Words: 1937
Pairings: Kyouko Kirigiri/Sayaka Maizono, post-canon
Warnings: Past major character death, angst w/ a happy ending
EDIT: ao3 link
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Kyouko's encounters with the dead had mostly been mundane. Dead bodies were just objects to inspect for clues in her line of work. She wasn’t a fan of the paranormal; there was no hard evidence ghosts were real, and even then, she had no reason to suspect that they would be any more interesting than the bodies they left behind.
Her first instance of re-sensitization occurred when she opened a gift box and her father's skull looked back at her. His empty eye sockets betrayed some kind of pleading-- "why didn't you reconcile with me before I died," or "why didn't you save me", or "why did you never say goodbye." Sometimes, she still looked at the skeleton in the Future Foundation's medical bay and got chills.
Jin Kirigiri was properly mourned after the killing game ended. He was given a burial and Kyouko felt some modicum of closure. His name still arose when the fallen Hope's Peak was discussed, but these discussions were often limited to board rooms and e-mails. She could mentally prepare herself for them.
Kyouko couldn't ever prepare herself to turn on her radio at the end of the day, ready to lower herself into a warm bath and unwind, only to hear Sayaka's disembodied voice.
As far as hauntings went, Sayaka's were pleasant. Sayaka's songs, as were typical of idols, were about love and hope and peace. Kyouko had never sought out that type of music, but she wouldn't actively avoid it. Idol songs were non-offensive and non-intrusive.
So why was she crying?
Their other classmates (long had Kyouko stopped calling them 'victims' or 'blackened', refusing to play Junko's game any longer) had been put to rest as well. Still, aspiring baseball players would say that Leon inspired them to begin the sport. Hifumi's doujins remained ranked #1 on websites for over a year after his broadcasted death. Women's enrollment in mixed martial arts programs soared in memory of Sakura.
Sayaka hadn't been forgotten. Her songs played on in her honor. It felt like everyone had a memory associated with her: from idols who loved collaborating with her to couples who said that one of Sayaka's songs was 'their song'. But Kyouko? Kyouko had only a name written on a shower wall and an impending class trial.
The detective had been so busy sorting out her jumbled memories and their sudden imprisonment that conversing with Sayaka had been far from Kyouko's top priorities. As Sayaka had glued herself to Makoto's side, some spark of annoyance radiated in Kyouko. It felt like reopening an old wound that she was discovering for the first time. As Kyouko’s friendship with Makoto deepened, Kyouko thought for a fleeting time that she had been jealous because she had feelings for Makoto.
As Junko had revealed the truth about their erased school lives, an epiphany struck Kyouko. There was no drawn-out investigation, no logical clues leading up to it, just genuine and unabashed love toward the first victim of the killing game. It pooled like blood in her chest, warm and sticky and nearly impossible to seal off. The only relic she had of their time together before was a photo of them sitting side-by-side at the pool. Even with that, she couldn't tell if her feelings had been reciprocated. The longer she looked at it, the more she realized that it hadn't been Sayaka she was jealous of, but Makoto.
"Feelings are one thing me and Gloomy share," Genocider Syo said, during one of their rare conversations. "Not memories-- yuck! As if I'd wanna remember whatever the hell she's doing when she's got the wheel. But feelings?" She swooned, drool dripping off her tongue. "It's just one reason why I also know how Byakuya-sama is so, so, soooo irresistible..."
There was an innate connection between them, a detective and a killer. This was the first time that Kyouko felt a genuine kinship. Her memories of Sayaka were laughs as ephemeral as wind chimes in the breeze, and watching the girl cower by Makoto's side as the 'game' began, and waking up in a cold sweat at 2 AM and rapidly pulling back her shower curtain. But her feelings of Sayaka were an all-encompassing warmth in her body and a longing feeling on her lips and an emptiness that only Sayaka’s smile could fill.
---
Makoto accompanied her on the mission. Most of the major districts of Tokyo had become relatively secured as the world began to heal. The Future Foundation was reluctant to send them both out into potentially dangerous terrain, but Makoto was the only one who Kyouko would allow to make the journey with her to Sayaka's old apartment. He didn't make any errant comments, kept an eye out for danger, and looked away to give Kyouko space as she began to cry. Five blocks away from the address and they had already passed a dilapidated poster advertising a concert tour that would never come.
As she collected herself, she again weighed the options. It was likely that they would get to the old address and find the rubble of a building, or that looters picked it clean ages ago should the building not have collapsed. They could interrogate one of the Remnants of Despair, but: 1. she doubted that any of them would give her a straight answer, and 2. she doubted that the Future Foundation would allow her to bother with such a personal question, and 3. she would never believe the answer they gave.
