Nezu's POV
Several days past and it was near the end of the week.
I didn't know what exactly I should do. Little Sora looked like she was trapped in her mind, deep in thought. She also seemed very unnerved and anxious. Recovery Girl had taken off the breathing mask after a day of her silently complaining about it but now she was just still.
Occasionally she'd reach up and fidget with the necklace that Nowane had brought her during her last visit. Curious.
She still couldn't speak but Recovery Girl was trying to get small vowels from her, her throat still needed time to heal but was getting better, but I doubted she'd want to speak to us.
I thought I should bring her some tea. Maybe that would calm her down and ease her nerves. As I was getting the mugs from the drawer at my desk I had an idea.
I made the drinks and walked down the hallway to the infirmary.
When I opened the door, there she was. Little Sora sat up in the bed, looking out the window that was in the other direction away from me. Sunlight poured into the room through the open blinds, making her short down hair come off as a more reddish color. Her hands were folded neatly in her lap and she was fidgeting with her index finger. Bandages covered her arms up to her shoulders but she didn't seem to mind it.
She looked over at me and I once again saw the grey eyes that belonged to my friend. Except they were now dull and sad.
Little Sora eyed the mugs in my paws as I made my way over to her bedside. Offering it to her, she took it in her bandaged hands and looked into it. I thought I saw surprise flicker in her eyes but it was quickly gone.
Hot chocolate with cinnamon sprinkled in. Her mother always went crazy for it. I know the favorite beverages of all my staff in case there was a meeting in my office. Kali always put so much cinnamon in her drink.
She relaxed a bit more after taking a reluctant sip of the hot chocolate, but remained silent. There was a distant look in her eyes like she was reliving her past and her face set in a neutral expression, hiding any emotions that she might be feeling. It felt like the walls that had broken during our late night talks was rebuilt.
She didn't trust me anymore.
I could tell from when Nowane visited and given her the necklace that she didn't trust her friend's kindness either. Something had broken when she was with the League. A part of her that had been taken and replaced apathy.
It made me sad.
It showed most when Recovery Girl was trying to coax her into speech. She would stare at her. Not at her but through her like she was a ghost.
The music that would change the colors of the world for just a few small seconds, the same sounds that would make it seem like the whole world had stopped and turned right, the beautiful melody of a guitar being struck, felt gone. She didn't want to talk.
Hopefully, with time and patience, she'd get better.
I would hold off the mental health exam for an actual phycologist. Nowane has taken hers and tested 100% positive for extreme Anxiety and OCD. She had a compulsion to always know where things were, including little Sora, and didn't seem to trust herself outside of her Droplet persona.
Overall it wasn't as bad as I thought she'd be. She'd still need therapy, though.
Little Sora was going to be going with Aizawa the next day and Aizawa seemed indifferent about it. If I didn't know better, I'd say he was impatient.
I just had to hope that it would work out.
Aizawa's POV
I walked into the infirmary and leaned on the doorway. Shuzenji was going the kid one last kiss for good measure but Sora didn't seem very bothered by it.
I remembered how much stamina she had. It was unbelievable how fast and long she run. Now that I thought about it. The Commission was the one that sent out for their arrest. That was part of the reason we didn't tell them they were here. But it made me wonder. What did two vigilantes that stayed mostly in Musutafu do to catch the eye of the Hero Commission?
I'd ask them later but it better be good.
I had brought a sweatshirt and sweatpants from Nowane for her to wear, anything to get her out of that hospital gown. They were tucked under my arm for her while she sat up and swept her legs over the side of the bed. She slowly slipped of the bed and onto her feet.
The moment her right foot hit the floor she stumbled into the awaiting outstretched arms of Shuzenji. That must've been the bad leg. Sora held her thigh and held back a hiss of pain.
Gulping, she looked up at me and down at her leg, and began limping over to me. I was grateful I had the thought to bring baggy clothes so they couldn't cling painfully to her wounds.
