Crumbling Souls

The hammering of his heart was all that could be heard echoing throughout the empty room.

Cracks slowly spread down the legs of the bed. The sound of splintering wood sounded like gunshots in the silence with each brittle snap.

Clutching his neck he felt his nails pierce his skin, the warm trickle of blood ran down his neck as it stained the grey sheets.

"Dad! NO!"

The words unbidden tearing from his throat in a raspy cough of a voice.

The desperation felt with each toss and turn of the nightmare-ridden sleep.

He saw him, raven black hair, his cold eyes filled with hate and… longing. For something, something that wasn't there.

His black hair was combed back, arm raised.

"NO!"

Screaming out he shot up, sweat dripping from his skin as he raised his arm to block an attack that wasn't even there. Rolling over he felt dust against his skin. Taking deep breaths he calmed himself, the racing of his mind slowly as his heartbeat slowly became more steady.

His thoughts were his own, he was his own. He was in control.

Taking a deep breath he put his hand against the floor, watching as all five of his fingers touched the ground. But Decay did not spread… he was in control. He was in control.

Pushing off with his hand he slowly got to his knees. Looking at the pile of dust that was the bed he had been sleeping on.

Why did the nightmares keep on happening?

Why was he remembering them now? He had felt them before… he didn't remember when but he had seen them.

Was it when he kidnapped the kid? Maybe…

Everything was feeling so slow now, compared to the panic that his body had felt just before.

He hated it, this cold feeling of calmness, but it helped. The apathy.

The nightmares only made him want to quicken his mission, but he had to be patient. He needed allies, he needed companions. He needed support.

The destruction of Heroes and everything that they had built wasn't going to happen overnight, no. It would be slow, but once the ball was rolling not even that fucking Hendrix would be able to stop it.

Thinking of Hendrix a mad grin spread across his face as he looked down at his hand, the distorted purple flesh from his elbow downwards looking like one big bruise… the one finger that was slightly blackish standing out against the purple tone.

The doctor had said his quirk would grow from it… that he would give him something else later but the doctor was gone now. That much Tomura knew. He had seen it on the news.

Opening the door he walked down the hall, following it to an open room filled with boxes, an old warehouse they were now staying in.

Looking around the room he saw Spinner, Compress and Magne… all that he had left from the original team. Kurogiri, Twice and Toga his most useful members had been taken out by that fucking Doctor… he never should have trusted him.

He had managed to get out of there, but he had lost a lot…

No matter… he could recover.

"We have been idle long enough, we are continuing with the next part of my plan." His voice was cold, although the lingering hint of mad excitement still clung to his tone. "We are going to leave Japan… with some friends of course. There are certain, 'communities' that I want to have a talk to."

He would do some recruiting. He knew some of their locations from the doctor. But that was it.

He needed allies, strong allies.

And these communities had them.

---

Honestly, Nick was feeling… grey… he wasn't staying idle, there was no fucking way he was going to do that. He had way too much to do, the first thing he wanted to figure out was how his soul was being affected by the merge. Something he had never considered was that the people Overhaul merged with were completely subservient to him.

Dabi however, had a very, very, very strong will. To the point that his quirk achieved a kind of awakening in the later part of the manga.

Actually, onto that thought could he get Rei's quirk to emerge?

Back on track, that was a way later problem, and that was even if he managed to figure out what was happening with Dabi's will.

Sitting he just sat on the bench outside the dorms, enjoying the warm sun for the moment. His eyes were half closed as he relaxed. The rest of the kids were either at Heroics or out on their internships.

It was kind of a grey area in canon right now. After all the main thing that was meant to be happening with the Mafia right now wasn't going to. Overhaul had been dead for years and he had taken rewind from Eri.

So he had time. He wanted to make his body over again but before that. His soul. It was time to genuinely focus on that. Pushing all the other thoughts in his head aside. He took a deep breath.

Closing his eyes he focused inwards. Towards where his thread tethered to… but where did it tether to?

He knew where it went, he could see it even with his eyes closed. Since that was all he was focusing on he could see his thread. The golden line waved in a wind that did not exist, twirling and curling through the air in such an ethereal and elegant way.

The golden line was the only light that cut through the darkness that he focused on.

It stretched far into the air and out of sight, directly upwards connected to whatever was beyond. The one thing that all souls were connected to. The light above, whatever it was, he had seen it twice now. And the darkness that was its opposite.

Focusing on the other end he tried to find where the thread actually tethered to… it didn't really have one place.

It seemed to weave through his whole body, at the same time attached to his whole body. The single thread unwound into multiple smaller ones each no thicker than a pinprick and attached to all over his body.

From the tips of his finger to the soles of his feet. The threads were anchored everywhere… but where was Toya's?

Looking deeper in Nick tried to dive down further into his soul. And for the briefest moment, he saw it.

A light, brilliant and blinding. Like a ball of string that all the singular threads came to through the various parts of his body.

All binding into the large ball of string that sat directly in his chest. Right in the middle of his rib cage.

