Hey i hope yall enjoy this its alot longer then normal so be ready. Also cid wont stay this emotional, no one's complained about it but I just wanna note that in case some of yall don't Like it.
Any who enjoy.
Chapter 60: Awakening to Changes
Cid's eye opened and all he saw was white.
That was the first thing that made it through his eye. A flat stretch of ceiling white and lights that were far too bright to be normal. Then the smell hit him, it was a sharp chemical smell that was far too familiar to him.
The Hospital.
Even half-asleep, and his mind as clouded as it was, he was sure that's where he was. But he couldn't remember why he was here.
His thoughts wouldn't stay in a proper line so he could think they kept drifting around. They slid off each other every time he tried to organize them. Something about trees. Fire. A voice talking arrogantly. Then nothing.
He blinked a few times, finally noticing something wrong with his vision. Half of it was cut off making him slightly nauseous, just gone, like someone had cut the world down the middle and forgotten to give him the rest.
He lifted a hand toward his face and his fingers fell on bandages. Thick ones. Wrapped over his right eye, down along his cheek covering a majority of his face.
'Ah That explains it' he thought. 'It's just covered up, I probably over used it or something'
He tried to sit up, putting his arms to his side. His left hand made contact with the bed but the right one didn't. Actually now that he thought about it he didn't feel anything from it.
Cid scrunched his brows in confusion, then turned his head and for a second he just stared at the empty sleeve where his right arm should have been. He stared at it longer than he would ever admit, why was it missing what could have happened. Then it started coming back to him.
The forest. The fire. The Nomu. All For One. The red and the blue. The blast going forward. Then messing up. Falling. Then dirt in his mouth. Pushing himself up to stumble towards all for one trying to finish him. Then nothing.
He let himself sink back into the pillow and let out a breath.
Stupid. He'd known it was stupid when he did it, but he was out of options and out of time. This was the cost, he was sloppy, and this was what that cost him. But honestly he was kinda ok with this, it could have been worse.
He'd stopped him, he beat all for one, the man that had a part in his parents' deaths, the man that threatened Yui. Yui was—
That thought cut clean through the fog in his head for a few seconds. Cid quickly looked around and his eyes landed on her.
She was there, right next to him, asleep in the chair beside the bed, slouched at an awkward angle and looked like she had been crying. One hand was on the mattress near his, close enough that he was surprised he didn't feel the warmth coming off it.
The panic left him all at once and he sagged into the bed relieved. He didn't care about the rest of it anymore. Not the missing arm. Not the missing eye. None of that mattered; he'd kept her safe.
He slid his remaining hand into hers holding it lightly so as not to wake her. But this also caused the rest of what had happened that night to finally return as well.
The older more mature looking yui, the kids, his house, breakfast, the laughing the playing, Claire and her clinginess, arc and his stubbornness, and flares soft giggles that echoed through his head, them calling him papa, and him finding out it wasn't real and having to destroy it all.
His throat tightened and a few tears slipped from his eye, which he clenched shut trying to hold them in. He accidentally squeezed Yui's hand a little harder than he meant to, waking her up.
Yui stirred and her eyes blinked open, looking around dazed for a second, then they locked onto him. For half a second she just stared, like she couldn't believe he was awake. Then she was up and leaning over him, arms going around him as carefully as she could, crying just beside his neck and trying not to put any weight on him, afraid she might hurt him.
Then she felt him shaking slightly and pulled back enough to see his face.
"Cid?" Her voice came out worried. "Does it hurt? What's wrong?" She looked him over fast, eyes jumping from the bandages on his face then his shoulder, to the rest of him equally covered as well unable to tell if something was wrong. "Hey. Talk to me. Are you in pain? Do I need to get a nurse—"
He didn't let her continue, he reached up, caught the back of her head, and pulled her down, his lips landed on her. This kiss was different than normal. It was deeper than the ones he usually gave her, slow and unsure, like he was using it to make sure she was real. Yui made a small sound against his mouth and in surprise, then leaned in and kissed him back but more carefully, one hand hovering at his jaw like she was afraid even that might be too much and she would hurt him.
When he finally let the kiss break, he didn't pull away. He rested his forehead against hers and stayed there, breathing her in.
"Jus-just stay here a bit ok," he said, his voice shaky and rough. "Hold me for a while."
Yui froze, shocked by how openly he was asking for her to comfort him. This wasn't the cid she knew that had walls up and kept everything at arms length, even her sometimes. This was something different, this was the same broken version she saw in the forest. So she nodded, moving like he was made of glass.
She eased herself around his upper body, drawing his head in against her, one hand sliding into his hair slowly, carefully running through it in a soothing pattern. She kept her weight off him and her grip light. Every adjustment was small, checked, like she was terrified of breaking whatever was holding him together.
Yui stared down at the top of his head, her thoughts crowding in all at once.
How did she help him? What was wrong? What had they done to him? Why was he shaking like this? Why wasn't he putting the walls back up like he normally did when he was hurting?
She forced it all down and organized and ordered them.
She needed to ask questions that weren't big or elaborate that wouldn't help him right now. She needed the simple ones. The ones that told her how broadly what was wrong so she could piece together how to help him.
"Are you in physical pain?" she asked quietly.
Cid's voice came out rough against her chest. "No."
Yui swallowed.
"…Are you hurting emotionally?"
He went still. For a second she thought he wasn't going to answer at all. Then he gave the smallest nod against her chest that she would have missed if she hadn't been paying attention.
That was more than he'd ever given her, in terms of views into what he was feeling. She usually had to read his body language or his face to get anything from him.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
No answer.
