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It takes Hitoshi a few moments to figure out what woke him. By any means, he isn’t the deepest sleeper in the world, and he certainly has enough trouble falling asleep in the first place, but once he’s out, he usually stays out. Not tonight.
Rubbing his eyes and shifting in his bed, he hears a muffled rustling sound coming from somewhere just outside his bedroom door. That must be the culprit. He flicks on the lamp beside his bed, swinging his legs over and sliding his feet into a pair of slippers, ready to trudge down the hall.
He doesn’t have to go far. As soon as he pokes his head out the door, he hears the rustling again, emanating from the open door just across the hall from his. He stops in his tracks.
Eri’s room.
Carefully, to avoid waking anyone else, he tiptoes across the narrow hall and creaks open the girl’s door, peering inside the room, which is entirely dark except for the pale yellow glow emanating from the unicorn-shaped nightlight on the wall opposite the door. He traces the faint outline of his little sister lying in her bed, an arm and a leg dangling off the edge, covers and pillows tossed haphazardly around her. As he watches, she contorts in her sleep, twisting and turning, scattering the pillows and blankets until most of them end up on the floor. Her small brows furrow into a deep grimace - much too deep for a face so young.
So this was what had woken Hitoshi. She must be having a nightmare, which isn’t surprising. This girl had been through the kind of trauma that would probably follow her for the rest of her life. What is surprising is how little noise she’s making. A lump catches in Hitoshi’s throat when he realizes what the reason might be: she’s probably trained herself not to scream, as a defense mechanism. To prevent waking the sick bastards that had held her captive for so many years.
He sighs, hand on the back of his neck. Should he wake her, or let her sleep, however fitfully? If it were him, would he want to be woken from his nightmares, or would he want to get some sleep, no matter the cost? He thinks briefly of waking Aizawa or Yamada, but then thinks better of it. Between three jobs each, plus the strain of two newly adopted children, they deserved to get a full night’s sleep every once and awhile.
Hitoshi doesn’t have to fret for much longer, though. A few moments later, Eri’s eyes flutter open, her limbs thrashing before she sits up and regains her grip on reality. She rubs her eyes, blinking up at Hitoshi in the faint light trickling in from the hall. “Hito...shi?” she asks, her small voice wavering.
“Yeah, it’s me,” Hitoshi answers, speaking softly to prevent his voice from carrying through the small apartment. “Did you have a nightmare?”
The girl nods, and a heavy weight settles in Hitoshi’s chest. Despite the pile of blankets bunched up all around her, she’s shivering slightly, fists clutching at the thick fabric of her comforter. Her gaze slides to the floor.
Hitoshi follows her line of sight to a stuffed rabbit resting near his feet. He stoops down, picking up the plush toy and depositing it back into his younger sister’s lap.
She smiles up at him gratefully, hugging the rabbit to her chest.
“Are you going to be okay?” Hitoshi asks.
Eri nods firmly, burying her head into her rabbit’s fur.
“Okay then. If you’re sure, I’m gonna go back to bed…” Hitoshi says, starting to close the door.
“Wait!” Eri cries. “Don’t… go yet.”
Hitoshi swings the door back open, letting the light from the hall flood the small room, banishing a fair portion of its shadows and painting its walls in soft yellows. He makes his way over to Eri’s bed, sitting down next to her. “Okay, I’ll stay. But will you promise to try and get some sleep? Yamada’s going to take you to his radio station tomorrow, remember? You’re gonna want to have enough energy for that.”
Eri nods. She lies back into the bed, allowing Hitoshi to tuck her under the comforter and blankets, nestling her stuffed rabbit next to her cheek. After he finishes, however, she scrunches up her face. “What if I...can’t fall asleep?”
Leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees, Hitoshi sighs. Trouble sleeping? Now that’s a problem he’s all too familiar with. Probably not for the same reasons as his younger sister, though. He never had to endure the horrors her previous guardians had subjected her to. No, his own nightmares stemmed from a more typical brand of foster child trauma: verbal abuse, micromanagement, backhanded comments about his quirk being ‘creepy’ or ‘dangerous,’ forced isolation. Scarring, yes. But nothing compared to what Eri had lived through. He could only imagine the kind of hell her nightmares forced her to visit.
