She Is A Total Monet!

He tells himself it’s a bright side, the bright side, about you being there, and maybe he’d believe it more if you hadn’t made it so difficult to explain. Tenko can’t tell anyone how he found out, which means he’s constantly searching for ways to phrase it, like it’s something he just thought of instead of something you’ve told him. Sometimes that’s easy to do, like with the fact that you used to have a job — all he has to do is wonder out loud if it’s really possible that no one ever saw you before the first set of attacks, and once the discussion of what you might have been doing kicks in, he does a little more wondering about jobs where your lack of a designation would be an asset. Sometimes it’s harder to figure out what of all the things he knows about you he should try to get out in the open. He can’t really see a point to telling people that you can’t come.

Tenko thinks about that sometimes. He tries not to. He tries not to think about you, for a whole lot of reasons, and for once in his life, the rest of the world makes things easy on him. You might be the most dangerous supervillain in the world, well on your way to ripping society apart, but you’re not even close to being the most lethal thing out there.

That title goes to the monsters that have been showing up randomly, nightmarishly bulked up and wielding multiple quirks. Like you before the Kyoto attack where you put yourself on the map, they’ve been showing up for a while, escaping before anyone gets a good look. The building collapse Tenko was working on when he went into heat was caused by one of them, the first time one was ever caught on camera. Like your debut did, the sight of one solved a lot of unsolved cases in one fell swoop. Someone nicknamed the monsters Nomus, and it’s stuck. Wherever they show up, people die. Heroes, mostly, because your swaps have left them stretched way too thin, and when the monsters are out of heroes to chew through, the civilians are next.

Every time the Nomus show up, Tenko finds himself envying you and your warp gate accomplice, who can get you anywhere you need to be at a split second’s notice. He’d like to be able to do that, too. He’s one of the few heroes who can stop a Nomu without getting within range of their quirks. All he needs is a clear path.

A red alert sounds as he’s changing out of his street clothes at the start of his shift, and Tenko spends a split second debating whether to get changed or go as-is. As-is, so he doesn’t miss a chance to stop whatever this is about — you, or a Nomu, or something worse. Tenko wants to stop you himself, if only so he can see you again. If only so he can ask you what business you had accusing him of messing with you when he’s the one who’s twisted up inside. Fuck it. He bolts out of the locker room shirtless and joins the crowd racing down the stairs to the street.

He catches up to Touya and Spinner, both of whom were on the night shift and supposed to be headed home. “What is it?”

“Another Nomu blew up a building two blocks away,” Spinner says tersely. “We think it’s the same one that got the building in Yokohama.”

“And it’s still on-scene? Fuck.”

“Yeah, my shitfuck old man was on scene, too. It blasted him and they’re still fighting.” Touya’s face is set in a grim mask. “I’m supposed to go help him. You and Spinner are on rescue duty, like — fucking hell.”

He stops running, and Monoma, who’s behind him, almost runs him over. “What the fuck?”

“Keep moving,” Touya snarls. “You too, Spinner. See you on-scene.”

Spinner takes off, but when Tenko tries to do the same, Touya grabs his wrist. “Put this on,” he snaps, shrugging out of his coat. “Unless you want everyone to see.”

“So what if I go shirtless? We’re wasting time —”

“I’m not talking about your stupid flat tits,” Touya says. “I’m talking about that.”

He’s pointing at Tenko’s shoulder. Tenko’s heart sinks. “I don’t know where you got that mating bite,” Touya says, shoving his coat at Tenko again, “but it’s the wrong fucking time to show it off.”

“It’s not —”

“I don’t care what it is. Put the damn coat on.” Touya offers it again, and Tenko shrugs it on, turning up the collar. “We’re dealing with that later.”

Right. Tenko has a job to do. He’s a hero, and people need help, and that’s got nothing at all to do with you.

The scene is about as bad as the one in Yokohama, only this time, Tenko’s not hypersensitive to the pheromones flooding the air. He and Spinner make a good team on rescues, when they get to work together, and because the building the Nomu hit is still upright, they’ve got a lot of work to do. Tenko’s the only one who can enter the building safely, knowing he can Decay anything that threatens to collapse on him. Once he frees the people who are trapped, he clears a path and sends them out to Spinner, who can carry them down the side of the building to the first responders.

It’s good work. It’s work only Tenko can do. So why does he want to fucking fight instead?

Sensei spent a long time trying to convince Tomura that he was built to destroy things, and All Might spent even longer trying to convince Tenko that he wasn’t, but looking back, Tenko doesn’t believe either of them. He wasn’t built to destroy everything. Sometimes destruction feels better than anything else. When Midoriya hollers into the comms that the team fighting the Nomu needs backup, the surge of excitement Tenko feels has nothing to do with being a hero.

He has plenty to be angry about. All the things he’s seen that he can’t unsee, that you forced him to look at. All the things he’s felt that he can’t stop thinking about, things he begged you to make him feel. The helplessness, worse than he’s ever felt — helpless to save you, helpless to stop you, helpless to make you stay. He might be helpless to deal with you, but you’re the only one he can’t do anything against. The Nomu spawns dozens more of itself, but the spawn are weak, and they’re stupid enough to approach Tenko in a group. A single touch to one of them is enough to collapse them all to dust.

The big one’s not that stupid. The big one’s smart, and unlike the others they’ve seen so far, it has a healing factor. Although Touya and his asshat father are strong enough to land serious hits, they can’t follow up — while the Nomu’s recovering, all they can do is make sure the wounded get out of the line of fire. But Tenko can do something to it that it won’t recover from. All he needs is a clear path between himself and the Nomu, so he won’t risk hitting anyone else with Decay.

But the scene’s chaotic. Way too chaotic for that. Tenko needs to grab the Nomu’s attention. He taps his comms. “What’s its range? Anybody know?”

Nobody does. Mirko offers to test it, but Tenko nixes that idea in a hurry. It would have been nice to know, but he can do this without it. He’s fast on his feet. Decay is even faster.

Tenko scrambles up onto the nearest pile of rubble, Touya’s coat billowing around him. He wishes he’d taken the time to put on his costume. If he gets hit, he’s going to pick up the road rash from hell. Tenko waves his arms above his head and pitches his voice to carry. “Hey! Over here!”

The Nomu whips around, lunges towards Tenko, and Tenko keeps his eyes on the path in front of him. A second. He needs one second where it’s clear, and then — the Nomu skids to a dead stop, ten meters or so back from where Tenko stands. Its enormous hands go limp at its sides, and its jaw works slowly, ponderously. Tenko’s desperate to activate Decay, but there are people crawling out of the wreckage now, scattering in the wrong direction. Worst-case scenario, Tenko Decays it while it’s taking him down. The Nomu doesn’t make a move. Its mouth opens, a string of garbled sounds issuing from it.

“What?” Tenko demands. If its attention is on him, that gives everybody else time to cue up a combination attack that will actually work. “What do you want?”

More garbled sounds, but at the end of them, Tenko picks out two words. “Your will.”

His stomach drops. “What?”

“Your…will,” the Nomu repeats, and the hairs on the back of Tenko’s neck rise. A rush of damp, clammy cold washes down his spine, and a sharp smell stings his nostrils. Neither of those feelings belong here and now. What the hell is happening to him? “What is….your will?”

Worth a shot. “Stop fighting,” Tenko says, fighting off a shiver. “Surrender, now.”

