Chapter 42
The Game – Starting Point
Black walls struck past them in shadowy mirages of shape and texture. The footfalls of their advance bounded up and around in dull, suffocated echoes. Rin ran fast, keeping ahead of Aizawa with her weight balanced deftly over her toes: chasseing around corners in breezy waves of movement and material, navigating the ever-darkening corridors with a steely focus though it was clear she knew as little of their location as Aizawa himself did. Close to nothing. Using only the haunted echo of Kizashi's voice as he mocked and taunted – You're here too, aren't you, Eraser Head? See what you've done, Rin? See what you've done~? – as a guide to their path.
Such darkly honeyed sounds clawed and crept across the grimy surfaces from every direction, and made Aizawa's head spin with a hatred so fervently poisonous it almost burned. Through every sinew. Right into the marrows of his bones, chilled and glowing in excruciating insistence.
Once – and one too many times – he tried to stop her. Catching up, for Rin was surprisingly nimble for someone with a freshly healed chest injury as well as faster than Aizawa could remember, he reached out for her wrist. Thin and flashing white behind slips of smooth maroon. Somehow shaken by the fine, fragile shape as he grasped it harder than he'd intended; hard enough, as a matter of fact, that with only a mere amount more force Aizawa would have been able to pull her shoulder from its socket. Rin came to a harsh and graceless stop, and for the first time since their initial meeting she looked at him.
Or rather, she looked through him with a blank, hollow sadness, and limply twisted her wrist in his grip. "Let go." Suddenly frozen in place, she seemed to melt into herself – however, through both experience and expectation, Aizawa knew that were he to release his hold she would bolt off once again like a feline shocked from high places.
"We can leave," Aizawa said quietly, gently, willing Rin to meet his gaze. Shrouded by the secrecy of the warehouse's dimness, his anxiety confused with tenderness, his fingers tightened themselves into a firm gesture of imploration. "Whatever you're trying to do here, there's a better way of–"
"There isn't," Rin interrupted, murmuring and still without settling her eyes. "This… this is…" She swallowed, tried again without success to pull herself free. "I wish you hadn't come."
Rin seemed to realise the silliness of the statement – like children bickering, a harmless playground insult flung around with indifference rather than by any malicious intent – and she bit into the corner of her lip, looking embarrassed by the underwhelming implication. Aizawa, on the other hand, despite his better judgement and despite knowing full-well that she didn't mean to be cold, could feel himself tremble. Could feel his insides wilt and shrivel as though he were… hurt? As though he had hoped Rin would come falling into his arms like a sakura petal from the tree, her fingers lacing a crown through his hair as she allowed herself to be carried off freely into the grey-scale sunset?
Frankly, he had hoped for that. Really, there was no denying it. Aizawa had hoped that when she'd left, it had torn her up just as much as it had done him – though of course, his own melancholy had been tinged with rather more indignation. He tried to muster it now; tried to think of the frustration and the manipulation and all the deceptive, unfair things Rin had done – simply for the sake of quelling his own disappointment in the face of her dismay. And indeed, a certain resentment managed to rear itself. For a moment, Aizawa managed to wish too that he hadn't come. After all, Rin had kept things from him and he had never tolerated secrecy before. Rin had stolen things and he wasn't in the business of accepting blatant robbery which came as a sort of betrayal. Rin had done this and that, and Aizawa could think of any number of reasons as to why it was all completely absurd that he should be here now, wanting desperately to whisk her away.
But then Rin's wrist slunk from his hold and her fingers graced over his. She did not face him fully, angled in a shamed cringe so that her pale eyes only just glimmered through her face's shadows. "I messed up, Shouta," she whimpered.
And he, no longer so sure of his antipathy, pulled her towards himself. Slowly. Softly, so as to not break the sudden magic so delicately established in such godforsaken darkness. "I know."
"And you're not supposed to be here."
"Yet, here I am."
