Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone

[strikefirster]

Who: Johnny, Daniel, Ortus, Gideon Nav's Exquisite Corpse, Paul, Kaworu, Deku, Harrow, Maybe more?
What: Kidnapping, Forced Adoption, Getting these kids away from the Emperor
When: Shortly after boatgate
Where: The Bone House and Cobra Kai

Content Warnings: Probably references to Murder, Manipulation, Johnny Lawrence.

Prompts and Mingle will be in the comments.

Comments

cw: gore description, psychological horror

[terriblepurpose]

When Paul smears his blood over the god's thumb a curtain of lightning falls across his vision, the world eclipsed in brilliance as he drops his shaking, bleeding arm to his chest and curls his hand into a fist. Vessels narrow, blood clots, but there is only so much compensation that even his physiology can make for what now slicks arm and thumb and hallowed blade.

Like a crysknife, he thinks, before she flips the sword and Izuku whispers into his ear. The universe hangs suspended between the two, divine retribution and mortal solace.

The blade strikes home, and so does the thunder.

Paul takes a shattered breath like the blow split his chest and not the starveling earth, curving around his leaping heart as silver pours from his stunned open eyes. The curse shivers ephemeral at the edge of his sight, ripples outward and onward into a future bisected. The moisture of his eyes, of his lips, weeps with the faint sting of acid, a brackish tide drawn forth by the gravitic tug of the Pthumerian's will.

"It is done," her voice says with his throat, and then he slumps against Midoriya's side bonelessly, teeth gritted against a strangled whimper as a cascade of sparks tumble agonizingly down every tender nerve in his mouth. It feels like catching a star on his tongue and swallowing, white hot annihiliation boiling in the stains of his guilt, pain welling up from soul more than body.

But nothing bleeds besides the slit wound on his palm as the shadow of the Pthumerian's sword falls across them as she pulls it free.

[wannasmash]

He's a Warmblood, this world's blood magic version of being Quirkless. He doesn't have anything to experience the effects of the curse being enacted on his behalf. He's already given away its best surge of power--or lack thereof--the inert quality that makes it ideal for treating Corruption and Beasthood.

As on the beach, someone speaks in another's voice, but it is not an Omen. It is Paul. Midoriya bends more securely over Paul, then curves them both into a bow, their hair nearly touching the grass. Those that would be superhuman are so small in front of the armored god.

"Thank you," he growls fiercely.

Then she is gone as quickly as she appeared, and air rushes to fill the void she left behind. The deep slit she left in the ground yawns balefully up at the sky. Finally, Midoriya disarms his Quirk. He sits up and supports Paul's weight against him. Amidst the uncoiling shock of relief, he attempts to grasp Paul's hand to stem the blood flow. His own face is smeared with rust.

"What happened to your voice?" he gasps. His own is thin and tremulous.

[terriblepurpose]

Paul numbly allows Midoriya to staunch the wound in a grisly echo of a handclasp, the silver draining out of his eyes like water from a cracked vessel. He swallows thickly, dreading what might slough down his throat from the wrecked throb of his mouth. He barely wants to skim his awareness over it; he cannot feel anything else so keenly.

"Punishment." No blood pours out, no greasy smoke. His voice is fractured and shivering, but it's his, and the agony is losing its keenest edge. "Part of the price."

All of him is shivering, a mimicry of shock. He shouldn't be so affected by the volume of blood lost so far, but he can already trace this deeper than the flesh. The fingertip of a god brushed under his chin, the faint candle flame of her might passed across his vision. His soul aches, jarred violently against its ephemeral moorings. He knows without knowing that he has been passed over by something far worse than this.

"It's done," he echoes, cold slicing down to his bones, exhaustion welling up in the gaps left behind. "Nothing will happen to him. She showed me." His hand spasms in Midoriya's with pain he doesn't feel. "It's time to go."

[wannasmash]

"Breathe," he reminds him, mind running its fingers past pages on signs, symptoms, and procedures. "You're safe."

A hand in his hand, and it is slick with blood. Midoriya works with his other hand to get what he needs from his belt. Gloves off, disinfectant ready, all of it passes in sharp relief. It should be a blur in light of how tiredly Midoriya slouches like a puppet with strings cut, but he will remember every bump of woven bandage under his fingers, every warm drop of paleblood daubed away. And he will not fall, supporting the shuddering one next to him with his weight. This is the one wound he can tend to out of so many wounds unseen.

He loops an arm around Paul and hauls him up, ignoring the weakness in his own legs. He guides him to sit in the back of the truck, where he pulls a blanket from the baggage and wraps it tightly around him.

He wipes Paul's face clean. (He's careful with the delicate skin under Paul's eyes.) Water is in order, and a steady arm--one that isn't his. Midoriya is too connected to everything that's shaken Paul, and his face is still streaked with his own warmblood besides. These are the thoughts that clip mechanically past each other as he resists the urge to put an arm around someone in need.

[terriblepurpose]

As Midoriya cares for his wound, Paul watches in numb quiet, as attentive to each detail as the other boy is, and he thinks: is this safety?

The question echoes in the sting of disinfectant he bears without a flinch or a sound, in the sponging away of blood, in the way he is raised up and carried and settled. He closes his eyes when Midoriya cleans them, still shivering, but the shivers have shuddered to nothing by the time he is done. Paul doesn't open his eyes to watch him depart, shuffling to the far side of the truck. Others join them, the last departures from this shadowed house, and the truck rumbles to life underneath them all.

The rattle of metal, the thump of wheels on a road not meant for them. Paul pulls the blanket closer around himself. He's still cold, under the summer sun, cold enough not to feel the pain in his palm or inside his chest.

Perhaps that is what safety is, this lifeless distance between himself and everything that he might feel. He hovers somewhere above himself, observing his own skin as a stranger, and he wonders if it hurts.

He opens his eyes and looks at nothing, and that is how he stays, for a while.