Work Text:
In the rocket ship, Momota’s coughing and coughing and coughing, and he awakes to a world of white. Then there are muffled shouts and machines beeping, and Momota has never been more confused in his life. Mostly because he is still waiting for his death.
His eyes flick open and he finally sees the world around him, bright and sterile and all processed through a thick layer of glass enclosing him like a coffin. The peace of dying shatters, replaced by sheer panic, and Momota flails wildly, kicking and punching at his glass prison with every ounce of his strength.
When it finally rises off of him like the door of a spaceship and alien faces of people in scrubs and lab coats appear to hover over him, Momota punches the first one to reach for him the face.
The words, “Calm down—everything’s fine now,” are cut off by his fist slamming into someone’s mouth.
Momota sees blood on his hand and feels a pain that sings with life.
There’s more shouting and he knows something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.
-
His knuckles are still bloody through the bandages they wrapped around them. He kept punching and biting and fighting until they finally held him down and stuck a needle in his arm that made the world too foggy to process.
Momota’s mind is entrenched in a deep haze, and lying flat on his back in strange hospital clothes in a strange hospital bed with strange hospital machines makes fighting against that haze somehow seem deeply unappealing. The image of his strange hospital roommate who he remembers crushing to death peacefully sleeping on the bed next to him does absolutely nothing to help.
The only sounds in the room are the soft hums of the machines hooked up to him and the occasional rustling of thin blankets from the bed next to him, punctuated by a sporadic snuffling. The implications of both threaten to eat him alive in the dead of night, and Momota counts the banal ceiling tiles, glimmering like stars.
The fog is thick around him in the dark room, and Momota presses on his bloody knuckles to remind himself that he’s still alive.
The ceiling titles spark in and out of existence and the pain in his hand tells him everything is a lie.
-
Momota remembers staring at the stars when he died. On death’s door, looking into the undeniable beauty of space, knowing his remaining friends would live, everything had been terrible and perfect. A truly fitting end for the hero he never really was.
Now, he stares at a static filled T.V. in a lounge in a demented hospital filled with the wandering ghosts of his old friends. The real world’s inside the T.V. where Saihara and Maki are. It’s the easier conclusion to come to.
A dulled, exhausted version of Tenko in ugly hospital sweats—because even their very clothes were dreamed up by someone else—sits with her knees pressed to her chest on the far end of the faded couch from him. She shifts constantly and yawns loudly and only seems alert whenever Yumeno appears on screen. Yumeno mentions the dead girl’s name, and Tenko presses her hands to her heart.
Momota presses down on his hand again. She still seems like the real Tenko. Of course, he’s yet to have an actual conversation with her to see for himself. She shushes him every time he tries to speak with a, “I—Tenko’s trying to watch.” Momota’s yet to see her leave the couch.
Other ghosts drift through the fog. At dinner, a version of Angie that’s near identical in cheer to the one he knew when he was alive skips away with a tray full of food to deliver to Tenko at her spot at the T.V.
Momota barely looks up from shoveling whatever’s in front of him into his mouth. Across from him and two seats to the left, Amami with every memory from every life he’s lived running over each other in his head tells a weird, rambling story that stops and starts and twists over itself in figure eights. His calm voice is the only one echoing through the graveyard Momota finds himself in.
Amami goes on and on, and sitting in front of Momota, Ouma with his big, round, doll eyes stares only at him and clenches and unclenches his tiny pale fists over and over again, the words of something desperately needing to be said on the tip of his tongue. Momota finally looks up at him, and Ouma doesn’t look away.
Amami finishes his story about his five sisters—then eight, then twelve, then five again—and seems strangely satisfied with himself. Ouma narrows his doll eyes and glances down to the bandages on Momota’s hand. Momota picks at his food and wonders if his existential crisis shows on his tired face.
-
Momota makes a beeline from dinner to the lounge with the T.V.. Tenko is still sitting at the far end of the ratty couch. Momota sits at the other.
After a moment, just under the sounds of the killing game, Momota hears light feet shuffle into the room behind him, then pause, then start to shuffle again, coming to a stop at his side. Momota doesn’t look up.
