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“Yaomomo?”
The voice from behind her is a rough, raspy whisper. She knows who it belongs to, even before scrubbing her eyes dry of tears and twisting around on the common room couch to see.
“Oh, Todoroki!” she says. “What are you doing up?”
Todoroki holds up an empty water glass, then nods towards the dorm’s kitchenette, where Momo has left a single light on. He looks unassuming in sweatpants and a v-neck, stained red with the glow of emergency exit signs that hang around the room and reflect off the inky black windows. The shirt exposes the burn that crawls up his throat, healed enough for him to go unbandaged but that Momo knows looks raw and angry by daylight. Right now, in the dimness of their common room at three-something in the morning, it is dark like blood. It still hurts him to speak, the reason why his whisper-rasp is so distinctive.
“Do you want some tea? Although, I’m afraid it’s probably cold,” she says, gesturing to a pot of lavender chamomile she’d brewed—thirty minutes ago? Forty? The mountain of crumpled tissues on the coffee table beside her bone china teapot tells her she’s been sitting here for quite a while. She hadn’t checked the time when she’d stumbled out of bed, propelled by nightmares and intent only on reaching the kitchenette so she could make her tea, the process of which would do as much to calm her racing heart as the drink itself.
Todoroki shuffles around the couch and perches beside her, holding out his glass. As she pours, the uptick to the corners of his mouth can’t quite be called a smile, but she takes it for what it means: thank you . He takes a long, slow draught before placing the glass carefully on the table and sinking back against the cushions.
“Wanna talk about it?” he asks.
Not “Are you alright?” or “What’s wrong?” After the raid on the Paranormal Liberation Front, nobody is alright, and everything is wrong. Momo knows she’s not the only member of Class A having regular nightmares. She thinks, Todoroki is probably the most traumatized of all—his own brother tried to kill him, leaving him with what will be another permanent scar, a lifelong reminder. Suddenly, her heart squeezes in shame for being so upset over her own nightmares, which are always about something that didn’t happen to her directly, that she hadn’t even witnessed, that is only half real and half a product of her imagination running wild.
She shakes her head: No, I don’t want to talk about it. “How about you? How are you holding up?”
He sighs, and it deflates him like a soufflé left too long in the oven, back hunching and shoulders curling in. He twists his hand in his lap and leans into her side and tips his head onto her shoulder. His hair is soft where it brushes her bare skin.
“Not so good, huh?” Momo asks without expecting an answer. She takes one of his hands from his lap and threads their fingers together. The skin of his palm is warm and dry. They’ve studied and hung out together a lot over the past few months, growing close enough for Todoroki to start using her nickname, but hand-holding is a first. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t let a boy snuggle against her in a public space such as this where, theoretically, anyone could walk in—a voice in the back of her mind that sounds like her father’s says something about propriety—but the weight of his head is so, so comforting, and Todoroki needs this. Momo needs this.
“My brother is still out there,” Todoroki croaks. “It’s only a matter of time before…” (It’s left unspoken, but Momo understands: it’s only a matter of time before Dabi comes after him again.) “I’ll have to be the one to take him down.”
The last word is almost swallowed in a weak, dry coughing fit. He grabs for his cold tea without letting go of Momo’s hand.
When he’s settled down again, head back on her shoulder, she strokes her thumb along his index finger and says, “That responsibility shouldn’t be on your shoulders alone.”
“My father can’t do it.”
“But he’s not the only one you can turn to. You have the rest of our class, and all of our teachers. Everyone here wants to help you. And I– I’ll offer you assistance in any way that I can. Whatever it is you need, all you have to do is ask, and I’ll try my very best to help you. Will you do that, Todoroki? Will you ask me if you need someone?”
She means it, fervently. Todoroki nods and squeezes her hand.
Back in the hospital, Iida had confessed to her what he overheard Todoroki saying to his brother during the battle. “Normally, I wouldn’t reveal something so personal without his express permission,” Iida had said, “but I’m concerned for the state of his mental health when he wakes up. I know you two are close. Can I ask you to help me keep an eye on him?” There has to be a way for Momo to help, a way for her to get to Dabi before he gets to Todoroki, because Todoroki shouldn’t be forced to fight his brother again, not if it’s going to cause him more trauma, not if it’s going to give him nightmares that never end and make him afraid to sleep just like hers do when she knows she’ll just wake again with her heart pounding so hard it makes her sick–
“I think,” she chokes, trying to keep her tears at bay. She is so tired to crying. “I think I listened to Midnight die.”
