Not Yet

XLIII: Flagging Ember

"I... I think..." Matsuda's hesitation was something unusual and certainly unnerving. Aizawa's heart was pulsating in his throat, as nervous anticipation hung in the air, waiting for the doctor's next words.

"No. I could be wrong. It's not r-" he began to dismiss, but got interrupted with a stern glare and an unwavering, demanding voice.

"Matsuda. What is it?" His stoic external appearance did not, for better or for worse, convey his inner turmoil. Yet that most certainly didn't convince the doctor that the hero was indifferent, nor ready, for the the news he was about to drop.

"I don't think that... he's gonna make it."
And as expected, Shouta's shock was evident by his stunned expression and his overbearing silence.

Matsuda found the silence so suffocating that he tried to fill it with an explanation, which he knew was very unwise in this situation.

"Izuku's body is at its limit. None of our chemical treatments are having the desired effect. I don't know why, but his cells keep deteriorating and the cell count keeps dropping drastically. While this normally would lead to instant death, Izuku's ability, whatever it is, is preventing his death for the time being. And as it seems that the center that controls this phenomena lies in the brain, if what you told me about Izuku's other ability is true, then the memories he keeps taking will only lead to his perdition."

Aizawa's eyebrows came knotting together, yet he remained utterly quiet. Matsuda couldn't even decide if that meant that the hero was dealing with the news badly or not. He really couldn't imagine himself being on the receiving end of such news.

"I need a moment," Aizawa said abruptly, turning on his heels and entering Izuku's room.
Ignoring the doctor's strained advise about not dealing with the news on his own, he shut the door behind him, muffling Matsuda's voice in the background to an indistinguishable string of noises.

He took a moment to gather his scrambled thoughts, finally acknowledging the icy fear that was spreading through his spine, starting from the back of his neck, at the thought of losing his boy.

He was glad he had sent Eri with Merio today -not without strict supervision of course-, it only made sense when the doctor had hurriedly requested a talk. Yet he feared that he could be stripping Eri of precious limited time with her most dear person alive.

He had never heard of someone regretting the future, but this feeling in his chest proved it exists.

He was already regretting the future that he knows he can't change, and that made an old wound -one that was buried under deep layers of dust and a  fragile shroud woven by the blissful passage of time- painfully rupture and bleed again.

Will it only have the same outcome, with the same regrets and the same bitterness and with another lump forming in his throat, refusing to neither get swallowed nor spat out?

A faint huff from the bed snapped his attention back to the living world.

No, self-pity wasn't what they needed right now. He couldn't spiral down in his -oh so familiar- thought process, not when he hadn't even tried to do anything yet, not when nothing had happened yet, and certainly not when he had got a warning ahead of time,  this time around.

He crept slowly closer to the weak body slumped on the bed, hooked to various machines that struggled to maintain what little was left of the flagging ember.

"Izuku," Shouta whispered above the whirring of the machines, kneeling down to touch the boy's hair gently at realizing he was actually awake.

The petite boy looked up at him with a knowing gaze, a faint reassuring expression plastered on his face as if he knew what kind of turmoil the hero was having within.