Chapter Text
The silence hung heavy as dust clouds settled in the chilly nighttime air. From his makeshift seat—a slab of concrete—Serizawa cannot make out anything more than vague shapes among the rubble. How long has he been sitting here? A slight breeze hits his cheeks as he slowly stands on shaky legs and tries to wipe his face. For how long has he been crying?
There is probably no point in sticking around in the aftermath of this unfathomably massive display of power, but how can he just leave without knowing the status of the President’s well-being? He couldn’t sense the man’s aura, and there was no sign of him otherwise. Unless—
Serizawa hears shuffling behind him and quickly wheels around to see— just Minegishi.
“Serizawa, you’re still here?”
He doesn’t know how to answer that, so he doesn’t.
“If you stick around here much longer you’ll likely have more than a few questions to answer when whoever’s in charge shows up.”
“Where should I go?” He craves guidance more than anything right now. He can’t maneuver through this, can’t plan next steps, can’t think further out than each individual second as it hits him with a jolt.
“The hotel I’ve been staying at wasn’t damaged. The rooms are probably all booked up by now due to displaced citizens, but you can stay with me, if you want.”
“I couldn’t do that.” His voice sounds like that of a helpless kid but he gets the words out. “What if I freak out and hurt you?” His security blanket—the umbrella—is tattered and useless now. He had sacrificed it for that man. The man in the suit who wasn’t the President.
Oh yeah.
Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out the business card. “The man I saved at the top of the tower gave me this. He said he wants to hire me. Should I call him?”
Minegishi would probably be raising an eyebrow at the larger man, if they had any. “It’s late. He’s probably in bed. If he still has a bed to return to, that is.” Minegishi is so matter of fact about the extent of the destruction Claw had caused—that they had caused.
Serizawa starts crying again. Was he the only one who hadn’t had the consequences of Claw’s actions in the forefront of his mind this whole time? He bows his head in shame and pockets the business card for later. Maybe that man had thought Serizawa was a bystander, a heroic citizen jumping to the rescue in a dire moment, and that’s why he had felt like he owed the esper something. But as he silently trailed Minegishi for several blocks to the hotel, surveying the damage through foolish yet uncontrollable tears, Serizawa understood the truth now—he was the villain in this world. He was exactly the man he always feared becoming.
“Well, here it is. Electricity and everything, too. Crazy, right? Hatori says most of the city is without power.”
With a soft tone, Minegishi attempts to coax Serizawa out of shell-shock, but with little effect. The smaller esper has to physically guide a very reluctant Serizawa into the elevator and then down the narrow hallway of their floor to Minegishi’s indefinite home. Even when they enter the room, Serizawa refuses to do anything but stand still as a statue in the corner nearest to the door, sniffling but finally having run out of tears for the time being.
“You can have the bed if you want.” An absent stare at the green and brown carpet beneath him probably does not count as a reply, but time rushes past him like river rapids and with it his chance to respond within reasonably respectable limits. “Okay, well you should at least clean yourself up a bit. Have a shower. We have running water too, shockingly.”
Still he shakes his head no, wringing his hands tightly together. He’s nonverbal now and doesn’t know how to communicate in a way Minegishi could make sense of, not that such skills were ever really his forte to begin with. Thankfully his power is still mostly drained from when the President had called it out of him to add to his own supply, but his anxious turmoil still manages to procure a mild buzz on his skin that’s enough for Minegishi to sense. They put their hands up in lieu of a confrontation, not one to stoke a flame. “Fine. You just stay there then. Let me know if you need anything.”
The plant wielder’s voice is soft, unassuming, and Serizawa is suddenly reminded of his mother, speaking to him from behind a closed door while he did his best to drown her out.
“Do you have a phone?” He blurts out.
“No, and the one in here doesn’t work. The phone lines are down. Cell service is pretty much nonexistent, too. Stupid Hatori can interrupt signals just fine but can’t seem to reverse the damage. Go figure.”
“Oh. What about the train?”
“What about it?”
“Does… is it running?”
“Not this late, even on a regular day.”
“Oh.”
“Got somewhere else you need to be?”
“My mom…” He trails off, feeling tears threatening to spill for the umpteenth time this evening. “I just thought…”
Thankfully, Minegishi interrupts the latest impending breakdown. “Well, she’s probably in bed by now, Serizawa. Try getting some sleep, and you can find out about the train in the morning.”
Serizawa notices the esper is inching closer to him, a blanket in hand, and he presses himself against the wall with a whimper. “Please, be careful. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t. You’re too drained to do much of anything.” They toss the blanket at Serizawa. “At least use this. I’m going to feel pretty guilty taking the bed if you keep standing there looking like a dog that’s been kicked too many times.”
