Fanfiction Archive

A Better Day (2787 words) by Overlord_Mordax, VickytheSnake
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Dangan Ronpa Series
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Kirigiri Kyoko/Naegi Makoto
Characters: Kirigiri Kyoko, Naegi Makoto
Additional Tags: Fluff and Angst, First Kiss, Emotional Hurt/Comfort
Summary:

Kirigiri and Makoto spend an emotional night together in a Future Foundation safe-house after finally escaping the killing game.

,

The night they broke free from the school, they were collected by ‘The Future Foundation’.

Everyone was tense, and disoriented, and on high alert. Exhausted as they were, as desperate for relief, it wasn’t hard for Kirigiri to believe that they might be dragged out of the frying pan and into the fire.

She let Byakuya take the lead on asking questions, while she kept alart for any sign of danger, anything that might be off.

In the end, they agreed that it seemed to be genuine, and allowed themselves to be put in the back of a truck and taken to one of the organization’s safe-houses.

There would be some kind of debrief the next day, but for the night, they were given a meal, and told to rest.

Individual rooms had been provided, but they had decided to pair off to watch one another’s backs.

Kirigiri had followed Makoto into one of the rooms, and locked the door behind them.

They were all a long way beyond propriety.

Makoto had held it together for a while. Through the questions, he kept his trademark hopeful smile. During the truck’s bumpy drive he did all he could to reassure the other survivors. Every time someone from the Future Foundation called him a symbol of Hope he laughed it off and let Byakuya deflect another question.

It was only when the sound of the lock clicked behind them that his shoulders finally sagged and the smile fell from his face.

They were free, but at great cost. Kirigiri , who’d come to know him all over again in the School of Despair, could see the weight of every death topple upon him at once and the real fragility just beyond the seemingly inexhaustible optimism.

“Well…” He managed to say with a shaky laugh “…it’s better than the dorms at Hope’s Peak, huh?”

Kirigiri looked around the room. The mattress sagged. The paint was peeling in places. There was a sting of mustiness that tickled her nose.

“No,” she said flatly. “It’s a trash heap. And I”m grateful for it.” She sat down heavily on the bed and the springs groaned.

Makoto walked over, falling down beside her until he was flat on his back on the old mattress. It bounced uncomfortably under him as he stared up at the ceiling. “No bathroom door prone to sticking.”

Kirigiri layed– or maybe just sagged– until they were shoulder laying on the bed. “No. If we’re lucky, we’ll never see that place again.”

She could feel Makoto shudder.

He opened his mouth to say something , but he couldn’t quite get it out. “I…I hope not.” he managed.

He didn’t look like the paragon of hope that the Future Foundation claimed him to be when pulling them out of the courtyard.

He swallowed thickly before he continued.

“But..we can’t leave the others there, right? Someone h-has to get them. To bury them.”

“Maybe,” Kirigiri said quietly. She lay with her gloved hands over her chest. “I don’t think there’s much left to bury in most cases. Maybe the school could be demolished, and a memorial erected…”

“A memorial.” Makoto murmured. His head shifted until it was laying against her shoulder, his eyes closed as he imagined it.

“No more execution traps. No more halls full of weird lights. No more of Junko’s little touches….just somewhere we can go to remember them. I’d li–.” He tensed up and his voice hiccuped. “I’d like that a lot.”

“Yeah.” Kirigiri breathed her quiet agreement. Even now it was almost impossible to guess exactly what she was thinking, but Makoto was almost sure that she was feeling that same empty, aching feeling he was battling.

Makoto’s hands clenched against the sheet of the bed, his face pressed to her shoulder as he breathed quietly , slowly and cyclically to keep it in check.

“Kyoko?” he finally asked in a small voice.

She looked over at him, her pale grey eyes seeming to search his face. “Yes, Makoto?”

“Do you think there was any way we could have changed her mind?”

It was a heavy question, one that weighed down on him ever since he discovered that once– before the brain damage and the killing games…they were all friends at school. Close friends.

Kirigiri was quiet for a long moment.

Makoto felt her gloved hand gently placed on top of his own.

“No. I don’t think there was anything that would have.”

“I just don’t get it.” Makoto whispered against her shoulder as his fingers tightened under her gloved fingers. “I don’t get how someone can become friends with people and then …turn around and do this to them…to her own sister, even…what kind of person…”

Kirigiri squeezed his hand. “No kind of person..” Her voice was quiet and cold. “What she did wasn’t normal. Not even something a garden variety psychopath would have been capable of. I think– its best to think of her as more of a perverted force of nature than a human being.”

Makoto squeezed her hand a little tighter. “A force of nature.”

He laughed softly, and without any humor. “…a force of nature with a name and face we saw every day for years….and now, because of her…Sayaka…Leon….Celeste, Hifumi, Mondo…everyone.” His voice hitched and cracked.

