Trtt

by Nexus Sannin

T

4. Mirko

Summary

Deconstruct, Reconstruct

by ColdLuigi

When Rumi wakes up after the battle with the High-Ends, it's to missing limbs, a career cut short, and no way out. She knows there's no going back, that she can never be who she was. At least, until she meets a quirkless (and stupidly hot) doctor named Izuku Midoriya. He helps her realize that there might be more hope than she thought.

The Pro Hero Miruko is coming back, one way or another. If she does it with a sassy and occasionally terrifying doctor by her side, well, that's just a bonus.

Notes

Hello and welcome to my complete lack of self-control, part...how many fics do I have now?

Eh, I'll manage. That being said, updates will probably be a bit spotty for this, but the idea is too damn good, and I really wanted to write this.

A reminder that I have no fucking clue how medical school or hospitals work, so if something doesn't make sense, my bad.

That being said, reminder that this is aged-up, quirkless Izuku, with basically no connection to UA or any heroics stuff, really. There will be some exploration of his backstory in future chapters, but suffice it to say that it isn't much like canon.

I'm also aware that in canon, Miruko only lost an arm, but she did get her leg seriously injured too, and I figured I might as well make the angst even worse by taking her leg, too. With all that said, enjoy!

See the end of the work for more notes

e notes

Missing Something

Rumi floated in an endless void, soft like feathers, stretching on in every direction. She couldn't feel anything, but somehow, she knew that something was wrong, very, very wrong.

She couldn't hear or see or smell, couldn't even move. She had nothing, was nothing. Fucking hell, was she even alive?

If this was the afterlife, Rumi thought it was stupid as fuck. If it wasn't...

Suddenly, Rumi felt something shining across her face, and she scrunched her eyelids tight (Wait,

she could feel it?)

Then, Rumi woke up, a jarring gasp escaping her chest as her eyes flew wide open, pupils blown

wide with battle instinct still ruling her mind.

Instantly, she was on alert, as fuzzy details of the fight she'd been in came back. She had to move, had to keep going, those Nomu fuckers were still on her tail, she had to-

Rumi bolted upright, or tried to, anyway; she was struck by a wave of dizziness as soon as her head left the...pillow? Where was she? What was going on?

Through a haze that she recognized as the fog of heavy-duty painkillers, Rumi heard someone say, "Alright, she's waking up!"

Rumi still couldn't feel her body; instead, a dull thrum of pins and needles seemed to tear at her flesh from the inside, like the feeling when her leg fell asleep only a hundred times worse. That wasn't happening everywhere, though; a few parts of her body, mostly her extremities, seemed to be barely tingling at all.

Somewhere in her mind, in a tiny corner not overrun by the mixture of the painkillers and her jarring awakening and her panicked certainty that she was about to get killed by those fucking abominations in that basement, Rumi realized that it was probably the parts that weren't hurting that she should be most worried about. But she was too busy trying to thrash, hoping that she could at least get some sort of leverage to get out of whatever fucking grip these monsters had her in-

There was someone saying something, their face hovering like a moon in her blurry vision. She couldn't make out their features, really, but at least their skin wasn't deep black and their face wasn't some sort of terrifying mix of an abstract painting and a bear-attack victim. Rumi relaxed a tiny bit, her limbs settling as the words came into clearer focus.

"Miruko, you're okay, you're safe. The fight is over," the masked figure in front of her said in a calm, smooth voice, clearly practiced for exactly this sort of situation.

Rumi blinked a few times, recognizing her hero name, and her lips finally obeyed her. In a voice that cracked and broke like too-thin ice, she croaked, "W-where...am I?"

That same gentle voice answered, "Tokyo Imperial Hospital."

Rumi knew that name; it was one of the most prestigious hospitals in Japan, one that had a whole wing reserved for heroes injured in the line of duty, renowned for its quality of treatment and care.

It was also famous for being the site that all the worst-injured heroes in Japan, the ones left on

death's door by the villains they fought to protect the innocent, were brought to. Rumi remembered how much she hated this place, then, how she swore she would never end up here.

And now, here she was, lying in a hospital bed, too fucking weak to even get up.

That damn voice returned, saying something else to calm her that only grated on Rumi's barely-

together nerves.

"Miruko? Can you hear me?" the doctor asked softly, soft eyes shining worriedly. Next to him, there was another doctor, doing something that Rumi couldn't really see from here.

"Y-yeah, loud and clear," Rumi muttered, her head lolling to the side, her chest rising and falling as she gulped in air like it was going out of style.

Even as she answered, though, Rumi's mind was racing, her honed hero eye taking in a million details at once, even through the scattered, fragmentary moments of coherence she could scrape together.

Rumi could see at least two doctors, and a few more medical personnel, nurses and the like, scattered around the perimeter of the room. None of them seemed able to meet her eyes.

What had happened to her?

The head doctor, still by her bedside, asked, "How much do you remember?"

Rumi wracked her mind, desperately searching for more than just fragments of terrifying monsters and shattering concrete and the adrenaline of a good fight...and the pain. The blinding, overpowering, mind-shattering pain that had come from...from...

Haltingly, Rumi answered, "I...I remember the mission, and the giant fucking monsters, and...not much else, honestly."

Then, for no reason other than curiosity, or so she told herself, she added, "How long was I out?"

The doctor nodded to himself, as if he had expected that. Then, he gently began, "Well, I think you've got most of it. The rest will come back, most likely. As for how long you were out...it's been about four days since you arrived. Most of that was spent in an induced coma while we stabilized you. You took some really serious injuries in that fight, Miss Miruko."

"Obviously, or I wouldn't be here," Rumi retorted, her patience running out rapidly. She just wanted to know what was wrong, dammit! Half her body still wasn't responding to her, and all this doctor could do was try to be gentle and soft with her. She was a top pro, dammit, one of the strongest heroes in Japan! She could take some fucking scrapes, no problem!

The doctor sighed, "Indeed. Quite frankly, you're lucky to have survived as intact as you did."

"Not lucky, strong," Rumi thought. She didn't believe in luck. Either you were strong enough to handle everything the world threw at you, or you got crushed by someone who was. She didn't need luck, and she hadn't gotten to where she was by being lucky.

"Just fucking tell me already," Rumi demanded sharply.

The doctor blinked, but he was clearly experienced at dealing with hero patients, because he just said, "Miss Miruko, look down."

Rumi obliged, and her world shattered to pieces.

One of her legs was missing.

Somehow, Rumi's earlier thrashing had thrown off the thin hospital blankets, letting her see the damage in full. In front of her, her sculpted, bronze-toned legs should have curved down, but one was abruptly cut off just above the knee, leaving her looking lopsided. The stump of her right leg was wrapped in so many bandages and pads that she could barely see the skin all the way up to her thigh, but the painkillers kept her from feeling anything but a dull sense of wrongness, an empty void where flesh and bone should have been, had been the last time she was awake. And now...there was nothing.

Somewhere in her ear, Rumi could hear the doctor explaining, "It was nearly torn off when you arrived. We did our best, but infection ended up setting in, and we had to make the call to save your life."

But Rumi was barely listening. Her heart was going at a million miles a second, she was on the verge of hyperventilating as her mind came to a screeching halt.

Her leg. She...her whole fighting style was based on kicks that could shatter buildings into dust. With one gone...

Rumi tried to raise her hands, and one came into view, clenching and unclenching, the muscles along her arm flexing. The other hand didn't, because the arm it should have been attached to was also gone. Where her forearm and elbow should have been was another mass of tightly wound bandages, and the same feeling of emptiness.

Rumi remembered that, now, how it had been torn off by that black-hole fucker, how much it had hurt, how she had wrapped her own hair around it as a makeshift tourniquet and kept fighting.

Rumi's first hysterical thought was, "It's a good thing I'm right-handed."

Rumi took a deep, rattling breath, fighting for control. Her mind was spiraling, the painkillers

stealing the edge from her consciousness, her chest rising and falling far too rapidly. With calm she didn't feel, Rumi said, "I...I see."

The doctor still had that gentle, understanding look on his face. In that moment, Rumi hated that look, more deeply than she'd ever hated anything. She wanted to crush something, break something, scream, yell, fight. But she couldn't do anything, not even sit up.

Some top pro she was.

Even all this anger, though, felt like a bandage over a gaping wound. Inside, under the flitting, ever-turning whirlwind of fear and grief and rage, Rumi just felt... empty. There was a black hole in her heart, and all that she could really feel was an overpowering sense of loss.

She hadn't just lost her leg and her arm, had she? Without those, without half the body she'd honed into a perfected weapon, Rumi couldn't be a hero. But being a hero was her whole identity. She'd never wanted to do anything else, be anything else. Her whole life had been laser-focused on a single goal-becoming strong, being the kind of figure that haunted villain's nightmares, crushing anyone who tried to stop her. She'd gotten so close to the top, been in the Top Ten, just a few steps from the summit.

And now she was in free-fall; she couldn't climb with only a single arm. Her career was over, she

was a crippled retiree at twenty-seven. Heroes had left active service for far less than two missing limbs, and when every bit of her strength had been tied up in her own body, there was no hope that she could return. Rumi knew it as well as these doctors clearly did; why else would they not be able to meet her eyes?

Rumi realized the doctor was still talking, and she somehow found it within herself to give a shit. She asked, "Sorry, could you repeat that?"

With a sympathetic grimace, the doctor explained, "It's not the end of the world, Miss Miruko." Rumi took a shuddering breath as apocalyptic fury boiled up inside her. How dare he tell her that?

"Oh? How the fuck is this not the end of my world?" Rumi snapped, her voice wavering. That made her angrier, because it was a weakness, one that she would never have allowed just a few days ago. But now, she couldn't even bring herself to care.

The doctor was still patient, still unflappable even under the murderous glare of the Number Five Hero. He explained, "You're in the best hero hospital in Japan, Miss Miruko. If anyone can help you, we can."

Rumi felt a hysterical laugh bubble up in her throat, filling the room with a sound like shattering glass. Her hatred rose with it; she didn't even know what she hated. Maybe it was the doctor and his fucking eyes, that looked at her as though they could understand her. Maybe it was the world, every single goddamn thing that had brought her to this place, to this feeling of knowing that her life wasn't just forever changed, it was destroyed. Or maybe it was herself, a scorching rage at her own decisions, at her own body for failing her.

Regardless of the storm of feelings she couldn't name raging in her chest, Rumi's next words were crystal-clear even as she formed them with the only part of her body she could still trust.

With bitterness and venom in her voice, Rumi said, "Shut the fuck up with that bullshit. Nobody can help me. Nobody."

The doctor had grey in his hair, Rumi realized, and wrinkles on the part of his face not covered with a mask. His eyes weren't understanding because he had been trained to put patients at ease; they shone with the deep sort of empathy that came from a lifetime of scenes just like this. It didn't matter; Rumi still hated him with every fiber of her being, for the crime of daring to pity her. The only person allowed to do that was her, and she had plenty of that going on right now.

"Miss Miruko," the doctor replied gently, "I know that this is a difficult thing-" At the top of her aching lungs, Rumi yelled, "You know nothing!"

She fell silent, panting with exertion, at the feeling of her emotions exploding through her skin and through her barriers, pouring out beyond her control.

Then, more quietly, she hissed, "Get out."

Rumi needed to be alone right now; she needed to think, to change something, to get away from this doctor and his gentle eyes and knowing words. It was all too close, too much, too quick. She wasn't ready, could never be ready, to accept her new reality.

The doctor didn't seem shocked, though he didn't move. He did, though, gesture to several of the orderlies and nurses to oblige; they slipped out of the room quietly, but it didn't change the way Rumi's chest seemed to be getting crushed, pressed down under an invisible weight that constricted

her breathing and turned her words into choked sobs.

"I will give you some privacy, Miss Miruko," the doctor promised, "but first, it's my duty to ask if there is anyone you would like us to contact, to let them know you're okay."

Rumi hesitated, but she already knew the answer. She was proud of it, eager to be self-contained, determined to be so strong that she never needed to depend on anyone but herself.

And yet...now, when she wasn't quite as strong as she had been, when her concept of who she was seemed to be crumbling to dust, her proud solitude was ash in her mouth.

Rumi shook her head. "N-no," she croaked, "there's...there's nobody."

The doctor was still looking at her with pity, and Rumi couldn't take it anymore.

Her voice low and dangerous, she demanded, "Now get out."

The doctor stood quietly, bowed low, and left, the door swinging shut behind him with a firm sound.

Rumi stared at the plain wooden door, and the crushing sensation around her chest didn't leave. Now, it seemed to grow to fill the whole room, taking up the empty space that had been filled with life and understanding just moments before.

Rumi quashed the sudden loneliness in her heart, a rattling breath escaping into the eerie quiet. Now, there was nothing but her in this room, and she wasn't even sure if she counted as alive anymore. Her life was gone, so what did it matter if she was still breathing?

A burst of manic energy courses through her at that, and Rumi became determined to get out of this fucking bed. She was...had been...the Pro Hero Miruko, dammit! She wasn't going to be defeated this easily!

Rumi strained mightily, her good arm and leg tending and flexing as she hauled herself upright. Hope rising inside her, she moved to swing her legs sideways-

And toppled back down, unbalanced, without half her limbs to brace herself.

Rumi groaned in pain as the motion seemingly aggravated every tiny injury that she'd barely noticed in her shock. At least the IV that disappeared into her surviving arm was still working, supplying her with the painkillers that were doubtlessly keeping her from feeling agony where her limbs should have been.

Taking a few deep breaths, Rumi decided that it wasn't worth it to stay awake right now. With tears bubbling up in her tightly shut eyes, she let herself sink down into the embrace of the drugs, a warm, floating bliss that let her forget everything, at least for now.

Her last thought was, "So this is how I go out. In a fucking hospital." Then she was asleep.

When Rumi woke up the next day, everything was exactly the same, and it enraged her. She lashed out at doctors, swearing, threatening, and then sobbing when they finally left her alone.

She didn't care if they told her that being "difficult" would only extend the time she had to stay in the hospital; it wasn't like there was anything in the outside world for her, anymore.

So instead, Rumi spent hours staring down at her missing limbs, watching her toes wiggle on one foot and wishing that the other was there to match it. Her good hand stroked over the bandages cradling her arm stump again and again, almost obsessively, as though she could feel the fingers of her lost hand meeting the ones in the hand she still had.

She barely ate, and slept in spurts; her dreams were haunted by pain and fear and memories, when the drugs didn't take those from her, too. The days seemed to pass too quickly and too slowly all at once, time flowing past her without touching her.

The only entertainment she could get these days, other than whatever was on the TV (coverage of the raid that had crippled her, mostly, which had apparently ended really fucking badly- they'd still won in the end, though, which was all that mattered,) was watching the endless parade of "specialists" that came to see her, examining her like a particularly interesting bug or a lucrative animal. They smiled down at her, asked her if she was "doing okay" (spoiler alert: she was the exact fucking opposite of okay), told her that they were here to help. Rumi didn't want their help, didn't need their help, didn't see the point. Couldn't they just leave her alone to grieve?

Most of the "specialists" or concerned nurses tended to give up after a day or so of the cold shoulder. For the more persistent ones, Rumi found that cursing, threats, or just kicking whatever instruments they'd brought with her good leg tended to get them out of her hair.

She took a vicious sort of pleasure from watching the smug fuckers who thought she was some helpless hero they could rebuild from the ground up or help come to terms with her "early retirement" run off in terror.

At least, Rumi was pretty sure she was retired. She hadn't had any visitors from the Hero Commission yet, but her agent had come by once the doctors said that she was officially out of the woods and on the "road to recovery." The man, one of the few people Rumi respected for his ability to put up with her shit, had taken one look at her and asked when she was coming back. Her heart had soared a bit at that, but she hadn't been able to tell him that she wasn't planning to. It didn't matter that much, anyway, since the doctors expected her to be in the hospital for months.

How could she come back? Sure, a few active heroes had fancy, high-tech prosthetics, but they were mostly underground heroes or long-range fighters, who could still use their quirks even with a missing limb. Rumi, though, was the one of the most powerful hand-to-hand combatants out there, so only having one hand was...a bigger problem. And considering the sheer force and power behind her biggest attacks, she doubted that any prosthetic could possibly hold up; her legs were mutated by her quirk to be incredibly powerful and resilient to shock damage, because they had to be. There was no way she could get a prosthetic that wouldn't completely invalidate her fighting style.

So Rumi chose to ignore idle dreams of the future she didn't expect to be bright, in favor of living day-to-day becoming the terror of the hero wing of Tokyo Imperial Hospital. By the end of her third week of being pitiful and bed-bound, fully two dozen doctors and "specialists" had been run off or taken off her case by Rumi's acid tongue, absolute stubbornness and refusal to obey even the simplest of instructions. Taking care of her injuries, not picking at her bandages, eating properly- for reasons even she couldn't fully describe, she just...refused to do them all. She didn't see the point, and all the doctors smiling so fucking nicely at her and telling her that she would make it out "someday" enraged her. None of them knew her, understood what it was like to lose your entire future, everything your whole life had been dedicated to, in a single day.

Rumi became the mortal enemy of the hospital staff, and she took savage pleasure in antagonizing them. Whether she was breaking equipment, cursing and yelling at those who approached her

when she was in a shitty mood (which was pretty much always, these days), or just being uncooperative when they tried to help her with basic tasks she should have been able to do herself, Rumi was sure that she would go down in history as the worst patient in the history of the hospital. Was it petty as fuck? Yeah, and Rumi knew that the hospital staff didn't deserve the shit she put them through, but her emotional range was still hollowed out, broken into fragments and constant pain.

Rumi's moods shifted moment-by-moment, as grief and despair and anger warred inside her heart. One second, she was staring uselessly down at her hand, her brain unable to comprehend why there weren't two brown-colored palms there, wishing she'd never joined that damn mission. The next moment, she might be fighting back sobs as she pondered a future trapped in this soulless hospital, or floating through life without purpose. After that, she might assault her pillow with a flurry of weak punches or try to break something within her reach; after a week or two of replacing equipment, the hospital staff ended up creating a dead zone around Rumi's bed, inside which nothing could exist without getting kicked hard enough to dent and scar metal. Rumi swore that when she finally had enough strength to get out of this fucking bed, she'd break the rest of their shit out of spite.

Rumi didn't care what happened next, didn't see the point of recovering at all. Even as the bandages were slowly removed from her stumps in stages, until they were unwound fully and she gazed at the abrupt, jarring ends where her brown skin capped places that shouldn't have ended where they did, Rumi didn't feel anything but hollow emptiness.

The media, somehow, left her alone; apparently, the Hero Commission hadn't told anyone about how badly she was injured. Rumi didn't care one way or another, honestly.

At last, as she neared the end of her first full month in the hospital, it became clear that she wasn't going anywhere fast. There was too much damage, too many things she had to completely relearn, for her to make much progress at all.

So the hospital called in the big guns.

Izuku Midoriya walked through the halls of Tokyo Imperial Hospital's administrative wing, his mind far away as he wondered why the boss himself wanted to see him.

Izuku had only been working here for a little over a year. He'd been hired right out of medical school, and his specialization in prosthetics, especially those for injured heroes, had already made him well-respected within the hospital, and within the hero community.

Of course, by "respect within the hero community," what he really meant was that any hero he'd ever treated paled in terror whenever his name was mentioned. Honestly, that suited Izuku just fine; if it meant that they avoided getting hurt because they were terrified of having to visit him, then he'd take it.

Even then, though, Izuku was still confused about why he was being called up by the director of the hero wing himself. He had work to do, dammit!

At last, Izuku reached the corner office where the director worked. Smoothing his permanently- curly green hair one last time, he knocked loudly.

A moment later, a gruff voice called, "Come in!"

Izuku did so. "Hey, Boss, you wanted to see me?" he asked, closing the door behind him.

Doctor Sora Danryoku, the head of the hero wing of Tokyo Imperial Hospital, grinned at him from behind a heavy oak desk. He certainly looked the part of a seasoned doctor, heavyset with thick glasses, thinning gray hair, and an equally gray beard just short and controlled enough to not get in the way.

"Midoriya, good to see you," Danryoku said affectionately as Izuku folded his lanky, six-foot frame into an armchair, "how have you been?"

Izuku couldn't help but smile at the twinkle in Danryoku's eye. The old doctor had been the one who had hired him, taking a major risk on an unproven medical student with a couple of crazy ideas and some...less than ideal qualities.

"I'd be better if the damn heroes could stop getting themselves injured for twelve hours," Izuku grumbled.

Danryoku chuckled, "Yeah, well, that's how it goes. Welcome to the life of a doctor, kid. The patients are always doing exactly what they shouldn't be."

Izuku nodded in agreement, recalling the multiple heroes he'd had to force back into bed to keep them from reopening wounds.

Getting back to business, Izuku asked, "So, boss, what did you need?"

Danryoku's face settled into business mode again, his eyes deep and, just like every doctor, hinting at the empathy he shared with the people who came to him in pain. It was a look Izuku hadn't quite mastered yet; he was too emotional, felt too strongly to be able to conceal that empathy behind a calm, reassuring mask. It may have hurt his bedside manner, but then, Izuku wasn't exactly the kind of doctor you called when someone needed a reassuring hand.

Danryoku began, "You've heard about the recent major hero operation against the Paranormal Liberation Front, no doubt."

Izuku nodded and snorted, "Kinda hard not to, when there's sixty heroes in this hospital alone, and multiple top pros out of action...or dead."

Danryoku's lips tightened and his eyes became distant, until he finally refocused on Izuku.

Danryoku said, "One of the "top pros" you just mentioned is Miruko. She's currently in the private rooms on the north end of the wing."

Izuku's eyes went wide. With an undercurrent of urgency and worry in his voice, he asked, "Wait, the long-term rooms? How bad was she hurt?"

"Bad," Danryoku said grimly, "double amputation, one leg and one arm."

"Fuck," Izuku swore, making Danryoku smile despite it all.

Lightly, the older man said, "You're still as much of a fanboy as ever, aren't you?" "Always," Izuku admitted, "and Miruko's one of my favorites. That sort of injury, though..."

When Izuku trailed off, finally realizing just how seriously the Number Five Hero must be hurt, Danryoku finished, "Career-ending, most likely. The surgeons did everything they could, but...it's the nature of the job, sometimes. At least she's alive."

Izuku took a deep breath, a surge of empathy threatening his control of his emotions. Finally, he said, "I see why you want me to help, then. Or at least, I'm assuming that that's why you called me here."

"Observant as always, Midoriya," Danryoku replied, "and aside from the fact that you can...empathize with what she must be going through, there is another reason."

Izuku squinted suspiciously at his boss. "It's not because I'm quirkless, right?" he challenged. Danryoku was better about that than most, but Izuku had had enough of having his quirklessness used to define him.

"Of course not," Danryoku assured him, "it has more to do with your unofficial title."

Izuku blinked in surprise, and froze for a second as he processed Danryoku's words. Then, he lowered his head into his hands and let out a long-suffering sigh.

"I swear, I am not some kind of "Hero Wrangler," Izuku groaned, thinking of the nickname that had started out as a lunchroom joke, only to slowly become an admiring and slightly terrified mark of his reputation for dealing with injured heroes, who were almost universally the worst patients imaginable.

Danryoku smiled indulgently, a teasing twinkle in his eye. He told Izuku, "You know, what you did to Best Jeanist suggests otherwise."

Izuku retorted, "All I did was tie him to the hospital bed when he kept trying to get out a week after nearly getting cut in half!"

"Don't forget the part where, every time he tried to get out, you shredded a pair of jorts in front of his helpless eyes," Danryoku pointed out.

"I threatened to do it," Izuku pointed out, "he never actually tried to escape, so I didn't shred any." "Why do you think that was?" Danryoku asked with a grin.

Rolling his eyes, Izuku muttered, "Because he knew I wasn't bluffing."

Danryoku nodded to himself, and Izuku hung his head, knowing that he'd been beaten.

"Okay, fine, maybe I've got a knack for getting dumbass heroes to take their health seriously," Izuku admitted, "that doesn't explain why I have to deal with Miruko."

Danryoku replied, "Perhaps not, but quite frankly, you're the last resort. She's been a serious disturbance for the past few weeks, and a lot of our staff are reluctant to work with her."

"What are you talking about? What has she been doing?" Izuku asked, puzzled.

Danryoku answered, "Being generally angry and belligerent, cursing at staff, destroying things during mood swings...she's struggling to come to terms with what happened, and I don't blame her."

"Why not?" Izuku asked.

Danryoku leveled his gaze at Izuku, and Izuku remembered another time, years ago.

"She's a young woman-your age, actually-who just lost two limbs. She's facing the end of her career at twenty-seven, after being one of the best and most famous heroes in Japan. Her whole

identity has suddenly crumbled. I can't even imagine the turmoil she's going through," Danryoku told him.

Izuku's heart couldn't help but resonate with Danryoku's words, with the image of Miruko that they painted. Then, he realized something.

"Maybe it doesn't have to be the end of her career," Izuku said shooting up in his seat. Designs filled his mind as they always did, ideas mingling into his stream of consciousness.

Danryoku's smile was as hopeful as Izuku's heart. "Perhaps not," he acknowledged, "if anyone can develop prosthetics capable of helping her return to the field, it's you."

Once, Izuku would have blushed at the older man's praise, but now he merely dipped his head humbly. It was true, after all; he specialized in prosthetics, especially hero prosthetics. It may have required an engineering degree on top of storming through medical school, but it had worked for him.

Izuku thought about getting the chance to help Miruko herself, to return hope to someone who had done the same for so many, and he knew he'd already made his decision.

First, though, Izuku asked, "What do you want me to do?"

The old doctor responded, "I want you to work with her. Anything you need to do to get her to heal, both physically and mentally, do it. Physical therapy, prosthetic measurements, any sort of healing necessary. Effective as soon as you accept, you're in charge of her case, and she's your focus. We can't let someone like her fall into despair without doing everything possible to help her, not when she got hurt protecting our society. We owe Miruko too much to let her sit forgotten in a hospital room."

Izuku felt determination welling up inside him then, the willpower that had carried him through a thousand challenges coming on full force.

With his green eyes seeming to glow with an inner fire, Izuku declared, "I'll do it."

Danryoku stared back at the youngest doctor in his employ, someone already known for his tenacity, dedication, and willingness to do whatever it took to save people, and smiled as he leaned back in his chair.

"I know you will," Danryoku said fondly, "you never could turn your back on someone who needs help."

Chapter Summary

Face The Facts

Rumi meets her biggest headache. Izuku tries something.

Chapter Notes

Chapter 2, here already!

I've been blown away by the response to this fic, and I'm looking forward to writing more of it. Thank you to everyone who's been commenting and reading.

Enjoy!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

On yet another day that passed her by, Rumi was lying in bed, mindlessly watching TV.

Once, she'd had a seemingly endless supply of manic energy, been so hyperactive that sitting still or relaxing had been unthinkable. She'd leapt from challenge to challenge, fight to fight, moment to moment like the rabbit her quirk made her imitate, overpowering everything with the force of her attacks and her wild-eyed grin.

Now, she couldn't even muster the willpower to do much more than lie motionless in her bed, watching meaningless shows that did nothing but remind her that there was a whole world outside that was now denied to her.

Rumi imagined that she could feel her muscles atrophying, feel her body weakening as she was slowly weaned off painkillers and the dull throb of her missing arm and leg dominated her mind more and more. She couldn't bring herself to care.

What was the point of worrying about it? She still hadn't been able to even leave the bed without being carried , let alone start any sort of workout regimen. Besides, it wasn't like she'd ever be in a position where being in shape mattered ever again.

Again, grief filled Rumi's chest. God, she still couldn't believe her career was over. So much work, so much suffering, so much success...all undone by a single fight, by charging ahead into a situation she was arrogant enough to believe she could handle alone, confident like Icarus before his leap.

Rumi had been a hero for less than a decade; she would be a retired hero for far, far longer than she had served. She knew what happened to retired heroes, had seen it happen to no less than All Might himself; they were forgotten, faded into nothingness, left in the dust. Sure, they were taken care of, and generously, too, but what was a comfortable life compared to the thrill of fighting villains? What was safety compared to the awed smiles of the people you protected when they saw you?

Rumi had thrived as a hero, reveled in the attention and the admiration. She loved having fans, having people who praised her and admired her. She'd become a hero for other reasons; mostly just a desire to become the strongest, to prove her strength to the whole world. But the perks had been nice.

And now they had all come to naught, and she was lying helpless and alone in a hospital bed.

Rumi was jolted out of her despairing thoughts by the creak of her door opening. Her ears, previously hanging flat and lifeless against her hair, perked up, swiveling towards the door along with her head.

A man entered, one who Rumi had never seen before. He was tall and lanky, though surprisingly muscular-looking under the doctor's coat he was wearing. Rumi's eyes tracked up the man's body until she saw his face. Cute freckles and surprisingly well-formed features, green eyes that seemed to dance with an inner light she couldn't quite place, mouth set into a neutral line, yet twitching up into the ghost of a sarcastic smirk. And of course, achingly soft-looking green curls that tangled and curved over his head, bushy and dense, that looked like he almost never brushed them.

Honestly, Rumi admitted to herself, he wasn't bad-looking. Hell, he was pretty cute, actually. Not that Rumi had time to think about that, or even wanted him to be here. He was probably another one of those fucking therapists who wanted her to talk about her feelings, as if understanding how shitty she felt would change the fact that she was never going to be a hero again.

Annoyed at the intrusion, Rumi demanded, "Who the fuck are you?"

Seemingly unbothered by her rudeness, the man replied, "I could ask you the same question." "Ha, ha," Rumi growled, her mood souring even further, "don't play cute with me. Who are you?"

The man's lips curved upwards into a grin, which surprised Rumi; she was so used to doctors and nurses looking at her with pity and sympathy and other things that pissed her off royally that the sight of this man in a lab coat smirking at her nearly threw her off.

At last, the man-the young man, Rumi realized, he couldn't be older than she was-began, "My name is Izuku Midoriya. I'm a doctor."

"Good for you," Rumi said coldly, "hi, nice to meet you, now fuck off." Midoriya's face didn't change in the slightest; Rumi felt a pang of surprise. The green-haired doctor responded, "Hmmm...no, I don't think I will."

This man's nonchalance, the way he seemed to brush off her rage like nothing, only made Rumi angrier. A sudden rush of energy filled her and she managed to, with effort, haul herself upright to meet Midoriya's gaze head-on.

Three weeks, and this was the most strenuous activity she could manage to accomplish, with all the strength and willpower and determination she'd been legendary for. Fucking sitting up.

Rumi snapped, "That wasn't a request. Get. Out."

"Now why would I do that? I just got here," Midoriya asked lightly, tilting his head in confusion that felt fake.

"I don't care! Get out of my room!" Rumi repeated, her voice rising in growing fury, "whatever the

fuck you think you can do for me, I don't want it. If you're another fucking therapist here to make me talk about what happened or tell me that everything's going to be okay, save yourself the trouble and leave right now."

"What makes you say that?" Midoriya asked. His voice had changed again, Rumi realized; it wasn't quite as amused, but it was still far from the gentle, soft tones of so many of the therapists and doctors who had tried to get her to "open up," using voices like those you would use with a child.

Normally, Rumi wouldn't have responded, but something about that voice challenged her, presented an obstacle she had to crack. Whatever this fucker's game was, he was still just another doctor, and Rumi knew he was just like all the others; he saw her as a pitiful wreck, the remnants of someone who had been one of the greatest heroes in Japan, a charity case. Rumi had had enough; this doctor was one too many, the final straw.

So Rumi roared, "Because, it's not okay! It's never going to be okay! I'm a cripple who can barely even sit up, forget about walking!"

"But you're alive," Midoriya pointed out, "that's more than some people can say."

Rumi's breath hitched a little as she thought about the snippets of news she'd caught over the last few weeks, of what the mission that had cost her her future had done to the whole hero world. Crust was dead, as were dozens of other heroes, with dozens more terribly injured. And that wasn't even counting the incomprehensibly terrible number of civilian casualties.

Even then, it wasn't enough to change Rumi's heart; the pit of crystallized despair that had set like stone in her heart couldn't be broken.

Her voice cracking and wavering more than she would ever admit, Rumi retorted, "It doesn't matter if I'm still alive, because my life is over! Being a hero was all I was, all I ever wanted to be! And now it's gone!"

Rumi fell silent, panting with the feeling of having something ripped from her chest, but Midoriya's face was still stony, unchanging. She couldn't seem to crack him.

So Rumi pulled her arm up from where she usually kept it hidden from view under the covers, and brandished her stump in his face. She hissed, "So unless you have a way to make this magically grow back, don't talk to me like things will be alright."

Still, Midoriya didn't say anything, didn't move a muscle. He just stared at her, his eyes drilling into hers. Rumi felt her ears wilting back down under that gaze, and she felt as though she was being picked apart. Midoriya had the most burning gaze Rumi had ever seen; it almost reminded her of her own, whenever she was in a fight. Rumi had never felt so helpless in front of someone else before, and not because she was currently unable to get out of bed.

Finally, Midoriya spoke, his voice steely, hitting like a sledgehammer. He said, "Funny. I thought that the Number Five Hero wouldn't be such a massive coward."

Rumi's jaw fell open in shock, and she reeled backwards with a choking gasp. Feeling outrage course through her, she yelled, " What the fuck? Y-you can't just-"

"I can't just do what?" Midoriya asked bitingly, his expression as hard and blunt as his voice, "call you a coward? But that's what you are."

"I-I'm not-" Rumi protested indignantly, still in shock.

Midoriya cut her off by asking, "Aren't you?"

"No!" Rumi shouted, "I fought the fucking Nomu, you piece of shit! I lost two goddamn limbs

protecting the world from those monsters!"

"And then what did you do after that? What have you been doing since you got hurt?" Midoriya

demanded.

Rumi froze, the question burning through her fury and striking her in the hollow center, the emptiness and lack of purpose she'd never been able to get rid of since she woke up. She knew the answer to the doctor's question, but she couldn't say it, couldn't admit that she was weak.

Before Rumi could even say anything, Midoriya answered his own question, saying, "Nothing, that's what. Well, other than sitting around and feeling sorry for yourself, of course. Worse than that, you've been actively resisting anyone who tries to help you. What am I supposed to think, other than that you're too scared to try and get better?"

Rumi felt her last weights snap, making her blood run hotter than it had since she'd been here. She insisted, "I am not scared!"

"I hope so," Midoriya retorted, "the Miruko everyone knows certainly wouldn't be."

Rumi flinched instinctively, her ears hanging helplessly by the sides of her head. She muttered,

"Miruko is ... she's dead. I'm not a hero anymore."

"Miruko isn't dead," Midoriya replied, "I'm looking right at her."

Rumi looked back up at this strange, furious doctor, who was standing by her bedside again, blazing eyes meeting hers. She felt her anger boil even hotter at Midoriya's implacable stubbornness, his seeming inability to understand what she was feeling.

Rumi snapped, "Did you hear a thing I just said?"

"I did," Midoriya replied, "but it was bullshit, so I ignored it. You are Miruko, even if you seem

determined not to act like it."

Rumi felt the last of her patience evaporate, and she threatened, "I'm going to kill you, you arrogant piece of shit."

Something started glittering in Midoriya's eyes then, a light that might have been victory. Cockily, he challenged, "Come on then, try it. Unless, of course, you're too helpless in that hospital bed."

Rumi saw red, and with her ears flying high, she threw herself at Midoriya with all her strength. Swinging her good leg to push off the bed, she flew headfirst towards him, her good arm outstretched and a snarl on her face.

Only, she didn't quite make it. Instead, Midoriya jumped out of the way, and Rumi crashed into the ground behind him, yelling in pain as she landed on the sensitive flesh of her stumps. She managed to roll onto her back, panting with effort and rage.

Suddenly, Midoriya was standing over her, but the stone-faced fury he had had was replaced with an easy, bright smile. That smile suddenly became all Rumi could see; it chased away her anger and her pain, even just for a second. She didn't know why, but she felt her heart soften and the despair around her heart crack, just a tiny bit.

"Congratulations, Miruko," Midoriya told her, "that's the furthest you've managed to move since you got here."

