Chapter Text
“I think we should break up, Uraraka.” He was just standing there, looking at her. Even though he was only a few inches taller than her, it felt like he was looking down on her, like she was something he couldn’t help but pity.
“...What?” She asked with a tremor in her voice. No. No no no, not now. She had known it was coming somewhere in the back of her mind but this was too real.
She had told herself they could make it work anyway, that they could figure out a way to stay together. Surely he couldn’t like her less than him, of all people.
Izuku wasn’t even looking at her now. “I said, we should break up. I like you, Uraraka, but I don’t think I like you… like that. Not how you say you like me, at least.” He adjusted the strap of his backpack over his shoulder as he reached up with the other hand to run it nervously through his messy, green hair. “And there’s something else… Someone.”
Her throat was constricting and she had to force out the words now. “But… but how can you possibly… he’s terrorized you for years, Izuku! Just a few months ago you were talking about how he used to call you useless.” Izuku had the decency to try and look shocked at her knowing exactly who they both refused to name. Ochako folded her arms and hunched her shoulders in, trying to be as small as she felt just then. “He hates you, and even if he didn’t, you can’t just forgive him, after everything… Can you?”
“Ocha- Uraraka,” he almost pleaded, nearly slipping up and calling her by her first name like he had been doing for months. “It’s not that simple. We’ve known each other forever, and he never really meant it when he used to say those things.”
Used to. Could you really say ‘used to’ when Bakugou’d been saying even nastier things at least once a week for as long as Ochako had known him?
Izuku let out a long-suffering sigh, like he was burdened by how truly unreasonable Ochako was being. “Just– can’t you be happy I found someone for myself? Please?”
He finally looked at her, and it felt like the final shot in the volley of arrows piercing her heart. It wasn’t really all that surprising. No, it was honestly expected at that point. Ochako had noticed for months now that Izuku hadn’t been attracted to her… really at all. And she had been trying to dress up more, wearing tighter shirts and girlish skirts. She even bought some cheap makeup at the drugstore and watched videos online to learn how to use it to try and make up the difference. She just had to try harder. That was all it was, right?
But she’d never really tried to look cuter for any boys at school before, so maybe she just needed practice. She just needed to figure out what to fix, and if Izuku could just wait a moment, they could figure it out. She’d never had a boyfriend before, but once she figured out the trick, they’d be golden. They needed to figure it out, or Ochako didn’t know what she’d do with herself.
The truth was, Ochako’d never felt like this before. It wasn’t like how the movies or books described it, exactly. There were no butterflies or blushing or anything… more embarrassing. But there was something about the way Izuku talked. How he disassembled an idea to its most fundamental parts and analyzed and reworked it in order to bring it together into something even greater at the end. How he could give a dissertation on any number of things, but more so how he put his whole heart into what he loved.
She just wanted a piece of that love for herself. She wanted him to dissect her and pull at her fibers, untangle them and read her like a book and then tell her… whatever it was she was missing.
Was that too much to ask?
Tears burned in her eyes, not falling but making her blink as she cowered behind her bangs and quivered a little. “I just don’t understand! Please, I just want to– to understand…” Ochako hiccuped, trying to find the words to express all of that, how she just wanted a small piece, whatever she could get her hands on, and that would be enough, but came up blank.
Izu– no, Midoriya, just sighed. He’d usually be a stuttering mess in the face of this sort of conflict, but he’d tried to broach this conversation several times now, and each time Ochako found some way to dodge and weave around it. She’d forget her bag in the classroom or remember an errand her parents asked her to run, or she’d simply point in a direction, claiming to have seen something, and power walk away. By now, he was just frustrated and tired. It was written in the tense line of his shoulders and the crimp in his mouth.
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Uraraka. It’s not fair, to either of us, for me to pretend this works when it just doesn’t for me,” Midoriya says gently, at least having the empathy to see her hurt. “And honestly, I don’t get the impression it was working for you either. I know I like guys, obviously. It’s a wonder we didn’t figure it out sooner. I mean look at me! And I might like some girls in the future, but maybe… maybe you don’t…” his voice actually took on a nervous tone now, like he was prodding a sensitive landmine that might blow up in his face, but Ochako didn’t see what he could mean by that.
