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“Can you be honest with me for once?”
“Iida—” Uraraka starts, but Iida shakes his head.
“No. I am tired of this. I refuse to watch him destroy himself and—and end up like my brother.”
“I didn’t mean to lie,” Izuku says, gaze pointedly stuck to the speckled linoleum floor of the medical bay. He keeps trying to count the red dots, but he loses track every time.
Iida closes his eyes, exhaling through his nose. “But you did. I asked you if you were hurt, and you said—”
“I swear, I didn’t know.” Izuku turns too quickly, sending a wave of pain through his cracked ribs. But that’s not important—what’s important is the look in his friend’s eyes. The mixture of disappointment and anger, molten metal, hidden in depths of dark blue. The way Uraraka holds the same look but softer. “...at first.”
“Then you should have told me when you realized you were injured.”
“I—” He wants to protest. He wants to say that he tried. But the truth is that he didn’t. Halfway through the fight, he’d felt the telltale warmth, the stickiness spreading across his side. He’d stopped. Glanced at Iida. Considered the options. And in the end, he’d made the same choice he always does.
“Deku,” Uraraka says quietly. Her fingers wrapped around the rails of the bed, clutching tight, like she’s afraid it’ll begin floating away. “Recovery Girl said if the battle didn’t end when it did, you could’ve bled out. You would’ve died , and we wouldn’t have been able to stop it.”
Her words sink in.
They make sense.
Everything she’s saying makes sense, now that they’re in the aftermath.
It’s just that the thought didn’t immediately cross his mind when he was in the moment, fighting to protect his classmates—his friends.
When the lives of countless others are at risk, he simply doesn’t have the opportunity to stop and thoroughly consider the consequences of his recklessness. Every millisecond in which he doesn’t focus on what’s at hand gives the enemy an advantage.
He couldn’t pause.
(He didn’t want to.)
Exhaling sharply, he clenches his fists, his nails digging into the soft fabric of the sheets.
The sensation grounds him.
It’s real. He’s here. He’s alive.
He locks eyes with Uraraka.
“I could’ve ,” he states, altering a bit of her words, but maintaining the truth. “I could’ve, but I didn’t.”
(He’s lucky, really. The odds weren’t in his favor, all things considered.)
Uraraka gives him a hard look, her jaw tense.
“Is that what you’re going to say every time something like this happens?” she asks. “Because that’s not going to cut it. You’re self-sacrificial, and you can’t continue in this way.”
Izuku bites the inside of his cheek.
Better his life than anyone else’s.
“I just—everybody else needed help, too,” he tells her. “There wasn’t exactly an abundance of paramedics, Uraraka-san.”
“So what?” she responds, her words coming out bitterly. “You thought that you would be a burden?”
“No, I just—” Izuku shakes his head, the movement sparking up a headache. He looks away from his friends, slowly wrapping his aching hands in the linens of the hospital bed. His anxiety is making itself known in the way his vision wavers with static and his hearing fills with a rush of white noise.
He nearly misses Iida’s next words.
“If it were me. Or Uraraka-kun.” His friend takes a deep breath, unable to hide the small shake. “Midoriya, we had to sit in the waiting room, and we didn’t know if you were going to make it— There was a lot of blood.” Iida takes a moment, adjusting his glasses and visibly steeling himself.
“How could you— how would you react, to— all that. If it were us. To look at your friends, and then listen to us tell you we weren’t worth being cared for? That we weren’t worth the resources?” He finishes, voice fraught with poorly disguised frustration.
Uraraka remains unmoving and silent in Izuku’s periphery.
Iida let out a breath. He pushes his chair back and stands up, pausing a moment before saying, “Midoriya, we just want you to care for your own well-being.”
Izuku hears his friend’s deliberate footsteps getting quieter as he approaches the door.
“Uraraka-san,” Izuku starts, keeping his gaze locked on the ground. He can tell she’s looking at him. “I’m sorry, I..” Izuku can’t quite finish the sentence, frustrated with himself.
She waits for him to continue, and seeing that he won’t, she stands from her seat as well. “Deku-kun,” Uraraka speaks quietly, tired. “If you really, truly want to save people, there has to be something left of you to do it.”
He hears the sounds of her gathering her things and picking up her bag.
“Uraraka-san,” Izuku calls out, finally moving his gaze up to his friend’s back. She stops, turning to look at him expectantly.
“I want to be better.” He says it firmly, forcing himself to make eye contact with Uraraka despite his vision watering. Izuku clenches his fists under the blanket, out of sight. “I’ll try. I’m sorry.”
