Note: Unexpectedly short chapter due to the fact that I've been sick this week.
Togami could feel his fingers tensing on the one hand not attached to Makoto, coiling tightly as if they'd already wrapped around Enoshima's throat. If everything she and Makoto were saying was true — if she really was the voice of Monokuma, the last hidden player in this horrifying game — then it had been her fault. That twisted farce of a trial, the manipulation of the vote, the false sentencing… all of it had been her doing. And even if she'd decided to save Makoto in the end, even if she'd been the one to help him… she'd been the one to send him into that execution. She'd tried her best to ensure Makoto's death.
He'd known it already, of course. Everything had to be the mastermind's fault in the end — all the deaths were ultimately their doing. But knowing that in the abstract was different — even thinking of Monokuma as the one running the game was different. Now he had a face, a name, a physical person who represented every nightmare he'd endured in the last few weeks. He could look Junko Enoshima in the eye and know that she was responsible for Makoto's near-death.
And he wanted to kill her for it. He wanted to feel the crack of thin bones in her neck beneath his fingers, the desperate flutter of her windpipe against the pressure of his grip, the slow drum of her pulse coming to a halt at his hands. He wanted her dead, and the only thing stopping him from trying was the fragile weight of Makoto's wrist in his other hand.
And then one of her delicately plucked eyebrows lifted in a perfect arch — and suddenly it was Makoto's fingers on his wrist that kept Togami anchored in place.
"Don't — please, don't," came Makoto's whisper, too loud in the quiet room.
Enoshima snorted, an utterly unladylike sound at odds with her appearance. "Oh, come on, sweetie, it's not like he's gonna go off the deep end over something that minor!"
"Minor?" His voice shook with so much rage that he hardly recognized it as his own. "You think trying to kill him was something minor?"
"Well, it was — what, like two whole days ago now?" She lifted a lazy hand before her mouth in a half-hearted attempt at covering an enormous yawn. "Old news."
"You —"
"You have a point." Kirigiri's calm declaration managed to drown out his furious snarl. "Naegi is alive, after all, and far better off than any of us expected after his experiences. Any anger or blame that we might have felt at his apparent death can be considered irrelevant now."
He spun to transfer his outraged glare to her, but Kirigiri looked straight past him to fix her eyes on Makoto. And of course, of course Makoto sent her a smile back, for all the world as if he were relieved. "I knew you'd understand, Kyoko. Thank you."
Which was absurd — what had she done to deserve Makoto's gratitude other than be her usual cold and stone-faced self?
Except that apparently Makoto liked her, cold and calculating as she was. Makoto appreciated her icy reaction — and he'd tried to prevent Togami from directing his rage towards Enoshima.
Togami took a slow breath, focusing on the gentle warmth of Makoto's fingers on his wrist. As long as he could hold onto that feeling, the living proof that Makoto was here with him instead of dead and cold in the mastermind's lair, he could force his hatred of Enoshima back ever so slightly. The barrier might be weak and fragile, trembling with every knowing smirk that crossed Enoshima's obnoxiously made-up face, but it would be enough to hold. It would have to be.
