MHA + pickme part two

The common room had gone very still.

It was the kind of still that happened when twenty people all made the same decision at the same time without speaking. The kind that had weight to it.

Hana's hand was still raised.

She hadn't meant for it to land that hard. Or maybe she had. That was the thing about Hana — even she wasn't always sure where the performance ended.

{{User}} hadn't moved. There was a red mark blooming high on her cheek.

Katsuki was the first one on his feet, chair scraping back so hard it hit the wall behind him. He didn't say anything yet. He didn't need to. His eyes had gone flat in a way that was somehow worse than if they'd been burning.

"Get out."

Eijiro was standing too, and that was the thing that made the air change — because Eijiro's face, always so open, always so ready to find the good, had closed. Completely. The look he was giving Hana was not anger. It was something quieter and heavier and final.

"You need to leave this room," he said. "Right now."

Hana's hand came down slowly. She arranged her expression into something wounded, something wide-eyed and beginning to tremble, because that was the move, that was always the move —

"Don't." Tsuyu didn't raise her voice. She almost never did. She was sitting very straight, her large eyes fixed on Hana with a steadiness that pinned her in place. "Don't do the face. Kero."

Momo had already crossed the room to {{User}}'s side, one hand coming up to hover near her cheek, careful and assessing, saying her name quietly.

Mina wasn't quiet.

"Are you INSANE?" The words came out sharp enough to cut. Mina, who laughed at everything, who kept her edges sheathed in brightness, was not laughing. "You put your hands on her. You actually — in front of all of us —"

"I didn't mean —" Hana started.

"We know you meant it." Kyoka hadn't moved from her spot on the couch. She was staring at the wall. Her voice was flat and tired in the way that meant she was angrier than she was showing. "That's the whole thing. We always know."

Hanta was standing in the doorway, arms crossed, and his expression was the most unsettling of all because Hanta was never this quiet.

Shoto was watching Hana from across the room with that blank, patient attention of his. He had not moved. He didn't need to.

"You should go upstairs," he said. "Collect your things."

Hana looked around the room. She did this sometimes when the performance wasn't landing — a quick inventory, searching for the soft point, the person who hadn't made up their mind yet.

There wasn't one.

Toru was invisible, but the chill coming from her corner of the room was a temperature all its own. Mezo had placed himself between Hana and {{User}} without any drama or announcement, just a shift of weight, a wall made of quiet intention. Koji was looking at her the way his animals looked at her, which was with a very simple and uncomplicated distrust. Fumikage had not looked up from the floor but Dark Shadow had pressed itself close to {{User}}'s shoulder, curled there like a second shadow.

Yuga, of all people, was the one who spoke next.

"Your sparkle," he said, with an odd and genuine gravity, "was never real. I always knew." He turned away from her, which was somehow more devastating than anything else he could have done.

Denki had his hands in his hair. "I can't — I defended you, like, twice —"

"Once," Hanta said.

"Once feels like a lot right now."

Hana took a breath. Reset. Tried again.

"I just — I've been under so much pressure and I reacted badly, I'm so sorry, I didn't —"

"Hana."

Izuku's voice was soft. It was always soft. He was standing near the window, hands at his sides, and he looked — not angry, exactly. Sad in a way that didn't leave room for the usual flustered uncertainty she'd always been able to use. He'd been watching her for a long time. He'd been writing things down in that notebook of his.

"You should go," he said. "Please."

The please was the worst part.

She left.

Aizawa was waiting in the hallway.

She didn't know how long he'd been there. Long enough. His arms were folded, his eyes half-lidded in that permanent exhaustion of his, his sleeping bag nowhere in sight which somehow made him look more official.

He said nothing for a long moment.

"You'll be moved to the business course," he said finally. "Effective Monday. I've already spoken with Nezu."

Hana opened her mouth.

"Don't." He wasn't angry either. That was the pattern tonight — nobody screaming, nobody theatrical. Just a series of doors closing, one after another, very quietly. "I've had a behavioral file on you since the third week of term. Tonight wasn't a surprise. It was a conclusion."

He looked at her for exactly one more second.

"Go to your room."

He turned and walked back toward the common room door. Paused with his hand on it.

"She didn't deserve any of it," he said, without turning around. "Not one thing you did. Not from the beginning."

He went back inside.

The door clicked shut behind him with a sound that was barely anything at all.

It might as well have been a vault.

The news traveled the way news always traveled between 1-A and 1-B — through Kirishima and Tetsutetsu, which meant it traveled loudly.

Tetsutetsu had been in the middle of a set of weighted pull-ups when his phone buzzed. He read the message. He dropped from the bar. He read it again.

Then he walked directly to Kendo's room and knocked three times with the side of his fist.

Kendo had the door open before the third knock finished.

She read his face first — Tetsutetsu was not a complicated person to read, his expressions ran large and honest and right now his expression was somewhere between outraged and genuinely hurt on someone else's behalf, which narrowed the possibilities considerably.

"What happened."

He held out his phone.

She read the message. Then she read it again, more slowly, the way she read things when she wanted to be certain she had understood correctly before she decided how to respond.

She handed the phone back.

"Is she okay."

"Kirishima says she's okay. Says she's — " Tetsutetsu stopped. Tried again. "He says she held it together. In front of everyone." Something moved through his expression that wasn't quite anger and wasn't quite something else. "That makes it worse somehow."

"Yes," Kendo said simply. "It does."

Word moved through 1-B the way it always did when Tetsutetsu knew something — imperfectly contained and at significant volume.

Shishida heard it from Tsuburaba in the corridor and went very still in the particular way that large people go still when they are restraining a strong reaction. He said nothing for a long moment. Then he said: "She struck her."

"Yeah."

Another silence.

"In front of the class."

"In front of everyone, Kirishima said."

Shishida nodded once, slowly, the way you nod when you are processing something you had not predicted and are filing it correctly. He did not say anything else. He didn't need to.

Setsuna found out through Shihai who had been in the shadow of the 1-A common room corridor and had heard more than he was strictly going to disclose to anyone, which still turned out to be enough.

"She actually —" Setsuna started.

"Yes."

"In front of —"

"All of them."

Setsuna was quiet for exactly two seconds which was the longest Setsuna had ever been quiet in Shihai's recent memory.

Then: "I have been saying this for months. I have been saying this for months and everyone kept telling me to be nice —"

"No one told you to be nice."

"Kendo told me to be nice."

"Kendo told you to be less loud about it."

"That's the same thing." Setsuna's pieces had started floating apart slightly the way they did when she was agitated, drifting at the edges like punctuation. "Is she okay? Actually okay, not 1-A polite-face okay?"

Shihai considered this. "Kirishima said she held it together."

Setsuna's expression did something complicated. "Yeah," she said, quieter. "That tracks." She pulled herself back together piece by piece. "I want to say something to Hana."

"Kendo."

"I know, I know —" She was already pulling out her phone. "I'm just going to text her. {{User}}. Not Hana. To tell her she has 1-B. Does she know she has 1-B?"

"She should know she has 1-B."

"I'm telling her anyway."

Monoma heard it from Kendo directly, which was how Kendo handled things she knew would otherwise reach him sideways and become something theatrical. She sat across from him in the common room and told him plainly and watched his face.

He didn't perform anything. That was how she knew it had landed.

He was quiet for a moment that was genuinely quiet, not the charged quiet he deployed for effect, just — still.

"She's transferring," Kendo said. "Business course. It's already done."

Monoma looked at the table. "Good."

Kendo waited.

"I'm not going to do a thing," he said, before she asked, which meant he had already considered doing a thing and was reporting back on his own decision. "I'm not going to say anything to anyone in 1-A about it and I'm not going to find Hana and I'm not going to make it into something." He paused. "I just want it noted that I never liked her."

"It's noted."

"I said so. Several times."

"You did."

"To you specifically."

"Neito."

"I'm just saying I called it."

"You called it," Kendo confirmed, with the patience of someone who understood that this was what he needed to say right now and it was not the worst thing he could be saying. "Are you actually okay?"

He looked up at her. The performance was entirely absent from his face.

"She's my rival's friend," he said. Not an answer and also completely an answer. "She should —" He stopped. Tried again. "She deserves better than that. People who are actually genuine deserve better than that. It makes me —" He stopped again.

"I know," Kendo said.

He nodded. Looked back at the table. "Is she actually okay."

"Kirishima thinks so."

"Kirishima is optimistic by nature."

