deercountry | Player Epilogue: August

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Player Epilogue: August

AUGUST 2023

Prompt 1 • Prompt 2 • Prompt 3

With the Reckoning's gift, Sleepers can now explore far past their previous bounds. August rolls in hot and humid, and as more Sleepers begin to travel, many - both within Trench and far beyond its walls - are struck by a new unease. Some Palebloods wake from fragmented, unfamiliar dreams of a stone staircase that rises into the sky until it is swallowed by clouds. Darkbloods may glimpse a looming shape which blots out the stars, there one moment and gone the next. And all Sleepers may feel a strange gravity, as though something is trying to draw them in two directions: up into the sky, or down into the earth.

It isn't difficult to follow the call. The actual location seems to change on a whim. One day, the call may come from just past the edge of town; on others, it is distant, out in the untamed wilds.

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PROMPT 1: THE STAIRS

CONTENT WARNINGS: extreme heights

Somewhere in the land, different every day, is a spiral staircase. Rather, it used to be a spiral staircase; the visions were far more pristine than the reality. Shards of pale, crumbling stone hang suspended in the mist. They lead up into the sky, chunks of ruined staircase hovering like stepping stones. Be careful: pieces may give way beneath your feet and send you into freefall.

As you go higher, the steps become blanketed with glowing flowers, stirred by the wind into rhythmic, eerie whispering. Around these flowers, Sleeper powers fail - enough to drop a flying Sleeper out of the sky.

At the top of the staircase, way up among the clouds, is a floating temple. The structure is ancient, crumbling, built of the same pale stone. Its grand doorway stands open, choked with the same glowing flowers. Thick bands of mist shroud its foot and its spires; the top of it can't be seen.

If a Sleeper reaches the doorway alone, the mist whips into a sudden maelstrom, powerful enough to drag an unlucky Sleeper back into the sky. But if they come with a companion, the mist boils up into a new shape. It's a sky Pthumerian: a dragon of wind and vapor, with a voice like moaning wind.

None may pass without a witness. Who stands at your side?

If it does not like your answer, the raging winds begin to rise. To earn passage, you must truthfully define your companion: are they your beloved mentor? Your dearest friend? A disappointment? When it senses truth, the dragon disperses into mist, and the doorway stands clear.

TL;DR:
- There's a floating temple in the sky! It rejects solo travelers with a powerful blast of wind.
- To reach the temple, you can fly or climb the crumbling spiral staircase. Beware of the power-nerfing flowers.
- To enter the temple, you must confess who your companion is to you.

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PROMPT 2: THE CHASM

CONTENT WARNINGS: extreme heights

Those who venture down, into the land's many tunnels and caverns, might find something new - and this one is more reliable than the staircase. It is a vast chasm, impossibly deep, with the gleaming spires of a great temple in its depths.

Woven of shimmering blue-green light, a hundred slim hanging bridges lead down to those spires. Down in the depths, the temple's balconies are woven of the same shimmering aurora-light. If a Sleeper arrives alone, they can fall directly through that light - but if they arrive in pairs or more, the light turns solid as glass beneath their feet. As they draw close to the temple, the light rises up into new shapes and speaks with a low, ringing voice:

None may pass without a cause.

If you've ever pledged yourself to a person, an organization, or an ideal - even in the privacy of your own mind - the light takes that shape. You may find yourself staring down aurora-visions of your old mentors, old allegiances, old loves.

Name your masters.

You must name these visions aloud. Worse, you may have to explain them, because the temple's guardian takes more interest in a meaning than a name. It takes its cues from your traveling companions: only when they seem to understand and acknowledge your loyalties does it dissipate, and the doorway stands open.

TL;DR:
- There's a deep, spooky crevasse underground. The same temple seems to reach up from its depths.
- To reach the temple, you can fly or traverse thin bridges made of light.
- The temple will create mirages of every person, organization, or ideal you've ever dedicated yourself to - formally or otherwise. To enter, you must confess those loyalties aloud.

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PROMPT 3: THE TEMPLE

CONTENT WARNINGS: plant monsters (including parasitic options)

The Temple is ancient. Its halls are round, smooth, and winding; most are deathly quiet. Communication from characters outside the Temple (such as via Bonds) feels distant, as though you're now in a space beyond Trench.

