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DAY 17
SUCCESSOR NO MORE: ALL MIGHT PROTÉGÉ RENDERED QUIRKLESS!! WHO WILL PROTECT US NOW?
Ochako bursts into the hospital with fire and fury in her wake.
“Who the hell told the press?!”
“Hospital staff, we think,” Todoroki is waiting in the foyer, ready for handover. “He already knows. We talked, but…” he shrugs helplessly. “Not really.”
Ochako’s anger tempers a little. She lays a comforting hand on his arm.
“’S not your fault, Todoroki-kun. No-one gets through that smile.”
“You will,” Todoroki states. “Iida may relieve you later, if work allows. I… won’t make it back this week.”
He looks so guilty, but Ochako just smiles. In the weeks since the war, Shouto and Ingenium have inherited so many new responsibilities. They’re never off the clock.
Neither is she: As Todoroki leaves, Ochako treats the lobby to her Uravity Smile to make up for bursting in, and the civilians relax in its glow. Then she heads for Deku’s ward, holding the smile out like a candle to light her way.
He needs it now more than anyone.
Ochako intercepts Dr. Kenko fleeing the Quirkless ward like it’s a plague house.
“Uravity-san! Ahem. He’s the same as ever, I’m afraid. 'Patient refuses to discuss prior experience of Quirklessness, or be moved to a proper ward–'”
“What’s wrong with this one?” Ochako asks lightly. The therapist swallows, because an honest answer would admit the Quirkless ward –dingy, out-of-the-way, with equipment years out of date– isn’t fit for purpose.
(“Wards were segregated because early experts theorized Quirklessness was the result of genetic defects. Some… invisible vulnerability.” Deku recited when she first visited. Information was always his comfort. The more he understood something, the less scary it was. And if he kept talking she might not notice the absence behind his eyes. “People worried Quirklessness was infectious.”
And just to say screw you to that idea, Ochako reached across to clasp his hand in hers. His heart-monitor ticked up a beat, and she smiled. See? There can be life after death.)
But Kenko doesn’t mention this, just bows and scurries away, clipboard in hand like a coroner checking off a crime scene. It drives Ochako mad, people acting like Deku’s gone when he’s right there.
She takes a deep breath, refixes her Smile, and enters the ward. The other patients are eager to see her and she waves; it’s rare for them to get Heroic attention outside charity photo-ops. Their celebrity ward-mate even means more consistent attention from the nurses.
(The things Ochako’s been told went ignored before boil her blood. If Ryuji or Mio were subjected to this…)
That Deku’s presence helps the ward is why he chooses to stay. Or at least Ochako convinces herself that’s why, and not a growing belief he deserves to be discarded down here after losing.
(Not the war. Just everything else. His Quirk. Tenko. All Might…)
He’s reading in bed when she reaches him, still bandaged all over. The book is Tsu’s gift, of the twenty their classmates left him. When he spots her he tries to project a wide smile, sparkling eyes, boyish enthusiasm. But he can’t hide that his smile’s a little thinner, his eyes a little duller; he's aged beyond his years.
But he’s doing his best for her, and that has always been more than enough.
Ochako smiles, settling in the visitors’ chair, and pulls out a book on gravitational theorems Deku recommended back before the first war. She hopes it reminds him of when things were simpler.
After running out of horrifying facts about Quirkless medicine to regurgitate, conversation has became harder for Deku. Which is fine. Ochako won’t pressure him. She’s happy to sit, occasionally reaching out to brush his arm or adjust his bedclothes to reassure herself that he’s there, warm and safe and alive.
If only everyone else agreed.
“Todoroki won’t come back for a while,” Deku says after a time. He doesn’t look up from reading.
“He’ll be back as soon as he can. Everyone’s just… busy.”
She doesn’t go into detail. Doesn’t twist the knife of his powerlessness any further.
“But you’re still here.”
“Every day,” she promises.
“...Why? Are you still hoping I can be… fixed?”
“You don’t need fixing, Deku—”
“Please stop calling me that.” The first tears speckle his book. “It… hurts.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because,” he gestures with his shattered limbs. “Deku isn’t here anymore, Uraraka-san. Now you’re stuck with me.”
Ochako closes her book. Part of her wants to be mad at Deku, for thinking this could change how she sees him. But they’ve been edging around this conversation since the doctors delivered the news, and she watched from this very chair as Deku shrank back into the five-year-old whose dreams were shattered in a place so very like this.
“You think, because your Quirk is gone, you don’t deserve to be called Deku?”
He smiles so sadly then.
“I… I know you believe in me, but… you’ve only ever known me with a Quirk. That version of me, the hero you named. He was born the day we met and he died on that battlefield—"
“But you’re here,” Ochako grabs his hand, squeezes so tight, trying to pour everything through the connection. She will not cry. “You’re right here.”
Deku goes quiet.
“...I couldn’t have saved you in the entrance exam without One for All.”
“But you still would’ve tried,” Ochako says fiercely. “And that’s what Deku is. Not your Quirk. Dekiru means you always try your best.”
Gently, she brushes the tears from his cheeks. Only months ago she wouldn’t have dared touch him like this, but now he needs her, so Uravity Is Here. Deku sniffles, leaning into the contact, and only months ago he wouldn’t have dared do that, either.
“It’s so cruel. To be given everything I’ve ever wanted, only to have it torn away.”
“I won’t pretend I know what that’s like. But I do know how it feels to be powerless, and looked down on. I grew up around Quirkless people, y’know.”
“Really?”
“They were the workers left after our competitors took their pick,” she shrugs. “But they were the strongest people I knew… before I met you.”
He scoffs, but she doesn’t back down. She’s still cradling his face like it's something to be treasured. “That strength is yours, Deku. Not One For All’s. Anyone who ever told you different can stuff it.”
He trembles, and opens his mouth, and then everything floods out. Aldera. What they let Bakugou get away with. All Might, leaving Deku on that rooftop with a broken dream when he himself started out Quirkless. All Might dying fighting All For One Quirkless, proving that even with billions of dollars of technology, Deku’s dream was never achievable as-he-was. And won’t be as-he-is.
