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There’s not much time left.
Shouta watches as the concrete pressed against his cheek begins to vanish under a slowly growing veil of blood. He can’t feel the streams trickling down his cheeks any longer, doesn’t really notice the way he has lost all sensation in his limbs.
He just watches the river keep flowing out, away, reaching further and further from him.
Some foggy part of his brain feels a pull towards it, wants to go too, but he can’t focus on much beyond breathing.
He’d never thought dying would be like this.
He thought it would be violent and brutal, quick, as a villain’s sharp claws dug into his chest, or slow and painful, as he was tortured or starved for information he promised to never give.
He didn’t think it would be like this.
It was almost peaceful, almost easy. There was no part of him that hurt, physically.
His mind keeps going back home, to the safe tucked away in the back of his closet, where he’d written a Will the day he graduated U.A., and amended it the day after he’d said, “I do.”
Shouta always thought the whole concept of a Will was a little odd.
Then he’d walked out into the living room just a few weeks before his wedding to see Hizashi marking up his own. That night, the blond had said, “It’s just about the most selfless thing you’ll ever do,” when Shouta asked his fiancé for his opinions on the matter.
“A Will isn’t for you. It’s for the people you leave behind.”
Shouta lets out a ragged breath, closing his eyes.
Suddenly, all the things he’d written in that document don’t feel like enough.
He’d given it all to Hizashi, and still, in his last moments, he felt like he needed more.
He always knew he’d die alone, most underground heroes did.
He wanted to die alone, had planned to die alone, had always promised it, not wanting Hizashi to be there for this. His worst fear was to be lying in a hospital, unconscious to the world, and force his husband to make the call.
How could he put him through something like that?
Now, though, with a startling stinging in his chest, he realizes he doesn’t want that.
He wants Hizashi.
He wants to feel his lover’s fingers brushing back his hair. He wants to feel those shaking lips upon his cheek. He wants to lay there, empty, drifting into darkness as Hizashi’s tears drip onto his skin, whispering things Shouta knows he’d never be able to comprehend, not now, not so close to death.
Despite all that, he’d understand the one thing that meant the most to both of them, the one thing he’d always known, since the first time Hizashi nervously wrung his hands in his lap when they sat on the bench in the park after their classes let out and he confessed the only thing Shouta ever needed to hear.
“I love you.”
Shouta’s eyes snap open.
For a second, he stops breathing, and he thinks this must be it. He is hallucinating his husband’s voice and his lungs have stopped working.
Then he sees Hizashi’s boot disrupt the puddle of blood, splashing the red liquid as he kneels down in front of Shouta.
He opens his mouth, wants to tell Hizashi, “I love you too,” but all that comes out are coughs and a wet feeling in his throat that keeps his voice silent.
Hizashi shakes his head, lips shaking as he tries to smile around the tears flowing down his cheeks.
“I know, Sho, I know.”
Shouta feels his body moving, realizes Hizashi is picking him up, pulling Shouta into his lap. He cradles Shouta’s head against his chest and begins gently rocking him. Just like his final wish, Hizashi’s lips press against his forehead.
“It’s okay. You can go,” he says. “I’ll be okay. I’ll be okay.”
The words come out around hiccups and sobs and Shouta knows they’re all a lie, but they bring him comfort nonetheless. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding on so tight until Hizashi had said the words.
It takes all he has left to bring his hand to Hizashi’s shirt, to tighten his fingers in the fabric, to tilt his head back just enough to see his husband’s agonized face.
Hizashi does his best to give him one last smile.
As Shouta’s vision fades away, he tries to do the same.
With an odd clarity, as everything else around him disappears, he feels satisfied.
He thinks, I couldn’t have asked for a better life than this.
---
Stage 1: Denial
The legal copy of Shouta’s Last Will and Testament arrives in a manila envelope only one day after his death. The hand written, slightly crinkled copy, covered in scratched out words and rewrites as Shouta made adjustments to the document, sits tucked away behind the heavy door of their bedroom safe.
Hizashi ignores both.
He places the envelope on the kitchen island and dumps his jacket over top of it.
Sleep is a special kind of mercy.
Once safely shrouded in his fantasies, he never wants to leave. In his dreams, nothing has happened. In his dreams, the heavy weight over his shoulders is not from the comforter, but instead his husband’s arms. The warmth that comes with the morning’s sunlight streaming through the curtains and onto his face is from Shouta’s soft breaths behind him.
Waking is a special kind of hell.
Rolling over and being met with an empty space, looking over Shouta’s pillow and finding long strands of dark, wavy hair, seem to viciously juxtapose one another. The little pieces of his husband still lingering around the house tell Hizashi that Shouta isn’t gone.
