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2
No matter how many healing quirks they use on him, the scars don’t go away.
Todoroki lays there and stares at his damaged hands as the nurse prattles on and on about everything that’s wrong with him.
‘ The hand crusher?’ He thinks as Fuyumi asks the nurse something, tears already springing in her eyes. She’s always been easy to tear up but she must have cried a record amount the past few days, even for her standards.
“-recommend intensive physical therapy to regain use of his legs…” He hears and then he’s zoning back out.
He must have closed his eyes because when he opens then again, the sun is close to setting and the pain is inching closer to unbearable as the seconds pass.
Natsuo is there instead of Fuyumi, a heavy textbook weighing down his lap and highlighter smeared over the pages. He’s staring down at it but it doesn’t look like he’s actually reading anything.
Shouto tries to say something but his throat feels like sandpaper. Thankfully, the strangled noise makes Natsuo look up and then he’s shooting to his feet and pouring him a glass of water.
“How are you feeling, Shou?” Natsuo asks quietly when he’s drunk some water.
“H’rts,” Shouto croaks in response and he’s not strong enough to hold back the tears that fall down his cheeks at the agony his body is in.
Natsuo stands and fiddles with something on the side of the bed where the heart monitor is.
He says something after but the pain makes everything fuzzy and the light hurts his eyes so he closes his eyes and tries to sink within his mind so he doesn’t have to feel -
It works too well because he loses track of time after that, falling away into darkness even though Natsuo is still talking, asking him something and sounding urgent… but… he’s tired….
1
“The pills aren’t working anymore! The bitch burned Jasper and almost killed me!”
Todoroki grinned with bloody teeth at that even though it earned him another backhand across the face.
“Give him a higher dose,” came a deep voice from behind him, and then a hand was fisted in his hair and pulling his head back sharply.
“Boss said not to give him too much or it’ll kill him…” Blondie added, fidgeting with the syringe in his hands. Todoroki had the feeling that he was new to the life of villainy, maybe roped into it by a friend or relative.
“I said give it to him,” the man behind him said, a cold hand, large and calloused, running down the sensitive skin of his back. Todoroki had to stop himself from shivering under the touch, closing his eyes as the touch traveled down, down… “The side effects should be enough of a deterrent to prevent further disobedience.”
When Blondie hesitated with moving forward, Jasper stalked forward and snatched the syringe from his hands. “It’s the least the motherfucker deserves after what he did,” he snarled, one hand digging into Todoroki’s shoulder and then the needle was piercing skin and then cold, spreading through his veins and then pain, burning and clawing through his blood-
“You’re mine ,” he heard through the agony that burned his nerves, “Your quirk is mine . Your body is mine. Your pain is in my hands. Do you understand?”
The pain… it burns-
“No matter. You’ll understand soon enough.”
5
Perhaps the most jarring thing is the warmth.
The days following the rescue, he feels himself getting cold and finds that he’s actually able to activate his quirk and warm himself up until he’s comfortable.
He can bury himself under the hospital blanket, hold Fuyumi’s hand, put on another layer if he wants.
“We can turn up the temperature if you’re feeling cold,” His sister offers when she sees him shivering and teeth chattering. He nods and so she gets up and he’s not expecting his body to warm up but it does.
Shouto finds a few moments later that he’s no longer cold.
And for some reason that realization sends panic shooting through his veins.
“Turn it down,” He croaks, watching with glassy eyes as Fuyumi confusedly sets the temperature lower, sending him worried looks over the rim of her glasses. She doesn’t ask but he knows that she wants to know. But how could he possibly tell her that the cold feels comfortable to him by now? That he may shiver but the cold is what kept him alive?
He stays silent instead and makes an effort not to pull away when she brushes a hand over his forehead to check for a fever.
“Midoriya came by,” she says softly, settling down into the chair. “You were sleeping then but he wanted to make sure you would be okay with visitors.”
He doesn’t answer but she doesn’t look like she was expecting one anyways.
“Are you cold? You’re shaking,” Her hand shifts into his hair and brushes through the strands and suddenly it’s too much, it’s all too much , and he’s jerking away and snarling at her with his broken voice, “ Don’t touch me.”
The worst thing is that she doesn’t even look surprised at his outburst, doesn’t gasp or yank herself away from him in alarm or start crying.
