Chapter Text
Memories can be a horrible thing.
They can tie you down.
Make you cry.
Bring you anguish, joy, anger, and it’d all happen in the same afternoon.
People can become hostages to their memories. Be at their beck and call because at any moment a memory could come and ruin a whole day. To be at the receiving end of a torture kept in your mind was a horror that he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemies.
Because when something you cannot see or fight controls you;
just how are you supposed to save yourself?
_____________
They were getting out of the bath and Izuku gently pulled Hitoshi along to the new clothes the kind lady had given them. He willed his mouth to move, to tell Izuku he could dry and dress himself, but nothing came out. When he was dressed and dry his friend (was he still his friend? Did he still even want to be?) handed him a towel.
“Can you dry your hair ‘toshi?”
He didn’t nod, even if he tried to make himself, but he got to work on drying his hair.
___________
Izuku had taken Hitoshi’s hand and they had been looking up and down the aisles for books on sign language.
Izuku reaching out for a few books that's titles caught his eye as they went along.
They finally stumbled upon a section on language.
Grabbing all the books on JSL his little arms could while still holding his friend's hand was no easy task but he managed to make it work. It was a simple thing someone like him could do.
The two of them went back to their spot from last night. There was a number of spaces with couches spread out in multiple spaces but..Izuku assumed his friend wouldn’t want to sit anywhere as open as those spaces.
Maybe it was a peeve of his as well that kept him away but being in the center of a room and not being able to see all the areas around you terrified him to his very core.
So they went back to the small area hidden towards the back, the books around them scarcely touched other than by overachieving students, leaving them in a secluded comfortable space. With only one way for the adults to get in and a secret way the boys had found last night for them to escape should anything go wrong.
(It wasn’t much of anything, but a sliver of space beside the shelf opposite of them that only thin small children like themselves could squeeze through).
Izuku let go of Hitoshi’s hand and set the books down on the floor before sitting down himself. Patting the floor beside him hitoshi plops the small bag of their clothes down before sitting beside Izuku.
Picking through their books with his free hand (Hitoshi had taken his hand into his, the small gesture filling him with such relief he was ready to cry) he stopped on one and placed it on his lap.
There was no way they would be learning JSL right now, so reading a book to calm their minds was the best course of action Izuku could think of.
Izuku quietly mumbled the words of the story and his own thoughts about why the author might have written that aloud to Hitoshi. Quietly worrying about the person beside him as he spoke.
The least he could offer was the background noise his mumbling created for his friend.
Distantly he remembered his mom telling him she quite liked hearing him mumble about heroes under his breath while they watched the news or HeroFightsAnalysis’s ViewTube channel.
“Your mumbling calms me down, Izuku. I can’t always hear what you say half the time,” she laughed,“ but I can feel the passion in your voice while you speak and that’s enough to help my racing heart calm.” She placed a cubby hand against her chest. A soft fond smile as she spoke to him with closed eyes.
Shaking his head he focused back on reading.
_____________
Being strangled is a memory Hitoshi wishes he never had.
The weight around your neck.
The suffocation and struggle for life. Your body will kick, scratch, and fight in every way it can to keep itself going.
But no matter how much effort you put into your survival
There’s only so much you can do when someone grabs you there.
Hitoshi had been quietly sitting on the floor in the room. He sat in a chair that was placed in front of the window in the room he and two other foster children stayed in.
It was his reprieve from the isolation of the home. No one outright hurt him here but being ignored left it’s own special hurt.
He would place his arms on the window sill and rest his head upon them, watching.
The trees would move with the wind. Leaves moving in a wave like motion and swaying. If he watched for long enough he could swear he could hear the sound they made.
There was a distant sound of a car driving through the street.
It was one of Hitoshi’s favorite sounds. The swoosh it made as a car drove past.
If it had rained the night before and a car drove through it, it would make a wonderful swoosh that had Hitoshi melting.
Usually he was left alone. Again, isolation.
Today however, he would not be left alone.
A man had come over to visit.
Hitoshi wasn’t sure who he was but he was drunk, rude, and smelled like pee.
The man had snuck up behind Hitoshi as he watched some people passing by in the street.
And as Hitoshis stomach sunk with a feeling of intense fear.
He spun around in his seat and saw a towering figure.
Hands were around his neck and lifting him into the air before he could even scream.
There was a feeling as he was crying and gasping for air then of weightlessness.
It was. It was something akin to what it must feel like to be a bird. Or what Hitoshi assumed it felt like to be a bird.
He was strung up and fighting with every ounce of strength he could muster.
His vision grew spotty.
His hits got weaker.
And just as everything was about to stop he fell nothing and everything.
Stories paint a picture when someone falls. It’s dramatic and adrenaline pumping as you watch a character fall in slow motion.
That’s what happened to him that day.
And the hard slap of the floor brought him back.