A/N: Well hello there everybody! Welcome to my latest fic. ;) Note that this prologue takes place at the end of Episode 74 / the beginning of Episode 75, and that naturally the rest of the story will be AU.

Looking forward to hearing all your thoughts! Please do follow, favourite and review~

Prologue

13 Years Ago

The blood blossomed out from his side in sickly warmth. Lemillion couldn't move.

Before him, before his wavering sight, images played out in a soundless montage – a red cape billowing, growing threadbare in the wind; his father's smile, fading; and somewhere, somewhere just within Lemillion's reach, a sunset. Lengths of shadow through his bones, silhouettes of memory leaking out from his veins. He could feel it. Could feel himself slipping. And though he willed strength to his fingertips, pleaded for his body to move, he knew it was over.

She was quiet behind him. Quiet and unmoving, though Lemillion imagined that beneath his feet the ground trembled with the way she shivered.

Eri. He twisted his neck upon his shoulders to see her, that little white face a stunning contrast to the crimson of his cape. Eri-chan. Gazing at him. Gazing at him with all the horror he couldn't bear to see. He'd saved her – he was supposed to save her! But he couldn't stop the flaming agony as it branched through his lungs. Behind a hazy curtain of silver, blurs and distortions dropping across his vision, he couldn't stop the screaming pain. The stabbing in his side. The foiling weakness as his blood oozed from his body.

Did you want to become a hero that badly? The voice. That man. Lemillion kept his eyes on Eri and tried his best, gave it his all, to smile. Because a hero would smile. A hero would smile for a little girl who couldn't smile for herself. Even when he could do nothing else. Did you want to save Eri that badly, Lemillion? That man, coming close, sending a seething rage like poison through Lemillion's sinews, filling the hollows from which his power had slipped. From which his quirk had vanished and drained. But there was nothing he could do. Nothing he could do to stop it as tears filled Eri's eyes.

"It's all a filthy disease of our time," Overhaul hissed, and Lemillion quivered with anxious agony. "I'll fix guys like you. With Eri's power, I'll fix guys like you."

Eri. Lemillion said her name, the syllable a petal off his tongue, and she quivered. Quivered like a white flower in a storm.

A man in white, the one named Chronostasis, swooped in from some unseen corner. He swooped in like a ragged white vulture and scooped Eri up in his arms as though she were a limp, lifeless doll. And she, dewy eyes transfixed upon Lemillion, did nothing to resist – too small, too filled with a lifetime of terror to know she could fight. That Lemillion would fight for her.

His heart plunged. His voice rose up in a violent scream as Eri began to recede into a darkening tunnel having opened up from nothing. He screamed her name with all the shattering rasp he could muster, and pushed pushed pushed against the stone sword through his side. Pushed pushed pushed though now, arms going weak with trembling heaviness, his desperation was fruitless. "Don't give up on me, Eri-chan!" he cried, hoping against all hopeless hope that she was listening. "I'm going to save you still! I'll save you!"

And past him in a venomous breeze, Overhaul ambled, gazing at him with a black-gold snake stare. "Die now, Lemillion."

Then he too vanished into the blackness, grazing the walls with his fingertips so that a forbidding door of stone closed in around the tunnel. Leaving Lemillion to scream against the searing lack of breath in his lungs, leaving him to bleed out the thin shreds of his remaining power. Eri! Eri! Eri! A mist closed in around him. His body went limp with the weakness he couldn't endure. Eri! Eri! Eri!

Where was Sir? Where was Tamaki?

Through the bounding flounder of his pulse in his ears, above the wretched pitch of Eri's name upon his voice, Lemillion could hear the heroes arrive. Behind the stone walls. Somewhere far off and disappearing, close by and overwhelming. But where were they? Lemillion felt the consciousness sap out from his body. He fell deeper into a dizzying pain, wordlessly crying out for Nighteye. For Tamaki and Midoriya and Aizawa-sensei and the rest. For Eri, who'd been right at his fingertips but now fell away. Fell away with a hushed, horrible plea.

Where were the heroes?

Why didn't they come?

Eri! Eri! Eri!

