Chapter Text
Dabi’s wrist and feet ache something fierce as he walks atop the concrete sidewalk, burning a little more than the rest of him that in turn feel cold or numb. He knows the faint chill on his scarred skin means he toed the line between overusing his quirk and quirk exhaustion, which for him is the result of the heat from his fire leaving his organs and focusing on his tired skin instead.
He knows his skin is painlessly flaking by looking at it, purple melted patches peeling away and fluttering off in blackened pieces, like blops of dandruff if dandruff were black instead of white and unimportant instead of itching. But the sight of his purpled burns no longer disgust him as they once did so Dabi only dabs underneath his eyes and rubs away some of the blood around stapled skin.
It still feels weak to be self-destructive, and curdling in his stomach to treat his quirks’ results only just enough that he doesn’t die from it after all; or too soon, depending on the day’s prospective.
Dabi suddenly wishes he were more of a villain, evil and deranged, but that would be too merciful for someone like him.
That drug runner girl deserved better. Instead, she is being buried sometime soon, her parents’ debt ever-mounting, and her older brother an only child. He’s not so evil he doesn’t feel angry and slighted by her death, like much of the world should be. She could’ve gone places.
Dabi’s eyes throb and he is pulled back out into the real world, soaked concrete and city life noise, a flickering street light at the corner. It’s hard to tell if the pain under his left eye means the skin there is broken and bleeding now (some staples decided to leave him at some point in the past three hours). He swipes a thumb over his upper cheek and thick red streams mix with rainwater to drain down his wrist and dirty the cotton sleeve of his increasingly damp, black hoodie.
“Damn it,” Dabi turns on his heel with a mutter, swiftly stumbling across the street. It's one way, so despite the world being blurry, he once again isn’t killed by Japanese traffic. He heads toward the hole-in-the-wall tiny market that serves him as a pharmacy. The place doesn’t sell bread or instant food, but it does sell alcohol and all you would ever need in a first aid kit. The first time Dabi walked in there fresh with a fake ID for a novel pack of cigarettes, he walked out with Advil and a two liter of too sweet, taboo soda the owner handed him instead.
The dark soda was shit, good sugar-rush-and-crash syrup in a bottle, and the iodine, burn cream, stitching needles, medical thread, gauze, medical staples (everything needed to patch a body bag together like a doll) were top shelf. There was no gum in the store either, but there was gum flavored chapstick shelved in between the plastic umbrellas and full face ski masks.
Befitting a ‘villainous area’ of a central Japanese district, really.
The cashier looks up and tips his head up in greeting when Dabi walks in. It’s the owner’s son working the store this time. Dabi skips past the single shelf of mostly socially unacceptable pocket food, finds the large bottle of iodine, and waves it above his head to the cashier.
They’ve both memorized the price by now.
“Have a good one,” The son says on Dabi’s turn toward the door.
It’s the first step outside the store when the light drizzle becomes a proper downpour. Dabi’s sweatshirt is soaked in approximately three seconds, making the material stick flush to his frame and the burned skin of his upper torso and arms. His hands ache at the chill they’re exposed to.
“Fucking great,” Dabi curses in a mutter, pulling the drawstrings of his hood tighter and huddling down further into himself as he starts to shiver. The way to the hideout is coincidentally against the wind, because Dabi’s fate is riddled with big and small challenges alike.
It soaks Dabi’s black facemask, making it stick to his nose and mouth so he briefly inhales water. He’s then suffocating, the pain behind his eyes rising to white hot, and his feet instinctively moving into the nearest alley. Back sliding down the wall, Dabi rips the face mask down with enough force he knows he’s ripped the cloth strings.
Dry, in public, and halfway shadowed by a cap, his personal take on eyebags can decently pass as smudged, poorly done makeup. But without the protection of a mask, Dabi’s appearance might as well be a siren. And despite being fireproof, his lungs aren’t smokeproof; another product of his cursed genetics, so the relieving gulps of humid, city tainted night air are worth it.
Not that anyone was likely to literally stumble across him here, on the ground in a tight back alley underneath a downpour. Normal people are at home or safely at work; dry.
Said rain is still battering his shoulders when Dabi hides his face into the space between his chest and raised knees. His headache booms with every harsh droplet and his breaths get harder to drag in with every inhale, another wave hitting him as the heat moves back inward towards his organs to burn. The burn of his chest and stomach are familiar.
He still cries, soon swallows involuntary wails because despite how numb his mind has mercifully become to his own pain, the ever persistently active nerves in his body are not numb. He sways, slumping back and tilting his head up so it rests against the wall behind him, water filling the back of his throat on every rasping open-mouthed inhale.
