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The girl watches.
Watches as the dust settles, as the sweat and blood and sounds of war quiet.
Watches as something else rises to take its place- something equally heavy and weighty on young Ochako’s still-tender heart.
The screams.
The cries.
The pleas of help- “Anyone...won’t anyone come and help.”
The funeral dirge of the city that they were supposed to be protecting.
The young hero wonders for a moment- even as some of the villains are apprehended and taken away to be locked up- how good of a job they had done. But she banishes it immediately, guilt rearing its head as she remembers the sacrifices that have been made even for this victory.
Her heroes.
Her mentors.
Her teachers.
Her friends.
Her peers.
She knows- hears even through the pumping of her blood, the heaving of her own breath, the aching in her chest- the names of the dead. There are many- more than she ever would have believed. Her heroes weren’t supposed to die; they were supposed to be untouchable. So far, they have been untouchable- she had seen Aizawa have his arms broken, and his face shoved into concrete, but he lived.
They were all supposed to live.
The girl has never been to war before.
Battles yes.
But never a war.
Never a war with so many casualties.
She sees her friends weeping for their fallen teacher. She sees Mina take Midnight’s hand-she must not have been dead long, she thinks as the pale hand hangs limply between Mina’s. She hears Momo’s ragged sobs. She sees Kiri hold Mina to his chest- rocking her- his own tears soaking in her hair.
She doesn’t join them.
There’s no time.
She hears that Deku, Bakugo, Shoto, and Nejire are all injured- some almost fatally (she can guess which ones, but she doesn’t indulge).
No time.
Not when she can hear the screaming.
Not when they are all so afraid.
Not when so many are still missing- buried beneath a demolished city.
But the girl knows- because while she has yet to see the full devastation of battle, she is not without her own battle scars. She is long disabused of any romantic notions about the work they do (she swears sometimes that she can still see specks of Nighteye’s blood on her suit, no matter how many times she cleans it). She knows those calls are not calls for a hero- not calls to glory. They are cries for something, for anyone, literally anyone who might be able to help.
This is not her moment.
Their moment.
There is only screams, and blood, and smoke, and dust.
This is the cost of her job. The necessity of their existence is inherently tragic- and it’s hard to remember that through the noise, and the ranking, and the sponsors, and the popularity polls.
But they exist because the world is broken.
Because people are so fragile.
The girl hears the fragility.
“Wait! Wait! Wait!”
“Please, we need an ambulance.”
“Someone come help us!”
“Hurry, we need help!
“Mommy!”
“Where’s my baby!”
There is no quiet.
There is no calm after the storm.
There is no silence or space that she and her comrades can sink into, to feel the weight of all that has happened.
She hears the screams.
She runs.
She lifts ( a car, a roof, a building).
She releases.
She’s sick.
Over and over and over.
She sees a leg, with no body.
She finds a woman screaming and crying with no leg. She stops as much of the bleeding as she can and helps her get to safety.
Then…
She hears.
She runs.
She lifts (a wall, concrete, a house).
She releases.
She’s sick.
She finds a mother, begging her to find her child.
She finds a child- unbreathing and cold.
Everything is broken.
That’s why she has a job, and something about that makes her more nauseous than the relentless overuse of her quirk.
But she doesn’t stop.
She doesn’t linger.
She’s not cold- the girl, the hero- no part of her would be considered cold. She feels every moment deep in her soul; feels each scream, itching pleading gaze of the dying, each grasping hand around her. She is not numb to any of it. It settles on her skin, sinks into her bones and her muscles, and she can feel it rearranging her very being- her DNA- the stuff that is her.
She hears.
She runs.
She lifts (bodies, pipes, and twisted metal- all of it hovers like balloons over the war zone).
She releases.
She’s sick.
She ignores the burning in her throat and her lungs as she sprints toward each new call- she blinks away the mixture of sweat and blood, blurring her eyes while her body hovers in this precarious edge- this in-between of being keenly attuned to every noise, every shift, every creaking frame around her while being deeply detached from what is twisting inside of her- every warning sign in her cells telling her that this is too much, that her body had finished ages ago. But she wasn’t the same girl from the Sports Festival whose body collapsed before she wanted it to, without her say-so. This time her body does what she tells it to do, and it keeps moving.
