He knew he had no right to touch her, crave her like air, but he did both. And when he put his mouth on hers he recognized the taste of her, like she'd been made just for him.
~ Jill Shalvis
Track 62; 1AM FREESTYLE, by Joji
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The next few days that you are forced to spend in the hospital in order to recover are dull, slow, and boring. The only thing you really get to deal with when you are alone is your foreboding thoughts, the haunting idea of what your parents had done and how their choices affected your life to this day. It leads you to wonder what life would have been like had they decided to keep Touya. Why had they given him up in the first place? You had so many unanswered questions that you weren't sure if you wanted the answer to.
"Our...grandparents."
"What about them?"
"They tried..."
That plays in your head like a broken record stuck on repeat. The only way you are able to escape from it is by distracting yourself. Medicine Girl hasn't deemed you fit enough to return home to Yoshio and Momo, so you're forced to remain relatively cooped up in the hospital. She never fell for your nagging about leaving the room, but once Shinso had heard enough he must have bargained a deal with her in order for her to let you out.
On one proposition: you had to be in a wheelchair. You still hadn't fully recovered your stamina and were at risk of passing out. She even told you that after the battle, you were technically still in a "fragile" state regarding your pregnancy. Meaning any drastic wrong move could increase the chance of losing them. So, you obliged.
Being able to leave the room meant you were able to visit Aizawa. He was happy to see you roll into his own private suite, even if you were pushed in by Shinso. Hizashi even happened to be there as a visiting guest and nearly cried with joy at your arrival. When they asked why you weren't walking on your own yet, you said that you still hadn't regained your stamina. Fortunately for you, none of the three men had the audacity to question you any further. You distracted them anyway by immediately telling Aizawa that Shinso called his prosthetic a peg-leg.
You didn't tell them or any of the U.A. kids that stopped by afterwards to check in on you. Not even Fat Gum or Mirko.
All you said was: "I killed Dabi."
Which meant your baby remained a secret.
You weren't quite sure why you didn't tell Aizawa. Perhaps you weren't ready, as you didn't even think you were anywhere near prepared to be a mother. You could've asked him for help, you knew he would at the drop of a hat.
But you still didn't know where your relationship with Takami Keigo resided. He had lied to you. All of it had been nothing but a cover scheme for the truth about you and who you unfortunately learned to be your brother. Had he known what the Hero Association was looking for when he passed out at your bar? Did he plan on taking things this far with you? How was he expecting it to end? A happily ever after or a quick sign off on divorce papers and never to be mentioned again? What did he want from you?
What did you want?
You weren't entirely sure, to be honest with yourself. You didn't even know how you felt about this baby. Was it thrill or dread filling your bones? How come you hadn't noticed any changes or signs until Medicine Girl had to spell it out for you? What did you want with Hawks? In all reality, you wished you could go back to how it was before you knew the truth. You wished you could live in the facade of everything being fine forever. You wanted to wake up every morning to Hawks and your cats without him having to spy on the League.
You wanted everything to go back to normal.
But nothing would ever be the same from here on out.
Especially not today.
You had just finished the breakfast Shinso had brought for you when Medicine Girl entered the room. The window was cracked and the curtains opened in order to let the spare bits of sunlight seep into the otherwise dreary white room. Shinso had to get to class, otherwise he would've stayed to eat with you. Her short stature paused at the doorway to relish in the gentle breeze wafting in before she approached you. The neutral smile on her face seemed normal, but you could tell there was something on her mind.
"How are you feeling today?" She asked you.
"I'm alright." You reply casually. "My ribs are feeling a bit better and I'm not as achey or tired. I think my staminas almost fully regenerated."
"Oh good, I was hoping you'd be getting closer to fully healed by now. Did you eat a full breakfast?"
You raised an eyebrow at her. Who was she, your mother? No, but she was your doctor. "Yes. Can I try and walk on my own today?"
"We'll try it out, I suppose." Her face rose into a small smile. "I do have some good news for you, though."
The first thought that came to your mind was that she was finally allowing you to go home. Your face lit up and you sat upright, finally only feeling a slight wince of pain compared to the twisting stabbing sensation you'd felt after you'd first woken up. "I can go—?"
"Hawks is awake."
You looked at her like a fish out of water. Anything you had planned on saying left your head. He was awake? Already? You thought it was going to be awhile before...you slumped back in the bed. Your eyes fell to your hands, where your fingers interlocked across your stomach and rubbed together nervously. Your anxiety grew to be strong enough to force you into a momentary out-of-body experience. You can nearly see your consciousness shaking you back into focus.