I offered my arm to help her to the bathroom where she could change but she ignored me like I wasn't even there. What?
Shuzenji began giving me a rundown of what I should do if or when something happened.
She limped out of the bathroom wearing the clothes I brought with the hospital gown draped on her shoulder. She looked down at the floor in silence as she came over to me.
Shuzenji offered her crutches but Sora refused, signing that it was okay in JSL.
We walked to the car and once she was in the backseat she started fidgeting and looking around outside the window.
I suddenly remembered. This was probably the first time she'd lived with an adult male since her father. She was probably anxious, and rightfully so.
If her own father did that much to her with no one knowing, she had no idea what living with another adult would be like. I would have to make sure she could trust me.
I pulled into the parking lot of the apartment complex and opened the back car door for her. She climbed out and looked up at the building. I couldn't read the expression on her face.
Nowane greeted us at the door and as Sora walked in she looked around the apartment as if she was looking for something and looked down. One of the cats, Mochi, came up to her. She was the more aggressive cats out of the three.
"You might want to be careful, she's aggressive with new people," I warned. Mochi had always tried to bite anyone new in the apartment and hiss threateningly. Nowane's first time was no different. Right after Mochi saw her, she tried to attack her.
Surprisingly, Mochi just trotted up to Sora as the girl crouched down and held her hand out. Mochi sniffed it before purring and licking her hand.
Hizashi walked in while this was happening and gawked at her. "Is Mochi okay? Showing affection? What happened?"
I couldn't even answer, it was so strange.
Brushing it off, I led Sora to her new room. It was still painted white so she could choose the color. All there was in there was a bare mattress without sheets.
"We're going shopping tomorrow. Or do you want to go today?"
She just shrugged and walked over to the backpacks and duffel bags against the wall. Then pulled out a dirty deerskin. I didn't even notice it when we were back at their old hideout.
"Where the hell did you get that?"
Not sparing me a glance, she laid on the bare bed and closed her eyes.
Okay?
Maybe it was fake?
I went back out and closed her door after turning off the lights.
As I snuggled up in bed for the night, a sleeping Hizashi laying next to me, I couldn't help but groan internally about what a problem child I was going to be looking after.
No one's POV
Sora walked next to Shouta as they went through the different stores at the mall. They were looking for clothes first and would look at paint colors later. They had ordered furniture that morning and that would come the following week.
Shouta was concerned.
The entire time they walked through the mall Sora wouldn't talk or respond to anything. When he asked her what kind of clothes she wanted, she would just shrug him off. He'd caught her looking at a bunch of soft hoodies and put them in the cart when she walked off, same with everything else. Seeing her looking at something longer than normal and put in the cart.
This continued for the entire shopping trip until they finally had enough and went back home.
After they got there she put all her new stuff in her room, leaving them in the bags until her furniture got here, and put the bed sheets on the bed.
He found she had a strange love for soft things.
She had spent a lot of time in the pillow and blanket sections, stroking the soft materials and running her fingers through the fake fluff.
So naturally, he bought a lot of it.
Shouta was still concerned. After her new black and blue sheets and comforter were put on the bed, she snuggled up under them. She didn't look like she was asleep, just laying down trying.
Looking down at his watch he saw it was only six in the afternoon.
Nowane was obviously worried as well. She caught glimpse of Sora in her bed and her brow furrowed with concern.
"Did she do this before?" He asked quietly.
"Only on the bad days," Nowane replied softly.
School was going to start up in a week. Since UA was shut down for a month so heroes could recuperate and come up with better ways to protect the students, he had time to help his niece.
It was still only a week.
What could Shouta do to help in just a week. Physically, she was fine. Her throat was healed and all her wounds scared over. She still had a slight limp but was recovering steadily.
Mentally though, she was only getting worse. She stayed in bed all day and never ate. He could only get her to eat when she was about to collapse. He didn't think she slept at night, either. He thought he could hear soft singing from her closed door, but it was faint and usually dissolved into sobs. Her guitar and other instruments gathered dust against the wall and Hizashi grew sad when he saw.
