Deku
Present
My dreams aren't the way they used to be. A fervent quality takes the light now as if everything's become a twilight haunted by memories.
"The power mustn't die with you, Deku."
"One for All is dangerous, the power must meet its end."
"If we let it, its energy will remain and whatever's left of All for One could take it."
Voices, those that sent squirming sensations through my arms, ring by the plenty. I can't handle it anymore. In sleep, it's impossible to sound them out, to stop seeing the flashes of memories I wish died with the villain we put in the grave.
Tomura Shigaraki stands atop a field of rubble, blood filling the cracks in his body as he proclaims the rotten life a world of heroes and villains bestows. I hear his screams, repeating like a knife stabbing through flesh over and over.
All for One is there too, smiling in the destruction. His body dies beneath my fists, beneath Shigaraki's power. The very idea of Tomura Shigaraki dies there too, Tenko Shimura emerging from the ashes with too much blood on his hands to stand in the light.
The recollections are painful. My dreams know, they feed off it. So when I wince, toss and turn, start to fight it, those visions cling to my consciousness. They come back with vengeance, only intensify the hurt.
This time, I see a stadium, hear crowds yelling in fear. It isn't the past, it can't be, I don't recognize anyone. I don't see any faces, only the back of blue and black uniforms to me as they stare, walk backward, start to scatter.
Lightning strikes the skies, pressure like that of someone cutting through wind, red flickering of power unlike any other- it all inhabits the air. Someone there wears a mask, black and adorned with a sigil, the same the metal man wore in the street.
The image flashes in and out with its sounds and colors.
All I feel, somehow, is pain. It radiates in my quirk. In One for All. As if the power alone searches for another as I sleep.
"Izuku?"
The waking world greets me with a gasping breath. The darkness of my bedroom, the quiet in it is a welcome sight. Or it would be were my skin not slick with cold sweat, my chest rising and falling shallow and fast.
The dream tries to follow me, to pull me back in, and finish its story.
Letting out a groan, I sit up, the sheets rustling beneath me. When I do, the street lights peeking into my window, the softness of satin, even the warmth of another- it grounds my panicked heart. So much so that as a woman's hand spreads over my bare chest, a sigh of relief leaves me like never before.
"Ochako," I breathe, gripping her wrist, pulling it to my lips. I kiss the heel of her palm, her fingertips, worshipping them.
"Are your nightmares back?" she asks, concern knitting her brows.
"Usually not when I'm with you, but–"
My shoulders shrug once, the sheets falling to my hipbones. The metal man's mask may as well be commanding the nails hanging picture frames to slit my throat as I sleep with how much his actions haunt me.
I swallow, wipe my forehead, and course my hair back, gripping Ochako's hand in mine, keeping it close. "This case has been hitting home."
First Kachann's own child at risk, then Tomura's sigil being brought into this, now the potentiality of betrayal? I've only been back for two weeks!
