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Yagi Toshinori dies in the summer of Midoriya Izuku’s second year at U.A.
It’s a fact. It’s something that is never going to change. Yagi Toshinori is dead, and he died long before any of them were ready to see him go.
“Long-term predictions can be wrong,” Toshinori had mumbled against Shōta’s neck many mornings, too sleepy to roll over and start the day, too awake to slip into slumber. “Sir Nighteye can’t know everything.”
And oh how true that was. Not five years, in the end. That was where he’d been wrong.
It happens like this:
The League of Villains is snapping at their feet, the summer is hot, and people are angry. There’s a hostage situation, a bombing, a robbery, something horrid and terrible every week. It’s not a collapse of society, it’s not an unworking of everything All Might fought for, but it’s a statement. It’s the League saying they are better than All Might, that what they stand for is more important than what All Might stood for.
Shōta isn’t there when it happens, and he pieces together information from the news and from the students involved. His mind is numb as he does it, his hands don’t stop shaking, and Shōta scrambles to understand.
Toshinori joined a meeting of strategists to discuss the League of Villains and their attacks on the city. Midoriya and a handful of other students were with him, there were many top heroes there, there was no cause for concern. At some point during their lunch hour, the building was attacked, the entire structure collapsing. Despite that, there was only one fatality.
“We didn’t,” Midoriya says, voice hollow as he sits in the hospital corridor. He’s shocked, and Shōta doesn’t believe it’s happened yet. “We didn’t know about the kids. He said it was going to be alright, he smiled, and…”
All Might died how he lived. In his last moments he saved a cluster of children, Shōta forgets how many exactly, and got them out safely. Shōta doesn’t know exactly how he died, and he isn’t listening when he’s standing in the morgue, aware of Midoriya breaking down outside and his phone ringing in his pocket.
No one else could get here as quickly as Shōta could. No one else could sign the forms. It’s his duty, but oh how it hurts.
“Can I,” he begins, and the person in charge of the bodies nods.
“I’ll give you a moment,” they say, and Shōta swallows around the lump in his throat.
He doesn’t move, he doesn’t cry, he doesn’t do anything. Shōta looks and he looks, and he closes his eyes. Toshinori isn’t there anymore, he is gone, and Shōta doesn’t feel anything.
“I’ll take you home to your mother,” Shōta says when he exits the room, and Midoriya’s head snaps up. He doesn’t argue. There’s nothing more else to say, not when the light of their world has been extinguished, and Shōta takes him home.
“You will stay,” Midoriya Inko commands Shōta after Midoriya stumbles out of her embrace and she glances his way. It’s is only one of a handful of times they’ve ever met, but that doesn’t matter. “We have an airbed or the couch. Either way, you need to stay here tonight.”
Shōta thinks about her kindness often in later years. He wonders what he might have done, what sort of person he might have become, if Inko hadn’t told him to stay the night. He would have become colder, broken, Shōta thinks. She saves him a little that night, sitting in her armchair as Midoriya sobs in his bedroom and Shōta lays practically catatonic on her sofa.
“You will see him again,” Inko says the next morning, in the stillness of the rising sun. “Both of you are lost right now, but you will find each other again.”
He’s never been a man of many words, but Shōta wonders if, in the weeks that follow Toshinori’s death, he forgets how to speak at all. His family send their condolences, though they live a different life to Shōta’s. They never met Toshinori, never knew the depth of Shōta’s feelings for him, but there are others who understand.
Hizashi lets him be. He doesn’t bother Shōta, doesn’t overstep his boundaries, but he’s there. There’s nothing he can say to make it better, so he talks about anything and everything else. They’re all given two weeks off from school, students and teachers alike as they struggle to understand what is happening, and Hizashi practically moves into Shōta’s school apartment, taking the bed while Shōta camps out on the floor in his sleeping bag.
He doesn’t go back to the home he shared with Toshinori. All necessities are here, at U.A., and Shōta doesn’t think he’ll go back to it for a long time yet. When he does, Shōta knows he can’t do it alone.
Nemuri shows up too, helping Hizashi cook meals and remind Shōta to bathe or dress or sleep. He drifts, those first weeks, and Inko welcomes him to her couch more than once, though not every time is just because Shōta turns up at her doorstep.