With Tenko and her hasty shushing in the room, it will be impossible for Ouma to finally begin the conversation they need to have, and Momota dutifully uses her and her raw devotion as a shield.
He can feel Ouma staring down at him with hard doll eyes before letting out a quiet sigh. Then he stands to his full doll height and moves past him to sit between Momota and his shield. Tenko pulls a face at his presence and presses herself closer against the armrest of the couch. Ouma doesn’t react to anything, not even the world of the T.V. and with his back pressed against the couch his short legs don’t even reach the ground. Momota thinks it’s almost funny that he never realized how small the big bad villain is until reality was stripped away.
But Momota doesn’t move a muscle, and Ouma’s glazed over eyes stare straight ahead.
They watch for hours. Ouma fidgets the entire time in the corner of Momota’s eye, and when the clock finally strikes midnight, he says, “I saw what happened at the trial.”
Momota turns to him and over his head sees Tenko has drifted off to sleep in her corner. He takes a deep breath. “Yeah. Real shitshow, huh?”
Ouma shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe. There was only so much I could do,” he glares down at his knees. “I was dying of poison, you know.”
Momota snorts. “I’m not fucking blaming you,” he crosses his arms. “I mean you were dead. What could you have done?”
“I could’ve been smarter,” he says automatically. “I could’ve saved more people. But,” he leans back against the couch and looks the image of pure exhaustion. “I guess that doesn’t really matter.”
Momota nods his head towards the T.V. “It fucking matters to them. I dunno if you ever really liked any of us ‘sides Shuuichi, but he’s alive, and not,” Momota gestures vaguely. “Dealing with whatever bullshit this hell is.”
Ouma says very quietly, “I guess,” and falls into silence.
The night crawls on, and Momota spares a glance over Ouma’s head to the sole window to see stars.
He presses down on his hand.
Ouma says, “What do you think will happen to Saihara-kun when the game ends?”
Momota sees stars. “Good question. Think he’s the same person in—I don’t fucking know—whatever the hell this is?”
Ouma gives him an odd look. “You mean real life?”
“No,” he says automatically. “I just mean when he gets out of there, you know?”
Ouma pauses. The clock ticks on. The killing game ticks on. Ouma says, “Where do you think we are?”
“We’re fucking somewhere that’s not—I don’t know!” Momota shouts. Tenko begins to stir, so Momota lowers his voice to say. “I don’t know. I’m just—I’m dead. Everyone’s fucking dead. So this is probably hell, I mean,” he elbows one of Ouma’s skinny arms. “I’m stuck here with you, after all.”
Ouma falls quiet again, then, “Hey, Momota-kun, I was a monster in the game, right?”
“The very fucking worst.”
“Then I probably would go to hell, huh?” he says.
“Wouldn’t know,” Momota says. “Never really thought about playing God.”
Ouma nods. “I see.” He bites his lip. “Also, Momota-kun?”
“Yeah?” he lolls his head to the side to stare at Ouma’s furrowed brow.
“You know you’re not dead, right?”
Momota’s mouth turns into a tight, thin line. “Wouldn’t fucking know that, either.”
Then Ouma reaches forward and grabs Momota’s bandaged hand, and presses both thumbs down as hard as his meager strength allows.
Momota yelps, and snatches his hand away. “The fucking hell was that for?”
Ouma leaps to his feet and points an accusatory finger in his face. “You’re alive,” he spits venom. “And you know it.”
Tenko jolts into wakefulness with a quick, mumbled, “I-I’m—Tenko’s awake.” She looks over to the two of them. “What’s going—”
Ouma runs from the room without another word, and Momota closes his mouth and doesn’t open it until sleep takes him to deliver inelegant snores. Tenko throws her shoe at him, and Momota wakes to another day of the rest of his life.
-
Others drift in and out of the room with the T.V. sometimes. Tenko remains a steady presence, as static and stagnant as the rest of the dreary furniture that surrounds her. Momota comes often for more chances to view the world he should have lived in. He’s yet to see Ouma return to watch the world of fiction, but he chooses not to think on that.
At breakfast, Amami begins rambling off another endless esoteric story, and Momota debates attempting to talk Angie into letting him have her job of bringing Tenko food each meal. But Angie’s already left, so Momota stands from the table with a light clatter.
