Chapter 41
The Hunt
At that hour on that day, taking a car into Tokyo would perhaps have been one of Aizawa's worst decisions. Taking the train did not prove to be much better though, for surrounded as he was by people in the midday business rush – knowing without a doubt that they were paying him no heed but at the same time unable to shake the sneaking premonition that he was the prey to unseen eyes – Aizawa shifted feverishly and fidgeted constantly in his seat. Refusing to settle his attention for the entirety of the forty minute journey. Urging the train ever onwards at ever greater speeds.
Emergency numbers lay in wait beneath his fingertips. As a matter of fact, part of the situation's horror could be attributed to Aizawa's difficulty – or more specifically, his failure – to press dial. He'd been the one so insistent on calling the police; he'd been the one who'd grown irritated and cold towards Rin when she'd refused to do so. And yet, he couldn't possibly bring himself to do it either. Not now. Come alone. Such an instruction reared its ugly head often. In hostage situations, in kidnappings and as part of ransoms. Par for the course, words which Aizawa had stomached and disobeyed before. Now, however, a dark magic had rung itself within them: a binding, suffocating force of power which left Aizawa helplessly gasping within himself.
Debilitated, he glared for an age at his phone screen, at his police contacts. Appalled by himself, he shoved the mobile away into his pocket.
Come alone. Aizawa wasn't an idiot – he knew what he'd be walking into. A trap. An ambush. Perhaps a well-played deceit – but he couldn't risk that. He couldn't indulge in the possibility that whoever had sent those photos, be it Doctor Voodoo or Paper Cut or someone else entirely, they'd sent them under false pretenses and Rin was really in no danger at all. What the chances were of that, Aizawa couldn't make out. Terror fogged his rationality. Memories of the photos, of Rin in… that state… kept him from forming a coherent thought. Apart from one, that is – that perhaps this was how Rin must have felt. Every day. No matter the resources at her disposal, no matter the contacts nor the strengths nor the love and support, the formidable and unseen influence held greater sway. Growing. Growing. Piercing its claws deeper so that she went at it alone. All alone because of some twisted sense that there was no other choice.
After taking two taxis and sprinting some kilometers, Aizawa arrived at the warehouse. Thin sheets of white still peaked out from behind the clouds, cold and of little comfort as ominous shadows stretched out from the building's exterior in ragged, undulating greys. It was quiet, resonances of traffic sounding somewhere distant, faint enough to be mere undertones to the wispy hiss of wind.
Despite his rush, Aizawa remained far off, shrouded by the shadows of the surrounding structures. All equally dilapidated and wretched in their once-industrial blandness, without any indication of their being inhabited or not – where he stood, weeds grew out along the concrete, stretching blackened stems upwards and outwards in a twisting, wild display; broken windows and grimy walls; surfaces with peeling paint or cracks like vines or rusted signboards, graffitied and tattered. Nothing moved. Not cars, not people. And certainly not Aizawa.
He watched. The light behind the clouds began a dip along the horizon until everything was bathed in a gloomy, dusted purple haze. He waited. Waited for a longer time than he could count, feeling his spine come to life with electric agitation at even the most innocent of sounds: birds landing with scratchy hoots on the roofs above, creaks from the old wood and metal. Aizawa checked his phone multiple times, always keeping the number for the police a mere finger's swipe away and maintaining throughout his limbs a predatory readiness to strike and kill. His hand on his capture weapon. His other poised over the blades hidden within his clothing's layers.
Throughout the hours, he searched for life – scanning, and finding nothing – then would slink to a spot closer to the building of interest, remaining obscured from sight behind walls and doors and peculiar structures – scanning, sneaking, still finding nothing.