And in that ball, there was a singular blue thread, blazing and determined that wound its way through the ball, emerging at parts and staying hidden in others. It didn't leave the ball to the light like the rest of them.

No, it stayed attached to his own body. Living despite being dead.

Nicklaus only saw this for a moment, the brief glance at his soul torn away as he suddenly found his eyes snapping open. The feeling of something else rushed into his mind as he slowly felt the perception of the world around him come back.

But it was different, he wasn't outside the dorm.

He was sitting in a park. The creaking of the swing set beneath him filled the air with an almost eerie sound. He… he didn't like it here.

He knew this park.

He… didn't know where from though. It was a part of his old life he knew that much though. But what memories did it hold? The sprawling city before him was something he remembered but…

the structures were crumbling. As if they were halfway between being constructed and deconstructed by his quirk. The deconstructed mass floating in the air waving and moving in an eerie drift of deconstructed particles.

He didn't feel that he could use any of his quirks here.

The roads led to nowhere apart from a long main one that carried through the centre of the city towards the horizon that was covered in a haze of mist.

The endless expanse of the sky was clouded and grey.

The buildings were in ruin and endlessly old.

Vegetation and greenery had taken back over the landscape.

He knew what this was...

This was his soul.

The roads and paths were his goals, he aims. His desires. And they lead to nowhere because he didn't know where he was doing, they were a mangled mess apart from the one road that he was following. The main path in his life. To become stronger, to become the strongest.

The buildings were the parts of his past life, the city like the ones from his old life that was slowly being destroyed and converted to who he was now. How he had changed.

The endless and clouded sky was the unknown and uncertainty of who he was. Who he was changing into.

The vegetation and greenery were the slow influence of his new life bleeding into a fresh start. Something old becomes new once more.

The park that he was standing in was the last bastion of his old self… the last piece of Andrew. A person that he had clung to through an alter ego that he was using.

Looking at his feet he saw the decayed grass, the rotting pile of leaves. The broken and cracked ground. The mess and swirling emotions that had made up who he was in his old life. The resentment. The hate. The abuse had shaped him into the weak coward that he was.

Turning around he saw the most vital part of himself.

A towering pillar of golden light. Hundreds, thousands. No Millions of threads that came together to form a brilliant tree that he just saw now.

The millions of threads came from all over his soul and formed the branches that blocked out the sky itself as it formed before him. The millions of threads weave themselves together from all directions.

The threads wove into branches and slowly the branches wove down into thicker limbs of the ginormous tree. The limbs weaved into a massive trunk that was planted firmly into the ground in the centre of the park.

A trunk so large across that Nick didn't know how it was fitting into such a small park but it did…

It just did…

Walking over to it he put his palm against the glowing trunk. Each thread was an emotion. Emotions wove into twigs that were thoughts. Thoughts wove into limbs that were his memories, his feelings. And all of that ended up weaving down to the trunk. The trunk was who he was. It was Nicklaus Hendrix.

But some of the threads were red. Corrupted and twisted, some of the limbs were made out of these saddened threads. Entire limbs… memories of his old life. Andrew… He didn't even remember his last name… Andrew's thread had been red… he remembered.

Slowly the memories were dissipating. He watched as some of the tiniest threads slowly faded away. He was slowly losing these memories. But some were too far ingrained into the trunk to be lost.

Emotions. Trauma.

Looking back at the trunk he saw it, a few blue threads that wove towards something.

Following them around the tree he slowly came around to a small forest that was on the other side of the tree. It was only about a meter across but while he was standing in it, it felt like an entire forest.

A forest that was burning in blue flames.

All the blue threads that came from the tree came from the trunk and attached to the back of a boy who was kneeling in the flames and weeping… weeping tears of emotions so pure and full that Nick had nothing that could compare.

Even with the trauma of his past life, something about the desperation in these emotions was abnormal. Andrew had never broken like this, his breaking had been slow and subtle. It had built up to a breaking point.

As he thought about that he felt something pulling at his thoughts.

Turning around he saw a scene before him. And he immediately turned away, but no matter where he turned and looked the scene followed him a spiralling mess as he desperately tried to look away.

Squeezing his eyes shut he crouched down.

He could hear it, the sound of cars passing underneath him. The cold metal of the railing against his back. The hands-on his collar. Pulling him up as his fingers slipped because of the sweat on the cold metal they gripped to.

His blonde hair was pressed against his face by the thundering winter rain. His voice, his cries, his pleas. He couldn't hear them over the crackling of laughter that sounded with the echoing thunder. As he opened his eyes, everything was blurry. His glasses had fallen, affording another pair was the least of his worries though.

This was the day he died…

The day Andrew died...

=======

Sorry for missing the chapter yesterday, I'll have a double release some time this week. I have been very busy lately. But the story must continue for you beautiful readers!

I must keep Roy a happy bird.

Reviews and comments are always welcome! Thanks for all the advice and support! Let me know how I am doing compared to the earlier chapters!