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They fan out in front of him like a deck of cards. He has already picked his hand.
They watch him with accusing eyes as he tries so, so hard to rationalise his actions, (he had no choice, everyone else had to survive, they were murderers,) but it’s never enough. It will never be enough. Their weighted gaze bores into him, and, selfish as he is, it hurts more than anything he can possibly imagine. Through everything he has witnessed, he still has the gall to say that his guilt is heavier than the very executioner's axe that he had held.
To say that it’s more painful than thorns or saws or your entire body breaking on impact, breaking just like your spirit mere seconds before. That it stings more than a falsified horde, stabs deeper than the glinting, razor sharp claw belonging to a grotesque perversion of your oldest love. That the way it eats away at him (in consumption that is shameless, hedonistic in its self pity, deserved) is comparable to being altogether swallowed by boiling mockery. That it steals his ability to breath on his own terms in the same chest ache as drowning unseen in your own blood. That the way it claws its way up his throat and sits there is equivalent in constant pressure to a noose. Even — if he’s feeling bad enough to spare her a thought — that it's more crushing than a giant hunk of rock.
So, to at least attempt to make up for his emotional arrogance, he has a routine. He begins to mentally shuffle his cards.
He starts with Kiyo. It’s easiest, in his mind, which is something else to feel bad about later. (The list grows ever longer.) It seems wrong to rank and categorise loss of human life. But, as he makes his way towards one of the people he killed, he decides that he has done worse. (It's an exercise in futility, anyway. He is spinning the barrel of a five-shooter with full chambers and planning to empty the gun. The bullets each being a different type holds little relevance given that all of them will be shot at the same target.)
Instead of Kiyo’s face, he looks at the details of his intricate outfit; his necklace, his entirely bandaged hands, his large, heavy boots (that stomped down on that board with such force, that shot Tenko up in disgusting premeditation, that—)
“I’m sorry,” he says softly, “I- You were– You were a bad person. You were a terrible person, who did terrible things, but that wasn’t permission for me to do something similar. Things… aren’t black and white like that. Tit for tat. I know that. I knew it then. But I didn’t… You’re still dead. You were maybe the worst of all of them– of us, but you still became a victim. Both of those things are true.”
There is no response. He turns away.
Instead of Kirumi’s face, he studies her posture; spine straight and shoulders back, hands clasped delicately in front of her, so utterly put together in a way that would look so uncomfortable on anyone else but that she wears no differently than her own skin (and yet it still fell apart so thoroughly in the face of her death, because of course it would, that’s how it—)
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, almost fearful, “I can’t say I’ll ever understand how you felt, but I know you did it with the intention of helping others, even if I… Even if I don’t agree with the choice you made. You wanted to live so badly. It means nothing now, and I know that, but I– I wanted you to live too. I know how much of a hypocrite that makes me. But I mean it.”
There is no response.
Instead of Gonta’s face, he closes his eyes and imagines his voice. So boisterous yet gentle, enthusiastic about the simplest things, so purely kind in the face of so much malice, (a voice so destroyed with regret and sadness and disbelief, that trusted him so completely as to accept the blame of a crime he didn’t remember committing, a voice full of hurt—)
“Oh, Gonta,” he mumbles, trying to keep his voice from immediately cracking, “I’m so, so sorry. You deserved to live to make so many more friends, to see so many more bugs. You were special. And you were the most courageous person among us.” He laughs sadly.
“I think I understand the burden you attempted to bear, Gonta, at least a little bit. To survive, and to have the deaths of your friends sitting on your shoulders. If only… If only my intentions had been as noble as yours. Your thinking was warped, but knowing now what you knew then… I get it. I don’t think it was right, but I think it was born of a bravery that I can only dream of. You didn’t want us to suffer. You… you were always thinking of us. You were a hundred gentlemen before I was half of one, Gonta.”
There is no response.
Instead of Kaito’s face, he looks at his clothes. They had always been so him, such a perfect demonstration of his personality. His ridiculous slippers, the way he rolled up his pants, the strange way he wore his jacket with only one arm, (one sleeve free, one sleeve with a puncture, one sleeve sticking out from a bloody mess, the galaxy lining that was just so Kaito serving as a shroud for an assisted—)
“I’m sorry, Kaito. I… didn’t kill you,” He chokes out, swallowing thickly, “You were always going to die. That’s what they told us. They never even gave you the chance of surviving.” Anger surges through him in a quick but white-hot flash, briefly breaking up the monotony of grief and guilt.
“So, I- I’m not sorry for something I didn’t do. You wouldn’t want that. But I am sorry for screwing up the chance that you — and Kokichi — gave us. I’m sorry for being too blinded by my own agenda of truth that I didn’t stop to consider why you were doing what you did until it was too late. I’m sorry I didn’t figure it out soon enough, that I- I’m not as smart as you and Kokichi thought I was, I’m sorry that your faith was misplaced. You supported me so much, Kaito, you kept me alive. You believed in me so wholeheartedly and… I wasted it. I’m so sorry, Kaito.” His eyes sting, but he barely notices, too used to the sensation.
