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aparticularbandit · 8 months ago

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What You Have Tamed: Chapter One

Summary: Life in space is not as Monaca Towa imagined it.

It's boring, and her supplies don't last long enough, so she can't get far enough out to find aliens at all.

Worst of all, when she comes back for supplies, she keeps running into Servant.

Why won't he leave her alone?

Chapter Rating: M for implications and discussions of past child abuse. Fic Rating: M for implications and discussions of past child abuse, as well as general Danganronpa reasons.

If you have trouble with the content in UDG, then this fic is not for you, as it is expected to address the abuse the Warriors of Hope went through.

AO3

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Space. The Final Frontier.

….

It kind of sucks, actually.

Monaca has spent the past several months up here, thinking it would be an end to her boredom, but no. It’s empty. Lonely. She thought maybe she would find some sort of alien race or species or whatever and then people back on Earth couldn’t hate her anymore. Or maybe she’d convince the aliens to be her bestest friends and then they could take over Earth. Then they could be the next wave of Monokumas, and she’d be an even better next Junko Enoshima, because she’d brought the aliens, and the aliens brought despair, and then they’d win when she couldn’t.

And then there’d be another glorious war between hope and despair and maybe despair would win this time.

(It wouldn’t win.

Big Sis Junko was better than any alien Monaca could ever find, and she hadn’t won, so no one else can either.

That’s the thing: if she brought an entire alien race to take over Earth, then everything Big Sis Junko did would pale in comparison and be forgotten. That’d be the worst option of all, probably. So maybe it’s a good thing she hasn’t found any alien race or species or whatever.)

Monaca doesn’t even look outside anymore. There’s just stars. And more stars. And no planets with singular roses on them. It was kind of pretty the first time, but after a while, it gets old. It’s all just stars. Sometimes big hunks of rock. Sometimes bigger hunks of rock. There’s no spaceships. No satellites. No probes. Nothing they’d sent out here before Big Sis Junko’s Tragedy. Just Monaca and her van and her Monokumas to pilot her around.

No food.

No water.

She’d brought some of that. But it didn’t last near as long as she thought it would. And while technically, yes, the van is equipped with the ability to turn her pee into water, she hadn’t thought she would actually get to the point where she needed to drink it. Sure, yes, it’s water, but that’s still disgusting.

Besides. She’s out of food. She can’t really do anything about that without eating shit – literally – and she’s not about to do that.

….

It’s not sanitary, first of all, and also any of the healthy stuff that would have been in said shit has already been taken out and used by her body, so it’s not even useful to eat.

Not that Monaca would eat it even if it was useful. Eat her own shits? No. Ew. Gross.

….

Which, unfortunately, means that she will have to go back. Periodically.

For food. And water.

(And a shower using water that wasn’t made from her own pee. Which is a much better use for that than drinking water, but it’s still kind of gross.)

Of course. To be fair. After a few months in space, wearing that Monokuma hooded blanket constantly and not really brushing her hair out and really only having the one outfit and not really taking the time to wash any of that – because, well, the whole water thing – Monaca is kind of. grotty. Gritty. Disgusting. Her long green hair is all matted and tangled. She might be clean, but she still smells.

…so probably also she should get some new clothes, too.

Maybe Monaca should have thought this whole hide out in space thing through a little better.

(Maybe Monaca should think it through a little better before she goes back up. It’s not like she’s going to find anything new. Even if she goes in the exact opposite direction, it’s just going to be more space and more stars and more rock everywhere. No aliens. No spaceships. And she’ll make it just exactly the same amount out there before having to come back for food and water. Maybe a little further, if she gets more food and more water, but the van can only hold so much, and then what? Then what?)

Monaca steps out of her van atop the roof of one of the most prestigious buildings she can find. One of her Monokuma servants rolls a red carpet out for her, and it’s not nearly as soft as she thought it would be. But she’s spent the past several months without shoes; she doesn’t want to wear them now. Not to mention they don’t quite fit anymore.

