Chapter Text
"From the moment our new life here began, my only thought has been escape."
Every pointed word of Celestia’s deranged and final truth struck her mind like the spears that killed Junko all that time ago. She’d felt a certain kinship with Celestia. She’d felt, on some level, past the coercion and the anger, that they were the same. They’d co-existed in the way Celestia wanted them all to (hah) – they’d shared coffee and card games and the same determined exterior.
This killing school life granted no room for friendship, not with these stakes, but under different circumstances…
Celestia could have become someone she thought of as a friend.
No. There's no point romanticising the dead. For all her charms and grace, Celestia had been a fearful person, not because of her outbursts or her riches, not even her talent; but her worldview, her lies. They couldn’t have been friends. Kyoko is a tireless effort to expose the truth, Celestia was lies upon lies to conceal bigger lies, deceit with a pretty face.
“Hmph. My ability to lie is unrivalled, and I take pride in that. It's not just other people—I can even fool my own emotions. The conscious deceives the unconscious.”
Her hair, her face, her personality, all beautiful lies, up until the very end. The conscious deceives the unconscious. It would be impressive if it weren’t so fucking tragic. Poetic if it weren’t so real, so god-awfully real, truer than anything Celestia had ever said.
“I think nothing of sacrificing others for my own ends. I feel nothing. That's all there is to me. That's what makes me...complete. Hmhm. Isn't it terrifying how different our values are?”
That was probably the truth. Kyoko could see it in everyone’s faces – they all saw this culprit as the least sympathetic. She’d killed two of their friends, an inexcusable crime, and she’d shown no remorse, no empathy, nothing to endear her to the group of classmates in mourning.
“I couldn't take it! I hated it from day one! More than anyone, anyone, ANYONE else in here!”
But as she’d clasped her hands for the first (and last) time – Kyoko had seen Celestia for who she really was. She’d looked into her eyes and she saw everything that could have been. This environment had done to Celestia what it had done to Sayaka, collected the sooty demons of fear and desire and crushed it into a diamond, sharp enough to kill.
"I... lost? I lost...!? When was the last time...I was forced to utter such words? They hang heavy around my neck..."
…
And mine.
Kyoko felt the guilt of sentencing another human to death after every trial. The system works to punish not only the blackened, but the innocent; it punishes those that spent countless hours poring over evidence and countless hours in a pop-up, pop-art courtroom and countless hours tossing and turning and begging for someone else to take responsibility.
It’s her only choice. To stay alive, to keep others alive, this is how she must live. But she must never get used to it. She etches the names of the fallen into her memory with a red-hot dagger, she sears their final words into her consciousness and the pain keeps her on the path of hope.
The list of names grows by four. Kiyotaka Ishimaru – a roaring fire of a boy extinguished, re-ignited, re-extinguished. Hifumi Yamada - passion personified, admirable in his own way. Celestia Ludenberg – the girl she never truly knew.
Taeko Yasuhiro.
The girl she’ll never get to know.
Never get used to it.