Chapter Text
Death was a cruel, familiar smell. It filled your nose sickeningly and turned your body to lead as you stared down at your little sister. Her eyes were open but blank, lacking the playfulness that normally spun around her magenta irises.
You desperately wished for this to be some sort of sick joke, for the single-toned heart monitor to spur into quick-paced beats, for your sister to blink and smile at you another time. But she never perked up or smiled again, nor did the monitor beside the hospital bed she’s resided in for the past week come to life.
For a long moment, you felt nothing. You could only stare at the lifeless body covered from the stomach down in fluffy blankets with uniforms and butterflies depicted on the top. It wasn’t until unfamiliar fingers shut her empty eyes that your sister’s death felt real. You were so sure it had to be fake, a hallucination—a drawback from the quirk you hadn’t used in hours.
The world crashed within you, breaking down buildings and eating the ocean with a single gulp. Your mind was chaos, full of initial grief and anger and sadness. But you couldn’t cry. You had seen the scene in front of you too many times to count.
Then, however—all of the times empty, lifeless eyes caught your own—you didn’t understand.
You blinked and the world came back to focus, drawing your attention to the people around you. There was a swarm of three nurses immediately pushing through the four-person crowd that was you and your family. They looked as though they had the fire in their bones to revive her. The ocean of time, however, killed the flame upon looking at her and the heart monitor that had been shrilling a single tone for far too long.
The sounds of your mother’s sobs grew louder as realization caught in her fragile, aging body. She brought herself to the floor, hiding her face in her trembling hands. Your father followed her movement, tears pooling at the bottom of his clear eyes. Your brother was left alone by the side of the bed, looking at his twin in complete shock. His hands were by his sides, and he stared, unable to comprehend that his best friend was gone and it wasn’t temporary.
The tallest nurse sighed solemnly and took the fluffy, unicorn, and butterfly blanket off the bed in a single pull. It fell to the floor, landing into a heap of nothing. The nurse followed by pulling the thin, light blue blanket—the obligatory hospital bed sheets—over your sister's face.
“Don’t cover [Sister’s Name] face!” your brother yelled suddenly, reaching over the bed and grabbing at the thin sheet that suffocated the one person he’d ever truly known. Tears began to gloss over his desperate eyes. “She doesn’t like when her face is covered!”
The nurse closest to your brother, a short woman with sad eyes, grabbed at him from under the armpits and pulled him away from the bed. Your brother yelled and kicked helplessly, eventually throwing himself onto the tile floor in a pile of sobs.
It was too much for you—the sound of the dead heart monitor, your brother’s muffled pleas against the cold floor and his arm, your mother’s voluminous cries which began to turn into hoarse screaming. You turned around sharply, removing yourself from the room completely.
Compared to the room, the hallway was quiet and barren. It was nice being able to calm yourself, but it felt so lonely. There weren't any nurses walking with their different colored scrubs drawing attention, and the lights were fluorescent and empty of gentleness.
You began to walk down the hall, looking for something familiar.
In terms of what you wanted to find, it lacked your family or those lifeless, magenta eyes. It was missing the room you lived in when you weren’t at school and didn’t include the bright pattern on the walls in the children’s half of the hospital. You wanted to find something you could use to forget about your sister’s death and the feelings inside of you that followed her passing.
When you made it to the lobby, where a waiting room was placed in the corner of the large, square room, you saw some familiarity.
Around seven of your classmates stood up upon seeing you, concern on most of their faces. Others held pity, and one held nothing at all—a blank slate of emotion and expression. You just looked at them. You weren’t particularly interested in talking to them or allowing them to see the exhaustion in your eyes.
But they were so familiar, normal.
“[Name]?” Yaoyorozu stepped closer to you, saying your name as though she couldn’t tell if who she saw was you or not. Her inky hair cascaded past her shoulders, and she folded her arms against her midsection. “Are you alright?”
Jirou stepped next to her, as did Midoriya. The entire group crowded you, and all you could think about was how they found you. They began to talk, looking at you directly with soft eyes. They spoke like they answered the unspoken question that spiraled around your head and then said more, continuing to move their mouths.
