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Dec 20, 2018

Closure (and how to move on)

AND HERE’S A SPECIAL LITTLE STORY FOR MY GIRL WHOSE BIRTHDAY IT IS!!!

Enjoy!

The shadow of Tartarus loomed heavy and dark above her, the midday sun unable to shine from behind the concrete and metal. The very presence of the place seemed to suck away the light around it, the dread and terror within chilling all who gazed upon it.

Or at least…that's what the stories online had to say about the place.

Eri stared up at the building, a strange sense of peace building up in her heart. This place always seemed so much…taller, when she was younger. It was just…a place, a building, a prison. That's it.

"Remind me again," Dad said from the driver's seat, at a loss, "why you wanted to go here for your birthday?"

Eri smiled softly and looked back to her dad, his face twisted slightly in apprehension. She didn't blame him for it, he had his own history with the place, but she made up her mind a year ago, she would do this.

"Because I need to speak to him." She answered easily, reaching down to squeeze his hand. "I need to…face that chapter in my past." She looked back at the building, the calm in her heart thrumming under her skin. "I've ran away from his my whole life…about time I stopped."

He shook his head and squeezed back, "Eri you don't need-"

"I want to." She uttered, looking him straight in the eyes, making him pause of a sudden. "I want to do this, I want the nightmares to end…I want to live." She laughed breathlessly, "maybe this won't change anything, maybe it'll make everything worse…but I want to try."

Izuku deflated slightly, the concern in his eyes dimming and mixing with pride, "…alright, if this is what you want, I won't stop you." His faced hardened again as he looked at the prison behind her, "just remember, everyone in there knows me, so if he tries anything just say the word and they'll-"

"Papa!" She groans in dismay and God has it been ages since she has called him that. It brings her all the way back to the early days, to times of hanging around in the dorm room with her family on all sides while she glued herself to him and Mama.

It had the same effect on him it seemed, his face melting completely at the sound.

She took her chance, leaning over the gearshift to drag him into a hug, "thank you so much for worrying…but this is something I have to do myself." She feels him wrap his arms around her in turn and the warmth in her chest grows. "You and Mama and everyone else…you protected me long enough."

"And now it's time for you to protect yourself huh?" He finished for her with a weak chuckle, "you're making your old man cry here…"

"Oh stop that Papa." She smacks his shoulder lightly without getting out of the hug, "you're starting to sound like grandpa Toshi."

He laughed at that and loosened his hold on her to look at her again, hands on her shoulders. "If you need me, I'll be right out here." His smile grew sad but proud, "take your time in there; I'll wait as long as you need."

She nodded with a grin, unbuckling her seat belt and opening the door, "thanks Papa."

"Just say the word and I'll bust through the wall!"

She laughed loudly as her feet hit the pavement, grinning doubly wide at him as she held the door to close it, "and now you're sounding like Kouta!" She closed the door and started walking towards the building, waving over her shoulder. "Later Papa!"

"Wait a minute!" He shouts, rolling down the window to stare at her, "don't you mean Kouta-kun? Since when was he just Kouta?!"

"One thing at a time Papa!"

She ran full tilt to the gate, stopping to show her I.D and permission to enter and visit.

"Alright." The guard nodded briskly, "everything looks in order." He looked at her. "Who are you here to visit ma'am?"

She swallowed the sudden lump in her throat, "Chisaki Kai, please."

He nodded again and pressed a button, a short buzz followed by the entrance slowly grinding itself open for her. She felt her pulse picking up with every step she took inside, the seed that this might not be such a good idea budding in her gut.

----

The first thing that struck her about his cell was that it was…clean. Too clean. She swore the stink of bleach breached the bulletproof glass dividing her from him. Or maybe that was just the PTSD talking, memories of being stuck in a room so sterilized you could preserve a blood sample on the floor.

The second thing that stood out to her was his arms…or the fact that he had any arms. She heard from news stories and hushed whispers from her family when they thought she couldn't hear about how he lost both arms.

