#i was so exited to do a commission... and learn. well. ive learned something

[ashlynya]

Learned a scam today

My finances are safe but my time is wasted. I wanted to do something with this fuckass dog. Yote into the abyss with you

[keilemlucent]

i am your salvation

(r18+)

hawks | takami keigo x reader

ao3

word count: ~13k

For years, Keigo had trained his body, fucking perfected it’s abilities. Every part of him was honed and forcibly designed to be the winged-hero, Hawks. But, now? He was the defunct number two, ‘Hawks’ and at home— reality? He was the comically broken Keigo Takami who struggled to do basic physical therapy.

Only you know him like that.

warnings: manga spoilers, suicidal ideation, abuse, ANGST with a capital A, just sad :^(((

this piece is hellish, enjoy ;^))) beta’ed by the lovely @keiqos, bless u

----------------------

Keigo was fucked.

He was so beyond fucked.

He was dead.

Basically.

He was half-alive in a hospital bed. An IV drip in each arm, pumping him full of god knows what. He didn’t care to ask. All he knew was that he fucked up.

He’d gotten sloppy.

Stupid.

Pompous. 

And now his wings were fried off his back.

(By fucking Dabi no less.)

 The first conversation he’d had with his doctor upon waking at the HPSC hospital was one where he legitimately contemplated suicide for the first time in a long while.

  “Hawks... There’s no good way to say this. There just isn’t,” The doctor began, looking through Keigo’s chart, sighing deeply. There was something so grave about the way he moved through the sterile hospital room.

The doctor handed him a handheld mirror. 

Hawks slowly raised it up with weakened arms, knowing what he’d see. 

A gruesome burn tore down the left side of his face. It puckered the skin around his eye, narrowing his field of vision (thank god he still had any vision at all). The soft flesh around his eye was so angry and blistered, pockets of puss gathering beneath the surface of his skin.

But what was worse than the scar, so much fucking worse, was the absence.

The complete absence of his wings.

No stubs, no nubs. Just nothing. 

His back ached against the hospital bed as he handed the mirror back to the doctor.

The doctor sighed again. He spoke to Hawks like he didn’t think the hero already knew what he was going to say, “Your wings are gone. Fully. The scans we’ve taken show that the... well, roots of them in your flesh are still present, they’re encased in scar tissue. Even the sections that the feathers grow from are cauterized. In our professional opinion, we don’t think that they’ll ever grow again.”

His heart fell in his chest. 

It fell so deep.

So far.

He didn’t let himself cry.

Instead, he contemplated how hard it would be to overdose on morphine they were undoubtedly dosing him with. 

The doctor continued as Keigo stared sightlessly at his lap, “As established, the muscles that control the roots of your wings are still intact, yes. But, they’re heavily damaged in a way that will affect your everyday life. Even without your wings, the recovery to stabilize your injuries is going to be strenuous.”

Who fucking cared.

Hawks had spent the vast majority of his life training to be a hero and now the very thing that made him the best was literally burned from him. It felt unholy. It felt awful.

Fire wasn’t cleansing, it was putrid. Desecrated was his body as well as his mind.

  He didn’t listen to much else of what the doctor said. He let himself go blank, wishing tears would fall. 

 ...

 That was yesterday.

Today, he was allowed visitors. His PA came, informing him that the Commission was putting him on extended, indefinite (thankfully, somewhat paid) leave in exchange for media appearances. They also informed him that half of the top ten were dead after the war with the PLF. Ryuku, Miruko, Edgeshot, Kamuiwoods, Crust, all lost. And countless others, too. Even some students. It seemed that there was no clear winner of the fight that took so many and changed so much.

One of the most hard-hitting pieces of news was that Endeavor was in a coma, on life support, with a brain injury that would most likely kill him. At best, he’d be a vegetable. 

Keigo felt nothing but hollow as he laid in his hospital bed. He was half machine, based on all of the tubes and monitors that he was hooked up to. He felt truly mechanical and falsely alive. Truly, he was used up. He wanted to die. He was sure of it. 

Keigo wanted to ask his PA to smother him.

He didn’t.

 The next person to visit him was you. His PA had informed him that they were legally obligated to see him first, otherwise, you would’ve been clawing his door down.

You.

Keigo didn’t want you to see him like this. All the reasons you had fallen for him were gone. There was no confidence, no lip, no charm, no drive, no stunning scarlet wings— nothing. He even had the bonus deterrent of a nasty scar covering half his face. He was so sure that you’d take one look at him and turn right out the door. 

Leave him for good. 

Maybe spit on him for good measure.

The old muscles of his wings twitched as you walked through the door. It burned like an old hell. 

You’d clearly been crying, face and eyes puffy. 

But you were strong for him.

You pulled a chair up next to his bed wordlessly. You sat, laying your head on his antiseptic smelling sheets and mattress. Your eyes went half-lidded, just barely looking up at Keigo’s terrified expression. You reached out, grabbing one of Keigo’s clammy hands. You squeezed it.

“I’m here, Kei’,” Your voice was so quiet. “It’s alright. I love you. I’ve got you.”

It made him break.

The machines that he was reliant on screamed as he desperately grabbed at you, dragging you up with the little strength he had. You pushed him down, moving to half kneel on his bed. You didn’t make Keigo work for your touch. 

You cradled his head to your chest as his scarred hands fisted your sweater. He screamed into your sternum. Keigo wailed and cried with everything he had. He was losing himself, raging for far more than just his current injury.

 He bawled for every single time he couldn’t in his hero training, forced to be broken by the demands of the Commission. He sobbed for every casualty and death that was on his hands, righteous or otherwise. And, selfishly, he cried for himself. He let tears fall in mourning for the version of himself that died by Dabi’s hand. 

He let himself shatter in your arms for the burning muscles and scars of his back, the ache of his face, and the emptiness and vulnerability that his lack of wings graced him with.

You more than let him; you encouraged it.

You stroked his hair, matted with sweat and grease. You whispered soft adorations, validations and love into his ears. He can hear your tears too, but it didn’t stop you.

“I love you, Keigo.”

“I’m here.”

“You’re safe.” 

“I’m not leaving.”

“I’ve got you, Kei’.”

“No one else will hurt you. I won’t let them.”

 You were far too late on the last one. But, you were quirkless. Powerless to stop the destruction that ravaged his body and now, his mind. 

Additionally, Keigo was relieved you didn’t say that ‘everything will be okay’. 

He knew it wouldn’t be.

You let him crumble against you for hours. 

Finally, he was spent, falling back in his bed, and letting you slump back into your chair. You took the liberty of finding a warm towel to wipe his face down with.

The rest of visiting hours, you laid your head on his mattress, holding his hand as he drifted in and out of sleep. Nurses came and poked and prodded him. They didn’t bother making conversation with either of you. 

They understood, to some degree. 

You were both together in mourning. 

A nurse came by later, night had fallen, telling you visiting hours were over. 

Keigo audibly whined.

You shook your head, running a thumb over Keigo’s knuckles.

“It’s alright,” You soothed both him and the nurse. “I’m not leaving.”

The nurse didn’t fight you, merely exited the room.

Keigo watched, awed. You retrieved a decently sized duffle bag and pillow that you’d brought (he hadn’t noticed). You set up a blanket and the pillow on a couch in the corner as a makeshift bed.

“Y-you’re staying?” Keigo asked, voice raw. 

You, somehow, smiled. So gentle and precious, nodding, “As long as you’d like me to. I told you, I’m here.”

Keigo relied on you for comfort in the past, sure. But not like this. Not like you were his anchor, tethering him to his existence now that his pride and preen were plucked from him. You were his salvation in that hospital room. You were the ground that he desperately and necessarily needed to learn to walk on.

 You both fell asleep quickly, dreaming of better things outside of your waking nightmare.

 ---------------------------

 Keigo was discharged two weeks later.

It is thoroughly confirmed that, unless by some medical miracle, his wings were truly toast. Gone for good.

The Commission brought in at least a dozen folks with spectacular healing quirks. Truly, the best the country had. Turns out, the Commission was clawing for hope too, in the wake of everything.

The efforts were in vain, of course.

Nothing stuck. 

The scar tissue wouldn’t shrink. The damage was too severe. The cauterization was so intense, it altered him. Forever.

 You stayed with him the whole time.

You went home, just a bit, maybe an hour a day. You showered then, changed clothes. 

You’d come back and do what you had been the whole time.

Just being there.

 You didn’t make him idly chat or make him watch shitty, hospital cable. You let him ruminate, stew, and simmer. You let him be crushed.

You were smart enough, empathetic enough to know that nothing you could do or say would lift him right now. 

He just needed you there.

And so, you were. 

 After being discharged with several prescriptions, orders to limit activity to allow for his other injuries (and concussion) to heal, the two of you went home. 

 Your first task was Keigo getting properly washed. 

At first, Keigo resisted.

“N-no, I’m fine, I’ll take one tomorrow,” Truthfully, he wouldn’t probably, not without your help. He just didn’t want you to see him so intimately in this state.

You shook your head, speaking as you brought several plush towels into the bathroom. You turned to Keigo who had wrapped his arms around his frail-looking form, looking at the floor.

You brought him into your arms, rubbing at his neck, not wanting to aggravate the injuries on his back, “I know you don’t want to, but it’ll feel good. Let me take care of you, please.”

You spoke so earnestly, it made Keigo fall apart. He hated being so helpless. 

He nodded against you.

You sat him on the toilet seat while you ran a bath in Keigo’s spectacular tub. You poured in epsom salts and some lavender bubble bath, filling the room with a familiar, herbal scent.

You helped him strip, mindful to not linger on any part of his body. Carefully, you lowered Keigo into the water. He could help but be surprised by the strength in your body to do so. Perhaps foolishly, he had never taken you as physically strong. After stripping yourself, you got in as well, across from him, so you wouldn’t see his scars. You were perhaps a bit too considerate.

The water burned his wounds, yet calmed his muscles. It was a different sensation than the ones he’d had for the past weeks. He welcomed it.

Keigo sagged in the bathwater, looking somewhat relaxed for the first time in so long. You knelt in the water and suds, lathering up his hair and body. So carefully did you wash away the sweat, smells, and lingerings of the hospital and the war that preceded it. You went through his hair with your own conditioner, figuring that the familiar smell might help keep him calm. Keigo didn’t say anything, just let you do as you needed. You carefully untangled any and all knots from his tresses, rinsing him down.

You dried him off, putting a few scented body oils on his dry patches of skin, parched from his time in the hospital. You still didn’t look at his back.

He felt ashamed and thoroughly disgusted. He smushed his face into your shoulder, gripping onto your like if he wasn’t, he’d die.

You find him fucking repulsive, right?

 “Kei’,” Your voice quiet still, “You okay?— Wait, don’t answer that.”

You chuckle at yourself. Keigo would’ve laughed too if he could. 

Keigo dressed himself, a semi-self sufficient act that made him feel better. Though, you picked out the clothes. Some of your own, soft, old garments that Keigo had seen you in a hundred times. 

It was only before he put on a shirt that you gave his back the quickest once-over, “You can put your shirt on now, Kei’. I just wanted to make sure it looked okay. It’s okay, you’re okay.”

Even that much sight and contact of the old roots of his wings made him feel so ashamed. It burned the corpse of his ego like the hot fire that crisped his wings. 

Despite those nasty feelings, the simple act of wearing your shirt made him feel better. It felt so good, so good, to be surrounded by you instead of the sterility of the hospital. 

 You had been kind enough to leave the hospital for a bit longer than normal the day prior to go shopping. You bought Keigo a large, fluffy, ivory blanket. You even washed it, so it smelled like home (and you) too.  

After you helped him to the wide couch, custom made to accommodate Keigo’s now torched wings. It was a small burn (ha) to his psyche, but he tried to let it go as you got him comfortable.

You gave him your special pillow. The one Keigo loved to steal and take naps with. You covered him in the new blanket.

“Is that okay?” You asked, tucking him in. Keigo would normally be embarrassed by something childish like that, but he couldn’t make himself care. It felt so good to be comforted. 

 So softly, he replied, “You made it feel like home already.”

You let a sad smile drift to your face, massaging Keigo’s scalp as he sobbed into his new blanket. 

He was so glad to be surrounded by you, no matter how rotten he felt. 

 -------------------

 The first week home was the hardest. Sleeping was painful, even next to you. Eating was a fucking labor as he had no appetite. Nothing interested him in the slightest other than staring at walls and pretending he would wake up from this nightmare soon.

An at-home physical therapist was brought in. He had to retrain the muscles in his back to relax, now that they weren’t carrying the weight of his wings. The constant tension in his back would cause long term damage (not like he wasn’t already riddled with chronic injury), least of all tension headaches. 

Your job let you work from home. Thank god.

...

Keigo hated his exercises. They hurt so bad.

For years, Keigo had trained his body, fucking perfected its abilities. Every part of him was honed and forcibly designed to be the winged-hero, Hawks. But, now? He was the defunct number two, ‘Hawks’ and at home— reality? He was the comically broken Keigo Takami who struggled to do basic physical therapy. 

Only you knew him like that.

 Keigo’s fists slammed against the floor as he strained with his PT exercises, the therapist themselves long gone for the day. You worked from your laptop on the couch. You weren’t supposed to aid him with his exercises unless necessary, as the therapist had instructed.

“Do you want me to help you?” You asked, almost coaxingly. 

Keigo beat his fists once more, crying out almost like a petulant child, (he hated himself for it oh my god—), “I don’t want to fucking do this! I can’t do this!”

And Keigo sobbed into the floor with abandon.

You moved from the couch to haul him into your arms, pressing his face into your neck. You said nothing, you just let him scream and die against you.

“I can’t do this!” 

“I hate this!”

“Make this fucking stop!”

“Just make this all fucking stop!”

“JUST FUCKING KILL ME ALREADY!”

