Work Text:
Hizashi opened his eyes to a world that belonged to ghosts. His headphones were gone and the gray, grimy world that he felt more than saw was muffled and still. This was bad, he hazily thought. He’d have to get his hearing aids out of the bedside table. He reached, only to find sharp, rasping concrete under his fingers. He wasn’t in bed then.
The raid had been that morning, hadn’t it? He slowly pieced the wisps of memory, of Nomus and tanks and Shouta and of having his breath ripped from his lungs as someone sped him from a threat he still couldn’t understand. Then his memories were just of fighting. He had screamed and screamed and screamed, following something through the destroyed streets but he could not remember how he’d ended up here, lying on what he assumed to be a street, sprawled face first on the ground with the side of his face stinging and his foot still caught on something.
Had he fallen? He must have fallen. The world in front of him swam, muffled quiet and blurry without his glasses but he set his jaw, hauled himself upright and kicked his foot free to place it next to the other. He just needed to get to the school and to his apartment, he’d be fine then.
But where was the UA? He tried to look for landmarks but his brain flatly refused to register the things he saw, only returning back that the world was gray and gone. Try as he might, he couldn’t push through the fog to get an idea of where he was. There was nothing else to it then and while his brain refused to work, his feet still moved and he pushed forward, stumbling along the paved streets looking for something to catch his brain and spark something.
One minute Hizashi was stumbling over something his brain had refused to see and the next, long bony fingers had a surprisingly iron grip on his bicep, hauling him back upright before he fell. He wanted to be surprised or concerned that he had been snuck up on but he could only feel relief at the somber face that Yagi wore. He let out a breath he didn't know he was keeping and tried to speak but nothing came out of mouth, his throat too raw and worn. He tried to sign but Yagi only shook his head and gave him a pull. "You need a shower, food and sleep. We're a few blocks from my apartment, come on."
Hizashi let out a hacking cough, the dust and the rawness of his throat seeming to suck the air from his lungs. He was exhausted, he realized. There was no way he could get home even if he could orient himself enough to find UA, the rubble was too thick still. And more importantly, his mind was shot. There was nothing else to do. He stumbled towards Yagi, grateful for the tight hold the man kept on his arm.
It was a first floor apartment and he could have wept for that. No stairs, nothing else to climb, he could stagger in. Yagi pushed him insistently towards a small bathroom and when Hizashi stared at his boots and wondered at how he would manage to bend down, Yagi reached down and untied them himself.
He felt like a child as Yagi slid off the stinking, bloodied remnants of his uniform. He registered that the man had been saying something as he reached in to start the bath but his face was turned. With old anxieties, he tapped at his shoulder, desperate to know what he was saying, if he was saying anything about him, what he was missing. At the look of confusion, he tapped his ears and mouthed 'deaf' until Yagi nodded and said slowly and clearly, "Get in."
Letting himself be tugged into the upright bath, or maybe almost a shower, was odd even when half asleep but he quickly stopped caring as the older man took the shower spout off the wall and began to rinse the grime and muck as though he was bathing a dog who'd gotten into the mud. The water was warm and Yagi had guided him to lean against the side of the bath and he felt his eyes drift shut over and over again, only to be woken up by Yagi moving him slightly this way or that.
The hot water on his face had made his skin scream, the heat and the pressure of the water unbearable as Yagi flushed grit and sand from the abrasion he must have picked up when he fell. He hadn’t even realized he’d been hurt but there was blood on the gauze that Yagi had pressed to his temple and cheek. Yagi’s mouth was moving, saying something as he applied some kind of cream to the abrasion but Hizashi couldn’t be bothered to read what he was saying. He just didn’t care.
He hadn’t realized he was shivering until he’d been wrapped up in a towel but that finally did snap him back to consciousness. His fingers were red at the tips still and he nodded to himself in relief, not shock then. That was good. Just cold and deep, painful exhaustion. Something touched his scalp and he flinched, only to look up and see Yagi holding up a comb, other hand up in apology. After a moment, his brain registered and he nodded in consent, dimly thinking that he’d laugh later that All Might, the Symbol of Peace himself, had thought to brush out his hair. A hero even now.
Yagi was quick and efficient as he urged Hizashi to his feet and toweled him down, finally holding out a pair of sweatpants to change into that were far, far too large but were manageable with a drawstring once he'd shakily stepped into them. The shirt was much the same but his uniform was done for, stinking of Nomu gore and his own panicked sweat. He reached for his directional speaker though, Yagi passing it to him when he saw. Somehow it was still intact when everything else had all given up the ghost. He clung to it like a child’s stuffed toy, pressing it close to the worn and sore spot on his collarbones where it fit best. His fingers stung where he held it, abrasions wherever his fingerless gloves hadn’t been but he clung despite them.