She merely pulls her hand out of hair and looks at him, with so much pity in her face that it makes him sick.
“It’s okay, Shou,” she whispers, hands folded neatly on her lap. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Stop fucking shaking,” the rancid breath burns against the nape of his neck, the body pressing him down moving rhythmically and sending burning ropes off fire up his spine.
“You don’t like it when we warm you up?” Jasper asks from above him, but Todoroki can’t answer because his mouth is full. “Fucking answer me when I talk to you!” He snarls, angry at the disobedience, and thrusts forward hard enough that Shouto starts gagging.
When they come, the burning in his stomach doesn’t stave away the cold at all.
He shakes and trembles and his teeth chatter and he reaches for his quirk, the hated heat of Endeavor’s fire side, and finds himself betrayed when it is gone leaving him cold cold cold
“You’re safe now.”
And he’s shivering and his teeth are clattering and fuck what is wrong with him?
“Shou? Can you breathe for me? I think you’re having a panic attack and I don’t want you to hurt yourself more. It’s just me, I’m not going to hurt you-“
She’s saying that but it still hurts and if he’s safe then why is he in pain why does he deserve all this agony he wants it to end all of it just stop
“You’re okay, Shou. I promise, you’re okay.”
“Do you like this? You act like you don’t but I can see in your eyes that you like being put in your place, hm? That’s it, you’re doing so well for me, you beautiful, gorgeous boy.”
He’s not, he’ll never be okay, not after what happened not after he’s been broken and tainted and used and he’s not okay-
Fuyumi calls the nurse when he can’t stop hyperventilating, all foggy and lost in another place. They give him some sedatives and they don’t stop his quirk but they do put him to sleep and the last thing he hears is “You’re safe now, Shou. You’re safe.”
3
Aizawa comes in on the third day, when he’s poking at the rice that the nurses had encouraged him to eat but he was too nauseous to stomach. His waiting visitor gives him an excuse to stop trying to choke it down and finally push aside his untouched meal.
He is the first visitor from U.A that Todoroki has had aside from his family in the days since he woke up in the hospital. Natsuo told him that his teacher had been lurking outside since they brought him here but didn’t want to overwhelm so he didn’t come inside.
Now, he watches blankly as Aizawa sits down right next to him on the chair stationed by the bed for his other vigilant visitors and then there is silence until Aizawa asks him how he’s doing.
Todoroki lies and says he’s fine.
His Sensei looks like he doesn’t quite know what to say to that, perhaps knowing he’s lying but unwilling to call him out for it. Instead, he asks him gently what conspired in the days he was gone.
“I’m sorry for bringing this up, kid,” he says, “And I wish I didn’t have to, but the police would find an account of your captors helpful before taking the next steps.”
His voice is uncharacteristically soft, like Todoroki will fall apart with one harsh word. He doesn’t sound like the Aizawa Sensei who would threaten to expel anyone who stepped out of line.
“We can talk whenever you feel comfortable. There’s no rush.”
He wants him to talk about what happened?
A part of Todoroki feels ashamed at the thought of bringing attention to what he had gone through in those days from hell, what those men had done to him.
But the larger part is tired. He’s tired of hiding his father’s abuse, deflecting concern when teachers, classmates, even his siblings would question his bruises and cuts when he was just a kid. He’s tired of concealing his pain.
He’s suffered through too much. Why should he try to protect other people from hearing the gritty details of the hell he’s been living ?
So he sits there in his bed, covered in bandages and sore in places he never knew he could be sore in and tells Aizawa everything.
He watches with a blank face as Aizawa’s expression twists and his skin turns pale the longer he goes on, a twisted shred of satisfaction rising within him. Let him feel uncomfortable and sick at the mere thought of what happened. Those feelings would only ever be a small fraction of the true terror he had felt actually living through the torture.
By the middle of his retelling, Aizawa looks like regrets ever asking. Todoroki watches amusedly and wonders if he’s going to stop him as he details exactly what had caused the wounds to his back.
To his surprise, Aizawa sticks it through until the end, knuckles white until he looks like he’ll break the arm of his chair, but he listens to all of it.
When he finishes, voice hoarse, Aizawa’s dark eyes bore into his with something deep in their depths. “Thank you,” he murmurs, and a part of him seems angry. His voice stays steady however and he simply adds, “I’m sorry for making you recount everything.”
