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“Someone… attention...”
Shoto drifts slowly back to awareness, and tries to open his eyes, with very limited success. He feels like he’s just woken up, but somehow he is so tired . Oh well; what harm can a little more sleep do?
“Can’t… if he’s…”
Who is that? Are they talking to him? The voice is so far away. And patchy, wavering in and out of reach, like he’s listening to the radio but isn’t quite dialled to the right frequency. They’re going to need to speak up, and maybe speak a little more clearly, if they want him to hear them. Or just move a little closer, it sounds like they’re halfway across the room.
...That is, if he’s in a room. Is he in a room? He can feel a slight breeze, so maybe not. In which case, where is he? And what was he doing before he fell asleep, again?
He tries to sort through his thoughts, but it feels like wading through thick soup. His whole body feels weighed down, somehow. It's like... he's fully attached to all of his limbs, they're definitely all there, but none of them will listen to his commands to move. He can’t quite remember if he should be concerned by that, though. His arms lie heavy by his sides, and his shoulders feel as if they’re braced against the ground, like someone is leaning their full weight on him.
“...much blood. Can’t wait until…”
Blood? Who’s bleeding?
Shoto feels his forehead pull into a frown, and all at once the voices (and was there always more than one?) completely cease, leaving him suspended in a strange, absent quietness.
“Todoroki?”
The voice is closer, now, almost like it’s directly above him. He’s still not quite sure who it is, though.
“Hey there. Can you hear me? You back with us, kid?”
That’s a different voice. ... Sensei? ... But ... yes, he’s awake. Why does it matter, though? Sleep seems like a nice plan right now.
The weight on his left shoulder shifts slightly, lessening, and Shoto suddenly becomes aware of how much weight it really is. He cracks his eyes open a fraction, at last, but the sun is in his eyes, the light is too bright and he shuts them immediately, wincing sharply at the sudden shock.
Bad move.
The movement sets off a chain reaction of movement through his torso, down his spine, jump-starting nerves that were happily lying dormant, before. There’s a fire that’s ignited somewhere in his abdomen, somehow on the wrong side - and he tries to switch it off, but it won’t disappear, so instead he reaches for his ice, trying to ice over the burn, but the temperature barely begins to drop before his quirk is stolen from him, and he feels the strange chasm of emptiness appear that he only ever feels when Erasure is directed at him.
He lets out a strangled cry. What the hell is Aizawa doing!? He’s been burnt, he needs to ice it -
“Kid, stop, just stay still - don’t move - stop trying to use your quirk! Stop - you’re okay - breathe - ”
Shoto realises very suddenly that he’s been unable to take a breath, his whole torso too tense and seized up as the fire burning in his abdomen blazes ever more fiercely. The weights on his shoulders are back in full, clamping him against the hard ground below, muting his attempts to move, holding him still through the crashing waves of agony.
Finally, it subsides just enough, the fire returns to a gently raging burn, and he takes a few shallow, staccato breaths. There’s a roar in his ears as his heartbeat hammers on, the blood that rushed to his head leaving him suddenly dizzy again, and he feels an awful lot like now would be a fantastic time to go back to sleep.
“...-ing better, that’s good, just keep breathing slow and steady. I’m going to drop my quirk, now, alright? Do not try to ice it, kid, it’s too deep, that’ll make it worse. Do you understand? Are you hearing me, Shoto?”
Shoto grits his teeth, mentally shakes himself awake again, and bites out an answer.
“Burn.” He takes another deep breath. “Needs … ice.”
There’s another long silence, and for a moment Shoto has to check he hasn’t passed out again. Wait, no - stupid Shoto - he wouldn’t be able to check if he was asleep, now, would he? Huh, he sure does feel woozy, though…
“...No, Todoroki, it’s not a burn.”
Shoto almost wants to laugh, through the slowness of his thoughts. Yes, of course it’s a burn, what else could it be? He’s had enough burn wounds to know exactly what a -
“Don’t panic, kid, but it’s a wound. Alright? It’s deep. So we can’t ice it. Do you understand?”
He wants to argue with that, but he can’t get up and look for himself, and Aizawa hasn’t lead him wrong before, so he tries to just trust him, and to calm his frantic mind despite the blaring alarms in his head. The fight leaves him pretty quickly, and his breathing slows a little more, and he feels it the moment his quirk comes back, but obediently doesn’t reach for it, this time.
