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Himiko Toga is a villain. She is part of the League of Villains, and she is fighting in the final battle, and the free life she wants is just within her grasp. But instead of finishing the job, she's spilling out all of her feelings to Ochako, tears spilling out her eyes as the other girl simply listens.
Was this what she wanted all along? To someone to listen, and not judge, and simply hold her close?
As she and Ochako float down from the sky, their arms around each other, there are some things Himiko realizes.
1. She has stabbed Ochako, and Ochako will die.
It's a very simple fact, really. But she's forced to face her actions as they are, with blood covering her adorable hero costume and staining her face, her brown eyes exhausted and almost dull with pain. Himiko had stabbed Ochako. Ochako is breathing heavily, hardly able to move, and is gazing at Himiko, still, like she is someone who needs saving.
It's funny. Isn't this what Himiko wanted? For Ochako to notice and see her? For a hero to save her? But Himiko feels nothing but dread. What has she done? This was all her fault.
She takes hold of her equipment, looking at Ochako pitifully. “Do you know the League wants to make a different world?” She asks, simply. Ochako weakly shakes her head. “They want to make a world.. that'll be easier for me to live in.”
Ochako nods, then, and Himiko walks closer to her as she makes the second realization.
2. Himiko can stop this, if she gives Ochako her blood.
Himiko drags her equipment before she slowly leans down, sitting on her knees as she takes a drink of Ochako’s blood, slipping easily into her body. “It's funny, though. We're so close to that wonderful world. But right now.. I don't want to lose you.”
Ochako’s eyes go wide with panic. “W-Wait..”
Himiko ignores her, digging her needle into herself before digging it into Ochako's side. “I'm gonna stitch up your wound now, okay?”
She knows that Ochako would oppose this—right now, the realization is hitting her, and she's looking at Himiko with utter horror and dread. “H-Himiko..”
Himiko looks at her, and smiles sadly.
3. Himiko is tired of running. She's tired of being confined.
She doesn't want her life to be in the hands of others any longer. She doesn't want to be a villain on the run, and she doesn't want to look at a life in prison, even if it's undoubtedly what she deserves. Himiko is also afraid to die, too, so she supposes she's a hypocritical coward, in that regard.
“You're weird, Ochako-chan.”
“N-No, you are,” Ochako says, frantically, “If you give away your blood like this, you'll..”
“Mm. You could've just captured me, you know? You could've just captured the villain, all easy-peasy. But you didn't,” Himiko feels the tears coming now as she lays down besides Ochako, beginning to feel lightheaded due to her blood loss. “You tried to listen to me. And.. when you touched me.. all of those heavy feelings, they got so light, all of a sudden.”
Ochako's looking at her with such pain and horror. Himiko decides that while she's afraid, she'd rather go out on her own terms, and she reaches out to take Ochako's hand, as she makes a fourth realization.
4. Funnily enough, giving away her blood feels good.
Himiko wonders how it would've been, had she gotten this love earlier. Would she have been encouraged to give her blood away, rather than take? Would she have saved lives rather than ending them, leaving a string of bodies in her wake?
She doesn't know. All she can do now is imagine as it gets harder to breathe and her head begins to feel heavy.
“H-Himiko .. no, are you..”
Ochako doesn't have to finish her sentence. Himiko can tell her end is approaching, sneaking up on her, and that she doesn't have much time.
“Yeah.”
Ochako's face scrunches up in a broken sob, and Himiko realizes one final thing.
5. In the end, she was a normal girl.
She's dying, and this is how her story ends, her arms wrapped around Ochako's as they lay side by side in a destroyed battlefield. She led a life of terrorizing others, raising her knife in jealousy rather than love.
Himiko decides, though, in this moment, she will die as a normal girl, she will die as Himiko rather than Toga, and she has Ochako to thank for that.
She was a girl who wanted love and to be loved. She wanted friends her age, she wanted to read shitty romance novels and go on first dates and meet cute boys and girls.
She didn't get any of that. She was a killer and a villain and a terrorist who hurt so many. But Himiko wanted all of that so badly, and Ochako allowed her to think, for a moment, that she was simply a girl done wrong by the world.
Himiko dies smiling, at peace despite it all.
I am Himiko Toga, and I’m a normal girl—with the cutest smile in the world.
6. Ochako has lost someone important to her.
Ochako wakes up in the hospital with an ache in her gut, a heaviness in her chest, and sadness consuming every part of her being.
She knows already. She doesn't need the nurses to come in and rub it in, that she failed. That Himiko ..
She wants to cry, she thinks. She wants to scream, and sob, and bash things in until this horrible emptiness goes away. But she knows she can't. So Ochako takes this pain, and she shoves it down deep, and pretends that it doesn't exist.
The battle just ended. Everyone should be happy, right? Who would she be, moping around over someone she hardly knew, when they just won? So she'll hold it all in, to spare everyone else, so they don't worry about her.
She doesn't want to ruin the mood, after all.