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Ochako Uraraka awoke suddenly, clutching at a sharp pain in her chest. Gasping heavily, she threw her blankets off of herself and stumbled out of bed.
Her breathing was ragged, and tears still clung to her eyes, each liquid pearl a reminder of the dream that was already fast fleeing from her memory.
The girl’s chest heaved with raspy breaths as she stood, clutching her bedframe and staring into the mirror across her room.
She couldn’t remember The Girl’s face some days.
She didn’t need to.
Gaunt eyes and two space buns stared back at her each time she sought her own reflection.
Uraraka cursed and dragged her eyes away from the mirror.
“It’s been months…” She murmured to herself, furious that she couldn’t forget, and that she could forget, all at the same time.
It shouldn’t hurt so much, the death of a villain who had killed so many people…
“Aw, Ochako-chan, you don’t really believe I’m a villain, do you?”
Ochako refused to look back at the mirror, to see the face she knew would be staring back at her, the face that would be pouting, tiny sharpened teeth peeking out from behind her lips.
“You’re dead, you have been for months.” Ochako whispered, still shaking from her nightmare dream. “Just leave me alone.”
Only silence greeted the girl. After a moment, she looked back towards the sheet of glass, but in the darkness she could only see her own face.
Ochako Uraraka felt alone.
* * *
“Morning, sleepyhead!” Mina Ashido grinned, poking the center of Uraraka’s forehead in a way that cleared away the fragments of snowflakes and feathers still lingering in the girl’s head.
“Hey Mina…” Uraraka started, yawning as she did. “You sleep well?”
The pink girl’s eyes lit up, sparkling with joy over the question. “Funny you should ask! I had the most crazy dream last night—You know those tiny little waffle makers—"
Uraraka smiled softly, following her friend through the halls of UA’s dorms. She was glad Mina hadn’t asked her how she had slept.
She didn’t want to lie to her friend, and telling the truth was out of the question. She had to grow up and learn to deal with her problems on her own, like a real hero. Dragging everyone else down with her nightmares would just waste their time.
“—Oh yeah, and during this one part of the dream, Elvis showed up! You know, that funky little guy who lived hundreds of years ago? Isn’t that crazy?!”
“Wild.” Uraraka murmured, a little too deadpan. But once she noticed the pursed lips on Mina’s face, she quickly corrected. “I-I mean yeah, that’s a crazy dream Mina! W-what happened next?”
Mina squinted at Uraraka’s face for a moment longer, before shrugging it off and continuing. “Well, he was actually at my grandma’s house with me, because apparently, he was dating her! It was so crazy because, like, they’re both robbing the cradle in a way, y’know?”
Uraraka laughed, wiping a bead of sweat off her forehead. Mina didn’t suspect anything.
“Are you really so afraid of letting them see what you’re feeling?” A familiar saccharine-sweet voice whispered in Uraraka’s head.
‘Shut up.’ She thought back, as if swatting at a mosquito lodged in her brain.
“We really are just alike, except your disguises aren’t visible like mine are.”
“I said SHUT UP!” Uraraka screamed back, the tears beading up in her eyes clouding for too long the fact that she was thinking aloud.
By the time she realized her thoughts had left her lips, it was too late.
“I—wait, Mina, that wasn’t…”
“Ochako, are you okay?” Mina asked, placing a gentle, but shaky hand on her friend’s shoulder. “If I’m being too much, just tell me—”
Uraraka’s mind searched for an out desperately, eventually landing on: “Class! We’re almost late for homeroom, I’ve gotta run!”
And with that, she dashed away, leaving a metaphorical cloud of dust, and one very concerned friend, behind.
* * *
‘I’m so stupid…’ Uraraka cursed herself, head resting on her desk, hands covering her face in shame.
Honestly, the girl would prefer if Mina were angry, or upset at her outburst.
Anger would be easier to fix than pity, than Mina deciding to try and fix things like always, getting into Uraraka’s head when even she didn’t see—didn’t want to see—what was going on in there.
“Hey, you okay Ochako?”
A gentle hand rested on Uraraka’s arm, and she didn’t even need to look up to see who it was.
She could feel the valleys crisscrossing his palm, scars burned deep into his skin, reminders of battles which were far greater than any Uraraka could imagine.
