The world was black.

Also a little red, but that was okay. Himiko liked the red. It was familiar, comfortable, and it reminded her of so many good memories. And quite a few bad ones as well, but that was to be expected; red was blood, passion, burns and lipstick. It was the sunrise, sunset, the moon on foreboding nights and the mark of her greatest passion.

Second greatest passion, she corrected herself. Izu-kun and his children; they were the most important things now. Her hero and the beautiful family she made for him. That was all that mattered in her mind. Blood, killing, heroism and villainy, all of those were things of the past. She was a mother now. And she was so excited she could barely force herself to lay still!

Wait… why was she laying still? Where was she? She remembered hands on her, pulling her away from Izu-kun, pulling her towards the ambulance. She remembered Izu-kun's limp form, ragged and beautiful being pulled into the other ambulance. She remembered calling out to him, the disdain on the faces of the orderlies as they injected her with something, putting a needle in her arm…

And now here she was. Laying in the black. At least the black was soft, and warm. It felt a lot like a bed, actually.

She opened her eyes, and then hissed and closed them again. It was too bright, too white, too much light! She tried to bring her hands up to cover her eyes, but both were stopped dead in their tracks by a quiet clank and the feel of something cold and hard pressing against them. Oh, she knew this one! Cuffs! Oh, this was going to be tricky. Now, if they weren't too tight, she could just dislocate a thumb and slide free, and then pop it back in place with her mouth and get to work on the other one. It felt like two different sets of cuffs though, so she'd probably have to do that for both. Oh well, she couldn't expect the police to make things too easy!

Then she stopped, and opened her eyes to stare at the ceiling. She had to fight the urge to close them again, but she won that particular battle and started looking around. She was in a hospital room. A very empty hospital room, and the gurney was clearly built more for security and sturdiness than comfort, but that wasn't exactly surprising. They probably had her locked up because of the stabbings and such.

Being restrained in a bed brought dark, awful things bubbling inside her, old memories she wanted to will away, but instead she thought of Izu-kun's smile and his hand (only one now, she remembered) holding her shoulder and telling her she'd be okay. She smiled fondly, thoughts of her papa sinking back into her subconscious to lurk and await another chance to resurface. She wondered for a moment if Izu-kun was in the same hospital. They were picked up by the same group of ambulances, so it would make sense.

She sighed. So she couldn't just break out. If Izu-kun was here, then the babies were here, and she couldn't just run away without seeing them. A quick glance down at the blankets revealed the other, more unfortunate truth; with one foot sealed up in a heavy plaster cast and the other gone completely, she probably wouldn't be running anywhere ever again. She swallowed back the tinge of fear that thought brought on, the memory of probing hands and iron grips on her hair and shoulders and turned her attention instead to the door of the room.

There was only one, made of metal painted blue with a little observation window. She couldn't see anything of interest from her angle, except for the occasional shape of something moving through the hallway outside. She was pretty sure it would be guarded; she'd escaped custody too many times for the police to take a chance like that again. They probably even thought she'd try and hurt Izu-kun again or something. That was silly; why would she hurt her Izu-kun? She just wanted to see their babies.

"Hello?" she choked the word out, realizing a little late that her throat was far too dry to be attempting to speak.

But it was audible, and clearly somebody was listening because just a few moments later the door swung open and an elderly man in a white coat and black shirt marched inside, polished leather shoes clicking on the tiled floor. Behind him came a plain-looking man with short dark hair wearing a tan trench coat, and behind him came a police officer, a woman this time in the blue and grey uniform of a constable. Himiko watched them all come inside, the old man's approach making her squirm a bit. He had a clipboard and pen, but she knew pens could hurt a lot. Papa taught her that first.

"Ms. Toga." the man in the coat was the first to greet her, nodding once. "I'm Detective Naomasa, and these are Doctor Goyo and Officer Sero. The doctor is here to give you a quick check-up, and then I'll be asking you a few questions."

"Okay!" Toga smiled at him, and she watched with a little pang of delight as the doctor winced before standing over her.

Doctor Goyo said nothing for the entirety of his checkup; he just pulled her blankets off her legs and checked her feet, noting quietly that the stump of her left foot was mending well enough and likely wouldn't require any particular attention. He rapped his knuckles on her cast and she winced, noting with a hint of curiosity that the officer with the black hair, Sero, visibly stiffened when she did. Finally the doctor jotted down a few quick notes, nodded to the detective and stepped outside, the door closing behind him.

Naomasa cleared his throat, before pulling Himiko's blankets back down over her legs in a surprisingly kind gesture. Himiko smiled at him, a more wholesome smile that wasn't meant to freeze the blood and scare children, and he nodded.

