(️✓) MARIA, BNHA VARIOUS

ㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤAFTER ENDING.

Hero life was tough and no one ever sugarcoated it back in the day. UA made it perfectly clear what to expect, in the field and the aftermath.

So it wasn't exactly a surprise when (Y/N) felt stressed, torn, and frayed from the long hours and even longer bouts of physical and emotional exhaustion.

Of course, they gave tips on how to stay sharp; "Eat three healthy meals a day!"

But sometimes she was too busy to get more than a bite in here and there, and other times she just straight up forgot to eat anything but some bland, tasteless protein bars between dawn and dusk.

"Keep yourself mentally and physically rested!" Right. Like she totally had a choice when asshole villains and mountains of paperwork on top of that kept her suited up well past a reasonable bedtime on most days.

They tried to prepare you for the expectations of defeat; losing a villain. Losing a life.

Nothing can truly prepare you for that.

That's why it needless to say, the (H/C) haired woman needed an outlet. Needed a distraction. Something to make her brain shut the hell up for even just a few minutes throughout her hectic life and let him forget about being one of Japan's top saviors for a moment.

Easier said than done.

Taking a walk when she had a spare moment became a hassle and caused more trouble than it solved because everyone knew her.

Everyone wanted a piece of her already thinly spread attention. Teenagers would be a bunch of messes, children cheered and adults pointed their phones in her general vicinity. And if she was really lucky, no one would approach her for an autograph or to take a picture.

(Y/N) was rarely lucky.

She doesn't even want the attention. She just wanted to do her job and help people.

Helping others without the guilt, anger, and remorse of loss and failure? It sounded like a dream.

Definitely wasn’t reality.

After that, she learned to escape to solitary places— behind buildings and into back alleys or maybe even go home to her condominium flat.

Literally any place where she could be alone and shut out nagging coworkers and the draining sense of reality gnawing at the back of her skull.

Silence, silence, and more silence. Intrusive thoughts reared her pretty head, as usual.

Work, failure, work, loss, more work, damage, death, even more work, loneliness and work.

So even silence and seclusion had its downfalls.

(Y/N) walked towards her balcony after a long tiring day, not bothering to slide the glass door shut and reaches for her pack of cigarettes in her coat pocket.

Flipping the top open, she pulled out one of the bleached sticks and a lighter. She placed the cigarette between her lips and brings the lighter close and covers the flame with one hand and inhales.

The smoothness is instant. She inhaled deeply and exhaled through her nose. It made her wonder life is so tough on her, asking some absent god if they cursed her since the very beginning of her existence.

When she was younger, she'd never so much as took a second glance at a cigarette before in her life, much less touched one.

Not with all the anti-drug advocacies she had grown up with during his childhood. Not with her own father being a Pro Hero that doesn't encourage any kind of vices. Not with the All Might PSA commercials she had watch, again and again, yelling about how, "Staying substance-free was what heroes would do!"