Third person pov

Pushing her quirk to the limit while she wasn't crying and hyperventilating was a lot different than she thought it'd be. As she jogged around the track, she found her eyes unconsciously straying back to the ball she'd frozen midair. It's like her gaze was drawn to it or something. Looking away for too long made her eyes start to itch. She wasn't sure if that had happened at the USJ, or of maybe she just hadn't noticed due to all her crying.

Her stomach didn't hurt, and it had been half an hour. Sure, freezing a single, inanimate object and maybe a few clouds didn't take much energy. Not as much as freezing a person took, anyway, but she felt happy. She didn't feel like she was going to start hacking up her lungs or anything of that sort. It was a good sign!

She did feel extremely drowsy, however. She found her eyelids drooping a little as she jogged. On that note, she was also strictly going around the track for her workout today. She didn't have to sprint or do any push ups like her two friends due to her quirk being in use. Aizawa didn't want her collapsing. She was glad for that. She didn't really want to feel like her body was being crushed from the inside.

"Hey, Lillian." Neito came up next to her as her eyes unconsciously drifted to the ball again. The urge to stare at the small scene she'd frozen continued to get stronger and stronger as she pattered around the track. She blinked, reaching up to rub her eyes as she looked at Neito and the wheezing Hitoshi. The blonde's expression twisted. "Are you... alright? Your eyes are red."

"I-I think the side effects depend on..." She trailed off, eyes going back to the ball. She continued, not looking away, "depend on how I'm feeling, maybe? At the USJ, I was so panicked I could barely think straight."

"And now you're calm." Neito provided.

"Y-Yeah. It doesn't really hurt. I'm just really tired, and m-my eyes itch. The urge to stare at what I've frozen also keeps getting stronger..." She pried her gaze from the ball, and the itching increased.

"Make sure to tell... Mr. Aizawa." Hitoshi panted, wiping his hand against his sweaty forehead. It did absolutely nothing, as per usual. Neito and Lillian shot him sympathetic glances. While Hitoshi had begun to take okay to the push ups, crunches, and things of that sort, he hated running with a burning passion. Lillian and Neito couldn't figure out for the life of them why he didn't like it, but he didn't.

"I will." Lillian assured. "Chris, is that a weed?!"

"I'm calling the police!" Neito took off sprinting again, Hitoshi groaning and following.

"911, what's your emergency?" The purple-haired boy managed to choke out before he was off and running again as well, looking like he'd rather do a flip off a cliff than do so

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

B

y Friday, Lillian had practically turned her house upside down looking for baby photos of herself. She'd hunted down even the most obscure of photographs, but no baby pictures arose. It occurred to her that even if they had been destroyed, there was no way they didn't have digital copies. Sure, computers hadn't been as advanced when she was a baby, but her parents had still backed literally everything up on disks.

Everything but her baby pictures.

She didn't know why the thought of being adopted made her so... sad. These were her parents, no matter what. She knew they loved her, and she loved them just as much. If she was adopted, that meant they'd chosen her to be their daughter. They'd gone and decided that she was the best one for them. Somehow, that thought didn't comfort her in the least.

A lot of the things she thought she knew about herself and her lineage was all a lie, if adoption was the case. She didn't have a great deal of Irish blood, and she didn't have ancestors hailing from England. She didn't have a distant relative from an ancient Japanese bloodline, and she didn't have to worry about maybe getting cancer in her heart at the age of twenty.

If not here, where had she come from?

Another thing, if she were adopted, who were her birth parents? Why hadn't they wanted her? Had they kept her until she was three, and then given her up? Who were they, and what were their names? She knew her surname was Faust, and that was fine. But what would it have been?

The thoughts were overwhelming, and as she sat at the dinner table listening vaguely as her parents chattered, she found herself teary-eyed. She didn't really know why. If these weren't her birth parents, it wasn't that big a deal. They loved her, and protected her, and cared about her. They gave her a home here and tried their best to make her happy. Why did it matter? Sure, she'd like to know where her quirk came from, and if she had a birth mother and father out there somewhere, but...

"Lillian, are you crying?" Her mother sounded startled, and Lillian looked up, blinking rapidly and bringing her hands up to her face. Sure enough, her cheeks were wet. She wiped at them rapidly. This was dumb, right? Was she really adopted? She wanted there to be a nice and easy explanation to explain why there wasn't a single baby picture of her in this photo-infested house. She wanted there to be a reason she didn't look like either of her parents when you looked closer at them in comparison to her.

She didn't think she really wanted to be adopted.

"Mom..." Her voice cracked. "Where... Wh-Where are my baby photos?"

The way they both froze was telling enough, and she found herself in disbelief as she gazed at both of them. Why hadn't they told her? Would they... would they have ever told her the truth? Were they really going to let her grow up not knowing they didn't share the same blood? She knew that didn't mean they weren't her family, and she knew that they were still her parents. She knew that, and yet...

"I-I'm going to Hitoshi's." She sputtered out weakly, standing up. Her mother opened her mouth to respond, but no words came out. Her dad looked mortified. Lillian tried to hold back her tears, but she knew she was failing. She always had been a crier. Why did this matter so much? These were her parents, but... what about her other ones? Had they cared? Had they wanted her?

Were they still alive?

She ran. She did enough of that in training, and her aching legs immediately protested. She didn't really care. All she could do was dart out the front door and tear down the sidewalk. She didn't go to her bedroom to grab her phone, and she didn't attempt to pry answers from her parents. Instead, she just went. It's all she could find the energy to do.