Ochako finally bursts the dam Dr. Kenko has beaten his head against for weeks. Deku cries until he has no more tears to give, but still there are a thousand more memories he hoped to leave behind. Ochako climbs into the bed and holds him as he shakes, shushing gently, pressing herself as close as she can to prove he’s not contagious or alone and that she will take every drop of grief he has if it will help him smile again.
Iida wakes her hours later, exhausted from his shift but smiling down at them. He doesn’t shoo Ochako away, just falls into the visitor’s chair beside them. She reaches for him, and he takes her hand as he sits there. The two of them united in their silent vigil.
DAY 18
“Hey, Kacchan," Ochako snarls, and Bakugou Katsuki looks up with the fear of God in his eyes.
DAY 21
“You have to do something about Aldera,” she insists for the twentieth time. Aizawa studies her, standing defiantly in the Teachers’ Lounge with Bakugou at her side, and sighs.
“No one will care, with everything going on.”
“Well, they should fuc–”
“And you’ll need evidence of discriminatory conduct.”
“I’ll testify,” Bakugou growls.
“That would be career suicide.”
“You think I don’t fucking know?”
Again, Ochako marvels at the bravery of a boy who just a few weeks ago could never admit he was wrong. What was his comeback to Ochako’s big rant? Her climactic gotcha! moment meant to skewer him between the eyes with a stake of his own failures?
I already know. Of course he did. Bakugou Katsuki knew everything.
“You’re too valuable, Bakugou," Aizawa frowns. "With Deku gone, Dynamight is the HPSC’s symbol of strength and rebirth. Now is not the time to fall on your own sword.”
“Fuck that. You won’t make me the next Endeavor–”
“You don’t get a vote. This is about what Japan needs.”
“What about Deku?” Ochako yells.
“They’re waiting until after All Might’s funeral to announce his retirement. There will be medals. A parade.”
Aizawa looks like he’ll attend just to set the floats on fire. Ochako might join him.
“They can’t just throw him away! We haven’t even graduated yet!”
“That’s another question,” Aizawa says tiredly. “Whether he can stay in the Hero Course in his… condition.”
“UA accepts Quirkless students,” Bakugou spits. He and Deku dreamed of becoming Heroes together as boys. Seeing the person he started this journey with torn away from it, just as he learned to accept him…
“In theory. But now Midoriya’s profile has changed he’ll have to re-sit the entrance exams—”
“But he’s Deku,” Ochako protests. “It’s not his Quirk that defines him, it’s his strategies, his analysis, his drive! They won’t change!”
“...I’ll submit a formal complaint with your testimony,” Aizawa rubs the scar under his eye, a stress-tic 1A fostered in him themselves. “But most officials will barely register what you’ve described as discrimination.”
“What? The constant, systematic neglect—”
“Is everyday for the Quirkless. Aldera will pitch it as toughening him up for the realities of the world.”
“Right,” Ochako glares. “When you put it that way, it seems so logical.”
Aizawa stares her down.
“I’ll do everything I can on my end, Uraraka. I… owe the boy more than I’ve given.”
Ryuji picks up on the third ring.
“If it ain’t li’l Chaks! How are ya?”
“I’m good, Ryuji-san. An’ Y’all?”
“Holdin’ up. The boys miss ya, y’ain’t been down ta see us in months! Yer Pa’s goin’ spare.”
“I talk ta him every week,” She sighs down the line. “Sorry, I jus’… Ryuji-san… you’re Quirkless, righ’?”
“...All my life,” the foreman chuckles, befuddled. “Why?”
“I think I need some advice.”
DAY 26
“Uravity, any updates on Deku’s condition–”
“--Recovery time–”
“--potential cure–”
“--replacement?”
Ochako re-adjusts her bag and shoulders through the swarm of reporters that have gathered outside the hospital every day since the news broke.
“--does Deku have any comment on the Quirkless euthanasia program being trialed in Nagoya–”
Ochako turns on her heel, finds a microphone shoved in her face, and her training kicks in. Grab the wrist, twist, disarm, and discard the weapon.
The assembled reporters watch the microphone spin into the sky and not come down.
Ochako is panting.
“What?”
The offending reporter, young, probably hungry for his first scoop, smirks.
“As Japan’s most prominent member of the Quirkless community, I thought Deku might have opinions on–”
(Deku doesn’t but Ochako does. She’s done her research since all this started. And every fact she found made her blood boil hotter.)
“He has just lost his Quirk. And his mentor. And you want to ask him about assisted suicide?”
(“I only considered it once,” Deku admitted sleepily into her chest late at night. “Or twice. Not seriously. Never for long. Kacchan would’ve gotten in trouble. But it was something else to plan. A contingency for if nothing else worked out.”)
The reporter must sense her fury because he backs up.
“I–”
“Being Quirkless is not a reason to die,” Ochako might be yelling, but she can’t tell over the blood thundering in her ears. “Quirklessness is not a disease. If I see you here tomorrow, you will never report on any Agency my classmates work in for the rest of your career. Leave.”
She doesn’t wait to see if he does, just powers through the hospital doors clutching her bag tight so she’s not tempted to do something worse with her hands.
“Uravity-san!” a Quirkless patient cheers.
Ochako blinks. Her anger carried her all the way to the ward.
Despite everything, Deku still has the energy to worry for her.
“You’re upset–”
“I’m better now,” she says, and crushes him in her tightest hug to reassure herself. His heart-monitor, she decides, is her new favorite sound. Or maybe it’s the startled little eep he makes into the skin of her neck. She pulls back and, without thinking, plants a soft kiss at his hairline.
Color blooms across Deku’s cheeks like sunrise after a long night.
“I! Uh! Um!”
“Hatsume made me the supplies we talked about,” she says brightly, ignoring her own blush/urge to scream into the nearest pillow.
(Which is Deku’s. Smelling of him. So close that his nose would brush her cheek if he he turned to her–)
“T-thank you! Let’s get started!”
(“Are you sure you want to talk about my awakening?” she asked. Weeks after the war she still hadn't been able to recreate it. “It’s not a… sensitive subject?”
“I miss Quirk analysis,” he admitted. “I know what you’re gonna say. I should try to move on, not focus on what I’ve lost.”
“I was gonna say you have an amazing talent. So long as you’re comfortable using it now…?”
“It got me through the worst of before.” His eyes almost swam over with gratitude. “I just… don’t want to go backwards.”
