#the belt specifically which is full of bandages and treats for kids he finds to calm them down

[creamecream]

Pro Hero: Search-and-Rescue Hero, Hachikō

[violetwolfraven]

Look, I don't have any specific prompt but can you write anything about the superpowers au?

Epic. I’ve got an idea I’ve been sitting on for a while that I was gonna write anyway but anyway I hope you ship jomike. Also that you’re okay with one in the rebellion version of the au cause that’s what the idea is.

Get ready for A N G S T.

Tw: injuries, non-graphic physical abuse, and kind of a bit of internalized homophobia.

...

Logically, Jojo knew that there was no one coming for him. Albert couldn’t afford to risk anyone else, and besides, they didn’t even know where this prison was to send someone. And if by some chance what was left of the gang could find this place, there was the fact that Jojo wasn’t even that powerful. He was just a flora, and not a leader. He’d known the risk when he went on that mission.

So, logically, Jojo knew no one was coming. No one could.

But as things got worse and worse from the second he got there, as the guards gave out beatings for nothing, for no reason, and left kids barely breathing left and right, Jojo kept hoping they would, anyway.

He thought he saw Jack once, across the cafeteria, but there was no way to know for sure.

Another time, he thought he heard Crutchie’s voice from that little jail cell they put him in before they brought him here, but when he called out, no one responded.

He though he’d passed a cell once that contained a boy with a shock of golden hair like Race’s, but he didn’t know if it was just his imagination.

Jojo didn’t know what was his imagination anymore. This place, a haze of pain and fear, had a way of messing with you. A part of him was still hoping it was all just a bad dream, but another part of him said that if he could wake up from this, he would have a long time ago.

But this place was messing with his head. He already didn’t know how long he’d been there, so he wasn’t sure. It wasn’t like Jojo had never felt pain before to recall it in dreams or memories.

“Hey, Jo, are you feelin’ up to tryin?’”

That was only one part of this nightmare that he really hoped was real.

Jojo hadn’t known Mike well before everything started going wrong. He’d known him enough to say hello, known that Mike was a twin, that he was the same age as Jojo, and what his powers were, but they hadn’t been friends. Barely even acquaintances, really.

Then Manhattan split up, and Jojo went with Albert, Mike went with Finch, and honestly, he’d barely even thought about the fact that he would probably never see him again, unless Albert or Finch actually succeeded in finding Jack, Crutchie, and Race.

Then Albert had taken Jojo, among others, on a hit, trying to take out the Delanceys.

Jojo was supposed to grow stinging nettles over the back door to prevent those assholes from escaping. He’d been halfway done with it, but Wiesel had gotten a cloth full of chloroform over his mouth and nose before he could react, and then Jojo was in a tiny jail cell with nothing for him to grow anything out of.

From there, they’d knocked him out again to transport him to the prison codenamed: the Refuge, and the next thing Jojo knew, he was being tossed into a cell with one of the Guzman twins.

“Well, well, well. Jojo de la Guerra. Great to see ya! Welcome to hell.”

Jojo had hidden how freaked out that made him enough to clarify that this was Mike, and oddly, he didn’t seem all that different from how Jojo remembered him. He seemed... fine. Sarcastic and funny. Which was weird because by all accounts, these prisons were basically hell.

He’d found out later that night that the Refuge really was hell, when the guards decided to welcome him by dragging him out of the cell to a room down the hall, yanking his shirt off, and taking an old belt to his back.

Jojo had tried not to scream, but he’d only been able to manage it for so long. And when the guards finally had enough, got his shirt back on him, and dumped him back in the cell, he was bleeding heavily and only half-conscious.

He’d flinched when someone gently touched his arm, and tried to get away, but instead, the hands pulled him closer, gentle as possible while still overpowering Jojo’s incoherent struggling.

Jojo had stopped struggling when he realized that the arms wrapped around him were staying gentle, that there was no more pain coming, but he’d still been dazed and confused.

“Mike?”

Mike hadn’t responded, and Jojo had felt the vibrations against his chest before he heard it; Mike singing quietly, his hands stinging less and less against Jojo’s back.

“I can’t heal ya,” he’d said when he was done, “I haven’t figured out a combination for that yet. But this’ll take away the pain. For a little while, at least.”

“How are you doin’ that?” Jojo had asked, “You said you’ve been here a month.”

