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Kyouka has never been afraid of the dark.
Logically, she knows it’s like, a thing. Creepy monsters under the bed, red eyes staring back at you from your closet, pulling your blanket over your head like that’s some kind of protection. That sort of stuff. She saw it in movies, heard it from her classmates growing up—but never experienced it herself. No reason to be afraid of monsters if she knew she could hear them coming.
She can’t hear a single thing now.
Wherever she’s being held is dark, and so cold that she can feel her teeth trying to chatter around the cloth gag somebody had put on her. Or, so she assumes. It’d been there when she’d woken up, if you could call opening your eyes to nothing but black waking up. At first she’d thought they’d blindfolded her too, but she can’t feel any kind of cloth over her eyes. Either there are no lights in the room, or—
She really doesn’t want to think about the possibility of permanently losing two of her senses. That would be, as Kaminari would put it, not very cash money of the universe to do to her. Especially not now, so close to graduation, to her dreams.
Kyouka pulls at her wrists again, swaying on her feet. She can’t hear the rattle of them, but she can feel the metal shackles locked around them, leashing her arms to the wall. They’re high up enough that she’s forced to stand just slightly forward on the balls of her feet to avoid straining her shoulders. And the worst part? She’s not even sure if whoever took her did that on purpose, or if she’s just that short. What she wouldn’t give to be Shouji’s height right now. Hell, what she wouldn’t give to be Shouji right now. With his Quirk she could just manifest a couple eyes and ears and get right out of here.
But with her own?
That, Kyouka will admit, is the one upside to not being able to see. All she can feel from her jacks right now is that one has gone numb, and the other has mercifully settled from a throbbing pain into a dull ache. But without seeing them, she can imagine that they’re just a little bruised, and not broken or permanently maimed.
Well. Technically, she can imagine that too. She’s just resolutely choosing not to. Plus ultra.
Her head falls back against the cold wall. Right now, all she wants is to be in Momo’s room, snuggled up in one of her girlfriend’s sweaters and watching one of the cheesy historical dramas that Momo keeps in a special folder on her laptop. They’d had plans to do it after their respective work study patrols tonight, or yesterday, maybe; she’s not sure how much time has passed. She’s not really sure of anything at the moment. Everything she remembers from before waking up in the dark is just glimpses—an emergency call. Arriving at the scene. Putting her jacks in the ground, trying to get some intel and—the ground exploding. Pain. Someone putting their hands over her eyes, and then everything going black.
There’s nothing she can do now but wait, and hope that somebody on her side comes for her soon.
Waiting gets boring quickly. Kyouka doesn’t show it, most of the time, but she’s not really one to just sit and do nothing. Either she’s listening to music or she’s listening to her surroundings, and if she can’t do either of those things she’ll twirl her jacks around her fingers, just to do something.
Here, she has nothing to do but think.
She tries to focus on school, at first. Goes through her schedule for the next few weeks, tries to remind herself what assignments are due and what tests she needs to study for. When she runs out of material there, she thinks about a song she heard on Present Mic’s show the other day, and reconstructs the beat in her head, tapping her tongue against the cloth along to it. And when that starts to turn from a distraction into a brain worm, she thinks about all of the memes Kaminari’s sent to her in past few days. And so on.
(The one thing she does not let herself think about is Momo. Kyouka refuses to let her be associated with this place, this darkness. And thinking about Momo will only lead to the inevitable thought, the question of whether or not this is permanent, and if that means she’ll never see—)
(She doesn’t think about Momo.)
Kyouka’s almost done counting backwards from a thousand when the darkness is suddenly no longer just darkness.
It’s only there for a second. A face, staring at her with big red eyes. Just a flash, but it sends Kyouka reeling back, yanking against her chains with as much force as possible. She’s not sure whether or not she screams, but she doesn’t need to hear to feel her heart practically throwing itself against her ribcage.