Hitoshi sighs, upset over the unfairness of it all. The least Eri deserves now is to have an older brother who actually knows what he’s doing, who can comfort her and reassure her through all the nightmares, convince her that they can’t hurt her anymore. He feels entirely underqualified for that. He can’t even fight his way through his own fears, let alone be a source of security and stability for a child.
Steeling himself, he reaches over and pats her head, watching carefully for signs of discomfort, in case she didn’t want to be touched.
He knows he didn’t, not for a long time. It wasn’t until quite recently that he started becoming comfortable enough around Aizawa and Yamada to allow a hug every now and then.
As it turns out, he has nothing to worry about. Eri leans into the touch, closing her eyes and letting it soothe her. She seems to completely disregard the hesitance in Hitoshi’s hand, the shakiness. Hitoshi is awed. This girl must have a boundless supply of resilience stored up in that tiny frame if she’s willing to trust someone like him so readily: a brother she’d only known for a matter of weeks.
“Tell me a bedtime story,” she says suddenly, eyes still closed.
Hitoshi starts, surprised she’s still awake. “Um, I don’t… know any.”
Eri’s eyes snap open. “Oh. That’s okay,” she replies, doing her best not to let her disappointment show.
The teen’s chest throbs. He might be a poor excuse for an older brother, but at the very least, he could do his best not to let down his little sister like this, however he can. “I don’t know any stories, but I can uh… sing for you, if you’d like.”
Eri’s eyes widen even further. They’re practically glowing: reflecting the dim light from her nightlight. “Yes, yes!”
“Okay then…” Hitoshi shuffles at the foot of the bed, feeling a bit self-conscious. It wasn’t like he’d never sung in front of someone before - he liked to sing or hum to himself sometimes when he was doing chores or busy work, like cleaning his room or working on math assignments, and odds are his dads and sister had heard him at least once - but for some reason, he was a little shy about singing for someone, even if it was a child.
After a while, he takes a deep breath and starting a lullaby he remembers from when he was younger. He isn’t sure if it’s something his biological parents had actually sung for him or if it was just something he’d heard on TV, but either way, the song had always brought him comfort. He hopes it does for Eri too.
Glancing over, Hitoshi watches as Eri’s eyes stay wide for the first few lines, then gradually droop. By the end of the first verse, they’re completely closed, and her breaths have slowed and evened. Hitoshi doesn’t think she’s quite asleep though, so he keeps going, making his way through every verse he knows. When he runs out of words, he starts over, softer this time, until his voice is barely above a whisper. Only then does he reach over and pat Eri on the head, checking to see if the girl is still awake or not.
She remains perfectly still, unresponsive to his touch.
Hitoshi rises from the bed and makes his way out of her room. Pausing, he reaches down and picks up another of Eri’s stuffed animals: a small pink stuffed bear. It must’ve fallen with the rabbit while she was thrashing around in her nightmares. He tucks it gently next to the girl and leaves the room.
XXX
Hitoshi’s nightly visits with Eri quickly become an established ritual.
She wakes him with her thrashing almost every night, sometimes multiple times a night. Each time, Hitoshi does his best to comfort her and soothe her back to sleep, but each time tempts him more and more into waking one of their dads. He just doesn’t feel qualified to help Eri, and she doesn’t seem to be getting any better.
But each time, Hitoshi convinces himself to just let them sleep. They could really use the rest, and besides, Hitoshi is awake for most of the night anyway.
He tries every trick he knows to help his younger sister deal with her nightmares. Lullabies are usually a surefire bet, but when those don’t work, he relies on his sixteen years of experience living with insomnia.
He makes her chamomile tea with warm milk and honey. One of his nicer foster moms had taught him the recipe, and though she’d done it more as a way to preserve her own peace of mind than anything, Hitoshi had appreciated it ever since. Eri always asks for extra honey.
He buries her in stuffed animals. Yamada couldn’t seem to stop adding to her collection. Every time he came back from a business conference, he brought home a new stuffed elephant or horse or monkey for his darling girl. Aizawa always scolded him for it, cautioning him not to spoil her, but Hitoshi was well aware of how many times he had slipped Eri a new stuffed cat behind Yamada’s back. Eri was good at keeping their secret, and Hitoshi knows that her collection helps remind her of both her dads’ love.