The Nomu drops to one knee, then the other. Tenko can’t trust how long whatever’s happening will keep happening, and he’s finally got his clear path. He activates Decay, wiping out the Nomu’s legs above the knee, and feels a surge of relief when they don’t regenerate. Behind the Nomu, he sees Endeavor gearing up for a killing strike, only for All Might’s voice to ring out above the scene and bring everything to a screeching halt. “That creature is a villain,” he reminds everyone. “We bring villains in alive.”

Tenko’s going to have to answer for the Nomus he dusted, then. It’s hard to bring himself to care. Not when his skin is still crawling and ice-cold. Not when memories are yanking at him from every angle, fighting to pull Tenko in two and reveal Tomura beneath.

Tomura. That’s it. It clicks into place for Tenko suddenly — not everything, not entirely, but enough. He doesn’t know what or why, but something about this reminds him of Sensei.

Tenko’s memories about his time with Sensei are in pieces, and any time something unfamiliar comes up, he’s supposed to tell All Might right away. But All Might’s supervising the transfer of the Nomu into a Maiden, and there are still civilians to rescue — and thanks to the Nomu, the number of heroes available to make it happen has been cut in half. Tenko can tell All Might later. Maybe by then he’ll actually have something to tell.

He’s the last one off the site, because it’s his job to deal with the empty wreckage of the building after the victims, living and dead, have all been removed. It’s a mess, and the Nomu critically injured multiple people, and who knows what the final casualty count from the collapsed building will be. Tenko’s rage from before is still simmering, seeking a target. He could blame you, since it’s your fault that so many heroes are out of commission — or he could blame the heroes, for dropping out of life instead of keeping on like he did. The Nomu’s an obvious choice. Too obvious, maybe. The person who deserves Tenko’s hatred the most is the person who made them. Which was — who?

Tenko drags himself back to Might Tower covered in dust and coughing on it, and somehow he’s still got two hours left in his shift. By the time he’s showered and changed into clean clothes, everybody but Spinner has cleared out onto other assignments. Spinner’s hunched over his computer, tapping away at some spreadsheet. Tenko sits down at his own computer and pushes the keyboard aside so he can put his head down. “Hey, Spinner.”

“Hey,” Spinner says without looking up from his screen. “I’ve been tracking the activity of current B-rank or higher villains. Did you know that the Nomus and Love’s Executioner are never active at the same time?”

“Huh?” Tenko turns his head to look at Spinner. “What do you mean?”

“She’s active on a cycle. Three weeks on, one week off.” Spinner double-clicks something, then starts typing. “The Nomus only show up on her week off.”

“That’s weird.” It takes Tenko a second to figure out where Spinner’s going with this. “You think they’re connected?”

“I don’t know. It’s just weird. Like they’re filling in for her or something.” Spinner keeps typing. “I only see two breaks in the pattern. One time last year, she was off an extra week — and a month or so ago, she was off two weeks in a row.”

“Did the Nomus fill in?”

“Yeah. You wouldn’t have seen, since you were, uh — out.” Spinner double-clicks again and looks up. “Somebody sent up a package for you. It’s on Monoma’s desk.”

Huh. Tenko glances over and sees a box, balanced on top of a bunch of leave forms and incident reports. “What’s in it?”

“The scanner in the mailroom said it’s just files. Tons of them,” Spinner says. “Want help with it?”

“Sure.”

‘Tons of files’ isn’t a joke. A lot of them are research papers or case studies, or compiled sheets of data and statistics that it would probably take a master’s degree to figure out. But right on top, Tenko finds something he’s been looking for. Spinner peers at it. “Is that the study from the singularity guy?”

“I think so.” Tenko scans it. Whoever wrote it, they wrote it for public consumption, not for other scientists — it’s easy enough for Tenko to understand, even if the charts and data table that make up the back twenty pages of it are incomprehensible. Almost. “Huh.”

“What?” Spinner asks, looking up from a case file. “Don’t tell me you believe this stuff.”

“I don’t have to believe it. I’m looking at it.” Tenko holds it out for Spinner. “See? That’s the designation census for fifty years leading up to that guy writing the paper. The number of betas born every year was going up.”

“Not by much,” Spinner says. He frowns. “Weird, though. It’s the only one that’s going up.”

Spinner’s right. Tenko flips back a few pages into the paper itself. The person who wrote it is theorizing that the number of betas being born will continue to increase, as will the percentage of betas born with designation disorders — until the only designation who will consider them disordered is the designation they have evolved to supplant. “This guy thinks betas are going to replace alphas.”

“Wouldn’t that mean we’d all go extinct?” Spinner asks. He glances down at the study he’s flipping through and frowns. “Hang on. This says that suppressant effectiveness is going down.”

“That’s been on the news.”

“Not for everybody. Just betas,” Spinner says, and Tenko looks up. “See? This is from fifty years ahead of the one you’ve got. It says that if beta suppressants stop working it’ll lead to — no it won’t. That’s dumb.”

Societal destabilization. Tenko’s with Spinner, except — “What does it say is going to happen if beta suppressants don’t work anymore?”

“Increase in designation disorders. Like the crazy guy’s study said.” Spinner glances uneasily at it. “This is weird. It’s talking about how bad that would be, except it’s not bringing up the real problem.”

“Which is?”

“If the percentage of alphas goes down and the percentage of betas goes up, the birth rate is going to drop like crazy,” Spinner says. “There are all kinds of conspiracy theories about what’ll happen if the number of kids people are having dips below the replacement rate, and those aren’t, like, wrong. Remember that weird thing from Europe a couple years ago where they introduced mandatory suppression pauses?”

“Yeah, that was fucked,” Tenko says. He thought so before, and having now gone through both a rut and a heat, he’s even more convinced. “What about it?”

“That’s how scared governments are of a demographic crash,” Spinner says. “A demographic crash is what would happen if betas outnumbered alphas. And this study doesn’t mention it at all.”

Weird. Something about that is tugging on the back of Tenko’s mind, but he can’t identify it. “We should check if the beta percentage is still going up.”

“If it is, I haven’t noticed,” Spinner says as he boots up his computer, heading for the Ministry of Health’s page. “You and me and Twice are way outnumbered around here.”

“We would be, though. Heroics is an alpha-dominated field.” There are multiple parts of Tenko’s job that he hates, but that’s a big one. He squints at the screen. “What the hell? Where is it?”

“I don’t know.” Spinner is scrolling, clicking. “They’re tracking alpha and omega births by year. There’s so much data here that they’ve had to link it on sub-pages by decade. But there’s no data for betas at all.”

“Click that tab.” Tenko waits impatiently as Spinner opens the tab labeled ‘Beta’, then reads aloud. “It is not and has never been the policy of the Ministry of Health to track the incidence of beta births. As it has no effect on population growth or impact on the birth rate for later generations, the government has chosen to direct funding elsewhere.”

Spinner looks baffled, but Tenko’s hit with a weird surge of anger. He’s always known how society looked at him and his friends — pointless, irrelevant — but actually seeing it in writing is something else. It’s official that he doesn’t matter. It’s official that no one cares. And Tenko really should be used to it by now, because it’s never been any different. At least not for him.

“This can’t be right.” Spinner’s back on the data page, clicking through year after year. “The data in the crazy guy’s paper was from official censuses. It even has the years on it. But according to this, they never collected any data on betas at all. Why would they hide that?”

