A/N: a different look into what Ghost in the Machine could have become, I guess. Thanks a lot for reading~
word count: a perfect 3333 words in total, made a little intentionally by me :))
all that remains
the Railgun's "dead", but not to Accelerator. A figurative AU/Canon compliant study.
"Who are you?" Misaka Mikoto asks. She's still in the long white dress she was buried in, feet bare and hair hanging loose. There's dirt on her face, between her fingernails, all over her brown hair. She's the splitting image of the dead girls he sees every night in his dreams, and Accelerator figures he must have finally lost it.
It's been three weeks since he came back from a wreckage, three weeks since a funeral and multiple nights of downing too many painkillers and too much caffeine.
"I killed you." He said, cause it's the only thing he's been hearing inside his mind for the past three weeks. "Who – what do you remember?"
She stared at him. At the corner of his eyes, he sees her hands twitch, like she wants to move them. She settled her eyes for his white hair instead, his bangs too grown out, red eyes sunk under even heavier eyebags. "I don't," Misaka Mikoto says. "I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't know how I –"
She mumbles, sucking in huge, heaving breaths that make even Accelerator wince at the sound. She looks like she's about to fall over any time now, but he doesn't want to touch her, something akin to fear lurking low in his stomach for the first time in a long time. He opens the door to his room instead, and steps aside to let her in.
"You killed me?"
She asks again, after a while, sitting in his bed. She keeps smoothing out her white dress, picking dirt off it. She looks at her hands like she's only seeing them for the first time, then gazes up at him. There's no contempt, just curiosity, and if he was being delusional, maybe even a hint of doubt, in her eyes. It's the familiar color of amber, glowing in the darkness of his room, his entire world.
"Why?"
Power. Silence. Is what he got.
"I don't know." is what he says.
"Maybe I should find out then."
"Maybe." He agrees.
She stares at him some more, contemplating, before clearing her throat and looking around. "I want a shower, and this dress is so dirty. What did I wear before this?"
"Uniform." He supplies, factually, and only because he's gonna humor himself with this absolute madness – "and boy shorts, for underwear." Touma had told him, in a grave fit of pouring his stupid heart out to him after her funeral ended. The dumbass.
"Huh. I could see that." She says, nodding, before shaking her head. Maybe if she wasn't dead there would have been a hint of blush on her cheeks. "Because these panties are seriously too uncomfortable for a corpse."
Accelerator almost laughs, but he shudders instead. He stands up and leads her to his bathroom, shows her how to work the shower and pulls the door shut.
Once he hears the water run, he collapses onto his bed for a minute, and dry heaves so roughly into a pillow the fabric gets torn. There's dirt all over his floor, his sheets, and he wipes his hand over his face, stands up and leaves outside.
.
.
.
It goes like this.
Aleister Crowley planted each 50 MISAKA clones in a total of 195 countries, set all their minds on fire, and used Misaka Mikoto as the transmission pole. Touma punched through everything to get them to her, and wept at what she's become, too broken down to do what needed to be done. So Accelerator held his breath, his heart back, and drove her monstrosity off.
When the dust cleared and air entered back into him, Misaka Mikoto was slumped in his arms, no air leaving in or out of her. The first time he touched her he tried to kill her, and the second time, he did.
"What school did I go to?"
Misaka Mikoto asks again, knees curled up to her chest on his bed, again. Accelerator wants to answer her, but he for real doesn't remember its name, just that it's filthy rich, and extravagant as shit. He tells her that instead.
"Can I see it?"
"Tomorrow," he says, muscle memory of replying to too many Last Order's requests. "I'm tired today." He almost flinches when he remembers her. He wonders if the kid will see the same thing he does. Probably not. She's not haunted by the ghosts of those she kills – she would never, anyways. Yet she hangs out with him. The people around him are batshit insane too, he dimly realizes.
"Do you go to school?"
"No."
"What do you do then?"
"I sleep."
"I wouldn't do that."
