Disclaimer: I do not own Boku No Hero Academia or any of Horikoshi's original characters, nor do I make any profit off of my writing.
The funeral was a quiet affair. Not in the sense that no noise was made, that couldn't be farther from the truth. Oddly enough, Inko Midoriya was the only one silent as the casket was lowered into the ground, she was the only one whose eyes remained dry throughout the entire service.
It'd been just over a week since the raid on the Yakuza base.
Over a week since her son died.
Over a week since he sacrificed everything to save that child.
She wanted to be proud of him, to be happy that he was able to be a hero in the end, just like he always wanted.
She couldn't.
Did that make her a bad mother? That she resented the one thing that made him happy? Would it have been better if she'd made sure he'd never been a hero? Would she trade his life for that girl's?
Izuku would hate her for thinking it, but there were other heroes in that base. They could have saved her on their own and he could still be alive. So, yes. She would accept the consequences that would come with preventing him from being a hero if it meant he lived.
It had been over a week since he sacrificed himself for Eri and it had been a week since she was brought into the fold about what all had been going on with her child.
She never thought she could hate people; it just wasn't something she found herself doing. Izuku got them from her. She got close to pure, unadulterated hatred whenever her son would come from school with a new scrape or bruise. Each of the days he came home just a little bit quieter she grew a little closer.
But then she would remember the words she told him when he was four and looking for support and she couldn't. Not when she would say the same thing all over again and repeat it day after day if it meant he was still there with her.
She knew his classmates were harsh with their words and their fists. She knew they targeted him more often than not, she tried to help, she wanted to help, but the school would do nothing about it, not in any way that would actually last. They'd pretend for a bit, but then it would come back with a vengeance.
She wanted to move far, far away from that school district, but there was a reason they went there and why it was so awful. They just didn't have that kind of money, not with Hisashi running off to America.
It wasn't as bad as it sounds, most of the time her little boy would have gotten hurt protecting others, at least in the early years. After a while, that treatment shifted to him, and he bore the weight of his peer's pain on his shoulders so they wouldn't have to.
Maybe if she had done something sooner, he wouldn't have thought his life was a worthy trade for another.
Was it her fault?
Inko winced ever so slightly as the silver-haired child let out another soft sob. She was incredibly good at crying quietly, a remnant of her time with those villains, she supposed. Still, Inko wished she could just be a little bit quieter.
The mother didn't even know if she believed what she'd been told. She didn't even know if she wanted to believe it either.
It made sense, all of the points in the story told to her add up.
Her son meets All Might.
All Might offers him a quirk so he can be a hero.
He accepts without hesitation.
He lives.
He smiles.
He dies.
It was believable. She knew just how unrealistic the 'late bloomer' story had been, especially when it isn't anything like her or Hisashi's. Sure, force activation was a thing, but that was typically associated with trauma and unless he was hiding something from her that's unlikely.
Who's she kidding? He's been hiding stuff from her since he understood he could.
She's not sure which part she's angrier about.
The fact that All Might gave her son the means he needed to die.
Or.
The fact that her son is now theoretically a prisoner to a quirk, forced to find tirelessly through the bodies of his successors to finally defeat a man who's lived since the dawn of quirks themselves.
A supervillain.
Her son accepted a quirk with a supervillain to accompany it without ever knowing. Even if he wasn't killed by this 'All for One' it doesn't change the fact that he could've been.
He was just a kid.
He was only a boy. A child. Fifteen years old.
When she was fifteen, she was worried about whether or not her parents would loan her the yen she needed to buy some ice cream or go to the movies, not whether or not a century-old man would come to tears his insides out like he did his predecessor.
So, no. She did not know which she was angrier about.
What she did know was that she was furious.
Her son died before he was ever given the chance to live and now, he's apparently locked away, unable to find the peace he deserves after such a hard life.
Then again, she still doesn't know if she believes the girl's story. It's not like the silver-haired child had managed to speak to Izuku since that first time.
Then again, she hadn't used either of her quirks since then either. She locked herself away in her room, only coming out if Aizawa was by her side and ready to erase her quirk at a moment's notice. She didn't let him touch her, she didn't let anybody touch her, but sometimes she left.
Only sometimes.
Most of the time she stayed in her room.
This funeral was actually the first time she'd left for the last several days, preferring to eat alone, behind locked doors. Nobody felt up to pressuring her to come out.