Back in the day she felt some sick knot of satisfaction tie up in her heart (serves you right serves you RIGHT), a twisted sense of justice for all the pain those hands wrought upon her. She shared this sentiment with Mama one day, and the look she gave her stopped her dead.

"When someone else is in pain it's never a good thing…he deserved it Eri-chan, for how he hurt you, her deserves far worse if you ask me…but you should never feel happy when someone else gets hurt. Only villains think like that."

She nodded back then, even if she didn't completely agree, but as she grew older she began to see what she meant by that. Him sitting in a jail cell, him missing his arms, him ruined and forever robbed of the chance to fulfill his twisted goals, him paying for all the wrongs he committed…it didn't fix anything, didn't make the nightmares any easier to bare.

And seeing him now, hunched over a chair with crude metal prosthetics attached at the elbows, only good enough for grasping food and tools, didn't give her any joy either.

The third thing she managed to notice before he looked at her was…he was so…small.

He towered over her in her nightmares, some bird faced shadow who blocked out the sun made her feel like she was back in that place that smelled of bleach and death, some tiny and scared little girl curled up on her bed with no one to turn to.

Now?

He looked like he had not eaten properly in ages, emaciated limbs barely filling his prison slacks. He sat heavily in the chair, leaning back and starring at her with sunken in eyes.

The sharp stab of fear she expected never came, the shear lack of anything left her at a loss of what to say. Not that she had any solid idea of what she wanted to say to him anyway, but this didn't help matters.

"Eri." He rasped out, making her jump at the sound of it (he sounded like thunder in her head, outside of it he was barely a pebble on a window), and he leaned towards the glass to get a better look at her. "They didn't tell me who was coming to visit me. I was expecting another one of those upstart "gangsters" looking for a leg up, or maybe another reporter…but, I'm glad it was you, it's been too long."

"I'll say." She murmured, a bit stunned at his appearance and how stark a difference between the one in her dreams and the one before her. "I'm a bit surprised you recognized me actually, it's been 12 years after all."

She could hardly believe this was the same man who tore her to pieces on a weekly basis, the one who haunted her dreams for years after she escaped.

"I spent far too long examining you far too closely to ever forget you Eri."

Ah, never mind, she can believe it. A quiet shiver of dread started at the base of her spine but went no higher, quickly dying down before she could think too heavily on it. "I guess that makes sense." She mumbles quietly, shrugging her shoulders and crossing her arms. "So…"

"So…what?" Over-Chisaki raised an eyebrow at her, spreading his prosthetics in a expectant gesture. "You came all this way, after all this time, what did you want to talk about?" Something sharp and acidic shone in his eyes, "are you here to see what I've been reduced to? To rub pity in my face?"

Eri opened her mouth to refute, but closed it when she couldn't quite find the words and settled for shaking her head.

"Or maybe you're here to demand an apology?" He chuckled bitterly, a dry and tattered sound from the bottom of his throat, "are you here for your long deserved retribution?" He got up and walked to the glass, slamming a metal fist against it, "well? Speak girl!" He slammed again, maybe hoping for a reaction, though his voice remained level, "why are you here?"

"How are you?"

Silence stretched long and odd between them, the words tumbling out of her mouth before she could properly articulate them, Chisaki slamming the glass not so much making her flinch as just flustering her out of her musings.

"…excuse me?"

"Well I mean besides the obvious." She gestured to the room on his side of the divider, barreling forward with her outburst to try and make the most of this, "you know, are you eating? Sleeping okay?"

Chisaki narrowed his glare at her, peering into her red eyes to pry some hidden meaning behind her words, "are you serious?"

Eri crosses her arms again and shrugs, the thought that she might have just undercut some dramatic moment he was building up makes a thrum of amusement pass through where the dread was a minute ago. "Yeah, I'm serious."

Chisaki scoffs and shakes his head, "as well as you would expect after over a decade in a prison." He spits the sentence on the glass, again hoping for a flinch, and only getting an embarrassed chuckle. "Why would you care about how any of that?"

"Because you look kinda…" She struggles for the words, looks closely at him, at how he wobbles slightly as he stands, at how she could see his cheek bones more clearly, something rises in her gut as she looks at him…but it's far from pity. "…tired, I guess."

