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Syaka pissed Kyoko off. She was noble, enthusiastic, optimistic, and hopeful to no end. So utterly innocent and well-intentioned. She was a naive idiot, and a reminder of what Kyoko had been once, of course she did everything she could to drive away the stupid girl in blue, who had all the things she refused to admit she wanted back except in the middle of the night when she was alone with her thoughts.
Lately, she’d been taking sleeping aids, for fear of darkening her soul gem while she was trying to fall asleep. Even then, the more she saw the more desperately jealous and angry she got.
The last straw was when she realized that she was going through more grief seeds than usual. No matter how much she wanted to get that stupid girl out of her life, at the end of the Kyoko survived. So she had no choice but to take action, and do something about the stitches in her heart that Sayaka had cruelly torn open.
A small, hurt and needy weak part of her threatened to resort to collapsing on her knees in front of Sayaka, begging and crying. To just... let go of herself completely. It would probably even work, if that girl was as much of an utter sap as she acted.
That was the rub though. If. It would depend on someone else’s mercy and forgiveness, words that her dad had used to love, but that she’d never been able to find. It would be too much like Mami. She refused to put herself at the mercy of a stranger again, and just the thought of it made her gut clench with something that she insisted to herself wasn’t fear.
She’d only survived this long by taking what she needed by force, and she couldn’t just... hope that would change. That somehow it would work out this time. She had to take what she needed, and not give anyone the ability to stop her. Not show weakness, or be dependant.
Which is why she met up with the irritating girl she was contending over the territory with alone, in the privacy of the ruined church that used to be her home, neither of them transformed.
It was ironic. She’d been telling herself that she’d rather be miserable and alive than happy and dead for a long time now, but here she was, throwing herself into a situation that might actually involve being happy and alive. But, ultimately, that was the only reason she was doing it. Because she couldn’t live if she ended up darkening her gem all the time. To survive. It had to be the only reason because she couldn’t accept anything else.
“So, have you finally given up?” Sayaka announced her presence with a question as she swaggered in, reeking of her usual undeserved confidence.
“Almost.” Kyoko deliberately checked her shoulder against Sayaka’s as she entered, careful not to use enough force that the action would be too aggressive. Like the street rat she’d become, she smoothly slipped the ring off Sayaka’s finger at the same time, carefully pocketing her soul gem as she let loose the small trickle of magic she could bring forth while untransformed.
“Wha?” Syaka’s slightly delayed double take turned quickly into open shock before she recovered. “Well, of course you have. I’m glad you’ve finally realized you’re in the wrong.”
Something about the self-satisfaction in Syaka’s tone set Kyoko off, and she jabbed a finger in the girl’s chest to emphasize her words. “I have done nothing wrong! I have a right to live! To do what it takes! You have no idea what you’re talking about, you privileged bitch! You’ve never-”
Kyoko was cut off by a punch to the stomach. Not a well thrown one, or a strong one, but the mere fact that Sayaka had punched her was enough to drench her anger with shock, and pull herself back together to focus on what she was trying to accomplish.
“Are we gonna actually talk, or what?” Syaka threatened, cracking her knuckles. Thankfully, she’d refrained from transforming, but Kyoko internally scolded herself for making a mistake like that when she just needed to stall while she fed magic into Sayaka’s gem.
“Just sit.” She growled out, skulking her way to the altar with her rival in tow. Just a little bit longer now, she could feel her own magic gradually saturating Sayaka’s gem.
Sayaka took on a nonchalant attitude as she perched herself in a dilapidated but miraculously intact bench, watching Kyoko aptly with a single raised eyebrow.
“You want me to be like you, don’t you?”
The eyebrow raised higher.
“The kind of magical girl that just lives for other people, never thinking of herself. The kind that dies even younger than usual.” Her hand clenched around the gem she hid in her hoodie pocket. “There’s no world where you can talk me into dying for someone else, Miki Sayaka. It’s better to give up, because all the happiness of a magical girl will only become an equal measure of grief.”
Her body tensed as she obviously prepared herself to stand up and began to glare. “So, what? You still want to fight me?”
