THE OTHER SIDE / s. todoroki ✓

nine. death is

"PLAY SOME MUSIC FOR ME, (FIRST NAME)," YOUR MOTHER WHISPERS.

Tentatively, as you hold her hand, you scroll through your phone shakily with another, and open up Spotify.

"What song do you want?" Even your voice is wobbly, tears threaten to spill from your saddened face.

She half-smiles, slouches even more into the bed, as if to fall into it. "You pick."

Surprised by this, you slowly click on one of your playlists, and listen as the first notes of a song play. The sounds fill the void in the room, swallowing the decay of death momentarily to allow your mother to breathe for the first time.

Shoto is in the cafeteria, giving you the space you need to be alone with your mother in what was essentially her last moments of living. You feel guilty, pining for his presence, because the warmth of his character and kindness of his soul was the only thing that kept you going anymore.

The soft music continues to play and you watch your mother for the next few minutes. The blood circulation in her body has slowed down, so when you try and hold her palm all you feel is the cold and the absence of life.

Her eyes are closed from the loss of consciousness, but the doctors says that she still has awareness of other people in the room. She can still feel your touch as you hold her hand and hear your trembling voice that teeters on the edge of being broken.

But her eyes are hidden forever now. And something in your heart shatters just trying to confront this. Because death is here. It is present in this very moment, and it is going to happen.

Her skin is this brash mottled pallor, decaying flesh rises and the skin turns blue under the absence of a working body. There is no liveliness to her demeanour, only the persona of a corpse that walks between the fine line of living and dying.

She has been undone by the string of Fate, whatever loom has cast her downfall, has done it with pleasure as it watches you suffer alongside her.

Death is something you should know like the back of your hand. But it is so unfamiliar, a nature so unknown it terrifies you to learn of it's inevitable existence; it is the reckoning that the gods bring upon their creation, to make them question what more is there to living. Death is peaceful. It is deathly comforting to watch her struggling expression fall and for her face to shift, as if she is slumbering. There is no difference between her sleeping and this. But death is terrifying. The death rattle arrives no more than mere seconds later, and the noisy breathing that commences is distressing, as if an exorcism is being performed. The sounds that fill the air overcome the soft mellowness of the song, and you are left reeling as the death rattle shatters all in it's path.

It is a reminder your mother is struggling to breathe in this very moment, she is choking, writhing, suffering and all you can do is watch death come and take her away from you. The essence of her soul already seems to have faded, because where was your mother now? Could she still be this hollow carapace of a being before you? The body that shakes furtively and cries out in anguish because death is fearful and unknown.

Death is here, and you are already sobbing as you press your face into the blanket to stop the never-ending trickle of tears, and you watch her die before your eyes.

author's note: this fic is going downhill so i dont blame you if you stop reading hahah