One month later

Nana strode down the halls of the greatest prison in Japan, her eyes distant, her expression set into a mask of determination.

She was wearing her full hero costume; the long white cape flowed and flapped behind her, swishing in the breeze her movements created. The lonely sound of her boots on the white concrete floor echoed down the tunnel-like hallway, bouncing into distant corners of the labyrinthine facility.

Guards nodded or stepped aside as she walked past; Nana's visit had been cleared by All Might himself, and they all knew it. Whether they knew who she was or not, it didn't matter. Nana barely acknowledged them beyond a cursory nod herself-her mind was too distant for anything else.

Even though Toshinori had been the one to help arrange this visit, he hadn't come along, and neither had Izuku. Neither of them had been particularly happy about that, but they had understood in the end.

This was Nana's journey, and her burden to bear; neither of them had any need to get between her and her closure.

It had been nearly two weeks since the last of her memories had returned; Nana had spent all that time sorting through them, processing them, squaring her new understanding of herself with all that had come back to her. It hadn't always been easy; there was so much pain in her past, so many people she'd lost. So many mistakes she'd made.

But she'd get through it. Nana would take all that she had been, and mix it with who she was now. She wasn't the Nana Shimura who had willingly walked to her death thirty years before…but she wouldn't reject that woman, either, because it was still part of who she was.

This was Nana's second chance, an opportunity to do better this time. She would start with herself…and trust the people she loved to help every step of the way.

Nana's cape fluttered as she turned a corner in the deepest part of the prison. She felt a little like a girl playing dress-up in her mother's clothes…but that was probably just something in her brain still adjusting to being a teenager again. In truth, she looked magnificent, filling the space with her presence alone; an avenging angel in black and white and red.

At last, Nana came to the place she'd been dreaming of for weeks. At the end of the corridor up ahead, there was a massive, imposing door made of dark metal. It was a dozen feet thick, with countless seals and locks. It looked like the door to Hell itself, and Nana knew what monster was on the other side.

Tomura Shigaraki. The heir of All For One. Mass murderer. Psychopath. Monster.

Her grandson.

Nana continued walking forward, refusing to falter under the grief that washed over her. She would not break, not when she'd come so far.

Next to her, the warden-who had escorted her down here himself, as befitted the honored guest of All Might-seemed to mistake her stony expression for concern. Proudly, he said, "Don't worry, Miss Shimura. That door's locked up tighter than a nun's…well, it's locked up tight. That monster will never be free again."

Despite it all, Nana found herself fighting a snicker at the near-slip of the warden's tongue. Gravely, she said, "Thank you. I can take it from here."

The warden looked at her strangely for a moment, but apparently decided not to push it. He nodded once, and the guards nearby pulled open a smaller side door; the interview room.

Nana stepped inside with her head held high.

Moments later, she stood in front of a pane of bulletproof glass, staring at Tomura Shigaraki.

He hung limply beneath a forest of chains and straps; suspended in midair, far from any wall or surface he could touch. His head was hanging downwards, and he barely looked conscious.

Izuku had seen him before, and he'd warned Nana what to expect, but…but Shigaraki barely seemed alive. Nana knew he mumbled to himself sometimes, but it was never anything coherent. For all intents and purposes, Shigaraki's mind was long gone. Something about the way he'd received All For One, followed by the subsequent injuries he had suffered before being defeated, had left him a shell of his former self.

From somewhere above her, Nana heard the warden's voice blare over the intercom, "Prisoner. You have a visitor."

Shigaraki didn't move, and the warden tried again, repeating himself. Still, Shigaraki didn't seem to hear.

At last, when the pitiful wreck of a man still didn't raise his eyes to meet her, Nana cleared her throat, and said quietly, "Hello, Tenko."

Instantly, the bound figure went rigid. The shell of Tomura Shigaraki saw her, and his lips moved soundlessly, saying words that Nana would never know. It looked like he might have been saying "Grandma?"

At last, though, he said in a cracking voice rotten and hoarse from disuse, "I killed you. I watched you crumble into dust, I rejected you, I left you behind-"

"You could never kill me, Tenko," Nana replied, her heart cracking into smaller and smaller pieces with every insane, ranting syllable that dripped from her grandson's lips.

