Chapter Text
“...Deku?”
Slowly, green eyes turned from the white walls to his other side. There was a white-haired man with red splotches in his hair. It somehow felt normal. Like this was normal. He looked at him and then forward.
“...Deku, can you… hear me?”
He nodded back, and tried to sit up. Tried, because pain shot up his body before he could get his head and shoulders up and off the bed. Even though he gritted his teeth, a whimper slid through his lips. A pair of hands shot out to grab him by his shoulders and slowly push him back down onto the bed. Briefly, he felt some panic rise up in his chest, but when he looked up, he saw familiar blue eyes back, just as panicked.
But those eyes-that shade of blue- was comforting, and he found himself calming down in the bruising grip.
“...You good?” the man asked quietly, breathless and almost fearful. “You … that… Does it hurt?”
Yes, of course it hurt. Did these bandages look like they were decorations or something?
He arched an eyebrow at him.
“No, that was a dumb question, wasn’t it? I… I just never heard you…” the white-haired man with red splotches trailed off, looking about as confused as the amnesiac felt, before he rubbed his face with his hand. He took a deep breath, a shuddery sound, before he turned back to Deku, looking about four days older. “Well, enough about me. What hurts?”
He stared at the man next to him and then tilted his head. He opened his mouth to speak what’s been on his mind. His mouth was painfully patched, and it felt like there needles in his throat from how dry it was.
“...Am I… Deku?” he asked.
He was on a bed. White sheets and mattress, and he couldn’t recall why. He was in a white room with a counter on one side and cabinets above it and below it. The room was spacious, if a little cold. There was an empty dresser next to him. The light was bright.
The man next to him, if he didn’t know that he could look any more dreary, proved him wrong. His expression crumbled away, as though all the hope and light in his life was being sucked away. His jaw clenched tightly.
“Yes,” he said, breathless. “You… that’s what you told us to call you,” he explained.
Deku, as that was apparently his name, frowned. Useless? He asked people to call him ‘Useless’?
But the man didn’t look like he was lying, if only because he looked too shocked and upset to lie, and it didn’t feel wrong. The information was easily accepted into his head, like it was a common truth. Perhaps, his name was Useless Deku. It sounded familiar, but it also caused his heart to pang.
In all honesty, he was beginning to think that he didn’t want to remember.
“And you don’t… remember me?” the white-haired man by him asked quietly.
Deku stared, and he felt like it was on the tip of his tongue. The harder he thought about it, the more his head felt like it would split open. He grabbed his temple, as if it would help get rid of the pain, when the other man spoke up again.
“No, it’s fine. It’s… Please don’t push yourself. Just… worry about feeling better soon. You took some damage in the last fight.”
Deku blinked at him. His headache receded back into his head, like a dull ache or a thick blanket made of wool wrapped to smother his brain as he focused on something else.
Fight?
“Just call me Natsuo,” he said. “I’m one of the uh… doctors here on the base.”
Base?
“I… I can’t let you walk around the base on your own at the moment. I will be happy to field any question you might have for now,” he said, sounding more like he was saying things as they came into his head instead of speaking in an organized and calm manner. It must have been a shock to him that he lost his memories. “You’ll…” he hesitated, his eyes drifting from Deku’s face to the bedsheet and back up, and spoke slowly, as though cautious for any negative response. “You’ll need to stay here for a few days to recuperate.”
Something felt wrong, was this man lying to him? Somehow, Deku didn’t think that was it. There was a different reason for this feeling, but he didn’t think it was that Natsuo was a liar. It must be something else. He must have forgotten something incredibly important- and it was resting on his chest like a boulder would.
But, without more information or anything, Deku decided on compliance. He gave a curt nod to show his understanding.
In return, the doctor gave a large sigh of relief. His shoulders sagged as he sat back a little in his chair. It almost felt like Natsuo was more happy about this than him.
There were no windows in this room, so he didn’t really have any way to tell what time it was or anything.
“Why don’t you get some more rest for now?”
Deku looked down at his body, the copious amounts of bandages as though it was the only thing holding his body together, and nodded. Rest, yes, that made sense. However, even though there was pain lacing through his body, he didn’t feel tired. If anything, he felt restless. Was there something he needed to do?
His eyes felt drawn to the door. He wanted to leave. He wasn’t sure if he could stand up, and he didn’t know where he would go, but he wanted to leave. The room felt too small.
