16 - Starting Point(s)

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!! Trigger warning: Panic Attack + descriptive language

Also I just wanted to express a quick thanks to everyone who has read, commented, or voted n this fic.

Everything is incredibly helpful (sometimes a comment or vote is the difference between my motivation to actually publish a chapter or not).

So thank you. Apologies for getting sappy.

Don't worry, you'll be hurting in a moment ;)

***

Toya marched through the empty halls, arms swinging at his sides as he strode down bleak corridor after corridor. When he first arrived (he wasn't sure how long ago it was now, lots of months or something like that. Time felt different inside.) he'd hated the lack of color, the lack of anything except sleek, white furnishing that made everything too shiny.

Now he didn't mind it much. He didn't mind a lot of things like he used to because most of them brought him to you. That's where he was headed right now: your room. It was at the end of a particularly long walk through the halls. Toya didn't know why your room was so far away from everyone else's, but when he'd asked you, you hadn't known either.

He liked to joke it was because you snored really loud, and would make a terrible neighbor. No one except Toya seemed to know you even existed, even his friend with the feathers, who felt like he knew everything.

"Hey! Y/n, you remember those pork buns I was telling you–" Toya stopped when he saw you. A stroke? A seizure? Every explanation he could think of deserted him. "Y/n?"

Why were you lying on your bed in a ball?

Why weren't you answering him?

Where were your eyes?

"Y/n??" He didn't remember rushing over, but one minute he was at the door, the next he was on the bed. "Y/n what's going on?"

Freezing. Your skin was freezing to his touch.

Pushing away curtains matted and sweaty hair, Toya kept looking for you under the layers of fear and panic.

"Why are you shaking? What's going on–" His breath caught in his throat when you jolted away as if he'd hurt you.

He saw your eyes then. Wide and terrified like an animal, your irises so small the white nearly swallowed them whole. You winced with every scratched inhale, like it was pain to simply breathe.

"Y/n?"

"T-toya?" That sounded like a pain, too.

"Yes!"

You flinched at the volume in his tone. Still shaking. Eyes darting, searching for light.

"Yeah," he whispered. "It's me. I'm right here." He reached out a hesitant hand. You whimpered. Breathing erratic, trembling. Old tears and sweat coated your face in grime. "Y/n what happened?"

Hysteria. That's what you were in. A new word they'd taught you the other day.

Hys-te-ri-a.

That was the feeling clawing at your insides, ripping apart your veins from the inside out. That was the feeling squeezing fear and confusion out of your heart like pus and blood.

Hys-te-ri-a.
Like an animal of prey.

"They... they were..." Again, Y/n. Again. "I was..." We will keep going until you can do this, Y/n. "They made me..."

𝐊𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐋𝐢𝐞𝐬 || S. Todoroki x ReaderWhere stories live. Discover now