Izuku Midoriya had been having nightmares of undeniable countenance: manic eyes dropping to a low, sharp face, features taken to like wet clay with a blunt-edged shovel, a snake tongue slithering from razorwire lips and stale, yellowed marshmallow teeth. Stain's lips cracked, his smile widened, and his eyes narrowed to mean slits as his knives carved the Adam's apple of Izuku's throat. It was a dream, some dusty part of his brain knew. It didn't mean the hot breath on his face wasn't any less real.

If he could scream, he would do it, but his mouth was filled with cold air that made no noise when he sobbed pitifully and begged for mercy. Stain's face lowered to his, the knife sunk into his throat, and his teeth clicked slightly as he hissed, like a machine would hiss during cool down. His pupils had shrunk to dots, and Izuku saw stars, and the only thing stopping him from inhaling his own viscera was Stain's psychological anchor unto him.

"What gives you the right," he slurred, "to determine good from bad? You're just like the rest," his tongue drooped to Izuku's cheek and licked a trail of blood. His body seized. It was like Cementoss had made a bed for him. Somehow soft, but hard, immovable, unyielding, and a tragic reminder of what he was: quirkless, incapable.

"Look at yourself. You thought saving your wannabe friends, break your wannabe body, and recite All Might's speeches like they're your own makes you worth something," Stain squatted over him. Izuku wailed, but not a sound nor syllable slipped. "Are any of the stupid thoughts in your head even original?"

A knifepoint pricked his scalp. "This society is broken. Our heroes are facades. I can appreciate one thing about you," he gargled a bit, breath rasping as All Might's would when he leaned over faculty lounge couches, "you believe it, at least. So noble," his voice broke, as did Midoriya's arms, his legs, his fingers— like he'd fought against Kacchan, or All Might, or Todoroki— for the first time, he could hear his own screams.

The world narrowed to the breadth of a width between Stain's chapped, personal holy war-carved face, and his own startled breaths. A strand of his green hair lilted in Stain's inhale.

"They don't deserve the noble. The so stupidly noble," if Izuku tried hard enough, it was like he was watching from his phone, lips pursed as he stared at himself. "Are you gonna make a difference in the melting pot of shit? Paaaaandora," he gargled, "trying to be the sole hope in the box. Your ideologies are of such purity, Deku, that it is inevitable they will tarnish. High and mighty naivety doesn't protect you from the greatest agonies. Defend your friends, and you'll end up the Dutch boy," he paused, body aflame with motion, scarves and hair blowing in ethereal wind, "plugging up the dike with your finger. Don't think your peers are so virtuous as to not be with the sludge."

Deku vaulted out of bed with a start and a muffled scream, before immediately slapping his own palm to his mouth. The walls of his mother's apartment were thin. He could hear Inko Midoriya murmuring in bed and tossing in her sleep. "Hiroshi," he heard, before her comforter swallowed her murmurings.

He felt sticky spit on his hand, knit his eyes, and inhaled sharply before slowly dropping his arm. His tongue was bleeding in a few places— he'd gnashed it with his teeth during the nightmare. Swallowing the coppery saliva, he rolled over, pressed his eyelids closed and let out a weary sigh. One… Two… Three… seconds passed. Fatigue had been swallowed by Stain's greedy tongue, leaving Midoriya frozen with anxiety.

"I'm not going to sleep," he mumbled to himself, reaching for the smartphone charging from the wall and gently unplugging it.

Wincing as he was blinded, he scrolled through his channels of text history, sighing sharply before his breath and gaze snagged on 'All Might.' A sickly weight settled on his sternum, the tiny icon bubbles of All Might's terse messages accompanied by his icon: a kindly picture where his muscle form held Izuku close to his massive pectorals. The sun glinted in fractal lines across his teeth and bled into lines on the visor of Deku's costume. Izuku's heart lurched.

All Might ۹(ÒہÓ)۶: Young man, thank you for speaking with Tsuragamae Kenji.

