Ashes of Love and War - TodoMomo

||Chapter 14 ~ Part 2||

His feet paused, and he felt the curse pull at him. Shouto sighed. It wasn't like he was tired anyway. "I can help you, if you need it."

Yaoyorozu wiped at her forehead with the back of her forearm. She nodded, and Shouto moved closer, ignoring the way his heartbeat stuttered.

"Thank you." She gave him a thin smile as she handed him a pair of scissors and one of the blankets. "If you can just cut these into long, thin sheets. I'm making them into bandages. Try to make them even, if you can."

Shouto hummed as he took the scissors from her. From up-close, underneath the exhaustion and despair that they all wore, he could see that Yaoyorozu's eyes were red-tinged and the thin skin under them slightly puffy.

Realization dawned on him like a kick in the gut.

"You've been crying."

"Oh," she twisted away. Reaching up, she self-consciously wiped at her face. "It's nothing."

A lump formed in his throat. "Are you okay?"

She sighed but didn't meet his eyes. "Is anyone okay right now?" she asked softly.

"But I mean-"

"It's fine," she cut him off sternly. Her expression flickered, and she swallowed, dropping her head to stare at the table. "We can't be infighting right now."

The anger in Shouto's chest stirred, but he pushed it down and forced himself to get to work. The logical side of him understood.

He couldn't make Yaoyorozu talk. Forcing her when she wasn't ready to speak would only upset her further. And besides, he'd promised only yesterday that he'd be better and more considerate of her feelings. He couldn't fail, not even a full day after he had made that vow, just because of a stupid curse making him impatient. Shouto gripped the scissors tighter as he sheared them along the sheet.

She'd tell him when she was ready.

But he couldn't help to wonder what had happened.

Shouto knew she had been angry with Aizawa's decision. However, when he had left the kitchen, she hadn't looked so upset that she'd cry over it.

There had been an angry resignation in her expression, but not sadness. But now, she looked sad. And lonely. It felt like something had occurred after the meeting, something more painful.

'We can't be infighting right now.'

Shouto's lips thinned. What did she mean by that?

"Todoroki."

Yaoyorozu's voice snapped Shouto out of his thoughts. He jerked his head up to find Yaoyorozu staring pointedly at his hands.

"You're cutting the sheet too small."

Shouto followed her gaze down to the table. The makeshift bandages he was cutting were frayed at the edges and definitely not meeting Yaoyorozu's request for evenly cut strips. He looked back up at her and felt his ears turn red. "Sorry."

Yaoyorozu shook her head faintly, raising a skeptical eyebrow. "You've never used scissors before, have you?"

Shouto shifted, and he looked away. "No."

In fact, Bakugo had explicitly barred Shouto from ever helping with what he called "household chores." According to the prince, any time Shouto was around, work only seemed to double. Shouto thought the judgment was unfair, but looking at his poorly cut bandages, maybe Bakugo wasn't wrong.

Yaoyorozu made a noise in the back of her throat that sounded like suppressed laughter as if she could read Shouto's thoughts. "Here. I'll show you a trick to cutting straight."