She steps out of the van like an exiled ruler coming to roost, and she looks up at the now quite dark blue sky with the hood of her Monokuma blanket dropping back, and she lets out a sigh. It should feel good to come home. It should feel good to see that the world is healing after everything Big Sis Junko did to it.

It doesn’t.

It especially doesn’t feel good when a voice she faintly recognizes calls out, “Monaca Towa?”

Immediately, Monaca cowers. She turns to flee back into her van, pressing a handheld button to set two of her Monokuma servants into attack mode. That should be enough. She should be able to get away. That should be—

Someone places a hand on Monaca’s shoulder, and she whirls with long, uncut fingernails to lash out at their face. The red paint chipped off long ago. Mostly. Not that that matters, or anything.

He keeps that hand on her shoulder but raises another to his face. “Ow.” He nearly stumbles back but doesn’t. “Ow.” His jade gray eye peeps through his fingers, staring at her, and he smiles. “I’m not going to hurt you, you know.”

Monaca glances behind him, where both of her current Monokuma servants have somehow trained their sights on each other and subsequently exploded. Then she meets his eyes and raises an eyebrow. “Come again?”

“You attacked me, when I have never been anything but your faithful Servant.” Servant steps back and drops his hand from her shoulder. “But if you would like to run, then please, by all means.”

His arm gleams metallic in the dying sunlight.

Monaca hesitates.

Her eyes don’t move from that arm as she asks, “How’d you know Monaca would be here?”

“I didn’t.” Servant tilts his head to one side and flashes another grin. “I’m just lucky, I guess.”

“Lucky puts you on top of this building?” Monaca examines him curiously. “Lucky puts you here just when Monaca would be?”

Servant shrugs. “Lucky means I got picked up in a freak storm and thrown here. Lucky means I’m mostly unhurt.” He taps just next to his eye, where Monaca’s nails have raked through, leaving claw marks around it. “I thought you were up in space…unless you ran out of food?”

Monaca’s gaze drops. She doesn’t blush, not exactly, but her lips purse together, her cheeks puff out, and her hands clench into fists. “I need more clothes,” she says, a half-lie only because it’s just as true as her needing more food.

“Ah. Growing girl.” Servant pinches his nose with one hand and steps back from her. His voice is nasally when he starts to say, “Do you need any—”

Monaca turns away from him and stalks back into her van. Two more Monokuma servants disentangle themselves from the outside, and with another pair (who hadn’t been switched into attack mode), they lift the van off the building and fly off. She doesn’t need this. She doesn’t need him. Besides, she doesn’t smell that bad.

She raises one arm and sniffs at her clothes.

Grimaces.

Yech.

Now.

The next several times Monaca tries to land anywhere, Servant is there waiting for her. She’s not sure that really constitutes as luck. In fact, she starts to land in one place, scours the area for him, does not see him, and then lands just to see his fluffy white hair pop out from a sewer drain a few seconds later (only significantly less white and fluffy). If he was really as lucky as he says he is, he wouldn’t be in a sewer in the first place.

That said, Monaca holds that for the future, and the next time she lands and he shows up, she grins at him, hands on her hips just like her Big Sis (and she’s not thinking about that because it hurts, but she’s not not thinking about it either), and says, “Who’s the stink one now, Servant?”

He meets her bright, matrix green eyes with his faded jade gray ones, head tilting to one side, and offers her an awkward smile. “I believe that would still be you, Monaca.”

Monaca purses her lips together and glares off to one side, tapping her foot. “Yeah, but Monaca is not the one who was stuck in a sewer.”

“A lot of time has passed since then, Monaca—”

“Only thirty minutes!” Monaca interrupts, stamping her bare foot on the red velvet carpet her Monokumas still roll out for her at every stop. (Or, at least, they try to roll it out for her at every stop. Sometimes she makes them roll it back up before she makes it one step out of her space van.) “You can’t have fixed sewer stink in thirty minutes! Not and gotten here!”

