A/N: Contains suicide, don't try this at home, kids

It took over three hours for Midoriya to die.

The stand had punctured his chest with the fall, but not deeply enough. Instead it sat wetly between his ribs, the pain shooting through him every time he took a breath. The one in his stomach he couldn't even see, but it hurt too, a throbbing, ebbing kind of pain that threatened to make him pass out all over again if he breathed in too deep. He was bleeding out from three places, the two hooks and his arm where the catheter had been, a wet trickle pulsing out over the spikes and dripping onto the floor, but that was slowing, his efficient body working against him. Midoriya wriggled against the spikes to force them deeper, biting back an involuntary cry as his vision went white with pain.

"Did you stop to consider," said Sasaki, from beyond the wall. "That Toga might have put you in quirk-cancelling cuffs?"

Midoriya grimaced. Sasaki was right. He hadn't considered for a moment that Toga might have done something to stop his quirk from working. But she hadn't exactly made it easy for him to kill himself either. He had to hope that wasn't the case. "Even if she has, this is still my best shot," he said. He couldn't afford to have Toga find him like this. She'd chain him down to something more secure, and then he'd be stuck.

"Someone could rescue you," said Sasaki.

"Like they rescued you?" Midoriya snarled back, and immediately felt awful about it. He didn't know how long Sasaki had been waiting for just that. "I'm sorry," he added, blood in the back of his throat, liquid in the base of his lungs, but not quite enough to drown him. "I'm just- it hurts a lot right now."

"No. You're right." Sasaki's voice was low. "She avoided detection for years, working the association from the inside. Even if capturing you came sooner than she planned, there's no way she would slip up now."

Midoriya squeezed his eyes shut, biting his cheek, but it did nothing to dull the pain of his injuries, the pain blaring out in his mind like a broken alarm. Wake up, Deku. You're dying. "It doesn't matter," he said, hearing his own voice waver. "I'm going to get us out of here."

Unless the person talking to him through the wall wasn't the real Sir Nighteye at all. Unless it was another of Toga's tricks. Midoriya breathed in, and regretted it instantly as the spikes in his stomach and chest shifted. He gritted his teeth, tears forming in the corners of his eyes. "I need to know that I can trust you, Sasaki."

"I can't prove I'm not Toga."

"I think you can." Every word Midoriya squeezed out was pain. "There was something I saw... upstairs. What's your most expensive piece of All Might merchandise?"

Sasaki's answer was quick. "The first All Might figurine ever made, of course. From the Delaware toy factory. The plastic ages in sunlight, so there aren't that many around anymore. When I first met him I asked him to sign it for me. He gave me a newer doll instead. Said I should have his signature on something that would last." There was a breath of quiet. "But I could have told Toga that."

"You didn't." Midoriya closed his eyes, not sure if he should tell Sasaki how he was sure that Toga didn't know. Because the figurine was currently out on a desk, collecting dust. But hadn't Sasaki suffered enough? He changed the subject instead."What does she want with me?"

"Toga?" Sasaki's tone was dark. "You're a perfect plaything for her. Someone she can kill over and over."

"I seem to be doing a good enough job of that," said Midoriya, wishing he could just hurry up and die already, but his body seemed to resist the idea, the injury on his arm already clotting. He could feel his teeth start to chatter as he went into shock, but there was no sign of the flame taking him as it had before.

If this didn't work, Midoriya decided, he had only himself to blame.

He drifted in and out of consciousness, his damaged body fighting to keep him alive as he lost more and more blood, as the stuff in his guts seeped into the rest of his insides, his breathing harder and harder as his lungs filled further. It hurt to breathe, it hurt to think of anything aside from his body, the present moment. He kept telling himself a few more breaths and the flame would come, his quirk would come, the quirk that had saved him from an ignominious death at the hands of a street thug. He would save Sir Nighteye. He would save everyone. He had to. Tears formed in his eyes, running freely down his cheeks, and he thought of All Might, grinning face staring down from the walls of his tiny apartment, from every cupboard in Sasaki's home. All Might had been only one man, in the end, with one life, and one death. Who knew how many tries Midoriya would get. How many times he would have to die to achieve even one percent of what All Might had.

"I'm cold," Midoriya, tried to say, but his lips wouldn't move.

The flame danced at his fingertips and moved upwards, red and gold. It flooded through his lungs, wrapped around him like wings.

Midoriya opened his eyes to find himself crouched in a crater on the floor, only fragments of the tickle machine remaining. Foam from a fire suppression system covered the rest of the room, and it sizzled as it reached the edge of Midoriya's crater. Taking a deep breath, his lungs miraculously and newly painless, Midoriya found the door that lead to the second room in the basement, where Sasaki was imprisoned.

