When Midoriya tasted blood on his teeth, the familiar, coppery tang of it, he was sure that he hadn't died.

No, this was something much worse. The back of his head was still throbbing where he'd been struck. An experimental flex told him he was restrained and mostly naked, bands around his wrists and neck, his back against something hard and flat. There was someone in the room with him, a woman, humming to herself as she moved. Toga. It had to be Toga.

He opened his eyes, his vision blurry at first as he took in his surroundings. No windows, no natural light. The walls were bare, the floor tiled, the room lit by a single halogen strip. It smelled faintly of bleach and damp tatami. Toga, the real Toga, was perched on a chair opposite him, the white button-up shirt she wore sized for Sasaki's body rather than hers, her chin cupped in her hands. Next to her was a small table, loaded with a tray of what looked like surgical tools. Under that was an icebox, pristine and white.

"Izukuu-" she smiled, too wide, drawing out the last syllable of Midoriya's name. "You're awake."

"You-" Midoriya growled.

"Yes, me," said Toga, happily, standing and spreading her arms wide. "Me, me, me." She twirled, white shirt billowing as her face shifted, her eyes briefly Sir Nighteye's yellow before the facade melted away again, dripping down her front and onto the tiled floor as she moved in close.

Midoriya surged against his restraints with a shout, but even his newfound strength seemed to do little but rattle them. Whatever he was strapped to, it was heavy. Toga laughed, her teeth white and sharp.

"Izuku, you look so good when you're struggling like that," she said, eyes raking him. "Like you'll keep going until you're really hurt, until your body can't take it anymore. Just struggling, and hurting, and bleeding." She ran a finger over his bare chest, tracing one of his old scars. "Your heart is beating so fast right now. Are you scared of me?"

"Let me go." Midoriya grated out.

"Hmm…" Toga raised a finger to her lips. "You know, I don't think I will."

"What do you want with me?" Midoriya demanded, straining against the cuffs again. "I'm just a regular guy. I'm not even a full hero yet."

"Oh, Izuku," Toga tilted her head to one side, and Midoriya couldn't help but see her in her disguise as his neighbour for a second. "You're selling yourself short. You're so much more than that. You're the phoenix hero. Nothing can keep you down. Lemillion's going to go on television tomorrow and call you the symbol of hope."

The symbol of hope. Midoriya didn't want it to be true. But everyone had been in despair, himself included, for a long time. Since All Might's death people had been looking at Lemillion like he was an inferior copy. Of course they would latch on to a new hero. A hero who couldn't be defeated, like All Might and Endeavor had been. A hero who couldn't die. A hero, Midoriya thought wryly, who was currently strapped to a table.

"I can't be the symbol of anything if I'm missing."

"But who says you'll be missing?" Toga leaned over him, still grinning as she plucked a scalpel from the table at his side, and traced a cold line down his chest with the tip. Midoriya gritted his teeth as blood welled up in dark red beads, and Toga popped the blade into her mouth, her face morphing into a mirror of Midoriya's. She tilted her head to one side, corners of her now green eyes creasing as she mimicked Midoriya's smile. "After all, I will be there."

Midoriya felt his guts sink. Of course Toga could use her quirk to imitate him, and the time she'd spent getting close to him as his neighbour meant that she knew him well enough to act the part. And he couldn't do anything here, wherever this was. A secret basement under Sir Nighteye's house, or a Liberation hideout nearby? Judging by what Toga had said, Midoriya didn't think he'd been unconscious long enough for her to move him far, but what did he know? She'd duped him before, been duping him all along. This could just be another layer in her game, a ploy to get him to act rashly somehow.

Toga seemed unconcerned with his silence, pulling pieces of what looked like medical equipment from one of Sir Nighteye's briefcases.

"You're type O, right?" said Toga, rifling through the icebox Midoriya had noticed earlier. It was full of blood packs, a uniform dark and syrupy red. "Shame, I don't have too many of these."

