Chapter Text
Heavy grey clouds promised rain overhead as Ochako stood silently over the equally grey headstone in front of her.
The plants around the grave had started growing onto the stone, lining the edges of it with small vines and leaves. It'd been a product of neglect, but it looked serene to the brown-haired girl.
She smiled. Maybe that's my own optimism talking she thought to herself, chuckling slightly as she wiped tears from her eyes.
Crouching, Ochako moved her gaze back to the headstone, her eyes grazing the text embedded into it.
Himiko Toga
20XX to 20XX
A beloved friend, with the cutest smile in the whole world.
Ochako had asked for the inscription herself since it seemed the other girl's parents weren't planning on putting anything, which Ochako thought was a disservice to Himiko.
The two girls hadn't really known each other for long.
A chance meeting at a playground as children led to them attending the same middle school, but now, Himiko was gone.
Ochako's smile faltered. We were supposed to go to UA together...we were supposed to be heroes.
Lost in her thoughts, she hadn't noticed the family approach a grave a few feet away. She also hadn't noticed that when the adults left, the young boy that was with them stayed behind, crouched in front of the grave similarly to Ochako.
His sniffling finally pulled her out of her head, and she glanced over at him.
He was young, about her age from the looks of it. The boy had blonde hair, red eyes that were even redder from crying, a black middle-schooled uniform, and a greyish-yellow scarf.
Ochako blinked at him, though he was too focused on the tombstone in front of him to notice her. He was mumbling something to it, but she couldn't catch what.
When he moved his head slightly to the side, he caught sight of Ochako, who nervously averted her gaze.
"You got a staring problem or something?" he said, the annoyance in his tone slightly washed by his voice reflecting the fact he'd just been crying.
Ochako turned back to him, shifting her position to be sitting on her knees. "Sorry, I didn't mean to stare I just..." her voice trailed off as she looked at the headstone the boy was sitting in front of.
"Someone important..?" she wearily asked.
The blonde boy scowled at her for a moment, but when he looked forward at the stone his gaze softened, and he nodded lightly.
"You..?" he asked, the earlier irritation almost completely gone.
Ochako nodded. "My best friend..." she mumbled.
"...Mine too," the boy eventually said after a few minutes of silence.
The two sat in silence for a while, before Ochako slowly got to her feet and walked over to the boy. She read the grave in front of him,
Izuku Midoriya
20XX to 20XX
A dearly loved son, friend, future hero.
"Midoriya..?" she read quietly.
"Yeah...I used to call him Deku, it was a way I'd make fun of him..." the blonde smiled lightly at the thought, a smile that quickly faded. He turned his head to the grave Ochako had been sitting at. "How about them? Who were they?"
Ochako smiled. "Himiko Toga..." she sat down next to the boy with a light sigh. "She had the cutest smile...But people were scared of her. Said she had a 'villain's quirk'," she scowled at the air in front of her.
The boy glared too. "Fuck people like that. Genuinely," he stated bluntly.
His certainty surprised Ochako, but she nodded. "Seriously..."
After another moment of silence, Ochako looked at Midoriya's grave again. "What type of quirk did he have?"
"...None," the blonde mumbled.
Ochako's eyes widened. She'd never met a quirkless person before, but she always wondered what life might've been for people like that. She couldn't imagine living without her quirk, but assumed people born without one were used to it.
"He was bullied, a lot..." the boy hesitantly continued. "I...participated," he admitted.
The brown-haired girl stared at him. He turned his head towards her, a sad smile on his face.
"Yeah, I know. Real heroic..." he sighed. "When we were kids, we said we'd be heroes together, but over time...I pushed him away," he sounded defeated, and almost seemed like he wondered why he was even telling her all this.
"Himiko and I were gonna be heroes together too, we were planning on going to UA together..." Ochako fidgeted with her hands. "I don't know if I'm still going to apply..."
"Why not?" The boy asked. When she didn't have an answer, he continued. "I'm still going. For his sake. Maybe you could do the same for Himiko," there was a slight gentleness in his voice that Ochako almost thought didn't fit his overall demeanor.
But he wasn't wrong.
Ochako smiled, determined. "Yeah...you're right."
She looked up from the dirt she'd been staring at, turning to the blonde boy.
"Ochako Uraraka," she said, offering her hand.
The boy's red eyes widened slightly. He hesitated for a moment, before rolling his eyes with a small smile and taking her hand. "Katsuki Bakugo."
