Chapter 44
The Game – Conclusion

Years later, that little girl had sunk into the recesses of Aizawa's inner world, little more than a splotchy abstract of green eyes and little, trembling hands. He'd remembered her name; he'd remembered the feeling, how good it had felt – no, not good, the way she'd looked at him was so much more than that. She stood in a stunning contrast against all the vile hopelessness of Shirakumo's death, pressing Aizawa onwards in knowing that he'd saved her, and she was safe, and if he could fix everything in the world just for that little girl's smile, he would. Even if that smile had become just too distant for him to reach.

But then!

But then she'd come back to him – all those years later, and there she'd been: insipid and peculiar and gazing at him with that cosmically familiar smile from the back of a classroom. Aizawa's first classroom. His first student, or one of the many, though none of the others had seemed quite so important as her. Her! Rin-chan!

Aizawa remembered the shock and bliss in such recognition, of feeling himself go frozen when his eyes fell over hers that first day of school. No longer that little girl bathed in blood and dirt, sickly in hospital sheets or bandages, but a strange teenager like some creature out from the depths of myth. And Aizawa remembered the sickness, the sheer torment that exploded all through him, when he first considered the possibility that she didn't remember him. That the quiet oddities in her smiles and stares had been emptied of him after so long – and indeed, he didn't venture to ask.

Aizawa remembered training – blood flowing from her forearms and shoulders as she manipulated it in crimson swirls outside her body. He'd pushed her. And pushed her and pushed her, knowing she could do so much more but knowing too that she was scared. After what had happened, ruby stains were blotched behind her eyes, and Aizawa saw how the stickiness of blood made her sick. Made her tremble. Made her fingers slip and cuts run too deep.

Every hospital visit – she pale and tired, he equally so as he waited for her. Waited in corridors. Waited just outside her hospital room's door, Recovery Girl always looking to him with a curious reassurance as though she knew how his own blood pounded through his ears. As though she knew. She knew.

Above everything, more than anything, he'd wanted to see her flourish, had wanted to see her safe.

And then, after it all, as though it all just hadn't been enough, she'd returned to him in her third year as she always did. Like the seasons. Like the snow and then the blossoms, a gust of wind through the classroom door. Only this time, the oxygen had dissipated from Aizawa's lungs in ways quite different to before. She came back from the holidays – from the excruciatingly long weeks away in Miyazaki – mortifyingly and unnecessarily beautiful like a butterfly having at last torn itself from its cocoon, and he somehow spiraled helplessly down into a new depth of feeling quite unlike anything he'd felt for her before.

It had revolted him, the way the boys in his class began to notice her.

It had shocked him that behind her back, he began to look at her in exactly the same way. By himself, he'd felt betrayed. By her new grace and competence, how suddenly she manipulated her quirk with the ease of water running and with the precision of striking serpents, Aizawa had been both thrilled and horrified. She didn't need him anymore. She wasn't a little girl anymore.

And then there was the UA Sports Festival. Never in his life had Aizawa been so excited and proud – willowy, distracted, delightful Rin as she knocked her opponent out the ring; talented, excitable, darling Rin as she grinned in disbelief at the fact of it before passing out in the middle of the stage from sheer overexcitement. Rush of blood to the head. Anemic exhaustion. And then in the backrooms before the prize giving – a darting ecstasy passed over Aizawa to see it now – he'd gone to her. She'd been pacing up and down, mumbling all sorts to no one but herself – and then she saw him, and had breezed over to meet him at the door.

And in a charmed moment, the two of them alone, she'd thrown her tulip-stem arms around his shoulders and rose up onto tip-toe to press her lips against his cheek. A long, soft, profound kiss. Thank you! Thank you for everything, Aizawa-sensei!

And Aizawa remembered that feeling. How he'd pushed her away gently to be faced with a sudden flush, a sudden fall to her features. He remembered the vague smell of sweat and the perfume she'd worn even back then; the chill of the backrooms; the crinkled, tight cling of her P.E. tracksuit. She'd told him sorry, the embarrassment suddenly dawning upon her. And he'd been too jolted to reply at first – by the ecstasy of the feeling, by the desire to pull her back into him and to kiss her properly because… fuck… he'd realised too late to stop it. It had taken every ounce of his strength to walk back out the door.

