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Nothing is assured. No destiny is guaranteed, even when you think you finally have everything figured out.
There are worse things, surely, than waking up beside a beautiful woman.
Though, if Izuku Midoriya is honest with himself, perhaps that is not quite true. Because while waking up beside a beautiful woman might seem to most people a good thing, it feels quite different when you wake up next to a very lovely stranger with absolutely no recollection of how you ended up beside them in the first place, nor any memory of who they might be.
This is Izuku’s exact predicament; lying in bed on his left side, eyes still adjusting to the light of morning, and staring into the face of a peacefully sleeping woman with auburn hair and deep blush marks on her round cheeks, wearing strange mittens on her hands.
She is absolutely beautiful.
And he has no idea who she is.
Izuku remains frozen in the bed for much longer than he should, in all probability, mind reeling as he tries to recall any protocol for this sort of situation. But he’s never run across a scenario at all like this in any of his textbooks, nor any of the forums he reads online about Hero work.
Is she a fan? Has Deku woken up face-to-face with his very first celebrity stalker?
He feels his cheeks heat at the thought, and he mutters it away as he stumbles out of his bedroom. No, Izuku thinks, certainly not.
No one that lovely could be interested in him, even if he is a well-known Pro. Because even with One for All, he is still strange, still gangly, still scarred and incapable of getting through an interview without stumbling over his words or tripping over his untied shoelaces when he walks on stage.
No amount of professional aptitude will ever fully make up for his social ineptitude, of that he is certain.
Izuku paces his living room a long time, lower lip pinched between two fingers as he tries to decide how best to proceed. Should he wake her? Call the police? He does a quick scan of his apartment to make sure he is where he’s supposed to be.
When he considers the possibility he might be in the wrong apartment—the wrong bed!—the mortification is nearly enough to make his knees buckle.
The apartment looks right, though. Well, mostly it looks right. His action figures line the shelves on the wall just as they should, and there is his Hero costume hanging up in front of the laundry closet.
But something is… off about it, too.
Because there are picture frames interspersed with the figurines of All Might and Nighteye and Miruko. Frames he doesn’t remember putting there. And there’s a container that looks suspiciously like a Pro Suit briefcase next to Deku’s uniform that, judging from the strange pink insignia, is definitely not his.
Curious, he makes his way over to the nearest shelf and peers at one of the many photographs. He smiles at the happy countenances of himself and his mother and…
Wait.
Wait.
Isn’t that…
The girl from his bedroom?
Izuku doesn’t have time to fully process this information because just as he turns around to catch another glimpse of the woman’s face so he can confirm that, yes, it is her in the picture, two strong arms wrap around his neck, trapping him in a headlock.
A strangled noise of protest escapes Izuku’s throat as he grasps the arms of his assailant and kicks in a bid to free himself from their hold. To no avail, though; whoever got the drop on him is strong enough to maintain the upper hand while he flounders, distracted just enough by a weird swooping sensation in his belly to be truly effective in his counterattack. When next he kicks, intent on activating just a small percentage of One for All so he can dislodge himself with minimal injury to his opponent, he squeaks in surprise.
Because his foot never connects with the floor. In fact, his foot never connects with anything and it is then he recognizes the swooping sensation in his stomach for what it is.
He is floating and though he tries very hard not to panic, he realizes he has much less control over his momentum than he is used to.
“Who are you and what are you doing in my apartment?”
The voice startles him. It is so close to his ear. Like speaking on the telephone, but much clearer. Izuku feels her breath fanning out against his temple, cascading over his cheek. He shivers at the closeness, her words prickling against the back of his neck like a cool breeze on a humid day, raising the hairs there to stand to attention.
When he pauses a moment, he senses something painfully familiar about this entire scenario, but he can’t quite put his finger on it.
“Y-y-your apartment?” he manages to ask between the competing thoughts racing through his mind. “This is my apartment!”
The revelation apparently startles her just enough to give Izuku the opening he needs. He uses a quick finger flick to send them both spiraling up to the ceiling. When her back collides with it—gently enough not to really hurt her, he hopes—she lets out a soft oof and her grip around his neck loosens. Izuku pushes away, flailing his limbs to maintain his bearings while gliding weightlessly through the air.
Apparently, the mystery woman from his bed—and the unfamiliar photographs in his living room—is more adept at maneuvering without the influence of gravity because she recovers quickly enough to elbow him between the shoulders.
One for All sparks to life and Izuku catches himself on the couch, sling-shotting his body around the far arm so he can finally face her.
Doing so is a mistake because as soon as he sees her again—brows drawn together and mouth turned down at the edges as she concentrates—he’s all but a goner.
How is he supposed to fight someone who looks so… so… cute?
Izuku watches as her fingertips come together briefly and she drops to the floor, her weight apparently returned to her. Again, familiarity prickles at his neck, wriggles its way between the folds of his brain, but he doesn't quite understand what it means.
As she readies herself for another attack, Izuku uses the split second she takes to gain her balance on the floor to push himself off the couch, launching toward the shelves on the other side of the room. He bangs into them with a less-than-graceful clatter, sending various action figures scattering to the floor.
He winces, hoping none of the pieces are broken or the corners of the boxes smashed. There’s no time to wallow about it, though, or check their condition, because his mystery assailant has already turned and is about to jump in his direction. Izuku throws the picture frame at her in a last-ditch attempt to stall her aggressions.
He grimaces when he realizes he put a little too much force behind the throw when the frame nearly hits her in the face. She catches it, though just barely, and is about to chuck it away when he shouts desperately, “I THINK WE KNOW EACH OTHER!”
She frowns, but watching him drift slowly back up to the ceiling, she must decide he’s not enough of a threat at the moment, so she turns her attention to the photograph now in her hands.
The same one Izuku had seen with his mother… and both of them.
He watches the same confusion he feels bloom across her face and thinks her pensive expression is perhaps even prettier than her confrontational one, though it hardly seems possible.
Large brown eyes flick up to meet his and Izuku does his best to give her a smile, though he imagines the effect is more wary than encouraging, despite his efforts.
“My name is Izuku Midoriya,” he says hopefully.
“Uraraka.”
“It’s nice to meet you?”
She chuckles, though he can see the hesitance in her expression—the same trepidation he felt creeping up his spine when he woke up beside her.
Uraraka brings her fingers together again and suddenly Izuku plummets toward the floor. He catches himself in a crouch, noticing how she jumps away from him when One for All sparks around his body.
When he straightens to his full height, Uraraka is standing close enough to scrutinize the freckles dusted across his cheeks, perhaps check them for patterns.
“If this is real,” she says, holding up the picture frame, “then why don’t I remember you?”
Izuku looks at the photo again, heart warming at the sight of them both smiling wide, one of his arms over his mother’s shoulders and the other around the woman’s–Uraraka’s–waist.
The warm feeling snuffs out, replaced with a cold chill of uncertainty.
“I have no idea.”
Everything we see is settled fact. If we can see it, we can touch it. But what if our hands pass right through the thing before our eyes? What does it mean when all you can see is an illusion?
It doesn’t take long for Izuku to realize Uraraka makes an excellent ally. She’s smart and resourceful. The first thing she does is open every drawer and cupboard in the apartment looking for more information about what their relationship might be.
It’s strange, though, because Izuku knows there should be cooking utensils in the drawer next to the stove, and an assortment of notebooks in the stand by the entryway. But every single door or drawer or cupboard they open is…
“Empty,” she says, turning to look at him, “they’re all empty.”
That doesn’t make any sense, and it’s almost as unnerving as waking up next to a stranger who is apparently not a stranger at all.
