Regret and Grudge

Awkward Outings

"...I've never been more fearful of a woman in my life than I am right now." Kaminari seemed to be backing up and hiding behind Jirou for me to walk over to Kirishima and ask what exactly went on.

"So why is Shiozaki here and what did she do to scare Kaminari?"

"She came to see if she could help at all with Eri with her overhearing Bakugou's cursing. She said it wasn't right to talk profanity in front of a kid in the short term and he umm..."

"He called Shio a girl doggy." Eri spoke up for it to take me a second to understand.

'Female dog? What is she...' "Ooooh....You know, I don't feel empathy for Bakugou if he did that. Good for you, Shiozaki."

"The man needed to learn some manners in ways that required more draconial methods. He is lucky I chose not to crusify him where he stood." We all began having shivers down our spines as this was said.

'Sometimes I wonder just how messed up she can make someone if she tried.'

Later that day

After school let out, Midoriya, Eri and I were told to head out into town to grab some things for Eri. It wasn't big things, but still stuff we needed to grab for her to be able to go on in day to day life like some books and some cleaning stuff. I kinda liked the idea of heading out, but was a bit more uneasy mainly cause this was with just Midoriya. 'Why couldn't they let us bring someone else as well?' I thought this as we went into a store to get Eri some child body cleaning soap and shampoo. While looking at some stuff, Midoriya found something he decided to show Eri.

"Look Eri. Doesn't this look cute?" He showed her a towel with a snowman hood on top for someone to have on while they're drying off.

"What's that on top?" She pointed at the snowman face for Midoriya to explain.

"It's a snowman. When it gets cold, it can snow and people make snowmen."

"...Can I make one?"

"Well, we can if it snows enough. I think that would be a nice little thing to do when it gets cold enough." It was kinda cute seeing Eri get a little excited over something so simple as snow. Reminded me of the time I went out with my parents to build a snow family. The idea with this was to make them just like our family with them looking kinda...ok, I was like three at the time, so they were obviously looking weird and I refused help from my parents outside of things to make them look like snowmen. "Uraraka? Hello?"

"Huh? Oh, sorry. I was spacing out a little. What's up?" I glanced at Midoriya and Eri who were trying to get my attention.

"We got what we needed here. Let's pay and head out."

"Oh, yeah. Alright." We walked to the register and paid with Eri starting to look a little sluggish. She was having a hard time keeping up and looked like she was ready to trip on her own two feet for it to confuse us.

"Hey, Eri. You ok?"

"I...I'm just sleepy."

Looking around, I found a bench not occupied to motion towards it. "You wanna rest over there?" Eri nodded for us to head over. Once there, Midoriya sat Eri down with her going next to him. She immediately put her head on his lap and passed out almost instantly, holding herself in a ball facing Midoriya. This made me feel kinda bad because she's still showing signs of issues she was pulled from.

"You wanna sit?" Midoriya motioned to his other side since Eri kinda took the seat beside her to make it a little uncomfortable for me to sit down there. I didn't see an issue with this for me to take the seat. However, a reality came to me when we were about a few seconds into sitting on the bench.

'Crap....this is really weird.' To be fair, Midoriya and I were on better terms, but the issue of me and him being not on the best terms in the past were still there. 'It's fine. Just don't think about it. Pretend that...pretend that this isn't as weird as you're making it out to be. This is not weird. You're just two highschool students taking out a girl you saved who thinks of us as her parents shopping. Nothing weird is happening.' I kept telling myself this with it not really working as well as I wanted it to. 'GOD DAMMIT! THIS IS WEIRDER THE MORE I THINK ABOUT THIS!'

"This feels...sorta awkward." Midoriya spoke up for me to turn to him and find out what he meant. "I mean, the two of us sitting together. After everything that's happened, this feels kinda unreal." He laughed a little for me to raise an eyebrow. "In the beginning of the school year, you would've rather bit your own tongue off than stand being within five inches of me."

"And you would've ran around trying to stop me before having a punch land on you to lose your nerve a little and punch back." Both of us started to snicker at this before Midoriya started to frown a bit.

"...Do you think I'm a bad person?"

"Where did that come from?"

"It's just, I feel like I'm not the greatest person I could be. I've screwed up a lot of people's lives to the point most would arguably say, I don't deserve to be happy. But yet, here I am. Acting as if nothing bad happened in my life. Is that...ok?"

I tried to find a way to explain this in the best way possible to come up with an answer. "I don't know. Honestly, I wanna say you're trying to get past the issues you had. Not everyone comes back the way you do after what you were in. I...I also don't know how to understand what you went through so...who's to say? But I do know that you trying to find peace in your life isn't a bad thing. Not everything has to be big and fancy and serious. Sometimes, it's better if you just accept these things and try to move on with them in the back of your mind." I thought about my answer before continuing. "Sometimes, just existing is enough to calm yourself."

Midoriya held his head back before asking another question. "Off base, but do you think it's bad I have no remorse that my father is in jail?"

"Hell no. That guy's a monster. He deserves the needle if we're being honest."

"I'm with you on that, but doesn't that make us bad people?"

"How?"

"Well, killing people is bad and is something heroes would want to avoid doing as much as possible. We'd even arrest people for killing. So wouldn't that mean we'd be villains if we killed another villain."

I mailed over the idea for the best way to explain how a hero killing a villain would be 'ok' for us and still avoid it making it look questionable. "I think it's on a basis to basis situation, but you do have villains that will kill and give no option outside of ending them. At that point, they've worn out all their options. Nobody wants to take another living being's life if they hold a conscience, but if it's for the safety of the people that can do things like come to this mall and spend money doing what they want, smile and be happy, and make dumb jokes trying to pick up girls or impress their loved ones, that I kinda think is fine."

Midoriya stayed silent before giving one final question. "Did I do the right thing not ending my father's life then? In your opinion."

"...Yes. Doing that would've made you no better than him and you had the chance to bring him in. What you did I personally think was by the book right."

"Thank you. That's been in my mind and I was worried it wasn't enough." Midoriya started picking up Eri and carrying her in his arms. "Alright. Might as well head back. Ready?"

"Yeah." I got up and we began walking back to UA. While we did, my mind went back to AFO's comment of what he did. 'Midoriya's strong enough to outlast that. I hope.'

And that finishes this chapter. See what happens with Izuku and Ochako next time. Hope you all enjoyed and thanks for reading.