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Hizashi was dragged out of blissful sleep by the sound of incessant beeping.
He shifted, unwilling to open his eyes, trying to squirm down into the covers of his bed and back into unconsciousness. As he moved, the sheets beneath him slipped and slid slightly, as if they were laid over plastic; Hizashi stilled, suddenly aware of the slight crinkling noise his movement had been making. A hospital bed, of course. He was in a hospital.
That made the beeping a heart monitor. Hizashi laid still, trying to relax while tuning into his surroundings. The air felt dry and cold—why had he expected humidity?—and smelled vaguely of antiseptic. It was quiet, but distant sounds of shuffling filtered through the walls and the hum of an air conditioner or some kind of ventilation provided a steady supply of background noise.
Slowly, the context trickled back to him like blood seeping through his hair. He thought he heard a fly buzzing, somewhere, and almost flinched. They'd... they'd taken him. They'd dragged his body back out of there. They'd cleaned him off and hooked him up to a heart monitor and given him something to dull the ache in his bones; he'd live. He'd live.
He had to live, now.
Hizashi wished he had time to mourn that thought, but someone was breathing heavily at his bedside, and if he focused, he could smell a hint of coffee and sweat. His visitor wouldn't buy his sleeping beauty act for long; for all his talents, Hizashi could never figure out how Shouta could always tell if he was really sleeping.
Breathing as carefully steady as the beeping of the heart monitor, Hizashi slid his eyes open silently to look at Shouta while the rest of his body lay limp. Shouta's head was in his hands; his hair hung in tangled locks from where they were twistsd up in his fingers. Hizashi couldn't see his face, but his breathing was laboured and he shook slightly with every gasp he took.
Hizashi closed his eyes. Nope, no, no no no nope. Hizashi did not want to do this. He did not know how to do this. He struggled to keep his breathing even as his whole body fought to lock up. The beeping of the heart monitor quickened.
The breathing beside him paused. Shit.
Hizashi let himself make a fleeting expression of minor annoyance, shifting to nuzzle his head into the pillow as if he was just waking up. He opened his eyes again, groggily. Blinked. Looked around the room—or at least, what he could see of it without moving his head—and let his gaze land on Shouta. He lay there, still, and felt like a deer in the headlights or a dog two seconds from being kicked. Shouta stared back.
Hizashi had to bite back the urge to say something stupid—like 'good morning' or 'come here often?'—but there was a line of tension in Shouta's shoulders that told him jokes would not be well-received. Hizashi had nothing else to say, so he stayed silent. Shouta's knuckles were white. The air conditioner hummed.
"You..." Shouta started, then stopped. His shoulders softened in relief. "You're awake."
Evidently. Hizashi slowly jerked his chin down and up in a vague approximation of a nod. Shouta's face did something complicated.
"We weren't... for a while there..." he trailed off. Took a breath. "You lost a lot of blood. Some of the wounds had been infected."
The wounds, not his wounds. Not wounds for Shouta's 'Zashi; not violence in 'Zashi's flesh, not blood, not infection. Scars, maybe, but old scars, healed scars, faded with time. Silver scars, smooth scars, echoes of a distant violence 'Zashi had no part in and no call towards.
Shouta did not take the contradiction of 'Zashi and violence well. Or, maybe, that was an unfair assumption; Shouta had to have known, to some extent, who he married. The hospital bed felt stiff against his back.
A thought came to him: 'when are we?'. He'd ask how long he was asleep, but that wouldn't tell him how much time he'd laid dead in the rubble, or how long he'd grappled with the Nomu before that. He opened his mouth to ask, but the second his voice started to rumble, it cracked, and pain lanced through his throat. Fuck. This was why he hated pain meds; he could never tell how much damage he'd done. He coughed reflexively, curling in on ribs that still ached even with the medication.
Suddenly, there was a pair of hands at his side, rubbing his shoulders. Shouta was shushing him, quietly. "Don't talk, you moron."
Well, yeah, that was evidently a bad idea. Shouta jostled him into a semi-seated position and reached for a paper cup at his bedside, picking it up and putting it to Hizashi's lips. Hizashi didn't get much of a chance to see or smell what it was, but it was clearly green tea—steeped for far too long, if the taste was any indication—and stone cold. Hizashi took small sips to let the liquid run down his throat nonetheless.
