"Remember when we talked about first impressions before the sports festival?" Hina asked the students of 1-A, and their heads nodded. She held up her example copy as emphasis. "Resumes are exactly the same, except you aren't around for them to determine what they think of you.
"Cover letters give you a bit more freedom with what you can say, but we'll go over those later this week." She went on, setting the paper on her desk and turning to look at them again. "For now, we are focusing on the resumes themselves."
Hina grabbed the stack of papers that sat on the corner of her desk and handed them to Aoyama to pass out. "Please look over this paper, as well as the attached recommendations on the second page. I'll give you ten minutes to read it over, and then we will be discussing each point individually. Think of any questions you might have in that...time."
As she turned around, Hina felt a spike of pain through her hand. They happened occasionally, small pulses of pain, but for the most part the redhead could ignore them. This one, however, felt remarkably similar to the slice of glass across her fingers. With a quiet gasp, she clutched at her hand and held it to her chest, squeezing her eyes shut to try suppressing the flash of fear that suddenly settled itself in her head. Her chest felt tight, constricted.
It startled her how fast the sensation of drowning, or falling, or choking, rose up within her. At this rate, she knew she wouldn't be able to hold back the anxiety from overcoming her, and she took a stumbling step towards the door to the classroom.
"Hitagawa Sensei?" Sato asked behind her.
"Are you ok?" Momo followed up, and she heard the vice president stand from her seat.
"I'm...I'm fine, really..." She hurried to reassure, still clutching her hand to her chest. "I just...need a moment. Please...keep working diligently..." She said between stuttered breaths, opened the door the next moment and snapping it shut behind her.
Once out of sight of the students, Hina knelt on the ground and turned to face the wall of the hallway, resting her forehead against the hard surface to have something to ground herself to. Her breath came out in a rush and, eyes closed, the redhead tried keeping herself above the waterline, so to speak, of the tidal wave of negativity currently rocking through her mind.
Thankfully, there was no one in the hallway to see her little episode. The only other one she'd experienced before had been on her way to the teacher's lounge for her lunch break, and students on their way to the cafeteria had stopped to worry about her. She'd tried shooing them away, insisting that she would be fine in a few minutes, too embarrassed to have so many witnesses to her brief moment of losing her composure.
Several minutes of practicing her deep breathing exercises helped to slowly, eventually, drain the anxiety that had overcome her. Inch by inch, she felt the ocean evaporate, until all that was left was a lightheadedness from her constant breathing.
Taking another moment to put herself back together, she stood to her feet and straightened out her hero costume. She slid the door open and met the concerned stares of her students with a small smile.
Sero raised his hand. "Are you-"
"Do not worry about me." She said, knowing what he was about to ask. "I'm alright. Truly."
Without allowing them to dwell on what had just transpired, she picked up her example resume again and held it up to read. "Now, do any of you have questions? Otherwise, we'll go over this together one by one..."
Her first week back went surprisingly well. Other than her two panic attacks, she'd done well to keep herself calm and without incident. Nezu had taken her aside after school that Friday to ask how she was feeling. To her relief, he didn't seem to be reconsidering her return to work, and had sent her away with instructions to 'take some time to relax over the weekend.'
Saturday morning found her sitting in a therapist's waiting room, eyeing it with a mixture of apprehension and a need to get this all over with. The room felt unfamiliar and sort of cold. The walls were meant to appear homely and relaxing, but despite the tan paint and paintings in their frames, Hina still didn't feel overjoyed to be here.
Therapy still scared her, somewhat. Even her visits with Dr. Fukuma beforehand had all been at the direction of her doctors and not something she'd voluntarily desired. It was undeniable how much visiting with him had helped her recovery, but she'd always felt this sort of dread in the time before their sessions.
It was hypocritical of her, really. She'd taught her students the importance of talking out their feelings and their stresses, and she was hesitant to do the same. If only for her students, to show them that there was merit in attending therapy, she would go.
"Miss Hitagawa?" Hina looked up at the middle-aged man who'd poked his head out from the end of the hallway. "I'm ready for you now."