All you heard was the endless echoes of their words, each sound adding to the other and turning the sentences into garbled noise. You could only look at their individual faces, calmed by their familiarity and cursed by the reminder that someone was missing.
Inko Midoriya was a kind woman. She took eight teenagers into her arms in the late afternoon and resulted in making them an early dinner as she stood silently—almost anxiously—in her apartment.
Iida sat respectfully on the couch, rubbing his eyes tirelessly as he held his glasses in the other. Kirishima stood near the couch, his hands in his pockets as he and Midoriya watched you stare at the floor. Yaoyorozu sat quietly near Iida, and Jirou sat on the chair in the corner of the room, looking at her empty lap. Todoroki sat at the table in the kitchen, talking to Inko in short bursts of monotonous small talk.
Until dinner was placed on the table and everyone squished together—sitting shoulder to shoulder awkwardly—that’s where you all stayed.
Inko made housou soup, giving average portions to everyone in white, glass bowls. It was steaming, the smell of onions, taro, and carrots—a fresh, familiar smell that almost made you hungry—wafting to your face.
You grabbed the thick spoon in your fist, taking a deep breath as your knuckles paled from your ironclad grip. It wasn’t that you weren’t hungry. You were. You hadn’t had anything but caffeine that day—your sister had reached a worse condition, and staying awake seemed like the only thing you could ever hope for.
Actually, you were starving.
The day before, all you ate you had a pathetic bowl of cereal. It was provided by the hospital out of pity because they all seemed to know what was to come in the following twenty-four hours. And it wasn’t that you didn’t want to eat or couldn’t find the desire within your body. Simply, your mind was projected on your sister’s dwindling health, and everything else was lowered to nothing—an unimportant speck of dust flowing around an empty bedroom.
Then, when your mind circled solely around your sister, you had almost forgotten about Bakugou.
Not that you cared about him or had a friendship with him. And it wasn’t that you had feelings for him or was anything more than a classmate.
It’s just hard to forget about someone when they had been pulled from your life by people who had killed innocent people. It’s hard to forget about a face when they’d been kidnapped. It was especially impossible when you had seen that face for hours every week and had listened to his harsh words explode in outrage enough times to remember every tone in his voice.
It was hard to forget him, regardless of what happened.
He was loud and pompous and annoying. He was arrogant. But he was strong. Intelligent too.
You brought the spoon to the steaming bowl when your quiet thoughts dulled into a ringing silence, and your mind was opened to the low conversation your classmates had amongst themselves.
Jirou nodded non-committedly; she was more focused on the meal in front of her. Kirishima slurped up the upon quickly, scarfing down the bowl like it would be taken from him. Midoriya was listening attentively to what Iida was saying about the projects that were supposed to be presented tomorrow.
Todoroki ate quietly and Yaoyorozu nearly mirrored his silence, though she nodded occasionally at the things Iida had to say. Sometimes Yaoyorozu even commented, however, she always took the time to swallow her food—it was unlike Midoriya who talked with pursed lips and a hand covering his mouth.
You took a sip of the broth, testing your meager stomach. When the feeling left a satisfied hunger for more, you took a bigger sip. That sip was followed by warm udon and a chunk of carrot, which was followed behind three more similar bites. It left your stomach feeling warm, grateful. The food was delicious, warm. It reminded you of home. It wasn’t your kitchen or your bedroom. Not your mother or your father. But home.
Whatever home was.
Suddenly, the lingering warmth in your stomach soured, the gentleness of the simple moment shattering. You stood up immediately, your movement violent and sudden as you tripped over Todoroki’s feet and nearly hit the half-wall that separated the kitchen from the living room.
An overpowering wave of sickness drowned you in its thick consistency, each phantom finger shoving itself down your throat violently. Each hallucinative hand hit the back of your throat, causing your stomach to lurch painfully. You forced yourself down the hall, hitting on your bottom lip until blood was metallic on your tongue. Slamming the bathroom door open and finding the toilet, you emptied your insides into the white bowl.
You grabbed helplessly at the smooth ceramic, your short fingernails clawing against the surface as your stomach painfully clenched.
