Izuku had instinctively screwed his eyes shut as they sank into Nana's memories; now, as the hurtling in his stomach finally ended, he started to open them again.

He was confused to see that he was standing on a normal-looking street, watching cars zip by and people pass him without even a glance at the two hero students who had just appeared in their midst.

As Izuku's gaze lingered, though, he started to notice some odd details; a building he thought he remembered seeing in a news story about its destruction in a villain attack, a billboard for a soda brand that had gone out of business fifteen years ago, strange fashions he didn't recognize. There seemed to be more people without visible mutations or other evidence of quirks, too.

Izuku asked, "W...where are we?"

From beside him, Nana's voice answered, "The past. A little over forty years ago, in fact."

Whirling to face his girlfriend, Izuku's eyes went wide. Nana was a ghost.

Or at least, he could see right through her translucent body. She was blue and ethereal, barely-there, with only the muted warmth of her hand in his to convince Izuku that she was actually real.

"N-Nana, you're…" Izuku stammered, shocked by what he was seeing.

Even though her body was slumped, her expression tired and worn, Nana's eyebrow went up teasingly as she replied, "This is a memory, Izuku. Of course we aren't going to be physically in it."

Izuku looked down to see that he, too, was glowing slightly blue and transparent. A woman walked right through him, and Izuku felt nothing but intense confusion and a bit of vertigo. Okay, yeah, this was definitely not the real world.

Then, Nana's words caught up with him. Izuku asked, "Wait, forty years ago? Where are we? What are you showing me?"

Nana's eyes were dull; her mouth was drawn tight as though she was fighting off pain. Quietly, she replied, "The first time I ever saw All For One. The first time I understood what we heroes face."

A second later, the building across the street from where Nana and Izuku had arrived in her memory exploded. Chunks of red brick rained down on the street, shrapnel flying everywhere, shards of debris catching passerby. Shrieks of pain and fear filled the air, and people ran desperately, looking like prey animals fleeing the approach of an apex predator.

Izuku saw people collapse to the ground, many terribly wounded by shrapnel, some not moving at all, and he instinctively tried to race to them. Nana wouldn't let him; her grip was like an anchor holding him close to her as she watched the carnage stonily, her face expressionless.

She reminded him, "Izuku, this isn't real. There's nothing you can do; these people died forty years ago."

It was the tone she said it in that made Izuku stop fighting her; Nana's voice spoke of too many nights spent telling herself the same thing, of tears shed until there were none left to give, of a lifetime of regret over the failure to help these people. Izuku returned to Nana's side, and now he was the one clenching her hand, reminding her that she had someone who could help share her burdens now.

Watching the pillar of smoke rise from the ruined building, Izuku asked, "Wait, this is your memory, right? Where are you? Actually, where are the rest of the heroes?"

"Right there," Nana replied, pointing to a series of figures that had just appeared from the smoke.

Izuku watched the group emerge onto the street, coughing and looking like they'd gone through hell. They wore hero costumes; Izuku even thought he recognized a few of them. Among them, he saw Nana, looking not much different than the ghost-Nana holding his hand so tightly it hurt, standing next to a plain-looking hero with close-cropped dark hair and a long blue jacket that covered much of his lower face. The only difference between the two Nanas was that this past Nana's eyes had none of the cockiness, or bravado, or resilience of Izuku's Nana. This Nana looked... scared. So did all the other heroes, actually. Their costumes were tattered, many were hurt or bleeding, and they had the same look of wild-eyed panic the fleeing civilians had had.

"What's going on?" Izuku whispered as the heroes stared at the ruins of the building in sheer terror.

Still unable to speak above a whisper as she waited for what she knew would come next, Nana told him, "I was just off my first year at UA. I landed an internship, mostly because there were never enough heroes anyway, so they had to put students on the front lines to fill in the gaps. My mentor and I got called into a raid to try to take down an organized crime syndicate. It turned out to be..one of his. As soon as we showed up, he was there. Apparently, whatever we'd tried to hit was important enough that he dealt with the strike team personally."