The two shook hands, officially introduced.
--
Rain had started to sprinkle down as the two left the cemetery, sharing stories of Izuku and Himiko, laughing with sad tears in their eyes.
When the rain started, Bakugo pulled an umbrella from his pocket, and it seemed the two already had already formed an inside joke.
"Katsuki!" a blonde woman called from the inside of a car, sticking her head out of the window. "Come on, the rain's supposed to get a lot worse!"
The two new friends hurried over to the car.
"Oh? Who's this?" the blonde woman asked.
"Ochako Uraraka, ma'am," she politely introduced herself.
Bakugo shook his umbrella near the ground, halfway in the car. As he sat down, he paused. "Did you...walk here?"
Ochako's brown eyes widened, and she sheepishly nodded, now holding her arms over her head in place of the umbrella.
Another woman in the car, this one with green hair, leaned towards Bakugo's window. "Do you need a ride, dear?"
"...If there's room," Ochako nervously said, and Bakugo quickly scooted over into the middle seat.
As Ochako got seated, Bakugo pulled a towel out from under his seat and handed it to her. She stared at it for a moment.
"Do you pull this stuff out of your inventory or something? Where'd this come from?" she said, trying desperately not to laugh.
The blonde-haired boy smacked her with the towel. "It was under the seat, stupid!" He said with a glare, though a smile threatened his lips.
A slight laugh came from the blonde woman in the front, who Ochako assumed was Bakugo's mother. "Katsuki hates the rain, so we usually keep a towel in the car to dry off just in case," she explained.
"Mom! Seriously!?" Bakugo snapped at her.
"Not in the car you two," a brunette man, Bakugo's father assumedly, sighed as he pulled out of the parking lot.
The drive was lively, jokes being thrown back and forth, laughs and smiles all around, a welcome contrast to the gloom of the graveyard from earlier.
Bakugo's mother even joked how odd it was for Katsuki to find a friend there.
"I swear, this boy is popular everywhere," she said with a shake of her head.
"Seriously," Katsuki agreed, annoyed. "But that just means there's no doubt I'll be number one!"
"You're aiming for the number one hero?" Ochako asked, her round eyes wide.
Katsuki nodded confidently. "Hell yeah, I am! And I'll be the best there ever was too, better than All Might himself!"
"Hm, maybe I can bring up the rear as number 2," Ochako joked. "Make those two proud, y'know?"
The blonde boy's eyes widened slightly, but he nodded again. "Fuck yeah."
"Those two?" the green-haired woman, who had introduced herself as Inko Midoriya, the mother of Katsuki's friend, asked curiously.
Ochako nodded. "Himiko and Izuku. We'll be the best, for them!"
"For them!" Katsuki repeated, a determined smile on both of their faces.
At the front of the car, Mitsuki smiled. It seemed like Katsuki would be alright without Izuku after all.
--
"You get 'em yet?" Ochako asked into her phone, nervously pacing her room.
"No, but quit worrying! It's making me worry!" Katsuki complained, his voice playing from the speaker.
After the ride home from the cemetery, Ochako and Katsuki exchanged numbers, and so did their parents.
Currently, the two were on a facetime call waiting for the results from the UA entrance exam to arrive.
"Oh please, I'm sure mister future number one passed with flying colors," The brown-haired girl teased, still pacing. "I'm pretty sure if I hadn't managed to make that zero-pointer fly like that I would've bombed it..."
"Nah, you've probably got this in the bag. How was the drawback when you did that?" Katsuki asked. It sounded like he was fiddling with something, but it was off-camera and Ochako couldn't see it.
"Horrible. I had to use so much of my quirk already, and then making that thing float was abysmal...Even if I set it down when I got unstuck, I still-" She quickly covered her mouth as if she were to vomit again, the memory of it making her nauseous.
"So glad my quirk doesn't have a shitty drawback like that. Sure, I get burns and shit, but it's better than vomiting," the blonde boy shuddered on the other side of the phone.
Ochako nodded in agreement. "Yep, your quirk's just sooooo perfect! A perfect quirk for a perfect boy!" she joked, purposefully making her tone extra sweet.
"Shut up!" Katsuki spat, and the two quickly devolved into a laughing fit.
A knock sounded on the front door of Ochako's apartment, quickly followed by her mother calling for her.
"I think that's it!" She practically squealed.
