Disclaimer: I don't own Dangan Ronpa. I only own the game. And some keychains. And posters. And a plushie. (I regret nothing!)
I should note that my writing style, while normally a bit stylistic, is a bit sporadic in this fic even by my standards. I hope you'll excuse it.
Please enjoy the fic!
"It's dead," she tells him. "The city, the people, this world — all dead. Even the dead are dead — what a thought! That these old men in their graves will never know such a world."
It isn't any kind of world, really: only a shoddy graveyard sprinkled in ashes. Komaeda can see the gravestones layered together, unmarked and blurred from cold rain; can see the rubble strewn round, total destruction of what might have been a shelter-house or church, debased to lumps beneath piles of snow. It isn't any kind of world but hers, Komaeda thinks. Enoshima Junko's done it at last.
It's too cold. Too dusty, and he coughs, vertigo at the edges of his eyes. She's got him by the arm, and Komaeda pushes away, away — further from sickness, further from her. Her hair in the storm like a twister.
"You could sing to them, Nagito-kun." Closer, closer, ice on her lips, when —? "It's nearly Christmas, you know, and they might have celebrated. You could dance in the holes and sing about hope. Oh, oh! You could dig in with your fingers and piss on the stones, Nagito-kun, and none of them would even care. You know, why, don't you? Don't you?"
Utter silence. Snow on the graves — whose? How did they look? Were they extraordinary?
"It's because," she whispers, rose-wet breath sticking to his cheeks, "they're all dead."
What her mouth says is choked in snow and static, but she catches him with her eyes: eyes that say this is me, and this, as well. They say where the snow falls grey, that is me; every stone you see, every box. Her eyes say here I am, and here, and here, and here. Here is a world I have created, here are my fingers on your heart — a cloying feeling Komaeda might name as hopelessness, if it wasn't for pride. But the look in her eyes, it's got him waiting for the ground to part with a grinding of stone teeth, or for blood to pelt his cheeks; it's Enoshima's world, now, and Komaeda's already dying.
"I won't soil a grave." His voice sounds like a bird's, high and coarse, as if Komaeda's been sleeping for a long, long time. "Even from such a lowly person as me... an act like that would be unforgivable."
"Ah, Nagito-kun," she giggles, "today this entire world's a grave. You haven't got the option, anymore."
She takes him past the first layer of stones, strewn with frost and rubble and gore. The snow hushes their footprints, trails of darkness through the storm, and whispers. Not a hint, but something familiar in where they are: shattered glass that grits like ice underfoot, or red-brown blocks peeking from behind the tombs; or there, just past her outstretched arm, the great face of what must have been —
"A clock," Komaeda says, into the buckling of his knees — there's snow in his mouth and ears but he can hear her laughing, the distance shrinking, just a little less and yes — there's the greenhouse, the ruined brick, what might have been a bell; closer, and Komaeda thinks she might kiss him, if he only doesn't retch. There, say her eyes, and he can just make out the lines of distressed wood behind her, the broken desks of students.
Enoshima gestures with her hands, their noses touching, Merry Christmas in her eyes and yes, this is me, too.
"Don't you like your present?" Closer, fingers in his shirt, fingers in her mouth. "It died beautifully, you know, and everyone in it. We did it with our hands, Mukuro and I, we watched — crunch — like music, glass and metal and people screaming, the hope of humankind..."
Closer.
The wind twists her and whispers and pushes like wings. Laughing, red and tiny in this storm, her mouth closing over his cheeks and nose and throat, ice-white and naked cold. She's beautiful again and raw, here where she's come so many nights to kill and dream, the school that was his shining hope and hers.
He might've told her, then. About the dying, about what she already knows. That he can't look at her. Can't look away.
She steals the handful of inches hiding Komaeda's hands (sharp nails the color of blood) and walks him round the stones. "Kamishiro Yuto," she points, "Super High School Level Intelligence Officer." Cracked stone. "Madarai Isshiki, Super High School Level Bodyguard. Murasame Soushun — ah, you know, don't you, Nagito-kun? — Super High School Level Student Council President."
"You buried them atop the school," he whispers. "These exceptional students — you buried them in this place and called it despair."
"They cried for me," Enoshima smiles, "shouting Junko-sama, Junko-sama as they tore each other up; to be boxed up here, in this place, I can't imagine the hopelessness they must have felt… maybe it was joy. Maybe it's the same."
She turns to him again, too suddenly, ice-fingers tracing bullets into his arm. Pulls him along. Closer, closer, close.
"I'd thought to do it differently, before — monuments! Masks! Terror in the streets! But those things aren't nearly satisfying, not after you've ended the world," she murmurs. "But you, Nagito-kun — to be you, who believed in this hunk of bricks so much; to witness your despair will surely be enough."
Her fingers flutter over his eyes. Her chest is fire, a warm cage — she's too small, but he watches it rise and fall and rise again. The stones won't come to life with words. Komaeda's dreamed those dreams before. He knows.
"I won't despair," he says. Too soft, too soft, and he's already sinking, already dying.
She laughs hatred, a musical sound, and pulls his face. "You're such a gift, Nagito-kun. Please... please, try to resist me more."
It's too cold. It's too cold, Komaeda wants to scream, and I can't feel you scratch you maim you kill you. It's too much to hate you here. "This school... in this place, even such trash as myself can fly," he gasps, but already she's cradling him in her twig arms and he falls against her like a breath. Just familiar. "Such extraordinary souls... their souls will give me hope. And hope will always triumph over despair."
She binds him and gags with her fingers, and Komaeda remembers — stupid, stupid. To save them, you'll have to do more than that. The gravestones seem to grow behind his lashes, grow larger and darker, gulp him whole. It's dead, she sings, all dead. No ringing bells, no regal desks, no students chatting or laughing. No hope for the world.
Instead there's Enoshima and her smile and her hand at his mouth. Red bricks at Komaeda's feet. A white box, warm from the pocket of her coat, pressed into his palms.
"Nagito-kun, you'll eat this Christmas cake with me. You will, won't you?"
He tastes before he sees it, a small smudged iced cake topped with candy strawberries — maybe the last sweet thing in all the world. The crumbs lodge in her nails, sharp pokes to his tongue, and Komaeda shivering still. Even now trying to break away, because Enoshima is not, has not been a god of any sort; but it's too cold, and some things are easier than struggling or breathing or living.
"Enoshima," he stutters, he cries. He wants to kill her. Reach, just reach, if you're not so weak — white legs kicking — but she sees him and she knows. She begs him with her eyes to try.
Her mouth tastes like pink sugar and strawberry, a sticky cross on Komaeda's lips, his forehead. Enoshima laughs love and loneliness and the end of the world, red on her pearl teeth. He whispers to her that she will fall, even before she lets him go.
Looking, spinning, round and round and utter silence. Snow on the graves — and ah, they were extraordinary, after all.
Merry Christmas, Nagito-kun.
He can't destroy her, not with hope, not with his hands or words or teeth. Enoshima Junko pushes through the powder with mirth in her eyes, nose upturned like a flower, drinking sky; Komaeda shouts something hoarse, but the wind swallows her up. The line of her mouth cuts his chest. She glides through the ocean of snow, high above where once stood the spires of Hope's Peak Academy. Komaeda watches her go and hopes. As far as he can see her, can hear her, can taste her despair, he hopes.
I'll destroy you, he breathes. Whispers in the storm.
But, it's too cold.