Chapter Text
“I’m offering you the chance to work with us, Todoroki-kun.”
The floor is cold. His breath is white.
All ten of his toes touch concrete slick with moisture, chilled as a frozen lake. He can see veins of blue-white ice branching out from his spread toes, cracking the concrete in their path.
The process is slow, languid: a gradual progression.
The blue-white tints pink, then red; the color spreads.
“You are special, child. Countless men have and will kill to obtain even a quarter of what you were born with. They are not like you. No one is like you.
“You are unique.”
It looks like a tree.
He spreads his cold toes wider, watching the white-pink-red spreading through growing canyons in the concrete, and wonders how big it will grow. The metal frame holding him off the ground is cold, too: will his hands also make trees that turn from white to pink to red, always growing bigger and wider and taller?
“Join us. Throw aside the chains of society, the people in your life who would tear you down and break your spirit to try to control you—who would convince you that you are somehow lesser, in your most natural state of being.”
But they don’t look like trees anymore. The crevices are growing wider, filling with red that no longer darkens from pink. His toes and fingers and hands are cold, but the red is warm; the ragged edges of the ruptured ground are abrasive against numb skin.
The red widens, the trees grow further, and his skin starts to prickle and burn.
“Join us. Or will you play the fool, Todoroki Shoto?”
He looks up.
His brother’s hair is the only recognizable thing left. The once-familiar face has melted into a mountainous region of craggy scars, bumps and ridges and lines running through and across it in a mockery of a blank mask. His eyebrows are gone, his nose. His eyes.
The monster with his brother’s hair has a mouth, still; it smiles.
“I care about you, Shoto. I always will,” it says. The frozen branches of blood-red trees run into the barrier of the monster’s feet, and begin their ascent.
“If I’d found a better way to get out, I would have taken you with me. This is my chance to make it up to you. Join us.”
The monster with his brother’s hair reaches out a hand, beckoning.
The branches climb higher and higher, pulsating as if from a heartbeat, spreading red wherever they touch. He can’t feel his fingers or toes or hands, and his breath is white until it isn’t anymore because he can’t breathe, and where there was only ice there is suddenly fire, piercing blue exploding before his eyes in a splash of heat and pain—
Shoto woke up.
He woke up disoriented, a loud beeping noise almost matching the painful sound of his heartbeat thundering in his ears. His vision refocused, after a too-long moment where all he could see was white—
(—and he was back there, watching his breath exhale into cold branches of ice and concrete and fire—)
—but the white was the dull white of most ceilings, interrupted with the occasional cord or cable, all collecting dust under the neon lights. Shoto blinked, then blinked again, and made a concentrated effort to stop trembling long enough to sit up and turn off the damn beeping sound.
When he did try, a searing pain across his lower stomach made him fall flat on his back again, winded. He inched a hand that suddenly felt ten times heavier down from his chest, feeling along the skin beneath his top, searching for any sign of injury, bandaging…
His searching fingers stopped at the wrinkled band of what felt like pajama pants. There was a line of papery surgical tape, just above it, with gauze a half-centimeter after. Shoto dragged his thumb across the length of it, from one hip to almost the other.
His brain was… foggy. There was something he was forgetting, he could tell, even past the dream that was already fading to something less knee-jerk terrifying.
Something… important.
Footsteps; the sound of a door opening. Shoto blinked at the ceiling, counting the wires and his breaths, still a little too fast, trying to match the beeping to see if it would help clear his head.
More footsteps—closer, this time. They paused at about his feet, so the end of the bed? They grew faster and louder, until they drew directly by his side.
The beeping stopped, then the face of a worried looking, middle-aged man with wiry sky-blue hair peered at his face, glasses drooping down his nose.
Shoto stared at him. The man seemed to rally, his worry-wrinkles flattening, and gave him a gentle smile.
“Todoroki-kun?
“Who are you?” he asked, since that seemed the most pressing question. The sound of his own voice startled him into flinching.
