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The most shocking part wasn’t that he’d opened his eyes. The most shocking part was that his eyes had stayed open. He wasn’t sure if it was a blessing or a curse, seeing those sharp, calculating eyes stare him down as they did years ago. He wasn’t really sure what he should do. What he should say. Everything felt off, cold, empty, wrong. He knew that any words he’d produce would leave a bad taste in his mouth. Hell, the words he had said six years ago - the lack of words, more like - left the worst taste in his mouth and no amount of time could wash the foul taste away.
But still . . . Everything felt wrong.
He’d been gone for six years - six years ago he made the worst decision a person could ever make. He walked away from his saving grace and didn’t look back until it was too late. And now he was back. He was back in the hospital - this time standing next to a deathbed rather than on one. And as he looked into those sharp, calculating, and damn beautiful eyes , he couldn’t help but feel the hole in his chest expand at the loss he nearly felt.
He almost lost him. The love of his life almost parted from this world, and he hadn’t even begun to try and make amends. So he kept his mouth shut as those eyes studied him, not a word shared between them until a silent gesture cued something more.
Mirai raised an eyebrow as if to say “ So,” but Toshinori could only stand there, unable to find the right words - or any words at all. So they just stared again. The beeping of the heart monitor beat against Toshinori’s eardrums until he felt they were fit to burst. The eerie silence between the two coiled around his neck and tapped against his heart with more pressure than he thought possible.
Nothing came to mind. No words. No actions. Just shock, regret, sadness, anger. The emotions personified as they danced around his skull knocking every stubborn wall they could find. And then he found a word. A phrase. A question that would escape his lips on a whim - an off chance that things might get better.
He walked away once, but there was no way in hell he’d ever walk away again. Toshinori caused enough damage pushing away the love of his life. Now, in the hospital room, another deathbed sprouted between the two of them. Mirai laid silently, covered in scars he did nothing to earn. Toshinori felt he might as well have caused them himself. He almost lost him. It was more than a scare. It was dumb luck that Mirai survived, and Toshinori would be damned if he left without trying to fix things now.
He knew he wouldn’t get another chance. So he let out a shaky breath. He let the panic take over and the words fall free. And a question was asked - out of fear, out of panic, out of impulse. He didn’t intend to dig himself a deeper grave, but words do little in the face of loss, pain, death.
“Marry me.”
Mirai opened his mouth to speak, but Toshinori grabbed his hand and interrupted him. “Mirai, will you marry me?”
“No.”
He didn’t pull his hand back. He didn’t slap him or push him away. He just laid there, on his deathbed, and stared. The answer came without the slightest bit of hesitation, so Toshinori knew he was sure.
So he pulled his hand back and stood silently. He hadn’t realized how much time had passed until Mirai opened his mouth again. “What?”
He was broken from his trance and shook his head, only barely noticing the tears that silently streamed down his face. Toshinori took a deep breath and smiled at Mirai, the best smile he could muster in a time like this. He knew it was forced. He knew Mirai knew it was forced. But it was the least he could do for Mirai - the only reason he ever truly smiled.
“Okay. Sorry to bother you . . “ He tried his best not to sound as pathetic as he felt. He didn’t think he had enough of a heart left for it to be broken this badly again. Toshinori moved away from the bed and walked towards the door, stopping just short of turning the handle. Some part of him, some naive sliver of the heart he didn’t know he still had told him to stop, wait. A small sprinkle of hope still played with his mind telling him that Mirai would tell him to wait -would change his mind. But after what seemed like an eternity, Toshinori realized Mirai had nothing to say in that moment - and probably nothing to say at all.
As he turned the doorknob, he felt more tears stream down his hollowed cheeks. He’d embarrassed himself enough. Mirai didn’t want him anymore. He’d probably moved on long ago.
Toshinori left the hospital with his heart heavier than it was six years ago.
A week had gone by. A week of silence, murmurs, heartbreak, and regret. Nothing seemed to change. Mirai sat up in his hospital bed, no longer suited for his death, and stared out the window at the plain view of a quiet street. He silently remarked that at least Toshinori’s room had a better view . . . Toshinori.
He left a week ago, walking out of the hospital room without so much as a glance back. Mirai couldn’t stop him. He knew he couldn’t. If he couldn’t stop him six years ago, how could he stop Toshinori from leaving now? It was strange, though, watching him leave a second time. Mirai felt used to it. His heart broke, just as it did before, but something about watching Toshinori leave a second time was nothing to him.
