Archive of Our Own

Satomi flinched back into her chair when a nurse rushed by, readily attending to some emergency that was out of Satomi’s sight. She felt ridiculous flinching because someone was speed-walking by, but being awake for 27 hours straight was running her nerves raw.

Well, there were other reasons but she was trying to shut them out for the moment.

She almost wished that she had stayed in Kamino, pulling away concrete slabs with her quirk to only find another dead civilian or at least a part of one. The few that she was able to save made the whole thing somewhat less crushing than sitting in a hard plastic hospital chair waiting to see someone she didn’t want to see. 

Just the impact of the fact that she had been called in as an emergency contact was probably one of the only things to push her to come. Never in a million years did she expect to care but the idea that he wanted her there…

She heard someone coming in her direction but didn’t recognize the sound of a wheelchair until the person spoke up.

“Rough night?”

Her head snapped up so fast, she could feel a nerve pinch.

“Tens ei .”

Her voice cracked a bit at the end but Tensei had never been someone to judge.

“Hey Satomi. I was rolling by and noticed you weren’t looking so good. Thankfully your hair is such a bright blue beacon otherwise I might have missed you.”

She tried for a moment to glare, or roll her eyes, or something in retaliation but she couldn’t bring herself to.

“How’d you get in? I’m pretty sure the hospital is locked down right now.”

“One of my old sidekicks had me as an emergency contact and I could get here the fastest compared to their family. I finished pretty quick because we aren’t really that close. But I’m more interested in what’s up with you.”

Satomi inhaled slowly, ignoring her hitching breath before she sat up fully to speak eye to eye. If she owed Tensei anything now, it was her full attention.

“Have you seen the broadcast of Kamino?”

“I caught parts of it while trying to coordinate sidekicks and such. Are you talking about what happened to Best Jeanist? I didn’t hear about his status after…”

Satomi nodded morosely glancing in the general direction of the elevator. “I’m waiting for them to clear him for visitors. He’s stable and is kind of awake but on that good stuff considering how much damage there was to his abdomen.”

“Do you actually want to go up?”

She turned back to him, eyes wide.

Neither spoke for a moment before Tensei sighed and wheeled himself around to park his wheelchair next to her, offering his hand.

“I might be biased but from what you’ve told me. I don’t think I’d want to see him either. If I talked to Tenya the way your brother talked to you, I hope he’d drop me like a rock faster than he can run away.”

Satomi ignored his offered hand as she was too deep into her thoughts to bother with Tensei’s offered kindness at the moment... 

“What if he’s changed? It’s been years. Maybe he could stand to accept the way I act and dress? Now that he’s seen more of what real villains are, he can stand me being a punk rather than the submissive little sister he wanted me to be.”

Tensei cringed a bit, thinking of the last time he’d seen Jeanist outside of fieldwork. Dude didn’t seem all that different from when Satomi and he would study at her house and get nitpicked at for their ‘uncouth behavior’.

“Honestly unless he’s had an epiphany between The Sports Festival and now, I doubt it. That Bakugou kid-”

"Don't get me started on that,” she growled to herself, getting a little loud. “That's what he does. He sees a kid going feral on live TV, y’know, ‘cause they put him in chains and he tries to make him into his idea of a perfect hero by...what? Putting him in jeans and telling him to be nicer?"

Despite the energy, Tensei reached out to grab her hand, bringing her back as a reminder that they were still in a hospital at ass o'clock in the morning.

“Too bad Bakugou didn’t pick you or Miruko. The energy you three give off matches pretty well. I bet you two could get him to channel his anger into something better.”

“You bet your ass I would.”

“Last time I bet my ass with you, I couldn’t sit right for a week after,” Tensei groaned but was still smiling enough to let her know it was in good humor.

This stumped Satomi for a moment before she saw Tensei’s shit-eating grin. 

“Wow, I wouldn’t have pegged you for that kind of man, Tensei.”

She let herself openly laugh for a moment before it turned into hiccupping, then into soft sobs.

“Satomi…”

“I’m fine, don’t be so bloody soft,” Satomi grumbled wiping at her eye despite not shedding any tears yet.

“If you need to cry, you should.”

She shrugged him off, ignoring the suggestion as she fought to catch her breath.

When she didn’t seem to change her mind, he sighed and leaned back, letting his head fall against the wall. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t force Satomi to do anything that wasn’t her idea in the first place. All he could do was offer comfort by proximity.

