Chapter 36
Truths

Though with a new reserve, Kizashi did nothing to retreat from the hallway – on the contrary, he glanced from Nezu to Rin to Nezu again, carved features assuming a distant coolness which glimmered in a grey mix of displeasure and greed. He eyed the way Aizawa's hand was balanced upon Rin's shoulder: eyebrow perking sharply, corners of his mouth screwing subtly into a snarl. And beneath Aizawa's touch, not lifting her own eyes to return Kizashi's look of menace, Rin's slight frame trembled. She was stiff, unyieldingly so, and her fingers toyed with anxious agitation like dancing spiders at her side. It stabbed through Aizawa, drained him and set a chaotic shudder through his bones.

Worse still was the way Nezu continued to smile at Kizashi with all the genial calm in the world, as though the man were a guest and not the spawn of the devil.

By this, Kizashi did not seem particularly put-out. Suspicious, perhaps, for his hands disappeared behind his back and he offered Nezu an obstinate stare. Silence, for some moments, and then a silken reply following which a spitting of venom would not have been out of place. "UA's festivals have always fascinated me," Kizashi said and, for the first time, his eyes flickered towards Aizawa. "Personally, the Sports Festival is my favourite." Back to Nezu. "But this is most enjoyable as well. So much to do, so much to see."

"Oh, quite!" Nezu agreed with a flat, unsettling enthusiasm. "Our students have been working very hard. I assume you were coming for Class 2A's tearoom – I was just about to head in myself to enjoy a cup of jasmine. Why don't you join me, Paper Cut?" Aizawa's blood ran cold, but Nezu pressed on without so much as a hint of hesitation. Smilingly. In genuine invitation. "I would be very interested to hear how you've been keeping."

Rin shot Nezu a look, the nature of it indecipherable behind her insipid alarm. In doing so, she shifted her shoulder with airy grace out from under Aizawa's palm, and muttered something indistinct. Kizashi noticed. A sneer angled itself into his features – and Aizawa's heart did a mortified bound between his throat and lungs. Paper Cut was allowed nowhere near his class. The stifling blackness that settled itself upon Rin's back was nightmarish. And Nezu did nothing about it. The exact opposite, as a matter of fact.

"I'm sure you would, Principal Nezu. Things have certainly been very… hmm, how shall I say?" Kizashi cocked his head in Rin's direction. "Very interesting since Doctor Voodoo's death."

"Of course. It's all terribly tragic," Nezu said. "You have my condolences."

"Oh, yes. Tragic. Very." Kizashi hummed in mocking thought. "But please do excuse me now," he pulled a box of more cigarettes from his pocket, shaking it amiably for Nezu to see. "I'm only stopping by. You know how it is – we underground heroes shouldn't stay out in the light for too long. Isn't that right, Eraser Head? Rin? It wouldn't suit us."

"What a pity. Are you sure you wouldn't like to stay for a cup?" Nezu opened his arms in a welcoming gesture. "Eraser Head's class is marvelously charming."

"So I've heard. They were all over the news last year, yes?" Kizashi, red tongue flicking across his lips once again, flashed his teeth at Aizawa. "It pains me terribly to leave without meeting them – you know I've always been fond of children, Principal Nezu. Especially those with a more mischievous streak." And horrifyingly enough, children also liked Kizashi. Paper Cut. He'd charm them with origami. With handsome smiles and flattery. Which was exactly why Aizawa would sooner die than let him go near his students. Kizashi took out a cigarette from his box, placing it between his teeth without lighting it. "Though perhaps I'll come back. Soon, I think. I'm simply dying to meet the boy who transferred from the general studies department – the one with the brainwash quirk. Remarkable thing. You wouldn't happen to have a lighter, would you?"

Nezu chuckled. "I'm afraid smoking isn't allowed on the school grounds, Paper Cut."

Kizashi shook his head, as though acknowledging his own absurdity. "Of course." He removed the cigarette, twiddled it between his fingers. "My mistake. Well then, goodbye for now." Slowly, boots doing their elegant tap against the tiles, Kizashi came towards Aizawa. Towards Rin. Cigarette still between his fingers.

Aizawa didn't move, but his hands remained poised to slice at Kizashi's throat. Following the other man with his eyes. Feeling Kizashi's own black stare pierce into him.