This was the consequence of her choice. This was her fault.

"I did. I...I killed all of them! Mother, Hana, Father!" Shigaraki insisted. He was thrashing now, hands twitching in his straitjacket as though he yearned to rip and scratch at his neck. It didn't work; the bonds were too strong. At the corners of the room, turrets watched Shigaraki's every move, ready to kill him in an instant if he looked as though he might break free.

Nana hung her head, feeling a terrible sense of deja vu. She'd shed all her tears, she had nothing left to give. Not to this monster that bore her blood, the only family she had left.

In a voice that was barely above a whisper, rough like sandpaper, like cracking ice, Nana said, "I'm sorry, Tenko."

Her grandson, given another name by the man Nana had fallen trying to stop in a final act of monstrous, cruel spite, fell silent as though he could understand her, like his tortured mind had given him a scant few moments of peace. Nana wondered if he even really saw her, or if she was just another ghost to him, another figment of a tortured imagination and a mind twisted and twisted until it finally snapped.

Taking a deep breath, Nana repeated, "I'm sorry for failing you, Tenko. I never should have left, never should have let you grow up alone the way I did. I couldn't be there for you...or for your father. If...if he was here, I would tell him the same thing. I shouldn't have been so afraid, so weak. If I'd been braver...maybe this wouldn't have happened to you."

Nana stopped herself to look, really look, at Tomura Shigaraki. He stared helplessly at her, still silent as though he couldn't believe his eyes. Nana supposed that he didn't, not anymore. His skin was ashy and faded, as though he was half a ghost himself. Nana knew that Shigaraki was only in his twenties; how many decades would he linger here, half-alive, before he finally died? What would come next for him? Would there be something that came next?

For a moment, Nana wanted to break down crying at what had happened to Tenko. But then, she remembered Kotaro. How his smile had lit up her world. How she would have done anything for him…and his tears as she walked away for the last time.

Nana had failed Kotaro. But this man, this horrible twisted fragment of everything Nana had loved, had killed him. Whatever else had happened, whatever other sins would forever weigh on her soul, that was undeniable. Because of Shigaraki, Kotaro was gone, and Nana would never be able to beg for his forgiveness.

The thought of her son burned Nana's pity to ashes in her chest, and with more force behind her words than she'd believed herself capable of summoning, Nana continued, "But for all that it's my fault... I still hate you. The world you grew up in was bad, bad because of me...but this was never your destiny. You could have chosen a different path, but you didn't. So much of this wasn't your fault, but some of it is. You are responsible for your actions, just as I was responsible for mine. You're the one who killed my child, and for that...for that I'll never forgive you."

There. It was out. Maybe it wasn't heroic, this burning hate for her own flesh and blood, but Nana no longer cared. Tenko Shimura was dead; he'd died long ago. Here, now, there was only Tomura Shigaraki, the monster who had killed the son Nana had failed so badly. If she could love those who weren't her biological family as family nonetheless, if she could call Toshinori her son and have it be true in the most important ways…then that had to be a two-way street. Nana's blood meant nothing; it didn't tip anyone who had it towards heroism, just as no villain's family were monsters by nature.

Nana drew the line here. Shigaraki was her fault, a product of her long-ago sins…but he wasn't family. He couldn't be family. Nana could not depend on her descendants to carry on her legacy…because the only legacies they could carry were of her mistakes, her failures.

Nana stood tall and straight, tears coursing down her cheeks, but her heart steady. She knew what her family was, and it wasn't this man in front of her.

That wasn't a victory, that insight. It was like…cutting a dead branch off a tree. You had to get rid of something to let the rest flourish. If Nana was going to heal, going to become the woman Izuku and Toshinori and all her friends believed her to be, she could not carry the dead weight of her guilt. Not anymore.

At last, Shigaraki spoke again. He whispered, "Why are you still haunting me? You aren't real, I know you aren't! Sensei said he killed you!"

"He did," Nana agreed, her voice soft and empty of emotion, "but he didn't kill what I stand for. He never could, and neither could you."

