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“What do you know, Hitoshi? What do you have on the organization named FÍN?”
The words echo in his ears long after the men have gone, leaving him in the dark and cold, leaving him with the lingering threat of a whispered voice that vibrates in his bones. The use of his given name that shouldn’t be known, given his undercover alias, curdles something within him.
He doesn’t know how long it’s been, or whether anyone is searching for him. He hadn’t told anyone who hadn’t already known of his whereabouts, his mission statement demanding utmost secrecy. Going dark, he’d said, right before cutting off all comms linked with his agency centered in Kyoto. Hitoshi thrives on these missions, his affinity for the dark and gritty side of heroism scratching an itch he had never known he had until his first assignment.
He knew the risks when he took this one; an infiltration of one of the most prolific gangs Japan has ever seen. A French-Japanese syndicate, with a network of associates so vast that it spans multiple countries, and Hitoshi had been tasked with joining their ranks.
They saw him coming from a mile away.
It makes Hitoshi suspect a mole in his hero agency that the men were able to call him by his name and know his quirk, and should he get out of here, he’ll be pursuing that lead with a vengeance. But...well first he has to escape, and rescue is seeming further and further away from reality.
At least he had told Aizawa goodbye. Maybe he should have trusted the nagging feeling that he wouldn’t return from this mission entirely whole.
The blindfold over his eyes tugs uncomfortably at the dried blood at his temple, reopening the wound with any movement. When he is left alone in the dark, and inevitably feels tears well up hotly behind his eyes, his nose scrunching with the burning in his sinuses, he feels the trickle make its way down his cheek without fail. Though such a small inconsequential thing, it still breaks something inside of Hitoshi every time.
They haven’t been in to see him in a long while. He’s unbearably thirsty.
Time drags long and warped, turning into a snarling beast that circles Hitoshi’s chair where his wrists are bound behind him and ankles tied to the legs, eyeing him with a deep hunger as Hitoshi can only wait for it to strike him.
Either it will bring him more pain, or it will bring him death.
After what feels like days of wondering which it will be, he hears the clanging of rusted hinges opening, footsteps making their way towards him.
He fights and yells obscenities when he is strong-armed out of the chair and brought to standing on shaking legs, invisible hands the only things keeping him upright.
The blindfold stays on.
Fear has turned into a solid weight in his stomach as he uses his other senses to make up for his lack of sight, but he doesn’t gain much. He thinks there may be three people in the room with him, two holding onto his body and another somewhere off in the distance. He wishes he could see the layout of the room, what the floors are made of (wood, he thinks), if he is drenched in light or shadowed in darkness, whether there is a window in this place or rather he is layers of impenetrable walls deep into their fortress—
He spits bile when a fist lands hard underneath his ribs.
“Now, Hitoshi,” the man says, the one called Claude, if Hitoshi goes by how he introduced himself, his words lilting with a French accent, “I grow tired of our games. You are purple and blue! I think it is time you share your secrets, non?”
Hitoshi is tired of their games, as well, though not in the same way, he supposes. He bites his tongue, determined to stay resolutely silent as he has done every moment so far.
Claude hums. Hitoshi thinks he sounds amused rather than irritated.
“So be it. Do you hear that, Hitoshi?”
Hitoshi is startled to find that he does, a sound filtering into his sensitive ears when he knows it wasn’t there previously. He feels a cool breeze on his face, cooling the sweat on his skin and sending a shiver violently down his spine; he tightens his jaw at the feeling.
“You see,” Claude continues, “when I tire of my toys, Hitoshi, I’m afraid I’ve always been bad about throwing them away. I was an only child—spoiled to the bone, yes, and I don’t think I ever really outgrew this, what is the word…” he trails off and Hitoshi finds himself bracing for something he can’t see coming.
He nearly jumps out of his skin when warm air ghosts over the lobe of his ear, a soft voice that still cuts Hitoshi to the quick sounding low and menacing, “Ah, yes...deficiency.”
The word slices through Hitoshi, hissed so harshly that his eardrum pounds, but before he can process the sensation his arms are wrenched forward. Weak legs scrabble for purchase but find none as Hitoshi is dragged blindly across the room, his breath coming quickly as his body twists in uncomfortable ways, pulling on injuries he had tried to ignore. Old bruises and wounds that he had received are reopened, until the hands on him abruptly pull him to a stop.
The sound is louder here, the breeze on his face even stronger—
“Do you know where I throw my toys these days, hero? Can you feel it? Can you smell it?”
Hitoshi doesn’t know how he missed it; the salt of seawater, the fishy brine blowing straight into his face. He doesn’t remember being this close to the sea. Was he unconscious for a longer period of time than he thought? Did they transport him?
