no regaining Junko from that, there’s no hope that they might possibly have her back to something even remotely approaching normal – they stole her, and now they can do whatever they want with her when she wakes (if she wakes!), and—

The worst is the realization that Junko….  Junko planned this.  She’d known it would happen even before wiping Kyoko’s memories.  She’d—

“I really did love you.  I really did.”

Kyoko’s throat cuts off.  It burns, raw.  She doesn’t cry because she doesn’t cry (not since Yui), because even if he’s been knocked out, Byakuya is still right there, and Hina’s….  Hina’s somewhere.  Besides, if she didn’t cry over Makoto, she sure isn’t going to cry over Junko Enoshima.  That would be so stupid.

So stupid.

Kyoko clenches her hand into a fist so tight that the leather of her glove creaks.  Her gaze drops from the sky, and she forces herself to draw another smoke-filled breath.

Junko said she was going to die.

Fair enough.

She died.

Just like she wanted.

“...maybe, eventually, you’ll see me again, too.  If you keep your promise, anyway.”

Kyoko can’t think about that right now.

Right now, she needs to get out of the wreckage Junko and her Ultimate Despair left behind.

Right now, she needs to find Hina.

Right now, she—

“M-M-Master!”

Toko races into the room, indestructible, sprints across the misshapen bits of concrete, dances around sparks and machinery that is somehow on fire, and cradles Byakuya in her arms.  There’s a sharp cut across his forehead and blood (red blood) smeared across it, only growing more smeared as Toko brushes his hair out of his face.  His glasses are gone, smashed under debris.  Like this, he almost looks normal.

Almost.

Toko’s gaze doesn’t leave Byakuya to glare at Kyoko as she desperately tries to lift his body with her noodle arms, but there’s venom in her voice when she says, “What. did. you. do?”

“Look around you, Toko.”  Kyoko stumbles away from her, closer to the door, closer to where she’d been standing with Hina when the Monokuma dropped.  Her eyes sweep the wreckage as she does. “Do you really think I could do something like this?”

“I-I-I wasn’t here!  I don’t know!”  Toko struggles with Byakuya, unable to move him.  She tucks her arms under his armpits and tries to drag him backwards, making it only a few steps back before she catches sight of the nearest broken wire still shooting sparks and gives up.  (There’s a soft crack as she drags him.  But there are a lot of sounds around them right now.)  “A little help?” she calls out.  “Please?”

But Kyoko isn’t paying attention to her.  Kyoko’s paying attention to the other cracks, the shifts in the concrete, the wires and the sparks and the bits of flame, and the singular hand outstretched from beneath a huge, huge piece of—

Kyoko isn’t strong.  She has never been strong, and the nerve damage in her hands hasn’t helped with that.  But something in her snaps, something in her rips her own muscles as she grabs the chunk of concrete, as she heaves, as she digs in her broken heels, as she shoves it off of Hina’s body.  (She’s done this before, and it tore her hands apart, and it’s tearing them apart again, and she was supposed to learn from it, and she didn’t learn anything at all, and it’s happening again, and it’s happening worse, and it’s—)  The cold within her spreads, another numb stronger than the disconnect she normally needs for examining bodies, as she sees Hina, broken, before her.

(She doesn’t see Hina.  She sees Yui.  She—)

Blood trickles dark and red from one corner of Hina’s lips.  Even from a non-medical professional, it’s clear that her spine has been shattered from the crooked way she lays along the ground, not that it matters much when her right arm has been smashed off, shards of bone sticking out through shorn muscle into nothing, not that that matters when Hina’s eyes are already starting to glaze over, their light fading.  And yet still, she speaks, her voice a rasping creak, “K…K…Kyo…ko…?”

She shuts off.

She has to shut off.

To survive, she has to shut off.

(She can’t do this again.  Not again.)

It isn’t fair to Hina.  It isn’t.

But it’s not like she has any control over this sort of thing.

(She does.  She does.)

“I’m here.”  Kyoko kneels down in the debris, takes Hina’s remaining hand in her own broken one, and gives it as gentle a squeeze as she can.  “I’m here.”

Hina searches above her, either not seeing Kyoko or not able to focus on her.  “I…I…I didn’t…I didn’t think…I didn’t….”