“Well, the difference is now you’re surrounded by people who know the value of your advice.”
He nodded, hands fisting in his sheets, that determined Dekiru-glint in his eye again after so long.
“This time, the notes won’t just save me. This time they’ll help everyone.”)
The exercise Deku planned for Ochako’s new ‘non-contact’ Float reminds her of home. Long ago, buried in a fangirl rant about Thirteen, Ochako mentioned the model solar-system that hung above her cot as a baby. When her Quirk turned out to be gravity-related, Ma took it as a lucky charm. The model had hung above every bed Ochako slept in since, until she came to UA.
Under Deku’s instruction, Ochako pulls ten differently sized light-up orbs from her bag and places them on the bed in order.
“Now,” Deku says. “Let’s get them stable in the air first. Then we can worry about orbits.”
Ochako closes her eyes. Deku strokes her wrist encouragingly, and she’s so grateful how easy that contact has become in the face of everything. “Remember what you’ve been reading. Try to picture the gravity.”
Ochako imagines the universe as the great physicists would see it; the indentations of mass in the fabric of space-time, gravity’s inexorable pull flowing into them in molten lava-lines…
She reaches out with her mind, imagining the gravity bending to her will, opens her eyes, and…
“Well, that didn’t work.”
“Hm,” Deku’s brow furrowing like that again is such a blessing. “Maybe it’s your visualization? When I was learning Full Cowl, it only really clicked once I related the power to something everyday I could easily understand the mechanics of.”
“You mean your microwave?” Ochako giggles.
“The most powerful microwave in the history of the world,” Deku nods earnestly. “So, what everyday thing can you relate your Quirk to?”
Ochako thinks back to her awakening. The numbing cold spreading from her abdomen, Himiko screaming her last words over the wind–
She grips Deku’s bedrail against a sudden swell of anger. But something else comes back to her too.
Bubbles.
“Okay, I think I’ve got something.”
She pictures the gravity again, but this time imagines herself holding a bottle of the blowing-bubbles you’d get in party bags as a kid. In her mind’s eye, Ochako unscrews the cap, dips the wand carefully into the bubble solution, withdraws…
And blows.
“Woah,” Deku breathes. Ochako opens her eyes to see a bubble of pink energy fly from her fingertips and swallow one of the waiting orbs. In her mind’s eye, Ochako watches the bubble lift the orb, flattening the indentation where its mass should be.
It drifts into the air without her having to touch it.
“Thankyouthankyouthankyou!” Ochako tells Deku before anything else. Then she squeals and does a victory dance in the middle of the ward. The other patients applaud.
DAYS 27+
The solar system model becomes a group project, with the whole ward pitching in to count out moons, paint planets, and crumble up an asteroid belt. The patients swap stories as they work, most of which are horribly depressing, but they laugh anyway. Deku brims with pride; Uravity has brought starlight to this dingy, forgotten room.
(Except sometimes, when he thinks she isn’t looking, his eyes sour. He studies her Quirk with such longing, a child whose favorite toy was stolen, watching everyone else play from out in the cold. Ochako wore that look, watching richer kids back home. Envy doesn’t suit Deku.)
The model comes together as Ochako’s control improves. Soon she’s adding planetary rotation. Then, planetary orbits, and finally lunar orbits.
It takes incredible concentration to maintain, and though Hatsume designed the orbs to be feather-light, Ochako’s stomach always heaves sooner than she’d like.
It’s worth it, though, when they shut off the lights and she watches the planets’ glow reflect in Deku’s eyes like lanterns guiding him home. For a moment, the patients can escape the ward into a cosmic realm where Quirks are insignificant.
Ochako climbs into the bed and holds Deku close. It’s her turn to mutter random facts in his ear; this is about the only subject she could do that with, and he clings to every word as tightly as he clings to her.
The moment the model reminded him of the Mindscape, Izuku knew the nightmare would be worse.
One For All left him like a dream in the moments before waking. The harder you hold, the faster it slips away.
He stands in the Mindscape, the Vestiges like iridescent statues surrounding him. And All Might, taking his place as the eighth star in their constellation.
Standing with Izuku is Tenko, form sputtering like a candle burned down to its wick, between the boy he was, the monster he was made, and the man he would never get to be.
Izuku smiles for him as no one has before. Reaches for his hand—
Around them, the Vestiges’ iridescent armor cracks, flaking away like rusting platemail.
Izuku feels the power begin to abandon him. He’s sprung a leak somewhere deep and unfixable, and everything good is gushing out.
Tenko grabs Izuku’s hand, terrified.
The Vestiges’ faces shear away completely, and from inside them scuttle jeering children like monsters from under the bed. Faces Izuku knows from Aldera and before.
The Quirk has fled him completely. The children start to point and shriek. One hurls a shard of Vestige-armor at him. Pain blares across Izuku’s forehead.
Tenko starts to wither in his hands, and Izuku has no power to help; the layers of him peel away from man to monster to boy to nothing. A Russian doll made flesh, weeping red, and at its center–
Kacchan, as-he-was. A six-year-old tyrant with eyes like spilt blood. His grip on Izuku’s hand flares magnesium hot. Izuku cries out as his flesh starts to smoke, turns to beg All Might for help–
Where All Might stood looms a man with Izuku’s curls. Izuku’s nose.
Midoriya Hizashi can’t even look at him as he turns away, so desperate to escape Izuku he’ll run halfway across the globe.
“Daddy I’m sorry come back I’ll be better I’ll fix it you don’t have to–”
“Betrayer,” Kacchan snarls behind him, nova in his palm. “We were supposed to be Heroes together! This is your fault!”
“It’s not… Kacchan, I didn’t mean to be…”
Kacchan opens his mouth, but instead of spitting Deku, the name echoes from far away, soft and tinged with worry.
Izuku opens his eyes.
“-eku, can you hear me? Hey. Hey, it’s okay… shhh, you’re safe. Breathe with me, okay?”
Uraraka Is Here. Izuku whimpers in her hold because his dreams may flee from him but nightmares cling on like barbed wire in the skin.
“I’m sorry for waking you.”
“No,” Uraraka murmurs. “I’m sorry I’m not enough to help you by myself.”
DAY 33
“You have to see him before the funeral.”
