Cut Off- Bakugo Katsuki

29

Aizawa had set her down, having felt her wriggle a long. The slime texture had gotten worse, it was so warm running down his forearms, and when her tears mixed in with it, he found out after briefly testing it with his taste buds that it was indeed blood. Iris bled, and unfortunately he didn't know where to look first. Her eyes, it now looked like her tears were pink. It looked like she was crying pink lemonade. He didn't panic, and the only thing he planned on doing was checking all of her wounds he knew of. He undressed her, she'd just have to understand the situation when she awoke. After all, when he saw the teeth marks on her hip, the cuts he didn't know what to do. He didn't know anything about this girl now lying unmoving in front of him. He didn't know why she was getting hurt in her sleep. As if this was a normal thing, her hands began to move, scratching at her legs, her nails reddening the skin.

"Please... Stop, Iris..." He mutters, using his scarf to soak up all the liquid that seeped from her body. He was witnessing, now that he knew how she got these gashes, that she was lucid dreaming. Perhaps this was a reaction to using too much of her quirk. After all, soaking the end of his scarf in her oncoming tears, he had to practically soak her body in them, and he found where all her marks were. He found that she wasn't dying or anything at all. She was just hurting. The only blood that existed on her body were coming from her eyes. It reminded him of the USJ. He could only imagine what she was dreaming about. It reminded him of Freddy Kruger, but it also reminded him of Midoriya, the boy in his class. Perhaps her quirk was alright, festering now because of Shigaraki. But also.... He knew she was harvesting something else inside of her, he knew now why she was opening her eyes more often. It had happened again. Her quirk had manifested into a higher level. It only made sense, her codons had moved, they'd shifted, he wasn't a science teacher, but he knew the answer.

"Oh Iris... You weren't meant to evolve. It has to be so painful. Why didn't you tell me sooner?" He mutters, cutting off the soaked end of his scarf, setting it aside to take to Endeavor. He'd know more about her eyes, maybe. He shook her body once, wondering if she'd wake up from the pain. But it didn't, she didn't. He scolded himself, and he stumbled to his feet, moving away from the sleeping girl. He couldn't, he didn't, he was lost. So much was happening. Hizashi was coping, Charlotte was dead, and Iris was having nightmares so bad that she was injuring herself in her sleep. He made sure to bind her up, her fingers continuing to claw at the air. Then, he worked on patching her up, looking briefly underneath the skin just to see nothing but veins and muscle. It was weird, he was afraid. There were so many things he had yet to know about her. Her life story. Was it ok to ask when she awoke? Was it ok to even bring up? Was her quirk now destroying herself just as much as it was destroying her will to become a hero? Just how much was she seeing? How damaged was the girl before him, in order for her to be hurting herself when she didn't even know it? She did know it, she just ignored it.

Or maybe, you know, how sad can she be to even be thinking of everyone turning on her? Simply put, Iris could be a lost cause. Aizawa knew that now, and that put him in a state of sorrow. He knew that all too well, and trying now to ignore her future, he couldn't help but imagine her above a pile of blind bodies. Those with white eyes, either colorless or completely torn out. It was a horrible image, but he couldn't help it. He just couldn't. Now, sitting there in the darkness of her more categorized room, he kept her there in his own image.

They had decorated her room a while ago, most likely two weeks after her incident. She wanted a garden, so he gave her a forest. He had bought her multiple seeds, pots, and a few ideal womanly things while he was at the store. She loved them, and one thing he failed to notice. All the plants inside her room, none of them ever bloomed. Not one, and he figured she might as well have let them die. It was unusual for her, probably because she often watered the weeds outside his apartment. This was a sign, he had written it down in his personal journal a while ago. She'd been feeding the wrong parts of herself. This was horrible. He'd been reading her all wrong.

"I'm so sorry..." He knelt for her, resting his face on her mattress as she continued to move around, the tears that slid down his cheeks soaked that part of the bed. He was at a loss, Iris was truly a mystery he couldn't figure out. It was tearing him apart. He stays there for the night, eventually falling asleep with the idea of taking her out to lunch tomorrow. He had to know how she was feeling personally. He had to know what exactly she had in store for herself.

He had to know if his daughter was destined to become something she didn't have to be, didn't want to be. Something that was probably inevitable. He didn't want to lose her, he can't lose her, he'd already lost so much.