Shigaraki didn't seem to hear her. Still thrashing frantically, he ranted, "You're just another ghost! Stop! Leave me alone! I killed all of you, dammit! You should be gone!"

Shigaraki's rage cut off mid-sentence as his head drooped, his chest heaving as he gasped for air.

"W-why aren't you gone?" he sobbed, his voice pleading and pathetic, "why are you doing this? Hana, I'm sorry, I didn't want-Please, please, just let me forget! I can't…I can't escape you. I thought I didn't need you, but…but I can't get away. Why can't I get away?"

Nana could feel her heart shattering, but there was nothing he could do. Shigaraki had dug his grave long ago.

Some people are beyond saving.

Nana shook her head one last time as Shigaraki's desperate cries filled the air. She had her closure; final proof that all she had left to her was to move forwards was right in front of her.

To the sound of the grandson she'd never known weeping for the dead, Nana said, "Goodbye, Tenko. I…I love you. Even if you'll never know it."

And then she turned away, and was gone. The sound of his sobs echoed through the halls behind her.

The second walk was shorter, and the warden didn't accompany her to this one, instead walking back towards the prison's control center. Nana didn't mind that; her last stop was going to be personal. She was honestly looking forward to it.

Soon, she arrived at the most secure cell in Japan. There were even more layers of security here than there had been at Shigaraki's; after all, this prisoner was still…well, definitely not sane, but lucid. Lucid, and capable of grinding nations into dust in an afternoon, had he wanted to.

Nana was working her way past the second room full of guards, the last one, when the intercom came on inside the cell she was about to visit; she could hear it even from here, over the guard reminding her that she was only allowed twenty minutes to speak with the prisoner.

"Prisoner, someone is here to see you," the warden said sternly; Nana was impressed by the professionalism in his voice as he spoke. Not many people could have spoken to the Demon of Kamino Ward without a tremble of fear creeping into their words, but the warden managed it.

The reply was audible as Nana waited by the door to the interview room. It was cool and polite, genteel even; the speaker could have been discussing tax returns or the deaths of millions, with equally dispassionate curiosity.

"Oh?" All For One, immortal villain, underworld king, and Nana's murderer, asked in a tone of polite interest, "Who might possibly wish to visit little old me? If it's that walking corpse All Might again, I'll-"

The door opened at last, and Nana stepped into the interview room; she was less than ten feet from All For One, with only a six-inch-thick pane of bulletproof glass between her and her killer. All For One's head swiveled towards her, and even though he didn't even have eyes (good job, Toshi!), Nana imagined that they would have been unbelievably wide at that moment. All For One's jaw wasn't quite hanging open, but it was close. Nana relished every second of it, as, for the first time in his two hundred years of life, All For One was struck speechless.

Nana waved jauntily, a vicious, icy smile on her face. "Hey there!" she said in a mock falsetto, "long time, no see, you bastard! Remember me?"

Then, she took a long, exaggerated look around the bare cell, with turrets in the corners and a number of machines whirring away, keeping All For One alive to face his eternal punishment.
"Nice digs," she taunted, "I love what you've done with the place."

That seemed to make All For One recover slightly, though his usual unflappable air was gone. He hissed, "What trickery is this? You're dead!"

Nana smiled as she slipped into the chair facing him. "No tricks here. And rumors of my death were…greatly exaggerated." she told him smoothly, her face barely twitching as she roared with internal laughter. Even as she stared at him, her heart filled with the familiar icy hatred she'd carried for this man all of her adult life. This man had killed her mentor. He'd killed her husband. He'd killed her. He'd twisted her grandson into a monster, ruined her son's life, tried to kill every person Nana had ever loved. Nana was sitting in front of the closest thing to an avatar of evil she could possibly imagine, and she didn't flinch.

All For One still looked incredulous. He repeated, "I killed you."

Nana shrugged. She wasn't quite sure how All For One was looking at her when he didn't have eyes…but it was probably some quirk bullshit, and honestly, she didn't really care. She replied, "I got better."

All For One didn't look satisfied. He shook his head, his movements far twitchier and unsteadier than usual; he looked genuinely shocked by Nana's return, and she was loving every second of it.

