Work Text:
"Safe or not safe?"
Nagito pauses where he sits in the threadbare patch of grass, beneath the willow tree. His fingers, delicate and sure even at that age, freeze where they entwine daisy stems about each other to create a crown.
He looks over at you, eyes wide, dishwater green beneath tousled auburn hair. There is colour in his cheeks and light in his face. It is one of the last times you will see him like this.
He tells you, "Safe. I think."
You grin, eight years old and full of giddy optimism, and pull up a place beside him. He wears neat shorts and a pristine, well-ironed pink shirt, marred by grass stains already. His legs are dotted with bruises and scars. The denim of your dungarees presses grooves into his pale skin when you sit, cross-legged beside him.
"How long've you been working on this?" you ask, plucking at the daisy chain between his fingers. He smiles and holds it up to the dappled light.
"I think... a long time," he answers solemnly, giving a great deal of thought to his reply. Nagito always takes everything so seriously. "I wanted to make it perfect."
You size the crown up thoughtfully; it looks neat enough for you, no asymmetry to be detected, and all the blooms Nagito had used were fresh and white. It was as long as your forearm, too, plenty enough to wrap neatly about the crown of your head.
"I think it's done," you decide.
Nagito nods, smiling demurely, always quick to agree. "It's for you."
Your face scrunches up in a pleased smile as he quickly, neatly links the two ends together and lifts the crown to rest over your head. It droops down about your ears. Nagito's smile is soft and endearing, admiring his work, you think.
"Is tomorrow a safe day?" you inquire, fiddling with the flowers. "I wanna make you one, too."
His eyes sparkle. "I don't know yet," he admits forlornly. "I only know when it happens."
You frown. "Well, I'll come find you," you say decisively. "And then we'll see, 'kay?"
It is not a safe day. Nagito doesn't come out from his house, so you return to your own driveway and make a flower crown from buttercups growing in the cracks and facets.
The flowers have browned by the time Nagito lets you in again.
"Safe or not safe?"
Nagito hovers, unsure, tense. His fingers drum a nervous rhythm upon the windowsill. "I'm... not sure."
You pout, peering up at him from where you stand below his window. "What d'you mean?"
"It's going okay so far," he says slowly. "But I have a bad feeling. We're supposed to catch a plane later. There's a doctor in Malaysia my parents want to speak to about my brain. I think something is going to go wrong."
You bite your lip. "Aw, Nagito..."
"If it does," he cuts across you, staring not down at you but out, across the city skyline. Japan glimmers in his glazed, pale eyes, and beyond that, the sea. That endless, bottomless pit. His throat flexes when he gulps. "It'll be all my fault."
"Hey! That's not true!" you protest, but Nagito is already a thousand miles away.
"I think you should stay away for tonight," he mumbles, ducking his head. "I—I'm sorry."
You bite your lip. "O-okay, I guess... call me when you land, okay? I'll wait by the phone all night, if I have to!"
He laughs lightly, shakes his head. "Ah, you don't have to. I'm not worth it. But thank you. I... I will call."
You smile, pulling up your bike and slinging a leg over the seat. One knee is plastered with colourful bandaids, courtesy of a squirrel darting in front of your path suddenly, forcing you to swerve sharply into the sidewalk. Asphalt had bit into skin, and the cut had been stung by the tears rolling down Nagito's cheeks as he insisted it had been his fault, his stupid luck cycle.
"Alright! See you tomorrow!"
Nagito does not call that night. You learn, hours later, that his plane never lands.
"Safe or not safe?"
Murmured, solemn. Mourners crowd into the wake hall like ants, donned in black, faces pale and shadowed and etched with grief. The caskets at the foot are bedecked in pale flowers, white as the skin poking out of Nagito's sleeves. Against the deep, unpatterned black of his suit, he looks positively lurid.
He droops. Every line of him is pulled towards the ground. On the table to his left is a stack of silver envelopes. Mourner's money. Condolences in stacks of yen. None of it will alleviate Nagito's grief, you know well enough.
Incense hangs in the air, thin and smoky and floral. Your mother puts a hand upon your shoulder and tries to urge you back.
"I'm sure he wants to be left alone," she murmurs, but you know Nagito and he has always feared nothing more than being alone so you know, you know she's wrong.
"Nagito," you whisper, creeping closer, aware of the watchful eyes upon your back. "S-safe or not safe?"
At last, he turns to you. His eyes look larger and greener than ever, ringed with bloodshot red. As his head shifts, you notice that the roots at his scalp are beginning to grow pale and brittle, like bone, like a malnourished plant. Fear roots itself deep in the pit of your stomach and refuses to leave for the next decade of your life.
"Stay away from me," Nagito says, and it is not cruel or commanding. It is a plea.
Stay away from me and stay safe. Your stomach knots.
"Nagito—"
"You heard him, love," your mother says, firmly this time. She slips past you to hand an envelope of your own into Nagito's limp cold hands. "We are so sorry for your loss. Please let us know if there is anything we can do."
Nagito does not look at any of you. He stares down at the envelope in his lap. "Ah... thank you very much. I think you should stay away, though."
