Word Count: 6,337

The world the night Shoto banished Haku from the army, it felt like the fairy realm: hazy, timeless, and altogether like a dream. He lay in the planning tent with Aizawa and Katsuki, staring at its canvas roof as if in a haze; he was trapped in a half-tempted state to reach out and take Haku— no, he had to remind himself, Momo— by the hand and keep him— her— around just because that was what he— she— deserved for saving them all.

Instead, he was left stuck in with own memory of kicking Haku— Momo— playing on loop. Something about it struck him so, leaving him both unable to banish the thought and unwilling to move, both of which visibly dismayed Katsuki.

"C'mon, you shitty hapa, have you only got half a brain left now too?" he snapped. "You've been staring at literal fucking nothing for the past half hour. We have shit to discuss, and we can't even bring anyone else into here because you're so fucking stuck on moping and shit—"

"Katsuki," Aizawa said sharply from his nest of blankets on the floor.

"What?" Katsuki barked back, dialing his temper back a peg.

"Get out."

"What the fuck, old man?"

Aizawa trained his laser-sharp glare upon Katsuki, and had Shoto not been practically incapacitated by his own thoughts, he would have felt that familiar chill of fear crawl down his spine. "I said, get out. What, are you so attention starved that you can't see the poor boy needs some time to process his thoughts?" he said evenly. "Go bother Hawks or something. I'm sure Dabi's up for taunting." He didn't even bother to sit up, but it did the job.

Katsuki slunk out of the tent, mumbling something unintelligible all the while.

For a full minute, neither remaining said anything, but Shoto thanked Aizawa silently. He wasn't sure whether the older man wanted to help or if he simply wanted peace and quiet; hell, he wasn't even sure about his own thoughts on Hak— Momo's true identity.

All he knew was that his chest ached with emptiness.

Was this grief? He'd been taught for so long by his father to feel nothing for the soldiers who didn't make it out alive, but Shoto was nothing if not rebellious, and calling it grief didn't neatly explain away what he'd felt discovering his father's death, why he'd chosen to clean all those dog tags with—

His hand tightened around the dog tag in his hand. It was pure and neat, for its owner hadn't died in battle, but instead he had kicked them away, following orders like nothing more than a trained dog.

"Katsuki would be calling you a bitch right now," Aiawa grunted.

Shoto flinched at its accuracy. He threw a careful glance at the older man, just in case he had more to say, but it appeared that Aizawa was just going to let him stew in whatever this feeling he was having was. All right then.

And with that, his mind was invariably drawn back to the owner of the dog tag.

Momo Yaoyorozu, née Haku.

If it were grief he was experiencing, Shoto had no idea why. It wasn't as if he— she had died. H… she was simply sent away. As she should have been.

He closed his eyes and drew in a long breath, but the image of Ha… Yaoyorozu flinching away from him as he addressed her was burned into his mind.

The last time he had felt this badly was over a decade ago, when it was decided his mother was possessed by demons and sent back to her family home with his brother Natsuo, but even then, he hadn't felt the same as he did now. He loosened his grip on the wooden tag, allowing it to dangle from his finger as he exhaled and opened his eyes once more to stare at the name painted on it.

八百万白.

He narrowed his eyes ever so slightly at the words, making them blur just a bit.

八百万百.

He had been blind. But now that he knew, did it make any difference? The outcome would have been the same had he known Yaoyorozu to be a girl from the start, if not worse. His hollow chest tightened. Sending her away was sounding more and more like a mistake built on nothing but rash thinking by the minute. He had been given the choice, for goodness' sake; why hadn't he made the righ—

"So, Shoto. Have you figured it out yet? Or do I have to spoon feed you the information?" Aizawa asked, interrupting his internal monologue with an invitation to talk it out, it seemed. "Because it would be a massive disappointment if I had to feed you the information."

Shoto's hand fell back down. (He could feel his heart beating against the gentle pressure of the tag against his chest.) "Have I figured what out yet?" he asked, genuinely confused. That he should have known of Yaoyorozu's identity the whole time? Had that look Aizawa gave him when he asked for guidance not been "as you think is right", but rather "don't do it, dumbass"?

"Oh dear, he's hopeless," Aizawa sighed, which only served to further confuse Shoto.

"What? What did I do?" (He could feel his heart rate pick up ever so slightly; what was he scared of?)

