Paul lets Midoriya take his arm, lets his hand slide down to the still-hot but cooling curve of his own hand, lets himself be led. His eyes oscillate in blue-greens, their shade unfixed as he is guided out of this house, expression empty but not blank. It is hollowed, a bare field of ash.

He may never cross this threshold the other way again. When he left Caladan, it had been the same, but he had not felt the doom that hung over them all so certainly then. He had faced the future with courage. He had been willing to believe in the transience of bad dreams. He had believed that the good and the just might not have their victory assured, no, but that it would be theirs if they were clever, and they were strong, and they stood side by side with their comrades-in-arms.

The air tastes of storms.

“I love you,” he whispers, as much a ghost as anything that has ever stalked the shadowed halls at their back, and he wishes that he hadn’t. He wishes that his tongue would cleave to the root and fall out of his mouth, as one wishes when one does not believe in wishing.

“I love him,” he says, and it’s worse, “I won’t regret anything that keeps you safe. Not if the one paying the price is me.”

The last, and the worst, in its helplessness: “I’m not done yet.”