Izuku was about to ask something else, maybe about who her mentor had been, or how she remembered this all in such detail, or maybe about what desperation had led to putting students on the front lines of conflict (even though he had experienced that desperation himself,) but he never got the chance. At that moment, one of the heroes yelled, "Teams 1 and 2 are down! We need to pull back and-"

Whatever plan the hero had, it was never completed, because suddenly some of the smoke covering the street solidified and wrapped around his neck like a tendril, dragging him backwards and into the ruins of the building. There was a bloodcurdling scream, and then a crack of bone that Izuku could hear even from as far away as he was.

Instantly, every remaining hero that had any sort of ranged ability began firing blindly into the smoke, filling the air with lasers and bullets and all sorts of projectiles, even a car that one hero with super strength chucked at it. Past Nana stood at the edge of the group, looking shell-shocked and helpless, unable to do anything but watch as the smoke condensed into a thick, choking cloud that seemed to absorb everything the heroes threw at it. After a few moments, there was a loud screech, and suddenly the smoke vanished, replaced with a storm of jagged pieces of glass that shot through the air, straight towards the heroes.

Izuku screwed his eyes shut at the terrible sounds of glass striking soft flesh, at the screams and crashes and horrible gurgling sounds as one unlucky hero who had been hit in the throat died. Nana watched as her past self successfully pulled two sidekicks out of the line of fire and the mentor-Suzuki, Nana's memories supplied-waved his hand and made a wide vortex appear that swallowed up much of the glass rain, while other heroes dodged or protected themselves as best they could. Even so, nearly a third of the remaining heroes went down, killed or crippled by a single attack.

Through it all, Nana didn't flinch, didn't acknowledge Izuku's presence at all, save for her death-grip on his hand. In a flat voice, she said, "This was just another day for most of Japan back then. This battle faded into history, never even got any media coverage, because villain attacks were constant. That was All For One's doing, too; he emboldened and controlled the underworld, spread his influence into every part of the country. Heroes were always on the back foot, always in constant danger just like the people they were trying to protect. I came of age between scenes just like this."

Then, at last, All For One came into view. He strolled casually out of the smoldering rubble without a single scratch on him, the faintest of amused smiles stretched across his face.

The first thing that struck Izuku was how normal All For One looked. Wearing a black business suit and tie similar to what he'd worn at Kamino, with short white hair and a plain face, he could have passed for just another one of the millions of salarymen who filled Japan's workforce. But then, Izuku looked closer, and he saw the way All For One carried himself like a king used to absolute power, and the way his smile was mocking and arrogant, and most of all, Izuku saw his empty, empty eyes. Those black, void-like eyes were missing something, something so vital that as soon as Izuku saw the mad gleam in them, he realized that this couldn't be a human being, but instead a demon who annihilated and dominated as he pleased. It was as if, if Izuku could have gotten close enough, he could've see the fires of hell burning in All For One's irises where a soul should have been. Those eyes promised Armageddon.

Izuku could feel the same sense of paralyzing, existential terror he'd felt from this man's presence that he'd felt at Kamino; it was all he could do not to step backwards, expecting him to attack. Nana's hand kept him firm, though, and the realization that this was an echo, a specter with no ability to hurt them.

Then, All For One spoke. In a businessman's disinterested voice, he drawled, "I must say, even for a bunch of heroes, you have been particularly pathetic. Is the Hero Commission really so desperate to hurt my operations that they'd send such a useless bunch of cowards to attack me?"

His voice wasn't cocky or arrogant; it was matter-of-fact, ironclad. All For One wasn't boasting, wasn't putting on airs, wasn't even pretending to be anything other than a god mildly inconvenienced by a bunch of gnats. He sounded like he wasn't even mad that these heroes had tried to undermine him. In fact, he sounded positively genteel; he could have been discussing the opera over tea, rather than slaughtering dozens of innocents for getting in his way.

To the heroes' eternal credit, they did not hesitate. They attacked, throwing everything they could into one final, desperate assault. Izuku watched in awe as the world filled with light and color and sound. One hero stomped his foot and great spikes of earth sprang up to spear All For One; another sent a shockwave of energy rippling through the air towards the villain. Flames and electricity and beams of light rent the air as they raced towards their target. Two heroes charged in close, one with enormous broadswords replacing his hands, the other's muscles bulging and swelling until he looked like he bench-pressed tanks. Past Nana, though, was held back; Suzuki kept a hand across her torso, refusing to let her join the fray.

