Kindness is Reciprocal

By: Eurazba

Chapter 1: Embraceless Cold

Hearts were not meant to be thrown.

Of course they also weren't meant to be broken over and over again by some shit for nothing dad that kept coming and going and going and …hurting.

The yelling, the hitting, and the leaving, all of it hurt, all of it kept breaking Steve's stupid fragile little heart. He was better off without the damn thing and all of its overly sensitive little feelings. He didn't want to feel any of this.

His father was gone, forever now.

Steve knew, he had heard the yelling between his parents, he knew all about the restraining order.

But it didn't matter to him, he didn't care about it, his stupid overly sensitive heart did, so he was getting rid of it. It was the convenient thing to do, no more trying to patch it up, no more trying to keep it together, no more feeling.

He pulled it out from where it had been shoved in his bag previous and stared at it. It was cold, riddled in fractures, scars, and bruises from the most recent hit that it had taken, and desperately held together with some patches and duct tape. What a sorry thing it was, he'd be glad to get rid of it.

With one last breath to calm himself, sure, he was final on getting rid of his heart, but he still couldn't stop that scared feeling at not having it, probably the heart's last desperate attempt to not be abandoned. Steve took position and chucked the heart as hard as he could over the bridge's edge. Through barely damp eyes he watched it soared through the sky, a wonderful, relaxing numbness filling him as it went further and further. A good distance away it finally landed, causing a sharp pain in his chest before it was quickly replaced by numbness.

It was gone.

It was gone.

There was no relief, no anger, no happiness or fear, just a numb feeling.

Good.

Good.

That's exactly what he wanted.

He let out one last sigh and turned away from the heart. This was the last time he was going to see it, he thought as he grabbed the helmet of his vespa, that much he was sure of.

The night was cold but he was free.

Of all the days of the week to be late to school, Monday always feels like the worst one to be late on. There's no excuse for staying up late for homework and sleeping in, you had the weekend to do it, there was no proper excuse for ill preparedness.

Except if you were Jim, and you felt it necessary to cook elaborate lunches almost every morning.

Don't get him wrong, Toby loved the lunches Jim prepared for him, they were delicacies that had restaurant quality mixed perfectly with homemade love in every meal, and they were always so fresh.

Which of course was why they were so late in the mornings.

This was one such morning, and Jim, in all of his infinite wisdom, dragged them down to the canals in some vain attempt to save them five minutes. Toby didn't like the canals, their slopes were dangerous, especially on their bikes, and they were filled with all sorts of junk and debris, you never knew when you'd crash or trip over something and land on some jagged edge. Jim trailed easily ahead and flew over the canal's edge before sailing down it's sloped walls in a way that filled Toby with worry. "Take a little risk," Jim would always suggest with his busted-up knees from falling countless times in his "little" risks, Toby liked his knees just the way they were thank you very much.

He also liked his face just the way it was, he thought with panic as he suddenly went zipping uncontrollably down the canal's slope. Jim watched silently at the base of the canal as Toby screamed the whole way. His bike hit the flat base of the canal with a harsh thump and yet his wheels kept rolling, he only reached the halfway point of the canal before his bike finally hit some rubble too hard and sent him flying over the handles. Jim yelled for Toby as he rolled across the ground a fair distance in front of his knocked over bike.

He watched the sky spin for a moment as a wave of hurt covered his body, Jim popped into his view just as things barely settled.

"Holy shit Tobes! Are you okay?" Jim said worriedly as he looked over Toby.

"I hate the canals," Toby grumbled, he held up his hand for Jim to help him up.

Everything hurt as he was pulled up, he let go of Jim's hand once he was sitting upright, using his other hand to hold his head and stop the spinning.

"Are you okay?" Jim repeated, crouching down next to Toby.

"Yeah, yeah," He mumbled with a wave of his free hand, the other rubbing his eyes before he finally opened them to see a clearer Jim next to him, "I'm fine, just a little dizzy."

He turned to the rubble he hit, some miscellaneous k-spar intermixed with some rubbish that must have blown its way there, his bike lay next to it looking okay but-

"…Is that a heart?" Toby asked, pointing to a different cluster of rubble a bit further away.

"What?" Jim turned his head in the direction Toby was pointing.