You and your family are shepherded to near the middle of the hall. You spend the entire wake shamefully not paying much attention to the sutra, but rather craning your neck to get a glimpse of the ghostly boy at the front. His hands shake when he lights the incense and bows his head in prayer.
You pray, too—not only for his parents' souls to rest in peace, but for there to be another safe day soon, so you can bowl over Nagito's terror of putting you in danger and hug him.
There is not another safe day for a long, long time.
Safe or not safe?
Your own text message stares back out at you, almost mocking. You cannot even remember the last time Nagito had returned a call from you, let alone a text.
It didn't mean you were going to stop, though.
Nagito moves schools, then houses. He goes to live all the way across town. You long for the days of cycling through the streets to arrive in Nagito's spacious yard. You felt special knowing the six-digit code to get through the gate. It was Nagito's birthday—930428. Sometimes you would let yourself in and his parents would be outside. His mother liked to garden, and she would often show you how to plant bulbs so the rain didn't pull them up when the topsoil got damp. His father liked to read. You still had books he had thoughtlessly lent you stacked up on your bedside table, unread. Remnants of people long gone.
The kids at school said there had barely been enough of them left to cremate.
Those caskets had been all but empty.
You text Nagito each morning, like clockwork. It soon becomes another thoughtless part of your routine, rather than you actually expecting an answer. You wake up, dress, try to call, get sent to voicemail, eat breakfast, brush your teeth, and text him on the way to school.
There has been no response for two months, three weeks and eight days, now. You're growing worried.
You call again. Your heart jerks when the dial tone cuts off at the second ring, an overeager 'Nagito!' already leaping forth from your mouth, but—
"Sorry, the number you have dialled is no longer in service. Please try again later or contact the owner."
You stare down at the phone in your hands, numb.
Nagito had truly cut you off. You don't know where he lives, only that it is too far for you to bike. He hadn't left a number or address, only vanished in the night like a ghost.
For the first time since the funeral, you cry, because it feels like there is never going to be another safe day again.
Safe or not safe.
Safe or not safe.
Safe or not safe.
You scrawl it into margins, doodle it upon your hands. You sketch it into your sketches for assigned art homework, graffiti it in bathroom stalls with marker pen. You wonder once, briefly, about getting it tattooed.
It has been three years and five months since you have seen or heard from Nagito Komaeda. Most people would've moved on by now, you're aware. But you know you'll never be able to pry that boy from your soul. He's too deeply engrained - and this, this phrase that haunts you, is proof enough.
The call comes unexpectedly, on the tail end of a rainy Tuesday evening. You'd shuttled from school to the library to study for a few hours, and had just gotten back home and taken off your rain-soaked coat when your phone buzzes to life in your pocket.
You take it out, frown at the unknown number. Hesitantly, you pick up, vowing to kill the call if things got weird. "Hello?"
"Ah—sorry, am I speaking to Y/n?" comes an unfamiliar voice on the other end. It buzzes pleasantly through your speakers, soft but well-accented. Posh, if you had to put a word to it.
"Um, yeah," you answer, still slowly unlacing your shoes. "Sorry, who is this?"
"Oh, you wouldn't know me," comes the breathy voice. "I'm... Nagito Komaeda's personal carer. Do you—do you know a Nagito Komaeda? I am speaking to the right person, aren't I?"
"Nagito?" you echo. Your fingers freeze in the middle of undoing the knot in your laces. "You're... Nagito's carer?"
"That's right," she confirms. "It's just... I'm sorry, this is an odd phone call to be making. Are you aware of Nagito's condition?"
You swallow hard, nauseous, stumble over to the stairs and sink down before your knees give out. "Y-you mean... his brain?"
"That's right," Nagito's carer says, gently, bracingly, the kind of voice you use on a trapped animal before loosing a bolt into its brain. "His condition has, um, significantly worsened since he saw you last. He has been diagnosed with lymphoma and, erm, frontotemporal dementia. Frankly, it's... eating away at his brain. His life expectancy is a year at best."
You grip the phone so hard that it presses grooves into your flesh. Nausea roils, hot and churning in your gut, and is it rainwater or tears running down your cheeks? "It—why are you telling me this?"
The nurse clears her throat. "Well... he's been asking for you."
You gape at nothing; your heart pounds so loudly you fear you might be sick. "Asking for me?"
"That's right. Is there any chance you could come down to the hospital, when you're next free? I—I wouldn't normally ask, but... he lost his parents, didn't he? And nobody has come to visit him in all this time, and he truly doesn't have long left. I—I just wondered if..."
She need say no more. Already scrabbling for a pen and paper, you ask, "Which hospital?"
"Safe or not safe?"
Because it's been almost four years since you've seen Nagito Komaeda, and you still don't want to intrude upon his boundaries.
His bed is beside the window, which is nice, you suppose. The rain had cleared up a while ago, and now watery sunlight spills through the blinds. You hover in the doorway, almost frozen.