The living room was small like the rest of the apartment, the curtains tightly shut keeping it dark and quiet. He could make out someone sleeping on a futon, and looked curiously at Yagi. “Thirteen.” He said carefully before holding up one finger and then three in case Hizashi wouldn’t understand. He appreciated that. “Let them sleep.”
Hizashi wasn’t sure what choice he had in that, given that he couldn’t exactly say anything and could barely do anything besides let Yagi guide him to another futon thrown down. Legs akimbo in front of him, he leaned against the wall and tried to breathe, to focus, to do anything besides be exhausted. A glass of water was shoved in front of his face and he greedily downed it, some part of his mind reminding him that he was almost certainly dehydrated.
There hadn’t been any alternative though. Shigaraki had to be stopped, there had been no other option but to stop him but they hadn’t, had they? The Nomus, the strong, stupid ones had swarmed around him and allowed for a retreat. He vaguely remembered Pixie Bob catching one of them under a wave of earth and being able to vent what felt like a lifetime of pain at the damn thing until it had clawed gauges in its face. Someone had finished the job after him but he couldn’t remember who. But they couldn’t have only killed one, could they?
Yagi pressed something cold into his palm and he frowned when he saw it was a jelly packet. Something pressed through the fog of exhaustion and nausea and he latched onto Yagi’s shirt with a burst of adrenaline. “Shouta.” He tried to say and kept trying when everything that came out was a scratchy wheeze. “Aizawa Shouta, Eraser, Shouta, is he okay. Is he okay, Yagi, is he okay.”
“Mic.” Yagi said sharply, prying his hand off of his shirt and staring him in the eye. “Eraserhead was heading to a hospital, last I heard. I don’t know the status, the cell towers are down. I have a CB radio but everything’s too jammed, I’ll tell you when I know.”
He was at a hospital. He’d been hurt? Hizashi tried to stand, only to be pushed back down two, three times. He could have spit in Yagi’s face by the time he finally looked up, tears swimming in his vision.
“-through.” Yagi had been speaking, “Too much debris. We need to wait for rescue teams to clear the way, you can’t get there in this condition.” He leaned in and said clearly, “You have to eat and sleep. You have no way to help him, not like this. I have been through my fair share of these situations, trust me when I say that you have done as much as you possibly can and your job is done. Eat and then sleep.”
The last words were said particularly slowly as though Hizashi were stupid as opposed to deaf but he twisted the packet in his hand and ate. Yagi wrapped him in a foil emergency blanket and waited until he looked up. “I’m going to go back and see who I can find. This is what I can do. Sleep.”
His head was heavy as he nodded. The pallet was thin and his hair was still sopping wet and his stomach clenched with hunger for something with substance but he fell into sleep like a stone.
He dreamed. He dreamed badly, loudly, painfully. Garaki was still his grasp, his voice a high pitched howl as he repeated “I really wanted to get my hands on Erasure instead.” He kept trying to drop the old man but his hands clenched tight to Hizashi’s mouth, his own eyes wide and teeth bared. The USJ spread out in front of him as he stood at the top of the stairs, Shouta down below in a pack of Nomu. He tried to push forward but was blocked by Kurogiri, whose mists parted to show Oboro’s fresh, sixteen year old face or at least what Hizashi remembered of it, nose scrunched in the way he did when something was funny. “It’s okay, he only wants Shouta.” He said, giving him a wink as Garaki began to shake at his shoulders, slamming him back and down.
Hizashi woke up swinging, blind panic pushing him forward, away, anywhere else. His fist was caught as was the followup punch and he was neatly pushed back and pinned. The fear was thick on his tongue and burned his nose but he looked up and - Yagi. The dark apartment. The pallet, an emergency blanket now thrown off of him, the foil reflecting a dim light from the kitchen. He went slack and stared up at Yagi’s face. The older man frowned at him but didn’t say anything, instead letting him go before shoving a protein bar in his hand and a bottle of water.
“What have you heard? Is Shouta okay?” He tried to say but the words still refused to come. Yagi shook his head and pointed to the water and the bar before crossing his arms. “Fine.” He tried to say, tearing open the package with shaking hands. The texture was disgusting, like thick puddy with a vague hint of peanut butter but he forced it down with the help of the water. The plastic bottle bounced off of Yagi when he threw it back but he couldn’t bring himself to give the slightest shit as he searched his face.
