#i kind of hate how this turned out

[cheeseballcheeto]

thing for a secret santa exchange in a server

[teh-inggris]

pvp civ nation...... this aint much but pls take my contribution for this series bc im going insane i love hate this man so much get him out of my head

[smokin-salmon]

Whatever, Go My Angst Art

[obsmiechujek]

Rhea's a mess but I love her

[tackykachowch]

How it feels to not like timebomb after s2

[itsallaboutbl]

This pen looks nice.

[badboychaser]

Phantom Pain

[lully-jo]

I wonder how many people really love and relate to Alisaie because they too were the girl who struggled to understand how folks around her could act like suffering and selfishness and hivemind behavior was normal and their softness was called a weakness and so they built up an abrasive exterior to force people to take them seriously and now they don't know how to be vulnerable without feeling embarrassed or cringe even though they still feel things so deeply it's almost suffocating...

[bone-byrd]

rahh

[coern-art-very-cool-and-nice]

“An abnormal heat is occurring within the ceasing remnants of my mind”.

[wildechildwrites]

Run, Rabbit

König/Reader

Wordcount: 3.8k

Warnings: 18+, Violence, Injury, Smut, lightly noncon but in the way that you're fighting it but are down, König being insane

No use of Y/N

Summary: You're on a solo mission in Romania, and König goes hunting

A/N: "Oh look another predator/prey coded Konig fic how original" SHUT UP I KNOW

AO3: Run, Rabbit

18+

You’re in the forests of Romania on a solo mission, snooping around an abandoned military base that’s been the location of some suspicious activity, according to your sources. You find the ghost of the for-hire group Kortac in rat-chewed maps and files, faint footprints in layers of dust, but the trail has long gone cold, the building slowly being reclaimed by nature. The trees show no sign of the changes of autumn, but it's in the air, the late summer whisper of a chill in the breeze. You take your time picking your way along the overgrown roads, enjoying the tranquility of the forest. The extraction point is ten clicks west of your position, but you’re content with your steady pace, the sun still high in the sky, shining brightly through the thick foliage, and the hike is an easy one. Your meager findings are carefully folded in your bag of gear, your gun snug on your hip. Ten meters to your right, a red deer raises its head up, watching you warily, before bolting away into the trees. You smile to yourself and raise your face to better feel the sun. 

You hear the crack of the shot and drop, but not quickly enough. Your ears ring, your shoulder burning agonizingly, like someone’s pushing a hot poker against it. You fight against the nausea and pain, willing yourself to move, scrambling into the brush for cover. The shot came from your six, and you grapple for your binoculars, trying to locate the shooter on the hill above you. You recognize the mask first, the bleached tear tracks down an executioner's hood, the hulking form of the figure wearing it unfortunately familiar. König is standing casually, seemingly unafraid of any return of fire, staring down like he can see you through the trees. The hairs on the back of your neck prickle instinctually as he begins to move, a sauntering pace down the hill like the slow lope of a wolf. You drop down again, ignoring the pain in your shoulder as you crawl through the underbrush. 

Nestled low on a hill, large body half buried in the underbrush, König watches you through the scope of his rifle, toying with the idea of killing you. He recognizes you from the files he’s seen on the 141, but there was nothing left at the base for you to find, no reason to draw suspicion and attention back here. You were harmless like this, and magnetic, head tilted towards the sun, your face lit up in a wash of gold light that plays up the color of your hair. His finger brushes lightly across the trigger as he contemplates his options. He rolls his neck loose before glancing through his scope again.

You stop behind a small boulder, pressing your back to it, breathing heavily, and pull your radio off of your hip. “Bravo Six, this is Bravo Seven Four, over.” 

The crackle of the radio is a relief, Price’s voice faint but firm. “Go ahead Bravo Seven Four, over.” 

“Enemies one; direction east of my grid two hundred meters, injury sustained, six clicks out of extraction point, over.” You peek out from behind the rock, but can't see anything, so you continue your crawl, waiting for a response. The birds have stopped singing, a deadly quiet that warns of danger.