Your thoughts came in rushes, broken fragments of a broken mirror. There were reflections of your inner voice, repeated realizations stabbing the remaining part of a coherent subconscious.
Housou soup was your sister’s favorite.
You gagged, emptying your meager stomach. It was painful, a sharp burn rising from your throat.
Housou soup was your sister’s favorite.
Housou soup was your sister’s favorite.
Housou soup was your sister’s favorite.
The feeling like pressure stabbed into your side, a string of cramps of pain rolling around your abdomen. You felt like you were dying, each punch of pain forcing you to spill your insides into the toilet bowl. Everything that rose up was sour, an acid from your clenched stomach.
Housou soup was your sister’s favorite.
When nausea left and the sickness in your gut stopped you from throwing up any further, you rested your cheek against the arm that lay along the narrow rim of the bowl. Your lips were wet and sticky, glossed in things you didn’t want to think about any further. Your hands trembled weakly.
“Oh, honey.” You heard Inko enter the bathroom, squatting to your level before sitting on her calves. She put a gentle hand on your head. “Are you sick? Or was my housou soup that bad?” Her voice was an enjoyable lightness, a mix between genuine concern and hope.
“She used to love housou soup,” you sighed almost deliriously. Your mind was foggy, your stomach tingled, and your body shook. “She used to ask mom for it every night.”
“What did you say?” She asked, her thumb rubbing gentle lines across your temple.
You shook your head, blinking slowly as you sit up, bowing your head. “I apologize for what happened”—you stood up, flushed the toilet, and moved to the sink a foot away—“Your food wasn’t the reason I got sick.”
“You don’t have to lie, kiddo,” Inko gave you a breathy laugh as you used the back of your hand to wipe your glossy lips. “I’ve never made it before. It was kind of a spur-of-the-moment decision.”
“It was great,” you insisted. You flicked at the faucet, drawing warm water from the metal head. You got a pump of soap and rubbed bubbles across your hands to your wrists. “It was just my own personal issues.”
“Well, are you okay?” Inko turned her body to look at you easier from her sitting position on the floor.
“I’m great,” you said, drying your hands on your pants. “Thanks for letting me inside your home, but I’ve got to go now.”
You quickly left the bathroom. You almost bumped into Kirishima, who had moved towards the doorway, but you pushed past him without care. Yaoyorozu was standing at the beginning of the short hallway, one hand on the wall. She looked worried.
“Hey? Are you okay?” she asked, looking at you with crinkled eyebrows and gentle, searching eyes.
You ignored her, heading straight to the door unapologetically. The remainder of your classmates looked at you curiously in the kitchen, frozen and confused about what had even happened.
“What are you doing?” Todoroki asked suddenly, stopping you in your tracks. You turned to look at him, and he ate a mouthful of udon as you did. He was still sitting at the table, his legs folded under him as the rest of your classmates cleaned their spots neatly and stood at the sink to wash their hands.
“Leaving,” you answered.
“Why?” he asked, tilting his head in question. “Are you embarrassed that you threw up?”
You looked at him another second before turning and walking out of the door, silent and focused.
As you threaded through the halls, walked out the building’s front door, and walked the twisty path to your house as the lowering sun made the world a dusky haven, Inko stepped into the kitchen.
She watched as Jirou quietly closed the door with a gentle press of the hand, her other holding her almost empty bowl. Yaoyorozu sighed and sat across from Todoroki, who looked up from his bowl.
“Are they always like this?” she asked as her forearms rested against the table, her eyes downcast. “Have they always been like this?”
“Are you asking me?” Todoroki asked with a raised eyebrow, “Because I’ve only known them for a few months.”
“I went to middle school with [Name],” Jirou said from the sink as she rinsed her bowl. She glanced back at Yaoyorozu who turned to face her. Jirou’s raven bangs follow her movements. “They’ve always been kind of closed off.”
“Kind of?” Kirishima echoed next to Jirou. He stood with his back against the counter, slight amusement in his voice as he rubbed at his neck. “I don’t know”—he shrugged, and Jirou looked at him—“they seem very closed-off to me.”