He paused for the slightest moment before them both, lifting the cigarette to balance it close to Rin's face. Hastily, Aizawa glanced to her; she glared at Kizashi, was biting way too hard into the corner of her lip. And as Kizashi brought the unlit cigarette towards her, its thin shape glinting like gunmetal in the reflection of Rin's eyes, she grabbed at Aizawa's hand and clutched it with all the force of death. An instinctive movement. A weird sound escaping her throat as she did so.

Like a flower, Kizashi pushed the cigarette into Rin's hair, behind her ear. "You have my congratulations, Aizawa-sensei. She's a catch. She simply must make you her pork dumplings sometime – those were my favourite."

And then he slinked on down the hallway and out of sight, disappearing around the corner, leaving a hateful burn in the deepest pits of Aizawa's soul. Nezu didn't notice. Ignored the way Aizawa snatched the cigarette from Rin's hair, or the way Rin began to sway as though she'd been holding her breath for too long – which she had been, with the clammy paleness to match. Indeed, without acknowledging for even the most fleeting moment the sickness of the situation, without once looking at Aizawa in a passing understanding of what had just transpired, Nezu tapped the side of Rin's limp wrist. The movement of it almost seemed casual. Jovial, even.

"Hiruma-chan! You look glum. Come, you should join me for tea."

"Principal Nezu, I–"

"A pot of chamomile, I think. Yes, yes, chamomile should be just fine!"

Nezu began his teeter towards the door – and Rin, lifeless, made no further attempt to object. Instead, her hand slipped from Aizawa's and she followed the principal with her head sagging down. A shamed hanging. Distracted, heavy drag to her feet. Not meeting Aizawa's gaze for even a second, apparently oblivious to the choked sound of his voice as he said her name in a panicked, crushing plea, she left him to the haunted hush of the corridor.

He waited for her until the school had been thoroughly and truly emptied – until which, determined and silently raging, he scoured the grounds for any sign of Paper Cut or Yukio or (God forbid) Doctor Voodoo himself. Naturally though, Aizawa may as well have been hunting for phantoms, because as he was most perfectly aware the Voodoo Agency had a particular skill for dissolving into the shadows. Gone. Vanished. Just like that. Just like that. And the knowledge sent a white strike of fury across Aizawa's vision. Paper Cut had been right there – right there – and Nezu, who could do nothing to feign the adequate ignorance, had let the fucking bastard get away.

Now he was – and would likely remain – nowhere to be found.

The sun began an orange dip along the horizon. Stragglers remained around the school gardens while the stalls and stages were dismantled, hidden away, set aside into hibernation until the next year's festival. Aizawa had returned to Class 2A's tearoom to find it emptied of visitors, his students having returned to their normal clothes rather than the quaint kimonos as they packed up – no Nezu and, more terribly, no Rin. "Chi-sensei left a while ago already," Yaoyorozu had told him. "Sorry, Aizawa-sensei, but she didn't say where she was going," Asui had said.

And when Aizawa began his lurk back out the door, Bakugo had been there watching him. Eyes narrowed, but with a softness quite oxymoronic upon his aggressively boyish and boyishly aggressive face. Tray of teapots between his hands. Querulous frown to match his silence.

Aizawa stopped. Gazed at the boy. "Something the matter, Bakugo?"

"No."

"Alright then."

Naturally, that should have been the end of it. But Aizawa lingered, watching Bakugo's features twitch and harden. For all his belligerent inaccessibility, Bakugo had a face that failed to hide anything – and what was clear right then was that he was thinking. Thinking hard; and soon enough, he caved. "That asshole-creep that came by earlier. The one in the white. What did he say to Chi-sensei?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"I don't. But there was – I mean, she didn't drink any of the shitty tea."

Aizawa hummed, though it came across as more of a grunt, and he tugged at his scarf. "I'm taking care of it."

He continued on his way past, and upon reaching the door just managed to hear over his shoulder as Bakugo muttered, "Yeah. You better fucking well be." Aizawa was neither shocked by the overprotective insistence nor offended by the condescension – because frankly, he agreed. He better fucking well take care of it.

The spot where he'd found her with Eri earlier that day was uninhabited, cold and still as a graveyard. None of the first years had seen her after she'd finished helping them set up their various stands. Aizawa spent the good part of an hour walking, pacing, dashing up and down – however, Rin continued to elude him as much as the evening's lethargic breeze. He phoned her once without answer: the familiar sound of the ring ring ring echoing off into unanswered oblivion.

More pacing. Redialing clumsily, the photo of Eri and Rin alight in the background. Endearing without being a comfort. Mocking him, the sweetness and domesticity haunting. Ring. Ring. Ri– It stopped at last!And there was a silence on the other end of the line. Aizawa held his breath. Waited. "Rin?" he murmured. "Rin, where are you?"