The lack of grumbled good mornings, the slowly fading smell of pine wood and espresso, the padding of socked feet attached to legs too exhausted to lift them properly off the ground, all tell him that he’s wrong.
He just can’t accept it.
Over the first few days, his phone never stops going off. He silences it, but still the screen flashes bright each time he misses another call, another text. Family and friends asking if he’s okay, their lawyer asking if he’s read over the Will, the mortician asking if he’s made funeral arrangements yet, how would he like the body to appear, will it be open casket?
They don’t recommend that.
Most disgustingly, there are voicemails from media services asking for a statement.
Hizashi sends only one message to Nemuri, asking her to keep everyone away. The lack of knocks at his door say his friend is doing what he’d asked, even if he can’t bring himself to answer her inquiries into his mental and physical well being.
At some point, the phone battery dies. He doesn’t plug it in.
If Shouta were here, he’d chastise him. He’d tell Hizashi he was a hero and people might need him, what if there’s an emergency? What if something happens to one of their friends? What if a villain attack goes wrong and they need help?
What if something happens to him?
Something already did.
It’s with this thought that Hizashi finally rolls over onto his back and stares up at the ceiling, opens his mouth and says, “He’s not coming back.”
---
Stage 2: Anger
Abruptly, everything is too much.
The neighbor’s dog, who they’ve had for five years, who Hizashi had dogsat when they’d gone on vacation, walked at least a few times a month, and who had never once done anything but brought him joy each time he saw its floppy little ears, barks a few times while he is trying to distract himself with a book and his jaw locks tight. He begins grinding his teeth in time to each little yip.
Principal Nezu had told him to take as much time as he needed, said it wouldn’t even be docked from his vacation days.
When Hizashi finds himself glaring at his neighbor as they both check their mailboxes, his stuffed with condolence letters and sympathy cards to add to the growing pile in his trash, he decides he should get out of the house.
Perhaps being away from Shouta’s things will help.
Perhaps some distance will allow him the strength he needs to pick up the half drunk coffee mug sitting by the kitchen sink, left there by his husband the evening before Shouta’s last patrol.
He’s halfway through a lecture when one student raises their hand to answer a question and gets one too many simple answers wrong. His nails dig into the lectern’s sides, his shoulders slump forward. The shouted words come out as if they belong to someone else, he’s barely aware he’s saying anything at all.
Another teacher, Cementoss, he thinks, takes him by the arm and drags him out of the classroom.
He is sent home.
Nemuri tries to stop him on his way out, as he stomps his way through the halls and toward his car. She says something he can’t hear. He shrugs off her outstretched hands.
When he gets home, his eyes land on the island, on his jacket still lying over that weighty packet of paper. Within an instant, he’s across the room, throwing the garment to the floor, ripping the envelope off the counter, and stepping in front of the garbage can. He places his foot onto the pedal and the lid lifts as, simultaneously, his arm raises above his head.
He holds Shouta’s Will in the air, fist tight around it.
His shoulder tenses.
He can’t bring it down.
Tears begin to fill the trash instead.
---
Stage 3: Bargaining
It begins with one simple thought: If I had gotten there sooner, this never would have happened.
He never recovers.
Every other string of words running through his mind starts with an “if.”
If only I hadn’t let him go out that night.
If only I had gone with him.
If only I had said I love you more.
The last one is the hardest to swallow.
He can’t avoid it any longer. Responsibilities are literally knocking at his door, coming in the form of friends left unanswered for too long and his manager asking just how long he thinks he’ll be off air.
He gives half-assed lies and flips the deadbolt into place.
Nemuri, however, refuses to be kept away.
She pushes her way into the house while his mind is pushing out more “ifs.”
If only I had appreciated him more.
If only I had kissed him harder.
If only I were stronger.
She pulls him to the couch, makes him sit down. It doesn’t take much effort for anyone to drag him around these days. She only takes a small glance at the envelope, now with a ring of coffee stained into the corner and slightly crinkled around where he’d gripped it tight the other night.
“Hizashi…”
He shakes his head. Her hand comes to his knee, squeezes.
“You need to talk about this with someone. You can’t keep shutting us all out. You’re kind of scaring us, you know?”
He folds his hands together in his lap, stares down at them.
“What do you want me to say?” His voice is soft and weak. In the back of his mind he recognizes how out of place it is, how empty it sounds.
“Anything...tell me how you’re feeling...just let it out,” she says. Her voice is steady, supportive, and some part of him takes the bait.
He couldn’t keep up with the thoughts spiraling around in his mind.
“I…” he tries to start, but ends up with his teeth digging into his lower lip. Nemuri’s thumb rubs his leg in little circles.
