Chapter Text
If we can’t trust him, who can we trust? was a thrum in the air like discharged electricity. Denki felt brittle, his neck hot and throbbing, laying in the hospital after surgery and transfusion. From there he couldn’t do anything but stare out the window at what Eiji— what Riot had done.
The view was chilling— one gaping wreck of a neighborhood by the ocean, crumbling pavement and rusted pipelines had opened up with just a few directed blasts. The sinkhole was still crawling with rescue workers on careful rigging and rotating shifts of heroes, giving it the appearance of a spasming wound. Denki felt raw.
His cry of dismay when he woke up the first time had been an empty hush of breath. There’s damage to your vocal cords, Mina said with sweet-voiced relief, just so glad that he hadn’t dissipated like static in front of her that night. Hanta took Denki’s hand with his left and Mina’s with his right, like he could anchor them both. I’m not going on let him take anything more from us.
Riot had been with Ground Zero at the start of their night, the whole group meeting up to close in on what their research suggested was a block of apartments and developments financed by a politically ambitious councilman and partially operated by a corruption ring connected to the Eight, and the League. Riot and Pinky had done the legwork on that investigation together, striding arm-in-arm into the Squadhouse to deliver the plan when their stakeouts and shakedowns had finally turned up something tangible and consistent about the location and its history. Pinky, Cellophane and Chargebolt took the underground route around the neighborhood, because it wasn’t like they couldn’t get comm service just about anywhere with Denki around. Riot sent them away from where he and Ground Zero would eventually bring the whole area down using what Riot called a “no-lose plan” to see how much of the structure was compromised.
Katsuki hadn’t been the same since he’d used his sharp eyes and better head for physics to point out the weakest part of the cracking strut, and watched Riot slam his fist into that spot, warping rebar and concrete. Ground Zero saw white hot rage in that moment— always calm but loud Katsuki had gone into a stone fury, only moving to suck in air and pour off sweat. He blasted Red Riot through a wall, knocking a fucking laugh from his wicked, vicious mouth. Attaboy! Riot had said, thumbs up driving home that this was his plan as he disappeared in the dust. For the last four days, Katsuki had been sitting in the chair in the corner of Denki’s hospital room, refusing to leave. Of course Katsuki thought it was his own fault Riot had read him. That he’d been used.
Denki understood, though. He felt like he should have known when they split up that the air was wrong. He and Mina and Hanta down the alley with construction fencing and tarp walls that lead to maintenance tunnels. In the view out the hospital windows, that was the last block left intact before there was only rubble and sunken foundations, where the city had failed to reinforce or replace long-rotten infrastructure. He should have known when he saw someone had tagged in neon paint on the overpass, We will really have to protect ourselves, and reading it had made Denki’s skin prickle.
“I hear you,” Katsuki said, clenching his jaw and abandoning his pretended nap. “Thinking.”
Thankfully he was no mind reader, but he didn’t have to be one to voice what was on Denki’s mind. “He’s still out there.”
Denki said come here, mouth moving as only the hard breath of the first consonant made sound. Katsuki rose stiffly and crossed the room in three heavy steps. Katsuki’s thick, rough fingers brushed over Denki’s throat.
“I’m gonna kill him for this,” Katsuki said.