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A cold breeze rushed through the ruins, carrying the upcoming winter’s message. It messed with Izuku’s hair, ruffling the once green curls. The hair dye had faded a time that felt like a lifetime ago but he didn’t make any efforts to dye it again yet. He was flying under the radar right here and now, not in immediate need to craft a new identity and to choose a new color to dye his unruly curls. Getting far away from here could wait a little more.
He was besieged by strong gusts of wind, sending shivers down his body, the chilly air sneaking under the loose T-shirt he was wearing. The cold seeped deep into his bones, freezing him from the inside out. But it didn’t matter to him. A little bit of cold couldn’t kill him.
The white gloom grew clearer by each minute passing at the side of his vision. Fading colors were returning to it, the white never really disappearing but getting covered up by yellows, blacks and grays. Their skin got color back to it, still not looking alive and rather sickly pale, their eyes missing their shine but they looked more human than Izuku had seen anything look like in the past months.
He didn’t look fully at them, only keeping them on the edge of his vision. It took months for him to find them; he wasn't taking any chances of losing them again. Japan was a large place and it took so long for Izuku to travel all the way here to be with them. His gaze was on the ruins below their feets, the lights from the stars reflecting on every broken glass piece they reached upon.
They sat in silence for a long time. The other didn’t say anything, their gaze distant and not focused, legs absentmindedly dangling over the edge of the rooftop. Izuku didn’t mind. He could wait for as long as they needed. He had all the time in the world.
The stars were shining their brightest dancing with the moon on the dark night sky when the other opened their mouth for the first time in so long. At the beginning it was just a small sigh like they were testing if they could breathe, but then that slowly turned into soft humming, a melody painfully familiar to Izuku repeating again and again. No matter how many times he tried to sing it to himself it wasn’t even close to this. It wasn’t this beautiful, this melodic. A part of Izuku’s heart crumpled with each time they started the melody all over again.
Lighter blues started to appear in the sky, the sunrise getting closer by each passing minute filled with soft humming. A while later after hearing the same melody for probably more than a hundred times they stopped and spoke up.
“I don’t remember,” they said, their voice faint and so, so quiet. The words could’ve gotten lost in the wind, carried away until it wasn’t louder than a soft whisper and blown away far from the only person that could’ve heard it, but no. Izuku picked up on it, he always did. The scared, perplexed questions always reached his ears. They reached him and filled his mind until they made his ears ring and he couldn’t think about anything else anymore.
Izuku hummed in acknowledgement, his eyes focused on the dust particles getting stirred by the wind on the ruins beneath their feet, levitating in the air for a bit before slowly falling back to the ground. “You don’t need to remember.”
“I don’t remember” the other repeated voice a little more panicked. He could see from the corner of his eye as they pulled their legs back, set them down on the edge and hugged their knees to themselves. They turned their head to him, the blonde hair strands floating with the movement, their yellow eyes widely blinking at him.
“You have nothing to be afraid of,” he said the same words as so many times before. They rolled off his tongue with such ease and familiarity. His eyes shifted upwards taking in all the light the fading stars could give. The end of the night was creeping close. “Your memories had been taken away from you when you fell in the hands of Death. They cease to matter from now on.”
The other shifted closer to him before hesitantly speaking. “But… I want to remember” they breathed out, the words just as hopeful as broken.
“What has already passed cannot be turned back” the cold wind whirled around Izuku, ruffling his curls and catching his clothes, tugging on them as a beg to join and be a part of the wind. “You cannot get back what was already taken. Life is the part of your being that fills you with memories, Death is the one that takes it away to keep the balance” as a soft sigh left his lips he could see his breath. The little fog that formed in front of him quickly evaporated with a strong gust of wind. “But you shouldn’t miss them. Without them you are ready to pass on.”
“Pass on?” the small voice echoed his words.
“You don’t belong here anymore. You have served your time here with both Life and Death, now you can move to a place far, far away from here where you can rest in eternal peace. You couldn’t really rest with a lifetime amount of memories, now could you?”
The rhetorical question hung in the air as the other stayed in silence, contemplating the words they heard as the sky got lighter and the sun got even closer to the horizon. The stars were preparing to say their last goodbyes, the faint points of lights blending into the bright blue sky.
For a long time neither said anything. It was peaceful sitting on a half collapsed house’s rooftop just enjoying the complete silence and delightful colors the sky was painted by sun rays that already reached over the horizon.
“How do you know all this?” the other asked eventually, tilting their head to the side.
Izuku’s eyes drifted close as the words fell off his tongue. “I am the Guide of the Lost Souls, protecting and guiding the ones that for one reason or another got left behind and cannot pass on without help.”
There it was. His title. The one he once held so proudly up in the air, feeling so honored to be the one helping the ones that no one did before. But now… he saw lives wither away in short seconds, met with so many that met Death too young with barely any memories to be taken away. He sometimes wished he could go back in time and change the crucial decision that led to this.
“Am I a Lost Soul?” Their voice was rather curious than scared. Seemingly they got mostly over their panic and now were just trying to figure out how things worked.
