Paul looks at Midoriya with the soft, wondering awe that his Hero has had a knack for conjuring out of him from the beginning. He runs his thumb over the back of Midoriya's knuckles and smiles, the lambent glow of their questioners playing over the sharp planes of his face to render them warm and gentle.

"Midoriya Izuku," he says, quietly, "Nagisa Kaworu."

A pair of echoes flow out of the bridge in front of Mariana, their hands entwined like Paul and Midoriya's are now. Both of them are smiling, dressed in light summer clothes, and even out of the corner of his eye Paul can imagine bright cherry red sugar clinging to their lips. That had been a good day. One of the best.

"I remember my promise to them." He pulses his fingers around Midoriya's, reassuring and certain. "And I remember my promises to everyone else."

The bridge begins to crowd. A tall, broad-shouldered swordswoman, sunglasses propped at a jaunty angle on her nose. A weathered man with a headband wrapped over his forehead. A smiling young boy with a bird perched on his shoulder. And, at last, a slender, graceful young man, auroral and gleaming, puts his arms around his beloved's shoulders and draws their foreheads to touch his.

"Thank you." The Paul of flesh and blood leans in and echoes the gesture, ease returned to the set of his spine.