daylight || mha

[ twenty-nine ] broken bonds

~*~

"i can't open my mouth and forget how to talk, cause even if i could wouldn't know where to start, wouldn't know when to stop"

~*~

She had stared at the message longer than she would have liked. Without being consciously aware, she had hoped for something of this sort. Even though she shouldn't, sometimes she had wished that he would seek her out. That she could apologize for what she had almost done that night. She hated wishful thinking of this sort. Mostly because she had never understood herself to be capable of it. Something she was undeserving of.

That didn't stop her, though. Faster than she had expected herself to, she had slipped on her hero costume and stashed away the phone. Not without looking at it once more, though. In hopes that she had maybe just imagined it. But no, it was real. As real as her body jumping out the window. As real as her arms holding on to better choices as she climbed down the hotel walls. As real as her legs running under the moon's disguise to meet her demise. She couldn't even stop her eyes from becoming traitors to her common sense whenever she ran past an alleyway where he could be awaiting her.

She reached the right alley faster than she had thought she would. Or maybe she just hadn't noticed her speed increasing ever so lightly with every step she had taken closer to him. Her feet halted right in the middle of the street. Even though the night was moonlit, the alley was dark. The only streetlight was on the other end of it, casting broad shadows along the entirety of it. Instinctively she moved to hide herself within them.

"Spirit?"

It felt like she hadn't heard his voice in ages. Instantly her mind was flooded with his screams. They had become irrevocably ingrained in her memory. She turned wordlessly. Out of habit her eyes scanned him. He was wearing the same clothes as usual, though his tattered coat had a few more stitches and his white shirt was slightly more charred around the hem. His arms were the same deep purple as she had come to expect, but the traces of dried blood where the charred flesh met his skin were newer. His face was sunken, as if he hadn't eaten right for a while. And there was the same kind of dried blood glued to the skin under his eyes. It looked as though he had cried, but instead of salty tears the only thing dripping to his cheeks had been crimson regret.

"Still checking me out?"

His attempt at loosening the tension fell on deaf ears. He had said it for old times sake, knowing that she would most likely not understand what it meant. It was worth seeing the flicker of youthful confusion on her face, even if just for a split-second.

"You are overusing your quirk."

Dabi couldn't help but chuckle hearing that. She said it every time they met. It wasn't because she thought he was unaware. It was her blunt way of making it clear to him that she noticed and that maybe in a different world, where it hadn't been tortured out of her, that she cared.

She seemed different to him. Her eyes were still surrounded by sunken, dark skin that seemed to only get deeper the more he looked at it. But she looked healthier than she ever had when he had seen her before. As much as he hated the thought of her being part of the system that had driven him to ruin, he was glad at least, that the Creator didn't have that much control over her anymore.

"I like your costume, hero."

The girl looked down at herself. It was such a little sentence with even littler significance on the surface and yet it wasn't. She let each single word bounce around in her mind trying to tie them to a string. Why he would say that of all things, she didn't know. But she knew he had a reason.