"The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point

where he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him,

and so loses all respect for himself and others.

And, having no respect, he ceases to love."

-Fyodor Dostoyevsky

All Might didn't know how to respond to that.

He couldn't, wouldn't ever learn how to respond to the words, "The kind of life you're describing... I don't deserve it."

For those poisonous, hate-filled words... They weren't true. If there was one thing he had learned throughout his career as a hero, it was that there was no such thing as an irredeemable person. Maybe in the view of the law, but no matter how horrible, no matter how disgusting the crime was, the criminal was always a different story. He had met men and women that had slaughtered dozens of innocents with a smile on their faces, only to break down in tears when a child held their hand and smiled— oftentimes, it was society that wronged them, not the other way around. They would have never have stepped on the path of blood and loud, piercing gunshots had they not been dealt a horrid hand in life.

Sure, it didn't excuse their crimes. Sure, it didn't appease the souls of the innocents who were falsely stuck down in error.

But goddamnit, he was just a kid.

He couldn't be more than 16 or 17 years old.

Where was the justice in condemning him to a life where the sun didn't shine, where he could never do anything with his life? All the chances that he had left to make something good of his life would be robbed, just as everything else had seemed to be for the young boy. (But where was the justice for those who had been hurt? Murdered? He knew he was biased. That was unavoidable. But was he making a mistake? )

There was no easy answer to this moral dilemma, but seeing as the words had inadvertently spilled out of his mouth already, he had the responsibility to stand by them.

Not to mention all the other debts he owed this young boy. It was a few callous words, a few moments of not thinking in the slightest, but it had started the beginning of the end of Young Midoriya's life.

Of course, it was at that moment of spiritual enlightenment that an unexpected (and unwelcome) addition barreled through the door.

"Sir..! You can't come in here, it's too late for visiting hours-!"

Red eyes swiveled and focused their piercing, almost murderous gaze on the nurse, beating down with all the misplaced wrath of a pubescent boy as he turned slightly from the door.

'Bakugo-shounen, this isn't the time-!'

He quickly drew on his increasingly limited pool of power, wincing internally at the stinging sensation and the feeling of emptiness; he had passed his power onto Young Mirio, and while he had just recently begun to truly acclimate to it and make it his own, he could still feel the drain of it that seemed to amplify his own injuries. Still, it wasn't anything he couldn't handle. He was the Symbol of Peace.

This was nothing (he couldn't allow it to be something).

It was a transformation that happened just in time, for just as Bakugo turned to look at the room itself in a minor lapse of attention from his starring contest with the nurse, he was 'himself' again.

"I need to see the person in here. You don't seem to have a problem with All Might being here, so what's the problem with me?"

The poor nurse looked like she was about to cry as she looked back and forth at the snarky teen and the Symbol of Peace who still wasn't authorized to be in the patient's room at this time but no one could stop. The teenager did have a point, unfortunately. If they denied him from visiting when they clearly were 'allowing' another to be near the patient, that would prove it to be the hypocrisy that it was. And the poor, young nurse hadn't quite learned yet that sometimes hypocrisy was just a fact of life, and it was because of this lacking experience that she sullenly let him stay in the room, although not before slamming the door shut with an angry hmph.

All Might heaved a weary sigh at the sight.

Bakugo-shounen admittedly had a lot of potential, but at the moment, he was simply a hot-headed youth. It was his duty as a mentor figure in his life to help him along in the path to being a good citizen and hero of society, but it was... trying at times with him. Especially in circumstances like this. His behavior was one side of the coin, but it was also the fact that he didn't know how to fix it. Or rather, fix it within his status as a mentor figure. He couldn't be too hard-handed in his handling of Bakugo-shounen, but he still had to try hard to sculpt him on principle. But it was especially hard because Bakugo-shounen saw him not as a mentor...

But a rival. Or someone to surpass, at the very least.

Still, he could only try.

"Haha! Bakugo-shounen, I was soon to leave this very room! We shouldn't impose on the hospital staff, understood?"

His eyes crinkled with a slight bit of visible displeasure.

"I need to-..." His words were cut short at the sight of a gaping wound, still tender to the touch, and deathly still red eyes. All Might felt himself slightly pause as well, not at his eyes nor his posture (not very much anyway), before he noticed the wound punctuating his stomach. The wounds, more like it. While a single raw tender line was the longest and most recent, little nicks and scars were still on his torso, and they all told a story of hardship.

He himself had quite a collection of that... special kind of medallion, but Midoriya Izuku was a kid. A kid that should have never seen, never experienced, something as telling as the array of scars that gouged his flesh. Kids weren't supposed to see a single drop of blood, yet he had been diving in gallons of it. It was something so absolutely wrong like that. It wasn't supposed to happen.

But it did, and All Might's heart ached for it.

"There's a rather good reason why the nurses asked you to leave. Unless your goal is to make me worse..?"

He managed to make Bakugo speechless in the span of a few sentences.

(All Might wondered where one could buy this special ability.)

"...No. That isn't it. That wasn't-..." He descended into silence once more, words stuck to the tip of his tongue and unable to escape. "Will you-... Will you be okay?"

The last word seemed to come out of bared teeth and a quivering tongue, but they still came out all the same.

The whole room seemed to collectively blink in stupefaction for a few long moments. All Might had recovered enough to smile (still a little dumbfounded) but Deku didn't look like he would recover any time soon. Although, more than confusion or even gratefulness (unlikely, but still a possibility), there was a deep swirl of anger that was coiled tightly in his wounded body and in his wounded spirit.

It was an anger that sprouted from the water of lies.

"...Bakugo. You don't really feel that. Nor do you feel it will be true. You may think it's true, but really... It never has been, Bakugo."

"...What the hell are you spouting-!"

He starred at him. His mouth slowly closed on instinct. It was hard to yell at eyes like those, ones that were so calm, still, and quiet, most of all. There was no rush in his words, nor did there seem to be any regard for what the other person thought or had to say. No, that much was misleading. He would listen to others, but he was comfortable enough with his own opinion to not be in a rush. And there was something undeniably... special about it. Special enough to unconsciously force Bakugo to close his mouth and listen, for once. He had (somewhat) gotten a handle on his temper and feelings. Now the only step left was to accept input from people other than himself and think about it.

"Bakugo. You never liked me. That much is a fact. And it's abundantly clear to me that that hasn't changed even now. I should make it perfectly clear as well. I will never like you. That prospect was ruined a long, long time ago. But at the same time, you still don't like me. Sure, you are prideful, but I've interacted with you for a fairly long period of time now and I can tell. That little quiver at the end... it is not pride, but disgust. All that fuels your motivation is guilt, and guilt alone."

He paused, slightly.

But his last words were as final as final could be.

"That is the truth that you hide yourself from behind all the lies. Lies that you used to even fool yourself."

"One can go through hell for another person,

And still despise them from the very core of their being simultaneously.

That is one of the most mysterious and interesting intricacies of life."

-CS