She nodded, and stood to enter the room he had emerged from. Everything felt eerily silent, uncomfortably so, but she powered through it, clenching and unclenching her fists to get rid of it somehow.
"Please, have a seat." He said, gesturing to a plush armchair. Having expected one of those stereotypical loungers, Hina suddenly felt ridiculous for it. The chair was extraordinarily comfy. The man sat in an identical match to her chair, a small coffee table sitting in between them. Facing him like this, she took in his graying hair and lively eyes, and the way he seemed to emanate a sense of safety.
"I would offer you something to drink, but unfortunately my coffee maker is on the fritz today. Hopefully by our next appointment we can have a little pick-me-up while we talk." He said with a small smile, before extending his hand for her to shake. "My name is Dr. Hitoshi Nagata. A pleasure to meet you."
"You too." She took his hand and then leaned back in her chair.
"Dr. Fukuma recommended me to take on your case once you were released from the hospital's care. I specialize in emotional trauma, which he said you may need some assistance with after your incident." He went on to explain. "It isn't unusual for heroes to refuse therapy, so I am very glad you agreed to attend."
Her hands clenched again, and she looked down at her lap. "I'm a teacher, so...I need to be able to show my students that therapy is important. I don't want my actions to prevent them from making a decision not to in the future."
"Is that your only reason for being here?" He asked carefully, and she shrugged.
"No...I know it could be very helpful, but I don't really enjoy the thought of having to need it...I guess."
"Understandable." Hitoshi said with a knowing nod. "Many see it as a weakness, to have to rely on someone else to help them work through their troubles. Of course, I am a bias opinion in that discussion, but I think it is admirable you are teaching the next generation of heroes that it is ok to have moments where they are in need of help. For that, I thank you."
Hina nodded her agreement, and he picked up a small notepad that was resting on the coffee table in between them, flipping to a page in the middle and unlatching a pen that was attached at the side. "Now, to preface this session, a little about what I do. My purpose is to help you traverse what can often be a debilitating bridge between emotional instability and as close to a sense of 'normal' as possible. I am a quirk user, able to manipulate the emotions of those I touch."
"Manipulate how?" She asked, curious and nervous.
"May I?" He reached out as if to take her hand, and she settled her palm down in his. She didn't have a reason to distrust him, and felt that he didn't mean her any harm. "What would you feel if I were to tell you that my wife died of cancer last month?"
Hina blinked, anticipating the little hollow in her chest at the sound of such a tragedy, but nothing came. She frowned, knowing it was worrisome that she didn't feel any sort of reaction to the news. However, not even the worry at her non-reaction registered. There was just...nothing.
"Are you blocking my emotions?" She asked evenly. He nodded and released her hand.
"Yes, exactly." He pointed to his head. "I've spent years studying everything I could about the brain and how it works. Thanks to that, I'm able to understand and 'turn off' certain networks within that produces various emotional responses."
"I'm so sorry about your wife..." Hina muttered, now able to feel the well of sympathy rising in her chest. But he shook his head and held up a hand.
"Don't worry over it, she is alive and well. It was simply an example." Then he tapped his notebook with his pen and faced her. "I utilize my quirk to help my patients ease into confronting the trauma that they are afraid to tackle. I'm hoping to do the same with your case."
Hina nodded her understanding, really thinking about it. It made sense, and she supposed the comfort of not feeling the terror and pain when she revisited the images Daichi had left her with should have put her at ease. Yet still, she winced. "I'm going to have to use my quirk to get to the bad part..."
"Yes." He agreed. "But you will not be alone in facing them, and I will do my utmost to ease what you do experience. At least for now, until you are in a position to begin handling the harder emotional obstacles. For now, we will begin small. The rest will come with time."
"Ok..." She murmured, hands clenching and unclenching again. This was all making her pretty nervous. He seemed to notice the gesture.
"The hand clenching...Dr. Fukuma mentioned that you had psychosomatic pain in your hands. Is that a coping mechanism?" He inquired, and she nodded. "Are they still painful?"
