Chapter Text
Toshinori felt on the brink of collapsing. He had put every remaining bit of energy he had left into his last message.
“Now…it’s your turn.”
His arm lowered without his control, strength dissipating rapidly after just the mere action of pointing at the camera. His vision was darkening around the edges. His ears felt clogged, yet the voices around him seemed to be echoing as though he were in a tunnel.
But he couldn’t pass out. Not yet. Not when the cameras were still on him. Not when this would be the last time the world would see him in the field.
Shit, was he exhausted, though.
His shattered arm had since stopped throbbing. Now it was just numb. And it wasn’t even a tingling numbness.
There was just…nothing.
That…probably wasn’t good.
There was a barked order from a familiar voice. It sounded like Gran Torino.
“THAT’S ENOUGH. LEAVE HIM BE.”
Thank you…
The cameras moved away and Toshinori swayed.
Now all he needed was to get out of here.
He took a step forward and that action alone almost made him black out.
He needed to get out of here. Get out of here so no one could see him…when…he…
His second step became a stumble, feet suddenly feeling an awful lot like concrete slabs. He didn’t have the strength to catch himself, all adrenaline officially having melted away and been replaced with exhaustion and weakness.
Suddenly and thankfully, there were arms there to catch him before he could tumble all the way down.
“Hey, woah…easy there, All Might,” came the voice of Kamui Woods.
“You need a hospital, my friend,” Tiger said, arms tightening their hold as Toshinori’s body sagged, muscles feeling heavier and heavier with each passing second.
“Be careful, his arm...” Woods cautioned.
“I’m…don’t…” Toshinori murmured, tongue thick in his mouth.
There was a hot bubbling in his chest and throat. It would have been a familiar enough feeling if his brain were working properly. He could have prepared. Instead, though, he no longer possessed the capability to cover his mouth as a painful, hacking cough burst past his lips. Blood spattered from his mouth and onto the rubble.
Tiger grunted as Toshinori suddenly became dead weight, the heaving coughs causing his spent body to shut down completely.
“All Might? All Might!” Woods exclaimed in alarm. “We need some help over here! We need a medic!”
“N-no…” Toshinori rasped as Tiger gently lowered him to the ground. “Ci-civilians…”
“You need help too, my friend,” Tiger stated softly.
Toshinori barely had it in him to protest further. Though, he wanted to, his pathetic body had different plans.
Another hacking cough forced itself from his throat, and with it came an even more alarming amount of blood. It sprayed across all over Wood’s feet and uniform.
Shit. That was gross...
“S-sorr-“ Toshinori tried to apologize, blood covering his teeth and dripping down his chin, face drawn in discomfort, pain, and stress.
"Shh, it's alright," Woods assured him, not caring at all about the new stains. "Just try to relax and breathe."
Another surge of thick crimson came up and Toshinori coughed and gagged. It just kept coming. He hardly had any time to breathe as wave after wave of thick copper burst from his throat.
Toshinori suddenly felt new hands touching his face and chest as medics seemed to appear almost out of the blue. One of them was speaking to him. He was probably supposed to answer, but...it was difficult for him to tell what the hell they were even saying amidst the groggy fog that was his world at that point.
He could barely see. He could hardly hear. He could feel pain coursing through every inch of his body - sans his mutilated arm - but even that somehow felt like it was at a distance. As though it weren’t really his own body that he was feeling.
It all felt eerily similar to the aftermath of his last altercation with All for One.
Shit...oh no, were his guts hanging out again? He couldn’t afford to lose any more organs...
Toshinori's body began shaking. His eyes widened as he felt what was surely his innards splaying out of his abdomen for the world to see.
No, no, no, please, no. Not again…
Hot blood continued filling his mouth. He felt like he was drowning in it.
“Sh-shit…his arm-“
"Hold him still, damn it!"
“His arm…”
“All Might...All Might!”
“Get that oxygen mask on him!”
“He’s coughing up too much blood, I can't!"
“His arm-"
There were so many hands on him. On his shoulders, his face, his head, his arm, his legs...he could barely feel them and yet, somehow, they seemed to weigh on him like cinderblocks.
His heart was hammering in his chest, his stomach, his ears, everywhere. It sounded like the loud cracks of thunder from a violent storm.
Was his heart even still within his body? Because it felt like it had hammered through his thin, bony chest. It felt like it was out in the open air along with his entrails.
"All Might, calm down! You're alright! We're trying to help you!" one of the medics said desperately; he was trying and failing to strap an oxygen mask to Toshinori’s face, but every time the plastic went over his mouth, a fresh spurt of blood would fountain past his lips, spattering the inside.
Toshinori couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe.
The blood just kept coming without any reprieve.
It was too much. Everything was too much.
“Shit...” the medic hissed. “Turn him on his side now!”
“But sir, his arm is-” another medic started.
“Never mind that! Turn him on his side now! We need to clear his airways!”
Tiger and Woods assisted in turning Toshinori onto his side. A new wave of coughing and sputtering caused saliva and blood to form into a grotesque puddle on the ground.
“Toshinori!” came a gruff voice.
“Mister Gran Torino, sir! You need to let us finish checking you over!”
“It can wait, damn it!”
The elderly hero shoved past, cursing lowly upon seeing the state of the kid.
Kid... Toshinori wasn’t a kid anymore. He was a man. A very scared man at that, Gran Torino realized.