More softly, with just the tiniest hint of a waver in his voice, he asked, "How?"

Nana's smile got wider as she leaned back in the chair. "One For All," she answered evenly, enjoying the way All For One flinched ever so slightly, "as it gets stronger, it turns out it becomes capable of some incredible things. Like reviving the dead, it seems."

Seeing the look of disbelief on the half of his face that remained, Nana felt her hate sharpen like a knife, ready to plunge into her enemy's heart. "Oh, that burns, doesn't it? Your greatest mistake, and it turns out to be capable of the one thing you've always wanted most. I bet you're fucking pissed in there, eh?"

All For One, Nana knew, had always wanted to be immortal. It was the final form of his narcissism, the ultimate expression of his ego; the desire to exist forever, to become an eternal plague upon the world, to escape the mundane fears of humanity, like death. He'd nearly managed it, too; his quirks had turned him into the closest thing to a god the world had ever seen. Unkillable, untouchable. But two hundred years was but a blink of an eye in "forever," and for all the depths of his madness and egomania, All For One was, in the end, just a man; he had one fear above all others, and Nana knew it now.

All For One was terrified of death. What was the point of his centuries of existence if it could just… end? To a man whose own existence and satisfaction was all that mattered, the thought of a day when all of it could be gone was truly terrifying.

But he couldn't run from death, not forever. Nana knew this well; she had, after all, some personal experience with dying. And she was going to use that to take sweet, sweet revenge on the man who had killed her.

"Tell me," Nana asked suddenly, interrupting the tense silence, "was it worth it?"

"What do you mean?" All For One asked, clearly fighting to regain control of himself, and of the conversation. He was a master manipulator, a man of unparalleled charisma and self-control; watching him crack under the presence of a resurrected enemy was the most satisfying thing Nana had ever seen. After centuries, he had met his match.

Nana asked, "All those years you had, all that stolen time. What did you do with it?"

All For One only stared at her, so Nana answered her own question, because they both knew the answer. "You caused pain, and fear, and death. You lived only for yourself, and spread evil wherever you went, because that was what you wanted," Nana said matter-of-factly, like a judge reading out a citation.

This, finally, drew a response from All For One. Chuckling softly, he agreed, "You're right. I was free. Isn't that all what we want, that freedom to go where we will, do what we want? I could have touched the stars if I so desired. Isn't that the ultimate dream? The power to live as we see fit?"

Nana stood in the face of an answer that was so logical, and yet so wrong, and replied with the certainty of two lifetimes, "No."

"Excuse me?" All For One asked. He seemed confused, as if he hadn't expected such a fundamental, categorical rejection. How could he? He'd spent all his life being selfish, he simply could not imagine the existence of people who were not.

"No," Nana repeated, her voice ringing with fervor, with unshakeable belief, "No, that's not what people dream of. We don't dream of trampling everyone else underfoot for our own desires. We don't dream of selfishness, of having the power to escape the consequences of our actions. We dream of doing good, of being kind, of leaving the world a little better than we found it...so we can pass it on to our children, and say "I did this for you."

All For One's expression seemed to sharpen, somehow, and he said mildly, "Be careful when speaking of children, my dear, after what you did to your own."

Recognizing the attempt to regain control of the conversation, Nana snapped, "Your words don't hurt anymore, you sad, hollow, pathetic husk. You have nothing. You are nothing. You never were. There is not a single human feeling in that empty void where your soul should be."

"Says the woman who gave up her own son like so much garbage," All For One noted dryly, his voice acidic and searing, like it had always been.

But Nana was no longer vulnerable to his words. "I know what I did," she acknowledged, her voice free and unwavering, "But I still know I have a soul. Because it hurt. It still hurts. That pain is proof that I'm human, that I feel the weight of my mistakes, of the guilt at hurting people I love. But you? You would never feel pain, or guilt, because you don't care."

All For One leaned forwards again, and Nana got the feeling that he believed he'd won. It was a strange sense of deja vu, a reminder of thirty years before, when this man had laughed over her dying body. "Spoken like a true hero,' he said mockingly, "But tell me, if you value pain so much, how did you feel when you learned what your dear grandson became? Truly, he is my proudest achievement."

