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Kyouka was still shaken up from the incident. Everyone is worried, but she brushes people off, saying that she’s okay. Katsuki knows better. If Kyouka was truly okay — which she isn’t, she’s absolutely fucking devastated — then she would be at the radio station on her days off, or she would purposefully find paparazzi for the sole purpose of flipping them off, and she wouldn’t look so lost and miserable as she was when Katsuki found her.
The two had the same days off, but never met up. It wasn’t purposeful or anything. Some days they made an effort to hang out, but most of those efforts didn’t work out in the end. Katsuki was the No.2 hero after all, and Kyouka was usually asked by Present Mic to MC the radio show for awhile.
On the rare days that Katsuki wasn’t unexpectedly called in to work (okay, in reality he just ends up helping any fight in his vicinity, but that’s besides the point) he goes to the park. Mostly to walk his annoying ass dog, but partly because the park is actually relaxing. Only old people go to the park near his house, and frankly, old people don’t give a flying fuck about heroes. No one notices him, and no one bothers him. The park is the only place where Katsuki just feels like Katsuki. No hero-ing, no Number 2 hero, no legendary graduate of Class 3A. He’s just Katsuki in the park, and he’s completely content with that fact.
And then someone recognizes him.
Kyouka.
He hasn’t seen her in awhile. Even if their partners are practically attached by the hip and go out for lunch every day they have off, Kyouka and Katsuki haven’t met in awhile. He’s kind of glad that he hasn’t seen her. It’s been three months since the incident, four since they’ve come face to face, and four since he’s seen her truly happy.
Momo tells Shoto everything, and as a result, Katsuki hears everything she has to say. Katsuki has heard both versions of the story: the one that Kyouka spews out like a well-recited speech as to not worry the public, and the one that is whispered behind closed doors to classmates and colleagues.
They start out the same way. Kyouka was tasked to be the leader of a recon and stealth mission to a nearby island to take out a group of villains that had been threatening to take control of the island and its residents. She had taken a solid team made up of her, three of her sidekicks, a credible healing hero, Sero, Mina, Shoji, and Denki. They had gotten separated five days into their mission by the group of villains, but had taken them down one by one. This was where the story shifted. An horrible “accident” happened that cause Kyouka to lose both her hearing and her left leg.
The truth? The healing hero had been compromised by one of the villain’s quirks, and they had realized too late. Two of her sidekicks and Kyouka were taken hostage by the villains, and in a desperate attempt to at least get her sidekicks out safely, Kyouka was left alone as a hostage.
Momo said that Kyouka hadn’t talked about what had happened to her when she was left alone. But Momo knew this: she had miraculously emerged from whatever dungeon they had kept her in, not able to hear what her friends were saying, and her left leg bleeding out dangerously. What she didn’t know was what caused Kyouka to lose her hearing.
Katsuki didn’t want to ask.
Hi Katsuki signed, sitting down next to her. She had hearing aids now, just like him. Momo had apparently constructed them for her with the help of a support item company; the special ones that she had made basically made it so that it didn’t affect her quirk at all. Momo hoped that her creation made it so that the mission never changed much about her girlfriend. It didn’t.
Hey.
How are you?
Kyouka hesitated, and Katsuki could tell that she was about to say some bullshit like, I’m fine or Could be better. She never lied around Katsuki.
I feel like fucking hell Kyouka signed. Everything has changed and I just can’t … handle it anymore. I just can’t Katsuki.
Something has changed about his best friend, and really, it breaks his heart. Katsuki lost most of his hearing during the war in their 3rd year, and to him, it was something so insignificant in the grand scheme of his life. But to Kyouka, whose quirk basically hinged on her ability to hear, it had been something that shook her whole world up, turned it upside down, put it in the washing machine, and dry it out in a hurricane. It changed everything for Kyouka.
I know that being deaf isn’t the end of the world; a ton of heroes that are deaf do well, but I don’t know if I can. Momo’s hearing aids are helping but I don’t have the heart to tell her that my quirk doesn’t work with it.
Katsuki’s eyebrows shoot up. I thought you said-
You thought wrong. Every time I try to use my quirk with the hearing aids in, it becomes all… muffled and weird. It feels like how my quirk used to act when I was younger. I can hear just normally, but my quirk… Her face falls even further, and Katsuki wants to make a snarky remark about the fact that she looks like she’s about to cry right now, but decides against it.
I’m going to lose everything, Katsuki. What kind of hero am I if I can’t even use my quirk? I’m basically fucking useless then.
He doesn’t know what to say. What can he say?
You can just start from the ground up again, you idiot. You said that your quirk is acting like how it did when you were younger, right? Just train it to be the way it was before you went on your mission. Kyouka stiffened at the mention of the mission. We’re only 25, we have time.
Kyouka sighs, taking in a shuddering breath. The tears finally started spilling over, and Katsuki could tell that this was the first time she had allowed herself to cry after getting back from the mission.
The old people pass by, sparing her a sympathetic glance. Katsuki finally wraps her in a hug. He keeps saying over and over and over again, “You’re going to be okay.” And every single time Kyouka whispers back, “I can’t. I can’t.”
“I’m right here, Ears. So is everyone else. Momo, Mina, fucking Dunce Face. Shit, your fans are asking you to take your time and they don’t even know you lost their hearing. People will wait for you to recover, Kyo. You have all the time in the world to get back on your feet.”
Kyouka’s hearing aids looks different to the ones Katsuki had. He hopes that they’re on, and hopes that Kyouka has listened.
She is going to be okay, eventually. Katsuki knows this. He just needs Kyouka to know.
“You’re going to be okay, Kyouka. You’re going to be okay.”