Chapter Text
You’ve been called an emotionless robot many times in your short life, but this last time takes the cake.
“What’s more precious, huh?” The villain, a large man with some sort of space-tearing quirk, shoots you a saucy grin. The siren sounding in the far back of your mind reaches a pitch high enough to drown out half of your constant, terrified train of thought.
In fact, the entire train seems to crash when the man smiles – because there’s blood flowing over his lips, blood, because you had to be bold for the first time in your life and try getting one good hit in, because he’s just told you to choose between your life and a child’s and there’s blood on his teeth and he’s smiling – and you are left staring at what could be your death.
He’s asked you a question. One shovel-shaped thumb is pointed straight at your midsection, and the other is jabbed into the collarbone of a kid.
You don’t know her. She’s small and blonde and most likely foreign seeing as she hasn’t stopped gasping out that one lilting word since the attack began. You don’t know for sure, but you think it means ‘mommy’.
“What’s wrong, wannabe?” The man says, and he presses his thumb into that little girl so hard that she stops talking. “Heroes die to save the public all the time. Aren’t you prepared to do the same? Why the bland face, huh? Am I boring you?”
The train skids along the metaphorical ground.
The crime rate in Japan is eight percent. Eight. Compared to America’s twenty percent, Japan is practically a paradise and it has been for a while. Villain attacks are few and far in-between, the victims cared for without much fuss, the media getting its fifteen-minute say in things before moving on.
Which means you never knew just how terrifying attacks were before now.
You never knew how sick human beings could be.
You feel your quirk twist in aggravation. It’s taking everything in you to keep your hair from floating, keep your body in check because one twitch could mean a little girl with a missing abdomen. Not one eyeball can be allowed to manifest. Not one arm, one wing, one mouth, and your shield isn’t thin enough or fast enough to fit between the villains’ thumb and the kid.
Every plan that rushes past you is useless. For all your reckless bravery earlier, you’ve backed yourself into a corner now.
He’s asked you a question.
If you could shield yourself just as he moves to kill you- but that would start a real fight- you’re not good at fighting- you know how to take a punch, right?- not when the punch means losing some insides, you don’t- if you die the kid has the chance to get out of range- look at her, she’s scared stiff, she’ll hesitate- but what if she doesn’t- but what if she does- but- but- but- if you face him alone, who will be left to save you?
He asked you a question.
“I…” Come on, stall, you have to stall, there has to be help on the way by now, if you could just buy some time…
The words don’t come. You don’t know what you could possibly say that will stop him.
But, miraculously, it looks like your single, halting word entertains him. Worse, he looks almost charmed by the fear currently choking you, smile softening to a nearly friendly expression. His voice doesn’t change.
“Not so brave now. Everyone wants to be a hero, but now you get it, huh?” From the corner of your eye, you see his hold on the kid loosen. “Nobody wants to die. So how about this… that hit earlier. That hurt. You stand still and let me repay you for it, and I’ll let this little tyke go.” His eyes dart to the nearby counter. “After getting my paycheck, of course. Stand still, and no one has to die.”
The girl whimpers out that word again. Compared to your earlier choices, this offer is easy to take.
You nod. The fear of pain isn’t as all-encompassing as the fear of death, and you can’t let a kid get hurt. You can’t. You won’t.
“That’s the spirit,” he cheers, “now stay still.”
He moves around you, out of your peripheral vision and for a moment your heart feels like it’s taking up the space your lungs are collapsing in before he reappears behind the counter.
The villain keeps a thumb pointed at you, but it seems like the girl realizes at the same time you do: she’s free, she’s out of the line of fire. The kid dares to twitch her head towards you; she looks just as scared as she was a few seconds ago, if not more.
The store is silent. You know the girls’ guardian has to be in one of the aisles, but you two are the only civilians in sight. Even the cashier ran to the back room at the first opportunity.
It’s too quiet to risk talking to her. There’s no guarantee she’ll understand you anyway.
Instead, you pointedly look down at your hand and gesture for her to back away.
She sees, but doesn’t obey. Her eyes flick between you and the villain currently breaking open the register, scooping out his ‘paycheck’. You gesture again, quicker and more insistent, but she only takes a step back before freezing again. As you thought, she’s too scared to move.
You’re deer in headlights. Sitting ducks. What a pair you make.
