I never wanted to be a hero.

Connie repeats those words to herself over and over again, bleeding out on the cold concrete ground. She was outside somewhere, just around the bend near a BBQ joint she would often go to, in a dark alleyway being pelted by rain. The ground was wet and cold, but as her blood spilled out in a steady pace, her back to the ground felt almost warmed by the thick liquid. How ironic was that? The life leaving her body made her feel warmth.

She would laugh if she weren't dying.

It all happened so fast – too fast. She was in the restaurant, having just bought some take-out food to take home. Tomorrow was the day she turned in her resignation at work, and she'd wanted to celebrate a bit early at finding a better proposition elsewhere. She adored the people she worked with dearly, as if they were her family, but who would pass up the chance to travel and follow their passion, making art in her case, for a boring desk job?

She supposed the phrase "never celebrate too early" really had some meaning to it after all.

But still – everything had been going smoothly until she'd left the building. One hand full of takeout, the other with her phone out as she checked her social media timelines for notifications, and suddenly she heard a muffled shouting a short distance away. Her heart hammered in her chest, her eyes shooting up from the blinding light of her phone to the darkness of the alley just beyond her, and she paused as she waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness.

She heard another muffled scream, a little more faint this time, and several gruff voices muttering to each other. She shut off her phone, took a step forward, then told herself she was being a moron. She turns her phone back on, dialed up 9-1-1 on it, and took another step, listening to the line dial for a short moment.

Just as somebody picked up on the other end, she rounded the corner to find a scene she would probably never forget. Not this lifetime, and not the next.

Four people in dark clothing – it looked to be three men and one woman – all huddled in a semi-circle around a woman on the ground, with one more person sitting atop her stomach and holding their hands over the woman's face to quiet her muffled kicking and screaming.

She drops her take-out bag in shock, her heart beating so fast in her chest she swore it must have skipped a beat or two.

"Hello? What is the address and emergency?" The voice asked again over the phone, a young-ish sounding man with a smooth voice. She hadn't even heard him asking the first time.

All heads turned to her as her bag fell to the ground. For a moment, there's complete silence.

The person on top of the woman – she sees now it was another woman wearing a long black dress – stands up slowly, and Connie begins speaking into the phone very quickly, telling the man on the other side the address of where she was and begging for help –

She hears a gun go off. She falls to the ground, feeling as if somebody had just punched her in the gut. She doesn't even scream, because for a few seconds she doesn't even feel the pain – just the impact. Her phone shatters when it falls beside her, and she could faintly hear the man calling for her and asking what was going on. She looks down, and there in the center of her nice blue shirt is a little puddle of red, tinted purple from the blue dye of her shirt, slowly spreading out and soaking her clothing.

She finally calls out for help loudly, feeling the tears fall from her face as the men and woman in the alleyway began scattering in fear of being caught. Only one stayed behind.

The woman in the long black dress pointed her gun at Connie again, and pauses as Connie brings her hands up to cover herself and began crying for mercy.

"Please, please, don't shoot me! Please, oh God," she pleaded and begged. She wasn't a religious person, but right then and there she began praying for help – for anything other than death.

The woman laughed a bit, muttered some words in a language Connie didn't understand, and turned around to face the other woman already on the ground. She could see now that the other woman was bloodied up a bit, like she'd been beaten up pretty good, but otherwise unharmed. Her short blond hair was a mess, and her makeup was smeared from tears and fighting back. She was wearing a dress as well, a light shade of blue that matched Connie's shirt.

When the woman in the long black dress pointed her gun down at the woman in blue, Connie's blood ran cold. Her body felt so cold and she imagined she was hearing static, as if she was a computer that was malfunctioning.

She didn't feel anything, then.

She didn't feel the tips of her fingers as they pushed against the ground.

She didn't feel her legs, scrambling for purchase on the ground as it began raining.

She didn't feel the gunshot wound in her stomach as it bled out.

She didn't feel anything as she collided with the woman in the black dress, throwing the both of them forward just far enough to the side that they didn't land on top of the woman in the blue dress. Her arm, bare from the short-sleeved shirt and wrapped around the woman's midsection as she had barreled into her, sings out in pain as it makes contact with the rough pavement harshly when they both fall to the ground.

She finally feels again, like awakening after a long, long sleep.

The rain is heavy and fast, loud in her ears as she shivers from the cold. Another gunshot goes off, but she sees that it was just from the woman falling over – nobody gets shot from the gun firing.

The shock of the act wears off on the woman in the black dress and she shouts something angrily – is that Japanese? – as she scratches with her pretty nails at Connie's skin to get her to leg go. She can only hold on for a second longer before her pain tolerance reaches its threshold and she cries out and tries to jump away. She's tripped by a sweeping leg in black laces, and she falls. Her head collides with the ground, and she doesn't move to get up again.

