Work Text:
Her shoulder wound was acting up again. The injury seemed to flare up at the most random moments, and Momo found it annoying at least, and unbearable at most. Sometimes the wound felt fresh again, as if she had just been hit with the villain’s quirk moments prior. Sometimes it felt like she was back on the battlefield, a home to chaos that had been a bustling mall just days before. Sometimes, only rarely, Momo felt the forgotten memories of that day rise up to the surface of her conscious mind as the injury flared up.
She had chosen to forget that day; or at least, she was trying to forget it. Heroism was a dangerous occupation and everyone in the Hero Course was well aware of the risks that came with it: injuries, ranging from fractures to paralysis, and of course, death. Something that her graduating class hadn’t been aware of in their first year, was how they would be thrown head-first into those dangers. Momo was certain that over three genuine villain encounters wasn’t part of the curriculum for first-year students.
Throughout her highschool years, Momo constantly questioned if this should be considered normal; if it was okay that the adults expected the literal teenagers to accept that their current lives were normal. Momo always had to swallow her retorts when their teachers kept telling them to get used to it, that real pro-heroes dealt with more in their actual careers. But in the years that Class 3A dominated the attention of hero fans all over the world, that wasn’t the truth. The fate of a whole country was placed onto the shoulders of teenagers, and the adults couldn’t do shit about it.
“It’s your time,” teachers would say when the class would ask why they would be dealing with the wars, the villains and their groups.
But what if it wasn’t? What if it was too early for 15-year-olds to be on the frontlines of a war? What if it was too early to cry at your girlfriend’s bedside, praying that she would make it to 16?
Sure, it was their time. But that didn’t mean that every responsibility, the fate and destiny of the whole world had to be placed on their shoulders. Veteran heroes existed. Their teachers existed. The staff at UA often seemed to forget that they were all heroes-in-training.
She had forgotten for so long, how she had felt about all this. Her friends all lied, saying that the hundreds of attacks, ambushes, and attempted kidnappings were all events that they could look back at with indifference. It wasn’t indifference, it never was. It was fear that if they thought of the events again, the real emotions they felt at the time — pain, misery, fear — would become real again. It was the proclaimed time of peace, and no one wanted to shatter that picture by thinking of how they got here in the first place. It was unhealthy, sure, but it felt the best to ignore those feelings.
Momo tried to remember the aftermath of those events. The feeling of being alive, being able to hug her friends for what wasn’t the last time, the knowledge that she would be able to live another day and go back to the dorms and feel like a normal teenage girl again.
“I’m home!”
Momo breathed out. The most relieving thing to hear.
Kyouka walked in, her headphones around her neck, costume tattered, and a smear of blood dried on her cheek.
Momo found herself confused. She thought it foolish to be mad at the world and society that had no obligation to protect her and her childhood, but she was still upset that almost no one had tried . She was allowed to be mad at the fact that she was thrown into two wars even before she graduated. She found herself unable to find anything tangible to be mad at, so she settled to complain about her shoulder injury.
Swallowing down her growing anger and confusion, her wounds are kissed better, and shitty take out food is shared. Kyouka talks about her day. The attacks. The singular attack that is considered the most dangerous thing she has gone through for this week, but would’ve been considered just another day — probably just another assignment — back when they were in school makes Momo smile a little.
Her childhood self was gone, it was gone the moment she was on the frontlines of the first war, but she finds solace in the fact that the world now is trying to save peoples’ childhood. Maybe, some day, heroism isn’t even needed, and kids get to be kids yet again.
The sun sets, and the pain in Momo’s shoulder subsides completely.