CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
FULL OF THORNS.
It was eerie in the comfort of (Y/N)'s room. The room was cold, and the faint buzzing of the air conditioner is the only thing than can be heard as she laid in her bed.
A soft exhale left her nose as her eyelashes fluttered tiredly. It was as if the world had shrunken away to leave a cold void around her skin, as if she had become detached from reality itself.
The battle from yesterday— she still remembers it very clearly.
Gray static on the screen was soon replaced with a grainy visual of the smoke covered courtyard. Through the debris she could vaguely make out a lone, frail figure standing among the rubble.
All Might nearly fell over as the dust cleared, but forced himself to remain standing, smiling up at the cameras and raising a victorious fist.
Everyone in the crowd erupted into applause, crying tears of joy, after their initial shock. The crowd cheered his name like a mantra, and he stood to enjoy his moment of victory before he was done for good.
"Now it's... your turn."
It almost felt like a goodbye.
As the sun began to slowly peak out over the horizon, the Symbol of Peace reveled in his last moments of being a hero.
(Y/N) rolls over on her bed and grips her pillow like a life preserver.
One of the sparks were gone.
━━
A few days later, 12:00 PM - UA Staff Conference Room
"Is everything ready for our students' return?" The principal asked.
"The buildings are in their finishing stages of constriction," Cementoss replied. "They should be finished by the time the new semester starts."
"It's been quite a summer, hasn't it?" Nezu chuckled lightly. "I feel like these dorms will be good for them. Our students need a sense of normalcy restored after everything they went through. This system will also allow us to keep an eye on them to ensure their safety."
"Well, parents are understandably questioning how "safe" their children are at UA." Aizawa questioned, "Will this really help the situation as it is?"
"I think it will," Nezu replied confidently. "Your class' provisional course was interrupted at the camp, so you'll need to get your students prepared for the upcoming license exam. The villains won't stay underground for long. Although we won the battle I wouldn't necessarily call this a victory..."
Aizawa's tired eyes indiscreetly drifted towards All Might, now permanently in his frail, skeletal form.
"The world will search for a new Symbol of Peace,” All Might said solemnly and apologetically. "I'm sorry I couldn't be that for longer, but I know someone will rise to fill the people with hope. That's what we need the most right now."
"Our students should be prepared for another incident such as this," Snipe chimed in.
"In that, you are correct," The principal said, his tone turning serious.
The teachers around the conference table all turned to look at Nezu, shifting uncomfortably in their seats.
"What do you mean?" Snipe asked.
"The only people, to my knowledge, who knew the location of the training camp before hand were myself, Aizawa, Vlad, and the Pussycats. There's no way the villains could have executed such an elaborate plan unless they had intel weeks in advance."
Ectoplasm's eyes widened, disbelief lacing his voice at what the prinicipal was implying. "You don't mean to say..."
"I'm afraid it's true," Nezu confirmed. "There's a traitor among us."
Nervous chatter erupted in the conference room, and Nezu raised a paw to silence it.
"Before any of you jump to conclusions, I want to let you know that an investigation of the school will be necessary to catch the mole."
"But if we can prove we're innocent then why would we need to be investigated?" Present Mic asked, clearly not a fan of people invading his privacy.
"Can you really prove you're 100% innocent?" Nezu then questioned.
Present Mic was at a loss for words for once.
"Exactly. Until a search has been concluded even I cannot be cleared of suspicion." Nezu continued, "For now I've called in our number one investigator. In two weeks time, the surveillance will begin."
"Is it really okay to spy on our students like this?" Cementoss asked in concern.
"If it means catching the traitor, then absolutely." The principal said with certainty, "I think it goes without saying that everything we've discussed in this room stays between us. For now let us focus on informing the families of each class about the dorm system."
As All Might's mind reeled at the thought of the task ahead he felt a surge of anxiety wash over him. He'd fought many villains in his lifetime, but none compared to what he had to do next.
━━
(Y/N) let out a quiet yawn as she made her way downstairs. She just woke up from a nap and was planning to cook herself a light meal— but faint discussing voices coming from the living room made her stop in her tracks. Already halfway down the stairs, she decided to sit on one of the steps instead of making herself known.
"So," (Y/N) heard her mother's cheerful voice. "I saw your fight, Toshinori! You really did great against that ugly piece of—"
'Toshinori? It seems like All Might's here...' (Y/N) almost tapped her foot against the tiled stairs in anxiousness and curiousity, but stopped herself just in time.
"Kyo." Then a deep voice interrupted. She assumed that it was her father. Gin has never been a fan of his wife's list of profanities.
"Oh, shut up— Anyway!" It was almost comical how her tone changed between how she addressed her husband and the retired hero. "Say what you need to say, Toshinori, don't mind him!"
(Y/N) heard a small laugh coming from All Might. He almost sounded nervous. "Well... Recently, UA has implemented dorms where—"
"No." Gin interrupted once again.
(Y/N) sighed as she picked at her fingernails. So that was why All Might's here. Well, it's not like she really cares. Dorms or not, as long she's still in UA, nothing else matters. She's not a big fan of living with other people anyways.
"Toshinori, I'm sure you understand." His deep voice continued, "I refuse to entrust my daughter to UA anymore. Meaning, not only the dorms, but I'm pulling her out of the school."
"What?" (Y/N) breathed out to herself, pure disbelief crossing her visage. "He must be joking."
"Love..." Virgo's voice called out quietly, she can almost hear the frown in her tone, as if hoping that something could change his mind.
"I know you have know reason to leave Young (L/N)'s well-being safety under UA's care after everything that has happened," All Might began. "But you can't pull her out from being a hero. She has great—"
(Y/N) stood up and speedwalked towards the living room, just in time for her to see his fathet shaking his head in disagreement.
