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dawn-moths · 10 months ago

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What if the league of villains meets a reader with a 3-legged cat named Sarafina that’s her emotional support pet. Like reader though she lost everything and then she meets the league and joins them, but little did they know they found out reader had a emotional support cat (reader tied to keep the kitty hidden but failed😅) and the league takes a liking to the 3-legged creature (especially Mr. Compress)

im so sorry this took me so long, but i certainly hope you enjoy what i came up with! and i also hope i was able to do sarafina justice in this lol

word count: 8,000+

tags: sfw! no warnings apply!

***

When you first met them, you’d been less than five hours out from having lost everything. Your job, your last relationship, your home— all of it swept away in what was not one fell swoop but, given the proximity of the events, it certainly felt that way.

Because your job had laid you off, along with about forty percent of its entire employee populace, your now ex had decided that sending you a text saying “I just don’t think we want the same things anymore” was a sufficient way to end a nearly two year relationship, and, just as you’d dragged your feet down the seven blocks that lay between your prior place of employment and your one bedroom apartment, you’d watched as the entire building went up in flames, the unfortunate fallout from the most recent villain attack that had swept through your neighbourhood.

But the moment you saw that— saw the flames that climbed past your floor, reaching higher, charring the building’s exterior to a point you could only imagine left everything inside nothing but indistinguishable ash— you didn’t care about your job or your ex or any of the things you’d just lost inside your home.

All you cared about, as your chest began to tighten and tears began to well in your eyes, was your cat. Sarafina. Your beloved three-legged baby.

“Oh my god—” you choked out as you raised a hand to cover your mouth and muffle the first round of sobs that began to spill out, feeling your knees buckle and threaten to collapse under your weight, your legs suddenly going numb.

After that, no more coherent words would come. There was just the immense agony of fresh grief followed by the hollow expanse only acceptance of such a great loss could provide.

She’d been with you for six years. You’d raised her from four weeks old, rescued her as a stray in the alley beside your apartment where the mother had abandoned the kitten due to its disability and likely low survival rate. You’d hand fed her, spent countless sleepless nights ensuring she would have the best start to growing into the healthiest, happiest companion she could given that first month of starvation and struggle.

You’d saved her, and in return, over the years, she’d come to save you in so many unexpected ways. She was your furry little angel. Your Sarafina.

And now, just like all the other foundations of your life, she was gone.

“There you are!” you heard a familiar voice tremble from behind you. “I was so worried! Thank god you got out in time!”

It was your next door neighbour, a sweet, elderly woman who often invited you over for dinner or offered you her baked goods, since she knew you lived alone and far away from your family.

For a while, you could only look at her, everything else in your world seeming to blur at the corners, slowly closing in around you until you wouldn’t be able to make sense of anything. She continued to speak but your ears were ringing so badly you couldn’t quite hear what it was she was saying. You caught sight of something in her arms, a wriggling bundle clutched close to her chest, and when you realized what she was holding, the world around you quickly snapped back into focus, the nearby blare of approaching sirens slicing into the chaotic soundscape.

“—so worried, poor thing was practically wailing behind the door…” That’s when she exposed the creature in her grasp a little more to you, the cream-colored head of your beloved cat popping out from the baby blanket your neighbour had wrapped her in.

You didn’t even think. You just leapt into action, taking Sarafina from her arms so you could cradle her in yours, trying to believe that this was real and not just some elaborate hallucination your anguish had tried to shield you with. But as you nuzzled your nose into the top of her head, pressing kiss after immensely relieved kiss to the spot between her big, curious eyes, you felt how solid and warm, albeit shaking, she was in your arms.

She was real.

She was alive.

You hadn’t lost everything in the end after all.

As you looked over at your neighbour again with misty eyes, though this time for an entirely different reason, you breathed out a trembling, “Thank you…” You couldn’t even begin to comprehend what you would’ve done if you’d truly lost her.

“Of course, dear,” your neighbour said, placing a wrinkled hand on your arm and giving it a light squeeze in an attempt to comfort you. “It’s a good thing I still had that spare key you gave me. I was happy to help.”

After that, the surrounding crowd of familiar faces and strangers alike congregated closer for a short time while one of the heroes on duty delivered some information for those who’d been affected before dispersing and going on their ways to seek out additional help or services. Your neighbour had asked you if you had a place you could stay for the foreseeable future, at least until they relocated the residents until the needed repairs were finished, which would likely be months, if not longer.

