Chapter Text
Waking up was terrible. The ear bleeding hum of the machines keeping him alive, their smell, the way they crawled all around his room like horrific insects, long and sprawling. The sound of his own breath, the ever-present pain and numbness in his body. His own mind starting up and thinking useless, repetitive thoughts. He wanted to go back to sleep, back to that sweet quiet nothing.
He tried a few times, forcing his eyelids shut, counting his own heartbeats. Each time they resisted, and some other sensation brought him back to the present. Touya groaned and shifted in his restraints, cursing them for the nth time.
It didn’t help that the lights were on in the observation room, which was odd, but not uncommon. Sometimes someone was still working, and they didn’t give a damn if Touya wanted them off. He couldn’t see anyone from where he was, though, laid out on his back and staring at the ceiling.
Through the layers of glass, he heard the door to the room open. Some chatter between the doctors. He didn’t focus on it, and it was muffled anyhow. He tried again to just fall asleep, because he didn’t care.
He startled back awake when something crashed against the wall, rattling the glass. The hell? He squirmed to get a better look, yelping when he was suddenly turned right side up again. Dizzily, he waited for his eyes to focus after the motion.
He stared as he found one doctor knocked out on the ground, and the other grinning at the controls for his machine. Oh, great! Cool! A medical professional gone mad! Natsuo would wanna hear about this! Well, if Touya isn’t about to die (finally) because this lunatic wanted to see what would happen if they injected him with ten times the dose of sedatives they usually used, or what-the-fuck-ever.
The doctor seemed to feel his eyes, and turned to very excitedly wave at him before turning back to the controls. He wondered if he was dreaming for the first time since being hospitalized. After some fumbling, they found the buttons for the comms, and grabbed the mic a little forcefully.
“Gooood morning sleepyhead!!”
“Shit!” Touya screeched, startled by the volume and nickname. The doctor just laughed.
“Waahh, you haven’t changed at all! That’s so funny!!” Their tone was completely different from how they usually spoke to Touya, the cold and slightly hostile tone dropped for something more childish, cutesy. Something familiar that tugged at his heart.
“Who the hell… are you?”
“One second, I’m still working!” They waved a dismissive hand, tapping away at more buttons with one hand, the other searching in a pocket. They closed a fist around something, and turned to him again. “Don’t freak out too much and die before we’re done, okay?”
Despite that, his breath still stuttered when they threw out a tiny blue marble with a fancy flick. There’s no way, there is no fucking way-
Mister Compress, Atsuhiro Sako, popped into existence with as much flourish as ever, a splitting grin on his bare face. He bowed briefly before popping back up, meeting Touya’s stunned gaze.
“My dear boy, it is so good to see you!”
“‘i-ister… How-?!”
“Ah-ah, you know I mustn’t reveal our tricks,” He tutted. This was definitely Compress, the smarmy bitch. “Not yet, anyhow.”
He reached out with his good arm, and with a pop the giant glass barrier between them was gone, leaving the complicated weird pod thing Touya was trapped in as the only thing separating them.
“Quite the intricate thing, hm? Ugly, though,” Sako smiled when Touya couldn’t help but bark a laugh at the sheer absurdity. “You won’t need it for much longer.”
Oh, okay. He wasn’t dreaming. He was dying.
“Thank god, ‘inally,” He sighed, out loud. These were the hallucinations his mind chose for his last moments, and though odd picks he didn’t mind seeing Sako again. He was a kind man, and though he’d never admit it, he appreciated his love for dramatics. If he had more energy though, he’d be picking a fight about stealing his thunder all that time ago.
The ugly tube was lowered further to the ground, the arm straining and warnings beeping before the doctor forcefully silenced them. It wasn’t meant to move that much, and Touya could feel his machines stuttering in surprise.
“Careful with him!”
“I am!!” They whined. “I’m making it easier for Tomura!”
“To’ura?” Touya echoed in surprise. Of course, of course he’d hallucinate their leader too. Where was he?
Sako answered him with another marble, which he tossed and released onto a patch of ground less crowded by tubing and other techno-nonsense. Sure enough, standing with his usual slouch, hair a wispy sickly blue mess down to his shoulders, was Tomura Shigaraki, red eyes full of life blinking up at him.
“…You’re super gross in person.”
Thank God, again, that Touya was dying, because he would never live down the lung health threatening full body laugh that wrenched out of him, and the genuine smiles the two men shared.
The pod rattled, gas hissing as the door swung open, scraping across the tiled ground. Sterile but fresh air hit Touya like a steel bat. He didn’t mind his lungs going into overtime as the machinery panicked, greedily taking it all in.
“Hurry, Tomura!” The doctor called, sounding suddenly more high pitched and feminine. He couldn’t see them, his view blocked by his leader hovering in front of him.