The psychiatrist that Nezu hired had, after a day or two of sessions, diagnosed her with PTSD, Bipolar, Depression, Anxiety, and Survivors guilt. Shouta's medicine cabinet was now filled with different pills, all prescribed to one person.
The only reason she wasn't put into a psych ward was because Shouta promised he could watch over her and keep her safe.
He knew that she was in no condition to go to a high school filled with rowdy students. It would either end up with Sora in a panic attack or one of his other students on the floor after being thrown over the shoulder because they decided to give surprise affection. Neither scenario sounded pleasant to him.
Shouta opened the door to his apartment after coming home from a late night patrol. It was about five am and he doubted that everyone was still awake. He put his boots by the door and headed into the kitchen to find his husband had leftovers for him in the microwave.
Silently thanking the gods to have blessed him with such an amazing person, he heated up the food and ate. After he was done he realized something was different. The apartment was quiet.
Usually everyone was asleep when he got home but the TV would still be on, playing some crappy live television show, or Nowane would be in the kitchen brewing late night coffee but would actually be a devils drink. She filled that thing with several bottles of five-hour-energy and monster. Why did he buy her these things?
But the apartment was still.
He went into his husband's room to find him asleep on the bed. He wanted to join him but he had to figure out why everything was so quiet.
Going to Nowane's room, he peeked into the door and saw her on her computer in the bed, headphones in and blasting music so loud he could hear from the doorway. She ate chips as she decoded what he assumed was another government facility. He found out she did that often.
She said it was funny to watch them freak out and panic, the sadist.
Although she never messed anything up or hurt anyone so he didn't mind. He secretly thought it was funny too.
One room left.
He slowly cracked open the door to Sora's room, fully ready to close it if he walked into anything he shouldn't see. But there was nothing.
The bed was empty and the room was vacant. The only sign of life was Mochi, who was pacing back and forth by the door.
When she saw Shouta enter she meowed and hissed, begging him to look at her.
But he didn't see her.
All he saw was the open window with the black curtains flowing in the wind that came through, making them and window sill wet with raindrops. She had escaped.
With the door finally opened enough, Mochi dashed outside and towards the front door, clawing in haste to get outside. He rushed out with his cat, not bothering to check if he put his boots on correctly.
Shouta didn't even notice the missing guitar and backpack.
He ran through the rain, following after the drenched cat that stopped every so often for him the catch up. His heart pounded in his chest and ears. Different scenarios and images flashed through his mind of where she had gone or if something had happened to her.
Tears pricked his eyes in frustration as Mochi stopped to sniff around. The scent must be washing away in the rain. He gripped his hair to keep from breaking down.
He'd had one job to do and he failed.
The one girl he was supposed to protect from herself was missing and he had no idea where she was.
She must've left her phone at the apartment because no matter how much he called, the rings were left unheard.
"Damnit!" He yelled when another call failed.
Suddenly, after circling around a few times, Mochi perked her head up in a different direction and meowed frantically.
He looked to her as she took off. Pocketing his phone, he ran.
Mochi ran for what must have been several minutes, but it felt like hours to Shouta. Finally, she stopped outside the gates of the old closed off park.
The gates reached high into the air, black with spikes at the top, but far from unclimbable.
Heroes were allowed to break into closed off areas if it meant someone's life might be in danger. The thought that this was the old park where Kali was buried hardly crossed his mind until he was running though open grass.
His heartbeat was still thumping loudly in his ears as he reached the back of the park, but he still heard it.
Singing.
And the soft strumming of a guitar.
Shouta slowed his running and hid behind a tree, the rain drowning out his footsteps.
Mochi slowed down too and hid at his side, watching with him. A few meters away sat Sora, drenched in the rain and sitting on the wet grass in front of three headstones while her back rested on the one behind her.
