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Red stained the already dirty and uncared for restroom as the unmoving body floated in an overfilled tub, coating the floor in a shallow layer of bloody water.
Aizawa was collapsed to his knees next to it, not caring doing so would surely ruin his expensive black suit.
“Matsuda..” he gasped, shaking the man lightly by his shoulder in some kind of attempt to wake him even when he knew..
It was obvious after all with the smaller man’s chest no longer rising nor falling, heart no longer beating, not the cause from any heart attack he had seen with his own eyes, but it was just as well..
The crimson colors, dried now, clear on two massive gashes in each wrist proved that much.
Proved too much.
There was no reply, not that it was possible for Matsuda now or ever again.
Aizawa knew that, he had seen too many cases like this close-up.
Too many dead people, friends, foes, strangers..
Ukita lay dead in the street, limp, unmoving.
Both eyes open and glassy.
He knew then, he knew now, but yet both times he refused to admit it.
“Matsuda!” he yelled this time, shaking him rougher this time, his head moving slack on his neck like the dead weight it was.
Closer to him now.
Aizawa bit his tongue to avoid making any noises, the question or more statements repeating in his mind.
Why why why why why.
A stupid thing to think, even before he opened the door to the bathroom before he knew, Aizawa understood why.
He had never exactly been the closest of friends with Matsuda, not in the traditional sense anyhow.
Always snapping at him, snarling at him since the day the old chief walked in with him sticking by his side like a five-year-old.
It was annoying even back then.
It was like his old boss had found this mess of a person on the side of the road and not any kind of police training academy.
The way the chief talked him up… went on about how with enough training he would be a fantastic officer only to come back with such a derpy looking man was a surprise for all of them, not just Aizawa.
All their mouths gaping in open as he bounded in, greeting them with his blabber and a large, beaming smile.
Nothing near the stoic, professional persona they had all expected.
To this day he never knew or understood why Matsuda had been chosen out of any other men, how he even got into the school.
If it was just his perfect marksmanship or something more but in the end everyone was disappointed.
The kind of disappointed feeling one would get from a family member buying them a knock product instead of the actual thing.
So.. ya disappointed, especially when the man just refused to grow up, act like the adult he was not after weeks, not after even after months.
He acted like… a child, a young very immature child playing games instead of life-threatening police work.
It was obnoxious and something that made Aizawa decide right away that he didn’t like this child of a man.
Luckily, Aizawa wasn’t around the man too often so most of the time, so he didn’t have to deal with any of his antics, but still, he couldn’t help but watch.
Watch like he always had, with his feet put up below the stage.
Brow furrowed, annoyed as he acted so friendly to all to no avail.
While he took the show, he wasn’t exactly a fan favorite in the police force.
Quite the opposite actually.
Just about everyone groaning whenever he walked in the room, or when any kind of spotlight was shined on him.
Aizawa only rolled his eyes, pretending not to see the hurt in his eyes.
Shunned for both his personality and the lingering jealousy for the high-up role he was chosen to have while still being a rookie.
Whispering things about him when his back was turned, to his face..
Ignoring the confusion.
Ignoring the hurt.
Just watching.
Years went by and unfortunately for Aizawa, the Kira case came along, and even if he expected it he was still aggravated to see Matsuda being one of the remaining people standing beside him who hadn’t run in fear of his life.
He sighed aloud and Matsuda’s smile fell.
Actually spending time with him was a lot more teeth grinding than he ever could have imagined..
Every smile, every curious look over his shoulder, every out first made him want to rip his hair out in frustration.
Had the chief taught him nothing?!
Had his father taught him nothing?!
Apparently not..
Lazy damn things must have taught him jack shit, or so he thought.
So he believed.
No one was trying to make him man up, so Aizawa decided to act and take that job himself.
The world would chew him up and spit him out if he didn’t especially in these dire circumstances.
It was for the best really, tough love as most called it, to stop him from acting like a damn child all the time and not like some kind of comic relief character from a bad cartoon who would make mess up apon mess up to the point Aziawa could basically hear the laugh tracks blaring from the speakers above.
So he sneered down at the younger man and openly snapped at him.