Bakugou glares at his lunch. It screws with your head, sitting in the high-school bubble of the cafeteria when out there they’re carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders.
“He doesn’t wanna see me, Cheeks. Not while he’s Quirkless again. I’ll only remind him of the shit I put him through last time.”
“That’s already happening! He thinks he only got you back ‘cause One For All made you equals. Now he’s terrified you’ll go back to… before.”
“Stupid.”
“Seems fair to me,” she snaps.
“It’s stupid, Cheeks, ‘cause his Quirklessness ain’t what scared me,” Bakugou scowls. Most of those are self-directed these days. “The real kick in the dick was everything he was despite it. How he could be so powerless and yet still be so… fuckin’…”
“Deku,” Ochako finishes for him. “That doesn’t get you out of fixin’ your mess. Coward.”
He studies her.
“You’re real pissed at me, huh?”
“I’m still mad I didn’t get to yell at you properly last time.”
He grins crookedly.
“Too bad. Pissed-off Uravity is my favorite Uravity.”
“That explains a lot. Look, Bakugou-kun, you’re his symbol of Victory, right?”
Bakugou jerks like she slid a knife between his ribs.
“He told you that corny ass—”
“If you tell him he can beat this thing, he’ll believe you,” she interrupts. “Please. If you’re not there for him at the funeral, I don’t think he’ll… It won’t be pretty without you.”
“Still think he’s an idiot,” Bakugou grumbles.
“Then go tell him he’s an idiot. It’s what you’re best at.”
DAY 34
Deku’s first word when he sees Bakugou is ‘Sorry.’
Ochako grits her teeth, hovering in the doorway just in case. Great start.
“Sorry, Kacchan, I’m sorry. I let you down again, I did it again–”
“You never let me down, stupid,” Bakugou barks. “Problem was you never stopped fucking being there for me.”
Deku flinches.
“Do you.. Want me to stop now? What am I saying, you always have.” He gestures around the dingy ward. “I.. think it might be time to stop chasing you.”
“Got that right.” Deku crumples and Ochako steps forward but Bakugou keeps talking. “Figure it’s about time we did this together again, don’t you?”
Ochako stops. Deku stares.
“Huh?”
“What’re you, fuckin’ deaf and Quirkless? Agency Bakugou’ll need a Support Partner. Analysis, gear, merch. You got a head-start on the competition with your creepy-ass notes. I made you a job offer, if you remember.”
“…When we were four, Kacchan.”
“So? You think I didn’t fuckin’ mean it?!”
“No! It’s just…” Deku sighs. “A lot’s changed since then.”
“You haven’t, Izuku.” Bakugou’s grin is his killing-blow. “So, offer’s still open. I got this new move-set I’m refining, and Cheeks says you’re the fucker to talk to. It was inspired by this upstart little prick who was always stealing my moves. Figured it was time I returned the favor.”
“...Oh?”
“I’ll need my gauntlet designs adapted into rocket-boots eventually too, if I’m gonna take this new move-set to the max.”
“Boots? Why…” It finally clicks. "Shoot style… Rocket-powered Shoot-Style!? Kacchan, that’s amazing…!”
The muttering churns to life for the first time in weeks. Ochako backs away, intercepting Dr. Kenko’s arrival before he can interrupt. Together they watch Hero! Agency! Ba-ku-gou! being reborn from the sidelines.
DAY 37
THE PASSING OF A TITAN: WHO WILL BE THE NEXT SYMBOL OF PEACE?
The ceremony takes place on a Friday, which doesn’t strike Ochako as a funeral day, and in August, which doesn’t strike her as a funeral month.
The public clog the streets around the cemetery, but 1A is inside, with Gran Torino, Detective Tsukauchi, and the Shields from I-island. There are no friends from Yagi Toshinori’s life before All Might. Ochako wonders how much of that was dutiful sacrifice and how much was Quirklessness.
Deku is improving physically but still propped up on a cane. He’s staring up at the memorial statue, modeled after Yagi-sensei without looking anything like him, as Ochako sidles up.
“Hey.” He jumps at her hand on his shoulder. “Your mom and I thought he’d want you to have this.”
She slips him his favorite All Might hoodie. He stares at that too. “I grabbed it from your apartment.”
Ochako checks in over tea once a week, because Midoriya-san’s access to Deku is limited as a civilian. The more time Ochako spends with her, the clearer the picture of Deku before his Quirk becomes. His childhood bedroom —with a lifetime of posters, merch, and the plushie he’d sewn himself for Home-Ec— was a better monument to All Might’s legacy than any statue.
Miracle of miracles, Deku laughs. He sheds his suit jacket and pulls the hoodie on instead. When he emerges, he’s giving her a smile to make his mentor proud.
“...Thank you,” he whispers, and pulls her into a hug that’s so strong, so steady and him. “For everything, Uraraka. Uravity. I… I don’t think we need a new Symbol of Peace. Those days went with him. But if he were here, he'd be proud of our new Symbol of Hope.”
He releases her and takes his place for the ceremony, leaving her dazed, with all this trust and faith and hope in her hands and not the first idea what to do with it.
Bakugou scoffs at Deku’s hoodie, but it’s a Shoulda-Been-Me sort of thing. He finds Ochako in the crowd and she winks.
Deku is the only one dressed right, she thinks as the ceremony unfolds. The other mourners look so silly, streaks of charcoal in the buttercup summer. Ochako imagines their sensei, worn-down but unstoppable, the sunflower scarecrow, asking what the fuss was about. Smile, he’d grin, because I Am Here! Forever and always. You will know where to find me.
Afterward, the HPSC wanted Shoto and Dynamight to speak as ‘leaders of the next generation, inspired by All Might and Deku’s martyrdom’. Both refused. Instead, Deku steps up to a podium in front of the uncanny statue, a blue-and-yellow beacon in a sea of blacks.
“H-hi,” he waves nervously, voice echoing through speakers and TV-screens across the globe. “I’m supposed to read from some cards a very nice lady wrote for me. But I’m no good with cards, or speaking in front of people, or people, really.” He laughs, strangled. “All I will say is that All Might had saved my life way before I met him. I had a… rough childhood.”
