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We have calcium in our bones–
Izuku breaks his wrist twice in their third semester.
The first time, it’s a clean break, nonexistent one minute and then there the next. There’s no prior notion for it, just a quick misstep, as Uraraka turns to speak to him and instead finds him in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, arm pressed close to his chest and a wince already settling on his features. Kaminari sets that one, deft fingers easily handling the limb with a tenderness they’ve all come to appreciate and a touch that is now more familiar than most.
“Really, Midoriya,” Kaminari teases, a familiar spark of mischief that serves to dull the pain. “Only you could manage to make my job harder on our days off.”
Izuku would say something in return, a soft laugh of an apology to continue the banter, but with every soft touch Kaminari sends warm sparks tingling along his skin and he can barely think over the feelings of heard, acknowledged, safe swirling around in his head .
The next time there are also sparks along his skin, but none that are warm or gentle or familiar. Instead, the electric touch sends gooseflesh rippling out from the point of impact, fueling him with the need to get out, leave, run . He does none of these things, instead planting himself firmly between Endeavor and Todoroki’s cowering form. There are things more important than his own safety and this is one of them. This will always be one of them.
Izuku does his best to remind himself of this, even as the man’s rough grip on his wrist sends his body aflame. Todoroki is crying behind him, a soft whimper of apologies and tears, and the sound alone ensures that nothing will sway Izuku from this position. Or at least, nothing until something in Endeavor’s face changes, flips, and before Izuku has a chance to think of what that may mean, the man is wrenching the limb upwards and flinging him to the side.
Izuku does not scream, that would take away from what he was trying to do. That does nothing to diminish the look of horror in Todoroki’s eyes as Izuku doubles over the already swelling limb, harsh angry tears already falling down his face. At somepoint, one of his classmates must have called Aizawa because he can hear his teacher’s voice growing closer, the pound of footsteps somewhere by his head. Whatever happens after that is lost to him, and Izuku is unconscious by the time medics arrive.
That day, Izuku cracks five of the eight bones in his wrist, and the doctors find hairline fractures in the two long bones of his arm. It is nowhere near the worst beating he’s even taken, but it still takes a minor surgery before Recovery Girl will consider using her own healing on him. It takes another two sessions with her before she allows him back for class.
That is also the day Endeavor’s hero license is forcibly revoked. If you ask him, Izuku still believes that that choice was worth it.
–iron in our veins–
Yuuga hates the fact that he understands the reason behind Kouda’s suggestion for their class to learn American sign language.
Sign language on its own is an advantage in the field. Not only does it make it easier for Kouda, who is quiet on some days and mute on the others, to communicate with them, but it also for them to deliver information to each other when they’re forced to be quiet for other reasons. Using American as opposed to Japanese sign language also had its advantages.
If his class was trying to be secretive in any way, whether trying to determine a formation of some sort or even just talking to each other in the hallways after class, there was always the chance that someone around them would know JSL. That chance goes down exponentially with ASL. After all, they go to a school in Japan, fight battles in Japan, and while some of them may travel, most of them will not leave Japan for any long period of time. Therefore making their primary signs in English rather than Japanese adds in an extra layer of defense for anyone who might wish them harm.
That doesn’t mean that Yuuga has to like it. After all, they could have chosen the French version of sign language. It’s close enough to the American version and none of them are even American anyway. But Kouda grew up in America and therefore knows the American version and Yuuga’s fine with that really! It would be very dull and unrefined of him to judge how anyone communicates, especially Kouda who has been nothing but kind to Yuuga since he got here. He is fine with Kouda using it; Yuuga just doesn’t have to like learning it. It just doesn’t have the same fluidity he’d expect the french version to have, regardless of how close the two actually are.
Still, he can’t say anything against it, not when all his classmates are already six months into learning it and especially not when Yaoyorozu is actively using it in the field. With an easy motion, she divides up the group and in, what he expects is a rather broken version of what it should be, sends him and four others to flank the villains along the back.
They make it about thirty feet before all hell breaks loose. Someone, he’s not certain who, screams and then the world around them explodes. He’s thrown backwards, head over heels and then heels over head. His head thumps hard against the wall or ground or something, and all at once, his vision goes white then dark then swirls more colors than he could say in French, much less in Japanese.
