Chapter Text
Iida had called an ambulance while Midoriya had run to find All Might, who was their chaperone on the trip, to inform him of what had happened. It was a simple enough accident, nothing nefarious about it: the scaffolding the handyman had been using apparently hadn’t been up to code and had given way underneath him without any warning, sending several hundred pounds of metal piping and high-dollar plexiglass lettering tumbling to shatter in the street.
The maintenance man himself-Higurashi Touga-whose Quirk allowed him to stick to porous surfaces such as brick, had been fine, having managed to adhere to the wall of the building in time to avoid a nasty fall, but he’d been frantic with worry over the fate of the girl he’d last seen standing below his workstation just before the accident. It took first responders nearly ten minutes of repeated reassurances before the man had calmed down enough to understand the fact that not only was the girl alright, she had managed to escape entirely unharmed.
To say Higurashi, a father with two young children of his own, was relieved to hear the news, would be a massive understatement.
Tsuna was beyond relieved himself to know that he had been the only one to receive any injuries, and even then very minor ones. Really, the paramedics had been entirely unnecessary. He’d had much worse wounds than this, and the gash on his side wasn’t even that bad-it had already stopped bleeding by the time the ambulance arrived. He didn’t even need to be looked at, really, he was fine!
Uraraka disagreed.
Uraraka strongly disagreed.
When the girl caught him trying to sneak off into the gathered crowd she gently, but firmly, took him by the shoulders and steered him right back toward the flashing lights and navy uniforms clustered at the opposite end of the street.
She parked him on the narrow step situated below the open ambulance doors, insisting he stay put while she went to find someone to look at his ribs and fussing over him in a way so similar to how Kyoko-chan would react in the same situation that he didn’t have the heart to try plotting another escape attempt. He remained meekly in place while she momentarily disappeared, then reappeared in short order with a gray-haired EMT in tow.
The older woman smiled at him, and her resemblance to Shuzenji-san was such that he knew all at once he was not leaving without a preliminary checkup at the very least and so he internally sighed and gave up the fight with relatively good grace.
He lifted his left arm with a slight wince at Uraraka’s urging and twisted his torso, carefully, to show the woman the damage.
The woman frowned and bent slightly to get a closer look. “Ah, I see.” She gave him another smile, this one more genuine and less professionally detached. “You must be the young man I keep hearing about. Sawada Tsunayoshi-kun? I’m Watanabe Ayaka. We’ve been looking all over for you. Word is you’re the big hero around these parts today.”
He felt his face flush at her words and he visibly twitched with the suppressed urge to flail his denial. “O-Oh no! No, I-I just did what I-I mean, that is to say I-I only did what I had to, or-or I mean what anyone would do! I-In my place, I’m-I’m sure.”
Her grin widened a bit more as she straightened and unfolded the glasses she had tucked into the chest pocket of her uniform. “I’m sure.”
Settling the frames on her nose, she turned to Uraraka, who was still hovering nearby. “I’m afraid I’m going to need you to rejoin your class group now young missy. I know you wish to stay with your friend but since the wound is severe enough to cause bleeding I want to bandage him up on site before I send him back to the school, otherwise Chiyo will have my guts for garters.”
The girl blinked up at her, then flicked her gaze over to Tsuna, who blinked back, just as uncomprehending. “Oh, but then, why can’t I-?”
“I’ll need to flush out the wound and, with your permission Sawada-kun, use my Quirk to check for any rib fractures.” Her tone gentled at their continued blank looks. “Which means he’ll have to remove his hoody and shirt so that I can view the injury in it’s entirety.”
Understanding hit the two teens like a freight train and both of their faces lit up crimson almost in unison.
“Oh!” Uraraka squeaked, round face aflame with the force of her blush. “I-I-I see. Um! Well, I-I’ll be waiting with everyone right over there Sawada-kun-” she gestured toward where the remainder of their class had gathered further down the road. Most of them appeared to be clustered around Tsuyu, no doubt asking for a recount of what had happened.
Yagi-san’s skeletal blonde form was unmistakable even from this distance, his hunched posture nonetheless still making him head and shoulders taller than the teenagers around him. He appeared to be speaking on the phone with someone.
“-c-callmeifyouneedanythingokaygoodbye!”
Flustered, the girl hurried off to join their classmates, leaving the boy to hunch in mortified silence on the step of the ambulance, praying the ground would hurry up and swallow him whole. A light touch on his shoulder made him flinch and look up at the paramedic, having momentarily forgotten her existence in the wake of his mortification.
