She was twirling around a ballroom, soft lights twinkling around her. Warm hands gripped around her waist, resting just against the curve of her spine. Frilled skirts twirled around her ankles, brushing across the skin of her calves.
She glanced around, eyes swirling around the elaborately decorated room. Polished marble floors, grand pillars and a giant crystal chandelier glittered back at her. Heels clicked across the floor, soft music dancing in her ears.
She tried to glance up, to catch the eye of the person guiding her around the dance floor. Strong arms wrapped around her, continued twirling her around the room.
She tried to speak, but no words came from her lips. It was as if she was in a silent movie, for every time her mouth opened and closed nothing but her own breath escaped her. It was frustrating, and she found herself growing irritated at her inability to speak.
A dip, before she continued twirling. Swirling around the room, eyes blurry and heart hammering in her chest. She tried to grab her partner's attention, and tried to wave her hands in front of his face. The more she stared up, the blurrier his face got.
The lights shining above shifted from soft and delicate, morphed into something painful to look at. They burned her eyes, made it nearly impossible to see as she continued to twirl around the room. The once delicate fluttering of her skirt around her ankles now made it nearly impossible to keep the rapid pace of the dance at hand. Layers of fabric caught around her legs like seaweed, tangled in the seemingly endless height of her heels.
She spun and spun and spun, twirling around the room like some sort of music box ballerina, arms locked in place around the neck of the mysterious person in front of her. The spinning continued, picking up pace until her vision blurred and she began to feel nauseous.
A soft chuckle, and it felt like gravity had been shut off. She plummeted down, before those same strong hands caught her.
—
Emiko had always hated the hospital. Some part of her had always hated it. The hospital was where the doctors would look a little too closely at her bruises, where they would raise an eyebrow at her mother as she stumbled over her words, claiming she'd fallen and that was why she had bruises all over her body. The hospital was where they wouldn't notice the burns on her back and thighs, no matter how hard she tried to get them to see what was happening to her. She couldn't tell them, at least not with her words. But for years, Emiko had tried to get those damned doctors to see or care about what her mother was doing to her.
For years she'd begged them to see the abuse she was facing - to give a shit enough to treat the cigarette burns lining her skin or to try and figure out why she'd flinched each time the blood pressure monitor squeezed a little tighter on her arm. Instead, though, the doctors had sent her back with her mother. Sent her back to that fucking house, that tiny goddamn room. They'd let it happen again and again, until finally Sakura had saved her.
The smell of antiseptic made her nauseous as she came to. The sour smell of alcohol burnt her nose and reminded her of the terrible days of her childhood. Her mind reeled as the fog lifted from her dream. She looked around the room, tried to press herself up.
Why can't I move?
Panic set in quickly as she realized her hands were bound. Soft cloth held her hands down, wrapped around her wrists. Her ankles too, now that she realized it. She struggled to pull free, but the cloth seemed impossibly strong to her.
"Emiko?"
A quiet voice, one that seemed to be rough from sleep called out to her. She turned her head, wincing as she did. Pain bloomed behind her eyes, stars bursting into her field of vision.
Do I have a concussion?
"'roki?"
Her voice was more timid than she expected, her words slipping off her tongue with a tremble. Todoroki looked at her, hair mussed from sleep. His eyes seemed dull, dark bags forming underneath them. His skin was paler than she remembered, as if he hadn't seen the sun in a while.
"You're awake."
He said it so casually, as if seeing her strapped down in a hospital bed was the most normal sight in the world. As if it wasn't the most uncomfortable and terrifying thing to happen to her in a long, long time.
"I am."
He smiled, as much as she'd ever seen him smile. His lips quirked slightly, and he pressed himself from the uncomfortable looking chair by the window. He moved towards her, so slowly she thought he was moving in slow motion. He was covered in blood, so much of it his blue outfit seemed almost black.
Is that my blood?
"I'm gonna untie you, okay?"
