Work Text:
“What do you mean ‘she’s my problem now’?”
Jirou looked down at the girl standing behind her leg, clinging to her skirt with one hand and a stuffed bear with the other. She gazed back with huge blue eyes peeking out behind bluer curls.
“Auntie Kyo, where’s papa?”
“The wills are very clear, if they fell in the line of duty and needed someone to take care of Yasuko-chan here, they wanted it to be you.”
“But-”
“You can see the contracts if you like.” He held out a ream of paper, flicking to the relevant page. “Invisible Girl signed it herself here, and Tailman here. She’s yours.”
Jirou looked at the signatures, staring for so long that her eyes started to blur and water. Toru and Mashirao had been some of her closest friends since leaving UA, and yes she had been there for the birth of her niece, and yes she had agreed to be her godmother. But she had never in a million years thought that she would actually end up there, with the girl being signed over to her following the death of both her parents in a rescue mission gone horribly wrong.
“But,” she said again, reaching out to grab the child services worker as they turned to leave. “I have no idea how to look after a child.”
“Nor do most new parents,” the bear-faced man shrugged. “You’ll figure it out.”
It wasn’t until they were back at the house that Toru and Mashirao had bought not long after graduation that it really started to sink in for Jirou. The house had been left to their daughter, with Jirou to take care of it until the little girl was old enough to take ownership properly. She’d been renting a small studio apartment of her own, hardly large enough for her let alone her and a child. Which meant she figured she was going to have to move house just as soon as she could. Better to uproot her own life than change things for the little one any more than they already had.
As soon as they were through the door Yasuko was running, up the stairs and out of sight, laughing and shouting for her mama and papa. She didn’t understand that they wouldn’t be there, and Jirou almost didn’t have the heart to tell her.
“Hey kiddo,” she called up the stairs, sniffing back a tear of her own, knowing that it wasn’t the time for that, “why don’t you come on down for a minute.”
She did, bounding all the way with her teddy still tight under her arm and straight into Jirou’s outstretched hands.
“Why you look sad Auntie Kyo?”
“Because I have to tell you something sad,” she said, picking the girl up and tucking her into her lap on the wide couch. “And I need you to tell me if you understand okay?”
“Okay.”
“You remember that Mama and Papa were heroes, lots of hard work every day to save people from bad guys?”
“Uhu! Papa fights with his big tail SMACK the bad guys.”
“That’s right, and Mama sneaks up on them to lock them up.”
“Yeah!”
“Well,” Jirou started, with absolutely no idea how she was going to finish. “Mama and Papa were at work yesterday and they were helping people when a really nasty bad guy showed up. They had to try to protect the nice men and women who were there, and they got hurt.”
“Mama says she gotsta go to work ‘cause otherwise bad guys hurt lots of people.”
“That’s right. But this time the bad guy hurt Mama and Papa. Real bad. Bad enough that they’ve had to go away, so Auntie Kyoka has to stay with you now.”
“But,” her eyes were huge again. Big and wide and swimming with tears. “But they’ll come home. Mama promised.” She put her hand on her head, ruffling her own hair the way that Toru used to do, “no matter what else happens bluebird, I’ll always do my best ‘n come home.”
“No sweetheart,” Jirou pulled her closer. “No, this time they’re not going to be coming home.”
She knew that Yasuko didn’t understand, big tears falling from her eyes as much a reaction to Jirou’s sadness as anything else. There was nothing else that she could say, letting Yasuko nestle her head into her chest and cry until the tears and the fatigue overtook everything else. Until she had sobbed herself out and fallen asleep in Jirou’s lap. Jirou ran her fingers through curly blue hair until long after the little girl's tears had dried up. When she was certain that she was asleep she gently lifted her, picking her up to carry her up stairs and tuck her into bed. In the morning she knew that there would be more tears, more questions and confusion about the parents she would never see again.
Jirou closed the door, sliding down the wall outside of it and finally letting her own grief bubble up to the surface. Two of her best friends gone in the blink of an eye. Lives ended and changed just like that. Right away she knew two things, someone had to go and get the bastard who had done it, and it probably couldn’t be her.