Midoriya isn’t doing well. He spends most of his time in his room, Inko says one night, and Shōta knows this can’t go on. It’s not the end of the world, though it may feel like it in these weeks. The world continues, they have a duty to do, and Shōta nods to Inko.
“I need to speak to him,” he says, and his words are rough, the first he’s spoken in a while. Inko nods, worry in her eyes, and Shōta thinks, for the first time, that perhaps there is life on the other side.
There are people who need him, people who need to learn from him. Toshinori gave his life for the future, Shōta can invest his in it too.
“I’m coming in,” Shōta says with a knock, and he’s not surprised to see Midoriya curled up in his bed. The air smells stale, there are unwashed plates and glasses littering each surface. It’s gross, in short, but it’s Midoriya’s grief. Dying is an untidy business the living are left with.
Only, there’s something else in Midoriya’s expression. It’s not recovery, not healing, but it’s something, and Shōta sits on the bed, eyes searching Midoriya’s for an answer.
“I saw him,” Midoriya whispers, and the tears return. His voice is stuffy, eyes red and it hurts to look at him, but there is a smile behind the tears. “Through our quirk, I saw him!”
Toshinori never fully explained his quirk, but Shōta knows the basics. It makes sense, that Toshinori lives on, somehow, inside Midoriya, that he can see him, speak to him, tell him all the things they never got to in life. Or the things they should have said more.
“If you see him again,” Shōta says, and Midoriya looks at him with wide eyes. “Please, tell him I’m sorry I wasn’t there. And that… and that I love him. I always will.”
They don’t speak after that, and Shōta is grateful. Midoriya shifts, and Shōta can’t help but stroke his hair until he’s asleep, so young and so buffeted by the world. Shōta makes a vow to do better, be better, to do all he can to protect the children in his care. He doesn’t want to say goodbye to another person he loves.
All Might’s funeral is a huge fanfare, as expected. U.A. staff are in attendance, but it’s a front. It’s for the world, for the public, and Shōta sits in stony silence the entire affair, mimicked by their colleagues.
No one faults them for it. They knew All Might personally. They have a private ceremony shortly after where Toshinori’s body is cremated, and Shōta hands his ashes over to Gran Torino to spread.
“I can’t accept this task,” Gran Torino says, eyes watery as he shakes his head. Shōta cradles the urn against his chest, a plain, beige urn, so unlike anything Toshinori stood for.
“Okay,” Shōta replies, and he goes alone, numb, to set Toshinori free. It takes him some time, and Nedzu says he is happy for Shōta to use holiday for it. He’s very understanding, and Shōta promises when he returns, he’ll give it his all.
The forests don’t feel right, when Shōta gets there. He wanders around the nature trails, startles some deer, fingers stroking the side of the urn the entire time. He doesn’t meet any other walkers, thankfully, for Shōta knows he looks strange.
Shōta plans to give up when he finds the perfect place. It looks like an abandoned field, mostly wild grasses and saplings. The edge of the land looks over one of the many valleys in the forest, and it’s so stereotypically beautiful it’s almost sickly. Shōta knows it’s perfect, though, and he sits down on the edge of the field, Toshinori before him.
The sun sets when Shōta lets him go, and he’ll struggle to make it back to the bus stop, but that doesn’t matter. The evening is cool, the wind wild, and Shōta feels his emotions finally break as Toshinori is given to the world.
When he surfaces from his grief, the full moon is high in the sky, and Shōta knows it’s time to go home now.
Hizashi is there, when Shōta arrives back at the school, and while Shōta has never been one for social gatherings, Hizashi gathering the kids and teachers together that night changes Shōta’s world. They stay up into the early hours, eating and talking, playing games and reminiscing, and Shōta turns his attention back to his world, going beyond to give it his all.
He lives spectacularly, Shōta thinks. He raises a generation of incredible heroes, and he’s proud to say they become his children. Hitoshi and Eri move into the home he once shared with Toshinori, and Shōta almost always has someone over for dinner, be it Hizashi, Nemuri or one of the kids from U.A. It’s terrifyingly social, and a tiny part of Shōta delights in the moment they leave and he can slip into bed alone, but mostly he doesn’t know what he’d do without it, without them.
When he’s 40, Shōta almost has to bury Midoriya. There’s a huge attack, the details are lost in the drama, and Shōta feels a haunting familiarity in watching a live news report, Midoriya fighting a horrific villain in the middle of a shopping district. It reminds him of Toshinori’s fight at Kamino, and it’s almost too much to bear.
