PAPER FLOWERS ( k. bakugou )

chapter 11

' i killed something good '

━━━━━

Glasses perched upon rows and rows of decanter glass with different coloured liquids sloshing inside. Oozing with the smell of alcohol and lemons partnered with the fresh scent of the flowers by the threshold. A row of pristine velvety bar stools complete with the sheen of the metal and glass sparkling under the artifical light.

It was a beautiful place. In that grunge aesthetic kind of way with space bound themes and star splayed ceilings. Kaede almost gushed. A perfect combination of the dark cosmos and the colorful lights that seek to illuminate it.

"What do you want to drink, Kaede?" Kurogiri asks, clad in a bartender outfit while polishing a wine glass using a white cloth. She hates (she hates almost everything) how this reminds her of the past again. Girl bound by past- once she just thought that it was merely a collection of past actions, but now. Now it was something dear to her. Unforgettable, but also irreversible.

This reminds her so much of how the older man offered her alcoholic beverages back then and she'd turn them down, then Tomura would make it a point to slurp loudly to incite envy from her, and Kaede always quick to anger would try to chuck dangerous objects only for Tomoe to step in immediately and offer her apple juice instead- that was the first time it occured and that led to her overall abhorrence towards apple juice.

Tomoe mocked her using it, but when she thinks about it now, he wasn't mocking her at all. He was pacifying her like he always did and she returned it with scorn.

Kaede was a bitch. There was no denying that and she'd always known that and there were no redeeming characteristics to her at all, but. But. No matter how good or evil someone was, the world was still unfair. And maybe that was the fairness of the world- being unfair to everyone no matter the goodness or the evil inside them.

And she still insisted to change the world. Because that was what they were made for, right? Destroying the balance that tethered the era of faux peace.

"Do you want me to drown my sorrows in alcohol?" she asked him, her head an amalgamation of discord. Oh Eris would step away from her now. She'd been driven to so much chaos that no one wanted that now. Even herself.

Kurogiri looked at her through those lightning like eyes, almost pitying and it made the blood curdle in her stomach. But she wasn't angry at him.

( As a child under the tutelage of All For One, she made it a point to dislike those who pitied her, scorn them even. Tomoe was one of those people. )

She was angry at herself, because back then, there was nothing to pity her for, but now. Now. There was reason. Reason to be pitiful towards Kaede. Broken, beautiful Kaede.

"That's the wrong question, my dear," Kurogiri answered. "Do you want to drown your sorrows in alcohol?"

"That wouldn't bring him back," Tomura spoke after minutes of silence. Three exact minutes. "But the way you are now..."

Kaede look down, the marble reflecting her visage and she didn't see her cruel, callous self. She saw a grievous creature who traded her fangs for tears, and claws for fears.

She saw the real Kaede.

That disgusting, eleven letters of a creature who only took and took and finally receiving that Karma. Heck, she has no right to grieve, because in the end, she never even told him that he forgave her and that she loved him like a brother.

All two hundred and six bones of a teen, filled with nothing, but regret and dying dreams.

"The mission with Toga," Kurogiri had said, probably to Tomura. There was a ninety-nine percent chance it was for Tomura. Kaede was a weapon barely functioning. Who'd tell her orders? "What if she fails?"

Kaede sees Tomura by her peripheral vision, shaking his head. "I trust my allies' capabilities. That woman will not fail. She'll get the blood."

"And after that?" the oldest man in the room requires and any other day, she would have been at least proud of Tomura. Any other day. Grief is like a catastrophical physical injury. It will cripple something within you forever and even when you recover, you will never be the same again.

Kurogiri hands him a glass of alcohol, ice cubes inside it glinting under the light and Tomura takes it, sipping before he answers, "I'll gather more participants. Then when my party is complete, that will be the perfect time to attack."

"More allies, huh?" That was Kurogiri.

Kaede smiles a bitter smile and slumps on the marble. "Replacements," she said. Replacements for the ones we've lost. For Tomoe. For what I once was.

"Don't say it like that," Tomura said, back to that scratching habit of his that she's resolved to never reprimand again. Let him do as he wished, it wasn't like he ever ordered her to stop doing all those terrible habits of her. "My allies are valuable. They cannot simply be replaced. Additional allies leaves a more secured feeling. That way..." he looked at her. "No one from my party will lose again."

"How naïve," she said.

"But thinking that he will be back is too," Tomura pointed out.

"I know," she whispered. There were five stages of grief. And those five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance were a part of the framework that makes up humanity's learning to live with the ones that we've lost.

Kaede was submerged in depression. And it's painful, because she knows that those stages are not stops on some linear timeline in grief. Sometimes, people got stuck. And maybe she will be stuck in depression forever. A never-ending cycle of misery.

Fist clenched, she looks up and meets Kurogiri's inquisitive eyes. "Can I have that drink now?"

"What would you like?"

Pink lips formed a straight line, red eyes wavering but doing their best to steady.

"Apple juice."

The glass is placed on the marble, nineteen footsteps leaving her to her lonesome and one two three four five- the glass hits the wall.

The five stages of grief may necessarily not be in order. For one depression could go before bargaining, or denial could be after anger and for Kaede- girl of fractured dreams and broken promises.

Anger came after depression. Those earlier jibes with Tomura were nothing, but the surface of her anger. Just the tiniest drop of anger in the cauldron of resentment she was brewing.

Kaede screamed.

It was a raw scream, and you called it a raw scream because you were screaming while your throat was raw. Then there were the sounds of her sobbing followed by glass thrown against the wall, the bar stools upturned and the room was full of glittering glass as it crashed against the floor, the walls and other glasses.

Shards cut her skin in the process, but there was so much pain inside of her that the pain outside would not register at all. Different colored glasses crashing, cracked and fragmented bottles where wine and brandy and whiskey spilled.

She fell on the floor, the once pristine space sullied by the mess and glass pieces were adding to her collection of scars, others lodged on her wrists and palms and she doesn't even mind it. She screams over and over again, to the deaf stars painted on the obsidian ceiling above her.

And when her screaming stopped, Kaede lay in the dark, a large glass shard clutched in her fingers. She felt the stillness of the room, the cold grate, the chill sound of liquids flowing from wine bottles, the cold presence of absence. She could end her life now. Simply, cleanly. They would know what happened, but that wouldn't matter then. She would be as cold as a corpse by that time. But bright behind her eyelids she saw Tomoe's face as he turned towards her to speak her name. She could not stop seeing it. And Kaede felt hate bloom in her heart. Hate for this world of injustice.

It was in her eyes. The hard stone of rage that all lonely girls possess.

And underneath that artificial light, she promised again. Because this world ruined her, she would ruin it.

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