Todoroki shrugs and says, “It was worse when it was actually happening.”
Aizawa doesn’t seem comforted by that at all.
14
“I’m sorry!”
“If you were truly sorry,” Rough hands ran down the open wound of his back, the warmth of his blood smearing along the flesh that stretched over the knobs of his spine. “You would have apologized before your punishment began.”
The crack of the whip and the sound of his skin splitting apart.
He screams.
It hurt- his back, it was flayed open, raw and tender to the touch and and and
“Please stop! I’m sorry… please-!”
Everything stopped.
“I already told you,” the man murmured, pressing the edge of his nail into the meat of a cut. “Your pain is in my hands. You. Are. Mine. And you will endure.”
And then the pain started again.
6
They let him go back to the dorms on the sixth day after he was found.
Endeavor tried bringing him home, his large frame cutting an imposing figure in his hospital room but Shouto had looked him directly in the eyes and said, “I’ll tell them everything.”
There was no fear in his voice, no inflection that could even hint that he wouldn’t go through with it.
After what he has been through, nothing his father could do to him would ever compare.
Endeavor evidently knew it too.
He stepped aside and allowed him to recover at the dorms, pestering U.A until he was assigned a temporary dorm room near the teachers wing, on the first floor so it would be easily accessible on his wheelchair.
“We’ll make sure he’s brought to his appointments on time and his meds are stocked up,” Midnight smiles up at Endeavor, probably seeing a doting father or a concerned parent when in reality, Enji was neither.
He was a collector.
A creator.
He made children and broke children and beat children and kept the ones that suited him best. But now… someone that was not him had broken his masterpiece and stitched it back together again and now Endeavor is at a loss for what to do. He had lost the upper hand and now he has no power and no threats and no authority either.
Todoroki watches him as he goes through the discharge papers, signing off the pages reiterating that they understand that there will be complications in the healing quirks, that the wounds will scar horribly, that the pain will never go away, that the body will always remember. Enji skims through the pages in half a second and signs his name at the end, signifying that yes, he understands his son may experience crippling and debilitating pain as a result of rapid quirk healing, now when can I go home?
“Take care of yourself,” he tells Shouto awkwardly when he’s being helped into Midnight Sensei’s car half an hour later.
Shouto doesn’t even look at him as he settles down against the seat of the car. “I always do,” he replies but underneath his flippant tone, something dark lurks beneath the surface. No matter how much he tries to ‘ take care of himself’, his safety will never be in his own hands.
After sixteen years, Shouto has learned that for himself well enough and he knows Endeavor knows it too.
He's not sure if he feels satisfaction or regret when his father turns and leaves without another word.
The drive to dorms is lively. Midnight and Present Mic don’t tiptoe around him like he would have expected, instead talking about everything under the sun.
“We’re doing a special on everyday heroes next Monday,” Mic tells him when they’re stuck in traffic on the highway. “People like nurses, doctors, and firefighters who keep our citizens safe without gaining much recognition. So much of our media focus is taken up by pro heroes that we forget about the people who work behind the scenes. Maybe you can tune in on Monday, little listener!”
Todoroki hums in response, looks out the window and watches as the trees blur past.
Midnight replies with something loud and excited but he’s stopped listening at that point. His head still hurts and the meds they loaded him up with seem to be wearing off. His body aches and his throat burns, but when he tries to uncap the water bottle Mic gave him before they left, he finds his fingers too weak to manage.
Instead of asking for assistance, he drops his head against the seat and closes his eyes, letting the hum of the car and Mic’s enthusiastic speech pull him into a trance.
When they finally get beyond the gates, he’s still groggy and his headache is infinitely worse. Aizawa stands at the dorm entrance with a phone pressed to his ear, looking annoyed as he listens to whoever is on the other side of the line.
“I have to go,” he snaps when he sees them approaching and then hangs up the phone. From one breath to the next, the irritation falls away and melts into that same cloying softness that he had shown in the hospital.