This got you to speak, not shushing him, but just trying to soothe—

“IF YOU REALLY FUCKING LOVE ME, THEN YOU’LL SLIT MY THROAT IN MY SLEEP AND LET THIS FUCKING NIGHTMARE BE OVER!—”

 You froze. 

He didn’t.

Keigo kept begging you to kill him. 

Incessantly so.

He didn’t know what to do.

This was a tantrum, maybe. More like a breakdown. It felt dramatic. But, his thoughts were real. He’d be happy to die, especially by your hand. Then you wouldn’t have to take care of him and he wouldn’t be able to feel as awful as he did. 

You kept holding him, squeezing him harder and harder still. 

Finally, Keigo tuckered himself out and sagged against you. 

 You reached up to the side table, grabbing your own glass of water, and offering it to him. You still hadn’t spoken.

Part of him thought to apologize, crack a joke even. But he couldn’t make himself do either. Instead, his shaking hands grabbed the glass. You didn’t fully let it go, just guided it to his lips where it dribbles down his chin. 

Keigo sputtered a sob.

He couldn’t stand being so weak.

 “Love,” You spoke so softly as he sipped. “I will never hurt you like that. I won’t let anyone else, either.”

Keigo suddenly started fucking laughing, for the first time in so fucking long, ripping the cup fully from your hands and throwing it across the room. It shattered in a wild display of raining glass and water. He hadn’t laughed in what felt like months. He let it loose, grabbing your face and directing it right at you, breath curling over your cheeks.

He knew it was cruel, to take it out on you. He hated himself for it even as he was doing it.

“How the fuck do you think you’ll protect me?” Keigo cackled into your face, horror beginning to overtake your features. He didn’t care. It felt good— “You’re just some stupid, weak, quirkless civilian— how the fuck do you think someone as powerless as you can protect me when I can’t even protect me—!”

 He kept laughing, but he was crying. He couldn’t tell which was which. Keigo could only tell he was hysterical.

 This whole time, since he had woken up in the hospital, you had been nothing but the perfect partner. You had been so kind, asking for nothing in return.

And yet, he’d verbally strike you like this for no other reason than his own hurt.

How fucking cruel.

 You let Keigo go, unable to disguise the pain in your expression. You didn’t say anything back to him. As you left the room, you were covering your eyes with your arm. Keigo caught one of your sobs as you fled to the bathroom, almost slamming the door. 

 Keigo heard your muffled cries for hours until you fell asleep on the bathroom tile as his old burns and guilt ate him alive. 

 He tried his exercises again. 

 -------------------

 That night, Keigo was too deep in sleep to hear you enter your shared bedroom. Part of you didn’t want to sleep next to him. You thought about returning to the bathroom or moving to the couch. But, you couldn’t make yourself. 

Keigo’s words hurt so bad. 

Partially because they were cruel. They gnawed at your insecurities, the fears you were desperately suppressing for him. 

Partially because you hated the fact you couldn’t do more, despite already doing so much. 

Partially because you knew that Keigo would never say things like that to you if he wasn’t being eaten up on the inside. 

Partially because the love of your life asked you to snuff his life out. 

It all hurt. Stung. Ached. Burned. 

 There was a small detail that hurt in a different way.

He called you quirkless.

You weren’t quirkless.

Your quirk was so weak and so taxing, sure. It was basically unusable. For fucks sake, you never even bothered to tell Keigo directly as you never used it. He had access to citizen quirk records, and you figured he checked in the several years the two of you had been dating. Apparently not.

But, you did have a quirk.

You stood next to your bed, Keigo covered in the comforter and soft white blanket you’d gotten for him. You could see the peakings of his back. His skin was marred with burns, cuts and scars that looked unimaginably horrible. You’d been avoiding looking at it, for him. You’d seen how it made him cringe.

But now with Keigo sleeping so deeply? You took it all in.

You looked at the nearly black scarring where the roots of his wings were. The fanning out of puckered, red skin from the burns. His back, which once rippled with the muscles that controlled his crazily powerful wings, was now a charred plain. 

...

You had an awful, far-fetched, fucked up idea. 

You sat, sinking into the bed as you contemplated your idea.

You brought your hands to your face, concentrating on your fingertips. 

Small, tiny vines and green shoots left your fingers.

There’s absolutely no way that this will work.

But, you’d hate yourself if you didn’t try.

 Life reclaimed life, you supposed. 

You drummed up a half-assed plan. It was a weak, frail idea— it would need a lot of support. Even then, you didn’t want to give yourself false hope. You couldn’t give Keigo false hope. It would ruin him.

...

You’d have to fix your diet. Eat lots of nutrient-rich food. Take more vitamins too.

You slotted yourself next to Keigo who, in sensing your warmth, turned into you, pressing into your front. His head nuzzled into your chest, an arm wrapping around your waist. 

You heard him wince at the motion, flinching in his sleep.

You had to try. 

One of your hands went to his back, brushing down the comforter to reveal the particularly gnarly scars where Keigo had lost part of himself. You laid your hand flat on the fire-flayed skin, praying you don’t wake him. You concentrated, watching small greenery go from your fingers to his flesh, desperately trying to repair the damage that had been done. 

 ------------------------------------

 Keigo apologized to you the next morning. He clutched your chest and told you how sorry he was. He told you how he knows he’s acting out, he’s just so fucking sad—

You told him that he didn’t need to justify himself. Not to you. Though, you accepted his apology and asked him to not say those kinds of things to you again.

“I’m trying my best, and I know it's not enough sometimes... but it's all I’ve got,” You speak to him in your own small voice. One that portrayed a weakness that you hadn’t shown since Keigo had been injured.

He felt even guiltier. 

 But, the second week was better.

His exercises were getting easier. Eating came a little better too. You started cooking more, not getting as much takeout. Part of him missed the comfort of familiar street foods, but another part of him craved the home-cooked meals you made so much more. They helped him feel better too, packed with veggies and lean proteins. 

Keigo didn’t notice, he was far too out of it, but you were already looking more haggard. 

It came with using your quirk in general, let alone to the extent you were pushing it. It was a pitiful quirk and you’d never strained it half as far as you were then. 

It had a price. 

To heal others, even something as small as a paper cut would take from your own body.

And, you were dedicating at least thirty minutes a night to attempting to ‘heal’ (read: reconstruct) the tissue of Keigo’s back. You had to start so deep in his muscles; it hurt to push your quirk that far down. Within the first five minutes, that first night you tried, you were silently crying from exertion.

But, you didn’t relent.

Each day, it was a little easier.

Sure, you had bad nights where it was extra hard. You blamed it on not eating well enough, using up too much of yourself during the day. 

It was a shitty excuse, notably. Your quirk was weak and self-destructive, it was beyond your bodily capabilities. There was no way to tell if it was even working to heal Keigo’s body. It was a gamble. 

And your wager was your health and body.

Even eating optimally and taking a bevy of new vitamins each morning before Keigo awoke, you could tell your physical health was suffering. You were losing a bit of fat already. Dark circles were punched under your eyes from the exhaustion. You had developed the slightest shake when you moved.

And the worst part was, you knew that you’d only get weaker from here on out.

So, you upped your calorie intake. You kept careful track of the foods you ate, the same with Keigo’s. He didn’t seem to mind the delicious meals you now coveted crafting, no matter how tired you were. If he was eating better, it would probably help you too, right?

You could only hope, resting it all on a long shot. 

 --------------------------

 Week three was good, but hard. 

The HPSC commission forced Keigo to do a media appearance. He told them, bluntly, that he couldn’t fake it right now. Probably, forever. 

They told him to suck it up, get out there, and put some hope into their society that was being pulled apart at the seams.

Keigo refused to let you come. He didn’t want to think about how you’ll look at him when he’s all dressed in his hero uniform, wings absent from his back, forcing him to bear the two empty slots of his jacket. 

When he mentioned it, you offered to sew them up.

Keigo felt horrible, but he just gave a nod, handing you his jacket without looking at you. 

You stitched the slits shut for him. Keigo requested red thread for the stitching and you obliged him.

 (You made note that Keigo truly had no hope. You couldn’t tell him a thing about your quirk usage until you were positive that it would have results.) 

 The media appearance went okay. Not great, but okay. ‘Hawks’ was dead, and Keigo was not a performer like he was. Though he still went by his hero name, his real name only known by himself, the Commission, Dabi (may he rot in hell), and you. He coveted that you had the intimacy in knowing his identity, but it felt dirtier now that Dabi (Touya?) had that name in his throat as well.

 When Keigo came home from the media appearance, he was keyed up. He flitted around the apartment while you made dinner. There was an anxiousness in his movements.‘Hawks’ would’ve taken to the skies to fly off some of this fractious energy. Keigo just had to wait for food to be ready and pray that the feelings went away. 

Just before dinner, he decided to try exercises outside of the one his physical therapist assigned him. He was feeling energetic enough, right? Might as well pull out some of the easier moves from his hero training. 

Keigo moved to his now seldom-used at home gym. He picked up a dust-covered five-pound weight and proceeded to try and curl it. The moment Keigo brought it above his head, his back tensed and burned something fierce.

The weight fell from Keigo’s hand, half-thrown, luckily missing any and all of his toes and feet. 

He cried in frustration, stuck staring at himself in the wall of mirrors. 

Keigo truly thought he looked pitiful.

He was still wearing his hero uniform sans the jacket. He’d lost a lot of muscle mass with his more sedentary state. His hair was too long. He had gotten more pale, losing his few freckles. His eyes were bloodshot and his teeth curl over his lips in a snarl—

“Keigo?” You opened the door to the gym, eyes wide with shock, but your tone didn’t change. He just glowered at you from the mirrors. You spoke again, staring him down with an almost scarily neutral poker face. “Dinner’s ready. Would you like to eat? Otherwise, I can save it for you.”

Keigo didn’t reply. He went back to trying to pick up the weight, screaming each time and hating how his back burned so intensely.

You left without saying anything. 

 ---------------------------

 Week four was hard because you and Keigo’s relationship is beginning to suffer. Or, it had been, but it was reaching a fever pitch. 

Keigo’s lack of human contact, lack of physical activity, and general cabin fever were getting to him. He was lashing out more and you, kind as you were, were having trouble dealing with it.

Your own run downstate was eating you alive, literally. No matter how much you put into your body, you needed more to heal Keigo. You were up to two hours a night of working at Keigo’s tissue with your quirk. By the end of your ‘sessions’, you would simply pass out and fall into listless slumber. You were losing a lot of sleep each night, but you were determined to keep going. 

Your exhaustion, in general, was making you a bit more prickly towards Keigo’s increasing frequent outbursts.

It all came to a head on a Sunday night.

The two of you were curled up on the couch, half-cuddling and half-watching TV.

A notice for breaking news showed red on the screen.

Both of you tensed. Before Keigo’s injury, he’d be rushing to throw on his hero gear and fly to help. Now, he just sat next to you, stiff as a board with pin-pricked pupils.

A picture, pre-PLF injury Endeavor flashed on screen.

“The Hero Public Safety Commission has just made the press release the former number one hero, Endeavor, is no longer in comatose.”

You watched a real, happy smile, spread on Keigo’s face. For a moment, there was a sliver of hope—

“But, he still remains in critical condition. Due to injuries affecting his central nervous system, he is reported as being in a state of paralysis. As of now, his life still hangs in the balance, though he is lucid.”

Keigo stiffened again.

There was rage painting his face. 

And pain. 

You stiffened with him.

You did not have it in you that night to deal with one of Keigo’s explosive moments. 

“Endeavor has left us all with this message—”

The camera flashed to an old video of the old ‘number one hero’, healthy and strong with a fist raised in the air.

You braced for impact as Keigo stood, shoulders hunching over.

Endeavors voice washed over your living room,

“Go Plus Ultra!”

And Keigo, honest to god, shrieked.

He fell to his knees and beat the floor beneath him. He slammed his fists in the hardwood over, and over, and over again. You slipped to the ground with him, trying to grab at his fists.

“Keigo, you’re gonna hurt yourself—” You tried to tell him. You managed to capture one of his fists, urging it to stay down-

But, you looked up to see Keigo giving a feral look with a frenzied, white-hot sneer all for you. 

 And his free fist flew towards you. It connected hard and solidly to your jaw.

You hadn’t been expecting it. Keigo had never struck you before, not even close. For fucks sake, he had never even raised his voice at you before his injury.

So, how could you expect to brace yourself for it?

The force of Keigo’s blow knocked you back. You jolted, falling onto your side and turning your head to the side, away from Keigo.

You brought a hand up to cup and shield your face, your jaw and eye socket throbbing. 

All you could feel was shock.

And sadness.

And horror.

And anger.

And terror.

 Keigo snapped out of it.

The news report was still playing, but he couldn’t hear it.

There was only the rushing of blood in his ears.

His mouth turned bone dry.

He had watched you move with his strike, falling more to the ground, hiding yourself—

“Oh my g-god, (Y/N),” Keigo’s voice was slippery and warbling. “I-I d-didn’t—” 

“No,” You stood up, still holding and hiding your face from him. His heart was crumbling in his chest.

You looked at him with only fear and heartbreak.

Keigo scrambled up, trying to apologize, hold you, mend this before it got worse—

But you put the hand that wasn’t cupping your face out, just barely touching his chest. You refused to let him any closer. 

“H-hey Kei’?” Your voice sounded so, so shaky. It’s hardly there. You were holding back tears and it was so obvious. It made every part of Keigo burn with shame. “I can’t today. Maybe another day, I could deal with this, y-ya know? But not today, okay? Have a g-good night.”

You walked away before he could say anything else.

 You dashed off to the guest room, shutting and locking the door before falling against it and breaking. You cried and rocked yourself as you tried to self-soothe your shattered body and mind. 

The month prior had been so hard. The person you love was hurt so deeply, and though you were trying with everything you had to help, it didn’t seem like enough. You were getting verbally beat up semi-frequently and now Keigo had fucking hit you. 