“Oh?” Servant tilts his head to the other side, and his normally fluffy hair looks…heavier than normal. “You must have missed the rainstorm. Luckily for me, the lightning struck just over there! Missed me by a few millimeters, but wow! It was beautiful!” His eyes dazzle with—

Yeah, no, she doesn’t want to see that.

Monaca turns away again, arms straightening at her sides until her elbows pop, hands clenching into fists again. “Quit! Following! Monaca!” She steps back into her space van.

“Monaca, wait,” Servant says, voice soft but still piercing through the world around them. (It’s followed by the rumbling of thunder, which isn’t ominous at all.) “I’m not following you. I would be quite happy to never run into you again. But my luck keeps drawing us back together—”

“Oh, poopie on your luck!” Monaca glares back at him. “Sewer poopie on your luck!”

“Yes, well, that is also part of it. Bad luck followed by good luck, more often than not. Particularly when I’m not controlling it.” Servant gives her a soft smile. “Like now.”

Monaca scowls at him. Sticks her tongue out.

Servant ignores that and keeps talking. “Which means it must be good luck that I keep running into you.”

“Or worse luck and something really good is still coming.” Monaca rolls her eyes. “Don’t know what kinda good luck is attracted to a stupid Servant like you, but Monaca knows she doesn’t want to stay and find out.” She turns back inside the van. “Going now.”

“If I were you, I would reconsider.”

“Monaca isn’t you, so—”

All of a sudden, the front half of the van lurches forward. Monaca stumbles in that direction and then whirls back to Servant, glaring at him again. “What did you do to Monaca’s van?”

Servant shrugs, lifts his hand, and flicks something from one metallic finger. “I didn’t do anything. But I trust that my luck did.”

“But I trust that my luck did,” Monaca repeats back in a mocking baby voice as she stomps out and towards the front of her van. As soon as she stomps off the red velvet, though, her bare foot lands directly on a shard of broken glass. She lets out a shriek, starts jumping around on her other foot, and then trips backward before landing square on her butt. (Fortunately for her, on the velvet instead of off of it.)

Monaca stares off into the distance. She takes a deep breath in, hands clenching so tight her knuckles hurt, foot twinging where the glass is still stuck in it. There was a time would she would throw a tantrum over lesser things, but something tells her that throwing a tantrum right now and slamming her clenched fists into the velvet beneath her would just lead to more pain. Even so, her eyes well up with tears. She sniffles.

Out of the corner of her eye, Servant steps forward.

“Don’t!” Monaca screeches out, refusing to turn to him. “This is all your stupid luck’s fault!”

“I warned you that it would be wise to reconsider.”

But Servant stays just where he is, not stepping any closer.

Monaca sniffles again. She wipes her nose with the back of one hand and tries not to think about how dirty her Monokuma hooded blanket already is, tries not to smell it. (At least she isn’t using it to blow her nose. She mostly uses her shirt for that. But she can’t do that in front of Servant; he’d think she was gross – more gross than he already does!

Not that she cares what he thinks, or anything.)

“Do you want me to get that glass out of your—”

“You just want an excuse to talk to me!” Monaca whines. “I don’t wanna talk to you!” She slams her fist into her own leg. It hurts, but not as much as the glass does.

“If you want me to leave, I will,” Servant says, crossing his arms. “After all, I’m nothing but your faithful—”

“If you were my faithful Servant, you wouldn’t be following me everywhere! Not when you know I don’t want it!”

Servant sighs. “Unfortunately for the both of us, my luck doesn’t much care what I want.” He twirls a finger around one of the still damp locks of his hair. “So perhaps, if we want it to quit causing you problems, we should have a little discussion. Just to appease it.” His gaze moves away from her, to the front of the van. “That should give your Monokumas more than enough time to change the busted tires.” He raises one eyebrow as he glances at her again. “You do have other tires, right—”

“No,” Monaca spits out. “Monaca doesn’t need tires in space! Why would I waste precious room on—” She bites her tongue. “Ow.” She finally turns to Servant and glares at him. “You did that on purpose!”

