It had been a week.
A week since he had been taken from his mother, though taken may not have been the right word, it was the one which Aki felt.
The only one that could describe what he was going through, the only one that could describe what he was thinking.
He was sitting on his bed, his back against the cold wall, knees drawn up to his chest, the book, the last gift of his mother in his hands.
The orphanage had been... fine.
It gave him food, three meals a day. It gave him a place to sleep, a narrow bed in a room he shared with three other boys.
The other kids even tried to talk to him.
But Aki remained silent to it all.
He just kept rereading his book over and over and over. The pages were worn now, some corners dog-eared from his constant handling. Because it was the last thing his mother had given him. If he concentrated hard enough, he could almost smell her on the binding, one of the few good things that came from his enhanced senses.
And yet, he loathed it. He loathed every second of it. The book was a reminder of that last day, of her shaking hands as she pressed it into his arms, of the way she couldn't quite meet his eyes.
He wanted to be with his mother.
He wanted to be there for her.
To help her.
To cure her.
To make everything go back to the way it was before.
To-
"Aki." His thoughts were interrupted. His eyes, which were fixed on the cover of the book, already peeling off at the edges, flew up to meet the black sunglasses of a man.
Aki could see the man's eyes through his glasses, the eyes of the man who had brought him here.
He loathed him too.
This man who spoke in gentle tones but whose actions had torn his world apart.
"A person is here to see you."
"A person?" Aki replied, his voice sore from disuse, cracking on the syllables. He hadn't spoken much since coming here, what was the point? Words couldn't change anything
"Is it-" Hope flared in his chest, small yet there, he hoped against hope, but of course the man's next words would shatter even that.
"No, it isn't your mother."
Aki gnashed his teeth but said nothing more, his gaze returning to the book in his grip. His fingers tightened around it until his knuckles went white. He wanted to tear it apart, to tear the pages, to burn the spine, to-
But he couldn't. It was all he had left.
The bed creaked ominously as it sank beside him. Aki looked to his side, watching as Bubbles settled his considerable bulk onto the mattress. His burly body filled almost all of the available space, making Aki feel even smaller than his seven years already did.
"I'm sorry." The words were soft, almost whispered.
Aki remained quiet, his gaze still on the book.
"I'm sorry for taking you from her, but it is what is best for you."
Best for him.
What did this man know of what was best for him? He didn't. He knew nothing.
The words bubbled up from deep inside, unstoppable.
"She needs me."
"I know, but she shouldn't."
"You don't get it."
The words came out sharp, especially for Aki himself, he had never spoken like that before, he had never spoken with anger.
"That's true," Bubbles said almost in a hollow laugh, a sound that held no real humor. "I don't. Probably no one will. That's the funny thing about being human. No one understands us. No one ever truly will, we bear the pain. Sometimes we find people who can bear it with us, but you're too young to bear your mother's."
The philosophy was lost on a seven-year-old who only knew that his mother was alone and he wasn't there to help her. Aki became quiet once more, retreating into himself like a turtle into its shell.
"I do need you to come with me though. It is mandatory for you to meet this person."
Mandatory. Another adult word that meant he had no choice.
"Who is it?"
"A doctor, he's going to check up on you."
"I'm fine." The response was automatic. He didn't need a doctor.
"Nothing wrong with being sure," Bubbles replied, a sigh almost escaping his lips.
Aki jumped from the bed with more energy than he'd shown all week, the book still clutched in his hands. Bubbles also stood up, his mass making the bed creak in protest. It had been a marvel that it hadn't bent completely under his weight.
Bubbles extended his hand, thick fingers spread in an invitation for Aki to take it, but when he saw the boy wasn't going to, he decided to forgo the gesture and simply opened the door instead. Both of them walked through it, their footsteps echoing in the hallway.
They walked down one hallway after another, until finally made it to an oak door, the exact same as the others. Bubbles opened it with a soft click of the latch. "Go in."
"You're not coming?" Aki asked. For some reason, this surprised him.
