' of dreams and dying, ii '

━━━━━

That temporary reprieve, that single shed of clarity in a mind overflowing with tornadic images and words that served as claws, clutching necks and fingernails drawing blood, that simple 'stop' from all the chaos, Kaede savored it.

And rightfully so.

Three days pass, seventy two exact hours, four thousand three hundred and twenty minutes, and the claws reach for her neck again, and this time there's no more reprieve so her nightmares take her to a grey world, something created from memory and combined with elements from her fears.

Tomoe stands at the center, and she questions herself again, how many times has she dreamed of Tomoe? How many times has he made her heart weep in these nightmares that made her wake up in a cold sweat? How many painful times?

"Tomoe," she says, and the world around them shifts to that of wooden floors, gargantuan mirrors and just about any conceivable weapon of death possible. Of course they're in the training room with two hundred fifty square meters of space, its four corners, eight upright posts and two double doors.

"Kai," the way he sees it is so unfeeling that she's reminded how this is a dream again. But Kaede doesn't want to leave. And fear clutches her wrists, its fingernails chafing her skin at the prospect of wanting to leave. She never will. Even in this twisted world full of memories and moments that smother her, Kaede will no longer turn her back on Tomoe.

"Those kids," he says. "You lied to them."

"Who are you talking about?" she asks, crumpling the skirt she wears beneath her palms- a grey thing vaguely reminiscent of the sorrowful skies she loathed. "I've lied to lots of kids," then softer, "I lie to everyone." Even myself.

"I'm talking about them," he says, "those children who carry hope in their pockets and blessed by the cosmos."

"Those U.A. kids," he clarifies and those clouds are brewing thunderstorms and there's a jagged piece of lightning that strikes her heart.

Kaede lets go of the skirt, her hands hanging low on her side. "They're not kids, Tomoe," she says, softly. "They're just a month or year younger than you."

"You know I'm not referring to that aspect," he points out and there's that snark she's seen in him, when she resented him to the moon and back, when she envisioned dozens and thousands of painful ways to kill him. "I'm talking about exposure to the world. Our world where dreams die everyday."

So we wrap ourselves in darkness and survive as nightmares, she thinks. Because that is their world. For children who were abandoned, forgotten or ignored. For children who didn't even have wooden spoons on their mouth. Power was the only thing they could rely on.

"They know things," she says, and why the hell is she defending them? "They're not entirely clueless."

"Ingenues, then," Tomoe says, and there's that reminder that he's a dream again, because Tomoe was as tender as the words she craved when she was a child. "They don't know how dark and desolate this world is. How people on the streets are dying, driven to madness, where victims are blamed and children are cutting their wrists with razor blades. They don't know how true it is, because they're all showing their stuff and how terribly sad it is when they don't have supportive parents."

"We didn't have food," he said. "They grew up, provided and they still think this world is about their dreams and aspirations."

Kaede shakes her head. This isn't Tomoe, this is just her mind twisting facts and showcasing them in this nightmare, because Tomoe never said those words, Tomoe never resented those greater, because it was Kaede who did. Kaede who hated the world to bits.

"They're not that bad, Tomoe," she tells him. She tells her past self and it's no longer Tomoe in front of her, but a Kaede who's merely four feet tall. Her past self of blood red eyes full of cold fury, chapped pale lips, bruised skin and that favorite dagger that has already lost to time.

"You told them that the naïve girl who spent fleeting halcyon days with them is not you," the younger self says, points an accusatory finger, "you lied."

This is a memory, she thinks. She's told her motivation and explanation for this and that time, she doesn't remember if it was Tomoe who heard and accepted it, or did she really tell him that? Or maybe she kept it in her heart? Dream world is hazy and there's a dense fog in the atmosphere that feels like it's going to latch unto her and smother her being.

"You told them that Yuko was still their friend, because Mizuki Kaede only appeared during that training camp, that you don't know much about them, you didn't lean on their backs, cup cheeks, hold hands, trade hugs and high fives, you told them that," she stops and stares at her, and what a dream, it taints the beautiful crimson of her eyes and makes it look pale pink instead, but even as a phantom, she's easily terrifying.

"Why?"

And the figure blurs and turns to Tomoe, and it's a great load off her shoulders, because among everything else, she's afraid of her past self. Of the atrocities she committed that can never be redeemed.

"Why?"

Kaede doesn't respond, because even though there are great discrepancies between real and dream Tomoe, he's pulling off that I'm going to answer my own question look.

"Do you intend to make them raise hopes only for you to crush it- that's what the Kai I know would do," he says, but it sounds like he knows that deep inside. "Or are you protecting them from the reality that they were foolish enough to trust you- that sounds very romantic and selfless, don't you think? But you wouldn't do it, would you? Or-" Deep inside, she's just being herself again. Selfish. "You are protecting yourself by detaching yourself from them, believing the person who loves them is a different entity when it isn't."

Darkness for three seconds and past Kaede is the personage in front of her.

"You're deluding yourself again with hope," the younger Kaede says. "Hope that they would still accept you, but you've seen the indifference in Todoroki Shouto's eyes, they won't even know you, they will never accept you," her chest hurts and it feels so real that maybe this is not a dream at all? "You're only lying to yourself."

The last statement isn't a question, because it was really never meant to be, the third idea out of three ideas is an accusation.

Kaede glances at the mirrors surrounding the walls for a split second and it's Tomoe again. Thank God it's Tomoe, again.

"Kai," he says, and instead of the mirrors reflecting the two of them, there are glass walls surrounding the room. One. Two. Three. Five cracks appear from all different directions. "You love them, don't you?

"You love the way they make you safe, don't you? The way they let you rely on them? Hold their hands tight, lean your back against them, flung your shoulders over theirs? All that bubbly laughter emanating from your carnation lips?"

Seven cracks now.

"You love how even when nothing's happening, no sweat, no drama, you feel like you belong."

Eight. Nine. Ten. Wider and thicker, but her eyes are still on him and his image is flickering from his own to her past self's, so it might give her a vertigo.

And the glass breaks, letting water seep in and drown them both but all it does for them is change the scenery and overturn themselves.

Two breaths from two lips and a thousand seconds of silence, before Tomoe takes five paces toward her.

"And it hurts you not to be with them."

Kaede knows that too, but she doesn't want to believe it, because she's strong, she always is, and accepting that is also embracing her changing sides, her leaving the darkness and embracing the cold.

Afterall, she's human too and humans are prone to switching sides.

Maybe the effects of the quirk haven't vanished at all, because as far as Kaede is concerned, these dead minutes and seconds, grey scenery and broken glasses, are giving her much needed clarity.

Kaede wakes up in Tomoe's bed again- it's the only place that helps her sleep and the air conditioning in the room is- dare I say- perfect. Two limbs touch the fur rug splayed in the floor, hands reach for a drawer and she picks up the blue letters, sits on the bed again, curls her legs underneath her body and tucks them with the blanket.

Breath dissipating in the air, Kaede opens the envelop. Cries at what she's seen, because the contents are like Pandora's Box- both beautiful and terrible and she reckons that after this, after this epiphany fueled by the words of the boy she loved and lost, the lie she gasped late at night.

The constant murmurs of I am a villain, I am a villain, I am villain would never be believed again. Because Kaede has grasped permanent clarity, and after years, an approximate eight years of indecisions and uncertainty, Kaede knows.

And she's damning the consequences.

--

E N D O F C H A P T E R
- s e l f - d e s t r u c t i o n