At some point, he thinks he screams but if there’s any sound to it, it's caught up in a flush of pain and panic that leaves him dazed. All around him, there’s nothing but an almost silence betrayed by the far-off sounds of a battle. If Yuuga had the presence of mind to keep himself quiet as well, he would. As it is, he thinks the concussion is taking a lot of that ability away from him.
He thinks the concussion is taking a bit more than that away from him. He knows he had been near at least one of his classmates when the explosion had gone off but he can’t recall exactly who and his vision is too blurry to scout out the area. All he can do is lay here, winded, exhausted, and tense all at once. The sweat and blood and dust clinging to his skin makes him feel disgusting and the almost blur to his thoughts makes him feel nauseous as well.
Everything is conspiring against him and for once, the empty space at his side makes him anxious rather than proud. Usually, he doesn’t mind putting himself up on a pedestal, up there all alone, showing off his endless charm for all to see, but now that loneliness feels all-consuming and raw.
Now, what he wouldn’t give to have one of his friends by his side.
And just as he’s about to do something unseemly like whimper or shake or beg, a hand pats at his hip. Yuuga feels all the tension release at once in what is certainly not a sob. He has more dignity than to sob at the simple repetitive gesture. French men are the paragon of society, the sparkle in the rubble, they certainly do not cry at the feeling of someone batting at their leg in a familiar pattern. Especially not an American pattern.
That doesn’t stop the motion from being the single best thing Yuuga thinks he’s ever known. Pinky, index, and thumb up. Ring and middle finger down. ASL. ‘Love you.’
It taps again and Yuuga reaches down to grasp for it. His fingers are slick with blood. So is his friend’s. That stops neither of them as they hurriedly link their hands.
“Hey, Aoyama.” The voice croaks, and Yuuga doesn’t have to think to place it: detached, female, melodic. Jiro. “You think that endless sparkle of yours can scrounge us up a beacon? I don’t really feel like dying here today.”
The corners of his lips twitch. Something thick and wet slips down his forehead. He thinks maybe he laughs. He thinks maybe he cries. He knows none of that matters, not with his friend’s hand in his.
“For you, mon amie ? Anything.”
Jiro squeezes his hand hard.
“K’. Good.” Then almost as an afterthought, she taps three of her fingers against his, a bastardized version of the motion she was making earlier. “Love you.”
Yuuga shuts his eyes, huffs as dramatically as he can, then goes against his every instinct to mirror her.
“ Je t’aime, Jiro.”
-carbon in our souls–
The first time Momo sees Shoji without a mask, Sero has stopped breathing.
The villain is gone, scared off by a combination of Momo’s quick thinking and the flare she keeps hidden in her boot, but she can’t stop to think about him, doesn’t have the time . Her focus is instead on Sero’s pale features, still soaking wet from the near ten minutes he spent underwater and far, far too still. His lips are a ghastly shade of blue, and his eyes are closed, and his normally stick-straight hair is plastered to his forehead with water and mud and some awful bright something that leaks down her friend’s face.
Its blood, Momo discovers, when her shaky fingers reach out to brush it away and feel the watery substance cling to her fingers. Its blood and Kaminari is with the other group and Recovery Girl is cities away, at a conference she had been discussing with the school for months.
It’s blood and somehow that isn’t even the worst of it.
Because Momo can help if it's just blood. She knows what to do with blood, no matter how much she would rather not deal with it. She is a hero, handling blood is just a part of what she will do for the rest of her life.
But Sero isn’t breathing. There’s a shaky pulse under her fingers, thready and far too weak, but his chest just isn’t moving. No matter how hard she looks, or how frantically she moves her hands, Sero is frighteningly still beneath her touch.
Momo knows there is something she’s meant to do in these circumstances, has been quizzed and quizzed herself on it extensively, but it's like her brain is stuck on a loop, like she’s one of her father’s antique records, scratching and skipping on every other beat. Check her friend’s still chest, touch his forehead, panic panic panic–
Repeat.
