Archive of Our Own ^beta

The way He comes into consciousness is almost out of order. The first thing He realizes is that He’s cold: the surface He’s lying on is freezing, the air He’s breathing burns through his lungs when it enters, and his bare shoulders and neck feel numb. 

The second thing He realizes is that his arms hurt. 

Honestly, it doesn't make sense how it takes him more than a couple of seconds to come to that conclusion. When He wakes, finally blinking his eyes open to more darkness, He lies still for what must have been a good chunk of an hour before He figures out He’s in pain.  

It starts out as an unnatural warmth. He is cold: an arbitrary fact. Thus, the rest of his body must be cold as well. That makes the odd, sinking warmth in his arms-- concentrated at the joins specifically—an anomaly. Just like that, He has something to distract him from the cold. Something new to think about.  

He shouldn’t have thought about it. 

Once He realizes that his arms are warm, they do not cool back down.  Almost tauntingly, they grow warmer. Warmer and warmer and warmer. Warm enough to heat his entire body if He could wrap them around himself. At this point warmth becomes an improper descriptor.  

A better word: hot.  

His arms are hot. They are hot and pulsing and alive, and He doesn’t like how it feels. The heat isn’t coming superficially-- from his muscles and blood vessels and skin-- it emanates from something deeper, burning tissue as it radiates outward. 

Burning. 

He’s burning. 

His bones are on fire. 

His bones are on fire . 

His bones are on fire and it, and it- it... 

“It hurts ,” the sound has to be torn out of him, becoming a dry, grating rasp instead of a proper sentence. But this is his body and his bones and his words and He knows what He is trying to say. 

“It hurts,” He tries again, “ It hurts. It hurts . It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. Ithurtsithurtsithurts ithurtsithurts ithurts mom ,” He gasps for breath, “mom, it hurts. Mom , it hurts .” 

There is another source of warmth now. Something slides down his cheeks, hot and wet. Once the tears start, He doesn't have the agency to stop them. His face is never going to be dry and cold again.  

The liquid isn’t only coming from his eyes. It leaks out his nose and trails down the side of his face, thick and slow. It froths up out of his mouth as He repeats the words again and again, because how else is He going to know it’s real if He doesn’t say it.  

“It hurts!” 

His body must be waking up now. He can feel heat as it builds on the tips of his ears, in the depth of his gut, along an aggravating line on his inner thigh. 

Still, nothing burns the way his arms do. 

“Mom. Mom? Mom!? Mom ! Mom, it hurts !” 

He doesn’t know how long He lies there, burning from the inside out. His words die out first, rubbing themselves to dust on the sandpaper that lines the inside of his throat, leaving him there with nothing to do save gasp for air. 

By the time there is a clattering on the tiles and the room explodes into light He thinks He must look horrifying, the way He’s been slowly smoldering away. A charred corpse on a table. The light pulls at the back of his eyes as something clicks directly into his ear. 

“Oh? And how long have you been awake now?” The voice is mild and slow, accompanied by something moving along the top of his head. The clicking gets louder and more erratic.  

“It hurts,” He scrounges up everything He can to explain it, scrunching his face as far as it will go, “It hurts. ” 

“Hurts? Well, I can’t say that's too unexpected,” the voice mutters lightly, “What hurts?” 

“My. My-” His back. His chest. His head. His-, “my arms.” 

“Curious, curious,” the voice makes a clicking sound with its tongue. Almost at once, the chittering near his ear picks up in intensity.  

“Haven’t seen this one before. Let’s try... Out! Get out of here you infernal-” there is a loud clatter and a hiss. The clicking ceases. 

“Let’s try this one then I suppose,” the voice repeats, “Shouldn’t cause us any problems. I’ll venture another dose if it persists, but keep in mind this is the most I’ll be giving you at once.” 

Something rubbery clasps harshly at his arm, undeterred by the heat it radiates and jabs something spiny right above his elbow. Deep enough that it must scrape against the bone.  

“There, that should hold you off until morning. You’ll be fine till then.” 

It’s a lie. 

The burning gets worse. It gets worse and it gets faster. He’s been injected full of gasoline. Like adding an accelerant-- the fire gets larger and hotter until it can finish eating everything on the outside. Until it licks its fingers clean of his skin and bone and muscle and finally. 

Finally. 

Finally, it leans over, brushes his hair away from his face, and sinks its long, spiny, hot teeth into his heart. 

------- 

Evidently, the fire had been metaphorical.  

When He wakes up again, He’s whole as always: unburned, unskinned, uneaten. He slowly manages to lever himself up off the metal table and sit on the floor, which is blessedly cool against the soles of his feet. 

The room is glaringly bright, very different from the encompassing darkness of the night before. The center of it remains occupied by three long metal tables, each with a light affixed overhead. The blue walls are lined with cabinets, interconnected by crowded countertops. He wrinkles his nose at the mess as He settles on the tile. 

That’s how the man finds him that morning, leaned against the table, feet on the ground, sheet wrapped around himself for modesty. He chuckles slightly as he places his clipboard on the adjacent table and reaches down to run a hand through his hair.  

“I thought I told you to stay put until morning,” The man twists a strand around his finger, smoothing it down afterward. His hair is longer than He remembers, brushing well past his shoulders. The man tugs at it lightly when He doesn’t respond. 

He opens his mouth to answer, but the only thing that comes out is a wheeze. Apparently, the sand paper in his throat hadn't been part of the hallucination.  

The man tuts lightly at the hacking sounds He makes, stepping around him to the water cooler in the corner of the room, and slowly filling a cup. He takes his time walking back, full cup in hand. The overhead lighting reflects harshly on his round goggles.  

“Go slow,” the man commands as he hands him the cup, steadying his grip.  

He plans to, only, as soon as the water hits his tongue, He can’t stop himself from tipping the whole cup back. Half of it ends up splashing out the sides. Water dripping down his face, He holds the cup back out to the man in a silent demand for more. 

The man sighs, shaking his head lightly, his bushy mustache ruffles as the movement and the light bounces erratically off his goggles. Still, he walks to the cooler and refills the cup even slower than before. 

When He gets the cup once more, He tilts it back at a slightly more moderate pace. Most of the water makes it into his mouth this time, but not nearly enough. He holds out the cup again. 

They go back and forth. After what must have been his sixth cup, his stomach feels oddly tight, and it has become taxing to swallow. 

“Let’s try this again, shall we?” the man leans back against the second autopsy table, “What’s got you in such a hurry to get up?” 

When He opens his mouth to answer, nothing comes out except for water.  

Heaving a sigh, like he expected this, the man opens one of the cabinets and comes back with a plastic bucket. 

“I told you to go slow, didn’t I?” the man reprimands lightly after watching him dry heave in front of the bucket for over twenty minutes.  

“Then why give me more?” He uses a corner of the sheet to wipe his face. Something wobbles in his stomach at the action, like He should be disgusted by it, even though it’s just water and bile-- the sheet has probably seen worse. “Why continue to refill the cup?” 

“I’ve been in the field for years kid. You don’t survive that long by being careless,” the man pushes his goggles up his nose, “We’re short-staffed already. No need for me to risk having my arm torn off just because I refused you a cup of water.” 

He frowns, “I wouldn’t have done that.” 

