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[gitanes]

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[gitanes]

[Maya takes her wrist. It's not quite touch, but it's very close. That's one thing she's never really thought about, how shades can touch each other. She's never felt safe to touch anyone. Even now, she starts, looking at Maya with wide eyes.]

[But she doesn't pull away. And her eyes sting, although she refuses to think about it. She won't cry. She really can't, even. She can't find the words, either. But Maya's being nice to her. Maya's being—]

[Like Daneca. Like Daneca — and her form shivers around the edges, solid but only barely so as she wrestles with memory.]

I don't—

[Swallowing around nothing, she bites it back. The natural response — how she doesn't need anything, doesn't want anything, can do it all on her own. She knows now that it's not true, but she holds it up as a shield all the same just in case. Even here and now. Even with Maya, who just apologized to her when no one ever apologizes.]

[What do you even say to that?]

Why do you want to help me? I don't . . . get it. Nobody nice has ever wanted to help me.

[Except Daneca. And even Daneca wasn't open like this. This is . . . something else. She doesn't know what to do with it, although she desperately wants to believe it's real.]

[missleadingquestions]

[Maya watches Lila, how she acts and responds, how little her shadowy face shows and how much it shows. She remembers speaking to Mukuro, the way that wolf would recoil at kindness she so deeply desired to be real. And she remembers— saying to Mukuro, and then Mukuro using her as an example— that conclusion they'd come to, that Maya doesn't have to understand the pain people are going through to accept it.

But more than that, whenever she hears someone like Lila— someone who believes so thoroughly that they don't deserve the help they're being offered or else that they can't trust it, can't rely on it safely— she remembers Espella. She remembers how hard Espella tried to keep a brave face on and deny the help that she needed— and how wrong Maya had thought it was that everyone was against her in the first place.

And she knows that a world where people think it's okay to let someone feel that isolated and alone isn't right.

So Maya puts that ice cream cone in a tendril of shadow so her hands are free, and takes the hand Lila's given her in both of her own. She looks into Lila's eyes and says—]

Maybe they weren't that nice after all.

[She shrugs a shoulder, her glowing eyes changing shape to simulate the crease of a brow, the line of her smile going one sided.]

...I know I'd want someone to help me.

[gitanes]

[When her hand is clasped in both of Maya's own, she feels that same old revulsion, the one she hasn't felt in over a year. She crushed it with Komaeda, cremated it with Mukuro, and maybe — maybe that's part of why she stays away from shades. Because with everyone else, it doesn't really feel like touch. Doesn't feel like bare hands on her own. Doesn't feel intimate and dangerous, doesn't make her breath catch and squeeze in her throat.]

[All the breath she doesn't need to breathe anymore. But it's reflex. So much of home is still stuck in the body she doesn't have.]

[Slowly, she shakes her head. She wants to explain, but she knows she can't. Even Komaeda didn't get it, not really.]

That's not— Nice isn't . . . the right word. I don't know how to say it.

[Doesn't know how to explain that what she really means is right people, as opposed to her wrongness. That this is not a value judgment in her mind but a simple categorization, something that was placed on all of them by a society that hated and feared power. If anything, she relished her wrongness, misses it now because it made things so much easier, more logical.]

[Does she even want someone to help her? She doesn't know. She doesn't trust it, she knows that much. It feels on first blush like an insult, an implication that she can't handle herself and her problems. At home it would be a threat, not only to her but to her family, to her father.]

[Her father, who wouldn't trust Maya either.]

[For some reason, that feels like . . . a good reason that Lila should.]

[She closes her eyes for a moment, just to block everything out. Just to have one second. It would be nice to think that when she blocks the world out, it's easier to make sense of all of this, but it isn't. It just aches more. None of the rules she knows have ever made sense here, but she's never needed them more than now.]

You . . . feel like Steve.

[That's it. That's— She opens her eyes, frown sharp and overemphasized on her shadow face.]

You're both supposed to be afraid of me. That's how it's always been. And neither of you are. Because it's different here, I know that, I do—

[But. But it's hard. She might know, but she doesn't understand. There's a separation, and she's the only one who sees it. Just her, and no one else, and sometimes she feels insane.]

[missleadingquestions]

[Maya's glowing mouth turns up into a weird smile, and she leans forward a bit, as if to cover a face she forgets can just disappear.]

You're giving me too much credit.

[She admits only because Lila is being so vulnerable at this moment. Holding back truths feels like a disservice at this moment.]

I was totally afraid of you, after the first time we talked. I thought you'd think I'm— well, you're so— put together.

[It was the same feeling she got with Franziska; the idea that someone who might even be younger than her might know what they're doing more than she does.]

You gave me advice— I mean, did you even know it was me?

[She asks, looking at Lila for a moment, then back down at their hands—]

The cure for thinking things that drag you down is to find the person who made you believe it, cut out their heart, and eat it.

I thought—

[She pulls Lila's hands closer to her own chest, or where her chest would be, as if pleading with Lila to understand her own phenomenal being.]

I thought, you have to be one of the bravest people I'll meet! And then I did meet you, and I was right!

The longer anyone's here, the more people they meet, the more people go away. But even if we never met again, I know— that my life is different because of every time we've met! I'd remember every bit of my life you were a part of!

So I can't stay back from anyone even if I'm afraid. I think—

[She laughs, suddenly, and continues—]

It's corny, but I think I'd miss out on someone great, if I did.