Chapter Text
Going into criminal prosecutions, you’d always believed that as long as you were good enough, you could secure a conviction. As long as you knew the case and prepared your witnesses accordingly, you would surely succeed. All you needed was to spend hours and hours obsessing over a file, memorizing its ins and outs to the point that its details haunted your dreams and you woke up every morning already thinking of arguments to present in court.
You believed that if the police had enough evidence to lay charges, then surely there was enough evidence for a guilty verdict. All you had to do was make sure that you presented the evidence skillfully and knew which cases to quote when you made your arguments. You told yourself that the threshold of beyond reasonable doubt is high, but a skilled prosecutor could surpass it with enough effort.
As you stare out at the city, the wind whipping through your hair, you wonder why you believed any of that at all.
The justice system is not a system of justice at all. It is a legal system so slow in changing that with the right Judge presiding over a case, a defense lawyer can spout all sorts of victim-blaming bullshit and have his client walking free by the end of the day.
It happened today, and it will certainly happen again in the future.
Tears well in your eyes against your will, your lip quivering as your throat constricts and each breath becomes more difficult than the last. You’d spent months preparing— endured so many nights of toiling over evidence until you had police statements memorized nearly word for word and could recite security footage timestamps like your life depended on it. You met with the victim countless times, prepared her for what you knew would be a rigorous cross-examination from defense and reassured her that you were doing everything you possibly could to get her justice.
None of it was enough. None of it ever seemed to be enough.
You were well known in the office for your near constant unwillingness to let go of a file. A prosecutor is required by law to withdraw a file if they don’t believe there is a reasonable likelihood of conviction— and your supervisors regularly reminded you of that fact. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, you always managed to find a glimmer of hope that nobody else seemed to be able to see: a similar case that went forward and resulted in a guilty verdict, the chance that maybe the accused will admit guilt outright and spare the victim from going to trial.
As a result of your optimism, you’re backhandedly known in the office as “Sticky Fingers”, because once you get your hands on a file, you can’t seem to let go. You have the lowest withdrawal rate in the entire prefecture; and to someone that isn’t in the field, a withdrawal rate like yours might be viewed as admirable. To your coworkers, all it means is that you’re not fit for this career.
Maybe they’re right.
You inch closer to the ledge of the roof, wiping away the tears threatening to fall before they have a chance to.
How much longer can you keep going on with this?
Your seniority in the office means that you’re not prosecuting petty thefts and vandalism offenses anymore; instead, you’re saddled with up to 80 files at a time, ranging from aggravated assaults to kidnapping and all the way to murder. The victims are no longer disgruntled neighbors upset about their kid’s bike being stolen, they’re people whose victimization has fundamentally changed their lives forever.
Today, it was a woman who left her house for the first time in months to go to the trial. She had been a nightmare to get a hold of in the beginning— distrusting of any authority figure whatsoever because of how many times she’d reported similar occurrences in the past only for her concerns to be brushed off. When you received the file, you’d called her nearly twenty times over the course of a few weeks only to be hung up on each time you introduced yourself as being part of the prosecution’s office. Your emails went unanswered, and you even tried to text her on your personal phone only to be blocked immediately. Any other prosecutor would have withdrawn the charges due to a lack of cooperation, but you’d resolved yourself to needing to hear from the victim first before you considered a withdrawal.
Eventually, you grew so desperate that you handwrote a letter introducing yourself and mailed it to her address. Nearly a week went by with no response, which you’d largely expected; it was a last ditch effort and in all likelihood, she would’ve trashed the letter the moment she got it anyways.
The day before you were set to be in court to declare a withdrawal, you received a response.
You remember it vividly. The envelope was light pink, a matching stamp decorated with roses carefully pressed into the corner. Her handwriting was neat, and the letter paper she’d used was adorned with faded flower designs. You’d practically torn it open, so surprised your bid at establishing contact had actually worked that you reread the letter three times before fully processing what it said.
You exchanged letters with her for two months before she finally agreed to a meeting in person. Typically, meetings with victims happen at the prosecution’s office, but you hadn’t even bothered to entertain that idea. Instead, you met in her backyard and helped her plant tulips in her flowerbeds, speaking only occasionally about the case. She was a soft-spoken woman who was clearly struggling with severe agoraphobia, and she didn’t look you in the eye once during the entirety of the conversation, her attention devoted solely to her flowers.
