The Effects of Special Relativity on Sublimation

by DiamondNinja914

When the Todoroki and Yaoyorozu families arrange to marry their children off to strangers, the two students seek alternative solutions. Dealing with Endeavor, bratty basic white boys, teachers who assume the worst, and overly nosy classmates could eventually bring two people together pretty darn well. Very long, definitely TodoMomo endgame. T- language, vague suggestive comments.

5. Antimony

TUESDAY, 11:37 AM

Momo almost didn't notice the cold. The pain in her abdomen and the lack of oxygen took priority.

She tried leaking salt from her skin, and while that gave her some wiggle room, the melted ice was still liquid. It hurt to move; something was badly wrong with her ribs.

Something was flashing in front of her. She tried to breathe but couldn't.

Momo tried to make out whatever was causing the lights, and thought she might have seen Todoroki, but her eyes started watering and she couldn't rub them.

She tried inhaling again, but the gas that was left was pretty much just carbon dioxide. She cleared her head and visualized the reaction that would leave her with more breathable air, but she couldn't quite think of it. Her head was getting fuzzy and her ribs were throbbing too much. Her fingers buzzed as circulation to them started to shut down.

No! She thought, fighting for consciousness. Had to stay alert. Had to find a way to breathe.

She pushed a metal spike out of her front and back through the cracks in the ice around her stomach. It didn't seem to be doing much, so she pushed harder.

It didn't make sense, but she tried to feel for the weak spots in the ice she could strain with the metal, and push there.

She heard a crack. It seemed to have worked.

She tried to breathe, but couldn't. It hadn't been enough.

What hadn't been enough?

There were lights coming from the side of her now, and the ice was shaking. It hurt her ribs more. The lights were too bright, so she shut her eyes. Couldn't they just go away?

She was just getting comfortable when the world collapsed. The ice rushed away from her, and someone heated the water that was left in pools around her limbs. The rebar in her stomach was shoved painfully to the side by her fall, and her own metal spikes clattered onto the floor.

"ARE YOU OKAY?!" came a voice she barely recognized.

She groaned. Someone tapped her shoulder twice and yelled again.

"She's unresponsive, but she's breathing. We need to get her out of here."

"We can't move her until we have a stretcher," came a voice from above her head. The voice's hands rolled her onto her side, releasing the pressure from the rebar. One of the hands moved to the juncture between her head and her neck. It was warm, warmer than hands usually were. The heat spread. It felt nice.

"Well she sure as fuck can't stay here!"

There was a swarm of footsteps. A set of nurses' slacks were in front of her eyes. There was a countdown from three, and she was lifted into the air. Lights started flashing. They were moving.

The warm hand moved from her neck. They were going too fast. Instead, it grabbed her own hands and held tight.

Before she lost consciousness, feeling returned.

FOUR WEEKS AGO

"So that's what's been going on," Todoroki said as he finished recounting the events of the last week. "What do you think?"

"Well, I…" Rei started, looking bewildered. She wrung her hands. "It's a lot."

Todoroki stood up to reheat the tea and pour some for her, so she had time to collect her thoughts.

"I'm proud of you," she said. "You learned from watching me and your father that you don't want to be like us, and you're trying to help someone else. I think that's very admirable."

Despite the kindness of her words, she looked upset.

"But?" he asked.

"But you shouldn't have to do this. You're… much more emotionally mature than I was at your age, but you're three years younger than we were. I don't like that this came up in the first place."

"Yeah, but that's why we did this. Yaoyorozu and I get to keep going to school like normal, and her parents get what they want, and Endeavor stops bugging me. Everybody's happy."

It was the weekend following the dinner with Momo's family. He'd been at the height of confidence that they'd made the right decisions at every turn, and that nothing could possibly go awry.

"What are you going to do about the fact that her parents want you to run their business? I thought you were trying to be a hero." She took a sip of her tea.

He frowned. "I don't know yet. But you're right, I'm definitely not doing that. No way in hell."

"Please think about it. For me. I don't want this to spiral out of your control." She still looked worried.

"I will. I'll be okay, Mom."

"I know." Rei smiled at him, but it didn't reach her eyes.

"I just… I couldn't do nothing when I found out. She's the kind of person who will force herself to make things work. She learned English for him, and kept talking about ways that it might not fall apart if she moved to America." He paused, looking for a way to convince her that he had to be the one to interfere. "But I know her. She bottles things up, blames herself, doesn't ask for help. It would have been bad."

His mother tried to hide a slight change in her expression. Amusement? Something darker.

"What?" he asked.

He was fairly sure that her need to control her reactions was a lingering side effect of her marriage to his father.

"Are you going to bring her here?" she asked.

Todoroki blinked. "Sure, I can. I don't know when that will happen, but at some point."

She smiled, more genuinely now. "I hope it can be soon. I don't know much about your classmates. You've told me things but sometimes it's hard to put names to faces."

She hadn't watched the sports festival as it was happening. She'd seen some clips later, but at the time, her doctor hadn't thought it was for the best.

"Did you see that really bad hairspray commercial that had Uwabami in it a few months ago? It came on pretty often."

Rei looked up and to the side, trying to place what he was referring to. "It rings a bell, but I'm not quite remembering."

He sucked in an uncertain breath. "Then this is probably not the right clip to show you. She was in it, as an intern under Uwabami, but they made her look really different. Um."

"Just show me," she said, her eyes alight with curiosity. "Now I can't place the commercial and it'll keep bothering me."

Realizing he'd probably made a mistake, he pulled out his phone, muted it, and played the commercial.

"Well, that's Yaoyorozu," he said, pointing to the screen, "but she looks pretty different in person. She actually despises this commercial."

His mother was transfixed. "Those poor girls," she said. "When I was a skater, they didn't even make me show that much skin."

He debated whether to tell her now or later that that was how Momo usually dressed.

"She's got a skin-based quirk. She can't really use it if she wears a lot of clothes," he said, and winced as he continued. "Otherwise, her clothes would just fall off."

His mother suppressed a laugh. She covered her mouth with her hand, but it was clear what she was thinking.

He sighed. "I know what this looks like. But she's actually very intelligent, and a very capable fighter. She's the other recommended student in my class. I know her fairly well and I am, uh, used to her… manner of dress."