"He is?"
Fuck. It was too soon. You weren't ready. You hadn't even thought about what you were going to say. You haven't told anybody what had happened. Nobody except Inko knew. Was he really going to be the second person you told? There was a high chance he already knew, actually. That was probably why the Hero Association had assigned him to that mission in the first place. They knew before you did.
How did they know?
"He asked for you."
Your heart skipped a beat.
You didn't know whether it was out of dread or excitement. You felt the back of your eyes begin to burn when you fought off tears.
"If you're not ready for that I can tell him you're still resting."
You thought about it.
Eventually you would have to face him. You felt like the hospital was neutral territory, a better ground for a conversation as dire as this one rather than your home turf. You didn't want the cats to witness the onslaught of emotions that were sure to occur. If it didn't go well, you had Aizawa and Mirko still in the hospital on the same floor as you to take sanctuary with. You would be able to figure it out from there.
Rip the bandaid off.
May as well take as many punches at once and heal after it all, right?
No matter what happens now you have to survive.
If it's by your husband's side or not, you are determined that you will not let this be the end of you.
"Yeah, I'd like to see him too."
The walk you take to the burn unit is unsurprisingly quiet. Medicine Girl doesn't say anything to you. You're thankful she doesn't. You're not sure if you could keep yourself together if she did so. You just wanted to run and hide right now. Your footsteps felt robotic as you followed her through the hospital. You were surprised you could walk at all, though it felt entirely different to do so. Nothing felt the same. You were exhausted by the rampant thoughts running through your head.
You didn't want to be alone.
None of the nurses looked twice at you when the two of you stepped inside the burn unit. The hallways are stark white, and you follow the short woman through a thinly carpeted area with a large circular desk where nurses and aides sit behind computers. There is an opening halfway in the circle where you're able to enter the hallway where the rooms reside. Each door is dark gray with tall, wide paneled windows making up the outer wall. Most are hidden with stark white curtains, forbidding you from seeing who is inside.
You do your best not to follow the nurses with your eyes when they step into various rooms to tend to the patients within. You wonder how many are victims of the war you fought in alongside many others, and hope that they heal quickly even if they didn't fight. Your temporary distraction of the war is futile when Medicine Girl stops at a door that is closed. It is Room 202. There is no name on the small panel next to the window. This curtain is closed, too.
Your heart plummets.
She turns to you, and places a hand on your arm.
"Enter when you feel ready."
Even though her voice is low and barely above a whisper, it still makes you jump out of your skin and your wings press flush against your back with anxiety. You make eye contact with her, and you see her shoulders drop slightly when she sees your face.
"He's pretty bandaged up," she begins, and you swallow hard. "He cannot speak right now, so he is using an app on his phone to replace his voice. It's a bit awkward, honestly. He...does not have his wings at the moment. There does seem to be signs of rapid healing and there was no damage to the internal bone structure of his wing base, so the outcomes are very positive. He has asked for you continuously. Are you comfortable with this? I'm not usually one to make assumptions but there seems to be some unresolved issues between the two of you. Am I correct?"
Nearly numb to her words and missing everything she said, you nodded softly.
"If you're sure, I won't pressure you into doing something you aren't happy with." She sighed and stepped to the side, revealing the door to you in its entirety. "Stay as long as you'd like. Visiting hours are over at 18:00. For you I'll make an exception." Shortly after, she walked away.
The space between you and the door seemed to be rapidly growing. You took a deep breath in through your nose and held it. You focused on your senses, but could not hear anything coming from inside his room. The rest of the hallway was quiet around you, too. You let it out and opened the door.
Had it not been for the multitude of bandage cabinets lining the far wall, it didn't differ much from your own room. The only other difference was the occupant, as well. You heard a gentle, electronic voice versus seeing him first. It immediately drew your eyes over to the bed centered on the perpendicular wall to the cabinets.
"Stardust."
You could feel the lump in your throat building before finding any words to say. You stepped in and gently closed the door behind you, making your way to the chair alongside the wall. The curtain is blocking the window to the hallway where the nurses and Medicine Girl reside; you're thankful for it. It's difficult to work up the nerve to look at him. You feel so betrayed and hurt, yet you miss him so badly that it nearly hurts even worse. You felt sick to your stomach knowing that you'd played the perfect fool the entire time.
