Notes; endgame spoilers, slight necro. (... uh ...)
Junko hates the dead.
It's not so much because of the bodies, the knowledge that they were once her friends - oh, what a sweet, trial word it is, friends. She has no friends; hope does not comprehend despair. She detests them because of their peace; because they're beyond despair now; because the blissful dead are dreaming dead, cold and rotting in their steel coffins.
The biology room is cold, silent save for the hum of machinery that keeps coolant pumped into the makeshift morgue. Junko runs her fingers over the panels, strokes the gently-flickering buttons that mark the spaces as occupied. Yeah, they're nothing more than super high-school level dead now, all of them. Idol, baseball-player, gambler; doujin author, gang leader, hacker, hall monitor. They're all the same and boring in death; the only difference is how much they've rotted, behind steel doors; what broken bones are arrayed beneath bruised skin - femurs, scapulae, vertebrae, mandibles. The drawers aren't marked but Junko knows who-goes-where; after all, she was the one who put them there, tucked their arms to their sides or over their chests and zipped those body bags up, slowly rolling the drawers shut. She was the one to lovingly press their wide, staring eyes shut - her fingers had stuck on Celestia's false lashes; Ishimaru and Yamada's, bulging and bloodshot. Oh, how ugly the dead are and how she hates them so.
She'll make an exception for her sister, though. Anything for poor, dear, dead Mukuro who died for a noble cause.
The drawer rolls open with the grace of a lumbering bear; she'd made sure to choose a nice spot for dear, sweet Mukuro's corpse, somewhere closer to the cooler vents and away from the door. Nobody will disturb you, just as you liked it, she'd singsonged as she laced Mukuro's fingers together over her chest and stroked her hair affectionately. Alone in life and alone in death, isn't it great?
Every time she'd come in during night-time, rolling a body in, counting the tiles until she reached the makeshift morgue; every time, she'd roll Mukuro out, stroke her hair, talk to her. A hacker and gang leader walk into a gym, Junko whispers into the shell of Mukuro's ear as she hefts poor little Fujisaki out of the trolley and into the drawer. A hall monitor walks out alone, so full of despair! Mukuro doesn't laugh but, well, that's Mukuro, boring in life and boring in death. Today, she announces when she carts two more bodies in, we had a good bait-and-switch, it's not too bad, actually! Let's see how the cards will play out, wanna place any bets? and then shuts the door on her sister's corpse.
"Hey, sis," Junko says as she kneels beside the gurney and unzips the body bag. "How're you today, are you feeling any better? You're looking like hell frozen over!" She laughs, a little, and pinches Mukuro's cheek. The flesh is cold, unpliable and filmed with dried blood. "You're a riot, you were always the life of the party, you know?"
Mukuro doesn't answer her, but that's because Mukuro's been dead for days now, a sacrifice on the altar of despair. Icicles rime her lashes, frozen onto the mascara. "What ugly eyes you have," Junko says, and cants her head to the side. "Had," she amends as an afterthought, and brushes her knuckles along the curve of her sister's jaw. "I've got the stage all set for you, big sis, so it's your time to shine," she says and smiles. "Too bad we'll have to cover up your face for that. That sucks, huh, to have the audience never knowing who the star of the show is?"
Mukuro gazes sightlessly back at her, eyes clouded over with frost. "Aww," Junko says and sets her thumbs against the corners of Mukuro's mouth, curves her lips up into a pantomime of a smile. "It's gonna be your big debut and you're still so sour-faced. Why so serious, huh, where's your big bad wolf smile, the one that said you were gonna flay someone alive and strangle them with their own skins?"
She tuts and straightens out Mukuro's clothes, arranges the pleats of her skirt and smooths down her sleeves. "You'll have to pay me back for my clothes that you ruined," she says and pokes her fingers through the holes from the spears, digs her fingers through the fabric and into her sister. She feels several things - ribs here, her liver or spleen there; the stiff underwire of her push-up bra; the cool slickness of stilled cardiac tissue. "You were always good at ruining things."
There's blood on her sister's face, blood soaked into her clothes, in the shiny fibres of her wig. Junko scrubs at Mukuro's face, licks her thumb and wipes away a smear from Mukuro's cheek. Not that it'll matter, soon.
"Ya know," she says, draws out the syllables in a breathless drawl, "things've been so lively without you around to dampen the mood. You really got the ball rolling, I'm so proud of you!" Junko sighs, dabs delicately at the corner of her eye with her fingertips. "The last trial, though, man, that was such a slow day, only one person died! And now they're being sticks in the mud, banding together and all." She wrinkles her nose, digs her nails into the back of Mukuro's hand, over the tattoo - just like she used to when they were younger, when she wanted to see if her sister would ever cry. Mukuro never did, because Mukuro was cold and unfeeling and boring and just flipped her hand over for Junko to pinch the soft skin of her wrist, allowed Junko to pick and peel at her hangnails until they bled. "So you're going to do a favour for me, one last big favour for your favourite little sister, right? Right?"
She lowers her voice, rummages in her pockets, rolls the black-white-red cherry bombs across her palm. "Of course I will," she mimics in Mukuro's voice, and laughs. "Of course you will, you're such a dear. Anything for me, right? Ooh, you're the best!" One, two, three, Junko slides them into each ragged gash left by the spears, four, five, six and on, until she's left with two. These, she slips into Mukuro's mouth and leans back to survey her handiwork. "Thanks, sis," she says, and presses a kiss on Mukuro's lips. "What would I do without you?"