"How do your classmates treat her?" Rei still seemed to be concerned for Momo's well-being.

Todoroki grimaced. "Most of the class doesn't mention it. But a couple of the guys are really immature. There's one in particular whom I'm expecting the girls will beat up and dump in a ditch at some point, and then the others will probably stop too. Other than that, though, everybody likes her. She's the class representative. Well, vice representative, and she's got better battle sense than the actual rep so everybody listens to her in an emergency. I actually suspect that might be a side effect of her quirk. She can… extrude, I think is the word? Any item that she completely understands the makeup of if she thinks about the entire structure at once. So, when Midoriya analyzes a situation, he can figure out how to defeat anyone or use his surroundings, but he doesn't perceive all of the environment and all of the problems at once the way she does. This gets in her way sometimes if she's fighting because she'll slow down to analyze, but I think by the time we graduate she'll have gotten past it, and besides I don't think she's trying to become a combat hero. She's more-"

He caught himself. He was rambling.

His mother looked at him and sipped her tea.

"Yeah," he said. "And I like her."

At first, he was confident. After a moment, he looked down into his tea.

Rei reached across the table and brushed away a few hairs that were sticking to his forehead. She looked amused, but he didn't feel like it was at his expense. "What are you going to do about it?"

"Mom…" he said. "Nothing. I'm not going to do anything."

It wasn't anything against her.

Rei's face fell. "Nothing? That doesn't sound like you. What happened to 'focus on the man whom you want to become?'"

He stood up from his seat facing her and started to pour another cup of tea. "That's exactly it, Mom. That's what I'm doing. I've got a lot to do to be that man. I've barely practiced using fire. I can't do anything that uses both my quirks. I've got the licensing reevaluation." He looked back at her. "And on top of that, her feelings on the m- well, me, are unknown."

It sounded weak even as he said it.

Rei stared at him until he had to look her in the eye. "Shouto, I think you're being uncharacteristically cold. You live at school. You spend most of the day with this girl, and the time you're spending training, she's there, isn't she? Your licensing reevaluation will be over soon. It seems to me like you could change the context of your relationship and not much else would be different."

Rei waited for him to say something. He sat down with her again, tea in hand. He folded his head onto his arms.

"I just don't know."

This was truly uncharted territory, down to the thoughts inside his own head.

"What are you afraid of?" She asked.

He looked at her with an expression that said, 'you're one to talk', but he didn't say it out loud. He waved his hand to gesture at the room, and let the hospital walls speak for him.

Family, relationships, love. All things he didn't have much experience with at all, if you didn't count the bad parts.

Rei nodded. "I understand. But let me ask you a question. Is being a great hero so important to you that you'll put everything and everyone else aside?"

This time, it was her turn to use the hospital walls.

TUESDAY, 12:08 PM

Everyone was used to Todoroki standing in the back corner and dealing with things on his own.

But it had always been a choice.

The blood bank had been blown up in the explosion, and the boys from classes 1-A and 1-B had been asked to donate blood in order of how likely they were to be a donor match for Momo. First by blood type, and then by quirk similarity. Todoroki had been sixth, not having a similar quirk but being minimally physically mutated such that his blood probably wouldn't have any unexpected properties like Mina's would. Now, thirty minutes after the hospital staff had wheeled an unconscious Momo into surgery, the students who had had blood drawn were sitting in a hallway along the hospital walls, drinking orange juice and trying not to pass out.

Todoroki grit his teeth against another wave of dizziness and nausea. He was exhausted, physically and mentally, and now that his adrenaline levels had gone down, he was fairly sure he'd pulled a muscle in his shoulder.

He ached all over, and every time he managed to forget about that fact, his thoughts returned to Momo.

"Have you guys heard anything?" came a small voice from down the corridor. Uraraka.

"All of the villains have been sent off. Aizawa's talking to the police. They've got some details about the gang, but not enough to really understand what they wanted," Kirishima said.

"What about Yaomomo?" Uraraka asked.

Todoroki shook his head. "No news."

No news was good news, he knew. Still, the inactivity was going to drive him mad, if the worry and weakness didn't.

He checked the time. Two and a half more hours of this, in the best case.

"You can hang out in here if you want," Tetsutetsu said. His blood wasn't compatible with Momo's, but he was sitting between Kendou and Awase, who had donated seventh and second. He'd been talking to Kirishima, who was sitting across from him. "We're all just kinda waiting around, though."

"Well, okay then." Uraraka stepped awkwardly between the outstretched feet and chairs and found a place on the far wall. She pulled out her phone to text someone, probably to update the other group of students.

"Did anybody actually see her?" Kirishima asked. "Everybody is acting really somber, but come on, it's Yaomomo."

There were several seconds before anyone responded.

"Not helpful," Todoroki said, and went back to looking at his orange juice. It was better than looking at his shoes, which had barely-dried blood on them.

He checked his phone again for something from Fuyumi. Nothing.

Theoretically, he could tell Kirishima what he wanted to know. He was pretty sure, if the situation was flipped, he'd be the person telling everyone there was no possible way anything could have happened to Momo. But he'd been the one to catch her, and it was her blood on his shoes. There had been several agonizing seconds where he hadn't seen any signs she was even alive.

He didn't really feel like being the person to explain just how bad she was.

"They're doing the best they can," Rikidou said. With a sugar-consuming quirk, he'd been the first to donate. "Mic said something about a robotic surgeon? I hear those are really good."

It was discouraging that that was the best anyone could come up with.

Todoroki, for once in his life, wanted to talk to the group. He wanted to tell them that he'd seen the horror, and that he'd had some sort of simultaneous emotional crisis and epiphany about who he was and what he wanted out of life, and he was barely treading water in the aftermath. He wanted to tell them that he'd be the first person to see her as soon as this was over, and they'd better not get in his way. He'd been fine with keeping the secret that there was something going on with the two of them, but that was when the something had been a sheet of paper his dad had had to sign for him. Now it was something else.

But she was their leader, too. And as much as he felt like he was the one who needed support the most, he knew it wasn't necessarily true.

"How you doing, man?" Tetsutetsu asked Awase, his voice low.