“Toshinori! Snap out of it!” Gran Torino barked, more harsh than was probably necessary.
Toshinori either couldn’t hear him or he was too lost in his own head to really pay him any mind.
Tiger and Woods turned him back over so the medic could once again try and get the oxygen mask on him. His mangled arm lay limp on the ground, not displaying even a twitch of its own movement. It was as though all of the muscle in it had died along with the remaining flickering flame of One for All.
Through all the jostling, Gran Torino noticed how Toshinori was desperately clutching his left side. He was sure that it probably hurt after the strain of the fight, but it was more than that...it was almost as if...
His eyes widened a bit as it dawned on him.
It appeared as though Toshinori was trying to hold something in place...like he was trying to physically hold something inside.
Gran Torino growled as the image of a younger Toshinori filled his mind. Bloodied, beaten, covered in gore...dying. Organs on the outside of his body rather than the inside where they belonged.
“Toshinori...it’s okay. You’re okay,” Gran Torino said in a softer tone of voice than before. “You aren’t back there. You’re here. And you’re...”
He was going to reassure Toshinori that he was in one piece this time, but that would’ve felt like a lie. While his organs were most definitely inside his body this time, his arm looked like it was about to crumble from his body.
It wasn’t just shattered...it was warped, twisted, and disfigured. It had essentially been obliterated.
Blood seeped out of the wounds caused by the multiple shards of bone that now stuck through the skin. His knuckles had crushed inward, causing the bones in his hand to crunch into his wrist like an accordion.
Gran Torino placed his ungloved hand over Toshinori’s, which was still clutching at his side.
“Toshinori, it’s alright. You beat him. You won,” he spoke in as reassuring voice as he could manage. “You need to calm down so the medics can help you.”
Toshinori’s eyes remained haunted, his brain still clearly lost in the past.
His grip on his side tightened.
He murmured something and Gran Torino’s gaze hardened, “What was that, kid?”
A cough got lodged in Toshinori's throat. Gran Torino kept his hand in place even as Woods and Tiger once more turned him onto his side. The blood and drool poured from his mouth once again. Gran Torino didn't even wince as it got all over his white and yellow uniform.
The coughing and heaving had barely ended when Toshinori croaked the words again, “N-Nana...s-sorr...m’sorry, Nana. I tried to...”
Gran Torino’s breath hitched.
Nana’s name still caused his heart to break every time he heard it. Even seeing her face in photographs caused him to turn away. And Toshinori uttering her name in that broken tone of voice was far too similar to how he’d sounded back then when she’d died.
Gran Torino closed his eyes, fighting back the tears threatening to emerge.
Toshinori really had gone past his limit in the fight. It was as though his brain was entirely scrambled, his mind torn between two terrible memories: the day he’d first fought All for One, and the day he’d lost the only real mother figure he’d ever known.
The hand that rested over Toshinori’s knuckles shook. He was certain he heard someone speak to him. Ask him if he was alright.
What a stupid question. Of course he wasn’t alright.
Neither of them were...
“I’m s-sorry, Nana...p-please forgive me...” Toshinori said brokenly, tears falling freely down his face now in thick rivers.
Gran Torino’s eyes flew open and his face fell into a deep scowl.
“You have nothing to apologize for, Toshinori. Nana would be-” the words lodged in his throat and he had to fight back against the emotions threatening to spill over. “Nana is proud of you. I know she is.”
Visions of Nana going out in a fiery blaze all those years ago filled his mind along with the way her face looked when she had looked at Toshinori for the last time. It had been clear even then how much faith she’d had in him. It was something Gran Torino himself had been incapable of understanding for so long. Or, rather, he wouldn’t allow himself to understand it.
“He’s an interesting guy. A little crazy. For instance, he thinks that crime hasn’t gone down because the citizens don’t have anyone to rely on...that the world needs some kind of pillar of support. And he says that’s what he’s going to become one day.”
A lone tear dripped down Gran Torino’s cheek.
His hand was shaking even more now, but it remained firm in its place.
“You did your job, Toshinori," he said gruffly, voice quivering and threatening to break. "You did good. You can rest now, kid. You can rest...”
Gran Torino wasn’t sure if it was his words or the exhaustion that made Toshinori finally calm down, but his trembling stopped and the haunted look in his eyes dissipated as they rolled a bit back into his head. A rattling breath passed his lips and his eyes slipped closed.
“A-All Might?” Woods stammered nervously.
“It’s alright. He’s just passed out,” Gran Torino said brusquely, attempting to discretely wipe the wetness from his eyes. “That’s good.”
He moved his hand from Toshinori’s and backed up, groaning as his back popped painfully in protest.
The medics immediately went back to work, more at ease now that their patient was no longer struggling and coughing up blood. One of them had wiped the blood out of the oxygen mask as best he could before securing it onto Toshinori’s face.
“Gran Torino, sir. We need to continue looking you over. You most likely need to go to a hospital,” a medic said tentatively.
"Yeah, yeah..." he replied tiredly with a wave of his hand.
He watched for a moment longeras Toshinori was worked on further. His face was slack and pale behind all the blood. It sent an unpleasant shiver and wave of emotion through him that he tried to shove away.
“They’ll take good care of him. He’ll be alright,” the medic comforted gently.
“I know he will!” Gran Torino snapped.
He glanced back one more time before following the medic back to the ambulance.
You can rest now, kid...your fight is over.
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