Chapter Text
Aizawa and Mic are very gracious when Katherine requests an impromptu, twenty-hour road trip to Hokkaido upon being discharged. They decide to bring Eri with them, and when Midnight hears about all the fun, they invite her along, too. With the car already 90% full, Katherine implies there would be no harm in taking Shoto, which takes a little more pushing and prodding before her dads finally say yes.
So, the moment Katherine is good to go, they pile in one of U.A.’s vans and make a straight shot for Hokkaido. With all three adults taking shifts driving, it’s doable in one day, and Katherine wakes up sometime around 8:00 the next morning to see trees stacked next to each other on the edges of the road. Aizawa looks at her in the mirror and hands back a breakfast sandwich. “Morning. Sleep well?”
“I can’t feel my legs,” she complains, accepting it. “How much further?”
“You didn’t exactly give us a destination,” Midnight points out as she pulls up her sleep mask, stretched out across the back row of seats.
“Don’t blame me for that. Blame the voices.”
“I’m blaming you for waking me up,” Shoto interjects as he picks his head up off her shoulder.
Katherine gives him an apologetic smile and kisses him on the cheek. “Oh, sorry. Do you want a sandwich?”
Eri’s eyes fly open. “I want a sandwich.”
“Enamorada, you’re supposed to be sleeping.”
“I’m too excited to sleep!”
Mic grunts from the passenger seat. “I’m not. Keep it down back there. Please.”
Katherine takes two more sandwiches from Aizawa and hands them to Shoto and Eri. Her gaze returns to the windows, the trees passing in green blurs. Something about this place feels familiar, but she doesn’t quite recognize her surroundings. It’s on the edge of her memory, barely tangible.
“Stop here.”
Her wings flick with surprise, nudging Shoto and Eri slightly. The voice is new but unmistakable—Aspen. What could her mother mean? She doesn’t see any signs of a house yet.
Nonetheless, Katherine blurts out, “Pull over!”
Aizawa does so without question. When Katherine steps out of the car onto the dew-stained grass, he rolls down his window. “What’s the matter?”
Katherine searches the edge of the woods for the slightest clue as to where the house could be.
“Further in, Dove,” Shadow says. “Follow the feathers.”
“Follow the what?” she mutters under her breath, looking at the branches. Then she spots it—two large feathers tied together with leather strips hanging from one of the trees. One is a red-shouldered hawk’s feather, and the other is a magpie’s. When she looks into the woods again, she sees a similar marker hanging from another branch up ahead.
“We wanted to be sure that you could always find your way home once you started flying,” Aspen explains.
Katherine chirps with excitement and turns back to the van. “It’s this way! C’mon!”
Once she’s sure that everyone is out, she dashes into the woods. Katherine teleports from feather marker to feather marker, her heart beating faster every time she spots a new one. “Slow down, kiddo!” Mic shouts to her before she can leave them in the dust. “One of us is missing a leg and an eye!”
“Thanks a lot,” Aizawa gripes as he climbs over a fallen tree.
Katherine is still one marker ahead of them, though. When she reaches the clearing, she sees the house first.
Shoto, noticing that she’s halted, rushes to catch up. “Why did you–”
He cuts himself off when he follows her gaze. It’s the house, alright, but it hasn’t fared well against time. The front is caved in—likely courtesy of All For One’s attack—and what isn’t damaged from combat has been reclaimed by nature. Vines twist and hug around the outer walls. Roots curl under the crumbling foundation. “Oh, dear,” Midnight begins as she comes up next to Katherine. “There may be some things inside that are salvageable.”
Katherine doesn’t reply. She braces herself and steps over the collapsed door.
The interior is completely cleared out. Besides the dust and dirt that’s settled, the walls and floors are bare. There’s nothing to suggest anyone ever lived here at all. Aizawa and Mic come in behind her while Shoto, Eri, and Midnight linger on the porch. “Looks abandoned to me,” Aizawa notes.
Mic gives him a stern glare before smiling at Katherine. “I bet it was pretty cool looking when you still lived here, right?”
“Yeah,” she murmurs. “There were piles of pillows and blankets everywhere. And random keepsakes on the shelves.”
Aizawa raises his brows. “So, your room? I’m picturing your room.”
Katherine giggles as she turns to him. “Minus the Pro Hero posters and the store-brand stuff, but yeah, I guess so.”
His gaze softens, and he ruffles her hair when she walks back to them. “I’m sorry, Katherine. I know you were hoping to find something.”
“It’s okay,” she replies, and when she sees Mic giving her an unsure look: “Really. Closure is closure, right?”
Before Mic can respond, they hear Eri call for them outside. “Hey! I found something!”
