Trigger Warnings: Blood, violence
"What are you doing?" I screamed as I lunged across Hawks toward Toga to shove her away from him, but she grabbed my arms, used my momentum against me, and pulled me across his body toward herself. Hawks gasped when my leg brushed harshly against the handle once again sticking out from his abdomen.
It really wasn't a surprise that Hawks was still conscious. Civilians tend to pass out much quicker when injured, but it takes a lot to keep a hero down and out. Since I was supposed to be a secret, I only really healed heroes, mostly. I kept up the rouse of going to check on the heroes that had fallen, been crushed, or other unfortunate circumstances that more likely than not end up with pretty bad injuries during the fights with villains. A comforting hand on their hand and face as I discreetly used my quirk, and suddenly, they were not as injured as the villains expected them to be. The heroes could keep on fighting, and I could keep pretending to just be a concerned tech consultant that tags along during patrols. The villains would be none the wiser, and it worked out for years.
Toga turned me and held me with my back against her chest. For how small she was, she was also very strong, and I was not going anywhere quickly. I needed to get to Hawks and heal him again.
"Please! Let me go to him! What do you want?!" I screamed as I thrashed around in her grip.
Her lips were right against my ear when she said, "use it all, or I'll just do it again." She released me and shoved me toward Hawks again. I fell forward and took my weight on my arms as to not jostle Hawks to injure him further.
I got to work right away, starting the same healing-removing-healing process as before, but giving even more energy toward it. She wants me to go all in? I'll go all in alright. Looking back, it was a reckless decision, but she had thoroughly pissed me off, I was sleep deprived and drugged with Xanax… and I was making excuses for myself that Bakugou would tear to shreds. I just had to take this experience as what it was and learn from it in the future.
As I was getting near my limit, as a final 'fuck you' to Toga, I gathered up all of the energy that my quirk uses that was left and pushed it out into Hawks. He jolted up as I fell, and he caught me before I smacked my face off of the floor with the help of his own reflexes and newfound energy that came from yours truly.
"Did it work?" I heard Toga ask. "Is she finally asleep?"
"There's no way to tell," Hawks responded. "Sometimes she falls unconscious, sometimes she's just kind of paralyzed."
"She's exhausted enough that she should have passed out," Dabi chimed in.
"You haven't seen her do this before. It's different each time. We won't know if she's out or not until she wakes up well-rested or even worse off than before," Hawks patiently explained.
I felt my hairs stand on end, like some kind of static surrounded me. Then I heard his voice, signaling that he was finally back. I wonder where he had gone.
"What is all this?" Shigaraki asked, most likely referring to the blood all over the floor and me, seemingly unconscious, covered in Hawks's blood.
As Twice tried his best to explain the plan they had come up with to get me to sleep so I didn't die of sleep deprivation, he trailed off and started arguing with himself about how they could have gone about it differently. Or, you know, just left me to die.
I heard Shigaraki take a few steps in our direction before Hawks yanked me away out of his reach.
"Hawks," Dabi warned, taking a step toward us as well, by the sound of it.
"Don't touch her," Hawks pleaded, pulling me in even closer and shielding my body from Shigaraki with his own.
"Why are her cuffs off?" I heard Shigaraki ask, even closer than before. I was once again yanked away from his direction by Hawks.
"Don't touch her!" Hawks warned. "Her quirk won't work. You'll hurt her!"
Hawks went on to explain that he felt me use all of my energy, including the separate energy that is used for my armor-like protection, so that I truly had nothing left, and would not gain it back for a few hours while my body recuperated.
Toga decided to test this theory herself and sliced down my arm. I just hope it was with a clean knife, and not the one that had been in Hawks and thrown across the floor twice.
"She's bleeding!" Toga exclaimed, sounding excited. "Twice, carry her to my bedroom. I'm gonna get as much as I can manage before I lose this chance!"
I felt Hawks's grip on me tighten once again as Twice stepped forward to follow Toga's orders. Before an all-out brawl about what happens to me next started, Shigaraki got involved.
"No" was all that it took.
Toga whined, and pleaded, and bargained, and argued, but she did not go against Shigaraki's declaration that I was to be left alone until I regained consciousness, or at least control of my body, when Hawks explained that there was no guarantee that I was actually unconscious.
Hawks carried my paralyzed body to my room and lied me gently on the bed. He brushed the hair away from my face and kissed my temple before leaving, closing the door behind him.
I tried to fall asleep. I really did. There was nothing else to do. I couldn't move. I couldn't even open my eyes to look around for possible escape routes that I might've missed the first thousand sweeps. But my mind would just not shut off. Not when I could hear occasional footsteps, doors slamming, and muffled voices from down the hallway.
