' promises unkept '

━━━━━

In evenings where the rain poured on gutters and rills, slid down roofs and leaves, the youth would pull a blanket over her head and press her face to a pillow- determined to muffle the sound. She had hated rain, although it wasn't the prime weather when she was struggling in the streets, the casual downpour of rain didn't make it easier for her.

Shivering beneath torn fabrics, the sick clammy feeling of cheap fabric clinging to her skin like a second layer, puddles covering feet infecting wounds, cold cold cold.

And she could feel it now, the cold trailing her bare shoulders, the cold moving in like two three four five cold fingers creeping on the surface of her skin and- blood red eyes were revealed and she clutched the dagger underneath her pillow, pointed it towards the intruder but she held back when the familiar face of Tomoe Shimura greeted her.

"If I'd known you'd react like this," he breathed, two pants. "I wouldn't have volunteered."

Kaede wasn't alien to early midnight interruptions like this, but being woken up was different. Usually, she would have been informed earlier on and they'd knock at her door.

"What is it?" she asked and sat straight, covering her almost exposed chest with a blanket. She was wearing a thin chemise and shorts (she hadn't bother cleaning up the stains of blood on the chemise so Tomoe wrinkled his nose in disgust).

"Sensei wants to talk to us in private," he said, and turned around to give her space to change, but the youth was already heading towards the door, her nipples surfacing beneath the thin material and Tomoe had no choice but to throw the blanket towards her general direction.

"Why did you do that, you bastard?" she growled like a feral wolf, pushing the peach blanket away.

"Your breasts you uncouth thing!" he shrieked, turned away, a pale pink cast on his cheeks and he was grateful for the darkness of the room for it spared him from further mortification.

"You uncouth thing"- she drew quotation marks in the air while glaring daggers at him-"what? You hijacked someone from the Victorian Era now?"

As soon as she saw the surprised expression on Tomoe's face, she put her hands to her lips. She shouldn't have said it. She didn't know why but there was a part of her that rang one two three four alarm bells when the words escaped her mouth.

The youth let silence take its place, hoping that it could erase, replace the words her mouth had just uttered.

Instead of anger or anything relating to that particular emotion, Tomoe merely ran his fingers through his stylishly messy white hair and looked at her- in the way that pierced souls and made icicles melt, in that selcouth way where even the pitter pattering of the rain outside didn't make a tint of cold approach your body- with vulnerable crimson eyes that almost looked like her own.

Craving for something.

( Afraid. )

"How did you find out?" he asked and you wouldn't be able to tell he was furious if you couldn't see the trembling fists beneath his pants.

She opened her mouth to speak but no voice came out, the girl who had sworn to make Fear fear her, she was afraid. And maybe it wasn't the prospect of being mutilated by Tomoe, it was the fear of facing that betrayed look on his face.

"Answer me, Kaede," he said. "How?"

The youth was nothing but a calamity this time, she was an animal, cornered, afraid, helpless and she did what animals do in those times- she attacked, she put on a façade of spite and let venom coated words flow like her guard.

"I asked sensei," she answered voice dull, meeting his eyes and her knees almost buckled at the intensity in them. She wouldn't look away. She wouldn't lose.

"Why?"

The youth shook her head, determined to rebutt. "No, why? Why did you keep it a secret from me? Tomoe, why?"

"Don't put this on me Kai!" he said, the façade of calm disappearing and jabbed a finger at her general direction. "It would have been better if you hadn't bothered with my business!"

"Wow!" she said. "Coming from you, that's rich! Who was it pushing himself past my barriers? Who was it that told me he would be my ally? Who was it? Answer me!"

He shakes his head, voice low and foreboding, almost threatening. "This is different."

"That doesn't matter," she said, "because I deserve to know."

He laughed, a derisive, cold laugh that made that created the searing pain on her eyelids. "You don't need to know, Kai," he said. "You don't deserve the knowledge. It wasn't important, it didn't matter."

"You told me I was afraid of being human! But you Tomoe- you are afraid of human feelings: mercy, faith, sympathy, empathy-" and she croaked out the last unmistakable word, "love."

"You are afraid of possessing human feelings, you deny the pleasures in which your power gives you. You can do so much better! You can bend the world to your will but you remain in this stagnant-"

"Shut up," he said. "You don't know anything. I'm leaving and-"

"Didn't you hear me the first time, Tomoe?" she asked with sharp red eyes, holding his wrists so he couldn't leave- escape. "You're a fucking coward. I always thought you were stronger than me, but I've figured it out now. I've figured out your pathetic excuse for a life now. You are nothing."

"You don't know what you're saying," he said with that voice that made her heart cover with frost. "I'm going to leave. Let me go, Kaede."

"I can use your quirk better than you can, I can face the repercussions because unlike you, I'm not afraid. I can-"

She froze. In a second, seven in total, his eyes were on hers and she felt that gaze- clawing, smothering and penetrating. It was like seeing the world in a different angle. She couldn't move anything, she couldn't feel anything, she couldn't- all the lists of coulds had been crossed out with couldn't and she was falling endlessly and hopelessly.