The man hums happily and you twitch, cursing up a mental storm. When you look, it seems like he’s gotten what he came for – the top of the register is completely missing, leaving the money tray exposed and emptied. He pats his pockets and looks to you both, seeming to perk up even more when he sees neither of you made a run for it.
There’s still blood sluggishly streaming down his face.
She really could have escaped, but it’s too late now.
He examines you almost lazily. Wondering where to hollow you out, deciding what you need to give to heal his wounded pride. You can’t even breathe in the face of that expression, and after a moment it seems like he knows that. His grin stretches.
When he comes back around the counter, he doesn’t get you in the back or tear at where one of your arms connects to your body. What he does is so much more chilling.
He picks up the destroyed stool you hit him with and makes you face him.
“Pretty smart, not using your quirk.” He snorts. “My cousin, they were a law student, you know? Always used to go on and on about how pretty much anything is legal if you don’t use a quirk to do it.”
The stool itself is metal. When the attack started, you had grabbed it by the bottom rung and slammed the top into the man’s head like a club, and he had responded by trying to separate your hand from your wrist. Instead, he cut off the lowest part of one of the stool’s legs, forming a sharp point.
Now, the man grips the stool at the top, meaning that point he made is facing you.
“Too bad it won’t do you much good.”
When he swings, you hear the kid scream.
A lot of things register at once.
First, your quirk. You’ve got a stranglehold on it, but it feels like it’s screeching, clawing for a foothold to save you, shield you, do something to make you not afraid anymore. However, you feel it falter when the hit connects, your quirk couldn’t save you, why didn’t you let it save you—
Second, the sound. When you had done this earlier, you heard the metal top connect with the guys head in a deep CLONG sound, solid metal against his skull. The sound it makes connecting with your face is different, because you can hear the point of the severed leg gouging your cheek alongside the CLANG in your ear, the girl screaming—
Third, the sight. The man’s blood on his face, his hungry grin. The flash of metal, then the shift of the horizon as you fall.
The horizon shifts, and behind the villain you see movement that, a split second later, registers in your mind.
A hero, you have time to think.
You hit the ground hard. Things move around you, shouts ring out, a child cries in a language you don’t know and you are suddenly sitting upright.
Blood drips into your eyes, the sting registering just a moment before your face realizes what’s been done to it. In the adrenaline-numbed moment before you are blinded with pain, you see your rescuer kneeled beside you and shouting for medical attention, hair risen like yours typically is, eyes glowing red.
“Sorry,” you say, “I don’t know.”
You’ve said it so much in the last half hour that it’s a surprise the nurses are even bothering to ask anymore. “You don’t know what your mom’s number is?”
“He destroyed my phone. I didn’t memorize it.”
The nurse, a man named… Chari? Chant? You look at the nametag on his shirt and almost scrunch your nose in disgust. His name is Chad. Who names their kid Chad anymore? Chad sighs in irritation and reluctantly stows away the pen and paper he’s been trying to shove in your face for the last few minutes. “Kid, I know you probably don’t care that much about law enforcement, but we’re seriously required to call your guardians within two hours of getting you here, or we get in trouble.”
“Sorry,” you say again, blandly. “I don’t know.”
“Geez.” He scratches at the back of his head. “Okay. Okay. I’m gonna go see if your family name pinged anything in our system. Sit tight.”
You nod. The slight motion pulls at the bandages on your face, but if they’re able to stay put after thirty minutes of dead-ended Q&A then they’ll probably be fine for a while. Chad leaves with one hand playing at the hem of his scrubs.
One of the doctors here used her quirk to stop the bleeding, but that’s about as far as she was able to go for a non-fatal injury. You get it, though. Quirk exhaustion is dangerous, and she might need it for someone else.
It hurts, but you get it.
There’s a lot of talking just outside the open door that you don’t bother paying attention to. They’ve been debating on how to reach your folks for so long that it’s basically background noise at this point. You’re pretty sure in another hour they’ll be desperate enough to enlist some kind of info-quirk. Those exist, right? Right. Actually, it might be a relief, because that’d mean you wouldn’t have to talk to them anymore.
Your head throbs. There’s nothing to do in this room except stare at some of the more colorful warning labels in the open cabinet. You stare until the red-on-white warnings are overlaid with blood-on-teeth and then you stop.