Something occurs to Tenko. “Keep looking. I have to check something else.”

He leaves the case studies, but collects all the research papers, and starts googling their titles one at a time. Title, publication date, and the journal they were published in, all of which should be enough to find them — only for his search to return zero results. Tenko feels like he’s going crazy. He’s looking at the studies. In a couple cases he’s looking at the actual physical copies of the journal the study was published in. But it’s missing from the digital copy of the journal. Not just missing. It’s like it was never there at all. So either everything in the box of files is fake, or somebody’s put a hell of a lot of effort into erasing it all from the record.

“We need to get Midoriya in on this,” Spinner says. “And Todoroki — he hates reading, but if we give him one job and make it sound like he’s the only one who can do it, he’ll tear it up. Most of this medical stuff Toga can probably understand better than us. And Twice and Magne —”

“We need to digitize it. And we need more than one paper copy of everything,” Tenko says. Spinner nods. He’s already pulling out his phone. “We can’t risk losing it if something happens to these.”

“It’s crazy that we got all this. And that it got sent to you,” Spinner says. “It didn’t say on the box, but do you have any idea who sent them?”

“No,” Tenko says. But he has a bad feeling it was you.

You can’t be trusted. You’d do anything to inflame Tenko’s anger at the system, anger that’s only gotten more intense since he’s experienced life on all sides of the designation spectrum. And at the same time, Tenko can’t imagine you faking all of this successfully. It’s not just the forgery — it’s the sheer amount of time it would take to make all of this look real. You don’t have that kind of time. But if you didn’t fake it, where did you find it? And why did you send it to Tenko?

Two reasons, Tenko realizes, as his friends arrive and Toga announces that whoever gets the most papercuts in an hour has to buy pizza for everyone else. First, because you knew he’d care about it. Second, because you knew he wouldn’t write it off just because it came from you.

It’s less work with all of Tenko’s friends involved, but it’s still a ton of work. He ends up buying pizza because he’s too distracted to turn pages carefully and gets demoted to writing down important points and which studies they were found in on a whiteboard. A picture is definitely emerging. He just doesn’t know what it is.

“I’m sending digital copies to everybody,” Spinner announces. “Your personal emails, not the work ones. And I’m going to make a flash drive for everybody, too.”

“Isn’t that a little paranoid?” Midoriya asks. “I mean — there’s no way people would try to destroy it, right?”

“Grow up, loser. They did,” Touya says. He hasn’t mentioned Tenko’s bite, which is a relief. “This box somebody sent to Shimura is all that’s left. Damn right we’re making copies.”

“I wish we knew who sent it,” Toga says. “What if they have more?”

“I don’t care about that. I want to know how they got ahold of it,” Magne says. “A lot of this is based on government data that supposedly doesn’t exist. So who leaked it?”

“Who said the one who leaked it is the same one who sent it?” Twice has to shout to be heard over the copy machine. “If I was leaking government secrets, I wouldn’t mail it myself!”

So someone else leaked it — but why would they give it to you? “The tracking history on the box is crazy,” Midoriya says. “According to the postal service website, it’s only been shipped once, but there are other labels and stamps all over the box. Somebody tried really hard to make sure it couldn’t be traced.”

Something crosses Tenko’s mind. “Slide it over. I’ll make a list.”

If he had any doubt it was you, it vanishes as soon as Tenko starts cross-checking the return addresses. If the labels are to be believed, the box has been shipped almost a dozen times, from the return addresses of every designation disorder specialist you’ve swapped. So much for it not being personal. But there’s one address that doesn’t match the others — not the first address on the list, but something hidden partway down. And it’s not a person’s address. It’s a post-office box. In Shiroiwa.

Somehow that doesn’t strike Tenko as a coincidence. The two of you met for the first time in Shiroiwa, and even though you wore a mask at the meeting for the victims, it didn’t raise an eyebrow with any of the townspeople that you were there. Shiroiwa’s not that big. If you were a stranger, someone would have pointed you out, blamed it on you. The only way they wouldn’t is if you were one of them. The cops and the HSPC have been theorizing that you’ve got some kind of home base. If you do, Tenko has a feeling it’s in Shiroiwa.

On his next set of days off, he makes up a lie about going to a ryokan and heads south to Shiroiwa instead. He knows it’s a risk to go by himself, but at the same time, he needs answers — and you probably won’t talk if anyone else is there. And Tenko wants to see you again. Alone.

If he does find you in Shiroiwa, he won’t be in heat or rut. His head will be clear, and he can see you, talk to you. See how he feels about you. If any of the connection he felt to you, feels to you, is actually real. Tenko can’t decide if he wants it to be real or not. Part of him doesn’t. It’ll be so much easier to capture you if it was all the product of heats and ruts, if you’re nothing more to him than a supervillain. And at the same time, Tenko doesn’t want to lose the part of himself that feels this way. He doesn’t want to lose the answer to that stupid, desperate yearning. He wants it to be true, even if it makes things harder for him. And he wants you to feel enough for him that it makes things harder for you.

He hits a bit of a stall at Shiroiwa’s post office, when he sees how many people use post office boxes, and how yours is empty, unlocked. He asks the clerk whose box it is, trying to be casual about it, and the clerk tells him that it belongs to a woman who lives on the outskirts of town, in a house that stood empty for a decade before she moved in. “She’s an odd sort,” the clerk tells Tenko. “Keeps to herself, mainly, but she shows up to help if you need her. And she must love this place. I don’t know if you heard about what happened when Love’s Executioner struck here, but she was there at every funeral.”

Would you do that? Go to your victims’ funerals? You’re smart enough to do things that would avoid suspicion — but at the same time, Tenko knows you don’t see people killing themselves after you’ve swapped them as something you’re responsible for. The clerk leans against the counter, a thoughtful expression on her face. “She took it hard, you know? After All Might and his sidekick left, I found her crying outside.”

So you’ll cry in front of everybody in the world except Tenko. Tenko fights to keep his temper in check. “Did she say why?”

“I didn’t talk to her, but my daughter did. I guess she had talked to the sidekick and regretted it,” the clerk says. Tenko’s stomach clenches. “What did I do. What have I done. That kind of thing.”

“Yeah,” Tenko says. The tight feeling in his stomach has shifted upwards, closing around his heart in a way that feels good and awful at the same time. “I got some mail from her, but I think it was supposed to go to someone else. Can I leave it here?”

“She hasn’t been here in a while. You’d be better off dropping it off on her porch,” the clerk says. “Go to the end of the street, take a left turn, and follow it until you run out of road.”

Tenko takes the left turn as instructed and realizes that it’s going to be a really long walk. So he’ll have time to think, time he needs, because once he pushes past the frustration with you for opening up to literally anyone else, that moment and that question are familiar. Not to Tenko, exactly, and not to Tomura. To whoever he was in between.

Un-brainwashing himself wasn’t a fun experience. Looking back, Tenko can say confidently that it’s the absolute fucking worst. Realizing that something Sensei had drilled into his head was wrong wasn’t a relief. It was never a relief, because Tomura had never just heard it — he’d heard it and done something, something he couldn’t take back, something that took everything else Sensei said about Tomura and proved it right. Tenko’s gone down some shitty rabbit holes in his time. What happened to him while he was getting deprogrammed was the worst, so Tenko’s pretty confident that he knows what was going through your head when the clerk’s daughter caught you crying. If you’re trying to work through brainwashing, who brainwashed you in the first place? And if something that happened that day made you question everything, why haven’t you stopped?