“Luckily my grandson lives one prefecture over,” she explained, seeming a little burdened by making travel arrangements, if anything, more so than worried about the actual long term effects of what having her home and everything in it burn down actually meant. “I suppose I should give him a call, just in case he hasn’t seen the news…” She seemed to contemplate something for a moment, then looked at you and offered to see if he had enough room for you to tag along as well, but you were already denying her generosity before she’d even finished extending the invitation.

“I’ll figure something out…” you replied. “Thank you, though. And thank you for saving my cat.”

With that, your neighbour bid you good luck and farewell and you were left to fend for yourself.

In truth, you didn’t have anywhere to go. You thought about reaching out to your now ex-boyfriend but suddenly he wasn’t picking up your calls and his voicemail was full, though whether that was because he was still at work and on do not disturb or just blatantly ignoring you in fear of retaliation at his cowardly text message was unclear. So, with Sarafina still bundled in the blanket and held close to your chest, you set out in hopes of finding some means of a roof over your head until you could regroup.

The sun was beginning to set within the next few hours and you weren’t feeling very optimistic. You’d tried several short-term shelters but they were already full, others who were in the exact same boat as you already having claimed the empty beds. You were trying to search the internet to see if there were any nearby hostels that might be able to accommodate you, but none of them allowed pets. You didn’t have enough money for an Airbnb or hotel room. Your best friend was on vacation and not coming back for another week, not to mention she also lived in an apartment so there was nowhere for her to hide a spare key. Your phone was almost dead. Every manga cafe or konbini you tried to enter to see if anyone had a charger you could borrow began to usher you out the moment they caught sight of the animal you had in tow…

As you paced about the streets, utterly, hopelessly dejected and forlorn, the people traffic was finally beginning to thin. You were running out of viable options and time left before darkness fell over the city and you found yourself in potential danger. You grew anxious and frustrated, knowing you could only cover so much ground on two feet.

Though, perhaps it might be a little easier with three.

So, you decided to use the one and only advantage you had left in your current position. Your quirk— the ability to temporarily control and see through the eyes of certain animals, and, lucky for you, cats just happened to be your best match.

“Think you can help us out, Sarafina?” you murmured to your cat, who’d ceased her panicked quaking about an hour ago and returned to her usual calm disposition that you’d come to take comfort in. Slowly, you lowered her towards the street, carefully helping her untangle her folded limbs from the blanket.

For a cat with one less leg than most others of her kind, Sarafina got around exceptionally well. She had two front paws and one back one and, having been born into the world that way, her balance and reflexes seemed to work just fine. She was your little trooper, the most important hero you’d ever encountered in your own personal life, and as you activated your quirk, her world became yours.

It worked as a sort of double consciousness when you entered Sarafina’s mind, but it still required a high amount of concentration so for the meantime you veered off to the side of the street in order to avoid any accidental collisions with other passersby in your own body. From there, you were able to focus solely on the path you navigated through the crowds with your new feline view.

Bobbing and weaving through the sea of shoes— shiny black business loafers and multi-colored converse and everything in between— you quickly made your way towards the less favorable parts of town. The streets became more narrow, the veil of litter thicker along the curb, and after getting more than your fair share of sinister glances from the residents and clientele of the area you decided to turn down an empty stretch of alley to avoid getting cat-napped by any shady characters skulking around.

At least, you’d thought the alley had been empty. But, after a quick glance over your shoulder to make sure you weren’t being followed, the next time you looked forward, your green, glass-marble gaze landed on the silhouette of a girl.

You stopped short in Sarafina’s body, causing the cat to stagger and stumble slightly as it attempted to catch its footing. Then, as the figure turned to look your way, her amber eyes cutting through the dark, you felt every hair on your spine raise as your back curved into an anxious arch. Your lips pulled back into a teeth-baring hiss and, for a moment, you found you weren’t in complete control of this mission anymore.

“Oh!” As the girl’s chipper tone rang out against the cold concrete and brick as she scampered over to get a closer look at the strange little creature now in her presence, you could feel Sarafina’s will tugging against your own, fighting, thrashing, the closer the girl approached as if on instinct. You struggled to hold firm. Perhaps you should’ve trusted your cat’s animal instincts when it came to danger, but at the moment you were too focused on hoping that this girl could give you a lead.

She crouched down before the fearful, feisty little feline, hugging her knees against her chest as she beamed and hummed a lilting giggle through closed lips. She held out her hand, offering it up for the cat to sniff, and you urged Sarafina to give her a chance. Eventually, when you felt the body you were currently occupying begin to relax a little, you were able to lean forward and sniff the back of her hand. Then, very much against Sarafina’s own character, you nuzzled the cat’s head into the girl’s palm, peeking up at her to gauge her reaction, feeling hopeful when her pink cheeks blushed a slightly darker shade and her smile widened to show that she also had two pointed little fangs present among each row of her teeth.