Toby found himself suddenly able to ignore his pain as he focused on the rubble in the distance. He stood up despite Jim's worried buzzing around him and made a beeline for what he was certain was a heart.

It was a heart, partially covered by some plastic wrapper and looking to be bandaged poorly by some other means, but it was a heart, just here, all alone in the canals.

Abandoned.

Toby had seen abandoned hearts before, ones that his Nana found and took in, the same horrible scars and cracks and bruises on them as this heart that he approached now. He had never found an abandoned heart on his own though. He bent over and brushed away the wrapper, carefully picking the heart up from the ground, it was beating slow and steady, surprisingly even, but Toby couldn't get over how cold it was. Most hearts were warm, like his own, though he never knew how warm abandoned hearts felt, too afraid to touch the ones his Nana brought in before for fear of hurting them more. This heart was cold, so very cold, he was surprised it was even alive, though emotional hearts did function differently than the rest of the human body.

"What is it?" Jim asked, poking his head around Toby, his eyes widened when he saw it.

"An abandoned heart."

Jim let out a little "oh" before looking wildly around for any signs of people, Toby knew there were none, the owner was long gone.

"Are you going to take it to your Nana?" Jim asked.

"Yeah, here, take it for a moment," Toby handed the heart to Jim, who took it nervously, having even less experience with an abandoned heart than Toby, he pulled off his sweater vest and took the heart from Jim, gently wrapping it in his vest. They couldn't take it to his Nana now, not if they didn't want to be late-

The bell rang out just then, reminding both why they had taken the canals in the first place.

"Final bell!" Jim cried out as they ran over to their bikes.

"We're so late our kids are gonna have detention!" Toby cried out as he pulled off his backpack and placed the wrapped-up heart inside as quickly and as gently as he could before climbing back onto his own bike and rushing to school.

"There are two different hearts in the human body," Coach Lawrence lectured at the front of the classroom, half looking at the health book in his hand and half looking over the class, the projector showed a model with two different labelled hearts on the screen behind him, "A physical heart and an emotional heart."

Coach pointed to each of the models as he mentioned them, one red, looking as what one could only be described as a blob with odd tubes coming off of it, the other a pinker tone, with a symmetrical shape. There were little scars and things on the model of the emotional heart with lines coming off it and labelling what each of the kind of scars and things meant, the model still looked better than Steve's sorry state of a heart.

"As most of you know, the emotional heart is connected to a person's emotions."

Steve muttered a sarcastic "Wow, really?" under his breath, a few other students around him laughed under their breath.

"How people react to situations can be reflected in their hearts," Coach continued on, likely having not heard his comment from the back of the room. Normally, Steve sat at the front of Coach's class to show that he had his best attention, but today he found that he really didn't care, likely an effect of tossing out his heart.

"Injuries can form from sources of emotional trauma as well as the heart being physically hurt, but only emotional scars will remain after healing."

Given that the heart ever actually has time to heal before it's hurt again, Steve thought. He let his mind wander as Coach explained that the emotional heart was the only piece of the body that could be removed and reinserted, he knew most of this from classes when he was younger, and more importantly, he didn't care. He didn't want to learn all about the emotional heart, he has gotten rid of his, he didn't care anymore.

He didn't care about anything anymore, he promised, despite the weird feeling that had been in his chest since earlier that morning just before classes began. It was… a vaguely warm feeling, not a nice one, but not a horrible one, just warm. It was an odd contrast the numbness he had felt throughout most of the weekend once he had tossed his heart, it fluctuated through the morning as he went to his classes. That wasn't supposed to happen when he abandoned his heart, was it? He glanced at Coach again as the man transitioned into talking about the physical heart and its importance to the cardiovascular system. It probably wasn't best to interrupt the class with a question as uncomfortable as what happened to an abandoned heart, he certainly didn't need anyone attempting to pry into his personal life. With a sigh he let his eyes drift again, sweeping over the class before landing and locking on Domzalski…

Again…

Steve didn't know what it was but he was having trouble not staring at Domzalski today. He kept glancing away from his computer screen during History to stare at Domzalski two seats away, and now he couldn't help but stare at his back from several seats away. Steve didn't know what it was but he felt this odd… draw to Domzalski when he was nearby. What this his subconscious' way of telling him that he needed to go after Domzalski today? He wasn't sure.