Thank God Shoji shows up when he does. He’d been stationed a few blocks away during this exercise, far enough away to avoid noticing when the villain came upon them, but apparently close enough to see the frantic flare she’d sent up when Sero had been dragged underwater. He crashes through the brush nearly right on them, so close that Momo nearly takes his head off before she realizes who he is.
At which point she nearly bursts into tears.
“Please,” she begs, as Shoji takes one look at the situation and drops to his knees beside them. “I– I don’t know what to do.”
Admitting it feels like a personal failing, but it’d be even more of a personal failing if Sero died because she couldn’t open her mouth. Thankfully, Shoji seems to have a better handle on the situation than she does. In one motion, he’s pressing a hand against Sero’s chest, above his mouth, settling at his neck before he presses them back to his chest again: one hand over the other, lacing his fingers together.
CPR.
He’s doing CPR and Momo knows all the statistics, can tell you compression rate, depth, breath ratio, but in the first moment where she’d need to use it, she finds herself staring instead, dripping lukewarm water onto the grass as Shoji completes the first set of compressions.
And still, Sero’s chest is frighteningly still.
This is something Momo acknowledges. Shoji must acknowledge it too, but there is a more visceral reaction in him than her. Where she is still frozen to the floor, hand cupping her mouth, Shoji moves with a calm she has always admired in him, taking in her still figure to push himself upwards and over Sero’s head in one fluid movement.
He could have just created another limb with a mouth attached, as far as she knows there’s no way he could have overextended his quirk this early in their exercise, but he must be working in autopilot. There’s no other excuse for her still-secretive classmate to suddenly jerk the mask he’s kept on for as long as she’s known him off his mouth and press his lips over Sero’s.
Momo can’t help but stare.
Shoji has a mutant-based quirk. She knows just as well as everyone else that quirks like that can change the physical appearance of a person drastically. That doesn’t make it any less shocking to look into the face of her classmate and see his mouth twisted up like a Van Gogh painting, a few deep scars painting the side of his almost alien-looking jawline.
Momo thinks in any other situation she might have said something. Not anything mean or awful distasteful, but something none-the-less. If anything, she should say something about how honored she is that Shoji trusts her with this part of himself that, to her knowledge, he hasn’t shown anyone in their class.
And then Sero heaves out a ragged breath, catching on lake-water and whatever else is currently living in his lungs and the words get stolen out of her mouth. Shoji pulls him upwards, and Momo finally shakes off the buzz in her brain enough to create a blanket to drape over Sero’s shivering form.
Later, once Sero is bundled up safely in the back of an ambulance and Aizawa is directing them all on a path home, Shoji catches her arm and awkwardly, quietly, asks that she not mention what he looks like under the mask.
It’s not pretty, he says, eyes averted in this dark sort of shame, shame, shame. I’m sorry you had to see that.
I’m sorry you had to see that, as if Momo would be ashamed by the very sight of him. As if Momo would be the type of person to put those suspicious, upsetting, horrific scars on his skin. As if Momo has any right to judge him at all.
She ends up promising not to mention it if only to get that ugly, pained look out of his eyes. But deep down, she knows the truth.
Momo will admit that she is vain sometimes. For as much as it has its downfalls and it does have its downfalls, Momo likes feeling beautiful, she likes being beautiful, even if it gains her more attention than she feels she wants or deserves .
She also knows that, from that moment and from any moment from then on, she will never see anyone more beautiful than Shoji calmly coaxing Sero’s struggling form to breathe.
–nitrogen in our brains–
Denki retakes their algebra midterms three times before he passes.
The first time, he had an excuse. He’d been on patrol with a hero the night before, and they got caught in a shoot-out just minutes before he was supposed to head in. It had ended well. No one, not even the villains were seriously injured, but the process of subduing and capturing those responsible had taken an extra two hours, not to mention the additional hour of paperwork he was forced to go through to leave.
In the end, he walks into his worst class with barely three hours of sleep under his belt, a bruise that stretched from his right shoulder blade down to the left side of his hip, and no memory that a test was even going to occur before Ectoplasm puts the sheet down in front of him.
