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Shouto was tired. He was tired of suffering, tired of his family issues, tired of the silence in his hospital room.
Sure, his classmates, Fuyumi and Natsuo visited almost daily, but during the nights the silence was deafening.
Alone in that room, even the sound of the press outside was drowned out by his own mind, by the thoughts that just wouldn't leave.
The thoughts of his brother, and how he'd told everyone. How he'd told everyone about their family, about their father. About the things that he was just coming to terms with, about the things he was trying to forget. But now everyone knew. Everyone knew how weak he was, everyone knew the things he'd been through.
And alone in that white hospital room the only time he found any comfort was when his friends and siblings visited, but even then he found more things to be tired of.
He was tired of the way his injuries prevented him from speaking, and tired of receiving bad news about hero society and the word in general.
But most of all, Shouto was tired of being pitied. He was tired of the way his friends treated him like he was fragile, tired of the sad glances he got from the nurses, tired of the way people spoke about him online, saying things like, "Poor Shouto" and "I hope the youngest Todoroki is okay".
Being in the spotlight had always made him uncomfortable, though Shouto guesses it's a given when your father such a famous pro hero. He could deal with being dragged to hero galas and other events that he could easily slip away from, but now that so many people were talking about him and his family everywhere, there was no escape. No way to hide and push his feelings down far enough to forget them, every time he tried he'd just be reminded through the notifications on his phone and the murmurs outside his door.
He supposed that he should just get used to it, this was his life now.
To him, the internet was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing through how much it helped him cope (online help forums, tips on coping mechanisms, etc), a curse through how quickly things spread, and how slowly they disappeared. Sure, there were trends that barely lasted 24 hours, but when it was something this big involving a famous hero, there's no chance of it being simply brushed to the side to be replaced just as quick as it spread.
Especially now, with how unstable society was as a hole. Sure, Shouto still hasn't left the hospital, but he's seen the videos. He's heard the news, the doubt spread through citizens. He's heard the way they question things, from why do heroes get away with so much? to why do villains even exist in the first place? And honestly, Shoto agrees with them, hell, he probably knows better than anyone (other than his own family and all the villains out there) just how fucked up the hero system is.
At this point, all Shouto wanted to do was run. To leave and go somewhere else, someplace where heroes and villains and quirks didn't exist. To someplace where he didn't have to worry about the way society treated him, to someplace shit like this didn't happen in the first place.
A place like that sounded like paradise, but of course, that's only the stuff of dreams. Dreams that he wished could last forever, but were always rudely interrupted by the haunting nightmares and anxiety that filled his mind. He had always slept fairly little, keeping up with his harsh training routine, but now? After everything that had happened? Sleep was rare. And the eyebags that all his classmates sported showed that they too had the same issue.
God, they were just kids.
Kids who were pulled into a war by a government system that obviously doesn't care about them.
Kids who had gone through more than most adults ever would and ever should in their full lifetime.
Kids who's entire lives had been changed, by injuries, trauma and fuck knows what else.
Kids who had already gone through enough with the regular attacks, so why? Why did it have to be them? Why did they have to suffer so much when the adults responsible were sitting back and watching?
Watching as their oh-so-valuable heroes and students were killed, injured, and hurt, mentally and physically, barely caring, because to them, heroes were replaceable. Quirks were becoming stronger by generation, a fact that Shouto was basically living proof of. If a hero or student died, it would be easy for the Hero Public Safety Commission to simply find and train a child with a suitable quirk to replace them.
Life and death is natural, something that can't be avoided. A fact that's the same throughout all living things, from plants, to animals, to humans.
And that's all the so-called 'Safety Commission' saw them as. Animals, pets, things that can be easily found, trained, showed off, killed, and replaced.
It was a brutal cycle, one that had been going on for years, but of course nobody saw this.
Because of course, the Commission was trusted by the public, the public who had been manipulated into believing that society was fine from the moment it was formed. People were labelled as villains, heroes, vigilantes. Certain types of people were frowned upon, others praised for their 'hard work' and forgiven for their mistakes.
The cycle went on and on, and Shouto was glad that it was finally broken, it just hurts that he had to play such a big part in its collapse. Sure, he knew that it was going to happen at some point, and of course he knew that one way or another he would be involved, but it was just the truth that he had accepted as something that came with the choice of becoming a hero (not that he really had a choice in the first place). It was just something that he had accepted and pushed to the back of his mind so that he could get on with life. Something that he had pushed away in hopes that he could forgive his father, that he could find ways to get better and heal, even just a little bit.
But when did anything ever go the way he hoped? He had learnt from a young age that you don't always get what you want, that you cant always be lucky, that things aren't always as they seem. And its these realisations that led him to bottling up his emotions and feelings, pushing them down so that he could find it easier to just accept that life wasn't easy, and it never will be. The scar on his face was a clear reminder of this, and was something he had hated for so long.
Recently, though, he wore it with pride. Pride in the fact that he made it this far, pride in that he was getting better. Pride in the way that he couldn't accept that he wasn't okay, and had no shame in admitting it. Sure, that last one was hard and took a little more time, but he felt as though he was slowly breaking from the cage he had built when he was younger.
The cage that now has returned, and feels tighter and more suffocating than before. He wasn't sure if he'll ever be able to escape it this time, the chains and locks that had built around it only growing stronger with every rumour, every post about him, every negative thought that crossed his oh so unstable mind.
He felt like he was going to break. He felt like he would shatter, alone in that cage with no way out. He felt that if one more thing happened he would lose it and go insane. With everything that's already happened to him, he's sure he's way past halfway there. It's only a matter of time and how.
And so, alone in that dark room, Shouto let out a small, dry giggle.
"Congrats, Touya. You want to kill me? Let's see if I can beat you to it."