That he really must wonder then, and he perks up to pass her a questioning look. Misaka Mikoto just half-turns to him, and shrugs.
"Only dead people really sleep."
That he really has to laugh then, because Misaka Mikoto might have died, but she would never know between the two of them, he's the one who's really dead.
.
.
.
The thing is, his goal of redemption is with the Sisters, not her.
Misaka Mikoto was always this...figure. She's real, but not to his world. He knew she was there, but he never gave her a second thought. Sure, her failure led him to his misery and they both had to live with the fact that they killed the most innocent lives to ever be created, but they were on different paths. Misaka Mikoto had wanted to throw herself at the world, and he had wanted to throw himself out of it. If Accelerator had looked closer, he would have realized they were two sides of the same damming coin.
If he had looked closer, maybe she still would have been alive.
"Did you know me?"
"Yes."
"Were we close? Did we...date or something? Was that why you killed me?"
"Fuckin' hell," he breathed. Now that's a thought. "No, you crazy wench."
A moment passed. She tilted her head at him.
"How was I like?"
"You're –" he starts, then has to stop himself short. What was she like? He didn't know Misaka Mikoto, never did, and now probably never will. This is all that's left he ever has of her – nothing more than a fantastical illusion, a by-product of his empty mind.
The thing is, he really thought she would always be there. Heroes don't die, villains do. He should have died, but he's here, and she's not. And all the wrongness of that fact sticks like gum in his throat.
"You were good." He concludes, stiffly.
"Hmm," she hums, non-comically. "And you're not?"
"Wouldn't put it that way."
"Is it because you killed me? Because if so, that's pretty vain."
"You don't know me."
He says lowly, enmity laced to his voice. He could see it in her eyes then, the way the wheels are turning in her head, as she watches his defense pull up so quickly. Misaka Mikoto simply half-smiles at him, before looking away.
"I kinda want to, actually. I mean, you're the only one I can talk to anyways."
He just snorts at that. It's ironic really, that the dead Misaka Mikoto would think that, when the living one would probably rather die than stay in the same room with him.
.
.
.
Days move on. Ghost Misaka Mikoto drifts in and out of his place, follows him outside and sees through his work, and asks him questions about herself he never knows how to answer right.
She must think it's a game to her, he thinks irritably. The way there's a spark in her eyes when she sees his voice get stuck back in his throat at her inquiry. The way she makes his hands twitch in the air and his eyes roam around for a figure that nobody can see.
"You're really strong. Your power level is insane," she comments. "I must be too if you had to kill me."
"You were a Level Five too." He says instead, voice tight. "I used to call you Third-rate."
"And you must be First-rate then." When he doesn't answer, she just smiles. "Was it a power struggle? I doubt I cared much about rankings though."
"No."
He shakes his head, and stupidly enough, suddenly remembers their first meeting. Facts are facts – he throws her powers back to her face and stands behind her. He bends down to the pulse point along her neck and whispers in her hair his name, and that he will see her again.
Facts are facts – "You just had to die."
"So much for me being good."
She snorts, finally. And for once, Accelerator has to smile at that.
.
.
.
"So you didn't have a choice?"
"Nobody did then."
"But if it was up to you, would you have let me die?"
"..."
"Ha, so you're not all that bad."
"Shut up. I'm trying to nap."
"Consider this revenge."
He scowled.
"Fine, go ahead. Sleep like the dead, for all I care."
.
.
.
"Just as I expected."
"What?"
He says flatly, turning to see her watching him at a much closer distance than he's initially anticipated. Accelerator immediately leans back, but not fast enough for the girl to miss his wrist as she points at it non-comically.
"Your hands. They're really smooth and spotless."
"…What?"
Misaka Mikoto rolls her eyes, like he's supposed to get it already. The idea strangely unnerves him, and he hotly glares at her through the pale strands of his bangs.
"To think that with all the fights you get into on a daily basis, you'll have something a bit rougher than those pretty hands." She explains, opening her palms in front of him, and that's when he sees it.