And by the impossibility of all the things he'd felt – their immense irrationality, how incredibly overwhelming and heartbreaking – Aizawa had been hopeless.

He'd only just moved into the apartment a few weeks ago, and until now had been pleasantly uninterrupted by neighbours and the like. Boxes remained unpacked across the living room floor, piled and scattered in no particular order. He mainly slept on the couch nowadays, lacking in both the energy and desire to set up the bed, and had a grand total of three coffee mugs to his name. Apart from Yamada, who'd forced his way into the apartment the previous weekend for a casual and drunken 'housewarming party', Aizawa had had no visitors. He'd had none and indeed, he did not plan on making any changes to this fact.

As such, the sound of a knock at the door was unexpected and nauseating. Outside, the sky had blackened to a murky charcoal. Traffic on the street below was but a dull hum, lights in the other buildings steadily beginning their submission to the night's blackness. Yet, it was there: gentle and quiet enough for it to not have been real. Knock, knock.

Considering the possibility that he'd misheard – that perhaps the knocking was but an echo from someone else's door – Aizawa stayed on the couch, staring into the entranceway's shadows. Cup of coffee to his lips. Newspaper thrown dismissively across the floor before him. He narrowed his eyes, grunted in an unspoken attempt to will the intruder away. But the knocking came again. Two gentle taps. And then a breezy voice, chiming his name in a sweet questioning and making him almost choke upon his drink. "Aizawa-sensei? Aizawa-sensei, are you home?"

He bolted from the couch, nearly messing his coffee, and stumbled for the door.

She was there. Hiruma. Rin, whom Aizawa hadn't seen since her graduation three weeks before.

A fog of yellow light from inside the apartment fell upon her as she blinked in disbelief at Aizawa – and to her, he must have looked to be in equal shock, for his limbs had begun a delicate tremble and his lungs had gone numb. She was in a pair of pajama shorts. She had her jersey on skew or even backwards (Aizawa couldn't tell, it was so massively large).

"Uh–" she smiled sheepishly, hands pulling and plucking at her sleeves. "Hi."

"Hiruma?" Somehow, the question of how she'd found where he lived did not so much as cross Aizawa's mind. Rather, heart floundering in anxious surprise, he was more fearful over the possibility of this being a dream. "What are you doing here?"

"I– Well, I don't know. I don't know. I guess I just… I didn't think you'd actually be home."

"It's very late."

"I'm sorry," she said.

After a long and dreadful silence in which neither of them moved, Aizawa's eyes heavy upon her and she not shying away, he stepped aside and told her to come in. The sound of it didn't reach his ears, intent as he was upon the lightness of Rin's step as she wandered past him – eying out the undomesticated mess without seeming to take much in, smiling small. Here, before him, she could not have been more than a specter. Since her class's graduation, Aizawa had agonized and brought himself close to the point of pain in resisting the urge to find her. To call her or write to her or damn well find her and tell her about the white hot irons that had stabbed at his chest over the last few months. Now here she was. Right here, and it felt so perfect and wrong.

He made them coffee – he knew, after one discussion in the teachers' lounge, how she liked it: Black. Three heaped teaspoons of instant. No sugar.

They sat awkwardly on the couch together, for it was the only seating Aizawa had. He wedged himself far into one corner, she stiff and quiet in the other. Her sneakers were at the door, and tapping her feet in rhythmless undulations against the floor, the pink stripes of her socks somehow seemed glaring. Grey pajama shorts, bandy legs more perfectly carved than ivory and scattered with scars from quirk training. Unbrushed hair. And the smell – god, the smell of her! Aizawa held his coffee close to his face, inhaling deeply and trying hard to think only of the burnt musk of caffeine.

The small talk: brutal. The smolders of emotion which bristled in the space between them: wicked, the works of some mischievous god with a black mark against Aizawa's name. How cruel for her to come to him like this. How terribly cruel and unfair.

"Are things going well at the Voodoo Agency?"

