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Here is a map with your name for a capital, here is an arrow to prove a point: we laugh and it pits the world against us, we laugh, and we’ve got nothing left to lose, and our hearts turn red, and the river rises like a barn on fire.
— “Saying Your Names” by Richard Siken
On the other side of the thick pane of glass that separates them, Touya coughs up ash.
This is when Keigo knows that his heart is beyond repair.
“Fuck, birdie. Didn’t think you’d get clearance to see me,” Touya rasps. His face is disfigured beyond recognition, hair a snowstorm around the ashen grey of his face. Keigo still thinks he’s beautiful, in that horrible way that only broken things can be. Keigo aches to pick up his broken pieces and glue them back together, even if his fingers would become ensnared in the tangle of his heart and begin to bleed.
“Neither did I,” Keigo murmurs, sitting primly in the steel chair bolted firmly to the ground. His fingers twitch in his lap, wishing fervently that he could reach through the glass and cradle Touya’s marred cheeks in his palms. “I’ve been suspended, you know. It’s not like I’m in the good graces of hero society.”
“I suppose we have that in common.” Touya’s lips, or the charred remains of them, curl into a feral grin.
The seat Touya is strapped to looks supremely uncomfortable: hard-backed, thick steel restraining his limbs. He’s wearing the prison-issued uniform of stark white, the garment shapeless and baggy, hanging off his frame in all the wrong places. Keigo laughs derisively at himself for noticing such trivial details.
There are heavy quirk-suppressant cuffs shackling Touya’s wrists together, as if the walls and ceilings of his cell weren't lined with guns and censors of every imaginable kind aimed to put Dabi down if he so much as thought of using his quirk. It’s almost barbaric, the way in which villains are maimed and shackled. A show of the government’s strength in the face of a villain’s weakness. Keigo wonders, absently, if he would be treated the same way if he had strayed a little too far from the path that the HSPC set out for him.
“Suspended, huh?” Touya barks, hysterical laughter bubbling in his chest and spilling out of his lips unbidden. “HSPC bastards instructed you to fuck shit over, and you’re getting punished for doing exactly that. Fuckin’ typical. ”
Touya’s tone is careless, though the both of them know this conversation is being recorded and likely monitored. But Keigo’s beyond giving a fuck about what the HSPC thinks about him anymore. The HSPC was already crumbling when Keigo was ordered to infiltrate the League; with half of the Commission's members dead or injured now, it’s safe to say that whoever may be watching this conversation isn’t too pressed about the specificities of what is exchanged during it. Japan is too busy getting their shit together and forming some semblance of a hero regulation body to care about what a half-dead villain and disgraced hero have to say to each other.
This prison cell is new and only just barely functioning, perhaps erected barely two weeks ago. It’s a cheap replica of the high-security cells of Tartarus, but only Dabi is housed within this miniature complex, presumably to minimise the impact of a planned riot and mass breakout like the last time. Other League villains are scattered across the country in similar fashion; Toga all the way up in Aomori, Spinner in Ishikawa, Mr Compress in Shimane. These temporary prisons will suffice, for now. Keigo doesn’t know what will become of them now that they’ve been detained. He can guess. He doesn’t want to guess.
“D’you know what they're going to do to me?” Touya asks. The question is incisively rhetorical, but there is a childlike curiosity in Touya’s voice that makes Keigo inhale sharply, hands curling into tight fists on his knees.
“You don’t know?” Keigo asks slowly, carefully. Touya’s eyes narrow as he tries to decipher any deceit underlying Keigo’ tone, before widening when he realises that Keigo is being completely genuine. Fleetingly, something flits across Touya’s expression, so vulnerable and terrified that Keigo falters. The mangled muscle that is the remains of Keigo’s broken heart aches and aches and aches for him.
Keigo has never believed that ignorance is bliss. Nobody could ever be truly ignorant, and nobody could ever be truly blissful. Keigo was once ignorant, but even as a child, he had been keenly aware that he was on the precipice of something. On the precipice of something that would change the trajectory and landscape of his life irreversibly. And when that had happened, and the HSPC had found him — well. Bliss was impossible after that.
So he doesn’t sugarcoat his next words. It’s the least he can do, telling the whole truth.
“I… I don’t know. They haven’t decided yet. If they’re going to put you on trial or not. Until then, well… They could do anything to you, really.”
Touya stills with the new piece of information. He lets his head fall back and thump quietly against the high back of his seat. Touya’s eyes scrunch up like he’s in acute, unidentifiable pain.
“So they’re going to be doing some messed-up shit to me, that’s what you’re trying to say. And you’ll let them do it.”
