Work Text:
Even hidden, the sun was hot.
It didn't look like a day the sun should be hot though.
Shattered buildings in every direction, a lowering gray sky, hot winds stroking sweat from skin while giving no benefit of cooling, only making him thirsty.
It should be cold with the way it looked .
But as soaked ragged fabric alternatively stuck and flapped free of dirty tired skin stretched across too many bones and not enough flesh, Hizashi sighed a brief prayer of relief.
It wasn't often he found an actual radio station to set up in but today must be his lucky day.
Climbing into the shattered remains of the building, ignoring with practiced ease the signs everywhere of death, broken skulls in odd corners, chewed bones scattered about, tattered remains of clothing, he set upon the third floor. High enough to avoid most predators yet low enough to jump from at need.
He was very very skilled now at leaping for dear life from heights, a skill he’d learned from someone once, well, with practiced ease he shut that thought down, he’d revisit it later, maybe.
Making sure his solar collectors were in place for the westering sun, he scavenged enough equipment to add to his own to make sure today's signal was strong, the strongest in weeks, months even.
Opening his mic, taking a deep breath, Hizashi set aside his bone deep sorrow, ignored the defeat that bled color from even the brightest sunset....
And began to sing.
A simple song, not needing anything other than former training in a voice class when he was tiny, and then a kids band dreaming of superstardom, and then a lifetime's worth of singing to the radio as he lived a pretty normal life.
Well, as normal as heroics was, anyway.
He sang three songs back to back, and then launched into a funny story, one of him tripping and falling into a nomu nest and how he’d gotten out of it, a tip to get them fighting themselves instead of chasing which he’d learned on the fly trying to survive what hadn’t been a very funny moment at all!
Then he described a way he’d found to use several plastic bottles to purify even the stankest water, sang another song, recited from memory several pieces of poetry, sang again and finally signed off (because they were searching, always, so short was safe, well, safer anyway), throat sore and scratchy, with his signature words, “No matter how dark, no matter how grim, we are all our own best hope. Be kind, help when you can, and keep safe.”
Touching the switch to go dark again he breathed, “I love you all.” and killed his transmission.
His heart was a bit better though, the way it always was when he reached out and touched so many. - how many, he didn’t know, had stopped wondering when days could pass and he never saw a soul - Looking out the empty hole that once held a window, the night sky was just that exact color of Shouta’s hair, when they used to walk along the river at night, at the end of his day and the beginning of his loves.
Curling on the hard floor he didn't even feel it any more, three years now of a running scrambling attempt to be the voice of hope he was so used to sleeping on hard ground he sometimes laughed on air that an actual bed might kill him deader than a nomu would!
Sighing in the dark, he let his mind remember his love, the way he’d cut the memories short as he was setting up. Remembered his eyes, how they crinkled at the corner when he hid a smile. Remembered that smile, so rare, so hidden, only a few were lucky enough to see it, to earn it! Remembered the bottomless well of kindness in Shouta’s heart, how hard it was without him, but no, tonight he’d remember only the good things.
Tonight was only for why he loved his lost love.
Closing his eyes he let his mind go, remembering so hard the world itself faded away as he slid into sleep with the phantom feeling of smooth skin in his arms, sweet lips on his, skilled fingers touching and soothing and loving, tears falling unheeded as he curled tighter into the dream.
It was nearing dawn when a tracker nomu slid in through the open window, crept up on the scent it'd been following for so long, a single bite killing the still smiling man instantly.
Of course when All For One walked in later to find a stripped carcass and a fat nomu instead of the cornered and helpless one time pro hero Present Mic he predictably took that rage out on the one who denied him a toy.
He thought it was a shame Nomu couldn't beg for it to be over the way he’d been anticipating the ragged remains of the now dead man would have done but he didn’t need this tracker, certainly not if it disobeyed a direct order for capture rather than kill, and after all, the voice hero was finally no more so he smiled as he carved the creature into pieces as it deserved to be treated.
Now all he needed to do was find the nomu glitch quirk, then it was all his, the entire world.
Perfection indeed, and at this point, nothing could take it from him.
Smiling as he pulled another sweet sweet scream of agony from the near dead construct, the day was pretty alright after all.