Content warnings: spoilers for entirety of DR1, character death, graphic depiction of childbirth, non-graphic depiction of suicide, one instance of gendered slur.
Kirigiri's stoic eyes turn to his, soft and pleading, for a brief second. Then the machine engulfs her, and it is all over.
I made the wrong choice, Naegi thinks blankly as the five of them stand there. Asahina sobs into his shoulder and Monobear sashays into some cheerful monologue about despair. Togami is looking at him accusingly even though he cannot possibly know, and he thinks that he needs to - to go back to that moment in the trial. And to place his trust in her.
But he can't. You cannot go back in time. This is reality.
They've all fallen into a routine of sorts. Hagakure has channelled all his sadness into cooking, so Naegi wakes to the smell of bacon and eggs on a Friday morning.
They still follow Ishimaru's rule. Celes's has been abandoned - they need each other in the night, and now that they know each other so well, it's staying apart that breeds distrust. But Naegi likes to think they're making Ishimaru happy somewhere, by following his rule - all rise for breakfast around an empty, empty table.
He likes to think of them all, happy somewhere. Ishimaru on the back of Oowada's motorbike; yelling about speeding. Maizono teaching Kuwata to sing. Sakura and Celes, having tea. Yamada and Fujisaki playing video games.
And Kirigiri - Kirigiri he isn't sure about. The only time she ever seemed happy was when she was with him.
Naegi shakes his head as he take his seat next to Togami, who is closely flanked by Fukawa. Syo makes less and less regular appearances now that the chaos in their lives has settled down - there's a tense moment when Naegi knocks over a bottle of pepper at dinner and a sneeze erupts from Fukawa's sensitive nose, but nothing comes of it. Though Togami would probably never admit it, Naegi can tell he's grown to appreciate Fukawa as opposed to her counterpart.
They'd all sat down and had long talks about their childhood at various points, and when the abuse that Fukawa had endured finally came out, it was as if a curse had been lifted on her. The defensive, deliberately provocative behaviour was gone, and so was the contempt Asahina and Hagakure had felt towards her, enabling the four of them - and especially Togami - to begin to learn about the hurt, frightened girl underneath it, who had been blessed with a brilliant young mind and a warm, romantic heart, and had learned to hide it all away under fear and loathing in the environments she'd been thrown into, only escaping in her writing. (She doesn't write, now, for there's nobody to show, but can occasionally be persuaded to tell stories, which she makes up on the fly but can lull them all into imaginings like a well-spun fairytale.)
The change is reflected in both of them now that they are, he supposes, comfortably coupled up - aside from Syo's subtle disappearance, Togami is less cruel, more relaxed, now that the murder games are over.
It's things like this that he uses to convince himself that this is the best outcome.
As Hagakure brightly chatters and scrapes heaps of food onto all their plates, an absence becomes notable.
Naegi's never sure what to do when Asahina is gone. The days come regularly and without warning. She has always been her sprightly self, and by appearances, has stayed that way - but she has her days where she hides herself away. The first time it happened, a few weeks after the final trial, he and Hagakure searched every floor, terrified that they'd discover her slashed up somewhere and that the nightmare wouldn't be over.
But in the end she was to be found in Sakura's room. In Sakura's bed, curled up and refusing to speak, her fists clenching and unclenching, and the pain and despair in her expression was like a girl possessed. She squeezed her eyes shut for the entire time they waited by her, as if she could deny the world by refusing to look at it. And she cried, mutely.
They had shaken her and shouted, but she simply tugged the covers over her head and burrowed deeper into the dark and warmth of that bed, in a dusty, unused room. He'd never have thought exercise machines could look so lonely.
The next morning, she was herself again, requesting a double helping of pancakes and chattering away about swimming tournaments.
They didn't bring it up after that.
So nobody mentions it as Hagakure leaves the fifth plate at an empty chair, and the four of them begin to tuck in. Conversation, when not led by Asahina, is difficult. Hagakure tells a bizarre anecdote about how he paused his TV and saw a famous politician shapeshifting into a lizard, but the tape destroyed itself. Naegi laughs, with him or at him, it doesn't really matter. He knows that Hagakure wants to be found laughable. It's how he gives himself purpose.
