ii.
At the Point of Ignition
"Let me back down in a place I know, hold that nail for the hammer stroke. Oh, this my weapon, this my loam, this my blood, this my bone. How do I wake my spirit cold? Most people die but others just go. She's still out there and the chasm grows, steady are the feet in the morning glow." -Tall Heights
Sensation was a curious concept; a thing Ochako had by turns both longed for and loathed depending on the context. It occurred to her now, as she rolled her paper-dry tongue in her mouth and flexed her fingers where they clasped together, bracing against Katsuki's back, that sensation was more of a thing that she recalled distantly rather than actively felt; like viewing the world through frosted glass. Hazy, indistinct, far removed from conscious effort.
Her feet were moving; one, agonizingly slow step at a time. Her quirk thrummed so harshly against her consciousness that even her mind began to feel like it was floating above her body; like watching herself take each step in a frame-by-frame slideshow; each slide cut apart by harsh sunlight and shifting shadows, stuttering as it burned up in the reel.
The trees shushed her with every breeze, and even though she couldn't hear it over the nothingness that clouded her floating self, she watched the waning daylight shift its dappled shadows and she recalled the sound that went with it in her memories. A comforting sort of Shhh that reminded her of her mother's soft features and having her bangs brushed from her eyes as she lay in her childhood bed.
Ochako vacated reality for an undetermined amount of time, processing nothing and thinking only vaguely of the weathered memories of her parents and her childhood home. Darting down hallways in sock-clad feet, screaming with laughter, a towel tied securely around her neck like a cape. Like tumbling down a rabbit hole in her mind Ochako felt herself slipping to a place that was quiet and peaceful, still.
Still as death, and perhaps just as cold.
Something sharp jammed into the bottom of her bare foot, and she realized with a moment of clarity that was suspended in a single beat of a hummingbird's wings, that she had stopped walking. Katsuki was slipping from her limp fingers and it took an outrageous amount of effort to step forward one more time, adjusting her hands against his heated skin to get a better hold.
One more step, just one more.
Katsuki's weighless bulk draped bonelessly against her back, and this was her single most important focal point as her steps carried them along the grass, cluttered roots, and dry expanses of dirt. His elbows curved over her shoulders, limp arms swaying with her sluggish movements, swinging from side to side in a gentle motion.
Ochako distracted herself from her own body's limits by watching his hands; they splayed out, fingers curling in on his palms in a relaxed position. She liked his hands, her brain informed her through the bubbling fog of her thoughts. His hands were the seat of his quirk, always hot to the touch and calloused from hard work. Katsuki often spoke just as loudly with his hands as he did with his mouth.
Ochako felt the ghost of his palms on her skin, memorized like a nuclear shadow scorched across her memory's surface. She couldn't ever possibly forget what his touch felt like now, not after all this.
Her entire world revolved around the points of contact between herself and her something-more-than-a-classmate, the brush of too-warm skin gritty with dirt or silky with sewer silt that crumbed and flaked as it dried. It was the only thing that kept her quirk from snapping that tenuous tether between her floating, foggy mind and her walking self. Katsuki's presence grounded her, gave purpose to her wandering thoughts and barely-there stream of consciousness.
She clung to her awareness of his touch like a drowning man to every break above the water's surface, gasping for air before plunging back down into frigid, numbing waters.
Keep walking.
Katsuki's heart beat.
Burning skin.
Labored breaths.
Katsuki's heart beat.
Keep walking, keep walking.
It went on like this for some unobtainable amount of time, until the already low sun set and the moon rose and all the golden warmth turned to cool grey light.
Something was touching her.
Something foriegn, something not Katsuki.
It made her uncomfortable, the way it tugged at her arm, trying to pull her to a stop.
Ochako shrugged the offending thing away, frustration rising like high tide and she used this momentary break in her mental fog to fuel her steps forward.
One more. Just beyond this stone, only one more. Just one more.
The foriegn sensation came back, and it was skin she realized distantly, or maybe gloves.
Hands, someone's hands.
Someone was touching her, pulling at her arm, hovering in her vision. Movement, blurry and indistinct in her burning eyes shuffling around her. Multiple figures at once, flashes of colour she didn't process, couldn't process right now.
There were murmurs in her ears overlapping each other, words skimming the surface of the ocean as she clawed her way from its dark depths. It didn't feel like she would ever break the surface. Nothing existed outside her bare feet, her next step, Katsuki's gently curled hands, the press of him against her back and the barely-there flutter of his eyelashes against her neck.
Someone was shouting. Maybe. She wasn't sure actually.
Ochako couldn't hear much, buried inside the grave of her mind and the damaged roar inside her ears.
The foreign hands became more insistent, tugging and yanking at her arms, stopping in front of her directly and forcing Ochako to teeter around the figure in a drunken haze. Stumbling steps, her only sure thing was her grip on the weightless boy on her back.
A sharp pain lanced down her spine when her burns were grazed, a lightning strike in the fog, and she felt more than heard her own whimpering from the vibrations in her chest.
More shouting, muffled in her ears.
The hands, or maybe a different pair of hands, shifted to Katsuki, and Ochako panicked.