Watanabe’s smile was kind as she helped him to his feet. “Don’t worry young man. I’ve been doing this job a long time and I’ve got three boys of my own. I promise you don’t have anything I haven’t seen before.”
Tsuna hid his face in his hands and groaned with embarrassment but appreciated her attempt to lighten the mood. He accepted her hand up into the ambulance proper and took a seat on one of the benches, shrugging out of his ruined hoody while she angled the doors in such a way to shield the inside from anyone on the street. He couldn’t quite bring himself to remove his t-shirt right away, instead fiddling with the hem as she retrieved the supplies she would need to dress his wound.
“Um,” he spoke up, curiosity getting the better of him. Her likeness to Shuzenji-san allowed him to be a bit bolder in the presence of a stranger then he might otherwise have managed, though he kept his eyes trained on the floor between his tennis shoes. “Y-You mentioned your Quirk before. Something about rib fractures. How…How does it work, if-if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Well aren’t you a polite young man.” She pulled a stool out from under the bench across from him and settled the items she’d gathered on a tray close at hand.
“Quirk Law dictates that I have to explain my Quirk to all my patients to the best of my ability and obtain their written consent in order to use it on them. Since you’re a minor under the care of a boarding school I already had All Might co-sign for you but if you choose not to allow me to perform a Quirk-based examination on you you are perfectly within your right’s to do so Sawada-kun. If that’s what you choose I would advise you have Chiyo-Recovery Girl that is-take some x-rays when you get back to the school however; from everything I’ve heard that was a very daring rescue you performed and it sounds like you hit the ground quite hard. Asui-chan in particular was very adamant that I check you over from top to bottom for even the tiniest signs of damage.”
He jerked in surprise and looked up reflexively, meeting her kind gray eyes with his own worried brown ones. “You checked on Asui-san? Is she okay? I. I hit her pretty hard. I tried not to, I tried to take the fall like Reborn taught me but I’ve never tried it while tackling someone before, did I...did I do it right? Is she...” He swallowed hard. “Is she okay?”
She held his gaze unwaveringly for a moment more before nodding. “Yes. A bit shaken, but that’s to be expected, though she’s holding up well, which I suppose is also to be expected from a Hero Course student. She had one or two bumps, a friction burn on her calf, but considering you’re only a few inches taller and she probably outweighs you by almost ten pounds I daresay it could have been much worse. The mental processing power of your Quirk-the amount of calculation it would have taken to know just how much force and speed it would take to hit her while causing the least amount of damage on impact while also compensating for your own mass in the fall, and the amount of time in which you managed it…it’s truly extraordinary young man. Asui-chan was very lucky you were there today.”
He just stared at her, eyes huge and round, completely unprepared for such frank praise for his abilities and having absolutely no idea how to respond. But he knew he should say something. His mom would want him to be polite. “Ah...thank you?”
She smiled and pat him fondly on the knee, a warm, grandmotherly gesture he had no frame of reference for outside of Shuzenj-san. “You’re very welcome. Now. Shirt off young man, let’s get a look at that battle wound of yours.”
His face flushed once more but he steeled himself against his natural shyness and managed to pull his shirt over his head without further delay.
Distracted by his own awkwardness, he almost missed the woman’s sharp, shocked inhalation when she finally got a look at his bare torso, but he caught it and looked over at her in concern. “Watanabe-san?”
Her sharp eyes were flicking rapidly behind her glasses, assessing, and he twisted gingerly to glance down at his ribs, wincing when he saw the dark reddish-brown slash and the rapidly purpling stain of bruising spreading out from the afflicted area. No wonder she’d gasped; it was worse that he’d thought. It was definitely going to scar. Oh well, he sighed mentally. Another one to add to the collection.
Heaven knew Spartan training and constant attacks from people wanting him to be/not to be the Tenth Generation Vongola boss meant he’d accumulated a fair number of scars over the years, the most prominent of which being the mirrored starburst scars on the front and back of his left shoulder, just before the joint began, where Tazaru’s Spikes had punched through him the year previous. Wounds obtained from Storm flames and Storm box weapons always left nasty scars.
When he looked back up Watanabe had busied herself with opening the plastic pouches containing the bandages and mixing together the saline solution to clean the cut with. “That looks pretty bad alright Sawada-kun,” she confirmed, her face still turned away from him. “You’ll definitely want Recovery Girl to heal it up for you once you get back to U.A. I’ll just put a field dressing on it in the meantime and make sure no debris remain in the wound, okay?”