The HPSC reps shift behind him; Deku wasn’t to confirm his Quirklessness. “When we did meet, life began again for me. I wouldn’t be here without him. Or my friends, out there saving you now…” He manages a smile, though Ochako imagines his knees are knocking. “They will lead our society out of this darkness, as they’ve already led a scared, lonely Quirkless boy into the light.”
The rep sours. Ochako smiles. Here it comes. “But for now, let’s celebrate the greatest Hero who ever lived! A Hero who, like me, sacrificed his power and became Quirkless for the greater good.” Pause for dramatic effect. Who says Deku can’t work a crowd? “And a man who, like me, was born Quirkless. But aspired to greatness in spite of it.”
The crowd outside the cemetery erupts.
DAY 38
SCANDAL: DEKU CLAIMS ALL MIGHT QUIRKLESS. FACT OR FICTION?
“Would it have changed anything for you? If you’d known All Might was Quirkless when you were boys?”
“Fucking everything, I’d like to think,” Bakugou looks up from Deku’s notes on Shoot-Style 2.0. “Or maybe I would’ve been the same stubborn little shit I always was.”
“Still are.”
He grins.
“ It ain’t about me, Cheeks. What matters is it would’ve changed everything for him.”
If you told Ochako when she first met Melissa Shield that one day she’d willingly leave the woman alone in a room with Deku, Ochako would've never believed you.
(Actually, Ochako would’ve laughed hysterically, insisting there was no reason Melissa couldn’t be alone with Deku and it wasn’t her business anyway, before sneaking away to spy on them.)
But Melissa is what Deku needs now. Genius, kind, connected.
(RIch, thin, beautiful).
And Quirkless.
“Help him,” Ochako orders, begs, warns. Melissa understands. She enters the ward with a Support-case and a smile. Ochako leaves them to it.
DAY 39
Dear Aizawa Shouta ,
Following a thorough internal review conducted by the institution in question, we have found no evidence of Quirkless discrimination at Aldera Middle School significant enough to warrant Ministerial intervention…
Ochako balls the letter up and hurls it into the sky. She wishes she could watch it burn as it hits the atmosphere.
She studies her clenched fists instead, wondering if Himiko’s school had a similar review when everything went wrong.
(“Coulda told ya,” Ryuji-san sighs over the phone later. “Same thing happened whenever Ma complained fer me. Y’get used ta it.”
“Ya shouldn’t’ve had ta,” Ochako spits.
Things are supposed to be getting better.)
DAYS 40+
Deku grows restless after the funeral. Almost all the patients here when he arrived have been discharged, but the ward is always overbooked with new victims of assaults, muggings, neglect. His speech backfired: Quirkless hate-crime is rising, and he’s devastated. Ochako reports it to every Agency she can.
Too domestic, she’s told. Take it to the cops.
Low priority, the cops dismiss. We’ll put ‘em on the backburner. Like that’s generous.
So Deku takes matters into his own hands. Melissa left him Support supplies and a digital syllabus, and he attacks this new subject with single-minded focus: Smoke pellets, flares, bodycams; from his hospital bed he supplies the patients with defenses as they leave. Hatsume even chips in.
Until one patient returns with broken ribs and a cop in tow. Had an altercation with a political activist , the officer explains. Provoked them with potentially lethal weapons-tech. Deku wouldn’t know anything about that, would he?
The defenses stop. Ochako reports the activists (supremacists), and when that fails (permits, loopholes, lawsuits) adjusts her patrol to monitor their meeting-place. Ryukyu pulls her up on it one morning.
“Priorities, Uravity. Your Quirk is needed for rebuilding. With Deku gone, you are the symbols of our restoration.”
Ochako fumes, but she is done telling people Deku is still Here. He’ll show them himself, in time.
“Some things shouldn’t be restored,” she bites, Himiko in her ear. “I won’t be a symbol of… that.”
Ryukyu doesn’t respond.
“All Pros have let things go,” Tsu says over lunch later, perched on a mountain of rubble and passing a water-bottle between them. “You know, I chose Ryukyu’s Agency in First Year because I thought, as a fellow heteromorph…” She picks at her locusts. “When we were kids, she was a huge advocate for our rights, kero. Spent a lot more time in her dragon form, too.”
“She was your Thirteen,” Ochako beams.
“Smaller-time than them, at least back then. But not in our house.”
“What happened?”
Tsu shrugs.
“She stopped being so loud. Spent more time as a supermodel and less as a monster, kero. Suddenly she shot up the rankings.”
“Were you hoping you could… remind her?”
“Maybe. But then the War—”
“Because of the War, after everything with Spinner, heteromorphs need us more than anyone,” Ochako says firmly.
Tsu smiles, unsure. It’s so unlike her.
“They need to be forced to remember the ones who get left behind. But… how do we do that without them calling us Villains too?”
Ochako has no answers.
DAY 54
Ochako passes through Aldera’s halls as she imagines Deku did. Ghostly. Half-there half-not. Bakugou looks worse. The sweaty, simpering principal thinks Japan’s new leading light is here for PR.
“…Testimony from your teachers will be glowing of course—”
“So they’ll lie through their fucking teeth?”
The principal stalls. Finally dials into the tone of his office; Bakugou yet to sit down, Ochako and Kirishima flanking like prison guards ready to restrain him. “We’re not here for a fucking puff-piece. We’re here because of the complaint you dodged.”
The principal eyes Ochako and Kirishima.
“We didn’t… name any specific students in that inquiry—”
“I know. We filed the complaint, dipshit,”
The Himiko in Ochako purrs at how the principal gapes.
“But… you’re a Hero now. It all worked out—”
“Not for him,” Bakugou snarls.
“Ah.” It’s not guilt sheening the man with sweat. Just animal self-preservation. Ochako’s fists shake. “I thought he retired, so I didn’t… He always was so quiet–”
“Because you never listened to him! All the shit you let me put him through and you never raised a finger–”
Kirishima wedges himself between them before Bakugou can grab the man.
“You… want us to apologize for not punishing you?” The principal laughs a little hysterically. “What, you want to go sit in detention for a while?”
“Bit fucking late now, ain’t it?”
“Detention wouldn’t have stopped you.”
“Expulsion would have!”
Everyone goes quiet. Bakugou sags, and Kirishima’s restraint becomes a half-hug. “I was twelve years old when I got here. Why couldn’t you wake me up?”