Deku wins, of course he does. He comes out smiling, even when Shōta visits him in the hospital.
“You don’t deserve these apples,” he says, and Midoriya laughs, all four limbs in casts. Some things never changed.
“Aizawa-sensei,” Midoriya says, and Shōta sits down, nodding. “I saw him again. And I passed on your message.”
His words are shy, with good reason. Shōta freezes, catching Midoriya’s eye, and then he smiles. It doesn’t hurt, not like it used to, when someone talks about Toshinori, and he sits back in his chair.
“He came to help you, huh?” Shōta says, and Midoriya beams.
There is no one else for Shōta. There never was before Toshinori, and he doesn’t make an attempt to find anyone after. No one bothers him for it, and Shōta isn’t exactly lacking for company. As he grows older, the house grows quieter, but Shōta normally has at least one of the four guest rooms set up for someone at any given time.
His family grows, and Shōta finds himself looking after younger children on occasion. He retires fully from hero work, and then from teaching. He is happy, looking after his family, and they make sure he’s never alone. He attends weddings of pseudo-children (and, later, pseudo-grandchildren), meets Midoriya’s successor, watches as the world gets brighter and better, and Shōta thinks he’s had a good, good life.
“I did alright, didn’t I?” Shōta says to an empty, beige urn, when his bones are aching and his eyes are throbbing in his skull. Something feels different tonight, it’s the first night in about two months that no one else is staying over at the house, and Shōta knows what has changed.
It’s his time. And oh, what a time it has been. What legacies he’s raised, what love he has cherished. He’s done well, with what he was given, and Shōta only really has one regret.
I regret you never got to see it too .
Shōta wakes to the most beautiful sunrise he’s ever seen. It’s only just cresting the horizon, the dark blue of the sky brightening, and he looks around, unsure how he came to be standing in a field of sunflowers. This isn’t where he fell asleep, and Shōta looks down at himself, aware that his body isn’t the same he fell asleep in.
He doesn’t know where he is, but that doesn’t matter when he sees the figure standing before him, their back to him. He’ll always recognise that back, no matter what or how many years between them. Shōta can’t stop the tears, and he makes no attempt to stop them when Toshinori turns.
He is just how Shōta remembers, in fragmented memories and from photographs of them in their last years. Except, not quite. Toshinori is at peace here, the harsh, tired lines of his face smoothed, his expression calmed.
“I didn’t think,” Shōta says, and he wants to laugh through his tears. He ends up warbling, slightly, and he sniffs, heavily. “I didn’t think I’d see you here.”
Death was an ending to Shōta. Death was final, the ultimate, the end. Midoriya might have been able to see Toshinori, but that road was always closed to Shōta, or so he thought.
When he speaks Toshinori’s name, the world seems to come alive. They reach for each other, and Toshinori is whole, united, and he holds Shōta. He kisses him, and Shōta can’t stop his tears.
Shōta doesn’t register what they say, not really, and he pulls Toshinori down for a kiss. His body sings with the contact, as if his soul is reconnecting with Toshinori’s here. There is nothing but them in this entire universe, and Shōta rests his forehead against Toshinori’s lips when they part, reluctant to pull away any further.
“You have so much to tell me,” Toshinori says, and the wind stirs their hair. “When you’re ready, I’d like to hear it.”
Shōta isn’t ready for a long while. He’s silent until the sun is high in the sky, but they make their peace with it. They lie amongst the flowers, staring at each other, fingers stroking skin and lips pressing small kisses. They are comfortable, soft, and Shōta starts speaking when he feels he is finally able to.
He tells Toshinori everything, his mind amazingly clear. It’s the magic of this place, he learns a little later. It shows you what you need to know, what you can cope with, and everything else is swept away.
“You’d be proud of them all,” Shōta says, and Toshinori wipes his eyes.
They’re ridiculously soft and weepy, both of them, and the thought of it just makes Shōta smile. He’s come to appreciate his softer side in his old age, and that causes him to widen his eyes, sitting up.
“I think I’m older than you,” he says, and Toshinori’s eyebrows raise. “How does age work here?”
“I think you can choose,” Toshinori replies, pushing himself off the ground. He shifts, turning into a teenager, then All Might, then to the Toshinori Shōta’s most familiar with.