“I’m done.”
She hears the voice, breaking through the buzzing in her ear, stalling her furious pace for just a moment. She looks up to find who said it. A hero. He’s supposed to be a hero, she thinks.
“This was just a big mistake.”
She stares for a moment- some confusing mix of heartbreak and rage warring in her chest at the sight of him.
“Maybe I should find a new job.”
Then get one and get out of my way , the girl thinks. Something hardens inside of her. She’s not cruel- she is not cold. But if he’s not going to help, he needs to leave (there’s no shame in leaving now). At some point during the day (the night?), her peers leave- most to the hospital for treatment or for support. The sun sets once and rises again, but she can’t leave. She thinks at one point, one of her teachers, maybe a friend, tries to drag her away from the scene.
“I’m fine,” she insists.
“You’re exhausted.”
“I can’t go, not yet.”
Not yet.
Because even when it’s quiet, even when the screams have settled, she still hears them. They are all she hears.
By the end of the second day, there aren’t as many screams; there aren’t as many cries or pleas.
By the end of the second day, the cries are no longer from the rubble but from families gathered close by waiting… waiting for their worst tears or their best hopes to be confirmed. So Ochako doesn’t stop.
Over and over.
Each body dragged from the rubble leads to another.
And another.
And another.
They keep coming. Keep dying.
Right in front of her.
Keep bleeding.
Keep staring- until she closes their eyes and cleans their faces, and brings them out to the edge of the warzone- where their loved ones are waiting. Because now it’s a recovery mission- not a rescue. But then, by the light of the moon on the second night, she digs deeper, her fingers raw and her costume ripped, past concrete slabs and metal frames, she finds him.
A familiar head of blonde hair, but his face is lacking that light, that smile, that easy sweetness that Denki carries in his very being. He looks pale, drained, cold.
Oh god.
Oh god.
The girl feels her lungs twisting, being wrung out in her chest, as a crack cuts through her, threatening to web and crumble all the control that she was holding onto. But she holds it together, two steady fingers on his neck, searching for any sign of life.
Some defiance to fly in the face of all of this death.
Please.
Please.
Please.
And then, she feels it- thready and fluttering. But it’s there.
He’s alive.
For now.
She would be fast enough this time. He wouldn’t bleed out in her arms this time. She wouldn’t be kept up at night with nightmares wondering what would have happened if she had moved faster. She drapes him with an emergency rescue blanket, checks his vitals, stabilizes his injuries- she notices at some point that her hands are shaking.
She’s not sure if it’s from fear, exhaustion, hunger, grief, excitement- all of them together, quaking in her body.
But she doesn’t slow. She doesn’t stop. She holds him close and whispers that she’s going to save him, that she won’t let him die, that’s she’s here.
He doesn’t stir, but that doesn’t matter because he’s breathing.
She carries him to safety- to real doctors who can get him to the hospital.
Her legs go out beneath her as the sun rises on the third day. But she stumbles back up before anyone can see before anyone tries to load her into the back of an ambulance. Because Kaminari had been buried beneath rubble for two days.
And he is still alive.
He. is. alive.
So she can’t stop- she can’t slow down. Because there are more- she’s sure of it. If she had stopped, Kaminari might be dead. She needs to keep moving.
Keep running.
Keep lifting.
Keep releasing.
Stand up after she pukes and keeps moving.
Because there are more out there, she is certain. And she could save all of them.
She could.
She doesn’t find another living, breathing human on the fourth day. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t there, she insists.
By the fifth day, she hears the screams again. She’s certain she can hear them. She just doesn’t understand why no one else can. She flings cars and fireplaces and bricks and debris. She searches frantically for the source of those screams, but she can’t find anyone. She can’t find them, but she can hear them. She swears she can hear them. And she doesn’t know why no one is helping her.
She doesn’t understand.
“It’s time to go, Uravity…”
“There’s no one there.”