Awase looked positively miserable. He was pale and shaky, and his knuckles were white as he mindlessly squeezed his orange juice bottle. His expression was that of a small child, hurt and afraid.

"I can't believe this is happening again," Awase said. "I hate just sitting here."

Todoroki tilted his head, trying to remember what Awase would be referring to, but came up blank.

Uraraka quirked an eyebrow. "Again? What do you mean?"

"Awase carried Yaomomo out of the summer camp nightmare," Kendou said. She'd been the only girl tall enough and of the right blood type to donate. "When she was hospitalized for a couple of days."

"And he likes her," Tetsutetsu said. Todoroki looked up in surprise.

He supposed he shouldn't be that surprised. Him, Steve, and you could also maybe count Mineta had all been interested at some point or another, and the unbalanced gender ratio at UA didn't help matters.

Awase shot Tetsutetsu a look.

"It's not a secret," Tetsutetsu said. "Didn't think you'd mind."

Awase sighed wearily. "Yeah, you're right. I haven't been keeping it a secret, but, it's not about that. This is serious."

Almost everyone sitting around the hallway looked at Awase. Someone coughed.

Awase looked at his hands. "Okay, maybe it kinda is about that."

"You should talk to her!" Kirishima said. "If you're this wound up about it, you've gotta say something. It's manly to be open, and honest. Plus, it's eating at you."

Awase glanced up at Kirishima, then unfurled from his fetal position to face him. "Eh, I don't really know her well enough yet. She's pretty and cool, but we've only actually talked a couple of times. It'd be weird."

Uraraka looked conflicted, like she wanted to say something but couldn't. She spoke carefully.

"You should definitely talk to her about this." She paused. "I mean, you don't even know if she's with anybody else or anything like that."

Awase looked contemplative.

Iida stepped in through the same door Uraraka had come through, rubbing his arm, and chose an open seat near the two of them. Seeing them sitting on the floor, he gave them a stern look, but didn't say anything.

Todoroki briefly considered pulling Iida aside and venting at him, but Iida wasn't the right choice for that kind of thing. And God knew Midoriya had enough on his plate.

The fact was, when he wanted to just talk to someone, he talked to Momo. And, obviously, she wasn't around.

Tetsutetsu put a hand on his chin, thinking. He turned to look at Todoroki. "Yo, Todoroki. You aren't gonna fight Awase if he tries to ask out Yaomomo, are you?

Todoroki sighed.

Through the whole exchange, Todoroki had been waiting for a wave of blinding jealousy to crash into him, to knock him over, but it hadn't come.

Today had been one of the longest days of his life, and it was barely noon. The two people he cared most about in the world were in mortal peril, and he didn't know when he'd receive the slightest bit of news about either of them. He couldn't be near them, or know what was happening.

He reached into his mental well for a single shit to give about Yosetsu Awase's feelings, and came up dry. They had explicitly agreed to not interfere with each other's dating lives, and if there was anything he wouldn't do while she was out of commission and fighting for her life, it was break a promise.

"No," he said. "Knock yourself out."

Awase nodded.

"You don't have to do anything formal," Kirishima said encouragingly. "Just ask if she wants to hang out some time, study, get coffee. You'll never know anything more about her if you don't try to spend time with her, since you're not in our class."

"Yeah," Awase nodded to himself, psyching himself up. "I'll talk to her, and I'll ask her if she wants to hang out sometime. After-"

He cut himself off.

After this was over, assuming she lived.

Awase visibly deflated at the thought, and he and Todoroki locked eyes for a moment.

Todoroki briefly wondered if he had the same helpless look on his face.

He wondered how many more times they'd do this, sitting around waiting to find out whether someone they loved had died. Whether it would make him better or worse, if it was still happening when they were adults. Wondered if it was this time, or the next time, or the next time when everything didn't turn out all right.

For that moment, the future he worked so hard to perfect seemed incredibly dark.

"Todoroki?" came another voice from the same hall Kirishima and Uraraka had come from. It was Present Mic, who beckoned him with a wave of his hand.

Todoroki sprang up and crossed the hall, ignoring the questioning looks from his classmates and following Mic away from the group. He had to stop for a moment to suppress a sudden wave of lightheadedness, but he pulled himself together.

Vestiges of the darkness weighed on his mind.

"Hey, kid. How's your sister?" Mic asked as soon as they got to an empty hallway.

"I don't know," Todoroki said. "She got bussed to another hospital and I haven't heard anything since."

Mic grimaced, clearly looking for something encouraging to say and not finding anything.

"But she seemed okay last time I saw her, I guess," Todoroki said, to give the man an out so he could get to the point.

"That's great! That's good," Mic said, spiking at high volume out of habit but catching himself. "Hey, so, I'm up to date on what's going on. We just got into contact with Miss Yaoyorozu's parents. They're away on some kind of trip but they're flying back and should be here by tonight. Do you… know what that means?"

Momo's parents were away on business, relating to the new contracts they'd secured after Endeavor paved the way. As for what that meant, Todoroki racked his brain. In the process he hit a mental snag over the fact that Mic had called her 'Miss Yaoyorozu', which technically wasn't correct.

"I don't know," he admitted.

Mic nodded. "Ok. So, what's going on is that you are her closest available family member."

"Um… what?" Todoroki asked, knowing what Mic had said but not really processing what he meant.

Fighting, he could do. This was something else entirely.

"It's okay," Mic said. "You don't have to do anything, we've already talked to them and Eraserhead will be her medical proxy until they get here. But you do have access to information that the rest of us don't."

It was an overwhelming thought, but he was glad Mic had told him this. He had something to do. It still didn't feel right, since Momo had no say and hadn't said he could have one, but he could try to help.

"Wait," Todoroki said. "Aizawa is responsible for nineteen other kids, and he's outside dealing with the police. How's he supposed to pay attention to her?" Even as he said it, Todoroki wondered what he was thinking. He didn't know anything about Momo's medical records, or whether she was allergic to anything, or what she would want.

"Todoroki, you can't be her medical proxy. You're sixteen."

He was actually fifteen, but he didn't say that.

He'd gotten some small amount of control, and he'd scrambled to not lose it, even if it made no sense.

"Sorry, yeah, you're right. Let's go talk to these people."

