Work Text:
When Izuku Midoriya returns to UA, he doesn’t leave his room for three whole days.
---
The rain outside batters against the windows at a punishing pace. They all thought that getting Midoriya back home would’ve changed things, made them better somehow, but it’s been over two days since he’s left his dorm room, with only his mother being permitted to enter.
The entire class has been antsy since. Bakugo paces the common rooms, stomping back and forth across the main level for so long he probably would have worn a track in the hardwood floor if Kirishima hadn’t come to stop him. Todoroki has made it up to Midoriya’s room multiple times, hand curled into a fist and inches from rapping on his door, before stopping himself. Ochako sits by herself on one of the couches, with Iida hovering close by.
Everyone has been giving her a wide berth since Midoriya returned. Her speech that day in the rain had set her apart from the others. They all knew that she cared for him, but the depth of her feelings hadn’t been clear until she was holding that megaphone, screaming at the mob, at the world, to let their hero rest. No one in class really knew how to approach her about it. Truthfully Ochako didn’t really know what to think of herself either.
Iida sets a steaming cup of tea on the table in front of her carefully.
“How are you doing?” he asks politely, though his eyes betray his concern for her.
She doesn’t know. Her impromptu speech had gotten through to the people, enough for Midoriya to finally be let inside UA’s fortress for some serious rest. She wishes she could talk to him, but doesn’t wish to bother him.
But she worries.
“He’s been alone for so long,” she says quietly, cupping her fingers around the teacup and letting its warmth radiate through her. “It can’t be good for him.”
She’ll never forget how he looked when they first found him. The ripped and bloodied clothes. The matted hair. His eyes. His bright, beautiful eyes looked so hopeless, like they’d never see the sun again. Ochako can’t imagine the pain he must have gone through for his eyes to look like that. He’d been carrying the weight of the whole world on his shoulders for weeks.
No.
The second he received One For All, the world literally had been placed upon his shoulders. The entire time she’d known him, he’d been silently suffering. The thought makes her stomach churn.
She looks to Iida.
“I’m going to see him.”
---
A light knock on the door startles Izuku from his restless sleep.
“Mom?” he calls out in the darkness of his room. He checks the clock on his side table. It’s midday, but the sun is trapped behind oppressing storm clouds that haven’t let up for days. His room is cloaked in shadows.
“No,” comes the response from the other side of the door. The voice is unmistakably female and laced with concern. Uraraka.
He grips his quilt, pulling it higher up his shoulders until it practically covers his head.
“I don’t want any visitors right now,” he says, trying to project his raspy voice.
He hears the click of the door, and a small rectangle of light illuminates the bit of floor he’s staring at before shrinking back to blackness.
“I know you don’t,” she says, her voice much closer now. “But I’m coming in anyway.”
He shouldn’t be surprised. Despite her polite and meek exterior, Uraraka’s always had a fire in her that made her act out boldly when she felt passionately about something. Izuku has seen it enough times to know that her strength is unshakeable. But right now Izuku feels like a weak breeze could knock him right over. Uraraka’s strength is intimidating in his sorry state.
He shifts, tugging the quilt higher.
He hears her soft footsteps approaching, stopping no more than a meter from his bedside. Her voice comes from a lower height than before, suggesting she’s sat down in front of him.
“How are you?”
She doesn’t use a voice. The voice of his mother, laced with concern and fear, which really meant I’m scared for you. The voice of Jeanist and Endeavor, impatient and twitchy, asking when will you be able to help us again. The voice of All Might, regretful and sad, begging please don’t hate me for the burden I’ve given you.
When Uraraka asks “How are you?” she means how are you?
Plain and simple.
“Fine,” Izuku says.
It couldn’t be further from the truth.
He’s repeated that word so often that it’s hard to even imagine giving another response. It’s all he has to offer right now, and it’s a boldfaced lie.
“Good,” she responds with assurance. “I’m glad to hear you’re feeling well.”
If Izuku had any strength left in him he’d scoff. The shell he’s become is so convincing that just a few days in a bed is enough to reassure people that he’s on his way to wellness again. He wishes he hadn’t done such a good job constructing this mask, because now he has no idea how to take it off.
