Secrets [Todoroki]

*Chapter Thirty-Four*

When Miri arrived home that night, she found the house to be oddly quiet. The servants weren't anywhere in sight, which was an obvious cue that something was up with her mother.

She climbed the stairs to her room, looking around. 'I can feel her presence, but I don't understand why she'd be acting like this, especially after last night. Did what I say not get through to her like I thought?'

She pushed open the door to her room and saw her mother frantically rushing from drawer to drawer, pulling clothing out and stuffing them into a suitcase on Miri's bed. "Mother!?" She exclaimed and rushed the rest of the way into the room.

"We have to leave Japan!" Her mother pushed out, fear written on her face. For her mother to be so scared...it was unsettling.

"What!?" Miri wasn't a stranger to moving around, but she thought they had finally settled down here.

"I..." Her mother stopped moving and stood in the room. "I'm not here like I want to be." She pointed at her head. "And I thought I could control myself better, but I can't. And...I talked to your grandfather on the phone. He told me that since you were on the screen from the Sports Festival, he hasn't received a call from Alzaro, your father. I don't want him to find us, Mirianne. He can't find us. I don't want to face him." She began folding the clothes nicely into the suitcase. "And maybe...if I get away from Enji...I might get better."

Miri stared at her mother. She had never seen her mother scared before. Yesterday was one thing, but the woman before her wasn't anything like the woman a month ago.

"The Nightmare I know never got scared. If I can accept the fact that my father might find me," She grabbed the clothes from her mother's hands. "Then I think you can too." She then raised an eyebrow. "And who is Enji?"

"You don't understand..." Nightmare grabbed the clothes back and aggressively folded them. "I've always been scared." She hissed. "Why do you think we never stuck around in one place for too long? Your father has connections everywhere. We can never truly hide from him."

Miri noticed her mother never addressed the Enji question. "So, you're telling me you're a coward who has done nothing but run from her problems?"

"Don't lecture me, Mirianne!" Her mother snapped. "I heard everything you thought about me last night." She whispered and shoved a pair of sweatpants into the case. "You may deal with your problems by confronting them head on, but that isn't me."

Miri didn't exactly face her problems head on either, but she wasn't going to correct her mother.

Miri stared at the woman in front of her. "Who the hell are you?"

Nightmare stopped what she was doing and stared at Miri. "What do you mean?"

"I mean who in the hell are you?" Miri held her hands up to her room. "You've been saying some weird and non-Nightmare stuff lately. Even yesterday, if you were actually yourself, you would've slapped me clear out the car window. Why didn't you? Did you hit your head on something before you picked me up from the school? Did one of your little minions poison your cereal or something?!"

Nightmare stared at her.

Miri groaned. "Oh, my god."

"Did you not want me to be the mother you had before?" Nightmare stared at her. "I'm...I'm trying to be better for you."

Miri stopped her ranting and stared at her once more, confliction clear on her face. "I..." She sighed and sat on the bed.

Miri understood it now. Somewhere within her argument with her mother yesterday, she must have realized something. When Miri told her that sorry wouldn't be enough, Nightmare must've decided to try and use actions as a way of making peace. In her own diluted sense of understanding, Nightmare was trying to fix things between her and Miri.

"It's not that I don't appreciate you trying, it's that..." Miri knitted her eyebrows together, trying to find a proper way to say it.

"Are you trying to tell me you want me to be your old mom, but not?" Nightmare stood in front of Miri, looking down at her.

"Why now?" Miri looked up at her. "Why now are you trying to turn over a new leaf? How has..." She struggled for the words. "How have you not just lost control yet? How are we having a normal conversation without you using the darkness?"

Nightmare stared at Miri, surprise on her face. "You mean...you don't understand?"

"What? Understand what?" Miri demanded.

"What did you do while you were in America?" Nightmare asked. "Because ever since you've come home, and every time you're around me, I can't use my quirk."

Miri stared at her, incredulous. "Are you serious?"

"Every time you come around, any feeling or connection I've made with the darkness dissipates. I can't even bring it to me now." Nightmare held her head. "Being around you clears my head, but leaves me feeling empty inside. Like a part of me is missing. You mean to tell me you're not doing it on purpose?"

Miri stood up slowly. "I make your quirk disappear?"

"I don't know about disappear, but it's like the darkness won't listen to me. What did you do in America?" Nightmare questioned further, pushing to understand just what exactly her daughter did.

"I...I accepted it." Miri shrugged, not sure what else to say. "I accepted the darkness."

Nightmare narrowed her eyes. "That's all?"

"That's all." Miri sat back down on the bed again. "Does it all flock to me now that I've accepted it as part of me?"

"There's nothing we can do about it now. As long as you are around me, I can't use my quirk. Forget the mission I gave to you at the beginning of the school year. Forget the school. Forget the boy and his father. Just forget we lived here in Japan. We'll go to Spain or something like that." Nightmare closed the suitcase.

"No. We'll stay here." Miri crossed her arms.

"Mirianne, you know we can't stay-"

"Yes, we can." Miri growled. "You just don't want to. I'm tired of running. We're going to run out of places to run to." She walked to her mirror and took a photo down from the thumbtack and held it up to Nightmare. "I've finally got friends here. I'm becoming happy and I'm growing to become a hero. Putting me into that school, regardless of the reasoning behind it, was the best decision you have ever made when it concerned me. Don't take it all away from me. If you wanted to change, you wouldn't do this."

The picture in Miri's hands was a photo of her and Uraraka with their arms around each other. Midoriya and Iida were in the background with funny looks on their faces. The picture made Miri happy every time she saw it.

Nightmare looked at the suitcase. "What will we do when Alzaro finds us?"

"Then I guess he found us. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it." Miri curled her fist. "But we're done running, okay?"

Miri watched her mother nod. She set the suitcase down slowly. The woman then slipped out of the room, leaving Miri alone to her thoughts.

'So, when my mother isn't under the influence of the darkness, she's pretty...docile? And when I'm around her now, she can't manipulate the darkness?' She sat on her bed, thinking. A slight smile came across her face. 'That means...I have a chance of getting my old mother back.'

Then she sat up in bed. "Wait...she doesn't want me to worry about the mission she gave me at the beginning of the year?" She stared at her wall. "She...doesn't want me to use Todoroki?" A weight seemed to have been lifted off her chest as her eyes burned in happiness. "I...I'm free from it?" She wiped at her cheeks.

'Can I work on things with him?'