The hush endured some time longer, until finally being broken by a timid sound like Rin clearing her throat. Low monotone, soaked in a pastel-soft melancholy. 'At your apartment.'

"When did you–?"

'I'm leaving.'

Everything stopped.

"What?"

A pause to rival the length of centuries. 'I'm sorry.'

The simplicity of the statement crashed upon Aizawa in a shattering brutality. Left him reeling as though he'd been slammed through the lungs with a mallet. Quiet for a long while, he stared out at the path extending to the main gate. Scatterings of life. Blurs of colour and movement suddenly unreal, like a film burned at the edges and faded with time. He hadn't heard right. She was leaving. Leaving the apartment? Leaving him? He hadn't heard right. He couldn't have. "Just–" He couldn't have. "Don't… Just wait there. I'm coming. I'll be there soon."

She said his name. The sound of it was poetry and pain, and in his mindless rush Aizawa refused to let it break his heart. "I'm coming."

Two bags in the entranceway – bags which, mere weeks ago, Aizawa himself had carried through the front door. Everything was wrong: the fading light as it struggled through the window, falling in sickly hues of yellow; the smell, Rin's blossomy perfume and the scents of cooking not reaching Aizawa as though having been scrubbed from the air; and Rin herself, wilted over the couch in a daze. She stared ahead, drunk or drugged out or exhausted enough to not give a shit as Aizawa edged towards her.

One coffee cup on the table, on the end furthest from the couch and still steaming in its fullness.

Despite the coldness which crept through the space, Rin's jersey was off and flung over the armrest next to her. Strappy grey shirt. Scars zig-zagging down her arms in ugly beauty, bulging and fleshy over the litheness of her limbs. Oh. One of the dining chairs had been pulled from the table, placed before the coffee cup. Aizawa seated himself, unable to tear his attention from Rin though she refused to settle her eyes over him. Oh. Oh god. His body ached from the coursing dread. His heart throbbed in his ears – he tried to remind himself that she'd waited for him; she was still here and it counted for something. He'd take care of it. It would be fine.

Everything Paper Cut had said was lies. Defilements of the truth, he repeated to himself. Defilements of the truth.

Her name slid against Aizawa's tongue, the sensation of the syllable a struggle against his throat's tightness. In turn, Rin swallowed hard on nothing. No reply. She swallowed again, plucking her fingers in her lap as though at strings. Finally she looked at him, those green eyes dead and resolute, and her lips pulled miserably at the corners, and she still didn't say a word though Aizawa silently begged her to.

"Paper Cut frightened you today," he said at last when nothing else came, leaning onto his knees.

Rin's voice was a painful rasp as she replied, "No." She cleared her throat. She shook her head. "No, he didn't."

"What did Nezu say to you?"

"We spoke about chess."

Aizawa narrowed his eyes, closed his hands into fists. "Rin."

"Shouta." The sound cracked with the threat of tears, and Aizawa pleaded within himself that she would cry – that she would be the one to lose her fragile grip of control and that she'd be weak enough to let him hold her. That he'd be able to hold her head to his chest and kiss her and never let her leave. But she didn't cry, sniffing back its potential as she lifted herself to sit straight. At least though, her eyes remained on his. "I wasn't going to wait. I wanted to be gone before you got back. But that–"

"Stop it."

She pulled a pained face, but resisted. "It wouldn't be fair on you. I need to explain ~ because everything Kizashi said–"

"Was lies."

"Is true."

They both scrutinized each other, he shaking his head in a feeble attempt to reject her words, she as carved and cold as a stained glass angel in snowy light. Aizawa noticed little things unnecessarily – that the dressing across her chest was gone, the stitches in her wound having dissolved to leave behind a bruise-purple line of scarring; that her hair was brushed behind both her ears but had begun to fall in relentless strands along her cheeks; that she wasn't plucking at her lip like she should have been despite how her fingers seemed to beg for movement.

"Before coming to stay with you in the dormitories, I went looking for Doctor Voodoo every night when you weren't here. It was harder with all your students around, and with you being so close, but I've still been doing it most nights during the week." She tapped the scarring down her chest. "Which is why my wound didn't heal properly. Which is how Yukio managed to find me, I think."

Aizawa should have suspected it, and in the big scheme of things he would only have been angry with her because she'd put herself in danger – beyond that, it wasn't exactly wrong. Aizawa said so. Elicited a struggling stare in return – despite his denial though, Rin continued.