"Why?" Choked, resigned. Rin, allowing herself to be held, stared up at Aizawa with an expression teetering on pain. Why? Tears didn't come, and for a moment everything around them seemed to envelop itself in a frozen, weightless blur. Aizawa knew why. Surely Rin should have known it too – surely, after everything, it needn't have been said aloud. There were secret languages in looks and gestures, in all the shit Aizawa had dealt with for her sake. The words had been spelled out for them both so many times before, perhaps even from the very beginning; yet still, the question hung itself in the air, a throbbing wound in its ugly incompletion.
Aizawa pressed her head lightly into his chest. He held Rin there, wanting to bury his own face into her hair as he'd done so many times before but instead remaining resolute. Dirty smell of age and grime around them. A metallic coldness striking their exposed skin. More certain of it than anything before, Aizawa answered in a voice firm and loud enough for all the unseen listeners to hear, "Because I love you."
Everything fell quiet again, and Rin went heavy in his arms. Stiffening, hardly drawing a breath let alone making any move to reply.
And then a slice of pain, swift to appear before lingering in his skin with a burn like raw acid, went hot across Aizawa's cheek. Rin sprang away at his body's sudden tensing. She leapt backwards and into an eager, defensive stance while Aizawa did the same, one hand rising to his face and then falling away again with blood at its fingertips.
Around their heads, a white breeze of movement at first before slowing down to the pace of a stalking bird of prey, was a paper plane. Folded into sharp, perfect angles. Hovering ominously between Rin and Aizawa for some moments, almost seeming to hiss with a life of its own. Its tip was dotted red like an arrowhead. It circled and dropped in smooth, practiced movements, darting off in the direction from which it came. Soaring. Stopping. Crinkling before the shadows and falling to the floor in a clumpy, careless ball.
"So that's it, Eraser Head?" came a voice, solid now rather than echoing from a distance. Paper Cut emerged from around a corner, wandering casually towards Aizawa and Rin. "You love her? Come on, you'll have to be more creative than that." He stopped some way away, and Aizawa's hands were ready over his capture weapon and the various blades concealed on his person. Rin simmered next to him. Paper Cut made no move, but allowed his devilish features – pristine and sickly glowing in the weak light with a new, high definition awfulness – to contort into a wide smirk, "I had to work so hard to get you both here. Please don't disappoint me."
Slipping a graceful, gloved hand into his pocket, Paper Cut was slow and deliberate in revealing a small stack of glossy paper. "I heard you say you received my photo, Eraser Head. Did you like it?" Paper Cut flung the stack towards Aizawa, and the papers scattered across the floor before his feet with a plastic flopping. Photographs. Paper Cut continued, "It was from my private collection. Not really one of my favourites, mind you – a little too unexciting, so I had no qualms parting with it."
Aizawa's heart sank. As much as he tried to keep his eyes from looking downwards, he simply could not pry them away, and in scattered glances he saw Rin against the oozing dimness. Her face, her skin, bare and often times battered. There were fingers in her hair, clutching like serpents. There was her back, finely carved with muscle and milky flesh. There was her mouth, and glazed eyes, and her neck tensed beneath a palm. Sometimes, in nightmarish blurs, there was Paper Cut himself – his lips pressed harshly to hers, his own skin, his hands in all sorts of places.
Aizawa looked to Rin, and she was frozen in horror.
Paper Cut's voice came as though from deep underwater, "I thought you might like these, Eraser Head, so I simply had to have Yukio deliver a little taster…"
Rin's head jerked on her shoulders. Looking sick, she ripped her attention from the photos and from Aizawa to stare daggers down Kizashi's throat. "Yukio–" she began.
Kizashi waved his hand, unaffected and dismissive in its lazy lavishness. "Yes, yes. He's on his way. I know my message said he'd be here, but he's just been so busy these last few days keeping an eye on you and all your new friends at UA." Turning the vile smirk onto Aizawa, Kizashi cocked his head teasingly. "He's not exactly as cute in that little uniform as Rin always was, so I won't blame you for not noticing him while he breathed down your necks." Back to Rin. "But poor Yukio's been so torn up, you know. Seeing how you've replaced him with all those lovely teenagers. Especially that Bakugo boy– Yukio said you look so fond of that one–"
"Don't listen," Aizawa spat in spite of himself, and lifted his hand in an instinctive motion towards Rin. "He's baiting you."
