Aoi's POV

I'd admit, the fight with the dinosaur gave me a lot to think about.

On one hand, it gave me something to talk about with Hinata, which I was happy about. Even if he was energetic, overly self-sacrificing, and stubbornly optimistic, he was one of the purest souls I'd ever met. It was hard to feel down in his presence.

It also gave me a sense of self-fulfillment, and an excellent exercise.

On the other hand...

I massaged my forehead as another splitting headache erupted in my skull. The side effects of my quirk were hitting me, and they were hitting hard – bloodloss, dizziness, extreme thirst, all of the good stuff.

Oh, what I wouldn't give for an Americano right now.

With an exhale of breath, I sank down onto the floor. My excuse of checking on Kita and Tanami wasn't a lie, per se – I needed a moment before I could do anything else.

I didn't think I'd have time to visit them, with how tired I was, and I just really didn't want to deal with feelings today. Especially not guilt.

I let everything around me fade away, and I fell away from the present. No, it wasn't a daydream; it's a state of silence, one that blew the pain away. My personal version of a painkiller.

But the darkness didn't kill the pain, not right now. It reminded me of the terror of death, the feeling of a mask slipping off, of the tremors in a voice that no one heard.

It was chaos, but not the same chaos I craved.

And that was how I knew I couldn't escape anymore.

The dinosaur fight was the first time in a long time that I'd felt absolute terror – that, I knew. My façade almost slipped. I nearly became the scared little girl from the lab again, and I didn't want anyone to ever see that. I didn't want to remember her. I didn't want anyone to remember her.

And yet, it didn't matter what I wanted and what I didn't. Because in the end, she still existed.

"Oh, Miyamoto?"

Katashi Sanada's smooth voice pulled me up from my thoughts, and I'd never been more thankful to someone than I was to him at the moment. In my mind, I added him to my list of people I owed a favor as I sluggishly moved to stand up in an attempt to look more mentally stable/put together than I was.

If the concerned look that Sanada threw me as he entered the tent was any indication, it didn't work. In fact, I probably looked worse than before, what with the fact that I was leaning on the fragile tent flap for support, mixed with my chapped lips and obviously unhealthy pallor.

I didn't let him worry about me very long, cutting off whatever he was about to ask me by asking a question of my own on something I'd noticed in just five seconds of being in the present (congratulations to me for being perceptive) –

"Why is there so much screaming outside," I deadpanned, not bothering to make it sound like a question.

He shrugged, still looking cautious. "I think they're building a bonfire or something."

"That'll be hard without Ale."

"Yeah, it will." Sanada narrowed his eyes at me, unusual for his typically playful demeanor. He was serious, now, and not in the teasing way that he used with some of his friends. "Hey, are you alright? Because Hinata was hiding a huge injury from us earlier, and I won't be having it if you're doing that too."

I'd talked to Sanada a few times, and yes, I'd vaguely consider us friends in the way that he knew the basics of my personality. But it was still cutely touching that he actually gave a shit about my health.

His suspicious expression was about as threatening as a goldfish – unsettling, but not in the least bit scary. I bit back a small smirk.

"I'm fine," I said, not completely truthfully.

"Miyamoto, you never say that you're fine."

Dammit. He was right. Note to self, stop demonstrating suspicious behavior in front of a person who was aware that you were mentally unwell.

"Alright, I'm not fine," I amended. "Quirk overuse is a bitch."

He rolled his eyes a bit, but he appeared relaxed again, because yes, I was telling the truth. No, it wasn't the full truth. But I was good at half-truths.

In a more conversational tone, Sanada said, "I was actually looking for you, per Argo's recommendation. I was talking with Jasper about this earlier, too, but I feel like you'd get it. Ale, too, but he's kind of preoccupied."

I let out the driest tone I could muster. "He's hospitalized, Sanada."

"Yeah, which is why I chose you." He gestured lightly for us to walk out of the tent, and I sighed, following him. "So, you know that one of those villains had a quirk similar to mine, right?"

