Still in shock, Rumi stared at Izuku, at the jarring stump of his right arm and the prosthetic he held with his other hand.

Izuku's eyes filled with veiled emotion as he saw Rumi's shock. He couldn't blame her for being surprised; sometimes, he still looked down at his own arm expecting to see flesh and blood where there was only plastic and metal.

Eventually, though, the silence and the look on Rumi's face was too painful. Izuku's voice bubbled with an undercurrent of heat and fear as he repeated, "I know exactly what you're going through, Rumi. I went through it myself."

With that, he tossed the fake arm to Rumi, who caught it instinctively. Her jaw hung open as she held it in her hand, running her fingers over the surprisingly bumpy surface. She examined it with her limited knowledge of prosthetics, noticing the perfectly articulated fingers, the weight, nearly more than her own arm, the feel of complex devices inside, and the apparent ability to mimic the color and texture of Izuku's flesh to perfectly disguise it.

With dawning horror, Rumi realized just how wrong she'd been, how foolish and stupid and idiotic. It made her sick to her stomach, all while Izuku looked at her with a sad, resigned expression.

All Rumi could say was, "I...is that…what happened? How?"

Bluntly but quietly, as though he could hear Rumi's thoughts and didn't blame her in the slightest, Izuku explained curtly, "A villain attack my sophomore year of college."

His voice was hard and pained, and his eyes were distant. Clearly, Izuku was thinking back those six years, running over his past in his mind the same way that Rumi had been for the past month.

Rumi flinched, and Hitomi appeared in her mind again; she wondered what Izuku thought when he saw the girl.

That wasn't enough for her, though; Rumi asked, "What kind of villain attack? I can't think of any big fight that happened near a college campus six years ago, let alone one that could have led to, well…"

Izuku raised his stump with a wry grin, his mouth twitching as if he wanted to do anything but smile. "Lead to this?" he finished dryly, something in his voice sounding like a snake rearing back to strike.

Rumi nodded quietly, not trusting her voice to stay under her control.

Izuku sighed, and it sounded deep and weary, as though a weight was shifting on his chest. Eventually, he dropped into a chair facing Rumi, his body sagging as if he was exhausted.

Izuku stared at Rumi, and something in his eyes was rawer, more real than she'd ever seen. In that moment, Rumi understood that she was seeing a side of Izuku few, if any, ever did. He had dropped all of the sarcasm and snark and dismissiveness, and he seemed more vulnerable now than Rumi had imagined he ever could be.

His voice quiet but unflinching, Izuku began, "I was taking a walk after classes one day when it happened. I was only going out to clear my head; I was pissed about...well. A professor in my Quirk Science class called quirkless people an "evolutionary mistake" or something like that...and he was staring right at me when he said it. Needless to say, it was either get off campus for a few hours or get tossed off for punching an esteemed faculty member in the balls."

Rumi suppressed a snort; she could just imagine a college-aged, grumpy Izuku starting a fight with a professor out of spite.

Izuku continued, "I was walking down some random street when I heard a cry for help from an alley. I looked down it, and a woman was being held up against a wall by a man who had turned his lower arms into giant sword blades. He was demanding that she hand over all her valuables, though I didn't know that at the time."

Izuku's smile was back, stretched thin over a face glistening with pain. He laughed, and it was hollow; it sounded like cracking glass.

"You'd think that the first thing I would do is call the heroes or the police," Izuku said in a voice that was layered with bitterness and grief and guilt for feeling either, "but no, that would be too smart. Instead, my body moved before I knew what was happening. Can you imagine it? Me, a scrawny, quirkless college student with exactly zero knowledge of fighting, rushing in to rescue the damsel in distress."

"It sounds like you were pretty brave," Rumi replied quietly, her voice soft as her mind spun. Here was proof of what she already knew, in the form of the words that she and Izuku and everyone else who had admired or wanted to be heroes knew.

"My body moved before I knew what was happening."

In that moment, Rumi couldn't help but grieve for what the world had lost when fate gave Izuku Midoriya a hero's heart and then slammed the door in his face.

