Chapter Text
Ｍａｙ
"...𝚂𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚋𝚘𝚍𝚢 𝚑𝚎𝚕𝚙!!!"
"...𝚂𝚑𝚎'𝚜 𝙱𝚕𝚎𝚎𝚍𝚒𝚗𝚐!!!"
"...𝙷𝚎𝚢, 𝚠𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚞𝚙!!!!"
There's something strange about drowning in air. The voices around her existed in that underwater place where sound becomes texture instead of meaning. She'd heard people talk about near-death experiences before. The tunnel of light, the life flashing before your eyes.
No one ever mentioned how ordinary it feels. How quiet.
Her consciousness was doing that thing where it pulls back from the edges, the way your vision dims when you stand up too fast. Except this time, it wasn't coming back. She could feel something warm leaving her, flowing patiently like water finding its way downhill. A calm river that knew exactly where it was going, even if she didn't.
Funny how the body has its own logic. How it can let go so gently while the mind is still trying to make sense of what's happening. She'd always thought dying would be more dramatic, more like the movies. Instead, it felt like falling asleep in the middle of a conversation, the words getting softer and softer until they didn't matter anymore.
Even here, in this strange floating place between awake and not, her mind kept trying to piece things together. Like it couldn't quite accept that thinking might not matter anymore.
Wait. What happened again?
There had been a fight. There was always a fight, wasn't there? That much felt true. The rest came in fragments. Voices shouting over each other, the sound of things breaking that were never meant to break. Villains and heroes, all of them moving with that terrible certainty that comes with knowing exactly who the enemy is.
Everyone had somewhere to go.
Everyone except her, apparently.
Was there anyone out there who'd turn their back on the whole world just to catch you when you fell? Someone who wouldn't see you as just another casualty in someone else's war, but as the one person they couldn't let slip away? She'd watched heroes save cities, save thousands of people at once. But what about saving just one? What about deciding that one person's heartbeat was worth more than all the noise?
Stupid thought for a girl who might be dying.
"...𝙷𝚞𝚛𝚛𝚢 𝚞𝚙!"
"...𝚂𝚑𝚎'𝚜 𝚋𝚕𝚎𝚎𝚍𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚊 𝚕𝚘𝚝!"
Their voices were too loud, each word pounding against her skull and making her head throb. She just wanted them to shut up. At least let her feel peaceful before she faced down whatever might be waiting in the afterlife.
Then her thoughts died down, and the lights and noise began to fade away.
She'd never really thought about what happens after. Heaven, hell, nothing at all.
Did it matter? Maybe dying was just like finally getting to sleep after the longest day of your life.
Maybe that wouldn't be so bad.
The noise started to soften then, like someone was slowly turning down the volume on the world. The bright lights behind her eyelids dimmed to something gentler. Her thoughts, which had been racing and grasping just moments before, went still.
Finally. Silence.
Somewhere beside her, a machine counted her heartbeats. Indifferent. Precise.
......
Something was pulling her back, not gently. A hook behind her sternum, insistent, dragging her upward through layers of dark toward the noise, toward the light, whether she consented to it or not.
Was she... alive?
The voices started getting clearer. That beeping noise somewhere. Muffled voices murmuring around her, snatches of sentences she couldn't quite make out. Her senses were still fighting to wake up.
Then a voice cut through. "—her vitals are stable, but..."
Her eyes opened, and she tried to sit up—too fast. The room tilted, and her head exploded with pain. "Ow." She fell back against the pillow, breathing hard.
At first, she couldn't piece together why her head felt like someone was hitting it with a hammer. Then her fingers found bandages wrapped around her entire head.
Well, shit. She didn't think she'd made it.
She tried to think back, and slowly, her memories came back in pieces. She remembered the war—first week of May. The week everything went to hell. Fighting, her quirk burning through her faster than it ever had. Then that villain. The stadium. The ground shaking beneath her feet.
And then someone screaming her name.
~
“Oh good, you're actually awake.” Setsuna was leaning over her, arms crossed, eyebrow raised. Her mouth ran sarcastic while her eyes told a wholly different story. She looked exhausted. She looked relieved. “We were this close to just leaving you here.”
She looked around at all of them. Nobody was pretending to be fine. Kendo had dark circles under her eyes that hadn't been there before. The two of them had all clearly been through it, and somewhere in the middle of all that, they'd still shown up here.
Her voice sounded off, stripped down and uneven. “What happened?”
Kendo reached over and put a hand on her arm. She didn't rush to fill the silence, that much was unlike her. When she finally spoke, her voice was steady but soft. "We won." Her mouth pulled into a small, tired smile. "The war's over. It's been four days."
Four days.
She stared at Kendo. Then at Setsuna. Then back at Kendo, like maybe someone was going to laugh and say they were joking.
"Four days?"
Her voice came out faster than her brain caught up. Four days. She'd been asleep for four whole days and she didn't even know she was still alive, her entire consciousness was just blank, nothing in it at all.
"Four whole actual days?"
“You've been out since the middle of the war.” Kendo's hand squeezed her arm once, gently. “We were scared.”
She looked past them toward the window. The sky outside was dim—late afternoon, maybe evening. "What happened to the city? Is it... is everything okay?"
"They're fixing it," Kendo said, her voice quieter now. "It's going to take a while, but people are helping. The heroes who aren't hurt are working with construction crews and stuff. The doctor wants to talk to you in a bit."
