Chapter Text
Tetsuya wakes up in darkness.
There’s a stillness in the air, but not silence. A gentle current of air is being blown over his nose, but even over the hiss of oxygen he can hear it.
The quiet sound of breathing.
The slow and rhythmic noise of someone sleeping close by.
Just the sound alone makes an uneasy feeling begin to bubble up. However, he remembers how he escaped. The sights and sounds of the night, the nice neighbours, and the ambulance. It’s all too vivid to just be a dream right? Tetsuya tries to clench his fists into the blankets covering him, but three of his fingers are unable to even bend, feeling bound just tight enough to immobilize them. Still, the motion is enough to jostle the IV plugged back into his left hand.
His gut tells him that this is a very bad sign.
It’s dark here, but not pitch black .
That realization is the only thing the keeps him from tipping over the cusp and going into a panic. The layout of the room looks different. It’s too dark to identify anything but he can’t be in the basement anymore. He almost manages to soothe his anxieties entirely before he sees the figure sitting in a corner, silently watching him.
It’s Terushima.
An all-consuming feeling of despair sinks deep into Tetsuya’s bones, like the front door was slammed in his face again.
He’s still trapped.
Terushima just moved him to another room in the house. Without a doubt this room must be just as fortified, and there’s no doubt that Terushima knows what he tried to do. If he even really did try to escape. Maybe the whole escape was just a drug-induced dream, and Terushima has just been sitting there watching him twitch in his sleep.
The drugs may be numbing the pain of his injuries, but his heart lurches painfully as if he were just stabbed with a shot of adrenaline. He feels worse than when he was coming down from those pills. The dream had felt too real this time. He would have preferred to spend the night in agony than have such a cruel dream. It was so vivid, but he should have known it couldn’t have been that easy to escape. Why would Terushima sleep downstairs and leave his IV bag well within his captive’s reach? The man was crazy, but not stupid.
Tetsuya can’t stop the tears from falling.
He does his best to choke down his sobs in fear of alerting the man, but an ugly keening noise squeaks out as he tries to pull out the IV. He doesn’t care if Terushima is right there or how much pain he’ll be in later, he just wants to be lucid. No more mystery drugs that make him hallucinate and black out. His bad fingers are almost too stiff to cooperate, but he manages to trap the line between his thumb and index finger before recklessly trying to yank it free. The tape is too well adhered to his skin though, so it just hurts as the port is wiggled around by his weak efforts.
“Tetsuya! Stop!” Somehow, Terushima moved from his seat and roughly grabbed his arm from the left, all without him noticing.
He’s unable to see the man in the dark, but he lashes out to punch before he can even think of how bad an idea it is. His hand connects with flesh but they both cry out when Tetsuya used his bad hand without thought again. The lights turn on despite them both being nowhere near the middle of the room. It’s not the dim, flickering light of a single bulb. The whole room lights up bright enough to hurt his head and shut his eye.
He hears a light switch this time as he sees the room go dark again through his eye lid, and then a soft click as a button is pressed and a dimmer light is turned on.
“Tetsuya? Sweetheart, can you hear me? Thumbs up if you can hear me,” a soft feminine voice gently coaxes him. Rather than answering, his eye snaps open in disbelief.
His parents.
No matter how determined he was to escape, a part of Tetsuya was convinced that he would never see his family again.
“- om ,” he manages to croak, and the voice is so rough and mangled it doesn’t even sound like his own. He’s so relieved to see his mom though that he can’t be bothered to feel concerned about it.
His mom cringes at the harsh sound and quickly says, “don’t talk yet. Your throat is still healing, it was badly damaged but hopefully nothing permanent. It’s important you let it rest though. Mirai, get up already and say hi,” she scolds.
“Dad is here too.” A hand waves at him from his left side before it grabs onto the bedrail and hauls up the rest of its body. His dad really is here too, looking happy even as he holds the side of his face. “Is your hand okay?”
He only gets out half a syllable of his apology before his dad shushes him. “No talking, remember? Maybe I can bring my tablet later so you can use the text-to-speech function. It’s my fault for sitting on your bad side and grabbing you without warning. We’ve been trying to keep all the lights off to help with the concussion but I can imagine why that would be disorienting for you. Are you okay? Wait, stupid question, is there anything I can do for you?” he asks with pleading eyes.
Tetsuya bursts into more tears before he can even process what’s happening.
Not the restrained tears of fear, not the bestial wails of agony, but sobs of pure relief. A heavy pressure flies off his chest so quickly it leaves him feeling dizzy. He might have really made it out. No tricks or conditions. The feeling is so visceral it leaves his head empty as he cries, his chest heaving with exertion to sustain it all even with the supplemental oxygen.