There is, she can hear them- she screams back. She thinks she screams, it’s hard to tell because her body won’t stop shaking, and her ears and her eyes and her mouth don’t feel right. Her bones feel like they are vibrating inside of her skin, and colors and sounds and sensations feel a thousand times more intense than they are supposed to be. Her throat is stripped and raw from continual puking over the past five days.
Something doesn’t feel right- her body feels weightless, and she can’t see. It’s dark.
Why is it dark?
She jerks awake, her eyes opening. When had they closed? She was being carried by someone. She kicks (she thinks she kicks, but it’s more of a twitch of her leg). She protests (but it’s more like a pained, ragged whisper).
She can’t stop.
She can’t stop until she saves everyone.
“There’s no one left,” a voice whispers above her head from whoever is carrying her. “There’s no one left, Uravity.”
There’s no one left. By that, he means there is no one left alive. There are still bodies- unclaimed and crushed.
She hadn’t saved everyone.
She had failed.
####
The boy wakes briefly, and through the haze of pain and drugs and the beeping of machines, he is vaguely aware of a hand around his and a voice speaking overhead. But he can’t make out the words she’s saying right now. He can hear the dip and modulation of her sentence, but he struggles to hear the words. It’s a familiar voice, one that used to sing him to sleep when he was a kid. He pretends not to remember that, anytime she brings it up; that she was once his favorite person, whose leg he would cling to and whose hand he was always searching for. He denies it now- as a teen, as the future number one hero.
He denies it, but he knows it’s true.
So does his body because it gently squeezes her fingers- now so much smaller than his- before he succumbs again to darkness.
He wakes a second time to another hand holding his, a different hand. This one is far more worn and rough and bigger than the last one. This one he doesn’t squeeze out of some unnameable, instinctual habit, but he doesn’t let go either because he’s relieved- even if he’s too tired to say it, that Shitty Hair is alive.
He’s relieved to know that anyone is alive, embarrassed that he passed out before he could make sure that was true of all of his peers (his friends).
“Bakugo…” he sobs in relief when he cracks an eye and turns toward the redhead sitting vigilant by his bed. “I’m so glad you’re alive.”
Of course, he’s alive.
What the hell did he think? That Katsuki was gonna let some wannabe, chapped-ass villain take him out? Over his dead body.
But he doesn’t say that because Shitty Hair collapses forward, his face buried into Katsuki’s shoulder as he cries. Katsuki doesn’t shift away, mainly because he can’t (his body still feels weak from the injury and the healing), but also because he doesn’t want to. It’s a pleasant weight on his shoulder, reminding him that they lived.
Kiri stays like that for a while, soaking Katsuki’s pillow in his grief and pain and relief, and Katsuki tries a few times to lift his arms to pat his head. He doesn’t have the energy to pretend he’s too hard for this, the energy to scold someone’s very human moment. He’s not the same Katsuki of a year ago- he’s not the same Katsuki from a week ago, a day ago (or however long since it’s been since he saw the full scope of what Deku had been and what Deku would be and moved on instinct to protect someone who he should have been protecting a long time ago- quirk or no quirk).
When Kiri does stop crying, Katsuki tries to talk, but a pained moan came out. He wants to know- how did it end? Did they win?
“Do you need something, man?”
He nods.
“Food?”
Shakes his head.
“Water?”
No.
“Uh,” Kiri looks around, confused, desperate to help but unsure how. Katsuki groans in frustration and rolls his eyes before weakly pointing at Kiri. A look of understanding dawns on Kiri’s face, and he clenches his teeth and tries to force a wobbly smile. “I-I’m doin’ okay...I’m- I’m okay. Do- do you wanna status report on everyone?”
Katsuki nods and lets his eyes shut as he settles back into the pillow to listen.
“Deku is alive…”
Which meant he would live- Katsuki knew him well enough to know that.
“He’s pretty mangled, but he’s alive.”
Of course he is.
Fucking nerd.
“Todoroki is pretty banged up, but he’s uh… he’s got a lot on his plate right now, and I’m not sure which is his most pressing issue right now between family drama and his injuries.”
Story of that kid’s life, it seemed. He didn’t want to be like Endeavor- now more than ever- that comparison filled him with unease.
