Chapter Text
A pair of tightly-laced boots pounded across the needle-strewn ground of the vast expanse of forest, short bobbed hair bouncing like wild while chestnut-brown eyes scanned the flora, breath coming out in strangled gasps as her legs raced, stumbling over roots and bushes as she ran, ran, ran, her hands coming up to scrub at tears that weren’t there anymore. The old cape around her shoulders flared behind her, smelling of home, smelling of friends and family and feeling like arms that pulled at her shoulders, wishing for her to stop and do what she needed to.
What she had to do.
Her stomach felt empty, hollow with hunger and exhaustion. She slowed to a halt, leaning on a nearby oak, tall and sturdy, before the far-off boom of a familiar, bright green magic startled her into running again. She hated it, being completely depleted of her pool before being sent out into the wood like a mutt being dropped off in the countryside. The message from the village elders was clear, and, honestly, she couldn’t disagree with what they had said. She no longer had a home in their village. If she were to come back, she would be killed on sight.
She continued running in a blind panic for hours, stopping just briefly every so often to suck air into her burning lungs, until night stretched across the sky and she was utterly lost under the pinhole stars, the canopy of leaves overhead leering down on her judgingly. She stumbled across a cliffside, and, with her calves aching and her head pounding, she sat down on the edge to gaze at the vast acres of forest extending past the horizon underneath her. Surely, those of her village would be asleep by now, and certain of her exile.
Everything came rushing back to her in the dead of night, and she felt the sting of it all again, so fresh and new, as she clutched to her cape as if her life depended on it’s soft, thick surface. Her padded fingers squeezed it into a bunch, bringing it up so she could bury her face in it. Her family, her friends, everyone she had ever known… she would never see them again.
Her mind searched the past year’s events for what could have gone differently. If she had collected more food for the village, if she had worked harder, if she hadn’t held back in the face of being thrown astray during that stupid showdown, if she had aimed a blast a little higher, if she didn’t feel the ache in her bones of magic depletion, if Izuku had enough coldness in him to finish their battle with a spell between the eyes, maybe she wouldn’t be here, a starving mage girl alone on a cliffside clinging so desperately to memories of a home she would never be allowed to return to.
She felt her throat open up, a scream ripping from her diaphragm. Home. She wants to go home. She wants to see her mom and dad. She wants to go to the market with Izu and play pranks and race back to her house with Idia and collect eggs in the mornings with Tsu and oblige Aoyama’s fashionable antics and watch Todoroki try to hold in laughter when she busts out a joke she’s been brewing up for a week and listen to Jirou play the lute and- and she screams it all out into the air. All of it. Her voice is raw and it cracks as she begs the open air to let her go home.
But, of course, the air doesn’t respond. The chirps of the crickets don’t tell her they’ll open their arms and let her back in, the sway of the trees don’t point to home. She gripped her midsection with her full arms, tightening in a self-hug as she continued to scream at the top of her lungs all that she wanted from the world. She knew there was no point to it, and it isn’t until her throat burns and her eyes droop that she let her voice pitter out, words blurring into a bubble of unintelligible babbles, the cool of night doing nothing to slow the pounding of blood in her ears.
Curling in on herself, Uraraka let herself sniffle into her shirt. She briefly recalled her father’s words, his warm smile imprinted on her memory. She had been only seven when she had heard it, wiping at angry tears after she and a classmate had gotten in a tiny-fisted brawl over a toy.
“You can throw a pity party, but once that’s done, you’ve gotta pick yourself up and get right back on it. There’s no use in wallowing.”
So, with the same reddened face and tear-stained cheeks as a seven-year-old, she hiccupped, her warm, pounding forehead pressed into her knees, as she forced down her tears, clearing her sore throat with a cough. The light spring breeze cooled her, offering some reprieve from the heat of running for so long.
Her warm chocolate eyes peeked up, once again sampling the landscape. If it weren’t for the situation she was in, she would’ve called the night pretty, each star shining overhead like the roof of a great crystal cave, the open air currents unlittered with clouds or birds. She took a breath, clenching her teeth with resolve. She could do this. She’s not defenseless, and she knows how to grow crops… to an extent. She could build a shelter, survive off the land… maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, maybe this could be the chance to start anew, to become a completely new person.
It isn’t until the warm whoosh of air blows the hairs on the back of her neck that she catches her eyes widening in terrort, slowly turning to face whatever creature decided that her wailing wasn’t enough to be scared off from approaching. For what seems to be the hundredth time that night, she found herself hitching her breath while her brown eyes stared straight into the muzzle of a blood-red, sharp-tooth, snaggle-clawed, blood-thirsty dragon.
And for the second time that night, she feels her chest swell with a scream.