Work Text:
Hitoshi was always under the impression that grand actions would be surrounded by something… well, grand.
Life seems to follow this formula. Generally, at least. Weddings are surrounded by cheering family and friends, perhaps a love rival for some extra drama. There’s expensive dresses and suits, painstakingly put together venues, the works.
Funerals are grand in a different way. Everyone dresses in black, people prepare speeches, there’s a line of cars traveling in a procession to the burial site. Shrines are put up in people’s homes- fuck, in the movies it’s usually raining, as if whatever god up there deemed the world should be sad.
Graduations usually come with big celebrations and parties. More speeches, more fancy outfits, more ceremonial actions. Fuck, even movie debuts can bring out the red carpet and the designer clothes. Holidays come with fireworks and sparkling lights and family traditions.
But All For One is finally dead, and everyone who could possibly celebrate it is, too.
There are no fireworks. There is no one cheering. There is just a vast, dusty wasteland, and cold, empty, silence.
Hitoshi is the only one still on his feet. Behind him, the only two people still fucking alive are one Shimura Tenko and Midoriya Izuku. One villain who turned hero when he realized his sensei’s goal was to destroy the world, and Hitoshi’s husband- the chosen one with the quirk meant to put All For One to rest for good.
Well, okay, they’re not legally married but by the time they turned eighteen the only government offices still operating were the ones that were glorified human experiment prisons with the goal to try and breed people who could combat the Nomus.
That didn’t work, in case you were wondering.
Shimura is speared through the chest by some of the rubble from the building All For One destroyed in a last ditch attempt to kill them off before they got to him first. Izuku has a giant gash in the junction of his neck and shoulder, and has about five minutes left to live, tops.
Hitoshi has a splitting migraine from holding a supervillain with hundreds of quirks meant to combat mind control with a mind control quirk, a broken arm, a large but thin gash running up the length of his left leg, and hundreds of tiny cuts and bruises from various building debris. A fucking miracle, really.
Not that it matters. All For One got what he wanted, in the end. The world is destroyed. Japan is practically leveled, and the parts of the other countries that aren’t are in such shambles that it’ll take humanity centuries to recover. So who really gives a fuck if Hitoshi lives to see tomorrow? There’s no one to fix his arm and nothing to fix it with, and everyone that he’s ever cared about is going to be dead in the very near future. There’s no point.
“Well,” Hitoshi says, turning around and ignoring the way his leg twinges in protest, “that’s it then, huh?”
“Hitoshi,” Izuku breathes, his working arm extending in his direction. Hitoshi is by his side in a second, shoving back all his emotions in favor of comforting him and resolutely ignoring the way Izuku’s blood bubbles up to his lips.
“I’m here,” he says, voice cracking despite the apathy that’s setting in, “I’m here. It’s okay now, alright? You did it, Izuku. You can rest. It’ll be okay.”
There’s a pause. His words hang heavy in the air. They all know what rest really means.
“Wait,” Shimura chokes, “it’s not over.”
Hitoshi looks at him. He tightens his grip on Izuku almost instinctively.
“Shimura, please,” he says, “don’t do this.”
Shimura looks him dead in the eyes. “All For One had a quirk that can help. I have his quirks-”
“-No,” Hitoshi rushes out desperately. “Don’t finish that fucking sentence-”
“-It can send one of us through time.”
There’s another silence, this one far more tense than the last. Hitoshi’s grip on Izuku’s hand is vice-like as the mere idea of going back, of fixing this, floats through his mind.
“How?” Izuku whispers.
Shimura’s still looking at Hitoshi. “I have a quirk that gives someone the ability to- to mess with time. Like a save point, except this one keeps track of every single moment you’ve ever been alive. If I had to guess, I’d say All For One used it a fuck ton of times and none of us ever knew.”
“One of us can go back. I can give someone the quirk, and we can go back to our past selves and try and stop this.”
One of us.
“You mean me,” Hitoshi states.
A pause.
Izuku takes in a shuddering breath. It’s wet, because there’s blood in his lungs. “You’re the only one who isn’t about to die, Hitoshi.”
He looks out at the wasteland around them. Stares at the broken concrete he’s standing on, at the small little metal bolt that came loose from a steel beam that’s cracked into pieces around them, at the broken glass and shattered wooden beams that are all stained with blood. Their blood, their friend’s blood, does it really fucking matter?
He could fix it all. Go back. See them again, when they aren’t lifeless and bloodied and disfigured beyond recognition. He could save everyone.
“What happens if I do die, while I have the quirk active?” He asks, voice quiet but cutting.
“The same thing that happened to All For One,” Shimura replies.
Hitoshi hangs his head. Weighs his options.
He really only has one, though.
He leans down, plants a kiss on Izuku’s forehead, and squeezes his hand one last time before pushing to his feet and walking over to Shimura Tenko. Shigaraki Tomura. Bitch. Whatever the fuck you want to call him.
Shimura weakly holds out a hand. Hitoshi takes it.
“Hitoshi, wait,” Izuku chokes out, and they both pause and turn to him.
“I love you,” he manages to say.
“Love you, too,” Hitoshi murmurs. There’s a burning feeling going through his arm and intensifying his migraine- the quirk being transferred- and it’s almost painful enough for him to miss the fact that Izuku did not live to hear his reply.
“Give him hell,” Shimura demands when Hitoshi steps away.
“I plan on sending him to it, at least,” Hitoshi quips, flexing and unflexing his hands as he feels through the power he’s been given. Izuku always theorized that he’d be able to withstand multiple quirks because his original one was so heavily based in his brain- where the quirk factor is. Turns out he was right.
It’s weird, having another quirk. It feels like he’s four all over again and accidentally brainwashing his mother because he wanted a second cookie. Except he’s twenty-three, and if he doesn’t figure out how this works, everyone who is dead now stays that way.
Great.
But the key to most quirks is to breathe. So, while Shimura takes his final breaths, Hitoshi takes in a few deep ones. In, and out, and in, and out. Taking in the dust and the smog on the inhale, and then trying to expel it without coughing on the exhale.
The first thing that clues him into the quirk working is the utterly blinding agony that is the new intensity of his migraine.
The second is the way the world fades away into a swirl of color until it is nothing but a vast emptiness.
~
It turns out that ripping your consciousness from one point in time and shoving it into another is incredibly painful.
It’s almost like he’s a piece of fabric that’s being torn by hand, each seam fighting the pull before being ripped violently from its proper place. It feels like burning and being stabbed and being shredded all at the same time, and even in the vast emptiness of the void he’s being pulled through as he travels he is screaming, though he can’t hear it make a sound.
In the void there is a singular glowing line. He’s traveling parallel to it, unable to deviate from the path. Hitoshi might think it was beautiful if he could think at all. The only thing running through his head above the pain is the word fifteen over and over again, trying to bring himself back to a time before the war. Before Jaku and All For One, before the sports festival and the USJ-
And then, suddenly, there is light. Blinding in its suddenness, it takes Hitoshi a moment to realize that the light is making shapes and oh, he’s on the ground of a classroom.
He tries to shift to sit up and immediately all of his limbs protest the movement. A groan tears from his throat as he blinks rapidly, trying to focus all of the blurry objects into more complete figures.
“-hinsou, Shinsou, can you hear me, listener? Shinsou?”
Hitoshi squints. That sounds like Hizashi, except Hizashi is dead, so it couldn’t be-
Time travel. Time travel. Right.
“Sensei?” He manages. His throat feels raw, as though he’s been screaming.
“You were, little listener,” Yamada says gently. Oh, so he said that out loud, then. Hitoshi can see his face now- he’s taken off his sunglasses to reveal his sharp green eyes, and his hair is styled up like it is when he’s in his hero costume. Because they’re in school. He’s at UA. He’s fifteen.
Suddenly Hitoshi is much more aware. Everything comes back into focus. The desks, the chairs, the utterly horrified faces of his classmates from 1-C. Hitoshi can imagine it’s probably terrifying to see a classmate just start screaming and flailing on the floor in the middle of homeroom. Whoops.
He sits up. Yamada holds his hands out, hovering as though he’s expecting Hitoshi to double over and start vomiting or something. Which is valid- he certainly felt like it a second ago.
Now, though, he feels great. Considering that before he was working with a broken arm, horrible quirk overuse, and whatever the fuck all that time travel shit was, this general soreness in his muscles is actually a vast improvement. The worst of it is a slight aching behind his temples. All in all, nothing terrible.
“Shinsou?” Yamada asks again, “kiddo, how are you feeling?”
“Fine,” he answers honestly, taking a moment to take stock of his physical state. He’s smaller- duh- and he definitely feels weaker. Malnourished a little, which means he’s still in the foster system. He glances at the calendar that Yamada-sensei keeps posted at the door and sees that it’s a week after internships. Not ideal, but he can work with it.
Yamada laughs incredulously. “Kid, you just started screaming and thrashing before collapsing on the floor,” he says a little breathlessly, “are you sure you’re feeling fine?”
Hitoshi looks around at his bewildered classmates. “Well- my head hurts, and my throat, but I don’t… I don’t remember what happened, sir.”
The lie tastes bitter on his tongue, but he’ll apologize later. He needs to talk to Aizawa, preferably All Might, too. Nezu, definitely… maybe Sir Nighteye?
The chances of him getting this right in one go are… slim. Slim to none, actually. All For One has an unknown amount of time quirks that do unknown things- it’s entirely possible that he’s even predicted Hitoshi’s time traveling already. This means that his best bet is to try and gather as much information as possible, build a timeline of the villain’s movements so that he can strike when the bastard is least expecting him.
“Okay,” Yamada says. He breathes out a heavy sigh, and then pushes to his feet. “I’m gonna take you over to Recovery Girl, then, and we’ll see what she says. Everyone else stay put until a teacher arrives to give you further instructions.”
Gasps break out amongst the students that Hitoshi ignores in favor of standing up-
-His legs buckle as soon as he gets them under him. Yamada is quick and catches him before he can faceplant, but the sudden head rush causes a round of nausea to course through his gut. He clamps a hand over his mouth to keep the bile in, settling onto his knees to ride it out. Okay, so maybe time travel had a few more physical consequences than he was expecting.
Yamada begins to rub circles into his back as he trembles, which is sweet and all but time is of the essence here and Hitoshi can’t keep wasting it being a baby. He’s a war veteran goddamnit- he’s better than this.
Using a desk for support, he tries to stand up again. This time it goes a little bit better, and taking it slowly proves to negate some of the dizziness. Yamada gives up all pretenses of letting him walk on his own, though, as he keeps his hands firmly on Hitoshi’s shoulders as they begin to move towards the door.
One of his classmates- one of the quiet ones that never talked to him but also never participated in the pointed staring or gossipy whispering- calls out a cautious, “feel better soon, Shinsou-kun,” as they walk out. It starts a chorus of about half the class wishing him well. All of it makes something tense coil in his stomach, reminds him that all of these people are going to die in just a little over a year.
Hitoshi is feeling completely steady by the time they get out into the hallway, and once they get to the infirmary he makes them both stop.
“Sensei,” he says seriously, “I’m not sick. Or hurt.”
Yamada gives him a look. “Shinsou, kid-”
“No,” Hitoshi cuts him off, “I just time traveled. I’m-” he cuts himself off to mutter, “fuck, how do I say this without sounding insane?” as he pushes a hand through his hair- “my consciousness belongs to my twenty-three year old self, and it traveled back to now. By accident, mostly, this is the first time I’ve ever done that, and-”
“Woah woah woah, okay,” Yamada says, holding both hands up and looking very bewildered, “Shinsou, look, I know homeroom can be boring sometimes-”
“Oh my fucking god,” he groans, “I didn’t fucking fake that to get out of class. Have you seen my academic record, sensei? I literally would’ve just skipped. Look.” He clasps his hands together in front of his face. “How can I prove to you that I’m from the future? I can tell you a lot of things, about yourself, about your husband, about the League and all of the other big villain groups right now, or I could just tell you that Japan is about to fall to a centuries old supervillain with the ability to give and take quirks at will. Literally anything. But I really need you to start taking me seriously.”
Yamada looks at him for a long, long moment. They stand there, outside of the UA infirmary (and Hitoshi resolutely is not thinking about how the last time he saw this place it was a pile of rubble beneath Shimura’s deadly hands), and Yamada seems to be contemplating every single life choice that has ever brought him to this moment.
“How do you know I have a husband?” He squeaks out eventually.
“Because he’s my mentor and you both adopt me two weeks after the summer training camp for the hero students. Which goes horribly wrong, in case you were wondering.”
“Ah,” Yamada breathes. “Right. Of course.”
A beat.
“Can we go talk to Nezu now?” Hitoshi asks.
Yamada turns right the fuck on his heel and starts marching in the direction of the principal’s office, calling behind him as he walks: “That sounds like a great idea!”
~
“So All For One isn’t dead after all,” All Might- in his emaciated form- says grimly. His hands are folded in front of his face, and he makes the perfect picture of solemn contemplation.
Hitoshi, meanwhile, is pacing the floor of Nezu’s office, a cup of coffee in one hand and a fidget cube in the other as all of the weight of his near decade of trauma decides now is the best time to slap him in the face.
He’s in a room of dead people. It’s him, Nezu, Aizawa, Yamada, All Might (Yagi?), Midoriya- which is the one that hurts the most, even above his fathers who don’t know who he is- and Detective Tsukauchi, Sir Nighteye, and Hawks are on their way. It’s fucking driving his nerves up the wall, and Hitoshi can barely stand it.
“You’re gonna pace a hole in the floor,” Aizawa sighs, sipping his own cup of coffee and observing him carefully. Hitoshi can’t identify the look in his eyes because the Aizawa he remembers is so drastically changed from the man he was when he first met him. Even above the fact that physically, they look very, very different. All of that feels like someone stabbing a knife into his chest and twisting brutally.
“I’m in a room full of people who’s bodies I remember burying, asshole,” Hitoshi grits out, “it’s a fucking miracle I haven’t started having a panic attack already.”
Aizawa stalls, body going rigid, and he looks like he hadn’t even considered that yet. Midoriya’s eyes zero in on him instantly. They’re sad, guilty. Undoubtedly, he’s thinking about how it should be him in Hitoshi’s place, or he’s thinking about how he wasn’t enough in the future despite the fact that he, at age fucking seventeen, became the commander for an army that, at best, would’ve died in a week without him. Hitoshi can’t stand that, either.
“Stop it,” he hisses, stopping in place and staring at Midoriya who jolts as though he’s been caught. “Whatever the fuck you’re thinking right now is stupid, okay? I chose this shit, I just gotta get used to it.”
His- fuck, they’re not even friends right now and Hitoshi used to call this boy his husband- Mdioriya looks down. “But I have One For All,” he whispers, dejected, “I should’ve been able to-”
“No,” Hitoshi cuts him off, “no, none of that shit, okay? You did what you could. Actually, you did kill him, eventually.”
“But it was too late,” Midoriya protests.
“Not too late. I’m here, right? We can still stop him.” He turns to Nezu before the other boy can protest anymore, “I can travel to any point when I was alive as long as I don’t die doing it. We have infinity to figure this out.”
“Hopefully we don’t need that long,” the rat says cheerfully, sipping from his cup of tea like he doesn’t have a care in the world. He does. Hitoshi can see the subtle ear flick. “But let’s start simple. What do you know about the quirks he possesses?”
And so it goes. Someone asks him a question, and Hitoshi fills in the blanks. They start out simple. What quirks does he have? Who is he working with? Where is he at different points in time?
Hitoshi makes them a timeline, starting with Kamino and working until he’s dead. He leaves out when everyone dies, and sticks to All For One’s main movements. At some point in the middle, the rest of their guests show up.
“This,” he says as he points to the place on the timeline labeled Jaku City Incident, “is our point of no return. Technically we have until about four months after this-” he points to the place labeled MLA and League team up- “but uh, just gonna go ahead here and say that letting Shigaraki’s little incubation shit finish is a bad idea.”
“When would you say is the best time to strike?” Sir Nighteye asks, observing his shoddy little timeline as if he’s committing it to memory. He probably is. Or not, Hitoshi actually never met this guy before he died in their first year.
