a/n: a-another update? it's bc i love you guys, you're all great <3
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Valui froze as Tori entered the room. Something stopped her; rooted her feet to the ground and prevented her from moving; from allowing her vision to see around the doorway. A small part of her didn't want to — the thought of what she might see kept her in the hallway. Visions mixed with cruel memories — she saw Hitoshi fainted, then hooked up to all the machines she had once been attached to; she saw him in pain; weak; injured.
I don't want to see you like that.
...As if you had wanted to see me like that.
Tori looked over her shoulder when she noticed Valui hadn't followed her. She didn't speak, but instead gave the girl a soft look of confusion; a gentle question of why she hadn't moved yet; if something was wrong. Valui shook her head, squeezing one of her hands into a fist behind her back.
I need to get stronger.
With that thought in mind, Valui swallowed any apprehension she had — any fear toward what she might see — and stepped over the threshold into the room.
The first thing she saw was purple — it always was the first thing she noticed about him. Hitoshi was pacing back and forth across the room, one hand running itself obsessively through his hair, which only served to make it even wilder. There was a bandage on the side of his neck where Stain had cut him; on one of his arms were small pinpricks of red where IVs had probably been. He seemingly hadn't noticed them enter the room yet; his gaze was pointed down at the floor.
"Hitoshi?"
Her voice came out softer than she had intended for it to. Worry filled it — was he okay? From the small portions of his face she could see, he looked upset; distraught, even. Had something happened in the length of time they were apart? Despite the volume of her voice, it still got his attention. Hitoshi froze, his head snapping up in the direction his name wad spoken from. Their eyes met, and for a moment, nothing happened.
Then, he closed the distance between them and pulled her tightly to his chest.
"Oh, thank god," he breathed out, sounding like he had been holding his breath this entire time, "you're okay."
"Don't break her now, Toshi." Tori's voice reached Valui's ears over the sound of Hitoshi's softly shaking breath. She was teasing for the most part, though there was a degree of truth to it — Hitoshi was hugging her so hard she found it difficult to breathe; and while she wanted to hug back, she couldn't, as he had ended up pinning her arms to her sides. "You should rest, too."
"I'm fine, Mom."
"No you're not." It was weird how gentle her voice was; how it could sound parental and yet kind at the same time — it was weird to Valui, at least, who was used to anything but. She was used to harsh tones; to tones that implied she had no idea what she was talking about; to tones that told her to just listen to those that were better than her. "You're pale."
"I always am."
"Hitoshi."
"Fine, alright."
Yet there was still no malice. No anger; nothing short of a light, albeit somewhat worried, tone that filled Tori's voice. It left Valui confused, simply staring amidst them as Hitoshi let go of her and went back to the hospital bed. Distantly, she noticed how his gait was different — slower, more deliberate, as if he were afraid of tripping over something and falling. When he reached the bed, he dropped heavily down onto it, one of his arms moving up to cover his eyes in the crook of his elbow.
"...I'm dizzy."
I'm sorry.
His dad — Hakaru was his name, right? — let out an amused breath from where he sat next to the bed. "Because you spent the past half hour pacing back and forth."
Teasing.
No anger. No yelling. No condescending tones or looks or exhales of breath.
This was so foreign that Valui could have sworn she felt herself getting dizzy. She had always known her family dynamic hadn't been perfect — far from it, actually — but that didn't mean seeing a proper one didn't flood her with confusion; with questions of what it felt like to not have your parents be annoyed at your every movement; with a painful mix of anger and sadness and jealousy and—
"Oh, I'm sorry, Valui." Hakaru's voice got her attention and snapped her out of her rapidly darkening thoughts. Her head turned toward him, eyes meeting his as he stood up from the chair he had been sitting in. "You can sit down if you want."
"N-no, it's—"
"You look tired, too," Tori said, smiling softly down at Valui when she looked up at her. Concern. Concern for her — for her well-being. "Go and rest a little." There was a soft pat to her head; a gentle nudge forward to do as she was told that led a single thought to make itself more prominent than the others in Valui's mind.
I wish you were my mom.