Izuku's smile only grew sharper, and his eyes betrayed the pain that had crystallized in his heart. He snorted, "I was stupid, that's all. I should have known better than to charge a villain with my bare hands. I guess...I guess that, for a second, I believed all the stories. I thought that the desire to save somebody was all I needed. I thought that it was my chance to prove that I was just as good at saving people as anyone else, quirkless or not. I thought that it was the one opportunity I might ever get to fulfill all those old childhood dreams of helping someone. I was a fool."

Rumi felt something in her heart break at the bitterness in Izuku's voice, the dull agony in his eyes.

In a dull tone, Izuku continued, "The villain just laughed when he saw me running at him. He swung a blade at me, and it…it cut right through my forearm. Sheared it off like it was nothing. And all of a sudden, all those dreams of being the hero disappeared. I was just screaming in pain while the villain taunted me about being weak and pathetic. Eventually, I passed out, and I didn't wake back up until I was in the hospital."

"What about the woman?" Rumi asked, "did she get away?"

Izuku's expression hardened, and in a tone that declared the end of that conversation, he replied, "No."

Rumi hung her head quietly in the silence that followed.

Eventually, Izuku added in an empty voice, "You know, that's why I admire you heroes; you make your injuries count. You can take pride in your scars, glory in your wounds, because they mean something. They're proof of how far you're willing to go to protect others. Every scar is a hit that an innocent person didn't have to take, because of you."

Rumi shifted uncomfortably as she felt her own stumps twinge. She wondered if she could ever take pride in her scars. She wondered if she'd really made them count.

Out loud, though, Rumi mused, "I thought you hated heroes."

Izuku's smile was the first one to show any sign of life since he'd begun to speak. "I hate and envy and admire you in equal parts. I hate you because I can't be like you, and because you remind me of the stupidest things I've done. I envy you because I wanted nothing more than to be like you. And I admire you because every hero I've met has been stronger and braver and better than I could ever hope to be," he admitted.

Rumi protested, "Don't sell yourself short like that."

Izuku opened his mouth as if to argue, only to halt himself. Closing his mouth again, he sighed and said, "If I ever try to argue with someone telling me I'm not useless and a waste of space because I'm quirkless and missing an arm again, you have my permission to punch me."

Rumi smirked. "With pleasure, Doc," she drawled, glorying in the look of sudden regret on Izuku's face as he realized that he'd just allowed one of the top heroes in Japan to punch him whenever she wanted.

For a second, the mood in the room seemed like it was recovering, but it inevitably slipped back into melancholy. The grins on both Rumi's and Izuku's faces slowly died away.

Eventually, Rumi asked, "How did you get back up? How did you escape that hospital bed?"

Izuku was quiet for a long moment, and Rumi wondered if she'd pushed too far in her hunger to finally get some hope. All she could see was Izuku's quiet, distant eyes, as he seemingly looked at her and saw someone else holding the prosthetic arm that fit smoothly over the callused and pale end of his stump.

At last, Izuku replied softly, "It was the hardest thing I've ever done. For weeks, I couldn't find the energy to get out of bed or do anything. Honestly, I didn't really see the point. I'd failed the one thing I'd really given my all for...and besides, the pity and the dismissal had been bad enough when I was just the quirkless guy in the back of the class. Being the one-armed quirkless guy sounded ten times worse."

Rumi felt a pang in her chest at how familiar so much of Izuku's story felt.

"The doctors, my mother...everyone did their best to convince me that life was still worth living," Izuku continued, "but I couldn't bring myself to believe them. It felt like the world had lost all its color...and it wasn't like I'd had an unstoppable zest for life before I lost my arm, either."

Rumi felt herself understanding Izuku more by the second. She realized just what he must have gone through, losing an arm as a quirkless student, how it must have devastated the little hope he had.

"What changed?" she wondered, trying to reconcile the washed-out young man of his story with the fiery, cocky doctor in front of her.

Bluntly, Izuku replied, "I did."

When Rumi raised an eyebrow in confusion, he elaborated in a quiet voice, "After a while…I just couldn't take it anymore. The pity in the doctors' eyes whenever they saw me there…I hated it. I hated it so much, because it felt like they were thinking the same things I was telling myself about how pathetic I really was. Eventually, it was all too much, and I knew I couldn't stay in that damn bed any longer."

