I have no idea how I'm cranking these out so fast. Anyways, I'm speeding through the more specifics scenes I had planned out, so maybe? a little bit of a longer wait now. I still have a few chapters well planned, and the story, I think, will take itself from there.

As I said on , I plan for this story to be about 60k words. However, with how freakin' long these chapters are (for me, anyways) it might be a little longer. Still, I don't plan for this to be an epic or anything. (Please, please god, don't make it an epic, I'm already dying from WIPs.)

I hope you all enjoy!

All Might recognizes this pain.

It's what he had felt during his fight with All for One, when his stomach and lung had been destroyed. So many surgeries, so much physical therapy, so much seemingly ineffective healing from the most renowned healers in the world. Nothing could fix him, not anymore, and now that he's passed on One for All, he knows his time as the Symbol of Peace is ticking away.

And for all that, he still feels a certain amount of satisfaction. He's served his purpose; he just has to get Young Midoriya through school and all will be… okay. Just like he's always promised.

None of that, however, makes the pain any less blinding. He can't help it; he's briefly brought to his knees at the shock of it, the feel of something cold seeping into his pores. The sensation of cold in itself isn't what's painful, it's the sudden swelling he can feel, pressing against scar tissue and previously-healed sutures tearing open. It's like a tumor but growing at an impossible rate.

He takes a breath and there's a burst of blood from his lips. The pain has spread even to his respiratory system, it seems. All Might breathes deep through the pain, and notices vaguely that it's a deeper, though more agonizing, breath than he's been able to take in five years.

Focusing elsewhere, he sees the young woman he had tried to save on the ground. Her eyes closed and she's still in the way only the dead are. He doesn't see her chest moving, but there was nothing that was going to save her after that brutal attack. It's even sadder that upon further inspection, the wound wasn't nearly as bad as it thought it had been.

"All Might!" Young Midoriya calls. "All Might—"

"I'm alright!" he calls, gripping his seething side for a moment before standing again. "Get to safety!" He doesn't say anything about bringing the corpse. Children shouldn't have to see such things, especially one as damaged as is this one.

He turns to face Nomu, hoping he can hold out through the pain to fight the menace off. His injury hadn't hurt this bad when the beast was digging his fingers into it, but All Might can only assume that the pain is catching up to him. He had thought it unbearable before, but it doesn't matter.

What matters is fixing this mess.

But upon turning back, he finds a bigger mess than himself. The villain who started all this—Shigaraki Tomura—is staring, wide-eyed, at the young woman's body, trembling, no—quaking—in rage.

"You!" Shigaraki screams, high-pitched and shrill. "You killed her!"

The truth is that she had killed herself. She had thrust herself before the deadly fist, arms open as if to embrace the blow with a smile on her teary face. Whatever sacrifice this young woman had thought she was making, it was worth it to her.

She even smiles in her death. Yes, whatever she had sacrificed herself for, she's satisfied with it. There's something tragic yet strangely noble about the notion. Death in self-sacrifice.

All Might can understand that, though her reasons were her own. To some extent, upon becoming a hero, he had expected to die in battle someday. He still might, but not before he uses up every last drop of One for All in his veins.

"Nomu!" Shigaraki shrieks, unhinged like All Might hasn't seen in anyone in a long time. It's not something to be pitied, though; just disturbing. "Kill him! Kill him, kill him, kill him!"

Nomu takes this order seriously and lunges. All Might manages to dodge out of the way, a half-second movement aided by a devastating throb in his left side that has him ducking instinctively.

He can't fight like this. He's going to have to push back against the pain somehow, but something tells him that maybe he's going to meet the same fate as the young woman, sacrificing himself to protect the students.

As he steadies himself, finally releasing his grip on his side and mind made up to fight until he breathes no more, until he's dead or victorious, he can't help but glance at where it hurts so badly. It feels too full, tight. Something is there that shouldn't be. At the same time, woman's blood on his shirt is dull and pale, like it's been washed mostly away.

No time to think anymore, Nomu is coming back at him. Making sure to keep himself between the dead woman and the villains, All Might gives it everything he's got. Plus Ultra.

