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His breath felt short, like he couldn’t get enough oxygen into his lungs. It felt like suffocation, like he was suffocating, dying. But it didn’t matter, his feet kept pushing him forward, pushing him like nothing would change the fact that he was running towards an absolutely demolished man.
This was his worst nightmare.
Something felt wrong, and although Tamaki couldn’t see it, he could sense it. Sense that something was wrong, that something wasn’t going according to the plan.
This was his worst nightmare.
“Dammit, Togata..” Tamaki whispered as he pushed through the flames and rubbles that blocked his way. It felt too silent since the villain had fallen, since they had fallen to the ground. Too quiet for a hero to rise up and claim victory.
Then he skid to a stop, glanced at the ragged cape slung over the rocks and the body it was attached to laying limp like a rag doll. “Togata..” The name came broken, choked, and Tamaki could feel his throat tighten like an allergic reaction, as though he was going to go into shock from the sight; and who knows? He just might.
His feet had slowed, but still propelled him forward. His heartbeat deafening, and the only feeling left in his body was the achy pain that came with every step he took. After all, he was looking at what he determined to be the impossible. There was no way that Mirio could be taken down, not like this at least.
“We still haven’t figured out to return your quirk,” Tamaki spoke to the two in front of him, his hands deep in his pockets and his shoulders hunched over just a tad. “Do you.. Do you really think it’s a good idea for you to come with Nejire and I?”
Mirio’s laugh came as it always did, gentle and warm. Just as Tamaki expected: nothing less. “Of course, it’s just a small bit of everyday villainy. There isn’t any way that I could get hurt and I can still fight just as I have before. My strength hasn’t dissipated any.”
“He should be fine, Tamaki,” Nejire’s voice came next and although the nervous boy seemed to doubt it, he didn’t fight the conversation anymore. In fact, he immediately nodded his head and allowed for them to go along with it. Maybe there was a point, their call was just for low level thugs, and if that was the case, Mirio’s punches would be enough to suffice.
That wasn’t the case though, they arrived on scene, and the moment they did something seemed wrong. There were only two villains trying to rob a convenience store, and when they were captured is when the real threat came. That thirty foot monstrosity appeared out of the shadows as though it was nothing and it laid down a lot of hurt for the Big Three in a way that none of them could react properly. In an instant, Tamaki and Nejire lost sight of Mirio and figured it was best that he was out of the way. Although they couldn’t be more wrong..
Mirio came crashing through like he still had his quirk, and although his attacks were successful, it didn’t leave him without markings.
Tamaki reached Mirio and felt his knees shaking, bonking together like they couldn’t help it. He felt horrified at the sight so bad he couldn’t move.
“Togata,” the voice came again, this time only marginally louder. “Togata? Togata!”
The blonde matted down with red rolled out of Tamaki’s vision and revealed that face that Tamaki knew all too well. The side of it was cut, beaten, and bloody just like the rest of his body that he wouldn’t admit he couldn’t move. “Hey, Amajiki,” the laugh that came was not normal. It sounded forced, weakened, like the sun had suddenly been covered by dark storm clouds. “Don’t use that face, I don’t like it very much,”
“What did you do?” Tamaki couldn’t deny the fact that his eyes were welling up with tears, he felt his whole body breaking apart in a way that he had never understood before. He had been all kinds of things imaginable, but yet this was so different then anything he knew.
“I guess I got carried away,” Mirio said before coughing and the cough forced blood to leak from between his lips in a way that only increased Tamaki’s panic.
“To-Togata..” Tamaki finally lowered himself down onto Mirio’s level and knew very well that the tears were beginning to stroll down his cheeks in rivers.
“I’m still fighting like I could be a hero,” Mirio said and Tamaki’s eyes widened up. After all, Mirio never mentioned anything about wanting to back down from being a hero even after he lost his quirk; not to him at least. He was still convinced he was going to become a hero and Tamaki thought he could do it too, he just also happened to know that Mirio hadn’t adjusted to fighting without his quirk. They weren’t expecting this. “But I’m not.”
“Y-You are a hero, you are a hero.” Tamaki shook his head furiously, he couldn’t process the fact that Mirio would be so negative in the first place. He always pushed and pushed for his own best and the best of others, pessimism wasn’t something known to Mirio. And it certainly was unnerving for Tamaki to hear. “We need to get you help, we need to get you help before it’s —”
“Sh, don’t panic, Amajiki, I don’t like it when you do.” Mirio said. He lifted his hand out from the rubble and raised it up to Tamaki who was wide eyed when it touched against his cheek. This felt wrong, Mirio was hurt and yet he was.. consoling Tamaki?
