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Shouto doesn’t remember the last time he’d seen the sunlight.
He’d lost all concept of time a while ago, and even now, he doesn’t know how long it’s been. For...days? Weeks? Months?...all he’s known is brick walls, dark corridors, barred doors, like jail cells…
He barely remembers how they got here. He supposes it doesn’t really matter, remembering right now. It won’t change the situation. Nothing he does now will change this situation.
He’s pacing restlessly, back and forth across the floor of the cell, like he’s been doing for the past hour. It hurts; he has bruises on his legs and ribs, and he’s fairly certain he sprained his ankle, but he doesn’t stop pacing. The movement and pain that follows is enough to keep his thoughts from wandering to darker places.
He keeps pacing. He doesn’t know how much time passes before, further down, he hears a door slide open and slam shut.
Immediately, he runs to the door leading into the cell, breath stuck on the lump in his throat, fingers curling around the cold bars for a moment.
Don’t be too bad, don’t be too bad, please don’t be too bad--
The villain appears around the corner, half-dragging a stumbling Midoriya beside him. Shouto steps back, numb, and the villain unlocks and opens the cell. Almost immediately, he throws Midoriya inside, and Midoriya stumbles, trying to catch himself; Shouto lurches forward, hooking his arms beneath Midoriya’s.
(There’s no blood this time. That’s...that’s good.)
“Midoriya,” Shouto gasps; his legs are unsteady, but he holds Midoriya up, mainly out of stubbornness. “Talk to me, are you alright?”
“Y-Yeah,” Midoriya pants; he grasps Shouto’s forearms and gets his feet underneath him, pulling himself up. Shouto doesn’t let him go, though, not with how he’s shaking. “I-It wasn’t bad this time, I-I’m okay.”
The sound of the cell door slamming barely reaches Shouto’s ears. He hears the villain grumble something but can’t make the words out, and a second later, the door further down the hallway opens and closes.
Shouto brings himself and Midoriya to the ground, and he begins checking Midoriya over instantly, looking for new bruises or gashes. There’s one across his cheek, bleeding, but not horrible; the most prominent thing Shouto notices is a new, ugly welt on Midoriya’s head when he brushes his bangs out of the way.
Shouto bites his lip, then raises his right hand and gently--very, very gently--settles his palm on the welt. Midoriya hisses through his teeth, squeezing his eyes shut, but the moment Shouto lets frost grow over his hand, Midoriya relaxes, just slightly.
“T-Thanks, S-Shouchan,” Midoriya says breathlessly.
Shouto nods, stiffly. Midoriya had started calling him that near the end of their first year of highschool. A childish nickname, perhaps, but endearing. More than Shouto had ever had growing up.
“I’m sorry it’s not more,” Shouto says, and for a moment, he curses the villains who’d locked them in here. Who’d kidnapped them. Villains who gave them Quirk suppressants, but just barely enough so that they could still use their powers to a very, very small degree. It was like a taunt, a jeer; a oh, you still have your powers, but you can’t use them to escape.
It’s...
“I-It’s okay,” Midoriya says, weaker than before, and his voice brings Shouto back to the present. “I-It’s...not bad, I promise. It...could be a lot worse…”
Shouto doesn’t answer. He leans against the wall and pulls Midoriya with him, and when Midoriya rests his head on his shoulder, Shouto rests his cheek on the top of his head, breathing deeply.
Midoriya falls asleep (or passes out) first, and it takes Shouto another long, unknown passage of time before he does the same.
Shouto can’t remember the last time he’d seen the sunlight.
But the only thing worse than him not seeing the sunlight is Midoriya not seeing the sunlight.
Shouto is shoved between the shoulderblades back into the cell, and the door slams behind him. He almost (almost) trips, but manages to catch himself, sliding one foot ahead of him before he stumbles.
Midoriya starts to push himself to his feet, but Shouto stops him with a hand. “It’s alright,” Shouto says simply, ignoring the pain in his ribs. “It’s alright. They didn’t do anything.”
Midoriya studies his face for a long moment, and then, when he deems that Shouto isn’t lying, he relaxes visibly, sinking back and resting his head against the wall. “I’m glad,” he says hoarsely; Shouto nods, then moves to sit beside him.
“They want me for leverage,” Shouto says, absentmindedly flicking a piece of dirt off his skinned knee. “They’re sending out a warning to my father right now. If he doesn’t hack up a generous sum of money, well, basically, I’m never seeing the light of day again.”
Midoriya hums thoughtfully and nods. His movements are shaky. “M-Makes sense,” he says. “G-Guess that’s why they don’t wanna hurt you, then, right?”