Every one of his even small mess up was met with a direct scolding that was more of a bombardment of insults.
Only getting more and more vicious and personal.
Mistakes that only seemed to get more frequent whenever he was around, like Matsuda was doing these things on purpose even with the flickers of fear in his eyes when he so much as said a word wrong.
Head bowed and lowered.
Tone shifting to a whisper.
‘Teaching him.’
it.. Really had been twisted hadn’t it?
Throwing things at an actor who was just trying to do their job and make him and the rest of the audience happy.
The show was free, it was just uncalled for.
So uncalled for.
He was a brand new actor… and they were killing his spark already.
But the more stress that ate away from him from home and work alike the more things were thrown.
He never understood why Matsuda felt the need to continue to speak to him even with this..
The snarling and snapping like Matsuda was his least favorite person on earth.
So offal to him, yet he never exactly told him to leave him alone.
He told him that he was an annoyance.. A bother, but never to leave.
Things really would have been different if he would have stopped altogether.
And so, continued to snip and snap, ignoring the others when they told him he was being too harsh with Matsuda, to lay off for once.
Aizawa only rolled his eyes and sorted.
He was doing what needed to be done, after all, teaching him, and besides, it’s not like they never snapped at him from time to time because THEY were frustrated.
Hypocrites.
Matsuda’s head lowered at them then their heads snapped his way as well.
When anyone looked his way at this rate, even new people..
Weird.
More kicks to the already beaten dog who had learned its lesson, more cans thrown at the comic relief from everyone now.
The actor was cowering, trying to protect his head from objects raining on him.
This all came to a halt the day he walked out of the building in a fit of anger of course.
He was gone after all, with Matsuda not even crossing his mind.
Not even a background character in the corner of his eyes when he went on his screaming match with or more at L as he yapped his ‘helping words’ that mostly made Aziawa want to knock him unconscious.
Storming out of the building, back to his family only to fall into even more stress than usual.
Stress that only got worse on that particular day he picked up the morning paper.
There was a death on the corner of the front page.
Something that he wouldn’t have cared about with everything going on if not for Matsuda’s fake name plastered on it.
With the man’s smiling face right next to it.
The other words were a blur to him, dropping the paper to the ground, overcome with an odd sickness.
A regret, fleeing to the restroom where he vomited, the leaky faucet of the tub leaking into reality for a moment.
The water.
Red, bloody water lapping.
Dripping.. there was a body in his arms.
There was a body on the pavement.
He remembered after, sitting there for hours and reading the paper over and over.
About how he had fallen off the edge of the building and cracked his skull wide open from a so-called ‘drunk accident.’
Throwing his hands out for everyone to see, getting everyone’s attention, eyes on him.
Just like a comic relief should.
Putting on that stupid damn smile, before he did his stupid tricks and plummeted to his death directly light of the moon down below.
He could see it, he could smell it, it was the only thing he could smell.
Then as like now, blood was coating his hands redaning it again as the text repeated in his mind so many times he could repeat it from memory to this day.
Dead. Dead. Dead. Drunk accident. Dead on impact. Dead.
He tried calling to confirm such a thing.
Nothing, everyone who would know never picked up the phone no matter how much he yelled into the dumb receiver.
He resurged a bit until he found Matsuda’s parents and called them..
Ask them.. but still got nothing, apparently, they hadn’t spoken to their own son in years.
He hung up on them as they started to go on a weird tangent that almost sounded like something he would say about the rookie detective..
He felt sicker than before, going as far as to travel back to headquarters.
Asking, begging.
Tell me if it’s true.
Just tell me, please.
I need to know.
Nothing.
Ide gazed at him with pity when he ran to him.
Regret was on his tongue, but he didn’t completely understand why this was.
Regret?
For what exactly?
Which parts?
Quitting?
And so he sulked, grieved for the man’s death or more avoided grief, not even crying as he drank himself into a blackout every night… until Matsuda showed up in the spotlight of a talk show.
He watched.
Only his silhouette at first, then the wall hiding his face fell making him want to smash his TV..
The static, like dripping.
