….
The three of them; Midoryia, Bakuogo, and Todoriki - had been in the hospital long enough for the novelty of visitors to wear off completely.
At first it was fine.
Dabi, Aizawa, and All Might came by on the first day.
Then each of their individual families.
…and their classmates… who also visited them… almost daily.
By day three, Bakugo was done.
When the door handle clicked downward, he didn't even wait for the person to appear.
"OH, COME ON!" Bakugo bolted upright, his bandaged hands rising in clumsy, locked fists. "I am SICK of this! Which bastard is it NOW?! I swear if it's Dunce Face again with another get-well card I am gonna shove it down his–"
He choked on the rest of his threat. Standing in the doorway were the Todoroki siblings.
Fuyumi, carrying a large cloth-wrapped package, and Natsuo behind her, looking like he was dragged.
Bakugo's eyes moved to the package in Fuyumi's arms.
He remembered what she had brought last time: homemade onigiri, tamagoyaki, pickled vegetables, and a karaage that was, and he would never say this out loud to another living person, some of the best he has ever had.
"...." He silently settled back against his pillows and said nothing.
A smaller figure appeared from behind Fuyumi's legs.
White hair, red eyes, a little horn barely visible under her bangs.
It was Eri, who peeked around the doorframe at the three bedridden students, one hand gripping the hem of Fuyumi's skirt.
"Hello..." she said, her voice was small, and she pulled back slightly behind Fuyumi when Bakugo's shouting from a moment ago registered.
Midoriya's face lit up immediately. "Hey! Eri! It's great to see you!"
He tried to wave and remembered both his arms were in casts, he settled for smiling so hard it probably hurt his face. "And Fuyumi, Natsuo… thanks for coming again, really."
Fuyumi smiled, warm and practiced, the smile of someone who had spent her entire life smoothing over difficult rooms.
She nudged Natsuo with a sharp elbow. He looked at the ceiling, then at her, and finally at the three boys.
"Hey." Natsuo said.
Fuyumi nudged him harder.
"...Hope you guys are actually, you know, healing or whatever." He added, with the enthusiasm of a man reading a hostage note.
"I hope we're not interrupting your recovery." Fuyumi said, setting the bundle on the side table. "I know you've been inundated with visitors."
"No, no! Not at all!" Midoriya's head shook so fast his hair blurred. "We should be the ones apologizing! All the trouble we caused, making everyone worry, and you keep coming all the way out here with food and–"
"Midoriya." Todoroki's voice came from the third bed, flat and even. "You should stop apologizing for everything… that will only make the other person uncomfortable."
"Right! Sorry! I mean… Not sorry, I mean–"
The reason Eri was with the Todoroki siblings and not with Dabi, or Rumi was a story in itself.
Earlier that afternoon, Fuyumi and Natsuo had gone for a routine visit to see their mother, Rei, in her rehabilitation wing.
A routine visit, or it would have been, except when they arrived on Rei's floor, they found someone already there.
Dabi was standing in the corridor outside Rei's room.
He wasn't inside but just standing there, looking at the door, wearing the expression of a man who had walked all the way to the edge of something and decided to stop.
Eri was inside the room, sitting on the bed next to Rei.
They were talking, Rei was brushing Eri's hair with a comb from the bedside table, and Eri was chattering about something; her drawings, or Rumi, or the cat she had seen on the way here.
And Rei was listening with the kind of gentle, focused attention that made Eri gravitate toward her every time they met.
The beautiful lady; that's what Eri called her.
She had mentioned her to Dabi a few times, the beautiful lady at the hospital with the soft voice and the white hair like mine, Papa, and each time she said it, Dabi's face would do something he would quickly cover up.
Fuyumi and Natsuo had caught him red-handed.
Dabi didn't try to turn to them, or greet them when they came face to face.
However, Natsuo stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes narrowing as he took in his older brother's defensive posture.
"What are you doing here?" He asked, his voice echoing a bit too loudly for the quiet ward.
