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Toshinori knows he was never supposed to live this long.
Although he’d managed to survive that first fight, it was only through the work of all the best medical experts and several very powerful healing quirks that the damage All For One dealt hadn’t permanently incapacitated him.
As it was, when he made his decision to continue with hero work, Toshinori had been well aware that his days were now numbered. And there had always been the near-inevitable fact that he would have to face his nemesis once more, and the stark reality that he would most certainly die in that battle.
That he had fought and lived a second time — it is nothing short of a miracle.
Prior to the stomach injury, before facing All For One, Toshinori had been there as David researched the effects of One For All on every subsequent user. He’d known that it was likely only his former quirklessness that had allowed him to continue in such top-notch condition for so long without his body beginning to tear itself apart at the sheer force of this quirk. He’d known that nonetheless it would likely shorten his lifespan; the only mystery was by how much, plus the looming question of whether or not he would live long enough to find out.
And even before everything with All For One and One For All, before the possibility of going into heroics and dying a pro hero was even a possibility at all, Toshinori had seen the statistics on quirkless individuals: the average lifespan, the suicide rates, the frequency of bullying and hate crimes and assault against people like him. While he’d never been suicidal, lurking in the back of his mind was a constant fear that he would be found out and attacked every time he went outs.
Yet, against all odds, against the hands of sickness and injury and fate that have tried to take him time and time again — while All Might the Number One Hero is no more, Yagi Toshinori has survived.
And Toshinori knows that he is truly lucky beyond belief, beyond all possibility, to still walk this world five years after the conclusion of the Great War. Though he is naught but a shred of his former self, he is thankful to be even alive.
And he is far from lonely; his former students come to visit often, Midoriya most of all of course, but most of them are also full-time working Pros now, and so when Toshinori is alone during the day…
Without the grit and the constant obligation to keep up something, to do more, more, more, without the burden of being the Number One Hero, without his purpose —
Sometimes, he feels as if he is nothing at all. Sometimes he sits and he cooks a recipe that Inko specifically modified to fit his diet plan, and then he thinks about all those who were lost already, who didn’t live to see this sunrise. Sometimes he wonders: if he were so lucky to survive, why couldn’t they have been, too?
But there are other times, times like this, where it is easier to focus less on the grief of the past. and more on the present that he exists in.
Here he is, surrounded by the people who know him for who he truly is, by the multitude of friends he’s never known until now, by the family who found him and will stand by his side unflinchingly. Here he is, able to finally live the life he hadn’t even gotten the chance to live; able to experience the small joys without constantly wondering when they will be stripped away in the blink of an eye.
The war is long over. Order has been– well, not fully restored, but mostly under control for now in the hands of the young heroes who were forced to grow up too quickly, but are now filled with a resolve to ensure that true peace is upheld to the best of their abilities, not wanting to relieve it all over again.
And yet. Even without war, without disease, without famine nor accidents nor simple human cruelty, time itself would come for us all, here in every end of every story.
Nevertheless, we make our moments of meaning, grasp them from the jaws of apathy, tear the skin of our fingers open on their edges as we white-knuckle our hope, our love, our dreams against the endless storm of the universe's tragedies.
Against all odds, against the hands of sickness and injury and fate that have tried to take him time and time again — while All Might the Number One Hero is no more, Yagi Toshinori has survived, for now.
Nothing matters and they’re all going to die in the end, but maybe, together, they can make something worthwhile before pass.
Toshinori lives on for the sake of simply living, for the sake of others but not in the way he used to; rather, because he knows he is loved and cared for and wants to spend another day with them.
All Might lives on in the people he saved and inspired; his heroic spirit is embodied by Class 1-A and the next generation of pros, and Toshinori knows they will take great care of the people in his absence. All Might can be no more because he no longer needs to bear the weight of hero society on his shoulders.
And– really, that is enough.