The Origin of something new (mha ff)

Chapter 36

Katsuki followed her, but she quickly noticed when he had nowhere to hide in the open space. "What do you want?" Upset, she stopped. He stopped indecisively as well. "To look after you?" Her gaze pierced him. "What the fuck are you talking about?" He tried to find another subject. "While you were gone, a cop called. He said you could pick up a file. What was he talking about?" Her eyes gleamed, then she looked at her watch. "Shit, they're only open till six. Can you get the going out permit while I go to the dorm and get my papers real quick? Thanks!" She was already running, Katsuki still had to process what had just happened. "I learned absolutely nothing new." She waited for him outside the gate. "Did they say anything else?" He shrugged. "Just that we should be back before nine." "We can do that easily, come on now." They went through the exit and trudged down the path to the nearest bus stop. "So, what's this about?" Katsuki waited for an answer and watched her while Kaede stared straight ahead. "I requested a case. No, not for our team. A private case I've been wanting to work on for some time." "But you can only work on a private case if you are a special agency or if you are connected to the case." He looked at her questioningly, but she ignored his gaze. "Exactly." "So you don't like to talk about your secrets, do you?" Now she finally forced herself to look at him. "Then they wouldn't be secrets any more, would they?" He teased her, "Aizawa knows your secrets though, doesn't he?" Her expression turned grim. "Why would he?" "Because he knows everything about you, doesn't he. At least it seems that way." "He'd like to know everything about me, but there are some things it's better not to know." "Like what?" "I don't know. Forbidden things?" Stuttering, she added, "He is our teacher, after all." "What kind of forbidden things do you do?" She gave him an indignant look. "Like I'm going to tell you!" They waited for the bus. "Just say it, after all, I'm even going to the police station with you now. I'm sure they wouldn't have let you go alone." "If you hadn't been there I would have already found a way out." "So these are the forbidden things you mean. You sneak out." Kaede was happy for the bus to interrupt the conversation, but in the square Katsuki started right back up, more impatient this time. "Just tell me, it sucks to leave me hanging like this." "I've already forgotten what you even want from me, that's how much you've been bugging me." "I want to know..." He wanted to know many things, but right now one thing most of all. "Why are you interested in this case?" They were in a bus full of people, Katsuki truly wanted an honest answer, but she couldn't give it to him in this place. "I promise I'll tell you later, but right now stop bugging me.""My name is Kaede Miharu, hero name Empathy, here is my hero licence. I am here for the folder of the case ,,Miharu 0901,,". The policeman checked her papers and excused himself briefly. Shortly afterwards he returned with three folders. "File 1,2 and 3. I wish you good luck." "Thank you." Katsuki followed her out. She exhaled as she stroked the files. "It feels so surreal." "What?" "Nothing." She looked up at the sky. "I need to read this." "Then let's go back to school." SIe didn't want to go back to school, she wanted to read right now. "It's about to rain, there's a playground up ahead where we can shelter." He stared at her as if she were joking. "I'm not going to a playground with you, there are kids there." She had to laugh. "Just come now, you said you wanted me to answer you." That drew him after her. At the playground they trudged through a sand pit to climb to a small tree house where they squeezed through the narrow entrance. "It's uncomfortable here," katsuki grumbled, but Kaede had already pulled out a file. She held it closed and waited. Before she took a look at the files, she had to put her thoughts in order. For years she had waited for this moment, she couldn't let it pass so quickly. She would be close to her parents once more, experience their last moments once more. Slowly she opened the file and froze in disbelief. Her stiffness vanished and she flipped through the pages in anger. "It can't be!" She threw the file on the floor and reached for the next one. "This shit!" Tears wet her cheeks as she reached for the last file. "Why?!" Katsuki looked at the file Kaede had thrown open on the floor. The writing had been blackened to illegibility. The black inscription "Miharu 0901" was crossed out with a red line. Katsuki winced as Kaede jumped up. She hit her head and sank back to the ground. Tussling her hair, she stepped over the files and collected the last one once more. Her eyes bored into the words that were not crossed out. She was silent for what felt like minutes, staring at the same page while her hands shook. "Kaede?" Her eyes turned to Katsuki. Silently, she held the page up to his nose. "The file was confiscated by the Hawks hero agency after the case was closed." Confused, Katsuki read the lines again and again without understanding. "Why did he do that, I don't understand." Kaede leaned her head against the wall, exhausted. "If you tell me, maybe I can help you understand..." She knew it would be harder if she looked at him, so she told it with her eyes closed. "My parents were killed." She took a shaky breath. Not a tear ran down her cheek. She didn't want to cry any more because of it. She wanted to tell Katsuki without weakening. "After the police couldn't solve the whole thing, Hawk's hero agency had taken over, but even he couldn't solve what happened. The murderer was never found and the case was declared closed." She thought back to that time. "I made it my mission to bring peace to my parents and at least clear up why they died. All that time, all that work was for my licence to apply for the case. And now here I am, and I have no right to the case because Hawks had it blocked." Katsuki was distraught. All this time he had been thinking something, but it had never occurred to him. "Did your stay in Tartarus have anything to do with it, too?" When her eyes met his, she quickly looked away again, just like a wounded animal. "How do you know?" "When we were kidnapped by the LoV, they said your chip came from Tartarus." Tears gathered in her eyes. "If you knew, if you knew I was a villain, why didn't you do anything? You tolerated me in the dorm even though you knew I was evil." "No matter how many times you told me your Quirk was evil, that doesn't make you a villain." He watched her try desperately to stop crying. "I have watched you help others, be there for them and your character is not that of a villain. You may think that your Quirk is only good for destroying, but maybe you just haven't unleashed the full potential of what you can use to save. Destroying is easier than healing, after all." She pushed the back of her head against the wall and took a gasping breath. When she didn't stop coughing, Katsuki panicked. "are you okay?" She panicked too and kept trying to catch her breath but couldn't. She bent over but had no room. Katsuki pulled her onto her back so that she was half leaning against his chest.