"Shoto," Aizawa said, sitting up at long last so that he could properly deliver his best deadpan look, "what's happening to you right now is that you're having feelings."

The boy blinked once, twice. "…Yes, I know that," he said, though he wasn't particularly confident in that statement anymore.

The older man hummed. "Okay, so maybe you're not that hopeless after all. But do you know what those feelings are?"

"Uhh, grief?" He furrowed his brow and frowned slightly; he had ruled that out earlier, but for the time being, it was the best he could come up with. "Regret? Yaoyorozu did win the war for us with that avalanche." (It was weird how just talking about Yaoyorozu, thinking about what she had done tied his stomach into knots.)

There was a beat of silence before Aizawa spoke again.

"You know, trusting you to identify your own feelings was a mistake. Almost as big of a mistake as sending Yaoyorozu away," he said, and Shoto flinched at the old man's second statement. Was he really going to be making shots at him like this? What was his point? "Seeing that you have the emotional understanding of a teacup, I should have known you wouldn't have been able to figure this out on your own." There was another pause and then, more softly, "How disappointing."

Shoto sat up, gravity pulling on his head in a way that made it hard to think. "Sir?" he asked. Both his hands instinctively convened on his lap; he didn't even notice that he was fidgeting with the dog tag he still held.

"You're in love with her. Simple as that."

It was a statement that should have, by all means, spurned a revelation within Shoto's heart and soul, opening his mind to the truth in what should have felt like a great weight being lifted from his whole being. Yet in reality, they fell upon his ears like any other string of words that had little inherent meaning to him. They carried no weight, no truth in his mind, and it scared him almost. It seemed like an important statement, and yet…

"I don't understand."

His words rang out, hollow as his chest, and hung in the air until it nearly suffocated him.

"What about it don't you understand?" Aizawa asked, and although it had his trademark gruffness to it, it was also not said unkindly. As if he, the person whom Shoto looked up to the most, had finally explicitly (if wordlessly) offered to mentor him in something he— the poor, deprived child that he was— genuinely wished for guidance.

"How?" Shoto blurted out before he could come up with anything else, and all the words after that felt as if they were stopped by an impenetrable wall between his throat and his mouth. He opened and closed his mouth multiple times, but each time, his question was blocked. Aizawa merely watched him, blinking slowly, not unlike a cat.

It frustrated Shoto that he couldn't let anything out, no matter how hard he tried, no matter how he forced his vocal chords to produce sound, no matter how badly he wanted to say them, the words would not come out, and now his eyes stung and his breathing had all but stopped as he put all his effort into just trying to speak—

"Cry if you must," Aizawa said, and even though Shoto knew that the blandness in his voice was merely superficial, that Aizawa wasn't truly indifferent to the matter, he felt guilty for being mute regardless. "It's good for you, and heaven knows you need it."

The tent was cold at night, and there was no sharper reminder of this fact than the feeling of a scalding hot tear as it rolled down Shoto's face, tear streaks leaving his cheeks that much colder than before. He bent over, his lungs seemingly collapsing from a lack of air, his diaphragm wracking with unborn sobs instead of allowing him to breathe.

It wasn't just about Yaoyorozu anymore, or this apparent love for her Aizawa claimed he had. The moment he first started crying, Shoto relinquished all rights to the mature, stoic persona he had built up for himself through all his years in training, and the emotions of the last decade hit him and swept him off his feet in an overwhelming tsunami of a realization that there was so much he didn't yet know, that he was so, so small in this world. So, so lost.

Like a child.

And all those things he'd said and done, all those lives he'd ended in battles just to save his own, all those families receiving the dog tags he'd washed with Yaoyorozu—

Instinctively, he recoiled when he felt a hand upon his back, the tears quelling themselves even though he hadn't let out nearly enough to feel better. He tensed, the realization hitting him like a heap of bricks— of how pathetic it was of him to do this, to cry over some stupid temporary feelings like some lovestruck teenager obsessed with any passing girl who happened to catch his fancy. He had bigger fish to fry, he couldn't waste his time or breath on Yaoyorozu, not when he—

"I'll be the first to admit that I don't know how to deal with crying kids, but if it's what you need to do, then by all means, continue until you've let it all out," Aizawa said, a hint of awkwardness leaking through his tone. "You're clearly overwhelmed right now, so just take a moment to calm down, and we can go through everything after that."

