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Chapter Text

Above and before anything else, Izuru is hopelessly, agonizingly bored.

A mob moves around him, piling material into a pyre that towers up from the cleared city street. It is the fourth they’ve built in the day, fuel scavenged from the wrecked buildings surrounding this bombed-out block.

He’s not sure who planted the bombs, whether it was one of the civilians with an interesting hobby or one of the Despairs passing through just as he was. Either way, he’d stayed behind, observing.

Enoshima had once pressed a lighter into his hands and told him to enjoy watching the world burn, but he’d never found it quite so entertaining. Not the way these people did, with their leering shouts disappearing into the sky like smoke from their wonderful fires. He supposes it must be a more fulfilling pastime for the lesser.

None of the mob pay him much mind. This is expected. Izuru moves like a specter, his presence kept hidden. This, too, is a talent, one Izuru exploits perhaps more often than he should.

Either way, they are beginning to light the pyre. The crumbled wood pieces lining the bottom are burning now, and the rioters begin hollering as the flames climb. Izuru watches blankly, trying to understand what joy they gain from the experience.

His mouth twists into the slightest of frowns. Boring. Utterly, completely boring.

Izuru turns, leaving the mob and their pyre to his back. Shouts chase him down the empty block, echoing off the rubble. He ignores these, eyes wandering over the set of skeletal buildings left haphazardly standing above the ruin. The warmth from the flames grows dimmer against his back as he peels off from the crowd.

A bank, ruined. A set of apartments, collapsed. A library, the roof caved in. Izuru stops, taking in the view. Then, without bothering to wait for a second thought, he ducks under the library’s half-collapsed canopy, sliding between the mess of bricks and concrete and rebar that now compose the entryway.

As he passes through the crumbled opening, pushing against one of the tipped over columns that once held the canopy up, the pillar shifts. Just as Izuru moves under it, it topples over entirely, crashing to the ground behind him and raising a cloud of dust and debris. Izuru holds his sleeve over his face to block it, but it makes his eyes water regardless.

He turns away from the now mostly hidden entrance and raises his head fully to survey the remains of what must have once been a grand foyer. In comparison to many other structures he’s explored in the city, the innards are surprisingly intact. The twist of the staircase to the second floor remains, although it has been made open-air from the caved roof. A set of pillars frame a front desk, where he can easily imagine someone still working. Perhaps with less blood staining the wood, but nonetheless.

The cracked marble floor gives way to carpet as he makes his way farther in, the scattered glass and wood shards crunching under his scuffed dress shoes. Izuru eyes the empty shelves, the torn, charred pages littering the floor, and the ashes that cling to his hands each time he touches anything. Predictably, books made easy fuel for the overeager arsonists and rioters outside. A bomb going off in a library would pour smoke for a long while.

Izuru doesn’t have any particular fondness for literature, although this is because he has no particular fondness for anything. He is unable to find any part of himself that laments these losses, even while understanding their significance.

A building was just a building. One more expense claimed by the Tragedy; another cost compounded.

The acrid stench of burnt material wafts heavy and thick in the air as Izuru breathes deeply. He has nothing left to gain here. Outside, he can hear the voices of the mob in the square, their voices mutating and rising in pitch excitedly. It’s the sort of sound that preludes one of the group being thrown onto the pyre.

He sighs. That, too, is predictable.

Suddenly, something shifts behind him. The sound of stone grinding against stone as the debris blocking the entrance cracks and crumbles entirely.

“Aha, I would never have expected to find you in a place like this, Kamukura-kun!” A voice exclaims.

“Komaeda,” Izuru says without reaction. He does not bother with a glance to confirm. He could hear the limping footsteps from outside, and there’s no mistaking that voice, half rasp and half wheeze. He often finds himself imagining that Komaeda is merely days away from simply keeling over. It was likely only due to luck that he hadn’t already.

“I was simply passing through,” Izuru drones, one hand raising purposefully to brush hair out of his face as he once again scans the space before him with sharp, calculated movements. “I have nothing to gain from this place.”

“Oh, I figured you might’ve been looking for something to read,” Komaeda answers mirthfully. “Perhaps that would be something we have in common?”

Even from a distance away, Izuru can hear him wheezing with each breath. The air is still choked with ash and particulate from the fires. It certainly isn’t healthy for someone with such a fragile constitution.

He does not point this out. It is not his business if Komaeda wants to kill himself, nor he does care to stop him. Objectively, the world would be better off without further despair in it, after all.

Instead, Izuru frowns, moving from his spot by the front desk to a section of destroyed shelving against one of the walls. “There is nothing of value to me in recreational literature,” he says coldly. “However, there may be other materials worth salvaging.”

He hears Komaeda hum, which he knows must accompany a nod. “I see, I see.” Those uneven footsteps approach, and he hears Komaeda need to catch himself once when he almost slips over a bit of glass. Izuru refuses to offer even a glance. Staring blankly at the singed wreckage before him, he focuses on calculating the chance that Komaeda has finally learned common social courtesy and will leave him alone. The result is disappointingly low.

“I’ve always loved libraries,” Komaeda sighs.

Izuru bites back a grimace, his shoulders tensing as he prepares for the dribble Komaeda is gearing up to throw his way. He chooses against mentioning that Komaeda has spoken about the subject before. Time under his teachers’ care has taught him how to handle being talked at, if nothing else, and he knows from past data the rambling will end sooner uninterrupted.

Predictably, Komaeda continues, “They always had such a peaceful atmosphere. Ah, this was… before, of course.” Here, he laughs as though he’s said something funny. “It was nice. I could lose myself between the shelves and pretend for a little while that I was normal. A bit naive of me, but it was comforting all the same.

Izuru can almost hear the dopey grin in his voice when Komaeda sighs behind him. “I suppose you must find all that rather dull, though.”

“I have never spent time in a library,” Izuru says bluntly. “I cannot empathize with your experiences.”

“You must have read, though? Back at Hope’s Peak?” Komaeda presses. “I’m certain that literary genius must be among your talents—”

“It is.”

“So then…?"

Komaeda is prying. Why? To build a more equal rapport between the two of them? Izuru doesn’t quite know yet, so he will play along until he does. “There is a certain amount of irony to my experience, I believe. While I have extensive knowledge of many works in nearly every genre and literary form, I have yet to ever read a book on my own.”

With the way Komaeda spoke before, Izuru does not expect this statement to be well-received. But he also does not expect his companion’s tone to soften the way it does in response.

“Oh, Kamukura-kun. They kept so much of the world away from you.”

If he were a lesser being, Izuru would have scowled at the pity. As he is, it simply baffles him.

“Surely they must entice you, though? Stories, I mean.”

Izuru shakes his head. “Stories are written by people. And people cannot help but be predictable.”

Komaeda hums lightly in response, but the tone swings low, flat and disappointed.

A clamor of shouts rises from outside, broken by one long frantic shriek. Perhaps the mob were to immolate someone after all. Izuru kneels down, his hair sweeping through the dust on the ground as he tips his head down to rifle through the debris at his feet. A small commemorative plaque lies atop the remains. He tosses it aside, at which Komaeda makes a slightly offended noise.

This place genuinely felt important to him, Izuru realizes. That must have been what drew Komaeda here to begin with. The despair of the loss. A despair deep enough that Izuru’s dismissive attitude of this place and what it meant stirred real emotion in him.

Curious. Brushing a length of hair behind one ear, Izuru says, “I was made to pen a novel myself, once. As part of one of my tests.” That catches Komaeda’s attention. He can hear his footsteps pulling closer, can visualize the way he would tilt his head slightly to the right as he listened. “They told me the subject could be anything. I chose to write about a man caring for his ailing mother until she passed from disease.”

“How tragic,” Komaeda murmurs.

Astute as always, Izuru thinks dryly. “That was the most common opinion. One of my teachers told me after reading that the ending made her want to cry.” He pauses. “I find that somewhat strange. What point is there in the desire to express emotion without the expression itself? What was her intent in telling me this?” Unbidden, the woman’s expression comes to mind, brows pinches and lips pulled up in an empty, sad smile. Quickly, he discards the image from thought.

“At the time, I concluded that she must have believed she was expected to find the story overwhelming enough to bring her to tears and was embarrassed that it hadn’t.”

During those late days of the project, the researchers had wanted to keep him away from any equipment he could potentially dismantle, so he’d been forced to write the manuscript by hand. He was delivered a single black notebook, its margins emblazoned by the Hope’s Peak Academy crest, and a small set of ink pens. The process had taken him less than a week, and his hand had cramped for two days after he finished. For the briefest of moments, Izuru almost considers an attempt to recover that notebook.

Another pointless sentiment, of course. It was surely lost by now, buried or burned or simply put away and forgotten somewhere in the maze of the ruined labs below the school.

Concluding a fruitless search of the rubble, Izuru stands. He looks over the ruined shelves and wall before him, still turned away from Komaeda. “The novel was, in technical terms, perfect. I wrote every line to maximize an emotional response from readers. My diction was impeccable. The pace and flow of the story were calculated. On all accounts, it was a masterpiece of tragedy, intended to provoke not only grief, but also a reflection on the nature of life and inevitability of death.”

Through the opened ceiling above them, the red clouds covering the sky roil, turbulent and unyielding. The harsh stench of smoke singes his nose as the fires outside grow. He hears Komaeda hack several wet coughs from the ash that he tries in vain to muffle in his elbow. Izuru turns, watching indifferently as his shoulders tremble from the fit. It takes Komaeda several moments to compose himself, spitting a wad of phlegm by his feet and wiping his mouth with the back of one hand.

“I’m sure it was immaculate,” he rasps, because he believes a response is necessary. “As to be expected of talent like yours.”

Izuru’s neutral expression twists into a frown. Seconds pass in silence, Komaeda’s labored breathing and the shouts of nearby rioters filling the space between them.

He considers this. Uncertainty is a stranger to him, but at this moment, he finds it forming a coil in his stomach. The sensation is almost thrilling. He forces his features back to normal, gathering his thoughts before opening his mouth to speak again.

“Why then,” he wonders aloud, “Could it not make her cry?”

Komaeda nods, thoughtfully. “There must have been something wrong with her.” The words are hasty. Once again, he’s only saying what he thinks Izuru wants to hear. “She must not have worked hard enough to understand what you’d written.”

“...That was a possibility I considered,” Izuru answers. The wind whistles long and low through the bones of the building, carrying the scent of char along with it. It is a smell they are both used to, and neither of them flinch from it. Izuru lets his eyes close, blinking soot from his lashes. “Though, I am now considering that it may be a testament to some element of art I have yet to fully understand.”

He continues, “Society finds merit in art. Art itself is a reflection of its creator. When the leaders of the Project created me, it was within the outline of their own views of both hope and talent. It is natural to create from the known.”

Komaeda doesn’t interrupt, and when Izuru opens his eyes he finds his companion watching him, looking somewhat contemplative himself, with his arms crossed and brow slightly furrowed.

Almost viscerally, Izuru’s stomach knots. Komaeda should not be allowed to look at him that way. It’s too close to the way he knew he was being watched from behind one-way glass in sterile concrete rooms, like a puzzle to be pieced together. A problem to be solved. To alleviate the discomfort and avoid revealing it, he breaks their eye-contact, looking instead to the floor by his feet. Around his ankles, the ends of his hair are choked in ash and dust, filthy and tangled from many days gone unwashed.

Izuru allows himself a breath before he keeps talking. “The story I wrote was one I understood, but did not empathize with. I emulated the protagonist’s feelings from conversations I had heard between my teachers. I had never felt such things myself.”

Grief was, after all, predictable. He would never let himself fall victim to it.

A small part of which, which he does his best to ignore, insists that he does know what grief feels like, now. That it was what brought unbidden tears to his eyes as he stood over a dying girl and watched her reach out to him in futility. Tears that had felt so much like someone else’s at the time. Was grief not what drove him to place her pin gently in his breast pocket? Not the reason it remained there even now?

Very purposefully, Izuru derails that train of thought, refocusing on the present.

Komaeda gives a hum in response, letting his arms fall back to his sides. “With your talent, that would hardly matter…”

“But it did,” Izuru says flatly.

He pictures his teacher’s face again. Her dyed brown hair due for a touch-up, going white at the roots, and the crow’s feet crinkled around her eyes from the sad smile she’d given him.

He’d held the notebook loosely in his hands, with the same detachment he’d have felt if she’d handed him back a rock.

“It’s a wonderfully sad story, Izuru-kun. It made me want to cry.”

At the time, the interaction hadn’t even warranted a second thought. Yet now, he can’t help but ruminate on those words.

“I understand why you’re hung up over this,” Komaeda sighs. Politely, Izuru refrains from informing him that he certainly doesn’t. “It’s only natural, of course. Your brilliant mind won’t tolerate any less than perfection.”

Komaeda shakes his head. “Of course, someone like me could never really be able to relate. With as feeble and insignificant as I am…”

Another set of meaningless, boring words. They are not what Izuru wants to hear.

It is then, with a chill that perhaps brings him more joy than it should, Izuru realizes he doesn’t know what it is he does want to hear. His eyes widen just a fraction, his next breath uneven from where it catches briefly in his throat. The uncertainty tightens in his stomach, and it makes his entire spine tingle.

The feeling must show on his face, because Komaeda lets out a breathless little laugh. “You’re making a wonderful expression, Kamukura-kun. Have you realized something?”

Carefully, he schools his features. He does not want to admit his thoughts to Komaeda, does not want to admit to being easily read. “Perhaps,” he answers, noncommittally.

“Ah, you have!” Komaeda grins at him. “You’re excited, aren’t you?”

“That is irrelevant.”

Komaeda laughs again, pleasant and airy, although the sound quickly devolves into a coughing fit. Izuru watches impassively for a moment, then sighs at him, stepping forward and offering Komaeda his arm, which is enthusiastically taken.

“Come on,” he says, gesturing for the door. “You’ll get sick staying in this air for too much longer.”

More sick than you are, he doesn’t say.

“You truly are gifted, Kamukura-kun,” Komaeda replies dreamily, his voice thick and hoarse. He coughs again, clinging to Izuru like a lifeline. “To be able to care for someone as worthless as I am.”

“Mhm.”

--

Later, when they’ve gotten away from the rubble of the once-grand library and the smoke-clogged air of those desolate city blocks, Izuru stands along the edge of an apartment balcony, watching the sky darken as evening sets.

Komaeda hasn’t slunk off yet the way he usually does, like an antsy cat kept indoors too long. He’s still at Izuru’s heels, although at a farther, less personable distance.

“Komaeda,” Izuru says, feeling the eyes on his back. “Are you not to be elsewhere tonight?”

“If you want me gone, you can just tell me,” is the amused response.

He doesn’t know if he does. So he doesn’t answer.

Silence nestles comfortably into the space between them. For another minute or so, they simply stay that way, Izuru’s eyes tracing the clouds and Komaeda’s tracing his back.

“What are you thinking about?” Komaeda asks, quiet steps pulling him closer until he stands at Izuru’s side.