Kyoko brushes a hand through Hina’s hair, torn from its ponytail, and traces her fingers along her face.  “It’s okay,” she murmurs, even though it isn’t, even though it hasn’t been for a very long time, even though it might never be again.  “You’re okay.”

That’s another lie.

“We couldn’t have known.”

That’s not.

Hina laughs – or tries to – but it turns into coughing.  So much blood.  So much blood, enough that it spatters a bit onto Kyoko’s face.  (She doesn’t wipe it off.)  “It…it…it was…was nice,” she struggles to say, her voice fading with every word, “to see…the…the stars….”

She doesn’t say anything else.

For a moment, Kyoko doesn’t move.  She just kneels, holding Hina’s remaining hand in her own, running her thumb comfortingly along her skin, as Hina takes in that halting, stuttering sharp last breath emblematic of death – once, twice, then no more – as her body struggles to maintain what her brain has already given up.  (Habit.  Muscle memory.  A refusal of belief.)  Then Hina’s jaw hangs open, gravity pulling it down now that she doesn’t have anything to hold it in place.  Someone else might reach over to close her eyes, but Kyoko leaves them open.

So she can see the stars.

(A body has been discovered!)

Then Kyoko stands, brushes the dirt from her skirt, smearing the deep red blood spattered across it, and turns to Toko, who continues to struggle with Byakuya.  She hears another crack, sharper this time, as she walks over to her, carefully avoiding the wires and sparks, and sits down next to her.  “Go get Hiro,” she says.  “I’ll keep an eye on—”

“You g-g-get him!” Toko interrupts, spitting the words out.  “I can protect Master b-b-better than y-you!”

After a brief consideration of current events and, more importantly, what Toko can do if something else should happen, Kyoko acquiesces.  She nods.  “Stay focused on him,” she says as she stands again.  “You won’t like what you might see elsewhere.”

Toko glares at her.

“And quit trying to move him without help.  You might make things worse.”

Kyoko feels Toko’s continued glare on her as she leaves, but she doesn’t hear any extra shuffling, which means she’s listened, at least.  She doesn’t spare another glance for Hina’s corpse as she passes it by.  Attachments like this will do her no good.  Hina is dead.  She needs to accept this.  To let it go.

And yet.

Kyoko pauses just inside of the tunnel leading out of the now quite destroyed room.  She turns, bends down, and finds that small plush bear buried beneath the rubble.  His torn red eye somehow seems even more torn, as though the fabric sewn beneath the hole is beginning to bleed through, and the black, covered with dirt and dust, seems softer, lighter, while the white seems stained from overuse.  Hiro will panic, if he sees this.  (Hiro is panicking already.  Kyoko doesn’t need to hear him to know that.)

She stares at the bear, brushes it off, and then tucks it into the inside pocket of her jacket.

Only then does she go.

~

Kyoko finds Hiro running about in the main hall, scurrying from one room to the other in his panic, yelling with his arms raised high above his head and his chunky sandals clunking along the floor.  She calmly walks over to intercept him (it’s easy to be calm when she’s numb) and places a hand on his shoulder to still him.  “Hiro.”

“AAAAAHHHH!”

Hiro jumps in his skin, bounds away from her, and whirls about with his hands up in some sort of attempt at a martial arts defensive stance.  “Don’t hurt me!” he says, eyes squinted shut.  “I know kung fu!”

Kyoko stares at him as he tries, blindly, to attack forward before easily stepping out of the way.  “Hiro.”

Hiro’s eyes snap open at the sound of her voice, which he somehow hadn’t recognized before in his panic.  “Kyokyo!”  He rushes forward and grabs her in his arms.  “I was so scared!  And now you’re here!”

“Hiro.”  Kyoko tenses at his touch and carefully disentangles herself from him.  “I know that calm is not easy for you in our current situation, but I need you to remain calm.”

“Calm?  Me?  I’m always calm!”  Hiro crosses his arms and fakes a laugh.  “I’m 100% sure that I’ll survive whatever’s going on!”  Then he leans forward, eyes still wild.  “But the explosion?  There was an explosion, Kyokyo!  And you’re—”  His eyes grow even wilder.  “You’re covered in blood, Kyokyo—”

“Please don’t call me that.”