Once they’d gotten comfortable enough, Hitoshi even starts trying to rock her to sleep, holding her in his lap while he sings her his latest lullaby (he’d started learning new ones once the first one had started getting stale). Once she drifts off, he carefully drapes her back into bed, tucking her in and arranging her stuffed animals in a protective formation around her, fully preparing to rush back into her room as soon as he heard them all fall to the floor again.
XXX
But as the weeks drag on, Hitoshi starts to get a little desperate.
Between Eri’s nightmares and his own worsening insomnia, he’s getting even less sleep than normal, and the effects are starting to bleed into his life a bit. He can barely pay attention in class, eyes drooping and head lolling forward whenever he sits in one place for too long. The ever-present dark circles under his eyes are as black as kohl, and he’s getting a little sick of people asking if he’s wearing eyeliner. Practical training is a joke. Barely having the energy to stay awake during class, he has little to no hope of dragging his sleep deprived body through close combat exercises or search and rescue missions. His classmates are starting to notice that something’s up, even more than normal.
He does his best to ignore them. The last thing he needs is their concern. He’s fine. It’s his little sister who needs help.
To remedy the situation, he starts spending his lunch periods away from his friends, in UA’s library, researching tips on how to help children fall asleep. Not surprisingly, the internet is chock full of interesting advice and remedies, ranging from imaginative to the downright useless. He finds that most of the advice centers on training children to respect a certain bedtime, or to get over their fears of the monsters in the closet or under their beds. That’s not what Eri’s problem is though. Unfortunately, her monsters are very real, and though there’s no chance of them coming to hurt her anymore, that doesn’t dispel the damage they’ve already done.
“Hey, Shinsou!”
Hitoshi turns around, looking over his shoulder from his spot in the circulation desk queue. He narrows his eyes and sighs when he recognizes the figure bounding toward him, like some kind of puppy looking to be pet.
“I’ve been looking for you all of lunch period! This is the fifth day in a row you haven’t sat with us, and we were all starting to wonder where you were sneaking off to -- what’ve you got there?” Midoriya asks, abruptly switching gears when he notices the stack of books in Hitoshi’s arms.
Hitoshi clutches them to his chest, reflexively trying to conceal their covers and titles.
Somehow Midoriya finds a way to decipher them anyway. “Are those… children’s books?”
Hitoshi sighs again, handing the books to the librarian. It isn’t like he’s embarrassed over the books. He just doesn’t need to get another person involved. “Yes, they are.”
“What are they for?” Midoriya asks curiously.
“What do you think?” Hitoshi snaps, then instantly regrets it when he sees Midoriya flinch. He doesn’t mean to be rude. He’s just a little too short on sleep to deal with his friend’s boundless optimism. He scratches at the back of his neck anxiously. “I’m sorry, I just… haven’t been getting a lot of sleep.”
“Is it Eri?”
Hitoshi takes the books back from the librarian and gives her a nod in thanks before tucking them under his arm and making his way out. No point in beating it around the bush anymore. He knows from experience that he’s no match for Midoriya’s persistence. “Yeah, she’s been having trouble sleeping lately. Nightmares.”
Midoriya promptly follows him. “Can I help?”
“No, it’s okay. I’ve got it under control.”
Midoriya gives Hitoshi a look, the kind that lets him know he isn’t buying into Hitoshi’s bullshit, but he doesn’t press him any further. They’ve been friends for long enough for Midoriya to know when it doesn’t pay to test Hitoshi’s limits, and for that Hitoshi is grateful. Hitoshi briefly wonders if Midoriya read into the deeper meaning behind why he didn’t want his help. Midoriya had done enough for Eri already. Hitoshi wants to be able to give her this on his own, at the very least.
They make the rest of the way to their afternoon practical training session in silence.
XXX
That night, when Hitoshi starts to hear Eri’s muted cries, he’s more prepared than ever. He makes his way to her room, one hand clutching the stack of freshly borrowed library books, the other carrying his voice-altering mask, the piece of support gear that allows him to imitate his opponents’ voices during training. He resolves to give his best tonight and try something new, in the hopes that this would finally help Eri through her tough nights, and keep the nightmares at bay.
“What have you got there?” Eri asks, sitting up in bed and looking at him with gaping eyes. Her gaze flits from his face to the items in his hands.