“Todoroki,” he intones as he takes his spot behind the wheelchair, lips quirking in a small smile that Shouto doesn’t try to return. Mic bounds up beside them with a wide smile, one hand clutching at the hospital bag. It’s filled with meds and pamphlets and emergency first aid kits in case one of his stitches pop and he’s in danger of bleeding out before they can get him back to the hospital in time, “ which hopefully won’t happen but it never hurts to be careful, am I right?” as the nurse has said.
Instead of heading to his usual floor, Aizawa takes them inside and turns a corner, leading them to the wing where the teachers usually have their dorms. It’s halfway between the students lounge so he can still see his classmates if he wants to but far enough that he can still have some privacy.
The room itself is not anything too different from the generic undecorated dorms they were all given at the beginning of the year, except for the fact that there are two beds.
“We thought it would be wise to have someone room with you if you’d be okay with that,” Mic says when he sees his confusion. “One of your classmates or even a teacher if you’d feel more comfortable with that instead.”
He tries to think of sleeping the night with a grown man bigger than him in the same room - “shut up and take it, bitch”- and barely stops himself from throwing up.
“You can think about it and let us know,” Aizawa gracefully says, burying his face inside his scarf. “Your classmates should be done with class in an hour if you’d like to come down to the dining room.”
Todoroki is too tired to even think about leaving his room but he nods regardless. When Aizawa and Mic leave a few minutes later with a reminder to take his meds, he finally allows himself to collapse down against his mattress.
16
“Take it easy on him,” Blondie said from somewhere in the room, voice uneasy and shaking from nerves. “He’s had a rough day.”
A rough day was putting it lightly, because Todoroki could practically feel his pulse in the wounds they had carved in his skin, digging deeper and shedding more blood than his father ever did.
“He can handle it,” the man from behind him laughed, pushing a hand on the back of Todoroki’s neck and shoving him face-down against the rough ground. It tore at the delicate skin of his cheek, agony on the thin covering of his scar. “Pretty boy like him was practically made for it, anyways.”
“Are you worried about him?” It was the leader again, the one who never showed his face but was always in the room. Todoroki thinks him and Blondie are the only ones who hadn’t fucked him yet, always keeping their distance.
Blondie tried to deny it but even Todoroki knew it was true. He didn’t have the guts to be the kind of monster these men are. He wasn’t made of the same hellstuff the rest of them were.
“Come here,” the leader told him, and Blondie listened, coming forward until he was also behind Todoroki.
The man fucking him pulled out without the leader telling him to, slapping Shouto on the ass hard as he stepped back and laughing when he whimpered.
“Fuck him,” the leader told Blondie, voice calm and slightly amused, like he was watching an interesting show.
Todoroki’s heart leapt in his throat because even though Blondie was one of his captors, he was always reluctant to hurt him and made sure he had enough to eat. He had never assaulted him or used him, even when they were the only ones in the room.
He couldn’t see much of what was going on behind him, but he could hear the nervous shuffling that Blondie was doing, the scrape of boots against asphalt. “I’m into girls,” he said, trying to keep calm, perhaps making an excuse, any excuse to get out of the situation.
The man that had been fucking him laughed like it was the funniest thing he had heard all week. “A hole’s a fucking hole,” he grinned, “Doesn’t matter who it is.”
“Fuck him,” the leader said again, and this time his voice was hard like steel. “Do it or I’ll flay the skin off his back and make you watch.”
Hands ran up the back of his thighs, hesitant and barely touching him. They were unfamiliar, soft and unblemished rather than the calloused hands he was used to.
“Please,” He whispered, burying his face into the crook of his arm so he wouldn’t have to watch but his head was wrenched back and he was turned on his back. “Don’t, please .”
Blondie stepped back when he saw Shouto’s face, panic quickly flooding his features. “I can’t. Don’t make me.”
“Do it,” the leader pushed him forward until Blondie was between his trembling legs, skin against rough denim. “It’ll hurt less for him if you do what I say.”
Slowly, moving so so slowly that it was almost a glacial pace, Blondie unzipped his pants. There was no prep needed and it didn’t even hurt when he finally pushed in.
Still, Todoroki clenched his eyes shut and tried to breathe through the irrational wave of betrayal and violation that he felt.
“You’re mine,” it was the leader’s ragged breath that splashed against his ear, the leader’s hands that wrapped itself around his neck and squeezed. “Your body is mine, your quirk is mine. Your pleasure and pain is mine. Do you understand?”
and then there was the deafening blast of a gun, warm warm blood spilling into his skin and Blondie, his eyes open wide and glassy crushing him and still inside him and he’s dead dead dead
“Todoroki-kun?”