Perhaps, if he explained himself, the doctor would be accommodating… Deku blinked at the frantic expression that took over Natsuo’s face when he realized that Deku was looking at the door. Okay, maybe not. Was he a flight risk or something? Why was he being stared at like that? He could barely feel his toes, he doubted that he would be able to stand up without assistance. As his doctor, he should know that to some extent, right?
There was a knock on the door before the door pushed open and a young man walked in without waiting for any recognition. His most noticeable feature was that half his hair was red, and the other half was white. As bizarre as it sounded, it didn’t surprise Deku. Instead, when he saw him, Deku felt relief.
Like a, oh thank god that this guy is alive, kind of relief.
"Natsuo-niisan, I brought dinner..." his voice trailed off when he caught sight of Deku. "You're up."
Deku felt his attention hone in on the food. It smelled absolutely heavenly. What was it? It looked to be in a wide bowl, and there was steam coming off of it. He was suddenly aware of how empty his stomach was.
"Oh, Shouto, good timing. Deku, this... This is Shouto. He’s uh… my little brother," Natsuo said slowly, pointedly ignoring the alarmed look that his younger brother shot him.
Deku gave a polite nod, and tried again to sit up. The movement proved to be too painful, because he didn’t get up and his lips immediately twisted into a grimace and his eyebrows furrowed. Before he could fall back though, Natsuo’s too-hot hands came to grab him and helped him up and lean against the wall. For a brief moment, his body spasmed in pain, tingling down to his fingertips.
“Hello," he said. His voice sounded scratchy to his ears.
"Ah, yeah," Shouto awkwardly sketched a proper bow back. His eyes darted from his brother to the young man and he blurted out, "Did you lose your memories?"
Deku nodded. “Yes,” he said.
His face twisted into something that looked painful, before he quickly honed it back into a blank expression. Deku had to hand it to him, he was harder to read than Natsuo, who looked like he swallowed a toad whole and was croaking out all his sentences as he thought of them.
"I see. Please let me know if there is anything I can help with," Shouto said. "I... I will return with more food then."
"...Shouto...kun?" Deku spoke slowly.
From the look on the young man's face, it was as though he had slapped him or something. It was his name, wasn't it? What was so shocking about being called by your name?
"Just..." He cleared his throat, “Just Shoto is fine. Is there… is there something you would like?”
Well, Natsuo made it clear that he shouldn't be alone so...
"...May I come with you?"
Natsuo shot up to his feet, his chair clattering behind him. Deku's hands suddenly felt empty, as he felt all of his senses suddenly open up, and snapped his attention to Natsuo, his heart rate shooting through the roof in a painful way. The young doctor looked wrong-footed as he opened his mouth and closed it again, before clenching his jaw tightly.
"I don't think that's a good idea," he said, voice too quiet to sound worrying, but too certain to sound fearful. Another beat of silence rang through them, and he slowly realized what he had done. He moved to set his chair back up. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Deku stared at him for a long moment, and then looked back to the ceiling. The adrenaline that pumped through his veins in his surprise kicked his thinking into high gear as he revisited all the information that occurred in the past few minutes. His body trembled. The door felt further away.
"Your worries," the young man said quietly, "is it concern or fear?"
Green eyes, sharper like a knife, found that familiar blue.
"Is it because I'm injured or because I'm unarmed?"
There was a long silence. Deku waited for an answer to his unknowingly callous question. Was this too forward? Was he being rude? Without any previous experience to base his actions on, he had nothing but a burning curiosity.
It had bothered him. They were in some sort of infirmary, wasn’t he? Then, why did the doctor have a gun and a small knife strapped to him? The teenager who came in didn’t knock, and was armed as well. Two daggers and a gun holstered to his thigh-and that was just what he could see. Both of them were muscular, Deku could tell even under their sweaters and jeans.
And, between them, he saw four ways to disarm them and leave. He couldn’t remember his name or what he looked like, but he could plan out an escape- injuries and all.
"I..."
He waited patiently, but he had an idea about what was going on. He hoped that he was wrong.
"...I just want to be careful," Natsuo said quietly, taking the food from Shouto's hand. He gave the young man a meaningful stare and then nodded at Deku. "I... You are the indisputable leader here," he said as he looked down at the bowl, "But there are plenty of people that might take advantage of you in this state." His grip turned white-knuckled on the tray.
Deku stared at him. The words slowly processing in his head.
“...Me?” he said, feeling as though he was tossed into a pit and free-falling. “I’m the what?”
The wry smile on Natsuo’s face was not helpful.
“...Why don’t you eat dinner first?” he asked, “And we can fill you in with what we can.”
This time, when Natsuo’s large hands passed him the food, Deku realized that his hands were shaking.