And he does. He wins, and before their plan can be revised, the villains are forced to retreat, though Shigaraki against his will. He never stopped trying to reach the body, screaming that she was his and to give her back. All Might can only think that if this Shigaraki had a vendetta against him before, it's only worsened. He hasn't seen that raw, wild sort of panic since… for a long time. He wishes he hadn't had to witness it again.

But his time is up. Smoke shrouds his body as he loses grip on his transformation. The pain is bearable now, just a low throbbing as he speaks to Young Midoriya. He's breathing surprisingly easy considering the extent he'd forced himself to. In his prime, it would only have taken five punches, he tells Midoriya. Now, it had taken him over one hundred. It's better than he thought he'd do, honestly. He'd expected something closer to three hundred, emaciated and weak as he is.

And hungry. He hasn't been this hungry since before he lost his stomach. His appetite is pretty nonexistent without it and he only eats by medical necessity at this point. Right now, though, he feels like he could take on an entire restaurant and empty their stores. The feeling is almost alien.

He mentions none of the last to his protégé. "You did help," All Might tells him. "Your efforts gave me a crucial moment and I didn't have to reveal myself. You did well. I'm proud of—"

He's cut off by a foreign sensation and an even more foreign noise. A gurgling, the hunger manifested into a sound.

His stomach—a stomach that he hasn't had in five years and isn't supposed to have, now or ever again—growls loudly, protesting its empty state. He actually feels the reverberations. It's his stomach, not anyone else's.

Both master and student don't say anything for a long moment. "All Might…" Midoriya breathes. "Was that—was that—I though you said you didn't have a stomach? It… it wasn't me!"

Keeping his calm and making sure he's smiling, though he feels neither, he says, "Let's go see Recovery Girl."

I honestly don't know what I expected the afterlife to be like.

I had hoped for a void, a loss of being that would render everything about myself nonexistent, the pain and the fear and the anger. Barring that, I might have expected something healing, like heaven, a solid comfort against the tragedy of my life.

I never expected hell, but it turns out that the religious were right. God, or whoever, doesn't tolerate suicide. At all.

But my punishment isn't that of Dante's Inferno. I'm not a gnarled, dead tree waiting for Harpies to come down and feast on me. Instead, I just feel the agony of the wound I had died from and a hollow emptiness in my soul, like chunks have been bitten off and stolen. Maybe the Harpies have come, after all.

I have a sense of moving around me, jostling me this was and that. Wind, perhaps? And there are distant voices, but I can't make out any of them. Mostly I'm just drunk on pain.

Then I realize that this is what I asked for, apparently. I'm going to feel this way for eternity. Something insides me burns, the agony increasing to a fever pitch, and I scream.

I wake up, still screaming.

I abruptly cut myself off when I see the sunset through a wide window with gauzy curtains, feel the starchy hardness of a stretcher mattress, smell antiseptic permeating the fresh, clean air. I'm in a hospital, or…

No. I look around, taking deep breaths to calm myself. This is familiar. This is… U.A.'s nurse's office.

Before I can do more than blink at the realization, Shuzenji Chiyo, better known as Recovery Girl, is pushing the separation curtains aside and striding in.

"Ah," she says, pleased, "you're up."

I nod mutely. "Um… why am I here?"

Recovery Girl looks at me with soft, compassionate eyes. "You were severely injured when you were brought in," she tells me. "But you never needed to be healed, did you?"

There's no point in lying. "My quirk is regeneration to the point of invulnerability," I say dully. Maybe even immortality, as long as there's always food. I don't say this. Because I'm not dead. I'm not even sure I ever was.

She watches me expectantly.

"What?" I ask, shrinking back a bit at her shrewd, piercing gaze.

She relaxes, some tension bleeding out of her as she notices my discomfort. "You don't have to hide your second quirk," she tells me. "It's already out in the open."

I can only stare at her, dumbfounded. "I—I don't have a second quirk?" I ask, because I don't, but if I did, it's not like I had ever tried to find out.

Vaguely I recall the feeling of the key twisting in the lock.

Knowing I can trust this woman, I ask, "Do I have a second quirk that I don't know about?"

Recovery Girl doesn't say anything for a few moments, instead choosing to busy herself by tidying up the room. It's already immaculate, so she's just stalling for time so she can think. I can respect that.

Finally, she sighs. "I think it might be better to just show you. It doesn't matter now anyways." She gives me a smile, something weary and happy at the same time. "There's a few people who would like to meet you now that you're awake. Are you feeling up to visitors?"

