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Muu can barely move. Restraints cover her body. Brackets on her feet force her to stand on her tip-toes so every step she takes is hellish. She misses her heels. Barbed wire covers her face like a veil. It slightly blinds her vision, and she can feel it scraping her skin persistently - even more so when she accidentally jerks her head too quickly.
Her hands are tied together, positioned as if she is praying. What she is praying to, she isn’t sure. Rei? Haruka?
Haruka.
Haruka is dead now. He killed himself. It could have been prevented . If she were voted innocent, if she were forgiven , then it could have been prevented. Es knew that. Everybody knew that, but still, the vote was decided as overwhelmingly guilty. How could they do that? Brandishing her as an unforgivable murderer while actively voting for a choice they knew would lead to the death of another? They were in no way better than her, in no way morally above her or the actions they were essentially prosecuting her for. Why did they have control over her fate?!
Disgusting, disgusting, DISGUSTING!
NONE OF THIS HAD TO HAPPEN! BUT STILL, THIS IS WHAT WAS CHOSEN! ARE THEY SATISFIED NOW?
Es is just like everybody else outside the prison! Hating her for her privilege and punishing her for it! Tying her up, bullying her, putting her through terrible things- It made her feel sick.
Her uncomfortable predicament meant that sleep was even harder for her than usual. No matter how she positioned herself, something - whether it be some of the brackets on her body or the barbed wire covering her face - dug into the crevices of her body and practically stabbed her.
(Is this how Rei felt in her last moments?)
As well as not being able to sleep she struggled severely to eat. Her hands being tied meant she could barely pick things up, and the wire barricading her face meant that every time she actually put things in her mouth her skin was maimed. She could barely even function alone, she had to ask those around her to help her do anything that wasn’t just laying down like some sort of helpless animal.
And her options of who exactly to ask were thinning. Haruka, Shidou and Mahiru are all dead, Kotoko was both as incapable as Muu herself currently is and also not somebody she’d want to have to rely on either way, Mikoto was… Not currently in his right mind and couldn’t really do anything aside from vomit, and Amane and Fuuta were both forming their freaky cult together (doesn’t a religion need three people to be valid?)
The only people that she could ask, then, were Kazui and Yuno, the latter being the preferable answer most of the time. She’d usually switch between the both of them.
Muu was starving. She’d barely eaten over the last few days. That mixed with her sleep-deprivation meant nausea attacked her conscience: she felt sick, her head pounded, her vision was distorted and blurry. She needed food. Sustenance. Anything.
Yuno.
She should find Yuno.
With unstable steps that threatened to make her trip over at any moment (made even worse by the tiptoe situation), Muu headed towards Yuno’s cell. She, honestly, was shocked she even made it there without passing out or tripping over and ending up powerless until somebody found her.
“...Yuno?” She asked, voice weakened by hunger and exhaustion. She didn’t get a reply. “...Yu…no?” Still no answer. She tried to fiddle with Yuno’s cell door, but without use of her hands the attempt was futile.
“...Yu…no?”
The third time was, finally, met with a response. After a few seconds that felt so much longer than they really were, Muu heard the click of the door, opened by…
That wasn’t Yuno.
W-what?
Who stood before her wasn’t Yuno.
This girl had dark hair. Well, so did Yuno, but this girl had dark, short , hair. Dark, short hair with sideswept bangs.
She had dried greyed eyes, of which stared at her with a completely blank expression, all other features on her face barely existent.
It couldn’t be.
She was dead.
Muu had killed her. Stabbed her. Watched as the blood poured out of her body. Watched as her eyes drained of colour.
But… It was…
Her…
She-
Rei was in front of her.
Muu began to scream. She wasn’t sure how else to react. Relief? Guilt? Anger? All emotions boiled up and blended together in her head, causing it to pound even more so than it already was. A striking red colour clouded her already restricted vision.
Rei. Rei. Rei. Rei.
Her eyes were narrowed in disdain, her lips thin and poised.
“You killed me.”
Rei’s mouth doesn’t move as she speaks.
“You killed me. You killed me. You killed me.”
The voice isn’t coming from anywhere in particular. It fills the entire room, extremely loud but simultaneously barely existent at all.
“You killed me. You killed me. You killed me.”
Muu still screams in response, thrashing her arms around manically.
Rei stands still as if frozen in time. She’s wearing white, glowing like an angel. Blood smothers her chest area, tainting her outfit. The gaping wound in her stomach seems to become wider and wider the more Muu looks at it. Her skin is pale, her figure near-skeletal.
Muu looks down at her own shaking body. She cannot see her hands, but the blood on them stains her uniform and she can feel it dripping down her fingers and arms.
“Shut up. Shut up! SHUT UP!-”
“Muu?” This time her mouth moves as she speaks. It doesn’t sound like Rei’s voice.
“SHUT UP!”
Rei’s expression suddenly switches. The sharpness of her barely discernible features soften and she’s… she- her eyes are a brownish-violet colour. Not grey, not hazel. She’s not… Rei.
Of- of course she’s not, Rei is dead.
She’s Yuno, just with shorter, differently styled hair. She’s wearing her Milgram uniform. She’s clean. Blood doesn’t stain Yuno’s body; blood doesn’t stain Muu’s own hands.
“What is it?” She asks quizzically, raising an eyebrow. Her response to Muu’s breakdown is surprisingly calm. Her face is unusually serious. Muu isn’t sure if that’s a result of the new haircut or something else.
Muu doesn’t want to tell her what she just saw. She doesn’t want to tell her who she just saw. Muu doesn’t want to come off as that deluded; there was that part of her that still needed to keep her image up. Though did image even matter anymore?! Did anything matter?!
“...Food.” She replies plainly, about as coherent as a young child who only just learnt to speak. That's about how capable she was, too.
She collapses onto Yuno - not
her…
not Rei - helplessly.