Heroes in the Dark chapter 93.5: A League of Villains Christmas
Everyone's working so hard!
I'm not doing nearly enough. How frustrating…
Looking down at all the pages of papers and opened books set before him, it was becoming increasingly evident that he had a difficult task laid out before him. And yet, whenever he steeled himself to really buckle down and work things through, his thoughts kept getting in the way. All the nervousness of the position he'd been placed in, the responsibility he now held, and the consequences that are almost guaranteed to emerge because of it all.
Twice looked down at the mess he'd made of the desk and wondered if this was even remotely worth all the effort. If he wasn't furthering his understanding of what he should be doing, then it'd be easier to stop, right? No no no, that'd be giving up, and he couldn't do that. He wasn't gonna relinquish his newfound standing in the Paranormal Liberation Front just because he wasn't "leadership material" or any countless number of negative things that circled his mind back and forth every passing hour.
He took a breath instead.
Caaalm down. I'm sure everyone is stressed. That's just part of making progress. And I am making progress. It's just hard to see.
I'm running out of time. Sanctum's gonna call you out if you don't know this shit. What kinda commander doesn't know the complex semantics of quirk history in a group like this?!
Twice brought his arms down onto the desk, scrambling the papers and shoving aside the books as if reorganizing and pushing it all away would make a lick of difference. They say that gaining a new perspective – or looking at things from a different angle? – can help to better understand your position. But does it really? Because he was pretty damn sure if he tried to read the words upside-down they'd make less sense, or if he started in the middle of the book he'd be lost in the plot. So what was he supposed to be getting here?
Twice leaned back from it all, taking comfort in his swivel chair. He idly drifted from left to right, watching the ceiling turn 90 degrees each time. Considering he was in the comfort of his own room, he felt like he probably shouldn't be this stressed. It was one of the few areas where he could comfortably reside without strictly needing to keep his mask on.
And yet.
And yet!
My head hurts. It hurts so much. I don't know… I don't think I'm splitting, but it feels kinda like that?
You're just making excuses. Just do better, or else you're gonna disappoint everyone!
Twice dug his palms into his eye sockets, pushing back the tension accumulating behind them as if that would do anything other than provide temporary relief. But it was enough, and when the spots cleared from his vision he felt that little bit better. Like maybe he wasn't a disappointment, that perhaps the fact that he was trying in the first place would be enough.
What to do, what to do… oh! Twice sat up straight in his chair, planting his foot firmly on the ground so that he didn't roll away. "I know! I'll see what everyone else is doing. I've been sitting too damn long in this chair – to hell with this paperwork bullshit!"
Maybe he could get some of Spinner's notes from the Brown Regiment's meetings, or check and see if Toga needed anything. If he could have another study session with Tokoyami, that'd also be nice. Surely someone had to be around here, yeah?
But if that was his expectation, then he was sorely mistaken. Every door he knocked on offered no response. Spinner was absent from the game room, Tokoyami gone from his favorite chair in the sitting room, and Toga was regretfully not getting some much deserved rest. It'd only been a few weeks since that overwhelming fight, how could they all be so busy?!
Seeing that this whole section of the mansion was abandoned except for him, he checked his phone to see if maybe he'd missed a message or update. Maybe there was a lieutenant meeting he didn't know about? But it wasn't that either, as his lack of notifications would indicate. Everyone just had their own things going on, and that was fine on its own.
Only it wasn't. Because he noticed something right then, scrolling through his phone. And that was today's date: the 26th of December.
Christmas was yesterday.
And nobody told him?!
Okay, okay. That was fine. Time blindness was definitely a thing in this place. It wasn't like there were calendars showing the date or festive lights strung up everywhere. But still, where was the spirit?! The more he thought about it, the more he realized: he's never celebrated anything with the League, even though they were – truthfully, admittedly – the closest thing he's ever had to a family since… ever. And that wasn't exactly a trait shared only by him, either.
Most of the people he'd grown to know in this little group didn't talk much about their past. Hell, he wasn't about to go off about his history either, but it still left him wondering. Twice had his hunches, of course: little hints and slipped comments that were hard to ignore. And sure, ending up with this crowd probably meant that life hadn't been all that forgiving for any one of them, but wasn't that all the more reason why they should take little moments for themselves? So they can celebrate their accomplishments and look forward for once?
That's rich, though, isn't it? Coming from someone so hung up on every little thing—
"I'll put together a party! I'll put up a few lights, order food, and we can have fun!"
"Nobody gets any presents. We've all been bad this year. There's no time to wrap them."
Twice struggled against the detrimental thoughts pounding against his skull. Despite his best efforts, he couldn't push them back. But he could reason against them, and that was enough to keep him on track. After all, if it was something he could do for his friends, then that made it easier for him to truly go through with it. With everyone working so hard, they should be able to relax, even if it was just for a night.
