The door slammed shut behind Yokozawa, leaving an awful, looming silence in its wake. Kirishima suddenly threatened to give out under him as the reality of the situation hit him like a ton of bricks.
He was dying.
He was dying, and Yokozawa probably hated him now. With good reason, too. He wasn't one to agonize over how he was a fuck-up, but that was the only thought reverberating sickeningly in his head right now. His vision swam, his throat itched and smarted and nausea roiled in the pit of his stomach as he held fast to the couch arm to gather his bearings. Fucking radiation therapy.
He didn't notice that Hiyori had come in until she shook his arm, her panicked "Papa, Papa!" disorienting him as he fought against the bile rising in his throat.
"Ngh? Oh, it's you, Hiyo."
"Are you okay, Papa? I heard Yokozawa-oniichan yelling. Did you guys have a fight?" she said, looking at Kirishima with worried eyes.
"Yeah, you could say that," he muttered, taking her hand that rested upon his arm and squeezing. God, Hiyori. Hiyori with those eyes and that hair and that smile. Sakura's features.
He saw his wife in her every little nuance and unconscious toss of her head, even in that steel-strong resolve and the way she held herself. And he loved her every bit as dearly. The more he watched his daughter, the more convinced he was that Sakura had always been his better half.
"You'd think some of that would have rubbed off," he murmured bitterly to himself.
"Huh?" Hiyori just looked at him, confused.
Without replying, Kirishima scooped her up in his arms and hugged her as tightas he could. God, he never ever wanted to let her go. She was the light of his life. She had been his one comfort, his one driving force ever since Sakura had passed. She was what made him get out bed and go to work in the mornings when old memories, racking him with pain, shackled him to it.
He loved her more than he could ever, ever love anyone else. He loved her more than he could even hope to express in the words he was so fond of.
It was just fucking ironic, wasn't it, how he never got enough time with the people he loved?
His face screwed up in pure agony and his heart honest-to-god seemed to wrench into two as the pain ripped from his throat in a single, helpless sob.
Because how do you tell a child who has lost her mother that her father is dying, too?
"Papa?" Hiyori's distress was palpable in her rising pitch. "Are you... crying?"
She needed to know. And Kirishima had to be the one to tell her.
"Hiyo. I have something really, really important to tell you. Promise me you'll be strong?"
He drew back from the hug and looked her in the eye. Despite the fear reflected clearly in her chocolate -brown ones, she steeled her expression, putting on a brave front.
"I promise."
Kirishima took a deep breath. It was a strange feeling, being on the precipice of ruining someone's life.
"I recently went to the doctor's because I haven't been keeping well. And, well, they diagnosed me."
"What is it? Is it very bad?"
"Yeah, pretty bad." He took her hand again, and held it fast. "I have cancer."
"What."
Her words came out as barely more than a horrible, strangled whisper.
"It's called Small Cell Lung Cancer," he supplied, knowing there was nothing he could do or say except just be there.
"Was this... why you and oniichan had that fight?" she asked, dazed, clutching on to Kirishima, still in that same tone of voice.
"Yeah, he found out before I could tell him myself."
They just rocked back and forth in silence for a beat, until Hiyori's grip on Kirishima's hand tightened.
"Papa, you aren't going to...?" Her voice trailed off, unable to bring herself to say the horrible word. When Kirishima didn't reply, her expression grew panicked, desperate. "Papa! You aren't, right?! Please!"
There was a long moment of awful silence.
"The doctor says I've got two months," he finally said hollowly.
Abruptly, all her questions ceased. Their hands that had had a frantic grip on Kirishima fell, limply, to her sides. The distressed light in her eyes was extinguished, even as her father watched, and replaced with a calm void of despair. It was a look one should never see on a child.
"No, no, no no no no no," she kept muttering to herself. Tears welled up in her eyes and cascaded silently down her cheeks, but she made no effort to wipe them away. Kirishima brushed them away, the only thing he could do for her. The crushing realization that there was absolutely nothing he could do to ease the suffering of his most precious person, suffering that he had caused, ate away at him slowly, painfully. He had to sit there and watch her hurt.
He breathed out I'm sorrys into her hair, as he tucked her into bed, climbing in beside her, reassuring them both that he was still warm, solid, there. They were the only words he could muster, straight from the depths of his heart.
He didn't let go even as their tears mingled, even as her sobs lulled her into sleep with the tear tracks still glistening on her cheeks.