“Yeah,” Jirou hummed, gently placing the wet bowl onto the stack the rest of her classmates formed. “Very closed-off seems right.”
Iida sat on the couch in the living room, using part of his shirt to clean his glasses. Midoriya walked slowly around the room, looking at the books on the chest-level shelf near the Tv that he had looked at many times before.
“Why?” Yaoyorozu asked, even though the question was unanswerable—an impossible equation.
“We probably shouldn't try to insert ourselves into [Last Name]’s personal issues,” Iida said sternly from the couch. He put on his glasses carefully, using his finger to push them up his nose bridge. “It’s disrespectful. If they wanted to tell us what was wrong, they would have already.”
The seven teenagers settled, the room turning silent as Inko continued to observe the kids around her. She had stood against the wall, her arms folded as she bit the inside of her cheek. She didn’t speak up even when the ringing in her ears grew too loud and memories of what once was were too forceful in her mind.
They all silently stood, as if mourning a version of yourself that had been dead long before most of them met you—a version only Inko and Midoriya would remember.
Everyone was so kind to you.
The days before your sister's death, they never asked why you left school early, or why you were constantly on edge. They never poked at you and asked unreasonable questions that strayed too far from a simple “Are you okay?” .
Everyone tried to be like gentle mothers who always kept their buttery voices low and sweet. Like babies who gurgled giggles from their tiny throats as bubbles rose past their cracked lips.
Inko did. So did everyone else.
But you weren’t fragile, and you felt they spoke their gentle words and asked those questions because they pitied you—because they thought you were a cracked glass vase about to shatter; because somehow they wanted to fix you.
Bakugou never did—he never asked you if you were okay, or sugarcoated his words when he spoke, or filtered his questions like he thought uttering the sentence would break you into two— and you were grateful for that. Because you knew whether or not the rest of your classmates didn’t let you know they questioned your disappearances midway through third period, they still talked and thought about it when you weren’t around.
At least Bakugou let you know he was thinking of the question and reminded you that he didn’t think you were a pathetic sheet of glass.
So, really, they weren’t being kind. Bakugou was.
You could almost laugh at that thought when you stepped through your house’s front door, hearing the droning sound of the Tv and muffling voices.
Bakugou being kind?
No, considerate was a better word. Maybe. Maybe it was.
Your eyes immediately drew to your brother, who watched a children’s movie while eating a big bowl of popcorn on the couch. His young, pudgy fingers grabbed at another handful before shoving it in his mouth. He laughed with a full mouth, watching as a character on the Tv fell down.
“That’s a lot of popcorn,” you told him when you reached the back of the couch. You put a hand on the top of his head, ruffling his hair. “Don’t eat enough to get yourself sick.”
“I know,” your brother responded, glancing at you before directing his eyes back to the Tv.
You silently nodded at him, turning towards the hallway.
You weren’t close with many. You were close with Jirou and Kirishima, but that was it. It was mostly your fault, though, because rarely did you talk enough for anyone to get to know anything about you. You had just known Kirishima and Jirou long enough for them to know a few of your flaws, and more than enough for you to know the average amount of times a week Kirishima would mention something about manliness, and the diverse music taste Jirou has.
You met Kirishima in elementary school, after three years of sitting in their small, square classrooms. He mostly seemed happy, but almost always seemed a bit hard on himself for a little kid. Jirou, however, you met in middle school. You were both forced to work together for a large, semester-long project, and she kindly let you listen to music with her.
If you really wanted, you could’ve made more friends or allowed yourself to be open with a few others. But you were stubborn with your own emotions. You never wanted them to show, to make you seem weak or vulnerable. You didn’t want to get used like you were as a child when you had too much innocence to understand that your doings were taking lives.
And anyway, you preferred listening to others talk rather than speaking yourself. Maybe that’s why you and Kirishima got along so well. And perhaps that's why you and Jirou were so close.
But as you walked into your bedroom, emotionally drained and once again in need of something familiar, you saw Bakugou’s face plastered on the Tv.
His face was the wrong kind of familiarity, but just what you needed at the same time.