Izuru wonders that, himself. Sometimes it’s hard to parse the threads of his own thoughts, everything in his mind whirlpooling into something overbearing and abundant and loud. Right now, he decides that he is thinking of failure. Or, rather, not-failure.

Because he, of course, cannot fail. He is talent itself, crafted in the image of perfection. The world is boring because he has nothing left to learn, nothing left at which to stumble and practice and triumph.

And yet, in the rotted bones of that library, Komaeda had told him the world had been kept from him. Komaeda, with the darkness of despair sewn behind his eyes, had pitied him.

Izuru’s eyes close as the dusty wind kisses his face. His entire body is alight with something, some feeling he’s finding difficult to place. He hears the railing creak where Komaeda leans against it as Izuru bides his time, tries to figure out what it is he feels confident enough to say.

“I was thinking…” he says, finally. Conclusively. “...Perhaps I might try writing again.”

Chapter Text

“This is my fault,” Komaeda says. His gaze is distant, a fervent energy set upon him as he works. “I didn’t realize how close they’d gotten, please, let me take responsibility. I can grovel at your feet if you want, if you’ll forgive me—“

“You’re rambling again.”

Immediately, his mouth snaps shut, hands stilling mid-motion. Izuru lets out a harsh breath, turning his head to press his cheek against the wall. His sweat-slick skin sticks to the peeling wallpaper.

He can almost hear Komaeda hovering over him, anxious energy radiating from him like heat off asphalt. Izuru makes a vague affirmative sound, gesturing for him to continue.

A thick, greasy odor blows out from the busted radiator in the corner of the room, muddling with the smell of blood. Trying to ignore the awful stench, Izuru watches a cockroach slink out of a crack in the opposing wall, only to disappear into another moments later.

The place is, as concluded by his most objective analysis, shitty. He isn’t in the best frame of mind to find a better descriptor for it, nor does he care enough to. It’s a shitty motel room with scratchy carpeting and moldy yellow wallpaper and a draft from where the windows have been bashed in.

Izuru knows it doesn’t matter where they stay, really. It’s not like the Tragedy gives them room to be picky. Still, the rough carpet leaves indents in his palms where he rests against it and something about that makes him itch. Figuratively speaking, of course.

This feeling, on its own, is possibly the most intense emotion he’s felt in months.

His leg hurts. Like the motel, this is another inadequate descriptor, this time for the gunshot wound that has perforated his left calf.

At his side, Komaeda’s bloody hands rise from where he’s just finished stitching the wound closed. He wipes them clean on a towel snagged from the bathroom before reaching into the medical supplies splayed out on the floor around him for a roll of bandages, as well as the one miraculously intact bottle of whiskey they’d managed to find.

“I just need to clean and wrap it now,” he mumbles, seemingly more to himself than Izuru, who is already aware of what he is doing and what needs to be done.

“Finish up, then,” he replies anyway.

Komaeda wets a second towel with the alcohol, pressing gently around the wound to clean the drying blood.

He lets Komaeda bandage his leg. Izuru could do it himself, of course, could have nursed his own wound from start to finish, but something about doing it for him seems to calm Komaeda down. Personally, Izuru prefers his companion partaking in a minimal amount of anxious worrying, so he doesn’t object. Even if he does have to coach Komaeda through doing the stitches.

He frowns as the wrap is pulled. “This was unavoidable, wasn’t it? Of course,” Komaeda says hastily, apparently holding his tongue for as long as he could. His shaky hands cinch the bandage too tight. “You wouldn’t just let this happen.”

Izuru grabs his wrist, guiding him to loosen it. He ignores the way Komaeda full-body flinches at the contact.

“Of course,” he parrots. Yes, Komaeda still thinks he is infallible. Izuru thumbs the scar on his cheek, wondering how many times he is going to make the same mistake.

--

He’d been scavenging the back of a convenience store when Komaeda stumbled across him, after months of radio silence.

When he first caught sight of Izuru he’d waved excitedly, exclaiming that their meeting was “the best luck he’d had in a while.”

Izuru himself felt more or less indifferent about the reunion.

Still, he said nothing, preparing for Komaeda’s approach, when the sound of footsteps and the telltale click of a gun being cocked drew his attention from the front of the store instead.

Whether the group had recognized them or were simply rather cutthroat survivors, Izuru didn’t know. What he did know is that the man apparently leading them carried a pistol, the barrel of which he kept trained between Izuru’s eyes.

“D-Don’t move,” the man stuttered. “Don’t move or I’ll shoot!”

His hands shook around the gun. Izuru noticed his finger nearly slip over the trigger. He predicted less than ten seconds before it went off, whether on purpose or accidentally.

A few meters away from him, Komaeda stared at the man, looking rather unconcerned. Izuru knew he had a switchblade attachment in the multi-tool in his back pocket, but it would take too long for him to grab. He watched Komaeda reach for it anyway.

The barrel of the gun jerked towards the movement, and before he could stop himself, Izuru moved.

There wasn’t any thought behind the action. It was simply that one moment he was standing at the door and the next he was in front of Komaeda with a bullet in his leg. The man had stumbled over something when firing and landed an unlucky shot, which Izuru realized was the only reason the bullet hadn’t gone straight through his skull instead.

His instincts took over, and in one fluid motion, he’d procured the multi-tool from Komaeda’s pocket and launched the knife towards the man, landing a straight shot through his neck. The entire action took less than three seconds.

Gurgling blood, the man fell, and the rest of the group scattered. At the same time, the wound caught up with him, and Izuru stumbled to his knees.

--

“It’s done,” Komaeda announces, bringing Izuru back to the present. The handiwork is a bit sloppy, but that was to be expected. He was no Ultimate Nurse, after all.

Still, Izuru looks the bandages over and gives him a nod. “Good,” he says. Komaeda nearly melts at the praise.

A moment sits between them; Izuru doesn’t move, just rests in that spot on the floor and listens to Komaeda’s shallow, whistling breaths. Then, he watches his companion stand and gather their supplies in his arms.

“I’ll put these away,” Komaeda explains, disappearing into the bathroom. He leaves the half bottle of whiskey sitting on the floor at Izuru’s side.

For a moment, Izuru stares it down, deciding. Then, he reaches for it.

The stretch pulls at the stitches, and he groans, fingers tightening around the neck of the bottle as he pulls it to him. Even with his muted pain receptors, the wound ached horribly. While adrenaline had clearly done its part in the moment, now that he’s rested, he’s so much more aware of it.

The wound may be worse than he thought. After all, the human pain response was meant to inform when something was wrong with the body. Izuru thinks maybe the doctors shouldn’t have fucked with it so much. After all, where would it get him if he struggles to feel the difference between a paper cut and a stab wound?

It’s an uncharacteristically bitter thought. Izuru figures the pain is clouding his judgment. He looks down to the faded label of the bottle in his hands again.

Komaeda returns into the bedroom just in time to catch him raising the bottle to his lips. Izuru ignores the sound of surprise his would-be caretaker makes as he takes a swig. It’s almost easy, since he doesn’t feel the burn on the way down.

Rejoining him on the floor beside the bed, Komaeda sits back on his heels, frowning intently. Izuru watches him consider the bottle with his eyes. He does not offer it, and Komaeda will not ask for it on his own. Knowing this, he drinks again.

“Kamukura-kun, are you sure you should do that?” Komaeda asks. “Alcohol inhibits mental function, not to mention the other negative health effects that may arise from sustained use—“

Izuru cuts him off by raising the bottle again. Komaeda’s mouth presses into a thin, upset line. It feels good, somehow. Izuru wonders if this is spite. After he swallows, he returns the bottle to his side.

“You didn’t bring painkillers,” he says. Not that he needs to explain himself to Komaeda. It’s a purely utilitarian excuse, to keep him from continuing his pestering.

“It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to stop you then,” Komaeda says evenly, but Izuru knows he’s unhappy about it.

The whiskey sits warm in his belly, and Izuru can feel it through the entire column of his throat. He shifts, keeping the bottle in hand as he lays his legs out flat, sitting up farther against the wall. Komaeda reaches out as if to steady him.

“It would be better if you laid down…”

“I know,” Izuru says curtly.

Discouraged, the hands pull back. Then, after a moment of deliberation, a determined sort of look enters Komaeda’s eyes as he slides over to sit along the wall beside Izuru.

Izuru watches him play with the carpet strands for a moment, folding his legs beneath him. He’s noticed that Komaeda always sits like he’s posing for something. He takes another deep breath, then turns to Izuru with a smile.

“You really should rest. Please, you can use me as a pillow if you’d like.”

There’s urgency in his voice, entwined with something apprehensive that shadows the warmth of his tone. This is a selfish request as much as it is a selfless one.

Izuru takes another knowing drink before releasing the bottle and tipping sideways into Komaeda’s lap. His skull presses uncomfortably against Komaeda’s bony thighs, but he doesn’t move. The pressure gives him something to focus on besides the stitches in his leg and the fog that’s set in his head.

“You drank almost half of what we had left,” Komaeda laughs. “Do you have a high tolerance?”

“I don’t know,” Izuru scoffs. “S’not like they let me drink...”

“You’re slurring already.”

Was he? He curls farther into himself, trying not to jostle his injured leg. A pained sort of sound rumbles out of him anyway. “...Still hurts.”

One of Komaeda’s hands comes to rest over his head. Izuru has to stop himself from flinching at it. His touch is cold from poor circulation, and for just a moment, it feels too much like a surgeon’s fingers along his scalp.

He can’t quite hide the shudder that escapes him.

Komaeda must not notice. “I’m sorry, Kamukura-kun. If only I were more capable….I suppose you’re lucky it wasn’t worse, being stuck with only me to treat you.”

That was a joke, wasn’t it? It does nothing to lighten his mood. He sighs, feeling tenderly around the bandages. “I wonder. Was it your luck or mine that caused him to stumble?”

“It was my bad luck that let you get hit at all,” Komaeda mutters darkly. “Just so I could experience the good luck of being able to use my worthless, filthy hands to tend to you… Kamukura-kun, I’m sure hope will soon blossom from the pain you have to endure.”

When Izuru looks up, he sees his eyes glimmering with despair and unshed tears.

Komaeda is a lot to deal with. Or, as Enoshima had once declared, “like, so much,” her words accompanied by a dismissive hand wave. Izuru has no need for companionship, of course. He is a beacon above the world, cold and thoughtless and perfect on his own. A mountain of talent and cultivated hope towering over the worthless. He should want for nothing and keep no company.

But. But Komaeda’s hands were gentle as they pressed against his wounds. Komaeda’s breath was warm against his cheek when he urged Izuru down for rest. Komaeda’s eyes were so full, full of yet another something he doesn’t understand, something so deep and involved and human that it would be impossible for him to.

The god among men has shed his humanity and risen to the angels, only to find himself utterly alone. Izuru’s throat feels tight. It is unfamiliar.

“I’m drunk,” he says abruptly. It seems to be enough to shake Komaeda out of whatever stupor he had entered. He blinks a few times, looking down at Izuru in an almost startled manner and laughing.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“This is not as much fun as I thought it would be.”

Komaeda hums, his cold fingers threading through Izuru’s hair. “I can believe that. Is it helping with the pain at least?”

Without replying, Izuru raises a hand to make a ‘so-so’ gesture.

“How about you tell me what you’ve been writing,” Komaeda suggests. “It’ll distract you.”

“The liquor is distracting me,” Izuru mutters petulantly, turning to press his face farther into Komaeda’s thigh. He doesn’t want to have to order his thoughts when he’s like this.

Seeming to realize his excuse, Komaeda starts, “Are you embarrassed by it? Or am I just too unworthy to hear—“

Izuru groans, cutting him off. “Shut up. You talk too much.” It is, perhaps, a more brazen statement than he would make while sober. He can feel Komaeda shaking against him as he giggles in response.

“She says that too!”

Izuru’s stomach twists. He doesn’t want to think about Enoshima right now. Doesn’t want to think about what a comparison like that might mean. He shakes his head, his hair falling into his face with the movement, strands catching in his lashes. Frowning, he tries to blow them off. When they don’t move, he tries again. Komaeda is still laughing.

Izuru stops, self-consciously brushing the strands away with a hand. He must’ve looked ridiculous.

“...I’ll tell you about it,” he concedes finally, if for no reason other than to distract from his rather uncharacteristic embarrassment. “But you must listen. Without any of your unnecessary self-flagellation.”

“Harsh!” Komaeda exclaims. It takes him a moment to catch his breath from the laughter, but after doing so, he sweeps one arm out, indicating for Izuru to continue. “By all means.”

After a brief silence, Izuru speaks.

“...At the beginning,” he starts. “A man wakes up in a box.”

Komaeda is very quiet. It seems he’s taking Izuru’s request to heart.

“It is dark, inside.” Bleak, he does not say. Desolate and empty and hopeless, he does not say. “As much as he searches for an exit, he can find none. No doors. No windows. No cracks.”

There’s still fog in his mind. “Eventually, something causes one of the walls to fall down. The man is able to leave his box. To go free.” Izuru lets his eyes close. He doesn’t think he could continue otherwise.

“Outside, he finds a hallway. As he follows it, he comes to realize that he is not just in one, single hallway, but an entire labyrinth of them.”

He focuses on the repetitive movements Komaeda’s hands make running through his hair. Suddenly, it feels hard to swallow. Izuru forces himself to anyway.

“He searches desperately for the end of the maze. He imagines what kind of world may exist outside of the walls.”

“What does he find?” Komaeda whispers, interrupting. “What’s beyond the maze?”

Izuru’s mouth feels dry. He swallows harshly again, his head spinning. “I don’t know,” he answers. He presses the heel of his palm to his forehead, absently feeling the groove of the scar sliced along it. He feels like he’s split his own head open before Komaeda, spilling his thoughts like blood on the carpet.

If Komaeda notices his distress, he does not address it. Just keeps combing gently through Izuru’s hair, catching and freeing tangles as he comes across him. The dull pressure of it is nice enough that Izuru must stifle the overly content sound that threatens to sigh its way out of him.

“You are taking advantage of me,” he mumbles, eyes still closed.

Above him, he hears a resonant gasp. “I wouldn’t dare!” Komaeda exclaims, sounding genuinely upset at the insinuation. Izuru tries to decide whether the comment is mocking or not. Knowing Komaeda, the latter seems more likely.

“You are. Here you have me in your lap, injured, inebriated, and as much at your mercy as I may ever be.” Izuru cracks his eyes open when Komaeda’s fingers still. “I am aware that you’ve desired me ever since our first meeting, you know,” he continues. “I can hear your elevated pulse even like this.”

Komaeda’s face twists into a small, unreadable frown. Unreadable, of course, because Izuru is drunk, and absolutely not because Komaeda is particularly difficult to understand. In fact, Izuru figures he’s as easy to read as someone like Enoshima. Single-minded. Simple.

He closes his eyes again, turning away from Komaeda’s face. “My proximity causes a physiological reaction in you.” The heartbeat under his ear quickens. “You’re a fool if you thought I hadn’t noticed.”