With wide eyes, Rumi managed to bolt upright, resting her pained upper body on her good arm, ignoring the stings and throbbing of her missing right leg. She saw that she'd managed to make it nearly five feet from the bed in her furious leap.

It wasn't much, not at all, but it was something. Maybe it was a sign. Her heart beating wildly, Rumi breathed, "I...what? How?"

"Like I said, you haven't even been trying to heal," Midoriya told her, the honest, ear-to-ear smile on his face infecting even Rumi, "you just needed the right push to make you show some effort."

Rumi's jaw dropped as she finally understood Midoriya's gambit. She said, "So, what you were saying, all the insults..."

"I was trying to get you to break through the fear," Midoriya finished, "you had to have some reason to want to move again."

Rumi raised an eyebrow; she couldn't help it, the whole idea seemed ludicrous. She cracked, "So you decided to goad me into trying to attack you? That's a hell of a plan."

"I find spite is a powerful motivator," Midoriya replied, a laughing grin on his face, "sorry about what I said, by the way. I was just trying to rile you up."

"I...okay, then," Rumi decided, dropping the matter.

Then, they both seemed to come down from their excitement enough to remember that Rumi was

still lying on the floor, and that spite was, unfortunately, not enough to get her back into bed.

So instead, Midoriya wrapped one hand under her legs the other around her torso, and bodily lifted

her back into place. If his face was a little red doing it, Rumi didn't notice.

Rumi's ears twitched as Midoriya's soft hands held her; she had to admit, being carried around

wasn't the worst thing in the world, at least when it was a cute guy doing it... "Aren't you a doctor? How the hell are you doing this?" Rumi wondered out loud.

Midoriya answered cryptically, "I like to stay in shape. Besides, it's not like you're heavy. You're shorter than I expected, too."

Rumi complained, "Call me short again, and I'll attack you for real."

As Rumi settled back into her bed, Midoriya retorted, "Oh? You weren't attacking me "for real"

that time?"

Rumi decided that not answering was her best bet. She just glared at this mysterious, young doctor with her best death glare.

Looking utterly unbothered, Midoriya sat down on a stool next to Rumi's bed. He said, "Well, now that that's done, I think we should try again with the introductions, don't you?"

Rumi, for once, realized that maybe she shouldn't be difficult. She was pretty sure that this doctor wasn't going to go away easily, and besides, he had helped her move the most she had in weeks. She still wasn't sure she believed what he had told her; there was still no path that she could see

back into the only life she cared about, the life of a top pro.

But maybe that tiny little spark in her heart was the tiniest, weakest glimmer of hope. So Rumi agreed, "Okay, sure."

With a nod, Midoriya stuck his hand out and said, "I'm Izuku Midoriya. Please, call me Izuku, though. I've been assigned to help you with your recovery-which means we're going to be seeing a lot of each other. I'm a big fan."

Rumi took his hand with the only one she had, and they shook.

For a moment, she hesitated, wondering what she should say. Then, she saw Midoriya-no, Izuku's -

eyes, which were shining with light and encouragement and faith in her.

A grin crossed her face, a ghost of the ones she'd once worn before the Nomus and the fight and

three weeks of suffering in solitude. And Rumi said, "I'm Miruko. But you can call me Rumi."

It was the first time since she'd lost her limbs that Rumi was even willing to entertain the thought of the future, and even if it wasn't that bright, even if she still didn't think she'd ever recover, it was still something.

And something was more than what she'd had before, at least.

When Izuku finally got home from work that day, he threw himself onto his couch and tried to

resist the urge to punch something.

He was stupid as fuck.

Sure, he'd managed to get through (he thought) to Miruko-no, Rumi- but he had also nearly ruined his chance to build a connection with her entirely. If it hadn't worked...he'd have been fucked. Rumi clearly didn't suffer fools, or anyone she didn't respect. She'd torn through far more experienced doctors than him for far less than calling her a coward to her face.

Izuku didn't regret saying it, though. It was what she needed to hear, because in the end, Izuku had taken one look at this woman, a hero he had always respected and admired, and knew that she shouldn't look like that, like she no longer cared about life.

The words had spilled out of his mouth, his acid tongue getting ahead of him as he tried to do something, anything, to get her to show the spark, the roaring spirit that was always the first thing anyone noticed about Miruko when they saw her.

For a hopeless few moments, there had been nothing; her rage and anger had come from somewhere else, from the pits of despair that Izuku was...uncomfortably familiar with from working with heroes and others who had been injured so badly.

Hell, part of the reason he'd been thrown so off-kilter in that room in the first place was because he'd walked in there and seen her lying there, empty-eyed, emotionless, her leg and arm ending in stumps, and it had made him think of-

Another hospital bed-

Doctors and nurses and the too-clean smells of the hospital- Useless, why am I so useless-

With a groan, Izuku pulled himself upright and out of memories he never let out of their cages. This wasn't going to help him with the fact that he had a patient to help.

A gorgeous, like, seriously drop-dead gorgeous patient his age, sure, but Izuku could handle that, handle the way that his heart had started beating like mad when she'd flashed that grin at him. Maybe.

Izuku rose and went to go make dinner. Even as he did, his mind was racing, with plans and ideas and designs for the future.

He couldn't help the smile that spread across his face as he thought of Rumi. Even in the depths of despair, she'd found that spark. It was fleeting, and Izuku knew that it was probably gone again by now, but it was a start.

One way or another, Izuku would help her, even if she had to be dragged into the future kicking and screaming. He'd never failed before, and he damn well didn't plan to start now.

Not when the most beautiful woman he'd ever met (damnit brain, that wasn't why he was helping!) was counting on him.

Chapter End Notes

Next time, plans and problems, and way more sass than Rumi bargained for. See you then!

Discord server: https/discord.gg/EbqDwjq

Chapter Summary

More Dead Heroes

Izuku and Rumi plan.

Rumi gets an unexpected visitor.

Chapter Notes

I'm still loving the response to this fic, you guys. It's seriously blowing me away how quickly it's been getting bigger.

Anyway, since I promised that this fic was one of the ones I'm going to be focusing on for this next little while, here's more of Rumi being an angsty rabbit, while Izuku might not be that much better.

Enjoy!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Rumi's good mood didn't last, unfortunately; a full month had solidified her self-pity and grief,

made her set in her belief that she would never be a hero again.

Even so, she found herself eagerly waiting for Izuku to show up again; she told herself that it was just because he was the most interesting thing in this shithole, but really, she was hoping that his presence would chase away some of the pain that still lingered in her heart.

Sure enough, when the door of her room creaked open to reveal Izuku's tired but eager grin and curly hair, Rumi felt her mood instantly lighten, just a little.

"So, are you going to attack me again?" Izuku asked when he was sitting in a chair by Rumi's bedside.

"That depends," Rumi retorted, "are you going to call me a coward again?" "Well, that depends on whether or not you're being a coward," Izuku told her.

Rumi felt a flare of outrage, but it couldn't motivate her to power through the sudden wave of exhaustion that swept through her. She didn't really see the point of trading barbs with this doctor, as much as it was what the old her would have done. Instead, Rumi hissed, "Just explain to me why the hell you're here."

Izuku looked up from his notebook with eyes that seemed to see right through Rumi, and didn't seem particularly impressed with what they found.

In a neutral voice, he replied, "I'm here to start planning your recovery."

Reflexively, Rumi scoffed, "Yeah, good luck with that."

Izuku tilted his head curiously. While his voice was free of judgement, Rumi couldn't lose the

sensation of disappointment she got when he asked, "Why are you so determined not to get better?"

Rumi blinked in shock, stunned by Izuku's blunt, harsh words. She blurted out, "Um, excuse me?"

Izuku put down the clipboard and gave an exasperated sigh that seemed to come from somewhere deep in his chest. When he opened his eyes again, he fixed Rumi with an exasperated glare and told her, "You have sat in this room for three weeks. Losing one limb, let alone two, is a traumatic experience, I know, but you seem to have gotten this idea in your head that you were killed in that fight, not injured."

"I might as well have been!" Rumi snapped back, "my career is over, and I've never wanted to be anything other than a hero! What else is there for me?"

Izuku hung his head and said something under his breath; nobody else could ever have heard it, but Rumi had rabbit hearing, so she heard him mutter, "Gee, where have I heard that before?"

Before she could process what she'd heard, though, he retorted, "Well, not being so whiny, for one. But who says your career is over?"

"I do!" Rumi replied, waving the stump of her arm at him, "after all, it's not like this isn't going to stop me from beating up villains."

"If you really think your career is over," Izuku said flatly, "you're either stupid or giving up as soon as things get tough, and the Miruko I admire doesn't fit either of those descriptions."

In the silence that followed, Rumi wondered why she was so affected by the fact that this random doctor admired her. Did he really still have faith in her, even after seeing what she'd been reduced to? Why?

Rumi sighed, "Look, I appreciate it, I really do. But I'm just being realistic here. There really isn't anything anyone can do that will help me become a hero again. Maybe I can learn to walk again, maybe I can eventually live on my own, but I don't want to do either of those things. Not when I have nothing I actually want to do with the rest of my life."

Izuku stared at Rumi for a long moment, then told her, "You know, if you're trying to convince me you're not stupid, you're doing a really shitty job."

Rumi was so shocked, she blurted, "What the fuck are you talking about?"

Dryly, Izuku asked, "Hello? Did you forget who you're talking to? I'm the best hero prosthetic

designer in Japan."

Rumi looked up and down Izuku's body; he sure didn't look like anything special. Tall, lanky, surprisingly muscular considering his occupation, with a clean-shaven face that made him look even younger than he was.

"The best in Japan? What are you, twenty-five? You look like you've barely graduated college!" Rumi observed, irritation lending her voice extra venom.

Raising an eyebrow, Izuku replied, "That glass house looks a little too fragile to be throwing stones there, Miss Usagyiyama. After all, you're the exact same age I am, and you're the Number Five Hero."

"Former Number Five," Rumi corrected, "I'm retired now."

"Current Number Five," Izuku emphasized, "and you're definitely not retired. Not on active duty, sure, but there's not a chance in hell you're retiring."

"What? Are you gonna build me some magic leg that lets me fight like I used to?" Rumi asked sarcastically, "Because guess what, I haven't found a single thing that can take more than one or two of my strongest attacks, and I'm pretty sure that any prosthetic you can come up with is gonna be on that list."

"Don't be so sure," Izuku retorted, his eyes twinkling mysteriously.

Then, Rumi's irritation and frustration drove her to push further. She demanded, "Why do you care so fucking much, anyway?"

"Like I said before, I'm a big fan of yours, and I'd hate to see your career end prematurely," Izuku replied evenly, "and besides, I swore to help people when I became a doctor. You need help, so here I am."

Something about Izuku's words grated on Rumi's volatile nerves, and she snapped, "What, am I some sort of grand fucking charity case to you? "Look at the poor bunny and her missing limbs, she's so helpless!"

Izuku snorted, "Believe me, you and I both know damn well you're not helpless."

"Then why do I feel so helpless all the time?" Rumi's traitorous brain asked. Instead of voicing the

sudden vulnerability she felt, she growled, "Then what am I to you?"

Suddenly, Izuku seemed to lose his rhythm, going quiet and still; until then, Rumi hadn't even realized how naturally their words had flowed back and forth. In the odd, wrong-feeling silence, she wondered, "What did I say?"

Izuku, meanwhile, was trying to sort out exactly why Rumi's words, not to mention the sight of her in the hospital bed, was still dredging up memories he'd rather not recall.

Slowly, he began, "You're someone that needs help, and I'm a doctor. You're one of the best heroes in Japan, and we all owe you too much not to help you as much as we can. But, more than that..."

Rumi raised an eyebrow as Izuku trailed off. "More than that, what?" she prompted, more softly than she expected; somehow, she knew that this was a difficult topic for Izuku, and that stopped her anger in its tracks, just a little.

Taking a deep breath, Izuku finished, "You remind me of...someone else. Someone who got hurt, a lot like you did."

"And that's why you agreed to be the main doctor on my case?" Rumi asked, a little surprised at the lingering pain in Izuku's face.

"That's part of the reason," Izuku admitted, "but mostly, like I said, you needed help, and I've never been able to turn away when someone needs me."

Rumi nodded in understanding, before another thought struck her.

Quietly, she asked, "Do I get to know who I remind you of?"

Instantly, Rumi knew she'd pushed too far. Izuku's face became steely and closed-off. Visibly re-

centering himself, he replied, "No, you don't."

There was a long pause, and then Rumi's basic decency won out over her lingering irritation and pride. Through gritted teeth, she said, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked."

"Probably not," Izuku agreed flatly, "but don't worry about it."

Still, the awkward tension remained, replacing the easy back-and forth they'd created without even realizing it. Eventually, it became too much for Rumi to bear, so she changed the subject.

"So," she mused, "what was this plan you have for my recovery, anyway?"

Recognizing the diversion, Izuku nodded once and picked up his clipboard once again. Quickly scanning it, he began, "Okay, first, could you give me a closer look at your stumps?"

Shrugging to herself, Rumi decided that it couldn't hurt, so she laid her arm flat on the bed and pulled the covers away from the remnants of her leg. Izuku leaned over her for a second, pencil tapping against his lips in a manner that would have been cute and endearing, if Rumi didn't still find herself annoyed by his very presence.

"Okay," Izuku announced after a moment, "it looks like they're almost healed enough to withstand some basic measurements and therapy."

"What kind of therapy?" Rumi asked. Izuku shot her a glare for interrupting his train of thought, but a tiny smile appeared on his face nonetheless.

He replied, "Physical therapy, obviously. Mostly just working out with a focus on getting you used to moving certain muscles that prosthetics usually rely on."

Rumi had to admit, doing some basic exercises really didn't sound that bad. Hell, it might help her with the way she'd been feeling so fucking soft and weak lately.

She agreed, "Okay, that doesn't sound so bad."

The grin that spread across Izuku's face right after that really should have been illegal, because it was the most evil thing Rumi had ever seen. He informed her, "Oh, no, it's pretty bad. It hurts like hell, especially at first. Trust me, you're going to hate it."

Rumi's ear twitched, the only visible sign of the confusion filling her mind. She asked, "Okay, what kind of fucking doctor are you, anyway? Insulting patients, enjoying telling them how much things are going to hurt..."

The shit-eating grin didn't leave Izuku's face as he answered, "I'm the kind of doctor they call in when the patients need to be insulted."

"What kind of patient needs to be insulted?" Rumi wondered.

"You," Izuku pointed out cheerfully.

Scandalized, Rumi snapped, "What are you talking about?"

Izuku didn't say anything, just raised his eyebrow for a moment until Rumi relented and admitted, "Okay, maybe the insults helped yesterday, but I still don't see why you're..."

"Such an asshole?" Izuku offered, a helpful smile on his face.

Rumi blinked in surprise a few times, then nodded, her ears perked up high.

Izuku chuckled to himself, then leaned in and explained, "I've been working with heroes for as long as I've been a doctor. Quite frankly, you are all stupid, stupid idiots. You are the worst patients imaginable, and that's when you aren't trying to go "plus ultra" and hurt yourselves even more without even recovering from your old injuries first. I'm pretty sure any hero worship or forgiveness got used up a while ago, which means that spite and irritation tend to be the most powerful emotions when dealing with you."

"Hey!" Rumi protested, "don't lump me in with them!"

"You're right, you're not like the idiot heroes who try to go back on duty dragging IV stands behind them," Izuku agreed, "you haven't become that dumb yet. On that note, if you ever do try to do anything that might re-open your wounds, exceed your limits, or rush things that can't be rushed, I will find out, and you will regret it."

Rumi couldn't help the shudder that ran down her spine at the sudden, overpowering aura of danger that was radiating from the deadly serious look on Izuku's face. Who knew that the most terrifying look she'd ever seen would come from this doctor, and not, she didn't know, a villain or a Nomu or something?

Rumi pointed out, "I'm the Number Five hero, what makes you think you can take me?" Izuku just smiled indulgently and replied, "That won't stop me."

Honestly, Rumi believed it.

Even though she still didn't know how far she could take this, how much she really wanted to go forwards into a future that still didn't seem like a place she could live, Rumi asked, "So, when do we start?"

Izuku's grin only got wider as he answered, "Tomorrow, bright and early."

Rumi's eyes narrowed suspiciously at his cheerful tone, but she decided that that was enough back and forth for now.

Checking his watch, Izuku sighed, "I probably should be going, but I just want you to know, Rumi, that I know you can do this. It's going to be hard, and it will feel impossible sometimes, but I don't think you've ever been stopped by that before, right?"

Rumi thought back over a career of success and strength and the rush she got when she saved the day. At last, she nodded, and a little bit of her old fire shone in her eyes, not much more than a spark, but it was there. "You're right," she agreed, "it never did."

"Then it won't stop you now, either," Izuku predicted.

As he began to leave the room, though, Rumi felt something loosen in her chest, and she couldn't help the words that left her mouth.

"Izuku...thank you for believing in me," she said softly.

Izuku paused on his way out, turning back to her with a smile much softer and kinder than the one he'd just worn.

"Of course, Rumi," he replied, "I always will."

Then he was gone, and Rumi was alone again in her room and her thoughts, clinging to the memory of that smile and the spark it gave her.

For a few hours, Rumi had little to do but stare at the ceiling and think idly about what tomorrow would bring. Would she be able to get out of this bed at last? Would whatever Izuku had planned hurt as much as he'd suggested?

Well, it wasn't like Rumi had anywhere else to be, so she'd just have to face it head-on.

Then, from the direction of her door, someone said, "Psst, is anyone awake in here?"

Rumi bolted upright in surprise, her ears flying up as she asked, "Wha-who is that?"

She relaxed slightly when she saw a familiar form leaning against the doorframe, or trying to, at least.

Rolling her eyes, Rumi asked, "Hawks, what the hell are you doing here?"

The Number Two Hero, shirtless but with so many bandages wrapped around upper body that he might as well have been wearing one, rose shakily from the affected lazy pose he'd struck and chuckled, "What? Can't a guy explore the hospital in peace?"

"I didn't even know you were here," Rumi retorted, "and besides, you sure don't look up to

exploring."

It was true; aside from the bandages and the shakiness in his walk, Hawks looked sickly and thin, his confident air exposed as just that, an air. In reality, his eyes looked haunted and pained, and the bright red wings that had become his key characteristic were missing entirely.

Rumi and Hawks weren't friends, really-she still thought of him using his hero name, since she didn't actually remember his civilian one-but they were the two youngest and most dynamic of Japan's top heroes, and they'd both earned some disdain from their colleagues for their...unique ways of looking at heroics. At the very least, though, they didn't hate each other, and they shared a couple things in common.

Including, apparently, the fact that they'd been hospitalized after that damn mission.

With a thin voice that had only a ghost of the cocky attitude that he'd worn so openly just a few weeks before, Hawks retorted, "Hey, appearances aren't everything. Besides, I couldn't stay cooped up in my room forever."

Now that, Rumi could relate to.

"Anyway, what are you doing in here?" Hawks asked, "if you're hurt, I can't see it."

Rumi blinked in shock, realizing that her arm stump was hidden under the covers just like her leg was. Did Hawks really not know at all? Rumi asked, "Wait, you didn't hear about it?"

With a shrug, Hawks answered, "I mean, I know you got hurt, but the news hasn't said why. In fact, I'm pretty sure nobody knows except the doctors and whoever brought you in, and they're not saying anything."

Rumi had to admit, she would never have expected that her career-ending injuries were still staying a secret. Why would the Hero Commission hold their silence like that? A question for another time,

probably.

Rumi said, "You know what, here, I'll show you."

She pulled out what was left of her arm and flung the covers to expose her leg stump at the same time, saying nothing else. The Number Two hero's eyes went wide as he saw the jarring sight.

"What happened?" he asked, looking as shocked as Rumi had ever seen him.

Doing her best to suppress the memories of the fight, Rumi sighed, "Ran into a couple of those High End fuckers at once. I beat 'em, but, well...it cost me a lot."

"I can imagine," Hawks mused, "still, you're lucky to be alive."

"Funny, everyone keeps telling me that, but honestly, I'm not convinced," Rumi replied.

Hawks snorted, sounding pained even from that tiny motion. He said, "You know, I hate the fact that I understand exactly what you mean."

Rumi looked at Hawks with sympathy, noticing just how many bandages covered his body. She asked, "What happened to you?"

Hawks sighed as he sank into the chair by Rumi's bedside, looking weaker and more vulnerable than she'd ever seen him. He explained, "Got hit by a blast from Dabi while I was taking out Twice. He...fucked me up good, let's leave it at that. The only reason I lived long enough to make it to this hospital is because of my intern from UA, Tsukuyomi. Hard to imagine, right? Me getting my ass saved by a first-year student?"

Rumi let Hawks speak, but she couldn't help but imagine how weak he must have felt, being carried away from danger by a student. It wasn't unlike how she felt, come to think of it.

Hawks looked back up at Rumi, his eyes understanding on a level deeper than she would ever have been happy with before. He asked, "So, you thinking of retiring, or not?"

Rumi was surprised that he hadn't assumed she was retiring, but a little thankful, too-more than she really expected to.

She responded, "Honestly...I don't know. I thought I was done for a long time, but now..." "But now what?" Hawks prompted.

"But now, I've got this new doctor on my case, and he's...well, he's a piece of work," Rumi admitted, "walked in here and called me a coward for not trying harder to get better."

Hawks asked, "Oh? How did you take that one?"

"I, um, may have attacked him, and missed. He said that that proved his point," Rumi confessed.

Hawks threw his head back and laughed, only to freeze as suspicion dawned on his face. Squinting at Rumi, he asked, "Wait, this doctor of yours, does he have green hair? Is he kinda young and really cranky?"

Confused, Rumi nodded. She added, "His name is Izuku Midoriya."

Hawks looked at Rumi with pity. He informed her in a grave voice, "Well, you're doomed."

"Huh?" Rumi asked, cocking her head in confusion.

"Because, your new doctor is the Hero Wrangler himself," Hawks said, whispering as though just saying his name would summon Izuku.

"What are you talking about?" Rumi asked, completely lost.

Hawks explained, "He's probably the most feared hero doctor in Japan. He scares most heroes more than villains do, because he has literally zero patience for anyone trying to get out of treatment or ignoring his orders. He's literally tied heroes to their beds before."

Rumi remembered Izuku's words about his opinion of heroes, and she decided that she could absolutely see Izuku doing just that, and also wondered if he would do that to her.

"But," Hawks added, "he's also the best prosthetics designer around. If he's working with you, I think you've got a good shot at going back into the field someday."

"I appreciate the faith," Rumi replied, "but what about you?"

Instantly, the winged hero's face fell, and his eyes slipped down until he couldn't meet Rumi's gaze anymore. Hawks muttered, "Nobody knows yet. The doctors say that they can't be sure if my wings will grow back, because even though the fire did a lot of damage, there's a chance that enough was left to regenerate. If there wasn't...I'll never fly again."

There was nothing Rumi could say, no words she could offer; she knew that look in her comrade's eye too well, that slow, crushing recognition that your life would never be the same, that some part of you would always be missing.

Wondering just who she was asking, Rumi asked, "What will you do if...if you can't be a hero anymore?"

Eventually, Hawks shook his head and gave Rumi a weak, fake smile. He said, "I have no idea. It feels like my entire purpose in life is just...gone."

Rumi couldn't agree more. For a while, she and Hawks sat in hollow silence, two suns not ready to die quite yet, but knowing that it might not be their choice to make.

Finally, Hawks stirred and continued, "Whatever happens, I don't think it matters. The only thing I care about is...making it count. If I have to go down, at least I took some baddies with me. Maybe...maybe that's enough. Did you at least get the bastards who did that to you?"

Hawks gestured at Rumi's arm and leg, and Rumi remembered the monsters, the way they'd laughed and taunted her, the way she'd taunted them as their bodies turned to pulp beneath her feet. She remembered staggering out of a room littered with corpses, convinced that she was a dead woman walking, and only caring about causing the most devastation possible before she went down.

At last, she returned the winged hero's gaze, and she said, "I did, I think."

Hawks nodded in grim satisfaction, and said, "Good. When you come back, you'll win for real."

Rumi...hadn't thought of her return in that way, but now that Hawks had said it, the idea refused to leave. However, she couldn't help but be confused by his words. "When?" Rumi repeated curiously.

"Of course you're coming back," Hawks assured her, understanding the implied question, "you think that doctor of yours would allow anything less?"

Rumi thought of the fiery determination shining in Izuku's eyes when he told her that she was going to come back, and she had her answer.

She replied, "No, I don't think he will."

"Good. This world doesn't need any more dead heroes," Hawks said with a soft smile.

Then, he added, "I should probably get going, before I get tied down for escaping, but I just wanted to say that I know you'll be back, Miruko."

Rumi flashed a wide grin just like Hawks as the hero left, while inside, she wondered why, exactly, everyone seemed to believe in her strength, when she didn't anymore.

Chapter End Notes

Next time, Rumi's first day of recovery. See you then!

Discord link: https/discord.gg/EbqDwjq

Chapter Summary

Two Kinds Of Pain

Rumi has a deadline.

Izuku and Rumi have breakthroughs and lose ground, all at once.

Chapter Notes

I'm loving the response to this fic! Enjoy!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

After hours of lying uselessly in bed the next day, Rumi couldn't help but perk up when she heard

the door opening.

"Izuku's back already?" she wondered, her eyes flying up to the clock on the wall. She realized it couldn't be; it was too early.

And yet, he'd been close to the only visitor she'd gotten, since it wasn't like many people cared enough about her to try and visit her-hell, Rumi didn't know how many people were even aware she'd been hurt.

Instead, the man who stepped through the door was wearing a smart, well-fitted suit and tie that clearly marked him as someone on official business. That fact was confirmed a second later, when Rumi saw the Hero Commission logo on the side of the briefcase the man carried with him. Rumi sized him up as he entered, her flinty eyes betraying nothing. The man's appearance was pretty standard, with few distinguishing characteristics. A mop of slick blond hair fell sideways over his face, he had dark-rimmed glasses perched on his nose, and he looked a few years older than Rumi.

The man bowed respectfully as he closed the door. "Miruko," he said, "a pleasure as always. My name is Sora Tanaka, and I'm here on behalf of the Hero Commission."

Rumi snorted at the man's respect for a woman who couldn't even get out of bed, but she knew better than to be a dick to an employee of the Commission. In a curt voice, she replied, "Good to meet you, Mr. Tanaka. Why are you here?"

As he took a seat next to Rumi's bed, Tanaka, clearly having some knowledge of Rumi's preference for straight talk over flowery words, began, "Miss Miruko, I'm going to be blunt. The Hero Commission has been wondering whether you would like to be taken off the list of inactive heroes and officially retired."

Honestly, Rumi had been expecting this earlier. All Might had announced his retirement a few days after Kamino Ward, and the media had been all over the Commission; Rumi had been out of action nearly a month, and she still hadn't seen herself mentioned specifically in the media as much more than one more name on a too-long list of casualties.

But still, Rumi wasn't prepared for how the question, put so bluntly, seemed to sear through her flesh. Suddenly, she was flashing back to the first day she'd woken up, the first day she'd met Izuku, the nighttime talk with Hawks. Everyone wanted to know the same thing, and they seemed to expect her to know already. Couldn't they see that her thoughts were a raging cyclone, a million hopes and pains and lost dreams swirling around an empty void?

Rumi tried to dodge the question by musing, "I'm surprised that the media hasn't found out about my injuries yet. Did you guys have anything to do with that?"

If the representative recognized the subject change, he didn't comment on it. Instead, Tanaka replied, "Indeed, the Commission has been doing its best to...deflect inquiries into your whereabouts."

"Why?" Rumi demanded in an emotionless voice.

Tanaka met her cutting gaze steadily as he smoothly explained, "The Commission has seen enough heroes pressured into retirement by public fear and outcry to know that allowing the media to have all the details about situations like yours can be counterproductive. We want to make sure you have the chance to consider your decision free of outside influences."

"Yeah, right," Rumi thought, "covering your own ass, more like. Losing All Might was bad enough; if I'm out for good, too, you guys are all going to lose your jobs."

Still, she couldn't deny that having the media breathing down her neck, demanding an answer about if she would be returning, might have pushed her to declare her career over with even more certainty than she already did. How much of the scrutiny could she take, when she was already so hopeless?

Out loud, Rumi asked, "But I am going to get to make that decision? I'm not being forced into retirement?"

Somehow, that was important to her; Rumi needed to know if there really was any way out of the darkness she found herself trapped in.

Tanaka shook his head. "No, Miss Miruko, you aren't," he assured her, "certainly, your injuries are severe, but perhaps they are not career-ending. Especially in these troubling times, the Commission hopes that there may be a path back to active service for you."

"That figures," Rumi reasoned, "with that Shigaraki fucker still on the loose, they need every hero they've got, no matter how injured."

But still, Rumi still didn't know if she believed anyone who said that she could come back; she couldn't see it for herself. She snorted, "Really? You think that losing two limbs isn't career- ending?"

Tanaka's face was still professional, but his eyes did seem pained as Rumi waved her stump in the air. He admitted, "There are plenty of Commission members who are aware of the difficulties you face, and our hopes are tempered by realism, but..."

"But what?" Rumi asked.

"But ultimately, there is only one person who can decide whether or not we are right in placing our faith in you," Tanaka finished, "and that is you, Miruko."

Rumi blinked as she processed the words. She still couldn't decide what she was feeling, what she

was thinking; her mind was a jumble, a coin flipping end-over-end in midair. She stayed quiet, meeting Tanaka's steady gaze without visible emotion.

Tanaka sighed and settled himself back into the chair. "Well? Do you know yet whether you will be able to return?" he asked, briskly but not without kindness.

Rumi hesitated again, a hundred conflicting memories flinging themselves through her thoughts. Then, she admitted, "No, I don't. Not yet."

At the end of the day, Rumi simply didn't know what she thought. One part of her was as convinced as ever that she was through, that her day in the sun was over. The other, though, recalled green hair and a vicious grin and faith so unshakable even her deepest despair couldn't cut through it, and wondered if, just maybe, she wasn't quite done.

"May I ask why?" Tanaka inquired softly.

Rumi didn't really feel the need to say much more than, "My doctors tell me that they're doing everything they can. If there's a solution that will let me come back...they'll find it. Until I know for sure that there isn't one, I won't say I'm done, not forever."

Tanaka's eyes flashed, and Rumi thought she saw the ghost of a smile on his face before it set into controlled neutrality. He nodded once, then told her, "Very well, Miss Miruko. The Hero Commission will be able to delay making the full extent of your injuries public for about a week longer; after that, we can make no promises. I suggest you have something to offer them by that time."

Rumi nodded once, then said, "Thank you, Mr. Tanaka."

Tanaka really did smile this time, as he stood from his chair. "You're welcome, Miruko," he said warmly, "and for the record, I do hope you return. Remember, you aren't alone in this."

Rumi watched Tanaka head for the door with her head tilted in curiosity. She asked, "What do you mean?"

Pausing to turn back to her, Tanaka replied, "Miruko, for weeks now, the Commission has been receiving questions from citizens young and old about your health and well-being. People are worried about you, and want you to get better. You are a top hero, Miruko, and that means people look up to you. I don't wish to influence your decision or make you feel any pressure one way or the other...but don't forget about the fans you have waiting on the other side."

With that, Tanaka left before Rumi could reply. Instead, she was left sitting there in her bed, wondering if what he had told her was true. If she came back, would it be to people who had never lost faith in her like she had lost faith in herself?

If she didn't come back, would those people forget her?

When Izuku arrived about two hours later, Rumi was almost thankful for the distraction he

provided from the questions that whirled around her mind, questions she didn't have answers for.

At least, she was until she saw what Izuku was pushing in front of him.

"Hello, Rumi! I was thinking we could get a change of scenery for today, head downstairs for today's PT session," Izuku said in greeting. In front of him, Izuku brought a standard hospital wheelchair, clearly intending to bring Rumi in it.

Rumi's eyes snapped back up to Izuku's face, and she replied flatly, "Hell no. No, no, no. Never in a million years."

Izuku sighed quietly as Rumi crossed her arms defiantly, shaking her head with her ears pricked high. Izuku asked, "Rumi, why are you like this? It's just a wheelchair."

"A wheelchair I will never get into," Rumi countered. Being escorted to the bathroom and not being able to do anything by herself was bad enough. She was not going to be paraded through the halls for everyone to see just how helpless she was.

Izuku clearly understood a bit more than Rumi was letting on, because he didn't bother trying to convince her that the wheelchair was in her best interest. Instead, he said, "Rumi, just get in the damn wheelchair. It's literally a two-minute trip."

"I will not get into that fucking thing," Rumi declared as she sat up, sniffing petulantly. She may only have two working limbs, but she still had her dignity, dammit!

Izuku just stared at her evenly, an unimpressed look on his face. Eventually, he told her, "Rumi, stop trying to pretend you can still do everything yourself. You can't."

Rumi reeled, turning to face Izuku as her jaw dropped. She stammered, "Y-you...what are you talking about?"

Izuku was unrepentant, crossing his arms over his chest just like Rumi had. He responded, "Look, I get it, Rumi, I really do. You based your whole brand on being entirely self-sufficient and never accepting help or team-ups; it's kind of your thing. And now, you're clinging to it because you're scared that everything else feels like it's been taken from you."

Rumi stared openly at her doctor, who had somehow managed to pick apart her entire mindset in seconds. She hadn't even been able to dissect herself that well, but now that Izuku had said it, she realized that that was exactly what she'd been doing. How had he known?

Seemingly unaware of Rumi's sudden crisis, Izuku continued, "I know that it's easy to cling to what's familiar in situations like this. But you have to realize that you can't be like that anymore. I hate to be so blunt, but you cannot walk by yourself. You need help, and being angry about that won't change a fucking thing."

Izuku just kept finding new ways to make Rumi fall apart, new weak points that threatened to punch holes in the tattered fabric of who she'd been, and it made Rumi mad. She snapped, "You can't change it, either!"

"Maybe not," Izuku told her, "but honestly? I think trying to stand by yourself as a hero is stupid, anyway. All it does is mean that there's nobody there to help you when you get in over your head."

Rumi flinched involuntarily as she remembered charging so far ahead of the other heroes that there was no support available when the High-Ends surrounded her. She remembered making fun of Kamui Woods at the hero ranking announcements, all because he'd dared to admit he had weaknesses, and taken steps to address them.

Izuku must have seen her flinch, because his expression softened and his eyes became less angry. More gently, he said, "Look, Rumi. Nobody here, least of all me, looks down on you or thinks any less of you for needing help. You did something braver and more incredible than anyone else I've ever met, and that's why you're here. You should be proud. But you can't let that pride stop you from accepting the help you need to get better again, or you'll never be what you used to be."

Rumi looked up at Izuku's face, and she saw the sincerity in his eyes. Maybe...maybe he was right. But even if he was, Rumi couldn't just throw away her pride. Right now, it was all she had.

So she straightened again and said, "I'm still not getting in that wheelchair."

Izuku's eye roll was so strong, Rumi could feel his irritation. He sighed, "Rumi, you will get in the

wheelchair, or so help me God, I will put you in the wheelchair."

"What, you think that a nerdy little doctor like you is gonna be able to pick me up?" Rumi cracked,

still defiant.

Izuku didn't say anything, but his eyes twinkled in amusement as he wheeled the chair up to the side of Rumi's bed and said, "Oh, I have my ways."

Then, to Rumi's shock, he simply reached his hands around and underneath her, and lifted.

In disbelief, Rumi realized that Izuku was now carrying her in bridal-style, one hand under her leg just high enough to carry her stump as well, while his other hand was on her back. "Hey, what's the big idea?" she demanded as she wriggled frantically, trying to escape Izuku's arms with little success. With a jolt, Rumi realized that Izuku was strong, and his arms, as well as the part of his chest that she could feel against her, were all solidly muscled and tough.

With an entertained grin on his face, Izuku replied, "I told you that I'd put you in the chair if you kept being difficult."