Is it even possible he can be found, now?
“So I will ask you one more time, Hitoshi,” Claude yells above the roaring din of the waves—how are they so loud? “Do you want to go home? Do you want to see the people you love once again?!”
The hands on his body fidget and move, ready to throw him to his death at the slightest nod, Hitoshi knows, and yet he doesn’t open his mouth. Drowning would be a terrible way to go, he thinks. Are there rocks at the bottom? Perhaps it would be a mercy to expire via a sharp blow to the head versus slowly succumbing to lack of air, before he inevitably gives in and sucks in water instead of oxygen. He absently notes that his chest hurts; he always did have an overactive imagination.
“Who do you work for? How did you find us, boy,” Claude calls again, his voice bouncing off of walls and water and pounding itself into Hitoshi’s body. He shakes his head violently, the cut at his temple bleeding freely. He won’t give in, he won’t give this man the satisfaction. He already resigned himself to dying in that chair, what difference does this make?
Claude only screams louder, “Do you think your mentor would be proud of you now, you piece of shit?!”
Hitoshi chokes on his breath. Aizawa?
“Shall I send him your body in pieces? Or maybe just your head, and leave the rest to the sharks, hm? I do like to be generous from time to time!”
For the first time since he’d woken in that chair, Hitoshi feels his jaw twitch with his desire to open it.
Aizawa. Flashes of the man assault his mind, all the way from his UA days down to the conversation he’d had with him a number of weeks ago, before he dropped off the face of the earth for this mission.
It had been a short call.
“Are you alright, Hitoshi?” Aizawa had asked when too many seconds had ticked by between bouts of small talk. Hitoshi had assured him he was, but couldn’t back it up with much enthusiasm.
But Aizawa was always one step ahead of him; it’s one of the things Hitoshi appreciates most about the man.
“You got a mission tomorrow.” Not a question, not a doubt. The man had read him like a book.
“Yeah.”
Aizawa had only grunted.
“It’ll be alright. Call me later, yeah?”
Hitoshi had sniggered to himself, in private. Of course the man had read his worry across hundreds of miles and a staticky phone call, abating Hitoshi’s fears and assuring his confidence in Hitoshi all in just a few words. No one else could ever do it better. They hung up soon after.
“Dad…”
Hitoshi forgets for a second that he isn’t alone.
“What did you say? Did you just call him ‘Dad’?” Claude taunts mercilessly. “Oh this is precious! I think sending him your head will work just fine!”
“No!”
“Who do you work for, Hitoshi?!” Claude spits, his voice cracking with the volume of it all.
“No one!”
Hitoshi begins to struggle.
“Wrong! How did you find us?!”
“I won’t tell you!”
The hands on him tighten.
“You will!”
“I won’t!”
He doesn’t want this to be the end—
“TELL ME WHO YOU WORK FOR!”
“I CAN’T!”
“Then you will die!”
And with those last words, Hitoshi feels himself pushed, his body in freefall before his lungs can even take a breath.
It feels like forever and no time at all, his shoulders locked into place in fear and a scream ripped from his throat so roughly that it tears at him from the inside out. This is it. Every person he considers dear runs through his mind at breakneck speeds, jumbled together into a miserable mess.
He had plans next month to go hiking in the mountains with Bakugou; he and Midoriya had just reconnected not too long ago and had planned lunch in the next couple weeks; his mom had just made manager at her office job in the city and he hadn’t gotten the chance to congratulate her properly.
He wants to talk to Aizawa again.
There are too many things he was supposed to do, too much life still left to live. He isn’t done being a hero, for Christ’s sake!
His thoughts spin wildly out of control, but the last one he registers is: god this is going to hurt.
And then he lands face-first into concrete, his nose breaking on impact with a spurt of blood and blinding pain.
The sound of waves and the breeze that had been so convincing—so real—are gone, and through the ringing in his ears Hitoshi can hear laughing from somewhere above him. None of it sounds very far away.
“You fucking idiot! You thought that was real,” Claude calls down to him, and Hitoshi tries to focus on his voice through the pain. He groans loudly, knees drawing up into a make-shift fetal position, the best Hitoshi can manage as he flops to his side, bound, and with blood pouring down his throat.
“We’ll be back later. I’m not ready to throw you away just yet.”
As Hitoshi hears footsteps retreat, leaving him to the silence of men’s lies and the pounding of his own blood in his face as the adrenaline seeps out of him, it all dawns on Hitoshi very slowly.
He isn’t going to make it out of here alive.
This time when he cries, staying silent is the last of his concerns.