Bullet | Suicidal Todoroki x Midoriya

9 | Remember

This story is not intended to promote or encourage actions/behaviors such as suicide, self-harm, abuse, violence, or substance abuse.

Shoto Todoroki

Izuku's horrified gasp transfixed Shoto's ears as a bath of silence pooled into the room. The weight of that silence felt like a blanket of lead wrapping around Shoto's chest as he examined his husband's expression of stupefaction and contemplation.

"Hell no!"

Shoto's eye twitched.

BANG!

Although cognizant that the sound reverberating through his mind was merely a memory, he nonetheless began to dip down to his knees.

"Do it."

He stayed his tongue and his breaths.

"Kill him."

Releasing an ancient gale of carbon dioxide, Shoto straightened his posture again

"The longer you wait, the more you both suffer."

"I'm n—"

"Hey. What'd...I tell you? Don't fuck with me now..."

"I'm sorry."

"Heh."

Forget, Shoto chastised himself. Forget it. Just fucking forget what happened! Everyone. All of it. Forget. But...is that right?

As a pair of emerald eyes met his, he felt his lips beginning to move as his voice flooded out from between. "For a while, this was enough. It wasn't, but it had to be enough. These scars look like a disease. I guess my mind is diseased. It became less and less helpful. I cut until I almost passed out. I needed it that badly. But it just wasn't helping..." He slid his sleeve back down to conceal his wrist. "So, I took a shot at drinking alcohol and didn't look back. There. I didn't want to tell anyone, but this is the truth. I don't know why or how I didn't give in to end it all. Maybe...I wanted to know that my family was okay. No. Nothing like that. All I had was this ring, and I wasn't going to lose it, but I forgot about a lot. It all felt like a dream. Numb. Everything was numb. I think...I forgot about it all. All I could think about was my duty, but I couldn't shake what had happened. Forgotten. Everything was forgotten. I forgot...that I had a family that I promised to return to. I forgot, Izuku. I forgot."

Izuku's arms encircled Shoto's chest, but as the former's tenacity strengthened, Shoto's senses weakened. "It's okay," Izuku whispered in visceral strains of solace. "But you can't forget about the past, whether it was good or bad... Shoto, please try to remember. Again. You can drown out the memories, but you can't change the past. Remember...what hurt the most." Izuku's arms trembled, but in reality, Shoto's arms were the ones trembling.

Shoto shook his head as his memories sundered his thoughts. "No," he protested with a wince, but once his mind had interpreted what Izuku was supplicating for, the beginning of an upheaval of traumatizing memories became inevitable. "No... Izuku, why?!" His pupils gasped as they frantically bashed at the peripheries of his eyes, but the request to remember became a subliminal command that triggered another chain of unearthing repressed memories.

"Because it's okay now," Izuku reassured him while interlacing their hands. "Don't hold back." With his free hand, Izuku deftly swept his fingers through Shoto's hair. "It's okay... I'm right here."

Incendiary bullets perforated Shoto's mind as one memory awakened the next to be fired. As though his gaze was fixated on an ocean of refulgent flames, his eyes were pried open. His desperate breaths marched until they seemed to exhaust themselves into figments of his profound imagination.