She could see, blearily, that the woman in the blue dress was gone.

With a sinking heart and a cold fear in her eyes, she realizes that her act of heroism was not returned. She'd been left to fend for herself there, in that dark alley as it rained and the woman in black screamed something cruel as she shot off two more rounds. One to the chest, one to the stomach again.

The woman in black takes a moment to compose herself, breathing heavily, and she turns and begins walking off as swiftly as she could in her high heels.

Connie wishes she could feel nothing again. It hurts everywhere. It's so cold, and the ground was hard and scratchy against her bare arms. She hears the rain hitting the pavement, blocking out the sounds of curious passer-bys coming over to see what the commotion was. She couldn't hear them gasp in horror at the sight and flee – yet again, she was left alone. Nobody to help her.

So there she lay, in that cold, dark alleyway listening to herself die, feeling the warmth of her blood seeping out of her body.

She hears, briefly, a siren. She sees the red and blue bouncing off the walls around her.

Then she is nothing more.

For a long, long time, there is nothing. She floats in nothing, like a swimming pool but without the currents of motion or the soothing coolness of water around her body. She floats for a time that she can't understand, and she feels nothing. She sees nothing. She hears nothing. She is nothing.

A light, then –

Blinding bright –

Calling, reaching out to her –

She reaches back, finds her voice to call back –

Please, please I want to live –

Suddenly she is bathed in the bright light, and it's not nothing anymore. Her eyes screw shut and she opens her mouth and she screams. It's so bright and blinding that she can't seem to open her eyes to look around, and her body feels so frail and weak that she can hardly move her arms to flail about. There is warmth that comes with the light, and it makes her so happy that she cries out again in joy. Hands hold her, and she is moved from one grasp to another. She feels safe, warm – she feels alive again.

"Kon'nichiwa, koneko..." A soft, nearly heavenly voice calls out to her in a tired, weak voice. She doesn't understand the language or recognize the voice, but she doesn't care at the time. She feels alive again.

She opens her mouth and can let nothing out but a wailing cry. The hands holding her feel too big, like she'd shrunk or was being held by a giant, but they held her softly and the chest she was pressed against laughed gently.

"Nante ōgoeda! Totemo osoroshī..." The voice cooed out in a sweet voice.

"Anata wa kanojo no namae o shitte imasu ka?" Another voice, unfamiliar to her ears, speaks up from a short distance away. The hands holding her still, then hold her a little bit tighter until she kicks a bit to give herself more space in the warm embrace. She feels the body move around a bit.

"Akemi. Himura Akemi."

She recognizes a name – who are they talking about? Do they know what her name is? Now that she could think again, beyond the lung-rattling scream of I'm alive again, she finally realizes that maybe what's going on right now isn't normal. If she had been shot three times, wouldn't she be in the hospital now? Why couldn't she open her eyes? Why was everything so blindingly bright, and why could she hear not only the heartbeat next to her ear as she was pressed up against a warm chest, but also another two beating hearts further away from her?

She feels a finger poke at her nose, and she tries to move away from it. "Kikoemasu ka? Anata no namae wa Akemidesu! Utsukushī chīsana eiyū!" Connie stops trying to follow the conversation. It was hurting her head to try to understand everything going on at once.

More talking happens, the poking and prodding stops, and Connie tries to fight the sleep trying to claim her desperately. She didn't want to sleep – she had just woken up after so long in the dark. Her chest churned with fear and she let out another wail, reaching out to grasp whatever, whoever, she could to try to tell them, don't make me sleep, please, I only just woke up –

And before long, she is in the darkness once again.

((A/N: Hello and welcome to my BNHA fic! This is the first time I've written something for BNHA, but I've loved the fandom for a long time so here I go.. I have always written good, heroic characters who sacrifice themselves for the sake of being the savior, so I'm trying my hand at a character who feels mixed about the whole story of BNHA. She isn't evil but she isn't all good either... Morally-grey is a good description of her feelings towards this whole shebang.

The Japanese turns into English in chapter 3, but until then the translations will be down below here!

Translations:

"Kon'nichiwa, koneko..." = "Hello, my little kitten..."

"Nante ōgoeda! Totemo osoroshī..." = "What a loud roar! So fearsome..."

"Anata wa kanojo no namae o shitte imasu ka?" = "Do you have a name for her yet?"

"Akemi. Himura Akemi." = Her name roughly translates into "Bright/Beautiful Hero"

"Kikoemasu ka? Anata no namae wa Akemidesu! Utsukushī chīsana eiyū!" = "Do you hear that? Your name is Akemi! Beautiful little hero!"

Thanks you for your interest in my story! Read and review!))