Shōta tests it, trying to remember how it feels to be old. He can’t recall, but when he looks down at his hands he sees liver spots, and Toshinori hums softly.
“You lived a long time,” Toshinori says gently, and Shōta squints at him. The afterlife hasn’t given him glasses or – wait. They’re in his pocket, apparently. He slides the glasses on and shifts uncertainly.
“Thank you for watching over them when I couldn’t,” Toshinori continues, and he kisses the corner of Shōta’s mouth, hand slipping into Shōta’s hair. He’s so warm, so strong, and Shōta melts against him, years of grief peeling back. He feels his bones lighten, joints strengthen, and when Toshinori cups his cheek, Shōta knows his hair is only mildly streaked with grey and he is, perhaps, the same age as Toshinori now.
There was no one else to kiss like this after Toshinori, and Shōta feels out of practice. Their noses bump, Shōta inhales a little too much and lets out a little wheeze, but they get there in the end. They start soft, a gentle greeting, and then Shōta’s arms wrap around Toshinori’s shoulders, gripping at the fabric across his back, and Toshinori dips them. They forgo air, gasping against each other as they rest their foreheads together, and Shōta laughs, kissing Toshinori quickly and messily all over.
“You’re here,” Shōta says, and he’s practically wrapped himself around Toshinori, looking up into his eyes. “You’re here .”
They don’t separate for a long while, swaying to the gentle breeze. Shōta’s ear presses to Toshinori’s heart, and though they are dead, it still beats. They’re alive in this form, here, and perhaps forever.
“Would you like to meet Nana?” Toshinori says, breaking the silence as the sun sets. The sky is thrown into a soft orange and pink, and it’s the most beautiful sunset Shōta has ever seen.
Of course he wants to meet Nana, he has a lot to say to her, to thank her for delivering Toshinori on his path. Toshinori nods, and they begin walking. The field seems to melt away to a town, though Shōta couldn’t see it before, and he thinks there are endless mysteries to this place.
It’s okay though. He’ll work through them with Toshinori.
Shōta feels butterflies in his stomach when Toshinori pulls them through a gate and up to a door. Toshinori’s hands tighten on his as they stand on the doorstep. The light inside the house is warm, and Shōta doesn’t feel fear. He feels happy, calm, and he feels the butterflies calm.
“You’ll love her,” Toshinori promises, and he steals a kiss from Shōta’s smile.
They have all the time in the world and, despite being dead, Shōta is finally going to be able to share all of Toshinori’s world, the way they should have done in their previous life. There’s nothing to stop them here, nothing sinister or cruel, and Shōta thinks his heart might burst by the end of this day.
The door opens and a beautiful woman stands bathed in the light of her home. She smiles, wide, and there are tears in her eyes as she throws her arms open.
“Welcome home,” she manages, and Shōta feels Toshinori pull him closer, moving into Nana’s open arms as one. She holds them so tightly and fiercely that Shōta understands why Toshinori loves her so much. Or perhaps that’s part of the magic of this place, to understand people a little better than in the world before.
“Now,” Nana says, pulling back and wiping at her eyes. “I’d love to listen to your story. Come in and have something to eat.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Shōta sees a small child peer from around the corner, grey hair hanging over his eyes. He glances at Toshinori, lowers his head and takes a deep breath.
It’s a second chance in a world without hatred, Shōta thinks, and he looks back at Nana.
“Thank you,” he says simply, for there are no more words he can say to express how he feels. She understands, looking back at the child, and then to them.
“We have eternity to make up for our sins,” she says. “And with some of the terrible things we’ve done, living is a harder price to pay. But not tonight. Dinner will be ready soon and Tenko has been asking to meet you for a while now.”
She leaves them in the hallway and Shōta slips his boots off, using Toshinori as a post to lean on. He’s still, eyes fixed on the spot they’d seen Tenko, and Shōta smiles.
“We can make amends for the things we couldn’t do before,” he says, and Toshinori looks down, letting out a soft sigh as he does. He nods, his shoulders relax, and acceptance settles.
“Together,” he murmurs, hope in his voice as he pulls Shōta against him. Toshinori’s eyes are bright as he looks into Shōta’s gaze, and he smiles softly with his next words. “We’ll do things right this time, together.”
Shōta believes him.