The powered people in the Refuge were given only the bare minimum of food, because though power-dampeners couldn’t completely take away anyone’s abilities, powers took energy and you couldn’t summon enough energy to use them with the dampener already interfering if you were half-starved.

At least, that was the theory, which evidently wasn’t completely true with how Mike was using his powers like normal, like nothing was wrong.

“I have. And I can’t do everythin’ in here, but... I guess some of us just know how to run on empty.”

He’d used water and soap from their sink and a ripped-up sheet they didn’t need to clean and bandage Jojo’s back, and the pain had stayed away until the next morning.

They’d fallen into a routine, patching each other up when they got hurt, talking about whatever came to mind during long days with nothing to do, sitting together at meals, and...

And little by little, Jojo started to realize that he was feeling things for Mike he’d never felt before, in a fluttering warmth when he smiled, a dull, throbbing hurt when he started to be able to tell how many of those smiles were faked, a fear deep in his bones when guards dragged the other boy out of the cell.

Or... maybe he had felt this before. Or something like it. He’d felt these things in a different way for every one of his close friends, and...

And he’d felt it to an extent for Race, once upon a time, when they were maybe 13. Then again, for Elmer for only about a month, when they were 15.

It had been a lot less intense, when he felt it for them, but it was definitely this, or something like it.

But Jojo had buried those feelings, never let himself think about them, forced himself to focus on developing his powers, instead. He’d decided he wasn’t going to feel that way, waited the feelings out and never made a move, because if there was one thing people hated more than a person with powers, it was a gay person with powers.

Jojo didn’t have anything else to focus on here, unless he wanted to focus on his own pain (he didn’t) so he was forced to feel every slight shift in his emotions as he fell in love with Mike.

He was falling. Slowly, but surely, he was falling.

And it wasn’t scary, like he was expecting.

Well, it was. But it was a million other things, too, most of them good.

But of course, falling in love in the Refuge was full of complications, and as they switched to sharing a bed on cold nights, (Jojo guessed at least a couple months must have passed if it was getting this cold. That, or the Refuge was farther north than they’d thought.) a few nights, it got so cold that Mike had to sing them some warmth.

They’d gotten lucky that nobody had noticed all the times when Mike took away Jojo’s pain, or his own, if he could manage a song after a beating, and that they hadn’t seen the first few nights he sang them some warmth.

They couldn’t stay lucky forever.

The next time Mike sang to keep them warm, the guards came in and dragged him away not five minutes later.

He was still breathing when they brought him back, but only barely, and Jojo had never felt this kind of fear before.

Mike had more bruises than Jojo could count, belt scars on his back, at least four broken ribs, and blood running down his face from a nose that was probably broken.

He was crying. No matter how bad things got, he never cried.

“Shh,” Jojo had said, “It’s okay. It’s over now. It’s gonna be okay. I’m here.”

Jojo had managed to get him up on the bed, but that was about all he could do.

Mike always smiled at him after this happened, to let him know that he wasn’t okay, but he would recover. And no matter how much Jojo hated how he felt the need to smile when he wasn’t feeling it, it was worse now that he wasn’t smiling, because that meant he was hurt so badly that he couldn’t care.

“Mike, you need to sing. Please, Mike. You need to sing the pain away.”

They’d beaten him so badly that he couldn’t sing. That was the problem. He was in so much pain that all he could do was sob.

And Jojo was helpless to do anything to take away that pain.

Jojo really hated being helpless.

He’d used their makeshift bandages to clean and treat the other boy’s wounds as best he could, but Mike was still in so much pain the next morning that he couldn’t even sit up.

For days afterwards, he wouldn’t or couldn’t talk, and he definitely didn’t sing, so Jojo had to fill the silence.

He’d talked about random things, when he could think of something to talk about, or sang, if he could remember lyrics to a song. And it was by no means like it had been when Mike would talk back, but at least after the first couple days, Jojo could tell he was listening.

It didn’t start to get better until a long time later.

Jojo had been singing to fill the silence, just some song he remembered that happened to be a duet in the real version.

“I remember what you wore on the first day, you came into my life and I thought, hey, you know, this could be something. Cause everything you do and words you say, you know that it all takes my breath away and now I'm left with nothing.

And maybe it’s true—“

He’d been shocked enough that he had to force himself to keep singing when Mike joined in from across the cell, singing the harmony part.