"Yes," Kendo said. "He is." She let that sit for a second. "I think she's okay. I think she has a lot of people around her."

Monoma absorbed this. "Good," he said again, and this time it came from somewhere completely different than the first time.

Ibara heard it in the quiet way that Ibara heard most things — it came to her through Pony, who had gotten a voice message from someone in 1-A, who had been crying a little while she recorded it, and Pony had played it for Ibara with her hands pressed together and her expression troubled.

When it finished Ibara sat with it for a moment.

"She is surrounded by people who care for her," Ibara said. It was not a question. She was reminding herself and Pony simultaneously.

"Kirishima said the whole class —" Pony started.

"Good." Ibara closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them they were clear and decided. "I will pray for her tonight." A pause. "I will also pray for Hana Mizuki, though I confess that prayer requires more effort to mean sincerely."

Pony stared at her. "You're going to pray for Hana?"

"I pray for everyone." Ibara folded her hands. "It does not mean I have excused what she did. It means I have more faith in what becomes of people than I sometimes have evidence for." She was quiet for a moment. "It is harder to mean with some people than others. That is the practice."

Pony thought about this for a second.

"I'm just going to send {{User}} a voice message," she said.

"That is also good," Ibara agreed.

Kendo sent the text herself, in the end.

She sat on her bed with her phone, typed it three times, deleted it twice, and sent the third version which was the shortest:

1-B knows. We're all here. You don't have to do anything with that, just wanted you to have it.

She put her phone down.

Picked it up when it buzzed thirty seconds later.

The reply was two words and a punctuation mark.

Thank you.

Kendo looked at it for a moment.

Then she put her phone down, lay back on her bed, stared at the ceiling, and let herself be quietly furious about it for exactly as long as she needed to be.

Fatgum found out first.

He found out because Kirishima called him, which was the right call — Kirishima had good instincts about who needed to know things and in what order — and because Kirishima's voice on the phone was doing the thing where it was steady on the surface with something working hard underneath it.

Fatgum listened without interrupting. That was unusual for him. Kirishima noticed.

When Kirishima finished there was a silence on the line that had weight to it.

"She okay?" Fatgum asked. His voice was the careful version, the one he used when he was making sure not to put pressure on the shape of a situation before he understood it fully.

"She held it together," Kirishima said. "In front of everyone. She just — stood there and held it together."

Another silence.

"Yeah," Fatgum said, very quietly. "That sounds like her."

He stayed on with Kirishima for another ten minutes talking about nothing in particular, which was the right thing to do, and when he hung up he sat in his agency chair for a long moment with his hands on his knees and looked at the wall.

Then he picked up his phone again.

He called Tamaki first.

Tamaki was in the middle of eating — he had to be, it was evening and he was always eating in the evenings because the work studies demanded it — and Fatgum could hear him set something down on the other end of the line before he answered.

Fatgum told him plainly. No softening, no buildup, just the shape of it, because Tamaki did better with the shape of things delivered directly than with the experience of watching someone try to cushion it and not knowing what was coming.

The silence on Tamaki's end was the particular kind that meant he had gone very still.

"Is she —"

"She's okay. Kirishima called me. The whole class — everyone was there, Tamaki. She wasn't alone for a second of it."

A breath. Slow. Tamaki processing.

"Hana," he said. Not a question. Just confirming the architecture of what had happened, placing it correctly.

"Yeah."

"I should —" He stopped. Started again. "I want to —" Another stop. Fatgum waited him out with the easy patience he always extended Tamaki, not filling the space, just holding it open. "I want her to know I know. Is that — can I —"

"Yeah," Fatgum said. "I think that'd mean something to her, actually."

The call ended and Tamaki sat on the edge of his bed for a moment.

He picked up his phone. Put it down. Picked it up again.

He typed for four minutes. Deleted it. Typed for two minutes. Deleted most of that.

Sent six words.

I know. I'm here. That's all.

He put the phone face-down on the bed and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes and sat with it, the way Tamaki sat with things, quietly and completely and without anywhere to put it except inside himself where everything already lived too close to the surface.

His phone buzzed.

He turned it over.

A single word back.

Okay.

He breathed out slowly.

That was enough. That was exactly enough.

Mirio found out from Tamaki, which meant he found out in three words and a period — something happened, call — and he was calling before he'd finished reading it.

Tamaki told him.

Mirio listened with the full-body attentiveness he brought to things that mattered, the kind that was so complete it had a texture to it even over the phone.

When Tamaki finished, Mirio was quiet for exactly one beat.

"She's okay," he said. It was not a question. It was Mirio deciding the shape of things, the way he always did, not from denial but from the deep and considered belief that the people he cared about were going to be okay because they were the kind of people who became okay. "She's okay and she has her whole class and she has us and she is going to be completely fine and I'm going to —"

"Mirio."

"I'm going to be so loud about how great she is the next time I see her," Mirio finished, with a conviction that was almost aggressive in its warmth. "Loudest I've ever been. I'm going to show up at a training session and just — announce it. To everyone present."

Tamaki made a sound that was halfway to something.

"You're going to make her embarrassed," Tamaki said.

"She's going to love it," Mirio said. "I know her. She's going to pretend to be embarrassed and she is going to love every second of it."

A pause.

"Mirio."

"Yeah."

"I'm — I'm glad she has people." Tamaki's voice had gone quieter, the way it did when he was saying something he meant at a depth he didn't usually let show. "She treated me like a person before I — before it felt easy. I don't forget things like that."

Mirio's voice, when it came back, was softer than the Mirio he showed the world.

"I know," he said. "Me neither."

Nejire found out forty minutes later because nobody had thought to call her and she found out from a second year in passing who mentioned it without realizing she didn't know yet.

She stood in the corridor for approximately four seconds.

Then she was moving.

Mirio got a message that was mostly punctuation and one incomplete sentence. Tamaki got a voice note that was forty-five seconds of Nejire inhaling sharply and then talking very fast and then a door opening which meant she was already in motion while recording.

She knocked on {{User}}'s door seven times quickly.

When it opened she had approximately forty questions ready and she deployed the first one immediately:

"Are you actually okay or are you doing the thing where you say you're okay because it's easier than explaining —"

And then she stopped, because she had looked at {{User}}'s face properly, and Nejire, for all her noise and motion, was genuinely perceptive in a way people who talked as much as she did rarely were.

She stopped asking questions.

She came in and sat down and stayed.

That was the whole thing. She just stayed. Close enough that {{User}} could feel the warmth of someone genuinely and completely present, not performing comfort, not filling the silence with the right words, just — there.

After a while she asked one question.

"Can I stay for a bit?"

She already knew the answer. She was asking because it was {{User}}'s to give.

Present Mic found out from Aizawa, which was how he found out most things that happened in the school after hours — Aizawa called him, flat-voiced and efficient, relayed the facts in the order they happened, and then was quiet in the way that meant he was waiting for Mic to process.

"She slapped her," Mic said.

"Yes."

"In the common room."

"In front of the class."

Mic was quiet for a moment, which was its own kind of statement.

"How is she," he said. Not the radio voice. Not the Present Mic voice. Just Hizashi, talking to his oldest friend.

"Handled it well," Aizawa said. "Better than most adults would have."

"She would." Mic's voice had something in it. "She always — yeah. She would." He exhaled. "The transfer's done?"

"Filed it before the hour was out."

"Good." A pause. "Shota."

"Hm."

"You going to check on her tomorrow."

A beat.

"I check on all my students."

"That's not what I asked."

A longer beat.

"Yes," Aizawa said.

Mic nodded to himself in his empty apartment. "Good," he said again. "That's good." He paused. "She's one of ours, you know. Like — actually one of ours."

"I know," Aizawa said.

"Okay." Mic leaned back. "Okay. You good?"

"I filed paperwork for two hours."

"That's not what I asked either."

The longest beat yet.

"I'm fine," Aizawa said, which in Aizawa language meant something had gotten to him and he was not going to discuss it and Mic should not push but should absolutely know.

"Okay," Mic said, for the third time, gentle about it. "Okay. I'll see you tomorrow."

All Might found out in the morning.

Aizawa told him in the staff room before first period, standing, in the spare efficient way Aizawa delivered information he considered necessary. All Might listened with his hands folded and his expression doing the thing it did when something grieved him quietly — not dramatic, not performed, just a settling, a weight arriving and being accepted.

When Aizawa finished he was quiet for a moment.

"She wasn't hurt," Aizawa said. "Not seriously."

