»»————- ☩ ————-««

Nothing made sense to him anymore. 

Any logical, calculated, and premeditated plan that had registered itself in Izuku's mind had gone flying out the window. Ceasing to exist as he stared at the sight before him. The door to the newly constructed medical wing ajar, wisps of cold air seeping through—meeting the humidity of the hallway in the hallway in a battle of fire and ice. 

The air pulsed with an omniscient overcast, radiating through the hall and touching the souls of the men and woman huddled together. Nobody dared to utter a word—their breathing simultaneously slipping out in quick, insufficient, trepidatious snippets. Heart pounding, veins electrified. Unbeknownst to them all—their trains-of-thought had all sifted into the same track, heading for the same destination:

The medical wing.

"What the hell," Katsuki murmured, eyes trained tightly at the freckled male. "I thought you said—"

"I know what I said!" Izuku seethed, perspiration slick against his palms and atop his eyebrows.

Clearly, what he said meant nothing anymore—for everything coming out of his mouth had been nothing but lies. Some, Izuku was aware of, and others he was not. 

"Well, somebody's gotta go in," Kaminari huffed, fingers curling into fists at his sides as he began the trek forward.

Izuku's hand shoots out, gripping onto the blond's shoulder until his fingernails scathed the surface of his skin. "There's no telling what the hell is still in there . . . If somebody got through a passcode-protected area, who's to say they didn't stick around?"

"So, what, you're going to go in there?" Shoto scoffed, "We need you—if you die so do they," he motioned to the three women lying on the makeshift cots.

"I know the ins and outs of this place—I'll be fine . . . just let me check it out," Izuku insisted, face void of emotion as he stared at the metal door. His features giving no sign of backing down as he walked towards the belly of the beast.

Perhaps, some part of him secretly hoped somebody was in there—not for assistance but to kill him. If he died there would be nobody to bear the burden of his guilt, nor would anyone know the quilt of lies he had woven. So, as he walked in, goosebumps rippling like waves across his skin, he felt a pang of disappointment as he took in the room.

Not much damage had been done to the exterior, sealed packages of syringes scattered across the floor, IV bags still stocked in the corner. The room smelt of thickly of rotting meat and a tinge of sickening sweetness—the same smell that blanketed over every corner of the Bunker. It was the smell of a decaying corpse.

A body was slumped in the corner, clad in a doctor's coat and standard-issue Bunker pants. Izuku didn't need to look twice to know it was Doctor Usagiyama. His stomach churned at the smell, but through his grimace, he heaved a sigh. 

"I know why the door was open!" he called out, quickly going to clear off the metal cots of all its contents. "It's safe to come in!"

As the group of natives walk in they hardly bat an eyelash at the miasmic stench. 

"Doctor Usagiyama must've come in here before—" Izuku stopped himself, swallowing the excess flow of saliva in his mouth as he begins setting up the equipment. "She was a level ten surgeon so . . . she had access to a lot of places."

Katsuki and Shoto stared at the room in amazement, taking in all the equipment and vials, syringes, and scalpels. It was something they—along with the other natives in the room—had only heard stories of. Something out of an old Earth Relic Tale.

Izuku on the other hand was having a hard time concentrating. What with the dead body practically calling out to him in the corner and the weight of the trio of women's lives resting in his hands—he was under quite a bit of pressure.

"I'm going to need you all to clear out," Izuku ordered in a hard tone. 

The freckled male's eyes twitched upward, locking with Natsuo's for a brief second. That incessant feeling of familiarization he held tautly with the boy, clouding his perception fleetingly before dissipating.

Only Katsuki, Shoto, and Shinsou remained—the three of them all bearing the same expression on their features. The look of worry mixed with awe. It was understandable, these were women they knew, women they probably grew up with—Izuku had anticipated they would be the select few to stay behind. Even if the idea bothered him to no end. But they were also in awe of all the new sights before them . . . new sights which had soon become a burial ground of dead bodies.

Not that they seemed to mind.

"So, are they going to be okay?" Shinsou questioned after a few beats of silence, his eyes always flickering back to the pink-haired woman. 

"I don't know. Maybe if you'd let me finish setting up without interrupting me I could find out," Izuku growled, quickly grabbing three IV bags and hooking them to a metal pole. Albeit, his attention was still focused on the body.

The dead body.

While the green-haired male worked his way around the room Shoto swiftly murmured something in Shinsou's ear, to which the young guard reluctantly exited the room. Gazing behind him to look at the pink-haired patient one last time. A look of longing and regret filling his lavender irises before he quietly left to stand post outside.

The young doctor-in-training worked briskly, running vitals to double-check his past prognosis on their sickness' being a typical cold. After getting the confirmation he so desperately needed he began filling their IV bags with common antibiotics—which had been developed a few decades ago. 

If anything, this was another one of his distractions. He could easily sense the two pairs of eyes drilling holes into the back of his head, making their presence known through sickening silence and calibrating eyes. To which Izuku pointedly ignored . . . to the best of his abilities.

"Have you finished setting up?" Shoto asked quietly, the corners of his lips twitching. "I'd hate to suffer the wrath of your eyes if you aren't,"

"My eyes?" Izuku scoffed, lightly pressing the tip of the syringe into the black-haired woman's skin. 