“I know,” He frowned, and reached out with all ten bare fingers. “This is gonna suck,” He sighed, and pressed them to Touya’s chest.
Touya had had close skirts with Decay before, losing bits of skin grafts to his leader’s stupid tantrums. He’d seen it in action, how quickly it worked, spreading in seconds, easily and almost painlessly reducing its victims to nothing.
This was not Decay. This stung like hell and lasted for ages. Touya screamed and thrashed, the pain was so bad he couldn’t see, it was just light and the overwhelming sound of his own voice, the machines and everyone else in the room, sensation sensation sensation and it was getting too hot and he couldn’t breathe but it had to be over soon-
And it did. It stopped. For a little, it was peaceful, black, nothing.
Then Touya was waking up again. Groggily, he blinked, and found himself staring at the ceiling of the observation room.
Three faces entered his vision, significantly more clear. Tomura, Sako, and Himiko.
Himiko.
Blue eyes met gold for the first time in what felt like years.
“What the fuck.”
“You’re alive!” She cheered. “It worked, Tomura!!”
“Great,” Tomura said, with no mirth. “Get him off the floor.”
Sako and Himiko worked in tandem to pick up a dazed and weak Touya, who ended up having to lean on the former. He hadn’t used his legs in a while.
Speaking of, he glanced down to find them… charred, but not as badly as they should’ve been. They should’ve looked like thin little sticks of charcoal, but instead they were the usual, familiar mauve-ish color of his scars, from the bottom of his heels up to his thighs, hiding underneath the hospital pants he was wearing. He had muscle again.
“What the f-” He realized something and looked to his right, where Sako had looped his arm around his shoulders. Well, a metal replica of something like an arm, at least, since he blew his real one off fighting his dad. He stared at it in disbelief. Hesitantly, Touya tried to wiggle his fingers. The prosthetic purred and obeyed, though the movement was undeniably mechanical.
“Didn’t have enough organic material to work with,” Tomura rasped. “I used the pod junk to make a new one.”
“It’s nicer than mine,” Sako pouted.
“Holy shit, the afterlife is so weird.”
“You’re not dead, you dramatic dumbass,” His leader huffed. “I just pieced you back together. You’re welcome.”
“Sure, sure sure, whatever you say,” He rolled his eyes, focused on flexing his other, fleshy hand. Damn, being able to move again felt great and also stung terribly. Weird that pain was still a thing at all.
“I mean it.”
“You and Himiko both died, and I was gonna die soon too. Of course I'm dead.”
“Then why am I here?” Sako said, offended.
“Hallucination.”
Before anyone else could protest, they all flinched at the sound of alarms, red lights flashing in terrible intervals.
“Time to abscond!”
Tomura pressed two fingers to his ear. “Kurogiri, take us out!”
Cool, he’s here too, Touya thought, as the ground disappeared and the four of them sunk through a familiar black portal. A second later they landed a little roughly in the back of a dinky van.
In the passenger’s seat was indeed Kurogiri, and in the driver’s was a bandaged and healing Shuichi Iguichi, already slamming on the gas.
“Goddammit, of course you’re my ride to hell,” Touya lurched in his seat, clawing at his arm rests so he didn’t go flying.
“What on earth are you talking about? Is he high on something?”
“No, they should be all out of his system because of me,” Tomura leaned towards Shuichi, watching the road with him. “He’s just being Dabi.”
“I thought it was Touya now?” Shuichi furrowed his brow, turning the wheel sharply.
Tomura blinked. “Is it?”
“I don’t care,” Touya-Dabi heaved, “Stop fucking swerving!”
“God, I can’t believe I'm happy to hear your bitching again,” Shuichi grinned and took another hard turn. Himiko helped Touya put on his seatbelt while he was retching again.
“Tomura, did you remember to explain the situation to him?” Kurogiri asked, straining to see their ward. The man groaned and fell back in his seat.
“I’m so tired of explaining it.”
“I’m afraid you have to, because it seems like he’s very confused.”
Tomura groaned again, but slowly sat up and faced Touya-Dabi.
“Fine. How much did you know about what happened to me?”
Touya-Dabi slowly gained his focus back, and scowled at his leader. Ex-leader? Nope, that sounded weird. “You died. ”
“How?” He didn’t deny it, just kept pressing.
He snorted. “That green kid punched you to death, or whatever.”
“What else? Anything?”
“Oh my god, just say it then. Don’t make me guess, I hate that shit.”
After some mutual scowling, Tomura did finally just spit it out; That Decay was a manufactured Quirk given to him by All for One as a child, that it was probably some version of Overhaul Ujiko tinkered with. That he was the whole reason his life was fucked. Touya thinks he did hear parts of that, but he never cared much, because… Well, it didn’t bring Shigaraki back, did it? Ignoring the fact that he’s here now and he’s starting to doubt the ‘being dead’ angle.
