As promised, the chapter on Christmas Eve!

Again, trigger warnings apply.

P.S. This chapter recaps some things simply because it was originally meant to be another story altogether instead of put in the same one as the prologue.

Have you ever wanted to die so bad it hurts? Where it cuts into your heart, seizes your lungs, hollows your stomach and makes every breath a battle?

I know I do. I'd always thought of my quirk, healing so fast that I physically can't die of anything short of old age, was a bonus in a world where there was plenty of violence. I thought the fact that my muscles healed so quickly that strength, stamina, muscle memory was so easy to build that I could more or less keep myself safe.

I had never wanted to be transported to the world of Boku no Hero Academia, especially when I knew 'spoilers', but I thought I could keep my head down and stay safe. The whole thing would work itself out. I'd be fine, even if I had to leave Japan.

Oh, god, how I wish I had run away as soon as I knew where I was.

I dig my long fingernails into my skin, scratching repeatedly. Even when I draw blood, the wounds heal as soon as the skin's broken. My captor had figured out early on that if I didn't eat enough, my injuries would stay stay until I ate next. While at first he had found my healing inconvenient, he now prefers to keep me well-fed—threatening his quirk otherwise—in order to keep me in shape. The only times he starves me is when he thinks I deserve punishment, or when he wants to see evidence of his claim on me.

My name is Zen Akito and I'm Shigaraki Tomura's 'Player Two.'

Player Two essentially means I'm his captive, or as he considers it, his girlfriend. I don't know what goes on in that sick, immature mind of his, but all his wiring is wrong. He needs to be killed. Prison would be too easy; no, he needs his head cut off and served up on a platter.

Ideally as a gift to me.

But all my hatred, all my fury, all my pain, has been forced deep. His means of punishment—a go 'round with his quirk on my bare skin, sometimes for minutes at a time—has, unfortunately, traumatized me. There's no reason why it wouldn't, but—I'm so tired of being afraid.

Honestly, the way he uses and abuses my body doesn't even match up. Sure, he thinks he's pleasuring me every time, but I can honestly say that aside from a natural building up of lubrication from repeated trauma, I have never once felt even a sparkle of pleasure from him.

I don't dare tell him that, though. I don't need to add enjoying being raped along with everything else. The lack of good feelings around him, the lack of positive reinforcement or aftercare, is staving off the Stockholm syndrome, I think. Every time he forces me to fall asleep in his arms, even the gentle way he strokes me sometimes, never does anything but send me into broken resignation. He hurts me too much and I can never please him, even the few times that I tried to in a bid to get just a little kindness.

I regret having avoided familiar faces, pro-Hero faces. If they knew me, if I had tried to make friends, maybe they would have saved me. Maybe I'd have any hope of being saved at all.

Once I had tried to lull him into false security, behaving obediently, even faking a couple of orgasms. Eating all my food. Pandering to him, listening to him vent—I had acted like a willing participant in this relationship for nearly a month. He'd decided one night that he wanted me to see the supermoon, and he let me go outside with him.

Of course, this was the chance I had been waiting for, so the moment we were outside, I bolted.

But my muscles were atrophied and I wasn't used to running anymore, nor had I kept up my strength. I hadn't fallen soon enough for him to think I had tripped, and I made it far enough for him to know that I'd tried to escape.

He'd pressed his hands all over my body in different intervals for almost fifteen minutes in punishment. I lost twenty pounds from the constant healing. I think that was my breaking point, when I realized he was never going to let me go, that my only chance of escape was when the 1-A students would hunt down Bakugou in an effort to save him.

If I was still alive by then, maybe they'd save me too. But that was possibly years away.

I could starve and cut and starve and cut until I could no longer heal and I finally died. Years. Maybe I'd be too insane by then to even go back to a normal life. Maybe I'd live the rest of my life in a nursing home, too broken to do even the most basic of tasks.

It barely bothers me at this point.

When Tomura walks in to 'our' bedroom, where he usually keeps me chained to a post like a dog, so that I can walk around, go to the bathroom, and lay on the bed, though not much else, he greets me in what almost passes for cheerfulness. At least he's not in a bad mood.

"Akito-chan," he purrs, appraising my lanky, too-thin body, dressed loosely in his shirt and boxers. He likes seeing me in his clothes. It's not like I have any of my own anymore, and I'd rather not be naked all the time. "I've got good news."

His definition of good news is usually very different from mine, but I don't protest. I look up at him, staring into those red eyes with fear, dulled by overexposure. "What is it?" I ask, because I had tried to be mute once, to ignore his existence, and it worked just about as well as trying to escape.

"I'm going on a little outing soon," he tells me with a manic smile. "And you're coming, too."

My heart pounds painfully, once, twice in my chest. Another attempt to escape? If he punishes me like last time I tried, I'll die before he gets all his anger out. I'll disintegrate and be free. I might even get to die outside, under the sky, breathing fresh air until I fade away. I've only regained fifteen of the twenty pounds I'd lost before and it's been two weeks.