Katsuki was hurriedly getting up from his bed where he had been laying, excitement gleaming in his eyes. "I think mine just got here too."
"My mom wanted to watch it with me, so I'll call you after?" Ochako asked into the phone as she made her way to where her mother was standing, nervously holding an envelope.
"Yeah, got it," Katsuki quickly said.
The two said a brief goodbye and then hung up. Ochako tucked her phone into her pocket as her mother handed her the envelope, a red seal with the letters 'UA' holding it closed.
--
"SHUT UP!!" Mitsuki called from the kitchen, annoyed at the sheer volume of noise Katsuki and Ochako were making on the phone.
"WHATEVER HAG!" He yelled back, and when he turned back to his phone he saw Ochako's shoulders shaking as she held in a laugh. "What the hell's so funny?"
"Sorry, I just can't get over you and your mom shouting back and forth like that," she said, recovering from the threat of her laughing fit.
"She's acting like we can't be excited we both got into the hero school," Katsuki said with a roll of his eyes.
Ochako was nodding on the other end of the phone, her brown hair bouncing lightly. "We should celebrate, right?"
Katsuki nodded as well. "Trip to the cemetery?" he suggested in a much calmer tone than before.
"I was thinking the same thing. Share the victory, y'know?" Ochako said with a thoughtful smile.
The two were in agreement, so they hung up once more and quickly got ready.
"You sure you don't need a ride?" Mitsuki asked with a raised eyebrow as Katsuki put his shoes on at the door.
"Yes," he said, exasperated. "I gotta go, see ya later hag."
His mom rolled his eyes. "You too brat."
By the time Katsuki arrived at the gated entrance to the cemetery, Ochako was already there waiting for him.
The two greeted each other and headed into the yard, walking slowly through the rows upon rows of headstones until they found the two they were there for, and sat at them respectively.
"God damn it..." Ochako muttered, a hard glare on her face as she stared down at Himiko's grave.
"What's up?" Katsuki called, walking over from where he was at Izuku's. When he saw the issue, he frowned as well.
Across the front of Himiko's grave in large black paint was the word 'monster'.
"Fucking assholes," Katsuki muttered. He pulled out a pack of disinfectant wipes from his pocket and handed them to Ochako.
She blinked at them but took them gratefully. "Another thing you pulled from hammerspace?" she joked as she took out a wipe and started rubbing away the paint.
Katsuki shrugged. "Sometimes people do similar shit to Izuku's grave, so I started bringing these with me. It's super annoying," he groaned.
"Can't even let them rest properly," Ochako disdainfully mumbled. "Oh yeah," she started, sounding less annoyed. "Why do you seem to always have random shit on you? If someone asks for a pen you suddenly have one, if it's raining you happen to have an umbrella in your pocket somehow."
The blonde boy stared ahead of him in thought for a moment. Why do I do that..?
He glanced over at Izuku's grave, and suddenly, it clicked.
'I have one!'
'Here Kacchan!'
'You can use mine, it's no big deal...'
'I've got it, Kacchan!'
"Oh, shit," he breathed out as Izuku's voice echoed in his head.
Ochako hummed in confusion.
Katsuki sighed, a smile playing on his face. "It's his fault," he muttered, pointing at the headstone a few feet away.
He ran a hand through his spiky blonde hair. "I didn't even fuckin' realize..."
"Huh?" Ochako questioned.
"Izuku was always a people-pleaser, he'd somehow almost always have what someone needed, even in middle school," Katsuki explained. "Though depending on who it was he'd magically not have a pencil they could borrow. He was a little shit like that sometimes."
Katsuki looked back at Ochako, who had a smile plastered on her face. "What?"
"Nothing, just this look in your eyes that you get when talking about him," she explained.
"You do the same shit when talking about Himiko," He teased, lightly smacking the back of her head.
The two of them laughed for a moment.
"Man, look at us. Soon-to-be heroes in training, in love with the dead," Ochako joked, and the two of them laughed some more.
Finally, three wipes in, Ochako had gotten all the paint off of Himiko's grave. The stone shined a little from the cleaning.
Katsuki headed back to Izuku's grave, sharing the news of him getting into UA while Ochako did the same with Himiko.
They were arguably a strange sight, sitting in front of the graves of the ones they loved, sharing jokes and stories while laughing and smiling. A strange sight, but maybe they were just a strange pair.
Perhaps they were just...weird.