Hizashi imagined Shouta waiting at his bedside with no clue as to what to do or how to help him, remembering that he liked tea and trying to make him some with the hope that he'd wake up and need it soon. Hizashi wondered how long ago that had happened, and how long the cup had been sitting next to Hizashi's bed.
It begged the question, again, of time. There was a war on, when Hizashi left. Shouta couldn't have left his students unsupervised for that long. Wouldn't've. He cared too much.
Evidently, something had alerted the hospital staff to his waking, because a moment later the door burst open in a flurry of movement and noise. A pair of quick footsteps echoed around the small room, mostly muffled by the carpet as the nurse walked around Hizashi's bed to check his IV.
It was a sign of his exhaustion that he largely ignored her, barely summoning up years' worth of training as a public servant to return her sickeningly empathetic looks with a pleasant—if tastefully chagrined—smile. At some point, she gave him something mildly quirk-enhanced to help with his throat, and he gargled it and spat it out into a pan as instructed. The colour of it was a woozy green-blue, and eerily similar to the colour of the nurse's teal scrubs. It tasted inexplicably like coconut; Hizashi took a sip of Shouta's too-strong tea to wash out the taste, but it lingered on his tongue.
The nurse told Hizashi that someone else would look him over properly soon. Hizashi dreaded it, so he smiled.
Shouta watched him like a hawk the whole time, unblinking gaze laser-focused on Hizashi with an intensity usually reserved for the villains he had to keep thoroughly locked-down with his quirk. Hizashi ignored him studiously, letting the bustling of the nurse seem to blur around him and vaguely following the movement with sluggish eyes. It felt as if Shouta was searching for something behind every twitch; he probably was. The silence between them hung like lead in the air as the nurse left the room, shutting the door behind her with a click.
A wave of exhaustion washed through him, an old pit opening and stretching somewhere in his chest. The heart monitor kept beeping at its same monotonous drone; light shining from behind closed curtains cast a dull haze across the space. The room felt empty. There was a familiar hollowness in his chest; Hizashi sank deeper into his bed as he waited for the feeling to fade. He could still feel Shouta's eyes on him, and it was all he could do to cover his despair in a layer of calm.
He could also feel, however, Shouta gearing up to speak; the silence between them twitched and squirmed hesitantly. He could hear Shouta's breath stopping and starting, preparing for words he didn't know how to say. Shouta's shoulders were more hunched than usual and his fingers curled inwards before relaxing, then curled inwards again. His eyes were narrowed with something akin to defensive anger, but every few seconds a flicker of something vulnerable—squishy, Hizashi thought—rose to the surface before being pushed back down.
Inevitably, Shouta would ask why. Hizashi had no intention of answering.
"Are the kids ok?" Hizashi almost grimaced at the sound of his own voice. Shouta snapped to attention, thrown-off by the interruption to his thoughts. Hizashi pressed on, reiterating his point. "Your students."
'Your' students, not 'ours'; another line in the sand, another few inches carved out between them. A careful, cruel choice, to set apart Shouta's people from Hizashi's, to separate their lives as much as possible so everything that Hizashi was couldn't bleed out to stain anything it hadn't already.
Shouta blinked, seemingly realising Hizashi had no idea what was going on with the war. He hadn't caught the intent behind the word. "The kids are fine; a few rough injuries, but nothing permanent since you... left. Midoriya had worse at the Sports Festival. After you..." Shouta blinked, his voice rough, shook his head, and started again. "After the nomu were cleared out, the Commission launched a series of assaults. The MLA had expected the nomu to buy them time and wear us down, so they weren't as prepared as they should have been."
His explanation sounded rehearsed, which usually happened when Shouta was unsure. "Are you worried it was too easy?"
Shouta's face darkened. "Nothing about this is easy."
Hizashi tensed. "Right. Yes."
Shouta's glare was so livid Hizashi stopped breathing. "Right? Yes?" His hands were shaking. "Hizashi, you almost died. I didn't even know they'd sent you; you didn't even tell me you were going, and I was looking after Ashido after her leg got fucked and I didn't find out until you'd taken half of Mustafu down with you. I had to bring Nedzu down on the Commission to get them to send out a search team and I still wasn't allowed on it because they thought they'd be finding a fucking corpse."