He is pale and so, so thin. His hair is longer and white as moonlight, fraying where it curls about his ears, and when he lifts his body to sit up, his arms shake with the effort of it. His cheekbones are sharp, eyes bigger than ever in the pale cage of his head.
He looks so fragile that you could burst into tears. But one of you has to be strong here.
He tells you, slowly, painstakingly, "...Safe."
His voice cracks and wheezes at the edges, fraying like old paper. You don't make it three tentative steps into the room when he says, still not looking at you, "I asked them... not to call you."
You halt, feeling your throat tighten. "You didn't... want to see me?"
Nagito's gaze flickers to you, pained. "Ah, no... it's more like... I didn't want you to see me like this. I didn't want to cause you any pain."
You could cry. "Nagito, look at you," you whisper. "I—you're not capable of causing anybody pain. You're in pain. And you've—you've been all alone..."
Nagito's lip wobbles; he stares fixedly down at his lap, strands of matted hair swinging past the sharp vertices of his jaw to obscure his expression. "Alone," he echoes, softly, contemplatively. "I suppose that's okay."
"It's not okay!" you burst out, staggering forwards until you kneel at his bedside. Your fingers curl in the bedsheets, frantic for a lifeline. "Why did you cut me off? You just—I called you every day, for months! You didn't even tell me... I missed you so much."
Nagito's eyebrows tremble, and his expression crumbles in the next moment; a dry, heaving sob wracks through his fragile body. "I'm sorry," he weeps, exhausted, a white ghost where he curls to hide beneath the sheets. "I'm s-so sorry."
You don't care if it isn't safe; you cross the rest of the distance between the two of you and gather him into your arms. He shakes like an injured animal, fighting, you think, between the urge to melt into you and keep himself away from you, keep you safe.
Safe meant nothing when tomorrow was unpromised. You held four lost years in your arms and he was cold and fragile and a pale stranger and so, so achingly familiar.
You don't realise you're crying too until it punches from you, painful and heavy. Nagito's fingers twist in your clothing as he scrabbles, even in the pits of his sickness and misery, to comfort you, putting you before him again.
It only makes you wail harder.
"Safe or not safe?"
Nagito sends you a wan smile from the gates of Hope's Peak. You stand across the street, watching the tides of brown-uniformed students come spilling out like a swarm of colourful ants.
"Safe," he calls back tiredly. You hurry across the road towards him, already rifling through your back and bringing out a bottled drink. Matcha flavour. He doesn't have much of a sweet tooth - says the medications make them sickly. He accepts it with the usual tirade of, oh, you didn't have to.
You run your eyes along him; him merely being able to stand on his own feet had felt like a miracle only seven months ago, and now here you are. He's going to school, all day. You can scarcely believe it, sometimes. Back in the hospital, things had been quiet, then dark, then darker still. There were several nights in the span of a month when you were woken by the heart machine sputtering to a flatline, that endless, shrill ringing. Herded outside by nameless doctors, the glass you were pressed against fogging with your tears and wet breaths as you watched them bring him back from death.
Again. Again. Not safe, not safe, not safe.
"You look healthy," you comment instead of saying any of this, and take a sip of your own drink.
Nagito smiles in return—duller than when you were children, you think, but practically lit up from the inside compared to those days in the hospital. "Oh... thank you. The doctors say there's still been no change."
You bite your lip. "I guess that's as much as we can hope for, at the moment. At least..."
"At least it isn't worse," Nagito finishes, raising his can in a mock salute. "You're kind, to spend so much time worrying about me."
"Oh, what else would I do with my time?" you joke. "Have a life?"
Nagito's serene look turns uncomfortable. "I'm serious, you know. I—I still have my carer looking after things. And I don't—I mean, you don't have to... babysit me every day, is all. I'm sure you have things you'd rather be doing."
You blink at him, stung. "No," you answer, having barely even thought about it. "I'm not babysitting, Nagito. You're my friend. My best friend. Unless it—I mean, do you want to see less of me?"
Nagito looks mortified. "No, no, I—"
"Because if that's the case, you know—it's fine, you can tell me—"
"Y/n!" Nagito's hands come up; his can of tea goes flying, landing with a tinny clatter upon the pavement, but he pays it no mind and neither do you. In fact, you freeze when his hands make contact with you, fingers digging into the fat of your upper arms. Distantly, you note how iron his grip is, despite knowing how weak he must still be. Nagito stares down at you intently, eyes wide and pale and urgent.
"I am nothing less than honoured that you've spent so much time tending to me," he rushes out. "It—it truly means the world to me. I just... I feel like the time you're giving to me is wasted. We both know what my luck cycle brings, and with the state I'm in already, well... it isn't exactly a stretch of the imagination that I won't be around for much longer."
"N-Nagito..." You return his manic gaze, hurt. "Please don't say that."
He sighs, long and deep and shaky, and his gaze dips to the floor. "Ah... it's alright. We both know it, really. I'm running on borrowed time. It's okay, really. I shouldn't even really be alive, after... after my parents, and the cancer, it—the fact that I still have time to spend with you makes me happier than anything. I just worry, after I'm gone, you won't have anybody there for you."