It sounded… thin, his voice: gravelly, whisper-soft; sandpaper scratched over glass.
That smile again, but a little brighter, crinkling at the eyes. Befuddled, Shoto stared at the places where the skin folded together, forming an expression of warmth.
Had he done something good enough recently, to earn a smile like that?
His head throbbed. The fog briefly parted—
(“—not responding! Keep putting pressure on the wound! At this rate, we’ll—“)
—and enveloped him again. Massaging his temples didn’t help the strange feeling of forgetting, but it did help the brief spike in pain.
“—as well as the current date, and—ah. Headache, son?”
Son. He hid the flinch, this time.
Shoto tried sitting up again, and was quickly—if gently—pushed back down. The doctor (he had to be, didn't he?) pushed a button on the side of the bed, and it began to rise under him. Somehow, the doctor knew to stop the movement before whatever was going on with his abdomen could give protest.
It kept on throbbing anyway. Shoto had to press his hands together to keep them from worrying the bandages.
“You’ve been through quite the ordeal,” the man continued, lifting a clipboard and scanning it carefully. His glasses were slipping down his nose again, Shoto noted. “I’ve got something for you to take for the pain, but some water will be a good start. Please have a drink—slowly. When you’re done, I have a few questions for you.”
As if on cue, a younger adult (translucent, golden fans for ears and matching gold eyes) reeled forward a cart and placed a cup beside his table, plus a smaller cup with unidentifiable pills inside. Shoto gave them a disinterested look, disdaining to take them with a shake of his head, but allowed the adult—nurse?—to press the cup into his hand.
He drank, tuning out the world around him until all the voices within it turned to low rumbles.
A hospital, doctor, nurse; an injury of unknown severity; fatigue, headache, an overcast sky clouding his mind.
Had there been some kind of accident? A fight? Had he done some sort of heroic act, leading the people treating him to show such care and kindness?
But Fuyumi wasn’t here, and neither was… Father. That ruled out an accident or anything heroic that might have brought glory to their family name... right?
“—roki-kun.”
Bringing his free hand up to massage the bridge of his nose, he automatically held out the empty cup; it was removed from his hand as he tried vainly to rub away the pain, wishing he could drag out with it an idea of what was going on. He was standing on the verge of another dive into deep contemplations when a light tap on his leg caught his attention.
Leaving his hand to do its work, he looked up.
This doctor had remarkably kind eyes. It was kind of uncomfortable, being the target of focused attention that lacked an underlying feel of anger or displeasure. Trying not to show his discomfort, Shoto slid his eyes to the half-open curtain to the left of his bed.
There was a small bedside table, resting just inside the curtains. On top of it, there was a plain white vase.
Shoto moved his fingers from his nose to his eyes, and gave each a vigorous rub. The sight before him didn’t change, even after he squeezed his eyes shut for a breath for added measure.
Someone... had brought him flowers.
”I know you’re tired,” the man reassured him.
(How did he know? Was that written down on the chart in his hands?
Did it also have written instructions for how to force Shoto’s cloudy mind to focus?)
The flowers themselves weren’t the prettiest he’d ever seen. There was a lot of green, which he appreciated… only there really was a lot of it, in an overly large ratio to any actual flowers.
There was a main bundle of spiked leaves leading to tiny white flower tops; those were surrounded by the occasional mismatched blossom in a mix of buttery yellow, purple, orange, and more white, all sporting way too many leaves each. It rather looked like someone had strolled through the park, randomly picked up flowers and weeds, then thrown them all together.
They were all sort of… wilty, too. Shoto’s head throbbed as he squinted at a particularly wilted white pansy (or was that a daisy?) shot through with red, and felt a brief flash of empathy.
Maybe what they both needed was a ton of water and some sunshine to get them back to full health.
“I just have a quick list of questions for you, then you can go back to sleep. I fully expect your family to want to see you, as they’ve definitely made that much obvious, but you can see them after you’ve rested.”
While Shoto had stopped paying attention a while back, he mentally marked the wry exasperation lining that sentence.