The idea of taking the file to trial and making her testify was something that weighed heavy on your mind, to the point that you considered resolving the file with a peace bond— an order where the charges against the accused are dropped and in exchange, the accused agrees to follow a set of conditions for a period of time. Upon bringing this up with the woman during an afternoon spent pulling weeds from the garden, she’d vehemently denied the idea, asserting that she wanted to go to trial.
That was all you needed, and so you spent the next month preparing her for court through snail-mail and the occasional in person meeting. You walked her through exactly what kinds of questions would be asked and warned her of how awful some defense lawyers could be in cross-examination. The closer the trial got, the more determined she became.
At trial, she was like a completely different person. She answered your questions beautifully and spoke with an elegance you’d never seen before in any witness. The pieces seemed to fall together perfectly. Direct examination went so well you almost second guessed yourself and wondered if you’d somehow missed something.
Cross-examination was a different story. The defense lawyer was ruthless, picking every single word apart and almost taking joy in watching the woman crumble on the stand. Defense brought up her past, her agoraphobia, anything they possibly could to discredit her testimony. You’d been forced to sit and watch, making an objection every chance you got until the Judge very sternly issued you a caution. There was nothing you could do as you watched the woman you’d come to know collapse in on herself, so shut down that she eventually began to agree with the defense’s version of events just to get it over with.
”So you’d agree with me that it’s possible you could be misremembering this whole sequence of events, correct?”
”I suppose.”
”And perhaps you simply misinterpreted what happened?”
”It’s possible.”
”This was all friendly to begin with, and it was your own past that made you think it was something else, right?”
”Sure.”
Cross-examination was concluded after four gruelling hours. The defense had sat back down with a smug look on his face and you’d stood up, closing your case to the court. She was your only witness apart from the hero who made the initial arrest, and her testimony had been the bulk of the evidence, as was often the case in offenses like these. You’d retaken your seat and turned in your chair to look towards the gallery of the courtroom, which was empty save for the victim sitting in the back row. She’d looked you in the eyes for the first time and mouthed “I’m sorry”.
The defense presented no evidence, and closing arguments began. You did your best to salvage what you could, quoting case law regarding victim testimony and trauma like your life depended on it. You spoke for what felt like hours, dissecting each and every part of cross-examination in an attempt to prove that a witness isn’t any less credible just because a good defense lawyer can tear them apart.
In cases like these, Judges typically want at least a few weeks to think before they deliver their decision. Today, the Judge needed only an hour.
The not guilty verdict wasn’t surprising, but it destroyed you nonetheless. By the time court was concluded and you turned to go find the victim in the gallery, she was gone. You’d headed back to your office and cried at your desk for nearly an hour before you pulled yourself together and started looking into filing an appeal. The application to appeal took only a handful of hours to put together, and upon recognizing the victim to be the woman you’d spent months trying to contact at the very beginning of the file, your supervisor denied the request due to a supposed lack of capacity in the appeal’s office.
The heartbreak of this file was not unique; you could think of nearly a dozen other cases you’d prosecuted that were similarly awful, but something about this one specifically was enough to break you.
How much longer could you keep experiencing this over and over? At what point was it simply not worth it anymore?
The answer comes to you in the form of the long drop below. You’d chosen the tallest building in the city on purpose, your heart pounding a steady rhythm in your chest as you stare out at the skyline and wonder if you’ll really jump this time. It’s become an unfortunate routine to come up here when your doubts threaten to suffocate you from the inside out, and this is the third time in this week alone that you’ve stood on the ledge and considered finally putting an end to things.
When you went into law, you thought you’d be making the world a better place. You studied eagerly all throughout university and got glowing reviews from the prosecutor you articled under after completing your law degree. You’d been so keen to finally begin practicing law on your own that you brushed off the clear warnings your professors and mentors gave you.
It’s not what it seems.
Getting a job at the prosecution’s office within weeks of being called to the bar was a dream. You decorated your small cubicle to a nauseating degree and had to fight against your own giddy excitement when you were assigned your first file so that your coworkers wouldn’t think you were weird. Throughout it all, you were so sure that this was what you were born to be doing.