“—that I can't live without you, and maybe two is better than one. But there's so much time, to figure out the rest of my life, and you've already got me coming undone. And I'm thinking two is better than one.”

They’d sang that song together, and Mike wasn’t using his powers; just his regular singing voice, but it was more than he’d spoken in weeks, so Jojo let him go silent again afterwards.

It was trial and error after that. Sometimes, Mike would join in on duets and sometimes he wouldn’t. He still never used his powers and barely spoke, but his voice came back little by little.

It was warm enough that they didn’t have to share a bed anymore, though did, sometimes, anyway, by the time Mike asked the crutial question.

“How would you feel about getting out of here?”

They’d concocted a plan, Jojo giving Mike some of his food leading up to enacting it, so he could finally manage a big use of his powers.

Using his powers for the first time since the guards tried to beat them out of him, Mike sang a blow of power strong enough to put a crack in the back wall of their cell.

From there, they switched to getting Jojo’s strength up, and he started on growing the strong roots of an oak tree through the crack, lengthening it and punching through to the other side.

Tonight, if Jojo could make his tree grow suddenly and quickly, it would rip the wall apart.

“I can try,” he said, offering Mike a smile.

The other boy stood back as Jojo focused, feeling the fibers of the tree and all his messed-up emotions that, in theory, made him stronger.

The crack widened suddenly with a loud crumbling noise, and alarms started blaring.

“Not to put pressure on ya, Jo, but now would be a good time!”

“I’m tryin’!” Jojo exclaimed, “Come on!”

He wasn’t strong enough. He was half-starved and the dampener was weakening him and no matter how many messed-up emotions the Refuge made him feel, it wasn’t enough.

“Jojo,” Mike said, halfway panicked, “I’m really sorry if I’s been readin’ your signals wrong, but...”

Jojo was already calling on love and protectiveness as well as fear and pain.

The wall exploded.

Because Mike had grabbed Jojo’s face, pulled him close, and kissed him.

It was desperate and scared, but good and deep, too and it made Jojo feel like he was flying, like even hell could have a little heaven in it if he tried hard enough.

Then Mike pulled away, his face still scared as he looked over his shoulder and saw that Jojo had grown a full-grown oak tree in the space where the wall used to be, the trunk thick enough to support the ceiling and the leaves visibly green even against the red lights flashing with the alarm.

The alarm.

They needed to get out.

The Refuge was clearly in the middle of nowhere, with a couple hundred feet between them and a thick treeline. If they could get there, Jojo would be in his element. He wouldn’t need to create new plants, just use existing ones to his advantage. He was feeling strong enough to do that.

“Come on!” Jojo exclaimed, grabbing Mike’s hand and rushing for the opening between the tree and the wall on one side.

He’d never grown one that big before.

The difference as they left the actual cell was noticeable. Jojo could feel when the dampener was no longer messing with him.

Mike held him back for a second in the space between their cell and the outside world, singing a combination Jojo didn’t recognize.

“It’s a shield,” he explained urgently, “I ain’t at full strength, so I don’t know how long it’ll hold, but—“

“You used your powers.”

It was the first time in... Jojo didn’t even know how long. Days? Weeks? He’d thrown up out of panic after using them to crack the wall in the first place and hadn’t used his powers again since.

Mike nodded, “We’d never make it if I didn’t. We still need to run like hell.”

He wasn’t at full strength. The shield might fail under gunfire. It might only last a few seconds. Even if it didn’t, they’d have to be quick to put enough distance between them and the Refuge to stay free.

Jojo squeezed Mike’s hand as he heard guards shouting in the hallways, “Ready?”

“Set.”

“Go!” They shouted together, then took off running, not dropping hands as they hauled ass towards the tree line.

The shield held up most of the way, and Jojo felt a bullet nick his arm, but he didn’t let himself care as he kept running. He just ran faster.

They barely made it, and they had to slow down due to the complete darkness of night but still keep moving so the guards wouldn’t catch them, but Jojo could finally breathe.

He was surrounded by plants, holding hands with the boy he loved and knowing that he was finally waking himself up from a long nightmare.

No one was coming to rescue them, but that was alright.

They could survive long enough to get back to the waking world of New York.

Growing stinging nettles behind them to make pursuit a little more interesting wasn’t even that hard.

...

((Btw I didn’t state it super clearly, but Mike’s power is that he can make basically anything happen with his voice. It’s just a matter of finding the right combination of notes.))