' the universe expands '

━━━━━

"Why?" he asked, and she hears the sound of clocks ticking from the nearby store signaling the arrival of midnight. But her attention hasn't been pulled from midnight boy standing in front of him, so lost and in all that suffocating darkness, she knew that he was alone too. Katsuki Bakugou was a boy destined for greatness, his mortal form worshipped by those who came upon him. Golden boy of the gods who was meant to be the epitome of power at all costs. He could not break, they thought and that thinking cast a burden upon him. A burden too great it was ripping him apart inside.

No one realized, but Kaede did because Kaede was the same, that he was human too and that he had his flaws too. No matter how many people attempted to crush those walls he erected, he had walked the path of loneliness and no one would ever become his companion.

Katsuki did not need pity. He needed nothing as shallow as pity. He was strong, breaking. And he was human too.

"Why do you keep on hurting me?"

He deserved an apology.

"I'm so sorry, Katsuki."

A kick on the crotch, twists in alleyways and she's gone.

━ × ━

"Stop that expression," Tomoe said, attempted to ruffle her newly combed hair, but she swatted it away. "You look ugly."

"Oh shut up," she said, continued donning that furrow in her eyebrows and murderous blood red eyes. Last night was just an illusion. Yes, it was over. Just a lapse of judgment never meant to occur again.

"You have no self-confidence," he says, hands on his pockets. "You didn't even attempt to deny that one."

"You're practically overflowing with it," she says, prepares a defensive stance. "If I ooze more self-confidence, it'll cause imbalance."

"Is that your cheap attempt at provoking me?" he asks, remains his stance and the air around them becomes denser, tenser.

Kaede rolls her eyes- she's done this action for almost fifteen times this day so Tomoe must have been more exasperating than the norm. "You were the one who told me I looked ugly," she points out, eyes trained on his stance and none of that lightheartedness present in her form.

"Just with that expression," he admits, that smile on his face. "You're actually really pretty."

Kaede throws the first punch. A left hook, her non-dominant hand (right hand, four fingers were still burnt) so the force is halved making it easy for him to deflect the punch and toss her to the ground.

"You're so easy to bait," he says with a laugh, but it's halted when he begins coughing. It's almost a blur, when he falls to the ground unconscious, and she crawls to his side almost immediately.

"Tomoe?!" she calls, two fingers moving to check his pulse and panic has clutched her throat so tight that she doesn't even realize that she's used her burnt fingers, so she bites her lips to hold back a well that's threatening to escape. "Tomoe what's wrong? Wake up! Tomoe!"

She feels his pulse, but she fails to be calmed by the actions and the next seconds are a burst of numbers twirling at her finger tips and she's about to skim his skin, figure out, but she promised, so Kaede has to carry him on her back and she's screaming on the hallways for Tomura or Kurogiri or Mr. Compress.

"Fuck," she curses, tries to remember the familiar turns to the infirmary, but she can't.

"Tomura!" she screams, pauses, realizes that he's still probably burying himself in hatred because of sensei.

Damn. Damn. Damn.

"There you are," a familiar voice says and she whirls to face Dabi, looking annoyed and uncaring as usual. "We have another mission. That crazy lady has to infiltrate- what's that on your back?"

"Dabi!" she screamed, ran towards him while carrying the limp body, clutching his black coat with singed fingertips. "Where's the infirmary?!"

"Your fingers are still burnt?" he asked. "You must be really stupid to not get that treated. Anyways, who touches scorching flames on impulse, are you sure you're not cra-!"

Kaede punched him.

"Listen to me you son of a bitch!" she yelled, accompanied with a degrading insult as Dabi fell to the cold floor. "Where's the infirmary? Someone's going to die!"

"Why should I care?" he asked, hauling himself to a sitting position, brushing his swelling cheek with his palms. "He-"

A foot was placed on his face and before he could make his flames ignite, Kaede's mouth had opened. "Three minutes and forty seven seconds. My quirk works at direct contact. I activated it earlier when I punched you. Those are your last minutes, so if I don't know where the infirmary is ten seconds, that prediction will come true."

Ten nine eight seven-

"You bitch." The flames dissipate.

Six five four three-

"Do you honestly think I'll believe that lie?"

Two one zero.

The knife glints against the fluorescent lighting, and she presses it against his neck, and she presses the boot on his palms. Two paces back and she-

"Just go straight for two rooms and turn left. The second room is the infirmary!"

She slips the knife back into her pocket, gives him a glare. "Alright, alright you bitch! I'll carry him too."

Kaede merely glares as he carries Tomoe to the infirmary and when he's laid against the lapis lazuli bedsheets, she hears a few groans and the doctor with a pathetic healing quirk rushes to his side and begins.

Fringes of white cotton are played with again, and her eyes are only trailed on his convulsing form and the seconds that have passed. She's on five thousand, eight hundred twenty one when the doctor turns to her and says that he's stable.

A relieved sigh escapes her lips and she stops counting. Leans against the surface of ultramarine walls complete with charts and the sparse embellishments.

"So... can I leave now?" Kaede turns around to face Dabi, still leaning against the eall while an ice pack is pressed to his face.

With a placid face, she meets him eye to eye. There's a bout of hesitation occupying her mind, but she pushes it all away. Wrath was preferable over vulnerability at times like this. She'd face even the anger of the gods- that's what Kaede made herself for. "It was a bluff," she said, clutching the knife hidden beneath the fabric of the coat she wore. "Thank you for your cooperation." Thank you for being afraid of your death, you pliable piece of garbage.

