Work Text:
reko had always been afraid of the dark.
to anyone else, that would have been an absolutely ridiculous prospect - reko yabusame, with her outlandish makeup and her all-black attire, and her demeanour that practically screamed “don’t even look my way or something bad will happen”, afraid of the dark?
yeah, right. reko wasn’t afraid of anything.
except loneliness.
to her, the fear didn’t lie in the mere darkness. she could deal with that.
it lay in the emptiness that came with it. it lay in the horrifyingly real dread of reaching out into that abyss, desperate to find some sort of anchor, some sort of light - and not being able to find anything. it lay in not being able to reach the bottom of the pit, because to reko, even being at rock-bottom with somebody else was miles better than towering above, with nobody to ground you at all.
reko had somehow managed to push these trepidations down, though, keeping up her ‘tough punk rocker girl’ persona for the public eye.
because god, if there was one thing that terrified her more than being lonely, it was being vulnerable.
she’d cover herself in darkness if it meant her light could shine that much brighter for everyone else.
she had to. for everybody else. for kanna, for sara, for all of them.
because if she wasn’t strong, then... who, exactly, was she?
there was only one person that reko was willing to offer her entire being.
that person was nao egokoro.
reko found it quite funny, really - nao was skittish, and emotional, and so unconditionally kind, and never in a million years did reko think they might have clicked. yet still, reko found herself drawn to the younger woman like a moth to a flame, and god, did she want to bask in all her glory.
nao didn’t add light to reko’s world of darkness, that wasn’t quite the right word. it was more like... she added colour.
yes, that was it. nao added colour. reko was a blank canvas, and through all their small conversations, and the subtle squeezing of a hand, and the fond gazes they so often exchanged, and the small declarations of protection, nao so gracefully and so tenderly ran her brush along it, making a masterpiece.
of course, that didn’t go to say that everything was perfect.
often, late at night, one of them would show up at the other’s room, sobbing and shaking and full of nothing but pure desperation. it happened too many times than reko would care to admit.
but as heartbreaking as it was, it wasn’t darkness. not at all.
in fact, it added even more colour to the canvas. they could both reach out in those moments, and they’d have each other to cling onto. an anchor. the bottom of the pit. they could bare their entire souls to each other, and not have to worry about a thing, because they both understood.
perhaps that’s why reko was so unconditionally, purely, drawn to nao.
as different as they were, they could rely on one another. they could show the other their ugliest, rawest sides and not have to fear about being looked down upon.
reko wasn’t scared around nao.
she wasn’t lonely. she didn’t feel vulnerable. she felt loved. she felt safe.
and all of a sudden, she didn’t view her world as ‘dark’ anymore.
she viewed it as ‘life’.