"So what did you do?" Rumi prompted, her eyes falling on the stump of his arm, then on the prosthetic her hands were still stroking, as if trying to learn every secret it held.

Izuku replied, "Simple. I got up, walked out of that fucking hospital, and started designing a prosthetic."

Rumi looked back up at him in surprise, her ears flying back up as she asked, "You designed your own prosthetic? How…it functions just like a normal hand!"

Izuku snorted softly, as though Rumi's awe was nothing. "Of course I did," he said, with all the confidence of a man who created his own freedom, rebuilt the scraps of an aimless, hopeless life into a new one filled with purpose, "As a matter of fact, I built it myself, too. Had to, since nobody would take a risk on a design from a student who didn't even have an engineering background. And it doesn't quite work as well as my old one-there's a reason I'm not a surgeon-but it's pretty close."

Rumi felt like she'd had the ground drop away beneath her feet. She began, "You didn't even have any sort of engineering knowledge?"

"Nope," Izuku admitted.

Then, his eyes blazing with sudden ferocity, he added, "That's how I know I'm the best prosthetic designer in Japan, Rumi. I built it into the very fabric of who I am, became the best because there was no other option. I learned on the fly, changed the entire course of my life and education to learn everything I needed to, attacked it with the kind of determination you can only get if you've had no goal for so long, and finally been given one that means a damn."

"And you did all that with one arm?" Rumi asked, feeling something strange coalescing inside her. It might have been amazement, or respect, or something greater; the lightness in her chest was something she didn't recognize.

Distantly, as though he was remembering the events as vividly as he saw Rumi in front of him, Izuku confirmed, "Yeah. I wouldn't have managed it without some help, obviously. I'll always owe my mom for putting up with my shit for so long while I recovered enough to go back to university."

Rumi heard Izuku talk about his mother, and she couldn't help but wonder what kind of woman could have that kind of strength, to help her son rebuild himself when the house of cards came tumbling down. Rumi wondered if she'd ever meet this mysterious woman, some day.

The thought brought up unbidden memories of her own family, but Rumi stamped those out immediately. There was enough emotional scar tissue in this room already without needing to add more of her own shit to the pile.

Ignorant of Rumi's brief crisis, Izuku continued, "Actually, building my own prosthetic worked out in other ways, too. You see, I used some of the university's resources to do it; I even had permission to use those resources most of the time. One of those times, Doctor Danryoku, my boss, happened to pass by when he was visiting a friend from medical school who taught there. When he saw what I was doing and I told him what I was doing, he all but begged me to go to medical school and come work for him. For a quirkless college student who still had no idea what he wanted to do with his life...that meant a lot. Watching a guy like him take such a big risk to help me…it meant more to me than I've ever been able to put into words. It was the first time I felt like I really had a purpose, you know? I had a goal I could aim for, and I was gonna give it everything I had. After that...the rest is history."

Rumi could see it clearly in her mind's eye; a pained, one-handed Izuku, his eyes glittering with furious determination, building himself a new arm from nothing more than his own ideas and the gifts of others. No wonder Danryoku had been in awe-Rumi was, too.

With that, the last of Rumi's anger, anger she now regretted fiercely, drained away. Hollowly, Rumi said, "I'm sorry, Izuku. I...shouldn't have said what I did to you."

"It's okay, Rumi," Izuku assured her, accepting the rare apology with a nod and a brief smile, "You didn't know, and like I said, I know exactly what it's like to be where you are right now."

Rumi didn't push; she was grateful for the glimpse into Izuku, though she didn't even know why.

Something inside her, some tug in her chest, made her whisper, "I...you're an incredible person, you know that, Izuku?"

"Not any more incredible than you, Rumi," Izuku replied quietly, a blush appearing on his cheeks, then disappearing as quickly as it had come.

"Stop, you're making me blush," Rumi said teasingly, barely aware that she was sharing the same red-cheeked look as Izuku, who was now leaning in surprisingly close; but then, so was she, as though her body was magnetically attracted to his side.