There are no windows, and yet many levels are choked with the glowing, power-negating flowers. Unfortunately, there is also an overgrowth of greenery that wants to kill you. Watch out for shambling mushrooms, tentacle-like plants, and burrowing roots.

On other levels, you won't find any flowers: instead, the air is thick with Blood Pollution. Here, Sleeper powers are stronger but more volatile. Gemstones have been inlaid into the walls and floor in beautiful geometric patterns-- and if you pass near them, you'll trigger the traps. Coldbloodstone hallways erupt with fire or ice; vilebloodstone traps burst into a choking gas; darkbloodstone traps reverse gravity and throw you to the ceiling.

Through every level, Beasts are prowling: the twisted forms of rodents, birds, insects... even long-overcome former humans. Venture deep enough and you will uncover storerooms, gardens, and alchemical workshops. For some reason, it all stands abandoned.

TL;DR:
- The temple is a ruin overgrown with violent plants and riddled with bloodstone-based traps!
- Ambient Corruption can vary heavily, and you can come up with minor Beasts of all shapes and sizes to fight or flee from.
- Feel free to scavenge stores of food, water, and bloodstone-crafting supplies.

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CODING

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Paul looks at Midoriya with the soft, wondering awe that his Hero has had a knack for conjuring out of him from the beginning. He runs his thumb over the back of Midoriya's knuckles and smiles, the lambent glow of their questioners playing over the sharp planes of his face to render them warm and gentle.

"Midoriya Izuku," he says, quietly, "Nagisa Kaworu."

A pair of echoes flow out of the bridge in front of Mariana, their hands entwined like Paul and Midoriya's are now. Both of them are smiling, dressed in light summer clothes, and even out of the corner of his eye Paul can imagine bright cherry red sugar clinging to their lips. That had been a good day. One of the best.

"I remember my promise to them." He pulses his fingers around Midoriya's, reassuring and certain. "And I remember my promises to everyone else."

The bridge begins to crowd. A tall, broad-shouldered swordswoman, sunglasses propped at a jaunty angle on her nose. A weathered man with a headband wrapped over his forehead. A smiling young boy with a bird perched on his shoulder. And, at last, a slender, graceful young man, auroral and gleaming, puts his arms around his beloved's shoulders and draws their foreheads to touch his.

"Thank you." The Paul of flesh and blood leans in and echoes the gesture, ease returned to the set of his spine.

So much for overthinking it. Nothing gives Midoriya such a clear purpose as saving another, all other thoughts banished like so much chaff. He's not bold enough to call himself a master of anyone, but even he has to know that he has uncompromisingly stood his ground and shaped Paul's perspective. He held fast to what he always said from the beginning, from the first day they met: Paul is kind.

He looks at the new House Atreides and wishes they were here to see this--though he knows Kaworu in particular would chide them for having to delve into the earth to remember that he is indeed their master, now bring him back a red slushie. Red as his eyes, red as the poppy in the window, red as Midoriya's sneakers. A lucky color.

"Everyone..."

Midoriya shouldn't be off guard in a strange place, but he's cried in danger before, tears streaming so fast they hardly lingered long enough to blur his vision as he took care of business. He's cried in front of Paul many times in many different ways, so Paul should know the signs that herald the hitch in Midoriya's throat. He lightly bumps Paul's forehead with his as he begins to weep, two rivers flowing around his smile.

The warmth of Midoriya inside his arms has become as essential as his own heartbeat. Gathering him up is the most natural thing in the world, even down here in the darkness, and it matters more than any test. Paul smiles back with a mirror-sheen over his own green irises and kisses the corner of Midoriya's eye, right along the curve of his freckled nose.

The figures begin to dissipate, coming apart in clouds of glowing motes as light as pollen. The swordswoman makes a rude gesture with splayed fingers and gleaming tongue, then springs up and back from the bridge to disperse completely, and Paul laughs with a bruised heart as the rest of them wave their less ostentatious goodbyes - except for the headbanded man, who attempts to follow after the swordswoman in the same style, with less grace.

Mariana's tendrils linger longest, curling gently in the air until even she becomes inchoate.