"It's fine! Let's get going!" Mic said, slipping back into his loud voice for a moment, spinning on his heel to begin heading down the hallway. Todoroki started after him.

As perilous as the situation with Fuyumi had been even an hour ago, she was probably off the bus by now. She hadn't suffered any injuries, she was surrounded by experts, and she had her husband with her. If there was something Todoroki could do over here, he could force himself to assume Fuyumi was fine for a little while.

The hospital was eerily quiet. Even though only the other building had suffered obvious damage, the rooms here were being slowly evacuated to other hospitals or moved around so that inspectors and detectives could check every room. The only people left were the patients who needed immediate care and the staff caring for them.

Eventually, they made their way to a hallway where a gaggle of nurses was crowded around the entrance to an operating room. They didn't appear to be doing anything but waiting and talking, but they fell silent when they noticed the two approaching.

"Nice to see you all! So, hey, this is the kid who's a member of her immediate family, and we were wondering if he could stick around over here for a while."

One of the nurses recognized Todoroki. One of the ones who had been with Fuyumi when they'd been locked in. She stepped forward and nodded for the group, beckoning Todoroki to follow her. Mic stayed behind.

"Um, can I…?" He started to ask the nurse. Words failed him.

"See her? In surgery? Absolutely not," she said, kindly but firmly. "But you can sit in here. We'll come talk to you if there's any updates."

She led him to a side room with a few padded chairs in it and a table. It looked like it was meant for an entire family, but it was empty.

"And there's bagels. Help yourself. It's going to be a while, so if you leave, we'll leave the door unlocked. No one else will come by," the nurse said. She turned to leave.

"Wait," he said. "How's she doing?"

The nurse didn't look at him as she spoke. "It's a very serious injury. They're… they're doing their best. We lost a lot of equipment, but we do have a robotic surgeon on her. She's in good hands."

Todoroki tensed. "That's not an answer. At all. That's the same thing you told us before."

When she turned to face him, she looked irritated. "I can't see the future. She's in a very serious condition. I can tell you that because the damage is to her stomach, and she processes food for her quirk, she probably won't be allowed to use it for a while. Her quirk may even slightly change, especially because she was conscious when the damage occurred. I can't tell you that she will be alright, I'm sorry. Again, she's in good hands. That's the best I can give you."

It was a lot of information he didn't know what to do with. Her quirk might change? Did that even happen? She'd probably be devastated if something affected her performance at UA. Even then, it was a small concern in the face of the dance with death no one could seem to reassure him she wasn't in.

The nurse walked out, closing the door behind her. Now, Todoroki was alone.

It wasn't something he was really used to anymore since living at UA. He'd felt some irritation, before, at having to listen to his classmates' chatter when so much was going on inside his head. Now, left alone to process his thoughts, he almost wished he hadn't left.

He leaned against the door and slid down it until he was crouched under the door's small window and put his head in his hands. The information from the day's events tumbled around in his head in such a way that he didn't really process anything, he just felt the impacted stress of each component. The new information about the impact to Momo's quirk didn't help matters. He had no idea what to do with it, and he didn't think he could think about it if he did.

His phone vibrated in his pocket.

He scrambled to pull it out and found several new messages that he must have received while he was walking. He opened the one from Fuyumi first.

It was a photograph of her smiling with what was, as far as he could tell, a healthy baby boy. The text that came with it said, "We are all right! We love you!"

He felt a small pang of satisfaction that the kid had a full head of white hair before everything else hit him.

It was dark in the room, since the lights were out and the blinds were three-quarters of the way closed. He was below the door's window, so to anyone else, it was like he wasn't even there.

So, he cried.

He wasn't much of a crier, especially because it hurt his bad eye to do it. The handful of tears that leaked out were more than he could remember ever shedding at once since he was, what, eight? Earlier than that?

But with the weight of worrying about Fuyumi removed from his shoulders, he felt like his thoughts had become unclogged. He loved her, dearly, but without having to think about her constantly, he could start to get everything else back in a row.

He took a breath and wiped his face, composing himself.

He pulled out his phone again so he could face whatever was next. There were three messages from Jirou, each a few minutes apart.

Kyouka Jirou: Where are you?

Kyouka Jirou: There's a reporter here who wants to hear about what happened and some people told her she should talk to you. Said she could come by in ~30 min

Kyouka Jirou: Do you know something we don't about Momo?

Todoroki gulped. He'd wanted to do something helpful, but talking to reporters was probably the worst thing he could be tasked with. He wasn't the best at talking, by far, and he hated reporters. But he'd wanted a task, he'd wanted to help, he'd wanted a distraction.

Well, Plus Ultra.

Me: They let me into a separate room for family members but they won't tell me anything

Me: Or show me anything. I don't even know why I'm here, this feels stupid.

Me: Send the reporter over.

He cracked the door open to look at the room number on the door, and sent Jirou the directions for how to get there.

There was one last message, this one from an unknown number. He clicked it.

Shouto. It's Futaba. Please call me as soon as you can at this number.

Todoroki's heart sank. It was Momo's mother.

If explaining things to Kirishima would be difficult, this was a thousand times worse. However, this was his actual responsibility, as the son-in-law.

He dialed the number.

"Shouto?"

"Hello, ah…"

"Futaba."

"Hello, Futaba."

"Shouto, you're on speaker phone. We're on our way to the airport. We spoke to the teachers a few minutes ago. What's the latest?"

It sounded like they were in a car, if he had to guess. Air conditioning noise, a low hum that could be the road.

"I wish I could tell you," he said. "They took her to surgery almost an hour ago and they haven't told us anything since. The teachers even brought me over to try to get more information, so they don't know anything I don't."

"What happened?" Futaba asked. "Why did they make Momo dismantle a bomb?"

"They didn't-" Todoroki stammered. "They didn't make her do anything. She volunteered."

There was a long, shaky sigh on the other end of the phone.

"I wish they'd gotten someone else to do it," Momo's father said. What was his name again?

"Tsukasa, she's training to be a hero. She can't just have someone else do her job."

"Yeah, but she's hurt, and she's a kid. Our kid. I'm sure they could have figured something else out. She could have let one of the older heroes take care of it."

