Chapter 172

I could barely hear my father's confusion through the fog of my mind.

The broken cartilage of his wings hung limply behind him.

"...Hawks ?"

I continued to stare at Keigo, unable to look away, the drumming rain drowning out all other sounds.

I was paralyzed, frozen in time, unable to do anything but stare at him as he bled to death.

He's dying.

I looked up at my father.

Confusion then horror flashed through his eyes.

I saw the panic in his eyes as he turned his head to the side and looked over his shoulder.

He rushed to the other end of the roof.

I watched him, oddly detached from the situation, as if I wasn't really in my body.

He disappeared into the fog, smoke engulfing him.

He hadn't taken the time to take Hawks' pulse, hadn't even knelt down to see if he was still breathing, hadn't even looked at him once he realized it wasn't Touya.

Hawks - like everyone else - was relegated to the background because his son, his murderer of a son, the one he shared flesh and blood with, was dying.

He would have done the same if it had been me.

I would have done the same for him.

Suddenly, the image of the perfect father I'd worshipped all my life shattered.

He had never put his duties as a Hero above his family but rather used his privileges in our benefit. He was a father first, then a man, then a Hero. He was selfish, too.

He was more like me than I realized.

I wasn't sure I liked it.

My gaze shifted to Hawks.

It was good that he was dying.

It meant I could push the narrative I wanted and nobody could argue. It meant he could never betray me, that my plan had been executed to perfection and no one would ever know.

It was a good thing.

He had to die.

It was a good thing, really.

The scenario was ideal, far better than anything I could have imagined.

A good thing.

He killed for me.

There was only one other person who had ever done that.

I batted my eyelashes to clear the drops of rain then dropped to my knees beside Hawks, sending splashes of water and blood onto his torn clothes as my legs hit the ground.

A sudden rush of air from the other side of his body blew a hole in the smoke screen that surrounded us.

My hands, glowing an intense green, focused on his torso.

My clone's focused on his head.

My left hand remained above his chest while my right turned skyward, index and middle fingers outstretched.

Steam thickened around us, cloaking us.

Above our heads, the rain changed its course as if an invisible umbrella were hovering above us, the drops of rain rolling off its transparent surface like they would on a glass bell.

A spark of electricity crackled at my fingertips.

I placed them on his chest and sent the first shock.

His chest shook. Nothing happened.

"Shoto !"

There was desperation in my father's tone.

I continued to shock Hawk's heart with my right hand while using my left to perform cardiac massage.

From the look on my clone's face, I knew the damage to his head was more serious than we'd thought.

He closed the wounds, strengthened the bones, and rebuilt the burnt tissue.

I sent shock after shock, lips pursed.

Come on, come on !

"Shoto !"

Hawks, wake up.

I wouldn't be able to bear it if he died because of me.

His chest jerked, his arms and legs convulsed.

"Shoto !"

I tore myself away from Hawks as soon as his heart started beating again.

Reluctantly, I left him to my clone's care and took a few steps back without turning around.

With a gesture, a second clone appeared to my right and ran towards Hawks.

The image of his twisted, bruised, broken body burned itself into my mind.

He had told me how Touya had hurt him. He'd told me how desperate he was to get out of the hospital.

He had trusted me, and I had ordered my clone to let him die if that was the price he had to pay to kill Touya.

It wasn't until I turned on my heels, my gaze gliding momentarily over a puddle, that I realized I had activated my Sharingan.

I ran to the other end of the roof, sharingan deactivated, rain whipping against my skin, where I could feel my father.

The sickening gurgles finally reached me despite the pounding rain.

Surprised, I stopped in my tracks, my legs stiffening for a moment.

My hands were clammy. A cold sweat ran down my neck.

This isn't-

I shunshined.

A crouching figure appeared behind the fog.

I emerged from the cloud, shock freezing me in place.

My father was holding Touya, his head against his chest, his blood running down his hands and thighs.

I could read the terror in his wide eyes, the horror in his half-open mouth, the lack of understanding in the wrinkles that creased across his forehead.

He looked at him the way he'd looked at me the day Kenzei had died and he'd found me covered in his blood.

I wondered if that was the expression he'd have on the day I died.

He looked up at me as if he'd heard me.

"Save him"

There was a groan of pain, followed by a squeak, and suddenly Touya's head emerged from the shadow of my father's. Touya hiccupped, eyes fluttering back and forth between Dad and I.

He hiccupped, eyes wide with terror as he choked on his own blood. Blood bubbled like soap from the corners of his mouth.

He looked at me for barely a second, then looked up at my father, two weak fingers tugging at his suit to attract his attention, leaving a bloody fingerprint behind.

