A/N: Hi guys, sorry it took so long for this chapter. School starts once again on Monday so- I apologize for not having published a whole chapter since the beginning of summer for me, as I've been indulging in other hobbies and I've recently been into the Black Clover fandom, and also have been writing a Black Clover fanfic. Anyways, enjoy the chapter.

Memories were always hard to deal with for him. He hated reflecting on his past, the thought of his mistakes made him cringe on the inside as he belittled himself on those past mistakes. The vivid flashbacks he would get would stir some sort of feelings that would upset him, usually it’d get a physical reaction out of him. Whether it was the tightening of his fists while his dull nails bit into his palm’s surface or a curt shake of his head, there was always something he hated about re-imagining things. He’d prefer to move on, he’d prefer to leave behind everything and forget everything so that he’d remain at peace in his present time. He was happy, dare he say, much happier he was with now than he was ever before, or maybe that was a little lie his delusioned-brain told him. 

Nobody knew more than him painful memories bit back at him. So when confronted with the topic of Y/N L/N, he’d freeze, stuck in his past with desperate attempts of trying to escape. He’d claw his way out, fight his way out, if he could. Why was fighting villains easier than even the thought of his former lover easier? 

Shota stared ahead blankly, almost emptily, with fingers curled around a glass of wine, raising the cup to his lips as he took in another sip, two pairs of wandering eyes on him. The red liquid slid down his throat, the fruity taste causing him to reflexively smack his lips. On a normal night, he would never agree to allow Nemuri and Hizashi to come to his apartment for a drink. On a normal night, he wouldn’t even have the bottle of red wine out on his counter. On a normal night, there wouldn’t be two extra chairs beside him. But it wasn’t a normal night. It hadn’t been normal for the past few weeks. The world turned upside down ever since the announcement of the retirement of All Might. 

His world paused the moment he gazed at the older face of his childhood friend. Everything that he thought had happened, he was questioning as he returned home from the police station that night. Since then, not another word was said to Nemuri and Hizashi, and neither have they approached him. He didn’t expect them to. In reality, he thought it would take longer for them to come to him. It’d been a week since that night they had found out of Y/N’s death that they weren’t informed of for fifteen years. This afternoon, only a single text from Hizashi, a text so different from his usual texting style with his misspelled words, numbers that would replace letters or words, and the excessive number of punctuation following his gibberish, that he almost ignored if it if it weren’t for the contact number above him that told him it was from the Voice Hero. 

The text said “We’re meeting at your apartment tonight. 9 PM.” And there was nothing else. They expected him to talk. He’d known it was a confrontation from the two of them, a conversation he wasn’t ready for but had to partake it. He’d be questioned about his actions, the why’s and how’s. He’d bet most of their questions he wouldn’t know the answer to himself. Even with all the lonely nights he’d spent, with no-one but his cat to distract him from his thoughts during the trying times he wanted to retire to rest. He would say he’d appreciated the silent treatment from them, it allowed him a little soul-searching of himself too. He wondered what he was feeling and why he was feeling them, but to him, it seemed so foolish and moronic of someone like him, to delve into his feelings. He was known for shunning his feelings away, locking them to a basement behind an iron door with the key destroyed, yet why did he feel so troubled? 

He knew that answer. It was simple of course. 

“You’re probably wondering why…” Shota replaced the ten-minute silence with his mutterings as he swerved the liquid in his container in a circular manner, before taking another gulp. He set the glass down with a faint clink against the marble counter. He opened his lips to say something but quickly shutted them once again as he found himself struggling with what to say. There were so many thoughts hovering around in his messed up mind, and he was searching for the right thoughts to say. “Why I never told you.” The five words seemed to have a weight on them, they seemed heavy as they rolled off of his tongue. 

He didn’t have to glance at them as the two beside both sides of him nodded their heads as they observed him in a way as if they were suspicious of him. Their eyes scanned over, like they were trying to detect any upcoming lies or nonsense that would escape his mouth. The Erasure hero swallowed another gulp even though he wasn’t drinking anything right now. 

He resisted the urge to clench his fist even tighter than they already were around his glass.