All of that led up to this moment, where Inko stared blankly at the hole her son was being lowered into beside her parents. Where classmates sobbed and cried and hiccupped and whimpered and bawled and she just couldn't take it.
Was it so bad for her to want to just go home and never see any of these people anymore? They were her son's first friends, or the first ones that mattered in any sense of the word, but they were also reminders.
They were exactly what her son wanted to be, what he was.
Heroes in training.
On the outskirts of the circle, behind the class of hero students, stood the parents who were trying their best to not show how much they wanted to be anywhere else. Inko was positive a few of those students would be withdrawn from the school when this was all said and done. She doesn't blame them; she never should have listened to All Might and his groveling. She should have taken her poor Izuku out while she could've.
Mitsuki stood to her left, and Masura to Mitsuki's. The hand was a constant reminder to pull herself back to reality as the normally loud woman silently gripped her hand. She couldn't bring herself to look to the right, not to where Eri was still sniveling and Aizawa was barely present and All Might wasn't smiling.
She knew they were hurting, but she just– she just couldn't. She couldn't look at them. Not when it was their fault.
She just wanted to be home.
Katsuki had the right idea, he didn't even come.
She would never have skipped her son's funeral, not in a million years or a million lifetimes. She would come over and over and over again.
She just wished she never had to.
She buried her parents and as harsh as it sounds and as much pain as it would bring her little darling Izuku, she wished he could have buried her.
They'd gone through the entire wake and funeral perfectly. They followed every rule and custom of post-quirk Japan and did everything to the letter. Everything was done right.
And yet it all felt so wrong.
Holding that sweet Uraraka girl's bandaged hands as the girl collapsed in on herself, that wasn't right.
Watching as a boy who was finally opening up shut down once again because her son died after he was the only one to help, to reach out, that wasn't right.
Watching those two little children guide their green-haired sister around as she walked listlessly behind them, that wasn't right.
None of it was right.
What happened to 'I'm going to be the world's greatest hero' Izuku? Had that just been a lie too?
She didn't know and she doubted she ever would.
For now, she would just be happy to go home and live out the rest of her life without ever seeing another one of these people. So, when the service ended, Inko silently turned and walked away. She didn't acknowledge any of the gazes that followed her as she disappeared down the street and walked home.
Especially not the poor child's ruby eyes, nor the pair of emerald orbs that lurked just behind them, watching sadly as everybody he cared for collapsed in on themselves.
Eri didn't know why she thought anything different would happen. Deku's mom looked just like him, she looked like her arms would've been just as kind, but she should have known that it was Deku and Deku alone who was that way. His mom may be just as kind, but his mom understood what Deku didn't.
Eri was cursed and Eri was broken. You don't pick up broken glass and hug it close like it were special. That would do nothing other than get you cut, and then you would both be broken. Inko understood that in a way her hero never could, especially not when he already picked her up and her glass was just a little too sharp for him.
So, she understood why his mom didn't talk to her, didn't look at her, didn't hold her. She got it.
That didn't mean it didn't hurt to see eyes so similar to her heroes and yet so different.
She hadn't spoken to Deku since the day he died, was that vision even real? Yagi-san had said as much, but could she trust him?
The answer was no, no matter how much she wanted to believe Deku wasn't gone, that he lived with her, she just couldn't. He hadn't come back, not when she cried for so long she collapsed from exhaustion, not even when she begged through her tears.
He was a hero, her hero. He would have come when she called if he could have.
Which means he couldn't have.
Which means he was gone.
Which means he was never there. No matter what Yagi-san said.
She– she couldn't accept that.
Her curse was bad, but Deku had said it was good. It turned those trees forward and back, they went all of the way out of existence and then came back. They were past dead before, they were dead and gone, never to return.
Yet they did.
She brought them back.
Could she do the same with Deku? Could she bring him back? Could she use her curse just to do one good thing? Could she?
Could she?
Her rubellite eyes swept away from Inko's back to the pit in front of her. Where the big brown box was.
They had said Deku was in there, hadn't they?
If she could just–
Her breath caught as a shovel full of dirt was tossed on top of the casket, her hands tightening on her dress as she watched.
Stop! Why are they–
Another clump of soil landed over the hollow case with a thump and Eri flinched at the sound. Tears were already beginning to form in her eyes as she watched.
