' flowers cannot bloom without rain '

━━━━━

The storm has passed. Grief is starting to fade and people will always tell you that it is better for the storm to pass, but they don't realize how all the casualties and the bereavement hurt more than physical pain.

How scratches and wounds are better than being unraveled inside.

"Well someone seriously needs therapy," a sardonic voice announces at the sight of Kaede sat on the marble floor and the glass shattered all over the place.

"Kaede-sama, have you cleared your mind now?" Mr. Compress, flanking Dabi asks with a careful tone.

Kaede looks at him, that neutral placid expression that made her look like an ivory statue- the ones made for Aphrodite (who they cling to for their continued patronage of love, oh amor vincit Omnia indeed), but Kaede's look had softened, weathered. Just a girl. "Yes," she said. "Much better now."

"Much better?" Dabi asked, incredulous. "I had to do all those missions that were meant for her and when I need alcohol to wash all that fatigue from doing her job, I see this. Nothing's edible now."

Kaede ignored him. There was something more pressing than his tantrums that resembled those of a child. She'd realized her new goal, no more light. Just darkness. She shall regain closure.

And for that, she needed strength. She needed to be stronger. More power.

"Kaede-sama?" This time, she doesn't face Mr. Compress, she sees what she has done. But the broken glasses from the array of alcohol bottles are gone and its stead is dust. Like glitter on the floor glinting against the light and she wishes the last trace of alcohol in her system is gone, so when she groans and checks her palm, Kaede is surprised to see only miniscule scratches.

Her hand, five fingers, have been gripping glass shards for the rest of the day, so how in the name of Hades are her palms almost clean?

"What's all the dust in here, anyway?" Dabi asks, tries to fix the bar stool and when he succeeded in doing so, propped himself on one.

"I don't know," Kaede admitted. "Mr. Compress, how many days has it been since I locked myself up in here?"

"Not a day," Mr. Compress answers, scanning the entirety of the mess. "More of half a day, really."

Time is murky. She knows that most of all, but this is an odd thing to come by and before she figures out this life, she has to figure what happened with all these and why there's a strange tugging at somewhere inside of her.

As if she's ready to implode, to crush sugar cubes beneath her fists and taste the sweet taste of life. Like pouring sunshine unto her throat.

"Maybe it's a quirk," Mr. Compress suggests, but he's met with a deadpan from Kaede.

"My quirk is identifying how much time it will take for someone to die," Kaede announces and dusts her pants of the dirt, or at least tries in vain. She's skipped showers now, so she must be really malodorous. "That's obviously unrelated to dust."

"Well..." Mr. Compress began and inspected the 'dust' on the floor with his gloved thumbs. "This looks like sand to me."

"Maybe your quirk identification was wrong all along...?" he suggests. "There's lime in here too, although the particles are more minute than sand."

Kaede tries to think about it as she props herself in one of the bar stools, three paces away from Dabi just to be sure, and she shrugs in the end. "How can time relate to sand and lime?"

"This is very interesting, indeed," the older man announces, carefully scans the particles. "Maybe instead of being limited to telling the exact time of death, it's more of an... hourglass?"

"Hourglass?" Kaede repeats dumbly.

"Yes," he answers. "Hourglasses cannot tell the exact time, but in olden times and in literature, they're usually used to signify the trickling moments of life. For example, in plays, the antagonists may allow the protagonists to live until the last sand in the hourglass falls, also this can be interpreted as you being an hourglass, what with the sand and the ability in relations to time."

"Far-fetched," Dabi (who was surprisingly listening) and Kaede chorused.

Kaede was the first to show her outrage at how they spoke at the same time. "Stop eavesdropping."

"It's not eavesdropping, I'm not interested in your conversation, but I can't help it"- he pointed two ears using two pointers- "because I have these."

It didn't take three seconds for the ravenette to scoff. "Then stuff your ears with plugs."

"Why the hell would I adjust for you?" he asked, livid. But if there was something worse than livid, that would be the perfect descriptor for Kaede.

"This wouldn't have happened if you just kept your mouth shut," she hissed, clenching her fists, almost ready to use the broken bottle of wine nearby to hit him. "The adults are having a conversation here Dabi, so mind your mouth."

"Adults?" he asked, taunting and furious at the same time. They were each other's mirror images although one would have been more of Narcissus towards their attractive reflections rather than Hera at the sight of Hephaestus (disgusted). "Maybe you should shut up, spoiled brat."