He heard Kirigiri swallow and her fingers tightened around his. “What we have to do is make it count.”

He finally opened his eyes to look up at her. “…by not wasting the fact we somehow survived..?”

She nodded quietly, looking up at the ceiling. “Exactly. All we can do is let our survival give their deaths meaning.”

“If anyone’s got any idea on how to manage that, I’d bet it’s you, Kyoko.” Makoto smiled tentatively at her.

“Me?” She rolled over on her side, facing him and looking into his eyes. “It’s you they’re already looking to.”

Makoto’s face flushed a bit pink, and his eyes flicked off to the side as he laughed softly under his breath. “…I’ve got no idea why, Kyoko.”

She smiled, very slightly. It was just enough to see that she was really smiling, but it was very much there.

“Because you amaze them.”

Makoto hid his face against her shoulder “I just followed your lead and presented evidence everyone helped me find. I…I’m not exactly the kind of guy who deserves to be put on a pedestal…”

“You can think that all you want, but there’s a lot to admire about you, Makoto.” He felt her fingers brush his hair. “You never lost hope.”

“I couldn’t.” He sheepishly looked up to try meeting her eyes. “It was hard…and I came close but I knew the minute I did….it’d be over.”

“And you were righ.,” Her voice was quiet, her fingers still in his hair even while he looked up at her. “And thanks to you, the six of us survived. I don’t believe anyone could have done better.”

“I think…” he trailed off for a moment before continuing. “I think any of you could.” He leaned into her hand with a half smile, unperturbed by how familiar she was being. He needed it now, more than he ever had. “…I just don’t think I’ll ever get used to anyone being ‘amazed’ by me..”

She toyed with a lock of his hair and shook her head. “You’re wrong. If nothing else, without you, Asahina would have taken us all down with her.”

Makoto shuddered against her. “….I can’t blame her for trying.” he hiccuped again “…but I know it’s not what Sakura would have wanted.”

“It isn’t,” Kirigiri said, leaning close to him, her gloved hand on his cheek. “But one by one, each of us flatered, and lost hope. If only for a moment. But you never did. You were always there. Holding on. Believing that somehow, one day we’d wake up and it would be a better day than the one before it.”

Tears beaded in his eyes as he swallowed another quiet sob. “…I couldn’t go on living if I ever stopped believing that one day it’d be better…I couldn’t…it wouldn’t be right to the people we’d already lost…”

“I know,” Kirigiri murmured softly, stroking his cheek idly. The leather of her glove was buttery soft against his flushed skin. “Tomorrow is that better day, Makoto. And it’s thanks to you that any of us are here to see it. I know the others… would be glad for us. All of them.”

“All of them.” He agreed. “Mukuro and Sakura and everyone…”

He leaned into her touch “we just need to keep moving forward…e-even if tomorrow is that better day, we can’t stop working to make the next even better..”

She huffed softly– was it a little laugh. “Keep talking like that, and they’ll really turn you into a leader, Makoto. But you’re right. And I don’t intend to stop.”

She paused. “I won’t lie, Makoto. The whole time we were in the killing game, I was using you. But from here on out, I intend to support you every step of the way.”

Makoto laughed gently, looking off to the side “I know you were, Kyoko..” He smiled ruefully “…I’ve been told I’m pretty easy to use, so I can’t blame you for it…and it worked out well in the end, you know?”

He blushed and smiled as he lowered his head. “…but…I’ll be really happy for your support. Genuinely.”

Kirigiri’s fingers traced over his cheek, and down his chin. “You turned out to be a lot more than I ever bargained for. I think, if I hadn’t lost so much of my memory, I would have known that from the start. How amazing you are.”

Makoto turned a deeper pink “…Kyoko.” he smiled shyly “…if anyone’s the amazing one, it’s you. You scared her so bad she had to take your whole memory just to make her schemes work..”

“And because she knew what to look for, she almost succeeded,” Kirigiri countered. “But you, she could never have anticipated. And I don’t think anything she could have done to you would change that.”

Makoto leaned his head against her “I don’t think I want to ever test that theory….but maybe you’re right…she did seem surprised in that last confrontation.”

“She did. Maybe the one time she ever felt surprised.” Kirigiri sighed, and her fingers brushed from his chin down to his shoulder.

He reached out, and placed his hand on her shoulder in return, leaning in closer.

“And I’m glad for it…if…if I was inscrutable enough to her to surprise her for once, then I’m happy…because it meant we were able to walk free.”

“It did. And now we have the whole world again. Whatever that means.” She smiled at him, but she looked distant, as if something was on her mind.

“Whatever that means…whatever it’s like now.” Makoto murmured softly. “…Kyoko, I know that face…talk to me.”