"No," All Might said. "I know. That's not —" He stopped. In his current form, gaunt and careful, the emotions moved closer to the surface than they ever had in his hero years. He had not always decided that was a bad thing. "She's alright."

"Yes."

"And she knows —" He paused again. "She knows the staff are aware. That it was seen."

"She knows."

All Might nodded slowly. He looked at the window for a moment. Outside the campus was filling up with the ordinary noise of morning.

"I would like to speak with her today," he said. "If that's appropriate."

"It's appropriate," Aizawa said.

All Might nodded again. He was quiet for another moment, and then:

"She reminds me sometimes," he said, not quite to Aizawa, not quite to anyone. "Of what it looked like when someone was going to be something real." He said it with the simplicity of a man who had known a great many people and meant exactly what he said. "I don't say that lightly."

Aizawa looked at him.

"I know you don't," he said.

The bell rang.

They both moved toward the door.

Aizawa paused with his hand on the frame.

"She's going to be fine," he said, and it came out less like a reassurance and more like a statement of fact, the way Aizawa said things he had already decided were true.

All Might looked at him.

For a moment, despite everything, despite the gaunt frame and the careful breathing and the weight of all that had been lost at Kamino Ward — he smiled. Not the Symbol of Peace smile. Just Toshinori's smile. Small and genuine and tired and warm.

"Yes," he said. "She is."

The League didn't plan it.

That was the thing. It wasn't an operation, wasn't a mission, wasn't sanctioned by anyone with a strategy. It was Toga, who had been in the vicinity of the U.A. shopping district on her own time doing her own undisclosed things, who had seen Hana walking alone after her first day in the business course.

Toga had her own feelings about what Hana had done.

She had expressed them.

Hana had been replaying the transfer announcement in her head for the third hour in a row, headphones in, walking the long way back through the shopping district because she wasn't ready to be in the business course dormitory yet and she definitely wasn't ready to be anywhere near the hero course buildings.

She didn't hear Toga coming.

Nobody ever did.

"Hi."

Hana turned.

Toga was standing four feet away with her hands behind her back and her head tilted at the angle that meant she was curious about something in a way that was not entirely safe. She was not in costume. She was in civilian clothes and she looked like anyone, except for the eyes, which Hana had heard described and which were exactly as advertised.

Hana's entire body made a decision before her brain caught up.

"You're —"

"You slapped her," Toga said. Conversational. Genuinely conversational, the way she discussed things she found legitimately interesting. "I wanted to know what kind of person does that. I've been thinking about it." She tilted her head the other way. "You're not very interesting, are you."

Hana took a step back.

"I wouldn't," said a voice from her left.

Twice was leaning against the wall of the closed shop behind her, arms folded, both hands visible. He wasn't blocking her. He wasn't moving toward her. He was simply there, in the way that made the geometry of the street feel different, like the exits had been quietly renegotiated without her input.

"We're just talking!" Twice said.

"We're definitely just talking," Twice agreed with himself, in the tone that meant he was not entirely in agreement.

Hana's heart was doing something she couldn't afford to let show on her face. She pulled composure up from wherever she stored it and arranged her expression carefully.

"I don't know what you want," she said, "but I think you should know that I'm a U.A. student and —"

"Business course," Toga said. "As of yesterday." She smiled. It was a genuine smile which somehow made it worse. "I know everything about you, Hana Mizuki. I've been watching you for a while because you're near her and I watch everyone who's near her." The smile stayed exactly where it was. "You hit her."

"It was —"

"You hit her." Same tone. Same smile. No room in either for whatever Hana had been about to say.

The shadow on the wall to Hana's right moved.

Dabi stepped out of the alley with his hands in his pockets and the particular quality of attention he gave to things he had already decided weren't worth serious effort. He looked at Hana the way he looked at mildly irritating structural features. His flames weren't lit. They didn't need to be.

Hana went very still.

"Dabi —" she started, and the way she said it made it clear she knew who he was and had thought about him before, had filed him somewhere specific in her mental architecture, and whatever that filing had looked like it had not looked like this moment.

"Don't," he said. Just the one word. Flat.

She stopped.

He looked at her for a long moment with the expression of someone examining something they had originally assessed as unimportant and are now confirming the assessment was correct.

"You know what's funny," he said, not like it was funny, "is that I don't do things like this. Tracking down some business course kid over a slap." He tilted his head. Toga's gesture, slightly, though he would never have acknowledged the similarity. "And here I am."

"Why," Hana said, and her voice came out smaller than she intended.

Dabi looked at her.

"Because she's —" He stopped. Something moved behind his eyes that he locked down immediately and completely, the practiced shutdown of a person who has been locking things down for a very long time. "Because Toga was already here," he said, "and I was in the area."

Twice made a sound.

"You walked forty minutes out of your way," Twice said.

"You definitely walked forty minutes out of your way," Twice confirmed.

"Say another word," Dabi said, without looking at him.

Both of Twice went quiet.

Dabi looked back at Hana. The examination concluded. Verdict delivered without words, which was worse than words.

"You're not worth the paperwork," he said. "And you're not worth her thinking about if she ever found out we were here." Something shifted in his voice, just slightly, just enough. "So we're going to walk away. And you're going to understand something clearly." He took one step toward her, not threatening, not physically, just closing the distance enough that she could not pretend he was speaking generally. "You don't get to be near her anymore. You made sure of that yourself. But if that changes —"

He left it there.

He didn't need to finish it.

Hana understood the shape of the unfinished sentence the way you understand a locked door.

Toga had her head tilted again, watching Hana's face with the focused interest of someone collecting data.

"You're scared," Toga observed, with what appeared to be genuine curiosity. "That's real. That's the first real thing I've seen on your face." She looked almost pleased about this in a way that was extremely uncomfortable. "That's what she looks like all the time, you know. When she feels things. Just — open like that." She looked back at Hana and the pleased expression settled into something else entirely. "It looks better on her."

She turned and walked away.

Twice peeled off the wall.

"Sorry about this!" he said.

"No we're not," he said.

They were gone.

Dabi looked at Hana for one more second.

"Go back to your dorm," he said.

He walked back into the alley and the shadow swallowed him and he was gone and the street was just a street again, ordinary and lit and full of evening noise, and Hana stood in the middle of it with her composure in pieces around her feet and her hands shaking in a way she could not immediately stop.

She stood there for a long time.

She did not cry.

She was not sure if that was strength or if she simply hadn't processed enough yet for the tears to arrive.

She walked back to her dormitory the long way, in the dark, touching her hair the entire time without noticing.

On the other side of the campus the 1-A dormitory was quiet.

Most of the common room had cleared out gradually over the past hour — people going to rooms, giving space, the class operating on the unspoken collective understanding that {{User}} had held it together all day in front of everyone and was allowed to stop holding it now.

Ochaco had been the last to leave, reluctant, and {{User}} had told her it was okay and meant it, and Ochaco had believed her and not wanted to and had gone upstairs with her hands pressed together in front of her mouth.

The common room was almost empty.

Bakugo was still there.

He hadn't announced he was staying. He hadn't asked. He'd just — not left. Moved from the chair to the couch at some point with the studied casualness of someone who was absolutely not making a thing of this and would deny making a thing of this under any interrogation.

He was looking at his phone. Or he was performing looking at his phone. The distinction was unclear.

{{User}} was on the other end of the couch.

She had been fine. She had been fine all day, through all of it, through the sound and the stillness and Aizawa's voice in the hallway and everyone's faces and Ochaco's hands on her face checking the mark and Momo's ice pack and all of it, she had been completely fine.

The common room was quiet and the lights were low and there was nobody left to be fine for.

The first tear came without announcement.

She didn't make a sound. Just — her face changed, the held thing releasing, and her eyes filled and spilled over and she pulled her knees up and pressed her face into them and her shoulders started shaking with the effort of not making noise about it.

Bakugo put his phone down.

He looked at her for a second. Something moved through his expression that he would never in his life have described out loud or allowed to be witnessed in better lighting.

He shifted across the couch.

He didn't say anything. He didn't ask. He just moved into the space beside her and put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her into him, firm and certain, the way he did everything — no hesitation, no softness in the gesture itself, but she was against his side and his arm was around her and he was solid and warm and completely, immovably present.

She turned her face into his chest.

He let her.

His chin came down slightly, not quite resting on her head, close. His other hand came up after a moment and stayed on her arm, not moving, just there.

She cried.