Domzalski adjusted in his seat to give a look to Lake next to him, Steve wasn't able to give too much thought into trying to read him as he saw the thing he had been most curious about before in their history class. For some reason, Domzalski wasn't wearing the same read sweater vest he always had, instead it was crumpled up and on top of his desk. No, not crumpled, it was wrapped around something. Of what, though, Steve wasn't sure, the way Domzalski had one hand wrapped protectively around the sweater while the other worked suggested it was something valuable. Why anyone would bring valuables to school was beyond him, and more so he shouldn't really care… and he didn't.

He just couldn't stop staring at it, he couldn't stop staring at Domzalski.

He didn't like it and tried to focus back on class, they only had a few more minutes left before lunch, right?

"The two hearts are relatively the same size and both are known to "beat"," Coach bounced his fingers around the word, "Which is the main reason they have the same name, making it difficult for everybody," There were a couple of snickers from coach's offhand comment, "Beating is almost always synchronized between both hearts, even though the emotional heart doesn't have the important job of pumping blood like the physical one does. Any questions?"

There were none, Coach concluded the lesson and snapped the book shut with a loud clap, other students who had grown bored by the lesson suddenly jumped with the noise. Coach passed out little piles of worksheets to students in the front row of classes and haphazardly explained the homework as they were passed back to everyone else. The bell rang as Steve got the last worksheet, a blank model of the emotional heart model stared back at him, he shoved it into his folder as quickly as possible and made a beeline for the door.

He was tired of thinking about hearts.

Steve couldn't seem to catch a break, almost half of lunch with the team had been spent talking about hearts. People shared odd stories, so-and-so show their heart to someone, in blah-blah-blah language the emotional heart was called this while the physical heart was called that, did you know that in he-didn't-care country, people show off their hearts freely? How odd.

He didn't want to think about hearts but the more people talked about them the longer they stayed on his mind, particularly his question about abandoned hearts, his weird up and down feeling still hadn't gone away throughout lunch.

"What happens to an abandoned heart?" He asked, suddenly calling the attention to his teammates around him, others at a further end of the table continued talking. Fuck, he didn't mean to say that out loud.

There was a brief uncomfortable silence, this topic wasn't a popular one to discuss, before Logan finally spoke up from next to Steve.

"My grandma abandoned her heart after my grandpa died," Logan said as he took a bite of his lunch, several eyebrows shot up as they looked at him, "The doctor said she would do fine without it, people can live without their emotional hearts, but she ended up dying from grief about a year later."

They all shared nervous looks, Steve almost choked on his lunch as he gave Logan a disturbed look of his own. He just shrugged in a way that said, "you asked". The thought of death and even the possibility of him dying laid a heavy feeling deep in Steve's stomach.

"My uncle abandoned his heart when got addicted to heroin," Seamus spoke up from the uncomfortable silence, they all stared at him, surprised by the information and curious as to what else he might say, "Turns out, some old lady found his heart and started taking care of it."

Everyone shared looks before staring back at Seamus.

"You mean someone just found an abandoned heart, didn't know who it belonged to, and just kept it?" Someone asked, Seamus nodded.

"She called herself something like a "heart smith"," Seamus explained, he frowned and shook his head though, "She didn't keep it though," he put down his fork and gestured with his hands, "So, like, she took the heart in, cleaned up the wounds, and started caring for it, you know like keeping it with her and giving it love and stuff," they all half-nod as Seamus continued his explanation, "Eventually, my uncle starts getting better, he came back and connected my grandparents again, even got out of his heroin addiction after some time. All 'cause some lady decided to take care of his heart. So, he goes looking for his heart and all that, finds this lady, apparently she and a bunch of other people find and take care of abandoned hearts."

"That sounds fake," someone said, and Steve agreed.

"No, no man, she called herself a "heart smith", you can look it up," Seamus insisted, "There's a bunch of forums of people sharing their stories about meeting hearth smiths and getting their abandoned hearts back after they've healed."

They all shared odd looks, some still unsure, one offhand comment "Well at least someone's looking out for them,", others pulling out their phones to check the legitimacy of Seamus' claims. Steve couldn't help but frown. So that must have been what happened, some "heart smith" or whatever found his shit-for-nothing heart. Well sucked for them, because he was not going to take his heart back, he wasn't even going to look for them, they could keep it for all he cared.

