All My White Lies | bnha

fourteen | icarus' soul

I WAS PAINTING WHEN NEJIRE WALKED IN. My fingers were cracked and covered with a myriad of colors. Mixes of red and yellow, hints of blue, streaks of green; all along my skin and my clothing like I was a forlorn canvas. "You left class early today," Nejire chewed on the inside of her cheek, dumping the classwork I had left behind.

I looked briefly at the assignments before turning back to the canvas at hand. "Yeah, Principal Nezu gave me some shitty news," I could hear the hardwood yelp from afar and I knew she wasn't the only one who had infiltrated my apartment. Mirio and Tamaki were probably wandering in the living room, muttering to themselves.

That's how it always was; the sun and moon lightyears away from us, almost in their own universe entirely. "Like?" Her fingers threaded to my paint-covered hand. Flakes of red and purple dusted her skin but she hardly seemed bothered; she wanted to drown in my art, in its eternity.

"He got me fired," I said blankly, spreading a wide slab of red from one corner to the other of the canvas. "So that I'd be forced to be 1-A's teaching assistant." Nejire seemed sympathetic, eyes softening. She knew I wasn't the greatest with kids; I liked them, sure, but my patience wasn't the highest.

It was hard to look at little kids without seeing Kioshi looking back at me, his owlish gray eyes, and black curls over his forehead. He was seeping into my reality, a ghost that wouldn't let go. Or maybe I didn't want him to leave just yet. "You think you'll be a bad teaching assistant?" She questioned, eyeing my canvas and then me.

I tilted my head towards her, her attention falling to the space along my neck. It was a blank canvas for the making and she knew that. One space untouched by my art, lost without its eternity. "That's without a doubt, Nejire," I chuckled softly, averting my gaze back to my art.

"I actually think you'll be great, N/n," She chimed. She only ever used that nickname when comforting me, when trying to catch my attention as if my soul was drifting away from hers. It was like her gravity could pull me back in with that simple word. "You don't know if you're bad at it until you try it, right? Plus, I think you're fitting."

Her non-covered paint hand reached upward towards my hair, flicking through the locks of h/c to get rid of any evidence of my work. "Isn't 1-A's teacher Aizawa?" She questioned, trying to prove her point as her cheeky smile caught my eyes. Emo, artist, laidback type. At this point, I knew that phrase by heart.

I nodded, leaning into her touch. "What are you making anyway?" The conversation shifted, her hand edging away from my face and back to my hand as if trying to feel the evidence of my self-proclaimed masterpiece. "I. . . " My brows knitted together in confusion.

What was I painting?

"I don't know,"

Nejire even seemed confused, her hand leaning over to thread with my other fingers, pushing upward to curl over my biceps; almost like a desperate attempt to catch my attention. "N/n?" She questioned, her touch brushing over Kioshi's tattoo as I instantly flinched, pulling back and knocking the easel down along with the canvas.

Nejire was frozen, lips parted in shock as thumps of footsteps resounded, Mirio and Tamaki rushing in with concerned looks. "What—" Mirio's sentence was cut short, blue eyes falling to the floor where paint smeared across my hardwood floors, my artwork flat against the ground as I was crumpled next to it.

I was in shock just like her, I couldn't begin to comprehend why I reacted to that. Why my body jolted to the side, averted her; as if my blood rejected her. For once, the gravity wasn't strong enough, there was a repel thumping within me. "You okay?" The sun reached me first, his hands gripping my wrist and tugging me upward.

If my legs hadn't tensed in time I would've slammed straight into his torso. "Yeah, I'm fine, just. . . slipped," My eyes caught Nejire's again and she still seemed offbeat, confused as much as I was. Mirio searched my expression again, that same look returning. As if he was a man digging with a dinky shovel for the deepest of my emotions.

His hand lingered over my own just for a minute longer before he abruptly let go, reaching for Nejire next. "You didn't get anything on you, did you?" He questioned, the girl instantly shaking her head. Mirio looked between me and her and then down at the floor. "You okay?" I nodded meekly at Tamaki's question.

"Yeah, I'm fine,"

"The ink in your veins says otherwise,"

Mirio's remark caught my attention and I peered down, my vein pulsing at the same speed of the hammering in my heart. As if trying to speed up the ink that flowed through my body; it was what kept me alive and now it was attempting to kill me, speeding up the system to abruptly slow it down.

To create and destroy.

"Can someone lift the canvas?"

My arms felt weak, simultaneously heavy yet too frail to pick up anything beyond a pepper or salt shaker. Mirio eyed me awkwardly, pushing past my frame to lift it and settle it on the easel he managed to prop up. Twelve crows with a reddened, sunset sky. As if the sun itself would burn away the flying birds, rid them of their existence.

As if everything I loved would be charred to ash.

And in the distance, a thirteenth one, flying closer to the sun like the tale of Icarus. Its wings flapped, feathers spread as if the fire of the star wouldn't kiss its freedom goodbye. It was alone—split up from the rest of the group—and vulnerable, drifting closer and closer akin to a moth to a light.

My head grew dizzy with anxiety, the ink in my veins pulsating faster as I heard more of my drumming heartbeat than the people around me. "Hey, hey," I could feel someone ease their arms around me, my body slumping against them as my eyesight began to blur, drifting out of my sense of reality.

There was something else my ink was flowing for, shifting and charging forward against the walls of my bloodstream like an army heading toward a battlefield. Creating it and destroying me simultaneously with the same essence of a reaper. I had no clue what the thirteenth crow stood for but I had the slightest suspicion that it was me.

The gravity of my self-made universe was no longer keeping me in reality. And without it, my soul was flying straight into Hell's flames.