“In an ideal world,” Hitoshi drawls, leveling All Might, Tsukauchi, and Sir Nighteye with a look, “Six years ago.”
All three men flinch. Midoriya purses his lip, probably torn between defending his mentor and admitting that, yeah, they probably should’ve checked for a body.
Aizawa has no such qualms. “He’s right. You should’ve burned his corpse.”
“It would’ve solved all our problems,” Hawks agrees.
“I am truly sorry,” All Might whispers, head bowed, and dammit Hitoshi can’t handle the kicked puppy look. He waves the man off and shakes his head.
“Anyways,” Hitoshi says, “Kamino would probably be our best shot. We let the timeline go on as normal until then, and then we should theoretically be able to put like, Snipe or someone in a position to blow his brains out after All Might kicks his ass for a second time.”
“You want me to let the training camp, where several of my students end up in critical condition, continue as normal?” Aizawa asks, only a little bit accusatory. He’s the best underground hero there is- he is intimately aware that sometimes, hard decisions are necessary.
“Yeah, actually, I do,” Hitoshi says. “Unless you want to watch them all die. In which case maybe I can bring a phone to the future and take some pictures for you?”
Everyone pales. No one says a word
“That’s what I thought. Alright. Next order of business-” he looks at Hawks- “in the event that shooting him doesn’t work, how hard do you think it would be to convince the commission to kill All For One while he’s in their custody?”
“Impossible,” Hawks answers immediately, fidgeting with his own cube that Yamada gave him to stop him from clawing holes in the furniture. “They’d want to try and manipulate him into using his quirk to help them.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen,” Midoriya mutters, “even without you telling us that All For One escapes eventually, it’d be pretty obvious that someone with centuries worth of quirks would be able to break out of a facility that's already had security flaws when dealing with other problematic quirks. He likely has one that keeps him alive, probably something that reverses aging or just halts it, and if the quirk suppressants in Tartarus worked on him how they’re supposed to, we wouldn’t be having this conversation because he’d have died immediately. So obviously he’d just bide his time until-”
There is a pause. Midoriya looks up, having previously been lost in thought. He blushes immediately, stammering apologies for mumbling too much, and Hitoshi has to work double time to prevent himself from bursting into sobs at the familiar mannerism that got beaten out of his husband by the second year of the war.
“Yeah,” he says eventually, managing to keep his voice mostly steady, “something like that.”
Aizawa levels him with an all-too knowing look.
Hitoshi clears his throat. He needs to get back control of the situation. “So uh, theoretically, then, how hard would it be to break in to Tartarus, with the hypothetical goal of killing All For One while he’s in custody?”
Hawks blinks, Tsukauchi heaves a weary sigh- oh boy is Hitoshi about to have bad news for him regarding some potential vigilantism in the near future- Aizawa and Yamada both snort in tandem and look at each other, Sir Nighteye looks utterly flabbergasted, and Midoriya and All Might exchange a worried glance that Hitoshi is electing to ignore for now.
Nezu- the only helpful one of the group, apparently- pipes up with a very enthusiastic, “oh, I’ve had a program to disable their security measures ready to use for years!”
~
They go with the Kamino thing. The only difference is that instead of stationing Snipe in one of the buildings, they made sure Hitoshi was brushed up on his sniper rifle knowledge and shoved him in position instead.
He vastly prefers this- he’s a very avid member of the “you want something done right, you do it yourself” club- and is all too happy to show off all the gun skills he learned while he was fighting for his life against killer monsters that would rip him to shreds in an instant if he didn’t have a long ranged weapon.
Most of Hitoshi’s time leading up to the training camp and subsequent hopefully successful murder attempt is spent doing things like that. Sparring, expanding his weapons proficiency, and making sure he’s 100% used to being in a smaller body again.
Aizawa and Yamada advocate to pull him out of his foster home, given that an abusive environment cannot be good for the mental health of a war veteran who’s seen a lot of shit, but Hitoshi tells them not to bother. He doesn’t spend any time in the home at all, instead traveling around to the different facilities he remembers the locations of and scoping them out.
A lot of the time he gets a hero as backup- Hawks, mostly, and Aizawa when it’s not him- but sometimes he goes alone. Like the time he went to the Nomu camp out in the Miyagi prefecture. It’s hard to control himself when it’s just him. Him and his swirling thoughts and violent memories. The urge to break in and destroy is sometimes so heavy that he winds up shoplifting some cigarettes on the way back just to take the edge off.
He and Midoriya don’t talk too much between the original meeting and the training camp. Aizawa seemed surprised when the boy managed to keep everything a secret, but Hitoshi married that bastard and knows exactly how good he is at lying. When you tell Midoriya Izuku something in confidence, that shit stays in confidence unless it’s literally a life or death situation.
Especially when it’s about a life or death situation.
Hitoshi spends those next few months avoiding any emotional conversation, being as vague as possible when asked questions about their impending doom, and hoping to god he didn’t already fuck up the butterfly effect beyond repair.
And then, finally, the training camp arrives-
-and nothing happens.
The moment the third night hits and Aizawa reports no activity, Hitoshi goes over to Kamino to see that the warehouse and the bar are completely empty. They even arrest the traitor only to find that they’re bewildered, too. There was supposed to be an attack.
So why wasn’t there?
“Maybe… maybe someone took the surveillance footage from the office?” Midoriya suggests the day after the camp ends, when it’s just the two of them, Aizawa, Yamada, and Nezu sitting in the principal’s office. All Might got pulled away for some mundane hero work.
“Are you absolutely certain that everyone you told about your time traveling was safe?” Aizawa asks.
Hitoshi nods. He is. The only explanation…
“Hawks might be bugged,” he realizes, “fuck, if the commission heard all that…”
“Then they’d probably try and strike first, which would alert All For One,” Yamada finishes. “Is there anything else we can do?”
“I’m afraid that, because of this, we’ve lost all of our ability to predict future events,” Nezu says, solemn for once as he looks at Hitoshi. “Can you go back again?”
“Yeah, I can,” he replies, sitting up straight in preparation to try and activate the quirk, but Aizawa holds up a hand before he can.
“Let’s think about this before you go,” he suggests. “Is there a better point in time you can go to? Somewhere further back, with fewer variables?”
“What about back to when All Might originally fought him?” Midoriya throws out, “I mean, if you could finish the job then, or get All Might to do it…”
“I’d be nine,” Hitoshi reminds him, “which isn’t impossible to work with- I could just go and find you guys again-” he nods at Aizawa and Yamada- “but I dunno. Would you two believe a nine year old telling you that a supervillain is about to die and you need to make sure it actually happens?”
“I’d believe you, I think,” Yamada answers. “I mean, you know too much for it to just be coincidence or insanity. Especially if you’re nine. Besides, Shouta and I didn’t actually start living together until I moved in with him three years ago.”
Aizawa nods along. “I can ask All Might for the location.”
“Might I suggest you go back there once without trying to alter the timeline in order to understand how exactly the event transpires?” Nezu adds, “that way you’ll know how your actions impact the world exactly.”
“Yeah,” Hitoshi nods. “Yeah, let’s do that.”
An hour later with a location memorized, Hitoshi takes a few more deep breaths and embraces the searing agony of time travel once more.
~
This time, when he travels through the void, he isn’t just flying blindly. His feet touch what feels like solid ground and he stands, for just a moment, in the midst of nothing, stagnant on the timeline.
Then the pain takes over again and he is ripped violently back towards the beginning, chanting nine nine nine in his mind like a prayer.
~
Hitoshi wakes up in his nine year old body with a sharp gasp.
His throat feels raw again and he is tangled completely in the thin sheet that is supposed to pose as a blanket in this sorry excuse for a foster home. The muzzle on his face must have prevented any significant noise from traveling through, however, because no one is coming to yell at him for being loud. Small mercies.
The date on his government issued phone says that it’s two weeks before All Might is going to fight All For One. He’s got no idea what to do with himself until then, but, well, he’ll think of something.
That something ends up being just… wandering around. It’s the summer, so he doesn’t have to worry about being too cold.
First order of business is getting the muzzle off his face. This is achieved through stealing the key from under his foster’s noses, fiddling with the lock, and then tossing it in the dumpster on the way out. Other than that? He shoplifts a little to keep himself fed, pickpockets the richer looking people here or there, and tries to keep himself entertained while he waits to watch a battle between titans.
Said battle turns out to be brutal. All For One literally punches a hole through All Might’s stomach and then All Might crushes his face and rips out his organs. The ground around them is destroyed, a few buildings are toppled, and Hitoshi has to wonder how the fuck there isn’t press storming the place. By the end of is, All For One is laying on the ground, abdomen torn open and organs spilling out- fucking gross, but incredibly satisfying to watch- and All Might is standing hunched over, clutching his side. After a momentary pause he just… leaves, probably expecting All For One to bleed out right then and there.
Which is… it’s a valid assumption, honestly. But it’s only a matter of seconds after All Might’s gone before Kurogiri is opening up a portal and a second Nomu is coming through, likely to take All For One back to Doctor Garaki for healing.
Hitoshi shakes his head. Always double check to make sure they’re dead.
This time when he takes a deep breath, the scent of iron stings his nose.
~
Now that he’s only in mildly all-consuming agony instead of excruciating, Hitoshi can finally appreciate the beauty of what he’s quickly realizing is his timeline. Not the world’s, just his.
It’s a single glowing line, golden with little sparks flying off. It reminds him of Denki’s quirk, if his quirk looked more like molten gold and less like pulsating energy. Still, there are similarities there that hurt his heart and remind him that he will never get the chance to see his friends ever again.
His feet stay on the invisible path longer this time, and when he’s pulled back to where he just was two weeks ago, the harsh tugging is almost comforting.
~
Knocking on Aizawa’s door at midnight almost feels like he’s torturing the man, but Aizawa still answers in all his pissed off exhausted glory.
The Aizawa from six years before Hitoshi meets him looks… almost identical to the Aizawa during his first year at UA. His hair looks a bit fuller and there is no scar under his eye (Hitoshi still isn’t quite over the fact that he has two of them when he was missing one for so long), but other than that he has the same exhaustion clinging to him and the same resting “if I don’t get coffee in the next five seconds I’m going to kill someone” face.
He looks down at Hitoshi, who is, might he remind you, fucking nine, and lets out one of the weariest sighs Hitoshi has ever heard.
“Can I help you, kid?” He asks, making a valiant effort to force the irritation from his tone.
“I’m going to need you to let me explain fully before you call me insane,” Hitoshi starts, and then without waiting for confirmation says, “I’m a time traveler, and I need you to help me make sure a supervillain who is eventually going to destroy Japan dies for real the first time.”
Aizawa blinks. Hitoshi stares placidly back at him.
“I don’t get paid enough for this,” Aizawa says, but he still steps aside and opens his door a little wider.
“No, you don’t,” Hitoshi agrees as he walks inside, “and you never will be. Japan collapses before you get a raise.”
“Fantastic,” the man drawls. He locks his door and then sets a hand on Hitoshi’s back to push him towards the couch, “start talking, kid.”
Hitoshi does, explaining everything up until that point in the simplest terms he can, if only for the sake of time. By the end of it Aizawa is staring at his floor, looking halfway to an existential crisis and halfway like he’s about to go rogue and kill the entirety of Japan’s criminal underground by himself.
Eventually, he just mutters, “I’m not ready to be a father,” which has Hitoshi nearly dying of laughter.
Aizawa stares at him, bewildered, and Hitoshi manages to choke out, “you’re not. At least, not for like six years. You’ve got time.”
The man blinks. Hitoshi snorts again and wipes the tears from his eyes.
“More importantly, we have a supervillain to murder,” Hitoshi reminds him. Aizawa’s eyes flash with that rage again.
It’s admirable how angry Aizawa can get on behalf of people he doesn’t even know. It’s the basic implication that someone will, at some point, hurt the people he considers his family that really gets him mad, and Hitoshi wonders how tiring it must be to be angry like that all the time. To see the worst of humanity and still have the energy to get pissed about it. He also envies that ability deeply.
“Right,” Aizawa says, a firm set to his jaw. “What’s the plan, kid?”
~
All For One isn’t there by the time Hitoshi and Aizawa get there.
His blood is, and the remains that didn’t quite… stay in his body, but despite the fact that they got there six hours early, the fight seems to already be over.
“I don’t get it,” Hitoshi breathes, “I don’t- what?”
“Did you get the right time?” Aizawa asks, but it doesn’t sound accusatory or like he thinks Hitoshi is just fucking with him. That would be comforting if he wasn’t so confused.
“Yes!” He yells, “I- I literally watched it happen. I memorized the time, I went back to make sure that I had it right, I- I don’t understand.”
They stand there for a while, on the outskirts of the rubble that the colossal fight created. Hitoshi begins to pace, some combination of anger and confusion and helplessness swirling within him. It doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t-
“Shinsou,” Aizawa says, voice quiet and a little… scared. “You said… you said that this quirk that you’re using- it originally came from All For One?”
Hitoshi pauses and looks at him. “Yeah? Well, originally it came from whoever he stole it from, but-”
Aizawa cuts him off, “Do you know if he has any other time-related quirks?”
Everything comes to a grinding halt. His breath catches.
He’d had this thought himself, at the beginning of his first loop back. All For One has more than just the quirk Hitoshi possesses. He could, theoretically, be predicting Hitoshi’s every move despite the fact that it’s different from the original timeline.
“Shit,” he breathes, “oh fuck.”
It’s probably a sight to see, a nine year old swearing like a sailor. Bakugou’s teachers probably had a heart attack when he started cursing people out at age five.
“I need to test something,” he says, and without waiting for Aizawa’s response, falls backwards into the aching pain of the void.
~
The tug isn’t as strong this time around. Hitoshi finds that he can keep himself still along the invisible bridge.
He observes his timeline from the outside for a long, long time. Trying to pinpoint exactly where he wants to go and plan exactly what he wants to do. Eventually, after standing there for so long, he becomes aware of the howling winds that seem to be echoing through the space. It’s eerie.
It’s lonely.
Izuku would think that it was beautiful. Izuku is dead.
The moment Hitoshi takes a step, that pull returns, and he’s yanked forcefully back to age fifteen.
~
Stealing from the facilities that house and build support items for heroes is a little harder than his usual shoplifting, but not impossible. Hitoshi has years of stealth beaten into him from the war, after all. If you were too aggressive with your movements, if you happened to step on and snap a twig, if you breathed too loudly, there was always the possibility of a Nomu hearing and alerting a horde. If that happened, well, fuck, you might as well just start digging your own grave.
So he’s pretty good at getting past security measures and sneaking through guards. The ones he can’t sneak past, he just knocks out with his quirk. Hopefully, as long as his disguise stays in place and no one recognizes the true nature of his quirk, he’ll be able to slip under the radar as some no-name villain and not a fifteen year old who recently applied to and got into UA.
The goal this time around is to interact with the main events as little as possible up until Kamino. Hitoshi is still of the mind that that is the easiest place to intercept and kill All For One, and until he’s proven otherwise he might as well run with it.
Hopefully, if nothing changes much for the people that matter, All For One won’t notice that he’s changed until it’s too late. Hitoshi takes his stolen gear- a spare capture weapon (sorry Aizawa), some kevlar body armor, two pistols, one sniper rifle, and as much ammo as he could carry after all of that- and stashes them in a hidden crevice in an abandoned warehouse by his foster home.
Hitoshi knows from about two years of stashing extra food and money in said crevice that no one ever checks there. He’s going to come back frequently, just in case, but for now he’s confident in its ability to keep his stuff safe.
From there, he tries to go about the route as normal. He goes to school, he loses against Midoriya in the sports festival (and oh, it aches to say all those awful things to him again), he trains with Aizawa, he witnesses the disaster that is 1-A’s first year from an outside point of view and tries to pretend that he’s okay, that all of his trauma and memories aren’t eating him from the inside out.
It’s hard- nearly fucking impossible, actually- especially when Aizawa gives him that calculating, concerned look that says he knows something’s wrong and he’s going to get to the bottom of it because he cares. Especially when Midoriya bounds up to his lunch table to ask him to join him and his friends. Especially when Kaminari steals his phone so he can text himself from Hitoshi’s phone to get his number. Especially when-
It’s hard. It’s… it’s hard.