He makes a 40% on that one and nearly passes out when he bumps up against a desk the wrong way. The leniency he’s given is something that he knows not to refuse. For the next week, Denki meets with Bakugou and Ectoplasm and Yaoyorozu almost non-stop. He crams formulas into his mind, makes flashcards, even invests in one of those tiny whiteboards so he can re-do problem after problem after problem.
And still, he fails. It’s not even a decent fail either, not something close enough to a C or even a D to blame it on missing a singular concept. Instead, Ectoplasm hands it back to him with a soft frown and a 52% turned facedown on the table.
He excuses himself after that, a feigned bathroom break that starts with him crying in a stall and ends with Kirishima coaxing him out with a soft promise that it's not the end of the world, that everything would be okay if he could just please come here so I can hug you, Kami.
He does eventually, and Kiri hugs him like he promises and they both look like idiots, arms wrapped around each other in the middle of their school public restroom. He’s lucky no one walks in. Or rather, he’s glad no one walked in on them, luck would imply there was any chance someone could walk in with Bakugou standing guard at the doorway like a half-feral pomeranian.
His thanks to the blonde is brushed off, as is the apology Denki gives him, shame hooked round his features as he tries to explain why hours of studying with his friend barely rose his grade by ten points.
“You’re fine, dumbass,” Bakugou says, as he roughly pulls them all back to class. “We’ll work on it again tonight.”
They do that and more. Every night for a week Bakugou sits them both down and explains the course material to him over and over again, with a patience Denki wouldn’t have expected from him a year ago. The rest of his classmates help too, whether it’s with the studying itself or simply checking in on him, plying him with snacks and other small, short tasks to get his mind off the way the test looms dauntingly in the distance.
And still, when he sits down in the living room the night before its due, after finally convincing Bakugou that yes, he’ll be fine, just go to bed already you giant nerd, he looks down at his paper and feels his mind go completely, entirely blank. Like all the effort he put into learning this material escaped out his head like air from a tire, and just like that all his old insecurities come flooding back.
The thing is Denki knows he isn’t stupid.
Despite what he thought upon joining UA, despite his own class ranking Denki is more than aware of this fact. Stupid people don’t make it into one of the most prestigious hero schools in the country. Stupid people don’t convince Shuzenji Chiyo to make them her apprentice. Stupid people don’t have a whole class baring their injuries at him like his quirk suddenly had the cure-all to every cut and scrape they acquired. He has all the facts in the world to tell him he’s not stupid and they do nothing to change the fact that he feels like the dumbest person alive.
After all, he’s spent the last hour looking over Bakugou’s pristine, picture-perfect notes and he couldn’t say what the information was even about, much less the specifics of the formulas and equations listed within. He doesn’t know anything and the test is in three days and if he fails it again he doesn’t know what Ectoplasm is going to do. He’ll certainly have to tell Aizawa if he hasn’t already, and what if that’s a part of the contract he made with Chiyo and does that mean she’ll stop training him and oh fuck what does that mean for the class if he’s no longer their medic and– and–
And suddenly there is a rabbit dropped straight into his lap.
It’s Kouda’s rabbit, he realizes after his brain has finally gotten enough of a grip to process the coarse brown fur under his hand. Kouda himself is settling down next to him on the floor, squeezing his bulky frame in between the couch and the coffee table to press up against his shoulder. Denki does his best not to look confused.
He and Kouda aren't particularly close. They’re friends certainly, and like he really likes the guy, but they don’t exactly talk much. Most of their interactions are within groups, or if its one-on-one, its more medic-related than anything else. There’s no reason for this to take place but it is taking place regardless, as Kouda gives him a kind smile.
“You looked stressed,” he says, in that soft, quiet voice that Denki has only ever heard in the most dangerous of circumstances. “Mir helps me when I’m stressed.”
“Mir is– she’s the rabbit right?” Denki says, feeling wildly out of his depth. The rate at which his pounding heartbeat decreased has him nearly dizzy with relief. He runs a hand through the rabbit’s soft fur, over her ears, as the pounding in his head starts to dissipate.