"B-but how?" Rumi asked, trying to ignore the urge to lean into the warmth of Izuku's body as he maneuvered her out of the bed. What the hell was going on with her? So he was strong, big deal!

"What? I work out," Izuku said simply as he bent down to plop Rumi down in the wheelchair.

"That's not fucking fair," Rumi grumbled as she recrossed her arms grumpily and her ears drooped, revealing her sulking as Izuku helped her settle into place.

"Life isn't fair," Izuku countered smoothly as he wheeled her out of the room, a scowl fixed on Rumi's face.

Izuku took Rumi down the hall and into an elevator, then out onto another floor, weaving through a series of identical-looking white hallways with expertise. The whole time, Rumi pouted, convinced that he was just doing this to humiliate her. Even the fact that the few other people they saw didn't seem to recognize her didn't help.

"Fucking muscular doctors and their fucking muscles," Rumi grumbled to herself, ignoring the part of her that had kind of enjoyed being picked up.

When Izuku finally pushed open a door labeled "Physical Therapy Room," Rumi didn't really know what to expect. All things considered, the simple, open area with a few chairs, mats, and a row of shelves along one wall was probably better than the torture chamber Izuku's teasing had her imagining.

She observed, "This doesn't seem too bad. Why were you saying that this was going to hurt, yesterday?"

As Izuku wheeled her towards a large, leaned-back chair in the center of the room, he replied, "Because we're going to be working with your stumps today."

"My stumps?" Rumi repeated in confusion, "what are you talking about?"

Deciding that she didn't need Izuku to carry her around again, Rumi accepted the hand he offered her, using it to wobble shakily into the chair. Izuku took his own seat next to her before he replied, "Well, it's pretty simple. You've been having basic shaping therapy, right?"

Slowly, Rumi nodded. She hated that shit. Apparently, if she wanted her stumps to develop calluses and be able to support prosthetics, she needed to have them occasionally worked over by a nurse's hands. Really, it just hurt like a bitch and left her plotting bloody vengeance on the poor souls who got stuck with the job.

"Well," Izuku continued, "you still need to have a version of that, because otherwise your muscles on that arm will waste away and it will be much more likely to get infected.

Rumi winced as she imagined that, and decided that maybe having someone constantly massaging her stumps wasn't so bad, after all.

"Okay, fine. Let's do this," she sighed, holding out her arm towards Izuku.

Izuku's eyes glittered in amusement as he reached out to cup the stump in his hands. He said, "You're going to regret that."

The first moment Izuku began to squeeze and massage the tender flesh of Rumi's stump, she understood exactly what he meant. It felt like fire was scorching the whole length of her arm, as her body protested fiercely. Rumi clenched her jaw hard to trap the involuntary yell of pain, turning it into a long, drawn-out hiss that shifted in volume and pitch as Izuku's hands worked their way up and down her arm, forcing her muscles to move and stimulating blood flow. The initial pain began to fade, only to be replaced with the dull, regular ache of sore muscles, only multiplied by a thousand. It throbbed up her arm in waves, driven by her heartbeat. Izuku continued to manipulate her arm as he massaged it, gently guiding it through a range of motion, tracing circles in the air, pulling it this way and that to keep it going.

In between the waves of agony, Rumi managed to swear, "Fucking hell!"

Izuku nodded in sympathy. "Yeah, it sucks," he agreed, "but it's better than not being able to use

the arm at all."

"Yeah, I'm sure that makes you feel better," Rumi hissed as she gritted her teeth and tried to tough it out.

Noticing her discomfort, Izuku offered, "How about you and I talk for a bit? Having a distraction helps."

Rumi wasn't sure how she was supposed to be distracted from the sensation of her arm being on fire, but she figured that it couldn't hurt to try. She asked, "Talk about what?"

"Anything, really. If you've got questions about anything, I can answer them, for starters," Izuku replied with a shrug.

Rumi tried to think, ignoring the bolts of pain that shot through her every few moments long enough to put together a coherent thought about something that had been bugging her for a while. At last, she asked, "I mean, I'm kinda curious about your nickname."

Izuku's head shot up in surprise, and Rumi hissed as he accidentally squeezed her arm a bit tighter than normal. "How did you hear about that?" he demanded.

When her voice was working again, Rumi replied mysteriously, "Oh, I have my ways."

"You've been stuck in your bed for weeks!" Izuku pointed out.

Rumi figured that playing games with a guy who was hurting her this much while he was being nice was probably a bad idea, so she sighed, "Okay, fine, Hawks told me the other night when he stopped by."

Under his breath, Izuku grumbled, "I knew I should have had him tied to his bed..." "What was that?" Rumi asked, her ears perking up and swiveling towards Izuku. "Nothing," Izuku replied, "so, what do you think of my stupid nickname?"

Rumi shrugged; the pain was still present, but she was getting better at focusing on the conversation instead. She told Izuku, "Honestly, I have no idea what to make of it. I mean, on the one hand, it sounds really silly, but on the other, Hawks was definitely scared of you, and I'm not sure why."

"Oh? Am I not intimidating you?" Izuku asked jokingly as he gave Rumi's arm one last go-over with nimble fingers that would have felt really good, if they had been anywhere even slightly less painful to touch.

"Nah," Rumi said casually, "but tell me, how did you get that nickname?"

Izuku answered, "Oh, at first it was a joke from the other doctors; they were pretty surprised that

the new guy was being put on a bunch of important hero cases." "What do you mean, the "new guy?" Rumi asked.

"I mean, compared to a lot of the other doctors in the hero wing, I haven't had my license that long," Izuku explained, "over time, though, heroes I treated started calling me that, too, mostly because I got really good at dealing with their fits of self-pity and refusal to actually take their own health seriously."

Ignoring the way her own gut squirmed at the descriptions that sorta fit her perfectly, Rumi asked, "Wait, how long have you been a doctor?"

"Only about a year," Izuku replied, "what, do I look older than I am or something?"

Rumi eyed Izuku as he released her arm and shifted to her other side to raise the stump of her leg; the freckles and wide, seemingly instinctive smile that always filled his face made him look younger than he actually was, if anything.

Still, she was pretty surprised that the most prestigious hero hospital in the country would accept a fresh graduate of medical school, even one as obviously talented and dedicated as Izuku was. Oh well, that wasn't really any of her business. Rumi asked, "What did you do to those heroes to make them afraid of you?"

"Oh, I usually just tied them to their beds until they healed or told them that if they didn't take care of themselves, I would kill them myself," Izuku said dismissively, making Rumi shoot a wide-eyed look at him. The two stared at each other for a long moment, and then Izuku began to massage Rumi's leg.

Biting back another scream of agony, Rumi raised an eyebrow and said, "You know, I didn't think

you had it in you, Doc. I like your style. Did it work?"

Forgetting about Rumi's rabbit hearing yet again, Izuku muttered, "Great. I'm being called "Doc"

by a rabbit, my life is now an ancient American cartoon..."

"What?" Rumi asked, deeply confused.

Izuku looked back up at her as his hands worked up and down her leg, massaging as far as the very beginnings of her thigh and sending even stronger waves of pain rippling up her body. He simply said, "Don't worry about it. And for the record, it usually does. I have the highest rate of patients returned to active duty in the ward."

"Including the patients you had to kill?" Rumi asked dryly.

Izuku retorted, "Oh, I haven't had to kill any of them yet. They're usually smarter than that."

"I'm glad to hear that most heroes are smart enough to not get killed," Rumi snarked, her mind getting more distanced from the pain by the second.

Izuku nodded and agreed, "Oh, most are. All of you are still stupid, though. You have absolutely zero concept of self-preservation."

"Thank you for the glowing praise," Rumi responded, even as Izuku continued to massage the perfect example of her lack of self-preservation. His fingers danced smoothly over the toned brown flesh of her upper leg, circling over her thigh and back down to the abrupt end of the limb and back again, squeezing and moving it to get the blood flowing.

For a little while, Rumi just let it happen, focusing on taking deep breaths as the pain continued to come and go, until she had another question she wanted Izuku to answer.

Rumi asked, "Why did you become a doctor, anyway, Izuku?"

"Why does anyone become a doctor?" Izuku countered vaguely, looking down at Rumi's leg instead of at her face.

"Why don't you tell me?" Rumi prompted, not letting Izuku get away with such an obvious dodge.

As he slowly began to wrap up, winding down his massage with a few last motions over the top of Rumi's stump, Izuku sighed, "Alright, fine."

He let Rumi's leg fall back down to the chair, and met her eye for the first time since he'd started working on her leg. Izuku told her, "I didn't always want to be a doctor. In fact, it kind of happened...well, not by accident, but I definitely didn't set out to be one, even when I started college."

"Really?" Rumi asked, looking at Izuku yet again. She had assumed that someone like him, as stubborn and driven as he was, to the point where he could get her to do things, must have had his sights set on a goal that nothing could keep him from.

"You look surprised," Izuku noted as he stood, clearly intending to move the wheelchair.

"Err, yeah, I kind of am," Rumi admitted, "I'm curious what you wanted to be before that, then."

Suddenly, Izuku's lips pressed tight together, and his eyes darkened. In an instant, his body language shifted, and the air in the room suddenly seemed to crackle with tension, with a warning.

In a low voice, Izuku asked, "And what makes you think I had something else I wanted to be?" "You just said that you changed your goal," Rumi pointed out, ignoring the way her danger sense

prickled along her skin at the look on Izuku's face.

"Maybe I didn't have one before," Izuku countered, his face still grim, no longer moving, facing

directly towards Rumi.

Rumi said, "Impossible. Everyone's got a dream, especially when they're a kid."

Izuku seemed to sag at that, but he quickly gathered himself. "Not me. Not a real dream, anyway," he muttered.

"Come on, you can tell me," Rumi assured him, "I know you must have had something."

Izuku glared at her sharply enough to make Rumi wonder if this was really a good idea or not, then

said flatly, "Alright, fine, if you want to know so badly, I'll tell you. I wanted to be a hero."

Rumi blinked in surprise. She...hadn't expected it, but honestly, now that the thought existed in her

mind, she couldn't help but be surprised that he wasn't one.

Rumi asked, "Why didn't you become one, then? You've definitely got the spirit, that's for sure."

Izuku didn't reply, except to say, "Let's just get you back to your room, Rumi."

Rumi wasn't satisfied, but she doubted that she would be able to get anything else out of Izuku once he'd clammed up.

That is, until they finally reached her room. Rumi had just settled back into her bed when, on a final Hail Mary, she asked, "Seriously, was it just that you didn't think your quirk would be good for it?"

Next to her bed, Izuku froze; the look on his face was one of pain and shock. Rumi pressed, "Come on, it's not that big a deal, right? I'm just curious."

Izuku fixed her with a long stare, one that felt to Rumi like she was being evaluated. At last, Izuku told her, in a voice that rang with a million unsaid cries, "Rumi, I'm quirkless."

Rumi froze, too, her eyes going wide and her brain screeching to a halt. For a second, she tried to say something, but she couldn't figure out how to fix the massive mistake she'd just made.

Before she could say a thing, though, Izuku just shook his head and left the room, the door swinging shut behind him.

Rumi was left to mull over the fact that the most stubborn, driven man she'd ever met was quirkless in complete silence.

Chapter End Notes

Next time, fallout. See you then!

Discord server: https/discord.gg/rPnRUFt

Chapter Summary

Rising In The Fallout

Izuku has regrets.

Hawks has ideas.

Rumi has a second chance.

Chapter Notes

Not much to say this time, other than the fact that I'm still getting blown away by the response to this fic. I'm loving all the excited comments!

(By the way, if this chapter doesn't make it clear, Izuku's backstory in this isn't quite like canon-he doesn't deal with Bakugo or meet All Might, among other things) Enjoy!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Izuku barely registered the trip home. His mind was whirling, and he felt too tired and drained to

even be angry.

As soon as he got to his apartment, Izuku dropped his bag by the door and barely had enough energy to collapse into a chair in his kitchen. Groaning lightly, he buried his face in his hands and squeezed his eyes tightly, turning the day's events over in his mind.

Izuku didn't know why he had told Rumi that he was quirkless. It wasn't like he went around telling everyone he met; most of his colleagues assumed he just didn't need his quirk to do what he did, so he didn't feel the need to show it off. Hell, they were even sort of right.

Izuku was proud of how far he'd gotten, how high he'd risen despite it all. He was a hero doctor at the most prestigious hospital in the country; he made a real difference where he was, helped people just like he'd always wanted to. Every hero he helped return to action meant more lives saved, more good done, in a roundabout way, because of him. In some ways, Izuku had helped save more people as a hero doctor than he would have as a hero.

But even with all that success, with all the things he'd achieved, God, did it burn to remember how he'd been as a child, all hope and bright eyes and wanting to be a hero.

Izuku couldn't really say exactly when that dream had soured, curdling like spoiled milk. He'd never been bullied, exactly; there were more quirkless people in his generation than there were in the most recent one, so he hadn't even been the only quirkless kid in his middle or high school. But there hadn't needed to be a single dramatic moment, or anyone to tell him outright that he would never amount to anything. The assumption had always been there, baked into the dismissive, pitying looks he got from teachers and peers; the stronger a classmate's quirk, the more haughty they became as they grew older and it became clearer and clearer just how useless Izuku was.

The only reason he had never been truly bullied was because there was never any point; what

would the bullies gain from proving that they were better than someone who didn't even have a quirk? There had always been a line, a barrier around Izuku that reminded him how much better everyone else was, thanks to the genetic lottery that had left him as worthless as dirt.

Izuku had been adrift, alone, helpless as other, stronger people around him chose their paths. Nobody had ever told him, "You can believe in yourself," so he hadn't, and slowly, Izuku had stopped truly believing that he could become a hero. His dream had become a fantasy, then a childish fancy he looked back at and cursed for how stupid and naive he'd been.

And then, long after he'd stopped imagining himself in a costume and a smile like All Might's, when he was still adrift and purposeless in life, he'd been given another opportunity by fate, one that might have revived his spirits. He had charged at it, given it everything he could...and it had cost him the little hope he'd had, in return for nothing at all. All it had done was prove, once and for all, that someone as useless as he was could never bring other people hope.

And then, one day when he'd hit rock bottom, when there seemed to be no point anymore, something inside him had rebelled, had declared, "Fuck that."

Izuku had picked himself up off the ground, built his own future the way he saw it, been given a second chance and wrung every little bit of success and satisfaction out of it. Nobody could ever say again that he was useless, or helpless.

Izuku hadn't even really planned on being a hero doctor; for the longest time, anything related to heroes had been too painful to look at, a reminder of what could have been in another universe. But then, fate had turned again, and Izuku had found himself in possession of skills few possessed and many needed, especially heroes.

Izuku had realized then that you didn't need to be a hero to save the heroes.

And Izuku knew he was no hero; forget being quirkless, he was rude, spiteful, and at times a downright asshole to his patients, a bad idea for any doctor. That didn't even include the heaping platter of emotional issues Izuku probably had, but hey, a childhood of being ignored, pitied, and basically treated like he didn't exist would do that to you.

Despite all that, though, Izuku was still determined to be the best at what he did, and the smiles of the people who he helped get their futures back always made everything else pale in comparison. Even with the shit he'd gone through to get here, Izuku still found it in himself to smile and be happy when he watched his patients take those first, halting steps, plastic and metal wobbling, then holding steady as they grew more confident, more hopeful.

Somehow, Izuku's thoughts curved back to the topic that had managed to make him so introspective in the first place: the Number Five Hero herself.

Why had he told Rumi he was quirkless?

Izuku had never slipped up like that before, never risked seeing that dismissive, superior look in the eyes of one of his patients. Izuku had always managed to keep himself under control, used his acid tongue to crack the built-up layers of pity and grief his patients always managed to build around their hearts. Izuku had made an art of it, been proud of his ability to make even the angriest of heroes wilt under the force of his personality.

And then Rumi had somehow managed to crack his shields, found a way to drag things out of him that Izuku almost never told anyone. That scared Izuku, made him wonder what might slip out next.

For whatever reason, Rumi was his weakness. Something about her just made it impossible for Izuku to stay neutral, to stop caring. Every time he saw her wavering, about to tip over the cliff into despair once again, Izuku felt determined to bring her back; every time she was riding high, Izuku gloried in the spark in Rumi's eyes, the burning intensity that she was so admired for.

Izuku didn't know what she thought of him now; he knew that Rumi had a reputation for being dismissive and refusing to deal with anyone she didn't see as an equal. Rumi's respect was earned, and Izuku wasn't sure that a quirkless man could ever earn the respect of someone as powerful as her.

Izuku pounded the table once as a surge of fierce emotion shot through him. Dammit, he hadn't gotten to where he was by being a coward, or by running away! He had a job to do, for fuck's sake, and who cared if Rumi might want nothing to do with him? He was going to make sure she healed, returned to being the hero he knew she was and could be again. Who gave a fuck what she thought about it?

Izuku clenched his fist, and made a promise to himself.

"Tomorrow," he decided, "I'm going to face her again. It doesn't matter what she says or what

she thinks, I'm not going to leave her to suffer alone again. Ever."

The next day, Rumi's guilt hit her like a sledgehammer from the moment she woke up. Memories of the day before filled her mind, and she felt her ears laying flat against her head as she wished she'd never pushed Izuku.

"I didn't have any right to pry like that," she thought to herself, finally appreciating just how far she'd pushed him yesterday.

Honestly, Rumi was amazed at how well Izuku had managed to control himself, all things considered. If she'd had to deal with something like that, Rumi wasn't sure if she could have resisted the urge to punt the other person through a wall.

Of course, Rumi had no idea how Izuku was taking it. For all she knew, he might be quitting her case, and she would never see him again.

For a moment, she tried to be happy about that, tried to feel like she had succeeded like she had when she'd driven off all the other doctors. Rumi tried to imagine what her new isolation would feel like.

She failed miserably, at all of them.

Slowly, the realization crept over Rumi that she didn't want to chase Izuku off anymore, even when she still doubted his promises about the future. Even if her faith in herself was still shaken, even if she still thought she would spend the rest of her life a miserable husk of what she'd once been, Izuku had managed to convince her to give recovery a shot. He'd given her something strong enough to start rebuilding her confidence, some sort of spark again.

Despite everything, Rumi owed Izuku for that. Honestly, she couldn't even bring herself to be mad that he hadn't told her anything about himself-why did she deserve to know?

The old Rumi, if she'd found out Izuku was quirkless, would never have looked twice at him. That Rumi believed that she was the strongest around, and that only people who were also strong were worth giving the time of day. Once, she'd believed that the only kind of strength that mattered was the kind that let you crush your enemies into the dirt.

This new Rumi...didn't quite know what she believed yet, but she did know a few things for sure.

First, that her old belief in physical strength above everything else had been what led her into that fucking basement; it was what had cost her everything.

Second, that Izuku may have been quirkless, may have been physically weak, but he was still one of the strongest people Rumi had ever met. Something about his drive, his spirit, the way he never backed down from any challenge...it was inspiring to watch, and it made Rumi recognize that Izuku being quirkless didn't mean a damn thing for his ability to be a doctor.

Third, physical strength would never be able to help her now; the only thing that Rumi could think of that might make her able to rebuild herself was the kind of inner strength that Izuku had, that Rumi had once thought that she had. If she was going to do this, Rumi knew, the only way it would work is if she had someone as stubborn as Izuku by her side-and there was nobody as stubborn as Izuku, except Izuku.

But why would Izuku ever want to deal with her again? She was a bitter, angry, lonely amputee who got most of her entertainment from harassing people just trying to do their jobs; would Izuku decide that helping her was more trouble than it was worth?

Rumi didn't have too much hope, not when she'd been so pushy with him, but maybe-

"Psssst! Hey, Miruko, how's it going?" a familiar voice suddenly whispered from the doorway.

Rumi's ears flew up to pinpoint the sound as she jumped in shock. "Hawks? What the hell do you want this time?" she demanded, her retrospection vanishing as it was replaced by irritation.

Rumi's fellow patient, still wrapped up in bandages and looking irreverent as always, said, "Hey, what's got you so cranky?"

"I-" Rumi began, only to cut herself off as she wondered whether or not to actually tell Hawks about what had happened.

God, was she seriously about to talk about her feelings like some sort of wuss?

Rumi took a deep breath, then exhaled in a long sigh. "My doctor and I had an argument

yesterday," she admitted.

As he walked into her room, Hawks replied, "Isn't that just par for the course with the Hero Wrangler? That man's pricklier than a goddamn cactus."

Swallowing her hollow laugh, Rumi answered, "I mean, yeah, sort of. But this fight...it was pretty bad?"

"Bad how?" Hawks asked as he dropped into the chair by Rumi's bed.

"As in, I made him storm out of the room and I haven't seen him since," Remi explained.

Hawks blinked once, then settled his arms on his knees, leaning forwards. He repeated, "You pissed off the Hero Wrangler enough to make him storm out on you? That's awfully impressive, Miruko."

"I feel like shit about it, actually," Rumi told him, "I shouldn't have said some of the things I did." "Well, this is just a day of firsts, isn't it?" Hawks chuckled in response, "the Hero Wrangler getting

angry enough to storm out on a patient, and Miruko actually admitting when she's in the wrong?" Rumi couldn't help but roll her eyes. Even then, she only felt a little less shitty. She continued,

"The thing is, I'm really worried that he's gonna drop my case."

Hawks nodded and replied, "I guess that makes sense. For all the shit he gives people, that guy's probably the best hero doc in the business."

"Yeah," Rumi agreed, "he's the first person who's actually made me think that I might actually come back from all of this."

Hawks' gaze suddenly as he met Rumi eye-to-eye. He suggested, "So tell him that. If you apologize, he'll probably let the whole thing go."

Rumi hesitated; she couldn't see Izuku forgiving her so easily, but...

"Do you really think he would, just like that?" she wondered.

Hawks snorted. "I have no fucking clue," he admitted, "but it's probably worth a shot."

Rumi...has no reason to disagree, especially when she hoped so desperately that Hawks was right. Even still, she knew that Izuku had no reason to believe she had changed.

She decided, "If Izuku is willing to come back, I'll apologize. Maybe that'll be enough." Out loud, Rumi said, "Thanks, Hawks."

"No problem," the winged hero replied, "now, I have an idea."

Rumi raised an eyebrow. She asked, "Oh? What idea?"

Hawks grinned widely and pointed to the wheelchair still sitting beside Rumi where Izuku had left it the day before.

"Things have been going too slow around here," Hawks told her, "you wanna go for a joyride around the hospital?"

Rumi felt an answering grin form on her face, as her heart filled with excitement at finally getting the chance to really escape this fucking room.

"Why yes, yes I do," she drawled.

Five minutes later, Rumi and Hawks were racing down the hallways of the hero wing, laughing crazily. Hawks was running as fast as his mostly-healed body would let him, managing a more than respectable speed that let Rumi, sitting in the wheelchair she'd once hated, laugh crazily as she gripped the armrest with her hand.

They dodged and weaved around dumbstruck nurses and shouting doctors, some of whom tried to chase them, and none of whom could possibly catch up with the two top heroes as they sprinted through the white, clean building.

Over the whistle of the wheels and the shouts of the staff, Hawks called, "Well, Miruko, isn't this better than sitting in bed all day?"

"It sure is!" Rumi laughed as they took a corner at thirty miles an hour.

Honestly, this was the most alive Rumi had felt in weeks. She'd forgotten how much fun it was to move so fast that one slip-up would make you crash into something, how the adrenaline rushing through her veins made the world slow down to a crawl.

They turned down another hallway, picking up speed as they raced down the length of it in seconds. When a figure stepped into sight at the end of the hallway, though, both Rumi and her partner in crime realized that they were screwed.

Hawks desperately slammed on the brakes (or rather, pressed his feet against the ground hard enough to make the tires of the wheelchair squeal), and Rumi clung desperately to the chair as they came to a jerky, spiraling stop, inches from the unsmiling, green-haired figure.

Both heroes looked up in terror as Izuku Midoriya drawled, "Well, well, well, what do we have here?"

Rumi noticed a twitch in Izuku's upper lip as he fought to maintain the glowering expression that seemed so effective against Hawks.

Sternly, Izuku asked, "Keigo, what did I tell you the last time we talked?"

With his eyes still downcast, Hawks muttered, "You said that you would tie me to the bed the next time I snuck out of my room."

"And what did you do?" Izuku prompted, sounding like the world's most terrifying disappointed mother lecturing a particularly naughty child.

"I snuck out of my room," Hawks sighed as Rumi watched with growing amusement that mingled with the pit of fear in her gut.

Izuku nodded and said, "So, you'd better get back to your room before I break out the good rope." Hawks blinked in surprise. When Izuku didn't immediately haul him away, he asked, "Wait, you

mean you aren't-"

"I will, if you don't get your ass in bed right now," Izuku interrupted, "but really, I'd like to talk to

Rumi right now. Alone."

Rumi gulped and her ears drooped as she heard Izuku's words. Hawks nodded, and raced away as

quickly as he could. As he passed Rumi, Hawks mouthed, "Good luck."

Rumi just ignored him, stuck in her wheelchair with Izuku standing in front of her.

Rumi forced herself to look up at him. Izuku's eyes weren't quite as hard or angry as she'd expected, although he didn't quite seem as easygoing as he'd looked the first day they'd met.

Rumi began, "Izuku, I know I fucked up yesterday, but-"

Izuku held up a hand, and Rumi quickly fell silent. He replied, "Look, we don't have to talk about it. It slipped out in a heated moment, it's not that big a deal."

"It is," Rumi countered.

Izuku fell silent, and Rumi could see his shoulders droop, although she didn't know why. He raised his head to face her again, and the defiance burning in his eyes took her breath away.

"Rumi, I don't care what you think-" he snapped, but it was Rumi's turn to interrupt.

She cut in, "Look, I know I pushed too far yesterday, alright? I'm sorry."

Izuku fell silent, which Rumi took as her opportunity to continue, "I'm sorry for forcing you to say

something you probably have your reasons for not talking about. I shouldn't have pried like that."

"You shouldn't have," Izuku agreed, his voice flat, but no longer angry. Rumi felt like that was a victory.

Then, she added, "I know it probably doesn't mean much coming from me, but I just wanted to say...that I don't think any less of you for not having a quirk. You're still the most stubborn, annoying guy I know."

"Wow, you actually made that sound like a compliment," Izuku snorted. "Coming from me, it is," Rumi responded, raw and honest.

Izuku held her gaze for a long second, as though judging her honesty; Rumi didn't blame him. Eventually, Izuku sighed, "Well, at least you didn't call me a worthless piece of shit."

"People actually said that?" Rumi asked, shocked.

"Sure they did," Izuku replied with a shrug, "I'm quirkless, Rumi. They might even have been right."

If the bitterness that crept into Izuku's voice wasn't there on purpose, he didn't acknowledge it, and Rumi didn't mention it.

But she did tell him, "Take it from someone who is useless, Izuku; you're definitely not. Hell, aren't you supposed to be the "best prosthetic designer in Japan?"

Izuku shook his head, a gesture at odds with the tiny, beaming smile on his face. It was the most genuine smile Rumi had seen on his face, and it lit up the hallway like the sun. She wondered why he didn't smile more, if just a tiny grin from him was so bright.

Fondly, he said, "You've got a point there, Rumi. Not about being useless, but hey, we could sit here swapping self-doubt all day if we wanted to."

"Probably," Rumi agreed, "and for the record...I think you would have made a great hero."

Instantly, Izuku's face changed. His mostly-controlled face wavered, wobbled, and for a moment, seemed to crack, revealing genuine surprise and joy behind it. He took a deep breath before he asked, in a voice trembling with more tentative hope and genuine emotion than Rumi had ever heard from him, "D-do you really mean that?"

Rumi nodded, a soft smile on her face as she answered, "Sure. If you've got the stubbornness to deal with my self-doubting ass, you can deal with anything. You've got spirit, Izuku, and that's what matters most at the end of the day."

Izuku smiled brightly then, and Rumi thought she would be blinded by it. Her heart leapt once, twice, three times as Izuku chuckled softly, a gentle, ringing sound that pealed high and happy like a bell.

Still speaking on autopilot, Rumi added, "Hell, you would have been a better hero than I was." Izuku stopped laughing, and the look he fixed on Rumi was full of worry and concern. "What

makes you say that?" he asked.

"Well, you've got all your limbs, for one," Rumi cracked, doing her best to keep the bitterness out of her own voice. She gestured with her arm stump, pointing at Izuku's own arm with fingers she didn't have anymore.

Izuku didn't laugh, and for a second, Rumi wondered if she'd gone too far again. Then, he smiled softly, and told her, "Let's get you back, Rumi."

"Okay," Rumi agreed, leaning back in the wheelchair as Izuku spun it around and began to push her back down the hall she'd so recently sped down.

As they reached her room, Rumi heard Izuku mutter, "Thank you, Rumi."

"Thank you," she countered. Rumi didn't add, "For not walking away," but she was pretty sure Izuku heard it anyway.

Dismissing her own gratitude, Izuku insisted, "Seriously, Rumi, I think I might have needed that."

Rumi's smile got wider once again; it was the first time she really thought that she might have fixed her mistake.

"Anytime, Doc," she replied, making Izuku chuckle again.

"I suppose we're stuck with each other," he mused out loud, "which means no more joyrides, missy."

"Or what?" she asked sweetly, falling back into the surprisingly familiar rhythm of their banter that she hadn't realized she missed so badly.

"Or else," Izuku told her firmly.

In that same singsong voice, Rumi gasped, "Is that a threat, Izuku?" "No," he corrected, "it's a promise."

Rumi laughed, and mock-sighed, "Fine, no more joyrides."

The tension between them wasn't gone, and it probably wouldn't be for a while, but now Rumi knew Izuku wasn't going to give up on her so easily, and Izuku knew that Rumi didn't care if he was quirkless or not.

For now, maybe that was enough to make the future look just a little bit brighter. Chapter End Notes

Next time, choices have to be made, and Izuku might have more secrets yet. See you then!

Discord server: https/discord.gg/EbqDwjq

Chapter Summary

Blame It On The Kids

Izuku has an idea. Rumi meets a fan. It's decision time.

Chapter Notes

This chapter took me a hell of a lot longer to write than I thought it would, but I'm really proud of how it turned out.

It's time for shit to reach maximum cheesy feels, guys.

Enjoy!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

When Izuku returned the next day, Rumi couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at the strange cart he brought with him, topped with a series of confusing metal and plastic structures, pieces seemingly disassembled.

"Hello, Rumi," Izuku said cheerily as he closed the door.

Rumi barely noticed him. Instead, she asked, "What the hell are those?"

Izuku mockingly clutched his chest. "What, not even a hello? What do they teach heroes these days?" he wondered rhetorically. Rumi rolled her eyes, waiting for him to get back to business.

Eventually, she responded, "Hello, Izuku, nice to see you again, now tell me what the fuck these things are, please."

"Polite and considerate as always, Rumi," Izuku drawled, sitting down and bringing the wheeled cart closer so that she could get a better look at what it held.

Rumi still couldn't make heads or tails of the strange objects; they varied wildly in size, shape, and design, with everything from a long, flattened object almost like a rubbery paddle to a three- pronged clamp with wires sticking out of it.

Noticing her confusion, Izuku smiled again and began to explain, "These are some examples of prosthetics, Rumi. Older models, mostly, but they might give you an idea of what you're working with."

Rumi squinted harder at the false limbs, feeling surprised and a little unnerved by how quickly this seemed to be happening.

She asked, "Hang on, I thought you said that I wasn't ready to get an actual prosthetic yet. What gives?"

Izuku stood up, skillfully sorting through the prosthetics as he replied, "You're not ready, not yet. Don't worry, I'm not gonna strap one of these things to you and expect you to just magically start walking again. No, this is more of a...showcase, I guess. Basically, I'm using this to explain how you're going to learn to walk again."

"I already know how to walk," Rumi grumbled indignantly, "that's not the problem here." "Not with a prosthetic leg instead of a real one, you don't," Izuku countered.

Rumi shrugged defiantly, her voice full of bravado as she said, "How hard can it be? Just put one foot in front of the other, right?"

Izuku rubbed his forehead in obvious irritation. At last, he told her, "Not quite."

"What are you talking about?" Rumi challenged.

Izuku gave her an unimpressed look, shook his head, and muttered, "Fucking heroes."

Rumi crossed her arms defiantly, waiting for Izuku to explain why he thought she was going to struggle so much with walking.

Eventually, Izuku sighed and said in a long-suffering tone, "Rumi, can you explain the biomechanics of walking to me?"

Rumi blinked, and her ears started to droop a little. "I..um...bio-what now?" she asked, totally lost. Izuku pressed, "What about running? Jumping? How about fighting?"

Rumi's ears fell even further as she shrugged helplessly.

"That's what I thought," Izuku told her, his voice harsh but not unkind, "Look, Rumi, no prosthetic is going to be exactly like a missing limb, and it's definitely not going to function the same way. So all of the motor functions you're used to will be different, for your arm and leg both. They'll eventually get there, but you will have to completely re-learn how to walk. Your balance will change, your muscles will have to get used to manipulating the prosthetic, and that's not even talking about fighting with it."

Rumi felt like she was wilting as Izuku outlined just how enormous her task was. Once again, she wondered if she could do it. Honestly, the more she looked at these tiny, weak contraptions of metal and plastic, she doubted that they could take even a fraction of her power. Maybe...maybe she should just give up. She had less than a week until the choice would be made for her, so maybe...

"Of course," Izuku continued, jolting Rumi out of her thoughts, "when you get your own prosthetic, things will be a little bit different."

Rumi felt herself sitting up a little straighter, her ears pricked again. "What do you mean?" she asked.

Izuku responded by picking up one of the prosthetics, the long, curved one that Rumi thought might have been a leg. He held it out to Rumi, letting her run her hand over the broad, flat surface of the part that must touch the ground.

Izuku said, "This is an old pre-quirk era prosthetic that helped with shock absorption and the like. It used to be popular with runners and athletes."

Rumi made a skeptical face as she felt the rigid yet flexible plastic. She asked, "Why do I need the history lesson?"

Instead of answering directly, Izuku countered, "Tell me, would you be able to fight or even jump with this?"

Instantly, Rumi shook her head vehemently. She could already tell that this fragile leg would never hold up. "Hell no," she answered, "I'd snap this thing in half the first time I tried to kick anything with it."

Izuku nodded, his eyes shining in agreement. "What about this one?" he asked, bringing out another false leg, this one seemingly nothing more than a long metal rod with a fake foot attached to the end.

"Please," Rumi scoffed, "I could shatter that with one hand, much less a kick."

Izuku nodded once, and put the second leg away, too. He turned back to Rumi and said, "Obviously, we've gotten better at making prosthetics since then; the technology's gotten much more advanced. Quirks changed everything, of course; now you have to basically make every new limb custom for every patient. When you start getting into hero prosthetics, which basically serve as vital support equipment anyway-"

Rumi's eyes went wide as she finally started to put the pieces together. "Hang on, how much more advanced are we talking here?" she cut in, antsy to get to the point.

Izuku smiled indulgently as he saw Rumi finally managing to get out of her stupor. He replied, "Advanced enough that I'm pretty damn sure I can make you prosthetics that'll be able to take every bit of punishment you can dish out."

For the first time, Rumi actually believed him. Even as she kept slipping into turmoil over her future, Izuku's cocky, confident grin was a lifeline. She knew him well enough now to believe that, regardless of anything else, he was probably stubborn enough to get it done. Even so, when Izuku raised his hand to forestall the anticipatory grin forming on Rumi's face, Rumi quieted down again far too quickly.

"That being said," Izuku cautioned her, "a prosthetic that advanced is gonna be pretty complex, and you won't be able to just stick it on and use it right off the bat. You're gonna need to practice."

Rumi tried to keep her disappointment from showing; she knew that it was just being petulant to be upset about that. She didn't become a top pro by slacking, dammit, she knew how to buckle down and work her ass off. She'd earned every bit of power she had; how would this be any different?

But even so, that deadline from the Hero Commission loomed in her mind, presenting a roadblock she didn't know how to clear.

Rumi asked, "So, uh, how long is this gonna take?"