Shouta's voice was hoarse, and his face was twisted into an expression Hizashi hadn't seen before. He'd seen Shouta emotional—of course he had, they'd spent their lives together—but it was always restrained, begrudging, isolation couched as exhaustion and tears excused as dry-eye. Shouta was not a man who liked to show emotion, even though Hizashi knew that at the core of every decision he made lay a tooth-rotting sentimentality.
Here, Shouta looked... upset.
Huh. Hizashi must have really scared him.
"I didn't mean—" Hizashi's face fell, because he had meant it, and he didn't want to lie. He repositioned instead. "I meant the war. They really just... fell?"
Shouta relaxed a little, begrudgingly, seeming to take Hizashi's misstep as misconstrued fear. As he relaxed, however, his eyes shadowed slightly; Hizashi realised with a pang of guilt that he probably should have offered some kind of comfort. It was too late to change course, however, so he watched as Shouta picked his next words.
"The war's over, Hizashi." He said tiredly, "They were strong, but they were one insurgent cell. Towards the end they had no support from anyone outside their bubble; their sympathisers realised what an MLA-style society would entail fairly quickly. A revolution that nobody can stand behind is doomed to fail."
Hizashi considered that for a moment. "There'd still be some sympathisers, though. People who felt ripped off when the MLA lost the war, or even the old Stain supporters who wanted the Commission dismantled and were willing to leap on the quirk supremacist bandwagon in order to make that happen. The MLA lost, but they didn't come from nowhere."
"They're few and far between. The MLA didn't endear themselves to Japan during the war, Hizashi." Shouta reached out a gentle but firm hand to grasp Hizashi's own and held Hizashi's gaze with intent. "Hizashi, the war is over."
Hizashi didn't miss the conspicuous absence of triumph: 'we won'. The cost, to Shouta, was too high for victory. He couldn't stand Shouta looking him in the eye like that—with pity, reassurance, and grief—so he looked down at their hands and absentmindedly ran his thumb over Shouta's, marvelling at the texture of his skin. He couldn't stand Shouta looking at him, or crying, or sitting beside his bed for hours with a cold cup of god-awful tea, but even so... he didn't think he'd get to hold Shouta's hand again.
Hizashi wanted to say something: 'I thought I'd died out there' or 'I'd hoped I had', but the words collapsed in his throat, only leaving something empty behind. He couldn't ruin this. He'd already ruined enough. He'd upset Shouta, scared him, and here they were now... Hizashi focused on Shouta's hand again, scarred and worn, and said the only true thing he could without breaking everything again. "I love you."
The heart monitor kept beeping, and the edges of the curtains fluttered and stirred in the eddies caused by the air conditioner.
If Shouta was surprised by the abrupt admission, it didn't show. Instead, he flipped their hands over so he held more of Hizashi's hand in his and ran his thumb over Hizashi's knuckles. He breathed out shakily. "I love you too. Hizashi..." he swallowed. "I can't see this happen to you again. I nearly lost you and I didn't even know. They gave you the mission, but you didn't have to take it. You were under no obligation to take it."
Hizashi didn't know how to answer this without telling Shouta that he did have to take it; it was always him. If they needed violence—to break something, senselessly, beyond repair—Hizashi had plenty. There was a brittle, ugly, vacuous rage in his chest and unless he wanted to murder everyone around him, Hizashi was not allowed to scream.
Hizashi was made to destroy. The Commission used him for their own ends, regardless of what he was or how much it hurt; they didn't ask questions. No touching, no prying, no lingering stares. Hizashi couldn't complain.
Shouta wouldn't accept that. Hizashi wasn't stupid; he knew there was something wrong with him, something that could be neatly pressed between the pages of a psychiatrist's book, a spindly, inky note about self-worth or a disturbed sense of identity or something Hizashi failed to find appropriately clinical words to explain. It didn't matter; he'd take it to his grave. He'd taken it to his grave.
Now, Shouta was here, holding Hizashi's hand and crying when he thought Hizashi couldn't see and demanding answers Hizashi couldn't give.
Shouta was clearly waiting for acknowledgement; he was drawing a line in the sand. You're not getting hurt anymore. I won't let you. Hizashi couldn't agree, not directly, not without ripping a path straight through to the beating, bleeding heart of the issue: 'you were under no obligation to take it'. Shouta was right.
It's fine. Hizashi would just have to push him out a little further. "It was my choice, and I made it."
