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The day that they put a new prisoner in the cell next to Lady Nagant’s is a boring day. Not that that’s saying much; every day is a boring day, here in Tartarus. Having a new cellmate transported down the corridor is the most interesting thing that’s happened in weeks.
She watches the procession through the cell window. The new prisoner seems to be sedated and bound to a rolling cart under a huge canvas cloth. It’s not an unusual procedure. What is unusual is the sheer size of the prisoner, and the huge black tail that protrudes from underneath and drags along the floor. She’d bet anything that taking down someone of their size was no easy feat.
But they did get taken down, and now they’re in Tartarus, just like her. Poor soul. No matter how heinous their supposed crime may have been, no one deserves to be in Tartarus.
——
She knows the sedatives have worn off when her new cellmate starts screaming.
That’s also not uncommon among new Tartarus arrivals. What’s different about this one is how… bestial it sounds.
Her cellmate snarls and howls. The walls shake. The sound of gunshots rattles in the air, for minutes and minutes until the howling subsides. Dead, she’d thought, the first time this happened. Or dying, at least, she’d amended, when the cycle repeated another two times.
But now, after dozens of repetitions — one hundred sixty two, to be precise, and who can blame her for counting when there’s nothing else to do in here — she can only conclude that her new cellmate must have some sort of passive regeneration Quirk, and that they must be insane. There’s no other reason for such mindless, repeated invitations for more pain, is there?
The silence ticks by, or it would if there were clocks or any other way to track the time down here. She dully counts the number of flickers in the fluorescent lights outside, which are never turned off.
One…
Two…
Three…
Four…
They start howling again. The floor vibrates under her feet with the force of their blows against the wall. The song of gunfire rings out again.
Not for the first time, Lady Nagant wishes that the soundproofing between cells was as good as advertised. At least that way, she might be able to get some sleep.
Any pity she might have felt for her new cellmate was burned out of her three foiled attempts at sleeping ago.
——
It feels like days before the noise from the neighboring cell quiets down.
First, the security systems stop shooting at the new prisoner every time they make a noise. They’ve realized the new prisoner’s madness, maybe. Shooting at them won’t make them stop howling. It’ll only waste bullets that could be better used elsewhere.
Following that is a long period of continuous howling, thrashing, snarling, and scratching. It ebbs and flows. A few times, it sounds like crying. But eventually, the new prisoner falls silent, and Lady Nagant can finally, finally get some sleep.
The new prisoner still howls sometimes, but not as often, not as loud. He starts having crying fits as well. It’s a tossup whether it’s preferable to or worse than the howling. On one hand, the crying is quieter. On the other hand, the crying suggests a level of emotional distress that just isn’t there when the mindless howling starts. Eventually Lady Nagant decides that since she can sleep through the crying, then that’s good enough for her. It’s a rather callous sentiment, but who’s going to care about that, down here?
As time goes on, the howling and crying fits become less and less frequent, until she can no longer use it to keep track of the passage of time. It’s almost a shame. It was… grounding, in a way.
But at least she can sleep peacefully now. If she has to go back to counting time by the guard rotations, then that’s that. A small price to pay.
——
It isn’t until her new neighbor starts speaking that she realizes that not only is the soundproofing of her cell questionable, but completely nonexistent.
“F… fff… fl…”
It had taken a while to recognize the attempts for what they were. Her new cellmate’s manner of speaking was strange: raspy, full of lisps, and broken, as if he had too many teeth or too much tongue. As if he was trying to remember how to speak, in fact.
“Fl...o. Wuh.”
Maybe that was what he was doing.
“F… f-flo-wuh. Wuh. Wuh. Wuh.”
A moment of silence, and a few solid thumps that she’s beginning to recognize as signs of frustration.
“F-flo-wuh.”
Thump. Thump. Thump. Pause.
“Rrrrrrrr…”
A rumbling growl.
“Rrrrr… rah. Rrrrrah. Rrrrrrah. Fff… Fuh-loh-wuh-rrrrrah.”
It still sounds more like a growl than anything, but with time and persistence, maybe he’ll manage to wrangle it into a word. In Tartarus, there’s not much that anyone has but time.
But really, she thinks to herself. She’s starting to think her neighbor came into Tartarus insane, and is slowly improving as time goes on. Isn’t that the opposite of what usually happens? What kind of experience did he go through, where Tartarus of all places might be helping him improve his condition? And so young, too, judging by his voice…
Despite herself, she can’t help but be curious. Curiosity is no good, she scolds herself. Immobile and isolated as she is, there’s no way to talk to anyone. She hasn’t spoken to anyone else in years.
Except…
Except for some reason, the soundproofing for the next cell over wasn’t done correctly.
She could talk back.
——
She doesn’t talk back, for a long while.
Part of it is that she can’t get used to the idea of someone suddenly being there. Spend years in Tartarus without a way to talk to anyone, the terrible loneliness, seeing the guards walk past the window and knowing they won’t speak to you no matter how much you might plead or cry… You adapt to being alone. You have to, or you’ll go insane. Not that the staff would let you stay insane for long; they have a dedicated psychologist with a mental restoration Quirk to ensure that you can never go fully insane, no matter how much you might want to. One day, someone might want to talk to you, make use of you, after all…
So there is nothing to do but suffer the loneliness. And then, you get used to it. It becomes comfortable. She still watches the guard patrols when they come by, of course, but if she wasn’t fully bound facing the window in the first place, she wonders if she would even bother to turn her head. She doesn’t like the idea of anyone being around her anymore, not really. A few minutes might be okay. But for them to be there, all day, every day, potentially about to strike up a conversation at any time…?
She doesn’t like that.
The other reason she doesn’t talk back for a while is because her neighbor is still trying to remember how to talk.
“All Might… most strong… Japan.”
A frustrated growl, a series of thumps that she’s beginning to think might be a tail thwacking the ground in irritation.
“All Might… hero… one…”
More shaking thumps. Her neighbor snarls and starts repeating the number ‘one’ over and over again. Although he’s retaught himself how to pronounce different phonetic sounds, stringing together a coherent, grammatically correct sentence seems to present him many difficulties. He struggles with prepositions and adjectives, puts words out of order, and frequently forgets words he’s just used. Sometimes, Lady Nagant can count up to fifty before he manages to think of an appropriate word.
