Chapter Text
“I…am I…cute?”
“The cutest in the world!”
Her smile is…wonderful? She was jealous of her smile? She was the first person to ever tell her that. Everyone she knew growing up called her face scary. The Togas felt her smile was “demonic”. Even Shiggy thought it was creepy.
Himiko slowly descends towards the battlefield of the Gunga Mountain Ruins, locked in a tight hug with Uravity, Ochaco, the girl who broke every rule to reach out to her. Her transformation is fading away: Jin’s dying again, for good this time. Himiko watches as hundreds of thousands of copies of her fade out of existence, surrounding the two girls in pink glows and vanishing bodies. He really can’t complain wherever he’s at, Himiko gave him the best finale he could have asked for.
Thanks to Ochaco’s Zero Gravity, she and Himiko are gently lowered onto the desolate ground. The battlefield feels cold against her naked skin, rain pouring down all over her. Himiko feels exhausted, physically and mentally. She gazes at the damage she and her clones caused moments before. “The knife I held so I could become what I loved,” the words flow out as she watches over Ochaco, who’s splayed out looking up at the sky, gasping for air. “I ended up holding it with anger and hatred to make the world an easier place for me to live in…”
How could have forgotten what she’s always lived for?
Ochaco’s struggling to move, but she’s losing so much blood, gushing out of the stab wound Himiko gave her. She’d normally be enjoying how beautiful she looks like this, all ragged and bloody, but this isn’t the time. All of her moving around has aggravated her wounds. At this rate, Ochaco’s going to bleed out, just like all the other people Himiko’s ever killed.
And yet, even though she’s dying, Ochaco won’t drop anybody no matter what. Himiko knew that, she used that knowledge against her moments earlier, attacked her knowing she wouldn’t be dropped. All the heroes caught in her Zero Gravity are given gentle landings as more blood pools out of her mouth and stomach. She really is incredible.
There’s none of her intensity left anymore. None of her passion, her determination, nothing left of the girl who risked everything just to talk romance with her. Now, her skin is growing pale, her body cold, and her expression is blank as she gasps for breath.
Himiko drops her knife, picks up her discarded gear, and gets moving. She’s already made up her mind.
Ochaco was going to give her blood for the rest of her life. It didn’t matter how many people she’d killed or how many of her friends she’d stabbed or how many times she told her to go away; She’d still take care of her for as long as she lived. What a weird girl.
She didn’t have to do that. All she had to do was capture the villains, be a hero, cast her aside just like everybody else did. She can’t set Himiko free, she knows that, but she won’t get to capture her, either. Himiko will go out on her own terms, give everything to save the one person who truly saw her, not a demon child, not a psychopath, not a villain. Her.
She doesn’t want to live in a world without her in it.
The exhaustion from using Jin’s quirk is catching up to her now, but she pushes through it. The League of Villains was going to destroy everything, leave a world that’s easier for her to live in in the wreckage, probably.
But what’s the point if Ochaco isn’t there with her to enjoy it?
Himiko shuffles next to the bleeding heroine, palming up some of her blood and drinking it. White goop covers her whole as she takes on Ochaco’s form. “I know I said this is a battle for survival,” she kneels next to her hero and sets up her gear for a blood transfusion, just like Jin did for her all those months ago. Part of her transformation wears off from exhaustion as she extends one of her needles. “But the only thing I really don’t want to lose is you...”
Himiko sticks a needle into Ochaco’s forearm and another onto her own. She smiles warmly at Ochaco, activating the needle’s pump as tears form in her eyes. “I’ll give you all my blood!”
Ochaco mouths something. She must be trying to tell her to stop, that she’ll die. But Himiko doesn’t care. Her sacrifice is worth everything. She breaks off a piece of one of her needles, using it to stitch up Ochaco’s stab wound.
Her transformation fades further, her entire face reverted now. She doesn’t have much time left. She lies down next to her love, laying all of her feelings bare, so she understands just how much she means to her.
“I’m sorry I stabbed you. I’m sorry I yelled at you. I mean it!” She can’t stop the tears now. Dammit. She hopes she won’t go out with her face looking all puffy.
“Thank you, Ochaco.” She returns her All-Might keychain, placing it on her stomach. She’d be so upset if she never saw it again. “You made me so happy! You really did!”
“Hi-mi-ko…” are the only words Ochaco can muster in response.
Ochaco’s color is returning to her skin, her body’s growing warmer. She’s done it, Ochaco’s gonna live! Her very first rescue. She’s gonna be so proud of her once she’s up and healthy again. If only she could have been around to see it. Ironic, huh? The girl who let all her victims bleed to death dies giving all her blood to someone else.
All her life, she wanted to become the people she loved so badly that she drank all their blood. And she kept doing it, over and over and over, addicted to the taste, the feeling of becoming those she loved. She wonders if only she had felt something like this earlier, this acceptance, this love, then maybe she would have loved giving blood as much as she loved taking it. Maybe all those people she had killed would be alive now. Maybe Saito would have loved her. But none of that matters now.
She was Himiko Toga.
She lived and loved the way she pleased.
Just a normal girl, with the cutest smile in the world.
Everything went black.