1618/Midnight Monsters

Midnight Monsters
Date of Scene:	17 June 2016
Location:	Mitakihara - Downtown
Synopsis:	Momo has a nightmare. She and Kyouko have a midnight discussion about the horrors of the past, and who is really to blame for them. Kyouko confesses some things she wouldn't to anyone else.
Cast of Characters:	Momo Sakura, Kyouko Sakura

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Momo Sakura has posed:
A little girl sitting by a wall, crayon moving over and around. A crude drawing.

A happy scene. Family. Warmth.

An angry scene.

The glint of a knife.

A happy scene. A crayon drawn landscape on the wall, bright colors.

A mother's scream. A child's confusion.

Smell of smoke in the air. A ladder and rope.

A crayon landscape. Bright, colorful. Flashes of it changing to dripping red.

So much red. Is it hers?

Her eyes stare at him. He screams at her to stop.

The red scene is hellish. Only sometimes it flickers to the crayon landscape.

He kicks himself off the stool.

She watches. Waiting. So much red.

No more crayon landscape. A crayon figure in the center. Red hair. Giant spear.

He stops moving. Her final breath leaves.

At least he won't get her, too.

~*~*~*~

Her throat is sore before she even wakes up.

She can still feel the burn. Still feel...

She doesn't see herself on a pile of pillows. She doesn't see the moon filtering through an open window. She doesn't see Dog, or hear him barking.

She just sees a red landscape.

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
    Screaming. Kyouko, in her short life, has become far too accustomed to the sound of screams. The screams of her enemies, as they fall before her. The screams of her friends, the ones she can never seem to save. Her own screams, often helf back in public, too often given voice when no one can hear, even if only in the echoing chamber of her mind.

    But the screams of her little sister are not ones she is used to hearing.

    She wasn't there, after all, when Momo died. And her sister had never had occasion to scream before that- not a scream of true terror, anyway. Not that Kyouko could recall.

    The screaming is loud in the small apartment, and it wakens her at once. She sits bolt upright in her bed, nothing more than a second-hand twin mattress set on a beat-up old metal bedframe she got at a junkyard. Her long red hair, freed from its ponytail for sleep, hangs about her as wide red eyes dart first left, then right, searching for the source of the sound.

    It says something about her awareness, even in the moments after waking, that she does not henshin. She recognizes that this is not a scream of attack.. at least, not of the kind a spear would help with.

    Moments later she is out of bed, bare feet padding across the small apartment, just two rooms, crossed in a matter of seconds. She's wearing a pair of loose shorts and a long t-shirt that says "Pocky". Without even stopping to consider, she drops to her knees beside Momo's pile of pillows and wraps her arms around her little sister, trying to silence the screams.

    "Hush, c'mon Momo, s'okay, I'm here." She whispers into the younger girl's ear, squeezing her tightly. "C'mon.. you were dreaming. It's okay."

    A lie, of course, because there's no way to repair what was broken those years ago, for either of them. But sometimes there's comfort in lies.

Momo Sakura has posed:
Limbs flail at the sudden contact. Kyouko may end up with a bruised shin before long.

She's not fully aware, not yet, but is just enough to recognize her sister. "No, Kyou-nee, you hafta go, he--he's gonna get you!"

She sits up the best she can, trying to both push Kyouko away and keep her hidden.

For a moment, large eyes dance around the church--

This isn't the church.

And there's a wet dog nose on her leg.

For a moment, it's all she can do, look around as her mind adjusts to being awake.

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
    Kyouko isn't afraid of pain, especially not from her sister. What's a bruise to a Puella, anyway? They fade even more quickly than they do on normal humans.

    "Shhh, shh, nobody's gonna get me." She whispers, trying to urge Momo to keep her voice down by using quiet tones herself. After all, there's apartments all around them, and in a cheap building like this the walls aren't exactly thick. Last thing they need is somebody calling the cops because they think there's an attack going on or something.

    "Momo, c'mon, wake up." She says again, tugging Momo more upright, pulling her closer and squeezing her again. "I'm right here. I'm alive." Well, more or less. "It's okay."

    She waits a moment, until she feels Momo relax and seem to realize where she is, and then she leans back slightly. Her face is serious, even surrounded by dishevelled red bedhead hair, and her eyes search those of her only sister with concern. "You alright, kid? Scared the crap outta me.."

Momo Sakura has posed:
By the time Kyouko pulls away, Momo is shaking. They don't happen often, but when they do they pack a punch.

She sniffles and wipes her eye with the back of her hand and her wrist. "'m sorry. Didn't mean too."

She sniffs again. She's not sure if she should nod or shake her head, so she shrugs instead. "I don't get them a lot. And I thought they were done because--"

A short little sob, and she's trying to be quiet. And then she's burying her face against Kyouko's chest. "I'm so glad he didn't get you."

