' vice versa '

━━━━━

Her feet has grown ice enclosed roots and stuck her to the ground, frost burgeoning in the spots where there were no sunshine, snowflakes falling incessantly and the ice from her throne wrapped every crevice of her body with its artificial coldness.

"What do you mean?" she asks, counting to sixty, calming her nerves. This was highly improbable- the prospect of Katsuki learning that she and Yuko were the same. It was a one in a thousandth probability.

"You're that bitch!" he said again, eyes widened, seemingly out of expletives until the next statement [accusation, really]. "The one who got lost and had to be carried to the police station!"

"Excuse me, Bakugou-kun?" she asked, unburnt thumb brushing against one two three folds of her pleated raincoat, trying to calm down, smiling casually on the outside. "I don't quite understand."

"That was probably four or three years ago!" he said. "You were that fucking crybaby! I'm not entirely sure but you look a lot different, because she had fucking lighter hair and shit for clothes?"

Oh. Oh.

The passage of time had affected his memory. In a way, she was that girl. The tears stop streaming. But that was when she was donning the mask that is Akihisa Yuko so she may have said something that reminded him of her. She hadn't realized that the serendipitous occurrence was such of great importance to him. He seemed almost fond.

"Oh," she said, counting one two three four five six seven eight nine ten in her mind, gathering her thoughts and figuring out what the proper course of action would be. He'd never let it go, wouldn't he? And chances of her escaping are all but lower than the number two. "Oh!"

Eyelids blink thrice, and after two minutes, one hundred twenty seconds, they stop staring at each other and she shatters the silence with her words. "Y-You're that boy?!"

The unhurt hand tries to clasp his cheek and she looks him straight in the eyes, supernovas create beautiful space nebulae and that crimson- varying shades of red are all melted and the liquid form drips and they create his eyes. "No way," she says, the disbelief too much to be real and when he swats her hand away (impossibly gentle), she keeps it frozen on her side. "It's really you!"

"Oh my god," she screams, continues to don the façade of breathless fangirl, jumps up and down in the puddle and sends droplets of rainwater scattering. "It really is you. The uncouth blond bit- I mean boy! Oh my, you became an awesome person. Holy-!"

"You're crying even now," he points out and she touches the streak of tears on her cheeks. Kaede is unaware that the blasted things were pouring out and she tries to wipe them off.

And Kaede rides along with the lie, and she knows that she's a thief for stealing moments with him, but it will be all right. Give her a chance, please. She's said her farewells, but she can't leave. Memories are just a collection of past actions and they can't will her to stay, but feelings are chains that hold her to the ground.

"Oh shut up," she says, uses her sleeves to wipe the tears, but they're still there and attempts to squelch the sobs only makes it worse. "You're still uncouth."

He glares at her. "You were shoving praises into my mouth earlier fucktard," he points out and she spins her head 45 degrees left, cheeks puffed as if everything was okay.

"Well I really really sort of admire you, so this revelation was an unexpected development," she lied and it feels light, so unlike the knives coated with lies she stabbed others in the back with.

"Are you a fucking idiot?" he asks. "Didn't you even recognize me?"

"Well... we live in a superhuman society with all sorts of peculiarities being normal. Having blonde hair and red eyes is sort of common. You can have rainbow hair for all I care, but I bet it would still be hard to recognize you," she said. "And I have bad memory, you know."

"You're so stupid," he said. "How can you even sleep at night with all that shit you've done?"

"Are you asking me for an apology, Bakubitch?" she asks, eyebrows crossed. She's annoyed outside but this conversation feels like a breath of fresh air from all the suffocation threatening to smother her entire being. God, even the nickname makes her want to cry, pull him close and never let him go.

As if it was that easy.

"What did you call me, you twofaced bitch?" he asked, annoyed, but there was fondness in his eyes and it was that look that made her soul splinter unto pieces- all screaming for him, for them. For those days she deemed foolish, and she's not even angry at this redundant action. This cycle of wanting and leaving and hurting.

Kaede wants to break free, but she can't. She can't, because she chose this faith. Moments like this. These are what make her unearth those hidden wishes; makes her want to kneel on the ground like a peasant instead of a queen who made an empire bow. Press her hands together and look for fallen eyelashes, dandelion fluffs and falling stars. All those false deities and saints. Even the devil himself.

"Sorry? What did you just call me?" she asked, jerked out of her reverie. Being twofaced was in her repertoire, but normal people would have been offended.

Katsuki grinned. "Apology accepted."

It's moments like this. This stupid, complicated, lovable, magical, amazing moments where the seconds and centuries stop filtering through her fingertips and she wished and wished and wished repeatedly for reincarnation. To be born as a different person, in a different place and a different family.

To stop being this monster who just destroys everything in her path. To stop wanting the carnage and the suffering. To stop being someone who wanted to rule. To be remembered in history not as someone who took and wrecked, but just a background character. To smile freely, make errors without losing her life. To treat death as something faraway and not by the edges of her fingertips.

To be human.

"Forget what I said about you being awesome and all that shit," she said, crossed her arms over her chest, and gave him that look- the bitch please look. "You're an uncouth bastard whose epithet would probably be some sick shit like Dumbass or Shitty boy."

"Says Crybaby," he said, and there was a ghost of a smile on his face and screw all those dandelion wishes, she'd wished he'd shut up and be less like this.

"Coming from the hero in training who will probably rank first in the Looks Most Like A Villain list in the near future, it's almost a pleasant compliment," she said, glared upwards, cursing his tall stature.

"Besides," she added, chin tilted with conceit. This sort of act felt normal, almost as if it was her true self, and Kaede shakes her head repeatedly, reminding herself that it was this action that led to the chaos in her mind. Believing that she wasn't a monster. It's wrecking her apart. Only through death can she be purified. "You've only seen me cry two times."

"I've only fucking met you for two times and both of those times, you were crying so stop being a bitch and admit it," he said, the fondness dissipating and moving on typical Katsuki bitchiness.

And how she wanted to clutch his hands and tell him. That it was more than dozens of times- their meetings. And she was smiling and laughing and living like a human too.

"Well both times we met, you were an asshole too," she said. "So why don't you admit that you're an asshole first?"

Another minute of silence (exactly sixty seconds), and Kaede doesn't even know why they're walking side by side in the rain, but she needs an excuse to leave and she needs it now. This has gone for too much already, she's wasted almost an hour in discussing things with him, forty two minutes and eighteen seconds underneath the rain and eighteen minutes which were spent on conversations.

"I want to talk to you," he said. "Coffee?"

"Juice," she said. Honestly, Kaede could have come up with a thousand excuses to leave, but she wants to stay and talk to him and reminisce with him. "But I'll talk to you. I've already talked to you."

"Your taste is shit," he said, hands on his pockets and both their raincoats aren't really alleviating the dripping raindrops and the puddles reflecting the grey wisps of clouds and the yellowish jagged bolt of lightning, so he has to shake his head and let some of the droplets that stuck to his hair fall.

"Still fucking rude, I see," she says, resists another shudder because of the clammy feeling of the rain on her skin. "How hopeless, Bakuhoe."

"Still a blabbermouth with bipolar disorder," he said and looked at her, through some fringes of blonde hair that fell on his face.

And despite all the jibes and thorny words, they're both smiling.

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