“Before… before I saw her… before I knew she was dead, she sent me a letter. Only to me. It was after we had split after…” A fight? An argument? No, it was just him shamelessly insulting her being and existence after she had spilled her most kept secret for years because she had trusted him. A betrayal of trust. “After a dispute.” He finally settled with that word. “The letter said something about a final goodbye.” ‘I promise that after this, you’ll never see my face again, or a trace of me once more.’ “I wasn’t in the right mind to know what that had meant. But… her last and only wish… before she left…” ‘... that is all I ask of you after this.’ There it was again, a moment where he wondered what was the next string of words he should say. “Was that… you two were never told of her. Of her… ” ‘Of me, killing her,’ he thought silently to himself. “Dying.” 

It was her last wish. Their last wish together, before she left. They would, presumably, never meet her again and forget about her, and move on. That was what she wanted. Who was he to deny her of that? Of course he couldn’t just break the last thing she ever wanted from him, he had to no matter what. It was the least he had owed her. If he had to live with her death alone, a secret shared between the two, and one of them was buried six feet underground. Shota had to have done his part. 

He wiped away the droplet that formed from the corners of his eyes, his expression still grim while he faced down, admiring the pattern of the marble material. “I had to have… I couldn’t just not do it…” 

“It was her dying wish.” 

His ears perk up on the quiet shaky breaths on their lips. And then, something he didn’t expect to hear made its way to Shota’s eardrums. It wasn’t quite like his normal voice, in a hushed whisper like he was afraid that his words would be heard from anybody else. “Why didn’t you ever even talk of her then,” the blonde to his left questioned quietly. There it was again. The silence he hated yet missed so much. 

A more feminine voice coming from his right sliced right through the noiseless kitchen they sat in, followed by the soft thumping of a cup being set down. “Why did you hate her?” It was louder than the Voice Hero, ironic in a way as the daylight hero had a quirk that enhanced the volume of his voice. There was more certainty to it, more demanding than the previous question offered to him. 

Hated her? No, he didn’t hate her. Maybe he did during the split, but since after her death, for the past fifteen years, the feelings he harboured for her was definitely not hate. Maybe it could be misinterpreted as hatred for the girl, but there was never a thought where he had wanted her to suffer. That he had wanted her to die. That he had wanted her to leave. Hated her? He couldn’t imagine.

What he knew he hated, was the thought of her. He resented his thoughts of her. He would, mentally and metaphorically, watch the memories they shared together burned to ashes in front of his very eyes with the lighter and gasoline in his hand. He’d love the bright vibrant color of the flare, the stunning flickering dance of the blended mess red and orange. He’d love the warmth and contentment that’d rest on his soul. He’d love to have walked away from the scene while the fire was still ablaze behind his back. He wouldn’t have turned away. 

He didn’t hate her. But he hated what they shared together. 

No, that was another lie. He didn’t hate what they had together. He fell in love with her. He didn’t want to throw away what they had. He didn’t want to forget what he had. The fire stopped burning and gave away to the wind that blew by, some of the memories still intact other than singed and charred edges. He looked back to where the fire he had started before was dying away. Just like her. He staggered towards the fading embers, crouching onto his knees. His hands searched through what remained. But the remaining memories were crumbling away at his fingertips like thin paper while he tried to pick them up. His numb fingers piece together whatever remnants were left but they still all crumbled away. 

He couldn’t say that he hated her. He hated remembering her. He didn’t hate what they had. But he hated remembering. It hurt to remember. He pieced together something for once. Another puzzle piece in a set of a thousand puzzle pieces. Small satisfaction welled up inside of him, but it was quickly pushed down when he figured he had to answer sometime soon. “I… I never hated her. I just… I couldn’t talk about her, it just… it hurted so much to remember and have to talk to her. She wasn’t… she wasn’t there anymore and it became so hard to talk about her when she just was…” Gone, he wanted to say, but he bit on his bottom lip when he tried to mutter that last word. 

“But… the way you talked about her, it was like…” Nemuri commented, before she stopped in order to search for the right words to say, before settling with a single string of words that made Shota’s heartbeat paralyzed for a moment. “Like you wished she never existed.” Uneasiness swelled inside of his stomach, something was starting to crawl around his skin, from his toes to his torso, he felt his whole body being swallowed by something. He heaved a breath as if it’d be his last, setting down his cup so he could prevent his tightening fists from breaking the fragile glass, because the little voice in his head echoed the answer to Nemuri’s answer. Shota’s lips trembled as he vividly went down the rabbit hole he called his memories. 

