Work Text:
Ochako rounded the corner of the crumbling building just in time to see a door burst off its hinges and clatter down to the floor of the alley. Deku stepped out after it. He'd been crying.
"Deku!" Ochako shouted, running up to him, "The structure's unstable! If you were stuck—"
Deku covered her mouth with his hand, just long enough to stop her from talking. He looked up at her, opened his mouth to tell her something—but he couldn't quite manage to voice the words.
Ochako grabbed his arm and pulled him back the way she'd come. She wasn't sure what kind of damage this area of the city had taken, but she wasn't sure that Deku hadn't destabilized something else by breaking the door. If the building was going to topple over, she'd rather that they didn't get sandwiched in this narrow alley when it happened.
"Don't go," Deku said, coming after her. There was something wrong with his voice.
"You have to tell me what happened," Ochako said, because Deku knew better than to smash through a building like this.
Deku coughed, and it turned into a gag. He stopped walking, stumbling to rest his hand against the wall.
"And I think you need to leave," Ochako said. Hopefully, this was something Deku had also realized.
Deku took in a breath in fits, like it was hard, and said, "Don't go inside."
Just then, something thumped—a swinging door, or a table in the wrong place, set to get walked into. There was something moving on the other side of the wall.
Ochako pulled Deku forward again, around the corner where she had come from. Now that she was looking at him closer, she wasn't sure that he'd been crying because he'd been upset. It seemed almost like he'd been struck all at once by a terrible cold, or a cloud of dust in the air. His nose was running, and he couldn't catch his breath.
"Kid!" a man shouted, and Ochako heard the step down out of the blasted door. "Get back here—I know you didn't get far!" Then he kept walking—the wrong direction down the alley. But it wouldn't be hard for him to turn around.
Before she had quite realized what she was doing, Ochako reached up and pulled Deku's scarf up over his head.
Deku blinked, long and heavy, like he'd realized what she was doing, like he couldn't keep his eyes open.
Pulling off her headgear, Ochako slipped the scarf around her own neck. Then she went for Deku's hood.
"Outside," Deku insisted, voice low.
That was when Ochako knew she was making the right decision. Because if Deku didn't have the energy to tell her not to do this, then there was no way he'd be able to help her, or even to make it back to the others on his own. And she wasn't sure she could fight and defend him all at once.
Ochako handed her headset to Deku, replaced it with his respirator and hood. Then she floated herself, tossed a hook from her wrist gear so it set against the corner of a high window.
She'd modeled them after blackwhip.
On top of the building, Ochacko ran across the roof, letting her feet fall as loudly as they liked. She'd be alright. Deku thought she'd be alright, as long as she kept the fight out in the open.
At the corner she stopped, crouched, pulled the hood over her face and looked down over the edge. There was a man there, wearing a white shirt and business slacks. He was staring up at her, grinning.
"Thought you could hide?" he shouted.
Ochako shot her hook behind her and pulled back through the air. With any luck he'd see the string and the flight, and not the color of her costume.
She was grinning too.