When Uraraka introduces herself in full—"Ochaco Uraraka, Hero name Uravity”—Izuku takes her hand between his own trembling fingers.
“I-Izuku Midoriya, Hero name D… Deku?”
It comes out as a question more than a confirmation of his professional status, and his handshake goes limp as he ponders his answer. Because, somewhere deep in his bones, Izuku knows it’s true—his Hero name is a reflex of his tongue; he doesn’t have to think about it at all before he says it. So while he knows his Hero name is Deku, but he has no idea why he would choose the childhood insult as the moniker for his Pro persona. It’s a term that still makes him flinch, brings with it memories of singed notebooks and shoulders, bruises on his forearms and back from being shoved against cool cinderblock walls.
Something flickers, a dying candle of recognition in the back of his mind as his eyes snap up to meet Uraraka’s.
“Everything okay?” she asks, tilting her head to the side so her hair brushes against one of her shoulders. The ghost of a tickle whispers over his own neck and Izuku shivers.
“F-fine,” he says. “Maybe. Except, well, you know.” He gestures between them and she nods, understanding.
He doesn’t elaborate about the new uncertainty surrounding his name, and Uraraka seems perfectly content to ignore the strangeness of his reaction in lieu of searching for more information about their predicament.
“Are you a new Pro?” she asks, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of you.”
That gives him pause because she’s right, Izuku has no recollection of a Pro Hero named Uravity, and yet he knows he should. Izuku knows all the Pros—from the popular to the niche, the old timers to the upstarts.
“I’m not,” he says flatly, not elaborating even when she stares at him with those wide, brown eyes.
Instead, Izuku follows her lead, muttering and pinching his lower lip between his teeth as he wonders if this was some elaborate and extremely realistic dream. As he does, though, he trips over his own feet and smacks face-first into the floor, dispelling any notions he might still be asleep.
When Uraraka confirms his suspicions that every personal item and utensil is missing from the kitchen, living room, and bathroom, Izuku decides it’s time to step outside the apartment and see what lies in the hallway beyond. He doesn’t even put his shoes on, just wrenches the door open and steps into the hall.
At least, he steps where the hall should be.
But it’s dark, black as pitch beyond the doorway and dotted with strange stars all made of the wrong colors. For one horrifying moment, Izuku feels a sharp tug behind his navel as if Uraraka has used her Quirk on him again.
“Deku!”
He turns toward the sound of her panicked voice, and finds Uraraka standing in the open doorway, hands plastered to the jamb as she stares out into the infinite darkness beyond.
And then Izuku plummets faster than the speed of sound, his head filling with a pressure like a balloon about to burst from too much helium.
He wonders if it’s strange that his final thought is that he doesn’t mind the way Deku sounds when Uraraka says it. Then, just as quickly, every conscious thought rips away from him and he feels like he’s exploding into a thousand bits of starlight, scattering across the darkness like confetti.
BA-LEEP.
Izuku collapses to his knees in the middle of the living room, forehead slick with sweat and one shaking hand clutched to his chest.
What the–
“Deku!”
Uraraka races to his side and Izuku is distantly aware that the door to the apartment is still open. It swings slowly closed and he has just enough time to glimpse the speckled darkness beyond.
“Where did I go?” he asks, shuddering when he feels Uraraka’s hands on his shoulders. He looks at them, noticing the way she holds her pinkies up so she doesn’t touch him with all the pink, squishy pads of her fingers.
Cute.
“You stepped out of the apartment into the… um…” She doesn’t know how to finish the sentence, apparently, which Izuku understands because he’s the one who walked out into it and even he isn’t sure what to call it.
“I fell,” he says, and she confirms with a nod.
“Really, really fast.”
CHA-CHING.
The sound is sharp, like a knife slicing through ice, and they both jolt when it clangs itself against their eardrums. Uraraka jumps up into a fighting stance, fists in front of her, while Izuku spills gracelessly onto his backside.
“What… what just happened?” he mutters, still panting, feeling a bead of sweat roll down his temple and drip off his cheek.
Suddenly, Izuku’s overactive brain is assaulted by memories of every video game he has ever played. Particularly the limited edition All Might’s Mighty Action Adventure he played through relentlessly when he was twelve, trying to find every Easter Egg and complete all the side quests.
It was an excellent game, with many features and hidden levels he never quite finished.
But every time All Might was resurrected by Recovery Girl after Izuku allowed his hit points to dwindle too low, a golden number would appear above his head to denote how many lives he had remaining.
And the sound the game made when it happened…
Izuku scrambles to his feet and bolts to the nearest window.
It confirms some intangible dread pooling in his belly.
“This isn’t my apartment.”
“Our apartment,” Uraraka corrects, joining him at the window. He hears her soft gasp and Izuku’s grip tightens on the sill.
He didn’t bother to look outside when he woke up. There was light spilling in through the windows same as usual, so it didn’t occur to him to check. But now, as they both stare out at the strange blankness beyond the pane, the dread in his stomach unspools like silk thread, winding its way along the rivers of his veins as adrenaline pumps into his extremities.
“Where are we?” Uraraka asks, brows pinched together. Her respiration is elevated, so Izuku knows she’s as concerned—maybe even, despite being a Hero, scared—as he is.
“I have no idea.”
And that bothers him. Izuku’s greatest strength—at least, before he was gifted One for All—has always been his analytical mind. Even before he had a Quirk to call his own, he could problem solve complex Quirk issues just by observing Heroes on the news.
But even as his mouth starts working, trying to unravel the confused webbing of his thoughts, none of the words make sense. Not really.
“It could be a dream but if that’s the case then I should have woken up when I fell. If not when she dropped me, then when I tripped or when I walked outside and fell because I got that same swoopy feeling like when you dream about walking down the sidewalk and you trip and then wake up so it doesn’t make any sense that I’m asleep. And if I’m not asleep then this could be a hallucination of some kind? Perhaps a Quirk but I don’t remember anything coherent before I woke up this morning so that’s not very helpful and if it’s not a hallucination then it could be an alternate dimension or a parallel universe? No true basis in concrete scientific theory and so that would be quite the phenomenon–”
“Deku.”
Izuku jumps nearly out of his skin, turning to find Uraraka staring at him. He immediately tries to apologize, but she waves her hands to stop him and he notices she isn’t looking at him like an alien with orange skin and too many eyes like most people do when he mutters half-coherently to himself in their presence.
Instead, Uraraka is smiling and it makes his heart beat faster than he’d like to admit.
He still manages to stutter, “S-sorry,” before she presses a finger to his mouth to silence him.
“Deku,” she says again, “I think there’s someone at the door.”
Her finger is still balanced against his mouth and Izuku tries very hard not to think about how warm and soft her skin feels where they make contact.
This becomes easier when he hears the soft knocking.
The gentle raps make him aware of another sound—something distant and fuzzy, but growing louder and more prominent with each knock.
“Is that… music?” he asks, the question a little muffled by her finger.
Uraraka nods, her face scrunched up and contorted with concern. “None of this makes any sense.” She pulls her hand away from his lips and Izuku immediately misses her, even though she’s still right next to him.
“Izuku, honey? Will you let me in?”
The sound of that voice makes Izuku’s heart pound, the rhythm of it in his ears louder than the strange music or even the knocking as it repeats again. He stares at the closed door much longer than he would like to admit, afraid of what he might find if he opens it.
Because Inko Midoriya is dead, and there is no way she can be standing on the other side, but her voice is unmistakable.
Neither he nor Uraraka make any move to open the door, both of them apparently stricken immobile when they remember what they found beyond it the last time.
The music—no longer just sounds, but firmly and undeniably music—loops around and begins anew, slowly rising in volume. There doesn’t seem to be a point of origin, almost as if the music is playing inside Izuku’s brain.