“It’s no secret that I adore you, Kamukura-kun,” Komaeda says hollowly. “You are Ultimate Hope. I have devoted my life to you.”

He may as well have been reading off a script. It’s enough to tempt Izuru to roll his eyes.

“I know you may be worried about my reaction to your feelings, but take solace in knowing they do not bother me. Like the rest of the world, they are boring.” He feels Komaeda flinch against him, but he can’t seem to stop himself from talking. “Love is predictable. I do not care for it.”

“Ah.” Komaeda breathes out a long, shuddery sound. “There it is.”

The hands pull out of his hair. Izuru frowns.

“I couldn’t be as lucky as to be able to hold you like this without any sort of consequence, Kamukura-kun. Of course I couldn’t!” In a matter of moments, Komaeda’s erratic breathing turns into erratic laughter. When Izuru looks, he finds that Komaeda’s fingers are tangled in his own hair, yanking hard. His head tilts back, knocking against the wall, and a manic smile splits his face. “This is perfect, Kamukura-kun! I was getting complacent, much too complacent. I was having thoughts I shouldn’t be allowed to have, imagining possibilities a lowly worm like me could never dream to achieve!”

“Komaeda—“

“Not that, of course, any of this is your problem,” he continues, apparently disregarding Izuru’s interjection. “In fact, it is all the better that my feelings go unattended to—“

Without thinking, Izuru sits up and grabs his wrists. Komaeda’s words cut with a strangled sound.

Gently, Izuru pulls his hands down. There’s blood under his nails, and the look in his eyes in entrenched in despair. Izuru can feel the trembling in his wrists.

He doesn’t understand. In the awful yellow glow of the shitty motel lighting, Komaeda’s eyes shine wet, chest heaving as he pants for breath. Baffled, Izuru lets go of him, reaching out to run a thumb over his cheek.

“You’re crying,” Izuru says.

Komaeda laughs, a sound choked and wet. “Am I?”

Izuru can’t help himself. “Why?”

“This was a foolish indulgence.” Komaeda shakes his head, pulling out of Izuru’s touch. “I shouldn’t even be allowed to be near you. May I split my stomach for you in repentance? Or burn the nerve endings from my fingers?”

A frustrated growl tears its way out of Izuru’s throat. “You’re spewing nonsense again.”

Almost subdued, Komaeda answers quietly, “It’s the only thing I can do.”

The words form a lump in Izuru’s chest. Instead of answering, he shuffles closer until he can let his head fall against Komaeda’s shoulder. His hair drapes over his face, but he doesn’t bother moving it.

He struggles to decide what to say. What arbitrary series of words can he string together that will take the pain out of Komaeda’s eyes?

What is he doing wrong?

It almost seems like another test, another experiment. A teasing voice that sounds too much like Enoshima taunts him from somewhere in his mind.

“You’re perfect, aren’t you? Then fucking prove it.”

“...I’m sorry,” he settles on finally. “I was… insensitive.”

Komaeda stays silent.

Izuru continues, “Despite what I’ve said, I do find myself enjoying your company.” He pauses, the admition almost physically painful. “A… slight embarrassment over that fact caused me to speak out.”

“It makes sense you’d find enjoying my presence shameful.”

“It has nothing to do with you,” Izuru insists. “It is my own shortcoming. You make for an… adequate companion.”

He lifts a clumsy hand to reach for Komaeda’s face. “Do you understand?”

Komaeda catches Izuru’s hand in his own. After a moment’s hesitation, he presses it to his cheek. “Yes, Kamukura-kun.”

Izuru thinks that, despite the uncertainty, he sounds rather at ease.

Either way, he doesn't want to ruminate on it any longer. He's tired, his eyelids slipping shut even as he fights to keep them open. The alcohol sits heavy in his stomach now, like a weight dragging him down. He presses farther against Komaeda’s shoulder, close enough that he can feel the pulse in his neck.

It’s warm. Human.

Komaeda brings both their hands down, resting their shared grip between them.

Like that, sitting on the floor with his back against the peeling wallpaper, Izuru falls asleep to the lulling rhythm of Komaeda’s heartbeat, his injury completely forgotten.

Chapter Text

The last time he sees Enoshima Junko, she sits perched over the edge of a concrete parking deck, her legs hanging over the side of the safety guard ten floors off the ground. She swings her feet back and forth, humming something as Izuru approaches, some by-the-numbers pop song he can’t put a name to.

“They really made a mess down there, huh?” She asks, tilting her head back to look at him upside down instead of turning around. “It’s real nasty, if you wanna see.”

Despite himself, Izuru hesitates, almost caught off-guard when she addresses him. She blinks at him a few times, then sits back up, waving lazily for him to come over. He approaches the safety guard, leaning over the wall to see what she’s referring to.

On the ground floor, blood puddles beneath several still bodies broken against the concrete. Izuru had predicted as such. He averts his gaze, pulling away from the edge.

“What a bunch of suckers, huh?” Enoshima sighs, leaning forward just a bit, elbows on her knees, as though threatening to fall herself. Izuru doesn’t move to stop her. “It’s such a hopeless sight. I mean, is this really what this generation has come to?”

“Your actions directly prompted a majority of these suicides,” Izuru tells her, as if she doesn’t know.

She giggles in response. “You’re totally right! Bet you didn’t even need to use your big ol’ computer brain to figure that one out.” One pretty manicured finger manages to poke him in the temple before Izuru swats her hand away.

S he puts the hand against her chest, looking offended before she slides her legs back over the side and hops off the wall. An explosion goes off in the building across the road, the windows bursting and raining glass on the crowd below. Shrieks rise from the street as Enoshima circles him, her gaudy humming picking up again as she comes to a stop behind him.

Izuru stands ramrod straigh t. He doesn’t budge, even as her fingers thread into his hair, her palm s pressing against his nape.

“God, you’re so pretty,” Enoshima coos, running a delicate hand through the strands. Izuru doesn’t bother to reply. She combs down to his waist, parting the locks with an uncharacteristic gentleness. “Pretty and perfect,” she whispers against his ear.

He jostles forward as she leans over his back, her arms locking tight around his neck. “What a pair we are, hm? Two hopelessly perfect people in a hopelessly imperfect world. Society wasn’t built to hold us, Kamukura-senpai.”

“Isn’t that the reason you destroyed it?” He says, wrinkling his nose at the cloying scent of her perfume, sweet and constricting. The shouts from below only grow in intensity as fire and smoke begin to billow out from the opposite building, pouring from the destroyed windows. Enoshima puts a finger against his cheek, her nail digging into the still-visible scar left there.

Izuru shoves her off immediately, ignoring the cry as she lands hard on the concrete.

“Enough. You are too clingy,” he scolds. “If you need a playmate, find your sister. I’m sure she’ll accommodate you.”

Enoshima pouts, sitting up to examine her scraped palms. She curls her fingers inward, pressing the grit stuck to her skin farther into the cuts. A line of blood trickles down her wrist. “You’re so mean! I destroyed everything for you, FYI.” She smirks up at him. “You didn’t forget, right? All that brain surgery didn’t fuck you up too bad, did it? I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Izuru narrows his eyes as she gets back to her feet, brushing herself off. Bloodstains follow the path her hands make over her clothes. “Your statement is not genuine,” he says. “I know that I was just a tool to help bring about the destruction you wanted.”

“Ah, ah. Careful.” Her blue eyes glimmer dangerously in the growing firelight cast across them. “I set you free, remember? I gave you despair to cure your boredom. If I wanted, I could’ve left you to rot in those labs for the rest of your pathetic, miserable life, with no company besides the fucking eggheads who made you.”

When he doesn’t respond, she pouts again, her eyes going watery with fake tears. Or maybe from the smoke. “Aw, don’t give me that look, sweetie.” She grabs his chin, forcing his head up and squishing his cheeks with a thumb and forefinger. At arm’s length, she blows a kiss in his direction. “You know I love you.”

With that, she spins on her heel, stalking off towards the elevator. “Well! I’m bored. I’m gonna head off and see if I can’t get in any of this action myself.”

With a chime, the doors open, and she steps in. Izuru just watches her blankly, unmoving from his spot. She grins when he meets her eyes, and one hand reaches up in an enthusiastic wave.

“Kamukura-senpai!” She shouts across the deck. “Make sure to keep me alive after I die, okay?”

Then, the doors slide shut, and she’s gone.

--

Today, Izuru watches her die on live television. Her execution plays out over the fuzzy, cracked screen of an old CRT, and he cannot look away.

She waves, at the end of it. Izuru is sure if she weren’t sitting, she’d take a bow. Like a proper curtain call. The thought makes him scowl.

The Despairs mourn her loss in their own, strange ways. Within the hour, Queen Sonia Nevermind appears on broadcast herself, dressed in a long bloodstained ballgown with pearly tears dripping down her beautiful face. She announces her intentions to retrieve the body, and Izuru is sure she’s going to be beaten to it.

He won’t go to Hope’s Peak himself, of course. Enoshima’s death does not cause him grief. Sonia Nevermind sobs on screen, and Izuru stews in the same, quiet, paralyzing emptiness that has defined his entire existence.

Enoshima is dead, and the world she created hadn’t fulfilled her promise to him. Despair hadn’t cured his boredom. The scattered moments of reprieve it offered were nothing compared to the paradisiacal world she’d painted for him in her words. In the end, despair had barely treated his symptoms, never mind the sickness.

Logically, he knows not even she could have given him the freedom he longs for. That perhaps it was never even her intention. She’d hissed her sweet words like a snake in a garden and coaxed him into her despair, using him and discarding him without a second thought.

If she were here, she’d be laughing. The static crackles, and for a moment, it almost sounds like her ghost.

Izuru slams his heel into the TV screen, feeling it crunch and shatter in a burst of sparks. He wishes it were her skull instead.

Overhead, the dark clouds blanketing the sky rumble with the promise of rain. With no other pressing matters, Izuru hides himself away to wait for the storm to pass.

His current lodgings consist of a mostly-looted pawn shop and the small apartment housed above it. Certainly not the most elegant of living spaces, but the water in the bathroom still ran, and that made it enough.

Izuru draws the tattered curtains over the windows as the storm brews, sitting in the dark. With only broken equipment downstairs, he has no way to communicate with the other Despairs, nor does he particularly want to. Instead, he spends that first day after Enoshima’s death memorizing cloud patterns and trying to sleep away the void making a home in his chest.

He’s bored. The feeling eats at him like a creature in his belly. A horrible, gut-wrenching boredom that brings him back to his time in the labs. To days spent in darkness, restrained and picked and prodded at, where monotony nearly stole his soul from his body.

He haunts the apartment like a wraith, shambling from the bed, to a seat by the window, then back. The time he doesn’t spend sleeping, he spends watching the sky. He takes half-hearted pleasure in realizing he can’t predict the lightning strikes.

The night the storm breaks, Izuru is splayed across the bed, watching the rain pellet the window, his hair a waterfall of ink over the side of the mattress. He closes his eyes, content to sleep until it passes, when the rattling of the door downstairs has him sitting up in alert.

Komaeda is on the doorstep, shaking, soaked to the bone, and smelling of blood and rot. He huddles just outside, eyeing Izuru as he comes downstairs like he’s waiting for an invitation to cross the threshold.

They don’t exchange words. Izuru doesn’t ask how he found him. Just opens the door and steps out of the way, indicating for Komaeda to enter.

A crack of lightning sends light spilling through the windows, illuminating Komaeda’s shivering frame. Izuru notices him clutching at his left hand, which remains mostly hidden in his sleeve. His eyes are glassy, whether with fever or pure delirium, Izuru isn’t sure. Either way, he seems only half-present as Izuru ushers him into the apartment.

He sits Komaeda down on the bed, the old mattress springs squealing beneath him. It’s too dark to see the extent of whatever injuries he has.

“What happened to your arm?” Izuru asks, already reaching for it.

Komaeda giggles, head falling forward as he pulls it up to his chest and out of Izuru’s grasp. “Are you sure you wanna see?” he drawls, shoulders hitching in his laughter. “Are you?”

Before Izuru can answer, he jerks away, hiking up his left sleeve and thrusting the arm out in a way that seems almost proud.

In return, all Izuru does is stare.

A set of blood soaked, roughly tied bandages encircle the length of his forearm. The blood seems to originate from a point just above his wrist, where it has stained the bandages in a dark, messy seam. The wrap is looped around the area several times over, tight enough to be cutting off circulation.

Komaeda laughs as he presents the arm, eyes wide and wild, his grin wide enough to show gums. “Look what I did, Kamukura-kun!” he says eagerly.

The hand protruding from the end of the bandages is not Komaeda’s. It is a slender, delicate hand that hangs very much like a dead thing off his wrist. The fingernails are long, adorned with chipped red polish, and the back of it is splattered with blood blotches, where vessels had burst and pooled under the skin.

Komaeda draws in rapid, uneven breaths, watching expectantly for a reaction. At Izuru’s silence, his grin slips.

“...Why are you looking at it like that?”

“That is going to get infected,” Izuru states. In the moment, it’s the only thing he can think to say. He’s struggling to parse the deluge of thoughts amalgamating in his head. Because he doesn’t understand what is expected of him here, doesn’t understand what this is supposed to mean, doesn’t understand what Komaeda was trying to accomplish by attaching Enoshima’s dead hand to his own body—

Komaeda laughs again, a hiccupy sort of sound that seems almost involuntary. Like he can’t stop it. He caresses the hand, bringing to his face and pressing his cheek against the palm. “Isn’t it wonderful, though? She’ll be a part of me forever, now. Even though she’s gone…”

“No. That is going to kill you.” She is going to kill you, he does not say. “I do not understand why you would want her to be a part of you to begin with. You hated her. I would expect you to be rejoicing in her death.” It sounds rather stupid to say these things out loud, but Izuru needs answers. He doesn’t understand.

Komaeda’s eyes go dinner-plate round. “I am rejoicing, of course! I’m ecstatic! Now hope can—can move forward! A-And the world can… finally begin to recover from despair…”

He hiccups again, his left hand falling heavily into his lap.

Oh, Izuru realizes. He’s crying.

Komaeda brings his arms around his body, sniffling loudly as tears drip into his lap.

“There’s nothing left for me to do now, is there? Hope has triumphed… The leaders of Ultimate Despair are dead… And the rest of us—we’ll all follow them, won’t we? She never killed me herself, so I have to do it for her.” He holds the hand in front of his face, staring at it like he’s entranced.

Izuru’s own eyes widen as he watches, astonished. Was this more of her hypnotic despair? Was this the true, murky depth of it?

His chest aches, and it is like nothing he has ever felt before. He puts a hand above his heart, crumpling the somewhat grimy dress shirt he’s wearing in a fist. The act does nothing to assuage the ache.

The feeling is not quite grief. It is not heavy and consuming, but rather tight and sharp. A sensation that leaves him out of breath. He wants to stop to categorize it. Concern? Anxiety? Something else he has no hope of putting a name to?