"Well, that's fine!" you snap. "Because you're not going anywhere, alright?! Now—please—just..." Your voice cracks horribly, and Nagito sees your tears coming a second before they bloom hot and heavy in your eyes. He pulls you towards him and you bury your face in the crisp white of his shirt. He smells like lilac fabric softener and disinfectant.
"I'm sorry," he whispers, rubbing soft, coaxing circles into your back. "I—I didn't mean to upset you."
"You don't know," you sobbed. "All those nights—feeling like I was watching you die—it can't be for nothing. Y-you... after all that... you have to live, right? You're owed it."
Nagito looks down at you, agonised. "I'm not sure it works that way, my hope," he tells you, and it breaks your heart all over again because you know he's right.
"Safe or—oh, um... hi?"
Your sentence sputters inelegantly to a stupid halt because there is a girl in Nagito's room. She is short and sweet-looking with short, dusky hair and wide eyes of such docility you wouldn't be surprised if her pupils were heart-shaped. She peers up at you over the top of a plastic pink console, mildly curious.
"Y/n!" Nagito scrambles to his feet from his desk chair. "Ah, I'm sorry, how rude... this is Chiaki Nanami, my class president. We're working on a project together for Miss Yukizome but, uh... we got a little distracted by her new video game."
"It's my fault, really," Nanami comments, a little shyly. She fiddles with her console buttons and the screen switches off with an animated pop! "I got so caught up trying to break this level... Nagito offered to help, but—"
"Ah, I think my hands are a little unsteady for that kind of intensity," he grimaces. "I think I hurt more than helped."
"Um..." Nanami looks like she sorely wants to agree, but deflects to spare his feelings. "N-no, it was no big deal. So you're Y/n, huh?"
You blink, surprised at being addressed. "Uh—y-yeah, hi. Nanami, right?"
Nanami nods, blinking at you considerately. "Oh, sorry if I'm being rude. Nagito has told us all a lot about you."
You feel a flush burning at your cheeks. "He—um, he has?"
"Yep," she confirms with the smallest amused smile. "Actually, he never really stops talking about you. You must be really close."
You find that it's difficult to look in Nagito's direction, kind of like trying to stare up at the sun. "Well, we've... known each other forever."
"Ah, I thought that might be the case," Nanami says pleasantly. "I'm glad he has such a good friend looking out for him, y'know? He can be a little guarded, sometimes..."
You glance sideways at him. "Don't I know it."
Three years, five months. No call, no text. Not safe, not safe, not safe.
"Well, I had better be going," Nanami says, clearing her throat a little and tucking her console away. "Thank you very much for having me, Komaeda, and for the help. It was lovely to meet you, Y/n. Officially."
"Y-you too," you return, feeling a little dazed. Nanami nods and steps neatly past you, heading for the door; as she passes, you get a scent of strawberry shampoo and marshmallow candy.
When the door clicks shut behind her, the silence swells. Heavy, oppressive, like a black stormcloud full of rain. You chance a glance at Nagito, and find him looking straight back at you. There is colour gathering in his sharp cheekbones, mallow-flower-pink. Lovesick pink. Your stomach knots, not altogether unpleasantly.
"Ah..." Nagito begins with a nervous little laugh. "Nanami can be... I mean, she..."
You unstick your throat. "You talk about me?" you ask, a little breathlessly. "At school? With your friends?"
"I... of course, I do," Nagito admits shyly. "They pretty much all know who you are. I... hope you don't mind?"
Mind? You feel dizzy, and also the insatiable urge to gather his matchstick limbs into your arms and squeeze him tightly. Instead you suppress your wide smile and shake your head.
"Want to go get coffee?"
"...Well, aren't you going to say it?"
Before you is a stranger. He is tall and lithe with paper maché skin, wide, watery pale eyes and a grin that stretches so far that the ends of his mouth appear pointy. His hair is matted and white like stuck-together candyfloss left rotting in a discard bin at a fair. When he speaks, his voice is wavery, soft, and grates you like a piano with its strings cut, a violin out-of-tune.
You know all these elements separately—they are parts of the boy you once knew, once loved. But combining them all together into this lanky white shadow makes something monstrous, something cruel. They become someone you have never known.
The boy who might have once been Nagito Komaeda leers down at you. Despair pulls his face apart. His eyes swirl with it, inky whirlpools with bottomless depths.
He laughs—no, he giggles, and kneels down to your level. Tilts his head like a curious child. "Come on... I—I got used to you saying it. Would you say it one more time? F-for me?"
Your lips trace the familiar syllables. "S-safe or not safe?"
He laughs, loud and manic and it must scratch his sandpaper throat; it sounds so rough that you wince. "Ahhh... isn't that the question?"
You don't answer. What on earth is there to say?
The world has fallen around you. The horizon has been dyed red, and the city bathes in the bloody sunset day and night, casting crimson on every smoking ruin of the city around you. On your lips, there is salt and ash and soot.