"Nana? I'm home!" Toby announced as he came in from the backdoor, he took off his backpack and pulled out the heart from where it was during the bike ride, finally taking a moment to check on it after a long day of keeping it hidden. It looked just as bad as before, he touched his thumb to the heart's surface, it was still cold.

There was no response, but he could hear the TV from the living room. He made his way from the kitchen to the dining room, placing his bag by his seat at the table, and through the swinging door separating the dining room from the hallway still carrying the heart carefully in his hands.

He called for his Nana again.

"Over here Toby-pie!" She called from the living room over the sound of the TV.

He rounded the corner and tapped her shoulder to get her attention, she turned down the tv and looked to him. He didn't really know what to say, so he just held up the heart as if it was a meager offering, she sat up and took it from him with her own feather light touch.

"I found it by the canals this morning," he explained sheepishly as his Nana turned off the TV, "I couldn't run back home to give it to you then or else I would have been late," though he and Jim were late to school regardless.

"It's okay, you did the right thing," she reassured, getting up from her seat with a groan, she pointed to the closet, "Grab my magnifiers and my mending kit."

Toby nodded and shuffled over to the hall closet as she made her way to the dining room, grabbing the plastic sewing box that acted as her mending kit by the handle and her magnifiers just above them. They were technically jeweler's glasses, but his Nana used the strong magnification of the glasses to meticulously care for the abandoned hearts that she mended, they helped her find every little cut and fracture. She had placed the heart and his vest on the dining room table and was washing her hands as he entered the room. He plopped the kit on the table and her magnifiers right next to the heart before going to wash his hands too, he likely wasn't going to touch the heart himself since he didn't have any experience mending hearts, but it was a good precaution.

"If you could bring me a couple of clean hand towels and a bowl of warm water, please, that would be great," she asked, making her way back to the dining room, he nodded, "Make sure it's not too hot."

She popped open her mending kit with ease, letting the multi-leveled shelves expand as she took off her glasses and replaced them with her magnifiers, snapping down the lenses and picking up the heart once again to look over it. He grabbed two clean hand towels from the drawer filled with them, and found a bowl big enough for the heart, taking it to the sink for water.

"You said you found this by the canals, dear?" His Nana asked as he turned on the water and tested it.

"Yes, a bit off from the bridge near our house," he tested the water again, a bit warmer.

She hummed and started mumbling things about the heart, "Poor thing", "It's so cold", "Duct tape, goodness". The water reached a comfortable temperature and he filled the bowl.

"They seem to be about your age," his Nana said as he placed the towels and bowl on the table next to her kit.

He was surprised by that, his age? Where there really people his age who were already abandoning their hearts? He stared at the heart as he sat down, what horrible thing could have possibly happened to this person to make them come to such a conclusion?

He rested his hands against the table and felt the same gentle thump, thump, thump from the heart that he had felt all day through his sweater vest as his Nana pulled a few choice items from her mending kit. The beating had stayed consistent from the heart for most of the day with slight fluctuations throughout the day, it was a bit fast now, but still consistent. The sound of tape brought him to look at the heart again, his Nana was slowly, carefully, pulling the duct tape off the heart. It looked painful, pulling off the duct tape, and the heart beat a little faster in retaliation.

"Never use duct tape to mend an injured heart," she huffed out, finally pulling the last corner off and setting it aside, "Only medical tape."

"Of course," he nodded, watching as she gently unraveled the messy bandages, more scars were revealed underneath, some old, but others fresh.

She pulled the bowl of water closer and dipped one of her fingers in to test the temperature, she smiled in a reassuring way and grabbed one of the hand towels, "Perfect."

Toby wasn't aware of how dirty the heart was until he watched his Nana wash away the grime, she pointed out scars and injuries as they became easier to see.

"These are from familial relations," she explained, tapping various marks and gives some specification to them. Toby listened attentively, his Nana had never gone this in-depth with him in regards to the hearts she mended, maybe she saw that he was old enough now. She sighed, "There's signs of abuse here."

He widened his eyes, but nodded, it made more sense now, why someone his age would abandon their heart. It was a terrifying revelation, but one that existed.

