Archive of Our Own ^beta

Ordinarily, Kaito Momota would’ve said he lived for the unknown.  What was the Luminary of the Stars without something vast and formerly-thought-impossible to illuminate?  He would have given himself over to the sprawling galaxy, after all, in a goddamn second.  All those ice-moons with possible shifting life beneath their frozen alien skin — all those stars so enormous and burning his mind could barely swallow the thought of them.  The Ultimate Astronaut.  The impossible was possible, wasn’t it?

Kaito loved adventure; Kaito was all about risk and the constant possibility that something could go unspeakably wrong.  Right?  If he started to doubt that, now, so near the end of things, what pieces of self would he even be left with?

Space Command, the oxygen levels just keep dropping.

Space Command, the ship’s hull won’t seal.  We’ve tried everything we can think of, but don’t give up hope yet.

This, though.  This fifth trial, during Monokuma’s ridiculous killing game semester.  This felt stranger than anything Kaito had imagined, had run through like a possibility that could turn up during his inevitable space-bound career.

Kaito could still smell Kokichi Oma’s sharp iron blood, splattered mercilessly on the hydraulic press, clinging to the air around him like a judgment stain.  That blood was soaked deep into Kaito’s left-behind jacket with the galaxy print inside and warm close to his heart.  Or.  You know.  That’s how Kaito had worn it, once, before it became part of Kokichi’s grave.  Why hadn’t he answered in his normal, boisterous voice, when Kokichi asked if he had been boring?

That liar, that maybe-tyrant, that stranger with a smile like a mask.  But also...  At the end...  Hadn’t Kokichi seemed so crushingly human?  Kaito hadn’t known what to make of him.  Even just starting to think about it now left him so, so tired.

But no.  No — the Ultimate Supreme Leader hadn’t been boring.  He was plenty of things, but not that.

And he had been brave, too, at the end. He’d climbed under that press as his bones convulsed, as poison shivered through his skin leaving bruises like dark flowers.  He had done it for them, he said.  For the friends who hadn’t believed he was their friend.  He had done it to flip off the killing game orchestrators which really — yeah.  Not much bad Kaito could say about that.  If it was true.

Kaito imagined himself laughing at Kokichi’s question — asking whether he’d been boring even while death dangled above him, Kaito’s hand so close to the button that would snap all his bones at once — and saying, “Of course not.  I might even miss you, ya know?  And Shuichi will, you can believe that!”

Shuichi.  Kokichi had written out a script for Kaito to help save his own soft-eyed sidekick, Shuichi...  And Himiko, and Maki, and maybe even Kaito’s own self.  Kokichi had claimed to see Kaito as bumbling and star-eyed, a hundred thousand lightyears away from real-life common sense.  Thinking about that used to make Kaito’s blood boil.

Would trying to trick the killing game — would gambling their friends’ lives on a theory, on a final throw of the dice — have been Kokichi’s idea of common sense?  Probably.  The guy had died for this.  Remembering the anger and electrified, desperate will in his eyes still made Kaito shudder despite himself.

He was inside an exisal, holding Kokichi’s script half-open across his lap.  He felt sick — dying-sick, for sure, but don’t tell anybody — and he was talking in Kokichi’s voice, just then.  Pretending either of them could be alive or dead. Forcing a laugh and hearing it come out like Kokichi’s infamous “Nee-heehee!”

For Shuichi, and for Himiko... For Maki, who... Looking at her now...  Seemed ready for battle and was scowling in a way that made Kaito’s heart climb into his throat.

Maki had been willing to fight for Kaito, the Ultimate Assassin charging in like a knight to bring him home.  Maybe Kaito would have thought more about kissing her if he wasn’t trying to hide blood he’d coughed up behind his teeth so dang often.

Maki trusted Kaito to be reliable.  Maki trusted Kaito to be someone who would shout the truth he believed in out into the universe, whether anyone listened to him or not.

If Kaito told the truth as he knew it this time, Kokichi’s final roll of the dice would get caught in the air before the verdict fell.  That last possibly-selfless trick, ruined.  And Kaito, at least, would die that day.  If Kaito let himself think about it, he could imagine Kokichi picturing them all safe as the hydraulic press fell.  Imagining them laughing in the school’s gardens, maybe playing cards or something else Kokichi would like.  Something he could have thought was worth dying for — people he might have thought were worth...  Uh.  Whoa.

But if Kokichi and Kaito were gambling wrong — if Shuichi and Himiko and Maki all couldn’t see through what they were doing here, or if Monokuma and all his awful puppeteers got wise too soon...

There’d be Shuichi’s blood on steel, next, wouldn’t there?  The Ultimate Detective (and Kaito’s sidekick’s) blood staining the air so it would never be clean again.  Himiko’s eyes would go empty, like the kind of magic Kaito imagined only the darkest mages used in those books she liked.  And Maki, who had chosen to trust in Kaito despite everything she’d ever learned, would finally realize she’d made a terrible mistake.

Kaito Momota, Luminary of the Stars — (Even Crying Children Adore the Ultimate Astronaut!) — opened his mouth to speak another line in Kokichi Oma’s sing-song voice.

No words came.

He couldn’t do this, could he?

Kaito was all about risk and adventure, wild stars and forging a path through so much unconquered void.  He would have told anyone about that, and he’d have expected his loyal friends to do the same.  Even now.  What else could he do?

As Kaito climbed out of the exisal, he hoped he was smirking at death in a way Kokichi Oma might understand.