He pulls his quilt down a few centimeters, enough for one eye to peak at her. Her arms are crossed, and she’s looking at him with a skeptical expression, one small eyebrow raised.
She’s lying too.
But her features fold into a soft smile when he finally makes eye contact with her.
“There you are,” she says quietly. But happily. Just seeing him makes her happy. He doesn’t get it.
She reaches out a hand, and Izuku can’t stop himself from flinching when it comes to rest on his head. She pauses for a moment, looking at him patiently, then begins to softly stroke the top his head, her hand gently pulling back his hair as she pets him. He doesn’t know what to make of it. Her gentle touch is so soothing that he sighs without thinking about it. Did Uraraka ever touch him this casually in the past? When was the last time he let someone even get this close to him? He tries to remember, but every gentle brush of her hand seems to be brushing away his frenzied thoughts as well.
His eyelids begin to flutter, feeling the pull of sleep again, but this time it doesn’t feel like a trap he’s falling into unwillingly. It’s warm and safe, and he hates himself a little less when the waves of exhaustion pull him under.
---
“How is he?” Iida asks her a few hours later.
Ochako stayed by his side long after he fell asleep, petting his hair with short, delicate strokes as he began to softly snore. There was so much she wanted to say to him, so much she needed to ask, but his bone-deep exhaustion was plain to see, even if only a fraction of his face was visible beneath his thick quilt. Ochako knew he needed rest; she was the one who advocated so passionately for it. But he needed others to lean on as well.
Ochako stands by the stove, watching the pot before her as it simmers. She puts a lid on it.
“Not good,” she answers honestly.
Iida’s shoulders slump. Most of the class has been hovering close to the kitchen, unsubtly eavesdropping on their conversation, and all of them do a poor job to hide their disappointment as well.
“I barely got to speak to him before he fell back asleep. I don’t think he’s slept in a bed or had a hot meal since he left us. I don’t want to push him too far.”
It’s obvious this is not what they wanted to hear. All of Midoriya’s friends have been so restless to see him again, to let him know how much they’ve missed him and worried for him, that it’s been a Herculean task to leave him be like his mother has asked them. Their collective hope that Ochako might have cured him of his ostracization after one short conversation was palpable the moment she left his room.
“He just needs time, guys.” Ochako turns, addressing the full class now.
Kirishima wrings his hands anxiously. “But what if he tries to go off on his own again? He’s definitely the type to sneak away when he thinks we aren’t paying attention.”
Ochako’s been secretly afraid of the exact same thing. She still has the note he left the day he decided to go off on his own to search for All For One. The pit inside her stomach from that day has never fully gone away.
But the class is looking to her for guidance. The weight of that megaphone has never left her hands.
She uses two thick towels to grip the handles of her simmering pot, placing it on the tray she’d prepared earlier. She looks to her class, her gaze determined.
“Then we make sure he’s cared for in the meantime.”
---
He still doesn’t give her explicit permission to enter, but Uraraka comes into his room anyway. Izuku can hear the whispers of other classmates just outside his door, but they’re cut off when Uraraka uses her foot to carefully shut the door behind her.
A comforting aroma envelopes the room.
“Are you hungry?” she asks.
Izuku’s grip on his quilt loosens. When he awoke from his nap, feeling more rested than he had in days, he was almost disappointed to find himself alone. Uraraka’s calming presence made him feel minutely lighter, and the shadows that greeted him upon waking were an unwelcome reminder of the loneliness he’d always have to shoulder. He was just allowing the darkness to seep back under his skin when she’d knocked on his door once more.
He lets his covers fall from his face completely. She still hasn’t turned the lights on in his room, but the pathetic excuse for daylight coming from his window is enough to illuminate the tray she’s holding, containing a large, covered pot, a bowl and spoon, and a cup of what looks like barley tea.
“You don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to, but I thought you might want a hot meal, so…” she trails off awkwardly.
It feels like it takes much more effort than required for Izuku to sit up, but he does it, trying not to visibly tremble in the process. How can he be the world’s greatest hero when he can barely pull himself into a seated position?