Amami pauses his story to stare up at him. Momota announces, “‘m done,” and begins to shamble back towards the T.V. room.
He only makes it halfway there when he feels a tug on his sleeve. Momota’s ready to whip around to tell Ouma to leave him alone, when Kaede’s face greets him with pursed lips and an unimpressed expression. Momota says, “Oh, thought you were someone else,” and Kaede’s face only grows more unimpressed at his lack of apology.
She says, “It’s fine. Let’s just cut right to the chase anyway.”
He frowns. “What are you talking about?”
Kaede crosses her arms and looks to harsh to be the sunbeam girl he remembers flickering into his life and then back out. “Look, I get that Amami-kun’s stories are annoying—I’ve been listening to them longer than anyone else—but give him a break, okay? He’s been through this, like, four times or something.”
“Yeah, yeah, I fucking get it. That all you wanna say?” he huffs.
She glares. “You’re not the only one going through this shit, you know.”
Momota snorts. “I know. Never mind me getting over the fact that I was fucking executed.”
Kaede just raises an eyebrow. “Momota-kun, I was strangled to death. Do you really think I’m about to accept that as an excuse for being a jerk to everyone?”
“No,” he says. “Just thought it’d mean you understand.”
She shakes her head. “Whatever. Just stop being a prick, got it?”
He rolls his eyes, and Kaede spins on her heel, blonde hair fanning out behind her when Momota calls out, “Hey.”
She looks back. “Yeah?”
And Momota’s left scratching the back of his head at the shadow of a blonde girl he once knew. A blonde girl who everyone loved. A blonde girl who one person in particular loved almost too much. Momota says, “I was gonna watch some more of the game. You wanna come?”
And Kaede just shrugs. “Not really. It’s basically just everyone left suffering, so…”
“Yeah, but you don’t want to cheer anyone on?” Momota asks. “Anyone named Sai—”
“Look,” she snaps. “I watch sometimes, but I’m just not the person I was in the game. He was nice, yeah, but I barely even know him, and he definitely doesn’t know me.” She looks away, taking a deep breath. “Sorry. This just…”
“Kind of a sore spot?” Momota ventures.
“Something like that,” Kaede frowns. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. I still like Saihara-kun well enough, and it’d be nice if he lived through this nonsense,” she shrugs. “But I’m just… not like Chabashira-san. Few people are.”
Momota snorts. “No one here is.”
“Sure seems like it,” she sighs. “But whatever. It’s not like watching them for every second will mean anything to them.” She shakes her head again. “Honestly, sometimes I think Chabashira-san’s wasting her time.”
“I guess,” Momota mutters under his breath. And he gives her a long, hard look. “You know, I remember you being a lot nicer before.”
Kaede barely reacts, glancing up at him looming form with one quirked apathetic eyebrow. “I could say the same about you.”
-
Momota stays in his assigned room that night. He chooses not to acknowledge Ouma’s existence and flicks out the light to let the darkness obscure every truth still lingering between them.
Ouma sits with his knees pulled up to his chest, and Momota can see his small form silhouetted by the light of the stars peeking through their one window, shining a halo around the boy he shares hell with. In the thick darkness, Ouma says, “You’re awake, aren’t you, Momota-kun?”
He lets out a sigh. “Yeah, guess I am. What do you want?” he rolls over on his side to get a better look at him. “And why are you callin’ me that?”
Ouma stiffens. “I… don’t want to be rude.”
“It’s fucking weird,” Momota says. “At least coming from you after so long.”
Ouma turns his head and the backlighting casts his face entirely in impenetrable shadows. Momota doesn’t see his mouth move, but the words, “Do you want me to call you ‘Momota-chan?’” ring clear in the stillness.
“Honestly,” he turns away. “I don’t really know what the fuck I’m talking about. I guess… I just fucking think you should act like you did before.”
Ouma’s voice is small. “But you said I was a monster.”
“Yeah,” Momota says to the ceiling. “I did.”
The clock ticks. The machines around his beep. Ouma fidgets with his blankets thin as his old straightjacket, and says, “Goodnight, Momo-chan.”
Momota groans. “Really?”