Nana felt a stab of guilt, but it was phantom pain; she no longer fell apart thinking of Shigaraki. She'd come to terms with it. "Is that what you call it?" she replied in the same mocking tone, "It hurt at first, I'll admit. But now...now I see that it doesn't matter."

All For One snorted, but Nana could read the shock and confusion in his body language. Hell, she was pretty sure he still hadn't even processed who he was talking to, and was falling back on insults to try and cope with her appearance. He crowed, "What is this lunacy? Of course it matters! I corrupted the last part of your legacy! Your contribution to this world is pain and death on an unimaginable scale!"

Suddenly, Nana stood up. The chair rocked back and forth as blood roared through her ears. In that moment, she understood. She had for a long time, but now the words came to her at last; for the first time, she saw just how small All For One was.

"Oh, you poor, stupid fool," Nana whispered, a small smile creeping over her face.

All For One's laughter stopped, and he stared at her in shock. Perhaps he wasn't used to being dismissed like that. "Excuse me?" he asked, all bravado and mockery vanishing for just one second from his voice.

Standing proudly, eyes full of fire, Nana told him, "My legacy to this world is not my descendants; it never was. A legacy isn't just those who carry your blood. It's the people who carry your ideas, your beliefs, who fight the battles you fought."

"The battles you couldn't win, you mean," All For One retorted. It was a dig, but a desperate one; he was slipping further, and he knew it.

Nana countered, "No, I don't. Some battles aren't the kind you win. They're the kind you fight over and over again, in a thousand different places, for all of time, because the alternative...the alternative is you."

Her finger pressed against the glass, aimed unflinchingly at All For One's heart. In that moment, she wasn't Nana Shimura; she was a hero, seeing her enemy.

"And is that so bad?" All For One asked softly, dangerously, "There are many evils in this world, my dear. Am I the worst of them?"

"No," Nana admitted, her voice nearly catching, "There are evils everywhere, from the kind the strong inflict on the weak...to the ones you inflict on the people who love you. But you are another kind of evil, the kind that heroes exist to fight."

"But why fight it, when you can never win?" All For One asked, utterly confident, certain of his own strength, of his own godhood.

"You still don't understand, do you?" Nana asked, like a teacher giving a lesson, "By fighting, we do win. Every day, every hour we keep you and your kind at bay, is a day when the good in people is kept safe, where children sleep soundly and safely at night."

"Until you die, and there is nothing protecting them," All For One said. He packed greater and greater malice into the single sentence, until it was a promise, a promise to burn everything and everyone Nana had ever tried to protect.

But he had already done that, and failed. Nana wasn't afraid of him anymore. She declared, "There will always be someone protecting them. Just as there will always be evil, there will always be heroes."

Nana's arms fell back down, and she stared down at the crippled remnant of her enemy. In a voice that rang with power and truth, she told him, "When I set down the torch, another will be there to pick it back up. When I fall, ten more replace me. Do you understand now, monster? You. Cannot. Win. You will never win."

"And yet, I killed you. It seems to me like I won that encounter, eh?" All For One replied. A weak rebuttal, and they both knew it; he had nothing, no evidence that could counter the living proof of Nana's words, the proof that lived all around them in the world her successor had built.

"And I came back, didn't I?" Nana snorted, hands on her hips, "But even if I hadn't…you didn't kill me. Not in a way that mattered."

If All For One still had eyes, he would have blinked. "What nonsense is this?" he asked, hands gripping the armrests of the chair he would spend the rest of his life in.

"A legacy isn't just what physical things you pass down," Nana said, "It's the ideas you give to the next generation. It's what you stood for in your life….and what's left of you after you die."

Nana had begun to pace as she spoke, but now she came to a stop directly in front of her enemy. Softly, dangerously, she asked, "What will be left of you, All For One?"

"I…" All For One began, taken aback by the question. For a man who had never conceived of anything other than himself, it was an impossible question. To All For One, he was all that mattered; who cared what would be left of him when he wouldn't be there to feel or see it?

