Supernova

We Deserve A Soft Epilogue, My Love

After the whole ambush and recovery debacle, my quirk control became more intense, but not necessarily more accessible. Recalibration helped a lot, but it was a slow-going process. Sometimes I'd wake up in the middle of the night screaming, horrified by the feeling of the sheets on my skin. Or a breeze rolling over my shoulders would take me off guard that my density would shoot up and I'd smash the chair beneath me into a heap of broken limbs. I hated pain. I hated itchy. I hated a lot of things. I found myself wishing I could submit and fall back into infinite silence sometimes, but the allure of a long life with my family was worth the annoyance I got from being too cold, from my shoes being too tight, from eating something that didn't sit right with me.

Let's just say that it took some getting used to.

Once I started getting the hang of it, I just wanted to feel things. I got injured a lot. I sometimes forgot about pain. I was curious about what flames, cactuses, hot stoves, knives, and those types of things felt like, without remembering that I needed to use Indestructibility while I felt them. I was collecting scars like it was my life's mission. I liked them. They were proof of being alive. Still, Elias and Demon made me carry recalibration tablets and black blood with me wherever I went. They came in handy often. So did Katsuki's watchful gaze and warm hand that seemed glued to mine most days. We were pretty damn inseparable outside of our obligations.

He liked showing me how things felt. We went to petting zoos and swam in chilly rivers and sat on beaches. What is this? I'd ask him. This is rough. This is smooth. This is soft. He only ever pretended to be annoyed by my questions. If ever there was a particularly hard or stressful day, and my quirk was acting up, and his touch was the only thing I could feel, he'd press his palm in the back of my hand and I'd press my palm to the subject of my interest, and we'd stay like that until the sensation had bled through to the other side. He never even pretended to be annoyed by that process. He was my safehouse, from which I could venture out into the world. It had opened itself up to me, and I was hungry to learn.

One day, Katsuki came over to my dorm room to find I'd chopped my hair off. He stood in the doorway, red eyes wide and flaring, while I held my discarded ponytail in one hand and the kitchen shears in the other, proudly, like a child showing a parent an art project. My hair, which was dead cells, but indestructible ones nonetheless, had never been able to be cut. It had just been slowly and steadily growing since birth. He stared. He stared at me for a long time. I felt regretful, like maybe my hair had been part of my girlishness, and maybe he wouldn't think I was pretty anymore, a novelty I had come to enjoy.

"How do I look?" I asked him, shaking my head, feeling the ends of my hair brush on my shoulders.

I realized it was not horror in his eyes but shock, and when he started laughing, I knew that was silly. He walked over to where I was sitting at the vanity and took the scissors out of my hands.

"You look like you need to even out your edges," he told me, turning me back towards the mirror.

He was concentrating on what he was doing, the same way he did when he braided my hair in my dorm room the day of the Shie Hassaikai mission. I heard the sound of the scissors opening and closing felt his warm hands brush the back of my neck and shoulder blades while he worked. I watched him in the mirror the entire time, in awe of how beautiful he was, my chest tingling something fierce all the while.

Elias and Demon both graduated UA with us, stayed around for the parties a few of us, including me, had convinced our parents into throwing, but before the summer had come to a close, they informed us that it was time for them to go back to Europe. Leo and Iliana didn't want the empire. Too much bad blood, apparently. Not really a surprise, but, you know. Plus, they had a toddler to worry about and another on the way. Unfortunately, I understood. I'd cried when they told us, and they'd both laughed at me. We'd visit all the time, Elias promised me. Nobody's forcing us to get married again, and we both have private jets. I nodded, but I continued to cry. I felt like I cried all the way until they asked Katsuki and I to see them off at the airport a few days later. I was still crying then, dripping hot tears onto the fronts of their shirts as I hugged them. Neither of them protested. Elias and Katsuki held hands and exchanged a nod. Demon held out his hand to him, but once he took it, he pulled him into a bear hug that Katuski tried to struggle and yell, but not explode, his way out of. When Demon let him go, he ruffled his blonde hair.