Then the words themselves actually registered.
The kind eyes flashed with alarm when Shoto began struggling to sit up again.
“Whoa, wait a minute—“
“My family’s here?” he demanded, fighting past the scratchy feeling in his throat. Brushing away the doctor’s—and then the nurse’s—attempts to get him back down, he managed to get one elbow under him and one knee half-bent before the pain forced him to give up.
Thwarted but undeterred, Shoto glared up at them. Hopefully he looked intimidating, and not like he was breathless from the sharp rise in pain his movements had caused.
“Who’s here? My sister? Father? ...Mom?”
The exasperation that had leaked into his voice was in the doctor’s face, now. Shoto noted the way he was bracing for further movements, and reluctantly stopped flexing his fisted hands. “Your Father and... I believe your sister? Are in the waiting area, though they’ll have to wait a bit longer to see you. It took a lot of convincing to keep them there, and part of that included making promises you would stay safely in bed. They’ll be here soon enough. Until then, I’d be grateful if you could keep from making me into a liar, and stay put.”
The exasperation had switched to chiding, and Shoto was embarrassed to find himself sinking back into his covers, chastened at the hidden scold.
Clearly, whatever had happened was quite serious, if he was struggling to pull up his most rudimentary masks.
(What was going on? Why was it so hard to remember?)
“Thank you,” the doctor said, and patted his knee again. He lifted his clipboard, flipped a page, and narrowed his eyes at it.
“Now, questions. Before anything else: how much pain are you in right now, on a scale of one to ten?”
“Two,” Shoto answered promptly, plopping his head against his pillow and beginning to fidget with the blanket.
Fuyumi and Father?
(Not Mom, though. That… yeah. Not Mom.)
The doctor’s glasses tipped down, revealing a look of incredulity.
“Two,” he said flatly.
Shoto idly traced the character for endurance over a seam on his blanket and nodded.
Focused on getting the strokes just right, he nearly missed the smile lines tensing with some stronger emotion.
(Anger? Worry?)
“...Right. I’ll… make note of that. Okay. So I just need your full name, date of birth, and today’s date, please.”
Distractedly, Shoto rattled off the information, even though he was pretty sure he had the current date wrong.
But Fuyumi and Father? Maybe he’d gotten caught up in a villain attack, something connected with Endeavor’s agency? That would explain why Father was here. Or… but the doctor hadn’t said ‘Endeavor’, had he?
“I can see there are some gaps in your memory, but that’s to be expected,” the doctor was saying, drawing Shoto’s attention. Looking up from the covers as the doctor turned away, Shoto caught sight of his name tag as it caught the light.
Mitsumori, he mouthed to himself. The name wasn’t one he heard often.
Gaps in his memory, though…
“What happened?” Shoto finally asked. He traced the character into his hand again when shifting in position brought about a slicing pain across his abdomen.
Mitsumori-sensei took the stethoscope the nurse handed him, then gave Shoto an unreadable look.
“You’ve had a serious injury,” he explained, his movements and demeanor turning watchful. Tensing without really knowing why, Shoto warily followed his movements as he picked up the cup of pills Shoto had refused, and reached out for him to take them.
“You lost a lot of blood. There was no sign of a head injury, but serious trauma can have a number of unexpected side effects. What’s the last thing you remember?”
Shoto opened his mouth to tell the man his mind was being uncooperative and cloudier than a stormy sky—
(“Make your decision, Dabi. Time is running out.”
Toya was shaking.
Shoto could see the connecting vibrations from the strength of his grip, could see the way his arm faltered as he stood, uncertain, fear flashing through his familiar eyes.
His face may have changed, but Shoto had deeply loved his brother for the short time he’d had him, and he knew how much this would hurt Toya, how hard it would be for him to come back from it… if he came back from it at all.
And Shoto was tired of hurting his family.)
—and nearly bit his tongue clean through as a torrent of emotion-dredged memory dispersed the cloud that he belatedly realized had been protecting his mind.
