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The first time Ochako meets her soulmate, they're on opposite sides of a battle neither of them should've been in. She'll return to this moment a million times, agonizing over it, wondering if she had felt anything at all beneath the adrenaline and fear and anger. Anything to indicate their bond.
A protective band covers her wrist. Hiding your mark is common among heroes and hero students. Later, she'll realize it was the only reason her soulmate didn't spot her mark on Ochako immediately.
Later, she'll wonder if things could've gone differently if it had been seen on that first fateful encounter.
Blood like the the soulmark on her skin drips down her cheek. Bruises and dirt streak across the body of the girl who's supposed to be her other half. The pain was caused by each other, to each other, as they fought each other for their lives.
Maybe she should've known. Maybe the blood was a sign, but she was too busy fighting for her life and the lives of her friends to see it. And then, when it was all over and one of her classmates had been kidnapped inches from safety, she was too busy dealing with the aftermath and the rescue and moving into the dorms to think about the girl with the crazy laugh and fanged smile who talked about love while drawing her blood.
Ochako is born with a blood drop staining her right inner wrist. Her parents hem and haw over what it means for her soulmate, but they always tell Ochako that if this person is bonded to her they can't be that bad. She thinks that maybe they're a doctor, or a nurse. Someone who works with blood. That's what it has to be, right? Why else would it be blood?
Some of the other kids make fun of her for it, calling her soulmate all sorts of mean names. She stands up for someone else for the first time. She stops playing with them. She finds better friends.
Her soulmate is the most special person in the world to her. She hopes her mark makes them happy, the pink infinity sign on her left shoulder that symbolizes her. She hopes that they like pink, that they'll like her.
When she gets her Quirk and spends a week alternating between floating random objects (and herself) and vomiting as her body adjusts, she understands her own mark and turns to the stars with new eyes and wonders if her soulmate is looking up at them with the same amazement.
The stars are magical to her. Space becomes her newest interest. She designs her hero costume to be astronaut themed, freaks out when she meets Thirteen, and keeps up with all of JAXA's latest news.
When her score on the ball throw in her very first test at UA is an infinity sign, she smiles at the joke no one else is in on and looks forward to the day she can tell her soulmate about it.
School is amazing, but sometimes it can suck. All around her, her peers are finding their soulmates. And she's happy for her friends, she honestly is! She just… wishes that could be her, too.
Izuku, so shy and private about his mark that he'd never even let her see it, walks into class one day holding Todoroki's hand. With how emotionally charged their sports festival match was, she isn't shocked. She makes a fuss about congratulating them and bullying the story out of Izuku later, and that's that.
She catches Yaomomo eating lunch with Hatsume, looking dreamily at the other girl as she speed-talks about something. She steers clear of their table and makes a mental note to congratulate her friend later.
It's like moving into the dorms tipped over a series of dominoes, and one by one most of her classmates start finding their pairs (and sometimes triples). She's not the only one left who hasn't found their soulmate, but she's largely outnumbered. And she is really, genuinely happy for all of them! She wants them to be happy with each other! She just wishes she could be, too.
The blood drop on her wrist still brings her comfort, no matter how lonely she sometimes feels, watching the couples around her. She knows that'll be her one day. And that good things come to those who wait. She's just getting kind of tired of waiting.
She'd already subtly asked around about medical Quirks, students, anyone handling blood. There are very few of them in UA, and none of them have her mark. Her soulmate's not here. For all she knows, they could be on the other side of the planet right now.
She presses her fingers to the inside of her wrist, tracing the mark in practiced motions, and tries to stay positive.
Ochako's soulmark starts graying in the middle of class one day. She doesn't know what it is, at first, idly scratching the itch and paying attention to Aizawa-sensei's lecture.
But then the itch grows into a burn, and alarm bells start ringing in her head.
She takes a peek. Her heart stops. No.
The red is, ironically, bleeding out, like something is leeching the life out of it. Out of her soulmate. She thinks maybe she gasps. Her heart is pounding too loud for her to hear it. She can't tear her eyes away as the color bleeds in and out, like it's fighting back against whatever's trying to drain it. Like her soulmate's fighting back.
Please, please fight! Don't leave me before I've even found you!
She thinks there might've been a hand on her shoulder, voices around her. She's not too sure. The outside world is muffled, unimportant. The only thing that matters is the burning in her wrist and the back-and-forth of color. She squeezes her mark, ignoring the pain, hoping wildly that they might feel it, feel that she was pouring her everything into them, that it would be enough to help them hold on.
She knows they can't feel it. But her brain's not really working right now.
Someone physically pries her fingers from her wrist. She snaps her head up, her teeth bared in a snarl she wouldn't recognize on herself, but the fight immediately quells when she meets her sensei's steady gaze. They're out in the hallway, alone.