Mirio used his hand to pull Tamaki down onto his level, and let the ravenette lay into his chest. “It’s okay, just relax.”
“To-Togata, I —”
“You’re okay, aren’t you?” Mirio asked and when Tamaki raised his head and nodded it, Mirio smiled in response. “I didn’t want to see you guys get hurt, and I figured that was the best I could do to help. After all, it didn’t seem like it was going so well.”
“You-You shouldn’t have come, you shouldn’t have —”
“I know, I know that’s what you think but that’s what my line of duty calls for,” Mirio said. “It’s funny, I should be in a lot of pain but I’m.. not. I feel kind of achy, but not very pained.”
“Let’s go get you some help,”
“Amajiki,”
“Why are you trying to fight me on this?” Tamaki huffed, shaking his head.
“Because it’s already too late.” Mirio shook his head and Tamaki’s eyes widened up.
“T-Too late..?”
“We’ve already done this before, you know that, and you’ve lived this a thousand times over. You need to stop, love, you need to stop thinking about it. Stop dreaming about it. It needs to get out of your head.”
“I-I don’t understand,” Tamaki shook his head. “Mirio Togata who do you think you’re fooling with such a crap story!? Stop playing games with me, now is not the time!”
“I’m not playing games, you know just as well as I do,” Mirio answered. “This happened ten months and eleven days ago, but you’re the one who counts it, aren’t you?”
“T-Togata..?”
“You think about it every night when you go to sleep,” Mirio continued on, and the thoughts swirled through Tamaki’s head like a tornado. “You stopped thinking about how it felt when I first lost my quirk, and you started thinking about the last time I fought without it. How when you got to this same pile of rubble which is always a little displaced as the memory escapes you, deforms in your head, how you cried and screamed and shouted and I could barely hear you. How the blood soaked onto the rocks below me, and how I held onto you, just as I am right now.”
“Togata, stop it, stop it, stop it!” Tamaki screamed, his voice shaking and breaking all the way. “Why are you saying this to me!? Why are you saying this to me!?”
“It’s all your doing, I’m not doing it, not this time.” Mirio said. “Then you’ll think about how I brushed over your hair just how I always did when you were upset, right? Just like this over the back.”
Tamaki could feel the hand roll over the back of his head, gently mixing with the locks in a way that used to calm him down. “Then I pulled you a little closer, and I kiss you one time,” Mirio did the action, and Tamaki hated how different his lips felt, how it wasn’t like he had remembered all this time. “And when I do that, I tell you with the last bit of my breath, that I love you and I’m so proud of you.”
“Togata, Togata don’t you dare do this to me! Don’t you dare do this to me!” Tamaki screamed, but this time, there was no answered. Mirio’s brilliant eyes fell closed and Tamaki sat there, shocked and unable to move.
Then all at once, the scream bellowed out of him, filling the world with his rage, his loss, his fear.
Then he jolted up, and found himself in a bed that had been empty for far too long. He looked around the room and when touching his cheek, he was already aware that he was crying in his sleep. He flicked the light on and glanced around the room and let out a sigh that grew into a choked cry.
Tamaki pulled his knees up to his chest, glanced over at the nightstand at a picture frame with him and Mirio, and for once Tamaki was laughing in it, and actually looked halfway-photogenic and not afraid.
Tamaki pulled the picture frame over to him and glanced at it, noticed how his tears fell down onto the glass. On the desk a few feet away sat a newspaper, the headline reading..
Young Promising Hero: Dead
Tamaki pulled the frame tight into his chest. Any time things seemed to go awry, Mirio was always the one who was right there. Through thick, through thin, through the things that were no big deal
at all; anything Tamaki needed, the soothing the calming, Mirio was always right there, ready to help. Ready to make the days bright and the nights peaceful. Everything was always right, and it was always the inspiration that Tamaki needed to push himself to new heights, now though? What happens now? “Togata, Togata.. Why did you do this to me..? You were always going to be the best hero no matter what, but you were always my hero. What am I supposed to do now that my hero is gone?”
“What am I supposed to do once the sun is all gone?”