Shouto hates it. He swallows hard, and his hands ball into fists. He knows what the villains brought Midoriya in for; they both do, actually. Midoriya had found out a few days (weeks?) ago, but it has something to do with the fact that the villains noticed a similarity of Quirks between Midoriya and All Might. They want to know what that’s all about.
And he hates the fact that the villains are hurting Midoriya to get the information out of him. He hates that all he can do is sit here while Midoriya suffers elsewhere.
It gets worse.
The villains get impatient. Midoriya disappears more frequently and for longer periods of time, and then he gets thrown back in with Shouto, exhausted, breathing heavily, sometimes bleeding, sometimes crying.
(He hides it as best as he can, though, he always does. He does his best to hide his pain even though it hurts.)
They’re weaker now, both of them, but Midoriya especially. Shouto doesn’t actually remember the last time either of them had been properly fed; the villains always give them water, but actual meals...he can’t remember the last time they’d gotten one.
Shouto hates how powerless he feels. Hates how powerless he is.
And then, one day, shortly after the villains take Midoriya away again, Shouto hears a piercing, grating scream split the silence like a chainsaw.
He leaps to his feet, ignoring the dizzy spell that follows, and makes a break for the cell door, hands gripping the cold, rusted bars. He hears the scream, pained and long and grating and he knows the scream, he knows who it belongs to, Midoriya is screaming--
Shouto finds his voice.
“Stop it!” He hates how desperate he sounds. “Let him go! Stop it! STOP IT!”
It doesn’t stop, and eventually, Shouto can’t tell who’s screaming anymore, himself or Midoriya.
The villains come back with Midoriya about an hour later. Shouto’s voice is raw from shouting and screaming, and a headache pounds at his temples, but the moment he hears the locks sliding back from the cell door, he leaps to his feet and races over.
The villain throws Midoriya inside. Shouto skids to his knees, arms outstretched, and catches Midoriya’s upper body. Midoriya is completely limp, but he’s trembling, chest and shoulders heaving with every desperate breath, and it takes Shouto another moment to notice the bandages around Midoriya’s forearms and forehead.
No, wait--not his forehead. The bandages are too low for that.
They’re wrapped over his eyes.
The villain leaves, slamming and locking the cell door behind him, and Shouto can barely breathe, but forces himself to keep drawing breath into his lungs, because he can’t help Midoriya if he passes out now.
Midoriya makes a small, choked sound in the back of his throat--a sob. A broken, strangled sob as his shoulders heave and tremble.
He tries to say something--a word, Shouto’s name, possibly--but Shouto stops him before he gets far.
“It’s okay,” Shouto strains, and he barely has a voice. It’s more of a breathy, hoarse whisper than anything. “It’s okay, Midoriya, shhh...breathe.” He bends over, resting his forehead between Midoriya’s heaving shoulder blades, running his fingers through Midoriya’s grimy hair. “Breathe. It’s okay. It’s okay, it’s okay, shh, breathe, it’s okay...”
It’s not okay, though.
Nothing is okay.
It takes a long time for Midoriya to calm down. Shouto is leaning up against the wall now, still holding Midoriya, absentmindedly running his hand along his back and through his hair. Midoriya hasn’t said a word thus far since getting thrown back into the cell; anything he’s tried to say has been choked and strangled, and Shouto constantly encourages him to rest rather than speak.
Eventually, though, Midoriya does speak, and this time, Shouto doesn’t stop him.
“S-Shouc-chan, I-I...I-I c-can’t…”
Shouto bites his lip and wraps his arms around Midoriya just a little bit tighter. “It’s okay,” Shouto says. “We’ll find a way to get out of here. I promise. We’re getting out of here.”
He means it when he says it, but when he steps back and takes a look at their situation, honestly, he doesn’t see how such a thing could be possible. He doesn’t know how long they’ve been here, doesn’t know how long help hasn’t come. And, at the rate the villains’ patience is waning with Midoriya…
Midoriya sucks in a long breath, then lets it out shudderingly. He’s still completely limp, and there are still bandages over his eyes and around his arms. On one hand, Shouto wants to know what the villains did to him, but on the other hand, he’s terrified to find out.
“I-It still hurts,” Midoriya says, choked, and Shouto returns his attention to him. “I-I-It s-still hurts, w-whatever t-they did, I-I...I-I c-can’t…”
“We’ll get out of here,” Shouto says again, but his heart rate is picking up again, and his breath keeps getting stuck in his throat. “We’re going to get out of here, Midoriya. I swear it, we’re going to get out of here.”
Midoriya lets out a quick, heavy breath, and Shouto rests his chin atop Midoriya’s head, thinking. He feels dizzy; after his panic earlier, not to mention lack of proper sustenance, he isn’t sure he’ll be able to stand if he tried. He knows Midoriya can’t stand (he can barely speak), and honestly, even if they managed to break out of the cell, escaping the actual prison and fighting off the villains along the way would be hard--or, rather, impossible.