Cautiously, he moved his hands to the knots at her wrists, fingers grazing over her skin ever so slightly, goosebumps breaking out from the ghost of his touch. He smiled down at her, again, before moving to her ankles. He rested his fingers there a moment, fingers causing electricity to dance up her skin. His gaze seemed to catch, landing on the back of her calf. She flushed, knowing exactly what it was he was staring at.
Scars lined her body - her arms and her legs and her back. Each of them told a painful story. Her mother had pushed her, once. In their backyard, and Emiko had fallen into the glass patio door. It had shattered, slicing into the back of her calf. She'd worn long pants in front of her mother from then on, a habit she'd only recently begun to break.
"How are you feeling?"
She pondered the question a moment, rubbing her fingers gingerly over her wrists, feeling where the fabric had begun to cut off her circulation.
"Like I got hit by a bus."
A soft chuckle escaped Shoto's lips, before he settled himself on the corner of her hospital bed.
"Not quite. Though I can see why you'd think that."
She tried to smile at him, but any movement seemed difficult. She was sore. Right down to her bones, she was sore. Her skin ached, her muscles were tight and felt as though they were on fire.
"What happened?"
The words felt like a weight in her mouth, a sentence nearly impossible to speak. She could see flashes of what happened, though they were distorted. Warped, as though she was looking through clouded over glass.
"Emiko-" he paused, scratching his head. "I don't know if it's my place to tell you that. Maybe you should wait for Sakura…"
Sakura. Does she even know I'm in the hospital?
"Does Sakura know I'm here?" The realization hit her like a freight train. She knew she'd been in a fight with Stain. She could distinctly remember screaming at him in that alley - could feel the soreness in her throat, could still feel the hatred bubbling in her stomach. "Did anyone call Sakura and tell her that I'm here?!"
Shoto looked at her, eyes wide. Her heart was hammering in her chest, thundering wildly as panic and anxiety grew.
"Emiko, breathe. She knows you're here. She's been waiting for you to wake up."
"What do you mean, wake up? How long have I been out for?"
"Emiko, really. Just relax. Sakura should be back soon. She just ran back to your home to shower and change quickly, but she'll be back soon, and then she can tell you everything."
That answer should have eased some of her anxiety, because at least Sakura knew. At least she knew Emiko was in the hospital. It should have, but it didn't. If anything, it left her feeling more on edge than she had felt earlier, if that was even possible.
Each passing second made it harder and harder to breathe, as the monster in her chest clawed its way out. Anxiety reared its ugly head in the blink of an eye, leaving her breathless and gasping for air. Tears formed in the corners of her eyes as she slumped over in her bed. Her head pressed against her knees, arms folded underneath her bare legs. Scars were exposed to the world, and some part of her knew that he could see them. She knew she should hide them, because nobody should have to see that reminder of her childhood. Nobody should have to see what she looked like underneath her carefully maintained facade.
"Breathe, Miko."
His voice sounded far away, as though she was on the other side of an incredibly thick door.
"Miko," she felt his hand press against her bare knee, thumb tracing comforting circles across the bruised and torn up skin. "Hey, breathe. You're okay."
His other hand pressed against her chin, tugging her face up until she was staring out into his lopsided gaze. Concern flooded through him, overtook the confusion that was living behind carefully shielded eyes.
His arms wrapped around her shoulders and he pulled her in, his lips pressing softly against her ear. Right hand fisted in her hair, left fisted in the blankets pooled around her waist. Their hearts hammered, hers beating an erratic rhythm and his beating slow and methodically as she'd ever heard.
"You're okay." He whispered, his softly minted breath tickling her ear. "I promise, Miko, you're okay."
He hadn't called her Miko in weeks. She hadn't realized how much she'd missed it.
"Breathe, Miko. Please, just take a deep breath for me."
She tried. She really did. Struggled to get her breathing under control, to control the erratic beating of her heart, but no matter how badly she tried, Emiko was losing the battle being fought in her head. All she could do was sit back, let her fear and panic and exhaustion battle it out in her chest. Her hands shook at her sides, and she noticed for the first time that blood had caked under her fingernails.