“No” the answer came instantly. “You are a special case. Sometimes Souls cannot pass on because someone still here and serving their time cannot let them go. In those cases an invisible force forms between them, like an invisible thread connecting the Soul and the Living. But now I’m here and I can cut that force for you.”
They thought for a second before piping up. “Are you like that too? Like me?” The questions slowed down and became more hesitant. “Stuck here?”
Izuku contemplated answering. One one hand he wasn’t here to chat with the Soul, he should’ve already set them free minutes if not hours ago and guided them to eternal peace. But on the other hand… It's been months since he talked to anyone, Living or not. He enjoyed the Soul’s company more than he should have.
“In a way, yes. In other ways, no” he decided on ultimately wanting to sound vague and not give off too much information. But not even a second later he could feel the other’s curious gaze on him so he added: “I am still in the reign of Life and Death, still serving my time and waiting for my clock to hit midnight. You can pass on now, but I can’t.”
Izuku’s clock was frozen in time, the hands not moving from where they had stopped. Until the end of time and maybe even afterwards they were going to stay exactly like that and weren’t going to tick even once.
“You’re lonely” it’s not a question, nor was it intended to be. It’s a statement said with full conviction. It’s not something to be asked after such a confession.
Izuku stayed quiet for a moment before speaking up, the words tasting bittersweet on his tongue. “I am alright. You shouldn’t worry about that.”
Souls didn’t have their memories anymore but even without them there were things that couldn’t be changed about them even if they weren’t breathing anymore. Personalities reached deeper than memories and as much as Death tried to take that also away Souls weren’t just emotionless ghosts flying around without a single intact thought. They could feel and think, just not as much as any Living would.
Times ago Izuku got surprised by how smart they actually were but now it was just a bittersweet callback to times before. He was thought to be a Lost Soul more than once in the past but never once had someone realised that his clock wasn't moving as it was supposed to be. They didn't know how wrong it was moving, or rather not moving, but they figured out something was wrong with it. Maybe they thought his was just slowed down, he couldn't know.
With how kind and caring they’ve been all their life spent on Earth and even now without their memories it was really true they were a special case.
He lifted up his hand that was closer to the soul. His scarred fingers slowly shifted carding through the air, trying to find something only he knew was there.
“Are you going to pass on someday?” the other asked, voice curious with a hint of somberness. He could feel their eyes on him; they didn’t even bat an eye to his moving fingers. “Will you join me in the place far, far away?”
Izuku stayed silent, not answering. He needed to concentrate if he wanted to find what he was looking for. When his fingers bumped into the invisible force, that the best description would probably be a rope of liquid lighting he curled them around it, having a light grip on it but not doing anything to it just yet.
For the first time he’s been sitting down next to the Soul he turned his face to look at them.
He met their gaze, those beautiful golden eyes looking deep into his green ones. The light was missing from them but they still reminded Izuku of the sun rays peeking out from behind the clouds on a gloomy day, the stars in the night sky, sending the message that light always finds its way to the darkness.
Their blonde hair, those slightly messy locks with the black streak on the left of his side fringe making Izuku wish he could card through them like the times before, make tiny braids on the back of their head that would fall apart seconds later…
The way they looked, the way they shifted closer to him, everything about them burned into his memory forever. Even if he closed his eyes he could see them on the back of his eyelids.
His sight got blurred from the tears threatening to fall down and run down his face but he didn’t take his gaze away or broke eye contact with them. Rather a small smile appeared on his lips, not a wide tooth showing one but a real genuine smile that he meant with all his heart.
“No. I can’t.”
As the words passed his lips and before the Soul could react he pulled, pulled down hard on the force in his hand ripping it out from the Living that was holding them back. No Soul deserved to have to stay back here on Earth, floating away for an eternity from one place to another where no one could see them and talk to them. They deserved to be free and able to rest. This is why he was here to help them.
A binding pain crushed through him as something got ripped out from his heart, his eyes not being able to focus on the white gloom that covered the Soul mixing with all his colors until they were all white. Izuku didn’t see him fade into thin air and flutter away with the cold wind.
When Izuku could open his eyes again the white gloom on the rooftop had already cleared. Because every connection the Soul had to the Living had been cut off, he could peacefully pass on now. He was gone and wasn’t coming back.
Souls were meant to pass on, to rest after the exhausting troubles both Life and Death put them through. Izuku couldn’t. He was here helping others find the way to eternal peace while he himself could never reach it. In return his memories couldn’t ever be taken away from him, he could recall every second he spent on the face of Earth lonely and feeling empty.
The morning had come with a shining sun that peeked above the horizon, littering the world in colors, light and life in addition to making all the stars fade in with the sky and disappear for another long day. The sunrise was mesmerizing, the sky painted in vivid reds, oranges, yellows and blues, all bright and lively.
The sun slowly rose in the sky reaching higher and higher with each passing minute. As a person climbed down from a rooftop and started walking away among the ruins, tears spilling out of their eyes but without a bother to wipe them away, the sun could only watch from up above the sky but not lift their mood.
Amongst the destroyed buildings no matter how keenly the sun was searching, only the same person could be seen as in the last few months since the dreadful war. Only the moon and stars knew that changed for a single night.