"You are my husband, and I should have known." There was a quiet outrage in Shouta's voice. "What were you thinking, Hizashi? What was going through your head? Why didn't you call? I would have gone with you."
Hizashi huffed incredulously. "You would have died."
"I would have died?" Shouta's voice was shaking. Hizashi's heart dropped like a stone. "As opposed to whom, Hizashi? What exactly did you think was going to happen when you took the mission? What the fuck did you expect?" His voice broke. "Why the fuck would you ever do that?"
Hizashi froze, his eyes instinctively flicking up to Shouta's face. He stared at Hizashi, eyes unblinking and searching, face twisted with grief. The longer the silence stretched on, the more sharp his gaze seemed, more desperate. Hizashi had to say something, anything. He broke eye contact and blurted out: "It doesn't matter."
Fuck. Anything other than that. Shouta's eyes narrowed with a dawning recognition. "What?"
"It's just- the kids, my quirk, everything, there are a million different reasons and picking one of them doesn't really-"
"No, that is not what you meant." Shouta's eyes were wild but still, his voice terse. "I know that tone. What aren't you telling me, Hizashi?"
The heart monitor was running a mile a minute. Hizashi stuttered out a dozen half-words, trying desperately to land on something to say. "It's really nothing. I'm just tired, ya'know? And, 'course, zonked on pain meds-"
"You were fine two seconds ago, and being tired doesn't make you a compulsive liar. There's another reason you took that mission, and you're not telling me."
"I just- does it really matter?"
"Yes, it matters, because you nearly fucking died."
"So fucking what? I wanted to!"
Shouta stared at him. The heart monitor let out another shrill beep. The air conditioner hummed, and Hizashi went cold.
Slowly, Shouta's eyes shifted from shock to horror. His gaze flickered across Hizashi's face searchingly; his lips opened subtly as if he were grasping for words.
Shouta had stopped stroking his hand, but they were still touching. Hizashi looked down to avoid the burn of his gaze; Shouta's wedding ring sat innocently on his finger, as opposed to the hidden chain around his neck. He hadn't noticed that. The detail made something in his chest ache.
"I-" Hizashi broke himself off before he realised he'd started speaking. He couldn't bring himself to look up at Shouta's face. "I'm sorry."
The words were quiet, but they felt like they'd been pulled from his chest. The taste of sickly coconut and green tea lingered in his mouth.
"I'm so, so sorry."
Shouta's breathing was tight and shaky, as if he were trying to control it. "It was intentional?" Hizashi couldn't bring himself to respond, so he just screwed his face up as if in pain, still avoiding eye contact like the plague. Shouta seemed to take that as a 'yes'. "You took this mission, knowing you would almost certainly die, as a way of killing yourself?"
Hizashi nearly flinched at the wording. "It didn't... it didn't feel like that. I thought..." Shouta watched him silently as he gathered his thoughts. "I destroy things. I'm good at it; better than I am at anything else. Of course it would be me; and if, in the process..."
Hizashi trailed off, relaxing slightly at the thought. Shouta's hand tensed around his, knuckles white.
"It would be..." nice. Convenient. A relief. Fitting, if nothing else. The sound of the heart monitor seemed further away; it was peaceful.
But Hizashi had been silent for too long; Shouta sat unnaturally still.
A switch flicked in Hizashi's brain.
Abruptly, Hizashi looked back up at Shouta, breaking the stillness; his face was carefully blank and mild, but he kept his eyes light and wide, blinking and shifting around to seem mobile and alive. "I'm alive now, though," he said, covering the wave of twisted nausea that rose within him at the thought with a light tone of voice and a twitching lip that hinted at a smile, "so I'll be alright eventually."
Shouta just stared.
Hizashi tilted his head slightly, expression threatening to slip. Why wasn't he saying anything? Hizashi blinked again, looking up at Shouta with soft eyes-
"Stop it. Stop that." Shouta's voice was sharp, alarmed; his eyes were open wide and staring at him with a look of glazed horror. He leaned back slightly, as if trying to get away. "That's not- you're not-"
Hizashi's brow furrowed in concern. "What?"
"You're not happy. Just a second ago, you looked like you'd stab yourself, and now you're-" he shook his head, looking honestly disturbed, "stop lying."
