Of Course Not. They're Perfect.

(Alternate Title: The Long Term effects of toxic positivity.)

xXx

'Heroism' and 'pain' weren't synonymous, but there was so much overlap they may as well be. At least, that's how it felt to Toshinori.

Some days, he really hated his younger self for wanting to do this. Some days, he thought back and wondered what he would have been if he'd never received One for All. Oh, they were few and far between, and usually he'd save someone and they'd beam up at him with such a grateful smile that he'd realize it was all worth it. That had happened hundreds of times since he'd started his career in America all those years ago.

So he didn't have those days often.

But they happened.

Nana had told him that he'd have those days, to not be ashamed of them, because sometimes the negativity piled up. Sometimes, it just became too much and that wasn't something he could avoid. But he wondered how she could tell him that. He couldn't help but be ashamed because heroes – especially the number one hero – couldn't have bad days. Bad days meant he didn't put his all in. Bad days meant people's died. So he hated those days because he had to put in so much extra effort just to be enough. That was part of why he'd created the persona of the hero with the unshakable smile. People couldn't know he had bad days, and so he developed the philosophy of faking it when he had to.

And for a while, it had worked. It had almost become his personality – the bright smile and the constant positivity.

He didn't truly hate that smile until after his fight with All for One. Until he lost his stomach and half his lung. Until he'd almost lost his heart (that's what the villain had been aiming for, after all).

Until he'd had to drastically change his diet (and that hadn't gone well because he just didn't remember some days, because he was doing his job). Until he'd begun to cough up blood because the way his lung had been damaged meant that whenever he breathed too hard or too fast, it would tear the wound open again. So whenever he found himself surprised or horrified, he literally tore his own chest apart, just by breathing.

But he didn't give up heroism because his conscience couldn't take it. Even after Mirai practically begged him, he just… couldn't do it. Imagining the people who would die because he hadn't been there would weigh on him and…

Maybe Chiyo was right and he needed therapy… but with what time? (And there was still the stigma, even if it was getting better, but he just didn't have the energy to deal with that right now, and wasn't sure he ever would. Besides, who could he even trust, therapist or not?)

At first, bad days didn't happen often. He was just thankful he still could use One for All. But then Mirai left, and he didn't really have anyone to talk to. Naomasa had helped, and he was thankful for everything the police officer did, but… no one could replace Mirai, just like no one could replace Nana.

So he'd had more bad days, but he'd managed to get through them.

But he knew they would increase. Some days he woke up and just wished he could lie in bed and deal with the pain, not force himself to work through it. Some days, the agony spiked – for hours on end – and he had to force himself to not cry. Some days, the never-ending throb that so often felt like a knife digging into his gut again and again and again rubbed on his last nerve.

And some days, it was all he could do to not utterly break…

But he couldn't, because if he broke, Japan broke – and a good portion of the world too.

He wished he wasn't a damaged Pillar. It had been worth it to take out All for One, but some days…

Toshinori wasn't stupid, though. Socially inept, perhaps, but not stupid. He'd had decent grades in school, and he wouldn't have become the number one hero if he didn't have a brain behind those muscles. He wouldn't have found All for One if he hadn't been able to do his job as a detective. Admittedly, Mirai had done most of the research, and Gran had done his fair share of the work too, but despite what many people assumed, Toshinori had a brain.

He also had autism.*

Barely on the spectrum, sure, but it was there. And his particular case meant that dealing with people without preparing first was… difficult. Extremely difficult. Later, he could look back and think of a dozen things he could have said or done better in any given situation – fortunately not usually in villain confrontations (because he'd prepared for those, so hard), but in personal situations. It was just another reason to keep those interactions to a minimum and show the rest of the world who he was through the lens of All Might. He knew how to act as All Might. Sure, some of it was pretty fake, but if it helped someone or inspired people, then he could deal with that.

But when that lens disappeared…

He knew there were some connections he didn't make. He knew there were some connotations he didn't pick up. But he'd gotten so much better, and some days… he just didn't have the mental bandwidth to deal with it.

It was on one of those days that he almost made the worst mistake of his life.

He'd just come off patrol, and was fighting a particularly nasty spike of pain due to a lucky hit from a villain. All he wanted was to get his groceries and go home and take a long, hot soak. He wished he could take some pain medication, but one had to have a stomach for that to do more than take off the edge, so he'd just have to power through it.

Like always.

It was then that he realized that today was a bad day, and he sighed.

It didn't help that in a year, he'd be diving head-first into a brand new job where children would be depending on him to not completely screw them up and it wasn't something he'd prepared for – wasn't something he thought anyone could really prepare for, and that was weighing on his mind, amping up his anxiety (which normally wasn't a problem, but he also normally didn't have to deal with starting from the bottom and trying to find all his pitfalls and prepare for them all over again).

Then he saw a villain made of sludge and mentally sighed before pushing any negative thoughts aside, glancing around and realizing no one was looking, so he bulked up and the chase began.

It led him all over the neighborhood. Unusual for him, but the slime villain was surprisingly agile.

Then he went into the sewer and Toshinori wanted to groan. He couldn't because he was in his hero persona, but he wanted to.

Looked like that bath would go from being a luxury to a necessity.

Yay.

His side twinged.

He began to wonder why he'd done this in the first place again.

