….
Vald King stood there for a moment, taking in the wreckage, then glanced down at the scorched floor.
"Yeah, sure." he muttered to no one. "I will just stay here and guard the wrecked apartment on my own, no problem."
Dabi crossed the campus in minutes, cutting straight through courtyards and over buildings, clearing gaps that would have required ladders for anyone else.
He reached the Recovery Girl's office and stopped at the door, his hand settling on the handle without turning it.
He stood there and took a long breath.
The rage was still there - all of it, every degree of it - but something else was sitting on top of it now, pressing it down. Or rather, a weight he was terrified to name.
Fear.
Aizawa had said there were no scratches, and he was a man of his word.
Dabi trusted his judgment with his life and with Eri's, which mattered more.
But he needed to see her with his own eyes, check her breathing and confirm with every sense he had that she was whole and alive and unscratched.
And he needed to see Rumi.
Who had fought five intruders in their home to protect their daughter and bled across the hallway, walls, and floor, now conscious and stable, which meant she was alive and that was all that mattered, though those words covered a wide range of conditions and some of them–
He turned the handle, the office was dim.
Recovery Girl had the overhead lights off, the room lit by a single desk lamp casting a warm yellow glow as medical equipment hummed softly in the background, the air clean with antiseptic and completely at odds with everything Dabi had seen in the last hour.
Rumi was on the bed closest to the door and she looked like she had been put through a war.
Both arms were wrapped in bandages from wrist to shoulder, burn dressings covering her left calf and hip, with gauze across her cheek and the bridge of her nose and a protective patch over her left eye. Her right arm rested in a sling, and beneath the hospital gown more bandages were visible around her torso.
She was awake, and her head turned the instant the door opened.
"Hey, Patchwork." Her voice was hoarse, the sound of someone who had screamed their lungs raw.
Dabi stood in the doorway, not moving for a few seconds.
"You look like hell."
"You should see the other guys. I gave 'em a real warm welcome."
He walked to the bedside, the weight of the last few hours finally pulling at his knees as he sat on the edge of the mattress. He looked at the stitches, and the way her eye was beginning to puff shut.
His hand reached out, trembling with a fine, high-frequency vibration, and stopped an inch from her face - as if his touch might be the thing that finally broke her.
Rumi didn't wait, she reached out with her good hand, grabbed his wrist, and pulled his palm firmly against her bruised cheek.
"I am fine." she said. "Stop making that weird face."
"What face?"
"That one, where you look like you're about to incinerate everything in a fifty kilometer radius and then have a midlife crisis about it afterward."
She turned her head slightly, pressing a firm, brief kiss into the center of his palm. "I am fine, Dabi. I handled the house."
She let out a weak, wheezing laugh. "I just saw the Osaka site coverage, and don't tell me you actually went head-on with two High-End Nomus dressed like that, because you look like you've been dragged behind a jet at full throttle."
…and indeed Dabi's civil dress is a mess.
"You're hardly in a position to judge." he shot back, a faint edge of disbelief in his voice. "Considering you took on five A-rank villains dressed in your pajamas."
"Hey, first of all, I was not in pajamas." she replied, straightening slightly with mock offense. "It was a tank top and shorts, which, if we're being honest, is practically my hero costume minus the spandex, so I would say I was perfectly dressed for the occasio–"
"Rumi."
He cut her off, his thumb tracing the line of her jaw with a desperate, silent intensity.
The joking died in her eyes, replaced by something raw and honest.
"They came for Eri." Her voice lost all humor instantly.
Dabi said nothing, leaning forward to rest his forehead against hers and staying there with his eyes closed, breathing slowly as his whole body shook in a way that had nothing to do with exhaustion.
"Thank you." he whispered, the words barely audible. "For protecting her."
"Don't you dare thank me." Rumi's voice was fierce, even through the rasp of her torn throat. Her good hand gripped the front of his scorched shirt, pulling him an inch closer. "She's my daughter, too."
They stayed like that for a long moment.
Dabi pulled back. "Where is she?"
Rumi tilted her head toward the other side of the room. "She's behind that curtain - Aizawa was with her a moment ago, though I get the feeling he either stepped out to give us some space or decided, very deliberately, to avoid running into you right now."
Dabi was already standing, as he crossed the room, pulled back the curtain, and stopped.
Eri was asleep on a small medical bed, tucked in carefully, her white hair fanned across the pillow. Her horn had returned to its normal size, a small nub barely visible beneath her bangs, and her breathing was slow, deep, and even.
There was not a mark on her, her face clean, her arms uninjured, her small hands resting on the blanket, perfect and whole.
Dabi sank to the floor beside the bed and sat there.
He stretched his legs out, tipped his head back against the mattress, and finally, for the first time since he left Osaka, he let his shoulders drop.
"Papa?"
Eri's voice was thick with the fog of deep sleep, that half-conscious murmur of a child who knows, even in their dreams, that safety has finally arrived.
"Yeah." His voice was rough. "It's me, I am right here with you."
"You're back…"
"Yep… I did…"
Her fingers tightened in his hair as she shifted on the bed, rolling toward the edge and toward him, one arm slipping off the mattress to drape over his shoulder as she remained mostly asleep, moving on instinct and muscle memory.
"Papa… I am a bad person…" she mumbled.
Dabi went still. "Why would you think that?"