This seems to be the best he can do, so when he doesn’t make a move to go to the short table in the middle of the room, Uraraka makes do. Using her quirk, she disables the gravity on the tray and lets it hover before her, delicately removing the lid on her pot with a towel and scooping some of the contents into the bowl. She hands the bowl and spoon to him, making sure he has a good grip on both before releasing her quirk and holding onto the tray once more.
As she turns to go set the tray down a few paces away, Izuku peers at the meal before him.
Rice porridge.
The will to smile left him a long time ago, but there’s a faint trace of amusement in his voice when he calls out, “You know I’m not actually sick, right?”
She turns to him, looking just as shocked as he feels that he actually spoke. She covers it up a second later, looking bashful and silly as she rubs the back of her head.
“I know, it’s just I don’t know how to cook much else,” she says with a shy smile.
“What did you eat when you lived on your own, before the dorms?” he asks, concerned.
Uraraka returns to her place before his bed, on the floor. “Mostly convenience store meals.”
Izuku doesn’t like to hear that. No wonder she always devoured Lunch Rush’s food in the cafeteria. He wishes he would have known. He could have brought her meals from home.
“But I learned how to make rice porridge when I was little,” she continues. “My mom was ill once and couldn’t work with my dad. I knew she was stressed about how we were going to pay the bills that month, and I wanted to help her get better. I looked up the recipe and made it for her myself.” Her smile is wistful, looking back on her past. “I’m sure it tasted terrible. I undercooked the rice; I remember my mom’s first bite making a crunching sound,” she said with a laugh. “But she said she felt better after eating it. It made me feel so good to help her, so it was a dish I practiced making a lot.”
Izuku looks down at the bowl in his hands. The rice looks fluffy and soft, the smell of egg and scallions is enough to make Izuku’s mouth water. He scoops up a bite, closing his eyes and letting it sit in his mouth for a moment before swallowing.
“Not crunchy,” he parses after a moment.
Uraraka laughs, and even with storm clouds outside churning on, his room lights up from the sound of it.
“I’m glad to hear that!”
---
He finishes his bowl without saying much else, though Ochako is silently gratified by the little contented hums he makes after every bite. By the time his spoon is scraping the bottom of the bare bowl, he’s looking better. Less animal. Less sad.
“Could I…” his rough voice sounds different than it did earlier too. Softer. Lighter. Like a memory of his former self. “Could I have more?”
Uraraka perks up in surprise. “Oh! Yes, of course, hold on!”
She turns to grab the ceramic pot the rest of the porridge is in, not thinking about how hot it still is. When her hands make hasty contact with the handles on either side, she hisses and drops it the few centimeters back onto the try.
“Are you okay?” he asks quickly.
Pain sings through the skin of her palms but she ignores it, wrapping her hands in towels and grabbing the pot once more.
“I’m fine. Don’t worry. That was stupid of me,” she says with an embarrassed grin.
She brings the pot over and holds it out for him to scoop more rice porridge into his bowl. Reluctantly, he does. But his eyes never leave her wrapped hands. Ochako curses herself for being so dimwitted. For making him think of her when she’s been trying so hard to get him to care for himself.
When she returns to her place, cross-legged on the floor, he’s set down his bowl and is holding out a hand.
“Did you want your tea?” she asks, confused.
But Midoriya reaches out and grips her wrist lightly, pulling her hand towards him so he can peer at it in the dim light of his room.
There’s a smooth, pink mark on her palm from the heat of the stone pot burning her. She silently curses herself again.
“It’s nothing, Deku. I swear. I’m fine.”
Neither of them needs to mention that she sounds a lot like him.
---
Izuku finishes his second bowl in silence. He can tell Uraraka is cross with herself. He could feel the mood she had created for them evaporate the moment the pot clanked back onto the tray, and he sadly doesn’t have it in him to try and recreate that atmosphere.
The light pink mark on her palm wasn’t the only thing to concern him. When he pulled her hand to him, he could see the newly minted scratches and still-healing scars covering her hands and arms that weren’t there the last time he saw her. He wonders what she must have gone through to get so banged up. The villains she might have fought while he wasn’t around. The rescues she led with her amazing quirk.
He’s missed so much since he’s been gone.
“How have you been, Uraraka?” he asks, looking at her hands once more.
Silence stretches between them.
