Guess Now Who Holds Thee?
[AN: Set right between the Sports Festival arc and when Shouto goes to visit his mother.]
Shouto took a sharp breath. Air was like needles in his lungs. His chest tightened. His face burned. He scrunched his fingers into the scratchy bed sheets he was sleeping on. His heart slammed itself against his chest, over and over again without risk. He felt like he was going to die.
These were all symptoms of a larger issue that Shouto had become quite acquainted with over the years. He couldn't rid himself of the memory of his mother pouring hot water over his face. He would never rid himself of the scar but God; he wishes he could just get rid of the sensation. Every now and again, it returned like a phantom and it was like he could feel his face burn for the second time.
He'd just woken up from a nightmare. It had just been a figment of his imagination but it was torturous nonetheless.
Deep breaths, he told himself as he sat upright. Colds tears didn't soothe the hot memory of his pain. He put his fingers to his face. His fingertips were laced with ice but nothing helped. All he could feel was the whitewashed sear of his pain. It was nothing like when it had been poured over him but it was just as painful. It was the fact that his mind willingly made him relive the event that really put Shouto through agony.
He ran his fingertips over the ridges caused by the scarring. He traced along trying to soothe the ache but it didn't work. It felt like nothing would work.
His hand dropped to his lap. He rocked as he breathed. His bare back felt prickly and he was drenched in sweat. He stared blankly at his lap. Darkness swirled around him and confused his eyes. He felt unanchored.
Shouto's eyes wandered around, following the murkiness in the room until he eventually came back to his hands. The way the darkness distorted his hands reminded him of Midoriya's hands. He'd seen what Midoriya's Quirk did to him. It shatters his bones and mangles him. It's stupidly admirable how he continued to charge through even with a broken hand.
Shouto couldn't help but feel responsible for Midoriya's misshapen hands now. After all, they had been the ones fighting during the match. Shouto doesn't regret going all out against the strange boy. His courageous and idealistic ways were so noble. Shouto couldn't help but respect Midoriya for it.
If only he could have remained as unaffected as he was mentally. With misshapen hands like Midoriya's, it doesn't seem unrealistic that Midoriya might get arthritis early or something similar. Midoriya was going to go far. Shouto predicts that from the deepest part of his heart. Someone as pure as Midoriya doesn't come around that often. He was driven and compassionate. He was going to make a fine hero one day: a hero that children could look up to.
Shouto sighs. The right side of his face doesn't throb as much now. He's distracted himself from his nightmare and the feeling that hot water was scalding him. Now he's found a different sort of pain to lament over.
This pain was different to physical pain. It was elusive and nameless but it still hurt like the devil. Perhaps it was guilt? Maybe even envy. Shouto is unsure but it makes his stomach knot and it makes him want to beg for forgiveness and to start anew.
That does sound like guilt, doesn't it?
But Shouto can't pinpoint what he wants to start anew for. He just knows he wants to say it to Midoriya's stupidly courageous and naive face. He has the kind of face with wide eyes and freckles and a cute upturned nose – he looks like a child, he doesn't look like an adolescent whatsoever. He looks like the kind of youthful fool that still believes that pain can be kissed better.
Maybe it's because its three a.m. but from thereafter, Shouto's mind wanders into dangerously delirious territory. He begins to wonder what it would be like to have Midoriya's knobbly hands that had been broken so badly, caress the right side of the fact.
He begins to wonder what it would be like to have those calloused fingers gently run along the ridges burned onto his face. He wonders what it would be like to have those childlike lips pressed lovingly against his cheek, or perhaps further up his face and closer to his temple. He wonders what it would be like to have sweet nothings whispered into his ear.
'You are perfect just the way you are.'
Shouto can hear it perfectly and he barely knows any of the words Midoriya says. He can hear it perfectly inside his mind regardless.
If only it were true.
His mind continues to stroll into lackadaisical realms of surreal impossibility and selfish fantasy. Shouto wonders what it would be like to have Midoriya hold hands with him. He wonders what it would be like to be kissed on the lips and loved like it was true. Midoriya seems like such an earnest person. He would give himself so wholly into a relationship.
Shouto's face burns and he feels himself tighten. He prepares himself for another onslaught of self-inflicted loathing but its strangely different. It makes no sense but this burn doesn't feel like a burn. This tightening doesn't feel like a chokehold.
It feels like something else. It feels more flighty and ethereal. It seems beyond the broken reach of any pair of hands – calloused and misshapen, or, capable of wielding fire and ice.
However, if what he felt had hands then they surely would have reached out towards him. Grabbed his hair and yanked him backwards into a Mystic Shape's deathly clutches and spoken to him in a silverly voice.
'Guess now who holds thee?' the Voice would ask.
'Death.' Shouto would reply then the Voice would surely speak of the perils that awaited him from then on.
Even though his completely new sensation doesn't make Shouto feel worthless and without hope, he loathes it nonetheless for he cannot name it and its effects were just as bad as the hatred he turns upon himself.
Yet the answer was not death, but love.