Hitoshi misses his family. Hitoshi is never going to see his family again.
That’s the part that Hitoshi didn’t get at first, when Shimura said he’d be able to go back. All that was really running through Hitoshi’s head was the fact that Izuku was seconds away from dying and Shimura only minutes, and the moment they both took their last breath he’d be alone. Painfully and utterly alone.
And there Shimura was, with the option to fix everything. Izuku and Shouta and Denki wouldn’t have to die. Katsuki and Shouto. Eijirou- Kyouka- fucking Neito. Everyone would be alive again, and Hitoshi would be able to stop them from dying in the first place. It’d be a second chance.
He didn’t realize that, even if he succeeds in this, he would still end up alone.
No one knows him anymore. They never can. Hitoshi has years worth of history with these people that they will never remember and never experience. There is a fundamental difference in who they are now and who they would have been should none of this time travel shit have ever occurred.
It’s painfully obvious as he watches Bakugou yell and snap and blow up, Midoriya shake and cower, Uraraka pick at her food aimlessly, Asui fidgeting anxiously despite her cool persona.
Katuski, Izuku, Ochako, and Tsu- they didn’t do any of that. Sure they started like that, when they were all getting to know each other, before all of the villain attacks, but by the end…
Katsuki was probably one of the kindest people in their ranks. He was gruff, spewed insults all the time, sure, but that’s how you knew he liked you. And when Hitoshi lost Hizashi, lost Shouta, Katsuki more than anyone else pulled him through it. Sitting by his side and smoking with him, letting him scream and fight all his energy out, calling him on his bullshit- he wouldn’t have survived without that man.
Izuku was their commander. He was strong and sharp and confident. There was no hesitation, no stuttering, no backing down from a challenge- he was the first to volunteer when the others were scared and his words never failed to call everyone to action.
Ochako kept stock of their supplies. Her money insecurity all her life meant that she was a master at budgeting and rationing. She never wasted shit and made sure no one else did, either. She took the brunt of their shortages and refused to leave anyone behind.
And Tsu was always so collected- truly collected. She shed her anxiety the moment shit hit the fan and was a common face surrounding the more twitchy members of their squad. Denki, Eijirou, Hitoshi. She walked them through breathing exercises and made sure they kept their heads level.
And those people are all dead. The people who helped him through his panic attacks, got him through his grieving, loved him, they’re all gone, and they’re never coming back.
That knowledge hurts more than anything else does, but it also makes it much easier for him to distance himself. Stay separate from all the emotions that are screaming at him to act now, stop All For One now. He needs to turn those emotions off. Act logically.
“Do you know why heroes aren’t allowed to be a part of missions that concern their friends and loved ones?” Shouta asked him one day while they were crouched on the windowsill of a warehouse that housed hundreds of Nomus.
“Because they’d do something stupid?” Hitoshi guessed.
“Yes,” Shouta said with a nod. His voice was taught with rage and grief, his brows drawn into a murderous glare as he watched Garaki putter about among the consoles. There is a vat beside one of the monitors, and in it, Hizashi’s mangled dead body is floating up and down in a slight motion.
“So we’re about to do something stupid, then,” he filled in.
“Oh,” Shouta breathed. He pulled a pistol out of his jacket and then gripped his capture weapon with his free hand. “Definitely.”
Hitoshi inhales a shuddering breath. Ectoplasm is writing algebra equations on the board and droning on about how they’re going over a new concept and it’s okay if you all don’t get it on your first try.
Logically.
He has to act logically.
~
Kamino Ward is quiet tonight.
Hitoshi hikes his rifle up so it’s sitting more securely across his back, and then he swings up to a rooftop in order to start making his way over to All For One’s warehouse.
The ambient noise of the city follows him as his feet land silently and he continues running. Stuff like this- the stealth, the action- it’s always been exhilarating. The wind in his hair, the burning in his lungs, his legs.
This sort of physical activity always makes the rest of the world fade away. He has one objective: get to the warehouse undetected. In that moment, nothing else matters.
Hitoshi always imagined that this is what it would’ve been like if he had gotten the chance to become a hero. The still nights, the eerie quiet, the running across roofs and dropping down on criminals in the alleyways between them. Sometimes, to help him fall asleep, or to help him cope with the war, that’s what he’d imagine that he was actually doing. Just going out on another day on the job to help people who were getting robbed by purse snatchers.
It was an easier reality to face than, well, reality. Now it just makes him feel a sense of deep longing.
The closer he gets to the warehouse, the stiffer he becomes. Something’s wrong. That sense in the back of his mind that isn’t quite as honed as Izuku’s or Shouta’s- but is still pinpoint accurate when it goes off- is screaming at him.
Wrong wrong wrong. He’s a single roof away now, and something is about to go wrong.
It happens in the form of those jagged red and black spikes- the ones that killed Katuski and Tsu, the ones that took Mina’s quirk- shooting out from the window of the warehouse, and before he has a chance to move one pierces him through his left shoulder.
Hitoshi bites back his cry as it digs in before yanking him forward. His body collides with the window- little shards of glass cut into his arms as he braces- and then then floor.
The spike retracts as soon as he’s brought into the warehouse and Hitoshi lands in a roll, right hand moving to draw one of his pistols the moment he’s on solid ground with his feet under him. He ends up kneeling- in a position that would allow him to shoot to his feet in a moment- gun out and pointed straight at the head of the bastard that started all of this.
All For One is reclined in a wheelchair, breathing mask hooked up to various monitors and machines. Hitoshi can’t help but remember what he looked like when all of his organs were spilling from the gaping wound in his chest. The image fills him with a visceral satisfaction.
“Well,” the villain says, clasping his hands together in his lap, “you recover remarkably quickly.”
“That’s your fault,” Hitoshi snarls. His shoulder is throbbing and his arms stinging, but he doesn’t particularly give a shit.
“I’m aware,” All For One drawls, “perhaps you should thank me for such useful training.”
He growls. All For One laughs.
In one smooth movement, Hitoshi tilts his gun down and shoots him straight in the knee.
The villain’s laughter cuts off into a sharp yelp, a sound that would almost be funny on someone so composed if it weren’t for the fact that he immediately retaliates with more of those spike things. Hitoshi dodges the first three, but he doesn’t manage to get past the next ten.
One stabs him in his other shoulder, a second in his opposite leg, and a third stops right before it pierces his neck. Hitoshi grits his teeth with a low hiss, refusing to let this motherfucker have the satisfaction of hearing him scream.
“Overkill, much?” He quips, if only to distract from how much the spikes in him burn.
“I could take your quirk right now,” All For One reminds him as he leans forwards- notably on his leg that does not currently have a bullet in it. “Both of them.”
Hitoshi glares. He gets the feeling that the villain is grinning under that stupid mask of his.
After a long moment, Hitoshi realizes that he wants a response. This is a game to him. Hitoshi is nothing more than a rogue piece on the board that he controls completely. It pisses him off.
“You’re not going to, though,” he guesses. He gets a nod of confirmation, and then asks, “why?”
All For One hums. “It wouldn’t change anything. No matter what I do to you now, I will always die in that final fight. The only difference is that this time, there will be no one left alive to come back like you are to try and stop me.”
Hitoshi stares. “You want me to help you,” he realizes. An incredulous laugh spills from his lips. “You- you actually think I’d ever-”
“How long do you think you can keep this up, Shinsou?” All For One asks innocuously, tilting his head, “how many times do you think you can go back? How many times have you already gone back, before you realized that I will always be three steps ahead of you?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Oh, but I think it does.” The spikes retract, and Hitoshi inhales a sharp breath as he tries to steady himself before he falls. All For One continues. “I think that, eventually, you will give up. You’re a stubborn man, Shinsou Hitoshi. Nearly as bad as your late husband, but you are fighting more than just an uphill battle against me. There is no scenario in which you can outsmart me and win, and I am extremely patient. Even if it takes centuries, your insanity will drive you to bargain with me eventually. It is only a matter of time.”
Hitoshi glares. He wishes desperately that looks could kill, wishes that he had a different quirk, so that he could light this bastard up with just a glance.
“I think you underestimate just how much I hate you,” He spits.
All For One laughs again. “Oh, but hatred is a fleeting emotion, is it not?”
Another spike bursts from the ground, aimed straight at Hitoshi’s face. He understands it for what it is- this conversation is over, and All For One wants him gone.
This time he obliges, falling backwards into the arms of the void. As the world fades around him, he hears All For One call out, “see you soon, anomaly.”
~
His injuries from the previous loop carry through to the void. Each of the limbs that had been stabbed are throbbing, and there is still blood soaking his clothes.
He realizes abruptly that it’s much easier to focus on that lesser pain now. The throbbing that came from the feeling of his body being ripped apart and put back together is nearly gone. He’s almost gained proficiency with the quirk, then.
Cautiously, he takes one step along the invisible bridge. The pull returns, but he can fight it this time. He takes another step, and then another, and then he is walking.
Hitoshi reaches out with one hand towards his timeline. His fingers connect with something solid, even though nothing is there. Ah. It’s not an invisible bridge- it’s an invisible tunnel. He is stuck moving parallel to his timeline; cannot deviate or explore the rest of the void.
Where does he want to go next? He needs to outsmart a supervillain who basically knows everything. How do you even do that?
His fingers glide along the invisible wall in time with him walking along the path. Think, Hitoshi.
Mind made up, he lets the tugging sensation take over as the real world falls back into focus.
~
This time when he returns to his body, he manages to stop himself from screaming.
It still hurts, don’t get him wrong, but it’s not nearly as bad as it was. Or he’s just getting used to it, or maybe a bit of both.
It’s a good thing he kept quiet, though, because he ended up traveling into his sixteen year old body in the middle of 1-A’s common room surrounded by most of his friends. They’re watching Avengers: Endgame, which is either a hilarious coincidence or cruel irony. He hasn’t decided yet.
Midoriya is curled into his side, and Hitoshi’s curled up to Kaminari. Uraraka is sitting against Midoriya’s feet with Asui pressed against her, and Todoroki and Iida are sitting together on the loveseat. Sero and Kirishima are tangled together, too, and they’re both taking up Kaminari’s other side. The rest of the class is lying in various cuddle piles on the floor in front of the TV. It’s nostalgic.
It hurts. It hurts so much.
Hitoshi swallows back his tears. They’re at the point in the movie where the remaining Avengers just figured out time travel and are preparing to go back and get the infinity stones. Quietly, he excuses himself to go to the bathroom.
“Are you okay?” Midoriya whispers, looking up at him with concerned eyes that see through him far too easily.
Hitoshi smiles back. “Yeah,” he says, hopefully in a reassuring manner, “be right back.”
Midoriya gives him one of his own smiles in response, something slow and easy. There’s a little bit of affection in there, too, and he wonders how it took him so long to realize he was in love with this boy the first time around.
That hurts, too.
As soon as he’s out of sight, he pulls his phone out of his pocket and checks the date. December 5th- so they’ve got a little less than two months. That’s not terrible, and Hitoshi should only need half of that for what he has planned.
He does as he said he would and goes to the bathroom, stopping at one of the sinks to splash some water on his face to help clear his mind.
All For One can predict his movements. He knows he’s here.
All For One is currently stuck in Tartarus, with supposedly no way out because Kurogiri is arrested, too, and the defense mechanisms would activate before their secondary warp quirk could teleport him safely out of harm's way.
Midoriya’s little tirade from his first loop back runs through his mind. Just how effective are the quirk suppressants in Tartarus? Aizawa’s quirk only worked on one of Shimura’s- he had to pick one, and it was usually Decay because without something blocking that they were all dead. Is that how it works for All For One? Or is it different?
Maybe all of All For One’s quirks are connected to his first one, stored in some kind of separate system to keep them from overloading his body? If they severed his connection to his first quirk, would it cut off the others? No, it can’t be that, because then Midoriya would be right- All For One would be dead as the weight of his centuries caught up to him instantly as soon as they put him in Tartarus.
“Fuck,” he hisses, splashing another handful of water on his face.
Start small. Figure out exactly what’s going on. Find the variables- then fuck around with them and see what you get.
“Okay, okay,” he says to himself, stepping back from the sink and grabbing some paper towels to dry off with. “I can do this. It’s gonna be okay.”
His eyes catch on his reflection in one of the mirrors. He looks tired, but not worn out, and nothing like he remembers looking. All of his facial scars are gone, and that one slash mark that went from mid-chest up to his jaw that almost killed him at age twenty-one, and the burn scars that used to cover his hands from when he, Shouto, and Tenya went up against Dabi. And he’s younger, his skin is a healthier color, his hair isn’t covered in grime and dirt and tangled beyond measure-
He hates it. It’s not him. It’s someone else, someone he doesn’t recognize anymore.
He grits his teeth, turns away from the mirror, and goes back out to rejoin the people he used to call his friends.
~
“Sensei,” Hitoshi says as he approaches Yamada’s podium the next morning in homeroom, “I need to talk to Nezu.”
Yamada raises an eyebrow at him. “About what?” He asks.
He glances back at the classroom. Some of them are looking at him curiously, some are trying to pretend they’re not eavesdropping.
“Can I tell you later?” He whispers, low enough that just his- is Yamada his father at this point?- teacher can hear. “It’s… it’s important.”
Yamada frowns but nods all the same. He pulls out a hall pass from his podium and starts scribbling some stuff on it before handing it to him. “Be back before first period,” he says.
Hitoshi nods with a light bow even though he’s definitely not going to be. He takes the hall pass and shoots his teacher-father-whatever-he-is a small smile before saying a quiet, “thanks,” and walking out the door.
Nezu’s door opens on its own before Hitoshi can even knock. The stoat (“Seriously, guys,” Izuku groaned one night while they were reminiscing around a fire pit, “he’s not a rat, I swear if one more person-”) smiles cheerfully at him, like he always does, and gestures for Hitoshi to take a seat.
“Come, come!” Nezu calls, “it isn’t often I get student visitors. Not willingly, anyways. Tea?”
Ah, Nezu. He never really changes, does he?
Hitoshi takes a seat with a small smile. “I’d like some, thank you.”
A minute later when both he and the principal have a cup in front of them, Hitoshi begins.
“I need your help doing something extremely illegal,” is what he starts with, because there’s really no point in beating around the bush with this guy.
Nezu tilts his head. “Well, that was certainly unexpected. Something illegal that you cannot ask your fathers for help with?”
“No. I’ll have to tell them, probably, but they can’t get me what I need.” Hitoshi leans back in his chair. “I’m a time traveler. I’ve come from about seven years into the future, and All For One ends up destroying the world. Shigaraki gave me one of his quirks- that’s a long story just run with it for right now- and so now I can travel to any point in time when I was alive. I’m like, transferring my twenty-three year old consciousness between points, I guess.”
The stoat nods slowly, showing that he understands. “I do hope you know I’m going to have to ask for proof about all of this,” he says.
“Yeah, this isn’t the first time I’ve asked for your help,” Hitoshi replies. “The problem is, All For One also has this quirk, and probably about a dozen more. He knows what I’m gonna do before I do it, so I haven’t been able to find a way to kill him before he kills everyone.”
“Ah.” Nezu sips from his cup of tea. “You want to convince the commission to kill him while he’s in Tartarus, then.”
“Ha! No. They won’t do that- I already asked Hawks before,” Hitoshi says, “I want to break into Tartarus and shoot that motherfucker in the head. You said once that you had a program developed to disable their security measures?”
Nezu’s paws stall on his cup.
“Oh, you certainly aren’t lying then, I suppose. I don’t tell that to just anyone.”
“Nope.” Hitoshi grins. “So. You in, rat?”
They decide to first do a run where they ask the commission very nicely to murder their most valuable prisoner, just to cover all of their bases.
The problem with this strategy is that it inevitably requires Hitoshi to out himself as a time traveler to them, which runs the very large risk of him getting kidnapped and experimented on. He spends the next two weeks of his life under the watchful gaze of several pros all at the same time and with his own hypervigilance running like crazy. He jumps at loud noises, sneaks around corners like he’s expecting there to be a Nomu waiting to rip him apart, and does not, under any circumstances, go off campus.