“...Todoroki-kun? Are you—“
“‘nna be sick,” he managed to get out, before lurching over the side of the bed and proceeding to do just that.
Afterwards, it was easy to blame the sudden upset on the pain, even if it was shameful to admit he felt enough to actually cause a physical reaction. He let the nurse and Mitsumori-sensei help him get cleaned up, and obediently took the medication, even if swallowing around a suddenly tight throat felt nearly impossible.
(Shigaraki.
All For One.
Toya.
How could he have forgotten?)
“These will make you quite drowsy. Don’t be alarmed if you feel the urge to sleep. Sleep is exactly what you need to recover, so don’t try to fight it—“
“SHOTO!”
The door slammed open as Mitsumori-sensei was opening his mouth to add some additional, unnecessary information with a very earnest expression on his face.
(Shoto, after all, had no intention of sleeping, not after that.)
Earnestness turning to alarm, his blue curls bounced as he quickly turned, his white doctor’s coat flaring out behind him. Shoto had gotten a split-second glimpse at the door, which had been more than enough to tell him all he needed to know; he focused on that fluttering coat hem instead of the approaching footsteps, and resolutely didn’t look up.
(“SHOTO! You get your wretched hands off my son, VILLAIN!!”)
“Sir, I asked you to wait downstairs—“
“What have you done to him? Why does he look so ill? You promised me you would give him the supposedly expert care I am paying you exorbitant amounts for—“
There hadn’t been much to throw up; with his memory mostly returned, aside from the occasional gap, Shoto wasn’t surprised. But that didn’t stop him wanting to do it again, and it was a real fight to keep his body in place. He assisted his body’s efforts with trembling fingers that wouldn’t listen to his commands pressed firmly into his wound.
That hurt. A lot. But it gave him more to focus on than white, a color he was beginning to hate, and it left him winded enough that he felt like he might actually want to sleep.
Sleeping, at least, would get him away from the storm that was heading his way.
But then: “Sir,” Mitsumori-sensei said, very firmly and gravely, “you are disturbing my patient. I don’t care if you’re the Prime Minister of this damn country, you will not cause his recovery to set back by upsetting him at such a delicate stage in his healing. Please wait in the waiting area until we call you, which will be when he is ready to have visitors.”
Shoto didn’t dare look up to see Father’s—Endeavor’s?—reaction to this incredibly daring statement, but after a beat of burning silence, the familiar, stomping tread made its way to the door. The sliding door slamming closed seemed to push air into his lungs; Shoto belatedly realized he hadn’t been breathing, and ended up coughing as he inhaled wrong.
Thank you, he didn’t tell his incredibly brave doctor. He showed him his appreciation in other ways, by not fighting the hands supporting him through the painful process of keeping his lungs where they were supposed to be and allowing them to help him back down on the bed.
“Yes, you clearly aren’t ready to see anyone,” Mitsumori-sensei said. His eyebrows creased in unhappiness, he placed the eartips of the stethoscope into his ears and the cold metal chest piece against Shoto’s upper chest, after politely requesting permission to unbutton his PJ top. Shoto stared dully at the white ceiling as the man went about his work, grumbling inaudibly under his breath.
...So.
That… had happened.
The understatement of the century, to be sure. But the pain, while not unmanageable, was making an already overwhelming set of memories nearly too much to bear; Shoto couldn’t find it in himself to do more than acknowledge their existence. Untangling them, putting name and emotion to their many convoluted twists and turns, was beyond him. He could feel the already-present exhaustion building just thinking about it, and it was so very tempting to give into it.
But he couldn’t sleep now. Not when he had to devise a plan for how to explain what had happened. His actions were understandable, with all the facts added up, but would the police understand? Would Father? His family? U.A.?
An image flickered to life on the blank screen of the white ceiling, showing disheveled black hair and piercing black eyes. A shiver ran down his spine, and Shoto bit down on the urge to hide from the phantom figure of someone who didn’t want anything more to do with him anyway.