Yagi was wearing a mask, one that Hizashi knew full well from having to give bad news. Cold fear gripped him as he mentally begged the man to just get on with it. “Present Mic.” He finally said, “Eraserhead is in a stable condition at East. He has lost a great deal of blood from an amputation to his leg but he is expected to pull through. However, Midnight has fallen in battle in the mountains.”
Using their hero names was smart, he dimly thought. A reminder to Hizashi of what they were, what they had agreed to when they became heroes. It was a way to gain distance from Hizashi who would eat lunch on the rooftop with Oboro and Shouta and -
“Take me to him.” He tried to say, pushing back at the immensity of emotion that threatened to drown him. “Please, I need to be there, please, take me there.”
Someone else reached over and pulled him to his feet and he swung his elbow at them, as he pushed himself to his feet despite his legs cramping and stiff as he forced them to hold his weight. When he reached out, his speaker was put into his hand and he slung it around his neck, the weight clearing something in his head. Without his voice he was no good to anyone but Present Mic always wore the speaker and even when Hizashi was a mess, Mic knew how to put on a show.
A tap on his arm made him look over, a moment of surprise at the sight of Tsukauchi, drawn and pale. “We need to get Ectoplasm to the hospital. We can make room. Now or never.”
A nod to show he understood before he took a step, then another towards the door. Yagi reached out but he slapped his hand away with a sharp shake of his head. Not now, not yet. He would thank him later when he wasn’t so close to snapping. Once he got to Shouta, then he could break down. But not until then.
A medivac helicopter was in the street in front of Yagi’s apartment. An actual fucking helicopter had touched down and he’d slept through it. A wisecrack bubbled up in his throat, something to break the tension and the silence but he swallowed it. He couldn’t say anything anyway. It was for the best, he told himself as he accepted a pair of clunky headphones like his own and felt normal for a brief moment at the weight of them with his speaker.
Ecto’s mask was torn enough to show his eyes but for all that he was clearly in a good deal of pain given the chunk of rebar in his right arm, he was awake, he was alive and he clearly knew the same news that Present Mic wasn’t going to think about right now. When he shut his eyes in pain as the helicopter lurched into the sky, Mic’d let out a breath he hadn’t thought he’d be holding.
Not yet. Soon. But not yet.
Bile raised in his throat, acrid and hot as he looked from the seat where he’d been strapped into the devastation below. Not yet, he reminded himself and he let his head thump back against the seat as he squeezed his eyes shut. Think, he thought, think this through. There was a puzzle here he could think about that wasn’t damn near an entire city gone and so many people - no, he wasn’t going to think about that yet.
He’d annihilated the tank. Wrecked it, took it down to pieces. The machinery was toast, even Garaki thought Shigaraki was done for. How had he managed to survive? What had he missed? He’d thrown accuracy to the side for the sake of sheer power, had he managed to separate the metaphorical brain from the cord but left the brain stem? Or had the vibrations caused enough friction to spark something and resuscitate him?
No, they never had been able to before. Another fucking Quirk? But they wouldn’t have needed the machine if he’d just been able to do that. His yell should have cut off what Shigaraki needed to survive. Shouta had been counting on him and he-
He snapped his eyes open and breathed hard through his nose, scanning the ceiling of the helicopter as he tried to find anything to distract him. Not yet. He hadn’t gotten to Shouta yet.
The hospital was a mess, overrun with screaming people and panic and the hot stink of a disaster zone and he wished he could hear, could have the noise and rumble of people in his ears to keep him from the muffled silence and his repeated reminders of not yet, not yet. A flight nurse waved him down and slapped a piece of paper in his hand as they passed Ectoplasm to the waiting crew.
‘133-K’
The stairs made his legs and lungs burn but he felt like he flew down them. The people he passed barely even registered, his mind having swung back to that rainy day when he’d had to tell Shouta that Oboro was dead. Shouta wouldn’t run from him this time. They had a life, they had Eri, he had the class, they weren’t children anymore who hadn’t experienced loss but he wasn’t going to get the chance to try and run this time. Hizashi couldn’t allow him to.
“I’m never going to get used to seeing this.” He tried to say as he stumbled into the room. Coughs wracked through him, his throat raw and sore but the words came from him, even if they never reached the air. “I don’t know how we keep doing this. How long are we going to do this? How long can we keep doing this?” Habit had him reaching for where the chair was behind him to pull it close to the bed. Practice had him reaching for the hand sanitizer next to the bed and thoroughly coating his hands before he took Shouta’s hand in his. Experience told him that Shouta was deep in a medically induced sleep and wouldn’t wake for a while, most likely.
