Archive of Our Own

Momo pries open her eyes to a blur of grey, black, red. 

The surface underneath her cheek is the ground, she decides, as a massive rumble rattles the sidewalk under her.

Rubble digs into her palms as she pushes herself up, out of her prone spot on the pavement. Over a sharp ringing noise, Momo’s ears eventually filter back in wailing sirens, someone screaming, and many other people shouting. 

Slowly, she eases back into a kneeling position, her bare knees protesting when they come down on a sharp layer of concrete and dust. She sees the dark pavement, where rain mixes with ash and debris. She sees her own palms, scraped and bleeding. She sees a body, a foot in front of her, crumpled and unmoving. 

Lifting her gaze, Momo takes in the sight of the ruins of several buildings, in various stages of collapse, most of which are on fire. 

Her agonizing process of coming back to herself passes in a slow, mindless syrup. Her hands begin to sting, and her knees join them. 

Stupid, is her first coherent thought, directed at herself. You know where you are. Be better.  

She’s helping to respond to the aftermath of an altercation between two different earthquake quirks. There are other heroes running around the scene, either helping with first-aid or trying last-minute rescue efforts. If she’s remembering correctly, and she always remembers correctly, Iida and Ochako are here too, somewhere in the chaos. 

Momo lurches forward, ending up in an undignified crawl as she hurries to reach the body in front of her. The woman lies unconscious, and Momo sees that her nose is bleeding, so Momo doesn’t try to move her right away. Instead, Momo tips into a sitting position to stick her leg out, and she begins the process of creating a spinal board. 

It takes longer than it should. Her body-fat percentage is too low. 

(Since she debuted, she’s become unsure whether that’s a good or a bad thing, but she’s more popular when she doesn't eat enough for her quirk.) 

Still, she manages. After an agonizingly long minute, the board clatters fully-formed to the ground, and now all Momo needs is someone to help her keep the woman’s spine aligned while she’s moved onto the board.

“Creati,” says a voice next to her ear, suddenly breaking through the haze of chaotic noises around her. 

Momo jumps, and whips her head to see who it is.

A group of paramedics has descended on her. One of them, broadly built and middle-aged, extends a hand down to her. “We have this covered. Thank you for the board, but I think you should go where you’re more equipped.”

Clamping her jaw shut against her instinctive urge to snap I wasn’t gonna move her on my own or I’m a certified EMT like you or I hate the way you’re smiling at me, Momo just nods and stands on her own, ignoring the proffered hand.  

“Will she be okay?” Momo asks.

“I can’t promise anything,” the paramedic says, and then moves past her to join his team.

She brushes rubble off of her knees and elbows, and she leaves the woman on the pavement in favor of finding another pro who can put her to better use.

The situation appears to have calmed somewhat in the time it took her to recover from...whatever had thrown her to the pavement. She suspects that an explosion might have occurred, based on her still-ringing ears and the fact that chunks of building have coated the street. Several ambulances line the other end of the street, blocking off the intersection, and a few pros are calming down a gaggle of bystanders. 

She manages to make it halfway to the ambulances before her head spins so severely that she staggers to the side. Her costume’s heels are an inch and a half too high to be practical (she’s submitted so many requests to change them but nobody gives a shit) and her ankle wobbles, twists underneath her. 

Before she can hit the pavement for the second time in ten minutes, though, someone catches her. The hand that latches onto her elbow and keeps her upright is encased in a thick black glove, and the arm belonging to it is coated in shiny metal armor. 

“Thanks,” Momo mumbles to Iida.

“Of course,” Iida says. She can’t see his face due to his helmet, but she knows what his facial expression is anyway--earnest, worried, unshakably polite. “Everyone is out of the buildings. Do you want to get medical assistance here, or can I help you find it somewhere else?”

“I should get home.” Momo needs to lean on Iida or she’ll fall over, but she starts to get a familiar panicky feeling that someone is going to see them like this. Iida’s going to join the fourteen-boy list of people who the tabloids think Momo has dated in the past year, and it’s gonna make her otherwise-pleasant interactions with Iida much more uncomfortable.

(She can never hang out with any of her male friends without it being a whole ordeal, and that’s one of the reasons why Momo doesn’t leave her apartment for much besides patrol. But besides the fact that she’s seen speculative posts about her supposed romantic dalliances with Kaminari, Todoroki, Shinsou, and even fucking Yoarashi who she’s hung out with all of four times--Momo has started to succumb to her sensitivity to scrutiny. 

The last time she went grocery shopping, someone had decided to post on Instagram about her rather unglamorous diet. The grocery store is off-limits now. Similar bad experiences have occurred at the mall, at the park, out to dinner with Kyoka. The way Kyoka bristled at the negative press had only made Momo more resolute in her decision to become all but a total recluse.

Momo tentatively brought the issue up with her personal assistant, and something about the interaction told Momo that her agency had been deliberately sending people to photograph Momo wherever they could.

So. Momo stays home. And she tries to publicly keep her distance from any and all men, including the ones she trusts with her life.)

“Are you sure?” Iida asks.

“Yeah.” God, her feet hurt so fucking bad. “Were there any casualties?”

An ambulance roars away, sirens drifting into the rainy night. Momo lets go of Iida’s arm, and wobbles on her own two feet. 

“I haven’t heard. Several were taken to the hospital, and a few more are going, but the building was evacuated before it went down.” Iida takes a half-step away from her, respecting her space and her decision to be a masochist. 

He’s a good egg. He walks her to the cluster of ambulances, and waves down an available medic for her before wishing her well and disappearing to debrief with his agency. 

The medic who sits her down on the curb is familiar. He seems to think Momo remembers him much better than she does, because as he begins to clean and bandage the scrapes that marr Momo’s knees, the medic says, “Why’d your agency clear you for this? Do you have a healing quirk that works for your agency?”

Momo’s brain, while slower than normal, works fast enough to understand what the medic’s implying. He must have been present at the last incident Momo responded to, which had only been two days earlier--and had involved Momo inhaling quite a lot of smoke, as well as dislocating her shoulder. 

“Oh. Yes. Plus, I heal fairly quickly,” Momo says, and laughs uncomfortably.

(Her father owns her agency and he’s not stupid--he’s hired a few people with very powerful healing quirks to work for them. But he always seems to be more proud of Momo when she declines this sort of help, and he always seems just a little more disappointed when she comes away from routine villain encounters with long-lasting injuries. It’s a balance that Momo fights to navigate.)

“I just want you to be careful,” the medic says. He’s young-ish, but has already developed the bossy tone that all EMTs use on new pros. “You have a promising career in front of you.”

(“She has such a promising future,” her sixth-grade tutor had said about her in hushed tones, ones that he deliberately wanted Momo to hear. Momo remembers this tutor because her parents were obsessed with him, and Momo remembers this tutor because he would smack a ruler over Momo’s wrists whenever Momo’s calligraphy strayed from perfection. “But what we need to work on is her propensity towards silly mistakes.”

