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“n-no..” is all eijirou can choke out between sobs. his own shattered breaths and sharp, cut short screams is all he finds audible as he watches the love of his life get brutally stripped of the light in his eyes.
all he can think about is that he needs to move. he needs to move his feet, run into battle, and save his husband. he needs to move but he can’t. his feet won’t budge. as much as he strains his body, as much as he screams and growls and sobs, he can’t move. katsuki, his husband, is dying in front of his eyes and he can’t do anything about it; forced to watch the one constant in his life be clawed and snatched out of his grasp.
he hears katsuki scream for him. scream his name, beg for him to help. beg for his husband to save him.
but he can’t.
he can’t move or even blink as he watches katsuki’s blond hair turn scarlet red. he can’t tell which wound it’s from but there’s no doubt it’s a katsukis.
as of right now, katsuki is being beaten to death by a villain that eijirou couldn’t describe if he wanted to. the only thing his mental capacity has the room to focus on is the gaping hole in katsukis abdomen, allowing all kinds of organs and intestines to fall out.
he was also able to notice that katsuki seemed to be missing an arm, along with the vertical half of his left leg as they were both agonizingly ripped out and apart as katsuki wallowed in pain and eijirou choked on his own screams and snot.
even as the light left katsukis eyes, the pleading in them never faltered. the pleading for his husband, his hero, his shield to come and save him. or at least kiss him goodbye; kiss him until he reached his final breath.
that kiss never came. neither did the big rescue because eijirou the coward couldn’t move his damn feet. he vowed to always protect katsuki. to follow him everywhere, regardless of any circumstances. to have his back when he needed it, to fight for him, to protect him. and he can’t even do that can he? how useless.
how useless of a hero, of a partner, do you have to be in order to not be able to save your own husband? to not even be able try? the most useless, incompetent, and unable of them all, eijirou thinks.
by some divine power, the one that’s forcing his inability to move, he’s also forced to hold eye contact with katsuki. katsuki who’s begging and pleading for help, for mercy, for something or someone or anything or anyone to stop this pure agony.
he’s forced to hold eye contact with katsuki who’s choking on his own blood and sobs of pain. still begging for eijirou to stop this, to save him, even if it’s too late.
gagging on his own breath, he’s trying to say his husbands name.
“ei—eiji-“ he chokes. it almost seems as though he’s reaching out with the one arm that he has left.
“eij-eijir-ou p-pleas-e”
eijirou could never even think of describing the pain he’s feeling. the utter helplessness and uselessness and fear shooting through his veins, popping at his palms, could be strong enough to kill a horse.
all he wants is for this to end. for this horrid torment and anguish to simmer and settle. for this to all have been some kind of disgustingly unfunny joke.
a pang of hope makes his eyes sting as he somehow thinks he might be getting his wish granted. everything in sight is fading away to pure abyss and eijirou can do nothing but wait in hopes to just wake up and everything be okay.
his hopes are pulverized the second the abyss fades away and the hellish, revolting scene he just witnessed seems to be beginning to replay before him.
an appalling sound escapes eijirous sharp teeth, seemingly knowing of what’s about to happen. he knows he’s gonna have to watch it again, he can feel it.
this time, as he’s watching his partner in life get torn to shreds, he remains unable to move. he remains unable to do anything as the exact same scene plays out in front of him.
katsuki cries and pleads and begs but the narrative is written and sealed. nothing changes, nothing gets easier, or more bareable, the exact same scene repeats and eijirou can do absolutely nothing about it.
when the scene fades again, eijirou is filled with the slightest bit of hope, but as the abyss fades once again, he knows what he’s bound to.
the scene plays again. it plays again and again and again.
what was minutes turned into hours and what was hours seemingly turned into days.
days, and days, and days. maybe eventually weeks. maybe years but who knows. the scene never gets less painful. never gets any more bareable, just more predictable. eijirou knows exactly what’s going to happen before it happens and the pain and sting lessens up none.
now, of course eijirou wasn’t actually witnessing this play out for years, not even months or days as much as eijirou would beg to differ with how it felt.
see, this entire time eijirou had been asleep. asleep and having the worst nightmare he believes anyone’s ever possibly experienced.
eijirou isn’t even the type to have nightmares. not anymore, not since a few years after the war.
which is why katsuki is so concerned for his red headed husband who’s seemingly hyperventilating in his sleep. he’s sobbing and on the verge of choking on his own snot as katsuki sits up, kneading his eyes as he realizes the scene before him.