He opens his eyes.
“Midoriya.”
The other boy is by the door, not inside the room but not outside either. “Todoroki-kun,” He says again, sounding breathless. “You’re here . Can I- Can I come in?”
Todoroki nods and watches as Midoriya carefully steps inside his room. He looks him up and down, eyes the wounds and scratches and bruises that still mar his body and frowns but doesn’t say anything. His wheelchair is still parked by the bed and Midoiya looks at it with pain in his eyes.
“How are you feeling?” He asks, wringing his hands and stopping right in front of the bed.
He’s in pain and his headache hasn't gone away and he still feels phantom hands on his body.
It’s his new normal so he feels no guilt when he says, “I’m okay.”
He watches as tears well up in Midoriya’s eyes, doesn’t say anything even as his breaths catch up in painful sounding sobs. He simply scoots over and lets him fold in on himself next to him on the bed.
“I was so worried,” Midoriya cries, and now that he's let go, he doesn’t seem to be able to stop. “I didn’t know where you had gone and Kachaan said he was the last one to see you but you never came back and I thought you were dead-”
Todoroki feels like this would be a good time to hug Midoriya, would have done it too if it was him from a month ago. But the present him still feels sick to the stomach at the thought of touch so he links his pinky with Midoriya’s instead and says again, “I’m okay.”
He lets him cry it out, both of them quiet until finally Midoriya starts hiccuping and his cries taper out.
“A few of us are having dinner,” he says with a wobbly smile, face red and eyes bloodshot. “Do you- do you want to come? It’ll just be me and Kachaan and I think Momo and Jirou? But I can bring you a plate here too, you know, just in case you want to be alone?”
Todoroki doesn’t particularly feel like eating but he wants to be alone in the dark of his room even less so he nods and hesitantly agrees.
Midoriya has to help him into the wheelchair and the pain in his entire body reminds him that he needs to take his meds so he grabs those too before they move to the dining room.
It’s quiet, something that is a rare occurrence when living with twenty teenagers.
When Midoriya pushes his chair into the kitchen, everyone immediately falls quiet, all conversation stopping.
“ Halfie ,” He hears, rough voice cracking, and he knows instantly who it is.
“Bakugou.”
“You idiot ,” Bakugou snarls and slams down the plate he had in his hands. He stalks around the counter, tossing aside Momo’s arm when she tries to stop him. “You- you fucking -”
“Kacchan!-”
And then Bakugou is right in front him, arms raised, and oh-
“Don’t fucking do that to me,” he whispers in the joint between Todoroki’s shoulder and neck, arms tight around him. “Don’t you ever dare do that to me again.”
The touch is too much, it itches and hurts but it also- it feels right. He doesn’t have too much time to think about it because Bakugou is pulling away and turning his face away, the tops of ears turning red.
"I made you your favorite soba, you idiot,” he says gruffly, as if his harshness will cover up for the brief show of human affection. “You better fucking eat all of it.”
Midoriya pushes his wheelchair to the dining table, and Jirou brings a glass of water before sitting across from him with Momo by her side.
“I’m glad to see you, Todoroki-kun,” Momo says softly, smiling at him so gently his heart begins to hurt. “The whole class was excited to greet you but we managed to get them to eat earlier so you could have some space.”
“Thank you,” Todoroki tells her, attempting a smile. It’s barely a quirk of his lips before it feels too brittle and he lets it drop.
Bakugou sets a plate of soba down in front of him, and takes a seat on the other side, reaching over him to snatch the hospital bag.
“Are these your meds?” He asks, already rifling through the different pill bottles without any shame. He pulls out bottles, flipping them over to read their labels. “Oi, this one says you have to take it before you eat anything, Halfie!”
“Kacchan! You shouldn't go through other people's personal things without permission!”
“Icyhot doesn’t fucking care, ask him right now!“
“Still!”
Todoroki leans back and lets their conversation melt over him, feeling more safer around the explosive argument than he has all week.
9
Someone throws up the first time Todoroki decides to tell his classmates what had happened.