“I thought we’d try something a little different,” Hitoshi answers, feeling a little sheepish. He feels almost as hesitant and shy as he did when he sang her the lullaby for the first time - and unlike singing, this isn’t exactly something he practices daily. “You said you wanted a bedtime story, remember?”
“Is that your make pretend mask?” she asks.
Hitoshi coughs, reflexively covering up a laugh. Make pretend mask? She isn’t too far off the mark. “Yeah, it’s my mask. Slide over a bit.”
She happily obliges, scooting over on the bed and giving Hitoshi space to sit down next to her, carefully avoiding her small army of stuffed animals as he does. He throws the thick, quilted comforter over their legs, making sure Eri is good and situated before reaching for one of the books. It’s a retelling of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Book in hand, Hitoshi uses the other to slide on his mask, feeling it click into place. He fiddles around with one of the dials before turning to Eri.
“Are you ready, little listener?” he asks in Yamada’s voice.
Eri’s eyes flare even wider, her lips bursting into a smile. “Loud dad.”
Hitoshi grins behind the mask. He plays around with the dials again. “I thought we could read some books tonight. Sound good?” he says in Mirio Togata’s voice, doing his best to imitate the upperclassman’s jovial cadence. By all accounts, he’s more of a big brother to Eri than he is, so Hitoshi might as well borrow his voice.
Eri laughs. “Strong brother.”
Hitoshi tries not to let the monicker dig at his self-esteem, but he can’t help it. He’s well aware of Eri’s different nicknames for all her ‘brothers’: Togata is ‘strong brother,’ Midoriya is ‘bunny brother,’ and Hitoshi is ‘tired brother.’ Whenever Monoma dropped by their apartment, she calls him ‘scary brother.’ It’s just her way of keeping them all straight, and by all means, if anyone were to sum up Hitoshi with one word, ‘tired’ might be the perfect pick. But he hopes that he can at least be more to her than that.
Cracking open the book, he flips to the first page with an illustrated spread. It depicts a small girl with long blonde hair - who looks strikingly like Eri, now that he thinks about it - wandering carelessly through the woods, surrounded on all sides by tall, gnarly trees with branches like grasping hands.
Switching the dials on his mask, Hitoshi starts to read. “Once upon a time, in a forest miles from the closest village, there lived a young girl…”
Eri burrows herself under the comforter, resting her head against Hitoshi’s side. She hugs her favorite toy, the stuffed rabbit, to her chest. “That’s tired dad’s voice.”
“Yeah, I thought he’d make a nice, boring narrator, perfect to lull you to sleep,” Hitoshi drones in Aizawa’s fatigued voice. Eri giggles, nodding in agreement as she scrunches her face against her rabbit and snuggles even deeper into the blankets.
Hitoshi turns the page and continues. “Her name was Goldilocks. She lived alone with her mother, who spoiled her endlessly, and didn’t pay much mind when Goldilocks wandered off...”
And on the story goes. Hitoshi picks a different voice for each character, choosing to stick with voices of people Eri knows to make things more fun. He uses Aizawa for the narrator, Yamada for Goldilocks’s mother, Togata for Papa Bear, Midoriya for Mama Bear, and Monoma for the presumptuous and spoiled little Baby Bear. For Goldilocks herself, he lets Eri try and read the lines. Yamada had been helping to teach her how to read a bit, to prepare her for when she started public school next year, and she is already pretty good.
When they get most of the way through - right as the bears come home and discover the strange girl sleeping in their beds - Eri looks up at Hitoshi with a quizzical frown. “Where are you in the story?”
Hitoshi pauses, looking down at her before turning the page. “Hmm, I don’t know. Maybe I’m the big bad wolf.”
Eri giggles. “That’s the wrong story. And you’re not bad.”
Hitoshi bops her playfully on the head. “Do you want to finish reading it or not?”
She laughs again, snuggling up against him and nodding.
They continue through the rest of the fairy tale without interruption. Eri drifts off somewhere near the end, right before Goldilocks’s mother has a chance to scold the girl for being a home invader. Hitoshi is surprised - he didn’t even need to go through his whole stack of books. Carefully untangling himself from the sleeping girl, he makes his way off the bed and tucks her under the blankets and comforter, once again making sure to tuck her favorite stuffed animals along with her. Switching off the bedside lamp he’d been using to read, he gives her one last glance before sliding out of the room and back to his own.