"Sometimes, but not nearly as bad as when I woke up the first time." She described, looking down at her hands. "They aren't that bad. I'll get pain there for a few minutes sometimes, then it goes away."
"I see." He said, writing something on his paper. "Well, unfortunately, I cannot assist with physical pain, but the rest I should be able to help address."
"I understand."
He set the notebook down on the table again and straightened in his chair. "Are you ready to begin?"
He reached both of his hands out and she took a fortifying breath. Hands shaking, she placed her hands in his. The moment he activated his quirk, she felt her apprehension slip away, until she felt nothing at all.
"Alright, go ahead and use your quirk, whenever you're ready." He said, and Hina's eyes began to glow for the first time in months.
The campus was dark. Her appointment with Dr. Nagata had been in the early afternoon, but in an effort to relieve some stress, she'd gone shopping after they'd finished. It hadn't been all that helpful in completely distracting her from the images she'd seen in her head, but it still helped. Plus, it gave her something to do while she thought over what had happened.
The terrible visions of death would have made her flinch away and want to immediately stop using her quirk, but with the help of Dr. Nagata, she'd been able to face it all without feeling a single thing. She didn't know what was scarier; the depictions of her loved ones being tortured, or the fact that she hadn't batted an eye to it at all in the moment. His quirk was truly terrifying.
True to his word, he'd started them off slow, asking her to stop after a half hour of cycling through what Daichi had forced into her head. The worst she'd felt was reflecting back on the images once Hitoshi had let go of her hands, but at most it made her shiver and tear up.
The prospect of her recovery had just increased about a thousand times, and Hina found she looked forward to her next appointment the following week. It gave her the courage to step up and seek out one particular person who she needed to see. No more putting it off.
Turning the opposite direction of her apartment, Hina headed down the path to where the 1-B student dorms were. Built with the same specifications as class 1-A's building, the teacher apartments were set just behind the tall dormitory. With a frown, she realized she'd never gone this way. She'd never come to visit before. That would have to be fixed in the future as well.
The dark-red brick teacher apartments were lit with a lamp post right in between the doors, illuminating both doorways. Vlad King's window was black, no doubt having already gone to bed perhaps. Midnight's however, was lit inside, and she could see shadows moving around inside.
Before this temporary boost in determination fled her, Hina raised her fist and gave several sharp raps against the door, quieting whoever was inside the apartment. There was a moment of silence, then a shuffle of noise as someone came to the door.
It opened a moment later to a casually dress Hizashi, looking surprised to see her there. "Hina! What brings you here? Did Midnight invite you?"
The redhead heard a panicked 'Hina!?' from inside, but ignored it. "No, but I wanted to stop by and see her. What are you doing here?"
He gave a shrug, opening the door wider to let her inside. "Just hanging out. It's my night off from the station. We haven't really had a big get together in awhile, so I figured..."
Hina nodded, seeing her friend sitting on the couch and pointedly not looking in her direction. Devoid of makeup and dressed in comfortable pajamas, she looked nothing short of tired. She was blatantly nervous now that Hina was here, and it made the telepath sigh in disappointment. Mic closed the door and seemed to notice the palpable tension in the air. They all heard him clear his throat awkwardly.
"Uhh...Nemuri, I'm gonna...use your bathroom." And with that clear excuse as a retreat, he disappeared down the hallway and shut the door behind him. They both heard the sink turn on, as if assuring them that he wasn't secretly listening to any conversation that would occur. As if that was a concern, but hey, it was the thought that really counted.
Hina looked back at the black-haired woman, who stared down at her fidgeting fingers. Her eyes were narrowed in a painful wince. "How are you, Nemuri?" She asked.
"Good. I'm...good." The train wreck that was the start to this discussion was almost enough to make Hina leave. But they needed to get this out of the way. And she missed her best friend. "How are you?"
"Doing a lot better than I would have thought, actually." She said honestly, and Nemuri spared her a glance before look back down at her hands. "I'm really lucky to have so many people supporting me, or I might not have been released from the hospital this soon."
"Mmm..."