Izuku looked at present Nana, who couldn't tear her eyes away from the sight, which had played out in her mind a thousand times, seared there for two lives. Her lips were moving soundlessly, forming words that could never be spoken aloud.

Izuku didn't need the link to know what she was saying: "No, no, don't, you can't win, just get out of there…"

Izuku knew what was going to happen before it did. Maybe it was All For One's smile that warned him, a smile that revealed just how much All For One was going to enjoy this.

A moment later, the world exploded. All For One used a massive concussive blast to simply blow away almost every attack aimed at him; nearby buildings were leveled, reduced to dust by the force. Flames filled the air, redirected back at the heroes, landing on them and filling the air with screams. All For One made a flicking motion with one finger, and something flew from his fingertip, heading straight for the heroes. It became a tiny black hole that sucked several of the heroes into it, screaming, before it shut down.

Nana whispered, "I wanted to fight, even though my whole body was frozen. My mentor didn't let me; he told me to run. I refused."

Izuku tried to avoid the sight of All For One cutting through multiple heroes at once by asking, "Why didn't he let you fight? Didn't you have One For All?"

Nana shook her head and replied, "No, not yet. In fact, the internship was a test, the last thing I needed to do before getting it. Instead...well, you'll see."

Izuku opened his mouth to ask another question, but he was cut off when the body of one of the heroes, the one who could control earth by the look of his costume, passed right through him and Nana before landing against a wall behind them. At least, most of his body; Izuku realized that the hero had been decapitated. He was glad he didn't have a physical body at that moment, or he would have vomited.

When the two melee heroes, close to the only ones still left able to fight, finally fought their way to All For One, they fared no better than their comrades. The broadsword hero led with a stab directly towards the villain's heart, only for All For One to smile mockingly at him when the metal blades shattered against All For One's skin. The hero didn't even have time to react before All For One crushed his skull like a grape with one hand.

The other hero aimed a mighty punch at the villain's face, one that would have laid him out flat, if it had hit. All For One seemed to simply vanish for a second, the hero's fist swinging through empty air. Then, the supervillain reappeared behind the hero, and stabbed him through the back with a blade that sprang from his forearm.

When the smoke cleared, All For One stood alone in a field of corpses, a few "luckier" heroes who were still alive groaning and clutching terrible wounds, or lying quietly, clearly hoping to avoid drawing the attention of the terrible god standing over them.

In fact, there were only two heroes left standing, Nana and her mentor. Nana was still struggling in the older man's grip, now requiring both hands to keep her from escaping, clearly trying desperately to attack All For One, a hand over her mouth stifling the endless stream of curses Izuku could imagine were pouring from her mouth. But Suzuki (who Izuku thought looked more familiar than he had any right to) kept holding her back, a calculating look on his face. Finally, he looked resigned, as though he'd come to a difficult decision.

Then, a strange glow passed through his body, and he yanked out a hair. As soon as the hand left her mouth, Nana took a breath to start yelling abuse at All For One. Instead, Suzuki stuffed the hair into her mouth, and Nana was so shocked that she swallowed without thinking. As soon as she had, Suzuki let go of her, his hands glowing. Past Nana's eyes went wide, and she yelled, "DAMMIT, NO! I WON'T LET YOU!" as she was suddenly swallowed up by a portal that Suzuki flung her backwards into. Izuku's heart broke at the look of fear and betrayal on Nana's face, the look of someone who refused to believe that they'd just lost.

Beside Izuku, Nana said, "For a long time, I couldn't forgive Suzuki for what he did. I was convinced that he was a coward, or just too weak to stand up and fight like I wanted to. I didn't understand how he could just throw his life away like that, to get me out of there. I understood eventually, though."

Izuku had nothing he could say, but for a second, he swore that a voice echoed in his mind, one that whispered, "I'm sorry." Then, it was gone; maybe it had never been there at all.

The memory world began to fade out as their anchor, Nana's past self, left the scene, but it lasted just long enough for All For One's body to glow and for the rumble of an explosion to fill the sky, a burst of light that shone and grew and erased everything else until Izuku and Nana were no longer in her memory.

The two found themselves floating in a featureless, blank void, the only things that existed. Color and substance had returned to them, though they weren't back in the real world yet. This felt like a sort of in-between place, somewhere not fully real, but instead inside their heads.

