For Healy, who got me on board.
[Author's Note: This story takes place after Episode 61 of the anime, or roughly Chapter 121 of the manga. Spoilers for plot developments up to this point.]
Chapter 1: Sauntering Vaguely Downwards
"There's someone you like, right~?"
That question had been echoing in Ochako Uraraka's mind for days on end.
"There's someone you like, right~?"
True, the girl who asked it was disturbed... okay, crazy... okay, psychotic. Just the thought of that girl made Ochako sick. Toga giggled and squealed and declared herself "friends" with poor Tsuyu and babbled about intimate, private things, all while trying to murder her and Tsuyu both.
Psychotic she was... but she wasn't wrong.
"There's someone you like, right~?"
The question came to mind yet again as Class 1-A filed out the double doors of Heights Alliance on their way to the new semester's opening ceremony. Or rather, Class 1-A minus two... Deku and Bakugou were staying behind, under house arrest for the fight they had the night before. Ochako cast a long look over her shoulder back at them as the group made their way across the courtyard. Both boys were vacuuming the floors at the moment, Deku doing so quietly and without fuss, and Bakugou... not. He hadn't blown anything up yet, so that was progress, she supposed.
Deku was in bandages, again. Thankfully not in critical condition like the aftermath of the training camp, but no matter how many times she saw him bruised, broken, and beat up—and that had happened so many times that she had lost count—she never, ever got used to it.
"I love people who are beat up and smell like blood...!"
Gah. Ochako stopped in mid-step and shook herself, her stomach turning. Her skin wanted to crawl off and hide in a corner somewhere, as it did every time she thought about that girl. Ochako thought of herself as an empathetic person, able to understand most people's feelings pretty well... but there was no understanding Toga, a girl so divorced from normal human feelings and behavior that she thought blood and pain and suffering were attractive. More than that, they made her excited. Disgusting. Sick, depraved, and disgusting.
Better not to think about Toga. She wasn't the problem, anyway.
The problem, if one could call it that, was Deku. During the Provisional License Exam, when saw that girl from Shiketsu all over him... something in her burned hotter than Todoroki's flames, a vehement, bitter anger that was totally unlike her. She decided back then that she couldn't allow Deku to distract her, much as she cared about him... much as she...
Much as she...
Blood rushed to Ochako's cheeks. It was a good thing she was lagging behind the rest of her classmates; she had a feeling that she was glowing like a neon sign.
Much as she liked him.
She liked Deku.
There, that was it. She thought it, and sky didn't fall, the ground didn't open up to swallow her whole... though the thought was tempting. Ochako buried her burning face in her hands. The soles of her shoes left the ground by a few centimeters.
"Ochako-chan?" Now Tsuyu was hanging back. She tilted her head to one side and blinked her wide, froggy eyes. "Are you okay?"
"I-I'll be fine, Tsuyu-chan, just fine. I was just... thinking about something."