You nearly attacked the EMS responders when you woke up. All you could see was red-on-white because they were in the middle of trying to stem the bleeding. Your quirk went into overdrive and sent the guy directly in front of you into the wall of the cabin. They didn’t give you the chance to say sorry.
You should apologize. As soon as the nurses let you out, you’ll track him down. Sorry I slammed you back so hard you broke the IV stand, I swear it wasn’t on purpose. You would have done it earlier if they hadn’t practically pushed you into the waiting room with a shock blanket as soon as the truck stopped.
The little girl from earlier isn’t here. You wonder what happened to her.
You wonder where the villain went.
Honestly, you’re lucky you remember the attack at all – everything after the mutilated stool crashing into your head is a panicky blur. The few seconds there had been before the thing got slammed into your skull are a blur, too, but you remember the things you noticed while it happened. You make an effort to remember those things.
You held onto your quirk. The little girl cried while it happened. Someone saved you, but not quickly enough.
Pointedly not thinking about the red-on-white, you try remembering what happened between getting knocked down and coming to in the ambulance.
It’s harder than it should be. You know for sure you were conscious at the time, knew you were being helped to your feet and escorted to the paramedics, but… it feels like you lost time, there. You didn’t ‘wake up’ in the usual sense, but when they shoved that quickly-bloodstained gauze right in your face you reacted pretty quickly.
Huh. Maybe you did need that shock blanket after all. That’s depressing.
Maybe finding that girl will clear things up a little. She was clearly worried about you, probably more than you’re worried about her; did the police have a translator for her? Was her guardian actually in the store at the time, and were they found before the kid got escorted to the station? She didn’t get caught in the fighting, did she?
If she did, you’re going to rain hell on the bozos involved, heroes or otherwise. You got a new scar for that girl.
Fuck, you have a new scar.
There aren’t any mirrors here, so you do your best to map out the parts that hurt the most with just a little pressure. Hand, meet face.
The villain swung from his right side. Your new scar (whether or not you should choose to accept it, ha) begins a few centimeters above your left eyebrow and stretches downward. If you’re super careful, you can actually feel how deep it had cut – there’s a space, just around your left eye, where the damage fades into a small scratch. Of course, that means your nose is pretty messy, but it seems to have bounced a little bit on that particular snag and leaves most of the right side of your face untouched.
Most of it. It dragged across your cheek one last time before you got knocked aside. Point is, despite being pretty linear, getting used to it will be difficult.
Bet you’re going to look like a badass, though. Most of the people that hang around you like you because of your ‘calm/threatening air’, whatever that means. Maybe now you’ll shift to ‘full on threatening, do not engage’.
That’d be interesting. And useful.
The voices outside reach a certain level of irritation that sets your teeth on edge.
They’ve got to be close to a decision now. It feels like you’ve been waiting forever, but it also feels like ‘forever’ is going to last a while longer. You might as well take the time to brace yourself for when Mom gets here.
You don’t quite zone out. Not like you usually do, anyway; there aren’t any entertaining daydreams floating around your head right now, mostly because the only thing you end up imagining is the clang of metal against your ear, and then imagining it blurs into actually hearing it and honestly, you’re trying to save that panic attack for later.
So you zone out. You take a break from reality for a bit and just go blank, letting your quirk adjust to your lowered heart rate and just exist for a while. By the time a new voice outside shocks you back to yourself, your hair is almost completely obeying gravity, hanging just a bit past your chin, and any extra features that popped up between being admitted and the nurses giving up have disappeared.
How long ago did Chad leave? Fifteen minutes? How long does it take for someone to look up a name?
They asked for your quirk, right? No, yeah, they absolutely did. Maybe they didn’t hear you right? It is a pretty weird quirk, with all the mutations piling up.
“Oh, finally. Mrs. Freeman!”
Shit. That’s your cue.
You take a deep breath as the harried clack of familiar heeled boots draws closer, but the preparation doesn’t stop your hair from shooting up to float lazily around your ears.
“You’re the ones that called?”
Her voice, even when urgent, centers you in a way. You’re going to be getting so many lectures for this stunt, but… at least you’ll be around to hear them.
“Yes, they’re right in here, but before you go in—”
“But nothing, move out of the way.”
And there she is.
