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His body is hollow, and yet dragged down by its own weight with every step. Kudo pulls him, the skin of his hand burning against Yoichi’s stiff fingers, but still he cannot move fast enough.
Footsteps echo down the tunnel behind them, drawing nearer with every step. Yoichi stumbles, and presses on. He clings to Kudo, and Kudo to him —
His brother reaches, the way he always has, for what is his.
And —
And Yoichi —
Yoichi gasps in a breath.
His head is suddenly stuffed full. Light assaults him from all angles — the sky, he realizes, is visible and bright.
Voices blend into an indistinct excited chatter as a great crowd of people make their way past him down the street.
The street? No, he was — he was underground, in the tunnels.
But…
Cars honk, music drifts out from open windows, bells ring as shop doors click open and shut.
He hears laughter. Yelling. A thousand soles touching down on pavement, hard and hot beneath his bare feet. Yoichi turns, dizzy, and finally remembers how to raise a hand to shield his eyes. Where — how —
A plume of color bursts at the edge of his vision. He turns — a meta power? It has to be, but — in public? In the middle of the day?
When did it become the middle of the day?
And then he really starts to look and he sees among the crowd so many meta humans, more than there should be, more than he has ever seen with his own eyes. His stomach twists, thinking of the greed such a sight would inspire in his brother.
He shouldn’t be here. He doesn’t — he doesn’t know where “here” is, only that he is woefully out of place.
“…Yoichi?”
He spins, barely keeping his balance, searching for the voice, which is both familiar and not. He knows whose voice it is as soon as he sees him, but he cannot articulate how. He takes a hesitant step forward, compelled, but terrified —
The young man bridges the gap between them, pushing through the moving crowd to take Yoichi’s hand.
“It’s you,” he says, “isn’t it?”
His eyes are wide, a deep green that picks up flecks of gold in the sunlight. Yoichi squints at him, at the scar on his face, at his freckles and his awestruck smile, and tries desperately to place him.
“How do you know me?” he asks, and the man’s expression droops. “I mean — I’m sorry, I —”
Somehow Yoichi feels guilty for not knowing him, for not remembering him. He feels distantly as though he should remember, but his head is still spinning and all he can see is the tunnel, Kudo’s back in front of him, red splattering out from some source unknown —
His brother’s hand on his shoulder —
“You… You don’t recognize me at all, do you?”
Yoichi shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I — I think I should. You feel…”
Familiar, he wants to say. Safe. Trustworthy.
Something fierce begins to flower in his chest, spreading through his body like raging fire. This is someone he must keep safe, someone who will do the same for him. Some part of him is convinced that he already has.
“How can you be here?” the man asks, quietly, maybe just to himself. Yoichi tries to channel that part of him, buried and subdued, which knows this boy, which trusts him, which loves him in the way a parent might love their own child.
But he can’t be much younger than Yoichi himself. A few years, maybe, but little more than that.
“Have I died?” he asks, suddenly, eyeing again the surging crowd, the bright sun in the sky. He lowers his hand and stares at it, as if his own flesh might shift and disappear like smoke. The young man chuckles, dry and bitter.
“A very long time ago,” he answers.
Yoichi knows then that he is telling the truth. He blinks and he sees the tunnel, faded, distant, superimposed over the bustling street. And he begins to understand.
“Wait,” he says, panicking. Fear grabs at his heart, tearing it, peeling away its layers and revealing something terrified and ugly within. “Wait. I’m not — I don’t want to go back.”
The boy’s hands slip through his own. “Yoichi?”
He looks up, and sees an infinite stretch of glowing orange ribs set into tarnished steel. He sees Kudo, moving as if through amber, turning his head, eyes widening, his hand warm against Yoichi’s.
Wind roars in his ears, drowning out the music, the voices, the muffled taps of footsteps on pavement. He reaches, reaches, reaches —
But his time is up.
“Izuku,” he says, his voice fading, echoing, straining against the winds of time, “Izuku, promise me — promise me you will carry it. You can’t let it fade. The power may be gone, but the legacy — the purpose —”
The words spill past his lips, meaning little to him. They come from within, from that part of him which seems to know and understand all things and offers him no explanation. But the young man — Izuku — seems to understand.
“I could never forget you,” he says, his voice ringing in Yoichi’s ears. “The world won’t either.”
Green and gold swirl beneath him; the tunnel grows nearer, more solid. The street seems to stretch out into the distance, warping; the many voices dull into a thick buzzing tone that does not end — until suddenly, it does.
“Thank you.”
The sound blinks out. Izuku fades into the dark ripples. The sun disappears, hidden by a roof of gray steel. Kudo’s hand slides back into his own, and his feet meet cold, black water.
Yoichi takes a breath.
His brother’s hand settles heavy on his shoulder.