You wondered if she also had a cat-related quirk, but that curiosity was swept away and replaced with panic when she slid her hands beneath your arms and hoisted you up to rest against her chest, continuing further down the alley. “Why don’t you come with me,” she suggested, “and we’ll find you something to eat?”

This would’ve been all good and fine, except for the fact that, with each step she took further away, the more you realized that you were about to reach the limit of your quirk’s capacity. Shared consciousness could only travel so far, and the fact that you’d been able to feel Sarafina’s will fighting against your own should’ve been your first clue, only you’d written it off as a strong enough fear that had just been peeking through.

As more dread filled your chest you tried (and failed) to wriggle free of the girl’s surprisingly strong hold. The last thing you were able to do before the thin line stretching between you and your cat was cut was let out a distressed yowl. Then you found yourself plunged back into your own brain, your own body, left leaning against the corner of a building by the curb and gulping down quick, shallow breaths.

You’d just lost everything.

You couldn’t lose Sarafina too.

So, not wasting a single moment, you took off running in the direction of the alley, trying every few steps to reach out into the vast dark and connect with Sarafina’s consciousness again.

It was much harder to move through thick crowds of people when you were the same size as half of them, forcing you to push and shove your way through those who stood in your way and earning you much gasping and grumbling and shouting from those you’d frightened or offended. Though the opinion of strangers hardly mattered to you right now. All you cared about was finding your beloved cat, and as you neared closer to the alley where you’d last seen her, once again casting your net and searching through the web of animals whose consciousness you could connect to— birds and squirrels and dogs that were currently out on their walks— you finally spotted the aura that unmistakably belonged to your cat.

You latched onto that little flicker of energy and a few seconds later found yourself once again being carried by the sharp-toothed girl.

But, unlike your last excursion using the body of your cat, you couldn’t afford to pull over and park your own body on the side of the curb. This time you had to keep running, to focus on what both your bodies were doing, though, as you used a majority of your mental energy to see through two different perspectives, you figured the best thing to do right now in order to assure that you caught up with the girl was to just let Sarafina’s body rest while yours booked it down the unfamiliar twists and turns of the sketchiest parts of the city.

“Hey!” you called out when you finally spotted the back of the girl’s blonde head, her two messy buns bobbing from further down the next street you turned down. “Stop! Wait!” But she was already turning the next corner, forcing you to sprint another block.

When you finally made it around the next turn, you half expected her to have disappeared, or at the very least be halfway down the next block, so when you nearly plowed straight into her, you were startled to say the least.

“You’re following me…” she stated, narrowing her eyes suspiciously as her cheshire’s grin only widened, those fangs of hers glinting in the last dying strokes of daylight.

All you could think to pant out in response to that was, “You have my cat.”

The girl scanned you up and down with a quick flick of her gaze, as if trying to size you up, then her sinister smile dropped and she gave a simple, “Oh.”

Sarafina squirmed in the teenager’s hold on her own accord until finally the girl let her go, your cat leaping from her grip and quickly scrambling to hide behind your feet, watching the stranger with wide, startled eyes but not seeming as hostile as before.

As you reached down to scoop Sarafina up, feeling her become calmer in your embrace, you figured that, even though you were out of breath and out of options, at least you had your cat back in your care.

“Seems like you came a long way…” the girl noted with subtle sarcasm. “How’d you find me?”

“It’s my quirk,” you admitted, seeing no harm in telling the truth. “It allows me to see through the eyes of animals…” You saw something in her amber gaze shift from distrust to intrigue. “Up to a certain range,” you added on afterward. “That’s why I had to run. If she got too far out of my range I might never have been able to find her again…”

“What did you say your name was again?” she asked, though you couldn’t tell if it was skepticism or curiosity that was woven into the inquiry.

You blinked at her. “I didn’t…”

“Well I’m Toga!” she introduced cheerily.

“Ok…” you responded, suddenly feeling awkward and very much wanting to get back to your search for a place to sleep for the night. “Well I should probably get going… I still have a few shelters to check for any openings and—”

“You’re from that building that burned down earlier today,” Toga asked, the sight of that mischievous grin splitting across her face making you feel a little uneasy, “aren’t you?”

You told her that, yes, unfortunately you were from that building that burned down earlier today, and for the past several hours you’d been wandering around trying to find any place that could provide a roof over both your head and your cat’s for enough time for you to catch your bearings and secure a better plan.

“Well if it’s a roof you need,” she proposed, “then I might know a place…” Another flash of that ominous grin had you hesitant to trust her invitation, even if it was your only option. “Though, it might cost you…”

You tried to swallow down the fear. How could a teenage girl be this intimidating? But, then again, the further you aged from that demographic the more weary of them you became.