Maybe he should feel bad but the truth is that he doesn’t stop even when Mina runs out of the room, the sound of her retching traveling all the way to the common room.
Midoriya, who is pressed up against his side, looks sick, eyes wide and wet like he’s going to start sobbing any second. Bakugou is on his other side, and perhaps more frighteningly, his face is completely blank, no scowl or traces of anger anywhere.
“ Dude ,” someone breathes, maybe Kirishima or Hanta or Denki and there are tears there too.
Todoroki sits there, blank faced, as his classmates fall apart and feels nothing.
Later that night, he senses when Midoriya and Bakugou slip out of his room after they think he’s asleep, the bed dipping down from either side and quickly letting cold seep back under the covers. He strains his ears to listen to their whispers, too loud in the quiet of the night.
“Kacchan, stop and think for once! If you get caught, they’ll take away-”
“You think I fucking care, Deku? Huh? After what those fucking bastards did to him, you think I care if they take my fucking license away?”
“Listen to me, I know-“
“They fucking just…. How could they fucking do that to him…?”
And there’s heavy breaths filling the air, stifled sobs and heaving inhales, the sound of someone trying to cover up their cries.
It’s a familiar sound.
“I know, Kacchan,” Midoriya murmurs quietly, “Believe me, I know. I'm not saying we sit here and do nothing, but there is a better way to do this.”
“Deku, the last fucking thing I care about right now is the fucking rules, alright? When he came to me that day, if I hadn’t-“
“I already told you that it wasn’t your fault. And that’s not what I’m saying. Instead of running off on our own with no plan or idea where we’re headed, we can stay here until we have an exact location on them.”
“You want to wait and do fucking nothing?”
“Aizawa Sensei is ready to kill them. You can see it on his face no matter how much he tries to hide it in front of us. He is not going to just let them go , Kacchan. We’ll let him take care of the legal side of things and strike when the time is right. Until then, we should be here for Todoroki-kun. He needs us to be here right now, not running off trying to get ourselves killed.”
There’s ragged breaths filling the silence, both of them breathing hard, but at least the crying has stopped. Finally, Bakugou says in a voice so raw that it doesn’t even sound like him anymore, “You heard what Shou said about what they fucking did to him and it’s all my fucking fault. Hearing that, I- fuck… I think I’m gonna throw up. How could they do that to him, Deku?”
And it hit Todoroki then that this was the first real brush with true villainy that Bakugou had had, and maybe that’s why all this was hitting him so hard. It was his first time staring down the void and seeing what the monsters dressed as men could do, how much pain they could inflict, for no other reason than the fact that they simply could . They didn’t care for quirks or rank or status. They only wanted the power that came from dominating others, like father had, like Jasper, like that man whose hands had burned hotter than them both but whose name Todoroki still didn’t know.
Those kinds of men were never really men, always something worse in disguise.
He felt something then, an ugly tangle of emotion that read like envy or jealousy or hatred, maybe, that Bakugou had grown up in a family with loving parents and devoted friends and no monsters stalking his halls, keeping him awake late at night when there was no noise except the crickets chirping. The thought of the crippling fear that had riddled his bones for years had some of the anger draining out of him because he wouldn’t wish that on his worst enemy, let alone on Katsuki who would pull him into his side when he was tired and make him soba when he forgot to eat and would stop for Todoroki when he wanted to take pictures of stray cats on the streets.
Todoroki sunk back against the sheets, closing his eyes against the soft murmurs that were audible through the open door, platitudes of guilt and regret and promises of vengeance and revenge.
When the bed dipped down some time later and a warm body pressed itself against his side, Todoroki was already too deep into sleep to be able to tell who it was.
5
“Be good for them, you hear?” Jasper fists a hand in Todoroki’s hair, pulling cruelly and laughing at the groan it earns him. “One of them has a healing quirk and will take any excuse to use it.”
“ I heard Dayton has a fetish for fucking them until they bleed. He’ll enjoy putting this pretty boy in his place.”
“You hear that?” Jasper pulled out of Todoroki’s mouth, pinching his nose to force him to swallow every last drop. “Maybe if you’re good for them, they’ll do you a favor by killing you and putting you out of your misery.”
