End of month.
She checked the rankings at 7:43 AM. Standing in the kitchen. Coffee in hand. Still in her sleep clothes.
Rank 79.
She stared at it.
Seventy nine.
She'd done it.
She'd actually—
She put her coffee down. Picked it back up. Put it down again.
Seventy nine.
She'd broken eighty.
He'd said she would. End of month. Like it was already decided.
She wanted to tell someone.
She texted her mother: I broke into the top 80.
Her mother replied in forty seconds: Did you eat breakfast?
She stared at the response.
Then laughed. Alone in her kitchen. At 7:43 AM.
She texted Emi: rank 79.
Emi replied: WAIT WHAT. AMAYA. THAT'S INSANE. CELEBRATE???
She was still smiling when she left for the agency.
The meeting was at ten.
Standard case review. Her and Bakugo and Hana and two other senior heroes. Going through the Lemillion follow-up. The secondary trafficking network. Mapping the operational zones.
She'd prepared. Thoroughly. Notes organized. Data cross-referenced. She'd even color-coded the zone map which was probably excessive but she'd done it anyway.
Bakugo went through everything methodically.
She answered when he directed questions at her.
Clearly. Efficiently.
Halfway through he looked at her map.
Said nothing.
But looked at it for slightly longer than necessary.
She counted that.
She was definitely counting that.
The meeting was almost done when Kirishima called.
Bakugo's phone was face-down on the table. The way it always was in meetings. Non-negotiable rule. Everyone's phones face-down.
It buzzed.
He glanced at it.
His expression didn't change exactly.
But something in it shifted.
"Give me a minute," he said.
He stood. Walked to the corner of the room. Answered.
She looked at her notes.
Tried not to listen.
Failed.
She couldn't hear Kirishima's side. Just Bakugo's responses.
"When."
A pause.
"How long."
A pause.
"I'm coming."
He hung up.
Came back to the table.
"Meeting's done. We'll pick this up tomorrow." He looked at Hana. "Clear my afternoon."
"The commission call at three—"
"Clear it."
Hana nodded once.
He looked at Amaya.
Something in his eyes she didn't recognize.
Or maybe she did recognize it and didn't want to name it.
"You're with me," he said.
She stood without questioning it.
The car was black. Agency vehicle. Bakugo drove.
She was in the passenger seat.
She'd been in a car with him.
Under completely different circumstances than every version of this she'd imagined.
He drove fast but controlled. The city moving past the windows. The morning light cutting through at angles.
He hadn't told her where they were going.
She hadn't asked.
She watched the streets.
Watched his hands on the wheel.
His jaw was tight.
The kind of tight that was different from his usual annoyed tight.
Something else.
Something harder.
Kirishima was already in the car. Back seat. She'd barely registered him getting in.
He was quiet.
Kirishima was never quiet.
That told her more than anything.
"How long has he known?" Bakugo asked.
His voice was flat.
Kirishima answered from the back. "Few weeks. He didn't want anyone told."
"Stubborn old man."
"Yeah."
A long silence.
Just the engine. The city.
"Who else knows?" Bakugo asked.
"Endeavor. Aizawa. Recovery Girl. Deku."
Bakugo's hands tightened slightly on the wheel.
Released.
She was putting it together.
Slowly. Piece by piece.
The hospital. The secrecy. The way Kirishima had called and Bakugo had stood up mid-meeting.
The world doesn't need to know.
Not yet.
Maybe not ever depending on—
She looked at Bakugo's profile.
The jaw. The eyes on the road. The flat expression that wasn't really flat if you'd been watching him long enough to know the difference.
Her chest felt tight.
The sad kind.
Not the wanting kind.
Just...
Sad.
Musutafu Central Hospital.
Not the main entrance.
A side entrance. Service level. Bakugo pulled in without hesitating. Like he'd been here before. Like he knew exactly where to go.
They got out.
Kirishima led them through a door. A corridor. Not the public areas.
She followed.
Didn't speak.
The hospital smell hit her. Antiseptic. Something underneath it she couldn't name. The specific quiet of a place where serious things happened.
They took a service elevator.
Sixth floor.
A nurse at a station looked up when they arrived. Recognized Bakugo. Kirishima. Her gaze passed over Amaya briefly.
"Room 614," the nurse said quietly.
They walked down the hall.
614 was at the end.
Kirishima stopped outside.
Looked at Bakugo.
"Deku's already inside. Endeavor left an hour ago."
Bakugo nodded.
Put his hand on the door.
Stopped.