Her confusion must’ve been evident on her face, since he swallowed whatever he had been about to say and muttered something that might have been “nevermind.”
“Anyways, I guess… I’m sorry it took so long for me to figure myself out, and I hope in the future we can be friends again. I've always really valued our friendship, Uraraka, but I don’t think we’re good partners for each other.”
The conversation was very quickly coming to an abrupt end, and Ochako scrambled for whatever it was that had been stuck in her throat, whatever argument she had for him to stay (there had to be one). But after relentlessly scanning her mind, digging through their relationship since it had started six months ago for a particular way that they were good for each other. So good and perfectly matched that there wouldn’t possibly be anyone else for him. A reason he and Bakugou would end in disaster and he should just stay with her and they could find the love, force it if they had to if only he would give her a moment to think–
But she couldn’t. There was nothing. The spark, which was really just that everyone seemed to think they’d be so cute and wholesome together, two blushing, bumbling idiots, that it just made sense, wasn’t real. It wasn’t like the movies because it wasn’t a movie. It was just… a mistake. It was just Ochako making a fool of herself.
She didn’t have anything left to spare, and certainly not dignity.
The tears finally overflowed, and as she turned her face up to look at him, she was surprised to find he looked as if he hadn’t noticed her slowly eroding away, like it was strange she was crying after everything he’d said. “Okay, Midoriya. I’m sorry it took you so long, too. I’m sorry you couldn’t settle for less,” she hissed out, not out of malice, but for lack of air. “I hope you and him will be happy. I truly hope he has whatever it is that I can’t manage,” she sniffed, “whatever it is that I’m doing wrong. But you can’t ask me not to wish you would’ve stayed. So we could’ve been wrong together, at least.” Then, so low he may not have even been able to hear, “now it’s just me. Again.”
Her eyes had drifted to the floor, and when she looked up again, for the first time, Midoriya seemed regretful, but also like he may have understood something he hadn’t before, at least not fully. His hand started to reach for her, but her eyes had already shifted to the side where there was a small posse of other kids walking past, stopping conversation and their stroll to stare at them. Her eyes widened and the air was pushed from her lungs as she spun around and marched in the opposite direction.
As quickly and forcefully as she could, Ochako shut off all non-vital senses, refusing to hear Midoriya’s half-hearted attempts to call out and stop her, refusing to see if any more passersby witnessed her breaking, and just sticking to a direction until it all went away. She gripped the straps of her bag on her shoulders like they could tether her to reality, but still felt as if her heavy footsteps sent shocks of numbness that spread through her from her toes to her ears.
And that’s how she found herself crashing through a bathroom stall, letting her bag fall to the undoubtedly filthy floor that she couldn’t find the will to care about, and perching on the edge of the toilet seat, at least having the mind to minimize contact and barely balance on the lip.
Ochako didn’t know if more tears were streaking down her face, ruining her sloppily applied eyeliner and mascara, nor if she was sniffling quietly or sobbing hotly and loudly in the bathroom that felt both much too large for someone so small and also like it was closing in on her.
Hours could’ve passed, or minutes, but at some point she was shocked out of her sorry state by the drag of the door against the tiles. She quickly made an effort to swallow any noise that could give her away, cupping her hands over her face and shivering with the effort. Whoever had come in either didn’t notice or didn’t care, but she didn’t enter a stall. Ochako could see her back through the crack in between the stall door and wall, and she was simply staring into the mirror. After a moment, she appeared to lean over the sink, gripping the sides and leaning her weight into it like it was the only thing keeping her upright. Ochako heard a long, shaky inhale, but didn’t see anything to indicate the girl would be leaving anytime soon.