It was a familiar feeling, easy to grasp in its astringent sting inside her chest, sitting neatly in the thrumming cavity around her heart. It cascaded with the swell of emotions that all seemed to fit together with a snap in these moments; panic, desperation, fear, pain, helplessness, rage.
So much rage.
"No!" Her scream pierced the stillness of her thoughts, or perhaps it was more a sob. Wet and slick in her throat, cutting clean trails out of the dirt down her cheeks.
Katsuki, par the course as of late, was the catalyst that drew the alarming, wildly monstrous thing from her brain and dragged it, unthinking, into the light. Her features twisted into something unfamiliar, hostility cut a ravenous line across her brow, narrowing her eyes to something sharp and unforgiving.
The movement around her stilled, a collected pause in limbs and bodies, every movement suddenly hesitant, everything except Ochako.
Because if her ordeal had taught her anything, it was act now or die.
Her body turned on the axis of a single heel, the ground beneath her churning and her muscles screaming in protest as she threw every inch of herself into her first, fingers curling in so tightly her nails bit into her palm.
She struck at red, intangible in shape and meaning. Just a lot of red. The moonlight tried to bleach the colour out, but it was too true of a crimson shade, a beacon in the pale.
It was a fleeting train of thought, distracting right up until her fist made contact with something that crunched. A wet snap, a cry of pain, the roar in her ears got louder with the pounding of her pulse and Ochako tripped backwards but managed to keep her feet underneath her with the fiercest snarl of teeth and lips and too much gum.
Stay away! She couldn't remember how to speak in a way that was on purpose. Her fists came up in an automatic defensive posture, and she was relieved to feel Katsuki shutter against her back, his fists gripping at her with burning skin to keep from coming loose in all his weightlessness.
Fuck off! An ugly sound tore out of her mouth, vicious at its core but edged with a shrillness that could only be fear.
Ochako was all feral animal, spit dripping off her chin and the promise of violence on the edge of her teeth, her humanity lost somewhere in her wake; probably resting in a pile of cloves with a bloody bag of shredded flesh. Or more likely that it had been lost even before that, it was hard to say. Maybe there had always been a part of her like this, buried under a mountain of social niceties and secure in the knowledge of safety that only a child could feel. But this was perhaps a consideration for another day.
There was another slowly lengthening moment of stillness, and the reaction confused her for a beat; no raining acid sludge or unforgiving stone trying to crush her neck.
It lasted a minute too long and she was distantly aware that many of the bodies began to back away, others telegraphing movements in slow motion. Ochako's eyes drooped dangerously low, fighting against her own fatigue and pain. She blinked against her last retreating surge of adrenaline that had given her a final boost. Her strength sputtered in her limbs, quaking down her spine with the effort it took her just to remain standing, to hold her quirk in place, to protect Katsuki when he was so much further gone than even her.
The figures stuttered about, movements slow and voices speaking in cadence she couldn't place.
The gloved hands came back, careful and purposeful, she felt the slide of them cup her filthy cheeks. She allowed this for lack of any ability to stop it as the large majority of her attention shifted back to keeping Katsuki from separating with her, and holding the dregs of her quirk in place on his mass. It was like grasping at steam, boiling hot, searing steam and it was all she could do to keep her quirk in place as it tried to burn her insides to something less than recognizable.
There was also that this person was touching her, which was more acceptable than touching Katsuki. She could feel herself heaving for breath, the rise and fall of her chest in tandem with the wet gasps of the boy on her back as he stirred from his boneless slump.
Her world filled with green.
Forest green and emerald green, soft and pliable and something. Something she couldn't quite recall. She thought it was probably important. Maybe. Maybe something. What? What was?
Thinking in actual sentences was excruciatingly hard.
"Ochako."
His voice came like a bullet, like a life raft, a break in the clouds, cutting straight and true, an arrow through the fog.
Katsuki's voice in her ear, whisper-quiet and barely-there.
"Its the fucking nerd." He slurred it out, his lips moving against her neck in a gentle contrast to his edged words. He struggled for breath, his limbs shaking against hers with sick, clammy hot skin.
Ochako blinked, trying to make a distinction out of the person who held her face in their hands.
"...Deku?" She managed to get out in a strangled whisper, the name rolled out of her mouth like a stone and fell heavy in the stillness of the air around them. Her quirk twanged with exhaustion like a plucked piano string, raveled too tight, the stretch of it was a pain she couldn't quantify.
The hands on her face shivered with movement, and it was a sluggish minute before she blinked the fog away enough to see his freckled face before her.
He was crying, features twisted into a tortured expression as his eyes seemed to drink in her form. His lips kept moving, and she wasn't sure if he was mumbling or if she just couldn't hear but there was no sound to accompany the movements.
"Deku." She realized, putting the correct memories to the word with a rush of relief so fierce and overpowering that it stole the light from her eyes and the breath from her lungs.
Ochako's knees buckled in a dead faint.
AN: Hey y'all, thanks for reading! What did you think?
I'm debating between either one, or two more chapters left so i guess we'll see.
This chapter was unbetaed.