At one point, he did, he answered truthfully to himself. And that scared him, terrified him. Because how could he think of such a thing when Y/N was the most cherished thing to him? He felt even more ashamed that he had felt those emotions after her death, like he’d forgotten how much Y/N meant to him, or how much he realized he lost when he held her for the last time that day. He didn’t know why he was being selfishly angry at her or maybe himself for the fact that she ended her own life, but for a few weeks, his younger self would lie awake, wondering-- imagining-- a happier life if Y/N hadn’t been there in his life. It was then at that short period of time he had decided to turn his feelings of love to hatred, and he didn’t know why. He just knew he was angry and frustrated with something. 

During those weeks, he’d daydream what kind of life would be if it weren’t for Y/N. He was sure he would have gone through everything normally, just without the obvious longing for her for the most of his lifetime back then. He always compared his life to a blank, boring canvas, while Y/N soon became the colorful paint splattered and sprinkled along on his life. He wondered what he would like without those splotches of paint. Would he have enjoyed his life as the same blank, boring canvas that stood without a meaning in his life? Back then, he would have answered yes, without hesitation. If he encountered the question of whether he could go back to his past without ever having Y/N introduced into his life, he would have said yes with all of his heart. 

Since Y/N had died, he discovered that he was selfish at heart with his feelings. He was sure of it. He was selfish at his very core. He couldn’t confess his affections, he couldn’t apologize for the wrong things he did, he couldn’t even mourn rightfully for her. 

The Erasure Hero swallowed a heavy gulp as saliva pooled inside of his mouth. He was numb to the feeling of his nails burrowing into his rough skin. 

But he loved her, Shota reasoned to himself. His feelings didn’t change even after. He had loved her but wished he had never known of her. But the more he started accepting she was dead, the more he clung onto the love for her. He thought it was impossible, that he would have more time to have done something. He felt like the only things that were left of her was his desires for her, however it hurt so much to love just a dead person. The loneliness that settled within his soul, the dreadful acceptance deepening within himself, the emptiness he still continued to harbour. His love reminded him of her too. So he stored it away, somewhere very deep down inside of him, so all he could feel was hatred instead. It was so much easier to hate her for leaving him, was how his mind tried to cope with things. It was much easier to say that she had left him on purpose than to say he killed her, and he still loved her. Maybe hatred was the only thing they shared mutually, no he was sure of it, Shota was sure that she hated him too. 

Love hurted him too much, he decided. And he was selfish for deciding that too. 

“It’s easier to hate a dead person than it is to love one, isn’t it?” A crooked smile formed on his face, but it wasn’t of happiness. Something wet rolled down his cheeks as his right hand unravelled its fist to cover the pitiful sight of his tears. His fingers outstretched across his face to hide his upper half, sniffing from his nostrils as he felt another roll of sorrow tears glided down his warm skin. 

He’d convinced himself over the years that he hated her and any memories of her, but that facade was starting to wear off quickly, a wall to protect him from any more suffering deteriorating, he couldn’t keep it up any longer. He didn’t hate her as much as he thought or liked to, and it was wrong of him to even try in the first place. But he shouldn’t love her either, not anymore. 

“Do you still…?” the Voice Hero on his right asked probed cautiously. Shota scoffed. “Hate her? No.” His fingers pinched the black long sleeved shirt of his, rubbing it across his face to clean up the snot and moisture on his skin. But Hizashi nodded, like he had just lied, making the hero clad in black frown. “I meant… Do you still love her?” 

Shota wanted to say ‘yes.’ He mouthed it to himself silently. He wanted to think there was a second chance for him. He wanted to think that this time, now that Y/N, was miraculously alive, that he'd be able to experience the fantasies he’s always had with her since he was younger. He would kill to be able to say those words to her face one day, preferably soon. But something weighed over him, something much denser and larger in mass than himself. 

So, a laugh escaped from his shuddering lips, shocking the two on either side of him, as they stared in silence as Shota continued to laugh. He was insane, he knew he was. No one in his right mind would be laughing at the matter. 

He was so foolish for still being in love with her, even though he knew reality wasn’t that forgiving. This was all such a sick joke wasn’t it? He was such an idiot. His love, their love was dead. What point was there for him to continue loving her if he knew that he couldn’t even dream of a chance to get together again. There was no ‘agains’ for him. No miracles at work here. Y/N being back here was just another trick for him to be deceived by, just some false hope thrown his way. Did it ever matter that he loved her anyways? It hadn’t mattered back then when she was alive, it didn’t matter back then he was grieving and mourning, and it certainly didn’t matter now or ever, as life had shown. Love just wasn’t for him. Why was he still in love with her? 