Midoriya's eyes bulged as he twisted his head to look at her, setting up a tall metal stand beside him. "What are you doing?"

"I'm going to need a lot of blood from you today," said Toga, her smile wolfish as she mounted the pack on the stand, a clamp in place on the tube that led from it. "And I'd love to watch you die from blood loss again, Izuku," she said, and Midoriya didn't doubt her for a second as she stuck his upper arm with something sharp. "But right now I have more important things to do, okay?"

She gave his upper arm a confident tap, and Midoriya grimaced at the uncomfortable sensation of the needle sitting under his skin.

"Now the fun part," said Toga, with a grin, and suddenly she was holding the biggest needle Midoriya had ever seen, attached to a battery of clear cylinders. She stepped in close, and for a second Midoriya thought she was about to stab his other arm, but she angled the needle upwards, plunging it deftly into his neck as she loosened the clamp on the transfusion. Midoriya didn't have time to scream. He struggled, but even fighting with all of his strength did nothing to dislodge the tube in his arm or the needle in his neck, Toga calmly holding her instrument in place.

Losing this much blood so quickly felt a lot like dying, Midoriya decided, the sting in his neck where Toga had stuck him rapidly becoming an ache as the vials attached to her contraption filled one by one. He felt faint, a wave of dizziness sweeping over him, and he would have fallen if the restraints hadn't kept him in place. Toga looked almost contented as her vials filled, and the last thing Midoriya felt before he lost consciousness again was Toga's cool hand on his forehead.

"I'll be back soon, Izuku," she murmured, face fearlessly close to his as she drew her needle out. Izuku felt the feeble trickle of blood that came out pool in the hollows of his collarbones as blackness crept into the periphery of his vision.

It couldn't end like this. It couldn't.

Could it?

Midoriya woke again to an empty room, the catheter still lodged in his arm, the halogen strip above him plinking on and off. He felt weak, his arms and head heavy, like the straps were the only thing holding him up. This was no good. He couldn't fight like this. He couldn't do anything like this. He needed to get out, before Toga got back. Ingenium had been the only person who'd been even close to knowing the truth about Sir Nighteye, and thanks to Midoriya he was in Tartarus right now.

Midoriya cursed under his breath, his mind racing and his mouth dry. He needed help, but he had no way of calling for it. Toga had taken his phone along with the rest of his clothes, and as far as anyone on the outside knew, she was Midoriya now. There was no-one who would come looking for him. But she couldn't have stashed him far from Sir Nighteye's house, not in the time she'd had. Collecting his thoughts, Midoriya took a second, more careful look at his surroundings. Two doors, reinforced by the looks of them. Perhaps this was a panic room of some sort. No windows. Underground, perhaps? He looked up, squinting past the harsh light of the halogen bulb, and sure enough there was an air vent in the ceiling, a fan whirring behind it. If he was lucky, that led to the surface. If he was unlucky, the interior of some sort of compound.

"Hello?" Midoriya called. There was silence. He tried again, louder this time. "Can anyone hear me? Hello?"

Worst case, he was in some sort of Liberation Front compound, and someone would come to shut him up. The best case?

"Ah," the voice that came through the vents was familiar, but not. "You must be her new prisoner, the man with the rekindle quirk." Sir Nighteye's voice was hoarser and more tired than Midoriya remembered it. But then, he'd never really heard Sir Nighteye's voice, had he? "She's been talking about you."

"Sasaki?" Midoriya asked.

The man's voice was wry. "The very same."

"How can I tell it's really you?"

"You can't," said Sasaki. "But if you'd rather sit in silence, I'm quite used to that, I assure you."

Midoriya swallowed, his mind whirling. Of course, Toga needed a supply of blood in order to imitate a person. That was why she hadn't killed his neighbour, and why she had kept Sasaki around. "How long have you been down here?"

Sasaki's laughter was a dry thing, echoing through the vent, but Midoriya recognised its undertones. It might as well have been a scream of despair. What had Melissa said? That Sir Nighteye had just changed one day, and fallen out with Lemillion? Had that been the real Sir Nighteye, or had Toga already taken over his seeming?