Serizawa just nods as he wraps it around him. He’s suddenly very, very weak and he sinks to the floor with an involuntary sigh. Minegishi makes no further efforts to facilitate the esper’s transition from violent antagonist to casual hotel guest, retreating to the bathroom for a while then getting into bed without a word. They turn on the TV and fall asleep quickly. On the other hand, Serizawa doesn’t even close his eyes. He listens to the news broadcast describe the day’s events over and over. One word in particular keeps him from relenting to slumber for even a moment— terrorism. He shakes uncontrollably in his corner, pulling the blanket tightly around him and wondering how he can possibly face the world while bearing the weight of his sins.
By dawn, Serizawa’s eyes are heavy, but still refuse to close. The blanket Minegishi handed him provides a small amount of comfort, but it’s nothing compared to his umbrella or the security of his room. At least he managed to make it through an entire night without his powers going haywire. Minegishi is still sound asleep, so he knows he must not have blacked out and caused any accidents. He stands on shaky legs, leaning against the wall for support, and wraps the blanket around himself tightly before making his way to the bathroom. The man who stares back at him in the mirror above the sink looks haggard—eyes bloodshot, face and hair covered in dirt. He shivers as he splashes cold water on his face to remove some of the grime, but it doesn’t do anything to help how dirty he feels. Living up to his reputation as a coward, he slips out of the room while Minegishi is still unconscious.
He wanders up and down busy streets for a while, hoping for something to point him in the direction of the nearest train station. He probably could have asked someone at the hotel’s front desk, but he wasn’t sure his mouth still worked right. Nothing about him worked right. It’s not until he finally stumbles upon a station, the sun now significantly higher in the sky, that he realizes he’s still got the blanket wrapped around him. Now he can add stealing hotel property to his lengthy list of criminal acts. Oh, and hopping the terminal—just as he hears the blare of the arriving train—because he can’t even remember when he last had a valid pass.
He feels one hand twitch to his side as he becomes part of the crowd, seeking the comfort of an object he can no longer rely on. The President would tell him to stop focusing on the small things and instead consider the bigger picture. But now Serizawa can’t rely on Suzuki either. He swallows dryly as he takes a seat—just as the doors whoosh closed—and wraps the blanket around him like a lifeline. The President’s words don’t have the same comforting effect when the big picture paints something much, much worse in the esper’s mind than any individual fear. Serizawa is a terrorist. There is no way to hide from it on the train, confronted with the faces of countless strangers whose livelihoods he may have jeopardized, whose lives he bartered for a chance to feel like he belonged somewhere. Yet here he is running back to his mother, tail between his legs, like an ill-behaved puppy eagerly returning home to someone who might scold it but would still have been praying for its safe return.
By the time the train pulls away from the platform marking Serizawa’s destination and out to the next long stretch of green fields and rice paddies, the esper’s resolve is disappearing as quickly as the sun on the horizon. Food might help, so he stops at a nearby convenience store he hasn’t been to since he was ten years old and buys some onigiri with some pocket change he forgot he had. It doesn’t help. His stomach still churns, and he puts all his attention on steadying his breathing as he crosses the train tracks and takes a sharp left towards his childhood home. He grasps for what’s familiar—the sound of crickets, the sight of the dust his feet kick up onto his worn crocs as he walks, the smell of mud from what must have been a recent rainstorm. He pulls the sleeves of his sweater down to his palms, gripping the cuffs in his fingers. These are all things he used to do to calm himself on his walk home from school, so that his mother wouldn’t notice the storm brewing inside him. Of course they don’t want to play with you. They don’t like you. Why would they? You’ll only hurt them. By the time he arrived home for dinner each night he could talk himself down to a simple “fine” when asked how his day was. Until that day, anyways.
The roads are relatively empty by this point in the evening, but the people he does pass eye him suspiciously. Word would spread fast out here. Too soon he spots the familiar shape of the pointed gate and stops there, a shaky hand gripping the faded, paint-chipped wood. There seems to be a light on inside, probably from the front room based on how it spills out through the small window in the front door. His mother always preferred to keep it on overnight to discourage anyone who was, in her words, “up to no good.” Serizawa might very well be one of those people now. Maybe she’ll be ashamed to see his face. Maybe she’ll even call the authorities. She must have seen the news, how all the blood, sweat and tears she had poured into her only child went completely to waste. With chest constricting and blood running cold he flees the property, ending up on an old bench at a park nearby. An icy chill takes root in his bones and he pulls his feet up to his chest in the hopes that by taking up less space he might eventually shrink down to nothing. A cursory glance around discovers nothing within close proximity he can break or injure. Satisfied, he lets exhaustion take over. For the first time in three years, Serizawa falls asleep to the sound of crickets and bat calls rather than car horns.
*
“Sir, are you alright? Do you need something?”
