A Song to Come Home to

Chapter Seven

"Do you know why you are here?" Doctor Mori speaks up. His voice is quiet and smooth, grating on Dabi's nerves. Dabi silently watches as the doctor leans closer, the plastic chair creaks under the man's weight. Under the unblinking gaze of the doctor, Dabi still remains silent. He smiles inwardly when Doctor Mori blinks and looks away.

Doctor Mori softly sighs after a moment and readjusts himself. Crossing an ankle over the other knee, he takes off his glasses and folds the metal arms in before he gently sets them on the table. Dabi would take pleasure at the doctor's slowly growing frustration but all he can feel is a numbing calm that spreads over his body.

"What're you doing?" He asks, eyes narrowing. To others, perhaps they would embrace the feeling of static nothing as it embraced them- choking out any other emotion. To Dabi, it makes him feel like a mere cornered animal. To his growing dismay, he can feel the tension in his shoulders begin to melt away. A raging war brews beneath his skin. A skirmish between instincts and this new alien feeling of calm. In horror, he completely relaxes in his chair.

"I am doing nothing." Doctor Mori clasps his hands in his lap with a small smile that graces his lips. Dabi doesn't like having the piercing gaze on him. "It is merely my quirk." Instantly, dread tries to furrow deep within his soul but is quickly vanquished under the working of Doctor Mori's quirk.

"I didn't agree to this. If I can't use mine, you can't use yours." Dabi retaliates, feeling nothing more than a foolish child throwing a tantrum. He feels waves of other emotions that roil frantically. Disgust, fear, and loathing are the constants that try to fight back against the calm that holds him captive.

"Well, unlike your quirk... mine is not at all fatal or even dangerous. All I am doing is reading your emotions and then calming the atmosphere around you. My quirk is Empath." Doctor Mori replies, his smile softens. Doctor Mori leans forward, to Dabi's inconsistency of fear that thrashes in spurts. It reminds him of a fire trying to flicker to life on wet lumber.

"Get out of my head." Dabi snarls out, shrinking away. Doctor Mori simply sighs again, shaking his head. He picks up a notepad and flips it open, taking the pen from behind his ear and clicks it.

"I am not in your head, Dabi. I'm reading your emotions." 

Dabi doesn't reply, his lip curled up into a sneer. He wants to lash out at the doctor, who's beginning to write in the notepad already.

"Now, do you know why you are here?" Doctor Mori questions once more, glancing up at him for a brief moment.

"Because all of you are too sadistic to let me live out my days in Tartarus." Dabi curtly answers through clenched teeth. He closes his eyes, Dabi doesn't want this therapy session. He doesn't want to talk. Not to Doctor Mori, not to his mother and definitely not to himself.

"Would you rather be in Tartarus?" Another soft question. Had the doctor's quirk not been in use, he would've gnashed his teeth and threatened the doctor's life. Anyone in their right mind wouldn't want to be in Tartarus. Deep down, he doesn't even want to be there but it was part of the plan. His last plan.

Now Dabi knows that he'll remain locked away in this institution for the rest of his life. He'll share the same fate of his mother, to simply fade away from everything. All Dabi had wanted was to go out in a flare of dramatics and when his name was spoken upon others' tongues, it would be tinged with fear. Rather than even being given the freedom of how he goes out, he's fated to merely flicker out of existence until he's forgotten. Much like a dying flame that reached the end of its wick. How foolish of him to think of himself as a raging forest fire or the scorching heat of a blue star.

"Yes." Dabi's answer comes out soft and forced. He refuses to give the doctor the satisfaction of him showing any weakness so he continues to glare at Doctor Mori.