If the mistakes are silly then how would they fuck up your whole future ? said a part of Momo’s brain that didn’t want her to be the Number One Hero.
“We expect better from you,” said her father to her during his lecture later that evening. “I know that you can be better than this.”)

“Thanks,” Momo says dully, and can’t even fake a smile. The first skill Momo ever learned was being polite to strangers, but her face is numb and unmalleable.  

“Take it easy,” the medic tells her. He moves on to taking care of Momo’s skinned palms. “Now, did you hit your head? And were you close to the explosion?”

Momo’s head doesn’t hurt that badly, and she wants to go home more than she’s ever wanted anything. Even considering that she’s someone who was showered with gifts growing up, Momo rarely gets what she wants, and she’s determined to make this situation an exception. 

“No,” she lies through her teeth. “Thank you.”

“Alright,” the medic says--too permissive, for someone who works with pros. He doesn’t even try to convince her to stay a while to keep him company, so he’s not a total shithead.

Momo stands, walks away on unsteady shoes. She hails a taxi, giddy with the rush that comes with breaking any rule. 

Every time Momo leaves an incident like this, it feels odd. Unlike some of her colleagues (Todoroki, Ochako, or Kirishima, for example), she isn’t ever approached to tell her how well she’s done, or to ask for autographs. The people who run up to her always want to ask about her costume design changes, or they just skip the pleasantries and reach out and touch her wherever her costume doesn’t cover.

Usually, she can keep her mind off of the less-than-savory aspects of her job when she reaches home, where she can hang out with Kyoka and talk about anything that isn’t hero work. But before she can go home and con Kyoka into coming to bed early with her, Momo has to go check in with her agency. She needs to fill out paperwork, and change out of her hero costume, and figure out how to get home without a taxi driver knowing her home address--normally, she would take an agency vehicle home, but she doesn’t trust a few of the drivers who work this late at night.

(Last month, her neighbor let her know that he’d seen a man lurking in the apartment building hallway, waiting for Momo to emerge. It was an agency driver who’d dropped her off at home a week earlier. 

The agency only did something when her neighbor complained to them, and they said, sorry, but heroines like her will complain about anyone they don’t like the look of. )

The quiet inside the taxi is a relief following the cacophony of the emergency site that Momo came from. The driver doesn’t try to talk to her, because she’s an older woman who can read the room, and Momo sits in peace and lets her aching feet get a rest. She uses the time to sort her thoughts, and she solidifies her future report of what happened, and pokes at the bandaged scrapes on her palms to keep herself from drifting off to sleep.

Before she can fully emotionally prepare, the taxi rolls to a halt in front of the agency. Momo pays, and slides out of the cab, and hurries to get inside the agency before anyone outside can flag her down.

All things considered, her post-incident paperwork with her agency goes smoothly, as does her debrief with Satsu, her agent, who’s in charge of tracking Momo’s statistics. She’s around Momo’s father’s age, and she wears crusty grease-paint makeup as a sad callback to her pro glory days. Momo isn’t her biggest fan. 

(Satsu had agreed with Momo’s father’s assertion that Momo was being coddled by not being volunteered for specific cases with...sensitive subject matter. Satsu is good at her job, but had also watched with unimpressed blankness as Momo trembled her way through a summary of her apprehension of a serial rapist last week.)

After having some time to collect her scattered thoughts, Momo is able to relay the extent of her participation (four solo rescues from the building, ten assists, massive property damage that wasn’t her fault, and no villain apprehension). All in all, it’s about an hour before Momo is allowed to stand up and leave to change into civilian clothing, at which point Satsu’s phone buzzes and she checks it as Momo pushes her chair in. 

“Creati,” says Satsu, in a voice that gives Momo pause.

“What?” Momo asks. “Did you get an update?”

Satsu nods. She sets her phone back down, and gives Momo a very faux-comforting look that isn’t comforting at all. “Three of the people you helped get to the ambulance are stable, and expected to fully recover. The woman who you recovered last just passed away from her injuries.”

Momo says, “Oh.”

“I’ll begin preparing a statement now. Usually, the most senior hero on the assignment makes the call, but...”

Momo finishes, “I should do it.”

“I figured you would want to,” Satsu says. She takes a pause, and then says, “Creati, it wasn’t your fault. The injuries were largely from an explosion caused by another hero’s mistake, and you saved the lives of three others before that.”

“She died,” Momo states. The fact speaks for itself.

“She did,” Satsu says. She looks back down at her phone, and then types something into her computer at a rapid pace before turning her gaze back on Momo. “This is agency policy, so don’t take it personally. You’re on extended leave for a week to recover and train.”

“ What ?” Momo asks, sharp. Even on long weekends, when Momo isn’t seen in public for too long, rumors start to swirl and she gets bombarded with comments on Twitter about who she’s shacking up with. Agency policy or not, it’s not good for Momo’s image to be thrown out of the limelight like this. And--less important, but still notably--Momo needs to be busy or her brain starts to self-destruct.

“I arranged a ride home for you,” Satsu says, almost rolling her eyes at Momo’s outburst. “I’m doing my job, ma’am, don’t get upset. The car will be outside for you when you’re back in civilian attire.”

“I’m--I was going to call a cab,” Momo says, at a loss for words.

“I saved you the trouble,” Satsu tells her. “Please take your allowed time to rest and recuperate. I’ll see you next Tuesday.”

Momo stares at her, dumbfounded, for several seconds, as Satsu goes back to typing up her report as if Momo has evaporated. 

Right. Momo is a new hero, and she’s bad at keeping her sexy public image going, and she’s incredibly replaceable. 

(Her performance has suffered since her debut. Besides issues with her image, Momo has had to fight tooth and nail to handle the stress she’s under. Her classmates are stressed, too, sure--but none of them seem to be crumbling like Momo. Kyoka, for example, has had issues with her agency overstepping boundaries with her public image, but Kyoka’s stress manifests as harder work, as better productivity, as more aggressive makeup, as growth to spite the people that try to set her back.

Momo’s stress manifests as avoidance, as lost composure, as failure. It’s a miracle that she hasn’t been demoted to sidekick yet.)

So Momo, obedient when she is nothing else, eventually turns on her heel and walks out the door on aching feet, keeping her mounting anger to herself.

Perhaps as a result of her headache and her exhaustion and the cocktail of emotions swirling through her, she stops paying attention to her surroundings. Somehow, she manages to change into yoga pants and a sweater, and at some point she ends up in the parking lot of her agency, being directed towards a vehicle, and somewhere along the way she’s discarded her horrible heels so that her throbbing feet stand in falling-apart sneakers as she clambers into the back of the sedan.

She doesn’t recognize the driver. He isn’t the creepy one, but Momo still tells him an address a few buildings away from her own and then rolls up the partition to give the signal that she doesn’t need to be talked to right now. 

For three blissful minutes, she sits in silence. Her ears ring, and her feet pulse with forming blisters, and she is alone with her thoughts.

But, because she hasn’t dealt with enough today, her phone chooses that moment to begin ringing. And when she checks the screen, it’s her father.

