Chapter Text
Izuku’s transition from minimally conscious to confused took another day, a day in which Ochako refused to leave his side except to answer her bodily needs. He didn’t say much, and half of the time he couldn’t focus on her face, but she kept a hand on his and she waited. She’d wait as long as it took.
In that time, Hawks, Miruko, Shinsou, and Kyoka finished up the majority of the work with the Kowareta Kage. Shinsou apparently had gotten shot, but the bullet didn’t pierce through his suit, so Ochako was sure he’d live with at the very minimum, a broken rib. Most heroes had been through more than that, so she wasn’t particularly worried. The rest of the Kowareta Kage were in prison, and the majority of the danger had passed.
She waited.
Izuku in the confusional state wasn’t particularly pleasant. He… was seeing a lot of things that weren’t there, things that half the time sent him into a panic attack and the other half made him just stare vacantly at the wall in confusion. Ochako sat with him through all of it. He let her, although even her presence seemed to induce some semblance of paranoia in him.
The doctors promised it would only take a couple days and he’d begin to be pretty much back to normal, with a few minor problems. They said Izuku’s recovery from the comatose state was impressively smooth, and she only had to wait a little longer. There would still be things he wouldn’t understand for a while, but he hadn’t been out long enough for any lasting brain damage to occur, so after his body healed a bit more, he’d come back.
Ochako waited.
Izuku slept fitfully, and Ochako sat with him, quietly murmuring the kindest things she could think of to help him. He spent most of the day sleeping. Ochako slept when he did.
“Ochako,” he said quite clearly at… almost two in the morning on the second day.
She met his eyes in the dim light of the room, waiting.
“Why are you still here?” The question was asked almost suspiciously, Izuku’s eyebrows furrowed tightly together like she was a puzzle he couldn't quite solve.
Ochako rested her head on her hand, watching him. “Where else would I go?”
“Not here.” He shook his head. “You have a life outside of this, don’t you? I don’t understand…”
“I don’t understand it half the time either,” she said quietly, “but I know that I can’t leave. That I won’t leave until you’re better. Because I care about you.”
“But I’m not…” He struggled with words for a second, jaw shifting around as he sought out the rest of his sentence. “Why do you care?”
Ochako shook her head. Because I love you sat in her thoughts, but that wasn’t the answer he wanted. Because why did she love him, why? And there were so many reasons she couldn’t specify a single one. She loved him because he was him . She loved him for every aspect of his being, ever fault and every glorious eccentricity. How could she tell him all the reasons she cared? She could start a list, but she was scared she’d never be able to stop.
Maybe she should. Make a list of everything she noticed, add and add and add to it until there was no paper left, and then write on the margins and the cover and the walls until Izuku could see how incredible he was.
His freckles, the way they dappled on his skin like sunlight through leaves. His laugh, and the way he tried to hide it but it still shone like a star. His intelligence, the way he was snarky and apologetic immediately after. The way he was nervous until he needed to be strong, and then suddenly he blazed like an inferno. The way that, when he talked, Ochako couldn’t look away. His silences were precious, and his ramblings were treasures. Ochako could spend every second of her life with him and never be bored, and yet always feel safe. And there was more, so much more…
She couldn’t list out the reasons she loved him, because listing them would cheapen it. The list would always feel too short, too achievable by anyone, when Izuku was the most special human alive to Ochako.
So the answer was…
“I don’t know,” she said, reaching up a hand and brushing a limp green curl out of his eyes. “I… You’re just… you.”
His nose scrunched up a little, like he was trying to find the loophole in those words. “That’s enough?” he whispered.
“‘Course it is. I…” I love you. Too soon. He’d almost died, yeah, but it was still too soon for that. Ochako could feel it, though, feel her love pulsing against her chest, pointing a hundred arrows right at him. And she could see in his eyes that he felt it too. The words didn’t have to be said to be true. They didn’t have to be exposed in the open for both of them to know they were there.
“You’re different from them,” Izuku said, tipping his head at the invisible peanut gallery across the room. Ochako had already helped him through two panic attacks about them by now, and Hatsume had helped with a third, and Midoriya had helped with the fourth and fifth… so she knew who they were. She knew who he saw when the concussion was still addling his perception of reality. “They stay because they want to see me fall.”
Ochako smiled. “And I stay because I want to see you fly.”
He nodded, stars in his eyes. Expression falling again, he whispered in a tortured tone, “But I don’t understand why.”
“You don’t have to,” she murmured. “It’s just true.”
His eyebrows furrowed while he thought about that, and then he nodded very slowly, expression clearly a little. “Okay.”
He burrowed under the blankets again, staring up at the ceiling, and Ochako pressed her lips into the back of his hand. She would wait. She’d wait as long as it took for him to understand that she wasn’t leaving, no matter what happened.
A few days later, Izuku was released from the hospital.
He was still slightly disoriented, but he’d managed to regain most of his senses – enough senses to apologise to Ochako for causing her any trouble, which she waved off immediately. It wasn’t any trouble. She loved him.
The doctors had said he shouldn’t over exert himself at all, but almost immediately upon their return into Ochako’s apartment, he launched himself into work again. The care centre they wanted to create wasn’t going to build itself, and they were functioning on a bit of a short timeline, since the deadline for getting the Kowareta Kage out of the hands of the HPSC was coming up quickly. Ochako was more than willing to do the brunt of the work herself, but almost the second they walked in the door Izuku was putting things together.
“We should probably start with getting land,” he said. Ochako glanced over his shoulder at his laptop to see he was already looking at realty sites to find a place for it.
“Maybe we could just buy an apartment complex,” she suggested. “We could remodel the inside of it to have more units, sort of like a college dorm.”