"I'm not." Hizashi kept his voice quiet and expressive; he let it break as his face closed off slightly in hurt. "I-" he started, then blinked and looked more intently at Shouta's face, "are you alright?"
Shouta looked stunned by the question. "No, obviously not. Hizashi, there's something wrong with you, and I'm trying to help but you keep brushing it off-"
"That's-" Hizashi made an offended face. "I'm sorry, something wrong with me?"
"You tried to kill yourself, Hizashi!" Shouta's breathing was ragged. "Stop pretending it's fine!"
At that, something gave way; anger spread like an oil slick through Hizashi's blood. His skin crawled; his hands twitched. "Why the fuck do you care now?"
Shouta visibly recoiled at the acid in his voice, face twisted in hurt and confusion. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Hizashi was definitely going too far; he didn't care. "I have always been like this, Shouta. No one has noticed. No one has cared. Why have you waited until now, when I was finally so fucking close to being done with it all, to start kicking up a fuss?"
Shouta was looking at him like he'd never seen him before. After a moment, Hizashi realised that the heart monitor was beeping furiously, and his breathing was laboured. His shoulders were twitching; Hizashi gritted his teeth and tried to relax. He looked down, away from Shouta, and realised that at some point they'd pulled their hands away from each other. Crossing his arms, he waited a moment for the beeping of the heart monitor to slow and for his breathing to steady.
"Hizashi," Shouta started, then stopped. After a second, he continued: "I can't know what's going on with you unless you tell me."
Hizashi stared blankly at the end of the bed. "I know."
"I care about you, but if I don't know-"
"I know." Hizashi closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the pillow. "I know, alright?"
They were quiet for another moment.
Shouta started again, softly. "When you say that you've always been 'like this'", he asked, "what do you mean?"
Hizashi rolled his head to the side, still not looking at Shouta. "I don't think I know, really. It's just... something." He brushed his fingers along the thin hospital blanket. "My chest feels hollow. I'm disconnected from most things, most of the time. I can barely stand being around people, but I'm terrified of being left behind. I have to keep busy, I have to keep performing, because every time I give myself a second to think..."
Hizashi swallowed.
"Whatever it is, I just. Don't feel human enough to live. I've felt that way for as long as I can really remember feeling anything." He breathed out. "I pretend well enough; I enjoy pretending. It's just tiring. My chest is still hollow."
Shouta kept looking at him, something broken behind his eyes. His hands came up to cover and rub at his face; slowly, he dragged his hands down, tugging at his own skin, and let them drop at his sides. He breathed out, shoulders slumped and shaking suspiciously.
The curtains kept fluttering in the air conditioner's wake. The weak light outside seemed a little stronger, now, but still failed to reach far enough to brush against the side of Hizashi's hospital bed.
Shouta took a deep breath, and started softly but determinedly, "You're here, now. And I know something's wrong, so we can fix it."
Hizashi's lips pressed together, twisting into a wry smile. He still hadn't looked at Shouta directly, instead staring into the empty space just beyond the foot of his bed. "Do you want me to be honest?"
Shouta waited a moment before aswering; Hizashi almost turned his head to look at him, to figure out why he was silent, but he couldn't be bothered. "Yes."
"I'm not going to get better." It felt strange to say it out loud. "If you want me to stop lying, I can try; but you're only ever going to see me get worse. I wanted to spare you that much."
"You're not sparing me anything," Shouta said; there was a protective edge to his voice. Hizashi heard the rustle of clothing as Shouta presumably stepped closer. He felt a hand against his; "Hizashi, look at me."
Hizashi complied. Shouta's eyes gazed back at him steadily, even though Hizashi could see the telltale redness and shine of tears. Both his hands clasped Hizashi's tightly. His hair fell messily past his shoulders, and his jaw was peppered with long unshaven stubble.
"I chose to marry you. I'm here. I want to be here. You're not... sparing me by leaving, you're making me lose you." He took a breath, then continued. "I don't believe that you'll never get better, but even if you never do, even if I have to watch you get worse and worse only for it to end in tears, it will be worth it. I want to see you, no matter what that looks like."
Something that wasn't hollow swelled in Hizashi's chest. It hurt to keep looking at Shouta, but he didn't look away. He smiled sadly, and felt his eyes fill with tears. "If that's your choice."
"It is."
Shouta kept holding his hands as the curtains fluttered, and for a second, Hizashi saw something through them that might have been the sun.