"H-he ...what?" Aaron could barely hold back his emotions upon hearing Aizawa's explanation. His body habitually stumbled back, landing in a nearby booth nestled in the corner.
"I know how painful that is to hear, but your friend isn't the best person." Aizawa slowly stood up, walked forward, and sat beside Aaron.
At this moment, both men fell silent. In the dim lighting of the bar, accompanied by the darkness outside, the emotions spiraling through the room seemed to be amplified. Aizawa could hear Aaron's soft, shaky breathing permeating the quiet space, and he knew that the man was trying his hardest to suppress a torrent of emotions.
"I-I've lived with him as long as I can remember, found the poor boy in the streets ...f-freezing his ass off..."
Aaron lowered his head onto the table, a shaky sigh pressing through his wrinkled, dried lips. "He wasn't a friend—but a damn brother of mine."
His hand extended, grabbing a nearby shot glass. Without any warning, he crushed it in his palm. Glass shards, accompanied by oozing crimson blood, gushed from between his fingertips, running down his forearm, barely gracing his elbows. Everyone in the room flinched, turning their heads to look at Aaron.
Aizawa leaned in a little closer, his voice a low whisper. "He meant a lot to you, didn't he?"
Paying no heed to the sudden attention, Aaron kept speaking with a tremble. "M'best friend, the only person aside from Oboro, maybe my Mum, that could make me smile... that gave me some damn purpose."
Hearing his words, Aizawa stifled a cough that lurched in his throat. Any sudden or sharp noise could prompt an unwanted reaction from Aaron—it didn't take a genius to analyze the man's emotional state. Instead of saying anything, he silently watched as Aaron reached into his pocket before removing a pocket watch that dangled by a rusty, creaky chain.
He opened the case of the frame, allowing Aizawa to get a view of what was inside. Within the mechanical gears and clockwork, he made out a folded piece of paper nestled within the machinery. Aaron's trembling fingers nimbly removed the paper, unfolding it to reveal a letter.
"This was from my Mum after I had moved away from her town. By then, she'd gotten used to Isaiah living with us ...but ...she was angry at him, just a 'lil bit."
Aaron's eyes scanned the letter slowly, analyzing each word and phrase, down to the diction and the way his mother would misspell some words and mischaracterize certain tropes. After a few seconds of silence, which was only broken by shaky breathing and distant, rolling thunder outside, Aaron looked towards Aizawa, frowning.
"I've read this letter more times than I've drank a shot, heh..."
Only when Aizawa heard him chuckle self-deprecatingly did he lean back in his chair, sighing softly.
"It t-turns out ...my mother didn't like Isaiah even if she bathed and fed him every day. She didn't look at him like a son—but a damn monster—something that lurks in our cellar and munches on the rats and urchins."
"W-why would she?" Aizawa asked, arching an eyebrow.
His mind began to race with an uncountable number of questions. If Aaron's mother had let Isaiah live with them for such a long time, even amidst her thoughts on the boy, she either did love him or she was too scared to kick him out—scared of how Isaiah would react. From what he saw and knew about the man, he was cunning and deceptive, yet brilliantly inscrutable with his philosophy.
Aaron's lips parted, and his tongue moved to lick them. "She was terrified of his one eye, sayin' it glowed in the dark when she slept—also saying Isaiah would watch her sleep, mumbling curses under his breath like some sort of witch."
Aaron flipped the letter over, revealing a black and white photograph. In the dim lighting, he saw what appeared to be Aaron and Isaiah.
Aizawa's gaze drifted to the photograph of the two boys. They were sitting by their house, on a wooden bench near a field of thick trees that barely allowed light to pass. Aaron's young and youthful features seemed to glow as he smiled, his visage missing a tooth or two. Isaiah, on the other hand, exhibited a demeanor more solemn—almost scarily collected and vigilant.
The attire of the two boys also differed to a drastic extent. Aaron was clad in a pair of overalls, a button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up, exposing his elbows. Countless dark spots around the knees and elbows of the attire told Aizawa everything he needed to know about Aaron's daily life and activities. Isaiah was wearing a high-collar shirt with dress pants. Unlike Aaron, he remained unscathed, his sharp yet innocent features contorted in what looked like slight disgust at the surroundings.
