Chapter Text
“Tokoyami,” the doctor says, hesitant. “Are you listening?”
He can tell the doctor every second word he’s said for the past five minutes. Some of them he doesn’t understand, but he can repeat them back; his parents say he learned to speak early.
He’s not sure when he started speaking, because there’s always been another voice in his head.
“Yes,” He says, “You don’t think it’s schizophrenia.”
The doctor looks a little disturbed. Is it because he pronounced the word without slipping? It takes practice - he likes going through the dictionary, sounding things out to himself. Words have power.
You have power, says the voice in his head. We have power.
“It could be part of your quirk...but it could also be another condition.”
At least his parents - and the doctors - believe him now.
‘Fumikage, it’s just your imagination.’
‘Don’t you want to make more friends? You need to stop scaring them.’
‘Son, I know it’s hard for you, but you have to learn manners.’
“I’m a bird,” He says quietly, “A mutated quirk.”
His mother can change the brightness level around her; his father can make things out of light.
When he was smaller, he would try to catch sunbeams in his hands, beak clacking in disappointment when they didn’t respond to his touch.
Now he’s eight, which is too old for that.
Whatever the voice in his head is, it’s nothing useful like what his parents can do, so it can’t be part of his quirk. What do voices have to do with his feathers?
“Are you going to test me more?” He asks, looking at the doctor’s face again, up from the floor. That’s where he usually tends to stare - he’s told his gaze is ‘intense for a young boy’.
Maybe people just don’t want him looking at them, or the shiny things they wear - he’s never taken anything, not since he was sunbeam catching age - but anything glittery calls to him.
“No.” The doctor checks his watch, then looks at Tokoyami again. “Not today. I need to discuss this further with my colleagues before we decide what to do.”
“What do you think it is?”
The doctor’s face is closed off as he asks, but not in an unfriendly way. He’s just being careful, though Tokoyami isn’t sure why.
“I think you should get back to your parents, young man. We’re done for now.”
The boy tilts his head back and forth, then nods, and runs out of the room.
—
I am power, whispers the voice. I am your dark strength. Use me.
“I don’t know how.” He says, alone in the hallway until he gets back to the waiting room. “And I don’t think I trust you.”
I am part of you, like your heart. I am your shadow and your will. We need each other.
“No.”
You will see, it replies, and then goes silent.
Tokoyami takes a deep breath, and steadies his hand on the doorknob. Time to keep his words inside him, along with whatever else lives in his head.
If he can’t be part of the light, then at least he can avoid falling into the dark.