Izuku stared at Nana's face for a long moment, feeling her regret and her lingering pain. At last, afraid of the answer, he asked, "What changed? How did you forgive Suzuki?"

Nana's smile returned, but it was like shattered glass, brittle and sharp. Her eyes shining with sorrow, she replied, "I did the same thing he did. When that happened, I finally understood how he chose the future over himself, how he let hope live on. It's not that hard, when you know that those who follow you will be greater than you could ever hope to be."

Izuku was struck by the similarities between Suzuki's death and Nana's; they'd both died to protect their successors, killed by All For One.

In response to his thought, Nana told him, "Yeah, Izuku. All For One has hunted the heirs of his brother for as long as One For All has existed. Their lives have been short, painful, and unpleasant, to say the least. Suzuki and I are far from the only One For All users to die at his hands, or to do it to protect this guttering torch we carry." Her voice was somber, but it resonated, charged by something greater than herself; it was a reminder that whatever happened, Nana had always believed that One For All was something more than a quirk, something more than an accident of fate.

Perhaps it was the hollow, eternal echo of this empty void they stood in, but Izuku couldn't help but feel a chill at his girlfriend's words. Into that emptiness, he whispered, "But not anymore."

Nana nodded, pride shining in her eyes, along with love that could never be explained as perfectly as Izuku felt it in that moment. "But not anymore," she agreed, "thanks to Toshi. And you."

Izuku nodded humbly, but another question came to him. He asked, "How do you do it? Stay so...positive, even with everything you've seen, all the horrible things that have happened? I could never keep smiling while carrying the burdens you carry."

Nana looked at Izuku with the most determined expression he'd ever seen; her eyes were hard, her jaw set, her chin thrust upwards. With a burning undertone in her voice, she answered quietly, "Because even though I've seen so much, I will not let it break me. If my smile slips, if I stop believing in the goodness of the world and my own ability to protect innocent people, then the villains really, truly win. And I will never let them win. So I don't let the weight of what I've seen crush me, even though it sometimes feels like it will. I enjoy life, I laugh and smile and hold the people I love tight, because that's how you defeat evil. If you let pain rule your life, if you let your anger and hate distract you from what's truly important, then you let evil win. That's why I smile, Izuku. Because it makes the world a little better, and because it's my way of defying all the things that try to bring me down."

Izuku could never explain the love and admiration he felt for Nana Shimura in that moment. At last, he thought he understood why she had been the center of gravity for everyone who had ever known her, and why the strongest hero Japan had ever known has spent his whole life trying to make her proud of him. He whispered, "You're the strongest person I've ever met, Nana."

Nana shook her head ruefully and replied, "Nah, I'm just the most stubborn."

"Maybe," Izuku replied, "But I love you anyway."

Nana just hugged him tightly, a strange feeling in an empty void. When she broke away again, Nana said, "Well, then, I answered your question about All For One; he's an immortal monster who needed to be stopped and an insane mass murderer. Now, can you please tell me about this Shigaraki?"

Izuku nodded, but he warned, "I don't really have a good memory to show you of him. Most of the ones I do have...don't capture what he was by the end."

When Izuku first encountered him, Shigaraki had been little more than a punk, an angry child lashing out with no good reason for anything he did. By the time Izuku had had to face him in the ruins of that city...he had been something both more and less than a man. A being of pure destruction who had snapped the last tenuous strings of sanity that tied him to humanity, who believed that he had the right to destroy and kill simply because it was what he felt like doing.

Nana gave him a confused look as she asked, "Wait, didn't you beat him?"

Izuku nodded dumbly as he replied, "Um, yeah, but…"

"But what?" Nana challenged, hands on her hips.

"But I don't remember much of the battle," Izuku admitted sheepishly, "I only have fuzzy recollections of fighting him, and the most vivid spot is standing over him once I won."

Nana looked even more confused now. "What happened?" she asked.

"I don't know," Izuku told her. Then, he had an idea.

Looking back to Nana, Izuku said, "I'll tell you what. I do remember a little of what happened right before the fight. I'll just show you that, okay?"

Nana nodded, and stepped close to him. As soon as their foreheads touched, Izuku reached into his own mind, and remembered the most terrifying day of his life.

With Nana by his side, it didn't feel nearly as scary this time. The world shifted around them, and rubble replaced the void.

