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Can you see the meaning inside yourself?
“Deku, can you look this way for a moment– there we go! Picture perfect!” You’ve already got a thousand pictures of me, why do you need more?
“Deku, what’s your opinion on the recent Endeavor scandal?!”
That you need to stop talking about it. Poor Shouto is hounded every time he leaves his house to go to his agency now, let him have some peace!
“No comment,” Deku said instead of his true thoughts. He walked brusquely away from the scene of his most recent battle. He had already answered the questions that were actually relevant to what had occurred and was now just trying to move on to wherever he was needed next.
The voices of everyone around him turned into the familiar droning background noise that followed him wherever Deku, the Number One hero, ventured.
“Deku, do you have any words of encouragement for the victims of the recent shopping center bombing?!”
He stopped to give his complete attention to the reporter that just spoke, as well as the camera man she had with her –Now these are the kind of concerns he should be answering to.
“What happened was an unnecessary and horrible loss for everyone. I give my heart to the victims and their families and friends who are surely going through a lot of pain right now,” Deku started out mournfully, before he forced out a smile to give everyone that would watch this clip hope. He tapped his closed fist on his chest over his heart. “But that’s why it’s even more important for us heroes to stand strong. So to everyone feeling fear during trying times, remember– We are here for you!”
“You’ve gotten quite good at this, pretending it’s not all a bother to you. All Might would be proud,” spoke a voice from behind him, quiet but still clear as day to him.
But when he casually turned his head to the side to glance back, there was no one there. Just the long shadow his figure cast in the light of the sunset.
Can you see the meaning in your darkness?
He tried to not let that bother him, but that kind of thing had been happening more and more ever since Deku became the Number One hero.
No, even before that. Deku only reached the top of Japan’s hero charts just earlier this year. But his mind has been unsettled since a couple of years before that, ever since he graduated and became a true hero.
Ever since All Might passed away.
Oh, where are you now? Have you gone away?
Here now, is it just a lookalike?
Deku works tirelessly as a hero; he rescues the people, he arrests the villains. But there’s a lot more to being the new Symbol of Peace than just that.
He does press conferences for every major event that occurs. He does charity work. He does photo shoots, interviews, random talk shows, promotional work– almost everything under the sun.
His face is plastered on some sort of billboard or poster at least once every block. Many people have noted that his handsome smile is reminiscent of All Might’s, shining so bright that it can give hope to people even when it’s only a picture.
Every time he looks at one of these pictures, it looks a little less like himself each time. Sometimes, he thinks it looks like a completely different person.
Why is that?
It’s definitely him in the picture, isn’t it?
“Is it really?” a voice from behind him asked. But when he swerved his head around to look behind him, all he saw was the long shadow his figure cast on the door of his closet.
Why does he keep expecting someone to be there? He already knew he was alone in his apartment. No one else was here.
All of the world is slowly changing in a way I cannot see from here
Even though Deku works tirelessly, he doesn’t look forward to going to bed at the end of the day, because a lot of the time his sleep is hardly restful.
Tonight was one of those times. Instead of having a normal dream that was impossible to fully remember the next day, Deku dreamt that he was nowhere.
There was nothing around him; just the cold dark, and the sound of his footsteps echoing across a hard floor he couldn’t see.
Yesterday, somebody called to me in my dream
“Are you lost? Where are you going?” a voice called from behind him.
He recognized it this time.
His heartbeat shot through the roof, so loud in his ears that Deku thought it may just wake the dead. He turned around. And standing there in plain sight was–
“A phantom… Is what you’re thinking isn’t it, my boy?” The thin face of All Might smiled at him. Deku ran to him.
“All Might! What– Is it you that I’ve been hearing?!” he asked in a rush, he had to know, “Does this have something to do with One for All?!”
“Hmm, I don’t really know. Maybe?” All Might cupped his chin, looking up towards the endless black above their heads. He sounded much too nonchalant for Deku’s liking. Because if this wasn’t related to One for All, that meant he was going insane.
“Why do I keep hearing you?! What are you trying to tell me?!”
“Those are questions I can’t tell you the answer to, my boy. But I think you’re overlooking another very important question…”
Deku blinked. The person in front of him wasn’t All Might anymore.
He stumbled back in fright at the sight of the scarred, disfigured face of All for One. The villain gave him a cold smile, and in the deep voice that Deku recognized from Kamino Ward, a voice that should have died along with the villain who had died in the League’s final battle, he asked–
“Am I really All Might?”