You were scared. You were terrified that this would become the norm. That Keigo’s outbursts would continue to worsen, as they had been, and you would become a physical punching bag for him.

It especially hurt because you were trying so hard to help Keigo. 

You weren’t delusional enough to think you could really fix him, were you? 

The fact that you were secretly and silently trying to regenerate Keigo’s body with a quirk he didn’t even know you had struck you bluntly in your mind.

“I’m just so fucked up, aren’t I?” You laughed and sobbed to yourself at the same time, slamming your head backward on the door, relishes the pain that floods your skull. It was a reprieve from the bruises blooming across your cheekbone. 

You eventually managed to cry yourself to sleep, literally. You curled up in a ball on the floor next to the door, worn down to the bone.

 In the early morning, far before dawn, you pulled yourself into half-wakefulness. 

You were relentless and you were coming to hate yourself for it.

You needed to work on Keigo, no matter how you shitty felt.

You crept into the master bedroom, trying to be silent. You didn’t want to wake him. Only when you were fully in the room did you notice a soft lamp is still on despite it being early, early morning. 

Wide awake and upright, Keigo looked horrified to see you. He looked at you, shaking and half-sobbing into a pillow he clutched to his chest.

You both seemed shocked to see each other. 

You sniffled as you turned off the lamp, stripping down to just a t-shirt and panties before climbing into your side of the bed.

You refused to face him while he was awake. You got as comfortable as you could (which wasn’t much). 

There was half an hour of disgustingly awkward silence. It coated the room, bearing the two of you who refused to sleep. 

“I’m s-sorry,” Keigo had yet to move. He was frozen in place as you were turned away from him in the dark. “I’m so sorry, (Y/N).”

Silence.

Your mouth felt dry and your mind parched. 

“Keigo,” You spoke like a being empty. You truly felt like it too. “If you ever touch me like that again, I will do worse than just leave you.”

It was a threat.

You let yourself have it, in all of this. You deserved one low blow. 

Keigo slowly slid down into the covers, babbling apologies and beginning to cry again. 

“Stop, Kei’,” You finally turned towards him, cupping his face. He blinked at you, eyes wide and glassy. “I love you. Just stop. Apologizing doesn’t make something like this better. I can’t do this if you keep hurting me, you know that. Just be better.”

Keigo winced at that. He knew it was true, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t painful.

You fell asleep on each other that night. You let your headrest nestled up against Keigo’s chest. He breathed softly above you, arms wrapped securely around you, holding you tightly like he was afraid you’d leave. You wouldn’t. You made the decision to stay at the beginning of all this. Your threats would always be empty. 

Idly, you had an arm thrown over Keigo’s waist, snaking up the back of his shirt to press your fingertips against his scars. Your roots and greenery didn’t have to go as deep now, as far as you could tell.

But, it had been a month with no discernable progress, visual or otherwise. 

But, you held onto hope. 

Because you had to hold onto hope that Keigo would get better. 

All of him.

 -------------------------------

      The second month was... different. 

Keigo tried with his whole heart to earn back your trust.

You flinched at him for the first week or so. 

He hated himself so fucking much each time you did. But, he never blamed you. He couldn’t.

(Even as you twitched away from him in the daylight, you tirelessly worked on his scars in his sleep. You couldn’t give up, no matter how awful you felt). 

Keigo did his exercises several times a day. He made a few more media appearances but refused to be seen with Endeavor. He (and truthfully, the Commission) knew that he could not psychologically handle it.

You were rapidly getting weaker, but you didn’t care. You ate more, slept when you could, and pushed on. You were up to three hours of healing a night. Tears rolled down your cheeks the whole time.

You were clinging to the prayer that you could unburn Keigo’s back like it would save you from your personally made hell. 

This was despite the fact he was already crawling out of the pit himself. 

 Your existence was eased slightly as Keigo was starting to help out more. 

Keigo wasn’t anywhere near normal— normal Keigo was dead in a disintegrated building, miles from your shared home. But, he was getting better.

 His muscles felt better. He wasn’t sure how, but they did. His PT exercises must’ve been working. The outbursts he had thrown so often during the first month pittered out to maybe once or twice a week. They were calmer now. You were still his anchor, of course, that was undeniable. But, it was mostly crying and clutching and not screaming and breaking.

It was a welcome shift.

Most of the time, Keigo would pull you into his lap and wrap you in his embrace. Softly, he’d sway and rock the two of you, like he was trying to lull and calm not just himself, but you in tandem.

A lot of the time, this was true. 

Your flinching subsided and Keigo had no more close calls with any physical violence towards you. In a few high strung moments, he still snapped at you. He’d apologize, and do better. At least, you told yourself that. That’s how you saw it anyways. 

Keigo was thoroughly traumatized. His mind was an open nerve and that had consequences. You were so endlessly tired. What kind of wounds and trauma were you incurring?

You forced yourself not to think about it. 

 Part of you, during this month, wanted to simply pack a bag and leave without a trace. 

But, you stayed with Keigo. You stayed determined. 

(Or, you stayed out of spite. On your bad days, you really had trouble figuring it out.)

Your body looked like shit. You were endlessly glad Keigo still wasn’t in a position to be having any sort of sex because he probably would’ve noticed how fucked up your body was getting.

You shook constantly, always quaking like a leaf in a rainstorm. Your skin bruised with almost any contact beyond light touch. Your eyes, once vibrant and expressive, had sunk in. 

Your body, no matter the several thousand extra calories you forced yourself to eat a day, still ran through your fat reserves. It was leeching muscle from you. It made your joints feel raw. 

 It almost hurts that you noticed how Keigo is so pained, but he didn’t notice you falling apart.

 -----------------------

      The third month was when shit hit the fan.

It was near the end of the month. 

You were doing so badly. You stretched yourself far beyond your body's abilities. 

You felt particularly sick, but you needed to get groceries. Keigo couldn’t himself for a host of reasons, which made it your job. You kissed him on the cheek as you left for the market.

Meanwhile, Keigo’s physical therapist dropped by for a check-in appointment. 

Keigo did his exercises beautifully. He had to admit, his muscles didn’t ache in nearly the same way they used to. They only really hurt when the weather changed, like he was some old, arthritic man. 

“Wow!” His therapist gasped, watching him complete his exercises. “It’s looking great, Hawks. It looks like you’ve gained back a lot of strength.”

The small amount of praise made him beam as he sat up. 

“I just want to check the actual wounds around your back, if that’s alright? Just feel the scar tissue,” The therapist asked. Keigo bit his lip, slowly pulling off his tee-shirt. He didn’t like the idea of anyone’s hands being that close to the intimate roots of his dead wings. 

But, it was necessary.

Keigo faced his back to her.

All he got was an audible gasp as the therapist’s hands traced at his spine.

“The progress back here- Hawks this is insane,” The other was alight, pressing a thumb somewhere near the root. It hardly even hurt. “The scar tissue— it’s not gone, but it's a lot more tender than it should be. Like it's actually healing.”

“Is that why it doesn’t hurt so bad?” Keigo asked, letting a few slivers of joy light him up from the inside out. During his initial prognosis, multiple doctors had said that he was going to be on fire for years, not months. 

The therapist nodded, “Looks like it. Even the scarring on the surface looks pretty good. Must have some damn good genes to be healing like this.”

The two laughed, Keigo feeling more lighthearted than he had in months. 

 You, on the other hand, were greatly struggling. 

You were so, so fucking cold; yet another bi-product of your overextension. You were wrapped in an oversized cardigan on top of one of Keigo’s mock necks. You couldn’t stop trembling as you try to shop as quickly and effectively as possible. Anything to get you home as soon as possible. 

You had a great deal of difficulty doing this, though.

If you moved too fast, your vision blacked out. It had been like that for a while, a week or two. You’d lost track. You figured it was your iron, maybe blood pressure. 

It was an easy thing to hide at home, but much harder in public.

You reached for something high on a metal shelf, tossing it into your cart. You needed another item, on the bottom shelf. You dropped to your knees, your body aching and rolling.

Almost done.

So close. 

Then you can go home and rest.

You stood up too fast. Your vision went black ringed for a second. You stumble, trying to catch yourself as you lost sight. 

You felt weightless for a moment, spinning, Though your limbs felt weighed down, impossible to move. As your vision returned, its field wouldn’t move, pointed up at the ceiling of the crowded market. 

There were people speaking, shouting around you.

Alarmed.

Speaking to you?

You didn’t care.

You were so, so tired.

You let your eyes slip shut.

 ------------ 

 Keigo had been waiting for you for several hours longer than it took to go grocery shopping, sure. And, to have you gone from the apartment so long made him itch too. It had been eating him, making him pace around. You hadn’t been answering your phone either. He figured you had made a detour and let your phone die.

 When he received a call from the local civilian hospital about you, he feels his blood freeze in his veins. 

“You’re listed here as (Y/N)’s emergency contact as a partner, yes?” The nurse asked. “They collapsed at a local market. They’re stable, but we’d recommend coming to the hospital as soon as you’re able to.” 

Keigo nodded, head swimming.

You’re hurt.

You’re safe, but you’re hurt.

...

Keigo was whisked to the back of the hospital in a poor disguise. He gets recognized, given some extra security. The scar that marred his face was enough of a marker even if he didn’t have wings. He hardly cared. He couldn’t. 

Your door opened to a very dark room, soft beeps and hums filling it. 

He imagined that he must've been feeling close to how you felt, seeing him in such a similar position those few months ago.

The nurse enters ahead of him, clicking around on a tablet to pull up your chart.

Keigo could hardly pay attention. He felt like he was going to die, seeing you like that.

You had an IV, pushing fluids into your thinned arms. Your face was hollow looking, sockets sunken, especially with your eyes closed like they were. You had several blankets on you, piled over you. Yet, you were still visibly shivering.

The nurse whispered, “They’ve been asleep for a while now. A doctor will be in soon. Just sit tight.”

She left the room while Keigo pulled a chair up to your bed. 

The smell of the hospital burned his nose. It reminded him far too much of his own time. All that pain. 

The ache in his back flared, but he figured it was somatic.

 Keigo reached out as he sat, holding one of your frail-looking hands in both of his own (had you looked this purely death stricken this morning? Keigo couldn’t recall either way, and he hates himself for it).

Your eyes slowly opened.

 Keigo met your gaze, breath caught in both of your throats.

Neither of you got a chance to speak, not a moment of fucking comfort, before a doctor barged in, flipping through your chart with a bored look on his face.

“We finished up your testing. Lucky for you, no concussion or fractures from your fall,” The doctor nods. He doesn’t even seem to notice Keigo, or rather, Hawks. “The rest of your results aren’t looking so great though.”

Your hand stiffened violently in Keigo’s grip. Your face went from worn and exhausted to filled with terror and... guilt?

 You were fucked.

The doctors and nurses had mentioned to you that they were fairly certain that all of your symptoms came from quirk overuse. You started weakly crying at that, your nurses looking confused. You didn’t elaborate then. You knew, the moment you woke up in the hospital that you were going to have to confront your own damage to your body.

You were going to be forced to explain it.

To Keigo.

The doctor continued. 

“Low levels of nearly all essential vitamins and minerals. Particularly low iron, magnesium, and potassium. In general, your test results and physical state would lead me to think you’re suffering from malnutrition. But, your panel shows that your metabolic rate is actually going abnormally quickly in a way that could only be linked to-”

Wait for it.

“Quirk overuse-”

Keigo barked out a laugh, letting go of your hand, “I’m sorry, but what? They’re quirkless, it has to be something else.”

 You didn’t say anything. Your eyes, glassy and unfocused, are trained on your lap. You’re taking sharp, quick breaths.

You’re going to have to tell him everything.

 The doctor flips through your chart again, shaking his head and bringing it over for Keigo to look at, “I apologize if this seems out of turn, but they’re listed in the public files as having a quirk... It’s marked as a weak healing quirk, but all the same, any strength of quirk has overuse.”

Keigo is stone still.

There’s tension so thick in the air of the room that the doctor excuses himself. 

 Keigo, for months now, had been in a traumatized stupor. His normally sharpened senses, aided by his wings, were the key to so much of his cunning. Both his physical and mental states were affected, which had made him less observant.

It had caused him to disregard so much. 

 But now, in your stupid, acrid hospital room, he was quickly putting it together. 

His back burned again. 

 You felt frozen. You couldn’t force yourself to move. You couldn’t do anything other than look at your lap and roll in your head. Your body hurt so bad, your head hurt too, and so did your fucking heart.

 “Can I clarify? Because I think I have an idea of what’s going on.”  Keigo had physically moved away from you. He leaned back in his chair, staring down with a mix of expressions you couldn’t suss out. It made you feel even sicker.

You nodded.

“Breath, (Y/N),” Keigo reminded you. He watched you take a massive inhale, followed by tears beginning to gather. You still wouldn’t meet his eyes. 

 “Have you been... using your quirk on me? Without me knowing?” Keigo asked, trying to keep his voice firm, but truthfully, it wanted to waver and bend so badly. “Please be honest.”

You nod, breaking down to rub at your eyes. 

Keigo doesn’t stop the instinctual way he moved towards you, leaning over your bed and wrapping his arms around me.

With his cheek pressed to the top of your head, he broke the illusion:

“Please tell me what’s going on. Please.”

And so, you did.

It came out tearfully, you spilling and cracking as you did. You felt stupid and guilty and awful, but at least you were out of this fucked up lie. 

It all poured out of you. Your fear and your desperation were all laid out and Keigo was reading the cards.  

You explained that your quirk has always been weak in addition to taxing on the body. Hence, you had seldom, if ever, used it as an adult. You were effectively quirkless and you were okay with that. Keigo had never asked so you never told him. 

You tell him, voice shaking, what happened the night Keigo had pleaded with you to kill him.