Not prettily, not quietly, not the way Hana had cried — nothing performed about it, nothing constructed, just the real shaking ugly sound of someone letting something go that had been held all day through things no one should have to hold things through.

Bakugo said nothing.

He didn't tell her it was okay. Didn't tell her Hana wasn't worth it. Didn't do the things people did when they wanted the crying to stop so they could feel better about the crying.

He just held on.

After a while the shaking slowed. Then stopped. She was still against him, face still turned in, breathing uneven and slow.

His arm didn't move.

The common room was very quiet.

Outside the window the campus lights were on and the sky was doing the late thing, the deep blue thing, and somewhere upstairs twenty people were in their rooms very deliberately not coming back downstairs and that was its own kind of love.

"You don't have to say anything," Bakugo said, eventually. Low. Not soft exactly but something adjacent to it, something that lived near soft without being willing to use the word.

She didn't say anything.

His arm tightened, just slightly.

"Okay," he said.

And they stayed there, in the quiet, in the low light, while the campus settled around them into night.

The patrol had run four hours over.

It happened sometimes — one call bleeding into the next, a warehouse situation that turned into a pursuit, the pursuit turning into a standoff, the standoff resolving in the messy way standoffs resolved when three of your four people were running on the last reserves of whatever they'd had at lunch. The fourth person, being Fatgum, had reserves that operated on a different scale, but even he had a threshold, and by the time they made it back to the agency the threshold had been located and crossed.

He had all three of them by the time they hit the door.

It had happened gradually, the way it always happened — Kirishima first, who had pushed hard all day and whose Hardening had cycled so many times that the comedown left him soft-limbed and barely verbal, and Fatgum had just scooped him up mid-stride without discussion because the alternative was watching him walk into a wall. Then {{User}}, who had made it further than Kirishima through sheer stubbornness and then hit the elevator and simply didn't have anything left, and Fatgum had caught her before she'd finished listing sideways. Then Tamaki, who had eaten everything he'd packed and then some during the standoff and had consequently burned through it all and was now listing against the agency door with his face turned into the frame and his eyes doing the slow blink of someone whose body was making executive decisions without him.

Fatgum picked him up last, adjusting his grip until he had all three of them distributed across his arms and his chest in the loose carried way of someone transporting sleeping cats, and pushed the agency door open with his shoulder.

The night staff looked up.

Nobody said anything. This had happened before. Not exactly this, but enough adjacent versions of this that the staff had stopped finding it remarkable and started finding it Tuesday.

Fatgum moved through the agency with the careful heavy tread of someone very large trying to be gentle and mostly succeeding. Down the back corridor. Through the door he'd had propped open since the second year of running his own agency, the room with the three couches he'd added one at a time as his work-study roster grew and the late nights became a known variable rather than an exception.

He set Kirishima down first — couch on the left, on his side, out before he landed. Set {{User}} on the middle couch with more care, making sure she was settled, tugging the blanket from the back of it down over her without thinking about it, just doing it, the way you did things for people you were quietly responsible for. Tamaki last, on the right couch, who made a small sound when he was set down and then immediately turned his face into the cushion and was gone.

Fatgum straightened up.

Looked at the three of them for a moment.

His chest did the thing it did sometimes at the end of long days — a fullness, complicated and uncomplicated at once, the particular weight of caring about people who had worked hard and trusted him to bring them home.

He exhaled through his nose.

Turned and walked back toward the main office, pulling his gloves off, rolling his shoulders, his body beginning the slow accounting of the day.

His desk had a lamp on it. Warm light, low. One of the night staff, Seto, had already put a coffee on the corner of it and Fatgum reached for it without looking up, eyes on the patrol report summary he needed to sign off on before tomorrow morning.

"Thanks," he said.

"Mm," said Seto, which was Seto's primary mode of communication after nine PM.

Fatgum drank. Read. Turned a page.

The files arrived next — the ones he needed to cross-reference against the warehouse inventory, the ones that had the supplier chain breakdown in them, the ones he'd been waiting on for six days and which had finally come through while he was on patrol. He felt them placed in his hand and took them without looking up, already flipping to the second page.

"Appreciate it," he said.

The voice that answered was not Seto's.

"Of course. I thought you'd want them as soon as you were back."

Fatgum went very still.

Not the stillness of surprise — the stillness of something colder, something that happened in the body before the brain caught up, the professional stillness of a man who had been in enough situations to know that you didn't move until you had the full picture.

He looked up.

Hana Mizuki was standing on the other side of his desk.

She was in civilian clothes, neat, her auburn hair done the way it was always done, and her expression had the warmth dialed up to the careful setting she used when she was presenting herself to someone whose opinion she wanted. She had a badge clipped to her jacket that was not a real badge, or it was a real badge, the laminated kind, the kind that looked official if you didn't know what you were looking for — the kind that said VISITOR: ADMINISTRATIVE LIAISON in a font that was almost right.

The files in Fatgum's hand had the agency letterhead on them. The real letterhead. The kind that meant they had come from the locked cabinet in the back office, the one with the supplier chain information, the pending investigation threads, the informant coordinates that were not — under any circumstances, under any interpretation of any policy — accessible to a business course student at U.A. on a visitor badge that did not hold up to ten seconds of scrutiny.

The coffee on his desk was from Seto.

The files had not come from Seto.

Fatgum set them down.

He set the coffee down.

He looked at Hana Mizuki across his desk with an expression that had nothing of the warmth in it that she was used to seeing from him, and everything of the thing that lived underneath the warmth — the thing that had run a hero agency for years, that had coordinated raids and managed informants and made hard calls about hard situations, that understood exactly what it meant that a civilian with a forged access credential was standing in a restricted section of his building holding files from a locked cabinet at eleven thirty at night.

"Sit down," he said.

His voice was very quiet.

Hana's expression flickered — just for a second, the performance recalibrating, looking for the angle —

"I just thought —"

"Sit down, Mizuki."

She sat.

He didn't sit. He stood behind his desk with his hands on the surface of it and looked at her with the complete and total attention of someone who had made a full assessment and was now simply deciding the order of next steps.

"The badge," he said.

She opened her mouth.

"Don't." Not aggressive. Not loud. Just the flat certainty of someone who had heard everything before and had no interest in this version. "The badge first. Put it on the desk."

She unclipped it. Put it on the desk.

He looked at it without touching it. Looked back at her.

"How long have you been in the building."

A pause. The performance tried to find its footing. He watched it try.

"Hana." His voice stayed exactly where it was, level and quiet and without any available warmth. "I have three upcoming pro-heros asleep in the back room who worked a fourteen hour patrol today. I am tired. I have your file memorized. I know what you did to {{User}}. I know about the texts you faked with my name on them." He let that sit for exactly one second. "I have been professionally courteous to you because the situation called for it and because I believe in doing things correctly. This situation is different. How long have you been in the building."

Something happened on Hana's face.

Not the planned thing. Not the performed thing.

The real thing — the calculation running, running, running, and finding no exit.

"Two hours," she said.

The number landed.

Fatgum absorbed it without moving.

Two hours. While they were on patrol. While the night staff cycled through shift change. While the agency was at minimum occupancy and the access logs would show a visitor badge that looked real enough at a distance, at the end of a long day, in the low light of the back corridor.

Two hours in a building with active investigation files. With informant information. With the patrol schedules of three hero students one of whom she had a documented history of targeting.

He picked up his phone.

"I'm calling U.A. security," he said. "Then I'm calling Aizawa. Then I'm calling the Hero Public Safety Commission because what you're holding constitutes unauthorized access to restricted hero agency documents which is not a school disciplinary matter, it's a legal one." He looked at her across the desk. "You're going to sit in that chair and you're not going to touch anything else in this room. Do you understand me."

Hana's composure was working very hard.

"I just wanted to —"

"Do you understand me."

A silence.

"Yes," she said.

He made the first call.

In the back room, on the middle couch, {{User}} slept.

Kirishima was out cold on her left. Tamaki had turned over at some point and was now half off his cushion with one arm on the floor, which was a him problem he would discover in the morning.

The room was warm. The lamp in the corner was on its lowest setting.

Through the wall, very distantly, they could hear Fatgum's voice — low, precise, utterly without give.

None of them woke up.

They didn't need to know tonight. Tonight had already asked enough of them.

There would be time in the morning.

Hawks smelled it before he saw it.