“At the very least, we ended it— I hope you know that, somehow. We ended it, and it’s thanks to you. But I’m not sure… It cost me. I… I don’t think you’d be very proud of your sidekick right now. So I’m sorry.”
There is no response.
He forces himself to look at Keade’s face, although he still can’t quite meet her eyes. Even though it physically hurts, even though it makes his body scream at him to look away, like looking into the sun. He owes it to her. The pain is nothing (at least nothing he doesn’t deserve) when held up against the blood she doesn’t have on her hands. She smiles at him, even here, her face forever frozen in the gentle way she looked at him. It hurts ten times more than any look of hatred he can try and make up (because he never actually saw one on her face.) It hurts because he has to look at her and reconcile that she was thinking of him, her murderer, in fond terms, even at the very end (when he sent her marching towards her own death over a mistake, and she herself was so convinced of her guilt, and he didn’t even realise—)
“Keade,” he whispers, barely breathing, “You’re the reason we- I got anywhere at all. You were a force of nature, even in the few days we had you, and you saved all of us, but you especially saved me. The thing is, I…” He attempts to suck in a breath, head swimming.
“I’m not sure you should have. I just think- no, I know you would’ve been so much better at all of this, Kaede. You were a leader.”
“There was a moment, back when everything was coming to light, where Tsumugi and Monokuma showed us some of what our audience was saying about us. It was… all pretty horrible. But I kept seeing this one, persistent sentiment pop up and it wasn’t even a surprise because I’d thought the same thing myself but to see it like that was so—” He cuts himself off, realising that he’s rambling.
“I saw… a lot of people say that I should’ve died instead of you, Kaede. I wonder if they were right. It’s just- you didn’t even kill anyone, and if an innocent person had to die, why wasn’t it me? I’m the one that completely missed the real culprit, that didn’t even have an inkling that things didn’t add up, that still sent you to your death despite it all. It was my mistake, and I should’ve died for it, not you!”
There is no response— there never has been, and there never will be. Because the dead don't speak; their voices buried beside them like gold in a pharaoh's tomb. Because this is taking place inside his head, and he can’t bring himself to reanimate them with his own imagination. The thought of puppeteering their memories makes him feel ill. So they stand there, stiff and still and bloody like the corpses they are.
“I’m just… sorry.”
He does this often. Tries to remind himself of how uneven his ratio is of pain suffered versus inflicted. That he is the lucky one. But it always ends this way, the debate skills carved into him by cruel necessity utterly useless against himself. His rational mind gave out around the same time his sense of reality did. Hence: Selfish. Shameful. Guilty. Looking upon the faces of the sacrifices he has made, wasted on a boy who can’t stop thinking about the many, many times he wished it was him, reliving those thoughts with a wistfulness that would’ve made all of them, desperate to live, hate him more than they already do. (In his mind only, of course. they never got the chance to hate him properly, like he had made sure they had reason to.)
Because in the end, no matter what crimes they committed— he still fumbled and dropped that impossibly heavy axe, pulled the trigger, wet the sponge, administered the injection. All him. All always him. Judge. Jury. Executioner. The most despicable people in the world deserved better than what he had given them. What his ruthless pursuit of the truth had given them. (Unintelligible words ring in his head for just a second, with a hauntingly familiar, lilting, deceptively childlike tone.)
Because, in the end, this is all just a sorry repeat. Nothing has changed since the day he tumbled out of that locker to find yet another of his future victims. Even before all of this, he was taught that finding the truth is not the universal good it is presented as, that it inflicts suffering, that it’s so cold and unforgiving in its indifferent certainty that it could never, ever be compatible with his too-soft heart. And still. He didn’t learn his lesson. Sometimes he sees that man laughing at him, wiping away tears as he overflows with glee. A frankenstein expression born of his imagined smile and his remembered hatred is burned into the inside of his eyelids. That man was a warning of the inevitable wrongdoings to come.
That man never even existed.
For a moment, he finds himself speaking with a voice that isn’t his. (But he always is, right?) What a waste of a perfectly good backstory, the voice supplies. All that character development, and for what, it mocks. Regression? No, I don't think so. I don't think you ever moved on from being the weak Ultimate Detective at all.
And maybe he hasn't. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything, apparently. He certainly is that person now.
Character, he corrects. Constructed character. A character that was oh-so cruelly made to be pathetic. The weak Ultimate Detective, who isn’t a detective, and certainly isn’t ultimate. The weak Ultimate Detective, who isn’t real, but his sins are.
When he stops making eye contact again, Maki and Himiko don’t say a word. When he starts staring at his feet again, they don’t betray even the slightest hint of surprise. It doesn't shock him. How could it? It makes perfect sense that they would’ve seen his fall from grace coming. The strained smiles he offers in compensation aren’t fooling anyone, but perhaps they aren’t meant to. Perhaps he’s being selfish again, putting them up for his benefit only.
Perhaps he has decided that even a weak lie is better than the honesty that has only ever proved to kill everyone he holds dear.
So it’s really, really for the best that the last bastions turn a blind eye.