The tan line of skin is expected, but what Accelerator didn't anticipate are the small calluses and scars peppering all over the inside of her palm and fingers. Some tiny marks even seem new, but the rest are criss-crossed down to her wrists, pinkish and bumpy.
Accelerator stares, for once in a long time feeling surprisingly dumbfounded. The girl seems to have picked up the question on his face, as she pulls her hand back and holds it in front of her.
"I remember it now. I...wasn't really born a Level Five, you see," she explains, voice light. "Took me a long time to grab a hold of my power and push myself there from 1."
"Why?"
"Why?" she half-turns to him, eyes a bit wide, like she didn't anticipate him asking. Accelerator almost wants to take the word back. Even he didn't expect himself to say something, too caught up staring at her rough hands, his pale and smooth, lying limp between them.
"I wanted to be strong, I guess. Wanted to help people. How can you be useful to anyone when you're weak, you know?"
"That's…" Noble. Nice. He wanted to say. "really fucking stupid."
Misaka Mikoto didn't response, just looks – really looks at him. Accelerator doesn't really know what she could see, and the way her dark orbs reflect the sunlight as they roam over him got his throat running dry. He stares back, absent-mindedly noting the tiny freckles peppering on her nose and cheeks. The Sisters don't have these – maybe her hair and face, but not the time she spent running under the sun, the scars and bruises she got running under the pressure of their world.
"I thought I was being good."
She replies, eventually, a hint of mirth swimming in her gaze that he dutifully ignored.
.
.
.
The thing is, there is no black and white.
It used to be so, for him – being black in a sea of white until Touma (that asshole), knocked some sense into him. And...things aren't really okay yet, but he's tethering in the gray area in between now, and that's more than he could ever imagine himself to be since the day they took him into their lab and stuck tubes to his veins. He's both, and at the same time he's not either one, and it feels like something inside of him is fractured, rough edges scraping jarringly against each other every time he moves or thinks.
But Misaka Mikoto has lived and died in that white line, like she's supposed to be. So she shouldn't be here – with him. Talking to him like they're ex companions and mocking him like they're old friends. He wants to tell her to go back to where she came from, maybe the high heavens above or go haunt her actual, real friends, but at the same time he doesn't want her to leave.
It bothered him when she was sad, and then it bothers him even more that it bothered him at all. But there was nothing he could do about it now. He cares, and there is no denying that. He just wouldn't tell anyone, and hopefully it would pass.
He just wishes she wasn't so...vivid, inside his mind, all the time.
.
.
.
His thoughts drift to it sometimes, after a while. The memories of the Sisters' deaths always appeared clear and haunting behind his eyes. If he focused hard enough, Accelerator could still remember the feel of their skin under his palms. Soft, smooth, untarnished from the world, until he came along.
Maybe that's why, whenever he looks at their Original, his mind couldn't help it – wondering how her skin would feel like. If she would break, or bleed under his hands, like they did. If he would ever let her, like he used to.
It's the only reason why he thinks about it. He tells himself.
.
.
.
"I'd...wanted to confess to Touma."
She passes him a glance, as if she was waiting to see if he had caught that, but he just gazes at her quietly in response, compelling her to continue.
"He was...everything I wanted to be. Strong, good, selfless, and kind. I thought that maybe...just maybe if I had managed to catch up and be with him, I would have become better, too."
That he really doesn't have any response to, then. The day he admits Kamijou Touma is right is the day he stops feeling the constant urge to punch the guy's pretty teeth back into his throat. Never gonna happen.
"You trying to be a hero?" he asks, but his voice doesn't sound as mocking as he intended it to be. It's raspy, like the words had difficulty coming out.
"Not really," Misaka Mikoto says, and shrugs. "I think I gave up on that particular label a while ago."