“Stay calm Bravo Seven Four–” Price’s voice is cut off by the sound of another bullet whizzing near you. You can’t have your radio giving away your position, and the squad is too far away to reach you before König could. You grab your radio and quickly press the button. 

“Bravo Six, silence, meet at extraction, over.” You turn it off, not waiting for a response, and tuck it back into your belt. Ignoring the growing burning in your shoulder, you move as quickly through the underbrush as you can. You need to cover more ground if you’re going to make it out of here, so you weigh your options, propping yourself into a low crouch, scanning the woods behind you. You can’t see or hear anything. You inhale deeply, then break into a sprint.

The cracking of branches is faint, but König is listening for it, his rifle slung over his shoulder as he searches for you. He immediately changes directions, moving towards the noise and quickening his pace. If you want to run, he’s more than happy to indulge you, relishing the adrenaline of the chase. Your trail is clear, broken branches like a beacon beckoning him closer. He spots blood on one of the low boulders, and swipes it up on his gloved hand, smiling under the mask. 

You're hyper aware of your disadvantage, the sounds of snapping branches as your pursuer draws closer, the sluggish flow of blood down your shoulder from where the bullet grazed you. Your lungs burn, head woozy as you run hard, branches scraping at your form. You risk a look over your shoulder, searching for König behind you, and your heart drops when you miss a step. 

All of a sudden, you're falling, hands stretched out in front of you as you tumble down a steep hill. You hear and feel the snap of your ankle in your boot, a whimpering sob yanked from your chest as you finally land heavily in some thorn covered bushes, branches scratching your body even through the thick fabric of your uniform. You pull yourself out, ignoring the pain as thorns drag against your face, drawing blood, then scan yourself quickly, the prognosis bleak. You can't run, not with what is definitely a broken ankle, and your shoulder is still oozing freely, but you won’t go down without a fight. You drag yourself through the dirt using your good arm, stopping periodically to listen to the sounds of König moving through the trees. Your entire body burns, and you fight against the growing fatigue that’s threatening to overwhelm you, trying to hold onto your quickly waning adrenaline. 

The sound of breaking branches draws nearer. He’s moving faster, heavy footfalls that make your leg muscles twitch with the urge to run. König whistles, high and loud, and you reach for your gun, cocking it as quietly as you can, turning around to face the direction of the noise, crouching low. Your heart pounds in your chest, fear creeping in, the weight of your situation crashing down on you.

“I heard you cry out,” a voice rings through the trees. There's something light in König’s tone, like this has all been a game of tag. “You can't be too far.”

Then the only sound is the breeze, rustling in the leaves. Blood from a cut on your forehead drips into your eye, and you resist the urge to wipe it away, scanning your surroundings as best you can without moving.

The unwelcome feeling of the muzzle of a gun presses against the side of your head, and your body shudders involuntarily. 

“Drop your weapon, Häschen,” König murmurs. You comply immediately, tossing it at his feet, unwilling to argue with a Beretta at your temple. The large man quickly kicks your gun into the bushes. “Sit up,” he commands, and you move slowly, trying not to aggravate your broken bone. 

The small shack hasn’t been used in a while, the table in the center of the room is covered in dust, and spiders have made their home in the corners, spinning silvery streamers that hang down, brushing against his helmet. König places you lightly on the small bed in the corner, stooping over uncomfortably in the low room. Your hair is full of sticks and leaves, your face scraped and bleeding. He needs to look at your shoulder, and the ankle you’d been hovering over protectively, but work comes first. You’ve thrown him off, his fingers tingling where he held you to him, the phantom pressure of your head on his chest as he carried your unconscious body through the woods haunting him even now. He grabs your gear bag, dumping it unceremoniously onto the table, pulling your medkit to the side before rifling through the papers you’d found. The information was outdated, but he shoves the papers into one of the pockets of his pants for disposal later regardless.

