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"All of us,

at certain points in our lives,

need to take advice

and need to receive help from other people."

-Alexis Carrel

AN: Sorry for the lateness, t'was a tad bit busy today. Also, the chapter is much great with Last Stardust playing in the background, for reasons I can't explain and my heartstrings hurt for.

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"You okay, kid?"

Zero looked at Deku with... not quite concern, because he was a little removed from emotions of that subtype, of sympathy, but the question was what it was and you had to give the man that. On the account of the kid's (actually true) sickness, they had been let out of the facility without much fuss, although he'd noted one or two eying them with a suspicious eye.

Still, as far as the law was concerned, they hadn't done anything in this instance, so they couldn't keep them there.

Well, they hadn't actually done anything this time around, but that was beside the point.

"I'm fine."

Zero snorted.

"As far as I'm concerned, there's a mighty big difference between okay and fine, kiddo," He paused at the still blank face of his partner, and scratched his head. "I don't mean to be a smartass, but you really don't look okay, or even fine. Granted, I wouldn't say your usual self is all that dandy either, but-... Agh, this kind of talk really isn't my style."

He was met with an increasingly blank stare, and just when he was about to give up on talking to the kid (he was getting all soft and mushy, but he had little soft and mushy energy left to spare for empty, blank stares, especially with his less than stellar sympathy), the kid answered.

"...Why are you bothering?"

"Have you never had someone care-," He amended his statement. "be nosy about you without ulterior motives?"

Silence was all that answered him.

"...Well, that's sad-"

"There was one person. Once. But she's gone now."

(Because of me went unsaid)

He felt a stab of hurt and irritation in his mindscape.

'And Gray' He amended quickly and in his own mind.

The lightning spirit let out a huff, but settled down again, fond feelings curled around her like a sunny day.

Then Zero started talking once more.

"I'm here now, so I suppose that makes two. Good for you, kiddo. More seriously... If your little friend hadn't forced me out of that link as quick as she did, I probably wouldn't be in one piece. And you got wrapped up in that shitshow yourself. If I was there, I can't say exactly what would have happened to me. He likes you far more than he likes me, and look at what that monster did."

Zero breathed out a sigh at the end of his speech.

He was disturbingly sincere.

Gray was raising a racket in his head about how it looked disgusting on his little douchebag face, but Deku would have been a little touched. 'Would' being the keyword here; his insecurities prickled and popped at one thing left unsaid.

"That sounds like an ulterior motive to me, Zero-"

His words came to an end with a flick to the forehead that he couldn't react in time to, the lack of malicious intent leaving him wide open to attack with him being none the wiser. He felt his body tense in one moment before it became soft in the next; he sensed no other assailants around and the true perpetrator was making no further moves to harm him (he had no intent to harm whatsoever, what?).

His face was a saddening picture of confusion.

"Idiot. This is gratitude. G-r-a-t-i-t-u-d-e. I ain't getting anything from showing concern over your well-being."

Deku grudgingly admitted the truth of that statement.

"So, then, now that we're on the same page, what exactly happened back there? I have quite a few coping mechanisms under my belt that might prove good for you. I'll even leave out the self-destructive ones, free of charge! Plus, it ain't some scam-feel-good-bullcrap that those spiritualists shove down your throat. They've all been personally tested by me and rated for effectiveness."

Deku blinked.

Zero looked onwards, increasingly expectant.

He could even say he saw a little twinkle within those cold eyes of his.

{How disgusting.}

He didn't exactly disagree, but who knows? There may actually be some merit to this (some way to cope) that had yet to be explored.

And so, he breathed and he spoke, regardless of how much it prodded at a wound that hadn't scarred over.

Zero was uncharacteristically solemn by the end of it.

"Souls? They exist, huh... And if the monster wasn't monstrous enough, there's this too. An ability that was an inordinately strong quirk... and he learned it, all by himself. Well, shucks. I can't say anything about soul pollution or whatever with any confidence. I didn't even realize this was possible."

A smidge of hope burnt out, and from its ashes, the tang of frustration drifted unbound.

Deku was well and truly frustrated this time around, his mental facilities and patience as frayed as they already were— now, he was played like a yo-yo, swung from highs to lows like a toy. Logically, there was the thought that Zero couldn't have known, but humans weren't logical creatures or even emotionless creatures in the first place. They had moments of it, but they were dominated by the sensation called emotion.

Humans were creatures of passion.

And where there normally would have been a dam of logic and apathy keeping it at bay, that wall had gained quite a few cracks.

(The outburst had been a long time coming, most of all.)

"You... So you're a liar as well," He laughed. It was a touch hysterical. "Every single person I meet seems to be one these days. Every single one... Even me, who's bemoaning the fact right now! I lie to myself, you know; each and every single damn day of my life. I lie when I say I'm fine. I lie when I tell myself, desperately, that dying isn't something that I want and that I have reasons why I can't die!"

He choked on his own words and looked like he was about to cry for a moment, but his remaining words just got higher in pitch and hysteria instead of faltering.

"I KILLED THE ONE REASON I COULD EVER POSSIBLY HAVE TO LIVE! How... How stupid is that? What I claim it to be now, revenge... It... It doesn't mean anything to me. It doesn't. That's the truth, which I've been avoiding all this time. I'm the reason she was killed, so how could it? Every single action that I've undertaken in the name of it doesn't have a reason. Just mindless death and suffering without a cause. So tell me, why the hell am I even alive? Why... Why is someone like me still alive-"

His voice broke, like shattered glass, but tears didn't come.

It looked like he suffered all the more of it, face scrunched up in dismay and agony.

"-and my mother isn't?"

And Zero... Zero did nothing but thread his arm around the kid's shoulders in silent support.

(He wasn't capable of sympathy, but he could be empathetic at times. He knew, after all. That kind of experience wasn't entirely dissimilar to his own. He was a serial killer with a mind of ice and a body of stone, but lords know that his past haunted him to this day.)

Only when he stopped and was as quiet as the dead did Zero speak a word.

"That feeling... It never fully goes away. Guilt, anyway. Time dampens the feeling, but that's all it is in the end... dampened. Unless you can conquer yourself, then you'll simply maintain your—horrible—status-quo until life decides to be a bitch and throws another stone at you. And I guarantee that you'll break yourself on it. I learned that fact the hard way."

He took back the arm around Deku's shoulder and looked him at him.

Those deadly still, cold eyes of his would have sent shivers down his spine, but as it was, they chilled his mind and made him fully awake.

"Suicide isn't an option for you anymore. I'm sorry to say, but that's just a hard fact. You might have had that qualification before your hands were stained red, but now you have an additional obligation now; not taking the easy way out. Death itself is a far kinder fate than you or I deserve, you see. And given how much you're obsessing over it, I doubt that you're lying when you said your mother's death is your fault. You have to make up for that too."

"...Y-you can't make up for it-"

"No, you can, because I say that you can. The bastard God, Devil, whatever supreme being that exists in this world... They haven't laid down a single guideline of what exactly everything is supposed to be and to not be. If I decide that I can atone by living with these sins on my back, I can atone for it. I'm not taking the easy way out by any means, after all. I look all my actions in the eye and walk on regardless. Understand?"

"...I-I don't understand... How could..? How could it just be so easily atonable, all of this?!"

He was shaking now, but his speech was telling in how he responded.

If he thought nothing of what he said, he wouldn't have bothered.

"Because being alive is more painful than being dead."

AN: *mic drop*

...

Alternative Title for This Chapter:

When A Serial Killer Is Your Sole Emotional Support, But You're A Serial Killer Too, So It Works?