There’s no stopping the tears now; her eyes burn with them. Todoroki grabs a wad of clean tissues and presses them into her free hand. She continues, “She said it was up to me to put Gigantomachia to sleep, she said she trusted my judgment, and then– and then there was a crunch, and, and the line went dead, and–”
In her nightmares, the line doesn’t cut out; she hears every crack and thud and scream, listens as the villains stab and pound and shoot her teacher dead. They never make it a quick death, and Momo is powerless to do anything but listen and cry until her voice is raw. In one dream, she threw her earpiece to the ground, crushed it beneath her boot, but Midnight’s screams still echoed through the forest, and when Momo crashed through bloodstained foliage to find her, losing herself deeper in the wood and watching Gigantomachia’s craggy back emerge over the treetops to block out the sky, she realized all she’d done was abandon her classmates to the mercy of the League.
(Sometimes, her nightmares are less specific: a simple phone call while walking down the street, or sitting in her room. But no matter how mundane the situation, she still wakes with the gut-roiling fear that the person on the other end of the line was about to die.)
Todoroki pulls her to his chest and hugs her fiercely, burying his nose in her hair. She tries to lay her head in a way that won’t irritate his wound and finds that he smells like burn cream.
“My plan wasn’t even good enough,” she sobs. “Midnight died trusting me to stop Gigantomachia from reaching the city, and I let him go. I let him get past me, I let so many more people die–”
“Momo,” Todoroki says, voice crackling and louder than she’s heard it since before the war.
It must hurt him. Momo’s breath dies in her throat.
He’s looking down at her with a frown, but she can tell he’d not angry, just concerned—he’s not trying to guilt-trip her by straining his voice. “Don’t blame yourself,” he says before dissolving into coughing again. “Sorry. Paper and pencil?”
Momo doesn’t have either, but with her quirk, that’s not a problem. It only takes her a moment to think of their composition, and then she reaches up under her pajama shirt and pulls out a newly-made pencil and pocket notepad—white, because that’s Todoroki’s favorite color. He thanks her with a nod and hunches over the coffee table to write.
She collapses back against the cushions and blows her nose, adding the to her tissue mountain, and waits for him to finish; his handwriting is too small and fastidious for her to read over his shoulder. Not that she would, anyway, since he’s making the effort to write her this note, and impatience would be rude. When he finally hands it to her, she finds he’s filled an entire page, small as the paper is.
You shouldn’t blame yourself , it reads. Gigantomachia may have done damage to the city, but that’s not your fault. He was a lot stronger than anyone anticipated, and none of the pro heroes were able to even slow him down, let alone stop him. Your plan did more damage to him than all of the adults combined, including Endeavor and Best Jeanist. You did a better job than two of the top three heroes. Midnight was right to trust you. I think she’d be really proud. And besides, that responsibility shouldn’t have been on your shoulders alone.
Her lips purse in a thin attempt at a smile when she sees his use of her own line. “You really think so, Todoroki?”
He nods vigorously and whispers, “You’re amazing.”
A blush blazing across her face, she tries to hold back a more genuine smile. “That means a lot coming from you, Todoroki. I…I’m not sure I’ll ever be as amazing as you, but…thank you.” A yawn breaks her smile, and her limbs feel suddenly heavy with exhaustion.
Todoroki huffs in amusement. “You should sleep.”
“I want to, but…” she starts, and memories of her dreams leech all the warmth from her body. She hugs her knees to her chest and finishes, “…nightmares.”
He says, “I’m here.”
When she looks at him over the arms she’s wound protectively around herself, she sees him leaning back against the arm of the couch, his own arms outstretched and inviting, a soft smile on his lips. She doesn’t hesitate to crawl to him and curl up between his knees as he pulls her into the warmth of his chest. His heart beats steadily beneath her ear. She’s sure his presence won’t erase her nightmares, but if she wakes again, it will at least be some comfort.
“Is this comfortable for you?” she asks.
“Mhm. You?”
“Yes.”
Her eyelids drift shut as he whispers, “Sleep.” That won’t take much; she’s much closer than she’s realized. On the cusp of unconsciousness, she thinks she feels him press a kiss into her hair, and she hopes it isn’t another dream.