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
    Kyouko shakes her head, strands of loose red hair, so long the ends pool on the floor around her where she kneels, shimmying in front of her face. "Don't.. it's no problem. I.. understand." Can she, really? Well, sort of. Maybe not exactly, but she's no stranger to nightmares. And she's been dead too, though not for nearly as long, or nearly as tragically.

    When Momo clings to her again, Kyouko raises her hand to rub the younger girl's back slowly. At first she doesn't say anything, giving Momo a few moments to collect herself, at least as best she's able. The apartment is dark, only faint moonlight coming in through the window- you can't really see the sky, mostly just brick wall, out that window, so the light which does manage to make its way in is even dimmer than it would be.

    "For a long time.. I thought I was the unlucky one." She says quietly, then. "It was.. real hard for me. It still is. It was my fault, after all.. I shoulda been the one who he took with him.. not you an' mom."

    She slowly shakes her head again. "I still believe that.. well.. I believe it'd be true in a just world. Dun really believe this is a just world anymore, though, so I guess I can't be surprised.. the innocent always seem to be the ones who suffer."

    "For what it's worth, Momo, I'm real sorry." She looks out the window, at the dim light. "I said I would protect you. I failed in that." And it's been haunting her ever since. She doesn't say that part out loud, but anyone who's known her in the past several years would be able to fill in that blank.

Momo Sakura has posed:
Momo sniffles and cries, of course, cringing when Kyouko expresses the self-blame and shoulda-beens.

Finally, after a moment, she turns her head so she could talk and not be muffled by the word 'Pocky.'

"He failed me, Kyou-nee. You don't just...you don't do what he did." Because she's a Little Sister, she rubs her eyes against Kyouko's shirt as she sniffles again. "I was scared he would. I stayed awake until he was gone."

She pulls back just a little to look up at Kyouko. "I don't blame you for what happened, yeah? But..." She shrugs her shoulders. "For what it's worth, I forgive you."

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
    I forgive you.

    Words that Kyouko has seldom heard- words she doesn't really deserve, at least in her own mind. There are some things you can be forgiven for- and some which can only really be repaid when the scales are weighed at the very end. Aren't those words supposed to make her feel better? Then why do they just make the guilt worse?

    She doesn't express this out loud, of course. She's not that insensitive, not that cruel.

    "I ain't sayin' he was without blame. Obviously, he was a monster. The worst ones always look like people."

    Does that make Kyouko the daughter of a monster? And Momo, too? She doesn't really want to consider that. Enough people already think Kyouko is a monster- she doesn't need to start thinking it herself.

    After a moment she climbs to her feet, pulling Momo with her. "C'mon." She says, navigating back through the dark apartment by a combination of feel and memory and managing only to stub her toe a little. She finds the bed, small and worn as it is, and sits down, pulling Momo down with her.

Momo Sakura has posed:
There are two kinds of monsters. Those who look monstrous, shunned by the world. Then there are those with beautiful skin and pretty words.

The last one is the scariest.

And she's quiet as Kyouko leads her to the tiny bed, feeling a bit warm and fuzzy and safe because soon her Nee-chan will be protecting her from dreams again.

And one of her questions is...is a monster for one person a monster for another? Or a hero?

Sitting next to her sister, she snuggles against her.

Then she clears her throat. "I told Miss White I wasn't gonna work for her. But. Um...I sold her my empty grief seeds..."

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
    Kyouko sits on the bed, with an arm around Momo's waist, keeping the smaller girl tight to her side. Momo feels warm against her- alive. The wonder of this isn't lost on her, and the fact that she owes part of that to Kyubey only dulls it a little bit. She'll have to remember to express her thanks to Usagi for her part the next time she sees her.

    "If you want to know the truth," she says after a few moments of silence, "When.. when I found.. what he had done." Bodies, fire. A life destroyed. Four lives destroyed, but one which had to carry on in its destruction, while the other three escaped, "It was almost the end for me right there. You know, us Puella.. despair can do us in, in a very real sense, same as using up our magic."

    "I think the only reason I didn't.. end right there was because it would have meant he had won. I didn't want to go on by myself.. but even more'n that, I wanted to show him that he had done his worst, and it wasn't enough. I didn't want to give him the satisfaction.. even if he wasn't there to see, one way or the other."

    "This pride I have, Momo.. s'my weakness. My biggest one." She's holding her sister tight, but staring ahead, into the darkness of the bedroom, and speaking quietly. These are words she's never said to anyone, a thing she's never admitted to anyone, because that same pride she now speaks of, it won't let her. Never show weakness. No matter how weak you are, never let them see it. This is a creed she has lived by for four years. But for her sister, in the quiet and the dark, she can speak of it now. Is it meant to be reassurance? Even Kyouko isn't really sure.

    "It makes me say stupid things I don't really mean, makes me do stuff when I know it's just gonna hurt people in the end. It's what made me Wish in the first place.. this pride, the thought that I could solve our problems, that I could take it all on myself and handle whatever the cost was.. didn't realize the cost would be paid by you, and Mom, and even Father. He was a monster, but if I hadn't made that Wish, we might never have had to see that."