“I would never.”

Monaca crosses her arms. She looks away from Servant again and stares straight ahead. Pouts. Big tears pool in her eyes. She’s on the edge of a tantrum, even if she knows that’s a bad idea, and that desire grows ever larger as Servant crouches down directly in front of her face. She turns away from him, her nose in the air. “You stink.”

“Oh?” Servant raises one of his arms and sniffs at it. His nose scrunches. “You’re right. How unfortunate. And here I thought the rain would have helped.” He sniffs again. “Perhaps it did. It’s hard to tell—”

“Doesn’t matter. You stink.” Monaca waves him off with one hand. “Go away.”

Servant sighs. He does not go away. If anything, he settles, crossing his legs beneath him and sitting squarely in front of her. “Give me your foot.”

Monaca whirls her head to face him. “Ew, gross, no. You’re all stink and nasty and dirty, and my foot’s hurt, and I don’t want your dirty nasty gross hand all over my foot!”

“Then we need to go in your van,” Servant says, as patiently as he can, “and clean up so that we can get the glass out. You don’t want this to get infected, Monaca.”

“Monaca can get it out on her own!” Monaca barks out at him, arms still crossed. “She does not! need! your! help!”

Servant raises an eyebrow. “Well, if you insist.” He pushes himself up by pressing the palms of his hands into the carpet in front of him and stands in one easy, fluid motion. “I suppose I’ll just leave you here, then, won’t I?”

“Hmph.” Monaca makes a great snooty sniffling noise. It takes a moment before she checks, before she looks to see if he’s really gone. She doesn’t see his scrawny ass anywhere. Good! Riddance!

Except.

Except she really does still have glass stuck in her foot. And it is going to be really hard to get it out on her own. And she’s not sure she even has any of the pliers or stuff needed to get glass out of her foot. And while she can have her Monokuma servants steal some tires and fix her space van up, it’ll take a bit, and she’ll be stuck here while they do.

Trying to get glass out of her foot.

That she’ll only be able to see in a mirror, and then she’ll have to mirror her actions to try and get the glass out.

(Or trust one of her Monokumas to do it for her, which she absolutely does not. They’re not that precision skilled.)

Monaca sighs.

“Servant? I’ve….”

How to word this without sounding like she was wrong?

“Monaca has reconsidered! You can…you can come help her, if you want!”

Her voice sounds weak. Feeble. Like it did when she was a child, when she was pleading with her stupid dad, her stupid brother not to—

Monaca winces. She hates asking for help. It sounds like begging, and begging has only ever made things worse.

Not that she’s asking for help now. She is giving permission. That’s an entirely different thing.

It still stings.

For a few moments, Monaca stays seated on her red velvet carpet. She stares at everything and nothing, her bare feet propped up, heels plopped in the plush fabric, that one foot still stinging and the other crusted over with mud and dirt. She hangs her arms over her knees and lets out a huge sigh. It’s not like she regrets sending Servant away. She is a bear! And bears do not regret!

That’s what Big Sis Junko would say, anyway.

And then it starts to rain.

Monaca stares up at the cloudy sky. Hit me, she thinks, as the rain soaks through her clothes. Hit me. It’s not as though anyone cares anymore.

Then, out of the corner of her eye, Monaca catches that white hair, and a disgusting growth of warmth blooms in the center of her chest. Somehow, his hair seems fluffier, as though he’s been electrocuted or something. (Maybe he has. It wouldn’t surprise her.) She wipes her eyes – she was not crying! it was just the rain! – and glares at him. “How dare you?” she accuses, throat raw. “Abandoning Monaca here! All by herself! With nothing but Monokumas to assist her!”

Servant holds a hand out defensively. “My apologies, Monaca. I thought you didn’t want me.” He gives her another awkward smile and seems to almost chuckle. Of course, he doesn’t come out of nowhere this time, just comes out of an alleyway with a gallon of clean, new water, with a first aid kid and a bag full of…of something. He must have chosen to come back even before he’d heard her call after him. Maybe he hadn’t heard her call at all.