By the time she was ready to go to bed she felt as though she’d made a hundred phone calls. To her agency, telling them what was going on and requesting a month off. Unpaid if it had to be, she just needed to figure out how to take care of a four year old girl without thinking about work. She was given it without question, Present Mic understanding all too well the pressures that were put on pro heroes, and vouching for her when it came down to it. Then she had fired up the old Class A phone tree. She wanted every single one of her old classmates on the job looking for the bastard who stole a kids parents, and she wasn’t going to take no for an answer. They were all more than up for it, Tenya promising to drop over with Midoriya to see them as soon as they could, Bakugou swearing that he would kill the bastard, Shinsou offering to help whenever the kid had nightmares. They were all right there, the way they always had been so many times before. But none of it helped ease the pain in her chest, the hole that losing two of her favourite people had left behind.
She sank into the guest bed, sniffing back the last of her own tears and telling herself that she had to sleep, that if Yasuko was the way that she’d always been then she would be awake at the crack of dawn wanting pancakes and playtime, at least until she remembered that her parents weren’t coming home. There would be so much to do, and Jirou didn’t have the first clue how she was going to find the strength or the energy to deal with it all.
***
In the weeks that followed Jirou received more than one offer for help. From her friends, from her parents, anyone who had known the couple wanted to do their part. They brought meals over and helped with the huge pile of laundry that somehow her one tiny charge managed to produce. Mina helped her learn how to deal with curly hair and Shinsou made good on his promise to help with both of their nightmares, and even Bakugou showed up a few times, with an apron and a bag full of ingredients to get the kid baking so that Jirou could shower and have a piss on her own once in a while.
But no matter how much help she had it never seemed to be enough. There was so much to do, so much to think about all of the time. She had bills to pay and the estate to settle, schools to arrange for Yasuko, her own apartment had been easy to handle but the list of everything else that needed doing seemed to get longer, not shorter, with every passing day. By the time her month off work was complete the house – and her life – were in chaos. Yasuko had finally seemed to accept that her parents weren’t coming back, but the side effects of that were devastating. She wouldn’t let anyone but Jirou touch her. Barely slept, ate nothing but a few mouthfuls of cereal and a glass of juice a day. Everything was a battle, dressing, showering, cooking, no matter who came by and what they offered there was nothing that could alleviate the grief that hung over the house like a cloud.
So Jirou did the only thing that she knew how to do. She got up, got dressed in her hero suit, wrangled Yasuko into any outfit that she wanted to put on no matter how crazy, and took the little one with her to work. A change of scenery might be exactly what they both needed, and even if it wasn’t, she couldn't afford to take any more time off no matter how much she wanted to.
“Earphone Jack! Great to have you back. And who is this little one?” Present Mic knelt on the floor to bring himself down to Yasuko’s height, beaming at her and chuckling when she pushed herself harder behind Jirou’s leg.
“This is Yasuko,” Jirou said. “She’s Toru’s little girl.”
“Man, I heard about that,” Mic sighed. “Any word on the guy?”
“None yet. Dynamight and Riot have taken point on it.”
“Then I almost feel sorry for him.”
“Yeah,” Jirou’s laugh was cold, harder than it used to be. “I don’t.”
“Well look, desk duty till you’re ready alright? We can sign this one up for the nursery, I guess she was in one at the other agency but-”
“No!” Yasuko clung to Jirou tighter. “No, don’t go Auntie Kyo.”
Jirou understood the words behind that scared cry. The last time her parents had dropped her off at nursery they had never come home, and she thought the same thing would happen again. It was all that Jirou could do to stop her own eyes welling up when she looked down at the scared little girl at her leg. She leaned down, picking her up and pulling her into a hug.
“Don’t worry bluebird,” she said, “I’m not going to leave you today.”
“Take her into the kitchen, there are cookies on the top shelf. Don’t tell Shota I told you they were there.”
“Thanks, Mic.”
