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"Well, look at you. You've really gone and done it now, Kaminari."
He doesn't say anything and you honestly didn't expect him to. He wasn't even looking at you. He's had a lot of visitors today and Aizawa warned you not to get your hopes up about him responding to you much. You'd nodded in agreement because you thought you were prepared for this.
But it still hurt.
You sat down in a chair next to the bed, wincing as the wood creaked beneath you. It seemed inappropriately loud in the quiet of the room, like when you're desperately trying not to cough in a library. You looked at Kaminari's blonde hair, falling around his head in messy spikes and took in an unsteady breath.
"The others are doing okay, in case you were wondering. Deku has the most broken bones, but he's used to it so I guess that makes it a little better. He probably has his own special hospital bed by now."
The joke sounded flat and hollow, even to you and you cleared your throat uncomfortably, absently smoothing out wrinkles on the blanket spread over Kaminari.
"Aizawa-sensei was pretty mad, but I think he was using that to cover how relieved he was. He's got an image to maintain, after all."
A lump swelled in your throat as you looked down at Kaminari's prone form. He looked so...peaceful. Your fingers tightened on the raised bars of the bed, the cool metal digging into your skin. You'd been going for light, easygoing, but looking down at him, you just couldn't do it.
"What were you thinking?" you asked, shaking your head. "Releasing as much electricity as you did...and you'd never even tested it before, you just went right for the craziest solution and hoped it might work. I know things for pretty desperate back there, but there's a limit to how stupid a person can be, you know!"
You said that far more harshly (and loudly) than you meant to and now that you started, you suddenly couldn't bring yourself to stop. The stillness of the room, cloying scent of flowers, incessant noises from the machinery, it was all too much.
"You should have let someone else take care of it, or at least warned us what you were going to do! Look at you now - do you have any idea how worried everyone is about you? How worried I am? I know you were just trying to protect everyone, you wanted to do what a Hero does, but...but this is..."
Your eyes flickered to the screen – somehow you'd been able to drown out the incessant beeping of the heart monitor, ignoring the jagged peaks of his heartbeat, but...suddenly you couldn't. Kaminari's placid, sleeping countenance, so unlike him, the machines hooked up to him, the horrible stillness in the air...it was like something out of a bad dream. All you wanted to do was wake up.
You reached out and slipped your hand in his, noting how warm it was, lacing your fingers in his. You belatedly realised you were shaking slightly and a vague thought in the back of your mind wondered when you had started.
"Kaminari..." you began, then stopped and clear your throat. "Denki...you've got to wake up now," you said, helplessly, feeling the sting of tears in your eyes, threatening to fall at any moment.
Pain swelled in your chest as you looked down at him, inert as a waxwork. Someone like Kaminari did not belong idling in a goddamn hospital bed, heartbeat reduced to electronic chirps and tubes in his nose. You remembered that stupid, carefree smile on his face as he turned to reassure you, just before he pushed his Quirk to the absolute limit, electricity so thick in the air it made everything crackle with static, blinding you.
You thought...you thought he'd be okay. Maybe just kind of stupid for a while after, the way he got when he overdid it before and Jirou would always laugh at him. Things had been scary, during the mission, but you'd be okay. You'd all be okay.
But the human body was just not meant to take a shockwave of that size and power. Though other students had received serious injuries, Kaminari was the only one in a coma. Sometimes you thought you saw something – a flicker of eyelid, a twitch of his fingers, but you could never be sure if you really saw it, or desperation merely planted the image in your mind, showed you what you wanted to see.
You'd never even gotten to tell him how you felt about him.
Maybe you never would.
Your hands flew out, gripping his shoulders and you suddenly found yourself leaning over Kaminari, shaking him, wanting to slap him awake, to do something that would make him react already!
"Kaminari! Kaminari, I know you can hear me! Wake up! Don't you dare die on me, damn you! Wake- "
And then you were being pulled back, away from him, in a grip that was firm but not rough. You spun around, angry, bewildered, only to see the tired face of Aizawa looking down at you. He looked, if possible, more exhausted than usual.
Instantly, the fight left you, all without him having to say a word. The rage almost seemed to collapse in on itself, leaving behind only exhaustion and despair.
"It won't help," Aizawa said and his voice was hoarse. "Believe me."
"I had to see him," you said, your own voice sounding distant, even to your own ears.
"I know. But these things take time. This is the best place for him to be right now, you just have to wait. Wait and hope for the best. I know it's hard."
You didn't say anything for a long while. Aizawa was right of course (as usual), yet the horrible, heavy feeling in your chest refused to go away, no matter what logical facts were presented to you. Leave logic to the doctors and nurses. In your case, all there was in you was fear, its claws lodged in deep. Any other reaction was simply a byproduct of the sick feeling that nestled in your guts and curled around your brain. As if through a thick fog, you heard Aizawa saying your name.
You looked up at him and something in your expression must have worried him, because he stood, waiting, as you struggled to say the words lodged in your mind like a thorn.
You swallowed, feeling like a wad of cotton had been stuffed down your throat.
"Aizawa-sensei...what if he never wakes up?"
the words seemed to distort and echo as they hung in the air, reminding you of the chiming of a gong. You actually had your hands over your mouth, eyes wide, as if you'd said something offensive. It felt like saying the words out loud, acknowledging them as a possibility, was somehow a curse. Acknowledging that Kaminari could die, in that moment, was like sentencing him to death.
Tears poured, unbidden, down your face, surprising you because you had not made a conscious decision to cry. You couldn't breathe – ugly sobs wracking your body, tears effectively blinding you. You didn't resist as Aizawa wrapped his arms around you, burying your face into his coat. His hand carefully stroked your back as you shuddered uncontrollably, taking deep, gulping breaths. He wished he could be the type of guy who could say words of comfort. It's the sort of thing All Might would have done – wouldn't have even had to think about doing – if he were here.
But to do that, to give you false hope while you stood there trying not to fall apart and failing, was the cruelest thing he could do.
So he let you cry, not trying to stop you or make you look on the (fictitious, in his opinion) 'bright side.' All he could do right now was be there – and that's what he would do.
As you held onto Aizawa, your heart breaking, the monitor carried on its endless electronic calls. For now, Kaminari's was, at least, still beating.
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