“No? Well, you don’t look like you would have. But, then again, Matcha didn’t look all that smart either, and she was still able to get out her cage and eat through two of her siblings while I took a lunch break,” he picks up the clipboard again, “you know what they say about appearances don’t you?” 

He does. Though He doesn’t know how. Or why.  

After He runs out of water to regurgitate, the man has him run through the basic tests: height, weight, and blood pressure. Strangely enough, He finds himself familiar with both the tests and the equipment. He takes note of the numbers and is hit with the odd urge to put back items the man just discards on the table afterward. Before He steps on the scale, He nudges it closer to the wall with his foot, so the side doesn’t clatter off again. He freezes minutely when He realizes what He’s done.  

He looks up. 

The man’s face is scrunched slightly—but he doesn’t say anything, just watches him from behind his tinted goggles. As he jots the results down on a sheet of paper, he introduces himself as Doctor Garaki. 

“Or just Doctor will do,” he adds, pulling out the needles and vials to take a blood sample, “that’s what you used to call me anyways.” 

He pauses at that, adjusting the sheet around his shoulders again. Polite introductions usually merit a response, “Ok, um you can call me...” He gets stuck here.  

He shouldn’t: there’s a void at the end of that sentence that He’s filled in before. He once had something that belonged there.  

“Well, technically, your name should be Nomu,” Garaki offers as he tightens the cuff on his upper arm, “It’s what you are after all. Though I’m not a fan of having to consistently address you as such,” the needle slides into skin and the first vial starts to fill, “I typically name the Nomu myself, but I’m not sure you fall into the same categories as my other creations. You happen to have quite a bit of... anatomy.” the first vial fills and is switched out for another one, “did you perhaps have a name in mind?” 

“No,” He admits, albeit reluctantly-- choosing a name is an opportunity He doesn’t want to give up just yet, “but I might. Later.” 

“I see,” Garaki switches out the vials again, “What about Eiji? How does that sound?” 

Eiji. It settles into him somewhat, covering his legs and torso much like the white sheet He wears, but it does not encompass him. It doesn’t surround his body and sink into it like He knows a name should.  

“Umm... maybe something else?” He tries. Garaki nods absentmindedly at that and sweeps the vials away into a clear plastic box. 

“As I said, you may decide yourself. Though I ask that you hurry it up,” he pauses as he uncaps a marker to label the box. 

 “I’m going to need something to call you.” 

------- 

There are no windows in the lab, but there is a small clock mounted on the wall, its corners chipped, and glass cracked. From there, He can tell that it's well into the afternoon that He starts to notice things. 

Namely, the scars. 

The most obvious are the two that start at his shoulders, running across his chest and joining at the sternum, from where it continues to his midriff. It’s still pink and tender to the touch and pulls when He gets up too fast, making sitting down or bending over significantly uncomfortable. When He asks Garaki about it, he just points him over to the wall embedded with small metal doors. 

He hasn’t done anything since the blood test so both curiosity and the banishment of boredom take precedence. The scar doesn’t hurt that bad, nothing like the pain from last night, but it is rather prominent, glaring up at him puffed and angry every time He looks down. So, He hitches up his sheet, tying it tightly around his midriff—low enough not to aggravate the scar-- and pulls back the clasping mechanic on one of the tiny doors.  

There is a hissing sound as the vacuum seal opens and the cold air makes his arms prickle. In an almost practiced motion, He braces his feet and pulls out the metal rack. It comes easier than He remembers.  

Lying on the rack is a man, tall and heavy set, his light skin tinted blue from the cold. The eyes are open and glazed over, pupils cloudy, and the body is stiff to the touch when He pokes it.  

Across his torso run two identical intersecting marks, though they don’t quite go as far down as his after they join. It takes him a moment, but He recognizes them: autopsy incisions, neatly made and haphazardly closed up with medical staples. 

“Uh, uh, put that one back will you, I need him for later,” Garaki looks up from his paperwork to warn, “If you want to mess with something I’ll take you down to the cages later.” 

He looks up from the body confused, “What would I do with him?” 

Garaki pauses at that, putting his pen down properly, “Do you not have any urges? What do you feel when you look at it?” 

He glances back down. The mouth is twisted, purple lips tilted in what seems like displeasure. Like he doesn’t enjoy being dead. 

“I mean, it’s a dead body. I’m just...” what? What is He right now? While it seems an obvious reaction, He doesn’t feel all that strangely about it. Something in the corner of his brain reminds him that He’s used to this, that He’s long become indifferent to it. Still, He stares harder at the man He just pulled out of the freezer: his hair is neatly trimmed, his face is patchy with stubble, some of his fingernails are cracked, but the ones that aren’t are well groomed, nicely cut and shaped. A lot of effort must have gone into that. He feels... 

“I feel bad. I’m just sorry for him,” He admits, “I wish he didn’t have to die.” 

“Interesting words from the person who killed him.” 

“What?” his head snaps up as something in his chest drops.  

Killed.  

He killed someone.  

He has no memory of this, but He killed someone oh god He killed someone - 

“Hey. Hey! Breathe. Relax,” Garaki demands, rising out of his chair, “I was joking about that. It was a joke. I got that guy out of the general hospital. The listed cause of death was a pulmonary embolism.” 

“Heart attack.” He rasps, exhaling fully. Slowly, slowly, He’s able to draw in a complete breath. 

“A stroke actually,” Garaki frowns, mustache bristling, “Why are you so worked up about it?” 

It’s the slightly annoyed tone that strikes something in him, sharp and jagged, “That’s a person!” He snaps, drawing himself up to stand straight, “A human being! You- you can’t just talk about him like- like some object o-or, or some- something-” 

“I thought I told you to breathe,” Garaki stalks over and grabs him by the arm, pulling him back towards the table first before returning to slide the body into the freezer. He pushes the sliding rack back in, grunting with effort. The door clangs as he slams it shut and pulls back the clasp. 

“People die all the time. If we treated every corpse like a human being then the world would be overrun with them,” Garaki walks over to him and reaches up to touch his hair, “At least this way they still have some use.” 

Standing there, He's suddenly overcome with the urge to rip Garaki’s arm away from his head. He grits his teeth and stares at the floor.  

“You really can’t have success without a couple of drawbacks, can you?” Garaki muses as he returns to his desk, “My most cognizant Nomu yet and you decide to have principles all of a sudden. You know, some of your predecessors were already capable of doing more than half of what we expect out of you, and they didn’t have any demands except for hunger,” he shakes his head, “Another thing to work out, I suppose.” 

 Eyes trained on the ground, He clenches his fist until something wet trickles over his knuckles. 

------- 

His ears are pierced. When He rubs them between his fingers, He can feel the indentations in the lobe. 

When Garaki lets him sift through the filing cabinets, He snags a paperclip off one of the folders. Later, He crouches by the water cooler, outside the security camera’s range, and tries to fit it through the hole. 

It doesn’t work. 

------- 

When Garaki leaves with the excuse of a late lunch, he locks the door behind him. Maybe he doesn’t mean to: the door is one of those mechanical steel ones anyway, it always locks right after someone closes it. 

He decides not to dwell on it.  

Instead, He spends the time poking around the room. The cupboards are filled with old medical equipment and the filing cabinets with more medical files. He glances at Garaki’s desk, but it seems that he’s taken his personal file with him.  