It took a few minutes and Tensei actually started to doze off a bit when Satomi’s hand on his startled him awake.

She tried to jerk her hand away when he flinched but he caught it, threading their fingers and holding her like a lifeline.

“It’s okay. I’d rather be awake right now if you need me.”

She didn’t seem sure but by this point, they were both hitting levels of exhaustion that were probably wearing on their logic.

“Should I even go see him? I’m still dressed in leather and spikes. I’m still rockin’ a mohawk and the same ‘villainous attitude’ that pissed him the fuck off back then. Even if he swallowed his bloody pride for ten minutes, he might be a bit pissed about being ghosted for years at a time.”

Tensei tried to be comforting by squeezing her hand but it didn’t feel right to be telling her how to feel about all of this. 

“What are you afraid will happen if you talk to him?”

It took a moment before she looked up at him, watery eyes asking for something he couldn’t give her.

“If the wanker tells me to ‘fuck off,’ I can’t do it anymore. I can’t make myself keep thinking that maybe it’ll be different. If he shuts me down now, that’s it. I’m bloody done with him.”

“You’re scared he will never change? And it’s better to live in denial than getting closure?”

She paused, processing that before she glared at him halfheartedly. “Why do you have to be so good at that?”

Tensei just smiled at her, earning a playful shove.

“Okay, genius, if you’re so smart, what should I do?”

This took Tensei aback a bit. He knew that he couldn’t decide for her.

“Satomi…”

“Just help me.”

Tensei sighed and ran a hand through his hair, making it stick up everywhere.

“Would you have regretted it if you didn’t come to visit me after Hosu?”

She tensed up, her eyes locking on something in the distance he wasn’t seeing but he forced himself to continue.

“If I had died that day, you would have regretted not saying goodbye for the rest of your life. Even if he’s stable now, he could still die. Would you regret not saying goodbye? Even if it was to a man who wouldn’t care about a connection with you.”

Anything past the suggestion of death went right past her head. Things started to fuzz around the edges and her breath started to get ragged as she started to fall too deep into her thoughts. 

She vaguely recognized Tensei trying to bring her back to reality but she couldn't breathe. She needed to get away now.

“Washroom,” she gasped out, ignoring him as he tried to stop her. She got up, stumbling to her feet, speed walking to the last place she saw a women’s bathroom.

She let the door fall shut behind her, unhappy with the idea of sitting on a toilet like this, but she needed something new. After a second, she noticed the baby changing table was an actual shelf with space under it.

It was enough room to squeeze into, arms wrapped around her legs as she struggled to get her thoughts together.

Even underneath the bleachers, standing in a random section of the hallway, Satomi could practically feel the rumble of the crowd as they geared up for the next match. Even between her high school years and then, the UA Sports festival seemed to be just getting bigger.

Satomi had spent the past five minutes trying to figure out what to write in the ‘agency’ box of the request form. Would she be allowed to take on a UA kid as a solo hero? The ticking time bomb of a kid might benefit from it though. Fewer rules, fewer people to tell him what to do, and more one-on-one time with a mentor.

She might have been putting the cart before the horse with already picking the Bakugou kid before the final battles but she had a feeling that she needed to do it now rather than later. 

Finally, she decided on just putting “solo hero” in the box asking for her hero agency, just to fill it in, when her phone chimed loud enough to hear it even in the hallway of the stadium, crowded as people ran to and fro between matches.

She managed to wedge her phone between her shoulder and her ear without dropping it, even as she was balancing trying to use the wall as a flat surface to write.

“S’appening?”

“Satomi?”

The near-tears sound of Ms. IIda’s voice broke Satomi out of her concentration, immediately pulling her attention to the phone.

“Hey hey, wot’s goin on?”

“It’s Tensei. Stain attacked him in Hosu and…”

On the other side of the line, Satomi could hear Ms. Iida’s voice hitch as she tried to ward off another round of tears. Objectively, she knew that she should say something or at least be tearing up too but nothing came as she desperately waiting for Ms. Iida to keep going.

“-he made it alive to the hospital but there was so much damage to his spine, the doctors aren’t even sure if he’ll live ‘til tomorrow let alone ever be able to walk again. I-I don’t…”

Satomi let her take a few deep breaths before interrupting.

“Have you called Tenya? I know you want him to stay for the awards ceremony but if he learns that we purposefully didn’t tell him until after, I think we might be proxy to his first swear.”

Even through the phone, Satomi could almost feel Ms. Iida calm, even if just a fraction of a percent. 