"I was worried about you. Are you okay?"
You don't like the adapted speech he's using. It doesn't sound anything like him and it makes trying to have this conversation even more difficult.
"Yeah, I'm alright." The first word comes out under your breath, but you swallow quickly and speak up to be heard. "Just a little sore. What about you?"
What you can only assume to be a chuckle catches in his throat. At least he still has some sense of humor about him, you guessed. You didn't think this was really a laughing matter though. Did he understand what your head and heart were at war about? Did he understand what he put you through?
"You don't have to act all nice to me, you know." His thumb taps speedily away at his screen, seeing that the other is currently mummified and bound by a sling. "You have every right to be upset with me, and scream and shout. Honestly I'm surprised you came, I wasn't expecting you to at all. So, thank you."
"I know I don't." You're surprised that you replied as fast as you did. You cross your arms over your chest to take on a more defensive posture and finally look up at him. "But I don't have any energy for that and neither do you."
Hawks hair is shorter. Touya had burned a lot of him and it off in the war, though it's only a few inches shorter. It's still a drastic change to what you had been used to before, but your heart skips a beat when he looks at you and does his best to give you his brightest smile.
God you love him so much it kills you.
He doesn't type anything, but he does nod after a second in agreement.
"Why did you pass out in front of Treasure Wing?"
He made direct eye contact with you, his thumb hovering over the keyboard. It goes to start, but falls back to where it originally had been.
"No more lies, either."
Keigo nods again in agreement. "I was ordered to investigate a possibly dangerous person living in the Musutafu Prefecture. All that they told me was that you had possible ties to someone possibly associated with the League of Villains. They said it was an 'undercover position'."
Your heart dropped at that statement.
"So you passed out to get inside? Why not just come in and ask for a drink?"
"I was actually jumped by some Yakuza thugs on my way there. That had been my original plan, but I figured I could use the injuries in my favor and worsened them a bit. I was going to play it off as a crash landing but then it started to rain, and my wings got soggy."
You chewed on your lower lip. He hadn't strayed his eyes from yours except to the keyboard. The mask covering the lower half of his face was transparent, so his expressions and emotions were easy to see if he wasn't using his mastered poker face. Fortunately for you, he is not concealing a damn thing.
His eyebrows are furrowed and his mouth is pinned in a frown. He seems frustrated, guilty, disgusted. It's a bit more difficult to tell his body language without his Fierce Wings there to emote, but you seemed to have perfected reading him after only a year of knowing him. At least you thought you had. Now you weren't so sure.
"Did you know To—" You swallowed. "Did you know Treasure Wing was going to be burnt down?"
He took a long, deep breath and closed his eyes for a second. "No. I didn't. That's when the HA told me to investigate more into the League. By that point though I didn't want anything to do with the mission."
"What do you mean?"
"I wanted out of it."
"Why?"
"I had already fallen for you."
That stirred something within you that you didn't recognize which made it impossible to interpret. It felt like a hot pit of lava that made you want to run from the building, yet also ask more questions. All of this was so much to swallow at once, were you even ready to process the answers you were receiving?
"So why did you continue?" Your voice was hard to locate.
He began to type again, doing his best to maintain eye contact. Every now and then his golden brown eyes would scan you, attempting to read your body language.
"I tried backing out, saying that I didn't want to do it anymore. I told them I thought you were just randomly targeted by someone who wanted to get rid of pro heros after the video of Stain went viral. Treasure Wing was a mild hotspot and if someone in the area hung around enough it was easy to figure that out. They didn't believe me, and said that they needed to know more about why you were targeted. If I wasn't willing to cooperate, they had a line of replacements willing and ready."
That was hard to swallow.
"I didn't want you to get hurt anymore, so I agreed to stay on the job. I was worried that anyone else they put on would get you in harm's way, but it turns out I was the one that continued to let you get hurt."
"Keigo-"
"I think I was blinded by you, honestly. My brain told me that maybe you were just trying to play me into a corner so you could kill me and that the HA was right, but my heart and something else told me otherwise. It was really hard not to fall in love with you and that damn cat, but the longer I was around you and the more I got to know you...I couldn't help it. I've never met someone like you and I didn't want to give up the chance at keeping you in my life forever." He tried to laugh, but choked and coughed. His oxygen mask fogged up and quickly faded. "Guess I fucked that up, too."
You didn't have to ask for him to continue.