When she can finally catch a full breath again, she dares to try and look around. Nothing. No sign of the eyes or the face. She whispers hello, feels it pass through her lips in a puff of air, but if there’s a response, she can’t hear it.
Maybe it wasn’t real. Maybe she was so bored that her brain was just imagining things. It didn’t make sense anyways for a face to just appear and then disappear like that. If someone were watching her, wouldn’t they stay? Keep observing? Unless—
—unless they just wanted her to know that they’re watching. Unless they’re still here, still watching her, and she just can’t see them.
Kyouka goes very, very still.
This, she realizes, is what it truly means to be afraid of the dark. Trapped, no way to know what is out there, what is stalking her, what is hungering for her. No way to defend herself. They could choose to kill her at any second and she wouldn’t even know it was coming.
Every breath burns as she tries to calm the panic burrowing itself into her every bone. What would Aizawa say? What would Momo say? Something rational, something about how giving into her panic makes her even more defenseless, how if she’s been captured and held then the villains probably have a reason to keep her alive and therefore won’t kill her, how they haven’t even bothered torturing her yet so why would they suddenly start now.
She makes herself grab onto those lines of thinking. Repeats them over and over in her head until breathing doesn’t feel like drowning, and then she goes back to counting. Whatever it takes to keep it together until help arrives.
One thousand, three hundred, and forty two counts in, something crawls up Kyouka’s ankle.
She jerks against her chains, sending a shooting pain up her shoulder as she scratches one foot against the other. The feeling disappears, and she sighs in relief. Must’ve just been a muscle spasm, thank god—who knows what kind of bugs have infested this place. She’d rather not deal with any of them, thanks.
Less than a minute later, the feeling comes back. Worse this time: slower, bigger, and Kyouka swears she can feel the tiny individual feet against her skin. She kicks at it again, straining both of her shoulders, but it doesn’t disappear. Instead, there’s another crawling up her other leg. And then another. And another, and another, until there’s a dozen insects crawling up her thighs, her stomach, and she’s doing everything she can to fling them off, trying to smack them against the wall so desperately that she feels the cuffs chafe the skin off her wrists, but nothing works. They’re everywhere, spreading their disgusting itch across her body, burrowing into and beneath her skin, and Kyouka has to bite her lip until she tastes iron just to keep from screaming. Wet hot tears stream down her cheeks as one of them crawls up and over her jaw, towards her eye, tiny feet reaching—
Just as quickly as they appear, they’re gone.
A shuddering sob escapes her chest, and she takes solace in the fact that she can’t hear how pathetic she must sound. She lets herself hang from her wrists for a moment, the pain overweighed by the sheer relief. Then Kyouka tentatively gets the balls of her feet on the floor again, though she can’t stop herself from feeling around for bugs first.
It’s just like the face, she thinks. Either her mind is playing tricks on her, or one of her captors has some kind of illusions Quirk—but that doesn’t make sense, why torture her without asking any questions?
Unless, of course, she wasn’t the only one they captured. It’s possible they could be using her pain to leverage answers out of one of her classmates, in which case: she has to stay strong. No matter what they throw at her.
Kyouka blinks back the rest of her tears and starts over at zero.
It’s the screams, next.
She doesn’t quite register what the noise is at first, only that she’s hearing something. That alone makes her perk up, look around for a source even though she still can’t see. Only when she tries to say hello does Kyouka realize that her ears have not, in fact, miraculously healed, and she braces herself for whatever is coming.
The noise gets louder and louder, like a distorted image finally coming into focus, and her scrambled mind is finally able to sort them out. Screams. Lots of them, different timbers and tones, some scratchy and cutting in and out, some near-wails.
And the worst part? She recognizes some of them. From training, from work studies. Mina, Kaminari, Sero—she hears them. Which means those are her classmates in trouble, in pain.