Izuku took a deep breath, and he and Nana opened their eyes to see the end of a war.

Izuku and Nana appeared, spectral like before, floating over a massive crater that had once been a city.

Nana's eyes went wide as she saw the devastation, a city erased, reduced to dust in seconds. At the edges, pro heroes and civilians scrambled like ants from a kicked nest, fleeing the destruction or fighting the villains that had appeared. But in the center of it all, there two figures standing at the bottom of the crater, facing each other in the ruins.

As they floated downwards towards the standoff, Izuku began to speak in hushed tones.

"Shigaraki attacked UA several times my first year," he explained, "but he was never very...smart, honestly. He felt more like a spoiled child lashing out, at first. But then...something changed. He got more dangerous, more powerful, and eventually…"

Izuku looked down at the city that no longer existed, and Nana guessed, "He did this?"

"He did this," Izuku confirmed, "and I had to stop him."

At last, they were close enough to the center of the crater that Nana could see Shigaraki, clad in a long black trench coat.

Nana's first words when she saw the face of All For One's successor were, "Okay, somebody needs to tell this crusty-ass fucker about chapstick."

Izuku snorted despite himself as Nana continued, "Seriously, he looks like a dehydrated prune somebody dropped in the sand. Is there somebody with an Aloe Vera quirk? If there is, get them on this, quick. It's his mortal weakness, I swear."

What Nana didn't say was the strange feeling that came over her when she looked at Shigaraki. He felt almost... familiar, somehow, like Nana should have known him. Something about his face, damaged though it was, tugged at the empty parts of her memory, making the gaps ache more than they usually did. Not the eyes, though; Nana felt a different sort of recognition when she saw those. They held the same mad abyss as All For One's, promised the same Ragnarok of flame and dust.

Nana saw Izuku standing across from this monster, and every cell in her body screamed to help him, to get between him and danger. Izuku watched her with understanding and sympathy in his eyes, holding her hand tightly.

Past Izuku said, "Tomura Shigaraki, it's over. Surrender."

Shigaraki sneered, "You can't stop me, you little brat."

"I don't want to have to," Izuku replied, hopeful to the last, "you can surrender. You don't need to do this."

"You're right," Shigaraki agreed, "I don't."

Nana watched this past Izuku's eyes widen with shock, and her heart clenched even further, already imagining what he would say. It was something All For One would have said.

Past Izuku opened his mouth to say something, but Shigaraki moved faster.

The heir to All For One finished, "I want to do this."

Then, he attacked, a wave of destruction rippling outwards, headed straight for Izuku. Other attacks rippled off Shigaraki, too, blades and spears and boulders, lightning, flames, and a thousand more things, all heading for Izuku.

Sensing Nana's shock, her Izuku explained, "He had All For One's quirk, too. He got it from All For One's doctor somehow, along with a few extra quirks as a...well, starter kit, I suppose. He didn't have much time to steal more, thankfully, or I don't know if I could have beat him."

Nana watched the wave of destruction pass the spot where past Izuku had been; she'd seen him dodge just in time, throwing himself behind a pile of rubble. In the brief lull, Nana asked, "How did you beat him? You don't even have full control of One For All now!"

Izuku shrugged as he replied, "Like I said, I don't remember. All I know is...well, what happens next. I can't explain it, but it felt like...I wasn't the only one fighting him. I was lying there, trying desperately to think of something. All I could think about was how, if I died, all hope was lost. I was the end of the line for One For All; I hadn't passed it on to anybody, and it was the only thing powerful enough to stop Shigaraki. When I realized that...something came over me."

Past Izuku rose out of the rubble to face Shigaraki once again, and he looked furious. It was the angriest Nana had ever seen the man she loved, but it didn't scare her. Instead, it gave her hope, because as Izuku stood, green sparks began to fly off his body. The sparks grew, getting brighter and more intense as lightning hummed in Izuku's veins. Even from this far away, Nana could feel the power flowing from him, the way the force of his will began to crack the ground around him, kicking up dust storms. The power kept growing, kept getting stronger, until Nana realized that it must be getting past what Izuku could control, and she began to feel afraid. But still, it kept growing; judging by Shigaraki's confused look and the way he wasn't attacking, he was shocked, too. Nana's Izuku was silent, watching the sight with a stoic expression.