Nagito presses close, too close. You can see every spidery pale lash adorning his wide eyes, the gentle parting of his lips. Pale and dry. He shakes, more than he ever did cooped up in the hospital, though he is nowhere near as sick as he was back then. Not physically, anyway. But there is something very, very wrong with your Nagito.
"I can't believe I found you," he admits, hushed, eyes round as coins in his wonder. You fight back a shudder at the adoration sparkling within the dishwater green. "Ah... I suppose my stupid luck has to come in handy sometimes, doesn't it? And—and it lead me to you, after everything, even after the city fell..."
"Nagito," you whisper, pleading. "We can't—we can't stay here. The city's collapsing... it's not safe."
Empty words. They go in one ear and out the other. You've tried for the last week, since he'd found you in the rubble. Now you live out your days in a bunker you'd stumbled across by pure chance. Water runs low, food even lower. You haven't seen the sunlight in days.
Indeed, Nagito is shaking his head frantically before you even finish speaking. "No, no no no," he says urgently. "I can't risk it. I—I can't risk you. The fact that you managed to survive for this long... my luck is surely about to run out. I can't, I can't, please don't make me..."
"We can go somewhere," you plead, reach a hand out to cup his face. He freezes at the contact, barely even a shudder wracking through his weak body. "Just you and me. We used to talk about running away, right? We can't stay here, Nagito, please."
"You..." Nagito curses and buries his hands into his hair, gripping at the roots tightly; his already pale knuckles blanch with the effort. "You have no idea what you're asking me. You don't know, you haven't seen... the world out there... I got you in here in time, before it all came falling down. If I let you out, you'll become just like them. Like me. Filthy, ridden with despair."
You can't speak.
Nagito looks at you and he is an empty beautiful stranger. "It will make me want to tear you apart," he confesses in such a soft, tender manner one would think he was confessing his love. "And there is no hope to be gained from your death. Not mine. Not yours. Not anyone's. So we can't—we can't leave."
You don't realise you're crying until Nagito's eyes widen again; he lurches forwards, fingers finding home lightly beneath the vertices of your jaw, and his thumb brushes at your wet cheeks gently. He sweeps the trails of your terror into your hairline, expression agonised like he's cradling a dying animal.
"Oh, please don't cry," he whispers. "I can't bear it... the despair on your face..." His hands shake violently. "Is your hope strong enough to overcome it?"
"I don't know," you weep. "I just want to leave. "
"It's out of the question," Nagito murmurs apologetically. His hands are still on your face, wiping rhythmically as the tears slide fast and hot from your eyes. "I'll make a run for food in the morning. I have to keep you here. Do you understand? I can't risk you out there. You're... my one last piece of hope in this world."
He sleeps as far away from you as he can, pressed against the cold wall. Years ago, he might've let you persuade him to share the small cot and blanket, but now he feels mortified even being in the same room as you. You weep for the world you once knew, for the boy who wasn't marred by despair.
He doesn't say goodbye to you when he leaves to scavenge food in the morning.
He doesn't come back, either.
"Safe or not safe?"
Asahina looks up as you enter, fixing a wan smile upon her face. She's tired—circles run deep and dark beneath her dull blue eyes, but she's trying, for you.
"Sounds like we're in the green," she replies, getting to her feet and stretching. Her ponytail is mussed. "The nurse said there haven’t been any more hitches since last night. They think his heart gave out from stress, or something. He's all good now."
You nod, absorbing this. The Future Foundation doesn’t keep you fully stocked on details of what’s happening in the killing game, but you can connect some dots using context clues. For example, a few days ago the boy called Nidai had such a flood of activity in his brain that it sent the doctors into a flurry. Only a few hours later, a boy called Tanaka had to be monitored all night after his heartrate spiked alarmingly. You can see the pattern laid out before you, victims and killers.
You just… hadn’t expected Nagito to be among them.
You aren’t allowed in the actual chamber where they all sleep. The most you can do is watch from the window, which you do, most days. The guards have all but grown used to you. You sit, and you watch, and you wait for it to be over.
For it to be safe.
You promise yourself that you will wait as long as it takes, that Nagito would do the same for you a hundred times over.
Asahina catches your eye. “Y’know, the both of us could stand to get some more rest.”
It’s cajoling; she’s been here for most of the night, but she knows you’ve been here for longer. Most of the sleep you’ve had over the last few days since Nagito’s flatlining has been short, fitful, and on a hard plastic chair in the hallway. You always woke sharply with the taste of panic and bile at the back of your throat, feeling like you were missing your heart from your chest.
“I—I guess.” You scrub a hand down your face, exhausted. “I don’t know. I feel like if I leave, then—”
Asahina clicks her tongue, looks you over sympathetically. “I get it, I do. You feel like if you leave and something bad happens, it’ll be your fault. But you know, even if something does happen, there isn’t going to be anything you can do to stop it. I’m sure Komaeda would want you rested.”
“I…” You trail off, still highly unsure.
“C’mon.” Asahina holds out a hand for you to take; her teeth glint whitely when she smiles. “We have a room not in use with a bed, if you really don’t wanna go all the way home.”
“...Okay,” you concede finally, taking the hand proffered. Her skin is warm and soft, and she smells like candy fabric softener.