Then new figures begin to form, spiralling up from the remnants of the last. Paul rubs the tip of his nose against Midoriya's encouragingly before he shifts aside to give him a clearer view of whoever has been conjured to serve as his test.

"I'm right here," he assures, as their features clarify into recognizable faces, "We'll be through it soon."

Cool flip, Gideon-san.

"Don't you want to say anything to--" he starts speaking to Paul, and then to the figures woven of light, "Wait, don't go--"
He stops himself as he silently and loosely rests his hands on Paul's encircling arms. If they want to say anything, all they have to do is say it, anytime, anywhere; to the faces of the ones still here; in the comfort of their own homes, even.

So he lets them slip away as he gently slips away from Paul. He's a different person than he used to be. He knows part of it means standing alone, even if someone is standing right behind him. Being a bearer of One For All is to be never alone and always alone. He takes one step forward, Iron Soles ringing on the light-glass.

A gaggle of eight adults from Midoriya's world stare solemnly at him. Well--one burly bald man isn't solemn; he raises an arm in casual greeting. Some are wearing tactical gear; others are wearing what are unmistakably Hero costumes. There is the huge hulking figure of All Might, recognizable from the replica merchandise Midoriya and Bakugou have commissioned for each other as gifts in Trench. They cluster loosely around a muscular caped woman.

"W-What are you doing out--here?" Midoriya blurts out, thoroughly disarmed. Even as more as-yet unidentifiable figures begin to coalesce behind the group, Midoriya's gaze jerks around like he's caught something else out of the corner of his eye. He looks ready for anything, but he also looks slightly insane as he looks at the nothing distracting him from the light.

Paul lets Midoriya go less easily than the illusions. As Midoriya understands, they're only shadows on a wall. Midoriya himself is flesh and blood, and even if his heart knits itself whole almost as readily as it breaks Paul hates to see it ever come apart.

But Midoriya believes in kinder things than Paul does. Paul can hope that means he's believed in kinder people, too.

The sight of All Might is reassuring. The appearance of other heroes and apparent professionals is as well, or it ought to be. Midoriya's reaction dispels that notion instantly. Paul doesn't try to track the invisible things his Hero seems to look to. He stays intent on what's within his sight, if not his power.

Paul wishes he'd been more insistent about keeping Midoriya in his arms. He takes a half-step forward, his feet soundless where Midoriya's shadow would fall if the light allowed for it to fall at all. If he looked up, he'd see the elongated broken silhouettes of them both, and nothing of the crowd assembled before them.

The weave of time is soft around his fingertips. Not yet. Not unless he has to. But it's there, there like the nearest pathways of the future his vision sifts through an inner eye only half-closed.

Whatever his outburst at first, Midoriya seems to be calmed. Something has reassured him that they are indeed illusions, and he looks at them once again like someone looking at a movie projected on a wall. The fascination is no less heartfelt, but firmly detaching fantasy from reality. He doesn't keep track of Paul, but his nose still tingles where he kissed him.

"Name your masters," they say.

Midoriya's eyes slide familiarly to All Might, and he gazes at him before finally ducking his head with mouth pressed in a line. The light shrinks from sculpted god-like man to a very thin man in baggy clothes. Still blond, but his hair has rather less perfecting gel in it. He looks like one good gust of wind would do him in.

"Are these his masters?" the blurry shapes behind them ask Paul.

Paul looks at Midoriya's ducked head and thinned lips. He thinks, for what is to him a long time, about everything he knows about Midoriya. The mysteriously transformed and much famed All Might watches over them both, as precariously poised as Paul feels.

"No," he says, softly. "These are his teachers."

If there's anyone who helped Paul understand the difference between a teacher and a master, it's the young man in front of him. Midoriya is shaped by the people who have come before him, but he's not beholden to their traditions. He's more than that. His rebellion against those burdens is a quiet one, until it isn't.

Midoriya standing alone against the other Hunters, against the demands of the world that Beasts fall to blade and spell, against the calls to violent ends for the irredeemable. Midoriya against every injustice and cruelty this world, and any other, has to offer. If he has a master of any kind, Paul imagines-

But it's not his place to name it. It's his place to answer what he's asked.

The duty-bound boy was dangerously close to becoming a duty-bound young man willing to spend his life in a violent end. Even now the weight of it still curves and weighs on his spine.