My father was looking at me but I looked at Touya, unable to understand what I was seeing, afraid of what it meant.

There was a hole in his throat, a slit thinner than a razor blade in his windpipe, and the mark of two red iron-tipped fingers crudely cauterizing the wound.

His head swiveled and the top of the wound reopened.

A thin white tip, like a bone, tore through the skin.

Touya hissed, raised a hand to his throat, leaned forward, eyes bulging, and coughed until he puked blood.

He shouldn't have been able to breathe.

He should be dead.

"Shoto, please"

My father grabbed Touya's shoulder with his left hand and held him tighter to his chest, then grabbed my wrist with his right.

The feather's still stuck inside.

I couldn't look away from Touya.

The feather was still stuck in his throat

He should be dead.

It didn't make any sense.

He should have died of asphyxiation, the feather should have come out the other side, he should-

He looked like a tiny, fragile child curled up against my father's chest, so weak and pathetic that he could only make high-pitched, almost whistling sounds, tugging desperately at his Hero's clothes to get his attention.

Impossible.

The rain turned into a hellish cacophony, deafening my ears and drowning my thoughts.

Shapes blurred, colors turned gray, and the blood spurting from his guts formed a red river that flowed all the way to my shoes, red waves licking the tips of my soles.

The voice whispered in my ear, its warm breath raising the hairs on the back of my neck.

'They are against you, Shoto. All of them against you.'

Were they ?

'Listen to his whimpering, look at him flailing. He should be dead.'

It didn't make sense.

'He should have died in the burning house, he should have died in the volcano, he should have died tonight'

How could he not ?

'The world will always get back on track no matter what you do, no matter how despicable it is.'

My skin was clammy and slimy, and suddenly I wanted to rip it off so that I could detach myself from it - detach myself from Shoto - so that I could become someone else, someone without inhibitions nor fears, someone who would always go forward regardless of the consequences.

'Go on, kill them all'

I was at the edge of the abyss, about to fall into the infernal spiral that would swallow me whole.

'I know you're dying to do it'

If I go forward, I-

"I can't lose my child a second time"

His voice broke.

I blinked, surprised, and suddenly the spell was broken, the colors bleeding into each other like watercolors until they got back to where they belonged.

I looked down at my father's hand clinging to my wrist as if I were his anchor in the middle of a storm.

His fingers were trembling.

Without looking away from his hand, I deactivated my Sharingan.

"I know you hate him, Shoto, and I know how much I'm asking of you right now..."

I was shaken by the pain in his voice.

I forced myself to release my hold on my tantô.

He held Touya in his arms as if to comfort him, eyelids low over sad eyes, hair graying, shiny and disheveled at his temples.

Rain trickled down his forehead, split at the bridge of his nose, rolled down his cheeks and diluted the son's blood he'd accidentally smeared on his jaw.

He looked old, weak and frail.

He shouldn't continue his career as a hero.

"I beg you : save him"

And when my father, still holding Touya under his left arm, tried to kneel before me, I could not bear it any longer.

"Get up", I said and grabbed his shoulder firmly as he started to bend forward.

The Todoroki were neither whiners nor beggars.

I crouched down, my gaze meeting his.

I didn't know if it was exhaustion, stress or fear, but suddenly his eyes became wet and I couldn't bear to look at him any longer.

I turned my gaze back to Touya, jaw clenched, who immediately tried to get up and back away, barely able to lift his torso before he slipped.

My father held him down, his hands on his shoulders, while I watched in silence.

Despite my iron grip on it, my chakra slipped out of my system in droplets : the ground cracked beneath my feet, fine cracks spreading like cobwebs behind me.

Did I have to give up on killing him ?

Was this the price I had to pay to become someone new - someone better ?

In his haste to escape even if he was immobilized, the triangular tip of the calamus swung under his skin and tore his throat wide open, timidly drawing the top bar of a 'T'.

Touya coughed, blood splashing across my forehead, face and eyelids.

I felt my father tense ; my hands went to Touya's throat.

He looked down at my fingers in horror, tucking his chin into his throat to get a better look at what I was doing, the top of his head rising.

The blood flowed faster and darker, swirling in the hollow of his throat, and I was tempted to leave him to his fate.

If I killed him, would that mean that despite my best efforts, I was unable to change my inner nature ?

And if I didn't kill him, would I be betraying the terrified boy who had nearly drowned in his bathtub ?

Suddenly, Touya's eyes rolled back into their sockets.

He collapsed like a popped balloon and then stopped moving.

My fingers hovered over his throat, undecided. My father stirred. A green halo illuminated my fingers.

I scanned his throat, the diagnostic jutsu assessing the extent of the damage.

