wolves in the middle of town | october catch-all

[acidjail]

Who: Mercymorn the First, Paul Atreides, and you
What: October catch-all, open and closed prompts
When: Throughout October
Where: Various locations in Trench

Content Warnings: Depression, suicidal ideation (passive), body horror, memory loss

Comments

cw: mercy-killing pacts, mention of loss of autonomy

[wannasmash]

It's a horror to see his Omen changed and make a guess as to why. Paul's soul is transmuted, and he is already forgetting himself. "Sandworms use vibrations to hunt," Paul once told him, and Midoriya stills his breathing for a moment as if it's happening now. She looks at him with nothing, the eye of the universe hidden. One of his gloved hands is splayed between Paul's fingers. The other rises palm up just under the worm’s head, inviting her to rest on it.

When he cries, he is in a more natural state, letting the full tide of his feelings ebb and flow. That day, he insisted his power had to be for saving people like a child insisting a schoolyard bully stop picking on others. It's right and true, but it came from the protesting part of his heart that doesn’t think ahead or plan.

Things are much, much worse when his mobile face stills like the Salt Lake during the day. He gazes forward. It's hardly a true sound that escapes him. Paul might know it as the barest noise of surprise someone makes the moment a knife snuffs their life out.

At fifteen, he learned that All Might had tried to defeat All For One, but the villain somehow survived. Midoriya took the news that he might have to face and kill him with no protest. Things haven’t turned out at all as Midoriya expected. Here in Trench, he secretly promised Shigaraki he would kill him if he became an uncontrollable Beast. He knows Shigaraki hates not being in control of his own body like he hates his own teacher.

"You can say it, Paul-kun."

Kaworu was direct with him once, letting the words about his death at the hands of the Leviathan fall from his lips because Midoriya couldn't utter them. Now Midoriya has seen so much more, and he can. He knows Paul asks him this because he knows Midoriya has it in him, and he doesn't want it to be Midoriya that does it.

"Kill you, and give Chara-san another reason to hate this world, using it as an excuse for hurting others? I have to think of Chara-san's feelings too."

He looks at him unblinking, and it makes his eyes dry and lifeless. He once told Chara he couldn't imagine hurting Paul and Kaworu, and promised not to, because their pain is his. Is it a mercy to extend to Paul the same promise he made to Shigaraki, to fulfill his pre-Beast wishes, or is it like giving up? He doesn’t know.

“I know I asked you to do something like this for me. And I’m sorry. It’s unfair that you have to think about it. I don’t expect anyone but a Hero to take on the burden of saving someone no matter what. I won’t let it come to killing you. I need Kaworu-kun to believe that there are people who will save, and that he isn’t alone. I need him to be able to carry hope. As long as I’m alive, I won’t give up on you.”

His brows knit--finally, a ripple across the glasslike surface of a lake. “I don’t know if this is right or if it respects your wishes at all...”

cw: mercy-killing pacts

[terriblepurpose]

The Omen lets her head sink into Midoriya's palm, nuzzling the blunt tip of her closed mouth against it. All her teeth concealed, shrunk to this size, she's not so terrifying a creature as her likenesses shown the great sand worms of Arrakis to be. If not for her unnatural, feverish heat, it might not even be unpleasant to feel the pliant nudging of her snout against his gloves.

"None of this is right, Izuku-kun."

A water-thin mercy: in the face of the impossible and the unbearable, the knowledge that this is not how things should be. Paul half-closes his eyes, as near as he comes to a flinch after listening to Midoriya's stark honesty. He can say it. If Midoriya can say it, so can he.

"I never see you when I dream about this." He holds up his other hand, cradling a pool of pale fire. "I want it to be because you asked me not to see you. I want it to be because you're somewhere out of my vision, not..."

He closes his hand. The light in it goes out. There are gestures even more direct than words. He stares at the backs of his soot-streaked knuckles, contemplation and faded grief making his soft expression seem wiser than his years - or, perhaps, only more tired. He doesn't know if there's much of a difference between the two.

"But I wouldn't let it come to killing you either," he says, looking up to meet Midoriya's sore eyes, "So who am I to tell you anything? Except that Kaworu isn't the only one who needs to be able to believe that people can saved. So do you. That's a part of why you won't give up on me, however many reasons I give you to."