"All Might retired from Hero work due to injuries. He looks like this now," he reveals quietly, staring at the specter. "He can't use his Quirk anymore."

Then he looks over his shoulder at Paul. Paul trusts him, and yet Midoriya is still afraid to show everything hidden in his heart. He could still walk away. There is no penalty for leaving. But he's come close to telling Paul in his heart so many times, and now he is faced with an image of the very secret.

He turns and slips close to Paul as if he were afraid of eavesdroppers on this bridge filled with nothing but shapes of light.

"He gave it to me," he whispers with a tight throat. "These aren't my teachers at UA. They're my predecessors who passed down a Quirk, and their Quirks with it, to me. That's why my Quirk is weird. I'm sorry I didn't tell you and Kaworu-kun. I didn't want you to worry or have to carry this secret."

He bows his head.

Paul takes Midoriya's hands lightly into his, sweeping his thumbs across his scarred knuckles. He looks at Midoriya's bent head, ready for whatever reproach Paul might heap onto it.

He drops his forehead to touch the top of Midoriya's and squeezes his hands.

"I understand," he says, quietly, "I forgive you."

The revelation is a surprise, but a surprise in the way the pattern of an embroidered rug is a surprise when it's flipped from its reverse. The rough knots of the back cohere into the intricate design of the surface.

Midoriya's panic and distraction all the way back at Paul's birthday party. His reluctance to show all the diversity of his Quirk, which never quite fit with the Quirks of his fellows, and its unusual late onset. The hints of perpetual anxiety he had around the subject, and the great weight of purpose he labours under to prove himself worthy as a Hero.

Paul knows he can't grasp the full extent of what this means to Midoriya, however hard he might try. He'd have to had grown up as Midoriya grew up, immersed in a world of Quirks, Heroes, and villains. But he still knows what it is to labour under the demands and expectations of the past. To have a legacy, terrible and grand, set on your shoulders.

He brings a hand up to Midoriya's chin and coaxes him up to meet Paul's eyes, if he'll heed it.

"I do understand," he repeats, slightly more firmly, "I didn't tell you everything from the start, did I? I know what it's like. I would have kept waiting, if you needed me to. It's all right."

He must be worthy of not only being a Hero, but also a successor--more than a successor, for he must surpass all those who came before him. He couldn't bear this blatant reminder of keeping a huge secret from Paul who is right here with him.

His shoulders hitch slightly then go slack as if someone unexpectedly took a heavy weight off them. When bid to look at Paul, how can he not? A person he loves and who loves him back, who trusts and forgives him, deserves the full gaze of his heart. Tears slip down his freckled cheeks.

"Kaworu-kun is the only one who did." Midoriya sputters a small broken laugh that is not a laugh. Scooting too close to him in a hot spring, Kaworu laid out his situation with frankness and asked bold questions about humans and loneliness. Midoriya presses their foreheads with a shaky sigh.

"When you told me that day, I cried because I understood." He doesn't say it, because it's just salt in the wound, but he had a choice in the matter of receiving his power. Paul didn't.

"They give me my privacy, but if I ask them to come forward, or if I'm in battle, I hear them. But they're not my masters."

He looks over his shoulder at the facsimiles again. The blurry ones behind the eight wielders shift expectantly. He cannot be at ease until his task is complete; he knows they're not done.

"Kaworu-kun couldn't keep a secret about himself if he tried," Paul teases, a tremor in his voice a soft echo of Midoriya's. He frees one hand to come up and gently wipe at the tracks of tears, leaving new smears of damp for the shifting lights to reflect off of.

Paul leans into the contact of their foreheads before Midoriya turns back to the waiting figures, one last press of grounding contact. When he wishes he could entangle them more perfectly this time, it's out of the wish that he could take on some of Midoriya's pain in a tangible sense.

But this is the best they can do, mortal beings that they are. Even the spirits or minds that apparently share Midoriya's thoughts (and he has questions about that for later, but not yet) aren't indivisible from him. Even in the midst of all of this, he can't help but wonder at the mechanisms at work - and if they're anything like the mechanisms that work inside of him, too.

"They may not be your teachers at school," he says, slowly, as the weave of connections becomes even clearer, "But they've still taught you. And that's a different thing."