She said nothing in return, but trembled and continued to stare at Kizashi. White fingers poised with bladed smoothness. A hard-set and unreadable mask. Then she twisted around with painful speed, and threw her hand up towards nothing – and from her palm, like seeping ribbons, thin trails of crimson slithered and gathered and were propelled outwards as though through veins rather than air. Blood. Deep and silken. Aizawa, slightly starstruck, followed Rin's gaze to find new paper planes having appeared from the silent stillness, only now to have fallen soggy and blood-stained and useless to the floor.
They quivered like sick birds before crumpling into balls, stewing in dribbles of red.
But there appeared once again that flashing sting, this time across Aizawa's other cheek, just under the line of his goggles and with much greater fervor. And when he darted outwards, he watched another paper plane curve gracefully up into the air. Around. Around. Swirling ostentatiously before disappearing out of sight into the depths of the corridors.
The incision was much deeper this time, and an oozing droplet like a tear fell down Aizawa's skin in slow, warm stickiness.
"Sorry about that, Eraser Head," Paper Cut said, lowering his hand back into his pocket. "It's not normally my style to use my quirk so outrightly, but I've got instructions, you know? Doctor Voodoo has been so looking forward to seeing you, he wanted to prepare a little gift." Several steps forward. He pulled out a box of cigarettes, flipped it open and plucked one out. Placing it between his lips, his black eyes settled in the smiling charm of a king cobra. "Something to repay you for all the–"
"Where is Doctor Voodoo?" Rin demanded, louder than Aizawa had ever heard her.
Kizashi raised his eyebrows at Rin, then shook his head. He paused to pull a lighter from his other pocket, and lighting his cigarette with an infuriating nonchalance, seemed to wait for Rin to speak once more – but when nothing came, her lips trembling and making Aizawa's heart skid and break, Paper Cut took the freshly decaying cigarette from his between his teeth and sighed exaggeratedly. "Want to know something, Eraser Head?"
"Not particularly," Aizawa replied, restraining something close to a snarl as it rumbled out from his chest.
Paper Cut pretended not to hear him. "Rin's a ticking time bomb." A puff, a swirling cloud of smoke rising up into the air like a silvery veil. "She cuddles up to you. She makes you dinners and flutters those pretty eyelashes and plays by all the right rules to get you hooked. But then," snap of his fingers, "she pulls some fucking ridiculous shit like dragging you into a game you have no business playing. Believe me, Eraser Head, you and I are in the same boat. See those photos? Have a good fucking look."
"Shouta. Please don't–"
"Do it, Eraser Head."
Despite the agonizing plea in Rin's voice and despite the icy rage which pricked Aizawa with every one of Paper Cut's words, he looked. Aizawa, though every part of him begged him not to, dropped his eyes to the scattering of photographs and looked and looked and looked. At Rin, at the incandescent slur of her features committed to paper. Knowing exactly what sort of trick was being played and yet not being able to stop himself – Rin, flashes of black lace, the gloss of the images or the shimmer of sweat, bruises, cigarette burns. A familiar face stared back at Aizawa, but sometimes a face much younger. Much softer. Green eyes sometimes filled with fear, other times with a recognisable ecstasy.
His guard was down, but nothing came. The walls around him only seemed to close in with potent obscurity, making the images before him spin and warp into some awful montage. Aizawa, feeling the oxygen burn through his lungs like a spirit, worked to steady himself by setting his eyes firmly on one of the photos. Though really, he should have looked at something else. At Rin – the one of now, whose fingers touched at his hand but disappeared into a numb shock of emotion – rather than at the pretty, youthful face looking out from some past life haunted with phantoms of memory and half-truths.
"The first of those photos was taken, oh, say…" Paper Cut dragged deeply on his cigarette, letting the statement hang unfinished for some moments before finishing through a cloud of grey. "When Rin was about seventeen."