He looked away, and refocused.
What mattered was Toya—Dabi. There were going to be serious repercussions from what had happened, regardless of how well he covered this up, but…
He had to… change the story, somehow. To lie, more strongly and more believably than he ever had before.
Mitsumori-sensei buttoned up his shirt, and Shoto glanced up at him and the furrow still present in his forehead. This doctor was strangely invested in him, which could be helpful, if he played his cards right.
...But he was so tired. Shoto swallowed a yawn and a grimace of pain, and tried one more time to scramble together a plan.
He just needed to lie and otherwise keep quiet, that was all. Would All For One—or any of the other villains—tell of their connection? How many of them even knew Dabi was Todoroki Toya?
What had even gone down, in the aftermath?
His head throbbed. Shoto suppressed a gasp, and grabbed at his temples, squeezing tight.
“Okay, mister. I think it’s time you had some shuteye. I’ll be back to check on you and talk a little further in a few hours.”
Shoto didn’t disagree. If nothing else, he could use the privacy to figure out what the hell he could do to fix this.
With a last pat to his shoulder, and a kind but firm reminder to stay in bed and call if he needed anything, Mistumori-sensei left the room. The lights went out as he left, and the shutters were closed by the nurse whose name and gender Shoto couldn’t be bothered to figure out. The cart was wheeled out on squeaky wheels, and then Shoto was alone.
Sitting up was a bitch, as he’d known it would be. But the medication must be kicking in because he was able to get his legs over the side of the bed and put weight onto his feet without them buckling, even if he had to sit back down shortly after. Breathing heavily, Shoto gripped the ends of the mattress and forced his heavy eyes wide open.
So.
A plan.
Cracking his toe knuckles, one after the other, Shoto tracked the way the pain resonated through his abdomen with each movement. The pain focused him, as it always had, and it wasn’t long before a plan wiggled into place beside the pain.
His memory: Mitsumori-sensei had been the one to say it first, hadn’t he? About trauma, and unexpected side effects. Even if he hadn’t hit his head, it would be believable if he couldn’t remember anything, at least right away. If he claimed amnesia, like he’d heard people did sometimes to get away from their responsibilities and families, that would give him time to decide what could be said and what couldn’t—and what could conceivably be hidden completely.
There would be some sort of inquiry, no doubt; but Shoto felt confident he could hold out against an interrogation without giving anything away.
Having a plan that might actually work was such a relief. Shoto breathed carefully through a mystifying urge to cry, chalking it up to a combination of tiredness, pain, and too many unwanted memories.
(Wouldn’t it be nice if he could actually forget.
Maybe if he’d...)
He rubbed away the burning in his eyes, using a surge of annoyance at himself as fuel for trembling legs and a protesting abdomen that really didn’t want to support his torso. Not crying out was a battle, but he allowed himself groans and short grunts of pain as he walked, painfully slowly, to the window. It was only a few steps to the chair beside it, and he sank into it with careful slowness that ended on a collapse as he lost the fight with the pain.
The shutters, once opened, revealed clear blue skies, devoid of clouds. Squinting at the harsh light, Shoto looked down at miniature cars and people milling about below him.
What floor was this? At least the 20th, probably. Father certainly hadn’t held back.
He tapped a line across the windowsill, staring through the glass to avoid looking at his reflection.
Father. No wonder Father… Endeavor was here. Shoto had gotten himself kidnapped, then badly hurt; his name was probably plastered across every media agency in the country. With that much publicity, Endeavor had to think about the family’s reputation, and…
And after the… press conference—
(“Have you heard of ‘a trial by fire’? No matter the circumstances that led to it, this is his trial by fire, and he will come out of it stronger than ever before.”)
—it would make sense that he felt the need to be present.
That. That made sense.
A yawn cracked his jaw, and Shoto blinked away tears after. The clouds that had safely hidden memories were enveloping his mind again, threatening to drag him towards sleep.
