My Hero Academia: Aspirations

Chapter 14

Aspirations
Chapter 14

Red tape. Bureaucracy. Both were equal amounts of bullshit.

After escorting Shoto Todoroki to the hospital, you and he had run into such annoying legalities that you really started to reconsider Aizawa's words. He had been upset that you'd gone beyond the law to help Toshinori regain what he'd lost. Theoretically you understood his point. It was a licensed surgeon's job to help the wounded after all. If just anyone tried to help there could be anarchy and uneven medical care for individuals. In all practicality, now you were at a hospital with the Todoroki family, you had found that uniformity of medical care seemed so damned patronizing.

The whole "we'll inform you if there are any changes" line that Todoroki and his two older siblings got every time they asked for an update was bullshit. It reminded you of when you'd been 16 and worried about your own parent. The worried looks the nurses and attendants gave the three of them while also not telling them what was going on reminded you far too much of what happened back then. And just like then you felt helpless.

Cold fear gripped you and it wasn't even your father. You barely even knew Endeavour as a hero much less the man  Enji Todoroki. Whatever was going on back in the surgery rooms, you knew you could have helped in better circumstances. You could have been helping to reduce nerve pain. Or maybe helping control blood flow. You could have helped with knitting up any organs if they'd been ruptured. Helping the heart keep a rhythmic beat. You could have even helped regrow any damaged muscle.

But no.

Just like you had told Aizawa, you were just chaperoning Todoroki so that there was no question of curfew or traveling while his father was in the hospital. Though with his older siblings there, even that amount of help was pointless. That feeling of frustration, fear, and helplessness brought back memories you'd rather not think about.

If Endeavor falls, this fragile illusion of peace will come to ruin. 

Why was being a vigilante so bad again?

You leaned your head against one of the trees in the garden as you frowned in frustration. Even though the air was practically freezing at this time of night, being outside was better than being in the actual hospital. Though it was one of the high end sort of places, good enough to have a garden for patients and visitors alike, it was still a hospital. The smell of rubbing alcohol and rubber gloves permitted everywhere. The scents, sounds, and site of the place made the cold fear in your heart worse.

Your mother had been brought to a place like this.

Your mother died in a place like this.

Which explained why you disliked it so much, no doubt. Knowing why the fear and anxiety threatened to overtake you didn't stop it from happening. It didn't rationalize it. What you felt was still irrational. Nothing bad was going to happen to you or what remained of your family this time. You were at the hospital to support a student. You were safe. The irrational fear didn't really disappear as you tried to reason with it; somehow that was perfectly normal and you hated that.

You pushed off from the tree and forced your sluggish body back into the main building. The sterile scent seeped through your mask, burning your throat with its unwelcome sharpness. You tried to push it to the back of your mind by counting the variations in the patterns beneath your feet.

It wasn't long before you found Shoto Todoroki sitting beside his sister, whose acquaintance you'd made at the hospital. He awkwardly had his hand on his sister's head as she let the fear take over. You took a seat across the hall from the siblings. You felt faint actually.