"She wouldn't do that. She knew there were people inside." Todoroki rubbed his eyes. "One of those people was my sister, actually. This is a total coincidence, but my sister was in the hospital today. She's pregnant. I mean, she was pregnant until probably fifteen minutes ago. She got evacuated and she probably would have been okay, but maybe she wouldn't have been."

There was a stunned silence on the other end of the line.

"I'm so sorry, I should have asked," Futaba said. "How are you doing?"

Unbidden, an image of Momo after the ice had melted came to mind, blood soaked through her uniform and pooling into the water around her. Her face and lips had had a blue tint. He'd tried not to, but he'd gotten more than an eyeful of the way her skin and clothes had torn into tatters around the wound from the rebar. He'd thought she might have grasped weakly at his hand as she was pulled away, but he wasn't sure.

"I didn't get hurt," he said. "Momo was the only one who was actually injured. The rest of us are fine."

"Shouto, I have to know. You saw. How bad does it look?"

"Tsukasa, come on now. She'll be fine. This happened in the middle of the hospital. She's as healthy as a human being can get."

Todoroki involuntarily sucked in a breath through his teeth.

"What is it?" Futaba asked, almost like a snap. She'd caught it.

He felt his throat threaten to close again. He cleared it.

"It was really bad."

He didn't want to be like the nurse. He wanted to be honest. It still didn't feel right.

"What happened? They told us Momo was in surgery but it sounded like she just got burned."

"I noticed there was another detonator, and I told her to run away. I tried to meet her in the middle so we could hide behind an ice wall, but we were too far apart. I froze her. She was safe from the fireball, but she got hit by shrapnel from the explosion. A steel bar went through her stomach."

He breathed in, and then out. He paused because his voice started to crack, but it didn't get better as he continued.

"She's got three cracked ribs, she lost a lot of blood, she had hypothermia, they're giving her some kind of tetanus treatment because of the rebar, and they have to sew her back up. But it didn't hit her spine or anything, so it's pretty similar to an uncomplicated gunshot wound."

The silence following was much longer than the one that had happened after he'd talked about Fuyumi.

"And they didn't tell you anything at all since?" Tsukasa asked. His voice sounded hard, and husky.

"No. Just that her quirk might change after this, because of the fact that her quirk uses her stomach."

"What? I didn't know quirks changing was possible. Getting better, sure, but changing?"

"I've heard of it," Todoroki said. "But it's extremely rare. People in life threatening situations can have their quirks change to accommodate their needs, or changes in their physiology could affect the way their quirks work. I guess in the case of Momo... can she create things through scar tissue?"

"I'm not sure. She's never really gotten hurt before. If she tries to create through a cut, though, it leaves a crack where the cut was," Futaba said.

"Hmm," Todoroki said. "Honestly, I don't know what kinds of changes actually happen. But I want to look at something to check." He stood up, stretched, and started walking out of the family meeting room.

"What are you checking?"

"When the ice melted, she'd tried to create something. I'm not sure what it was. I'm heading back to look at it."

He passed the hallway where the rest of the first years were sitting. It seemed like all of them were together now. There wasn't any laughter, but the mood seemed to have improved a little bit in the time he'd been gone. A few of them noticed him pass by, but he kept walking.

The main building with the maternity ward was more than rubble, but less than a shelter. There were all kinds of personnel picking carefully through and around the perimeter, taking notes and photographs.

"Hey, kid!" an inspector yelled as he got close. "It's not safe!"

"I'm from UA!" Todoroki shouted back, and kept going through the doors they'd wheeled Momo's stretcher out through.

He stopped before the final turn into hallway H. It wasn't a conscious decision. His feet just stopped moving, and he stood still.

"Did you find it?"

It snapped Todoroki back into alertness, and he pushed ahead.

It had only been barely an hour since the last time he'd been in here, and already the return was jarring.

The hallways he'd seen from the outside of the building were blackened, with the windows blown out. This one's walls were pristine, protected from the explosion by the ice. The floor was covered in water that was clouded with blood, soot, and ash. The back end of the hallway had completely collapsed.

He walked carefully through the water, and it rinsed off some of the dried blood from his shoes.

"Found it," he said.

Two long steel prongs, oddly shaped. They looked like lengthened morningstars that had been through a car wreck. The side that would be the 'handle' was jagged at the end. If he remembered correctly, they'd fallen off of her when she'd lost consciousness.

"It's like a long bar, but the end has spikes on it. And it's really irregular."

"Anything new? She makes metal all the time."

"No, I think it's metal all the way through. Here, I'll send you a picture."

He snapped a photo and sent it.

"That's… that's blood?" Futaba's voice.

It was at that point that Todoroki realized he wasn't being a very good hero.

As awful as the topic of conversation was, he'd been appreciating the fact that he could have it. He couldn't talk to his classmates about what he was thinking, or how he felt. Momo's parents were perhaps the only people who expected him to be devastated, who expected him to really feel something.

But he still needed to be watching out for their feelings, too.

"Yeah, but she's okay on that front. They had a bunch of us donate blood, and as far as I've heard, at least two of the donations already cleared with the lab, and they're collecting more. We're all backing her up however we can."

He was trying to sound optimistic.

"Okay, that's good, right?"

"Yeah, that's good."

"So… what are these metal things? They don't really look like anything else she's made."

"Right. And that's why I think her quirk already changed. I don't know what this is, but it looks like she's never made it before." He turned over one of the metal pieces in his hands. The triangular pattern that adorned most of her creations was irregular. "I'm not sure, but she might have been trying to break the ice."

"Was… was she stuck in the ice for a long time?"

"Not really, no. Probably thirty seconds. We have another student who was able to instantly melt all of it."

It wasn't good to give them any less hope than they could possibly have. Tell them the truth, absolutely, but give them every reason to believe that things could be all right. To him, even beside his feelings for her, Momo was a strong hero candidate who should absolutely be trusted with a mission of this nature. To her parents, she was a child. Their child.

Todoroki heard whispering through the phone, but he couldn't make out what they were saying. He thought he heard Futaba say something like 'you can't say that', but he wasn't certain.

The whispered conversation got louder and louder until Tsukasa's voice became perfectly clear.

"Don't ignore what's right in front of you, Futaba. You told me we should let her marry him because he made her feel safe. Now she's being treated for hypothermia because he fucking froze her. I don't care how he makes her feel if what he does is exactly what I was afraid of in the first place."