You knew he was large, but kneeling at his feet he feels like a goliath, towering over you, the gun held in his grip looking comically small in his giant hands. He holsters it, and you get a stupid, moronic, brilliant idea. In a quick motion, you’ve ripped your radio off of your belt, pressing down on the button and bringing it to your lips. “MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY–” König slams the heel of his palm into the back of your head, and the world goes dark.

He doesn’t bother stripping you properly, just takes his knife and slices it up through the collar of your shirt, baring your shoulder to him. His eyes, unbidden, trace the line of the now exposed column of your throat, and he swallows loudly in the quiet of the room. König draws his attention back to your injury with some difficulty. He barely even grazed you, the puckered wound bleeding sluggishly, and he quietly gloats at his own aim. When he pours alcohol on it, you awaken with a hiss, throwing your arm out hard in his direction reflexively before your brain catches up with you. He deflects you easily, wrapping large fingers around your wrist, enjoying the feeling of the delicate bones, watching with silent smugness as your confusion reads clear on your face. 

“Guten tag,” he says, pleasantly casual, as though you’ve run into him at the grocery store. Your head is pounding, and you’re thrown, trying to grasp your surroundings. Your shoulder is burning, and you’re suddenly aware of the air on your bare skin. You rip your hand out of his grasp, pulling yourself as far away from him on the small bed as you can manage. He tilts his head, studying you. 

“What are you doing?” You ask, your voice hard. 

König gestures with the alcohol he’s holding. “I’m patching up your injuries.” His voice is low, his accent curling around the syllables of his sentences like smoke. 

You blink at him, utterly disarmed. “Why,” you pause, biting your cheek as a wave of pain radiates through your ankle, “Are you patching up my injuries?” 

“Would you prefer it if I left them?” He volleys back lightly, tilting his head. 

You don’t say anything, staring at him with suspicion. He’s got you cornered, quite literally, and there’s no way you can get away from him with your ankle like this unless you can get your hands on a weapon. There’s a knife tucked in your boot, but you can’t exactly pull it out subtly. His beretta is on his hip, his rifle is leaning against the table, but you’d be lying to yourself if you thought you had a chance in hell of reaching either before he could. 

 König takes your silence for compliance and goes back to dabbing your wound with alcohol. You flinch when he places his hand on you, and he makes a dissatisfied noise in the back of his throat. “Such a nervous little rabbit.” The mask conceals his expression from you, but you can hear the frown in his voice. 

“You shot me,” you respond dryly. “Doesn’t exactly foster trust.” 

 “Just a scratch. I could’ve killed you, if I wanted to.” He shrugs, a casual movement that’s unintentionally intimidating, your eyes on the way his shoulder muscles move beneath the layers of clothing he wears. 

You spend your time with large men, the boys of your team all averaging above six feet, but König is just startlingly gigantic. You scan his torso, eyes tracing across the wide planes of his chest, lingering too long to be decent. You catch yourself and drop your gaze down to your hands. “If you don’t want to kill me, what do you want?”

“I want to know what you are doing here.” His tone is still pleasant, but interrogative. His fingers are deliberate, surprisingly gentle as he bandages your shoulder, but there’s an unspoken thread of tension in the air. 

You’re much more docile when he patches up your ankle, an uneasy truce between the two of you. You sit still as he splints it, legs draped almost intimately over his lap, his large fingers curled around your injured leg, gentle pressure holding you steady as he works. He adjusts his hold, squeezing lightly on the meat of your calf, and your breathing stutters. His eyes flick to yours, something dangerous in their expression, and you hold his gaze as you deliberately drag your uninjured leg closer to you, your boot trailing across König's upper thighs intentionally. His eyes slip close at the sensation, just for a moment, and that's when you act, yanking your knife out of your boot and sinking it into his thigh and launching yourself to the floor. He lets out a snarling cry, and you scramble up, your vision going white from the pain of your ankle, but you push through it, sprinting out of the shack. 