Some sort of brain damage, she thinks, to the memory or the language processing centers. She’s no expert on brain injury-related speech difficulties, so it’s hard to say if her neighbor would be able to understand her if she spoke… or if he would want to talk to her at all.
A brain injury would explain the speech difficulties, and the abrupt mood swings, the way he sometimes starts howling and scratching for no real reason and other times just limply cries for guard rotations upon guard rotations on end. But it doesn’t explain why he’s in Tartarus. This place is supposed to be for the worst of the worst, the criminals who are so heinous they don’t deserve the relief of death. And inconvenient cases like herself.
A monstrously huge and strong nutcase with the ability to shake the cell walls of Tartarus would certainly qualify as an inconvenient case. But the criminally insane should be granted some sort of amnesty during trials, shouldn’t they? What did he do that was so bad, he was still sent here even after amnesty?
Despite herself, the curiosity grows.
——
“All Might… attack… California, Smash. First used…”
There’s a pause as her neighbor struggles to remember the next word. Lady Nagant hesitates, but then, for the first time in ages, speaks.
“Hey, kid,” she says, and then coughs a little because talking around the feeding tube in her throat is uncomfortable, damn it. “Is All Might the only thing you know how to talk about?”
There’s a long, long silence on the other side of the wall that, if Lady Nagant had to guess, is stunned. Heh. Can’t blame the kid. Must be surprising to realize you’ve had an audience for all your self-run speech therapy.
“I don’t mind the speech practice,” she continues. “Been a while since I’ve heard anyone else’s voice down here. But can’t you change up the topic every now and then? Surely you’ve got some other hero trivia tucked away.”
“...Yes.”
“Let’s hear it then.”
She waits patiently while her neighbor considers the proposal. After a few minutes, he starts speaking again.
“E… Ease… Eraserhead. Hero, underground. Um…” A frustrated growl. “...Underground hero. Quirk…”
Lady Nagant lets the words wash over her. Her neighbor speaks in short bursts, guttering starts and stops, but he persists stubbornly. For one guard rotation, and then two, and three…
She doesn’t even notice when she falls asleep to the sound.
——
Despite a successfully uneventful first meeting, they don’t directly speak to each other again for a long while. When it happens, though, it’s her neighbor who initiates.
“Hey. You… awake?” says her neighbor.
Lady Nagant contemplates not responding for a moment. She still isn’t used to this whole ‘talking’ business yet. But she’ll have to get used to it eventually, since they’ll likely be cellmates for a long while yet.
“I’m awake. What do you want?”
It comes out blunter than she means to. Years of prison time have done no graces for her social charms.
“You… Who?”
“Who am I?”
“Yes.”
She thinks about not telling him, as well. And then she thinks about the arduous way he’s been trying to remember how to speak, her atrophied sense of empathy twinges, and she sighs.
“The name’s Lady Nagant. At your service.”
A thoughtful pause. “Lady, Nagant. Hero. Um… Safe… commission. Safe commission…”
“The Hero Public Safety Commission. Yes, that Lady Nagant.”
“Lady Nagant, hero, why… why, um… here, why?”
“That’s a story I don’t care to recount,” she says coldly.
“...Sorry. You… first, person. I… much time… speaking.”
She takes a moment to decipher that. “I’m the first person you’ve spoken to in a long time?”
“Yes.”
“...The hell happened to you, kid?”
Her neighbor snorts. “My… business.”
Damn. She’s dying to know, but she can’t really refute that after she told him the same thing.
“Fine. As long as we’re exchanging pleasantries, though: you got a name, too?”
He lets out a growling, humorless sort of laugh that wouldn’t be out of place coming from a crocodile.
“Prototype… HE-0.”
...Prototype?
“You make it sound like you were some sort of experiment.”
“Yes.”
The frank admission catches her off guard.
“Who the hell…? Never mind. It’s your business.” She pauses, and then, distinctly not minding her own business, “Were you created from scratch, or did you… have a name? Before?”
Either possibility is horrifying. The second one, however, just a little more so.
For a while, she thinks that her neighbor isn’t going to answer. Well, that’s understandable. She wouldn’t want to answer that either.
Eventually, though, he lets out a hoarse chuckle. “I had… name. Name… secret. Knowing… bad. Here, knowing… okay.”
She turns that over in her head. “Should I interpret that as, you had a name that you weren’t supposed to know?”
“Yes.”
“So you kept it a secret. But it doesn’t matter, here.”
“Yes.”
It was a mistake to have this conversation, Lady Nagant thinks. She’s learned a total of three new facts about her neighbor and it’s three more than she’s ready to handle.
“What was it?”
“My name, Deku.”
“...Deku? Like…”
“Yes. Useless… Deku.”
She presses her lips together. “That’s not a name either. I’m not calling you that.”
“Why? Deku, name… very funny.”
“There’s nothing amusing about disparaging others, especially with no context behind how or why you got that name,” Lady Nagant says firmly.
Her neighbor considers that.
“No one… used… my name. Mom, yes. Others… no. You… not… Mom.”
Lady Nagant has a lot she wants to say to that, like, They should’ve used your real name, or I don’t want to insult you every time I address you, or, How old are you? Why did they put you down here? Does your Mom know?
She doesn’t say that. She says, “Fine.” She says, “I’m still not calling you that. You’ll just have to be ‘the kid’ until we come to an acceptable compromise.”
The kid thinks about it.
“Okay.”
She half expects him to continue the conversation and ask more about herself. Instead, he’s quiet for a guard rotation or so, and then resumes practicing how to speak.
“Hawks. Number… three… hero. Quirk…”
And she listens, because there is nothing else to do in Tartarus, and because she’s getting used to having someone there.
——
With the way that the kid has been improving, it’s hard to remember sometimes the condition he came to Tartarus in.
Lady Nagant is reminded of it quite rudely when, after a period of uncharacteristic silence, the kid begins howling again.
Now that she’s spent so long listening to him speak, the howling sounds different — not in quality but in the meaning she can read into it. Fear, she thinks. A lot of fear. Rage. Pain. Desperation. And the persistent way that he keeps thrashing around in his cell…
Listening to the howling is a lot more miserable than she remembered it being.