Her day can’t get much worse, she thinks. Though it would be much better for her brain for her to ignore the call, she doesn’t know what consequences would follow a disrespectful move like that. Sitting in silence isn’t helping, either.

“Hi, Dad,” she says into the receiver, cautious when he doesn’t say anything for a moment too long.

“Yaoyorozu Momo,” he says, steely-cold and disappointed, and Momo’s throat immediately closes up. “You were responsible for the only civilian casualty.”

His tone is always like this when he’s at his angriest. Momo isn’t scared of him hurting her, not in the way that she knows would be a real problem, but she can tell just by his tone that she’s really screwed up this time.

“It was an accident,” Momo breathes, pleading. She wraps one arm tight around her stomach; she’s still healing from her overexertion earlier and her stomach aches for food that she hasn’t earned. 

“How many times are you going to use that excuse on me? You know better than to let accidents like that happen , ” her dad says. “I didn’t get you this far to make mistakes. You’re supposed to be good enough to avoid them.”

“Dad,” she says, then has to shove her hand against her mouth to muffle the sob that bubbles up. The partition is raised, but it isn’t completely soundproof.

“That’s right, I’m your father. You promised me you’d make me proud. Be better next time,” he says. “Do you promise?”

Momo says a wobbly, sincere, “I promise,” and her dad sighs and hangs up before she can say anything else. He’s always hated when she cries.

Before the driver can hear her crying, she forces herself to stop, compartmentalizing as much as she can until she doesn’t feel anything at all.

Just get home , Momo tells herself, and forces herself to breathe in and out evenly. Kyoka will make everything okay somehow. She’s made worse days better.

For all her whimpering and complaining, Momo is able to make it home safely and get into her apartment without dissolving into a tantrum. The driver is confused when she gets out and disappears into an alley to weave to the back door of her apartment building, keys clutched between her fingers like brass knuckles, but he doesn’t follow her. Inside the building, none of the other tenants have chosen to roam the halls this late, so Momo reaches her front door without being pestered.

Slotting the key into the lock feels like finding water in a desert. 

Momo creaks the door open, and slips inside before locking it, then re-locking it, then re-re-locking it to make sure. Once her mind is at ease that nobody will get in, Momo calls, “Kyoka?”

Nobody answers her. But the apartment is warm and still, and just the smell of their new candles is soothing. On a wild tipsy night half a year ago, Kyoka had convinced Momo to create an exact replica of a painting the two of them saw in a temporary museum exhibit, and the replica (accurate enough to fool everyone who visits their home) hangs near the front door. Momo smiles at it.

She pries her sneakers off of her feet and squints further into the apartment. None of the lights are on; though Kyoka sometimes closes up for the night and sits up in bed on her phone, so this isn’t abnormal. 

“Kyoka?” Momo tries again, and begins the trek to the kitchen. She’s prepared to find a snack to take to the room, but she’s stopped by a sticky note on the fridge that makes her mind spin out of control for the thousandth time today. 

In Kyoka’s uneven, scrawly handwriting, it says, ‘Got called out on backup! Be back late late late or tomorrow morning. I love you.’ 

For a moment, Momo’s brain crackles out like a microphone overwhelmed by sheer amounts of audio, and then her mind kicks back into gear with a vengeance. 

Kyoka isn’t home. 

Momo is alone here. Even if she called Kyoka to beg her to come back early, there’s no guarantee Kyoka has even taken her phone with her. Kyoka’s bad enough about setting her phone down and then losing it for two weeks that she’s resorted to leaving written notes like this one. The two of them aren’t married, so Momo can’t know much about Kyoka’s assignments.

Momo is alone here. That means there’s nobody to have her back, and so she’s not safe. The reminder of physical security overrides the irrational feelings of betrayal rising in Momo’s throat, and she sets to work securing the apartment.

She’ll need to check windows, doors, closets, smoke detectors.

(This is a routine she picked up in middle school--at least, that’s when her parents noticed it and tried to make her stop obsessing over it. Momo’s always had compulsions to triple-check for things like that, especially after the first time she got kidnapped as a child. It feels like trying to scratch an itchy bone while only being able to reach skin-deep.)

Momo is already in the process of opening the fridge, so she completes that and stares at her options for snacks until her brain reminds her that this isn’t a safe course of action. The food might not be safe either. If nobody’s been around to keep an eye on it, anything unpackaged could be tampered with. 

Momo needs food to survive. But she’s not stupid, and she knows that anyone could get into her apartment. Her agency has a key, in case of emergency. Her parents have keys, too. That doesn’t take into account the thousands of people with quirks that make locked doors no barrier at all.

All of the food in the house is suspicious. Momo’s stomach hurts, twists, cramps, but she can last until Kyoka gets home. If Kyoka takes too long, Momo will find a stash of pre-packaged snacks somewhere in the pantry and she’ll manage. 

With food off the table, Momo begins her safety check. 

Her compulsions have gotten better and worse in an ebb and flow, based on how much stress she’s under. If she ever managed to get the courage to visit a therapist, she imagines this would be chalked up to a desperation for control. Momo cannot change that it’s been raining for eight days straight now. She cannot guarantee that all of her former classmates will remain safe forever. She can’t bring that woman back from the dead.

(She cannot get anyone to change her costume design, she cannot choose her own diet, she cannot kiss Kyoka in public.)

What Momo can do is make sure that her apartment is secure. Her range of control includes (and ONLY includes) her ability to lock, re-lock, re-re-lock her doors and windows, and to check behind every door and to triple-check that the stove is off. When Kyoka comes home, she’ll be able to go right to sleep, and she won’t have to worry about someone lurking in their closet. 

(One recent night, Momo had a horrifyingly realistic nightmare about someone emerging from their bedroom closet in the middle of the night, and she’d screamed so loud that her neighbors had run over to check on her. She’d tried to calm herself down but then Kyoka had admitted, shaky and pale, that she’d had the exact same dream.)

--She checked the front door, didn’t she? She’s checked it a couple times now, she thinks, but maybe she was distracted and she didn’t make sure. Momo turns from the windows to walk to the front door again. This is the moment when her right foot, which hurts the most, decides it’s had enough. It spikes with pain, and her other ankle wobbles, and Momo’s momentum makes her topple like a tree.

Momo hits the ground, scraped palms meeting the carpet first. 

Momo’s tenuous grip on her mood, teetering by a thread, breaks.

Everything that she’s been carrying crashes down around her, and it’s too much to pick it all back up again. Like she’s sixteen again, Momo scrambles up to her feet and abandons her previous task in favor of sprinting for somewhere to hide. She doesn’t stop until the bathroom door is closed behind her and the shower is running hot water. 

With new reassurance that her neighbors won’t hear her having a tantrum, she finally doubles over herself to let out the shuddering sob that’s been threatening to surface for as long as she can remember.

It tears from the back of her throat, stealing all her breath away. For an immeasurable moment, she is suspended in that spot, her crying so intense that she can’t get any sound or breath or tears out, and then her lungs spasm and she begins to truly bawl. 

