The Origin of something new (mha ff)

Chapter 30

She sat in her room and stared at the wall. The wall was white, nothing special, and yet it was pleasant to focus her gaze on it. A little light shone through the window, so the white of the wall shone more in one corner than in the other. She studied the wall. She had been studying the wall for what felt like an eternity. Or it was only a few seconds, she had lost her sense of time. She was unable to take her eyes off the wall. It didn't matter how much her body trembled and how much her hands cramped in the fabric of the ceiling. Even the tears in her eyes, which had clouded her vision and were now slowly drying on her cheeks and hands, did not matter. She was trapped, not in her body but in her mind. She wished she could let go and not think about it so much, but her hands did not respond to her command.When she woke up, she had already slept for several hours. It was a nice sleep, a comfortable sleep, but something had jolted her out of sleep. She didn't know who it was and she didn't know where, but somewhere around here someone was feeling really shitty right now and she couldn't do anything about it. It was always in her sleep where her defence was subconsciously drowned out. The person's feelings had drilled into her. They drove her crazy, caused her pain and made her hallucinate. While she was still asleep, there was nothing she could do about it. She just lay there and looked up into the crazy eyes. They weren't really eyes, it was more like the feeling of being watched. As if emotions had personalities staring at her while she slept. While she lay defenceless in her bed. She felt drunk, like she was high when she finally gained control. She stumbled out of her bed. Anything was better than lying in that bed again tonight. Kaede opened her bedroom door and groped into the hallway. It was completely dark, only a slit of light caught her attention. A slit of light under bakugo's bedroom door. Curious, she crept to the door, but she was clumsy and tripped over her own feet. With a soft thump, she banged her head on the door. "och nöö." Almost immediately the door was yanked open and an angry Bakugo stared at her. "What are you doing spying on my door?!" She put a finger to his lips. "Shhhh you have to be very, very quiet, the others are asleep after all." Like a toddler, she simply walked past him. This untypical behaviour worried Katsuki. He closed the door and stood in front of her, holding her by the shoulders. "Have you been drinking? Have you completely lost your mind?!" She ignored him. A book on his bed had caught her attention. She tried to reach for it, but he grabbed her wrist. His grip was firm and she was sure to have bruises the next day. When she turned to reach for it with her other arm, he held that too, but she shifted her weight so that Katsuki fell with her to the side on the bed. He lay on top of her and pressed her arms into the mattress. While he stopped her from moving her legs and doing something else stupid, he stared at her intensely. Their faces were only inches apart and Katsuki could see exactly how red her eyes were in the light of his lamp. If he didn't see the tears too, he would have thought she had consumed some kind of drugs. "What's wrong with you? What are you doing in the hallway, you should be sleeping." She shook her head, licked her lips and kept trying to free her arm. "You're not sleeping either. Why is there a light on in your room in the middle of the night, tomorrow will be busy again." With a jerk she freed her arm but instead of reaching for the book grabbed Katsuki's hair and placed her hand partially on his forehead. She closed her eyes and shared his feelings for less than a second because he flinched right back. He was standing by the wall right by the window when she sat up. It stung her that his warm body was no longer on top of hers and strangely enough, she had detected a vanilla smell. "You like walls, don't you? If there's anything, you always retreat to a wall. You find peace in it." She continued to eye him because he said nothing. "It's because of the villains, isn't it? Ever since they grabbed you from behind that time and kidnapped you, you've been watching your back cover. That's why you panicked today, because I came from behind. Did you have a flashback or..." He interrupted her, "I hate you for that." She slid further onto his bed and leaned herself against the wall as she closed her eyes. "For what?" "To know how I feel. I hate it. The others are naive extras. I'm glad they don't see me weak, but you..."He did not see that her hand was getting closer and closer to the book. "I know what you said today at the hero exercise. You know very well that you did nothing at all. It wasn't your Quirk, I myself was too weak and panicked, but you told everyone it was your Quirk's fault. Why?" She opened her eyes. "I thought you wouldn't like it if they knew about it. How much you were struggling. I think it already sucks for you that I know. After all, you hate my Quirk for it." He felt bad for saying that about her Quirk. Her Quirk