Neither of his parents hesitate to comfort him. With his father being closer Tetsuya gets pulled into his embrace first before his mother holds both of them. He can’t even distinguish what they’re saying but their voices are so soothingly familiar that it doesn’t matter. He even feels someone carefully stroking his head, but he doesn’t feel the slightest bit of rejection to the touch. Being held by Terushima was restrictive and sickening, but just by immediately feeling safe in his parents’ arms, it proves that he isn’t completely broken.
After a while he manages to calm his hysterical tears to a more manageable level, and in the new quiet he’s able to hear that his parents are crying too. His mom sniffles over his shoulder, audibly holding back more tears as she says, “I’m sorry we didn’t find you sooner. I’m so sorry, I promise we looked every day.”
His father speaks up too. “I love you Tetsuya. We both love you so much.”
As soon as their words were said none of them were able to hold back. Tetsuya had thought he was sick of crying, but these tears felt cathartic rather than a manifestation of misery. He’s missed his parents before but never like this. He doesn’t know if he’ll be able to let them go.
It’s a very long hug. Probably long enough to hurt their backs from hunching over the whole time, but they don’t try to pull away until Tetsuya lets go himself.
As Tetsuya uses his good hand to wipe away his tears, his mom makes a panicked noise. “Oh my god, your hand! Do you think the IV line is alright?” At the reminder of his hysteric actions Tetsuya looks down to see that the medical tape holding it in place has been half removed. It’s still in his hand but who knows if he displaced the needle. He hadn’t even noticed the faint stinging until the injury was pointed out.
“I just called a nurse. We probably should’ve dealt with that first,” his dad notes sheepishly before putting a warm hand on his shoulder.
His mother wrings her fingers together. “Does it hurt? Are you in any pain?”
Compared to what he had been experiencing for the past few days, his current condition is phenomenal. He gives her a thumbs up.
She immediately looks even more concerned. “It hurts? Don’t worry, I’m sure the nurse can do something.”
He meant to signal that he was feeling good, but he wasn’t about to complain about receiving more care. There’s a quiet knock on the door before someone walks in. A woman in light blue scrubs and holding a clipboard comes to his bedside. “Hello everyone, I’m nurse Tanaka. It says here that the patient is 16 year old Kuroko Tetsuya?”
“Yes, that’s our son. Hello, I’m Kuroko Yori. This is my husband Mirai.” He watches his mother shake hands with the nurse before everyone turns their attention back to him. “Tetsuya woke up about 15 minutes ago. He might have displaced the IV but it’s still in there, is he going to be okay?”
The nurse smiles and says, “Let me take a quick look at it, do you mind if I grab your hand for a moment?” He’s a bit surprised that the nurse asked for permission but it’s definitely not unpleasant. His dad moves back to allow the nurse to have better access, and Tetsuya stretches his hand to her in consent.
The last time someone held his hand like this, it was to rip his nail off. Luckily the nurse is quick in her assessment, lightly touching his hand with her gloved fingertips before coming to a conclusion. “He’ll be fine, I just need to reapply some tape. There might be some bruising or mild irritation though, make sure to let someone know if it starts giving you trouble.”
The nurse is swift but gentle, peeling the stretched tape off his hand before putting a new strip over it. Once his IV is re-secured, the nurse starts asking questions. “On a scale of one to ten, how much pain are you feeling? I brought you a pen and some paper if you feel like you’re able to write.”
She hands him the clipboard and attached pen. His penmanship isn’t very neat with his left hand, but he has no problem writing a shaky 4. Definitely better than the basement, where he wouldn’t have hesitated to write a 12 at some points, but there’s still a pervasive ache in his body.
She follows up with, “can you tell me where it hurts?”
The muscles in his neck feel stiff, his head is both foggy and dully pulsing, nose congested and achy, gouged eye prickling, back twinging. In addition to numerous nameless pains that he can tell are waiting to flare up the moment he tries to move.
Rather than struggling to write everything, Tetsuya decides to voice the most pressing pains. She reads it aloud. “Your neck and your head huh?” The nurse nods at his answer and fiddles with his IV before writing something on her own clipboard. “Understandable. You have a concussion and whiplash, presumably from the same incident. I’m going to run down the list of your injuries, do you have any questions or concerns before I start?”
He asks for the time.
“It’s currently half-past six in the morning, you were brought to the hospital around two. You’re in the intensive care unit. Any other questions?”
He’s curious about how long he’s been missing, but that’s probably not something the nurse would know. He’ll have to ask his parents once the nurse leaves.
