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The last thing Celeste sees are the blinding lights of a firetruck as it soars through the air to kill her.
It’s a final slap in the face that she suspects was intentional on Monokuma’s part. Up until that moment, the sweltering heat of the flames and the ropes that dug into her wrists had been painful, but not humiliating. It was the kind of death she’d always dreamed of, being set aflame while all her enemies, the people who had looked down on her, doubted her all her life, watched on from the sidelines. Perhaps she had lost, and perhaps she was dying a scorned woman, but at least she had her dignity. At least this was a death befitting of the image she put her entire life into curating.
Which made it sting all the more when the blare of a siren pierced the air and a firetruck came flying out of nowhere, crushing her dead in a burst of smoke and splitting metal. Celeste opened her mouth to curse and died with it halfway out of her mouth, her eyes wide open, her red lips no longer pulled into the smile she fought so hard to maintain.
Bitterly ironic, truly, and not at all the end she would have chosen for herself, had she more than a moment to think about it.
The execution is the furthest thing from Celeste’s mind the next time she opens her eyes, however. The first thing she sees upon regaining consciousness is a bustling, ostentatious ballroom with polished lime floors and marble arches, glass chandeliers hanging high overhead. The only light in the room is the gentle dance of flickering candlelight, and the dance floor is so congested, filled with swirling ball gowns and coy, hushed conversation, that Celeste can barely see more than a few yards in front of herself.
When she finishes her examination of her surroundings, her gaze flickers down to herself. She’s dressed in a similarly fancy ball gown made of glossy black silk that that’s long enough to brush against the floor when she walks and decorated with scarlet red ribbons. Despite its considerable heft, when Celeste moves forward, her heels clicking against the floor, it’s like walking on a cloud. The skirt practically weighs nothing at all. A smile coming onto her face, Celeste does a twirl, marvelling at the way the gown fans out as she does, and only stops, slightly breathless, when she makes eye contact with somebody she thought she would never see again.
Gleaming azure eyes, porcelain skin, and a delicate lily smile are what Celeste sees when she turns. Her breath catches in her throat and for what feels like the first time in an emergency, Celeste can’t find a smile, can’t even find her voice to give a greeting. Memories rush through her, of fleeting kisses exchanged in the halls between classes, of secret trips made out into the countryside, of veiled words and promises and nights spent huddled together under the sheets as they tried to tune out the sounds of violence, of the outside world that they’d always known tearing itself apart.
Celeste’s eyes are wet. Sayaka’s smile is bittersweet.
“If…” Celeste’s voice, when she finally finds it, breaks pathetically halfway through her first word. She clears her throat and tries again. You’re better than this. “If you’re here, then that means…”
“You died,” Sayaka says. She moves closer. She’s dressed in a beautiful pink dress that brushes against her knees and her hair is tied out of her face, flowers woven between the silken blue strands. Unlike the girl from Celeste’s memories, this Sayaka doesn’t hesitate, coming to a stop only when she and Celeste are inches apart and reaching up to cup her face in one soft, delicate hand. Celeste’s chest stutters. Sayaka’s eyes only sadden. “We both did, betraying our closest friends… I don’t think any of us could have predicted what was going to happen.”
No, Celeste doesn’t think so, either. Before the killing game, before they lost their memories, Celeste had been willing to unravel herself, pull at the seams on her mask until it fell apart, if only so that Sayaka would have something to see. She’d loved the rest of their classmates, too, Makoto and Chihiro and Hifumi and all of them, but Sayaka… it had been different with Sayaka.
Now, though…
“I… don’t really understand,” Taeko says quietly. She leans heavily into Sayaka’s hand on her face, taking a shallow breath. “Where are we…? There’s no such thing as Heaven. This can’t be it. People like us don’t get a Heaven.”
“No,” Sayaka agrees. She tucks her arms around Taeko’s shoulders instead and draws her in nearer, their foreheads bumping together. Taeko watches Sayaka’s eyes close but keeps her own open, peering out, taking in the beautiful features she thought she would never get to see again. Her hands twitch before she allows herself to place them on Sayaka’s sides, pulling her in the rest of the way. “It changes from time to time. It was a stage when I first got here, and then a strawberry field, and then a club… I think it becomes whatever the heart wants it to be. It only turned into a ballroom when you came.”
A ballroom. Did Taeko really want a ballroom so terribly? She glances past Sayaka, watching a faceless brunette woman be twirled around the dance floor. If asked, Taeko supposes she wouldn’t have vetoed the idea entirely out of hand, but what she really wanted…
Taeko says, “Sayaka,” but has to stop, has to treasure the weight, the feeling of Sayaka’s name on her tongue. Only when Sayaka’s eyes have open to gaze out at her, expectant, does she continue, a lump thick in her throat. “I… missed you. Even though I didn’t know what I was missing, I missed you.” She closes her eyes, feels heat pooling in the corners. It would have been mortifying to her in life, and in a way it is even now, but if Sayaka saw her murder, her trial… it would be impossible for her to see Taeko any uglier than she’s already been. “I wondered what you must have felt while I was executing it, how you would have gone about doing what I did…”
“Well, I doubt I would have been nearly as successful as you were,” Sayaka offers with a breathy, humourless laugh. “I didn’t even manage to land a blow on Kuwata-kun.”
The remark makes Taeko laugh too, hard, the hideous, hiccuping laugh that she worked so hard to suppress back when she was alive. Sayaka’s hold on her only tightens when she hears it, so Taeko lets it out, but she doesn’t dare open her eyes, fisting her hands in the expensive fabric of Sayaka’s dress and hoping she never has to let go.
If they’re both dead now, though, if this is really, truly the end for both of them… why should she have to?
When Taeko’s laughter has quieted, she takes a moment to compose herself, waiting for her tears to dry.
“How long does a location usually stay the same?” Taeko asks finally, opening her eyes. When she does, she finds that Sayaka is staring back at her, gaze soft in the way it only used to get when they were completely alone. Like this, surrounded by formless strangers who can only dance, Taeko supposes that they are.
Sayaka turns her head after a beat and looks out at the dance floor. “I would say… a few hours? Time is difficult to judge here. It could be about to change any minute.”
“Mmmm.” Taeko reaches up to take Sayaka by the jaw after hearing that, gently turning her face so that their eyes meet again. “In that case, we had better go catch the next dance, shouldn’t we? I wouldn’t want to lose this opportunity.”
Eyes widening, Sayaka actually flushes, as if the idea of dancing with Taeko is somehow more embarrassing to her than being those close together. Taeko can’t help but smirk to herself. Still, Sayaka nods quickly, and as the next song starts up, Taeko winds their fingers and guides the other girl out onto the dance floor. Couples part to make room for them and the music swells as Taeko pulls Sayaka close again, squeezing her hand tight and starting to twirl around under the candlelight.
There’s a melancholy to it, a bittersweetness. Even as Taeko holds Sayaka close, it’s with the knowledge that they both betrayed their dearest friends and lost their lives for it; became blackeneds in a game where they didn’t know all the rules. Still, it’s more than Taeko would have expected. She wouldn’t have expected anything at all, if she would have been asked before she died.
That, in itself, is reason enough to dance. And if not that, then the fact that they’re here, together, finally in a world where there are no prying eyes to take them apart. Taeko is more than willing to accept this peacefulness, this freedom, even alongside all the pain that comes with it.