She dried the heart with the other hand towel once it was clean, it only barely looked better. He could feel the heart continue to beat fast as she traced a finger against the biggest fracture, starting from the left side and spindling diagonally across the heart, it was jagged and deep, any deeper and it might actually have broken the heart in half.

"This one's just like Jim's," she said softly, Toby's eyes widened at his Nana's words, not because he thought it was wrong, but because he knew she was right, "It's more fragmented though, it cracked in increments instead of all at once."

"A parent leaving," he whispered, she nodded.

He remembered how Jim's heart was after his father left, the horrible deep scar, and how quiet and dejected Jim was. Supposedly Dr. Lake had a similar scar on her own heart, but different for being a romantic partner as opposed to a parent, Toby had never seen it, though, as they weren't that close. His Nana had though, when she helped repair Jim and Dr. Lake's hearts, something Dr. Lake had been too distraught at the time to manage herself.

Toby had only seen Jim's heart a couple times after the first, when they were still young enough to not fully understand the cultural significance of only showing your heart to specific loved ones. His heart had healed normally, and now only carried an old scar.

"The poor dear," his Nana mumbled, pulling Toby from his thoughts. She set the heart down on the cleaner towel and grabbed the butterfly bandages and other small bandages she had set out.

Toby watched her closely and quietly, mentally taking note of how she worked with the heart for possible future reference, he wasn't sure if he would ever actually have to use the information, but he liked the possibility of following in his Nana's footsteps for heart smithing. She ignored the older scars and focused on the smaller cuts first. Careful around the bruises, she nicely put the bandages on to help the cuts hold together and heal. It looked better, once she was done, but only barely, the huge fracture still drew far too much attention. She was careful as she handled that part of the heart, making sure everything was aligned and that there were no loose fragments to get caught in the wrong place when she wrapped it.

"Open this, dear," she said, handing Toby a single-packaged gauze pad as she grabbed some wrap bandages and gently opened the package for the roll.

"The heart's not bloody though," he said, still opening the package as she asked. Emotional hearts couldn't get bloody, there was no need for gauze, and luckily no worry for infection either.

"It helps hold things in place and prevent rubbing," she answered, taking the gauze pad when he handed it to her and lining it up over the heart's fracture.

Again, he could barely feel the heart beat a little faster through the table before his Nana picked it up and began to gently, but firmly, wrap the heart. Well over half the roll was gone one she determined that the heart was properly wrapped, it was almost completely covered, only the rounded humps and the point at the bottom stuck out from the white, it seemed almost cozy. She snipped the end and taped it down before finally setting the heart down with a sigh, Toby couldn't help but let out his own sigh too, the heart continued it's quick beating, as if refusing to sigh with them.

There's a moment of silence following that Toby couldn't help but feel awkward in, normally his Nana would take the heart and begin the next part of the healing process, keeping it close to her own heart so that it can slowly mend. Hearts healed better together. But his Nana already had two abandoned hearts in her care at the moment, and trying to take care of more without any help often put a strain on one's own heart. He knew that there was a web of other connected heart smiths that his Nana knew and could get in contact with for this very reason. Such an event had happened before, when a heart smith the next town over reached out to his Nana hoping she could take care of a heart that she had found but couldn't take care of for the other abandoned hearts she was looking over at the time, his Nana luckily was able to take it off her hands.

Toby glanced from the heart up to his Nana as she replaced her magnifiers with her regular glasses once again, she turned owlishly at him and he felt suddenly nervous under her perceptive gaze.

"Toby-pie," she began, her voice carrying a questioning tone that made Toby lean forward, "Would you be willing to take care of this heart?"

"Me?" He sat up, looking bewilderedly at her and her request.

"I know it's a big responsibility," she kept her voice steady and firm as she explained, "But, you have a lot of love in your heart to give, and I think heart smithing would be a great thing for you."

He nodded along to her words, only just hearing them but more lost in his own head at the proposal. Toby had always fancied the idea of following in his Nana's footsteps and taking on heart smithing, it had always seemed like an honorable thing to do for others, and it didn't really take time away from following whatever path he would want in life. The idea of taking on this heart though made him nervous, he had never taken care of a heart before, well aside from Jim's, but that was more in an indirect way, spending time with him and being his friend. Toby had never actually held Jim's heart, had never actually taken care of it in a more direct way, if he messed up with this heart, he could really hurt it, he could really hurt it's owner.