“I haven’t called him. I don’t know if I could keep him calm enough just through the phone to hear me finish telling him where to go.”

“You need me to go tell him?”

“Please.” Ms. Iida was practically whispering now, anything louder potentially spurring on another round of tears.

“Got it. Send me the address and I’ll send you an eta once I got Tenya.”

Ms. Iida agreed and said some placating goodbyes that Satomi didn’t really process. As much as she needed to be an adult right now, for Tenya and Tenseii’s sake, she really just wanted to find a private corner and scream until she felt better.

But a hero’s work is never done. That includes giving bad news.

When she neared the stairs going up to the student section of the stadium, she was prepared to have to argue with a security guy until she was blue in the face. Thankfully, that particular guard was two feet away, awkwardly flirting with an unimpressed Uwuami. Small mercies.

As long as she didn’t act suspiciously, she was mostly ignored all the way up the stairs and down the corridor leading the individual classes’ sections. When she found class 1-A’s section, she didn’t think much before popping her head in.

“Tenya.”

The aforementioned kid jumped a few inches in his seat along with the rest of the class. When he saw her, he looked .3 seconds away from lecturing her about safety protocols but she interrupted him.

“Your mom called. It’s an emergency.”

Tenya froze in place, his eyes going wide and face paling like he was running out of blood. The other students were either doing the same or desperately looking to each other for answers or reassurance. 

In a move faster than she could process, Tenya was out of his seat and trying to rush past her. She managed to unspool a cable from her belt and coil it around his wrist, stopping him a bit too hard.

“I promised your mom I wouldn’t let you get hurt tryin’ to rush out of here. She doesn’t need two sons in the hospital.”

He hesitated, trying to subtly test the grip she had on him but she just wound more of the cables further up on his arm in response.

When he relaxed his pull, she didn’t let go but was able to take the time to ask one of the kids where the locker rooms were and how to get there. Tenya tried to protest taking the time but she was steadfast in making him slow down.

As they were leaving, Satomi heard behind her someone whisper her hero name, Tension, to another student. Which reminded her…

She whipped around to glare at the rest of the class.

“I better not hear a peep of this on social media or I will tie you all up on light poles, hanging by your big toes and leave ya there for the vultures.”

Whatever authority these kids thought she had was enough to encourage most of them to nod fervently.

She ended up waiting at her car for Tenya to come out. It probably would have just stressed them both out to have her breathing down his neck. In the end, he managed to make it to the car without hurting himself so it was enough of a win for Satomi to ignore how it had taken much less time than it should have and the fact that Tenya’s polo wasn’t buttoned properly. 

What was probably even a worse indicator of trouble was that the entire way to the hospital, Tenya never criticized her driving once. Not when she changed lanes too fast or sped up at a yellow light rather than slowing down. It took her making a crack about how she was breaking every law, including the laws of physics to even get him to mumble something about, “be careful.”

It was hard not to rush in right after him when they made it to the hospital and Tenya practically leaped out of the car. Instead, she forced herself to be deliberate as she parked, grabbed a parking pass, and made sure she had all of her stuff before walking inside.

It was a bit after Tenya had gone in so when she finally made it up, she could hear him openly crying and mumbling something she couldn’t make out on the other side of the door. 

Ms. Iida was standing by the doorway, head tilted back as she struggled to stem the flow of tears even for a moment.

“Ms. Iida?”

She looked up and started crying all over again when she saw Satomi.

Privy to the Iida family body language, Satomi knew she could at least put her hand on the elder Iida’s shoulder, a small comfort in a non-tactile family.

“Any change since ya called?”

Ms. Iida shook her head. “He’s stable now but that can change at any moment. If you want to go in and say-”

“‘ello,” Satomi interjected. “I’m just saying ‘ello to him. I’m not accepting a goodbye right now.”

Before Ms. Iida could say something that made more sense, Satomi breezed by, slipping through the doorway.

It was simultaneously worse and better than she imagined.

Tensei wasn’t sprawled on the bed, blood and guts spilling out of his abdomen but at the same time seeing in person the million machines he was hooked up to and the miles of gauze keeping him closed made her nauseous.

Before she could chicken out or freak out, Tensei was able to lift his head just slightly and focus his eyes enough to look at her.

“S-tomi.”

Hearing his voice so rough and haggard, made the tears well right back up in her eyes even as she fought to keep them down long enough to be the rock that everyone needed at this point. 