"So, Ms. Toga… you understand the charges laid against you?" he asked, reaching into his coat and pulling out a little black notebook. "Before the Midoriya case began, you were already the prime suspect in three assaults, though all your victims survived. However… you are here under charge of the murder of Inko Midoriya and the rape of Izuku Midoriya. If you would like to plead guilty now, we could skip the courts and handle all of this out of the public eye."

Himiko lay there quietly for a time, thinking. Really thinking, not her usual 'thinking' where she vaguely considered something for about half a moment before going ahead and doing it anyway. She wasn't stupid enough to think she'd done nothing wrong. She'd seen in that cell that she'd hurt Izu-kun, hurt him badly enough that he'd wanted to hate her. That scared her more than the idea of prison; if her Izu-kun hated her, she really had nothing.

But he didn't hate her. He said so, he said he wasn't big enough to hate that much. For a moment she wondered what it was he hated so much that it took up all the room for hate inside him. She supposed that was a question to ask him later, when they had time. For now, she had questions she needed to answer.

"I hurt Izu-kun's mama," she admitted, but then she shook her head. "But I didn't kill her. I just hit her on the head and she fell over. She was… she was breathing. I checked. Shigi said no killing any of Izu-kun's family and I was already breaking one rule, I wasn't gonna break two."

Naomasa's eyes went wide and she wondered why. She watched him look at the lady officer who looked at him, and cocked her head to one side curiously. Then Naomasa looked back at Himiko.

"You're telling the truth." he said, voice low, full of disbelief. "You… you aren't lying. You're telling the truth. You didn't kill her."

"Of course not!" Himiko shook her head. "If I did, Izu-kun would hate me and our family would be ruined!"

"Ms. Toga, I don't… I don't think you're aware of what this means." he said, looking at her with one of those serious expressions adults liked to put on when they were talking about something they thought was super important. "My Quirk is called Human Lie Detector. If you lie to me, I know it, and I also know when you tell the truth. You are telling the truth right now, and people can't lie to my Quirk. It's functionally impossible."

Himiko shrugged.

"I don't wanna lie anymore," she admitted. "I didn't kill Izuku's mama. I did…"

She took a bracing breath, deep and even, and closed her eyes for a moment. Himiko was somebody who rarely regretted anything. She did what she wanted because she figured it didn't matter; people were just meat, things that didn't mean anything. They were dumb and silly and they were afraid of the sight of their own blood and all of that was silly and stupid. But Izu-kun… he was her hero. The one who had saved her. The one who had killed Shigaraki for her and for their children.

She now had one crime to regret.

"I hurt Izu-kun." she nodded. "I hurt him like… like papa hurt me and it just made things worse. And he said he didn't hate me, but… I think I hate me. I didn't want to hurt him but I wanted him and I didn't think he could…"

She wanted to hold herself, but her hands were still attached to the bed frame so she just let her head fall and sniffled a little. She didn't want to cry. She wanted to stop. But she couldn't, she wouldn't. She had to keep going. This was her crime. Her mistake. Her villainy. She would own up to it.

"I was just like papa." she whispered, staring down at the blankets in her lap and squeezing her eyes shut to try and keep the tears in them. "I hurt him and took things from him and used him and now he's gonna hurt forever like me."

She looked up at Naomasa, who was watching her with as expressionless a face as he could manage. There was something behind that mask he was wearing, but she couldn't make out what it was through the watery haze over her vision. So she sat there and waited, until he suddenly began writing in that notebook of his. His pen scratched across the paper for a long while, filling page after page, before he closed it suddenly and tucked the pen away. He turned and gestured to Officer Sero, who opened the door and stepped outside.

Then he looked back at Himiko.

"Ms. Toga…" he said, voice low. "We're going to have to re-examine the case somewhat, regarding this new information. This may take some time, during which you will be kept here. If you are well behaved, you may be unbound at some point, though the door will be guarded. Before that, however…"

Naomasa looked at the door.

"Izuku Midoriya would like to speak with you." he said. "However, pro-hero Snipe would also be in attendance to ensure Midoriya's safety. Would that be acceptable?"

Himiko nodded. That sounded wonderful. She was still a little on edge, her arms cuffed as they were, but she didn't dare say anything; she knew that would just be asking for trouble. Although… Detective Naomasa seemed nicer than most police were… maybe if she asked nicely?

"Could…" she hesitated, the shadow of her father in her head barking at her to shut her mouth, before redoubling on herself. "Could I… have a… a hand free? Or you could just cuff them behind my back… being… being stuck to the bed… it... "

Naomasa stared at her for a moment, and then took a step around the bed. He stopped just short of the cuffs however, and looked at her. For a moment, that neutral, almost disinterested mask slid away, and revealed a hint of worry.