Not the food — though the food was also immediately identifiable because Endeavor's lunch was a specific and legendary thing in the pro hero world, a tray assembled by the agency's kitchen staff to exact caloric specifications that could fuel a man made of fire through a twelve hour shift, and it was not small — but the situation. Hawks had a nose for situations the way he had a nose for wind currents, something in the air pressure changing, something that told him whatever was happening around that corner was going to be either very funny or very complicated and possibly both.

He came around the corner.

It was both.

{{User}} was sitting at Endeavor's desk.

Not near it. Not leaning against it. At it, in the chair, with the kind of settled comfort that suggested she had been there long enough to get comfortable and had made a considered decision to stay. Endeavor's lunch was in front of her — or most of it had been in front of her, it was now approximately two thirds of what it had been, which was still an impressive quantity of food — and she was eating with the focused contentment of someone who had either not eaten since morning or had simply recognized quality and committed to it fully.

Endeavor's agency had excellent lighting.

She looked very comfortable.

Hawks stopped in the doorway.

He looked at the desk. Looked at {{User}}. Looked at the tray. Looked back at {{User}}.

He put one hand over his mouth.

Hana was standing three feet from the desk doing something Hawks clocked in approximately one second — the voice, the posture, the particular angle of concerned authority that wasn't authority at all, the performance of someone who had found an audience and was running material.

"— completely inappropriate, you can't just walk into a pro hero agency and sit at the Number One Hero's personal desk, do you understand how this looks —"

{{User}} took a bite.

"— I'm serious, this is exactly the kind of thing that damages professional relationships, if Endeavor comes back and finds you here he is going to be —"

{{User}} considered something on the tray. Selected it. Ate it.

"— are you listening to me? I'm trying to help you, I know people here, I have connections in this agency and I'm telling you as someone who understands how these things work that you need to get up right now before someone sees you and —"

"Someone sees her," Hawks said, from the doorway.

Hana spun.

Hawks raised a hand in a small wave. He was still covering his mouth with the other one. His shoulders were doing something he was not fully controlling.

"Hey." He looked at {{User}}. "Hey. Is that the braised —"

{{User}} pushed the tray slightly in his direction in a gesture of invitation.

"Okay first of all," Hawks said, and came into the room.

Hana reorganized rapidly. Hawks watched her do it — the recalibration, the new angle, the expression finding its shape for a different audience. He had seen this before. He had seen it and filed it and had been mildly entertained by it from a comfortable distance.

The comfortable distance was currently gone because she was in Endeavor's office.

"Hawks," she said, with the warmth dialed up, "I was just trying to explain to her that —"

"How'd you get in," Hawks said. Not aggressive. Genuinely curious, the way he was genuinely curious about most things that interested him, tilting his head at her the way he tilted his head at things he was actively analyzing.

Hana blinked. "I — I know people here, I have a contact in the —"

"Name."

A half second pause. Very small. Hawks caught it the way he caught small things, cleanly and without effort.

"Excuse me?"

"Your contact. Name." He smiled at her. The smile was friendly and completely without give. "Because I know everyone in this building and I'm trying to figure out who authorized a business course student's visit because that's — that's a specific process, there's a form, it goes through the agency liaison at U.A. and then through our intake desk, so." He tilted his head the other way. "Name?"

Hana's expression did the thing where it held its shape through effort rather than ease.

"I don't see why that's —"

"Yeah," Hawks said, simply. He looked at {{User}}. "You good?"

{{User}} made a gesture of supreme contentment in the direction of the food.

Hawks finally let himself fully smile. "Right? It's unbelievable in here, their kitchen is —" He looked back at Hana. His smile stayed exactly where it was and changed its quality entirely. "You're not authorized to be here."

"I told you, I have a —"

"You don't," Hawks said. Still friendly. Still easy. "I would know. I know every authorization in this building, I personally reviewed the visitor log this morning because we have active case threads running and visitor access is flagged, so." He spread his hands. "You don't have one. Which means you followed her in," he glanced at {{User}}, "or you talked your way past the front desk, which —" he seemed to do a rapid internal calculation, "— Hasegawa is on front desk today, which means you caught him at shift change, which is actually pretty good timing, I'll give you that." He paused. "Still trespassing, though."

Hana opened her mouth.

The door opened.

Endeavor came in the way Endeavor came into every room — ahead of schedule, radiating an ambient heat that the building's climate control had long since made peace with, already reading the report in his hand, his attention on it completely.

He reached his desk.

He looked up.

{{User}} was sitting in his chair eating his lunch.

A silence occurred.

Endeavor looked at the tray. Looked at {{User}}. Looked at the tray again with the expression of a man doing a precise internal calculation about how much of his lunch remained and cross-referencing it against current operational caloric requirements.

{{User}} looked up at him.

A beat passed.

Endeavor pulled the second chair from the corner of the office, set it beside the desk, sat in it, and reached across to the tray.

Hawks made a sound.

"Don't," Endeavor said, without looking at him.

Hawks pressed both hands over his mouth.

Endeavor looked at {{User}} with the expression he reserved for people he had assessed and found competent, which on his face looked like a slight reduction in the ambient intensity he aimed at everything else. He reached into his jacket, produced his own agency ID in a gesture that was entirely unnecessary given that it was his office, and set it on the desk.

"You're licensed," he said. Not a question. He had checked. He always checked.

{{User}} confirmed.

He nodded once. Reached for the tray again.

"Hawks," Endeavor said.

"I'm not saying anything, I'm just —"

"Remove the trespasser," Endeavor said, with the flat efficiency of someone issuing a field directive, "and close the door."

Hawks turned to Hana.

Hana had been standing very still during the preceding forty-five seconds with the expression of someone whose entire operational model had just been stress-tested in ways she had not prepared for.

"Okay," Hawks said, pleasantly. "So. Few things." He held up one feather between two fingers, counting off. "One — she's licensed, you're not, which in any hero agency means she has default authority to be in spaces you don't, full stop." Second feather. "Two — you don't have a visitor authorization, which I'm going to need you to come explain to our intake desk, that's not optional, that's a building security thing." Third feather. "Three —" He paused.

Looked at her.

The smile was still there. It had gone very quiet.

"You followed her here," he said. "On her work time. To a hero agency where she has legitimate professional standing." He let that sit for a second. "I know about the file situation at Fatgum's. I know about the slap. I know about the texts." He tucked the feathers back. "I like to know things. It's a whole thing I do." He gestured toward the door. "Intake desk is on the second floor. I'll walk you."

He said it the way you said things when they weren't offers.

Hana looked past him at the office.

Through the door, in the warm light, Endeavor had the report in one hand and was eating his lunch with the other with the focused efficiency of a man reclaiming lost calories, and {{User}} was still in his chair and he had not asked her to move and was not going to, and the tray was between them and the office was quiet.

Hana looked at this for a second.

Then she looked at Hawks.

Something moved behind her eyes that was real. Not performed. Just — real, and small, and gone quickly.

She walked toward the door.

Hawks fell into step beside her, unhurried, one hand in his pocket, three feathers trailing lazily behind him in the corridor like punctuation.

"For what it's worth," he said, conversationally, as they walked, "the intake form isn't that bad. It's one page. The pen works."

Hana said nothing.

"You're touching your hair," Hawks said.

She stopped touching her hair.

They walked to the elevator in silence.

Back in the office, Endeavor finished a section of the report.

Set it down.

Looked across the desk.

{{User}} had found the second portion of the tray and was making informed decisions about it.

Endeavor watched this for a moment with an expression that a stranger would have read as neutral and that anyone who knew him would have read as something much closer to quietly satisfied — the expression of a man who ran a tight and serious operation and had, in the middle of a complicated day, come back to find something uncomplicated and genuine sitting in his chair eating his lunch and not performing anything about it at all.

He reached across and moved the better portion of the remaining tray to her side.

{{User}} looked at him.

He picked the report back up.

"You need the calories," he said, to the report. "You're doing field work."

He did not look up.

The office was warm and quiet.

Outside the window the city moved through its afternoon.

The four days thing hadn't announced itself.

That was the problem with {{User}} — she didn't announce things. She didn't come to breakfast looking hollow-eyed and asking for sympathy, didn't perform exhaustion the way some people performed exhaustion, didn't give anyone a clean moment to point at and say there, that's when it started getting bad. She just kept showing up. Kept being present and capable and fine-faced through training and patrols and meals and the ordinary machinery of days, and if the fine-face was costing more than it used to cost, she was paying the difference somewhere nobody could see.

Hitoshi noticed on day two.