“So whose idea was it for you to be patrolling alone? I just wanna talk.”

Tenya picked his head up and looked at Satomi with the most confused expression, no doubt Ms. Iida mirroring him perfectly. But rather than let her stand alone trying to laugh in this awful situation, he smiled right back.

“I don’t remember but don’t worry, I ‘just want to talk to them’ too.”

Satomi’s mask slipped a bit as she stepped forward and took a spot at Tensei’s side. She tried to keep the bravado going but seeing how dull Tensei’s normally bright eyes were, she hiccupped a sob and laid her hand on an unbandaged spot on his arm.

“Fuck if I can’t think of the right thing to say right now.”

Tensei’s smile didn’t waver. “Then don’t say anything. We just need you here with us.” 

She was ripped out of the memory when something grey moved in her peripheral vision. Her chest tightened as her quirk flared, the cables sewn into her jacket and spooled on her belt vibrating with energy as they prepared for a fight.

A moment away from attacking, a hand rested over her’s, the familiar feeling of concrete fingers holding her own. 

“Ken?”

“Hello Satomi.”

“Fuck, how long have I been here?”

He did his version of a smile which included mostly eye movement and a slight tilt to his head. 

“Not long. I actually saw you run from Tensei. He wanted to come after you but this bathroom isn’t wheelchair friendly.” 

Over the years she’d been told that it was the weirdest things that set her off. Almost like a mousetrap spring but that was the only one set among a thousand identical ones. The thing is, what most people didn’t understand was that those mouse traps were always sprung when her friends were having issues.

“They have an inaccessible bathroom, in a hospital ?” Satomi snapped, anger overshadowing her panic as she stumbled to her feet. But before she could go rush off to fight, Ken stuck his arm across her path, stopping her cold.

“I understand you aren’t happy with that but you can't take all of your negative energy out on some poor nurse who doesn’t have control over the width of the bathroom door.”

No matter the internal fury, she couldn’t argue with that. And besides, going up and down in blood pressure so quickly between waiting around, a panic attack, her righteous anger, etc. was going to get her nothing but her own hospital room and a very intense lecture from Tensei about her personal health.

“Whatever we’re doing-” Ken said, breaking her out of her thoughts again, “-you’re washing your hands first. You’ve been sitting on the bathroom floor in a hospital.”

Satomi cringed but still shot him a dirty look before doing as instructed as fast as she could get away with.

“Ya coulda said it nicer or something. I really didn’t want to be thinking about how many germs are-”

“Excuse me.”

Brought out of their own little bubble, they both looked up to see a middle-aged woman, standing there, hands on her hips looking like she just ate a lemon.

“Wot,” Satomi asked, her accent going a little harder than usual. 

“I do believe this is the women’s room. You-” she dramatically pointed her finger at ken, “-aren’t supposed to be in here.”

Before that particular mousetrap sprung and set Satomi off, Ken was already speaking.

“Are you suggesting that because I have a mutant quirk, I cannot be female? I understand that for women ‘square’ is not an accepted body shape but that is usually an opinion one keeps to themself.”

The lady sputtered, unsure of whether to point out his masculine voice or to just keep standing there. Thankfully Ken had it covered. 

“If you’ll excuse us, she needs to go check on her critically injured brother.”

With a hand on her back, he steered Satomi to the door, ignoring the lady continuously trying to talk to the both of them. Satomi resisted a little as if she would have actually been able to beat Ken in any kind of strength-based competition to get within lecturing range of the lady.

Tensei seemed a little apprehensive as she was dragged out cursing out someone he couldn’t see, but at least didn’t say anything about it when Satomi was unceremoniously dropped back into her chair. He was probably relieved he hadn’t done permanent mental damage by trying to make a connection between his trauma and her current situation.

But Satomi was pissed at Ken.

“Am I ever going to be allowed to rightfully chew someone out around you or are you going to man-handle me out of every situation?”

“First get a full night’s sleep, start regular counseling sessions, and just generally take care of yourself, and then you can fight whoever you want. But for now, you aren’t thinking straight-and before you accuse me of anything, I’m saying this because you are- and are being overly emotional. Probably due to the lack of sleep.”

She looked like she was going to have an aneurysm trying to reason her way out of that one.

“Okay, one, you’re probably right but two, get fucked.”

Not knowing what to do, Tensei reached out and put his hands in between them and did a little ‘back off’ gesture, at the very least trying to prevent Satomi from going off again.