Class 1-A is baffled by this sudden switch in behavior, but his close group of friends catch on pretty quickly to the fact that something is potentially very, very wrong, and so one of them is almost always glued to him whenever they can be. Aizawa and Yamada (who are in on what’s actually going on, by this point) even let him sleep in the 1-A dorms, so he spends a bit crashing on various friends’ floors while they await whatever the commission decides to do.
The commission refuses to kill All For One unless they get to “interview” Hitoshi, which is wholly unsurprising and very annoying. He contemplates resetting then and there, but Nezu makes a case for waiting until Christmas and hey, what could possibly go wrong?
As it turns out, a lot.
He’s with Uraraka walking back from classes, Snipe on a roof somewhere watching his every move, when they’re approached by three people in black suits.
“Shit,” Hitoshi hisses, stopping them and pushing Uraraka just a little bit behind him. He’s armed, and y’know, a trained war veteran, so he’s slightly more qualified for this than she is.
“Shinsou-kun,” one of the commission officers says, “we just want to talk.”
“Buddy, I don’t have to be from the future to know that that’s bullshit,” he snarls. Uraraka’s head whips to him with wide eyes, but she’s quick, so the rest of the situation clicks into place almost immediately afterwards.
The officer steps towards them. Hitoshi steps back and pushes Uraraka with him.
“Do you all have visitor passes?” Uraraka asks from behind him, “because if you don’t, you being here is illegal.”
“They don’t care about that,” Hitoshi says, eyeing the gun holsters strapped to their belts. The bullets in them are almost definitely non-lethal sedatives, but he can’t time travel to escape if he’s unconscious.
“Well they should,” she grumbles.
“Shinsou,” a second officer says, “this is your last chance to come peacefully.”
He bares his teeth. “Threatening me doesn’t usually end well,” he warns. Because he also has a gun concealed on his person (thanks, Aizawa) and his bullets are very lethal. And unless one of these fuckers has a quick-draw quirk, he’s faster than them, too.
The first one’s hand drops to their holster.
“All For One is going to destroy the world!” Hitoshi roars, “all you fuckers are doing is making sure that he’s gonna win! Is that what you want?”
The third one sighs. “We just-”
Hitoshi activates his quirk and orders the third one to “sleep.” In one smooth motion he draws his gun from the back of his pants and clicks the safety off. One bullet lands in the first one’s hand, and another in the second one’s knee.
Uraraka screams from behind him and both the officers cry out. Hitoshi doesn’t stick around to wait for them to get their bearings- he just pulls himself back into the void.
~
Hitoshi lets his forehead thump against the invisible walls of the tunnel, staring listlessly out at his timeline.
“How many times do you think you can go back?”
As many as it takes. Hitoshi takes a deep breath and returns to December 5th.
~
“I can’t believe we’re actually doing this,” Yamada breathes. He’s their getaway driver.
It’s December 12th and he’s sixteen. Hitoshi, Aizawa, and Kayama are all geared up and ready to break into the most secure prison ever built. Nezu is their guy in the chair, so to speak, ready to fuck with the security systems whenever they need him to. Hawks- who at this point is technically a triple agent- was all too eager to come along as backup. You reap what you sow after all, and sometimes you sow a highly trained assassin who has every reason in the books to want to fuck you over.
It’s a delicate mission. One wrong move and they release thousands of criminals who really should stay locked up, or they might just release All For One himself, which would be awful.
“Not exactly how I thought I’d be spending my Thursday evening,” Kayama agrees.
“I can’t believe I was talked into this,” Aizawa echoes.
Hawks leans back against the car, “I don’t know about you guys but I’m having a great time so far.”
“I offered to go alone,” Hitoshi points out. “You can all back out now, no judgment.”
“Absolutely not,” all four of the others plus Nezu say at the same time with varying degrees of volume and enthusiasm.
Sneaking into the prison is… interesting. They have to climb along the outer wall right above sea level and cut through the wall into one of the unoccupied cells that Nezu located for them earlier. It’s grueling, but it carries with it that same exhilarating feeling that Hitoshi gets from running along rooftops. He maybe shouldn’t be so excited about committing one of the highest level crimes there is, but, uh…
No, actually, he doesn’t really have a defense for that one.
Nezu follows them carefully through the security systems, looping footage when they pass in range of a new camera. Tartarus doesn’t actually have guards in the prison, as break-ins are meant to be handled by the system shutting down access to a specific grid of cells. Doors will lock, and depending on what level the cell block is located at, sometimes it will completely detach itself from the prison and drop into the sea.
Hitoshi tries his best not to look into the cells as they pass. As bad as some of these people are, there is a large part of him that is well aware Tartarus is unforgivably inhumane, and some of the ways they chose to ensure prisoners stay locked up make him sick. Most people in this prison are forced into a completely sedentary lifestyle with cells the size of regular solitary ones. The people with more dangerous quirks are barely allowed to move at all, and while researching exactly how they were going to do this, the six of them found a buried internal report detailing how some of the inmates were suffering from muscle atrophy after being denied movement for up to months at a time. And that’s not even mentioning how basic necessities are often withheld as punishment.
It’s fucking disgusting, but Hitoshi can’t fix the world until he saves it from being completely destroyed. One thing at a time.
Nezu was right, though, it’s ridiculously easy for them to sneak down to the lowest level cell block undetected. From here it’s going to be more difficult, because there are actual guards that patrol this location, but-
All at once, there is a loud boom that echoes from three levels above them. The three of them make bewildered eye contact, and Hitoshi swears under his breath.
Of course it couldn’t be that easy. Of fucking course All For One already had a plan in mind to break out before they could get to him.
“Should we run for it?” Kayama mutters as another explosion sounds.
It’s not going to work, Hitoshi realizes with a growing sense of hopelessness. No matter what they do, All For One has planned for it.
Aizawa must realize that he’s already starting to give up, because he shoves Hitoshi roughly in the shoulder to snap him out of it and says, “it’s our best bet. Nezu-”
“I’ve got it,” the principal says in their ear, “you’re safe to go. Just don’t get shot.”
And so they run. Guards try to intercept them immediately, calling after them and ordering them to stop as if that’s going to do shit. The first gunshot that goes off misses them completely, but the second clips Hitoshi’s arm and the third nails Kayama right in the back of her calf.
Aizawa pulls out one of his weapons and halts, turning around to fire back on them while shouting at Hitoshi to “go!”
He does, knowing already that he’s going to reset regardless but he just wants to see, wants to know if it would be possible-
The floor beneath his feet begins rumbling. Hitoshi has five seconds to register that All For One is walking around the corner in his prison outfit, hand outstretched and glowing, before the rumbling begins to turn into a series of pops that he knows are about to turn into an explosion that will kill everyone in this lower cell block.
“Hello, anomaly,” All For One says placidly, unconcerned that he’s about to kill himself, “I suppose I’ll see you again soon, then?”
Hitoshi pulls himself into the void, but not before flipping that bastard off with both hands.
~
His ears are ringing when he lands on the bridge this time. Explosions and gunshots in close quarters are no joke, and he has to wonder if the hearing damage is going to carry across each of his resets.
For a while, he just lies down and stares up at the nothingness that expands above him. Eventually the ringing subsides and all he’s left with are the howling winds that rush past him and ruffle his hair as though they’re trying to comfort him.
It’s nice, but he has a job to do. He forces himself to stand up and return to the real world once more.
~
This time he goes back to age ten and runs away from home. He does the same thing he did in his fourth reset- breaking into support companies and stealing some gear before becoming a vigilante.
All For One should be mostly incapacitated, still undergoing treatment from Garaki, so it’s a perfect time for Hitoshi to get a mostly uninhibited look at all his facilities. He spends two years doing that, traveling throughout Japan and writing down every facility that’s meant to create Nomus and every abandoned warehouse, inconspicuous house, and underground bunker he could find that had any ties to the League at all.
At one point he finds a younger Shimura and Kurogiri. He debates trying to get them to help him for a while before deciding against it- something to try for a different reset.
The image of Eri flashes through his mind a few times, too. Her quirk is technically a mutation type- something that she’s had since birth- and Overhaul has almost definitely started his experiments on her by now. He forces himself to ignore that, as much as it feels like a betrayal. That’s his sister, but inevitably helping her in this reset won’t translate to another, so it’s technically a waste of time.
… although, maybe if he just happened to stumble upon Chisaki outside of his compound one of these nights… surely it wouldn’t hurt to put a bullet between his eyes?
He checked. It doesn’t.
By the end of it all he has a comprehensive map of the entire country marked with locations and names and organizations that are related to All For One and the League. At age thirteen he drops that, along with a complete file of future events (written in vague terms, so it sounds like Hitoshi merely overheard some plans instead of actually living through them) on the doorstep of All Might’s hero agency.
A week later and the underground contacts he ended up making during his escapades alert him that there are large teams of heroes investigating all of his claims. Hitoshi waits for the catch, for something to go wrong, and it comes in the form of Gigantomachia catching a group of heroes off guard and murdering them, swiftly and brutally. One of those heroes happened to be All Might.
Hitoshi swears when he hears the news, and wastes no time dropping back into the void for round two.
~
This time when he lands on the bridge, he already has a plan in mind. Hopefully he doesn’t have to spend three and a half years acting it out.
He’s become almost completely numb to the pain by now. It’s fleeting, hitting him in sharp bursts before dulling until he can’t feel it at all.
He almost misses it.
~
He goes back to age nine, a week after All For One and All Might fought, and grabs Aizawa again. They go to the facility he found last reset that housed All For One while he was recovering. Hitoshi is not surprised when he isn’t there.
He draws up the map he made last time and he and Aizawa decide that their best bet is to start from the top and work down. They bring Yamada into the know as well, mostly because Hitoshi doesn’t want to fuck up their relationship and he knows damn well that Yamada will be willing to help. This ends up involving Kayama, eventually, and Nezu, too.
Traveling Japan with Aizawa is easier than he thought it would be. He kept the details vague, especially about the nature of their relationship, and Aizawa was willing to keep their current one strictly professional. Well, as professional as it can be when Hitoshi is literally nine years old. That’s still weird.
Hitoshi is almost to the point where he can completely ignore his trauma, if only because he’s gotten good at saving his breakdowns for when he’s alone. They still hit him hard, and he still wishes desperately for one of his dead friends to hold him through them, but there’s a layer of apathy that’s beginning to set over everything.
He has one goal. One objective, and that matters more than anything else. Kill All For One- for good this time.
They don’t find him by the time Hitoshi hits age fifteen and Aizawa has to go teach the hell class. Hitoshi bottles up his frustration and returns to the void.
~
“God fucking dammit!” He screams the moment he’s alone, slamming his fist into the invisible wall. The words don’t make a sound, though he can feel his mouth forming the syllables.
His hand stings and he revels in it, if only because it’s the most concrete thing he’s felt since two months ago when he fucked up on a side job and got stabbed.
The howling winds whistle around him and his timeline pulsates with that soft glow. He stands on nothing, looks out into nothing, and seethes.
He’s missing something. He has to be. There is a solution here, some sort of answer to this damn equation. A way he can cheat the system, flip the board- whatever fucking game metaphor you want to use. There’s a way to do it.
There has to be.
~
Shimura hates heroes, that much is obvious, but Hitoshi knows the man he’s going to be too well not to know who he is now.
All he has to do is play at Shimura’s missing memories, All For One’s absence (without mentioning the nearly fatal injury), and promise him that he has something better for him, someone better for him, and he’s willing to follow Hitoshi. Kurogiri is a little harder, at least until Hitoshi activates Brainwashing.
It’s weird, using his quirk on someone who is technically two someone’s in one body. He can only grab one mind because he only got one response, and it feels almost like trying to grab a fish in a river with his bare hands. Once he has Kurogiri fully suppressed with his quirk, though, Shirakumo comes to the surface, mostly free of All For One’s control. It makes a headache begin to build behind his temples, but he ignores it in favor of committing this new development to memory.
So he can break the Nomus out of their brainwashing. Huh. Neat.
Shirakumo is still a little shaky, and when Hitoshi isn’t using his quirk on his second consciousness he has a hard time staying in control. Despite this, Aizawa and Yamada are utterly thrilled to see him again and Hitoshi knows they’ll find a way to work around it. They also agree to take in Shimura, too, which makes his life a lot easier.
But of course, when Hitoshi does something right, All For One has to combat it by doing something wrong. Hitoshi might’ve taken away his protege, but All For One is resourceful. A year after Shimura is freed from his grasp, Dabi goes missing from the criminal underworld, and he can’t find him again. Hitoshi curses himself for not thinking of that sooner.
The next reset, he tries to save both Shimura and Dabi, but then All For One just picks up a random quirkless kid from the foster system. Hitoshi realizes that if he keeps going down this rabbit hole, eventually All For One will get to Izuku, quirkless as he is until age fifteen. Hitoshi can’t let that happen.
He scraps the idea and returns to the void to plan his next move.
~
Dozens of resets, and nothing is working.
Collectively, he’s been at this for maybe fifty three years now? He’s tried pulling himself out of the main events to try and ambush All For One when he doesn’t expect it. He’s tried setting the heroes on all of his artificial armies. He’s tried taking him out at his weakest. He’s tried killing him while he’s in Tartarus. He’s tried taking away his protege. He’s tried he’s tried he’s tried.
He lays on his back on the bridge in the void. The apathy has overtaken almost all of him, now, leaving him with nothing but his burning hatred.
He’s going to kill All For One if it’s the last goddamn thing he ever does.
~
“What do you get out of this?” He asks the supervillain once. He’d tried to go for him at Kamino again, though it was a half-hearted attempt at best and it wound up getting everyone in the immediate vicinity killed and both his legs broken.
“Entertainment,” All For One replies placidly, kicking at All Might’s corpse. “It gets terribly boring, you know. Being immortal.”
You wouldn’t be immortal if you let me kill you, Hitoshi thinks bitterly.
The supervillain turns his gaze towards Hitoshi. “You understand, don’t you? Or has it not been long enough for you to get bored of all these people quite yet?”
Hitoshi tries to imagine getting so bored he begins to torture his friends and family. He can’t see it, can’t comprehend where the villain might be coming from. Maybe that makes him a good person. Maybe All For One’s right, and it just hasn’t been long enough for him to become a monster yet.
He remembers that stupid quote someone on the internet made up. Or maybe it came from a book or a movie or some shit.
“You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
It echoes alongside all of the taunts from his old foster families and middle school classmates. “Did you really think that you would ever be a hero?”
“See you soon, anomaly,” All For One calls.
~
After another twenty-ish years he realizes that trying to stop him before the war breaks out isn’t working, so he turns to try and stop him after.
The problem with this, of course, is that the rebellion is almost immediately on the back foot. They’re caught off guard and unable to keep up with the sheer power that the League holds. Even with Hitoshi’s future knowledge and frankly disgustingly honed fighting capabilities, they don’t stand a chance against All For One’s planning. He still tries for a good thirty years, though.
It is during one of these resets, watching Bakugou, Todoroki, and Midoriya fighting against a gigantic horde of about a hundred Nomu and managing to hold their own that Hitoshi realizes the problem.
He’s just not strong enough. He doesn’t have enough power. He’s great at stealth (but All For One is better), at long range (but All For One can reach further), but when it comes to brute force he just doesn’t cut it and never will. He’s not like those three powerhouses- he doesn’t have explosions he can launch from his palms, or the ability to control two separate elements at once, or whatever the fuck One For All is at this point-
Wait.
One For All.
It’s a transferable quirk. And it combines with whatever quirk the user already has.
For the first time in nearly a century, hope begins to bloom in Hitoshi’s chest. He doesn’t wait to see if the three men fighting for their lives win, he just jumps straight into the void.
~
Hitoshi is kicking himself for not thinking of it sooner. He paces the vast expanse of nothingness, thinking it through.
He highly doubts that he could convince All Might to give him One For All, but Midoriya is a different story. Hop on the timeline towards the end of the war after they’re married, explain the situation, explain how desperate he is, and Midoriya would fold like a house of cards.