It struck a nerve. Rin bit her lip. She'd told him before graduation about her fears and her nightmares, struggling for breath – and he'd held her hand, and told her in turn that nothing could hurt her so long as he was around. He remembered her. He remembered her. She remembered him too, and Aizawa couldn't help but to believe that she trusted he'd keep her safe once again. Perhaps that was why she'd taken the job in spite of it all. Perhaps that was why she was here now.

"It's fine, I guess. Different to what I'd thought it would be." She looked away, to the floor, put her coffee cup on the table. And then, curiously flushed, she smiled at Aizawa. "But I've been… I mean, can I ask you something, Aizawa-sensei?"

Aizawa, through thoughtless slips of surrender, found himself inching closer. "Of course."

"Do you think it's too late for me to change my mind about being a hero?" A deep, profound gaze. "And if I did… Would you be disappointed?"

"No," he said quickly, and under Rin's surprised expression drew a breath to speak more calmly. "No, I wouldn't be disappointed." He put down his coffee cup next to hers. The space between them closed itself a little more. "But why are you asking? Has something happened?"

"I've just been thinking."

"Is that why you came here?"

It seemed she didn't know how to answer. Rin continued to look at him, suddenly quite somber, and Aizawa felt for a moment that perhaps the question was unfair, that really there could be no explaining why she'd come here, back to him, just as there could be no explaining why it made him tremble. They stared at each other, seemingly now unable to speak, sensing something carefully established begin to slip from them: a distorted protectiveness giving way to self-consciousness, and self-consciousness to adoration.

"I… don't know why I came," Rin repeated, face now deepened to the colour of blossoms, throat jumping sharply though she continued to smile. "There was something I wanted to say. I've wanted to tell you for a while."

"Yes?"

Hands tensing in her lap as she turned her face toward the floor. "Actually, you know, I should go~"

"No." Purposeful thought left him. Aizawa touched his hand precariously to her cheek: hot, smooth – guiding her to look at him more fully as stroked his thumb across her skin. "I'd like it if you'd stay."

Rin froze at the contact, but did nothing to pull away. Green eyes. Those same green eyes.

She'd been his student not so long ago, and before that a child he'd cared a great deal for. But now the boundaries were falling away and there was no way out with words, risky, requiring a clarity of the heart terribly new to Aizawa. Composedly uncertain, he drew close, close enough to feel Rin's breath against his neck as she shuffled and stiffened next to him. The angling an awkward twist. Her own hand rising to touch his where it now rested along her jaw. Chaste, hardly with any real pressure at all, he grazed her lips with his own. They were soft; they were cold, tasting vaguely of salt; and a shudder reared itself through Aizawa's spine.

A quiet admission of guilt. This wasn't how it was supposed to be but Aizawa was not prepared to stop it. Not now. Too late, too far gone. The moment was quiet and perfectly still, but everything inside of him seemed to ache. For her and against her – Rin. For the way she sent a million pinpricks through his bones like dead stars flaring back to life.

She drew away, though hardly so, her mouth still close enough to his own for him to taste her words. "This isn't– Doctor Voodoo–"

"Ssh." He pulled her closer. "Doctor Voodoo doesn't mean shit."

This time with uncertainty prickling out into a cocktail of relief and ecstasy, Aizawa kissed her again. This time, she sank into him with all the innocence of a flower in the rain.

And just as quickly as it happened, it was over. And Rin left in silence, tying her shoes with trembling hands and walking fast from the door down the corridor. An odd slant to her shoulders. Not looking back at Aizawa, who watched her go, wishing as he'd never wished before that she'd come back and stay and be his.

Memories blended into the near-past after that. The letter. The hospital. Somewhere between then and now, she'd ghosted herself from his mind without explanation. Maybe even for the best, because the image of her leaving through his apartment building, the weight of her lips from that night now burning upon Aizawa's like acid delicious and decaying – perhaps he wouldn't have survived, knowing then as he knew now how he'd fallen in love before he'd even had a chance to realise it was happening.

But now, it was all back. Back where it belonged, just as Aizawa was back in the warehouse with his back to the gritty ground and sobs ringing out between his ears. Somehow, it all seemed even more dreamlike. Just as, if not more unreal than all the things that had come to pass. But– fuck–

Fuck.

It was real. All of it.