“Okay, new topic. I...can’t think of anything. I’m tired too. Anyone else? Nothing relating to the current situation or hero stuff at all.”

“Fine,” Satomi huffed. “At the beginning of this year, Tenya almost hit me with a baseball bat because he thought I was a burglar and then proceeded to freak out that Tensei and I were in a room alone with the door closed. Then Ms. Iida, while calming him down subtly told us that she knew what we were doing and that we’d better be using protection.”

The two men froze for a second, processing the statement before it clicked.

“Satomi!” Tensei hissed, mortified.

“You still live with your parents?”

They both glanced over at Ken who was just realizing how skewed his priorities were.

“Yes Ken, I live with my parents. You know how traditional my family is. I didn’t really have a good reason to move out once I was stable enough for it besides the western distaste of anyone who still lives with their parents.”

“Fair enough.”

Satomi gestured sporadically, drawing their eyes to her. “Okay, is that really the point you two are going to talk about, or are you at least going to pretend to be surprised that Tensei and I are still FWBs?”

Unamused, Ken looks at her and deadpans, “Oh wow. You and Tensei have a sexual relationship. I never would have guessed.”

“Hey-”

“I actually thought you two had started dating again. You were one of the first people to come to see him after his big injury.”

Satomi looked a bit uncomfortable but thankfully, Tenya was willing to take over for her.

“That’s its own story but honestly-”

“Ms. Fletcher-Hakamata?”

Pulled out of their own little bubble, the trio looked up at the nurse who had spoken.

“That would be me,” Satomi said carefully, not sure if she wanted to hear the news.

“Your brother is awake now but he really needs his rest so if you want to go see him today, you ought to go now.”

She handed over a single laminated pass with a hard bump in the middle where there must have been a microchip. Not waiting for Satomi’s reaction, she walked away, probably to one of the other million tasks nurses do on a regular day.

It was calm for about ten seconds before Tensei noticed how pale Satomi had become in the past moment. 

“Satomi-”

“We haven’t even figured out what I’m supposed to do,” Satomi hissed curling into herself, grabbing at a few strands of hair which had fallen out of their stiff positions over the course of the night.

All Tensei could think of to do was lay his hand on her back as she started to spiral again.

“You know-”

Satomi and Tensei looked over at Ken in confusion, his tone not quite fit for the situation. 

“-this reminds me of our motto when we had our All Might club back in middle school.”

Satomi groaned loudly at him, possibly in an attempt to get him to stop but Tensei seemed interested and subtly gestured for Ken to continue.

“WWAMD. What would All Might do?”

Thankfully, rather than playfully punch him in the shoulder like she would do to most of her friends, he had the protection of concrete shoulders. So instead, she angrily but gently reached out and pushed on his face until he had to lean back to get away from her hand.

“Go away.”

“If I did that, then who would be here to remind you of your amazing core values and loving nature?”

“You know what-”

She stood up and turned to face them.

“You can imagine I’m doing it because it’s the Right Thing™️ but if it means getting away from you two dweebs, I think I’m going to head up.”

Ken seemed relatively pleased with this but Tensei immediately dropped from smiling to apprehensive. 

“Wait, you don’t have to do this just because-”

Ken cut him off by pushing down his outstretched hand.

“Do you really think we can force her to do anything she doesn’t want to?”

Tensei seemed to understand, which was pretty lucky for all of them as Satomi had taken the chance and left, heading around the corner to the elevators.

She had to go through another security check there plus there were quirk suppressor cuffs she apparently had to wear. It was a good thing that all this security went into protecting Tsunagu but it was really annoying standing there as she was scanned again by more security at the floor she was looking for. 

For all of her bravado, when she was led to the right door, she paled so fast a nurse looked ready to catch her if she passed out. 

It took another solid minute of being instructed on how to breathe (how ridiculous was that) before the nurse let her go back to regretting every decision she ever made.

But before she could start into another spiral, she made the split-second decision to knock before she could talk herself out of it. 

After a few seconds, she almost decided that he must have been unconscious from the drugs or just plain asleep. She started to turn to walk away, berating herself for getting worked up over nothing when she heard a very rough voice speak.

Right, severe abdominal wound. He probably couldn’t speak well.

Unable to run any longer, Satomi twisted the door handle and leaned in just enough to stick her head through the door.

“Good morning, double-denim disaster.  I kinda wish you were this see-through when we were kids. I might have won some of our arguments.”

