Chapter 4 - Support
Sometimes, when he’s feeling especially melancholy, Shinsou Hitoshi will find his mind wandering to the first time someone had ever put a muzzle on him.
He doesn’t remember the details that well, it was right after his quirk came in so he’d only been four, half a year away from five.
He remembers, in a sort of objective way, that it’d hurt, and that the walls had been yellow.
He remembers the fear and confusion a lot better.
He remembers his Dad, screaming at his mother to stop, before ripping it off his face.
He remembers a distinct lack of understanding when the police came.
(Because his mother had stopped alright, stopped so completely and absolutely that her heart had stopped with her.)
He can vaguely remember hugging his sister and crying, though that might have been a different time. It’s not as if that night was his Mother’s first instance of cruelty after all.
He has not thought about his sister in a long time.
He should probably be more upset, to find out that she’s dead.
That she-
She…
He ought to feel more broken up about this, be crying or something. Instead he just feels sort of empty, a bit floaty.
Sitting in the back of a police cruiser, he almost feels relieved, because if the police hadn’t come to tell him, then he’d still be starving in a locked closet.
He’s a horrible brother.
He barely remembered her, she would have been completely different.
He’ll never get to know.
He feels sick.
“You with me kid?”
The officer from earlier is crouched next to him.
Oh, they must have stopped.
He leans forward and vomits.
‘One of the perks of being invisible,’ Toru thinks as she kicks a can along the sidewalk. ‘Is that no one can see that you’ve been crying,’
The street is mostly deserted at this time in the evening anyways, but she’s not sure she would have the courage to go out if her no doubt bloodshot eyes and probably bright red nose were on display.
Or maybe not, maybe she’s pretty when she cries, like movie characters who just stand there with trembling lips and wide eyes and perfectly pale faces as tears stream down their faces.
It doesn’t really matter.
She just needed to get out, away from the staunch darkness in their house and the absolute silence of Mom and the loud cries of Dad.
It’s weird to hear her Dad cry, it’s unsettling. But she would never ever even think of asking him to stop, because if anything is worth crying for then it's got to be losing a sister, or a kid in her parents case she guesses.
She’s walked to the pier, there’s no one around.
The ocean smells nice.
She hasn’t gone to school.
Probably a good thing, she wouldn’t be able to focus if she tried.
“Ha, I’ve missed all the boring stuff anyways,”
She can imagine Morie looking at her with a perfectly straight face and saying ‘your welcome for that’ in the most widely sarcastic voice ever.
She laughs.
And laughs.
Leaning against the railing until she’s slamming onto the ground and laughing hysterically.
(She’ll have bruised knees tomorrow.)
The world is blurry.
Hitoshi ended up staying with a hero.
They had been apologetic, saying that their house wasn’t really guest ready (there were dishes on the counter and very little food in the fridge. They’d ordered takeout, he hadn’t eaten any.) but they had an emergency foster license and a spare bedroom that he could use until they found somewhere more permanent for him.
He feels empty, cracked open.
He lays in bed and doesn’t sleep.
As a hero, especially one that works mainly in the ocean, Selkie has seen a lot of weird things, so the animated pile of clothes, (invisible person, his brain quickly guesses, he’s inclined to agree), doesn’t give him much pause.
The hysterical sobbing does though.
“Hello there,”
He’s sitting cross-legged a few feet away from them, because he knows that dramatic mutations like his can be frightening or disturbing, but he’s a hero, so of course he’s going to at least try to help.
The sobbing doesn’t stop, but it does quiet slightly.
How to continue this?
“Would you like to talk about it?”
“What?”
“Whatever it is that’s got you crying so hard, would you like to talk about it? If not I have some snacks on my ship, might be some tea too if you’re interested,” He’s trying not to cross any boundaries, but they sound pretty young, and while it’s not common, sometimes people come to the pier with the intent to disappear.
“Here, I’m a pro-hero,” he pulls out his license and holds it out in their direction. “Mainly rescue work, but I deal with villains on occasion,”
The clothes seem to lean forward.
“Selkie?”
“Yep! That’s me! Sea Rescue Hero: Selkie at your service!” he winks and puts his chin in his hands, like they’re buddies having a gossip session instead of a hero and a potential jumper. “So, mind telling me what you’re doing out here?”
“I- I’m sorry if I disturbed you, I just needed to get out of the house for a bit,”
Well that set off warning bells of an entirely different kind.
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
A little blunt, but sometimes that’s needed.
“Um, I wouldn’t want to bother you,”
“Nonsense! I asked if you wanted to talk about it after all!” he smiled, doing his best to make it seem warm and comforting. “If you don’t want to talk about it that’s fine, but I’d like to make sure you’re ok,”
Often, if Hitoshi can’t sleep it’s because his brain is echoing with the taunting voices of his teachers or classmates.
Or any one of the numerous guardians he's had over the years.
Villain.
Liar.
Monster.
Usually he gets angry, tell the voices in his head to fuck right off and then scrapes the anger from the surface of his thoughts and tempers it into spite.
‘Fuck you, I’ll be a hero,’
But now…
Monster.
Monster.
Monster. Monster. Monster. Monster. Monster. Mon-
How can he be a hero if he couldn’t even save his sister?
Sure, logically he couldn’t have known she needed saving, but he never even tried to reach out! He’s had years, he could have at least tried.
Besides, how could he be anything other than a monster when he can’t even bring himself to cry?
Maybe everyone else was right.
How could he possibly be a hero?
Why is this what’s bothering him?
His sister that he hasn’t even tried to see or talk to in years is dead and all he can think about is heroics.
How can he be so selfish? So horrible?
Why-?
With a sharp inhale, he curled onto his side and pressed his hands into eyes.
Why can’t I just cry? What’s wrong with me?
Toru isn’t an idiot.
She knows that stranger danger is a thing, that she has to be extra careful because it’d be very hard to find, or very easy to hide, her if something ever happened, she knows that you shouldn’t trust someone just because they’re a pro-hero.
But it’s all just so much right now.
And Selkie is sitting there, with a smile that looks kind of silly and he offered to listen and-
She tells him everything.
He listens and nods at points and looks a little heartbroken through most of it. And then he gives her a hug and walks her home to her parents who were beside themselves with worry.
“I’m sorry Mom I didn’t think-”
“It’s ok, it’s ok, we’re just glad you’re safe,”
“Thank you for escorting our daughter home,”
And since her mother had always defaulted back to quite politeness whenever she’s not sure what to do, they invite Selkie in for tea.
Toru thinks he’s probably an amazing hero because with a few gentle words and subtle prodding she’s suddenly telling her parents everything too.
There are a lot of tears and it’s a little awkward with Selkie right there. But she needed to talk to them, before the silence and the darkness and the tension and the all encompassing grief that weighed each of them down broke something irreparable in their relationship with each other.
Nothing feels ok yet, but Selkie leaves and they sit on the couch and watch a movie, (not one of Morie’s favorites, not one she hated either, it’s too soon for that), and it feels better.