“You’re not bad.”
Eri’s words continue to echo in his mind as he lies awake in his bed for the remainder of the night. He could never hope to explain to her how much they mean to him, and it kills him to know that once again, he was the one who needed fixing. Who ended up getting fixed. This is supposed to be about helping her. And somehow she ended up helping him more.
Thankfully, though, she remains asleep for the rest of the night. At least the story seemed to do some good. At least he could do that for her, just this once.
But Hitoshi is fairly certain these wouldn’t be the last of Eri’s nightmares.
XXX
His suspicions are confirmed a few days later, after a blissful stretch when Eri would only wake up once a night or not at all. She loved their newfound storytime, but it isn’t enough. When Hitoshi wakes up to the sound of her cries for the third time that night, he’s beyond frustrated with himself. Nothing is working, and he’s out of ideas.
He walks cautiously into Eri’s room, doing his utmost to hide how drained he is, battered as much by his own self-deprecation as he is by the lack of sleep. “Are you okay?” he asks.
Eri peers up at him, tiny fists clutching her blanket to her chest, white-knuckled. Her eyes are wilder than normal, filled with the remaining dregs of whatever horrors had been chasing her in place of dreams. She’s shaking slightly, looking lost and haunted in the dim half-light trickling in through the doorway. “Y-yes…”
Hitoshi sighs and leans against the doorframe, finally letting his weariness show. It’s clear she doesn’t want to disappoint him. She knows very well how little sleep the both of them had been getting over this, and she feels guilty over it. A seven-year-old, feeling guilty over a problem that her older brother is supposed to fix for her. “No, you’re not.”
He rubs the back of his neck, wracking his brain for something to do. He could try reading her another book, or singing, or chamomile tea, but clearly none of those are permanent fixes. Maybe it’s finally time to admit defeat - admit he can’t do this on his own. But he still refuses to wake Aizawa or Yamada.
Glancing down at his feet, an idea finally comes to him. He picks up Eri’s stuffed rabbit and returns it to the girl, giving her a comforting pat on the head as he does. “Hold on a sec, I’m gonna go do something.”
He turns out of the room and returns to his own, flopping over his bed and fumbling for where his phone sits charging on his nightstand. Flicking through his contacts, he quickly finds the number he’s looking for. He only hopes he isn’t about to wake him up too.
It only takes a few rings before the person on the other side picks up. “Hello? Shinsou? Why are you calling in the middle of the night? Is everything alright?” Midoriya asks, firing one question after another in a tone much too energetic for that time of night. Clearly he’s been up at least as long as Hitoshi, maybe longer. Must be up late watching pro hero footage again or something.
“Hi, Midoriya. I’m fine. Everything’s fine. I just…” Hitoshi sighs, metaphorically gritting his teeth before letting out his next question. “Would you mind coming over for a bit? Eri’s having a really tough night, and I’m not… not sure what to do.”
He barely waits for two breaths before Midoriya answers. “Yes, of course! I’ll be right over.”
Hitoshi swears he can hear his friend fumbling around for his shoes in the background, leaping into action just as quickly as he would in a hero training exercise. He tries his best not to let the jealousy swell in his chest. “Great, text me when you get here, and I’ll let you in.... and thanks.”
“Of course!” Midoriya chirps, again over a muted shuffling sound. “See you soon!”
“See you,” Hitoshi replies, lowering his phone and exiting the call.
Midoriya arrives much quicker than Hitoshi expected, the text popping up on his phone mere moments after they’d ended their call. He must’ve used full cowling to rocket his way over, Hitoshi thinks with a pang of bitterness. As he makes his way to the door to let his friend in, however, he swallows the feeling and reminds himself that this is no time to lose his head over childish jealousy.
“Hi, Shinsou. How’s she doing?” Midoriya pants after the door swings open, his haggard breaths confirming Hitoshi’s suspicions. He’d run all the way here.
“Okay, just… scared,” Hitoshi explains tiredly as he shepherds Midoriya down the hall to his room. He’ll debrief him before returning to Eri. “She’s been having pretty bad nightmares for the last month or so, and I’m out of ideas. I figured someone who knows her a little better might be able to help,” he says, taking a seat on his bed.
Midoriya gives him a confused look. “Knows her better? But you’re her brother.”
