Trigger warnings: Suicidal actions, drugs, violence, blood
There, Shigaraki sat leisurely in all of his intimidating glory, pushing a custom pair of night vision glasses up to rest on top of his head.
"That was a nice little victory dance," he teased and leaned back into a relaxed position, referring to my celebration of the avoidance of the stool that I had previously bumped into.
"How long have you been sitting here?" I whispered, trying and failing to change the subject. It definitely was not the time, but I couldn't help the blush that spread across my cheeks. There's just no stopping some involuntary reactions.
"You're fun to watch," was his rebuttal.
"Now what?" I asked, ready to get this whole mess over with.
"What do you mean, 'now what?' You go to bed like a good little hero and wait to be rescued when the time is right," Shigaraki said bluntly, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. He might as well have been examining his nails as he said this. That was the only thing missing from his isn't-it-obvious tone and attitude.
"Aren't you going to punish me?" I asked, incredulously. Maybe most people wouldn't ask and hope that maybe it just didn't cross his mind, but I would rather know than wonder if it was going to come back to bite me unexpectedly.
"No."
When he was met with my blank stare, he continued, "you are an underground hero who was taken hostage. You have never felt this helpless and out-of-the-loop before, have you? Like you're two steps behind…. You've always been ahead with that nicely kept secret of a quirk. With your… insurance policy gone, I'm sure you're feeling quite hopeless. Anyone would do what you've done, just probably not as well."
His tone was stoic, and the words were condescending and relentlessly taunting, but…
"Was… was that a compliment?" I asked, looking up and meeting Shigaraki's gaze and holding it for the first time while I awaited his answer.
"Every time you failed, you came up with a new strategy. When you didn't find a door, you didn't give up. You moved on to other avenues that made sense," Shigaraki said while nodding slightly and still holding my gaze.
"You won't find a way out," he warned, his tone going from wonderous to stoic in an instant, and his gaze moving from my eyes to lazily glare at the wall. The change was so drastic and sudden that I reeled back a few inches to instinctively get some distance between us.
"It's fun to watch you try. No one is going to stop you. So, please, feel free," Shigaraki taunted while reaching out his hand and brushing his fingers against my cheek. I honestly couldn't tell if he was trying to be patronizing this time, or if he was just imagining what other things I might do to try to escape that would serve as good entertainment.
I wordlessly pulled away and turned to head back to the room they assigned to me.
Shigaraki spoke again, and I stopped in the doorway of the kitchen to show that I was listening, but did not turn around, to show that I also would not be pushed around.
"Let's see how crafty you really are, Seijin."
The use of my name was meant to startle me, and it did, but just a little bit. Dabi must have told him about our little interaction earlier. Or Hawks gave away my name when he gave everything else about me away. Either way, it apparently wasn't enough of a deterrent to stop me from my snappy reply.
"I invented those glasses," I quipped before gliding out of the room and walking quickly to my bedroom, not needing to be slow and quiet anymore now that I had already been discovered by the leader of this whole operation and he has declared no punishment or ill will toward me.
I didn't get to see Shigaraki take the glasses from off of this head carefully, making sure not to touch them with all five fingers. I didn't get to see him examine the glasses and smirk at the doorway where I had just hastily exited. I didn't get to see him move from a seated position to lying on his back with his legs dangling off of the table's edge, holding the glasses up to fiddle with the mechanisms fit snugly into a slim, usable design that I had originally invented to rid the hero world of the bulkiness and eyesore that were night vision goggles.
I didn't get to hear him mutter to himself, "if I knew she'd be this much fun, I wouldn't have needed convincing."
I did, however, notice my face was still warm after closing the bedroom door gently behind me. There was no need to make excess noise and make the villains sleep-deprived and grumpy in the morning. I already had enough on my plate. My blush had not faded since the first teasing statement Shigaraki flung my way.
I slid down to the floor with my back against the door and rested my still hot cheeks in my hands. I really was hopeless, wasn't I? Some things just can't be helped, and my biological reactions were one of those things. I tried not to let it bother me because it was something that was beyond my control. I had much bigger things to worry about that were under my control, like staying calm and alert, and getting the hell out of this situation in one piece.
I tossed and turned for the few hours of what I assumed to be night passed. It was hard to tell with no windows and no clock. I couldn't sleep. I paced around my room. I tried locking my door to see if I could trip my brain into feeling safe. I did some push-ups and sit-ups. I was dead tired, but every time I lied down, I just ended up tangled in the sheets from all of my fidgeting. I think I finally learned how to meditate, though, because that's the most I could manage. It simultaneously felt like an eternity and an instant. Maybe this was one of their methods to slowly drive me insane…
It was working.