The older man's words almost made Shoto want to laugh. He really was nothing more than a dumb kid, wasn't he? Deprived of any sort of childhood, forced to grow into this role far before he was ready, he supposed it made sense. And he almost didn't want to believe Aizawa's response to be genuine; was he really not being punished for acting so stupidly and crying?

He wiped away his final few tears as his breathing slowed again, only just then realizing that he'd been clutching Yaoyorozu's tag the entire time. But rather than get overwhelmed again, the sight of it calmed him; for the first time in his life, he felt truly ready to talk about something.

"What makes you say I'm in love with Yaoyorozu?" he asked, his voice hoarse and raw and quiet from the prior bawling, yet surprisingly level at the same time. "We were only friends."

"What is love but a more solid, more intimate version of the loyalty you feel toward friends?"

Shoto chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment. He had no counter to Aizawa, but then again, he hadn't much experience with the emotion in the first place. All he had were the memories already made with Yaoyorozu, of those long night conversations by the streams, of the hours spent talking by the fire. Calling each other by their given names. Poking fun at one another's horses.

Something stirred for the first time in his hollowed-out chest, and now, he was starting to understand it.

"How," he asked again, though he had a much clearer picture of the answer now. "How did I fall in love with her?"

"That's not an answer I have, and even if I did have it, I wouldn't simply hand it over to you."

Fair enough, Shoto thought.

There was a pause, for any other questions Shoto might have had he knew he could answer on his own. He had them, he knew them inside, so it would be a waste of breath to ask them aloud. There was just that one little thing that didn't feel quite so real.

"So…" he said, slowly and deliberately, "I'm in love with Yaoyorozu."

"Yes," Aizawa replied, sounding just as matter-of-fact here as he did when he first told Shoto.

"I see," Shoto said, and it was, to some degree, kind of true. Speaking it into existence rather helped, but it was still a little strange to wrap his mind around.

His sensei, it seemed, didn't quite believe him. Aizawa rolled over. "Hopeless," he grunted.

The lonely candle keeping them both company went out.

No one could sleep that night in the cave, and although Kyouka would later pretend it was because the ground was cold, hard rock, no one was fooled when she got up to stare out the entrance by herself.

Denki opened his eyes and flicked his gaze in the direction of Kirishima, who cracked open an eye of his own. They shared a meaningful look, and the redhead nodded at Denki— do it.

The blond sat up and stretched, his muscles stiff from lying perfectly still whilst also being perfectly awake for the whole night. He glanced at the girl sitting by the mouth of the cave, all alone in the cold, and the world seemed to melt away for a minute.

Do it.

But was that really such a good idea? She needed space, and they had given it to her, but… what if it wasn't enough? Would she still be mad at him if he walked up to her now?

His arms fell back to his side, and he fought the near-irresistible urge to crack his knuckles. There was only one way to find out.

Kyouka didn't even bother to look at him as he walked up from behind her and took a silent seat next to her. "Why are you here, Chargedolt?" she sniffled, though her words were not without their venom. Denki winced.

"Well, um," he awkwardly began, shifting his eyes everywhere but her. "Can I call you Kyo?" he blurted out.

"Why?" Kyouka suspiciously asked, though she still didn't give him the privilege of her gaze.

"Uhh… it sounds nice?" he answered, racking his brains for something other than the memory of "Shows how much I love Sero that I gave him a nickname, you know."

"No."

"Ji?"

"No."

A cold silence fell between the two, going on for a terrifyingly long time before Kyouka finally spoke up again.

"Why are you here, Chargedolt?" She still sounded like she had been crying, but more in that her voice was hoarse and tired rather than fragile and crackly.

"I…" Denki faltered and bit his lip, struggling to put everything he felt to words, just as Kirishima had encouraged him to do. "I'm sorry about being so dumb when you told us you were a girl earlier. I'm sorry about not giving you space sooner." He let out a breath, feeling as if there should have been so much more to what he was saying and coming up short. "I'm sorry."

There was a pause, and Denki held his breath out of fear of Kyouka's response. It felt like it stretched out into eternity, and he was sure he was near suffocation when she finally did answer him.

"…I'm sorry," she said, so quietly that Denki was certain that if he had been breathing, he would have missed it.

He exhaled. "It's okay," he began.