Have some fun!
Laugh a little!
Forget for a fleeting moment that there aren't going to be any happy endings here.
Eat some… cake?
It sounded ridiculous. Maybe it'd be childish to put his responsibilities on hold for something so trivial. But if they didn't find time to do stuff like this now, then when would they ever?
So Twice did step up to the task, daunting though it was. It didn't even have to be a big thing, just meaningful. Because that counted for something, even if he couldn't step through the gates with grand, sweeping gestures. He's never had access to so many resources before—
That's a lie. I used to have all the money I could ask for.
Not that that lifestyle ever did me much good…
—so he put in the orders, ran it through the head of the dining hall and the budget coordinator, and even tracked down the location of decorations that they already had on site. Interestingly, the mansion hadn't hung up any of the festive ornamentations in years, but they had in the past for promotional gigs. As he learned from the storage manager, these public celebrations at the mansion had thinned out once the Meta Liberation Army started gaining new ground. It made sense, considering how much attention it was drawing to their headquarters. It'd been more essential to keep the public eye on the Detnerat corporation, rather than the newly re-emerging MLA headquarters.
Once that all was taken care of – and he'd taken a few trips around the place locating everything he might need – all that was left was putting it all together.
Twice chose the living room with the nice view out the windows to set it all up. Since it was at the end of the League's dedicated space, it offered less interruption and more of a surprise! Of course… it'd be hard to assemble it all on his own before the end of the night.
So he phoned a friend. Or rather, he sought the help of the only other responsible adult he could think of in this situation.
"Hey, Compress?" Twice answered eagerly the moment he picked up. "So if you're not too busy… I need your help immediately!"
Silence on the other end made him wonder if he'd been had by the nefarious voice mail. Until Mr. Compress finally did answer. "…Did something, erm, happen, Twice? I'm just finishing up a meeting, but I can be there in a bit. Where are you?"
Twice briefly muted his phone long enough to let out a curse. He hadn't meant to interrupt something so important, yet here he was messing things up again. "I, well, okay maybe it's not that important," he backtracked nervously. "It's just that I wanna do something nice… you know, for the kiddos? I'm gonna give them a Christmas party!"
Mr. Compress turned out to be very agreeable upon this revelation. "Ah, of course! Yes, I see the importance of the situation now. You're back in the League headquarters, correct? I'll make sure to be there momentarily." And with that, he was already gone, assuming his normal duties.
It was nice that he was so understanding.
Twice couldn't believe he'd actually agreed.
Until Compress got here, Twice had the whole place to himself to begin setting up. Everyone else was out for the day, he already knew. So that'd give him plenty of time to work with.
If it was anyone else left to decorate a room, the task would've proven more daunting. But as he started unboxing all the gleaming ornaments and tangled lights, he remembered that he didn't have to do this alone while waiting for Mr. Compress.
Taking a steady breath, Twice used his quirk.
He hadn't used it since the fight against the MLA, when he was caught in the midst of a fight or die situation, so it was still nerve-racking. But these were the sorts of steps he'd willfully take to improve the lives of those around him. That being said, he kept his copies at two this time around, with the explicit instructions to keep it that way. Sure, an army of hims was perfect for combatting a legion of quirk fanatics and seeding chaos through an entire city, but he required a bit more precision for such a delicate operation.
"Okay! I'm Twice #1, and you two are the copies! Is that understood?"
"Yup!"
"Got it, Twice!"
Already, this was such a relief. It'd been so long since he's done something like this in a normal setting. He used to have his clones do all the work and fight over scraps. It was never a good home situation, but the old him had been fine with it up until it actually started to impact him. Having images of himself rebel had been something of a turning point, and he never wanted to replicate those mistakes ever again.
With that in mind, he decided to split the work evenly between the three of them.
"You untangle the stuff in those boxes! And you – help me hang up these things!"
By the time Mr. Compress entered the room, considerable progress had already been made in their decorating. He stepped quietly around the working Twices, taking in their efforts. "My, this is already shaping up to be quite the spectacle!" Mr. Compress commended, startling them from their collectively focused tasks.
Twice – the real one, of course – jumped down from the step ladder he'd been using to hang décor and excitedly ran up to the magician. "Oh good, you're here! I was getting worried. I don't think I'll need that much help. So please, can you lend me a hand…?"
Mr. Compress rested a contemplative hand to his mask and thought about what needed to be done. "Well, you seem to have the decorations taken care of. Have you already made food arrangements?"
"It'll be ready in two hours!" Twice declared, quite pleased with how much he was able to do on his own.