“Can you see the meaning inside yourself?” out of nowhere, a laughing voice asked.
It was All for One’s voice. Deku tried to ignore it as he focused on his patrol.
He rushed through the first half of his day so that he could have enough time to stop by All Might’s grave before heading home.
Deku whispered to the headstone as he sat down in front of it. His bouquet of flowers had already been placed in a position of honor.
“I still don’t know the reason we met or parted… But All Might, did this happen to you when you had One for All? If it did, why didn’t you tell me?”
His gaze wandered away from the gray tablet marked with Yagi Toshinori’s name, and towards the shadow that he cast in the sunset.
“Did you have as much of a hard time with everything that comes with being Number One as I am? It feels like– like nothing matters as much as it used to. Did it ever get like that for you? Or…”
–did you just choose the wrong person to put on your pedestal? he couldn’t finish the question, even when he was asking it to a grave.
“So, can you see the meaning in your darkness?” All for One’s voice asked him once again. Why does he keep asking that?
The shadow appears again and again
Deku stayed at the grave sitting in tense silence, before getting up and walking away. There was no true chance to rest as Number One. He just had to keep moving forward. He had to keep trying to figure things out for himself.
Searching for something in the nothingness, I keep on walking
This grave used to be frequented by many of the general public, but based on how bare the site had been when Deku had got there, there hadn’t been a visitor for some time.
It had been a truth of his world that once All Might died, there would be an irreparable hole in the world. The place that he had once been and no longer was would be noticeably empty for eternity, for everyone.
But as time passed after his death, so did the attention of the people. Those who knew All Might, of course, still visited the man. Deku had often come here with his friends, and occasionally met with Detective Tsukauchi. But the people that hadn’t known him, the ones that he had worked so hard and hurt himself to save time and time again, seemed to be able to move on with their lives just fine for the most part.
There was still sadness and remembrance from them. Countless monuments were built in All Might’s name, and his memorial service had been the biggest in the history of heroes, with people from all around the world coming to show their support. Now, a couple of years later, people still mutter “such a shame” and “he was a true hero”.
But these had no real meaning in Deku’s eyes. Since the world was able to move on without him, while Deku was still stuck in the place where All Might had been.
Deku couldn’t understand how they could accept his death so easily. He had been their Symbol of Peace, society was supposed to fall apart without him there–
“But you’re the Symbol of Peace now, aren’t you? Why would they still need me?”
This time, it was All Might’s voice that sounded from nowhere. Deku’s head swerved around to look behind him, but still, no one was there. There was only his elongated shadow that forever followed him.
All for One’s voice finished the thought, this time coming from where All Might’s grave was.
“So, have you thought what truth means in this world? Is the “truth” enough for you to believe?”
Deku went from walking to running. He told himself it was so that he could get back to his apartment sooner, but it felt like he was trying to run away instead.
What was he running from? The voices in his head? They would follow him home, he knew that– so what was he really running from?
All of the world is slowly changing in a way I cannot catch up with
“I have to say, you really are as friendly as you make yourself out to be!”
The blond man in front of him –Hawks, still the Number Two hero to this day– said that with a grin, despite the fact that his statement implied that he had thought Deku’s hero persona to be a lie previously.
But he didn’t take that personally. Endeavor had been the Number One hero for a while, and the news had been rooted out by some persistent gossip journalists some months back about his history of abuse with his family. Many had become disillusioned by this even if Endeavor had already entered his retirement before it came out –apparently the man couldn’t deal with Deku passing him in the rankings, but he was already getting old so it was about time anyway– Due to this, Deku had to work even harder to make up for the loss of belief in heroes.
The public’s view of heroes ranged from stalwartly loyal to fickle at best depending on the individual in question. Hawks had been a victim of this. His job to infiltrate the League of Villains had ruined his reputation for the short time that the public and the uninformed heroes believed him to be a true traitor. And even after the job was finished, the League was defeated, and it was revealed that he had been on their side all along, it never quite recovered. It was hard for people to trust in someone when the suspicion of “how much had Hawks really been on the heroes’ side?” was planted. Once again, the Number Two hero was not Number Two in terms of the popularity ranks.
Day by day, we’re losing our own shadows
Of course, Deku trusted that Hawks had stuck to being a hero through and through. Everything he had to do as a villain was due to being ordered to stick to it by their own government. As a hero who also has to listen to the Commission, how could Deku fault him for that?
But even still, the shaky ground Hawks was on made it an unwise choice for other heroes who looked after their image to associate with him. So Deku, worried about not living up to the universally believed in image that All Might held as the Symbol of Peace, did the cowardly thing to never seek the hero out.