Frequent, too frequent of a noise that burrowed in his head
It was him.. looking shaken out of his mind, but alive, still spouting his optimism and about Kira?!
What.. the hell was he doing?! And why?!
We’re the others letting him do this?!
Kira was going to-
Matsuda he was going to actually die by his hand this time-
The blood.
The wet snap of a body hitting the floor.
The sobs and splashing.
The dripping.
He HAD to stop it.
He was going to stop it!
He dropped everything, jumped up from his chair watching this twisted thing, and convinced the others to stop this, catch Kira, stop everything, make sure Matsuda didn’t die.
The man he had thought was dead just yesterday was there when he showed up with the loyal Ide by his side.
Smiling the moment he spotted him with a shouted greeting and a wave.
Happy to see him.
But Aizawa?
As if none of what he felt had ever happened, he frowned, annoyed with him.
Matsuda’s smile fell.
Being back on the case was just as stressful than Aizawa had remembered it.
Although perhaps a tad more enjoyable with Ide around.
Then again everything was always better with Ide around.
Even with the other members of the task force acting more jaded than before.
The chief was all grey now.
Light behaved like a full-on adult.
Matsuda.. was the only one who hadn’t one but.
Or so he had thought back then-
So set on perhaps on continuing to correct him.
Staying above and in control maybe.
To keep what little power he held here.
He was still loud, still the comic relief that everyone rolled their eyes at.. yet now.. he was quieter than before.
Head lowered more than before, more desperate all the same as he jumped around too and fro, asking Aizawa what he was doing, if he could help.
Again, like a child.
He hadn’t matured at all from day one..
Had ignored everything he had tried to drill into him.
Or did he just forget the time he was away?
Annoyance was all he felt again, guess it was time to reinforce that.. AGAIN.
He had to do everything here when it came to Matsuda, didn’t he?
God..
This was exactly why Matsuda behaved like this..
Because they let him.
Matsuda’s flinching got even worse with every snap from Aizawa.
Back to old times, it was almost pathetic just how little Matsuda learned
And maybe it was Aizawa who refused to learn, who was blind from the pain and blood.
He could remember when the eye deal was first brought up.
The desperation in his eyes to help.
But not bounding this time, not smiling with the most twisted expression he had ever seen on Matsuda’s face.
Desperate to help, to do something for everyone even if it meant half his life was wiped away.
Such a big hint about what was really going on with him..
The self-hatred.
The frustration with how he was.
The deep need to do anything for them.
The real descent though, the descent Aizawa actually picked up on, began that offal day the flat line of Soichiro Yagimi ran out through the hospital room.
Lights screams, raw with grief ringing out as well as he collapsed beside the cooling corpse.
The dripping of the IV.
The dripping of the tub was all Aizawa could hear.
The last noise, being the soft, yet audible sobs of Matsuda, his head lowered to them.
Biting his lip to a avoid making any real noise.
Matsuda really never got over that death as after that the man got quite like someone up and pushed the mute button on him.
Those optimistic commits stopped, and no more Happy greetings greeted Aizawa and the others as they walked through the door.
He only spoke to anyone when it was needed besides a strange comment about Kira every now and then.
He wrote it off as something he would get over.
At him maturing so thought nothing of it.
Didn’t confront him or attempt to speak to him.
The lack of annoying blabbering when things were getting serious was a blessing, so he paid it no mind.
Even with the ever dimming sparks in his eyes.
From the sound of crying from Matsuda’s floor of the headquarters above him on the occasion, he stayed the night.
He remembered rolling his eyes at it even when his gut rolled in sickness.
Never once did he try to knock on that door, the most he ever did was yell from his room for the man to shut up when he was being too loud.
Hands cupped and booing at the lone actor on stage now as they shook by themselves.
It was more effective for hurting than cans it seemed.
Aizawa had thought it was selfish of him.. they were ALL suffering, not just him..
Light was.
Even if.. he knew Matsuda was close to the man to a similar scale than Light even..
The way the chief was the only one to praise.
One of the only good people in his life had vanished just like that.
The only good person apparently.. with his parents and lack of any friends outside like this.
Matsuda was falling and this time no one was going to hold out a mattress to save him down below, plummeting, already a quarter of the way down, to the event everything was leading up to.