They needed to stop, they couldn't just bury him! She could still help, there was still hope! She could bring him back!
Another shovel sunk into the mound behind the pit, the silver head of the tool disappearing amongst the different shades of brown. There was a soft shink as it went in, similar to that of a blade sinking into flesh and all Eri could think of was how they were killing him. They were killing Deku.
".. make them stop.. "
She grit her teeth even as she sniggled and sobbed, her breath becoming more and more ragged with each and every thump of dirt in the hole.
".. please.. make them stop.. "
Aizawa turned his head to the side lethargically to look at her, not fully registering her words. That had been happening more and more lately as he was thrust back and forth between his own high school career and now.
Back and forth between the people he failed to save.
Oboro and Izuku.
Both too good for the world.
Both dead.
Eri hiccupped again and her hands clenched even tighter as her hoarse cries grew louder.
".. make them stop!"
Aizawa blinked down at her again before following her gaze to the two men shoveling.
What is she–
"Stop, stop stop! He's not gone! I can– I can bring him back! I– I'll be good and I– I– I can use my c- curse to make him better! I can do it! Aizawa make them s- stop! Bring him back out! I can– I can help!"
He wouldn't listen. He never did, too lost in his own mind to hear her properly, not like he would have had his problem child lived. Instead, he'd stare at her with red eyes and floating hair before plucking her from her seat and carrying her away even as she pounded into his chest and flailed her legs. He'd ignore her choked words and her sobs because there was no way of fixing this.
Eri tried and tried to get back to the boy in the grave, to reach him before he was gone forever, sealed beneath layers of earth. She didn't know why, but she felt that was what would set it in stone. Not being there as the last of his life slipped away, not her talk in the clouds, not the days leading up to this. It was that dirt. That dirt was going to seal away her chances of ever seeing him again. She couldn't reach out in her dreams, not like she had before. She had tried, she had tried so damn hard. She tried and tried and tried and nothing. No clouds. No whispers. No hugs.
She didn't deserve those hugs, those warm embraces, she knew that, but she wanted to be selfish, just this once. She wanted to be held by the boy again.
Nobody was quite like he was, maybe in a different world they would have. Maybe Mirio would have been present enough to push past his own misery to help her, but with the deaths of Sir Nighteye and Deku on his mind, it just wasn't possible. He couldn't muster the smile like he wished he could. It just– he couldn't.
In a different world, it would have taken a lot of hard work, but Eri would have smiled again and felt happy amongst her found family at Yueei. Aizawa would have been like her dad with Lemillion and Deku like her brothers. It wasn't perfect, but it worked. In a perfect world, her real dad would have been alive and her mother never would have given her away to the bad men.
This wasn't that world.
This world seemed like the worst possible option. That's why she needed to help Deku, to bring him back because if anybody could fix this world it would be him. She tried to reach out to him, to pull at whatever power lurked just beneath the surface of her skin to get to him. She'd affected things without touching them before, right after– after– she'd done it before. She could do it again.
She pulled and pulled and pulled and an unfamiliar power responded for an instant before being swept away in a wave of emptiness leaving her stomach in knots. Her eyes shifted upward slowly, tears beading along the rims as she met Aizawa's gaze.
He said nothing as he stared down at her with his quirk active, shutting down any chance she ever had at bringing him back.
That was the last thing she saw before she slipped into unconsciousness, her exhaustion finally catching up to her and sweeping her mind away like a river sweeps away foam.
"Hello, Eri."
She sucked in a breath and whirled around and for the first time in months, she found herself staring down those emerald eyes once again. Those green lights meant so many different things to Eri. To her, it was like an unachievable dream, one she could never, ever hope to reach. They were so kind and so far. She couldn't make it to them, not completely, no matter how much she wanted to, no matter how much she tried.
"I'm sorry I couldn't speak with you sooner, I wished I could have."
He didn't hate her? He didn't spurn her?
That much was obvious, he was here, he'd come back. (Just like he had said he would.) She didn't know why she doubted it, it was Deku. No matter how much she didn't deserve it, he would ignore her warnings and come for her.
His voice was tight as he spoke like he was holding in so many emotions that he just wanted to let out. She couldn't hear the other voices as she had before, she couldn't really say why that was. The last time she showed up they all seemed to be arguing; about what, she didn't know, but she think she preferred it this way. It was better with just her and Deku.
