1-800-BUGGELOO | video | un: rin

[offinventory]

[ Green = Midoriya | Blue = Murderbot | None = Locals ]

Beasts can be people. I had to see if there was a person in there. That's why I used a Moon Drop on the Bugge.

Waste of a Moon Drop... Just kill it like we all do, Deku. [ The voice comes from a grizzled Hunter with their hand on their hilt. ]

[ Midoriya isn't filming this. He and a group of farmers are the subject of this onlooker's stream. A few Hunters are interspersed with them, identifiable by the badges that match Midoriya's own. They know him by his Hero name, Deku. His green Hero gear is lightly stained with his own warmblood. He's bruised and exhausted, but anyone familiar with him knows that he'd be much more injured if he actually came off worse in a fight. ]

If there's a chance I can save someone without killing, I have to try.

These are my crops! The blood of the Bugge enriches them, don't you understand? I have to feed my children! [ A farmer brandishes their harvesting sickle. ]

I--I'm sorry. If you need help, I--Please, let me help. There has to be another way. There are other ways to make the soil better, just--we can figure this out together--

[ Several people in the crowd push forward, and Midoriya flinches with a step back in time with them. He can feel several stabs of alarm in his head. It evokes multiple memories of a group of people ganging up on him, and he's not good at using words to defend himself. He wants nothing more than to wrap his arms around his head and not look at them, but these are people he wants to protect. He has to face them. ]

Congratulations, you are being streamed live to DeerNet. Don't do anything you'd regret.

[ The voice is flat and even, near emotionless but with a slight edge to it. If anyone looks at their relic, it is streaming with a one second delay. ]

[ OOC: replies will come from Murderbot and Midoriya ]

Comments

[wannasmash]

His face folds at "meant," half his mouth pressed against Paul's hand, but his face remains dry. He doesn't know what he's meant to do. The origin of his Quirk never bothered him for long in the past, but that was before he was faced not with the reality that someone wanted to kill him, but that he might have to kill that someone.

"Only because I can't accept a world that says some can be saved and some can't," he says tightly like a room filling up with water. "Like the hardest times in mine, where victory just means life and defeat means death. It's a world that tells me to abandon you and Kaworu-kun."

He knows Paul's unfocused eyes can't see him, but he needs to look up again at his much beloved face. He needs to count the folded lines in his irises and trace the high bridge of his nose as Paul's arm winds him close like the joining of two trees.

[terriblepurpose]

Before they went into the other world that Merlinus had folded of himself, Paul, Midoriya, and Kaworu had a conversation not wholly unlike this. Paul hadn't fully understood, then. He will not pretend to himself that he understands fully now, and that might be the trick of it, the not pretending. A person who thinks he understands everything already has no capacity to attempt to understand anything more.

The person he was then would have told Midoriya to abandon him. That person lives in him still, close to the skin. But he does not shape the humbled gratitude of Paul's expression, love sweet and bruised in his eyes.

"The first step in changing the world is not accepting it." He feels the tilt of Midoriya's face in his palm and tilts back in kind, a tidal lock. "You tried. It didn't work today. You can try again tomorrow. Or is it everyone else who gets to make mistakes, and never you?"

Paul bumps the tip of his nose against Midoriya's, sharpened point to soft one.

"I don't think that's very fair, melisseus. I want to do everything right the first time, too."

[wannasmash]

"I don't know if what I did was right. I was always going to be one step away from killing to save, and I don't know if that's right either. Today I didn't hesitate when I made my decision. But it could have been a very different one, and I would not have hesitated then either. There's just no time for that."

As he whispered in Kaworu's ear that day for only him and Paul to hear. He clutches Paul's hand to his face, ignoring his own bruises.

"What would you have done?" he asks so quietly they might be curled up together under a blanket listening to each other's breathing instead of standing next to a brackish lake full of rotting fish. He thinks he knows the answer, Paul's first instinct, but he needs to hear his voice and thread his fingers through his. He's long stopped floating in the air, but he still feels adrift.

[terriblepurpose]

Hearing all of the doubt tangled up in Midoriya's words sinks hooks into Paul and tugs, sympathy sharp and painful in him. When Midoriya clings to his hand Paul wishes he could do as Kaworu has spoken of and find some way to be even closer, bridging the gaps between them completely to tuck Midoriya safe against his heart, away from the relentless harshness of the universe.

But even if he could, he wouldn't. Midoriya wouldn't thank him for it. He never wants anyone to go easy on him.

"I would have killed it," he says, "Once."

The bleak wind off the lake ruffles his hair as he holds Midoriya in a heartbeat of silence, contemplating him like he can see him after all, clear as moonlight on the changing leaves.

"I'd try not to now. Not if there was another choice. But if I had none, if it was it, or me - or someone else - I still would." There's no teasing or coaxing in his tone anymore, absolute seriousness taking its place for this bout of honesty. "I don't know if that's right, either."

[wannasmash]

He tells Paul what he just told Shigaraki, a terrible consideration and contingency he hadn't planned on thinking about at all today.

"Problem with Beasts is that they can't communicate their wishes. I'll tell you mine now. If I become a Beast, do that. Make sure I don't come near the city. Don't take risks. If you're not sure whether or not to kill me, ask Kacchan. He's capable of making a very quick decision even if he doesn't like it--the problem or the solution. And he said he wouldn't let me hurt anyone."

Midoriya and Bakugou seem like night and day, but on closer inspection, they're very similar. Midoriya keeps his word as seriously as an oath. He's never known Bakugou to break his either.

He bows his head, the tired line of his spine ready to fold if he's not careful. His voice becomes small and tremulous, some of the boy he still is slipping in and pushing the young Hero aside.

"I want to go home," he whimpers as if Paul is fully-sighted and equipped to take him there.

[terriblepurpose]

Seriousness transforms into the closing off that comes so quickly to Paul in the face of horror, but it only goes so far. It's his eyes that give him away the most as they collapse, flickering pointlessly like he might somehow look through nothing to see Midoriya if he wants to badly enough. Paul's fingers trace his cheekbones to sink into his hair as Midoriya bows his head, curling up after the dire weight of that request as if it took the last of his strength for this day to make it.

Paul cradles him as though it's true, his whimper sinking into the warm curve Paul makes of himself to hold it in.

"Anything you ask of me," he promises, in a murmur that comes thick past his heart tucked into his throat. He says it with all of the terrible gravity he can pledge himself with, his mouth half-against Midoriya's hair, binding himself to this pact without qualm or negotiation.

He will follow Midoriya's wishes. Keep him away from the city, don't take risks, ask Kacchan for his advice. Don't let him hurt anyone. Paul intends to follow each rule exactly, if it ever comes to that - and then Paul will bring him back to himself. He'd rather die than kill Midoriya, and since the rule that no one gets hurt extends to Paul by any fair interpretation of Midoriya's intent, it leaves rescue as the only option.

But first, it would have to come to that, and he has yet to see the thing that would break Midoriya's spirits so completely in all that they've been through side by side. So he puts it away from himself for now in favour of sliding his hand down to clasp Midoriya's, shifting away just far enough to fit them between their chest.

"And let's go home," he says, and if Midoriya will allow him, he'll lead him by the hand with the sea medallion around his neck gleaming with his singular desire to fulfill that simple, aching request. "Let me look after everything."