Chapter Text
Hospitals always smell like someone boiled time and added bleach.
Mirio Togata lay in a room that the morning had turned to afternoon turned to evening without asking his permission. He was propped at an angle that made the world look like a slope; a blanket was tucked just-so because a nurse with a power complex about corners had adopted him. Electrodes made a polite forest across his chest. His smile, habit, armor, promise, kept trying to climb onto his face and then sliding off, not because he didn’t mean it but because it weighed too much.
Midoriya sat in the visitor’s chair as if it had asked him to take its confession. His notebook lay open on his knee, but the page was blank and the pen was trembling. The better part of Full Cowl hummed faintly along his veins like a distant train you’re sure you can outrun if the timing breaks your way.
“She must be so scared,” Mirio said softly. His voice was hoarse with use and swallowed screams. “She hates small rooms and bright lights. And those gowns-"
Midoriya blinked. The picture reassembled in his head with painful ease: a little girl with a horn in a tattered hospital gown, bare feet slapping on a filthy corridor, blood tacky on her ankles. He swallowed. “No shoes,” he murmured. “She didn’t have shoes.”
Mirio squeezed the blanket. “The floor’s cold,” he said distantly, as if he’d left part of himself lying on it. “And the tiles aren’t… kind.” His eyes clenched shut, then opened and found the ceiling like a point on a map. “I should be out there.”
“You should be in bed,” said Aizawa from the doorway, voice like sand over steel. His hair hung limp; his eyes were red-rimmed and too awake. He stepped in with the gravity of a man who refused to topple because there were students in the room who would topple if he did. “Both of you should be, one in bed, one at least pretending to sit.”
Midoriya shot up straighter. “Eri-"
“Is not in this building,” Aizawa said, which sounded cruel and was in fact kindness wrapped in a lesson. “We’re searching.” He did not add quietly, because the word had couches and broom closets filled with reasons they weren’t sharing. “Sir Nighteye’s team is running filters. Centipeder has the registries. Uraraka and Asui are resting for the first time in twenty hours. Fat Gum is feeding half the hallway. And you-" He leveled a look at Mirio that was not a scold and not permission and therefore something like respect. “- will be useful when you can stand without clenching your teeth.”
Mirio grinned automatically. “I’m not clenching.”
“You are,” Aizawa said, and then, softer: “And she’s afraid, yes. But she is also… with someone.” He let the absurdity hover and harden into something that could balance on a bedside table. “Midoriya?”
Midoriya looked up, pen knuckled white. “Yes, Sensei?”
“You saw the pink thing up close.” He said it as neutrally as a man could say the pink thing and have it still be truth. “You believe he, Kirby wants to help?”
Midoriya remembered a nub held out to a shaking child. A head tilt that took fear as a puzzle to be solved with softness, not a problem to be smashed. A water crown and a truck and the look on Eri’s face when the star had tucked her onto safety. “I do,” he said, and his certainty surprised him enough to take the sting out of the guilt for a heartbeat. “He… he felt like a kid.” His throat worked. “A very strong, very scary kid.”
Mirio’s eyes warmed. “Then maybe she’s not as scared as we think,” he said, trying the thought on like a shirt he wanted to fit. “Maybe she’s… eating cake.”
A nurse swept in with a clipboard and the authority of a goddess in crocs. “It’s rest time in twenty minutes,” she said briskly. “And if either of you tries to ninja your way out of my ward I will personally call Recovery Girl and have her scold you until your hair turns gray.”
Midoriya blinked. "We're teens-
“Don't care it will be grey,” she said without blinking, and disappeared.
Aizawa let out what, in a different life, might be called a chuckle. “Sleep,” he ordered. Then, when Midoriya opened his mouth: “Midoriya. That was an order.”
Midoriya closed his mouth. Mirio eased back. The monitors ticked. Somewhere down the hall, a machine made a beeping sound that suggested it was thinking rude things about the heart it was attached to.
“She’s scared,” Mirio said again, softer, because some sentences don’t change no matter how many times you fold them.
“And someone’s carrying her,” Aizawa replied. “Let yourself picture that for five minutes.” His voice went even lower, like a hand on a fevered forehead. “Then sleep.”