Tenko’s made no progress in answering that question by the time he reaches the house at the end of the road, and as he looks up at it, he wonders if he’s made a mistake. This place looks abandoned. Boarded-up windows, shingles missing off the roof. The path leading from the road to the front door is overgrown. There’s no way this is your home base. You can’t live here.

Maybe you can. Tenko just doesn’t want you to.

He tries the front door, but it’s locked from the inside, and the lock on the door is a lot stronger than the door itself. Tenko picks his way around the house instead, looking for a back door, and gets lucky. The back door is locked from the outside. He Decays it and lets himself in.

The back room is empty, but Tenko knows there must be a bedroom around here somewhere. It’s a small house. He comes across a bathroom first, and that’s where he hits the first sign that someone lives here. There’s a plastic tote with towels, soap, toothbrushes, shower stuff. Tenko pries the lid off to investigate, wondering if any of it holds your scent. He’ll feel pretty stupid if it turns out that he was hooked on your shampoo this whole time.

None of it smells like you — not the soap, not the shampoo or conditioner. He even smells the toothpaste. The towels carry the faintest hint of your scent, but as Tenko unfolds one to bury his face in it, he sees something beneath it. You’ve got an entire ambulance worth of first-aid supplies, and based on how disorganized it is, it gets a lot of use. Tenko refolds the towel and sets it back down, unease beginning to roll through him. His scent is going to be all over your house, but you won’t be able to tell he’s been here. You’re scent-blind. Anybody could have been here and you’d never know.

Tenko leaves the bathroom behind and investigates the next room. Your bedroom. Tenko thinks it must be, because there’s an old futon and some thin blankets and a mostly-deflated pillow. Tenko sees a handful of books piled alongside the bed, another box full of clothes. Your bed isn’t made, and there’s something caught up in the sheets. Tenko looks closer and realizes that it’s one of his shirts. You must have taken it with you, either of the times you left.

He picks it up, but there’s something bundled up in it. Tenko unwraps the shirt from around it and a hand falls down to the mattress with a thud.

Tenko recoils from it so hard that he almost falls over. Is it a person’s hand? It’s life-sized, and lifelike, and when Tenko touches it, it’s cold and stiff. Embalmed. That’s what it is. No wonder it makes him want to vomit.

And at the same time, the urge to touch it is strong. To pick it up. To settle it over his face, like it’s supposed to be. Tenko doesn’t know where that thought is coming from, but he knows what comes with it — disgust, discomfort, fear. There’s a reason this is here, wrapped in his shirt. You knew he’d come here. Knew he’d pick up his shirt and see this. If Tenko puts the hand over his face, something will happen. Does he want that?

No. Tenko doesn’t want to know, just like he never wanted to know what it was like to be an alpha or an omega, to go through rut and heat and mating bites and the stupid loneliness that’s only gotten worse now that he knows what’s missing. But Tenko needs to find you again. For his own reasons, for the innocent people you’ve hurt. He lifts the hand and settles it over his face — again.

The sickness that wells up within him is the worst feeling he’s ever experienced, but somehow, the memories are what he can’t stand. He hates the way the few he hung onto shatter, the way they reveal themselves as pieces of a larger, more horrible picture. No wonder Tenko forgot about what happened when he was Tomura. Every single piece of it was a nightmare. He just didn’t realize how much he’d forgotten until right now.

He crumples to his hands and knees on the floor, sobbing for air and gagging on his own disgust and fear at the same time. He wants nothing more than to rip the hand off his face and go back to forgetting, to walking through life in sheer cluelessness, because it’s not just his memories that are coming back. It’s everything you’ve said to him, everything he couldn’t quite piece together sliding into place, creating a picture that makes Tenko so sick with guilt that he can barely think.

Your ally, your Warp Gate, is Kurogiri — the same Kurogiri who used to look out for Tomura. You’re working for someone who can change people’s bodies, add in powers they didn’t have before. The person you work for wants All Might humiliated, so much that they saw your attack at the billboard chart as a failure. Someone told you how Tenko’s quirk really awakened, and it wasn’t him or All Might. And somehow you have Father’s hand.

It all adds up to one thing, one person. This whole time, Tenko’s thought Sensei was dead, but he isn’t. Sensei’s the person backing you, manipulating you, making you a monster — just like he would have done to Tenko, if Tenko hadn’t been saved.

That’s the worst part, the part that’s making Tenko want to claw off his own skin. Sensei wanted Tenko. Since he couldn’t have Tenko, he took you. Everything that’s happened to you at Sensei’s hands, everything you’re doing now — it’s all Tenko’s fault.

He stays crumpled on the floor, crushed flat under the weight of his own guilt. He knows what Sensei’s like. Knows what you’ve been living through, for as long as Sensei’s had you. How long? Too long. Three years was too long for Tenko, but you said — his misery does what his loneliness couldn’t and drags up the memory of what you said during his heat, while he was grappling with the fucking knot toy from hell. You said he was better than you, that you’d been told he was better than you — since I was fifteen years old. You’re around Tenko’s age. Sensei’s had you for almost a decade.

Even as Tenko’s guilt suffocates him, even as his mind spins, part of it is still working. He knows Sensei, understands Sensei, understands what’s happened to you, and that means he knows how to beat it. The system is fucked, too fucked for one person to change, but now there’s an enemy Tenko can fight, and someone for him to save. You didn’t decide to become like this of your own free will. Sensei took whoever you were before and made you into Love’s Executioner. You aren’t evil, as much as you want Tenko to believe you are. You can still be saved.

But Tenko can’t save you on his own, and most people in Japan want you dead, even if your death would mean that nobody ever gets swapped back to their original designation. He needs to talk to someone who will take his word for it that it’s Sensei behind this, who will let him explain, who will know what to do next. Tenko pries the hand off his face, drops it back down on the shirt and yanks his phone out of his pocket.

All Might picks up right away. “Good evening, Tenko. I was wondering if you’d arrived yet! I’m so glad you decided to take some time off to relax —”

“I’m in Shiroiwa,” Tenko says, and All Might takes a deep breath. “Love’s Executioner was hiding out here, and she’s — uh —”

Tenko’s throat closes up. “Are you in danger?” All Might asks sharply. “Tenko, are you all right?”

“I found out who’s backing her. Who made her like this.” Tenko can’t look at the hand without wanting to vomit. “It’s Sensei. Sensei’s alive.”

“No,” All Might says at once. “All For One is dead. I saw him die.”

“He’s alive!” Tenko snaps. “I don’t know how, but it’s him. She had Father’s hand. She left it here for me. And she knows stuff she couldn’t know unless — Sensei made her like this, and we have to save her. I have to save her. It’s the only way —”

“Stay where you are,” All Might orders Tenko. “I’ll be there soon.”

Tenko should tell All Might not to use the remnant of One For All like that, but he can barely think. He’s trying to piece together your life in his head, figure out what happened to you at Sensei’s hands. Sensei got ahold of you when you were fifteen, and no one came looking for you. He’s had you for ten years at least. But Sensei wasn’t isolating you, not all the way. You had a job for a while. You lived here for a while, long enough that no one questioned it when you showed up at the meet-and-greet, or at the funerals for the victims. Hiding in plain sight, until Sensei was ready for you. Ready to use you. For what?