A couple of the cabinets are locked, but it’s a standard pin and tumbler mechanism, barely a challenge with the right tools. Hitching the sheet up again He starts to comb through the drawers and cabinets. He has a paperclip but He can’t seem to find a pair of scissors, or something long and sturdy enough to hold the tumblers back while He picks at the pins.  

Surprisingly, the entire room is devoid of sharp objects. There are packets of syringes but no needles, and rubber wiring for draining blood but no scalpels or surgery scissors. Even the stapler is empty. 

Glancing at the door, He carefully tucks his lone paperclip into the folds of the makeshift skirt He's made with his sheet. He doesn’t know what He’d be able to do with a few inches of flimsy wire, but it's better than nothing.  

He saves the freezers for last. 

Mindful of the security cameras perched in all four corners of the room, He opens up the same one He had earlier that day. The man is still there, stationary and unblinking with his unimpressed face, improperly sealed autopsy scar, and neat fingernails. He leans over to hold his gaze for a moment but He still can’t figure what Garaki had expected him to see. 

Relative fact: it’s a corpse. A dead body. Well preserved human remains. Part of him still expects himself to have an adverse effect to the sight, like the second time is the charm, but He remains indifferent to it. Again, He’s already seen plenty of these.  

 He strains lightly as He pushes the rack back in—the body is pretty heavy. He wonders if it was hard for Garaki to get it out of the hospital. 

He wonders if someone misses it.  

There are ten slots in the freezer but only six of them are filled. Two of them are just spare body parts: a couple of wrapped limbs and something long and spiny, like a tail.  

He comes across another complete body on his fourth try. It’s a woman this time, with long hair tied up on the top of her head. There are long scratches down the side of her arms and part of her left shoulder is gone. If He leans over, He can see her collarbone from the gap made by the missing flesh. The wound itself isn’t very messy so the injury likely occurred post mortem.  

The lady has a cloth tied around her head, so He takes it off to be able to look her in the eyes. They’re closed, but there are lines made by marker that slope over her eye lids and mark down the sides of her nose. Hovering over, He uses his index finger to pull back an eyelid. Even in death her irises are a vivid blue, probably due to a quirk, since the eyes had been labelled and all.  

As He starts to push the tray back in, the hair, which had already been loosely bound, comes undone, falling long and limp off the sides. It reminds him abruptly of the unfamiliar way his own hair brushes against his bare shoulders whenever He moves. Grimacing, He roots though her tangled strands until He finds a hair tie. 

He ties the corpse's hair back in place using the cloth that had been used to cover her eyes. It’s not like she’d be able to use her quirk in this state anyway.  

The hair tie He slides onto his own wrist.  

The next slot doesn’t even hold a person. It’s part of an animal, something large and furry with clawed feet. The fur has two distinctly contrasting patterns so He roots though it until He finds the place where the parts from two different animals had been fused together neatly, the divide nothing but a single ropey scar that runs under the fur.   

He frowns lightly at the sight, wondering why this one failed.  

The last corpse is the newest, if its placement furthest from the door is to be believed. It’s a kid. Well, a teenager technically, but still a kid; smaller than him with a baby fat lined face and a mass of dark curly hair. It has the typical autopsy scars, bound tightly with an ugly dark thread instead of the more popular staples, but what interests him more are ones that must have formed back when the kid was alive.   

The arms, warped even further with rigor mortis, are coved with them-- long, ropey, discolored lines that wind their way up the limbs and curl around them. One of the upper arms barely has any unblemished skin, it's all dark and textured, like someone had run it over with a wide toothed sandpaper every day for several months. It makes his own arms ache in sympathy, not unlike his memory of last night.  

The entire throat is a mess of red and purple bruising. The skin there is chafed, practically rubbed raw. Whatever happened, the poor kid must have struggled. 

Its eyes are open. 

Perhaps it’s the way the body is positioned, or maybe the angle He’s standing at, but all combined, it makes it seem as if the corpse is staring at him. The eyes are clouded over, but they never seem to leave his face, widened in perpetual questioning. Reaching over, He gingerly closes the lids, wincing lightly as his fingers brush cold skin.  

If the corpse could feel, it would probably think his hands were on fire.  

------- 

There is a discolored patch of skin right above his left knee. It’s small, nearly unnoticeable with everything else He has on him but for some reason, looking at it makes it uncomfortable to breathe.  

If He sits leaning forward with his hands on his knees, his palm matches up perfectly with the mark.  

------- 

“It hurts again,” He greets when the metal door beeps and slides open. Garaki raises a questioning eyebrow at him, He raises his both his arms in response. 

“What hurts?” Garaki drawls almost mockingly. He blinks at the tone. 

“My arms,” He clarifies. The low throbbing has started back up again, though thankfully, not with the same intensity as before.  

“Your arms,” Garaki repeats, “that's a new one. Do you know why your arms hurt?” 

“I-” He glances down to the limbs in question, nothing seems out of place, but they continue to pulse lazily, like his bones have a heartbeat of their own, “I’m not sure.” 

“Do you remember ever injuring your arms?” 

The corpse in the freezer with the scarred limbs comes to mind, “I don’t know.” 

Garaki sighs deeply and slumps into his office chair, “There’s nothing wrong with your arms,” he states, “We checked them this morning, and I’ve been watching you all day. This pain that you feel? It’s all in your head.” 

“No, I’m pretty sure it’s in my arms,” He corrects, squeezing his elbow, the pressure seems to alleviate the pulsing, if only slightly.  

The doctor huffs out a small laugh, “Sense of humor. That’s a new one. Hope I can replicate that in your successors, it gets awfully boring around here,” his expression straightens, “When I say it’s in your head, I’m taking about physiologically. There’s nothing wrong with your arms, but your brain wants you to feel like there is.” 

“Why?” He wrinkles his nose; it seems like a pretty shitty thing for his brain to do unprovoked. 

“You want my best guess?” Garaki offers. He nods, leaning forward lightly.   

“Well think about it this way, when something hurts bad enough, people, in this day and age take pain medication for it. That medication inhibits the signals between your nerves so when the brain can’t process them you don’t feel anything,” Garaki leans far enough in his chair that He thinks that he’s going to fall, “Now what do you think happens if someone takes it often enough?” 

“It stops working?” He knows this, but phrases it like a question out of habit. Back then, people hadn’t liked if He sounded self-assured about things, they’d said it showed arrogance.  

He can’t afford arrogance. 

“Precisely. The human body excels at adaption, which means that, to keep feeling the same effects, a person has to take more of the substance. Then more. Until eventually, they have a hard time functioning without it,” the goggles flash as he nods, “the brain isn’t accustomed to receiving normal signals, so it’ll have a hard time keeping working order. Naturally, it tries to relay the message that it needs the medication back. It’ll make it harder to concentrate on basic tasks. It’ll refuse to run proper bodily functions.” 

The chair creaks as he sits up, “It’ll make you think your arms are hurting.”  

“I don’t take any medication,” He mentions, but, even as He says it two images flash across his mind: a packet of gummies next to two pills in the nurse's office and a glass bottle on the lip of a ceramic sink alongside an empty syringe.  

He doesn’t remember the context for either.  

