Fates Entwined (A TodoBaku ff) ✔

LXVI

"Shoto! Wake the fuck up!" 

Shoto's eyes blinked open. Gone were the beautiful blue flowers, his mother's gentle touch, Touya's bright smile. Instead the air reeked with blood and smoke, and his body was shaking terribly. 

"Oh thank the gods." Katsuki breathed out, head falling atop Shoto's own. "Don't fucking scare me like that again, falling like that you- fuck..." He felt more than heard the man take a slow, deep breath, strong arms pulling him closer to his chest. 

"Cold." He mumbled, trying to keep his eyes open even though it felt like a momentous task. 

"Cold?! You're fucking burning! Shit- Kiri, go find Glasses and send a messenger for Cheeks!" 

He heard Kirishima shout somewhere in the distance, beyond his view that was limited by Katsuki's cloak. His own clothes felt heavy, damp with blood and melting ice and-

His father. 

He struggled to push himself up, intending to turn around to where he knew his father's body knelt stiff and impaled, dead by his hands. His side burnt, his arms felt weak, and before he could even sit up properly it seemed Katsuki caught on to what he was doing and pulled him even closer, tucking his head against his neck.

"Don't look." Katsuki spoke quietly, as if doing so any louder would break him. "It's okay now." 

And Shoto wanted to protest. Wanted to shout that he had killed his father, just how his father killed Touya and his mother. Wanted to say there was still so much yet to be done, people who would need healing, and yet there was no fight left in him. With his mother's words a ghostly whisper at the back of his mind, he tried to fall back into the calm state he left her in, and despite all the begging and shouting and shaking, fell back into the darkness...

He wasn't sure how long he spent floating. He wasn't asleep, nor was he awake, nor was he suspended in that blurry state that suffocated his body on the worst of days. He simply floated. It was dark and peaceful, yet sometimes a stray voice would pass by and he would catch a word or two if he tried, mostly his own name. Attempts to wake up were futile, he tried until his body gave in and the darkness became heavier, if that were even possible. He didn't think, couldn't speak, he merely existed and waited in this place where time did not exist. 

There were times he came close to leaving this place, when he could feel something against him, a needle or a hand perhaps. But those touches were fleeting, as if his body did not have the energy to acknowledge them, and he was floating once more. Perhaps this was it, the time when he had to stand by his choice to live, to carry on in this life until he had reached fulfilment. Perhaps this was a test, tempting him with peaceful eternity where he would not have to think of the blood on his hands, blood that would stain his skin forever, visible only to him...

It could have been minutes, hours, days, or weeks when light returned to his world. It started small, a weak flickering flame, until it grew and grew and dissipated the darkness until golden hair blessed by the sun and carmine eyes was left in its place. Eyes that watched him for a long moment, as if that was all they had been doing for some time, watching and waiting without change. But now they widened, and if the shine in them was from the morning sun filtering in through the latticed window or the simmering of tears, he couldn't tell. 

"Katsuki." He greeted, throat itching from the dryness that clung to it, those few syllables faint and scratched. Katsuki helped him take a few sips of water from the glass on the bedside, calloused hand a familiar comfort at his nape.

"Morning, princess." Katsuki spoke back just as quietly, perhaps wanting to hold on to this fragile moment, afraid it would break and Shoto would go back to that dark place. There was a glimpse of a smile on his face, making him look young and not a king burdened from war. Shoto had missed it. "How ya feeling?"