A bit overweight, as most mothers are, and still in her work clothes – maroon and black today, with those ever-present black boots – but somehow looking less professional than usual. She chokes on her next breath just seeing the amount of gauze on your face, but as soon as that moment of shock passes she’s in your space, already tilting your chin around to look.
“Ma’am—”
“Hush,” she says, and they do. “Ovi?”
“I’m fine.” ‘Ovi’ is one of your old nicknames- you had gotten into a huge, family-wide argument about the word ‘oviparous’ and how it definitely was a word when you were five. The name just sort of stuck after that. You haven’t heard it in a while. “I’m fine.”
She exhales. “You gave me a heart attack. I’m going gray, darling.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” she says. “I heard you saved a life, even if you are driving your mother to an early grave.”
That gets your attention. “Do you know what happened to her? None of the nurses said anything.”
“She’s not injured. That’s all I asked.”
“What about the villain?”
Her face changes. One second, she’s in ‘motherly concern’ mode, and the next she looks like she would skin someone alive if she were only allowed to – you see that expression every once in a while, when you somehow catch her on a business call. It’s almost gratifying, knowing it’s directed at someone that hurt you. “Put away for the rest of his natural life, if I have anything to say about it. And believe me, there will be things to say.”
Mom is terrifying when she wants something, and right now it looks like she wants that guys’ head on a stick.
Sometimes it’s really nice being related to her.
She directs her – still intensely bloodthirsty – attention to the small gathering of nurses outside. “When can we leave?”
Most of them shrink back. Chad (when did he get back?) steps up to the plate. “In a few hours, ma’am, but there’s an officer waiting for your child’s statement.”
“I met him. He can wait.” As always, Mom’s word is law. “What’s been done so far?”
“Thanks to Doctor Katsuki, the bleeding is stemmed and the cut has been cleaned.” He looks down at the notepad he’d been carrying earlier while the group lingering behind him escapes to safer parts of the hall. “It’s a bit too small to require skin grafts, but the cut will scar without quirk interference. The concussion and broken nose that came with it have been completely healed.”
You bet your next allowance the next question’s about the money.
“How much would intervention cost?” Ah, there it is. Predictable.
“If you’ll follow me, I can input your insurance information and see what your options are.”
She nods and turns back to you, already using her unoccupied hand to try smoothing down your hair. It never works, but she never stops trying. “You’ll be okay here?”
You nod. Fuck, you must have really scared her. The last time she was this worried about you, you had a fever for three days straight. “I’ll talk to the cops.”
“You will not. No statements until I get back.”
“Okay.”
“And don’t touch the bandages.”
“I won’t.”
“And relax,” she says, untangling her hand from your hair. “Do you want me to call Kay?” You shake your head- it’s enough that she has to deal with treatment costs right now, you won’t dare add a therapy session too. “Later, then. I’ll schedule a meeting for tomorrow afternoon.”
She leaves before you can argue.
Mothers.
… You forgot to ask for a phone. You really need to stop forgetting stuff.
There’s nothing left to do but bounce your leg and wait. The door’s been left open again, but it seems like the crowd from earlier has completely dispersed so there’s no chatter to tune out. You hear Mom’s voice down the hall and do your best to follow orders: don’t talk, don’t touch, and don’t panic.
Easy.
You close your eyes and wait for your heart rate to slow.
“You didn’t use your quirk.”
“It’s against the law.”
“But you didn’t use your quirk,” she hisses in the silence of the car. “You had an advantage and the brains to pull off a miracle and you just let that bastard hit you. What about the shield? I gave you my Lucky Shield and you held it back? For what?”
“I didn’t know the heroes would get there that quickly,” you say, and you already know you’re going to be saying it a lot more in the near future. “If I used any part of my quirk it would have started a real fight, and then I’d be arrested.”
“I would have gotten you out.” Streetlights streak past your window, glow bouncing off the side mirror. “You need to trust me on these things! You would have been acting in self-defense, which means I could have gotten you out easily and with one less… injury.”
“It’s a scar, Mom.”
“We can get it fixed. There must be someone somewhere that can.”
You nod. With Mom paying a bit extra for a specialist, your newest injury is fully healed. However, they said it took too long to track her down for approval and medical costs so there’s still a fine white line stretching like yarn from your eyebrow to your nose, only interrupted where the metal skipped over your eye. And Mom is pissed.
It didn’t help that she sat in while you were giving the cops your statement. By the time you were discharged, she was about ready to break your legs as long as it kept you from moving.