Midoriya nodded. He closed his eyes and, because his teacher had asked him to, pictured a small, round, ridiculous hero carrying a little girl down a street. The image refused to be anything but tender. It put socks on her in his head so the pavement wouldn’t bite.
He didn’t know that, a few districts away, that picture was deciding to become true.
You can live inside a moment for a long time without noticing the edges until they scratch you.
Kirby noticed the edges when he looked down and his eyes didn’t find red shoes. Eri had been walking beside him across a patchwork of sun and shade up a block of silky asphalt, down a slice of old cobbles and the rhythm of her steps had a flinch in it, tiny and brave. He’d been talking, if you could call poyo and “look bird” and “bun smell!” talking, and she’d been answering with smiles and the kind of nods you give to a baby brother who’s actually ancient.
Now he frowned at her feet.
They were small. All feet are small to a puffball, but these were small in the way things are when they’ve been asked to grow around pain. The bandages he’d wrapped earlier had gray bruises where city had leaked into the weave. Her toes, hugged the ground like it might bring them closer to safety.
He stopped so suddenly that a pigeon, mid-waddle behind them, almost bumped him.
Eri stopped too, because she had learned that when Kirby ceased being momentum and became statue, something was About To Happen.
He pointed at her feet. “Cold?” he asked, because you begin with the simplest true thing.
She blinked at them as if they belonged to someone else. Then, instinctively, she tried the smile that meant I promise I’m fine, please don’t make a fuss. It bent in the middle. “It’s okay,” she said. “I didn’t want to… bother you.”
Kirby’s mouth became a tiny o of astonished offense on behalf of the universe.
“Bother?” he repeated, as if he had never considered the word could be attached to you deserve not to bleed when you walk. “No. No bother. Friend feet hurt. Kirby fix.”
Before she could argue, because she would, because children who have learned to be small always do, he scooped her up.
It wasn’t dramatic. He didn’t do a superhero dip or a bridal sweep. He simply put both nubs under her knees and behind her back and lifted, as if she weighed what she weighed (which was not much) and the air was cooperative (which it often was for him). She yelped, then steadied, arms going around his round shoulders on reflex. He was warm. He was very good at being portable furniture.
“Kirby carry,” he announced, more to the street than to her, as if warning it to behave.
“B-but-” she tried, because not being a bother is a religion with a hard catechism. “I can-"
“Kirby fast,” he said, and set off.
He didn’t sprint, he didn’t need to. He moved at that Kirby-pace that looks like a bounce and covers ground like a rumor. He took alleys not because they were shorter but because they had less grit. He hopped curbs with the care of a waiter carrying soup. He angled his body so her horn wouldn’t bump street signs. He glared at a pebble as if it personally had something to answer for.
The first store with shoes and clothes was not a boutique with curated playlists and three shirts that cost rent. It was the kind of place where the bell over the door had been there longer than the paint on the frame, where the owner knew five kinds of parents and three kinds of children and stocked for all of them. Mannequins in the window wore the current idea of cool; a handwritten sign promised Socks 3-for-500; somewhere, behind a row of hoodies, a radio cheerfully lied about traffic.
Kirby shouldered the door with the polite intention of a gentleman and a battering ram all at once. The bell went ding with alarm.
The clerk looked up, expression moving from Hello! to …what? to Oh jeez, protect the child in a single clean arc. She was about thirty, hair up in a hurry, the kind of face you trust with picking your haircut when you can’t form words. Her eyes flicked to Eri’s bare, bandaged feet, to the hospital gown swallowed by a scarf and a too-big sense of self-effacement, back to Kirby’s set mouth and round determination.
“Hi,” she said, switching gears without missing a beat. “Welcome. I’m Hana. Looks like we’re having A Day. Let’s get you two sorted.”
Eri, still in Kirby’s arms, tried to apologize with her posture. Kirby said, “Shoes,” like a king ordering the tide to go away.
Hana’s smile softened into something like a blanket. “We can do shoes,” she said. “What size?”
“Small,” Kirby said at once. Then, remembering his research method for bun sizes earlier, he added, “Soft. No hurt.” He paused, then, exquisitely serious: “strawberry.”