“I don’t have much money on me right now,” you explained, trying your best to keep your voice even. “But if I can get to an ATM tomorrow I might be able to—”

“Oh, I’m not talking about money,” Toga was quick to clarify. Then, even more bluntly, “I’m talking about your quirk.” You couldn’t quite place why, but that notion sent a wave of chills skittering up your spine. You’d heard all kinds of horror stories over the years about people being kidnapped or exploited for their quirks, just another reason why you tended to keep yours to yourself, but so long as you weren’t going to have to be involved in hurting anyone, you figured it might be a fair trade for a place to stay.

However, when you relayed this to Toga, the response she gave wasn’t entirely reassuring.

“Hmm… Well, since your quirk isn’t very strength related, I doubt he’d suggest you be involved in anything too…” But then her words trailed off. You were about to ask her who he was, and just where exactly, and with who, it was that she lived, but, having already decided that she was going to take you back and introduce you to whatever awaited you on the other side of this questionable decision, Toga quickly cut in with an almost apologetic, “Oh, but you might want to leave your cat somewhere a little less…”

You hugged Sarafina closer to your chest protectively. If this arrangement required you to be separated again then you weren’t interested. “Well, actually, I guess since it’s related to your quirk, it’s fine,” Toga shrugged. “It’s just— there’s a couple people who might not like cats very much and…” The girl ended up in a fit of rambling that you mostly tuned out, just focusing on trying to stay calm and pressing gentle kisses into the space between your cat’s eyes as she purred in your arms.

You were exhausted, both mentally and physically at this point, and you were starting to think you’d do just about anything for a place to lay down for a while.

“Anyway!” Toga beamed, back to being bubbly and blushing. “The place isn’t too far! So why don��t we get going before the real bad guys come out of hiding, hm?”

***

As much as you’d tried to brush off her earlier statement as a dark-humored joke, it turns out Toga hadn’t been kidding when she’d alluded to more nefarious villains crawling out from the dark corners of the downtown streets the thicker the night became.

And, in all honesty, you hadn’t even thought to consider the teenage girl possibly being one of them until you’d reached the building, shelter, hideout perhaps, that she claimed to reside within. But what were you to do, really? Say you’d changed your mind because the place didn’t match up to your standards? It was a little late for that now, and if she really was a villain, you didn’t think insulting her home was going to end very well for you.

“How many people live here?” you suddenly thought to ask. She said it depended on the time of day, which didn’t make you feel any better, but before you could press further she once again reminded you that you should probably find a place to stash the cat before you reluctantly followed her inside. You eyed Sarafina nervously before preparing to part ways, her big green eyes gazing up at you in a way that nearly broke your heart, once again anxious and confused.

“Don’t worry,” you told her, lowering her towards the pavement. “Just be good and wait for me somewhere safe. I’ll find you a way in once I check things out.” And, with that, your cat scampered off to hide in the shadows and await further instructions.

With the feeling of dread only weighing heavier inside you the further down the first hall that you trailed after Toga, once the door opened to reveal what looked like a small bar and a couple strangers seated inside, some of that fear was temporarily replaced with confusion.

“I’m back!” Toga announced, sounding as if her return was something to be celebrated, though the three figures currently in attendance barely even glanced her way.

That was, until they realized she’d brought company.

Then you found yourself under the strict scrutiny of various sets of eyes following a startled double take from almost all of them.

“The fuck?” one them— a patchwork-scarred man with piercing blue eyes and spiky black hair— drawled, the silver staples at one corner of his mouth tugging at his skin as he sneered, looking rather uncomfortable, but then again, you figured that was probably the least of his discomfort given literally everything else about him. “Toga, what did he say about bringing your friends back here? You tryna get us all arrested or some shit?”

Despite his harsh, and rather concerning words, the man’s tone came off as mostly tired and disinterested. But you could see it in his eyes, all that sapphire blazing with contempt. You really wish you could turn back, but now there were several people who would likely hunt you down if you tried to flee.

“Oh, she’s fine!” Toga said, brushing off her friend? Roommate? You had no idea what kind of situation would pair a teenage girl and a guy like that together, let alone leave them living under the same roof. “Besides, she has a pretty cool quirk! And she needs a place to stay—”

“Himiko Toga…” the figure behind the bar, who seemed more mist than man, began, setting down the glass he’d been in the middle of cleaning and slightly narrowing his glowing yellow gaze at her. His voice was even but firm as he said, “I believe it has been made very clear to everyone here that no guests are allowed until they are vetted through the proper channels…” He turned his otherworldly stare onto you and you reflexively took half a step back. Then he said, “Did Giran send you?”