“I just...keep thinking...I could have done more...I could have…” he trails off.
“What, Hizashi?” His mouth snaps shut at her stern tone. She sounds irritated. He hears a heavy sigh to his left, before she takes in another breath and continues, “What are you trying to say? That you could have stopped it? That if...what? You’d done something different, he...he wouldn’t be dead?”
Hizashi’s shoulders tremble as he lets out a shaky exhale.
“Listen to me,” she says, and now her hand is moving up to his face, cupping his cheek, turning him toward her.
It’s the first time he’s really looked at someone like this, one on one, straight in the eye, in what must have been weeks. It feels odd now, out of place. He feels like he can’t hold her gaze, and yet he’s too afraid to turn away.
“There is nothing you could have done to save him and…” her voice waivers here, gets softer. It’s she who breaks eye contact, looking off to the side as she says, “There’s nothing you can do to bring him back.”
Silence comes crashing down.
Something vital shifts inside Hizashi.
When Nemuri leaves, he feels these new pieces locking into place.
---
Stage 4: Depression
When Hizashi looks back on this time, he’ll remember it as both the hardest and easiest part of his grieving.
He feels nearly nothing.
Even his limbs are numb and heavy, as exhaustion settles in and never seems to leave. It’s a struggle to convince him to get up for water when his throat takes on a sandpaper-like consistency. His bones and blood and muscle and mind all have a palpable ache that only sleep seems to dampen.
In the brief moments where he’s awake, it’s difficult to put his feelings to words.
Everything has a stifling, too much quality too it.
The sound of his sheets shifting against his clothes is too much.
The small trickles of light coming in through his drawn curtains is too much.
The now nearly completely vanished scent of Shouta, barely there despite his reluctance to wash the sheets, is too much.
It’s on the third or fourth day, he’s lost count really, that he feels something different, that he feels anything at all.
His mind shifts gears, goes wandering back to Nemuri’s words.
There’s nothing you can do to bring him back.
He feels helpless.
He is a hero without a purpose, unable to save the only person who ever mattered.
His eyelids slide down. He descends into slumber once again.
Each time he awakens, he hears her voice in his head. Over and over, tinged with a lonely sadness that penetrates every part of him, and mixing with the static.
At some point, among all of these chaotic thoughts, the image of Shouta’s Will, still sitting on the kitchen island, interrupts, brings the whole chorus to a halt.
There’s nothing you can do to bring him back.
For the first time since nearly throwing that envelope into the trash, tears begin falling down his cheeks and soaking into the pillow case below him.
There’s nothing you can do, Hizashi thinks. There’s nothing you can do for him.
So do something for yourself.
---
Stage 5: Acceptance
It starts with opening the curtains all the way, something he hadn’t done in weeks. His hands shake when he grips the fabric and pulls, but when the light finally touches the bed, bounces off the mirror propped against the corner wall, he finds his feet moving.
He grabs the black, silk robe off the back of the bedroom door and slips his arms in, tying the belt loosely around his waist. This too feels like progress, something small, but something more than he’d had the energy to do lately.
Stepping out into the hallway takes a bit more out of him, but he doesn’t let the momentum fade. He knows if he pauses, he’ll never make it to his goal. So he continues on, refusing to look away from the end of the hall, forcing his feet to slide across the carpet until they meet the smooth tile of the kitchen.
He pushes himself toward the island.
Here, though, he has no choice but to stop.
With the loss of movement, he begins to waiver.
Staring down at the envelope that had plagued every corner of his mind that Shouta’s death wasn’t already occupying, he fights back the urge to begin biting at his lip again. It’s already raw from the previous night spent crying into his sheets.
He takes a deep sigh, like air could somehow help bring his hand up from where it is tucked against his chest, arms crossed over him protectively. He holds it in, closes his eyes.
He sees Shouta, sitting on the living room floor, hunched over the kotatsu, pencil in hand, as he scribbles onto a pad of paper. He remembers watching his husband’s reading glasses sliding down his nose, how his hand rose lazily up to push them back into their place. He’d plopped down on the floor behind Shouta and lay across his back, peeked over his shoulder, and asked, “Giving me anything good?”
It had been a joke.
All heroes die, but he hadn’t really considered it, not in that moment, anyway, not for Shouta.
His husband had nudged him away and told him if he kept trying to find out, he wouldn’t leave Hizashi anything but the piece of paper the Will was written on.
He’d laughed, they both had.
Now, he exhales.
He opens his eyes.
He reaches out and picks up the envelope, sliding his finger under the seal and tearing it open. He pulls out the small packet, letting the envelope fall to the counter as his hands begin to shake.