It felt like hours passed before she was able to breathe freely again, before the tightness in her chest began to subside. Pain had flowered in her ribs, and she had small, red crescent moons lining her palms where she'd dug her blood stained nails into her flesh. Her jaw ached from clenching her teeth and tears had dried on her cheeks, leaving salty track marks down her face.
She was finally able to open her eyes, to gaze back at him. Worry clouded his vision, lined his face. She realized then, in that instance, that he hadn't let go of her even once during her panic attack. He'd held her, he'd let her cry and tremble and feel, and he hadn't once pulled away. He hadn't cared that she was sobbing, loudly. Hadn't been fazed by the curses she knew had slipped from between clenched teeth.
He stayed.
It hit her then, a feeling of calm and peace she hadn't felt before. His arms were around her, his hand wrapped around the tangled locks of her hair, and he had stayed. He was the first person, the first one in her class to see her as someone other than who she pretended to be, and he'd stayed.
Somehow, despite the layer of antiseptic and sanitizer that clung to his clothes and his skin, he still smelled like himself. Fresh snow and ash. Two scents that had no right mixing, but somehow did. The sweetness and spice mixed together and tickled her crinkling nose. An anomaly. Something that the universe created that didn't quite make sense, didn't quite fit into the world's view of what was possible.
She grinned, blushing against his shoulder. She couldn't deny herself these few seconds of being held by him, of the overwhelming sense of home that emanated from their embrace, because she knew when they pulled away, he would close himself off again and she would go back to pretending they were only just friends.
Not pretending. We are just friends.
She repeated that over again, as the seconds seemed to tick by at a snail's pace. She knew that she couldn't feel this way about him - that allowing herself to complicate their fragile friendship anymore than it already was would be a mistake. That letting him in, letting him like her would be a catastrophe.
She was not worthy of the kind of love she longed for. She knew that. She did. She was not worthy of his love. Shouldn't even be letting him hold her like this, should have pulled away long before her heart started hammering in her chest.
But she didn't. Because despite her insistence that she wasn't worth love, that she was a broken glass thrown against the wall, left in pieces on a kitchen floor, she longed for love. Longed for someone to see her and to stay. Longed for someone to run their fingers over her broken and jagged edges and pull their hand away, and to not see blood when they did. She wanted to be soft and sweet, gentle and kind and caring. She wanted to be whole, to be a complete person with no flaws. She didn't want to be a burden on anyone, and she knew that if she let herself feel these things, let herself care about him anymore than she already did, let him care for her in that way, he would end up dead.
Everyone she ever loved was in danger with her around, and she knew it. She knew she was a ticking time bomb. An explosive just… waiting for the fuse to be lit. She knew that she would go off one day, and that she would leave a trail of bodies in her wake. She'd been turned into a monster a long time ago. She'd learned that at a young age. That nobody could love her, because she was broken. She was weak. She was a burden to everyone, and she knew that.
Her heart ached, but she pulled away. Met his questioning gaze, scooted back so that she was resting against the overstuffed hospital pillows. Ignored the desire to throw herself back into his arms. Ignored the pain in her side, and grinned at him. She hoped it reached her eyes, though she doubted he'd notice if it didn't.
"Thanks, 'roki." she whispered, folding her hands in her lap gently, so as to hide how much her fingers trembled.
"Anytime, Miko." he whispered back, settling his weight onto his palms as he leaned back.
A knock at the door of her room startled the pair, and Shoto stood quickly.
"Miko! You're awake!" Sakura cooed, stepping into the room. Her dark hair was still damp from her shower, a sure sign that she'd rushed from home. A steaming cup of coffee sat clenched in her fingers, large overnight bag slung over her shoulder. "Hi, Shoto. Good to see you."
Sakura smiled at her classmate, though Emiko knew it didn't reach her eyes. She could feel the concern and the anger and the sadness radiating from her aunt, and Emiko knew that she was in for it.
"I should go and let you two catch up. I'll see you around, Emiko." Shoto left the room like a ghost, the scent of snow and ash following in his wake.
