̶U̶n̶ Scathed

-17-

Hours, days, weeks pass as I sit by Dabi's bedside, watching his chest just to make sure that it keeps rising and falling with his breath. Nurses come and go, and the flowers left by random visitors wilt and die on the windowsill. Still, I hold his hand with one finger bandaged and pray that he wakes up. 

The other members of the League are here almost as often, but go back to the hideout to sleep at night while I stay by his side. In a strange sort of way, I feel like if I let go, he'll slip through my fingertips into a place where I can't bring him back from. 

"You should come home for a while. You need a good night of sleep." Compress says, wrapping an extra blanket around Dabi and handing one to me.

"It's lonely at the base without you. Yeah, we miss ya!" Twice and his alter both nod feverishly.

"Shiggy, Dabi's okay without you for a few hours! We need you to take a break." Toga insists, but I shake my head. 

On one the few occasions where I have to leave to let the nurses change bedsheets or replace machinery, I walked by a waiting room at the other end of the hospital. I heard a strange noise coming from that direction, so I enter the room. 

Toga's curled up next to Sako, quietly crying into his chest as he rubs circles into her back. Spinner sits across from them, staring at nothing. Magne is walking around and handing out snacks, and Twice is rocking back and forth in the corner. 

I clear my throat, and only half the people look up. Toga springs out of her seat and hobbles over as fast as she can with her crutches, letting them clatter to the ground as she wraps me in crushing hug. 

"Calm down." I mumble, but don't push her away. Before long, my shirt is wet with tears and everyone has eventually come out of their little dissociative worlds enough to notice me. 

"Hey." Spinner looks at me, halfheartedly nodding before looking at the wall again. Twice waves and smiles before aggressively bursting into tears again, all the while giving me the thumbs up. 

"Tomura! Nice to see you've taken a walk and stretched your legs. it can do a lot of good, you know." Sako grins, but it doesn't reach his eyes. 

"Any change?" Magne asks while handing me a bag of chips, which I stuff into my jacket pocket before answering. 

"No." The moment the words leave my mouth, a loud drawn out beeping comes from down the hall, and I see two nurses run out of Dabi's room. 

Without thinking, I toss Toga her crutches and sprint down the hallway, throwing open the door to Dabi's room. A pair of beautiful blue eyes stare dazedly into my own, and a horribly burned hand runs through black hair. 

"Shiggy?" 

I knock a chair out of the way and pull him into my arms, breathing in his familiar scent through the chemical smell of the hospital. He slowly lifts his arms and hugs me back, although he drops them after a few moments. 

"I- I'm sorry, I was too weak, I should have-" 

"Don't start spouting that crap. Your did amazing and saved all of us. Even though you got us really worried for a few weeks." I lower him back onto the bed, squishing the pillow a bit so he's in a sitting position. 

"But I got burned, Dad's gonna... he's... I can't be a hero if I'm this weak..." Dabi slurs, exhaustion and whatever painkillers he's on making him delirious. I softly cup his cheeks in my hands and look into his hazy eyes, waiting until they focus on me. 

"You're not weak. And if saving all those people back there doesn't make you a hero, then screw them." He smiles a bit and looks calmer. 

"You're my hero." 

------------time skip---------

Shigaraki wheels me into the waiting room in a wheelchair, where the rest of the league is waiting. It's been about three days since I woke up, and I've been able to walk short distances and move my fingers a bit, but not much else. The burns are too severe, but the doctors say that they should heal enough for me to go back to almost normal. 

Eraserhead walks into the room, closing the door behind him and sitting down in a nearby chair. He nods at me and Shigaraki in turn, giving both of us a small smile. For some reason, it makes me feel better than it should. 

"So, after you guys fixed the whole mess at the center with little to no assistance, the Commission has decided to reward your efforts, so to speak. You guys are getting let off the hook for all of your crimes, and they're going to kind of let any further crimes slide unless they're felonies. You'll receive enough money to get back on your feet and restart somewhere else if you want to, and then we'll be out of your hair. to be honest, I don't think the Commission could've handled that attack at the square by themselves. You guys have saved more people than most of my students." 

Everyone's unresponsive for a moment, before the reality sinks in and smiles spread across all of our faces. Spinner and Shigaraki high-five, Magne hugs Compress, and Kurogiri pats me on the back. Twice does a little dance. 

"Oh, and Toga? One of the students in my class thinks you're kind of cute, and asked me to give you this. Not really my job to play matchmaker, but she was pretty insistent." He hands a slip of paper with a phone number on it written in pink glitter pen, signed Uraraka with a heart at the end. Toga squeals and immediately programs the number into her phone. 

"You guys stay out of trouble. I would say see you later, but for your sake and mine, I hope we never meet again." 

"Later, hero." Shigaraki says with a smile, watching Aizawa leave the room. 

-------------------

After two more months of hospitalization, Dabi's ready to leave the horrible place, and so is everyone else. He's still using a wheelchair, but only because he gets tired walking long distances, and it's just easier for now. 

We meet up at the base, and before long all of our meager possessions are packed up into boxes. Kurogiri warps them all outside, onto the roof, so we can chill for a while while he sweeps through the bar for anything we left behind. With the vanishing money from the Commission and a clean slate, the world is our oyster. 

"Hey, Shiggy." Dabi limps over to me, gravel crunching as he plops down at my side.

"Where d'you wanna go?" 

I think for a moment.

"Maybe America, I heard that their quirk laws are pretty much nonexistent and I doubt they would notice a few more ex-criminals. Or somewhere in Europe would be nice, I've always wanted to check that place out."

I look back at him, and he's nodding along with what I'm saying.

"What about you? Where are you going to go?"

"Same way we've always gone, I guess." He looks at the horizon, where the sun is just starting to rise. The wind whips his hair around and for a moment, the glare of the sun and the wind transform him into a small, redhead boy with a sparkle in his eyes.

"Forwards."