“I-I, Kei’,” You push out, pressing your face into his shoulder. “I didn’t know what to do. You were so hurt and so sad and I had this stupid fucking idea that maybe, maybe I could use to my quirk to heal you.”

Keigo’s breath catches. He doesn’t say anything for a moment before asking, “Why didn’t you tell me? Ask me?”

“I didn’t know if it would work. I still don’t know if it does. It didn’t wanna... I didn’t want to get your hopes up. E-especially since it would’ve been coming from me.” You pressed harder into him like you’re scared of him disappearing. “You were already so crushed.”

Keigo didn’t know what to say. There was a swirl of emotions bubbling and writhing in his body and mind and he didn’t know what to say for the first time in a long time.

 So he didn’t say anything.

Keigo sat back in his chair, putting his elbows to his knees, using folded hands to rest his head on, parsing through his own feelings.

“K-Keigo?” You asked, wiping a tear away. As much as Keigo hated seeing you like this, he also recognized your state was by your hand. 

Right?

“Sweetheart, I love you—” Keigo stopped himself, sighing deep in his chest. “But, I can’t... I just need some time.”

 You nodded, tears coming back to drip down your face.

Keigo just watched with a neutral expression.

 -----------------

 Despite not being able to handle talking to you, Keigo was more than willing to help you out of the hospital. You were discharged with a prescribed diet and vitamins as well as a followup appointment in a few weeks. 

“And, most importantly,” The doctor made eye contact with you. “Don’t use that quirk of yours until further notice. Honestly, with it being so destructive, I can’t understand why you would in the first place.”

You burned with shame.

The night you came back from the hospital, Keigo took incredible care of you. He didn’t talk much during it, not to you anyways. He was nearly constantly speaking under his breath, all unintelligible. From his tone and myriad of expressions, you guessed he was verbally processing. 

Keigo gingerly gave you a bath, scrubbing away the smells and stickiness of the hospital. He managed to cook you one of the nutritious recipes you had shown him a few weeks ago. You sheepishly had to ask for another portion, explaining how your metabolism burned so quickly.

“Have...” Keigo finally spoke while making you another plate. “Have you always been eating this much?”

You nodded, sipping your water, “For a long time, yes.”

He hated himself for not noticing such obvious things. 

 Keigo kept carrying you from place to place, no matter how much his back hurt. He didn’t care. He couldn’t.

He laid you in bed at some point, sliding in next to you. He still hadn’t spoken much since you’d left the hospital. 

You had tried to babble apologies and beg for forgiveness, but selfishly, Keigo wasn’t listening. He was trapped in his own head. Even when you clung to him in the bath, he could hardly make himself hold you up from sliding too far into the water. 

It almost hurt to touch you.

 It was late when Keigo finally verbally, directly regarded you. 

“Why?” Keigo asked. You’re both turned away from each other. The bed had been vibrating with your harsh breathing and crying for an hour or so now. “Why did you do all this?”

You stop shaking, but only for a moment.

Your voice is so soft, weak, “Please don’t blame yourself. It was my choice.”

“That’s not what I asked.” Keigo could hear the anger in his voice. “Why. Did. You. Do. This?”

You’re silent for a moment. 

And then you’re sitting up, yelling.

“Because I didn’t know what else to fucking do!” You gripped your hair at the roots, pulling. “You asked me to fucking kill you, Keigo! You begged me to!”

Keigo sat up, staring you down. He felt so much anger and rage in him, it was bubbling up, “That doesn’t mean you had to hurt yourself like this for me!”

“I didn’t want to hurt myself! I wanted to help you! Using my quirk was all I could do!” You looked over at him, digging your nails into your exposed thighs. “What else was I supposed to do!”

“Exactly what I thought you were doing, helping me!” Keigo screamed back at you. “You were doing so good at it!”

“You wanna know why I could even help?!” You shouted. You grabbed Keigo’s shoulders and brought him inches away from your face. “Because, every night, I got to give myself just a shred of hope that you would get better. That maybe, maybe your wings would come back and you’d smile like you used to instead of yelling at me, and hitting me, and asking me, begging me, to slit your fucking throat!”

 You couldn’t stop crying. Your body was so run down, so depleted, but it still musters up the energy to drip tears like a flooded creek. You wanted to run and leave the bed, retreat to the bathroom where you can break down on the tile in peace, alone where Keigo wouldn’t have to watch. You’d done it enough prior to know he wouldn’t check on you.

 Keigo stared at you with wide eyes. 

He didn’t know what to say at first

He was feeling so much—

 Keigo didn’t know what to do or say.

So, he just twisted the knife, one could say.

 “You should’ve just left if you were really that miserable with me.” Keigo regretted it the moment it left his lips. You tense up, looking at him with a gaze he could only call broken.

 “No,” You grabbed your shoulders, rocking yourself. “No, Kei’, I couldn’t, I won’t—”

“Then stop complaining.” Keigo shrugged. God, this was awful, wasn’t it? Why wouldn’t he just shut up? “You’re the one who stayed and tortured yourself. That’s on you.”

“So you’d rather have that I... left?”

“Duh,” Keigo laughed, staring down your crying form. You’re so decrepit in your current state. He hated looking at you, purely because he knows he was at least a portion of what led to this. But, he’d never admit it. “Fuck, (Y/N), you didn’t have to kill me, and you didn’t have to kill yourself either.” 

 He’s splitting inside as he watches you break in front of him. Some fucked up, sadistic part of him relishes it. The other, muted, more sane part is screaming at him to stop fucking talking-

“You really got yourself hospitalized for overusing a quirk on me that I didn’t even know you had. You were so desperately trying to get me my wings back, all while acting soooo supportive of me trying to live without them?!” Keigo bellowed at you. You cowered, bent legs beginning to slide off the bed — “Do you realize how fucked up that is? That, behind closed doors, while I was fucking asleep, you were trying to fix me? Well, guess what, (Y/N), I’m broken beyond fucking repair, and no cute little shit you pull is going to fix me!”

Keigo shrieked his last words.

You fell off the bed, slamming onto the floor. A sickening crack filled the room as your head, basically unsupported, met the hardwood.

 “Stop it!” You were screaming yourself silly from the floor. Your head hurt so badly. Maybe you were bleeding. You didn’t care. “Stop it!”

You knew you couldn’t handle this.

You were raw. You couldn’t do this. You couldn’t confront any more than you had already that day. Your body hurt so badly and your mind hurt too. Everything Keigo said just rubbed salt in the wounds he helped to create.

“Keigo, just fucking stop it!”

Your vision spun. You thought that maybe you were hyperventilating. You couldn’t feel your hands, numbness beginning to pull at your extremities. 

“I’m fucking sorry!” You wailed. “What would do if you were in my position, Keigo?! Just watch me suffer and not do anything even if you could?!”

Keigo leaned over the bed, giving you the most empty look you’d ever seen him wear. 

“I would’ve just fucking left, (Y/N),” He spoke in a monotone, eyes like dead coals. “I would’ve just left.”

You stared up at him.

This horrible feeling had filled you from toes to top and you couldn’t escape it.

 Keigo didn’t say anything else as you panicked on the floor. He simply got up, left for the guest room, and slammed the door.

 Neither of you ever felt as awful as you did that night.

 --------------------

 Keigo didn’t sleep that night.

Neither did you.

 He figured (he hoped) you’d be gone by the morning. Maybe you would just pack your dusty suitcase and get the fuck out.

...

Truthfully, not a single fragment of Keigo wanted you to leave. No piece of him wanted you to go out of his life. God, if he really thought about it, the prospect of not being side-by-side in this world together threw him into bends of anxiety and pure grief. 

Truthfully, as Keigo silently, tearfully, examined your actions, he felt his anger ebb away.

He understood. 

Why you did what you did.

But it didn’t mean that it didn’t hurt. 

Guilt was eating him, too. For all the horrible things he had said. The things he’d done that hurt you without regard for months now. The fact he never noticed you deteriorating. And all the nights you crept back into your shared room, for comfort and to keep trying to help him, though perhaps cruelly. 

 It was dawn when Keigo exited the guestroom. He figured that you were either gone or would be soon.

He was clearly mistaken.

Keigo stopped when he saw you at the kitchen table, head down, and resting on your folded arms. You were wearing a huge sweater, one of his, and a blanket around your shoulders.

Keigo had, incredibly selfishly, somewhat forgotten your physical state.

He ached.

 “I made coffee,” You said quietly. You looked up, meeting Keigo’s gaze with bloodshot, puffy eyes. “It’s still warm.”

“Why are you here?” Keigo asked, heart starting to beat too fast again. “Why haven’t you left-?”

“Do you really want me to leave?” You asked with an unfamiliar edge to your voice. It’s not anger or malice, but something different. You stand, bracing yourself on the table, wobbling. Keigo wanted nothing more than to scoop you into his arms and apologize. But, he doesn’t. 

 You looked at him with this edge of fierce determination, asking the penultimate question, the core of this all, “Keigo, do you want me to leave because of my actions, or do you want me to leave because you don’t think you deserve help?”

There was a poignant quiet over the apartment. 

The birds of the new day interrupted it from outside, chirping with the eos of dawn.

“I don’t think... I—” Keigo was speechless again, stuttering. “You shouldn’t have hurt yourself so bad.”

“That’s been established, I went too far. I should’ve told you, offered and asked, and go from there. It ultimately was a complete breach of boundaries and for that, I’m sorry. Fuck my good intentions, it was selfish.” You squeezed the edge of the table, eyes low. Your gaze turned up sharply to meet his, that edge of determination and fierceness in it that Keigo was unfamiliar with. “My question is, do you want me to leave?”

Keigo stared at his feet. His head was swimming, “You should leave.”

“I asked if you want me to,” You asked again. You were being more firm than you had ever been. You sounded unbreakable. It was that stubbornness that kept you there with him, right?

Keigo met your eyes with a sharp glare, “You should’ve left the night I asked you to kill me.”

You sighed, shaking visibly, but still keeping yourself so strong, “Please just answer me. Do you want me to leave? If we’re going to break up, let’s just call it that, and get it over with, okay Kei’?”

Oh, hearing you say ‘breakup’—

That broke Keigo. 

Having to truly think and reckon with a reality where you weren’t with him and you weren’t facing the horrors of the world together was purely the stuff of nightmares. 

The stupid little facade Keigo had so carefully crafted broke. The burns on his body started to ache anew, somatically. The scar over his eye twitched as tears were gathering anew. 

“N-no,” Keigo hugged himself, shaking his head. “N-no— I don’t want you to go—” 

You didn’t say anything, just watched him with a sad expression.

“Then I won’t.” You sat back down. “Keigo, I know that this is all fucked beyond belief. I know. But, I won’t leave. I really, really don’t want to. I won’t, not unless you want me to go.”

And Keigo was breaking for you again. 

He somehow stumbled next to your chair, managing to fall to his knees and rest his head on your cold, cold thigh. He pressed his nose into your flesh, trying to fucking absorb your smell like you could disappear any moment. 

“Why did you do it-” Keigo sobbed into your skin, nails biting in the flesh of your calves. It made you jerk in your seat. “WHY DID YOU HURT YOURSELF FOR ME!”

You didn’t have a good answer for him, so you didn’t reply. 

Keigo’s grip on the flesh of his leg started to break skin as he wailed into your leg.

You just looked down at him with this expression of pure remorse,  melancholy coloring your eyes.

You grabbed his clawed-hands, recalling the last time you tried a move like this with a twitch. You held his hands in your own, pulling him up, “You can’t do that, Keigo. You’re hurting me.”

“All I DO is hurt YOU!” Keigo crushed you into a tight hug, knocking the wind from you. You jolt forward into his death grip. 

 “It was my choice,” You remind him, so much weakness in your choice. “A very, very selfish one. If I was going to try to heal you, I should’ve asked.”

You started crying with him. 

You both were just torturing yourselves, truthfully. 

 At his core, Keigo was a fucked up man who was so thoroughly repressed and manipulated, it was hard to see his psychological shortcomings. They were all so meticulously hidden. 

But not then, not after losing his wings.

“I’m so fucked up,” Keigo kept crying into you as you had his hands locked together. “I hate myself for being this upset at you when you were trying to help me.”

“Love,” Your voice was so soft, releasing Keigo’s hands to pet his hair. “It wasn’t right for me to try and do what I did. You can’t help how you feel.”

“I could before I lost them!” Keigo muffled himself with your flesh.

Them being his wings, obviously. 

You hauled him upwards, forcing him to sit in your lap. Keigo had always had a bit of size on you, but in your shrunken state, it was even more pronounced. 

“Then you weren’t feeling,” You pressed your face to Keigo’s chest, wrapping your arms around his waist. He entangled himself with you, and you both just held each other for a long, long time.

 ------------------------

In the following six months, a many very important things happen.

Keigo got a place for you for two entire months, just so you two have some separation. After actually having a calm talk about your relationship dynamic since Keigo’s injury, it was comically apparent there were so many fucked up things that had happened and that you both needed a bit of time to collect yourselves.

It was a hard separation, but you still see each other at least half of the days of your time apart, and even a few that you snuck over for the night to stay over. Keigo was so, so thankful. Being wrapped in each other was a different experience, something actually healing. 

You both got therapists, next. A couples therapist too. 

Thank God. 

Keigo had oodles of trauma to sort through, and you had your own shit to deal with as well. Not to mention the whole ‘Keigo being a dick to you because he was hurt doesn’t justify it’ kinda broke your brain for a second. Also, Keigo having to process ‘he was capital A abusive to you after he got hurt, and your only stability being the hope in healing you is much more complicated than just them trying to ‘fix’ you’ was a case of note. 

It was weird, really. 

 When you moved back, fully, to Keigo’s (you weren’t sure if you could call it ‘your’ apartment anymore), it was nerve-wracking. It was under the understanding that you could move out if you needed to, that separation and an ending were just a corner away.

It made you feel more unstable than you had in months, but you kept up with it. 