"I wanted to-"
"Can I just...say something before you go any further? To...get it off my chest." The woman interrupted suddenly, and Hina nodded from curiosity and surprise.
"Ok."
Her hands wrung themselves worriedly in her lap. "I've just got so much to say...and no idea how to say it all. I'm so sorry for having left you behind that night, I never should have left you alone, and seeing what happened to you after has almost been too much for me. I was so close to quitting this job..."
Her voice shook with barely restrained sorrow. "Everyone keeps trying to tell me it wasn't my fault, but it was. I know it was. You were alone, and had that not been the case, maybe your brother wouldn't have gone after you that night, and maybe you never would have been put in that coma."
"And I'm so sorry for not...visiting. I just...I couldn't bear to see you like that because of what I did." She sniffed, taking off her glasses to wipe away at the tears that had begun to fall. "The week you wouldn't wake up was...hard on all of us. None of could do anything to help, I had never gotten a chance to say I was sorry or make up for what happened, and after I heard you had woken up, it just didn't feel right to face you. After all you'd been through-"
Hina took a step towards her. "Nemuri-"
"-I don't blame you if you can't stay friends with me like we used to be, or if it'll take time. I understand. Maybe you can't stand the sight of me, or-"
Another step. "Nemuri-"
"-if you need space, I get that too. Whatever you need, I can...I can..." The black-haired teacher finally lifted her eyes enough to look at Hina, half afraid of the expression she'd find there, but there was only pain and the worry that she felt she wasn't deserving of in the slightest.
Before she could say anything more, Hina stepped closer and wrapped her arms around the art teacher, hugging her close and squeezing her in as hard as she was willing to. Her chin rested on the back of Nemuri's shoulder, and Hina's eyes closed.
"Please let go of this burden you're carrying..."
Hina heard Nemuri released a stuttering breath, and her body shook. Then a moment later, she was enveloped in just as tight a hug as the one she was receiving, and the two women held each other tight in comfort and apology. Understanding, self-forgiveness, and the slow realization that the lingering sense of guilt was unnecessary.
"I'm sorry..." Nemuri sobbed into Hina's hair, shoulders shaking with grief. "I'm so sorry..."
"There is nothing to forgive." The redhead whispered, waiting as her friend let out everything she'd been building up since her abduction over 2 months ago. "You did nothing wrong."
"I left you-"
"You did what you needed to. As a hero." Hina replied sternly. "I would never fault you for that."
"You got hurt."
"Because I wasn't strong enough to protect myself. That's on me." She squeezed her friend. "Let go of the guilt, it's killing you. And I can't stand to see you so upset over something like this. Please...let me take on the responsibility of my own weakness."
Nemuri shook her head against Hina's neck, refusing to accept her admission of weakness, but didn't try to keep pressing the issue, thankfully. For several minutes, they simply sat there, letting the guilt fade and the grief overflow, and finding comfort in the fact that their friendship had not faded.
There was one last place Hina needed to visit before going home. During her appointment with Dr. Nagata, he'd stressed the importance of unloading the burden her emotions. It was his first instruction as her therapist.
Talk through your emotions with someone you trust. Start small, if necessary. How you feel at the end of the day, how your last anxiety attack made you feel. Things like that. But take steps to begin trusting in someone to help you cope with what has happened to you. Recovery can be a team effort. Is that something you can do for me?
It certainly was. And there was only one person she knew who she trusted enough to talk about all of this with.
Shouta answered her knock after only a moment, eyebrows raising upon seeing her standing at his doorway. "Hina, are you ok?"
"Yeah, I just wanted to see you." She said with a smile, stepping past the threshold when he opened the door wider to let her inside. He shut it behind him, and she noticed a stack of papers on his kitchen table, scattered in three separate piles. "Are you grading?"
"Yeah, I'm a bit behind." He answered, scratching at the back of head tiredly. He eyes the table with trepidation. "I think I should stop assigning homework so often."