Now, even more nervous and confused than before, you stuttered out an anxious, “Sorry— Look, I guess I made a mistake. I can go and just—”

“You’re not going anywhere, actually,” a rough, crackling voice rasped from the doorway behind you. You flinched and then turned, blood running cold as your eyes met silver and carmine.

“Uh… I’m— I—” you stammered, trying to still your trembling hands and smooth out your shaking voice. Then, seeming to finally reach your limit, your eyes filled with tears and you blurted out, “Look, my house burned down and I lost my job and I got broken up with all within the same day and I’m tired and hungry and I just need a place to stay for the night, ok?”

The pathetic whine that got tangled up at the end of your sentence didn’t seem to earn you any sympathy from anyone, not even the anthropomorphic lizard who’d remained mostly silent through all of this and simply observed with wide eyes as he darted his stare back and forth between you and the other men accompanying him at the bar counter.

The man in the doorway, who somehow looked like the most worn out one in the room, hesitated for but a moment before he quickly started towards you in an aggressive stride, one of his hands halfway lifted with intentions you could only assume were going to bare consequences to you, but Toga was standing between you two with her arms outstretched as if to deescalate the situation.

“Wait!” she shouted, causing the man, who, the more you looked at him, the more you started to think you’d seen him somewhere before, or at least seen those eyes, the image of them cutting through the silvery dark and trying to rise from the dead in the graveyard of some distant memory filled with tv static and chaos, to stop short, though his gaze remained trained intently on you. “There’s a good reason I brought her here! I swear!”

The man’s malicious stare narrowed as he studied you, not even bothering to look Toga’s way as he spoke to her. “Doesn’t matter,” he said, and you felt every muscle inside you recoil, begging you to at least try and make a run for it, though no matter which angle you looked at it, your odds of escape didn’t seem very good. “If she’s not from Giran then she could be a plant from the heroes. Or a spy…”

The more you looked at him, despite the adrenaline pumping and the cacophony of fear swelling within you to its ultimate crescendo, the more you became confident that you had, indeed, seen him somewhere before.

Just not his face.

When they’d broadcast the story about the aftermath of the breakin and attack at UA way back when, his features had been carefully concealed beneath a mask— a hand— but now that you were seeing it up close, those silvery waves and that spindly frame could only belong to the same person you’d seen in the grainy, blurred photographs depicting the suspect on the news.

You were standing in the middle of the League of Villains headquarters, a helpless little fly caught in the hungry spider’s web with no way out that didn’t end in you left in a pile of pitiful dust on the uneven hardwood floors.

“I’m not a spy—” you desperately cut in. Though, in hindsight, that’s exactly what a spy would say, wouldn’t they? “I’m not… I didn’t want to come here!”

Tomura Shigaraki then seemed to consider this whole predicament from a new angle, relaxing his stance just a hair as he pondered over the possibilities. He could just decay you and be done with this headache, or…

He could find a use for you.

“I’m assuming the only reason you were brought here—” Tomura eyed Toga in a way that was so sharp it could’ve cut had she been standing any closer to him before flicking all that visceral crimson back to you, “was because you have a quirk that could be useful for the party as a whole…” You tried not to raise a brow at the implication of being added to the so-called party against your will and exploited for your quirk, but couldn’t suppress the urge to swallow down the lump that had been forming in your throat. “So out with it then,” he demanded, taking a step closer to you and crossing his arms over his chest, Toga taking another step back as if still intending to defend you if he attempted to reach out again. “What’s your quirk?”

You had to go about this carefully. Say too much and you might become their prisoner, say too little and you might find yourself on the missing persons list.

So you gave the most basic explanation you could think of— the one you tended to rattle off whenever someone asked you by means of smalltalk— that you had the ability to see through the eyes of certain animals within a certain range.

Though, of course, you should’ve known better than to assume the leader of the League of Villains would just leave it at that.

Thus began the barrage of follow up questions. Which animals? It depends, though cats, dogs, and birds were what you’d had the most experience with thus far. Can you control them? Most of the time, yes, but it depends. How far is the range? It depends. What happens to your consciousness and body when you’re in their heads? It depends. Do you have any other answer to a question than ‘it depends’?

“Ok, look…” you began, slow and steady so as not to reignite the tension in the room, the way his eyes had narrowed in anger more and more with every answer you gave making you feel like a bomb was about to go off. “I’ve lost just about everything I have. So what, right? Why should you care? But can you least just give me a moment to think all this through—”

The scarred man huffed out a cruel breath of a laugh, clearly mocking you and once again reminding you that you would find no sympathy here.

