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You are what you are.
At UA, her classmates love it. Momoyao, they petition, pencils. Momoyao, a fountain. Momoyao, I damaged a mirror, a new one please. That’s our Goddess Momoyao! Ashido really is the best at finding nicknames, Momo thinks. She’s not quite a goddess, but she’s flattered by they mean.
She cannot create the world, stir the sea with a spear to form islands, or even birth the elements. If anything, she would be a goddess of small things (if there was ever such a goddess), and at that a goddess whose power is so dependent on painstaking study. Every object has a unique chemical makeup and string of equations she needs to understand to replicate. Momo’s mind houses a small library of plans, and each object she has committed to memory exists as a book on a shelf. Momo knows the book of matryoshka dolls so well she doesn’t even need to pick it up.
Momo wonders what it would be like to blink, and instead of creating a doll, see fire and ice surge from her body. She’s let water drip from her palms, even fashioned gasoline, but she is no master of the elements. Todoroki can create ten story high walls of ice and set whole streets aflame. He could fly to heaven on a frozen pedestal, all the while incinerating the earth with a sun of his own making.
If she was the goddess of creation, he would be the god of destruction.
There is no one more breath-taking than Todoroki garbed in full flame and ice. The disparate temperatures often create a wind stream that swirls around him, tossing up his red and white hair. The air trembles where he stands, where his body and mind are as strong and lithe as a fox, and his eyes narrow in a beautiful mismatch of grey and turquoise. Todoroki wields his powers with dazzling precision and frightening speed. His opponents are often defeated before they have time to think. The constant reminder that he is Endeavour’s son does little to take away her amazement.
Momo has analysed the possible outcomes of fighting Todoroki more than she will ever let on, even to Jiro. She can never see a win in an open arena. Because what she needs is time - time to plan, conceive, create. Time would never be on her side in a confrontation with Todoroki. Even in landscapes with places to hide from or dodge his attacks, she always imagines herself faltering, and then a nightmare of flames or ice hurtling towards her, his face, apologetic. Sorry, Yaoyorozu.
Sorry Todoroki, would be more apt. Sorry for being too slow, sorry her plan failed, sorry about his family and how difficult it must be, sorry she does not know how to help, sorry she sometimes feels so far from him -
Todoroki moves with the confident energy befitting of a god. He never seems to doubt what the right thing to do is, although he will let himself be corrected if he is wrong. That degree of surety is foreign to Momo. She still does not completely understand why he voted for her as class representative, but every time she considers the fact, warmth washes through her. Yaoyorozu Momo is smart enough to believe in herself but it is somehow different to know that Todoroki Shoto sees something in her.
And he saw something in her, even at the time she did not.
Todoroki Shoto, who is unflinchingly blunt, who is sincere and compassionate, despite everything he’s been through – he was the real hero that day.
She can’t help it then, being drawn to him.
Once, the god of destruction accidentally breaks his pair of disposable chopsticks instead of snapping them into two. The class had gone out to eat, and she had sat next to him, reasoning that it followed from sitting next to him in class. Todoroki stares at the broken utensils in his hands, then at the soba – because of course this god lives on soba – he was about to eat.
His serious expression is too much. She softly laughs, and in moment, has a fresh pair sitting in her outstretched hand. The irony of the tiny but symbolic contrast in their actions is not lost on her. Here she is, playing her creation to his destruction.
“Thanks,” Todoroki says. His left hand pauses over hers, larger, and slightly rougher. Those mismatched eyes, curious, fill her vision. “You didn’t have to.”
“It’s no trouble,” she says.
She really didn’t, of course. They could easily have asked for another set. When Todoroki takes the new pair without further comment, he is probably just humouring her. She can see it by the way his gaze softens.
It's the least a goddess of creation can do, she thinks. The very least, for now.