The fire has subsided a little more now, anyway, replaced with a chill numbness that seems to radiate out from the edges of it. The numbness spreads quickly, chasing fleeting pins and needles into his limbs and up to his neck. The voices above him have resumed their quiet conversation, muted and sombre and fading in and out of Shoto’s awareness.
“...no time. I don’t like this, either, but I don’t see…”
“...can’t do that! How… survive until…”
Shoto drifts, tuning everything out, unmindful of the voices above him battering back and forth about something unimportant, and it could be minutes, or hours, or seconds, before there’s a gentle tapping against his cheek.
“Todoroki. Kid, come on, come back to - ah, there you are.”
His eyes twitch in response, but he doesn’t make the mistake of trying to pry them open again. He doesn’t think he could if he tried, this time; he’s on the precipice of a nice, long sleep, and the alarm bells in his head seem to ring even harder at that, but even those have started to become a faint, distant worry. Aizawa’s here, so things can’t be that serious. He can deal with whatever the problem is when he wakes up.
“Todoroki. Hey. Shoto . Try and stay focussed. We’re going to try and close the wound. So just - don’t fight us, alright? Just don’t fight. It’s going to be okay.”
The words break through the muddy haze, but they don’t mean an awful lot. Don’t fight? Why would he fight, anyway? He’s half asleep. Let someone else do the fighting.
“We need you to light your hand up. Can you do that? Just some fire in your hand. That’s all.”
...It’s an odd request, and he’d really rather just doze off, but sure. He sets his hand alight, feels the familiar cool flames flicker around his fingertips, but they last all of a second before he realises just how drained he is, so he lets them fade again. Hopefully that was enough for whatever they wanted to set fire to. He has to resist a mad giggle, for a moment, at the mental image of Aizawa committing arson. He’ll have to ask, later, what he needed the fire for -
“More than that, kid, we need a continuous flame. We need you to keep it going, no matter what. ...Even if it hurts, understand?”
Shoto frowns. That sounds… worrying. He already hurts. What on earth do they need fire for that could hurt worse? He reluctantly complies, all the same, lighting his hand up - but the flames last a few seconds at most before fizzling out again, the pleasant scent of a freshly snuffed-out candle reaching his nose. No can do. He’s just too tired. If they need fire that badly, they’re going to have to source some the old-fashioned way.
There’s a heavy sigh somewhere above him, and Shoto tenses up. Uh oh. That doesn’t sound good. He really can’t keep a flame going, though - it’s not like he’s not trying! Surely that’s not his fault?
“...Alright.” Aizawa-sensei’s voice grits out, and it has that ominous, foreboding, almost toneless quality that he usually saves for expelling people. This is really not good. Surely Shoto’s not in that much trouble, just for not being able to use his quirk? He’s trying -
“Todoroki, can you hear me?” Oh, that’s another voice again. Someone new? “You don’t know me, but I’m a pro-hero, I’m working with your teacher, here. I can do the opposite of him. That’s my quirk. So I’m going to help you keep your quirk going, alright?”
Oh. Neat quirk. Must be some kind of forced-activation thing. Pity Midoriya’s not around, he’d have so many questions for them about that. Shoto can’t fathom what use that knowledge is to him, though, seeing as he’s apparently out of commission at the moment, anyway.
He doesn’t respond, too lost in the mire of his jumbled thoughts, instead only passively noticing as the weight on his left shoulder lets up again, and someone lifts his arm, crossing it over to the other side of his body. There’s a confusing moment as weights lift in some places and settle in others, but after a second the movement stops, and he’s clamped even more firmly against the ground.
The stillness and quietness around him is absolute for a few seconds, but the air feels tense, the silence fragile, as if everyone is waiting for something to shatter it. Shoto feels as if he’s caught in the eye of a storm. Someone taps his cheek, and he feels his eyes twitch a little bit, lacking the energy to respond with any more vigour than that.