He shifted in the rather uncomfortable seat, wishing he could pull his knees up to his chest. He couldn’t afford to fall asleep, but it would be nice to get comfortable.
Where was his phone, anyway? He’d left it behind for the test of courage (which seemed like a lifetime ago, now); surely someone had thought to take it to his family, along with his bag. He never used it for much of anything, but he itched to check the news to see what they were saying, to…
...to check the damage.
Shoto craned his neck, not very hopeful he’d see it lying around somewhere, and wasn’t terribly disappointed when he didn’t. Well, there went that idea.
He yawned again, wider than ever. Wiping away the resulting tears with the heel of his hand, Shoto propped his elbow onto the armrest and leaned his chin on his fist.
This was why he didn’t like pain medication. It kept him from feeling the results of his progress in training, made him complacent and lazy, and it left him mentally compromised in a way he couldn’t control.
The hospital room didn’t provide any distractions, just lingering anxiety from bad associations. Shoto resorted to staring out the window again, when the sleepiness became too hard to fight. Watching the distant flow of traffic wasn’t very interesting, but it at least provided enough stimulation to keep his eyes from closing for more than a few seconds at a time.
It was going to be a long few hours.
(“If you think Todoroki Shoto won’t come out of this incident a stronger, braver, more determined hero than he already was going in, you should go home and rethink everything you know about heroes.”)
—
“Shoto!”
Looking up from his faltering attempts to find wilting flowers interesting, Shoto caught sight of Fuyumi’s face changing from worry to relief.
Sleep had remained elusive, but not without effort. Shoto had done everything short of jumping out the window to avoid having it overtake him. A few hours in, he’d started to think it might be worth the risk to try sleeping; with the images and thoughts already ravaging his mind, how much worse could his dreams be?
In the end, Shoto had been too afraid of his mind’s ability to call up demons and twist innocent memories to risk sleep. He could feel, now, the effects of that decision in the way his quirk roiled under his skin uncomfortably and the way everything felt heavy and slow.
The sight of his sister made all that exhaustion compound, but there was also a trickle of happiness trailing over the exhaustion. It had been a while since he’d last seen her, with the camp and their conflicting schedules. No matter the circumstances, he would always welcome a chance to spend time with her.
He was beginning the arduous process of sitting up from his slouch when her expression twisted, her eyes filling with tears.
Alarmed, Shoto gritted his teeth against the pain and moved faster. She caught up to the bed just as he managed to get to the edge of it. Fuyumi wasn’t one for outward gestures of affection: Shoto’s surprise, then, when she nearly jumped on him the second she was close enough was entirely understandable.
“Shoto, oh my god,” she sobbed into his hair. Shoto stared across the room dumbly, and belatedly went to hug her back. He didn’t comment on the way her hands were putting weight on his injuries, just held her with light pressure as she cried.
You’re okay, she kept saying. You’re okay. Like she was trying to convince herself, or possibly him.
Movement across the room alerted him to the fact that they had an audience. Instantly offended that anyone would deliberately stick around to witness his sister’s breakdown, Shoto craned his neck, glaring in the direction of—
…of Father, observing them both with an inscrutable look on his face.
His insides froze, then began to shudder. Shoto’s arms flexed, just shy of a flinch. He let his eyes slide away in a natural way, like he hadn’t noticed, and frantically grasped for his normal masks and appropriate attitude for dealing with the Todoroki patriarch.
When he felt ready (if there ever was such a thing), he set his face, and met his eyes.
“Father,” he said tersely. Shoto felt Fuyumi tense under his hands, and made an effort to smooth the rough edges out of his tone.
“Thank you for arranging a private room. I appreciate the priva—“
“Shoto,” Father interrupted, and Shoto shut his mouth. That hadn’t sounded angry, but Father might be building up to it. He liked to do that, sometimes, possibly to catch Shoto off guard.
Resigned to the possibility of a dragged out argument while injured, exhausted, and hurting, and with the worst possible person as witness, Shoto gently pushed Fuyumi away from him and shifted his torso in Father’s direction.