"Hmm, I'm sure the students would agree with you." Hina replied offhandedly, suddenly hesitant to bring up the real reason for her visit. If he was so far behind on work, perhaps another time would be better. Not to mention, he looked exhausted. Even more so than usual. She still had a whole week before her next appointment-
"Something on your mind?" He asked, eyeing her conflicted expression and snatching her attention away from the assignments he'd been grading.
She searched his expression. He met it with patience, waiting for her to answer. And when she finally decided that maybe, just this once, she'd impose upon his time, she looked away.
"I wanted to talk. To you." She said. "I don't want to barge in while you're working, but-"
"Remember what I said on our first date?" He asked in slight amusement, making her look up again. "You're worth making time for. Putting off these papers another night won't be the end of the world."
So saying, he took her wrist and guided her to the living room's couch. The apartment had been mostly dark, but he flipped on a standing lamp in the corner of the room to give them a little bit of light to work with. With a gentle nudge, he indicated for her to sit on one end of the couch, himself on the other. Still within reaching distance, but allowing her some space should she need it. Clearly, whatever was on her mind held some importance.
"What did you want to talk to me about?"
Last chance to back out, Hina.
"Everything." Was her initial answer, despite knowing that the doctor had recommended to start slow and small. She was too eager to get everything out in the open. "All the things I haven't been able to say up until now. About...Daichi escaping prison and Kamino Ward, and what...happened. Why I was in that coma. And how I put myself back together. And everything after that, how I feel and what I have inside my head now. I want to...to just...get it out of my system."
At first, he'd seemed surprised, but it quickly vanished and his gaze lost some of the fatigue that had settled in his eyes when she'd first shown up.
"I'm willing to listen. To whatever you need to say." Was his answer, the mild curiosity melting away to something she couldn't quite identify. Whatever it was, she knew it was genuine, and kind, and something she could place her trust in that he would hear her out without making her feel like a burden. That anything she had to say wouldn't be met by deaf ears.
That he would care enough to give a damn what she felt.
And so she spoke.
The words came out, and they kept coming. So hesitant to reveal her troubles and insecurities so openly before, once Hina began she couldn't seem to stop.
Rambling on and on about how Daichi's escape had petrified her to the very core. That she had hoped never to have to deal with him again after locking him away the first time, content to let him remain a bad memory and nothing more. The guilt that each and every one of his victims placed onto her, and how she'd felt this insurmountable hurdle to overcome when she'd realized that she was the sole person with the right quirk to fix the damage he'd done.
Hina sobbed through her experiences of Kamino Ward, of how there had been so many dead that she hadn't been able to save, and the ghost-like survivors who were barely hanging on. The haunted, the dead, and the dying, and how it was difficult to determine who was who in that war-zone of a debris field. The gruesome, dusty, bloody scenes of death that left her afraid that no matter how hard she tried, there were no further survivors left to be found. She shivered, remembering clearly the distant cries and wails of those she'd never have any hope of finding, no matter how long or hard she searched through that wreckage or cracked stone and broken metal. And how each corpse's unending stare into the heavens above had seemed to accuse her of being in some way responsible for their death.
The terror she'd felt upon realizing that Daichi had indeed found her and captured her had been debilitating. She spoke of her eventual resignation that she would die there before the glimmers of hope forced her to fight back against the mental attacks. It was hard to describe the desperation in her efforts of upholding her mental wall, but she tried her damndest to make it make sense out loud. How everything had depended on her own willpower overcoming his own.
And then the moment it had all shattered in a searing pain and the dousing of a light. Hina had run out of tears by the time she explained how time had stopped and she watched the fragments of her mind float above her for what had seemed like weeks, out of reach and a reminder that she'd been too weak to protect herself or those she cared so much about. The numbness, the feeling that she somehow deserved this never-ending void as the end to her life.
Hina told Shouta how the helplessness had morphed to hope, having caught a glimmer of a memory in one of the shards, and how she'd tried absolutely everything possible to piece who she'd been back together. The way her hands had been reduced to nothing more than muscle and the white slivers of bone underneath a canvas of blood, the nerve-endings long having been sliced off by the shards. Through a mixture of scream-inducing nightmares and depictions of him and the students being tortured over and over again, she'd begun thinking that she had indeed already died and was trapped in a perpetual hell. But that through it all, she knew she had to put the pieces together.
