V I O L E T S
A N D
M O R T A L S
When Kaya had started to run Yoake as her own, she told herself that she would become someone better for it.
Yoake represented her dreams. Something that was left behind and wanted to rebuild itself from the ruins it was abandoned in. They've been let down once, clinging to false hope for years until they decided to give up. Someone had to collect the pieces and find them where they lay.
Kaya made Yoake an orphanage of her dreams, wherein hopefully they could bloom once again under a different sun, a different sky, and a different meaning of hope.
Because Kaya knew, in the state she was in, that she couldn't fulfill the fantasies her younger self kept on building day after day after day – on a silent prayer to the shooting stars, she once told herself – because what else could it be?
How could she allow something like her dreams rely on her to be accomplished when she relied on a piece of stick that she kept allowing to control her life?
Smoke was never good for flowers. And maybe that's why Kaya's like this. A wilting violet in a shallow flower pot, only being watered once in a while when it rains. Sometimes she's afraid that the flowers will catch a fire, because she swore, one day, that she heard whistling cracks from a distance. There were days where she sat alone hoping she wouldn't come running into the fire once it catches in the middle of the rain, no matter how absurd it may have sounded at those times.
Then a day came when she was ten, that she realized the cracks she heard weren't the cracklings of a starting fire but a break – a tear, an opening – on her shallow flower pot.
Kaya wanted flowers to bloom under the hidden, whistling cracks she once heard when the sky poured. But they wouldn't. They didn't. Even now, being sixteen, she hasn't stopped hoping that the garden she built through the years in her lungs would grow genuine violets from a fire and not from the smoke it only left behind.
Things never made sense, all throughout her musings, but Kaya didn't mind. They were, after all, fantasies. Fantasies Kaya told herself at nights because no one was there anymore to read her a story to bed.
And the thing about fantasies were they didn't — couldn't — really, truly, exist.
Yet she remembered inhaling something like scorching fire, telling herself that it was only a fantasy, but if it was, why did it feel so real? Why did it feel like she was burning? Why was the pain there, when it surely shouldn't have been?
Oh, but the feeling was already there. It was something that couldn't be erased, even when she hugged the pilllows a bit closer at nights and covered her whole body with blankets a little bit tighter (not even when she slept with the lights on.)
Until she just found herself in need of the feeling of being scorched, torn apart but rebuilt, though not the same as before — never the same as before.
So instead, she just held the fire of the cigarette a little bit closer, a little bit tighter. But now the lights were off so she could perfectly see the embers.
Not every one of them was beautiful.
- - -
One morning, Katou went to Yoake for the first time in a few days.
He asked for Pogako.
"He's not here, Katou-san."
Katou kept going back, the same time, the same place, asking the same question.
And Kaya would give the same answer as before.
Until, of course, she didn't want to anymore.
"Katou-san, aren't you being too desperate?"
And Katou laughed lowly, "Am I?"
"You're not the reason he left."
Katou nodded, because he knew that. He knew that the moment Pogako stepped out the door to look for someone more important that him at that moment.
"Of course. He left because of Amira." croaked Katou, his voice not quite breaking.
But Kaya knew what she heard; and if it didn't break the man before her, then it broke herself.
"I'm so sorry, Katou-san. I didn't know he'd do that or this would happen —"
"Not your fault, Kaya-chan."
"It kind of is, you know. You two got along after I sent him to The Quill so well and you looked much, much happier that I couldn't — wouldn't — believe that it's going to go wrong and —"
"Kaya-chan, please," pleaded Katou, "we both knew this would have happened."
"What do you mean?"
— a bittersweet smile.
"That to Pogako, if it's not Amira, then it's no one at all. It's.. her or nothing."
Kaya understood.
- - -
"Hey, Katsuki-chan. I finally decided to give you a raise!"
The spiky blond rose an eyebrow, "Bullshit. We both know I barely even work."
"It's the least I could give for you just being here."
"Why wouldn't I be here?"
"You don't have to be, really," Kaya muttered under her breath, a bitter chuckle erupting from her lips.
"Hey, Katsuki-chan. You think people can be utter, complete idiots sometimes when it comes to people they care about?"
Katsuki peered at her from his food with a gaze not enough to be called solemn but enough to calm her down.
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"Why the fuck not?"
"Well, that's very helpful. Thanks a lot." Kaya said in a deadpan.
And Katsuki rolled his eyes to the heavens, the drama queen that he was, and stomped off to a corner with something spicy muttering about 'women' and their 'emotions'.
That's where Kaya had a chance to observe Katsuki. Wanting to actually figure out the reason for the feeling she had buried days ago, for it kept surfacing time and time again.
Kaya would not label Katsuki as a person who was misunderstood. He was all of the person he was on the surface. A brash, loud, passionate person even with his mephitic and vain attitude that didn't serve anyone any good — nothing of that bravado was false. It was him, and it was all that made Katsuki himself. But he was deeper than Kaya, a shallow flower pot that she is — he was nothing like her wilting violets.
Katsuki could build a perpetual valley of roses and tulips and sunflowers and snapdragons if he really wanted to. Because Katsuki was a person who was genuinely changing and unveiling, blinding mortals with his radiance in the process.
Mortals like Kaya.
And Kaya stopped herself from grinning brightly, because she couldn't help but compare the both of them from Hades and Persephone. That maybe Kaya was Hades and coerced something so beautiful as Persephone to come down with him, somewhere she didn't know where it truly leads. Although neither of them were mortals in that line of thinking, Kaya thought herself as inferior to something so incredible. Because Kaya can't still comprehend how Katsuki could have stayed all this time.
And perhaps Kaya was having an inkling now of what this feeling is, but she would be a fool to admit it too soon.
She'd let him carry them there.
She trusted Katsuki enough to know that he will. Unknowingly or not.
"Could you quit staring at me with that horrid smile on your face, woman?"
"Not yet, Katsuki-chan."
"I should sue you for this."
"Oh, really?"
"Fucking really."
Kaya just cackled.
And Katsuki just cursed.
Maybe Kaya wasn't strong enough to carry her dreams alone, but her heart was getting stronger. Their hearts were getting stronger. And the best part is they don't have to wonder if it's enough.
— — —
a / n ; im so sorry for not updating sooner and coming back with something so lackluster. cry me a river, lovelies, im suffering w schoolworks and that's all i had going on to fuel this chapter to life. i do hope you enjoy picking up some vague hints, if you live on that. (because i do). keep safe and happy, people of this earth! have a good day, read something depressing, drink coffee, or coke, or water, or whatever so, then go to sleep at four in the morning. it's a nice habit if u want to go die soon. take it from me.
cleverlu: thank you for reviewing again!! aw you're so sweet, i don't know why u even like this so much but im very very grateful to you. thanks, sunshine! it means a lot you think so much of this. im sobbing!1!1!1!1!1!!1!
Sarah Lazenski : thank youuuu for that review and view on at a standstill! i appreciate it very much, esp bec you thought kaya was an okayish character. ah, my baby gets love.
and to answer your question(?) why aas isn't exactly all that known, maybe it's because i tend to write in lesser word counts, depending on the story's genre and flow, and since aas is more of a... storytelling of a life, an anecdote of two people's lives together, maybe, i decided lesser word counts would be comfortable. also, maybe the fact that the overall plot comes off as boring to other bnha/mha fans because it lacks flashy action scenes and suspense, which they all like. i'm more of a lighter person on terms of it, with specks of dark themes underlying them. and this is getting too long. thanks for reviewing again!
thank you again everyone for reading, favoriting/following, reviewing too, of course! thanks for allowing me to share this to you all.