Hana’s mouth twitched. “Soft and no hurt and strawberry,” she repeated, grabbing a little long tray, a measuring sticker, and the sense of humor that keeps retail from eating your soul. “We might have something. You know what? We’re doing this right. Do you want to carry her, or should I-?”
Eri stiffened. Kirby’s arms tightened very slightly. “Kirby carry,” he said gently.
“Got it,” Hana said, reading the room like a pro. “We can measure while you hold. Toes to heel.” She knelt on the shop rug without hesitation, the better to be eye-level with a child who had only met kindness at height.
Eri’s breath fluttered. Kirby leaned his forehead against hers. “Safe,” he murmured, and set her carefully on a stool he dragged over with a foot. He knelt, tiny, round, and pulled a towel out of nowhere.
Hana blinked. “Did that...come out of your-"
“Stummy,” Kirby said, busy. He set a shallow basin beside the stool, also out of nowhere. He poured water from a silver teapot that had no business being there and tested it with a nub. “Warm,” he announced.
Eri stared between basin and towel and Kirby’s face as if trying to locate the trick. “Where-"
“Pocket,” Kirby said causally, “For… stuff.” He looked at her feet, then at her face. “Okay?”
She looked at Hana. Hana nodded once, the kind of nod that says I’m on your team even if I don’t know the rules. Eri nodded back. “Okay,” she whispered.
Kirby handled her feet like they were made of the same stuff as his best parasol. He eased the bandages free with the patience of a person who has time for this because nothing is more important than this. The skin beneath was not as bad as it could have been and worse than it should have been, red where friction had insisted, raw in two small places where tile had tried to keep her. Eri watched his face for flinches. He didn’t give her any.
He washed her feet with the warm rag in slow circles, humming nonsense under his breath. He made a game of the worst bits; he blew on a sore spot and made a little boo! noise like a spell. Hana handed him a tiny packet of sample foot balm without comment. He dabbed it on with solemn concentration. He conjured clean, soft bandages and wrapped them lightly, tucking the ends in with a flourish. He did not kiss her toes because some boundaries are holy; he settled for tapping the tips with his nub. “All done,” he said proudly. “Soft.”
Eri was crying. She was trying not to; she was holding the tears in her nose and eyebrows like a person trying to carry too many groceries up the stairs. Hana pretended to adjust a box of belts on the shelf so the kid could have the privacy of a stranger at the right distance.
“Thank you,” Eri managed, the two words doing the work of at least twenty.
“Welcome,” Kirby said, as if he hadn’t just rewritten three chapters of her internal book titled The World.
Hana clapped her hands gently, bringing the universe back into its right shape. “Okay! Socks.” She pulled a package from a display, small, cotton, ankle, with tiny stars stitched at the cuff. She held them out like a secret. “Try these.”
Eri touched the fabric like it might purr. “They’re… pretty.”
“And practical,” Hana said briskly, as if prettiness needed a lawyer. “And if anyone tells you you can’t have both, you refer them to me.”
Kirby took the socks, dramatically shook one out (it poofed), and slid it over Eri’s clean, warm foot. The little star kissed her ankle. Eri giggled, hiccuped, and then made the brave decision to let a stranger put her foot into a sock for her. People came in pairs. Safe and choice. She could have both.
Shoes came next. Hana did the measure, sticker, pen, the ritual lengthening of a child’s toes as if by magic and disappeared into the aisles like a hunter into a forest. She reemerged with three boxes: a plain pair of link sneakers, a strawberry themed pair with supportive cushioning and a little cloud embroidered on the side, and a pair with tiny LED lights in the heel that blinked when you stomped.
Eri’s eyes went to the lights like moths do. Then, because children who aren’t used to wanting ask permission from the air, she glanced at Kirby.
He wobbled in place from the effort of not immediately yelling YES. “If friend want,” he said, straight-faced and adult, then blew it by whispering: “Blinky.”
Hana hid a laugh that would have come out as a squeal. “Let’s try the clouds first,” she suggested. “Make sure we’ve got the right fit. Then you can test the blinkies like science.”
The clouds fit like apologies that actually change behavior. Eri stood. The sole cushioned the memory of tile away. She took a step. Another. Her face did that thing faces do when something good happens to feet, surprise at how close joy is to the ground. “They’re… soft,” she said, wonder cluttering the corners of her mouth.
