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It's been many years since Shouto carried his heart with him.
After his mother tried to destroy his unsightly half, she had been sent away. Shouto's heart hurt so much, a near-constant burning in his chest that threatened to sear his lungs, the bones of his ribs, the veins and arteries that pumped blood through the vessel…
Well. One day, he decided he didn't want it anymore. So he took it out.
Normally, when someone took out their heart, it was to give it to someone else. Usually a lover, sometimes a close friend or family member. The social norm was to only remove your heart from your chest when you had someone who could safeguard it for you.
But Shouto had no one.
His heart was angrily yanked out by his own hand, blood and gunk dripping and staining the tatami as he held the throbbing organ in his fist. The gaping hole in his chest spilled red, strings of muscle and sinew hanging out of him like vines of a wisteria tree dangling over the water.
Shouto shoved his still-beating heart in a beaten up bamboo box he'd found amongst his mother's possessions, closing the lid with a definitive slam. He could still hear his heart beating inside as he carried it to his closet, shoving it in a corner towards the back and burying it beneath various clothes and blankets stored inside. When he slid the door shut, he could no longer hear the cursed thing thump-thump-thump -ing against the sides of the box.
Without his heart rattling inside his chest, Shouto felt…
Empty.
But emptiness, he decided, was better than all the pain he’d endured in such a short time. So he kept his heart locked away in his mother’s old box, tucked away at the back of his closet where no one would ever find it.
Every time Shouto looks in the mirror, his scars stare right back at him.
The one on his face...and…
The one on his chest.
Frostbitten fingertips trace the deadened skin on the left side of his chest, where the shredded edges have curled into each other and healed over into bumpy, discolored, jagged lines like a bare, dead tree branch etched onto his body. He taps his chest once, twice, feeling the echo inside his ribcage where his heart is supposed to be.
Shouto inhales a rattling breath, exhaling a puff of frost that coats his lips in ice.
Days like these make him glad he’s discarded his heart, kept it in a box locked away. Else, his father would have broken him completely by now.
Shouto splashes some cold water on his face and looks one more time in the mirror, traces his heart scar one more time before tugging on a sweater and hiding it from the world once more.
Shouto can’t remember feeling this emotional in a very, very long time.
Ever since he’d ripped his heart out, any kind of feeling that would bubble up had always felt muted, subdued.
But this...this anger...this sadness…
He feels like he’s going to burst from the pressure of it all.
When Midoriya looks at him with fire burning in those bright green eyes, fingers broken and bleeding and a snarl on his usually innocent face…
Shouto burns in a way he hasn’t in eons.
“It’s your power, isn’t it?!”
Those words alone ignite something in Shouto’s chest, a flame bursting to life in the hole where his heart used to be.
Shouto burns. Midoriya smiles.
Then…Shouto cries for the first time in over a decade.
In the days after the sports festival, Shouto brings the beaten bamboo box out of his closet. He sits down cross-legged on his futon and gingerly sets the box in his lap, running his hands across the lid littered with nicks and dents. Through the old wood, he can feel the beating of his heart resting inside, the rhythm stronger and steadier than he can ever remember it being. In the close proximity, he can almost feel his pulse echoing in the vacant chamber of his chest.
He sits there for a long time, the locked box in his lap and the faint beats of his heart pulsating in his ears.
But he doesn't open the box.
He's…afraid of what he might find.
Soon enough, he puts the box back into his closet and covers it back up with blankets, feeling strangely empty.
Shouto has no idea why, but he brings his heart with him when they move into the dorms.
He'd had every intention of leaving it behind. After all, he's gone without it for over ten years now. Why would he need it?
And yet, seeing his belongings stacked up and waiting to be loaded into the car but no bamboo box among them, Shouto feels nervous to leave home without it.
So he digs it out of the closet and holds it close to his chest for the entire ride to the UA dorms. If he holds it close enough, he can almost pretend it’s still inside his chest, beating away in a steady, relaxed tempo.
Midoriya holds out a jar to Shouto, crooked fingers curled protectively around the glass.
“What’s this?” Shouto asks softly, trying to peer past the metal lid and into the jar to see its contents.
“I-It’s my heart,” Midoriya says, holding the jar up so Shouto can see it better.
And there, inside the glass, is a heart almost too big for the container to hold. Parts of it are shriveled like raisins, some parts purpled and mottled with bruises, other parts covered in plasters and wrapped in old, bloody bandages that look ready to fall apart. Yet, despite its beaten appearance, it beats a strong, even rhythm that somehow puts Shouto at ease.
“I want you to have it, Todoroki-kun,” Midoriya says a bit shyly, smiling up at the taller boy. “I mean, you already kind of do, anyway. And I know you’ll take good care of it.”
Shouto gingerly reaches out for the jar, taking it in shaking hands and trying to hold it steady so he won’t drop and break it. He pulls it close to his chest, hugging it almost like a child would a stuffed animal. He studies Midoriya closely, noticing a scabbed mark coming up just a little past the collar of his t-shirt.
He must have just recently removed his heart, so sure Shouto would accept it.
“Come in, Midoriya,” Shouto says, backing into his room and giving Midoriya enough space to enter. Shouto goes and sets Midoriya’s heart jar on his desk to keep it safe before retreating to his closet.
“You can call me Izuku,” Midoriya says from where he’s standing by the door. “Since you’re my heart’s keeper now…it’s only fitting, right?”
Shouto hums affirmatively in response, finally finding the beaten up bamboo box beneath a pile of clean laundry he has yet to fold. He withdraws the box and walks over to Izuku, handing it out to him hesitantly. “Then…as my heart’s keeper, you can call me Shouto.”
Izuku blinks once, twice in rapid succession before he reaches for the box. “I…wow, um…I didn’t expect…I mean…what?”
Shouto bows his head, unable to look Izuku in the eye as an explanation comes tumbling out of his mouth. “I took my heart out almost eleven years ago. I’m…sorry if it’s not in great condition.”
“Eleven years ago?” Izuku asks, and Shouto can clearly hear the shock in his voice.
Shouto looks up as Izuku unclicks the latch on the lid, tilting it open to gaze at the heart inside. Both of them stop breathing—Shouto because he hasn’t seen his heart in over a decade, and Izuku because, well, Shouto doesn’t know for sure.
His heart is small, much smaller than it had been in his childhood. There are patches that are darkened brown, almost black, like a freezer-burned slice of meat left uninsulated in an icebox for too long. Other parts look charred, as if they’ve been left sitting in an open flame for far too long. And though it’s grotesque and bloody and damaged by the opposing elements that flow through his veins, it’s almost…beautiful in a way.
“Shouto…” Izuku breathes out, closing the lid softly and holding the beaten up bamboo box close to his own chest, where his own heart mark is in the process of scarring over. “I promise I’ll keep it safe.”
“Thank you,” Shouto says, leaning forward and pressing his forehead to Izuku’s. “And I’ll keep yours safe as well.”