Best get it over with, then.
Father, as if sensing Shoto’s anticipation, began to walk towards the bed. Shoto felt the warmth of Fuyumi’s body move away, her sobs going near-silent. For all that her tears and the unexpected hug had made him vaguely uncomfortable, it wasn’t fair that she felt the need to hide her emotions. Angry on her behalf, it was a real fight not to show it on his face as Father drew closer, then closer, then right up against the other side of the bed.
This close up, he looked… uncomfortable?
“Shoto,” Father repeated.
He almost sounded uncomfortable. How bizarre.
“You… how do you feel.”
A demand, but one with an edge of uncertainty? Shoto shook his head slightly, wondering if he actually did have a head injury, and replied, “Fine.” He mentally patted himself on the back afterwards. That had nearly sounded friendly.
A pause.
“...Are you feeling any pain?”
That question was so unexpected, Shoto couldn’t hide his incredulity.
“...No,” he said slowly, unable to keep a, What in the fuck? expression from his face. “I’m fine.”
Father was in his work suit, which he wore to the agency when he wasn’t doing hero work. As Shoto watched, his left hand went up to tug at his tie—lightly, as if it had been tied too tight.
That couldn’t be a tell of nervousness. There was no way.
The man scanned the room, taking in the shutters, still closed, then the chair Shoto had been sitting in. When his eyes trailed over the flowers, they paused, then sharpened.
“Who left these here? Have they been checked for tampering?” The demanding tone was irking, and completely uncalled for. What had the flowers ever done to Father?
And here he was, thinking Father was nervous or something equally as stupid. He was clearly in high dudgeon with how quick he was to throw his weight around in a hospital room.
“Well, I ate one earlier,” Shoto said—airily, because a ridiculous question demanded a ridiculous answer. As Father’s eyebrows shot up, he continued, letting his voice go dry and slightly biting: “If I haven’t died, they can’t have been laced with anything serious.”
“Shoto!” Fuyumi exclaimed, aghast. Shoto gave her an apologetic look and a small smile to show her he was joking, then shot Father a flat look of displeasure.
If he was just here to be an ass, Shoto would respond in kind.
“Now if you’re done checking to see if I’m still breathing,” he said caustically, not in the mood to drag anything out. Before he could continue, footsteps sounded from the outside hallway. The sliding door opened a moment later, and Shoto was relieved to see the floppy mop of blue hair appearing through the door.
“Todoroki-san,” his savior said, sounding very severe for a man with a kind face and glasses that refused to stay on his nose. “Your son is trying to rest. You will be informed when he is ready for visi—Shoto-kun! What are you doing out of bed?”
Shoto looked down automatically, and recalled that, yes, he wasn’t in bed. He grimaced sheepishly at the frowning man.
“I… was?” he tried. Hunching his shoulders as Mitsumori-sensei only frowned harder, he let go of Fuyumi and got both hands under him, pulling himself towards the head of the bed slowly and with considerable difficulty.
“Let me help.” Mitsumori-sensei’s hands were firm but not harsh as he supported most of Shoto’s weight. Fuyumi followed the man’s every move with wide eyes, her folded hands white from how tightly they were pressed together.
Shoto didn’t look to see Father’s reaction.
As he was scooted up against the pillows a moment later (a simple move that left him winded), Mitsumori-sensei pushed up his glasses, and waited pointedly till Shoto looked up and caught his eye.
“Please stay in bed, Shoto-kun,” he said. The severe tone he’d directed at Father was gone, but his tone didn’t leave any wiggle room for disobedience. “You are risking a lengthy stay at the hospital every time you over-exert yourself. For your own sake, please listen to instructions and rest.”
It was a tone Shoto realized he found familiar, though he couldn’t quite remember why; it reverberated inside his head in a way that made him want to squirm and break eye-contact, like he’d done something wro—
(“You screwed up, and you’re in a lot of trouble… but it isn't the end of the world. We’ll deal with it, and once it's over…”)
Mitsumori-sensei said something else, but Shoto was busy lying flat on his back, his eyes drifting to the white ceiling, broken apart only by harsh lighting and cords covered in dust.