And then the first not guilty verdict came in. It knocked you down briefly, but you were determined not to let it get to you and jumped right back into preparing for your other files even more intensely than before. Acquittals were bound to happen and you’d worked hard to prepare yourself for that reality, but it still hurt nonetheless. You tried to tell yourself that even the best prosecutors failed to meet the burden of proof sometimes.
What truly got to you was the way that an accused person was able to play the system. You’d get all ready for trial— prepare your witnesses, organize evidence to a freakishly meticulous degree, print out extra transcript copies for the jury— and then on the day of, the accused would fire their defense lawyer. They could get away with dismissing their counsel at least three to four times before the Judge would put their foot down and make them self-represent, each delay meaning that trial was pushed months down the line. The cycle would repeat over and over, until the victim would inevitably become so exhausted from the whole process that they refused to testify and you had to withdraw the file.
If it wasn’t firing their counsel, then it was the defense asking for a mistrial to be declared on the last day of trial because they wanted to put forward an application. If it wasn’t that, then it was the accused failing to show up for court at all. It was a game of attrition to see who would drop first, and quite often the accused won.
By the time a case gets to trial, the victims have already endured a months long police investigation followed by several months of administrative court dates while the accused reviews evidence with their counsel and waits until the last moment to enter their plea. In the superior court— where the serious files you are often handed inevitably go— the wait times for trials are upwards of a year. The accused know the game they are playing, and they are specifically advised by their defense lawyers to delay as much as possible until a Judge says otherwise. If the accused can simply tire out the victims to the point that they no longer wish to participate in the process, then they can get away scot-free.
But that’s just how it goes, right? There are always going to be bad actors in any system, and maybe this system just has an unfortunate number of bad actors. At the end of the day, you just have to follow the law and grit your teeth through the delays until trial. Even if it takes upwards of four years, there will eventually be some kind of justice at the end of it all. The accused can’t run forever.
So you continued on with the same fervor. You prepared like your life depended on it even if you knew some bullshit application was going to result in trial being adjourned another eight months. You spent so many late nights in the office that you became well acquainted with the evening janitorial staff and earned a degree of admiration from your coworkers that meant you were promoted to a Level 2 prosecutor a year earlier than was normal.
Your work-life balance collapsed— never even really existed to begin with— but you told yourself that as long as you could just make it to trial and put forward your argument, the justice at the end of it all would be worth it. You just needed the guilty verdict— to be able to tell your victims that their perpetrator would be behind bars and that they could live freely.
The sick reality of it all is that the court system lags decades behind society. A 267 charge, assault with a weapon, was not amended to classify quirks as weapons until nearly 40 years after quirks first began appearing en masse. You could quote decisions from the Supreme Court all day, but it would never change the fact that victim-blaming rhetoric is still rampant among the Judges, especially when it comes to the types of files that you’re routinely assigned. The principles of witness credibility and reliability are built upon what society views to be an ideal victim— an immediate report, the “normal” response of tears and utter fear towards perpetrators, complete cooperation with police— heaven forbid a victim be delayed in reporting or hug their abuser goodbye after being assaulted because they don’t want to be killed.
Sometimes it makes you sick to your stomach to know that you’re part of a system like this. The criminal justice system is unfriendly and wholly traumatic for victims, and you play a role in that trauma. You issue the subpoenas and put the victims on the stand, at the complete mercy of the defense. How many times had you heard from a complainant that going to court was worse than their actual victimization? Too many to count.
You shuffle forward, the tips of your shoes touching nothing but air. The thought replays over and over in your head.
How much longer could you keep doing this?
You’re crying now. You don’t know when the tears started to flow freely, but your cheeks are wet and your chest is hiccuping in uneven jolts as you struggle to breathe. It’s one of those ugly cries that borders on a panic attack, something you’ve become very well acquainted with over the last few months. A pathetic whimper falls from your lips, and you raise your hand to bite down on your knuckle in an attempt to stifle your cries, assessing the drop below. You’re far up enough that it should be instant.
The image of planting flowers with that woman flashes in your mind. You can clearly recall the first time you heard her laugh, and the memory serves only to make your expression crumple as you cry even harder. The wind bites at your skin, pulling at your clothes and roaring in your ears to a near deafening degree.
You can’t do this anymore.