Maybe she had come on too hard because Tsunagu was just staring at her with wide eyes, frozen even as he seemed to have been tugging on a corner of the hospital blanket with his fingers. The effect was magnified 100 times by the fact that with the hospital gown, he no longer had anything to cover the lower half of his face. 

“What? Not funny?” She joked, hoping she could talk her way out of the awkwardness. “Okay, how about this? I thought you hated holes in jeans.”

Her brother still said nothing, his eyes not moving from her face.

“Tsunagu, dude,” she laughed, desperately trying to get a reaction. “I need some feedback here. I have a bunch of these because I use humor to cope with trauma. Can I keep going or are you going to yeet me out of the window?"

“Satomi?”

That was a bit unexpected as for the past few years the rare occasion where they saw each other and Satomi couldn’t immediately walk away, he would be completely formal and call her Miss Tension or at best Miss Fletcher. She, of course, would probably call him some stupid denim based pun to try and get a rise out of him but honestly, she was a little out of practice using his given name too. 

“Yeah, it’s me,” she said carefully, still smiling and trying to keep her voice level. “You might have forgotten to take me off your emergency contacts. I can go if you want-”

“Stay.”

Even spoken so softly, that single word made everything in her chest compact before releasing, letting the tension flow away and a certain tightness in her heart finally relax.

She tried to smile at him but it didn’t quite reach her eyes as they misted over.

“Uh, sure. I can stay.”

Tsunagu gestured with his head towards the empty chairs left there for family and friends to sit with patients. Satomi was still unsure she fit in either category but she still followed his silent direction, grabbing a chair spinning it around and sitting so she could lean her arms and head on the back.

With their history still fresh in her mind, she expected Tsunagu to chastise her for not sitting properly or at the very least frown in her general direction but strangely enough, he smiled at her.

“I see you haven’t changed despite my...less-than-friendly attitude towards your style.”

So stunned by the combination of his positive tone but potentially negative words, Satomi just tilted her head and promptly got an eyeful of a part of her own falling mohawk which apparently decided this was the right time to make her blind.

Through the struggle of getting her hair away and the pain to stop, she heard Tsunagu make a soft sound before starting to roughly cough. 

Now panicked, she reached for the nurse call button but was stopped by a barely imperceptible tug on her sleeve. When she didn’t immediately react outside of freezing, the silk lining on the inside of her jacket squeezed around her wrist before gently pulling her hand away.

Tsunagu, despite breathing like he had just come off a marathon, was obviously reaching out and tugging on her sleeve with his quirk, in spite of him just having A) gone through surgery and B) just got out of the mother of all battles.

“What the bloody hell are you doing, you need a nurse for whatever the hell that-”

“I was laughing,” Tsunagu said in between deep breaths. “I mean, it started out as a laugh but it hurt a lot worse than I thought it would.”

Despite feeling relief, the stress that was threatening to swallow her took over for a moment.

She, in the kindest way possible, hissed at him,” Would you be careful already? I’ve had enough scares tonight to last me ten lifetimes. I don’t need you tearing stitches for a chuckle.”

Some of the light that had been brought to his eyes dimmed at this. Most likely unused to having his face uncovered, he openly frowned at her.

“What,” she asked sternly, a breath away from snapping at him. “Surprised that I care about ya?”

“To be honest, yes I am.”

Leave it to her brother to be able to rile her up to anger then drop her right back down with one look and one sentence. As much as she wanted to stay mad, talking about the most toxic parts of their relationship could wait until he was cleared to be completely stable.

She took a deep breath, allowing her quirk to roll down her shoulders into her jacket where she very slightly shuddered the embedded cables. It took tremendous effort to even slightly use her quirk with the suppressors on but it felt even better, like stretching a stiff muscle. She felt ridiculous resorting to old habits to keep her jumpy energy down but considering this was old business, it fit.

“And to be honest I’m surprised about that. The last time I talked to Tsunagu, he tore me down for not fitting to his standards, and any time I’ve talked to Best Jeanist in the past few years, he was cold at best and dismissive at worst.”

That hit Tsunagu where it hurt apparently as he winced and looked away from her sharp gaze.

“I can not disagree with that. I was particularly...aggressive with that opinion.”

“Were ya? Were ya really?” Satomi managed to sound hyper-aggressive and completely done with everything at the same time.

Tsunagu did not look back at her, eyes fixated on an unseen point beyond Satomi’s shoulder.