Izuku's eyes seemed to understand her impatience all too well. He stroked his chin and mused, "Well, I can't say for sure, obviously. The design and work on the prosthetic will take a little while. As for the physical therapy and exercises and training you'll have to do...it could be anywhere from a few weeks to a few months until you're ready. Even after that, it'll be a hard road back. At the end of the day, though, the only thing that's going to speed this up is you, Rumi."

Taking a deep breath, Rumi nodded. She was going to try, at least, She still didn't know if she would succeed, but it wasn't like she was losing anything by learning to walk again.

Suddenly, Izuku frowned at her, his eyes seeming to sear through her very soul, reading her emotions like a book. Rumi hated it when he did that.

Izuku asked, "Rumi, is something bothering you?"

Exhaling with an uncertain shudder, Rumi decided, "Eh, no point in hiding it."

"Yeah," she admitted, "the other day, a guy from the Hero Commission came to talk to me."

"What did he say?" Izuku asked softly, sinking into his chair. His eyes were gentle, judgment-free, easy to talk to. Rumi kind of hated that, too.

But still, she replied, "He said that the Commission has been covering for my absence for as long as it can, but that the media is hounding them too hard now. Basically, I've got a week to make my choice about...about whether or not I'm retiring."

For a moment, Izuku's eyes flashed bright, before he controlled himself again. Evenly, he wondered, "And what choice are you going to make?"

Rumi couldn't help but knead the blankets uncertainly as she muttered, "I...I don't know yet."

Izuku held her gaze for a long moment; Rumi could barely stop herself from looking away, refusing to be that cowardly. At last, Izuku told her, "I assume you know what my opinion on that is."

Rumi couldn't help the sarcastic quirk of her lips that formed as she replied, "Gee, Doc, I don't know if I do."

Izuku sighed, looking genuinely worried for a moment before his face turned to steel again. Firmly, he said, "Rumi. I'm not letting you give up."

"I wasn't aware you got to make all the choices for me," Rumi snapped, her anxiety turning outwards in a heartbeat.

"I don't," Izuku agreed, "but I do feel like you need a voice of reason right now."

Rumi growled, "I don't need anyone else acting like I can't make decisions for my own damn self."

Something flashed in Izuku's eyes, and he snapped, "You aren't making this decision for yourself, Rumi!"

Rumi wasn't sure why, but something about the way Izuku's voice heaved as he spoke, something about the sudden energy that animated him, made her pause. Restraining her anger with difficulty, she asked, "What do you mean?"

His whole body alive with intensity, Izuku responded, "Rumi, you do realize that you're a Top Ten hero, right? That means that people look up to you. There are people who are inspired by you."

Rumi snorted bitterly, "Hah, so what? I didn't become a hero to inspire people or make myself into some kind of idol for people to admire. I did it because I like to fight, Izuku, I like being strong."

"And look where that got me," something traitorous whispered in her heart, a tiny voice she couldn't manage to squash.

Izuku stood, and Rumi was reminded that he was at least six inches taller than her. His voice

seemed to fill the room as he retorted, "That doesn't matter, Rumi. You don't get a choice. Even if you never meant for them to, people see your face and feel safe. Kids admire you, believe it or not."

"So?" Rumi asked harshly, "I don't care. All that faith doesn't mean a damn thing when I'm sitting alone in this fucking hospital bed."

Izuku hung his head for a moment, and Rumi briefly wondered if she'd finally won. Then, Izuku looked back up, and she knew that she was never going to win, not when he could give her a look that stubborn.

His finger jabbing sharply at her, then at the door, Izuku said, "Rumi, if you give up now, you're going to have to go out in front of every media outlet in the world and say, "I couldn't cut it. I give up." That's what you'll have to do. Do you think you can do that?"

Rumi hesitated. Once, she would have rather died than give up, let alone admit that she'd given up. But that had been before the mission, and the Nomus, and everything else that had happened. Now, Rumi didn't know if she had given up.

But Izuku wasn't done. He added, "If you go up there and say that, all those people who look up to you, you know what they'll do? They'll wonder if you ever meant what you said, if you were just all talk. They'll think that you failed."

Every word hit Rumi like a hammerblow, because she knew it was true. It was what she would have done, once upon a time. She hung her head, unable to deny it, unwilling to take the risk of changing course.

Izuku softened as he saw Rumi's despondence, but he wasn't going to let up. As long as he was on her case, there was no way in hell she was retiring. But how could he convince her that she wasn't just in this for herself?

Suddenly, Izuku had an idea. It would be tough to do on such short notice, and it might not go well, but...well, Takahashi owed him a few favors, and this counted, he was pretty sure. He asked, "Rumi, would you be willing to go somewhere tomorrow?"

Confused, Rumi looked up again. "Um...sure," she replied, "where?"

Izuku's grin was the most terrifying thing Rumi had ever seen. "You'll see," he told her, "you'll see."

The next day, Rumi was lying lazily in her bed, flipping through TV channels, when the door was suddenly barged open.

Now, for all that Rumi was a grown adult woman who considered fear to be something she beat up in a back alley (most of the time), she did still have some rabbit tendencies, thanks to her danger sense. And of course, when a rabbit was startled, their first instinct is always get the fuck out.

Unfortunately for Rumi, that instinct manifested itself in attempting to jump out of bed, which only caused her to fall to the ground with an undignified squawk as she managed to tangle herself in the sheets.

Meanwhile, Izuku strode into the room, a vicious grin on his face as he said, "Come on, Rumi, let's go on an emotionally-taxing field trip!"

Trying not to thrash around as her ears dragged along the floor, Rumi snarled, "You're really

selling me there, Doc, but can I get some help over here?"

Chuckling as he saw her dangling helplessly in her sheets, Izuku obliged, quickly untangling her and plopping her into the wheelchair that stayed by her bedside. Rumi didn't even bother fighting it; honestly, she didn't mind the idea of a change of scenery.

And if she was secretly hoping that Izuku could find a way to change her mind, well, he didn't need to know that.

Izuku quickly steered her out of the room, and down a winding maze of hallways that Rumi could never hope to keep track of. Eventually, though, she got curious about the changing markings on the walls, and asked, "Hey, Izuku, where are we going?"

"The children's wing," Izuku said curtly as they turned a corner, "there's someone I want you to meet."

Instantly, Rumi's blood went cold. She gripped the arm of her chair tightly as she said, "No."

"Yes," Izuku replied coolly, his eyebrow raised, "what, Rumi, it's just kids, they're not that bad."

Roughly, Rumi responded, "No, it is that bad. I hate kids."

"Why?" Izuku asked curiously.

Rumi explained, "They're tiny and grubby and loud and they always want to touch my ears. Kids are the fucking worst. I'm not even allowed to cuss them out!"

"Why would you want to cuss at kids?" Izuku wondered, trying to suppress his amusement at the fact that Rumi had been more animated about this than about anything else he'd seen.

"Uh, hello? Did I mention they like grabbing my ears?" Rumi retorted, gesturing to said ears with her hand.

"I see," Izuku said as they finally came to a small playroom clearly meant to give the children who stayed here a place to get out of their rooms, "well, I...don't think that ear-grabbing is going to be an issue here."

Now, Rumi was really confused. She began, "What is that supposed to mea-"

Before she could finish, Izuku opened the door, and the two of them entered. Rumi's eyes went wide as she saw the only child in the room, a small, black-haired girl with downcast eyes, maybe eight or nine years old who was absentmindedly pushing some colored blocks around with her hands-

With her hand. She only had the one, her right. Her left was missing, along with the rest of her arm up to her elbow. The sight of it made the stump of Rumi's left arm ache dully, perhaps in sympathy.

Some part of Rumi's mind registered a woman that must have been the girl's mother sitting nearby, along with a female doctor in a long white coat. If she'd been paying more attention, she would have seen the mother's eyes go wide in sudden recognition, only for the doctor by her side to put a finger to her lips. But the bulk of Rumi's mind was focused on that girl, who wore an expression shockingly familiar to Rumi, and yet... not.

In a quiet, kind voice, so different from how Rumi was used to hearing him, Izuku said, "Hitomi? There's someone I'd like you to meet."

Rumi couldn't find her breath as the girl-Hitomi, apparently-looked up at them, slowly and curiously. Her eyes were a shocking, glimmering silver, and Rumi could only imagine how shockingly wonderful they must be to look at when the girl was smiling. Now, though, they seemed dull, though not emotionless. When Hitomi's gaze landed on Rumi, though, on her missing arm, they seemed to spark, and in that moment Rumi understood .

Somehow, Rumi managed to piece together Izuku's plan, realizing that she was the person Hitomi was supposed to meet. She still couldn't find her voice, still stunned into silence by the sight of the girl's jarringly absent arm.

In a quiet, soft voice, Hitomi said, "Hi. My name's Hitomi. What's yours?" Rumi blinked once, and answered, "Oh, I'm...I'm Rumi."

Somewhere behind her, Rumi could sense Izuku leaving, heading to where his colleague and Hitomi's mother were sitting. Rumi assumed that they were just here to observe, maybe watch the fireworks. That meant that she and Hitomi were left alone in the middle of the room, left basically to their own devices.

Slowly, Hitomi got up from her kneeling position; Rumi noticed that she did it with surprising dexterity, considering the fact that she had to lean back on her one arm and get her legs underneath her. Apparently, she was more experienced than Rumi was in one-armed motion.

Hitomi came closer to Rumi, who got the distinct feeling that those almost reflective silver eyes were sizing her up. Eventually, Hitomi said shyly, "You only have one arm...like me."

Rumi nodded, bringing up her stump without even thinking about it. She added, "Yeah. One leg, too."

For a second, neither of them said anything, as though the understanding they had went deeper. Then, Hitomi asked quietly, "Can...can I ask how it happened?"

Rumi's mouth went dry, and she debated over what she was supposed to say. Uncertain, she looked over her shoulder, to where Izuku was sitting. He shrugged before making a shooing gesture, as if to say, "This is your show, not mine."

Rumi got the hint; she was on her own. Turning back to Hitomi, Rumi answered, "I...a villain did it."

Hitomi nodded gravely as she replied, "That was what happened to me, too."

Rumi's heart caught in her throat, but she kept it together. She said, "I...I'm sorry to hear that."

Hitomi smiled then, a quick flash and curve of her lips, but it was there all the same. Then, she changed the direction of the conversation as only children could.

"Are you a hero?" she asked, sweetly and innocently.

Rumi realized with a jolt that this girl didn't know who she was. Normally, Rumi got recognized constantly even off duty; the ears, the tanned-brown skin, and the brutal smile tended to make her stand out, even in a superhuman society. But then, Rumi could imagine that a month in the hospital had made her different-looking enough to slip by a nine-year-old. Besides, who thought of the powerful, intimidating hero Miruko and pictured her in a wheelchair?

Now, though, Rumi had a new dilemma. She didn't want to reveal who she was, only to watch the

typical hero worship inevitably turn into disappointment; she couldn't take that right now. So instead, Rumi responded evasively, "Something like that. You've probably never heard me."

"That's okay," Hitomi said before adding, "I want to be a hero, too."

Rumi saw the opportunity to change the subject, and went for it immediately. "Really? What's your...why do you want to be a hero?" she asked, managing to summon up a tiny spark of genuine interest.

She had been about to ask what Hitomi's quirk was, until she remembered Izuku and his dreams and his stubbornness. Maybe Hitomi's quirk wasn't the most important factor in whether she could become a hero. Although...she had said she still wanted to be a hero, hadn't she?

Hitomi beamed, excited to talk about their dreams just like every child was. She explained, "I wanna be like my hero, Miruko!"

Oh.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

Rumi had to suppress an involuntary flinch at Hitomi's words. Determined not to act weak in front of a kid, she managed to say, "Really? That's great!"

Hitomi must not have noticed the waver in Rumi's voice, because she beamed widely, her silver eyes shining brightly. "Yeah, Miruko's awesome!" Hitomi cheered, "she's always beating villains with her bare hands, and no matter how scary a fight gets, she never backs down, ever!"

"Oh?" Rumi choked out, fighting to control her shame as this young girl praised a hero she'd been, once.

Hitomi nodded vigorously as she confirmed, "Yeah, she's incredible!"

Then, her expression soured, and the exuberant girl drooped as though weighed down with worry. Leaning in close, Hitomi whispered to Rumi, "I'm kind of worried about Miruko, though. Nobody's seen her since that really bad fight a month ago. They're saying that she got hurt really bad...and I'm scared that she's not gonna come back."

Rumi blinked a few times, until she finally managed to agree in a weak voice, "I am too, kid." "Really? Are you a big fan of her, too?" Hitomi asked, tilting her head in curiosity.

The question of if she was her own fan was so strange to Rumi's mind, she nearly laughed. Instead, though, she asked another question that was still burning at her.

"Hitomi, do you still want to be a hero, even though you..." Rumi asked, trailing off as she nodded at Hitomi's missing arm, which the girl waved around just as wildly as her good hand as she spoke about her favorite hero.

Hitomi came to a stop long enough to glance down at her missing limb, then looked right back up into Rumi's eyes.

"Yeah, I do," Hitomi told her, the light, airy exuberance gone from her face, replaced with a look of pure determination that Rumi couldn't help but recognize, the kind that would get this tiny slip of a girl past a thousand obstacles and a thousand people telling her "no," the kind that made her look like she was about to drive through a concrete wall with nothing but her body.

"Why? What makes you say that?" Rumi wondered, trying not to be swept up by this girl's faith and failing in the most hopeful way possible.

Hitomi rubbed her right hand over her stump as she explained, "Even though I got hurt by a villain, I tried to be like my hero and never give up. I was still really scared and hurt and afraid for a long time...I didn't think I could do it. But then I realized that if Miruko lost her arm, she still wouldn't give up, and I shouldn't, either. I...if she doesn't come back, then...then I want to be just like her anyway!"

Hitomi was speaking quickly and forcefully by the time she was done, her eyes shut tight as though she was expecting Rumi to challenge her, to tell her that she was wrong.

Instead, as she felt something inside her feeling softer than she could ever remember, Rumi asked quietly, "So that's why you want to do it? You...want to live up to who you think Miruko is?

"To who I know she is," Hitomi corrected, her voice still ringing out with strength mixed with nervousness, "and...because if I ever meet her, whether she's still a hero or not...I want her to be proud of me."

Rumi smiled then, somber and muted, but a real smile, one that pushed back the fear and the darkness in her chest and, for a second, made her feel like the hero this little girl thought she was again.

She brought up her remaining hand to ruffle Hitomi's hair affectionately, and told her, "If Miruko saw you right now...I think she would already be proud, kid."

Hitomi's smile was full of all the same feelings that Rumi could feel swirling through her, and it was as much of a promise as Rumi's was, too. She said, "Thanks, Rumi."

"Anytime, Hitomi," Rumi responded, grinning back and holding out a fist. Hitomi bumped it, and something inside Rumi that had been loose, had been missing, snapped back into place.

From the side of the room, Izuku watched with an unreadable expression, half wry grin and half grimace, as pride and memories warred inside him.

A while later, when Rumi had said her goodbyes and she had been assured that Hitomi's mother was sworn to secrecy, Izuku wheeled her out of the room with a knowing smirk on his face.

They hadn't made it twenty feet down the corridor before Izuku asked, "So, do you still think I'm making things up?"

Rumi huffed, crossing her arms over her chest as she retorted, "You sly motherfucker, you had that all planned out, didn't you?"

"What, me? Of course not!" Izuku laughed, a twinkle in his eye, "Of course, if I just so happened to arrange a playdate with the biggest Miruko fan in the entire hospital, who happens to be an actual ray of sunshine, well...is that a crime?"

"I suppose it isn't...but I'm still feeling a tiny bit manipulated," Rumi grumbled.

Without a drop of sympathy, Izuku responded, "Good. You needed that, and don't try to lie about it."

Rumi rolled her eyes, but she took his advice. Eventually, as they made their way towards her

room, she spoke up again to say, "Izuku...I've made my decision, but there's one condition." Without stopping or missing a beat, Izuku replied, "I see. Do I get to hear it?"

Rumi nodded, drawing in her breath as a look of raw stubbornness formed on her face, a look borrowed from a little girl who had borrowed it from the woman Rumi would be again, someday.

"I'm going to come back," Rumi declared, "I'm going to work my ass off, fight tooth and nail, do whatever it takes to be a hero again...but there's something I need you to help me with."

Even though Rumi wasn't looking at him, Izuku nodded, his voice ringing with depth and force every bit as strong as Rumi's. "Anything," Izuku promised, meaning it as deeply as he could mean anything.

Rumi closed her eyes, imagining the scene; she had five days, five days until playtime was over. When she opened her eyes again, they burned as she growled, "I'm going to announce it myself, in person. But when I do... I will not show up in a goddamn wheelchair. I won't let the people who look up to me see me like that. I am going to walk onto that podium, no matter how short or hard that distance is. To do that...I need your help."

Izuku could have said a hundred things, given any number of reasons why what Rumi wanted was ludicrous at best, and borderline impossible at worst...but he knew it wouldn't matter. Rumi would do it anyway, and he would cheer her on every step of the way.

"Tomorrow, we're going to start," Izuku told her, "and it's going to be the hardest thing you've ever done. You're going to be begging me to let you stop, but I won't let you. If we're going to do this, we're going to fucking do it, you hear me?"

Rumi nodded once, knowing full well that she was going to be in agonizing pain this time tomorrow, and not giving a damn. Pain, she could take and then some; she wasn't afraid of it anymore.

"Tomorrow," she agreed, "we get to work." Chapter End Notes

Yet another symptom of my "I'm too lazy to come up with more than three Japanese names" disease, I know, I know.

As a heads up, I'm gonna be on a trip these next two days, so no chapters, unfortunately.

Next time, the work starts.

See you then!

Discord server: https/discord.gg/rPnRUFt

Chapter Summary

You Gotta Get Back Up

The first day of learning to walk is painful, but maybe talking will help. Or, alternatively, it could...not.

Chapter Notes

Behold, more of the idiots slowly getting used to the concept of not hating each other! I feel like we've slowly gotten into a comfortable pattern for these two lately. Hopefully, things will start getting more varied soon.

Enjoy!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

The next day, it quickly became apparent that Izuku wasn't joking or exaggerating in the slightest

about the difficulty of learning to walk again, or the pain.

"Fuck!" Rumi swore as she toppled forwards again, her weak, traitorous leg buckling underneath her. The floor rushed up to greet her as she desperately tried to break her fall, but it was too late. Rumi braced for impact as she was-

Caught by Izuku's strong, steady arms at the last moment, letting her cling to his shoulder as he guided her back into an upright position.

Soothingly, he told her, "It's fine. You'll get there."

Rumi snorted humorlessly as bitter frustration coursed through her, fueled by the need to grit her teeth as constant waves of pain radiated from her screaming leg muscles. She retorted, "When? When will I get there? Because I've got four fucking days to get this right, remember?"

Rumi and Izuku had been at this for nearly an hour; the very first thing had done when he'd arrived was strap a simple prosthetic leg to Rumi's stump, more or less a fancy, advanced peg-leg that was a simple piece of metal for her to push against, cushioned from the tender skin of her stump by as much padding as he could physically add.

Rumi had spent the first thirty minutes just trying to stand up; the false leg and missing arm meant her balance was completely screwed up. Even when she could stand without immediately pitching forward, Rumi hadn't even been able to take a single step without going down. The mix of her horrible balance and the agony that shot up her leg every time she put any amount of pressure on the limb kept making her messed-up knee buckle instantly. She probably would have knocked herself out on the tiled floors by now if Izuku didn't keep catching her.

"The only reason you only have four days is because you're too proud to talk to the media sitting down," Izuku pointed out.

Rumi narrowed her eyes, and her ears stiffened slightly, a sign of her growing irritation. "It's not because of pride," she growled.

"Then why are you so damn stubborn about walking out to that press conference under your own power?" Izuku asked, his hands crossed over his chest.

Rumi thought of Hitomi, of the fire that burned in her silver eyes when she spoke of Miruko, and the worry she felt for her missing hero. Rumi imagined how the girl would react if she saw her hero battered and broken, not standing tall that Miruko should.

Through gritted teeth, Rumi replied, "I'm doing this because anything less goes against everything I'm supposed to stand for."

Of all the responses Rumi expected from Izuku, rolling his eyes was one she hadn't considered. And yet, there Izuku was, muttering, "Fucking heroes."

"Aren't you the one who told me that I mattered to people and I should try to live up to their faith in me?" Rumi pointed out, gripping the foot of her bed for support as she tried to stand up.

God, just standing up felt so liberating, Rumi wanted to laugh. How far had she fallen to feel so much happiness over something so small?

Izuku responded, "Yeah, but I was expecting you to commit to your recovery, not make demands your body can't meet!"

Rumi stared down at her throbbing leg, at where the stump disappeared into layers and layers of padding that didn't do a damn thing to make it hurt less. "I'll manage," she insisted.

Izuku replied, "That's the problem, Rumi. You can't just "manage" when you're dealing with something like this. If something goes wrong, it could fuck up your entire recovery."

Rumi knew that; before they'd even started, Izuku had lectured her on the dangers she was inviting, from undoing the work of shaping her stumps, to causing sores that could permanently damage her ability to wear a prosthetic at all in the future, to risking cuts and infections. Even so, she wasn't going to stop, not when she had something to prove.

"Then we just have to make sure that nothing goes wrong," Rumi told Izuku, "Now, are you going to help me do this or not?"

Izuku sighed loudly as his shoulders slumped; his eyes shone with pride even as his mouth set in an unapproving grimace. He said, "You are a stubborn, reckless idiot with no regard for your own health."

"So a normal hero, then?" Rumi joked, even as she felt the pain in her leg steadily worsening, making her arm tremble as she tried to brace herself, forcing herself to stay upright.

"Unfortunately," Izuku sighed.

"Then what does that make you?" Rumi asked. Even as she spoke, though, her amputated leg's shrieking and fatigue got worse and worse; now, she was practically leaning on her one good arm just to stay upright. The pain had changed, too; instead of a steady ebb and flow of agony, it was pulsing, growing, getting more and more intense as Rumi's strength slipped away.

Izuku seemed to notice it, too, but he still replied lightly, "Your enabler, obviously."

Rumi barked out a laugh, but it was obviously shaky. She hissed, "Okay, let's do this."

Izuku raised an eyebrow skeptically, but he spread his arms wide, standing barely three paces away from Rumi. "Okay," he said, "remember, just try and walk to me. One foot in front of the other, it doesn't matter how slowly you're going."

Rumi nodded, took a deep, unsteady breath, and focused. "One foot in front of the other," she repeated in her mind, "it's just three steps. You can do this."

Rumi closed her eyes, then opened them again. Without another word, she let go of the bed, swinging her prosthetic leg forwards. She felt a vibration run up it as the false foot hit the floor. Slowly, she shifted her weight, hoping that this time it wouldn't fail her, and-

As soon as Rumi felt a bolt of concentrated agony shoot up from her stump, so strong it left her barely able to feel the whole leg, she knew that this attempt was going to end even worse than the others. She threw her arm out as she tipped over, yelling, "SHIIIIT!"

Just like before, Izuku was already moving before she fell, his arms encircling her, supporting her before she could topple. Rumi felt his solidly-built chest under her hand, and she couldn't explain the way her skin heated up a little.

A wave of disappointment crushed everything else in her mind, though, and she swore, "For fuck's sake, I thought-AGHHHH!"

Rumi cut herself off with a tortured yell as Izuku tried to right her, and weight came back to her half-gone leg. It felt like she'd been stabbed right in the stump, the pain was so sharp and universal.

Instantly, Izuku said, "Rumi, get on the bed, and off that leg. Now."

Even as tears of pain built up at the corner of her eyes, Rumi hissed, "No, I'm okay, I can-"

Before she could even finish, Izuku pushed her backwards onto the bed, making her eyes go wide as her back struck the mattress. Izuku moved too quickly for even Rumi to react, and soon, he was sitting next to Rumi as she lay flat on her back, lifting her prosthetic leg into the air.

Rumi protested, "Hey, what the hell, Doc? I can keep going, I swear!"

As his fingers undid the straps that fastened the prosthetic to Rumi's stump, Izuku fixed her with the most scathing look in his arsenal. It instantly made Rumi's ears wilt in terror, cowing her enough for him to say dryly, "I'll be the judge of that, and the executioner, if I want to be."

Rumi bit back hisses and grunts of pain as Izuku pulled the prosthetic off fully, revealing her skin glowing an angry red color. When Izuku put a finger against the end, Rumi cried out, all her attempts to suppress the noise failing as agony transfixed her.

In an exasperated tone of voice, Izuku asked, "Rumi, why didn't you tell me that the pads were chafing?"

Rumi froze; in fact, she'd noticed the uncomfortable rubbing pretty soon after the prosthetic had first been put on, but she had been so determined to make progress that she hadn't told Izuku.

Guiltily, she muttered, "Because I didn't want to make you worry, and I thought I could tough it out."

Izuku rolled his eyes again. Flatly, he told her, "Rumi, that was stupid. Trying not to worry me doesn't help, and you can't "tough this out." You'll only make it worse."

Rumi sighed as Izuku grabbed a container of lotion and began working it into her stump, the cooling sensation draining away the pain. She replied, "Yeah, yeah, I know, Doc."

"I hope you do," Izuku retorted, "because this could have been much worse if it kept going."

Rumi blinked in surprise and asked hopefully, "So...this isn't that bad?"

Izuku continued to massage Rumi's painful stump as he huffed, "Honestly? No. We caught it before it started to blister, so this won't slow you down too much. We'll take a twenty-minute break and then get back to work."

If Rumi wasn't already lying limply on the bed, she would have flopped down like a cranky teenager. "Do we have to?" she whined.

"Yes," Izuku said calmly as he gave Rumi's stump one last work-over with his gentle fingers, then let her leg drop down to hang just over the edge of the bed.

Grumpily, Rumi hefted herself with her arm until she was sitting up next to Izuku. She said, "Ugh, fine. What are we going to do with this break?"

Izuku shrugged and responded, "I don't know, what do you usually do with your breaks?"

Rumi tilted her head in confusion as she stared at Izuku. She told him, "I don't take breaks, Doc!

I'm a top pro, I'm always working."

Izuku squinted at Rumi's defiant pose for a long moment, his expression thoroughly unimpressed. Eventually, he slumped and muttered, "It's a goddamn miracle none of you top pros end up in the hospital for nervous breakdowns instead of losing half your internal organs or some shit like that. I'm pretty sure every fucking one of you is insane."

Rumi shrugged and replied, "Look, I've always just given my all to everything I do, and it's not like I have many interests outside of being a hero."

"Or any interests," Rumi thought to herself. She'd become a hero with the same single-minded drive that had won her so many fights; there had never really been room or time for anything else, even things she sometimes wished for.

Izuku stared evenly at Rumi, and she found herself wondering about his interests. At the end of the day, she realized, she barely knew anything about him, other than his work. And something in her wasn't satisfied with that.

So she asked, "What about you? Any hobbies?"

Izuku couldn't help the hollow chuckle that Rumi's words forced out of his throat. "Not anymore," he replied evasively, "med school took the same kind of focus from me."

Rumi's ear flicked; she'd heard the hidden layers Izuku couldn't keep out of his voice, and she pressed, "What do you mean, " not anymore?"

Izuku didn't particularly appreciate Rumi prying like this, but after a moment, he figured it was a good way to get her to sit still until her leg was ready to keep going. He answered, "I, uh, I used to be a pretty big hero fan."

Rumi supposed that that made sense, though the bitterness in Izuku's words as he said "used to be" made her feel hollow grief at the thought of a boy filling his life with symbols of a dream he could never reach, and those symbols souring more and more with every passing year.

"Oh?" she asked, "how big of a hero fan are we talking here?"

Izuku winced as embarrassing memories came to the forefront of his mind. With a blush spreading over his cheeks, he admitted, "My room might have been mistaken for a hero merchandise store if you walked into it without context."

Rumi chuckled softly as she teased, "It sounds like you were a huge fucking hero nerd, Izuku."

"I was," Izuku replied casually.

Rumi asked, "What hero was your favorite? Because if your room was like a shrine to Endeavor or something, I'm going to make so much fun of you."

Izuku raised an eyebrow. "Why Endeavor specifically?" he asked, earning himself a smirk and a glare from Rumi.

She replied, "Do I need a reason? He's just a little bitch."

"Didn't he save your life?" Izuku pointed out. Rumi fought back the tide of agonized thoughts, half memories and half fever dreams from that terrible day, and shrugged instead.

"Sure," she admitted, "and he has my gratitude for that. But he's still a little bitch."

Izuku pretended to think about it for a second, then nodded sagely. "You know what? You're absolutely right," he agreed, "and for the record, my favorite hero as a kid was All Might."

Rumi told him, "You know, I'm not surprised, honestly. He's a good choice."

Izuku looked surprised. He mused, "That's kind of unexpected coming from you, honestly, what with the whole retirement business that went down after Kamino. I thought you'd be all dismissive of him for being "weak."

Rumi snorted loudly. Crossing her arms, she scoffed, "Please, there's no way I'm gonna insult that kind of move. The guy beat the strongest villain Japan has ever seen by himself."

"Second strongest, now," Rumi corrected in her head, remembering the reports she'd heard about what Shigaraki had done to the city after she'd gone down, and the way her danger sense had shrieked when it saw him. She'd never felt anything like it, before or since. But he'd been forced to retreat eventually, and even though he was technically still out there, the heroes had won a brief reprieve.

"He did," Izuku agreed, "and he's still awesome, even if I get cranky every time I think about him hiding an injury that bad."

Rumi grinned at the thought of what Izuku would have done to All Might if given the chance. She asked, "Did you ever have him as a patient?"

"Nope," Izuku answered regretfully, "if I had, though, you can bet your ass I'd have dealt with him."

Rumi pictured the Number One Hero getting taken to task by a doctor half his age, and she

laughed. Izuku grinned as Rumi nearly doubled over before finally recovering.

Then, another thought came to her. Rumi asked, "You know; I'm kind of curious about something...what's the most memorable patient you've had?"

Recognizing another opportunity to keep Rumi occupied, Izuku stroked his chin, thinking of the best stories he could remember. He joked, "Other than you?"

"Of course," Rumi cracked, "after all, nobody else can get under your skin like I can."

"You're absolutely right on that one. You are the most irritating patient I've had, that's for sure,"

Izuku agreed.

"I consider that a professional compliment," Rumi replied airily.

Izuku retorted, "Trust me, it is."

They both laughed, slowly trailing back into silence as Izuku gathered his thoughts.

At last, he began, "Well, I can think of one pretty memorable patient. You remember when Ingenium got hurt a few months ago?"

Rumi nodded, her brow furrowing as she recalled the incident. "He got hurt by that Stain fucker, right? The one Endeavor beat during the Hosu Incident?" she asked.

Izuku nodded in confirmation, then continued, "Anyway, Ingenium-I call him Tensei-got transferred here when it became clear just how bad his injury was. His spine was damaged so badly that for a while, we thought he might not be able to walk ever again."

Rumi winced in sympathy for a familiar situation. She wondered, "But isn't he back on the job now? I thought I remembered seeing something about that..."

"Yeah, well, who needs a spine, anyway?" Izuku responded, grinning, "not him once I helped design a whole new brace structure for his costume that let him walk and use his quirk again, that's for sure. Oh, and I also gave him extra rocket boosters for the hell of it."

"Hang on, you just...fixed a spine injury, just like that?" Rumi said in surprise.

"Sure," Izuku answered with a shrug, "this isn't the best hero hospital in the country for no reason, Rumi."

"So, is that why Ingenium was memorable?" Rumi asked.

"Oh, not quite," Izuku told her, "I remember it because of the talk I had with Ingenium's brother. He came in so devastated and angry over his brother's injury, he was obviously gonna do something stupid like try to "avenge" Ingenium."

"Hang on...you're talking about that Iida kid from the sports festival, right? The one with a stick the size of Mount Fuji up his ass?" Rumi asked, recalling the boy from her own viewing of the event.

Izuku nodded, snorting at Rumi's description. "The very same," he confirmed.

"So, what did you do?" Rumi prompted.

Izuku replied, "Oh, nothing too serious. When I was done explaining the path forward to Tensei

and his family, I told the kid to wait behind. When he did, I told him that if he did anything to distract his brother from recovering and healing, I would personally break his legs and stick him in the room right next door to his precious brother."

Rumi snorted in spite of herself, saying, "And he just... accepted that?"

"Of course he did," Izuku responded, "I can be very convincing."

"Now that, I know from experience," Rumi muttered.

Izuku laughed, but even as he did, he was struck by a thought; for all that Rumi knew about him, he didn't know much about her. He decided to change that.

Izuku said, "So, now you know who my favorite hero is, but I'm curious...who's yours?"

"Oh, I uh..." Rumi stammered, not expecting the question and turning slightly red at being caught

off guard.

Once she'd recovered, Rumi retorted, "What's it to you?"

Izuku shrugged. "I'm just curious," he admitted, "I've always wondered who Miruko could possibly look up to."

Rumi smiled gently at Izuku's admiring tone as she mused, "I guess it's only fair to answer...but I'm not sure you'll know who it is. She's a pretty...old-school hero."

"Uh, hello?" Izuku joked, gesturing at himself, "hero nerd, remember? Try me."

Rumi couldn't really argue against that. Taking a deep breath, she said, "You know Maverick?"

Izuku's eyes widened slowly, and he wracked his mind. Eventually, he replied, "Vaguely, I think. She was...before our times, right?"

"Sure," Rumi confirmed, "she died...not long before we were born, I think. But that doesn't change the fact that she's the single most badass hero I've ever seen. When I was a little girl, I saw a clip of her, fighting some villain, and...I've never wanted to be like someone as badly as I did then. She was just so...strong, and confident, and determined, it inspired me. She was everything I wanted to be. I always wished I could fly just like she could...although my jumps sometimes felt close."

Izuku nodded, looking as though he'd never expected this opportunity to hear something like this from someone he admired. He added, "I mostly know about her because she was supposedly All Might's mentor."

Rumi hadn't known about that, but it just added another wrinkle to her favorite hero. Then, she remembered how Maverick had died, too, like all the heroes seemed to these days, and a dark thought crossed her mind, a return to a place she only came back to in low points.

Hanging her head, Rumi muttered, "I wonder if she ever felt as weak and pathetic as I do right now."

Izuku heard her, and his heart flared with determination. He put a hand on Rumi's shoulder and said in a soft, urgent voice, "I guarantee you, she did, Rumi."

"What, did you somehow have her as a patient, too?" Rumi asked sarcastically, bitterness papering over the frustration that welled up inside her. How could she claim to want to be like her hero

when she couldn't walk, when she was letting down the little girls that looked up to her the way Rumi had, sometimes still did, to Maverick?

"No," Izuku replied, "but I've treated enough heroes to know that they're just like everyone else. They're stupid, and scared, and sometimes they hit rock bottom and wonder if they really mean anything, if they're actually capable of what they thought they were.

Rumi's heart ached; she felt like Izuku had stripped away every layer of defense she'd built, cut right through to her true feelings. She hated it, but appreciated it more than she could ever say at the same time.

His eyes soft and understanding and kind, Izuku continued, "We all have those moments when we don't think we can go on, Rumi, every single one of us. We grow from them, we survive them. Trust me, you will, too."

Rumi felt her spirits lifting again, as Izuku's smile filtered into her like sunlight. Maybe he was right. He hadn't lied to her yet, after all.

Even as she felt better, managing a soft smile, Rumi felt her curiosity returning. She decided to chance something. Izuku had told her more about himself today than he ever had...and maybe she could answer the burning question she'd had about Izuku, ever since she'd first noticed his flinches and his pauses.

Izuku Midoriya was hiding something; some secret of his past was lying just behind the mask of the cocky, abrasive doctor he wore so naturally. Rumi intended to find out what, to satisfy this burning fascination with him that she'd begun to harbor.

So Rumi asked, "What was yours?"

Izuku faltered, his smile dropping. Confused, he responded, "I'm sorry, what?"

"You said that everyone has a lowest point," Rumi repeated, her voice soft and hopeful and maybe a little more vulnerable than she would have liked, "What...what was yours?"