That thought makes his feet halt. He… he doesn’t want to manipulate Midoriya. Even if, in the grand scheme of things, he’d never remember it, even if it’s to ultimately help him, Hitoshi doesn’t want to manipulate him into doing anything. It makes him feel too much like All For One.
There’s also the issue of how strong One For All is after Midoriya receives it. He’s the singularity point of the quirk- if anyone else tried to use it after him, it’s likely that they’d just explode on the fucking spot, at least if they weren’t quirkless.
But… maybe Hitoshi wouldn’t have to use it in order for it to combine with his other quirks? Maybe if he got it, and then used the time travel quirk a couple of times, then it would start to transfer on its own, without him having to touch the stockpiled powers?
He just doesn’t know enough about the quirk to say for certain. But a certain principal and retired number one hero might have a few ideas.
~
Hitoshi returns at almost the exact same time he did the first time around, except this time he doesn’t even halt the notes his past self was taking when he slips back into his body.
He had been re-writing his English notes, apparently. There’s some quiet acoustic song playing in his headphones, and it’s been so long since he’s listened to it that he doesn’t remember the words. Yamada is quietly scrolling through his phone at the podium while some other students are talking amongst themselves. It’s peaceful.
Against his better judgment, he decides to just… go through the day. He sits through lessons that he learned decades ago, listens to mundane conversations about who’s going to eat lunch with who and where. Someone talks about going to the pool that weekend. Someone else shows off pictures of their new dog.
How long has it been since Hitoshi has lived in a moment like this? Since he’s been normal, without thinking about what his next move is going to be, what he needs to steal, who he needs to recruit? Years? Decades? A century?
It feels like the eye of the storm. The calm before everything is going to blow up in his face. He goes to the teacher’s lounge after his last lesson, intercepts Aizawa before the man can go to the gym they’re supposed to train in, and asks him to grab All Might and bring him to the principal’s office.
There’s some convincing needed, but Hitoshi has recited this script so many times that he knows exactly what to say in exactly what order to get his teacher to listen to him in the most efficient way possible. In five minutes, the three of them are knocking on Nezu’s door, and Hitoshi reveals his time traveling, the end of the world.
They take it the same as they always do. All Might apologies solemnly for failing to stop All For One the first time. Hitoshi brushes him off. Aizawa calls in Tsukauchi and Sir Nighteye- but not Hawks, because he works too closely with the commission. Hitoshi talks. He makes a timeline. He throws out theories, like he hasn’t tested all of them twenty times over.
And then finally the meeting is coming to its conclusion, and Hitoshi asks, “can I speak to All Might and Nezu alone for a second?”
“Of course!” Nezu agrees as he pulls out three more teacups. All Might sits back down. Hitoshi moves to sit a little closer.
Once everyone else has left the room and they’re all calmly sipping their tea, Hitoshi sighs and says, “none of what we just planned is going to work.”
The other two blink at him.
“I’ve tested it. I’ve tested everything dozens of times. I’ve been doing this for over a century now, actually.”
“My boy…” All Might breathes.
“Then why did you call us all here?” Nezu asks, putting his cup down and folding his paws.
“Because I needed to talk to you two alone, and this was the least suspicious way I could do it. At least the way I thought of first, I guess.” Hitoshi takes a sip of his tea. “All For One knows everything I’m going to do each reset before I do it. I’ve tried to be faster, be unconventional, do something he wasn’t expecting when he wasn’t expecting it.” Another sip. “Didn’t work.”
“But now you believe you’ve found something,” the principal guesses.
“Yeah.” He turns to All Might. “If I told you I had a near guaranteed way to get One For All- what would that… how would that work?”
All Might jolts, opens his mouth likely to protest, before pausing and shutting it again. He sinks into his seat and brings his hand up to his chin. Hitoshi waits patiently.
“The transfer, or the effects it would have on you afterwards?” The hero asks.
“The second one.”
“It… depends. I assume you know of the potential side effects that it can have on one’s body, should it be unprepared,” All Might begins, and once Hitoshi nods he continues. “It’s been known to significantly power up the original quirks of each user. That is what you’re looking for, then?”
Hitoshi nods again. “But I can’t use it. I have to get it from Midoriya, and he’s the singularity point. If he gives it to someone who isn’t quirkless, and they try to use it…”
“Ah,” All Might muses. “No, I don’t believe you’d have to use the quirk for it to affect your other two. But I’d imagine it would need a good amount of time to circulate through your body, and that you’d have to use the quirk you want it to affect more in order to truly get it to strengthen it. Like working a muscle.”
“I can do that,” Hitoshi says. Then he turns to Nezu, “and what exactly would a powered up version of my time travel quirk look like?”
Nezu taps a paw on the table. “I’m unsure. It’s impossible to tell, really, without extensive experimentation. My first instinct is to say that it would allow you to travel outside of when you’ve been alive, instead of just transferring your consciousness to your alternate selves, but you’d still need a vessel to inhabit. Perhaps you would be able to take your body instead of just your mind?”
Hitoshi nods along, but it… it doesn’t sound like enough. Sure, Hitoshi might be able to take himself back before he was alive, but without knowing for certain…
How can he be sure that All For One wouldn’t be able to predict those movements, too? How can he know that any point in time is safe, as long as All For One knows that he’s there? What if he goes back and kills All For One as a baby and then someone worse pops up? But if he tries to kill him any later in the timeline Hitoshi runs the risk of him knowing and then… is there anything left to try? How many chances would he have? The problem at the end of the day is that the safest option is to kill All For One now, not before, but as long as Hitoshi exists along the timeline he’d be able to track him.
…
But what if he didn’t? What if- what if he pulled himself outside of time? His mind flashes back to the invisible tunnel that trapped him alongside his own timeline. What if he broke out of that? What if…
“What if I didn’t exist?” Hitoshi asks, barely above a whisper. “What if I managed to use the powered up quirk to- to remove myself from the timeline? Then All For One wouldn’t be able to follow my movements. He wouldn’t know that I was there.”
“Would you still be able to interact with it?” Nezu asks, tilting his head as if he’s considering it. “I suppose it’s possible…”
“Absolutely not!” All might cries, startling them both as he shoots to his feet. Hitoshi looks up at him with wide eyes and the hero meets them, horror blazing in their depths. “I can’t believe you’d even- suggest such a thing!”
“Yagi-” Nezu starts, but All Might rounds on him with a glare that cuts him off.
“And you,” he snarls, “how dare you consider it! We can’t ask him to remove himself from existence!”
“It’s the last option we have,” Hitoshi protests, standing up and stepping in front of Nezu’s desk. “It’s this or everyone dies. Do you want that?”
All Might falters for a moment, but pushes forwards despite it. “There has to be another way-”
“Well there isn’t!” Hitoshi snarls. The room falls silent, and he realizes that he’s clenching his fists so hard he’s nearly drawn blood. “There isn’t,” he repeats, a little steadier, “this is the only option we have.”
“It can’t be, my boy, you don’t deserve-”
“This isn’t about what I deserve. This isn’t about me at all.” He moves to gather his stuff, before realizing that he’s just going to time travel so it’s pointless. “It’s about saving the goddamn world. And if this is the only way to do it, fine.”
“Shinsou…” All Might mutters. Nezu looks grim, but no protests come from him.
Hitoshi meets the stoat’s eyes, probably for the last time. “Will it work? If I get One For All, will it power up my quirks without killing me?”
“Yes,” Nezu says quietly, “I believe it will.”
He nods. “Good.”
“Shinsou,” All Might repeats, sounding a little desperate, “my boy, please reconsider-”
Hitoshi doesn’t wait for him to finish before he’s gone again.
~
Just to test it, Hitoshi rests his fist on the invisible wall of his tunnel before pulling it back and slamming it against it. Pain reverberates through his hand and he lets out a silent string of curses, but nothing happens to the wall. Nothing at all.
Hitoshi slumps against it. It’s here, in this mostly empty void, where it hits him. What he’s about to do.
Pull himself from existence. Become something that resides outside of the timeline. All to kill one fucking guy.
Not that he was really expecting to settle down after all of this, but he had hoped, hoped that- that he’d at least be able to stay in their lives. But now they won’t remember him at all. No one will. He’ll never be born, he’ll never be a student at UA, never be a hero.
No one will know that Shinsou Hitoshi was ever there in the first place.
He lets out a shuddering breath. It echoes in his chest, but no sound reaches his ears aside from the howling winds of the void. Somehow, that feels like poetry.
~
Hitoshi comes back to himself at sixteen years old. A glance at his phone says it’s just past midnight, two weeks before the war is going to start at Jaku city.
He’s in Aizawa and Yamada’s house. There’s one more thing he needs to do before he takes One For All from Midoriya. Before he- before he… stops existing.
Silently, he gets up from his warm, comfortable bed and creeps into the hallway. He cracks the master bedroom door open to see that Yamada is asleep, but Aizawa is not. Which means he’s either out on patrol, or-
-or grading papers in the kitchen. Aizawa looks up when he enters, eyes tired and heavy. He’s in his ridiculous hot pink sweatpants and a black hoodie that has Yamada’s radio station logo on it. His hair is, for once, tied back- probably to keep it out of his face while he’s marking.
“Hitoshi?” He asks quietly, “is everything alright?”
For the first time in this whole mess, Hitoshi hesitates. But then he remembers the question he wanted to ask, and shakes himself out of it.
“If you- if there were a lot of people in danger that you cared about,” he starts, keeping his voice down, “and you could save them, but- but if you did, they’d all forget about you, would you do it?”
Aizawa frowns. “Where did this come from?”
“Just-” he scrambles for an excuse- “just a nightmare.”
This earns him a raised eyebrow and a very obvious expression of disbelief. Aizawa sets his pen down and leans back in his chair, clearly waiting for him to tell the truth.
“Please, can you just answer the question?” Hitoshi whispers.
There is a long moment where Aizawa just looks at him, observing silently. It makes him want to squirm- a feeling he thought he’d forgotten after years and years of feeling absolutely nothing at all.
“I would,” he answers eventually.
“What if everyone forgot you- not just your friends?”
“I still would.”
There’s a buzzing starting to build under his skin. It’s spreading through him like a fire, setting his nerves alight with anticipation.
“What if you could never talk to them again. Never talk to anyone again. What if you just… stopped existing completely?”
“Hitoshi,” Aizawa says, voice cautious. He puts his arms on the table and leans forwards, brows drawn together in concern. “What is this about? What are you saying?”
Hitoshi inhales a shuddering breath- he can hear himself gasping, this time. He forces himself to meet Aizawa’s eyes because he knows, deep down, why he really came here.
“I think I’m saying goodbye.”
A pause. Aizawa’s eyes widen slightly, his mouth parts, and then, in the smallest voice Hitoshi’s ever heard from him, he utters:
“What?”
Hitoshi lets out a bitter laugh. It stings his throat, comes out a little wet because at some point he started crying. “I think I’m saying goodbye,” he repeats.
Aizawa stares at him. Hitoshi knows he’s intelligent enough to understand that there’s something more to this, that this is bigger than the two of them. This isn’t Hitoshi feeling down or depressed or suicidal, this is all he can do now to stop something terrible from happening.
Aizawa swallows. “I can’t stop you, can I?” He whispers knowingly.
“No,” Hitoshi says, voice shaking, “I wish you could.” A sob breaks from his throat, “I really wish you could.”
Another pause as his father- because really, did this man ever stop being his father? Wasn’t Hitoshi just lying to himself to justify pushing him away?- observes him further, black eyes looking him up and down with a deep melancholy.
“Come sit down, kid,” he says eventually, gesturing for the chair across from him at the table. “Tell me everything.”
“It’s a long story,” Hitoshi protests even as he walks over on shaky legs, “and it’s- not pretty.”
“I’m gonna forget it anyways,” Aizawa says bluntly. “You deserve some comfort. Talk.”
So he does. And this time, he doesn’t spare a single detail.
He starts with what Aizawa already knows. How much his life sucked in the foster system, getting into UA, getting adopted by him and his husband. And then, when he gets to the war, he makes sure to tell him about every single death. Every time they won a battle, lost a battle, how he and Izuku got together after one particularly terrifying one where they all thought they were gonna die, how Yamada died, how Aizawa died. How All For One destroyed the world, and then how they finally killed him. He tells him up until the end of the war, where he gets to Shimura giving him the time travel quirk, and how he had hope again.
And then he gets to the resets. The loops. Whatever the fuck you want to call them. He tells him how he started out thinking that they might’ve stood a chance, trying different things, seeing which produced the best outcome. Talking to All For One for the first time, and then going back and realizing that he was right, how nothing he ever did mattered, how in the end he’d always fail, and he’d always have to go back and try again.
He tries to cut himself off there, but it’s only 1:34 AM and Aizawa says they’ve got time, so he keeps going, detailing most of the resets. How eventually he became numb to everything and just went through the motions as methodically as possible to try and find what would work. The right thing to say, the right person to kill, the right person to save.
“It never worked,” he whispers, “and then I realized- I realized it was because the quirk wasn’t strong enough to outmaneuver him. But I can fix that if I get One For All. I can make it stronger.”
“But you’d still be inside the timeline,” Aizawa fills in, “and All For One would still be able to track you.”
Hitoshi nods. He doesn’t have to say the rest- they both know it. The silence that falls is heavy.
A thought comes to the forefront of his mind. “You know, I don’t think I ever actually wanted to be a hero,” he muses quietly. “I think I just wanted to spite everyone who told me I couldn’t.”
Aizawa snorts. “Sounds about right,” he says, rolling with the subject change effortlessly.
“Then why’d you train me, if you knew I was there to be petty?”
“Because that’s why I went to UA in the first place, too. It wasn’t until…” Aizawa trails off, but seems to steel himself and continues, “It wasn't until Oboro died that I realized my motivation had changed.”
“Oh,” Hitoshi says, the picture of eloquence.
His father lets out another small laugh. “What did it for you, kid?”
“What do you mean?”
“When did it stop being spite? You wouldn’t have lasted through a century of time travel if you were just here to piss other people off.”
Hitoshi huffs, “I really, really want to kill All For One.”
“No you don’t,” Aizawa says confidently.
Hitoshi pauses. He stares at his father.
“You don’t,” Aizawa says again. “Or, okay, you do, but mostly you want to protect us. You’ve just been too busy isolating yourself to realize it.”
Hitoshi blinks.
“You’re a hero, Hitoshi, whether you wanted to be one or not. You’re our hero.”
“Oh,” Hitoshi says again, tears building in the corners of his eyes.
Aizawa smiles at him. It’s sad, filled with grief. “I’m sorry no one’s said it before now.”
He chokes on his next breath. His hands begin to tremble. Aizawa takes them in his.
“I don’t want you to do this,” he whispers, “because you’re my son. I love you, and I don’t want to forget you. But if you’re going to anyways, I want you to know that I’m proud of you, okay? I’m so incredibly fucking proud of everything you’ve done, and even if I don’t remember it, even if I never get to see you again, kid, I-”
“I will always be proud of you, I will always love you, and you will always be my son. No matter the timeline. Do you understand, Hitoshi?”
“Yeah,” he chokes out. He’s squeezing Aizawa- Shouta’s hands like a lifeline. “I love you too, dad I-.” A choked off sob. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“You won’t,” Shouta promises, squeezing his hands back just as tightly.“No matter what happens, kid. Okay?”
He shuts his eyes tight. More tears leak out and splash against the kitchen table. He nods. “Okay.”
“Go be a hero, Hitoshi.”
Despite himself, he grins. His father matches it with that feral show of teeth he always uses during training. Hitoshi missed it so fucking much.
~
Welcome back, the winds of the void seem to say. They make the dried tears on his face feel cold, so he brushes them off with his sleeve. One more stop before the end. Before his end.
He swallows. He can do this. He has to do this.
He has to go see Izuku.
~
When he returns to the real world, he’s warm. Comfortable like last time, but even more so now.