"Fair's fair, woman," Izuku told her in a rough, laughing voice that lightened the mood slightly.

"Sure it is," Rumi grumbled, only to become aware that she was still running her hand up and down Izuku's fake arm, fingers laced through the plastic and metal ones of the prosthetic. Smiling weakly, she offered, "Um, I should probably give this back, shouldn't I?"

In a good-humored tone, Izuku agreed, "I would appreciate that."

He reached out for the prosthetic, but something in Rumi made her instead offer it end-first. Seeing what she wanted, Izuku shifted quickly, and put his stump against the end of the fake arm. Gently, Rumi helped guide it into position, where it fastened itself over his stump with a click and a gentle hum as panels lowered back into position and the green light slowly disappeared, inner workings vanishing behind the outer shell. As she watched, Rumi's hand rubbed over Izuku's elbow, feeling where the cool metal and plastic met his warm flesh and blood. She couldn't help but stroke her hand over it, as though convincing herself that it was real.

Rumi watched as Izuku flexed the arm, fake fingers wiggling in perfect sync, the flesh tone quickly replacing smooth grey until even Rumi couldn't see where flesh ended and machine began.

She asked, "How does that work? How can you make it blend in like that?"

With a soft grin as he stood, Izuku replied, "A man has to have his secrets, my dear Rumi. After all, you seem to have a talent for dragging them out of me, and I need to keep at least a few in reserve."

Rumi snorted, only to fall silent as she put the pieces together and came up with hope. She said, "Hang on, if you can make prosthetics this good...can you make me one?"

Izuku smiled fondly at her hopeful tone, at the shining in her eyes; it reminded him of a young man who had risen off a bed much like this one, determined to be the solution to his own problem. He replied, "That's what I've been trying to do, Rumi, but it takes a lot of work. Besides, I'm a doctor, not a hero. This thing isn't designed to take the kind of punishment you need it to. Honestly, it's pretty fragile, all things considered. I've damaged older versions just by hitting the wall too hard."

Rumi's eyes fell to the ground, her tenuous grip on hope slipping as her ears fell again. In a hollow voice, she said, "Oh."

Without missing a beat, Izuku continued forcefully, "But we'll get there. And believe me, I'm gonna make you the most kickass limbs you've ever seen."

At last, Rumi finally began to believe, really believe, that she might have a shot at a brighter future. With someone like Izuku behind her, who had built his own escape from despair not unlike her own, she might just do this.

With a little of her old spirit lingering in her heart, Rumi cracked, "Really? I'll believe it when you put a laser cannon in my new arm."

"Oh, you want a laser cannon?" Izuku asked with a mischievous smile and a playful gleam in his eyes, "That can be arranged."

Rumi shivered a little, even though she had to admit that a laser cannon sounded like fun. Maybe it didn't fit her combat style, but hey, who said that she couldn't change that?

With a jolt, Rumi realized that for the first time, she was actually thinking of her future in heroics in concrete terms, as something she would reach someday. For the first time, she had real, solid hope.

A moment later, though, Rumi was brought back to the real world by Izuku saying, "I...should probably get going now."

Rumi's head swiveled to check the clock; she realized that they should have had another hour to work on walking.

"Why?" she asked, "we're not finished yet!"

Izuku stood up anyway, looking drained. He retorted, "Well, I'm finished. All this "revealing my secrets" shit has officially made me tired of you for today."

Izuku collected his things and started to head for the door, his shoulders slumping as he walked.

He had nearly made it to the exit when Rumi said firmly, "You don't get to walk out on me when things get tough. Not this time."

Izuku's eyes went wide with indignation. He whirled around, growling, "Don't you dare imply-"

Rumi, her spirit buoyed by a sudden insight that left her with a stiffness to her spine that she hadn't had in a month, interrupted, "Don't try to deny it, Izuku. You keep running away. Every time you let something slip or show a little bit of the man behind your mask, you run away right after. What, are you scared that I'll think less of you because of what I've learned?"

Izuku was holding himself rigidly, but a tiny flinch ran through him at her words, and Rumi felt realization dawn over her.

Quietly, she said, "That's exactly what it is, isn't it?"