“We could just buy a college dorm building.”
Ochako almost laughed. “Where on earth would we find one of those? And who would be selling?”
“I think anyone will sell anything for a high enough price,” he pointed out. “Plus, it’s summer. Plenty of time for a university to adjust.”
“Okay, fine. Say we do that. Do we want to do it in Tokyo, or…”
Izuku’s eyes lit up, and that alone was enough to make Ochako trail off.
“What?” she asked as he dived into typing rapidly on his computer again.
“I have an idea! Cementoss. You know that guy, right?”
Ochako laughed, ducking her head. “I do. I’ll call my parents and ask them to write up some blueprints for us, and then I’ll call UA.”
Izuku beamed. “Okay! I’ll start working through other stuff.”
Lightly punching his shoulder, Ochako protested, “You’re supposed to be resting!”
He sighed, but there was still a happy light in his eyes. “Later, Ocha. Later.”
Shaking her head in amusement, Ochako pulled her phone out and called her parents.
The nonprofit took nearly two months to start up. In that time, Izuku moved back into his warehouse. At first, Ochako was apprehensive about that, because she really liked living with him, but she quickly realised that it didn’t actually matter much. Almost a hundred percent of the time, she was either at his warehouse or he was at her house. “Living” in separate places did not mean they actually lived separately. Ochako slept over or he slept over and the arrangement worked perfectly well for both of them.
The two of them registered themselves as a nonprofit, purchased land for it, and used a combination of resources from Ochako’s parents and Cementoss in order to build the actual building. The next step was all Izuku. He made what Ochako would consider to be a top-notch security system, something he said was ‘unhackable.’ Ochako wasn’t sure if that was actually possible, but if anyone could come up with something like that, it was Izuku.
They moved the members of the Kowareta Kage in, put a whole bunch of money into it, partially from a major donation from Yaomomo and, shockingly enough, another from Bakugou. It still needed a lot of work, but they had a start, and a start was enough.
At the same time, Ochako had started going around to schools to give anti-bullying speeches. It didn’t take much time to do, and it really proved a little went a long way. Especially because it felt like she was giving hope to people who needed it. She wasn’t sure if statistically she was making a difference, but Izuku said it probably didn’t matter. What mattered was that she was trying, and that the people she spoke to heard the message. “Whether or not they do anything about it or not is up to their own stupidity,” in Izuku’s words.
Meanwhile, the HPSC was lurking. Izuku was annoyed with all of its meddling members, especially the president, but both he and Ochako refused to let them take away what they were building. They were ready to fight tooth and nail for it. Ochako suspected if she asked, she could get a great deal of her graduating class at UA to back them up too.
Bakugou and Izuku had… sort of made up? They’d made up well enough that Izuku didn’t freeze up every time he saw Bakugou anymore, and that was enough for Ochako. She wasn’t there for the actual conversation, but Izuku reported that it contained an apology from Bakugou. It was given through gritted teeth, but that was to be expected from Mr. I’m Never Wrong.
And slowly but surely, Izuku was moving to a place in Ochako’s life where she couldn’t imagine herself without him.
Epilogue
It had been a long day at work.
Ochako was tired, she’d had to stay up way later than usual, and she might have overused her quirk a little. All she wanted was to crawl in bed and sleep for a full twenty-four hours.
She staggered into her apartment building, remembering distantly that Izuku had been over when she left that morning. He probably hadn’t left – knowing him, he got lost in some project or other and completely lost track of time until exhaustion caught up with him. And then he would have been too tired to leave, so he was probably still inside.
Ochako fumbled to put her key into the lock, twisted, and pushed the door open, staggering into her apartment.
The apartment was still, but the entrance hall light was on. Ochako stopped in the entrance, shutting the door behind her, and wondered at the light.
Izuku was probably asleep. But he’d… left the light on for her. He’d thought about her before going to sleep, and he’d left the light on.
Ochako rubbed her eyes, holding back the beginnings of tears.
It was such a simple thing, leaving the light on for her, but wow it meant a lot to Ochako. He really…. He cared about her. Enough to remember to leave a light on for her when she came home.
Man, she loved him. And he loved her back. And that… made her unbelievably happy.
She slipped her shoes off, got ready for bed, and slipped under the covers next to him. He immediately rolled over and latched onto her side.
She thought that would be it, and was about half asleep when Izuku buried his face in her shoulder and mumbled, “I love you, Ocha.”
Ochako froze, the wind knocked right out of her by four words. There they were. An admission of the trust and the care they’d both built from the ground up. A truth both of them had known for ages, and refused to say out loud.
Hearing those words was very different from just knowing they were true.
The timing… was perfect.
“I love you too, Izu,” she answered, fighting back more tears. She kissed the top of his head, right in the middle of the curls.
He sighed, almost in relief, and Ochako felt a smile start across her lips, and then her eyes, pulling warmly at her cheeks. So happy. She was so, so happy.
Beaming, she nestled her chin into his hair. “Hey,” she said softly. “I don’t have work tomorrow.”
He suddenly flailed around, turning over onto his stomach in that one yoga cobra position thing. His eyes were bright as they met Ochako’s in the dark. “Art museum!” he screeched.
She flopped an arm over her face to cover up a snicker. “What?” she giggled into her elbow.
“I want to go to an art museum,” he declared. “Can we go to Tokyo? It’s only an hour or so by train and I haven’t been to an art museum in years.”
Shaking her head, she said, “Sure. Yeah, of course.” Ridiculous, he was, and she loved him to the moon and then around it a hundred times and then to the edge of the galaxy and then finally back.
She dropped her arm away from her face and met his eyes.
That smile of his.
Damn.
Bright as the sun.