Sasaki was restrained with chains rather than strapped down as Midoriya had been, and he looked thinner than Toga's version of him had been, his cheeks gaunt. His skin was dirty, flecked with dried blood, and what Midoriya could see of him was riddled with scars, track marks where Toga had taken blood and replaced it, and other marks that looked more deliberate. His hair had grown out, and fell matted to the tops of his shoulders. He stood unsteadily when he saw Midoriya, holding out his chained wrists.

Midoriya fetched a hacksaw from Toga's table of torture implements and set about sawing through the chains. Sasaki's hands shook a little as Midoriya worked the saw, and for a second Midoriya wished that he really did have a power quirk, that he could just snap Sasaki's restraints with his hands and carry him to safety

"There's something I've been wondering. About Toga," said Midoriya, his voice low as he worked. "She's been embedded in the association for a long time. And she's got nothing against killing. Why hasn't she killed more heroes?"

Sasaki stared down at Midoriya, his expression thoughtful. "You're asking the wrong question. It's more than that. An individual hero can die, yes, but the ideal of heroism lives on. It's not enough to kill the heroes. The public would still support the hero system, and the Liberation Front has power, but it doesn't have the numbers to impose its ideals on the population." Sasaki paused, his lips a thin line. "Mirio was a good choice," he said, half to himself. A good choice for what? Midoriya wondered, but stayed silent, intent on freeing Sasaki quickly.

"He's kept them at bay, stopped them from achieving overwhelming victory," Sasaki continued, a grim smile gracing his lips. "And so what must be destroyed to achieve the front's aim is the ideal of heroes."

Midoriya nodded, remembering the questions the examiner had asked him in his license exam. "The Association seemed worried about letting in people aligned with them."

"It wasn't enough to kill All Might. Death doesn't kill a symbol. Can't kill an ideal. All Might is still here, in our hearts, in our paradigm of the world."

"Then what's their plan?" Midoriya frowned. "How do you kill a symbol?"

Sasaki's voice was hollow. "You pervert them. You have them betray everything they stood for. You make it so that no-one can stand to look at their face." He looked up at the ceiling, the gauntness of his face and the sharpness of his collarbones made even more apparent. "You have them fail, over and over."

Lemillion is going to announce that you are the symbol of hope. Midoriya felt cold as he remembered Toga's words. She was going to use him- use his face. The last of Sasaki's chains came apart in his hands, and he let them drop to the floor.

"We need to find Toga. Now."

"That's easier said than done," said Sasaki, gingerly rubbing the sores where his shackles had been. "We still don't have a way to get through the panic room door."

"Ah, that." Midoriya pressed his fingertips together. "Leave that to me."

His second suicide was easier than the first, a case of slashing his wrists with one of the blades from the torture table as Sasaki stood back. Midoriya tried not to think about how much steel and concrete he was about to absorb as the red-gold flames consumed him again, fire suppressant foam hissing against his shoulders. The space where the door had been smouldered, and Midoriya checked his body for lingering flames before he stepped through.

Raiding Sasaki's wardrobe yielded ill-fitting clothes for both of them. Sasaki was weaker than Midoriya had thought, his steps staggering, his eyes blinking at the daylight that filtered through the house. It was later than Midoriya had assumed, the sun already low in the sky. How long had he been down there, he wondered, rising panic in his gut. He'd been unconscious at least twice. If Toga returned, would he be able to fight her and protect Sasaki?

He went to the phone he'd seen on the desk in Sasaki's study, but his hand froze as he reached for the handset. Who could he call? Certainly not the police- he'd be asking them to arrest him. And of all the heroes who knew about the Toga situation, he only had one number committed to memory. Not knowing quite what he would say, Midoriya tapped in Todoroki's personal number. His answer was a busy tone, and he swore under his breath as he put the handset down. He couldn't afford to wait around in the hopes of Todoroki picking up.

There was the sound of a television from the other room, a studio audience laughing. And familiar voice, Minoru Mineta.

Midoriya stepped into the room to see Sasaki on his knees in front of his television set. "We need to go," he said, but Sasaki turned and raised a finger to his lips.

Midoriya felt a chill as he caught sight of Mineta's guest, seated across from the short man. It was someone whose face he'd seen nearly every day as he worked at the Can't Stop Sparkling agency. Aoyama's sidekick, Jazzler.

"I worked with him for several years. Of course, everyone at the agency knew that there was something special about him. Knew he was wasted on the merchandising team." Jazzler laughed.

"And what about the rumours regarding his purported relationship with the number two hero, Uravity?" Mineta asked, thumb on his bobbly goatee as he leaned in.

The display behind the two of them shifted to a photograph of Midoriya in street clothes, seated at a table in a cafe across from none other than Uraraka. A single piece of cake sat on a plate between them.

"Well," said Jazzler with a grin. "I certainly wouldn't blame him-"

"That's her," said Midoriya, stupidly as Jazzler prattled on. "That's Toga." The thought of Toga wearing his face as she had cake with Uraraka unsettled him.

Sasaki nodded grimly. "They said you're due to do a live interview on Uravity's talk show tonight."