Call and Answer
Mitsuki stared at her phone. She wasn't sure how long it had been. Time had lost all meaning. Her son had been taken from her by a villain disguised as a hero. She'd let him be taken. It didn't matter what Masaru said, it didn't matter what the lawyers said. All that mattered to her was that she failed to keep her son.
Everything else seemed to fall away after that. She lost track of days first, then hours. Night or day, darkness pervaded over everything. Some of her friends had called. She'd had a few listless conversations, carried by others. Masaru brought her food which he almost begged her to choke down. But what she wanted most she couldn't have.
She hadn't heard from her son since he was taken from her.
She wasn't sure how long it had been since he'd been taken, hours felt like days, days felt like months, a week could be a year. It was all so endless. The only thing she knew she had to do, the most important thing she could do, was keep her phone charged. Keep it active for when he called, if he called. It was the one thing she knew she could do. The one thing she was ready for. Any call, any number, she answered in an instant. It didn't matter if the number was from a friend, family, or unknown. All she could do was seize that chance, hope against hope when she put that phone to her ear that it would be her son's voice on the other end of the phone.
And every time it wasn't her son her heart was wrenched, and the darkness swept back over her.
Alone in the bedroom, the cellphone provided the only light.
She blinked and found herself looking into his room. She knew in an instant that she was dreaming, she knew because he was there. Her son was sitting on the floor in his room with his favorite All Might action figure, playing out the hero's adventures. She stepped inside and sat down next to him, wrapping an arm around him and asking him to tell her what All Might was doing. The story didn't matter; she would never remember it when she woke up, but she listened to him all the same.
And she listened, with mounting dread, for the knock that would take him away again.
The dream was familiar to her now. But every night her time with her son grew shorter. Soon he would be gone again. Torn from her. Again. It was impossible for her to enjoy the dream, knowing what was coming. Even these few moments with her son brought her no respite. He tugged at her sleeve and she looked down at him as he asked her what was wrong. She couldn't even answer him, and he looked so afraid.
She drew him into her arms as the knock began. She hugged him tight, willed him to stay with her this time, willed the people at the door away. Below her she heard the door open. Her son was scared and he was saying something, repeating himself. Usually he cried, but this time he spoke. Answer me. He kept repeating it. Answer me. Please mommy. Please. And then he was pulled from her arms. She knew who was doing it, but could never see them doing it. All she could see was her son as he was pulled away from her, crying again as she was left on the floor of his room. The hand that had held him was left tingling from her last touch. She wouldn't be able to keep him; she couldn't stop them from taking him.
She reached out for him anyway.
Mitsuki's eyes opened to darkness. Her hand and arm were numb, and the familiar weight of her phone was absent. Sleep was driven from her mind, even as the dream lingered, and she swept her arm over the bed to find it. Her phone began to ring. She cursed, throwing off the sheet and scrambled to the other end of the bed, the tinkling noise growing closer.
She lurched over the edge and stared down to no avail; she could hear it, but still couldn't see it. She groped for it blindly, trying to snatch it up before the call ended. She touched it, felt the subtle vibration as it rang and snatched it up.
The call had ended.
She glowed, cursing her failure and unlocked the phone to search the call log. She held her breath as it loaded, staring at the new number at the top of the list. There was no name attached, but it was something new, different. She dialed the number back and waited with baited breath as it rang.
Once.
Twice.
Thrice.
The fourth ring didn't come; instead she heard quiet breathing coming from the other line. She reached out anyway, a desperate, awkward introduction spilling out of her mouth. Her mouth went dry as she listened for a reaction. She'd been shot down by wrong numbers and telemarketers, there was no good reason to believe, even for an instant, that she'd hear from him.
She barely caught distant words come through the line, and she hugged the phone closer to her ear. She introduced herself again, but was cut off midway though as her son called out to her. Tears spilled from her eyes as she listened to his voice, but then his words turned her heart to ice.
That man was hurting her son.
Author's note: I rewrote this chapter so many times. I started with Touya, that didn't feel right. I changed how he got the phone, but it still didn't feel right. I tried starting with Bakugo (meaning canon Torodoki) putting in effort to fight/'train' with Endeavor to buy Touya time to get the phone. I wrote it from Endeavor's point of view, showing he was eager to see a shift in Bakugo's willingness to fight back... but in the end, it only really worked if I stuck with Mitsuki.