The surprisingly quiet Katsuki kicks himself up and across the room, stopping a few feet short of where Izuku worked. With his head tilted and fire-like eyes blazing with intensity, he offers his typical smirk.

"You do this thing with your eyes when you're pissed," poorly, he attempted at imitating Izuku's previous facial expression.

Eyes squinted into a glare and eyebrows pulled down, locked in place. It took a moment—but Izuku managed to understand what expression he had been trying to replicate. The same one his mother gave his father whenever they disagreed on something. 

His father had once referred to her as an old Earth Relic statue when the look crossed her features, carved from the finest of stone. Everything about her face would slacken then vulcanize, enough to send the toughest of men groveling at her feet. Albeit, Izuku may have been the only person alive immune to his mother's silent attacks—for he had inherited the same feature.

The thought made him smile, a brief moment of relapse before the nostalgia and guilt embossed its way through his system. Hardening him. Like a statue.

"Yep, there's the look," Katsuki hummed, bemused by it more than anything.

Izuku solidified his glare. "I'd appreciate some peace and quiet,"

His eyes swept up and down the boy's thin frame, a satirical look shimmering in its warm trenches. "I'm sure you would—" he extended a hand, "—and Shoto here can give you what you want."

"Okay?"

"I on the other hand," Katsuki dared another step. "love pissing you off. It brings me . . . guadium."

Joy. Izuku pressed down another scoff, swallowing it along with a string of words he'd rather not say aloud. It brought Katsuki joy to piss him off—he would yell at the boy if the feeling did not correspond both ways. He would yell at Katsuki if his body wasn't taut with dread and desolation. He would yell at Katsuki if he weren't hyper-aware of the dead body still making itself known.

Izuku breathed in, he breathed out, and still, his attention had pulled away from himself yet again. Ebbing away from the three women in desperate need of medical assistance, waning from the taunting speech patterns of the blond male, dissolving from his consciousness—overtaken by something else entirely.

Another body that had fallen in his own hands, intentionally or not. If he hadn't asked Doctor Usagiyama to come down here that day . . .

"You know sometimes I feel like you're not listening to me," Katsuki commented idly, breaking through his trance.

"Really? What gave you that idea?"

"Did they teach sarcasm in this place too?" the blond pondered aloud. "You seem to be pretty fucking fluent in it,"

Izuku threw him a lopsided grin. "Thanks. I get that a lot,"

"See!" Shoto pointed a finger, breaking through his own vow of silence. "I think he did it again,"

"You know I'm a bit surprise," Izuku blinked, forcing himself to look at his patients. "From what our researchers had said, you people were supposed to be volatile and . . . How do I put this lightly? Complete and utter dumbasses,"

With narrowed eyes Katsuki's jaw sets. "We're people too, you know. We know just as much as you all do—we just don't have access to all . . ." he gazed at the room again. Amazement vibrating every fiber in his body. ". . . this."

Izuku stared at him momentarily, holding his gaze like a breath. Two. Three. "A normal person wouldn't put their wonder above the basic facts set in front of them," he snapped, voice low and hard. A statue again.

"And what would that be?"

The green-haired male waved his hand exasperatedly to the corner. "None of you batted an eye at her! At any of them!"

It didn't take rocket science for the two natives to decipher what he had been speaking about. 

Silence. Indisputable silence was all he had received as an answer, silence that thickened the walls with Izuku's anger and Shoto and Katsuki's understanding. It had all been silent, unnoticed, dwindling into a crystallized ball—beautiful but deathly aggravating. Izuku could not do a thing with this ball but admire it.

He could not hold the ball of silence or it would break. He could not toss it and risk it falling. All it did was sit there. Unmoving.

"You're not used to death," Shoto spoke it like a statement, an affirmation. The first crack appearing thinly across the ball at his words. "It scares you more than you let on."

"Makes sense—" Katsuki continued for him, speaking alongside the boy as if they were one. "—your people were protected here in this . . . fortress."

Another fracture.

Shoto cambered his head. "Which only makes me wonder that much more how you survived this. Was your fear of death your drive for survival?" the question was meant to go unanswered.

"It was my selfishness," Izuku blurted out, regretting it as soon it tumbled from his tongue. The ball shattered and as the shards spread in rippling waves across the room, their emotions—hidden across each individual fragment—reflected off the lights.

It was raw and it was open, thus giving the illusion of sincerity. But those pieces of glass dispersed into fine dust, it was gone as if it had never appeared in the first place.

Izuku was a statue again. Katsuki and Shoto mere observers of his stone exterior.

"They'll be fine," Izuku cleared his throat, "I gave them medicine. I'm monitoring their vitals . . . It's most likely just a mid-grade cold, so I caught it before it could turn into something else,"

Before any remarks could be announced Izuku was briskly walking out the door, a small tablet in hand to monitor their vitals from another room. Just as he were about the round the corner
—no clear destination in mind—a tuft of white hair caught his peripheral vision.

Natsuo.

Hello Cricket Cultists!!

Merry Christmas ;)

Thoughts?

Until we meet again!!!