Now, Izuku's expression slammed shut faster than a storm door, his smile fading, replaced with a steely, unreadable look that seemed to hide a thousand warring emotions. Rumi watched Izuku pull back, severing the easy flow they'd built without realizing.

With an expression that suggested that he was trying not to get angry at her, Izuku growled, "It was a long time ago, that's what. Now, your leg should be ready to go again; are you gonna walk, or are you gonna sit around asking me questions I'm not gonna answer?"

That was as definitive a rejection as Rumi had ever seen, and she cursed herself for trying. She should be happy with what Izuku gave her, dammit! He wasn't here to satisfy her curiosity, and yet...Rumi couldn't help her intrigue when it came to him.

One way or another, Rumi swore, she'd learn more about Dr. Izuku Midoriya. But for now, she hauled herself into position as she said, "Yeah, good idea, Doc."

Izuku never made eye contact as he fastened the prosthetic back on, and stood up again. Rumi didn't force it.

This time, she made even less progress than she had the first time before she toppled over, barely getting caught by Izuku. Honestly, she was kinda surprised that he'd caught her at all; by the look

on his face, even he was surprised by the speed he'd moved at.

That gave her hope that maybe she hadn't hurt him as badly as she had before, or maybe he was learning to deal with her ability to get under his skin, to draw out his secrets one by one the way he drew out her pain.

With Izuku's help, Rumi righted herself, gritted her teeth, and tried again, swinging her foot, keeping her weight back until she was absolutely sure of the footing, and...plummeted to the ground yet again.

Rumi didn't care about the pain already throbbing in her leg; she barely noticed the way Izuku's hand lingered over hers as she stood back up. Her whole being was focused on her goal, just like she always had been.

Four days until she would walk out in front of the whole world, and tell them that she would come back, no matter the cost.

She was going to do this.

Chapter End Notes

If it wasn't clear, or you haven't read my other fic, Crossing The Veil, "Maverick" is Nana Shimura's hero name, or at least the one I came up with for her. I really like the fanart of Rumi being inspired by Nana, even if the timeline doesn't quite line up, so I used my powers of Fuck Canon to do it myself.

Next time, Rumi finally pushes too far, and things come out. See you then!

Discord server: https/discord.gg/EbqDwjq

With These Imperfect Hands

Chapter Summary

Izuku stops hiding from Rumi.

Chapter Notes

I'm continually being blown away by the response to this fic. Now that we've reached a moment I've planned from the beginning, I can't wait to see what you guys have to say!

Enjoy!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Izuku's night was long and sleepless. He tossed and turned in his apartment, paced helplessly, did

everything he could to get his brain to settle.

But instead, all he saw when he closed his eyes was the same nightmare that had haunted him for six years, blood and blades and upturned flesh and laughter all in a jumbled mess, like a jigsaw puzzle torn apart.

The goddamn laughter was what got him most of all; it mocked his every effort, his defiance of what he was. It sneered, "You're nothing, and you will always be nothing."

Izuku turned over again, but accepted that sleep wasn't in the cards for tonight. Oh well. It wasn't like this was his first time pulling an all-nighter.

Instead, he pulled on the nearest clothes he could find-a T-shirt that said "T-shirt" on it, you couldn't knock the classics-hauled himself out of bed, and wandered through his dark apartment. Maybe he would have tripped on something, if he spent enough time in this apartment to accumulate junk that would end up on the floor. But no, he only came here to sleep and eat most of the time.

Izuku knew he was a workaholic, but honestly, he didn't really care. He loved his work, loved helping people. Why worry about other things? He may sleep here, but he was only really at home when he could help others.

Eventually, Izuku made his way onto the balcony, where the cold air hit his lungs with a shock. It was bracing, almost, the way the wind whipped at his hair and made him draw his limbs closer to himself for warmth.

Izuku laid a hand on the railing and stared out over the city, which shone with light and rang with sound that was almost jarring to Izuku. He was used to the efficient, subdued chaos of the hospital, where everyone knew what they were doing in a world that liked to remind them that they didn't, not really.

Izuku let his eyes close again as the sounds of horns and laughter and even some music wrapped tightly around his senses, only to open them with a jolt a second later when memories flashed through his vision like the screech of a knife on concrete.

God, had it really been six years? Six years since Izuku's life had changed. The jury was still out on whether it was for the better or not.

It was strange, how one decision, one chance roll of the dice, could take him down a path he'd never have expected.

What would have happened, if he hadn't gone where he did, and been given one chance to prove he deserved more than he'd gotten, and failed?

He wouldn't be a doctor, hiding the things he'd lost from people.

He wouldn't be at the top of his field, a dynamo at twenty-seven.

And...he wouldn't have met people like Rumi.

Izuku sighed, rubbing his face as the tanned, rabbit-eared woman cropped up in his mind again.

What was it about her that did this to him? Somehow, Rumi could get to him in a way nobody else really could. Maybe it was because she was observant, and blunt, and stubborn as a mule, or maybe it was something else entirely. Whatever the reason, Izuku found himself constantly fighting to keep his mouth shut around her, trying to keep from spilling every thought in his head.

That wasn't even mentioning the way Izuku felt drawn to her. At first, it had been because she was one of the heroes he most admired. Then, it was because he'd seen how much the woman underneath all that bravado and indomitable spirit was hurting, hurting in ways he knew all too well. But even that familiarity, that desire to help Rumi out of the sucking abyss of despair she'd found herself in, couldn't explain the way he felt the walls around his heart crumbling every time she spoke.

Izuku knew by now that he couldn't help that crumbling. Sooner or later, Rumi would tease out every last one of his secrets, because she was just that annoying and dogged...and because something in her eyes reminded Izuku of himself.

That left Izuku questioning whether he should bite the bullet and tell her himself, before it was dragged out of him. It might help her see that there was a path forwards, that someday she wouldn't be helpless.

But wasn't Rumi already charging forwards, determined to heal, her old fire returned to her eyes? Didn't the smile of a little girl push her forwards?

That wasn't quite enough, and Izuku knew it all too well; no one reason was going to be enough to free Rumi from her despair. No one person could pull her out, not when she'd buried herself so deep, lost so much. Besides, there was a difference between running away from a place you couldn't remain any longer, and running towards a goal you wanted with all your heart. Izuku had spent long enough doing the former that he understood doing the latter was the only way Rumi was ever going to be who she used to be.

This was another way Izuku could help her, but it would force him to expose a part of himself he had buried for six years. He didn't know if he could make that kind of self-sacrifice.

Izuku almost laughed out loud as the thought crossed his mind. Sacrifice. So many heroes he'd

treated had believed that their injuries were worth what it had cost them, saying that as long as they "made it count," they didn't mind the pain or the end of their careers. Hero after hero said that as long as someone else wasn't hurting because of them, they'd grit their teeth and take it. Not all of them said it or believed it, of course, far from it, but Izuku had heard it so many times that he was sick of it.

So many of Izuku's colleagues said that the attitudes of their patients were inspiring; Izuku wished he disagreed, that he could voice the helpless frustration he felt every time a hero rose to the occasion, determined to not let anything keep them down.

But he couldn't. After all, he understood that desire, that need to tell yourself that there was meaning in the pain you suffered, in the life-altering losses you experienced. He understood it as only someone who'd lived it could.

At the end of the day, though, Izuku knew he had no right to compare what he'd felt to what the heroes he treated went through. After all, so often, they were telling the truth. They'd willingly given up their own safety and health and future to protect somebody else, to help someone, to stop those who threatened the innocent. For them, ending up in the hospital was so often not a loss, just a victory that was a little more bittersweet than usual, but a victory all the same.

Izuku, though? He hadn't made his loss count, had failed miserably even in the attempt. The random chances of life had given him one shot to prove that he could save people, and he'd only been punished for trying.

A particularly strong gust of wind raced up the side of the apartment building, and the cold cut right through Izuku's clothes and sank into his bones. He shivered, rubbing his shoulders and arms to try and keep warm.

Okay, that was enough bitching about his life on the balcony for now. Really, he wasn't that bothered about the path his life had taken. Izuku had rebuilt his life piece by piece, day by day, and he'd reached places he'd never even dreamed of.

Sometimes, Izuku remembered the old saying that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. He supposed that it fit him pretty well.

He was still here, still breathing, still fighting. He knew how much of a blessing that was, and he knew better than to expect any more.

That was just fine with him, because a second chance was all he needed. Izuku could take care of the rest.

At last, Izuku turned to go back inside, unable to stand the cold any longer.

He still didn't know if he could ever tell Rumi about his past. He didn't even know if he should. For now, his pains would stay firmly locked up where nobody could see them, behind walls that had crystallized into being long ago.

Unfortunately, Rumi had mastered the art of shattering walls, whether Izuku's or otherwise.

Even after an hour of practice the next day, Rumi still couldn't take a couple goddamn steps without falling.

She could feel her determination wavering with every time Izuku had to catch her. Hitomi's smile and her words felt like a bandaid over a gaping wound, a temporary solution at best. Underneath it,

the same familiar hollowness and self-doubt were lurking, waiting to pull her right back down. Something inside her whispered, "Stop pretending you're the same Miruko Hitomi admires. You've

failed too many times to even make the claim."

Rumi tamped down the voice with a fury as she rose again, her false leg wobbling underneath her. Cursing her own weakness, she hissed, "Again."

Izuku, standing across from her as he had for days now, looked at her with something that might have been sympathy. He told her, "Rumi, maybe we should try something else-"

"No," Rumi interrupted, her ears pricked defiantly, "we are doing this now."

Izuku sighed, and his expression faded further. Stepping forwards, he explained, "I think we should

get you used to how walking feels before we actually make you do it."

Rumi snapped, "There isn't time! We've already wasted half of our time with nothing to show for it!"

Izuku replied, "And you'll waste the rest of it if you keep trying to do this alone."

"Why shouldn't I be doing this alone?" Rumi demanded. She'd have to walk up to that podium alone, speak alone, stand up in front of the whole world alone. Shouldn't she be ready for that?

"Because you can't do it alone," Izuku said firmly. Rumi would have argued, but Izuku had won exactly this argument before, and deep down, she knew he was right.

But it still stung, dammit. Rumi grumbled, "I can do this just fine, Izuku."

Izuku's only response was to close the distance between them and circle behind her, grabbing onto

her hips. As he did so, he said, "We'll see about that."

Rumi fought back a blush as she felt Izuku's hands on her hips, seemingly making her skin heat up wherever they touched. "H-hey, what's the big idea?" she asked, her ears twitching.

Coolly, Izuku explained, "I'll keep you balanced and supported, while you focus on putting one foot in front of the other. Now, walk."

Taking a deep breath and fighting back a strange fascination with how close Izuku was, Rumi nodded sharply and did just that. Her false leg swung out first, raised up and pressed down in a drawn-out, wobbling step not unlike a toddler's first halting ones. When she felt it hit the ground, Rumi began to shift her weight forwards.

This had always been where she fell, unable to keep herself balanced when one leg lacked the natural shock absorption of her muscles. But this time, with Izuku providing an extra source of support, Rumi's prosthetic held her weight long enough to swing her other foot forwards and plant it on the cool tiled floor.

Rumi felt her eyes go wide, but before she could react any more than that, Izuku murmured, "Good, now keep going."

Shivering a little at the sound of Izuku's voice so close to hear ear, as well as the realization that she was walking, Rumi nodded, focused entirely on picking up her false foot with her straining muscles, which were already getting tired. She swung it forwards and set it down, and went to keep going.

Rumi continued going through the rhythmic motions of walking, in an exaggerated gait that felt like a child stomping through a puddle with rain boots on.

Step, shift, swing, step. Again, and then again.

"Good job, Rumi!" Izuku told her, approval and pride shining in his voice. Rumi's breath got louder and more disbelieving as she kept going, Izuku's steady hands guiding her hips in a slow, deliberate circuit of the room.

Eventually, though, Rumi got impatient. When they were barely halfway through the track, she demanded, "I've got it, Izuku. Let me go."

Izuku warned, "It's not going to work, Rumi. You're going to fall."

"I don't care what you think is going to happen," Rumi retorted, "let me go."

Izuku sighed, "Fine."

He let go, and Rumi swung her false leg forwards again, expecting it to go just as smoothly. She had it now, it would work perfectly.

Her prosthetic foot hit the ground, and Rumi shifted her weight. A moment later, she was falling forwards, windmilling her arms as her knee failed to bear her body weight.

Rumi wasn't sure if Izuku was too far away to catch her, or if he just wanted to teach her a lesson. Either way, he wasn't there to hold her up, not this time.

Rumi hit the ground hard enough to get the wind knocked out of her, her hand smacking into the tiles a moment after the rest of her. She groaned in pain, feeling the throbbing in her leg.

Izuku didn't say anything as he stood over her; he knew that nothing he could say would measure up to Rumi's own fury at herself.

Rumi felt something snap inside her, something she barely recognized. Maybe it was the natural reaction to the shame she felt, lying helplessly on the ground. Maybe it was weeks of frustration and agony, finally boiling over when she could take no more. Maybe it was the look in Izuku's eyes as he came to help her up for the hundredth time, understanding and kind, free of judgement and pity.

Rumi supplied all the judgement and pity herself, and the thought that this quirkless doctor could somehow understand her enraged her even as she knew she was being cruel and unfair.

As he gently held her by the waist, Izuku began, "Are you okay, Rumi? You did good, even if it doesn't feel like-"

With rage seething in her veins, Rumi hissed through clenched teeth, "Shut the fuck up." Izuku fell silent for a moment as his mindset shifted in an instant, then tried, "Rumi, you know

damn well that getting cranky doesn't help anything-"

Rumi cut him off again as she snapped, "I don't care! You don't know anything!"

This time, Izuku's silence wasn't surprised, it was cold, with a hint of steel in his glittering green eyes. In a low voice that had a thin facade of neutrality, Izuku asked, "Oh? What don't I know, Rumi?"

By now, Rumi knew Izuku's tones well enough to recognize the cliff when she saw it. Izuku's posture was closed and stoic, and he seemed to loom in her hospital room, his jaw set sturdily. Rumi didn't care, though; her anger burned like an inferno, chasing away her misgivings and her restraint, leaving only scorching anger and loathing, aimed inwards but pushed outwards.

Rumi shouted, "You don't know what it's like! You know nothing! You've never been this helpless, this fucking useless!"

So what if he was quirkless? Izuku has always been whole, was still at the top of his field, could still look to a future that would be like a better version of his present. But Rumi couldn't; all she had to look forward to was pain and humiliation and being more dead than alive. All she had to cling to were a few empty words about a light at the end of the tunnel-a light she couldn't see. She had to trust in others to believe it existed, had to rely on them to get her there-and Rumi had always been self-reliant, refusing to put her fate in the hands of anyone but herself.

Now, Izuku's eyes simmered with carefully controlled fury; Rumi didn't care. His voice was flat and dripping with danger as he warned her, "You don't know what you're talking about, Rumi."

It was moments like this when Rumi remembered just how many powerful heroes feared the man in front of her. His muscled arms were crossed over his chest, and his eyes seemed to fill the room with flame and a staticky, ozone feeling, the kind that set the hairs on the back of your neck to tingling, the kind that came right before a devastating storm. Deep in his eyes, though, something else was shimmering; a deep-seated, endless pain, something that came directly from the center of his being, a weak point exposed somehow by Rumi's rage.

Rumi, as always, barreled right through the obstacles that anyone else would have balked at, her spirit alive with determination to crush anyone who opposed her; she didn't care that Izuku wanted to help her, that she needed his help. She didn't want it. In a laughing, sarcastic voice that sounded like shattering glass, Rumi asked, "Oh, don't I? You're always on that side of this line, looking down at the people you get to save! You take walking for granted! But I can't! I can't fucking do anything, because of this!"

Rumi raised her stump yet again, drawing attention to the empty void where her hand had once been. Underneath her, her false leg gleamed, all shiny metal and plastic, a fake thing that could never replace the power of flesh and blood.

"Oh, so you think I don't know what it's like, being helpless?" Izuku asked back, in a tone that seemed to ring with unseen pain, dragged up from the depths for the first time in an eternity.

With blind fury still driving her forwards, Rumi snarled, "I don't! How could you understand?" Suddenly, Izuku exploded. Out of nowhere, he yelled, "I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT IT'S LIKE,

RUMI!"

Rumi was so shocked, her anger cleared for a moment, dissipating like fog under a sudden beam of light. Izuku never yelled, had never even raised his voice around her. He had been sarcastic, and snippy, and rude and irreverent, but he had never screamed. This was something deeper, some emotion that cracked the mask he'd built. Somehow, Rumi had gotten through to the man beneath the Hero Wrangler, and it scared her, how deep the hurt seemed to run in his voice, how she recognized that tone, because it was the same one she used at her lowest.

She stumbled backwards, barely managing to catch herself with her hand before she toppled over the bed, ears flattening against her head in shock.

Meanwhile, Izuku stormed forwards a few steps, his eyes burning with rage. For a moment, Rumi thought he was going to yell again, but instead, he took a deep breath and looked down at his hands.

Softer this time, Izuku repeated, "I know exactly what it's like, Rumi."

Rumi felt her irritation return, feeling deeper somehow, as though she was no longer responding to the shame she felt from falling, but to some inherent flaw she'd found in the connection she'd built with this stubborn, cranky, cryptic man.

When she spoke again, Rumi's voice was icily calm. "You know, I don't know whether I believe you or not," she said.

Izuku's eyes went wide, and he took another angry step forward. "You don't get to act like this," he warned, "I don't owe you a damn thing, and I don't care whether you believe me. There's nothing keeping me here."

Her voice slowly getting louder and more painful, Rumi snapped, "Well, too fucking bad, because I'm stuck with you! You can walk away whenever you want, but I can't! So I get to sit here, day after day, and you walk in and out as you please, telling me whatever you want and expecting me to take it as gospel! You don't know what it's like when you leave, how empty this room feels!"

Rumi might have expected a lot of things from Izuku's reaction, but hitting the wall wasn't one of them. But sure enough, he slammed his fist against the white plaster of the wall, hard enough for Rumi to hear the tremors for several seconds. She looked into his eyes, and she saw something give way, something that might have been the last of his restraint, or the last wall holding him back.

Izuku roared, "Why do you keep pushing, dammit? What makes you think you deserve my entire fucking life story? You already know more about me than I ever tell my patients, and you want more? Isn't what you have enough, for fuck's sake?"

Izuku fell silent, panting with exertion as he clenched his fists. For all of it, Rumi wasn't truly afraid of him; she knew all too well the kind of empty anger that you felt when someone was getting too close to the truth, cutting through all the layers of thorny brambles that grew around your heart.

As clarity slowly dawned over her about just what she needed from him, Rumi replied, "No, it isn't."

Izuku stared at her, eyebrows knit together as he seemingly prepared to yell again. Before he could, though, Rumi met his gaze, and something about the certainty there stopped him short. It was different from the stormy rage that she'd had before. Now, she looked like she'd finally found a reason for what she was doing.

"It isn't," Rumi repeated, more softly this time as something finally made sense, "not for what I need."

"Oh, and what's that? What do you need?" Izuku demanded, his voice blunt and harsh.

Rumi gripped the bed with her only hand as she stared down at the stump of her leg. She needed so many things; her future back, a little bit of hope, a second chance. But Izuku couldn't give her all of those.

Looking back up, Rumi began, "I need you to work with me. I can't do this by myself, Izuku...but

if we're going to be partners, if you're going to help me come back after everything that's happened, I need to trust you."

Izuku's gaze was softening now, too, as he stared at Rumi. He must have seen something on her face, filled with hope and seriousness and an openness he'd never seen before, because he shook his head once and exhaled loudly, the rush of air seeming to take some of the tension from his limbs as it escaped him.

"Okay, fine," he sighed, "how can I get you to trust me?"

In that moment, he remembered another hospital bed, another directionless patient, and he wondered what might have been if this conversation had happened there.

"I don't need your whole life story," Rumi replied quickly, "I just...I don't know why I should listen to you when you say that everything will get better. Something in my mind...it says "he doesn't really know what you're going through," and I guess I believe it. So...please, can you at least explain why you know what it's like, what proof you have?"

"Give me hope," she didn't say, but thought all the same, "prove to me that there actually is a light at the end of the tunnel."

Izuku sighed again, running one hand through his hair as he craned his neck to look upwards, as though questioning why he'd ever agreed to work with her. When Izuku let his hand fall again, his eyes met Rumi's, and they were still hard, but no longer angry.

"Are you sure you want to know? It's not pretty," he warned her.

Rumi rolled her eyes and gestured at her missing limbs, saying, "I'm something of an expert on that topic, if you haven't noticed."

Izuku chuckled despite himself, and agreed, "Yeah, I guess you are."

He took a deep breath, looking down at his hands, which seemed to be trembling just a tiny bit. "No more secrets," he mumbled as if to himself, "no more hiding."

Izuku looked up one last time, into Rumi's eyes. Rumi was shocked at the vulnerability she saw there; for the first time, she thought that she could see, really see, a side of Izuku that few people ever did.

In a voice that trembled even as it burned with determination, Izuku told her, "You wanna know why I know you have a future? Fine. It's because I'm the proof."

Then, he reached down, and placed his left thumb against a point on his right wrist, at the join between his hand and his arm. Rumi watched in disbelief as a green, flowing light suddenly crept up the center of Izuku's arm, branching through it in a manner that was too angular to be moving through his veins, too bright to be natural. Then, his lower forearm and hand split, the gaps in the thin, softer outer covering revealing articulated joints of oiled machinery. Strange panels and sections of the thing seemed to rise, peeling away from his elbow and from each other as Izuku's forearm lost its fleshy color and reverted to the smooth gray of plastic and metal in a wave that looked like pixels turning off. With his left hand, he turned something and pulled hard, and his arm came off.

Rumi stared wordlessly at the stump of Izuku's right arm, which ended just below his elbow in a jarring way that made her mind whisper that something was wrong. Her own stump ached in

sympathy, in sudden, horrible understanding.

But Izuku just looked exhausted, as though he'd never intended to do this and was being drained with every second he pushed into uncertain territory. Still holding the high-tech prosthetic that had fooled Rumi so completely, Izuku looked up at Rumi, and his wavering face set into determination again.

It didn't matter how bare and raw and exposed he felt in that moment, because Rumi still needed his help.

"Here," Izuku said roughly, "still think I don't know how you feel?" For the first time, Rumi had no reply.

Chapter End Notes

Yeah, I'm not telling you what happens next. You'll just have to wait. Discord Server: https/discord.gg/EdqrbRC

Chapter Summary

Make It Count

Rumi reacts.

Izuku tells his story.

Despite everything, things are looking up.

Chapter Notes

Y'all's reactions to that cliffhanger made my week. Oh, I'm looking forward to the future of this fic.

I was originally hoping to update Hearing A Heartbeat next, but then I had four days where my motivation kinda just vanished and I decided to update this instead, because you guys always blow me away and inspire me with all your love for this fic.

I hope you guys enjoy more of Izuku's backstory!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Still in shock, Rumi stared at Izuku, at the jarring stump of his right arm and the prosthetic he held

with his other hand.

Izuku's eyes filled with veiled emotion as he saw Rumi's shock. He couldn't blame her for being surprised; sometimes, he still looked down at his own arm expecting to see flesh and blood where there was only plastic and metal.

Eventually, though, the silence and the look on Rumi's face was too painful. Izuku's voice bubbled with an undercurrent of heat and fear as he repeated, "I know exactly what you're going through, Rumi. I went through it myself."

With that, he tossed the fake arm to Rumi, who caught it instinctively. Her jaw hung open as she held it in her hand, running her fingers over the surprisingly bumpy surface. She examined it with her limited knowledge of prosthetics, noticing the perfectly articulated fingers, the weight, nearly more than her own arm, the feel of complex devices inside, and the apparent ability to mimic the color and texture of Izuku's flesh to perfectly disguise it.

With dawning horror, Rumi realized just how wrong she'd been, how foolish and stupid and idiotic. It made her sick to her stomach, all while Izuku looked at her with a sad, resigned expression.

All Rumi could say was, "I...is that...what happened? How?"

Bluntly but quietly, as though he could hear Rumi's thoughts and didn't blame her in the slightest,

Izuku explained curtly, "A villain attack my sophomore year of college."

His voice was hard and pained, and his eyes were distant. Clearly, Izuku was thinking back those six years, running over his past in his mind the same way that Rumi had been for the past month.

Rumi flinched, and Hitomi appeared in her mind again; she wondered what Izuku thought when he saw the girl.

That wasn't enough for her, though; Rumi asked, "What kind of villain attack? I can't think of any big fight that happened near a college campus six years ago, let alone one that could have led to, well..."

Izuku raised his stump with a wry grin, his mouth twitching as if he wanted to do anything but smile. "Lead to this?" he finished dryly, something in his voice sounding like a snake rearing back to strike.

Rumi nodded quietly, not trusting her voice to stay under her control.

Izuku sighed, and it sounded deep and weary, as though a weight was shifting on his chest. Eventually, he dropped into a chair facing Rumi, his body sagging as if he was exhausted.

Izuku stared at Rumi, and something in his eyes was rawer, more real than she'd ever seen. In that moment, Rumi understood that she was seeing a side of Izuku few, if any, ever did. He had dropped all of the sarcasm and snark and dismissiveness, and he seemed more vulnerable now than Rumi had imagined he ever could be.

His voice quiet but unflinching, Izuku began, "I was taking a walk after classes one day when it happened. I was only going out to clear my head; I was pissed about...well. A professor in my Quirk Science class called quirkless people an "evolutionary mistake" or something like that...and he was staring right at me when he said it. Needless to say, it was either get off campus for a few hours or get tossed off for punching an esteemed faculty member in the balls."

Rumi suppressed a snort; she could just imagine a college-aged, grumpy Izuku starting a fight with a professor out of spite.

Izuku continued, "I was walking down some random street when I heard a cry for help from an alley. I looked down it, and a woman was being held up against a wall by a man who had turned his lower arms into giant sword blades. He was demanding that she hand over all her valuables, though I didn't know that at the time."

Izuku's smile was back, stretched thin over a face glistening with pain. He laughed, and it was hollow; it sounded like cracking glass.

"You'd think that the first thing I would do is call the heroes or the police," Izuku said in a voice that was layered with bitterness and grief and guilt for feeling either, "but no, that would be too smart. Instead, my body moved before I knew what was happening. Can you imagine it? Me, a scrawny, quirkless college student with exactly zero knowledge of fighting, rushing in to rescue the damsel in distress."

"It sounds like you were pretty brave," Rumi replied quietly, her voice soft as her mind spun. Here was proof of what she already knew, in the form of the words that she and Izuku and everyone else who had admired or wanted to be heroes knew.

"My body moved before I knew what was happening."

In that moment, Rumi couldn't help but grieve for what the world had lost when fate gave Izuku Midoriya a hero's heart and then slammed the door in his face.

Izuku's smile only grew sharper, and his eyes betrayed the pain that had crystallized in his heart. He snorted, "I was stupid, that's all. I should have known better than to charge a villain with my

bare hands. I guess...I guess that, for a second, I believed all the stories. I thought that the desire to save somebody was all I needed. I thought that it was my chance to prove that I was just as good at saving people as anyone else, quirkless or not. I thought that it was the one opportunity I might ever get to fulfill all those old childhood dreams of helping someone. I was a fool."

Rumi felt something in her heart break at the bitterness in Izuku's voice, the dull agony in his eyes.

In a dull tone, Izuku continued, "The villain just laughed when he saw me running at him. He swung a blade at me, and it...it cut right through my forearm. Sheared it off like it was nothing. And all of a sudden, all those dreams of being the hero disappeared. I was just screaming in pain while the villain taunted me about being weak and pathetic. Eventually, I passed out, and I didn't wake back up until I was in the hospital."

"What about the woman?" Rumi asked, "did she get away?"

Izuku's expression hardened, and in a tone that declared the end of that conversation, he replied, "No."

Rumi hung her head quietly in the silence that followed.

Eventually, Izuku added in an empty voice, "You know, that's why I admire you heroes; you make your injuries count. You can take pride in your scars, glory in your wounds, because they mean something. They're proof of how far you're willing to go to protect others. Every scar is a hit that an innocent person didn't have to take, because of you."

Rumi shifted uncomfortably as she felt her own stumps twinge. She wondered if she could ever take pride in her scars. She wondered if she'd really made them count.

Out loud, though, Rumi mused, "I thought you hated heroes."

Izuku's smile was the first one to show any sign of life since he'd begun to speak. "I hate and envy and admire you in equal parts. I hate you because I can't be like you, and because you remind me of the stupidest things I've done. I envy you because I wanted nothing more than to be like you. And I admire you because every hero I've met has been stronger and braver and better than I could ever hope to be," he admitted.

Rumi protested, "Don't sell yourself short like that."

Izuku opened his mouth as if to argue, only to halt himself. Closing his mouth again, he sighed and said, "If I ever try to argue with someone telling me I'm not useless and a waste of space because I'm quirkless and missing an arm again, you have my permission to punch me."

Rumi smirked. "With pleasure, Doc," she drawled, glorying in the look of sudden regret on Izuku's face as he realized that he'd just allowed one of the top heroes in Japan to punch him whenever she wanted.

For a second, the mood in the room seemed like it was recovering, but it inevitably slipped back into melancholy. The grins on both Rumi's and Izuku's faces slowly died away.

Eventually, Rumi asked, "How did you get back up? How did you escape that hospital bed?"

Izuku was quiet for a long moment, and Rumi wondered if she'd pushed too far in her hunger to finally get some hope. All she could see was Izuku's quiet, distant eyes, as he seemingly looked at her and saw someone else holding the prosthetic arm that fit smoothly over the callused and pale end of his stump.

At last, Izuku replied softly, "It was the hardest thing I've ever done. For weeks, I couldn't find the energy to get out of bed or do anything. Honestly, I didn't really see the point. I'd failed the one thing I'd really given my all for...and besides, the pity and the dismissal had been bad enough when I was just the quirkless guy in the back of the class. Being the one-armed quirkless guy sounded ten times worse."

Rumi felt a pang in her chest at how familiar so much of Izuku's story felt.

"The doctors, my mother...everyone did their best to convince me that life was still worth living," Izuku continued, "but I couldn't bring myself to believe them. It felt like the world had lost all its color...and it wasn't like I'd had an unstoppable zest for life before I lost my arm, either."

Rumi felt herself understanding Izuku more by the second. She realized just what he must have gone through, losing an arm as a quirkless student, how it must have devastated the little hope he had.

"What changed?" she wondered, trying to reconcile the washed-out young man of his story with the fiery, cocky doctor in front of her.

Bluntly, Izuku replied, "I did."

When Rumi raised an eyebrow in confusion, he elaborated in a quiet voice, "After a while...I just couldn't take it anymore. The pity in the doctors' eyes whenever they saw me there...I hated it. I hated it so much, because it felt like they were thinking the same things I was telling myself about how pathetic I really was. Eventually, it was all too much, and I knew I couldn't stay in that damn bed any longer."

"So what did you do?" Rumi prompted, her eyes falling on the stump of his arm, then on the prosthetic her hands were still stroking, as if trying to learn every secret it held.

Izuku replied, "Simple. I got up, walked out of that fucking hospital, and started designing a prosthetic."

Rumi looked back up at him in surprise, her ears flying back up as she asked, "You designed your own prosthetic? How...it functions just like a normal hand!"

Izuku snorted softly, as though Rumi's awe was nothing. "Of course I did," he said, with all the confidence of a man who created his own freedom, rebuilt the scraps of an aimless, hopeless life into a new one filled with purpose, "As a matter of fact, I built it myself, too. Had to, since nobody would take a risk on a design from a student who didn't even have an engineering background. And it doesn't quite work as well as my old one-there's a reason I'm not a surgeon-but it's pretty close."

Rumi felt like she'd had the ground drop away beneath her feet. She began, "You didn't even have any sort of engineering knowledge?"

"Nope," Izuku admitted.

Then, his eyes blazing with sudden ferocity, he added, "That's how I know I'm the best prosthetic designer in Japan, Rumi. I built it into the very fabric of who I am, became the best because there was no other option. I learned on the fly, changed the entire course of my life and education to learn everything I needed to, attacked it with the kind of determination you can only get if you've had no goal for so long, and finally been given one that means a damn."

"And you did all that with one arm?" Rumi asked, feeling something strange coalescing inside her.

It might have been amazement, or respect, or something greater; the lightness in her chest was something she didn't recognize.

Distantly, as though he was remembering the events as vividly as he saw Rumi in front of him, Izuku confirmed, "Yeah. I wouldn't have managed it without some help, obviously. I'll always owe my mom for putting up with my shit for so long while I recovered enough to go back to university."

Rumi heard Izuku talk about his mother, and she couldn't help but wonder what kind of woman could have that kind of strength, to help her son rebuild himself when the house of cards came tumbling down. Rumi wondered if she'd ever meet this mysterious woman, some day.

The thought brought up unbidden memories of her own family, but Rumi stamped those out immediately. There was enough emotional scar tissue in this room already without needing to add more of her own shit to the pile.

Ignorant of Rumi's brief crisis, Izuku continued, "Actually, building my own prosthetic worked out in other ways, too. You see, I used some of the university's resources to do it; I even had permission to use those resources most of the time. One of those times, Doctor Danryoku, my boss, happened to pass by when he was visiting a friend from medical school who taught there. When he saw what I was doing and I told him what I was doing, he all but begged me to go to medical school and come work for him. For a quirkless college student who still had no idea what he wanted to do with his life...that meant a lot. Watching a guy like him take such a big risk to help me...it meant more to me than I've ever been able to put into words. It was the first time I felt like I really had a purpose, you know? I had a goal I could aim for, and I was gonna give it everything I had. After that...the rest is history."

Rumi could see it clearly in her mind's eye; a pained, one-handed Izuku, his eyes glittering with furious determination, building himself a new arm from nothing more than his own ideas and the gifts of others. No wonder Danryoku had been in awe-Rumi was, too.

With that, the last of Rumi's anger, anger she now regretted fiercely, drained away. Hollowly, Rumi said, "I'm sorry, Izuku. I...shouldn't have said what I did to you."

"It's okay, Rumi," Izuku assured her, accepting the rare apology with a nod and a brief smile, "You didn't know, and like I said, I know exactly what it's like to be where you are right now."

Rumi didn't push; she was grateful for the glimpse into Izuku, though she didn't even know why.

Something inside her, some tug in her chest, made her whisper, "I...you're an incredible person, you know that, Izuku?"

"Not any more incredible than you, Rumi," Izuku replied quietly, a blush appearing on his cheeks, then disappearing as quickly as it had come.

"Stop, you're making me blush," Rumi said teasingly, barely aware that she was sharing the same red-cheeked look as Izuku, who was now leaning in surprisingly close; but then, so was she, as though her body was magnetically attracted to his side.

"Fair's fair, woman," Izuku told her in a rough, laughing voice that lightened the mood slightly.

"Sure it is," Rumi grumbled, only to become aware that she was still running her hand up and down Izuku's fake arm, fingers laced through the plastic and metal ones of the prosthetic. Smiling weakly, she offered, "Um, I should probably give this back, shouldn't I?"

In a good-humored tone, Izuku agreed, "I would appreciate that."

He reached out for the prosthetic, but something in Rumi made her instead offer it end-first. Seeing what she wanted, Izuku shifted quickly, and put his stump against the end of the fake arm. Gently, Rumi helped guide it into position, where it fastened itself over his stump with a click and a gentle hum as panels lowered back into position and the green light slowly disappeared, inner workings vanishing behind the outer shell. As she watched, Rumi's hand rubbed over Izuku's elbow, feeling where the cool metal and plastic met his warm flesh and blood. She couldn't help but stroke her hand over it, as though convincing herself that it was real.

Rumi watched as Izuku flexed the arm, fake fingers wiggling in perfect sync, the flesh tone quickly replacing smooth grey until even Rumi couldn't see where flesh ended and machine began.

She asked, "How does that work? How can you make it blend in like that?"

With a soft grin as he stood, Izuku replied, "A man has to have his secrets, my dear Rumi. After all, you seem to have a talent for dragging them out of me, and I need to keep at least a few in reserve."