With the arrival of hot tears that sting her eyes, her knees threaten to give out, but she manages to stagger over to the counter and wrestle her clothes off. There’s something inherently absurd in removing her clothes and folding them neatly to place on the counter, all while sobbing her heart out, but Momo completes the task and then glances up to confront herself in the mirror.

Her makeup, already faded and smudgy from a day of patrol, has begun to pool and streak across her face as she continues to cry. She stares at herself, hiccuping and too-thin for her quirk to be healthy, and she hates that her hands have automatically moved to fix her hair into something more manageable. As if it should fucking matter what she looks like right now.

Taking a wheezy breath in, Momo wrenches away from her unfamiliar reflection and rips open the shower door, pouring herself in and slamming it behind her. The water is too hot, and it feels like it’s going to melt her skin off, but Momo doesn’t adjust it. Her hands are too heavy to lift again, and her feet hurt too much to keep her standing.

Momo sits on the floor in a defeated heap and rests her aching head on her knees, and lets her tears overwhelm her. They mix with the hot water thundering down onto her head, the latter of which drowns out any noise of the outside world. 

Here on the shower floor--Momo owes Mina an apology for saying Mina was cliche for having drunk breakdowns in the bathroom at three in the morning--Momo’s brain fixates on a loop.

The fact of the matter is that Momo fucked up today.

Satsu had said that Momo did the best she could. But that’s still another casualty on Momo’s record, and that’s still an entire person who’s gone because Momo couldn’t be better. 

Momo’s dad had been right. After her years and years of training, Momo should have thought ahead, should have been faster.

What must her sidekicks think of her now? If they could see her, they’d start polishing their resumes immediately--Momo isn’t the perfect, put-together, Capable Hero that she pretends to be, at all.

(Everyone has figured that out already. She’ll be unemployable within months.)

With hot water pounding down on her head, all alone, Momo knows above all else that she’s a failure. Her brain slips into less and less coherent thoughts until her entire existence spans no further than the cooling tiles beneath her.

A hand lands firm on her wrist. 

Momo startles out of her curled-up ball of self-hatred and turns her head to find Kyoka there, crouched in the thick mist of the too-humid bathroom, fear illuminating her features.

“Momo,” Kyoka says, muffled by the water still drumming Momo’s skull, “are you hurt?”

Momo wonders if she’s hallucinating.

“Do I need to take you to the emergency room?” Kyoka asks, over-enunciating, talking slowly like Momo is a child. “You only need to nod yes or no.”

“Sorry,” is what Momo responds with instead, the single word garbled around a heavy tongue. Her shoulders feel numb from the long-since-cold water, and her ass has fallen asleep from her uncomfortable position.

“No need to say sorry,” Kyoka says, forcibly calmly. “Are you hurt?”

Momo doesn’t think so, so she shakes her head.

“Have you taken anything?”

She shakes her head again, and Kyoka looks at least a tiny bit relieved. Kyoka sits back on her heels, and offers a halfhearted smile. “Here, let’s get you dried off, okay? You’ve been in here for a while.”

Momo has no way of verifying this. The water has pruned her fingers, but other than that, she has no watch, and her phone is discarded on the counter with her clothes. 

Kyoka’s sweatshirt sleeves are getting wet from the shower. She reaches up and turns the water off, then returns to kneeling next to Momo, uncaring of the drenched knees of her joggers. 

“I’m going to get you a robe,” Kyoka says. She continues to say her words slowly. She must be worried that Momo isn’t in a state to understand her very well. “Stand up for me so you can put it on when it get back.”

Momo stares at her, waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

(Kyoka has never even lifted a shoe to drop on Momo, but that’s not something that Momo’s brain understands, especially after talking to one of her parents on the phone.)

Kyoka stands, walks to the other side of the bathroom, and reappears with a white robe in hand. Upon her return, Momo remembers what she’s supposed to be doing, and hauls herself up onto unsteady feet. 

“Careful,” Kyoka murmurs as she reaches around Momo with wet sleeves to drape the robe over her shoulders, and after Momo summons the cooperation to put her arms through the sleeves, Kyoka ties the sash for her.

“You’re home,” Momo says stupidly. 

She’s supposed to be the person who takes care of others. Momo wants to make Kyoka feel safe, and part of that is not being a nervous wreck when Kyoka gets home after a long day. 

Momo summons all her strength and takes a breath and tries to smile. 

Kyoka smiles back, her lopsided grin just a little...off. Unsure. Her hands--the knuckles of one are bruised, the other sports two band-aids--move from the robe’s sash to Momo’s hands and squeeze, then tug.

“Let’s go warm you up,” Kyoka says, still cautious. 

Momo follows her out of the bathroom and to the bedroom, where one lamp is on and the corner of the covers on Momo’s side of the bed has already been turned down. 

When Momo has sat down on the edge of the bed, Kyoka clears her throat and asks quietly, gently, carefully for the second time, “Do I need to drive you to the emergency room?”

Momo understands little right now, but she does manage to grasp the full implications of the question this time. (There is no chance of fooling Kyoka into thinking this is just a routine bout of crying.)

She shakes her head, awash with the fear of her first public appearance since the collapsed buildings being of her, too-thin and pathetic and damp, stumbling into an emergency room. 

“Are you ready to say what happened, or should I not ask?”

Momo would trust her with anything, so she doesn’t even think before admitting, “I’m on exten-tended leave because I caused a civilian casualty.” Momo hiccups. Her voice is nearly gone, reduced to a rasp. She clears her throat, but it doesn’t help. “My dad called and said. I need to be better.”

“Fuck him,” Kyoka says right away. This is a predictable response. “And fuck your agency. Why didn’t they call me instead of him?”

“We’re not married.” Momo rubs at her eyes with the base of her right palm, and makes a pitiful attempt at a laugh. 

“Yet,” amends Kyoka. 

Momo’s chest seizes with panic, and she stutters out, “I l-love you so much but if you propose to me right now—“

“No, of course not! Oh my god.” Kyoka laughs, nervous but approaching normalcy. “ No. Let’s. Uh. Let’s have some tea instead. It’ll help your stuffy nose.” 

Tea is a staple of any post-crying situation (granted, the roles are usually reversed), but the mention of it reminds Momo of another thing she’s stressed about.

“We can’t,” Momo says, and clamps her hand around Kyoka’s arm. Her paranoia overrides her general fear of making Kyoka even more worried than she already is. “You shouldn’t eat anything here.”

“I already did,” Kyoka says, like it’s not a big deal. “When I got home, I had a snack.”

Momo is too tired to cry, so her next sob of horror is just a vague shudder and a wheezy noise from her throat. 

“Oh no,” Kyoka says, alarmed. She turns and pulls her knees under her, facing Momo fully and putting her hands on Momo’s shoulders to ground her. “Momo, look at me. What is it?”

Momo hiccups, fear stabbing into her brain like the beginning of a migraine. “Neither of us were home for a while. Anybody could’ve gotten in here.”

