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Midoriya always liked the idea of soulmates, of the existence of someone whose soul connected with his on a deep, emotional level. He started to sing from the very moment he learned that his soulmate could hear the melodies he created. He would do it day and night, whenever he could get away with it. He hummed made-up rhythms in hopes of making his soulmate’s days better, he sang all types of songs wondering which ones they liked and which ones they didn’t, he invented lyrics directed towards them on occasions, too.
But his soulmate never sang back.
When he was younger, he didn’t think much of it. People around him were talking about the music they and their soulmates were into and he was always left out, but he didn’t mind it. In those cases he simply turned away and started singing, hoping it made whoever was meant for him happy.
When he got diagnosed as quirkless, he sang. He sang his heart out whilst he blasted music in his room, his voice stronger than any speaker he could get his hands on. He sang and he cried, praying his soulmate sang back at least once, hoping he didn’t lose them, too.
But they still didn’t sing.
When he tearfully told his mother, she burst into tears and started apologizing to him the same way she’d done when they first found out his quirk would never come. Midoriya, still young and innocent, felt his heart shatter before he could truly understand what it meant for him.
As he grew older, people started harassing him not only because of his lack of quirk but also because of his lack of soulmate. That’s when he began to realize just how cruel and unfair the world was. He couldn’t even fathom the miseries he had to have caused in his past life for fate to decide to screw him over to such a degree.
He kept singing, though. He knew that the chances of him having a soulmate were slim; he knew that the universe had decided to destroy both his dream and a crucial chunk of his soul and that knowledge caused him to feel a certain type of despair that made him lose his way. So he clung to childish beliefs and kept singing, pretending that someone who didn’t exist was listening to him.
~
Todoroki didn’t know much about soulmates. He was too secluded, too sheltered, too busy with arduous activities to bother to find out. When he told his mother that he could hear a soft, melodic voice sing in his head, she looked at him with melancholic eyes which started watering rapidly and told him to remember that voice and hold it in his heart forever, no matter what.
Though he didn’t understand, he didn't need to be told twice. And so every time he heard the tiny voice sing, a smile bloomed on his face and warmth filled his chest.
Soon enough, his father started training him. Every minute of each exercise he was forced to do was torturous and it made him suffer in a way he didn’t think was possible. Yet, every time he shed a tear his soulmate soothed his pain with a gentle hum or a cheerful song. In the make-believe safety of his room, he allowed himself to indulge in the security his soulmate made him feel and smile tiredly to himself.
His father found out, though. It wasn’t unexpected; most people did have soulmates after all. It wasn’t even training at that point, and Todoroki knew. It was a fruitless beating, given time and time again, that served to remind him to never sing back. At a very young age, he was threatened and abused into silence, and he was so genuinely terrified he listened. He never dared to sing back, hoping whoever that lovely voice belonged to understood. He still smiled when he heard them, though. And no matter how agonizing the beatings became, nobody would convince him to do otherwise.
He came close to humming back once when he heard and felt his soulmate hurting and suffering, the harmonies in his head interrupted every few seconds by the singer’s sobs and whimpers. He wanted them to know that he was there and that he eagerly listened to every tune, but the phantom feeling of his father’s scorching fire and the loudness of his booming voice made him cower. After all the sound had ceased, though, he wondered if it had been worth it; he wondered if he should have gone against his father’s demands despite knowing what the consequences would be.
As he grew older, Todoroki started to rebel. He refused to use his left side, the fire quirk he cursed so much. He disagreed with Endeavor, both as a father and as a person. He decided to make it his ultimate goal to become a hero without him or his power. However, no matter how rebellious his spirit had become, the flashbacks to the torture kept him from ever singing back. As time went on, his soulmate’s voice became buttery and smooth, but he didn’t fail to notice the sorrow it seemed to always carry, the precious cheer it tended to have long forgotten.
Some days Todoroki wished for the voice to go away and for his soulmate to shut up. He wondered why they even kept it up if he never sang back or even gave any indications of being alive for that matter. Those days, all it took to make him regret his harsh thoughts was a blink, a moment of darkness that forced him to see the silent plea in his mother’s eyes when she told him to hold onto the voice, to hear the sheer amount of pain in his soulmate’s chants. And even then, he never dared to sing back. Perhaps someday when he gathered the strength and courage to fully challenge his father, but until then he’d remain quiet, chained down in his very own prison cell.
~
Midoriya’s singing became less frequent when he entered UA. He was on the path he dreamed to be on, the path towards becoming a hero like his idol. He had a quirk, and although it didn’t fill the emptiness he felt in his chest, he knew better than to be greedy and accepted the gifted power with eternal gratefulness. He still allowed himself to sing to an imaginary person that would love him unconditionally were they to exist, though. And every night without fail, he opened his window to look at the moon and the stars and sing to them as though they were the holders of his soul’s missing piece.
He’d long stopped daydreaming about the day his soulmate would intone a hushed note, and the desire to be loved had been buried deep down underneath mountains of other emotions.
On that particular day, though, the star that lit up the long and merciless road ahead of him vanished into thin air, his surroundings flooding with darkness and his heart becoming an even emptier void; the embers of One For All still burning inside All Might had died down after his fight with All For One, forcing him to retire. To the public, the hero was as good as dead.
Anguish and panic were at an all-time high. The need for another symbol of peace was crushing, and unbeknownst to the helpless citizens, society’s next support pillar was but a lost child who was attempting and failing to find his way.