She huffed another small laugh. “So you’ve caught on to me? It’s true, there’s something on my mind…”

“Hard not to.” He grinned. “…I had to learn my way around your expressions for weeks now, after all….but ah…will you tell me?”

He squeezed her shoulder “the first step to supporting one another is being honest together..”

“Alright,” she nodded slightly. “I’ll be honest then.”

Unusually for Kirgiri, she seemed to hesitate.

“You can tell me anything.” Makoto prompted. “…we’ve been through a lot, right?” He chuckled “…Even getting dumped in the trash.”

That even seemed to fluster her, just a little. She smiled bashfully, almost a grimace. “heh, well. I’m sorry again…”

“I forgive you.” Makoto said with a trace of a giggle, shaking his head. “It’s what had to happen, you know? I knew you’d come for me…”

He leaned forward “but I’m listening to you. I promise.”

“It’s frivolous,” she admitted, glancing away.

“What’s wrong with frivolous?” Makoto smiled a little more warmly “I mean…now’s the time for it, right?”

“If not now, never, I suppose,” she agreed slowly. She paused and drew another breath. “Makoto– can I kiss you?”

Now it was his turn to fluster….he blinked at her with wide , brown eyes for a quiet moment before he managed to whisper “y-yes please.”

He’d wanted to…ever since they’d started getting closer in the later days of the killing game.

Now she didn’t hesitate at all, she scooped her arm around him, and pulled him closer, pressing her lips to his. They were a little bit chapped, and her kiss was a little bit rough. Unpolished, certainly.

It wasn’t as if Makoto had much more polish…it wasn’t his first kiss, but it was close to it. It wasn’t as if his own lips weren’t chapped from days of yelling objections back and forth and fighting for his life.

It wasn’t as if any of that mattered more than the act itself. He leaned into her with a soft murmur, kissing her in return. It was passionate…and from his end, rather gentle to meet her rough kiss.

He felt her gloved hands trembling against him, perhaps the most vulnerable that she had ever allowed herself to be.

When she drew back, it wasn’t very far, and he could feel her breath on him still. Her grey gaze stayed steady on him.

Makoto was flushed…smiling…his hand reaching up to place atop her own as he leaned in close to kiss the tip of her nose.

“I’ve been waiting a while for this kiss, Kyoko…”

She twined her fingers around his, flushing and looking down a little. “You have, hm?”

“Yeah.” He laughed softly, another little giggle as he squeezed her hand in his. “…at some point in that school…after a few close scrapes…”

That thin, sly smile returned to her lips, barely noticeable. “I tried to tell myself I wouldn’t get attached. But now… there’s no need for that.”

“Not anymore at least.” Makoto smiled warmly “you were trying not to get attached, huh?”

“I think I failed,” she admitted lightly.

“Should I say sorry?” Makoto teased , his face tinted pink over his big and goofy smile.

“Don’t apologize for that.” She leaned in and kissed him again– just a peck on the lips this time, but somehow, it sealed the idea that it wasn’t going to be a one and done.

Makoto embraced her then. He didn’t hold back from holding her tight in his arms with the silent acknowledgement of building feelings, built up all the way through their trials and shared horror…and ultimately here. In the safety of the Future Foundation…free , at least for one night.

“I won’t.” he murmured against her. “…I think I’ll say I love you instead.”

At that, Kirigiri flushed quite pink, and he heard an intake of breath. “How optimistically forward of you.”

There was a pause just the length of a heartbeat.

“I think I love you, too.”

“Hopeful optimism’s my thing, remember?” Makoto gave her a grin…before her reply sunk in, and he hugged her even tighter. “…I’m glad,” he murmured. “Even through all the despair…at least we found that at the end of it all, ri-right?”

“Found, or forged,” she agreed, her gloved fingers toying with his hair again as she hugged him. “I’m glad.”

“I’m glad too.” He looked at her with a shy smile. “…thanks for giving this average nobody a chance, huh…thanks for still being here at the end of it all, too.”

“I’m getting suspicious of this average nobody routine of yours,” she teased. “But thank you too. It seems like you’ll have a hard time getting rid of me.”

“Uh oh.” Makoto said with a quiet laugh “you’re on to me. I’m doomed.”

He gently squeezed her shoulders “Funny enough…you’re stuck with me too. So I guess we’ll just have to go forward together…no matter what comes next.”

“No matter what comes next,” she agreed. She rested her forehead against his. “We’d better at least try to get a little sleep though. If nothing else, so that we can say that it’s really tomorrow.”

“The sooner the better, right?” He looked deep into her eyes. “…I’m glad I finally have the chance to fall asleep next to you, Kyoko…we can wake up to that better tomorrow together.”

She gazed back at him, her grey eyes a ghostly mirror that reflected all of the pain and uncertainty they had been through, but also the hope for a new beginning. She squeezed his hand tightly.

“I’m looking forward to it.”