"No, only your legal guardian can be in there with your doctor, I'm not."
Aki nodded, not knowing exactly what a legal guardian was, as he went through the door, hearing the creak as Bubbles closed it once more.
The room was sparse, deliberately so, as if someone had tried to make it non-threatening but had only succeeded in making it feel empty. A medical bed sat at one side, its paper covering crinkling from seemingly nothing at all.
Along the same wall stood various pieces of equipment, a blood pressure monitor, a scale, shelves lined with medication bottles.
At the other side of the room was a simple desk, papers scattered across its surface in what looked like organized chaos, and behind it, a chair. On said chair was a man, reclining back and forth with a rhythmic squeak.
Aki's enhanced eyes locked onto the man, taking in all of his features at once.
The doctor was an old man of short stature, probably only a head and a half taller than Aki himself, and he had just celebrated his seventh birthday not long ago. Though celebrated may not have been the right word for it, as his mother had had one of her episodes before they could.
The doctor was completely bald, and had a very large and bushy mustache that seemed to compensate for the lack of hair elsewhere. It was gray, streaked with white, and moved when he spoke like a living thing.
He wore black-rimmed glasses that sat on his brow rather than his nose, an affectation that made him look both scholarly and slightly ridiculous. His doctor's coat was pristine white, with a simple shirt beneath it.
A single thought ran through his mind at that moment.
Much too white.
"Hello, little one," the doctor said with a grin that didn't quite reach his eyes, breaking Aki's momentary thought. "I'm Dr. Tsubasa."
He rose from his chair with a soft grunt, the movement adding a few inches to his height but not enough to make him imposing. He moved slowly, as he walked over to the medical bed.
His fingers, Aki noticed, were long and thin and when he tapped the bed with his index finger, the sound seemed too loud in the quiet room.
"Come now, get on it, I'm going to test your physical."
Aki nodded. He went over to the bed, the paper crinkling under him as he sat, the book still clutched in his hands.
"Well then, what's your name?" the doctor asked as he plugged his stethoscope in his ears.
"Aki, Aki Tadashi," Aki's voice came out quieter than he expected it tor. He cleared his throat, tried again, but the doctor was already moving on. "Hmm, Tadashi, Tadashi," the doctor muttered, rolling the name around in his mouth like he was tasting it. He unplugged his stethoscope from his ears, placing it back on his neck. "Oh, you're Victoria's son?"
Aki's eyes widened at his words, his heart suddenly hammering in his chest.
"Yes, yes, I am. How do you know my mother?"
"Oh poor thing, has no one told you?" the doctor asked. The corners of the doctor's lips were upturning slightly, a micro-expression of something that looked almost like satisfaction. It was a detail Aki wouldn't have missed normally, his enhanced vision catching every twitch and tell, but he was too focused on the fact that this stranger knew his mother's name to care about the warning signs.
"Told me what?"
The question came out desperate, needy. He hated it.
"Your mother is the closest person to ever suffer from quirk singularity."
The words made no sense to the young boy.
"Quirk singularity?" Aki repeated, the unfamiliar term feeling strange on his tongue.
"You really do not know anything, do you?" The doctor's tone was almost pitying now, but that undertone of something else remained. "Do you even know your mother's quirk?"
Aki shook his head, shame coloring his cheeks. How could he not know? She was his mother, the most important person in his world, and he didn't even know something so fundamental about her.
"It's called Fae's Blood. Quite a poetic name for such a devastating ability. It lets her experience the feelings of anyone in a certain area as if they were her own. The more she grew, the more this area expanded. Imagine it, young Aki, feeling every joy, every sorrow, every flash of anger or moment of fear from everyone around you, all at once, with no way to turn it off."
The doctor's hands were cold as they pressed against Aki's neck, checking lymph nodes, but Aki barely noticed. "Yes, I've been treating your mother since she was as small as you. Seven years old when they first brought her to me, crying because she couldn't understand why she felt so many things that weren't hers. The first thing I taught her was to release these feelings through an anchor, someone she could be complete with, someone whose emotions could ground her own. She jumped from one to another for years, struggling to find stability. Parents, friends, tutors, therapists, anyone who could provide that emotional tether. Until she finally found one she could stick with."