A while after the howling ends, Lady Nagant says, “Hey, kid. You there?”
She hears a miserable sort of shuffling, and then a subdued, “Yes.”
She tries to think of a delicate way to broach the subject, but just like the last dozen times she tried, fails to come up with anything. Blunt approach it is. “What’s with all the howling?”
“Um…” She hears the shuff, shuff of what she now recognizes as his tail brushing against the floor. It is the occasional prelude to him thumping the tail entirely. “...I. Sometimes… Hall — Hallow…. Hallucinations. S…Sorry. ”
She makes what she hopes is an appropriately neutral sound. “You don’t need to apologize. Those hallucinations sound pretty bad. Did you always have them, or are they a new thing?”
The kid huffs. “Last… good memory… um… luh… lab. I start… hallucinations. Sometimes, I… tr, train, tranquilized. But… hallucinations, still… very much! Then… here… Wake up.”
Lady Nagant’s head is spinning with questions. A laboratory, he said. Good memory, he said. Does he even know how he got here?
“So, do you have any idea where you are?”
The kid makes a thoughtful noise. “Special jail. Here… good… se-security. Me, caught. I… conclusion… T, T, Tartarus. Or… similar.”
“You deduced that yourself?”
“Yes. I am… correct?”
He’s got a mind like a steel trap. “...Yeah. Sorry, kid. I dunno what you did so bad that you got stuck in Tartarus of all places.”
The kid says, “Prototype HE-0… me, weapon. The most… likely… conclusion. I was… used. But. No memory.”
Lady Nagant scowls. “That’s no reason to put you down here. You’re clearly a victim. You need help, not institutionalization. And you’re a kid. You can’t be older than eighteen, can you.” She nods at the silence that follows, even though she knows he won’t see it. “That’s what I thought.”
The kid is quiet for a little while longer before he says, “But. Here… not laboratory. No… experiments.”
“For God’s sake. We’re trapped, isolated, and immobile. There’s nothing to do and no one to talk to. We can’t eat by ourselves. We can’t even take a shit on our own. I don’t care how much better the conditions here might be compared to where you were before; you still don’t deserve to rot here forever.” She curses under her breath. “A fucking kid down here… What the hell were they thinking?”
“I am… monster. Me, here…” A quiet exhale, and a voice more subdued than usual. “Ef-Ef… Efficient. And… logic. Why? Heroes… not knowing—”
“Not knowing isn’t an excuse!”
If there’s any proof that the hero system is corrupt and can’t help anyone it’s supposed to help, then this kid is it. She won’t regret saying it, but she does regret the sharp inhale from the other side of the wall and the way the kid goes suddenly silent. She shouldn’t have raised her voice.
“I… apologize for the outburst. But I stand by what I said, kid. You shouldn’t be down here. You don’t deserve it. In fact, you… are exactly who the heroes should’ve been trying to save.”
She waits in tense silence. A trauma victim, a subject of human experimentation, and a kid… She’s not equipped to handle any of these. The kid needs guidance and counseling and a safe environment, but the only thing she can give him is her anger.
The kid sniffles, and then he starts making these little choked noises that she would recognize as suppressed sobs anywhere.
“...Hey, I’m sorry for raising my voice. And upsetting you. But you need to know this, okay? None of what happened to you is your fault. You don’t deserve to be locked away down here. They should’ve given you help.”
“You… apologize, not needed.” He sniffles again. “Just… very… feelings, yes. I wanted… when… laboratory. Wanted… someone, to say…”
And with that, Lady Nagant becomes very, very aware of the fact that, by the kid’s own testimony, she’s the first person he’s spoken to since being removed from the lab.
Fuck.
“It’s true,” she manages to say. She can’t lose her composure while the kid is having a breakdown in the next cell. “None of this is your fault. Remember that.”
He cries. He cries, even though she can hear how he tries not to.
Lady Nagant has cursed the binds that keep her strapped down and immobile countless times since her imprisonment, but perhaps never as hard as this moment, where she cannot even comfort him with a hug or a warm hand.
——
They don’t speak again until after the kid’s next episode of hallucinations. The silence afterwards is worrying. Maybe he’s unconscious, she tells herself. Or sleeping. All that thrashing has to tire you out. There’s no reason to interpret the silence as sadness.
Nonetheless, she finds herself initiating conversation once again.
“I had hallucinations too,” she says. “For a while.”
There’s no response, which makes her feel rather stupid for how long it took for her to resolve to speak. Next time she should make sure the kid’s awake first before sharing something important, huh?
“You…too?”
Oh. He did hear.
She clears her throat uncomfortably. “Yeah. Hallucinations are one of the possible effects of long term isolation and sensory deprivation. I… did not handle the beginning of my imprisonment well.”
It was rather disgraceful. But then again, there’s no one to prove anything to by handling Tartarus gracefully.
“You… hallucinations… still have?”
“No. There’s a staff member who has a Quirk that restores mental strength.” She twists her lips in an expression she knows he won’t see, but the hatred still seeps into her voice. “Before I could do anything drastic, he intervened.”
The kid takes that in. She makes herself keep talking and push aside the anger and hatred and embarrassment. He needs someone who can empathize with his experiences.
“He used to make the rounds regularly. Make sure no one had gone insane or tried to kill themselves yet. He’d tell me about it, sometimes, even though he wasn’t supposed to, and he was proud of his work. Said that he considered it his duty not to allow anyone’s minds to self-destruct from the loneliness. It was inhumane, he said. And if we didn’t remain sane, how would we ever reflect on our actions and learn to repent, he said.”
Her hands tighten uselessly inside the straightjacket.
“As if anything about this place is humane.”
The kid is quiet for a while.
“He… still… comes?”
“No. They figured out how to administer his Quirk through some sort of solution in the feeding tubes.” Lady Nagant laughs sardonically. “What wonderful progress… now, I know I will never even have the respite of going mad.”
The kid shuffles slightly in the neighboring cell.
“Going mad… not… good, like… you think.”
“What, speaking from first hand experience?” she scoffs.
“Yes.”
… Right. Well. Being a human experiment and trapped in a lab under conditions worse than Tartarus would probably do that to you.
“I apologize for my callousness. I suppose I just want… a reprieve. From all of this.” She sighs. “Sometimes I think death would be preferable.”