"Natsuo! Behave." Fuyumi hissed. She turned to Dabi, her expression a mix of sympathy and the exhausted patience of the family peacemaker. "I am sorry, he is just... surprised."
Dabi didn't look at Natsuo. He didn't even look at Fuyumi.
His gaze was fixed on the floor, tracking the faint sound of Rei's laughter bleeding through the heavy wooden door.
"The kid wanted to see her." Dabi said.
"Hm. Thanks for bringing her." Fuyumi replied softly.
"Mm." A short, non-committal nod was all he gave.
Fuyumi lingered, her gaze darting between the door and her brother beside it. "But… do you really not want to meet her? Just for a moment?"
"Fuyumi, do you actually want me to?" He questioned sarcastically.
The question hit like a physical weight.
Fuyumi opened her mouth to speak, but the words died in her throat. Even Natsuo's bravado faltered, his expression softening into something uncharacteristically grim.
"Well, there you have it." Dabi added. "Mother is finally recovering, Fuyumi. The doctors say she is making progress for the first time in a decade. If I walk through that door... if she sees a dead son standing in her room while she is trying to find a reason to be whole again..."
He let out a short, dry huff of a laugh that held no humor.
"I am the ultimate trigger, Fuyumi. I am the worst thing that ever happened to her heart. I can handle being 'dead' for the rest of my life if that's the price of her sanity. What I won't do is be the reason she regresses just because I was selfish enough to want to be seen."
The silence that followed was heavy, an understandable weight shared by all three siblings. They all knew the fragility of Rei's mind; they all knew that for their mother, Dabi wasn't just a brother or a hero: he was the scar that wouldn't close.
"So." Dabi said, straightening his jacket and regaining his mask. "I stay on this side of the wood. Eri gets her 'beautiful lady,' and Mom gets to keep her peace. Nobody gets hurt that way."
Fuyumi reached out, her hand hovering near his arm before she thought better of it. "You could at least sit in the chair, Toya. You don't have to stand guard like a gargoyle."
"I like the view of the exit." Dabi replied, his eyes drifting back to the door. "Now go in. Eri's probably run out of stories by now."
"It's always about her, huh?" Natsuo muttered, though the bite was gone from his tone.
"What else is there?" Dabi countered simply.
….
By the time the visiting hours ticked to a close and the siblings emerged, the brief spark in Eri's eyes had gained from meeting his Mother had already begun to dim.
In actuality, it was the real reason Dabi visited her.
Since the incident, Eri became quieter and subdued, and the problem was that she wasn't venting either.
It was like someone had turned the brightness down on her, and for a new couple unaware of how children are handled felt pressurising.
Even when they were tried, she would not talk about what was wrong, falling quiet at odd moments to stare at her hands, and when asked, she would say nothing in a voice that meant everything.
Dabi figured it was the attack.
What she had done with her quirk and seen that day.
The fact that bad people had come into her home while she was sleeping, and the world she had been told was safe had turned out to not be.
And the child is unable to let that thought go.
That's when–
Fuyumi had offered to take her to see Shoto and the others.
Dabi had hesitated, after what happened at the apartment, letting Eri out of his sight is surely not an option.
But Rumi had volunteered to go along.
She was right outside the hospital room door right now, leaning against the wall casually…
So here they were.
After the initial greetings, the room settled into an awkward quietness.
Five people in a hospital room, three of them bedridden, one of them four years old and not talking, and two visitors who weren't sure how hard to push the conversation.
Fuyumi tried to ask Midoriya about his physical therapy schedule.
Midoriya answered in too much detail, because he always over-explained when he was nervous, and then asked Natsuo about university, and Natsuo gave a one-word answer, and the conversation died again.
Eri was sitting in a chair between Midoriya's and Todoroki's beds. Her legs dangling above the floor, not swinging them. She was usually a leg-swinger. The fact that her feet were still was the clearest sign that something was wrong.
