Work Text:
Apathy is comforting, sometimes.
It's horrible when you're trying to survive a killing game and you don't want to move so anyone could come in and stab you.
Still.
Apathy means she doesn't have to feel. Apathy means that she doesn't have to think about that rocket ship, about the blood painting the inside bright pink, and the light in her world that suddenly extinguished.
She plays pretend for a time, happy to lie as long as it means Kaito will be proud of her.
Still, when they're all alone, she lets herself cry, tears rolling down her cheeks and making small dark indents on Kokichi's blueprints.
"Hey now, Maki Roll! Don't feel so down!"
Kaito grasps her hand through the small window, stroking her palm reassuringly. "I'll be fine, you'll see!"
"...you'd better."
Maki glares coolly at him, a promise in her gaze. "Or else I'm gonna kill you."
He smiles, the same wide smile that contains all the bravado of the Ultimate Astronaut. "Can do."
The memory plays in her head on loop, the same memory haunting her every step.
The way Kaito smiled as he stared at those stars, the final frontier. The place he'd wanted to reach for the longest time.
She wants to be able to ask him what it's like. What it's like to have your dream achieved.
And he'll respond with his usual charm, smiling at her and telling her all about his dream.
It'll be perfect. Happy.
That's why she has to see him again someday. Someday, she'll see him, and he'll be proud of her.
Someday.
"I wrote your love story," Tsumugi smiles, a sickening pleasure in her gaze.
Oh.
Oh.
What is her hope?
It was life, her friends, but obviously that didn't work.
Kaito?
Can she live on for him, live just to achieve everything he never did?
Her hand runs over the coat in her grasp - pilfered from Kaito's room after the fifth class trial. She hugs it like a security blanket, relishing in the faint smell of cologne on its fabric.
But she has to move on.
Kaito would want her to live for herself. Not for him.
She lets the coat go, and it's carried away by the breeze.
Maybe it'll make its way to the stars someday.
As she watches it float away, one single thought runs through her mind.
"Hey... I love you a lot."