Meanwhile, as if trying to rewrite his most recent plan to figure out how your quirk could fit into it, Tomura once again retreated to his inner pondering. Then he looked at you and stated with a threatening amount of finality, “Well, if you weren’t a spy before, then you can consider yourself one now.”

You felt sick. You felt like your vision was tunneling and soon the whole world would collapse around you where you stood.

“So, for now, you can stay, but—” You felt like every fear you’d ever had was reborn inside of you at once, an amalgamation of despair and horror and distress swirling in a catastrophic tornado. Tomura took another step closer to you, arresting every urge you had to turn and run with a single stare. “If I get any notion that you’ll betray us…” Every word that he said was a threat, tone laced with venom and vengeance. “I’ll kill you on the spot. Got it?”

You learned that, though you thought that you’d lost everything, there had still been one last thing left the universe could take from you.

Your freedom.

You tried to hold back the squeak that was rising up your throat, again swallowing over the lump that had formed there as you nodded your head in terrified understanding. And then, just as quickly as it had seeped into the room, that air of murderous tension seemed to dissipate, Tomura stepping back to retreat to wherever he’d come from among the second story of the building.

***

You’d been delegated as Toga’s responsibility, though the girl couldn’t have been more happy to have a new friend and, seeing the personal quarters of the place were running low, a new roommate as well. It was only after you’d used your quirk to merge with Sarafina that you were able to guide her up the several dumpsters, crates, and boxes to the thin ledge that ran along the side of the building that Toga’s room was on, pry open the dirty window, and allow your cat inside, trying to muffle your weeping sobs as you held her close and dampened her cream colored fur with your unending stream of tears.

Toga was nice enough to give you your privacy for an hour or two at least, returning once she’d pressed her ear to the door and felt relief that she couldn’t hear you crying anymore, bringing with her some water and snacks and a spare blanket as she reentered the room.

“It’s not much,” she said as she slid you a granola bar and a sandwich she’d swiped from one of the local konbinis. “But it’s better than nothing, right?”

She offered you a softer smile, seemingly the only one who was sympathetic to your current situation, even though she’d been the one directly responsible for it. But you didn’t blame her. Perhaps because you knew, if you did, then you’d be all alone in your sorrow and suffering. She didn’t apologize and she didn’t tell you it would get better. She sat with you and tried to offer what small comforts she could— her favorite hard candies, her favorite plushie, the new album she’d been listening to recently that she really liked— and she’d just talked to you, rambling about anything she could think of until eventually you found yourself dozing off, your cat curled up by your feet.

You hoped that, when you woke up in the morning, all of this— this entire traumatic day— would be nothing but some horrible dream.

You were a lot of things.

Lucky wasn’t one of them right now.

***

As the next week passed in thick, tense silence, you and Sarafina grew restless. You kept going back and forth between slipping away in the night and finding a real place to stay until you regrouped and formed a stable plan— not that you thought one of them, now that you’d met all eight of the current members, wouldn’t track you down and either drag you back or just kill you�� or staying and risking finding a place for yourself among them here.

You’d never wanted to be a hero and you definitely didn’t want to be a villain either, but you’d be lying if you said it didn’t feel at least a little temping at times. Because when you and Toga sat together in the room you now shared, Sarafina curled up on one of your laps (your cat had begun to take quite a liking to her, despite her initial fear of the fanged teen) as you chatted about what your lives were like before passing the threshold of the bar door that had inevitably sealed both your fates, you actually found yourself feeling content, dare you consider it actual relief or happiness.

Toga was the friend you always thought you’d have— chipper, lively, a little twisted but ultimately funny. But she had been through a lot. Much more than you probably would’ve been able to stomach, which also made her capable and cunning.

At least, with her, the torture of awaiting the role Tomura would force you to play in his upcoming schemes became a little less intense. She granted you a distraction, even if only a little, and she got along with your cat on top of it.

Toga and Sarafina became your only comforts in your small little world.

But, like most things in your life as of late, something was sure to swoop in and try to destroy it all.

***

You’d been approaching the end of your second week with the League when your secret got out to the rest of them.

Well, really, the secret got out to one of them— the man with the cold blue eyes who you now knew as Dabi— who then spread it to everyone else like a spark that ignites into a wildfire.

“Get rid of it,” was Tomura’s initial reaction when he’d first found out, everyone gathered around to witness the conflict with varying degrees of confusion, amusement, and worry as you stood in the middle of the bar clutching Sarafina close to your chest, ready to sacrifice yourself to shield her if those deadly hands of his made any sudden moves.