He continued speaking and Eri listened with rapt attention, she soaked in every word as if it were a lifeline and didn't let a single one miss her ears. He explained a lot of things with that same voice, the one that hid his pain. He said why he couldn't see her sooner, about why she needed to work to ask Aizawa to help her get control of her quirk. Then he apologized for asking something like that.
It didn't matter. Those emerald eyes shined on her and she would do everything they said.
Whenever he said something that scared her, he would pick up on that. The first time it happened the clouds coalesced around her and held her tight, it was a foreign feeling yet all too familiar.
Had she ever been hugged by anybody before him? Had anybody else ever told her everything was going to be okay and that they'd protect her with everything they had?
She didn't think so.
She relished that feeling, she reveled in it.
Eri's hands gripping onto the wisps of greys and purples as they flitted about and held them close to her, imagining them to be the hero's shirt. Her ruby eyes clenched tightly as the pressure increased around her and she let a sob escape her lips.
She needed to be better, she needed to listen to whatever it was Deku was saying to her right now, it could be important. She couldn't disappoint him. What if he threw her out because she was being bad? He wouldn't, he'd never. But she couldn't risk it. But then the ghost of a hand began carding through her hair and she melted further into his shadowing embrace. He wasn't there, not physically, not yet, but it was enough.
They stayed like that for a while longer, ignorant to the worlds around them, both in the clouds One for All and out. Then, when their time came to a close, Deku's eyes would shine from a distance and he'd whisper some parting words to her as she desperately tried to close the distance between her and them.
"I'm proud of you, Eri, so proud. You're so good, just wait a little longer and I'll see you again."
And then, she was gone; sucked back into the world she wanted no part in and away from the only good thing she's ever known.
She'd wake up in her own bed with tears streaming down her cheeks and harsh sobs tearing from her lips. Somewhere deep in her heart of hearts, where the rest of her second quirk was stored, Deku would collapse in on himself once again. He had thought it would be easier, he'd gone over the part where he had failed. He had moved on.
He promised himself as a child to be the world's best hero. He'd said as much to his mom, to Kacchan, to All Might. He'd believed it too. Then, with his quirk, he was going to do it. He was going to be the next number one, the guy everybody looked to and felt safe around. The one who made them smile.
He'd failed.
But maybe not completely.
He thinks– he thinks if he can just help Eri. If he can just help this one girl, this one little, hurting girl, if he can just do that then and only then will he consider himself successful.
He'd promised to be the world's best, but now Eri was everything he cared about. She was his world and he'd be damned if he wasn't the hero she needed right now.
That didn't mean it didn't hurt any less to see his mom shutting down through Eri's eyes.
That didn't mean it didn't hurt every time he saw his teacher's dead eyes.
That didn't mean it didn't hurt to see his friends breaking down and giving up.
It didn't mean he wasn't falling apart. He could pull himself together long enough to be strong for Eri, but it had only been a week. A week since he died, a week since he lost his future. He wanted to stop worrying his mom so much, he just wished he could have found a better way to do so. He wanted to not cower under Kacchan's temper, he just wished there was a different path.
This was his life now and that was okay. He was content to just be there for Eri. He just needed time.
Time and a hug of his own.
He reappeared in the room he typically found the rest of the vestiges in (or at least those that liked to be around the others). Most of them were waiting there for him, already having agreed to stay out of his way as he connected with the tenth. He ignored them.
With lead feet, he stumbled across the room and collapsed onto the couch next to the seventh, curling into her side as she laid an arm protectively around him, shooting a glare at anybody who opened their mouths to question him on progress.
It was there where he let himself grieve for the world he missed.
Eri and Deku spent the next half hour pouring their hearts out in their respective realities, but eventually, they had to pull themselves together, harden their hearts, and push forward. So, they would.
Improvements were slow, almost unbearably so, but they came. It may have been easier if Eri trusted people to help her, but ever since the funeral, she had drifted further and further from those at Yueei.
Still, she was improving.
It helped that she had a teacher in her mind that actually understood how to explain things.
"Good job. You're doing great, Eri."
It didn't feel like she was doing great. It felt like she was doing the opposite of great. Bad. It felt like she was doing bad.
Refusing to give up until the voice in her head gave up too, Eri clenched her eyes and focused.