“Mina is alive, no major injuries…”
That’s good.
“Jirou, Iida, Momo, all physically fine.”
Physically fine. He knew what that meant.
“Uraraka I’m actually not sure yet. She’s still out at the site doing rescue and relief, I think.”
Katsuki wonders briefly how long he’s been out and if the little airhead was eating enough to sustain that kind of prolonged use of her quirk.
He almost instinctively moves to pat his pockets, but then he remembers he’s in a hospital gown, not his suit, and he’s pretty sure that chocolate bun he had pocketed for her was smashed to hell anyway.
Shame.
“Denki is…” Kiri’s voice broke, and Katsuki’s eyes opened slightly again, blinking away the haze and sleep. “He’s uh- still missing. We aren’t sure where he is, b-but we haven’t given up on him yet.”
Kiri’s face falls further and further as the list progresses- as the list becomes a body count, as the names become those of the fallen and the lost. It’s a war, after all, the boy thinks- even when you win, you lose.
He knows that’s true- no matter how much he wants to win. He wiggled his fingers at Kiri- letting his crying, broken, grieving friend know that he can hold his hand if he wants. Because he’s not the same boy from a week ago, or a day ago, and he knows they need each other.
And he’s not so fragile that he won’t offer what he can- even from a hospital bed.
Kiri takes it gratefully- grasping like it’s a lifeline as another shudder racks through his body. They don’t speak again, and Katsuki falls asleep to Kiri’s sniffling and the warmth of his hand against his palm.
By the third day, his body is recovered enough that Katsuki can sit up in his bed. He’s still a little dizzy and disoriented; his body is still wrecked to hell, but he can feel it healing- he can feel the bones, and skin, and muscle knitting back together.
Kiri comes to visit him again, and this time he can actually talk.
“They found Denki,” he declares, and Katsuki is relieved, of course, to hear he’s alive but also relieved to see something of the Kiri returned in that smile and enthusiasm. Katsuki knows that it’s very unlikely that any of them will be unchanged by this, for better or worse, but still, Kiri’s smile shouldn’t be something he had to sacrifice.
“How is he,” Katsuki asks.
“It was touch and go for a while there. He has some pretty severe internal bleeding, and he was hypothermic when they brought him in, but Jirou said he opened his eyes this morning and gave her a thumbs-up, so… I think he’s going to be okay.”
Katsuki scoffed and shook his head. “What a fucking dumbass,” he said.
“Right,” said Kiri with a laugh, sitting in his usual spot. “Waking up after a near-death experience and seeing the girl he’s been into for a whole year sitting by his bedside? You’d think he could come up with something cooler.”
Katsuki is glad Pikachu is alive.
Really really glad.
“How’s Deku,” he asks, a question he never would have spoke out loud before. But he’s not the same Katsuki from a year ago, a week ago, a day ago. Everything was different.
Kiri smiles at him. “He only woke up once last I heard- and he just wanted to know how Kacchan was.”
Katsuki rolls his eyes. Of course. Stupid fucking nerd.
“But they said he’s stable and is gonna pull through.”
Katsuki wonders briefly if he’ll be able to go see him anytime soon. He risked his damn life for the nerd- it’s only good business to check on his investment. Make sure the idiot wasn’t wasting it.
“How’s Angel Face?”
Kiri looks at him confused, and Katsuki has the horrifying and embarrassing realization that he had only ever called her that in his head. He needs to talk to the doctors about lowering his pain meds- they were making him loopy.
“Round face,” he amended.
“Uraraka?” Kiri asks. Katsuki grunts in acknowledgment- best keep his mouth shut, it seems. “I still haven’t seen her. I think she found Denki, so she was out there last night at least.”
He’s surprised to hear that. It’s been three days now, almost four. He also is not surprised to hear that- for many reasons.
On the fifth night (he thinks it’s night- it’s hard to keep track), he hears screaming in the hall; screaming and crashing and metal on tiled floor. He hears doctors and orderlies barking out instructions. He shakily gets out of bed and bares down on his feet. His knees buckle slightly, but his hands find purchase on a chair, and he’s able to walk along the wall to his door.