Wiping her eyes to ensure no leftover tears could betray her façade, Uraraka sat up and smiled at Midoriya.
“Good morning Izuku, I’m fine, just sleepy.” She laughed to punctuate her sentence, a sound that washed away the worry etched onto the green-haired boy’s face.
Just one look at Midoriya, and his deep scars, wounds so extensive that even Japan’s best medical quirks couldn’t rebuild his body completely, and the girl knew it wouldn’t be right to vocalize her troubles to him.
After all, if he could keep smiling after everything he’d been through –After watching his best friend die, and feeling his body collapse under the weight of the world he carried on his shoulders, after giving everything he had left to give until he was left without a quirk, even without his dreams of becoming a hero…
“I’m doing great, no need to worry!” Uraraka shot the boy a wide grin and two thumbs-up, which seemed to assuage his worry.
“Alright then! …Say, Shouto, Iida and I were planning on meeting up and working out together after school, would you like to join?”
‘A workout would be nice, nothing like feeling some muscle burn to keep your mind distracted.’ Uraraka mused, eventually smiling at her friend and agreeing wholeheartedly.
As a plus, Mina wouldn’t be there, which meant if Uraraka could just manage to avoid speaking to her throughout their classes, she would be home free, and maybe this morning’s awkward outburst would just… blow over.
* * *
“Ochako Uravity Uraraka, have you been avoiding me?!”
Mina slammed her lunch tray down on the floor, sitting beside Uraraka on the school’s roof, apparently having tracked the girl down specifically for this confrontation.
Cornered, Uraraka stammered out a reply. “N-no! I mean, I just felt embarrassed is all –but it’s nothing, really!”
“What, you mean you yelling “Shut up” at my face this morning, then leaving without an explanation?”
Uraraka nodded frantically, and Mina stared solemnly into her friend’s eyes.
There wasn’t a hint of anger, only a deep mire of pity. Exactly the opposite of what Uraraka wanted.
“Y’know, I can tell you’ve been feeling down today—we all can. After all, it’s six months ago today that—”
Uraraka stood up suddenly, sending the lunch tray in her lap clattering to the ground. “I’m feeling like a breath of fresh air. See you later.”
And before Mina could protest, the brunette had disappeared once again, the access door to the roof slamming shut with a clang that seemed to echo in Mina’s very soul.
* * *
Uraraka pushed the training gym door open with a weary sigh. Finally, after a long and overwhelming day, she would be able to get her mind off of her problems with some nice exercise.
It wasn’t like she was upset with Mina, but the girl could just be… too much sometimes. Too pushy, up-in-your-face, and altogether too loud.
It wasn’t like those were bad things on their own, after all that’s just what made Mina… well, Mina.
But on days like these, when everything was already feeling like too much, and all Uraraka wanted to do was climb into her bed and hide under her covers, drowning herself in darkness until a dreamless sleep might overtake her?
...
The door swung open, greeting Uraraka with a sudden, uninvited barrage of sound, as she suddenly heard the voices of far more people than the four boys she had expected to greet her.
“Uraraka, what’s up!” Denki Kaminari chirped, jogging over to greet the girl.
“Uhh, what’s going on?” She responded, looking around the gym and seeing her entire class, plus half of Class 1-B. “Is Mina up to this? I thought Izuku reserved this room for some strength training?”
Shouto drifted over to the doorway and spoke. “Actually, this is my doing. I only intended to invite Yaoyorozu along, but Jirou overheard, who invited Hagakure, and things spiraled from there.”
If there was anything that could make Uraraka feel better about this situation, it was that Shouto seemed genuinely remorseful about this fact, the resident ice prince of class 1-A understanding full well the shock of having a private event turned into a full-on party.
Uraraka began to turn on her heel to leave. “Ah, well I just remembered something I have to—”
She was too late.
“Ochako! Hey!”
The girl turned to see a floating glove, waving frantically through the air, calling Uraraka further into the gym.
Gritting her teeth and plastering a forced smile to her lips, she walked forward to greet the invisible girl the glove was attached to.
“Hey Hagakure, nice… party you’ve got going on.”
Hagakure turned her head around wildly, an action made visible only by the clips in her hair. Seemingly for the first time, the invisible girl noticed that nobody seemed to be working out, instead they stood in small groups chatting, some sipping on the juice boxes provided by Sato.