It seemed like he was laughing for minutes, only his chortling defending against the stunned silence from his friends. They were worried, concerned, no, he could see it in just their posture, they were scared for him until his laugh lasted. 

As his laugh began to fade into absolute silence, he looked dead straight at the counter. In his lowest, softest voice he could muster, he replied back with an unimaginable sadness and somber despair filled in his tone, as this time he couldn’t just brush his tears away. He hunched his shoulders, but his fists untightened. His lips formed from his usual scowl to a smile, one of hopelessness and self-pity. “Does it matter either way?” 

Y/N couldn’t believe her ears from what the doctor in front of her was saying. It’s been a little over a week since she first woke up here. She was starting to get comfortable here too, accepting the life she was going to have for what she thought would be for some years, but when Doctor Carrol had told her that he had good news to tell her, Y/N was confused. Everyday since that first session of talking with the doctor, they had gotten along well, in fact, Y/N found the male’s presence comforting, calming in fact, despite all the chaos still happening. He had never done anything to put her off in any way, and he was always considerate. Still, Y/N still found herself confused and puzzled by her own feelings, especially towards her friends, though she wasn’t exactly sure she could still call them friends. Not when she’s been gone for so long. Vivid scenarios played through her head of one day meeting Hizashi, Shota, and Oboro, but she didn’t know when. She couldn’t even face Shota. Not when he had broken the news of the manner that she had indeed died, and not only that, but it was because of suicide. It made her wonder what had happened to her. 

Shota must have been in so much pain, everybody must have been suffering. How could she be so selfish in taking her own life? Didn’t her past self know that she had her friends to support and help her? It didn’t make sense. What caused her to want to end her own fate? Especially with so much hoping and wanting in the future. But she was back from the grave, and until she could remember or until someone told her what happened, she wouldn’t have any answers anytime soon.

Well that’s what she thought, until she heard the news from Doctor Carrol of course. “Probation?” The word slipped from her lips in shocked surprise. Why was she sentenced to probation? 

“Mr. Principal came by,” Doctor Carrol gave a small smile, but the name made Y/N’s head cock, not recognizing the name. Like a principal of a school? Who would that be? Why would the principal of a school come to see her? Y/N pondered. Didn’t Shota work at UA? “He insisted and convinced the judges that you were to be put on probation and under close surveillance by the staff of UA Highschool for 6 months!” 

“That means you’ll be able to see your friends again, right?” the blonde male beamed even brighter. Y/N tried to reciprocate the same smile but for some reason, the same warming grin couldn’t spread across her lips. She couldn’t feel the same happiness as the doctor was having for her. Something fluttered in her stomach, upsetting her belly, unease evident on her facial expressions.

She really did want to see everybody, but she wasn’t sure if she was ready. She wasn’t sure if they had wanted to see her. Would they be glad that she was alive and back? Surely not? After all that she’s done? It would have been better if they didn’t have to see her again right? She wasn’t sure if she herself was mentally prepared to meet them again, and she couldn’t forgive herself after seeing what her actions had done to Shota. 

The doctor must have noticed her distress at the thought of going back to the hero school, resting a hand on top of hers to soothe her just a little. Y/N took in a deep sigh as her eyebrows unknitted from one another in her state of slight panic. “I-It’s just… how could they b-be happy to see me? I do w-want to see them… but…” The girl looked down at her hands that rested on top of her lap. “B-but… I have to… deal with it… don’t I?” She mumbled.

The Doctor nodded empathetically. “It is mandatory for you, but it’ll be better for you, you know? You’ll have to meet a probation officer three times a week to see how you’re doing, so if anything happens someone can still help you. This is a start to a new life for you, a chance to have some normalcy back for you.” 

A start to a new life? Y/N wondered how exactly her new life would be like… especially with everything that’s happened. Would everybody she knew before be in it as well or would it be new people? Would her new life treat her just as terrible as her previous life before? Would it even be better for her? Regardless though, she had no way of knowing what her future would be, and the only way she could do was just to hope that it’ll be any better than before.

“When do I have to go?” 

“Tomorrow.”