That’s not because of the shitty cot he’s lying on, it’s because he’s curled around someone. He can hear their quiet muttering and the scratch of pencil on paper, the occasional pause before the sound switches to an eraser. Hitoshi knows without looking that it’s Izuku, and for a moment he lets himself bask in the closeness, drift into that groggy state just in between being awake and being asleep. “You deserve comfort,” Shouta had said.
“Hitoshi?” Izuku whispers. A hand settles in his hair and combs through it, tugging gently when it snags on the knots and tangles. “Are you awake?”
“Mm,” he grunts, pressing a little closer. This is the last time he’ll ever get the chance to do this, most likely. He can savor it a little.
Izuku snorts quietly and keeps petting him. It’s nice. Safe. He feels loved, just like he felt with Shouta mere moments ago.
He’s never going to feel like this again, after this. After he takes himself out of the timeline. He may never see Izuku ever again. His husband, the man he loves, the one he’s been trying to avoid as much as possible for the past hundred years.
Before he realizes it he’s crying again, though he has no idea how he has any tears left to shed. Izuku springs into action immediately, shoving aside his papers and bringing a second hand to curl protectively around Hitoshi’s back and pull him close.
Why did he ever shove this away? Why did he ever try to convince himself that his friends weren’t really his friends, that his family wasn’t really his? Of course they’re the same- sure, they don’t have the same memories maybe, but they’re- at their core, they’re them with a little less polish. Maybe this Izuku doesn’t know him like he used to, but he would learn. He would put out the effort to get to know Hitoshi again because they love each other and that’s who he is-
And now he’s sobbing, Full-body, ugly, painful sobs that tear through his throat and make it ache. Different from the ones with Shouta, because these are mournful, grieving, and there’s a sense of loss behind each choking breath and gasp for air. He holds Izuku tight like the man will disappear if he lets go and he might as well, because Hitoshi knows this is it. The last time he will ever be able to get this kind of comfort from the man he loves.
Izuku is whispering quiet reassurances to him, trying to soothe him, and that almost makes it worse, drives the reminder home like a knife in his chest.
Hitoshi doesn’t want to let go. He doesn’t want to do this.
But it’s not about him, and it’s not about what he wants.
“Go be a hero, Hitoshi.”
“Izuku,” he chokes out, pushing away and trying to rub the residual tears from his eyes. His husband looks at him, gaze swimming with concern and worry and that determination to fix whatever just made him cry, but he can’t. Not this time.
“I need you to give me One For All,” he whispers, and looks away when Izuku inhales sharply.
There’s a pause. Izuku’s hand finds his, then- “Hitoshi?” He murmurs, obviously confused.
Hitoshi swallows. It’s hard to force it past the lump in his throat. He just told all of this to Shouta and even if that felt like the biggest weight ever being lifted from his chest, suddenly it’s as if it’s all fallen right back on top of him. He grits his teeth and talks anyways. “I’m- I’ve been traveling through time. For a century. We don’t- Izuku we don’t win. Ever. I’ve been trying over and over and nothing’s been working because he always catches me no matter what I do I-”
“Hey,” Izuku cuts him off, placing a hand on his cheek and guiding him to look at him, “Hitoshi, it’s okay, okay? Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.”
It’s a different comfort than Shouta was. Izuku is soft where his father is hard. Gentle and guiding where Shouta tends to just shove you into the deep end and hover in case you need him to pull you back out.
“It’s not strong enough,” he forces out, “the quirk- the- the time travel quirk that I have. It’s not strong enough, and the only way to fix that is…”
“One For All,” Izuku finishes. “Hitoshi, that’s… that’s really dangerous, baby.”
“I know.”
“It could kill you.”
Ha, if only that was worse than what he was planning on using it for anyway. Hitoshi shoots Izuku a small, cracking smile. “I know.”
Izuku takes a long moment to just hold him and look at him. And Hitoshi knows, without him saying anything, that he knows Hitoshi is leaving out a very large part of whatever is hurting him. Izuku has always been able to see straight through him, and that won’t change now, even after a hundred years apart.
“I don’t want to give you my quirk, do I?” Izuku guesses, bringing their foreheads close so they can rest together.
“No,” Hitoshi admits, “you really don’t. But I need you to do it anyway.”
Their eyes meet.
“Do one thing for me, first?” Izuku asks.
“Anything.”
Izuku kisses him. It’s slow, languid, unhurried, and Hitoshi melts into it immediately. This sort of easy affection that he hasn’t gotten in ages- Hitoshi could soak it up for days on end, but he’ll take this. The easy glide of their lips, the way Izuku cradles his face like he’s good, like he’s something to be treasured.
Hitoshi fell in love with Izuku because he was sweet and heroic and strong. He was everything that Hitoshi used to think he wasn’t, the antithesis of his sharp edges and pessimism.
He stayed in love with him once he learned that he was dead wrong about all of that. Yes, Izuku is the kindest person that has ever existed, and yes he is the embodiment of heroism and strength, but he got all of that because he worked to hone all of his sharp edges and cynicism into something he could use to help.
Izuku and Hitoshi are far too similar for their own good. It’s why they can’t hide from each other, and it’s why Hitoshi has to hide from him now.
They stay pressed together even when they pull back, forehead to forehead, Izuku’s hands on his cheeks and Hitoshi’s settled around his waist. For another long moment, they stay like that.
But eventually Izuku pulls away and reaches up to pluck a piece of hair from his scalp. Hitoshi remembers him telling this story, about how All Might made him eat his hair on the beach. He laughs a little.
“It couldn’t have just been your blood?” He asks.
Izuku grins. “If I had to do it, you do, too.”
His face twists up in mock disgust as he reaches out to take it. At the last second, though, Izuku pulls it back. Hitoshi blinks at him, but then he sees it- the set jaw, the sad eyes.
“Izuku?”
“Promise me you’ll come back,” his husband whispers, “promise me that I’ll see you again.”
Hitoshi swallows. He makes eye contact.
“I promise,” he lies.
There’s a second of silence, one last pause that lasts a lifetime.
And then finally, Izuku holds his hand out again. Hitoshi takes the strand of hair and swallows it- fuck that’s weird- and waits.
“I don’t feel anything,” he says.
Izuku smiles something bittersweet. “It’ll take a few hours. Are you staying?”
“I shouldn’t,” Hitoshi says with a wince. “I’m supposed to use the time travel quirk as much as possible to like, help them fuse or some shit.”
His husband leans forwards and kisses his cheek. He lingers close for a moment before pulling back for good, and Hitoshi doesn’t let his longing show. He smiles. Izuku smiles back.
“Be safe,” he says, “come back.”
Hitoshi nods, because he doesn’t think he can lie out loud again.
~
The first thing Hitoshi notices when he returns to the void is that he can hear himself breathing.
It’s quiet, muffled like he’s underwater, but he can hear it. It’s physical evidence of the change in the quirk, that his plan worked. The first step towards actual progress in so long.
He spends an unknown amount of time sitting on his bridge and staring at his timeline.
“I’m gonna win,” Hitoshi whispers, and smiles at the sound of his own voice.
~
He’s just doing as he was told, hopping through time at random points to get used to the powered up quirk, when he hears a feminine voice call out, “Shinsou?”
Hitoshi whirls around immediately, and there, standing and framed in a pale glow, is a ghostly middle-aged woman with black hair in a… hero costume? If it is, it’s one he doesn’t recognize.
“Who the fuck are you?” He snarls, backing up and remaining conscious of the fact that he’s on a rooftop this time. “How do you know my name?”
“My name is Shimura Nana,” she says. Hitoshi freezes in place. “Ah, so you remember that, then.”
“The vestiges…” he mutters. “Wait, I thought that was just an Izuku thing?”
“We did, too,” comes a male voice. This one belongs to someone bigger than Nana, with an outfit that looks more like a motorcyclist than a hero. “Guess you’re just lucky, squirt.”
Five more ghostly figures come into view. Hitoshi can’t put any names to faces other than the first- Yoichi, All For One’s brother- but he remembers Izuku talking about them. Remembers the long nights after All Might died where he’d meditate on the floor of wherever they were staying and talk to the spirits in his head.
“How much do you remember?” He asks.
“Not much,” Shimura says sadly, “but enough to know that you’ve been through a lot.”
“And that you’re about to do something really fucking stupid,” the orange haired ghost says. Second, maybe. Izuku said that one liked to swear almost as much as Katsuki.
“It’s the only option I have,” he hisses. “You think I fucking want to do this?”
“Oi, didn’t fucking say you had a choice,” Second snaps back, “just that it was dumb.”
“Be nice,” Yoichi scolds. He turns to Hitoshi. “We’re not here to talk you out of it. We just wanted to let you know that the quirks should be fused now.”
Shimura nods, but she looks- she looks sad. “You should say your goodbyes.”
Hitoshi swallows, but shakes his head. “I’ve- I’ve already done that.”
All seven ghosts stare at him.
“Are you sure you won’t regret that?” Shimura asks quietly.
He laughs, “are you kidding? Of course I fucking will, but I-” he takes a deep breath- “if I go back to talk to them now, I’m never gonna be able to do it. I gotta- I gotta leave now. Before I can talk myself out of, y’know, literally erasing myself from existence.”
A round of understanding nods follows his declaration. Hitoshi inhales, gets ready to travel, but then a thought occurs to him.
“Are you all- are you all going to stay with me the whole time?”
The vestiges exchange some looks, and then Yoichi shrugs. “Who knows? Time quirks are weird. Especially superpowered ones.”
“Guess we’ll find out,” the biker guy tags on.
Find out. Right. Just after he completely erases himself from the timeline.
“Hey,” he whispers, “none of you are going to remember that I asked you this, but-” he takes a deep breath- “take care of Izuku for me, okay? He’s- fuck, you know what he’s like.”
“We do,” Shimura agrees, setting a hand on his shoulder. “And we will.”
All of the other ghosts nod.
“Alright, then,” Hitoshi says, and then he pulls them all back into the void.
He’s been feeling the quirk steadily grow in power each time he uses it since gaining One For All, but now it really hits him. The world rushes past him in a blur of colors, but it feels more… solid, if that makes any sense. Like he could reach out and grab the strands, pull them together and make something out of them.
When his feet touch down on his bridge and the colors all fade to black, it feels far more complete than it ever has before. If he looks really hard, he can see images within the swirling gold of his timeline, little flashes of his life that indicate when exactly he is looking.
“It’s beautiful,” Shimura whispers beside him. So the vestiges came into the void, then.
Hitoshi nods in agreement- she’s right, the void has always been gorgeous- but quickly focuses on the task at hand.
The invisible tunnel- the one that keeps him bound to his timeline. He needs to break out of it. He takes in a breath to steady himself, pulls his fist back like before, and punches the wall with as much force as he can muster.
Crack.
Pain erupts from the center of his chest, spreads out like he’s a glass pane that’s just shattered. He screams, and the sound echoes and bounces off the walls as he falls to his knees. His knuckles are bleeding but the stinging barely registers when he feels like he’s being torn apart.
No- like he’s tearing himself apart.
“Shinsou!” Yoichi cries. The ghost crouches next to him, but Hitoshi manages to shake his head.
“‘M fine,” he croaks. The pain is either a very good sign or a very bad one.
Cra-ack.
Hitoshi cries out again as he feels another round of breaks spread through his torso. It feels like it started at his ribs but now it’s spread down to his abdomen and up towards his shoulders. Tears build in his eyes. It’s the worst pain he’s ever been in.
Cr-aa-ack.
Another scream. His arms, his legs, it hurts, goddamnit, fuck-
Crr-a-ck.
His fingers, his toes, his head. Fuck fuck fuck-
The ground he’s sitting on shatters.
Like glass shards or snowflakes, the invisible tunnel is suddenly very visible. It shimmers as Hitoshi falls through it, reflects the light from his timeline, and it’s not the only thing that’s changed.
Suddenly the void floods with color. Greens, blues, purples- like the aurora borealis. It stretches and blends across the space, pulses out of sync with the gold of his timeline, and crawls across every expanse of black as though it can’t stand the sight of it.
Hitoshi has never seen anything prettier in his life.
“SHINSOU!” Someone screams. Right, he’s falling. Falling rapidly, away and further still from his timeline. Panic builds in his chest as he realizes that there is nothing to stop him from falling forever, that perhaps this is it, the ending he’s been working towards. He reaches out, fingers stretching towards the gold line desperately, calling out for it to save me, don’t let this be it, please-
Suddenly, in a flash of blinding light, his timeline moves. It breaks from its rightful place in the void- causing the last threads in Hitoshi to snap right along with it- and surges towards him. He screams again. It scrapes his throat, and the light is burning his eyes, but he can’t look away, and he can’t stop calling for it, begging for it to save him- save me, please-
The light touches him. It sears his flesh, burns hotter than Dabi’s fire ever could, but it ignores his thrashing as it coils around his forearm and solidifies into some kind of bracelet. All at once Hitoshi seems to fall faster, but by now the pain is so all-consuming that panic falls to the wayside as he keeps dropping, slipping further away from anything meaningful.
This is it, he thinks, all of that, and I couldn’t even save them.
And then he hits the ground. He has time to scream one final time as his back collides with what might be concrete before he blacks out.
~
Consciousness returns to him in stages.
The first thing that hits him is the pain. It’s ebbing and flowing through his whole body like a tidal wave, pulling back before pushing forwards once more in a cycle of agony.
Then, while curling up tightly in an attempt to abate some of it, he realizes that he’s lying on solid ground. On real solid ground- not whatever he used to stand on in the void. He cracks his eyes open and squints against the sunlight to see that he’s lying in the back of an alleyway that has a dumpster on the left side and two doors on the right. In the mouth of the alley he can see people walking past, some on their phones, a couple with dogs, just going about their days like nothing is wrong.
The next thing he realizes is that he’s twenty-three again. The cut on his leg is gone, but his pants are still torn where the gash should be and there’s a scar there, along with all of the other ones he collected throughout the original timeline. His arm isn’t broken, either, not that it hurts any less for it.
His combat uniform seems to have disintegrated along his upper right torso. The sleeve is gone, and so is the shoulder and part of the chest piece, and in its place is that gold band that takes up almost all of his forearm. It’s glowing softly, and Hitoshi can almost feel the power coming from it. The rest of his arm around it is horribly burnt- the wound wraps around his elbow and stretches up towards his shoulder, and then down to the back of his palm until it meets the scars already there from previous fights.
Another wave of pain hits him and he whimpers, curling tightly around his mangled arm as if that would help at all. He needs to call someone over, to yell for someone out on the street to help him, but the words get caught in his throat and he fades back into unconsciousness.
~
When he wakes up for a second time, he feels much steadier.
Everything still hurts but it’s no longer all-consuming. His arm feels like shit, sure, and his head would like him to take some migraine medication yesterday, but other than that it’s… bearable.
He’s still in that alleyway from before and it’s still daytime, so it’s likely that not a lot of time has passed. He doesn’t have a phone or any method to call someone, so his next step should be to get to the street and ask someone if he can borrow their-
Wait.
If he’s… if he’s twenty-three again… then… how are there people? How are the buildings around him still intact? Hitoshi saw All For One level Japan, he-
He swallows. Unless that hasn’t happened yet.
Unless it worked, and Hitoshi isn’t…
He takes a deep breath and forces himself to stand. It’s not easy- just sitting up makes his world tilt and his stomach feel queasy, but he has to know, has to know if it worked, if he’s really-
Standing is hard. Despite going slowly, the first time he tries the head rush is so powerful that he collapses to his knees and vomits. The bile burns his throat and throwing up makes his head throb, but he doesn’t pass out again and he’ll take that as a win.
It takes him a long time to feel steady enough to try again. He keeps glancing out at the street, wondering if someone heard him, if someone is going to look and see him, hunched over and horribly injured, but no one does. No one spares him so much as a glance, and a deep sense of discomfort begins to build.
Finally he manages to get his feet under him. He keeps his right hand on the wall the whole way out, taking small steps slowly to try and negate the nausea. Hitoshi makes it to the end of the alley, right at the street, with torn, bloody clothes, a burn that spans a good twenty percent of his body, and scars that cover the whole expanse of his skin.
And no one even blinks at him.
