Your legs feel strange; your knees bend against your command, and you find it difficult just to step forward. Your head is pounding. You hear whispers in your blood and you know – you know – that this is the beginning of the end. The pain will spread from your legs and travel up through your blood like a toxin. It will reach your heart, your brain, until you'll be consumed by it and you'll be unable to form a solid thought, just like how you're unable to form a solid step. And then? You don't know. Maybe you'll just shrivel up and die here.
No.
Yuta needs you.
You have to protect him.
With this, you somehow conjure enough strength to move. Out of your room. Goodbye Gojo, goodbye Megumi, goodbye Tsumiki, thank you for loving me. Down the stairs. Goodbye, Ieiri, and thank you for everything. Out the infirmary. Goodbye Panda, goodbye Maki, goodbye Toge, thank you for your friendship. Through the ruined paths of your home, into the thick miasma of dust and ash. Goodbye Yuta, I love you.
You keep on walking. The world seems to move in slow motion, like the frame-by-frame feature on DVDs. You see, you step, you move in fragmented moments of time.
You swallow back your fear. You've never been in the thick of combat before; you've always hung back, always protected by your friends, always tucked away somewhere safe because the school can't afford to lose a healer. Is this what they have to deal with every time they go out into the field? The coppery smell of blood hangs in the air. Sticky smoke clings to you. You don't understand what's happening at all, why it's so quiet, until the dust settles, and you can clearly see the carnage.
A limp mound of black and white fur. A body twisted at an unnatural angle. A cold, white hand, flung out across the ground, with fingernails painted a dark shade of blue.
Breathing becomes almost impossible as you fall to your knees in a crumpled heap. Blood soaks your shirt, stains your skin. Your first thought is that you're too late, Getou's killed them all, but you realize now that they're still alive. Still stubbornly clinging to life. They're dying, yes, and you can feel the faintest stirrings of their Cursed Energy brushing against your skin. But it's enough. Warmth shoots down your spine, and in response, you watch as Inumaki's breathing evens out, how Maki's mangled limbs are healed and untwisted, one muscle fiber and cell at a time.
The relief that hits you is instant, after days of lingering in the boundary between life and death. Your breath comes back; the pain recedes like a tide going out. It's the clearest that your mind has been in days, unfettered by the hazy numbness of medicines and drugs.
Coughing, you feel a malevolent presence behind you.
"Impressive. Not even Shoko is capable of healing at such speed."
How is it possible that your worst nightmare has arrived, and you are unable to move from this spot?
Slowly, you get to your feet, avoiding sudden movements as though he were a venomous snake. Getou takes a quick step closer, and you flinch.
He only laughs. "You weren't who I was expecting."
Your suspicions are all but confirmed. He's here for Yuta. A pang of longing moves through you, sharp and unexpected. What you wouldn't give to have him by your side right now. You can still remember the broadness of his back, the warmth of his body pressed against yours as he'd shielded you from Getou's view with a single-minded determination.
"He isn't coming." Your breath catches in your throat. That lone pang of longing for Yuta to be here has doubled, tripled, transformed into something ugly. Your ears buzz with the electricity of it. "I told him to run."