"Nothing, that's what," Nana said, her voice soaring, crescendoing as she spoke the truest words she'd ever known, "You lived for yourself, and only yourself; you have nothing to give, no legacy to speak of. All those years spent chasing immortality, and you never understood that ideas can live forever, and men cannot. But me? My legacy includes the greatest heroes, the greatest men, to stand atop the world in generations; they will be remembered long after you and me and this very prison itself have crumbled into dust. Together, they have inspired millions of people, thousands of heroes, who inspire more people themselves, on and on forever. And some day, the memories of my successors will inspire someone even greater, who will rise above even them and become a new beacon to generations after them, a thousand thousand ripples of love and light and strength passing through the world, from a single gesture I made more than thirty years ago."

Nana's voice fell again, getting softer, quieter, until the world seemed to have shrunk back down from the grand infinity her words had conjured, all the way to the here and now, to two enemies, two views of the world, to a single question.

"Tell me something, All For One: what quirk do you have that can change the world with a single act of kindness?"

The greatest villain the world had ever seen could not answer. He had nothing to say, no rebuttal; there was none he could ever find. In that moment, Nana knew, All For One had lost, and lost forever.

Maybe he had done that the moment he tried to cheat death, the one thing that even he could never do.

Nana slowly let her shoulders slump again, though she didn't sit back down; in the corner of her eye, she saw the timer on the wall, counting down her twenty minutes. Five minutes by now, actually. It was time to end this.

All For One's head rose again as Nana began, "I'm sure you'd like to know how I came back from the dead."

He didn't respond, but Nana didn't really care. She drifted closer to the glass, until she was nearly up against it.

"Luckily," she told him, "I brought some friends to…explain the process. They've been dying to meet you."

That made All For One's head jerk sharply towards her, towards the vicious, anticipatory grin that grew and grew on Nana's face. That was good; it meant he watched as she closed her eyes, purple lightning crackling over her skin, and breathed out slowly. As if from nowhere, smoky shapes began to swirl into existence inside All For One's cell. They emerged from the walls, forming into arms and legs and bodies and faces; soon, five ghosts encircled the immortal villain. Suzuki, Hana, Kenji, Daigoro, Fuji. They grinned eagerly, relishing the shock and disbelief and dawning horror on All For One's face as much as Nana did.

And then, a sixth coalesced, right in front of All For One. And the Devil King gasped in fear at the impossible sight in front of him.

The First stared at the ancient, barely-living form of his long-lost brother, and smiled. There was not a drop of humor in it.

"Hello, brother," he said good naturedly, "it's been quite a while, hasn't it?"

All For One had no eyes, no tear ducts, but there were suppressed sobs in his trembling voice as he said, "B-brother? What...what is this? How are you here? "

The First, his translucent feet now touching the floor, stepped closer, looming over his brother. There was victory burning in his eyes as he told the man he had died trying to stop, "These are consequences for your actions. I told you that they'd find you eventually. As for how I'm here…I'm fulfilling a promise I made to you, of course. Don't you remember when I told you that I'd never forget what you'd done? Well, I haven't. And neither have any of the others."

Trembling, All For One turned his head to see the other wielders approaching, too. Each of them was smiling; not one of those smiles reached their eyes.

"Now this is some poetic justice," Daigoro said as he stepped up and laid a hand on All For One's shoulder, "all that killing you did, all the shit you got away with while trying to live forever…and in the end, death still comes. But not yet. Not for a long time yet."

"Indeed," Kenji agreed, beaming hungrily, like a wolf stalking helpless prey, "we aren't going to kill you. We're going to let you rot, you bastard. You'll watch the world forget you ever existed, and it will be beautiful."

All For One was trembling now, his strained facade of control cracking entirely. His voice cracking, he shouted, "Get...get away from me!"

He writhed in his restraints, making the turrets beep and suddenly swivel towards him; All For One froze instantly, breathing heavily. His power was gone, both over quirks and over others. Now, he was a scared bully, finding out that all his strength was nothing compared to another's. He couldn't even move without risking death…and now that his confidence was shattered, the fear took over.

As the past wielders crowded in, taunting the man who had killed them, relishing his terror as he was confronted with the one enemy he could never defeat, All For One's eyes landed on Nana, who was watching the whole scene with an unreadable expression. When she noticed the look, she said sweetly, "Aww, look who's weak now. Strapped to a chair and haunted by ghosts. Looks like somebody's slipping."