When Servant kneels down in front of her, Monaca can’t help it. She is afraid. It has been too long since she has been around another living, breathing human being, even longer since she has been this close to him. “I don’t want to be Big Sis Junko anymore,” she says, voice quiet, remembering the dark words of encouragement he’d spun for her nearly a year ago.

“Neither do I.” Servant holds his metallic hand aloft, wiggles his fingers twice. “It’s nice to keep bits of her alive in us, except they don’t always function properly, do they?” His lips curve slightly. “No one else will ever be Junko Enoshima.”

“Don’t say her name.” Monaca glares up at him, glares through the frazzled, wet green bangs that have grown long enough to fall in her eyes. “Someone like you…should never say her name.” Not like that. So blunt. As though he’d known her any better than Monaca had.

Servant’s expression doesn’t change. “Of course.” He examines her carefully. “Would you like me to lift you? I wouldn’t want you to step on any more shards. You could hurt yourself—”

“Yes.” Monaca cuts him off without a second thought. Servant always did have a tendency to ramble. “And be quiet while you’re at it.”

“Of course.”

Monaca glares up at him again. “Didn’t Monaca just say to be quiet?”

This time, Servant only smiles. He scoops her up in his arms easily enough, even though she’s grown a bit larger since the last time he saw her, and then he carries her, gentle as anything, back into her van.

The first thing Servant does is wash her feet.

Monaca knows how dirty, how gross, how disgusting her feet are. Normally walking barefoot isn’t a problem, since she’s only in her van and she does bathe, you know, but she’s also been walking barefoot for the past several days in desperate need of a hot bath, has been walking barefoot off and on for the past several hours in alleyways and on rooftops and a lot of other places where maybe she shouldn’t have been barefoot, where maybe much worse things than glass shards might have happened to her if she hadn’t been avoiding Servant in the first place.

(His luck extends. Maybe.)

But Servant doesn’t say anything about any of that. Maybe because Monaca told him to be quiet. Instead, he silently gathers one of the green bowls from her sink (her least favorite of them, which is maybe why it’s the only one that’s still clean), inspects it and then rinses it just to make sure that it’s safe, and then fills it with water from the gallon he’d brought with him. Then gently, gently, he washes the dirt, the grime, the ick from her feet.

The water is pleasantly warm.

“Aren’t you going to get the glass out?”

Servant looks up at her with those jade gray eyes.

Monaca sighs. “You can talk,” she says, waving one hand dismissively. “Monaca won’t mind. Too much.”

Servant nods and returns to his task, gaze dropping back to the foot held steady in his hand. “If I don’t wash first, it could get infected. That would be worse for you, wouldn’t it, Monaca?”

“Fine.” Monaca scowls. She crosses her arms. “Why do you know that, anyway?”

“This isn’t the first time someone’s needed my help.” Servant catches his words, corrects himself, as Monaca shoots him a look. “The first time someone’s allowed me to assist them, I mean.” He doesn’t look up when he says, “This may hurt.”

Monaca rolls her eyes. “You forget. Monaca is used to pain.” Worse pain, even, than shards of glass stuck in her foot. It isn’t as though the wheelchair fixed everything. No, it just meant they were more careful with what they did. Couldn’t break Monaca all at once, couldn’t break her again at all, because someone would figure something out.

(It’s the oldest trick in the book, saying she fell down a flight of stairs, except really she fell down five, and really she didn’t fall because someone dropped her, but they couldn’t say any of that, could they? Not, they said she fell, and the crack in her skull kept her from saying otherwise, and no one noticed the bruises around her neck (or if they did, they were paid well to ignore them), but the wheelchair….

The x-rays said Monaca’s spine was fine, but they couldn’t account for potential brain damage.

(The Ultimate Neurologist was free, provided Monaca was enrolled in Hope’s Peak’s elementary division, and he knew she was lying, so Big Sis Junko knew she was lying, but at least Matsuda-senpai noticed what everyone else chose to ignore and lied to her half-brother, her sperm donor on her behalf. She could have a miraculous recovery later, if she wanted, when she was far enough away from them to be considered safe.

