Notes: Spoilers for the end of the game.
He has a nice smile, Mukuro decides, curled in at the edges and reeking of despair.
(Junko will like him, she thinks, and she does too. Together, they're going to eat him up, the little herbivore boy in the den of lions.)
.
They make the introductions. Idol, swimmer, heir, wrestler, detective, fortune-teller, programmer. Fashion girl, baseball player, hall monitor, gang leader. Gambler, doujin author, literary girl.
Soldier.
"What's your talent," Mukuro asks him and he stops and looks at her. It's funny because the others, all the others volunteer the information about themselves freely but Makoto Naegi doesn't, Makoto Naegi just gazes at her like he's turning the words over and over in his mind. He's got a five mile stare that goes nowhere and when he smiles faintly, it's something small and painful and self-aware. Junko rocks back and forth on the balls of her feet and Naegi's eyes snap away from Mukuro's and straight to her, watching the careless sway of her shoulders.
"Luck." He says it like a curse, says it like an anathema stamped across his face, up his temples and down his cheeks, letters crawling across his forehead and chin. "I got here by pure, dumb luck."
The words are a bitter pill on the tip of his tongue. Junko's smile widens and she taps her chin with red-lacquered nails, thoughtful. "Is that so," she hums. "Is that so."
.
"You like him, don't you?" Junko says, almost desultorily. Her eyes glitter in the gloom, sharp as the stare of something wild and dangerous and beautiful in the headlights. Mukuro fidgets under the sheets, turns her back to her sister and tries to memorise the pattern on the wallpaper instead. "Is this for real? My beloved darling big sis likes some scrawny, shrimpy boy more than me?"
Junko grasps at the sheets, twisting it around her, pulling and gathering them around her in a makeshift shroud. The pitch of her voice rises to something girlish and plaintive and she huddles against Mukuro's shoulder. "You can't mean that, can you? Say it isn't true."
When Mukuro doesn't reply her voice shifts again to something sharp and vicious; her fingers curl, nails marking clear lines of red down Mukuro's back. They both know what it means, just like they both know what her Fenrir tattoo really means - mine, mine, mine, my bitch and my hunting dog, you're no wolf who preys on scared little piggies shivering in their beds. "Is this a betrayal? Are you betraying me? After everything I've done for you, everything we've gone through together?"
Mukuro apologises on instinct, lets the I'm sorry slip from between her teeth without a second thought. Junko snarls, cards her hands through Mukoro's hair and pulls until something in her breaks and lies down and bares its throat to her little sister. "Sorry," Mukuro says again and this time she means it. Junko smiles, contented.
"You had better be," she coos. "But I don't mind too much, though, he's a nice boy, a skinny little herbivore boy. They say opposites attract, don't they? Carnivore girls like you and me, we should go for the herbivore boys, shouldn't we?"
"Maybe," Mukuro says. Junko's fingers trace concentric circles over Mukuro's back and across the nape of her neck. "He was the first person in this school to smile at me."
"Oh?" Junko whispers. She draws out the syllable until she's out of breath, until her lips are curved around the sound of a silent 'o'. Her teeth press against Mukuro's shoulder, an insistent caress.
"It was so full of despair," she says, and Junko bites down.
.
Junko's the one who goes to him first, the one who offers him a chance at becoming Despair itself.
"Do you want," she says, "to watch the world burn?"
Junko, Mukuro thinks, was always one for the theatrical, from the phrasing of her words to the giddy pitch of her laughter, leaking from behind red-taloned fingers pressed coquettishly over her lips. Naegi stares at her and laughs shortly, sidestepping. "I, I'm sorry Enoshima-san, but I-"
"Do you want to become something better? To have a better talent than useless, fickle luck?"
He glances sidelong at Mukuro, watches her watching him and back to Junko. He smiles that smile, her favourite smile, the one that's harsh and mocking and filled with the despair that makes her sister's breath catch in her throat.
"Sure," he says.
.
(he's a herbivore boy, her herbivore boy but junko, junko's the one eating him up, bit by bit. when mukuro kisses him she can taste junko on his lips, the saccharine sweetness of cherry lipgloss
they mark him, brand him with the title of super high school level despair. it suits him, fits him more than luck and hope. they carve themselves into his skin with each scrape of junko's nails against his back, red against red; with each bite mukuro takes from him, fenrir's teeth against his wrists, the mark of the beast
oh, their little herbivore boy, he's bad luck, all right
bad luck to the hope of the world)
.
Junko throws him away first, because she says she wants to relish the despair of seeing her sister with him, with their herbivore boy. She wants to feel the despair of knowing he was Mukuro's first, that she was always second fiddle to the disappointment sister, to the mechanical soldier girl who'd never stood a chance against her. Mukuro doesn't mind because it all works out, anyway - Junko's despair, Naegi's despair, her own despairing fear that this will all come back to haunt her, that she will pay for her the bad luck that's her permanent bedfellow.
.
"I was always the better one," Junko says idly; she taps her fingers idly against the console, watching the feeds from the monitors scattered around her. Mukuro licks her lips, tastes Junko's cherry lipgloss, feels the mascara heavy on her lashes. She doesn't need to ask because she knows the answer, because Junko will enlighten her, because that's what Junko always does.
"Because," Junko says and the tap-tap of her nails punctuate each syllable. "It's you who's disguised as me and not the other way round, right? When you talk to each other ... when you do things to each other ... he's always seeing me. Not you, not Mu-ku-ro I-ku-sa-ba, not the disappointment, the corpse-girl, always the second choice."
.
It's always been bad luck, to be Junko Enoshima's sister. Worse luck, to be with Makoto Naegi.
Her earpiece crackles to life and despite herself she listens, listens to Junko's voice, tinny through the speakers.
"Ah, I'm so jealous!" Junko singsongs, as though she hasn't just run her sister through with myriad spears, hasn't relished the squelch of blood or the crunch of bone as something breaks and fractures. "To be killed and betrayed by the only two people you could trust! You're lucky you're getting the chance to experience this, you know? I wish I could feel that sort of crushing despair, it's so exhilarating!"
Makoto Naegi watches as she falls; she sees his mouth move, knows exactly what he's saying despite the static buzzing in her ears. Your sister's next, he's saying and his eyes, his eyes are the eyes of a shark, cold and predatory.
When everyone's still staring slack-mouthed at her he rushes over, under a pretense of checking her vitals. His hand hovers over her wrist, feeling for a pulse but his mouth is close to her ear and he's whispering, too low for her to hear.
"I'll always be your carnivore boy," Naegi murmurs. "I'll eat the two of you up, just you wait."