"You were cutting off your circulation." He explains, not letting go of his careful grip on her hand.
She bursts into tears and launches herself into his arms.
"My—My soulmate," she gasps out between sobs, clutching the back of his jumpsuit the way she couldn't with her mark, with her dying soulmate.
"I know." He says softly, pressing a hand to the back of her head and shoulders and just holds her. If she were more coherent, less panicked, she would've heard the thick pain in his voice, the heavy history behind his words.
Right now, she just cries in his arms as her soulbond burns and frays like a weak thread, as she nearly loses half of herself that she's never had the opportunity to know.
He holds her together until the burning fades and her mark stabilizes, a weak red that's the most beautiful thing she's ever seen.
They hear the news about the Deika City Massacre days later. She squeezes her mark, steadily getting back to a healthy red as her soulmate heals, and wonders.
The destruction is like nothing she's ever seen. Previous traumatic, life-threatening encounters give her the ability to keep functioning, to move, to save. Ochako is a Provisional Hero and these people are relying on her. She floats them in batches, sending them up for her classmates to pull along, pushing past her weight limit because the decay is getting closer and there are still so many left.
She vomits a few times. She keeps going.
She floats a bus full of people. It's not as bad as the plane, but on top of everything else it almost brings her to her knees. She slaps Tsu's tongue and herself and gets lifted just as the decay breaks apart the ground beneath her feet.
When she's taken some deep breaths and pushed through the nausea, she realizes Izuku and Bakugo are still gone and Shouto's gone with them. Her first instinct is to go and find her friends, but her place right now is here, helping with the evacuation and all the people depending on her Quirk. She has to trust them to keep each other alive.
She wishes she had their soulmarks in that moment, if only to make sure that they stay safe.
If the wave of decay was bad, the destruction left in the wake of the monster under the League's control is inconcievable. As some Pro Heroes falter in the face of such absolute devastation, Ochako and her classmates push through exhaustion and pain and save lives.
Her world quickly narrows down to a cycle of search, lift, rescue (or mark for retrieval, for when the body recovery teams arrive), bring to the emergency field station, rinse and repeat. She throws herself into it. If she allows herself to truly stop and comprehend the horror of the day, she'll freeze. And she cannot freeze. Not while there are still people to be saved.
She pairs up with Tsu. They keep each other going, steady and strong in the face of this tragedy.
She cherishes every smile, every sob of relief as families are reunited. She pushes aside every wail of despair and every refill of her body markers, each time she runs out. She's very, very good at ignoring emotions she can't deal with. She'll probably end up bawling on the floor of her shower later, but that's Future Ochako's problem.
An elderly lady appears, flagging her down for help with her sick husband. She assures Tsu she can handle this and follows her.
The old lady is Toga Himiko.
She disappears into a house. Ochako follows, guard up high, scanning her surroundings. She can't let the villain get away, not again.
Her voice echoes around as she declares that she wants to talk to her, to Izuku too. Ochako pushes it aside, but something about the words, the way she said them, stays with her. There was something about her voice that Ochako couldn't place.
"I want to be like you. So be honest, Ochako." The ceiling breaks open. She's pinned to the ground before she can react, her hand on Toga's wrist the only thing stopping her from being stabbed. "What do you wanna do to me?"
Ochako doesn't know how to respond. Her gaze is intense, eyes narrowed and sharp, no trace of the cheery, crazy girl from the training camp to be found. Ochako could deal with that; what freezes her is what else is there, naked and vulnerable and clear as day. Pain. There is deep, dark pain in her eyes.
"Do you wanna kill me, like Jin was killed? Will you murder me, too?" The anger in Toga's words isn't directed at her. But the hand holding the knife doesn't tremble the way her voice does.
Ochako still doesn't know how to respond. The girl above her is a villain, someone who's committed horrible crimes, who's actively threatening her life. But she also realizes for the first time that Toga is her age. She isn't the soulless monster haunting her nightmares. She's a person in pain. She's a teenager in pain.
What the hell are children doing on the front lines of this war?
"Start talking." She demands, pushing the knife down harder. Ochako shoves aside the part of her that instinctively wants to reach out and help someone hurting, just for the moment. She needs to survive if she's going to save anyone. "Exactly what are your intentions?"
"You pulled this whole stunt just to ask me that?" She asks, mind racing as she tries to fit the new pieces she's gained into the puzzle of Toga Himiko.
"Well, it's important." She says, sounding honestly confused.
Important? "You think so? Tell that to the old lady whose blood you took. You killed her to ask a stupid question?" She spat, rage flaring at the idea of one more body added to the count of the day, and for something as meaningless as a question—
"Did you say 'stupid'?" Toga recoils slightly, pain and anger painted across her features. "I didn't kill her. I just needed enough for a minute." She says quietly, looking genuinely hurt that Ochako had thought that of her.