No obstacles. No movement in the barren parking lot nor around the warehouse's entranceways or windows. Breathing hard. Fighting off the chills that snipped at his cheeks and hands. Ready to be ambushed, ready to attack. Always ready, though Aizawa's mind refused to clear, drowsed by gnawing emotions which dulled his attention to the details of the warehouse. He'd look for layouts. He'd look for entrances and escape routes and vantage points – replaying plan after plan as he did so. But then in lesser-guarded moments, he'd look for slurs of white or for flashes of grace in the blackened windows. He'd listen, not for anything or anyone's voice but hers. Her. Rin. Rin could have been in there. The notion forced itself upon Aizawa continually, and he would have to shake himself awake from an anxious stupor time and time again.
Eventually, a low groan of thunder rolled in, followed by its own empty echo.
Aizawa didn't approach from the front, though if anyone was inside to expect him they'd likely be keeping an eye on the side doors anyway. And so, having spotted a far-removed area presumably once meant for deliveries, he went through a window. The glass had been smashed into jagged shards; Aizawa cleared the way to maneuver himself carefully and quickly through the remaining frame, and in a deft swoosh of movement like that of a black alley cat he landed himself within the building.
It stank of rust. It stank of mildew and damp and suffocating, murky dust. Keeping close to the walls, darkened and cold beneath years of neglect, Aizawa navigated his way through angled corridors. Steady steps. His goggles lowered before his eyes. Light from the outside oozed in through holes and windows, all of them odd and wrong in their placement. The gliding crunch of sanded ground beneath his boots left Aizawa nauseous and edgy. And all the while, he willed away unconscious efforts to remember, though the urge grew oppressive and irresistible as he ventured deeper into the labyrinthine simplicity of the warehouse's dimness.
Had he journeyed these hallways before? Was he stepping upon the imprints of his very own footprints, fossilized in years of dust and decay? The more he rejected the questions, the more they broke through into the forefront of his mind – should he have known where he was going? How must it have felt back then: him, nineteen years old and working to gain his independence, working to gain his experience? How must it have felt, knowing that children were at stake – the same as it felt now, perhaps, knowing that Rin may have needed him or that Rin was– Oh, god. There came the pinch in his neck, the growling threat of the pain as it readied itself at the base of his spine to pounce against him. Not now. Not now.
Not now.
Aizawa froze in his tracks, stealing a harsh breath of air – stale and muggy in his lungs. His spine stiff, his mind doing swirls and eddies of submission and resistance against the offensive ache and the relentless thoughts. Something was around the corner. Something was on top of him. No sound, no feeling, but it was there, and growing, and Aizawa was sure for a moment that he'd been standing rooted in place for years.
His skeleton was breaking within him, turning to sand or steel and splintering like wood. His organs were collapsing into cosmic explosions of darkness, but there was no agony. Only a disembodied lightness that floated Aizawa ever away and away. Blood. Why could he smell blood, in all its metallic sweetness? And silence. It was so loud. Dripping into his ears with the smooth, honeyed quality of children laughing. Or crying. Or – saying his name? Mutters. Mutters around the corner. Pulsing into his synapses with white hot threat. Eraser Head. A warm pressure appeared and vanished in his hands, against his chest. Eraser Head. The ground dissipated, the scaled walls falling away into nothingness and soon, after an eternity, in no time at all, AIzawa stood in the middle of a wide, grey space blurred and dotted in white.
…Shouta…
Something was on top of him.
A weight. A pull. A palm, fingers splayed and gentle as everything collapsed around him and suddenly – suddenly – he was back where he'd been, with the dizzy euphoria of crashing down, down, down.
"Shouta?"
And for the first time in the seconds that had disappeared from him, he was aware of the light touch against his shoulder. Everything fell back into focus, as though following behind him and descending upon his senses in a silvery cloud of reality. Not startled, not frightened, still unsteadied, Aizawa twisted his body against the corridor wall to face the person to whom such a calming, aggravating, wonderful touch belonged – and there she was. Too dazzlingly solid in her horror, too real and beautiful in the absolute dismay with which she stared at him for Aizawa to believe that she was anything but really, truly there. Her lips were parted. Her eyes were wide despite the heavy cling of shadows to their lids.