“Chasing shadows.” You respond, your voice equally mild. You know he looked through your pack and probably found the papers. You wonder if he thought it was ironic that you came sniffing after KorTac, just to run right into him. You certainly did.

You can't run properly, reduced to a hobble that's made all the more difficult by the fact that you're on uneven terrain in the quickly growing dark. You need to figure out your location and find a way to contact your team, but you’re disoriented and disarmed. You haven’t made it more than a few meters when you hear the sound of the front door slam open. You pick up the pace, trying to put as much distance between you and the very angry Austrian hot on your trail. 

“Häschen,” König’s voice rings through the trees, and a trickle of fear runs through you. You duck behind a tree, pressing yourself against it firmly, trying to blend in with the darkness. 

“Always trying to run away,” he snarls, shoving his body against yours. He thrusts his uninjured thigh between your legs, pinning you further, and you let out an unintentional gasp at the sudden pressure of hard muscle against your core. König instantly pulls away, his eyes shooting down to your ankle with concern, before dragging slowly up your body, his gaze accusatory.  

He can hear you breathing, light and quick, and he doesn’t even try to disguise the heavy sound of his footsteps as he closes in on you. He whips around the tree you’re cowering against, and you try to bolt, but he wraps his fingers around your bicep, yanking you back, slamming his hands above your head, trapping you against the tree. 

“You like this,” he says, and you shake your head desperately. 

“I don’t–” he interrupts any denials you might have, deliberately grinding his thigh in between your legs. You clench your teeth against the noise it draws from your throat. 

He leans impossibly closer, your noses almost brushing through the hood he wears. “Did you like the chase as well?” His voice is a husky rumble, full of heat, and you have to bite back a whine. “I liked the chase.” You realize the hard length against your stomach isn't his Beretta, and an unwanted spike of arousal shoots through you in response.

“You’re insane,” you snap, grappling for some semblance of control over the building pleasure in your core. König pulls away from you abruptly, and you flush at how wet you are, soaking through your underwear. 

“How about a game, Häschen?” his voice has lost its edge, back to the pleasant tone he used in the shack, and your head spins at the sudden change.  “I'll give you five minutes to run or hide, and if you can make it ten minutes without me finding you, I’ll take you to your extraction point myself, safe and sound.”

Your heart races. You don’t trust him, but there's no way you'll get another chance to get away from him. “And if I can’t?” You ask. 

You know you’re fucked, but you scramble through the darkness as quickly as you can, trying to find a good place to hide. If your ankle wasn’t broken, you’d climb a tree, but you’re stuck searching for ground cover, listening with mounting paranoia to the quiet noises of the forest. You’re a celestial body pulled unwillingly into König’s orbit; collision unavoidable.

He says nothing, just purposefully presses his hard cock against your center. Traitorous want flows through you.

You hear him coming, branches breaking as he stalks towards you. You stand as straight as you can, letting him approach you, his eyes bright in the dim of twilight. When he comes within range, you lunge for his gun, almost succeeding in yanking it out of the holster before he grabs you around the waist and pulls you to the ground, pinning you roughly beneath him. 

Even as he manhandles you, you're hyper aware of the delicate way he avoids putting any weight near your injured shoulder. He's got your legs splayed around him, but he's careful, adjusting you just so, keeping your ankle tucked safely away, angled so he won't jostle it. His hips press obscenely against your ass, and you can't help arching your back into him, begging for his cock even as you swear at him.

“Get the fuck off of me,” you spit, and he just laughs, an off-putting, mean sound, before reaching around and ripping open your pants. The button pops off, and the zipper teeth split forcefully apart as he shoves a hand into your underwear. 

“Complain all you want, Häschen, but you're soaked for me,” he coos into your ear, roughly rubbing your clit. You moan at the contact, and he moves his hand lower, pressing his palm against your clit before shoving a finger into your wet center, roughly splitting you open. You gasp at the sudden stretch, König giving you no time to adjust as he pulls his finger out for a moment and plunges it back in, moving in and out at a punishing pace.