That’s the closest she’ll come to telling a kid, Sometimes I think about using my Quirk in here just so that the guns will blast my head off. She’s thought about it too many times to count. She hasn’t acted on it yet, obviously, but it’s only a matter of time before even that bastard doctor’s Quirk isn’t enough to “cure” the impulse out of her. The suicide rate among Tartarus prisoners, she suspects, must be alarmingly high; after all, what’s the point of living a life like this, if there’s no hope of getting out?
But she does hope. She still hopes that someone will come for her, because how could they do this to her after all that she did by their command? They won’t come for her. But what if, one day, someone did?
Hope truly is the cruelest emotion of mankind.
——
Time passes. The kid keeps practicing his speech, and Lady Nagant learns more trivia about other heroes than she ever cared to know. She wonders if anyone remembers her in the outside world. The kid has another episode.
She intends to leave him alone, but this time, he starts another conversation.
“Lady Nagant?”
“Yeah?”
“What did you… hallucinate… about?”
Lady Nagant valiantly does not tell the traumatized victim of human experimentation to piss off.
“...Too… sensitive? Sorry.”
She exhales slowly. “Why do you want to know, kid? It’s not something I like to think about.”
The kid hesitates.
“I like… hearing you… talk. Want… to know… more… about you. And. No one else… to ask… about what… I see.”
That’s right. There’s no one else he can turn to, to ask how to deal with everything… Lady Nagant isn’t the right person to ask, but she’s all he has, isn’t she? Every time she remembers that fact, it gets more and more depressing.
“I started hearing voices. At first I couldn’t tell what they were saying. I thought maybe the guards were talking in the hallway. And then it was singing… I thought I could hear children laughing. Why would they bring children here to play? To taunt me? I heard accusations. I thought I heard the sound of gunshots, and people dying…”
She licks dry lips.
“I imagined gory deaths, for myself, the guards, the children. It felt so real, I couldn’t tell if it had happened or not. I would spend hours wondering if I’d accidentally killed someone… I’d look at the walls and it was like they were melting. Warping. I didn’t feel like my body was my own. I kept wondering if this was real, or if this was a dream. And I’d still hear voices, accusing me of all the blood on my hands…It scared me, so I became angry. I’d talk back. Yell at them. Afterwards, though, I wouldn’t be able to remember what I said, or how much time had passed… If I had been angry at all. Maybe that had all been my imagination too. I…”
Her throat tightens, and she doesn’t push herself to talk about it anymore. That’s enough, surely.
“I’m sorry,” says the kid.
“Don’t be. You’re not responsible.”
“No,” he agrees. “But I’m sorry… that… it happened. It sounds… hard, and… lonely.”
Lady Nagant clenches her jaw and squeezes her eyes shut. Losing her composure would be disgraceful.
“...Thank you. And what of you? I can lend an ear to you as well, if you wish.”
“Telling you… would be… fair,” says the kid.
“Forget fairness,” she retorts. “The question is, do you want to?”
Swish, swish goes the kid’s tail.
“I also… hear voices,” he says quietly. “I can’t… tell what… is reality… Sometimes, thinking I am… back in… laboratory. Thinking… others… in my body. Sometimes…the others… crying. Sometimes, hostile… want to be… in control. Scared of… losing myself… but also, scared I was… never myself…because, Deku… should be… dead.”
He’s quiet for a moment.
“Sometimes I feel… trapped… need to… escape. Otherwise… experiments. I feel myself… being cut… open… carved up into… chunks… They’re putting things… into me… breaking me down… until I am… gone. It always hurts. Because. I remember… how… everything is… supposed… to feel…”
Lady Nagant swallows. As always, everything the kid reveals about what he’s gone through inspires more questions than answers, but the biggest red flag question of them all is—
“What do you mean, you should be dead?”
The kid laughs sardonically.
“Prototype HE… all made… from… corpses. Logical conclusion: Deku… already… dead. Maybe I am… just… an imposter.”
“Or perhaps,” says Lady Nagant, “since you have your memories, you could have simply been… brought back from the dead, somehow. Resuscitation.”
“No,” says the kid. “The memory… a fluke. Because of… mistake with… Perfect Recall.”
“Perfect Recall… is that the name of a Quirk? I thought you were a regenerator..”
The kid laughs again. It remains an unhappy sound. Then he speaks.
“Project HE Log 4. Perfect Recall successfully implanted. The spliced hippocampus has overcome the initial rejection and seems to be reintegrating correctly—”
He speaks perfectly with no stuttering, no pauses or scrambled grammar. He speaks with a completely different inflection. He sounds like a different person entirely.
“—unusual activity in the hippocampus that must be monitored—”
She can barely hear him over the security systems roaring to life, the guns that have started firing non-stop, rat-tat-tat-tat, light flashing against the halls outside.
“—Log 17: Autocellular Manipulation has been fully integrated into HE-0’s body. Subject is responsive and aware. Beginning cognitive testing to ensure that the integration of multiple brains has not degraded the subject’s cognitive abilities—”
It must be ripping into his body. He can survive it, she knows, but it must hurt. It must hurt so why does he keep speaking? Stop—
“—decided to implant Calculation as well to smooth out the workflow. HE-0 is already perfectly capable of self-diagnosis and recording voice memos due to Autocellular Manipulation and Mimicry, so with this—”
“Stop it!” she yells, wishing she could cover her ears, grab him and shake him by the shoulders, anything. “Stop — fucking — talking, or whatever this is! They’re shooting you! Don’t you care? Stop it! Stop!”
For a horrible moment she thinks he’s not going to listen, that he’ll keep parroting all the horrible things that have happened without any care at all for the guns — but he does stop. He stops, and the gunshots stop, and the ringing silence still cannot drown out the sound of her harsh breathing.
“Why would you do that to yourself?” she demands. “Because I wanted answers?”
The kid is silent for a while. She wishes they were face to face so she could shake him.
“I… don’t know,” he says quietly. “I-I guess… I wanted… knowing… to hurt.”
“Hurt who? You? Me?” She tries to keep the anger from her voice, but who knows how successful that is, because the kid’s voice when he speaks next is barely audible.