“Well if she goes, I go!” you protested.

As soon as the words left your mouth you felt your fear spike, a quiet gasp following your bold statement when you saw Tomura’s hands flex. You knew what those hands could do, the horrors they were capable of, so you figured you’d better make your case before the leader of the League of Villains turned both you and your cat to dust.

“Besides!” you argued, trying to shake the quiver in your voice and fight off the tears that threatened to well in your eyes. “She’s the animal most compatible with my quirk! It’s more effective the more the animal trusts me!” Which, in all honesty, was just a theory you had, though in this case you were more than willing to swear it as fact.

“Ok, fine…” Tomura huffed, shoving his hands into his hoodie pocket, which only made you slightly less nervous. “But if you don’t prove both yourself and the cat useful on the next mission…” He turned, as if to leave, but shot you a scathing glare over his shoulder which made your blood turn to ice. A crooked grin split across cracked lips as Tomura said, threatened, challenged, “I’ll make sure the two of you don’t have to worry about finding a new place to live.”

With that, he departed, causing you to quickly retreat back to Toga’s room to once again cry in private, keeping Sarafina in your arms as you repeatedly kissed the top of her head, murmuring words to her about how you’d never let anyone hurt her or keep the two of you apart.

When Toga came to check on you, she tried to offer consolation but you both knew there wasn’t much to be done. You couldn’t just leave. If that much hadn’t been blatantly clear to you at the start, every day spent here was only further reinforcement of that damning fact. But you couldn’t very well stay if the threat of Tomura Shigaraki decaying your cat remained hanging over your head.

Who you really hated at the moment, though, was Dabi. Even after Toga made him apologize (which was really nothing more than a disinterested, insincere drone of, “Sorry, I guess…”) you were still mad. The shadowy bartender, Kurogiri, seemed neutral on the whole cat debacle, so long as it didn’t hinder Tomura’s plans. The man with the lizard quirk, Spinner, seemed intent on staying out of it, though wished you luck on the upcoming task, the odd man with the duplication quirk called Twice (though after he’d introduced himself with that name he’d immediately backtracked and insisted you refer to him as Jin) would extend his sympathies only to retract them moments later (you were still trying to figure him out), and the initially intimidating woman known as Magne had actually come around to you more once she learned of Sarafina’s existence, for whatever reason.

Other than Tomura, no one seemed to have any strong objections to Sarafina’s presence, so long as the litter box was kept away from all of their rooms (which wasn’t easy in a place that had become this cramped with residents) and you cleaned up after her. Dabi avoided the cat, acted cold and disinterested, was probably more likely to torment her than anything else, though once you’d caught him holding out the back of his hand for her to sniff when he thought you weren’t looking. Toga stole cans of cat food whenever she could and once or twice even Jin let the creature nuzzle its face against his arm if he was sitting at the bar and she happened to hop up onto the counter. Spinner seemed wary of her but became slightly less nervous after Magne convinced him she was mostly harmless.

However, out of all of the misfits that comprised the League, it was the energetic and eccentric man known as Mr. Compress who enthusiastically offered up the fact that he was also a fellow cat-lover.

“She’s just a little sweetheart, isn’t she?” the usually masked man, currently devoid of his disguise, cooed as he came to sit beside you at the bar one evening, Sarafina resting nice and cozy in your lap. You smiled and gave your cat’s chin a little scratch. She tilted her head up to allow you more space as she began to purr, her squinting eyes glancing at Compress out of the corner of her vision.

“Yeah, she is,” you confirmed, your voice soft as you continued to dote on your cat. “She can be picky about who she shows that side of her personality to, though.”

Compress leaned in closer, moving slowly so as to not startle Sarafina. “What happened?” he asked, then further clarified with, “Her leg. Was it always missing, or…”

“Oh—” you perked up, Sarafina twitching a bit in response. “Yeah… She was born like that. At least, I think she was.” You went on to regale the story of how you’d found her, so tiny and abandoned, in the alley that ran alongside your apartment, and how you’d nursed her back to health and become her forever home along the way.

“Ah…” he seemed to contemplate, like he understood. Then he said, resting his chin in his palm and gazing upon the three-legged cat dreamily, “You just couldn’t help but fall in love…”

You told him yes, you supposed you had, and then thought to yourself privately that you dreaded the inevitable day where she would be gone from your life. You’d be forced to move on without her, and even if you got another cat someday, it would never be the same.

“And what about you?” you asked, trying to pull yourself from those depressing thoughts. “Did you ever have cats, or…?”

Atsuhiro exhaled a reminiscent chuckle. “If you count feeding strays in my neighbourhood growing up,” he said, “then yes, I suppose I had quite a few.”