All Uraraka offers him is a sad smile of her own. He can see she’s still hurt. Angry with him. She speaks softly.
“I know, Deku-kun.”
After she leaves, Izuku crashes back into himself fully, the stress of everything hitting him at once. Knowing his friends are angry with him— with what he did. Or didn’t do. More so than anything else, it makes his stomach churn uneasily. He clicks the hospital bed’s remote, slowly easing himself into a more horizontal position.
He doesn’t know how much time he spent laying there, staring up at the ceiling. The light from the window changes slightly, and he dozes on and off. He wants his mom, but she’s on a business trip, way up in Sapporo. She’ll be back tomorrow.
Izuku starts at the sound of his phone buzzing on the bedside table.
He reaches for it, wincing but staying horizontal on the bed, and looks at the caller-ID, dreading what he would see. He doesn't think he can handle another conversation like the one with Uraraka and Iida. And disregarding that, he does not want to speak with anyone right now in general. Maybe his mom. No one would be as calm as she would be while talking to him— him who is injured and anxious, who just wants to curl up into a ball but can’t without hurting himself or risking his recovery, who just wants the simple comfort of hearing his mother’s voice.
His mind finally registers the name floating on the screen.
(Speak of the Devil and he appears, right?)
The voice is shaky but firm when he answers. “Izuku.”
“M-mom?”
“Baby, what happened?”
“It was-” A quick exhale. “An accident; we were stuck in a fight and I, I was injured and we didn’t know until it was, until it needed im-immediate action. We didn’t, I didn’t notice until after.”
“Are you okay?”
“I,” he starts. Izuku’s throat is dry and his eyes are filled with tears, he can’t stop his voice from trembling and his free hand from clutching at the thin hospital sheets. “I’m, I guess I’m—” He stops again, sniffling. “I’m good. It’s not serious anymore."
“Honey, please.” There’s something in her voice that stops Izuku in his tracks. It hurts him to hear her like this. She is pleading with him and the tone she used is the same one Izuku had heard over and over again, had heard even when he was little and his mom was speaking to his father. It’s the tone she used every time his dad had announced he had to leave. It’s the tone she used when he left to stay at the dorms. It’s the tone she used every time he ended up in the hospital because he did something heroic, stupid, or both.
(It was mostly both.)
(Oh, why hadn’t he noticed it before?)
“Please, I need you to tell me the truth. just tell me if you’re okay.”
And god damn it, Izuku wants to tell her. But he just—
It’s choked, and too soft for anyone else to hear but his mother. “I don’t know.”
He doesn’t know.
It’s a quiet admission and where one might push on it, Midoriya Inko knows her son inside and out. She knows that when she asks him not to, Izuku would never lie to her. So she accepts it as it is: a silent plea for time to figure it out. “When I get home, we’re going to talk about this and before then, I want you to think about it. You need to know this, baby. You can’t just keep pushing yourself and never allowing yourself to breathe. And- and if you still don’t have an answer when I get home, we’ll figure it out.”
Neither of them speak for a long time.
“When I get there tomorrow—” She stops and holds her breath. She releases it after a four-count, “just please be there when I get home.”
Izuku chokes on his own tears. He doesn’t acknowledge the comment. “I love you, Mom.” Screw it, he has to address it somehow; for his mom and himself. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow. I love you.”
And the call is done and over with.
He pulls the phone away from his ear and holds it out in front of his face. Usually he would worry about dropping it onto his face and hurting whatever scratch or cut he inevitably had there but now, with tears blurring his vision and dropping onto his cheeks, he sees the missed notifications and messages from his classmates, from his friends and finds he doesn’t care.
Wiping away the wetness in his eyes, and subsequently wincing because the simple motion is enough to send pain soaring through his chest, Izuku clicks on the first message.
It’s from Yaoyorozu.
‘ Are you alright? Iida has informed me that you ended up in Recovery Girl’s office. Is it the usual broken bones, or something more critical? ’
‘ Not that broken bones aren’t something to worry about! But you seem to have a habit of breaking yourself, and as such I’m concerned that, since Iida felt the need to inform me of your absence, this trip is different from your usual. Please respond when you have the chance, although if you are too hurt I’d advise that you refrain from answering. ’
Izuku wants to laugh at how formal Yaoyorozu is, even over text, but his concern overwhelms any amusement he may have. He wants to respond, to reassure her that he’s okay...but he’s already admitted that he isn’t , and he can’t bring himself to lie to anyone else.
He clicks out of the chat, choosing a new one. This time, it’s Kirishima.