He nodded. “Yes ma’am.”
She turned back to him, her smile once more unfailingly gentle as she directed him to raise his arm slightly. “This is going to sting a bit I’m afraid.”
She wasn’t wrong. Cleaning the cut did sting but she was efficient and experienced, chattering lightly about anything and everything in order to distract him, which he appreciated immensely. Soon enough she was done and having him hold down the cotton pad over his ribs as she quickly wound the strips around his middle to keep it in place. Taping everything was the work of seconds and then she was stepping back to survey her work.
“Looks good! I have to say you took that very well for someone so young Sawada-kun, I’ve had veteran Heroes twice your age in here who squawked more than that,” she teased. “Tell me the truth, you’ve done this before haven’t you?”
He grinned bashfully back at her, seeing no reason to lie. “Once or twice. I have to say, you’re much better at it than Doctor Shamal. He usually complains the whole time about having to work with guys; you’re much more professional. It’s a nice change.”
“Doctor Shamal? Is he your family doctor?”
“You could say that.” If you spelled Family with a capital ‘F’.
Moving slowly, he shrugged on the velcro-front scrub shirt Watanabe had provided in order to replace his blood-stained t-shirt until he could return to the school. Although since he’d been wearing a borrowed U.A school t-shirt in the first place, he had no idea what he was going to do once he got back. Maybe he could somehow salvage this one? He tucked it into his pocket just in case. “I mostly only see him when my dad is in town or when something really bad happens and someone needs medical attention right away. Otherwise he’s off getting up to who knows what.”
She blinked. “I...see.” Pushing her glasses up her nose, she nudged the stool back out of the way with her foot and shifted to stand in front of him, a clipboard in her hands that she’d retrieved while he’d been distracted.
“Alright so, a quick rundown of how my Quirk operates. My Quirk is called Bone Echo, and basically how it works is I position my hand over an area of your skeleton I think may have been damaged, like so-” She demonstrated, holding her splayed hand steady a few inches away from his sternum. “-and produce a subsonic sound, inaudible to most without Quirk-enhanced hearing but audible to myself, which vibrates the bones at a cellular level in a localized area while I listen for imperfections in the echo the sound produces. While my Quirk is nowhere near as foolproof or concrete as an X-ray machine, it’s more than accurate enough to locate obvious breaks or dislocations and can even detect micro-fractures, which while not technically useful in my line of work, is a neat trick and I live to gloat.”
She winked, prompting a startled grin out of him. “So how ‘bout it sonny, you want me to echolocate your bones or would you rather wait and have Chiyo check you out using the non-witch doctor method up at the school? Truth be told I didn’t notice any obvious breaks when I was cleaning your wounds, otherwise I wouldn’t have wrapped your ribs, but it’s always better to be safe than sorry. I would rather check and have nothing be wrong then send you home without checking and find out later from Chiyo that I missed something, but as I said the decision is up to you. Either way I think you’ll be fine until she can have a look at you.”
Tsuna chewed on his lower lip, considering. On the one hand, he’d broken or cracked ribs on numerous occasions prior to this and so he knew what it felt like. Although there was some soreness when he breathed deeply, there was no sharp, shooting pain, and when she’d lightly pressed on the left half of his ribcage earlier, there had been some tenderness, most likely from the surface bruising, but no grating or sickening movement under his skin. His ribs were more than likely fine, but...her Quirk sounded...really kind of awesome actually, and he kind of wanted to know what it felt like to have his bones vibrate. Would it tickle?
Somewhat guiltily, he nodded and signed the form where she directed him to, hoping he wouldn’t be wasting too much of her time. He knew it was her job and she seemed so nice but he knew she more than likely had more important things to be doing. Hopefully it would be a relatively quick process.
She had him turn so his left side was facing her, his left hand grabbing his right arm to keep it out of the way of her inspection-“I already know your arm isn’t broken young man!”-then she held out both hands, her index fingers and thumbs almost touching, her palms hovering a few inches above his skin, and concentrated.
He watched in avid fascination as the tendons in her softly wrinkled throat pulled taut and started to shiver the barest amount, and although he couldn’t hear anything, as she’d said he wouldn’t, all of the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stood up as goosebumps swept over his flesh. It was the oddest sensation; not ticklish exactly, but he could definitely tell something was happening, almost like the barest edge of a buzz underneath his skin, stopping just before it became a full blown itch. It wasn’t pleasant exactly, but it wasn’t necessarily unpleasant either. It simply was.
