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I'm awful.
It's not a thought unfamiliar to his head. To any of the Remnant's heads, really. He knows they're all feeling it, no matter how much they shove that voice down with atrocity under atrocity, basking in it to only fuel their Despair.
But the hit of Despair, the shakes of laughter because what else can you do, doesn't come. The thought lingers like a stone, firm and clear amongst the feeling of blurriness on his limbs.
He takes another swig of sake, and waits for it to be drowned out.
It lingers like a stone at the bottom of a drink of sake. Or something. And the more he drains the pool around it, the clearer it is to see.
Junko fucking used him. She used all of them. She never cared about them for as much as she could get out of them... How could he let Peko be used like that, again? Fuck.
The Despair is slow, prickly, not the explosion he's looking for. Not enough to drown himself in.
Worse yet, there are other thoughts. About how this needs to stop. This is a cycle, and they need to stop it.
So he stands up from his chair, and stumbles his way forward. The corridors twist and bend around him, and his breathing is so loud in his ears, mouth breathing like a fucking animal. Neither the Monokuma helmets nor the Monokumas acknowledge him as he goes past, past these lifeless corridors.
Finally, he finds the right room. He goes to knock, but next thing he knows, he's practically falling in with the door.
"...Young Master?" Peko, sweet, glorious Peko, speaks up.
"This... thisss isn't right." He responds, hating how his tongue slurs.
Peko is silent, examining him. They stand at the doorway, looking at each other, slightly wide-eyed. He waits, waits for her to snap him back into place, to call herself his tool or walk over and push him over or call him the coward he is or anything. It's so much more real from her tongue.
"I know." She responds quietly.
And so they continue to stare at each other, both searching for answers, both trying to turn to the Answer, yet looking for the other to do it first.
"What are we supposed to do, Peko?"
"I... I don't know."
So he stumbles forward. He walks over to meet him halfway, to sling an arm around his shoulders to steady him. By all means he should reprimand her. He should.
She sinks to her knees, and he sinks down with her, until they're settled on the floor of her room. She is in a perfect seiza, him splayed out a little, leaning back on his hands.
"Junko was a fuckin' monster."
"Yes."
"She ruined all of us."
Peko is silent, but he searches her still expression and finds some flicker of worry. He silently pries her to do something. (Always so fucking dependent on her. Yet the Despair hit doesn't come from that either. He doesn’t know what he could do without her right now.)
Peko does something. But not something hard, sharp or cruel. Her lips are still tilted slightly downwards, not the usual sadistic grin that rips across her face. She undoes her seiza to mirror his pose.
Unveiling her legs. Her leg. With a skeleton of prosthetics around it so that she can even fucking use it.
And suddenly it feels like his eyepatch is cutting into his face.
"We fucked up, Peko. We- we fucked up." His voice quivers slightly.
"I know, Young Master." Her voice starts to untwine, eyebrows creasing.
"The clan- the world..." You. He still can't say. "There's got to be something- we gotta do something-"
"You won't remember this tomorrow, Fuyuhiko. And if you do, you won't care."
He wants so badly to disagree. But he can smell the alcohol on his breath clinging to him like rot. He leans his head onto her shoulder, and she wraps his arms around him. She's warm, and despite everything, there's a softness in her body that hasn't been whittled away.
(The moment is gone by sunrise, buried in an unmarked grave.)