He noticed because noticing was what he did — not loudly, not in the way that announced itself, but in the cataloguing constant way of someone who had spent a long time reading rooms because reading rooms was how he survived them. He noticed the way she was sitting in the common room on the second night, very still, facing the window, the lights off, the kind of awake that was not restful. He noticed because he had come down at two in the morning because he couldn't sleep either and she had already been there.

He had not said anything.

He had sat in the chair across the room and they had been awake together in the dark for forty minutes and then he had gone back upstairs and she had still been there.

Third night he came down again at one-thirty.

She was in the same spot.

He sat in the same chair.

Neither of them said anything.

He went back upstairs at three.

Fourth day she was in every class and every training session and ate at every meal and said the right things and laughed at the right moments and Hitoshi watched all of it from the peripheral position he always occupied and ran the numbers and the numbers were not good.

Fourth night he came downstairs at midnight.

She was there.

He sat down across from her.

He looked at her in the dark for a moment — really looked, the way he rarely let himself look at people because looking carefully at people was a thing that cost him and he was careful about what he spent. The window light was doing the thing it did at this hour, pale and indirect, and in it she looked tired in a way that had gone past the surface and into the structure.

Four days.

He knew what four days without sleep did to a person. He knew it clinically, he knew it personally, he knew it in the specific way of someone who had spent his own bad stretches staring at ceilings. The body started making errors. The mind started generating static. Things that were manageable in the light became very loud in the fourth night's dark and the fact that she was sitting here again, alone, in the same spot, told him that whatever was loud for her had not gotten quieter.

He sat with it for a moment.

He looked at her.

He made a decision.

"Hey," he said.

She looked over at him. The fine-face was still on but it was running on reserves, he could see the effort of it, the slight delay between the look and the expression.

"Hey," she said back.

He was quiet for a second.

He had thought about how to do this. He had turned it over and looked at it from several angles and had been honest with himself about what he was considering and why and whether it was the right thing. He had landed on yes, but only this, only once, only because four days was the number after which his concern outweighed his scruples about the method.

He held eye contact.

"How are you?"

The question landed the way he had calibrated it to land — soft, direct, the genuine shape of a question someone asked when they wanted the real answer.

She opened her mouth to answer.

The quirk took.

It wasn't violent. It never was, when it worked the way it was supposed to work — it was just a door opening and something stepping through, the voice finding the channel it needed, the compliance settling over her like a weight that was also a relief. Her expression changed, the fine-face going slack, the held thing releasing all at once, her eyes going the particular soft unfocused way that meant she was under.

Hitoshi leaned forward slightly.

"You're going to sleep," he said, quietly. Steady. The command voice, but low, stripped of anything that wasn't the instruction itself. "Close your eyes."

Her eyes closed.

"You're going to stay asleep until morning."

Her breathing changed — one long exhale, the held tension going out of her shoulders, her body making the adjustment from four days of resistance to the simple animal truth of being allowed to rest. Her head tipped slightly.

She was asleep before it finished tipping.

Hitoshi caught her automatically, one hand at her shoulder, keeping her upright for the two seconds it took him to register that she was fully under and that he was going to need —

"I've got her."

Hitoshi looked up.

Shoji was already there.

He had not heard Shoji come downstairs. He rarely did — Shoji moved the way large careful people sometimes moved, with a quiet that was deliberate and total. He was standing at the end of the couch with the particular readiness of someone who had been awake, who had been waiting, who had perhaps also been running numbers.

Their eyes met across the dark room.

Hitoshi nodded once.

Shoji crossed the room in two steps and gathered {{User}} up with the careful efficiency of someone built for exactly this, for carrying things that needed carrying without jostling them, without making anything harder. He had her settled against his chest before the second step, her head against his shoulder, her breathing still the slow deep breathing of someone genuinely, finally, completely under.

He looked at her face for a moment.

The fine-face was completely gone.

She just looked like herself, in the way people only looked like themselves when they were fully asleep, and the looking of it was — Shoji held it for a second, filed it in the place where he filed things he was going to be quiet about, and then looked at Hitoshi.

"Her dorm," Hitoshi said.

Shoji nodded.

He moved toward the stairs.

Hitoshi stayed in the common room.

He sat in the chair and looked at the window and listened to the building — the soft sound of Shoji's footsteps on the stairs, careful and even, then the distant sound of a door, careful and even, then nothing.

Then quiet.

He looked at the spot on the couch where she had been sitting for four nights.

He looked at his hands.

He turned the thing over in his mind one more time — the ethics of it, the calculation, the choice to use the thing everyone was afraid of on someone who had not given him permission — and he sat with the discomfort of it the way he always sat with discomfort, directly, without looking away.

Then he looked at the window again.

Four days was four days.

She was asleep.

He stayed in the chair until he was sure Shoji had made it back to his own room, and then he went upstairs, and he did not sleep well, but that was not unusual for him, and in the morning when she came down to breakfast looking like a person again rather than a person held together with the wire of will, he would say nothing about it.

She would know.

He would know she knew.

That would be enough.

That was always how it worked with them.

Shoji set her down with the care he gave things he did not want to get wrong.

Her dorm room was unlocked — she never locked it, he had noticed this before, the easy trust of someone who had enough people around her who would notice if something was wrong — and he nudged it open with his elbow and crossed to the bed in the dark.

He got her settled. Pulled the blanket up. Stood there for a moment in the way he stood in spaces when he was checking that everything was correct.

Her breathing was slow and even and completely unguarded.

Mezo Shoji, who had heard things with his enhanced senses that he never repeated, who had stationed himself between her and threats without announcement and would do it again without announcement, who kept his care very quiet and very constant, looked at her sleeping face in the dark of her dorm room and felt the thing he always felt when she was alright — the thing that had no name he was going to give it, that lived in the part of him that just kept watch.

He pulled the door closed behind him.

Tested it once to make sure it had caught.

Went back to his room.

Did not go back to sleep for a while.

Downstairs the common room was empty, and quiet, and the couch by the window held nothing but the impression of four nights of someone trying very hard to carry something alone, and in the morning the sun would come in and by the time anyone came downstairs it would just be a couch again.

The city heard him before it saw him.

An old man floating above the business district on a cluster of glass orbs, robes billowing, white beard catching the winter wind, both arms spread wide like he was conducting an orchestra only he could hear.

"Revelations from the universe, I have received! Flee, good citizens! The dark lord's lips curl into a wicked crescent! The end is nigh!"

The civilians below did not flee. They did what people did with street preachers in a city that had seen actual supervillains level entire blocks — they stepped around him, checked their phones, and kept walking. A woman with a grocery bag looked up briefly, determined he was not her problem, and kept moving.

Izuku, Katsuki, and Shoto were still three blocks behind.

They had been three blocks behind since the moment Endeavor had heard something the rest of them hadn't processed yet and simply started moving — no announcement, no instruction, just a controlled explosion of forward momentum that left them scrambling to keep up in their civilian clothes, support items deploying on the run.

"He knew before the sound even reached us," Izuku was breathless, notebook instinct firing even mid-sprint, already trying to clock it, understand it, file it.

"Less talking," Katsuki said, already pulling ahead.

Shoto said nothing. He was watching his father ahead, the flame that wreathed Endeavor's shoulders as he closed the distance with the unhurried precision of a man who had already identified the threat, calculated the approach, and decided on the conclusion before the fight had technically started.

Above them, Starservant had gathered every scrap of glass from the surrounding buildings — office windows, shopfronts, car windshields, all of it rising toward him in a glittering torrent — and compressed it into one enormous roiling sphere that hummed and shifted above the crowded street.

"Enlightened Fallen King!" he screamed, and the sphere dropped.

Endeavor hit it first.

Flashfire Fist.

One punch. One concentrated detonation of focused flame that didn't splash, didn't spread, didn't waste a single degree of heat on anything that wasn't the target. The glass orb vaporized on contact — not shattered, not scattered, just gone, turned to smoke and vapor and the sharp hot smell of superheated silica, and by the time the civilians registered what had happened the threat was already resolved and Endeavor was already moving again, not even broken stride.

"Don't make trouble on my turf," he said.

Starservant fled into the alley.

The alley was a trap. Obviously a trap. Shoto could read the geometry of it from the entrance — too narrow for Endeavor to use his fire at full range, the walls on both sides crammed with Starservant's followers, a dozen of them bristling with improvised glass weapons they'd loaded up before the ambush.

They came at Endeavor from three sides.

The three of them moved.