The thought rings clearly through your mind, washing over you with a resigned calmness. You take a deep breath, clumsily wiping away your tears as you lift your head and look out at the city.
Taking a step backwards, you lower yourself off the ledge and back onto the rooftop floor. Another sob bubbles out of you against your will as you slowly toe off your shoes, placing them neatly on the roof’s edge. Unnatural deaths always warrant an investigation, but hopefully leaving your flats behind like this will make sure it's a brief one.
Stepping back onto the ledge, you carefully raise your right foot, extending it forwards and dangling it over the edge of the building. The wind is so harsh that you struggle to keep yourself steady, and you wonder if it’s strong enough to make you lose your balance altogether. Maybe this can just be a tragic accident.
“Excuse me.”
You nearly jump out of your skin at the sound of the voice calling out behind you. Your foot immediately returns to the cement beneath you and you leap away from the edge, almost losing your balance and falling to the ground. You whip around, your heart dropping when you spot a figure standing nearly a dozen meters away.
”Are you okay?” he asks.
You stare at him in shock, struggling to process what’s happening. How did you not hear him approaching? The man across from you is dressed in a simple, loosely fitted black jumpsuit, a length of grey fabric pooled around his shoulders. His voice has a feigned casualness to it that’s betrayed entirely by the rigidness of his form, one leg slightly in front of the other as if he’s preparing to dash forward at any second.
In your struggle to put yourself together, your first instinct is to smile. You force the shaky grin onto your face before you can really think, a nod following soon after. “What? Oh yeah— I’m okay!” you stammer, giving the man a small wave. “Just out for a little evening stroll, if you get what I mean.”
The wings at your back make themselves known, shifting to expand outwards a small amount. Your feathers are ruffled in a way that completely betrays your lie, and you really hope that this guy isn’t familiar with avian body language.
“Just taking a small rest before I get back to it!” you add, returning your wings to press flush against your back. “You— y’know how it is…”
In truth, you couldn’t fly to save your life. You’d never bothered to learn because you’d ironically been terrified of heights as a kid, and the attention your wings garnered meant that you kept them hidden whenever you could. They were huge, too— hard to maneuver and always knocking things over. Even if you had tried to learn, you’re not sure it would’ve even been possible for you to fly in the first place. The only good they seemed to do for you was provide a reasonable excuse for why you were on the roof of a highrise so late at night. The last hero that’d found you up here a few weeks ago had been on his way within seconds of seeing your wings, clearly more interested in finding some villain to take down.
The man stands motionless, and an uneasy feeling begins to grow in the pit of your chest. This guy is a hero, right? Now that you’re looking at him a little closer, he’s not dressed in the usual hero attire that you’re accustomed to, and you don’t recognize him from any of the files that you’ve personally worked on in your years at the prosecution’s office, either.
A nervous laugh escapes you before you can stop it, the disingenuous smile on your face wavering. The moonlight above catches against the man’s eyes for just a moment, allowing you to watch his gaze flicker between your socked feet and the pair of shoes sitting on the ledge of the building.
Fuck.
“Well, I better get back to it…” you trail off, tentatively taking a step backwards, closer to your escape. “Good… uh— seeing you…?”
Knowing that your cover is blown, you dig your heel into the gravel beneath you and pivot to turn back towards the edge of the roof, lunging forward as quickly as you can. You’re just a meter or two away— and surely this guy isn’t fast enough to reach you in time—
The ball of your foot just barely brushes against the cement ledge of the rooftop before something is wrapping tightly around your torso and yanking you backwards. You cry out in surprise, completely losing your footing and crashing to the ground. With your heart thrumming wildly in your chest, you look down at your body and try to figure out what the hell just happened, quickly recognizing that the thing restraining you is the familiar grey scarf that was previously pooled around the man’s shoulders.
You feel yourself freeze, your entire body going rigid. You know how these things go— have watched it in security footage and read it in police reports. You’ve seen the way people end up when they find themselves in situations like these— fates worse than death.
So you scream, unintelligible and as loud as you can manage. You thrash and struggle, your wings snapping out as far as the restraints will allow and beating against the ground. Gravel flies through the air, your voice louder than you’ve ever heard it before as panic burns through your body.
”Christ, woman!” the sound of the man’s voice being much closer than before only makes your screams intensify. “Easy— I’m not going to—“ You kick your legs out wildly, managing to slam your foot into the man’s shin hard enough that he stumbles a step back. “I’m not going to hurt you!”