Komaeda gives another heart-wrenching sob, and he decides he has a more important matter to deal with.

“…You’re not going to die,” Izuru says finally.

Komaeda startles from his daze, glancing up like he’d forgotten Izuru was standing there. “Oh. Aren’t I?”

No. Not yet. Not if Izuru has any stake in the matter. He won’t give Enoshima the satisfaction of stealing Komaeda from the world.

He shakes his head, a jerky, uncertain movement. Strange. “Don’t move,” he says unnecessarily.

He turns away from Komaeda to find the box of supplies he’d stashed, feeling the hair on the back of his neck prickle where he knows he’s being watched.

Izuru slips easily into the caretaker role, feeling a sense of balance come over him as he peels off Komaeda’s drenched jacket. The motions come easy when he doesn’t need to speak. He undoes the bandages with intent to refresh them, holding his breath at the stench of dead flesh that surfaces from beneath the wrapping.

He realizes the lump above the amputation site hadn’t just been too many layers of bandages either, but rather from Komaeda’s belt cinched as a tourniquet and not removed after the fact. Izuru moves quickly, removing the belt and redressing the area, tying a fresh set of bandages from elbow to wrist to hold the hand in place.

He tries to spend as little time looking at the thick, black stitching as he can. Bile rises in his throat at the sight, and Izuru swallows to keep it down. When he’s done, he finds two pill bottles among the supplies, shaking out the right amount of each in hand before holding them out to Komaeda.

Light bursts through the window as a bolt of lightning cracks somewhere outside, sending their shadows chasing along the floor. Komaeda’s an amorphous, cowering shape and Izuru’s tall and dark and menacing.

He waits for the thunderclap to rumble by, ignoring the way Komaeda flinches at it. “Antibiotics. And something for the pain as well,” he explains stiffly. You’ll need to keep taking them for a while.”

Komaeda’s eyes squeeze shut for a moment, and he takes a sharp breath through his nose. For a moment, he holds it there, like he’s gathering all the tension pent up in his body. Then, with a long exhale, he releases it, opening his eyes again and accepting the pills with a shaking hand.

“Okay,” he says. “Thank you.”

He swallows them dry, looking exhausted from even that. Izuru sits beside him on the bed afterwards, close enough to feel the warmth of the body beside him, but not close enough to touch. Together, they listen to the rain.

“I’m such a nuisance,” Komaeda sighs, bridging the gap between them to rest his head on Izuru’s shoulder. “If I were you, I’d just kill me and be over with it.”

“That complex of yours is less endearing than you think it is.”

He scoffs. “I don’t think it’s endearing at all…”

When he falls silent, Izuru glances over, only to find Komaeda staring down at the hand-that-isn’t-his resting in his lap.

“I hate her,” he whispers miserably, like it’s a secret. “Because she isn’t gone. As long as the rest of us are alive, so is she. And that’s exactly what she wanted.”

Izuru thinks of her final request to him, called out between the gap of an elevator door. Had she left the same request for them all? Instructed all her loyal followers to live on in her stead?

Komaeda turns his face to meet Izuru’s, and this close, in the dark, his eyes look like muddy pools. He can see every exhaustion line in Komaeda’s face, and the sight steals his words.

“It’s okay, though… right? Because… hope always wins…” He grabs Izuru’s lapel, pulling their faces even closer. “You’re Ultimate Hope. You’ll rid the world of despair, won’t you? I know it.”

“...This world doesn’t need me to recover, Komaeda. I helped instigate her destruction. I am as much a force of despair as any of you.”

He shakes his head. “No, that’s not—“

“Don’t let your feelings for me cloud your judgment.”

A frustrated noise tears out of Komaeda’s throat. “You’re not listening.”

“Then what is it you’re trying to say?”

It’s as if all the fight crumbles out of him in a single rush. Or perhaps he’s simply too tired to keep it up. Either way, Komaeda simply sags against Izuru’s chest, his grip slipping. Izuru has to put an arm around him to keep him upright.

“Well?” he prompts.

“I can’t understand you,” Komaeda admits. “If you’re hope, you should want to kill me. That’s the way of the world. I don’t know why you don’t just let me die.”

What an awful, twisted sentiment. Izuru knows he’s not hope. Not really. Not in the way Komaeda expects, and not in the way the doctors who created him wanted.

He thinks that perhaps the way Komaeda looks at him runs perpendicular to how those researchers did. An intersection at reverence. But where he was once viewed as an object, as an experiment, as a means to an end, Komaeda’s gaze is something else. Human. Worldly.

Komaeda breathes against his neck, and that too is reverence. But beyond that, it is also something more. Compassion. Love.

Izuru thinks of humanity stolen from him. Then, of humanity returned to him, given back piece by piece in tender words and hesitant touches and bothersome tangents in destroyed libraries. How Komaeda gave to him unthinkingly, would tear his heart from his chest if Izuru asked it.

In a desolate, white-walled lab far away, the Project’s researchers had killed whatever part of him could feel love. They had carved it from his head the same way they had carved away everything else—with precision and calculation and sharp, unfeeling scalpels.

Therefore, in this moment, it cannot be love that compels him to cup Komaeda’s face in his hands, drawing it up to meet his own. Cannot be love with which he pulls the other closer, cradling him against his chest without worry over the piece of corpse pressing into his side.

When he says, “Because your life is important to me,” it is not a statement said out of love. It simply cannot be. But it is certainly something, something hot and tangible and unfamiliar that flushes out the tightness in his chest.

He shifts a hand to the back of Komaeda’s head, gentle against the coarse fluff of his hair. He is pliant beneath Izuru’s hands, unraveling like a cut seam. His face scrunches up, like he’s trying not to cry.

When he finally does make a sound, it is impossible for Izuru to tell whether it is a laugh or a sob.

“I’m so tired,” he murmurs.

Izuru pulls back, shifting just enough for the two of them to lie down. “Rest, then,” he whispers in response.

The bed is dusty, uncomfortable, and cramped with the two of them sharing it. But the drumming of the rain sings a rhythm soothing enough to pull Izuru easily to sleep, Komaeda’s head a comfortable weight against his breastbone.

--

He wakes just beyond the break of dawn, to a loud clattering sound and thin, pale light filtering through the window across the room. In the spattering of seconds that follow, Izuru takes note of several things very quickly.

The storm outside has quieted. Not yet to a full halt, but to more a drizzle compared to the unrelenting downpour of the previous night. With the lightening of the rain, Izuru can very clearly hear the sounds of movement on the floor below. Hushed voices and footsteps imply at least a few people, people who seem to be unaware of his sharper-than-average senses.

Beyond that, and most importantly, there is no one else in the bed. Komaeda is no longer beside him.

Izuru does not panic, of course. However, the speed at which he races out of the apartment and down the stairs may have broken his own world-record sixty meter sprint time.

His hair falls against his back and into his face as he halts at the bottom, stopping at the sight that greets him on the shop’s floor.

Komaeda gives him a small, strained smile from where he’s held down in a choke hold by none other than Pekoyama Peko. Upon Izuru’s arrival, her eyes narrow dangerously at him, sword tight in the hand not constricting Komaeda’s neck. Her would-be hostage scrambles to get a grip on her arm, clawing to seemingly no avail.

“Good morning, Kamukura-kun! Pekoyama-san and I were just talking ab—“ her hold tightens, strangling the rest of his sentence out of him. Izuru can see a bead of sweat roll down his temple from the exertion.

“I recommend staying silent, if you wish to keep your head,” Pekoyama says coldly.

Izuru glares at her. He can tell she’s regarding him with caution, her sword angled and ready to deflect him should he attack. He is not so foolish as to underestimate her. On alert and with a hostage, she is a dangerous opponent. For now, he will hold his ground.

Besides, she isn’t the true danger here.

“Where is your handler, tool?” he calls out.

“Right fuckin’ here.”

Kuzuryuu leans casually against the shelf he appeared from behind, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’m surprised you didn’t notice me yet. Just thought it’d be nice to stop by and see how you were doing.”

“How did you find me?”

He jerks his chin at Komaeda. “You follow a rat to find the nest. I knew he’d go runnin’ to you, so I had Peko tail him.” He smirks. “I guess you were too busy playing house to realize.”

Izuru doesn’t answer, and Kuzuryuu must notice him staring at his face. He’d turned to reveal the right side of it, where an eye that didn’t match the color of his left sat clouded and glassy in a half-lidded socket. Kuzuryuu chuckles, raising a hand to caress the puffy reddened skin surrounding it with a knuckle.

“Pretty, ain’t it? I figured it must help me see whatever the fuck it was she saw in you.” He shakes his head. “Maybe I’m just fuckin’ dumb though, ‘cause I still don’t get it.”

“You all have a very strange approach to grief,” Izuru comments. Komaeda’s hand and Kuzuryuu’s eye… had the Despairs left any of Enoshima’s body behind? Pekoyama at least still appeared whole, even if at the current moment he is compelled to remove one of her arms from her body.

Kuzuryuu sneers. “As if you know a goddamn thing about grief.”

Izuru’s eyes flick back to Komaeda. In Pekoyama’s arms, his face has started turning blue. He can’t afford more distractions.

“You want something from me.” Izuru says, cutting to the point. “I know you haven’t gone through the trouble of chasing me down for nothing.”

Kuzuryuu nods, slipping his hands in his pockets and stepping forward in an extremely forced display of ease. “Yeah, you’re right. I want—“

“Not yet,” Izuru interrupts. He looks back at Komaeda. “Let him go, first. Then we can talk.”

“What, him?” Kuzuryuu scoffs. “As if he hasn’t taken worse.”

Izuru doesn’t respond. He stares pointedly at Kuzuryuu, unrelenting. Komaeda wheezes like a clarinet played wrong.

Finally, with a sigh, Kuzuryuu gestures vaguely to Pekoyama, who reluctantly removes her arms. Komaeda spills out of her hold and onto the floor, barely catching himself on his elbows when he lands and curling into himself, coughing and gasping for air.

Before anyone else can move, Izuru grabs him by the back of his collar and drags him gracelessly behind him. He coughs harshly again, sputtering as he is deposited on the floor by Izuru’s feet.

Kuzuryuu just watches, looking rather disinterested. He spreads his hands out. “So you’ll listen now?”

Pekoyama has retreated to his side, her sword still unsheathed. She appears to be waiting for his answer.

Izuru glances at Komaeda, rubbing his throat and taking rough, shaky breaths. “Yes. I will.”

“Good.” Kuzuryuu jerks his thumb, indicating outside. “You know how much of a mess those dumbasses are making out there now that Enoshima’s gone?”

“I do not.”

“Well, it’s a fucking big one.” He scowls again. The eye that is not his does not quite mirror the movements of the other, and Izuru can’t help but keep watching it. “Everyone’s decided that now’s a great time to rampage on their own. They’re getting messy, and they’re gonna get caught.”

Izuru blinks, looking away from the eye. “Get to your point, Kuzuryuu.”

“My point, is that those idiots are gonna fall apart without a leader. And you need to step up.”

“I’m not interested,” he answers immediately. Behind him, Komaeda wheezes.

Kuzuryuu grits his teeth, spitting, “Selfish bastard. She trusted you so goddamn much, you know? And here you are, depression napping with your fuckin’ boytoy instead of working towards her cause.”

“It’s better this way, Kuzuryuu-kun,” Komaeda interjects, his voice hoarse. “He’ll bring hope to the world now. The path is clear.”

“He’ll bring jack shit if all he does is sit around on his ‘perfect’ fucking ass all day. What, did Hope’s Peak give you a new one of those, too?”

Izuru’s eyes narrow. “What are you talking about?”

Kuzuryuu smirks, looking rather pleased with himself. “Yeah, I know about the Project. And I know she’s the one who saved you from it, same way she saved all of us. She gave you your freedom, didn’t she? You fucking owe her.”

He goes on, “You were her second-in-command. They’ll listen to you out there, and even if they don’t, you can make them. I’ll even back you up.” He grimaces. “Anything to get Souda to stop acting all high ‘n mighty ‘n shit. If he keeps going like this, I’m gonna grind him up in one of his own machines.”

“Is that all you had to say?” Izuru asks. Pins and needles trace down his spine at the mention of the Project, memories turned sensations that have yet to fade. “If so, then I find it best if you leave now.”

Breaking off his tangent, Kuzuryuu shakes his head. “Nuh-uh. No way you’re getting out of this that easy—“

“I will consider it,” Izuru cuts in. “I understand the depth of Enoshima’s faith in me. And you are correct. It is unfair of me to leave her work to the wayside.”

He knows Kuzuryuu has an ego, and he’s alright with feeding it, if it’ll keep Komaeda safe. He steadily meets Kuzuryuu’s gaze, although it feels more like he’s speaking to Enoshima’s dead eye swiveling in his socket than the yakuza himself. “You can expect to hear orders from me soon. Spread the news to the rest of the Despairs, if you must. But for now, you must leave.”

Kuzuryuu looks like he’s going to say something else, and Izuru immediately levels his gaze.

“I will tell you, Kuzuryuu Fuyuhiko, it is best if you go on your own terms. Before I am forced to get physical.”

“Young Master,” Pekoyama warns from her spot in his shadow, hand over the hilt of her blade.

Kuzuryuu clicks his tongue. He considers for a second, eyeing Izuru over, then, with a scoff, turns on his heel. “Fine. We’re outta here.”

For a few moments, Pekoyama remains still, her sharp eyes boring into Izuru’s even after Kuzuryuu steps out the door. She jerks her chin up, like a challenge. Tension burns in the air, a fuse set to spark, only to be extinguished when Kuzuryuu yells, “Get the fuck out here, Peko! I’m not gonna wait in the goddamn rain for you!” and she quickly makes her exit.

Izuru waits for their footsteps to fade before turning his attention fully to Komaeda on the floor behind him, shuddering on his knees. He kneels down, reaching to tip Komaeda’s head up and leaning in to inspect the bruising forming on his neck.

“I’m fine, Kamukura-kun, really,” he insists, pulling away with a gentle but firm hand against Izuru’s chest.

Izuru frowns. “I should check your injuries properly. I am aware of your tendency to downplay them.”

“Aha, it’s like you’re really worried about me or something,” Komaeda teases. Ignoring this, Izuru reaches for him again, only to be stopped once more.

Komaeda’s soft brows furrow, his mouth downturned in an open frown. “Are you… actually worried?”

“I would like to do my best to preserve your safety,” Izuru says briskly. “Now, let me check—“

“Actually?”

Izuru’s patience runs thin. “Are you just realizing this now? After what I said to you last night?”

Komaeda shakes his head. “This is—this is different. It was a matter of my life last night, and I understand that! You find that my life, as pitiful as it is, can be of some use to you. But I’m not going to die, now, and you’re worrying over me anyway.”

“...Yes,” Izuru says, unsure of the point Komaeda is trying to make. “Was that not clear?” He takes hold of Komaeda’s wrist and moves it aside to continue his assessment. And while Komaeda does not resist, the look of confusion remains on his face.