She tried to process that. Fixing it. That was good, right? But her brain kept jumping to other things. All the faces from the battle. People she knew. People she didn't know. "What about everyone else? Are they all okay?"
Setsuna leaned forward. "Hey, slow down. Everyone's dealing with stuff, but they're okay. Most of our class is fine. The other class got hit pretty hard, but you know how they are. Some of them are still in the hospital, but they're going to be fine."
"She's right," Kendo said, using that voice she always used when she was trying to be responsible. "You don't need to think about everyone else right now. Just focus on getting better, okay?"
She didn't say anything. She just stared at the white blanket covering her legs. How could they tell her not to worry about everyone else? That was like telling her not to breathe.
The door opened without anyone knocking, and her mom came rushing in. Her purse was hanging off her shoulder like she'd been running, and when she saw her awake, her whole face crumpled. She looked like she was about to cry, or maybe she was already crying.
"Oh, my baby," she said, crossing the room in seconds, wrapping her arms around her so tight. "My little Moon, you're finally awake. I was so scared. We were all so scared."
She felt stiff for a second because she wasn't really used to hugs anymore, but then she just let herself melt into it. She patted her mom's back awkwardly. "Mom, I'm okay. I'm fine." But even as she said it, she was looking over her mom's shoulder toward the door, thinking about her siblings. "Are they okay? Did anything happen to them?"
Her mom pulled back and wiped her eyes. She was definitely crying now. "Oh honey, you know they don't let little kids visit in the hospital. Especially not right now with everything that's happened. They're staying with your aunt. They're completely safe." Her mom put her hands on her face. "I'm just so happy you're okay."
"But they're not hurt, right? Nothing happened to them?" She could hear herself asking the same question over and over, but she couldn't stop.
"They're perfectly fine," her mother said again, smiling, though it looked forced. Like she was trying really hard to look happy. "But you need to stop worrying about everyone else for five minutes and worry about yourself. That's what you need to do right now."
She looked down at her hands on the blanket. Her fingers looked pale and thin. She'd lost weight. When was the last time she'd eaten anything? She couldn't remember. But how was she supposed to stop worrying about everyone else? That was the only thing she knew how to do. Taking care of other people, making sure they were okay, putting them first. That was who she was.
"I don't know how to do that," she finally said, so quietly she wasn't sure anyone heard her. "I don't know how to not worry about everyone else."
Her mom's face softened, the way it used to when she was little and had nightmares. "Oh, sweetheart. That's exactly why you need to learn."
She nodded, because it was easier than explaining why she didn't want to talk about any of it. Her mom kept fussing with the blankets until her friends finally said goodbye, promising they'd come back soon.
And suddenly, that was the moment her thoughts and mind finally felt quiet.
She stared out the window and wondered what was going to happen now. To the hero stuff, to everything. Probably nothing good. But maybe that was just her being dramatic.
The doctor showed up later with his clipboard and tired face. Her mom stepped back, hands twisted together, while he rattled off medical terms she didn't really care about. Head trauma, blood loss, strain on her system. He asked the usual questions. Any dizziness? Headaches? Blurred vision?
She told him what he wanted to hear.
The window was more interesting anyway. She had always loved watching the sky, and she was happy she got to see it again. Even if she wouldn't say anything about it.
She spent the next few days looking at that same patch of sky. It never changed, which was somehow comforting. Three more days in this place. A week total since she'd woken up. Most of the bandages were gone now, just a small one on her temple. The doctor said she could go home.
Her mom was running late. Traffic or something. She was already dressed in the clean clothes from home, and sitting around waiting felt wrong. Other students were still here somewhere. Maybe she'd run into someone she knew.
She decided to walk around the hospital. The place felt calmer than it had in the past few days. It was so quiet she could almost hear the squeak of shoes on linoleum, the soft beeping of machines behind closed doors, people speaking in hushed voices.
She glanced around, reading the nameplates as she passed by. No one she recognized. But the next wing over seemed busier.
Her peace was suddenly ruined by a loud voice yelling in the distance.
"I don't care! You are not healed! Get your ass back in that bed, Katsuki!"
She started walking. The voice was coming from a hallway just ahead. Someone mumbled something back, too low to make out.
She took a few steps closer, and that's when she saw a boy walking with what looked like his parents.
Oh, she recognized this guy. Very, very much.
But instead of annoyance showing on her face, concern took over. Bandages were everywhere—his chest, his arm, half his face. Only one of his eyes was visible, and it was furious. Red and angry and completely ignoring the woman behind him who was probably his mom. Some older guy was holding an IV stand, following along.
She found herself walking down the same hallway. In the same direction, because that's where the hall led. She could've turned around or ducked into another corridor, but that would've looked weird. So she kept going.
When he looked up, their eyes met.
Her ears started ringing all of a sudden, her heartbeat stuttering in her chest, and yet he held her gaze. Was this just because a guy was staring at her? Was that it? Or was it the fact that this was the first time she'd seen him like this—beaten, bandaged, barely himself? Maybe it was the concern etched across her own face as she took him in.
It hit her a second too late that they'd been staring at each other. Whatever that was. Embarrassment flushed through her and she quickly looked away, eyes darting to anything but him.
The eye contact had lasted maybe six seconds. But to her? It felt like forever.
What the hell was happening?
Her heart was racing so fast it was stupid. For a split second, just one insane, completely out-of-nowhere moment, she actually thought: Katsuki Bakugo might actually be the kind of guy she'd want.