little birdie.

OLD FRIEND

Shi is forgetting something.

Shouta (Shouta, Shouta, Shouta, Shouta―such a pretty name) is in a hospital room. He's covered in bandages, dresses in them as if they were fine silk. Why? She doesn't remember why.

It's something important, Shi is sure. Something she needs to remember, something she has to. Hizashi stumbles in, his hair is pulled down (how does she know it's supposed to be up, up, up?) in a bun. Blonde splashes across his face.

"Shouta!"

Shouta doesn't answer. He's like a gravestone (how does she know what a gravestone is, how does Shi know that black is Shouta's hair and blonde is Hizashi's? How does she remember anything when there's a haze spanning from sixteen years ago―).

"Shouta you idiot."

And it sounds so fond. Shouta muffles. His bandages are slurred around his throat and his mouth is just the same―he's covered in white sheets like some dollar-store ghost. The kind that Oboro wore on Halloween.

(Who's Oboro again?)

Shi hisses at the stinging brushing her skull. It's strange, she doesn't have a skull.

(She's dead so why does it hurt?)

Her teeth burn and break on the ground and she's falling falling―

"What! Get back down! I know you hate hospitals since―well―but you have to rest Shouta―"

A groan flits through the bandages.

"Shou, I think you should start up therapy again."

"That's―no."

"Shoucchan you can't just―keep doing this." Hizashi is holding Shouta's hand like a prayer. (dead birds don't fly, only clouds do that, smoke dripping out purple like it's toxic) like a dream. "You're gonna run yourself to the ground―" Shouta goes limp, eyes hollowed like a rotten tree. "I'm sorry! I just. She's gone, I miss her but―" he looks like he's going to cry and Shi wants to know why? who did this? who who who―

"I can hear them, sometimes." Shouta (Shouta Shouta Shouta Shouta Shouta Shouta―) says. "She's laughing with him, y'know?"

Hizashi smiles like some sort of liar. Like he's tipped off, off to the side, head underwater (falling, maybe he's falling too) and breathless. "We can only hope, but I―" his voice cracks like he's fifteen again. "―I really hope so."

Shi wonders, vaguely, if it's any concatenate that she knows any of this. All drenched out and weary.

"Yeah," Shouta says, and Shi wonders if he's smiling. Wonders if it's any more real than she is, all leather and patchwork under gauze. Maybe he's falling too. There's a spark in his eyes, under his skin. "me too."

Shi wonders what is means, really.

_

It's the dead of night and Shouta is still up, even when they nurse said he was asleep. Shi watches him mutter and mumble to himself, it's Sunday morning and he's going to school. To teach.

(Shi wonders if he knows how bad of an example he is, spewing hypocrisy from each pore, saying to save yourself before anyone else but still dreading the rerun. He's pushing himself when he doesn't work, arms barely healed, spine curved on a back-brace. He's almost dead.

She wonders why she hates that. That sadness, despair. Don't die, Shi wants to tell him, for him to listen and go back to sleep, where it's safe; don't die, please please please.)

He can't hear her, though.

Well, she's wished enough now. And if wishes were fishes, she think she'd have enough mind to open a goddamn aquarium by now.

She's all ivory like this, white white white like milk, and there's no use crying over a broken cup or a window unhooked or a quirk that―

She must've had a quirk at some point, she guesses. If only she could figure out what it was, maybe she could piece herself into a person; Shi must've been a person, before.

She must've had a quirk, no?

It would only make sense, but it doesn't matter now. Her legs feel hollow and her mouth feels like there's a taffy gluing it shut.

She wants to be herself. If only she could remember. If only she could―

GO ON NOW, FLY LITT―

She ends that thought. She doesn't like it. It makes her head feel like there's something wrong, closing in.

( Any and all pro heroes must attend mandatory therapy for the duration of their career and five years after retirement. They must meet with a therapist for a minimum of fourty-five minutes once a week, should they miss a week they must take an evaluation or reschedule it to the nearest date, should they miss more than six appointments consecutively, their license must be put on hold. )

There's a man in black, in a suit and tie with a smile that could freeze the sun, he's crisp. Sharp like a knife. His smile is cold but not unkind, it reaches his eyes in all the worst ways. He's skipping along, holding a little boy in his arms, he passes her and the boy shakes, all gold and red.

It reminds her if the corpse boy by the dumpster, half dead, like her. He was saying sorry sorry sorry sorry I'm sorry sorry sorry― to her corpse, long after she was dead, half conscious and dead.

She's, ah, ghosting them, she supposes.

(Ha―that's funny, isn't it? She doesn't have a choice in this, she can't just, pick up her phone and call all the people on there, tell them she's alive! I'm alive, look at me I survived! because she didn't. Shi is a ghost. Shi is ghosting.)

She wonders if they'll ever know, if she's ever going to find someone like her. All cold lungs and empty mouths and hollow hearts.

(Smokey like the seaside.)

She hopes it, small, in her chest. Another fish in the aquarium. One day it'll be the ocean, sea-salt drenched to her knees. She thinks if she'd finally feel the sand between her toes then it's all worth it.

Maybe then Shi won't feel like a corpse gone bad.

__

A/N: haha, it's been a minute. *leaves for the next [insert time here].