Finally, satisfied with his examination, Izuru stands. He reaches a hand to help Komaeda up. “You should be fine. I’ll give you another round of antibiotics once we get back upstairs.”

Komaeda grasps with his good hand, leaning heavily against Izuru even once he’s gotten to his feet.

“You know, I’ve never wanted to kiss you more than I do right now,” he admits quietly.

Izuru pauses. “Then why don’t you?”

“Oh, Kamukura-kun,” Komaeda says with a sigh. “I thought you were above asking questions you know the answer to.”

And he does know the answer, doesn’t he. Because Komaeda doesn’t see himself as worthy enough to initiate anything between them, despite his extensive pining. Because Izuru is untouchable and immovable and perfect, a cliff on a mountain to Komaeda’s river valley, always looking down. Because neither of them is meant for human connection.

Perhaps that means they could never find solace in anyone besides each other. Izuru makes note to write that down later. It’s rather poetic.

Now, and without another word, Izuru kisses him. He kisses him, because it is the only thing he can think to do. And it is not perfect. It is awkward, straining, a meeting of two pairs of chapped lips and smelling of grime and sweat and blood. There is no talent for this, Izuru realizes, a fire lighting in his belly. He pushes forward, devouring Komaeda’s gasp of surprise, holding him steady as they tip together. This is his humanity. He is grasping it in hand and binding it to his tongue.

The kiss lasts only a handful of seconds. Komaeda is the one who pulls away, looking dizzily up at the ceiling instead of at Izuru. “Oh,” he says, sounding dazed. “You’re not very good at that.” Immediately, his face goes red. “Ah, I mean—not to sound ungrateful, of course! In fact, I’m sure it’s my fault, I’m sorry—“

“Enough.” It is a command, but Izuru says it with a tenderness he wasn’t aware himself capable of. He hoists Komaeda up against his shoulder. “We will… discuss this later. For now, you will take your medicine and rest.”

“You know best,” Komaeda says, almost slyly. Izuru can hear the smile in his voice. It makes him feel… a way. A way he does not entirely want to think about.

He cannot be despair in the way Enoshima wanted. And he will not be the hope the people who made him designed him to be. But he will be this. He will hold what is important to him against his beating heart and feel in a way he was never supposed to.

Izuru leads them both back into the apartment, closing the door carefully behind them. Outside the window, the sky begins to clear.

Chapter Text

For the week and a half that follows the encounter with Kuzuryuu, the apartment mounted over the pawn shop becomes their keeper. Izuru very quickly decides that Komaeda would stay with him while he healed. He’d made too easy a target out on the streets, injured and reeking of weakness. The Despairs could smell blood like sharks in the water, and Izuru is sure none would hesitate to tear Komaeda apart.

He draws the tattered shades over the window, considering this. If he had been asked even a week prior, he would have left Komaeda to his ruin without a second thought. Not out of hatred or malice or anything, but purely out of apathy. Boredom. The bystander effect, perhaps. His own unwillingness to interfere in matters that didn’t involve him.

Although, Izuru supposes, the matter does involve him now. He watches Komaeda sit up from the bed with a grimace, bleary eyes tracking Izuru’s movements. From the bathroom, Izuru listens to the sound of the water running where he’s turned the faucet in the tub. It sputters, air in the pipes making the flow uneven.

“Do you need something more for the pain?” Izuru asks.

Komaeda visibly hesitates. “No.”

“Are you sure?”

Even in the dim there’s a clear struggle as Komaeda shifts in place, all his weight resting on his good hand, elbow locked to hold him upright. “...I’ll be okay. You’re not trying to overdose me, are you?”

He says it like a joke. Izuru frowns, drawing away from the window and melting into the shadows of the room. “That isn’t funny.”

Komaeda laughs weakly. “Sorry.”

Nudging a lock of hair over his shoulder, Izuru heads back into the bathroom, watching as the tub slowly fills. The bathroom itself is cramped and dirty, the corners of the tiled floor growing black with mold. The tub sits shoved against one wall, leaving barely enough room for even one inhabitant in the tiny bathroom.

Izuru sticks a hand out, holding his palm under the stream. He blinks. “It’s hot.”

From behind him, Komaeda chuckles. “Lucky.”

Izuru hadn’t heard him get up, but when he glances back he finds his companion leaning against the bathroom doorway, head tilted against the doorframe as he watches. His messy bangs just about fall into his eyes, and a shaky grin graces his tired face. Izuru must force his gaze away as another unknown emotion bubbles in his stomach.

When the tub is just about full, he turns the faucet off, straightening up. He gestures for Komaeda to go ahead before moving to shimmy out the doorway past him.

“You aren’t going to join me?” Komaeda asks, sounding surprised.

“There is barely enough room in that tub for one person, much less two.”

“Ah, I didn’t mean…” he shifts under the scrutiny of Izuru’s gaze. “Just—would you, um, help me at least? On account of…”

He sheepishly holds up the dead hand, currently free of its bandages. The ugly black stitches stand out in the greasy lighting. Right. Of course.

Izuru nods, just slightly embarrassed at the misunderstanding. “I will help. Undress and get in, I’ll join you in a moment.” He turns back to the bedroom, giving Komaeda his privacy. It was, perhaps, more for his own sake than Komaeda’s. To watch him would be too personal, too intimate. So, Izuru stands in the bedroom for a minute, gazing thoughtfully at the bed they’d been sharing.

For a long time, he’d figured himself above these things. Care. Companionship. Nights spent beside another warm body. Tender kisses inside wrists and against jaws. Still, he feels a certain amount of spiteful joy at betraying what the Project’s leaders had worked so hard for. Even if it means his horrid human heart falls somewhere below perfection.

From the bathroom, Izuru hears the splash of water as Komaeda shifts in the tub, and it is overwhelmingly loud in the otherwise relative silence. There are no screams rattling the windows, no distant explosions sending fire spewing into the sky. There is no murmuring hum of a security camera watching him, while scientists on the other end document his every move. Right now, it is just him and Komaeda in this quiet apartment. They may as well be the only two people in the world.

Izuru returns to the bathroom only to see Komaeda settling even farther into the tub with a sigh, his shoulders and chin sinking into the water. The layer of dirt and grime and sweat clinging to his skin has already begun to flake off and darken the water. Izuru could hazard a guess as to how long it’s been since he’s properly washed, but he decides it would be a rude assumption to make.

It’s not as though he’s any better. His once pressed shirt is wrinkled and torn, stained off-white from months without being cleaned. His hair is a dreadful thing laying heavy against his back, long and choked with oil and sweat, loose strands fraying from his scalp. Even in the labs, Izuru had little interest in cleaning it—he found the task boring and tedious—and with spotty access to facilities, it has only gotten worse over time.

The Tragedy had not been kind to anyone. Not even its instigators.

He kneels beside the tub, prodding Komaeda’s shoulder. “Try to stay awake. I said I would help, not that I would do this for you.”

“Hm?” Komaeda’s half-lidded eyes slide over to him. “Of course. You’re already giving me much more than I deserve.”

Choosing to withhold a response, Izuru instead reaches for his left arm, pulling it gently from the water. He turns it over in inspection, noting that the inflammation has done down significantly. Still, Izuru is sure the wound isn’t healing well with the stump of a dead woman’s hand against it. The skin around the area is still red and irritated by the stiches, unaided by fact that Komaeda can’t seem to keep from scratching at them.

“You should let me take this off for you,” Izuru mutters as he takes the arm in hand, pressing a thumb against the seam to create room to clean it. Komaeda winces as he soaps the area, dumping clean water from a bottle to rinse it.

This is not the first time Izuru has offered. And just like every other time, Komaeda simply shakes his head in response.

“I don’t think I can get rid of it now,” he says quietly. “It’s a part of me. And it…reminds me. Of everything she’s done. So I don’t forget.”

Izuru frowns, resting the hand over the side of the tub to keep it out of the dirty water as he moves to soap Komaeda’s hair. “You should want to forget the things she’s done.”

“Maybe,” Komaeda admits, head falling forward as Izuru rubs shampoo into his scalp. “But I think there may be nothing left of me if I forget her.”

Something stirs in Izuru’s gut at those words. It might be pity; he doesn’t quite know. Understanding, maybe. After all, Enoshima had molded him too.

He continues his ministrations in silence, rinsing the suds from Komaeda’s hair, letting his hands linger in the strands.

After they’re done in the bath, both dried and curled together in the cramped single bed, Izuru rests a hand to the back of Komaeda’s clean hair and sighs. Komaeda sits in his lap, head against Izuru’s chest, sleepy from both the warmth of the bath and fatigue.

From the bed, Izuru can see out the apartment’s single window, where the smog-choked red sky darkens as evening sets. He’s tired of seeing it, and very suddenly, he is tired of being here. Tired of being in this world the way it was now, decrepit and broken.

He can feel Komaeda’s heartbeat under his fingers, the rhythm steady. It brings him back to himself.

“I’ll have to leave soon,” he murmurs, melting his loneliness around the words. He’s indulged too much. It had to be enough. “I have business in Towa City.”

For a moment, he’s unsure whether Komaeda hears him. Then, the body against him shifts a bit. “I’ll follow you there,” Komaeda whispers against his breastbone. His breath is hot on Izuru’s skin, alive and present and inviting. Izuru doesn’t know how he will stand to leave this behind.

Nevertheless, he speaks again. “You shouldn’t. It is of a personal matter.”

“I’d follow you to the ends of the earth if you asked,” Komaeda mumbles.

Izuru frowns, looking down. His nose tickles where the fluff of Komaeda’s hair brushes against it, and he runs a hand over it to smooth it down. “I’m not asking.”

“Right.”

“Komaeda,” Izuru says flatly. “Do not put yourself in danger unnecessarily.”

Komaeda hums. “You don’t need to worry over me. I’ll be okay. I’m lucky, remember?”

There are plenty of things Izuru could say to argue. However, in the sleepy stillness of the settling night, with his disordered thoughts weighing in the back of his mind, he has no care to do so. He lets it go, simply closing his eyes and pressing a kiss to the top of Komaeda’s head.

“Fine,” he concedes.

–-

Months later, when Naegi Makoto comes for him, it is within the rotting belly of the former Hope’s Peak Academy, in a derelict classroom long scorched by fire and death. Wind whistles through the shattered windows, and Izuru’s shoes scuff the floor stained with blood and soot.

He hears the man approaching long before he reaches the door, long before he calls out, “Kamukura Izuru?” in a shaky, false bravado tone. Izuru does not need to look to know that Naegi is trembling, or that the pits of his standard issue Future Foundation suit, a size too big, are soaked dark with sweat.

Unflinching, Izuru turns. “That is the name I was given,” he says. He has to speak up to be heard over the helicopter outside. A Future Foundation vehicle, whirring its blades through the dirty air. Even in the desolation, there is no silence to be found here. Beneath their feet, the building groans in the wind.

Naegi picks his way past the door. Short and smooth-faced, he looks like a boy playing pretend in the sleek black uniform of the Future Foundation. On his lapel, the pin bearing their logo is slightly crooked. He seems barely a man, but the circles under his eyes and the exhaustion prominent in his face speak wonders of the weight on his back. The hope of the world lies on this man’s scrawny shoulders.

For a moment, and only a moment, Izuru pities him. He too knows how it feels to be Atlas. To struggle like an insect beneath an unimaginable burden.

A pair of handcuffs click against each other in Naegi’s trembling grasp. Izuru eyes them skeptically.

“You know those will not hold me,” he says.

Naegi nods, swallowing hard. Izuru follows the bob of his throat. “Yeah, I know.”

“You will not be able to subdue me on your own.”

“…I know.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I’m here to ask you to surrender.”

Izuru frowns. “The Future Foundation want me dead. You are asking me to walk myself to the gallows.”

“That’s not it. The rest of them,” Naegi stresses, “want you dead.”

It is not hard for Izuru to understand the meaning of his emphasis. Knowingly, he tilts his head. “Not you, though.” 

Jerkily, Naegi nods. “Right.”

Izuru steps forward, expecting Naegi to flinch away from him. Somehow, he keeps his ground. Sweat beads on his temple, but he looks determined despite it. Interesting. Perhaps there is in fact something more to Naegi Makoto than what first appears.

Izuru gestures to one of the desks. “Take a seat. We can discuss your intentions further.” His tone makes it clear the words are not just suggestion. He waits silently until Naegi moves to do so, watching bemusedly when the man flinches at the shriek the rusted metal chair legs make as they drag against the floor.

“Okay…” Naegi says once he’s seating, squirming uncomfortably in his seat. He’s quite the ridiculous sight that way. The Future Foundation’s poster boy sitting with his hands folded over a school desk like he’s being reprimanded for misbehavior, thumbs turning over each other. “Um… are you going to sit?”

“No.”

“Oh. Okay.” Naegi clears his throat awkwardly. “I guess I’ll start then. There’s no need to beat around the bush, I suppose. I have a plan for you. All of you.”

“You mean the Remnants of Despair.”

He nods. “I’m not going to turn you in to the rest of the Future Foundation.” His eyes dart around the room as he speaks, like he’s worried about being watched.

“Enoshima’s game is over,” Izuru says. He means the words to reassure, but his tone fails to carry the sentiment. It comes out mocking and harsh instead. “There are no cameras here.”

For a moment, it’s almost like Naegi doesn’t hear him. Then, he swallows once, apparently steeling himself. “Yeah… Yeah, I know.” He meets Izuru’s gaze again, although his eyes still flick away every so often. Izuru doesn’t blame him. It has only been months.

“There’s a machine on Jabberwock island,” Naegi begins explaining, “fitted with a software called the Neo World Program. It’s a type of psychotherapeutic virtual reality, meant to help trauma patients recover.”

Last he’d heard, the Neo World Program had only just entered beta testing. He wonders who completed it now that the Ultimate Programmer and Neurologist are both dead.

Unaware of Izuru’s wandering thoughts, Naegi continues, “We know that the Remnants were brainwashed into becoming despair, and… well, I don’t think it’s right to just execute you all. So we’ll take you into custody temporarily, and—” he stops, glancing around again.

“You plan to use the Neo World Program to rehabilitate the Remnants,” Izuru finishes.

“The machine will take your minds back about three years. Before you all entered Hope’s Peak.” Naegi smiles hesitantly. “I guess you can already fill in the rest.”

Like usual, Izuru finds himself thinking several things at once, and the whirlwind of those thoughts forces him to freeze. Lately, Enoshima’s last words to him have been eating through his brain like a worm, and as Naegi describes his plan, all Izuru can think is that this must be what she wants him to do. Infect the program with her, let her run rampant.

It was her final request. Isn’t he obligated?

However, he also notes a flaw in Naegi’s plan. Izuru did not exist three years ago. This borrowed body of his held another being in it, one that had been removed for the sake of making room for Izuru. If the program attempted to take his mind back then, would it even work? Or would he simply be erased as well, leaving behind an empty husk? Without examining the code, Izuru doesn’t know, and that not-knowing makes his heart race in a way it hasn’t in nearly as long as he can remember.