Kyoka thinks about this for a moment before she finally understands Momo’s real concern. She lifts her hands to cup Momo’s face. Her hands are probably the only thing keeping Momo together when Kyoka says, “Momo. I ate something half an hour ago, and I’m okay.”

Right. Kyoka would’ve already been hurt if there was something wrong. 

(Kyoka would be choking on her own vomit in the kitchen while Momo uselessly broke down in the shower, unhearing-- )

Momo tips forward, her forehead meeting Kyoka’s collarbone and settling there. Kyoka’s hands leave her face and instead, her arms wrap around Momo’s back.

Kyoka, predictably, freezes for a moment while she figures out the best way to comfort Momo. She settles for running a hand over Momo’s wet hair, carding her fingers through the full length. “I’m guessing you didn’t eat when you got home.”

Momo shakes her head, embarrassed, and turns her eyes towards the wide window across the room, still resting her temple against Kyoka’s collarbone.

Of course Momo was just being dramatic about the food. 

( Momo gets something snuck into her drink only twice and she has the ego to think someone will try to do it again. )

After Momo’s breathing subsides into something more sustainable, Kyoka clears her throat. “It’s around five. Let me get you some tea and a snack, and then we can go to sleep, alright?”

Momo shrugs. She’s becoming more and more aware of her surroundings, and as Kyoka mentions what time it is, Momo manages to see past the bedroom window. Sun lightens the horizon already. 

Her brain still fuzzes with radio static as it struggles to follow Kyoka’s words, and her entire body has started to shiver. 

Instead of admitting either of these things, Momo pulls back and looks Kyoka in the eye, and what leaves her mouth is, “I can’t be a hero anymore.”

Kyoka’s eyebrows raise, and her mouth opens in surprise. 

“I know I’m a horrible person,” Momo admits. She’s so dehydrated. Her head throbs with congestion high in her cheekbones. “But I can’t do it anymore. I’m sorry.”

“Baby,” Kyoka says, gently taking hold of Momo’s elbows, “are you sure about the emergency room?”

Momo isn’t. But she nods anyway. Somewhere in her head, where she stores the knowledge she has from mental health first aid training and the many lectures she gave to spiraling classmates back in school, she knows that she’s overreacting because she’s tired and hungry and paranoid. If she just gets some sleep, she won’t have the first public meltdown of Class A. 

Kyoka’s ear jacks twitch. She watches Momo in silence, clearly unsure of how to continue. 

The admission isn’t an impulsive thought. Momo has been miserable since she debuted, and the only thing keeping her in the hero field has been the fear of everyone in her life abandoning her for giving up on the thing she’s trained for all her life. 

“I’ve noticed that you aren’t happy lately,” Kyoka finally says. Momo’s anxiety abates, a little, when it becomes clear that Kyoka isn’t going to shout at her for being selfish.  “Your asshole dad doesn’t help, either.”

Momo wants to laugh at that. She’s so congested that it hurts to snort, and she grimaces. 

“Sorry,” Kyoka says, probably having misinterpreted Momo’s sour expression as a reaction to Kyoka’s words. She leans up and kisses Momo between the eyebrows. “Let’s get some sleep and talk about it in the morning.” She glances to the side, to the rapidly-brightening sky out the window, and then amends, “Well, when we wake up later.” 

Momo nods numbly, and then tilts sideways and lands diagonally across the bed. 

“Me fuckin’ too,” Kyoka agrees. With a light pat on Momo’s knee, she stands up from the bed. “Lemme go grab you a snack, and then we can sleep for three days.”

“Okay,” Momo mumbles, turning her face into the pillow to block out the overhead light.  “I love you.”

Kyoka’s voice cracks into something sweeter and more heartfelt. She always manages to sound surprised when Momo says that to her. “I love you too,” she says. “Be right back.”

When Momo finally resurfaces into consciousness later that day, the blinds on her bedroom window are closed and the room is dim. She flops onto her back, squinting against every aching muscle in her body. The apartment is silent. Kyoka isn’t in bed with her, so she’s most likely working in the living room. Outside, the hum of traffic says that it’s either the lunchtime rush or the post-work traffic jam. Momo hasn’t ever slept all the way until evening before, so it must be around noon or one o’clock.

After several minutes of mindless staring at the ceiling, Momo begins the excruciating process of coaxing herself out of bed. It takes much longer than it should, but she has nowhere to be. 

Once she’s upright, she pulls on comfy clothes--always the first order of business. After spending too long tricking her brain into not worrying about matching colors or styles, Momo eventually staggers into the bathroom, where she is confronted by her discarded clothes from the previous night in a stack on the counter. She doesn’t attempt to toss them into the laundry hamper, because she’s focusing on just getting her teeth brushed, but she does note that her socks, on top of the pile, are bloodstained from the ripped blisters that her boots must have caused last night.

Her feet still hurt--they’re even a bit swollen now, judging by the sensation she experiences at every step--but it feels more manageable now that she’s not on the verge of crying. With a generally vacant feeling, she puts toothpaste on her toothbrush and scrubs at her teeth for three minutes.

Her reflection, when she gets up the courage to confront it, is haggard, but not as disastrous as she thought it would be. She fell asleep without managing her wet hair, so it’s oddly creased and not in prime straightening condition, but Momo’s not going anywhere today. The bags under her eyes aren’t scarily prominent--the only real issue is the ever-growing pangs in her stomach from lack of food. 

Momo spits into the sink, and then steels herself for breakfast. 

It’s more of a late lunch, judging by the fact it’s past two in the afternoon by the time she coaxes herself into making some eggs and toast for herself (what kind of villain would bother poisoning individual eggs, anyway?). Kyoka isn’t, in fact, out here--but it’s testament to how stable Momo is right now that this doesn’t inspire panic in her brain. 

She scarfs both down at a rate that would make her mother nauseous, and then, emboldened by the idea of getting away with such behavior without anyone finding out, Momo makes herself a second round of food. 

Days off, especially unplanned days off, never seem to have much of a purpose. Uninspired to do anything productive, Momo goes straight from washing her dishes to the bedroom again, where she tucks herself back under the covers and vows to sleep until Kyoka comes home.

This nap period is much shorter than intended. At the exact time Momo decides she is warm and cozy, she hears the front door unlock down the hall, then swing open. 

Keys jangle, and Kyoka’s heavy boots clunk on the ground. 

“Hello?” Momo calls, though her voice is almost gone and barely carries at all.

“Hey, my darling,” Kyoka calls back as she clunks through the house, “my stars, my everything. Sorry I wasn’t here when you woke up.” 

“It’s okay,” Momo says. She remains curled on the bed, blinking languidly at the window, because she can’t find the willpower to force herself to sit up. She listens to Kyoka clatter down the hall until she reaches the bedroom, at which point Momo turns over and finds Kyoka there, hesitating in the doorway.

For the first time since she woke up, anxiety wakes up in the back of Momo’s exhausted brain. Something about Kyoka’s energy is different.

“Baby.” Kyoka’s voice is halting, despite a clear attempt to remain casual. 

She’s about to break some bad news. 