Unable to repress a moan, Aizawa rolled onto his side and propped himself up.

Rin was slumped on her knees, Yukio limp in her arms though one hand was up against her cheek. Full of red splatters. Ungodly smallness. He was alive, though just barely, and Rin's palm was spread across the blanket of blood that knitted itself out from Yukio's chest. Her face swollen, her face pink and shimmering. Blood had pooled alongside Yukio's shoulders, but seemed to ooze inwards rather than out. Indeed, as Aizawa stared hard through the sickly mist across his vision, the blood disappeared. Crawling, seeping, up and up back into the wound as though the whole scene were playing out in reverse.

"I didn't want to hurt you," Aizawa heard Yukio say in a weak, tiny voice. "I didn't know."

"It's fine," Rin said, steady and hard in spite of the tears that erupted along her cheeks. "Just don't speak."

"It hurts."

"I know."

"I love you, Rin-chan."

"Don't say it like that. You're going to be fine."

Paper Cut was right there, watching. Just watching, with a fucking smirk across his face. Aizawa forced his hands beneath his shoulders, struggling against the invisible weight laid upon his back as he pushed himself up. Feebly, of course, and without much success, for as soon as he managed to lift his torso from the ground a firing pain through his neck sent him limply back down. And Paper Cut laughed, and Rin's eyes shot up towards him.

Throwing his hands out in a mock show of greeting, Paper Cut cried with exaggerated pleasure, "Finally, you're awake, sensei. I was getting bored." Crack. Hateful, with the slicing poise of a snake and much too fast for Rin to react, Paper Cut's boot met her side. Aizawa flinched as though the pain were his own. Rin crumpled next to Yukio, gasping against wet sounding coughs.

"You get finished up with Yukio quickly now, Rin, my sweet," Paper Cut said, kicking her hard in the other side of her ribcage before stepping over her crinkled frame and towards Aizawa. "Because Eraser Head here's going to be losing a lot more than just some blood."

Move! Aizawa screamed within himself to move!

Paper Cut waved his fingers in the smooth twist of snakes, and pieces from his sleeve tore to wrap around his fingertips like talons. He grinned, brandishing the teeth too white for a smoker and the bloodthirsty intention too shining for someone once a hero. Aizawa clenched his own hands into his fists, willing, begging, pleading for his arms just to move and for his eyes to just stopping shutting against the pressure like stars exploding through his skull.

Just barely, Aizawa heard Rin hiss, "Fuck you, Kizashi."

"Oh?" Paper Cut grunted, turning. "Want to say that–"

He didn't finish. A shock bolted down Aizawa's spine. She was too fast and then she was frozen, her hand around the handle of another blade from the soft folds of her costume. It was buried into Paper Cut's hip, and around it a soaking redness spread across his costume's pristine, perfect whiteness. Paper Cut stared at her, mouth hanging in a soundless scream before being concealed by the palm of Rin's free hand like a mask. She held him there. Held him as though she planned to crush his skull. Glared at him with the whites of her eyes having blackened once again to unholy darkness.

It seemed almost possible to hear the thud of Paper Cut's heart. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Unnatural and nauseating, though perhaps Aizawa was listening simply to his own pulse as it hiked and fell in terrible undulations at the sight of Rin's… hate. Indeed, she was capable of hatred. Aizawa had forgotten that until now. And it sent a wintry chill through Aizawa's bones.

"I'll kill you," Rin said, truthfully. More truthfully than Aizawa had heard any person speak before. "If you touch him, I will kill you."

"Like you killed that man?" Paper Cut spat, muffled behind Rin's hand. "Please. You won't do that."

But then he shuddered like a puppet being shaken, and with nightmarish glossiness a perfect trail of blood ran out from his ear down his jaw.

Just as quickly, his body went still again. He drew a breath, an awful gasp sounding like an injured dog's, and Rin continued to glare. Face steely and beautiful, hand dead set against Paper Cut in a clawed, certain loathing – as though to say try me. Could she feel how Aizawa trembled? How he marveled and at the same time collapsed in upon himself – this wasn't her. Was it? It wasn't.

"God, Rin," Paper Cut moaned, and the ecstasy of the sound made Aizawa certain he'd be sick. Also that he'd kill Paper Cut himself if ever he manage to move. "You're just like your mother."

