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The blanket had a strange texture, not quite cotton and not quite plastic. Toshinori ran it between his thumb and index finger as he sat on the curb and stared at the space between the buildings. It was winter but there was no snow, and the cold bit lifeless and still.
Cementos had brought him here, pulled him away from the white field. The park had been least touched by the collapsing buildings, and in the aftermath it had been co-opted like every other space. Triage and makeshift hostels and food stations littered the path where the rescue heroes funneled the living victims. The empty lawn was for the dead.
After the report on the news he had waited until he got sick of hearing the same voicemail message. Then he had slipped out of the gates and taken an empty train—no one wanted to move towards disaster. Knowing several of the police working the blockades personally, it was fairly easy to gain entry to the site. He had traveled from block to block, sent from rescue hero to first responder to volunteer until he found himself walking from mound to mound in a lifeless park, lifting up the edge of each white sheet in turn, hoping desperately that his search would be fruitless.
It was not.
His eyes were not closed, his mouth open in an unconvincing attempt at a smile. Dropping to his knees, Toshinori had scooped him up, held him close so he would no longer have to look at that empty face. The body was wet and slick but no longer warm.
What did you do the day after the world ended?
Toshinori sat on a curb and ran a shock blanket between his fingers.
"Can you do something for me?"
The voice should have been lost in the crowds worrying back and forth, in the buzzing which already filled his ears, but something about its cadence cut through the clamor. He looked, saw a child standing by the triage tent, someone older kneeling down near them.
"I need to leave now," the young man continued, one hand on the shoulder of the sniffling child, "Can you stay here and be brave by yourself?"
The child rubbed his eyes, one hand clutched in the cloth tied around the figure's neck. "Don't go."
Toshinori was moving before he could think. Time moved strangely, and the next thing he knew, he stood with his own hands tight in the stranger's shirt collar. Only, the boy's face was not strange.
"When did you escape," he spat, vision blurred in his anger, in the unfairness of it all. "Toga."
"Wait—All Might—it's me!" the boy who was not Midoriya insisted, trying unsuccessfully to wriggle out of his grip, "Really, I promise! Ask me something only I would know!"
"Who did I fight seven years ago," Toshinori blurted, immediately realizing that the question was terrible. Since Kamino, everyone in the world knew of his battle with All for One.
"Seven years from today? Do you mean just in that one day, or in the whole calendar year that day falls in, or—how are you dividing this year, what are the end dates? I can't name every incident, but I could probably get the major battles—do you want, um, alphabetical order, or order of difficulty, or—"
Toshinori dropped him. There was only one person he knew who could hear that question and think he was supposed to list every villain All Might had ever fought. "You were dead."
"Yes—um," Midoriya said, readjusting the cloth around his neck. The cape—that was the shroud he had been laying under. The ventilator at his neck hid the knot in the cloth. "It's Third's quirk. Did you see where Aoi went?"
"Who?"
"Uh, he was just here—oh, Saeki has him."
Looking over his shoulder, Toshinori saw a woman with one of the bright volunteer vests walking off with the distraught child in her arms. He turned back to Midoriya. "You know the workers at this triage unit?"
"I've been here since last night," Midiriya explained, "Saeki's pretty cool. This unit is for the collapsed building two blocks over—um, actually I should get back to that."
"You'll stay right here," Toshinori warned, voice stern as he could muster.
Midoriya stared right back. Something in the way he held his shoulders made him look older than he had a moment ago. "Look me in the eyes and tell me that's what you would do in my place."
Toshinori looked away. "Be careful."
"I will."
Turning, Midoriya wove through the clustering crowd until he reached a clearer part of the street. Toshinori watched him break into a run, cape swirling after him like snow.