“Nishishi,” Ouma giggles. “You asked for this.”
“And you’re really going to do it?”
He hears him shrug against the blanket. “I might as well. I think it’s too late for me to try to be liked anyway,” Ouma says plainly. “So I guess I’ll just go back to being a monster.”
“You don’t have to fuckin—”
“Shush! Momo-chan, I’m trying to sleep!”
The silence becomes uncomfortable, and Momota presses down on his bandaged hand for the first time that day, and regrets everything.
-
Come morning, Momota discovers Ouma took his promise to heart and transforms from a quiet, doll-like, skittering boy staring at the ground to the giggling terror that taunted him during the worst moments of both of their lives.
Momota looks at him rocking back and forth on his heels, incessantly pestering Amami with inane question after question. And Momota clenches his jaw because he can’t say he’s not the real Ouma anymore. But then again, Momota doesn’t think he ever met the real Ouma until he was too busy chocking on his own blood to know anything but pain.
The T.V. room is still a refuge, however, and today Tenko’s shifting in her spot more than usual and finally says her first real words to him since he woke up. “Momota-san,” she says hesitantly, eyes still fixed on the T.V. “Do you think Tenko’s… like how she was in the game?”
“What do you mean?” he asks, stretching his arm out over the back of the couch.
Tenko pulls her knees to her chest. “I mean—Tenko means, is she… strong or brave or,” she wrings her hands, “good at emotions?”
Momota gives her a once over. “Uh, well, we haven’t really talked a whole lot, but you seem the same, I guess. I mean, I can’t really fucking tell the difference.”
She nods, seemingly comforted by his answer. “Good.”
“You wanna be,” he searches for the words, and remembers last night and doesn’t say ‘the person you were.’ Instead Momota says, “You wanna be the person they made you?”
Tenko stiffens. “Maybe. In the game,” her voice grows soft, barely rising above the T.V. “Tenko was really cool and really admirable… Tenko was someone anyone could like.”
Momota snorts. “Not the guys.”
And then some of a familiar, fierce cheer returns to her. “No, maybe not the awful boys, but,” Tenko’s face lights up as Yumeno wanders into frame, “Tenko doesn’t care about them.”
Momota follows her gaze and understands everything.
-
Ouma’s skipping to dinner when Momota grabs the back of his shirt and drags him down an out of the way hall without a word of explanation. Ouma cries out that Momo-chan’s going to beat him up the whole way until they’re finally alone. He wrenches himself out of his grip, tears replaced by sheer annoyance. “What do you want?” he practically spits.
Momota prepares to swallow his pride. “I want to fucking apologize. So shut up, and let me do it.”
“You’re off to a great start so far,” Ouma says raising an eyebrow.
“Shut up,” he says. “And,” his next words are directed somewhere to side of Ouma’s round doll eyes, “and I’m sorry. I really don’t understand you, so you should stop listening to me. I’m just full of crap, okay?”
Ouma stares at him blankly. “What exactly are you apologizing for anyway?”
“For,” Momota throws his hands in the air. “I don’t know! For not understanding, I guess! I barely know who the fuck I am right now, and I never knew who the fuck you were in the first place. So I’m sorry for a lot of shit. Mostly for calling you a monster. You’re probably a really good person or some shit, for all I know.”
“Stop,” says Ouma coldly.
“No, look,” Momota continues. “I think I just really fucking wanted everything to go back to normal, so I’m trying to figure out what the fuck’s real—”
“Stop,” he says again.
“And I guess that this is just my fucking life now, so—”
“I said stop!” Ouma shouts.
Momota finally looks down at him and can’t remember a time he saw Ouma angrier, his tiny doll hands curled into fists, and his entire doll body almost trembling. Momota blinks at him. “Are you okay, man?”
Ouma jabs a thin finger at Momota’s chest. “No! Because you still don’t understand! I tried telling you the truth, I tried lying to you, so now I’m going to try yelling at you!”
“Have you ever…” Momota blinks. “Yelled at anyone before?”
“No, I haven’t!” he shouts again. “But you never listen to me!”
“Well I’m listening now,” Momota says.
Ouma stares at him hard and takes a deep breath. His thin voice drops in volume, “Okay… okay.”