It’s another point of concentration, the easing weight in his lap coupled with the warm press on his bicep, and that combination has him uncurling his shoulders from around his ears. The numbers on the paper unweave themselves from the swirl they’ve pressed themselves into. It’s not perfect, the numbers don’t magically make sense in his brain, but somehow, this single action has done more for his mental state than the good ten minutes he’s just spent hyperventilating over his book.
Denki calms himself down bit by bit, eases himself into the feeling of safety around him. The bunny in his hands nuzzles further into his stomach, as Denki takes one more settling breath and nudges Kouda lightly.
“Hey, Kouda,” he asks. The boy responds with an answering hum that thrums through their joined shoulders. “Do you think you could stay a while? Just until I get done with reading through my notes?”
Denki doesn’t need to look up to see the boy’s nod. It’s written in the way Kouda’s weight presses ever so slightly more into his shoulder, in the way he whispers something to the rabbit in his lap that has her curling up into a tight little ball.
Denki spends the next two hours working next to Kouda, neither of them saying much more than a word. Between them, the rabbit falls asleep to the steady scratching of Denki’s pencil and the familiar lull of their breathing. Eventually, Kouda nods off too, but his warm, steady presence never leaves.
The next day Denki passes with an 86, and his friends all cheer. Iida offers to buy him ice cream, as the rest of the class presses in close to pester him into playing for the rest of them as well. Somewhere someone has set off a confetti cannon. Mina is trying to convince Momo to get them all pizza as well, while Sero strings tape-streamers along the ceiling. Denki smiles and soaks up all the attention and laughs so hard his sides hurt.
And on the way out, he taps that still clinging warmth to Kouda’s shoulder and feels any lingering anxiety fade away again.
–93 percent stardust–
Tenya is going to make something of himself.
This is not a goal, nor an aspiration. It is a statement, a fact, like so many that his classmates and teachers throw out on the daily. Tenya is going to be a hero, the same as all the others in his generational line.
His grandfather was a hero, and his uncle was a hero, and his brother, and now here Tenya stands, tracing their footsteps in his too-big boots, and trying to keep up an idea that is as much ingrained in his body as it is his mind. Tenya is a legacy, and he should be proud of that, he is proud of that, but sometimes, he can’t help but ask himself what he did to get here.
If no matter his own choices, Tenya is nothing more than an extension of his family.
After all, his costume is a near replica of his brother’s, and more than enough people have said that if they didn’t know better, they’d think he and Tensei were twins. Even his name is identical, ripped off Tensei’s ruined hero career like snatching a child from the breast of its dying mother. Tenya wants to work hard, wants to prove himself, but sometimes, in some of his more shameful moments, he wonders if it even matters.
This should have been one of those.
Their class is currently being evaluated by a member from the Hero’s Commission, He’s certain that she was pressed for time, had been overwhelmed by the sheer amount of students whose techniques she was forced to sit through and evaluate. But still, what is he supposed to say to the woman who looks him dead in the eyes and responds with a cool: I've seen your brother’s technique before, Iida, there’s no need for me to look at yours.
He feels the flush on his cheeks trace its way up to his ears, hears the stuttered way that his two classmates within earshot shoot their gazes to him. It’s not anyone he’s particularly close to, but Ojirou still sends him a startled look as Hagakure’s uniform jerks in his direction.
They’re worried, he realizes, and he is too. He’s always in control of his own actions but now he can’t even convince himself to shut his mouth from where its gaped open. The instructor seems to have no such qualms, and instead continues on with her grading, not even glancing up at them.
Eventually, Tenya finds his control. He swallows hard and gathers himself enough to drop down in a low bow.
“Of course. That makes sense,” he says, even though it doesn’t really. He and Tensei have a similar quirk, but the differing location makes their attacks and movements incredibly different. Still, Miyata is someone the Hero’s Commission brought in personally to judge their abilities. If she says that it doesn’t matter then obviously it doesn’t matter, despite anything to the contrary. “I’ll take my leave.”