“So, what do you think?” Naegi asks.

Too many things, if he’s being honest. But one thought bubbles to the top of the rest of the slew muddling around in his would-be perfect brain.

He wants to test Naegi, test this robber of his title. Izuru has long since determined that it is impossible for any one human to truly embody hope. He wants to know how Naegi has fooled the world. What will be enough to make him crack.

It’s clinical. Experimental. A process learned from the people who made him.

Enoshima Junko’s consciousness sits packed away in a USB nub on his person. He will keep his final promise to her after all.

After a beat of hesitation, Izuru closes his eyes. “Very well.”

The wind pulls his hair like it doesn’t want him to go. Izuru does not listen. He bows his head and turns his wrists up, and Naegi slips the cuffs over them and snaps them shut. Surrender is as easy as lying. They both know it’s just for show. If Izuru wanted to escape, his bindings would make no difference.

During their talk, the helicopter he’d heard from the classroom has descended to the clearing outside, scattering dust and debris with the whirl of its blades. The wind from it clears Izuru’s hair from his face, and in doing so displays more kindness than he expects from any of the Future Foundation members themselves.

He follows Naegi dutifully through the blasted doors, and what a sight they must be. Five-foot-two Naegi Makoto leading out the looming shadow that is the leader of the Remnants of Despair, Kamukura Izuru, handcuffed, like a dog on a leash.

They’ll see it as another win for hope. Izuru can hear the lackeys whispering even from here, can see their hushed conversations and sideways glances even as Naegi gestures for him to board the helicopter.

Before he’s properly seated, two of the larger grunts climb into the chamber as well, descending upon him with purpose. All pressed suits and sunglasses and hands frisking him over. Izuru just stands still and takes it, complying when they ask him to turn, when they feel under his jacket. They won’t find any weapons on him, after all. And the USB nub that holds the world’s next downfall is sewn between the padded lining of his coat. They won’t find that, either, although not for lack of trying.

“What’s this?” One of the men asks suddenly, pulling a small, battered blue notepad from Izuru’s inside pocket. For a moment, he just stares at it blankly, caught off guard.

“...Nothing important,” he answers after a moment. There’s no way they’ll let him keep it. Besides, he has no real attachment to the few scraps of paper inside that he’d scrawled margin to margin with bits of stories, unfinished. They were just words. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t care.

Izuru repeats this to himself as the man tucks the notepad into his own breast pocket, presumably to be examined later.

Eventually, the men appear satisfied with their search, and Izuru is allowed to sit, sandwiched between them. Naegi offers him a sympathetic look from his own seat but says nothing as the helicopter takes off once more.

Izuru watches as the looming spires of the former Hope’s Peak Academy shrink and vanish in his sightline. The view does not make him feel anything.

True to his word, Naegi does not take him to the Future Foundation’s headquarters. Instead, after a few hours of travel, the helicopter lands on the roof of a rather innocuous looking building a few miles from harbor, and Izuru is roughly directed out of the vehicle and in through the doors.

He passes through several monochrome hallways before finally being thrust behind a set of bars, into a cramped, dark cell. Even with just a glance, he notices the vulnerabilities of it. The openings in the bars, the grate of an air duct on the far wall, the latch on the door. Still, there is no urge in him to escape.

The stick that is Enoshima’s consciousness is his only company as the guards slam the gate of the cell shut, leaving him to himself in the dark.

Izuru sits on the ground and stares at the wall. There is emotion in him now. Anticipation. He wants to see what will happen next, whether Enoshima’s despair, her ultimate failsafe, will overcome Naegi’s plan to save them.

For now, he has nothing to do but wait and see.

--

Izuru has not dreamt since leaving the facility he was made in. Something about the holding cell must trick his mind into believing he’s returned, because that night, he does.

He dreams of walking in darkness, one hand flat against a wall to his side, which is his only guide in the dark. His shoes click on linoleum, a sound he’s familiar with, and beyond his breathing, this is the only thing he can hear. The silence is deafening, and Izuru feels swallowed by it.

Where the wall turns, Izuru turns with it, navigating around corners and edges and dead ends with touch alone. He doesn’t know how long he’s been walking, but he’s afraid to stop, afraid to lose his place on the path in the dark.

His heart beats frantically, and it is like nothing he has ever felt before. Skin scrapes the wall, his pace quickens, and from somewhere behind him a low beeping begins, steady in both volume and rhythm and it follows him down the winding halls.

It ends when Izuru bursts around a corner only to halt at the sight that greets him. The hallway ends in a mirror, a floor-to-ceiling sheet of glass lit by a single recessed light in the ceiling above it.

Izuru approaches cautiously, staring into the mirror. A stranger with his face stares back, assuming the role of his reflection.

The boy in the mirror moves then, without Izuru’s input, pressing his hands to the glass between them. Despite seemingly trapped, his expression remains unfazed. When he speaks, it is not quite with Izuru’s voice.

“I know you,” the boy says, although he speaks hesitantly, sounding unsure. “You’re the person I became, right?”

“I am,” Izuru answers immediately. The beeping emanating from the hallway behind him continues, filling the space between him and his reflection.

The boy moves his hands, dropping them to his side as he moves away from the mirror. There is no residue left on the glass from his fingers.

“I don’t understand,” he says. “Why did you come to see me?”

“I have not done so on purpose. I simply ended up here,” Izuru replies.

The boy glances around. “How?”

Izuru hesitates. He glances backwards at the tiled floor that melts into shadow, then forward again, at the glass impeding his progress. He doesn’t want to admit he doesn’t know.

“Will something happen to you if I break this mirror?” he asks instead.

The boy looks confused. “Mirror?”

“The one you’re trapped in,” Izuru explains. “There is an exit behind you.”

Again, the boy’s brow furrows in confusion. Repeating Izuru’s earlier motion, he glances behind himself, at the dark of the hallway behind the glass.

“It’s a box,” the boy says.

Growing frustrated, Izuru puts his hands against the glass. “It’s not a box. It’s a maze. There is an exit. I simply need to find it.”

“An exit,” the boy echoes. Then, he shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to be the one to tell you this.”

And his mouth opens once more, but before any words can escape it, Izuru is ripped violently from his sleep to the sound of clanging against the bars of his cell.

He wakes all at once and sits up to see a group of suited men just outside, armed with pistols and dark sunglasses, except for the man banging against the cell door. He’s blonde, with sharp eyes that look with scorn down at Izuru from behind wire-rim glasses. Izuru recognizes him.

“Kamukura,” Togami Byakuya sneers. “Get up. We have work for you.”

--

Izuru finds himself rather unceremoniously escorted through the facility with Togami’s entourage corralling him between them. He’s eventually pushed into a sparse room, furnished with only a table and chair on one end. A camera on a tripod is set up facing the table.

Naegi is there, watching nervously as one of Togami’s men takes Izuru by the wrist and shoves him into the seat behind the table. The man pulls his cuffed hands up and attaches the chain to a hook on the table.

“Is this an interrogation?” Izuru asks blandly.

“It’s a broadcast,” Togami answers.

Naegi shuffles forward, setting his mouth in a firm line before he elaborates, “We’re going to show the other Remnants that you’ve been captured. Hopefully, they’ll be more willing to surrender themselves if their leader tells them to do so.”

Izuru thinks that may be too logical a step for the other Remnants, but he keeps that to himself. Instead, he says curtly, “So you’re using me.”

Naegi swallows. “Well—”

“You are a prisoner, Kamukura,” Togami interrupts. “This is not a resort. You will do what we say.”

Well. Izuru is very good at that. He lifts his chin and turns to look straight into the camera. In his periphery, he sees Togami nod. One of his men takes a spot behind the camera.

“Just tell them to not resist capture,” Naegi instructs. “Tell them what you think will make them turn themselves in.”

“Rolling in three,” the man behind the camera says. “Two.”

The camera lens shines in the dim light, and it looks like Enoshima’s dead eye swiveling in Kuzuryuu’s socket. Izuru meets its gaze evenly and without feeling, just the way he should.

“One.”

“Remnants of Despair,” he begins. “There are many things I am sure you are aware of. For one, who I am, and what me appearing here, on a Future Foundation broadcast, means.” Izuru lifts his chained hands as far as he can, making a point to rattle them audibly. From the corner of the room, Naegi gives him a thumbs up.

Izuru puts his hands back down. “Remnants of Despair, you are scattered. You are divided.” He pauses. “You are losing.” It takes everything within him to stress the word, and it still sounds unnatural coming from his mouth.

“We have long been weakened by Enoshima’s death. Every day, more and more of her followers are killed. Many by our own hands. Meanwhile, the Future Foundation’s numbers only grow larger. I do not need to explain why this model is unsustainable.” Izuru makes firm eye contact with the camera, imaging the faces watching him right now. He must be on every screen out there. He sits a little straighter and draws his shoulders tight.

“When the Future Foundation agents come for you, you have my permission to turn yourselves in. For now, you must chase your despair in surrender.”

With that, he bows forward, and his hair falls with him, obscuring his face. He hears the camera cut with a click.

“Do you really think this will do anything?” Togami directs the question at Naegi, who seems tentatively pleased with Izuru’s speech.

Izuru answers instead, righting himself. “Probably not. You should be prepared to bring them in with force either way.”

Togami clicks his tongue, scowling over at Izuru. Probably upset that Izuru spoke to him without prompting.

“Either way, it’s worth it to try,” Naegi says. “Maybe it won’t convince all of them to surrender, but even a few is better than none.”

Ever the optimist, Izuru notes. He looks down at his chained hands on the table and pointedly avoids thinking of just how loudly Enoshima would be laughing if she could see him like this.

--

The Future Foundation hold him in that facility for an additional month. Izuru only barely manages to keep track of time there. When he was kept in the labs, his schedule was regulated, and he always knew what time it was despite the lack of windows. Here, he’s woken so inconsistently it throws his internal clock off. He’s never really sure what time it is.

Both Naegi and Togami leave after that first broadcast, only returning every so often to check on him. Neither tell him anything about what’s going on outside, how many have been captured or who. However, considering he’s made to do two more broadcasts in the following weeks, he can’t imagine the situation went as well as Naegi hoped.

He spends most of his time imprisoned sleeping, and he dreams often. Most of his dreams contain that same dark maze from his writing. He’ll stumble through those empty corridors, acutely aware of being watched. Not once is he able to find the exit before waking.

Then, finally, his reprieve is granted. He is roused from sleep by the agents only to be cuffed and ushered, not farther into the facility, but back out of it. From there, he’s loaded onto a black armored truck and driven out.

After the drive, Izuru is hustled out of the car, and immediately he notes the acrid stench of sulfur and waste, indicative of the sea. In the port is a large, nondescript freighter, around which a few Future Foundation agents linger. Izuru’s eyes land quickly on Naegi, who seems to have taken to standing beside the boarding plank and looking out of place.

His eyes light up at Izuru is herded closer, and his undoubtedly sweaty hands unclasp and spread out in greeting. “Kamukura-san! This is it! You’re going to Jabberwork Island!”

Izuru feels no need to respond, and so he doesn’t. Naegi’s face falls, but he reorients himself quickly, instructing the men hoisting Izuru to take him aboard.

The room he’s thrown into is dark and empty, with only one square cutout on the side of the wall through which Izuru can see the red ocean and sky. Izuru makes to move to it, only to stop as the ship tilts. He can hear the roiling waves outside, can feel the sway of the boat beneath his feet as the ocean rattles it. On instinct, Izuru searches for patterns and with a jolt finds that he cannot identify one.

Every jostle is a surprise.

--

The room housing the Neo World Program is tall, with a domed ceiling into which reaches the spire of the central processor. Even Izuru finds himself awed by it, although only for a moment. It is a marvel of technology, the same way he’s supposed to be. Seeing it sparks a sense of kinship in him.

The Remnants were each led inside individually, and Izuru can see now that he’s the last one. Fourteen of the virtual reality pods lay closed in a halo around the computer, each humming gently with life. Only one remains open and empty, and Naegi nudges him towards it.

They pass by the central processor, and Izuru needs only a moment. With near inhuman precision, the black and white nub of the USB drive slips from his sleeve and into his hand. He pauses, and Naegi bumps into his back.

“Uh, Kamukura-san…?” Naegi asks nervously.

Izuru takes a performatively deep breath. “Nerves,” he says.

Naegi gives him a sad, sympathetic look, and it makes him look ridiculously young. Like a child mourning a dropped candy. “Of course. But you don’t need to worry. I promise, you’ll all be okay. This will work.”

Izuru nods. Naegi’s eyes stay on his face, and as they continue the walk to the pod, neither Naegi nor any other Future Foundation agent in the room notice the new addition slotted neatly into one of the computer’s many ports.

Soon, Izuru finds himself cradled in the VR pod, nestled between wires and tubes. It is a familiar sensation. He was born this way, spat into the world from wires and computer code. In the end, this place may be his coffin as well.

Naegi is at his side. Izuru thinks he may have taken his comment about being nervous too seriously.

“You’ll be okay,” Naegi repeats, and Izuru can tell he believes it.

Izuru turns his eyes up, to the domed ceiling and the top lip of the pod hovering over him like a jaw about to close over prey.

“Tell me, Naegi Makoto,” he says. “Who do you think will appear when I enter the program? Will it be me? Or will it be the lost mind once housed within this body?”

Naegi doesn’t reply immediately, and his boyish face twists into uncertainty. The look deepens the lines under his eyes. “I… I don’t know,” he says finally.

With a smooth, mechanical hiss the lid of the pod begins to close, cutting their conversation short. Inside, mercifully hidden from the prying eyes of the Future Foundation and the world, Izuru allows himself a smile. It is fragile and awkward, but genuine, and he catches it reflected in the curve of the lid containing him.

He doesn’t know either. And he cannot wait to see.

Chapter Text

The first thought Hajime has as the simulation melts away, as he wakes and takes a first and triumphant gasp of stale air, palms slamming against the walls of the chamber containing him, is that he is, for perhaps the first time ever, well and truly himself.

The island flashes behind his eyes, growing hazy with each moment, and he fights to keep it in mind. Beneath the veneer, other memories surface. Images of dark rooms and needles and faceless men scribbling on clipboards. A clipshow of red skies and ruined building and the beam of a dead girl’s smile. He tries to shake his head, and his neck is too heavy for it. His whole body is heavy, his limbs mushy with disuse, and he thinks he just might drown in the amount of hair crammed around him.

Somewhere above him, he hears a hiss, and suddenly the top of the container he’s in lifts away, taking with it the blurry green vignette hiding the outside from view. Cool air slams into his face, and the difference in temperature between the chamber warmed by his body heat and the world outside is enough to make him shiver.

He blinks to adjust his eyes to the darkness beyond the lid of the container. Looking down at him is Togami Byakuya’s impassive face. His gaze is sharp and searching as it surveys Hajime, as though it is looking for something in his face. Whatever it is, Togami must find it, because after a few seconds, his eyes soften, and he holds out a hand to help Hajime sit up.