“Because… it hurt… me. I didn’t… want…” He hesitates. “If you didn’t… if you said… it could… be worse. If… you said… I was… useful now… that it all… had a purpose… But I thought… if you knew… how much… it hurt… then… you couldn’t… ever… say…”
It makes a horrible backwards sort of sense, and she hates it. The hatred shifts her anger and blows the spark into a blazing flame. “Who told you that?”
“Told me… what?”
“That it could be worse. That it’s okay, because hurting you was useful.”
The kid shuffles.
“Who. Do you think.”
“I know someone experimented on you. You mimicked his voice. What is his name.”
“I don’t know.”
She snarls. She wants a name to hiss, a face to hate. It burns that she cannot even have this. All she has is a wall, and a voice she cannot reach.
“Listen, kid. There is no progress, no knowledge, no purpose that could justify all the shit that was done to you. Suffering is not a debt that can be repaid with goodness, suffering is not a fucking currency to buy desirable things. This son of a bitch hurt you. You suffered. That’s it. There is no moral to the story beyond the obvious, which is that he shouldn’t have done that to you. And you shouldn’t have to use your pain to prove a point to anyone.” She grits her teeth. “So don’t fucking do that again. I don’t care if you’ll get better from being riddled with bullet holes. If the pain is avoidable, then avoid it!”
The kid snarls. “And what… about you?” he demands.
“Yeah, what about me?”
“Will you… do it? Get yourself… shot… full of… bullet holes?”
“Why the hell would you…”
“Sometimes I think death would be preferable,” he says in her voice, and in a brief rain of gunfire.
“Knock it off,” she shouts. “Is it worth it just to, to…”
“Will you do it?”
“That has nothing to do with this conversation!” she snaps, and she can feel her anger shifting to target the kid. It’s not fair to him. But why does he have to keep poking, and getting himself shot over nothing, and poking again—
“It does,” the kid says. “You can die… from the guns… but I… can’t! I’ll just… get better… and you’ll be… dead! And I’ll… remember… what it sounded like! Forever! And then… I’ll be… by myself… again… because you wanted… to die… but I can’t… even… if… I tried…!”
She feels like all the wind has been knocked out of her. Her breath catches, her eyes tear up, her arms involuntarily yank at a straightjacket that will never give.
“Don’t… You… how do you know that you can’t…”
She can’t bring herself to finish the question.
“No… killing yourself! Promise!” he demands.
“I-I… well…” She wants to refuse. She doesn’t. She says, “You promise too, then! Stop hurting yourself for no reason and just talk it out!”
“Fine! I… promise!”
“Then I suppose I’ll promise too, won’t I!”
She glares at the wall separating them, anger still bubbling in her, and then she hears the kid muffle a sob and start to cry.
It’s damn annoying. Shut up and stop crying, she wants to scream. Why are you so pathetic?! Who are you to demand me to value my life, and just because you are scared of being alone!
But that’s the anger talking, she knows. She wants to let it talk. It would be easy. She could say what’s on her mind, and he’d probably listen. He’d probably give in if she pushed, because he wants another human being around him so badly, he could accept almost anything. Her anger would be nothing compared to what he’s gone through before. She could make him take it.
Lady Nagant clenches her jaw so hard it hurts, and then she lets out a breath. No. Don’t let the anger win. Don’t let Tartarus win, as long as you’ve still got anything in you, don’t let it turn you into the monster they accused you of being…
“I promise,” she repeats, quieter now. “As long as you’re here. I’ll accompany you for as long as I can.”
——
Time passes. The kid’s grasp on language improves. He tells her more hero facts as he practices. If she recognizes the name, then sometimes, she’ll give her own input.
“Cormorant. Specialized in sea… rescue missions. Missing in action. Last… known appearance: April 12, 2XXX. Quirk…”
Other times, she doesn’t. Cormorant had been a cheerful woman with curly blue hair and huge, shiny black wings. She was fast in the water, could navigate storms and seas like it was nothing. It hadn’t saved her from Lady Nagant.
Whoever the kid was before, he’d been someone who loved heroes with all his heart, it is clear. He wants to know anything and everything about them; drinks up anything she tells him, even if it’s something as small as a hero’s pre-battle rituals or their favorite kind of tea. So it’s only a matter of time, really, until the kid asks her again.
“Lady Nagant?”
“Yeah, kid?”
“You worked as… a hero. Right?”
“...You could say that.”
The kid considers that.
“You know now… about me. Can I ask… why you… ended up here?”
Lady Nagant scowls.
“You like heroes a lot, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You want to keep liking them?”
“...Yes?”
“Then it’s a story you’re better off not hearing.”
He thinks about that some more.
“Do you… believe… in heroes?”
She laughs sharply. “No.”
“Then… I want to know… why.” He pauses as he gathers words. “I want… to understand… my friend.”
“It’s barely relevant to our situation.”
“It is. Because… you are my friend.”
Lady Nagant purses her lips.
“Fine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Her story is not a very interesting one, and she recounts it in as detached a way as she can. Her recruitment to the Hero Public Safety Commission. The years of training. Her excitement to become a hero in truth, to do good, to make a difference. Her unfailing execution of the President’s orders. Assassination after assassination. Murder after murder. Beginning to question her purpose, asking why these deaths were necessary. Investigating her targets. Asking why. Why silence the protesters? Why kill heroes who had done nothing but express doubt? Why did they have the power to silently decide another person’s death at all? Why, why, why?
The confrontation. The President’s threat to her. Her decision. The way her training had kicked in. She had expected more from the President; shouldn’t it have been harder to kill him?
It had been so simple.
But then… the consequences.
“You know the rest,” she concludes. “Used for years to kill the innocent, and then thrown away to rot forever. Some of my colleagues… I like them. I admire and respect them. But this whole damn system is rotten… How can it allow atrocities like my assassinations and this fucking prison exist?”
“Maybe most people… don’t know,” the kid says, though he doesn’t sound very sure.
“Like I said before. Not knowing isn’t an excuse.”
The kid is silent for a long while after that. She hopes this hasn’t hurt him too badly.
She hopes he doesn’t think too badly of her, for everything she’s done.
——
Maybe it was a mistake to tell the kid. If she’d been more persistent in her refusals, he would likely have backed off eventually. And there’s no one else in this hellhole to tell him anything she won’t, either.