"Hey!" Todoroki said. "I didn't have a choice. If I hadn't done that, I'm sorry to say this, she would have died, and it would have been my fault for not freezing her."

"Yeah, well, she might die now, and it would be your fault because she was trying to save your sister, right? I can't believe you had the gall to come to my house and tell me to my face that you wanted to marry my daughter as soon as possible, and then this happens. How long's it been, a month? What, did you get tired of her or-"

"Tsukasa!" Futaba interjected. "You're out of line."

"Am I? My concern, my one concern going into this was that her getting tangled up in his fucked up family would pose a risk to her safety. And here we are."

It was eerily similar to every worry he'd ever had. He'd sworn off dating because he didn't want to subject anyone to his father, and he'd told his mother he didn't know how to handle relationships, so he wouldn't even try.

But, faced with his own arguments spat back in his face, he didn't find he believed them anymore.

"We all came here. Every student in the UA hero course helped with this evacuation. The reason Momo was responsible for defusing the bomb is because she's smarter than the rest of us, she's better, and I'm mad as hell that that means she was the last person inside, but that was her choice. The fact that she's amazing means she will be put in more dangerous situations than the rest of us will. That's the way it is. I did my best to look out for her, and I was the only one who noticed she was still in danger because I care. If you want her to stay safe on the sidelines, you should talk to her about it yourself. But as far as whether I did enough, that's between Momo and I, and I frankly do not give a shit whether you think I'm good enough for her. You tried to marry her to a buffoon for money. Your judgment is worthless to me."

He could feel that he was red in the face, and he was clenching his fist. There was more he could say, but he managed to stop himself.

"You're a disrespectful little twit, and I can't believe Momo would want to marry you."

Well, she hadn't, really. He was the temporary, fake love that was around to get this man off her back.

"Well, I'm what you've got. I'll stick around here and do what I can. Call me if you have any more questions."

He hung up.

As soon as he did, he cringed. He probably should have known that the stress would get to him, make him lash out. He even thought about apologizing, taking his words back, but knew the damage was done and nothing he could say would erase the fact that they'd heard it. And, he couldn't honestly say he hadn't meant what he said.

The Yaoyorozus had been expecting someone proper, someone who said their "please"s and "thank you"s, and knew what order you were supposed to use the fancy utensils at dinner. Both of their families were wealthy, but the kind of wealth and culture they came from was completely different. He and Momo might be more similar to each other in upbringing than the rest of the class, excepting Iida, but if you really got down to it, their families weren't similar at all. Hers was a family that worked together, and was all about collective success, and his was one that had tried that and failed a long time ago.

He thought about his mom.

She was the person he could think of in all of the world who deserved to give up hope. There had been a time when she'd suffered and snapped, but afterwards, with help, she'd tried to get better.

His phone buzzed again. It was a text message from Futaba.

I'm sorry about that. We're all very stressed. I'm sure you did your best. Please keep watching out for Momo.

He looked down at the two metal prongs. He still had no idea what she'd been trying to do with them.

Now would be the time to walk away.

He didn't know what to do, here. He wasn't good with people, and he couldn't force himself to play nice with Momo's father if he was being accused of things that weren't true. He didn't know how long this marriage would last, but he was already setting bridges on fire, and only time would tell how bad the damage got.

If it had been two weeks ago, if someone else had saved her when the second bomb had gone off, he was pretty sure he'd cave. Keep his distance from Momo so she could find her own path, and he'd keep working on his own goals.

He wanted to be a good person. More than that, he didn't want to be a bad person. But he didn't always know what that was, or what to do. He could say, with confidence, that Momo was "good", but that knowledge didn't give him a measuring stick on how to treat someone he cared about.

Normal people navigated this, of course. Normal people spent time together, and told each other their feelings, and found ways to live together in harmony over the course of decades. Taught offspring how to do the same. But Shouto Todoroki was a person who had spent those formative years learning the opposite lessons, even if he knew they were wrong.

He'd told his mother he didn't know how to do this, to truly bring people in closer than arms' distance, Momo especially. She'd told him a solution, and she'd made it sound so easy. Just change the context of the relationship, she'd said. He'd left the visit with her that day on the fence.

Now, he was certain she was right.

For as long as he could remember, Endeavor had been someone who had focused almost entirely on only one aspect of his life, at the expense of all others. When Todoroki had insisted on pursuing his hero studies over a relationship, it was probably because he'd been searching for a pattern that was safe, familiar. He'd chosen to do nothing, and continue the way he'd been going, because at least then he was in control. Even if it wasn't optimal, ignoring his feelings was something he knew was capable of.

That had been what he'd learned when he'd seen her bleeding out in the ice. That he couldn't ignore how much he cared for her. And that if he shut the feelings out, he'd be shutting out something important to his very self.

If he followed in his father's footsteps, as someone who didn't even try to connect with others or pursue his own emotional fulfillment, he'd die miserable and alone.

If she made it, he'd talk to her. More than that, he'd try. Put in an effort to see her for reasons unrelated to schoolwork, listen to her troubles instead of watch them from afar, take her to more festivals with greasy food and introduce her to his mother.

When.

When she made it.

Momo was capable of anything.

He typed out a response to Futaba.

I will.

TUESDAY, 1:56 PM

"Why do I only count eighteen students?" Aizawa asked. "Where's Mineta?"

Aizawa was trying to get the class lined up, their things collected, and back on the bus.

"I'll go get him," Mina sighed.

"Thank you. Everybody else, we're heading back as soon as those two return. There's too many of us, and we're starting to get in people's way."

"What about Yaomomo?" Uraraka asked. She was standing near the back of the line, and had to crane her neck way out to the side to be able to see.

"They already told us the surgery will be finished soon. Todoroki will stay here until her parents come in from the airport. He'll keep us updated, right Todoroki?"

"Yes, sir." Todoroki nodded. He was standing off to the side.

"Shouldn't I stay?" Iida asked. "It's my duty as class representative to make sure the entire class is safe."

"No, I need you with the rest of the group. Normally I'd leave Yaoyorozu here but, obviously, that's happening anyway. When we get back, we're just going to go over what happened today and how we handled things, so we can fill Todoroki in later." Aizawa easily concealed the truth of why Todoroki had been chosen to stay.