Everyone in the room knew about the attack on the U.A. faculty area, that it happened the same night as the Nomu incident. They are also aware that Eri had been the target, and that Rumi suffered injuries during the fight.
But they were unaware of Toga's transformation; that information was locked down tight among Dabi, Rumi, Aizawa, Vlad King, Recovery Girl, and Nezu.
Nobody else, the fact that a four-year-old girl had rewound a teenage villain into a toddler was not something that needed to be circulating through the student body or the media.
But they could all see that Eri wasn't okay, and none of them knew what to do about it.
The silence stretched, then Bakugo's stomach growled.
His face went red.
"Kacchan, are you hung–" Midoriya started.
"WHO THE HELL IS WHAT?!" Bakugo's voice cracked up to a volume that made Fuyumi flinch. "THAT WASN'T ME! I don't know what you heard but it wasn't. I am not… SHUT UP, DEKU!"
"I didn't say anything yet!"
"You were GOING to!"
From the third bed, Todoroki's voice came out with his usual flat, unhurried delivery.
"It wasn't you? That's strange. I definitely heard something." He paused, looking at the ceiling like he was genuinely puzzled. "My mistake, then. Sorry about that."
Bakugo's head whipped toward him. "OI! Was that SARCASM?! Are you being sarcastic right now, you Half-and-Half BASTARD?! Because it sure as hell SOUNDED like–"
"I was apologizing. I don't see how an apology can be sarcastic."
"EVERYTHING you say sounds sarcastic! You've got that dead face and that flat voice and you just… you do it on PURPOSE."
"I don't know what you mean."
"SEE?! RIGHT THERE! THAT! You're doing it RIGHT NOW!"
Midoriya was waving his casted arms in a way that was probably supposed to be calming and looked more like a bird trying to take off with broken wings. "Kacchan, please… The doctor said you need to stay calm or the stitches in your hands–"
"DON'T TELL ME ABOUT MY HANDS, DEKU! I'LL SHOW YOU CALM! I'LL–"
A sound stopped all three of them.
Small, bright and unmistakable–
Eri was laughing.
It was not a big laugh, just the kind that slipped out before you can catch it.
A giggle that broke through whatever she had been holding down for the past several days.
Her hand covered her mouth, her red eyes crinkling at the corners, her feet swinging again.
The room went quiet.
Midoriya and Shoto looked at her. And so did Bakugo but then immediately looked away.
Natsuo was staring at the little girl, Fuyumi had both hands pressed together in front of her chest, her eyes bright.
Nobody said anything for a moment.
They just let it be there - the small, clear sound of a little girl laughing in a hospital room, after days of silence, because three idiots couldn't stop arguing even when they were held together with stitches and plaster casts.
Fuyumi moved first, she clapped her hands together, seizing the moment before it could slip away.
"Well! Who's hungry? Because I definitely am, and I brought way too much food for just us."
"Me! I want some, please!" Midoriya said immediately, because Midoriya would agree to anything that kept the mood from dropping back down.
Bakugo's eyes slid to the cloth-wrapped package on the side table, he stared at it for a long, stubborn second.
"...whatever." he said. "Since you brought it all the way here, I guess it would be a waste not to."
Fuyumi was already unwrapping it, pulling out containers, and Natsuo was helping her set things up on the wheeled tray table.
Eri had slid off her chair and was standing on her toes to see what was inside, and Midoriya was trying to figure out how to hold chopsticks with casted hands, and Todoroki was watching all of it with the faintest trace of a smile.
A small, messy, improvised lunch, six people in a hospital room, eating food that was still warm because Fuyumi had wrapped it in three layers of towels, talking over each other, arguing about who got the last piece of karaage.
Bakugo got it, nobody challenged him on it.
Eri got the second-to-last piece, handed to her by Fuyumi, and she ate it sitting cross-legged on the floor between the beds with her cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk.
She was smiling.
.
….
[To be continued…]
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