No. No. It’s not real. Kyouka shakes her head, presses her right ear to her arm in an attempt to block it out but it doesn’t work. The screams have gotten so loud they feel like they’re bouncing off of the inside of her skull, echoing against themselves. Her face scrunches up, tears building once more. It’s not real, she tells herself, it’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real but god it’s so much, too much all at once, and she can picture everything so clearly in her head. Mina with acid bubbling over her skin. Sero with a bone jutting out of a wrecked shoulder. Kaminari with a knife carved halfway down his thigh.
Momo with—
The screams do not dissipate as quickly as the bugs. By the time they’re gone, the idea of trying to count is so far away that Kyouka doesn’t bother trying.
Across the clearing stands a kid in a school uniform and a gas mask. Mustard. She didn’t see him in the forest that night, but she saw him in the news after. She’s not sure when he got here. Not sure when here became a thing either, this dark place of trees and shadows.
“Aren’t you going to save your friend, hero?” Mustard says, and his child’s voice scratches in and out like a bad tape. He laughs as he kicks something in front of him. A body.
An invisible body, Kyouka realizes, wearing just a tank top and shorts. Something wet stains the ground around it.
She tries to take a step forward, but there’s nothing she can do as the gas fills the clearing, and envelopes them both.
Shigaraki appears out of the darkness. Maybe he was teleported here by that Kurogiri, or maybe he was here the whole time, Kyouka doesn’t know. He walks right towards her, though, grin peeking out beneath the hand attached to his face.
He doesn’t say anything as he approaches, just stops a foot before her and tilts his head curiously. Then, in a slow, exaggerated movement, he reaches his hand towards her arm.
She remembers, all of a sudden, the way Aizawa’s arm looked as the others carried him to safety in the USJ. Skin cracked away, muscle and bone exposed. Fear takes on a shape of its own, clawing against her ribs, but she cannot move. Cannot run away.
The fingers land on her shoulder one by one. When his thumb touches down, Kyouka can’t help but scream.
There is a voice behind her. It sounds like Aizawa’s, not cold but firm in its facts. Rational. Blunt. Four words over and over and over.
You will die here.
The forest is on fire. She can’t hear it, she can’t see it, but she can feel it all around her. The forest is on fire. It burns, and burns, and burns, and she burns with it.
She’s not sure how long she’s been hanging there, ghosts filling in the hollows of her senses in a half-dazed state, when something—someone—warm touches her arm.
Kyouka doesn’t think, just reacts. Dredging up every bit of energy and adrenaline she can, she kicks out with one leg, striking whoever it is in what feels like their stomach. Growling, she says, or at least thinks she yells, “Get the hell away from me!”
For a moment, she almost thinks it worked. Then the hand lands on her bare forearm again and Kyouka thrashes, kicking out into thin air, about ready to scream from the pain lancing through her wrists when—
The hand isn’t still. It’s tapping something out on her arm, something in dots and dashes, over and over. Morse code. She forces herself to stay still, to keep track.
M-O-M-O, it says. M-O-M-O.
Her breath hitches. “...Momo?” she asks, four letters that reverberate through her lungs regardless of hearing.
Y-E-S, the fingers tap, and she nearly sobs with relief. She’s never been more grateful that they learned Morse just to talk to each other during class than right now. R-E-S-C-U-E. U-N-L-O-C-K.
She nods, understanding the question. The fingers leave her arm, and for a moment her chest seizes—what if it’s not real what if she disappears like the rest—but then they come back, ghosting over her wrist as they fiddle with the cuff. It’s not long before the metal pops open, and Kyouka’s arm drops like a dead weight. She’s too exhausted to scream, just lets out what she hopes is a groan but knows is probably a whimper, as an arm—as Momo props her up against the wall and tackles the second cuff.
When her other wrist is released, Kyouka begins to crumple, but Momo catches her, wrapping her arms around Kyouka’s waist to hold her up. It’s warm, and soft, and it makes her want to break down right then and there. She might’ve, if not for the fact that she’s about two seconds away from passing out.
The fingers start tapping again, this time against her back. L-E-A-V-I-N-G. C-A-R-R-Y.