"I'm sorry," she repeated, her voice loud and watery this time, and Denki's brain short-circuited. A tear rolled down her cheek and fell to the cold, stone floor with a tiny patter. Then another, and another… "I'm sorry."

Denki exhaled softly, as if doing so any harder would blow her away in the wind. He swallowed a lump forming in his throat; her tears were contagious, it seemed. "What for?" he breathed.

"Being mean to you," she replied, tipping over and leaning heavily on his shoulder. "Getting so mad when it wasn't your fault. Calling you stupid all the time. Overreacting to every little thing you do. For making you apologize all the time when it was my fault, my stubbornness, my pride."

Denki relaxed, slowly wrapping an arm around Kyouka and drawing her close, gently wiping away her tears with his free hand. "It's okay," he murmured, marveling at how warm she felt despite the snow that had begun falling softly just outside. "It's okay, I don't mind. I deserved it half the time anyway, for doing and saying all those stupid things."

She thrashed for a second. "No, it's not okay! Can't you see I'm trying to apologize to you for once? Maybe you did deserve it half the time, but that's another half you didn't deserve! It's not your fault you fell in love with a shitty, little liar who—" she caught herself before she could continue, but already, Denki's breath was caught in his lungs once more.

It was strange. He had known because Kirishima had told him he told Jirou that he liked, well, her, at this point, but to hear her say that she knew was an entirely different story. It threw his heart into the pit of his stomach, a splash of almost tangible fear washing over him afterward.

Kyouka's grip on him loosened, and he let her go. (Already, he felt that much colder.) She let out a breath, slow and wavering, as if preparing to say something herself.

"Friends?" she asked him after a spell, and from the corner of his eye, Denki saw her shoot him a half-hopeful glance.

Just friends? (He focused on his breathing, on keeping it normal despite the twisting snake of fear in his stomach.) "No," he decidedly said, and Kyouka stilled beside him.

Be brave, he reminded himself, but don't be stupid.

"I love you," he said, his voice strangely warbled and on the verge of cracking. "You know I can't keep going with just—"

"I'm in love with you."

That alone was enough to shut Denki up. For the first time in forever, he truly dared look directly at her, just to be sure that she meant it, but she was looking anywhere but his direction, too embarrassed to own her words.

Tears began to fall to the floor again, more thickly than before, but perhaps that was because now they belonged to two rather than the one.

Denki stared at her, his mouth agape, his eyes shedding shameless tears, and she peeked back at him, red-eyed and nervous. Neither could say a word, for it was as if there was nothing left to say now that everything they had been holding in was laid so barrenly out in front of them.

Kyouka sniffled and wiped away her tears, half a smile already pulling at her lips, laughter already bubbling up within her despite continuing to cry.

Denki grinned, his heart lighter than the clouds.

He laughed as he pulled her close to him.

Dabi was the kind of person who was very easily bored. Maybe it was the apathy, forcing him to search for things to take it away, but that held way too much depth and sappy symbolism and meaning for his tastes. He preferred to think that he was independent to the point of following where the wind blew, wandering off with every whimsy, and seeing the world with such broad perspective that everything after it seemed mundane and boring.

However, if there was anything he still cherished, it was his status as Shoto's older brother, and the privileges of making fun of him that came with it. He had yet to make fun of the kid when it came to that other kid— Haku? Though apparently, something happened earlier in the day when he wasn't looking, and Haku turned out to be a girl?

Dabi was at least three percent sure Hawks wasn't fully sober when he told him because also apparently, they didn't even kill the supposed girl even though it was, like, y'know, a capital crime.

(Man, he never even spent that much time with Toga in their brief time on the same side, and yet somehow, in some way, he still felt influenced by her habit of constantly injecting 'like' into her sentences.)

Wack.

Anyway, he wasn't completely surprised by that fact anyway, if Hawks was to be considered a valid source, of course. They kept him around, after all, so who was he to judge if they were going to keep a single measly girl alive if she single-handedly wiped out all of Kurogiri's forces.

Dabi had to admit, that was an impressive feat. Apparently though, they didn't keep her around regardless of her gender, which he personally thought stupid (since he knew firsthand that women could lead and kick ass just as well as men), but whatever, man! That was none of his business, really.

But, he decided as he spied with his little eye something blond and angry come out of the planning tent, I can make it my business anyway.