"And everyone knows to meet here at a designated time, yes?"
"I—" Twice stopped, his excitement fizzling out. "Uh, no, actually. I didn't think that far ahead. I just thought everyone would come back here when they got tired, and then we'd party and everything would be great."
Mr. Compress shook his head knowingly, already reaching for his phone. "If you want events like these to work, you need to ensure that your audience knows the time and place! Don't you fret, though; I'll send out the invites so that everyone can make it back here."
That was a relief. Twice wasn't exactly the best at communicating plans to those around him – something about sending mixed messages? It was for the best this way. He hoped it actually worked.
With hours ticking down before everyone could come together, they set up everything they could think of. Mr. Compress set up the table, buffet style, in preparation for the food, and the Twice clones worked together to set up a dusty fake tree in front of one of the windows. The real Twice, meanwhile, preoccupied himself with finding a good playlist of Christmas songs to play in the background.
When Twice heard the door open on the other side of the hall, his heart just about leapt from his chest. He scrambled from his seat, tripping on a strand of brightly colored lights that the poor Twice clone could not for the life of him untangle, and raced to meet the arrivals. He was thrilled to see that the kids had shown up all together, with Spinner, Toga, and Tokoyami entering at the same time.
"You made it!" Twice gasped, meeting them at the door with tinsel tangled in his fingers and glitter scattered across his costume.
Spinner looked him up and down quizzically. "Oh, Twice! So this is where you were all day. Uhh, what's up with the…?"
Toga rocked back and forth on her heels, eyes glinting in anticipation. "You have something special for us, don't you, Jin? Compress said we needed to meet up later on tonight, so I went and found those two during one of their training sessions."
Tokoyami looked warily between the two of them. "I'd assumed something was wrong when Spinner told me we'd be getting together. But upon closer inspection, this doesn't seem like a serious matter." Then he paused, as though listening to someone else, and realization dawned upon him. "Is this, perhaps, a celebration?"
"Over this way, you'll need to see it for yourself!" They followed along curiously, until Twice led them into the fully decorated room of twinkling ornaments and glittering lights.
Mr. Compress turned around from where he'd just finished some last-minute set-up, spreading his arms wide in a welcoming gesture. "It's a very Merry Un-Christmas!" he declared.
The three of them looked amongst each other, equal parts impressed and confused. Twice scratched his head, figuring he might as well explain. "Well, you see, yesterday was Christmas but I don't think anyone really noticed, yeah? And it's not like any of us have had much reason to celebrate. But dammit, we need to have some fun! It's bullshit that you younger ones haven't had the time for some fun! So get cozy, eat lots of food, and let's get together for some games in front of the fireplace!"
Toga gave him the softest smile, and the words she said next just about broke his heart. "I used to celebrate Christmas every year with my family. But I guess, it's been a while since then, huh?"
Spinner nodded in agreement, walking around the room while mystified by the attention to detail. "When I was living on my own, my mom would mail me a letter every year around this time wishing me well. But this was my first year without a permanent address, since I've been moving around so much. I guess I kinda miss that, you know?"
Tokoyami stayed silent, more thoughtful than anything. And though he was also smiling, Twice couldn't help but notice the sadness in his eyes. Did I do something wrong?
Whatever they were all thinking, Mr. Compress was happy to interrupt. "Now come along! Reminisce as you may, this is the time for new memories! May they all be good ones."
They took to the idea quickly, kicking off their boots and easing themselves into the comfort of the festive room. It was hard to be glum or think about work when they were surrounded by so many twinkling lights and nostalgic melodies. Together, they made a mess of the food table in their mad rush to fill their plates and seated themselves throughout the room. More than anything, they were laughing, talking about Christmas memories and snow days and all the little things that made the bleak winter months so fun. And Twice was right there along with them, indulging in Christmas cake while putting out ideas of what games they could play.
At some point early on, Tokoyami brought out his quirk – much to Toga's delight. Though Tokoyami looked more inclined to stick to himself, Dark Shadow flitted through the room like an excitable kid.
When the sound of the front door opening sounded, everyone stopped what they were doing to turn their curious heads. In reality, it could only have been one other person.
"He left my text on read, so I wasn't sure he'd actually show up," Mr. Compress mumbled, idly sipping from his cup of hot tea.
Twice took the initiative, springing from his seat to welcome the last invitee. "Dabi! There you are – I'm glad you could make it! Why'd you keep us waiting so long, you bastard!"
Dabi walked right past in the direction of his room, dragging his feet and reeking of smoke. It gave Twice pause, making him wonder if, despite their festivities, it might be best to leave him alone. No, no, he has to join us! Because I know how much he cares about the team and… and I know he'd appreciate gestures like this, just like everyone else is!