“Well, your body certainly did. He took everything he could get his hands on,” the goggles flash again, He wishes He could tell if Garaki was looking at him, “why do you think the cabinets are locked?” 

“My body?” He asks, squeezing his arm again. It doesn’t help as much this time; He presses on it harder until He could swear He hears the bone creak. 

“Yeah, poor kid was pretty far gone, it made him all kinds of desperate. Lying about pain is far from the worst thing he’s done.” 

“But I’m not lying,” He protests. 

“We’ll see about that. It’s been over twelve hours from your dose last night, which is longer that I expected, sure, but you never know,” he taps the edge of the desk absentmindedly, “tell me if it gets any worse. If the resurrection hasn’t completely fixed the withdrawal, we might have to work you down dosage by dosage.” 

He nods jerkily, wrapping his arms around himself. 

They’re warm to the touch. 

------- 

There is a smattering of small marks near the crook of his elbow. Like pockmarks but darker.  

They almost look like freckles.  

------- 

It’s been fifteen hours since He’s woken up when Garaki realizes that He’s just been wandering around in a sheet all day. 

“Most of my Nomus just end up in whatever I find, but I do conveniently happen to have clothes in your size if you’re interested,” he mentions offhandedly. 

Apparently, He has a backpack, which is new, because He doesn’t remember the backpack. It’s dark and dusty and filled with clothes. Briefly, the memory of another bag flashes across his mind: this one large, yellow, and stuffed to the brim with books that He doesn’t even need every single day. He just carries them because of the habitual, nagging worry that someone will ruin his supplies if He leaves them unattended. 

When his mom asks, He reminds her that He just likes the weight on his back.  

There are no bathrooms inside the lab, so when He nervously asks about one, Garaki makes a note on his clipboard before scanning his id card by the metal door and taking him out into the hall. It’s barely a thirty second walk to reach the bathroom, but He revels in the feeling of being outside the sterile autopsy room, with its walls filled with medical files and corpses. 

Garaki keeps an iron grip on his arm as he leads him there, but he lets him go in by himself. The restroom, like the connecting hallway is metal lined and dimly lit. There’s a shower head in the corner, a lidless toilet, and a familiar stained ceramic sink.  

It takes him two tries to figure the shower out and He nearly groans out loud when the hot water hits him. He stays in there until the tips of his fingers wrinkle, turning the dial further and further towards the left until the water burns his skin. Almost miraculously, the heat from the outside seems to work wonders negating the heat in his limbs. 

He wonders if that is all in his head too. 

The mirror is fogged up by the time He’s done so He rifles through the backpack while it clears. As the doctor had mentioned, there are several shirts, old underwear, and a pair of loose drawstring pants. When He pulls out a worn sweater something clatters to the floor.  

He picks it up. It’s a phone, old with a chipped case and cracked screen, but it still turns on when He presses on it, the battery announcing itself little less than half full.  

Perhaps Garaki really hadn't checked the bag as well as he’d claimed because He has a vague feeling that this isn’t something that He’s supposed to have. The screen glows impossibly bright, like a beacon, as He glances around the bathroom for cameras, or anything that would tip Garaki off. 

After several heart pounding moments, where Garaki doesn’t open the lock, burst into the room, and pry the device away from him, He finally takes a proper look at it. There is a finger print sensor on the back that He almost instinctually presses his right index finger to. The phone vibrates lightly as it unlocks. 

There’s nothing much on the device, it’s almost identical to the factory rest with basic wallpaper and preinstalled apps. Water droplets drip off his hair and roll infuriatingly slow down his back as He scrolls through the calendar and notes app. Everything is empty, even the text messages, the only thing He finds is that there had been an alarm set for 3:20 and 3:30 in the morning consecutively, but even those are disabled.  

He opens up the call log last. The contact list is blank, so the only thing He gets is a list of numbers. There is one that shows up rather often, but it hasn’t called or been called in the past couple of days. The latest call is to a new number, one He can’t find again in the call history no matter how far up He scrolls. It was made last night, at around midnight, which is odd, since He doesn't remember calling anyone, much less doing anything then. All He recalls from last night is the inferno his body had been so keen to imitate. 

The mirror is still fogged up by the time He finishes pulling on his clothes so He just settles for running his hand through his damp hair, more to get it out his eyes then style it.  

He’s just opened up the phone again when a pounding on the door nearly has his heart tearing itself out his chest. 

"You done in there?” Garaki asks and He makes a strangled noise in response. He doesn’t know where to keep the phone. On his person is too risky, Garaki is always poking and prodding him and would discover it eventually. He could hide it in the room, but it's covered in cameras. Finally, He settles for powering it down and wrapping it up in a shirt, which He shoves into the bottom of the bag with the paperclip and hair tie: his most valuable items.  

Garaki looks frustrated when He opens the door but he doesn’t say anything, which He takes to mean that He isn’t in any kind of trouble.  

“I’m keeping this with me,” He informs Garaki as they make their way back to the lab, tucking the backpack even tighter under his arm. Garaki squints at him but doesn’t object. Though as soon as they enter the bright room, he makes a beeline for his desk to add something on his clipboard. 

He remains at the entrance watching the door slide shut behind him and realizes, for the first time, how strongly the lab reeks of formaldehyde.  

------- 

He notices this scar after the shower only because it itches aggravatingly as stray drops of water slide down his drying legs. It’s on his inner thigh-- a thin, white line barely visible in the dim lighting.  

Looking at it makes his stomach turn in a completely different direction than the mark on his knee does. More in disgust than in regret.  

As the evening goes on and his arms and legs start to heat up again, He can feel an irritating line of heat right along the side of the scar, as if someone was trailing a heated piece of wire back and forth against his thigh. 

He wants to scratch at it.  

He does scratch at it, first idly, then with ever growing intensity until the itch grows hotter and hotter and his nails just aren’t sharp enough to help anymore. 

At that point, He can do nothing but grit his teeth and sit on his hands, because He knows that if He doesn’t control himself, He’s going to scratch and scratch and scratch until He splits the skin right back open. 

------- 

As is increasingly becoming a pattern, He thinks Garaki was right about the burning. 

It remains manageable all evening, making him clench his jaw at most. But at soon as Garaki leaves, dimming the lights, and letting the door hiss shut behind him, it returns with a vengeance.  

Arms. Legs. Fingers. Shoulders. It’s all He can do: repeat the body part that is pulsing the warmest to distract himself from it. 

Soon even that isn’t enough. 

“It hurts,” He whispers to himself, lying pressed again the tile in the desperation that the coolness of it will ease the ache. 

“It hurts. It. Hurts. It hurts ,” He pauses, trying to remember what comes afterward.  

“Mom?” 

That’s not right. He doesn’t have a mother. He knows this in the same way and with the same conviction that He knows where the stethoscopes are kept (third drawer along the fourth counter clockwise, third counter counterclockwise) and how formaldehyde smells on unwashed clothing (absolutely rancid).  

Logically, He has to have a mother. Preceding whatever the hell He’d woken up from yesterday, He’s no biological miracle. Somewhere out there is a woman who carried and birthed the infant version of the body He wears now. What He’s really missing here, is the emotional connection.  

He'd done this last night too, called out for his mother in the throes of agony, which makes precisely no sense. Perhaps if He had some memory to latch on to, something ironically abstract to ground himself in, some image or feeling to seek comfort from...  