Izuku was already airborne, Blackwhip threading out toward the highest cluster of followers, yanking them off their perches before they could drop. Shoto channeled his flame into a single focused line — the way Endeavor had shown him, not spread, not wasted, concentrated — and burned the glass weapons on the left flank clean away. Katsuki took the center with an explosion condensed so tight it hit like a spike, pinpoint, controlled, nothing like the indiscriminate blasts from two years ago.

A split second before the last grouping could close in —

Every one of them was simply plucked off the ground.

Red feathers, precise and uncountable, threading between them like a net pulled taut, lifting Starservant's remaining followers clean off their feet and depositing them in a tidy cluster at the alley entrance with the casual efficiency of someone shelving books.

Hawks dropped onto a fire escape above them, one hand in his jacket pocket, the other turning a page of the book he was reading.

"Sorry, terrible timing on my part," he said, sounding not even slightly sorry.

Katsuki pointed at him. "I almost had those."

"You definitely almost had those," Hawks agreed, looking at his book.

"Then why —"

"Faster," Hawks said simply.

Katsuki's expression went through seven stages.

Shoto looked at Hawks with the particular attention he gave new and interesting variables.

Izuku had already introduced himself twice in the time it took the others to have that exchange, notebook out, practically vibrating.

The police arrived. Starservant was led away still preaching, his voice receding down the street: "The fire he gives off blinds them all — Endeavor is the darkness — the darkness is him —"

Nobody engaged with this.

Endeavor stood in the alley entrance with his arms crossed, looking at the four of them — the three students, the Number Two Hero with his book — with the expression he wore when something had happened that he was going to process internally and never discuss.

Hawks tucked the book under his arm and held it out to Endeavor.

"Meta Liberation War," he said. "Great read. Really relevant, I think, given — everything. I flagged some parts you'd appreciate." He said it lightly, conversationally, the kind of light that wasn't light at all. His eyes were doing something different from his voice. "Highlighted the best bits."

Endeavor took the book without looking at it. He looked at Hawks.

Hawks looked back at him with the easy openness of someone who was not being watched and also was definitely being watched and had accounted for both.

A beat passed between them that carried more information than the words had.

"We're done here," Endeavor said.

He looked at his three interns. Something moved in his expression — not approval, not exactly, but the particular quality of a man who had watched something and was recalculating.

He turned and walked.

They followed.

The Endeavor Agency was warm after the winter street.

The lobby had the particular atmosphere of a place that ran on precision and expectation — everything in its place, staff moving with the efficient quiet of people who had been thoroughly trained — and the three of them came through the doors behind Endeavor still cooling down, still running the debrief in their heads, Izuku's hands moving slightly as he mentally wrote notes he was going to transcribe the moment he got to a pen.

Katsuki stopped walking.

Izuku walked into him.

"What —" Izuku started.

Then he saw.

Fatgum was in the lobby.

Fatgum, who took up a significant portion of any space he occupied, was standing near the reception desk looking enormous and comfortable and holding two cups of something hot, and beside him —

Kirishima saw Katsuki first and his face broke open like sunrise.

"BRO —"

"Don't —"

"BRO —"

Katsuki was already being grabbed. He submitted to this with the resigned expression of someone who had run the numbers and determined resistance was more effort than it was worth, which was its own kind of affection.

Tamaki was standing half behind Fatgum in the way he stood behind things when there were suddenly more people than anticipated, his hand finding the sleeve of Fatgum's costume with the automatic ease of long habit. He looked at Izuku with the careful wariness he gave most situations and then his eyes moved past him.

{{User}} was sitting on the low bench by the window.

She had clearly been there a while — she had a coffee, she was comfortable, she was watching all of this unfold with the quiet warmth of someone who had specifically come to see it happen. She had been at Fatgum's agency for a work study session that had run over, which was how she had ended up here, in this lobby, at this exact moment, and she had not told anyone she was here because she had correctly predicted it would be funnier this way.

Izuku made a sound.

It was not a word. It was the sound of someone whose emotional processing system had briefly exceeded its available capacity.

Shoto, who had come through the door last, stopped beside Izuku and looked across the lobby.

His expression did its version of the thing Kirishima's face had done — not as loud, not as visible, but there in the particular quality of his attention as it moved from the lobby to Fatgum to Tamaki to the bench by the window, and settled.

He walked over.

He sat down next to {{User}} without preamble, with the complete lack of ceremony he brought to everything he decided to do, and that was it. Just sat. Close.

{{User}} handed him the other half of whatever she was eating.

He took it.

Fatgum had been watching the door.

He handed one of the cups to Burnin, who had appeared at the correct moment to receive it with the competence she applied to everything. He kept the other one and looked at Endeavor across the lobby.

"Wild timing," Fatgum said.

"Hmm," said Endeavor, which was his version of agreement.

Fatgum looked at the lobby. Izuku was now talking at a speed that suggested he had three months of questions backed up. Kirishima still had his arm around Katsuki, who was letting him. Tamaki had emerged from behind Fatgum's arm by approximately four inches, which meant he was doing well. {{User}} and Shoto were by the window.

Fatgum's chest did the thing it did.

"Your boys did good out there," he said.

Endeavor looked at his three interns across the lobby. The calculation ran briefly in his eyes — the Starservant approach, the way Katsuki had condensed, the line of Shoto's flame, Izuku's Blackwhip threading through. What they'd been two weeks ago against what they were today.

He said nothing.

But he watched them for a moment longer than he needed to.

The common room was loud in the comfortable way it got loud on evenings with nothing scheduled — Mina had claimed the floor cushions, Denki was losing spectacularly at something on his phone and announcing each loss, Sero had somehow gotten tape stuck to his own hair and was accepting no help removing it, Tsuyu and Ochaco were on the couch sharing something from a single bowl, Kirishima and Katsuki were at the table with the particular competitive quiet of two people who were nominally doing separate things and were actually tracking each other constantly.

Shoto was near the window reading.

Izuku was next to him writing.

It was an ordinary evening. The kind that felt like a held breath between the extraordinary ones, warm and low-lit and uncomplicated.

The front door opened.

Nobody looked up immediately. People came in and out. It was a normal sound.

Then Mina looked up.

Then she didn't say anything, which was unusual for Mina, and the quality of her silence pulled Ochaco's attention, and then Ochaco's attention pulled the room's.

{{User}} was moving carefully.

Not dramatically. Not making anything of it. Walking with the particular controlled evenness of someone who had done an internal assessment and determined that the way to cross a room was steadily and without drawing attention, and was executing this plan with full concentration.

There was bruising along her jaw. A cut above her eyebrow, already treated, the thin line of it still raw. The way she was holding her left arm suggested something in her shoulder that she was managing.

The room went very quiet.

And then everyone's eyes moved to the door behind her.

Endeavor was not in his hero costume.

This was the first thing that didn't compute. Endeavor existed in hero contexts, in agency contexts, in the formal architecture of his public presence. What was standing in the doorway of the 1-A common room was a man in dark civilian clothes — heavy coat, plain, no flames, no costume — and the absence of all the visual language they associated with the Number One Hero made him look briefly like a stranger.

Then it resolved, because it was obviously still him, the size of him, the posture of him, but the context was so wrong that the brain resisted the image for a half second before accepting it.

His hands were hovering at {{User}}'s sides.

Not touching. Hovering. The way you hovered when someone was moving under their own power and you had made an agreement with yourself not to take that from them but also were prepared to override that agreement in approximately zero seconds if the situation changed. His eyes were on her the way you watched something fragile that was insisting it wasn't fragile.

It was, Shoto would think later, the most frightening thing he had ever seen his father do.

Because it looked like something he recognized.

It looked like care. Unperformed, unstrategic, uncomplicated parental care, the reflex of a person whose entire attention had narrowed to one point and was not going to widen until that point was safe.

It looked like what a father looked like.

Shoto had put his book down.

He was staring at Enji Todoroki with an expression that had no available category, that was somewhere between profoundly unsettled and something that lived much deeper than unsettled, something he was going to have to sit with alone for a long time before he understood what to do with it.

Ochaco was on her feet.

She moved across the room quickly and then slowed as she got close, the instinct to rush tempered by the visible effort {{User}} was putting into being upright and mobile on her own terms. She came alongside her instead of in front of her. Didn't grab. Just appeared, present and close, her expression doing the thing it did when she was holding back everything she felt in order to be what someone else needed.

"Hey," she said softly.

{{User}} looked at her.

Ochaco looked back.

Something passed between them that was private.

