𝐊𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐋𝐢𝐞𝐬 || S. Todoroki x Reader

41 - Devotion

The thing that they don't tell you about burns is how little they hurt at first. There would be moments when your body just went completely numb over the trauma, and you wondered why you were even in the hospital to begin with. 

But then you'd try to shift your weight from one side to the other, moving your arm too fast reaching for your water bottle. And everything would come back. The fire, the night sky, the rain. In those moments, death seemed like the most merciful choice.

You couldn't quite remember what happened those first few days in the hospital. They'd had you pumped up on every antibiotic known to man, so the world dipped into a hazy lull as you retreated to the back of your brain and let your subconscious do most of the work. Healing took so much energy, you found, and so most days consisted of sleeping until the doctors needed to rouse you for another treatment. 

Swapping bandages, seeing how the skin grafts on your upper arms were healing, if the bones in your wings were still snapped back into their rightful place. The burns on your forearms hurt the most, and the skin just above your trapezius, where your nerve endings hadn't fried over and withered away. Those were the places where you could feel everything all of the time, and no amount of antibiotics or burn cream the nurses gave you could help with that.

They strapped an IV to your arm that supplied a healthy stream of medicine after Hawks had to hit the emergency button in the middle of the night because you'd started convulsing from the throbbing. The pain all bled together, you couldn't tell where the physical ended and the emotional began. All you knew was that everything in your world was a lie.

Toya was alive. 

He'd been alive that entire time. 

He'd been somewhere, living, breathing, laughing, crying, existing somewhere in the city along beside you. And then he managed to find you, and the first thing he did was try and kill you. There was a gaping wound that no amount of drugs could patch up, no kind of skin graft could cover. You left it open and untouched most of the time, unequipped to deal with the horrible heavy feeling that constricted your chest whenever his name came to your mind. 

There was no energy left to give him, you realized after spending an entire night digging through the recesses of your memory and prying apart every interaction you could remember. Nothing helped, it was pointless, and only served to make you angry. Angry and utterly sad.

'He's alive,' you whispered in the middle of the night, when no one could hear you.

'He's alive,' you'd said one day over lunch.

Hawks had brought Chinese food, a favorite in your rotation. He picked at the white carton in his palm with a skeptical brow. The bags under his eyes had darkened considerably. You couldn't remember the last time you'd seen him well-rested. Couldn't remember the last time you'd felt well-rested. 'Who?' he'd asked.

That same, sinking between your ribs. You willed yourself to spill out the word. 'Toya. He's alive.'

His fatigue must've been worse than you'd thought, because instead of brushing it off, Hawks hesitated. For just the briefest moment, an emotion akin to the one darkening the pit in your chest flashed across his eyes. Communication had turned fickle ever since your fight after the mall incident with Shigaraki.

You knew Hawks had stayed with you those first few days, but the first clear memory, untouched by haze, was the sound of his heartbeat and he laid next to you in the white hospital bed, snoring faintly. The dim glow of street lamps filtered through the blinds, but the room was quiet. It's its own little world of heart monitors and the beautiful lull of breathing. It sounded like home. You'd nestled further into his side, let the tears come, and pretended not to notice when you felt his shoulders shake with the same sadness wracking your bones.