' i don't need a hero '
━━━━━
Deep breaths. Seven, eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eight-
A knock.
"Kaede-sama," it's not difficult to figure out that the person standing on the other side of the door is Mr. Compress. He's the only one who adds a formal honorific after her name. As if she was some reputable personage. "The League is gathering at the bar in ten minutes, Shigaraki wanted you to come."
"I don't want to," Kaede simply answers, her tone betraying nothing of the plans swirling in her mind, tucking the letters in the envelopes and putting them back in the drawer. "It's probably some menial task that I have to perform."
"He added that he wanted you to socialize more to have better relationship parameters," a statement that makes Kaede's eyebrows furrow. She's already standing in front of the mirror she brought to Tomoe's room, masking the remnants of the tears that had flowed from her eyes, the stubborn set of her jaw, red rimmed eyes and raspy voice.
"That doesn't make any sense," she replies, applying one of those cosmetic powders she received from Toga the other day.
"That wasn't exactly verbatim," Mr. Compress points put. "My mind may have jumbled some things, but in the end, it is what Shigaraki wishes."
Kaede's reflection is looking at her with the same impassive look and she tucks a stray strand behind her ear, cursing how fast the growth rate of her hair is. It's already reaching her shoulders.
"Tell him that I don't plan on taking advice from someone who doesn't have any friends," she answers, the blow hitting her too. She wonders what hurts more, the fact that you used to have friends or you didn't have any to begin with.
"Will you not change your mind?" Mr. Compress asks and to Kaede's mind, it almost means another thing. Pertaining to the thoughts she's harboring in her mind.
The reflection's impassive visage turns into that of iron. Two eyes that were once cold and unfeeling are like red flames. Passionate. "Never."
Maybe it is like biting the hand that fed her, honed her power and gave her a purpose. Maybe this is betraying the girl who she once was. Maybe she's ruining the chaos swirling at her finger tips with this. Maybe she should just wait for a hero to rescue her. Maybe this is not the most logical of options.
But for once, there's a strange sort of clarity that's present in her mind, clearing away the chaos. Her name is Mizuki Kaede, she thinks and she's incapable and unwilling to leave her fate at the hands of others. For once, she will heed the call of her beating heart.
She is done with these qualms, all the maybes threatening to overwhelm her. She has never flinched before pulling the trigger, never felt ill at the sight of blood, she has never apologized for surviving, for thriving.
So she discards the maybes as fast as car moving at 180 kilometers per hour. No more hesitations impeding her choices.
Mizuki Kaede will break free.
━×━
Hair pulled to a Dutch braid (a failed one, with errant strands sticking out), Kaede folds the letter, places it in an envelope and leaves it lying on top of Tomura's gaming console. He'll find it. She left it in most obvious way possible.
She did not apologize for betraying them in the letter, she apologized for leaving him. The last family I have, she remembers writing, it's not too late for you too.
Just like what Tomoe did for her, she will encourage him, because she believes that there is still light inside of him. There is still light in that boy who was abandoned and unloved.
Kaede understands that it's not enough, but Tomura is a person too- who has his likes and dislikes, his off moods and the rare happy ones. He grieved too, had his own dreams and aspirations.
They both had terrible pasts, abused, but that will never excuse their actions. It is a naïve dream that children wish for in wishing wells.
Kaede doesn't mind if the whole world doesn't forgive her. There are the people who matter and it is only their opinion she cares about. The people who knew her, not the strangers who always had an opinion about everything as if they knew all the facts.
So she stands in front of the doorway, having walked one kilometer and eighty-seven meters from the train station, past the pedestrians who don't even sense her presence, the dogs tied on leashes as their owners walk them around. Kaede remembers Roki, the capricious dog who adored Bakugou.
The house is a beautiful thing: adorned with a wooden well, a metal swing attached to a flowering rambutan tree, a garden tea set next to painted tires and cobblestone fences with honeysuckles and snapdragons on the porch, white slate pavements leading to a quaint porch. The house looks more lovely, more comely and none of that curtain of ice seemingly covering every inch. She raises her hand to knock, pauses midway, lets it hang on her sides and it's only then that realization reaches her.
