Supernova

Chapter One Hundred and Seven - We Call This a Denouement

The next morning was better. Groggy, but manageable. This time, everyone was awake when I was. The curtain that gave way to the window was open. Aizawa was there again. Or hadn't left. I could see Katsuki was there too, the reds of his eyes having bled into the whites. I tried to smile at him. He looked away from me and I felt the warmth tighten around my hand. I looked away too, out of respect.

He'd never liked me to see him cry.

Recovery Girl was there too, and she looked perfectly pleased to see me. She was the only one who smiled when I looked at her, and she was the first to speak.

"Good morning," she told me. "It's good to see you again."

I started crying again. I hadn't been aware of why I'd started crying at the time, thinking I was just overwhelmed all over again, but I know better now. It was the same thing as welcome back and I desperately needed to hear those words. I'd needed someone to say that they'd seen how gone I'd been even though I'd still been here, hiding in plain sight.

The tears were hot and irritatingly itchy as they rolled down my cheeks. It was this sensation that made me realize that it wasn't just my hand that was warm, but there was still sensation overtaking the rest of my body too. I understood fabric was brushing up against my skin on both sides. My hair was sticking to my cheek and the back of my neck. I was hungry. It wasn't just an awareness I had; I could feel it.

"How are you feeling?" Recovery Girl asked next.

"I'm starving," I said.

There was a laugh that filled the room. It hadn't come from Recovery Girl. Aizawa's face hadn't moved a muscle. Katsuki's breath still communicated to me that he wasn't quite capable of any speech yet. But I knew it wasn't any of them. I knew that laugh. I knew it well. I looked over to the other side of me, looking for him. There was a curtain, a shadow behind it. Recovery Girl went over to the wall of fabric, and hovered beside it, as if asking me permission. I nodded. She pulled it back. When she did, it revealed another hospital bed, Elias lying in it.

"I assume you've just said you're hungry," he said. "That's so you."

He was smiling. With a smile I recognized. He was back, too.

I'm not sure what I was thinking. I ripped my hand from the warmth, sat up, and pulled myself off the bed with one movement that should have been swift but ended up being horribly awkward, and worse still, incredibly painful. My entire body seized like the most intense coldness had been liquified and poured over me. I screamed again, and my body shot towards the floor in this sudden action I had no control over.

Aizawa's scarves caught me before I hit the floor. Just inches before. I felt them, too. The tightness with which they held me, how rigid they were against my skin. It was awful. I cringed away from them; it was an action I hadn't really considered myself capable of in such a context. It burned. It burned so horribly. Everything burned. They lifted me up and back into bed with the same swiftness, and Katsuki took my hand back again, in both hands this time, and by the time I looked at him, he'd managed to wipe his face off and the only thing that gave him away were those incredibly red eyes.

The warmth from my hand silenced the rest of my body immediately. No, not silenced. It calmed it. It made everything else I could feel manageable. There was no more itch, no more cold, no more pain. It became the anchor. He was the stability.

I shouldn't have been so surprised. He always had been that for me.

"I'd advise against trying that again," Recovery Girl told me, reprimanding me with a stern, wagging finger. "You'll be in that bed a while longer still."