From the corner of his eye, he can hear Hagakure start to open her mouth, and he does his best to motion the girl to stop before this whole thing gets out of hand. While Hagakure isn’t anywhere near as outspoken as some of their other classmates, she does have an incredibly kind heart that often has her speaking out in defense of someone she thinks has been wronged. Usually, Tenya wouldn’t worry about her, with her bubbly personality it's rare that anyone would take offense to it, but he doubts this woman is the type to take any sort of criticism lying down, and Hagakure worked so hard to have a new ability to demonstrate during this assessment. No, it would be better for Tenya to just leave. He could always get Aizawa to review his skills later. While a new set of eyes would be helpful, it isn’t worth getting them all stuck in remedial lessons because he and his brother had a similar quirk.
Ojirou apparently has other plans.
Which on its own is surprising enough for Tenya to gape for the second time in barely a minute, as he and Hagakure turn as one to face their classmate. Ojiro is usually one of the most soft-spoken of his classmates. Anger of any kind isn’t something he displays often, especially not towards authority figures, and yet here he is, eyes pointed at some random point in the floor as he says, quiet but unbelievably firm–
“That’s bullshit.”
And Tenya swears that the force of that sentence rocks the room like an earthquake. Hagakure lets out this little muted oh my god, that's overlaid by his own propensity to flail which sends his glasses flying, which in turn is only overshadowed by Miyata’s gasp of indignation.
“Excuse me,” she huffs, but apparently cursing isn’t the only tool in Ojirou’s repertoire for the day.
“No, I won’t,” he says, and suddenly that hesitance is gone. He turns to meet Miyata’s glare head on, tail flicking back and forth furiously, and something about that must resonate in this woman because her mouth shuts so fast Tenya can hear her teeth click from here. His next words are loud and quick and more direct than “What gives you the right to come in here and look at a bunch of kids and tell any of them that they’re not relevant? What sense of inflated, hyper-superiority complex must you have to think that it was okay to do that? You can hide behind that big, fancy title all you want, but I know as well as the rest of the people in this room that you haven’t seen the outside of a computer desk since you started evaluations.”
“Holy shit,” Hagakure whispers, but Tenya doesn’t even have it in him to correct her. All he can do is focus on Ojirou’s blurry form as he takes another step towards Miyata, more furious than Tenya’s ever seen him.
“And even if you did have the experience to actually judge us properly, why would you think to do that without even looking at the way a person uses their quirk? You’re sitting at a school that prides itself at teaching not only quirk control but strategy and technique as well, and you’re telling me that the only thing that matters is some predetermined ability we’re given at birth that apparently you haven’t checked too much into enough to know that Iida’s is, in fact, different from his brother’s.”
“I- I-” Miyata swallows hard, tries again. “They’re both listed as Engine.”
“Which manifested in completely different places!” Ojirou yells. “Or did you not even think to look that part up? Actually, don’t answer that. I’ve been the tailed-kid often enough to know how well you people look into these things.”
His tail flicks one more time, a hard jerk back and forth before he seems to come to some sort of conclusion and suddenly the appendage comes to a rest, ramrod straight down the side of his leg.
“You know what? We’re done here. Tell the Hero Commission they can come back when they find someone to do this who isn’t going to come in with a stigma. Or better yet, have Aizawa do it. We’ll do better with him anyway.”
Miyata makes some aborted sound, some notion to try and regain control, but Ojirou has already broken away, gathering up Tenya’s glasses from the floor only to pop them back onto his nose. He leans back for a second, assessing before he snatches Tenya’s hand and tugs him towards the door. Hagakure’s presence is steady at their backs, but she lingers for just the briefest second, and even without seeing it, Tenya knows her gaze is burning into Miyata.
“No matter what you see in us,” Hagakure says, a weight to the words that would send their meaning into even the deepest ether. “We are more than our quirks.”
And then her hand is back in Tenya’s, small fingers forming an ironclad grip. Tenya is still reeling when they leave that room, but the people with him lead him without fail down the hallway and out into the commons, where the rest of their classmates are gathered. Some have already been evaluated, others still were waiting on their turn.
All of them leave after Ojirou says a few words.
There is still much to that story that Tenya only remembers in fragments, how closely his classmates had stuck to him after that, the way Aizawa only had him speak once despite him being the cause of this whole mess, the almost squeaky sound of Ojirou’s voice an hour later, hand over his mouth as he tried worked through the idea that he yelled at a Commission Member oh my god my career is over, what the hell was I thinking?, but there is still one thing that rings loud and clear, no matter how bad he may feel at any given time, Tenya will look back at this moment and know that he matters.
