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Todoroki Touya was in and out of consciousness when his body was remade.
For most of it, he was numb.
His body tingled with it, with the sense that there should be feeling, should be sensation. All he felt was pressure. Sharp, pointed, in lines.
On his legs.
On his arms.
On the side of his neck.
A pressing sensation, a releasing.
He drifted on these feelings, in and out of awareness. One moment, he felt something wide and firm on his throat; the next moment, nothingness. Quiet. Peace. He has known peace like this before; he has experienced little of it. Glancing moments with his mother’s hands in his hair, his sister playing violin on a rainy day. He tried to grasp onto the feeling, onto the awareness, but the thoughts vanish, one by one.
Touya’s mind was sluggish, slow.
He let them go and drifted further. Following the feeling down. Away. In and out.
At some point, his eyes blinked open. But all he saw was the same as he saw before on the back of his eyelids: darkness. Pitch black.
But there were sounds – a shuffling. A humming. Melodic. And—a flickering.
Faintly, he smelt it.
Burning.
The smell he knew too well. The smell that caused shivers up his spine.
Slowly, he turned his head to the side. The numbness shook away to searing pain, sharp as a knife’s edge.
He faded away, and the scent went with it.
When he reappeared once more, perhaps minutes later, or months, or years, he could feel something by his feet. Could hear the sound of dripping, slow and languid.
Then, a gentle tutting sound. His eyes opened, and for only a second, he saw something: a man, a glowing light on his face, a beacon of white cutting through the darkness like a lighthouse at midnight.
For that brief second, Touya saw shapes and lines. His mind unable to piece them together at first. A shining, silver blade, drenched in red, slipping into his leg. Then the man’s bicep heaved, the shoulder slamming the arm down.
He felt pressure on his shin. Not uncomfortable, just pressure.
Touya couldn’t fathom the feeling to be scared, or confused, or anything at all, as he watched the blade vanish beyond the flesh. It made a thunking noise, and he exhaled. The white beam of light passed over to him, blinding his already poor eyes.
When the light man spoke, he sounded far, underwater.
“No, no, back to sleep, child.” He reached out a hand, pressing thick, warm, wet fingers to his jaw and directing Touya back into place. His eyelids felt heavy. They drooped closed.
Touya vanished to the inner darkness, but he returned again and again. On those occasions, he could not find the ability to look. Opening his eyes was unreachable, distant. He could not remember how he might’ve once done it.
He could not remember a lot, actually.
How to touch.
How to see.
How to smell.
The burning scent was gone, that roasting smell vanished. But he could still hear it, the faintest flicker of fire, the cinders spitting. He could hear the humming voice, the song unfamiliar, looping.
The pressure increased, too. It came in waves; around his jaw, nose, throat. Down to his sternum – there was a heavy pressure there, he heard a distinct crack. He could not find it in himself to be worried.
To be afraid.
But there was something happening to his chest. Something strange, as it pressed inwards and then expanded out. Wider than it was before, growing larger, the pieces lifted out and up.
The tearing sound of wet flesh. Of it ripping, like well cooked meat falling off the bone.
Then there was a pulling on his legs. A tugging sensation. A shredding sound. He had never heard this kind of shredding before. Like tissue but thicker. The sound of squelching viscera. The drip-drip-drip against the floor.
Touya could feel a wetness. A warmness.
It was on his skin, in his mouth. Iron-tasting. Metallic.
It slipped between his teeth, under his tongue. It choked him, pooling in the back of his mouth, in his throat.
There was a pressing on his jaw and then it was trickling out, running a line down his shoulder. Another line ran down the side of his neck as something split across his ear. The sound grew loud, the slicing sawing of a blade, the wet slap of something hitting the floor.
And then he was blinded and deafened. No smell, no sight, no sound.
Just the feelings, just the pressures, just the sharpness of the sensations that slipped through the haze. The almost pain, so familiar. A ringing of agony.
He drifted once more into the black.
When he returned, there was a voice speaking.
He heard it, muffled once more, underwater and distant and garbled, but he heard it all the same. Another joined it, lyrical and smooth. The voices lilted and twisted and turned like a song. Sometimes, they petered out, and sometimes they came back.
And then, at last, he was in desperate pain.
An overwhelming agony. Two hands landed heavy on his shoulders, pressing them down, and he felt them too much, too weighted. His eyes did not open, his mouth could not speak.
He was forced downwards as the pain stretched out.
His shoulders felt wider than before. His hands felt larger. It was all too present; intense pain in his legs, cracked across the calves and thighs horizontally. In his biceps, in his forearms. Each finger felt broken and reset. Each rib reangled outwards. He had never been aware of his organs until this moment, each one sploshing about your torso, captured in the rib cage, in the flesh, different, missing, new pieces added.
He felt like a stranger in the meat of his body.
The hands held him down as he writhed. He did not control the writhing. He was not conscious of the hands or the pain or the fire.
He just knew that he felt it. That he was lost in it.
Blue flames flickered behind his eyelids, a child’s scream echoing.
Hands ran up his legs, over his hips, stomach, chest, arms, face. Intense, powerful itching followed their wake. His body, cracked apart, sewn together, pained, itches. And he trashed for all he was worth as it overcame him, as he drowned in feeling.
The voice said, “Stop fighting, child. You are being remade.”
A second voice became excruciatingly clear, as if spoken right into his ear. “You must not fight the feeling of the making. You must let it consume you whole.”
Darkness devoured him, and he was gone.
It would be three long years before he woke up once more.