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Toshinori’s day had started off rather ordinary. He got out of bed, he taught his classes, he went to meet Shouta for dinner. Nothing out of place, a peaceful day for once. It happens as he turns the corner towards the restaurant where Shouta waits within for him to arrive.
The child slams into him unexpectedly, wrapping her arms around him and babbling in a panicked string of words he can’t understand.
“Reila, there you are!” Toshinori looks up to see a frantic woman hurrying towards them, tear tracks still shining on her cheeks.
He looks back down at the child gripping his legs so thoroughly, just in time to see her hair glow in a flash of color.
“No,” the woman gasps. “I’m so sorry. She sometimes accidentally activates her quirk when she is scared. It doesn’t cause more than some bad dreams for a night as far as we can tell.”
Toshinori nods thoughtfully, taking note of her words so he can relay them to those who might need to know.
“No harm, she’s scared, it is an understandable reaction,” he says. “Might we exchange contact information so I can relay back anything relevant I experience if it might help her?”
The woman nods vigorously, pulling out a scrap of paper and a notebook to scribble her name and number on.
“Thank you kindly, sir. You were nicer than some are.”
Toshinori grimaces briefly before gently patting the child on the head as he steps back from her. “Mistakes happen, she deserves the grace to make them and learn from them.”
He shifts uncomfortably as the woman nearly bursts into tears again before croaking out another thanks and hurrying off with her daughter in tow. Shaking his head slightly, he starts towards his destination once more, already compiling how to tell Shouta about this experience.
Toshinori knows the man is going to want every single detail.
That night, Shouta insists on canceling his usual patrol to stay in with Toshinori instead, and no matter how much he protests, he simply cannot dissuade the other man from it.
“You’ve been through a lot of shit, you know that,” Shouta says, his eyes narrowing in the glare his students have all come to know and fear. “Hell, I can’t even imagine the stuff you’ve been through before we even met. Even if all this quirk does in the end is give you a couple of nightmares, I’m not gonna leave you here alone to deal with that! What kind of— hero do you take me for?”
Toshinori softens at the explanation. “It’s… not about you really.”
Shouta shoots him his flattest look. “If you hit me with that, ‘it’s not you, it's me’ crap, I’m not making breakfast tomorrow.”
Toshinori coughs and quickly changes track. “I was on my own for a long time, you know that. One of the hardest things I ever had to learn, was to lean on others and ask for help. Relying on other people… it doesn’t come naturally to me, you know. But I’m trying. I’ll keep trying.”
Shouta huffs, but finally stops glaring to instead perch beside Toshinori on the very edge of the bed. “Yeah. I get it.”
“And you know…” Toshinori’s grin turns teasing now and he can’t resist reaching out to poke at Shouta’s cheek. “You’re the one that taught me that. About leaving things to others and not trying to do everything myself.”
Shouta raises an eyebrow at him like he doesn’t believe a word Toshinori is saying.
“No really! It was after I failed you at the USJ remember? I’d foolishly used up all of my time before the trip, and in doing so, I let you down.” His previous good cheer dissipates as he stares down solemnly at his hands. “You got hurt. Because of me. Because I wasn’t there when you needed me. And that taught me that I could no longer try to do everything myself, that I needed to allow others to help carry the load.”
Toshinori pauses to stifle a sudden yawn with the back of one hand before continuing. “It’s why I was able to allow others in at Kamino, why I did not rush over to the rescue without backup. I—“
Shouta cuts him off with a light whack of fluffy pillow to the face. “Alright, that’s enough of that. You’re clearly exhausted, just lay down already before I make you.”
“Alright, alright, I’m going,” Toshinori laughs before slipping under the covers. He’s asleep almost as soon as his head touches the pillow.
Toshinori is fighting All for One in Kamino Ward. The ground around him is cratered and devastated by the torrent of violence released by their battle.
All around them are the skeletal remnants of destroyed buildings and roads and lives. His body feels like it reflects the wreckage around him, aching and miserable. A roadmap of all the miseries in his life and the damages done to it. The ache in his body is matched by the sense of wrongness, of something being missing. That Toshinori is forgetting something vital, that he needs to know about.
Toshinori is so very tired.
Tired of this endless back and forth for seemingly no purpose. This endless string of loss with no positive. Here he stands fighting the monster he thought he’d put down all those years ago. The same one that had taken everything that had mattered to him away bit by bloody bit. His mentor, his closest friends…this road he’s walked has been endless. And for what? For the same bastard to crawl back out of the grave he’d finally been put in?
Toshinori is exhausted, and everything is wrong.
He’s fading, losing his strength and he’s outmatched here with no heir to pick up the mantle as he drops it. No one to point to and say “You’re next.” It’s just Toshinori, and he’s stumbling, falling, crashing to the ground as his body gives up.
Toshinori is spent.
He has nothing left to give, no hope to look to, no one left to mourn him. The Symbol of Peace’s fall will shatter the very thing he fought so hard for. Toshinori tries to cobble together his strength for one last push, one final try. In a final, trembling gasp his efforts fall short.
Toshinori dies fighting All for One in Kamino Ward.
But it doesn’t end there.
All for One remains at large, Toshinori’s spirit can see it.
“Hey!”
No hordes of heroes were called in for backup, and therefore, no one is on hand to stop the Noumu and the League from devastating the city.
“Hey, wake up!”
All for One is not arrested, the blond UA student is not rescued, and the one called Kurogiri is not detained.
“Toshinori, I swear to god don’t–”
The heroes have no one to rally behind, the civilians have no reason to hope, and slowly the entirety of Japan falls to ruin and despair.
“Alright, hold on, just… just hold on.”
And through it all his spirit wanders, unable to do anything but watch and listen, and be crushed and weakened beneath the weight of his guilt, regret, and shame–
–Toshinori gasps awake.
His hands scrabble for purchase against the warm arms holding him upright and he wheezes and keens as he struggles to catch his breath.
There’s wetness on his cheeks and a chin pressing gently against the top of his head, and a familiar voice murmuring a low and gentle, “I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you.”
Toshinori struggles to process.
He’d been alone.
Friendless, partnerless, successorless.
But now he isn’t.
His hands fist into Shouta’s shirt as everything slowly clicks back into place.
He’d first met Shouta at UA…
He’d been at UA because he’d accepted a job as a heroics teacher…
He’d taken the job because… because Izuku was going to be there.
All the breath rushes out of him in a whoosh that is less a mere exhale, and more a sigh of relief.
Izuku.
That’s what he’d forgotten.
Izuku.
That had been why it had all gone so badly in his dream. Without Izuku, the will to dig in, to truly Plus Ultra and go beyond simply hadn’t been there. Toshinori breathes deeply and painstakingly calms his racing heart.
Surmising further, the dream seemed to have shown him the ending that would have happened had he never met Izuku that day in the tunnel. If Izuku had never grabbed onto his leg, if he hadn’t offered him One for All, everything would have ended there in Kamino Ward.
He smiles ruefully. “I believe the young girl’s quirk may be more than simply causing nightmares. I think it causes one to dream of a worst case scenario…”
“We will have to let her mother know in the morning,” Shouta replies. “But for now, it is time for you to go back to sleep.”
Toshinori releases his grip on Shouta’s shirt and wraps his arms around the man instead. “If you insist.”