–with souls made of flames–
Uraraka has crafted an entire identity out of being kind.
She is the laughter against Deku’s chest, the teasing lit high and flighty as they convince Iida to take a break, just this once – No one will know . She is Tsu’s friend and Todoroki’s sounding board and Mina’s model when she’s got a new fashion idea she needs to get out of her head. She is the rescuer of victims and the savior of many and the friend of even more.
Uraraka is, to her classmates and to the rest of the world, kind, but Ochako is not. Ochako is desperation incarnate, a flame that burns from the inside out, hotter than even the brightest blaze of Todoroki’s quirk. She is fire and gasoline and spittle that she can’t, won’t , admit to. She is dragging herself through the mud with nothing but herself and the knowledge that if she doesn’t do this, one day she will watch her family work themselves to the bone –prideful and hungry and still poor, without so much as a penny to their name .
Ochako is angry, and up until last month, the only person she will admit it to was herself. Also up until last month, she usually got a decent amount of sleep and went to class as refreshed as she could, with the belief that maybe that alone would help her to keep up with her classmates.
Now things have changed in the most unexpected of ways, as she sneaks past Iida’s patrol at a quarter past eleven to jimmy her way into the oldest gym on the UA campus. Her partner in crime is already waiting for her with a bag resting on his shoulder and a disgusted look on his face as he surveys her descent down from the window she’d forced open.
“You’re late, Round-cheeks.”
Ochako flips him off. Bakugou knows exactly why she’s late; him bringing it up is just his version of being an ass. Besides, it's not like she takes long to get ready. She strips off the heavy coat she’d put on to protect her from the harsh winds outside and slips off her tennis shoes and socks. Her hands are already wrapped up in preparation for the next few hours. Bakugou has already laid out the mat, and he makes an impatient gesture at it that Ochako only just avoids repeating back at him.
Instead, she launches herself up and onto her feet, and just like it's been for the past month, the fight is on. Kind, warm Uraraka is thrown to the background, as Ochako slams her bodyweight into Bakugou’s knees forcing them both to the ground. She lands a solid blow to his jaw, another to his shoulder, before he gets his wits about him and flips it back around on her, sweeping her feet out from under her to send her face-first into the floor. He knees her in the back, enough to force the breath out of her, but she doesn’t give in.
Here, when it's only the two of them, giving in isn’t an option. Instead, they go for another few rounds until Ochako is nearing the amount of bruising that's hard to hide with concealer and Bakugou is nursing a bloody nose that they both know will reopen itself sometime during their first period. They lay on the floor for a bit, more winded than either of them is willing to admit, and feel that anger in them simmer down from a boiling rage to a dull, even fizz.
Then they pack up, try to leave the place as spotless as it was before they came, and go back to the dorm, ready to do the whole thing again tomorrow.
Granted, not every night is a carbon copy of the last.
There are quiet days when Ochako comes in and the mat isn’t even set up, where there’s not Bakugou but Katsuki, sitting back against a wall refusing to meet her eyes. Those days are worse than almost any other, the ones where they press shoulders too-close, too-close in a space that could fit three of their class and try to sync their breaths. Sometimes they speak, quiet, half-formed words they will never repeat outside of this space. Aldera, imperfection, quirkless, all regaled to the empty bleachers beside them.
There’s never a meaning behind the words, she doesn’t get the full story, but she knows the regret behind them, almost as well as she knows herself. She knows the taste of those words, the ache that must grow in his chest, that empty, near-nauseous feeling in his stomach.
Other times, she walks in with anger in her gut that burns so hot that she sees red. There are times when Bakugou will come in swinging before she even puts down her stuff, where she screams and cries and wrecks things they spend until daylight trying to repair. There are nights where they go too far and they wait until morning to bring the other to Recovery Girl and hope that they have answers for the volley of questions she’s sure to ask.