He means to shut it, and block out some of the noise, but he stops when he gets sight of the screaming patient, of wide, panicked eyes, and hair matted with blood and sweat. He hears words like “sleep deprivation psychosis” and “hallucinations” and “severe dehydration.” He sees an I.V stand on the ground and a couple of doctors floating on the ceiling. A few nurses plead with her to settle down- to let them help her, but he can tell from the look in her eyes that Round Face has no fucking clue where she is right now.
“Let me go,” she screams, in a voice that doesn’t sound at all like her- it’s scratchy and feral and desperate. “Let me go!” She kicks and thrashes and tangles in her sheet as she attempts to stand. “I have to get back out there! I have to save to them! I have to save them! There are more!”
Doubt that, Pink Cheeks, he thinks to himself. After five days, anyone still buried in that rubble doesn’t need a hero anymore. He isn’t cold- not really- he doesn’t mean it cold. It’s just the reality of it. No use killing herself to recover bodies that aren’t breathing anymore.
“They are more,” she whimpers raggedly, whatever sedative they finally managed to get into her taking its course through her body. “There were more.” Her eyes slide shut. “I can save one more.”
On the 7th night, Katsuki is walking and eating and talking, and he’s ready to get home. But he’s stuck there for another four days to make sure his vitals stay strong, and they don’t risk the wound reopening. He’s pissed about it, but he doesn’t fight them on this. Better he lose two weeks of training than three months because his intestines and lungs won’t stay put in his body.
He goes to see Deku, and Deku can’t move his arms, so Katsuki holds his foot and berates him for being so extra that he has to destroy his body in every villain encounter.
“I guess I should learn how to use black whip,” the dork muses, looking down at his arms. Katsuki sneered at that and told him his arms would get working again, despite Deku’s best efforts.
Katsuki asks if anyone has updated him, and a weight lands in the boy’s green eyes- one that was going to get there sooner or later if Deku was going to be the next symbol of peace, but Katsuki had secretly hoped that it would be later.
“All Might came and told me,” he continues, his voice shaky.
Of course he had.
Katsuki nods.
“What about Uraraka,” asks Deku suddenly. “All Might told me she was in rough shape when they brought her in.”
That was putting it mildly.
“I don’t know,” he answers. He really didn’t. He hasn’t seen or heard anything since they brought her in two days ago. “I’ll try and find out. Since apparently, I’m better at healing than you, and you’re still bed-bound.”
Deku smiles at him- that stupid, knowing smirk like he just has Katsuki all figured out.
“Thanks, Kacchan.”
“Tch… whatever nerd.”
That’s all they say before Katsuki leaves to return to his room. He wonders if he should say that he’s sorry.
But then again, Deku really does have him figured out.
But- he can at least check on the nerd’s friend while he’s up. Even though he’s pretty sure he’s not supposed to be wandering around the hospital by himself. Oh well… they just saved the city, so that should grant a few perks, he thinks.
It turns out she’s his neighbor—a few doors down and not so hard to find.
Right now, it’s only her in the room. No visitors, but the jacket draped over the lounge chair, and the flowers by her bedside and the old cup of coffee indicate that one may not be far away. He should leave, he thinks, but instead, he steps closer.
Dark and drab, and it doesn’t feel like something she would like (if he was given to speculating about what kind of things she liked or didn’t- which he wasn’t, though he did wish he had that chocolate bun to leave for her at her table, maybe he would tell Kirishima to bring him one.)
She’s asleep. But it certainly doesn’t look peaceful or restful- he finds that medically induced sleep rarely is. She looks like shit.
Sick and sallow, with bruised eyes and chapped lips. Her cheeks somehow look less round, and he wonders how she manages that in a week. Her face twitches, and her brow furrows into deep harsh lines as her mouth twitches downward in a way that is wholly unfamiliar to her face, it seems.
He knows- more than most- that she’s not sunshine and rainbows all the time. He has seen her strength and resolve, and stubbornness. But he has never seen her in distress like this.
He fights the urge to reach out and touch her hand. They aren’t really close, but he wants her to know she’s not alone.