Only Midoriya and Bakugo were locked into their training, side by side on treadmills which had been cranked up to maximum speed, while Bakugo made occasional jeers like “Feeling tired yet, Deku?!” and Midoriya would respond with something like: “Never!”
Hagakure rubbed her hands through her hair bashfully. “Hehe, yeah, things kinda got out of hand, huh? Oopsie!”
Uraraka sighed. “It’s no big deal, I’ll just train in another room—”
“No way!” Hagakure grabbed her friend’s arm and dragged her to the center of the room, in which a circle was forming. (Not including the still sprinting green and orange duo, of course.) “Today’s the anniversary of our big battle, we should all get the chance to hang out today, and talk!”
Before Uraraka could protest, Yaoyorozu called for the group’s attention by tapping on a wineglass with a tiny silver spoon. While they were likely created using the girl’s quirk, Uraraka knew that if anyone would be carrying around those items ‘just in case’, it would be Momo Yaoyorozu.
“If I could have everyone’s attention, please?” Yaoyorozu asked, setting down her spoon in her bag, a detail which only served to confirm Uraraka’s theory. “Six months ago today, we fought together against an army of villains.”
The mood in the room immediately sobered.
“We all fought hard, and we lost people that we cared about…” Yaoyorozu continued, staring off into the distance, remembering the teachers, friends, heroes, that had been lost that day.
“Without you all, I couldn’t have kept going. So, thank you all for being my friends!”
The girl bowed deeply, long hair streaming over her face as she did so. When she rose, tears glistened in her eyes.
“Plus Ultra!” She raised her glass in the air, followed shortly by the other members of class raising juice boxes and water bottles, each shouting “Plus Ultra!”
Kaminari’s juice box slipped out of his hand in the moment, and spilled out across the floor. As the teens stopped to stare at the box, watching the boy’s expression, painted white from the horror of losing his juice, the tension in the room seemed to crumble.
Sero began to cackle, along with Jirou, while Kaminari tried desperately to scoop the cranberry juice back into the straw, a task both Sisyphean and unsanitary.
While the clusters of hero students broke up into their groups again, Uraraka couldn’t help but stare at the juice staining the floor with a haunted expression.
The trails left by Kaminari’s fingers in the puddle reminded her of those her own hands had left in the damp soil that day, as her shock-ridden brain had tried to force Toga’s blood back into her veins, only succeeding in infecting her wounds.
Those clumps of dark earth coated the girl’s pale skin until you could almost believe she was uninjured, merely sleeping—A façade broken by the ever-trailing streams of blood coating her mouth, her arms, trails of blood that seemed to lead into Uraraka’s own veins, the offending droplets of crimson ichor betraying the fact that if it weren’t for her, Toga would be alive.
She felt an odd kinship with Kaminari in that moment.
Grief makes people do strange things.
“Let’s go outside.” The soft voice of Todoroki spoke, standing to Uraraka’s left. “It’s loud in here, and you look overwhelmed.”
Uraraka took one last look towards the group, and made a split-second of eye contact with Mina.
She didn’t want to confront this feeling of guilt, to make this moment of class unity and remembering fallen heroes all about her.
It wouldn’t be fair.
So, she walked.
* * *
The duo strode quietly across the school grounds, feet meeting manicured lawn as each merely enjoyed the other’s presence, expecting nothing from the other but the comfort of silence.
In the distance, the children saw cherry blossoms, which began to turn Uraraka’s stomach.
She knew those trees.
Despite the dread building inside of her, those trees, and the small, fenced-in area they surrounded, drew the pair in with a magnetic force, almost like a whirlpool drawing her ever nearer to the despair she knew she would find there.
It didn’t take long for details to show themselves, for the stones behind that fence to become visible, the weeds inside growing noticeably longer than the lawn outside.
Graveyards are hard to miss.
As Uraraka passed through the gate, following the lead of Todoroki, it took every last gram of her willpower not to allow her eyes to drift to the spot she knew all-too well.
One simple gravestone, stating nothing but two dates, the latter just seventeen short years after the former, on the far-left side, two spaces from the front row.
Instead, she followed Todoroki to where he kneeled, a gravestone much the same as all the others.