Surprisingly, he kept his calm and merely exited the premises, following the doctor who left after declaring that Tomoe was stable, leaving her to her lonesome and when the wooden door closed behind him, she let all the intensity finally weaken her and she sank to the floor- sobbing.

That was what it meant to be a monster. To cry behind closed doors and never let them see even a shred of vulnerability. Even when you no longer want your throne, they will claw their way towards it and destroy you.

Everyone who wasn't in your side was an enemy. She turned to Tomoe, watching that vulnerable form through fringes of raven that fell in front of her face. And those who you keep close to your heart were liabilities.

Buoyant upon feelings sewn taut as a child who was merely twelve, she wasn't privy to these feelings that feel like ivies crawling up her spine and threatening to snap it apart and break like the seed coat of the plant that burgeoned on places where sunflower seeds were scattered.

Honey sunlight oozed from places where the mauve and vermillion curtains couldn't, and when she looks up to see the sky through the French windows, she sees the basin of blue outside with candy floss clouds clearing away.

Of course, Kaede doesn't miss the tiniest signs of regaining consciousness for the boy whose final days and hours were trickling one by one.

"Tomoe!" Crawling clumsily towards his side as if he was leaving, as if he was going to turn into warm sunlight in a couple of minutes, she clutches his pale hand and bring it to her lips, smiling and crying at the same time.

"Kai," he says, tries to wipe the rivulet of tears streaming from her cheek. "Don't cry. It'll ruin your pretty face."

It was an unpleasant face at the best of times, crude and broad and host to a limited repertoire of expressions ranging from sly to vicious, but now she looked stricken. Afraid and yearning and that unpleasant was getting rid of its prefix.

That was Tomoe. Who saw beauty even in monsters. Who found the stony dignity in the lift of her shoulders, and the jut of her blunt chin and her unexpectedly unguarded, vulnerable eyes beautiful. Captivating.

"Beautiful, my ass," she said and rubbed her thumb against his wrist. "Stop saying that when you're the one lying on your bed with the perfect amount of sunlight on your hair."

Tomoe chuckled at that, clutching her burnt hand by the wrists and rubbing circles on her palms and with those perfect lips and crimson eyes, he admitted it. "I'm dying, you're an observant person so it's obvious you'd notice that."

Placid, powerful, powerless. She answered him with carrying those. Tomoe had told her earlier that it looked ugly. She unearthed the hidden meanings beneath those feathery light words. And she answered. "It is prevalent. I didn't even need to use my quirk."

"Quirks..." he said, and his hand paused. "I got greedy."

"What?" Kaede's voice detonates the question. She put on that facade of calm, as if she was novocaine- numb, but there were things you just couldn't guard yourself from. "What do you mean?"

A sob. A weep. A sniffle. An action referring to gasping while crying. A sob. Tomoe was crying and there are a million steel wires wrapped around her throat, smothering her, takes her a minute to spew out the words. "Tomoe, what's wrong?"

He's clutched her hand too tight that it hurts, but in the rarest instances- like twin strawberries meant for lovers, Kaede didn't mind the physical pain and was more concerned of the pain that was tearing Tomoe to shreds. "I want to tell that you're ugly when you cry, but you manage to make it even more picturesque than diamond dust, you flawless bastard."

"Don't worry," he told her. "I'm dying, so you don't have to carry that resentment with you forever. I'm just afraid you can't ask me to expedite the process."

"You jerk! I don't want you to die. I don't want to see you cry too, so for heaven's sake, stop acting like I want to," she said.

"Then, do you want your truth?" he asked softly.

"Yes."

"Truth seeking Kai," he said, ruffled her hair. "You changed, but no one cannot take that from you."

"I'm a liar," she said.

He grinned at her. "Aren't we all?"

She smiled at that.

"I asked sensei for a new quirk," he admitted.

Blinking, she tilted her head to the side. "Well that's essentially his power. To gift-"

"It wasn't just that," he cut in. "The quirk. I got greedy. So greedy that I asked for more. So selfish and impatient that I asked for more. Sensei thought that you were the most impatient among the three of us, but sensei makes mistakes too. He believed that I was strong enough to handle all that power and I did. For two years, I managed to. Then the remaining years, I got so wrapped up in the power that I ignored the clear signs of organ failure, the times when it was too cold for me even when there's broad daylight."

"You turned yourself into a Noumu?" she asked, softly. Fuck softly. She was screaming.

"Close enough."

"What the fuck Tomoe?" she screamed. "Why would you do that? You're already strong without any of it. I have a useless quirk and I manage. Why?!"

"I have a quirk that can discern the full potential of other quirks," he said. "It can tell anything and has probably the biggest backlash, and sensei told me to tell you that your quirk is incomplete, Kai. You aren't just an observer of time, Kai," he said. "You can will it."

"I don't give a single flying fuck about that," Kaede says. "I just want you to not die, you moron!"

"Your voice is too loud, Kai."

"I don't care!" she screeches. "The only thing that matters now is that you can't die Tomoe, because you're the only..." her voice softens, then breaks, "person who... you're my bestfriend."

"Kaede."

"You can't just die," she says. "It's unprecedented and uncalled for. Promise me you won't please."

He doesn't say anything. And it breaks her genuinely because Tomoe Tomoe Tomoe Tomoe is a wonderful boy who could unravel the secrets of the expanding universe at his touch and he was a constant in her life, something that reminded her of what she was and what she could be. What she was supposed to and he was her everything.

"Tomoe," she says and an airy breath escapes her lips and she is so close to crying. "Promise me. Please."

"I won't."

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