Chapter Text
There’s something to be said about the beauty of a light so bright that it makes every speck of dust in the air sparkle. And there’s something to be said about the calm that comes from the nursing home area of a hospital, the quiet of it, dare he say, the utter stillness and silence of it.
He heard, once, that using the word “quiet” to describe a hospital (or maybe it’s an emergency room?) is bad luck. Though he’s not sure if he got such an impression from local or external media, he would like to think the principal is still the same. That, once something is pointed out, the thing to initiate its opposite will occur.
A quiet emergency room, flooded with those from a villain attack.
A quiet issue, thrown into getting better.
One way or another, he steps into his mother’s hospital room and glances around. The neatly-made bed, the quaint counter top unit to the right, the pleasant desk and the well-oriented view from the small two-person table next to the window.
It’s the afternoon, so it makes sense that his mother is seated where she normally is. A glance at the clock reveals it’s about the same time he prefers to visit her, if not edging a bit late for accruing the most out of the visiting hours.
He’s pretty sure he’s not technically supposed to be here, anyway. It doesn’t much matter. The hallways were empty; they usually are. No one is here to scold him, nor was anyone there when he informed his father he was to come visit her. He’d agreed, not that Shoto would have given him the time of day had he argued. The only way to stop him would be to do so physically— which Shoto is certain is an era of his father now gone dormant, at the very least.
He slips into the room. When he slides the door shut behind him, it gives way to a hollow click— one that reminds him of knocking on a hollow log. In which case, he wonders which area would be the tree, and which would be the sky.
He remembers his mother calling the sky beautiful, some weeks ago.
“Mom?” he says, as if calling for her attention, but she’s already giving it to him. Her smile is pleasant, eyes shut like she’s tired or simply knows the world too well to benefit from having them open.
“Shoto,” she replies, “It’s so nice to see you.”
Even through the veil of a beautiful sunshine, Shoto can’t help but categorize that as a lie. A fib, at the least— perhaps the operative word isn’t so much see as it is nice. The figurative manner of speaking, just the same way he would say It’s nice to see you when he was young, to old relatives or friends of the family, when it really wasn’t him taking pleasure in the personal interaction. The same way, he supposes, of even when he came here for the first time, and said, It’s good to see you, Mom, because even though it had hurt him to physically see just how much she had seemed to age— it had been nice, at least, to be in the same room as her again.
It had been nice, at the very least, not to be the only one in a room marred by the same event.
It had been nice, at the very least, not to be alone.
“It’s nice to see you, too,” he says. His voice, still graveled and raspy and sore from the previous night, pulls tight over the air in front of him, and the only thing he can imagine is sheet music. Handwritten, imperfect, done by an amateur or a child in an arts class, but done, all the same. And he remembers, so distinctly, the whistling calm of the Shakuhachi’s breath, as it caters to the gentle and the sick and the grieving, as it describes a place in a storm so unintelligible only those in the middle of the silence can see its beauty.
His eyes burn, his cheeks flush— he feels them prickle with heat— and as his mouth pulls into an expression he can only assume is pained, tears start to fall from his eyes.
“Mom,” he says again, and maybe that’s better. Maybe this time, though his voice sounds arguably closer to a child’s, the message gets across that something isn’t right. That although he says it, he’s scared— under the circumstances of his own recovery, of something his mother had needed so dearly yet he himself can’t accept for himself, something that had practically changed the very core of who he knew as his mother over the approximate decade she’d been away…
She had changed, yes, but she was still the same.
She was just not sick, anymore.
Not as badly as she used to be.
His mother looks at him with eyes that reflect his own, whether it be by the pain or the empathy, and he shouldn’t be surprised by the tenderness in which she says, “What’s the matter, Shoto?”
What’s the matter?
