Chapter Text
Shouta had always found situations like this irritating. He knew that he had two left feet when it came to dancing around an uncomfortable subject. As well as a tendency to be blunt or, as others often put it, rude towards people who lived their lives with their noses in the air. The backstage sitting room was now filled to the brim with people just like that. His children’s coworkers’ plus ones uselessly pranced around each other and obnoxiously chatted amongst themselves, pretending their flutes of champagne were glasses of water and their designer suits and gowns where casual work clothes.
Shouta sighed, sadly not for the first time that night, as someone commented on how delightful the
Hydrangeas
he’d left as a thank you to his attorney were while still staring at the post on the screen. Most people's eyes glanced at him and his husband almost lazily before turning on their phones and searching for an update on the ‘drama’. Nothing had changed, it was over. His children were taking photos with fans, their scars and bruises from training untouched by concealer and answering questions about the film with the widest smiles he’d seen them pull in a while.
Nezu had kept to his word and was working with 1A and their families to prevent this mess from ever happening again. 1A were going to be doing a sponsorship with as many members of their families as they could as well as going back to their old counselling sessions, they wouldn’t ever be putting the people they cared about or the things they wanted aside to simply not annoy another person ever again.
It was like the light and laughter Shouta had been craving for what felt like a lifetime had finally welcomed itself back into their lives. Wiped its feet on their welcome mat and picked up the shattered remains of everything the ‘Helens’ had managed to destroy. He cheered just as loudly as Yamada did when 1A and their co-stars were welcomed backstage and away from the press, his grey eyes filling with tears as Shinso wrapped his arms around his waist. His children’s eyes no longer clutched onto the dull and faded exhaustion they once had as they laughed at each other's jokes. Their voices were vibrant and bold compared to the cold desaturated whispers they had once been.
The ‘Helens’ cold twisted grasp no longer forced them under the rapid changing currents of their envy and anger. They had pulled themselves through the darkness and along the rocky cliff to freedom and an odd sense of clarity. The reality of it all seemed to finally slot into place. They had been brave. It was a phrase that almost everyone had been called at some point, so much so that it wasn’t often something Shouta had ever taken without a pinch of salt. However, now when the people they’d watched reach out and leave their support for them on the edge of the cliff through the internet or television or in person it did hit him differently. They’d watched him and his family struggle up that wall, heard about how they’d swum through the murky waters below it and see them cry more time then they had ever cried before because of it, and they still called them brave. They didn’t see his sorrow as weakness and for once he was glad to have let his mask slip. He was glad to have finally found envy’s justice.
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