All Might ۹(ÒہÓ)۶: Young Iida and Todoroki also have my thanks.

Izuku Midoriya: Thank you sir! I didn't really have a choice but… I don't know. I wanted resolution for the Iida family, and all the other heroes!

All Might ۹(ÒہÓ)۶: The police are an important regulatory body for Japanese quirk users.

All Might ۹(ÒہÓ)۶: A necessary annoyance.

All Might ۹(ÒہÓ)۶: That being said, you will be a great hero. I am incredibly proud of you.

Eyes pinched, he glanced to the tiny analog clock glinting on the topmost bar of his window. Three thirty-seven a.m. Izuku sighed. Both at himself, and at the tingle in his fingers and the goosebumps running down his scarred forearms and spine. If he had a teleporting quirk, he'd find All Might and scream the nightmare into his brain telepathically.

Kacchan was a bully. He kicked Izuku down to the barebone scrapes of his knees and the squeaky sobbing of a kid, a baby, really. Explosions licked his fingers and personality with a lupine ferociousness, that is to say he was the wolf and Izuku was the rabbit until All Might forced him into something more. Stain, contrastly, was homicidal. A murderer who greedily drank cold blood as he spilled it with his other fist, drinking richly from the cup of proverbial sin.

Kacchan had tormented him for the greater majority of his years. Stain had tormented him for ten minutes. The level of self-doubt was disparaging, really. Bakugou hadn't even grazed the surface of sudden inhibition Stain had managed to highlight in a snapshot of time. Izuku felt like his soul was screaming, and he in turn whimpered, lips pressed thin.

Quietly, he prattled out a message to All Might. It lingered in the 'send' bar, cursor blinking, but his thumb didn't even dare hover over the delivery button.

Izuku Midoriya: does what i did make me a villain

"Quick, Izuku," he whispered to himself, "figure it out. Think. What did you do?" The immediate answer to his tumultuous mind was: hero work. The utter antithesis of villainy, and yet the stupid lilting filament of tongue, his own blood babbling from chef's dices, malignant eyes that bled fear into a body like cancer— he couldn't shake it.

He flipped to a notes application on his phone, filled with errant cell numbers and months-old to-do lists. Pursing his lips, Midoriya quietly created a new page, brushed a palm frond of sprightly green hair from his eyesight, and began typing. These machinations weren't reserved for the books of hero notes he kept on a shelf perpendicular to his mattress— twelve pristine volumes and a thirteenth charred one— no, this was for himself. Those compositions were for Deku. These were for Izuku Midoriya. It was a startling realization that the line between those two people was a twisted dichotomy both obvious and incredibly, incredibly blurred. Deku swallowed.

The world presents hero work as an object of purity, but I'm not so sure anymore. Stain makes, uh

Stain said

I somehow told myself that morality isn't all clean in this encounter. Heroes have their own way of being villainous by changing the value of what it means to do good. Ms. Midnight, the R-rated hero, she uses sex appeal, and Mt. Lady, she

All Might does interviews

What does it really mean to be heroic? Can I decide what is right and wrong?

Is there really a right and wrong?

Izuku closed the note and quietly saved it, toes curling. The title was "mine." Period and all. Despite the odd sense of finality, something in him eased, while another part of him squirmed before being squished adamantly with a swelling hope in his chest. He glanced leftward in his bedroom.

Even in the din of darkness, he immediately recognized the sculpted smile of his hero plastered on the wall, twin prongs of hair standing sentry to a gallant, tanned fist rocketing towards the viewer of the poster. He remembered cherry blossoms, and trees, and sobbing his heart out into the filthy sidewalk while his nails picked up dirt as he unconsciously reached for his no, not hero— that was a gross understatement— but idol. He remembered feeling a joy that was like being in the eye of a hurricane. God, he was so happy.

He tossed his phone rather carelessly onto the mats lining the floor, ignoring the woody clack as it landed. Warmth ran through his body, and in the high of the reverie he forgot entirely to send his query to All Might.