The principal lays down his winning flush.
“If we had expelled you, you wouldn’t have been there to save us.”
If Bakugou hadn’t lunged, Ochako would have. He leaves scorchmarks on the principal’s desk before Kirishima bundles him outside, to match the marks he left on Deku’s years ago.
“We need to leave,” Kirishima says grimly. Ochako nods, exhausted; they used up their lunch break for this dead-end, and if word gets back to their agencies they’re here without permission…
She pretends not to see Bakugou shaking as they pass the landmarks of Deku’s nightmares on their way out. This is what treating kids as just their Quirks gets you. Things would be so much simpler if everyone were Quirkless, Then Himiko might still be alive.
DAY 59
Ochako isn’t sure precisely when she and Deku sleeping together became routine. All she knows is Deku keeps her nightmares away, and a bed is warmer with him in it, and when dreams do wake her there is no faster way to drift off again than listening to the reassuring thrum of his heart.
The nurses don’t comment on her overnight bag becoming a permanent fixture under his bed, nor her raiding the breakfast trolley every morning before work.
At UA, even Mina knows better than to tease the delicacy of her and Deku’s Something. Everyone does, except…
“Bet you’re loving this,” Mineta sniffs during sparring. “Now Midoriya actually needs you. Now he’s damaged goods, and no-one else will take him, so he’s stuck with you.”
Ochako stares at Mineta. She recalls his garbled confession to Deku when the class was trying to bring him home, and wonders if this is jealousy. It doesn’t matter.
“Sensei, I’d like to spar with Mineta next, please.”
Mineta pales. Really, Ochako muses as she gets into position, would anyone mind if she punted him to the Moon?
Ochako gets her first reprimand for excessive force that day. Each ball Mineta threw at her she floated back in his face. Once he was welded to the ground, she hit him. Once or twice. Maybe a little more.
Bakugou howls. Aizawa demands an explanation. And the truth is Mineta’s words cut deeply. Every morning Ochako wakes to Deku’s face, she feels guilty. He’s so vulnerable, and she is trampling his boundaries. Before the War, Deku could barely withstand a hug! Does he feel obligated to do all this now to help her through her issues? Does he feel pressured by their new power imbalance?
She can’t shake the feeling she’s taking advantage of him. And so she has not found the courage to kiss him again. They cuddle, they hold hands and drift off in each-other’s arms. But Ochako has done nothing that couldn’t be spun as platonic.
Embrace your feelings, Himiko would’ve said, and it’s true Ochako has never been closer to Deku than she is now. But there are parts of her that have never been further away. She wonders what Himiko would think of it all, knowing she’ll never have the chance to ask. That makes Ochako livid too, if she stops to think about it too long.
Things have changed. Himiko’s lesson came before Deku lost his Quirk. Before they had to put him back together piece by piece.
He’ll leave the hospital soon. That will break the spell.
(She feels terrible for the part of her that wants to keep him there, where she can protect him. But the more she learns about Quirkless life outside, the angrier she gets. The HPSC are throwing Deku on the fire when they deserve to burn.)
DAY 60
“I love you,” Himiko breathes in her ear. Her knife plunges, as it did in the war, but...
Instead of Ochako’s stomach it carves right through her heart.
Instead of an ice-spear it’s a lightning rod. Feeling thrums from the piercing-point to the very tips of her fingers.
Himiko draws the blade down delicately, as Ochako imagines she’d unzip a lover’s dress. Ochako stares down at the fissure in her chest that should hurt, should bleed, but…
Himiko laughs. “See what we’ve uncaged?”
Starlight erupts from the opening. Ochako gasps as the universe pours out of her, in nebulae and comets and whole constellations.
Himiko grabs her hand and they dance through the air, just like the war, high above with the swirling cosmos. Ochako laughs, draws Himiko close–
She’s cold.
Ochako clutches her cheeks but her blush vanishes under her fingers. Himiko is as cold and gray and lifeless as Ochako found her when she woke on the battlefield.
There’s the blood she expected. Not her own, but Himiko’s, soaking Ochako’s hands, cascading between her fingers and floating away in zero-gravity bubbles. Her Awakening run red. The starlight in her chest sears uncomfortably hot.
The body in her arms flickers. It’s Deku now. Deku gray and lifeless, so cold that when Ochako cries out and pulls him close he hurts her to hold
The starlight inside her roars, no longer light but fire, a cosmic furnace that spews from her chest to incinerate all the beautiful wonders that came before.
Himiko opened her up, and now she can’t shut herself off. Ochako screams as the fire cremates her from the inside, burning hotter and hotter–
“-raraka! Uraraka, wake up! Ochako, please–”
Ochako wakes gasping, writhing, covered in sweat.
Deku’s hand in hers is an anchor. “It’s okay, Uraraka. Just breathe. You’re safe now, I promise–”
Through her panic and fear, she believes him.
It takes a few moments of stop-start heaving to find herself. He’s with her the whole way. “The nurses are here,” he murmurs once she’s stable. “Apparently there are people outside–”
“Protestors,” a standby nurse agrees. “We… think they’re here for Deku. We’ve called the Police, but as a Hero on-scene…”
“I’ll deal with them,” Ochako reaches for her costume case stowed under the bed. Deku frowns.
“You just–”
“I’ve got this,” she says shortly. She will not lose him like she lost Himiko. “Let me protect you.”
TAKE IT BACK!
ALL MIGHT RESTS IN POWER
BESMIRCHER OF HIS NAME
DEKU LIES!
Ochako reads the placards standing atop the hospital, as she stood atop UA in front of another rabid mob weeks and lifetimes ago, to protect the same boy. She is cold, tired, and raging, and she will do this over and over for him if he needs her to.
Ochako recognizes faces below from the supremacists Ryukyu ordered she leave be. How many are responsible for injuries in the ward?
“...it’s appalling to lie about the dead to further his political agenda!” one tells the reporters on the hospital steps over their war-drum chanting.
“BRING HIM OUT! BRING HIM OUT! BRING HIM OUT!”
“But the HPSC are yet to contradict Deku,” the reporter says. (They won't let him explain either, scrambling to edit One For All into a statement that doesn’t violate state secrets.)