“Don’t mention it kid. You just do what you need for you and the little one.”
Everyone they passed wanted to stop and talk to Yasuko, to offer her a drink or a cookie or something else that might make her smile. They doted on her, smiling with her, tickling her and laughing when she finally giggled along too. It was such a relief to see her start to show a little of her old self, and though Jirou knew it wasn’t forever – maybe not even for long – it was so much better than the alternative.
Across the kitchen she caught a familiar set of eyes as she whispered the name of every hero and sidekick and employee alike to Yasuko so that she knew everything that was going on as they went. Momo, looking as poised and perfect as ever, smiling at her with a sadness in her face that Jirou hated to see there.
Of everyone, Momo was the last person that she wanted to see her struggle.
***
Momo had heard the news, the same way everyone else had, but unlike everyone else she hadn’t managed to find a time or a reason to go over and see Jirou and the girl that she had taken in as her own. It wasn’t that she hadn’t wanted to – quite the opposite – it was that she had absolutely no idea what she would say once she was there. What anyone could say or do to make the unthinkable a little easier to live with. She’d been afraid, and that fear had stopped her from going to the woman she cared about most in the world when she needed her the most.
There she was, standing in the kitchen with a little girl in a tutu and lopsided pigtails in her arms, and Momo didn’t think that she had ever been more in love.
“Hey, Kyoka,” she said, finally finding the confidence to approach. “Good to see you back. How’s it going?”
“Oh you know,” Jirou said, shrugging and trying to play it cool despite the bags under her eyes. “I’ve had easier jobs.”
“Well she looks healthy and clean and fed so I would say you’re doing pretty great,” Momo said, peeking at Yasuko with a smile. “Hi little one, do you like bunnies?”
Yasuko nodded, showing a little more of her face.
“What colour?”
“Blue.”
“Alright then. Close your eyes.”
Yasuko scrunched her eyes closed and Momo smiled at Jirou, pulling aside her shirt and creating a bunny in the exact same shade of blue as Yasuko’s hair. It had super soft fur and a big pink bow around its neck and huge soulful eyes. She’d made a lot of soft toys over the years, to soothe scared children who had seen villain attacks, to put into baskets to take to orphanages for holidays when she knew that there would be few others there to lift spirits. It wasn’t much, but Momo loved children, and seeing Yasuko’s face break into a smile when she took the new toy made the slight fatigue worth it.
“Thanks, Momo,” Jirou smiled, setting Yasuko down and letting her play with the new bunny. “That’s really sweet of you.”
“You know I’ll help out, anything you need,” she reached out, stopping herself short of running her thumb over Jirou’s cheek the way she once used to do. She didn’t know why they had broken up, Jirou drifting away from her even though she was as much in love as she had always been. She ached so badly to close the gap again, to pull Jirou back into her arms where she was sure she was supposed to be, to offer to be there every step, to help raise Yasuko as she would have their own children. But she stopped herself, smiling and nodding, stepping back again when she noticed that Jirou had stiffened just a little. “I could keep her with me for the day, if you like. Show her around, take her for lunch, you know how big my family is and-”
“I think we’ll be okay,” Jirou said, not sounding as though she believed it. “She’s not doing so well being away from me right now so…anyway I should get to the office.”
Before Momo could reply she had turned, taking Yasuko’s outstretched hand and began walking out of the kitchen towards her waiting desk.
“Yeah,” Momo said to her back, not quiet enough to escape Jirou’s sharp ears should she be listening. “Here if you want me.”
***
As soon as Jirou was in her office she regretted being so cold with Momo. Regretted pulling away from that hand that, at one time, she would have gladly leaned into. So long had passed that she couldn't even remember why they had fallen apart, couldn’t remember what it was that had made her so sure that they would never work even though she was still as in love with her childhood sweetheart as she had always been. All she knew was that of anyone in the agency, Momo was the last person that she wanted to see her at her worst. Was the one person that she needed to not think she was weak, that she was struggling with something that so many people did without thinking.