Maybe her other parents hadn't wanted her. She didn't know why they wouldn't, but she hoped there was a good reason. That it wasn't just because she was... well, her. She'd clearly been adopted at three or so. What if they'd gotten to know her, and they simply decided they didn't want her anymore? Why give her up so late? Or had she been given up as a baby, and nobody had wanted her until her parents came along?

A part of her told her to go to Hitoshi's window, but she found herself knocking on the front door before she could process the thought. When had she begun to hyperventilate, and better yet, why was she in the first place? So what if she was adopted! That just... That just meant her current parents wanted her. They chose her.

But who was she? Who were her blood parents?

Mihoko answered the door with a smile that quickly dropped the moment she saw Lillian standing there looking like she was in shock. She quickly ushered the poor girl into the house, closing the door softly as Lillian wrapped her arms around herself. The woman spun around to face the freckled girl. She'd grown rather fond of Lillian, which made seeing her in this state all the more heartbreaking.

"What's wrong, honey? Why are you crying?" Mihoko brushed some of Lillian's hair away, gazing down at the wide-eyed girl with clear concern etched across her face.

Lillian blinked a few times, but seemed to have heard her. She looked vaguely disoriented, as though her head were spinning. Mihoko frowned. Had the girl's parents said something about her quirk? Was it school? A flashback to the USJ attack?

"I...I'm adopted?" It sounded more like a question, but Mihoko's heart broke at the small voice the girl spoke in, her heart skipping a best at the admission. With a noise of motherly distress that only she could ever possibly pull off, she took the girl into her arms, holding her close as she began to break down.

"Mom?" Hitoshi appeared from the hall, the noise having drawn him. His eyes went wide. "Lillian? What's wrong? Did she get hurt?"

Mihoko couldn't help but smile a little as her concerned son approached, though it was a sad one. Lillian pulled away from the woman to face her friend, peering up at him like maybe he had some answers. He frowned, welcoming her into a hug immediately when she latched onto him. He looked to his mother for an explanation. She just wiped at her eyes a little.

"Lillian?" Hitoshi returned his gaze to his friend when he realized his mom wouldn't be giving out any information, if she knew any at all. "What's wrong?"

Something that sounded like a choke laugh bubbled from her chest, and she detached herself from him, wiping at her eyes and shaking her head. "I-It's so dumb." She seemed to decide, sounding extremely sure of herself. Mihoko murmured about tea before disappearing to give them some privacy. "I-It's... It's so d-dumb."

Hitoshi felt nothing but concern at this point. The last time Lillian had shown up at his front door in tears was right after the USJ attack. He knew it was pretty easy to make her cry, but he didn't think she'd rush to someone's house in flurry of tears just on a whim. Something serious had to have happened, and he was worried. Even more so because Lillian was trying to tell herself the worry was dumb, which definitely meant it was serious.

"Hey, slow down. I'm sure it's not 'dumb'." He put his hands on her shoulders and urged her in the direction of the couch. "Start from the beginning."

He took a seat and pulled her down next to him, rubbing her back in a comforting manner as she attempted to gather herself, nodding and taking a few deep breaths. She wiped at her face as much as she could. Hitoshi made a mental note to carry a handkerchief with him. Everywhere. Twenty-four hours a day, literally, because he had no idea when she was going to show up crying.

Lillian took another deep breath and seemed to center herself. Hitoshi waited patiently as she wrung her hands together.

"R-Remember when y-you came t-to my... my house?" She asked quietly. "A-And you teased me about n-not seeing any of... o-of my b-baby pictures?"

Hitoshi felt confusion take form in the pit of his stomach. "Yeah, I remember that." He said instead of asking another question. He didn't want to interrupt Lillian. She'd tell it the way she wanted to tell it. He momentarily wondered if he should call Neito for back up or something. The blonde was better with emotions, from what Hitoshi could tell. Not by much, but at least he could do more than just pat someone's back.

"W-Well... Hitoshi, I-I've never seen any o-of my b-baby pictures either." She whispered. Hitoshi's heart immediately plummeted when he realized the direction this was heading. Sure, a lot of things made more sense now, but what the hell? He hadn't seen this coming from a mile away. Well, maybe he had from two miles, but that wasn't the point.

"I-I looked. There... n-none exist." She bit her lip, looking down at her hands. "I-I asked... a-at dinner, about the photos. Th-The looks... they..."

He didn't know what to say. What could he say? Lillian had just found out that her parents hadn't birthed her. They weren't related by blood at all, and she hadn't known anything about it! She had to be wondering where she came from, and why her original parents didn't want her. She clearly hadn't been adopted as an infant or anything of that sort, so did that mean her parents had... had died, or given her up after a few years? Or maybe she'd been adopted or fostered by another family for a few years before?

"I-I know I shouldn't b-be upset. Th-They'll always be m-my parents, an-and I love them, a-and they love me. They ch-chose me. They weren't s-stuck with me or... or anything. They c-came, and s-saw me, and wanted me." Lillian said, sounding like she was trying to convince herself more than she was telling him. He wrapped at arm around her and pulled her into him. "I just... wh-where did I come from? A-And my medical... m-medical records. Everything R-Recovery Girl has d-doesn't... a-apply..." She sounded near tears again.

"It's okay, Lillian." He assured her, trying to keep his voice was soft and understanding as he possibly could. Those two things weren't really his forte, but at least he was making an attempt. "You're right; they should have told you, or they at least should have made sure the information the school needed was correct. But you're also right when you say that they're your parents and that they love you, you know? I met your mom. She adores you." He gave a grin.

"I-I know." Lillian mumbled. "B-But... m-mother-trucker dude. This hurts like a buttcheek on a stick."

Mihoko came in to find Hitoshi trying not to laugh and failing, and Lillian smiling a small smile, her eyes far brighter than before.