Love/Hate (Lemon GarouxReader 🍋)

Hell

Author's Note: 

Hi! So happy to see you all again! I've just got one important note for this chapter and for this story in general:

The story has now reached the Monster Association arc. If you have read the manga and/or webcomic, I just wanted to take a moment to explain that I will not be following either of those exactly. When I planned out this story back in 2020, I based the storyline on the webcomic and where the manga had been up to, so this story will not include the new elements that were added to the manga towards the end of the MA arc that differ from the webcomic (I don't want to give spoilers so I'm not being very specific though I do strongly encourage everyone to read both the manga and webcomic!).
I am writing my own version of those events to fit in line with this fanfiction. That means I have kept, cut and combined different events from manga and webcomic to tell the story that I am passionate about. So this is just a heads up that it WILL be different to canon in some obvious ways.
I will also only be focusing on what happened to Garou. The manga and webcomic do an excellent job portraying many different fights that the S class heroes go through but my aim is not to rewrite or narrate every event of this arc but to concentrate on Garou and reader and our other important characters.
So I hope you enjoy this version of the MA arc as we start to approach the conclusion of this tale! 

Thank you very much for reading and your support! :)

~*~

You have never felt like this before. At once completely numb, paralysed but also so tense and agitated, as if being pulled, cracked into a million little pieces. Your mind feels jagged, nonsensical and no matter how much you try to pull it together the fear never lets you, rendering you just a mute, shaking wreck. A complete and utter wreck steeped in your own suffocating hell.

You know something's happening around you, a jumble of worried, panicked voices, some talking to you, some about you, but their words don't make sense, as if you're hearing them in some sort of vacuum. They sound far away and distorted despite being right next to you, surrounding you with their concern. Tsukiko, some unfamiliar hero, Zenko, Bad, Bang, Bomb, Genos...!
But all your attention is on the scene that replays in your mind over and over again. Ryo and Tareo's surprised faces and the ugly, deformed tentacles, gruesome appendages wrapped tight around them. It happens so fast that their little expressions freeze in time. They didn't even have time to become afraid, to register what was happening to them, before they were pulled from you.

"I have to find them," you say, getting up off the ground, your eyes looking ahead but not really seeing, your gaze still focused inwards at the terror of that memory.
Tsukiko stops mid-sentence, turning away from Bad, quickly gripping your arm in support as your own legs barely hold you up.
"I have to find them," you say a little louder as you take a step forward.
"Wait," Tsukiko says gently, trying to hold you back, to pull you back into lucidity. "Wait-"
But you resist, pulling your arm away, out of her reach.
"I have to. I'm going to find them," you mumble and start walking slowly, shakily, completely unaware of the kind but sorrowful, powerlessly angry, dismayed stares fixed on your back, on your dirt-covered, bleeding fingers.
Bad, for all his furious hatred of Garou and his regard for you as someone more than just a little insane to keep associating with him, feels a powerful, dangerous mix of rage and empathy right now. He cannot imagine how it would feel to be in your shoes, to lose Zenko like that right before his own eyes. This whole situation is fucked up and he's ready to fucking kill as many monsters as it takes for doing this, for putting Zenko, Tsukiko, in harm's way. For threatening to destroy everything that he loves, that gives him meaning.
"Oi," you feel a hand on your arm again. A bigger, much stronger hand. The quiet compassion in this voice doesn't match the iron grip of its owner's hand. "Oi," it says again, even softer, "you ain't going to do anything by yourself."
It pulls you back lightly, with concern.
"We'll get them back," it says. "We'll fucking get them back," and the pure rage-driven conviction gets through even to you, just for a moment, just for the tiniest second, before your mind collapses again.
You try to pull away again, your body acting on its own, as if completely disconnected from your mind, or maybe completely, perfectly connected, being given unconscious instructions to find, to protect, but the people who know and care about you lightly and kindly guide you away from the spot.