This story was originally posted on Ao3 months ago. I remembered that I have a small percentage of readers that prefer to use this site, so I am slowly copying things over. If you want to stay up-to-date with my fics, please check me out on Ao3. My username is AeolianMode there. I consider Ao3 the optimal viewing experience however, as I can include fic illustrations.
They say your life flashes before your eyes when you're dying, but Toshinori knows that's not true. It was always the small things. Drinking tea against a rainy window. Petting his cat. Holding Shota's hand. Reading the texts he sent last night off of his cracked cellphone screen to the quiet murmurs of talking heads on the TV.
Just got off the plane, safe in the USA. Stay out of trouble until I'm back. Don't go leaving the apartment without an escort. I love you.
He would've laughed at his luck, if he could breathe past the gurgle of blood in his lungs. Shota had been called away to the States yesterday- Dallas Texas, of all places- for an agency in desperate need of his quirk. If he hadn't been quirkless, Toshinori would've gone with him. But the world couldn't have All Might anymore. Whether the world needed All Might anymore was another story. A story that seemed to be shaping up towards a very unsatisfying conclusion.
As he felt blood spreading on his shirt, spilling from the epicenter of his scar, all he felt was guilt. He had gone and done the one thing Shota asked him not to do, and now, his boyfriend of 2 months was going to come back home to Toshinori Yagi's stiffly formal and highly crowded memorial service. Not to mention what this was going to do to poor young Midoriya.
Maybe his past wasn't flashing before his eyes, but his future. It was easy to imagine how the next couple of days were going to go after his body would be dragged off the street. He had no living relatives that he knew of, he hadn't gone public about his relationship with Shota yet, so UA would probably be notified first. All Might belonged to the world, and it would be his wish that his funeral be as public as possible.
He had written his will after he heard Nighteye's prediction. There wasn't much in it. He had amended it only once, after he met Midoriya. He could never tell the boy what he planned on leaving him. He didn't know how to say it. Maybe he was just scared.
I'm scared of a lot of things , he thought, digging his hand painfully into the hole in his side, as if that'd do anything to stem the flow of blood. Death was never one of them, until now. I don't want to die. I'm not ready.
He felt warm hands against his back, bracing a shoulder. His ears buzzed. Everything went lopsided as he was rolled onto his side. It took him a moment to realize that buzzing sound was someone's voice. He heard a woman's voice calling to him through static and cotton.
"-r Yagi. Hang on. Breathe. I called an ambulance. Just hold on."
He peeled open his eyes. He couldn't see anything but sideways asphalt, sideways skyscrapers and a sideways wall. Someone's fist hammered between his shoulder blades, and he spat blood. The hand moved to his face, cupping across his mouth and nose, and he distantly wondered if he was being smothered. He struggled.
"Mr. Yagi, please stay calm! My quirk lets me generate oxygen out of my skin! Pl-please breathe."
He could breathe against her palm. Clean, cool air flooded his windpipe. He gulped like a beached fish, quickly forgetting that there was a hand clasped firmly over his face. As the static in his ears cleared, he heard the panicked chattering of a crowd.
"What's going on?"
"Someone shot All Might!"
"Holy shit! Who?"
"He got away!"
"He got away? Who let that happen?"
"I- I don't know, man! No one knew what was going on!"
"Shit, where are all the heroes? Is All Might okay!?"
"I don't know!"
Sirens howled in the night. Someone with authority shouted something to disperse the crowd, and Toshinori felt the bystander's hand peeling away from his face. He blindly grabbed at air, missing her wrist, wanting to thank her.
Instead, his head thunked against the asphalt.
He jerked himself awake with a grunt. He was surrounded in white sheets and covered in tubes. Where was the girl? The crowd? The street? Dazed, his eyes explored the sudden shift in his surroundings, fighting against the weight of his eyelids. There was something affixed over his face, and he lifted his hand to remove it. A mask. He felt a tube slide when he moved his arm, realizing there was an IV in his wrist.
The unmistakable smell of a hospital flooded his senses, sterile, empty and stale. Reality smacked him, along with several hundred bad memories, and his tongue suddenly felt quite thick against the roof of his mouth. He half expected to see Nighteye hovering over him with premonitions of doom. Or the sting of Gran Torino's fist against his cheek, chastising him for his foolishness.
A nurse was in the room. She'd probably been here a while, but Toshinori just now noticed her. He felt like everything around him was moving just a few ticks slower than it should have been. The colors too bright. The noises too loud and too sharp.