She didn’t know then Matsuda-senpai’s relation to Big Sis Junko, but it’s fun, sometimes, to think that even then, Big Sis Junko was looking out for her. Before they even met, Big Sis Junko was saving her. She can’t hate her for that.))

Servant washes her feet, and he falls silent, and he gives Monaca the slightest of notices before he starts to remove the glass from her foot. Each shard he sets on a new, clean towel he pulls from his plastic bag, careful not to let the tweezers touch the fabric. When he’s nearly done, he lifts Monaca’s foot with that cold metallic hand, examines it carefully, and then says, “I’m going to need to use the needle. I’m sorry.”

Monaca’s eyes widen. Needles mean syringes mean toxins means being forced to pass out means Servant might take advantage. But he holds the needle aloft for her to see it – a sewing needle, not a medical one, which eases some of her immediate panic – and then shows her exactly what he means to do. Some of the shards, he explains, have gotten far enough under her skin that he cannot reach them with the tweezers alone. He will need to use the needle to lift the skin to get them out. She nods her acceptance, refuses to be glad that she allowed his assistance (although there’s no way she would ever have been able to get those shards out on her own, not even with the Monokumas), and then presses her hands on the floor to either side to hold herself steady.

The tweezers hurt the same way pulling a splinter out hurts, but the needle hurts even more.

Monaca grits her teeth, even as she wince, even as tears creep into the corners of her eyes, tears she refuses to actually shed.

When Servant finishes, he wraps the towel on itself and tucks it into one of Monaca’s many, many garbage bags. Then he empties the bowl, rinses it as neatly as he can, and returns, washes Monaca’s foot again, and then gently – gently because everything he’s done has been oddly gentle – wraps her foot with a fresh bandage. He looks up and leans back, then, both of his hands resting on his knees. “Monaca,” he murmurs, “may your Servant make a proposition?”

(She wiped the tears away when he went to the sink, but she’s sure he still notices the traces of them, and she hates him for it.)

“You have earned Monaca’s favor for today,” Monaca says, eyes lighting on that metallic arm and then narrowing, “so she’ll listen.”

(Sometimes, when she speaks in third person like this, Monaca imagines Big Sis Junko at the end, when she’d revealed herself to the group who’d killed her. Monaca is not a queen, so she does not speak with the royal we the way Big Sis Junko did, but she might be a princess, the little sister of a queen, so that should count for something. She thinks, maybe, that Big Sis Junko would have laughed at that, might have thought it their little joke, might have leaned until their noses just touched with that bright grin on her face.

Sometimes, when she speaks in third person like this, Monaca pretend that Big Sis Junko is still alive.)

Servant lays it all out for her – his idea – that if Monaca lets him know when she needs supplies, he will meet her wherever she lands and have all of them ready for her.

At first, Monaca recoils. The idea of telling anyone when she will return feels like a trap, like if she tells him, he’ll just find a way to tie her down and force her to stay here, on Earth. She doesn’t think Servant will make her pay for her “crimes against humanity,” but that doesn’t mean he won’t try to make her Big Sis Junko again, won’t try to make her fight again.

She’s still so tired.

Too tired.

But – and she will never admit it in a million years – Monaca’s lonely, too. Space is empty and vast and boring, when it’s just her and the Monokumas. Even if they do speak with Big Sis Junko’s voice, that’s not the same, not when they only ever say what she’s taught them to say. They don’t have any real intelligence, and even worse, they don’t fit in the van.

Still, she says no, and Servant leaves, and she thinks that’s the end of it.

Then Servant shows up – by sheer luck – the next three times she lands for supplies, and eventually, staring at that metallic arm, Monaca accepts.

He’s just going to be there anyway.

Might as well put him to some use.

(Back in her van, back in space, Monaca pulls out an old notebook and starts a new design.)

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