"Oh." She shouldn't feel bad. "I assumed, because of the people you've hurt before—" She tries to explain, even though she isn't sure why she feels the need to explain the reason she'd thought a murderer had murdered someone.
"So that's it?! I've hurt people, so I'm just an irredeemable monster?!" Toga raises her voice, her expression deepening in its mix of hurt and anger. The knife starts to shake, and she's not sure whether it's in rage or sadness.
"What? No!" Ochako says, feeling like she's missing half of the conversation. "That is not what I said!"
She needs to get out of this position. Toga is becoming more unstable with every response. In a move that's partially Gunhead and partially Izuku, she throws Toga off of her and through the doorway into the next room. She scrambles to her feet. "You wanted to know what my intentions are?" She calls. "What I wanna do is save as many people as I possibly can! And if you're gonna get in my way, I'll have to stop you right now!" She declares, conviction pouring from her heart.
"Sorry," the voice that comes from the shadowed room is deeper, graver, "but I'm way stronger than I was last time. It won't be so easy." Ochako feels her heart sink. She'd been hoping Toga would hear the implied offer, that she would save the other girl too if she could.
If Toga let her.
I need to touch her without letting her steal my blood, she thinks, racing to come up with a plan. She just needs to touch her once.
Toga appears from the darkness, and Ochako freezes.
No. There's… no way. It can't be.
Her jacket is gone, and her school uniform underneath is torn in several places. Including her left shoulder, where a pink infinity sign peeks out.
"No way," she breathes, her eyes wide and jaw slack. Toga pauses, eyes narrowing suspiciously as she glances around. "What? Is this some kind of distraction tactic?"
The next words come out before she can stop them.
"You're my soulmate."
Toga's eyes widen. She grabs at her sleeve, tugs it to cover the mark. "No, you can't be my— You're lying! That's low, Ochako." She hisses, pulling out her knife.
"Wait! Look!" Ochako nearly rips off her wristguard, rolling up the sleeve of her costume underneath. The blood drop is stark against her skin.
Toga's jaw drops.
Her eyes fill with tears.
She lunges at Ochako with her knife.
"They were right!" She screams, as Ochako dives back to avoid being stabbed. "They were right!" She's nearly sobbing, her knife swinging around wildly, like she's not even aiming anymore.
"What are you doing?!" Ochako cries, grabbing the wrist with the knife and twisting it. Toga pulls another with her other hand and tackles her. "I'm going to be you, Ochako! I have to! You're my soulmate!" A manic grin spreads on her face through the tears as the knife swings down, narrowly missing her neck. Ochako uses her distress and flips their positions, pinning her to the ground. "Stop it! Toga!" She yells, trying to break through to the other girl.
She's fully sobbing now, loose hair sticking to her cheeks and golden eyes rimmed with red. "I've loved you this whole time, but now you're my soulmate! I have to become you, because they were right!" Ochako is lost and confused and feeling completely blindsided. The crying villain beneath her is her soulmate, the person she's been waiting fifteen years to meet, who apparently already loves her. This is supposed to be the happiest moment of her life, except for maybe her future wedding.
It's definitely not supposed to be this.
"Who was right?" She asks desperately, wanting to understand, wanting to help.
"My parents!" She half-wails half-screams, her voice raw and shredded, anger flaring in her expression. "They told me even my soulmate would think I'm a monster, and they were right!"
Ochako's heart breaks a little.
She has no idea what to say. She can't fix the sobbing, angry mess beneath her. She can't help Toga at the cost of her own life.
But she can reach her hand out and try.
Toga's sobbing cuts off as she hiccups in surprise. Ochako squeezes gently, tightening the hug she's pulled her soulmate into. "They were wrong." She says, voice serious as a promise. "I don't think you're a monster, Toga Himiko." Toga stops breathing beneath her arms. Ochako waits for the knife in her back, for the moment she'll be forced to let go and fight her soulmate again. She'll do it. She won't let Toga keep hurting people. Ochako will stop her if she has to, even if her heart twists at the thought of putting her soulmate behind bars.
Toga makes her choice.
Arms wrap around Ochako. Softly, hesitantly, like they're not sure they'll be welcomed. Ochako rests her chin on Toga's shoulder. The hugs firms into something solid, something real.
It's not the end. There are still atonements for the harm she's caused innocent people, consequences for her actions. There's still the League and the devastation she helped facilitate. There's still the blood on her hands.
There's also the harm that was done to her first. The trauma, the emotional damage, the abuse and neglect. The psychological scars and biological urges informing her every decision, every swing of her knife. They don't excuse it. They don't make it okay. But they make it different than simple evil, and that makes all the difference.
It's not the end. Ochako knows as well as the mark on her wrist, that as the fragile bond solidifies between them, it's only the beginning.