Stood there for a second.
Just a second.
Then pushed it open and went in.
Kirishima looked at Amaya.
"You can wait out here if you—"
"I'll wait," she said.
She sat in the chair along the wall.
Kirishima sat next to her.
The hallway was quiet.
From behind the door nothing.
No sound.
Just the distant beep of monitoring equipment.
Kirishima leaned forward. Elbows on his knees. His hands hanging.
She looked at his face.
He was trying very hard to hold something steady.
"All Might?" she asked.
Quietly.
He nodded.
She sat with that.
Toshinori Yagi.
The Symbol of Peace. The former number one. The man who'd changed everything. Who'd held the world together through sheer impossible will.
Who was behind that door.
On his dying breath.
She thought about the photo on Lemillion Agency's wall.
Bakugo in the wreckage.
Alive because of that man.
Because of the chain of choices and sacrifices that started with a skinny kid offering his last ember of power to a quirkless boy with a hero's heart.
She thought about the poster on her wall at home.
Not the Bakugo one.
The old one. The one she'd had since she was nine. All Might in his prime. Arms spread. That enormous smile.
I am here.
She sat with that.
The hallway was very quiet.
"He's been teaching at U.A. for years," Kirishima said. To himself mostly. "He kept working. Even after everything. Still showed up every morning."
She nodded.
"He's stubborn as hell," Kirishima said.
There was something in his voice that was almost a laugh.
Almost.
They sat in silence.
Five minutes.
Ten.
The door opened.
Deku came out first.
She'd only seen him once. In the agency. He'd been warm and energetic and talked about quirks too fast.
Now he looked—
Like someone had taken something from him that he'd been holding his whole life.
His eyes were red.
He sat down on the other side of Kirishima.
Didn't speak.
Kirishima put a hand on his back.
Deku leaned into it slightly.
The door was still open.
She could see through it.
Bakugo.
Standing beside the bed.
His back to the door.
She couldn't see his face.
She could see his shoulders.
The set of them.
Something about the way he was standing.
Like he was very carefully staying upright.
Like he'd decided to stay upright and was executing that decision with everything he had.
She looked away.
Gave him that.
The privacy of it.
He came out twenty minutes later.
Closed the door quietly behind him.
Stood in the hallway.
Deku looked up.
Their eyes met.
Nothing was said.
But something passed between them.
The kind of thing that didn't need words. That had been built over fifteen years of being each other's everything. Rivals. Enemies. Reluctant allies. Brothers.
Bakugo looked at Kirishima.
Kirishima stood.
The three of them formed something wordless in the middle of that corridor.
She was very still in her chair.
Aware that she was witnessing something private.
That she was an outsider here.
Not unkindly. Just truthfully.
This wasn't her grief.
These weren't her fifteen years.
She hadn't been there.
In the war. In the early days. In the training ground arguments and the battles and the moments that had forged these people into what they were.
She was just here.
In the chair.
Rank 79.
Six weeks at the agency.
A girl with a Dynamight plushie at home and grenade underwear in her laundry.
And she felt—
Grateful. Strangely. To be trusted with even the peripheral edge of this.
Bakugo looked at her.
She met his eyes.
His expression was—
She didn't have a word for it.
She'd cataloged so many of his expressions over the years. The scowl. The focused look. The almost-smile. The annoyed. The assessing.
This one she didn't have.
It was the one underneath all the others.
Raw.
Human.
Just for a second.
Then it was gone.
"Let's go," he said.
Quiet.
They walked back down the hall.
Service elevator.
Out through the side entrance.
Into the afternoon light.
She got in the passenger seat.
He drove.
Different from before.
Slower.
She watched the city move past the window.
Didn't speak.
He didn't speak.
Kirishima was quiet in the back.
After a long time Bakugo said:
"He's comfortable."
To no one specifically.
"The doctors say he's comfortable."
She nodded.
Didn't know if he could see it.
Nodded anyway.
The city continued.
Ordinary. Unaware.
People on sidewalks. Shops open. A child pointing at something in a window. Someone arguing on their phone.
The world not knowing.
Not yet.
She looked at Bakugo's hands on the wheel.
Loose now.
Not tight.
Just resting there.
She thought about saying something.
Didn't.
Some things you didn't fill with words.
Some things you just sat inside.
And let them be.
...
She checked her phone once.
The ranking notification was still there.
Rank 79.
She'd broken eighty.
It would have been a great moment.
...
It still was.
Just differently.
She put her phone away.
Watched the road.
Stayed.