Togami reads a book and doesn't join the conversation, but nor does he stop Fukawa from pressing his arm happily when she thinks of some way she'd like to please him. Hagakure has begun another story and Naegi is initially only half-listening, thinking that he should maybe check on Asahina, that maybe she does need somebody with her. But then when Hagakure ends with "So long story short, I accidentally got ordained as a priest-", Fukawa sits bolt upright with a fervour in her eyes that Naegi initially mistakes for Syo.
"A p-priest?" she whispers, huskily, and Hagakure looks rather taken aback, as if he hadn't expected anyone to actually react.
"That is what he said. Do your ears need cleaning out?" Togami informs her, not too unkindly.
"Th-then it's fate. My white knight and I will be married. Today," she whispers.
Naegi begins to laugh nervously, and hopes that Togami won't be too cruel.
"Why not. It'll make things interesting." Togami boredly replies, sipping instant coffee.
Naegi gives a strangled yelp, and Hagakure claps his hands with anticipation and says he'd be glad to do the honours, and Fukawa passes out on the spot but when she wakes up she's not Syo, just herself ten times more enthusiastic, and latches onto Naegi's arm and demands his help with dresses, and suddenly they're going to have a wedding.
By luck, it ends up being the next day, so Asahina is present for the 'ceremony'. This is because Hagakure refuses to marry them without at least a ring, let alone any of the other legal neccessities, so Naegi and Togami end up spending most of the afternoon feeding coins into the gacha machine and trying to get it to spew out a ring of some sort. By the end of the evening, they have about seven hundred kitty barettes, and then Monobear takes pity on them and arrives with a ring of his own, a pink heart-shaped affair that Naegi thinks he's seen in a fashion magazine. Actually, come to think of it, it feels like he's seen it somewhere else recently.
In the morning Asahina does Fukawa's hair and makeup, and they don't so much make her a dress as they do cover her uniform with tens of feet of ruffled up toilet paper in virginal white, pinned together with kitty barettes. She holds a bouquet of the bright orange flowers from the pots in the staffroom, and they make an aisle in the gymnasium with two lines of chairs. Naegi and Asahina sit on the bride's side, Monobear on the groom's.
Togami seems to have gotten himself organised into a dinner jacket, and stands by Hagakure looking as though he is waiting for a bus, while they all take their seats, Asahina buzzing with excitement, and then Monobear produces a ridiculous, vuvuzela-reminiscent rendition of Here Comes the Bride from his speakers.
Fukawa appears in the doorway. She's nervous. Her makeshift dress looks close to falling apart. Her hair, rather than tightly restrained into tense braids, is loose and silky down her back. She's sweating and shaking.
She's beautiful. If Naegi isn't mistaken, he sees Togami intake a sharp breath.
In the end, Hagakure didn't know what words to say, and bride and groom were respectively too speechless/apathetic to give any vows.
Asahina and Hagakure are both crying, Asahina silently with a smile, Hagakure loudly blubbering. Monobear appears impassive.
Naegi sheds a tear as Togami slips the pink ring onto Fukawa's finger. She smiles into Togami's eyes, and kisses him without fear, and in that moment she's a fairytale princess, Rapunzel, Cinderella, not a mentally ill girl covered in toilet paper in a school gymnasium.
And life goes on.
Kuwata is pelted with baseball after baseball, again and again, until the bruises and dents in his body no longer have a human shape; the blood is unimaginable, Naegi is screaming and pounding at the fence but Maizono won't stop the machine, and he has to take the knife and stab her with it but she won't die and she won't stop painting 11037 on his face with her blood and Leon's blood and-
Ding dong.
Her yells are muffled. "Naegi Naegi! You gotta come quick! There's trouble!"
He sits bolt upright, terrified, remembering the last time he heard such urgency in Asahina's voice. But when he throws open the door and she grabs him by the wrist, it's not for finding another dead friend but for the premature beginnings of life.