They look at each other, and Katherine teleports to the front steps. Eri is crouched at the base of a tree, looking at something. When Katherine gets closer, she sees an odd amalgamation of items—one of the feather markers, two silver rings, and an incense holder. When Shoto walks over, he remarks, “It looks like a grave.”
“All For One’s not that considerate,” Midnight states dryly. “This is the first time you’ve been back here, right, Katherine?”
Katherine turns to her, a brow raised, and Midnight holds up her hands defensively. “What? You take lots of unsupervised field trips.”
“And if you didn’t make this, then who did?” Mic wonders aloud.
She purses her lips. She wishes she knew, but she’s at a loss, too. She didn’t have any friends here—not that she can remember. All she had were her birth parents. And all they had was…
“Aspen?”
Katherine whips around when an unfamiliar voice says her mother’s name. They were all so caught up in the mystery that they hadn’t heard the footsteps coming out of the forest. She locks eyes with a woman who looks to be in her late thirties or early forties. She has antlers poking through her curly hair and white dots speckled over her tan skin, and her deerlike ears flick with surprise at Katherine's sudden turn. A box of incense sticks lays at her feet, and she looks nervously at them all. “Uh, no, sorry,” Katherine starts before her eyes narrow curiously. “How do you know my mom’s name?”
The woman’s eyes widen even more. She stares at them for a few moments, then finally breathes, “…Oh my gods. Katherine.”
…
The woman, who eventually introduces herself as Wren, invites them all to her home, which is just a short trek away from Katherine’s old house. The moment she steps inside, Katherine’s gaze is drawn to a photo of her birth parents on the mantle of Wren’s fireplace. “Hey–!”
“Shadow loved that camera of his,” Wren states with a sheepish smile. “I still have it—if you want it back.”
Katherine looks at the walls of Wren’s living room, crowded with picture frames of different subjects. “Did you take all of these? Or are they his?”
“Oh, well—Shadow took them, but he gifted some to me after the walls at your place started getting too full.”
She watches Wren start rummaging through a drawer. “How did you know them?”
Wren looks up and bumps her antlers on the shelf above her, seemingly confused. “Aspen and Shadow. My parents. How did you know them?” Katherine repeats.
“Oh,” Wren says, going quiet. “Right. You wouldn’t remember.”
She continues her search, and Katherine sends a bewildered look to her dads, who are poised by the door in case this goes south. Wren finally pulls out a large book and sits on her couch, gesturing for Katherine to sit with her. “I was one of the test subjects at Dr. Ujiko’s lab,” she explains as Katherine settles. “You might’ve noticed, but I’m a mix of deer and human DNA. I wouldn’t say my gene-splicing is as smooth as your parents’, but I get by. When Aspen and Shadow broke out, they tried to bring as many of us as they could with them. They saved dozens of experiments, including me. We all settled here.”
Katherine watches Wren curiously as she opens up the large book. “Our lives weren’t easy, but we got by. Aspen kept us all together, and Shadow made sure we had what we needed to survive. For us, it was paradise. We lived like semi-normal people for the first time in our lives. When they got married, and then they had you—it was heaven on earth. They loved you so much. We all did.”
Wren goes quiet again before continuing. “After they were killed, a lot of the other experiments fled this area. They figured Dr. Ujiko was after the rest of us, too. But since we hadn’t found you yet—well, I always figured you’d find your way home, just like they wanted you to,” she discloses, a bittersweet smile on her face. “Anyways…I made you this. It’s everything Shadow took of you and Aspen. I tried my best to salvage what I could from the house.”
Katherine takes the book from her, and her heart skips a beat.
It’s a scrapbook. Plastered on the pages are her mother and father’s faces, frozen in time, caught in the happiest moments of their lives—and hers. “It’s not the neatest, I’m sure,” Wren states apologetically, “but I hope it’ll do.”
Katherine looks at Wren and throws her arms around her, trying her best not to break down sobbing. “Thank you so much.”
Wren is still for a moment, then hugs her back. “You’re welcome, Katherine.”
…
They stay the night at Wren’s house, and in the morning, they set back off for U.A.
Katherine is still asleep when they pull up in front of the gates, the scrapbook held tightly to her chest. When Shoto nudges her, she chirps indignantly, but her slight irritation at being woken up instantly fades.
Class 1-A is gathered at the gates, even though it’s 2:00 in the morning. They all cheer and wave to her when she gets out of the car. She can smell the cake Sato’s baked from here, and in the dim light, she can see the banner Dark Shadow and Koda’s birds are holding up.
“Welcome Back, Fearless Leader!”
Katherine beams and dashes to them, laughing with delight as she falls into their arms.
Finally, she’s home.
-End of Book Four