“Hello?” He calls, staring straight into the eyes of a plain looking man who’s talking on the phone and holding a briefcase. “Hello? Sir, please-”
He walks past. No response.
He waves a hand in front of the face of someone else walking past. They don’t even flinch, and he pulls it back before he can make skin to skin contact.
Desperately, he steps into the crowd and shoves another person, and for a brief moment they make real, genuine eye contact-
-but the second Hitoshi’s hand leaves them, someone else seemingly just- materializes, and the person he pushed yells at them, instead. No one bats an eye.
Just standing still like this, it seems as though everyone is unconsciously avoiding him. Like they know he’s there, maybe they sense some sort of presence, but they just walk around him like he’s parting the red sea. No response. No looks. No aggravated muttering about some asshole just standing in the middle of the sidewalk.
He’s not there. To these people- to the whole world, most likely- Hitoshi isn’t there.
A sob tears from his throat and he lifts his right hand to clasp over his mouth to muffle it. No one hears him. Just like in the void- he might as well not be making any sound at all.
Crying makes his headache worse. The bright light of the sun hurts to look at. His arm throbs in time with his heartbeat.
This is what he wanted, isn’t it? This is what he worked towards for a century. He can still touch people, even if the universe seemingly overwrites his presence the moment he stops. That means he can still kill All For One, and the man will never know he’s coming.
But here he is, standing in the middle of a crowd in intense pain, and he’s completely, utterly alone.
The vestiges aren’t even there. He tries to call out to them, even tries to poke One For All inside of him in a last ditch effort. Interestingly, doing so doesn’t hurt, even though he can see the familiar red lines that indicate that the quirk is activating beneath his skin.
There is no one to go to, no one to help him, and there never will be again. He is alone.
…
For a while, Hitoshi just wanders. Aimless, until the pain becomes too severe for him to ignore anymore, and then he gets a few destinations in mind.
His first stop is a drug store. His arm and head still hurt like hell, and he reasons that if he can touch people then maybe he can touch items, too? It’s worth a shot, anyways.
Turns out he can. Sort of. Picking up a bottle of Excedrin reveals that, while he can grab it, the item seems to sort of… copy itself, instead of letting him pick it up normally. When his hand closes around the bottle it shimmers for a moment before Hitoshi pulls away an almost holographic looking version that solidifies in his hand a second later. Just to test it, he tries to put it back down, and the moment his hand leaves it the bottle dissolves into nothing. Weird, but it’s his life now, so he better get used to it.
He swallows two pills dry and then picks up some bandages and burn cream. He doesn’t have a bag right now, so he doesn’t stock up on stuff right away. That’ll happen later.
Hitoshi finds a bench outside in a nearby park and sits down to bandage his arm. He avoids the golden bracelet, still too wary of it to touch it. The memories of what happened in the void are starting to come back to him, and he knows that this bracelet is essentially him. His life, maybe. He doesn’t know, and he’s too afraid to find out.
Next, he winds up at a mall. He sticks to the outer edges of the crowd, because walking in the center- even though he can- feels so incredibly isolating when everyone parts around him that he can’t bring himself to do it.
He wanders around the stores for a while. He can take anything he wants. Designer clothes, expensive watches, whatever weapons and gear his heart desires. It all feels empty. What’s the point of looking nice if no one is going to see him? There isn’t one.
So he just picks out what he wants. It seems to be spring, and he wasn’t cold on the walk over here, so he goes for a simple pair of black cargo pants, a plain belt to keep them in place, a black v-neck t-shirt with a random band logo on it that he thinks he used to like but can’t remember the music of, and a leather jacket because why the fuck not?
Along the way he also picks out a new pair of combat boots to tide him over until he goes and steals from the support companies again. Well, actually, is it stealing if he’s not really taking anything?
The jacket stays off for now because he doesn’t want to pull at his bandages. He ties it to a backpack he got from a camping store, nabs a box of cigarettes and a lighter from the gas station right outside, and continues on walking.
At one point he passes by a store that has a calendar in its window with July 1st circled. His birthday, he realizes with a jolt. Now curious, he searches for the year only to find-
Oh. Hitoshi swallows. It’s the day I was born.
His feet carry him to his childhood home without waiting for his permission.
He barely registers that he was in the area already, that whatever fuckery he pulled in the void probably landed him here on purpose. He barely registers anything at all, actually.
The sky is dark by the time he’s at his own doorstep. Peering in the window confirms his suspicions.
Those aren’t his parents in the living room, and that baby the mother is cradling isn’t him.
“Fuck,” he whispers, sinking to sit on the stairs. He drops his head in his hands and ignores how the movement pulls at his burns under the bandages. “Fuck.”
~
At some point, he ends up at UA.
It was the natural conclusion. He can’t stick around his house- it’s not his anymore and it feels profoundly creepy to watch complete strangers raise their kid- most of his friends aren’t born yet and he’s not really sure where some of the ones that are live, and wandering aimlessly got really boring really quickly.
He had a hundred years to explore Japan- he doesn’t need to do it again. The only interesting thing left to watch is, well, his dads.
When they’re sixteen. And high school students.
A part of him sort of hoped that UA’s security system would flag him as an intruder, but he had no such luck. No one notices him, no one looks his way, and just like on the street and at the mall everyone automatically parts for him when he walks through the hallways.
It’s weird being back at UA as an adult. Everything feels smaller, most of his teachers are teenagers, and he has all of the lessons memorized. He spends his time hovering around Shouta, mostly, which naturally ends up with him hovering around Hizashi, and Shirakumo, too. Tensei and Kayama, occasionally.
And that’s weird- seeing Shirakumo after hearing the stories about his old antics. Shouta and Hizashi didn’t talk about him a lot, but when they did it was always fond and loving. He gets the feeling there might’ve been something more between them if Shirakumo didn’t die in…
Hitoshi glances at the date. Two months.
He swallows. Internally, he debates stopping that from happening. He could, it would just take a bit of planning.
…he doesn’t have to decide now, though. So he looks over Shouta’s shoulder again to see him filling out his latest trig problem totally wrong.
“You’re supposed to use cosine, not sine, you idiot,” he sighs, “you’ve done this three damn times already. No wonder you always told me to go to Hizashi with any math questions.”
Shouta doesn’t hear him, obviously, and keeps doing the problem wrong. Hitoshi wanders over to see that Hizashi finished the worksheet a good five minutes ago and is now trying to fold it into a paper airplane. Shirakumo seems to have stopped trying halfway through and is doodling flowers on the side of his page. Honestly, same.
Hitoshi wishes he could talk to them. He’s not sure what he would say, because he’s not super keen on fucking up the timeline more than he already has, but it’s incredibly lonely to speak without anyone even looking his way.
He has nine years to kill like this. Doing nothing. Being nothing. He doesn’t even have to eat or sleep, he’s literally just there. A fly on the wall, except he’s not even enough of a presence to be annoying.
Maybe he should pick up a hobby. Get really into art or something, except no, the moment he lifted his hand off any paper or canvas he touched, it would disappear. He could take up a sport, maybe? Nothing that requires a ball. Swimming seems like it would be feasible- rowing, too, but he’d have to drag a new boat all the way to a river every single time he wanted to practice. Not impossible, just inconvenient as hell.
A groan escapes his lips and he slides down to sit cross legged on the floor in the middle of the row of desks. What’s the point?
Unbidden, his eyes catch on the bracelet that’s literally welded to his arm. It’s been about two weeks since he got back, and the burns around it have healed as nicely as they could without a healing quirk or actual medical care. He still doesn’t know what it does, if it does anything at all.
As the boredom continues to seep in, his curiosity grows, too. By now he’s less scared and more anticipatory. He wants to know if it holds any power, but there’s that final thing holding him back, and he’s not sure what it is.
He looks up at the clock above the door. They still have another fifteen minutes left in this period.
“Oh, fuck it,” he grumbles, and takes his other hand to tap the bracelet. Just with one finger.
Instantly, everything pauses.
Hitoshi blinks. Looks around. Gets up. Pushes Shirakumo by the shoulder-
The boy gasps, unfreezing instantly before his eyes lock on Hitoshi and he goes still once more in a much more natural manner, gaze filled with fear as he looks around at all his frozen classmates.
Hitoshi rears back immediately, taking his hand off Shirakumo and stumbling until his back hits the desk behind him. Shirakumo freezes like that, eyes staring blankly towards him. It’s creepy, and the pressure he feels on his wrist is similar to that of what he feels when he uses his original quirk.
“What the fuck,” he breathes, looking around the frozen room. The second hand on the clock isn’t moving. When he looks out the window, there’s a bird frozen mid-flight.
Cautiously, he looks back down at his bracelet and taps it once again.
The world unfreezes. Everyone’s pencils scratch across the paper like they hadn’t stopped. Hizashi keeps folding his paper airplane. Shouta looks frustrated. Shirakumo has a brief moment of confusion before he shrugs and turns back to his drawings.
“Holy shit,” he says with a slightly hysterical laugh. He just paused time. For the whole world. Hitoshi doesn’t know if he likes that he can do that or not, but it might come in handy to use against All For One.
…What else can he do? He’s invisible until he touches someone, the universe re-writes his involvement whenever he does something, he can have whatever he wants basically whenever he wants it, he can pause time- does he have any other new powers? What the fuck did One For All do to this quirk?
He has to find out, now. The idea’s been planted in his head, but he shouldn’t do it here. He runs the risk of Shouta seeing him, and he knows for a fact that if Shouta saw him on UA grounds he’d panic and activate his quirk, which could have all sorts of terrifying impacts on Hitoshi’s general wellbeing.
He slips out of the classroom, ignores the way the world overwrites the door opening with someone coming back from the bathroom, and makes his way off UA’s campus.
Hitoshi has some theories to test.
~
It turns out that on top of pausing time, Hitoshi can send the world’s timeline forwards and backwards as he pleases.
All he has to do is tap the bracelet like he’s going to pause it, except instead of lifting his finger he drags it forwards or backwards along the metal depending on which way he wants time to go. Sending people back doesn’t seem to have any repercussions, but sending them forwards leaves everyone disoriented and almost resulted in a car crash one time. So safe to say he’s not using that one.
It seems as though the timeline isn’t predetermined, like there’s not any one path that someone will inevitably end up taking. Sure there are events that are going to happen, but they technically already have, at least for Hitoshi, and he can mess with them at will. So, no predetermined destiny. Cool.
The last thing Hitoshi wants to test has to do with his original quirk. Namely: can he use it, and if he can, what does the universe do about it?
He hasn’t used it for a long time, mostly because guns and knives did the trick better than brainwashing could in a lot of situations. He certainly hasn’t used it since he got One For All, so who knows what the fuck it’s gonna do now? Not him!
Mostly for the sake of entertaining himself, he turns it into a vigilante mission. Honestly, if this goes how he’s hoping it will, Hitoshi could end up being the most successful vigilante to ever sort of exist, like, ever. No one could ever catch him.
He doesn’t have any gear yet, but he doesn’t really need it. That night Hitoshi takes a casual stroll along the streets of Musutafu, stopping in alleys and peering into shady areas until he finally catches some burly guy trying to mug what seems to be a homeless teenager at knifepoint. Dick.
With a single tap, Hitoshi pauses time and walks up to them. He’s careful to grab the wrist of the hand that’s holding the knife, and makes sure to keep a firm grip when the thug startles back into awareness.
“What-” he starts, cutting off as he catches sight of Hitoshi. His eyes go wide and angry, but all Hitoshi does is smile placidly at him.
“Wonderful weather tonight, huh?” He asks. The thug growls and tries to tug his wrist free, and Hitoshi is pleasantly surprised to feel the thread connecting their minds snap into place even with just that tiny response.
He grabs onto it mentally. The thug goes still, eyes glazing over and muscles going lax.
“Sleep,” he orders, and lets go. The thug freezes in a falling pose, eyes still hazy with Hitoshi’s quirk. He unpauses time.
Immediately a hero that Hitoshi doesn’t know the name of is there, foot connecting with the head of the thug even while he’s already unconscious mid-fall. The teenager slumps in relief against the wall, showing no signs of having noticed anything off about the situation. Huh.
An hour later Hitoshi finds another alley with shady people in it. It’s just two people again, but this time it seems to be some sort of drug deal. The guy with the baggie of pills is counting money while the other man fiddles with his hands nervously, either expecting to get caught or just that wound up from withdrawal.
Again, Hitoshi taps his bracelet to pause the world, but this time he puts a hand on both of their shoulders instead of just the one.
“Gentlemen,” he drawls, and gets a yelp of surprise and a snarled out “who the fuck are you?” in response. They both count, and Hitoshi activates brainwashing.
This time, instead of just ordering them to fall asleep, he tags on, “forget that you ever saw or talked to me.” This time he lowers them to the ground before taking his hands away and letting time resume.
This time, nothing happens. There is no rewrite, no hero to save the day, no cop busting a drug deal.
Suddenly, all of his new powers don’t feel so cool anymore. It only takes a single second for the discomfort to set in.
He’s… he’s basically a god, isn’t he? He has complete control over the flow of time, and now with the added ability to influence the timeline as long as he makes people forget about it…
He doesn’t need to eat or sleep or drink water, he might not even age. He’s essentially an immortal deity that lives outside of the laws of the universe who can affect the events within it at will. He’s a god.
Hitoshi takes two rapid steps back from the unconscious men, puts a hand on the wall for support, and then doubles over and vomits.
He doesn’t like this. This is- this is responsibility, it’s power, it’s- he could do anything. Anything at all, and no one could stop him. Per the rules of his nonexistence, no one would even know that he was the one doing it.
Anything, anything at all, and he could get away with it. Murder. Kidnapping. God, fucking anything. Any crime, any atrocity- he could do it, and no one would even fucking know.
“What do you get out of this?” He’d asked the supervillain once.
“Entertainment,” All For One replied. “It gets terribly boring, you know. Being immortal.”
He vomits again.
No, no, he won’t turn into- into that. He can’t let himself become a monster. Nine years. Hitoshi has to last nine years, and then he can try and off himself or something, end his immortality before he has the chance to go insane and turn into something despicable.
Nine years.
~
Watching Shirakumo die is hard.
He’d gotten attached to him a little bit, or maybe he just watched Shouta and Hizashi get attached to him and that rubbed off on Hitoshi. Either way, watching the League interfere with his internship until he’s crushed under a falling villain is… gruesome.
Hitoshi debates for a long while whether to rewind or not, but ultimately decides against it. All of the events that happen from now until All For One and All Might’s battle are important, and altering one- especially one so big as the origin of Kurogiri- could ruin everything he’s worked towards.
Of course, he could just go back if that happened, but really doesn’t want to. Really, really does not want to.
He tries to keep his bracelet covered up at all times. With a bandage, or a jacket- whatever he’s feeling at the time.
His burns have completely healed. He doesn’t get migraines anymore. And, after letting two months go by, Hitoshi can safely say that he’s not getting any older. Every reminder of his new strength makes him sicker than the last, so he tries to ignore it as much as possible.
Distracting himself is hard, though. He follows Shouta through his grieving for a while, but it’s too difficult to watch him waste away homeless in an alley, so he leaves and wanders some more. He ends up at Shouto’s house, somehow, and stays for a few weeks until watching Endeavor abuse his eldest son starts to piss him off too much for it to be safe for him to stick around.
Turning his back on that hurts. It makes him feel disgusting, but he doesn’t want to fuck this up. He starts cycling through his friend’s childhood homes.
Nine more years becomes eight, and then seven. Hitoshi has a favorite place to smoke, now, and the burn in the back of his lungs reminds him that underneath all the fancy powers, he’s still human. Maybe he can even get lung cancer.
At one point he stops at Izuku’s house- sees his dad, a man with a fluffy head of black curls, broad shoulders, and copious amounts of freckles. The resemblance is uncanny. Hitoshi hates him immediately, especially when he sticks around to see Izuku’s quirkless diagnosis, to watch Midoriya Hisashi leave, to watch Izuku break down over it.
“Can I still be a hero, mama?”
Midoriya Inko doesn’t say no, but she doesn’t say yes either.