Izuku's eyes flared with anger, like a strained rope snapping and whipping outwards. "I don't care what you think of me," he snapped.

"Izuku, what possible reason would I have to think less of you after what I just learned?" Rumi hissed in response, the fury in her voice surprising both of them.

Izuku fell silent for a moment, then slowly said, "I...guess I see your point. It's just that-"

"Izuku, shut up," Rumi commanded, "before I exercise my doctor-punching privileges."

Izuku blinked in shock, and actually obeyed for a second, before he realized that it was toothless. Mockingly, he pointed out, "But I'm over here, and you're over there. How are you supposed to punch me?"

Rumi slowly rose to her feet, her one good arm supporting her as she settled her weight. She threatened, "I will come over there, just watch me."

Izuku smirked. "Well then," he replied, spreading his arms wide, "I'm right here. If you can, come over here and prove me wrong."

Rumi took a deep breath and let the determination Izuku's words ignited in her blood flow through her. She was going to do this. Not just because Izuku didn't think she could, but because she was determined to live up to his example. If he could rebuild his life with scarcely any help, she could do it with him behind her.

She exhaled, and swung her false foot forwards. Izuku was about four paces away; she'd never even managed one on her own before.

Her prosthetic hit the ground, and her knee nearly buckled. But Rumi gritted her teeth and stayed up. She started to shift her weight off her good leg, then shifted it forwards. Again, her knee trembled but did not collapse. Her muscles, weakened by a month of atrophy but slowly coaxed back into shape, shook and ached but answered her call.

Rumi shifted her weight, and took another step. She completed another full one, and began to find her rhythm. After that, she picked up speed and found her balance. For the first time in a month, she was walking under her own power. Izuku watched with wide eyes as Rumi crossed the room on tottering, barely-working legs, but crossed it nonetheless.

At last, Rumi took one last step, and pushed her muscles a bit too far. With a yelp, her knee buckled, and she plummeted forwards.

Only for her to land on Izuku's chest, her windmilling arms curling around his shoulders as he caught her with his own hands, which grabbed her waist to steady her.

Not caring in the slightest about how close they were, or about how she could have fit neatly under his chin, or about the incredibly intimate position she'd landed in, Rumi cried, "Izuku, I did it! I walked!"

Izuku, his own fears forgotten, cheered, "Great job, Rumi!"

He hugged her, and she did the same, everything else forgotten for a moment.

Then, Izuku said, "Now, let's see if you can't walk better than a twelve-month-old baby."

Rumi asked, "Does that mean you're not leaving this time?"

"I don't really see how I could, after that," Izuku admitted, grinning sheepishly. Of course Rumi wouldn't see him any differently, she knew exactly what he had gone through. For a doctor, he really was stupid sometimes, wasn't he?

Rumi's grin was sharp and eager as she agreed, "You're right. I do need to do one thing, though."

"What's that?" Izuku asked.

"This," Rumi replied, driving a fist into Izuku's gut hard enough to drive every last breath of air out of his lungs. Izuku's eyes went wide as he gasped desperately, crumpling over as Rumi smirked.

Izuku coughed and choked as pain surged through him, the air slowly returning to his lungs. When he had enough breath to speak again, he decided, "I guess I deserved that."

"You did," Rumi agreed.

Slowly drawing himself back up to his full height as the dull pain in his stomach subsided, Izuku asked, "So, just to be clear, the first time you walked again since you lost your leg...was specifically to punch me in the gut for being an idiot?"

Shamelessly, Rumi nodded and replied, "Yep. Want me to do it again?"

"The walking part, yes," Izuku told her, "the punching me part, not so much."

"Well, what are we waiting for?" Rumi demanded, tapping her good foot impatiently.

Izuku just chuckled, "Only you would learn to walk again out of spite, Rumi."

"Well, what can I say?" Rumi retorted, "someone once told me that spite is the most powerful motivator."

At that, Izuku just threw his head back and laughed, the sound high and clear and a world away from the hollow, cracking bitterness of his voice not long before.

There were two days left until Rumi's press conference, and she'd finally started walking again.

But more than that, she finally had hope.