Except that Uraraka can hear it, too.
The knocking is louder this time, Izuku is almost sure he can feel the reverberation of it in his chest.
“Izuku, honey? Will you let me in?”
“Who is that?” Uraraka whispers.
He gulps, finally walking slowly toward the door. “I think it’s my mom,” he says, pointing to the picture of the three of them, which Uraraka set on the couch after her initial surprise wore off.
He does not tell her that Inko was buried several months ago. Does not explain how eerie and unsettling he finds her voice as she repeats the same seven words over and over again.
“Izuku, honey? Will you let me in?”
When he finally opens the door—because what other choice does he have?—the music swells and both Izuku and Uraraka wince as Inko toddles inside, happy as can be and apparently not at all aware of the strangeness of the situation.
The door swings easily closed behind her and Izuku only just manages to catch a glimpse of that dark speckled nothingness from before.
Where did she come from if there isn’t a hallway?
“Oh, Izuku it’s so good to see you,” Inko says, plopping down a bag and turning to give him a sloppy kiss on one cheek. Her hands are cold, not at all like Uraraka’s finger when she shushed him, and Izuku pulls away, revulsion curdling in his stomach.
Something is very wrong with his mother.
She sounds exactly right, looks just as he always remembers her looking, but there is a distance between them he cannot quite articulate. Something cosmic and unending; a cavernous existential loss of their bond.
“Ochaco, honey, how are you?”
Inko makes her way toward Uraraka with her arms wide, obviously expecting a hug. But Uraraka, dexterous as she’s proven herself to be, sidesteps and Inko instead bumps into the couch, though it does not seem to phase her. Instead, she merely alters her course and continues pursuing Uraraka through the living area. Her pace is slow, but somehow still menacing in its determination.
Inko’s smile never falters as she repeats the greeting again, “Ochaco, honey, how are you?”
Uraraka dodges her arms and knocks over a shelf full of action figures, but Inko just steps on them as she continues her pursuit.
“Ochaco, honey, how are you?”
“Get away from me!” Uraraka shrieks. Finally at her limit, she slaps her own thigh with one hand and floats up to the ceiling, letting her back bump up against it as she glares down at Inko who stands below her, arms still wide.
“Ochaco, honey, how are you?”
Uraraka looks pleadingly at Izuku and the panic blooming in his chest—the burgeoning realization that things are more than weird they are wrong—creeps up into his throat, making it difficult to speak. Still, he manages to squeak out, “M-mom!” before Inko can finish her next repetitive question. She looks at him, though her arms remain spread in Uraraka’s direction. Izuku takes a deep breath to steady himself before he gestures to the couch, “Why don’t you sit down and leave Uraraka alone?”
This seems to jolt at something in Inko’s brain because she drops her arms and takes several steps in Izuku’s direction, tilting her head just a little too far to one side as she asks, “What did you call her?”
“Uh…” Izuku’s eyes dart over to Uraraka’s and she shrugs, clearly equally as confused, as she releases her Quirk. “Ura–”
He never finishes his explanation because as soon as Uraraka hits the floor, Inko turns and opens her arms again.
“Ochaco, honey, how are you?”
Ochaco lets out a growl of frustration. “Stop calling me that, I don’t even know you!”
Izuku wonders if Uraraka always looks so pretty when her cheeks flush in anger. If so, he thinks it very unlikely anyone has ever won an argument against her.
Only a moment later, though, the blush fades as Uraraka blanches. Izuku looks at his mother and finds her face crumpling in a familiar way—eyes wide, wobbling lower lip clamped between her teeth.
“What do you mean you don’t know me? Ochaco, honey, it’s me.”
Izuku tries his best to diffuse the situation, standing between both women and turning toward his mother with a gentle expression on his face. “Mom, Uraraka is having a difficult day. We both are. Maybe it’s best if you leave and come back ano–”
Inko tilts her head again in that way that makes Izuku’s stomach lurch. “What did you call her?”
“Uraraka,” he says slowly. “Because that’s her name.”
It doesn’t make any sense that Izuku is so ill at ease when his mother’s shoulders begin to shake. He has seen his mother cry more times than he could ever hope to count. But there is a strange rumbling that accompanies her first sniffles this time and he feels that swooping in his stomach that he’s becoming so acutely familiar with.
Fat tears gather on Inko’s lashes as she lets out her first sob. Uraraka steps carefully forward.
“Ma’am, I’m very sorry, I wasn’t trying to hurt your feelings, I–”
But whatever Uraraka hoped to accomplish with her apology is clearly a lost cause because her words only serve to make Inko more miserable. And then she’s sobbing, chest heaving as she wails, head tilted back. The tears roll off her cheeks in comic waves.
Well, they would be comic if they weren’t so utterly terrifying. Because unlike all the times Izuku has watched his mother cry before, this is different. The tears don’t dribble off her chin and collect on her shirt where they leave a harmless stain. Instead, they land on the carpet and burst, as if growing larger with the contact. By the time Izuku shakes away the shock of what he’s witnessing to try and comfort his mother, he already has to slosh through three centimeters of water.
“Mom, it’s okay. Everything is fine. Uraraka and I are just trying to figure out–”
Inko’s voice is a pitiful whine. “What did you call her?”
The tears don’t stop. And soon, the water is nearly to Izuku’s calves. His mother wanders the apartment, inconsolable and repeating herself as the coffee table begins to float. Whatever is happening, Izuku feels an immense need to figure it out and fast.
Even if the Inko before him is not his mother—and it’s clear now she is not—he can’t seem to turn off the part of his heart and his mind that wants to protect her.
His thoughts spiral. The apartment is fake, this isn’t a dream, but it absolutely cannot be real… Izuku thinks he would have a migraine if he had the time for it. If he weren’t so terrified.
“Deku!”
He looks around to find Uraraka above him, holding out her hand. During his muttering, the water has apparently risen to his knees. Without hesitation, Izuku reaches up and lets her curl her fingers around his palm. He immediately feels that swoosh in his stomach as he lifts off the ground and out of the water, rising slowly through the air.
And even though he has no recollection of the now ruined photograph bobbing listlessly across the surface of a lake of his mother’s tears, there is something so deeply familiar about the action he just sort of stares at Uraraka for a moment.
She stares back, which makes him think maybe she feels it, too.
“Ochaco, honey, how are you?”
Both their heads snap in the direction of Inko, who is smiling even as she continues to cry, even as her tears surge recklessly through the apartment, a tempest made of love and frustration.
If only they could understand what she wants.
The water rises faster, now, it seems, and the music that comes from everywhere and nowhere all at once races like someone has sped up an old audio cassette until the singer’s voice becomes high-pitched and warped.
“What did you call her?”
Inko is close, rising with the tide of her tears. They are running out of room, out of air.
Out of time.
“Ochaco, honey, how are you?”
Izuku mutters furiously, but none of the words make sense anymore, even to him. It’s just noise; just a soothing stress response to quell his fear, to tamp it down beneath a familiar blanket of problem-solving.
Because they are going to die. Drown. In this weird not-quite-right apartment with his mother crying and neither of them ever figuring out why they are so important to one another.
Izuku yelps when Uraraka lets go of his hand. He actually squints his eyes closed as if he might fall before he realizes that, even if she deactivated her Quirk, there is nowhere for him to fall.
The water is almost to the ceiling, now.
Uraraka swims toward Inko, a look of fierce determination on her face Izuku does not quite understand.
And then, after only the briefest hesitation in which she takes a quick, steadying breath, she dives into the other woman’s waiting embrace.
“I’m well,” she says, “it’s good to see you.”