There’s vehement anger, frothing hotly in the venom of Touya’s voice. Keigo recoils under the force of it, even though he’s been on the receiving end of Touya’s anger too many times to count. It still stings, every time he’s faced with it. It stings because he is the one who should be angry. But Keigo cannot bring himself to be angry at this man — a man who he has loved, irrationally and purely, for as long as he’s known him.
This foolish love didn’t save either of them from damnation, did it?
“I have no power to stop them and you know this,” Keigo replies, tone measured but laced with a note of pleading. Forgive me, Keigo says silently, trying to impart the sentiment through the unbreakable glass that stretches between them. Forgive me for everything.
Touya does not respond. The air is thick with the intensity of Touya’s gaze, the weight of his silence. Keigo stares back desperately, nails digging angry half-moon circles into the heels of his palms.
“Do you remember,” Touya says finally, breaking the taut silence. His voice is low, the syllables slicing through the air like sharpened knives, “telling me that you’d be the one to kill me?”
Keigo shifts uncomfortably in his seat. He remembers the conversation so clearly that he sometimes wonders if it were real, and not a figment of his imagination; vividly, he recalls the acrylic tang of his blood in the air, the rhythmic cadence of the rain pattering around them, the press of Keigo and Touya’s lips together before they parted.
An automated, toneless voice rings out from above: your visiting time is over, please exit the doors to your right to be escorted outside. Keigo is grateful for the instructions; instinctively and immediately, he stands up. It’s almost nauseating how Keigo is still the government’s perfect little soldier. How he acquiesces to instructions from higher-ups so easily.
Touya is still staring at him through the glass, gaze sharp and cutting through the conflicting thoughts in Keigo’s mind. Fire dances in his eyes, unfurling like a splayed palm, the sapphire embers burning untamed within his irises. It’s what Keigo loves about Touya; the brightness with which he blazes with, unapologetic despite the sins he was steeped in. He was drawn to Touya’s fire, entranced by its destructiveness, its cruel beauty.
Fire had always been Keigo’s weakness, after all.
“You should’ve done it,” Touya spits, as Keigo stands up uncertainly, making his way to the now-open doorway. “You should’ve killed me. It would have been a mercy.”
Keigo knows, with a certainty that is harrowing, that this is the day that they will part for good.
Touya is standing on the banks of a very murky river, his feet buried in the briny silt where the waters meet the shore. The sun is setting, dangling like a ripe apple over the horizon. There is blood in the air.
He knows whose blood it is, and he knows, without looking down, that the river runs red with it. He knows that the world around him is on fire, that he is on fire, that he is burning and burning until there will be nothing left of him to turn to ash.
Touya no longer knows if he’s awake or if he’s asleep.
“You have to know something —”
“I told you, Hawks. I don’t. I don’t have the authority nor the connections to —”
“ Please, Aizawa. You’ve at least heard rumours about what they’re going to do to him —”
“He’s a villain, Hawks. A supervillain. A mass-fucking-murderer. Ethics don’t exist when it comes to him —”
“I still need to know. I need to know how bad it will be —”
“You can’t do this to yourself. There’s nothing you can do —”
“Anything, Aizawa. Anything, just so I can foolishly hope that he’ll be alright in the end —”
“Fine. But you didn’t hear it from me —”
“ Fuck, thank you so much, Aizawa —”
“Endeavour is going to see him, Hawks. He’s been allowed clearance to see him.”
If he walks along the banks of the river, Touya will reach a point where the river forks into two like the spearing of a snake’s tongue.
The side he is on is thick with blood. It’s a crimson that is reminiscent of his hair before it turned white. Before every semblance of innocence was burnt away from his being. But the other branch of the river runs clear, gurgling gently as it flows.
Touya will look at the other side of the river with a longing that is incomprehensible, bare feet burying into the muddy sand. If he stares hard enough, sometimes, the silhouette of a boy will swim into view. The boy will be as bright as the river — no, brighter than the river. He will shine with everything that is good in the world.
The boy, too, is burning.
Touya watches him, with a curiosity and sorrow that he cannot explain, and burns up with him.
“What the fuck, ” Enji hisses as he strides through the clinically lit corridors of the infirmary. A researcher jogs behind him, clipboard pressed to her chest, as her pleas for Enji to calm down increase in pitch and intensity. Enji pays her no heed as he turns sharply around a corner, attempting to shoulder through a door that reads authorised personnel only beyond this point. It doesn’t budge, however — it only bleeps in protest, the mechanism beside it flashing brightly, requesting for ID verification.
