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You raise your hand to the blood red door of a home you no longer know like the back of your hand, but can remember like the cusp of yesterday. You’re going to knock, you just have to take a moment and gather the strength you aren’t sure you have.
It takes a years worth of moments before you can so much as bring your arm away from you side, but you manage to find that strength and you bring your fist against the door, three times, rapid and loud, then you bring your fist against the door again, three times, rapid and loud.
You’re purposely obnoxious like that, making people listen as you beat your fast hand against their door. You make people listen with your fist. It’s what gets them to the door faster.
But he isn’t fast and he isn’t slow either. He’s waiting on the other side, leaned against the door, hand frozen over the handle as he peeks through the peephole. You look down the hallway, and imagine yourself racing away in the elevator. The door’s creaky hinges sing as it swings open.
He looks like greatness, like thriving. Like he’s surviving without you. He looks so good.
You’re staring.
Your battered shoes become the most interesting thing in the world in that moment. More interesting than the ocean of skepticism in his gaze, more interesting than the bags that aren’t heavy under his eyes, more interesting than any of the too loud thoughts that hunt for your confidence.
He doesn’t let you in without question, he doesn’t let you in at all, but you’re inside his home anyway.
“Why are you here?” Is what you should have suspected, the only plausible conclusion to your arrival on his doorstep is a question.
Why are you here?
Your throat is a Chinese finger trap and your voice is that stupid finger that always gets stuck. You pull and pull at your words but your throat won’t come undone to let them go.
You stand there, drowning in memories that you can’t seem to let go of. The ones that dance in your dreams, that mock you when you wake up alone.
You’re so lost, in this old apartment with walls that are yellow like popcorn, with it’s groaning ceiling, with the landlord who couldn’t show up on time for a million dollars. You’re seeing yourself tucked under his arm, snuggled on that couch in the corner, bundled in blanket after blanket, waiting for the man to come fix the heating.
What finally crawls from your lips is, “I need help.”
He searches your face for the ever so slight curve of your lip as you ensnare him in a trap, or the gleam of hatred as it carves a path through your eyes, or the laughter that pricks the edges of your mouth as you make him the butt of another lie. He finds none of them.
“What do you need help with” Surprise drapes itself across your face. Really, you should have known, he’s never been the person to turn away someone in need. Even if that someone happened to be the kind of person who would chose villainy over love.
You draw a blank. You really had nothing else prepared, nothing planned to say if he did say yes. But, you do have a problem, so you should start there.
“Fury… I-” You lick your lips and try again, “She is, she needs to be stopped”
“Who is Fury?” He takes a seat on the couch, that couch. You flee across the room from that monstrous thing, that tortuous memorial of a furniture piece and lean against the wall, arms crossed.
“That’s not important. She needs to be eliminated and that is all that matters.”
When he says, “I’m not going to let you kill.” It sounds an awful lot like, ‘I’m not going to let you kill, again.’
You’re an iceberg, an arctic kind of cold, frozen solid. The chill that fills you also fills the air. He’s watching you again. Perhaps for a glimmer of pride, or a touch of satisfaction. You don’t feel those, you feel as though your rib cage has been pried open and your secrets poured out onto the floor before you.
You’re throat is the desert, your blood is sand, your tongue is the idea of an oasis, the illusion of one. You croak, “I’d never.”
You’re a terrible liar.
His face crumbles, his eyes fill with distrust. He gave you a chance, to tell the truth, to come clean. He gave you the chance to own up to your mistake, but you can’t. You can’t be brave like him, you can’t be pure like him, you can’t be a hero like him. Some people have to be villains, some people have to kill other people. Some people have to die. Some people deserve to die.
“Okay, explain”
“She’s harming the children, disrupting their education, attacking during the day and what not,” You gesture bigly. “I can’t have that in my city”
His eyes widen, he leans forward on the couch as if he couldn’t hear you the first time. “Your city?”
“Help me get rid of her.”
“She’s harming children?”
You nod, “She’s harming them, hindering their education, and I can’t-” You breathe deeply, in and out, “ I can’t get rid of her alone.”
He doesn’t even have to take a moment, “I’m in.”
You wait for him to say something, anything else. You find yourself doing this a lot. Maybe it’s time for you to stop waiting for him to hate you; he probably already does.
“Thank you, Midoriya