“Tell the truth.” He orders, adding a second finger. He curls them, stroking your inner walls, bullying you open until he finds the spot that makes you see stars.  “Say you want me to fuck you.” 

You're beyond words, making a derisive noise that transforms into a whine as you move your hips back, driving König's fingers deeper, your ass rubbing against his clothed erection. All you can focus on is the press of his body against yours, his fingers unspooling you, pulling you apart as he pants along with you. The tension is building, the knot in your stomach tightening as König forces you closer to the edge. 

He pulls his fingers out abruptly, leaving you devastatingly empty and unsatisfied, and you let out an anguished whimper despite yourself. He pushes your pants roughly down around your thighs, and the purr of his zipper opening makes you clench reflexively around nothing. 

He presses right against your entrance, a breath away from splitting you open on his cock. You shove your hips back, trying to fuck yourself onto him, and he pulls back. “Say you want this,” he demands. 

“Fuck. You.” You snarl, even as your thighs tremble. He drags the head of his cock up through your folds, coating himself in your wetness, and you gasp. 

“Such spirit,” he murmurs. In a single motion, he sinks into you, splitting you in open, pulling the air from your lungs. 

He thrusts into you fast and hard, like he wants to tear you open, and it hurts, even with how soaked you are. You cry out, trying to squirm away from the pain. His fingers find your clit again, his breath hot in your ear. He dwarfs you, your legs shaking from pleasure and the weight of him on top of you, pressing you into the dirt. 

“You wanted this.” His voice is a panting snarl, his talented fingers stealing your senses as he forces you closer to your orgasm. The sound of skin slapping against skin fills the forest air as he pounds into you without mercy. “Say it.” 

“I want this,” you whimper. You feel the shocking whisper of his lips against the junction of your neck and shoulder and realize with a start that means he’s not wearing his hood. All thoughts are shoved out of your head as he sinks his teeth into your skin, and you wail as you snap, the sensation dragging you over the edge, your body trembling as you cum. His thrusts become sloppy, his cock twitching inside you as he shoves his hips against yours, filling you up. He stays like that, flush against you, as his dick softens, keeping you full and trapped under him. 

You lay in the dirt panting, hollowed out and raw. There are pine needles prickling against your skin, soreness awakening in your limbs as you come back to yourself. König climbs off of you, still cognizant of your injuries, and pulls you into his lap, wrapping his arms around you like a lover, the brutality melting into tenderness like watercolor. His hood is back in place, and the world comes crashing down around you as your senses return, the weight of your actions pulling you down as regret and shame bubble under your skin. 

The walk to the extraction point is silent. König holds you cradled against his chest; your hand fisted in the front of the vest he wears. His thigh burns, his entire body consumed with exhaustion, but he clenches his jaw against the pain, focusing instead on your face, turnt up towards him, open and vulnerable, eyes rimmed with red. If he was a better man, he'd be sorry. 

König notices your eyes glazing over, the warble of your chin, and reaches up a large hand to cradle your face, wiping away tears you didn't realize were threatening to fall. “Hush bunny, you did so well,” he croons down at you, his saccharine actions thrown in high relief against how violently he handled you before. “Such a good girl for me.”

He sets you down gently on a large rock, and pulls your knife out of a hidden pocket, his hand raised in a placating gesture as he slowly places it beside you. It’s still got his blood on it, dried to rust on the tip. You don’t reach for it, pulling your uninjured leg up and wrapping your arms around yourself. You look even smaller than you did before. 

He straightens his spine against the odd sensation in his chest. “Tell your captain to keep a closer eye on his men,” He orders, then reaches out a hand, hovering just above your cheek bone. Neither of you bridge the gap.  

You watch him disappear into the trees, the shadows swallowing him whole, the sound of a helicopter in the distance.

