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The air is cold, sterile, and silent, save for the low hum of machinery and intermittent beeping of the heart monitor.
Yagi Toshinori enters Gran Torino’s assigned room in a similarly muted fashion, sliding the door open and shut with barely a click. He finds the chair where he left it; the old man hasn’t gotten any visitors besides him and the nurses. Like Midoriya, Torino teeters on the knife edge of survival, and like Midoriya’s classmates, Torino’s colleagues are swamped with work.
Toshinori has the privilege to visit them both. So he splits his time between his teacher-mentor-father and his student-successor-son and waits. They are similarly stubborn about clinging to life; Toshinori is confident they will wake.
Whether they will be happy about it…
As he sits, Gran Torino’s eyes crack open. His already labored breathing stutters, resulting in a full-body twitch that eventually culminates in a pained groan.
“Take it slow,” Toshinori advises.
“Stupid lesson from a stupid teacher,” Torino snaps. Toshinori looks away to focus on the bright yellow fabric bundled on top of a cabinet, neither laundered nor repaired. He’ll have to do it later.
The silence between them is tense. Surprisingly, it’s Torino who breaks it.
“Izuku?”
“Coma,” Toshinori says, fingers curling into fists. Before Torino can curse, Toshinori adds, “I think he’s talking to the predecessors of One for All.”
“Not something you could do,” the old man comments. He’s peering down at his injuries with a detached fascination: the maimed leg, the thick compress hiding beneath his bandages. Toshinori is uncomfortably reminded of his own injury, and of his own convalescence. He had recovered quickly, and privately, though he suspects that One for All had assisted with the process.
However lucky Torino is to have survived, Toshinori thinks the aftermath will be so much messier.
“It’s not,” he agrees.
“How can you tell?”
“A feeling,” says Toshinori. He forges on despite Gran Torino’s disbelieving eyebrows. “I think oshishou had a point, about the predecessors’ spirits living on in One for All. I’m not able to channel One for All anymore, but I think I still have some connection to the Quirk.”
“Ghosts in the machine,” says Torino dryly. He studies Toshinori. “Oh. You’re not joking.”
“I wouldn’t joke about this.”
Honestly, Toshinori had thought Torino would be ecstatic (as ecstatic as the old man ever got, as he swung between smugness, serenity, and seething fury) at the possibility of reconnecting with Shimura Nana. He had also quailed at the thought of telling Gran Torino that Toshinori’s own connection seemed to be a one-way thing.
And Toshinori doesn’t know how to tell Torino that he feels betrayed, in a way.
When he was researching the previous users of One for All, an alien-like urgency had pushed him past investigating to obsessing. As though a whisper had filtered through his head and said: what else, what more, why now?
Shinomori’s case. The hypothesis that Toshinori’s Quirkless heritage had protected him from the pitfalls of a stockpile Quirk.
The harsh intake of multiple people breathing in at once, even though Toshinori had been alone, with only stacks of heavily-redacted reports to keep him company. All of Toshinori’s devotion, and it had earned him nothing but sleepless nights and silent vigils.
Torino sighs then, heavy with resignation. And just like that, he moves on. “Shigaraki?”
“Escaped,” Toshinori reluctantly says. He doesn’t want to talk about the current situation of society and its failure to stabilize in the wake of so many terrible revelations and events. He really doesn’t want to talk about Tartarus. Except, it will be impossible to keep Torino in the dark about it forever. “Don’t have a heart attack on me, but—All for One’s back on the field.”
One heartbeat. Then two.
Something like forty years ago, Gran Torino and Toshinori had sat in a hospital room, numbed to the core by the very real confrontation and consequence of baiting All for One into the light. The superficial injuries belied the grief suffusing Toshinori’s body, and although he hadn’t recognized it at the time, the terror in Torino’s.
White-faced, Gran Torino had told Toshinori that they could not afford to stop moving.
Sleep. Wake up. Go to school. Your internship hours are going to be spent sparring with me.
For the rest of the year?
Until I’m goddamn satisfied.
It was a miracle they had survived the first week without killing each other. In retrospect, Toshinori could see the value in Torino’s decision to forgo the mourning period. Toshinori had still ended up sobbing on the ground, confessing to his father what he could not to his mother.
And of course, without dwelling on Toshinori’s admission, Gran Torino moved on to the next point of business.
“Cockroach,” Torino says through gritted teeth. The heart monitor stays impressively calm. “Third time’s the charm, then?”
“Torino-sensei, the third time was Kamino Ward. It’s safe to say the odds are against us.”