“Hey, Touya…” Todoroki whispered, voice cracking noticeably. He reached his hand into his pocket and withdrew a small, foil-wrapped package of soba noodles. He lay the offering down on the ground beside the stone and bowed his head, whispering a quiet prayer for his brother.
A crow flew down from overhead, landing on the fence but not daring to come inside.
Even the animals around here knew the truth, that villains were buried here, in this tiny plot of land, fenced in and surrounded by bright pink trees which seemed to stand guard, hiding UA’s deepest, darkest secret.
Uraraka knew why this was the case, of course. How grave sites for villains tend to be vandalized, stones crumbled and offerings crushed underfoot.
Nedzu had created this garden to defend those villains, killed just half a year ago, as a symbol that UA would be dedicated to protecting all.
It was a pretty gesture and all, but the students and staff avoided it, feeling the place was cursed.
‘Look at me, Ochako-chan.’ A voice whispered from behind Uraraka.
She didn’t look, knowing what she would see already.
A body covered in blood-soaked soil.
Skin too pale, even for the fairest of vampires.
Blue lips whispering ‘Thank you for everything…’
A normal girl, with the cutest smile in the world, defiled by the undeniable touch of death.
Uraraka couldn’t bear to look. It was like this every time she tried to visit the grave.
“Let’s go.” Uraraka whispered to Todoroki, gently grabbing the hem of his sleeve.
The boy looked up from his prayer and nodded quietly. The words exchanged by the pair didn’t need to be audible to be understood.
After all, if anyone in the world could understand how she was feeling, it would be Todoroki. She may not have been present at the time, but she’d heard stories about what happened in Kamino, about Dabi’s final battle.
That entire city block had been closed off to the public. Even half a year later, passersby claimed they could smell burning flesh.
* * *
Falling apart doesn’t always happen all at once, sometimes it’s a cascade of small moments.
A nightmare stealing a restful night that was desperately needed.
Spending a day without lunch.
Visiting the grave of a lover lost to time.
No, falling apart doesn’t happen all at once, but some moments begin the cascade more than others.
“Ochako… we’re all here for you, you can talk to us.” Mina greeted Uraraka in the hallway, just moments before the girl could reach her dorm room and let sleep overtake her. Behind Mina were the other girls in Class 1-A, each with a concerned expression on their face.
Uraraka crumbled.
Large tears plummeted to the ground, soaking into the carpet of the hallway as though the ceiling had sprung a leak. She tried desperately to wipe at her watering eyes, but only succeeded in rubbing her face, smearing the tears and puffing her eyes.
She tried to mumble apologies, to claim she was okay, but her hiccupping, shaking picture she painted didn’t allow for any words to be formed.
The girls clustered around Uraraka, practically drowning her with their hugs and comforting words, not a single one of which Uraraka understood in the state she was in.
The following moments were like a blur, as the girl was swamped by affection, lacking the wherewithal to either deny or accept their comfort.
It was a sweet gesture from Mina, Uraraka truly did appreciate how much she cared, but she also knew that a group hug wasn’t what she needed to find the closure she so desperately sought.
There was only one person left to confront now.
* * *
Uraraka stood, facing her reflection with an unwavering determination in her gaze.
Only the glow of the full moon was left to illuminate the glass surface, as late as it was into the night.
Uraraka had needed to wait until all her friends had fallen asleep to sneak away from their impromptu sleepover in the common room, after all.
The girl drifted a finger ever closer to the mirror, marveling at how alive the hand that reached back to her seemed to be, a contrast from the dead eyes of the corpse that watched her, Uraraka dared not breathe, lest she confirm that her reflection was as hollow as it seemed to be.
The reflection’s hair was brown, a tone which seemed wrong on her scalp, as though her follicles were begging to be dyed a specific shade of box blonde.
Those canines, ever peeking through from behind her lips, were sharp—but not enough.
Uraraka traced her hand along the jaw, cheeks, and eyes. Each ridge and valley of the surface feeling wrong on her skin, practically begging to be ripped off and replaced with something else, something that felt less foreign, a face of someone that deserved the life she lived more than herself.
“I’m here…” Uraraka whispered, voice croaking, saturated with the pain that consumed her entire being.
The reflection smiled.
Uraraka didn’t.
“I’m ready to talk.”