Hitoshi says yes, but Izuku can’t hear it, and watching him cry hurts too much for him to stay.
Six years.
He watches Bakugou Katsuki turn into a bully. Multiple times he wants to step in, but he doesn’t- what could he even do, anyways? Don’t fuck up the timeline, Hitoshi.
Five years.
He watches Ochako struggle with her family’s money and food insecurity. He wants to help, but he can’t. He leaves, watches over Tenya and Tsu for a while, and when that gets boring, he dabbles in a little vigilantism. Can it be called vigilantism if he doesn’t even exist?
Four years.
He follows Denki around his school for a few months and watches him accidentally short circuit the building’s electricity no less than three times. A few kids make fun of him for it, but most, including Kyouka, just thank him for getting them out of reading time. After that, he finds some of his other friends to observe.
Three years.
Eijirou and Mina. Mina was always the same, bubbly girl she was in high school. Hitoshi ends up being entertained enough to stick around for the whole school year as he watches the six year old play pranks on her classmates and teachers. Eijirou, by contrast, is quiet and reserved. Hitoshi knew this about him, of course, but it’s still such a difference from how he is even at the start of UA. Hitoshi calls out words of encouragement but again, no one can hear him.
Two years.
If Hitoshi has to watch Shouta and Hizashi simultaneously chicken out on asking each other on a date one more goddamn time-
One year.
Sometimes he wanders the city to watch hero fights up close. Sometimes he sees Izuku doing that, too, watching in fond amusement as his… as the boy scribbles down notes in his journal.
All Might in his prime is something to behold. A god among men, some call him.
Ha, Hitoshi thinks. He’s sitting atop a nearby roof and breathing in nicotine as he watches the number one hero effortlessly subdue the latest hot-shot villain. If only they knew.
One month.
Hitoshi starts preparing. He scopes out a few support companies to see what gear he wants. Security measures are no longer an issue, so he just walks in, takes a few things, and leaves.
He sticks with the cargo pants, t-shirt, and leather jacket, but he throws on a capture weapon, knife bandolier, and two gun holsters for good measure. It might be overkill, but he’s not taking a single chance.
He also grabs a bit of body armor, just in case. It never really made a difference against All For One’s quirks, but it makes Hitoshi feel cool and that’s good enough.
The day of the battle he grabs a tank of gasoline and a box of matches and makes his way over to watch the two titans duke it out for the last time.
The fight goes almost exactly the same as it did the other ten million times he’s seen it. The hole in All Might’s stomach, the face crushing, All For One getting his organs ripped out. All Might leaves prematurely once more, and Hitoshi takes a deep breath, pulls his sleeve up, and pauses time.
Walking over to All For One on the ground feels surreal. This… this is it. This is everything he’s worked towards. There is no trickery, no convoluted plans, no last second way for All For One to stop him. Hitoshi’s… just going to kill him, and that will be that. The man that’s tormented him and his family for so long. That forced him to pull himself from existence just to save them. He’s right here at Hitoshi’s feet. Completely at his mercy.
With a deep breath, Hitoshi steps closer to his head, and then slams his boot down onto the bastard’s sternum- the only part of his torso that’s truly intact anymore.
The weight of his hatred is strong, and it hits him all at once. The way All For One chokes and gasps and spits up blood is deeply satisfying on an almost terrifying level. Should he really be this happy about getting to murder this guy?
Mmm. Yep. Yeah. He’s earned it. Decades of struggling and trying and failing flash through his mind. He’s definitely earned it.
“All M- Might-” All For One stutters, probably mistaking Hitoshi for the other hero in his blindness. His voice cuts off when Hitoshi flicks the safety off on one of his pistols, though.
“Not All Might,” he says. A vicious grin starts to spread across his face.
The villain’s body stills. “Then w-who are you?”
Hitoshi hums. Weighs his options.
“An anomaly,” he decides on, echoing the little nickname All For One gave him during the resets. “One who is going to really enjoy killing you.”
All For One coughs up more blood. His hands are trembling. Hitoshi almost wishes the bastard still had his eyes, if only so that he could see the fear in them.
“Wait,” the villain chokes, “I can- I can give you power. Whatever you want.”
It’s the first time Hitoshi has ever heard him sound afraid. He’s almost begging. Hitoshi laughs- it’s bitter, a little sad, but mostly manic. How many goddamn times did he scream silently into the void? How many times did he pound his fist into those invisible walls? How many times did he watch his family die, in how many ways? He should make this asshole die one time for each and every one of those resets, make him choke on his own blood for centuries- suffer just like Hitoshi had to.
He won’t, but the thought is there. The desire.
“No you can’t,” Hitoshi says. “I’m already a god. And I already had everything I wanted. You took that from me.”
“I don’t know you,” All For One tries, “please, young man-”
“That’s such a shame, isn’t it? That you don’t know me,” Hitoshi sneers. “I almost wish you did. I almost want to stand here and tell you every single little thing you’ve ever done to make my life hell. You won’t die- you can’t, not like this. I could do it, and then I could torture you for as long as I wanted.”
All For One goes still.
Hitoshi puts his finger on the trigger. “But I think I’d rather just kill you instead.”
Five gunshots go off in rapid succession. Hitoshi puts three of them in his head and two in his exposed heart, and stops before he can fire off the last one.
All For One doesn’t even have the chance to scream. Hitoshi feels a century of pressure lift from his shoulders at the sight of his unmoving, mangled beyond recognition corpse.
Still keeping his foot on top of his chest, Hitoshi slips his pistol back into its holster and swings his bag around to his front. He tested this earlier- as long as no one is around to see him pour out the gasoline, the universe allows it. And the only other body in the vicinity is a dead one, so.
He drenches the man’s corpse. Right before he lights the match, he whispers, “see you in Hell, bastard.”
And just as the fire begins to spread, he steps away and lets time resume.
Immediately one of Kurogiri’s portals opens up and a Nomu comes through. All For One’s body is being turned to ash, but that doesn’t deter the monster from trying to pick it up. Hitoshi pauses time again, pulls out his second gun, and uses all six bullets to make sure the Nomu’s corpse lands right in the fire.
This time when time resumes, Kurogiri materializes as a full person. He stands and stares at the bonfire for a long moment before turning away, opening another portal, and disappearing all together.
Hitoshi laughs at the sight, and then suddenly he can’t stop laughing. The disgusting smell of burning flesh hits his nostrils and he can’t. Stop. Laughing.
He falls to his knees from the force of it, lets the heat of the flames warm his skin as he watches the last of that villain’s face melt away, and soon his laughter dissolves into full body, gut-wrenching sobbing.
He did it. He killed All For One. He saved the fucking world.
In the absence of anyone else to do it, Hitoshi hugs himself. He sits there and cries until the fire has gone out and the only thing left is a pile of ash. Until reporters come to investigate the damage and scream at the sight of charred bones. Until they’ve left, too, and it’s just him again.
Alone.
His tears dry at some point, but he can’t bring himself to get up and move. Or do anything. He left one bullet in the chamber for a reason, after all, but now that he’s fulfilled his purpose he can’t even muster up the energy to kill himself. Eventually he falls to the side, curls into a ball, and just stares out at the rubble. At the sky and the stars. Watches clean-up crews come and go and avoid his tiny, pathetic form. Someone picks up All For One and the Nomu’s bones, and he still cannot make himself move.
Days pass like that. They slip away from him- he’s completely numb to all of it. It’s not like he needs to do anything to keep himself alive.
Soon it’s been weeks. Construction projects have begun to repair the damage from All Might’s fight. Hitoshi absently wonders if they maybe had a press conference about it like the training camp.
It’s when he can’t stand the noise of the machinery anymore that he finally sits up, pushes to his feet, and starts walking again. He has no purpose and no destination, and he still has one bullet in his gun.
He’s not surprised when he ends up at Dagobah beach, with all of its piles of forgotten junk.
There’s a busted dock that he hops on top of. Once at the edge, he sits back down cross legged and stares out at the horizon. It’s peaceful. Izuku used to take him here on the quiet nights, before it was destroyed, to show him where he used to train and reminisce on the days where they weren’t fighting for their lives all the time.
Absently he starts fiddling with the handle of his pistol. Does he want to kill himself? No. It’s the same problem he told Shouta about when they discussed his motivation to be a hero. It’s not that he wants to kill himself, it’s that he doesn’t want to become a monster, and that’s the easiest way to stop that from happening.
He wants to stick around and watch over his family, but that’s going to hurt. A lot. It’s going to require watching them live their lives without him, completely without him. He’ll have to watch Shouta marry Hizashi and start a family without being a part of it, watch all his friends graduate without him. Izuku will probably fall in love with someone else. Denki will find someone else to bug about all his cartoon obsessions. Shouto will have to piss off Katsuki on his own. Maybe Eri will even get a different big brother.
Can he live with that? Can he watch that happen? Because if the answer is yes…
If the answer is yes, then he has the chance to give them all better lives. It could be dangerous to fuck around with them, but he has infinite chances, doesn’t he?
First, his eyes drop to the gun on his hip. Then to his left arm, and his concealed time bracelet. He pulls his nearly empty box of cigarettes out of his bag and lights one up. He doesn’t notice the sting anymore.
Where would he even start? Kurogiri and Shimura, probably. Then maybe he should do something about Bakugou’s bullying… the Todorokis, definitely- he can’t leave Shouto there now that he knows it won’t end in All For One living. Eri was born this year, too. He should keep an eye on that, try and send heroes to her in time to stop her from suffering under Overhaul.
Hitoshi sighs. He stares out at the rippling waves, watches the sunset. Smokes the rest of the pack.
Just like at the start of this whole mess, he only really has a single option, doesn’t he?
Once dawn breaks, he stands up, pulls out the gun that’s loaded with a single bullet, and tosses it into the ocean.
~
“Dad!” Eri cries, banging on the door to Shouta’s office, “dad, I can’t find my bunny!”
Shouta sighs. This is not surprising- Eri loses her bunny more often than she finds it. But he knows this is likely to turn into a temper tantrum if left alone, so he gets up from his chair and walks out into the hallway.
Truthfully, he wouldn’t trade this loud, obnoxious six year old for the world. Three years ago when they found her being experimented on by the Yakuza, Shouta was afraid she’d never have the courage to be this demanding.
And yet.
“Where’d you see it last, kiddo?” He asks.
“Papa took me to the park and I brought it,” she whines, “but now I can’t find it anywhere!”
Shouta resists the urge to sigh. Of course it was Oboro. Of course. He’s the worst of them when it comes to losing things- ironic considering that his second quirk is so good for transporting them.
He walks into the kitchen and grabs his keys. “Do you remember which park?”
“The one by the ice cream stand.”
“Alright.” Shouta walks back down the hallway and knocks on the door to Tenko’s room. His son takes a few seconds to open it, and when he does he only cracks it open until he sees that it’s Shouta on the other side.
It’s a habit that he hasn’t gotten over and likely never will- to make sure that whoever is at the door is safe. Tenko was much older than Eri when he experienced his trauma, and went through it for much longer, and that shows in his smaller mannerisms. Shouta still doesn’t know all of the details, but he does know that even before All For One Tenko’s biological parents were pieces of shit. And he knows enough about what the supervillain put his kid through to be glad that All Might pulverized the bastard.
His facilities are still being uncovered with the help of an unnamed vigilante even six years later. It’s why Tenko’s still staying in their house despite being an adult- the commission has deemed it unsafe for him to be out on the streets, although Shouta has a sneaking suspicion that has more to do with his quirk than any actual concern for his safety.
Shouta’s technically supposed to be tracking down the vigilante that’s assisting in All For One’s post mortem takedown in order to arrest them, but he’s… not really putting his all into it.
Whoever they are, Shouta owes his family’s lives and safety to them. Including Eri’s, because there’s evidence to suggest that they were involved with uncovering the Yakuza’s plans. Shouta’s not gonna fuckin’ arrest him- he wants to throw the guy a damn party. Maybe buy them a ticket to America or something to escape the government.
“Dad?” Tenko asks once the door is open far enough that Shouta can see all of him.
“Can you watch Eri for a bit? She left a toy at the park. I’m gonna go grab it.”
“Mr. Squiggims is not a toy! He’s my best friend!” Eri yells in genuine offense. Tenko muffles his snort behind his hand, and Shouta rolls his eyes now that his back is to his daughter.
“Right, of course,” Shouta sighs, turning to look at her, “I’m sorry for calling him a toy.”
Eri crosses her arms and her lips form a pout. “You better be,” she grumbles.
“Eri, c’mon,” Tenko says, saving Shouta from the rest of this interaction, “do you want to play Mario Kart?”
Instantly his daughter perks up, all perceived slights forgotten at the chance to play video games with her brother. She dashes past Shouta and shoves Tenko’s door the rest of the way open, calling “I’m gonna beat you this time, Nii-san!” over her shoulder as she goes.
“Thanks,” Shouta whispers. “Call me if something goes wrong. Hizashi should be home soon, too.”
Tenko rolls his eyes. “You always act like we’re gonna disappear or something the moment you look away. We’re fine.”
He smiles. “I know. I just like reminding you that I’ll be there if you need me.”
His son blushes a little and grumbles out something that would no doubt be sarcastic if Shouta could actually hear it.
No, he wouldn’t trade his kids for the world.
~
It’s early spring- mid March- and the chill that bites into his fingers reflects it. He buries his face into his capture weapon to keep his nose warm as he makes his way down the street towards the park Eri indicated.
Moments like this make him appreciate how unknown he is as a hero. No one pays him any mind as he strolls down the sidewalk- all Shouta is to them is another face in the crowd, as opposed to Hizashi’s celebrity status. It makes mundane errands much easier when people aren’t asking him for autographs every five seconds.
Shouta approaches the park assuming that he’s going to have to turn the damn thing upside down in order to find the bunny, but he’s surprised to see that someone else beat him to it.
There, on the park bench towards the back corner of the park, is Eri’s bunny. There’s a man there, too, someone tall in their early twenties with wild purple hair, a leather jacket, and black cargo pants. In the back of his mind, Shouta notes that he’s not dressed for the weather at all. His hand is on the bunny, and Shouta says nothing as the man picks it up gingerly, like it’s something beyond precious.
He knows this man. He’s seen him before somewhere, hasn’t he?
Say something, his mind begs, anything, just fucking say something!
“Sir?” Is what he ends up calling out. The man jolts and looks around before his eyes land on Shouta and- oh.
He’s covered in scars. Across the bridge of his nose and on his cheeks, along his jaw, down his neck- now that Shouta looks, he can see burn scars covering the man’s fingertips and the whole back of his left hand. They’re all old- long since healed, but…
“Sorry, is this yours?” He says, jolting Shouta out of his thoughts. His voice is deep, deeper than he was expecting. Older than he was expecting, for some reason.
He swallows. He has no idea why he’s so off-kilter.
“My daughter’s,” Shouta answers. “She left it here when she was playing with my husband.”
The man snorts. There’s something… sad in his gaze. Something longing. “You’re a good father, if you’re coming all the way out here in this cold for it.”
“Just doing my job,” Shouta protests.
“Yeah, well, most parents think their ‘job’ is to order another one online. Give yourself a little more credit.” He walks over to Shouta and holds the bunny out. “Sorry for holding you up.”
Shouta stares at the bunny. He reaches out and grabs it, but doesn’t make any move to take it from the man’s grip. Now that he’s closer, Shouta can smell the almost overpowering scent of nicotine on him.
Say something.
“Who are you?” He asks. Not what’s your name or do I know you? Because he does know this man and his name isn’t the important part. Shouta suddenly, desperately, needs to know who he is, why he remembers him when they’ve never met, why looking at him makes his chest ache.
Purple eyes zero in on him, and there are so many emotions swirling within them that they’ve melded into something indescribable. There is only one namable one that sticks out from the others. Resignation.
“Nobody important,” the man answers eventually with a casual shrug. “Have a nice night, sir.”
He takes his hand away from the bunny before Shouta can protest. In a flash, it is no longer the purple haired man covered in scars, but a shorter blonde one in plainclothes walking away from him.
Shouta stares. Holds the bunny close.
He doesn’t remember why he’s crying.