Hawks had never sot Deku out either, until recently. For some reason he had contacted Deku through his agency saying that he wanted to talk. Deku had assumed it had something to do with hero work, but so far they really had only talked.
“Uh… thanks, I guess? But can I just ask– what is this really about, Hawks-san?”
Hawks finished another bite of his chicken before answering Deku’s question. They were in a private room, so if this was about anything confidential he should be able to say something. So why was he sticking to small talk?
Half-lidded eyes examined him, much like a bird of prey. “I just wanted to have the chance to meet and get to know the Number One hero. You’re pretty young for your rank, but so was I. I wanted to know how well you took to the waters of hero life.”
He feels like he hasn’t been taking it well at all, if the voices in his head are any indication of his mental state…
But still, he asked, “And what do you think?”
“I think you’ve got it nailed! You know how to keep a smile on your face even when you don’t want to smile. You know how to work the press. You keep in contact with your mother and friends from UA, and have a support system– it sounds like you have everything you need to stay successful!”
Deku had to keep himself from blinking at that answer. The first two were a given, and were slightly concerning to hear considering Deku had been trying to keep anyone from noticing that his smiles could be lies. But it was the last part that caught him off guard. He had been so frightened by the thoughts that haunted him –both from his phantom and his own– that he hadn’t been thinking about the good things he still had in his life.
About the people that were still here with him, even when a certain one was not…
That which I’ve obtained, I’ve noticed, changes as I hold on to it
“That’s good to hear. But… why did you want to know about that in the first place?”
“Oh, I just wanted to be sure that I was leaving the rest of the heroes in good hands,” Hawks casually remarked. The man leaned back in a relaxed manner and averted his piercing eyes to focus on the window beside them, looking down at the view.
Deku, in contrast, sat up straighter in his seat and looked at Hawks in confusion. “Leaving in good hands– Are you planning on retiring soon?”
Hawks continued to look away from Deku. “In a way, yeah. I just feel like there’s no reason for me to be here anymore, you know?”
Deku understood that sentiment perfectly. And he really shouldn’t, since he knew that he was still needed here, by both society and his loved ones.
But even so, he felt that he understood that feeling. Since day by day, there was a little more of “Deku” in this world than there was “Midoriya Izuku”. How long would it be until Deku was all that was left?
So, day by day, we’re losing proof we are here
“All of the younger generation seems to be doing fine on their own, and to be honest... I hadn’t really chosen hero work for myself, it just fell into my lap. I liked the feeling of acting as a hero, though I had to do some things I didn’t want to do. And I liked being like the hero that I admired, but…”
Hawks’s eyes unconsciously moved to the television set. When they first arrived, he had asked if Deku was okay with turning it off. It had been blaring commentary about Endeavor and Shouto’s history, so Deku had agreed without a second thought.
“He must have believed in that fake hero, what a disappointment that must have been for him!” All for One laughed in Deku’s mind. He had to push down the offense that he felt on Hawks’s behalf.
“What do you mean by that?”
“The Hero Commission paid my parents a lot of money for the chance to train me. They scouted me at a young age, and I didn’t really get a say in it.”
“That’s awful!” Deku couldn’t help but exclaim in outrage. He believed Hawks’s claim immediately –Since he had become more familiar with those running society, he knew they were willing to bend some morals to get what they thought would be right.
Leaning forward with strength shining through his green eyes in a way that had been missing for awhile, he didn’t hesitate to offer, “You have every right to leave your position, if that’s what you want. I’ll back you up on it!”
Hawks finally looked back at Deku to blink at him in surprise, before he waved him off with a sad smile. “Ah– there’s no need for that, kid. I’ve got my own plans for how to handle it.”
“Really? I see, that’s good…” Deku calmed down and leaned back in his seat. “Then what do you want to be if you don’t want to be a hero anymore?”
Hawks glanced away from Deku once more, and laughed bitterly, “Fuck if I know. I’ve never planned on being anything but a hero– it was the only reason why I was here. So there’s nothing else I really want to do with my life. I just…”
Red wings slumped down as Hawks’s eyes went back to the TV, then back to the window.
“ …I’m just tired of it all. I want to stop.”
This evocative fog wears the title of “The World” and obscures my perception
After Hawks left to go back to his agency in Kyushu, Deku dreamed of darkness again. He looked around endlessly for that glimpse of All Might’s ghost.
But there was nothing there.
Why wasn’t he still here?