Keigo noticed, much more observant than he had been. About two weeks into you returning to the apartment, he asked the question, “What if we moved?”

You had been quietly eating your breakfast, but this startled you, “Move? Why?”

“I mean,” Keigo sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. His gaze flickered to the living room, recalling the times he broke down and was so awful to you. It shifted to the bedroom door where you broke boundaries over and over. “A lot of bad stuff happened here. If we’re going to have a fresh start, might as well live somewhere new, right?”

You mused on it for a moment, then nodded, “Yeah, that would be good.”

The next few weeks were the most healthy and productive that you and Keigo ever had, pre- or post-injury. Apartment hunting turned into purchasing a two-floored, highrise, insanely nice condo across the city. Keigo suggested buying a house, but you refused. You both liked the views too much to live somewhere so close to the ground.

You packed your things, mutually. You both threw away plenty, bits and bobs that had been relatively unused for a long time. Lots of old memories were thrown out to make way for new ones. Though it was sad and there was plenty of grief in it, you actually had each other this time. 

When you found Keigo sobbing, clutching an old picture of him and Touya, one of the only of him from his childhood with the Commission, you held him and rocked him. You cried with him, not just settling for ‘dealing’ with him anymore. 

When you cleaned out the kitchen, you found the two dozen extra vitamins and extracts you had been taking while healing Keigo. You stared at him, idly, for ten minutes, somewhere far off in your head. Keigo came up behind you, wrapping his arms around you. Softly, he pulled you back from your mind. He helped you throw away each bottle, talking reverently to you so your gaze and mind would stay in that moment, and not those past and unsavory.  

You helped each other, or, were learning to.

 You and Keigo both had to agree that shopping for furniture was probably the most fun the two of you had in a while. With a facemask and a beanie on, Keigo appeared a lot less like his former self, allowing for the two of you to covertly search for new homewares without prying crowds.

The old apartment had originally been Keigo’s from his early years of being a hero. You simply moved in with him, adding yourself to his space. This time, you were making it together. 

 “What do you think of this one?” You turned to Keigo, next to you. Both of you laid on top of a fairly nice mattress, the store relatively empty aside from the employees and the two of you.

“I think it's good, it’s not too soft,” Keigo turned and smiled at you, speaking from behind his mask. 

You couldn’t help sitting up, tugging the cloth mask just a bit lower to drop a sweet kiss on the side of his mouth, “Get out the credit card then, babe.”

 The condo was sorted within a few weeks, full of furniture and slowly being decorated. 

You also had the opportunity to christen the mattress, if you will.

...

How long had it been since you and Keigo had laid together like this? 

Your bodies were sticky with sweat and cum, several rounds having passed throughout the night. Your new mattress was going to need a fresh change of sheets after this.

“Hey, angel, come over here,” Keigo tugged you closer to him, laying your head on his chest. You smiled softly, pressing closer. You missed it, truly, the warmth of his body and the feeling of his skin on your own like this.

“Alright, check-in,” Keigo pressed a kiss to your damp forehead. “You feeling okay?”

“I feel great,” You hummed, throwing a leg over his waist. “I can honestly keep going.”

“Should you?” Keigo raised an eyebrow and chuckled, nudging a knee between your legs. You flinched, knowing how sore you’d be in the morning already. 

Though your body had recovered somewhat, you weren’t fully back to where you were before Keigo’s injury. You didn’t mind, though. Keigo had taken to doting on you a bit more than he used to. 

You shrugged and Keigo just chuckled, bringing you ever-closer. 

“Are you okay?” You straddled Keigo’s hips, cocking your head to one side. 

Keigo was silent for a moment, stormy almost. He bit his lip, tracing hands and eyes over your figure, finally landing on your face. His softened hands cupped your jaw. 

“Yeah, I’m okay,” His thumb rubbed over your lips. There’s something so melancholic about him. “I just missed you.”

You knew exactly what he meant by ‘miss’.

 It was a feeling beyond sex, but rather intimacy. Sure, Keigo had been balls deep in you for the first time in months and that was ecstasy you wouldn’t trade the world for. But, this feeling Keigo regarded was different.

It had been so long since the two of you had been so softened around each other.

Guards, after months of being raised high, had begun to fall.

  Thank God.

 Your eyes watered as you lowered your face to his, ghosting your lips over his, “I missed you too, Kei’. I missed you so, so much.”

 How many minutes of hell had your both endured? And how many were there still to go? Thoughts of fear and anguish constantly swirled within the two of you for so long. They certainly hadn’t stopped, but they were lessening. Therapy helped. Being in the new place with a fresh start did wonders for the two you. Keigo’s passion for cooking continued to grow and you had taken up a few new hobbies of your own. 

It was the mundane, you supposed, that was the stitching for broken relationships. The real healing of proverbial flesh and bone was intimacy, vulnerability, and love.

“Hey, Kei’,” You kissed him breathless, once, twice, three times. “I love you, you know? A lot.”

“Yeah?” Keigo giggled, something high and light that he wouldn’t have released a year ago. “I love you too. So much.”

 The night continued in tender fucking, the two of you visibly watching wounds begin to grow smaller and scar, no more fire, and no more forced stitchings. 

Salvation came from time and small things, you supposed, half-asleep and nestled neck to Keigo, feeling better than you had in a long time.  

---------------

     You supposed, some time later, that karma gave the two of you a small gift. In the eyes of all things, it must’ve been just a spec, but God, it was something. 

     ...

They had come back over a year and half from when you had tried to heal Keigo. 

The attempt wasn’t forgotten, no, but it certainly wasn’t at the forefront of your minds like it used to be. Except the one morning that Keigo got up before you, sleepily yawning his way to the bathroom.

You heard his sharp gasp, loud exclamations in your half asleep state.

“Babe?” Your voice hoarse with sleep, you spoke. “You okay?”

Keigo jumped onto the bed, straddling over you and the comforter. 

“(Y/N)!” Oh, his eyes were wet. Soft, gooey tears were streaming down his face as he shakily grabbed your wrists. He pressed them to the scars of his back.

Your eyes went wide as your hands brushed against small, soft feathers. 

“Keigo!” You shouted, sitting up, urging him to turn around so you could take a better look. 

Keigo trembled as he bared his back to you. 

Your breath caught as your hands trailed down his marred flesh.

The scars, old and worn now, had faded a great deal. The charred plain calmed with time, perhaps by your own touch and very much so by Keigo’s own cells and flesh.

But, in the center of his back, where the roots of his wings once were, was something growing anew.

Small, burgundy feathers were growing from spindly looking, down-covered bones and skin.

They were small, nothing like his old wings. More aged, with their darker color. The feathers felt softer as you ran your hands along the largest, no bigger than your hand from wrist to tip.

Keigo shuddered.

“Do... Do they feel like they used to?” You asked, transfixed.

Keigo shakily shook his head, “N-no, they feel less sensitive I think. They feel different.”

...

 As Keigo had healed and changed, so had his body.

His wings never grew to their own old size and power, not even close. They couldn’t support his own body weight, so Keigo never flew again. But, the feathers, wine-colored and almost bruised looking, could be sent to do small tasks, much like his old ones.  

At first, it seemed cruel. After so long and so much, his wings grew back but in such a decrepit form. For days, the two of you waited and waited to see what the final form of his regrowth would be. In the end, at their best, they stretched out to about the span of Keigo’s arms. The feathers weren’t symmetrical either, even at their peak regrowth. Some grew in fluffy and rounded, while others were jagged, sticking out awkwardly from the rest of his form. 

Over time, the inherent disappointment and despondence turned into appreciation.

Because they had come back, it just took time. 

...

With enough time, Keigo wore them proudly, no matter how oddly they stuck out from his marred skin. Keigo’s body was still too damaged to do hero work proper, but he still was kept around.

At the end of the day, the feathers colored like dried blood represented something far larger. If the completely destroyed number two hero could come back to even a fraction of his former, angelic glory, that was something, right?

It was like in the eyes of all things, you were both awarded a physical manifestation of healing. The gnarly wings that grew from Keigo’s body may have been off-putting to some, but to the two of you, it was a testament to it all.

It just took time. 

[shoutaaizawas]

↳  ❝burn❞ dabi x fem!reader → part III

summary: touya todoroki, your childhood friend was dead or so you thought. trying to dig deep you find dabi at a local bar known for being a villain hangout. word count: 1.8k tags/warnings: flashback, bar setting a/n: now we’re getting somewhere, hope you guys enjoy!

masterlist

part II part III part IV

It didn’t take long for you to realize that things weren’t okay at home for Touya. You were a smart kid, observant. You didn’t miss how tired he looked, the bags under his eyes. The bruises that covered his skin, the burns. Whenever you asked him he would just brush it off and say he fell or hurt himself with his quirk again.

There were only so many times you could believe that. Eventually, he opened up about it. He trusted you more than anyone but he carried an amount of shame at the truth of what happened at home. His father trained him, harder than a child should ever have to train. Even when Fuyumi and Natsuo were born and got their quirks he continued to train Touya because he was still the best bet at becoming a hero out of all of them despite his quirks drawbacks.

There were many nights Touya would go to your house, climbing in your window. You would play video games, watch movies, or sometimes fall asleep beside each other. Anything that you could do to distract or give him shelter from what he faced at home.

It was only when Shoto got his quirk that Enji Todoroki gave up on Touya. It was the first year of UA. You remember him tapping at your window, tears in his eyes. He never cried, it hurt to see him cry more than you could ever describe.

It was complicated, in a way he was free from his father’s torment but at the same time, he felt so abandoned. The training and suffering he went through all for nothing. His own father didn’t believe he could be a good hero.

That night you found Touya at your window. Letting him in he explained what had happened before breaking down.

You took him in your arms and held him close as he let out all of the emotions he had stored up for years. The music you had playing softly a background to his quiet sobs. You pressed a kiss against the crown of his red hair, holding back the blooming feelings you had for him.

As he eventually calmed down, he finally spoke.

“I’m sorry.” His voice was low and raspy from crying.

“You have nothing to be sorry about, you know I’m always here for you.” You said, brushing your hands through his hair.

“I don’t know what I’d do without you.” He whispered.

“Me neither.” You said giving him a soft smile before hugging him closer.

There was nothing harder than watching Touya and what he went through during all the years you knew him and not being able to do anything about it.

Perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to look into something that the hero commission seemed to want to look the other way on but you were always one to get into things you shouldn’t. It wasn’t like you had a high rank you’d be at risk of losing, the worst they could do was take away your hero license and they were dumb if they thought you wouldn’t become a vigilante.

It was a dangerous game. You had two options, tail Hawks, and see what he was up to on a normal day. Hawks was far faster than you which would leave you struggling to keep up not to mention he had keen senses that would probably pick up on you quickly. The other option was to follow Dabi from the League of Villains, finding him wouldn’t be easy and the likelihood of him trying to kill you if he caught on was high.

Neither option was good but if you didn’t do something it would bother you. You had to get to the bottom of this.

Villains could be predictable, they had spots they liked to hang out in or make deals at. You dressed in civilian clothes, put a wig on, and did what you could to look different from your usual appearance. Waiting till night time you went to a bar that was a hot spot for villains. It was hard but you could repress the rain that followed you these days. It would take a lot of energy but it was possible and would help your cover.

Entering the bar you were hit by a cloud of smoke and the sound of music playing, the bass rumbling through the floor. This was the last place anyone wanted to be if they weren’t looking to get in trouble. Walking in you recognized a few villains right away. You carefully scanned the room as you made your way to the bar.

Ordering a whiskey neat you made your way to an empty corner of the bar, making sure to keep you back to the wall and your eyes on the entrance. You made note of the exits of the building.

Time passed and you waited, sipping your drink slowly and watching your surroundings. Some people glanced over at you but didn’t bother you. If you acted like you belonged somewhere people usually didn’t question that confidence.

The door opened and finally, you caught sight of the man you were looking for. Dabi walked in, you watched as other villains looked nervous at the sight of him. From what you had heard he was dangerous and quick to act if he felt the need to. No doubt people had learned not to mess with him here.

For a moment his gaze scanned the room pausing at the sight of you in the corner. He looked you up and down before walking to the bar, sitting down there. You watched him carefully as he ordered a drink and started sipping on it. You weren’t sure what exactly you were looking for, you doubted Hawks would show his face here and you didn’t think talking to him was the best idea.

At the same time if you missed your chance to get information from him now you might not get another chance. You could tail him home but if he caught on it would be bad, worse if you ended up at the league’s hideout.

After mulling it over you decided you should take the chance. If worse came to worse you knew you could escape if things got violent here. Standing up you made your way to the bar, placing your empty glass down before waving the bartender over for another one.

Dabi was next to you but you didn’t look over hoping to get his interest by seeming indifferent. You could feel his gaze on you.

“What brings someone like you to a dark place like this?” His raspy voice cut through the music of the bar. You looked over slowly smirking at him.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” You teased.

Seeing him this close up it was odd. You took in the dark patches of skin that covered his face, the staples connecting them to his unmarred skin. His eyes, the striking blue eyes felt familiar.

“Dabi, you bastard.” A man stepped up to his other side grabbing his shoulder roughly. The drunk man looked angry.

“Shove off.” He growled at the man before standing up pushing him back.

“Take it outside!” The bartender shouted at them.

“Gladly,” Dabi said with a dangerous glint in his eyes. He grabbed onto the man by the back of his shirt. “Sorry, doll. Another time.”

You stood there shocked by what happened. You had been so close to having a conversation with him before that man had interrupted. You let out a huff finishing off your drink. You waited a moment before following them out. You wanted to see what was going on.

Turning around the corner into the alley you could hear the commotion of Dabi and the man fighting. What you didn’t expect was the gas that had filled the small area. It must have been from the man’s quirk. You stopped breathing, hoping to stop whatever effects it might have but you were too late. You already felt woozy, your vision fading.