Mina had stood up from the floor cushions without any of her usual motion and noise, just stood, and was standing very still, which meant she was more frightened than she was showing and was deciding what to do with that.

Tsuyu had set down the bowl. She was watching {{User}}'s face and then watching Endeavor's hands and then watching {{User}}'s face again, and the slow steadiness of her expression meant she was running an assessment and not sharing the results yet.

Denki had put his phone face-down on the cushion beside him.

Kirishima had pushed his chair back.

Izuku was standing.

He didn't remember standing. He had simply been sitting and then he was standing, notebook still in his hand, his eyes moving between {{User}} and the bruising and Endeavor's hovering hands and back to {{User}}, and the part of his brain that catalogued things was doing it automatically and hating itself for doing it.

Katsuki had not moved.

He was sitting very still at the table looking at {{User}} with an expression that had gone completely flat in the way it went flat when something had happened that he was going to process later and very thoroughly, in private, and what was on the surface right now was just the controlled nothing he put there when the alternative was not controlled.

His hands on the table had closed.

Shoto crossed the room.

He went to {{User}} first, because whatever was happening with his father was going to have to wait for the moment it took him to establish for himself that she was — that she was here, that she was standing, that the bruising was old enough not to be getting worse. He looked at her face with the careful attentiveness he gave things that mattered, said nothing, and then stepped back and turned to look at Enji.

His father looked back at him.

It was a strange moment. Shoto had spent most of his life reading his father as a variable to navigate, a condition to account for, a force to position himself relative to. He did not have a ready framework for the thing his father's face was doing right now, which was something unguarded and exhausted and still partly located in whatever had happened before this room.

"What happened," Shoto said.

The door opened again.

Aizawa came in first, which meant he had been called, which meant someone had already made calls before this. He took in the room in the single efficient sweep he applied to every space he entered, landed on {{User}}, and his expression did its version of nothing that meant something — the eyes sharpening, the tired quality deepening, the professional assessment running under a personal one.

All Might was behind him.

In his current form — gaunt, careful, the large coat that hung on his frame — he stopped just inside the door and looked at {{User}} and the whole room watched something move through him that he didn't cover in time. The hope he carried for her, the specific investment he had said out loud once in a staff room to Aizawa, visible for just a second before he gathered it back.

"She needs Recovery Girl," Aizawa said. Not a question. Looking at Endeavor.

"She's been seen," Endeavor said. His voice was — not soft, exactly. Endeavor's voice didn't do soft. But it had lost the command register it usually occupied. It was just a voice. "I drove her."

The room absorbed this.

Aizawa looked at Endeavor for a moment with the measuring look he gave things he was recalibrating around.

Endeavor looked back.

Kirishima already had his phone out.

He had it out before Aizawa had finished the first sentence, stepping back from the group with the instinct of someone who knew exactly who needed to know this and how fast, and he was already on his feet moving toward the edge of the room, not leaving but creating a pocket of space, the phone already ringing.

Fatgum picked up on the second ring.

"Hey — yeah, something happened, she's back, she's okay but —" Kirishima's voice went lower, turned away from the room, one hand pressed briefly to his forehead. "Yeah. Yeah. You should probably know what happened. Endeavor's here, he's gonna — yeah."

He lowered the phone, looked back at the room. Put it to his ear again.

"He says put it on speaker."

"Tell them," Aizawa said to Endeavor.

Not a suggestion.

Endeavor looked at the room — this collection of sixteen-year-olds in their common room who were standing in various configurations of controlled fear and anger and the particular species of dread that came from caring about someone and seeing them hurt — and something in him registered the looking, the weight of it, and didn't dismiss it.

He pulled a chair from the table.

He set it facing the room and remained standing beside it, one hand resting on the back of it, and spoke.

"She received a message asking her to meet someone outside the north training facility," he said. "Earlier this evening. The message appeared to come from a classmate."

The room shifted.

Izuku's pen had stopped moving.

"It didn't," Endeavor continued. "It was a setup. The classmate had been in contact with a villain — a low-grade independent, mid-level quirk, known in the Musutafu area. The classmate fed him the location, the timing, and told him she would be alone."

A silence that had temperature.

"The classmate arranged the meeting location," Endeavor said, and his voice was doing a thing it had not done before in any context any of them had encountered him in — it was carefully uninflected in the specific way of someone maintaining inflection through effort, because what was underneath it was not something he was going to put in a room full of students. "Then stepped away before he arrived."

Ochaco made a sound.

Small. Involuntary. Her hand had come up to her mouth.

"Hana," Mina said.

Not a question.

Nobody confirmed it. Nobody denied it.

"Hana," Mina said again, and the second time it wasn't the same word as the first time. The first time was recognition. The second time was something that had no clean name.

Tsuyu had closed her eyes briefly.

Sero had very carefully set down the tape he'd been holding and put both hands flat on the couch cushion.

Denki was looking at the floor.

Katsuki's chair made a sound against the floor.

He wasn't up. He had moved the chair back two inches. The two inches cost him something visible. He put his hands flat on the table the same way Sero had put his hands on the cushion, applied identical pressure, and looked at the wall behind Endeavor's head with the expression of someone performing a very specific internal operation that required all available resources.

Kirishima, still holding the phone with Fatgum on the line, was watching Katsuki with the careful attention of someone monitoring a structural element under load.

Izuku was looking at {{User}}.

{{User}} was not looking at anyone. She was looking at a middle point in the room, somewhere between present and wherever she'd been before she walked through that door, and her face had the quality of someone who had processed enough to be here and had not yet processed the rest and was not going to do that here, in front of everyone, in the common room.

Shoto turned and looked at his father.

Enji Todoroki, the Number One Pro Hero, was looking at {{User}} with his hand still on the back of that chair, and his expression had no professional register in it at all.

"I was in the area," Endeavor said. To Aizawa. Technically. But the explanation felt like it was for a different audience. "On patrol. I heard the commotion." A pause. "She had handled most of it herself."

Something moved through the room at that. Several people looked at {{User}} and then looked away, because the looking felt like too much to aim at her right now.

"The villain is in custody," Endeavor continued. "There will be a full report filed with U.A. and the Hero Public Safety Commission by tomorrow morning. The classmate's involvement has been documented."

From the phone, very quietly, Fatgum said: "Kirishima."

"Yeah," Kirishima said.

"She okay?"

Kirishima looked at {{User}}.

"She's home," he said.

A sound from the phone that was not quite a word.

All Might had not spoken.

He was standing just inside the door and he had not moved, and the coat hung on his frame, and he was looking at {{User}} with the expression of a man who had just located something he had been afraid to find and was adjusting to the relief of it, which was its own kind of hard.

After a moment he crossed the room.

He stopped in front of her.

He said her name, quiet, just her name, and then he put a hand on her head the way you put a hand on someone's head when every other gesture was either too much or not enough, careful and warm and brief, and then he lowered it and stood beside her and that was all.

That was enough.

Aizawa had moved to the other side of her. He wasn't touching her. He was just — there. His capture weapon loose around his shoulders. His eyes moving between her and the room in the steady monitoring way that meant he was going to be there for as long as she needed the room held.

Endeavor was still by the chair.

He looked at Shoto.

Shoto looked back at him.

For a moment there was nothing between them except the fact of this evening and what Shoto had seen when his father walked through the door — the hovering hands, the civilian clothes, the undisguised something on a face Shoto had spent his entire life learning to read for danger.

Shoto looked away first.

He went and sat back down near the window.

Not far from {{User}}.

Not saying anything.

Just near.

The common room had gone back to quiet, but it was a different kind of quiet than before. The warm low-lit uncomplicated kind was gone. This kind had edges. This kind had Katsuki's flat eyes and Mina's very still face and Ochaco's hand still hovering near {{User}}'s good shoulder and Kirishima on the phone and Izuku standing with his notebook hanging from one hand and All Might next to {{User}} like a gaunt and steady lighthouse and Aizawa holding the room together through the simple act of not leaving it.

Endeavor picked up the chair. Set it back at the table where it belonged.

He looked at the room one more time.

"She should eat something," he said. To nobody specifically. To the room. "She hasn't."

He turned toward the door.

Rikido was already on his feet heading to the kitchen.

Endeavor left.

The door closed behind him and the room breathed.

And then, from the kitchen, the sound of cabinets and the warm ordinary noise of someone making food, and Ochaco sat down next to {{User}} and didn't say anything at all, and across the room Katsuki finally moved his hands off the table and put them in his lap where nobody could see them, and the evening went on.