"Eventually I weaseled my way into the Paranormal Liberation Front. It wasn't until then that Dabi started dropping hints on what his primary focus was. I played oblivious to what he was saying until he broke into our home." His eyes fell shut briefly. You mentally thanked him for not continuing with that particular topic. Just thinking about it made you want to throw up. "The HA wasn't letting me out. I was in too deep to be replaced at this point. I figured the best way to protect you was to get involved as much as I can, and hide it from you. I wanted to stop him before the war, take him out quietly. They told me I could go to trial for doing that."
"Our marriage?"
"It was real to me. You are my wife. There is no one else that I ever want to give that title to. I had to ask the Hero Association for permission. I knew going in that they wouldn't let me if they knew I wasn't doing it for the mission. So when they asked, I told them that I was. It was stupidly selfish of me. They wanted Dabi to show up and ruin the ceremony. I'm glad he didn't. I wouldn't change a thing about that night."
"The Nomu?"
"Dabi told me that he was going to send it after Endeavour to take him out. He lied to my face and sent it to you instead. I didn't know anything about it being your father. Had I known, I would've done everything in my power to stop it. I nearly killed him once I heard, but if I did then that would ruin everything I had done to protect you. I'm so sorry."
It's taking every ounce of willpower within you not to cry. "Did they tell you they sent me undercover, too?"
He shook his head no. "You really caught me off-guard when you showed up... I panicked." You watched his Adam's apple bob in his throat. "I'm sorry for everything. God I hate the fact that I have to talk through this fucking thing. I should have been 100% honest with you from the start, it was foolish of me to think that I could hide it from you. You're too smart for that and I knew it. I don't know what I was thinking. After I told you everything, that was the last time I saw you before the war. He told me he was your brother just before you and Tokoyami arrived." He let out a heavy sigh, like he was hesitating. "I don't deserve anything from you. I'm sorry I dragged you into this mess."
Keigo let out a frustrated groan and fumbled to unlatch the oxygen mask from his face. He knew he should keep it on, but he couldn't convey himself properly through a damn speech device.
"(Y/N)."
Your name sounded so foreign to you. Not only had it been forever since you heard it with your own ears, heading Hawks say it over your nickname made your heart skip a beat. Even if it was scratchy and hard to hear, he still said it.
"I never wanted it to be this way. I wasn't lying when I said I love you." He took a wheezy breath, determined to finish. "I really, truly do. You mean everything to me. Fuck the Hero Association. I don't want anything but you. You are all that I have. If I don't have you, I have nobody."
He grit his teeth, blinking back the tears in his eyes when his free hand scrunched into the blankets.
"I don't want to be alone."
The words ripped from your throat before you could think twice about them. "I don't want to be alone either." The concrete brick sitting at the back of your throat hit you full force, and you couldn't hold back your own tears. "I love you too, and I don't think I ever couldn't love you."
"I want...to try again." His face remained sullen, yet there was a small bit of light in his eyes that remained hopeful. "Can we?"
"Before I answer that, I have to tell you something." Those words spilled off your tongue like sandpaper. You had to face the music now, before it was too late. Logic said it was best to tell him now rather than later, just in case it made a difference in what he desired.
"Okay, what is it?" Hawks will never tell you that his heart dropped, then leapt into his throat at that statement. Seeing you sitting there, hands laced around your chest in a protective manner and eyes downcast broke his heart. Your wings were sheltering your shoulders protectively, it was easy for him to tell that you were anxious. He hated that he was the one to put you into this predicament.
"I'm pregnant."
A look of shock crossed his face, then a wave of emotions that you couldn't identify. They happened so quickly. Surprise, fear, happiness, worry, excitement, you were surprised he didn't combust. The way his eyes locked onto your stomach made you feel somewhat insecure. You fought the urge to wrap your arms around your stomach as if that would protect your baby—his baby too—from his stare.
You flinched when he finally looked back up at you. A slow grin crept across his face. "It's mine?" It didn't come out louder than a whisper. You nod, once again unable to find the words you could have said instead.
Suddenly, his frown fell and he snatched you back into focus on him.
"I swear I will do everything I can to make sure we can be a family again."
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words; 4,047
sorry I made y'all wait so long for this chapter. been a lot going on in real life. this is the second take of this chapter because I absolutely hated the first. thanks for hanging in with me, I love you guys xoxo
thanks for reading!
please remember to vote!
~ evixtus