Fukawa's pregnancy has been routine, but this is too early - far, far too early. They weren't ready. Togami is gripping her hand as her wails echo around the school's corridors like a wounded animal. All modesty cast aside, Hagakure has thrown her skirt up over her legs and has a hand each on both of her knees, urging her to push. Naegi is frozen for a moment as he sees the bizarre protrusion of a tiny, bright red head from Fukawa's straining body. Then he is whipping his hoodie off and shoving it below her as a blanket, and Asahina is stroking Fukawa's hair and saying how well she's doing at the same time as Hagakure is yelling that she needs to push harder. He feels sick and dizzy, but nobody looks greener with fear than Togami.
"We need some tongs from the kitchen, dude!" Hagakure declares, having somehow been appointed as the authority figure in this madness. "I gotta try to pull it out!"
"Are you insane? You'll kill the baby!" Togami snaps viciously, and Naegi thinks he's never seen him so scared.
But then, it's as if the pressure in the room changes for a moment. Fukawa falls down on the bed, white as a sheet. When her eyes open, they're not the same.
Genocider Syo sits up and shoves her hands into her own body, tugging out the child by her fingernails, and holds it up with a puzzled triumph. Naegi thinks, absurdly, that Syo probably didn't even know she was pregnant, as they don't experience co-consciousness. She slashes the umbilical cord with her own fingernails and the baby is horrifically silent in her arms for three tense seconds before it coughs weakly and then begins to wail.
It's tiny, and covered in what looks like a mixture of blood and cream cheese. But it seems physically fine.
Togami slides his infant son out of Syo's frozen grip and clutches him to his chest, heartbeat to heartbeat, looking terrified but delighted, as Fukawa falls into unconsciousness once again.
An heir is born.
It may take a village to raise a child, but they make it work with just five kids and an increasingly absent animatronic bear. Monobear's lack of interest in the baby seems uncharacteristic - aside from stocking the fridge with formula and providing an excess of diapers, plus expanding the gacha machine's repertoire to include incredibly cutesy themed babygros and kid-friendly toys, he barely ever checks in on their family.
Togami is still possibly not the type of guy Naegi would trust with his own child, but Fukawa is the picture of motherhood, and they all dote on the baby as well. Though initially small and frail due to being weeks early, Yuuto Togami is quick to become healthy and gurgling. He is an endless diversion in the school's monotony. Fukawa is always smiling down at him.
This could, Naegi thinks, be peace.
They burst into the laundry room just in time to see Genocider poised with her finger over the spin cycle button.
"You guys arrived just in time!" she grins wickedly, head twisting at an unworldly angle. "Wanna see how many times he can go around before his little brains go flying?"
Yuuto's chubby palms are splayed against the inside of the washing machine's glass. He is sitting up - barely able at six months - not crying, but looking mildly apprehensive. Genocider's laughter bounces off the damp walls, and Togami moves before anyone can react - in seconds he is on top of his wife, pinning her to the ground as she continues to laugh, he pressing her wrists and hissing "You will never, ever endanger my son again, I'll never let you touch him-" and her snakelike tongue is close to lashing his chin as she twists and giggles in his grip.
Togami hoarsely cries "You bitch!" and her face melts away, paling abruptly into horror. Fukawa lies passively under Togami and begins to weep.
Hagakure remembers to let the baby out.
Though their rooms are still, despite everything, totally soundproofed, it's when Naegi decides to crack open his door to make sure Yuuto isn't crying that the shouting hits him. The words aren't exactly discernible, but he can catch enough - she's a danger to the baby, I can't control her, this is your responsibility, we never should have let a child into this environment - to feel a dread sink into his gut, low and cutting. It's reminiscent of something he can't quite place.
He rocks Yuuto and tries to remember a lullaby his mother used to sing to Komaru and him while they played in the bath, but the words are gone.
It's the next morning, when they force open Fukawa's bedroom door, that he identifies the feeling. It's the cold, sick horror of seeing Maizono's body for the first time. It was so long ago, and he's seen enough gory deaths by now, but the Proustian shock always remains.
As suicides go, though, it's quite elegant. Almost artistic, like all Syo's work. But this time there's no writing on the wall.
They were afraid Monobear would submit them to another mockery of a trial, but when he appears it's with a weary head. "She did it herself," he says, when probed, "Ooooobviously."
"Aren't you enjoying this?" Naegi viciously demands.