“Hello?”
He stumbles from the bed and turns to see- well- he thinks for a second it’s Uraraka, but he knows it’s not. He bows stiffly to the woman. “Sorry,” he stuttered. “I- I’m...I…” He doesn’t know why he’s so flustered, but the woman is looking at him with so much exhausted kindness that he isn’t certain what to do with it. “Sorry, I’ll leave.”
“You don’t have to Bakugo-san.”
He wonders how she knows his name, but he doesn’t ask. She smiles at him, tired and sincere, and crosses to the bed. He wants to see himself out- to leave her in privacy, but he stays a moment longer and watches the mother stand over her daughter, and he wonders if that was how his mother had looked at him- did she look so afraid? So sad? So deeply worried?
“Were you badly injured, Bakugo-san?”
“I…” yes- he had been on his deathbed a week ago. “No,…” he lies. “No, ma'am. I’m fine.”
She rubs her head and brown eyes that look so much like Roundface well up with tears. “That’s good.” Her voice is a strained sigh. “I...I worry about all of you.” She is looking down at her daughter, her hand squeezing Roundface’s limp wrist. “You’re all so young.”
They are.
He forgets that sometimes.
Everyone forgets that sometimes.
He thinks maybe they have to- they have to forget it, or else how could they send them out to fight a war.
Katsuki didn’t grudge them whatever denial they needed to do that. He wants to fight- after all.
“I wish they would let me stay with her through the night,” she says, and Katsuki wonders if she knows that he’s still there. Was she talking to herself? “I don’t want her to wake up alone.”
Katsuki doesn’t want that for her either. She’s a good person. A good hero. He wonders if she knows how many people she saved.
“I’ll tell her you came by.” He tries to tell her that she shouldn’t bother- that he’s sure it wouldn’t mean anything to her; it wasn’t like he was Deku or anything. But for some reason, he doesn’t. “It’ll mean a lot to her,” she continued. “ She talks about you often.” He doesn’t know what to say to that, and a small part of him wonders what she says about him.
“I hope she wakes up soon, Uraraka-san.”
He really did.
###
Katsuki has never been good at sitting still, and all he had done for the past week was rest- sleep and sit still. That is how he found himself in the hallway at 2 in the morning, pushing a gurney as he walked laps in the hallway, his headphones blaring in his ears. No one had said anything yet. No one had bothered to comment, but adults always had issues telling him what to do. They were either afraid of him or assumed his attitude was shit, and he wouldn’t listen anyway.
Both valid.
And so what if he went past Ochako’s room every so often- just to check. She had been sleeping for almost two days now. But he supposed that was the goal, that was what they wanted. But the trembling fear in her mother’s words had been irritating Katsuki since he heard it.
“I don’t want her to wake up alone.”
He doesn’t either.
So he walks by her room when he can.
He’s on his way back to his room to sleep when he passes her room one more time; this time, he notices that her bed is empty, the blankets bunched at the bottom of the bed. He stops and peaks inside, but he doesn’t see her. He looks back down the hall to see if she had started wandering around like him- unable to stay put in those uncomfortable beds.
But then he hears it, the retching and the dry heaving. She’s on the other side of the bed, on all fours. He thinks her body wants to be sick, but from the look of it, there’s nothing for her to throw up. He wonders if he should go find a doctor, but then a noise comes from her, and it sounds nothing like her- it’s not a sob or a cry or a growl, but something like all three, guttural and pained and hopeless.
“Uraraka…” he calls her name before he has the chance to talk himself out of it before his nerves stop him.
She looks over her shoulder at him, briefly, and it seems to take her a while even to place him, her eyes cloudy and unfocused. And he doesn’t- he really doesn’t- take a lot of notice of her eyes. But he does know that they are bright and warm and filled with life- resolve, joy, empathy, kindness- whatever it may be, but always filled with life.
But they look dull now and devoid of the vitality that so defines her as a person, as a hero.
He doesn’t like it.
But he understands it.