Doing so, however, leaves a bad taste in her mouth. He said she was his friend, and she doesn’t know how wise it is for him to think so, but as a friend and as the adult, it’s her responsibility to give him the right to choose. She can’t help him choose much in here, but she can give him the choice to decide whether he still wants to be her friend.
Hopefully…
Hopefully he does. If he won’t talk to her, then she’ll have to go back to the days of isolation and despair, and if that continues long enough, it can only end in her breaking her promise to him.
——
When the kid speaks to her again, he says, “The Prototypes… we were all… designed to overpower… the heroes.”
Lady Nagant raises her head from where she’s let it slump.
“There were weaker… noumus. They couldn’t… think for themselves. The High End noumus… were supposed… to be different. The doctor… wanted us… to retain… our personalities… from life… but not… the memory. I remember… because of… Perfect Recall. The integration… process… something happened. I don’t… know what.”
“This doctor…” Lady Nagant scowls. “So his purpose was to kill heroes, was it?”
“The doctor… didn’t care. He was just… interested in… the science. The noumus… were an interesting… challenge. And a gift… to his… benefactor. The benefactor… wanted… to destroy… hero society.”
“I can’t say I don’t relate to the sentiment,” she says, “but I hope that this benefactor dies and rots in hell forever.”
The kid laughs a little. That seems optimistic for their relationship.
“I thought… you’d sympathize… a little more.”
“I haven’t forgotten what happened to you, kid. The ends never justify the means.” She snorts. “If my time with the Public Safety Commission has taught me anything, it’s that the means will determine the end you arrive at. With all the blood that’s been spilled to maintain the current order… it’s little wonder that the hero system is as broken as it is today.”
She wants to ask him if she blames her for being a murderer. Does he still like her? Can he forgive her for all that she’s done? But that’s a burden that she shouldn’t put on a child, no matter how lonely she is in here.
“I think… you’re right,” says the kid. “The Commission… shouldn’t have… done that… to you.”
Lady Nagant rapidly blinks her suddenly damp eyes. “I… thank you.”
“I don’t know… if I believe in heroes… especially after… your story,” he says. “But when I was… in the laboratory… I often wished… that a hero… would come save me.”
She twists her lips wryly, and says without thinking, “And instead, they put you in another cage.” Well. Shit. Not the most tactful thing to say, is it?
But the kid just says, “Yes. I thought… things would be… different… if a hero came. But now… I am in Tartarus… and many things… are the same.”
“I’m sorry,” she says.
“Not… your fault.”
“I know. But I’m sorry that it happened.”
The kid is quiet for a moment.
“Do you know… what the worst part… of being… in the laboratory… was?”
There are a lot of options here to pick from, and she has no idea which one to choose. “The total lack of bodily autonomy?”
“No,” says the kid. “It was… the boredom.”
The boredom?
“The doctor… wasn’t always… experimenting on me. But when he wasn’t… I had nothing… to do. Before… the hallucinations… got really bad… sometimes I’d think… I wish the doctor… would hurry up… and come back… because I can’t stand… doing nothing… feeling nothing… seeing nothing. Maybe some pain… was worth it… just for the sake… of feeling something. I’d think… I would kill… just to have… a radio… or a window… to see the sky…”
He laughs dryly.
“It was awful… I felt like… maybe I wanted… this to happen… maybe I actually… deserved to hurt… because I didn’t… hate it enough. Because I cared more… about the lack of a window… than anything else. Sometimes… the doctor… would put me… under the knife… he’d cut me open… and it hurt… But you can only… be preoccupied… by pain… for so long… before that becomes… boring, too… He was cutting me open… and all I… would think about… was how long… had it been… since I felt the sun.”
Lady Nagant swallows dryly. He’s been under invasive surgery without anaesthesia? He was awake for it?
“Pain… was the most… boring thing… in the world… and I thought… if I’m bored… then does it mean… that what was happening… wasn’t that bad?”
“No,” says Lady Nagant, struggling to keep her voice even and calm. “No. You got used to it, that’s all, but you shouldn’t have had to.”
“I hope… that’s true,” says the kid. “Tartarus… is very similar… to the laboratory… it doesn’t hurt… as much… but there’s still… nothing to do. For a while… I thought Tartarus was worse… because there was no… stimulation… I’ve thought about… getting shot… on purpose… And I still… dream about… the sun…”
“You never got to see the sun while you were being transported here?” Lady Nagant asks hopelessly, even though she already knows the answer.
“I don’t… remember. I wish… I did.”
And now he’s stuck here forever, with no way to see the sun ever again. There will be no appeals process and no reward for good behavior. There is no way for her to help him… She swallows around the lump in her throat. It’s not fair. It’s just not fair. No matter the crime, she can’t accept anyone being treated the way the prisoners in Tartarus are, and she definitely can’t accept this treatment for him.
He doesn’t deserve to live like this. Maybe no one does.
“I hope,” she says, and clears her throat to try and rid some of the thickness of her voice, “I hope that it helps, at least, to talk. I hope it’s less boring.”
“If you… weren’t here… the boredom… would be worse… than the lab… I’d use my Quirks… just to trigger… the security… the gunshots would help me… feel something.”
He pauses.
“But you’re here… and you… made me promise.”
“Yeah… I did, didn’t I?”
“Yes. So you… keep your promise… too.”
“Okay,” she says quietly. “I will.”
——
He still won’t tell her who is responsible for the experiments.
“If I’m here… then I hope… he is here too,” he says. “Feeling the things… I felt… the boredom… and the despair… And I hope… he dies nameless… without anyone… who remembers him.”
“I’d like to have a name to curse, though.”
“He sucks… and he’s ugly… and his name… is lame.”
“That just makes me want to know his name more, kid. C’mon, we can make fun of it together.”
“I don’t know. I just want… to forget about him… It’s not like… we can do… anything about him.”
And that, as much as it stings, is true.
“Alright, fine. But if you ever see him being wheeled down the hall, let me know, alright?”
“I’ll… think about it,” says the kid with a smile in his voice, and she snorts.
——
“I hope,” he says to her one day, “that when… the doctor… finally used me… as a weapon… that I was… totally useless. That I was… Deku…”
He laughs. She doesn’t, but she doesn’t reprimand him for the strange joy he finds in his derogatory nickname, either. Instead, she tries for a more neutral, “That would really go to show him, wouldn’t it?”