He’s content to dissociate. Lets his shit lungs drag in air despite the equally shit air quality.
His mind falls into that special pain haze that distorts time. He will move when the wave passes and he can walk again-
But something distinctly flesh-like settles on his forehead.
He jolts, adrenaline floods, and he pries his eyes open. Only they don’t open, clenched shut as he’s slammed back into his tense body and with that, sensations of him burning from the inside out, electric pain like his insides are cramping and boiling within him.
He moans, trying to twist his body away from the stranger, but he’s not sure if he moves at all.
Everything hurts, water stings the insides of his nostrils when he breathes in rain and he coughs, curling into himself until a hand forcibly shoves him back upright. Dabi sobs with a shudder at another onslaught of hot white pain from his torso.
The hand moves, something tries to pry his wrist away but Dabi is seized up, his limbs locked around him and shielded by his soaking, oversized clothing (information he only knows because he could recognize the sensations of his fingers inside his sweatshirt pocket in his sleep). Another touch on his forehead turns warm and Dabi has a thought, a stab of fear and panic - ‘what are they going to do, what if my brain melts-’ delirious;
But suddenly it’s over.
He wakes - ‘wakes-?’ - and it’s raining, water sloshing and noise in his ears. Dinky alley walls greet his eyes when he opens them and the darkness tells him it is either nighttime or a very cloudy day.
It’s not the first time he ‘wakes up’ on the ground so he reflexively keeps himself relaxed.
He’s not in pain anymore, that’s the first thing he notices. HIs muscles, bracing for it, relax.
The second thing he really notices is that it’s different somehow when he opens his mouth and moves his jaw to speak.
There’s a lady in an EMT vest passed out next to him, sprawled uglily over the concrete. A quick check proves the mystery citizen is alive, which means Dabi should go. He’s risen when he sees his hand and freezes.
He quickly flings his other hand beside it and stares, long enough to be sure the rain blurring his vision isn’t the cause.
There are no staples.
No purple, burned skin.
He snaps a hand to his cheek, and worse, it hurts . Dabi can feel the skin there tingling from the slap.
There are also no staples tugging underneath his fingertips.
“What the hell?” Dabi breathes out in English, because that’s the only appropriate response here.
His body moves quicker than his mind though and in the next second Dabi has habitually searched for and acquired an identification work card off the EMT before he knows what he’s moved and searched for.
Work cards have basic summaries of quirks that registered federal employees must carry on them. It will hopefully explain what reality seems to be right now. Regeneration quirks are exceedingly rare, could this be a hallucination quirk?
The EMT has a level four, extra-transformative quirk.
Classification : Healing
Quirk : ‘Tough Love’
Name : Kim Rime
Age : 19
Tool(s) : N/A
Federal EMT hours under The Central Tokyo district: Part-time
If found, please return to -
Dabi runs a hand through his locks and his palm thrums with sensation. It also shakes.
“Okay. So you’ve helped me.” Dabi says aloud. Hearing his thoughts would ground him, hopefully.
This is crazy.
“Okay, okay… You need to get out of the rain first.”
They are nowhere near Tokyo; she’s a long way from her employment. Not that he could risk dropping her off - wait, he could now. Nobody would know - “No, no; still. Still, someone might-”
It would be weird to drop off an unconscious person anyhow. A hospital would be better except she must have seen his face before she healed him. He had no mask.
Why would she heal him?
Dabi wildly glances around, suddenly reminded how blissful it is to move around with no pain, and spots the tiny market.
So deep into this town, she must have known just who she could run into. EMTs leave the same way they come after every emergency; by a van. He looks down. Sees the soaked vest and dripping, floppy purple hair slick against her forehead.
This woman, Kim Rime, left herself completely at his mercy.
He’d take a risk, just this once. She could be valuable.
So, Dabi props her up against the brick wall and adjusts her so she won’t fall back over. There’s a tiny sting in his palm. Staples, a bunch of them, lay on the ground, some bloodied ones getting cleansed by the rain. He only allows himself a moment to absorb the sight before he grabs a handful and is up and jogging; adrenaline pumping in a new, healed but shaky body; across to fetch the owner’s son.
Dabi keeps the market protected enough that if he’s anything like his father, money alone should cut it. Still, he pulls his drawstrings tight enough to hide his hair and hastily slaps the broken face mask over his mouth before stepping back in on shaky legs and dripping water all over the welcoming, black rubber mat.
“Hey Yuuri, I’m in the market for a quick, small favor…”