Momo’s brain spins, attempting to deduce what the issue is. If it was something about a coworker, or their former classmates, Kyoka wouldn’t be this reserved. If it was something small like a cancellation of future plans, Kyoka wouldn’t look so nervous.

Kyoka still has the keys to her motorcycle in her hand. Her coat is still on.

She’s going to say she needs a break from you , Momo realizes, horrified. She struggles to sit up, fighting against her wobbly arms and tangled comforter to get upright.

“Don’t freak out,” Kyoka starts, “but I invited Midnight-sensei to come check on you.”

It’s not what Momo expected, but it’s almost equally unpleasant news. Momo snaps, in a voice that’s scared and angry, “What?”

Kyoka doesn’t recoil or step back, but she blinks hard enough that it’s almost a flinch, and the movement makes Momo want to crawl into the dumpster chute in the hallway and die. 

Moving almost gingerly, Kyoka averts her gaze and ruffles the shaggy hair that hits at the back of her neck. “Yeah,” she mutters, “I figured you wouldn’t be...crazy about it.”

“You didn’t ask me if it’d be okay.”

Kyoka frowns, and pulls her eyes back up to Momo’s, and her demeanor changes. Her shoulders set themselves in a familiar determined way, as if Momo’s obstinance has reminded her of why she did what she did. “I know.”

Momo clenches her jaw down against words that would be too mean for this setting. She hates being treated like she can’t be trusted with her own free will. 

Momo presses her fingers into her temples and mutters, “I can’t talk to her. She can’t see me like this.”

With a frustrated noise, Kyoka crosses her arms, only digging in her heels more. “You think I like seeing you like this?”

Momo stills, her eyes wide. 

Kyoka waves her hands, as if trying to smack her previous words out of the air. “That’s not what I meant. I can’t--I didn’t say that right. I just mean, I don’t want you to have to be this sad and overwhelmed and stressed out.” Kyoka’s voice wobbles. “You shouldn’t have to be like this! You think I want you to be miserable all the time, just because I can’t give you enough support to keep you going?”

Momo furrows her eyebrows. “What? No, that’s not the issue! You do so much for me. If I could just get a grip--”

“Momo,” Kyoka says, shutting her down, “you need to talk to somebody.”

Momo scowls, trying and failing not to feel petulant. 

“Just. Please. I know you trust Midnight-sensei.”

“Well, yes, but--”

Kyoka says, rushing through her words as if she can predict Momo’s anger, “Plus she’s waiting outside already so it would be rude not to invite her in.”

“She’s outside ?” Momo asks. She looks down at herself. Nothing about her appearance is ready to greet Kayama, the one person in her life she hasn’t disappointed yet. “Kyoka, I--”

“She doesn’t care what you look like. She’s worn the same outfit for fifteen years now.” Kyoka sets her keys down on the vanity, her ear jacks twitchy and jittery. “Please, you can be mad at me later, I promise.”

“I’m not--” Momo’s hair isn’t styled. “I need to get ready, I need to--”

“Okay,” Kyoka says. She nods, she smiles bracingly. “Okay. I know. You can take as much time as you need, okay? I’ll invite her into the living room and you can take your time.”

“Kyoka,” Momo pleads.

“Please do it for me,” Kyoka says. 

Beyond Kyoka’s typical makeup, honed to perfection after putting it on every morning for a year, she looks so tired. Unlike Momo, she masks her feelings terrifyingly well, but Momo can see that she’s just rushing for any port in a storm. She knows Momo so well, and she’s just trying to help. 

Momo breathes her anxiety out as best she can, and finally nods. 

It’s the least she can do, after what she’s made Kyoka put up with today. 

In her hero profile, Momo’s lowest statistic was resilience, as voted by her teachers at UA. She’s not doing much to prove them wrong as she finally walks out to the living room with all the dread of someone facing execution.

To Kyoka’s credit, she’d been right about Kayama’s wardrobe choices; she’s wearing roughly the same sweater-and-stretch pants combo she wore outside of work for all of Momo’s high school career. Grey hair is beginning to creep at her temples, and her makeup is less extreme than it used to be. But her smile is the same.

As she hears Momo enter the room, she turns his gaze from Kyoka and fixes it on Momo instead. “Hello there,” she greets, her dark eyes staring through her soul, “good to see you, kiddo.”

“It’s a pleasure to see you too,” Momo says. Her voice hasn’t become any less wrecked since greeting Kyoka, and she grimaces at the crackling nature of it. 

“Sorry,” Momo apologizes as a reflex. “I’m coming down with a bug.”

“Hmm,” says Kayama, and Kyoka makes about the same noise of skepticism. 

Momo shoots a look at Kyoka, who smiles benignly, apparently having overcome her fear of Momo being legitimately angry at her. 

“I have to be on a call for work,” Kyoka says breezily, and she rises from the couch to take her exit. “Thanks for coming to visit, Sensei.”

“Sure thing,” Kayama says warmly, while in contrast, her calculating eyes remain on Momo.

As she passes, Kyoka kisses Momo’s shoulder, the highest point she can reach, and then disappears into the hallway, leaving Momo alone in the doorway.

For a moment, Momo stands stock-still as she and Kayama regard each other. Then Momo forces her feet into motion and creakily makes her way to the armchair. 

“You two are so cute,” Kayama says, gesturing to Kyoka’s retreating back. “You gonna pop the question?”

“ Sensei, ” Momo snaps, face flushing with an emotion that, for the first time in a while, isn’t panic. Her voice cracks up an octave, making Kayama laugh at her.

“I’m allowed to ask! You never keep me up to date on these things, and I gotta know how my favorite class ends up.” 

“No you don’t,” Momo says. “There are other things to worry about. You have two jobs and a partner.”

“Hey, mean! ” Kayama says, indignant. 

Momo sits primly, studiously refusing to cave to Kayama’s gossip-mongering. She’s aware of Kayama’s tactics, but that doesn’t make them any less effective. Kayama’s the only adult who ever treated Momo like a normal student instead of born-leader-good-example-perfect-daughter, and Kayama doesn’t get upset when Momo dares jab back at her.

Kayama takes off her glasses to wipe them on the hem of her sweater. “But if you don’t wanna talk about that, I’m gonna ask you about something else. Kyoka said she came home and found you in a pretty bad place.”

Momo grimaces, and averts her gaze to the high windows of the living room. “I suppose so.”

“Hey, none of that.” Kayama leans forward, now laser-focused. “It’s just us here. What’s going on?”

Momo shrugs. Previously, she’d thought she was all cried out, but tears are threatening to rise in her throat all of a sudden as she admits, “Um. I don’t wanna be a hero anymore.”

“Okay.” Kayama is unfazed.

Surprised, Momo snaps her gaze to meet Kayama’s.

“I’m serious,” Kayama says. She smiles, unbothered by Momo’s revelation. “It’s your life. I can’t speak for everyone under the sun, but your lady friend and I just want you to be happy, and I know most of your classmates would feel the same way.”

“Don’t call her my lady friend,” Momo mutters, and swipes at her eyes with the inside of her wrist. 