“Shoto... I’m sorry - forgive me for this, I’m sorry -”
What? That’s Aizawa again - and his voice sounds uncharacteristically soft, and even more grave, somehow, violently cutting through the peaceful quiet with a sort of grim finality, but Shoto doesn’t have time to dwell on why it sounds so wrong before his hand is suddenly alight again, and the flames burn hot, but he has no control over it, he isn’t the one using his own quirk, it isn’t him -
“Okay, ready - steady - go -”
Whoever had lifted his arm earlier suddenly moves it again, pulling his now-blazing hand further across his abdomen and then pressing it straight down against his skin, right where the horrific burn was before.
And.
It.
Burns.
God, it burns.
It is abject agony compared to the fire that he felt there earlier, and he futilely tries to fight against it but the pressure is unrelenting, the stranger’s control over his arm is absolute, and he doesn’t have the strength to fight them off and end the pain.
He desperately tries to switch off the flames in his hand instead, but he can’t do that either; his quirk is being pulled and twisted and ripped to the front of his consciousness, the flames blazing merrily away with total disregard for Shoto’s own will, as if he’s under Shinsou’s mind control - except there’s no fog, there’s only this painfully unrelenting clarity, and he can feel every muscle, every fibre, every cell in his hand being set alight, every molecule of his being now blazing with a hotter fire than he thinks he’s ever made before.
Aizawa was there, before, wasn’t he!? He was there before - where did he go, why isn’t he stopping this? Why can’t he - turn it off, make it stop, fight them off, rescue him, why isn’t he doing anything, why is he working with the villain doing this to Shoto -
He weakly tries to struggle again, pushing against the arms holding him down, but he can’t get away, can’t even shift them slightly, the weights on his shoulders and torso and limbs and joints pressing down even harder and crushing him into the ground with renewed force every time he tries to struggle away.
His arm is repositioned against his abdomen again, the fire moving to suddenly ignite a new part of his skin. Whoever is manipulating his arm is merciless, and they press it against his abdomen again and again, tracing a searing line of burns across it, ripping a scream out of him that he doesn’t even notice until his voice cracks and breaks, the sound getting caught in his damaged throat.
Finally, finally, it ends, and as he tries to stay afloat in the waves of agony that follow, he feels his arm placed back by his side again, positioned on the ground with a jarring gentleness that seems almost deliriously funny after the abject torture that those same hands have just subjected him to. He doesn’t have the energy to laugh, though, instead losing himself to another tidal wave of pain, and as that finally subsides, the voices from before filter back in, quiet and sombre and insistently apologetic, for some reason.
There’s a hand in his hair. It presses against his forehead for a second, but then shifts to gently thread through the hair just above it, and then it repeats the motion, a cool but heavy weight distracting him from the fire that’s slowly burning through his abdomen again. He doesn’t remember anyone ever stroking his hair like this before, but it’s nice. It’s weirdly good. It’s soothing. He hopes it won’t stop.
Somewhere, in the distance, there’s the sound of sirens, somehow both far away and close at the same time, and the hand at his forehead shifts slightly but doesn’t leave, just stilling in his hair. Shoto feels himself frown slightly without really meaning to, and seconds later the gentle touch tentatively starts up again, threading through his hair and stroking back and forth. He’s steadily drifting back toward that strangely cold, numb place where he was floating before, but he tries to fight it, doesn’t want to drift away completely, grounding himself with the hand at his head.
He’s lost track of where he is, and how long he’s been here, and why he should care, and why he hurts so much - but even that, now, is fading away to a pleasant cool numbness. There’s some more insistent tapping against his cheek, and the sirens suddenly get even louder before stopping abruptly. There’s a flurry of movement around him, an uptick in general noise and bother, but the hand in his hair is there throughout, steady and solid and distracting, keeping him tied to the ground.
The voices continue, but they don’t seem to be aimed at him, and if they are, they don’t seem to be seeking a response, so Shoto just floats on through it all. He knows, somehow, that he’s made it through the worst of the storm; he was in the eye of it, earlier, but now he’s almost at the other side, the pain lessening by the second, calmness taking over.
There are still hands around him, and on him, but they’re protective, supporting, caring - and the hand at his hair is still there, through it all, a steady constant in the whirlwind of activity surrounding him.
He vaguely feels a mask being placed on his face, and seconds later, Shoto lets go completely, the final sounds filtering away to nothing as sleep takes over.
He can let go, now.
He knows, somehow, that he’s safe.