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Toshinori Yagi gives One for All to Izuku Midoriya on a bright morning in the spring, with fog rolling in over the beach, burning off in sunlight that was nearly cold in its whiteness.
He plucks a hair from his head and watches this still tiny green-haired boy swallow it, and thinks, Well, that's it then.
It's not.
One for All does not leave him all at once, and Toshinori is both grateful and furious over it. It's a slow ebbing instead, being able to do less and less and less as time goes.
As someone who always strove for more and more and more, it's a disconcerting feeling. Toshinori feels like he's hollowing out, like he's groping in the dark for a light switch that is six inches left than where he thought it was.
There is no difference at first. He has already only had One for All for a few hours a day, and for the first week it stays that way.
Then he has to duck into an alley after he gets the shakes when fighting some sort of snake quirk. He stares at his hand, something in his clenching tight, and then the power goes out of him.
It gets worse, and worse. He can barely keep up the charade for teaching, only managing to hold his larger form for the forty five minute class and no longer.
He collapses into a chair in the staff room after a particularly grueling class.
"You're going to kill yourself like that." It's said flatly, not angry. Just matter of fact. Maybe a little disappointed.
Toshinori tips his head back to look at Aizawa. He's frowning, a default expression, but there's a new crease between his eyebrows that lets Toshinori know he might actually be worried. Toshinori gives him a smile, smaller and softer than he would in his larger form. In this skeleton body, the gleaming grin he gives usually can be a little frightening.
"Not yet," Toshinori says.
The crease between Aizawa's eyebrows deepens. "If you die, Midoriya won't get over it," he says bluntly.
Toshinori closes his eyes.
Aizawa continues, relentless. "At this point, if you die, Izuku Midoriya will believe that it is because you gave him One for All, that it is his fault that you are dead, that it is his fault that the Symbol of Peace is no more. What would that do to a fifteen year old kid?"
Toshinori swallows.
"What good would that do for any of us?" Aizawa says, his voice unexpectedly quiet.
After Kamino Ward, Toshinori thinks about this conversation, and Bakugo Katsuki, and prays that Aizawa is wrong.
He knows he is not.
The thing about One for All is that Toshinori knew from the beginning that it would be taken away. As a quirkless kid, the idea of having a quirk, of someone wanting to give him a quirk, that he was allowed to be a hero- it was something that he never took for granted, that he always treasured.
And now it was gone.
Toshinori is okay for a couple of weeks. He goes through the motions of healing, of letting Midoriya and Bakugo heal, of talking to police and reporters and UA staff and whomever he needs to.
He buys clothes that fit his now-permanent skeletal frame.
He is still imposing, a thin, seven foot tall man with black holes for eyes, blue burning in the center.
He gets a new apartment.
It's his first one that he's planning to spend a majority of his time in, not just a crash pad in between gigs in different cities and countries and continents. It's smaller, but has large windows that throw sunlight throughout and extremely ugly cabinetry.
Toshinori signs the lease and wonders if he can just sleep at the school.
Aizawa tells him he can't, because he's tried and they don't let you.
He goes through the motions of being okay.
It's one morning in this new apartment that Toshinori walks into the bathroom and skids a little on the bath mat. He hasn't purchased a non-slip mat for underneath, or a shower curtain, or new screws from where the left drawer is wiggly.
He slips on the bath mat and hits the floor, hard. His reflexes, honed beyond simple quirk usage, desert him. His hip bangs against the floor and his breath leaves him in a small gasp of pain. It's by far not the worst thing he's ever felt, barely ranks in the ways Toshinori has been hurt over the years.
Physically, at least.
Toshinori Yagi, at this moment, is an almost fifty year old man, laying on the floor of his bathroom, hip throbbing, unable to catch himself from falling.
Something sharp pushes through his chest then, and he gasp, louder and sharper this time. It hurts, there, like he's just swallowed glass. It reminds him of a time where he'd been impaled on some villain's quirk- razors in his lungs.
Something wet is on his face.
He touches his face gingerly, wondering if he managed to cut it somehow- on what? Nothing sharp in here- on the way down.
When he brings his fingers away, they're damp and taste like salt.
Ah. He's crying.
Toshinori's not positive he can remember the last time that happened.
It breaks something, inside him- something in his mind gives way, and all of a sudden he really is crying, a man on the verge of middle age curled up against the wall of his bathroom sobbing into his fist.
It feels awful, and ridiculous, and he's too old for this sort of thing, really, but he can't seem to stop.
He's breathing in hard, and his lungs, ruined from years of hero work and breathing in debris and detritus and asbestos can barely keep up with his sobbing, and so he's hiccuping weirdly and gasping in between tears.
He's crying for the pain in his hip, for the pain in his lungs, for the pain in his heart. He's crying because he's been laid out by a simple fall, when before he could catch buildings. He's crying for the loss of his quirk, and the loss of his health, and the loss of his life.
He's crying for the curse he had to pass on, for how much he wants it back, for how much he hates that he wants it back. He's crying for the sake of a green haired boy too bright to be there long, and a blonde boy too desperate to be the best, and a black haired man who was right after all.
Toshinori's crying because he knew this would happen, that he prepared for it to happen, and he's crying because despite all this he's crying anyway.
And even as he cries, he thinks about how ridiculous it is that he's crying on the floor, and about how there's dust behind his toilet that he really needs to sweep up before it gets gross.
And then, after a while, he stops crying.
He catches his breath, sobs not cracking open his throat anymore, and then eventually the tears stop too. His eyes hurt, dry and swollen. His raw throat hurts too.
Toshinori sniffles a little, wipes his nose on his hand and then stands unsteadily. He washes his hands conscientiously, and then his face.
When he stares at himself in the mirror, he finds a haggard man staring back, a single blood vessel burst in his upper cheekbone and his mouth red and wet. He meets this man's eyes, what he can see of them, and gives him a little nod.
Leaves the bathroom.
Toshinori comes back in after finding a hair tie and pulls the cleaning supplies out from under the bathroom sink and carefully wipes behind the toilet.
When he stands up, his knees creak and he lets out a little groan, then laughs. It's soft and self-deprecating, but still there.
He goes into his little kitchen and makes coffee. He stares out the window while it percolates. The sun is gold in the morning, and lays itself in thick stripes against the floor, against the ugly green cabinets, against the white walls.
He thinks about if he has sugar. He thinks about getting a cat. He thinks about re-painting the cabinets when he replaces the screws in the bathroom.
The coffee maker makes a noise of protest when it's done, and Toshinori pours himself a cup- with some sugar, he has enough left for another cup or two, he'll need to buy more- and sits himself back down at his kitchen table.
He makes a list of things to deal with in the apartment. He makes a list of things to buy at the hardware store. He makes a list of groceries to get that he needs, and that two students he knows would need, and maybe he adds and crosses out jelly packets twice.
The coffee at his elbow steams, sends wisps into the air that curl like question marks.
Toshinori Yagi sits in the sunlight and makes lists to start being okay.