Rumi snorted, only to fall silent as she put the pieces together and came up with hope. She said, "Hang on, if you can make prosthetics this good...can you make me one?"

Izuku smiled fondly at her hopeful tone, at the shining in her eyes; it reminded him of a young man who had risen off a bed much like this one, determined to be the solution to his own problem. He replied, "That's what I've been trying to do, Rumi, but it takes a lot of work. Besides, I'm a doctor, not a hero. This thing isn't designed to take the kind of punishment you need it to. Honestly, it's pretty fragile, all things considered. I've damaged older versions just by hitting the wall too hard."

Rumi's eyes fell to the ground, her tenuous grip on hope slipping as her ears fell again. In a hollow voice, she said, "Oh."

Without missing a beat, Izuku continued forcefully, "But we'll get there. And believe me, I'm gonna make you the most kickass limbs you've ever seen."

At last, Rumi finally began to believe, really believe, that she might have a shot at a brighter future. With someone like Izuku behind her, who had built his own escape from despair not unlike her own, she might just do this.

With a little of her old spirit lingering in her heart, Rumi cracked, "Really? I'll believe it when you put a laser cannon in my new arm."

"Oh, you want a laser cannon?" Izuku asked with a mischievous smile and a playful gleam in his eyes, "That can be arranged."

Rumi shivered a little, even though she had to admit that a laser cannon sounded like fun. Maybe it didn't fit her combat style, but hey, who said that she couldn't change that?

With a jolt, Rumi realized that for the first time, she was actually thinking of her future in heroics in concrete terms, as something she would reach someday. For the first time, she had real, solid hope.

A moment later, though, Rumi was brought back to the real world by Izuku saying, "I...should probably get going now."

Rumi's head swiveled to check the clock; she realized that they should have had another hour to

work on walking.

"Why?" she asked, "we're not finished yet!"

Izuku stood up anyway, looking drained. He retorted, "Well, I'm finished. All this "revealing my secrets" shit has officially made me tired of you for today."

Izuku collected his things and started to head for the door, his shoulders slumping as he walked.

He had nearly made it to the exit when Rumi said firmly, "You don't get to walk out on me when things get tough. Not this time."

Izuku's eyes went wide with indignation. He whirled around, growling, "Don't you dare imply-"

Rumi, her spirit buoyed by a sudden insight that left her with a stiffness to her spine that she hadn't had in a month, interrupted, "Don't try to deny it, Izuku. You keep running away. Every time you let something slip or show a little bit of the man behind your mask, you run away right after. What, are you scared that I'll think less of you because of what I've learned?"

Izuku was holding himself rigidly, but a tiny flinch ran through him at her words, and Rumi felt realization dawn over her.

Quietly, she said, "That's exactly what it is, isn't it?"

Izuku's eyes flared with anger, like a strained rope snapping and whipping outwards. "I don't care what you think of me," he snapped.

"Izuku, what possible reason would I have to think less of you after what I just learned?" Rumi hissed in response, the fury in her voice surprising both of them.

Izuku fell silent for a moment, then slowly said, "I...guess I see your point. It's just that-"

"Izuku, shut up," Rumi commanded, "before I exercise my doctor-punching privileges."

Izuku blinked in shock, and actually obeyed for a second, before he realized that it was toothless. Mockingly, he pointed out, "But I'm over here, and you're over there. How are you supposed to punch me?"

Rumi slowly rose to her feet, her one good arm supporting her as she settled her weight. She threatened, "I will come over there, just watch me."

Izuku smirked. "Well then," he replied, spreading his arms wide, "I'm right here. If you can, come over here and prove me wrong."

Rumi took a deep breath and let the determination Izuku's words ignited in her blood flow through her. She was going to do this. Not just because Izuku didn't think she could, but because she was determined to live up to his example. If he could rebuild his life with scarcely any help, she could do it with him behind her.

She exhaled, and swung her false foot forwards. Izuku was about four paces away; she'd never even managed one on her own before.

Her prosthetic hit the ground, and her knee nearly buckled. But Rumi gritted her teeth and stayed up. She started to shift her weight off her good leg, then shifted it forwards. Again, her knee trembled but did not collapse. Her muscles, weakened by a month of atrophy but slowly coaxed

back into shape, shook and ached but answered her call.

Rumi shifted her weight, and took another step. She completed another full one, and began to find her rhythm. After that, she picked up speed and found her balance. For the first time in a month, she was walking under her own power. Izuku watched with wide eyes as Rumi crossed the room on tottering, barely-working legs, but crossed it nonetheless.

At last, Rumi took one last step, and pushed her muscles a bit too far. With a yelp, her knee buckled, and she plummeted forwards.

Only for her to land on Izuku's chest, her windmilling arms curling around his shoulders as he caught her with his own hands, which grabbed her waist to steady her.

Not caring in the slightest about how close they were, or about how she could have fit neatly under his chin, or about the incredibly intimate position she'd landed in, Rumi cried, "Izuku, I did it! I walked!"

Izuku, his own fears forgotten, cheered, "Great job, Rumi!"

He hugged her, and she did the same, everything else forgotten for a moment.

Then, Izuku said, "Now, let's see if you can't walk better than a twelve-month-old baby." Rumi asked, "Does that mean you're not leaving this time?"

"I don't really see how I could, after that," Izuku admitted, grinning sheepishly. Of course Rumi wouldn't see him any differently, she knew exactly what he had gone through. For a doctor, he really was stupid sometimes, wasn't he?

Rumi's grin was sharp and eager as she agreed, "You're right. I do need to do one thing, though." "What's that?" Izuku asked.

"This," Rumi replied, driving a fist into Izuku's gut hard enough to drive every last breath of air out of his lungs. Izuku's eyes went wide as he gasped desperately, crumpling over as Rumi smirked.

Izuku coughed and choked as pain surged through him, the air slowly returning to his lungs. When he had enough breath to speak again, he decided, "I guess I deserved that."

"You did," Rumi agreed.

Slowly drawing himself back up to his full height as the dull pain in his stomach subsided, Izuku asked, "So, just to be clear, the first time you walked again since you lost your leg...was specifically to punch me in the gut for being an idiot?"

Shamelessly, Rumi nodded and replied, "Yep. Want me to do it again?"

"The walking part, yes," Izuku told her, "the punching me part, not so much."

"Well, what are we waiting for?" Rumi demanded, tapping her good foot impatiently. Izuku just chuckled, "Only you would learn to walk again out of spite, Rumi."

"Well, what can I say?" Rumi retorted, "someone once told me that spite is the most powerful motivator."

At that, Izuku just threw his head back and laughed, the sound high and clear and a world away from the hollow, cracking bitterness of his voice not long before.

There were two days left until Rumi's press conference, and she'd finally started walking again. But more than that, she finally had hope.

Chapter End Notes

Next time, Rumi's finally ready to face the world. See you then!

Discord server: https/discord.gg/rPnRUFt

Chapter Summary

Like A Phoenix In The Night

Rumi has her moment of truth.

The world will learn what Miruko is really made of.

Chapter Notes

Since this seems to be all my brain has ideas for, here's more Izuku and Rumi!

I've got a fairly important announcement I'm going to put in the end notes, since this might end up being the last update of anything for me until I go through a fairly significant change in my life.

Enjoy!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Two days of practice later, Rumi was adept enough at the delicate art of walking with only one leg

that truly listened to her to make good on her promise.

It was a good thing, too, because by then, the media pressure had turned itself into a frenzy, like a dog chasing its tail. Rumi didn't watch much TV anymore-the last week had been such a whirlwind of revelations and healing and walking that she hadn't had time. Even then, she'd been constantly aware of it the way you were aware of a thunderstorm raging outside your calm, cozy bedroom, always present, but never really your biggest problem. Even as media stations howled "WHERE IS MIRUKO?" like she was some sort of precious jewel that had been stolen, Rumi had always been able to retreat into her quiet places, where steady hands and bright smiles and green hair were waiting to pull her, inch by inch, from the sucking quicksand of her grief.

But now, the media shitstorm waiting for her was Rumi's biggest problem. She'd known it was coming from the moment the hospital and the Hero Commission had helped set up this press conference in the hospital's press room, but it still felt like it had snuck up on her.

"How did I get here? What's going to happen next?" Rumi wondered as she watched the last minutes tick away before she had to leave.

At last, there was a knock on the door. Rumi smiler, because there was only one person it could be.

"Come in," she called, already rousing herself out of bed, thankful that she had already gotten dressed.

The door swung open, and sure enough, Izuku was there, his soft smile making the greyness of the rainy day outside seem a little less gloomy. His eyes twinkled with something that might have been pride. He didn't bring anything with him, no wheelchair or clipboard or barbed words on his lips. He just looked at her with the kind of admiration she was used to, tempered by the pride and friendliness she wasn't.

"Are you ready?" he asked her as she pulled on her prosthetics. The leg was sturdy and well-fitted, if simple and workmanlike; Rumi knew it would get her where she needed to be, because Izuku had given it to her. The arm, fitted loosely over her stump, was much less important and much less sturdy; it felt like a mannequin arm haphazardly stuck onto her body, gray and uniform, without joints or anything more advanced than the vacuum cup that kept it fixed in place. Rumi hadn't really cared one way or another about her arm, but it had been her publicist's one demand for this press conference, that she wear some kind of prosthetic arm.

Rumi could understand why, certainly; something inherent in the human mind always rebelled at the sight of a person who wasn't symmetrical, filling with a sense of wrongness when limbs ended abruptly in jagged stumps. Walking onto national television visibly missing an arm wasn't exactly great optics, especially when everyone was going to assume she was helpless anyway.

Rumi didn't give a damn about optics, though; she never really had. She hadn't hated the press, exactly, but she'd always seen them as an unfortunate obstacle between her and kicking more ass, kind of like paperwork. Ugh, paperwork.

But now, Rumi had to go deal with the press herself; she had no other option.

Rumi closed her eyes for a second, taking a deep breath. When she was done, she opened them again and told Izuku, "Yes. I'm ready."

Izuku nodded, offering her his hand. Rumi took it with her only good hand; flesh and blood met the metal and plastic of his advanced prosthetic. With a tug, Rumi was standing next to him, looking up at his smiling face with a pang of warmth she didn't recognize.

"Then let's go," Izuku said, "there are people waiting for you."

For a second, Rumi felt hollow; those people were waiting for Miruko, not Rumi. Nobody was waiting for Rumi.

But that was fine; she'd stopped being just Rumi a long time ago. Miruko was who she was, in both the easy times and the hard.

She nodded, agreeing, "Yeah. We shouldn't keep them waiting."

With one hand balanced on Izuku's shoulder, his hands hovering near her waist, not touching her but ready to catch her if she fell, Rumi walked out of her room under her own power.

She had promises to keep.

They made it through the halls of the hospital quickly and smoothly, passing closed doors and people in a hurry as usual. Rumi never faltered, not once. Her legs stayed strong and steady under her, and she walked with purpose, if a little less finesse than most people.

Soon, though, they were in the "backstage" portion of the press room, surrounded not by doctors and nurses but by PR people and Hero Commission employees, scurrying around in a different form of controlled chaos. When she saw the back of the stage and heard the eager, hushed murmur of a hundred voices on the other side, Rumi hesitated, her ears starting to droop. Izuku noticed her sudden uncertainty instantly.

"Rumi, you've made it this far," he reminded her, his voice low and certain, a lifeline to cling to, "you can do this."

Rumi nodded grimly, her chest rising and falling as she took deep breaths. She replied, "I know I can, it's just..."

"Just what?" Izuku asked gently, his hand on her shoulder.

Rumi exhaled, looking up and seeming to stare right into Izuku's soul. She explained, "I think that it's just...sinking in that this is the last time Miruko will be who she used to be. As soon as I walk out there with half the limbs I used to have, the old idea of who people thought I was will be destroyed. All that strength, that willpower and ferocity I used to have...it'll be replaced by the weakness I have now in people's minds. I guess...I guess I'm just not ready for that to happen yet."

Izuku's grip on Rumi's shoulder tightened, and Rumi winced a little at both the pain and the intensity of Izuku's burning gaze. His green eyes stripped away all the fear and darkness from her heart, left her feeling raw and bare and exposed before him. Izuku smiled, as if he had seen what Rumi was at her core and found it beautiful.

"Rumi, you and I know damn well that you're not weak," he told her, his voice resonating in Rumi's chest, "What you've done took the kind of strength that almost nobody has. How many people could have learned to walk again so soon? How many people would set their sights on becoming as great as they used to be, before they lost everything? Nobody, that's who. And yet, that's what you've done. Never forget that you're stronger now than you used to be, not weaker."

Rumi smiled, and her eyes were bright and hopeful, her ears pricked above her head. "Thanks, Doc," she said, "I owe you a whole lot. Everything, in fact."

Izuku returned her smile, wide and proud. "Thanks, but you and I both know you did most of the work," he replied. His false hand patted her shoulder reassuringly, the dexterity unparalleled by anything Rumi had ever seen.

Rumi would have argued, but she knew that this was a fight she couldn't win. Izuku might never know just how much she'd clung to his certainty to drag herself out of the darkest moments of her life, the ones that still threatened her occasionally. She might never know where she would have ended up without him...and as far as she was concerned, that was a damn good thing.

At last, one of the attendants called Rumi's name, telling her that it was time to go talk to the press already.

Reluctantly, Rumi and Izuku let go of each other. With one last nod, Rumi stepped away, taking slow but certain steps towards the stage, the alternating soft footstep and loud clunk of her flesh and metal feet marking her gait.

She'd nearly made it to the stage when Izuku called out, and Rumi turned one last time to look at him.

His eyes shining, Izuku told her, "No matter what happens, I'm proud of you, Rumi. I'll be waiting right here when it's over."

Rumi's grin looked like it belonged on her hero persona, it was so wide and cocky. She drawled, "You better be."

Then, she turned and disappeared onto the stage, leaving Izuku to wonder which of his statements she'd been responding to.

Rumi wasn't sure what to expect when she walked onto the stage.

For a few precious moments, she was concealed from the press by a curtain, which meant that she got to watch and listen as the harried-looking Hero Commission representative standing at the podium faced an onslaught of shouted questions from the assembled journalists.

As Rumi watched, one of those journalists asked, "Can you really not offer us any information on the state of Miruko's health-"

"As I have now said multiple times," the spokeswoman interrupted, "the Commission has opted to allow Miruko and her office to release that information when and how they see fit. They have indicated to us that they wish to share certain details today, hence the press conference. Until Miruko arrives, I will not be saying another word on the matter."

"So what you're saying is that Miruko is healthy enough to give her own press conference?" another reporter asked, seemingly ignoring the spokeswoman's entire speech.

Before the Commission employee could reply, though, she spotted Rumi waiting in the wing, tapping her good foot impatiently. Rumi nodded, and from the look of sheer gratitude on the woman's face, you would have thought that Rumi had delivered her from hell itself.

Turning back to the array of microphones in front of her, the spokeswoman said, "Everyone, you can ask your questions now. Miruko is here."

In the silence that followed, the spokeswoman stepped down and away from the podium, disappearing into the wings as soon as Rumi had set foot on the stage, every camera instantly turning to her.

The silence seemed like it would end quickly, as the first heartbeat saw reporters opening their mouths to begin shouting questions. Then Rumi's false foot hit the stage with a loud thunk, and the room was as silent as the grave once more.

Rumi strode to the podium, her head held high, ears pricked defiantly, while the reporters just stared. When Rumi turned and grabbed the podium with her good hand, the fake one hanging stiffly by her side, she saw their eyes go even wider.

Rumi could practically hear their thoughts already.

"Oh no."

"Not her too."

"Well, there goes another top hero."

"How could they have kept this hidden from us for a MONTH?"

"God, and she's so young, too..."

Rumi let their disappointment and grief and pity wash over her like the tide, without touching her. She'd had enough of every single one of those things for a lifetime.

Rumi leaned close to the microphones, and let the side of her that always came out when she was a hero flow freely. She snapped bluntly, "I'm here. Ask your fucking questions."

There was one last beat of silence, and then it was as if the reporters collectively shook their heads

free of paralysis and got back to work. They may have been shocked, but they were still professionals, and they were confronting one of the juiciest stories in recent memory.

Rumi saw several people force themselves to stop looking at her prosthetics; she couldn't care less if they stared. She'd gotten these injuries protecting them and their entire society from unspeakable abominations. The least they could do was look at what it had cost her.

As the press gathered themselves, Rumi only had eyes for the television cameras in the back, returning her gaze impassively and unblinkingly. She wondered how many kids were watching right now, hungry for news of their favorite hero. She wondered how many people that looked up to her were staring in shock and horror at her injuries, at the plastic arm that couldn't fill the space her flesh had. She wondered how many were staring with hope or admiration instead. She wondered if those expressions would change by the time she was done.

At last, the first question was asked by a man with greying hair and gill slits on his neck, who asked, "Can you give us more information about the nature of your injuries?"

Rumi nodded curtly. Taking a deep breath, she launched into a prepared explanation, the kind she always hated giving, but could never deny the usefulness of.

She explained, "During a battle with several High-End Nomu similar to the one that injured Endeavor a few months ago, I sustained serious injuries, including the loss of my arm, and leg wounds severe enough to require amputation, on top of internal injuries. I've spent the last month in recovery."

As soon as Rumi had finished her answer, another question came at her. A woman with glowing spiderweb patterns across her skin asked, "Why the radio silence? Why have you not allowed any information to get out about your status?"

Rumi sighed, knowing that she was out of prepared answers. She replied, "Because I was told that I needed to stay focused on my personal health. I didn't want any distractions."

The reporter didn't look satisfied by that, but Rumi didn't really care. She moved on, pointing to the next journalist with her good hand.

This man bore an elaborate pompadour, and seemed as greasy as his hairdo as he stood and asked, "When can we expect an official announcement for your retirement?"

For a second, Rumi stared blankly at the reporter, trying to process his words. She blinked a few times, searching for the right way to respond.

After a moment, she gave up and snapped, "I'm sorry, who said anything about retiring?"

A murmur went through the journalists at that, but the man who had asked the question seemed unmoved. He simply replied, "Forgive my presumption, Miruko, but I had assumed that this was an announcement of your retirement, due to the career-ending nature of your injuries-"

Gripping the podium tightly with her good hand, Rumi interrupted, "My injuries are not career- ending. Severe, yes. But I refuse to retire because some monster got a lucky shot."

Rumi thought of Hitomi, refusing to let her dreams die because of childhood losses. She thought of Izuku, who had turned the worst moment of his life into the seed of a new life, rebuilding his own hope.

Rumi may have inspired millions, been an idol for countless people, but she could never stop

admiring those two for their drive, a drive they'd never lost, while she had had to learn all over again how to throw herself into the teeth of despair, trusting in her own spirit to carry her out the other side. They were her heroes, because they were the reason that she might become a hero again.

"With respect, Miruko," the reporter protested, "you have suffered a double amputation! How can a close-range fighter like yourself reasonably expect to return after such a loss?"

Rumi felt her patience snap, and fury roared through her, held back only by sheer force of will. She leaned closer to the microphones, her eyes blazing, and hissed with absolute certainty, "I am not going to stop being a hero. I am never going to quit, give up, or surrender. I won that fight, and I am not going to let this slow me down. Mark my words, I am coming back. And I'm going to be just as good when I do."

At last, the man fell silent, perhaps ashamed, perhaps convinced by Rumi's boundless spirit. Either way, nobody else raised a hand to question her. They seemed to accept this as a natural continuation of who Miruko was; of course she wouldn't let even a double amputation slow her down. Of course she would overcome any challenge.

If only they knew how close she'd come to failing. But she hadn't failed, in battle or in healing. Now, she was standing as tall as ever.

Another reporter stood up, and Rumi's scorching gaze turned to her. Unflinching, the woman asked, "How do you know you'll be back? What gives you so much confidence?"

Rumi didn't respond for a moment. Her mind was too busy running through memories, of a green- haired man with a vicious grin and taunting eyes and steady hands, and a smile that could light up a room, and pain in his past. He'd shown her that there was a path back from rock bottom, a trail he'd blazed himself once. He challenged her and refused to let her languish in despair, cutting through all the scar tissue and right to her heart every time. His secrets, and the familiar pain in his eyes, drew her in, made her curious about this man as young as she was who had risen through his field just as fast as she had. Without him, she'd be lost.

Rumi's smile was wide and bright, her teeth bared and her eyes glittering as she met the reporter's gaze. Rumi said, "How do I know? It's simple: I've got the best doctor in Japan on my case. If he can't help me, nobody can."

There, let them chew on that. Rumi's brand may have been standing alone, but she couldn't do that anymore. Without Izuku, she would have still been lying blank-eyed on a hospital bed, wondering why she was still alive when so many other heroes were dead, thinking that she might as well have been, too.

But Rumi wasn't dead; she was still breathing, still kicking, still fighting. That wasn't going to change any time soon.

Rumi had no patience for anything that wasn't the truth; she cut through lies and bullshit as easily as Izuku had cut through her own fears and pains.

And the truth was, Rumi was only going to be able to rebuild herself if Izuku showed her how. But he would show her how, because he knew exactly what it was like to need help so desperately, and have none available. He would be that help, if nobody else would.

Rumi didn't think she could put into words how thankful she was that Izuku Midoriya had been there for her when nobody else would. For now, though, she had a press conference to finish. After

that, it was time to get to work.

Across Japan, people of every description watched the Miruko press conference. No matter their reason, none could deny the determination blazing in every fiber of the rabbit-eared woman's body. Most of them could see a familiar light in her eyes, and the vast majority of them recognized it as the same light she'd always had, a light that promised relentless, unyielding victory at any cost. The wisest and the most perceptive, though, knew that this gleam was different; it was the unshakeable confidence of someone who had been weak and wasn't anymore, who was familiar with all the pits and dark places until they were no longer places of fear, who had shattered and put their pieces back together. This strength was to Miruko's old strength as steel was to iron.

The strength of steel, after all, is only known after it is tested.

Children clutching Miruko toys jumped for joy as they learned that their favorite hero was as strong as they'd always known she was. As they always did, the children accepted hope the easiest, put their faith into those they believed in without reservation.

Worried families breathed a little easier. All Might and Crust and so many other heroes may have been gone, but here was one hero that refused to go down, a hero who would stay planted between them and evil no matter how many times they were on the brink of death.

In the dorms of Japan's most prestigious hero school, bright-eyed first year students turned hardened combat veterans too soon wondered if they could ever be as fiercely, unstoppably determined as Miruko. They hoped that they could, because how else could they keep everyone safe from what they knew lurked out there?

Elsewhere in that Tokyo hospital, a little girl with black hair and silver eyes and an indomitable soul stared in shock at the familiar face on the TV screen. Even as her heart lifted and she wanted to jump for joy, the girl was bursting out of her bed and racing into the maze-like halls, not knowing where she was going, but knowing what she had to do when she got there.

Backstage, a green-haired man rubbed the fingers of one hand over the plastic and metal forearm of the other, fighting the urge to mutter anxiously. He was too far away to hear the words his patient spoke, but if he had heard them, he would have recognized them; he had inspired them, after all, given them to a woman who's hopeless eyes had reminded him of his own, once upon a time. How could he possibly have turned his back on a woman who needed his help?

In other places across Japan, a hidden group greeted the news with grief and hope at the same time. Miruko was far from the first to have her life forever changed by the tragic whims of fate and villainy, after all, and she would certainly not be the last. But for those who had lost limbs and suffered much like she had, perhaps Miruko was a symbol of something; perhaps that something was hope. After all, if she could show such relentless determination and spirit even after losing limbs, why couldn't they?

And in a dark place in the hidden underbelly of Japan, a dusty, shambling thing that might have been a man once looked at the broadcast and hissed. His madness turned Miruko's determination to desperation, twisting everything in his hatred. And in his hatred, he saw opportunity.

Chapter End Notes

Before I get into the announcement, let's get the fun stuff out of the way: Next time, reactions and discoveries in the aftermath.

See you then!

Discord server: https/discord.gg/EdqrbRC

Now then, the announcement:

I want to start off by saying that the almost-exactly five months since I first started writing fics has been one of the most fun rides I've been on in a while. Seeing how enthusiastic you guys get about my writing is just...well, it's the best feeling in the world.

That means that now, as summer ends and I face a major transition in my personal life, I want to do everything I can to keep writing these stories that I (and you guys, apparently) find so compelling.

While updates will most certainly slow down (my daily updates were always pretty ambitious, and bound to slow down eventually,) and potentially stop for a bit, they will keep coming. I might end up narrowing my fic rotation for a while during the transition (again, nothing I write is really on hiatus, just not a focus at any given moment), but I genuinely don't know, just like I can't say how much updates will slow down or what other changes are coming. At the end of the day, though, I have stories I want to tell, and I'm going to tell them.

If you took the time to read this, thank you, and I can't wait to bring you guys more of my fics!

Chapter Summary

Everything You Gave Me

Rumi emerges.

Words have repercussions. Fears are faced.

Chapter Notes

Yeah, yeah, a couple weeks have gone by, haven't they?

I've been adapting to some changes in my life, but I'm still alive and still plugging away at this fic along with my others.

I didn't quite get everything I wanted to put in this chapter into it, but I felt like we needed a bit of fluff/humor to lighten the mood and set the stage for the transition to what I consider the next "book" of this fic, which should start happening in the next few chapters.

PS: See the end notes for the explanation of the chapter title/some of the lines in this chapter.

Enjoy!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

When the long press conference was finally over, Rumi walked off the stage with her head held

high, the steady clunk of her false leg echoing as she disappeared behind the curtains.

She'd barely made it down the wooden stairs backstage before Izuku was there, his arm slipping neatly into hers, steadying her. Rumi finally let her facade slip a little, now that she was back in a place she'd come to know was safe; she let out a bone-deep sigh and sagged wearily against Izuku's shoulder, grateful for the rock-solid support he gave her.

She grumbled, "I fucking hate doing that."

Izuku's smile was wide and bright as he chuckled, "I couldn't have guessed."

Rumi glared up at him, wondering all the while just why she liked this view so much. "Aren't you the funny one," she cracked as she pulled herself upright again, her good arm clutching Izuku's shoulder while her false one hung limply at her side.

"I try," Izuku replied smoothly as he guided her first, wobbly steps into a steady gait.

They walked like that for a minute or two, slowly but surely making their way through the winding halls. Rumi felt light, lighter than she'd ever felt in long, painful weeks of healing; maybe it was the weight that was gone from her chest that did it, the vanished worry of whether or not the world even cared that she was gone.

Now, Rumi knew that it didn't matter if the world cared, if people thought she could come back or

not, because she had one person who believed, and that was enough.

Turning her head slightly, Rumi said quietly, "Izuku, I don't think I've ever thanked you for everything you did."

Without faltering, Izuku smiled back, still supporting her, still guiding her effortlessly. "You were a little busy snapping at me and making me relive traumatic memories," he told her, his voice free of bitterness or judgement, his eyes twinkling with amusement.

Rumi snorted a little and agreed, "I probably was. But I just wanted to say it, because it's true. Without you, I'd probably still be lying uselessly in bed, giving up. Now, I've got a chance ; I've got hope again. So...thank you, Izuku. For everything."

Izuku nodded, his expression gentle and kind. "You're welcome, Rumi," he replied, "but I didn't do this just for the thanks."

Rumi tilted her head curiously. "Why did you do it, then?" she asked, remembering the last time she'd asked this question, when they were both harsher, less forgiving and understanding with their words.

Izuku's grin shifted a tiny bit as he answered, "Bragging rights, obviously. Being the doctor who healed Miruko definitely gets you some recognition."

Rumi held his gaze steadily, her eyebrows raised, fighting to keep the corner of her mouth from twitching upwards. After a few seconds, Izuku knew she'd seen through him, and grinned again.

He admitted, "Okay, yeah, not really. Honestly, my answer is the same as it was before: I know what it's like to be hopeless, to know your life as you knew it is over, and then refuse to stay down. But more than that...I've gotten a gift here, this chance to use everything I've got to make myself a new path. Why should I be the only one to get it? I've got skills that so many people could benefit from. I feel like...I've got these skills for a reason, and not using them would be a tragedy."

As he spoke, Izuku raised his artificial hand, flexing and turning it as if admiring the way the bumpy surface mimicked his skin, hiding his deepest loss from the world. Rumi watched the sun dancing through his metal fingertips, and his words rang in her mind.

"I feel like...I've got these skills for a reason, and not using them would be a tragedy."

"Are you sure you're not a hero?" Rumi asked suddenly, not even sure why she had spoken.

"Pretty sure, yeah," Izuku laughed, "why do you ask?"

"I-I'm not sure," she admitted, a little embarrassed, "that just...it sounds like the kind of thing a real hero would say."

"Like you, you mean?" Izuku countered. Rumi felt her cheeks turn red, though she wasn't sure why. Maybe it was the admiration in Izuku's voice when he spoke, or the shining belief in his eyes when he looked at her, or the fact that nobody had ever called her a true hero to her face before.

For a second, she was tempted to disagree, to protest that all she'd ever wanted to do was fight, not be altruistic or save others. But then she looked into Izuku's eyes a little longer, and she held her tongue.

Those were doubts for another day, it seemed. Instead, Rumi mused, "We make one hell of a pair, don't we? A hero who forgot how to be strong, and a one-armed quirkless doctor with strength to

spare."

"Don't forget about the one working set of arms between us," Izuku joked, gesturing at Rumi's false arm with his own.

Rumi chuckled, and agreed, "That too."

Still grinning happily, the two finally reached Rumi's door, slipping inside with slow, steady steps, always getting stronger and more certain.

And far away, Rumi's words brought hope she once didn't know how to reach.

A few minutes later, as Izuku helped Rumi ease off her prosthetics and massage her aching stumps, there was a series of loud, aggressive knocks on her door, refusing to go away. Izuku and Rumi exchanged confused looks, equally mystified.

"Were you expecting somebody?" Izuku asked. Rumi shook her head.

"Maybe it's the Commission?" she offered, though she doubted it. They were probably still off doing damage control, hoping that the world would see how far she'd come and not how far she still had to go.

As the knocking continued, Izuku shrugged and went to open the door. His prosthetic fingers closed around the handle, and he pulled the door open, already beginning to say, "Okay, who the fu-"

Suddenly, the door exploded forward again, knocking Izuku back with a grunt as the person on the other side blitzed into the room, a blur of black and silver. Rumi was barely able to follow the action as the small but quick intruder ran into a staggering Izuku. There was a flash of blue, and then Izuku stopped moving, seemingly frozen in time. His form wobbled, off balance from the impact of the door, but stayed rigidly upright, not a muscle moving. A faint but steady glow surrounded the edges of his body, like a cocoon totally enveloping him.

Rumi's battle-hardened instincts drove her to try to jump out of bed as soon as the door was forced open, but she moved too slowly for the blur, who slammed into her with a cry, knocking her flat on her back. Rumi's eyes widened as she stared into a familiar set of silver eyes.

"Hitomi?" she gasped, short on air thanks to the girl's weight on her stomach.

"I'mreallysorry, butIsawtheTVandwhydidn'tyoutellmeyouwereMiruko, you'remyfavoriteheroandIcan'tbelieveItalkedtoyouwithoutevenknowing-" Hitomi babbled, her mouth moving a mile a minute, leaving absolutely no chance to draw breath or for Rumi to understand a word she said.

Rumi panted, "Whoa, kiddo, slow down a bit!"

Surprisingly, Hitomi did, cutting herself off mid-sentence and taking a deep breath. When she'd gotten enough air in her lungs, she began again, still speaking quickly but intelligibly.

"I saw the TV broadcast," she said, her voice eager and happy, "I didn't even realize you were Miruko when I talked to you! You look just like her...I mean, you are her, so why wouldn't you, but-"

Seeing that the girl was going to start babbling again, Rumi interrupted, "Yeah, kid, I'm Miruko."

Hitomi's eyes were so bright, they looked like reflective moons, shimmering and dancing with excitement. She cried, "I can't believe I'm actually getting to meet you!"

Rumi kept waiting for her typical irritation and impatience with fans to bubble up inside her, but it wasn't coming. Instead, something like guilt and fear filled her gut; Rumi was worried about why Hitomi had come, what Rumi was supposed to say. This girl had seen Rumi at her lowest; how could she still look up to her?

Before Rumi found out any of that, though, she did kinda need tobreathe. In a strangled voice, she grunted, "It's nice to meet you properly too, kid, but do you mind getting off of me?"

Hitomi turned beet red as she realized she was still sitting on Rumi, and she scrambled off, babbling apologies that Rumi waved off with her good hand as she sat up.

At last, Rumi met Hitomi's silver eyes, and her heart trembled at the confusion and excitement there.

Her voice barely above a whisper, Hitomi asked, "Why didn't you tell me who you were?"

Rumi hesitated; the look in Hitomi's eyes threatened to spill over into hurt, and something in Rumi was terrified of the thought of this one little girl losing the admiration in her eyes. Rumi wondered for a second why she cared so much about what Hitomi thought of her, but she couldn't come up with a good answer, except that she was afraid of losing one of the few people who had never stopped believing in her.

After all, Rumi had stopped believing in herself, and other people had saved her. What right did Rumi have to see hero-worship in a child's eyes, when she'd broken?

The fear made it hard to tell Hitomi the truth, even though Rumi knew she couldn't hide it; she worried about what Hitomi would think, if Rumi would shatter the image of herself in the girl's mind.

In the end, though, Rumi had been conquering fear all her life, and this was just another kind to face and defeat. Softly, she admitted, "I was too scared. I didn't want people to know about what happened to me."

"Why?" Hitomi asked, her high, rock-steady voice cutting through every layer of confusion and conflict straight to the heart of the problem, the way children have a gift for doing.

Rumi took a deep breath and replied, "Because...I'm supposed to be invincible, right? You looked up to me, and I didn't want to destroy that belief that I always win."

"But you did win, didn't you?" Hitomi pointed out. She looked pensive, worried, concerned. And yet, her eyes still shimmered with that admiration, the awe that children have for their heroes.

Rumi nodded slowly, but added, "Yeah, but sometimes it doesn't feel like I did. I've spent almost every day since then being afraid."

" Afraid of what?" Hitomi asked.

"A lot of things," Rumi admitted, "but disappointing people especially. I'm supposed to be strong,

and here I am, lying uselessly in a hospital bed."

There was a pause, as Hitomi sat quietly, and Rumi waited for the truth, the harsh words that hurt all the more when they come from a child.

But instead, those silver eyes blazed with conviction, and Hitomi declared, "You're still my hero, Miruko!"

"Why?" Rumi demanded, her voice cracking, barely above a whisper, "what have I done to deserve it?"

Hitomi smiled, then, but she didn't respond. She just looked at Rumi, who immediately began to feel self-conscious, as if she'd asked an incredibly stupid question with an obvious answer.

Hitomi said, "You never quit. That's why."

Rumi opened her mouth, ready to protest that she had quit, that she'd failed, but she found that she couldn't say it. Hitomi's words rang in her head, and at last, Rumi realized that this silver-eyed girl was right. Rumi hadn't quit, not in the end.

She may have given up, but she'd found her fire again, in the end. That was all that mattered. Strength wasn't defined by flying over challenges with ease, but by if you could pick up all your pieces when you fell and struggle onwards.

Rumi let her head tip back, staring at the ceiling as an amused smile danced across her lips. "Getting life lessons from a nine-year-old," she thought to herself, "I really did hit rock bottom,

huh?"

She would come back from it, though; she always did.

Rumi leveled her gaze at Hitomi again, and told her, "Kid, you are something else. You still want to be a hero?"

Hitomi nodded, her hesitancy at being so close to her idol disappearing, replaced by pure, bullheaded stubbornness. Rumi was liking this girl more and more.

She grinned, not even realizing how much it looked like her old smiles, the ones that revealed the unstoppable force lurking in her heart. "Good," Rumi said, "with a spirit like that, you're gonna be a great one."

Suddenly, Hitomi hesitated, her eyes falling down towards the empty space where her lost arm should have been. In a slow, soft voice, she admitted, "Sometimes, I don't think I can."

