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It’s chaotic in the hospital. Fuyumi wouldn’t expect otherwise, and is sure that many, many hospitals – makeshift or otherwise – all over Japan are much the same. Heroes are in abundance, both among those getting treated and among those healing. She hears the smattering of so many languages and sees so many unfamiliar faces, as it seems like every person who could be spared with a healing quirk is here along with the best-of-the-best doctors.
Such a thing should be reassuring. It’s… not.
Fuyumi ended up being the least injured out of everyone in her family. She doesn’t know if it was her quirk, or simply the spot she was at, or even if her cowardice at being one of the last to get involved caused this. Mom is fine. Burnt, but fine. She, Fuyumi, and Natsu are all in one room (along with many other people) and that leaves it easy to check in on them. Natsu’s also fine, though his hair being shaved down to almost nothing makes them all laugh. Cry, too, but laugh.
Father is… probably never going to be a hero again, if he ever wakes up. Fuyumi doesn’t know how she feels about that. She never really knows how she feels about anything related to Father – especially now. Especially after… everything.
Shouto is over with his friends, with the other UA students, and that’s who Fuyumi is in search of right now. It’s good that he’s comfortable with them, that he has friends that support him and that he wants to be with – she doesn’t want to interfere, just wants to check on him.
(She doesn’t know how Touya is doing. If he even lives. If he could even live, like that. His heart was still beating when they took him away.)
Room nine, room nine… Fuyumi pushes open the door, glancing around for her brother. All heroes, of course, she’s in the right section. Her eyes glance to the left, searching for a familiar figure, when a voice from her right catches her offguard. “Hey. Todoroki. Who’re you looking for? The kid’s not here.”
She turns, and it’s Mirko. How could she not recognize the Number Five Hero? She looks… well. Like she’s probably going to add another prosthetic to her set, and quite frankly Fuyumi is astonished she’s awake and talking. Mirko looks tired, tucked into bed even as she sits up, squinting slightly at Fuyumi and frowning… but not at all diminished. It looks like she could leap from her bed in an instant if a villain showed up – and honestly, maybe she would.
“O-Oh, he isn’t?” Fuyumi asks, reaching up to tug on her hair and then when her fingers fall short because her hair is shorter now, she ends up awkwardly rubbing the back of her neck instead. “Sorry, I thought he was in room nine…”
Mirko shrugs. “This is room six.” Fuyumi checks, glancing at the door, and oops – is she more tired than she thought? She’s about to apologize when, “You. Did Endeavor train you at all?”
Fuyumi blinks, wondering if she misheard that. “Excuse me?”
The hero grins, bright and fierce. “You Todorokis all rushed into battle, even if you aren’t heroes. I saw the footage. Did he train you at all?”
“Oh. No, not really.” She had some basic quirk training as a child, but Father hadn’t been interested in her, so that was the extent. But Father will no longer be a hero, and Shouto will continue. She had seen the world seemingly fall to pieces, a quirk free-for-all, and…
Fuyumi’s been talking to some of the other patients in the hospital, the non-heroes who ended up here for one reason or another. “I can’t wait for things to go back to normal,” is a common refrain, and Fuyumi… doesn’t know how to deal with that.
That being the normal is why things ended up this way, she wants to tell them. That being our normal is why Touya and all the others happened. If Touya lives… she wants to learn about all of them. Every single one of them, whether they lived or died, all of his companions and allies and everything she’s missed out on over the years. She should ask Shouto if any of them lived, if they would be willing to speak to her.
Once, she would have been afraid. But now she can’t help but look at every villain locked away and think, This is someone else’s Touya.
Mirko’s smile hasn’t dimmed at all, even at Fuyumi’s denial. “Damn, so you raced in there without anything? Good for you!”
She feels awkward. “I just… wanted to save my family,” she says. Is that selfish of her? Fuyumi doesn’t know if she would have run in if it were someone else. Probably not. There’s a reason she’s not a hero. “But…” She hasn’t voiced this to anyone else yet. Maybe a stranger is better. “I think I want to learn how to fight. Even if just a little. I didn’t like feeling so… helpless.”
The world fell apart and she could do nothing. She’ll never be a hero, but…
Mirko laughs brightly, loud and shocking in the hospital room. “That’s great fire! I’d love to spar with you!” Her grin is bloodthirsty, and Fuyumi’s heart skips a beat.
“With me? But I… I don’t really know anything. I was going to sign up for a class or something.” Whenever the world is a little more, well, put together.
“A class? No way!” Mirko looks excited, though, and moves as if she’s going to touch Fuyumi, body shifting instinctively in her direction before straightening back up, because she doesn’t exactly have hands at the moment. “I’ll have to rebalance with my new prosthetics, and it’ll be fun! No classes running for awhile anyways!”
Fuyumi eyes her skeptically. “...Are you just asking me because I’m not a hero and won’t like, be able to report you for acting outside of medical guidelines?” Mirko looks caught. Fuyumi can’t help a giggle, shaking her head. “I think I’ll pass.”
Mirko grumbles a little but accepts it. “Fine, fine, but if you have time later… I’m here. Incredibly bored. And here.”