"I understand. I apologize for questioning." Iida stepped back to the head of the line.

Mina returned, carrying a struggling Mineta like a backpack, and the class marched down the hall.

Todoroki had sat in the empty hallway H for a little while, and then taken the two metal prongs back to the family meeting room. The reporter had been there questioning the nurses, and he'd made a few statements about what had happened. Then, he'd just decided to return to sit with the rest of the class. Even if he didn't have anything to really occupy his time, the group's chatter was better for his sanity than solitude.

Now that they had left, though, he headed back to the hallway where the operation was still underway.

He approached the same nurse. She'd turned him away a few times, but he was willing to push his luck. "How's it going?"

"They'll be finished soon," she said, smiling. It was the same answer he'd gotten last time.

He headed back into the family meeting room, sat at the table, and stared out the window. They were almost done. She was almost in the clear. In the back of his mind, he had this weird sort of superstition that as long as he stayed here, as long as he was paying as much attention as he was allowed to, nothing unexpected could happen. If he fell asleep or started doing something else, there was no telling what could go wrong.

There was an adage about watched pots and boiling in there, but he didn't like that adage.

"Soon" turned out to be another forty minutes. When the door knocked he almost expected it to be another reporter. When he realized it was the nurse, he paused for a moment, trying to read her facial expression through the glass before he could bring himself to open the door.

She shot him a thumbs-up.

He let out a massive exhale and let her in. She passed him a large stack of papers that didn't immediately look to him like he could decipher anything about them easily.

"The surgery was a success. Looked… a little iffy there, a few times, but the important bit is that she's going to be okay."

"Cool," he said, immediately before and after thinking that "thank you" would have been the appropriate response. "Um… what else do I need to know?"

"It's gonna be at least one full week before we recommend that she uses her quirk. Then, when she does use it, start out with something small. If everything looks normal from here on out, we're gonna keep her here for four nights, then let her go home to UA. We know you all have a pretty robust medical system over there if anything goes wrong. I've told your teacher this, but she has to take it easy on the PE for a little bit."

"Okay," he said, thinking about the last time Momo had been hospitalized. He'd asked her to leave early to rescue Bakugou, and she had done so almost without question.

"Now listen," the nurse said, looking at him seriously. "I'm going to tell her all of what I just told you. I'm telling you because you have to help hold her to it. I want you to think of it as your responsibility to make sure that she doesn't use her quirk at all until next Tuesday."

"Okay."

"We talked to her parents again, and they think it will be at least another two hours before they're able to arrive. They got held up."

"What do you need me to do?"

"Need? Nothing. But you can go sit with her in about five minutes. They're moving her now. I'm going to call and tell your teacher everything I've just told you, is that all right?"

He nodded.

The nurse turned and left.

It was a strange set of responsibilities.

He'd always been the youngest child, the baby. The one everyone took care of. He had gotten pretty good at fighting, and rescuing people in emergency situations.

He'd never really had to support anybody before. Like, ever.

But he wanted to be the sort of person whom people could rely on, and in the last few hours of waiting and agonizing, he'd resolved to be that person for Momo. He might not be good at sitting around and asking questions and talking to reporters, but he was the person that was here, and he wasn't about to do a shit job at it.

He was almost glad Aizawa wasn't here to psychoanalyze his response to the situation.

He pulled out his phone and sent a message to the class groupchat.

Me: Surgery went well. Momo is fine. Eraser incoming with info.

He waited until he heard Aizawa's footsteps recede, and then stepped back out into the hall. The nurse made a 'follow me' motion, and led him down a long sequence of hallways he didn't think he could possibly remember to get to a room with closed blinds and a door with no information in the pocket.

The nurse went in first, checking a bunch of cables and equipment. Todoroki stopped cold at the door.

"Will our classmates… see this?" he asked.

The nurse shook her head. "They can come by when she wakes up, which almost certainly won't be today."

"Why are her arms all wrapped up?"

"Her skin was very frail, probably from overusing her quirk. When she got sandwiched between the ice, it left several long lacerations."

He didn't say anything.

"It was still quick thinking. A few stitches is nothing compared to the burns she would have suffered otherwise." The nurse turned back around and ruffled his hair. "I'll be back in about one minute."

He was left alone in the room.

The creature laying in the bed didn't look very much like Momo at all. They'd dressed her in a Hello Kitty gown, with pale pink hearts and stars all over, and some of the wrappings had clips with similar shapes. Her hair was limp, and pulled back from her face in a way she never did herself. There was a big patch of gauze under her right eye, presumably covering another cut from the ice.

He walked up to her, and held her hand. That was what people were supposed to do, right?

He remembered the way her skin had felt the day they'd visited the sandwich shop - soft, with a texture like a wax statue. Now, it was dry like paper and lace. He got the feeling that if he grazed her palm with a fingernail, she'd start bleeding all over again.

He stared at her until his brain reconciled the fact that this was her. That she wasn't just the person who answered all of the questions and beat the shit out of him with a bo staff on Tuesdays and Fridays. That even if the fragile, sick, injured, asleep Momo only came out part of the time, it was still a part of her.

A part of her he wasn't sure she wanted him to see.

She was a person prone to bouts of insecurity and doubt. Would she want him here? Would she want their classmates here? He didn't know how much she valued the opinions of others.

Or his opinion. He didn't know how much she valued that, either.

"I guess Kirishima is right," he said to the Momo creature. "I guess I am supposed to talk to you at some point. About me."

He felt stupid talking when no one was listening, so he shut up.

The door opened, and he turned to see the nurse again. She was holding a large plastic freezer bag with something written on it in Sharpie, probably Momo's name.

She handed him the bag and he looked over the contents. One waterlogged, bloodstained school uniform. A hair tie. A few tools she'd shoved in her pockets. Two shoes. A phone that had snapped in half.

She was going to be here for the next few days, and she couldn't use her quirk.

"Do you have an index card?" He asked.

"I've got a sticky note," the nurse said. She handed him one, along with a pen.

Your phone broke. You can use mine. Passkey is 746886. -Shouto

He stuck it to his own phone and handed it to the nurse. "Can you give this to her later?"

