Sometimes he has nights like this.
Sometimes he doesn't feel up to going out and saving those that he can. Sometimes he can't bring himself to leave t pickpocket for that life-saving paper. Sometimes he stares at the ceiling, the sky, the wall, trapped in his own mind.
Sometimes he succumbs and watches the words of three others appear on his arm.
He usually keeps his arms wrapped, to avoid reading what his soulmates write. He's never written to them, and they don't know he exists. It was one of the last things his mother had drilled into him.
He supposes that it was the right call, after all. They didn't need him. Three in a single bond was already a rarity, something that not many approved of. Four in a single bond was practically unheard of, and he didn't want to willingly subject his soulmates to that kind of horror.
Then there was the matter of his quirk. He figures, had he gotten his mother's quirk, she would never have been frightened by him. If he had been quirkless, maybe she would have kept him, even if it was a negligent situation. But no. He had inherited his father's quirk. When someone's quirk is such a major part of their being, a piece of their personality, a component of their soul, it's particularly cruel to rid someone of that. And he could do that, permanently. Who could love him with a quirk like that?
His father, apparently, could, in his own sick way. His mother couldn't, and with the reveal of his soulmates, she made sure his father knew where to find him. And so he went with the man.
It was another thing his soulmates wouldn't want him for. His father raised him to be a villain just like him, and they seemed to all be heroically inclined. He didn't really agree with what he was made to do, but it took a long while before he could escape, and by then the damage had already been done.
Now, the thought that he could be saving one of them on any given night helps him keep going. Seeing the words that they write to each other keeps him here. They are the only good things in his life.
And that's enough, for now.
Someday, it might not be enough. Someday, he might not be enough.
Maybe he'll be caught by his father's group. Maybe he'll take on an opponent that is too much for him. Maybe his soulmates will stop talking by the skin of their arms.
He keeps a pen on him, just in case. They don't know him, but he knows them, even if it's only by the words that they write. There's one thing he wants to tell them, if he says anything at all.
When it all becomes too much, he has the pen easily accessible, his arms easily rendered bare. He won't know if he'll actually write it until the moment he's drawing his final breaths, no matter how that comes about.
Maybe he'll let them know he exists, though maybe it seems too cruel. He just hopes that, maybe, if he takes the chance, he can tell them what he needs to. They won't ever accept him, and that's ok. They've given him so much. He just wants to say
Thank you.