Yeah, you’ve heard that one before. If the circumstances were different, you’d probably laugh; instead, you start crying again because why the fuck did the night have to go this way? If you’d just gone through with it a minute earlier—! The sharp gravel beneath you digs into your skin, and with the way that you’re fighting right now, you’re sure that you'll be sore tomorrow if you manage to survive this. If.
“Lady— I’m a hero!” the man proclaims to no avail. “I’m not going to hurt you!”
You don’t buy it for a minute, anger flourishing in the back of your throat at his audacity to make such a laughably false claim. “This is a fucking crime—“ you spit. “This is already a 267 charge and if you don’t let me go right now you’re gonna earn yourself a 279 at this rate, too!”
”It isn’t forcible confinement if I have the authority to do this!” the man retorts. “You’re hurting yourself, stop struggling—“
An unnatural laugh escapes you. What cruel God decided that you of all people needed to be put in this situation right now? “Don’t give me that citizen’s arrest crap! The Supreme Court repealed that shit sixty-four years ago!”
Over the sounds of your struggle, you just barely catch the sound of the man huffing in frustration. “I told you, I’m a hero—“
”Let me see your hero license then, asshole!” you bark out in response, gritting your teeth together in frustration when the fabric around you only seems to get tighter the more you struggle.
“I’m a little preoccupied with trying to keep you from killing yourself!” he snaps in response, raising his voice so that you can actually hear him over the sound of your own screaming. “Can you just stop for a second?!”
For a moment, you refuse to listen; carrying on with your yelling and thrashing for a few seconds more before the realization hits you that in all likelihood, nobody can hear you at all. The wind is so intense tonight that it’s surely drowning out any inkling of a struggle even happening, not to mention the fact that you chose the tallest building in the goddamn city to jump from.
You pause, thinking for a second longer and realizing that the man knew what a 279 charge was. Most villains didn’t bother to pay attention to what they were even being charged with in the first place, much less memorize the charge codes. Is he actually telling the truth?
Lifting your head from the ground, you look up at the man. He’s holding the fabric of his scarf with both hands, his jaw clenched tightly shut as he looks down at you. You let your wings go slack against the restraints, your eyes narrowing into a glare.
”Show it to me!” you demand.
Upon seeing that you’ve briefly paused in your escape efforts, the man hesitates. He watches you carefully, slowly pulling out a plastic card from his pocket. He’s on edge the entire time, refusing to look away from you.
”Bring it here!” you order. “I know what these look like so if you’ve forged this your ass is so getting an impersonation charge, too!”
You think you catch a glimpse of the man rolling his eyes. “Relax,” he grunts, taking a step towards you. You reflexively flinch away, the man pausing for a beat to make sure that you’re not going to resume your thrashing before he crouches down.
He flips the card over in his hand to face it towards you, and you lean forward as much as you can manage, narrowing your eyes to carefully examine the card. The commission insignia on the top right of the card seems legitimate, and the registration number is actually four digits unlike some of the fakes you’ve seen in the past. The card lists his hero name as “Eraserhead”, his legal name in a smaller font just below.
”Shota Aizawa,” you mumble, committing the name to memory in case this guy is stupid enough to use his real name on a fake hero license. You continue to intensely examine every inch of the license, from the kerning of the letters to the size of the ID photo on the left side of the card.
Much to your annoyance, you conclude that the license is real.
“Whatever,” you grumble, dropping your head back to the ground in favor of trying to subtly wriggle your way out of the restraints while the man— Aizawa— is busy tucking the card back into his pocket. He notices immediately and you let out a groan of frustration when you feel the fabric tighten around your torso once again. “This is still bullshit.”
Aizawa ignores your protests completely. ”I’m going to help you sit up,” he says. “Are you okay with that?”
You pause for a moment, wanting to decline just for the sake of being difficult but ultimately deciding against it. You dejectedly gather that your only hope of being able to throw yourself off this building tonight is if you can talk your way out of this situation, so you give him a terse nod and do your best not to flinch when you feel his hand on your shoulder.