Tenko doesn’t know. He pulls the shirt out from underneath Father’s hand and buries his face in it, sucking down the faint remnants of your scent that still cling to the fabric. You said you were supposed to hate Tenko. Of course you should hate Tenko. Everything that’s happening to you is his fault.

“No, it isn’t,” All Might says firmly when he gets there. “If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. I should have made sure he was dead. Now tell me what you know.”

Tenko lays it out as clearly and simply as he can manage. Putting on Father’s hand unlocked the door on his memories of Sensei, and with his memories in place, a bunch of things you’ve said or done became clear. With you on his team or under his thumb, Sensei controls not just quirks, but designations, too. With that kind of power, he could rule the world.

“Why hasn’t he taken her quirk?” All Might asks, frowning. “Surely that would be quicker than trying to control another servant.”

“He didn’t take my quirk,” Tenko says. “He wanted to use me against society. Against you.”

“That’s true, but while Decay is more destructive, Love’s Executioner is a destabilizing force. Why wouldn’t he want to control it himself?”

“I don’t think he can,” Tenko says. “Midoriya said it’s a blank, right? It can’t be copied even if we could get Monoma close enough.”

“Why would that mean it can’t be stolen?”

“I don’t know,” Tenko says. He held it together when All Might got here, and he doesn’t feel quite as unhinged as he did before, but it’s lurking in the back of his mind. “Why does it matter? We have to save her. I have to save her. Why she’s like that — I can’t just leave her —”

“We will not be leaving her,” All Might says. He puts his hand on Tenko’s shoulder. “But when we rescue her, we must be successful. What else can we infer about All For One?”

All For One might be behind the Nomus. They didn’t consider him before, but all the Nomus have multiple quirks, and considering that they’re active whenever you aren’t — “It begs the question again,” All Might says. “Why does he need her?”

“I told you. The same reason as me.”

“No,” All Might says, frowning. “He chose you to retroactively spite your grandmother and to torment me. He has sent her after me, but this is not about me, not entirely. Why does he need —”

All Might breaks off, frowning. He leans down and picks something up off the bed, and at first Tenko thinks it’s the hand. But it’s worse than that. So much worse. “I recognize this shirt,” All Might says. “This is yours.”

Tenko’s never been a good liar. His face turns red from embarrassment and his eyes start burning way before All Might actually asks the question. “How did she get this?”

Even as Tenko’s trying to figure out what to confess, how to confess, All Might is answering himself. “We know she’s aware of where you live. She must have taken it when she broke in to change you back.”

“Yeah,” Tenko says. “I should have moved.”

“This is not your fault,” All Might says. “None of this is your fault, Tenko. But we must move carefully in order to defeat All For One. The HPSC cares only about stopping Love’s Executioner by any means necessary. Sir Nighteye barely talked them out of a kill order.”

They were going to kill you? Rage boils up inside Tenko and he grits his teeth against it. “So we don’t tell anybody.”

“Young Midoriya must be told,” All Might says. “And if you feel they can be trusted, you should tell your friends.”

Tenko can trust his friends. With the truth about how you got like this, why you can’t or won’t stop. The difference is that he can’t get away with hiding the rest of it like he did with All Might. When he tells them, they’re going to find out that you did a lot more than just swap his designation back. And when that happens — what are they going to think of him? What are they even going to say?

It doesn’t matter. Tenko needs to tell them the truth. He needs to save you. He needs to kill Sensei. He can figure everything else out as he goes.

<- Chapter 9

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It doesn’t surprise you that you aren’t the only person whose life Kai ruined. When you’re honest with yourself, you can admit that Kai had to have been letting it out somewhere else, all those times he wasn’t beating you. But you’re still shocked at the scale of what Kai’s done. The sheer number of people who’ve been tormented because of him. You know Kai as an abuser. The other people he hurt know him as a mad scientist, a monster of a different breed. The ones who survived, at least. Kai has killed people. You’re still kind of shocked you aren’t one of them.

Leaving Kai felt impossible, but he’s in jail awaiting trial and you’re free, and you’re working on wiping out every piece of your life he controlled. Today at the doctor’s, that means updating your address, changing your insurance (again), and clearing off your emergency contact. The receptionist asks if you want to add somebody else. You add Emi, because she said it was okay. And after a moment’s hesitation, you add Tomura, too.

They’ve become the anchor points of life without Kai, as strange as that is to admit. You could live a hundred lifetimes and still not deserve Emi — she let you crash on her couch for almost a month, and when her lease came up and her roommate moved out, she let you move in officially. She’s had your back with everything, from little things like making sure you got your old cubicle back at work to big things like going with you and Mr. Yamada to file for your divorce from Kai. You’ve tried to pay her back as best you can. You’re back to paying rent and utilities, holding up your end of the bargain and trying to remember how to be a good roommate, how to be an actual person instead of a shell of yourself. The person you are outside of Kai’s shadow is someone you haven’t seen in a while, somebody Emi’s never met. The first time you cautiously cracked a dirty joke in front of her, she stared at you with her jaw dropped for a solid fifteen seconds before she burst out laughing.

“Finally,” she said, grinning. “Now that I know that conservative shtick was all him, I’ve got so many jokes for you.”

Emi’s taken the slow reappearance of your old self mostly in stride, but Tomura, who only knew your old self, meets any sign that you’re still you with relief. The fact that he knew you before makes the damage — inflicted first by his stalking, then amplified a thousand times over by Kai — all the more apparent. Tomura hasn’t run away from the stalking. He hasn’t pretended it didn’t happen or downplayed it or brought up the fact that everything Kai did was so much worse. It just sat there between you, until the day you finally asked him why.

Not good reasons, he said, and then it was quiet for a little while. It made sense in my head. I knew you still loved me. You even said it while we were breaking up, and I don’t think you were lying.

I wasn’t lying, you said. That wasn’t why we were breaking up.

Yeah. And if I was breaking up with somebody I still loved, it would be because I wanted them to prove they loved me, Tomura said. Try to make them leave. If they really loved me, they wouldn’t let me go.

Something about that broke your heart. It made sense to me, Tomura continued, so I figured it was what you were doing, too. Except you were a normal person, and I was raised by a psychopath. What made sense to me would sound crazy to you.

Back then, yes. Now? A little less crazy than before. How did you come around? you asked, and Tomura hesitated. Did you come around?

Right around when you started dating him, because of him, Tomura said, and your stomach dropped. When he talked to me, he said pretty much exactly what I just said to you. The bastard did research on me. The court cases against Sensei and everything. He said that I’d traumatized you and you had trust issues and paranoia because of me, and —

And if you really loved me, you should leave me alone. You can imagine Kai’s voice saying just those words. And you listened.

Yeah. What was I supposed to do? He was right. Tomura looked down at his hands in his lap. I stepped back. Because of what he said, and because thinking about you with other people made me sick. I couldn’t stand to watch that closely anymore.

That’s why he talked to you, you said, and Tomura looked at you. He couldn’t do all the things he wanted to if someone was watching.

But he was still right about me, Tomura said. I never wanted to scare you. I’m not going to do that again. If you say you want me gone, I know you mean it.

I know, you said, and you bit down on the next thing before you could say it: I’m not going to say that again.