“Walk,” Kirby encouraged, backward-stepping, arms out like spotter panels.
She walked. She didn’t flinch.
“Blinkies,” Hana said, because rewards shouldn’t be delayed past the point of poetry.
They blinked. Of course they blinked. Eri stomped carefully, then stomped not carefully at all, and when the heels lit up she let out a laugh that Kirby had only heard twice today and every time it felt like winning.
“We can… get two pairs?” she asked, with the caution of a person who has learned that abundance has a test at the end.
Kirby nodded so hard his crown (which had vanished) nearly reappeared from sheer enthusiasm. “Two,” he agreed. “Cloud for long. Blinky for fun.”
“Deal,” Hana said, because sometimes the adult’s job is to agree to sanity.
Clothes were less like shopping and more like excavating a new person. Eri gravitated to a soft hoodie the color of morning sky with a little stitched star near the hem, to leggings that didn’t rub, to a cotton dress with pockets (Kirby shook her hand when she said “pockets” because he respected priorities). Hana found a bundle deal on underwear because the universe can be decent in small ways. Kirby pointed solemnly at a beanie with a pom-pom. Eri tried it on, and then her hand went to her horn, halfway between pride and hiding.
Hana hesitated in the polite, professional way of people who have been trained not to assume. “Do you want hats that… make room?” she asked, quiet.
Eri’s throat did the thing where it closes around three different answers. Then she looked at Kirby, who was watching her as if the choice were a star and he was its friend. “No,” she said, and her voice didn’t tremble. “I want it out.” She lifted the beanie off, smoothed her hair back with both hands, and chose a headband instead—a simple blue one that made her look like what she was: a little girl allowed to be pretty on purpose.
“Excellent,” Hana said, and meant it so hard that both of them relaxed.
Toiletries were a pile of small dignities: a toothbrush that wasn’t grey from too many mouths, a little bottle of shampoo that promised peaches, a hairbrush with gentle bristles. Kirby held the hairbrush like a weapon and then tucked it away with reverence.
He paid with a treasure chest because of course he did. Hana did not count the coins because she knew a plot device when it walked into her shop; she rang up a number that would not make her boss yell and then closed the register with a conspiratorial wink. Kirby, in turn, placed a shiny coin she’d never seen on top of the counter by the stapler and patted it like a tip. “For kindness,” he said simply.
Hana swallowed around the knot that retail puts in your throat when someone remembers you’re a person. “Come back if the shoes rub,” she said. “Or for… anything.” She glanced at Eri’s scarf, at her eyes. “Anything.”
Eri nodded. Her eyes shone. “Thank you,” she whispered again.
“Any time,” Hana replied, and meant it in the way of women who have declared small sovereign nations inside fluorescent buildings.
Outside, the sidewalk felt like a new country. Eri’s socks hugged her ankles and the clouds hugged her arches and the blinkies hugged her inner six-year-old, who had thought perhaps she might not be allowed to live here. She stomped once, for science. The lights flashed. She stomped again, for joy. The lights obliged. Kirby stomped in solidarity even though his shoes did not blink and he was deeply offended by this oversight.
“Good?” he asked, unable to contain the smile that made his whole body become punctuation.
“Good,” she said, and then, because good was not big enough, “Better.”
He fussed the hoodie onto her shoulders (she could do it herself; he made a show of letting the sleeves “mysteriously” find her hands). He adjusted the headband with the clumsy care of a brother trimming bangs. He stepped back and tilted his head as if appraising a painting he’d had the honor of hanging.
“Pretty friend,” he said solemnly.
She blushed so bright the blinkies tried to keep up. “You too,” she said, with the goofy bravery that comes with new socks.
They walked with the lope of People With Errands, a category Eri realized felt weirdly luxurious. Kirby bought a backpack that looked like a star had decided to hug a zipper and packed it with the small life they’d just conjured into being. He insisted on carrying it because he liked the weight. Eri insisted on carrying the toothbrush because it was hers, and the having of it kept unspooling in her chest like a ribbon.