A piece of broken calamus laid across his throat like a fishbone. Tiny shards of bone had pierced his esophagus like thorns.

More pieces might have ended up in his lungs.

The feather had traveled diagonally across his throat and ended up hitting on his spine, breaking in half there.

How likely was it that the feather would hit his damn spine ?

"Can you do anything ?"

If he lived it meant that nothing made sense, that my moral conflicts had no reason to exist, that I could do whatever I wanted as long as I wanted to because the world would always find a way to get back on track.

If he died, on the other hand, it meant that I was as free to decide my path as I was to be held accountable for my actions.

If he lived then I could become the worst scumbag on Earth and the world would keep on turning.

If he died I'd be forced to become a better person.

If he lived, I would return to my true nature.

If he died, it meant I had the power to change.

"Shoto ? Is there anything you can do ?"

Becoming a better person is so much harder than staying the one I am.

I bit the inside of my cheek and got to work, placing my right hand over his lungs to artificially stimulate his breathing.

My left hand remained over his throat : my chakra scalpel sliced his throat vertically from under his chin to the hollow of his collarbone.

Blood began to gush out but I deflected the fluid like a floating river around my fingers before inserting it further down the incision in his throat.

I wasn't manipulating the blood per se, just redirecting it with my neutral medical chakra which acted like a tunnel.

I lowered my hand until my fingers grazed his throat.

The white calamus, covered in blood, quivered at the contact with my green chakra.

It barely moved at first, resisting, and I had to force it out, inadvertently enlarging the wound.

Slowly, the feather emerged from his throat like a floating anchor.

I clenched my jaw, eyebrows furrowed, more focused than I'd ever been in my whole life.

I could kill him, pretend the operation had gone wrong, slice his jugular without moving a muscle.

That's what the old me would have done.

That's what the new me really wanted to do.

I didn't want to make a decision - no matter what choices I'd made in my life, everything had always gone wrong, no matter my motives.

My eyes went to the growing pools of blood I was kneeling in.

But maybe this time I won't have to make a choice...

The calamus - four centimeters in length - emerged completely from his throat.

The flesh repaired itself, the filaments crisscrossing, then the skin reformed before tightening like a tile of cloth.

I didn't heal the wound on his right hand or the huge gash on his left thigh.

My eyes returned to the pools of blood in which we bathed.

The shock should have awakened him.

It didn't.

My hands remained on his heart.

I sent three consecutive shocks, just as I had done with Hawks.

Nothing happened.

Touya's whistling stopped. His breathing became more even.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my father's shoulders slump in relief, as if he could hardly believe it.

I was leaning over Touya now : he didn't see the right hand I brought to Touya's thigh and plunged into his flesh, twisting my fingers maliciously to hurt him.

No physical reaction.

Passed out or...?

I straightened up casually, one hand on his neck and the other on his chest.

He was breathing easily.

Another electric shock.

No reaction.

"It's not magic," I told my father. "I limited the damage, but he's already lost too much blood. If he dies, there's nothing I can do"

I was - and always would be - incapable of bringing the dead back to life.

But if I was right, if the world always got back on track no matter what I did, then Touya wouldn't need me to possess Edo Tensei to survive.

Or maybe the world was on my side a little bit.

Maybe Touya wouldn't wake up.

"Thank you"

I didn't answer.

My father, who had been on his knees, his buttocks on his heels, leaned back, his arms on his knees, and watched me as I finished my work on Touya's throat.

His shoe hit small, rigid cylinders that rolled and shit.

I tensed, forcing myself not to look, hoping he would do the same, trying to divert his attention.

"I'm pretty much done with him: you need to call 911 so they can take over. If you do it soon enough, there's a good chance he'll pull through", I lied

Don't look, don't look, don't-

He lowered his eyes to the cylinders, raised his gaze, then abruptly looked down again.

His posture went from exhausted to taut as a bow.

I met his gaze but he didn't look at me, his eyes roaming my two hands first, then Touya's.

He stopped at his right hand and silently examined it, stunned.

Then - with no expression on his face - he dusted off his trousers and stood up.

One shunshin later I was in his way, preventing him from advancing.

The sky was black above us, the storm roaring.

Yellow lightning burst from one cloud and spread to the next, creating a network of fluorescent yellow veins crisscrossing each other.

The wind whipped and the rain intensified, blurring the surroundings.

My father looked down at me in surprise, then frowned.

He had been careful not to step on the three severed fingers lying in a pool of coagulated blood.

"Move aside Shoto"

He would kill Hawks, I was sure, because that's what I would have done if I were him.

"No"

I wouldn't let him.

*

A/N : If you want to read the next chapters ahead of everyone, go check the story's P@treon, Nar_cisseENG