It had only been happening for about ten seconds when he first saw her pale eyebrows twitch and then draw down sharply as her mouth twisted in a frown. He frowned as well, not sure what the problem was, since he was certain his ribs weren’t broken. Perhaps there was a hairline fracture neither of them had expected? That could be a problem, but if Shuzenji-san’s Quirk really did work the way everyone said it did, he was sure it would be fine long enough for him to get back to the nurse’s office. He couldn’t think of anything else that could possibly be causing her to make that face.
He couldn’t stop a small jolt of surprise when the sensation suddenly increased, spreading in a static-y cloud out from the area around his wound to encompass his entire torso. Watanabe frowned even harder in response to whatever her expanded examination yielded.
The feeling abruptly faded away as the woman lowered her hands, still frowning, though she didn’t speak for a long moment. Just as he’d begun to fidget, she spoke once more. “Sawada-kun, is it alright if I ask you to rate your pain level for me right now?”
Thrown, it took him a second to realize what she was asking him. “My pain level? Er...I’m sorry, could you be more specific?”
She blinked, some of the distance disappearing from her gaze as she refocused on him and she offered him a lopsided smile. He couldn’t help but notice it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “On a scale of one to ten, one being the lowest, little to no pain, ten being an intolerable amount of pain, how much pain are you in right now?”
“Oh, uh.” He took a moment to really think about it. Considering the worst physical pain he’d ever been in had been during his fight with Daemon Spade…“Um, I’d say I’m somewhere around a-a...three maybe? Or maybe a two. No, no a three. Yeah. Three.”
Honestly it really was closer to a two but her face had done something funny when he’d said that and his Intuition had flared so he’d quickly changed his answer back. He just wasn’t sure why.
She nodded, her expression mostly back to normal as she smiled at him. “Alright then young man, I think you’re good for now. Nothing’s broken and although you do have the tiniest crack in one of your lower ribs, it shouldn’t be anything one of Chiyo’s healing kisses can’t cure.”
Grabbing another clipboard, she quickly scrawled something down, tore the page free and handed it to him. “Do me a favor Sawada-kun and give that to Recovery Girl when you see her, first thing when you get back to the school. It’s just a few notes for her on your injuries and telling her that I haven’t given you anything for the pain or infection in case she wants to prescribe you some antibiotics.”
He glanced over the note as he folded it into quarters to fit into his back pocket but it was written in some form of shorthand and he couldn’t read it, but he nodded to show he understood. He followed the woman to the back of the ambulance and let her help him down. He couldn’t bow properly in his current state but he did so as deeply as he could and thanked her for her time and assistance.
She grinned and inclined her head back at him. “It was nice to meet you Sawada-kun. Let’s try not to see too much of each other in the future, alright?”
-
Shuzenji Chiyo was not a temperamental woman. She couldn’t afford to be, not in her line of work. Oh she got angry occasionally, of course she did, she wasn’t a saint, and there were times where she couldn’t help but get more than a little irritated when certain people didn’t look after themselves in the way that they should (elsewhere on campus, Toshinori and Midoriya both sneezed in tandem).
But she didn’t fly off the handle at every little thing. She was a veteran Hero and a nurse of more than fifty years who had willingly chosen to spend her twilight years working in a high school that trained rookie Heroes. If she couldn’t keep a tight rein on her temper her heart would have given out decades ago from the sheer stress of it all and her blood pressure would be through the roof.
Her iron clad control was hard forged and hard won and she took great pride in the fact that she had never, not once ever in her life raised her voice at a patient, no matter how senselessly stupid some of the actions which had landed them in her care were.
So the fact that she was currently incandescent with rage was not a fact to be taken lightly.
When she’d gotten a call from Toshinori earlier in the day letting her know there had been an incident at the mall and some of the students had sustained minor injuries, she’d been concerned but not unduly worried, especially not after she’d heard Watanabe Ayaka’s team had been the ones to respond.
Ayaka had been in one of the first medical classes she’d ever mentored after she’d finished her own schooling and the two of them had been friends for years. She trusted the younger woman implicitly and knew she’d look after Chiyo’s kids like they were her own until Recovery Girl had the chance to see to them herself. She saw no cause for alarm.