He links the fingers of their hands still touching, a hold loose enough for Midoriya to slip away again to stand alone if he wants to. Paul only wants the contact a moment longer. He's greedy like that.

"So if not them, then...?" Paul coaxes. Midoriya has the answer inside of him. He trusted Paul to find his own, and Paul will do the same.

He keeps ours, Midoriya can't help thinking with a soft gratefulness. Kaworu is an immovable object in more ways than one.

Midoriya blinks, returning to the reason they're here. "Th-thank you." For reminding him. "Thank you, Paul-kun." For being so kind. Midoriya feels a little childish with his urge to turn back to Paul and clutch his hands and the rest of him. Beyond the entrance of the temple after scouting out a hiding spot, they can rest and process the visions they have seen, both light-woven and inherited.

Now his fingers close on Paul's as he steps forward, back straight, face limned with wet light. It's no longer out of a wish to hide next to him. He's introducing him to the people who helped him along the way. Another person forms out of the light. He looks vaguely threatening--it's the grumpy expression and spiky Hero costume.

"Teachers, huh?" he murmurs softly, but he doesn't sound surprised to see Bakugou there. Midoriya is still stuck on teachers until Bakugou is engulfed in light and shrinks down to a small child. Another child with voluminous green hair and freckles appears next to him and takes his hand, and the one he calls Kacchan lets him.

Very quickly, his other classmates appear, whether they're ones who have been in Trench or not. And all his schoolteachers, and--

"...Mom?" he blurts out in a small voice. But he has no time to weep again before the light quickly sprouts too many people to count, allies and enemies alike. There is Shigaraki with a disdainful expression, Sir Nighteye inscrutable behind his glasses, little Eri and Kota, and even some Heroes and bystanders he only knows by acquaintance... He's promised to protect the ones he still can, the yet-to-be-saved.

Two well-defined figures appear in front. They are a Duke and an Angel, one clad in darkling black, the other almost blindingly pale. The real Midoriya's hand tightens on the real Paul's. It occurs to him that he has to speak.

"Everyone... Everyone I ever made a promise to."

Edited 2023-09-10 00:34 (UTC)

It's hardly a wonder that Midoriya is attended by so many spirits. Paul knew that about him already, even if he didn't understand how literal it truly was.

But it's one thing to know, and another to see. Midoriya's compassion is such a vast thing that even this great cavern barely seems able to hold it. Paul would swear the bridge manages to become wider, or somehow deeper, an optical illusion no less real than the rest of the illusions.

He should call them visions. It would be more true. A map is not the territory, but that isn't to say it has nothing to do with the land. A map is a thing in relation, and a thing itself.

All of this is Midoriya, drawn out and reflected back. It's his connections, the ties he's formed, every person who's left a mark on him. Teachers, friends, enemies, family. The rescued and the lost, the gentle and the harsh, the near and the distant. Paul holds Midoriya's hand so closely that he has to remind him to be careful of how his so-often broken fingers ache under the wrong angle of pressure. He has to be especially careful of this when he sees himself, his breath catching in an undefinable soft way at the top of his throat.

"These are his masters," Paul affirms quietly to the air. In the moments before the visions begin to fade, Paul sweeps his gaze over the crowd, capturing each face and tucking it away next to his own gallery of memories. Anyone and everyone who's ever mattered to Midoriya matters to him. Then he settles, as he always does, on Midoriya.

A Midoriya made of light clutches the hands of Paul and Kaworu and completes the circuit. Though silent, he looks like he's in the middle of offering them some bolstering words.

The real Midoriya tightens his hand on Paul's, whose slender fingers are surprisingly strong. He knows this of him, from the first time they clasped hands and laid their fingerbones together. When they're close, their pulses thrum side by side. His heart swells when he hears Paul speak. Green eyes look at green. He rests his head on Paul's shoulder.

The figures sweep away like cottonwood in summer. Midoriya half expects the impossible light-made dust to carry on the air and settle in their curls. The temple door is open. He hesitates.

"I'm sure you have questions," he whispers, as if it might be rude to talk too loud here. "I don't... have all the answers. And I have questions of my own." He ducks his head, self-conscious about being so prying, but he has the warmth of Paul's hand and the softness of his eyes as they catch the last of the dissipating light.

