Chapter Text
The breeze on top of the hospital roof was sharp tonight, stars glittering like the only thing happy to see you alive. It was was nice, saying goodbye this way. The sky had never been as beautiful before the whole disaster, so at least you could appreciate it now the way a painter would. Specks of snow fluttered around, dampening the noise from the nearby generators.
You shifted forward on your bum, leaning forward to look down at the back ally of the hospital. Quite the drop, over ten stories, and with the garbage and waste recycle there, it seemed fitting.
Your nails stung where they met bruised pink flesh, red lines lacing your flesh. Clean. At least when you felt pain it was something. Something distracting from the hell inside your mind.
It doesn’t help.
“Darling.” Limber hands with long fingers run down your back. “Only mine.” It’s sick, a twisted fantasy that’s been entwined into your subconscious. You don’t like it, but you’ve accepted that you don’t know how to live without it. “Pure.”
Who were you, if not Overhaul’s victim?
A face in the papers. Fodder for tabloids. A loser. A villain pretending to be a victim. Someone who didn’t entirely hate their captor, who found him to be tragic, handsome, and terrifying broken.
They were right.
You had let Kai Chisaki do whatever he wanted, and so you gave yourself no defense. Not when the police asked what had happened, nor when your father’s step-wife demanded an explanation for your pregnancy.
Sex, Karen, it happens.
She didn’t appreciate your bitter reply, and had threatened your father that if he brought you to her home, to threaten the stability of her precious children, they were through. Not that the threat had much clout as the woman was referring to the house your father had bought. But your kind father was not blessed with a strong spine, and so he relented, offering to pay for an apartment.
However, the conversation was stalled as you began receiving threats. Death threats, thanks to a newspaper who caught wind of a leak in the police department and discovered you, the quirkless, pregnant, wife of the former boss of the Shie Hassaikai. From across the nation, people were sending in letters detailing how you should be dealt with.
The hospital staff was on strict alert to not let a single letter, or psycho, into your room.
So abandoned, alone, and seven weeks pregnant, you did the only thing you could think about. The time was right, everything just like you planned. The nurses only checked in on the half-hour so there were around fifteen minutes left. With the stolen mask and apron, no one had given you a second look. They had done what they always did best. Look away, pretend that everything was okay until the brutal truth was ready to rip their comforting lies to shreds.
Your hand floats over your belly, knowing your own hypocrisy is ripe. This wouldn’t solve a single thing for you, and you weren’t alone.
But silently screaming was no longer enough, and death was the only certain thing in this life.
What could you offer this boy who would always be stained? The memory of Overhaul may fade but things would never be like they had been. Better to end it for both of you and solve the problem of you.
You stood, no more struggling. In the position, the wind swayed you back and forth, lulling you into false security. With little fanfare, you pushed forward and closed your eyes to the sky.
Peace.
At last.
.
.
.
“What are you doing?”
The moment is sharp, the daydream disrupted as you drop the dish you had been holding. The dish that had been clean, as you had been scrubbing it for hours. The one that you were still scrubbing, trying to get the permanent smudge in the corner to finally off.
It clatters against the ground, shattering into fifteen pieces around your feet. Your jolt sends you reeling in terror the opposite way, and the only reason your foot isn’t sliced open is thanks to the large scarf wrapped around your arm.
As soon as it’s finished steadying you, you’re released from the scarf, falling to the tile floor to shake like a leaf in a storm. You scramble, hands to the counter, pawing at the tile there.
The owner of the scarf. It was him, the man who wears black and looks like he doesn’t sleep. You push down the revulsion. Overhaul wore black, though would he would never have been seen so unpolished and frumpy as this hero.
“You.” You said blankly, forcing the word out. One word syllables are all you communicate in, much to your lawyer’s distress. It was quite a leap from the empty stares you had stated with, so at least you were talking.
For a long time, you forgot you could. You realize that you’ve been staring at one another for a while, and you realize you are gripping something. It’s a large knife. The same type knife that you had hidden under your pillow, swiped the day you discovered the staff kitchen at the UA Dorms. You looked about ready to skewer him.
You release it, letting it clatter to the counter. You don’t know what to say to this scruffy man. You used to have confidence in spades, but now you have a difficult time looking at any man who looked legal.
Thankfully the hero broke the awkward silence.
“Eri said she was worried about you.” He said, making it clear that he was just as much your watchman as Eri's.
“Fine.” You said, tapping a finger against your large sweater, finding a loose thread on the bright yellow atrocity to play with. Colorful cats were threaded across the front. You couldn’t complain. The only things you responded when asked about what you wanted to wear was ‘color’, and now you had it in spades.
He’s at a loss.
You don’t know why he’s still here. You don’t like him. Don’t like anyone. You stay in your room most of the time, handle locked, tv on. Someone delivers your meals, just leaves them outside your door. You leave the half-eaten place after you try and fail to eat. It mostly tastes like ash, too rich to make sense, guilt at eating something good overflowing logic.
Perhaps because he’s only seen you like four times he’s getting a good look in. Like you are an animal or something. The same look is why you don’t want to see the kid heroes who saved, you despite the intense gratitude you feel.
How could you show your face to that blonde boy who had lost his quirk, thanks to you?
He deserved better.
“What.” You say sharply, hair falling over your face like a degenerate. “What?” You repeat when he just continues to stare. He raises his finger.
“Your sweater.” He says. You pinch your lips together. “It’s nice.”
Your mouth drops open, a nerve in your forehead twitching.