“Oops, my bad. Your ‘lover,’ then.”

“ Stop. ”

Kayama laughs at her, but quickly falls serious again, eyebrows furrowing. “You can choose to change careers if you want. But what’s making you feel this way?”

Now that she’s sure she isn’t going to be yelled at, Momo’s posture slumps. She breaks and says, “Everything.”

Kayama raises her eyebrows. “Sounds like a lot. Let’s start smaller.”

“Um.” Momo winces at the verbal tic escaping her. She can never find the right balance between casual and obedient around adults, even Kayama. “Well, to start with, my publicity team told so many people where I live, so I can’t even leave the apartment anymore.”

“That’s illegal.”

“But, if I press charges, I’ll--”

“--You’ll be harder to hire, yeah. I know, but I’m still mad. What else? I won’t interrupt this time.” Kayama mimes zipping her mouth shut.

Momo digs deeper. “My costume is so ugly and it doesn’t feel like me but nobody will change it, and it doesn’t matter how hard I try because the second I mess up I get booted off of duty and I get shouted at, and, and I can’t even eat as much as I need for my quirk and I can’t sleep because I’m always worried that someone’s broken into my apartment because it happened before and nobody cared. ”

Kayama says, achingly understanding, “Oh, kiddo ,” and Momo dissolves into crying again. Kayama stands and walks over, crouches, and enfolds Momo into an unpracticed hug, and Momo holds on in a similarly uncomfortable-but-still-comforting way.

“No wonder you’re having a hard time,” Kayama says, slowly rocking Momo back and forth. “Can I ask you about one more thing? And then I’ll stop making you rehash things when you’re already tired.”

“Okay,” Momo says, and makes a gross sniffly wet noise.

“Do not get snot on my sweater, I’m not Aizawa and I don’t like that.” Kayama still doesn’t let go, still continues rocking Momo back and forth despite her words. “But I wanted to ask--Kyoka said you thought your food was poisoned yesterday. Do you get scared about that a lot?”

“Um,” Momo says. “Yeah, I guess. Especially after I got roofied a couple times earlier this year.”

“ Kid ,” Kayama says, horrified.

“Nothing happened,” Momo mumbles. “I had friends with me.” She pushes her nose into Kayama’s shoulder, refusing to back off when Kayama huffs in protest. “I just get paranoid.”

“What else do you get paranoid about?”

“I don’t know.” Momo’s never admitted this to anyone. She’s sure Kyoka’s noticed Momo’s rampages of checking locks, but Kyoka’s never asked about it. In high school, Kyoka also never asked Momo about her endless loops of folding and re-folding clothes--Kyoka just accepts Momo as she is, which is both a good and a bad thing. “A lot.”

“Hm. Okay. Thank you for telling me.” Kayama pulls back, releasing her awkward grip around Momo’s shoulders. Her face is set in worried lines, and she lifts her hand to the side of Momo’s face and swipes tears away with her thumb. It’s an uncharacteristically maternal sort of gesture, but Momo doesn’t comment because saying so would make Kayama have a crisis. “Were you just going to take all of this on your own?”

“I’m sorry,” Momo tries, but Kayama shakes her head.

“Don’t apologize for that. I’m just asking.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Momo winces, and Kayama huffs part of a laugh at that. “I figured it was this hard for everyone else too.”

Kayama, for once, does not have a retort for that. She just has a sad nod and a knowing expression that says she understands.

After giving Momo a minute or two to pull herself together and stop clinging to Kayama’s shoulders like she’s the parent Momo needs right now, Kayama sits back on her heels and regards Momo with a bracing look. “Okay, bigshot. You can choose to do whatever you want, but let’s hold out on making career decisions until we’ve fixed what we can. I can send you my agent’s number, and she can start whipping your agency’s policies into shape. If your father can’t be trusted to take care of you, I will.”

Momo nods, and sniffles again, not even having the energy to defend her dad.

“I’m not saying this because I think you’re crazy,” Kayama says as a preamble, and then takes the plunge, “but you should talk to a professional. Most heroes who do turn out a lot more well-adjusted.”

“All Might never had a therapist.”

“You think he was well-adjusted?” Kayama throws her head back and laughs. “ Honey. I can send you the number for mine, okay? And in the meantime, I’m going to do a little work of my own to see if I can make anything easier for you.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

Kayama says, “Shush,” and shakes her head. “I want to. I promised I’d have your back, and the backs of all the girls in your class. Plus Jirou, who said to stop calling her a girl. I love her grumpy little face.”

“I do too.”

“Glad we can agree on that.” Kayama pushes her hands onto Momo’s knees to leverage herself into a standing position. Her knees crack as she goes, and she grimaces theatrically at the sound. “ God. Okay. That was enough talking for today, in my opinion. I’ll get out of your hair so you can get back to resting.”

Momo stands and follows Kayama out to the entry hall, where the latter has already trapped Kyoka in a hug. With her eyes peeking over Kayama’s shoulder, Kyoka rolls her eyes at Momo while Kayama whispers something (which, judging by Kayama’s priorities in life, is probably something about how Kyoka should propose soon). 

“I’ll talk to you two soon!” Kayama chirps at full volume, as Kyoka extracts herself from the hug. Kayama glances over her shoulder and beams at Momo. “Get some rest, kid. And answer your phone when I call you tomorrow.”

“Okay?” Momo says, nonplussed.

Kayama leans over, and pats Momo’s face, and then Kyoka’s face with a little more force, and then she sashays out of the apartment, closing the door behind herself. 

Kyoka walks on eggshells around Momo for all of half an hour, creeping around like she’s worried Momo needs time to herself to recuperate. Momo gets tired of this behavior pretty quickly, and corners Kyoka in the kitchen when Kyoka sneaks in there to make a dinnertime smoothie. 

Momo takes a seat at the kitchen island, meeting Kyoka’s startled jump with a neutral smile, and begins to untangle her hair from its hastily constructed bun. Kyoka hesitates before going back to her smoothie, shoving baby spinach into the blender and then turning to find her weird vegan milk in the back of the fridge. 

It takes several minutes for Momo to work on her hair, but it takes Kyoka longer to find a clean cup measurer to get her smoothie ratio exactly right. Both of them are stalling. 

Eventually, Momo is the one who gets antsy in the quiet, and she asks, “What are you thinking about?”

“Um, I was gonna.” Kyoka gestures jerkily with the spoon she’s using to shove ice to the bottom of the blender where it’ll break up better. “I was gonna tell you I’m thinking about going to therapy too. I’m not just trying to, uh, bully you into doing it by yourself.”

“Really?” Momo asks, eyebrows raised. “But you aren’t...I mean, you just aren’t. Messed up. Like me.”

Kyoka wrinkles her nose up, and slows down her movements as she thinks about Momo’s response. “What do you mean by that?”

Momo gestures vaguely, uncomfortable with having her words scrutinized. “I mean. My brain is weird. Yours isn’t.”

“My brain is plenty weird.” Kyoka sticks her tongue out. “I have like, mad depression. You know that.”