Once upright, Hajime blearily takes in the darkened room. The central processor for the Neo World Program stands aglow with sickly green light, an obelisk between the fifteen pods splaying outwards from it like the spokes of a wheel. The three Future Foundation members are hurrying back and forth between the survivors, helping them as they wake, and Hajime finds their expressions torn between the crossroads of apprehension and relief.

Togami leans over him, working to free the various wires and tubes feeding into the pod. Hajime keeps still as the man’s fingers unhook an IV from the port in the crook of his arm.

“So,” Togami says finally, moving to peel electrodes off Hajime’s scalp. His look is careful, almost wary, as he watches Hajime wince from the hair that tears off alongside the sticky pads. “Which one are you, then? Hinata Hajime? Or Kamukura Izuru?”

The question baffles him. Newly woken and still hazy from the mirage of the simulation in the corners of his vision, the thought of even attempting to answer that question feels overwhelming. Hajime tries to speak only to fail with a cough. Togami is still watching, looking expectant behind the bridge of his glasses.

Hajime swallows, trying to soften his unused voice.

“I’m me,” he says, like it means something. It feels like it should. His voice cracks around the words, and Togami just purses his lips and stays silent.

The clarity of the moment doesn’t last. As the final wires are disconnected, freeing him entirely from the hold of the VR pod, he keeps circling back to those words. In just enough time for him to clumsily rise to his feet, shaky on legs that have begun to forget how to stand, it dawns on Hajime that he has no idea what he meant. That whoever it is in his head isn’t quite him at all. He finds himself fixated on the ground as he tries to order his thoughts, so absorbed by them that he doesn’t even notice when Togami leaves, someone else taking his place.

“Hinata-kun?” A voice asks, hesitant.

Hajime looks up, startled. A hand stretches out towards him, belonging to Naegi Makoto. The man looks older and noticeably more haggard than his avatar in the simulation had been, but the same warm crinkle is apparent in his eyes, the same small, hopeful smile.

Hajime’s mouth goes dry. “…Yes?” he answers with a question. The name doesn’t feel exactly right, and to reply feels like cinching a belt too tight. It’s suffocating.

Naegi’s tender smile falls. “…Kamukura-kun, then?”

Instinct tells him to answer, but just as he opens his mouth, a searing pain cracks along his brow. Hajime sucks in a breath through his teeth, reeling backwards and just barely managing to catch himself against the open rim of the VR pod, his other hand flying up to press against his forehead. His fingers brush against a line of rough, upraised skin just under his hairline, and he freezes.

He thinks Naegi might be saying something to him, but he can’t hear it over the ringing in his ears. His vision swims, and he chokes out a sound of pain, gripping harder as his head. Someone puts a hand on his back, taking his arm and draping it over their shoulder, and the next thing he knows he’s moving.

Doors swing open, and Hajime must close his eyes against the harsh bright light of the space outside the server room, his head pounding with every beat of his heart. With his eyes squeezed shut and mind foggy, he doesn’t know where he’s being led, can’t keep track of the turns and corridors well enough.

A maze, he thinks dizzily, and the laugh that starts in his chest turns into a whine.

Every other thought feels overwhelming. Hajime seeks out contentment and simply lets himself drift.

He isn’t truly present, that first day. The world passes by under the pain of a migraine and a head fog unlike any he’s experienced before. He’s vaguely aware as he’s put into bed in a cleared out room, and at some point he’s brought food and drink, which he indulges little of. They give him pills for the headache, but the only true respite he gets from it is sleep.

He doesn’t ask to see the others when he wakes. He doesn’t think he could face them the way he is—with confusion and hesitation and uncertainty stewing in him like a horrible broth. Not after everything he’d said in the simulation.

Hajime is told later, as he’s brought soft foods and liquids by a smiling Naegi, that the Future Foundation members had brought supplies from the third island and renovated several offices of the administrative building into makeshift hospital rooms to house them for the time being. Hajime processes this information with disinterest. He still feels like his head is going to burst.

Naegi tells him as they begin physical therapy that simply the feat of waking up and staying somewhat himself must have been incredibly taxing on Hajime’s mind and body. That they hadn’t expected whatever he’d done in the simulation to stick.

Hajime doesn’t know what to think about that, but then again, he’s doesn’t want to think much at all. He just drifts, doing what he’s asked, moving as he’s told and eating as much as he can when he’s brought food. The rest of the time he spends sleeping or watching out the large windows in his room at the cloudy gray sky outside.

--

A brief polite knock warns him of Naegi’s entry just moment before the man eases the door open. None of the Future Foundation wait for Hajime to give them permission to enter. They just do it.

As it is, Hajime watches vacantly as Naegi awkwardly approaches the bed, hands clasped politely in front of him and a sheepish sort of smile on his face.

“Hey, Hinata-kun! How are you feeling?”

Hajime sighs, sitting up straighter with his weight on his hands. The mattress creaks and dips under his palms. “Better,” he says curtly, unwilling to afford a kinder tone to Naegi’s forced enthusiasm. “Kirigiri came by earlier with lunch and had me do some stretching and light exercise. With a continued regimen, the soreness and mild muscle atrophy should resolve themselves.”

Naegi gives a short nod. “Good, that’s good to hear.”

The two lapse into silence. The buzz of the AC is deafeningly loud within it. Naegi clears his throat.

“Um, your friends are recovering well, too! It’s kind of miraculous, to be honest. Sonia-san even asked if it would be possible to—”

“No,” Hajime interrupts, already knowing what Naegi’s next words are to be. “No, I’m not seeing any of them.” He can’t. Not when he’s still like this.

Naegi frowns. “So you don’t think you’ve figured out which one you are yet.”

Hajime groans, leaning forward and pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes. What a stupid fucking thing to say. As if he could simply untangle the strands of himself knotted together in his mind. As if to do so were as easy as pulling apart a bow. Hajime thinks to even start he’d need a pair of scissors.

He hears Naegi’s nice dress shoes against the linoleum floor as the other man steps closer. A moment later, a hand lands on his shoulder.

“I guess that means I’m right,” Naegi says, and Hajime could strangle him for how amused he sounds about it. Instead, he just lets out a sharp breath through his nose. He tries to put a name to what he’s feeling. Frustration? Anger? It’s hard to tell. Every emotion stirred within him feels strangely distant, clouded by some overwhelming apathy that refuses to leave him be. He shrugs Naegi’s hand off, letting his own fall from his face to his lap.

“I just…still need more time,” he says lamely. “It’s not like all this is easy. The recovery stuff. It’s like—I can almost hear two voices in my head. Both trying to convince me they’re who I really am.”

“Well, maybe you don’t really have to figure that out,” Naegi suggests. Hajime gives him a dubious look, and Naegi seems to grow flustered under it, backtracking quickly. “I just mean, instead of trying to figure out who you are, or who you’re supposed to be, maybe you could just decide…who you want to be instead?”

That stupid hopeful smile is on his face again, flowering even under the weight of Hajime’s incredulous stare. “I don’t know if it would be any easier, but…it’s a thought?”

Hajime thinks about that for a moment. Who he wants to be? If he’s honest, that sounds like an even bigger pain in the ass to figure out. But Naegi looks so pleased with himself. Like this is the part where Hajime is supposed to have a grand revelation about his identity and have all his problems solved. Maybe start crying or something as he aggressively thanks Naegi for his bout of wisdom.

In reality, nothing changes. The AC keeps rumbling. Naegi is still waiting for an answer.

Hajime thinks of cold despair. He’d felt it in the simulation—when he’d faced the other half of himself, that dark, inhuman thing still lurking within him now.

“If…If I were Kamukura,” Hajime tries to explain. The words come haltingly. “I wouldn’t. Want. At all. He never wanted anything.” Then, unprompted, “I was never allowed to.”

Naegi’s eyes widen, and he looks so stupefied that Hajime almost laughs. He doesn’t, though. Just keeps talking.

“In the simulation, I wanted to keep being myself. So, so badly. And I still…want that. I think. I still want to be me, but—” He tangles one hand in the unruly locks of his hair and pulls. The stinging of his scalp distracts him from the headache rearing its ugly head once more. “I don’t know what that means right now. I want to by myself, but myself is so muddy.” He pulls harder, wrapping the lock around his hand, and the tight draw of the strands bites red lines into his palm. “You all keep asking me which one I am, but I’m more like—both? Either?”

His chest hurts. Naegi reaches out to put a hand over his, tugging Hajime’s hair out of his grip. Hajime’s suddenly blurry vision finds Naegi’s face, reading worry in his eyes, and it’s only then he realizes he’s started hyperventilating.

“Breathe, Hinata-kun,” Naegi murmurs, rubbing circles into the back of Hajime’s hand.

He tries to. Several deep breaths later, he closes his eyes, collapsing back onto his pillow with a sigh.

“It used to be so simple,” he mutters. “When it was just me alone in my head.”

“You know, I have a friend whose situation is a bit similar,” Naegi says. Hajime cracks an eye open to receive Naegi’s reassuring smile. “Maybe I can ask her about it for you.”

“Fukawa Touko,” Hajime says, startling even himself. He doesn’t know how he knows her. His mouth keeps moving, and there is no emotion in his voice. “I doubt her input would be helpful. Her situation is hardly similar to mine.”

Naegi’s brows knit together. He leans closer, eyes searching Hajime’s face. “To whose?”

“To—” Hajime stops, suddenly at a loss. “Ours?” He groans. God, his head fucking hurts. He covers his eyes with a hand, massaging his temples, and Naegi seems to take this as a cue to back off. He pats Hajime’s hand, the one he still has in his grip.

“I’ll let you get back to your rest, okay? One of us will bring you dinner in a few hours.”

Hajime offers a noncommittal hum in response and asks Naegi to turn the lights off as he leaves.

--

That night, his dreams are memories. Through a blur like frosted glass, Hajime watches needles draw blood and scalpels split flesh. There’s a scratching at the back of his skull, like the scrape of a pen on paper. He closes his eyes, his head spinning under the glare of the fluorescent lights, and when he opens them again, he’s somewhere else.

The haze clears, and he can see the room, now. Dark and empty and exactly thirteen of his paces across. He can measure the distance with his eyes even in the dark, having walked it countless times before. The distance never changed, and he would walk it regardless. A tiger stalking its cage.

Right now, he is not walking it. Because his body is exhausted, limbs heavy with the fatigue of a long day of testing, and despite this, they have once again restrained him to the bed. This, besides the security camera mounted over the latched metal door to the enclosure, is the only item in the room.

There is a procedure scheduled in the morning. The doctors plan to open up his head again, to leave him once more with a crest of angry red stitches over his skull. Then they’ll ask him to perform for them. Like a court fool.

Like a science project.

He is not upset by this, and it is only partially because they have removed from him the ability to be so. He understands what he is and what he is meant to become. There is method and procedure to these things after all, and he is smart enough to know that progress is not always easy nor bloodless. He will follow orders because that is what he agreed to, and because they will sing his praise and call him a “scientific marvel” and he will be able to sleep the next night feeling as though he has accomplished something with his worthless life.

Tonight, however, sleep eludes him. They’d dosed him with melatonin, but it has only made him sluggish and still unable to rest. He suspects he’s begun to grow a tolerance for it—being dosed often in the evenings or when they move him to different facilities. They do it to keep him compliant, and that feels like an insult. He knows better than to try and escape.

Thirteen paces of an empty metal room. This is his world. The bindings yanking his wrists to the bedframe are cloth but have been tied too tight. They pull and chafe at the skin as he adjusts his position, struggling to sleep. The IV port in his arm hurts, and the stiches under his nape itch. Despite the fact that the room is equipped with both camera and microphone to monitor him, he does not bother to voice these complaints. Nothing would be done about them even if he did.

He teachers love to coo over him during tests, love to clap their hands together and say, “Wonderful job, Izuru!” as he flawlessly completes whatever task they’ve set before him. They’ll cheer as he breaks records in athletics or performs pitch-perfectly on whatever instrument he’s been handed. Applause will break as he completes complex combat maneuvers or solves complicated problems in seconds. But at the end of it all, it is not him in celebration. It is their own success. He is simply a byproduct of it. The perfect experiment.

So no one will come to loosen his restraints or offer him another sleep aid or gently sweep aside his hair so it doesn’t catch and bunch in his stitches. There is no reason to care for something like him.

At times like these, he thinks he hates them. Or, rather, that he would if he were able to feel at all.

The thought bores him as soon as it crosses his mind.

Hajime wakes from the dreams that were his memories and sits up suddenly in a dark, empty room. The curtains are drawn tight over the windows, and the only light comes from the hallway outside the door. Excepting the bed, the room has no furniture. His disoriented mind fills in the gaps.

Thirteen paces.

His heart pounds as he slides the sheets off and slips from the bed, shakily making his way to one end of the room. The tile is cool under his feet, and he feels the uneven ridges where the pieces of flooring meet one another when he scrunches his toes at the chill.

He takes one tentative step from the wall. Then another. Step by step, he walks carefully from one end of the room to the other, and he only allows himself a full, proper breath when he’s reached the opposite wall following fourteen and a half paces.

Hajime’s back hits the wall. Pressure builds in that line drawn across his scalp, and he slides to the ground to stare at the floor between his feet. His head falls forward, long black hair curtaining his view as he takes several timed breaths in an effort to calm his racing pulse.

Somewhere else in the room, the AC clicks on, whirring faintly. From the hallway, he can hear the hum of the fluorescent lights, and a tree branch taps against the window of the room as the wind rattles it. He is not in a lab below Hope’s Peak, and he never will be again. If he could stand and draw the curtain, he’d see the line of Jabberwock’s beach, the dark shape of the ocean and the greenery outside. He’d even see the moon if the sky were clear.

It takes longer than he’d like to properly convince himself of this fact.

Eventually, and with a voice that does not feel completely like his own, he murmurs, “Those were your memories, weren’t they.” He presses a hand to his chest, feeling the thrum of his heart under his fingers. It reminds him that he’s human. “But, you’re me, right? So they’re really my memories. Just…ones I forgot.”

His inflection fluctuates, rising to something overwhelmed before dipping back into apathy. He can’t hold it steady. The budding migraine begins to blossom. Hajime groans.

“I hated them,” he tells himself bitterly. “The doctors. My teachers. The Steering Committee. All of them.”

He remembers Enoshima laughing in his ear. He imagines the teasing light in her eyes and the scrape of her fingernails on his face. Hajime grits his teeth as the pain in his head swells. “Her, too. I hated them with everything I had. I just didn’t know.” His hand curls into a fist, his shirt bunching between his knuckles. “Bastards thought they taught me everything, but never let me know just how much they took from me. They never taught me how to feel. Never taught me how to understand myself, how to handle living outside of those sterile concrete rooms.”