Young Asui and young Sawada had obediently come straight to her office for a checkup once arriving back at the school, appearing repentant (Asui) and sheepish (Sawada) by turns and followed by a frazzled Toshinori. It had been the poor boy’s first outing since his retirement and apparently he wasn’t adjusting to it as well as either of them had hoped. She’d made a mental note to wrangle him into sitting down and having a chat with her about it over tea within the next week as she turned her attention to her young charges.
Asui had gotten off astonishingly light given the circumstances, but she still bestowed a healing kiss upon the girl and had to be a bit more stern than usual in her instance that she go and rest for a while in the dorms before she would agree to leave Sawada behind. Chiyo had sent Toshinori off as well to make sure the girl actually obeyed her directive and then focused on her last patient.
The boy had hunkered down out of the way on one of the spare cots in the corner-the same one he’d been using when he was still sleeping in her office-spine curved and arms tucked close to his body in a way that didn’t so much scream ‘I don’t want to be here’ as softly whisper it. But then, she was used to that; no one ever really wanted to be in a doctor’s office.
Leaning her weight against her cane, she smiled up at the young man. “So I hear you took quite a tumble today,” she said, smothering a sigh when he jerked. So jumpy, this boy. “All Might informed me that Ayaka-chan’s crew was on scene today. That’s good. They’re some of the best. I should know, since I trained young Watanabe myself.”
He gaped at her. “You trained-!” Then he started as if he had just remembered something and scrambled around on the bed for a moment, turning to reach into his back pocket while remaining seated. “Oh! Um, yes, Watanabe-san was very nice, and she, she, uh, she used her Quirk and she asked me to um, give you-this!” Withdrawing a folded piece of paper, he offered it to her.
Frowning in confusion, she took it, wondering what could possibly be so urgent Ayaka wouldn’t have just picked up the phone and called-
As her eyes skimmed over the other woman’s coded results from her brief Bone Echo examination, Chiyo felt her blood turn to ice in her veins.
“Shuzenji-san?”
She looked up at Sawada’s hesitant call of her name to find him analyzing her expression worriedly. “Are you okay? Watanabe-san said one of my ribs had a small crack in it but I’m fine, really. I know its Saturday, and if you’re tired, I can just wait for it to heal the normal way. I-I’ve had broken ribs before, and this really doesn’t hurt that bad in comparison. Honest.”
As she strode through the halls of the school on her way to Nezu’s office, file folder clenched tightly in one gloved hand as the point of her cane rapped sharply against the floor in the other, her heart clenched anew at the earnestness in the young man’s face when he’d essentially told her not to worry about him and to put her needs above his own.
Even though it was her job-no, her duty and privilege, to look out for her students, to put their health and wellness first, and she had never once considered it a burden, the fact that he had so willingly disregarded his own wellbeing in the face of her potential discomfort spoke volumes to the selflessness of spirit embodied within one Sawada Tsunayoshi.
That only made the evidence she now held, which spoke of the terrible abuse he had apparently been suffering for years, all the more abhorrent.
She couldn’t clearly remember now what she’d said to reassure him that she was alright, just knew he must have taken her at her word. Though he continued to watch her apprehensively as he followed her into a side room set off her office where x-rays were taken on the rare occasion they were required.
Quirks weren’t magic. Her ability to heal was only as strong as her patient’s body and shattered or splintered bones didn’t always heal correctly on the first go ‘round, even when her kids were in excellent physical health, as young Midoriya could attest. The human body could make mistakes; bones could set themselves incorrectly, joints could realign improperly. Sometimes the pattern of healing needed to be checked on between sessions to make sure everything was progressing as it should.
Sawada hadn’t questioned her motives for wanting to x-ray his chest, neck, and arms, for which she was grateful. It had taken everything she had to keep her face impassive as she examined the results on the screen, and if her voice had audibly wavered when she confirmed Ayaka’s diagnosis of a hairline crack in his lower fourth rib on the lefthand side, well, she was old. These things were to be expected in someone her age.
She had printed off his x-rays for further study and pressed a Quirk-laden kiss to the young man’s forehead before sending him on his way with a handful of gummies when he admitted he’d missed lunch due to all the ruckus.
She was afraid she might have let her emotions get the better of her a little when she’d activated her Quirk and it might have packed more of a punch than usual. The poor dear had seemed a tad dizzy afterwards, though he’d been quick to reassure her that he could make it back to the dorms on his own when she’d suggested calling Toshinori back to escort him.
