[TODODEKU] revelation in the light of day [Villain!Deku]

2

The woman known only as "Mnemosyne" to her colleagues sat in front of an unconscious boy, his freckled skin pale under the single fluorescent light hanging above them. His green curls fell around his innocent, sleeping face, and, for a moment, Mnemosyne almost had an inkling of pity for the child.

Then she remembered the wads of cash Kurogiri had flashed her before she had come in, and it shriveled up almost as soon as it had come. Her oft-frowning lips curled upwards at the boy's unconscious frame, still tasting the iron tang of his blood in her mouth-- she would have fun with this, Mnemosyne knew. She leaned forward in her chair, pitch-black eyes running over him once more, before shut her eyes with an outward breath and entered.

Mnemosyne saw people's minds in abstraction; she could view memories if she tried hard enough, but mostly they just appeared to her as non distinct forms, related memories all shoved together.

His mind was still like all of the unconscious minds Mnemosyne'd encountered before, however, there was an undercurrent thrumming just below that she hadn't felt in a long time. The pulsing resistance to her entering his mind hummed all around her, and she gritted her teeth in annoyance.

Teenagers, Mnemosyne thought grumpily as she found her bearings amongst the increasingly hostile environment-- it seemed his entire mind was telling her to leave, leave, leave. Had she not been many years this boy's elder, had she not done this same job repeatedly throughout her life, her resolve might've crumbled beneath the sheer force of his will.

But she was not new at this, and she was not going to be ejected from the boy's head so easily. With growing dislike for this insolent child, Mnemosyne dug in and began her work.

She may have named herself after the Greek goddess of memory, but she was Arachne in how she spun her threads around his memories, pulling them from the surface and binding them below his consciousness. His resistance continued while she sewed his memories unconscious; some came down easily, whilst others put up a fight. She made a list in her head of the ones that were hardest to bind.

The first difficult one made sense: it was a collection of memories about who Mnemosyne assumed was his mother. She was a plump, green-haired woman with a tendency towards overprotectiveness; the boy had many happy memories with her, and Mnemosyne could see that he thought of his mother very fondly-- Mnemosyne rolled her eyes and yanked harder, watching in satisfaction as the memories sunk into repression.

The second difficult set of memories was harder to parse-- she couldn't seem to get them down no matter how strongly she pulled. With an annoyed growl, she breathed into the boy's mind:

Stop resisting.

The only response she achieved from him was a yank pulling the collection of memories further away from his unconcious. Mnemosyne grit her teeth; what was so special about these memories, anyways? She came closer to the memories, realizing with a sigh that she would have to disconnect all of the memories and pull them down one by one. Which was going to take absolutely forever.

Mnemosyne severed the memories from one another, peering at each of them individually-- her perplexity only increased.

It was just a boy.

She saw memory after memory of this disfigured boy with white-red hair and and a perpetual stoic expression, always with a soft glow around him from the memory's point of view. She sorted through them, looking for an explanation. She saw slow days spent under the sun, sly glances at one another during class, and kiss after kiss after kiss.

Oh, she thought, scowling, it's love.

She continued her work.

One by one, she tucked away every one of those memories that the unconscious boy seemed so desperate to hold on to, underneath and into his subconscious.