"Welcome to the living, Mr. Yagi." She had a dull, husky voice with an unimpressed tone that reminded him a little of Shota. She was checking something on a machine nearby. For all the times he had been in and out of hospital rooms, he should've known what it was called and what she was doing, by now. He didn't.
He started to say something. He coughed. His head flopped to one side, very much against his will.
"To answer all the questions I'm sure you have: you just got out of surgery. It's 11 PM, Friday, same day. All the witnesses have been told to keep quiet by the police until we hear your wishes. We've been trying to respect your privacy and keep this under-wraps. I'm sure I don't need to tell you this, but if this kind of story broke- that you got shot by a villain in an alley- all hell would break loose."
Toshinori nodded and regretted it. His brain felt like it was rolling around in his skull.
"Anyway," his nurse continued, moving away from the machine to give Toshinori a sad, stern look, a hand on her hip. "You're either extremely unlucky, or the gunman was an extremely skilled sharpshooter. Got you right in your scar. But that's not what concerned us. What's bothersome is that there was an entry wound, no exit wound, and no bullet."
Toshinori's brows furrowed in confusion. He un-stuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth, trying to find his voice. "But…" he croaked. "I was shot."
"Yes, you were shot. The bullet is gone. Likely it was a result of the villain's quirk, but we couldn't identify it. And he's still at large. Kamui's agency is on the job, discreetly. We didn't tell them who was shot, only that a gunman was on the run after harassing civilians. We'll inform you through the proper channels if we learn anything."
His nurse checked his IV bags. He watched her out of the corner of his eye, his forehead throbbing. "T-there was a woman with me when... " He coughed. "When I was on the ground. Did you get her name?"
"From what I was told, she left as soon as the EMTs arrived. A shame, too. She's probably the reason why you're still alive."
"Yeah. I wanted to thank her." Toshinori lifted a hand to his own face, pressing his fingertips against a hollow cheekbone, lost in a swirl of uncomfortable thoughts. He almost died, and he felt almost nothing. He remembered telling Midoriya he was going to live. He promised Inko he'd live. Worst, he promised Shota he'd live. And here he was, faced with his own mortality, and feeling nothing. The drive to fight his fate, to scratch and claw at the last threads of life he had, to resist going out without a fight, kicking and screaming- where was it? Where had it gone? Was he all talk? Was he still a liar?
Shota hated liars.
He didn't want to die- but he didn't want to live, either. Not really. He was thankful he was still here, but he felt like an empty husk puppeteered by life. He didn't want to be tossed aside, but he didn't feel as if he had much say in it.
"So… so no one knows?"
"As far as I'm aware, there weren't any journalists rushing to the scene. Fortunately, the incident happened in a very isolated part of town. Which reminds me…" The nurse gave Toshinori a cold stare. "What were you doing there, exactly? Where was your escort?"
"I didn't have one. I… didn't want to bother anyone. Usually it's. Eraserhead, accompanying me, but he's away."
"So, let me guess. You saw trouble and rushed to help."
Toshinori laughed bitterly. "Guilty as charged." He joked, grinning with all his teeth. Shota would kill him if he saw him doing this. The whole fake-smile thing. Laughing through his tragedy. That was an All Might smile.
"Well," his nurse began in an exasperated sort of way that Toshinori often heard from disgruntled parents, "I don't know you, Mr. Yagi, so I'm sure you don't need me telling you any of this. But if I were you, I'd think a little more carefully about the role you play in society now. I understand you're retired, but you're still All Might to the world around you. Villains do still want you dead. If you're killed on the streets, that'll be a wake-up call for criminals. It's going to hurt a whole lot of people if you act foolishly."
Guilt tasted a lot like bile and felt a lot like a boulder on his chest. He said nothing.
"Well, chew on it. I'm going to let you rest. In a few hours I'll check on you again. Is there anyone you want to contact about this?"
Toshinori started to say Shota. He stopped himself as soon as his lips parted, and changed course. "No. No one. I just… want to go home."
"Well, your doctor will be the one to decide when you go home. Because the bullet ended up disappearing immediately after entry, the amount of damage was minimal. Most of it was a surface injury, and the greatest threat it posed to you was blood loss. Very little internal damage, and it missed what's left of your intestines. So, you avoided what could've been a very bad case of sepsis. They'll probably let you go home in a day or two."
"I see."
Shota was getting back Monday morning.
Toshinori planned on telling him absolutely nothing.