"Heeeey, cat-kid," he said as he sidled up to the kid in question and fell in step with him. Cat-kid, of course, shot him a narrow glare, but Dabi pretended he didn't notice. "Tell me about that one guy who got kicked out today. Haku? Was that his name?"

"First of all, don't call me that, charcoal brain," cat-kid snapped, turning to face him so sharply, Dabi instinctively jumped backwards as if to avoid getting mauled. "Secondly, why the fuck would you care?"

"If you're going to disrespect your elders by calling them 'charcoal brain', then I'd say you deserve your nickname," Dabi replied. "And also because I just figured it would be good to know about the guy who, like, y'know, saved all your asses when it came to that one fight."

Cat-kid let the nickname thing go, but he wasn't going to just dole out information just willy-nilly, it seemed. Dabi wondered if it was because the kid didn't trust him, or if he was aware of the repercussions of letting the information transpire. Either way, his retort of, "What do already know anyway?" wasn't doing Dabi any favors.

But he shrugged it off all the same; Dabi prided himself in his relatively chill attitude, after all. "Not much, really. Last night Hawks told me Haku was actually a girl and that you guys kicked her out. I know Shoto's been in love with the kid since before then. That's about it, I'd say," he answered, dropping the information he guessed cat-kid thought he wanted as if it were nothing. "All I wanna know is—"

"Half-n-Half's in love with the Yaoyorozu kid? That peony? The fuck?" cat-kid interrupted.

Bingo, Dabi thought. "Yeah, kind of obvious if you know him well enough."

Cat-kid stopped walking, and Dabi had to try very hard not to let his glee show as he watched the gears turn in the kid's head.

"Huh," cat-kid grunted after a moment. "I guess. Explains why the old man kicked me out of the tent."

Dabi raised an eyebrow. "Oh?" More fuel?

"Yeah, Hapa was just moping around like a little bitch on the ground, staring at the dog tag Peony left behind. Annoying as fuck, since I actually thought we had shit to do, but—" he cut himself off and narrowed his eyes at Dabi. "Why would you need all this information anyway?"

Dabi crossed his arms and cracked his neck. "Well, you know, it's kind of my job to know things. That's why I'm around, remember? I know things, I tell people, and I get to freeload off the army."

"Yeah, I fucking guess, but what the fuck would you even know about love?" the kid retorted, crossing his arms right back at him.

Touché, kiddo; I really don't know anything about the subject, Dabi thought. Really, it's just for making fun of Shoto—

His mind caught onto the memory of a few nights ago, when he was first settling in and saw Shoto go off with the Yaoyorozu kid to clean dog tags. Cat-kid had been there too, he recalled, yelling obscenities until…

Dabi couldn't help the sly grin forming on his face, even when it began to tug at his stitches. "Enough to know that you've got some of your own for one particular person," he said, nonchalant despite leaning in.

Cat-kid jerked his backward, his face contorting into a mixture of confusion and disgust. "Wh— what? What the fuck?"

Dabi shrugged as he took a step forward, taking advantage of their height difference to intimidate the kid. "You know, the one that calmed you down the other day."

Cat-kid furrowed his brow and dug his heels into the ground, making it clear he wasn't going to let himself back down from the conversation. "Kir— Shitty Hair?" (Don't think I didn't notice you catch yourself, Dabi thought, getting more invested by the second.) "I'm not in love with him! What the fuck?!"

"Mhmm, of course you're not," Dabi said with mock skepticism. Even though he could hear the genuine surprise in cat-kid's voice, from the way the kid's face twisted and faltered, he figured he just hadn't noticed it yet or knew what it was.

The kid scowled and cracked his knuckles. "The fuck're you doing right now anyway? I thought you wanted to know about Peony or some shit, go make fun of Hapa or something, I don't fucking know. He's your brother and all."

Nah, his brother wasn't as fun. Less expressive. Had it been Shoto he was teasing, the kid would've stalked off fuming by now. "Too late, kitty-cat. Didn't you say Aizawa was talking with him right now? Looks like you're stuck as my replacement for now. Tell me more about this guy, hmm~?"

"No, fuck off." Cat-kid was posturing up to fight him, but Dabi didn't feel particularly intimidated. What was the worst he could do? He was just a scared kid, after all. Best he'd done was help captain a bunch of rookies, and that didn't exactly rank high on the list of things that even remotely set an alarm off in Dabi's mind.