"Tired?"

"You look like I used to." She says quietly, whatever menace he tries to exhude falling flat. "All those years ago, when you-" The memory of it makes the lump come back, and she swallows it thickly, shaking her head.

He barked out a harsh laugh falling back on the chair with a piercing glare, "so, you are here to pity me."

"No-"

"The monster who tore away at you is brought low and made to feel the same crushing pain you suffered at his hands, it that it?"

"Don’t you dare compare this," she gestures to his room again, to the books, the newspapers, the food cooling on a table, the damn window, her voice gaining an edge she didn't expect when she came here. "Any of this to what you put me through." Her voice is an echo of steel, bouncing off the walls and crashing against the glass, and Chisaki is the one who flinches. "None of it comes close."

It lights a fire that causes her to take a step towards him, her nose an inch away from the glass. He leans away.

She doesn't expect that flare of indignation at the bottom of her gut, but she is glad for it as it burns away that seed of doubt that's been gnawing a hole down there since she's stepped foot in this place.

Soon though, she sees the sudden apprehension in his eyes, the dread he bites and chokes down so he could glare at her again, and the fire simmers down as the feeling from before floats back up, and this time she recognizes it.

Not pity, but sympathy, understanding. No forgiveness or mercy, just simple empathy for someone in a bad place, deserved or not. Whatever history they have is put aside and all she can see is a sick man who probably hasn't been sleeping or eating properly for a week.

Granny Chiyo would approve, she thinks.

Chisaki growls in frustration and stands up again, shaking her out of thoughts again, "would you stop going and circles then and just tell me why in the hell you're here?"

Eri sighs, shaking her head, before reaching for her pocket, digging through it for what she wanted to show him, eyebrows pinches as she searched. Finally she smiled as she found it and pulled it out, "to show you this."

It was a plastic card, with several details printed on the face along with her picture. The two details that caught the eye were the first two:

Name: Midoriya Eri.

Hero Name: Lady Q

"Hero…?" He mumbled looking between her and the picture on the card, "you…you're a-"

"Just graduated a short while ago." She said with a gentle smile, flipping the card so she could look at her picture, "I start as a side kick at the Ryukyu office in a month or so." She smiled a bit wider at that, remembering the looks of mock betrayal on her parent's faces when she said she wasn't going to start in their offices, not wanting to seem like she got leg up from her direct personal connection with them.

Great auntie Ryukyu was always the most down to earth of her family, she would treat her fairly as she started out.

Another bitter chuckle bubbles out of Chisaki as he shook his head. "So, that's what you're here to do." He turned away to pace back and forth with a manic sort of malice, "you're here to prove me wrong, to prove you're not some curse on everyone you find yourself with, that's it isn't it?"

"No." She said easily, heart light and calm, "I came here to prove myself right." She looked up at him as he froze. "I came to prove that I could be more, than what you said, to keep the promise I made to myself and the people I cared about."

"What promise?" He spat out, venom and bleach dripping from every word, "what asinine promise could make you come here?"

"That I would move on." She said, smile unflinching in the face of his disdain, "that I would move pass what happened to me, what you did to me, and simply…be." She grinning fully now, uncaring of how ridiculous she sounded, "That I would be whatever I wanted to be."

Chisaki stood there, stunned by her and how easily she spoke these things to him, seeing nothing of the scared child he held under his thumb, "you-"

"And the only way I could do that," she continued on, barreling through what he tried to say, "is to face you, be here in front of you after all these years." She stopped smiling, sighing deeply and looking at the ceiling, "to stop running away for the first time, to turn around and actually look and see what and who I was running from all this time…and to see how I felt."

Chisaki had nothing, no words to speak, no venom to spit, all he could do was stand there, and hear her.

"And now?" She went on, voice considering, "seeing you here? Finally speaking with you after all this time, do you know what I feel?" She waited a long moment, for a guess or a call for her to leave, but all he did was stand there and gape, so she sighed again with a shrug of her shoulders, "honestly…nothing."

That woke him up, eyes widening in outrage, "…nothing?"