He’d been so frantic at the prospect of being an inconvenience she’d allowed herself to be persuaded, letting him depart her office on his own.
She hadn’t been able to quell the urge to check in on the Heights Alliance extension a short while later and she hadn’t bothered to hide her relief when Aizawa answered and confirmed the boy had made it back in once piece. She had a feeling she had roused the man’s suspicions with her outsized reaction, and if that were the case then more’s the better. As soon as she was done with Nezu she planned to turn right around and call Eraserhead and All Might into her office to speak with them about this situation. It could not continue, and it would not continue. Not on her watch.
She had tried to sit down and organize the information clinically, in a detached, professional manner. Starting with the scans of his ribcage and working outwards, she had used a red marker to delineate the damage she was seeing, high-lighting it and adding quick notes beside each circle with her approximate guess of how old each injury was based on remodeling.
She’d gotten about halfway through before she’d been forced to stop because her hands were shaking too badly to continue, the stark black-and-white of the x-ray stained all over with red marks and her eyes burning with ruthlessly repressed tears, gritting her teeth so hard she could hear the bones grinding in her jaw.
The same thing had happened when she’d tried to outline the damage to his arms and shoulders, making sure to note the scar Ayaka had mentioned though she hadn’t seen it for herself, and she’d only managed a passing glance at his upper spinal scans before her composure had deserted her entirely. She’d shoved everything, including Ayaka’s note, into a spare folder, grabbed her cane, and stormed off to the main building.
Saturdays were one of the few days Nezu actually kept the outer door to his office closed as a deterrent to bored students, but she knew from experience that the principal never locked it. When she reached the door she shoved it open with admittedly unnecessary force, startling the woman sitting at the desk beside the inner door.
“Recovery Girl!” Mashiro Hitsuji, Nezu’s secretary, gasped in surprise and quickly got to her feet. “Is something the matter? What’s going on?”
Chiyo winced, momentarily derailed in her pursuit. She’d forgotten the young woman would be working today. Nezu so rarely required a secretary, except on weekends to catch up on paperwork, or when the calls were coming thick and fast from rabid media outlets and frantic parents alike after a villain attack on the school or the students.
“Ah, please excuse me dear. The door just got away from me, I always forget how weighted it is.” She waved the girl off as she crossed to the door next to her desk.
She paused to offer her a reassuring smile, hoping it looked more sincere then she currently felt. There was no reason for her to take her bad temper out on the innocent receptionist. “Please go back to whatever you were doing before I interrupted you. I just needed to speak with Nezu for a minute. He’s not too busy I trust?”
Dark eyes flicked nervously to where Chiyo’s hand was already resting on the handle. “Um, well, I-I don’t think s-?”
“Good.”
Without further ado, she slipped into the dimly lit inner sanctum of the head of U.A High, making sure the door was firmly shut behind her. She trusted Hitsuji completely and knew anything overheard would never leave this room but Nezu’s open door policy was the worst-kept secret on campus; anyone could walk into the outer office while she was having her discussion with the principal and for the sake of Sawada’s privacy, she couldn’t risk anything leaking out. The x-rays in her hands already felt like enough of an invasion of trust for one lifetime.
Nezu was working at his desk and glanced up when she entered, the genteel expression on his face giving nothing away. If he was disquieted by her unexpected presence in his office, he didn’t show it. “Recovery Girl! To what do I owe the pleasure of-?”
She crossed the room as swiftly as she was able and smacked the file down on his desk, feeling as if she had to keep this knowledge to herself for one second longer she would surely explode. “Look at this.”
Nezu regarded her for a beat before complying without comment, sliding the folder towards himself and flipping it open.
She paced, unable to watch as he rifled through the contents, the slick sounds of the x-rays shuffling together as he spread them out on his desk and read over them too loud in the otherwise still quiet of his office. Her soft footfalls and the muffled tapping of her cane on the carpet were the only other sounds for a long, long time.
After what felt like an age, Nezu gathered the files back together in a stack and returned them neatly to the folder. Closing it, he rested his folded paws together on top. His customary smile was nowhere to be seen. “This is Sawada?”
Thank God for that brain of his. “Yes.” Her voice was curt, clipped. Awaiting judgment. Everything hinged on his next words. Her entire body practically vibrated with tension and her fist was clenched tight around the bulb of her cane.
The deafening silence was finally broken by his tired sigh. “Chiyo...”