"Not really," the bear shrugs. "It's getting boring."
It's the last time he ever sees Monobear.
Togami stays in the library and speaks to nobody. What's left of Fukawa vanishes coldly in the night, just like every other corpse.
For two months, Naegi, Asahina and Hagakure try to keep smiling at Yuuto as he looks at them with wide, confused cornflower eyes and seems to ask where his parents have gone.
It's snacktime in the cafeteria. Yuuto is nearly two years old and Togami is reading to him. The toddler's eyes are still a bright, curious blue, and he is the spitting image of his father. Naegi watches and wonders when he'll begin to see any of Fukawa. He looks, but he can't find it in Yuuto's tiny, purebred features.
"Most governments view the needs of consumers as being generally identical to the needs of society," Togami reads, and Yuuto stares up rapturously and nods his little head. "Exceptions include-"
Asahina snatches the book out of his hands. "Stop reading him that! Tell him a nice story!" she demands crossly. Togami frowns up and jiggles his son absently on his knee. "This is a nice story," he informs her, "A nice story about the real world."
"The real world?" says Naegi doubtfully. He isn't even sure how he wants to finish that sentence.
Yuuto laughs and puts his hands on Asahina's face as she coos at him, swooping him up into her arms. "Stinky! Looks like daddy needs to spend less time on government and more time on potty training, huh mister? Doesn't he? Doesn't he? Yes he does. Yessedoes. Yessss he do-"
"Mamma," Yuuto cheerfully interrupts, hugging her neck.
Asahina puts him down slowly, and is afraid to look at Togami. But rather than cross, he looks pensive, and abruptly rushes off upstairs at a high speed.
When he returns, it's with a dusty book that Naegi thinks he maybe recognises.
"B-but..." says Hagakure as he peers in on his way back from the trash room. "I thought... they didn't have any in the library."
"I looked harder," Togami sneers.
But it's with a peaceful expression that he sits down again and holds the book at an angle so that Yuuto can see the jacket picture.
"While The Scent Of The Shore Still Lingers," Togami reads. Swallows. Continues. "By Touko Fukawa."
Yuuto pops his thumb into his mouth and snuggles into Togami's shoulder.
"Chapter One... Call me Ishiko."
It's actually Asahina who first suggests it.
"If you want to make a baby, I don't mind."
She smiles, and Naegi stares. "I... would you want to do that?"
"Sure, I mean... it gets lonely here. And I love Yuuto, he's an angel."
He realises that Asahina is twenty, fertile, and surrounded by male pheromones. It makes sense, actually.
But still, what she's suggesting is...
"There doesn't have to be anything else, Naegi-kun," she says quickly, and for a moment he's reminded of Maizono in the way she seems to trace his thoughts. "We don't have to get married like F-... We don't have to like, date." She laughs. The idea of dating is pretty laughable. "I'm just saying if you're interested, I'm OK with it."
"You're like family to me," he manages. But he is also twenty, and it's hard to ignore -
"We're all family," she agrees warmly.
"Uh."
Asahina lies down next to him and rolls over, her supple figure making itself known. Propping up her face on her chin, her expression is cheerful - and inviting.
"Uh, yeah, okay," he manages.
They manage.
"I hate Kazuki!" Yuuto screams.
Aoi rolls over and covers her ears.
"No you don't, Yuu-chan," Naegi pleads, "He's your little brother. You love him."
"I hate him! You all love him better! Even daddy loves him better!"
"It's not that, it's just that he was born sick and so we have to spend a lot of time taking care of him, little man. Everyone loves you." Hagakure attempts.
"I hate you! I hate Kazuki! I want my mummy-", the three-year-old wails, and Naegi feels a knife go through his heart, but it can't compare to how Togami must feel.
"Come along, Yuuto," Togami manages. "You're a Togami, we don't throw tantrums. We can tell you one of mummy's stories." Reluctantly, the toddler allows himself to be led out of the room, and Aoi groans in relief.
Naegi smiles down at his babe-in-arms. Kazuki, although frail - they had no diagnosis other than what their few medical textbooks could tell them, but Togami was fairly sure his lungs were malformed - was the most cheerful child imaginable. Although he did remind himself that Yuuto had seemed the same and then had entered the Terrible Twos, four-week-old Kazuki Naegi did an excellent job of displaying all the optimism of both his parents. He barely made a sound of complaint, which was as worrying as it was peace-inducing.