"Sure. Think we've got a charger around here somewhere." She stuck the phone in her pocket. "Your teacher said you can head back to the dormitory whenever you're ready."

He hesitated. There almost certainly wasn't anything else he could do here, what with no one else being hospitalized, and he wasn't even sure he was allowed to stick around. He wasn't sure what he would tell his classmates, either.

"You can stay here if you like. Visiting hours will be over at eight, but her parents should be here by then. She probably won't wake up before you leave, but she might. It'd be a shame if she woke up and there was no one around."

"Okay," he said.

The nurse pulled out a chair and sat down in it, pulling her own phone out of her pocket and starting to browse something. Seemed like she'd be there for a while. Probably needed to watch someone who'd recently come out of trauma surgery.

Todoroki curled up in a chair in the corner, near but not too close to where Momo was, and fell asleep.

TUESDAY, 5:16 PM

"Hey," she said when the anesthetic wore off.

"Hey."

"You look terrible," she croaked.

"Not as terrible as you do," Todoroki said. How romantic. "I just got off the world's most awkward phone conversation with your dad. He and your mom will be here later."

"Did we win?"

"Yeah. We won." He leaned forward and put his arms on the bed to support himself, his left touching hers. He let his eyes drift shut.

"Steve was mistaken, you know," Momo said.

"About what?"

"I think your other hand's pretty warm."

He opened his eyes again, and he was sitting across the room. Momo was still unconscious.

Only a dream.

TUESDAY, 7:45 PM

He woke up for real when Futaba tapped his shoulder.

"You're going to have to go soon," she said. "Should we call you a taxi?"

He shook his head, stretching. "I can walk."

Tsukasa nodded at him. "Thanks for holding down the fort. Watching out for her." He looked away, his expression unreadable.

"Sure."

Todoroki stood up, gathered his belongings, and left the unconscious Momo creature where she was.

TUESDAY, 8:03 PM

"Oh my gosh, you got back just in time," Uraraka said when he walked in. She was sitting at the main dining table with Tsuyu.

"How is she? Why were you gone so long?" Kaminari asked.

"She's the same. I fell asleep."

"You have to see this," Kirishima said. "Hagakure's calling the news group. They messed up so much stuff." He beckoned Todoroki over to a laptop, which had a news article pulled up. One of the short, surface-level ones that just let the public know something had happened. The in-depth analyses would happen in the coming days and weeks.

Todoroki skimmed the article as Kirishima explained the situation.

"They didn't get the villain group name right, they said Hagakure was the one who helped find the bombs, and they called Yaomomo Momo Todoroki. I guess because you were the one that talked to the reporter? Anyway, Hagakure is calling them and telling them the article is messed up. We'll see what they do, I hope they release a correction because this does not paint an accurate picture at all."

Shit shit shit. This was entirely his fault.

The reporter had been talking to the nurses. He'd been in the room reserved for family. The reporters might have even talked to Momo's family on the phone.

Some "support" he was.

"I hope they fix it too," he said.

"Yeah, it was weird," Mina said. "The article doesn't even mention most of what happened, just that Yaomomo disabled most of the bombs and saved a bunch of people. Did you even tell her about the ice wave?"

Todoroki thought back. "No, I don't think it came up."

"Really? What else did you even talk to her about?"

Todoroki shrugged.

Hagakure, who had been standing apart from the rest of the group holding up a phone, put the phone back in her pocket and returned to the main area.

"They said they're sorry and they will release a correction within the hour," she reported.

"Sweet, thanks for calling 'em."

"Yeah, thanks for sorting that out." Most of the other students nodded.

Tsuyu was looking at him, with her finger on her chin.

The same expression she usually used when she was thinking about something. Tsuyu was one of the most observant people he knew, and she knew something was going on with Momo's engagement situation. It was only a matter of time before she figured it out.

Todoroki didn't know what to think. So far, he'd coasted on the fact that no one would possibly suspect the insane situation he and Momo were in. Now, some poor reporter would probably get in trouble for making an entirely reasonable deduction, even if the article hadn't been particularly accurate otherwise. On top of that, the rest of the class had seen the screwup, which meant eventually, someone was going to put two and two together.

"Have we heard anything about the villains? Why did they do this?" he asked.

A few of his classmates looked at each other. They clearly knew something, and they looked reluctant to tell him.

"They're thinking the villains were trying to piss off your dad," Midoriya finally said. The only one brave enough to tell him, apparently. "One of the henchmen said they were originally intending to do this sometime next week, but after they heard about a high-value target inside the hospital they decided to move the timetable up."

"Fuyumi," Todoroki said.

"Probably. There's been no official statement, yet, though. They're still talking to everybody who was in the hospital, trying to figure out whether there is somebody else who could have been the target they were after. The police are having a tough time because apparently this is a new group of villains and they don't really know what they want."

Todoroki remembered the awful feeling of foreboding he'd felt that morning, the whiplash between anticipating a happy day ahead and helpless fear. He was fairly confident that that was the feeling the villains, the terrorists, were trying to inspire.

The police could question more of the henchmen, but at this point, he was all but certain they wouldn't find anything that contradicted his theory. Fuyumi was the target. Psychological warfare. A demonstration that the number one hero couldn't protect his own daughter, and a decent chance to break the man as a bonus.

He felt less miserable with the knowledge that his sister and Momo were all right, at least for now. But he didn't feel any less helpless. He couldn't do anything here, and he couldn't talk to his family for a few days since he'd given over his cell phone. Not to mention the fact that without his license, he wouldn't be allowed to know much.

"I'm mad as hell," he said. "I think I'm gonna go train. Lights out isn't for another two hours."

"Aren't you gonna eat? We have leftovers." Midoriya asked.

"Eh, I'm fine. I just want to punch something."

"Want company?" Iida asked.

"Not really."

Todoroki went upstairs and changed clothes, and then ventured back out into the night.

Everything he'd said to Tsukasa had been wrong. The attack had been about his family, after all. He was the corruption, the slow-acting poison that went after the things he cared most about and spent the most time with. If he'd thought he might be cursed before, he knew it truly now.

He stayed out in the training ground until the early hours of the morning, hoping the night's cold could give his mind some peace.