Chapter 16: The Heartache and the Headstrong Hero
The world, for Gaara, had shrunk to a space of four walls, a ceiling, and a floor. After the initial, terrifying realization in the dark, he had been moved. The new cell was not black, but a stark, sterile, seamless white. There were no corners, the walls curving smoothly into the floor and ceiling. A single, recessed light panel above glowed with a soft, constant light that was neither day nor night. It was the color of nothing.
He lay on a simple, hard pallet, his body clad in a plain, grey uniform. The heavy, Quirk-suppressing restraints were gone, but he knew he was no less a prisoner. He could feel it. The dead silence where his connection to the sand used to be was a constant, gaping wound in his soul. He felt naked, hollowed out, a ghost haunting a body that was no longer truly his.
New sensations plagued him. There was a dull, throbbing ache in his side where Aizawa had kicked him. A sharper, more persistent pain pulsed behind his eyes, a headache born from the trauma and the violent shutdown of his power. He had a small, stitched cut on his forehead where he had hit the ground after being blasted from the sky by All Might. These physical pains were novelties, unwelcome but understandable.
But there was another ache.
It was a strange, heavy pressure deep within his chest. It wasn't physical, not like the other injuries. It was a profound, hollow sorrow, a feeling so vast and unfamiliar that he had no name for it. It was the pain of his broken identity, the pain of his confirmed fragility, and the agonizing, crushing weight of his own solitude, now more apparent than ever before.
He had been alone his entire life, but only now, stripped of his power and locked in this silent, white void, did he truly understand what that loneliness felt like.
The sound was so sudden and loud in the absolute silence that it made him flinch. A heavy, metallic clank, followed by the hiss of a pneumatic lock. A section of the seamless wall slid open, revealing a hallway beyond. Two figures stood there: one was the detective in the trench coat he vaguely remembered from the aftermath. The other was a man he had never seen before. He was impossibly thin, a walking skeleton with sunken, shadowed eyes and wild, blond hair that seemed too large for his skull. He looked fragile, as if a strong breeze could knock him over.
The detective stayed by the door while the skeletal man walked slowly into the cell, his footsteps echoing softly. He pulled a simple metal stool from a recess in the wall and sat down a few feet away from Gaara's pallet. He didn't look intimidating. He looked… tired.
For a long moment, the man just sat there, observing him with those deeply shadowed blue eyes. There was no fear in them. No disgust. Only a profound, weary sadness.
"My name is Yagi Toshinori," the man said, his voice quiet and a little hoarse. "I'm a teacher at U.A. High School."
Gaara said nothing. He simply watched, his teal eyes cold and wary.
Toshinori's gaze drifted to the small, clean bandage on Gaara's forehead. "I heard about what happened. All of it," he said softly. "The doctors said you were treated for your injuries. How are you feeling?"
It was a simple, standard question. But for Gaara, a boy who had never been asked about his feelings, it was a foreign concept. He considered the pains in his body. The throbbing head, the aching side. Then he considered the vast, crushing weight in his chest.
His voice, when he finally spoke, was a dry, sandy rasp. "The pain in my head," he said, his gaze unfocused, distant, "is nothing compared to the pain in my chest."
The words hung in the sterile air of the cell. Toshinori's breath caught in his throat. It was the most heartbreakingly honest thing he had ever heard. This wasn't a villain. This was a child in agony.
"Why?" Toshinori asked, his voice now even gentler, leaning forward slightly. "Why were you with them, young man? Why did you do what you did?"
Gaara was silent for a long time, processing the question. Why? No one had ever asked him why. They had only ever told him what he was. A monster. A danger. A tool. He looked at this strange, skeletal man and, for reasons he didn't understand, he gave him the simple, unvarnished truth.
"They didn't run away," he said.
Toshinori waited, letting the silence draw the story out.
"All my life… people have been afraid," Gaara continued, his voice a monotone whisper. "My power… it keeps them away. It keeps everything away." He unconsciously touched his own chest. "The man with the hands… Shigaraki. He didn't run. He didn't look at me with fear." He paused. "He looked at me and saw a tool. A tool is better than a monster."
