A/N: Final chapter drops tomorrow! Until then, have some feels (and some adorable Toga, because apparently she can't appear in a fic without making cookies with Inko)!


The end of December had come once more, and Izuku began his day by walking into the kitchen and pausing in shock at an unusual sight: Himiko was sitting at the table with a plate of cookies, humming happily as she decorated them with icing.

"Izukun!" She brightened up as she saw him enter.

"Afternoon, sweetie," his mother added with a smile over her shoulder. "You're just in time to catch some lunch and help us with these cookies."

"Are we sending some to Grandpa?" He inquired, slowly going to sit down at the table.

"Of course." Inko chuckled with a shake of her head. "He's been asking about when you could call, y'know. It would make his new year."

"I'll have to call then." He nodded, murmuring a thanks as she placed a plate in front of him.

Himiko hugged his arm for a moment before going back to her cookies, humming and swinging her feet. Half of them were cutesy, with swirls and squares of different colors, and the other half were… not .

I'm definitely not giving any of those to Grandpa, he decided with a harsh swallow of his rice. Those designs would give him a heart attack.

"Do you like them?" She asked, the picture of innocence, with a bright smile and a cute flush of her cheeks. "I made one just for you."

She slid a cookie over to him, and to his surprise, this one was rather mild - it had a pretty red heart over a simple lattice pattern of green and white.

Nodding, he gingerly picked up the cookie and responded, "Wow… this is really cute."

"Isn't it?" She giggled, cupping icing-stained fingers over her cheeks. "I worked reeeeally hard to make the heart just perfect!"

"Thanks, Toga." He flashed a quick smile her way before setting the cookie on the edge of the plate.

"She's been such a good helper all morning!" Inko commented. "The rest of the League should be in for dinner around four."

"They're celebrating with us?" Perhaps he shouldn't have sounded so surprised, yet it still leaked into his voice.

"Of course." Glancing back, his mother added, "they're welcome as long as they please."


The air was crisply frigid as the group walked down the street. The clouds, though they hung heavily, seemed bright with cheer, and the winter sun gently broke through.

The group had already split into two, with Inko, Izuku, and Toshinori in front while the League and Hisashi lagged behind.

A few of them were sporting their Christmas gifts already - Himiko was smiling all the way to the shrine in her comfy hat and mittens, and those who had gotten coats were now wearing them. Shuichi hunched his shoulders, engulfing his neck and chin in the scarf Inko had given him. The muted coral of the scarf pleasantly contrasted the black coat.

Things had gotten a bit awkward when Toshinori met them at the shrine; while Inko and Izuku's eyes had brightened, Hisashi's smile became more forced and the group seemed to sense the awkward tension in the air.

Shuichi and Dabi glanced at their leader's uncomfortable expression and then turned back to look at Toshinori. The bright blond hair and shadowed blue eyes looked quite familiar, yet his gaunt appearance… was this truly All Might's real form? This fragile skeleton of a man?

How pitiful, Dabi thought in disdain. This is the man my father is so focused on outperforming? He doesn't look like he could kill a mouse, let alone stay number one for so long.

So this is All Might… It's been so long since I've seen it that I've completely forgotten he looks like this. I almost feel bad for him, Shuichi thought to himself contemplatively, stuffing his hands further into his pockets.

Then their eyes went to Izuku. The boy's face was bright as the sun, smiling up at Toshinori as if he had hung the moon and the stars.

I see it now, they unknowingly thought in tandem. The future of the heroes…

Will crumble to dust. Icy-blue eyes glinted with intent unknown.

Will rest upon his shoulders. Raspberry eyes shifted back to the blond, a familiar feeling settling in his chest.


For once, he had spent time going through his notebooks. Yoichi had given him a small pep talk and, heaving a sigh, he had sat on the floor next to the bookshelf and pulled the first one out. Then the next. Then the next, and the next, and the next.

Before he knew it, all thirteen notebooks were splayed out on the floor around him, Number Thirteen standing out almost remorsefully among them with its ragged appearance.

Flipping through his first, he couldn't help the nostalgic smile at the childish scrawl of red crayon and the stick-figure drawings decorating the page.

Number 2 was more of the same, though the scribbling seemed more intelligible and the drawings were beginning to take the shape of heroes he faintly recognized from his childhood.

It sent a wave of anguish over him to recognize the look and names of heroes that had died, heroes that faded away, heroes that turned to villainy, heroes that retired in the prime of their life due to reasons beyond their control.

One of them, a woman, had retired from heroics after a career-ending injury, leaving her horrifically disfigured. Another, a man, had suffered the loss of his leg. Since his Quirk was considered useless to heroics after the amputation, he had quietly been relegated to a desk job at his agency.

How many of them had been victims of his father? How many the victims of villains under his control? How many… had been fodder for his goals?

That question felt hard to swallow, even now.

Sighing quietly, he closed Number Twelve and turned to Thirteen. The water-damaged, singed book had been a source of grief since that day, and even now a heavy weight made itself known in his chest as he slowly flicked through the pages.

Ink had run, graphite had faded, pages clung to one another, yet he still held a certain fondness for it, the page of All Might's signature miraculously untouched by time and the elements. The sight of the familiar scrawl made him crack a smile.

Pressing a thumb against the page and tracing the ink, he frowned to himself. How might his life have changed had he not thought to take that alternate route home that afternoon? If he hadn't clung to All Might, desperate to hear honeyed words instead of the harsh reality that dictated his fate? If he hadn't moved to save Bakugo from the slime villain, leaving him to die scared and alone, a spectacle among civilians, the one heroes refused to touch?

Would he still have this dream? Or might he have folded to his father's whims, in the end?

Closing the book, he hummed to himself. While it was true that he and Tomura were more alike than they might have realized (or wanted), he couldn't help but hesitate to compare them both. Tomura had been a source of nightmares for almost as long as he'd been a student - yet he still felt strings of yearning drawing him nearer, a compulsion that he could not have explained a month ago - yet now, he felt he could.

Perhaps now that they were so much closer than before, he could finally bridge the gap and discover what it was that bound them - not only by blood, but by something more innate.