He hates this shit. He doesn't deal with family and friends. This is the worst you could've given him.
Twice put his foot down – both physically and in his head – making Dabi jump in surprise. No! This is a day for everyone! Whatever happened in his past doesn't matter. Cause I'll make sure he – no, everyone here has fun!
"Dabi!" Twice said his name, demanding his attention. "We're all having a Christmas party, so come join us!"
Dabi leaned wearily against the hallway wall, his face thoroughly unamused. "That's nice and all, but I think I'm gonna pass. For once, I'd rather turn in early for the night. So if you don't mind, I'll just–"
"I do mind, actually!" Twice corrected. "You've been working all day, haven't you Mr. I-Don't-Care. Well, you can't fool me! Now you're gonna relax and eat some damn chicken, got it?" Twice slumped, his enthusiasm leaving him like a breath. "Ahh, I'm overstepping my boundaries, aren't I? Dammit, all I do is chase people away… but I still need you to at least eat something if you really need to sleep so bad."
Dabi seemed taken aback. Which was, to say, understandable considering Twice was never so up-front about these sorts of things. But his demands must've worked, because Dabi relented pretty quickly, as if he hadn't needed much convincing in the first place.
"Fine, whatever, I'll join your little reindeer games," he groaned, shuffling towards the room where everyone was waiting for them. He served himself some food while the rest of the League cheered him on for actually showing up.
By now everyone was comfortably settled into the spirit of the party in their own ways. Even though it was just the six of them, he was glad he'd been able to pull something together on such short notice. Was this part of what taking a leadership role meant? He hoped so, because this was something he'd actually enjoyed doing.
"Yay, Dabi's going to play with us!" Toga sang, her eyes twinkling with mischief.
"That's a surprise," Spinner murmured. "Outside of meetings, I didn't think it'd be so easy to get everyone together for stuff like this."
"Well, not everyone," Tokoyami corrected while pouring a cup of apple cider for Dark Shadow. "Though I wouldn't be surprised if Shigaraki wasn't overly fond of such outlandish festivities."
Twice hesitated. The room went quiet but for the gentle singing of Christmas carols from the speaker. Then he reached a resolution; it's not like they were hiding things from Tokoyami on purpose or anything, it's just that things always seemed to happen suddenly. "Well, you see, this is everyone. At least for the time being," Twice began.
Tokoyami set the pitcher down while his quirk glugged away at the freshly poured cup – where it went, he didn't know. "…I beg your pardon?"
"Shigaraki left already, a few days ago, actually," Twice continued. "He's already started on his own training. That's why the regiments were formed and we were placed in charge, in anticipation for his absence, yeah?"
Dabi maneuvered his way through the food table, piling together everything that remained onto one plate. "Leader won't be back for a few months or something like that. And when he returns, he'll basically be a whole other person… I think. The whole training thing sounded pretty vague and sketchy, but isn't that always the case?"
"He's in the mountains with the doctor guy, right?" Spinner asked between bites of strawberry cake. "I didn't know we'd be celebrating anything, but now I kinda wish he could've been here with us."
Twice pointed his finger up at the ceiling, drawing their attention. "All the more reason for us to have fun here, tonight! For all we know, it might be harder to enjoy things like this, so let's celebrate the night away!"
Prompted by his proposal, they all made the most of the evening, sweeping Shigaraki's absence behind them. With everyone present, they had enough people to play various board and party games. Sometimes a certain song would pop up, and somebody would begin singing along only to be joined by another. As the night moved on, decorations began to fall from their poorly pinned tacks and the food went cold. The fire in the fireplace burned down to embers, with even Dabi too tired to tend the flames, and nobody was able to conceal their yawns.
Mr. Compress held up his teacup, clanging the side of it with his spoon. This prompted everyone else to follow, offering up their beverages of assorted teas, hot chocolate, and cider respectively. "I'll be the first to admit, I hadn't any plans for doing anything special with you all. But! I'm glad I got the chance to do something like this before we close out the end of a truly tumultuous year. A lot has happened since we were brought together through one way or another… but I truly wish everyone here a bright future and the happiness they deserve!"
A wave of mumbled agreement rippled through the room, along with the clinging of mugs and glasses.
Twice raised his glass, looking out over the small group of people, each one of them incredibly different and irreplaceable. And for the first time in so very long, he felt all his worries and anxieties melt away. Here, in this place, there was no pressure bearing down on them. No threat hovering over their shoulder or negative thoughts berating him every step of the way. He was comforted by the realization that today he'd set out to make something happen and had been rewarded by the smiling faces of the people he appreciated the most in this desolate world. If there could be more moments like this, he'd be perfectly content desperately holding onto every second of it.