"I understand if you don't want to," his Nana's soft voice broke him from mulling, "I know this is a lot to suddenly ask, but I really think this is something you can do."

He looked at the heart again, cozy, beating it's fast little rhythm, but cold, still probably cold. His Nana's words rung throughout his head, "They're about your age". The heart's owner likely went to Arcadia Oaks High, as it was the main feeder high school for the town and much of the surrounding area, if he took care of the heart, he could likely find it's owner and eventually return it to them once it had healed. True, the purpose of a heart smith was not to seek out the abandoned heart's owners, but only to take care of the hearts unconditionally. But could he do something like that?

"What if I mess up?" He asked looking worriedly at her, "What if I hurt them even more?"

His Nana gave him a comforting smile, "Hurt is a directly involved thing," she explained, "I know it's scary, but it's a lot scarier holding the heart of someone you know and love, 'cause you can hurt them a lot more than a stranger that just needs a little kindness," she looked back at the heart, "There's not a lot of damage you can do by dropping a heart, and believe me, I've dropped a few hearts in my youth," he looked at her with wide eyes, never expecting such a confession from his Nana, who handled hearts with such care and expertise that she could practically juggle them, though she wouldn't, of course. She laughed at his shock, "There'll be a bit of a learning curve, but I'll be right here with you Toby-pie."

"Okay," He gave a small nod as he smiled at her, feeling more confident at her words despite his still present unsureness.

"Now, Toby-pie," her voice was much softer now, there was a tint of worry to it, "You may have to carry this heart forever, it's owner may never end up finding you and taking their heart back," she explained, he felt the nervousness return, "But, they may also eventually find you after their heart has healed, and they may take their heart back and be able to move on to the next part of their life with their heart intact… And that's something very special you can give to someone."

Toby knew, he knew that the few times an owner had actually found them were by happy accidents or by the owners themselves seeking out their hearts, it wasn't something that he would be able to control.

He remembered one time a few years ago, a nice older gentleman had found his Nana after overcoming the terrible heroin addiction that had caused him to abandon his heart in the first place, having actively sought out his heart once he had healed. Toby had nervously been off in another room, observing such a personal moment in someone's life from the side, but it was a beautiful thing, seeing this man be reunited with his heart. If Toby had the chance and ability to eventually give that to someone? Why should he not take it?

"Okay," he repeated, softer this time, "I'll take care of the heart."

A bright smile crossed his Nana's face and she wrapped him up in a big hug, he hugged her back and tried to make sure he could breath.

"Oooh, I know you'll make a wonderful heart smith!"

"I'll try my best," he said, letting out a little breath once she let him go.

They cleaned up the table together, his Nana went to find one of her old resting boxes for him as he put away her mending kit. She came back to the dining room with the little velvet lined box just big enough for two hearts to sit comfortably and gave it to him.

"Now remember, the resting box is for when your home, you can put your and the other heart in here to rest so your heart can help it heal," she carefully explained.

"I know Nana," he said as he took the box from her and gently placed the heart inside.

"Oooh," she cooed, placing her hand on his cheek, " I know you know a lot of these things from watching me over the years, but I just want to make sure you remember," she clapped her hands together and glanced at the clock, "I'll get dinner started, we'll go over some more details then."

He nodded taking the box in one arm and his backpack in the other, "I'll be up in my room."

He shuffled up to his room, careful with the box and the heart in one hand so he didn't drop it. It wasn't necessary, but he closed the door to his room once he was there, tossing his backpack to the side and still carefully watching the heart. He took the box over to his desk, gently setting it down so that it didn't make a sound and sitting before it.

Hearts healed fastest when they were together. Normally, for most people, this meant spending time together, loving each other, bonding or just taking care of each other, for an abandoned heart, it meant placing his own heart next to it in the resting box and just letting the abandoned heart absorb it's warmth and love. It was rare that Toby actually pulled out his own heart, he'd never really had much reason to, so now, when he pulled it out to place it in the box, he couldn't help but stare at it, and compare it to the heart he was now taking care of.