Satomi ignored his silence in favor of reaching up and pulling down and to the side the last of the stubborn parts of her mohawk down, wincing at the crunch of the dry hair spray. It wasn’t anything close to a decent hairstyle with how angled and stiff each strand was. It was reminiscent of her casual asymmetrical style that was more common on the days that she didn’t have the energy for hairspray.

Tsunagu seemed more enamored with this than he really should have been. Or maybe he was just zooted off his mind or falling asleep. Either way, she kept shooting him side-eye glances, waiting for him to speak.

When he still hadn’t said anything, by the time she was done, she fully looked at him to make sure he was still awake. He was, so she got even more frustrated.

“I have been asking for you to contribute to this conversation and all you’ve done is interrupt me with curveballs and...you’re zooted off your ass right now.”

Tsunagu, in all his glory, actually, genuinely, completely smiled at this.

“Maybe just a bit.”

“Fuck,” she hissed under her breath. “I thought you actually wanted to talk. I am not accepting an apology until you’re sober. I want to know for sure that you mean it.”

He frowned, not like he was mad but he almost looked...sad that she wasn’t taking his apology at face value.

“But-”

“Ten years of silence didn’t make you want to apologize, so why would this? I think ya’ just moody ‘cause of the drugs.” 

“Is it that crazy to think that I’d want to make up after almost dying? Satomi, you ran away-”

“You pushed me away,” she snapped back, standing up abruptly and backing away from the bed. “And for what? Because I dressed differently than the norm? Newsflash asshole, plenty of people are punk but I’ve never seen anybody but you wearing a fucking jurtleneck.”

“Satomi-”

“If you tell me to calm down I swear to god that I’m leaving and never coming back.”

The anger was evident on his face but he stayed silent.

“Did it ever occur to you how much of a hypocrite you were telling me to be more ladylike? You’ve never exactly been the most masculine person. And the worst part is I don’t really give a shit about that part. I care that you were so far up your ass that you were actually surprised when I went back to England and cut contact.”

“Satomi.”

“We should have been building each other up, not tearing each other down.”

“Sa tomi .”

“You got away with fashion because you got into heroics too but-”

“Sa-”

“What!”

Tsunagi flinched back when she whipped around to glare at him, the fire in her eyes not doused by the tears brimming there.

“I know you think I’m too inebriated to mean it but I wish you could understand that I really am sorry. For everything. What I said that day was supposed to be about my genuine concern but I let my own doubts cloud my judgment.”

He reached out with one hand, palm up, pulling on the IV embedded there and the million wires attached. It was an obvious gesture of openness but Satomi stayed back, angry, silent tears streaming down her face.

“There is no excuse for what I did but I hope you can find peace in what I wanted for you. You worked so hard for your education and your hero license and so when I could see you were struggling to get an agency interested in you because you did not fit the idea of the typical female hero, I stepped in.”

“By telling me to change everything about myself to fit in,” Satomi said coldly.

“Yes. I...I don’t even know why I said those things anymore. I had this image in my head of how everything would go and it all-”

“Blew up?”

Tsunagu leveled her with an unimpressed stare.

“I was going to say ‘fell apart’ but I guess that works considering…”

He finally managed to clear his vision through the pain and concoction of drugs they had him under. Instead of the cocky, defiant hero he had come to know, he was now looking at his crying little sister.

“Wh a t?” she snapped, her voice cracking in the middle of the word as she tried to be subtle as she wiped away her tears.

In the million times he imagined this conversation, Tsunagu never even thought his sister would care enough to cry. By the time she returned to Japan, she seemed unbothered by his very existence outside of him being Best Jeanist. If they were angry tears as she yelled at him, he would understand but she didn’t seem angry.

“Do you remember the summer we spent at my maternal grandparent’s place in Kyoto? I think I was 13 so you must have been six.”

The change in conversation surprised her to the point of her crying stopping purely out of confusion.

“Kinda. I was six though.”

It wasn’t much but she wasn’t yelling or crying anymore.

“Grandma made you stay inside the whole time learning tea ceremonies and fan dancing. You started screaming at some old tourist who you were supposed to be showing off for because he criticized your technique.”

“And you spent the time learning sword fighting,” she responded dryly, dropping back into her chair casually as if she wasn’t willingly coming closer despite being angry. 

“I spent more time gutting eels than sword fighting,” he grumbled, making a face at the memory. “Grandpa and dad wanted to get me interested in more masculine stuff but I think they just caused me to have a psychosomatic allergic reaction whenever I saw raw eel.”