"Where are we going?" I ask quietly, clearing my throat when it crackles from disuse.

"That's a surprise," he says, walking over to where I'm huddled on the floor. "Come on, get up. I want to hold you."

Never let it be said that fear is not a powerful motivator. Despite everything I feel for him, I shakily stand up and follow him to the bed, curling into his chest when we lay down just like he wants me to.

Tomura breathes in deeply. "Have you taken a bath recently?" he asks with a frown.

"Just not today," I lie. I haven't bathed in three days in the hope that my ripe smell might drive him away.

"You smell," he replies, wrinkling his nose in disgust. "Let's go get you bathed."

That wasn't the intended result. I prepare myself mentally for the assault; Tomura doesn't seem to be able to be anywhere near my naked body without having to use it.

He turns on the tub, surprisingly, since he usually prefers shower sex, pinning me up against the wall and rutting into me with every snap of his hips. The water acts as lubrication where I have none, and it's not good but it's better than nothing.

Tomura leaves me to stand, sitting down on the toilet lid and watching the tub fill. "If you do well when we go out, I have a special present for you," he tells me.

This piques my interest, but only a little. "Yeah?" I ask. "What is it?"

"That's a surprise."

"Everything's a surprise," I grumble, leaning back against the wall.

"There wouldn't be any fun in it if it wasn't," he says, smiling sharply. "I promise you'll like this one, though."

I know without a doubt now that I won't like this one. At all.

The bath is almost full now, and Tomura turns it off so that we can both settle in without it overflowing. I hate that it fits both of us almost comfortably. He starts undressing and I know the routine; with mechanical movements, I remove the shirt and boxers, letting them drop carelessly onto the floor. Tomura takes me by the wrist, pinkie finger extended, and guides me to sit between his legs in the steaming water.

Using his favorite scented soap—one that I've come to loathe, even though it's not offensive in itself—he starts lathering my hair. Hair is tricky with his quirk: he never touches one strand or my scalps with his full hands, so it never hurts me. The feeling of those gentle hands, dry and scratchy against my scalp even with the lather of shampoo, combined with my deeply ingrained terror of them, has me trembling in fear. It's an automatic response at this point. Only Tomura touches me, and Tomura's touch almost always results in pain or some other form of discomfort.

"Are you cold?" he asks to my trembling. "I made the water extra hot."

"I'm fine," I reply truthfully. It's his touch, not the water, that is causing this. "Guess I'm just winding down after a long day."

Tomura decides that's not worth replying to and moves on to washing the rest of my body, then expects me to do his. He's tall and hard as a rock right now, but so far he hasn't made any indication of wanting to rape me.

I wash him as expected, my touch clinical and unfeeling. The musculature of his body unnerves me, the leanness and strength beneath such a thin body. Before I was captured, I could have taken him in a fight, but he had taken me by surprise, and the pain came before I could even fight back. It's one of my most shameful moments, my biggest regret, that I froze instead of fighting.

Fight, flight, freeze. And freeze is the worst of them, the least mentioned for all its commonness. We all like to think we'd fight back when attacked, or at least run, but more often than not, the brain tells the body to freeze in place, to make ourselves invisible and nonthreatening.

I hate myself. I hate myself every day for it.

As I wash his hair, not roughly but certainly not gently, I feel tears prick my eyes. I'm vaguely surprised by this, as I haven't cried from emotional pain since the attempt to escape, too lost in my resignation. But remembering that fatal mistake, of letting him grab me and not taking him as a real threat for the split second he needed, has me breaking inside all over again.

I swallow the sob. Force back the tears. If he catches me crying, who knows what will happen?

The ache in my throat tells me that I'm going to have to cry at some point tonight. Physiologically, my body isn't giving me a choice.

I finish and Tomura turns on the shower briefly to spray off the excess soapy water. I brace myself for the rape, but it doesn't come. Neither do the clothes come on and I don't let my guard down.

Tomura settles next to me on the bed. "I got you some nice food tonight. You'll enjoy it."

No, I won't. Everything tastes like ash to me ever since the loss of my freedom. I eat to escape the torture, not to survive.

"Thank you," I say anyways.

Tomura turns on his side and faces me. "I did a little research," he says. That's never good. "I don't think you're enjoying sex as much as you should be."

I stiffen. Has he caught on?

He sighs. "I just haven't paid enough attention to you, I guess. But tonight, I'm going to make you come so hard you scream my name."

I won't come, but I'll certainly scream his name so loud that all of Kamino Ward will hear me. Needs must.

He turns my face to him, away from the ceiling I had been blankly staring up at all. "We have a little time before the food is delivered," he murmurs. "Let me make you feel good."