The horrible thing Paul asked Midoriya to ask of Chara to spare him guilt, or worse. The books and the stones and the Beasts in the woods, the ill-considered choices, the cutting through the world like a knife instead of a human being. Midoriya as wide-eyed as this on his knees on the deck of a ship. So many of the things that Paul could be, so many of the things he already is.

"And so I need to believe it too. For both of you. For me." New steel slips into his voice. "We won't let that future happen."

cw: death mention, mha spoilers (anime-friendly)

[wannasmash]

Paul can say it, but he shouldn't have to. That knowledge makes it worse. The nerves to feel would be dead, but they aren't. They scream, and Midoriya's chest hurts when he watches Paul hold fire blooming in his upturned palm like a deadly lotus. It scours the air dry.

Paul had simply agreed that day, but now Midoriya knows his true sentiment. They refuse to accept the world as it is, the one that says one of them must die.

"I've told you about the person back home who could see the future," he says lowly. "There was an unforeseen outcome. It caught them by surprise. They looked, and they thought we would fail and die, but we didn't." It was a bittersweet victory. Sir Nighteye died of his wounds later. Midoriya sat at the kitchen counter with Paul and obliquely mentioned it in the wake of the Leviathan's destruction.

He runs his glove along what is presumably the Omen's sinuous neck. It is calming to concentrate on making a soothing motion as if he can make trials vanish like wrinkles. Perhaps occupying his hand with comforting the Omen will make him feel like he can remain poised sitting here... He finally shatters, and he clutches the worm that isn't Sophia to his chest. She's too warm, but so are his tears, and he buries his face into her like a heated blanket.

"I love you, Paul-kun," he chokes between sobs.

[terriblepurpose]

The sand worm coils as comfortingly as she can against Midoriya's chest, her tapering tail wrapping around his wrist and her closed mouth nuzzling at his tear-slicked face. Unlike her living counterparts, the water holds no terror for her.

The hum starts slowly. She's never done it before. It builds to a pulsating vibration like a rolling purr, or the thrum of an alien engine in the place of a heart. Her heat cools to warmth as she offers Midoriya all the comfort her Sleeper can't.

"I love you too, Izuku-kun."

Paul doesn't realize he's crying with him at first. The sting at the inner corners of his eyes could be anything until he notices the difference in the shimmering of light in front of him. He leans into the ram's wool and half-hides his face there, shoulders rising and falling in breath that saws like a knife.

"I'm sick of looking at the future. What does it have to show me? Everything I want to see is here. It's with you. I should have seen that." His throat aches, his heart caught in it. "I see it now."

Did that shadowy seer see it, in the end? Paul doesn't want to know. He thinks he might finally understand why Midoriya asked him so desperately not to look for him in the black waves that stretch endlessly on ahead.

[wannasmash]

He remembers Sophia's weight, so slight that it was better marked by the patter of her hands and feet than any heaviness. He remembers the drawing of the worm and its eye of teeth, a creature that has always so fascinated Paul. He buries his sobs into her, and he can only liken her comforting purr to a car that is somehow alive and hums like no car should. Midoriya's Omen solidly supports Paul's weight and tucks their chin over his curls as if he is in danger of being blown away like ash.

He has never looked away from Paul's tears, though there were times he could have to help Paul save face. It's not in Midoriya to look away and abandon him to his sorrow. Watching Paul cry with him deepens his own sobs, and he takes minutes to surface from them.

"I've brought food, some clothes for us... You can see me as long as you want. I'll be here." I promise, though he doesn't need to say it.

[terriblepurpose]

When the tears taper off to a shivering ache, Paul doesn't feel lighter or more whole, precisely. Everything is as horrible as it was before. What he feels is cleaner, like he's expelled some intangible filth in the salt crusted at the corners of his eyes he rubs away in the wool of Midoriya's Omen. He sits back and looks at him again, longing as strong as it ever was.

"I'd like that." Paul's voice catches at the top of his throat, and he swallows thickly, mouth tasting like ash and char.

Midoriya will have to visit Kaworu again, eventually. The rest of the city will call him back too, his Hero's work never done. Paul has a whole world to share him with, and he will let him go when he has to. But not yet. Not while he can keep Midoriya here, his Omen still curling herself into him with all the love in Paul's heart, while they can sit and share a meal like this is any day by the water, while Paul can lie down and drift off to sleep next to his protective, constant Izuku.

He always has better dreams when they're next to someone else.