The first page is a neatly typed note from their lawyer. It says that the packet contains a letter from Shouta, and that the rest was his Last Will and Testament. She gives her condolences. She gives her contact information. She says she’ll be in touch to help him settle his new finances, and to help him update his own Will.
Ah, yes, he’d forgotten about that.
He’d have to give his possessions to someone else now.
He’d never thought about a world where Shouta died first.
Setting the lawyer’s note down onto the counter is perhaps the hardest thing he has ever had to do.
He takes the rest of the packet into the living room, sitting down on the couch, right in front of the spot where Shouta had written it all those years ago.
Finally, Hizashi looks down. He begins to read.
The greeting is crossed out several times, finally starting with just:
Hizashi,
Like most intimate things, I’m off to a bad start here. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to begin a letter to my husband, knowing you’ll read it after I’ve died. It’s hard to think about that. Not so much dying, I know it will happen, but picturing you...alone in our house...shit, you’d hate it. I know you must hate it. I’m…
The word “sorry” is crossed out. Hizashi’s hands increase their tremble.
I don’t think I’ll have died doing anything I regret. I hope it’s during hero work, or I hope it’s when I’m old, retired, lying in a bed with you.
You know, I never used to think about that. I never thought about dying in my sleep. I never thought about making it passed my 40s, really. I hadn’t even made a Will until I fell in love with you. Now, nothing I have seems like it could ever be enough. If you get this when I’m old, I hope I’ve acquired more than just some money, a cat, and a sleeping bag. I hope I saved something good for you. I hope it makes you happy.
I hope you’re alright.
I know you’re a mess. I know you’ve probably been crying for days. I know you’ve probably locked out all our friends and family. I hope you’ve remembered to feed the cats...and yourself...at least.
It’s okay if you didn’t, though. It’s okay to take time. Take as much as you need. I sure as hell took my time telling you I loved you, confessing to you, and I hope I took my time leaving you.
If I didn’t, please know that you were in my last thoughts, I’m sure. Please know that you were the best thing to ever happen to me.
You see, Hizashi, the funny thing about writing this will is that you’re suppose to give up the most important things in your life to someone you love, but…
You’re the most important thing in my life.
The paper crinkles in Hizashi’s hands, as his grip tightens around the page. His teeth are digging into his lip. He sniffles, tears gathering along his bottom lid.
You once told me that writing a Will is one of the most selfless things we ever do. You told me that we don’t write them for ourselves, we write them for other people.
I wish that I could be there to help you. I wish that I could give you so much more than this stupid letter.
I want you to know that it’s okay if you want to get rid of my things. It’s okay to wash my clothes, to throw out the sleeping bag, to take down our pictures for a while, whatever you need to heal, it’s okay. I understand.
I also understand if you move on.
You were the love of my life, Hizashi. After that is over, it’s okay if you have more people to love. I want you to surround yourself with people and things that make you happy. I want you to fill what remains of your life with happiness and warm memories, because that’s all you’ve ever filled mine with. If I’m not there to share in them, I hope you will experience them for both of us.
I know you won’t forget me.
I know you loved me.
I know you’ve probably got an equally as sappy letter sitting in that safe beside mine.
I’m not a religious man, Hizashi, but I pray to God I never get the chance to read it.
It’s so hard to wrap this up...you know...the end of the page is coming up here and I still feel like I have so much more to say. I can’t possibly find a way to end this. How could I? I’m still alive. How am I supposed to know what I want to say to you when I’m dead? I hope I’ll have said everything to you already when I’m still there with you.
I’m rambling now, something I must have picked up from you, no doubt.
I guess that’s a good place to end...thank you, Hizashi. You changed me so much. You made me softer, kinder. You made me more honest. You made me take risks, talk about how I feel, and more importantly, made me care about myself more.
Hizashi, I knew the day I became an underground hero that I would die young.
You made me want to live.
I love you. I love you more than I could ever write here. You were everything that ever mattered.
I know this is hard. I know you’re upset. I know. I know.
But you are strong. You’ll be okay.
Goodbye, Hizashi.
Keep going, for me.
Love, your husband,
Aizawa Shouta
It takes a long time to put the letter down. It takes a long time for the sobs to cease. Briefly, he feels like he’s back at square one. Curled up on his side, face pressed into the couch cushion, he feels like he’s made no progress at all.
When his eyes have finally dried, he looks to where he’d placed the Will and letter on the ground. He stares at Shouta’s handwriting, stares at those few words:
Keep going, for me.
“Okay,” he whispers.
Hizashi pushes himself into a sitting position, picking up the packet which will outline all the physical things Shouta has left behind.
He knows this won’t hurt as bad, that he’s gotten through the hard part.
He can do this.
For him.
For Shouta.
He can do this.