Like it's even an option for me to say no. I'd tried telling him I was too tired once. He said that he'd do all the work, relax me enough so that I could sleep peacefully. He had noticed my trauma dreams by that point.

He presses a gentle kiss to my mouth. I wait until he prods for entrance before parting my lips—never quite fighting back, but making it clear, at least to myself, that I'm being as defiant in this as I can without being hurt.

He twists so that he's on top of me, and with careful touches starts to pinch and twist my nipples. I fake a moan, and my peaks are tight, but from the goosebumps of revulsion. He doesn't have to know the truth, and he won't if I don't say anything.

Biting and suckling down my neck and collarbone until he reaches my breast, he closes his lips gently around my peak and swirls his tongue around the areola, teasing with not quite enough friction.

That softness, that gentleness, creates a small spark in my abdomen. He's never been so soft before, always rough and demanding and easy to ignore.

But now he's teasing. I don't know what he researched or why, but whatever he's looked up… might actually work.

He nips down, grazing the peak with his teeth. The sparkle intensifies and I hiss a breath through my teeth.

Tomura looks up at me smugly. "That's a sound you've never made before," he says, self-satisfied. I hope he never makes the connection between my fake sounds and my real sounds, or I'm in for some serious trouble. "You really like this, don't you?"

I can barely move, too horrified by my reaction to form words.

He pulls away and resettles on my other breast, putting forth all the same effort. I try to keep my breathing calm but it's not really working, whether from hysteria or arousal I can't tell. I'm betting on hysteria; it feels good, but not heaving-breathing good. It's still Tomura doing this to me. It's still rape.

Slowly, he moves away from my breasts and laves open-mouthed kisses down my stomach until he reaches my thatch of curls. I gasp and stiffen. No, no—can any woman not enjoy oral sex if done right?

That thought calms me. Tomura's only ever cared about his own pleasure. There's no way he's going to be able to do anything even vaguely stimulating.

But his tongue finds my clit almost immediately, a long, strong stroke right up my slit. My hips buck and I force a hand to my mouth to stifle the chilling moan that escapes my lips.

"That's a noise you've never made before, too," Tomura says. No suspicion in his eyes yet, while mine are starting to get wet with tears. "And you taste so good… we'll have to do this more often."

And he continues to lick and stroke, sliding a finger inside me, then two, until I'm panting, on the precipice, and I know he's going to make me come. There's no avoiding it now.

His fingers find that little patch of nerves at the same time that he sucks violently on my clit with a graze of teeth and I keen, coming so hard that I can't stop my hips from nearly bucking him off. At the same time, tears escape, and the keen turns from overwhelming pleasure to a deep, wrenching pain.

This time, Tomura doesn't comment. He just licks up the last of my juices before moving up to press his cock inside me.

He glides in smoothly and hisses. "This is amazing," he pants, and I know it's going to click soon that I've been lying about enjoying anything he does to me for so long, but I'm in too much pain to care. This is rape, and as he thrusts inside me in a dangerously pleasant rhythm, I realize that I'm genuinely going to enjoy it, enjoy being taken against my will. It's the one thing that I had always relied upon to stay strong: he had never affected me before. But now…

I can't help it. That physiological need to cry breaks through.

Loud keening, the kind of wrenching sobbing that speaks of a soul-deep pain, escapes me. Tears flow quickly, wetting my lashes and cheeks and temples. After a near-convulsing sob, Tomura snarls, "Are you crying?"

"N-no," I sob. "It j-just… feels so good." It's the most blatantly obvious lie I've ever told him.

Thankfully, though, he takes me at my word, picking up his pace. My emotions are so messed up right now that physical sensation has all but ceased to exist.

Finally, at long last, he comes. He's built up his stamina quite a bit since the first time. As soon as he's pulling out, there's a knock on the locked door. "Dinner," calls Kurogiri, knowing better than to interrupt Tomura's time with his 'girlfriend.'

Pulling on some sweats, Tomura forces a kiss one last time before going to fetch my meal.

I eat mechanically. My stomach swirls with nausea. Everything hurts, and I feel like I'm never going to be okay again. I'm never coming back from this.

I let myself cry that night until I'm empty. I'm a void. Everything that makes me myself is gone. Shigaraki Tomura has stripped me of everything I love, care about, value. I'm just an empty shell.

I can't wait to die, and I'm going to do it the first chance I get.

I know tomorrow is a holiday for most people, and hopefully you'll be with your families, so I hope you can enjoy this chapter today! That said, thank you to everyone who is working tomorrow, whether you volunteered or were brought in, because you deserve gratitude for that! Alongside that, happy holidays to everyone who doesn't celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, or any other religious holiday. I hope your time off (or on, as the case may be) is relaxing, enjoyable, and fun!

(Can you tell I'm incredibly socially awkward? Well, above is exhibit A.)

Anyways, love you guys! Thanks so much for the follows and faves! And don't forget...

reviews are love. :D