Blue flames filled the alley, the heat intense against your skin but not hurting you. You collapsed to the ground, falling onto your hands and knees. As everything faded to black you saw one last thing. The figure of Dabi approached you slowly, intimidating as he drew closer.

“You never could stay out of trouble, huh?” His voice sounded fuzzy, you could barely make out his words before your head hit the ground.

The breeze was soft a cool, moving through the petals of the cherry blossom tree above you. You laid across the soft grass, Touya next to you. You looked overtaking in his features as he watched the tree sway above the two of you. You smiled at how peaceful he looked.

“What are you smiling at, raindrop?” He said looking over with a teasing look.

“Trying to figure it out.” You teased. Touya let out a short laugh.

“Very creative.” He said. In one quick moment, he was over you, leaning down, his nose almost against yours. “If I didn’t know better I would say you were admiring me.”

“Hmm, I don’t know what you're talking about.” You said cheekily.

“Really?” He said leaning in closer, pressing his forehead against yours, almost brushing his lips against yours. “Then I guess you don’t want a kiss.” He said before laying back down at your side.

“Wait,” You said in a huff, pouting as you rolled to your side, leaning over him. You leaned down for a kiss but he turned his head.

“Nope.” He said as you tried again only to be dodged once again.

“Touya.” You whined. “Fine, I was admiring your handsome looks. Are you happy.”

“Yes.” He said with a smirk, his arms wrapping around you and pulling you on top of him. His lips finally met yours, softly. You smiled against him, content.

Sighing, you rest your cheek against his chest, listening to his heartbeat and taking in his comforting scent. Your eyes drifted closed, sleepy from how relaxed you were.

“Go to sleep, raindrop. I’ll wake you up when it’s time to go.” He said, his hand brushing up and down your back helping you fall to sleep even more.

You woke with a gasp, your lungs burning. Looking around you expected to be in the alley or somewhere worse but you were in your home. In your bed.

Had there been a hero nearby? Or perhaps one undercover at the bar that saw you hurt? Why hadn’t they left a note or taken you to the hospital?

You laid back down, exhausted still. Too tired to wonder what happened. You could figure that out later.

Your mind drifted back to your dream. It made your heartache it was so real. You could feel his arms around you, his lips against yours. Tears welled in your eyes. You never had the chance to kiss Touya, never had the chance to tell him how you felt and that would haunt you till the end of your days.

taglist(message to be added or taken out):  @flowersgirl02 @wesparklebitch @moon-write @strangely-charmed @ibookishqueen @tomomoni @why-so-red

[homebusinessuniversity]

STEP BY STEP VIDEO MARKETING CONTENT | FREE WEBINAR | 2019

New Post has been published on https://www.homebusinessuniversitypluginprofitsite.com/step-by-step-video-marketing-content-free-webinar-2019/

STEP BY STEP VIDEO MARKETING CONTENT | FREE WEBINAR | 2019

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[gordonwilliamsweb]

A Hospital Charged $722.50 to Push Medicine Through an IV. Twice.

Claire Lang-Ree was in a lab coat taking a college chemistry class remotely in the kitchen of her Colorado Springs, Colorado, home when a profound pain twisted into her lower abdomen. She called her mom, Jen Lang-Ree, a nurse practitioner who worried it was appendicitis and found a nearby hospital in the family’s health insurance network.

After a long wait in the emergency room of Penrose Hospital, Claire received morphine and an anti-nausea medication delivered through an IV. She also underwent a CT scan of the abdomen and a series of tests.

Hospital staffers ruled out appendicitis and surmised Claire was suffering from a ruptured ovarian cyst, which can be a harmless part of the menstrual cycle but can also be problematic and painful. After a few days — and a chemistry exam taken through gritted teeth — the pain went away.

Then the bill came.

Patient: Claire Lang-Ree, a 21-year-old Stanford University student who was living in Colorado for a few months while taking classes remotely. She’s insured by Anthem Blue Cross through her mom’s work as a pediatric nurse practitioner in Northern California.

Total Bill: $18,735.93, including two $722.50 fees for a nurse to “push” drugs into her IV, a process that takes seconds. Anthem’s negotiated charges were $6,999 for the total treatment. Anthem paid $5,578.30, and the Lang-Rees owed $1,270 to the hospital, plus additional bills for radiologists and other care. (Claire also anted up a $150 copay at the ER.)

Service Provider: Penrose Hospital in Colorado Springs, part of the regional health care network Centura Health.

What Gives: As hospitals disaggregate charges for services once included in an ER visit, a hospitalization or a surgical procedure, there has been a proliferation of newfangled fees to increase billing. In the field, this is called “unbundling.” It’s analogous to the airlines now charging extra for each checked bag or for an exit row seat. Over time, in the health industry, this has led to separate fees for ever-smaller components of care. A charge to put medicine into a patient’s IV line — a “push fee” — is one of them.

Though the biggest charge on Claire’s bill, $9,885.73, was for a CT scan, in many ways Claire and her mom found the push fees most galling. (Note to readers: Scans often are significantly more expensive when ordered in an ER than in other settings.)

“That was so ridiculous,” said Claire, who added she had previously taken the anti-nausea drug they gave her; it’s available in tablet form for the price of a soda, no IV necessary. “It works really well. Why wasn’t that an option?”

In Colorado, the average charge for the code corresponding to Claire’s first IV push has nearly tripled since 2014, and the dollars hospitals actually get for it has doubled. In Colorado Springs specifically, the cost for IV pushes rose even more sharply than it did statewide.

A typical nurse in Colorado Springs makes about $35 an hour. At that rate, it would take nearly 21 hours to earn the amount of money Penrose charged for a push of plunger that likely took seconds or at most minutes.

The hospital’s charge for just one “IV push” was more than Claire’s portion of the monthly rent in the home she shared with roommates. In the end, Anthem did not pay the push fees in its negotiated payment. But claims data shows that in 2020 Penrose typically received upward of $1,000 for the first IV push. And patients who didn’t have an insurer to dismiss such charges would be stuck with them. Colorado hospitals on average received $723 for the same code, according to the claims database.

“It’s insane the variation that we see in prices, and there’s no rhyme or reason,” said Cari Frank with the Center for Improving Value in Health Care, a Colorado nonprofit that runs a statewide health care claims database. “It’s just that they’ve been able to negotiate those prices with the insurance company and the insurance company has decided to pay it.”

Penrose initially charged more money for Claire’s visit than the typical Colorado hospital would have charged for live birth, according to data published by the Colorado Division of Insurance.

Even with the negotiated rate, “it was only $1,000 less than an average payment for having a baby,” Frank said.

In an emailed statement, Centura said it had “conducted a thorough review and determined all charges were accurate” and went on to explain that “an Emergency Room (ER) must be prepared for anything and everything that comes through the doors,” requiring highly trained staff, plus equipment and supplies. “All of this adds up to large operating costs and can translate into patient responsibility.”

As researchers have found, little stands in the way of hospitals charging through the roof, especially in a place like an emergency room, where a patient has no choice. A report from National Nurses United found that hospital markups have more than doubled since 1999, according to data from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. In an email, Anthem called the trend of increasing hospital prices “alarming” and “unsustainable.”

But Ge Bai, an associate professor of accounting and health policy at Johns Hopkins University, said that when patients see big bills it isn’t only the hospital’s doing — a lot depends on the insurer, too. For one, the negotiated price depends on the negotiating power of the payer, in this case, Anthem.

“Most insurance companies don’t have comparable negotiating or bargaining power with the hospital,” said Bai. Prices in a state like Michigan, where Bai said the autoworkers union covers a big portion of patients, will look very different from those in Colorado.

 Also, insurers are not the wallet defenders patients might assume them to be.

“In many cases, insurance companies don’t negotiate as aggressively as they can, because they earn profit from the percentage of the claims,” she said. The more expensive the actual payment is, the more money they get to extract.

Though Anthem negotiated away the push fees, it paid the hospital 30% more than the average Level IV emergency department visit in Colorado that year, and it paid quadruple what Medicare would allow for her CT scan.

Resolution: Claire and her mom decided to fight the bill, writing letters to the hospital and searching for information on what the procedures should have cost. The prices of the IV pushes and the CT scan infuriated them — the hospital wanted more than double what top-rated hospitals typically charged in 2019.

But the threat of collections wore them out and ultimately they paid their assigned share of the bill, $1,420.45, which was mostly coinsurance.

“Eventually it got to the point where I was like, ‘I don’t really want to go to collections, because this might ruin my credit score,’” said Claire, who didn’t want to graduate from college with dinged credit.

Bai and Frank said Maryland can be a useful benchmark for medical bills, since the state sets the prices that hospitals can charge for each procedure. Data provided by the Maryland Health Care Commission shows that Anthem and Claire paid seven times what she likely would have paid for the CT scan there, and nearly 10 times what they likely would have paid for the Level IV ER visit. In Maryland, IV pushes typically cost about $200 apiece in 2019. A typical Maryland hospital would have received only about $1,350 from a visit like Claire’s, and the Lang-Rees would have been on the hook for about $270.

Claire’s pain has come back a few times but never as bad as that night in Colorado. After visiting multiple specialists back home in California, she learned it might have been a condition called ovarian torsion. Claire has avoided reentering an emergency room.

The Takeaway: Even at an in-network facility and with good insurance, patients can get hurt financially by visiting the ER. A few helpful documents can help guide the way to fighting such charges. The first is an itemized bill.

“I just think it’s wrong in the U.S. to charge so much,” said Jen Lang-Ree. “It’s just a little side passion of mine to look at those and make sure I’m not being scammed.”

Bai, of Johns Hopkins, suggests asking for an itemized explanation of benefits from the insurance company, too. That will show what the hospital actually received for each procedure.

Find out if the hospital massively overcharged. The Medicare price lookup tool can be useful for getting a benchmark. And publicly available data on health claims in Colorado and at least 17 other states can help, too.

Vincent Plymell with the Colorado Division of Insurance encourages patients to reach out if something looks sketchy. “Even if it’s not a plan we regulate,” he wrote in an email, such departments “can always arm the consumer with info.”

Finally, make it fun. Claire and Jen made bill-fighting their mother-daughter hobby for the winter. They recommend pretzel chips and cocktails to boost the mood.

Bill of the Month is a crowdsourced investigation by KHN and NPR that dissects and explains medical bills. Do you have an interesting medical bill you want to share with us? Tell us about it!

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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A Hospital Charged $722.50 to Push Medicine Through an IV. Twice. published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

[stephenmccull]

A Hospital Charged $722.50 to Push Medicine Through an IV. Twice.

Claire Lang-Ree was in a lab coat taking a college chemistry class remotely in the kitchen of her Colorado Springs, Colorado, home when a profound pain twisted into her lower abdomen. She called her mom, Jen Lang-Ree, a nurse practitioner who worried it was appendicitis and found a nearby hospital in the family’s health insurance network.

After a long wait in the emergency room of Penrose Hospital, Claire received morphine and an anti-nausea medication delivered through an IV. She also underwent a CT scan of the abdomen and a series of tests.

Hospital staffers ruled out appendicitis and surmised Claire was suffering from a ruptured ovarian cyst, which can be a harmless part of the menstrual cycle but can also be problematic and painful. After a few days — and a chemistry exam taken through gritted teeth — the pain went away.

Then the bill came.

Patient: Claire Lang-Ree, a 21-year-old Stanford University student who was living in Colorado for a few months while taking classes remotely. She’s insured by Anthem Blue Cross through her mom’s work as a pediatric nurse practitioner in Northern California.

Total Bill: $18,735.93, including two $722.50 fees for a nurse to “push” drugs into her IV, a process that takes seconds. Anthem’s negotiated charges were $6,999 for the total treatment. Anthem paid $5,578.30, and the Lang-Rees owed $1,270 to the hospital, plus additional bills for radiologists and other care. (Claire also anted up a $150 copay at the ER.)

Service Provider: Penrose Hospital in Colorado Springs, part of the regional health care network Centura Health.

What Gives: As hospitals disaggregate charges for services once included in an ER visit, a hospitalization or a surgical procedure, there has been a proliferation of newfangled fees to increase billing. In the field, this is called “unbundling.” It’s analogous to the airlines now charging extra for each checked bag or for an exit row seat. Over time, in the health industry, this has led to separate fees for ever-smaller components of care. A charge to put medicine into a patient’s IV line — a “push fee” — is one of them.

Though the biggest charge on Claire’s bill, $9,885.73, was for a CT scan, in many ways Claire and her mom found the push fees most galling. (Note to readers: Scans often are significantly more expensive when ordered in an ER than in other settings.)

“That was so ridiculous,” said Claire, who added she had previously taken the anti-nausea drug they gave her; it’s available in tablet form for the price of a soda, no IV necessary. “It works really well. Why wasn’t that an option?”

In Colorado, the average charge for the code corresponding to Claire’s first IV push has nearly tripled since 2014, and the dollars hospitals actually get for it has doubled. In Colorado Springs specifically, the cost for IV pushes rose even more sharply than it did statewide.

A typical nurse in Colorado Springs makes about $35 an hour. At that rate, it would take nearly 21 hours to earn the amount of money Penrose charged for a push of plunger that likely took seconds or at most minutes.

The hospital’s charge for just one “IV push” was more than Claire’s portion of the monthly rent in the home she shared with roommates. In the end, Anthem did not pay the push fees in its negotiated payment. But claims data shows that in 2020 Penrose typically received upward of $1,000 for the first IV push. And patients who didn’t have an insurer to dismiss such charges would be stuck with them. Colorado hospitals on average received $723 for the same code, according to the claims database.

“It’s insane the variation that we see in prices, and there’s no rhyme or reason,” said Cari Frank with the Center for Improving Value in Health Care, a Colorado nonprofit that runs a statewide health care claims database. “It’s just that they’ve been able to negotiate those prices with the insurance company and the insurance company has decided to pay it.”