No, I don't feel up to that at all.

"Before… before all that, can you tell me what happened? At USJ? The last thing I remember is All Might putting me on the ground and telling me it would be okay." I resist asking about Tomura. Did All Might kill him? Is he locked up? Does he think I'm dead? Am I safe?

Recovery Girl nods and gives me a brief rundown of what had happened. It's mostly in-line with canon, but All Might had been stalled by my appearance, which gave the teachers more time to show up. I can't help but smile; at least I'd done something useful.

"And then All Might was…" She cuts herself off, then scoffs. "I'll let you talk to him about that yourself," she says with fondness that's not aimed at me.

I swallow hard. Her monologue had given me time to muster my courage. "And…Tomura? The villain in charge? Was he…?"

Recovery Girl tsks disapprovingly, apparently misreading my hesitancy and nervousness. "That information has not been disclosed to me," she says snippily.

I force back my tears at immediately being pegged as a villain because of Tomura's need to show me off and his insatiable lust. "No, no—it's not like that. He, um, he…" raped and tortured me. I wanted nothing to do with him.

But the words stick my throat. It feels like as though if I say it out loud, I can't pretend it didn't happen. Maybe, if none of these people know what went on in that bedroom, I can deny it to myself and not have to live with the pain.

I might not have been able to kill myself, but surely I can make a better attempt once I'm out of here. It can't be impossible.

Recovery Girl waits patiently.

Before I can curb my tongue, I word-vomit in a rush, "There wouldn't be any evidence, I heal too fast. But he—but he—I never wanted any of this! He just did it, he took it, he—" My throat constricts all of a sudden and I tears form that I have no hope of ignoring. "Don't tell anyone, please?" I beg as understanding dawns in her eyes. Salty drops of water stream down my cheeks. Sometimes, it feels like I'll never stop crying. It's all I seem to be good for.

There's a flash of remorse on Recovery Girl's face, maybe because she had assumed I was complicit before asking me anything. It's gone quickly enough that I don't feel pitied.

"I just—I just want to know if I'm safe," I eventually tell her quietly, wiping futilely at my damp cheeks. "If he's dead. If—if it's over."

She approaches me then and lays a very gentle hand on my shoulder. I can't help it; the unexpected touch has me flinching away. I haven't been touched kindly in… My eyes find a calendar.

I was with Tomura for almost five months. The shock that I've lost nearly half a year of my life to him makes me want to hurl, but Recovery Girl's words interrupt my thought process.

"He got away," she tells me. "But you're safe here at U.A. No one will be able to hurt you here."

I remember the traitor in the school, though I don't recall much more about it other than that there is one. The fact that I don't even know who it is winds me momentarily. I'm not safe here, not if Tomura is still alive.

Then again, he had seen me die. Maybe, if he keeps on thinking that, I can be safe.

"Alright. Um… I'd be willing to see visitors now. But," I grasp her hand as she pulls away, "don't tell anyone. Please."

"It will only help your cause," Recovery Girl says. "There are some who are suspicious of you right now, despite your good deed. It is suspected that it was accidental and not of your own will."

I stare at her with wide eyes. "Are you telling me they want to put me in jail?" I breathe, barely able to comprehend it.

"Some may want to, but a certain someone won't allow it," Recovery Girl says, smiling a small, comforting smile. "Now, let me go fetch your first visitor."

I'm reeling from the conversation—not much of it makes sense to me. Apparently I have a second quirk that made me do an accidental good deed, some people at U.A. want me locked up, and either way I'm still not safe if Tomura thinks I'm alive in any capacity. With the traitor, whoever that is, in the school, it's only a matter of time before I'm spotted.

Despair makes it hard to breathe. Die. I have to die. As soon as possible.

"HELLO! I AM HERE!" bellows a very familiar voice that has my heart jumping into action.

The man himself has arrived with such speed that the curtains blow open all on their own. He stands, tall and proud, his strange forelocks brushing the ceiling. It feels like he fills half the room with just his body, and the whole thing with his presence. Any fear that I had felt before melts away now that he's here.

"Hi, All Might," I say softly. I feel like crying all over again, but this time from sheer relief, the feeling of safety he seems to exude. "Thank you for saving me." Then I'm all out of words.