"What cause is Mariana giving you?" To use the temple's words...

Beautiful things can be dangerous. Paul is his mother's son, and so has known that the whole of his life. He has no doubt that whatever force animates these visions would have sent them tumbling into the abyss below if their answers were judged unworthy.

Dangerous things can be kind. He knows that from his mother, and almost everything and everyone else he's ever loved, including the young man at his side. A sense of peace settles over Paul where the light does not, invisible and yet still shining. He exhales softly in the silence, stirring the cool abyssal air, and he accepts the feeling for what it is.

He's sure if this is the place for the questions he has even with the sense of calm that follows their acceptance. He's poised to say as much before Midoriya asks his own question first, and his mouth quirks in a slightly rueful smile. It's a shy one, if a person knows what shyness looks like on his face.

"She doesn't give out causes," he says, shaking his head, "I've learned that much. She gives...experiences. I thought they were puzzles, once. Something to solve, and then I'd understand it all. What she wanted from me. What I was meant to be, and do."

He goes briefly quiet, dropping his gaze to their linked hands, then lifts it back to Midoriya's eyes.

"I'll never understand all the things I want to understand," he admits, light as the shifting colours around them, "But it's the trying that makes sense of the world. Not holding myself apart from it, or above, but being in it. We're all sea creatures. It's not up to me to change the currents. It's up to me to choose how I swim them."

"Or something like that." He smiles wider, more crookedly. "I don't think any of us have all the answers. Not even her. So my question to you is...do you think there's any answer from you I should have, before we go forward?"

This attention to how one lives in and interacts with the world is something Midoriya likes to draw out of Paul. Once, Paul sought control, as if he could control the tides themselves. Midoriya prefers the young man who excitedly collects fungi samples while on a forest walk.

"I can tell you what the more recently awakened Quirks can do, but that's not what's most important..." Midoriya hadn't planned on telling Paul these things, so he flounders and rambles a bit as he answers. It's a miracle he doesn't accidentally slip into one of his muttering spiels.

"With this secret comes the fact that it's transferable, but only if I will it. There's a problem there; I could be coerced into giving it away. All Might told me to keep it secret."

Paul knows by now what would cause Midoriya to make a great sacrifice. There are things in this world worth the risk. He squeezes Paul's hand and kisses his cheek. Paul is used to looking composed in front of others; even his shy smiles are charming.

"The god or gods here asked us about causes and masters. I don't think they quite understand what inspires us. And... we don't quite understand what's going on here. It'd be pretty rude of us to walk in assuming we know everything and are always right. Let's bow at the door."

This is how he conducts himself if he finds himself at Trench shrines of minor and major Pthumerians. Does a fish know the whole ocean? Or a squid?

Anyone who knows anything about Midoriya can imagine what would force him to share the Quirk he was gifted. What Paul knows of Midoriya's world and the sorts of threats that exist in it adds another dimension to the tapestry of understanding.

Paul nuzzles the side of Midoriya's head in passing when the shorter young man kisses his cheek, unable to pass up the opportunity for more solicitous contact. He'd wrap him up in a blanket and take him home on the spot if he could, and damn the door - but that would be even more disrespectful than not bowing at the threshold.

Which he does, as neatly and deeply as if greeting the ruler of a planet. He doesn't let go of Midoriya's hand to do it.

"We'll help you keep it safe," he promises, straightening his spine and stepping forward, "For all of you."

His past shards and present self, a concept Paul knows he'll be weighing for some time. He breathes in slowly, tasting the ancient dust of a sealed place.

"...do they talk to you often? Your predecessors?"

"Plants, gardens...?" he mutters only to himself. He keeps his shoes on as he ventures inside in step with Paul, glad the air isn't rancid. This huge place must air out somewhere, if it even follows the usual laws of nature. Though it might be prudent to have both their hands free, he only shifts to a loose hold, cupping Paul's fingers.

"Before I had my first weird dream, they didn't. They couldn't. But since One For All's power grew after I turned sixteen, and coming into contact with other Quirks that disturb it, I guess I talk to them as often as my teachers. They're the only ones who really know how to use these Quirks."

His eyes rove corners and blind spots as they do when he's on patrol, routinely but scrupulously.