It was a simple test. A dandelion sat in front of her in a field somewhere on Yueei's campus. There was nobody out there with her, but she didn't mind. Deku kept asking her to reach out and trust somebody to come with her, but she simply couldn't.
They weren't Deku. They weren't. They'd never be Deku.
Maybe, maybe she could have trusted one of Deku's friends, but they were mostly all gone.
Uraraka had unenrolled, Iida had transferred, Todoroki had been pulled out by his father to be trained privately with staff he could trust to protect his son.
There weren't many people Deku told her she could trust explicitly, the only one who had remained on the list was 'Kaachan' but just because Deku trusted him with his life didn't mean he'd do the same with unstable children with dangerous quirks. Really, the primary advantage of Bakugou knowing would be the fact that he already had some knowledge of One for All.
Even then, he hadn't been the same since Izuku's death. Nobody really had.
Izuku wasn't sure if he should be thankful that most of his friends and had gone their separate ways. He didn't have to see them cry anymore, which was good, he hated the thought of people crying over him. That wasn't what he set out to do when he became a hero. He wanted everybody to smile when they saw him, not mourn when they thought of him.
Still, even if he didn't have to see that, he still missed seeing them.
He missed Uraraka's brightness, Iida's.. stiffness, and Todoroki's conspiracies.
He missed them.
He missed his mom too.
And All Might.
And the rest of his classmates in 1-A.
And their rivalry with their sister class.
And Aizawa strangely enough.
He missed Midnight's uncomfortable flirting, and Cementoss's droning about history, and.. well, he didn't miss Ectoplasm's math, but he did miss Ectoplasm! And Present Mic! He can't forget Present Mic.
He missed them all.
He missed feeling too. Not emotionally, he could definitely feel emotions. But the feeling of the wind on his face, the cool yet sticky sensation that settled over their classrooms during the summer, the weird music box songs that echoed down the dormitory's hallways. He was pretty sure that was just Tokoyami trying to freak people out but damnit did he miss it.
He missed life.
And everybody was so close, he could watch it all in real-time through Eri's eyes. He could feel the breeze against her chubby cheeks and the dirt between her fingers and he could see everybody he knew and loved, and he couldn't do anything about it.
Because the quirk was a secret.
Telling them all would only force them to relive the pain of losing him all over again. It wasn't right. It was cruel. No matter how much he may want to reach out, no matter how much he may want to speak with them one last time, he can't. He won't.
And even that wasn't enough, Eri didn't trust anybody. If he asked, he had no doubt that she would suffer through any number of human interactions so he could talk to people, but he wouldn't do that to her. Couldn't do that to her.
She'd been through enough.
So, instead he watched.
Golden hues crept through the blackness of her eyelids, shining through the thin layer of skin as the young girl's quirk activated. He couldn't tell what was happening, he could only sit and watch and hope it was going alright. There had been far too many dandelions rewound out of his existence or turned to nothing but the decomposing mass the future holds for his liking.
He hated when Eri was upset.
It was bad enough that all he could do was whisper sweet nothings in her ears to make her feel better throughout the day, but when she was crying, and he couldn't hold her?
Or even worse, when she cried herself to exhaustion just so she could reach the dreamscape and come jumping into his waiting arms? He hated it.
She'd suffered too much for one girl.
"You're doing good, keep it up."
He was sure if he could see her right now, she'd look ethereal. Golden light flooded from her horn like aurora with golden lightning dancing across her skin. One for All hadn't done much to her quirk (blessedly) past boosting her control over the continuum of time and gifting her the ability to push things into the future. Izuku was thankful for it, without control of her first quirk he feared the consequences to herself and those around her if too much changed.
"I'm so proud of you, Eri. Just hold on for a few more seconds before cutting the river off just like how we talked about. Can you do that for me? Let's try. Three. Two. One. That's it, Eri, you're almost doi – wonderful! You did amazing, Eri!"
The girl slumped tiredly as the last vestiges of her quirk pittered away. "I.. did it?"
"You did it! Do you see that little spindly bud where the dandelion was before? Do you remember how it looked before?"
Eri blinked down at the flower through lidded eyes and nodded sluggishly. ".. was white."
Somewhere in her mindscape, she got the impression her hero was nodding ecstatically. "Right! It was white before, and it had a lot of those little floaty bits that came off in the wind, remember?"
"Mm."