“Not really. He chose… Deku… because I was… meek… and for his… first prototype… he needed a… controllable personality.”
“I see.” She purses her lips, and then asks carefully, “You don’t feel guilty for being ‘meek,’ do you?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Sometimes I feel… like I deserve… everything that happened… to me… because I couldn’t… do anything right. I couldn’t… stop him… or escape… or fight. I wasn’t… a good weapon… and then… with the hallucinations… I wasn’t… a good computer… or a good… voice memo… either.” She clenches her jaw. She’ll never forgive this doctor for trying to turn him into a tool. “Sometimes… I think… if I became… more powerful… or brave… then at least… it was all… worth something. But then I’ll think… that I’d rather… see the doctor… fail to get… any results… that he wanted.”
His voice becomes spiteful. “I hope… all his efforts… meant nothing… that my pain… meant nothing.”
Suffering is not a currency, she remembers telling him. She still worries often about the things he reveals about the past and how it’s shaped him, but she’s glad that this tenet, at least, is one thing he’s starting to believe.
——
“So if I… was free… for a day… that’s why… I would go… to the zoo,” the kid concludes.
“Makes sense,” she says. “Personally, though, I’d want to go to a restaurant district.”
“You only… have so much… space in… your stomach.”
“Psh, there’s an easy solution: just throw it back up.”
He laughs. “Gross!”
“I’ve had a food tube stuck in me for years. I would kill to have a real meal again. Fuck, just some sushi or a spring roll…”
“In the lab… I also had… nutrient tubes,” the kid offers. “But sometimes… the doctor… would make me… eat weird stuff.”
“Really? Why?”
“I can… manipulate… any cells in… my body. Including… what I’ve eaten.”
“That must feel weird.”
“He kept… feeding me… body parts… with useful Quirks… to see… if I could… change my body… to match,” says the kid, like he isn’t admitting to forced cannibalism. “I pretended… I couldn’t… because I felt… already like… I was made… from too many people.”
“Well,” says Lady Nagant, for lack of anything else to say, “I’m glad he never caught you out.”
“Me too. But I still… remember… the structures. So if… I was free… for a day… I could also… grow some gills… and go swimming.”
“Huh, that sounds fun. Wish I could make a bullet that lets you breathe underwater and shoot myself with it. A pity my Quirk isn’t so fantastical.”
“If you want… my Quirk… it’s very easy,” says the kid solemnly. “You just need… to go to… the lab.”
It’s not a very funny joke, but they laugh anyway, because what else is there to do?
——
And then, one day, the Tartarus systems all shut down.
——
It’s worse than a shutdown. Even the failsafes are shut down. Now only the physical security measures remain… of which there are very few.
For the first time in years, Lady Nagant is released from the restraints strapping her to the chair in the middle of her cell. She wriggles free of the now-much-looser straightjacket with a bit of effort, pulls the tubes out of herself, and rolls to the floor. She stumbles immediately. Her muscle memory is so rusty it takes a few minutes to remember how to walk.
“Lady Nagant?” says the kid. “What’s going on?”
“An opportunity,” she replies, even as she feels the walls shake from distant explosions and the door of her cell rattles. “How are your restraints? Can you get out of them?”
She hears his huge form shuffling on the other side of the wall. “No… everything’s bolted really tightly.”
“Don’t worry. I can handle that with my Quirk. Hang tight while I open the door.”
Embarrassingly, she can’t find a way to bypass the physical security of the door, and has to resort to shooting the viewing window with her Quirk. The glass shatters into a fine rain clattering on the floor. Shoddy work… but she doesn’t suppress the excitement blooming within, from the first time she’s been able to use her Quirk in years.
Lady Nagant climbs out the window. And that’s when she sees him.
“The Traitor Hero, the beautiful Lady Nagant. It’s an honor to meet you.”
Lady Nagant smiles insincerely. “All For One. I remember chasing after you, back in the day.” If he’s here, this can only mean that the entirety of Tartarus has been compromised. Above, she hears more explosions, feels more shaking floors. A prison break. Her only chance to escape.
“I consider you leagues above all others. Please, I have a favor to ask of you.”
She raises an eyebrow. Now this will be interesting…
“Soon enough, there will likely be a boy who will leave U.A. and start acting independently. I’d like you to capture him and bring him back to me. He has many connections, so it’s likely there will be pros accompanying him. It would be best to separate them before engaging. For example, waiting for some rain…”
Is that it? Lady Nagant snorts. “I’m not doing any of that. Freedom is so hard won; I’m not wasting it on your plans.”
“Now, now. You of all people should desire the fall of pro-hero society. But that day will never come as long as this boy lives.”
She narrows her eyes. “You would have me kill a child?”
All For One spreads his hand. “Not kill, just capture. You would think me so cruel?”
Lady Nagant looks at him flatly. She knows full well the cruelty he is capable of and has no interest in his games. But if what he said is true…
She hasn’t forgotten her anger.
“I’ll give you a chance to convince me,” she says. “First, though, I must free my associate. If you would step out of the way.”
All For One obliges. She twists a simple bullet out of her hair and raises her arm rifle to shoot the lock of the kid’s cell. She steps inside and nudges the door closed behind her, and thankfully, All For One doesn’t follow.
For the first time, she sees the kid.
He looks like a huge, four-legged beast with skin as black as an oil sheen. There’s the huge tail, of course, and a pair of giant, webbed wings that are tightly bound to his back. His face, half-wired by welded metal, is shaped like a giant bird’s. Strangest of all is the brain that is half-exposed to the air from the missing top of the skull.
The kid peers at her with one of the greenest pairs of eyes she’s ever seen.
“Are we getting… out of here?”
“Yeah. The whole place is a mess right now; this is our best chance to escape.” She inspects the interlocking metal bands that pin the kid immobile to the floor. “Hold still.”
The kid watches with interest as she shoots apart the locks of the bands. When she finishes, he stretches out before rising to all fours, nearly brushing the ceiling.
“Lady Nagant… Who were you… talking to… out there?”
“Just some villain,” she says. “Likely the culprit of this whole mess, if my intuition’s right. You don’t need to worry about him.”