No.

"Yeah," I told him, like the liar I am.

"Well – "

He stopped midstep, eyes displaying that far-off look that I recognized to be one that I saw on my own face, every day.

I didn't prompt him to finish until he spoke again.

"You remember that villain attack a few months ago, with that woman who had a quirk that was a lot like yours?"

"I do."

"Was it...weird? Seeing a power so like your own quirk, but used for something...brutal, something like this?"

Well, that was certainly a question.

I couldn't say no. I couldn't say that I hadn't seen my quirk brutalized, demonized, used to draw blood before. I couldn't tell Sanada that my ability wasn't an innocent one. And I couldn't let him feel alone in this emotion, because I understood it so much better than anyone at this damn camp could, and it could tear people apart, realizing that the abilities they'd held in such high regard could bring so much carnage.

So I told him yes. I sympathized with him, I told him he was a good person, a good hero, and that he'd never go down that path. I said the nicest things I had in years, just to make sure that he didn't become the same as me.

But when we'd finished talking, it was Sanada who helped me.

"You know," he said, thoughtfully, as if he knew what I'd been thinking this entire time, "I think it's alright to be scared of who you are. But that doesn't mean that everyone is scared of you."

He patted me on the shoulder (and I was sure he would've pulled something like turning into water to get my shirt wet had he not been injured), thanked me, and left to talk with Jasper, completely unaware about all the things he'd just changed.

"Thanks," was what came out of my mouth as a whisper, even though he couldn't hear me.

My eyes flickered to the sudden color that appeared in the corner of my vision. As I watched, the fire sparked to life, colliding with the gorgeous sun as it reached the horizon and exploded into a blazing aria of gold. Cheers resounded up from the group of people around it - some my friends, and others, the people they'd saved.

I approached the bonfire in a silent stupor, and as I took a seat, warmth glowing against my face, one last miracle walked toward me in the form of a seven-year-old girl.

Immediately, I recognized her as the child whom I'd saved outside of the earthquake. The child who was crying for her mother, the child who reminded me of myself.

"Thank you for saving me," she said, and I felt her gratitude hit me like a truck of sadness. She offered me a toothy smile, and as her mother directed her away, I thought that, for the first time in a long time, I might cry.

In a day of terrifying occurrences, Sanada and this child had managed to make everything feel worth it.

Before I could start sobbing on the spot, though, which was saying something seeing as I was not an emotional person, Hinata approached me with a paper cup (always good to be environmentally friendly) filled with warm water, holding it out for me to take. He was smiling, but there was something written all over his face that I couldn't put my finger on, but was so very familiar that –

Oh.

The blonde boy gazed at me, worried. "Are you okay, Aoi?"

I gave him a bitter smirk. "No one actually asks that question if they know that the other person isn't, right? Your answer was there the second you thought of it."

In the present, he touched my shoulder gently, with a cautious gleam in his eyes.

I knew what he wanted to ask, but he was too considerate to do it. And Hinata had always been far too kind to me, and I didn't deserve it, not at all. So I turned to him, took the water, and I tried to look casual.

"You can ask, Hinata."

He relaxed. "You...are you okay, Aoi?"

I smiled, genuinely, and it feels so new, so freeing.

"Yeah. I'm okay."

Extra.

"You bastards watched the sunset without me‽" Ale basically shouted, then cringed as the pain in his wound evidently hit him. That didn't stop him from whisper-yelling, "I can't believe you, you traitorous shits – leaving someone as hot as me behind while you went to go watch a flaming ball of fire‽"

"It's a ball of fire, you don't need to add the 'flaming' part," Asia, the one who alerted him of this development, said with a complete poker face. Ale rolled his eyes dramatically, and she made a face at him.

Jasper threw back zir head and laughed.

I sighed.

Wait till he finds out he missed a bonfire.

This chapter was written by -butterfly--effect-