Inko sniffles, but she smiles as she wraps her arms around Uraraka. “Always lovely to see you, dear.”
“U-Uraraka, what…”
Inko stares sadly at Izuku over Uraraka’s shoulder. Her crying increases anew and Izuku winces when his head bumps the ceiling. He cranes his neck awkwardly to keep his lips above the water.
“Mom, please, I–”
“What did you call her?” Inko whines again.
Uraraka’s head disappears beneath the water. Izuku is a strong enough swimmer, but it’s always weird with all his clothes on and he feels the greedy way the water pulls at his shirt, trying to drag him down, down, down, the sensation magnified by the panic he feels watching Uraraka go under.
“Ura–” he sees his mother’s sad green eyes and shouts instead, “Ochaco!” around a mouth half-filled with salt water.
And then he’s swallowed whole. Izuku keeps his eyes open, panicked and desperate not to lose sight of his mother and Ochaco.
Ochaco is still with his mother. Inko holds one of her hands, though he can’t tell if her Quirk has any impact now they’re both submerged. She reaches out and brushes Ochaco’s hair behind her ear and Ochaco… she looks like she’s laughing.
Like she’s happy.
Izuku is trying to figure out how he is going to save them both when there is a loud POP followed by a strange sucking noise that seems to echo all around him.
He spins, kicking wildly to get a better view of whatever is going on. He’s fairly certain his eyes nearly bulge out of his skull when he finally finds the source of the noise.
The door—the one he walked through only to plummet across eternity to a seeming near-death—is open, the water draining out of it like a bath. Izuku fights the riptide, but it’s a losing battle and soon he is being dragged toward the opening. He’s frantic as he tries to fight it, but then he sees Ochaco floating toward him through the water and she doesn’t appear worried at all.
There’s something about the way she looks at him, it makes him believe that everything is going to be okay, even if he’s about to drown amongst the infinitely winking stars of a false sky. He wonders how she can be so calm in the face of such horrifying circumstances.
He latches onto her when she passes by, like she is a lifeline. She grips him fiercely, too, and Izuku wonders if maybe he could be just as important to her in this moment as she has suddenly become to him.
When they shoot out of the doorway, he expects to plummet like he did before, like the water is doing now, pouring an endless saline waterfall into the fathomless depths of the strange sky.
They don’t fall, though. Instead, they rise. He looks at Ochaco, tries to ask her if it’s her doing, but she looks as bewildered as he feels and she answers before he can even ask the question, “It’s not me! It’s not me!”
He looks down as they float up, up, up, and there is Inko in the doorway, no longer crying thick, fat, unnatural tears, but smiling that wobbly smile of hers he used to love so much.
“I love you, Izuku.”
“I love you, too, mom. I miss you.”
His grip tightens on Ochaco’s shirt and he knows he should apologize, but he’s too busy crying to choke the words out.
His tears float up past their rising bodies, too fast for him to catch, and are lost amongst the infinite stars.
It’s the last thing he remembers.
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Memories fracture when left untended, sometimes they even reshape themselves into an incorrect portrait of past events—an oil painting rinsed away before fully dried to the canvas, incomprehensible.
Izuku wakes on the ground, staring up at a an almost invisible ceiling of tree leaves and branches. The only reason he knows what he’s looking at is because he can just make out the twinkling of stars beyond the canopy.
They wink at him. Like they know something he doesn’t. It makes him feel like he’s in middle school again, left out of every joke made at his expense.
He groans as he lifts himself onto his elbows, spitting dirt from his mouth, though the grit lingers against his teeth and he grimaces.
“Where are we?”
The question surprises him. Not because it’s a strange one to ask, but because there’s no one with him.
And yet there is some prickling feeling in the back of his mind that tells him there ought to be. When he spins around, though, it only confirms he’s alone—just Izuku and the inky shadows of the evening, swathing him like a sticky blanket. A spiderweb clinging to his hair that won’t shake off.
Izuku starts walking. No real direction—there’s nothing to indicate whether he should go north or west or south or east; hardly anything to tell him which direction is north, though the flickering stars overhead at least provide some indication the path he’s on might lead southwest.
There is something eerily familiar about the trees around him, but Izuku can’t put his crooked fingers quite on it. He spends most of the time muttering about how he might have gotten here, scratching his chin as he tries to figure out why he thought someone was with him.
When One for All sparks to life and he throws himself up into the air to survey the landscape, all he sees are endless kilometers of dark branches poking up into that expansive blanket of the sky, like the twigs themselves put the holes of the stars there.
So he keeps walking.
It’s a while before he tries again and when he does, it’s equally useless. But on his third launch up above the canopy, something new immediately draws his attention.
In the distance, off to his left, he discerns a soft pink glow. It’s so faint he thinks for a moment perhaps he imagined it, but then Izuku hears the familiar sounds of a battle—distant, but distinct—and he knows, finally, precisely which direction he needs to go.
He takes off like a rocket, shooting over the trees in a haze of red and green blurred together with the static-laced tendrils of Black Whip as he pulls himself along the tops of the trees. The sounds grow louder as he approaches until he can more clearly discern the shouts of a single person nearly drowned out by a furious and foreign shrieking noise as well as… music?
Something distantly electronic and upbeat makes its way into Izuku’s ears and he’s utterly bewildered by the sudden urge he has to play the first All Might computer game his mother bought him when he was seven years old.
When Izuku drops into the clearing, he abruptly realizes where he’s been this whole time and it feels like someone has filled his belly with ice water.
“The training camp?”
There’s no time to indulge his bewilderment, however, because half a breath later, something dark and shrieking dives at his head and pulls at the unruly green curls of his hair.
Izuku shouts, tugging instinctively on the strands to free them, only for the creature to turn and seer the skin of his hand.
He jerks away, looking in horror at the blistered flesh of his palm. When he reaches up the next time, he’s careful to grab the thing with both hands and use all his strength to free it from the nest of his hair.
When he finally gets a good look at it, though, he nearly drops it like it’s burned him again, shock and confusion bruising into him like a punch from the man it so reminds him of.
“K-Kacchan?!”
It’s obviously not Kacchan, but it’s also not not him. It’s a… bat, Izuku thinks. Or at least, it’s mostly a bat. With wings so dark they look almost black until Izuku’s eyes adjust and he realizes they’re actually a very dark green.
But what’s most disconcerting about the creature is not the strange veridian sheen of its skin, but the way its face so clearly resembles that of Izuku’s childhood friend Katsuki Bakugou. Its eyes are the same scorching crimson, outlined like the mask he adopted as part of his Hero costume while still at U.A.
Izuku holds the creature in his hands, wings spread wide as he tilts his head to examine its face. It shrieks again and emits not only an ear-piercing sound, but a small explosion from its fanged mouth.
It’s enough to startle Izuku into fumbling the bat-like animal, finally dropping it unceremoniously to the ground. It recovers quickly enough, flapping its wings to take flight before turning on Izuku and speeding toward him with renewed vigor. Izuku backs away, not entirely sure what he’s supposed to do with a feral bat that looks like his best friend.
Thankfully, someone else steps in so he doesn’t have to do much. He shields his eyes against an unexpected pink glow, too bright against the dark landscape; the very same light that coaxed him toward the clearing. Once engulfed in the soft glow, the bat suddenly floats upward, beating its wings furiously, turning in a dizzyingly unsatisfying circle as it screeches in protest.
Izuku thinks if he could ascribe human emotions to a flying rodent, he’d say the bat looks both incensed and a little nauseous.
“Do you know what these things are?”
Izuku turns to find a pretty brunette tying a length of string to the bat’s leg before letting it float upward. It’s then he notices she’s holding a bundle of the irate animals almost like a bunch of particularly macabre balloons purchased for a birthday party.