This was the first time he'd heard her voice in a while when it wasn't crying or sarcasm. It was smooth and sweet like honey but still filled with longing and pain. It felt as if the world had stopped spinning and every creature stopped moving just to listen. The rain was like a distant memory in his mind and he barely heard it beside the music being played.
It was like going back in time. A scene straight out a photograph that had been taken to capture the moment forever. It was like Kali was in front of him again. Kayama had just introduced her to him, Shirakumo, and Hizashi, and after figuring out she liked music, Hizashi asked if she could sing something for them.
She had told them it was a lullaby that her mother sang to her when she was younger, a lullaby she planned to sing to her future children to pass on.
And now here it was, being played in front of him as if all the pent up emotions he'd hid for so long broke free. It started with one tear, then followed by another, and more after that. It took a lot to make a man like Shouta cry, but for that moment he felt light.
They looked so similar.
Even drenched in rain water she was the spitting image of her mother. Kayama was devastated when Nezu told them of their relation. She still seemed hesitant to come visit her. Out of shame or grief, he didn't know, but know he understood.
The song ended and all that was left was the eerie silence and the rain. The world continued to be still for a few more moments, like it didn't know what to say or how to continue on. Shouta understood that feeling.
Sora sat still, not moving a muscle. She stared at the headstones as silent tears fell down her cheeks.
It was then that Shouta understood that if he wanted her to open up to him, he had to open up to her first. He took a few hesitant steps in her direction, Mochi went ahead and sat at her side.
She looked down at the cat and then up at him surprised.
He closed the gap between them and sat down. They stayed in silence, neither one of them quite knowing what to say. Until, "Did you know that... that when you're drowning, you don't actually inhale until right before you black out." Her voice was sore from lack of use.
Shouta looked at her surprised. That was one way of opening a conversation, he guessed. At least she was talking to him.
"The instinct to not let any water in is so strong you won't open your mouth until you feel like your heads exploding. And when you finally do let it in that's when it stops hurting."
He looked down at his lap and tried to process her words.
"I'm fine," She said sourly. "Yeah, aside from the not sleeping. The jumpiness. The constant overwhelming crushing fear that something terrible is about to happen."
"It's called hypervigilance. The persistent feeling of being under threat," Shouta said slowly.
"It's not just a feeling, though. It's like it's a panic attack. You know, like I can't even breath," She said.
"Like you're drowning?" He asked.
"Yeah," She nodded.
"So... if you're drowning... and you're trying to keep your mouth closed until that very last second.... what if you choose to not open your mouth? To not let the water in," Shouta said.
She raised her head to look at him, wearing a face of disbelief. "You do anyway, it's a reflex."
"But... if you hold off until that reflex kicks in... you'd have more time, right?"
"Not much time," She said.
"But more time to fight your way to the surface."
"I guess."
"More time to be rescued."
"More time to be in agonizing pain. Did you forget about the part where you feel like your head is exploding?" Sora said.
"If it's about survival, isn't a little agony worth it?"
"What if it's agony now and just Hell later on?"
"Then I'll be there and go through it with you. You're not alone anymore. I promise," Shouta said.
Sora didn't say anything to that. He took that as a chance to continue. "You know, you look a lot like your mother. Sound like her too. If she saw you now, she'd be proud."
"Why would she be proud of the reason she's dead?"
"What do you mean?"
"He killed them. He killed them because I told her. I told her about what was going on when I should've just stayed quiet. He told me what would happen and it happened. Now they're gone," She cried.
"Sora, listen to me. Your mother would never be mad or upset at you that her seven year old daughter told her she was getting abused. If she was ever mad at anyone it would be the bastard that hurt you. You are not the reason for their deaths. You are not the one who set that house on fire, you are not the one who held that gun, and you are not the one who wanted them dead," Shouta said sternly.
Sora held his gaze in shock, then shock turned to more tears. She laid her head on his shoulder and let the walls break.