The doctor paused, adjusting his glasses though they didn't need adjusting.
"In fact, she stopped seeing me soon after. Completely dropped out of treatment. She seemed to be quite in control, found her perfect anchor in a man who loved her as much as she needed to be loved. I was starting to believe that quirk singularity wasn't that great a theory after all. Perhaps some people could simply adapt, evolve with their quirks rather than be consumed by them." His mustache twitched. "Then he went off and died."
The words were delivered so casually, even Aki hadn't registered that the man, this doctor was speaking off was his father. No, all Aki did was listen.
He shouldn't have.
He should have thought about why a doctor was telling him this, why this particular revelation was being delivered to a seven-year-old child who had no framework to process it.
He should have thought about why this doctor in particular was here, in this specific orphanage, at this specific time.
But he didn't.
He stayed quiet and listened, each word sinking into him. "She came back two years ago," the doctor continued, his voice taking on an almost conversational tone, as if they were discussing something mundane rather than the destruction of everything Aki had believed about his life. "Desperate. Broken, really. She said she had tried to find another anchor, in you, funnily enough. Her own son, the last piece of the man she'd loved. But she said it wasn't working, that her area was growing more and more each day and she couldn't take it. The emotions of hundreds of thousands, probably millions now, all pressing in on her consciousness at once."
The doctor pulled out a small flashlight, checking Aki's pupil response while he talked, the light harsh and invasive. "My oh my, how many drugs I tried to take her edge off. Suppressants, inhibitors. We tried meditation, isolation therapy, sensory deprivation tanks, all this while you were off at school, it's why social services were tipped off in the first place. Nothing worked for long. The quirk just kept growing stronger, the radius expanding exponentially. But her breaking point..."
He paused, clicking the flashlight off, leaving spots dancing in Aki's vision.
"Her breaking point came all the same. When she couldn't even keep it together for three hours without completely losing herself to the emotional chaos around her." The doctor moved to check Aki's ears now, the cold metal of the otoscope uncomfortable against his skin. "I guessed she had been releasing her frustrations at home, the anger that wasn't hers, the sadness that belonged to strangers, all of it pouring out somewhere. But I couldn't quite be sure where or how." His voice dropped, became almost conspiratorial. "Until that day, that is. She came and confessed, and so social services finally took you."
Aki didn't know what to say, a single sentence spilled from his mouth.
"My mom is sick?"
"Deathly so, I'm afraid." The doctor said it so casually, so matter-of-factly, as if he hadn't just destroyed the last hope a seven-year-old had been clinging to.
Aki's heart beat.
It beat louder and louder and louder, each pulse resounding like thunder in his chest. The sound filled his ears until it was all he could hear, not the doctor's continued commentary, not even his own ragged breathing.
Just that relentless pounding that seemed to shake his entire small frame. It thrummed in his ears like a drum.
His brain couldn't think, couldn't process, couldn't make sense of the information that had been so cruelly delivered.
The words bounced around his skull, quirk singularity, deathly ill, anchor, breaking point.
His entire being was on edge, every nerve firing at once, every muscle tensed to the point of pain.
He was about to explode, he could feel it building inside, the fuse running out quickly.
He needed to see his mom.
The need was physical, visceral, clawing at his insides.
She was sick, sick people got better, that was what happened, that was how the world worked.
He was going to make her get better. He had to.
She needed an anchor. He'd be her anchor.
The book in his hands creaked under the pressure of his grip. The doctor was still talking, but the words were just noise now, meaningless sounds against the roar of blood in Aki's ears.
His vision began to narrow, darkening at the edges.
He needed to be with his mother.
NOW!
Then he burst.
A/N: Sup had some free time, so here you guys and gals go. See you when I have some more free time. It's been a pleasure.