“After Izuku destroyed All for One, my body couldn’t hold up, so I died. But something- Something brought me back,” Tomura stared at the ground, hugging himself. “Sheer will or… Maybe my original Quirk. I don’t know. But somehow, I pieced myself back together.”
“You can use the whole Quirk. Not just half,” Touya filled in the gaps, eyes widening in realization. “You have Overhaul. So everyone-” He looked around the vehicle.
Sako waved at him from the back, amused. Kurogiri’s blank face observed him, some kind of fondness still palpable. He craned his neck to see Himiko behind him, who seemed as cheerful and full of life as always.
“We’re alive. Oh my god, I’m still alive.”
“Congrats. Good morning.”
The ride continued for a while in silence, thankfully slower and less crazy now that they seemed to be out of the woods. The League, mostly back together, seemed to be giving Touya time to think.
Until Himiko tapped his shoulder, jolting him out of his processing. She had slid out of her seat, unbuckled, to duck her head in between him and where Tomura was sitting. She was bowing.
“M’sorry. I broke our promise.”
Touya blinked. “…Promise?”
“That we’d either both live or both die. I broke it because I died,” She kept her head down as she went on. “I saw your fire go out while we were fighting… So I thought you didn’t make it. I thought I was keeping my promise when I did it.”
More silence passed, more uncomfortable than before. Himiko shivered, Touya couldn’t see her face but it seemed like she was about to cry.
“I'm really s-”
Touya promptly bonked the top of her bowing head with the edge of his hand. “Ow!”
“That’s for dying like that,” He huffed. Then, slowly, he lowered his own head to her level, turning her frown into a look of surprise. Stuttering, questioningly, she reached out to bonk him right back.
“And that’s for me even making that stupid promise in the first place,” He sat up again, and hoped his scars hid the stupid embarrassed blush on his face. “You should’ve lived either way. That’s what you’re supposed to do.”
Himiko stayed stunned for a few moments, tears lining her wide eyes. Then she grit her teeth and whacked Touya one more time, a little harder.
“Ow! What-”
“The same goes for you, stupid! Can’t you value your life a little more?!”
Touya had no retort, so he bonked her back again before Kurogiri sent her back to her seat.
“Enough,” They sighed, clearly having gone through multiple fights since being revived. “We can work this out after a night’s rest at home. I have a lot to say to both of you on this subject.” He turned to display his unamused face to them.
Touya puffed and brought a leg up to his chest in his seat, at the same time Himiko pouted and folded her arms.
“Whatever,” they said in annoying unison. They both scrunched up their noses.
Finally, the van came to a stop, and everyone started hopping out. Touya wasn’t sure where they were, some mess of city wreckage they hadn’t gotten around to yet. Compress took the vehicle with him once everyone was out, and they all followed Tomura into the rubble.
There was a large chunk of cement and rebar amongst the mess that Shuichi pushed to the side with Body Bulk, revealing a tunnel into the earth. It seemed to take quite a bit out of him to put it back once everyone was inside. Kurogiri’s hand vanished for a moment, and with a click, a long string of lights lit up from deeper inside right up to just short of the entrance.
“How long did this take?” Touya asked, following the group down the wobbly stairs.
“I was testing out Overhaul while making it. It got more elaborate as I brought more of the party back,” Tomura explained. “It was just a hole for me and Kurogiri to hide in for a while.”
“The lights were my idea!” Himiko said proudly. “Cute, right?”
“Huh.”
The bunker was a humble space, two and half rooms at most. A living and eating space, a sleeping space, and a single bathroom. The League had had much, much worse, honestly. This was almost cozy.
Touya felt a little dazed as everything settled into a routine he recognized, a relic from a life he just barely stopped living. Kurogiri gave him something to eat, and god it was really nice to have real food again, not liquid garbage, even if it was just reheated convenience store karaage that was kinda soggy. It was warm and it had some semblance of flavor, so it was amazing.
They had things prepared for him. His own garbage mattress with a light blanket, a toothbrush, new sleeping clothes, dumb stupid cute animal slippers that matched with Himiko’s. It was all waiting for him.
He glanced up from his dumb new comfy slippers at their leader, who was taking the time to brush his hair before bed with some help from Shuichi. Touya wondered how long he spent planning how to get everyone together again. And why?
“What happens next?” He asked, out loud. Tomura blinked slowly, already sleepy. “Are we just- gonna try again? What’s your plan here?”
Tomura sighed. “…I wanted my friends back. Once we have everyone, we can discuss what comes next as a group.”
“…Is this not everyone?”
Their leader smiled a little. “Next time we go out, we have some old friends to exhume.”