For breakfast, it seemed that they were still in their celebratory mood because everyone was present again. Even though I was awake for over 24 hours by that point, I was still very conscious of the side-eye I was getting from the villains. I knew what I looked like from the mirror in the bathroom across from my room, but there wasn't much I could do about it.
I had dark bags under my eyes and my eyelids were so heavy that I didn't seem like my acutely aware self. I was, though. I put extra effort into paying attention to what was going on around me and how the villains interacted with one another and me.
It didn't seem like Shigaraki told anyone about what had transpired in the kitchen. Speaking of the kitchen, I finally got to see it with the lights on without Shigaraki taking up my attention when I helped Twice carry the dishes after breakfast was over. I was so tired that I was restless. I needed to be doing something, anything. Just to be sure so I didn't later doubt myself, I glanced under the table. My fingers did not deceive me last night, as there were no signs of a trap door.
Maybe I was becoming delusional from my lack of sleep, but it seemed like the villains were starting to actually get concerned. Toga 'tripped' into me and tried to subcutaneously inject what was probably something to help me sleep. I didn't need to remind her that my quirk would not allow that because she realized it herself as she slapped her own forehead and walked quickly to her own room. She came back seconds later and offered me a bottle of pills. I looked at the white tablets inside the orange prescription bottle but made no move to actually put whatever the hell it was into my body.
"It's trazodone," she informed.
When I made no indication of taking the pills, she added, "to help you sleep."
"I know what trazodone is," I sighed tiredly. "I just don't think it will help. It might make it worse."
"She's in fight-or-flight mode," Hawks interjected, throwing himself over the back of the couch to land next to me before relaxing back into the cushion and throwing his arm around my shoulder. "Her body won't allow her to sleep if she doesn't feel safe."
Toga perked up at this, snatched the bottle from me, and rushed back into her room. After a few seconds, she came back out with another orange prescription bottle, this time with little blue tablets inside.
"I got these for Shigaraki as a joke. No surprise that he refused them, but it was still funny," she explained as she handed the bottle to me. "It's-"
"Xanax," I cut her off, because apparently my manners go out the window when I'm sleepy. "I'm familiar."
I had already decided to give it a try. I was no use to myself if I was dead on my feet. If a rescue team came in the next few days, I would be more of a burden than a help to their efforts.
At the same time, I didn't want to make it easy on them. I wanted to bite back a bit. It was probably my sleepiness making me braver, combined with the confidence that Shigaraki not telling everyone that I had tried to escape brought out.
"Are you going to force me to take it?" I asked and handed the bottle back to her.
Surprisingly, she accepted it back, and responded, "no. I don't see how I could. But, please just take them anyway."
I started at that. Toga saying 'please' at all, let alone to a hostage of the League, jolted me. She handed the bottle back and I accepted them. I opened the cap and looked inside, shaking the bottle a bit to get the pills to shift. I looked at the little blue life-savers as I pondered what to do next: Give in or see how far I can push some boundaries?
I'll give you one guess. Here's a hint: I work with the legendary Bakugou. So, of course, I had to see how far I could push it and how they would react to small threats.
"What if I just took all of them?" I asked, holding up the bottle that contained probably about 90 little blue pills of alprazolam in a toast. It looked like a full 30-day supply, and if I was serious about taking my own life, this would be quite the way to go. Toga either knew a doctor, threatened someone, stole them, or just really committed to getting them to tease Shigaraki with.
I noticed that Hawks shifted in his seat beside me. I could see his concerned stare out of the corner of my eye, but I kept my gaze locked on Toga. She moved forward, just the tiniest bit. In response, I moved back the same amount, put my hand out in a stop motion, and brought the bottle to my lips in a warning, or maybe a dare. I noticed her gaze flick from me to just behind me just a second too late.
A hand grabbed the hair at the back of my head and yanked my head back at the same time Hawks reached out to take the bottle from me. A second later, Toga was literally in my lap, straddling me. Her face hovered above my own and dropped a little blue oval into my mouth before slapping her hand over to prevent me from spitting it back out.
"Swallow," Dabi commanded from his position behind the couch, with his hand still tangled in my hair. I decided now was probably the time to obey and stop pushing the boundaries, because it looked like I found a firm one.