All Might goes serious at the drop of a hat, and that blue gaze focused entirely on me makes me shiver with something foreign. It's a good kind foreign, though. "No, young woman, it is I who should be thanking you."

I nod tentatively. "Recovery Girl said that I did some kind of good deed," I say. "But I have no idea what it was. If I did do something good, it was a happy accident."

All Might grins at me. "Accidental or not, it seems you have greatly lengthened my life span. Now, what I'm about to tell you is confidential. Can I trust you?"

"Yes," I tell him, but I hesitate. Is he so sure that I'm not Tomura's girlfriend or consort? Is he so sure that I won't turn on him?

I won't, ever, but he has no reason to believe that.

If he feels any hesitancy himself, he doesn't show it. "Five years ago, there was a battle that was not televised…"

And so he goes on to tell me about the fight, although he excludes any mention of All for One, and how he lost his stomach and left lung excepting that he had. The surgeries that had debilitated him, the aftereffects; just the hell that he had been through, all the while trying to stay active as the Symbol of Peace.

I nod along, trying to look surprised when I should, but I can't muster much up because I'm really not understanding where he's going with this.

"In short," he concludes, and that wasn't at all short, though necessary to listen to, "I have only been able to keep this form for three hours a day until the USJ incident. Now, please don't be surprised, but…"

There's poof of energy being released, resulting in a smoky cloud, and Yagi Toshinori appears before me.

But he's different.

There's a certain fullness to his face, a show of lean muscle on his arms. He's thin, but not stick-and-bones thin. I wonder if this is the first thing the manga got wrong.

"I have no evidence for you that can prove what you changed," he says. "But you have given me both my stomach and my lung back." And he lifts his shirt to reveal a completely normal abdomen—one even with a little muscle definition.

My heart leaps in my chest.

"I did that…?" I'm stunned, staring at the lack of mangled scar tissue I had expected to see. There's no scarring at all, in fact. It's a flawless, uninjured, completely whole abdomen. "But… how?"

"We—that is, the teachers here at U.A.—believe your blood has immense healing properties," he tells me. "At one point, while I was carrying you, your blood became cold instead of warm and in less than thirty minutes, I had been fully healed from an injury that has greatly inhibited my life for half the last decade. Strangely enough, the blood on my shirt was gone. So, Zen-san, I cannot thank you enough."

"Akito," I blankly correct him. The informality doesn't seem right, for some reason.

He smiles, megawatt and breathtaking. "Akito, then. You may call me Toshinori."

I stare down at the blankets, taking a moment to center my thoughts and focus on the important ones, the ones that aren't crowding my head about how much I want to declare (platonic) love for All Might right now. "Um… Recovery Girl said that some people want me locked up." I close my eyes and take a breath. "That's not going to happen, is it?"

"Of course not!" Toshinori booms, aghast, like I'm telling him the ocean is actually made out of chocolate milk. "You have done me, and Japan, a great service."

"It was an accident," I remind him. "I mean, I would have done it anyway had I known, but…" And then I start to dig my grave deeper. "And—and I was with Tomura, and I promise it wasn't what I wanted, I didn't want to be there, but I'd understand if that was a black mark against me. I'm not—I'm trustworthy, I promise, but you guys don't know that, and—"

"Akito-san," Toshinori interrupts me gently. I immediately shut up.

"You abandoned him to try to help me," he says, and I didn't realize he had really taken note of the way I'd tried to get Nomu off him. Apparently, he did. "That is not what someone loyal to a cause does. We all make mistakes. Even if he was very kind to you at first, some people are adept at trickery and manipulation. What matters is that you did the right thing when the time came, no matter how you felt before. Does that make sense?"

A tear slips down my cheek. "It wasn't like that at all. It was never…" And then I cut myself off, because worse than being sent to jail is admitting just how weak I was to let myself be abused like I had. The image of Toshinori—All Might—cringing back in repulsion if I told him that such a sick being had been inside me, had once even brought me pleasure… well, it would break whatever there was left of me.

Nobody can know. I already wish I hadn't said anything to Recovery Girl.

"It's alright," Toshinori tells me firmly. "The past doesn't matter anymore. You're not going to jail or incarcerated in any way."

"If I'm not going to be in prison, then what are you going to do with me?"