[kaiserouo]

<3

actually i made a calligraphy thing for him but its too distracting so i yeeted it out the window

[sorikufeels]

kiss me once, kiss me twice, and, dare i say, kiss me three times

(progress posts: sketch, line art progress)

[ohello0]

SAG-AFTRA you dumb bitch

There was cross industry solidarity for actors for MONTHS only for gaming and voice acting to get thrown under the bus with ai shit. This is gonna fuck over so many people who will be underpaid to “touch up” something ai did or not paid or consulted at all

[genissillybilly]

sinking town ((blood and slight gore warning))

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

does your First have any baggage about being referred to as the first user of one for all/the legacy that left with regards to like. The friend of his that his brother took the quirk from before murdering her in front of him. He seems like he would have so much baggage but also given the amount of repression and secrecy he’s got going on, i’m guessing none of the other users bar his husband and maybe third have any idea about the quirk’s origins

(btw love your aus so much!!! i am frothing at the bit for any info for every single one; your mind and the storylines you create fascinate me beyond measure.)

First has more baggage than the turnstile at the airport.

He thinks about his friend a lot. He doesn’t talk about her.

Second knows about her. Second knows about most things. He’s the only one who knows how exactly First ended up in the Vault.

Third knows a little. This is because when the resistance was trying to find out what First knew about his brother’s operation, they showed him his own goddamn wanted poster from his My Life As A Teenage Unabomber phase. Oh yeah throw back to when he was a “wanted terrorist.”

Apparently, from everyone else’s perspective, there was some guy and some girl ten years back who made a bit of a name for themselves. Everyone thought they must have had some kind of intel no one else did about all for one, because they hit places that no one even knew all for one was involved in yet. Not exactly the same style as the resistance—they exclusively did quick and dirty pipe bomb attacks—but they were weirdly precise in targets. Like, they got a manhunt after them a while ago after they pulled off a hit in one of the wards that still liked to pretend at society. A bit authoritarian, but given the chaos of the rest of the Japan, it was almost welcomed. They had introduced mandatory medical examinations for everyone. Swore up and down it was just to prevent accidents when meta abilities manifested. People had been disappearing in this ward, meta and non meta alike, but that was true everywhere now. And then a bomb went off in the office of a respected clinic, and some of the first responders saw their missing neighbors dead in the files when they rushed in, and also there was suddenly records flittering from the fucking sky—

It turned into a riot and a lynch mob. Not exactly a nice place to life after. Less orderly. Hanging political leaders in the city square gets so tetchy. But the experiments stopped, at least in that lab. It wasn’t until years after that that the resistance to realize all for one had set up the lab. Apparently he had anti-meta figureheads in the game and pro-meta figureheads. Like a third of the factions claiming to be Japan’s government and fighting each other for control was just. All for One fighting himself. He was just increasing the chaos and strain so people would eventually fight him less when he returned order at the cost of their freedom. And these guys seemed to know it before anyone. They disappeared a while ago, and the resistance always assumed all for one caught and killed them, but if first could confirm—

Why is he laughing.

It was just so goddamn funny. His secret intel was being physically locked in his brother’s central command center before the vault. He thought his brother missed that, sometimes. It was more convenient for him. If he wanted access to First, he could just go right down the hall. But in the end, that convenience was trumped by the assurance of the vault. It took longer to get to First, but All for One always was sure he’d still be there.

First’s relationship with the resistance was a little rocky originally. He made a lot of people nervous. His brother was threatening brutal death to all of them for this, and a lot of them suspected that First was really just… bait. A spy they had voluntarily brought into their organization. Here’s something to rescue—don’t suspect him of being on all for one’s side now. He was just. A big risk. His chronic need to fuck off didn’t help. But he passed the initial polygraph and their literal leader thought he was legit for some reason, so he was given leeway, but a lot of people were on edge with him at first. So he gets a lecture about laughing at people who his brother had more likely than not murdered

Second, squinting at the picture: this is a picture of you isn’t it

Yeah uh. Still curious as to what happened to that guy? Or did they piece it together themselves.