“I...I can’t be here…” she whispers shakily, shaking her head and dragging her fingers through her hair, gripping and pulling and tugging at her scalp. “I can’t…” she shakes her head, her breathing rattled and strained, like she’s gasping for breath in a plastic bag. “I can’t be here.” He approaches her slowly. She’s twisted in on herself, bent and burrowed like she’s trying to disappear.
“Sorry, Cheeks,” he says. “I’ve been here for a week. Apparently, when you send kids to war, they want to hedge their bets.”
This gets no reaction from her. Her hands are still buried in her hair as she stares into the corner of the darkroom.
“I need to keep looking,” she whispers. “There are more…I know it. There’s more. I...can save more.” She looks over at him again, searching and pleading. “I can save more,” she insists. But she says it like a question. “I...can keep going. I can. I’m rested now. I can do more.” She doesn’t look rested. Her eyes are wide and sick with panic, with an urgency that her body is currently not equipped to hold, that it is clearly trying to shake loose.
Her voice quakes. She is wrecked, thoroughly, in her body and soul. And he doesn’t know what to do about it. He knows this is the job. This is why they exist. He wants to tell her that she’s brave, that she’s a hero. Katsuki has never had any delusions about what it takes to be a rescue and relief hero. People might assume he looks down on it. But he doesn’t. Not at all. He’s far too weak to be a rescue hero. He can’t abide the failure that a rescue hero must be prepared to face. He does not have it in him to stand at the precipice; he is not strong enough to carry the weight of their collective failures as heroes, to look at all the collateral damage and step right into it, to bridge the gap between what heroes hope to do and what they fail to do. He wonders if she knows how brave she is- because he would go insane knowing his foes were acts of god and natural disasters. He wants to tell her that she saved everyone that she could, but he’s certain- right now- it will fall on deaf ears.
That there will always be one more she could have saved had she been a little faster, a little stronger, could go 122 hours without sleep instead of 121.
He gets that deep in his bones.
But he also knows that will drive her crazy.
And the world needs Uravity.
So he goes to his knees behind her and sinks back,
“I could’ve saved more..” she whispers.
“You did good,” he whispers back, wrapping his arms around. He’s glad that even now, even with the immense power in her body, even as it twists tight and braces itself, that she feels soft. He wonders if that’s why she’s built to be a rescue hero, a hero who looks disaster in the face, a hero who feels the weight of her losses without being overwhelmed by them. She’s softer than he is, and he thinks it helps her take a punch, to give on impact in a way that keeps her from breaking.
Because he knows, even as she falls apart in his arms, that she’s not breaking.
That she’ll be okay.
“They just kept dying…” she sobs, her head dropping forward.
“You did good.” He aligns his forearms under hers, letting her rest as much as she can against him.
“They kept screaming…” her fingers desperately, frantically tangled with his in a white-knuckled grip. “And they just kept dying.”
“You did good.” She pulls his arms closer and tighter around her, like a seatbelt keeping her from shattering into a million pieces.
“I could have saved one more.”
And she could have dropped a building on bystanders had she passed out in the field, but he doesn’t say that to her. He just holds her and waits for her to stop fighting, to find something like rest in the fact that she wasn’t alone. She’s raw right now, and everything is an open wound, and he just wants to cover her for a few minutes and see if that’s enough time for some healing to happen.
Katuski from a year ago, a week ago, wouldn’t have come to her- wouldn’t have considered this a part of his job as a hero. But everything is different now. Everything has changed- in ways that none of them are fully prepared for.
They need each other more than he ever wanted to imagine, or face, or reckon with.
He’s alive because his friends showed up.
Fucking Deku and Icy-Hot, and even fucking Four-Eyes.
Her wounds are different. Her body is broken under a different sort of weight, but it’s no less profound and no less punishing. He was impaled by All For One, and he’ll have a scar to remind him of that every day. He does not doubt that Ochako will carry the broken bodies, and the faces frozen and twisted in pain, inside of her forever. It’s brutal, all of it, and even with the evolution of quirks, they aren’t built to shoulder it alone.
So he holds her until the last of her considerable strength gives out- until she sinks, pliant and boneless and shaking into him until she can longer hold her own body up.
His body curves around hers protectively, holding her as tight as she will let him.
