Out of Place

You can’t stand this body.

They tell you you did this to yourself, but you can’t quite imagine it, can’t quite tell what you were thinking at the time.

You’re a little sick at yourself, maybe. Sick at yourself and sick at them.

You’d cut it off, but Hinata says no.

(There are good reasons not to do it. No facilities here, not even the Super High School Level Nurse to stop you bleeding out, and maybe it would be better, maybe it would be for the best ...)

But Hinata says no, and he says it with a dead certainty in his eyes.

Is he trying to punish you? You think you’d like it if he were; you’d like to matter that much. But you know that’s not it. Hinata knows the practicalities as well as you do, and when all things are weighed, your own sickness at yourself is immaterial.

‘We all have to live with what we’ve done,’ Hinata says. And if he says it with empathy to the others, he doesn’t say it that way to you.

---

Here’s the thing. It’s not that no-one trusts you – you’re perfectly inured to that by now, and if there were ever any bitterness over it, it was transfigured the moment you realised what everyone was.

It’s not that they all wish any of the others had woken up instead of you – you understand that wish quite well. You know you don’t deserve this luck. (And if none of the others deserved it either ... well, you keep that to yourself.)

You understand your place here. You have always understood. The thing is – the thing you don’t get – is why none of them understand theirs.

Maybe it’s that hope. Maybe it’s Hinata’s hope, that you fell in love with. It must be. Why ever would they think they mattered, why ever would they think –

But Hinata says no.

Maybe you love him for it. You can’t quite tell any more.