He helps pull you into a seated position, not once loosening the restraints around you in the process. You sit cross-legged, refusing to look at him and instead preoccupying yourself with examining the damage you’d done to yourself during the struggle. The skin of your legs is smeared with blood and covered in tiny cuts, the gravel on the ground around you decorated with smudges of crimson. You bitterly realize that your clothes are probably all torn up too, meaning that your favorite court skirt is done for.
Across from you, Aizawa sits down. He keeps his distance, mirroring your position. He must be waiting for you to speak first, because the silence drags on for an uncomfortable length of time. You of all people know not to talk to law enforcement, and so you instead opt to take a closer look at him, cataloguing the bags underneath his eyes that are somehow worse than yours and his flowing black hair. Now that you’re not fighting for your life, you vaguely recall having seen him on TV for a press conference at some point.
“You going to tell me why you were really up here?” Aizawa finally speaks, having accepted that you’re not going to be the one to start the conversation.
You huff, your wings shifting uncomfortably at your back. You can only imagine what a mess your feathers have become, and the thought of having to go home and straighten them all out makes you want to kill yourself even more.
“I told you— I was just out flying,” you assert, struggling to return his gaze as he watches you intently.
”I think we both know that’s a lie,” he responds, breaking eye contact for only a moment as he looks past you. You don’t have to follow his eyes to know that he’s looking at your shoes, neatly lined up on the roof’s edge.
You bristle at his words, your face heating. “Those— those aren’t mine!” you blurt out, immediately flushing with embarrassment before you can even finish speaking. Really? Is that the best that you could come up with? You’d seen villains drunk out of their minds give better statements.
Aizawa looks at you, quirking a brow and wordlessly calling you out on your bullshit. You briefly consider abandoning the conversation and going back to your thrashing attempts at escape, but he must be able to see your thought process on your face because the restraints around you tighten in a silent warning.
”What made you come up here?” he asks simply, his tone deadpan.
You suck in a breath, the events of today and this entire fucking job flooding back into your mind against your will. What didn’t make you come up here? You look down at your crossed legs, cursing under your breath as you feel tears gloss over your eyes.
You cannot cry in front of this man anymore than you already have— not when there is a very real chance that one day you’ll get a file on your desk that he was the responding hero on. Meeting with heroes in your cramped cubicle to discuss court was already awkward enough to begin with.
Across from you, Aizawa sighs softly. “Look, you have to work with me here. I can’t let you go unless I know you’re safe, and I really don’t want to put you on a seventy-two hour hold unless I have to.”
The tears in your eyes refuse to abate no matter how much you try to blink them back. You can feel your shoulders shaking as you try with all of your might to keep yourself together.
“Just a hard day at work, that’s all,” you mumble dismissively, keeping your gaze pinned to the ground. “I wasn’t actually going to do anything.”
There’s a beat of silence. You can already tell that Aizawa isn’t buying it, but it’s clear that he’s also not sure how to proceed, either. He shifts to rest his elbows on his knees, his hands loosely clasped together in front of him.
“You’re with the prosecution’s office, right?”
Your head snaps up immediately to look at him, your eyes wide in shock. What the fuck?! “Uh—“ you struggle to think of how to respond; do you deny it or just own up to it? If he goes to your supervisors and tells them you tried to throw yourself off a building you’ll be forced onto a leave at best and fired at worst.
“I have a friend who mentioned you once— or mentioned a prosecutor with an owl quirk,” Aizawa shrugs, keeping his expression neutral. “Present Mic. He’s loud, you’d probably remember him.”
The added description refreshes your memory. You’d worked with the hero on a handful of files over the years. Most recently, you’d prosecuted a hostage taking file that Mic had led the initial investigation on. A large portion of witnesses in court needed to be asked to speak up during their testimony, but that was unsurprisingly never a problem you encountered with him. He testified decently and responded to your emails quickly enough that he was never all that memorable to you— apart from that awful hair.
You nod dumbly, the realization that there’s no easy way to escape this slowly settling over you. Aizawa knows who you are— even if you manage to escape these restraints or talk your way out of this, he knows where you work and can very easily file a concern for well-being report that would have you hospitalized. If he didn’t know your identity, you could at least stall long enough to maybe figure something out before being put on a psych hold.
”He’s— nice,” you stammer out, unsure of what to say.
Aizawa huffs in a vague amusement. “That’s one way to describe him, I suppose. Not the first word I’d use.”