"I used my quirk…" she whispered, her voice shrinking into itself. "I was scared, and I didn't stop, and there was a girl… and I think I did something to her…"
"Shh." Dabi reached up and covered her hand, the one tangled in his hair, holding it gently. "We will talk about it later - for now you're safe, so just close your eyes and go back to sleep."
"Papa?"
"Hm."
"Are you mad at me…?"
Dabi closed his eyes. "No, Eri, I am not mad at you, and I never will be for trying to protect yourself, do you understand me? You did what you had to do."
A brief pause, her breathing evening out again as sleep pulled her under.
"I brought you something - Hawks gave me his autograph for you, even drew a little feather next to your name and said you're the toughest kid in the city."
"Thank you…" she took it and kept it aside.
Eri didn't look as excited as Dabi had expected her to be about the autograph.
He let it go, because after the night she had endured, a scrap of paper with a feather meant nothing in a world she was too tired to stay awake for.
"Mm." Her grip on his hair loosened, her arm slackened over his shoulder, and her breathing deepened.
She was asleep.
Dabi sat on the floor of Recovery Girl's office with his daughter's hand in his hair and his back against her bed and he didn't move for a very long time.
Across the room, Rumi watched him through her one good eye without speaking, because she did not need to, as she saw him sitting there shaking while holding a four year old's hand and understood exactly what was going through his head, because it was the same thing in hers.
After a while, Dabi spoke without opening his eyes.
"Where are the ones who did this?"
"They haven't gone anywhere" Rumi's voice was flat. "Aizawa and the others intercepted them at the scene and took every one of them into custody, so it's already contained."
"Did you guys find out who's leading them?"
"I am not completely sure yet." Rumi replied, brow furrowing slightly as she recalled it. "They mentioned someone called Nine, one with white hair, hooked up to a life-support rig, and carrying multiple Quirk signatures."
The name 'Nine' and the mention of 'multiple Quirks' rang a few bells in Dabi's head.
"Rumi."
"What?"
"Did you leave enough of him for me to have a conversation with?"
She didn't answer right away.
"...I managed to not kill him, if that helps."
"No. That's enough."
"Also, there's something you need to know about Eri's Quirk - when she used it, she rewound her completely, and now she's been reduced to a toddler, maybe three or four at most."
Dabi processed that, his mind racing through the mechanics of [Rewind]. "Where is she?"
"I am not certain, but she's most likely with Aizawa right now."
He looked back at Eri, his daughter - the girl who spent her nights sobbing about being a curse, who was terrified of her own quirk - turned a teenage assassin into a child to save her mother.
From the doorway, a voice.
"You made it." Aizawa was leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed.
His capture scarf was back in place, though the blonde girl was no longer tucked inside it.
"I tried to give you the full tactical brief on the phone." Aizawa said, his tone dry but lacking any real bite. "But someone decided to launch themselves before I could finish a sentence."
"I heard enough."
Aizawa took in the scene, Dabi on the floor, Eri asleep, Rumi battered but unbowed.
"The students in Osaka - I just received Maijima's report on them, and all three are stable for now." Shota said, shifting his focus to the other situation he'd been managing.
"…That's one less thing to worry about."
Aizawa hesitated for a second. "Endeavor showed up at the Osaka site."
Dabi's eyes opened. "What?"
"He was present during the Hosu engagement, and the moment he learned Shoto was involved, he commandeered a helicopter to Osaka. He's at the hospital now, waiting."
Dabi stared at the ceiling, processing the image of the Number Two Hero dropping a national crisis to fly across the country for his son.
Six months ago, Dabi would have called it a lie.
Now... he wasn't sure what to call it.
"So many weird things happening at once." was all he managed.
"We need to talk about the fallout." Aizawa pressed, stepping into the room. "There are security protocols to review, an active investigation, and an HPSC inquiry into your flight path, along with Eri's Quirk evaluation, the de-aged hostile, and the medi–"
"Tomorrow."
"Dabi-"
"I am exhausted… Whatever it is can wait until morning, give me tonight, and I will deal with everything else then, but right now I am not going anywhere."
Aizawa looked at them, let out a breath, pushed off the doorframe and turned to leave.
"Fine." Aizawa said. "Tomorrow."
He turned and left, closing the door behind him softly, the infirmary settled into a heavy, artificial silence
"Hey." Rumi said.
"Hm."
"Come here, and bring her with you."
Dabi opened his eyes, looked at Rumi, then at the small white haired girl sleeping against his chest, stood carefully to lift Eri from the bed without waking her, and when Rumi shifted to make space despite the bed being too small, he sat on the edge as she pulled him down beside her.
He settled with his back against the raised portion of the bed, Eri curled against his chest, Rumi pressed against his side with her bandaged arm draped over both of them.
It was cramped and uncomfortable and one of Rumi's IV lines was digging into his shoulder and Eri's horn was poking him in the chin and nobody moved.
Outside, the sun was coming up over U.A. campus.
The emergency lights were off, but the courtyard remained destroyed, the apartment in ruins, and Cementoss was going to be busy for weeks.
But the grounds were quiet now, and the crisis was over.
Inside Recovery Girl's office, a family slept.
They slept badly, tangled together on a hospital bed that was too small, covered in bandages and plaster dust and the fading smell of blue fire.
.
….
[To be continued…]
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