Where I see nothing, where it should always be
He wandered and wandered. He felt so alone. In a world that was supposed to have billions of people, in a position that granted him the admiration of everyone, in a life where he had friends and family– why did he still feel like he was alone?
Is it because he isn’t here anymore?
“Who isn’t here? Yagi Toshinori, or Midoriya Izuku?”
This time, Deku couldn’t hear the voice well enough to distinguish it. When he turned around, there was no one there.
Light and shadow, dream and reality...
Eventually, a shape emerged from the darkness. At first, Deku had thought it was some sort of object lying on the ground. But once he got closer, it formed the shape of a body.
Dark red blood was splattered around it, contrasting with the black ground. The limbs haphazardly sticking out at strange angles, as though the person had fallen from a high place and was killed. Fear burst through Deku at the gruesome sight. A hand unconsciously flew up over his mouth in an attempt to not throw up.
Even standing right next to it, its image wasn’t completely there. The colors were partially transparent and the edges were fuzzy, like a picture that was out of focus. It made Deku wonder if the body was truly there or not.
Despite the obscurity, it was easy to tell who it was. The limbs that had come out the most broken of them all were the large, red wings on the back. The feathers mingling with the blood were of almost the exact same shade, making it hard to tell where one started and the other ended.
Dancing somewhere in between…
Where am I?
“Can you see the meaning inside yourself?” out of nowhere, a laughing voice asked.
It was his own voice.
But when Deku swerved around, it was All for One that was there.
Panic ensuing, Deku screamed, “What hell is this?! What even is this place?!”
“You can’t tell?” Voice back to normal, All for One tilted his head in a questioning manner, not put off by the body next to them in the slightest. “That’s Hawks.”
Is he being purposely obtuse? “I know that’s Hawks! But– why is he here?! And why is he dead?! The only people I’ve been seeing are related to my quirk, so I thought all of this had to do with that!” Deku threw his arm out to gesture at the nothingness surrounding them. “But if that’s not it then what is this?!”
“All of this is you,” All for One stated, as though that actually meant anything, “You saw some of yourself in Hawks, so that’s why he’s here too. That, and well…”
I still don’t know the reason we met or parted
A nervous anxiety suddenly overcame Deku. He stuttered out, “Well what?”
Deku blinked, and the ghostly figure shifted once more. It was himself this time.
With green hair, green eyes, casual clothing, and a face that wasn’t smiling, this shadow looked more like Midoriya Izuku than he did. But this Izuku was like Hawks’s body, in that he wasn’t completely there. And his transparency made him resemble a phantom even further.
The other Izuku gestured to the nothingness surrounding them. “The two people you’ve seen before now were already dead. But the two of us here… we’re only halfway there, you see?”
So, can you see the meaning in your darkness?
“I just feel like there’s no reason for me to be here anymore, you know?”
Deku jolted at the sound of Hawks’s voice.
He swerved to look behind him and down at the dead man. The bloody, partially crushed head of Hawks was turned away from the ground slightly, looking up at him with a single golden-brown eye.
His body moved before he could think. He reached out to touch the shadow–
Only to find himself jolting up out of his bed covers, breath heaving, heartbeat racing, and a cold sweat running down his forehead.
“I’m just tired of it all. I want to stop”
It was Hawks’s voice. But this time, he’s not actually hearing it. It’s all in his head.
And again, the shadows haunting Deku –the shadow of Hawks as well– faded away, leaving only belief in the significance of searching.
But that’s all he really needs, isn’t it?
He doesn’t bother changing into his hero costume, he doesn’t bother changing at all. He just jumped out of bed, wrapped a robe around himself to ward off the cold, and barely remembered to stick his feet in a pair of shoes before he rushed out the door.
For the first time in years, he left the house not as Deku, but as Midoriya Izuku.
He didn’t know how much time he had, so he couldn’t waste a minute of it. A trip to Kyushu by bullet train was supposed to be around three hours.
Izuku, using Full Cowl, made it in just over twenty minutes. And even then, he was still cutting it close.
Once he reached Kyushu, he headed towards Hawks’s agency. It was the dead of night, he didn’t know why the man would be there for this moment, but…
–Dark red blood was splattered around it, contrasting with the black ground. The limbs haphazardly sticking out at strange angles, as though the person had fallen from a high place and was killed–
Izuku just had a feeling that’s where he’d do this.
Sprinting and leaping from the rooftops, Izuku arrived just in time to see a shadowy figure pull himself up over the boundary of the agency’s roof to push off and freefall through the air. In the dimness of the city night lights, he could just barely make out the red wings that were folded tight against the shadow’s back.