They hadn’t fought this time. Not even the beginnings of a bicker. Mirai responded, cold, detached, but ever-so-sure. Toshinori just - accepted it and moved on. He didn’t even put up a damn fight. After six years of radio silence, he comes back to ask for his hand and gives up after a two-letter word is muttered without hesitation.
The years had changed Toshinori. Mirai could tell. Mirai no longer saw the stubborn maniac of days past. The confidence was still there. The impulsivity and complete lack of common sense, sure. But now that he was older, broken, Quirkless - he didn’t even seem like a hero at all.
Heroes at least put up a fight. Mirai let out a small, sad chuckle as he continued to stare outside. He was interrupted from his thoughts, though, by the opening of the hospital room door. A mousy nurse peeked her head into the room with a worried look gracing her blushing cheeks. “Sir Nighteye, sir . . .Uhm . . You have a visitor, if that’s alright.”
He sighed and turned back to the window. It was probably one of his sidekicks, checking in like usual. Or Mirio. Mirai smiled at the thought of Mirio coming to visit him. In the week that he’d been awake in the hospital, Mirio had visited twice. Both visits were the only decent fun he’d had since he woke up. Even though he still had no way of getting his quirk back, Mirio smiled for Mirai. The two of them joked and talked until visiting hours were done. Maybe today would be a good day if his protege visited.
As footsteps could be heard filling up the room, Mirai turned to greet his visitor with a hopeful gaze, only to have his breath taken from his lungs at the surprising sight before him. Yagi Toshinori stood before him, expression unreadable. Mirai let out a small, barely audible scoff - not from ill will, not from anger. He was genuinely shocked to see Toshinori standing next to his bed. At least the turnaround after he left the second time was shorter.
“Mirai-”
“I wasn’t expecting to see you again for a while. Or ever.”
The words had a sharper bite than the coldest winter winds. Mirai hadn’t intended to sound so harsh, but as he stared at the hospital wall across from him and the powerless television in the corner, he couldn’t find it in him to regret his words. He said what he had felt. What was there to regret in that?
Toshinori was struck with silence. He wished Mirai had slapped him or punched him in the gut because that would have been a million times easier to deal with than the ironclad grips he felt placed on his heart. He took a breath and stumbled around his words, making sure not to go silent anymore. “W-what do you mean?”
Without missing a beat, and turning back to face Toshinori head-on, Mirai spat out a reply with as much unplanned bitterness as before. “The last time you walked out on me in a hospital, you didn’t come back for six years.” Still he had no regrets.
Toshinori felt his mouth run dry and time stop around him. Mirai had a point, sure, but pointing it out was rubbing salt in a wound that Toshinori spent years ignoring. Mirai stayed silent, glaring at Toshinori through his glasses. Toshinori had nothing to say, but he forced himself to say something, anything to keep him from running away again. “I almost... lost you, Mirai. Because it took me six years to come back and apologize. Make some type of amends. I can’t let that happen again, Mirai. I want you back.”
Mirai hums lightly before turning back to stare out the window. He purses his lips ever-so-slightly and lightly grips onto the blanket covering his legs with his only remaining hand. “I do wonder how terrifying it is to sit in a hospital room wondering if the man you love will ever open his eyes again. I wonder how terrifying it is to feel like next time, neither of you will be so lucky.” The sarcasm is dripping from his tone like venom from a snake’s fangs as it bites into Toshinori’s neck and curls itself around him.
Toshinori moves closer to the bed and tries to hold Mirai's hand, but this time Mirai pulls away. Feeling his heart beat faster and faster and faster until he felt it was fit to explode, Toshinori moved his hand to grip at his shirt, pulling it away from his neck. He was suffocating, drowning in Mirai’s words. “Mirai, love. . . Please-”
“No!” Mirai shouted as if he’d just gotten his voice back after decades of unuse. The red lense of rage blinded his view as he no longer saw the man he fell for all those years ago. All he could see was a guilty man begging for an innocent verdict without even pleading his own case. “No, you don’t get to talk! You get to sit and listen because I’ve had to hold my tongue for six years, and you have the nerve to come to me on my deathbed and ask me to marry you?! Like you didn’t spend all of those years pretending you never loved me at all! So don’t call me by that name and don’t you dare act like I’m making a mountain out of a molehill!”
