Things Worth Fighting For

Chapter 10

Aoi's POV

I'd admit, the fight with the dinosaur gave me a lot to think about.

On one hand, it gave me something to talk about with Hinata, which I was happy about. Even if he was energetic, overly self-sacrificing, and stubbornly optimistic, he was one of the purest souls I'd ever met. It was hard to feel down in his presence.

It also gave me a sense of self-fulfillment, and an excellent exercise.

On the other hand...

I massaged my forehead as another splitting headache erupted in my skull. The side effects of my quirk were hitting me, and they were hitting hard – bloodloss, dizziness, extreme thirst, all of the good stuff.

Oh, what I wouldn't give for an Americano right now.

With an exhale of breath, I sank down onto the floor. My excuse of checking on Kita and Tanami wasn't a lie, per se – I needed a moment before I could do anything else.

I didn't think I'd have time to visit them, with how tired I was, and I just really didn't want to deal with feelings today. Especially not guilt.

I let everything around me fade away, and I fell away from the present. No, it wasn't a daydream; it's a state of silence, one that blew the pain away. My personal version of a painkiller.

But the darkness didn't kill the pain, not right now. It reminded me of the terror of death, the feeling of a mask slipping off, of the tremors in a voice that no one heard.

It was chaos, but not the same chaos I craved.

And that was how I knew I couldn't escape anymore.

The dinosaur fight was the first time in a long time that I'd felt absolute terror – that, I knew. My façade almost slipped. I nearly became the scared little girl from the lab again, and I didn't want anyone to ever see that. I didn't want to remember her. I didn't want anyone to remember her.

And yet, it didn't matter what I wanted and what I didn't. Because in the end, she still existed.

"Oh, Miyamoto?"

Katashi Sanada's smooth voice pulled me up from my thoughts, and I'd never been more thankful to someone than I was to him at the moment. In my mind, I added him to my list of people I owed a favor as I sluggishly moved to stand up in an attempt to look more mentally stable/put together than I was.

If the concerned look that Sanada threw me as he entered the tent was any indication, it didn't work. In fact, I probably looked worse than before, what with the fact that I was leaning on the fragile tent flap for support, mixed with my chapped lips and obviously unhealthy pallor.

I didn't let him worry about me very long, cutting off whatever he was about to ask me by asking a question of my own on something I'd noticed in just five seconds of being in the present (congratulations to me for being perceptive) –

"Why is there so much screaming outside," I deadpanned, not bothering to make it sound like a question.

He shrugged, still looking cautious. "I think they're building a bonfire or something."

"That'll be hard without Ale."

"Yeah, it will." Sanada narrowed his eyes at me, unusual for his typically playful demeanor. He was serious, now, and not in the teasing way that he used with some of his friends. "Hey, are you alright? Because Hinata was hiding a huge injury from us earlier, and I won't be having it if you're doing that too."

I'd talked to Sanada a few times, and yes, I'd vaguely consider us friends in the way that he knew the basics of my personality. But it was still cutely touching that he actually gave a shit about my health.