A moment of silence passes, between them. Then languidly, she moves. Her fingers grab at the front of his soft sweater, tangle themselves in the fabric. It's like an enormous weight he didn't realize he was carrying is leaving him, and suddenly he feels so light he thinks the breeze could take him away, flying. Everywhere she touches him, every micro point of contact is numbing the pain. Accelerator has forgotten what breathing without suffering felt like.
"I think I remember myself a bit more, now." She murmurs.
"That's fine," he tells her, even though his palms start to sweat. He oscillates constantly between wanting her to remember everything, and nothing at the same time.
"It's strange how life happens, isn't it?" she says, deep in thought. Her breathing is shallow, his non-existent. "I'd always lived with the firm belief that if you tried hard enough, you could make a difference. If you were just brave enough and loved people hard enough, you could decide which path you could go. That life wouldn't just happen to me, that I could have a say and change it how I want to."
She's silent for a moment, and Accelerator closes his eyes and listens to his own pulse for a change.
"Was that worth it?" he finally asks, and looks at her again. Her hands are still twisted in his shirt, he thinks they might as well be in his ribcage, with how tight it all feels inside.
"I don't know. But would it make a difference? I'm dead now, either way."
"You're not," to me, he wants to say, but that isn't right, is it? She did die, and life did happen to them. He frowns. Their life really sucks.
He looks at her again. "Sorry." It's an encompassing sorry. A sorry that's supposed to represent a multitude of sins and wrap them up into a ball, thrown into the abyss, so they'll never have to go through and feel their pain ever again. "I would have let you live."
She says nothing to that, just gazes up at him, then looks down. A hand trails up, slowly, and stops at the base of his throat, where a black metal band is peeking out from his bunched up collar.
"Nice choker." She comments, and scrapes a fingernail against it a little. He quivers.
"Yeah." He says, louder than he meant to, throatier than he expected. "It's for maths."
"I like it."
Then she drops her hands, moves away, and leaves it at that.
Accelerator doesn't sleep for the rest of the night.
.
.
.
She never finds her uniform again, and he can't exactly vector-snatch some clothes from an all-girl school for a goddamn ghost, so she settles for his white hoodie and black knee-long shorts, the latter makes her sigh in relief at the familiar confines of them. He thinks he must be used to seeing her in his stuff somehow already, but he never is. He's got almost a good three inches over the girl, but his clothes fill her almost perfectly.
It feels fucking disturbing. Nothing of him should ever fit her.
"Anything's better than that creepy dress," she shudders. "I felt so friggin' naked in that thing."
She didn't look naked, just looked like what she was supposed to be. But he doesn't tell her so, because he would rather see her in anything but that, too.
The mere sight of her mocks him, and he deserves it. He guesses he's stolen much more from her. They will never have parity.
.
.
.
The chess pieces all go back to the same box at the end of the game.
.
.
.
"I haven't even had my first kiss yet."
"You're like fifteen. No sane guy would touch you even with a ten-foot pole."
She frowns at him.
"What, language?" he asks. "I haven't even started being vulgar yet."
And they're back here again. Treading the line of sharing too much, and it wouldn't be the first time. Spilled blood, spilled tears and an apathetic boo hoo. He gladly returns the favor.
She side-eyes him, and it's all there in that one glance. It's a wordless reminder of the predicament they're in – the hundreds of sleeping, ticking time bombs, crafted from the worst of humanity, just lying in wait for them.
"You know what I mean." She repeats.
And okay yeah, he kinda does. So when she moves closer again, he doesn't lean away. She lays her head on his shoulder, pressing the crown of her head into the crook of his neck, soft hair tickling his chin. He lets her, and puts his head against the wall behind them. This is what bodies are made for – to fight, to fuck, to live, to struggle, to feel and to bleed.
"It'll be alright." She finally says, voice small. The whisper ghosts over his exposed collarbone, and Accelerator fights down the shudders bubbling under his skin.
And things aren't alright, not by a long shot, but maybe here, sitting together, they can pretend for a while.
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.
In the single room of a private hospital in Academy City, Misaka Mikoto's eyes opened to the sight of bare white ceilings.
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