Her heart broke. “No!” She spun to glare up at him. “No! Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare tell me nothing can be done Nezu! I won’t hear it!”
She grabbed the folder only to fling it back down on top of the desk, scattering lurid black and white and red-red-red photographs everywhere. “Look here! And here! Healed corner and bucket handle fractures in both arms, evidence of multiple subluxations of both shoulder joints, both his collarbones were all but shattered at some point, and every. single. one of his ribs shows signs of remodeled compression fractures!”
She slammed her free hand down on the desk and glared at the principal as fiercely as she could through a haze of tears. “Someone had been using that boy as a punching bag for years Nezu! Years!” She jabbed one gloved finger back towards the door. “Sawada is only fifteen years old! For him to have sustained and healed so many skeletal injuries at his age, without the benefit of Quirk-enhanced medical treatment might I add, he would have had to endure a nearly daily amount of senseless brutality almost since infancy!”
She paused to draw in a shuddering breath and turned her back on him, knowing she was crying freely now and incapable of doing a damn thing about it. “The worst is-are the injuries to the spinous processes. There are healed compression fractures to his upper vertebrae that show where someone must have wrapped their hands around his neck a-a-and sh-shook h-him until-until-” Her voice cracked on a sob and she couldn’t go on.
A soft pressure on her shoulder signaled that the small creature had left his chair and rounded his desk to rest his paw on her arm. “Humans,” he said gravely, no hint of his usual carefree cheerfulness in his voice. “Can be unimaginably cruel, especially to those they deem lesser than themselves.”
He would know.
Chiyo took a moment to breathe and fought to get a better handle on her emotions. It was a losing battle. “I saw the signs,” she continued dully. “How could I not? I’ve never seen anyone so afraid of their own shadow. He said he’d been bullied but this...to cause these kinds of breaks, it would take strength. In a world without Quirks, it would take adult strength, without question.”
“Male adult strength?”
She shrugged, noncommittal. “On some of the newer injuries maybe. On the...on the ones on his vertebrae yes definitely but any sufficiently strong woman with a bat or broom handle could have caused some of this damage, or additional, soft-tissue injuries.”
She pulled a tissue from a pocket of her coat to dab at her eyes, then straightened her spine as best she could and turned to face him, clear desperation and determination intermingled in the set of her jaw. “Please tell me there’s something that can be done.” She heard the pleading note in her voice and ignored it, already knowing what he would say.
Nezu sighed again. “Chiyo, while I concede you have a solid basis for beginning an investigation into potential parental abuse, who’s going to launch it? On what grounds? Sawada hasn’t said anything to us, and the legality of how and why you obtained these x-rays in the first place is dubious at best-no, don’t argue with me, you know it’s true. I know the content of those standard EMT release waivers the same as you and while Watanabe-san’s proverbial tail may be covered, you are on shakier ground, full disclosure-wise. Did you tell Sawada you wanted his x-rays in order to open an abuse investigation?”
“Of course not-”
“Of course not, because no charges have been filed. Why? Because no fingers have been pointed. And even if they were, who would they be pointed at? In case you’ve forgotten, Sawada doesn’t technically exist as far as this world is concerned Chiyo, and we can’t keep him here against his will. Recovery Girl, I’m sorry, believe me, I am, but in this particular instance there is simply nothing we can feasibly do beyond turning our concerns over to the school counselors and recommending they speak to Sawada about it themselves.”
She’d known already. She’d known deep down that there was nothing that she could do long before she’d even set foot in this office. She just hadn’t wanted to believe it. Hadn’t wanted to believe that even with all the proof she had, all the hard evidence she’d gathered, in the end she’d still be forced to send that sweet, shy, heroic boy back to his abusers in his world where she couldn’t protect him. She was going to have to let Sawada willingly walk back into hell alone when the time came and she already knew it was going to break her heart irreparably to do so.
And just like that all of the fight went out of her at once and then she was no longer Shuzenji Chiyo, woman on a mission, instead she was just Shuzenji Chiyo, tired, heartsore, and feeling every one of her seventy five years. She sighed deeply, bowing her head in pained acquiescence.
An understanding paw was laid back on her arm and the small creature stretched up on his tip-toes to tap his forehead against hers in rare show of deeply held affection. Nezu’s high-pitched voice contained an ocean of understanding and kindness as he said, “As much as we might wish it weren’t the case, there are some battles we just can’t fight for them. No matter how much we might want to.”