“No.”
Izuku looks up, blinking in confusion. Uraraka looks…angry? “No?”
Even from where she sits on the floor, her presence feels looming. “No, you’re not allowed to ask me that. You don’t get fret over me. You don’t get to think about other people right now. I know it’s your nature to care for others, but right now you are in no shape to be doing so. So don’t ask me how I’ve been, and don’t think about me.”
“Uraraka—”
“I’m serious, Deku!” her outburst has him jump a little bit. Her hands are gripped in tight fists, despite her burnt palms. “The more you think of others, the more it causes you pain. It’s why you left, isn’t it?”
This makes him go still. Leaving was such an easy decision he barely remembers making it. When he got the news that All For One escaped Tartarus, Izuku knew he couldn’t remain at UA, putting the people he loved in danger. Shigaraki would come for him. All For One would come for him. It was the most logical conclusion to leave this place behind, to meet danger head on, as far away from his friends and family as he could get. So no one else would get hurt.
When he meets her gaze again, her eyes are misty. “You thought that we’d be in danger because of you, so you left. And now you’re like this,” she says with a sniff, gesturing to his whole sorry state.
Shameful. Weak. Afraid.
But he remembers Uraraka standing on top of that building, megaphone in hand as she shouted to the mob. Those weren’t the words she’d used to describe him to the people who wanted so badly to demonize him.
He had special power, but he wasn’t special. While all the other heroes saw him as the lynchpin for their success, the world was reminded that in the end he was just a high schooler. A boy trying to find his way, the same as everyone else.
In that moment, Uraraka felt like the only person who saw him for who he truly was.
But she’d always been that way, hadn’t she? Lifting him up whenever he was falling. She’d been doing it since the moment they met.
Tears bead at the corner of his eyes as well. Ever since her impassioned speech on the roof of the school, when those first tears fell, part of him felt like he may never stop crying.
Uraraka’s voice softens when she sees him crying again.
“I can’t be another person who brings you pain, okay? So don’t worry about how we’ve been faring without you. It doesn’t matter, because you’re home now. That’s all I ever wanted.” She wipes her eyes with the back of her hands and corrects herself. “All any of us ever wanted.”
She sniffs once more but looks just as resolved as she did that day. The fire in her eyes that’s always been there shines brightly, illuminating even the darkest corners of his heart.
She rests her fists on her hips. “Now. How are you doing?”
Her caring words mixed with such a hardened expression have an unexpected laugh escaping from him. It’s so Uraraka.
He can’t help but answer honestly.
---
Ochako leaves Midoriya’s room a few hours later.
Iida and Todoroki meet with her the second she makes it off the elevator, rushing to her side.
“How is he?” they ask immediately, chomping at the bit out of concern for their friend. Uraraka sets down her tray on the counter, taking the now-empty pot and putting it in the sink.
“Now. How are you doing?” she’d asked him forcefully.
She hadn’t expected his watery laugh, nor had she expected him to finally tell her how he felt.
“Terrible,” he’d said, looking down at his lap. But he looked so relieved to say it. Even the shape of it on his mouth left him almost looking like he was smiling. Hope unfurled in her heart like a flower in bloom.
It had been slow-going, but between bites of cooling porridge and sips of barley tea she finally got Midoriya to open up. His feelings still seemed too complicated to fully explain, too raw. So they stuck with what was simple. The stress of wielding One For All. The pressure of feeling like he wasn’t enough. The fear of more people getting hurt.
Ochako already knew most of these things— she could guess as much just from a single look at him—but none of that was the point. Midoriya deserved to say it himself, and she was honored to be able to share some of that weight with him. To give him permission to think of himself just as much as he cared for others.
He seemed better for it too, by the end. As she turned to go, he’d stopped her, taking a moment to twist his misshapen fingers with hers, their scarred palms touching.
“Thank you,” he’d murmured, before allowing her to leave.
Iida and Todoroki look at her expectantly. Waiting to see how their fallen hero was faring. If he’d be able to rise again.
How is he?
A small smile lifts the corners of Uraraka’s lips.
“Better.”
---
On the third day since Izuku Midoriya’s return to UA, he emerges from his bedroom. His friends greet him with open arms.