“No idea,” he says, truthfully, trying not to notice how all the bats seem focused on him, acting almost as much like Kacchan as they appear to be made perversely in his image.
The strange music reaches a crescendo and then repeats itself and Izuku looks around for the source of the noise. But there are no speakers in sight, and the sound doesn’t seem to be coming from a particular point so much as from everywhere.
Inside his own head, almost.
“You hear it too, don’t you?” his companion asks. “The music.”
“Y-yeah,” he affirms, gnawing at the inside of his cheek nervously.
“I’m Ochaco Uraraka. Hero Name Uravity.”
“Izuku Midoriya,” he offers, extending a hand, “Hero Name Deku.” He stares at her, trying to fight the abnormal instinct to address her by her first name. He never does that; Izuku was raised to be polite, and knows that isn’t proper in the slightest.
Still, he can’t help but feel there is a familiarity between them, some fleeting memory which exists just beyond his periphery. And when Uravity’s hand slides against his palm, Izuku experiences a jolt of recognition that mirrors the strange sensation he had when he awoke on the forest floor and realized he was alone, though he thought he shouldn’t be.
When he flicks eyes up to meet hers, he can see she feels it, too.
“Have we worked together before?” she asks.
Izuku shakes his head slowly, almost disbelievingly. “Not that I can recall.”
Their hands fall away and Izuku refuses to acknowledge how much he wants to reach out and touch her again. He would remember if he’d worked with her before.
How could anyone ever forget such a lovely face?
“How long have you been here?” he ventures, instead of voicing any of the other questions currently buzzing in his brain. His mouth turns to sandpaper at how familiar everything is as his eyes sweep around the clearing. He almost feels like he’s back in first year, enjoying the field trip atmosphere before everything went to hell when the League of Villains attacked.
He clenches his scarred right hand into a fist, recalling the way he’d pushed beyond his limits that day to save Kouta. The utter panic he felt when he watched Kacchan disappear through a portal, how his arms flailed uselessly at his sides, someone tying his arms in a sling. Why couldn’t he recall–
“Deku?”
Ocha–Uravity’s voice cuts through his ruminations and he startles backward. It takes all his effort to think of her Hero name instead of her given name, but it’s a good enough compromise when Uraraka feels so unpleasant.
“S-sorry, I got a little lost in my thoughts. This place… I haven’t been here in a long time.”
“Neither have I,” she said, “First year seems like forever ago.” She tugs on the strings held in her hands as the bats attempt to fly away from her, working together like a flock of irritated birds. When they continue to fight her grip, Uravity releases a huff of air that blows her bangs momentarily away from her face. “Fine,” she says, “have it your way.”
When she releases the bundle of strings, the bats drift up into the air toward the sky, still not fully in control of their own flight.
“Is that… did your Quirk do that to them?” Izuku asks.
Uravity nods. “Zero Gravity. Until I release it, they’re pretty much at my mercy.”
Izuku’s mind races with the myriad implications of such a Quirk. “You’d make a great Rescue Hero,” he says.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” she answers, smirking.
The tips of his ears burn at her teasing, but when he manages to look at her, she’s staring at him with a confused expression.
“Are you sure we’ve never worked together?”
“I–”
Izuku never finishes his sentence because any thought he might have is drowned out by the renewed, thunderous beat of the music at it screams in his head.
He and Uravity both clamp their hands over their ears, buckling under the force of the sound.
Then, an inhuman screech echoes over the clearing and when they look up, they both stare in wide-eyed horror as an enormous, looming shadow blots out the stars like ink spilling over paper.
“What is that?” Uravity shouts, but Izuku can only shake his head, straining to keep his eyes open over the deafening music.
Uravity bravely removes her hands from her ears and brings her fingers together. He watches as the bats that look so much like Kacchan disperse in a frenzy of battered wings, bumping into one another as they scatter into the trees when she releases them.
The shadow swoops through the clearing and Izuku watches as several of the bats are swallowed whole by the darkness.
“What is that?!” Uravity shouts again over the overbearing music, the beating of massive wings bleeding into the soundtrack, making it somehow louder and more oppressive.
“I-I don’t know!”
The unseen creature swoops through the clearing, knocking both of them to the ground with the sheer force of the air as it parts around its body.
Izuku feels the dirt grind into his face, and he spits a chunk of it from his mouth as he turns back toward the center of the clearing, lifting up onto his knees.
One for All bursts to life around him, and for the first time, the creature is sharply visible in the blistering light.
Its body is sleek, with pale skin, a long, powerful tail, and red, leathery wings. The whole creature is covered in black and red feathers, deadly claws protrude from its fingers and toes, with hind legs more like a wolf than a human.
But its face… its face is what truly gives Izuku pause because it’s incredibly familiar.
Uravity names him first, though, which is a surprise.
“Kirishima-kun?!”
The creature roars, baring several rows of sharp, shark-like teeth, jaw snapping closed with a sound loud enough to make Izuku’s body vibrate.
While the thing certainly looks enough like Eijirou Kirishima to make the connection, all the vibrant joy of his old classmate is gone, replaced by something horrifying. Izuku’s stomach curdles at the smell of its breath as he dodges another pass, rolling himself into the bushes that surround the clearing.
Uravity stands firm, vulnerable at the center of the clearing. She shouts up at the beast, though Izuku can’t hear what she says over the roar of the creature and the pounding of the awful music.
Then, Izuku watches in horror as the winged monstrosity swoops down, reaches out its claws, and slices her.
Blood, he realizes, there is blood, as he scrambles to his feet.
“Uravity!”
She turns, but as soon as their eyes meet, she begins to blink in and out of existence, the horror on his face no longer a result of her injury, but of the fact that she is disappearing.
“Uravity!”
BA-LEEP.
She is… gone.
The fury is instant and it stirs in him like a hurricane gathering itself over the open ocean, amassing water and wind as the storm builds to a crescendo.
The fact that the music does the same is all but lost on him as Izuku focuses his energy.
Izuku bursts into the clearing as the sharp CHA-CHING of a cash register rings in his ears, swathed in the vibrancy of One for All, lighting his determined features and the unexpected battlefield upon which he finds himself. He isn’t sure exactly what his plan is, but he knows he must stay on the offensive if he’s to have a chance of disorienting his enormous, airborne opponent.
His rage feels so familiar, so much like he felt when he battled Muscular all those years ago.
Blinding. Unrelenting. Illogical.
He launches a punch first, landing his unprotected fist against the corner of the Kirishima-creature’s jaw, only to pull his stinging hand away when he realizes this perverse and monstrous version of his friend has somehow maintained the hardening features of Eijirou’s Quirk.
He wishes he had time to figure out how this is possible—to pinpoint what exactly is going on, but all he can do is dodge and weave and kick and flick himself around the clearing using the trees to boomerang himself with Black Whip.
All he can think of is watching Uravity blink out of existence.
Which is why it’s so strange that he can still see soft flashes of pink light in his periphery. He wonders if it’s the bats—if the tiny explosions they emit look different when competing with the brightness of his own Quirk when he activates it.
It’s not until the beast’s powerful tail cracks against his shoulder that Izuku falters, his scream of pain piercing even the relentless pounding of the music as his arm detaches within the socket and he collapses to the forest floor, clutching at the useless appendage with tears in his eyes.
The music drains away for a moment and Izuku huffs a confused chuckle.
The bats descend upon him, flapping their angry green wings and singeing the ends of his hair as they pull it with their taloned feet. He barely gets a curse out of his mouth when the Kirishima monster barrels toward him.