She waited. Then eased back just enough to see his face. Wondering if he had fallen asleep.
He hadn't, he was just staring past her, lost somewhere she couldn't follow.
"Cid." She shook him lightly, enough to pull him back. His eye focused on her again, slower than she liked. "Hey. I'm here."
She didn't push him with any more questions. She tried to piece what she had already together into an idea. The way he'd woken up in the forest. The way he held onto her like he was afraid she'd disappear if he loosened his grip. The look on his face when he first woke up, the grief and pain that marked it.
They'd done something to him in his sleep. That was all she could piece together, and it was bad enough to make him like this.
'I'll figure out more later.' she thought 'for now I need to make sure he gets better.' she thought
"Are you hungry?"
Before he could say no, his stomach answered for him, letting out a low and unmistakable growl.
A small laugh slipped out of her before she could stop it.
"Okay," she said. "I'll go get you something."
The second she tried to move, his hand tightened on her immediately. Yui looked down at him, then nodded.
"Okay. Guess I'm not leaving." She reached for the call button without moving out of his hold. "I'll just get the nurse."
Not even a few minutes later the door opened and a nurse stepped in. Her eyes landed on Yui laying on the bed and started saying something but stopped half way through.
"Young lady, you can't sit on the bed like that. He's fresh out of surgery. If you put weight on him it could—"
She stopped when she locked eyes with Cid.
He hadn't let go of her despite what the nurse said if anything he looked like he'd started holding her tighter. His remaining arm was still locked around Yui, and his one visible eye had tracked her the second she came through the door. Not confused. Assessing. Like he was trying to decide if she was a threat.
The nurse took things slower after that. Looking over the bandages that covered almost every part of his body. Whatever they had him on after surgery had left him only half mentally in the room and tended to respond to anything that he deemed a threat. Pulling the girl off him looked like a good way to make that much, much worse.
"…Alright," she said, quieter. "She can stay. Just make sure you don't lean on the injuries, ok?"
Yui nodded, carefully adjusting herself to ensure she wasn't putting weight on him.
She quickly left then came back a few minutes later with food. Getting him to eat was its own fight. He complained as soon as the nurse tried to help, low and irritated, like the whole process offended him.
"Cid," Yui said, firmly. "Eat, Now." while giving him the look.
He looked back at her then pouted and did as he was told. Reluctantly. The drugs impaired his thoughts so he just did what she wanted.
When he finished all his food the nurse checked him over once more and gave him another dose of pain killers.
"This'll help you rest a bit, I'm sorry if it's too strong. But you really don't want to be awake and not have these with how injured you are. she said kindly.
Cid's grip on Yui loosened by degrees as it started to take. He didn't ask her to stay again. He didn't have to. She was still there when his eye finally slipped shut.
Yui waited until his breathing evened out.
She brushed his hair back from his face, leaned down, and kissed his forehead.
"I'll be right back dear, sweet dreams." Then she eased his hand from around her and stood up.
The hallway outside was quieter than she expected. This whole stretch of the hospital had been closed off for the students that were caught in the attack. Staff moved in and out of rooms busy checking on patients. A few heroes were posted throughout the corridor, where they could be seen.
Aizawa sensei was one of them.
He was leaning against the wall a short way down the hall, arms folded, eyes on the rooms lost in thought. He looked like he'd been there a while.
Yui walked up to him. Her face was set, but it wasn't steady. Anyone looking close would have seen how shaken she really was. She walked up and stopped in front of him putting on a brave front.
"What did they do to Cid?"
Aizawa's eyes moved to her.
"That's for the pros to handle Kodai, You should be with Kageno at the moment. He's recovering. We'll handle the people that were detained and the media so focus on recovering."
"That's not what I asked."
She reached out, caught his sleeve, and pulled him out of the open hallway. Aizawa let himself be pulled along. He followed her around the corner, already braced for her to raise her voice, to yell and scream at him that they should have done better that this was his fault.
She didn't.
When she turned around, her composure had slipped all the way. Her hands were shaking. Her eyes were wet.
"Please sensei," she said. "Tell me what they did to him."
Aizawa didn't answer right away, shocked at how the normally composed girl was acting.
"The Cid I just saw in there wasn't the normal him." Her voice stayed low, but it was fraying. "Whatever they did to him, however they hurt him, broke something I'm not sure I know how to fix. And I won't even be able to start trying if i don't know what they did to him. He's too shaken to talk about it, so please. Tell me what they did. I need to know how to help the man I love." She finished bowing deeply with tears falling to the floor.
That hit him harder than he expected or had prepared for. Aizawa looked at her for a long second, then exhaled through his nose and rubbed the back of his neck.
"They used a quirk on him," he said. "it was Dream-based. It was meant to keep him asleep for at least a few hours in some version of a perfect life, his own brain created." His tone stayed flat. "It was supposed to last hours and he broke free of it in only a few minutes. The man they forced into doing it said he's never seen that happen and that he must have ripped it apart to get out like that."
He paused.
"That's all we got out of him. So the rest you'll have to work to piece together."
Yui didn't argue, she didn't need to. The pieces she already had started fitting into this new information completing the puzzle. A perfect dream of a life he wanted. Him having to tear it apart to wake up. Then a fight immediately after, before he'd even had time to put himself back together.
No wonder he was so messed up, something like that was the worst thing that could have been done to someone like cid.
Yui wiped at her face once, then nodded.
"Okay, thank you sensei, I think I know where to start."
She turned around and headed back to Cid's room.