Naegi pets his singular spring of hair and sings him to sleep. Aoi soon follows into the depth of slumber - she's been drained by the nights up worrying lately. He begins to address a sentence to Hagakure, but abruptly realises he is leaning slightly forward in his chair with rhythmic, heavy breaths. His eyes are still staring, though. Hagakure, it turns out, sleeps with his eyes open, which will never stop being unnerving. It seems as though they will never run out of things to learn about Hagakure.
He wanders out of Aoi's bedroom and peeks his head around the corridor, where in his own room Togami is speaking aloud from another romance novel in a soft murmur to Yuuto, whose eyelids droop and flutter even as he tries to sit up, rapt. Once his son is finally asleep, Togami turns to Naegi. Of course, he knew Naegi was there the whole time. At the end of the day, Togami is still Togami.
He indicates with a finger for Naegi to follow, who does, like a stray dog. Up the stairs and to the library, which has become more of a homely reading den for Togami. Naegi isn't sure he likes it there. There's a lot of bad memories floating around.
"Sorry," Naegi branches out. "About what Yuuto said. It must hurt you."
"It's quite all right." Togami snorts. "He's a child, of course he wants his mother. He misses her, even if he - doesn't remember." His voice is quieter now, softer. It's late.
"You must miss her too; you must - it must be so hard."
A pause. "Spare me your pity, Naegi. I haven't fallen that low."
"She should be here. They should all be here, and it hurts that they're not. You can admit it, you know-"
"You don't know," Togami snaps, "You don't know a damn thing about me, or-" he begins to shove Naegi into colliding with a desk - "You can't project your simpleminded emotions onto me-" he grabs Naegi's collar and slams, choking him - "When I should not be here, I should not - I should not-"
"It's okay," Naegi wheezes, and Togami gives a little cry.
"It's okay," he repeats. Their staccato embrace begins to wilt, and instead Togami's fingers are fumbling at his shirt buttons, missing the right holes, as Naegi tries to create some kind of safe structure inside his arms. "It's okay, it's okay."
Byakuya's mouth finds his like they are lost in the dark, and they cling on through the night.
Despite the drawbacks of apnea and other undefined breathing issues causing a raspy voice that might faze another child, Kazuki's chattier and better-spoken than Yuuto was at two by far, and Naegi blushes to admit this is probably because of his own tendency towards the loquacious. So when Kazuki is able to tell him "Stop calling me a boy, daddy. I'm a girl this week," Naegi takes it all in his stride. Kazu-chan is Kazu-chan. His two year old is advanced beyond a toddler's years. He couldn't be prouder.
He's giving Kazuki speech therapy when Aoi announces her second pregnancy. Although Naegi nearly leaps out of his seat with shock, it's nothing compared to Hagakure, who rushes over and grips Naegi's shoulders with a demented gleam in his eye. "I told you! I told you!" he begins to yell, and then his eyes roll back in his head as he seems to actually realise what Aoi has announced.
It's Yuuto who notices first, and what he notices is the trash.
"Father," he announces at breakfast. He is pale and lanky and fifteen years old. His hair has darkened to Fukawa's plum, and he is never without a book. "The trash compactor's broken."
"Broken?" Togami furrows his brow and continues eating his bagel. "It hasn't been fixed?"
"You said Monobear fixed it. Where is Monobear?"
Yuuto may be pubescent, but on certain matters, one can only obtain a child's worldview whilst stuck inside a murder school. To the children, Monobear is God and Satan in one neat package, and equally unseen yet felt.
"Hmm. Where is Monobear?"
"We haven't seen him since - since Yuuto was a baby. I think he got bored." Naegi replies.
Sakura is ten and sharp as a tack. Athletic and meditative in equal measures, her discipline is unbounded, just like her enormous shock of deep brown hair. It doesn't have quite the springiness of her father's, so it falls around her shoulders freely much like that of her namesake. "But he always restocks the food and stuff anyway. Why's he not fixed it?"