You and Tomura aren’t together, not in public or in private, but the two of you talk every day. He always lets you initiate, never asks where you are or what you’re doing or why you haven’t messaged him back yet. You’ve got space from him if you want it, all the space you didn’t have after the breakup. In spite of the fact that he saved your life, you don’t feel a ton of pressure. Maybe that’s why you keep talking to him so much.

You and Tomura were friends first. Best friends, almost. You missed your best friend more than you wanted to admit, and as you work on finding yourself again, it’s a relief to have him by your side. But you’d be lying if you said there wasn’t some kind of spark, some kind of chemistry between the two of you. Tomura doesn’t mention it, doesn’t push your boundaries. Which is a good thing, because right now, with him, you don’t have a clue where your boundaries are.

Once your doctor’s finished checking over your injuries, she asks you about birth control. She’s willing to give you the pill without a physical examination, but that’s not what you’re after. “I want the IUD.”

The doctor blinks. “Are you sexually active?”

“Not right now,” you say, “but I don’t want to take chances. I just want to get it taken care of and stop worrying about it. And I don’t want anyone to be able to mess with it.”

You’re pretty sure Kai started the whole trying-for-a-baby thing by tampering with your pills, trying to get you pregnant by accident rather than force a conversation and potential pushback from you. It’s not because of Tomura. It’s not because you’re thinking about him. You’re just being careful. The doctor nods. “I’ll put in a referral to OB-GYN. They should call you to set up an appointment sometime later today.”

You nod. The doctor tilts her head, studying you. “Are you still seeing your therapist?”

“Every week.”

“And have you given any more thought to medication? I can set up a referral for a psychiatrist as well.”

You shake your head. “I already have the thing for nightmares. I shouldn’t take anything else until the trial’s over.”

You’ll be called as a witness during Kai’s trial. Unfortunately, it was Kai’s legal team who put you on the list. The prosecution isn’t touching the domestic violence and attempted murder against you in this trial; that will be the next one. But you know damn well why Kai’s lawyers calling you, and it’s a big problem. You had no idea what Kai was doing at work. You spent more time with him than anybody. If you didn’t see anything, none of it happened.

Mr. Yamada’s instructed you to reference the domestic violence whenever possible, both to remind the court of Kai’s potential for violence and to explain why you were too scared to ask questions. When you think about bringing it up in court, you feel like you’re going to be sick. Some anti-anxiety medication would probably help. But you’re going to need all your wits about you to avoid torpedoing the prosecution’s case, and if that means fighting through on your own, so be it.

The OBGYN calls you on your lunch break at work, and you make an appointment for a week from now to get an IUD placed. You’ll feel better once that’s done. Once you know there’s no chance you’ll have a baby you don’t want.

Work goes easily, and you and Emi head home together, as has become usual. “Me and Shouta are going out tonight,” she says. “It’s our three-month anniversary. I probably won’t be back until late.”

“Dinner and a movie?”

“A late movie. He says there’s something he wants to talk about,” Emi says. She frowns. “I hope he’s not breaking up with me.”

“If he was breaking up with you, I don’t think he’d have suggested the movie.”

“You’re probably right. You were right about him. He’s a good guy.” Emi’s frown melts away into a smile, and her eyes are soft when she glances your way. “I want that for you, too.”

“You don’t think Tomura’s a good guy?”

You’re faking surprise, and Emi laughs. She sobers up fast. “If I thought he was scary or creepy, I wouldn’t let him in the apartment. I know he’s been really respectful — this time. I just know you have a lot of history with him, and it’s not good. Even if he didn’t hurt you, he made things harder for you. And you’ve got enough going on right now already.”

You nod. Your therapist has said the same thing. Yamada’s said the same thing. Everybody says it’s a bad idea to start up a new relationship when you haven’t healed from the old one. You agree in theory. Mostly in practice, except the part where you’re not sure if you’ll ever heal from what happened with Kai. And even if you could, how are you supposed to explain it to somebody else? You were weird even before Kai showed his true colors, and now you’re even worse. You startle easily. You apologize too much. You panic if someone calls you unexpectedly or knocks on the door with an Amazon package or even sends you a text that could be read two ways. Nobody who doesn’t know why you ended up like that is going to put up with it. And there’s only one person in the world who you know understands.

“That just went in one ear and out the other, didn’t it?” Emi sighs. “Have him over tonight if you want to. Just take it to the bedroom if you get busy. My last roommate used to hook up on the couch all the time, and I saw way more random guys’ asses than I ever wanted to see.”

You laugh in spite of yourself. “Don’t worry. We’re just friends.”

You text Tomura while Emi’s getting ready for her date, and he comes over about half an hour after she’s left. He usually brings something for you, not that you’d ever ask him for anything, and today he’s brought you a claw clip like the one he gave you when you were in the hospital for your miscarriage. “I need my shitty one back,” he says. “You’re getting an upgrade.”

You are. This one’s metal, not plastic, and you can tell when you pinch it open that it has a stronger grip. “You know I don’t usually wear them in my hair, right?”

Tomura looks puzzled. “What do you do with it?”

You show him. The plastic one leaves dents in your skin; the metal one leaves bruises. “Like a bracelet,” Tomura says. “I can get you a bracelet that’s not going to do that.”

You shake your head. “I don’t need jewelry.”

“You barely have any. Toga says it all wound up in the evidence locker.”

“Not quite all of it,” you say. “They let me keep everything I could prove he didn’t buy.”

You barely complained about everything you owned being taken as evidence, but when you realized they had your whole jewelry box, some part of you rebelled. You didn’t care about the things Kai bought you, but the rest belonged to you, and you wanted them back. Mr. Yamada worked out a deal that let you sneak things out of evidence if you provided photo evidence of yourself wearing them before you met Kai. “I got the necklace back. The one you gave me.”

“I can’t believe you kept it.” Tomura’s sitting cross-legged on the couch, just like he used to do in high school. “You must have hated me. Why didn’t you throw it out?”

“I didn’t hate you,” you say. “It was — complicated.”

After you broke up with Tomura, you found yourself missing Tomura more than you thought you would. By the time he’d first started stalking you, you were wondering if you’d made a mistake, and although the stalking kept you constantly on edge, you never hated or feared Tomura the way you fear Kai. Based on his expression, Tomura knows you’re holding something back, but he doesn’t try to pull it out of you. “I’m glad you kept it,” he says. “I can afford the real stuff now. Tell me something you want and I’ll buy it for you.”

“No.”

“How come?”

You don’t know. You’re dead certain. “Just — no.”

Tomura’s got a stubborn look on his face. “I’m supposed to get you stuff.”

“We had this talk in high school,” you say. “My answer hasn’t changed.”

“Yeah, but everything else has,” Tomura says. “What’s the real reason? Is it because he bought all that expensive shit you didn’t want and made you wear it to show off? I swear I’ll only buy you the cheap stuff.”

“No.” Your voice is sharper than you meant to be. Louder, too. Tomura looks startled. “Drop it.”

It’s quiet. “Yeah,” Tomura says after a second. “I earned that one. I’m sorry.”

You don’t answer. Your heart is racing, and you don’t know why. You’re reading a threat, and you don’t know why. Tomura isn’t Kai. If you’d pulled that move on Kai, he’d have backhanded you so hard that your ears would still be ringing in the morning. Tomura’s never hurt you.