Toshinori nods as though he's been expecting this question. "Well, Principal Nezu is going to want to talk to you about your options, but as I understand it, if everything checks out, you should be free to go after that." He pauses, a dark look coming over his face. "That is, if you feel safe enough to leave. Shigaraki was desperate to get your, ah, body back," he says. "If you want to stay here, under protection, I'm sure the Principal will not object."

A cold feeling of trepidation trickles down my spine. Shigaraki hadn't believed I was dead after all, then. Or if he had, he still wanted my corpse for… something. It doesn't matter, because in the end, I'm still a target.

But staying here only prolongs the inevitable. I'll never escape Tomura as long as I live, whether he's near or far. The damage is too much. I swallow hard. "How much do I weigh?" I ask.

Toshinori's brow wrinkles at that. "That is a question best left to Recovery Girl," Toshinori says, sounding a little confused at the non-sequitur.

It's important, though. If I've lost significant weight, I can probably just find the nearest skyscraper and take a dive. No more Akito, no more Tomura haunting me. I'll be free.

I remember the glimpse of what I can only assume was afterlife that I had seen. That's going to suck, but I'll be okay. Even that hadn't been as bad as even one day in Tomura's 'care.'

"Alright," I say. I have to get out of here as soon as possible. "I can talk to Principal Nezu whenever it's convenient." But, I think to myself, the sooner, the better.

"I'll go let him know," Toshinori says. "And again, thank you, Akito-san."

I can't help the little smile that pinches my cheeks. It feels foreign, like I've never smiled before. "No, thank you."

He nods back and leaves the room with much less fanfare than he had arrived. I lay back on the plastic pillow and close my eyes, trying to prepare as best I can for what I assume is going to be an interrogation.

I think of Nezu's incredible, quirk-enhanced intellect. Does it extend to emotional intelligence? Is he going to be able to read me like a book? Is he going to force me to stay under surveillance if he knows I'm suicidal? I can't let him know.

But I don't know how to do that. I just have to hope and pray to a being that I'm pretty sure doesn't exist, or at least doesn't care about me, that no one notices.

It's about a fifteen minute wait before a large bear-mouse-rat knocks lightly on the wall before peeking his head in. "Ah, Zen-san," he says in a mellow, soothing voice. If my hackles were raised before at the thought of meeting him, they're down now.

When Recovery Girl follows him in, my heart drops. Has she told him? I asked her not to say anything. My hackles rise back up immediately.

But if Nezu knows anything, he doesn't say it. He thanks me for my good deed and offers me a place at U.A. to rest and get my life back in order. Apparently, he had looked me up and found a few minor articles about a woman of my appearance vanishing seemingly into thin air. I had been declared dead, and though it's natural that everyone would assume that, it still steals the air from my lungs. My apartment lease was ended upon declaration of death, has been given to somebody else, my furniture sold off, my bank account put on indefinite hold without a will. I'm told that my former boss, Takamura, had swooped in when no family stepped up and had taken care of everything that had been necessary after I'd disappeared—died.

If only that had been the case.

"So, essentially, I have nowhere to go," I summarize and the offer to let me stay in an apartment on campus until I get my things in order makes sense now.

Nezu nods solemnly. "It's unfortunate, but we have the means to feed and shelter you until you can get back up on your feet. In the meantime, if you wish to fill your time, I'm sure there are some menial positions you can fill. Of course, it's entirely up to you. U.A. is happy to have you after what you've done for All Might."

I nod, though the charity makes me feel guilty because I'll be snubbing it when I kill myself. Still, it's not like they have any real use for me. "Thank you," I hear myself saying distantly. "I'd appreciate it."

That's how I came to live in apartment between Yamada Hizashi and Kayama Nemuri. I last for about three days before I find a particularly tall skyscraper and make the decision to end it all.

Sweet, sweet freedom awaits. Tomura will never hurt me again.

To everyone who has reviewed, faved, and followed, thank you! It's so encouraging to see people enjoying this! I really hope you all continue to like the story! You guys are amazing and I LOVE YOU.

Next chapter features another of my favorite characters - you can probably guess who. I'm still trying to figure out the love triangle, or whatever you call it. Polyamory. (Please someone let me know what it's called.)

Have a wonderful New Years, everyone!