"Nah," the man said, but he regretted it in an instant when the kitty-cat kid punched him in the crotch. Dabi seethed and doubled over in pain; all the wind had been knocked out of him, leaving him incapable of skipping after and harassing… Katsuki, had his name been? Whatever he was called, the kid was stalking off now.

Dabi grinned despite the pain and watched him go. For now, he was satisfied with what he had done.

The night felt cold and unforgiving, hopeless in its sky full of clouds blocking out the moon and stars. Momo suppressed her shivers the best she could, but when all she had to help keep warm was a cold-blooded dragon and a horse's backside, it was hard to do a good job.

Her stomach was empty thanks to her hasty packing, and her mind was full thanks to the whirlwind of a day that got her in this position in the first place. She would not be sleeping tonight, she already knew. Not while she had all her decisions and their consequences weighed so heavily on her mind.

Iida reached over and nuzzled her shoulder, and Momo sighed as she stared at the roof of the cave. Uraraka snuggled up to her breast, and Deku… well, she hadn't kept tabs on the cricket since she left him behind for the battle. He was somewhere, probably (she trusted Uraraka to know), but she was too exhausted to care.

"I can't believe I lost the gamble," she said weakly at last. "I can't believe I lost all of them."

Uraraka fidgeted beneath Momo's armor, which she hadn't bothered to take off yet, and poked her cold, whiskered nose against the girl's neck. "Do you wanna talk about it, Yaomomo?"

Momo listlessly placed her hand atop Uraraka's head and kept it there. "All I wanted was to bring honor to the household." Her voice was empty, altogether devoid of all emotion, as if the words were simply being pushed through her airway with no real meaning to them. "And I started… I started to think I could do it, you know?"

A tear leaked out from the corner of her eye. She let it run down her face and leave a streak of cold on her cheek. "Maybe I should have seen that wasn't going to happen when he kicked me out. Maybe I should have gone home. At least then I put in a good effort and just came up short. Instead of being sent home knowing full well I should be dead and yet not even worth the effort of punishing."

She sniffled, but that didn't make it any easier to breathe. Another tear rolled down, just as icy cold as the last, and she coughed to clear her lungs of the phlegm building up from the emotion. "I shouldn't have come. I shouldn't have made friends. I shouldn't have kept following him."

She sat up again, her eyes burning now, and she hardly noticed Uraraka fall down onto her lap with a solid and unceremonious thunk. "I lost them," she said. Her voice was like a frozen lake: the ice full of cracks on its uneven surface, betraying the tumultuous waves beneath.

Her reality was sinking in now, and her breathing became choked on the tears that began streaming down her face.

She lost them.

She lost her chance.

She lost him.

Uraraka squirmed around on her lap, but Momo could barely see her face in the blur. She said something, Momo was sure, but she could hardly even hear herself anymore. There was an ache in her chest; a pounding, whooshing, rush of blood in her ears; and a deep, deep well of regret in her soul.

She loved him.

She hadn't meant for it to happen, but she settled into it anyway. She let her heart fall, piece by piece, into his hands; she didn't even know at what point it was no longer her own. For all it mattered, it never was.

All she had wanted was to make her parents happy, to do as the wished, and to bring honor to the family name.

She screamed, a wild, harsh thing that left her lungs all in a rush before the last of her willpower crumbled, and she was left sobbing.

Hell would have been kinder than this.

"ADVANCE! BLOCK! RETREAT!"

Katsuki was mad.

Some would argue that this was the understatement of the millenia, but Katsuki would argue right back that he was merely cranky most of the time, not mad, so fuck you.

Right now, though, he was angry. He could feel the rage steeped in his bones, tearing at his self-control and screaming to come out. And maybe he would have, had he felt the soldiers deserved that. He knew they didn't, they really didn't, and that was the only thing keeping him from boiling over.

It was that shitty Hapa that made him so mad.

"TO THE REAR! BLOCK! ADVANCE!"

Morning had come again, and where had he been? Still asleep! The fuck! Aizawa told him that Half-n-Half had to sleep off a lot of feelings before he could function properly, but Katsuki kind of wanted to call the faintest whiff of bullshit on that. Of course he wouldn't because he knew better than to fuck with Aizawa, but that didn't stop him from hating the fact that Shoto practically went into an angst coma from kicking Yaoyorozu out or whatever.