They won't recognize her. They won't. They won't know that girl, two eyes two ears one mouth and a thousand hate shoved down their throat. Did they even think about her? Did they still even live here?
The door opens and Kaede, startled, tries to turn around but an unfamiliar face stands in front of the door.
"Who might you be?" the man asks, all muscular and gruff, nothing lighthearted about his appearance and his right hand is substituted with pincers: red crab pincers. "Are you my niece's tutor?"
"Oh..." she's out of words, out of twenty six letters that have always been her companion since time immemorial. Kaede came here to meet her parents, an all out confrontation about the wrongs they made, but she didn't expect this.
This man is not her father. It's obvious from the lines in his face and the stubborn set of his jaw that she's not her father. And dear old daddy obviously didn't have crab pincers for hands.
"Well," the man asks, raises his eyebrows and the whole action pisses Kaede off, but she wills herself to recollect her calm. Do this for Tomoe, for yourself. "Are you or are you not my niece's tutor?"
Kaede puts on a smile, thank God for learning it, and extends her palms to shake the man's normal hand. "Your niece..." Kaede begins, tries so hard not to act suspicious, because she's still definitely a wanted criminal and Tartarus is definitely not the most ideal of places to be locked in. "I'm such a scatterbrain"- gives a dumb Yuko grin-"so I'm not sure if this is the right house. Is her name Yuki?"- the clichést name possible-"Aoi? Hikari? Natsu? Haru? Nanami?"
"It's Honoka," the man says gruffly ang Kaede blinks, thrice. The name is very familiar, but she must be wrong, because the Honoka she knew was an orphan. An effervescent girl who had hope in her eyes but fatherless, motherles-
And God, she's standing in front of Kaede.
"Kai!" she yells, pulls Kaede's hands and clasps them with hers. "You're here! You're here!" Smiles that big smile. "It's all thanks to you!" She cheers, turns to the muscular man and Kaede notes the way his features soften at Honoka's sight. "Uncle, can she go to my room? Please? Please? Kai is really smart, she can be my tutor for today since I don't like Tooru anyway, an- oh please?"
The man sighs, scratches his beard twice and looks at Kaede with two discerning eyes. "I guess, but don't make a mess."
She raises three fingers. "I promise."
He turns to Kaede, points his eyes using two fingers, "I'm watching you."
It is a very Yuko move when she just shrugs and lets Honoka guide her through the minimalist living room, past the twelve steps of the staircase into Honoka's room which is full of pink stuff toys, Hello Kitty merchandise and three posters of famous female heroes- Recovery Girl in the center, and there's a tug at Kaede's chest.
The woman who was like the mother she never had. She misses her.
"I thought you were orphaned," Kaede says, sits on Honoka's plush pink bed. "What's all this?"
Honoka smiles at her, that big grin of a smile that would have made her Yuko's lost little sister. "You know, the day after I met you, I got adopted. They wanted a girl and since they loved my personality!" she smiles again and plops unto the pink divan at the corner of her room. "If you hadn't saved me," she had that glimmer in her eyes, as if the storm had stopped. "I wouldn't have experienced the feeling of having a family, of having a home."
Honoka smiles again, and Kaede loves how infectious that smile is, making her day a whole lot better. Then Honoka tears herself off the couch, moves towards Kaede and embraces her. It's a warm hug that envelops her being and makes an equally infectious smile capture her lips.
"Thank you, Kai," she whispers.
"I should be saying that," Kaede whispers. "If it weren't for that clarity you gave me, I wouldn't have-"
"Hmm?"
Kaede shakes her head, pats Honoka's back.
"Never mind."
Some say that grief is like being extremely homesick, but knowing the home no longer existed. That was what it felt like, losing Tomoe and the happiness in which he brought her, having the thought that she could never go back to her friends. To the people who have been closest to family. But you can recreate that home again. Home wasn't just an assemblage of different parts in a steady foundation.
Home, no matter how cliché it sounded, was where the heart was.
And maybe. Just maybe. She can keep her heart beating until she finds that place.
A place to belong, a place to be loved.
Mizuki Kaede will find it.
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E N D O F C H A P T E R
- s e t t l i n g