The Wise Child (BNHA x OC)

17. You're Killing Her

17. You’re Killing Her

I was second. Second. I felt my muscles strain, tense. My head rushed with red and my pulse beat loudly against my skull. How was that possible?

Hadn’t I worked enough? Given enough. And yet, a boy, Midoriya, won. I was so certain. I thought that there wasn’t a chance I would lose but I had. My eyes stayed firmly on my feet, too afraid to look into the crowd. To find my father looking down on me. Staring through me. Had he already decided? Realized I was useless to him? 

I looked up, finding the green haired boy smiling. We caught eyes and he flinched. I didn’t feel guilty. No, I didn’t have that luxury. What had he just done to me?

I swallowed thickly. Ignoring the way I could feel my brother’s eyes on me. I ignored the sound of others passing the line. I ignored it all, digging my nails into my skin, wishing to feel cold blood from the wounds, but stopping my nails from going too deep. I still had work to do.

It took too many deep breaths for me to count before my mind cleared.

With much force I looked up, and saw my father’s eyes trained on my brother, before drifting towards me. 

They were cold. I wished they were warm, burning even, I wished they hurt with anger and not indifference. But he was detached, uninterested. Things were slipping. It was like trying to gather sand with a strainer, and all I could do was watch it slip through the cracks.

No. I had to calm down. There were two more events. I could win. If I pushed through I could still win. I’d do well enough that he’d forget my brief slip. There was still time.

I listened carefully as one of my teachers, a pretty woman with deep blue hair, explained the next event. My heartbeat slowly settled when I realized that the first to come in the race would be the one with the highest bounty. 

Every person had a point level based on where they placed in the prior event, and they had to capture other’s points to gain the most and win. And Midoriya was bestowed the highest amount, leaving him to attempt protecting his until the very end.

I felt a weight lift from my back. Perhaps it was fate that I didn’t win first. That this way I paved the way for my own success.  

My eyes unconsciously shifted up towards the stands, finding my father’s, and I realized my mistake. He glared furiously. ‘Someone actually worthy would have won, and continued their success regardless of circumstances. You are nothing.’

I didn’t need to hear him say to know that he would. And that I had failed him twice by my faulty justification. 

“Ghost face!” 

I flinched hearing the name, imagining Natsu behind me, but stopping when instead my eyes met Bakugou’s glowering down at- or actually up, he was a few inches shorter- at me. I gulped, prepared for his anger. I had left our last battle unfinished. 

“You’re on my team.”

I blinked. He wasn’t mad. A wave of relief washed through me, I had avoided another person’s anger. But now he offered me a decision to make. Was it wise or would it-
“Yes.”
I let the word slip on impulse. I should have thought it through more. I should have considered all my options. How could I have been so reckless what if this cost me the victory? What if-

“Don’t act like yah coulda said no!” 

Well, it didn’t matter now. 

“Yae! Acid girlie! The prettiest person in the world!” I slowly turned my head at hearing the odd formation of words, looking to see a very pink, very jumpy Ashido stuck in a crowd that had gathered around me and Bakugou.