Work Text:
“No.”
Kyoko tilts her head back and looks directly into Yui’s eyes. She’s grown in the years they’ve known each other; she doesn’t need to tilt her head back any longer; she could just meet Yui’s eyes, but she doesn’t. Acting like this, there’s a bit of obstinateness, stubbornness. Like Kyoko knows best, when she doesn’t.
(Or maybe she does.)
“I’m not going in there without you. Not with him.”
Over a year of study at Hope’s Peak, and Kyoko is no closer to her father than she was when she started. Yui had hoped that the close proximity at least would help things along, and she’d told Kyoko multiple times throughout to give him a chance, but….
Well, who can argue with why should I give him a chance when he didn’t give me one?
And it’s not like Yui doesn’t understand being abandoned by her parents. After her sister’s death, she practically stopped existing, as far as her parents were concerned. They barely acknowledged her presence with all of their fighting, and the boarding school where she’d gone for middle and high school was a peaceful reprieve. She’s certain they’d forgotten her while she was there.
That’s not the same.
“Kyoko, if you don’t go, you’ll die.”
“And you won’t?”
There’s no weight of emotion in Kyoko’s voice. She’s not being overcome by anything; she’s simply pointing out the logic of the situation. And to be fair, she’s not wrong. If Kyoko is at risk in the world marred by the Tragedy, then Yui is, too. It doesn’t matter that Yui’s older than she is; the Tragedy affects all of them equally: young, old, male, female, and everything in-between.
But that’s not the point.
“They are offering this chance to you and your friends—”
“Yui Onee-sama is my friend.”
“I told you not to call me that.”
Yui reaches out to ruffle Kyoko’s long lavender ice hair, but Kyoko bats her hand out of the way. She remembers, when Kyoko was younger, when they’d first met, how Kyoko kept her hair in matching braids, one on either side of her head. As she’d gotten older, she’d retired the braids but still woven at least one black ribbon through her hair, sometimes leaving her hair down and using the ribbon to hold it back out of her face, at other times tying her hair back so that she can think without having to worry about the distraction a single strand could cause. Her hands are still just as dainty and porcelain white as they were when they first met, just now she covers them with gloves whenever she works, refusing to contaminate the evidence with even a single fingerprint. (She’d gotten Yui ones to match with hers, but Yui doesn’t wear them very often. Her detective specialty isn’t quite as fastidious. It doesn’t matter that Kyoko doesn’t agree with her.)
A fond smile traces Yui’s lips, and she reaches around to ruffle Kyoko’s hair anyway.
“You’ll be fine.”
“I’m not going without you.”
Yui knows as Kyoko says it that it’s a lie. It isn’t a battle. Kyoko doesn’t want to go, but she will. She’ll hate every moment of it, but she’ll still go. It isn’t about friends or survival or everything going on outside, it’s—
“You have to take care of the mysteries in there,” Yui murmurs, “and I have to take care of the ones out here.”
“Yui Onee-sama is no good at—”
“Hey!” Yui props her hands on her hips and leans over Kyoko. This shouldn’t work, now that Kyoko’s grown taller, but somehow it still does. “I’ll have you know that I found that Izuru guy—”
“He got away again—”
“But I found him!” Yui’s gaze grows firm. “You couldn’t even do that.”
Kyoko pouts. Not like most people pout – it’s just a downcast of her eyes, an averted gaze, a slight pursing of her lips. At least she isn’t trying to change the subject now, as is her way when she wants to draw focus away from something she doesn’t like.
Not for the first few seconds, anyway.
“What if something happens?”
That’s not exactly what Kyoko means. She’s not putting words to the harder fears – What if you need me? What if something goes wrong? What if you die? But they’re all encased in that singular question, and they’re all valid.
Yui isn’t going to lie to her. She won’t say she’s going to be okay. Because she doesn’t know that she will. Something could happen. To either of them, maybe! And with Kyoko locked away, Yui won’t be able to help her either. Won’t be able to do anything.
(Maybe she could, if she were there, but—)
“You won’t need me. You’ve never needed me, Kyokyo.”
Kyoko’s lips purse in disgust, and her next words come out in a hiss. “Enoshima-san is a plague.”
“You like her.”
“I don’t.”
Yui brushes her fingers gently through Kyoko’s hair and tucks it back behind her ear. She notes when Kyoko blushes faintly and smiles – fond, knowing. “You’ll have Enoshima-san in there with you, and I’ll have Chi-chan out here with me.”
Don’t say we’ll be okay.
So Yui doesn’t say it. She only notes when Kyoko’s gaze drops. That’s the thing – Kyoko doesn’t cry. She’s never once seen her hurt enough to get to that point, but if she looks closely enough, she can see something like a tear curling at the corner of Kyoko’s eyes. That’s probably just her imagination, though.
She won’t say they’ll be okay, but she can say the next best thing.
“When you get out of there,” Yui says instead, “when the Tragedy is over, I’ll be right there. Waiting.”
Kyoko turns away from her, and her hair falls in front of her face. A curtain.
“I’ll make sure the world is cleaned up out here. So you can come back. Okay?”
“Yui Onee-sama will take a hundred years, and she still won’t clean everything up.”
Not without me.
“It’s a good thing I’ll have plenty of help, then!” Yui pushes a bright smile on her face as Kyoko turns to her. “There’s a whole group of us! Chi-chan and me and Munakata-san and Kimura-san and—”
“And I can’t join you?”
Yui’s smile falters. “If you’re here with me, who will take care of your classmates?”
Don’t say your dad sits on the tip of her lips, although Yui won’t say it. They’d fall into familiar banter then – the inadequacies of Kyoko’s father in the face of everything that is going on, specifically. He hadn’t investigated into anything himself; he’d hired Kyoko and Yui to do it for him, and although he’d fired Kyoko from the job, Chisa Yukizome found more in her investigation into the Steering Committee’s corruption than Jin Kirigiri had in the years he’d invested in the job. He was an utter failure of a man in all respects, and having him head up this measure….
“They’ll need you.”
Because Jin Kirigiri certainly wasn’t going to protect any of them.
“You’ll keep them safe. I know you will.” Yui leans forward. “You and Enoshima-san both.” She tries to smile. “Okay?”
Kyoko shakes her head once and looks up to meet Yui’s eyes once more. “No.”
But that’s an agreement of its own.