Now that she really thinks about it, Mirko… does not at all seem like a hero who likes any sort of sitting down time. Any sort of deskwork. She lost her limbs before and was out in the field in what seemed like a crazy quick amount of time, and while she clearly longs to do the same here there’s not the same sense of urgency coming from everyone else. Fuyumi sympathizes. She’s very low on the list to be informed about things, especially since Father is still unconscious, and it grates at her.
So she gives Mirko a smile. “I’ll come back later,” she promises. “After I find Shouto.”
Shouto is fortunately doing as well as, well, he can. It doesn’t seem like he’ll have any real permanent injuries that will stop or hinder his hero career – maybe some burn scars, but honestly all of the Todorokis will likely walk out of here with those – and all of 1-A will survive. He’s relieved that all of them are well, and promises to visit them later, when he’s healed up a bit more, since he’s still not in great shape.
He hugs her before she leaves, and Fuyumi tries not to think about the fact that she can count every single hug she’s had with him on her fingers.
In that way… Mirko is a relief. An escape.
Touya and Father do not hang over their conversations in the same way that they do over Fuyumi’s with her family. Natsuo burns with anger so fiercely that Fuyumi worries for him, but the anger is tempered by Father’s continued slumber. Mother… is equally better than she has been in a long time, but also emptier. She smiles more, but also looks at nothing just as much. Fuyumi doesn’t ask her what she sees.
Father sleeps, and Fuyumi watches him do so and feels just as empty as Mother does when she looks at him. She doesn’t want him dead, doesn’t want that loss, but she doesn’t love him, either.
Mirko is a joy.
“-and when I told her I was single, she turned to the assistant teacher and said, ‘I don’t understand why Todoroki-sensei isn’t married. She has such big boobs!” Fuyumi shares, and Mirko laughs so hard she cries.
“Holy shit,” she wheezes, leaning over and using Fuyumi’s shoulder as bodily support. “You really got to have a thick skin to be a teacher, huh?”
Fuyumi mock grimaces. “You don’t even know the half of it.”
“Gimme more,” says Mirko, eyes bright.
“Only if you give me a hero story,” says Fuyumi, but she obligingly shares.
They come from completely different worlds, in a way. Fuyumi has stories of her children being silly. Ridiculous incidents that have happened. The occasional funny story of Natsuo – she doesn’t have any for Shouto, which pains her, and Touya is too tender to touch. Mirko has tales of being busted at an underground fighting ring before she became a hero. Of battles that sound like they could be something off of a movie screen (but Fuyumi has lived them, now, and she doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to look at an action movie the same way again).
It’s a relief.
She’s surprised, then, when she goes to visit her one day and a hero she doesn’t know is blocking the door. “Sorry,” he says. “But there’s work being done inside. You can’t enter.”
Fuyumi furrows her brow uncertainly. “Like… the doctors? Is it on Mirko?” How worried should she be?”
“IS THAT TODOROKI?” Mirko yells immediately from inside. “I’M ALMOST DONE!”
The hero looks exasperated. “No, she’s not.”
“FUCK YOU, I HEARD THAT, I AM!”
Fuyumi can’t help her laughter. “She’s getting her prosthetics? I’ll come back later,” she promises. “I’ll come back later, Mirko!”
“YOU BETTER!”
She does, of course. Fuyumi keeps her promises. Mirko is stretching when Fuyumi enters the room, testing out each new limb, and grins at her when she enters. “I was just thinking I had to chase after you, now that I can.”
Fuyumi shakes her head with a grin. “Please don’t do that. Are you released from the hospital now?”
Mirko laughs and claps her on the shoulder. She moves with ease, as if she’d been using them her whole life – to be fair, just one arm is new, and Fuyumi can’t remember if it was this one or not. “They want me to stick around a little longer, but if the doctors wanted that, shouldn’t have given me a leg to race out of here!” She bounces a little, pleased. “So yeah, I was just waiting for you. Gimme your number.”
Okay, that’s a surprise. “Excuse me?”
“I couldn’t use a phone before, so didn’t matter. Gimme your number, so we can talk later. You can let me know when you’re outta here. I’d like to take you on a date. Your big boobs entranced me.”
Fuyumi snort-laughs, shocked by the boldness but also relishing in it as she claps a hand over her mouth. “You…! Mirko, I cannot-”
“Rumi,” she says. “Call me Rumi.”
“...You’re so…” Fuyumi shakes her head again slowly, in disbelief. “Alright, Rumi.” Her face pinks. “I… I’d like a date, then. Once things have calmed down a bit.” She has too much to think about. Too much to contend with. But…
Rumi is a joy.
They swap numbers, Fuyumi adding a rabbit emoji next to Rumi’s name, and when Rumi sees that, she adds a snowflake next to hers. “Fuyumi,” Rumi says, trying it out, and Fuyumi’s cheeks are hot.
Rumi laughs a little. “Cute,” she says, and then she bumps shoulders with Fuyumi. “I need to burn off the past however many weeks right now. Call me later!” And with a wink, she’s bolting out the door.
Fuyumi watches her go, blinking in surprise. She looks down at her phone, at the new contact, and she smiles a little. Maybe she doesn’t know what’s next, but… whatever happens, Fuyumi will do her best with it.
Yeah. It… it will be okay.