Toshinori’s bleak assessment earns him a narrowed glare, and it’s a sign of how exhausted and bitter Toshinori feels that he is unfazed. He can afford to be scared of Torino when Torino is walking of his own volition, cursing up a storm about the fact that he can no longer eat a whole box of microwaved taiyaki.
“Casualties?”
“Multiple civilians,” says Toshinori. “Multiple pro-heroes. None of the students, thank goodness.”
Torino stares at him. “There were no students at the hospital.”
“Many were… encouraged to participate in the mansion raid.” It still leaves a sour taste in his mouth. Terrible, yes, to see Eraserhead bandaged up yet again due to Toshinori’s failures, but it was even worse to see his students file back into U.A.’s dorms, eyes shadowed with something more than grief. Midnight’s death haunts them still.
The old man breathes.
“What else?”
“A loss of trust,” Toshinori says, leaning his elbows on his knees, fingers pressed together like a prayer. “Civilians want to protect themselves, and the remaining pro-heroes of Japan are stretched thin. Some died, and many are retiring.” He offers Torino a mirthless smile. “Yoroi Musha is out.”
“Twenty years too late,” Torino responds.
“You never liked him.”
“Gimmicky cowards with a chip on their shoulder shouldn’t be in this line of work.”
Well. Either Toshinori takes that as a personal insult, an unintentional dig, or Gran Torino’s acerbic sense of humor. He goes quiet anyway. Now is a good time as any for a lull in conversation to occur, but Toshinori doesn’t get long to contemplate his next move.
“What’s eating you up,” Torino demands flatly.
“Nothing.”
“Pull my other leg.”
“It’s nothing,” Toshinori stresses. “And if there was something, I wouldn’t want to talk about it.”
“Toshinori. When you bottle up your specific brand of guilt, it has a tendency to backfire on you spectacularly,” says Torino. “I’m not walking away for a long time, so get it off your chest right now while I’m wired to half a dozen machines.”
Toshinori interlocks his fingers.
“Toshinori.”
“The Public Safety Commission has been disbanded,” he tries. “Their headquarters were attacked the same time the raids occurred.”
“Unsurprising,” says Torino.
“I don’t think anyone could have anticipated a direct attack, Torino-sensei.”
“I’m not talking about the Commission. I’m talking about you. Deflecting.”
Hospitals are supposed to be places of healing. Yet whenever Toshinori sits in one with Gran Torino, it seems that Toshinori is always clawing at his own heart.
“Do I disappoint you?” Toshinori asks, resigned to hearing an answer he already knows, staring hard at his hands. He’s pushing the wrong side of his fifties, less grizzled and more gaunt, more of a beanpole and less of a pillar. It’s impossible to remember all the things he did right when all Toshinori can see is where he went wrong.
And even though Gran Torino looks so fragile, tiny and bedridden, bandaged and hooked up to more machines than Toshinori can count on one hand— he still has the strength to look ahead.
Toshinori didn’t learn that. He had thought he did, those six years ago when he survived the fight with All for One, because in spite of the grievous injury, All Might had forged on.
“You can be honest,” Toshinori says. “Just like in U.A.”
“We’re a long way from that time,” says Gran Torino. His expectant and unimpressed expression hasn’t changed.
“It was a yes or no question, Torino-sensei.”
“No, then.”
He says it so simply. Toshinori blinks. Torino tips his head to the side, watching with half-lidded eyes how Toshinori processes his answer. Except Toshinori cannot fathom when this change of perception happened, because just as recently as Kamino Ward, Toshinori had still been reduced to sitting on his ass, listening to Gran Torino’s instructions.
“You’ve done more than anyone should have asked of you,” Torino says. “And you did it well.”
“I overlooked so many problems,” Toshinori protests. “So many people didn’t feel safe.”
“Brat,” says Gran Torino fondly.
“Torino-sensei.”
“There’s something more than that. You’ve been dealing with that insecurity for decades, and you know as well as I do that even a Symbol of Peace can’t catch everything. What’s going on?” Torino is ruthless when he wants to make a point; Toshinori circles back to his original impulsive question and thinks—
“Midoriya-shonen,” says Toshinori in a soft voice. “He’s talking to the predecessors.”
“So you said.”
“And I couldn’t. I can’t, even now, even though I’m connected to One for All still.” From there, the words come spilling out. “Oshishou told me from the beginning that One for All had some kind of spiritual essence. She might not have said outright about the voices, but she hinted at it. That we could meet again, somehow. And all those years… forty years, Torino-sensei, and—and nothing. Not a word, not a vision.”