Everything went still. Though Rin's palm remained secured, her despising resolve seemed to waver. Ghoulish eyes widening, she spluttered, "Excuse me?"

"Your mother, Rin," Paper Cut wheezed. "She was always so difficult about everything. No matter how many drugs I got into her system, she always managed to hide you so fucking well. The one time I did manage to find you, she also threatened to kill me." Rin's hand fell away, and Paper Cut cocked his head. He wasn't smiling. Blood was gushing from his nose as though he'd taken a hard punch. "Doctor Voodoo told me it wouldn't be necessary to get rid of her – much as she may have deserved it. She was a fucking whore and a liar. Sound familiar Rin? I wasn't supposed to tell you. Doctor Voodoo was going to tell you himself when the time was right. He didn't want to kill her but he was willing to do it for you…"

"Stop."

"It's true."

Rin shook her head. Aizawa felt himself do the same. "No."

"Yes. She died because of the secrets she kept. Just like Yukio is going to die, and just like your precious Eraser Head is going to die because of your secrets."

"No!" Rin threw her hand back in a jolting contortion, and Paper Cut coughed out a black spew of blood.

In perfect unison like a horrific choir, both of them screamed and twisted. Both of them dropped to the floor with fleshy, heavy thuds, and Aizawa watched stunned. The two of them, Rin and Paper Cut, writhed. She clutched at her chest – Aizawa was struck by a nightmarish dread that her wound had torn open and that her heart would fall out from her body. Paper Cut clawed at his cheeks and mouth in the manic way of rabid beasts.

From across the space, Aizawa felt a pair of eyes on him. He met Yukio's gaze, the boy's own pale face having dropped into an awful, pleading look which made Aizawa's heart plunge.

"Oh golly, Kizashi. That was the one thing I asked you not to say." That voice. Aizawa knew that voice. Warm and hypnotic, a smile sown into it like a devil's sick of sin. He screwed his head upon his shoulders – and there, there in the place from which they'd all come, was the rap of a cane against the floor. The swish of a purple coat against fiendishly pale skin. Doctor Voodoo, swaying casually upon the scene as though Paper Cut and Rin did not coil themselves into nightmarish shapes of pain.

Three little dolls were cradled in his arm, the size of newborn babies and just as disconcerting.

Fuck no.

Please no.

One doll's hair hung in silken, fairytale stands of white – and in its chest, little gemstone flecks of red around it, was a needle. The other doll wore a suit, lovingly knitted, quite like Paper Cut's – and its raggedy face, where its jaw would have been, was ripped off and leaking out fluffy tufts of crimson. And the third doll remained untouched, swathed in black with a scarf wrapped around its neck.

Doctor Voodoo stopped right by Aizawa, for a moment looking down at him with that nauseating, infuriating grin. "Children can be so disobedient, can't they, Eraser Head?" And with the tip of his cane, he tapped Aizawa's temple teasingly. "I don't know how you've coped with my Rin for so long. She's certainly a handful."

"Go to Hell."

Heartily, Voodoo chuckled. "I'm afraid the Devil wouldn't like the competition."

Paper Cut gasped again, hands around his face in quivering desperation. "Doctor Voodoo! Oh, Voodoo I'm so sorry! I got carried away!"

"That you did." With his thumb and index finger, Voodoo flicked the one doll's forehead, and Paper Cut fell backwards as though he'd been shot through the head. "A pity. You were doing such a good job. But I'm here now." Forgetting about Aizawa entirely, Doctor Voodoo began a casual wander towards Rin as she continued to clutch at her chest. Aizawa tried to scream – indeed, the sound began to escape from his lungs, but before anything coherent could leave him he saw Voodoo's produce another needle. And then he was blinded. Blinded by white hot agony in his groin which shot and screeched through his limbs.

No blood. No broken bones or sprains or anything real at all. Only the torture of ruthless, pointless pain.

Doctor Voodoo bent down towards Rin. From the other end of the room, Yukio started yelling again in the high-pitched, tormented whines of an injured animal. "No! No! Leave her alone! Monster! Monster!"