A weight presses behind his eyes, and he blinks to try and alleviate the pressure. He tips his head back to rest against the cool of the wall. The ceiling wavers in his vision, tiled acoustic squares melding with his memory of the smooth concrete room he’d had in the labs.

Hajime laughs without smiling, and it is a dry, wretched sound. “I was never human to them. I knew that. But I never knew what that would mean for me. For—for us?”

His head feels like it just might burst, and his eyelids droop, exhaustion overcoming him. He’s still too shaky to make the walk back to the bed. “For me,” he whispers again, slipping sideways along the wall, compliant as sleep overtakes him.

--

In the morning, Hajime rouses by a sudden, startled shout. He winces as he blinks awake, bringing a hand to his cramped neck and shoulder. His back is cold from lying against the floor all night, and the arm he’d been laying on is tingly with pins and needles.

“Hinata-kun!” Naegi crouches before him, looking frantic, his hands outstretched and hovering uncertainly; he wants to help but can’t figure out how yet. “What happened? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Hajime says curtly, pulling himself up. Every time he moves his head, pain crawls up his neck. He groans, pressing harder at the joint and trying to keep still.

Naegi seems unconvinced. “Why were you sleeping on the floor?”

Hajime looks down. The ground around him has been practically swept clean by the rivers of his hair. He can see dirt and dust caught in the ends, and he doesn’t even want to imagine how tangled the whole mess is. “Circumstance,” he answers, distracted. He can’t stop looking at his hair.

“As long as you didn’t fall or anything,” Naegi says. “I mean, it’s good that you’re moving around and all, but pushing yourself too hard won’t—”

“Can you cut my hair?” Hajime blurts, cutting off whatever Naegi was saying. The sudden interruption makes the other man stumble over his words, and he settles finally on, “Huh?” before simply staring at Hajime with a comically baffled look on his face.

Hajime doesn’t know how to make it any more clear. In an effort, he gathers some of the locks by his face, holding them out. “Can you cut it?” he asks again. “Please.”

In response, Naegi gives him what Hajime believes must be the most relieved smile he’s ever seen.

They drag a chair from one of the supply closets and set it up in Hajime’s makeshift room. The only scissors Naegi manages to find are long and thin and meant for paper rather than for delicate hairstyling. Naegi looks apologetic about it, but Hajime assures him that it doesn’t matter if the cut is smooth, he just needs it off.

He sits in the chair and folds his hands in his lap, letting Naegi pull the mass of his hair over the back and begin combing it out. When Hajime stands, it reaches to just about the back of his knees, so sitting has it draping across the ground, collecting even more debris.

There is a tug at his scalp as Naegi’s hands catch in a tangle, and though it is just a momentary pull, it catches Hajime off guard. He is struck with the sudden realization of what is happening, of what he has asked Naegi to do. His eyes dart to his periphery, where long dark locks obscure his vision. This is his hair. Naegi is going to cut his hair.

Oblivious to Hajime’s sudden loss of conviction, Naegi opens and closes the scissors experimentally. “Are you ready?”

Hajime quickly snaps upright, nodding and inclining his chin up. He feels ridiculous, and his face flushes. He’d asked for this, hadn’t he? And yet now, in the face of it, he’s getting cold feet. In his lap, his hands curl to fists, and he’s acutely aware of the sound of his own pulse in his ears.

Naegi gathers a lock of hair on his right. The scissors make a metallic slice as the two halves slide open in preparation to cut. Hajime imagines the blades lining up like a guillotine. He squeezes his eyes shut and tries to block the thoughts out. He’s too aware of everything happening around him, and the thoughts ache in their intensity. He feels the precise sting of hair pulling taut, he can hear each of Naegi’s breaths with the volume of a thunderclap, the constant electric drone of the lights in the hallway bore into him, the press of the chair against his back weighs heavy, it’s too much all at once.

The blades close, slicing through the strands, and Hajime feels the release of each one individually, feels the loss of their weight, and he can’t stop himself from crying out.

Immediately, he slaps his hands over his mouth, and Naegi drops both his hair and the scissors in surprise. The scrape of the latter hitting the floor makes Hajime wince.

“Shit—” It’s the first time he’s heard Naegi curse. Hajime opens his eyes to see the other man round the chair and crouch in front of him, worry evident in his eyes. “Are you okay?”

For a moment, he stays silent, forcing in a long breath as he gathers himself. Then, Hajime lets his hands drop and gives a firm nod. “I’m sorry,” he says, voice flat. “I think I may not be quite ready for this after all.”

Ever honest, Naegi’s face folds into a perfectly disappointed frown. Hajime raises an eyebrow. “You’re not happy about this, then.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to?” Naegi asks, ignoring the statement.

“Will you tie me down and cut it anyway if I say no?”

For a tense moment, the two simply stare at each other, Hajime’s question hanging bitter and curt in the air. Then, Naegi sighs, tension falling from his shoulders. Suddenly the lines under his eyes seem more prominent, even as he looks away.

“Of course not,” he murmurs. “I just want you to be comfortable. As yourself.”

Hajime thinks of the anger he’d felt last night after waking from his dream. The anger at the people who’d shaped him in their own ideals. Who’d taken him from himself. He feels it again now.

“You don’t get to decide what makes me comfortable,” he says.

Naegi flinches. “I never—I didn’t say I was—”

“I’ve changed my mind about the haircut.” Hajime stands abruptly from the chair, sending it squealing a few inches back along the floor. His hands shake at his sides. “Please leave.”

In a haste, Naegi does. He doesn’t even stop to take the scissors with him.

--

Later, Kirigiri is the one to bring his meal. She sets the tray on the currently empty bed and only after doing so diverts her attention to Hajime sitting against the windowsill.

“You’re up,” she says bluntly.

Hajime nods. “Got restless.”

“It’s good to see you moving around. Some of the others aren’t quite there yet.”

“Mhm.”

At his noncommittal replies, Kirigiri crosses her arms. Hajime knows she’s not going to beat around the bush any longer.

Predictably, she says, “Naegi told me what happened.”

Straightforward as ever. Hajime thinks Naegi may be the only one of the Future Foundation trio with any tact, even if his overeager optimism left him stumbling along the way.

He doesn’t answer Kirigiri. Just stares up at her. She meets his gaze with cool competence.

“I looked into the Kamukura Project the best I could,” she tells him. “Most of the information has been lost, but of the files I could recover, I put together something very important.”

Hajime’s breath catches in his chest.

Kirigiri continues, “There are only ever mentions of actions taken to remove your identity. Never to replace it, or to imbue you with a new one. They took your memories and gave you a new name, but they didn’t put a new person in your head. I cannot imagine how they’d go about doing so to begin with.”

“Get to the point,” Hajime grinds out.

“Kamukura Izuru isn’t a real person,” she says bluntly.

The remark scathes him. Anger bubbles in his chest, and he scowls, glaring at her. “What are you trying to say?”

Her carefully schooled face refuses to move. “I’m saying that to view Hinata Hajime and Kamukura Izuru as two distinct people is incorrect. It’s impossible to create a person from nothing that way. Who you were, or are, as Kamukura is just a different name under which a certain set of your experiences were lived.”

Great. Another person who’s going to tell him who he is, who he should be, how he should think. Hajime is getting fucking tired of this. He stares blankly at Kirigiri and knows that, if he wanted, he could figure out what she’s feeling under that neutral gaze. Could analyze micro-expressions and shifts in body language and discover her true intentions. He finds he doesn’t have the energy for it.

She’s telling him he’s himself, and it’s ridiculous—he already knows that. It was the first thing he felt when emerging from the simulation. Like he’d cracked from a cocoon finally fully formed. But he has yet to understand what shape that truly is. What that means.

Kirigiri takes his silence as a prompt, and says, “I was worried about what would happen when you woke up. Naegi was…optimistic, as usual. But sometimes it’s important to be a realist.” Her face softens when she mentions Naegi, and Hajime barely keeps from rolling his eyes. “Both Togami and I were prepared to have to exercise force were you and the others to awake in the mindset of the Remnants. You, especially, were our biggest concern. And yet, you all awoke with little complications.”

She uncrosses her arms and steps closer to him. “You do not want to be asked who you are. So I am telling you.” Her eyes bore into him, and Hajime feels violently observed rather than seen. It is a familiar, uncomfortable feeling.

“You are not Kamukura Izuru,” Kirigiri says. “That much is fact.”

--

Despite being allowed and even encouraged to get out of their rooms and familiarize themselves with the building they were housed in, the former Remnants were not allowed in the Neo World Program’s server room. Naegi says it’s for “security reasons,” which Hajime translates to the simple fact that the Future Foundation don’t fully trust them. Not that he blames them for it; he doesn’t fully trust himself yet either.

When he sets his mind on getting in, he’s prepared to have to break the lock, or at least pick it, to do so. He’d practiced on the door of one of the empty offices and found he could do it with his eyes closed. It isn’t a surprise, but he wishes it were.

The practice ends up unnecessary. When Hajime arrives in front of the reinforced iron doors and reaches out to test the handle, it turns easily. He frowns, twisting the knob and pulling it open without resistance. Hajime glances down both sides of the hall, confirms he’s alone, and steps inside.

The room is dark and significantly colder than the hallway outside. The floor and machinery crowding the room are awash in pale green light from the central processor, which hums quietly. Hajime enters the circle the VR pods form around it, and only then does he realize he isn’t alone.

He recognizes Kuzuryuu’s small figure, where he sits with against the lid of one of the still-closed pods in the circle, his hands pressed against it. His hair looks freshly buzzed, and he’s dressed in the same hospital scrubs Hajime is.

At the sound of footsteps, Kuzuryuu looks over, and one eye widens in surprise when it lands on Hajime. The other is hidden beneath a gauze pad. A painfully familiar sight.

“Hinata,” Kuzuryuu says gruffly. He pulls himself to his feet, looking Hajime over. “Or, uh, d’you prefer—”

“That’s fine,” Hajime cuts in. He knows how he must look with long black hair still spilling over his shoulders, but he couldn’t bear for his friends to call him by Kamukura’s name. He can barely stand to be called by his own.

Kuzuryuu nods in understanding. He turns back to the pod he’d been lying against. “You won’t snitch about me being in here, yeah? I know we’re not supposed to come in, but I couldn’t stand not seeing her.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

Kuzuryuu laughs dryly. “Yeah, you’d have to turn yourself in too, huh? Are you here to see Komaeda?”

Hajime nods tersely, expecting judgement. Instead, Kuzuryuu offers him a small, sympathetic smile.

“You’re better than that bastard deserves. But I know you cared about him. Even when we were all at our worst.”

He stretches, wandering away from Pekoyama’s pod and moving to shuffle past Hajime to the door. Just as he’s about to pass, he stops.

“Hinata,” he starts, then grimaces, looking pointedly away. “You should know we’re, uh. We’re all worried about you. The rest of us. I know you hafta take time to figure yourself out and all, and we’re not gonna judge you for not knowing yet.” Hajime watches Kuzuryuu shuffle, rolling words around in his mouth before he seems to psyche himself up enough to continue.

“We all have our own demons, y’know? We’re all trying to figure something out one way or another. Don’t you think it’d be easier for you if you talked it through?”

Hajime looks past him to the massive obelisk of the Neo World Program’s central processor. “I don’t know,” he answers, and he is torn open by that truth. “I don’t know.”

Kuzuryuu sighs. “I’ll leave you to it, then. Give you some privacy.” He steps around Hajime and continues through the machinery towards the exit. Hajime turns to watch him go.

“Kuzuryuu,” he says before he can stop himself. When Kuzuryuu looks back, Hajime tries to smile. “I…I really appreciate the concern. I’m sorry you’ve all had to worry about me.” He turns to the processor again, bathing in the dim light. “I’m not quite done figuring all this out. So, can you please tell everyone to wait on me?”

“Of course,” Kuzuryuu says, and Hajime believes him.

Some of the tension slides from his shoulders. “Thank you.”

He hears the door open, then latch closed, and as Kuzuryuu’s footsteps fade down the hall, Hajime is left alone in the server room to gaze reverently up at the living spire of the simulation.

Eventually, he makes his way to Komaeda’s pod. Mirroring Kuzuryuu’s earlier position, he sits on the floor against it, facing towards Komaeda’s head. The glass is too opaque to properly see through, but Hajime can imagine what he looks like lying there, the subtle rise and fall of his chest, the sweep of pale eyelashes over his cheek, his breath dampening the air. Buried in wires and tubes.

That last thought makes him cringe.

Still, the warm humming of the pod as it works to keep Komaeda alive is comforting. The heat seeps into his side, fighting the chill of the room. Hajime sighs.

“Everyone keeps giving me advice,” he laments. “I’m sick of it. I’m already the most me I’ll ever be. It’s just that no one sees it.”

Komaeda’s pod hums in sympathy. Hajime knocks his head against it.

“Y’know, if you were awake, you’d try to give me advice, too. You’d say that I’m just a reserve course student, and that I need the guidance of the Ultimates, or something like that.”

If he really wanted, he could emulate Komaeda’s exact response to any given statement. He has the data for it, after all, and the talent to boot. But he doesn’t do that. Instead, he breathes a breath that tastes like electricity and antiseptic.

“What would you tell me, if you were here?” he asks Komaeda’s comatose body. “Which me would you ask me to be?”

He falls quiet. Ten active pods around him, full of the bodies of his comatose friends, thrum quietly. Hajime aches to help them. He wonders which of the people he’s supposed to be would do so.

Hinata wouldn’t be able to. Kamukura wouldn’t see the point in it.

But he, whoever he is, yearns to save them. And he knows he can. What does that make him?

“Would you love me if I saved you?” Hajime asks Komaeda. “Or would you hate that it was me that did it?”

Even with all the data, he can’t bear to extrapolate an answer to that. For once, Hajime manages to calm his mangled thoughts, closing his eyes and letting the hum of the machinery fill his mind instead.

--

The next night, Hajime finds himself under the flickering light of the hallway bathroom, armed with only a pair of office scissors and a dirty mirror.

Who you want to be, Naegi had said.

You are not Kamukura Izuru, Kirigiri told him.

We’re not gonna judge you for not knowing yet, Kuzuryuu had reassured.

I’m me, Hajime had told Togami, fresh from the simulation.

Two lives blur in his memories, and Hajime finds that they’re not as separate as he’d thought. They’re shattered and cut like puzzle pieces, but they fit together. And gently, he takes each shard of himself and puts it in place, mending the cracks and forming something new. Something finally whole.

He takes the blades to his hair. Dark locks pile on the floor around his feet, but he will wait until morning to clean them. Because now, with the weight off his neck, he can finally raise his head far enough to stare straight into the mirror.

He catches the red of his left eye in the glass and ponders it for a moment. It is as much a part of him as anything else, just as much part of him as the heart in his chest or the scar on his head. There is a firmness in his reflection’s gaze that he’s never seen before, something new, tentative, yet certain. And upon meeting it, Hajime, for the first time since reborn from the cracked egg of the simulation, smiles.

Between the dust and cracks in the glass, the image in the mirror smiles right back.