Izuku rolls to avoid another long sweep of the creature’s tail, but his eyes pop open—wide and disbelieving—when he doesn’t stop rolling. Instead, he bounces up into the air, his momentum carrying him beyond the treeline, out of sight of the clearing. He feels out of control of his body and a tendril of Black Whip finally shoots out to anchor him to a sturdy branch.
Izuku isn’t sure whether it was a conscious decision, or an instinct borne of looming nausea.
“What is wrong with you?” Uravity’s voice is angry, but it’s impossible not to detect a faint note of concern in it, too. “I was yelling and yelling, and you didn’t even look at me.”
Relief bursts in Izuku’s chest like a balloon and he can already feel the tears streaming strangely over his upside-down face, running up his temples and into his hair. He tilts his head to find Uravity standing on the forest floor, hands on her hips as she frowns up at him.
“I thought you were…” dead, he thinks, but, “gone,” is what he says.
When she brings her fingertips together, he feels like he weighs a hundred times more than usual and he’s only saved from a painful landing by Float.
Uravity appraises his strange Quirk usage, tilting her head adorably to one side as she assesses him.
“What did you say your Quirk was?” she asks.
He didn’t, and Izuku stammers some incomprehensible reply now, still gripping his dead arm, before changing the subject. “Where did you go?”
The question brings a cloud over Uravity’s face, but it disappears too quickly for him to gauge it. “I don’t know,” she says, kneeling down to inspect his dislocated shoulder, “but I came right back. You would have known if you were paying attention.”
Izuku feels the admonishment like it is physical—Uravity is not the first person to point out he is sometimes too focused. That righteous anger is not always the best offensive plan of attack.
“This is gonna hurt,” she says flatly before forcibly jamming his arm back into place.
Izuku winces, then sighs in relief. He’s about to thank her when Uravity starts pulling off her shirt and Izuku’s brain and mouth turn to sawdust as his face heats.
“Wh-wh-what are you d-doing?!” he cries, squeezing his eyes closed.
Uravity says nothing, just rolls her eyes again as she uses her blouse to fashion a makeshift sling.
“Helping you, you dummy.”
Izuku’s eyes shoot open when she insults him. Something about that word—dummy—pulls his eyelids insistently open. He’s sure he’s been called that plenty of times before; mostly in middle school, but the way Uravity says it feels familiar in a way that makes no sense at all.
He’s relieved to find she’s still wearing a black tank top even though her button-down is now tied around his shoulder.
“You could have died,” she says, spitting the words out like burnt toast.
Izuku’s brain still buzzes with the word dummy, which seems infinitely more applicable in the wake of her observation.
“I… I didn’t know what else to do.”
Uravity’s cheeks puff out as she glares at him.
“You didn’t have to avenge me. And I’d like to make it clear before we go back that I don’t need you to protect me, either. It’s a hell of a lot more effective if we work together, you know? A team. You barreled your way into a battle you weren’t ready for and now you’re injured, which puts us both at risk.”
Izuku’s head droops.
She’s right, of course. And though he’s heard the criticism before, there is some strange power he feels when she says it.
Like she’s been waiting a long time to tell him as much, though they don’t know each other.
The chastisement stings a little less than it ought to, at least, because he’s just so relieved she’s okay. No blood, even, on the shirt she’s given him.
Strange…
“I’m sorry, Och–Uravity. You’re absolutely right. Let’s strategize first.”
He doesn’t expect her to giggle in response, but she does. When he looks up at her, Uravity is smiling, her eyes twinkling as if she feels the same unexpected familiarity between them that he does.
“Just wait for me next time, okay? We’re both Pros. We’ve got this.”
He nods, and even though he still doesn’t know who she is—why they are here or why the villainous creatures they’re fighting look so much like his friends—he knows in his heart, it’s the truth.
Then the music changes, and Izuku has no more time to dwell on such thoughts.
Uravity stands and holds her arm out, which he takes, noticing the way she doesn’t touch him with all five of her fingertips as she heaves him to his feet, her eyes already turned to the sky as it begins to… shimmer?
“What is that?” Izuku asks.
She’s already shaking her head, taking off at a jog back toward the clearing as she answers, “I have no idea!” She begins shouting battle plans over her shoulder and Izuku listens intently to each one, though it’s soon clear they are no longer necessary.
The scene at the clearing is like something from an old film Inko used to watch—a swirling vortex of winged creatures spiraling around the demon masquerading as Eijirou. The Bakugou-bats all wear the same wide-eyed, panicked expression as they surge upward, despite the furious beating of their wings.
“It’s pulling them up!” Uravity shouts over the din—the screeching of the monsters and the rush of air—and points toward the sky.
The shimmer is more of an opening, Izuku realizes, and it’s sucking everything into it like a vacuum.
Izuku crouches, preparing to launch himself into the air as the first wave of Kacchan-shaped bats disappears into the void.
Uravity’s hand on his uninjured shoulder stops him.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she asks, mouth and eyebrow quirked upward slyly.
Izuku can’t help but chuckle. “I have to try to save them,” he offers quietly.
It’s too much like losing Kacchan to the League of Villains, watching him disappear through Kurogiri’s vortex. Even if the bats aren’t exactly Katsuki Bakugou and the demon isn’t precisely Eijirou Kirishima, Izuku has to find out why they look so similar. He has to find out where they’re going; where they came from.
He must help them.
“Then I’m going with you.”
It’s the last thing Uravity says before she launches herself into the air, weightless and elegant as she turns mid-jump to look back at him, smiling as she waits for him to leap into the unknown with her.
Izuku does so without hesitation, like he’s followed her into battle a hundred times before.
Like he’ll do it a thousand more.
Love is patient. It has to be. It is vast as the night sky domed above us, stretching toward infinity; endless and all-encompassing. In many ways, love is the only thing that truly matters.
The stars are magnificent.
Izuku streaks through the galaxy like a comet, the points of light in every direction dotting over the curved surface of the ship’s windshield.
In another arm of the same craft, separate, but easily seen through the glass, someone else stares in wonder at the wide expanse of the universe, her brilliant smile lit by the dizzying array of celestial bodies as they fly past.
He doesn’t know her name, but she feels familiar. Safe. And Izuku knows, somehow, he is exactly where he is supposed to be. Waking up here, crawling out of the strange pod where he slept for who knows how long, it’s nice that he isn’t alone.
For a while, he is simply content to be—a rarity for someone whose mind is usually so chaotic, brimming with disparate thoughts held together by a tenuous thread. Izuku swears he recognizes constellations as they zip their way through the endless sky, even though he knows that can’t be true, given how long he’s apparently been in stasis.
He’s grateful he seems to remember how to pilot the ship, follow the coordinates already programmed into the system, even if he can’t quite remember why.
Has he always been an astronaut? The idea seems unfamiliar.
When her voice crackles to life, so close to his ear, Izuku startles, bringing his thumb up to press against the small device implanted there, which he hasn’t noticed before.
“Do you know where we’re going?” she asks, softly, as unsure as he is.
He turns toward her floating form in the opposite module—so close and yet unreachable—and shakes his head.
“No idea.”
“Strange,” she says, though she seems relatively unbothered by the curious lack of information they have, “that we can’t remember.”
He watches her and the eternity of the universe whizzing by in turn as they talk with one another. He learns her name is Ochaco Uraraka and he’s never heard a sound quite as lovely as that, he thinks. He repeats it over and over in his mind—a mantra or a prayer or a memory.
Ochaco. Ochaco. Ochaco.
They speak for what feels like hours or days or even years as they hurtle across the sky, still unaware of their true destination, twirling through constellations and laughing as they dodge the debris of meteors.