    "But my pride is also what's kept me going. Kept me going then, and since. I just can't give up, Momo, because even now, I can feel him watchin' me.. watchin' us, now, I guess. He wants me to give up, because he thinks that I'm the monster. He wanted to punish me, and he's still waitin' for me to break under the weight of it."

    "But I won't let him win, Momo. My pride, for all it makes me do dumb shit, say dumb shit, for all that it causes me trouble, it keeps me moving. It stops me from breaking, like jury-rigged patches holdin' up a groaning bridge."

    "So listen.. I promise, I'll do my best this time. I'll protect you, best I can, since for whatever reason fate saw fit to give me a second chance. But I ain't perfect.. I'm as far from it as you can be. So please just.. help me figure it out? I'm worried my pride will cause me to lose you again.. lose everything I've built. The family I've managed to build. It means everything to me."

    Her head hangs for a moment, and she squeezes Momo all the tighter in the wake of her words.

    Then Momo mentions selling her empty grief seeds to Miss White. Kyouko doesn't say anything more for a moment, and then says, "S'fine. Miss White.. she hurt me bad. But I hurt her too.. that pride, I was just talkin' about. It won't let me forget what she did to me. But pride won't put food on our plates an pride won't keep the lights on. So.. s'fine."

Momo Sakura has posed:
Momo lets her sister talk, absorbing words she senses are not easy for the eldest Sakura to say. When she is squeezed, she holds on just as tight, and a soothing hand against a shoulder blade.

"He wasn't there. I felt Mama, then you, but..." She shrugs. "Maybe he is watchin' us. Maybe he does want us to fail. But I think that's part of his hell. Learnin' he was wrong about you, and having to watch you be stronger'n he ever was. Even at your weakest."

A decisive nod from one who truly believes what she's just said.

"It's why I came back. This time 'round, I getta protect you. Even if it's from your self when you're just bein' a big butt." She knows, of course, that she won't do near a good a job as her sister had. Is. "And this time 'round, I'll let you be scared in the middle of the night and tell you everything's gonna be okay."

A beat.

"An' if you get too prideful, I can always tell you're girlfriend about the time I caught you kissin' your pillow."

She pulls back a bit, eyes wide as she looks up at her sister. Her voice is quiet and low, as though the very thought of what she's about to say will get taken awake if spoken too loud. "Do you think...we could get a big, giant cake with it? An' I dunno how to use a credit card. Can you teach me?"

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
    Stronger than he ever was. Kyouko wants that to be true. But what is strength, exactly? Is it the power to level buildings? To bend people to your will, and make them do what you want? Or is it just the ability to keep going, even when there's nothing left, even when the world is trying it's hardest to crush you? Perhaps strength means different things to different people. All that Kyouko really knows is that she wants her sister to think she's strong- even if she knows she's faking it half the time.

    He wasn't there? On the other side, she assumes. That doesn't change anything, though. Kyouko doesn't believe in ghosts, anyway, despite all the crazy magic she's seen. The eyes she feels on her, judging her, aren't the eyes of her actual father- they're the eyes of the father she's imagined, demonized, hated and feared these past years. They're his eyes, but also her own eyes. But that doesn't change a damn thing.

    Momo says she's going to protect Kyouko this time, and Kyouko can't help but grin slightly, fang protruding from the corner of her mouth. "S'at so?" She flops over backwards on the bed, pulling Momo down with her. It's a small bed, never meant for more than one person, but it's okay for snuggling, especially for smallish people. "I'm your big sis, kid. Pretty sure that means I get to do the protectin'. But.. well. Guess I wouldn't mind some help every once in a while."

    Momo teases her about a pillow-kissing incident. She digs a knuckle into her sister's ribs. "Don't forget whose roof you're livin' under." She snorts, but she's hiding a blush in the darkness.

    "We can get a decent sized cake with it." She allows.. she doesn't know what Hannah paid for those Grief Seeds, but she's sure it's enough for that. "And yeah.. I'll show you. It ain't hard."

Momo Sakura has posed:
Momo snuggles against her sister, finding That Spot that her body remembers even years later. And it has the effect now that it did then: all of her relaxes, she sighs, and feels like nothing can get her here.

Momo then nods. "Yes. Even the Kyou-nees of the world need help!"

Then she's too busy squirming away from the knuckle! Tickles! "Okay, okay, I won't tell her!" Maybe NotNiisan-kun.

Then she's happy! Cake! That they actually pick out! "Oh thank you!" YAY CAKE! "I dunno how much she gave me, though? Like I said I wanted a cooler to bring home ice cream, and she laughed and said she wasn't gonna cheat me. So maybe it's like...five-thousand yen!"

(It's probably closer to one-hundred-thousand.)