Chapter Text
The dark didn’t bother Tsu as much as the cold.
She’d been so careless. She’d felt big and important because Selkie had asked for her personally, when he requested Aizawa bring some students to help with another smuggling case, but it had all ended in disaster.
Tsu had gotten separated from Tokoyami and Hagakure during their scouting mission. She’d been just a little too eager to show off—for her classmates, her teacher, and her first mentor—and crawled down the cliffside they’d been scouting to check out a cave opening. Tokoyami probably could have followed her, but Tohru couldn’t, and Tsu couldn’t blame him for staying behind with her.
It was her own fault, anyway. The cave had been one of the smuggler’s caches, complete with three of the smugglers loading stuff onto a refrigerated truck. They’d caught Tsu before she could fight back and shoved her into the truck, locking it from the outside before they started to drive away.
It was pitch black inside the truck. More urgently, it was cold.
She shivered and curled up a little tighter around the handwarmer Momo had made for her. Tsu’ hands were so cold she could barely hold onto it, and she clutched it close to her chest to try to warm herself up.
Her limbs were aching and her head was fuzzy. Every now and then she tried to knock the side of the truck with her handwarmer—it was a smooth metal cylinder, with a socket on one end for its recharge cable—but sometimes her hand were shaking too bad and she almost dropped it. She didn’t even know if Sirius would hear the sound anyway. They were probably too far away.
Tsu banged the handwarmer against cold metal of the compartment anyway, not wanting to give up hope just yet. She held the handwarmer close, shivering, fighting back a wave of panic when she realized it was significantly cooler than it had been before.
“Please….” Her voice was barely a croak, and she coughed against the cold, dry air of the refrigerator. “Someone….”
It was so cold. Worse than the provisional exams. She was fighting just to stay conscious, and she was losing that fight.
So cold…
Tsu shuddered and hugged the handwarmer even tighter. She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting back the prickle of desperate tears. They’d freeze on her cheeks at this rate and just make her colder.
Cold….
Her legs had long gone numb, and now she couldn’t feel her fingers. Her hands were just big, clumsy things at the ends of her arms. She wanted to bang on the truck again, but it was so cold and she was curled up too tight to move. She couldn’t even feel if the handwarmer had any heat left, but she held it as close as she could anyway. Her lungs hurt, the dry air of the refrigerator grating against them like beach sand.
Cold….
The handwarmer slipped out of her clumsy fingers, and Tsu couldn’t pick it back up. She tucked her hands under her arms, but they just felt like big, cold blocks leeching more heat away from her. Even as dark as the truck was, she could feel her vision fading in and out. Sleep was calling to her. Hibernation. Letting her body rest until the warm season brought life to the world again.
So co—
The squeal of brakes snapped Tsu out of her thoughts, and she tumbled to the side as everything in the refrigerator truck shifted suddenly. A crate banged against her hip, and she knew that would have hurt if she hadn’t been half frozen.
“…here? Where…the back!”
Voices? Tsu scrambled up, her hands and feet completely numb. “H-here!” Her voice was weak, and the sudden movement made her double over with a cough. She was cold all the way through, her body slowing down with its inevitable march to sleep. She hacked out a dry sob, crawling toward what she thought was the end of the truck. “P-please….”
“Get…open now!”
“You don’t…key anyway.”
“We have probable cause.” Aizawa’s voice, so clear and so close. Tsu reached forward, still finding the cold-slick metal of the truck. He was just on the other side.
“I told you; we don’t have a key!”
“I don’t need one. Tokoyami?”
Tsu heard a familiar screech. She had never been afraid of Dark Shadow, so she didn’t even flinch back when sharp shafts of light pierced her prison, courtesy of long, shadowed claws. Red eyes peered in at her, and Dark Shadow flung their head back with a cry of triumph. “She’s here!”
Dark Shadow’s claws made quick work of the rest of the door, and a rush of warm sunlight flooded over Tsu’s shivering form. Before she could even make a movement toward the door, soft bands of cloth had wrapped around her torso and gently pulled her free, out of the cold of her tomb into the arms of her teacher.
She was still shivering. It felt even worse now, in the warmth of the afternoon, but she knew that was just because her body was waking back up. Her hands were still mostly useless blocks at the end of her arms, but she managed to cling to Aizawa as she buried her face in his chest.
“Tsu!” Tohru’s voice was choked with tears as she wrapped her arms around Tsu from behind, adding her warmth to Aizawa’s. “I was so scared!”
Still too cold to speak, Tsu just nodded. She couldn’t tell if she was shaking or shivering anymore, and she was pretty sure Aizawa’s hold on her was the only reason she hadn’t collapsed to the ground.
He was talking, she realized. Her head was tucked under his chin, so she mostly heard the rumble of his voice in his chest, but she tugged away enough to listen to what he was saying.
“…and kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment,” Aizawa said.
“Kids climb in dumb places all the time!” She thought that was one of the smugglers talking, but didn’t want to look to be sure. “You can’t blame me if she jumped in the back of my truck and I didn’t see her.”
“Of course.” Aizawa’s voice was dry and sarcastic, and she didn’t need to look to know his expression. “A hero student just happened to climb in your refrigerated truck you were loading with illegal goods, and you didn’t notice.”
“Exactly!”
“Tokoyami?”
“I saw it.” Her classmate’s strong voice shattered any doubts about the man’s guilt. “I followed Asu…Tsu…from a distance and saw you incapacitate and imprison her.”
Her arms were still mostly cold, clumsy things, but she felt his hand touch her wrist as he came to stand next to Aizawa. “I alerted the others, and we were able to follow your truck.”
“W-well…kids lie!” the man protested lamely.
Aizawa snorted. “Not my kids. Not if they don’t want a dozen laps around campus and extra homework.”
Tsu tucked her head under his chin to hide her smile. He wouldn’t do that. He was too devious. He’d send another teacher to have the I’m not mad I’m disappointed talk with them until they were begging for punishment.
He rested a hand against the back of her head while he kept talking, and she let herself sink into the embrace. Aizawa didn’t give out a lot of hugs, so she was going to take this while she could. He reminded her of her dad, in a way. Her dad could do just about anything with one of her siblings hanging off him, like the kids just became part of him for as long as they wanted the contact. Aizawa was directing the authorities, all while holding Tsu up.
A few moments later, another vehicle arrived in a screech of tires. She heard familiar voices now, first Selkie and then….
“Froppy!” Sirius somehow ducked under Aizawa’s arm to wrap Tsu up in a hug. “Oh, I was so worried!”
“Th-thanks,” she croaked. Aizwa had slowly released her and backed away, leaving her in Sirius’s care. “Sorry for the trouble.”
“Let’s just get you warmed up. Ah, is that all right, Eraserhead?”
Aizawa stared at Tsu until she nodded. She’d be fine with Sirius and Tohru.
“Take good care of her,” Aizawa said.
“Oh, I will,” Sirius vowed. She’d brought a crinkly emergency blanket with her, which she wrapped around Tsu’s shoulders as Tohru took her hand. “Come on. We can make some cocoa and get you into some warmer clothes, okay?”
Tsu nodded, shooting one last, thankful glance over her shoulder at Aizawa before following Sirius back toward her truck, where her kind friend already had the heat blowing despite the warmth of the afternoon.