Penrose initially charged more money for Claire’s visit than the typical Colorado hospital would have charged for live birth, according to data published by the Colorado Division of Insurance.

Even with the negotiated rate, “it was only $1,000 less than an average payment for having a baby,” Frank said.

In an emailed statement, Centura said it had “conducted a thorough review and determined all charges were accurate” and went on to explain that “an Emergency Room (ER) must be prepared for anything and everything that comes through the doors,” requiring highly trained staff, plus equipment and supplies. “All of this adds up to large operating costs and can translate into patient responsibility.”

As researchers have found, little stands in the way of hospitals charging through the roof, especially in a place like an emergency room, where a patient has no choice. A report from National Nurses United found that hospital markups have more than doubled since 1999, according to data from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. In an email, Anthem called the trend of increasing hospital prices “alarming” and “unsustainable.”

But Ge Bai, an associate professor of accounting and health policy at Johns Hopkins University, said that when patients see big bills it isn’t only the hospital’s doing — a lot depends on the insurer, too. For one, the negotiated price depends on the negotiating power of the payer, in this case, Anthem.

“Most insurance companies don’t have comparable negotiating or bargaining power with the hospital,” said Bai. Prices in a state like Michigan, where Bai said the autoworkers union covers a big portion of patients, will look very different from those in Colorado.

 Also, insurers are not the wallet defenders patients might assume them to be.

“In many cases, insurance companies don’t negotiate as aggressively as they can, because they earn profit from the percentage of the claims,” she said. The more expensive the actual payment is, the more money they get to extract.

Though Anthem negotiated away the push fees, it paid the hospital 30% more than the average Level IV emergency department visit in Colorado that year, and it paid quadruple what Medicare would allow for her CT scan.

Resolution: Claire and her mom decided to fight the bill, writing letters to the hospital and searching for information on what the procedures should have cost. The prices of the IV pushes and the CT scan infuriated them — the hospital wanted more than double what top-rated hospitals typically charged in 2019.

But the threat of collections wore them out and ultimately they paid their assigned share of the bill, $1,420.45, which was mostly coinsurance.

“Eventually it got to the point where I was like, ‘I don’t really want to go to collections, because this might ruin my credit score,’” said Claire, who didn’t want to graduate from college with dinged credit.

Bai and Frank said Maryland can be a useful benchmark for medical bills, since the state sets the prices that hospitals can charge for each procedure. Data provided by the Maryland Health Care Commission shows that Anthem and Claire paid seven times what she likely would have paid for the CT scan there, and nearly 10 times what they likely would have paid for the Level IV ER visit. In Maryland, IV pushes typically cost about $200 apiece in 2019. A typical Maryland hospital would have received only about $1,350 from a visit like Claire’s, and the Lang-Rees would have been on the hook for about $270.

Claire’s pain has come back a few times but never as bad as that night in Colorado. After visiting multiple specialists back home in California, she learned it might have been a condition called ovarian torsion. Claire has avoided reentering an emergency room.

The Takeaway: Even at an in-network facility and with good insurance, patients can get hurt financially by visiting the ER. A few helpful documents can help guide the way to fighting such charges. The first is an itemized bill.

“I just think it’s wrong in the U.S. to charge so much,” said Jen Lang-Ree. “It’s just a little side passion of mine to look at those and make sure I’m not being scammed.”

Bai, of Johns Hopkins, suggests asking for an itemized explanation of benefits from the insurance company, too. That will show what the hospital actually received for each procedure.

Find out if the hospital massively overcharged. The Medicare price lookup tool can be useful for getting a benchmark. And publicly available data on health claims in Colorado and at least 17 other states can help, too.

Vincent Plymell with the Colorado Division of Insurance encourages patients to reach out if something looks sketchy. “Even if it’s not a plan we regulate,” he wrote in an email, such departments “can always arm the consumer with info.”

Finally, make it fun. Claire and Jen made bill-fighting their mother-daughter hobby for the winter. They recommend pretzel chips and cocktails to boost the mood.

Bill of the Month is a crowdsourced investigation by KHN and NPR that dissects and explains medical bills. Do you have an interesting medical bill you want to share with us? Tell us about it!

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

USE OUR CONTENT

This story can be republished for free (details).

A Hospital Charged $722.50 to Push Medicine Through an IV. Twice. published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/

[phantom-le6]

Episode Review - Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 6 (2 of 6)

Starting of the June part of my on-going reviews of Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes, we begin with our second instalment from season 6.

Episode 6: True Q

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

The Enterprise brings aboard a young Starfleet intern, Amanda Rogers, who is unsure what area of scientific study she wants to dedicate herself to and is initially assigned to study biological sciences under Dr Crusher. The crew soon finds that Amanda has unusual abilities. She redirects a falling cargo crate to avoid injury to Commander Riker, and contains an explosion in the warp core. Q appears and reveals that Amanda is actually a member of the Q Continuum, having been conceived by two other Q when they opted to take on human forms and hide their abilities as Q. Q has arrived to teach Amanda how to harness her powers, as well as to decide whether to return her to the Q Continuum, or to let her remain living a normal human life.

 Captain Picard, suspicious of Q's motives, orders Lt. Commander Data to investigate Amanda's parents. He finds that they died from a freak tornado in their Kansas home, something that would be nearly impossible with Earth's weather modification network. When confronted about this, Q reveals that the Continuum had Amanda's parents killed when they were living as humans in mortal form. Q admits his true intentions: to determine if Amanda is truly a Q, or if she is a Q-human hybrid, in which case he has orders to destroy her. Picard argues with Q about the morality of his decision, while Q points out the responsibility that the Continuum has to govern their omnipotent powers and the people who use them (Amanda could accidentally destroy the entire galaxy in theory). Eventually Q tells Picard not to worry, that he's decided Amanda is Q, and as such she has a choice: either to return to the Continuum, or she can choose to live as a human. However, if she does the latter, she must voluntarily suppress her powers and not use them. Q warns Amanda that it won't be as easy as she thinks, revealing that her parents were given this choice but were unable to resist using their powers, resulting in their execution by the Continuum as punishment.

 As Amanda contemplates her choice, the ship receives a distress call from their away team; the Enterprise has been on a mission to the planet Tagra IV, the ionic anti-pollution systems for which are failing rapidly, risking a rise in atmospheric pollutants that would block out the planet’s sun. The away team’s efforts to repair these systems have gone wrong and the reactor powering the systems is on the verge of overload. Unwilling to let the Tagrans or the away team die (especially Commander Riker, who she has become attracted to), Amanda uses her abilities to stabilise the reactor and restore the planet’s atmosphere to its natural, unpolluted state. Amanda acknowledges she has been in denial ever since learning her true parentage, but must finally accept that she is Q. Q prepares to take Amanda to the Q Continuum, but she demands time to explain her new situation to her adoptive parents. She also says goodbye to the crew, fearing that she will not see them again, particularly Dr Crusher, who reminds her that as part of the Q Continuum, she can do anything she wants.

Review:

Sadly, we’re not back at true Trek yet in this sixth season.  Rather than an episode to develop/explore an existing character or something with some real issue exploration, we get what is really little more than Q fan-fodder. On another show, it might be cool to have a show that caters to the recurring guest trickster stirring things up, but on Trek it really should serve some purpose, and here it doesn’t. Q’s supposed riff on great power entailing great responsibility certainly doesn’t qualify because from Q it’s a hollow lesson.  The guy created a warp core breach just to prove the other guest character was a Q, endangering the thousand-plus crew of the Enterprise; where’s the responsible application of power in that?  Nowhere, so it’s no wonder Picard claims humanity morally superior to the Q, because clearly Q’s morality is amoral at best.

 I think that same lack of morality is also evident in Amanda when she abducts Riker and then tries to whammy him into loving her, though frankly as she was raised human and given how little time she spends with Q, I think it’s a bit strange she should cross that moral line quite so readily.  I like it when the Roddenberry idealism is tempered a bit, but that part was totally over the top, and frankly it stopped me having any sympathy for the character. Changing anyone’s mind on a whim is not cool, and it needs a better rationale than ‘oh, here’s this person I barely know that I’ve got the hots for’.  Overall, I think this episode is only worth about 5 out of 10.

Episode 7: Rascals

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

Captain Picard, Guinan, Ensign Ro and Keiko O'Brien are returning to the Enterprise from the planet Marlonia, but a transporter accident results in them changing into 12-year-old children. Although the four still retain an adult mind, the crew have trouble taking them seriously, and Picard is convinced by Dr Crusher to temporarily relinquish command of the ship. After turning over command of the Enterprise to Commander Riker, Picard ponders resigning his Starfleet commission, albeit temporarily, in order to pursue other interests. Meanwhile, Keiko is dismayed by her husband Miles' reluctance to be with her and is further saddened her daughter Molly doesn’t recognize her. While Ro is at first upset after being reminded of her unpleasant childhood, once Guinan's enthusiasm causes her to soften, the pair begin jumping on a bed and engaging in other childish pursuits.

 Dr Crusher works out how to reverse the de-aging under controlled conditions. Before further tests can be run, two Klingon warships decloak and attack the Enterprise. Ferengi pirates board the ship and take control, but Riker locks out the main computer. The Ferengi beam most of the adults on-board to a nearby planet and corral the children, including Picard and his party, into the schoolrooms on board. Picard and his group try to use the classroom computers to regain control of the ship, but are prevented by the limited functionality and condescending interface. Picard pretends to be Riker's son and demands the Ferengi take him to his "father," throwing a tantrum until his demand is met. He asks Riker to unlock the computer console in the schoolroom, using the ruse that none of the computer games will work.

 After Picard is returned to the schoolroom, the lead Ferengi threatens to harm the children if Riker does not unlock the computer and teach his lieutenant how to operate the Enterprise. Riker pretends to instruct the Ferengi officer, but only spouts deliberately meaningless technobabble as he unlocks the computer console in Picard's schoolroom. With command functions enabled, Picard is able to activate a transporter safety function. With help from Worf's son, Alexander Rozhenko, Guinan, and Ro, they use communication badges to trap most of the Ferengi on a transporter pad with their weapons disarmed and the exit blocked by a force field. Once most of them are detained, the children and Riker are able to overpower the remaining members and retake the Enterprise. After the events, the transporter is used to return Picard, Guinan and Keiko to their adult states. Buoyed by her experience, Ro decides to remain a child for just a little while longer and draw some pictures, something she never did during her childhood.

Review:

While this episode is something of a flop in its comedic elements, it actually works fairly well as drama and a bit of Trek issue exploration.  Not brilliantly, mind, but well enough.  After all, it’s an interesting premise to take adults and make them physically become children again while retaining their adult minds, memories and personas, and it takes either sci-fi or mystical fantasy to achieve something like that.  Picard, as the lone main cast character impacted by the incident, represents the professional conundrums a situation like this would cause.  He’s a fully capable officer, but would never be taken seriously in the body of a 12-year-old, and potentially would need to find something else he could do until physically old enough to resume his duties as a Starfleet officer.  It would have been fun to see this explored more, and I hope someone somewhere has tried to follow this idea through in some format.  If Star Trek ever did a series of stories akin to Marvel’s “What If?” comics, this would make a great instalment.

 Next, we have Ro, who represents what those with a bad original childhood might do if given a second childhood in better surroundings.  Ro’s had to grow up a refugee as a result of the Cardassian occupation of Bajor, and when she gets made back into a child, she initially doesn’t want it.  She wants to get right back to being an adult, but then Guinan manages to get her to enjoy herself and make the most of her new childhood.  It’s another interesting idea, and apparently a lack of subsequent Ro appearances this season led many to speculate from the episode’s ending that Ro might have been the one crew member who opted to remain a child.  However, that speculation would be ended when Ro returned one final time late in the seventh and final season of TNG.

 Lastly, we have Keiko O’Brien, who perhaps gets the most dramatically interesting issue to explore.  As an adult she’s a wife and mother, but then all of a sudden, she’s reduced to just shy of 12 years old, and as a result not only does her husband recoil from any notion of physical intimacy with her, but her infant daughter can’t recognise her.  Not only does this make the episode another pre-cursor to DS9’s “make O’Brien suffer” episodes, but it also highlights that present day concerns around age in relation to adult relationships might still exist by this era even in the world of Trek.

 To me, this is interesting because Trek is supposed to be a relatively utopian world for humanity, and the key reason for the age of consent laws we have in the present day is to protect those we consider children from being sexually exploited by those we deem to be adults. The way Miles reacts to Keiko still trying to be his wife when she’s been physically regressed in age is indicative of how most decent people today would probably react, which makes me wonder if that means laws like age of consent still exist in the world of Trek? Is Miles recoiling because Keiko is physically now below the Federation’s equivalent to our real-life age of consent laws, or because 24th century humans no longer try to exploit children in that way?

 If there is no age of consent law in the world of Trek because it’s not needed, how does anyone gauge who is old enough or not for relationships?  From a scientific point of view, there is no set age of sexual maturity; each person reaches that point in their own time, and our real-life age of consent laws are strictly a legal guideline rather than a scientific absolute.  If an age of consent law still exists in the world of Trek, where has that limit been set?  At present, a different standard is set by every country around the world, with most ranging from 18 down to 14, with a few exceptions going as young as 13 or even 12.  I imagine if anyone behind the Trek shows were to set such a law for their world, it would probably be around the upper end of the age range given that the US law varies from state to state, and is usually between 16 and 18.  It’s an interesting issue, and one I think too many people in real-life over-simplify by just assuming their local laws in this area are somehow absolute instead of part of an international variance.  That kind of lazy thinking around many of the issues that plague our world in real life is precisely why such issues still exist.