He’s a child again, sitting with her in the garden, small as he is in her lap, as they look over the spread of the deep blue flowers and the park across the road where the kaki trees bloom, plentiful with fruit. He’s a child again, sneaking away with his sister to play in the reeds of a nearby forest creek, the sound of singing frogs and crickets chirping, the annoying buzz of a mosquito or two, a biting fly or the gulp of a fish out of the fresh water.
He’s a child again, being taught about the world as his mother makes dinner, as he clings to her leg with a bruise on his right knee so fierce from falling, but he doesn’t feel it. Between the cold of her skin, and the cold of his own, it’s soothed, and numbed. He’s a child again, pressing his face into the fabric of her skirt as she tells him stories, stirring a pot of soba noodles, and murmuring little things under her breath, counting the minutes and leaving the packages of all the ingredients she uses on the counter to be cleaned up later.
He wishes he could remember those stories.
“Mom,” he says, and this time, he tastes the salt of his tears. He reaches up with a hand— unsteady from his emotion— and wipes the wet streams away from his eyes, away from his cheeks. He sniffles, as gross as it is— as disgusting, his brain cuts, disgusting don’t tell her, but he says it. He mutters, for the first time, an admission of a fault or a confession to God that he did something wrong, a plea for forgiveness, and he says, “I have an eating disorder.”
Arguably, he had been expecting something. He doesn’t know what, exactly, but it’s something— something bitter and tart and crass, something overt and explicit in flavor, something sharp and biting and sour like bile. The look of disgust, in another person’s eyes, and he remembers walking in on his mother the night he’d been burned, seeing the pure terror in her eyes. As scared as she was, he’d been afraid, too.
He is afraid, too.
But she doesn’t look disgusted, or terrified, or afraid. She doesn’t look much of anything, and for a minute, all he can do is wonder if he has abruptly been rendered completely unable to read facial expressions, rather than the difficulty he had grown to adopt after every pair of human eyes he met held the same anguish he’d seen that day so many years ago.
Eye contact was avoided to protect himself. Because the last time he looked someone directly in the eyes for a little too long…
His mother whispers, “Oh, Shoto.”
It sounds like a blessing.
She reaches out, holds her hands out to him, the same way she would do when he was little and hurt— the same way she would do, and he would run to her, and collapse into her chest and cry, or try not to cry because big boys don’t cry, and probably cry anyway.
Shoto avoids those memories— avoids the feeling of being wrong, somehow, for being unable to hold in his emotions. He walks slowly to her, and when he’s close enough for her to touch, she takes his hands and guides him down.
“Sit, sweetheart,” she says, and he does.
On the floor, in front of her, he sits. And her grasp goes from his hands to his head, where she cradles it in her palms and strokes the thinning hair out of his eyes, brushes it so his bangs are more evenly parted from his eyes, and he’s going to have to fix it later to hide his scar better, but for now, he doesn’t mind.
With the soothing breath of a mother hushing her baby, she pets his head, strokes the back of his hair, cards her delicate but effective fingers through the strands that he can’t so much as brush through without losing what feels like half— and she guides him, once more, to turn his head and rest it in her lap.
He’s a child again, harboring a fever, curled beneath the heavy covers of his futon with a damp washcloth on his forehead, and as delirious as he is, he doesn’t feel unsafe. For his mother is there, stroking his cheek and replacing the cloth regularly, singing a soft song about sakura trees.
But he’s also here.
Sitting on the floor of a hospital room, his head in the lap of his mother, as she switches between soothingly petting and adjusting his hair to stroking her hand upon his cheek, wiping the tears away as if her hands are just tissues, uncaring that her thumb brushes his scar. He can see her skin, though he can’t feel the touch— not past a mild numb pressure, the same way it would feel if his hand fell asleep and he couldn’t wake it back up, again.
He used to think the eye had died. He’d thought he’d gone blind. Having bandages wrapped so deftly around his head, covering his vision— something so present and inorganic for so long will do that to a kid.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” Shoto says, breath hitching. She shakes her head, though, and simply tucks his hair behind his ear.
“No,” she says, “Don’t be sorry, it wasn’t your fault.”