"I'm not spoiled," she said, racked her mind for an insult and only managing to come up with something after seven seconds, so the pause turned awkward. "... you gothic, Stain fanboy! Oh look at me, I have piercings and how terribly dark this dangerous looking visage I have. I sew corpses into my body, because that's really edgy, and oh wait, I shall purge the evil side of heroes, because I'm God."

Dabi was furious. More furious than his state earlier and if one would compare, earlier- two minutes and five seconds would have been called calm. "You hypocritical bitch! You probably joined the league, because oh I hate everything and I can't be wrong so the world must be and let me grieve and act all psychotic after the person who I pushed away died." He stood up from the bar stool and pointed the doorway. "All those people out there fear you, because they've seen what you could do as a child, but I know that you've been trapped in a different body for years, so you're obviously weaker than your child self! Mizuki Kaede, bringer of darkness, I see a pathetic loser."

"Dabi this has gone far enough-!" Mr. Compress announced, trying to calm the waters, but it was too late, Dabi had already approached Kaede and they were standing face to face (not really, because Dabi was taller).

Bloodred eyes drip fury, because what could incite anger more than truth? "I'm going to kill you."

"Keep dreaming."

Twenty seconds, twenty tiny stutters of a hand belonging to the wall clock whose glass case has been cracked and Kaede throws the first punch, uses the broken wine bottle to stab him and it grazes his dark cloth but fails to reach flesh for flames eat away the glass.

Heat emanates from the blow, so Kaede discards the bottle, takes three four five continuous steps back as Dabi attempts to scorch her skin, but her reflexes aren't quite jaded by time so only trickles of her cloth are burned.

"You two!" Mr. Compress tries to stop them by using his quirk, but the enraged teens have seen it in action and are aware of its capabilities, so the moment his palm reaches their range, they both take a wrist and toss him into the nearby cabinets.

Mr. Compress' distraction helps Kaede to regain the upper hand, giving Dabi a kick to the chin that sends him tumbling back and she attempts to follow with a stomp to the throat, but two hands grip her leg and blue flames lick again.

Screaming in pain, Kaede uses the other leg to strike at his eyes. The grip loosens.

"You fucking bitch," Dabi says, rubbing his eyes with the back of his palms, but Kaede is as scheming as she is furious, so she doesn't hesitate to follow up with a kick to the gut and when he fumbles, another wine bottle within her grasp, just twelve inches away, she breaks it and the sharpened edges glint against the light.

Sharp, almost as effective as a knife. Dabi will die by this. That smug, self-satisfied prick.

Five seconds and she's lunging at him with that broken wine bottle, and when the sharpened edges are so near, so close, Dabi vanishes.

No, compresses.

"That's enough, isn't it?" Mr. Compress asks. "Grief tends to bring different sorts of emotions and predominantly... rage."

Tongue clicked in distate, Kaede tries to find something that can alleviate the burn that hurts her leg. There's a puddle of water nearby that looked like it was once ice and Kaede touches it, grunts at the fact that it would have been better if it was still ice.

Pain gnaws at the leg again and it feels like thousands of candle flames licking at her pale skin, all so nocent and it feels like the cessation of the pain will be eternal bliss. Ice.

Kaede needs ice. If only these puddle of water were ice again. If only. If only- "Kaede-sama, what's wrong?" a voice jerks her out of her reverie, and she sees Mr. Compress playing with a marble containing Dabi inside. "You've been grasping those ice cubes for a while now. Does the burn hurt too much that you cannot ap-"

"Ice?"

There's ice in her clutches. There's ice in where the water was supposed to be and it's such a ludicrous thought and how convenient for Tomoe's words to take a different meaning now.

You can will time.

Past, present and future.

Stupid, stupid. The whole thought was ridiculous. A bunch of hokum that should be obliterated to irrelevancy.

That's right, she thinks as she transfers the ice cube to a handkerchief Mr. Compress gave her and creating a makeshift ice compress. It's all a bunch of nonsense.

After fifteen years, ten months and fourteen days, it would be impossible.

"That's right," she whispers. "It's ridiculous."

The statement is repeated over and over again in her mind, even as she leaves the room and orders someone to clean up the mess.

Turning glass back to sand, water to ice. A ridiculous notion, she thinks, while her right hand is still holding a glass shard, willing it to turn to dust.

Three days have passed, seventy two hours of loneliness and grieving, but she's decided to place a period on that never-ending sentence.

Flowers cannot bloom without rain, they say, and in her case, she was that flower after the harsh rain, but Kaede is done. Done with being the flower; she wouldn't want to be the rain either, because that was pale and insipid in comparison to all that potential.

She won't be the flower, or the rain, she will be the storm.

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