“But you got to catch those eels first. And bugs, and fish, and whatever else,” she pointed out. “That sounded awesome to me back then and wouldn't have been worse than boring-ass tea ceremonies.”

“I would have gladly switched. I would have rather done a million tea ceremonies rather than touch a single eel again.”

She huffed but couldn’t completely hide her smile at the idea of a fully grown and costumed Best Jeanist being forced to gut eels and catch fish as if it were his day job. This was apparently...apparent on her face as he shot her another flat look. 

“Don’t look at me like that. You’re the one that brought up that summer. I could have been teasing you about how you should be a fishmonger now that you can’t-”

Her mouth snapped closed with an audible click of her teeth. The mood came crashing down between them. Tsunagu turned away, suddenly very interested in the heart monitor, warning them that his heartbeat had picked up. 

“I didn’t mean to...Are you going to be okay? Like...I don’t even know what to say right now.”

He took a deep breath and looked back at her, his own stony stare free of the tears she swore were going to be there.

“Every hero has to be prepared for early retirement. While I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do even light work again, it is almost guaranteed that my standing in the hero polls will plummet and I will no longer be number four after this year.”

She didn’t have the heart to tell him about All Might’s retirement. 

“Even if you can’t toss bad guys into prison, you’ve still got some fight left in ya. At worst, you can become a police consultant, and whatever active hero work you can do will still matter even if it isn’t on as big of a scale.”

“Will it really?”

“Alright Tsuna-fish,” she snapped, using an old English nickname. “Stop being such an ass to yourself. That’s my job. Were you this hard on yourself because you weren’t All Might or Endeavor?”

“No, but that is because I was giving it my all. Now I can barely speak without every muscle I have aching or screaming in pain.”

Satomi paused at this information, unsure of what to do. She probably would have waited until the next day or next week if she had known how much pain he was in even through the drugs. But Tsunagu was still talking.

“If I had been faster or stronger-”

“Dude. You went toe to toe with the guy who gave All Might a run for his money. Like, I wasn’t watching at the time but if I hadn’t already heard the outcome, I would have been worried that All Might lost. The lives you saved by being there aren’t nothing. Those heroes will go on to save more lives than you could physically possibly save before you retired if it happened naturally.” 

He opened his mouth to respond but stopped after a moment, a long sigh releasing from his lips. 

“Alright denim-for-brains, we’re both tired as hell so I’m not going to keep pestering you about it tonight but I’m sure as hell going to be sending you recommendations for therapists that specialize in heroes and hero-related trauma after this.”

She reached out and offered her hand to him, just as he had done a few minutes ago, expecting the same response she gave him.

“Shit’s fucked right now but you’re alive and that’s got to be worth something.”

He looked up at her, eyes still dull as if he was still trying to put the world on his shoulders. After a moment, he reached over and rested his hand on hers, probably too tired to do much more than that.

“If anyone will have my back in the coming times, I’m glad it is you.”

“Awe, Nii-san~ I didn’t know you care that much about-”

“Because my other friends would be too scared to cuss out a bitchy nurse.”

Satomi gasped in indignation and swiped at his head, careful to only come close enough to brush by his hair. He smiled at her, breathing oddly as he tried not to laugh and cause more pain.

“Jerk.”

“I love you too Oni-chan~”

She huffed but still smiled back at him, resting her head on the back of the chair as she adjusted her arm so she could keep his hand in hers as long as she could without them both cramping up.

“Whatever, “ she mumbled, closing her eyes for just a moment. “Be as sappy as you like. Just don’t expect a get well soon card.”

What must have been hours later, a nurse knocked on the door, slipping into the room when he got no answer. 

He expected to find Jeanist alone and asleep as he should be after all of the surgery that had to be done to save his life. So he was surprised to see another person still in the room.

The girl (woman?) was sitting backward in a chair, leaning over the back to face the patient’s bed. It had to be the most uncomfortable position even considered for sleep and the nurse was almost concerned that she had passed out rather than fell asleep.

But as he came closer, he realized why she was positioned like that.

Even asleep, their hands were still clasped together, tethering them together like a lifeline. And after the day that had presided this, they probably needed it.

After managing to maneuver around her to carry out his duties, he noticed one of their phones on the bedside table and against his better judgment picked it up and opened the camera from the lock screen. A few clicks and he left the phone back where it was. Even if they didn’t want the photos, they could delete them later.

After all, life passes by quickly enough on its own, let alone when villains and heroes are involved. Isn’t it better to appreciate the moments that come?