The room was too quiet.
Not the kind of quiet that calmed anything—just the kind that pressed in, heavy and sterile, like the walls were watching.
Dabi sat hunched forward on the edge of the bed, forearms resting on his thighs, fingers hanging loose between his knees. The light above him buzzed faintly, uneven. It should’ve been annoying.
It wasn’t enough.
His thoughts filled the space anyway.
Flashes came and went without warning. Heat. Smoke. That familiar, unbearable brightness. His father’s face—still standing, still breathing, still there.
So close.
His jaw tightened, the pull of old staples faint but familiar. For a second, something hot stirred under his skin—reflex, memory—but it died just as quickly, like everything else here.
Then something quieter slipped in where it didn’t belong.
His mother.
The others.
He exhaled sharply through his nose, like he could force it out with the breath alone.
“…Tch.”
This place was suffocating. But it wasn’t prison.
That was enough.
A knock cut through the silence.
“Group therapy.”
The room looked exactly the same as always. Chairs in a neat circle. Too neat. Too deliberate. Patients already scattered through them, each one carrying their own brand of damage in the way they sat, the way they avoided looking at each other.
The psychiatrist stood at the front, already mid-sentence, like the conversation had started without anyone’s permission.
Dabi didn’t bother with a chair.
He moved past them, slow, uninterested, and dropped to the floor instead—back against the wall, one knee drawn up. It wasn’t comfortable. That wasn’t the point.
“…trauma reshapes the way we process—”
The words blurred together.
He let his gaze drift instead.
Not obvious. Never obvious. Just enough to take people in piece by piece.
Someone tapping their foot too fast. Someone staring at nothing like they’d fallen out of their own body. Someone trying too hard to look “normal.”
Predictable.
Then the door shifted again. His eyes lifted, almost lazily—and stopped.
You.
For a second, nothing else moved. No tension. No hesitation. Just that same stillness you carried with you, like you existed slightly out of sync with the room. Not nervous. Not trying. Just… there.
His gaze lingered a fraction longer than it should have.
Not interest, not quite. Recognition, maybe.
Then it slipped away just as easily. Like it hadn’t happened at all. The psychiatrist kept talking. Dabi didn’t speak. Didn’t react.
He just leaned back against the wall, eyes half-lidded, watching everything without looking like he was watching anything at all.