Shouta pulled out his wallet, being careful to not disturb the girl, and pulled a photo from the back pocket. Hizashi and Kayama also has a copy of the photo as it was the last one with all five of them.
Him, Hizashi, Shirakuma, Kayama, and Kali.
He handed the photo to Sora and she took it in her shaky hand. She looked down and then pointed at a figure who had their arms around his and Hizashi's shoulders.
"Who's that?" She asked.
Shouta smiled sadly and said, "That's Oboro Shirakuma. He also used to be friends with us in high school."
"What happened to him?"
He sighed deeply and said, "He died. It was a long time ago. In our second year on our internship."
She looked at him with wide grey eyes. "I'm sorry."
Smiling sadly into his scarf, he wrapped an arm around his niece. "It's not your fault. It's mine for not being able to save him."
Sora looked at accusingly, "Were you the one who killed him?"
"No?"
"Then it isn't your fault either. Look whose being a hypocrite."
He won't lie, that helped. This month had been an emotional roller coaster, opening up old wounds and memories, but what she just said helped with the pain a little. "Yeah, thanks."
"I'm sorry for shooting you before," Sora said.
"Hmm?"
"When you were chasing me before. I shot you in the side and grazed you. Not that I didn't mean to shoot you, I just feel bad," She explained.
Shouta looked down at her. "Don't worry about it. You were just trying to get away, I kinda understand. Gave me a nasty scar, though. How did you shoot me anyway? I erased your Quirk."
"I used to keep a compacted bow and arrow on me on patrols in case I came across you. Started doing it after our first encounter. I would hide about two metal arrows that could be pulled to be longer on my belt and the bow would fold up and latch onto my leg. It was pretty crappy but I was able to get the drop on you, wasn't I?" Sora said.
"I see," He said. "Well anyway, don't worry to much about it."
The rain was beginning to let up a little and their tears were drying.
"By the way, you know I don't really mind vigilantes too much, as long as their doing a good job and not killing people. I knew a few that were pretty okay. Like the Crawler? And Pop☆Step?" He said.
"Yeah, I met them. They're pretty cool," Sora said.
"Yup, but at least they were older than eighteen! You're crazy." He said.
Sora winced slightly. "Sorry," She said.
"What in the world did you do two do to get the Hero Commissioner hate you so much? She literally ordered every hero to call your arrest! The order was to arrest you on sight! What the hell!?" He said.
"Ahh, about that," Sora laughed slightly. "You see, I was having a bad day and one of the new laws that the Commissioner put out made me kinda pissed. So, with Nowane's help, I may or may not have snuck into the building and into office."
Shouta gaped, "And what did you do?"
Sora licked her lips and smiled evilly, "I wrote on her computer screen in permanent marker."
He felt the color leave his face. "What did you write?"
"That she was a dumb bitch," She roared back with laughter. "And then I signed it."
"You're insane!" He said.
"I know!" She wheezed.
"You're going to apologize for that later, I swear." He said threateningly. She didn't seem affected.
When Sora calmed down and wasn't laughing like a hyena she leaned her head on his shoulder. His clothes were still wet and he was sure they'd both get a cold after this. Sora was slightly shivering as they sat in comfy silence.
"Hey, Uncle Shou?"
That was the first time he heard that name. It felt nice. "Yeah?"
"Thanks. For what you said."
"Don't worry about it, Problem Child."
Holy shit!
This took SO long to write I swear to god!
Writers block has been hitting me hard and tbh I've been kinda depressed lately.
Anyway, I'm glad I made this chapter longer.
It was good in my opinion.
If there were any typos feel free to tell me and I'll go back and fix them.
Anyway. If some of you noticed, cool, but i used an audio I heard online that made me cry once. It was written by Stiles Stilinski.
The name of the audio is called "I'm fine"
If you want to listen to it it's on youtube.
I would post a link but Wattpad isn't letting me but anyway, I hope you enjoyed the chapter this week!
Thanks for reading!
Bye!
~Care-chan
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