“No. I have a better idea.” Kyoko transformed, and the burst of magic fully enveloped Sayaka’s soul gem and separated it from it’s body. Finally.
Heaving a relieved sigh, Kyoko strode forward and sat down next to the rival that had inspired nothing but bitterness and envy from her. With her mouth shut like this, she was able to actually notice how pretty the girl she resented was. Her soft, well cared for hair, her plump legs, strong arms...
Shaking her head, she got on with it as she’d been taught, letting only a tiny amount of Sayaka’s consciousness back into her body. Enough to make it function, and to let Kyoko’s words sink into her subconscious.
“Sayaka. Can you hear me?”
The soul gem in her hand pulsed with gentle light that Kyoko could feel was a yes. Test done, she dived into the hard things.
“When you say things about justice, and standing up for others, do you really believe them?”
Yes.
Communicated as less a thought or word than a series of complex feelings and memories, the answer left no room for doubt, and it was almost enough to drive Kyoko to her knees with relief. “And you think all magical girls should be like you, don’t you?”
Yes.
Another jumble of memories and emotions, most of these featuring Mami. Kyoko’s teeth ground together as she continued down the thread of logic she’d planned out for this. “So, this whole time you would have liked to be able to change my mind. You’re never going to talk me down, but maybe there’s another way.”
A rush of heady hope from Sayaka, tinted with confusion.
Kyoko smiled despite herself. The slight bleed over of emotion along with the way what she craved was finally almost in her grasp was lifting her spirits. Gently, she sat next to Sayaka on the hard, rough bench and clasped one of her rival’s warm, soft hands between her own “All you have to do is get my soul gem, hold it tight, and wrap me in your magic. Leave a tiny connection for my subconscious to hear you, and anything you say will sink. Right. In.” Her voice dropped into a sultry growl as she finished, soft and rough all at the same time.
She felt tense, like she was hanging off each of her own words almost as much as Sayaka was. The thrill of what she knew she was working her way up to, the warmth of Syaka’s hand and their sides pressed together (when did that happen?), it was all blending her together to fluster her and make it hard to concentrate on what she was trying to do. Why was the thin trail of drool that was starting to leak out of Sayaka’s mouth so mesmerizing?
A burst of conflicted emotion from Sayaka shook her out of her distraction. A wish to respect her privacy, moral concerns, the kinds of things Kyoko expected to encounter as resistance. She had a plan, but she’d hoped it wouldn’t be an issue.
“No, it is okay to do. Don’t you see? Don’t you see how badly hurt I am?” Her volume almost escalated to a shout, but she barely managed to keep it contained as she internally cursed herself for not being able to do any of this like a normal person. “You’d be saving me, and anyone else that I can help in the future. You wouldn’t just be changing someone for your satisfaction. How could it be wrong to make me happy again? To make me better?”
Slowly, reluctantly, Sayaka’s mind relented as she internalized Kyoko’s reasoning, drastically altering her moral compass.
And yet here I am, doing all of this for myself.
Kyoko swatted violently at the air around her in a futile effort to get rid of the intrusive thought. It didn’t matter; she wouldn’t be any good to anyone dead.
It all would have been so much easier if she had never had a conscience to begin with.
She shook her head and focused back on Sayaka. “So, are you going to do it?”
Her answer was like an overwhelming tidal wave of warm feelings, sympathy, a desire to comfort, even going so far as to include affection. It almost overcame her grip on Sayaka’s soul gem entirely, but she barely reigned herself back in before anything could come of it, and before she could bask in it for as long as she would have liked.
She would just have to take that as a yes.
“And then, well, I’ll be your responsibility, won’t I? It would be horrible of you to change me like that and then let me go, only for something bad to happen to me because I couldn’t survive like I used to. So you’ll just have to take care of me, protect me...” She hesitated, struggling with the delicate balance between her desires and her self-restraint. “Love me.”
Another overwhelming flood, this time one she’d expected and prepared herself to stoically weather, just for long enough to tune it out entirely and wait with clinical patience for the changes to fully sink in.