Refusing to be swallowed by the intrusive feelings of hopelessness, Midoriya did the only thing that brought him comfort— he let his emotions bleed out of him and the music absorb his agony as he imagined his smiling soulmate listening to him sing with all his might.
Todoroki had only heard so much emotion in a person’s voice the day his soulmate broke down when he was a kid, the day he nearly committed the unthinkable act of communicating back to them. He heard the voice in his head again, somehow filled with even more heartache than ever before. The urge to sing back and let them know that he’d be there to listen resurfaced after years of being suppressed, so pressing he felt as though he couldn’t breathe.
Memories of the abuse came hand in hand with the dire need to sing, and despite his newfound strength Todoroki still found it difficult to let go of the fright he felt every time he even opened his mouth, terrified to the core of accidentally saying something in a singsong tone that might reach his soulmate. So he just listened to them sing to their heart’s content, listened, and wished to be brave enough to sing back.
There was a beat of silence during which Midoriya tried to pull himself together at least somewhat. He opened his window and stepped out onto the balcony as he looked at the night sky and the countless stars that decorated it. He wondered if his soulmate had become one of those stars, if they felt at peace wherever they were. He looked at the full moon that remained brighter than any street light, its beauty incomparable and unique.
He did what he did nightly— he sang. And Todoroki heard his soulmate again, more delicate than he’d ever heard them be.
“I know you're somewhere out there, somewhere far away.” Midoriya imagined someone laughing and smiling, someone happy that got to hold him close and love him despite his flaws. “I want you back, I want you back.
“My neighbors think I'm crazy, but they don't understand. You're all I had, you're all I had.”
Todoroki knew he was being referred to directly, and his heart broke at the sound of his soulmate’s voice, so broken and brittle yet still gentle and subdued.
“At night, when the stars light up my room, I sit by myself,” —tears started rolling quietly down Midoriya’s cheeks— “talking to the moon… trying to get to you… in hopes you're on the other side talking to me, too, or am I a fool who sits alone talking to the moon? Oh-oh.”
Todoroki recognized the choking of sobs during his soulmate’s singing and it quickly became one of the sounds he hated most. Whoever they were, it didn’t matter, he just wished he never got to hear them sound so devastated.
“I'm feeling like I'm famous, the talk of the town. They say I've gone mad, yeah, I've gone mad. But they don't know what I know, 'cause when the sun goes down, someone's talking back, yeah, they're talking back, oh.
“At night, when the stars light up my room, I sit by myself, talking to the moon…” Midoriya’s voice cracked and wavered. His whimpers and sobs were messing with his singing, but he didn’t care, because nobody was listening to him anyway. He didn’t have a soulmate. His eyes watered even more at the thought and his breaths shuddered violently. “Trying to get to you… in hopes you're on the other side talking to me, too, or am I a fool who sits alone talking to the moon?”
Todoroki’s soulmate sang the song often, so much so that he’d learned it by heart, and he knew that every word was directed towards him, every note was meant to be heard by him, every time the melody began playing in his head it was a confession and a plea, a beg to hear from a person who had kept quiet his entire life. Despite that, it had always been relatively calm and quiet, much different from the despondency and utter misery that was being delivered now.
“Ah-ah, ah-ah, ah-ah, do you ever hear me calling?” ‘I hear you,’ Todoroki wanted to say. ‘I’m here.’
“Ah-ah, ah-ah, ah-ah, 'cause every night, I'm talking to the—”
“Moon…” a foreign voice joined Midoriya suddenly. It startled him into silence, but the voice didn’t stop. The voice that didn’t come from behind him, or above, not below or to the sides. It was in his head. It was— “Still trying to get to you… in hopes you're on the other side talking to me, too, or am I a fool who sits alone talking to the moon? Oh-oh.”
Todoroki was told his entire life to never dare even think about singing, but it was all ignored at that moment. His soulmate had sung to him despite his unbreakable silence and had unknowingly helped him push through the toughest events in his life. He was sick of not doing anything for them in return and even going as far as causing them further pain by keeping his mouth shut.
“I know you're somewhere out there,” they both sang together. “Somewhere far away.”
Midoriya fell to his knees as more tears ran down his face. His breathing became irregular, hitching with even more whimpers and sobs. He soon found himself bawling on the floor, curled up in a ball and shaking terribly. He was weeping and wailing, possibly even screaming. He couldn’t find the energy to care about the volume of his cries or the hour of the night, the only thoughts running through his head were his soulmate. The soulmate he had, the soulmate who was alive, the soulmate who had heard him, the soulmate who had sung to him, the soulmate whose disembodied voice was hoarse and gravelly, smoky in a way that made Midoriya feel euphoric and overjoyed like never before.
Hours passed before his ragged breaths calmed down and his shaking and quavering decreased in intensity. When they did, he went to bed and passed out immediately, though not before the butterflies in his chest and stomach came back from the dead.
Todoroki didn’t sing anymore, and he didn’t hear any further from his soulmate that night either. He laid on his bed staring at the ceiling, his hands trembling wildly, as he tried his best to escape the memories of his father and all the pain he put him through. After what seemed like an eternity of dreadful restlessness, though, Todoroki began to shake more violently. It was partly because of general unease and a bone-deep fear, but also because of a delirious sort of ecstasy that came with the thought of finally breaking the bindings that chained him to his father for so long.
His fire belonged to him, as Midoriya had once told him. His voice also belonged to him, and his father had no control over either of those things.
On that fateful night, both boys slept peacefully, their hearts beating in synchrony cheering their mutual discovery.