Toshinori felt a pang in his own chest so sharp it was like a physical blow. This boy's existence had been so starved of acceptance that being objectified and used for evil was a step up from what he had known.
"Did you want to hurt my students?" Toshinori asked, his voice thick with emotion.
Gaara's brow furrowed slightly, as if he were trying to remember the feeling. "I… was hurt," he said slowly, the memory of his own blood flashing in his mind. "So I hurt back. That is what happens when you are attacked. You defend. You eliminate the threat." His gaze finally met Toshinori's. "Isn't that what you did to me?"
The question was not an accusation. It was a genuine inquiry from a mind that saw the world in brutal, simple terms. Toshinori had no answer for that. He had, in essence, done the same thing, just on a grander scale, under the banner of heroism.
He saw it all then. A child born with a terrifying, defensive power that had built a perfect prison around his heart. A life of absolute isolation. A desperate, unspoken plea for connection that had led him to the only people who wouldn't run away—a league of villains who saw him only as a weapon.
Toshinori stood up, his heart heavy with a terrible weight of responsibility. "Thank you for speaking with me," he said. He walked out of the cell, and the heavy door hissed shut, plunging Gaara back into his silent, white world.
In the hallway, Detective Tsukauchi was waiting, his expression grim. "Well?"
Toshinori Yagi leaned against the wall, a deep, soul-weary sigh escaping his lips. "That boy," he said, his voice trembling with a mixture of sorrow and a new, fierce resolve. "He is not a villain. He is a victim of his own power. A child who has never once had a single person to guide him, to show him another way."
"Toshinori, be realistic," Tsukauchi said, his voice firm but not unkind. "He nearly killed Aizawa. He buried half a dozen of his fellow students alive. His power leveled a state-of-the-art facility. He is a Class-S threat. The Hero Public Safety Commission is going to lock him in the deepest, darkest hole in Tartarus and throw away the key. That's the end of it."
"No," Toshinori said, standing up straight. His skeletal frame seemed to gain a new, unshakable strength. "No, it is not. Because if we do that, we only prove him right. We prove that the world only knows how to fear him and lock him away in the dark. We are heroes, Naomasa. We save people. And that includes saving them from themselves."
Tsukauchi looked at his friend, seeing the familiar, stubborn fire ignite in his sunken eyes. "What are you proposing? You know the Commission will never agree to rehabilitation for a case this extreme."
"Then I will not give them a choice," All Might's true voice echoed in the frame of the dying man. He looked at the detective, his gaze filled with an almost reckless determination. "I think there is a possibility. He can be saved. I want to transfer him to U.A. Academy. I want to guide him to the right path."
Tsukauchi stared at him, utterly dumbfounded. "You can't be serious. To U.A.? As a student? After what he did? The parents would riot! The media would crucify us! It's impossible!"
"'Impossible' is a word villains like to use," Toshinori countered, a flicker of the old, heroic fire in his voice. "Please, Naomasa. I'm asking you as a friend. Dig into his past. Find everything there is to find about where he came from. I am determined to do this. I will propose it to Principal Nezu. I will take full and absolute responsibility for him."
He placed a hand on his friend's shoulder. "I will guide him into the light."
The detective let out a long, weary sigh, running a hand through his hair. He knew that look. It was the same look Toshinori had before he went to fight All For One. An impossible, stubborn idealism that could either save the world or get everyone killed.
"I'll see what I can find," Tsukauchi finally relented, a heavy sense of foreboding settling upon him. "But I think you're making a terrible, terrible mistake, Toshinori."
Back in the silent, white room, Gaara lay on his pallet. The door was closed. The skeletal man was gone. He was alone again.
But something was different. The heavy, aching pressure in his chest was still there, but it had shifted slightly. The conversation replayed in his mind. The man had not feared him. He had not looked at him with disgust. He had not tried to use him.
He had simply… asked him how he felt. He had asked him why.
Gaara unconsciously brought a hand to his chest, feeling the slow, steady beat of his own heart. A new, unfamiliar question began to form in the quiet of his mind, a tiny spark in the vast, lonely darkness.
Why? he thought. Why did he ask?