If I Had One Wish

Chapter Sixty Two

Chapter Sixty Two - Behind Closed Doors 

Beware of perpetrators in disguise...

Some people set fires wherever they go, and have mastered the art of playing the burn victim.

Steve Maraboli

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Katsuki passed through the first hour staring at her, cold non-committal answers of response leaving dry cracking lips as the inside of his throat seared with a scream that felt like it had been building up for nearly thirteen years. The back of his eyes tracked the yellow stutter that flew between the cloudless blue vacancy. He didn't know when the memory ended and he began again, he didn't even think he blinked with how his eyes glossed in a haze of disorientation.

Izuku was on the stand now, Izuku was speaking now, but he couldn't hear much of what he said. He was thankful he didn't look at him for he feared that'd make him break, he much preferred it like this, despite his prior conviction to it. He much preferred to feel empty inside just this once for it didn't make him feel his useless fears, scared of the grown up woman, scarred with cruel intentions.

He could feel her eyes burning through him when he dared take his glare off of her to watch him, watch the green eyes focused on the lawyer attempting to chew out some discrepancy in their stories. Katsuki had launched through his speech already, by now, on what had happened. On what she had done. A summary of the worst four years of his life with a thrilling epilogue of the two it took to get to court.

How he had felt large in a bad way, in an awkward way, the same feeling of a nightmare churning in his stomach as he had gripped the paper and tried to speak. He had heard his voice crack twice, a pain in his side, in his throat. Perhaps it was a blessing he zoned out through most of it by drowning in a depth of green.

It was wrong to do this, he thought to himself, to look at Izuku in a crowded room and feel as though he spoke to him and him alone when he had read the sheet. There were so many details that he didn't add in, he had watered down his trauma, and still no one believed him. But Izuku, oh, his eyes. They were lending him strength and telling him he was doing fine, and they had no right to do so.

Why did it help?

∘₊✧──────✧₊∘

"Can you tell us what happened between you and Mrs.Leiko?"

I went through the same thing that was briefed years prior, giving a rough timeline. Someone had helped me make this, told me to put as much as I felt comfortable sharing. Even now, it was discomforting to speak of with all the penetrative gazes. "Uhm.." I looked at the page, not written by me but consisting of parts of myself I wished to keep hidden in the dark.

The judge coughed out a sigh, clearing her throat in a way that told me to take a moment. She was kind, Mrs.Kamari, not looking at me as if I were a walking crime scene. I take a gulp of air, feeling like a child about to blow out a candle set atop a grandiose cake before it wheezed out of me, cut short.

I refused to look up, this was how I was now, staring at the margins between the text as if they unearthed confidence and shreds of dignity. "O-on- When... Uh, shit." There was a clamor that rippled through who was there, which wasn't much, the jury shifting in their seats. The hag would be gettings looks for that, letting a twelve year old curse. Inhaling sharply, I tore it off like a band-aid. "It was between spring and summer, I was six-" I tore through the first story fast and quick, skimming over details, skipping over certain words, leaving out what I thought or felt of the ordeal. Merely factual, that's all. What happened before, during, after.