“Oh. Yeah, I know. But you aren’t...crazy.”

Kyoka stops preparing her smoothie. She sets the blender down and turns to face Momo fully, and Momo has the distinct feeling that she’s said something wrong. 

“Do you think you’re crazy?” Kyoka asks.

There’s a right answer, but Momo isn’t sure what it is. In theory, she knows about the societally constructed idea of insanity and how it isn’t something to be feared. But she also remembers her mother, irritably smacking Momo’s hand away from the lock on the front door and snapping “ Stop acting crazy. Nobody’s going to love you if you’re like this.”

She says, hesitant, “...No.”

While occupying her hands again with putting the blender cup into the base of the appliance, Kyoka frowns. “I know you feel like your brain isn’t yours sometimes. And if you feel like your circumstances are driving you off the deep end, that probably isn’t helping.”

Momo’s fingernails have settled on her scraped knuckles and are beginning to pick at the scabs there. “But normal people don’t have weird hangups like me--”

Kyoka presses the button on the blender, cutting Momo off with the loud scraping noise of her ice getting crunched up.

After a few moments, Kyoka flips the machine off, and Momo picks up where she left off. “--And they don’t get paranoid like I do either, so--”

Kyoka presses the button on the blender again. Momo falls into annoyed silence, glaring as Kyoka watches her with an innocuous, bland smile. 

The blender turns off again. Before Momo can pick up her last sentence, Kyoka asks, “Do you think Ochako is crazy for hoarding food?”

“What? No,” Momo says, pushed off-balance for a moment from the non-sequitur. 

Without missing a beat, Kyoka follows up with, “Because it’s a learned habit from her upbringing and she’s just doing what she has to to feel secure, right?”

Momo sees the trick that Kyoka has played. She lets out a breath of defeat and says, “Yeah.”

Kyoka moves around the kitchen counter, abandoning her snack entirely, and keeps walking until she’s close enough to pull Momo into a hug. As soon as Momo opens her arms to accept the embrace, Kyoka tucks her head under Momo’s chin, and Momo feels her start to drift her hand over Momo’s back. 

“Thanks for dealing with me today,” Momo finally says, eyes half-closed. 

“That wasn’t what it was. I should be thanking you , dummy. I didn’t realize how bad things were getting, so I kind of went overboard with trying to fix things.” Kyoka begins to drum lightly on Momo’s back, an arrhythmic beat that doesn’t mean anything but makes Momo smile. “Do you wanna get takeout for dinner? I’ll have Kami order it and drop it off, he owes me a million favors.”

The implication there is nobody’s gonna poison Kaminari, and it makes Momo huff a laugh into Kyoka’s shoulder. “That sounds nice.”

“Bet.” Kyoka kisses Momo’s forehead. “I’ll text him. Are you gonna head back to bed?”

Momo yawns. “Yeah.” Returning to sleep is the only thing she’s good for right now, but she’s not too far gone to keep herself from tugging on Kyoka’s sleeve and saying, “Come with me.”

Predictably, Kyoka’s cheeks flush pink, and she rolls her eyes in an uninterested way that’s anything but convincing. “Fine. Let’s go.”

(Kaminari has to wake the two of them up an hour later by buzzing into their apartment fifty times and whining through the intercom until Kyoka careens out of bed, swearing, and runs to press the button to let him in.)

Momo doesn’t sleep well, despite the cathartic day she’s had. In the middle of the night, she stumbles around the house in a half-asleep daze and finds herself at the front door, locking and re-locking and re-re-locking until she’s frustrated enough to cry. Eventually, the itch is scratched, and she shuffles to the couch and passes out for the rest of the night.

When she wakes up, Kyoka is half on top of her, snoring into Momo’s ear and acting like a weighted blanket. Momo blinks sleepily at the sunrise, and rests in uncertain peace until her phone starts ringing at full volume, scaring Kyoka so badly that Kyoka falls onto the floor, banging her elbow on the coffee table.

“Ow, fuck. Ugh, what time is it?” Kyoka groans, rubbing her eyes.

“Um,” Momo says, and digs her phone out. The caller is Kayama, who apparently doesn’t know what constitutes a polite time to call , because it’s seven in the morning. “Seven.”

“Shit. I have patrol.” Kyoka rolls over so she can get her knees underneath her, and from there she stands and takes uneven, meandering steps towards the kitchen. “Shut your phone up.”

“Good morning to you, sunshine,” Momo calls after her, and she smiles at Kyoka’s responding middle finger, and then she swipes to answer Kayama’s call.

“Good morning!” Kayama exclaims.

Momo says, “Sensei, I was asleep .”

“Oops!” Kayama trills. She’s so fucking annoying, is the thought that creeps through Momo’s exhausted brain, and then she’s scandalized with herself for thinking something so disrespectful. “Well, I’ll make this quick.”

“What is it,” Momo says, still blinking sleep away.

“Well, little old me was asking around,” Kayama says playfully, making a show of what should be a very straightforward call. “And. I talked to our dearest friend, Nedzu, and he let me know there’s going to be an assistant teaching position open here next year.”

Momo’s heart stops, and all previous resentment drains away. She rubs her eyes and sits up and says, “Sensei, no. ”

“Sensei, yes!” Kayama says. “I’m inviting you to apply! With glowing references from me and Eraserhead, the process will be a breeze for you. And the best part is that your agency won’t be able to encroach on union hours.”

“Oh my god,” Momo says, feeling a weird, unfamiliar flicker of excitement. 

“Right?” Kayama’s voice softens out of her showy, obnoxious hero tone. She spends too much time around Present Mic, and the two of them amplify that trait off of each other to an unbearable extent. “Teaching at UA kept me from quitting hero work. That’s a secret you can’t tell anyone until my memoir is published posthumously. You don’t have to follow my lead, though--choose what’s good for you and your heart right now! There’ll be other UA positions.”

“This is…” Momo finds that there’s a smile on her face. She didn’t think she would have the opportunity to teach for another ten years, given the trajectory of her hero career, but a lot of the teachers at UA maintained a pro hero career while teaching. 

“Aw, we’ll be coworkers.” Kayama sniffles theatrically. “I’m so goddamn old.”

Momo giggles. “I could tell students you’re my older sister, if it’d make you feel better.”

“You’re the best child in the world,” Kayama tells her. It’s a little embarrassing that even this jokey praise makes Momo’s heart soar, but nobody is around so Momo slumps into an elated smile, her chin resting on her hand and her cheeks hurting. “Let me know what you decide! I can send you the paperwork.”

“Okay. I’ll get back to you,” Momo promises. Kayama makes obnoxious kissy noises into the receiver, and then hangs up, leaving Momo feeling like she’s floating.

Kyoka stomps back through, now in her hero costume and with her severe makeup marking her face, with a sloppily-constructed sandwich in one hand and her keys in the other. She stops in the doorway to the living room, and Momo beams at her.

“You’ll be okay here?” Kyoka asks.

“I’ll be okay here,” Momo confirms, and for the first time in a year it feels like she’s telling the truth.