PAPER FLOWERS ( k. bakugou )

chapter 20.5

' of dreams and dying, ii '

━━━━━

That temporary reprieve, that single shed of clarity in a mind overflowing with tornadic images and words that served as claws, clutching necks and fingernails drawing blood, that simple 'stop' from all the chaos, Kaede savored it.

And rightfully so.

Three days pass, seventy two exact hours, four thousand three hundred and twenty minutes, and the claws reach for her neck again, and this time there's no more reprieve so her nightmares take her to a grey world, something created from memory and combined with elements from her fears.

Tomoe stands at the center, and she questions herself again, how many times has she dreamed of Tomoe? How many times has he made her heart weep in these nightmares that made her wake up in a cold sweat? How many painful times?

"Tomoe," she says, and the world around them shifts to that of wooden floors, gargantuan mirrors and just about any conceivable weapon of death possible. Of course they're in the training room with two hundred fifty square meters of space, its four corners, eight upright posts and two double doors.

"Kai," the way he sees it is so unfeeling that she's reminded how this is a dream again. But Kaede doesn't want to leave. And fear clutches her wrists, its fingernails chafing her skin at the prospect of wanting to leave. She never will. Even in this twisted world full of memories and moments that smother her, Kaede will no longer turn her back on Tomoe.

"Those kids," he says. "You lied to them."

"Who are you talking about?" she asks, crumpling the skirt she wears beneath her palms- a grey thing vaguely reminiscent of the sorrowful skies she loathed. "I've lied to lots of kids," then softer, "I lie to everyone." Even myself.

"I'm talking about them," he says, "those children who carry hope in their pockets and blessed by the cosmos."

"Those U.A. kids," he clarifies and those clouds are brewing thunderstorms and there's a jagged piece of lightning that strikes her heart.

Kaede lets go of the skirt, her hands hanging low on her side. "They're not kids, Tomoe," she says, softly. "They're just a month or year younger than you."

"You know I'm not referring to that aspect," he points out and there's that snark she's seen in him, when she resented him to the moon and back, when she envisioned dozens and thousands of painful ways to kill him. "I'm talking about exposure to the world. Our world where dreams die everyday."

So we wrap ourselves in darkness and survive as nightmares, she thinks. Because that is their world. For children who were abandoned, forgotten or ignored. For children who didn't even have wooden spoons on their mouth. Power was the only thing they could rely on.

"They know things," she says, and why the hell is she defending them? "They're not entirely clueless."

"Ingenues, then," Tomoe says, and there's that reminder that he's a dream again, because Tomoe was as tender as the words she craved when she was a child. "They don't know how dark and desolate this world is. How people on the streets are dying, driven to madness, where victims are blamed and children are cutting their wrists with razor blades. They don't know how true it is, because they're all showing their stuff and how terribly sad it is when they don't have supportive parents."

"We didn't have food," he said. "They grew up, provided and they still think this world is about their dreams and aspirations."

Kaede shakes her head. This isn't Tomoe, this is just her mind twisting facts and showcasing them in this nightmare, because Tomoe never said those words, Tomoe never resented those greater, because it was Kaede who did. Kaede who hated the world to bits.