Work Text:
Hero exercises always made Momo more anxious than she liked to admit. She was training to be a hero, and she knew she was doing very well for a first-year student. But, thinking about being able to actually put those skills to use in an actual emergency made her heart race and hands shake. Late at night, she would sometimes admit to herself that she might not have what it takes to be a hero.
It all came to a head one day when they were doing solo training. Momo was doing her best to feed herself and consistently think of the molecules needed to make the nesting dolls. It was overwhelming, to be experiencing the different sensations from the food and creating the material at the same time while trying not to get a single formula wrong for the different colors and such.
Momo could slowly feel herself become shaky and dizzy, clearly not feeding herself fast enough to keep up with the sheer amount of dolls she was making. She knew she should slow down, but Aizawa was walking past with that judgemental look that always made Momo feel as though she was falling behind no matter how far ahead she seemed to be. She had to keep going for his approval. It didn’t matter that her head was spinning and her hands shook as she lifted a sandwich to her lips. It didn’t matter that it felt like it was just waiting to come back up as soon as she swallowed it. All that mattered was the formula for the dolls.
C6H10O5 (wood), C17H13N3O3 (red paint), C16H12C12N4O4 (yellow paint), so on and so forth.
Aizawa paused, looking straight at Momo with a gaze that seemed to look into her soul and condemn her for her inadequacies. She would never move fast enough for that gaze to brush over her instead of being fixated. It was fine. She just needed to focus more on the formulas instead of how her jaw ached from non-stop chewing.
Momo grabbed a cupcake and started eating it. She wished she could just stop. She didn’t want to eat anymore. She didn’t want to continue with the dolls anymore, especially since, when she looked down at the most recent dolls she had made, they were starting to come out misshapen. She wished that Aizawa would stop staring at her. She noticed how his eyebrows continued to crease the longer he looked, and it made her feel so small and insignificant while she tried to focus on the dolls coming out the correct shape.
As Momo tried to pick up another piece of food, her sight blacked out for a moment. When she got her vision back, she was on her back, looking up at the ceiling of the infirmary and Aizawa who was hovering above her with a sort of gentle concern that seemed out of place on his face. Immediately, she knew that she had overdone it and was going to get into trouble.
How could she be so stupid? She was supposed to be one of the good students who never gave Aizawa a reason to complain or worry. Oh, how should she go about apologizing?
Aizawa spoke before Momo could make up her mind, “Are you alright?”
“I… I’m fine. Um, I’m sorry for worrying you.” Even to her own ears, Momo’s voice sounded shaky and uncertain, and she couldn’t help cringing at how her voice cracked on her apology. “I’ll do better, I promise.”
Momo did her best to meet Aizawa’s gaze, but she kept looking away every few seconds against her will. Maybe she was trying to hide her failures, even though he had already seen them.
Aizawa sighed as Momo tried to sit up before gently pushing her back down to a lying position. “Kid, you are severely malnourished, and you were beating your own personal record for speed. There’s no need to ‘do better,’ but I have a feeling that there is a need for you to slow down and take a break.”
“What? I can’t do that! My herowork would suffer, and I could fall behind.” Momo exclaimed, temporarily forgetting her manners. As soon as she remembered them, she quieted down to calmly say, “Sorry. I meant to say that… Uh, I would prefer to continue the way I am so as to not possibly hinder my classmates during team missions nor possibly not be able to save everyone I have set out to save.”
Aizawa sighed, and Momo had to stop herself from breaking eye contact as soon as he looked at her. “You are not going to save everyone. No matter how hard you work or how much you suffer, someone will always not be saved. You can’t blame yourself for that. You just have to get used to that reality and do your best to save as many people as you can. I know that you can save a lot of people, Yaoyorozu. You have immense potential to be one of the best heroes out there, but you cannot save anyone in this state.
“Pushing yourself to the breaking point isn’t helping anyone. I know that with the way Midoriya’s herowork is going it may seem like that, but he’s an exception and not the rule. You are not falling behind in any way, so stop driving yourself to the point of collapse. In order to protect people, you have to take care of yourself first.”
Momo sobbed. There wasn’t anything else she could do with the information that Aizawa so cruelly and carelessly presented to her. She couldn’t save everyone, and, if she kept going the way she was, she wouldn’t save anyone. Hearing it said aloud made it seem more real than when she thought it to herself at night, so crying seemed the most appropriate response.
Aizawa pulled her up into a sitting position and into a hug. Momo clung to his hero suit and sobbed into his shoulder as he rocked them back and forth. It was an uncharacteristic display of vulnerability on both of their parts, which made it all the more intense of a moment.
Soon enough, Momo had cried her eyes dry and laid back down to sleep off the throbbing headache in her temples. Aizawa stepped away, letting her curl up around a pillow. The last thing she thought before drifting off was a simple, Thank you, Mr. Aizawa.