Jin and Magne, Touya realized. “Are you sure you can bring them back?” He’s pretty sure Jin was cremated by the HPSC (bastards.) And Magne was- well. He wasn’t sure he remembered where they put what was left of her. If they kept her body at all.
“If I can fix Kurogiri and you, anything’s possible,” He shrugged. “But doing all that rebuilding eats my stamina up. So leave me alone, and go to bed, Dabi.”
Dabi was honestly also too tired to bitch back. For the first time in months, he did what his leader asked, and laid down on his ‘bed’.
Everyone had their own mattress, but they were basically all touching, in some fucked up and evil version of a sleepover. Dabi was at least stuck mostly to one corner, but he had Himiko at his open side and Sako mirrored over his head. He was able to look up and squint at whatever he was reading, some kind of caper book, from what he could gather of the upside down kanji.
Himiko tapped his side for the second time that strange day, and he turned to see her holding out a brush while pointing at her hair. He gave her a puzzled scowl.
“Jin’s not here yet, so he can’t do it for me,” She gestured to the empty mattress on her other side. Another pair of dumb as fuck animal slippers were waiting on the dingy fabric. “You can reach the tangles better. Please?”
Dabi sighed. “Fine. One time,” He sat up, and took the brush. Himiko grinned, fangs and all, and turned to let him work.
Jeez, the buns she liked really left her hair a mess once she took them out. No wonder she needed help. “Would you ever do a different style?”
“Do you know how to style hair?”
“I can do a ponytail.”
“That’s too stuck-up. It has to be cute.”
Dabi snorted. Oh, the face Fuyumi would’ve made. “Twintails, then?”
“I’m seventeen, not five.”
“Christ. Nevermind then. Keep your crazy buns.”
She giggled, then went back to being silent and still for a little. “…Ohh, right, you have a little sister. That’s where you learned.”
Dabi couldn’t manage more than a quiet affirming hum. Thinking about his siblings right now was… odd. Would he be able to see them while on the run like this? What were they gonna think with him disappearing like that? Does he even want to see any of them?
Finished with brushing Himiko’s hair, he paused before giving back her brush, leaving her staring at him questioningly.
“The last time I talked with Shouto, he asked about you,” He whispered, worried the others would hear. It didn’t matter, they already knew about his family, but he was still unsure about letting the two worlds cross.
“Really?” Himiko seemed pretty surprised at that. “…What’d you guys say?”
“He said that… He wished he got to meet you. He wanted to know what you were really like, I guess. He’s a smart kid, he knows what everyone else says about us is bullshit.”
“So what did you tell him?”
Dabi hesitated, and turned his head away, not meeting her eyes. “That you were crazy.”
“That's what everyone says! You’re lying again, what did you really say?!”
This was stupid, I should’ve stopped talking forever ago. Dabi grit his teeth and started twisting a hand in his hair- Fuck, it felt good to do that again, the gentle pain in his scalp becoming something syrupy and comforting in his chest.
“Tell meeee!!” Himiko whined, whacking her hands on his mattress.
“Ugh! I told him that you love everything, and you probably would’ve gotten along! You’re the only two brats I can stand!”
“And? And?!”
“And he said he would’ve liked to have another sister! Fuck!”
Himiko’s gasp nearly choked her. A sister. …She would be an older sister to Shouto, if she was remembering correctly.
She hadn’t had siblings in years. Can she try again?
“Tomura! Tomura, did you hear?! I’m a Todoroki sister! Touya said it!”
“I did not! I did not say that at all!!”
“Can I go see my new little brother sometime with him, please please please?!” She clasped her hands together, begging, scrambling over on her knees to bug Tomura. He swatted her away, curling up further under his blanket. He even yanked Shuichi’s arm up over him for weight, making the mutant fluster and blush.
“When everyone is here, we’ll discuss plans and desires. How many times do I have to say it?”
“Yippeeee!!!” Himiko cheered, throwing herself back on her mattress. “I’m so excited!”
“I didn’t approve this! I did not say any of this was okay!” Dabi complained, to no avail.
“Everyone shut up and go to bed!” Kurogiri sat upright to scream at them, surprising everyone as they billowed out in size for intimidation. “Please!! Not you, Atsuhiro, you're fine.”
Sako gestured proudly to himself, a smug kitten smirk on his face.
Everyone had settled in for the most part just a few minutes later. Shuichi and Tomura were snoring in sync, enough to be noticeable but not as grating as Dabi thought it would be.
As he stared at the ceiling, eyes slowly drifting shut, a tiny warm hand slid halfway into his. He sighed, and slowly curled two fingers around Himiko’s.
“I missed you. Glad you’re home,” She whispered, halfway asleep herself. “Goodnight, Touya-nii.”
“G’night, y’psycho brat.”
They both fell asleep to the sound of the other’s quiet laughter.