And she was pristinely, perfectly pale. Unblemished. Not a bruise nor a cut nor the slightest hint of a drugged-out slope about her features to be had.
"Shouta," Rin said again, as though only just realising for herself that it was certainly him. He was here. He was here for her. The chime of it sent a wild pulse through Aizawa's bones, and for a moment he could almost ignore the fact that the quiver in her voice made her sound revolted or petrified. "How–" she withdrew her hand, stepped back from him as though he planned to hurt her. "How did – what are you doing? Here? Why are you here?"
This was the first time Aizawa had seen her hero costume – all maroon, all soft materials falling about her torso and hips in comfortable, flowing folds but sleekly clinging to her arms and thighs. Milky, muscular calves. Shoes which looked more fairy-like in their lightness and point: good for running to danger. Good for escaping. Good for disappearing. Hair slicked tightly back from her face in a whip-like ponytail. White hands. White face, set upon him in a scandalized mask. An exquisite, confusing face which Aizawa wanted desperately to both slap and shower in kisses.
Without stepping away from his place against the wall, though also without removing his newly fixed gaze, Aizawa said softly, "You. I'm here for you."
Rin made an aghast sound like a choke or a scoff, but her expression remained unchanging. Baffled and horrorstruck. Thwarted and flustered. All myriads of complicated feeling in the ashy, hard-set contortion of her countenance. "But–" she spluttered. "Why?"
"God, Rin, don't make me explain."
She stepped away from him, almost looking ready to runaway – a look Aizawa recognised because it was a look he knew well. "Leave," she said at last after unending ticks of pregnant silence. "You have to leave. Right now."
"What happened to you?"
"What?"
"I got pictures. And I got messages. What happened to you?"
They both stared at each other in confusion: him fully realising that he had been played but somehow not being able to translate it into a comprehensible language for his heart or tongue, she without any indication of understanding but all the world's worth of sickening fright. Aizawa wanted to leave. He wanted to abandon everything and cocoon her in his arms and flee. But now too, he couldn't bear the thought of it – some inkling trepidation held him back, some feeling that he was close. So close. So, so close to knowing. Here he was and here she was at what was perhaps the start of so much more than he could possibly comprehend. There'd be no leaving now. Not for him and not for her, though the terrible foreboding which underscored all Aizawa's stomach-churning instincts made him wish she'd be gone to some place far off and safe.
At an obscure location not far from their own, something dropped, heavy and metallic and reverberating through the corridors' eerie hush. Rin cringed at the sound of it, and shot her gaze between Aizawa and the stretch of space behind him. "I don't understand," she murmured, tense and despairing. "What do you mean by messages and… pictures? Did Nezu put you up to this?"
Nezu? "What?"
"How did you know to come here?"
Aizawa, in his own muddle of bafflement and relief, spoke through near-gritted teeth, "There were–"
But it all faded away into the awful, devilish sound of his voice, "Oh, Riiin~" Paper Cut. Slick and taunting like a child before an injured beetle. "You're getting warmer, Riiin. Come and geeet me~" He was close.
Too close, and with the sensation that he'd been caught within a bladed mousetrap, Aizawa shot Rin a look that he knew to be pathetically pleading. The reserves of his resolve swiftly running low, begging that she turn away with him and run the other way. For the first time in his life as a hero, Aizawa came so close to grabbing Rin's wrist and fleeing – fleeing to some place that Paper Cut and Doctor Voodoo and nobody else, no matter the genius, would never find them because, fucking hell, he loved her. He loved her and he didn't know if after everything he'd be able to keep her safe. And he couldn't lose her. Please God. He couldn't lose her.
But she only looked at him, pulling a face like a woman about to jump.
And then off she went, spinning on her toes in all the enchanting grace of a figure skater and sprinting away down the corridor towards Kizashi as he continued to call her name. Slow motion. So close. Close enough that Aizawa had had her right there within his grasp, and now there was no chance of him allowing her to slip away again.