Affinity

Chapter 30 - Benevolence

 With her back pressed against the rough concrete, Emiko crouched in wait. Her eye still throbbed, and she knew she would soon lose consciousness if she continued to lose blood at such an alarming rate. Her fingers stayed clenched around the shard of glass in her hands, and she fought against the pain of the cut she'd inflicted upon herself. She needed a weapon, and the only thing around was the same glass that had injured her.

If she hadn't been as terrified as she was, she may have laughed at the irony. Only moments before her only means of protection had been hacking away at her hair, had been catching on her skin and tearing away what little innocence she still clung to.

Blood pooled around her, small droplets meeting bigger puddles and forming a terrifying cluster of sickening red. Despite the pain and despite the blood, she kept her one good eye focused solely on the door of the small room she was in.

In her haste to leave, Mara had left the single bulb on, and it cast an eerie glow around the room. She took in as much detail as she could, seeing that the floors weren't, in fact, concrete, but hard packed dirt. That let her know that she was well below the main floor of the building, and the ceiling above her was barely 6 feet. She knew All Might or Endeavour would never fit down here, so she tried to hide her hope at being rescued by them. Dust floated down around her, coated her arms and legs, no doubt from the fight that was taking place somewhere above her head.

She didn't know how long had passed, but Emiko was growing woozier by the second, and she felt herself slip in and out of consciousness. Her fingers threatened to lose their grip on her makeshift weapon, and she grit her teeth at the inconvenience.

Get it together, Emiko.

She kept ranting to herself in her head, forcing her hands tighter and tighter around the glass. Without even taking a moment to process, she dug the small weapon into the palm of her hand.

"Fuck," she hissed in pain, "Goddamnit. That hurts."

Emiko knew well enough that pain would be the only thing keeping her conscious, and so she fed into that. Fed into the bite in the palm of her hand and allowed the pain to fight away the darkness creeping into the edges of her vision. She breathed in the pain, let the sting run across her skin. Let it bite into the tips of her fingers and toes as Sentiment once had. Let the pain take up residence in her veins and crawl through her whole body. Each breath she took pressed it further and further, and still Emiko continued breathing into it.

In the silence, her heartbeat roared. It screamed in her ears and clawed in her head and made it nearly impossible for her to focus on anything else. In the silence her mind raced, scanned over the things her mother had shown her. In the darkness, she saw Shoto. The soft smile on his lips, the way he sighed into her kisses. In the darkness, her father smiled down at her, his honeyed brown eyes lit up in the setting sun.

In that same darkness, though, Shoto's blank gaze haunted her. Her father's eyes losing their happy glow, blood dripping from her mouth threatened to upend the small modicum of control she held onto.

The silence made it possible to hear Shoto and her father whisper their love into her ears, to coax her forwards and out of the darkness holding her back.

That same silence though, made it possible for her mother to coo and taunt her, to threaten everything she ever loved. Her mother's voice drowned out everything good, left bitterness festering in her stomach and mind.

Oh, Emiko. She cooed, your father died before you were even born.

Have you not figured it out, Emiko? She laughed cruelly, It's taken you so long already.