“eijirou, wake up,” the blond tries to stir the other. failing, he rubs a gentle but firm hand on his bicep, rubbing harder the more impatient he gets because the red head simply isn’t waking.
with furrowed brows he rubs harder, “eijirou, baby,” he tries, having pity for the one short of breath.
“red,” he insists louder, voice groggy but laced with undeniable worry. rubbing into the sleeping one harder, giving him a stern shake and a few pops excreting from his finger tips.
“cmon wake up,” he almost shouts, not caring about any angry neighbors in the slightest.
with one last shove and shake eijirou awakens. he awakens with a gasp, not understanding where he is yet or how the hell he escaped that utter torment.
once he remembers how to breathe, it’s straight sobs and chokes for him.
katsuki can’t even say anything before his body moves without thinking, tugging eijirou into his arms and tucking the reds head under his chin.
katsukis never been great with comfort. he’s never been good at simmering sadness, only starting it.
but right here, right now, nothing has ever felt more natural to katsuki than consoling the love of his life for whatever reason he might be so distraught.
eijirou didn’t hesitate to latch onto the blond, completely unable to speak, he decided he’d explain later when he could breathe properly. as of now, he continued sobbing and sobbing and sobbing, getting all kinds of tears and snot all over his husbands neck and jaw, not that katsuki cares.
once eijirou has calmed down and is no longer asphyxiated, katsuki peels the other off of him easily, trying to find eye contact while still holding the red head close.
stroking his spine up and down in a comforting, pitying manor, the blond uses his free hand to wipe some excess tears from eijirous high cheek.
“ ‘gonna tell me what that was all about, red?” katsuki insists. with another sniffle, eijirou try’s to use his unsettlingly gravely voice to explain, still torn up from the memories of that god awful dream.
“i-i had a dream..” he starts
“i had a dream where— where you..” he trails off, hoping that the other would understand so he didn’t have to say it and relive that agonizing moment.
turns out, he didn’t even have to say it to relive it. tears welling in is eyes, he chokes up and begins to sob once again, this time much more minimally but nonetheless he sobs. he sobs as katsuki takes his head into the crook of his neck once again, hushing him and soothing him with one hand tucked in his hair and the other rubbing along his back.
“i-it was o-over and over a-again,” the red choked out
“o-over a—and over and i-it wouldn’t stop,” he somehow got out between his rasps.
“i-i couldn’t do a—anything and i just had to watch, all frozen and useless and i couldn’t move kats i just h-had to watch over and over and o-over,” he choked out a rant, katsuki hushing him with sweet nothings. the room was filled with eijirous gasps for air and katsukis “i know red, i know,”s and “shh sh sh everything’s okay, i promise,”s.
when the sobbing let up, they pulled back ever so slightly, just so katsuki could see his husbands red puffy face and cradle it in his hands, rough fingers on smooth skin,
“i was so scared katsuki.”
“you were dying over and over and over and i— i couldn’t do anything,” he sniffled, voice just above a hush.
wiping a few more stray tears from the red heads cheeks, the blond looks into his husband's eyes with such adoration and intent that it would just seem so uncharacteristic to the common eye— to anyone but eijirou.
without a word, katsuki takes his husband's hand and places it upon the left side of his chest.
“feel that?”
eijirou nods ever so slightly.
“i’m alive, red. and i don’t plan on goin’ no where anytime soon, so calm down, yeah? everything’s alright, ‘promise.”
eijirou lets out a long, shaky breath.
tilting his chin downwards, his forehead meets katsukis as katsuki continues holding the other's head in his hands at the jaw, almost like eijirou is the most fragile but important thing in the world.
“promise me,” eijirou starts, voice still unsteady.
“that,—“ he looks into katsukis eyes.
“that you’ll let me go first.”
katsuki smiles, rubbing his thumbs across eijirous scarlet stained cheeks.
“okay,” he agrees simply, amused with the fact that eijirou thinks katsuki has the slightest say in their fate.
“i promise,” he ends his statement with a press of his lips, right below eijirous swollen eyes.
katsuki knows he can’t control the future. he knows there isn’t a way to ensure he goes first, he knows on a statistical level, it’s honestly probably more likely that katsuki is gonna be the one to go first— but none of that matters.
the only thing in the word that could matter right now is lying back down, cradling the red head’s head on his arms where eijirou can hear his heartbeat and pressing his lips to his husbands hair every chance he gets; a subtle reminder that he’s there, and he’s okay, and he has absolutely nothing to worry about.
not when katsuki is there to pick up the pieces.