All For One, immortal villain, devil king, lord of the underworld for more than two centuries, Demon of Kamino Ward, looked at Nana and whispered, "Please."

For a single, timeless moment, Nana studied him. Stripped of all strength and pretenses, unable to leave a single chair for fear of death, All For One was a pitiful sight. A half-dead prisoner, surrounded by ghosts, helpless, pathetic. It was the sweetest sight Nana could possibly imagine.

The timer went off, and Nana turned to leave. Just before she did, she smiled brutally, her eyes dancing with joy.

She told him, "Burn in hell, All For One."

And then she strode out the door, never looking back once as screams filled the air.

After two hundred years, All For One was defeated, once and for all.

Ten minutes later, Nana walked out the front doors of Tartarus with an enormous smile on her face and a weight off her chest. She finally had closure. She could finally look towards the future.

She was so happy, she almost walked into her boyfriend without realizing. Only when Izuku's strong arms suddenly wrapped around her did Nana come to her senses.

"Hey there, babe," she whispered, though the sounds were lost in the crushing hug. Nana let herself get lost in the warmth for a while, remembering long days spent in those arms. She shivered in excitement at the reminder that she still had an entire lifetime to enjoy Izuku's hugs.

When Izuku finally released her, the first thing he asked her was, "So…is it over?"

Nana nodded. "It's over," she confirmed.

Izuku smiled widely, and the relief filled both their hearts. "I'm glad," he said, "so…what next?"

At that moment, Nana became aware of a strange, unearthly light filling the sky. Night had fallen while she was in Tartarus, and this far from any major city, the sky was so full of stars it seemed impossible, fake even; she watched the Milky Way shimmer in the sky, unimaginably distant stars seeming to dance, just for her.

But that wasn't what drew Nana's eye. No, that was the beautiful ribbons of blue and green that twisted and shimmered in the air. Nana gasped, drawing Izuku's eyes upwards, too, to the auroras.

"How?" he gasped, "they almost never show up this far south!"

Nana just laughed, a light, free sound. She slipped from Izuku's arms with ease, and was ten feet into the sky before she was even aware she had used her quirk.

She froze, though, when Izuku shouted from below, "Hey, Nana, where are you going?"

Nana couldn't stop the joy and laughter from seeping through into her voice as she floated lower, closer to the ground. She said, "Izuku, look at it! It's beautiful!"

Izuku craned his neck skywards, then came back down to look back at her. "It is," he agreed softly, his eyes shimmering as brightly as the stars. Nana wanted to drop back down and kiss him silly at that moment, he looked so perfect.

Then, she remembered a question, and a promise.

She grabbed Izuku's arm, making him tilt his head questioningly at her.

"If I remember correctly," she said lightly, "I made you a promise once, about auroras."

Izuku gaped at her. "Are you saying-" he began, his expression somewhere between joy and nervousness.

Nana nodded. "I think it's time to make good on that promise. Come, fly with me, Izuku," she offered, holding her hand out as she floated above the ground, long white cape fluttering in the nighttime breeze.

Izuku studied her hand for a second. "Why does it feel like things always end up like this?" he asked, "you, leading me to places I never imagined going…and me, going there because it's with you."

"I don't know," Nana admitted, her smile never changing, "but I don't need to. All I need to know is that I love you, and you love me…and there's lights dancing in the sky, waiting for us to join them."

Izuku stared at her, and Nana could see, for just a second, the Milky Way reflected in his eyes; the shine was dwarfed by the love in that gaze, the love for her.

Izuku slowly lifted off the ground himself, coming nearly even with her. He took her hand, lacing their fingers together. "Then by all means," he murmured softly, "show me what it's like up there, at the edge of the sky."

Nana smiled. "I love you," she said, simply, honestly.

Izuku returned the expression, and whispered, "I love you too."

And then they were flying, up and up and up into the stratosphere, disappearing from view, weaving along endless streamers of beautiful light, as the stars watched them dance.

It was the perfect ending, and the perfect beginning.