Midoriya closed his eyes, squaring his jaw. "I'm going to get you out of here."

"And how do you plan on doing that?"

"I'll think of something," Midoriya promised. "I'm a hero."

"There's no way out," said Sasaki, voice flat.

"You seem pretty sure of that," said Midoriya.

There was a pause. "I built this place, originally." said Sasaki. "It's a panic room. The doors are reinforced steel and concrete. And given Toga's strapped you down to the tickle machine and you've not burst free, I'm guessing you're not packing a power type quirk up your sleeve, either."

"Not exactly," Midoriya admitted, biting his cheek. "Isn't there some kind of failsafe on the doors? To stop you locking yourself in?"

"There was," said Sasaki. "Until our mutual friend Himiko Toga started using it as a dungeon."

Midoriya exhaled through his nose. If he could just kill himself, he'd be free of his restraints. Melissa had said that his flames had atomised the material that he had touched, re-using them as components for his body. Maybe he could do that to the door as well. "I'll get us out of here," he said, more to reassure himself than anything. From the other side of the wall, Sasaki made no reply.

Midoriya had never killed himself, at least, not on purpose. What had happened in the power plant was technically a suicide, he supposed, but it had been more like standing there and waiting for the explosion to do the work. It wasn't the same as doing it with his own hands. Would his quirk even work if he committed suicide? He honestly wasn't sure, but right now his only alternative looked like waiting for Toga to come back.

And there weren't exactly many options for him, either. He could cut off his airway by straining against his neck restraint, but as soon as he fell unconscious he would start breathing again. He needed to damage himself.

He had heard stories about people biting off their own tongues, but he'd never been sure if that was a real thing or just something that happened in movies. There had been a girl a few years back who had died that way, but she'd been some sort of mutant. Midoriya wasn't even sure if he could bite his own tongue off.

A little wriggling convinced him that the catheter in his arm was wedged too securely for him to tear it free while he was strapped down like this. Twisting his head, he could bring his lips to the tube, the mostly empty bloodbag hanging vacant at the other end of it. If he could use it to pull the stand to him, maybe he could find a jagged edge on it that he could use to open a vein.

Bracing himself for the pain, Midoriya took the tube between his teeth and wrenched it from his arm. Fresh blood glistened at the site, thin and red, and Midoriya gripped the tube tightly in his teeth as a wave of nausea came over him, bile rising in his throat. He steadied himself, slowing his breathing. Now he just needed to pull the stand over, and catch it. He gave the tube a tentative tug, careful not to dismount the bloodpack, and it swayed, listing towards him before it rocked back again, secure on its wheeled base. He tugged again, pulling it further, and it toppled. He brought his knees up to catch it, as far as he could with his ankles in shackles, but the stand was too far forward.

No! Midoriya's heart sank as the stand clattered uselessly to the floor, leaving him with a plastic catheter in his mouth and nothing else. The tip wasn't enough- he'd only be able to puncture the tops of his shoulders with it in his mouth like this, and even then it wasn't particularly sharp. He stared down at the fallen stand, the hooks to hold bags pointed upwards, and paused.

"Sasaki," he called. "You said I was on the tickle machine, right?"

There was a pause. "I can only assume that's what Toga would use to restrain you."

Midoriya nodded. "Does it tip?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Is it attached to a wall?" Midoriya expanded.

"It wasn't," said Sasaki, his tone curious. "Though if you're planning on using it to crush yourself and rekindle, I'm afraid it's not heavy enough."

Midoriya stared down at the hooks on the stand on the floor in front of him. "It's okay," he said, quietly. "I don't need it to crush me."

The machine seemed to take forever to fall, Midoriya rocking it back and forth with his limited mobility until finally it overbalanced. His death was necessary, he told himself, as the ground loomed, sickening and inevitable. One spike pierced his chest, and another just below his ribs, puncturing the skin and sliding through flesh. Midoriya screamed.