“Don’t make me,” Todoroki whispered through a throat that felt like sandpaper. There’s the coppery tinge of blood on his tongue and he doesn’t know what wound it’s from. Every inch of his body is in pain, so much that he could be bleeding from every pore and still not know. “Please ’m s’rry-“
“Your apologies won’t make any of the pain stop,” the voice said from behind him. The rest of the men reverently fall silent from respect of their leader, the one that had no name and no face. A hand brushed over his bound ankle, trailing up his bruised calf and pressing curiously into the wounds there. “They’ve already paid good money for a chance to be you. You should be grateful that you’re worth this much to them.”
He sobbed at that, unable to stop the tears even though he knew that at least three of the men got off on his tears.
“You’ll be obedient for them, won’t you? You’ll be a good boy because you know what will happen otherwise.”
12/14/15??
It’s Thursday.
Or maybe it’s not.
Maybe it's Friday and he’s slept through the day.
Maybe it’s Wednesday and he never woke up.
He lies there and his mind is a foggy wasteland. His body is gone, there’s no heat or cold, no pain… he feels comfortable, floating away like a cumulus cloud, light and airy…
Shouto doesn’t know how long he lays there because time means nothing to him now. All he knows is that he’s calm and unconcerned with anything that would happen to his body.
There’s voices from far away, underwater. One harsh and the other pitchy and nervous, Bakugou and Midoriya? They call for him and maybe he answers but he blinks next and he’s in the common room, wrapped up in a blanket on the couch with a steaming bowl in front of him.
It’s half eaten, why is it half eaten, was he eating from it?
He doesn’t know and it hurts to think so he closes his eyes and sinks away.
When he’s like this, he doesn’t know who he is or what he’s doing or what’s going on around him. He used to sink away when his father hurt him too much to bear when he was a kid and that trick came in especially handy when he was held captive with demons that would use and abuse him every waking moment of the day.
He doesn’t know why he’s drifting away now of all times when there’s no threats and no pain. No one is hurting him or using him but he still feels nothing.
When he finally comes back to his body, he’s outside on the porch steps, huddled in an oversized hoodie with Bakugou plastered against his side. There’s an arm around him, big and strong, and Todoroki leans against it as tiredness creeps up on him.
“There you are, Halfie,” Bakugou murmurs against his hair and pulls him in closer. “I was fuckin’ getting worried, you bastard.”
Ever since he got back, Bakugou has been uncharacteristically clingy, sticking to his side like extra strength gorilla glue. He and Midoriya often take turns skipping class so he’s never alone for too long. Todoroki doesn’t know if it’s guilt that makes them do it or some semblance of pity but he likes their company too much to tell them to stop.
“I’m tired,” he whispers in response across the damp skin of Bakugou’s shoulder, pressing his forehead against the heat radiating from the other boy.
“Then go the fuck to sleep,” comes the harsh reply, but the arm tightens around him and then he’s being pulled in closer until all he smells is burnt caramel.
Todoroki listens and closes his eyes.
0
“I have to go out,” Todoroki announced, standing above him with his blank face and mismatched eyes that blinked all slow like a cat.
“So?” Bakugou looked up from his homework, face twisted up in a snarl. “The fuck does that have to do with me, Halfie?”
“ Can you come with me? I don’t want to go alone.”
“The fuck? No! Go ask Deku or one of the other extras! I have better things to do.”
“It’ll only take a few minutes-”
“Go the fuck away! I already said no.”
Todoroki didn’t bother staying and arguing more, knowing by then when he could bug Bakugou into giving him what he wanted and when it was a lost cause.
He turned away and didn’t tell him the strange dread that he had been feeling all day, like something terrible was going to happen. If he were home instead of at the dorms, he would assume that his father was in a worse mood than usual but he wasn’t at home and so he was at a loss for the fear that he felt.
Bakugou didn’t know it then, but two days later, he would stay awake for hours at night, thinking and regretting and beating himself up for not saying, “Fine, Icyhot, I’ll fucking go with you,” that day when he asked.
Maybe if he had gone with him, Todoroki would never have gone missing.
Maybe he would come back to the dorms later that day, tired from a day of chores but overall happy, and go to sleep in his own bed, safe and healthy.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Maybe if Bakugou had cared a little more, had tried a little harder, Todoroki would never have gone missing that day.
And maybe Bakugou wouldn’t spend the rest of his life regretting his decision to say no.