For example: his small hands fisted in her skirt at a farmers' market, the sweet smell of her bedsheets where she slept alone, her hand curled lightly around his ankle as He lay in a hospital bed, the shell of his ear rubbing against the buttons on her sweater as she rocks him back and forth whispering ‘Sorry. Sorry. Baby I’m so sorry. I'm so sorry. I’m so sorry Iz-’. 

But He doesn’t have any of that. All He has left of his mother is the prison of a body she had gifted him and her empty name on his lips. 

“It hurts,” the spot on the floor He’s lying on grows warmer so He rolls over to a new area, “It hurts.” 

“Mom.” 

He doesn't have anything like that. 

“It hurts.” 

It does. Doesn’t it. 

“Mom?” 

He needs to stop. 

“Mom, it hurts.” 

He doesn’t deserve her. 

“Mom.” 

He holds his breath until his throat constricts, so He can’t keep saying it. Eyes screwed shut, He rolls over again. At this point he’s going to heat the entire floor up. 

‘Mom’  

He can’t say it, but He mouths the word just in case He forgets it later. 

‘Mom’  

His bones are smoldering again, He wonders if there is anything out there strong enough to extinguish them. It must be a real messed up physiological thing, the fact that his brain always conjures up fire. Maybe He enjoys being burned. 

‘Mom’  

There isn’t a shrine nor a god close enough so He prays to the ceiling lights instead. One of them is yellower than the other. 

‘Mom’  

Maybe, maybe if He lies still enough, she’ll come inside his room without knocking and wrap her cool fingers lightly around his ankle, keeping them there until He slightly shifts it, instead of checking his breathing like He knows she really wants to. 

“It hurts.” 

What an awful price to pay for being alive. 

------- 

There's a pink line on his left thumb, barely an inch long. It sways lazily as his arms tremble with the effort of dragging him to a colder spot on the floor. 

This one He doesn’t remember doing to himself. 

------- 

When Garaki returns the clock reads half past one and He has made it to the wall of coolers, which, to his relief, do not seem to go warm after a few minutes of pressing his feverish body against them. He’s discarded his shirt somewhere so He can alternate between holding the full map of his back and his chest against the cold stainless steel. The legs of his sleep pants are rolled up too, the reddened skin of his inner thigh on display. 

“It hurts,” He greets like clockwork, but, before Garaki can respond, something jumps out from behind the clipboard in his arms and clatters its way across the tile and into his lap clicking rapidly. 

It’s a cat. Well. Almost a cat.  

The creature has the build of a small feline, but its feet are raptor-like and the tail is lined with cracked greying scales. Its torso supports two distinct patterns of fur: one dark and striped, and the other lighter and spotted with a courser texture.  

The oddest part is the head, large and oblong with an exposed cranium and inset eyes that are decidedly not mammalian, and never seem to concentrate on the same spot. Its mouth, like the nostrils, is long and slit. It remains sealed through the clicking, but when it opens to let out a gurgling craw, He can see jagged, glass shard shaped teeth that extend down to its throat.  

“That’s Sukiyaki,” Garaki introduces, “Don’t look at me like that, you’re the one that named her. Though you preferred to call her-” 

“Suki,” He finishes, leaning down his head, which happens to be the only part of his body He can move at the moment. Suki lets out another hacking gurgle at the sound of her name, reaching out a paw? (foot?) to bat at the ends of his hair. 

“Yes,” Garaki echoes quietly, “I thought you’d appreciate the company down here if you weren’t asleep,” he makes another note on the ever-present clipboard, “If everything went right, I doubt you’ll be sleeping much these days anyway.” 

 Suki makes another swipe at his hair and clips his arm on the way down, which brings a quick end to the distraction. 

“It hurts,” He reminds Garaki. 

“So, it does,” Garaki tilts his head upward, as if looking to the same ceiling lights for answers on what to do. When he brings his head back down his eyebrows are furrowed.  

Abandoning the clipboard on one of the autopsy tables, the doctor makes his way to the cabinets, pulling a ring of keys out of his pocket to unlock it. He fiddles with something on the counter, then locks up the cabinet again. When the ring of keys is dropped rather noisily back into his pocket, Suki’s eyes roll back in response. 

“Can you stand?” Garaki questions, but crouches down slightly and grasps his upper arm without waiting for an answer, “this here is around half of last night's dose,” he brandishes a syringe filled with a clear liquid in front of him, “It’ll take the edge off, but you won’t get completely knocked out. Understand?” 

He nods rapidly, eliciting a distorted yowl from Suki as his hair shakes from the movement, “It hurts,” He clarifies, in case Garaki starts having second thoughts. 

“Well then, out. Out! Shoo!” Garaki swats lightly at Suki until she clatters her way to the other end of the room where she sits back on her haunches and observes with slightly crossed eyes. 

“You’re going to owe me a favor for this,” the doctor informs him, right before the needle is plunged into his arm. 

Much like last night, the heat only grows following, stripping away at his skin and flesh, but this time it stops just shy of his heart, opting instead to dissolve lazily back into his core.  

When He blinks the dark spots out of his eyes, Garaki is still there, once again busy at his desk. Suki has climbed up onto one of the autopsy tables, her tail dangles off the side, swinging back and forth idly. 

“Ready to go?” Garaki questions, without looking up from his papers. He peels himself away from the freezer, and groans out loud at the way his muscles twinge, but, on the bright side, his limbs no longer want complete independence from his torso. 

He swipes an arm out experimentally, snagging his shirt off the floor in the process. 

“Yes.” 

------- 

There are a good number of similar marks, all short, straight, pale, and awkwardly angled scattered up and down his arms. 

Suki chitters gutturally when He throws her a look. 

------- 

This time, when Garaki leads him through the maze-like metal tunnels of the lab he doesn’t clutch at his arm like He’s about to run at any given moment. Instead, he walks ahead almost nonchalantly, like they are simply two people strolling through the labs. However, the way he stops ever so often to turn around and stare are a giveaway to the fact that He is still not to be trusted.  

The walk had been slightly exciting, with the sloping ceiling of the tunnels and Suki winding herself between his legs, but the room they enter into almost makes him long for the autopsy room again, cloying chemical smell, frozen bodies and all.  

This room is larger but it is covered in standing tanks, packed so densely that it makes it hard to walk across it without winding through them and making unfortunate eye contact with whatever is inside.  

Not that the things inside can tell. Most of them are vaguely humanoid forms, floating limply in murky liquid, but once in a while He catches a flash of white that might be a sclera.  

All in all, its creepy as hell. 

Suki seems to reflect the sentiment, as she practically pushes herself up against his legs as He walks. After the third time He nearly trips over her in the limited space He reaches down and scoops her into his arms. She scrabbles momentarily against his chest in surprise, but sinks into the hold a second later, clicking contently.  

Garaki leads him to the back of the room, where there is a similar inset metal wall embedded with small doors. This freezer is filled mostly with spare parts and small half fused animals that the doctor has him remove and wrap in plastic sheets before spraying down and wiping the trays clean. 

“We’ll bring the bodies from the autopsy room down here after, they’re taking up too much room there to begin with,” Garaki says ‘we’ but the tone implies that He is the one that will be doing most of the heavy lifting.  