Yeah, definitely a bad day.

But, like he did every other time, he pushed through it and chased the villain into the sewer.

Which very quickly ate up what little time he had left in this form.

And worse, he found the villain accosting a child. The boy was scrabbling weakly at the slime pouring inside his mouth and…

Toshinori saw red.

Which was never a good thing.

That didn't happen on good days.

He demolished the villain, but in the process may have hurt the child, which tore at his guilt… but fortunately, the kid was still breathing and he listened to make sure there wasn't anything in the boy's lungs. There wasn't, but it would only occur to him much later that he'd forgotten to actually call an ambulance because he was so focused on the boy living, and then capturing the villain, and then his smoking body because he was almost out of time… and he really should have just reverted back and helped the boy then, but again, he didn't think about it – this was why he hated bad days.

He decided to sign the somewhat damaged notebook that had fallen out of the boy's backpack to try and make up for everything (it couldn't, but it was a start, he hoped), went about scooping the villain up in some capture devices David had made for him, that looked utterly harmless – like soda bottles, but the top unscrewed… it was all he had on him at the moment, okay?

Then the boy woke and acted fine, and so Toshinori went to take off, shoved the villain in his pockets (later something he highly regretted later) and jumped.

The kid latched onto him.

Toshinori panicked.

They landed.

The boy broke down, told him he was quirkless and asked if he could be a hero just as Toshinori's time ran out.

He deflated. His side ached. He'd torn the wound open again, he knew. On top of it already hurting more than normal.

And everything just piled up.

So he did something incredibly stupid. He told the kid about his fight with All for One, showed him the wound in his side and everything it did to him,

He was just so tired.

He looked at the kid and saw himself.

He looked at the kid and saw someone who would just kill themselves trying to help the world.

And maybe he wouldn't have said it if he wasn't this close to regretting taking Nana's offer, but he didn't see the desperation in the kid's eyes. Didn't see the hope dwindle and die. It didn't even occur to him because he was done. Just done. (Even though he knew that wasn't the kid's fault.)

Toshinori told the kid no. That he couldn't be a hero. Even tried to come up with a compromise, but…

If he hadn't been so used to separating Toshinori and All Might, he may have realized that the kid didn't see Toshinori telling him that at all. He saw All Might – his hero… and that would have put it in a completely different light. If his side hadn't been utterly aching to a point of almost dragging tears out of him, if he hadn't been so sick and tired of being sick and tired…

But only later would he realize that was what Nana had been warning him against. Toshinori was human. He had bad days. He gave bad advice. He would sometimes not have the mental capacity to see long-term consequences, no matter how used he was to it.

He left the kid on the roof only to realize his reason for leaving – getting the villain to the police – had vanished; had likely fallen out somewhere along the way and he hadn't noticed because of the kid.

Toshinori seriously considered giving up on heroism right then and there. He'd taken out All for One, and as much as he loved his job (most days), hadn't he earned a rest?

Of course, he never would give it up, but for one blissful moment, he imagined what it would be like to not have to wake up tomorrow and know he had to get up – that people were depending on him. Of just worrying about himself…

But then he shook the thought away, gathered what stamina he had left, and began to search for the bottles of sludge, hoping he could find it before the villain figured out how to escape.

Sometimes, he had nightmares about what happened next.

What if, disheartened, that bright, intelligent boy had just gone home? Or somewhere else? Would the kid have gone to an average high-school? Become an average office worker? Somehow, Toshinori just can't see it. Would he have made it to high school at all? (He absolutely hated thinking about that one, as valid as he found it later to be.) Would he have become a villain? Joined the League of Villains? Because he certainly would have made a terrifying villain.

But he didn't.

He gave the world one final chance. In doing so, he gave Toshinori one final chance and turned that day from a bad to good.

Or at least far better.

But it just drove the point home.

Toshinori hated that he had bad days… because heroes can't have bad days.

Heroes can't be human.

And maybe… that was part of the problem.

xXx

AN: *So many things Toshinori does I would do in a similar situation, simply because of how my brain works. I have Autism. Fight me.

I also LOVE the idea of someone with Autism overcoming so many issues and stigmas (on TOP of his previous quirklessness) and becoming a hero anyway. The number one hero! Although I don't think he went about it the right way…

It bugs me that so many people in the fandom seem to judge Toshinori so harshly. Does the guy have problems? Absolutely. But he's also one of the most realistic characters BECAUSE he has problems. And I don't like the idea of him being held to a high standard he isn't prepared for.

Worse, he doesn't have much of a support system. Of the people who knew him and his secrets, he had 1. Mirai, a fan boy who put him on a pedestal, even after he left and didn't talk to Toshinori (although some of that does fall on Toshinori, so there is that). 2. Sorahiko… who beat him up as a teenager (let's be real, he really isn't the healthiest person to take teaching from). 3. Nezdu. 'Nuff said. 4. Tsukatchi, who was busy with his own job and life almost completely separate from All Might and 5. Recovery Girl who is more or less done with everyone for pretty good reason. Does this take all blame off of Toshinori? Absolutely not. The guy needs to address his problems – badly, and with professional help – but people taking that one day and making it his entire personality…

Just, no.

Okay, glad that's out of my system. Going back to writing my other stories now.