An uncomfortable silence settles between the two of you once again. Maybe if you make this conversation awkward enough, Aizawa will just give up and let you plummet to your death? It’s a feeble hope, but you’re going to cling onto it anyways.
”Being a prosecutor must be hard,” he continues simply. “Heroes save the day and then move onto the next thing without thinking about the mess they’ve left.”
A bitter laugh escapes you. “Yeah, I guess,” you mutter. “You guys take all the glory and then it’s my job to actually put the guy in prison.”
”Sounds like a thankless job.”
”I knew it would be like that going into this,” you shrug. “Being in the spotlight isn’t for me anyways.”
Aizawa hums in agreement. “What made you get into prosecutions?”
”I wanted to help people,” you answer bitterly, your throat constricting in on itself as you speak. “I loved law and wanted to help victims get justice.”
”Loved?”
You shake your head, looking down at your hands. “I don’t know what I feel anymore. This job hollows you out.”
“For what it’s worth, Mic had good things to say about you. Said that you were good with the victims.” You tilt your chin up just slightly to spare a glance at Aizawa, who regards you with a neutral expression. It’s clear that he’s trying to keep the conversation as casual as a conversation like this can be, but the way he’s watching you betrays him. He’s concerned, and you almost want to laugh at the realization.
“I don’t know how he’d know that,” you mumble. “He never attended any of the meetings I had with the victims. But you heroes never do— too busy taking down another villain to boost your ratings.”
You recognize quickly that perhaps you’re being too harsh, wincing at your own words. “Sorry— it’s just that we always invite the responding heroes to attend meetings with complainants, and they never show. I think heroes see the word ‘optional’ in the subject line and just immediately trash the email,” you look back down at your hands, picking at the skin around your nails. Why are you saying any of this? If you want to get yourself out of this situation, you shouldn’t be criticizing heroes in front of a fucking hero. “I think you guys look at those invites and say ‘what use is there for me to go? I already did my part.’ You don’t realize that a lot of these victims feel so left behind by all of society. Having the hero that initially saved them show up later down the line to support them in the court process can change their view of the system completely.”
You’re rambling now, but you can’t seem to stop yourself despite the realization. “I guess it doesn’t matter though. What’s the point in trying to change their minds when the perspective they have in the first place is probably true anyways? I don’t even have faith in the justice system anymore.”
”Is that why you’re up here tonight?” Aizawa asks after taking a moment to think. At the very least, he doesn’t seem pissed with you for blatantly criticizing his profession, which you suppose is good.
“I’m tired. That’s why I’m up here,” you answer against your better judgement. “I see the worst of humanity everyday and there’s nothing I can do to meaningfully change anything.”
The way that Aizawa looks at you suggests that he’s felt the same way— if not right now, then in the past. You can imagine that it’s probably a common sentiment among heroes.
“And this is your solution?” he tilts his head just slightly. “Taking another good person out of the world?”
You curse under your breath as you feel a teardrop roll down your cheek. So much for not crying in front of this guy. “Maybe I’m a good person, but I’m not doing any good. I’m a part of this awful system.”
A minute of silence passes as Aizawa watches you carefully. You can’t help but squirm, your wings curling forward to wrap around your shoulders like a makeshift safety blanket. It feels like he can see right through you.
”How often do you meet with your complainants?” the question catches you off guard— enough that you lift your head to meet Aizawa’s gaze once again, your brow twitching in confusion.
It takes you a moment to respond while you try to figure out if this is some weird trick question. ”I meet with victims when I first get the file, a month before trial, and again the week before trial. If they want more meetings though, I’ll make room in my schedule,” you answer tentatively. “I email most of my complainants every few weeks to keep them updated on where the file is in court.”
Aizawa hums softly in response. “I’ve worked with prosecutors who don’t meet the victims until the day of trial. They’re completely unprepared for court, and the prosecutor just throws them on the stand without answering a single one of their questions.”
You feel a hot anger flutter in your chest at his words. There were an unfortunate number of prosecutors who didn’t value building rapport with victims nearly as much as they should. In most of your cases, witness testimony was the bulk of your evidence, meaning that your case was only as good as the testimony the victims were able to provide. To hear stories of victims’ phone calls and requests for meetings going unanswered by other prosecutors always made your blood boil.
