Chapter Text
“I— I don’t wanna go hommeee,”
Monika whimpers, clinging to Sayori’s hand like a caterpillar clings to a twig in a windstorm; trying to breathe through the tears streaming down her face is a losing battle that results mostly in hiccups and a dizzying sense of - she doesn’t even know. She doesn’t want to go home. She’s never wanted to go home, but she’s never cried about it and definitely never so much, and she doesn’t know why she’s started today. She doesn’t want to go home ever again. She wants Sayori to pick her up.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Sayori sighs - not a disapproving sigh, a gentle ‘I-understand’ sigh and Monika wails more for it, it’s too much! Doesn’t she see it’s too much?
The brown-haired girl moves to push her sore, drippy face into the toy she’s carrying (that Sayori bought her), only to be carefully stopped by fingers beneath her chin and a tissue wiping her eyes, her nose, her mouth.
“Sh, baby, just a second,” Sayori soothes as Monika— f-fusses? Some unearthly noise that seems the only way to express her frustration because she’s tired and her face hurts, the light is making her eyes itch and,
“You don’t want your new friend all messy, right? There you go.”
Monika buries her face in the soft happy turtle with a hiccup, fingers already instinctively searching the seam-stitches on his back to self-soothe. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine it’s fine it’s fine. She wouldn’t want Sayori to be mad at her, would she? Then she’d never bring Monika back to this place. She must have whimpered again at the thought, because Sayori reaches over her shoulders and pulls her into a soft hug and Monika melts, just like she had every time Sayori held her hand or tucked her hair back or fussed over her jacket. It’s not fine. She doesn’t want to go home.
“C—Can’d we staayy,” Monika mumbles, a tremor running down her back. “P-Ple-ea’de,”
“Aw, good manners,” Sayori says, lightly petting up and down Monika’s back. “You liked the indoor park, huh?”
“I— l-li’ge you!”
Which is not something she expected to be sobbing into the shoulder of a transfer student she met maybe a month ago, but it’s true - if not for Sayori, Monika isn’t sure she would have liked any of it. The make-a-friend store was too big, the food was too correct, the people playing at the park were all acting strange and everybody in a uniform had eyes that were much too deep, but none of it had been frightening because - Sayori was there and she held Monika when she nearly tipped into an animal bin, and she let Monika come running back as many times as she needed to at the park, and she portioned Monika’s food so it wasn’t overwhelming, and she didn’t make Monika talk to anyone with deep eyes.
Sayori was the reason she liked the trip.
Sayori was the reason she wanted to come back.
Sayori was the reason she felt safe enough to come back.
“P-Plea’de,” she whimpers again, arm not wound around her turtle wrapped around Sayori, “I don’ wanna go h-hom’b. W-Wanna go wit’you.”
“I know, sweetheart,” whispers Sayori, arms tight around Monika, who gives one last sob before the last of her energy falls from her chest and she breathes shakily, exhausted. “I know. And you can, baby,”
Monika’s breath catches.
“But not yet.”
And releases as a pained whine.
Sayori shushes her gently again, pulls one hand back to brush Monika’s cheek. “Sh, shh, I know. I have to be ready, Monnie, I’m sorry. Do you remember what the lady at the toy store told you?”
Monika does remember the woman - deep-eyed - who had put the warm stuffing in her turtle’s soft shell, put in the little heart and affixed the emblem (winged heart) to his chest, embroidered patch that had been tapped to Monika’s forehead, heart, nose, cheeks, lips.
“He’ll keep you safe until you can come with me, okay? I know he can do it. He’s very brave.”
The patch was the oddest part of the affair, because it had...
(“And your cute little nose, so he’ll always smell like your favorite things!”)
Monika presses her face to her turtle again, and takes a long breath of a blanket she hasn’t seen in 16-and-a-half years and the library of the school where she attended kindergarten and the perfume of the woman who had run after-school daycare in third grade.
“H-He g‘an?”
“Yes,” hums Sayori, smoothing Monika’s bangs back from her forehead - and Monika believes her, with all her heart. “He won’t let anything hurt you again. And neither,” she continues, firmly, “Will I.”
Monika feels the tears prickling again - only prickling, her heart worn out, limp and wrung of tears, but prickling all the same.
“T—Thhaaan’gk youuu,”
“Shh,” Sayori soothes,
Lets Monika cry out the paradoxic hurt; hurt like frostbitten fingers in hot water, a numb leg massaged and receiving blood again.
And walks her home.
Sayori had been very right - Turtle protected her.
Monika named him a day after she got home. She thought, maybe, that she shouldn’t - that he would be gone again too fast to need a name - but Mother and Father didn’t even look at him.
Or, they did, Monika supposed - they looked at where he was, nestled in Monika’s arms, then went back to what they were doing without a word. She wasn’t... sure, what to make of it.
So she named him Turtle. It wasn’t a very clever name, but she liked it and it fit him and she hummed happily under her bed as she told him that, quietly, and hugged him tight.
His stuffing was still as warm as it was when she hugged him the first time, and she sleeps very soundly.
She brings him to school. Sayori is absent, which makes Monika very sad, but Turtle reminds her why that is and she feels a little more like she can face the day. Nobody at school sees Turtle, either; and nobody makes fun of her or says mean things.
Actually, everyone seems kind of nice, for once, and it’s a very pleasant (and confusing) surprise. She doesn’t get hit with any dodgeballs in P.E., and when one whizzes very close by her, three people hiss “Be careful!” to the person who threw it and he looks very sorry. Someone gives her a carton of chocolate milk at lunch and Monika gets invited to sit at a table and everyone passes her something to eat, and every once in awhile glance over to her with a sweet smile and wave. The boy who sits across from her in math tells her good job! when she finishes her quiz. A girl in study hall reads her history textbook aloud to her whenever she needs to find the answer to a question.
It’s surreal and the best day Monika has ever had at school, and it only gets better when she gets home and Mother and Father say hello. It is, in fact, all they say to her, and that makes the best day ever better - Monika is awash in contentment as she finishes her homework and entertains herself in her room and is brought downstairs for dinner, and Mother and Father talk adult business between each other over her head.
She is struck with the thought that this is all very similar to when she was young enough to not matter to them, as long as she was quiet and good. And Monika is now very skilled at being quiet and good.
She tells Turtle this when she’s close to sleeping; Turtle agrees. Monika runs her fingers over his seam and thinks about Sayori’s favorite mall and falls asleep without being scared someone will find her.
The only person who could find her is Sayori, and she isn’t frightening at all.