"That day..." Aaron's voice swiftly cut through the ambience.
His lips curled up faintly, revealing a small, languid smile.
"She took the both of us to the orchard for a photography shoot. Back then, fancy gimmicks like the camera had only begun to appear everywhere. So you can only guess she was excited to have this done with us."
He pointed to the young Isaiah sitting on the bench, who was resting his head on his hand. "If you couldn't tell by now, Isaiah wasn't the most ecstatic about sitting around and having his photo taken."
Aaron flipped the photo over, revealing another scene. This time, they were under one of the orchard's trees, gazing down into the grass. In the slightly grainy quality, they could both see that Isaiah was holding a squirrel in his small palms.
"Like his current day-to-day life, Isaiah's always been fascinated with creatures that couldn't be taken back to him. If you ever were to enter his old room when he still lived with my Mum, you'd find what seemed to be an entire zoo wandering around."
He leaned back in the booth, chuckling softly. "One time, my Mum damn near fainted when she saw a massive spider crawling on his sheets."
"May I ask..." Aizawa slowly took the photo from Aaaron's grip holding it up to the light.
"...how did Isaiah lose his right eye?"
"Good question," Aaron scoffed, resting an arm on the table.
"He never told me that. Though, he had two when I found him."
He couldn't help but let out a forced, stifled chuckle as he recalled past experiences. "Though I woke up one day to hear screamin' and hollarin' from my kitchen. So I shot out of bed and trudged down in my pajamas, catchin' a glimpse of my mum holding a cloth to his eye, already stained red with the disgusting stuff."
Aizawa suddenly coughed, caught off guard on why Aaron would be smiling while recalling such a grim story.
"What's funny wasn't the bloody injury, but what he said the moment I approached him. He was on the couch and stuff, readin' a long-ass book as if nothing had happened. His eye had been bandaged up since a doctor was rung over mere minutes after he came in bleeding."
"When I sat down beside him, he looked towards me and ...smiled, sayin' how it was just a scratch, and that he'd make some sort of potion to heal his own eye!"
Aaron suddenly exploded into laughter, tears threatening to spill from the corners of his ducts. At this moment, his trembling grip on the pocket watch loosened as he tossed the object into the wall. Its brass exterior cracked from the impact, allowing tiny trinkets and machinery to leak onto the floor. Everyone in the bar seemed taken aback, looking in the direction of the duo.
"But that damn fool lied; he's always lyin'."
Aaron's shoulders grew slugging as he sank in his seat, letting out a shaky sigh. "He be... sinking needles into people ...makin' em' calm or whatever the hell his logic was."
He gripped the edge of the table with a tremble until his knuckles turned pale. Aaron's eyes, previously filled with empathy and recollection, hardened like mottled stone. "He be hurtin' people cause he doesn't like em' ...he wants to make a perfect world where nobody can suffer ...e-except ...nobody will have a trace of emotion left in their minds..."
...
"Damnit!" Carter rolled back, shooting bullets off the walls in an attempt to ward off the supernatural attackers. Countless wraiths and spirits flew around Isaiah's laboratory, cackling and emitting chaotic, visceral energy.
"The Blood Moon's early?" He turned to Catherine, who had already begun making clean work of the wraiths.
She moved with precision, slicing up the creatures with her spiritually amplified blades. When they made contact with a spirit, the ink-black energy of the wraith instantly turned an illusory purple, pulsing and sucking into the metallic blades of the weapon.
"And these damn wraiths seem a lot tougher than usual!"
She leapt into the air, slicing two wraiths down the middle with a precise cleave. The hilts of the swords vibrated slightly as the energy diffused into them, amplifying the strength of her own weapons.
"Could this all have to do with Isaiah? The bastard disappeared just before we had guests."
"He's like ...Order 8, not that strong. From what I know, the Puppeteer pathway isn't proficient with demonic manipulation until demi-god level. This is likely fate just conspiring against us ...like it always does."