“Yes, sir,” he replied anyway, distant and faint. His body felt incredibly heavy; his wound called for attention, though the pain was manageable. He wanted to sleep or maybe sink into his mattress, even as his extremities trembled like he’d just come off from running a marathon. The contradistinction only made him more tired; when a cold hand carefully reached to grasp his, he didn’t have the energy to react.
(That… Aizawa-sensei was… irrelevant. What was done was done, and Shoto was too good at ruining the good things in his life to fool himself into thinking there was anything left to fix.
There would be no hugs for returning back safely, no searching eyes and hands on his face, no praise or scolding for throwing himself into danger without permission—)
“I understand your worry, sir, I truly do. At this point, however, you will only make your son’s recovery longer and considerably more difficult—”
Shoto had made… some kind of plan. It was hard to recall it, just then, but there had been something like a plan, for sure. That meant he could relax, didn’t it? He could finally go to sleep?
( ”I can’t, kiddo,” Nii-san said regretfully. Shoto’s brain short-circuited, stuck on joy and stubbornly refusing to move.
“...What?” )
He was so tired. Surely he could go to sleep?
An idea struck. A strong surge of hope, strong enough to give him a physical burst of energy, tore through Shoto, and he sat up with barely a hitch.
Fuyumi’s hand tightened around his; he barely noticed. Father’s sharp glance was harder to ignore, but Shoto had a goal to reach and a plan to get to it, which necessitated Father keeping his nose out of Shoto’s business.
“Mitsumori-sensei?” Shoto asked, letting the natural rasp in his voice add a weary edge to his words. The doctor turned to look at him, lecture forgotten.
“Yes, Shoto-kun? Is there something you need?” He really was a very kind man. Shoto resolved to find some way to thank him for his generosity, particularly in the face of Father’s bullheaded, annoying, aggravating everything.
He gnawed at his lip, a deliberate motion; his eyes he kept on his bedspread, where his fingers were suddenly in motion, reaching out to grip Fuyumi’s tight. “Is there… Is there any chance I could get, um, something to help me sleep? It’s just that I had trouble sleeping earlier,” he added hurriedly, letting shame color his words. “I don’t… I mean, I’m okay, though. It doesn’t hurt.”
It really didn’t, all things considered. But making a lie believable was an art form Shoto had perfected long before this, and one of the key points was to say a complete truth in a very factual tone.
(He’d found, over the years, that he was more likely to be believed when he said it didn’t hurt than when he admitted to some form of weakness.)
As he’d expected, the doctor looked faintly alarmed, which he quickly covered with a soft smile and a pen that scribbled over his clipboard. “Of course, Shoto-kun. I’ll get you something to help you sleep, and the nurse will bring it around as soon as she can. And while I’m sure that it doesn’t hurt—“
(See? There it was, that tone of disbelief.)
“—I’ll bring some more pain medication along as well. Let someone know if you decide to take it, alright? And don’t forget there’s a button you can press to call a nurse if you need anything—anything at all.”
It wasn’t long before his family was ushered out, politely but very firmly. Watching their backs as they exited the room, Shoto found himself feeling conflicted.
On the one hand, he welcomed the silence. Father was an unwelcome addition to any sort of gathering on a normal day, and while he loved his sister, the last thing he wanted was to use what little energy he had on panicking over how to stop her tears.
Today, however…
Today was not a good day to be left alone with his thoughts.
He couldn’t leave his bed, from both a lack of energy and the growing respect he had for his doctor; he couldn’t go outside for the same reasons; and the thought of asking for his phone, to look at a blank screen devoid of messages or notifications…
It wasn’t a good day to be left alone at all.
Shoto wrung the blankets between his hands, running sensitive fingertips over the individual stitches, and hoped the nurse would come soon.
(“I… l-love you. S...save. Yoursssself.”)