His heart was in significantly better condition then the other one, there were little fractures, of course, from being picked on over the years, but there were no heavy scars on it. Sure he asked out lots of people, and was rejected just as many times, but it was all superficial, asking people out for the chance to get to know them, he hadn't quite found himself developing any deep crushes on anyone yet. Much of his life was rather nice, through some perspective, the worst thing to happen to him was before he could really remember anything, before his heart was fully developed. He couldn't really feel the pain of losing his parents if he couldn't even remember them, his memories began with his Nana. It could be said that he was lucky to have never really experience a heavy heart break within his waking memory.

He shook his head from his thoughts, and rubbed his thumb over his own heart, it was warm, significantly warmer than the other heart before him. One last deep breath, he didn't know why just the idea of putting the hearts together was making him so nervous, and he placed his heart in the box next to the other so that they rested comfortably together and touched.

And then there was a feeling, something he had never felt before, something he couldn't quite describe. It felt almost like his heart was touching tv static. Nothing terrible, but fuzzy almost, not a good kind of fuzzy though.

Hearts naturally try to synchronize when they touch, and he watched as they slowly made to match each other's beating, creating one strong beat he could feel through the surface of his desk.

The fuzzy static sensation didn't go away, but it did calm and dull so that it was less distracting.

There wasn't much else to do at this point, just let the heart rest and soak up his own heart's warmth and love. So long as the person wasn't continuously in positions of emotional devastation, a heart smith focusing on the one heart could have it completely healed in about 5 or so months. Of course, it was a rare and lucky chance that the pain someone was going through was suddenly going to stop after they abandon their heart. Toby took another deep breath and turned away from the hearts, hoping that whoever's heart this was, that they were out of the terrible abuse that had driven them over the edge.

He hoped he could help them heal.

It was lucky that Steve's practice was in the morning that day, he had only just been home for no longer than 10 or so minutes before he found himself feeling again.

Stars above what was this heart smith person doing to his heart?

It had started off harsh, nothing he hadn't felt or dealt with before, of course he had much worse feelings in his heart, but there was pain and memories associated with it. The memory of desperately trying to keep his heart together, all the times he scrambled to wrap up his heart to keep it from falling apart. That terribly lonely feeling of having to fix it all himself. He found it was easier to sit down, and then he found it was easier to just lie on the ground and curl into himself, to wait for this sensation to go away.

He didn't want this. He wanted things to be null, he didn't want to keep feeling. He abandoned his heart so he wouldn't have to feel like this anymore, just give him a fucking break. All he could do was breath, breath and try to wait for it to end, please let him feel nothing again.

After what seemed like forever, everything finally dulled. Steve managed to uncurl from himself, watching his clenched hand relax from where it lay before him. Now he was back to not feeling, and it didn't seem to matter anymore if he could get up off the ground, he didn't care. Good.

Good.

Nothing was welcome in his life, nothing was what he wanted, nothing was what he deserved. It was better than anything he had felt before. He closed his eyes and breathed.

Nothing.

Nothing.

…Something.

Steve's eyes broke open again. There was another feeling, another sensation he was having. Something spreading out from his chest.

It was warm.

He didn't know what was happening now, but he felt…warm.

Not hot, like the burn he felt at the end of practice, or like the burn he felt when he wore too heavy of a jacket for the weather, but warm. Warm like going to the park with his mom, when he would run around and play in the sun with utmost joy and not a care in the world.

…Where did that memory come from?

It was a happy memory, an old one, something he had almost forgotten.

This odd warm feeling seemed to dredge up a whole bunch of other happy memories with it, because suddenly he couldn't seem to remember anything else.

So many old memories of laughing, playing, of being happy, unconditionally happy like when he was younger. So many memories that he had mentally pushed aside. He pulled his hand over his mouth and tried to hold back the tears that were building in his eyes.

It had been so long since he had felt this, this warm, happy sensation. He didn't know how to deal with it, it was such an overwhelming change from earlier. He didn't want this either, he wanted nothing, he wanted nothing. And yet the warm feeling wouldn't go away.

He sobbed into the ground.

A/N: Ah I can finally share my Trollhunters fanfics! This is gonna be a short fic, with only about 3-4 chapters in total, though I'm honestly not sure how long the other chapters will come out to be. I've only got one part of the next chapter done so who knows when that will come out.

I hope you all enjoyed this!