You listened as he recalled some of his favorite ones, the silly names his childhood self had given them, and found yourself thinking about how, perhaps in another life, one where none of these people had fallen into villainy for some reason or another, they’d all have lived lives not so dissimilar to one you’d had before the fire. You could easily see yourself getting along with Atsuhiro, along with Toga, of course, if you’d just happened to meet them in passing.

Maybe you would’ve been neighbours. Maybe you would’ve made sure to check in on each other’s pets when the other was away. It made you consider, perhaps for the first time, that maybe it wasn’t entirely the villain’s fault for becoming that way, that maybe it was society that had done them wrong in some way, set them on the wrong path, or maybe never given them the chance to get on the right one in the first place.

Because, hero or villain or just plain old civilian, everyone had hopes and dreams and things they’d once desired for their lives. Everyone had once just been a child, and some of those children had fed stray cats.

Now that didn’t sound like a very evil thing to do, did it?

***

The mission comes and goes and you prove yourself useful.

You’d been tasked with stalking a UA student throughout the week, charting his daily schedule, his usual habits and patterns. Something about insurance for a plan B if the initial kidnapping attempt went wrong.

When you reported back, you felt a pang of guilt surge within you. He was just a kid. A teenage boy. When you tried to press for more information the general consensus just seemed to be that they were trying to recruit him. That he’d been the winner of UA’s sports festival and might have what it takes to be a good addition to their group. Not quite knowing exactly what the League had in store for him made you feel awful. But maybe it was better that you didn’t know.

It gave you a false sense of hope in thinking you might be able to escape all of this and still view yourself as a good person in the end.

***

Another couple of weeks passed in the blink of an eye, but with Tomura’s stamp of approval that Sarafina could stay after your successful mission, so long as you kept her off the bar counters going forward, you felt you could relax a little bit.

Almost all of them, including Toga, prepared to head out to commence plan A. Tomura had initially ordered you to come along, use your quirk to help scout out the surrounding area, but due to the constant use of it during the week you’d spent following the highschooler around in the bodies of birds and squirrels almost around the clock, you’d fallen victim to the severe migraines that could occur due to an overuse of your quirk, the pain showing up with a delay, building, then gradually subsiding again, which could take a week or more to recover from if you really went overboard.

Or at least, that’s what you now had to convince everyone of anyway.

So he’d let you stay behind, albeit very begrudgingly, which had surprised you. Now, as they recounted the plan one last time and took a final stock of their supplies, Sarafina watched them from her perch on the arm of the couch, alert and curious. Atsuhiro came over and bid Sarafina, and yourself, a personal farewell, patting the cat’s head and saying something about the gesture being for good luck.

“Get some rest,” he reminded you. You nodded and promised him you would.

“Feel better!” Toga chirped as she departed, and you gave her a bittersweet wave goodbye.

One by one, you watched them leave until only you and Kurogiri were left.

You took a seat at the bar, slowly sipping at a glass of water as you held your head in your hand and kept your eyes closed and, against Tomura’s wishes, allowed Sarafina to leap onto the counter one last time. As night approached, you took your leave and retreated back up to Toga’s room.

Then you pried open the window and dropped down onto the dumpster below, wincing when you made noise, but urging Sarafina to jump, to trust that you would catch her.

And she was hesitant, if not outright refusing.

It was almost like she didn’t want to leave, so you had no choice but to activate your quirk and leap down into your own arms before heading as far from that part of town as you possibly could.

Your cat seemed content to make a home here. You just weren’t sure yet whether you really felt you belonged. Though, if your intuition was anything to go by, this probably wouldn’t be the last time you saw them.

It was only a matter of time until one of them dragged you back or left no witnesses. You just hoped it was Toga or Atsuhiro who came to reclaim you.

Until then though, you and Sarafina had better find yourselves a place to stay.

***

(Thank you to @supernatural-hunter1 for your request and I hope you enjoyed! Also I know I left the ending so ambiguous but I couldn’t think of how to end it. Anyway, I hope you have a wonderful day and remember to do something kind for yourself. Byyyyye <3)

#kodis requests #literally me finishing august requests on the last day of the month #sorry if this feels rushed #i just didn’t want to make it too long and then take literally foreeeeever to post it #this had potential to be a much bigger story tho i just didn’t have the time #im sure i got some of the time lines or details mixed up here but yknow what it is what it is #i did not have time to triple check everything (although i tried my best believe me)#bnha fanfiction #mha fanfiction #boku no hero academia fanfiction #my hero academia fanfiction #bnha fanfic #mha fanfic

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