And somehow, it had worked. The glowing orb that had previously been her consciousness had slowly began to build as she forcing the shards to construct themselves back into their appropriate places, following a pattern or timeline she hadn't been able to understand at the time. Stained red with dried blood, it had eventually formed the original orb. And the moment she'd placed the last piece, she'd been spat back out into reality.
Fresh tears slid down her cheeks as she described her nightmares after the fact, haunted by the images Daichi had crammed into her mind, unable to escape them when she fell asleep. And the way she'd had moments where she'd been certain that all of this was simply the most elaborate ruse Daichi could have come up with, only to yank her back into the hellish prison she'd been in before in an effort to break her. The paranoia had caused many a panic attack.
Throughout it all, Shouta listened without a word. Hina could hardly look at him during the breakdown of her turbulent feelings, and she eventually closed the distance on the couch between them. Shouta pulled her into his side, placing her head against his chest so she could listen to his heart beat as she recounted the rest of her experiences. His breathing had become shallower as she finished speaking, hand loosely buried in her hair to hold her close.
When his apartment was plunged into a thick silence, Hina having run out of things to speak of, she felt him lean down to place his lips at the top of her head and keep them there. Her eyes closed, taking strength from the warmth of his embrace and the way he breathed beneath her ear.
And when he finally pulled away to take her face in her hands, bringing them face to face, she was shocked to see the evidence of track marks down his own cheeks, eyes red from his own grief. She'd never seen him cry before. Never seen him so moved with sorrow like this. He gently wiped away at her own cheeks, searching her face for something she couldn't say.
"You're the stronger person I've ever met..." He whispered between them. And when she opened her mouth to refute such a claim, he covered her lips with his thumb. "Even after everything, after all of what you just described to me...you're still here. Alive and improving. And that's your strength. You're ability to endure and overcome."
Hina was so moved by the revelation, that her strength lay not in how hard she could throw a punch or a kick, her speed or flexibility, or how inspiring she could be to the masses...that she began crying again in earnest. All this time, it was always so intangible to her, to say she was strong when compared to All Might or Endeavor, or any of the other heroes she worked with on a daily basis. It had been easy to deny and brush aside as words meant to make her feel better.
The ability to endure...Hina could finally grasp at the concept of persistence as a measure of strength. And it was like a weight had been lifted from her heavy, shaking shoulders. She was not weak. And for once she could say such a thing without that tiny, nagging worm of doubt at the back of her mind.
All this time...Hina was strong. In her own way.
Happiness began to flood through her grief, and she pressed herself back into Shouta's chest, shaking as she sobbed. He kept her against him, letting her take all the time she needed to get it out of her system and come back to her composure.
Minutes passed before her sniffling faded and she could breathe a bit easier against his shirt. Pushing herself up, she looked into his face. "Shouta...thank you for being here for me."
"Thank you for trusting me." He replied, an amount of relief behind his gaze. His fingers combed through her hair to smooth it out as he thought to himself. "You should stay tonight."
"But your papers..." She trailed off, head turning to look at the assignments he still had yet to grade. She didn't want to completely prevent him from working on them the rest of the day. He gently guided her chin back to look at him, and he flashed her a small smile.
"They aren't important. Are you still having nightmares?" He asked instead.
"Yeah..."
"If you have another one, I'll be there. Maybe you can get a bit more rest if you aren't alone."
The thought was appealing, and all of the emotional baggage she'd just unpacked had left her feeling drained and in desperate need for some shut eye. There really wasn't a downside to this, other than Shouta's neglected work. But as he'd told her. It wasn't important.
"Ok."
She let him pick her up to bring her into his bedroom. Hina found herself falling asleep in his arms even before he'd made it to the bed itself. Through a fog of fatigue, she could only barely discern the feeling of someone settling beside her, and a soft comforter coving her body.
That night was the best sleep she'd gotten in months.
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