After all, what they’re doing is not healthy by any means, but yet again, what is anyone else doing that is? Her teacher throws himself at every villain who comes between him and his students with apparently no regard for his own personal safety. Her two best friends have both attempted murder on completely separate occasions. The person she now spends every night with has a vocabulary that consists almost entirely of bit off curses and a nickname she still pretends to hate. And Ochako herself leaves that gym with knuckles bruised every color of the rainbow and a head clearer than when she went in.
Thank god this isn’t a long-term solution, or else she’d have enough broken bones to rival Deku by the time she’s done with school. Sometime later, she knows they’ll have to come up with something safer. They’re all going to counseling now, under Aizawa’s orders, and she figures sooner or later one of them is going to say too much and this whole thing is going to come tumbling down. Or maybe, they’ll end it before that even happens. Half the time, they don’t even fight anymore and Bakugou meets her there just to press his back to hers and bitch about whatever dumb thing Kaminari did or how pretty Kirishima’s hair looked after it rained. Sometimes it's the other way around and she tosses her bag down only to lay her head on his stomach and toss chips in the air to see how many he can catch in his mouth without dislodging her.
On those days, and sometimes on others, she can see their futures laid out before them, the types of heroes, the types of people they’re going to be. Where that anger in them still lingers but is overshadowed by the good they do for people, for each other.
She thinks of that and knows that one day, they’re going to be alright.
–we are all just stars that have people names.
Their class attends their first funeral when they’re fifteen. They do not cry. Despite their class’s penchant for being overly emotional, this is not, in all honesty, something that is extremely surprising. The funeral is not for someone they hold any fondness to, nor is it for someone with whom they have worked alongside. Instead, it is for a man they have all been a victim to time and time again.
That does not deter them from coming; nor is he the reason they attend.
There are other forces at play here, ones that have Momo ensuring that all of them are dressed in the finest, black silk ties and coats, winter-ready dresses and heels, that task Hagakure and Mina with a morning spent tying forget-me-not’s into braids and combing back unruly bangs. It is the same force that has Iida barking out a schedule that they actually keep to while Sato clears his hands of all the dishes he’s spent hours upon hours making. It is a part of the magic that allows someone, no one is sure who, to finally find a way to keep Midoriya’s tie from coming undone.
It is the force that has all of their class filling into a nearly empty service on a Saturday afternoon, stiff-backed and reverent, ready to accept a weight that is not their own. The few members there stare, some even gape, but that does not halt their parade from their destination. Instead, Tsu keeps her place at the head, this entire group of will-be heroes trailing behind a girl who barely comes up to some of their shoulders.
A girl who walks up to her teacher without hesitation and slips her hand into his. Any of the other girls in his class would have their hand dwarfed in his, none of them were particularly tall, but Tsu’s fit comfortably there as the rest of their classmates gather around. They flit in with quick bumps or brushes, accidental in the ways that this class never is.
There’s a cough somewhere in the crowd, a whisper of sound, and the rustling of everyone settling back down. The hand in Tsu’s stays almost limp, weak in a way they have never associated with their teacher.
“You all don’t have to be here,” Aizawa whispers.
“You needed someone,” Tsu responds, blunt as she always is. The words send a shock through Aizawa, a startled half-hitch rises in his throat, only betrayed by the twitch of his palm in hers. She can’t see his face, not with his eyes trained ahead like the very thought of breaking his concentration would wound him deeply. With how wet his gaze is, Tsu wouldn’t be surprised if it did. That is of no matter though. Broken or not, Tsu knows her classmates.
They are not leaving their teacher.
They’ll stay there like a wall against any gaze that pins them, the final floodgates against a tide that is threatening to take them out at the ankles. The bow Aizawa is on is flimsy and broken, battered in a storm that started long before any of them knew enough to know what a storm even was, but this is not an infallible fact. That bow may bend, but they will keep it from breaking, stand firm behind Aizawa just the same as he has always done for them.
Their class is a fortress and it does not matter if they all can see the tears start to well up in their teacher’s eyes, feel the sobs start to wrack his chest, it does not matter if the man who has kept them alive needs a break just this once.
They will brace this storm with him, and as Shirakumo Oboro’s funeral winds to a close, they know they will come out stronger for it.
- A poem by Nikita Gill