They found a public restroom where the mirror didn’t lie and the sink water ran warm when persuaded. Kirby guarded the door like a bouncer at a very exclusive club that only admitted one small girl and her horn. Eri scrubbed her hands and face until the hospital smell fled. She tried the peach shampoo just enough to make her hair smell like summer. When she came out, Kirby did a little clap without thinking and she curtsied in the ridiculous, wonderful way of children who have just discovered that performance is allowed.
“Food?” he asked after a minute, because joy burns calories.
She grinned. “Cake?”
He put a hand over his heart as if she had just.. well offered him cake. “Cake.”
They split a cupcake on the curb, because sometimes thrones are concrete and frosting is communion. Her blinkies flashed when she kicked her heels against the step. He licked frosting from his cheek and pretended to be offended when she dabbed a bit on his nose and he went cross-eyed to see it.
“Kirby?” she said around a crumb, because there was always another question now. “Can we… get pajamas?”
“P’jamas,” he repeated with reverence. “Soft ones. With stars.” He looked at the sky as if waiting for applause. “Sleep good with soft.”
“And a blanket,” she added quickly, then looked immediately guilty. “If that’s, too much-"
“Too little,” he said, scandalized. “Blanket and friend bear,” he declared, as if conjuring stuffed animals were part of his power set.
They did not buy a bear. Kirby produced one from pocket-sky with a flourish that made a toddler in a stroller three feet away drop his pretzel in awe. The bear had a slightly crooked smile and a belly that asked to be poked. Eri hugged it the way you hug the first safe thing that looks like it might be allowed to keep you.
Evening leaned in. The city’s edges softened. The neon signs blinked awake. Somewhere above them, on a rooftop with functional binoculars and a head full of bad ideas and soft spots, Himiko Toga watched them from a shadow.
“They’re adorable,” she whispered, half disgusted, half besotted. “If I stab the puffball the girl will cry. I hate when girls cry unless it’s-" She stopped. She felt Twice bump her shoulder. “Okay, okay,” she sighed. “We’re just watching. Gathering intel. I can do that. I can. …I could totally, like, adopt them, though.”
“Don’t,” Twice said, both of him, and they wrote KIRBY BUYS SHOES in a notebook because intelligence has to start somewhere.
Down on the sidewalk, Eri tugged at her hoodie pocket, eyes suddenly heavy. “Do we have… a place to sleep?” she asked, the question a feather that still managed to fall hard.
Kirby nodded. He pointed at the sky. “Roof,” he said. “Garden roof. Bench. Blanket. Safe.” He tapped his chest. “Kirby watch.”
She nodded. She believed him not because he could turn into a truck or swallow the sea, but because he had put socks on her and washed her feet like it wasn’t a tax on his patience.
They went back to the rooftop with the tarp and the cat (who had grudgingly decided that perhaps someone else could own this building between three and five p.m.). Kirby shook the blanket out stars, of course and made a nest with the efficiency of an animal that had napped on every planet. He tucked Eri in and then made a show of tucking the bear in, too, because equality under blanket law is important.
“Kirby?” she said into the folds, sleep already putting stones in her pockets. “Thank you. Again.” She looked at her shoes lined up neatly beside the bench. “For… making me a person.”
“You are person,” he said, gently offended. “Always. Kirby just… add shoes.”
She laughed, a tiny, tired bell. “Add shoes,” she repeated. “Okay.”
He settled beside her, round and watchful, little red feet sticking out from under the edge of the blanket like punctuation marks. The city breathed. Somewhere, a boy with a notebook finally fell asleep with his face in a page because his teacher told him to. Somewhere else, a boy with a smile like a sun he’d learned to carry even in eclipse dreamed of a little girl eating cake.
Up here, Eri drifted, one hand curled around the headband she’d taken off and tucked under the bear’s paw, the other resting on Kirby’s side, as if to make sure the roundness stayed between her and the world.
“Night,” she mumbled, almost gone.
“Night,” he said, and the word was a ward.
Her blinkies were lined up like tiny lighthouses, heels to the bench, ready for tomorrow.
Kirby watched the skyline a long time, unblinking and very awake, as a kind of promise. And then, when the cat finally decided to sleep on his feet without asking, he allowed himself to close his eyes.
New shoes. New steps. And a road that, unbelievably, was beginning to feel like it led somewhere that didn’t hurt.