Seventeen. The aching began its outward blossom from the base of Aizawa's neck – please not again, not now – and though he was vaguely aware of Rin's palms closing around the top of his arm, he froze in anticipation.
"Kizashi," Aizawa heard her say, "Don't do this."
Followed by Paper Cut's throaty, smooth chuckle, "Seventeen sounds about right. I mean, to be fair, it was all supposed to start out as a little game. Doctor Voodoo's experiment, if you will, and all I had to do was give Rin some extra motivation to join our agency, as though having had Yukio there wouldn't have been enough – play the role of the nice guy, send her flowers, tell her she was such a promising hero, all that jazz." He was coming closer. "It wasn't anything else at first, I was only doing a job. But then there she was, making eyes, flouncing about in that little school skirt and – fuck, I just couldn't say no. And she couldn't either, could you Rin? After that, you kept coming back for more and more and–"
Blindly, Aizawa clutched a blade from its concealment and threw. The angle was perfect. The intention was pure and hateful, and it was only by a well-chanced inch that it missed Kizashi's throat.
But by this, Kizashi was unruffled. He flashed a sneer, cigarette still balanced and burning between his fingertips as the faint, metallic clatter of the blade dropping chimed at the end of the corridor. "Does that upset you, Aizawa-sensei?" he taunted knowingly. "Does it make you ache to know now that while she was in your class, while you looked her up and down knowing full-well that your dear student could never be yours, I was fucking her? Because there you have it. I've been fucking her since all the way back then and she was begging me for it."
Deftly flicking his fingers, the cigarette went flying – soaring, with the same pointed grace as the paper planes. Ash dropped from its tip, searing red and angry as it bulleted towards Aizawa. Eye-level. A clear, single stripe through the slats in his goggles. Chest flaring, eyes burning, Aizawa felt the simmering sensation through his head as he activated his quirk, staring hard at Kizashi and watching the cigarette drop pathetically from its path. Its paper casing shriveled upon the floor. Without anyone's boot having met it, the cigarette folded in upon itself as though in shame, its smoldering mouth dying down into grey.
"She played by all the right rules," Kizashi said again, apparently unperturbed by his quirk's erasure. "And I fell in love."
Aizawa felt Rin shrivel next to him as she murmured, "That wasn't love."
"But then she went ahead and tried to fuck everything up because she just doesn't appreciate everything Voodoo did for her. Almost blowing our whole operation. Actually blowing her old teacher, as though what she and I had was nothing." Suddenly, the air changed, like an impending storm. Kizashi came closer once again, still without any apparent intent to attack properly but setting Aizawa's teeth ever more on edge. "After everything we did for you, Rin. The stories we covered, the secrets we kept – Doctor Voodoo saw so much potential in you. Ever since you were a little girl – ever since you killed that poor man – Voodoo saw so much potential."
Helpless, the pain began its spread, and Aizawa could do nothing to quell the roiling emotions as they fed into his foiled attempts at remembering. Killed a man. Rin had killed a man – or Paper Cut said so, and it must have been lies, but Rin did nothing to deny it. She only made a strangled sound, allowing her hands to disappear from their place along Aizawa's arm. And she only lifted and coiled her fingers with hypnotic swiftness, serpentine grace, summoning out thin slivers of bloodstreams from her wrists' concealment. Through an impending daze, bright light crawling into the corners of his vision like rising suns, Aizawa watched with breathless bemusement as paths of crimson flew out towards Kizashi like the chords of his own scarf.
Kizashi seemed to dodge them, and Rin slid out from Aizawa's line of vision. Instinctively, his own hands went up to his capture weapon, his eyes still set on Paper Cut and his quirk's power still active throughout his bones. What there was to achieve, Aizawa somehow couldn't decide – to capture, to silence. Throwing out his scarf's edge in the beginnings of an attack, Aizawa repeated to himself that Kizashi wasn't to be believed. But last time, everything he'd said had ended up being true – and Rin had left, and every inch of Aizawa's soul had ached with the desire not to believe any of this had happened. That he hadn't, in some confused way, been lied to and charmed. That there was nothing for him to remember.
He blinked.
