Red Ink

Part 34 - A Warning

"Is he... going to hurt you?" Red asked quietly.

Her driver was already climbing back into the car when she asked him, but it had taken the entirety of the ride back to her parlor to work up the courage to even ask him. It was dangerous to become too comfortable with the man just from what happened during the appointment– at the end of the day, he was still working for Dabi.

He was about to close the car door, but her question made him hesitate. She couldn't read his expression from behind his mask, but she expected he was looking at her. Wind whipped her hair as she waited for an answer.

"Maybe," the man said, his voice gravelly from the voice modulator.

Y/N took a hesitant step towards the car, debating the words on her tongue. There was a chance that what she was about to tell him would ruin her life– but if she was right, then she could save his.

"Take the car and go," she whispered. "Go far away. If you leave now, he won't find you."

She saw his grip on the steering wheel tighten and heard him exhale shakily. "If I go, you can't go back."

Y/N had gone into appointment after appointment with Dabi feeling completely isolated and alone. Today was the first instance she actually saw someone else standing with her in the hellfire, and now he was warning her to run.

Red gripped the car door and opened it wider. "Why did you defend me?" she asked.

He let go of the door handle and turned away from her, as if he didn't want to say it. For a moment she thought he was going to ignore her. It took a while before he finally spoke. "You were kind to my son."

She pulled back slightly in confusion. His son? Who the hell—

Then it hit her.

"Tadashi," Red breathed. "But... he's from topside."

"I made sure he would be. I work in the Underground to keep it that way."

With a mask on his face, Red couldn't help but see her driver as the man who did that exact thing for her ten years ago. The man's hands were dirty to keep his sons' clean, just as Ray's were dirty to keep hers clean.

Y/N looked down both ends of the street before nodding at her driver. "Stay for dinner. Let me thank you properly."

"I don't need your thanks. I need–" the man tapped his foot against the floor of the car erratically. "I need you to promise you won't go back."

"Sir, I... I appreciate that—"

"He's not going to let you leave."

Red's stomach dropped and she wondered if she'd misheard him. "He... what?"

The man took a deep breath, finally accepting the fact that both of them were already fucked, and jumped into action. He turned off the car, shut the door behind him, and pulled her into the tattoo parlor before she could protest.

Once inside, he began closing the blinds. "He has a theory," he said, shuffling from window to window and speaking quickly, "that your quirk could be the next drug for the Underground."

Y/N took a seat on one of the tattoo lounge chairs and fidgeted with her fingers. "That doesn't make sense. It just heals scar tissue. People aren't that hung up on something so trivial."

"Dabi thinks that Trigger will enhance it into something else. His theory is that your quirk isn't scar healing, it's cell reversal."

"Cell reversal?" Red scoffed. "But my quirk only works on scar tissue."