“I’m getting help,” he tells her. “I’m… there’s an eating disorder unit here, and… and I might not be able to visit you for a while, and…”
“That’s okay. I understand.”
“I’m scared, Mom. I don’t know what’s going to h-happen.”
He lifts his head, just enough, to look at her face. She’s smiling, though her expression is sad. Her eyes look tired, and she looks worn, but even still, she looks genuinely happy and healthy and better than before, and he knows that’s the point. Even on the hard days, they’re better. She told him as much.
But she’s smiling.
“I know you’re scared,” she says to him, a tone so gentle and protective, his nerves soothe a little bit naturally. “I know you’re scared, I was, too. But you don’t have to be, because they’re going to take care of you. They’re going to help you. And I know that’s probably scary for you, too, but it’s worth it in the end. I promise, Shoto, it’s worth it.”
“What if I can’t get better?” Shoto asks. He swallows the thickness of mucus and saliva in his throat, trying not to let his breath waver with every urge of his lungs to hiccup. “What if I’m gonna be like this forever? What if—”
“You won’t,” says his mother. “You’ll get better. I got better.”
Shoto grips the fabric of her pants. It’s soft, almost velvet-smooth, which is more than he can say for even his most comforting sweater. He hopes he isn’t getting tears on the fabric of her clothing, but he probably is. His chin is wet.
He thinks about those words: I got better.
“They said…” Shoto trails off, taking a second to swallow again. “They said that— eating disorders can be genetic. That… something about fifty-six percent, o-or… Mom, did you—?”
Even without saying anything in response, the expression on her face reads the answer loud and clear. She is sympathetic, not empathetic— she, herself, has not gone through this, though their experiences aren’t too dissimilar nonetheless. She shakes her head, softly. As grateful as Shoto is for that, as grateful as he is for her not suffering this way, he’s also frightened.
How could he have possibly controlled his left side, a trait he got from his father— with his eating issues, another trait from his father?
“I never did, no,” she says. Even though he’d gathered that much, he appreciates the verbal confirmation. Sometimes he gets body language wrong.
“Did… did Dad…?” he doesn’t mean to trail off. It just kind of happens. It’s a physical impossibility, his brain tells him, that such a thing relates in the slightest— that he relates in the slightest— to a man he grew up to despise more than hatred itself could surmise.
“When I met your father,” his mother begins, in such a tone that Shoto doesn’t know if this is going to connect to the topic, “He was such a hard man. Back then, he would always be more interested in work than food. Sometimes, once we got married, it would be impossible to get him to eat anything at all. He was determined to be Number One. He still is, I suppose— though I believe he’s gotten better, too.
“I don’t know if your father has an eating disorder. I don’t know if he ever did. But I know his habits certainly weren’t normal, and as much as I tried to talk to him about it, his defensiveness pushed me away from the conversation entirely. I think he was afraid, too. I just don’t know what of.”
With the tears mostly calmed, and his overwhelmed state mostly sated, he finds himself resting his head back in his mother’s lap. She allows him to; in fact, she’d never so much as hinted that she wanted him to remove himself at all. So he stays with her, even though he feels sick to his stomach, and he has the urge to vomit— or make himself vomit, at the very least. And he closes his eyes, and focuses on the feeling of her fingers in his hair, or on his cheek. Or the sensation of a sturdy, unwavering palm, the hand of a parent, under his chin, along his jaw. The sensation of cold fingertips, unmarked by her quirk, rubbing small circles behind his ear.
He thinks about dreams. And he thinks, truly, that there’s something to be said— as small as it may be— about being able to think, in general.
“Life is such a gift, Shoto,” his mother says to him, entirely unprompted. He contemplates asking if she’s psychic, but abstains. She smiles down at him, again, with this tranquility to her being. A peace, a presence of mind— “It’s rude not to accept a gift.”