But he could, a voice in your head reminds you. Any man you date could do the exact same thing.

Tomura reaches out to you slowly, and when his hand’s in reach, you take it. Tomura follows along until he’s beside you. “Do you want me to leave?”

You shake your head. “Did you bring over some really gross horror movie to watch?”

“Yeah,” Tomura says after a second. “I haven’t seen it before. We don’t have to watch it. We can watch a rom-com or something.”

“A romcom?” You repeat, incredulous. “I married a monster. I didn’t get my personality removed.”

“I guess you never liked those,” Tomura says slowly. “You never liked my movies either.”

“I’m expanding my horizons,” you say. “Let’s watch.”

You’re having a hard time with feelings lately, both with having them in the first place and knowing what feeling you’re supposed to have in a given situation. Horror movies make it easy, and the movie Tomura picked is straightforward space horror. Tomura gets grossed out a lot faster than you do — he has a thing about eyeballs, and the first really scary shot involves a pair of empty eye sockets. The thing that gets to you is the creeping, omnipresent dread; something is wrong, you don’t know what, and it’ll be a disaster when it happens. That feeling’s familiar. You lived with it for five years.

You hadn’t seen it coming, the first time Kai hit you, but you’d known something was wrong that day anyway. It was six months after the wedding, and you were buying the house, because Kai insisted it was a better investment than renting was. Between the two of you, you had just enough money for the down payment, which you deposited into a newly opened joint account well in advance of signing the papers. The money wasn’t the problem. The problem was that you were late.

Seven minutes late to signing the papers, because you’d been a little late getting out of work for lunch, and there’d been just a little traffic. You knew Kai hated lateness, but the realtor wasn’t angry, and neither was the notary witnessing the signing. You got there, you signed on the dotted line next to Kai, and you and Kai were the proud owners of a starter home. Everything was fine. You assumed it would be fine.

It happened when Kai offered to drive you back to work. You thanked him, because it was nice of him and you couldn’t have just taken the bus, and he didn’t let on that anything was wrong until you were already in the car. Is there anything else you’d like to say?

Um — He’d caught you off-guard. You used to wonder what would have happened if you’d just known right away, if you’d just reacted faster, if you’d just apologized the way he likes, but now you know better. Kai had been waiting for an opportunity to assert control. This was it. I was just a little late.

Time is money. Kai’s grip on the steering wheel was loose, relaxed. And arriving promptly is a sign of respect.

Nobody minded, you said. They weren’t upset —

Ah. I forgot you can read minds. Kai’s voice sharpened slightly, and you felt the first faint twinge of foreboding. Forget about them. It was disrespectful to me.

I wasn’t even ten minutes late, you said, and you rolled your eyes. I said I was sorry.

Kai backhanded you across the face, missing your nose but setting your cheek and jaw on fire. I don’t believe you.

“Hey,” Tomura says, and you snap back into the present. “Are you okay? Are you — here?”

“I’m here,” you say.

“You sure?” Tomura looks skeptical. “That guy just got blown out of the airlock and you didn’t even flinch.”

Maybe you weren’t as here as you thought you were. “I just zoned out a little bit. Everything’s fine.”

Tomura looks even more skeptical than before. “I used to zone out like that, too. I was never going anywhere good.” It’s quiet for a second. “Did I — was it me? Did I do something to send you back there?”

“No,” you say. “I’d tell you.”

That’s not quite true. He’d know if he tripped your memories of Kai, because you’d run. You think he might know that. “Okay,” he says after a second. “Want to keep watching?”

“Yes,” you say. You settle in at Tomura’s side, your head on his shoulder, and watch things go to hell onscreen.

After the movie, the two of you sit quietly together. You haven’t picked up your head off Tomura’s shoulder yet, and for no reason you can think of, you feel drained. You’ve been really tired lately — more than you should be — but this feels different. Something inside that’s sick of trying to walk this tightrope, trying to balance so many things. The prosecution in one hand, your mental health in the other. Your need for your injuries to heal versus the fact that you have to be able to use your hand, even if it hurts. Everybody’s well-intentioned advice about you and Tomura, every book you’ve ever read about dating after abuse, everything you went through at his hands and then at Kai’s — all of that against the fact that Tomura never makes you feel like you have to play a part. That he lets you be yourself. That you feel safe with him. As much as it’s possible for you to feel safe, anyway.

“I was thinking,” you start, and Tomura startles slightly. “Would you ever want to go the arcade again?”

“The old one back home?”

“Any arcade,” you say. “I was thinking about the first time we went out. That was fun.”

“Yeah, it was,” Tomura agrees. He readjusts his grip on your hand. “But if you want to go out and do something, we should do something you like. I’m up for anything if you go with me.”

He says it like it’s nothing. Like anybody would say the same thing. “Kai would have hated it,” you say. “Because it was dirty. Or loud. Or the air smelled funny or there’s too many people and too many kids running around —”

“Really?” Tomura sounds surprised. “That asshole was obsessed with making you have kids and he doesn’t even like them?”

“I think he thought he’d like his own better,” you say. “Or he thought he could make it so they wouldn’t act that way. I don’t know. But I think — he would have hated the arcade, but you and I had so much fun that day. I want to figure out what fun is again.”

“I’m down to replay that level,” Tomura says, and you laugh. “What?”

“You still talk like a gamer.”

“I still play games,” Tomura says. You know. Sometimes you get him talking about it on purpose so you won’t have to say anything, although he always figures it out faster than you want him to. “A lot of stuff has changed, but a lot about me is still the same. I’m not a different person just because I aged. And neither are you.”

“That’s not why I’m different,” you say.

“That’s what I mean,” Tomura says. “Bad things happening don’t make you stop being who you are. When Toga showed me that picture, I could still see you. Not what he turned you into. Just you.”

Tomura’s grip on your hand tightens slightly. “I see you. Just like you saw me.”

“I still see you,” you say. Talking about this feels awful. You’re too tired. “Are you going with me to the arcade or not?”

“I’m in,” Tomura says, and the smile that crosses your face is some mix of real and relieved. Right now you don’t need to know which is which.

You regard the cup the nurse just handed you with no small amount of confusion. “What’s this for?”

“Standard practice,” the nurse explains. “Before we place an IUD, we do a pregnancy test. It’s just a precaution.”

You would love to never take another pregnancy test in your life. But that’s the point of the IUD, right? If all that stands between you and semi-permanent birth control is the prospect of peeing in a cup, you can handle it. You’ve handled way worse. You head to the bathroom, wishing you’d doubled up on the anti-anxiety meds they gave you to keep you calm during the procedure. This is a small complication, but your hands are still shaking. You’re just relieved you managed to deliver it without a spill.

They take you to an exam room and tell you to change into the gown, which is fine. Cold, but fine. You wrap your arms around yourself to keep warm and focus on calming yourself for the procedure. You’ve read about this. It’s going to suck. You might pass out. But it’s going to be fine. Everything is going to be —

The door opens and your doctor comes in. You take a deep breath, only to get it knocked out of you when you see the look on her face, and she gives you the small mercy of not dragging it out. “Your pregnancy test is positive,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

You know why she’s sorry. You know everything you need to know already, and for the first time since you woke up in the hospital you feel that quick, bright snap as your mind disconnects from your body, from reality, from life. It doesn’t matter that Kai’s in jail, probably going to prison for the rest of his life. Even when he’s behind bars, you can’t get away from him. There’s only one way to be sure.