The remains get wrapped in plastic a second time and labelled before Garaki directs him to the walk-in freezer, which is even cooler than the autopsy room. It’s cold enough that He can see his breath in front of him when He exhales and Suki refuses to enter it all together, chittering nervously at door. 

Hopefully next time his brain wants him to think that his body his aflame, Garaki will let him hang out here instead. 

He doesn’t realize that the freezer has a light switch until Garaki enters to check his work and complains about the dark. The goggles he’s wearing must be tinted because He isn’t having nearly as much trouble seeing.  However, the light does help better illuminate the corners of freezer. He nearly jumps back when the bulb above his head flickers to life, highlighting the large bodies that are propped up against the wall.  

He’d thought them to be part of the shelving at first. But on a closer look He can make out the limbs under the dark plastic wrapping. They sway slightly when the freezer door slams shut behind Garaki, and it’s only then that He notices that they aren’t propped against the wall, but are, instead, hung from the ceiling by bright nylon cord knotted neatly around their necks.  

“The slots on the one outside are only so big,” Garaki reminds him, “so this is what we have to do with the ones that don’t fit.” 

------- 

His hands are pretty. 

It’s an odd word to use and an odder one to use accurately. It's not something He’s accustomed to, being pretty. Sure, He’s grateful for his hands and they’ve always been useful , but never anything close to pretty .  

Strangely enough, when He thinks of his hands, He envisions them as large and awkward and gross with the near consistent presence of scabs, or hangnails that He wouldn’t stop picking at until his fingers were red and inflamed. 

He’d forced himself out of that habit eventually, less out of determination, and more to keep in tune with the new way his fingers were warped and his palms creaked and it was hard to understand exactly how surfaces felt underneath them. Any swelling on top of that would have been torture. 

But now, his hands are pretty: pale and mostly smooth with long fingers and oval shaped nails. There are a few blemishes: stray marks, a couple of dark hairs on the knuckles, and calluses on some of the fingers, but they don’t do much to retract from the overall beauty of them.  

He finds himself admiring them idly whenever He catches sight of them. Sometimes He even dedicates time to it, lying on his back, holding them up to the light, and tilting his arms back and forth lightly.  

Sometimes, when the medication wears off faster than usual, and He’s left with nothing to do save clench his teeth and stare at the ceiling, they are almost a reprieve. Sure, He doesn’t have a name and his head pounds and his limbs ache and He longs and longs and longs for the kind of sleep so deep that He can only dream it but, at least. 

At least.  

At least his hands are pretty.  

------- 

 The new room doesn’t have cameras. 

Logically: that is incorrect. There are cameras there, sequestered in all four corners much like the autopsy room, but the jumble of tanks and dim lighting give him two things here that He hasn’t had before: security and blind spots.  

Garaki makes an expression He can’t quite dissect when He requests to go there, but he relents. So, He spends the majority of his day in the tank room, under the watchful stare of half formed Nomus, which is somehow preferrable to Garaki and his ever-present clipboard. 

He takes the backpack with him and manages to find a charger in one of the side pockets that He had missed previously. He plugs it into an outlet tucked conveniently behind an empty tank and shuts it on and off so He can watch the swirling animation for the welcoming screen.  

Suki is there too, darting between the tanks and batting at his bare feet for attention when He looks away for a moment. 

He waits well into the afternoon, but, when Garaki doesn’t make another appearance, He finally takes his hair tie out from its hiding place at the bottom of the bag and uses it to make a clumsy ponytail that rests loosely at the nape of his neck. It’s a relief to not have to push his hair out of his face every couple of minutes, and comes with the bonus feature of Suki not putting her claws near his eye trying to play with it.  

Garaki’s claims of not needing to sleep as much aside, the last two nights catch up to him between the murky tanks and He manages to doze off slightly during the afternoon. When He come to, it's to an echoing ring from across the room.  

The phone. 

He almost brains himself on one of the tanks with how fast He scrambles to the other side of the room. He swipes to the right in his haste to silence it and spends the next couple heart pounding moments clutching the device to his chest, eyes darting around the room to make sure nothing is out of place.  

He doesn't even realize that He has answered the call until He hears a tinny voice on the other end, “Hello we would like to ask if you would be willing to participate in filling out-” 

He hangs up, heart still pounding in his throat. 

He sits there, curled behind the tank, grip tightened on the phone all the way up to the second phone call. This one He’s more prepared for, and He swipes right again seconds after the screen lights up with an unfamiliar number, picking up the call before the device even has a chance to make a sound.  

“Hello?” He asks. All of a sudden, his voice sounds too loud to his own ears. 

“Hello?” He moves the phone slightly further away from his ear to double check that He hasn’t accidentally been yelling. Garaki hearing aside, some of the forms in the tanks must be at least somewhat cognizant because they seem to shift around at loud noises. 

“Is anyone there?” He puts the phone on the floor so He can lean over and read the number on the screen. It's probably another telemarketer anyway. He doesn’t know what prompted him to pick it up. Boredom, most likely.  

He’s about to hang up when a voice crackles from the speaker, “Hi!” it goes silent again. 

Minimizing the window on the current call, He opens up the call log and starts to scroll up, trying to see if He can match this number. He doesn’t have to look far, it’s the second entry, right above the spam call from the afternoon. 

The one He’d supposedly called right before He’d woken up. 

“Hey, umm, I’m sorry but who is this?” He presses his knees to his chest and leans over so the microphone can pick up his voice properly.  

“I’m, uh, Hitoshi.” Hitoshi. He doesn’t know a Hitoshi. Granted, He doesn’t really know much of anyone, but He thinks that if He’d known this Hitoshi, He would have remembered him. Hitoshi. Hitoshi. Hitoshi, Hitoshi, Hitoshi...  

“Hitoshi, Hitoshi...” He rolls the name around, trying to get used to how it feels in his mouth. It’s a nice name so He tucks it, small and tight, right next to ‘Eiji’ in his mind. But, also, “sorry, I don’t know a Hitoshi.”  

There is a pause on the other side. 

“Ah, no I um, I was looking for my friend,” Hitoshi says; he has a nice voice, low and smooth, He can tell even over the phone. He opens his mouth to respond that Hitoshi probably has the wrong number because there is no one of the sort here. The only people in the lab are him and the doctor, and He strongly doubts Hitoshi with his pleasant voice and an almost awkward stilt to his words is friends with Garaki. 

“He called me from this number a couple of days ago, and I wanted to reach him again,” Hitoshi rushes out before He has the chance to say anything. 

From this number... He switches back to the call log, squinting at the matching number. Well, there’s the evidence for the call. Frowning, He reaches over to dig around in the bag again and comes out with a crumpled receipt, which He straightens out.    

“Oh, uhm, wait a minute,” He places the receipt on the floor before realizing that He doesn't have a writing utensil. He’ll just have to remember this then, “what was your friend’s name again?”  

Names are good. Garaki had pulled his bag out from under his desk, so if there was someone out there who had access to this phone then it would mean they had to have been in the lab the morning the call had been made. Which means an increased likelihood that Garaki or his cameras would have seen them. 

“Izuku,” responds Hitoshi. 

Izuku. 

