~No More Time~ (EraserMic)

Mistakes We Made

The apartment was silent, like a pause in a hurricane, as the lithe little alley cat lay on the floor of his decimated living room among the shards of broken glass that he didn't have the strength nor spirit to clean up, too numb to even curl himself up in a ball to try and preserve the last shreds of warmth his shivering body still possessed, the icy wind that poured in from the shattered window over his head clawing it away from him, and he let it do so gladly, dazed and bloody onyx eyes barely open and hazy, splotchy, red,  unshaven face squished and distorted by the hard wooden floor he now inhabited.

A now lukewarm glass bottle and a melting empty carton were his only companions at the moment, and even they didn't seem to want anything to do with him, nor he with them, the alcohol tasting sour and the ice cream making his stomach churn, so he had abandoned them along side his hope of Hizashi coming back, especially after what he had said and done, those last bitter words racing through his mind at random intervals, making his usually dry, aching black eyes suddenly wet, such an odd sensation for him, as he never cried, not even when the hulking form of Nomu had towered above him and drove his face into the cracked crater of the USJ while his own students watched in horror and fear, as he felt his bones splinter and crack, as his body was crushed under the monster's weight and he felt himself slowly dying, he hadn't let a single tear fall....

....so why was he crying now?

Because I would never have seen this coming....

Aizawa hadn't let himself cry because he knew from the moment he had laid eyes on that hulking, twisted creature, it wanted to kill him.

It was the sole purpose of its artificial existence, kill him, the puny, insignificant obstacle in its path, then kill All Might, all while the students he had swore to protect struggled, fought, and cried around him, all of them eventually being snuffed out as well.

He hadn't cried, because he knew that the pain would end when the monster was done with him, knowing it was irrational to hope his suffering would delay the villains long enough for his class to escape and for help to arrive, but doing it anyway, convincing himself that his death, although meaningless and unimportant, would at least buy the students some time.

He hadn't cried then, because he had expected to die, prepared himself for it, accepted it even, for the sake of his students and the sake of his colleague, but would never have expected to be hurt like this, least of all by Hizashi, the only one he had ever truly loved and trusted, the only one he had let his guard down for, and who for so long seemed content to love him right back without a word of complaint, despite his bad attitude and unsightly appearance, and as he thought over the lies he had convinced himself to believe, he felt himself wishing that the Nomu had killed him then at the USJ, or at least made him a comatose vegetable, so that he wouldn't have to be feeling this heartbroken, exhausted and hopeless misery now, lying alone and freezing like a helpless puppy who's been kicked one too many times.

'T-this...' He thought to himself in a bleary eyed state of dazed bitterness and sorrow, feeling yet another hot trail drip from the corner of one scarred and achy socket, silently and quickly cut a vertical trail down the bridge of his nose, staring blankly at the wall, but seeing nothing. '...is worse than death...'

He had once again resigned himself to a miserable, hypothermia induced slumber, when he heard a soft rap of knuckles against the warped door, his breath catching in his dry and aching throat as the lock clicked and swung open on its hinges slowly with several scraped crunches of crystalline shrapnel under a pair of tired feet, it being shut tight behind whoever entered, a shocked, pleading, and all too familiar wheezing and broken rasp breaking the stunned and eerie silence that hung thick with disbelief in the still and empty air.