In a bland, practiced monotone, she told him about how she'd manipulated most everyone at the Voodoo Agency for information – with basic psychology, with bribery, by other unspecified means. Kizashi most of all, though he still didn't realise it. She told him she hadn't once tried to reach out to anyone for help because Doctor Voodoo was mad but he was a genius and the whole thing had to be handled with the utmost care (where had he heard that before?). The other three who'd died were accidents she hadn't accounted for. They were good people. They wanted to help. And in the end, she'd gotten them killed because she was the one who got them involved.

And she promised herself not to get anyone else involved again.

But then Aizawa came along – and she'd panicked – and she didn't say no when the hospital staff told her he was going to help her out with her recovery – and then the moment she saw him that day at the hospital, she lost any resolve to say no at all. And she thought it would be fine. That it was all close enough to over for her to pretend that it had never happened at all, even if she only pretended for a little while. "But then we… it all went a lot further than I thought it would. You've always meant the world to me. Ever since leaving high school, I've regretted every decision that took me further and further away from you, and I just – I didn't think. I just stopped thinking."

All this time, Aizawa had wanted the truth. Now he was getting it, and he would have given everything in the world to have made Rin stop.

Unable to resist at last, she lifted a hand to her mouth and bit – hard – onto the tip of her index finger. Until she winced. Until her cheeks went red from the effort and sting. It shocked and thrilled Aizawa in a numb and dazed sort of way; and it was with something of relief that Rin lowered her hand again to say, gaze steady, "When I found out about Yukio ~ that he was at the Voodoo Agency, I mean ~ I asked him to take away your memories." A profound harshness about her words made Aizawa's gut turn in on itself. "You weren't supposed to remember me. At all. But then you arrived at the hospital–"

"But why the fuck wouldn't you want me to remember you?"

"Because…" She halted. Chewed on her tongue and dangled the silence before Aizawa.

He stood from his seat. "Tell me."

"Because I… soon before graduation, I told you I was scared. I told you there was something wrong at the Voodoo Agency and that I was scared ~ and you swore you'd keep me safe. That's exactly what I didn't want, Shouta. I messed up, and you couldn't get involved because–"

"Because everything has to be handled with," he air-quoted, "the utmost care? Is that it, Rin? Is that all?" He didn't mean to speak at her in such a hiss, with such disgust. It was the furthest thing from what he felt. But Aizawa's control over himself and the situation slipped, and in spite of himself he'd given Rin the upper hand.

Her features crinkled delicately. "No. That's… not all…"

"What else then?"

"You – no… we – I mean, after graduation ~ it all happened after graduation, but I didn't understand any of it and I was confused–"

"You're not making sense."

Apparently she'd said enough. Her eyes fluttered downwards to her lap, where her hands balled themselves tightly into fists – tense enough for the whites of her knuckles to glow luminously beneath her skin. A shudder seemed to run itself across her shoulders, fine and carved perfectly to the bone. The sight of it, the imagined feel of Rin's shivering frame beneath his hands, made everything inside of Aizawa do a dramatic dive. The very depths of his heart rocketed into his head.

A murmured something. Sickly sweet nothing. Rin returned her attention to Aizawa and let her lips part and close dumbly, her eyes' incandescence filled with shadowy apologies and confessions and darknesses. No words came. No more words. No more logic – she'd stopped thinking once again.

Though Aizawa's heart begged him to be gentle, he glared at her. Though every fiber of his being pulled him in her direction, aching and longing to please (oh God, please) hold her or touch her or kiss her or something to say that it was okay – they were okay, and there were parts of them to salvage and save out of all this mess of secrecy revealed – still his fingers quivered with a snaking indignation. "Are you finished talking?" he asked her, voice ominously soft.

She said nothing.

So he sighed. "Then leave."

And meekly, without the objection Aizawa waited so desperately for (please God, please!), Rin gripped her jersey in her hand and stood. Quiet. Beautiful and distant. She stopped for mere moments to keep her gaze on him – and he wished she wouldn't, because he could pinpoint the exact moment her heart broke in perfect unison with his – before tiptoeing across the living area. Away. Away from him without looking over her shoulder. Away to the door, where the two bags she'd brought stood ready to be taken. More murmurings, amongst which Aizawa managed to discern a shattered, "I am so sorry, Shouta."

Then, taking her things with an unnatural ease and grace, she left Aizawa alone in an empty apartment with a cold, stewing cup of coffee.

A/N: Oww. My heart.