“S-Shouchan, i-it...i-it hurts…”
Shouto blanches. He wonders once again what the villains did to Midoriya, why his eyes are bandaged now, but again, he really doesn’t want to think about it. He tries not to.
“I know,” Shouto says instead. “I know, I’m sorry. Hang in there, it’ll be okay.”
“I-I...I-I d-don’t think I can...h-hold back for much longer,” Midoriya chokes again. “T-Th-They s-said...th-they said they’re going to...t-to...gouge my eyes out if I-I...if I-I d-don’t...t-tell them…”
“Tell them your connection with All Might?”
Shouto feels him nod, quickly and feverishly. There’s a long, long pause, in which Shouto’s mind races. He’s always known Midoriya had some kind of connection with the hero; he hadn’t pried back then when he first figured it out, and he certainly isn’t going to pry now.
“S-S-Shouchan, c-c-can...c-can you keep a secret?”
Shouto nods without thinking. “Yeah, I can,” he says, absentmindedly stroking Midoriya’s hair. His fingers run over the bandages a few times, and he tries, again, not to think about it. “Whatever you wanna talk about.”
“Y-You...y-you have to p-promise y-you won’t...t-tell anyone else.”
“I promise.”
Midoriya breathes for a long moment, silent aside from his shaky breaths.
“O-Okay...I-I...I-I trust you, S-Shouchan.”
Another long moment of silence.
“I-I’m All Might’s successor.”
Shouto stops, his train of thought going blank. “...What do you mean by that?”
There’s a long pause. Maybe it lasts seconds. Maybe it lasts minutes. Maybe even longer than that.
And then,
“I...I-I inherited my Quirk from him. I-I-It’s...c-complic-cated, b-but…t-t-that’s what happened.”
Shouto thinks about this. It sounds insane, really, it does, the thought that a Quirk could be passed down from someone else, but, the more he thinks about it. the more it makes sense. Midoriya, with a Quirk he couldn’t control for the longest time; All Might, noticeably weaker than before. How much time Midoriya and the hero spend together, how often All Might has pulled Midoriya aside to talk privately. Not to mention the similarities between their Quirks.
It all makes sense, now. The reason their Quirks are so similar is because they’re the same Quirk.
“Midoriya, are...are you sure you should be telling me this?” Shouto ventures, and he isn’t even sure why. He thinks about the villains, about their kidnapping Midoriya, about them hurting him for answers… “I mean, I’d never tell anyone, but…”
“I-It’s okay,” Midoriya gasps. “A-All Might’s t-told a few friends, t-too. P-Plus, like I said…” Midoriya takes in a deep breath and leans against Shouto a little heavier. “I-I trust you.”
Shouto hesitates, just for a moment. “I’m glad, Midoriya. I’m…” He stops, refrains; “Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me this.”
Midoriya nods again, shakily.
“...But...this means you definitely aren’t All Might’s secret love child, correct?”
Midoriya makes a strangled, choked kind of sound. “Are you serious.”
“Yes.”
Midoriya doesn’t say anything for the longest moment--and then, he does, laughing shakily, painfully, but honestly.
“I-I can’t believe y-you’re...y-you’re still g-going on about that…”
Shouto smiles, and he thinks it’s nice to still be able to. “What can I say? You dodged the question pretty adamantly, Midoriya.”
“I-I know, b-but--” Midoriya’s voice breaks off into another small fit of giddy, broken laugher, and Shouto is torn between smiling and crying. Midoriya stops abruptly, tensing as tight as a violin string and hissing through his teeth in pain, and the air turns serious again immediately. Shouto tightens the arms around Midoriya’s shoulders and runs his fingers through Midoriya’s hair until he relaxes again.
“You okay?”
Midoriya nods shakily again, but he doesn’t say anything.
The villains come by once more, later--Shouto almost attacks them, but doesn’t for the sheer knowledge that Midoriya would be the one paying for it if Shouto struck out at them. The villains tear away Midoriya’s bandages, first around his arms and then around his eyes, and Shouto’s breath catches at the scars twisting and winding up Midoriya’s forearms.
The villains leave, and Shouto’s and Midoriya’s arms move to embrace each other.
“...Can you…” Shouto is scared to ask.
Midoriya gets it, though. “Y-Y-Yeah. I-I can s-still see. T-They...I-I think...t-they have a healer, s-sort of like Recovery G-Girl.”
Shouto nods stiffly, but he doesn’t mention the fact that it seems even more cruel that way, for the villains to hurt their victims, heal them, and then hurt them again.
He doesn’t dwell on it for too long, though. He can’t.
It only goes downhill from there.