And so he fell apart.
It was a mercy that he’d lost his voice. Control of his Quirk was hard enough as he went through his normal day and as tired as he was, he wouldn’t have stood any hope of being able to keep it in. He probably would have had to muzzle himself until a sleeping pill kicked in and that never made anything better. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been able to actually just cry without a soundproof room with his headphones. It almost felt good, normal even.
He still buried his face in the bed though as he cried, his body running on habit more than anything. He wept until his head ached, until his abrasion bled on the sheet and until the blanket was uncomfortably damp and then he just moved and cried more. He would never talk to Nemuri again. It didn’t seem possible, Nemuri had been even luckier than he was, somehow always managing to stroll through hell and come out the other side without so much as a chipped nail. He briefly, wildly entertained the idea that it could be a mistake, that the information could have been misconstrued somewhere down the line but Yagi and especially Tsukauchi wouldn’t have given him information that was emotionally charged without verifying it first.
She was gone. One of them would have to go and get her cat and he wept even harder at the idea of going into Nemuri’s apartment like he was just watching the place. It would have to be him too, Shouta clearly not in any position to even be upright for a long while and he was so tired of this. He was so tired of being the one that always managed to be fine and safe at the end of the day when two of the best friends he’d ever had were now dead, or might as well be for one, and the other almost spent more time in the hospital than he spent outside of it.
He was going to be the last one of them standing when he had no right to do so. With the way that Shouta fought and generally just existed, there was no way that he would outlive Hizashi and panic hit him like a freight train. He couldn’t do this again. He couldn’t. When Shouta went, Hizashi would have to crawl onto the funeral pyre with him because he simply could not be left by himself. That strangely calmed him for a moment, maybe it was the fact that he had a plan now if Shouta died but that was too dark, even for him.
Did he even love Shouta or was he just so scared of finally losing everyone that he couldn’t let him go?
A hand was suddenly in his hair and while he did jump, he went right back to where he’d been and guided Shouta’s hand back, feeling it curl around the curve of his skull and ground him. He turned and pressed his cheek into his palm, which still smelled like smoke and dirt and broken concrete. But he peppered kisses on his calloused palms, on his fingers, on his rough, misshapen knuckles like he could somehow make this better, like he could fix this if he just loved him better.
Shouta had felt the wetness on his cheeks, however. He tore his hand away, feeling on the bed for where Hizashi had been crying, measuring how much space he’d left wet with his touch. His hands moved faster and more desperately as he mapped out Hizashi’s current mental state. Hizashi didn’t want to but he made himself look up to Shouta’s lips and read, “Who? Who Hizashi? Not one of the kids, please. Who.”
He picked up his hand and tried to speak against it, letting Shouta feel his lips but how none of the vibrations of his words came out. This was cruel, he thought. He couldn’t talk and with his eyes covered, Shouta couldn’t see. They didn’t have many options to communicate and as much as Hizashi wanted to use that as an excuse, he knew he couldn’t.
“Your voice is gone, I can feel that.” Shouta said, the medication made him slur his words and his lips did not move like they normally would, but Hizashi could still read them. He’d had more practice in this than he preferred. He shook his hand out of Hizashi’s and rested his fingers on his forehead. “Is it one of my kids.”
Hizashi shook his head and Aizawa sagged in relief until he stiffened again. “Who. Who is it then.”
Hizashi felt the lump in his throat grow as he made an ‘N’ in JSL and pressed it against his palm.
“N?” He guessed and Hizashi pressed his hand to his forehead and nodded. “Nedzu?”
He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to do this when he couldn’t even say anything, when he was helpless to comfort him or tell him that it would be alright. But he knew his role. The next time, someone would be telling him. He signed N again, then E, and M and watched Shouta crumple.
He tried to inventory his options. He couldn’t speak, he couldn’t sign, the only thing that he had was touch. However, his bed was a spider web of wires and tubes and the immensity of Aizawa’s injuries, the missing foot hit him again. He couldn’t curl up into bed with him as much as he might have wanted to. The only comfort he could give was to press his palms on each side of his rough and horribly wan face and let Shouta clutch at him.
A nurse had come in, his eyes wild as Shouta’s heart rate monitor started to scream but he stopped at the sight of them. Hizashi just gave him a shrug, there being nothing left to say in a world that had stopped making sense.