The room was too bright, too sterile, too full of sounds that didn’t make sense. Machines beeped in sharp intervals, nurses moved quickly around the bed, their voices clipped and urgent. But for Satoru, everything tunneled to one thing — you.

You were clutching his hand with a strength that nearly broke his bones, your cries raw, pulled straight from the deepest part of you. He had never seen you like this. Never seen you so vulnerable, so torn open by pain. And he hated it — hated that he couldn’t do a damn thing.

“Breathe with me, sweetheart, just… just like that—” His voice cracked. He tried to sound steady, tried to wear the easy grin everyone expected of him, but his chest was constricting too fast. His thumb kept brushing over your knuckles, desperate, as though that could anchor both of you.

Then you screamed again, louder this time, and he swore his heart split clean in two.

Satoru had faced curses the size of mountains, had walked through battlefields soaked in blood without blinking. But this — watching the woman he loved writhe and cry, powerless to stop it — it was worse than any nightmare.

He caught flashes: the sweat on your brow, your back arching off the bed, the doctor’s calm but urgent instructions. The monitor’s shrill beeping when your heart rate spiked. Every sound stabbed into him. He couldn’t block it out. His Infinity meant nothing here. He couldn’t shield you. Couldn’t fight this.

Terror clawed its way up his throat. His hands were shaking, his breaths coming too shallow, too quick. She’s hurting. She’s breaking. I can’t… I can’t stop it.

“Her blood pressure’s dropping—” a nurse’s voice cut across the chaos.

The world tilted violently. He swayed on his feet, his grip on your hand faltering. He wanted to hold on, wanted to keep whispering to you, but his body betrayed him. His vision blurred at the edges, black creeping in, and the roar of blood in his ears drowned everything else out.

“No, no, I’m fine—” he tried to say, but the words collapsed with him.

A sharp gasp rippled through the room as Satoru crumpled to the floor, all six-foot-three of him hitting the tiles with a graceless thud. The nurses exchanged quick, exasperated looks — not the first fainting father they’d seen — but you, mid-labor, turned your head just enough to see him lying there, pale and still, one hand still stretched weakly toward you.

Even unconscious, even as terror finally dragged him under, his body hadn’t stopped reaching for you.