Seeing no movement from his hands, the nurse continues. “So the most pressing concern when you got here was your neck. We have you on an oxygen mask because your throat swelled up quite a bit, but we’ve managed to get that under control with some steroids. There was a bit of tracheal damage but fortunately no tears or fractures. There is quite a bit of laryngeal damage so it’s very important you don’t try to speak to minimize long-term effects. You’ll have to remain sitting up and you’ll probably be on a liquid diet for a few days,” she informs him apologetically before continuing.
“The whiplash isn’t severe but you’re going to be feeling sore for a few weeks. You’ll be taught some stretches to help reduce that and speed up your recovery. We were also concerned about your head because there was some blood on the back, and we found a nasty cut. We closed it up with four staples. Broken nose should heal up without just fine without surgery, but we’ll have to wait for the swelling to come down to be completely sure. I’m also very sorry to say, but...there is no saving your eye.”
His parents quietly gasped in horror but Tetsuya himself was already well aware it was unsalvageable. It’s kind of the nurse to look so sad on his behalf though.
Tetsuya takes a moment to feel gratitude towards the medic who insisted on the neck brace. While he probably wouldn’t have been paralyzed without it, it was wise to take the precaution. He didn’t think that strangulation could cause that kind of damage, but in hindsight it was more likely his trip down the stairs that did the worst of it.
“The damage to the eyeball itself and the tissue around it is quite severe. You’re scheduled for an operation to have the socket cleaned out and fixed up this evening. We’re trying to have it done as soon as possible to avoid infection and for your comfort. I imagine it doesn’t feel very good in there with all the inflammation. When it’s all healed up, you’ll be able to get a prosthetic. It won’t have any visual function, but most people find it more comfortable than an empty socket.
“Your other injuries aren’t as pressing but we’re keeping tabs on them. Some large areas of bruising and moderate patches of abrasions on your back. Probably some muscle strains as well, which the anti-inflammatories also help with. Your broken fingers should also heal up nicely if you take care of them.”
Tetsuya’s a bit curious as to what the doctors thought about the condition of his fingers. The little holes in two of his nails and one fingernail missing entirely looked like torture wounds to him. Though compared to his gouged eye it was barely a warmup.
Terushima.
Is he alive? Did they find him?
What if they didn’t think to check the basement? What if Terushima is still sleeping down there? What if he woke up and escaped? What if he’s coming here? What if they brought them to the same hospital, and Terushima hunts him down?
The man is only missing an eye, meanwhile Tetsuya himself can barely sit up right now. If Terushima comes for him, he’s defenseless. Even if his parents never leave his side Tetsuya wouldn’t put it past him to get a hostage or just kill his parents before they can call for help. The basement was awful, but at least it didn’t have these many variables.
Maybe he really should have killed Terushima.
It’s not fair. He’s out of the basement but the man still takes up most of his thoughts. Tetsuya tries his best to keep calm, but the stress is already creeping back in. Tears of fear and frustration begin to pool in his eye and his bandaged one is already uncomfortably damp.
Someone lightly places their hand on top of his left one. “Are you still with us Tetsuya?” He looks up to meet his dad’s concerned gaze. Tetsuya’s unsure of when he even looked away from the nurse or if she said anything else after mentioning the fingers. Even his mom has a bit of fear in her eyes while the nurse watches quietly from the sidelines. He nods stiffly in response. While the movement was careful and slight, he can still feel the way his muscles disagree. He didn’t feel nearly this sore when he was running around trying to escape. Maybe the drugs and adrenaline kept the worst of it at bay?
The nurse clears her throat to gain their attention. “Alright, I think I’ve said all the important stuff. I’ll be back in a few moments to run through a simple physical exam to see how your concussion is doing. Take some time to gather your thoughts and I’ll answer any questions and concerns then. It was nice meeting you Tetsuya-kun.” She waves cheerfully before exiting the room.
“Um,” his mom hesitates before saying, “I know it’s hard losing an eye, but don’t you remember how well grandpa did even after he went blind? We’ll get a really good prosthetic; people won’t even be able to tell it’s not real. And the nurse said keeping it will only make you feel worse.” His dad even nods along and squeezes his hand.
Tetsuya gently pulls free to pick up the pen. He asks them what happened to Terushima.
His parents have a silent conversation over him with their eyes. It makes him nervous that there are things they aren’t telling him, but he has only been awake for about half an hour now.
His dad is the one to answer. “They found him unconscious. He’s currently receiving medical attention at a hospital, but he’s still in police custody. We promise he can’t get anywhere near you.”
That cautious answer plucks at a string of worry in Tetsuya’s chest, but he chooses to focus on the fact that Terushima is being watched. He doesn’t even have the mental strength to fret and worry any further. He doesn’t cry with relief again; he only closes his eye and slumps back into the many pillows supporting him.
He draws in a shuttering breath, smelling the antiseptic air of the hospital and appreciates the change from the musty and stale air of the basement.