The two of you walk to this spare room in near silence; you mostly too exhausted to speak, Asahina respecting your silence. She unlocks the door to a modest unoccupied room, furnished with only a skeletal bed, a bedside table with a lamp, and a chair beside a window with the blinds drawn shut fast. The mattress was as thin and hard-looking as a rice cake, but right now you could fall asleep on concrete.
Asahina waits until you collapse upon the bed with a groan of stiff springs, and then she says softly, quietly, “I get it, you know.”
“Hm?” you mumble blearily, already half-asleep.
Something sad and faraway glimmers in her blue eyes, something that gives you the impression she is no longer seeing you in front of her. She’s somewhere else, with someone else. The lines that crowd her features look suddenly, irretrievably sad.
“I wasn’t able to save the person I loved, either,” she admits. “For days after it happened, I kept thinking… if I was only there with her, all the time. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened. Maybe I could have stopped it. But you can’t get caught up in the maybes, you know? There’s only what is.”
Only one part of her speech sticks out to you. “Love?” you echo, stricken. The word beats a tattoo against your heart like a second obtrusive organ has wedged its way between your ribcage. Asahina smiles sadly again.
“Yeah,” she says. “Sometimes you don’t realise until after it’s too late, but… yeah.” She gathers herself, sniffs hard. “Jeez, look at me, reminiscing. I feel like such an old woman some days! Anyways, you should get some rest. I’ll come get you personally if anything happens, okay?”
“Yeah. Okay,” you answer back, still dazed. Asahina nods once more before leaving, shutting the door with a firm click behind her.
In the dark, lukewarm room, you do not sleep for a while yet. The word love brands itself on your skin, tattoos itself upon your brain.
Love. Safe. Not safe. Love. Not safe. Love. Safe. Not Safe. Safe.
Love.
“Safe or not safe?”
This time, it is Nagito who says it. He lingers behind you like a shadow—tentative, as he is most of the time now. You motion him over silently with a jerk of your head, and he stumbles over, pale eyes watching you cautiously. This part of Jabberwock goes mostly uninhabited; from what you understand, it’s the part of the beach where they all arrived at the start of the killing game. No amount of time they spend healing, it seems, will compel them to come back here.
Too many bad memories. Or maybe it’s the shrine.
It’s modest, but sweet. There’s heart in it. The haka lodges itself in the sand, with Nanami’s name inscribed upon the surface. There’s a smattering of offerings in the nooks and juts below; framed photographs of the class president snapped by Koizumi, a pink gaming console, sweet exotic-looking flowers just starting to wilt.
That explains the bouquet of purple Nagito is holding at his elbow.
Silently, he kneels down next to you, pulls the dying flowers from the grave and sets about replenishing them. You watch him work, a content silence swelling between the two of you.
“I was sad,” you murmur, “when I heard she died. I know I only met her a few times, but… she seemed sweet.”
“She was more than sweet.” A small furrow works itself between Nagito’s pale brows as he works, replacing each flower with meticulous care. Violets, the deep indigo singing against the shining marble haka. “She was kind, and thoughtful, and intelligent. And we killed her.”
Your expression softens like melted butter. “You didn’t. It wasn’t anybody’s fault but Enoshima’s.”
“Everyone says that,” Nagito says quietly. “But it doesn’t feel true. Not when I remember everything I did. The way I acted, and liking it. I…” He turns big watery eyes to you. “What I did to you. I’m… I’m so…”
“I’ve forgiven you a million times,” you interrupt gently. “How long are you going to keep apologising for?”
Nagito frowns, eyes far away. “Until I forgive myself, I guess.”
“It wasn’t you. You would never do that to me.” You hesitate—and Asahina’s words echo back to you, and so you reach out and curl your fingers over his. Nagito looks down at his hand, encircled within yours, as though it doesn’t even belong to him. It’s not the metal one, the one where Enoshima’s rotting limb once wedged itself. It’s just him, pale skin, veins spiderwebbing underneath. “You’re the one who cut contact with me for two years to try and keep me safe. It made me… furious, at the time. And hurt, and confused. But I get it now. But you can’t… you can’t run from the things that make you happy. You’ll have nothing left. And you’re afraid they’re going to end, I get that, but everything good ends, luck cycle or not.”
“Not you,” Nagito whispers. Tears needle at his lovely eyes. “I—I couldn’t stand it.”
“Not me,” you promise, relenting. “Not ever.”
Nagito sighs. “How long are you here for, anyway? Doesn’t the elusive Future Foundation need its top worker back soon?”
You elbow his side, grinning. “Oh, they can spare me for a few days. I’m here to document progress, after all. I can’t really show up for an hour and give concrete findings. I have to, um… assimilate.”
Nagito’s soft smile is like the summer sun breaking through the clouds. “So we have the pleasure of your company for days yet. You should meet the others.”
“They—they know me already.” Your cheeks warm. Nagito shakes his head, and he pouts, and for a moment you’re eight years old in a big garden under the camellia tree, and his cute face is scrunching up because your stack of plastic bricks turned out neater than his. You stare at him, heart swelling in your chest.