“She thinks of you as a brother too, you know. And you’ve known her longer. Aizawa and Yamada only adopted her a few months ago. Before that, when she was living at the hospital, I barely saw her, and then suddenly they brought her home and were like ‘Hitoshi, you have a sister.’ But I don’t know the first thing about having siblings,” Hitoshi rambles. He raises a shaking hand to the back of his neck, painfully conscious of how much he’s letting spill out, but too far along to stop.
“And then she started waking up to these nightmares, and I had no clue what to do. I tried everything that usually helps me: tea, singing, stories, stuffed animals… but nothing helps. She keeps waking up, so afraid. And I don’t know how to comfort her. How do you comfort someone who’s lived through such horrible shit? Especially a kid? I can’t just tell her everything’s going to be okay. That’s cheap crap coming from someone who doesn’t know the first thing about what she’s been through...”
By the end of his rant, Hitoshi realizes he’s started tearing up. He hates himself for it. Once again, he’s letting himself collapse at a time when he needs to be the strong one.
Midoriya leans down, sitting on the bed next to him. “Shinsou…”
“So that’s why I called you. You’re so much better at this stuff than me. You always know what to do or say.”
Midoriya laughs hollowly. “That’s not true. You should’ve seen me in the provisional license exam, when we were tested on our ability to comfort survivors. I made a real mess of things.” He grabs a box of tissues off the nightstand and offers them to Hitoshi. “And you’ve done so much already. I had no idea this was going on for an entire month. I bet it was thanks to you she got any sleep at all.”
Hitoshi looks at him with aching, red eyes and takes the tissue box begrudgingly. “Well, now look at me.”
“It’s okay to ask for help, Shinsou.”
Drying his face with the tissues, Hitoshi turns at looks at his friend, who’s staring at him with an uncharacteristically serious expression etched into his features. Or maybe it is in character. Hitoshi had seen that look before, whenever Midoriya was about to rush headlong into something that he had no business rushing into. “I know that,” Hitoshi says.
“No, you really don’t,” Midoriya replies.
Hitoshi shudders out a sigh, trying to clear away the last of his unhelpful feelings. Midoriya has a point. How long had it taken him to admit that this was a problem he couldn’t solve on his own? How much time had been wasted over his stubbornness, at Eri’s expense?
No. He shakes those thoughts from his mind. Layering himself in guilt now would only bring him down. It’s what had been bringing him down this whole time.
Crumpling up his tissues and tossing them in the wastebasket, he turns to Midoriya. “Okay, you’re right: I don’t. So I’ll start now. What do you think we should do?”
Midoriya smiles. “I’ve got an idea.”
XXX
Half an hour later, Midoriya, Eri, and Hitoshi are sprawled out across Eri’s floor, buried under a metropolis of pillows, blankets, and stuffed animals. Hitoshi and Midoriya had dragged the chairs from the kitchen into the room, and it was no small miracle that they’d managed this without waking either Aizawa or Yamada. Once they had their structure, they’d dragged Eri’s blankets and comforter off her bed and draped them over the chairs, creating an instant tent. They then proceeded to renovate their structure with the remaining blankets and pillows until they’d built a proper fort. They’d even managed to incorporate most of the sheets and blankets from Hitoshi’s bed, as well as the fleece throws from the living room, creating little nooks for Eri to populate with her stuffed animals. By the time they had finished, it wasn’t just a pillow fort. It was a pillow castle.
Midoriya made it clear that he thought the best thing for Eri in the long run would be to tell Aizawa and Yamada about it, and possibly get her to professional help, if she was comfortable with it, and Hitoshi agreed. In the meantime though, Midoriya figured the best way to help her make it through the night was to have a little fun.
As soon as they finished their fortress, the three of them ventured inside with Hitoshi’s laptop, propping it up on a pillow stand and stretching out on their stomachs to watch one of Eri’s favorite movies.
The small girl lies stretched out between the two of them, her chin resting on the cushion provided by her favorite stuffed rabbit. Her contented expression makes it hard for Hitoshi to believe that she’d been wracked by nightmares only an hour before. Reaching out an arm, he drapes it over his sister comfortingly, watching her face for signs of discomfort at the touch.
She turns her head and smiles sleepily. “You’re the best big brother ever.”