They’ve got it. What about her?

Oh.

Her, all for one killed.

Third just knew he had a partner in crime for a bit that his brother killed. First confessed to him, once, on one of the few times that he got drunk with Third, that the Quirk his brother had forced on him was really hers, and he hated it so goddamn much. He tried to dig it out from beneath his skin when his brother made him take it, but he just ended up strapped to that dumb fucking medical cot for for his trouble. He thought pain was supposed to get easier with time. It’s been ten years now and all he’s done is forgotten what she looked like. He’s just got these shitty fucking wanted posters that were missing most of her face and enough regret to drown in. The only reason why he knows grief can’t kill you is because he would have managed it by now.

He never talked about what she was like in life, really, or ever again. First didn’t like to talk about it. He didn’t like to talk about a lot of things.

He went looking for her when he found himself in One for All. He could never find her, or her memories, and he eventually accepted she wasn’t in there. He’s not sure why. Maybe it wasn’t strong enough when she had it to make a copy of her. Maybe when it combined with his quirk it reset it, somehow. His and her quirk had just blended in a way the others hadn’t. Every user could access stockpile and transference, after all. But their own quirks didn’t pass down to each user. So maybe when his fused with hers they made something new and wiped out the old. Maybe he killed her a second time.

He didn’t talk about her with the Past Users. It’s not exactly that he didn’t like or trust them. Trusting them (at least more than the average person) was actually a kind of easy decision—it’s really hard to sell him out to his brother when they’re already fucking dead.

Her memory is so tangled up in so many of the worst moments of his life that he struggles to talk about it. Like, completely independent of trust issues, he just doesn’t like to tell people things. He doesn’t like how they look at him after. He doesn’t like how it dredges up all the old mess and feelings in his head. He’s not sure if it’s a side effect of one for all’s stockpiling or if he’s just never gotten over a goddamn thing in his life, but the emotions all feel just as fresh as they did two hundred years ago. He’d rather just. Not think about it.

Especially with how he doesn’t even feel like the same person as he was with her.

It was the last time in his life that he was really young. He never had a real childhood, but they were sort of babies when they were off trying amateur terrorism. He was seventeen when he ran from his brother the first time. He thinks he was maybe just barely eighteen when he met her. She was older, but not by a lot, and she’d gotten an actual childhood.

He wasn’t. He was fucked up when he was with her but he wasn’t fucked up the way he is now. He told her things. Telling people things didn’t feel like handing them a knife the way it does now.

They were a couple of kids just… pretending they could handle anything they were up to. She especially had a very young belief in the idea that they’d somehow make it through. She took First to his brother thinking he’d save First, and then she’d find a way to steal First back from him, and then this wouldn’t just end with her all alone and him gone. She never even considered it’d turn out the other way around.

First already sort of figured he’d gotten stuck with the casting call for a tragedy when he was born. He wishes he’d told her that. Maybe she’d have let this end the right way around then.

It sort of fucking hurts to look at Class 1-A sometimes. They carry on the way First used to with her. She was basically still a high school student when he knew her. She never even finished her last year. And they just acted so goddamn young together. And how Nine’s entire class have banded together to save him with this stupid, innocent, young assurance that the hero always won and their story would have a happy ending—

He thinks about her a lot when he’s at the school.

The Past Users find out a little bit about her. When they start using Shinsou’s quirk to work on getting Izuku back, the users also try to get dream connection working. It’s easier now, almost as if Shinsou showed them all a path hidden in the underbrush, but First ends up slipping a lot when he’s dreaming. No one had really expected that. He was always the best at not, is the thing. But he doesn’t remember that, and also he’s never tried to navigate one for all from the outside. So he slips and they have to scramble to find him.

Sixth ends up finding him in a memory of her, and his attempts at pulling First out accidentally slip him into a memory of her death. Sixth follows and sees it. It isn’t pleasant.