Shoto’s grip on her pants leg tightens. He shuts his eyes, again, his pitiful attempt to will away the feeling of crying again, though there’s only so much he can manage or accomplish now.
And that, he believes, is alright.
“Mom,” he says, “What do you find beautiful today?”
The noise she makes, the hum— it’s delightful. A coo though it may be, one understood by mother and child, it’s enough for them both. “My son,” she says. It’s shock enough for him to open his eyes— to try and gaze up at her, with a bizarre feeling squirreling away in his chest, behind his heart, threading in his veins. “My beautiful baby boy.”
Her hands slip under his jaw, and for a final time, she guides him. To sit with an upright posture, to tip his head down, though no longer have it resting in her lap. Her hands are like protective armor along his cheeks, the sides of his face, fingers near the upper back of his neck.
She leans down. She presses a kiss to the top of his head, to the crown— the part of his hair, where red becomes white and vice versa.
“Shocchan, my baby,” she says.
She has a scent— one of lotuses, and cotton, and trees.
“I love you.”
It sounds like forgiveness.
“I love you, too, Mom.”
Fortunately, the active crying stopped long before he left her hospital room. Even so, he’s not in the clear. As he trails down the hall back to the elevators, he wipes his cheeks free of stray tears. He fears his eyes may be red. He doesn’t pass by a bathroom or a mirror, however, so he can’t exactly check.
He takes the elevator down to the ground floor, where he’d left his father to deal with… whatever it is the hospital staff would deem necessary.
Shoto tries not to feel bitter about the irony of becoming a patient at this hospital, no matter how temporary.
The elevator chimes, alerting the destination. He steps off, tugging his sleeves down over his hands. His issue with showing skin may be new, but it’s intense. He wonders if he’ll ever truly feel comfortable wearing just a tee-shirt again.
It takes a moment of wandering down the halls to rediscover the waiting room, though once that rediscover is made, it doesn’t take long to find his father. It’s kind of hard to miss such a large man— not to mention the fire, should he choose to don it particularly proudly at any time.
Endeavor, however, has relaxed into one of the chairs of the waiting room. He has a small notebook open in his hands, where he scans the interior and whatever is written there.
It’s only when Shoto gets closer, that he recognizes the small notebook.
The beige cover reeks of intrusion.
“What are you doing?” Shoto asks. He hates the way his raw voice wavers. He hates the way it tapers off.
Endeavor glances up. He closes the notebook. He waves the notebook, ever so slightly, once, in the air, like a gesture to its presence. “Sorry,” he says. “It fell out of your bag, and I saw what was inside… curiosity got the better of me.”
Endeavor sets the notebook down on top of the bag in the chair beside him.
“It wasn’t my place,” he adds, like that makes it better— like acknowledging the obvious makes Shoto take less issue with it.
“Don’t look at my stuff,” Shoto huffs. He’s too mad to say anything else. He snatches up the notebook and bag, and sits down in the seat beside his father— to save himself from the budding weakness in his legs, if nothing else. He certainly doesn’t do it to appease his old man, that’s for sure.
Shoto looks down at the bag, and the notebook. He tries to read the front cover, where he knows he wrote his name, but he can’t make sense of it. None of the characters register.
Giving up, he drops the notebook onto his bag, which rests in his lap. The pencil hooked in the spine of the journal threatens to roll off; he catches it before it does.
“I used to do that, too, you know,” Endeavor says. Shoto looks at him.
“What, drop pencils?”
“No. Keep journals.”
“…oh.”
Shoto lowers his gaze.
The waiting room smells offensively sterile.
There’s a woman at the desk to the right of where they sit. Shoto thinks she keeps giving the two of them glances, but he can’t be too certain. He tries not to look at her, anyway.
“Am I supposed to feel bad for you, now?” Shoto asks. “Is that what I’m supposed to do?”
“I don’t think you’re supposed to do anything,” Endeavor replies. “I just thought I’d tell you. In case it made you feel any better.”