When Past Izuku spoke again, his voice sent chills through Nana. It was harmonic, many voices and one.

" I will stop you," Past Izuku declared, "and you will never hurt anyone, ever again."

Shigaraki screamed, a wordless cry of rage and anger tearing at the very air as he attacked, holding nothing back.

As Past Izuku flew forward to meet the attack head-on, Nana suddenly realized that something was wrong. The memory was fading, but not gently and uniformly. Instead, the thunderbolts shooting off of Past Izuku seemed to be shattering the world, letting the void behind seep in. Nana could feel something tugging her, a prickling across her skin that was getting stronger and stronger. Suddenly, it surged, and Nana had to bite back a scream of pain as a cold fire flowed through her veins, making her body feel like it was hollowing out, draining into something else.

Her Izuku said, "I feel it too. I think it's time to leave."

Nana nodded wordlessly. As Past Izuku leapt forwards to slam his fist into Shigaraki like a cruise missile finding a target, an impossibly bright light began to shine from the point of contact. Nana and Izuku slipped out of the memory just before the light washed over them, flung out of the past at high speeds.

Behind them, the light began to change colors; it shone green, and yellow, and purple and blue and many more colors.

Nine colors, in fact.

Where Izuku and Nana's entrance into their memories had been smooth and easy, their exit was anything but.

The two were flung apart from the center of their room at high speeds, as if shot from a cannon.

Nana, used to sudden changes in speed and direction, managed to use her quirk to push back and come to a relatively gentle stop, bouncing off of the wall lightly and floating down to slump against the wall, panting. Izuku, without such experience, simply slammed into the wall face-first. It took him a moment to peel himself off the wall, groaning in pain.

Nana tried to stand, only to find herself so exhausted that she could barely support herself.

She decided, "Okay, that's enough fucking around with telepathic bullshit for today."

Izuku nodded painfully, already trying to get up.

Izuku and Nana didn't waste any time undressing for bed; Nana didn't even tease him or make any advances. She was too tired, too emotionally drained from reliving one of the darkest moments of her life that she could remember. Just recalling it now still left her shaking, made her feel like that weak, scared, useless girl that had watched her mentor die.

As they slipped into bed together, Nana whispered, "Izuku, could you…"

Without her even finishing the sentence, Izuku wound his arms around her, drawing her tight. She basked in his warmth, his safety. Pressing her face into his neck, Nana mumbled, "Thank you, Izuku."

"Of course," he told her, feeling her arms encircle his torso, too. He felt as safe as Nana did, an endless circle of love protecting them both.

Izuku asked, "Nana, are you okay?"

Nana nodded sleepily, answering, "Yeah, I am…it was just a lot, y'know? I'm done with the "revealing all our traumas" stuff for a while, I think…"

"Sounds good," Izuku agreed, "right now, I just want to hold you like this."

"Mmmm," Nana muttered, "I love you, Izuku."

"I love you too, Nana," Izuku replied.

Nana shifted in his arms, looking up into Izuku's eyes with the kind of sleepy love that couldn't be faked or hidden. It was the cutest he'd ever seen her, with mussed hair and an adorable pout on her lips.

Nana told him, "No, Izuku. You gotta say it like you mean it."

"But I do," Izuku retorted, an involuntary smile covering his face, "how could I mean it any more than I already do?"

Nana simply responded by kissing him hard on the lips, then returning her face to the crook of his neck and whispering "I love you" against his skin. Izuku's hands tightened around Nana's waist as her breathing began to deepen.

Then, just as Izuku was about to drift off to sleep, too, Nana asked, "Hey...what happened to Crusty, anyway?"

Izuku's face darkened as he was plunged once again into painful, regretted memories.

He answered, "He...wasn't a good loser. His mind didn't...didn't take it well. Shigaraki's in Tartarus, his quirks useless, but he's completely insane now. Apparently, he does nothing but to talk to people who aren't there, yelling at them to go away, to leave him alone. It's like...he's surrounded by ghosts only he can see, and they're tormenting him for what he became."

Izuku fell silent, only for the quiet to be pierced by a loud snore from Nana; she was fast asleep.

Izuku couldn't help but be grateful for that as he, too, let sleep claim him.

Despite their painful memories rising afresh, neither of the heirs of One For All were haunted by nightmares. Nothing bad could happen when they had each other, after all.