It was clear Hawks had no plans on coming out of his fall.
Izuku’s next leap cracked the wall under his feet being used as a springboard. Bitter cold air rushed against him as he rocketed over the vast distance between him and Hawks, catching the hero around his waist. Izuku threw forward his legs and the arm that wasn’t holding Hawks to brace their crash against the agency’s wall. His hand and feet broke holes in the metal framing, but he had successfully prevented them from getting hurt at least.
After a huge breath of relief gushed out of his taxed lungs, Izuku turned his head towards where he was holding Hawks against his side.
Hawks was staring at him with wide eyes and his mouth slightly parted, speechless and bewildered at the sudden appearance of the Number One hero –in his pajamas no less– at a place that was a whole different island from where he was supposed to be.
Even if it was a little late, Izuku still had to tell him. The words and meaning that he had failed to find on his own, but became so clear once he realized another person needed to hear them–
“No! Even if you think there’s no use, don’t give it up!”
Izuku gazed at Hawks with pleading eyes. Hawks stared back with an unreadable expression.
After a moment that lasted much too long, Hawks closed his eyes and quietly sighed, “Hold onto me. I’ll bring us up.”
Large wings unfurled from Hawks’s back. When they gave a powerful beat, Izuku let go of the wall and allowed Hawks to fly them back up to the top of the building. Hawks brought them over the edge and plopped them both down on the rooftop.
Instead of looking at Izuku, Hawks scowled at the floor. His arms were defensively crossed over his chest.
“So… how did you know?”
“You said some suspicious things when we talked,” Izuku explained. He hesitated for a few seconds to think over the rest of his response, before saying, “I’ve sort of been hearing a couple of deceased people that I knew and seeing them in my dreams. So when I had a dream where I saw you instead and you were dead… that made me think that you might die soon. And looking back at what you said made me think that you were planning on killing yourself.”
Hawks actually lifted his gaze to give Izuku a “what the fuck?” stare. That was probably too much information.
After seeing that Izuku wasn’t bullshitting, Hawks raised his eyebrows and huffed out, “Jeez. And I thought I had issues.”
“Things have been… a work in progress for me,” he admitted, before moving onto a more productive conversation topic, “So what was that about?”
Grimacing, Hawks glanced away and tried to nonchalantly shrug off the seriousness of his response. “You already heard the crux of it. I’m stuck in a life that exhausts me, and there’s no reason for me being here, because no one wants me– they only want Hawks.”
A sorrowful look filled his eyes as he confessed, “Only one person has ever cared about me and not the hero, and they’ve hated me for years since I chose my job over them and landed them in prison. And then even my hero ended up being a lie. There’s… nothing left for me anymore.”
Izuku considered that for a moment. Hawks might still be alive right now, but he still hasn’t been saved. Nothing has changed for him.
So how can Izuku save him?
It’s like what Deku has been asking himself this whole time; What is a person supposed to do when they feel like nothing is meaningful anymore? When all that they’re doing is searching endlessly for a reason, when there might be none or when they’re too blind to ever see it?
Because someone he loved is missing, he feels like everything else in his life has lost its meaning. He feels like everything means nothing. But it should mean something, right?
But do the things that he cares about really mean anything at all, when he’s the only one that cares about them?
“What does it mean if you can’t get things back to the way they were before?” A voice behind him asked, it was unrecognizable again. “So, everything is nothing. Nothing is all. It’s not the end of the world even if that’s the way it is. After all, you’re still here, aren’t you?”
Izuku glanced behind him. In the dark of the night and unlit roof, he couldn’t see his shadow.
Hawks shifted his eyes over to where he was looking. “You see something?”
“No, but I heard someone. No one’s actually there though, so don’t worry about it.”
Despite Hawks giving him a very concerned look in response, it felt good to say that. This was the first time he’s ever admitted to it out loud to someone else. Just by doing that, Izuku felt more grounded.
And in this case, he was glad to hear what the voice had to say –It gave him an idea of what he was overlooking.
Izuku looked up at the empty, blackened sky. As expected, no stars could be seen due to the pervasive city lights. Not even the moon was out tonight.
Seeing that Hawks instinctively followed his gaze again, Izuku started to speak, “If you think about it, everything about our lives is meaningless. Even if I die today, or you die today, the world will move on without us just fine. The people who love us will find a way to move on as well. Even if our entire planet and life as we know it comes to an end, the rest of the universe will go on like nothing had even changed. From that perspective, everything is meaningless.”