Her life, fingers were moving and she willed them to stop but didn't. Didn't. Human will was powerful. It made the impossible possible. It managed to defy logic, the rules instilled out by nature itself. So losing your will, control over anything and everything in your body-

It was horrifying.

She saw different images, as if she was inside a prism and bits and pieces where showing her different memories and making her feel. Abandoned in the streets, asking for help but the people averted their gazes and said that the heroes would do something about it, shot in the eye and scorned by others, abandoned to die because he was useless, screaming and clawing on throats, the blade against skin and the most terrifying part was that the youth actually believed the memories were hers and she's trying to scream but her mouth won't open and nothing- a whole clump of nothingness embraced her- happened.

For a split second, she remembered Tomoe's cold eyes and penetrating stare and she's screaming, trying to scream words out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out.

GET OUT.

And she feels pain, the kind of pain that splintered her soul and made pinpricks of pain bite on pale skin, as if her bones were being crushed to dust and fed to her. Everything hurt and she was breaking inside out.

Her deepest darkest thoughts, memories and desires. All laid out. Bared to the world and she needed him to leave.

GET OUT You shouldn't have done it GET OUT. GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT You have to understand GET OUT You You STOP This is GET OUT This isn't powe- You have GET OUT. This is a curse. IT HURTS I do too IT HURTS PLEASE I hurt too and this GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT This is a curse GET OUT GET OUT I'M SO And it's also PLEASE I'LL DO ANYTH ripping me from from inside out JUST GET OUT PLEASE I'm broken GET OUT GET OUT OF MY MIND I'M SORRY and cannot be GIVE ME BACK MY saved BODY TOMOE STOP PLEASE You don't understand STOP IT how much this hurts GET OUT OF MY BODY me and GIVE IT BACK how much I'm TOMOE frightened I feel like everything I'M BEGGING YOU around me is made up like how I'm just STOP STOP GET OUT an amalgamation of a YOU'RE HURTING ME GET OUT thousand different people PLEASE I'LL DO ANYTHING and I'm PLEASE GIVE ME BACK I'M SORRY SORRY nothing PLEASE I'm afraid PLEASE PLEASE so please SORRY.

"I'm so sorry," Kaede whispered and tears have began falling from her eyes like the rain outside her room. She's fallen to the cold floor, dressed in a camisole and short shorts with a blanket wrapped around her body to ward off the cold. And counting, one two three four. To make herself feel better. To steady her world, herself.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered again, but loud enough for the boy across the room to hear. The youth didn't even realize that she was in control of her body again, simply tucking her chest to her knees and sobbing softly. Six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve.

There were things that scarred you forever and this was one of those things. She knew now that true terror was when you didn't have a choice in the matter. When you were sealed off in a prism cage and splintering from inside out. What a destructive quirk.

Hands were on her back and she recoiled from his touch. She was terrified of him. Get out get out get out get out but her own body had grown afraid and nothing escaped her lips. She retched from his touch, afraid of him, and then meeting heartbroken crimson eyes, afraid for him. She'd lost count but she tried to hold the reins to her life again and count one two three four five six seven eight.

Stay stay stay stay stay. That was only a glimpse of what he endured for the last thirteen years of his life. A boy. She remembered hearing somewhere that we were all just children once and once we've shed those shells, the world had the right to fuck us up over and over again, but what she saw- he was never given a chance to be a child.

Nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen.

"I'm sorry," he said and cradled her in his arms, two children, a boy and a girl. "I'm so sorry."

Twenty twenty-one twenty-two twenty-three twenty-four twenty-five twenty-six.

"I'm so afraid of this power, of this ruination within me. This robs humans of their humanity, their feelings, memories and will. This coalesces everything and I don't-I don't want to use it, but I have to. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."

"Please..." she croaked in between sobs, resting her head on his collarbone, heart lurching in her chest. "Please Tomoe. Don't ever-"

"I'm so sorry Kai," he whispered, tucking strands of her hair behind her ears and rubbing circles in her back. "I'm sorry."

"I like that," was the only thing she could say because terror still had her clutched on its claws and she couldn't find it in her to forgive. She loved him truly, but she couldn't forgive. "I like that nickname. Kai."

He ran fingers through choppy raven locks, inhaling her scent. "I like it too."

"Tomoe," she said, and she liked like how he smelled so clean. "Please don't do it ever again. Please."

"I won't," he said, ruffling her hair gently. "I promise."

But promises were meant to be broken, she should have learned that by now.

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E N D O F C H A P T E R
- s o l a c e

□ all my bbys are so volatile lmao. i know some of you thought tomoe would be the easiest to deal with, but both kaede and him are children who grew up in a way that made them more broken than others so he's actually more effed up than kai. yikes. and i love love his quirk. especially the backlash just like i introduced in the previous kai chapter.

□ lmao, i rambled, so next up is a yuko chapter, what would you guys like to see? i'm accepting requests as long as they're feasible <3