“Endeavour,” a voice rings out coolly from behind the heavy-set door. The researcher on Enji’s heels stops blabbering, sliding to a stop, barely catching herself from crashing at full force into Enji’s back. Someone on the inside of the room opens the door, revealing an oversized operating theatre. But instead of a bed at the centre of the room, a steel chair holds residence front and centre.
Strapped to it is a sedate Touya.
His head lolls and drool drips down his chin, forearms shackled to the arms of the chair with quirk-suppressant cuffs. His torso and thighs are restrained and strapped to the chair with steel fixtures. A hospital gown, innocent in its customary shade of pale blue, is drawn tightly around his body. His feet are bare against the white linoleum flooring.
“What are you doing to him?” Enji demands the doctor who’d just addressed him. The doctor simply snaps on surgical gloves with an air of pragmatic carelessness, wriggling his fingers to smooth out the wrinkles against his skin.
“A customary, post-incarceration physical examination. Nothing to get so riled up over.”
Enji takes a step forward. He draws himself up to his full height, impervious and mountainlike and emanating with rage, and snarls down at the doctor. The doctor looks thoroughly unperturbed by Enji’s wrath, matching his gaze squarely.
“Customary physical examination my ass. ”
The doctor almost looks amused. The various other nurses scattered across the room have stopped to watch the altercation with abject horror written all over their faces, frozen to the spot like statues.
“You were allowed clearance to see him at the imprisonment facility, not impede upon medical proceedings. Matsuda-kun, please guide Endeavour back outside.”
Matsuda, the frazzled researcher who’s bouncing on her toes behind Enji, nods nervously like a bobblehead. She places a tiny palm on Enji’s forearm, touch featherlight as if she’s terrified that he’ll burn her hand off if she dares to be any firmer.
“He doesn’t need to be unconscious for a medical examination,” Enji bites back in protest, shrugging the researcher’s hand off. Matsuda lets out a noise like a wounded animal and jumps backward so quickly that it’s a marvel that she doesn’t stumble over her own feet and face-plant onto the floor. “I know what you’re doing to him. And you — you can’t fucking —”
The doctor beckons a nurse over. The nurse creeps over to him, looking terrified, pushing a trolley containing standard blood test procedure equipment: a tourniquet, a butterfly needle, cotton wool, bandaids, and a collection tube.
“But we can,” the doctor grins, all semblance of coolness in his face dissipating, giving way to something cruel and shadow-laden. His face splits into something subhuman, maniacal, as he attaches the collection tube to the connector at the top of the needle. The nurse tightens the tourniquet above the crease of Touya’s elbow with trembling fingers, nodding affirmatively at the doctor as he prods the spot where Touya is to be pierced. Enji watches in detached horror as the doctor slides the needle underneath Touya’s skin, blood bursting into the collection tube like the first gush of summer rain. The doctor leaves the needle in the skin when the collection tube is full, unscrewing it and swirling the blood within it like a glass of aged wine.
“Oh, Endeavour,” the doctor sighs, dropping the blood sample into the tray atop the trolley. The nurse bursts forward to remove the needle from Touya’s forearm and hastily slaps a bandaid over it, before wheeling the trolley away out the back door of the operating theatre. “If only you knew.”
Touya needs to save the boy.
The desperation with which this realisation comes is almost unsettling. Touya feels his skin begin to drip off his bones, like melting candle wax. But his survival is an afterthought. All he can think is that this boy, this beacon of light shining on the other side of the river, deserves to live more than Touya does.
He dives into the murky depths of the river. The waters are as cold as ice, though, intuitively, he knows they’re meant to be warm. The current is so strong that he’s barely able to fight against it. Frantically, he kicks against the force of the current, his limbs screaming in protest as the iciness of the waters seeps into the very marrow of his bones. He can’t even make it to the fork in the river, where bloodied water gives way to crystal clear depths.
Touya’s legs have begun to go numb. The metallic tang of blood assaults his nostrils, clings to his scalp, settles like grime underneath his fingernails. He’s not getting anywhere. His feet are barely making splashes on the surface of the waters.
He’s drowning, he realises, far too late.
Perhaps he’d been drowning all along.
“Endeavour, fuck, where were you —”
“Aizawa, you’re not meant to be here —”
“I give less than a shit, Endeavour, just listen to me —”
“Do you know? Did you hear? What they’re doing to him —”
“I can guess, and I know it’s not pretty —”
“They’re not allowed to, right? They can’t do that —”
“It doesn’t fucking matter — Hawks is going to do something, and I have no idea what. But he’s going to come to you first, because he knows you got clearance to see —”
“Why is Hawks, of all people, getting involved —”
“ Shit, Endeavour, you’ve worked with him for months now —”
“I still don’t see how that has to do with him being invested in what happens to —”
“He’s in love with your son, Endeavour. Hawks is in love with your son.”