“Hey Yasuko, I need to go back and see Momo in the kitchen, the nice lady who gave you the bunny. Do you think you can stay here just for a minute?”
Huge eyes crinkled closed for a moment, and she shook her head.
“I promise promise promise that I will come right back, I just need to go and say sorry.”
The crunkled fear turned to confusion. “Did you do something bad?”
“Not today, but a long time ago.”
“Mama says when you do something bad you should always say you’re sorry.”
“Exactly.” She reached down to pull Yasuko into a hug, promising again that she would only be a minute before making for the door.
Momo was still where they’d left off, standing looking at her pot of tea with a sadness on her face that Jirou hated that she had been the cause of. She cleared her throat, standing a little awkwardly and waiting for Momo to look up.
“You okay, Kyoka?”
“I wanted to apologise. I was…kind of a dick back there and you didn’t deserve it.”
To her surprise, Momo chuckled, shaking her head the way that she used to when Bakugou did something outrageous in their third year, and apologised with more curse words than pleasant ones.
“Kyoka there is absolutely nothing to apologise for. Your whole world has been shaken up, I think I would be a little tense too. More than.”
“Did…” more hesitation, she was sure that she never used to be so nervous around her once best friend. But a lot had changed since then, a lot that she wished she could take back. “Did you want to come and meet Yasuko properly? I really think she’d like you, and I could do with five minutes to read through my emails and work out what I missed.”
“I would love that. She’s in your office?”
“She is, and if I leave her much longer I think she’ll be out here looking for me.”
They wandered back down the hall side by side, doing a little catching up, talking about Yasuko and how she was handling the adjustments. By the time they pushed back into the office they were almost talking like they used to, some of the weight lifting from Jirou’s shoulders when she pushed the door open to call out for Yasuko.
There was no answer.
“Yasuko, it’s Auntie Kyo, where are you hiding?”
Jirou closed her eyes, letting her ear jacks rise and tilt to better take in the sounds of the room. Yasuko loved hide and seek, and she was sure that this moment was no exception, she would be under the desk or in a cupboard, giggling away whilst waiting to be found.
But the room was silent. Completely silent.
“Yasuko?”
Panic rose immediately, her heart racing and her palms starting to sweat. She had promised that things would be okay, that she would be back in a few minutes and nothing would go wrong. Once again Yasuko had been left by an adult and something horrible had happened, something that she had been assured wouldn’t.
“Momo, I don’t-”
“It’s okay. Take a breath, she can’t have gone far.” She reached for her radio. “All hands, all hands this is Creati. We have a little girl missing from the building. Four to five years old, small, blue hair, blue eyes, quirk-” she looked at Jirou who shook her head, Yasuko’s quirk had come in yet. “Quirk unknown. Lockdown all buildings, nobody in or out until we find her.”
The response was immediate, heroes and sidekicks calling in their floors, promising to check every room, the security detail reporting back that the doors were locked and the windows had been shuttered. Heroes raised into the kind of action that they were built for.
“We start here,” Momo said, taking charge the way she always did so well. “Start with the office and work outwards in a spiral, we overlap as often as we can, radio in if we find her.”
Jirou nodded, watching Momo leave before she started looking, not calling out, not speaking at all. Just listening as hard as she could, tapping her jacks to anything that she thought might be hollow in the hopes that there would be some sign.
A sign that she didn’t find. Yasuko and her bunny were nowhere in the office, she had to move on. To the hall and then the next room, the office after that and the one after that, the toilet blocks and the changing rooms. On and on they opened doors, calling for Yasuko every now and again, not getting any response.
With every room Jirou’s fear grew. She had been entrusted with the girl for no more than a month and things were already going more wrong than she could have imagined. Scenarios ran around and around in her mind, the villain who had killed her parents coming back to finish the job, some crazed relative that she didn’t know about breaking in under the cover of invisibility to steal the child that they believed should be theirs, Yasuko’s quirk finally manifesting into a huge tail that launched her straight through a window without her being able to control it.