In his unguardedness, Aizawa gave Kizashi all the opportunity to evade his attack. More than that, Kizashi managed with the ease of a snake in water to come up close – face to face, only inches away, so that Aizawa could see the flecks like molten gold in his eyes as he lifted a clawed hand with paper talons having materialized seemingly from nothing. Paper Cut grinned sickly, and made to stab at Aizawa's neck or face or shoulders, and only by a moment's grace did Aizawa slip from the line of fire. As he did so, a whipping thread of crimson warped around Kizashi's wrist and hardened to a rubbery, iron-scented entrapment.
Rin was out to the side, encircled by orbiting threads of blood once again reminiscent of Aizawa's own weapon. Metallic sheen in the shadows. Healthy, deep red glimmer. In a way Aizawa had forgotten but now suddenly recalled with piercing clarity, the whites of her eyes had blackened into negative space, and her iris's greens glowed vampirically in their new surrounds of bloody-black darkness. With one hand, held out and fisted, she held Paper Cut in position with her quirk. The other remained suspended gracefully alongside herself.
Aizawa's pulse contorted with thrill and confusion at seeing her… like this. So self-assured. So certain – a shocking, perhaps almost pleasurable contrast to the teenager who'd been too scared to even lift a finger in the direction of an opponent.
But then again – was Aizawa really remembering right?
The heat in his neck flared into the base of his skull, and it took an unappetizing amount of resilience not to crumple and groan.
Paper Cut, pausing for a moment to consider Rin seriously before cracking another charismatic grin, shook his head at her, though he made no attempt to pull himself free. "You probably don't need me to tell you that this would all be a lot easier if you would just use your quirk properly." Mockingly, he lifted both hands above his head in a show of surrender. "But alright, children. You got me. I say we just calm down and talk things through – after all, I believe a certain someone has arrived who has a lot of questions for you, Rin."
Though she now stood some distance away, Aizawa felt Rin's air drop. He looked at her – the new blacks of her eyes receded into white once again, and as they did so the crimson linings which surrounded her began to disintegrate and descend down into the soft folds of her costume as though the material itself were formed from her blood. His heartbeat in his ears, the metallic taste of panic upon his tongue, Aizawa watched helplessly as Rin spiraled into a resigned stillness. She didn't look to him, but instead turned slowly to follow Kizashi's gaze. Inadvertently, eyes set on her, Aizawa turned too – and soon enough was confronted by a rabid, unhappy little face at the end of the corridor. Glaring. Spitting poison with a sullen, childish hatred.
"Yukio."
Yukio still wore the UA girls' uniform, and though it was hard to tell through the lighting's poorness, the bruises across his face had faded and the pink puff of his hair had been brushed in new directions of curls and disaster. All knees and elbows, spindly limbs without stockings or a blazer, it seemed impossible that he didn't shiver against the warehouse's ominous chill. He tip-toed closer, looking like a child grumpy after having only just been woken from a nap. His gaze, disconcerting in its anemic shadowing, didn't leave Aizawa. Stifling him. Threatening him with the promise of agony.
No one spoke. No one moved a muscle except for Yukio, who came closer – ever closer, until at last squeezing himself into Rin's side. Spidery arms curling around her waist, head pressing into her chest and his intent stare at last falling away from Aizawa.
"Rin-chan~" the girl-boy-man muttered something else into her costume, and to Aizawa's dismay, Rin wilted like a flower in snow. Looking defeated. Suddenly weak and fragile. Her arms lifted and suspended themselves in an uncertain circling around Yukio's shoulders. Her fingers trembled. And she, with a darting terror, glanced between Kizashi as he watched in mirthful silence and Yukio as he clutched her tighter in drowsy desperation and Aizawa as his stomach dropped and dropped and dropped with a terrible foreboding.
A/N: Sorry for the longer-than-average wait between updates. Holidays have been crazy-busy...
For those who have been wondering about Rin's quirk (that's right, I'm talking to you fatwhiteguy) I'd suggest you stay tuned for the next two chapters. :P As always lovely readers - follow, favourite and review!