Everything is nothing. Nothing is all.
Hawks blinked at Izuku as he processed his words. Then, Hawks’s brows screwed up as he gave Izuku an incredulous look. “I could’ve sworn that the pep talks you give on TV were more positive than this. And weren’t, you know, totally nihilistic.”
“Those are Deku pep talks, you need an Izuku pep talk. And I’m getting to the positive part.”
“How do you make something positive out of that?”
Izuku ignored Hawks’s rhetorical question. “What I’m trying to get at is, even with all of that, we’re still here aren’t we? Earth didn’t need to be capable of supporting life. You didn’t need to be born into this world. I didn’t need to be born into this world. But we still managed to be born and go throughout our lives in a way that we ended up here together now, in this spot.”
Izuku looked away from the sky to return Hawks’s gaze.
“There is meaning in that. It’s only meaningful to us, and we may not comprehend what that meaning is, but it’s there. Something is here, but we’ll never know what it truly is. And that’s okay.”
Izuku crossed the space between them to take hold of Hawks’s hand, even as the man slightly backed away from his approach. He noticed that the glove covering it was cold to the touch.
“You happened to be born into this world, and it’s okay for that to the be the only reason why you’re here. It’s okay for life and all the little moments that are a part of it to be meaningful on its own. You don’t need to prove your worth or try to carve yourself a place; You already have worth, you already have a place. Whether you’re a hero or nothing at all, that doesn’t change.”
He squeezed Hawks’s hand, and refused to look away from him.
“What’s your name, Hawks?”
Hawks stared at him for a long moment, before answering, “...Takahiro.”
“Takahiro-san, you can call me Izuku. You don’t need to worry about it being too painful to go on because of your loneliness, because I’m here now. Not as a hero, but as a person. I’ll help you get by, and I’ll help you figure out what you want to do. So even if you think there’s no use... don’t give it up.”
Takahiro examined him like this was the first time he had truly looked at Izuku. It probably was. Then, he furrowed his brows and sighed in defeat, “Okay. Okay, just– Stop crying, please.”
Izuku brought his other hand up in surprise to touch at his face, and felt wetness upon his cheeks. He hadn’t even noticed that he started crying. Why was he crying?
Vigorously scrubbing at his eyes, he stammered, “S-Sorry about that! You’re the one that should be being comforted right now, not me. All Might did always say that I was too much of a cry baby…” So why did he think that Izuku could do this on his own?
A second of hesitation passed. Then, Takahiro used the grip Izuku had on his hand to pull him close, and used his free hand to push Izuku’s face down against his shoulder. A curtain of red feathers surrounded him in an embrace. “There’s nothing wrong with crying when you need to.”
Takahiro offered to let him stay at his agency for the night. The Winged Hero actually had his own apartment set up there, and though there was only one bed, it was big enough to fit both of them.
When he saw Izuku eyeing the bed uneasily, he must have remembered what Izuku had mentioned previously about seeing dead people in his dreams, because Takahiro promised that he would be by Izuku throughout the night. That helped Izuku feel at ease enough to lay down his head and drift off.
He found himself in the black nothingness once more. This time, the shadow before him was still in the image of Izuku, but it was even more transparent than last time. It looked like it was fading away.
“Who am I?” the shadow asked.
Izuku knew the answer this time. “You’re me. That is, you’re Midoriya Izuku. You were trying to tell me that I was losing myself, weren’t you? That I was empty and dying, trying to never let go of All Might and live up to what I thought he would want from me as the Symbol of Peace. By trying so hard to be a hero, I lost sight of what it meant to be a person.”
The shadow gave a ghostly smile. “That’s right.”
“So, now that I feel more like Izuku instead of Deku… Will I stop hearing those voice? And stop dreaming up this place?” he failed to keep the hope out of his tone.
“Probably not,” the shadow’s answer was unsettling, “After all, you can’t go back to being just Izuku anymore. You’ll always also be Deku. And as long as that’s the case… you’ll always be searching for the meaning in your darkness.”
“ ...But would I really be able to find that meaning if I was just Izuku? Wait– How… How did you know what Hawks would do? And that he would do it tonight? If you’re really just a part of me, then there should’ve been no way for you to know that! Does this really have nothing to do with One for All? Or something else entirely?”
The shadow just gave Izuku one last smile, before turning its back and walking away from him. The voice faded along with the figure that disappeared right in front of him.
“Who knows…”
Even in the end, he still can’t find all the answers