Chapter Text
A gentle touch wakes Hizashi from a dreamless sleep.
Wakes may be the wrong word. The soft tap on his arm seems to all but grab him by the shoulders and shake the life out of him. It yanks him from momentary nothingness back to reality, back to where his bones ache almost as much as his heart does.
He shoots upright, ignoring the screaming protests of his weary body, cursing himself for falling asleep in the first place. Where’s Shouta? Has he been moved? Did something happen? Did he take a turn for the worse while he was busy sleeping like a damn fool —
“Yamada...”
Shouta’s voice is weak, gravelly and rasping. Unsurprising, since he’s been unconscious for so long. But by god, to Hizashi, hearing it now is the closest he’s felt to being home in a long time.
Hizashi takes stock of his friends condition as he sinks back into the creaky chair that has been his uncomfortable base of operations for the last... how long has it been?
Shouta’s remaining eye reels about, taking in the sights of the hospital room as his brain tries to catch up with the time he’s lost.
“What happened?”
How the hell is he supposed to answer that?
There’s so much that’s happened, so much Hizashi still doesn’t know. Maybe he would, but the television lying broken in the corner ensures he will have to learn it from the next concerned colleague to visit them. What he found out about Shirakumo... about what was supposed to happen all those years ago...
He should start with what he knows.
“You had to go into surgery,” Hizashi begins slowly, carefully. “There was a lot of damage to your eye socket. They did their best... even Recovery Girl came straight in to see you, but they couldn’t save the eye.”
Shouta lifts a hand to his face, just long enough to feel the edge of the bandages wrapped firmly in place, before dropping it back to his leg. The movement seems to spark a memory, and he lets out a semi-delirious huff as his fingers grasp for a leg that isn’t there anymore.
“I see that’s still gone.”
It’s a weak attempt at humour. Hizashi must look as bad as he feels if Shouta is trying to make a joke, but he can’t bring himself to reward the attempt with a smile. He can’t even muster up the energy to scold him for the actions he took to end up with one leg, as much as he would like to. At least he’s still alive.
“There’s—“
“What about the League?” Shouta cuts him off. “What happened with Shigaraki?”
“He... he got away, I guess.”
“You guess?” His eyebrow quirks up at the phrasing, but he doesn’t dwell on it. “What about the kids? Midoriya, Bakugou, Todoroki, too. They were there.”
Another hard question. Hizashi winces as he thinks about the first year cohort. Forty children, all damaged beyond repair. Who wasn’t? And he’s heard quite a few of them were still somewhere in the building.
“They’re alive,” he expels the worst case scenario from Shouta’s mind. “They’re in bad shape, but they’re out of the woods.”
“Idiots...” His voice is laced with emotion, primarily relief, as he recalls the actions of his students on the battlefield.
Actions they had to take because Hizashi wasn’t there. Because he went against every fibre of his being that told him to stay close to Shouta, because it was more important to focus on the objective. That’s why one friend was lying in a hospital bed missing an eye and a leg and the other was...
“Sho...” he trails off, unsure of how to begin.
How do you tell your best friend that the gang has been reduced to two men and a cat? That someone you thought would always be there... isn’t anymore?
It’s Oboro all over again.
They didn’t get to say goodbye. Hell, Hizashi didn’t even know what happened until long after the fact. Harder, still, was that the news was delivered to him through the damn TV not long after Shouta was returned to the room from surgery. He idly reminds himself that he’ll have to pay for the television he broke when the hero casualty report had been broadcasted. It had to be done, though. He wouldn’t let Shouta find out like he had.
Neither of them were there for her when she needed them. The one time she needed help. The one time both of them needed him and where was he ? Shouta lost a leg, an eye. And Nemuri...
She was gone . No fanfare, no tearful last words, not even a rude gesture she’d always promised to send them off with. One minute it was the three of them, and the next it was two. She died without the people that needed her most by her side. Surrounded by kids too young to have to see her go.
Too long has passed without any words, because Shouta reaches out again. His calloused fingertips gently touch Hizashi’s balled fists, pulling him back to the present with a softness he doesn’t deserve. It should be him comforting Shouta right now, not the other way around.
Just spit it out.
Hizashi spares only a moment to be hideously jealous of Shouta’s ignorance before the guilt brewing in his chest begins to grow. His friend has already lost so much, and now it’s up to him to take even more.
But no one else can tell him. He has to be the one to break the news. It’s Hizashi’s responsibility. He owes Shouta that much. He owes them both.
Penance for failing to protect either of them.
“It’s about Kayama.”
The fingers ghosting across Hizashi’s knuckles freeze. He knows.
“You’re wrong.”
It’s hard to talk around the lump forming in his throat, but Hizashi muscles through it.
“Nobody’s sure who did it, she was separated from the others for a while. They think that—“
“You’re wrong ,” Shouta persists. His head is shaking from side to side gently, his remaining eye scrunched up.
Hizashi unballs his fists long enough to take Shouta’s hand between them, squeezing it as well as he can without distributing the needle still lodged in back of his hand.
Whatever he planned to say has left his mind, leaving the voice hero without a single idea of how to stop Shouta’s world from crumbling.
“I’m sorry,” he manages to choke out, bowing his head in defeat. For what, he’s not sure. For having to break the news? For not being there to stop it? For Shouta, or Nemuri, or the students, or himself?
Liquid dribbles down the back of Shouta’s hand and between their skin. Did he disturb the needle? Grateful for an excuse to look away from Shouta’s pained face, Hizashi glances down to check their hands for blood.
Ah, not blood.
He ducks his head lower to wipe away the tears he wasn’t aware he’d shed on his shirt. He was sure he had no more tears left in him, but it seems he was wrong. He wishes he was wrong about more than just that.
Shouta’s whispering— no, whimpering. It’s barely comprehensible, but Hizashi can make out the slow chorus of ‘ no no no no no ’ as the hand in his grips him tighter.
But there’s nothing to say, nothing to do. Nothing that will help him.
There’s nothing Hizashi wouldn’t give to take away Shouta’s pain. But there’s nothing he has that will do it. He can’t give or say anything to make his friend feel better. Last time, he couldn’t even convince him to stay. It was Nemuri that brought them back together. She was always more persuasive than Hizashi. Words came easier to her during the hard times.
Hizashi wonders what she would say to them now. If their roles had been reversed -what he wouldn’t give to trade places with her- how would she comfort the man lying in front of him now?
Whatever she would have done, Hizashi knows he wouldn’t be able to compare to her.
There’s still so much he hasn’t told Shouta. So much he needs to know. But Hizashi can’t bring himself to add to his grief, not yet. He’s had his time to curse himself and the villains and the damn universe for taking her away, Shouta deserves that same time. So he sits silently, giving the man time to process the loss, to come to terms with another friend leaving them so unceremoniously. He offers the only thing he has to give, a heartbeat. A life. A reminder that they aren’t alone. Not yet.
Without Nemuri, it’s up to them to be there for each other. She’s not around to drag them back together when they begin to drift apart, they have to do it themselves.
Hizashi grips Shouta’s hand a little tighter between both of his, a couple of finger stretching out to press against the inside of his wrist. The thrumming of Shouta’s pulse grounds Hizashi, reminds him that, if nothing else, they’re still here. They still have each other.
He hopes that will be enough.