Midoriya’s crybaby genes must have bounced over the connection, because horrifically, Toshinori can feel his face contort and his eyes water. He hasn’t cried in front of Gran Torino in decades.
“Like I wasn’t worthy,” Toshinori concludes, choking on the last word.
Here is what Toshinori learned on his own, independent of Gran Torino’s teachings: don’t cry. Smile through the fear and the pain, and don’t cry.
Conveniently, Toshinori has forgotten that all those decades ago, Gran Torino never censured him for his tears. So it is now, that Toshinori feels the unfamiliar prickle and the cooling trails sliding down his face, and Gran Torino says nothing.
Until he does.
“You’re everything Shimura stopped hoping for. Did you know that?” Toshinori jerks his head up from its bowed position; he can hear oshishou saying in her wry tone, typical Torino. Can’t make eye contact when communicating an emotion. “I saw her through almost every big milestone in her life. Her pro-hero license, her marriage, her pregnancy. The loss of her husband, and then her son.”
“You didn’t try and stop her.”
“She knew best.” Torino’s grin is painful. “I believed that then, and I believe it now. Kotarou survived longer than he would’ve if he stayed in her custody, which was ultimately her goal. So Shimura was right on that, never mind what Kotarou did with his life after. And you… I told you already.”
“You know me,” Toshinori jokes. He recalls his rusty impression of Torino’s lecturing tone, perfected during those golden hours of patrol with oshishou. “‘It takes twice as long for me to tell you something, versus me beating the lesson into you once.’”
“Then listen,” says Torino. “When Shimura met you, she was still hurting from giving up Kotarou. She couldn’t stop being a hero, but she didn’t want to stop being a mother. And every day, the news cycle spoke of a crime wave, fueled by something bigger than the injustices of the world.
“I was enough to keep her from drowning in work. It wasn’t until she met you that she started smiling again. That she had a son again.”
Toshinori scrubs his eyes. “Really could’ve used this talk forty years ago,” he manages.
“I wasn’t this emotionally intelligent forty years ago.”
“If Hound Dog ever managed to sit us down for therapy, he’d diagnose us both as emotionally-stunted,” he tells Torino. “You probably perpetuated a family cycle, Torino-sensei.”
“One of us cries, and it isn’t me,” Torino shoots back waspishly.
“It’s Midoriya-shonen,” Toshinori agrees.
Torino’s laugh comes out as a wheeze, and Toshinori winces in sympathy. The exhaustion that comes out of crying begins to settle in; he hasn’t allowed himself to cry for a while. Not in front of the students, and not in front of his colleagues. Gran Torino is situated in that blurred zone of family and teacher and co-worker.
Gran Torino is tiring as well. The conversation’s taken a lot out of him, and it surely doesn’t help that he was treated to a hint of Toshinori’s resurfacing insecurities.
“You asked if you disappointed me,” the old man says quietly, hoarsely. “Didn’t I disappoint you?”
His throat sticks.
Torino smiles, wry. “I know,” he says.
“Torino-sensei,” Toshinori attempts, horrified at his slip. He should fix this. He has to make sure Gran Torino knows that the past is past, and that his efforts haven’t been wasted on an ungrateful child. As Toshinori opens his mouth to reassure Torino, an urgent flicker of something calls out to him.
His head jerks to the door. Outside, down the hallway, in another room—
“He’s waking?”
Toshinori looks back to Torino, distractedly saying, “Yes,” before he freezes. Gran Torino has propped himself up halfway, teeth gritted with the effort it takes. He has reached out and clumsily pressed his hand against Toshinori’s forehead, fingers dipping into his hair.
It feels like a benediction.
“I am,” Torino forces out, “so proud of you. I could not be prouder. You were worth it, do you hear me, Toshinori? You are, still.”
The moment doesn’t last forever. Whatever burst of adrenaline fuels Torino, it dwindles with emotional vulnerability. He pats the top of Toshinori’s head and slumps back into his pillow, looking gray with exhaustion.
For his part, Toshinori stares, wide-eyed, like he’s fourteen years old again, meeting Gran Torino for the first time.
“Go,” says Torino. “Izuku shouldn’t wake up alone. He should have his family with him.”
There is a weak grin pulling at Torino’s mouth, familiar in its toothiness. Toshinori gets to his feet. He’s unable to return the smile, because he is suddenly terrified that if he leaves this room, Torino will somehow find a way to escape the hospital, hole up in his apartment, and—and—
“He’ll need you too,” says Toshinori. “Get better soon, tou—Torino-sensei.”
Gran Torino closes his eyes, and Yagi Toshinori moves on.