Save him, Touya thinks, even as he succumbs to the overwhelming pressure of the waters swirling around him. He feels the breath in his lungs falter, his chest and heart fighting desperately to keep him alive. But he has no energy left in his body to heave himself above the surface. He closes his eyes as begins to sink.
Save the boy.
Enji strides out of the agency, coat slung over his hero costume. The chill of the first frost of winter has finally gotten to him, gnawing at his skin despite the many thermal layers lining his skin. He buttons up his coat all the way to the top, sinking his chin into the warmth of the fabric.
He’s so preoccupied with his thoughts that the person barrelling headfirst into him takes him by surprise.
Enji prepares to attack, knees bending into an offensive stance, before he realises who it is. His entire body unclenches, the tenseness working its way out of his muscles, as he looks down at a distraught Keigo who’s making no attempt to unpeel himself from Enji.
Keigo is dressed haphazardly, the collar of his leather jacket sticking up at the wrong angle, t-shirt rumpled and reeking of sweat. His usual easy demeanour has been replaced by a desperation that Enji knows all too well. Something soft and fiercely paternal, something that he didn’t know he possessed, splinters at the sight of it.
Keigo sinks against Enji’s chest. Enji freezes as Keigo pillows his face against Enji’s sternum, hands fisting in Enji’s heavy coat. Enji gapes down at him in confusion muddled with shock, at a complete loss for what to do. Tentatively, Enji brings a hand to pat Keigo’s hair in what he deems a comforting movement, which prompts Keigo to bury his head further into Enji’s chest.
“Quirk experimentation,” Keigo mutters, his voice muffled. “Those sick fucks are experimenting on him.”
Enji sighs, mind wandering back to Aizawa’s conversation earlier that week. The noise makes his entire body heave, breath exiting his lungs in one sweeping exhalation. He places his hands on Keigo’s shoulders and pushes him off, his touch gentle but stance firm.
“And what can we do about it? They have no higher ups to answer to, no ethical considerations to adhere to. If he dies before the trial date is set, nobody will bat an eye. Nobody will mourn him.”
Keigo’s shoulders begin to shake as silent sobs wrack through his body. His fingers clasp Enji’s coat like a lifeline, talons incisive, threatening to rip through the padded fabric.
“I will mourn him. Doesn’t that count for anything?”
Enji rubs at his temple, warding away the headache that is threatening to burst beneath his skin.
“He’s a monster. A monster that I created. A monster that I, foolishly, thought I could save. Don’t you make the same mistake as me, Hawks.”
He places his hand on the crown of Keigo’s dipped head. A tiny gesture of reassurance. It’s all Enji can provide for him.
“You’re not the only one who loves him, Hawks.”
A hand closes around his forearm just when Touya has resigned himself to his death.
It heaves him backward and upwards, pulling him above the surface of the water. Touya chokes as oxygen enters his lungs again, his eyes stinging with salt. Another hand joins it, looping under his arms and lacing its fingers at his sternum, dragging him onto the muddy banks of the river.
Touya splutters, coughing up blood, the viscous red of it dribbling down his chin. He forces his eyes open, tears burning at the corners of his eyes.
“Were you trying to get yourself killed?” his saviour demands from somewhere above him. They lean over and their face enters Touya’s blurry vision. They’re so bright, shining like the molten gold of the sun, that Touya has to squint in the face of such beauty. Touya closes his eyes, heart pounding resoundingly loud in his ears, coughing up water and blood once more.
“You need to save the boy,” he manages to croak. He finds the strength in his body to point to the other side of the river. “He’s burning. You need to save him.”
His saviour laughs, a derisive, clattering laugh. Touya knows this laugh as well as he knows himself. He can trace the contours of the sound with his palm. He can pick through the rollicking hills and the rocky terrain of their voice without a map.
“If I could have saved him, I would have already.”
Touya forces himself into a sitting position, his head pounding with the tinny beginnings of a headache. Feebly, he cranes his neck to look at the boy on the other side of the river. He can make out the white of the boy’s hair, the defiant trembling of his tiny fists. The primal wail of agony that the boy lets out, as blue flames relentlessly consume his body, spirals through the still calmness of the air.
“It’s too late for him. But it’s not too late for you.”
Touya finally turns to face his saviour. He feels his heart constrict as he lets his eyes rove over the sharp curve of their jawline, the stubble that lines their chin, the warmth that creases their face into something lovely and gentle.