"If I'm being totally honest, I think that she shouldn't be a hero anymore."
The statement shocked her to no end, and she can't help but speak up. All head snapped towards her as she uttered, "Father?"
"I..." Gin started as he turned back away, closing his eyes and his head hung low between his shoulders, arms crossed. "Have never approved of you wanting to be a hero in the first place."
(Y/N) found myself dumb, in the sense that her words have stopped flowing, stopped because her fathrr have told her something that she never anticipated for a moment. "...What? You... never approved of me?"
Her eyes stared, waiting for a sign that he's lying, but none comes. Instead his mouth remains an uncharacteristic grim line amid his stubble.
"Tell me, (Y/N), why did you chose to join the line of hero work?"
With eyebrows furrowed, she replied so surely. "I told you— I have to prove something. I want to prove something."
Gin shook his head in what (Y/N) seems to identify as— disappointment. "A Pro Hero is constantly facing death," he started. "Not just their own, but others' too. Looking at it realistically, it's an unpleasant job."
"I know that—"
"You chose to be a Pro because of your own selfish reasons? Don't make me laugh, (Y/N)."
"Arakan." Virgo warned from beside him but Gin only ignored it and took another chance to speak as his daughter stood there motionlessly, at a loss for words.
"Kids these days have been protected by the Symbol of Peace for so long, that they've forgotten about the actual life-and-death risks of a job like this. If you're heading for an early death, just for that reason, I might as well take the chance stop you right now." Gin added with his stone cold voice.
"That's pretty harsh, don't you think?" All Might butted in with an awkward laugh, hoping to ease the situation.
"I'm telling it as it is." The white haired man sighed again. "I trained you so wouldn't die easily in the battlefield, but after the encounter with All For One— it has been made clear that the war is still not over with the League still on the loose. Now that you've seen for yourself how UA had failed so many times— I refuse to send you out there."
After that, it was just pure silence. No one dared to speak.
(Y/N)'s body is thrumming with restless energy. There’s something dark and vicious in her blood, and she has to fight the urge to break something just to fill the void inside her.
Suddenly, she can’t stand it anymore.
(Y/N) turns on her heel and bolts, ignoring her mother and All Might's calls of her name.
She runs to the nearby playground, sits on the old rusty swing set and lets the cool air of dusk fill her lungs as she tried to calm down.
The (H/C) haired teen breathed until her lungs are sick of oxygen, her usual level of irritation locked into place as she began to not entertain the thought of going home for dinner.
Her pools of (E/C) eyes looked around instead of rising.
"(Y/N)?"
Someone called her name in such softness that made her turn her head, only to meet the welcoming presence of her mother.
Virgo had to come and sit beside her, staring up at the sky in that calming way of hers.
It was the kind of day even a feather would fall without drifting one way or the other. The grass was straight and silent, the leaves dangled more as if they had been painted there. Should a person be able to feel the beating of the birds' wings— that would have been the only breeze. It was still, utterly still.
"I don't want to stop being a hero." (Y/N) quietly said.
Virgo smiled a little at her in understanding. "I know." She paused, letting another rush of wind pass by before continuing with a shaky sigh as she stared ahead. "His reasoning... I know it might not sound right to you... But ever since he met you, he wanted you to have a normal life, more than anything in the world." Virgo continued, voice soft and reminiscent. "A normal kindergarten, normal schools, a normal environment— all of that. He tried everything to make you feel contented with the life you had."
"Well, that didn't work." (Y/N) replied just as quiet.
Virgo hummed, slight amusement coating her tone. "You wanted to be a hero," she confirmed. "He was so reluctant to train you... but he can't just let you go without proper supervision so he did everything he could to make you strong. He was fine about it for a while, but I guess... after All Might's retirement, his doubts resurfaced."
(Y/N)'s eyelashes fluttered, lightly kicking her feet against the pavement. "I hate it."
The short haired woman then continued to explain that her father was no pink carnation but a rose, the full bloom of his love hidden past brambles and thorns.
When (Y/N) complained that she, too, got pricked, her mother had hummed and blamed love.
"It's a dangerous thing for a man like him to have. It’s a wild untamed thing and he doesn't know how to handle it when it falls in his lap. He loves you the most. More than me. So he sits with it, simmers with it, and can't always express it the right way. When he's blunt with his words, his intention is not to hurt you. Just worried, and a little scared."
"What could he be scared of?"
(Y/N) was still bitter about the whole thing, but her mother had a way of wearing her down. Even at 16, she was still practically putty in her mother's hands. Virgo probably knew that. That's why she didn't demand anything of her. Just gave her daughter context clues and little suggestions, adamant that (Y/N) should make decisions for herself.
This moment was the same.
"You," she confessed. "What you could become. He wants you to be happy, and he's worried that the way you’re acting now, and at the rate you're going... Well, it may hurt you in the end and you would just end up cursing yourself. He doesn't want you to have any regrets. It's better for you to resent him than yourself."
Warmth. Relief. Safety. Home.
Virgo stood up, smiling down at her daughter, who was seemingly deep in thought. "You should come back for dinner." And with that, she walked away.
(Y/N) sat alone on the swings and wonders if she, too, is a thorny rose.
Maybe she's just like her father.
Maybe love is a dangerous thing for someone like her to have, so untamed and feral that it drags her into its own wildness.
AUTHOR'S NOTEㅤ⌗
Next chapter, (L/N) (Y/N): ORIGIN.
To everyone that couldn't view the photos in the last chapter, sucks to be you ig <3
I'm just going to leave @statvexque's headcanon here.