“All Might had the strongest Quirk in the world. Calling him Quirkless, at his funeral? Kid might as well have spat on his grave.”
For a moment, Ochako rages at All Might, too. For not coming forward while he was alive, for putting his secrets and image over doing his best for those who needed it most. Trying to forget that part of himself. Until Deku.
“What would you say to criticisms your arguments promote Quirk-supremacy?” the reporter asks.
“It isn’t supremacy if it’s true.”
“Uravity!” One finally notices her. The others turn to look. The chanting hushes. “We demand Deku speak with us! The press are here. He can walk back what he said right now!”
The reporters look up eagerly.
“He can’t ‘walk back’ the truth,” Ochako shouts. From this far they won’t hear the furious quiver in her voice. “Go home!”
The protestors roar disapproval and the chanting kicks back up.
“BRING HIM OUT! BRING HIM OUT!”
Embrace your feelings, Himiko taught her. So Ochako does. She closes her eyes and imagines her bubble-bottle, like Deku taught her. There’s poetry in that; Quirkless genius versus Quirk supremacists.
Bubbles cascade from her fingers, swooping down to yank every placard, banner, and megaphone high into the air. The supremacists yell; one holds onto his sign for a few feet before falling back on his butt.
They stare at her silently now. The objects hang above them like threats. Ochako’s hand trembles with white rage.
“Uraraka?”
His voice punches the anger right out of her. She turns. Deku has followed her onto the roof, still sleep-soft in pajamas and wielding his homemade flares and smoke-pellets. Still ready to help her even now.
“...You’ll catch a cold,” is the first thing she can say.
“Better get inside then.” He doesn’t step closer. If the crowd sees him they’ll riot. But he offers his hand. “Ryukyu is sending sidekicks. If you fight them now, you’ll only get in trouble.”
Ochako swipes at her eyes, glaring down at the protestors because if she looks at him again, he’ll break her.
“How can you just… take this? Aren’t you angry? Don’t you hate it?”
“Hatred is for them,” Izuku murmurs. “And look how it’s ruined them. You deserve better.”
Ochako sucks in a breath. Deku is still the best of them.
But she… isn’t. So, with Deku on one shoulder and Himiko on the other, she tries something new.
The protestors cry out as the objects slice through the air, but they don’t fall. Instead, Ochako imagines a new bubble, high above, drawing them all together. She wills the gravity stronger and it crunches the placards to kindling, pulling everything in and in, until the protestors’ hatred coalesces into her own, concentrated little planetoid.
Ochako drops it on the hospital steps like the baseball they threw on their very first day at UA, all that time ago.
“LEAVE!”
Even the reporters run.
“Holy Woah,” Deku says.
The ward is buzzing when they return. Already legends are being embellished about Uravity sending a squad of serial-murderers into orbit. That’ll probably come back to bite her later. Deku helps her back to their bed, and out of her gauntlets. He puts them to the side and takes her hands instead, palms-up, tracing the shape of her fingerpads and marveling at their newfound power.
“You don’t have to keep doing this for me, you know,” he murmurs. “I appreciate it. So much. But... I don’t want you to feel stuck with me. Like you’re obligated to be here.”
She laughs.
“Y’know I’ve been thinkin’ the same thing in reverse?”
“Yeah, uh…” Deku looks away. “Kacchan told me about Mineta.”
“He did?”
“He seemed really excited about you punching him. But, for the record, I don’t feel that way about you.”
“...You don’t?”
He looks at her funny, like she suggested gravity goes up and stars burn cold.
“How could I? I just haven’t said much because I was scared you’d… I dunno, wake up, I guess? But out there on the roof. You’re holding so much in because you don’t want to burden me. So, maybe talking is terrifying, but we need to. And you’ve always made it easier to face my fears.”
“I don’t feel stuck with you either,” she blurts. “You trusting me to help you through this is the luckiest I’ve ever been. You being in my life is a gift, Deku. Seeing the Hero you’ve become and still are, how much you’re growing—”
He kisses her then. Clumsy and nervous and soft and determined, and in front of the whole ward.
He tastes like green tea and sugar.
“I-I’m sorry!” Deku breaks away, frantic, tomato-red. “That was rude, y-you were talking and I interrupted, I’m—”
She slots her mouth against his, to swallow his anxieties and breathe them back to him as love.
The other patients whoop and laugh. Deku melts.
DAY 61
After all that, Ochako gets suspended anyway.
“They want to sue for abuse of power!” Ryukyu drops the report on her desk. Ochako feels like she’s been summoned to the Principal’s study, appropriate for a highschooler but ridiculous for a war veteran. “You need patience, Uraraka. You can’t get caught in political controversy so early in your career. Prioritize. You’ll do more good once you’re well-established.”
(Prioritize means fixing the rich neighborhoods first. Leaving Deku & Himiko behind.)
“Is that what your boss told you when you fought for heteromorphs? To be patient?”
Ryukyu freezes. Ochako snarls. “When did patience become complacency? Because you’ve been Number Ten for three years now, but you’ve forgotten all about the heteromorphs. It must be easier when you can hide the part of yourself people hate.”
The dragon in Ryukyu snarls back at her. Ochako does not back down.
DAY 62
While she’s suspended her professional access to Deku is revoked. The rest of the class nearly riots, but an official application as a member of the public will take nearly a week to process.
Not that Deku should be there another week; his injuries are long-healed. Sometime after the funeral, Ochako realized the HPSC were no longer keeping him there for his health but out of their own embarrassment. Waiting for the controversy around him to die down.
So she feels no guilt breaking him out.
(She wouldn’t sleep a wink without him.)
She taps on his window. Tsu is covering her evening shift in the ward and rolls her eyes when she sees her. Deku sprints to open the window.
“Hey,” she says, concentrating on floating steady against the breeze. “Wanna get out of here?”
She offers her hand, Peter Pan whisking Wendy off to Neverland. Deku stares at her, at the huge duffle slung over her shoulder, and then back at Tsu.
“What’re you waiting for, kero? This is the height of romance.”
Deku blushes furiously but grabs Ochako's hand and grins as he lifts off the floor. They’d had their fill of adulthood; if the world wouldn’t allow them their childhoods then they would steal them back.