"...Do you want to say hi?"

Between the pair of them, Paul is as confident as he'll ever be they won't be blindsided. Sometimes it reminds him of how it felt going anywhere with his mother, cutting through the dark of unknown possibilities like bats through the dark.

It's no surprise he's thinking about her when Midoriya talks about teachers. The pang of feeling he gets is a residue of the reminder out there, so far uncategorizable except that it's not jealousy or envy.

Homesickness. He thinks that might be it, when it ripples down his spine and makes him close his hand a little more tightly on Midoriya's than is tactically prudent. He loosens up again, of course, but still, it happened.

"Chemosynthesis?" He says, first, in answer to a question Midoriya wasn't really asking. There's no trace of it in the air that he can taste, but it's a theory worth floating. He pauses in front of a broken mural, seeming to inspect what's left of the once colourful tile there.

"How would I start, if I was to say hello?" He asks, cutting his gaze back to Midoriya. "They must...know some things about me already, don't they?"

The Danger Sense that allows Midoriya to evade with preternatural swiftness protects Paul as well, so long as he remains close enough. When Paul's hand tightens on his, Midoriya draws a sliver closer to him, only half aware he's doing it. His eyes are drawn to where Paul is looking, but he still waits for his answer. Not to the mention of gardens, because Paul ultimately knows more about strange plants than he does, but to the second.

"They know your name, how I feel about you and Kaworu-kun, but not the details. They know I almost lost you." To the spear of blood that pierced a goddess, the roiling seas that sank a ship, and a future full of terrible mercies. "Seems only fair you get to speak to them yourself instead of me just saying stuff about you."

He tries to imagine if they were standing here with them, though they've never manifested as more than just voices and peripheral presences only he can perceive. He tries to imagine how the careful, meticulous Paul would conduct himself in that space, how he would take the measure of these strangers. Midoriya's eyes unfocus slightly as he asks if any of them would like to come forward.

"They're like my teachers. They're not important officials or the heads of rich families or anything, but they're experienced. They know the burden of this power and how important it is to have people who can stand with me. I guess you'd start with something normal like--Wait, one at a time--"

Here he seems to have a little trouble with crowd control. "This is--he's introducing himself with his Hero name, Lariat. He's the bald man you saw earlier, friendly, kind of intimidating but only in the way All Might is. He says thanks for taking care of--'our little guy'?"

His voice rises, and he turns pink with embarrassment.

Paul reorients to face Midoriya directly as he lays the groundwork for this strange kind of audience. As Midoriya speaks, months drop off of Paul's demeanour - months of increasing ease of comportment, how his whip-sharp grace has smoothed into motion as languid as waves. Dignity returns as easily as shrugging back into a coat. His back straightens to a poised line as he claps his hands behind the small of it, looking at Midoriya's eyes intently as if they'll show some new sign of presence now that Paul knows he ought to be looking for it.

He doesn't see anything except Midoriya's own shift to embarrassment. It's not like what happened to Gideon and Faith, then, or anything else to do with the soul - not in that way. But what does Paul know about Quirks and identity? Before today, he didn't know they could be transferred, or carry vestiges of the self with them.

But if it were a bad thing, if it were dangerous in and of itself, Midoriya would tell him. Paul believes that even with the incontrovertible evidence proof that Midoriya can keep secrets about Quirks well. Trustworthiness isn't about honesty or deceit, but about how those tools are applied.

Besides. It's hard to imagine much sinister about someone who apparently calls Midoriya 'our little guy', a nickname that threatens to crack Paul's formal dignity with a smile. He bows at the waist to help hide it.

"It's been my honour, Lariat," Paul says, rising back up, "And not so terrible a burden. He's certainly done more than his share of taking care of me." A pause, Paul's eyes flickering across Midoriya's face, softness at their corners. "Thank you for providing him with your guidance."

Once, Midoriya saw another person behind the eyes of an enemy, and he watched that enemy wrestle with control of his own body. This is not a possession, but more of a haunting. Midoriya has never felt a malicious, parasitic presence. Still, he's in no hurry to say it's like hearing voices, even if that's exactly what it looks like. It makes him sound crazy.

