RESURGENCE - MHA x FReader

Chapter XIX: Expectations

The ghost of solid air was a persistent memory.

It wasn't just a thought—it was muscle memory. A flicker of sensation that sometimes came uninvited, like the faint buzz left on your fingertips after touching something electric. You remembered being ten, standing barefoot above the dusty training ground, air pressed thick and alive beneath your feet. The wind whistled softly against your skin, your heart thudding fast enough to drown out the world. The scent of sun-warmed earth and the faint metallic tang of your own nervous sweat mixed in the air.

And then came his voice.
Your father's. Calm, even, measured.

"Efficiency is the cornerstone of control."

He didn't speak loudly. He never had to. His tone was never cold—just deliberate, like every word had a place and purpose. He was a man who believed that emotion clouded judgment, that precision was a form of care. That was his version of love: teaching you not to fall.

That day, you wanted to answer him. To say look, I did it, to laugh, to feel the ground under your feet again. But the air slipped. The current wavered. And before you knew it, you were falling.

He caught you.

His arms were steady, unshaken, and you could still remember the faint scent of antiseptic clinging to his coat, the smell of steel and wind and something almost like safety.

"You lost focus," he murmured. "That's fine. We'll try again tomorrow."

..

Now, two years later, you sat at your desk, fingers drumming absentmindedly against the wood. The old memory hummed beneath your skin like static. You could almost feel the air stir in response, invisible currents curling around your wrist. It always reacted to you, even when you weren't trying to call it.

Your quirk. A power that, in your first life, would have been pure magic.

The paper on your desk fluttered. You stilled your hand, letting the room settle again. Outside your window, the afternoon light bent through the glass in streaks of pale gold, dust dancing in the quiet. You listened to a dog barking somewhere, the rustle of leaves brushing against the siding. It all felt muted, unreal, like you were stuck between worlds again.

It had been a year since the Chisaki incident.

You don't talk about it at all.

No one can know.

Because truth has a way of connecting things that should stay separate. And if anyone learned that your father had once stood too close to men like him, that he'd once been part of a world he'd tried to leave behind... they'd come for him. And you couldn't let that happen.

He's been different since then—lighter, somehow.

He doesn't lock his study door anymore. Sometimes, when you walk past, you'll find him sitting by the window instead of his desk, just staring outside with this quiet, content look on his face. Like he's learning how to exist without holding everything together. Like he's finally letting go.

You tell yourself that's good. That he deserves to rest. That everything is fine now.

Your mother, meanwhile, has been working more than ever. She's always been calm in a way your father wasn't—relaxed, talkative, always humming while she cooks. She used to say she liked her job at the Hero Commission because it was "peaceful paperwork and coffee breaks." But that changed a few months ago.

You still remember the night she came home late, the way the front door slammed open, the smell of rain-soaked concrete clinging to her coat. Her hair was slightly messy from the wind, cheeks flushed and eyes bright with something that wasn't just relief.