He’s alive because he wasn’t alone out there in the field.
He wouldn’t let her be either.
###
Ochako sinks into the solid warmth that is Katsuki Bakugo, the certainty of his arms. She doesn’t have the strength to keep fighting. She saved who she could. But she could have saved more. She has to learn how to hold both of those in her own body- her powerful body that holds so much. She has to learn how to do both if she wants to get better- if she wants to save more.
If she wants to be the hero who saves the heroes- who saves everyone- she has to learn to hold those losses without being destroyed by them.
But right now, she needs to cry.
Right now, she’s not so sure that she can do that by herself.
She needs to shake and sob and cling so hard to the hands holding hers.
They aren’t the hands that she expected- but somehow, they are exactly what she needs.
She doesn't fear that she’ll be seen as fragile as she comes undone in his arms. As her being unravels in the dark of her room. She knows this moment won’t be all he sees when he looks at her. So she gives herself over to it. He reminds her- with his very presence- that she’s worth holding together- at least he thinks she is. And somehow, that means so much to her in this moment where she’s not so sure if she’ll be able to pick herself back up again; if she’ll ever be able to smile again, let alone step into her hero suit.
She cries until his heartbeat and his quiet affirmations are louder than the screams in her head.
She cries herself sick.
She reckons with this path she has chosen.
She doesn’t question or regret it- but tonight, she bears the weight of what it means to be a hero in a world where people do so much evil to each other. These won’t be the last bodies she holds in her arms- these won’t be the last final breathes that she bears witness to. This is not the only time that she will be the last face that someone sees, or the last hand that they hold.
So she lets herself fall into the steady rise and fall of his chest; she lets herself sink into him; she lets him hold her up; she lets his hands, his arms, cradle hers.
Until she doesn’t hear.
Until she isn’t sick.
Until she has no more strength to lift.
Until the weight is too much for even her, and she chooses, finally….
To release.
###
The teacher may only have one eye, but he can still see clearly enough what’s happening, what is being shared by the two children huddled on the floor. He sees the change even from the distance he keeps so as not to intrude.
He had assured the mother- for what his word was worth to the woman whose child he had sent into war- that he would check in on the girl, make sure that when she woke, she wasn’t alone with whatever demons have surely made themselves at home in her soul. But it seems he isn't needed- not this time.
Which is, always, the surest sign for a teacher- even in the midst of all of his failures- he’s doing something right.
It’s a job that hurts him more than it does anything else- teaching heroes is the only thing more painful than being a hero, as far as he is concerned. Because he has to sit and watch what isn’t glamorous enough or pretty enough to be shown on T.V. or reflected in the polls. It’s part of his job to watch the messy, painful birth of heroes. And it’s the hardest thing in the world when they are no longer play-acting, no longer pretending.
It doesn’t happen at graduation.
It doesn’t happen on their first mission.
It happens here.
In the dirt.
On the floor.
Surrounded by the bodies of dead and suffering friends- under the immensity of the people they cannot save.
The thing is, so many heroes never become heroes. They put on the cape and play the role and say the words, maybe even rescue a civilian or two. But the teacher knows the truth- he has seen, shaped, formed hero after hero, sent them off into the world, and was unfortunate (fortunate?) enough to watch as many of them never truly became heroes. Some heroes are lucky like that.
His class, his children, are not so lucky. They are heroes, are becoming heroes, and will still become heroes. It happens over time and in the blink of an eye. Right in front of him, now he sees it, the slow dissolve of the child.
Just like that…
The girl becomes a hero (holding the weight of the world on her shoulders).
The boy becomes a man (holding the hero when she can’t hold herself).
He is honored to see it when it does happen, and of course, it fills him with something like pride. But it’s more than that- heavier than that, more heartbreaking and holy than all of that (if he were a man given to believing in the sacred).
Because he knows the painful truth of how heroes are born. Heroes come into the world in the same way people do, in sweat, and pain, and tears, and blood.
And Shota can’t help but mourn and grieve for what’s lost in the moment that they become everything they had been striving and learning to be.
He’s a teacher, after all-, and that is also his job.