When she felt the warmth of his body, she relaxed. Her face was completely wet and her hair stuck to it. Katsuki brushed her hair behind her ear and looked at her from above. "Don't scare the shit out of me man." "I only panicked because of you." "Yeah sure, I'd say so." Her expression darkened and she freed herself from the awkward position in his lap. To bridge the silence, she went on. "After my parents died, I was a nervous wreck. I could control my quirk even less and was a danger to the outside world, so I was put into an induced coma at the age of 7."  She sighed, as if tired of having to tell her story over and over again. "I don't know if I just lay there for the next few years, or if they gave me some kind of medication. When I was 10, they didn't want to keep me there any longer. After all, I was only costing resources. No one wanted to deal with me and no one could vouch that I would control my Quirk. When they woke me up from the coma, I guess there were complications. I was delivered to Tartarus without question. My Quirk was too dangerous. So I ended up in the worst prison in the world at the age of 10. I was completely cut off from the outside world and lived in a tiny bare room, but it didn't stop me. I remember exactly how it felt back then. My Quirk was stronger than ever, I don't know what it was, but I had an extremely high range back then. I was able to extend my presence to the point where I could feel the emotions of the people in the city, and so I was not alone after all. I was there for a year before the Hero Commission figured that an 11 year old girl with no family could be exploited very well after all. They wanted me. Well, not me, but my Quirk. To control me they recruited Aizawa and for practical reasons I then grew up at UA. At that time they still wanted me to be some elite thing or something, so they forced me into extremely hard training for close combat and ran tests on my Quirk. That's how I lived. I've been at UA for as long as I can remember because I can barely remember the time before the coma. They took that away from me. They gave up the dream that one day I would be elite because my Quirk was too inconsistent. Now they are running tests to do more research. Who knows what else they plan to do with me, after all, I am their property."

She felt bad about telling him. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have bothered and bugged you about it. "Shut up, I wanted to hear it, I wanted to know more about you. I want to understand you." "Just because you know what someone has been through doesn't mean you can understand them." "You're a smartass, it's impossible to have a normal conversation with you!" As she laughed he too began to smile. "Let's go back, shall we?" "If it's okay with you." As he walked behind her back to the school he watched every single step she took. They were not stumbling or powerless, hopeless or desperate. She was walking like any other student, and despite having to endure so much. She only hid her pain, she hid her wounded side. But she was aware that this side of her existed and Katsuki now knew it too. It was something the two of them shared. Her story, the part of her she didn't want to show to anyone. She didn't even know why she had broken her silence, why or even how she had managed to talk about it. But in front of Katsuki, it was easy. Something stirred inside Katsuki. He was the only one who had seen that part of her. The only one who had seen her so vulnerable. He had wanted to know more about her for a few weeks already and had been watching her, but that was no comparison to what he felt now. He could not describe it. Warmth bubbled through his veins and an abnormal lightness for the evening hour drove him on. All he knew was that he wanted to be with her.