The beautiful thing about losing your mind again is that you can hide it this time. You’ve already decided what you’ll do, so all you have to do is get yourself out of the doctor’s office in one piece, without raising any alarms. You speak quietly, calmly. You ask the doctor a few questions — even one about abortion, even though you know what the answer will be. It feels like the right thing to do. Like the kind of thing someone who’s not planning to kill herself as soon as she possibly can would say.

As you sneak out of the exam room and make your way to the exit, you hear the doctor instructing the nurses to have someone watch you, and asking the receptionist to call your emergency contacts in the order listed. That’ll be Emi first, then Tomura, which works in your favor — Emi has a job where she can’t drop everything at a moment’s notice, and Tomura has the kind of job where they’ll reschedule things to suit him if he decides not to show up. They’ll call Emi first. You have a head start.

But what are you going to do with it? You know above all else that you need to act before you lose your nerve, and that you need to make sure it sticks. Last time wasn’t foolproof. This time has to be, and that means not just making it stick, but making yourself hard to find in the aftermath. And you know you’re a coward. You don’t want it to hurt.

It’s going to hurt, but then it’ll be over. It won’t last the way the pain of being trapped with Kai’s baby for the rest of your life will. You turn right instead of left on the main road and start walking towards the bridge.

It occurs to you to pick up a rock on the way, but your workbag is heavy enough if you don’t let go of it. With every step you take, you can feel the veneer of calm you projected cracking. It’s not like it was that last day at Hassaikai Corp, where you knew there was no way out and just wanted to get it over with. Now there are things clawing at you, trying to pull you back. A safe place to live without anyone who hurts you. A job of your own. A future that was starting to look just a little brighter. Freedom. Friends. Tomura.

None of those things will exist when you have Kai’s baby. You keep walking until you reach the center of the bridge.

The water seems like a long way down. It looks cold and fast and deep, and as you stare down into it, you try to summon up some emotion, something to counteract the weak struggles of hope. There’s nothing that can combat it — what if, what if, what if — and you don’t need anything. You know. Cars are zooming past on the bridge in both directions, but no one slows down, asks if you’re okay. Would you, if you saw someone peering over the edge at the center of a bridge? You’d like to think so. It doesn’t matter now. You climb up and over the railing.

You hear brakes squealing, followed by a chorus of horns, and when you look up, you see a Rolls-Royce Phantom mid-fishtail, blocking one lane of the road. Whoever’s driving it leans on the horn in response to the honking, and the passenger-side door opens. A man stumbles out, and a faint twinge of horror runs through you. It’s Tomura.

You’d know him anywhere, and it crosses your mind to jump before he reaches you. But he’d probably jump in after you, and the last thing you heard, he can’t swim. And maybe this is good. You can explain why, and once he understands, he’ll let you go.

“Wait,” Tomura says. Wait, not don’t. Maybe he will understand. “I got the call from the clinic. They said — we were on our way there and I saw —”

Just your luck to pick the bridge he’d be driving on to come get you. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It’s all that matters. You’re what matters. What do I have to do to get that through your head?”

You can’t drag this out. Tomura’s first reaction will tell you everything you need to know, and then you’ll have proof — and he’ll have the reason, and know it wasn’t him. “I’m pregnant.”

Tomura’s expression doesn’t change. “I can’t get an abortion,” you continue, waiting for something, anything, to cross Tomura’s face. “I can’t have a baby that’s half him. And you don’t want me if it means that, so let me go.”

Tomura opens his mouth and you cut him off. “Don’t lie.”

“When have I lied to you?” Tomura’s expression still hasn’t changed. You’re still waiting for the hurt, the disgust, the feelings he’s never known how to hide. “I don’t care about him. I care about you. If there’s something we can do to get you out of this, we’ll do it, and if there isn’t —”

“There isn’t!”

“It doesn’t change anything,” Tomura continues. “I don’t care that it’s half his. It’s yours. That’s what matters to me.”

You shake your head. “I don’t believe you. You never wanted kids. You wouldn’t stick around while I raise some other guy’s baby.”

“Really?” Half a smile crosses Tomura’s face. “I want him to suffer for what he did to you. I already took everything else away. How do you think he’ll feel about the kid he wanted so much being raised by me?”

Somehow that, of all things, is what makes a dent in the mess boiling inside your skull. You don’t trust Tomura’s paternal instinct as far as you can throw it, but you do trust that he loves you. And you trust that he hates Kai enough to do just about anything to stick it to him. “If we can find a way out, we will,” Tomura says. “If not, we’ll make him suffer. He’s still in your head, but I can see how you win this. You win this by being alive and being happy. And if we end up with a kid nine months from now, you win by raising it to be nothing like him.”

You can’t think of anything that would unhinge Kai more thoroughly than that — having his kid, and raising it wrong. You find yourself nodding, and Tomura holds out his hands for yours. “I’ll help you back over. Come on.”

Your workbag is a counterweight, pulling you off-balance, but someone else grabs it and frees up your other hand. You glance over and recognize one of Tomura’s newer friends. Twice. “Hi,” you say awkwardly. “I’m sorry about this.”

“No worries, Shigaraki’s former girlfriend!” Twice chirps. “Sure, you gave him a heart attack, but I’m cool as a cucumber!”

Tomura looked so steady from the far side of the railings. Now that you’re on the same side, you can feel his hands shaking, see how shallow his breathing is, and before you can say so much as a word, he yanks you forward into his arms, hanging on so tight you can barely breathe. “I don’t care about anything else,” he says in your ear, his voice wavering. “I don’t. As long as you’re here. Don’t leave me again. Please.”

You nod against his shoulder and wrap your arms around him, surprised at the sigh of relief that exits his mouth, at how quickly it seems to set him at ease. Someone honks their horn, and Twice hollers at them. “Shut up, baldy! Can’t you see they’re having a moment?”

“You can have a moment in the car, right?” That’s Spinner’s voice. How many of Tomura’s friends did he bring? “We’re supposed to bring her back to the clinic. That’s what the doctor said.”

“Yeah,” Tomura says. He loosens his grip on you ever so slightly, and you stumble. Kai would have picked you up. Tomura just steadies you. “Come on.”

You get the story from Twice on the short drive to the clinic; the doctor called Tomura during a board meeting, which Tomura promptly left, and Twice and Spinner either borrowed or stole the CEO’s car to race to the rescue in. They’re in the driver’s and passenger’s seats; you and Tomura are in the back, seatbelts on, him leaning against you with an arm around your waist. You’re texting Emi, then Yamada, wondering when you’ll start feeling normal about this, when one of Tomura’s hands moves.

There are places he doesn’t touch you. He never puts a hand on your back, because Kai always did that, steering you through a room, always one move away from yanking you off-course. His hands never come close to your neck, even if it means giving you hugs that are more awkward than comforting. But the place he’s touching now, Kai never touched like this. You never gave him the chance. Tomura’s hand settles against your lower abdomen, fingers splayed, in a gesture that’s probably supposed to be reassuring. And that’s when it hits you for real — no false calmness, no determination to die and get this over with, not even the relief of knowing that Tomura’s still with you. For the first time since you woke up in the hospital, you burst into tears, and nobody, not Tomura or the doctor or anybody else, can make them stop.

<- Chapter 8