"Why not?" Rumi asked gently.

Hitomi replied, "I...as much as I want to, as much as I want to be like you, it feels like I'll never reach that level. You're so strong, and my quirk is-"

Rumi, realizing where this was going, quickly interrupted, "Quirks aren't everything, kid. Like I said, you gotta have the heart first, and you already do."

Rumi thought about Izuku as she spoke, how he was the most selfless and heroic person she'd ever met. "Thank you," she thought, "for showing me the truth, and giving me the words I needed."

Hitomi still didn't look convinced. She protested, "But still-"

Rumi decided to stop holding back. One way or another, she needed this girl to understand her own strength. She interrupted, "Hitomi, when I first met you, I was about to give up completely, and quit being a hero. I didn't think I could come back, not with everything I'd lost."

Hitomi fell silent, her eyes going wide again; she looked shocked, like she'd never even seriously considered the possibility of Miruko quitting.

Her voice as strong and steady as it had been when she'd announced her return to the world, Rumi continued, "I thought my life was over, that everything I'd worked for was gone...until I met you. Seeing how strong your spirit was, how determined you were that not even losing an arm would slow you down...it inspired me. That was what helped me make the decision to come back, Hitomi. Not my own determination, yours. So don't ever think that you aren't a hero, Hitomi. To me, you already are."

Hitomi's eyes went wide at that, at such a certain statement from her idol. "Y-you really think so?" she breathed, something in her expression suggesting a hole in her heart filling in.

Rumi nodded gravely. "I know so," she confirmed, "after all, you saved me, didn't you?"

Hitomi's smile was so broad and bright, it was blinding. Without warning, she surged forwards, wrapping her arms around Rumi's torso in a tight hug. Rumi grunted as the impact drove air from her lungs yet again, but she couldn't help the smile that filled her own face as she hugged the girl back.

"Thank you," Hitomi mumbled into Rumi's shirt. The words brought memories to Rumi's mind, of all the thousands of people who had thanked her over the years, of how she had smiled and given them some bland response and moved on with her life, back to the parts of the job she loved.

Somehow, this felt different; it felt like it mattered.

Suddenly, Rumi had another idea, an impulsive stroke of genius-or maybe premature celebration of

something she would never achieve. She decided to go with the first one.

When Hitomi pulled away from Rumi again, Rumi told her, "Hey, kid, when you get outta here, come find me, alright? I'll help you become a hero; it's the least I can do, seeing as you helped me decide to try and be one again."

Hitomi stared at Rumi like she'd hung the stars. "Do you really mean that?" she asked, her eyes filled with light.

Rumi grinned. "Of course I do," she replied, "since when does Miruko break her word?"

As Hitomi stared at her hero in shock and wonder, Rumi simply held out her fist; after a second, Hitomi responded in kind, bumping Rumi's good hand with her own.

When the moment passed, Rumi took the opportunity to look around the room for a second. When her eyes fell on Izuku, who was still apparently frozen solid, she got very confused.

"Um...did you do that?" Rumi asked Hitomi, pointing at the static doctor with a slightly sheepish expression, due to her embarrassment over missing him entirely.

Hitomi nodded, but she looked a little embarrassed, too, probably over using her quirk (at least, Rumi assumed it was her quirk) on a doctor of all people.

With effort, Rumi stood up, pulling on her prosthetic leg with much more dexterity than she had two days ago. She walked over to Izuku, and poked him experimentally. The blue energy around him shimmered a little, but he remained completely rigid, not even his eyes moving.

"Huh," Rumi mused, turning back to Hitomi, "this is a pretty neat quirk. What exactly did you

do?"

Sitting on the side of Rumi's bed, her legs swinging lazily, Hitomi explained, "My quirk is called Stasis Touch. I can put anyone I touch with my hand into a kind of...the doctor called it sus...suspen..."

"Suspended animation?" Rumi guessed, seeing Hitomi struggling with the word.

Hitomi nodded as she continued, "Yeah, that's it! Anyway, I can freeze them in place, and keep them like that for a while. The thing is, I kind of..."

Rumi's eyes fell on Hitomi's one hand, rubbing over the stump of her other arm as she stared at the ground. The pieces fell into place.

"That's why you're worried about whether you can be a hero," Rumi realized, "your quirk only works through your hands, and you...only have one left."

Hitomi nodded wordlessly, and if Rumi hadn't sympathized with the kid before, she sure as hell did now. To lose such a fundamental piece of who you were, of what you needed to be what you wanted to be, leaving you less than you had been before...it was a lot like Rumi losing her leg (or a doctor losing his hand.)

Rumi told her, "You'll be fine, Hitomi. If I can still be a hero with one good leg, you can be a hero with one good arm."

Hitomi perked up a little at that, a hopeful smile spreading across her features. To herself, Rumi wondered if a quirk like the girl's could ever be channeled through a prosthetic, or if some other solution could be found. Maybe she should ask Izuku about doing a bit of non-hero work.

Speaking of Izuku, Rumi was having more fun that she probably should be poking his statue-like form and waving her hands across his unresponsive face. She asked, "Is he awake in there?"

"Yes?" Hitomi replied uncertainly, "He doesn't have to breathe or anything, but I think he knows what's going on."

Well, that just made the look of mild irritation still fixed on Izuku's face even funnier to Rumi. Although... "This is temporary, right?" Rumi asked.

Hitomi confirmed, "Yeah. The longest I can hold it right now is...fifteen minutes? I can end it at any time by touching him again, though. Should I do that?"

"Nah," Rumi replied, a grin forming on her face, "Let him stew in there for a while. He deserves it."

Hitomi gave her a strange look, but wasn't about to argue with her hero. Rumi went to go back over to the girl, but suddenly, an old friend decided to appear.

"Hey, Miruko, anything interesting going on in here?" Hawks asked as he stuck his head into the open doorway, wearing his trademark grin.

Rumi's head instantly swiveled towards him, her ears pricking as she snapped, "What are you doing here?"

"Come on, can't a guy come say hi to his fellow casualties?" Hawks replied, walking into the room. Rumi didn't try to stop him, but she did roll her eyes, huffing in exasperation at the Number

Two Hero's antics.

As Hawks strode towards Rumi's bed, Hitomi asked, "Who are you?"

Hawks stopped just long enough to look down at the small, skinny girl, with the expression of someone who wasn't quite sure how to deal with children. He replied, "Who are you?"

Before Hitomi could respond, Rumi did instead, saying, "This is Hitomi. She's a friend."

"Since when do you make friends with children?" Hawks asked with a grin that showed he wasn't serious.

Instead of responding, Rumi repeated, "What are you doing here?"

"What, are you worried that the good doctor will tie me down again?" Hawks retorted.

"Nope," Rumi cracked, wearing a wide grin as she gestured with her thumb at the motionless figure in the corner.

Hawks followed her gesture to Izuku, then immediately raced over to him, poking and prodding just like Rumi had. Craning his neck to look back at Rumi and Hitomi, he asked, "Who did this?"

Rumi pointed at Hitomi, who looked a little confused about the whole thing. Hawks happily announced, "Well, she's my friend too now. This is great."

As Hawks finally abandoned the scowling statue of Izuku, Hitomi asked, "Miruko, who is the funny man?"

Rumi couldn't help the snort that escaped her, while Hawks gasped exaggeratedly, seemingly horrified by the fact that Hitomi didn't recognize him.

While Rumi muttered "the funny man" under her breath, Hawks replied, "Don't you recognize me? I'm Hawks, the number two hero!"

Hitomi tilted her head curiously at Hawks. "Really?" she asked, "doesn't Hawks have wings?"

Instantly, Rumi winced, worried that Hitomi's innocent question would kill the mood instantly. But instead, Hawks smiled, looking so excited that he began hopping from one foot to the other.

"He does!" the blonde man announced, whirling around to reveal a section of his back that was bandage-free, with a hole in the back of his shirt. Rumi's eyes went wide as she saw the tuft of blood-red feathers there, small and scraggly, but undeniably there.

"They're growing back?" she breathed, shock and excitement and happiness and a little bit of jealousy mixing inside her. If only her losses could grow back.

Hawks turned back around, and Rumi felt her hope turn to confusion. She knew the look he was wearing, filled with hope and crystallized loss all at once, a smile that was a bandage for sorrow at all the things that you would never get back.

"One of them is," the man who had once soared above Japan corrected, his eyes filled with grief and hope, "the other one..."

Hawks shook his head, so slightly it was almost imperceptible. Rumi saw it, though, and let her head hang down, her ears suddenly flopping against her head.

"I see," she said quietly, imagining how cheated Hawks must feel. His wildest hopes of recovery,

granted to him along with his worst nightmares, all at once.

"Yeah," Hawks agreed, his voice shaky and quiet, "yeah, it's...it is what it is. I mean, I didn't expect...well, I don't know what I was expecting, but still. The one I've got is going to come back as strong as ever, apparently, but I don't know how I'm going to do...well, anything."

Rumi asked, "What's next? I know you didn't know what you were going to do before, but..." Hawks looked at her, and Rumi saw something new burning in his eyes, some idea, some

conviction she hadn't seen there before.

He admitted, "I think I was...putting myself in an unwinnable position before, mentally. I kept thinking, "If they come back, I come back, and if they don't, that's it." Now...now I'm in limbo. I have my quirk, just...just not all of it."

"So what are you going to do?" Rumi prompted softly. To herself, she swore that if Hawks tried to run away from this, tried to give up, she wouldn't let him. If she could fight her way back to hope, he could do it, too. Rumi was willing to drag Hawks with her, if that's what it took.

"Is this what Izuku feels, when he swears to give his patients hope?" Rumi wondered.

"I don't know how I'm going to do it," Hawks replied, "but I'm going to use everything I have to come back. I...I've got a second chance here, I think, and I'm going to use everything I've got to keep fighting. That may not be as much as I used to have...but it's something. I've still got one wing; that'll have to be enough."

Rumi smiled, then, and put her hand on Hawks's shoulder. She told him, "That's the spirit. We wouldn't be heroes if we didn't keep fighting no matter what."

Hawks returned her grin. "Look at you. You sound like your old self again,' he teased. Rumi bared her teeth and corrected, "I'm my new self, stronger than I ever was before." "I can believe that," Hawks decided.

For a second, their eyes met, and the two heroes understood each other.

Then, Hitomi declared, "I know you two will do it! You're both strong and awesome!" Hawks turned to look at Hitomi, then back to Rumi. "Is she always like this?" he asked.

Rumi nodded. "She convinced me to become a hero again by telling me that she believed in me," she added.

Hawks blinked. At last, he said, "Alright then, so she's a literal ray of sunshine all the time. Cool."

It wasn't even that funny, but Rumi couldn't control the laughter that bubbled up in her chest, like a volcano blowing its top. She started giggling, then cackling, until finally, she was clutching her sides in howling mirth. It proved to be infectious; soon, Hawks and Hitomi were both laughing as well.

It felt like a release, a venting of all the pain and darkness and fear that had plagued Rumi ever since that damned mission; at last, the weight on her chest was lifting, and she could breathe again. It was the first time she'd been happy enough to laugh freely in...a long time.

Unfortunately, the three of them were so distracted by their laughter that they didn't notice the blue

energy shell around Izuku fizzling, sputtering, and finally dying entirely. They also didn't notice the doctor stumble, regain his feet, and turn towards the laughing trio with murder on his face.

What they did notice was when Izuku clapped his hands sharply, making all three amputees freeze in sudden shock and terror. They swiveled as one, identical expressions of fear on their faces.

Crossing his arms over his chest and scowling, Izuku demanded, "So, let me get this straight. Your first response to seeing a man frozen in place by an unknown quirk is to poke him, your second response is to laugh at him, and your third response is to keep laughing?"

Guiltily, Hawks, Rumi, and Hitomi nodded. "I see," Izuku grumbled, "I hate all of you."

"What can I say, Doc?" Rumi cracked, "it was nice to have some peace and quiet for once!" That set the three of them off again, and Izuku could only look on as they howled and chortled at his misery and suffering.

"Fucking heroes," he muttered, but nobody listened to him. Chapter End Notes

"When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, "I used everything You gave me." —Chadwick Boseman

Yeah, I'm crying, so what?

Next time, it's time for Izuku to have a difficult conversation. See you then!

Discord server: https/discord.gg/rPnRUFt

Chapter Summary

The More Things Change

Izuku gets some good news, and gets angry about it.

Rumi gets the good news from Izuku, and SHE gets angry about it.

Chapter Notes

Believe it or not, I'm still alive. I'm so glad to be back to writing this. First, I put all my fics on hold in order to finish Crossing The Veil, and then finals happened, and then I just forgot how to put words together for like a week, and this specific chapter has been kicking my ass for so long it's not even funny. But it's here now, and it marks the official return of Deconstruct, Reconstruct to my writing rotation. I'm sorry for just not updating for three months; it shouldn't happen again. Hopefully.

Enjoy!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Two days later, Dr. Danryoku called Izuku into his office, ostensibly to report on his only patient.

Izuku, of course, knew better than to keep the boss waiting.

When he reached his boss's office, the door was already slightly open; an invitation Izuku knew very well. Even so, he eased the door open slowly, cautiously.

Izuku owed Danryoku a hell of a lot, and he knew it. The man had been fully willing to take a risk by hiring a one-armed, quirkless student right out of medical school, and Izuku was fully aware that even one of those things would have disqualified him in the eyes of nearly every other professional in the field. That was half the reason Izuku hadn't told his colleagues about his prosthetic or his quirklessness-he knew that most of them had quirks that were at least tangentially related to healing, and they assumed his was, too. Hell, some deeply buried part of him that recalled a childhood spent never standing out wondered what they would think about getting outshined by a quirkless wannabe.

Danryoku, though, hadn't hesitated in the slightest. He'd seen something in Izuku, something that even Izuku didn't know about. He'd put his faith in Izuku, and Izuku had vowed over and over again to prove himself worthy of that trust.

But Izuku had also learned a thing or two about his boss over the years, and sometimes he couldn't help but wonder at what, exactly, Danryoku saw in him...because if it had been himself, then Izuku sure as hell didn't see it.

You see, under the twinkling eyes and thick glasses and long gray hair and beard that made him look like Santa Claus (albeit if Santa Claus had more PhDs than your average astrophysicist,) Sora Danryoku, the most respected hero doctor in Japan, was the most devious motherfucker Izuku had ever met. He had a fondness for playing pranks and tricks on his colleagues and employees, and the mad genius of the man who had pushed hero prosthetic science decades into the future to back

it up. Izuku sometimes wondered if Danryoku got bored running the biggest and most complex hospital network in the country; the thought terrified him so much, he preferred to blame the older man's constant mischief-making on him just being a crotchety old geezer who liked keeping his subordinates on their toes.

So Izuku opened the door to Danryoku's office carefully, half-expecting some sort of Rube Goldberg-esque machine to trigger and dump some sort of disgusting slime or something on his head. Thankfully, there were no unwanted surprises...though the grin on the old doctor's face was far too mischievous for Izuku's liking.

"Midoriya, come in!" he said cheerfully, "how have you been?"

"I've been fine, Boss," Izuku said casually, slipping into the seat across Danryoku's meticulously

ordered, yet still disastrously messy desk, "and I did just submit my most recent report on-"

"On Miss Usagiyama's recovery process, yes," Danryoku interrupted, casually pulling said report from the mess of papers covering every inch of his desk, "and, as a matter of fact, her case is precisely the reason I called you in today."

Izuku snorted lightly and retorted, "Wait, you mean I'm not here to talk about any of the other cases you haven't given me since she showed up?"

As Danryoku chuckled lightly, Izuku found himself reflecting on the fact that he wouldn't have been able to get away with half his shit if it wasn't for the fact that Danryoku was his boss. Aside from the fact that Danryoku liked him, the older man was well known as the type of boss who preferred irreverence and sarcasm in employees to blind obedience and ass-kissing. Izuku, who had never blindly obeyed or kissed ass in his life-and had absolutely zero intention of doing so, ever- found the ability to be his usual sarcastic self in meetings to be very enjoyable. If he had worked under anyone else, Izuku would probably have gotten fired a long time ago...though he also wouldn't have had to deal with the scarily clever pranks Danryoku played on the hero ward, so, pros and cons.

Settling back down, Danryoku confirmed, "Indeed. Now, I have read your report, but I'd like to hear about how she's doing from you, if you don't mind."

Izuku didn't mind, not really, but he was still confused. "Why?" he asked curiously.

His arms crossed over his chest and his expression as warm as ever, Danryoku replied, "Reading medical language and dry reports are one thing, and hearing the truth is another. I prefer a doctor's honest assessment, in plain language. I find it's more accurate, most of the time."

Izuku shrugged, figuring that if Danryoku cared so much, he might as well indulge his boss. Nodding, he answered, "Alright. That makes sense, I guess."

Danryoku grinned. "I'm glad you agree," he said, "now...how is our favorite patient?" "If she's your favorite patient, you can fucking have her," Izuku muttered.

Danryoku's only response was a chuckle and a meaningful look in his eye. He countered, "You mean she isn't your favorite patient?"

"She's my only patient, right now," Izuku pointed out sarcastically. "I suppose she is," Danryoku agreed, grinning amusedly.

Rolling his eyes at his boss, Izuku decided to ignore whatever fondness Danryoku had for bantering to focus on actually answering his question. In an exasperated voice, he said, "Rumi is

the most stubborn, idiotic, impatient, and downright reckless patient I've ever had. She ignores my orders, refuses to slow down even when it's hurting her, goes for fucking joyrides in her wheelchair, is rude and blunt and way too good at insulting me..."

Izuku left out the part where he'd told her about his past and his prosthetic. Even he couldn't quite explain what had possessed him when he'd done that, what that strange knot of heat and fury in his gut had been when Rumi had finally broken through his walls.

Danryoku raised an eyebrow. "I'm sensing a "but" here," he said evenly, his grin as wry as ever.

Izuku nodded glumly, his head slumping forwards into his hands as he admitted, "And...she's made faster and better progress than any other person I've ever met who's suffered as much as she has. She's already learning her new prosthetics, and soon I might actually have to move her up to new ones. She throws herself at every problem like nothing I've ever seen, her healing factor is twice as strong as we expected, she doesn't understand the meaning of the word "stop," and all you have to do to make her do something is make a bet with her that she can't do it. I hate it. I fucking hate how much I admire her spirit."

Danryoku chuckled, "Once a fanboy, always a fanboy, eh?"

Izuku rolled his eyes. "This isn't me fanboying," he replied, "this is me telling you that I've never

had a patient this infuriating in my life."

Danryoku nodded thoughtfully, his fingers combing slowly through his beard. "You know, I bet

the reason she gets you so angry is because she reminds you of yourself," he mused.

Izuku froze. Some part of him agreed with Danryoku, and it sent him panicking. Was that why he'd gotten so personally invested in Rumi's case? Was it that he couldn't help but see someone else in that hospital bed whenever he looked at her? Did the defeated, hollow look in her eyes strike a little too close to home?

Deep down, Izuku knew the answer was yes. But he rebelled, refusing to acknowledge it. In a sharp, curt voice, Izuku insisted, "Rumi and I are nothing alike."

Danryoku just smiled, his glinting eyes studying Izuku, making him feel uncomfortably like a bug under a microscope.

"Are you sure?" Danryoku said airily, "you're both driven and highly capable, you're both recovering from life-changing injuries...and of course, Miss Usagiyama might be the only person in the world as stubborn and willful as you are."

Izuku struggled to find the words to disagree strongly enough, but he couldn't help but focus on a single part of Danryoku's sentence. He felt a dull throb in his arm, an old phantom pain where flesh met metal, a reminder of what he'd lost.

"I'm not recovering from that injury. I recovered a long time ago," Izuku corrected, tamping down the strange itching sensation near his prosthetic lower arm.

In some ways-a lot of ways-Izuku was better off now than he had ever been with two arms. He'd risen to the top of his field, saved lives every day, lived more than comfortably on a hero doctor's salary. Before, he'd been a despondent, aimless, quirkless college student; no goal in life, no real plan, just the crushing knowledge that he would never be quite good enough, not without a quirk.

And then he'd lost an arm, and risen from that bed with fire in his eyes and the words "fuck it" on

his lips. He'd stopped caring about how he measured up to others, stopped worrying about their pitying stares, given up on his hopeless dreams. Somehow, it had worked; his bullheaded stubbornness had broken him through the clouds, brought him to the top of the world. Izuku wasn't in that place anymore, that hopeless, gray past; he'd long since left it behind.

But still, Danryoku's gaze bored into him, deep and old and potent as only an old man's gaze could be. Izuku felt with absolute certainty then that Danryoku could see something in Izuku that Izuku couldn't, that all of Izuku's blind spots and dark corners were exposed to that searing, searching look.

"My boy," Danryoku said softly, almost murmuring, "healing is not a process that ends. It's always happening. Physical healing is quick; the other kinds last a lifetime."

Izuku...didn't understand. "What are you talking about? It's been six years, I barely even think about the injury anymore."

Even as he spoke, Izuku remembered the night before he'd revealed his prosthetic to Rumi, when the old nightmares lingered and kept him awake all night. They were rarer now than they had been...but they still came. For a moment, Izuku saw himself as Danryoku must see him; a young man full of fire, casting long, dark shadows on his soul. A man who bore scars deeper than his skin; just like too much scar tissue, they restricted him, hemmed him in, stopped him from being free.

Danryoku took one last look at Izuku, and said, "But it still haunts you."

Izuku didn't respond. He didn't know what to say. How could he counter the truth? So he just sat there, his expression neutral, saying nothing.

At last, Danryoku leaned back in his chair, waving a hand as if to dismiss the tension that lingered in the air. "Anyway, I'm sure you've had enough of listening to an old man's ramblings," he said, "so let's move back to discussing Miss Usagiyama. After all, she'll be discharged soon."

Izuku's whole body tensed without warning; he didn't even know why. All he could recognize in himself was dread, and panic, and worry so strong it sent his heart thumping. Why?

Fighting to keep his voice even, Izuku replied, "S-she will?"

A tiny smile flitted across Danryoku's lips, and once again Izuku got the feeling that his boss knew exactly what was going on inside Izuku's head. "She will," Danryoku confirmed, "now that she's recovered from the most immediate impacts of her injuries, and learned how to use at least basic prosthetics. She should be able to take care of herself, with the assistance of a medical caretaker we assign, of course."

Izuku struggled to keep everything in order in his head. He knew the hospital's standard procedure for discharging injured heroes like the back of his hand, but it still took him a few moments to get his thoughts together enough to say, "A...caretaker."

Danryoku nodded. "Yes. Miss Usagiyama lives alone, and I'm sure you know from experience how difficult basic tasks can be immediately after losing a limb," he said. "It'll be good for her to have someone to help out. It also means that she can continue working on her recovery outside of the weekly PT she'll still have here at the hospital."

Izuku managed to make some noise of understanding, but his thoughts were a million miles away. Somehow, in the whole mess of his interactions with Rumi and her progress, it had never quite hit

home for him that she'd be leaving eventually. That he would one day be deprived of her dry wit and determined fire. That they'd part ways again. It made perfect sense, of course; he'd only ever been her doctor, assigned to her only as long as it took to get her walking again...but then why did his heart sink? Why did he feel... empty in a way he'd never felt before?

Gently, Danryoku told him, "It's tough, realizing that people move on, that all your work and struggle is rewarded by making your patients leave, isn't it?"

Izuku raised his head, looking up at the older man with emotion-filled eyes. "It...it is, yeah," he admitted. "I worked with her for weeks, poured so much time and energy into helping her...poured myself into it, too. And now...it's over. I did my job."

Danryoku's eyes were filled with understanding as he replied, "It's one of the hardest parts of being a doctor. But at least she's doing much better now."

"Yeah," Izuku sighed, wondering why that information did little to cheer him, "at least she's doing better."

A few moments of silence followed as Danryoku shuffled papers on his desk, leaving Izuku to mull over his own sadness and confusion. Why was he so messed up about this? He should be glad to be rid of Rumi! She was an angry, stubborn, arrogant woman who never listened to him!

(But she was also hurting, and scared, and so often alone against the world. She was brave and strong and fiercely determined, and just being near her made Izuku feel stronger. And she was... really hot. Like, really hot. Wait, why the hell did Izuku know that-)

Out of nowhere, Izuku was thankfully jarred from his rapidly derailing train of thought by Danryoku telling him, "Of course, this is all hypothetical anyway."

Blinking, and feeling a sudden wave of dread at the all-too-familiar twinkle in Danryoku's eye, Izuku demanded, "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Danryoku grinned evilly. "It means," he said with relish, "that I have your new assignment already. You'll be acting as Miss Usagiyama's medical aide for the near future, starting as soon as she's discharged."

Izuku blinked. For a few seconds, he was perfectly still, wheels turning and turning in his mind. Then, he exploded to his feet, shooting up to his full height and slamming his hands on Danryoku's desk.

"You conniving, evil, two-faced BASTARD," Izuku hissed, his voice shaking with fury, "you fucking played me."

At last, the shit-eating grin on Danryoku's face dissolved into full-body laughter. The old man roared in amusement as Izuku's infuriated face shook, revealing the overpowering relief and joy that he was trying to conceal under a mask of righteous indignation. Izuku wasn't even thinking about getting put on glorified babysitting duty, or about all the work that still lay ahead of him; he was torn between dancing with glee at getting to see Rumi more, and finding something to punch (partially because he'd have to see Rumi more.)

"I sure fucking did!" Danryoku chortled. "Son, you should have seen the look on your face when I started getting all serious and sad! I was convinced you were going to start blubbering right there!"

"You fucking planned this, didn't you!" Izuku snapped, looking like he wasn't sure whether to laugh or curse.

Wiping tears from his eyes, Danryoku cried, "Are you kidding me? I've been intending to do this for weeks!"

Izuku stood again, taking his hands off the desk and starting to clutch at his face, trailing his hands through his thick, curly hair.

"God, I fucking fell for it so hard," he lamented, "I'm so fucking mad at you...and at myself for falling for one of your stupid jokes."

Danryoku laughed, "Age and experience over youth and vigor, my boy!"

Izuku's gaze leveled off as he met his boss eye-to-eye. "I hate you," he said calmly, "I hate you so fucking much right now."

Danryoku finally stopped laughing, though his grin was enormous and unlikely to go away for days. "You hate everybody, Midoriya," he said casually, before catching and correcting himself. "Well, except for Miss Usagiyama, of course."

Izuku snapped, "Are you kidding me? I hate her the most!"

Once again, Danryoku's gaze seemed to cut right through Izuku's defenses, right to the truths he

didn't even know himself.

"My boy," Danryoku said teasingly, "are you sure about that?"

Izuku opened his mouth to reply, then realized that he wasn't. Not anymore. And that was goddamn terrifying.

So, Izuku elected to execute a tactical withdrawal. Definitely not running away. Nope. Never.

Danryoku grinned as Izuku stammered out a goodbye, said something about going to tell his patient the "good news," and then bolted out the door as fast as his legs could carry him. When the younger man's footsteps had faded into the distance, Danryoku leaned back in his chair, sighing in satisfaction.

"It'll be good to have some more married doctors here," he mused to himself, "I won't have to be the one reminding them to take care of themselves all the damn time."

As always, Rumi's ears perked up when her door creaked open to reveal a curly mop of green hair. It was honestly a tiny bit maddening, how easily her day could be brightened by Izuku's presence; all he had to do was show up for her to crack the tiniest of smiles.

God, she was like a fucking dog or something. And yet...Rumi couldn't find it in herself to be too annoyed. After all, wasn't being happy better than the alternative? Sure, the reason for her happiness might be a tad bit pathetic, but she'd take it. Just because Izuku seemed to bring the sun with him whenever he stepped through that door didn't mean she should turn away from it. Rumi didn't even bother being self-conscious about how she straightened and perked up in front of Izuku, his mere presence chasing away the lethargy that sometimes clouded Rumi's senses and left her feeling useless and helpless.

A moment later, though, she noticed that Izuku wasn't wearing his usual wry, sarcastic grin; instead, his expression was grimmer, more businesslike. Nervousness washed over her.

Still, though, she greeted him with a grin, asking, "Hey, what's up, Doc?"

Izuku's stoic mask slipped in half as the door closed behind him. Looking up from his clipboard in mild disbelief, he said, "I swear to God, it's like you know I spent way too much of my childhood watching old American cartoons."

Rumi snorted. "I have no idea what you're talking about, Doc," she replied innocently. Too innocently.

Izuku just shook his head. "If you ever call me a nimrod, I will throw you out a window," he informed her.

Rumi grinned, baring her teeth. "Don't tempt me," she responded.

Izuku raised an eyebrow, reminding her, "Hello? Getting thrown out a window? Is that not an effective threat?"

Rumi shrugged. "I'm pretty sure I'd be fine," she said. "I'm hard to get rid of."

"I've noticed," Izuku grumbled under his breath. Rumi's ear twitched as she smirked, her simple prosthetic arm crossed over her chest along with her flesh and blood one.

At last, Izuku sighed heavily and sank into the chair next to her bed, eyes falling back down to his clipboard.

"As much as I'd like to just keep enjoying your company," he began sarcastically, "I'm afraid there is actually something we need to discuss."

"What is it?" Rumi asked, bracing herself for some new complication or obstacle to overcome. Izuku replied, "You'll be discharged in a few days."

And just like that, Rumi stumbled, like she'd leaned into a blow and found nothing to push against. She couldn't make out Izuku's tone of voice; it was complicated, turbulent, like there were layers he was burying deep.

"I...I'm being discharged?" she repeated in shock, "I...that's great!"

And it was; Rumi's heart felt lighter than it had since she'd woken up in the hospital. She'd nearly forgotten that there was a world outside of these white-washed walls and clinical smells. It left her a little nervous...though mere nerves couldn't explain the strange leaden ball that settled in her stomach, like a weight that held her here, reminding her of a hole where she was about to leave something behind. She didn't know what was causing it, what could cause her to feel something like dread at her approaching departure.

Dismissing the feeling, Rumi mused, "I didn't realize my recovery was going so well."

"It is," Izuku interrupted, jarring Rumi from her maelstrom of thoughts, "but you're far from done. There's still a long road ahead, Rumi."

Rumi stared down at the simple, barely-mobile piece of plastic that had replaced her arm, and nodded to herself. She had a long way to go before she would be like what she had been. Maybe she would never be like that again...but dammit, she was going to try.

Izuku continued, "Obviously, our little daily sessions won't be happening once you leave. So, after today, I'll be handing your day-to-day care over to your medical caretaker. The hospital has already assigned them; they'll help you with basic tasks and develop a PT routine you can do at

home, in addition to visits here about every week or so."

Rumi's ears slowly drooped as she processed the words. All of a sudden, she understood exactly what that pit in her stomach was...and the realization that she would miss Izuku, the man who'd pulled her from her own head and given her a path forwards, terrified her to her core. It was a sudden, incredibly potent feeling...and Rumi was really bad at feelings.

"So...that means you'll be leaving?" she asked, even though she already knew the answer. When Izuku nodded, an inscrutable look on his face that could have been regret or pain or hollow-eyed acceptance, Rumi became very quiet, staring out the window at the world she now had to return to.

"You sound almost sad about that," Izuku observed after a while, his voice light and humorous, his eyes twinkling.

Rumi nodded softly, shrugging her shoulders. "I...guess I kinda am," she admitted. "I mean... you've been a good doctor, you know? Under the layers and layers of assholery and sarcasm, at least."

"Excuse you," Izuku scoffed, "I don't have layers of sarcasm. My entire being is sarcasm." "Wouldn't that be a sarcastic statement, then?" Rumi pointed out.

Izuku frowned. At last, he ordered, "Stop that. You're ruining my jokes."

"Aw, too bad," Rumi retorted, "maybe you just need better jokes."

Izuku opened his mouth to respond, but no words came out. Instead, after a few seconds, Izuku's eyes glittered even more, and then he said, "I have to admit, I might miss you calling me "Doc" every five seconds."

Surprised that Izuku was even capable of this amount of softness and honesty, Rumi asked, "You really mean that?"

"No," Izuku admitted a few seconds later. Rumi couldn't help but pout as her ears wilted.

"After all," Izuku continued thoughtfully once Rumi had marinated in her dread and sadness for a few more seconds, "you'll get plenty more opportunities to reference a two-century-old cartoon, since my motherless bastard of a boss assigned me to be your medical caretaker."

Rumi froze in place, her brain practically sparking as she heard the words. The pit in her gut exploded, turning into a roaring heat she didn't recognize. Laid overtop of it, though, was a different fire that she did recognize; outraged fury, mixed with shock at the audacity of Izuku's reversal. She began to splutter incoherently, curses mixing with exclamations of shock and disbelief.

Izuku, for his part, grinned widely and savagely, his equivalent of a deep belly laugh. Mockingly, he asked, "So, is that joke better?"

Rumi struggled for a few more seconds to find words good enough to describe just how much she wanted to punch Izuku right then...or maybe hug him, she hadn't decided yet. At last, she said, "You...you piece of shit, you actually made me feel sad for a second!"

Izuku's expression shifted towards surprise and amusement. "Aww," he said teasingly, "you do care."

Rumi's heart wouldn't be able to take her telling the truth she was only just beginning to become aware of, so instead, she opted for crossing her real and fake arms, pouting furiously, and muttering, "I hate you so much right now."

Izuku chuckled, "If it's any consolation, I only did it because my boss played the exact same joke on me, and I had to spread the anger around."

It wasn't much of a consolation. But for Rumi, the realization that she was still going to have Izuku by her side as she fought the most difficult battle of her life was consolation enough.

He was going to be there until the end, one way or another. She knew that now. Chapter End Notes

Next time, moving out and moving in. Also, Izuku starts a crusade against carrots. See you then!

Discord server: https/discord.gg/rPnRUFt

Chapter Summary

Triumphant Returns

Rumi leaves the hospital.

Coming home is always complicated.

Chapter Notes

Sorry for vanishing for more than a week. I was spending some holiday time with my family...and then there was an attempted coup. Fun time, that. I feel like I'm justified in not feeling up to writing for a few days after that shit.

But I'm back now, with a chapter that was a hoot to write. Enjoy!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

When Rumi was finally discharged from the hospital, it felt like a dream. She sat quietly as the plan was explained to her, nodding when she was supposed to, but barely hearing a word the doctors, her PR people, or anybody else said. If they noticed, none of them commented.

Honestly, it just felt off, leaving like this. Rumi hadn't put much thought into the future of her long road back to heroics, but she'd always sort of assumed that her exit would be triumphant, a final declaration that she was back. She thought she would feel excited, or proud, or eager to get back to work. Instead, the whole thing seemed anticlimactic, at least from the way it was explained to her. Her hero agency was sending a car to take her home, and that was that.

Maybe it was because Rumi wasn't recovered. She knew that without even having to ask Izuku, honestly. She could feel it in the unsteady way she still tottered around, how she struggled to stay balanced on mismatched legs of flesh and plastic. Hell, even if she'd still had all her limbs, Rumi could feel the way her body had softened and weakened from long weeks spent as an invalid. Izuku had started to help her get back into fighting shape, but that was going to be a hard road all by itself.

So, leaving the hospital without fanfare felt a little surreal to Rumi. She knew why it felt that way, though; this wasn't the end of her recovery like she'd once assumed. No, there was a lot more work to do yet. She had to relearn how to walk, move, and even fight, all to accommodate the more advanced, customized prosthetics that she hadn't even gotten yet. Izuku had told her that he was working on it, but that "Complex, custom-made design and prototyping doesn't happen overnight, and it happens even slower when my asshole boss has me on babysitting duty."

Personally, Rumi was fairly sure Izuku was more annoyed with himself for slow progress, but whatever.

Speaking of Izuku, Rumi became mildly annoyed with herself as she slowly made her way towards a side exit of the hospital. The reason for her irritation became clear as her eyes landed on Izuku, who was waiting for her against the wall, wearing his usual warm, steady smile, where only his twinkling eyes betrayed the harder edge to his personality. Rumi felt herself cheering up just from

his presence...which only made her more annoyed.