You’re eight years old and giggling in the grass. You’re thirteen and missing your best friend so badly that you want to claw out your own heart. You’re nineteen and sitting beside him at his classmate’s grave.
And you’re in love, in love, in love.
In another world—a kinder one—you think you could be laying, untouched, on Nagito’s bedroom floor, staring up at the ceiling. Perhaps he could hold both his hands with both of his, perhaps he’d be whole. Perhaps there would be stars in his eyes when he looks at you.
In another world, you are nineteen, and nothing bad has happened to you.
Safe or not safe?
The word etch themselves into the condensation you’d blown onto the window of the abandoned building. It’s night, or near enough—the last shadings of sunset colour the distance horizon a burnt copper. The Future Foundation had refurbished the abandoned building enough to make a temporary living space for you, since it was planned for you to come down to Jabberwock once a month or so to monitor progress.
It’s not safe to be there full-time, Kirigiri explains patiently to you. Reformed as we hope they are, they were Remnants, and it’s important you don’t forget that.
Each of them is capable of great harm, Togami concurs briskly. You are there to monitor, not to get acquainted. It’s for your own good.
You’re to spend about three days here a month, anyway. You’re on a helicopter back to Headquarters tomorrow. But Nagito is here, fingers tapping at your window, and as you watch he stretches onto his toes, breathes over the window, and writes back clumsily— safe.
You hurry to the door, wedge it open against the night. Nagito slumps against the frame, peering up at you tiredly. He’s dressed in his nightwear—a long, drooping shirt and shorts.
“I can’t sleep,” he says before you can ask. “Did I wake you?”
“No, no,” you hurry to assure him, waving your hands. “I was going over my notes. Are you okay?”
Nagito chews his lip, looking oddly— chastised, if you had to put a word to it. Like a kid caught with their hand in the cookie jar. “M-may I come in?”
Wordlessly, you step aside, and he shuffles over the threshold with his head bowed. He casts a cursory glance around, and you watch the features of his face curl with distaste. You’ve read the reports extensively—you know what happened in this room, even if it’s dolled up much nicer than it was when it was used during the killing game. You suspect no amount of refurbishing will scrub the blood from the floorboards in Nagito’s eyes.
You tilt your head. “What’s going on?”
Nagito shrugs, still avoiding your eye. “I—I don’t know. I don’t know how to…” He sounds tortured, and when he looks up at you beseechingly, there’s a strong undercurrent of honest terror beneath his delicate features. It makes you go cold, because he’s hardly ever looked at you with fear before. “I don’t want you to leave.”
“Oh, Nagito,” you breathe. “I’ll be back soon, silly.”
“Ever,” he blurts out, then ducks his head and tugs at his hair harshly like he’s punishing himself for it. You still—there’s the servant, the remnants of him lining the boy in front of you. He’s a patchwork man made up of everything and everyone he’s ever been, and the servant lingers in his inclination towards harm. “It’s—it’s inconceivable, how selfish I’m being. I know that you have your job. I know that you’re doing real work, helping people, rebuilding the world. And yet I still—I only want you here, with me. I don’t want to see you a few times a month. I want, I want…”
You take a step forwards reflexively, but Nagito flinches back like you’re going to hit him. You freeze, stomach dropping, and Nagito looks at you like he’s sorry for even existing.
“I’m sorry,” he says shakily. “I shouldn’t have come.”
“Hey, hey—” You reach for him, but he sidesteps again, spinning, heading for the door. For a fleeting moment, you think it would be kinder to let him go.
I think you should stay away for tonight.
Stay away from me.
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And he leaves, and he leaves, and he leaves.
A lifetime of letting Nagito leave, a lifetime of watching his retreating back, a lifetime of being pushed away out of fear, out of self-loathing, but you’re leaving tomorrow and you think there can only be room for one of you to walk out on the other at a time—so for the first time, you chase.
You get to him before he reaches the door, fling yourself at his back and your arms wind themselves tightly around his front. You feel him tense, gasp, go totally rigid in your hold as your arms press into the concave of his stomach, your forehead at the nape of his neck. His hair brushes over your face, soft and clean. Some of the colour has started to come back at the roots.
“Don’t leave,” you plead into his skin. “Not again.”
Nagito sobs; it’s wrenched out of him and it’s twenty years old, a lifetime of festering grief and guilt and sorrow, and you pull him tighter to you like you want your bodies to sink into each other, so you can cut up his anguish and share it. You want to press close enough to pull out his heart and replace it with yours, if only so he could feel for himself how much love you have for him stored inside there.
“I’m sorry,” he wails. “I don’t want… I can’t…”
“You can,” you tell him with all the patience of someone who has known him for most of his life and yours. “Anything. You can tell me anything.”
Nagito drags a shaking arm over his face, scrubbing at his wet eyes. And he takes several deep, steadying breaths. “I don’t,” he rasps a moment later, trembling like a newborn deer. “I don’t want you to leave. Ever. It’s hideously selfish—you’ll hate me for even thinking it—I want you to stay here forever. I want you to stay with me forever. I don’t care about the people you’re helping, because I want you to be helping me. The only time—the only times I feel like I’m not ruined beyond repair is when I’m with you. When you leave tomorrow, I’m afraid I won’t even know who I am.”