His head practically swims at that for a moment. Izuku. Izuku. Izuku, Izuku, Izuku. It's like something clicking, the word on his tongue sliding into place, the itch on the side of his leg dissipating.   

Izuku.  

He knows an Izuku. 

“He called me two days ago, super early in the morning.”  

“I don’t remember anyone coming in then,” He comments out loud, but his mind is still reeling. Izuku. Izuku was right there. Hitoshi had talked to Izuku. Izuku who He knows . 

“What does this friend of yours look like?” He asks, voice almost trembling with excitement. He hopes Hitoshi doesn’t hear that. He doesn’t need Hitoshi to start asking questions about him. He just needs Hitoshi to answer his questions about Izuku. 

“He’s um short? Curly hair?” Curly hair. Izuku has curly hair. He tries to build that image in his head. Izuku, whom He knows, is short and has curly hair. 

“Eye color?” He tries next. It’s a pretty standard question for identification.  

Also, if Izuku had looked at him, He wants to know what He might have seen if He’d looked back. 

“Green?” Hitoshi says it like he isn’t sure. 

“Was that a question or an answer?”  

“Answer.”  

“Ok, thank you. Do you know if he was left-handed or right-handed?”   

“Why do you need to know this again?” Hitoshi asks and He feels a note of frustration spike. 

“Well, you’re the one who asked for him,” they both know Izuku, but right now Hitoshi is the one who knows more , and He is the one who needs to know more, because He knows Izuku and He needs to know more about Izuku so He can-  

“Just, what hand does he write with?”  

So He can. 

“Umm...Both?”  

He needs to know who Izuku is because. 

Because. 

“Does he have a preference?”  

Because. 

“Listen I have no idea-”  

Because if He knows Izuku...  

“Ok, thanks for the info. He isn’t here right now, but if I find him, I’ll send you a text. I'm not allowed to call in the evenings, it might wake them up,” He doesn’t mean to blurt that out. The mass in the tank in front of him rotates lazily, as if in reprimand. 

If He knows Izuku... 

“Ok-”  

If He knows Izuku then there is a chance... 

He hangs up. 

If He knows Izuku then there is a chance that Izuku knows him too. 

------- 

There is a scar on his chin. 

In the grand scheme of his face, it’s hardly something that He should care about. There is a lot unusual about his face. So much so, in fact, that the scar is perhaps the most normal part.  

He remembers reading somewhere, that demons, when walking the mortal plane, would sometimes steal the faces of handsome men and women to disguise themselves. His face is definitely stolen, He thinks, for all the ways that it fits him wrong. 

He wonders if that makes him some decent looking guy with poor luck, or if it makes him the demon.  

There are a lot of things that fit him wrong, but the face is most noticeable, likely because it’s the one He sees most often: in the mirror, reflected on the steel tables, shining distortedly off Garaki’s ever present goggles.   

The nose is longer and slightly aquiline-- He can feel the slope when He traces his fingers down it. The eyes are both smaller and uneven, with one of them single lidded and the other double. His lips are narrower; longer, thinner, and almost excessively chapped from the cool dry atmosphere of the lab. Enough that it hurts to smile too wide. 

The jaw is also more defined, narrow enough that it seems like part of it is missing, and patchy with hints of dark stubble.  

Then there’s the scar. 

If He peers close enough in the right lighting, a thin pink rope, about half the size of his smallest finger, trails its way from the center of his chin to the side of his jaw. It's hidden well enough that He can only really see it if He tilts his head the right way, but He’s spent long enough staring at himself that He knows exactly where it is. 

Sometimes if He catches sight of his face unexpectedly, He runs his fingers over the scar. Back and forth. Between his chin and his jaw. It’s a small comfort in that it helps take his mind of his face, already unfamiliar, but transformed even further with dark eyebags and hollow cheeks. 

It’s such an odd spot to have a marking that it almost cements his belief that this can’t be resultant of something He’d done on purpose.  

------- 

In the end, He doesn’t need to ask Garaki about anything.  

He figures it out himself, leaning back against an empty tank, phone warm in his hand, still coming down from the high of remembering something important. 

Izuku was short, Hitoshi had said. Short, curly hair, green eyes, ambidextrous.  

Short, curly hair, green eyes, ambidextrous.  

Short, curly hair green ey- 

His gaze lands, almost cruelly, on the slightly inset stainless steel wall across the room. Complete with small embedded doors.  

For a minute He considers it, that He is wrong, and that Izuku is still out there: living, breathing, holding the kind of answers that He needs, but, in the end, it’s a futile hope. 

His arms and legs pang in sympathy as He pulls himself up and makes his way over the freezers, as slow as humanly possible.  

This time He doesn’t even need to go through all of them to figure out which one it is. He’s the one who had helped Garaki move the corpses, carrying them in his arms from one room to the other. 

He sighs out loud as He opens the door and pulls out the tray. The body had fit perfectly in his arms, the easiest of the three to transport. 

Sure enough, lying on the tray, lids shut, dead to the world and anything beyond it, is Izuku: short stature, curly hair.  

He gently pulls the lids up.  

Green eyes. 

It takes him a moment but He takes both hands turning them over lightly and, sure enough, on the side of both of the middle fingers is the prominent callus caused by repeat use of a long narrow tool, like chopsticks, or a writing utensil. 

Ambidextrous. 

He knows how Izuku would look at him now: cold, placid, and unmoving. It almost gives him whiplash with how fast his hope has been torn away. Just an hour ago He’d been so sure He woke up with nothing, and since then, He has both been handed the singular piece of information He remembers most definitely, and has had it taken away in almost the same breath.  

When Suki comes looking for him after her nap, He’s still leaned against the cooler, phone clutched in hand, slot shut to prevent the body from spoiling. He’s letting her rub her back against his leg when the thought strikes him. 

Izuku would have liked this. 

Suki yowls angrily when He shoots up abruptly. Izuku likes animals. He’s just remembered something else about Izuku. 

He almost wants to slap himself with how belatedly it occurs to him. Again: if He knows Izuku, then there is a large chance that Izuku knew him back. The kid being dead doesn’t change a thing. Hitoshi, who He talked to over the phone, doesn’t know Izuku is dead, but he still has a memory of him. 

The more He learns about Izuku, the easier it will be to find out what Izuku knew about him.  

He pulls open the freezer with renewed vigor, gritting his teeth when the door clangs loudly against the side. The body is still stiff, but He arranges it to look more recognizable, pulling the sheet down slightly so the top of the scarring on the upper arm is visible, tilting the head back to the hair doesn’t cast an obscuring shadow over the rounded features, and finally propping the eyelids open. 

Like a glaring reprieve in the pit of his dark luck, He already has a source who was familiar with Izuku while he was alive. 

He opens the texting app and enters the number manually, still too wary to save anything in the contacts. He types out and deletes about half a dozen greetings before finally settling on a neutral ‘hey’. 

He waits for a minute, phone tucked close to his chest so as not to be visible to the cameras, but doesn’t get a response, so He goes ahead and snaps a picture, thankful of his foresight to turn the camera flash off.  

The picture is sent and he’s typing a follow up message: ‘is this Izuku’ when He pauses.  

‘Is this Izuku?’ 

It feels wrong to ask, because the body on the table isn’t Izuku. It had been at some point, but it isn’t any longer. It’s a shame, almost, Izuku is such a nice name, He likes the way it sits heavy against his tongue—the name of someone who had known him. 