"Nothing." She confirmed. "For years you were this…nightmare stuck in my head, you just wouldn’t go away, no matter how hard I tried." She played with the card in her hands. "I lost sleep, some days I wouldn't eat or refuse to leave my bed because I was so scared you would be around the next corner, ready to take away everything and everyone I loved."

Chisaki's eyes grew furious, still stuck on her answer. "Nothing?"

"But as time went on…I thought about you less." She smiled again, chuckling, "less nightmares, fewer days where I was too scared to get out of bed, and soon enough you became a rarity…but you never really left." She looked at him at last, locking her gaze with his. "…until last year, a little while before my birthday."

Chisaki slammed a metal hand on the window, "you insolent-"

"You just…stopped appearing in my dreams." She ignored him, smile small but stubborn. "I had other things to worry about, my future, my friends' future, the world around me." She chuckled, "and a few months ago, it suddenly hit me that all my thoughts of the future…lacked your presence, there wasn't any tiny terror in the back of my mind that you would come back and ruin it for me."

He slammed his hands again, the bang of the glass echoing all the way to the guard station, she could hear footsteps getting closer to inspect the noise. "You dare-"

"You weren't a nightmare anymore." She muttered quietly, just loud enough to hear, "not some monster from my past, or even just…my abuser." She shrugged her shoulders one more time with a mirthless chuckle, her voice matter of fact, "now…now you're just…nothing."

Chisaki banged the glass like a mad man, "arrogant brat!" His eyes went blood shoot, spit flying from his mouth as he shouted, "nothing!? ME!? NOTHING!?" He kicked the glass hard enough that she was sure he broke a bone, and yet he went on. "I HAD YOUR MISERABLE LITTLE LIFE IN THE PALM OF MY HAND! I GAVE YOU A DESTINY! WITHOUT ME YOU'RE NOTHING! NOTHING BUT ANOTHER CARRIER OF A DISAESE THAT WILL KILL THE WORLD!"

"You should stop Chisaki-san." She shook her head calmly as she looked at him, already turning a foot away from him as the guards approached to subdue and calm him. "You'll over exert yourself if you go on like this."

"DON'T YOU DARE PITY ME YOU MISRABLE CURSED CHILD! I WON'T STAND FOR IT!"

"HOLD HIM DOWN!"

A dozen men in white coats swarmed into his cell, holding him down as he howled and scratched at them, soon he was immobile long enough for one of the men to plunge a syringe into his arm full of clear liquid, the effect almost immediate as his words began to slur and slow.

Eri let a shaky sigh, as they started to strap him to a gurney to take to the prison clinic, she stepped to the glass one last time, tapping on it to get the barely conscious Chisaki to look at her, "one last thing!" She shouted, face a bit more sympathetic, "grandpa says…he says you're forgiven, for everything you did to him."

Chisaki tried to keep awake, the anesthetic slowly dragging him down, "b-boss?"

"He said he's sorry he couldn't gather the courage to come here himself before…" She trailed off as Chisaki's head lolled to the side, fully under the effect of the drug, "…before he passed away."

The men wheeled the man away out of sight, one of them coming to the glass, "you alright miss Midoriya?" His face was filled with concern, "he didn't scare you too much did he? He's been a bit…out of it lately, refusing to eat and such so-"

"It's okay." She calmed him, shaking her head with a smile. "He...I'm okay." She let out another shaky, slightly wet, sigh, "for the first time in a while…I'm…really…really okay."

She turned away, her steps echoing in the hall as she slowly put more and more distance between her and her once-nightmare…as she did many times before.

This time though, she did it with no fear nipping at her heels.

Before she knew it, she was out of the building, the sun peaking over the top of the building.

(She didn't notice she was crying until she came back to her dad, Izuku wiping the wetness on her cheeks, before hugging her tightly.

She laughed and calming him down, the tears were only from relief…she was free.)

#My hero academia #Eri (bnha)#Midoriya Izuku #Chisaki Kai #stuff rex wrote #closup #literally waited for the second it turned midnight to post this #my daughter deserves an instant birthday present #HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABY!!!

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