He pauses, attention drawn to evening his breathing, so Momota says, “You need a minute?” Ouma nods in response, and Momota continues, “Alright. Guess we got all the time in the world after all.” Ouma nods again and his trembling begins to subside. Momota says, “Also, I don’t know if you want me to just shut up, but figured while I’m apologizing I should say sorry for killing you or something.”
Ouma looks up at him incredulously. Momota looks away, saying, “So sorry. I know you asked me to, but, you know. Still sorry.”
“You’re…” Ouma says slowly. “Whatever. That’s as good a place to start as any.”
Momota crosses his arms. “What? Do you,” he looks him over, “want to talk about the game?”
Ouma nods. “I’ve been trying to.”
“Yeah,” he runs a hand through his hair. “I’ve… been trying to not to.”
“I noticed,” Ouma says, a wry, more familiar smile finding its way on to his face. “In the game, you were… the only person I was ever completely honest with, you know.”
He snorts. “When you were dying? What? Did you think there was nothing to lose at that point if you told the truth?”
“Yes,” he says. “And even then, some of it was a lie because… everything…” he frowns. “I always knew the game was a lie. I just didn’t predict how thoroughly it was a lie.”
Momota shakes his head. “You couldn’t have known.”
“Maybe,” Ouma says to Momota’s feet. “It still means everything I did was meaningless. And I dragged you down with me.”
“Alright, quit beating yourself up about that. Like I said, there was nothing—”
Ouma jumps on the spot. “But I failed! I failed, and I dragged you down with me. I died and I planned to die, but now I’m just here because nothing I did mattered! Everything would have mattered if I was dead! Everything would be better if I was dead!”
Momota squares his shoulders. “Well you’re not fucking dead, so deal with it.”
“Neither are you,” Ouma hisses.
Momota stares down at the doll before him and finds it in himself to unclench his jaw. “Is it always going to be like this between us?” he asks. “Are we always going to be at each other’s fucking throats?”
“Maybe,” says Ouma. “And maybe we should both just be dead.”
“Fine,” Momota straightens. “I’ll kill you, if you kill me.”
“I was being serious,” says Ouma, all of his bravado deflating around him, replaced by a tired irritation.
“So was I,” says Momota, and his exhaustion catches up with him.
And the energy of the fight drains to nothing. Ouma says, “Fine. So we’re both suicidal. Fine.”
“Yeah… I guess we’re on the same page again, then. It only took dying for us to get along,” Momota breathes. “We always have to be dying to get along, huh?”
“It sure seems that way,” he says.
“Not the best basis for a friendship, huh?” Momota snorts.
And Ouma looks up at him. “You want to be friends?”
“After everything,” Momota huffs, placing a hand on Ouma’s bony shoulder. “I don’t really think I can just call you an acquaintance. So yeah. Why not? Not like we’ve got anything else left to lose.”
Ouma’s doll eyes flick over his face, searching for something unknown to both of them. “Okay then,” he says finally, almost confused by his own words.
“What?” he asks. “You never had a friend before?”
And Ouma gives him his most honest answer yet. “Not really. In neither of my lives.”
“Oh.”
Silence stretches awkwardly between them, Momota’s hand still gripping Ouma’s frail shoulder. He ventures, “You wanna get dinner or something? I’m not really hungry anymore… but you should probably eat. You’re…” he looks down at him, “too skinny.”
Ouma pulls a face. “You’re my friend. Not my mother, Momota-chan.”
Momota frowns. “So I’m back to ‘Momota-chan,’ huh?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Just because nothing mattered, doesn’t mean everything has to change.”
Momota just shakes his head. “You have a weird way of looking at things.”
Ouma stares at him with stars in his eyes. “I do. But nothing matters, right?”
“Yeah,” and Momota moves his hand to ruffle Ouma’s hair. “Also, you know everything being fake means your secret organization really was a lie, yeah?”
Ouma puffs out his cheeks at him, and when he reaches out for Momota’s hand, he runs his slim fingers over the bandages as gently as possible.
-
Life continues on after their deaths.
And when Saihara eventually wakes up, and DanganRonpa comes to an end, the rest of their lives stretch out before them.