Chapter Text
The ones who smile are the strongest of all.
The ones who smile are the strongest of all.
The ones who smile are the strongest of all.
Those words tumble over and over in Sorahiko's mind, desperate and grasping, a phantom sob he can still feel soaking into his shoulder.
Nana's last lesson to the brat, and something about it just makes him feel uneasy.
This Symbol of Peace thing… it's a nice thought, Sorahiko can admit. Not something he wants to encourage, but not something he wants to discourage either. Nana had her own approach to heroism, and Sorahiko doesn't want to think ill of the dead. It's very little, what they have left of Nana, and she believed in the brat, entrusted him to Sorahiko, and he can't imagine she'd appreciate him trampling over Toshinori's dream.
It's better than revenge, anyway.
You want me to just leave? Even though Sensei tried so hard—
"Again," Sorahiko says, and Toshinori groans, rolls over, muscles deflating just a little. He didn't even kick the kid that hard. "C'mon, up, try again."
Sorahiko has a less than a year. Less than a year left to pound whatever he can into Toshinori's blonde little head, beat whatever weaknesses and bad habits out of him. There's still so much they don't know about his gifted quirk, so much they won't ever know now, and that monster is out there just waiting to snuff out the next wielder of One For All. Sorahiko can't, won't, let Nana's precious heir die so easily, and—
And, this grief is still fresh, and maybe that's why he's distracted enough to not see the coiled tension in Toshinori, the split second of unnatural stillness before he surges upward with a cry.
It's still too early for Toshinori to even begin to reach the heights of which Sorahiko and Nana sit, but Sorahiko hesitates just enough for scuffed knuckles to graze his face, a gentle wind scraping his cheek before the excess gust slams into it.
His eyes snap shut in reflex, stinging and seared dry, and his head snaps to the side, but if a little thing like temporary blindness could take him out, he wouldn't be able to call himself a Pro for nothing.
Eh, Nana?
Twisting with the fall, the dull thud of a headache beginning to bloom, Sorahiko tucks his feet underneath him and leaps. Wind howls, a missed punch or leg swipe, he doesn't know, but it's easy enough to hit the training room's ceiling and rebound back with a pressurized hiss. His feet hit something slightly squishy, and there's a gargled urk as he drives full force into it.
The earth cracks, and everything goes still.
"G-Gran-san," wafts up from his feet, and Sorahiko rubs slowly at his eyes as a shaky breath rises up, and goes down. "Gran-san, that actually hurt, y'know…"
"So?" Sorahiko says, and blinks, the colors falling to rights. He looks down at a dusty and dirty brat that he needs to do better, be better. "I'm still going easy on you."
Toshinori mutters, disbelievingly, "This is going easy?" and rumbles, like a gurgling belly, and then deflates completely.
Brat, Sorahiko thinks, stumbling off with half a hopped step as Toshinori rolls over onto his back again, arms flinging wide.
Super-strength. An unfair amount of stamina and not too shabby speed. Hardier than just about anyone Sorahiko knows, and still growing like a weed. It's… It's just—
Just, even with all of that, he can see the exhaustion in slitted blue eyes. The boy just doesn't know when to quit, maybe actually doesn't, but when you put on a smile for the world... don't forget that there's more than just a body to a person.
He's still angry. Still scared, hurt and grieving. Sorahiko knows this. Is quite angry himself, hurt and hurting.
Time heals all wounds, yada, yada; Sorahiko's heard it all before. Except, before, he was older when he learned exactly what it means to die a hero, what it means to put his own life on the line. Toshinori is young, too young, but that's life. The harsh truth of the matter is… there will be others, and Toshinori can't stumble here, can't rush off and die a fool's death when he's got a long life to live if Sorahiko has anything to say about it.
So.
Sorahiko's digging in deep, pushing Toshinori harder than he's pushed any of his own students with a desperate hope that the kid'll make it because he has less than a year left.
Less than a year, and Toshinori will be out of his shadow's reach.
But, out of Sorahiko's too.
It's a sobering thought, and that's what makes him huff with amusement, turn on a heel. "Let's go eat, I'm feeling generous," Sorahiko says over his shoulder, and he can hear Toshinori scrambling up and onto his feet.
"Really?" he asks, suspicious, but the excitement is there. Like Sorahiko doesn't know he regularly ate Nana out of house and home given the chance. "Like… an all you can eat?"
"Sure, kid," Sorahiko agrees, because they're both all they have now, really.
Sorahiko's never made friends easily, and Toshinori was alone, before Nana. A quirkless boy in a world rapidly filling to the brim with the extraordinary, and a grouchy old man that's already lost too many good people to this, that feels like he's just going to lose yet another if he's not careful enough. The empty space where Nana used to be is glaring, the nebulous but painful feeling it instills nearly indescribable.
So, this Symbol of Peace, thing?
It's a nice thought, and, if anyone could make it happen, it would be Toshinori.
But, Sorahiko can't help but feel it's going to come back and bite them in the ass, regardless of the good outweighing the bad.
When you save the world, who's going to save you? he wonders, maybe just a little bitterly, and ruffles the brat's hair as they both duck for the doorway.
When you save the world, who's going to save you?