"Well, before the flower looks like that, it's big yellow flower. They don't look quite the same, but they are. You rewound it perfectly, setting it back to just before it bloomed for the first time, do you see those little bits of yellow petals peeking out from the leaves?"
Eri did. There wasn't much to see at first, but if she leaned in close enough, she could just make the little bits of yellow of the flower's petals. She did that? She made it better? That was her?
But.. it was a curse?
Inside her head, Izuku sighed and Eri immediately found herself curling in on herself. She didn't want to upset him! She knows she awful at this, she knows her curse is bad and she's horrible at controlling it and—
"Eri, sweetie, breath for me. Do you remember the exercises?"
She nodded shakily as she blinked through her tears, not even registering when they started to spring to her eyes and drip down her cheeks.
"Let's try them then, okay? Come on, sweetie, in through your nose, slowly. Good. Now old it in your stomach for a few more seconds. Now breath out through your mouth, slowly again. Great work, sweetie, can you do that again?" At her nod, he continued. "Do you need me to walk you through again or no?"
"I– " She choked back a sob and shook her head. "I c- can do it." She had to be able to.
"Of course, sweetie. I'll be right here if you need me."
She knew that. Deku was always there for her. He never complained about it, he never hesitated to answer her calls, he never got angry at her. What did she ever do to deserve a hero like him? A hero that is always there.
In through the nose.
Her curse—quirk—only ever hurt. But.. she just helped that flower, didn't she? She did, right? It was bent, the stem broke so the top couldn't receive the water and the.. the.. nutrients (was that what Deku called them?) from the ground. It was better now. She did that, right?
Out through the mouth.
And– and– she did that with her power. Her power. Not her curse, not what the bad man said. With her power, what Deku called it. Deku. Deku was right, not the bad man.
In through the nose.
She was doing better, wasn't she? She hadn't lost control outside of quirk practice recently, she hadn't lost control when she got scared. She was doing better. Wasn't she?
There was a buzzing at the back of her head that said 'yes.' It said 'yes, you've gotten so much better and we're all so proud of you.' It wasn't just Deku, it was the others he'd described to her but never pressured her to meet.
Out through the mouth.
"Deku?"
"Yes, Eri?"
".. can I meet the others? Can I see my family?"
Somewhere in her head, she could feel Deku smile warmly, a smile filled with pride and love. A smile that said he was here for her unconditionally and nothing would ever change that. "Of course, Eri. Once you get back to your room you can take a nap and meet them."
With one last tired glance toward the flower, Eri nodded to herself with a small smile.
Maybe things weren't perfect. Maybe they were all still grieving in their own ways. Maybe they would keep doing so for years to come.
But things were okay.
Things didn't need to be perfect right away, they didn't. Slowly but surely, life was improving.
And Eri didn't have the support she so desperately needed in the real world.
And Izuku didn't have the strength left in him for one last set of goodbyes.
And nothing was perfect.
But nothing was ever perfect.
Eri knew that first hand. Izuku knew that first hand.
Things weren't meant to be perfect; it wasn't possible. Life sucked and it was hard and too many people suffer too much for no reason at all.
But things were getting better.
They were.
Izuku could feel it in the way the tension left Eri's shoulders when she was behind closed doors. How that primal feat that once encompassed her whole being slowly ebbed, how she was finally able to simply be.
Izuku could see in the way Eri hesitated less and less when he asked her to try her quirk, in how she slowly accepted it as her own power.
Izuku could hear in the way she spoke, in the slightly higher lilt she took on when she was excited. He could sense it in the smallest tugs of her lips when she tried to smile.
Things were getting better.
They were.
And as Eri sluggishly stood up on her tiptoes to close a small hand around the doorknob and spun the cool metal around, as she drew closer to her bed and the door shifted to a close under its own weight, as the one little girl he gave everything to save murmured a tired 'goodnight, papa' he knew things would keep getting better.
Sure, there were a lot of things left unanswered about Eri's future. She needed more help than some quirkless hero hopeful in her head could ever provide. And there was a lot more to worry about: the League, One for All, All for One, but those were things for later. As for as anybody knew, One for All died with Izuku Midoriya, they had no reason to suspect Eri. She was safe now.
And that was enough.
Author Notes:
Bit of a bittersweet ending but what can you really expect from a story like this. Hope you enjoyed it!