She nodded, mumbling a small, "O-okay. Th-thank you," as she crossed the room and sat down in the recliner that was beside the bed. It wasn't very comfortable, but it was enough — enough to encourage her body to relax after being tense for so long. She habitually pulled her feet up underneath her, curling up in it.
Hitoshi slowly pulled his arm from his eyes, glancing sideways at Valui before looking to his parents. "When can I leave?"
Hakaru looked toward the door, then back to Hitoshi. "I don't know. I'll go find the nurse and ask."
As Hakaru started leaving, Tori's eyes briefly met Valui's. She smiled softly at her, then at Hitoshi. "I'm going to go with him."
And just like that, they were alone.
Silence filled the room; the only sounds that could be heard were the ticking of a clock and the sounds from the hallway that were muffled by the shut door. Valui stared down at her lap, noticing for the first time that her knees were scraped up. She couldn't remember when it happened — she couldn't even remember feeling pain, not even after her adrenaline had worn off. But that wasn't important right then. She wasn't important right then.
"How, um..." Why did she suddenly feel so awkward? It was a struggle just to string her words coherently together. "How are you feeling...?"
"I'm okay, I guess." Hitoshi's answer made her exhale softly out of relief. Valui lifted her gaze up, watching him as he rolled over onto his side to look at her easier. "My neck hurts, though. Put stitches in it."
"I-it was that bad?"
"Yeah. They said since it was an emergency, they didn't have time to wait for someone with a healing Quirk."
Valui briefly thought over how little sense that made — this was a hospital, wasn't it? Logically, there should have been plenty of people with healing Quirks to fix him; to heal him in a way that didn't require something as archaic as stitches. It was just a cut, how bad could it have been that their only means to save him was like that?
Emergency.
Images of Hitoshi laying unconscious in a pool of his own blood while Valui frantically held her hands to his neck in attempts to stop the bleeding flashed through her mind, imprinting themselves on the inside of her eyelids so that it was all she saw when she closed her eyes.
...Emergency.
"O-oh."
It was all she could say.
"How are you, though?" When their eyes met, Valui saw worry in his. That same guilt from before filled her — she didn't want to make him worry about her. "You didn't get hurt or anything, did you?"
"No, I'm okay."
"Your knees don't look okay."
Valui glanced down to her lap again, eyes scanning over the scrapes that were beginning to scab over. The lack of adrenaline and worry made her realize how much it hurt — her legs ached and her knees were stinging. They would scar, most likely, but that was the least of her worries. "They're okay," she said, wanting to get off the topic of herself — she wasn't the one who had almost died. "It doesn't hurt."
It does.
Hitoshi looked at her for a while, then let out a sigh of resignation. "Alright. If you say so." A small wince flashed across his face; a look of pain flooded his features and sent a wave of worry crashing over Valui.
"H-Hitoshi? Are you okay?"
He nodded slightly, his face relaxing after the pain had seemingly subsided. "...Yeah. It just hurts a little. I'm fine."
You're not.
"O-okay..."
Silence fell over them again — comfortable silence, though. It always was with them. Valui couldn't remember a time when their silence was anything but. It lulled her into a sense of comfort and peace; safety. She shifted and folded her arms on the armrest of the recliner, laying her head down on them. Her eyes shut for a moment, only to open again when she felt a hand softly touch the top of her head. Blue eyes drowsily opened — she hadn't realized how tired she had been — and met purple ones.
"Hitoshi...?"
Is something wrong?
Hitoshi smiled softly, easing any of Valui's unspoken worries. "I love you."
Valui's face grew warm, and when the suddenness of it had worn off, a smile broke out on it. "I-I love you, too."
Hitoshi's hand slipped from the top of her head to resting on the arm of the recliner, close enough to where Valui could faintly feel his fingertips against her cheek. Something like amusement filled his eyes — amusement and something else that Valui couldn't name right then. "You know how you always call me your hero?"
Her head tilted slightly; the action made her cheek lean lightly against his palm. "Yeah? Why?"
Hitoshi smiled a little bigger, and suddenly Valui had an inkling of what he might say — or, rather, what she hoped he'd say.
"Now you're my hero, too."