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violetsandandfog · 1 month ago

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Sara would have felt guilty, but that well had long run dry. Its resources were dedicated to flooding the back of her memories and stagnating there. Memories that everyone tried so hard to make her repress – evidenced by the subtle rattle in her bag as she walked towards her locker. The rattle of medication that she only really took when Nao made her.

He had asked her if it was because she missed him, if she wanted to keep seeing him like this, and she didn’t answer out loud because talking to them was a death sentence for her sanity, but she knew he knew the answer.

Besides, she knew what Nao’s voicemail said already. There was no logical reason to listen to it.

Come home.

It’s late.

Can’t you just get it tomorrow?

Dinner’s ready, so…

I’m sorry…

Something like that. It was almost like she’d heard it before, over and over again. Like she’d lived tonight as many times as those simulations had been run of that night. Is that why she felt possessed in that final game? Like she was on a track that had been carved out for her, time and time before.

No, it wasn’t anything like that. It had just been…the logical thing to do. She was going to survive anyway. This way, someone would at least survive alongside her. Everyone else’s suffering would be cut short as would the sick enjoyment of their enemy. Kai...had said that himself; that they were doomed to be toyed with. Unable to save a single person. He’d chosen his resistance, and she’d chosen hers. She’d go on and do her best to make something of herself that would justify the fact that she’d doomed so many people. People she’d just met. It was…rational. Wasn’t it?

There was a sudden impact that she hadn’t been expecting when her legs gave out on her, but it didn’t faze her much. Sara pulled herself up into a sitting position. The contents of her bag were already spilled across the tiled floor; her medication rolling across the flat surface and into the shadows of the hallway. Papers fanned across the black and white checkered pattern of the flooring and she distantly realized that the very assignments she’d come to collect from her locker weren’t forgotten in the first place. She might have laughed at herself, Joe would have laughed at her. If she didn’t have so much blood on her hands.

It was literal; Sara looked down to see that her palm was scraped and cut; shaking. Her skin looked ghostly in what little light the school’s hallway windows had to offer. When was the last time she ate? It would have been whenever Nao made her, but she had been avoiding her for…was it days now? Had she slept? No, she wanted to sleep, would only sleep, leaned against—

Splinters of memories flashed through her mind. …Not only was it night time, it was Sunday. She hadn’t gone home at all, had she? Vaguely, she remembered taking a shower here, sitting at her desk in a darkened class room, walking through the hallways like a ghost over and over, thinking about going home but too afraid to see the faces of the dead projected onto her parents (and could she trust them anyway??), and too resentful to see Nao even if she’d made this choice along with her. And before that; that number, she’d seen it somewhere. Was it a grade? God, she hoped not…but her academic performance was the last thing on her mind right now, anyway.

Shakily, with her less injured hand against the wall for support, she stood up. No, she wasn’t just here because she’d lost her mind. Because she thought she’d forgotten her homework. There was a reason. A logical reason to be here. Limping, she walked forward, one hand still along the wall as if she was afraid to be trapped here forever if she got lost. There was something in her locker. That’s where she’d seen that number; those papers. Someone had put them there. Someone was alive, and as much as she tried to will everyone’s faces into her mind there was really only one. He never could have been the logical choice, even if she wanted it to be him. Wanted him. He was as broken as she had been left when Joe died; violent and traumatized and criminal. Even if the opportunity presented itself, escaping with only Keiji would have been a selfish, immoral decision. One that even he probably wouldn’t condone, but she hoped he wanted it too – even if that was a purely emotional—

She only realized that she was running when she became aware of the sound of her footsteps tapping lightly but quickly against the tile. Sara was only running off of memory, off what her body remembered wandering around so uselessly. Right now, she couldn’t even see for all the darkness and the way red and blue auras of every silhouette in the school seemed to stretch and flicker well past the boundaries of whatever objects they were meant to represent. Her whole body ached, hurt, but she didn’t hold the wall for support anymore. Those four papers had been in her locker, she was sure of it – even if they appeared dipped in blood. The tell-tale mark of her hallucinations, but she had to believe that just this once…

Her locker flung open with a metallic clang; already unlocked. Mostly open. Sara didn’t stop to wonder if she’d done this already. No…what made her freeze was the black space occupying the locker. There was nothing there – no papers, no flash of red, no clue, nothing except the muffled echo of her sob as she hit the locker next to it, bruising her previously unmarred hand as she started to sink towards the ground.

His hands felt heavy on her shoulders. She knew without looking. Sometimes she saw or felt the others, but only he touched her so directly. He muttered something, probably something the real Keiji had never said to her before, but she couldn’t hear him. That was a first: his words existed only in her brain, didn’t they? But there was already a cacophony of sound there – a choir of instincts begging her to run away.

”Don’t leave.”

She’d never said anything out loud to him before; knew better than to talk to the hallucinations. But now she couldn’t stop herself; couldn’t help but answer everything he’d ever taunted her with.

”I love you.” That surprised even her. She’d have never said it to the real Keiji; it couldn’t have been true, could it? They’d just met, even if she thought of him in ways she hadn’t ever thought of anyone before. Even if he teased her, she was sure he never would have entertained that and she knew it was a bad, irrational decision anyway but—

His fingers dug into her shoulders and she tried to wipe the tears from her face, even if she was still facing away from him. It hurt a little. It was surprising, but not enough to get a rise out of her. Normally, his spectral hands felt cold. Not today, though – but maybe that was just because she felt frozen to her core. Alarm bells rang in her mind, blurring out things he said to her that she just couldn’t comprehend. It broke her heart not to hear him. He was threatening her, she knew it, but she still wanted to hear his voice. Hear his response. Adrenaline was rising from her limbs and into her brain, stirring up the stagnant guilt with something else; something she’d only felt when she was in the crosshairs of the sacrifice card or when someone was dying before her eyes. Maybe the rumors of a monster that lurked these halls were true. Maybe that was fine. She’d die here with this hallucination and maybe that was fine.

”Please don’t disappear—“ She gasped out, and she’d have turned to look at him, but she was held in place. A realization that made her heart all but jump out of her chest as her locker slammed shut and she was forced against it by the back of her neck.

“No—!”

Who was she talking to?? Who had seized her this way? It felt just like his hands, but now the tips of his fingers were digging into her neck and her head was swimming with the lack of oxygen and blood supply. Her fingertips scraped across the metal of the lockers meekly before her bruised hand grasped at the shackle that was his own. Muted bangs tried to reach her eardrums as she tried to thrash, but all of it was to no avail. Sara had never been choked before; her imagination had still fueled a hallucination of just that once but this was different. It hurt, it made her head spin and pressure build in her throat and she felt flesh bruising as his fingertips migrated across her fragile neck to envelope it. Her cries and questions became gasps, coughs, and then nothing as the auras and colors gave way to pinpricks of light and static that faded over her vision and her hearing became nothing more than a high, alarmed buzzing tone.

The scene spun slightly and for a split second she was granted clarity of vision when her face was wrenched upwards by a rough yank against her ponytail. She really was hallucinating Keiji; she mouthed his name in recognition…but he wasn’t soaked in the red tone that helped her differentiate reality from illusion. At least before it all clouded over again. Her body felt numb; only her neck was in pain. Everything else tingled with dying sensation, the sort of base sensation of existing and being alive that she was only aware of because it was leaving her. Still, Sara swore she felt something brush across her tingling lips.

#your turn to die #sara chidouin #yttd #keisara #sara hallucinates in the school from Late Homework for some reason #I'm rusty #post massacre ending #postmassacre

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