That damn revelation in the warehouse.
That damn reveal they all saw coming, a reveal they worked to reveal..
All of them but Matsuda.
Aizawa watched as he fell to his knees, such an empty look in his eyes as Light cackled onwards.
Laughing in what he could only describe as pure unchecked insanity, screaming exclamations that hardly made sense.
All eyes on Light as he lost what little was left of his sanity.
Until.. Matsuda stole the show.
Pulling out his gun so fast it was a blur of bright silver, and shooting Light before the man could do any more harm to anyone ever again.
Matsuda at the center of the spotlight now, for the first time not in any kind of comical sense filled with the twisted laughter of studio noise.
Him and the so-called ‘main character’ the big bad villain of all this standing directly across from the other like they were the last two people on earth.
One thing led to the other, then Matsuda’s gun went off five more times in a rapid fashion.
Letting out a shriek that rivaled Lights, something unhinged and angry, his face contorted in an expression Aizawa didn’t even know the younger man or anyone for that matter could make.
It almost scared him more than the mass murder in the room, lunging forward and pulling Matsuda back before he could go in for a headshot as what was normally a timid man screamed and struggled against him with hateful wails about killing the man who was already bleeding out.
Whose blood was already coating him.
Staining his clothes.
The bathroom floor, in stains the next owner would never be able to get out.
Tainting him forever.
He wished he would scream and thrash now.
Give anything for it.
Claw at his arms until they left marks in an attempt to finish what he started.
He only broke away from Awizwa when his ‘prey’ made an escape, elbowing Aizawa in the face before scrambling after him wildly.
With him of course the first to race after him, finding Matsuda standing over the now very dead body of the person who was to blame for all their misery.
No more anger on Matsuda’s face.
was it.. horror? Sadness? Grief?
Why?
After everything why?
He watched Matsuda reach out a shaking hand-
He could remember sneering at the sight, grabbing the young man roughly by the shoulder, “stop it, Matsuda, what is this sympathy?”
He could remember Matsuda’s lip trembling, not having a reply to give him.
He didn’t even turn to look at Aizawa with his blood-splattered face turned only to the lifeless Light that had betrayed them all.
The body was taken away and exclamations were made, announcing Matsuda to the public as ‘the man who killed Kira’, making sure to leave out the fact that Kira was really Light of course.
It would have destroyed his family.
Destroy a lot of people.
Still, the dead look in Matsuda’s eyes didn’t fade.
So dull…
So full of nothingness
Even when he was showered with praise from others, the media, from Light's mother who gripped his shirt and sobbed her thanks to him.
Matsuda trembled just as hard but never clung back, his haunted eyes, a glaze with guilt and self hate.
Cringing at every compliment he was given.
Flinching at the praise..
But still, Aizawa said absolutely nothing to him.
In the back of his mind thinking about how he should be thankful for this.
He was the hero after all, being praised even more than Near for that last action when they got thanked diddly squat.
He didn’t do anything when a large portion of Japan and hell all the states held him up as some kind of savior that would lead them to salvation as his name was announced across the world.
As their savior.
As their hero.
As a killer of the corrupt god.
Thanking him on their knees like he was some kind of new lord as Matsuda turned a shade of green.
‘All hail.
All hail Matsuda Touta, the man who saved us all!’
They would chant over and over.
Nor did he do anything when Matsuda’s home was vandalized but what remained of the Kira supporters with bright red paint that promised his death, that he was the one to plunge the world into hell.
When the angry screams surrounded him about being evil, being a murder as he swallowed like he wanted to agree with these crazy people.
‘Evil. Evil. A demon sent from hell to steal their hope away, to damn them all’
The man was both an angel and a demon to others it seemed.
The most Aizawa did was shoo off both those people with a sniff, not until now truly realizing just how further this had made the man fall.
He hadn’t understood why the man was taking it so personally.
Why he couldn’t shake it off.
Why he didn’t seem to listen when he explained to him they would get over this eventually.
To be a man about it and fix himself, ignore it, stop letting it get to him, stop looking so dead.
But.. it didn’t work.