“Huh?  But Kyokyo is—”

“Please don’t call me that,” Kyoko repeats, firm, as she grits her teeth together.  “Ever.”  She waits, waits for another counter to her words, but when Hiro doesn’t say anything else (surprisingly), she continues.  “Byakuya tried to erase Junko’s memories.  A mecha Monokuma—”

“A mecha Monokuma?!?!?!?!” Hiro echoes in a high-pitched shriek, jumping back again with his hands in front of his face.  “Say it ain’t so!”

Kyoko ignores this.  “—broke through the ceiling, allowing a few of Junko’s associates to take her with them.”  She takes a sharp breath in through her teeth.  “Hina is dead.  Byakuya is hurt and unconscious.  Toko needs your help to—”

“Hina’s….”  Hiro cuts her off, voice soft.  “Hina’s dead?

There are a lot of things Kyoko could say in this moment.  She could explain what happened in more, excruciating detail.  She could say just how she found Hina after everything.  She could mention that maybe, if she’d searched for Hina first, instead of focusing on the giant Monokuma and the people who’d came for Junko and Junko herself, she might have gotten to Hina in time to—

To what?  She isn’t the Ultimate Nurse.  Even if she’d gotten Hina out from under the fallen rubble faster, there was nothing she could have done.  Nothing.

(Mikan was the Ultimate Nurse.  Kyoko remembers that.  She could have done something.  But she wouldn’t.)

((This is wishful thinking, Kyoko.  Mikan couldn’t have saved Hina.  Not from that.  No one could have.  Hina was dead the moment she betrayed you.))

“Yes,” Kyoko says instead, with all the finality of saying it during the previous incarnation of the Game (A body has been—), only there’s no Blackened, no one to punish for Hina’s death.  (It wasn’t a murder.  Junko may have planned for all of this, but it wasn’t a—)  She tucks her hair back behind one ear, brushes her fingers through the much shorter pieces that once held a braid before Jack cut it off (she should have the ribbon, and now that’s gone, too, because she’d never had the occasion to go back for it), and then brings her fingers back sticky with a bit of Hina’s blood.  Her ears ring.  “We need to get Byakuya out.”

“Yeah.  Okay.”  Hiro crosses his arms with a perplexed expression.  “So, uh.  Where were you?”

~

It’s just as they make the turn into the last tunnel that Kyoko remembers.

“The door to the future will open before then.” “About halfway, I’d say.  Halfway through the story.” Her eyes widen.

“They’re just through there.”  Kyoko gestures to the broken door at the end of the tunnel.  There’s no need for a code anymore, which is good because Hiro is so overcome to be exploring the secret tunnels that she’s not sure he would remember it to get in.  “Can you make it from here?”

Hiro pauses halfway to the door and turns back to her, blinking in confusion.  “Yeah, but…but what are you doing?”

Kyoko doesn’t respond with any sort of chagrin, but there’s something of Junko in her when she says, “The same thing I do every time, Hiro.”  She can’t quite complete the reference – she’s not the sort to try and take over the world, unlike some people she could name – but there’s something warm and almost comforting about saying it.  Something that breaks her heart.

But she’s not thinking about that.

As she turns away, Kyoko hears Hiro behind her, “Yeah, but what is that?”

Honestly, sometimes there’s no helping people.

~

For all that a huge mecha Monokuma smashed through part of the school, the rest of it doesn’t seem too terribly damaged.  It’s as though whoever designed the old building – or, at least, whoever created all of the hidden tunnels and passageways in the first place – wanted that particular room, meant for experimentation, segmented away from everything else.  So Kyoko makes her way through the rest of the building back to the Data Processing Room, back to the Monokuma Room, and back down the hatch without any particular trouble.

And finds the mirai door – the future door – wide open.

Inside, Kyoko sees two people.  One of them is a boy with fluffy white hair and a thick chain about his neck who she has never seen before, leaning into a chair with a curious, bemused expression on his face, his hand on his chin.  She looks at him and senses nothing but discomfort.  Of course, she does not dismiss him outright, but her gaze is drawn much faster, much stronger to the other, to the boy who is supposed to be dead.

“Makoto?”

He startles, having not noticed her entrance, and looks up at her, an awkward sort of smile crossing his face.  “Kyokyo!  I, uh.  I didn’t die!”  He bites his lower lip and scratches the back of his neck.  “Sorry?”

Kyoko stares at him.  Blinks.  Tries to process.

There’s just so much.  Too much.  Happening all at once and all together.

Her brain short circuits.

“What…what did you call me?”