You’re silent, not wanting to interrupt yet, because even though this is the most honest Nagito’s been about his feelings in years, you get the sense that he still has more to say.
“I can’t care about the world,” he says quietly a moment later, “when my own is leaving me behind here tomorrow morning.”
You bury your head between the sharp blades of his shoulders, breathing deep. You inhale talcum powder and citrus body wash and toothpaste and something lurking underneath it that is so familiar it makes you twelve years old again. Something that’s just Nagito.
For a moment that feels like years, you stand there, entwined like an ouroboros. A twist of limbs and souls, and you hold it whilst Nagito shakes, whilst you gather the words you want to say to the tip of your tongue.
“I’m not leaving you,” you mumble into his skin. “I will never, ever leave you. Even if we can’t see each other all the time… I will never be gone from you.”
Nagito sniffles, sounding unconvinced.
“Let me ask you,” you say quietly, changing tactic. “When we’re apart, do you think of me?”
His breath hitches. “Yes, of course. All… all the time.”
“Then I’m not gone, am I?” you ask, smiling gently. “I’m still there with you. In your heart, in your head. You know what I would want you to do. So you do it. Be better on your own. Because, Nagito— you’re the strongest person I know, and you don’t need me to heal.”
When you loosen your hold and he turns around to face you, his face is pained, features pinched with misery, the skin beneath his eyes blotchy with tears. And he opens his mouth—to argue, to put himself down again, so you put your finger over it.
“You’re not selfish,” you murmur. Nagito stares at you, entranced, and the intensity of it makes every cell in your body light up and fizz like a dying star. “You’re not worthless, or pathetic, you’re not monstrous. You’re Nagito. You’re my best friend. And I love you more than anything.”
It’s not the first time you’ve said you love him, but both of you can tell it’s different this time. It’s more real, more tangible, hovers between you like a mist or fog. Nagito’s eyes swell with tears again, and he drops his face into your collarbone.
“Don’t say that,” he says weakly. “D-don’t make it real. You deserve far more. Someone better. Someone whole.”
“There’s no one else,” you whisper, heart hammering against your ribcage. “There never was. Never will be. I’m yours, and you’re mine. Okay?”
Nagito’s hands come up like a man possessed, gripping onto your waist like he’s terrified you’re going to disappear. The cold metal of his left arm leeches through the thin cotton of your sleep-shirt, and you revel that you have him in all walks of life. Before the tragedy and after. Always, he comes back to you.
“Mine,” he whispers against your skin. “Mine…”
His eyes lift up, seeking desperately some affirmation, one that you are only too happy to give. “Yours,” you agree, and you don’t have another moment before he slams his lips upon yours.
It feels like waking up, like being truly alive for the first time in your life. In a moment he’s pulled back, stammering, horrified at his own daring—but you don’t allow his loathing time to fester, instead cupping his face in your hands and pulling him back to you. Your lips capture his in your first breath of oxygen after a lifetime underwater, and his arms wind tight around your waist. The kiss is wet with saliva and tears but it’s perfect, you wouldn’t want it any other way.
“I love you,” he gasps between contact like he’s lost himself, fingers scrabbling for a hold, wavering and frantic. “Love you. I’m sorry. I love you.”
“Stay,” you breathe as the two of you part; Nagito’s eyes widen. He’s flushed like he’s sunburnt, red from the tips of his ears to the juts of his cheekbones. Fondly, you stroke a finger over them. “Stay with me tonight. You’ll be the last one I see when I go tomorrow.”
Nagito looks at you desperately. “I’ll wait at the landing ground all day when you’re due to come back,” he promises, lifting your hand to bring it to his mouth. He mumbles into the skin. “So I’ll be the first one you see when you land again.” A mirthless little chuckle leaves him. “Ah… you see? Selfish.”
“No,” you rebuke, settling your head against his chest. Through the feeble layers of cotton and skin, you can hear the jackrabbit of his heartbeat. He’s so alive, and it feels like a miracle after everything, feels like you could sob and scream and leap for joy. He’s alive. You’re alive.
You’re together.
“No,” you say again. “Not selfish. Mine.”
Nagito’s breath hitches, and you feel his heart skip a beat. You lead him over to your bed, pull back the covers. He settles on the side against the wall, stiff and uncomfortable until you curl up next to him. You slide a hand under his shirt, spread your fingers wide over the plane of his stomach. Feeling the soft rise and fall of breath.
Years ago, the two of you share a bed for the first time. You’re innocent and untouched, and it’s much less bittersweet than it is now—but there’s one important constant that has remained the same.
You and him.
No matter the state, no matter if you’re whole in mind and body or in tatters, it’s always you and him. And if you have anything to say about it, it always will be.
As sleep begins to lull you under, you ask, “Safe or not safe?”
And smiling, you think, he tells you, “Safe.”