Ochako can’t fly, but she has discovered a new way to fall, reorienting her gravity so it pulls them forward, not down. Until Deku plants a shy kiss on her cheek and she nearly drops them.
He grins, tucking into her chest like he was meant to be there, the wind whipping his hair and the moonlight gilding him silver. Ochako wonders if he’s remembering Float and Full Cowl, blasting through the sky faster than she ever will. She hopes the memories don’t hurt.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” he hisses a few minutes later. “I can’t believe you’re encouraging it.”
“I can’t believe it’s taken you so long.” She slings her now-empty duffle back over her shoulder. “You ready?”
Deku trembles. And nods. Ochako grins, pressing her fingers together. “Release.”
High above Aldera Middle School, fifty high-compression paint bombs (trademark Hatsume Mei, patent pending) fall at once.
“I don’t want to go back to the ward,” he confesses once they’ve made their getaway, car alarms blazing and the town painted green behind them. She considered hitting the supremacists too, but that’d only provoke retaliation. They’ll have their time.
“Then we won’t go back,” Ochako says simply.
“I can’t go home. They’ll look for me there.”
“No. But I’ve got some time off. You wanna come see mine?”
They do drop by his apartment, so he can pack and hug his mother, both weeping happy tears. Midoriya-san pulls Ochako in too. There’s a lot of love in their house. Ochako tears up trying to keep her head above the water.
Tsu meets them at the train station with Ochako’s still-full overnight bag from the ward.
“Safe travels, kero. Don’t come back until you’re ready.”
“We will,” Ochako promises, hugging her too.
They board the next train for Mie, finally dozing off on each-other’s shoulders as the first streaks of dawn peek through the carriage windows.
DAY – –
Ryuji-san was right all those weeks ago. Pa was going spare.
Her parents are overjoyed to see her and it fills Ochako like rocket-fuel. Deku hovers awkwardly in the background until she pulls him in for introductions. Pa is impressed by his firm handshake, and Ma promises to fatten him up after months of hospital food.
“You’ve stopped hiding your accent,” Deku observes in the back of Pa’s truck as he drives them to their building site. “It’s really cool.”
Ochako blushes like the schoolgirl he reminds her she still is. She catches Pa smirking in the rearview.
Onsite, Ochako finally sees a silver lining to all the War’s destruction; steady work for her family. The workers cheer and crowd her, but soon Pa sets them all to work.
Ryuji-san claps Deku on the back.
“Another fine addition to our Quirkless Brigade, eh?”
Deku looks dazed. Quirklessness has never been a good thing. Quirklessness has never meant belonging.
“...Brigade?”
Before the War, when she was still wrestling with whether she liked Deku and the consequences of that, Ochako used to worry that she wasn’t even attracted to him for him. It wasn’t Midoriya Izuku she was blushing over but Deku the Hero. The idea, the aspiration, not the person.
It took Deku running away for her to know without a doubt, no. For her to see that heroic ideal for the false idol it was.
After the war, in the back of her mind, Ochako wondered if, now she saw Izuku for who he was, her admiration might simmer down. Her feelings fade.
Watching him now, with everything stripped away– helping out where it’s safe, listening to the workmen’s stories and scribbling notes on construction like he would a Hero battle– Ochako sees…
Her best friend. Free from One For All’s shadow, Deku is himself. Humble and inquisitive and quick and kind.
He watches the workers erect walls and work heavy machinery, awed at what they accomplish together without Quirks.
(Ochako shows off her awakening too. The crowd oohs and aahs and she makes sure Deku gets his share of the credit.)
When it’s time for them to leave, Ryuji-san gifts Deku a workers’ jacket. It’s massively oversized and battered seven ways to hell. Deku wells up anyway.
“Hero merch got me through everything last time, too,” he whispers, tracing the URARAKA CONSTRUCTION logo with his fingers
“Three cheers for Deku, our Quirkless hero!” Ryuji calls. The workers holler.
Deku bawls all over his new jacket .
Her parents put Deku in the guest room and Ochako didn’t have the courage to stop them.
Now she’s lying in bed unable to sleep, surrounded by the relics of a childhood that seems as distant as the moon filtering light through her window.
Here’s the downside of Deku making himself essential to her.
This isn’t gonna fly. She jumps off her bed, scoops up her bedclothes, opens her door–
And comes nose to nose with Deku.
“Oh!”
She blinks. One of his arms is raised to knock. Under the other he holds his own bedclothes.
Ochako giggles and steps back.
“Am I comin’ out or are you comin’ in?”
“Oh. Oh, in, please!” he scrambles inside and she laughs again,
Between them they make a little nest on the floor, like kids would at sleepovers. Ochako never got the chance when she was younger, a mix of awkward bluntness and fear of judgment for her circumstances. She doesn’t suppose Deku got the chance either. They’ll make up for it together.
“Your Solar System,” Deku hums happily into the crook of her neck. Ochako looks up at the model she told him about months ago in the ward, still glowing faintly after all these years. It sways gently in the breeze.
“Mhm. I’s good ta be home.” She’ll have to get used to not hiding her accent around him, but Deku grins like they’re sharing something precious and private.
“You don’t want to leave.”
“Not yet. Not… fer a while, I think. D’ya wanna stay?”
Part of her had been afraid of his judgment too. Mie isn’t exactly impressive. But he gave her home the same open wonder he gives everything. And now he tilts his head up and kisses her, soft and languid. It’s a comfortable kind of kiss, one given with all the time in the world for more.
“They need Heroes here too,” he breathes against her lips. “Maybe more than in the cities with big Agencies. One of your workers told me about some robberies the other day. People stealing from the reconstruction effort.”
“...Can’t have tha’.”
“Not on Uravity’s watch.”
Ochako chokes up.
“Or Deku’s.”
She swoops in to steal another kiss before he can deny it. One day denial won’t be his first response, she promises herself. He relaxes into it, their mouths moving together, teeth grazing lip. They break apart, flushed.
“Thank you. For… everything.” He can’t really put it into words yet and neither can she. She just knows they’re not all the way out of the dark yet, and that once they do return to the real world they’ll need each-other more than ever.
But for now, cocooned in blankets and happiness and him, Ochako scoffs and settles down to sleep.
“Right back atcha, hero.”
He hums. When they drift off together, her sleep is dreamless.