Piloting the ship requires both of them to work in tandem, and he’s surprised at how easy it is. Even if he can’t remember her, it’s clear they’ve worked together before because some instinct of timing and teamwork still exists between them.
They debate, eventually deciding an unnamed nebula provides the best possible view from their craft, though Proxima Centauri is a close second.
He decides privately to call it the Ochaco Nebula, though he keeps this thought to himself.
Izuku does not know how long they travel for, only that by the time she reaches out and presses her palm against the glass, and he brings his up to mirror it, he is already very much in love with her.
And it feels, somehow, inevitable. Like the stars, the organization of the universe.
Like he and Ochaco have done this before, perhaps differently, but with the same understanding and intention.
When music suddenly pours in through the same earpiece he’s been using to communicate with Ochaco, Izuku doesn’t know what to make of it.
“Are you playing that?” he asks.
She shakes her head, eyebrows furrowed in what he expects is an exact copy of his own confused expression. The deep thrum of the bass and the ominous percussion—persistent and anxiety-inducing—set his teeth on edge.
Something is coming, but it remains unclear what, exactly.
It is not until he realizes there is a hollow point in the distance that he understands where they are headed. Not until he watches in horror as stars and planets and moons are swallowed by a stark, blank nothingness, that Izuku reaches out and presses his hand desperately to the glass again, wishing he could feel the warmth of her skin in his grasp, squeeze her hand reassuringly in his own.
“Is that–”
“A Black Hole,” he confirms.
It would be awe-inspiring if he weren’t so terrified—the way entire celestial bodies are swallowed up, deleted from existence. What an incredible phenomenon, to think the universe can both create from nothing and return to it—make everything beautiful ever seen as easily as it can destroy it all in an instant.
“What do we do?” Ochaco asks.
Izuku can hear the panic in her voice, he’s listened to her speak enough, now, to easily detect even the subtlest changes in her tone. There’s nothing they can do, though.
They’ve come too close and there is no way to escape.
Somehow, Izuku thinks this was always the plan, and it is only with the realization of his own imminent demise that he truly takes in the ship they are piloting—the strange design of it. Lights blink and instruments whirr to life, as if the ship itself is preparing for something—its greater purpose.
He wonders if they were sent here to destroy an imminent threat to their galaxy, curses the blank, empty space of his memory—destroyed, he supposes, by the unnatural sleep he endured to reach this point. When he’s prompted to scan his thumbprint to confirm an automated process, he does so, and watches Ochaco do the same. The countdown that appears on his console after does not surprise him.
There is a sinking sense of familiarity to all of this, as they plummet toward the end of everything.
Izuku knows, of course, he has never stared down a Black Hole before; never been in this exact position.
For just a moment, when he glances toward Ochaco, he suddenly has a vision of someone in a puffy white space suit, a Black Hole pulling her toward it; away from him. Her plaintive brown eyes begging him to hold on, but instead he lets her go.
“O-Ochaco?” he whispers.
She turns to look at him and his heart breaks, the tears trailing over her cheeks—all he wants to do is reach out and brush them away with his fingers. He casts a glance at the suit hanging by the exit hatch. He hasn’t worn it; hasn’t had any reason to make his way to the outside of the craft for repairs,
They’ve been lucky to this point, and extremely adept in their maneuvers around potential threats.
“I’ll meet you,” Ochaco says without hesitation, and when Izuku looks back at her, she’s already wrestling her way into her own suit.
Watching everything bend and swirl and disappear within the Black Hole, it’s impossible not to expect there to be noise. Izuku imagines the sucking sounds of a vacuum, maybe. Or some cacophonous sound nearly incomprehensible to the human ear that will turn his brain to gelatin.
Instead, when Izuku makes his way a little too hastily out of the hatch, he is met with exquisite silence. Even the music is gone once he’s outside the ship. That is, until Ochaco’s voice crackles to life in his ear.
“It’s beautiful, in a way,” she says. When their eyes meet, Ochaco is already smiling. Despite the immense sense of loss crawling up Izuku’s throat, he returns the warmth of her expression.
“It is,” he agrees.
Just because a thing is deadly doesn’t mean it can’t also be beautiful. He only wishes he had more time to appreciate the splendor before him now.
Not a Black Hole, but a brilliant spark of light he wants to bask in for eternity, the flame of Ochaco’s determined gaze, her brilliant smile.
When Ochaco lifts her gloved hand up, Izuku presses his against it. If he closes his eyes and really concentrates, he can almost feel the shape of her fingers through the thick suit.
“We should have done this sooner,” she says.
Izuku chuckles. “Probably, yes.”
They detach their tethers, let the ship steer toward the event horizon without them. The gravitational pull of the Black Hole has them trapped, anyway. They won’t escape. Izuku doesn’t want to try.
Not if it means spending one half-second of the time he has left not staring into Ochaco’s fathomless eyes—as vast and enticing as all those brilliant stars when he first awoke.
“I’m glad you’re here with me,” he whispers, feeling the prickle of a blush race up his neck and over his cheeks.
He’s less embarrassed when he realizes Ochaco is blushing, too.
“I just wish we had more time.”
Izuku nods. The ship disappears inside the void of the Black Hole and Izuku hopes silently that whatever mission they were given will be fulfilled.
The edges of Ochaco’s form are already bending, shifting to mirror the event horizon as they enter the field. Everything slows and Izuku feels as if he can see everything that has happened in his life, from the moment he was born to waking on the ship to pressing the helmet of his suit against Ochaco’s.
He sees other things that don’t make any sense—an apartment filled with action figures and photographs, a clearing in a dense forest lit with green and red and pink. Ochaco smiling. Ochaco crying. Ochaco screaming.
Ochaco, Ochaco, Ochaco.
She’s all that matters. He knows that now.
And as he feels that final pull toward infinity and nothingness, he finally has the courage to say something he knows he should have told her a thousand times in a hundred different lives.
“I-I love you, Ochaco.”
She smiles even though she’s crying harder than ever, “I love you, too.”
Then everything disappears and Izuku is at peace, the faint echo of music thundering in time with his heartbeat.
BA-LEEP.
No other sound follows.
Moving on is easier together, even if it isn’t easy at all. Moving backward in order to start again? Almost impossible, except in very rare circumstances.
The light is blinding. Too white and too hot and too everywhere.
Like he’s been swallowed up by a monster made of lumens, a creature devoid of shadow.
But when his vision clears, Izuku realizes it is just a regular fluorescent, set into a drop ceiling. Directly above him, shining down with all the uncomfortable attention of a spotlight.
Izuku lies prone, mouth fuzzy and mind fuzzy and limbs too leaden to move, at the mercy of the overwhelmingly bright bulb.
He can hear it, the electrical buzz grinding into his brain like his head is being repeatedly stomped into the asphalt.
Black Whip shoots out and destroys the bulb in an instant, the insufferable noise and brightness snuffed out with a single brief snap followed by the tinkling sound of shattering glass.
Izuku can’t even care that he’s broken something, that he’s allowed his control to slip enough for instinct to take over when he’s clearly in a hospital, likely surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands, of vulnerable civilians.
At least the buzzing has stopped, he thinks, as his eyes slide closed again.
“Thanks.”
The croaking voice makes Izuku’s eyes shoot open and he whips his head to the side far too quickly, resulting in an awful, nauseous feeling that bubbles in his stomach and then lurches up his throat.
“Careful,” the voice says again, “I already vomited twice and I’m a lot more used to being queasy than you are.”
He unclamps his mouth and even though his vision still swims, Izuku forces himself to look across the room.
There, lying on a bed identical to his own, face turned toward him, is Ochaco Uraraka.