Shoto bites his tongue at the urge to say he feels worse. Instead, he says, “I don’t feel any better.”
Endeavor takes it the same, nonetheless.
“So I got this from you?” Shoto asks. “Because whatever genetic variant you have makes you predisposed to be such a perfectionist, you have to stop eating?”
“Aren’t you the same way?”
“Don’t compare me to you.”
“You’re the one who brought it up.”
When Shoto blinks, it feels like the weight of the world tacks on to the corners of his eyelids. He thinks of the scale. What did Yaoyorozu do with it? He doubts he will ever get the chance to know.
“We still have to check you in,” Endeavor says, like this is the first conversation they’re having all day. “I didn’t get any of the paperwork settled, because I was pretty sure they wouldn’t let you see your mother if I did.”
For a while, Shoto doesn’t know what to make of that. He picks at the cover of his notebook, at the corners of the pages within. When was the last time he read a book? When was the last time he did something for the fun of it?
“So, let me know when you’re ready, and we’ll go up to the desk and do that.”
Right.
Do that.
A morbid curiosity makes Shoto ask, “Did you ever make yourself throw up?”
“No,” Endeavor says. Shoto can’t tell if that’s the truth, or if it’s a lie. He decides he’d rather not know. “I’m pretty sure I never had an eating disorder. I wasn’t healthy, certainly, but it wasn’t an eating disorder.”
“That’s what I said, too,” Shoto says.
He flicks the cover of the notebook.
It comes with a sound.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” says his father. “Earlier. I was out of line, and—”
“You need to be more specific than that.”
Shoto is more than aware of the agitated look Endeavor gives him. He tries not to let it bother him, by simply keeping his attention to the ground.
Eventually, that’s enough to force Endeavor’s hand. To give in.
“When I blamed you for being sick,” Endeavor says. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
Even with how begrudgingly Endeavor had said it, the apology is still an apology. He doesn’t know how much faith he can put into it being genuine. His mother has a better outlook on the man than Shoto thinks he ever will.
He can’t say he particularly understands why.
…does that make him a bad person? Misguided, maybe? He doesn’t think so.
He doesn’t like that thought. He doesn’t like any of these thoughts. As much as he would like to say his father is redeemable somehow, just to feel better about himself, he can’t say such a thing— can’t so much as think such a thing— without feeling nauseous.
“I forgive you,” Shoto says, “Specifically for that. Everything else, I just can’t.”
Endeavor is quiet, for a second, before saying, “That’s fine.”
“That’s going to take time,” Shoto adds.
To which Endeavor replies, “You don’t have to forgive me.”
“I wasn’t asking your permission.”
“I know,” his father says. “I know.”
Growing up, Shoto was exposed to a very specific kind of environment.
Hardwood floors. Against his knees, caked in fallen sweat and tears, vomit-stained.
A culture, which he’d inherited from both his mother and his father, and a system of doing things which he still has yet to truly shake from his habits—
An image: in the plastered, muted screen of his memory, he is a child again. That child version of him curls up into a ball. That child version of himself whimpers, clenches his little fists. That child version of himself holds his stomach, and sobs.
— and sometimes, he wonders if he even wants to shake said habits. If he wants to rid himself of that culture, just in an expression of trying to eliminate what came with it.
He’s only five years old.
Already five years old.
With an inhale, Shoto reminds himself that was a decade ago.
But at the same time, he has to ask himself, who would he be without it?
What would become of him, if that did not exist?
In the end, all that’s left is to move forward.
Endeavor places a hand on Shoto’s shoulder.
Shoto flinches. Hard, but not as hard as he would have a month ago, or two months ago, or a year ago, or three years ago.
He’s still afraid. He thinks a part of him is still that child.
He thinks that part of him might never leave.
Not forever.
But it’ll get better, though.
Right?
“I think I’m ready,” Shoto says.
There’s a delay.
And then, with a tenderness Shoto only thought possible from his mother, he removes Endeavor’s grasp from his shoulder.