‘ Yo! You feeling okay, bro? You seemed to get hit pretty bad during that fight, but you kept on going! It was pretty manly, but it’s even manlier to back out when you need to. You know that, right? ’
His breath catches. Izuku finds a new message.
Todoroki.
‘ You don’t need to break yourself so much to prove you’re a hero. We already know it, so please remain intact from now on. ’
‘ Kouta would be upset, if you disappeared on him from being a hero, too. ’
More tears form, and Izuku hastily rubs at his eyes, ignoring how every movement is sore and pained. He can’t do that to Kouta, he can’t hurt the boy like that. He, he can’t .
He won’t.
“I won’t,” Izuku promises, voice a soft whisper in the empty room, but there’s no one to agree with him. For some reason, this hurts even more than the lingering pain, and Izuku winces.
And then the door opens, and Kacchan marches in, a scowl on his face and...are those tears in his eyes?
“You fucking, self-centered bastard ,” Kacchan starts, and Izuku’s eyes widen because Kacchan is shaking .
“Kacchan-”
“No! No, you don’t get to ‘Kacchan’ me!” Kacchan shouts, and then he kicks a chair for good measure. “You’re so, you’re so selfish! Ugh! Fucking dumbass, getting yourself hurt all of the time! Hurting everyone else!”
“I… I don’t-”
“You do!” Kacchan interrupts. “You always do, and you’re so stupid that you don’t even see it!”
“What am I supposed to do?” Izuku shouts back, almost surprised by how forcefully the words break free. “Am I supposed to just stop? Let other people get hurt instead of me?”
“Yes!”
“Why do you even care?”
“Because I don’t—” he stops. Scrubs one hand through his hair, avoiding Izuku’s gaze. “Because I don’t want to see you fucking die .”
The admission is quiet. It almost echoes in the near silence that follows, the air that would be still if it weren’t for Kacchan’s heavy breaths and Izuku’s pained ones. Eventually he finds the words to respond.
“Kacchan...I’m not trying to get hurt, or die, or anything like that, I swear. And I- I don’t want to hurt anybody else.” It’s the truest thing he’s ever said. He really doesn’t; it’s just hard to remember, in the moment, that there are people like Uraraka, like Iida, like his classmates, his mom, Kouta—people who care about the state he comes home in. “I know that in order to keep saving people, I have to take care of myself, too. But sometimes I can’t help but think...if I slow down, if I stop, and somebody gets injured or killed—then that’s on me, isn’t it?”
Kacchan stays quiet for another second, and then he huffs. “Dumbass.”
“What?”
“You get injured. You don’t stop, and you manage to save one or two more people, and then you bleed out. Then, at the next fight, which you’re not at because you’re fucking dead, five people who could’ve been saved by you die.” He turns to Izuku and fixes him with the most intense glare Izuku’s ever seen from him, which is saying something. “You can fucking do math, I’ve seen you in Cementoss’s class. Calculate that.”
Izuku can’t help it; he looks away, back to the red dots on the floor. There’s no point in trying to count them now. His eyes are too blurred with tears for that. “Oh.”
“I can’t possibly have been the first person to point that out, nerd.”
“No, you weren’t.” Izuku wipes his sleeve over his eyes. “I think, um, I think Uraraka and Iida tried to tell me that, earlier.”
“Yeah, they better’ve,” Kacchan says with another snort. “You gonna fucking listen this time?”
He thinks of Kouta. Of the text messages on his phone, both the ones he’s read and the ones that are still pinging. Of his mom, who’ll probably hug him, repeat the same lecture, and then make him katsudon while they both cry. Of Uraraka and Iida, who’re both depending on him to learn this lesson. “Yes. I mean—I’ll try. I don’t really know where to start, but I’ll try.”
“I know where to start,” Kacchan says, smirking when Izuku glances over at him. “Next time Four Eyes asks you if you’re injured, say yes. Even if you think you aren’t, because you probably are.”
Izuku laughs. “Fair enough.”
In ten minutes, Recovery Girl will come in and shoo away Kacchan to do her last healing session with Izuku. In an hour, Aizawa will escort him back to the dorms, tell him he has time off the next few days to spend with his mom, and then fix those intense eyes on Izuku as he tells him this can’t happen again. In two hours, he’ll get a call from All Might, an awkward check-in that will end with another slightly hypocritical reminder to look after his own health. In a day, he’ll be at home with his mom, who will, in fact, hug him, repeat the same lecture, and then make him katsudon while they both cry.
For now, though, there’s just Kacchan, taking a seat in the very chair he kicked, complaining about how worried everybody was and how Kaminari’d nearly driven him up the wall, while Izuku half-laughs and half-cries. And that’s enough.