Eventually, I heard my door open and shut, then footsteps walk toward my bed. At least, I thought I did, because after that, I didn't hear anything at all. No one touched me, no one spoke to me, and I didn't hear any more movement after the fact. I honestly thought I might've been hearing things. It was definitely a likely possibility with the sleep deprivation going on. It still nagged in the back of my mind that it felt like someone was there.
I found out my instincts were still as sharp as ever when I heard the door open again and Toga screech in surprise.
"What are you doing in here?" she exclaimed.
From beside my bed, where I imagine he had been sitting silently on the floor, Shigaraki responded sarcastically, "making sure no one decided to slice our sleeping beauty, here."
"I wasn't going to slice her… I was just going to take some blood with, you know, a needle. All professional and shit. I swear."
"Get out," came Shigaraki's sharp reply, and Toga did get out without further argument.
I heard Shigaraki sigh from beside my bed and shift on the carpet. Then I felt fingers on my face, brushing hair away from my eyes and cheeks. He sighed again.
"With your unlucky streak, you're probably wide awake, aren't you?" he asked rhetorically.
"It must be terrifying, hearing everything going on, surrounded by villains who took you hostage, and not even being able to defend yourself," Shigaraki continued as his hand brushed against my throat.
If I could have gulped, I would have. If I had any control over my breathing, my breath would have hitched in my throat. But I had absolutely no control over my body. And he was right: it was absolutely terrifying.
"I didn't know what they were going to do to you. I though with Hawks here, you'd be fine without Kurogiri and I to oversee everything. I've been trying to give the League members some more leeway to do as they please so long as it serves us in the long run, but Toga seems to have taken up the habit of asking for forgiveness instead of permission when it comes to extreme plans like these."
He seemed almost irritated with himself more so than Toga. Like he couldn't quite find the right balance of leadership style that he was going for that commanded both respect and acceptance, that made people think that he really does deserve to lead them and he does a great job instead of walking all over him whenever he gives them the slightest bit of slack.
I was just grateful not to be alone and bored out of my mind while paralyzed from the effect of overusing my quirk to the extreme like that.
Shigaraki continued to ramble on at a leisurely pace. I don't know if he was doing it for my benefit if he really did suspect that I was conscious, or if he just really needed someone to talk to, whether or not they responded or even listened. Maybe he was gambling a little bit, hoping that I was actually unconscious, but continuing on anyway. He was giving me valuable information, but he wasn't stupid. He wasn't telling me, 'oh, by the way, the exit has been right under your nose' or 'my biggest weakness is cheese' or anything substantial. Just venting, like he might to a friend, if he had any.
I felt my energy level steadily increase, though it was slower than usual, most likely due to my lack of sleep as of late. As he changed the subject from different levels of respect he receives from different villainous groups to the few heroes that weren't actually all that bad, 'like Hawks, but don't ever repeat that to him or he'll never let me forget it,' I started to regain control over my body again.
I opened my eyes and turned my head toward him. He was sitting in a relaxed position next to the bed with his back against the wall. I reached out my hand to touch his face, like he was prone to touching mine. He stopped mid-sentence and turned his head to look at me instead of staring across the room. His red eyes met mine, but he didn't move away or stop my hand from getting closer.
His expression was unreadable when I brushed his hair out of his eyes. He just watched me, like I was a fascinating creature in a zoo exhibit, and he wanted to see what crazy thing I'd do next.
"Thanks for watching out for me," I rasped, dropping my hand back onto the bed.
He picked up a glass of water that was next to him on the floor and offered it to me. He was very patient as I took my time getting the feeling of controlling my body back and moved myself into a seated position.
After I basically chugged the whole thing, he asked, "is your quirk working again?"
I nodded in response before basically choking on the water as I gasped mid-gulp.
"I'm sorry!" I choked out as I coughed up the water I had inhaled. "I didn't mean to touch you! I forgot that my cuffs were off and-"
He cut me off by placing his hand over my mouth and shifted his weight until he was leaning against the bed and his face was hovering over mine.
"You wouldn't hurt me, would you?" he asked. I had the feeling it was not a rhetorical question, so I shook my head in response.
"Is that because you're smart enough to know better or because you refuse to hurt anyone?" he asked, removing his hand from my mouth, but not moving away from how close he was to me. I had just realized that his other hand was gripping my wrist and had it pinned lightly to the bed next to my head- all five fingers.
"A little bit of both, maybe," I whispered, "plus, you haven't done anything that warrants me to defend myself, and I don't ever attack first."
His eyes moved quickly to glance down at my lips as I spoke before moving back up to resume the intense eye contact. "Is that so?"
His face moved closer to mine, and I closed my eyes in anticipation of the inevitable meeting of our lips.
… But nothing happened.
I opened my eyes, and he was seated on the bed, hand still around my wrist, but his face much further away as he looked back to the closed door of the bedroom.
"I'll let Hawks know you're awake," he muttered before releasing my wrist and moving swiftly out of my room, closing the door once again behind him.