“I don’t know why they took so long to call me,” she grumbles, and you almost flinch.
“Sorry.”
“Hush. We’ve lived in this city for what? Three years? Three years, four doctor’s visits, all our digital files in place and they couldn’t even track down a number? What idiots.”
“My phone broke.”
“They only needed your name. Possibly your quirk.”
“Maybe they heard me wrong?”
She huffs. “Unlikely.”
You let it go, if only because the amount of time it took for the nurses to figure out your mother’s number only helped your already dangerous stress levels. Talking to so many people, all of them asking the same questions over and over again… it wasn’t fun.
“Do you…” You begin. She glances over. “Never mind.”
“No. What is it?”
“I just…” You have to ask her. You have to. She would never forgive you for holding off, for waiting until the time was right; she always said ‘the time is never right, so just do what you can now’. Your whole family lives by that. You need to ask.
“Darling?”
You… you can’t. Not yet.
“I was wondering how I could get all my friends’ numbers,” you say instead. “I don’t think my phone can transfer them anymore.”
Mom doesn’t pick up on your cowardice. She never does. “We’ll get you a new phone this weekend. I’ll see what I can do about getting the broken one back from whatever evidence locker it was shoved into.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to.”
Right. And Mom’s word is law. As always.
You both drive in silence for a while. It’s a more comforting silence, though: instead of beeping heart monitors and shuffling nurses, there’s just the hum of the engine and the stifled sounds of bugs and frogs chirping in the night.
The car pulls up to a stoplight. You stare at the red just long enough that it reminds you of red-on-white and then you look away, hair lifting a touch.
“Darling, your eyes.”
This time you really do flinch- you didn’t realize you had been looking out the window and looking at her at the same time. The eye that manifested on your shoulder gets dismissed. Your hair rises some more.
“Honey—”
“It’s green,” you say just as the light changes.
She reluctantly moves the car forward again. “Are you sure you’re alright?”
“I’ll get over it.”
“So you’re not, is what you’re telling me.”
“I almost died,” you shoot back casually, “what do you think?”
There’s a pause. “I think you should be ready to visit Kay tomorrow.”
“… What time?”
“Three. Plenty of time to sleep in.”
“I’m not going to school?”
“Just so I can take you out early for therapy? No. Besides, don’t you want rest?”
You guess that’s true, but… “You never let me have off days?”
“You nearly died.”
“That’s never really stopped me before, though.”
“Do you want an off day?” She says, like you’re the one being unreasonable. It would be a fair assessment if she was actually acting normal.
Do you want an off day? Absolutely, always and forever, you cherish your vacations something fierce. But just imagining wandering around the house with nothing to think about but what happened earlier, plus no way to contact your friends, makes your heart sink.
It’s just so quiet in the house.
“Everyone’s going to worry if I don’t show up or answer my phone.”
“I’m sure your friends know you’re more than capable of taking care of yourself. You’ll see them on Tuesday.”
“Okay.” As always, in the end it doesn’t really matter what you prefer. The guys in school think you’re stubborn, but you’re one of the most spineless people you’ve ever met. Living with Mom has its perks (a house mostly to yourself, all the latest tech to fill your free time, a storm of a defender calling you her child) but the tradeoff is she always knows what’s best.
Even if she doesn’t tend to stick around to see what ‘what’s best’ includes.
You’re not stupid. You know you’re plain-faced and expressionless. You’re a conceptually tired person despite only being thirteen – tired enough that Kay, your wonderful rainbow sparkle therapist, has been trying to get you anti-depressants for the better part of four months behind Mom’s back. You can join whatever clubs you want, but can’t make friends that stick. You can go anywhere, do anything, and face almost no consequences. And all of it – all of it – comes from Mom and her influence.
It’s a balancing act. Without the general feeling of exhaustion following you around it would be easier.
Kay says it gets easier, with time. That the emptiness and tired aura never really go away when people have the thing you have, but as they get older it fades. Like background noise. Like old lightbulbs. Like paint in water. You just have to learn to hold on.
You’re pretty sure you can do it, after today.
Because somewhere around the moment you got it the car to drive home, the shaky feeling in your chest got a little more stable.
Because you did a good thing today.
Because, as soon as you can get the words out, you’re going to tell Mom you want to be a hero.