Serizawa startles, almost rolling off the bench he had ended up sprawled out on. His mouth feels dry as cotton and speaking still feels impossible. Whoever is calling out to him must think he’s homeless, sleeping with a blanket on a park bench and looking like all hell. He considers the possibility of remaining selectively mute as he meets the eyes of the older, wispy-haired woman peering down at him.
“Oh, you’re-”
“M-my apologies, ma’am. I’ll be on my way now.” The words spill out in a nervous stutter and he bows deeply before scurrying off without looking back. That’s the thing about being out in the sticks—everybody knows everybody. This woman has probably been living here for decades, if not all her life. She probably still remembers the chubby kid with the curls hanging down past his ears. She might even know his mother personally, he realizes grimly. He decides he can’t put off the visit any longer. The only thing worse than his mother coming face to face with her criminal son unannounced would be if she were to find out he’s in town from anyone but he himself.
It ends up easy, too easy. “Katsuya!” Serizawa is just waiting for the other shoe to drop when his mother greets him at the door by taking him into her arms as if it were the most normal, natural thing in the world. Immediately he tenses and pulls back. He doesn’t have his umbrella anymore and somehow she still doesn’t seem to understand what he’s capable of. “Are you okay?”
“C-can I stay here? Just for a little while?”
She opens the wider and stands back from it, gesturing him inside. As soon as he slips his shoes off she’s making her way to the kitchen. It sickens him to his core that she doesn’t even question it, that she doesn’t seem the least bit wary.
“I have rice steaming, would you like to eat?”
“Yes, thank you so much.”
“I’m your mother, you don’t need to thank me. Come in and have a seat.”
Everything looks and feels the same as when he left. The paint peels in the same places; the wooden floors creak in the same spots they always have. It even smells the same. The familiarity should be soothing, but instead it’s distinctly unsettling. Something should have changed. If not, what had he even abandoned her for?
“What would you like on top?”
“Anything you have is fine, mom.” He sits stiffly at the kotatsu, staring at the worn and frayed edges, the fading colors. This is how the household had been before he locked himself away. She would ask him questions about his day or his mood or what he wanted for dinner, and he would say whatever would be the least burdensome. There’s shuffling coming from the small kitchen and then the sound of a kettle whistling, the same one she got as a wedding present before he was even a bundle of cells.
“Here Katsuya, have some tea. You look exhausted.” She’s wearing the same red slippers that he would catch glimpses of from the small gap between the hallway floor and his bedroom door. She left him tea every morning, back then.
“Thank you, mom.”
“My Katsuya,” she sighs. “Always so polite, so accommodating. Even with his own mother. I don’t know what I did to end up with a son like you, but you’re one in a million, you know that?” He winces, both from the burn of sipping the tea too soon and from the irony. She never knew what to say to him, but how could she? Nothing prepared a parent for a child like him.
“Mom, please don’t.”
She steps back into the kitchen to prepare their bowls. When she kneels across from him at the table, she stares at him in earnest, biting her lip like she wants to say something that will smooth everything over. The couple of bites of rice he’s already swallowed almost come right back up with the thought.
“Mom, I-”
“I hope grilled fish is okay. It was on sale at the market yesterday. If not, I can get-”
“Mom, I’m so sorry. Please forgive me for everything, even though I don’t deserve it. I want to make it up to you.”
She waves her chopsticks dismissively. “Don’t be silly, Katsuya. I haven’t seen you in three years. I’m the happiest woman in the world right now. I’ve missed you terribly. It’s been lonely without you.” Serizawa stares at his bowl, and his mother stares at him. The wall clock ticks softly. The old kitchen sink drips lazily, and his mother never knows when to let the subject die. “I’m the one who should be sorry.”
“Don’t, mom.” It feels like something is pulling on his vocal cords, the words coming out tense and taut. A pressure he hadn’t noticed building up in between his eyes increases substantially.
Her hands—bonier than Serizawa remembers, the early stages of wrinkles around the knuckles—grip her teacup tightly. “If I hadn’t brought that man into our home you wouldn’t have been-”
“”Mom, I’m begging you. Please stop this!” Tears stung his eyes as his ears began to ring. The pressure between his eyes becomes more of a throbbing.
“I just want you to know that I finally see it now, what you went through for all of those years. I’m sorry I didn’t do more for you. I should have made more of an effort. I was afraid and ashamed, but that’s no excuse.”
“I’m tired. I’m going to finish this in my room.”
He stands abruptly, swipes up his bowl, and retreats. As soon as he slams the door shut, he slides to the floor and sobs until he exhausts himself into sleep, the throbbing of his head reduced to a dull ache only when the tears finally stop flowing. The porcelain bowl lays shattered on the other side of the room, its contents splattered on the nearby wall and all over the floor.