The realization hits him like a hammer—that he knows her name immediately without having to think. There are tears already gathered along the line of his lashes, and he can see she’s crying, too, even as she smiles at him.
“Urar–Ochaco,” he breathes, and she laughs when he says it, like it’s the punchline to a joke she’s been waiting her whole life to hear.
It doesn’t matter that his stomach feels like an unruly sea, or that his head is like an overstuffed hive of wasps, Izuku untangles himself from the bed as Ochaco does the same, and they stumble across the room, colliding somewhere in the middle and collapsing to their knees as they clutch at one another.
“You’re safe,” he whispers, like it’s a miracle.
“You’re here,” she says, like she still can’t believe it.
The memories of where they’ve been rush in and he blubbers apology after apology, each of which is met with either a rebuttal or an apology of Ochaco’s own.
If the brightness and the buzzing of the fluorescent was overwhelming, this is shattering. Izuku feels like a mirror broken apart and put back together wrong, reflecting the same image, forever distorted.
It’s overwhelming. Disorienting.
This is Ochaco in his arms, every iteration of her he met and didn’t know, as well as the one he’s grown up with and grown to love so deeply.
The one he lost so many months ago, when she moved out of their shared apartment and they stopped speaking.
“Good to see you nerds are awake.”
They jump apart, though one of Ochaco’s hands grabs his, pinky lifted only slightly so he doesn’t float.
Katsuki Bakugou stands in the doorway, expression hard and arms crossed.
Suddenly, and unexpectedly, Izuku remembers the little Kacchan faces in all the angry bats they faced together. Ochaco must remember at the same moment, because they both slap a hand over their mouths to unsuccessfully stifle their laughter.
Katsuki’s bafflement is obvious, his arms fall uselessly to his sides and he stares at them like they’ve lost their minds.
It’s not until Eijirou Kirishima joins him that Izuku stops laughing, staring up at the grinning boy’s sharp smile with a look of trepidation.
“What’s going on in here? You two got a case of the giggles?” Eijirou’s eyes drift meaningfully to their clasped hands, resulting in a raised eyebrow and a grin.
Ochaco stops laughing, too, her grip on Izuku’s hand tightening as her palm goes clammy.
Eijirou looks to Katsuki, bewildered. “What did you do to them?”
“I didn’t do anything!” Katsuki shouts, palms crackling indignantly. “They took one look at me and started laughing and then you came and now they look like they’re gonna piss themselves!”
Everyone stares, suspended in awkward silence, until Ochaco finally clears her throat.
“What happened to us?”
Katsuki scoffs. “We were in the middle of a multi-agency rescue mission in downtown Shibuya when you two idiots got hit by a pretty powerful Quirk.”
Izuku remembers, now. There had been an earthquake, but one too localized to have been natural. The buildings in Tokyo shook and crumbled in parts, but the Shibuya District was hit badly. When the calls first started coming in, no one knew the source, so it was an all hands on deck situation; rescue- and battle-oriented Heroes alike scrambling to locate survivors as well as whoever was behind the attack.
“There were three of them,” Ochaco says, eyes unfocused like she’s trying to recall a memory from a night of too much drinking, “they were targeting a cybersecurity firm.”
Eijirou nods enthusiastically, though his smile falters a little when both Izuku and Ochaco flinch.
“Yeah,” Katsuki confirms, “one of them caused the earthquake, the other had a Quirk that allowed him to directly connect to the information that was being stored within the firm’s systems, and the third–”
“Had a Quirk that sent us reeling through an alternate reality.”
Katsuki shrugs. “Maybe. Asshole won’t tell us anything except that everyone he’s ever used it on before has died. We can’t find any registration information for him or his Quirk anywhere.”
Despite the chill running along his spine at the realization that they might perhaps be the first two to survive the strange nightmare, Izuku can also feel unbridled excitement bursting in his chest, the boyish anticipation as his eyes widen like a puppy’s.
“So, you’re saying we’re the first known targets? That we could help build the profile for this Quirk?” Izuku is so enthusiastic about the idea it takes several moments for him to realize he’s the only one. “S-sorry,” he says, “I just think that’s… it could be interesting.”
Katsuki rolls his eyes. Ochaco giggles.
But Eijirou bobs his head like he’s pumping himself up for a particularly rough workout. “Yeah, man, totally! You guys are the first survivors we know of!”
“I’m sure there were others he just wouldn’t tell us about,” Katsuki grumbles, though low enough so he doesn’t detract from what Eijirou’s saying.
Izuku’s mind is already racing—trying to dig around all the things he learned during their experience, wondering why others might not have survived. He’s mumbling, probably, as he wonders whether these situations they were placed in were some sort of test, some method by which the Quirk user might deem them worthy or unworthy.
Would they have drowned in their apartment if Izuku hadn’t called Ochaco by her given name? Would they have suffocated in space if they hadn’t both said, I love you—the thought of the last part still makes Izuku blush to his ears, but–
Suddenly, Izuku remembers how Ochaco yelled at him in the forest, scolding him for running into a battle blindly, without backup or a solid plan.
Like she’d been waiting a long time to tell him how she felt.
He turns toward her and can see she’s thinking about it, too. She brings a reassuring hand up to his cheek and then kisses him swiftly on the mouth as if she already knows what he’s about to say.
Maybe she does. Maybe he muttered it aloud without realizing.
“No more holding back,” she says as she pulls away, “promise.”
Izuku feels his body collapse in relief, his head resting on her shoulder.
Eijirou practically vibrates with happiness as he watches them, but Katsuki lays a heavy hand on his shoulder to keep him in check.
“Whatever,” Katsuki says, “I’ll tell the doctors you’re awake.” He glances overhead briefly, then glares at Izuku, “And that you owe them a lightbulb.”
Izuku swallows, blushing sheepishly as they leave. He can hear Eijirou’s eager whisper as they depart, “Did you see that? I thought they weren’t speaking.”
Katsuki’s muttered response is lost as the couple move further down the hall.
Once they are alone again, Ochaco rubs her thumb along the back of his hand and Izuku turns to face her. An overwhelming sense of relief floods him just from staring into her warm brown eyes, her messy hair, her flushed cheeks.
Ochaco smiles, but he can see the tears gathering in her eyes again as she presses her forehead against his gently.
“I’m actually sort of glad it happened.”
Izuku laughs a little, cheeks pulling taut even as he feels warm tears spilling over them.
It’s strange, to think that maybe being incapacitated by a Villain’s mysterious Quirk in the middle of a battle might have been the best thing to happen to their relationship, but as they find one another, lips pressing close in a gentle kiss, he can’t help but think maybe it is.
That maybe, now that they’ve met each other what feels like a dozen times over, he knows Ochaco better than he ever could have otherwise; better than he did before.
And that isn’t knowledge Izuku plans to squander. Moving forward, he vows to be more open, more honest; to say what is in his heart without worrying it is not what she wants. He will not make the same mistakes that lost her the first time.
Because Ochaco has always wanted him, same as he’s wanted her. And, for all his intelligence, he was absolutely dumb to think otherwise.
“I think maybe we should get off the floor,” Ochaco says quietly, but neither of them makes any move to stand. Instead, Izuku lifts his wrist to touch the pad of her pinky and guides her other hand to her own cheek until they both lift off the cool tiles in tandem, still connected by their tangled fingers.
Ochaco giggles. “You dummy,” she says, but she doesn’t argue.
When the doctor does arrive, he finds them tangled together against the ceiling, arms firmly wrapped around one another as Ochaco tucks her face against Izuku’s neck and he kisses her hair.
And there’s no place—at work or home or school or even deep in space, spinning through endless, exquisite galaxies—they would rather be.