"Did Sayaka Maizono love me?" Even if the Remnant didn't burst out laughing, there were no good responses. If they said no, she would be crushed. If they said yes, she would wonder if it was a joke. It would give the Remnant at least some kind of upper ground when dealing with them, and she didn't dare expose such a personal weakness, even if they were the only surviving classmates who would know. Kyouko had to find out for herself, and she had done enough good work for the Future Foundation that they didn't ask too many questions when she requested this mission.
Three blocks away and Kyouko turned around. This was Makoto's real job: he put a hand on her shoulder and politely, but sternly, told her that they had to keep going.
The difference between corpses and spirits was the finality. Corpses were objective, observable things. Their cold lips would never speak again. But she couldn't grasp the shape of a spirit. If she found hard evidence that Sayaka never loved her, then she wouldn't be able to close her eyes anymore and pretend that Sayaka's love songs were written about her. And then, to Kyouko, she would be nothing more than a skull wrapped in a beautiful package.
"We're here," Makoto said. To Kyouko's surprise, the apartment hadn't been destroyed. It was a nondescript place, identical to the other buildings lined up like tombstones on the alleyway. Nobody would ever think it was the home to the world's top idol. Maybe that was the goal.
Sayaka's record with Hope's Peak indicated that she lived in Unit 3. The wooden door remained relatively unmarred. A small, floral welcome mat rested outside the door. It was almost as if this place were waiting for Sayaka to come back. The door groaned as Kyouko pushed it open, and she couldn't help but feel as if it were lamenting.
The amount of clothes and shoes on the floor made it immediately clear that Sayaka hadn't lived alone. She must have lived with the other members of her idol group. Kyouko didn't know if they were alive, but judging by the dust, they hadn't been here in a while.
Kyouko had taken for granted her family's status growing up. Even as a teenager in Hope's Peak, she hadn't considered that the Sayaka Maizono would share a studio apartment with four other growing girls who just happened to be the highest grossing idols in history. Now that the evidence was right in front of her, she didn't know why she hadn't thought of it before. The studio and the manager took the fattest portions of the profit. Sayaka was paid in smiles and promises.
Even if it had been a shared space, everything about this place was Sayaka. The hairbrush poised near the bathroom mirror for morning karaoke. The file boxes of saved fan mail; the nearly-depleted stationery set used to write replies. The strands of long blue hair that just got on everything (and suddenly, she had a strong memory of a lint roller in Makoto's room). She felt as if spectral arms wrapped gently around her neck in an embrace from behind, whispering anecdotes into her ear as she poked around. Every item had such a story that it felt as if she were being given a tour rather than intruding.
"Ah... over here," Makoto said, speaking up for the first time since they entered. His furrowed brow had given way to a smile. She followed him into the shared bedroom, five futons piled up as if the girls were hamsters who had to share body heat to survive the winter. The sorry state of this place made Kyouko wonder how Sayaka could bear it.
Then, her answer came in the form of her own face staring back at her. Dozens of her own faces, to be accurate. One small corner of the room was plastered with picture after picture of Kyouko and Sayaka. In their old school uniforms that Kyouko remembered her in, a memento from their real first day at school; in Hope's Peak uniforms, sitting closer together as the semester had gone on; in casual clothes, sitting between a milkshake that had one straw painted in both of their lipsticks. Each polaroid had a date on it and some type of note: from a heart to an xoxo to a "best day ever!".
It had all led up to this. Kyouko kneeled in the corner where the photos were, noting that the floor was slightly worn; someone had spent a lot of time here. For each photo, she couldn't remember a thing except for how her heart had soared.
Sayaka had loved her. Sayaka had loved her so much that she took these mementos and even hung them up in her little bit of living space, a little 'fuck you' to the love ban, risking her prosperity and reputation because the sight of Kyouko's face had helped her through a hard day. Sayaka had loved her so, so ridiculously much that she even kept these photos up where the other idols could see them. How long had they known? Had Sayaka asked for their advice before they got together? Had Sayaka rocked on her heels in excitement as she rambled on about their date? Kyouko probably would never know for sure, but for once, she was okay with that.
She reached carefully into her jacket pocket and produced a photo-- one of the polaroids that Junko had presented to them during the killing game. It had been little more than a taunt at the time, but now, the memento of herself and Sayaka lounging by the poolside was one of her most treasured possessions. Kyouko found a roll of scotch tape nearby and, with surgical precision, attached several pieces to the picture and attached it to the wall. And, as she did, a weight lifted off of her shoulders and was carried like chimes away on the breeze.
The next time Kyouko heard Sayaka's love song on the radio, she was just able to smile.
we live in cities youll never see on screennot very pretty, but we sure know how to run freeliving in ruins of the palace within my dreamsand you know, we're on each others team