It’s pitch black when he awakes an unspecified number of hours later. Instantly he is hit with the smell of fish and remembers that in his panic he had neglected to clean up after the accident with the bowl. Squinting in the yellowish light of his bedside lamp, he curses himself with each broken piece of porcelain he removes from the floor for being reduced again to the pathetic mess he was before the President took his hand. He had been pulled up from the mud only to sink right back down into it. Maybe that’s just where he was meant to be. After all, the President did say he wouldn’t make it on his own. The cleanup doesn’t eliminate the funky odor now permeating the room, so he cracks open his window. The breeze both soothes and taunts him. A familiar smell wafts in. The smoke from his mother’s favorite brand of cigarettes replaces the smell of old breakfast. Or had it been lunch? What time is it right now? He peers out the window and sees no trace of sunlight, so it must be at least after 8.
He wonders if his mother has fallen back into old habits or if this is a special occasion. She used to smoke when he was younger but quit for several years. Or maybe she never did. Old habits die hard, after all. Standing alone in the bare bones of his room, Serizawa knows that better than anyone. Well, she’s not hiding it so maybe he doesn’t need to either. Tentatively, he cracks the door open and peers down the dark hallway. He pads down the hall with a quiet caution that’s second nature. The weaker his presence, the better. The sliding door that leads to the engawa seems to disagree, groaning loudly against his hand as he slides it back to join his mother where she stands enjoying her vice. She takes a long drag and exhales a thin line of smoke as Serizawa steps onto the porch in his socks and slides the door shut behind them. She’s making no effort to conceal her smoking, so he makes no motion to conceal his distress at the pile of butts sitting in the nearby ashtray. Definitely not a special occasion, then. For a moment they simply stand in silence, staring out across the wide open fields that stretch in every visible direction. She clears her throat, but doesn’t shift her gaze.
“It’s such a mild night, Katsuya. It feels like there should be fireworks, or children laughing—something.”
He stares intently at his hands, fiddling idly. Everything in him is screaming resist but first he has to know for sure what he’s up against.
“Did… Did you really miss me that much?”
She folds her arms, lit cigarette hanging loosely in her right hand between two fingers. “If you ever become a parent, you’ll understand.”
“I’m sorry I freaked out earlier. I was afraid that I’d—I didn’t want to—ah, there’s no excuse for my lack of manners, mom.”
She snorts a laugh. A total shock. Serizawa could probably count on one hand the number of times he’s heard the sound. “Save that for someone who finds formalities and appearances worthwhile.”
“But, if I’m going to reintegrate into society… I’ll need them.” There wasn’t a lot of normative social encounters to be had in a terrorist organization composed entirely of social outcasts, so Serizawa felt a pull to cling to what little he did pick up on. The President valued appearances.
“The value I placed on appearances wasted your youth.”
He’s never heard her talk like this, so blunt and with such conviction. Where he expected wavering and hesitation, he was getting anything but. This scene is a far cry from the woman who would quietly ask him from behind his closed door if he would eat some dinner before slipping away as if in the wrong just for bringing it up. Dazed, Serizawa sits down cross legged at the edge of the engawa. His mother sits beside him, ashing her cigarette in the tray to her right. Unlike Serizawa, whose legs are carefully tucked, she lets hers dangle loosely over the wooden edge. It’s then he notices she’s barefoot. When was the last time he saw her without her distinctive red slippers? It’s an odd thought to have right now, but befitting. Environmentally, nothing has changed. It’s the same house, the same porch, and the same two people. But there’s nothing ordinary about the moment they’re sharing now.
“There’s so much I need to say to you, mom. But it’s so hard to look you in the eye right now.” He stops, feeling his throat tightening. Now is not the time to be getting choked up. He’s making it all about him. It’s always been all about him. Selfish, stupid, overbearing.
“Katsuya.” A hand placed gently on his back jolts him out of his thoughts and he flinches, but doesn’t pull away. “It’s hard for me to look straight at you, too.”
“I got a job offer. A real one this time, I think? I’m going to call tomorrow and accept. I-I’m going to do everything I can to make up for the years I lost, the years I stole from you.” He pulls the card out and holds it out to her, haphazardly wiping a hand over his eyes to clear his clouding vision. He’s like a kid showing off a good grade on a spelling quiz, isn’t he? “I’m going to make you proud this time.”
“Whatever you do Katsuya, do it for you. Not for me or for anybody else.”
Sprawled out on his futon later on, he turns those unexpected words of advice over in his mind while eyeing every bit of the flashy looking business card until he’s all but memorized its contents. The words and colors seem too big and bold for such a small piece of card-stock, but it’s not like he knows anything about how to run a business. He stretches an arm out to open his window a bit wider, the breeze pulling an unfamiliar optimism into the stale and stuffy room. Maybe at this new job he’ll get to learn a thing or two.