belonged to her, was a part of her. He didn't feel quite so guilty anymore when her hand grazed the cover of the book. With a leap, he threw himself onto the bed and tried to snatch the book from her, but she turned away. Silence. "This... this is a romance novel." "Yeah, and what about it?!" He snatched it out of her hand. For a few seconds she just stared at him. She looked at him kneeling on the bed, pressing the book protectively against his chest, then she started to laugh. His expression darkened. "I hate you." She continued to laugh, got up and stumbled off the bed. As she ran back towards the door, Bakugo remembered how she had come into his room in the first place. "You still need to tell me why you're so drunk." She turned around indignantly. "I'm not drunk!" "Then why are you acting like this? It's not my problem, go to your room and get some sleep!" She thought for a moment about going back, but she couldn't. The thought of lying in that room again and just sleeping as if nothing had happened.... His eyes widened when she suddenly stopped smiling. Her joy had filled the room and no sooner had he wanted to send her away than it weighed on the atmosphere. He scrambled closer to her. "Tell me what happened." She just shook her head. Insistently, he repeated himself. "Tell me what's wrong with you." "No." Her no was strong, not the silent no he would have expected, as weak as she looked just now. "You are weak." She raised her eyes. She stared at him with such intense anger that he thought she would burn. "You think I'm weak? Because I need to cry now?" Tears streamed down her cheeks. "You're an idiot Katsuki." "You are weak. You're weak not because you're crying now or because anything happened to bring you this far. You're weak because you think you have to sort this out on your own. What are you looking at now? Do you think you're the only one looking around at more people than just yourself? I've been watching you and I have to tell you something right now. You make me so sick." She winced, but he wasn't finished. "You really piss me off because you're always busy trying to help. Whether it's Earphone Girl or Shitty hair or any of the other extras. All the time you're just taking care of them. And now I'm gonna get you. One time I catch you and you're miserable, and don't deny it now, and you won't let anyone help you? It makes me so sick, kaede, you can't imagine. You came here to my room, your own bad luck. I won't let you out until your answer satisfies me." She stared at him. "I..." Her voice failed. "I just can't get over it."Then start from the beginning. Why did you go out of your room into the hallway?" "Because I couldn't sleep." She had wiped away her tears and met his gaze. "Why couldn't you sleep?" She exhaled. A slight exhale. She had the upper hand on how this conversation would go. She could tell him the truth, or lie. Kaede looked at him and eyed him. He was waiting for an answer, staring at her as if he had been waiting all this time for her to finally say something. "It's about my Quirk. When I sleep I can't protect myself from emotions that corrupt me. This night it was particularly bad again." "And what do you do about it?" "Like what do you mean?" "Do you train so it doesn't happen anymore or something? What else do you do when it happens?" "I try to calm myself down so I don't lose control. Maybe I'll go to the doctor or Aizawa too." "So you let others solve your problems?" "I-" "You have to find a solution yourself. Heroes need sleep. You need sleep. You can't wait until the next day. You need to sleep now." "And how do you imagine that?" She rolled her eyes. "You lie down and if you do anything strange I'll hit you so you wake up." "I don't think that's how it works." "I don't care, now go."

She lay in her bed and Katsuki on the edge. "You have to close your eyes to sleep." "I feel like I'm being watched." "I'm not watching you silly." He turned his back on her.

He couldn't concentrate on his book with her lying behind him. He still had to think about what he had said. Did it seem suspicious to her that he had been watching her? At first he just wanted to keep an eye on her because he wanted to know more about her. He couldn't make it too conspicuous that he knew she had been in Tartarus. But he found himself watching her more and more often, for no reason. When she laughed while eating with the other girls. When she cleared away the dishes to relieve the others of work. When she helped the others, he knew that he didn't really know anything about her past. Maybe she was in Tartarus, but that was not all. She knew Hawks and who knows who else. He could not look away, and that was what bothered him most.

When she woke up, she saw Katsuki reading his book. Half asleep, she sat up and leaned over his back onto his shoulder. "You should sleep too." As she yawned, her warm breath brushed his ear. "Are you all right then?" "Clear, as good as I've ever been!" She woke once more, later that night, this time wide awake. She remembered hugging him from behind. That she had been very close to his back and he hadn't minded.