Overhaul stared straight ahead, covered in bloody splatters shaped like stars. Cuts, cuts, cuts all over his clothes and face and hands. Eri waited for him to claw at himself like he did whenever he got dirty, those naked hands scraping at an itchy redness like paint along his neck and cheeks. And Eri waited for him to look at her in the way he always did, those eyes melting golden with silent disgust and for him to tell her something hateful. That this was all her fault.

Because it was – because behind them, falling away ever more into shadowy melancholy, Le Million-san was gasping against bubbles of his own blood. Impaled and dangling in a terrible contortion; the haunting image of his body replaying itself before Eri's helpless sight like something straight out of a nightmare. All tattered whites and reds, that blonde head hanging dull. All because he'd wanted to save her. All because of her.

Eri waited for Overhaul to say so, to say that she was cursed. Eri prepared herself to shrink as small as she possibly could into the white of Chrono's chest as he held her, small enough that perhaps she could slip between the thin threads of material and skin and existence into an invisible, quiet nothing. She shut her eyes against prickling tears. She buried her head into Chrono's shoulder, not because there was any comfort to be had there but because her neck was too heavy to bear the throbbing weight of her skull.

She waited – but nothing came. Overhaul didn't say anything.

Chrono made sure to buckle her up tightly in the backseat of the car. He patted Eri's cheek – tap, tap – the palm of his glove frighteningly hot, and he shut the door. Outside, he and Overhaul spoke in calm, hushed tones like they always did. Words Eri couldn't make out, words she couldn't understand – fixed as her mind was upon image of the hero Le Million as he bled, bled, bled. Drip, drip, drip of blood like apple juice out a box. How his eyes had met hers, how they glowed bluer than any sky Eri had ever seen even though he must have been in so much pain. He'd smiled at her even though he must have been in so much pain!

And he'd screamed louder than anything Eri had ever heard. He'd cried her name like a horror in the night when Chrono had picked her up to take her away.

Chrono took the driver's seat and started the car. Overhaul opened the door on the other side from where Eri sat, and he climbed in next to her. Close to her. Close enough that she could smell the metallic scents of dirt and blood on his skin, and the fading undertones of disinfectant and his soapy aftershave. Smells she knew better than her own reflection. Smells that made her whoozy with fear as Overhaul leaned in towards her. His hand on the seat. Inching close to her legs in the threatening way of a snake through grass.

"Are you going to be a good girl now, Eri?"

Her voice sank into the pit of her stomach. She could only nod.

With a sigh, Overhaul took off his mask. Placed the jeweled, manic thing in the space between them. "We're going to visit some friends somewhere faraway," he said softly. "I hope you won't act selfishly – they're doing us a big favour."

"F-friends?" Eri questioned with all the quivering volume she could spare.

Overhaul stared at her for a long time, his mouth twisting funnily. Not at all like a bird. It was too sharp, too coiling – like the cobras Eri had seen in animal books, all devilish and quiet. She wanted to look away, out the window or at her hands in her lap. Anywhere, anywhere except into Overhaul's eyes. But he held her there, wordlessly daring her to move, until at last he slumped backwards into his seat. Looking tired. Looking monstrous, all shreds and splatters of crimson. "Tell her where we're going, Chrono."

Without tearing his gaze from the windscreen, before which the car's headlights were the only illumination in a hellish stretch of darkness, Chrono said in that easy, teacher voice, "Do you remember the world maps I showed you a few days ago, Eri-chan?" She replied yes. "Do you remember the big country called Russia?" She replied yes, even though in her mind's eye Eri could only muster an image of crinkling paper and lots of twisting, black lines. Blurry black lines without names.

Black lines that curled and crept into oozing dribbles like the blood that slipped out from Le Million's body.

The car went bump over something small. Eri's heart flung itself into her mouth, though Overhaul was perfectly still next to her and Chrono continued a straight drive ahead.

"That's where we're going," Chrono said smoothly. "We're going to fly on a plane to Russia. To Moscow, where our friends stay."

And as a sliver of light opened up in the darkness before them, carrying the car out into a quiet street strange and far, far away from their home and from Lemillion, Eri could do nothing to stop the tears that scalded her cheeks. Could do nothing against the violent yuckiness in her stomach as Overhaul ran his hand through her hair into her nape. Clutching. Squeezing lightly. Lemillion's blood still sticky in his palm.