It's strange to see Paul lock eyes with him as if looking at another person. It's as if he's in a video call, and the camera has set him at an angle meant for someone else. He resists the urge to try to catch a more familiar gaze.

He's more accustomed to being called "kid" and "young man," so he knows Lariat is teasing him. He distinctly remembers when he met the memory of Paul's father, who made both boys squirm, and he blushes again.

"He says that there's no one better than him to teach me his Quirk, and that... he knows you're a dedicated, loving person to me. If he didn't already know that, he'd think you're--No, I can't say that, I'm not calling my boyfriend weird..."

He struggles internally (in a completely mundane way) as his fondness for Paul wars with his respect for the former wielders. He's called Paul many things, but he can't bring himself to bring that casualness to mixed company. He half-heartedly flaps his hands as if dispelling smoke.

Paul clears his throat behind his hand, a sparkle of amusement dancing in his eyes. He could forego the laugh without the show of suppressing it, but this threads the needle between not laughing at what must be a very solemn inhabitant of Midoriya's head and letting Midoriya know he's taking it in good humour.

"In fairness, he's not wrong," Paul says, tipping his head in a slight nod. "But thank you for defending my tattered reputation."

He takes a step in and catches Midoriya's hands in mid-flight, pressing his thumbs to the centre of their palms. There's a pressure point there he digs into lightly, drawing a semi-circle of alleviation around it. (Do they feel what Midoriya feels? No, Paul decides, briskly. Midoriya would be sure to tell him that.)

"The other things matter more." He stays at what feels like a respectful distance, aside from holding Midoriya's hands; this is still strange, but he thinks he can get the hang of it. "I don't mind anything else if they think that first."

"Always, Paul-kun."

The vestiges don't feel the physical sensations, or they choose not to, but they know what is in his heart. They know the fluttering joy he feels in this moment when Paul arrests him gently. If they were flesh and blood standing here, it would be unmistakable anyway from his small flushed smile and bright eyes. Midoriya follows the stillness of Paul's hands as he closes his own gloves around his thumbs.

His face settles into something more solemn, and his shoulders straighten, no doubt because of the presence of the next vestige.

"One more would like to meet you. This is Shimura Nana, All Might's sensei--the Hero in the white cape." There is a slightly breathless awe in his voice. He looks the way he did when he spoke to the memory of Paul's mother.

"She wants to thank you for looking out for me. She wants to make sure you know that..." he hesitates, troubled. There is something apologetic in his eyes, but he speaks as bidden, relaying the directness of her words if not her entire tone.

"This Quirk, One For All, is the reason why most of its past wielders died. They were hunted, or they were killed trying to stop the villain All For One. His student, Shigaraki, may choose to attack me again. She wants to know if, knowing this, you are still prepared to stay with me."

It isn't much different from things Midoriya has told Paul before and the promises they've made. Midoriya has none of the nervousness of someone who expects Paul to leave him, only the faint sadness of someone who would understand if that unlikely thing were to happen. It is a question someone not as close to either of them asks, both for knowledge and to call Paul and Midoriya's attention to it, as a teacher must.

Paul mirrors Midoriya's renewed gravity as he introduces Shimura. He listens to her echoed words with absolute seriousness, as though none of the warnings or promises before have bearing on this moment, this request.

They don't. This new person, or her shadow, or whatever she truly is, hasn't come to an accord with Paul. He takes the choices he's made until now, promises made in hope and sealed in blood, and he sets them aside. He weighs what she asks.

He knows grief. He knows its obliterating depths. He carries it everywhere, in all of him. He saw it again today, and he'll see it again tomorrow, visions or not. He catches glimpses of it in the mirror in the shape of his eyes, in how he holds his shoulders, and he hears it in the echoes that haunt his own voice.

What would it be like to lose Midoriya? The end of a world - but he doesn't love the world because it will never end.

"Yes, Shimura-sensei," Paul says, "I'll stay with him through everything. There's nowhere else I'd want to be."

"Nowhere," he repeats, more softly, for Midoriya. "I promise."

Player Epilogue: August

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;u;

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joke's on deku, neither of them are normal

and it's additive weirdness too

oh he's getting such a good grade in weird

not beating the allegations

i'll always be here to ruin cute things with a steel chair

it's very effective...

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/wrap!

/wraparoni