"Maybe he's busy," Aoi assures her daughter, but the inquisitive Sakura is unconvinced. Kazuki-kun slouches into the room late, having just recently achieved the dubious triumph of adolescent morning slump. He's currently wearing grey slacks and one of Leon's punk shirts - Naegi isn't sure how he feels about Kazuki wearing the dead's possessions, but there's no real way to discipline him. Besides, Kazuki-chan looked cute as a button in Maizono's dresses, when she could still be persuaded to dress up so sweetly.
"You guys should go to the data processing room and just check it out. You're such pussies," he comments.
"Language!" Aoi scolds as her son grabs a bagel and slides into a chair.
Kazuki is going through what Naegi's mother called A Stage.
"But-" Hagakure mumbles through a mouthful of food "-He has a point. We're all too damn old for that bear to kill us now, if it even still exists. 'Sides, fridge stock is running low too, now that you mention it."
They don't want to say it, but the thought is there.
Is this fluttering fear in his stomach hope, Naegi wonders, or despair?
It's been a long, long time since any part of life for Makoto Naegi, in his early thirties, has been frightening. But the memory could be one of yesterday as they cautiously make their way to the data processing room, and suddenly his thoughts are flooded, unbidden, with her. Kirigiri. Kirigiri smiling. Kirigiri's gloved hand on his shoulder, asking his help. Kirigiri, appearing with a map and refusing to ask questions. Kirigiri, angry. Kirigiri, daring. Kirigiri, kind. Kirigiri's breath, hot against his ear as she whispered the name Mukuro Ikusaba.
His heart hurts so much he can't breathe. And he thinks that he needs to - to go back to that moment in the trial. And to place his trust in her.
But he can't. You cannot go back in time. This is reality.
"I think I knew it was her," he admits quietly as Togami impassively deals with Enoshima's body, rolling it off into a corner of the room, the blood just starting to congeal. "I don't know how I knew, but - somehow it couldn't have been anyone else."
"Under different circumstances, I'd have a whole lot of questions right now," Togami seems to agree. "But for now the smell is getting to me. Let's just get out."
"So in the end," Aoi pouts, "There was nothing you wouldn't expect up here. Just a lot of controls and monitors."
Although the children had been ordered out of the room, Kazuki wanders back in anyway, and indicates with a single thumb something they all neglected to notice.
"She left a note," he points out, boredly.
Naegi looks at the pink-stained standard issue notepad and thinks of Kirigiri's lips sounding out the foreign syllables of dying message.
'Congratulations!
You bored me to DESPAIR.
Have fun out there in the world. -J.E.'
"What's 'the world' mean again?" Kazuki inquires.
"It's - it's where we live."
"Hope's Peak Academy?" Sakura frowns.
Naegi breaks out into a broad grin as he spots the red remote control that one of them had managed to kick aside when they entered the room. "Not any more."
The entrance hall is as silvery and sterile as the day they met, and although the gatling guns cannot faze him any more, that giant door has turned into a giant question mark in their lives all of a sudden, and that's terrifying.
"What do you think is out there?" Hagakure grins, ruffling Sakura's hair.
"I.." Togami swallows. "...I don't think we should go."
"You don't... what?" Naegi looks to Aoi for support, but her face too is suddenly grey and apprehensive.
"I mean - our children - we don't know what's out there." Togami casts a glance at Yuuto, who is porcelain pale, thin veins almost visible under his skin, holding a novel and looking unnerved. "They've never seen sunlight, they've never been - inoculated against diseases, there may be people out there who will hurt them, and I-"
"There is no food." Naegi surprises himself with the authority his voice can carry. "If we do not leave our children will starve."
Togami stares for a moment, then steels himself. "I... Yes. I don't know why I ... Yes."
"Sakura," Aoi whispers minutely.
"I'm here, ma," said girl pipes up, shifting. But Aoi is not there, and has not been there for a very long time.
Kazuki looks up at Naegi, and for all his tough-acting, is still twelve years old. "Dad, is it scary out there? I wanna... stay inside Hope's Peak if things are different out there."
"Things are scary, yes. And different." Naegi finds himself saying.
"So what is out there?"
"I don't know."
He presses the switch.