It took less than an hour for the agency to clear the whole building, every person reporting in that there was no sign, some promising to go out and search the streets.
“How the hell did I let this happen,” Jirou sobbed, dropping her head into her hands. “I should have-”
She stopped, hearing the faintest giggle in the back of her mind. A sound so small and far away that she wasn't sure that she heard it at all.
“Yasuko?”
The giggle again, louder but still so far away, combined with a gentle tug on her sleeve. When she looked down there was nobody there.
“Yasuko are you…invisible.”
“Hide and seek!”
The voice was strange, when she reached down she could feel the little girl there, her pigtails, the little fingers that clung to hers, but she had sounded as though she was across the office.
“I found her!” Jirou shouted down the hall, pulling Yasuko close into her chest and breathing a long sigh of relief.
“I’ll call it in,” Momo said, running back to her. “I guess she got her quirk finally.”
“You guessed right.”
“Hey Yasuko,” Momo said, pulling her radio out to stand down the search, “can you make it so we can see you again?”
After a moment she flashed back into view, grinning and giggling with the blue bunny still wedged under her arm. Jirou blinked and she was gone, the next blink she came back. In and out of view, laughing all the while as though it was the best game that she had ever heard of.
It was the first time that Jirou had heard her really laugh since her parents had gone, and though she knew that she should have been angry that Yasuko had scared her so much, that was a talk that she could save for later. She was just happy that her little one was okay.
“Well,” Momo said, looking at the pair with a warm smile on her face. “Looks like you’ll have your work cut out for you after all.”
“Yeah,” Jirou said. “I was struggling to keep tabs on her as it is. Why couldn’t she have grown a tail?”
“If you ask me,” Momo said, holding her arms out to Yasuko and beaming when she leapt into them to be lifted and carried back to Jirou’s office, “you’re the perfect person to take care of her with a quirk like this, and I’m sure Toru knew that when they decided to put you down.”
“But I don’t-”
“You can hear . When nobody else could see her you could hear her. That counts for a lot.”
“Maybe I can ask Mei to make me some super special see invisibility glasses,” Jirou sighed, “Just in case.”
“Well I’m sure you’ll think of something, you always do.”
Jirou nodded but she wasn’t sure that she really heard what Momo said next. Her thoughts were spiralling, down and down into the sinking fear that she’d felt the first day that she had brought Yasuko home. The fear that there was no way that she was going to be able to take care of her alone.
“Kyoka?
“Hmm?”
Momo chuckled. “Well what I was saying wasn’t that important anyway. What were you thinking about?”
“I don’t…” she swallowed, hating what she was about to admit. “I don’t think I can do this alone.”
Warm soft fingers tangled up with hers, pulling her attention to Momo’s face. “Kyoka I know this is terrible timing. Really bad, but…what if you didn’t have to? What if-”
“Momo what are you-”
“I never stopped loving you. Not for one day, not for one second. I have loved you with everything that I am for as long as I’ve known you, and I don’t expect you to feel the same way and I don’t expect you to want to rekindle anything. But I want to help. I want to be here for you, however you need. Whenever you need it.”
Jirou wasn’t sure that she could believe what she was hearing. Her heart was racing, the hand that Momo was holding tight to sweating in a way that she knew must be unpleasant, but Momo didn’t pull away. Steadfast and reliable, wonderful as she had ever been.
“I could never ask you to-”
“To what? Be with a woman I adore? Spend time with this beautiful little girl? I’m not asking for your heart-”
“It’s always been yours,” Jirou said, glancing back to where Yasuko continued to play. “I don’t know why I ever thought it wasn’t.”
Momo beamed, pulling Jirou in for a kiss that was far more chaste than either one of them really wanted.
“I should get some work done,” Momo said, breathless, brushing some hair away from Jirou’s face. “Meet me for lunch?”
“Can’t wait.”
There was so much for them to work out, and they would have to make sure that Yasuko was happy before anything else, but for the first time that month Jirou felt as though she could breathe more easily.
It was going to be hard, so hard, but at least she wasn’t going to have to do it all alone.