“Keigo,” Touya croaks. Keigo’s lips split into a grin.
“Come, now,” he says, holding out an upturned palm to Touya. “Let’s go home.”
“Excuse me, sir, but you’re not allowed to visit at this hour, much less without official authorization or clearance — Holy shit what’re you doing —”
“Your cooperation would be greatly appreciated —”
“What the fuck? Ouch, fuck! Okay, okay. Alright. What do you want from me —”
“Keep your hands up or I’ll have to —”
“My hands are up, see? Please, fuck, please don’t hurt me —”
“It won’t have to come to that if you listen —”
“Whatever you want, I’ll give you whatever, please let me live —”
“Take me to him. Take me to Dabi.”
Touya stares at Keigo’s palm for a long moment. He traces his eyes over the calluses of his knuckles, the blisters lining his finger pads. They’re hands melded for destruction. They’re hands that have only known warfare, that have been trained to be cruel and remorseless in their precision.
They’re hands that Touya will entrust his life to, despite everything.
“Yeah,” he breathes, and takes Keigo’s palm. “Take me home.”
When Touya cracks his eyes open, he hears a delirious sigh of relief somewhere above him.
“Oh thank fuck you’re finally awake.”
He feels the press of the lip of a plastic bottle against his mouth. It takes all of the remaining energy in his body to let his mouth hang open as cool water slips past his lips. He gulps like a starved man, until the gush of water from the bottle is reduced to bare droplets.
“You really did take me home,” Touya croaks. His vocal cords feel like they’ve shrivelled up within his throat. His voice is hoarse, unrecognisable even to his own ears. The voice of a corpse. The voice of a dead man walking.
“This is not home,” Keigo clarifies as Touya coughs up phlegm onto his hospital gown. “We’re in the janitor’s closet. And we need a way out, that doesn’t involve, well — ”
Touya gathers his senses enough to finally identify the heady stench that’s clinging to Keigo’s body.
“Did you kill someone, birdie?” he grins, his brain teetering on the fine tightrope between absolute clarity and insanity. Keigo is washing his hands in the tiny tin sink standing proudly against the wall, rubbing his skin so hard that they must burn raw with the force of it.
“I don’t know what to do now,” Keigo replies, ignoring Touya’s question. His tone is light, almost conversational, though Touya can detect the quaver beneath it that Keigo is not even attempting to mask. “I didn’t plan on saving you. I don’t know why I’m saving you. I don’t know —”
Touya, somehow, manages to heave himself up onto his tremulous feet. Hawks does not stop scrubbing away at his skin. The tin sink is coated with diluted blood. Whose blood, Touya does not know.
“Look at me, Keigo,” he whispers.
Keigo does not look. Touya supports his weight with one arm against the wall of the closet. The other darts out to clasp Keigo’s shoulder, roughly yanking him around to face him. There’s something feral and animalistic and predatory in Keigo’s eyes, underlied by something harrowingly vulnerable
“Three weeks. Three weeks they broke you apart and stitched you back together like a fucking ragdoll .” Keigo’s voice is trembling with barely suppressed rage. His hands, dripping with water and blood, ball into tight fists.
“I didn’t feel a thing, if that makes you feel any better.”
Keigo blinks, hard. There are tears welling in his eyes and shamelessly tracking down his face, blood flecking his hair and smeared across his cheek. Even like this — no, especially like this — he’s absolutely beautiful. The very image of damnation.
“I was going to kill you, Touya.”
Touya inhales a sharp breath. He lets his hand move up the column of Keigo’s throat, stopping to rest at Keigo’s cheek. He draws his thumb over the heavy bags beneath Keigo’s right eye, touch gentle.
“Because I asked you to?”
Keigo closes his eyes and nods as Touya strokes a circle into his skin. Touya hums, contemplatively. The water from the still-on tap gurgles steadily behind them.
“But you couldn’t.”
Keigo surges forward and pressed his lips against Touya’s marred ones. Touya can taste blood on his lips, the salt of Keigo’s sweat dissipating into nothingness on his tongue. Touya curls his hands at the nape of Keigo’s neck, feeling his head spin and legs go weak as the breath is stolen from his lungs with the kiss.
When they part, Touya collapses against the wall behind him. Keigo falls into a heap on top of him, and they lie there for a moment, curved into each other like two broken halves. Imperfect things, finding solace in each other. Monsters wearing the skin of men. A perfectly terrifying pair, the two of them make.
“Where do we go now?” Keigo asks, his words wobbling and breaking as they spill out of his lips.
“Anywhere,” Touya murmurs, nosing into Keigo’s hairline. “Anywhere you want.”