Chapter Text
Session 1, Section C
Participants: Dr. Hale, (Y/n) (L/n)
Dr. Hale: You said last time that losing him wasn’t the hardest part. What did you mean by that?
(Y/n): …I didn’t say losing. I said… watching him leave.
Dr. Hale: Leave how?
(Y/n):... He’s still alive. Still breathing. Yet he's decided he doesn't need me. At least… that's how it feels like.
Dr. Hale: And that hurts more?
(Y/n): …Yeah. I mean… call me selfish but, at least if he’d died, I’d know it wasn’t a choice.
(Y/n): It just feels like amidst his time of struggle, a time in which he needs people who love and care for him the most, he simply decided he was better off alone… decided I was a liability. That caring about me made him weaker… That needing anyone at all would slow him down.
Dr. Hale: And what does that make you feel?
(Y/n): I don’t know. Frustrated? Led on, I guess, for thinking I mattered more than that; for thinking growing up together meant something.
(Y/n): I mean… We were kids. We basically learned to walk together… [REDACTED SEGMENT]—I just thought that… maybe it meant something permanent.
Dr. Hale: And now?
(Y/n): Now he looks at me like I’m a risk assessment.
Dr. Hale: You sound angry.
(Y/n): No—I’m just tired.
Izuku Midoriya’s personal convictions never would’ve allowed him to leave behind a carefully made bento—especially not one cooked and personally packed by All Might, his one true idol.
However, that’s the thing about desperation. It tends to have a side effect of its clouding of one’s mind and make even the most principled people act against everything they believe in.
Yet now, even as his boots sank into the muddied ground and the rain poured relentlessly around him, his once meticulously designed hero outfit was reduced to a soaked, shapeless mess that clung to him like cheap rags.
He couldn’t stop thinking about All Might—the careful way he had prepared that bento, the pride and care folded into every portion—and how he had selfishly left it behind.
Regret gnawed at him, sharp and unrelenting, but it was tangled with something worse: a hollow sense that he no longer had control over his own actions, that his desperation had driven him so far from reason that even simple acts of affection felt out of reach.
‘All for One is after me. I am better off staying on the move. I am better off not putting my class in jeopardy.’ He'd repeated those three sentences in his head over and over again the past hour as he sped away from everything he'd ever known—after he'd made the impulsive decision to just run as far away as he could.
But the words felt hollow, echoing emptily against the chaos inside him.
Every step, every breath, screamed that he was abandoning more than just a place—he was abandoning trust, care, and the people who believed in him. His chest tightened with guilt, a weight that no amount of running could shake.
And still, even as he mechanically repeated those words, trying desperately to numb himself, his mind refused to obey. All he could yearn for was the warmth of his mother’s embrace, the steady, watchful gaze of All Might, the laughter he had shared with his classmates—and the quiet, unwavering love of his childhood friend, (Y/n) (L/n), that had always anchored him, no matter how far he ran.
Yet he couldn't turn back anymore. Who would accept him after he'd just repeatedly pushed them all away? (He would've, had the circumstances been reversed, but Izuku Midoriya's mind had turned so fully against him that he couldn't even fathom his series of actions as something to be forgiven).
Izuku launched himself up one last time, the sparks from his One For All quivering and flickering in the wet night before he finally landed in a dark, secluded cave. And as pulled off his hood and limped over to one corner to get his first lick of shut-eye in a daze, exhaustion dragging at every muscle, he let himself slump against the cold stone.
Only then did he notice it—the faint pressure around his wrist, something soft and familiar brushing against his skin whenever his hand moved.
It was thin, elastic, and nearly forgotten.
He stared at it for a moment, muddy rainwater dripping from his hair onto the ground, and his chest tightened in a way he didn’t have the strength to fight.
‘It's not even much’, he thought. ‘So small… and objectively insignificant on the grand scale of things.’
But the warmth it carried felt achingly familiar, like a quiet reminder that he could always turn back if he wanted to.
His fingers curled slightly, instinctively, as if afraid it might vanish if he acknowledged it too much. And for just a second, in the cold dark of that cave, the weight on his chest eased ever just so slightly.