"If I may ask…" He almost sounded like he regretted beginning to speak. "Why are you uncomfortable with restraints?"

She closed her eyes as her father whispered a hateful "Whore" into her ear, and she felt a heavy phantom weight press down on her chest as he held her down. She opened them wide again, and opened her mouth.

"If I was bad, Papa used to…" she swallowed, and Naomasa seemed to put a few prior things together before flinching, his hand slipping into his pocket and retrieving a small ring of keys. He flipped through them for a moment, and then unlocked the cuffs on her left arm. She immediately grabbed at the blanket, pulling it up higher.

She wasn't going to panic, she told herself. This man was a police detective. Papa was dead. The detective wasn't Papa. He wouldn't do anything like that to her. Naomasa watched after he unlocked her other cuff as she brought her hand up to her face and covered her mouth, muffling another of those choked whines that packed all her fear and pain into one place, though he certainly heard it still.

"Toga?" he said her name, but he sounded a mile away, down a tunnel or something, his voice echoing and bouncing off nothing inside her head.

Papa was on top of her. She was on top of Izu-kun. Papa was laughing. She was laughing. She and Papa blended together in her head, her smaller form and the shape of Izu-kun mixing as well and she let out another whine, rocking back and forth slowly. She wouldn't scream. She wouldn't cry. She was a good girl. She had to be a good girl and smile. Smile no matter what. Smile when she hurt or when she wanted to cry because that way Papa wouldn't be mad and she didn't have to sleep in Papa's bed.

"Himiko!"

She hadn't even noticed the door slamming open, but she felt an arm wrap around her, something warm pressing against her. The arm was bumpy with scar tissue, the grip trembling slightly, but she knew this feeling. The smell was familiar too, though she couldn't begin to describe it. And when she opened her eyes she knew, her relieved cry escaping her with a single choked name.

"Izu-kun…"

They held each other for a long moment, and Himiko's fear and panic began to fade away. Izu-kun was here. Like he promised. He was holding her tight and he wouldn't let her go or hurt her like Papa, he would protect her like he said. He would protect her and their family. Because he was a hero.

"I am here." he whispered, before pulling away a little, and she looked up at him and smiled. He smiled back, a small and delicate thing, and she saw behind him an unfamiliar man with one eye and a head full of braided black hair step inside, warily eyeing her closeness to her Izu-kun. The detective was also staring, and both seemed to grow even more surprised when Izu-kun beckoned the one-eyed man forward. She noticed immediately the two tiny forms in his arms, one of them squirming and squawking unhappily, and her eyes lit up.

"Snipe-sensei, could you bring them here?" Izu-kun asked, voice low.

The man, apparently Snipe (Himiko had never seen him without a gasmask on) took a tentative step forward, before reaching down. Izu-kun took one of the two babies with his arm, delicately scooping the little bundle free, and Himiko reached forward with disbelief to hold the other. She saw the wisps of blonde hair so like her own, and then the tiny little figure she held opened its eyes and she saw emerald green.

"He's beautiful…" she whispered, and Izuku smiled. "They're both… Izu-kun, they're so beautiful."

Her hands were trembling helplessly, but the fear was gone now. She only felt… well, she wasn't sure. She'd felt it before, when she'd first seen Izu-kun in that warehouse to rescue her, and when she'd first seen the twins in a half-conscious haze after the birth. But now… it felt right now, good and healthy, holding her son and seeing her daughter. Safe, away from the danger and the violence, in her arms...

"And they're safe," Izu-kun replied as if agreeing with her thoughts, showing her their daughter in his arm, who had wrapped two of those skinny tendrils around his forearm and wrist again. "Nobody will hurt them, ever. And if anybody tries to hurt them, to hurt you… I'll be there. And they'll fail."

His eyes burned with a verdant flame as he spoke, conviction as hard as steel filling his voice. And there was a quiet danger in his tone that sent shivers up her spine. She leaned in closer to him, and he didn't push her away; he even leaned back, touching his shoulder to hers. The two sat in quiet for a moment, together, safe, with their children.

Himiko wouldn't forgive herself for hurting him, she decided. Not until he forgave her. And she wouldn't dare assume he loved a broken, twisted thing like her. But she decided then that she would do whatever it took to earn that forgiveness, that love. And this time, she decided, it would be genuine and real. At first she had thought him cute and strong and safe. Now though… now she understood. Izu-kun wasn't a toy. He had never been and she sorely wished she had understood that sooner. He was a hero.

Her hero.