Seriously, what was going on with her? Why could Izuku make her day so much brighter just by being there? It made Rumi want to punch something...though if she did, she would probably fall over, and then Izuku would pick her up, which would make her even more annoyed...

Rumi shook herself from her thoughts as she reached Izuku. He nodded in greeting as he said, "It's about time you showed up."

Rumi raised an eyebrow. "Not even a hello?" she asked indignantly. "Or, I don't know, a "Hey, Rumi, nice to see you're out of the hospital?"

Izuku chuckled as he rose up to his full height (and that was another thing that annoyed Rumi, the fact that Izuku was taller than she was, and it wasn't even close.) He replied, "You aren't out of the hospital yet, though."

Rumi rolled her eyes. Gesturing at the door in front of them, she said, "Oh, my mistake. After all, I'm more than three feet away from the door. Of course that doesn't count as being out of the hospital."

Izuku grinned. "My, someone's sassy today," he teased, even as he began to reach for the door himself.

Rumi began to reply, but she was interrupted by one of the nurses, who ran up and said urgently, "Sorry to interrupt, Doctor Midoriya, but there's a problem."

Izuku looked irritated, but his voice was perfectly calm and reasonable as he turned and asked, "What's going on?"

The nurse hesitated for a second, clearly looking for the best way to explain it. As she did, Rumi suddenly became aware of a dull roaring sound coming from the other side of the door. Her ears twitched as she turned slightly, trying to figure out what it was. Suspicion grew in her mind as she recognized shouting, and the snapping sounds of cameras.

At last, as Izuku grew more and more impatient, the nurse blurted out, "The press found out."

Izuku's eyes hardened, and he turned fluidly, brushing past Rumi and yanking the door open. Instantly, the roar grew ten times louder. Rumi's ears flattened against her head as she heard shouted questions and caught a glimpse of the all-too-familiar sight of paparazzi.

"How the hell did they figure out when I was getting discharged?" she asked worriedly as Izuku slammed the door shut again. "I thought the hospital and my agency agreed not to publicize it!"

Izuku was scowling as he shrugged and replied, "Your guess is as good as mine." "Did someone leak it?" Rumi wondered, anger rising up in her chest.

"Maybe," Izuku said, his voice surprisingly even. "I doubt it, though. More likely they just saw the car your agency sent and figured out what was going on. There's been a press presence in the area ever since the raid that got so many heroes hurt."

Rumi blinked. She hadn't even noticed that, or thought about it. "Wait, really?" she said, surprised.

Izuku nodded. "Yeah," he confirmed, "it's mostly tabloid reporters and such now; all the reputable journalists cleared out a while ago. Odds are it's just a couple dozen parasites out there right now."

Rumi swallowed heavily, fighting to keep the concern off her face. "Should...should we wait, do you think?" she asked. "Until they go away?"

Izuku looked at Rumi, seriousness mixing with the scrutiny that Rumi knew from experience could cut through anything she ever tried to hide. "Why would we wait?" he countered. "It's just the media."

Rumi took a deep breath. "Y-yeah," she agreed weakly. "The media."

Izuku's eyes narrowed. "Rumi, are you okay?" he asked, his voice not quite gentle, but not accusing, either.

"I'm fine!" Rumi snapped, just a little too fiercely to be convincing. She softened rapidly as she admitted, "I...I just don't like the thought of the tabloids seeing me like this."

"Like what?" Izuku prompted.

Rumi's gaze fell towards the ground. "You know what I mean," she said quietly.

Izuku stared at her for a long moment, and Rumi fought the urge to wilt. At last, Izuku said, "Rumi, stop acting like a coward."

Incensed, Rumi's head shot back up, eyes blazing. "What did you just call me?" she demanded.

Izuku didn't flinch; his expression was stony and even. "Nothing," he replied. "You're acting cowardly, and I know for a damn fact you're the bravest person I've ever met. Now, stop worrying so much about the damn media."

Rumi reeled a little from the words; the praise mixed in with the harsh, blunt tone Izuku only used when they both knew she was being stupid was the last thing she'd expected. He was right, and she knew it, but...well, she was stubborn.

Plaintively, Rumi muttered, "That's easy for you to say."

"Sure it is," Izuku agreed, "But it's still true. You have to go out there sooner or later, and there's no point hiding from it."

Rumi glared at Izuku, but her irritation slid off him like water, and a moment later she sagged in defeat.

"Fine," she sighed. "Just make it quick."

Izuku nodded, and took her arm, letting her lean on him for support. Rumi was certain that that would only make her look weak, but she couldn't really fight it; after all, she did need that help making her way down the stairs. Flat ground, she could manage just fine, but she still struggled with climbing and descending stairs...a lot. And she'd rather not fall flat on her face in front of the media.

She grumbled relentlessly as Izuku threw the door wide open, and they slowly made their way outside, into the flash of cameras and the roar of dozens of people shouting questions at them.

Thankfully, hospital security had already cleared a path to the car that sat waiting; they would only be exposed to the paparazzi for a few moments. It still felt like an eternity.

Rumi tuned out every last bit of the noise; she didn't want to hear the questions, the demands to

know every little detail of her recovery. She didn't like to think about what they'd probably make of her leaning on Izuku as she walked, or of the fact that she wasn't wearing a prosthetic arm at all, instead opting to simply tie off the empty sleeve of her shirt.

It was a few torturous heartbeats before Rumi let Izuku help her into the car, before he slid into the seat right next to her. Only then could she breathe again.

As the door slammed shut and the noise of the press faded behind the rumble of the car leaving the hospital lot, Izuku leaned back and sighed, "Damn. I can't imagine having to put up with that shit daily. I'm glad I'm not famous."

Rumi snorted in agreement, but found herself confused by Izuku's statement. "Aren't you the Hero Wrangler?" she asked. "Seems like you're pretty famous to me."

Izuku turned his head to look at her, his expression as unreadable as it usually was. "I'm well known in my field," he corrected. "That's pretty different from being famous, let alone that kind of famous."

Rumi joked, "Well, seeing as you just walked through a sea of cameras with me, I'd get ready to be famous soon."

Izuku rolled his eyes. "Please, that's not gonna happen. I'm just a random plain-looking guy in a coat to those reporters. No way they make a big deal out of me."

Rumi found herself irritated by Izuku's words, and she didn't know why. They were true, for crying out loud! Well, maybe not the part about him being plain... wait, since when did she care about that?

As Rumi wrestled her confused, conflicted feelings back down, Izuku added, "Besides, they'd turn tail and run as soon as I opened my mouth and revealed that I'm an asshole."

Rumi frowned. "You're not an asshole," she said. Regret flooded through her immediately; why had she said that? Why did it seem so important to change his mind?

Izuku raised an eyebrow. "I kinda am," he countered. "You don't have to sugarcoat it, Rumi. I know I'm a dick."

"You helped me, though," Rumi pointed out, still wondering why she was getting into this argument.

"Yeah, by being an asshole," Izuku snorted. Rumi fell silent; she knew he had a point there. At the end of the day, it had been Izuku's refusal to let Rumi wallow in her own misery, and willingness to bulldoze through her anger, that had let him get through to her.

Instead of arguing further, Rumi turned to gaze out the window. Bright sunlight streamed between buildings, hundreds of people flitted by quicker than she could even blink. It felt so odd, to be here. Rumi felt like an outsider, looking at a world she barely even felt like she was part of anymore. Her world had shrunk down to that hospital room, and she'd been trapped there by her own body. Now, she had to figure out how to go back.

"God, it feels like I'd forgotten that the outside world even existed," she mused aloud.

"It's easy to do that, sometimes," Izuku agreed softly, making Rumi jump at the realization that he'd overheard. "To get so bogged down in your own mind, your own war, that you lose track of where you are in the bigger picture."

Rumi turned to look back at him, a million questions suddenly bubbling up as Izuku seemingly let down his guard a little. "Was it like that for you?" Rumi asked, nodding down at the hidden prosthetic attached to Izuku's arm.

Izuku frowned, stormclouds seeming to roll across his face. Rumi saw his grip on his false wrist tighten unconsciously.

When several seconds passed without an answer, Rumi's ears wilted. Slowly, she said, "Sorry. Forget I said anyth-"

"Yeah," Izuku admitted weakly, his voice soft and unsteady. "Yeah, it was."

Rumi blinked in surprise. When she met Izuku's gaze, she saw a deeper well of emotion in his eyes than she'd thought him capable of.

Izuku took another soft breath, and continued, "When I took those first few steps out of the hospital after months trapped inside, it felt...it felt like being born again, in a way. It was jarring, though; I realized that the world had continued as normal, that my life crashing down around me hadn't changed everything the way I thought it had. I couldn't decide if that was encouraging or discouraging."

Rumi could feel Izuku's words hitting home; she realized that she knew exactly what he meant. She was on the precipice of that same moment herself.

"What did you decide, in the end?" she wondered.

Izuku quirked one side of his mouth upwards, forming a bitter smirk. His eyes were distant and

pained as he replied, "I never did. Even now, I still wonder. I'm not sure if there is an answer." They were silent all the way back home, after that.

The drive to Rumi's apartment wasn't that long; Rumi hadn't realized how close to the hospital she'd lived, though she sure appreciated the convenience. Within twenty minutes, they were standing outside the building, which wasn't anything special from the outside, just one of hundreds of high-end condos in this part of the city. Rumi didn't really care about any of that, if she was being honest; she didn't spend much time at her apartment anyway. It was a place to crash when she wasn't at her agency or on patrol, not much more.

And now, she had nowhere else to be. Even though Rumi knew she could probably go to her agency if she really wanted to, she also knew there was no reason to. If she was gonna be trapped somewhere feeling sorry for herself, she'd rather it be where nobody else could see.

Behind her, Izuku climbed out of the car, his head turning to take in the street around them.

"Damn, I just realized I know where this is," he observed as he walked up beside Rumi. "We can't be more than a couple blocks from my place."

Rumi turned to look at him with a surprised look on her face. "Wait, you live around here?" she asked.

Izuku nodded. "Yeah. Only about fifteen minutes that way," he confirmed, pointing down the street, through a snarl of bright lights and gleaming glass buildings and more people than Rumi had ever known existed.

Rumi shook off her surprise as Izuku held the door open for her. She'd known that Izuku would still be coming to see her, and meeting her at the hospital, but she hadn't realized that he would be so close. Somehow, that made her feel better. The tangle of dark thoughts sitting in her chest shrank, just a little bit.

"Is that why your boss assigned you to me, you think?" she wondered as her slow but determined gait carried her towards the elevator. "You were close enough to make it convenient?"

Izuku snorted as he replied, "He'd probably say that if I asked him, but I doubt it's true. Nah, he just did it because he's an asshole."

"Sounds like the pot's calling the kettle black there, Doc," Rumi quipped. Izuku raised an eyebrow as the elevator doors closed behind them, and Rumi hit the button for her floor.

"Oh, don't get me wrong, that's a compliment coming from me," Izuku explained with a grin. "I respect Danryoku's commitment to making my life hell, honestly. It takes real commitment to fuck with somebody that much."

Rumi chuckled despite herself. "Am I really that bad?" she wondered, her voice light and free. She wondered how she already knew the answer well enough to make the question a joke and not a worried inquiry.

Izuku lazily raised an eyebrow. "You've dragged more of my past out of me in a couple weeks than anyone else has in years," he replied. "You're the biggest pain in the ass I've ever met."

Rumi grinned. "The feeling's mutual, Doc," she told him.

Izuku returned the expression. "I sure fucking hope it is," he told her. "I have a reputation to uphold, after all."

Rumi rolled her eyes as the elevator doors opened. Thank God she didn't have to walk up a bunch of stairs to get to her apartment; indeed, it wasn't even that long of a walk down the hall. However, it was long enough to make Rumi wonder aloud, "Honestly, I'm kinda surprised you live in a neighborhood like this. I don't know a ton of my neighbors, but the ones I do know are all heroes or rich assholes."

"There's a difference?" Izuku asked, smirking. Rumi swung a light punch at him, just enough to sting a bit without making her lose her balance.

Rubbing his shoulder and wincing, Izuku said, "Alright, point taken. As for how I can afford it, well...I'm a specialist in one of the most in-demand and competitive fields of medicine in the world, at the most prestigious hospital in Japan. I do just fine."

Rumi nodded thoughtfully, and as a result she almost missed Izuku add in a mutter, "Besides, what else am I gonna do with the money?"

Rumi's sensitive hearing picked up the words, and her white ears pricked towards the sky. "What's that supposed to mean?" she asked.

Izuku looked surprised for a moment. He looked as though he was about to end the conversation, but then he took a long, deep breath and shrugged instead.

"I'm a bit of a workaholic," he admitted. "I don't really do much else other than my job. Hell, I'm barely at my apartment, most of the time; it's just a place I go to sleep, really."

Rumi's thoughts rose up and swarmed her again; wrestling them down, she replied, "I suppose that's another thing we have in common, then. I couldn't tell you how many times I've just crashed in my agency's break room so I would be there if villain bullshit went down."

Izuku looked thoughtful as Rumi unlocked her front door, but if he wanted to reply, he didn't get the chance. Instead, as the door swung open, Izuku followed Rumi inside.

Sure enough, the apartment was sparsely decorated, the kind brought not by a conscious choice, but because nobody cared enough about the place to add a personal touch. Izuku saw very little personalization, either; no family pictures, no scuffed furniture with a history long enough to fill a book, none of the little odds and ends that inevitably filled any home over years. Everything from the kitchen off to one side near the door to the slivers of other rooms he could make out through doors left ajar seemed soulless, without the kind of unique personality any home inevitably developed to match its owner. His own apartment was the same, and could have swapped places with Rumi's without either of them noticing for days. Just about the only part of the place that didn't look like it had come straight out of a catalogue was the well-appointed, comprehensive home gym that filled one corner of the large central room of the apartment.

Rumi closed the door behind them, the mismatched click of her false foot against the hardwood floor echoing and making her apartment feel lonelier and emptier than it already did.

"Like I said," she repeated, just a little embarrassed, "I don't exactly spend a lot of time here. Honestly, I'm just glad the building comes with cleaners, otherwise we'd both be sneezing from all the dust right now."

Izuku nodded thoughtfully. He cracked his knuckles-making Rumi wonder if he'd specifically added a knuckle-cracking feature to his prosthetic arm, or if that was just a design quirk-and announced, "Alright, let's get to work moving stuff around."

Rumi blinked in confusion. "Wait, why?" she asked as Izuku strode forwards.

Izuku turned back to look at her, the look of slight exasperation he got when he had to explain himself on his face. "Rumi, you've got two missing limbs," he reminded her. "That's gonna make a lot of stuff harder, including shit you don't even think about doing. Trust me, we need to do some rearranging or you'll get stuck on the couch and be completely unable to get up by yourself."

Rumi winced just from the thought. "Fine," she muttered, her eyes landing on the kitchen and instantly brightening as she recalled one thing she did have in her apartment. "Just...gimme a second to grab something, alright?"

"Fine," Izuku replied. Rumi swiftly made her way into the kitchen, bracing herself as she hauled the refrigerator door open. With any luck, her stash should still be good...

Bingo. With a grin, Rumi reached into one of the drawers, and withdrew a fresh carrot. She took a satisfied bite as she closed the door again...only to find Izuku standing there, arms crossed, looking thoroughly unamused.

"Really?" he asked. "You could at least try not to be that easy to predict."

Rumi shrugged, the carrot still firmly clamped between her teeth as she replied, "What can I say,

Doc? I am a rabbit."

Izuku groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose as though he was developing a migraine. "First of all, never call me Doc while you're eating a carrot like that again," he demanded. "Second of all,

Rumi, I'm your doctor. I know as well as you do that your quirk doesn't affect your digestive system or what diet you can eat."

Rumi snorted. Just because it was true didn't mean she had to admit it. Honestly, she just really liked carrots. She didn't know if it was a rabbit thing or not, she just fucking loved them. She definitely didn't have a problem, though. No, absolutely not.

"Why are you annoyed about this? Shouldn't you be proud of me for eating healthy?" she pointed out.

Izuku replied, "I may not be a nutritionist, but I made it through medical school. I know that carrots are not that healthy, and they would be even less healthy for you if you did have to eat like a rabbit. Besides, nothing is good for you if it's all you eat."

"What are you talking about?" Rumi demanded, a nervous twinge in her voice as she tried to nudge the refrigerator door fully shut. "It's definitely not all I ea-"

Quicker than lightning, Izuku crossed the kitchen, yanking the fridge wide open. Rumi's ears slowly wilted as the fridge's contents became clear.

It was all carrots. In every drawer, on every shelf. There were a few other things here and there, but more than two-thirds of the fridge was taken up by fresh carrots. Crouching down to get a better look at the inside of the fridge, Izuku squinted meaningfully up at Rumi, as though inviting her to continue her protests.

"I...usually eat takeout," she explained. "This is all I usually use this fridge for. Carrots." "A carrot fridge," Izuku repeated acidly. "Yeah, because that's so much better."

Rumi shrugged, taking another bite out of the carrot in her mouth. "I can stop eating them anytime I want," she assured him.

Izuku stood back up to his full height, once again pinching the bridge of his nose to stave off a headache.

"The Number Five Hero is a carrot addict," he muttered to himself. "Fucking wonderful. You know what? This isn't my problem. I'm not dealing with this."

"Hey! I'm not an addict!" Rumi protested. She finished her carrot with a savory crunch, then stealthily reopened the fridge to grab another. Izuku watched her pop it in her mouth with a raised eyebrow.

"Sure you're not," he agreed, turning and heading back towards the main room. "Now, are you coming to help me, or not?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Rumi grumbled as she polished off the second carrot in two bites. Man, she had missed these things while she was in the hospital. Maybe being home again wouldn't be so bad after all.

From the other room, Izuku yelled, "If you don't get here in five seconds, I'm going to move every bit of furniture in this house exactly three and a half inches to the left!"

Rumi hurriedly grabbed yet another carrot from the fridge, before slamming the door shut as she made her way towards Izuku as quickly as her inexperienced gait could carry her.

"Don't you fucking dare!" she yelled back, a giant, unconscious grin on her face.

"Oh no, too late!" Izuku called out in a melodramatic voice. "I've already started!"

As Rumi hobbled out of the kitchen, she realized that for the first time since she'd learned she was leaving the hospital, she was happy. For a moment, the sun shone brighter, and she felt like she could finally say she was getting better.

But there was still a yawning void in her chest, and the happiness did little more than paper over it. Worse, Izuku was the cause of that happiness; what would happen when he left again? Rumi knew she wouldn't see him again for a few days...but those few days loomed in her mind as if they were years.

For now, though, Rumi tamped down her worries and returned to Izuku's side. She could pretend everything was okay, just for a little while.

Even if she couldn't do it forever. Chapter End Notes

Next time, Rumi is reminded that recovery can be a bumpy road. See you then!

Discord Server: https/discord.gg/rPnRUFt

Chapter Summary

Weights And Burdens

Rumi relapses.

Izuku comes to the rescue.

Chapter Notes

Took a little bit longer to get back to this than I would have liked, but oh well.

Note: I did my best to find a compromise point between depicting Rumi's mental struggles honestly and telling a good story. I shy away from assigning a specific diagnosis or anything because I don't know enough in that area and don't want to make light of them, but there are elements here that fall under illnesses such as depression. Just a heads up.

My updates will probably be slower than they've been the last few months, since I'm now back at school, but I will still do my best to get through a semi-predictable rotation in a decent time frame.

P.S. There's a line in this chapter that's a reference to my favorite book series of all time. I will literally hug you if you spot it.

Enjoy!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Nearly as soon as Izuku left her apartment, Rumi found herself feeling lost. It was as if all the light and energy had been sucked out of her the moment that door closed, leaving her alone in the ruins of her former life, a reminder of all that she'd lost.

It wasn't just that her furniture had been rearranged; it wasn't even the way the tiniest tasks, like opening doors, had suddenly become delicate, time-consuming exercises. No, it was the fact that Rumi felt like she had been yanked from the real world and dropped into limbo.

For a while, she tried to keep up with Izuku's advice and the exercise schedule he'd given her, she really did. She lifted weights and ran on the treadmill and did all the other things she would have once scoffed at as weakling training. Once, her training regime had been orders of magnitude more intensive, and she'd been able to do it almost without breaking a sweat.

Now, she could barely lift the smallest weights her custom gym had. Some of it was the way her muscles had atrophied over the course of months in the hospital. Some of it was the fact that she simply couldn't do some exercises with the imbalanced, weak prosthetics she wore, forcing her to struggle to stay on her feet. All of that, Rumi understood, and maybe could have even overcome.

But there was another aspect to it, one she didn't understand. For some reason, she just...withered inside when she laid eyes on the gym equipment, lying there ready for her to use. Some part of her simply didn't want to do it...but it went deeper than that, deeper than laziness or disinterest. Rumi could feel herself simply draining out over time, feeling like she was on a different kind of

treadmill-forever running as hard as she could just to stay in the same desperate, helpless spot.

She gave up after two days. What was the point, anyway? She didn't want to constantly be reminded of how far she'd fallen, of how much she'd lost. That was all it was doing, really. It was as if Rumi could hear a voice inside mocking her every time she struggled with the simplest, easiest exercises she could think of.

"You're pathetic," the voice-like her own, stripped of everything but dark despair-told her. "You'll never come back. You can't win this fight."

Rumi had gritted her teeth and shoved the voice away, but it kept coming back. Every time she slipped and nearly fell just walking around her apartment, every time something as simple as going to the bathroom turned into an hour-long ordeal because she was missing a fucking arm, every time she stared out the windows at a world that was moving on without her, it was there, whispering that there was no reason to fight so hard, no when she'd never succeed.

Rumi tried to fight it, but the stifling, lethargic melancholy just kept settling into her, like a pillow pressing down on her face. It got worse the longer she was alone, too; Rumi had never really considered herself an extrovert, but day after day confined to her apartment left her feeling like she was slowly going insane. She was so isolated here; no friends to check on her, no neighbors who cared, nobody who seemed to be bothered to visit.

She used to like it that way-fewer distractions, fewer wastes of her time. Now...now she was lonely, and falling, and nobody was there to catch her.

Rumi knew there was nothing technically stopping her from leaving her apartment...but where would she have gone? Who would have taken her? What would she have done if she got swarmed by paparazzi?

Who would have seen her like this and been shocked by how far the fearsome Miruko had fallen?

Rumi was no stranger to these feelings-they'd been constant companions in the early days, in the hospital. But those days were gone-and in the hospital, as lonely and infuriating as it had been, there had been the ever-present hum of life happening all around her, and people who cared, people who cared enough to put up with her at her absolute worst.

People like Izuku.

He'd told her that he would come back to check on her in a few days, a week at most; Rumi had assumed that that week would fly by. But instead, it felt like years. Rumi floated along in a depressive haze, feeling as though she was running from everything. Her past, her future, her mistakes, her triumphs...all her failures. What was one more to add to the pile?

Days passed in melted blurs, flowing into each other until Rumi lost all track. She went through the motions still, or tried to-eating, training, showering, all the rest of it. She didn't see the point. All the world felt like it had lost color, and Rumi could only see the gray. She didn't...she didn't even feel anything. Not anger, not frustration, not sorrow or despair. There was just the void in her heart, sucking all the light out of her eyes.

Somewhere inside her, there was still feeling; a tiny fragment of her yelled at her body to move, to do something, to give a damn about the future. It shouted for her to act, to try, to put in the effort she needed to accomplish anything. But it was drowned out by the gray, and only added a layer of anxiety over everything as Rumi lay aimlessly in her bed, or on the couch, or mindlessly watched TV, desperate for something to break the monotony of a life she'd lost all hope of ever improving.

She didn't know what had happened to her, or why she'd fallen so far so quickly as soon as Izuku had left. But he wasn't here now, and in the pits of her despair, Rumi found herself doubting if he'd ever come back. Maybe he'd done the smart thing and let her dig her own grave. She was a hopeless case, why waste time or effort or thoughts on her? She should just sink into this pit, deeper and deeper; it was the only way she saw. She couldn't get out of it...and she couldn't be bothered to try. She just stayed on the couch, watching TV, eating junk food, waiting for...well, she didn't know what. Maybe it was more accurate to say that she was just...existing. Floating along in the haze, no goal she was reaching for, just that overpowering despair in her chest.

Some hero she was. All sound and fury, and then as soon as she had to stand on her own, she folded.

After nearly a week, the longest, darkest week of Rumi's life, she had more or less given up. That only made the greyed-out storm in her chest worse. She'd quit before she'd even had a chance to get started. She really was pathetic. All her determination, all of Izuku's arguments against giving up, all her own arguments against giving up...they felt so far away now, buried behind an impenetrable wall of greyed-out nothingness.

There was a dinging sound from her phone. Rumi blinked, then scowled. Reaching for it for the first time in a couple days, she saw that she'd gotten a new text message. Opening it up, she found she actually had more than half a dozen unread messages, from the past four or five days. Had she just...missed those? Or had she not cared enough to read them or respond?

Remember, Rumi, if you aren't exercising I'm going to come kick your ass.

Rumi? You there?

What are you, a teenager? The cold shoulder ain't cute, Rumi. Just answer me.

I swear to God, if you went on a carrot bender or something like that, you're gonna regret it. Hey, is everything okay? I at least expected you to insult me or my ancestors by now. Seriously, Rumi, you're starting to worry me. Please answer.

Rumi blinked in confusion, not even sure who the texts were coming from. A moment later, though, her eyes landed on the contact number, and she huffed a little despite herself. Izuku. Of course. She'd completely forgotten she had his number now. Her gaze shifted back down to the most recent text, the one that had finally gotten her to pay attention after days of radio silence.

That's it, I'm coming over. Be there in a few minutes.

Rumi's eyes went wide, panic flooding her system. Izuku couldn't see her like this. He'd take one look and know she wasn't worth helping, that all his effort in trying to lift her up had been for nothing. Even though she was already more or less beyond that, even though she'd basically given up, Rumi couldn't let Izuku leave, too. She didn't know how or why, but she knew that that would truly break her. Before she could even begin to slowly tap out a one-handed reply, though, that panic transmuted into defensive fury, the kind that Rumi always tried and failed to control. It animated her movements, tinged her thoughts with desperate defiance. Her words were met by Izuku's characteristic bullheaded stubbornness.

No

No

Not happening

Too late. I'm outside.

Fuck off

Just leave me alone

Damnit, just go away

I fucking hate you, leave me the fuck alone

Rumi looked up from her phone in shock as angry, powerful knocking rang out from her front door. It sounded like a machine gun, and the heavy wooden door shuddered from the force of each strike.

"Rumi, you better open this fucking door, or I'm kicking it in," Izuku's all-too-familiar voice announced from the other side.

Somehow, the knocking made irritation overpower the soul-sucking lethargy that had been controlling Rumi for a week. She scowled. "Go away!" she yelled back, hating how soft and pathetic her voice sounded. God, it sounded like she was practically crying.

The knocking stopped, and Rumi felt a brief surge of bizarre hope that maybe Izuku had listened. That would break her, and part of her wanted nothing more than for him to ignore her words...but at the same time, a different part of her crowed in victory. She was finally free of him, free to sink into her sorrow, free to fail.

At last, Izuku answered. Quietly, he said, "Not happening, Rumi. Not now, not ever."

Before Rumi could even hope to reply, there was a loud thud, and her front door shook as if it had been hit by a battering ram. Then it happened again, and the whole slab of wood rattled in its frame. She thought she could hear the hinges creaking and groaning.

Rumi watched in stunned silence as the door shook once, twice, then three more times. Each one make the door creak more and more, threatening to overwhelm the lock. It held, though, and when there were no more strikes, Rumi thought that Izuku might have given up. She began to relax.

That, of course, was when Izuku kicked the door one last time, neatly snapping the lock, sending it skittering across the floor as the whole door swung inwards with a bang, making Rumi flinch. Her jaw dropped when she saw Izuku on the other side, his leg still raised from where he'd made good on his promise. His face was dark with anger, though it didn't seem aimed at her.

"Now then," Izuku said sternly, stepping inside with one last sneer at the door, which swung back and forth on creaking hinges like a boxer who'd just taken one too many punches to the face. "What the fuck is going on in here?"

It took Rumi a second to overcome her shock enough to process his words. Once she did, she immediately demanded in a voice that nearly cracked with surprise, "How in the hell did you manage to kick my fucking door in?"

Izuku raised an eyebrow, his arms crossed. It only highlighted the muscle that Rumi forgot about so easily, and always regretted forgetting as soon as she had. "Hard work and determination," he replied dryly.

Rumi just shook her head, slumping back down on the couch. "Whatever," she muttered. "Now I guess you get to see just how fucking pathetic I am. Take a good look."

Izuku did just that, turning his head to take in everything. The giant pile of dirty dishes in the sink. The barely-used gym equipment. Rumi herself, lying as if in a fugue state on the couch, the TV still on, albeit muted. Rumi wilted a little under his gaze, waiting for him to yell at her, to break out the snark and acid tongue that had always worked so well on her. She swore to herself that it would not work this time.

But instead of any of the things Rumi expected, Izuku turned, closing the door gently. Then, he crossed over to her, sinking down to sit on the ground, his back against the arm of the couch.

"Looks like you've had a rough week, huh?" he sighed, leaning his head back. His body language was gentle and relaxed; Rumi could only stare at him in confusion.

Thrown completely off guard, braced against an onslaught that wasn't coming, Rumi felt herself lurch, her emotions churning.

"W-what makes you think that?" she nearly snarled, clinging to scraps of what might have been pride, or just anger.

Izuku stared up at her, his raised eyebrow and no-nonsense expression making Rumi feel like an idiot. "Because it looks to me like you've been going through a depressive episode," he replied

calmly.

Rumi flinched at the word. "I...I am not!" she insisted, though she didn't know why. Maybe it was just the thought of the label that scared her.

Izuku's expression shifted, becoming more understanding. "Rumi, it's fine," he assured her. "Honestly, it's kind of to be expected. A big shift like this, and having to get used to living on your own again? It's no wonder you've been struggling a little."

"I...I..." Rumi stammered weakly. "I'm fine, I really am."

Izuku's eyes were sorrowful now, as if he saw something new in her that she couldn't see.

"Rumi," he told her, "you don't have to pretend. There is no shame in experiencing the things you have, okay?"

Rumi blinked, more than a little off-put by the genuine kindness and understanding in Izuku's voice. For a moment, she didn't know what to say.

Izuku took that moment to add, "Look, you know you can talk to me, right? I'm always willing to listen if you have stuff you want to get off your chest."

Hesitating, sorely tempted but still unsure, Rumi asked, "Oh, do you want me to talk about my feelings? Maybe I should reveal my tragic backstory while I'm at it!"

Those deep green eyes just kept boring into her. Rumi gulped under their scrutiny. "I know it seems cheesy," Izuku admitted, "But it really does help to talk to someone about what you're thinking. It isn't a cure, but it's better than sitting around and stewing."

Rumi flinched; that was more or less exactly what she'd been doing for the past week. Still, she decided to listen. What the hell would it cost her? Besides, Izuku's presence was doing exactly what it always did, making things seem a little bit easier, a little bit more hopeful.

"Okay," Rumi sighed, starting to search for the right words. "I guess it's just that...well..."

Rumi's search continued, her mind trying valiantly to sort through all her thoughts, all while Izuku waited patiently. Suddenly, Rumi felt something snap, letting anger bubble up inside her...and now she had the words.

"What's the fucking point?" Rumi snapped. Her voice was helpless...hopeless. "Dammit, Izuku, why do I even bother? I'll never be who I was, and I don't see how I'll ever get close! I'm just... I'm fucking useless. Why should I try to get up off this couch, anyway, when I'll just be dealing with all this shit for the rest of my life?"

Izuku nodded as if to himself. "I hear you," he told her. "But you're wrong." Rumi flinched a little, but began to reply, "You-"

Izuku interrupted, "Listen to me, Rumi. I know exactly where you're coming from. I've been there, you know?"

Rumi fell quiet, knowing it was true. Even in the depths of her hopelessness, she couldn't help but listen to Izuku. How could she look away, when his deep green eyes could identify every bit of pain she felt?

Taking a deep breath, Izuku let his head lean back until he was staring at the ceiling. Rumi wondered if he was doing it so she couldn't read the look on his face.

"When I lost my arm, the same thing happened to me the first week after I got out of the hospital," Izuku admitted. His voice was raspy and quiet, nearly choked with emotion. "Everything just felt... washed out. I kept wondering why I was bothering, when there just wasn't any joy left in the world for me to have. I felt weak and useless, I barely ate, I didn't bother to do PT. There just didn't seem to be any point. Even though it didn't last forever, even though I learned to see the joy-as little as there is-in life again, that feeling never really left. You learn to keep it at bay, to ignore it, to force the light in if it won't come by itself. But that gray place is always there in the back of your head."

Rumi nodded silently. It was the confirmation of her worst fears; she was weak, now. Broken. She wondered if Izuku still was, too.

Suddenly, Rumi looked down to find Izuku staring her right in the eye. In a voice that rolled on and on like cold rain, Izuku whispered, "Right now, you're wondering why you shouldn't just give up. Your goal's so far off, it seems nearly hopeless. You aren't as strong as you used to feel. And you're just so... tired. Exhausted, even. You feel like you've been used up, then thrown out. Tired, cold, worn out. And your goal doesn't feel any closer than it was before."

Rumi let her head flop back onto the arm of the couch. She felt like all her energy was gone. "I... yeah," she admitted with a sigh, a long exhalation that felt as if it drove something from her body. "Yeah, that's how I feel."

Izuku nodded. Then, suddenly, he reached out for Rumi's hand, lying limply near the ground. Rumi felt her cheeks heat up involuntarily as Izuku gripped it, as though pouring strength into her. She looked up, and saw his eyes blazing, as only someone who had seen his own darkest depths and returned from them could do. It was fire, and life, and warmth.

"But it'll pass, Rumi," Izuku told her, voice quiet but ringing with fervor, eyes shining with urgency. "If you never believe another word out of my mouth, believe that. One day, the sun will rise. Things will get better. You'll look up, and the sky won't seem so far after all. You will be warm again."

Rumi shivered, but whether it was from the passion in Izuku's voice, or her hand in his, or the feeling of warmth that flooded through her, she wasn't sure.

"How do you know that?" she heard herself ask.

Izuku smiled softly as he rose to his feet. "It happened to me," he replied. "I can show you the way out."

Rumi nodded. It wasn't much, but a tiny spark was still clinging on inside her, and now she was nourishing it instead of the grayness. Somehow, somewhere, she found the strength to rise, getting to her feet in front of Izuku.

"Okay," she whispered. "I believe you."

Izuku chuckled, then gestured to the gym equipment in the corner. "Good," he said. "Now then, you've got a week of PT to make up for, remember? And exercising is actually a really good way to deal with the shit you've been dealing with."

Rumi groaned in protest at Izuku's drill sergeant-like requirements, but couldn't keep the small grin off her face as she made her way towards the home gym.

"Is that why you're so buff?" she jokingly asked. Izuku glanced down at himself, giving Rumi an excuse to admire his physique. Look, she was allowed to enjoy the goods, wasn't she? Rumi opted to ignore the seemingly magnetic pull in her gut urging her to get an even closer look.

Izuku shrugged. "What can I say?" he replied. "Doing PT myself felt good enough that I kept up the habit even after I didn't need it anymore."

"And I'm sure the appreciative stares from women have nothing to do with it," Rumi commented dryly. Izuku blinked in confusion, trying to make sense of the comment. He had no idea what she was talking about...and some of the implications made him decide to bury his curiosity as deep as it would go.

While Izuku seemed to work through her offhand comment, Rumi began to work through her PT routine. Almost instantly, she found herself feeling better. The light she'd been missing for nearly a week began to creep back into her eyes.

It wasn't quite a magic bullet-the grayness clung on stubbornly, whispering venom in her ears, dragging at her limbs. Maybe it would always be there. But that didn't mean she had to listen to it.

Chapter End Notes

Next time, we get some more Izuku time, as he works on a big project...when he isn't getting distracted by pesky thoughts about a certain bunny, that is.

See you then!

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End Notes

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