Izuku doesn’t belong tucked away, like Hitoshi and Eiji had been. He needs to keep it out and visible, a consistent reminder on his lips so He always knows what He is looking for.  

Surely, surely, Izuku wouldn’t begrudge him that. 

He glances down, the body stares right back up at him in what could almost be taken as silent permission. 

The twin checkmarks light up, signaling that his previous messages have been seen. 

Breathing slowly, in his nose, out his mouth, He adjusts the wording on his final message and hits send before leaning over and shutting no-longer-Izuku's cold, dead eyelids with the tips of his warm, living fingers. 

‘Is this ur friend?’ 

------- 

He thinks these ones are a punishment. 

Less a reminder and more a special kind of torment. He didn’t think He would be allowed to have anything otherwise.  

He’s a special kind of screw up: a fact, so there has to be something there to illustrate that. Something other than his marked body, or ill-fitting face, or delicate hands. 

It’s an unkind conspiracy, the way the sleeves on all his shirts fall a bit too short, and how his hands are so nicely shaped that his eyes continue to catch on them, and how Garaki always tilts his head away after long silences, as if he were averting his eyes from them even though He can never tell what he is looking at from under the goggles. 

It’s like the undesired effects of an improperly worded wish: his hands are lithe, shapely, and largely unmarred, so, to make up for it, there are thick matching lines on the inside of both his wrists. 

Large. 

Prominent. 

And most importantly, newly healed.  

------- 

There are two men in the autopsy room.  

From the way the silence is practically a physical presence when He enters, they were in the middle of a conversation. 

From the way Garaki’s face is stiff and lip curled as he opens the door to let him in, he hadn’t been enjoying that conversation. 

One of the men is neatly dressed, in a well-worn, yet well-pressed suit and an impressively complicated tie. There is a mask on his face, one that He thinks is rather unnecessary. The delicately painted expression does nothing more than give an air of calm indifference, which is rather redundant, since the man seems to exude it anyway, with his easy stance and casual greeting.  

The first thing the other man does as He enters is knock a cup of pens off of Garaki’s desk. He’s practically his companion’s opposite, with a worn coat and a shirt whose better days look like they’ve seen better days. His posture is lazy, his face heavily scarred, and his eyes widened in surprise-- unblinking, even as the cup clatters to the floor noisily. 

Garaki scoffs out loud. Still the man doesn’t move. His white knuckled grip on the desk looks like it hurts. Something on his face glints in the bright lighting. If He looks closer, He can spot a number of piercings and, are those... staples? 

“Eiji,” the man gasps, swaying lightly on his feet, as if his knees are ready to give out underneath him, “Eiji, is that...? Just— How ”  

“That isn’t Eiji,” Garaki says sounding almost bored, but He catches the undercurrent of vindictive pleasure in the tone, “it is, in fact, the first step in realizing--” 

“Oh save it you bald bastard,” the man snarls, finally steady enough on his feet to let go of the edge of the table, “What the hell did you do to him?” 

“Nothing you need to be concerning yourself with,” Garaki sniffs taking a step aside and gesturing to the door, “Now if you will please--” 

“That was rather fast, wasn’t it?” the man in the suit speaks up for the first time. Even his voice is serene, “I was under the impression that these processes took a couple months at the very minimum. At least, that is what I recall you telling Shigaraki.” 

“He was an ongoing procedure,” Garaki almost hisses, “Now if you would--” 

“You experimented on him when he was alive?! ” the man with the—yeah those are definitely staples—screeches. His eyes dart rapidly between him and Garaki and He has to stop himself from shivering when the gaze comes to a rest on his wrists.  

“They were controlled tests, Dabi, don’t act as if I have not perfected the technique. Besides it wasn’t like your friend ,” Garaki pulls on the word referencing an implication He isn’t familiar with, but the man, Dabi, is, if the way his face screws even further in anger is any indication, “didn’t actively volunteer for it.” 

“Like hell Eiji would have--” 

“I’d guess,” Garaki continues, “it had something to do with the seventeen milligrams of morphine injected subcutaneously he’d receive every four hours following the surgery, while symptoms lasted. But I’m sure you have your own, exponentially more correct assumptions to make.” 

Dabi scoffs out loud and tears his gaze away from his wrists, still scowling, “I don’t care what kind of--” he takes a step towards him.  

He takes a step back. 

The scowl disappears like it has been slapped off, “Eiji-” Dabi starts again. 

“Actually umm,” He can feel his body flush at the mortification of cutting someone off so directly, “That’s- that’s not my name. My name is--” He goes to take a deep breath but realizes the gesture might look weird preceding something so trivial so He settles for a shallow one. It isn’t nearly enough. 

“My name is Izuku.” Well, only for the time being, but He really doesn’t want to explain all that.  

Dabi gapes at him for a moment, mouth opening and closing like there is something that he wants to say. Ultimately, the silence wins out and he shuts it with an audible click. Schooling his face back into a scowl that pulls at the staples embedded in it, he stalks noisily towards the door.  

For a second, He (Izuku) almost thinks that Dabi is going to shoulder him out of his way as he walks, and prepares to move to the side, but he sidesteps him entirely as he stomps out. 

“Well, another time then Doctor?” the man in the suit offers as Dabi’s footsteps echo down the hall. As he leaves, he reaches over and pats him lightly on the shoulder. He (Izuku) almost recoils at it. It’s pathetic how his body is knocked off kilter by a friendly touch, by a fleeting moment of warmth. 

He (Izuku) stares at the two of them retreat down the hall until Garaki swipes his card and slides the door shut a touch more forcefully that usual.  

“Who were they?” He (Izuku) asks, glancing at the door, even though it’s closed.  

“Nothing you need to concern yourself with,” Garaki answers. It’s a deflection, which is strange, because thus far he has been pretty indulgent of Izuku’s questions, which, given, have mostly been about medical equipment and procedures anyway. 

“If they show up again,” Garaki warns him, “You’re not allowed to talk to them. If I’m not there then you will get me and then keep to yourself.” 

“Why?” He (Izuku) doesn’t mean to say it, the question just slips out.  

Garaki pauses in picking up his pens from the floor, “Why?” 

Depositing the ones he’d already collected on the desktop, he walks up to him and reaches up to run his hands through his hair. When his fingers catch at the hair tie, Garaki’s already frustrated expression completely smooths out for a second before he yanks it out, hard enough that Izuku’s scalp stings afterward.  

“Why?” Garaki repeats, “Why? Because I told you to, that is why.” 

The hair tie lies on the floor where it has been dropped, framed by the dark strands of hair that have been torn out along with it. 

He (Izuku) blows a lock of hair away from his face.  

When Garaki raises his hand to touch his hair again, Izuku grasps it, five fingers wrapped around the wrist, and shoves him back. Away from him.  

“Why?” He (Izuku) asks again, spitting out a strand of hair. 

Garaki stares back at him with the same placid expression, his goggles are crooked, “Say, what did you say your name was again?” he asks.  

“Izuku,” He (Izuku) replies, breath still caught in his throat. 

“Say Izuku,” Garaki takes a step forward. 

He (Izuku) wants to take a step back.  

“Do your arms still hurt?”