Whatever though. He was there to help command and hell if he wasn't going to do his damn job.

Katsuki scanned the crowd of soldiers, searching for a familiar face. He wasn't there, Katsuki knew, because there was never missing that shock of bright red hair, but the absence of it upset him for some reason.

"ADVANCE! BLOCK! RETREAT!"

He'd seen the owner the day before, when Hapa brought Peony out for display, but since then? Nothing.

Where Kirishima could be was a mystery to Katsuki. His friends were gone too, the short, moody one and the stupid, blond one. Maybe these things were all related somehow. Fuck if he knew.

He caught the eye of that charcoal brain for a second, and the latter grinned at him. It, of course, filled him with rage because fuck what he'd said yesterday he wasn't in love with anyone. What the fuck was this guy seeing?

…Well, it wasn't as if Katsuki knew all that much about love himself anyway, but he scowled at himself for thinking about even entertaining the thought of charcoal brain being right.

Hawks came out and took over drilldown, allowing Katsuki to slink off and nurse his sore throat. He slipped into the nearest tent, and who would be lying there on the ground with that same slab of wood on a string in his hand?

That mixed bastard, of course.

Katsuki ground his teeth; the dumb bitch didn't even react when he entered right in front of him. Was he dead? Oooor what?

He nudged Hapa with his foot, reluctant to strain his voice, but when still nothing happened, he started seeing red again. Something within him snapped.

"Hey! Fucker," he barked, but it didn't matter to him whether or not the other person was listening. In one swift motion, he bent down, snatched the dog tag out of Shoto's limp hand, and yanked it out of reach when Shoto reacted far faster than he ever could have expected. "What the hell are you doing?"

Half-n-Half didn't answer; there was a fire in his eyes again, but it was fixated upon the name on the tag Katsuki now held.

He was tempted to chuck it out the door, to just straight-up destroy the thing, but he didn't. Angry as he was, Katsuki still had restraint, but that didn't keep him from blowing over in other ways. "Huh? What was that?" he taunted, somehow managing to keep Hapa at arm's length from him.

"Give it back," Shoto snapped, but Katsuki scowled and kept it away.

"Yeah, or else what? For fuck's sake, man! Are you living for the dead, or for the living?" He could see the other boy's eyes darken significantly, but he was on a roll now. "You made the shitty decision, now you live with it!—FUCK!"

That last part was because Shoto kicked him in the shin, temporarily overwhelming him enough to take back the dog tag and shove him back out the door.

He sighed. He was tired.

Katsuki sat down on the dry dirt floor with one knee pulled up to his chest and his arm resting upon that knee as he watched Hawks do drilldown. At least he tried. Unlike that shitty Hapa.

He allowed himself the time to calm down, and his thoughts inevitably wandered off. Much to his chagrin, he noticed they headed straight back toward that shitty redheaded hairbrain.

.

.

.

Maybe he wasn't in love. He couldn't say for sure. But maybe he was.

Regardless of whether or not he was, he at least figured out one thing: if he had to pick someone to fall in love with, it would have been Kirishima. Everyone else was too dumb or too angsty or too whatever-the-fuck.

He just didn't know what to do with the information now that he had vanished.

Katsuki rested his head on his arm. He was tired of searching.

Author's Note xviii. i have no idea how i wrote all this in a week. wild, right? we had not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR characters cry in this chapter. is this what angst is supposed to feel like? and like wow a little bit for everyone here too. we have tdmm breaking down because basically they miss each other, kmjr finally confess their feelings, and bakugou has been smacked in the face with the possibility of falling in love. yay.

also payoff for the dogtags finally. i think my favorite line of this chapter is "hell would have been kinder than this". OH, WHICH REMINDS ME! i decided to put up an annotated version of orchid on my tumblr... which i don't advertise on this site anymore for reasons *coughcough fanfiction fiasco coughcough*. i've only annotated up to chapter five, but if you wanna read my commentary/meta on this fic, mention it in a review or pm me, and i'll send you the link.

yeah! ! ! i should work on college apps. thank you for reading, follow/fave if you're new and intrigued (we ARE nearing the very end after all), leave a review if that's what you're into, and as always, have a greaaaaat daaaayyy~~~