The kid tilts his head in a bird-like motion.
“He sounds… familiar.”
She frowns. “Should I chase him off?”
“No,” he says. “I want… to see.”
She studies him for a moment. His face doesn’t express very much, but the way he looks at her is earnest, pleading.
Lady Nagant turns away to the door. She takes a moment to twist a few more bullets from her hair, just in case, and palms them into her hand before opening the door.
“Have you retrieved your associate successfully?” says All For One pleasantly, and then, “Ah, I see you’ve acquainted yourself with one of my noumus. What a fortuitous occurrence.”
One of his noumus? She keeps her face blank, but the anger stirs in her again, bright as a star. Then that means—
The kid laughs.
“Lady Nagant… you wanted to know… who the benefactor was… right?”
All For One looks at him with interest. “Oh, you’ve spread the good news already?”
The kid steps forward heavily until he’s right behind her, breath warm on her shoulder.
“He’s right… in front of you.”
Before he has even finished speaking, Lady Nagant has lifted her gun and loaded it with every bullet she just made.
She shoots.
——
The fight is fast, brutal, and destructive. She remembers buildings collapsing, the first breath of night air, the taste of salt on the breeze. The sound of laughter and screaming. Her shootout with All For One.
“Stop,” the kid saying. “Let’s leave. I want… freedom… more than… revenge.”
“You go first, kid.” Lifting her rifle. “Your revenge means more to me than my freedom.”
The anger burning so bright, and she can finally do something about it. Baring her teeth in a vicious smile, the laughter bubbling out of her—
The bright light, the explosion of sound.
The pain.
The last thought: Finally, and, It was a good way to go.
Then nothing.
——
She wakes up in a laboratory.
It takes her a while to understand where she is, and then she sits up with a jerk, checking her surroundings. She’s on a hospital-like bed, no signs of restraint, and the door is unlocked. There are lots of bandages on her and intravenous fluids attached to needles in her. She pulls out the IV despite the sting because she has had enough of intravenous fluids for one lifetime.
Curled up on the floor next to her, amidst all the beeping medical machines, is the kid.
She shakes him awake gently. He blinks blearily and then, seeing her face, almost completely bowls her over with the enthusiastic nuzzle.
“Whoa there, kid, be gentle with me. I’m still an invalid.”
“Your own fault,” he says angrily, still nuzzling her. “You should’ve… stopped fighting… and left… with me.”
“He was right there,” says Lady Nagant. “I almost had him.”
“You almost. Died.”
“No, it wasn’t really that close, was it?”
He turns his head to the side so he can peer at her with one judgmental green eye.
“I brought you… to the old… laboratory… to give you… medical treatment. You had… many burns… and a bad… concussion. I had to… give skin grafts… and steal antibiotics… to fight off… your infections.”
She blinks.
“You had that kind of medical knowledge?... No… you had that much dexterity with those huge claws of yours?”
“Perfect Recall,” says the kid. “And… I’m very good… with my hands. Lucky… for you.”
The realization that he was operating on her based off of his own experiences in the lab makes her cheer at being alive quickly evaporate.
“You couldn’t have brought me to a hospital? Surely it would have been easier for you.” She pauses. “Not to say you didn’t do a great job, but having a kid in charge of your operations doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.”
“No. They would have… taken you away… healed you… and put you back… in Tartarus. I saw… on the news. I won’t… let them.”
He looks at her balefully.
“You almost… broke… your promise.”
“Huh?”
“You said… you’d accompany me… as long… as you can. And then… you almost… got yourself killed.”
She lies back in the hospital bed and lets the kid rest his head on the mattress next to her. “In my defense, I’ve been out of practice for years now.”
“Then practice… before… trying to fight! We… are free now. We have… all the time… in the world.”
“Free,” Lady Nagant repeats. She tastes the word on her tongue, looks around at the laboratory and revels in the new sights, new scents, new sounds. She thinks of the zoo, and the food district, and all the dishes she can finally eat. She thinks of the ocean, and going swimming by the beach.
“Surely the pro heroes are still looking for us.”
“I fly… very fast,” says the kid. “They won’t… catch us. But if… we want rest… we can fly… across the ocean… and find refuge… somewhere else.”
“What about your mother? Don’t you want to see her?”
He blinks and turns away. The webbed wings get tucked in tighter to his sides.
“I look… nothing like… her son.”
“She would still love you,” says Lady Nagant. “You’re still her son, no matter what’s happened to you.”
Swish, swish goes his tail on the ground. “I don’t know. No.”
Lady Nagant studies him for a while, the way he makes himself small by her side, and she decides, maybe the kid isn’t ready to go home yet, but they certainly aren’t going overseas until he’s seen his mom at least once. He deserves that much and more.
“Let’s not worry about that for now,” she says. “I’m still an invalid. Is there a window around here? I want to see the sun.”
The kid lets her sling an arm around his shoulders to support herself, and then he escorts her up the stairs towards the roof. He pushes the door open with one clawed foot, and the light that spills in makes her eyes water so hard she has to shield them.
But…
But here they are, on the roof of some abandoned hospital, looking out at a great city. There are clouds in the sky, the smell of street food wafting on the breeze, traffic sounding in the distance. There’s conversation and laughter and the sounds of people everywhere. There’s the warmth of sunlight on her skin.
Her eyes water some more, and then she’s forced to wipe away tears entirely. It’s been so long. So damn long…
“If you died… that night,” says the kid severely, “you never… would’ve seen this… again.”
“Yeah,” she forces out past the lump in her throat. “Yeah. You’re right. I’m sorry, kid. I’ll be more careful next time. This is… I’ve wanted… for so long…”
“Izuku.”
“Huh?”
“My name. Izuku.”
Lady Nagant smiles even as her vision blurs. “Izuku… What a good name. It’s so nice to finally meet you, Izuku. I’m Esumi.”
“Esumi-nee.”
“You’re really going to call me that, you brat?”
“I’m reminding you… we are together now… so don’t… throw away… your life again… okay?”
“Okay.”
“Promise?”
A tremulous laugh. “I promise.”
She stands on the rooftop and cries, overwhelmed by the joy and the sorrow and the freedom all at once, and he sits there with her, quiet. Together, they gaze out at a world alive.