 Speaking of lazy thinking, all the interesting issue exploration is swiftly undone by the horrendous Ferengi pirates, the over-the-top performance put on Picard’s 12-year-old incarnation to feign actually being a child and Riker’s son, and a generally under-whelming threat that just made the adult crew members look unrealistically incompetent and stupid. Why?  All because the show insisted the Enterprise and/or its crew always be in danger.  Heaven forbid that every once in a while, they could have just done a show that was all about the issue and not manufacture some random happenstance threat that didn’t need exist other than to tick a box and waste screen time. It’s a shame to think this was the final time the O’Briens were on TNG prior to their move to DS9, because it’s a very spoiled episode by the time it’s done.  For me, it’s only worth 6 out of 10 on balance.

Episode 8: A Fistful of Datas

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

The Enterprise has arrived 2 days early for a rendezvous with a supply ship, USS Biko, and thus the crew spend the time to pursue personal activities. Data and La Forge propose to Captain Picard to attempt to set up systems that would allow them to use Data's processing abilities to run critical systems in the case of main computer failure, and he allows them to proceed.

 Meanwhile, Worf reluctantly joins his son Alexander in a holodeck adventure set in the town of Deadwood, South Dakota, in the American Old West, later joined by Deanna Troi. Worf and Alexander play the role of lawmen in Deadwood, where Eli Hollander, the "Butcher of Bozeman", is wanted for acts of murder; Troi plays the role of the mysterious stranger who assists the lawmen. Worf tries to use his Starfleet tactics to end the episode quickly, but Alexander insists that the program be a challenge to be fun and increases the difficulty level. They still capture Eli, learning that his father Frank is a sly and powerful man.

 As Data and La Forge work on the interface, a brief energy surge occurs. The ship's systems react strangely, specifically around elements of Data's logs and records. Data also takes up stereotypical Wild West mannerisms and vernacular, but is unaware of this.

 In the holodeck, Frank, who now appears exactly like Data, captures Alexander, demanding the release of his son Eli. Worf gets into a gun battle and is wounded, and he and Troi find that the holodeck safety protocols are off and they cannot end the program. They realize Alexander could be in trouble and the only assured way is to play out the story. Further, Troi observes that Eli, also now resembling Data, has come to possess skills comparable to Data's. As more of the holodeck characters take on Data's appearance, Worf works to create a personal shield as protection, knowing he would not be victorious against characters that all have Data's skills.

 Data and La Forge determine that the power surge causes segments of the main computer and Data's processes to swap memories, and they start a memory purge to restore both to normal operation.

 On the holodeck, Worf and Troi successfully defeat Frank and his gang, and recover Alexander. They believe the story is now over, but the holodeck does not yet respond. Only after Miss Annie, proprietress of the local tavern and also now looking like Data, thanks Worf for his bravery and throws herself into Worf's arms, does the story end, allowing the three to leave safely. Data and the ship's computer are restored to normal, and Worf promises to join Alexander on the holodeck for another adventure in Deadwood. As a final nod to the Western genre where heroes are often seen riding off into the sunset, the episode concludes with the Enterprise flying toward and seemingly into a star that is half obscured by a nearby planet.

Review:

And we’re back on the lighter side of Trek again, though this time to better effect than the previous episode.  The ‘holodeck gone wrong’ aspect of the episode undermines any potential sense of character development we might get from Worf joining his son on the holodeck, but it is cool to see that by making himself and his father lawmen in the program, Alexander has perfectly worked it around the one thing that would enable Worf to enjoy the whole thing.  As a man of action and a security chief, it makes sense for Worf to be put in the role of being an old west sheriff.  It’s also interesting to note that the episode was directed by Patrick Stewart, and that certain shots where homages to the western film Shane, scenes from which would be used years later in the film Logan which featured Patrick Stewart as an elderly Professor X introducing Logan’s clone-daughter Laura to that film.

 This episode is an ok diversion and a decent Trek nod to the concept of westerns, but it’s still not proper Trek, and the Data-in-drag scene at the end was more cringe-worthy than funny.  At this point, season 6 really feels like TNG has thrown all it’s achieved after the first couple of seasons in the bin and gone back to season 1-2 quality.  End score, 6 out of 10.

Episode 9: The Quality of Life

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

The Enterprise arrives at Tyrus 7A to oversee an experimental mining technology, a "particle fountain", engineered by Dr Farallon. While on the planet, the crew observe the use of small machines called Exocomps that Dr. Farallon claims can analyse a problem, replicate the correct tool to repair it, and "learn" this for future situations. During a trial run, one Exocomp refuses to enter a tunnel; moments later a confined explosion occurs within the tunnel. Dr Farallon, Lt. Commander Data, and Lt. La Forge investigate the Exocomp, finding more new electronic pathways in its circuits than they expected. Dr Farallon, having encountered this before, would normally erase the unit's memory, but Data suggests that the unit may have exhibited self-preservation behaviour and wishes to examine it further. Data asserts that if this is true, the Exocomps should no longer be used on the particle fountain, but Dr Farallon dismisses his claims, and says that any delay will ruin the years of work she has put into the project already.

 Data tests the Exocomp aboard the Enterprise, instructing it to repair a malfunction in a Jeffries tubes, though having jury-rigged a false alarm that would alert the Exocomp to danger. To his disappointment, the Exocomp continues to repair the malfunction through the alarm. However, when Data investigates the unit, he finds that it has repaired not only the malfunction but also his false alarm, having sensed it was not in any real danger from the test. Data concludes the Exocomps possess self-preservation and are sentient.

 While Picard and other Enterprise crew are visiting the fountain, a malfunction occurs, threatening to release massive doses of radiation. All but Picard and La Forge are beamed to the Enterprise before the radiation blocks any further attempts. Riker and Dr Farallon arrange to have the Exocomps beamed into the particle fountain to be detonated as a way to save Picard and La Forge at the cost of destroying the Exocomps, but Data has locked out the transporter controllers, claiming the machines are sentient and refusing to allow them to be forced to die for others. After some negotiating, Data allows the Exocomps to be used but only if they are given the choice to go. The Exocomps show their intent to proceed, but come up with an alternative plan and beam-down co-ordinates, and are beamed to the facility. The units configure themselves to syphon energy from the particle fountain, allowing Picard and La Forge to be rescued, and all but one of the Exocomps returns to the Enterprise, the last one sacrificing itself to save the others.

 As the damage to the fountain is repaired, Dr Farallan admits she is still not sure if the Exocomps are sentient but promises not to abuse them again. Data explains to Picard that he had to stand up for the Exocomps, just as Picard had stood up for him (in "The Measure of a Man") when his own sentience was questioned. Picard acknowledges that Data's actions were probably the most human thing he has ever done.

Review:

Finally, a true Trek episode across the board, and rather fittingly it’s a Data episode that brings us back to what this show should be about.  Yet again we’re delving into the question of machine life and how that be defined when some biological definitions of life don’t bridge the gap to the world of the mechanical, but we also get a kind of empowerment message in that Data is trying to stand up for those like himself.  Whereas “Measure of a Man” back in season 2 had Picard acting as Data’s advocate, this episode switches Data’s role and has him play advocate for the Exocomps.

 Why is this an empowerment message?  Because Data is one of several Trek characters whose traits enable him to stand as at least a partial metaphor for autistics like myself.  All too often, those of us who are autistic aren’t able to be our own advocates when we are marginalised or held back by the society we live in.  Many of us have to rely on someone else, someone who is non-autistic, to put their case forward as Picard did for Data back in “Measure of a Man”, but some of us can do what Data does in this episode is advocate someone like himself.  In effect, this is the equivalent of one autistic person standing up for another autistic, or for autistics as a whole.  It echoes the very kind of advocacy I’m trying to achieve with my own writing, and I think this is something we need to see more of in modern TV, film and literature.

 The only problem I have with the episode, and it’s a fairly minor problem, is what the heck the name Exocomps is supposed to mean. It’s clearly an abbreviation of some kind, but what’s the actual long-hand name that’s been abbreviated? Neither the episode itself, nor the Trek wiki site Memory Alpha, state this, and to my mind it’s lazy writing to invent any abbreviation or acronym without having an explicitly stated long-hand version as well.  As such, the episode just loses out on top marks and ends up scoring 9 out of 10.

[witchykitchenconjureman-blog]

As i often am, that morning i was feeling equal parts martha stewart and marie leveau. In addition to being those two ladies, im also always the dude everybody LOVES to make halloween costumes with, since i have craploads of little knick knacks, trinkets, and odds and ends sitting around for years, waiting for a purpose. And that, folks, is what voodoo is all about: collecting simple things from around your world, creatively making your purpose their purpose, and sending their magick off to do what it does how it sees fit. Who knew all this shit around my house was a link to the universe?                  {{{{{{MIND BLOWN}}}}}} Before i digress further, back to my point..... That day being saturday, and me being a 35 yr old gay guy with a cat and an injured knee, I had an urgent need to do something exciting, but with some meaning....and almost always with glitter. This is why we craft. Both artsy-crafters and witchy-crafters; we're just lonely creative geniuses with sewing kits and glue guns and mason jars and quill pens and mortars and pestles. We're like pioneer folk, but gothier and with bluetooth capability. And, usually, we're kinda the shit. Again, it being a saturday, and with all the voodoo ive been studying, i immediately think "hmm, saturday...BARON SATURDAY!" A LITTLE BACKGROUND INFO... The baron i most often speak of is Baron Samedi (translated: "Baron Saturday"), but there are several Baron incarnations (LaCroix, Cimetiere, etc.) The barons belong to a group of loa called the ghede. In essence, the ghede are cemetery/death-related spirits, but they live right here among us in our world, and they are no angels.  They drink, they smoke, they cuss, they fuck, the are quite obscene at times. So basically, theyre that hot mess Laura from yr cousins wedding, right? Nope. They're better. Know why? Cuz the barons aint all doom and gloom. They can actually be helpful, albeit obnoxious  guardians who can sometimes help in dire situations. They also hold a very important place in the voodoo/hoodoo pantheon, because they are in charge of our exit from this life, and can help when things hang in the balance. Petition them carefully and dont expect special treatment...but if u offer some candy and alcohol, u just may luck out (still not Laura, i swear!) The ghede dance the banda, and they represent death and fertility. They each have a unique and fascinating story to tell.  Baron samedi is probably the most famous of the ghede, and his wife Maman Brigitte also plays a prominent role in their graveyard community. The baron is revered by new orleans  natives and tourists alike. In haiti to this day, the first male grave in a cemetery is dedicated to him, and the first female plot to his wife Brigitte. The Baron along with the rest of the ghede are celebrated on November 2nd (All Souls Day, Day of the Dead). The dark, skeleton-like images of the ghede have got a very halloween-y appeal for many, understandably. But they also have a significant religious, cultural, and practical appeal for like bazillions of people (according to the university of vague and exaggerated facts.com......ok, lets just say alot of people then). From africa, haiti, cuba, throughout the caribbean and south america.... and here in the states, specifically in louisiana. Each place has evolved its own traditions and spin on the original african Voudon tradition. But his tophat! His glasses missing one lens! His funerary style! His skull face!....Laura? Nope the unmistakable baron samedi! The loa are fascinating to learn about. Personally i find that, through creating items with the powers and symbols of a certain loa in mind, i can make a connection to them. I begin to understand them. I feel their vibe (like dig it man....no, but seriously). Do i believe a mystical being is possessing me in a supernatural sense when i serve the loas? No. I do however feel as if i invoke certain energies from the idea of them. They are powerful archetypes associated with specific numbers, colors, plants, animals, objects, and acts. Putting a human-like name, face, and personality to these energies is the best way to get to know them and their inherent power. 

         A) Smudge my sacred space (my home)

         B) Welcome ghede spirits/energies (by fanning towards me, prefferably when the moon is waxing)

         C) Get rid of ghede spirits/energies (by fanning away from me, prefferably when the moon is waning).....

                Plus....on the other side is a sacred mirror, perfect for mirror spells! Personally, ive seen similar feather orisha fans (and mirrors, but not fan/mirror combo), and i havent seen any dedicated to the baron or the ghede, though im sure they exist. But who needs their fans?!! I poured this one out from my heart and soul and, because i made it, my magick comes built-in. All of the details are specific to the ghede or the baron specifically, and quite honestly it made me feel closer to understanding what makes Baron Samedi a powerful image i can channel into my own creative magick.

There was no plan.

No specific end goal.

No list of supplies.

Just grabbin' and gluin' and beading with fervor until painstakingly perfect. I wouldnt stop until it looked like something the baron himself had commissioned from me. Beautiful in an honest way, and beautiful in its ugly aspects as well. The ghede have a twisted beauty that is awe-inspiring....

As the process continued, the art transformed. I was, in a sense, "possessed" by creativity. Quickly i grabbed anything i could use that has an association with the baron and the ghede:

Numbers 9 and 13.

Colors purple, black, and red.

Skulls and skeletons.

Crosses.

Nails.

Every detail bringing the baron closer.

By the time i was finished,  the entire table was a full-on Baron Samedi conjure altar:

Offerings of rum, coffee, and cocoa. Cigars. An image of a rooster. Candles. Incense.

And my fan. OUR fan. Without the idea of him and his signature style and tastes, none of this very real magick would have occurred.

Even if he is a mythical being or a metaphor, his mere history and unique character make him someone who will continue to carry magickal associations when focused on.

After the work was complete, i blasted "No time to cry" by sisters of mercy, danced a bit in my legbrace, and fanned the incense throughout my apartment, feeling as if those feathers were part of my very own wings.

I left the baron his rum, coffee, cocoa, rooster, and half a cigar in a nice black box with a bow. I wouldn't have felt right removing them (even in the world of the dead, there are no take-backs).

Finally,  i hung the fan, mirror-side down, on the inside of my front door. This is where i can interact with it daily, and also where it can best fan in the good and fan out the bad.

Though i never petitioned the baron for anything (it felt more like a fun boozy brunch with a friend than conjure), i left the experience  feel honored and powerful. And with a dope piece of magickal art.

Its nice having friends in high places.

P.S.  tell hot mess Laura, Baron Samedi says hello.