As the words flowed out of Mirai's mouth, Toshinori felt himself put up against a firing squad. He deserved it, he knew. But each word Mirai said felt like a round on an automatic rifle fired into each of his vital organs. He scraped up the wall, tried to climb out of the deep chasm he found himself floundering in, and stuttered around every damn syllable until he produced coherent sound. “M--Mirai, I never... I would never deny the fact that I love you.”
“You didn’t have to. Actions speak louder than words, Toshinori.” Mirai was back to his cold, calculating self as he turned on the television and stared blankly at the news as it flashed across the screen. It felt as if he decided to ignore Toshinori completely. As if talking with Toshinori wasted his time more than watching paint dry.
So Toshinori reached out to grasp any string of hope that was left. He willed himself to speak even though he felt as if words had abandoned him completely. Toshinori opened his mouth, then closed it. He sighed and ran his hands through his hair. “Then what do you want me to do, Mirai? I’m here right now because I want to apologize. Because I want to somehow make up for all that I’ve done to you and because I don’t want to let you go again. So what do you want me to do?”
Mirai sighed after he noticed Toshinori had finished. Turning back to face the man practically pleading for forgiveness in front of him, Mirai frowned and felt a small stream of tears fall from his eyes. “You were gone for six years . . . Six years, Toshinori. You can’t expect me to rejoice for your return just because you finally said sorry.”
“Then what should I do-”
“Work harder, dammit!” Mirai stared at the ceiling and took a deep breath as tears began to flow freely. “Both of us have changed more than you could have anticipated, Toshinori. You’ve been living as All Might, and I as Sir Nighteye for six years. So if you want things to go back to our glory days then you’re going to have to get a damn time machine and send me postcards because none of that will ever come back.”
Toshinori moved to hold onto Mirai’s hand again, breathing a sigh of relief when Mirai didn’t pull away. “I want to work harder . . . I’ll work for it - for you, Mirai. I just . . . I know I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I walked away again.”
“So you decided to propose and then walk away when I said no?”
Toshinori took a deep shaky breath and closed his eyes as he spoke, sincerity dripping off each letter. “I want to spend the rest of my godforsaken life with you, Mirai. I want nothing more than to be by your side for the rest of time.”
“I’m not going to marry you.”
“Mirai-” Hurt and complete dejection washed over Toshinori’s face, but Mirai squeezed his hand and interrupted him.
“At least not right now.”
“Wha-”
Mirai rubbed his thumb over Toshinori’s knuckles and sighed, letting a small smile work its way to his lips. “It’d be stupid to marry you now. You proposed to me out of desperation, panic. We can’t just jump into a relationship after six years of bad blood and pretend that everything is rainbows and butterflies, Toshinori. If you want this as much as I do, you need to be willing to rebuild everything from the ground up.”
“I-”
Toshinori was interrupted for a final time as the hospital door creaked open, revealing the mousy nurse from before. “I’m sorry, Sir Nighteye, sir. A-and All Might, sir. Visitors hours are over now.”
Mirai gave the nurse a smile and nodded. “Of course. He’ll be on his way in just a moment. Thank you.”
Toshinori gripped Mirai’s hand tight and frowned, feeling the breath leave his lungs once more. “But Mirai . . .”
Mirai turned to look at Toshinori and smiled - a real, genuine, uncalculated smile that Toshinori didn’t think he’d ever get to see again. And that’s when Toshinori felt he was brought back to life. Before Mirai could speak, Toshinori nodded and smiled. “Mirai. . . I’d be more than willing to rebuild our home from the ground up . . . Anything to be by your side again.”
Removing his hand from Toshinori’s grasp, Mirai smiled again let out a soft sigh. “Come back tomorrow. We can talk about this more. Any maybe come before visitors hours aren’t almost over?”
Toshinori nodded vigorously and moved to start walking out of the room, as he approached the door the nurse left open, he decided to actually look back. Mirai laughed, and god did Toshinori miss that melodic sound. “This is going to be hard, Toshinori. I hope you understand that.”
“What kind of hero would I be if I backed down from a challenge?”
Before Toshinori turned back around, Mirai gave him a sad but warm smile. “Thank you . . . I missed you, Toshi.”
His heart skipped a beat as he heard Mirai call him by his nickname. Smiling wide, Toshinori opened the door completely and began to walk away. “I missed you too, Mirai. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The next day, Toshinori arrived at the hospital not even a minute after visitors hours opened. Mirai felt at home as he saw Toshinori’s signature smile burst through the door. Things would get better. Think would be okay. No one would be leaving anymore . . . Not for a long long time.