Every passing day getting worse and worse with no one taking much notice to it besides a sad look every now and then.
Not doing anything.
Not saying anything just like him.
All viewers, all the same.
Not front row like him, not long term viewers, but still silent watchers of this tragic performance, still instigators nonetheless, only playing half attention as they tapped on their phone, uninterested.
Not to say he had Aizawa’s full attention, he just didn’t have his phone out choosing to zone out instead.
Giving the actor on stage no praise nor any more booing for the performance he had been putting on for all these years.
A play that was just reaching its final act.
A climax that showed this wasn’t the comedy Aizawa though it was.
Wished it was.
The world calmed and healed..
They calmed and healed, but Matsuda didn’t.
His empty mess affected his work, impacting the way he spoke to them as he clung to them more than usual, especially to Aizawa.
It was getting annoying.
Everyone else was doing okay!
It had been years?
Why was he still acting like this?
He wanted to vomit.
The blood smell was so strong.
The death smell was so strong.
Every time Aziwa gave him little to no attention.
Snapped at him to stop acting like a depressed teenager.
More and more clingy, more and more desperate for anything, spouting what he thought was overdramatized bull shit about being an evil murderer, how the world was worse now because of him, how he was only a burden to everyone around him and it would be better off if he quit.
If he was gone.
He should have taken it seriously.
He should have said anything other than the things he ended up saying.
It was so fucking obvious so clear.
He was a detective for god's sake.
His fingers dug into Matsuda’s soaked hair, holding him tightly.
He should have done something, ANYTHING, but..
Instead, “Matsuda you’re clearly not in your right mind, why don’t you take some time off? Relax? Go home to your family for a while.”
“Really? You won’t need me?”
Not catching the massive red flags he sighed, “ya.. we’ll be fine without you, so don’t worry.”
He told the man without so much as looking him in the eyes.
Dead, dead so dead.
He smiled at Matsuda, trying to be reassuring fit once, but Matsuda didn’t smile back.
“Okay,” he told him and without even a proper goodbye left for his ‘break’.
His smile fell.
God god god.
He should have known.
Should have said goodbye there were so many warnings.
So many.
But he hadn’t.
Hadn’t thought much of it even, until the day Matsuda was set to return and the man didn’t show.. nor the next day.
At long last he was worried.
Telling the others to keep watch as he went to check in on the man.
Unaware because of his past zoning out he hadn’t seen the man make a final bow from the stage.
Slow and deliberate, any pride or joy gone in his movements that was the performance of his less enjoyable act as the comic relief.
Always the comic relief, even his pain and struggles.. a laugh track played
He stepped inside the unlocked all apartment, followed the drip.
Stood up from his chair when he caught the flash of yellow as Matsuda walked to the back of the stage.
But.. the show was over.
In the flooded bathtub was a bloated corpse.
And so here he was back in the present.
Matsuda’s eyes were deader than ever, non blinking for days by the look of it.
No one had bothered to check in on him
He was an adult, yes, but that was just an excuse wasn’t it?
An excuse he always made.
To grow up, to suck it up.
He wasn’t a child anymore.
Just an excuse.
Doing nothing, just sitting back and watching until he walked off the stage.
“Okay.”
Matsuda going home ever to return.
He should have gotten up, called a cop car, but Aizawa found he couldn’t move, sitting frozen on the empty stage.
He held the body closer, a dampness on his cheeks that wasn’t water, wasn’t red.
An emotional response he used to openly scold Matsuda against, shamed him for, called him a girl for.
Not that any of that idealism mattered now.
This wasn’t how any of this was supposed to go.
He remembered how the new employee smiled at him from the Chief's side.
Not to Matsuda of all people, yet how could it not?
He was the comic relief even the audience was apparently tired of once he lost his spark.
The pavement had been hit and blood had been spilled all over Aizawa on his knees in a bathroom.
“It’s okay… it’s okay Matsuda.. I’m here now.. it’s okay..” he sobbed out, knowing the words reached no one as he sobbed like he never sobbed before that came no reply.
Off the stage.
Off this plane of this existence leaving Aizawa kneeling on the stage in the dimming spotlight.