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My legs burned with the strain of the run, my muscles were on fire, and my lungs pleaded for a breath. And yet, I couldn't stop. I had to keep going. I had to reach him.
The ground shook every time I used the last dregs of my quirk's strength to propel myself forward. What was the point of having a body that could move at an absurd speed if I couldn't use it to close the distance to the ones I loved?
Before me, Mount Fuji rose in the distance. The air was thick, heavy with the dust raised by the battle raging ahead. Some trees had been torn out by their roots. And everywhere, the ash from his Decay coated everything, making it seem like a place abandoned by God's hand.
God. What a stupid concept at this moment. What an empty farce. If He existed, if He was truly that omnipotent, omniscient force, then His cruelty was perfect. Why had He pushed me into this situation? To be a mere spectator of my own condemnation? Why had He placed him in my path, letting me taste his light, if my only destiny was to snuff it out with my own hands? Why had He granted me the miracle of that genuine, fragile, real smile, only to turn it into a memory that would burn inside me every day I had left to live? Was my life a payment? How many sins, how many imaginary failings did I have to atone for, to deserve this as my future?
His voice reached me. Distant, but closer. I couldn't make out the words, but the tone… that tone I would have recognized anywhere, in any life. I had heard it in shouts and in whispers. In promises we knew we wouldn't keep. In words of hate that cut and words of love that healed. That voice had cast me out and had begged me not to leave. It had lulled me and it had shattered me. That voice said my name in a way that transformed it into something completely new, only ours.
That voice was the echo that confused my truths. With it, what was right became doubtful and what was forbidden, necessary. It was the voice that convinced me there was still a softer bottom to fall onto.
I kept running. Even though my skin was bleeding, even though my joints ached, even though my battered body just wanted to stop, even though adrenaline was the only thing driving me forward. I needed it. I needed it to not live a life full of regrets. I needed to know I tried everything, that I held nothing back. That I wouldn't condemn myself to spend whatever life I had left crying over what I didn't do.
My feet propelled me one last time. My body broke through the underbrush, shattering the last barrier, and suddenly, the open field lay before me.
But it wasn't a field. It was dead, decaying earth. A few paces away, Izuku Midoriya lay where he had fallen, bruised and wounded, his strength hanging by a thread. I heard his ragged breathing. And then, I saw his eyes. Those eyes that reflected a whirlwind of panic and resignation, and in which, I swear, I thought I saw a glimpse of relief.
You knew, didn't you, Izuku? That there was no other place I could be but here.
My feet dragged, with the loss of momentum, with the adrenaline fading, everything cost more. But they moved, slow, agonizing, forward, toward my goal.
"Tenko." I was breathless, but I couldn't afford to stop and recover.
His eyes—God, those eyes—settled on mine. They watched me with the same softness they had nights before, when we pretended to say goodbye knowing that, next time, we could be nothing but enemies.
Three nights ago, in the borrowed intimacy of a stranger's room, that was the last time "Love" was our name.
We promised.
We swore.
And yet…
"In our next life… let's meet as two normal people, okay?" My voice came out broken. I raised my hand, index finger and thumb extended like a gun. "I'll be waiting for you, Tenko. At the same café where we met. I'll order a ridiculously sweet drink, and be reading a ridiculously cheesy book…"
He didn't move, he just held my gaze. His body, bruised and wounded, was almost unrecognizable; barely a vestige of the man I had fallen in love with to the point of madness, the man I dreamed of a whole life with. In his eyes, there was no resistance. There was a silent assent, a final "yes" to everything I was saying, to everything that was about to happen.
And yet…
"Please…" I begged, my voice strangled by uncontrollable sobs. "Laugh at that again. Please. This time… ask for my number. Ask me out. Let's watch some stupid movie. Let's eat somewhere quiet. And this time…"
At my fingertips, energy began to gather. An amount that I knew, with terrifying certainty, would kill me if I released it. It would tear me apart from the inside out. Burn me. Consume me.
And yet…
"In another life, Tenko Shimura, let's love each other the right way. Okay?"
My chest… God, how it hurt. My face was soaked with tears. My voice was nothing but a broken cacophony. All that came from my throat was a shattered noise. This shouldn't be happening. It shouldn't be me. It shouldn't be him. This shouldn't be our end.
And yet…
The energy erupted from me in an uncontrollable torrent. It impacted against his chest with a dull sound, and the air filled with my screams, my wrenching sobs. I could feel my body crumbling: skin turning to flame, blood boiling, my soul being shredded and hurled into the void.
When the torrent ceased, the world took time to come back into focus. I could barely stay on my feet. I have no idea where I found the strength. It was a final command from instinct, perhaps my soul refusing to surrender. I took one small step. Then another. Dragging my feet over the charred earth, trying to close the distance between us. To reach him. To cradle him. To touch him one last time.
There stood Tenko, still on his feet, with a smile I had never seen before. He could have moved. He could have avoided it. And yet, his eyes never left mine.
His lips moved without sound, before his body fell to the ground.
I fell too, just a few meters away, my fingers stretching toward him, trying to bridge the meters that now separated us. My vision blurred as the world faded, and I felt my body slowly dying.
And that was okay.
I preferred this to knowing what it was like to exist in a world where Tenko could never touch me again.
And yet…
"See you soon."