Time passes. Shouto doesn’t know how much time but it’s time, time in which Midoriya’s health deteriorates further, time in which Midoriya goes from speaking sentences to speaking fragile words to not speaking at all, merely breathing. Honestly, Shouto is faring no better. The villains had (finally) left them something to eat, but that was a while ago, and Midoriya hadn’t been able to stomach anything.
It’s...bad.
It’s all very, very bad.
As it is now, Shouto and Midoriya are lying on the floor, curled against each other. It’s freezing, and Shouto is using what heat his left side can produce under Quirk suppressants, but he’s exhausted. He’s exhausted, he feels sick, and he’s only keeping his eyes open right now because he’s terrified if he closes them for too long, he’ll lose Midoriya.
Midoriya is...not in good shape. Even in the horrible lighting, Shouto can tell how pale he is, can feel Midoriya’s shallow breaths against his neck. Midoriya’s eyes have steadily been losing their light for the past few...days? Weeks?...and now, they hold no light at all, exhaustion and pain fogging what used to be bright, unbridled happiness.
Hang in there, is all Shouto can think, squeezing Midoriya as tightly as he can, which ends up being weaker than he wants it to be. Hang in there, Midoriya. Hang in there. Hang in there. Hang--
Off to the side, he hears the door bang open.
His eyes snap open, and he lays there on the floor, exhausted but somehow more awake and alert than ever. Midoriya’s eyes crack open, and Shouto can see a million things; fear, pain, anguish, panic, but mostly fear.
“They said they’re going to gouge my eyes out if I don’t tell them.”
Shouto clenches his fists. The villains are coming back, then. Coming back to interrogate Midoriya once more.
Well.
Shouto won’t let them.
He sits up, but that’s as far as he gets before a vicious dizzy spell hits him. He hisses through his teeth, clutching his head; he’s vaguely aware of Midoriya sitting up beside him, asking if he’s okay.
“I’m fine,” Shouto lies. “Stand down. I’m not going to let them hurt you again.”
The door slams. Midoriya flinches like he’s been burned, and Shouto reaches out, fingers curling around Midoriya’s wrist.
The villains had hurt him enough. Shouto isn’t going to let them do it any longer--
“Todoroki! Midoriya!”
Shouto’s eyes snap open, and his head whips up, staring. Beside him, Midoriya mirrors the movement.
Iida.
It’s Iida, standing there just beyond the bars of the cell, eyes wide, breathing heavily.
Shouto can’t believe it. His mind goes numb, again, and when he opens his mouth to speak, no sound comes out of it.
There’s no way this is real, Shouto thinks. There’s no way. There’s no way.
Except, Midoriya seems to notice, too. Midoriya is seeing the same thing as Shouto, which means...
Iida swings a leg at the door, engines revving; the lock snaps and hits the floor with a soft thunk, and Iida throws the door open immediately, rushing inside.
He crashes to his knees, and one arm goes around Shouto, the other arm going around Midoriya. Shouto flinches for a second at first, but then, he’s slammed with the realization that this is real, this is real, this is real, Iida is here, reinforcements are here, it’s okay, this is real, we’re going to be okay, and he finds himself embracing Iida and Midoriya both at once, so relieved he could cry.
“I’m sorry,” Iida says, voice thick with tears. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. You’re safe now, both of you. We’re going to get you out of here.”
Shouto thinks his eyes will stay dry right up until Midoriya’s choked sobs break the silence.
After that, Shouto can’t hold back anymore.
Shouto wakes up in the hospital.
At first, he jumps, panicked, thoughts raging full-throttle. Of course the first thing through his mind is Midoriya, where’s Midoriya, where is he, where are we, and then, when he takes in his surroundings, his worry fades into relief.
They’re lying on separate hospital beds, right next to each other. Midoriya’s eyes are shut, and although he’s still considerably paler than what should be healthy, some color has returned to his face. He has an oxygen mask, and there’s gauze around his head and smaller wads of cloth taped over cuts on his cheeks. He isn’t conscious, but he looks better than before, which is good.
Shouto leans back again, dizzy with relief, and lets out a long, heaving sigh. A hospital. They’re in a hospital. While it isn’t preferred, he’ll take anything over the cell they’d been in before. Literally anything.
“S-Shouchan?”
Shouto turns his head. Midoriya blinks at him slowly, tiredly, and although there are dark rings beneath his eyes and his skin is pale and scarred, he smiles behind the oxygen mask. Some of the light has returned to his eyes--not much, but enough.
Shouto smiles back, equally faintly but equally honestly, and he reaches out and gently settles his hand on Midoriya’s. Midoriya smiles a little bit brighter, and after another moment, his eyes slide shut, and his breathing evens out.
Shouto squeezes Midoriya’s fingers, then shuts his own eyes to welcome sleep.
They’ll be okay. Maybe not now, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually.
They’ll be okay.