After a moment to collect herself, Ochako pulled her phone from her pocket and almost gasped when she saw the time. Half past three. An hour after school got out for the day and Midoriya had cornered her and thirty minutes until she had to be home with the groceries her mom had asked her to pick up from the corner store. She glanced up again at the girl, who continued to stand motionless, and, after weighing her options, she decided she couldn’t wait any longer.
Ochako rose quickly and pushed out of the stall with her bag, wanting to escape as quickly as possible and not risk the girl seeing her face. But just as she had almost escaped, the girl’s eyes had snapped up and locked onto hers in the mirror, and Ochako’s feet inexplicably refused to take another step.
The girl’s irises were a striking golden color, perfectly accenting her ashy blond hair. Ochako wondered if they were contacts for a moment before discarding the thought. They held too much of an inner luminescence to possibly be fake. But her eyes were also like slashes of pain carved under her eyebrows, wary and on the offensive all at once. They seemed to expect something of Ochako, something that was meant to hurt.
The rest of her face was partially shadowed by her loose hair, cleanly hanging just above her shoulders with straight bangs cut to eyebrow length. It was what Ochako would expect for city schoolgirls to wear for dress codes like she sometimes saw online. She wore no visible makeup, but there was something about her face that seemed ethereal to Ochako. Her wan complexion, without rosiness, and the shadows under her eyes only seemed to lend to that image, and Ochako couldn’t help but be captivated by her, hostility or no.
All the while, the girl’s eyes had been searching her, a confused crease forming between her brows and her shoulders tensing and untensing as she seemed to war with herself over what to do or think. She made no indication that she would do or say anything, or that she even knew how to, for a long, poignant moment.
And then it was over, as Ochako’s neurons began to fire again and she realized, to her own horror, two things. One, she had been staring intently into this girl’s face for far too long, and two, she no doubt looked a complete and utter wreck. That second thought, already ordinarily anxiety inducing, seemed amplified for the same reason she hadn’t been able to stop gazing intently at this girl’s features. Whatever that reason may have been.
Ochako’s lungs expanded rapidly as she heaved in a startled breath and promptly spun on her heel, very nearly scurrying out the door. When, after she had continued her retreat down the hall and the door slammed behind her, she let out an embarrassing squeak, she was glad no one witnessed. Making for her things in her cubby, she neglected to slip into her coat out of haste and immediately regretted it as the cold stung her blushing cheeks.
It took a moment, but that afternoon's events suddenly rushed back in the form of a distinct burning in her eyes and a shuttering breath. She stopped on the sidewalk and stared down at her feet. A crack in the pavement snaked by her left shoe, a tuft of brown grass peaked out, trampled down by rain, snow, boots, and the numbing dead of winter. The thought struck her that it must’ve been lonely. The cold leeched color from everything, but there was not another shred or scrap of dead brown along the concrete walkway to keep it company.
“God…” she breathed. The threatening sting of tears was gone, and she now just felt hollowed out. I’m pathetic. I really am just another overdramatic, sullen teenager, aren’t I?
She started walking again, taking care to step around the grass shoots, but slipped into a state of unseeing motion. Ochako arrived at the corner store, interpreted the scrawl of her mother’s grocery list sticky note from her pocket, and proceeded home without fanfare or further theatrics.
She didn’t mention the day’s events to anyone when she got home, but that’s because she had to retrieve her key from her pocket and let herself in after observing the lack of a car in the driveway. There was a kind of staleness in the air as she kicked dirt off her shoes in the entryway and slipped them off before putting away the groceries in the kitchen. The sun was already coming down, leaving shadows lurking in the dank corners of rooms in the house and the stark fluorescent lights to lay cold rays over everything within reach.
Ochako was used to this afternoon stillness that often permeated the air when her parents worked into the evening, but today it felt especially malignant. She still had to do homework and study and do her laundry, but it all seemed to fall away when faced with the depth of her aching.
She trudged to her room, neglecting to turn on the light, and fell without feeling onto her mattress. The rays of final sun peeked through the blinds. Dust motes dancing in the air stilled, and the molecules of the air froze, and the only living creature there was her, alone. And the Earth kept spinning.