But nothing seemed to reach Voodoo. He crouched down, placing his cane alongside himself, and with his free hand stroked Rin's hair. "Hello, my dearest. My darling. I've missed you so much."

Like a viper – and shit, did it make Aizawa proud – Rin's head shot upwards and she spat into Doctor Voodoo's face. Just as swiftly, he slapped her. Hard. The sharp sound carrying between the walls and making Yukio roll into the fetal position, wailing. Sickly, Doctor Voodoo guffawed, and he gripped a handful of Rin's hair to bring her to look him in the eyes.

"You must have a lot of questions. I know, I know, don't look at me like that, with those big lovely eyes ~ such an ugly face doesn't suit you. Come on, my dearest, show me your biggest smile."

Something was off. Aizawa stared hard, trying to figure it out – he only saw them in profile, Doctor Voodoo's face close to Rin's, and he only saw them through the airheaded daze of aching.

"You…" Rin breathed, the sound of it breaking Aizawa's heart. "My mother."

"It had to be done," Doctor Voodoo said, releasing his hold on Rin's hair and lovingly, mockingly, began to line the three dolls up on the floor before her. "She'd never let me have you. I knew you'd be able to do great things – I could give you so much. But she called me mad. Can you believe that Rin?" Ironically, he cackled. "She thought I was mad even though she never saw what sort of potential was swelling in her womb."

With a long, swollen finger, he pressed down into the Kizashi-doll's stomach, and across the floor Paper Cut spilled his guts in a sour pooling of vomit.

Surprisingly, Rin threw out her hand and cried Paper Cut's name. His real name, with none of the hatred of before.

As she did so, Voodoo gripped Aizawa's doll's arm between his fingers. He screwed it effortlessly into an unnatural angle – and Aizawa imagined splintering bones in fire, and bit down hard into his lip to stop the scream rearing itself from the depths of his gut. He was going to black out. His head seemed to disconnect from his body and then come crashing back.

"Stop it!" Rin screeched.

"Then listen like a good girl. I have to leave soon and I only have time to tell you this once."

Aizawa couldn't see. To listen took every ounce of strength he could manage – to listen to Yukio screech and throw himself about helplessly, to listen to Kizashi groan and sob, to listen to Voodoo as his sickening baritone so familiar and so demonic spouted words that Aizawa, after everything, couldn't even convince himself were lies. No matter how he felt Rin's heart break – for indeed, he felt it in his own chest, he felt her soul drain out from her body alongside his and into nothing – he couldn't convince himself or her.

"I knew you'd be wonderful. After all, we have the very same eyes, don't we? Yes, Rin, look at me. I know you've been denying it. But it's true. Your mother lied to you, and you've lied to yourself, but you're mine. You've always been mine and I'll make sure you stay mine. No one else's." In a silhouette of sudden light and blackness, Aizawa shuddered at the sight of Voodoo leaning forward to plant kisses along Rin's face. He rasped – no, stop – but no sound other than a bloody desperation came out. No one else's. Only mine.

Things went black again. Black for a long time or no time at all.

There were sirens squealing in the distance. Everything around him broke away, sending vibrations through his body like millions of crawling ants. Aizawa felt himself float up from the floor and down again and up again, as though upon an expanse of endless sea. He felt the soft gracing of Rin's lips upon his. He lifted his arms and held her though she wasn't there. Rin. Doctor Voodoo – no, stop. Leave her alone. Yukio crying. Kizashi silent.

And explosions. Explosions? Footsteps? Barks like dogs.

"Hands up! Get those dolls away from him! I said hands up!"

Knowing that his eyes flitted open but seeing nothing, only the high greyness of roof and concrete, Aizawa waited. More explosions, and voices blurring together in his ears in a distorted song of nausea and disorientation. What a shit-show! Yamada? Fuck off, you creepy little shit! Bakugo? Bakugo? Why?

There were hands on Aizawa's face. Light in his eyes. What?

And then, like the devil himself, there came the composed, tea-time sound of Nezu as he said gently but with a dreadful loudness that pierced between Aizawa's ears, "Hello Doctor Voodoo." Drunken fantasy. Drugged out nightmare. "I've been waiting rather a long time for this."

A/N: One chapter left...