She nods, and with careful, gentle movements, Momo scoops Kyouka up into her arms and begins to carry her. Any other time, she might feel her stomach turn with nervous butterflies, or her cheeks flush, or her heart flutter. This time, all she feels is the blanket of safety settling over her.
As Kyouka lays her head against Momo’s chest, she lets herself drift off to the soft heartbeat of the girl she loves.
When she opens her eyes, it’s still to darkness. For a moment, her heart stops, and she wants to scream—it couldn’t have been a hallucination, please, no—but then she registers the soft beeping of some kind of monitor beside her, and the bandages around her wrists and earjacks, and the bed beneath her, and the hand holding hers.
“Momo?” she whispers. This time she hears it, her voice in all of its scratchy and wrecked glory.
The hand around hers tightens. “Kyouka!” Momo says, quiet but surprised. “You’re awake. Hold on, let me get you some water.”
She barely manages to bite back a whimper as the hand disappears, leaving her alone in the dark once more, but Momo’s quick. Only a second or two later there’s a straw to her lips, and Kyouka takes several gulps of one of the most refreshing glasses of water she’s ever had.
When the cup is gone and Momo’s hand is back in hers, she decides to just go for it and rip off the band-aid. “Why’s it so dark in here? Am I…?”
“No,” Momo hurries to say. “No, no, you’re not—you’re fine. The blindness was an effect of one of the villain’s Quirks. Recovery Girl said after so long, though, it would be better to gradually reintroduce light so we don’t hurt you.”
“Oh.” That’s...a relief, at least, but— “After so long? How long was I gone?”
Momo is quiet for a few moments. “Seventeen hours, thirty two minutes.”
“That specific, huh?” Kyouka tries to joke, but it falls flat. There’s an awkward moment of silence, and it hurts to not be able to see her girlfriend’s face, to not know how to comfort her. “I’m okay now, though. And that’s not even that long, really, Bakugou was gone for like—”
“You were—” Momo starts and stops again. Her hand grips Kyouka’s like a lifeline. “You didn’t even recognize me.”
The memory of her desperate lashing out floods back. Kyouka winces. “Sorry. Couldn’t see you. Or, well, hear you either.”
“I know, I know, it’s not—it’s not that.” There’s the sound of clothes rustling, and then Kyouka feels Momo’s head press into her arm, like she’s leaning over the bed. Like she’s praying. “It’s just—we didn’t know where you were. We didn’t know who’d taken you. And when I walked in, you were just standing there, looking like…”
“Absolute shit,” Kyouka finishes, even though she knows what Momo really meant. Even now, the things she saw creep around the edges of her consciousness, haunting her. She has a feeling nightmares are going to be her friend for awhile after this.
Momo gives a small, wet laugh. “Yeah. Yeah. I was scared for you.”
There isn’t much Kyouka can do to fix this. She can’t promise it won’t happen again—they’re heroes before anything else. This is the reality of their jobs. Still. She brings her other hand over, ignoring the dull pain in her shoulder to run her fingers through Momo’s hair. “Hey. It’s okay, love. You found me.”
The response she gets is a near silent sniffle. Momo’s always been a quiet crier. It’s both impressive and somehow more heartbreaking. “I love you,” Momo finally murmurs into the sheets, squeezing Kyouka’s hand.
“I love you too.” Despite her exhaustion, a small smile breaks on her face. She tugs on Momo’s hand. “Get up here.”
Momo’s head lifts off the bed. “Are you sure? Your shoulders were strained, you shouldn’t—”
“Yes,” she says, tugging again. “Come on, before Recovery Girl storms in here.”
With one more muffled sniffle, Momo carefully pulls herself up onto the bed. Kyouka scooches over as much as she can, making enough room for Momo to cuddle up to her side and nestle her head against Kyouka’s collarbone. For the first time since waking up in those chains and darkness, she takes an easy breath, knowing as long as she is right here, anchored by this warmth, she will not be lost.