“It sounds like you’re already doing good in this system.” Aizawa continues. “You care about the victims— that much is clear. Is that not enough for you?”
”It’s not enough for the courts.”
He shakes his head. “That's not what I asked. You said yourself that you work in an awful system. It’s unreasonable to think that you’d be able to change it entirely on your own. In your work, it sounds like you’re doing all that you can.” Aizawa gives you a pointed look. “Is that not enough for you?”
You open your mouth to respond, but nothing comes out. Having a response to everything was your job and somehow this very clearly sleep deprived man was leaving you speechless. The realization almost makes you angry.
“How many files are you assigned to right now?” he pushes, a dull drawl to his voice.
The number comes to you immediately. “Eighty-four.”
His brows raise just slightly, like even he wasn’t expecting a number that high. “The pressure you’re under must be overwhelming,” he starts, and you almost laugh. Talk about an understatement. “What do you do outside of your work?”
“Until I’m higher up in the office and can be picky with the files I take on, there is no life outside of work,” you respond with a bitter scoff.
”And how long will it be until then?”
”Ten years at the earliest.”
”I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound sustainable.”
You shoot a scowl towards Aizawa, your wings bristling in annoyance before you can stop them. “I’m not looking for job advice here, buddy.”
Aizawa holds his hands up in a feigned surrender. At the same time, the restraints around your torso go slack and pool around your waist. It’s a demonstration of good will, but the fact that the fabric doesn’t retreat back towards him shows that he still doesn’t trust you completely.
“I think you need a break,” he says simply. “I don’t think you want to die.”
You want to snap at him, claim that he’s wrong and yell that you want nothing more than to plunge off the edge of this building and into nothingness— but the unfortunate truth is that he’s probably right. You feel your shoulders sag in defeat.
”It’s easier to die than it is to go on vacation in my line of work,” you mutter in response. “Taking a break is a sign of weakness.”
”That’s bullshit and you know it,” Aizawa grumbles back immediately. “Would you tell one of your complainants that?”
”Don’t use my complainants against me,” you sneer. “That’s just rude.”
A flicker of amusement passes through his eyes. “Let’s make a deal,” he starts. “You go home and take at least a week's worth of vacation, and I won’t put in a concern for well-being report.”
”Deal,” you answer immediately.
Aizawa gives you an unimpressed look. “Don’t bullshit me. I’ll be calling the office asking for you, and if I get transferred to your desk line and you pick up, we’re going to have issues.”
You frown. That makes your plan of lying to his face a little more complicated.
”Fine, fine,” you groan in annoyance. “I’ll take a vacation. Management was getting on my ass about having too many vacation days anyway.”
He nods in approval, still watching you carefully. “If I let you go home, what’s to say that you won’t be back on this roof in a few hours?”
Man, this guy really knows how to cover his bases. You hold yourself back from rolling your eyes, frustrated with how easily he sees through you.
“I’ve got a major trial coming up at the end of the month. We’re at the end of the window for prosecution and if I die, there wouldn’t be enough time for another prosecutor to take it over. I need to stick around for that at least,” you answer honestly, a reluctance in your voice. “That good enough for you?”
”For now,” he hums in response. “But I need you to find things outside of work to look forward to.”
”That’s asking too much. Can’t you just be glad that I’m not dead on the street?”
“I am glad that you’re not dead on the street,” he asserts, a flatness to his voice. “But I want more.”
”Greedy bastard,” you mutter under your breath. If he hears you, he doesn’t say anything about it.
Aizawa stands, and you watch as he walks towards the roof’s ledge, picking up your flats and returning to where you’re sitting on the ground. He extends the pair of shoes towards you, and after a moment of hesitation, you reach up to grab them.
“Let’s get you home.”
You slip the shoes onto your feet, wincing in pain as you stand up. You do your best to brush away the gravel embedded in your legs, shooting Aizawa a glare as he watches with a disinterested expression. Eventually, you decide that picking the rest of the gravel out of your skin is a problem to deal with when you get home, giving up on the task for now.
Aizawa’s scarf remains loosely wrapped around your waist. You look between him and the grey fabric, cocking an eyebrow.
“You gonna get this off of me, or…?”
His lip twitches upwards just slightly. “Not a chance, sweetheart.”