I swallowed, and Toga confirmed that I actually did swallow the pill before she got off of me and Dabi released his hold on my hair. Hawks grabbed my chin and roughly turned my head in his direction.
"Don't do that," Hawks growled out. I had to look away; his glare right into my own eyes was too intense.
The Xanax didn't knock me out. As the hours passed, and I was watched closely by Toga, Dabi, and Hawks, I became a little more uncoordinated and clumsy, but I never drifted off into sweet, sweet sleep. I saw everyone else around except Kurogiri and Shigaraki. They must have gone somewhere together. And that made me think of more possibilities of how the villains would be able to get out of this doorless nightmare of a house if there was an emergency. Surely they would not be okay with trusting that Kurogiri would respond right away, even if they had enough time to contact him in an emergency. I looked around the room, dazed, but on a mission, but nothing stood out to me as something that would be an exit point.
After a few hours of constant monitoring, I was finally allowed to go to my room alone. I heard them peek in every once in a while, and I knew they were disappointed each time they saw that I had not yet fallen asleep.
I was lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, and daydreaming since I couldn't actually dream for real at that very second, when I heard yelling and a thud come from the living room. I sat up in bed and listened closely. Was a rescue team coming for me? Did Bakugou break in here to fuck shit up?
I heard muffled arguing, but no other movement. My curiosity won out and I started down the hallway only to meet Twice head-on.
He grabbed me by my shoulders and lightly shook me, "come quickly, Succubus! It's Hawks! No. Leave him to die."
To die? My heart jumped into my throat as I allowed Twice to pull me along.
He grabbed my arm and pulled me to the living room where I found Hawks lying on the floor with a knife sticking out of his abdomen and Toga standing over him, still yelling at him as he lost more and more blood as the seconds passed.
That is the type of situation that I was trained for. It was the situation that I felt most comfortable in. My training, muscle memory, and instincts kicked in immediately, temporarily giving me a jolt of adrenaline that dampened the effects of the Xanax. I rushed over to Hawks and dropped down at his side, looking at his wound. I didn't notice that I had already automatically started my routine of mindless, reassuring rambling to keep him calm and let him know that help was there. I needed to do at least some healing before removing the knife so that he didn't bleed out on me. With the first few steps planned, I put my hands on him, one on his face in a comforting manner, and one on his abdomen, near the wound.
Nothing was happening.
Nothing was happening.
Nothing was happening.
Nothing was happening.
Nothing was happening.
When I finally snapped out of my mind loop, it felt like I had jeopardized everything even though it just took a few seconds to register that my quirk was not working and why exactly that was. I panicked. This was not usual. This was not normal. This was not part of my training or muscle memory or routine. This was completely disruptive and if I didn't get my act together, it would ruin me, I knew.
I vaguely heard Dabi in the background, "are you satisfied?" but paid him no mind.
This was just mind over matter, wasn't it? I don't know who made these specialized, quirk-canceling, cuffs, but I could and would power through them to help Hawks.
Except it wasn't that easy. No matter what I tried, I couldn't get my quirk to reach him. I was panicking. I vaguely noticed the tears streaming down my face but didn't bother to waste time wiping them away. I collapsed against Hawks and sobbed. I was so scared. The adrenaline helped but did not completely remove the drowsy haze over my mind, and I just couldn't think straight during this dire emergency.
"Please!" I wailed into the open, directed at no one in particular. "Please help me save him!"
I heard Toga protest, but seconds later, Dabi knelt next to me and pulled my arms toward himself. He produced a key and unlocked the cuffs, allowing them to fall from my arms to the carpet. I felt the rush of energy release and immediately directed it towards Hawks. After enough healing that he wouldn't gush blood, I quickly removed the knife in swift motion, apologizing automatically when Hawks hissed in pain, before quickly healing him the rest of the way.
I sobbed in relief and collapsed against him. He was the one who almost died, but he was comforting me by rubbing my shoulders and upper back as I sobbed into his chest. I saw Toga kneel down on the other side of Hawks out of the corner of my eye but didn't turn to face her. I was just so, so relieved. As I started to calm down, I remember thinking that the blood was very sticky as it dried on my skin and the carpet before my mind was shocked into full factory reset once again.
Toga had picked up the knife I discarded, and violently pushed it back into Hawks's abdomen again, twisting it for good measure. Hawks groaned in pain and I was just horrified. I didn't think before this about how he got stabbed in the first place while surrounded by people it seemed like he might trust.