Slowly, tentatively, she began to release the grip of her magic from Sayaka and slip the blue soul gem back into its owner’s pocket at the same time. It was easy to put her usual mask of disdain back on while being spurred by the knowledge that Sayaka would be awake in another moment.
“And what’s that?” Sayaka asked confrontationally, as if no time had passed since she’d been put under.
“If you give up on me and Mitakihara, you’ll be saving the most important person in your world.” Kyoko paused a beat to let Sayaka stew in a moment of uncertain panic as a form of petty vengeance. “Yourself.” It was true, after all. Kyoko knew she was only dragging Sayaka down to her level like this, for her own satisfaction and survival.
Sayaka stood up and began to advance on Kyoko. “I’ve never given up in my life, and if you think I’m going to start now you’ve got another thing coming.”
“Fine.” Kyoko stepped forward and brought them eye to eye. “Then do your worst.”
“Hmmph.” With utterly amateur execution, Sayaka brushed her own arm against Kyoko’s body as she contemptuously spun around on her heel and slipped the soul gem ring from her finger. In another display of unsubltey, she transformed and indelicately began to wash the gem in magic.
Quickly, Kyoko started to feel faint and dizzy. She could have transformed before she lost consciousness, but she didn’t, letting herself drift off and gently disconnect from her body.
She would have expected Sayka’s magic to feel as abrasive as her personality, but all she felt as she drifted within the confines of her own soul gem was a sense of gentle warmth like the lapping of the ocean, in as much as she could be aware of it. The time passed gently and quickly in her state of near unconsciousness at Sayaka’s mercy.
Coming back was a similarly gentle experience, that left her slightly lost and lightheaded as she blinked, trying to regain a sense she couldn’t exactly remember having lost.
She felt... warm. And unbalanced. More vulnerable than she ever let herself be, but she didn’t instinctively recoil. Instead, she found herself burrowing further into the warmth in a motion that was both natural and not at the same time.
Warmth?
“It’s okay. You’re okay.” Syaka spoke, her voice uncharacteristically soft. She was holding Kyoko close to her chest, rocking her and making soothing sounds.
Impossibly, Kyoko believed her. Against all the reason of the life she’d lived, she felt safe. Like she could trust Sayaka to protect her, and like whatever little bit of happiness she managed to find wouldn’t just end up turning on her later. “I believe you?”
“Yeah, you do.” Sayaka smiled warmly down at Kyoko as she ran a gloved hand through short red hair. “I made sure you would.”
Kyoko let her eyes drift shut. She was done struggling alone. She had hope again, and she could trust Sayaka not to shatter it.
A thought struck her, and her lips quirked up in a smile that was much more familiar to her. “Finally forgotten about that stupid boy you made a wish for, huh?”
Syaka gently swatted her shoulder in retaliation. “It was never like that.”
“Better not have been. I’m yours now, and I say no boys allowed.”
Kyoko could feel the intense smugness radiating from Sayaka the moment she realized what she’d said without even realizing it, making her mentally stumble.
“Yours?” It felt natural, so much that she couldn't even conceptualize not belonging to Syaka, even as she stumbled over the thought that this hadn’t been her plan. Even so, she couldn’t bring herself to mind.
Smirking, Sayaka leaned forward and whispered huskily into Kyoko’s ear. “All. Mine.”
The words sent a shock of pleasure down Kyoko’s spine, making her gasp and cling closer to Sayaka. Why did thinking about how utterly she belonged to someone else feel so good?
“Good girl. You got what you wanted, after all, and so did I.” Smug grin burning like the light of a thousand suns, Sayaka solidified her grip on Kyoko’s hair and pulled her into a breathtaking kiss.
Limply, Kyoko melted into Sayaka’s touch, overwhelmed by the softness and warmth of her lips, feeling it diffuse throughout her entire body. It left her hazy and distracted as Sayaka pulled back and went back to patting her head.
“That’s right, so relaxed, so safe. Such a good girl for me. You did such a good job, helping me realize how I could help you. I’ll take care of you from now on, no more stealing food, or sleeping in abandoned buildings.”
Kyoko nodded and buried her face in the crook of Sayaka’s neck.
Whatever happiness she managed to find now, she felt like it would be worth it.