Work Text:
Happy-go-lucky Midoriya Izuku, knew there was something wrong with him.
It had been a week since he was kidnapped by the League of Villains and the retirement of All Might which had left the people depressed but still coping.
Midoriya himself, practically eat and breathed Heroics.
So then, why was he seeing two faces everywhere he turned?
Every time he talked or interacted with someone...
A second head appeared.
The second head never showed anything good.
Some heads looked at him with some sort of pity, another group of heads started taunting him, he counted four different types of heads.
The worst... were the heads that sneered at him and called him abusive names.
Those heads appeared beside most of class 1-A.
How could he concentrate, when he kept on seeing those heads that would taunt him and laugh at him at every turn.
He wasn't even safe in his own apartment.
His mother had another head of some kind.
His sweet mother had a second head that seemed to think he was a waste of space.
As the days flow by, those heads got worse, they started moving closer to each person and replacing the original heads on people necks.
More days flew by, he couldn't but felt faint and his head hurt, his mother called a doctor and called UA when she saw he was burning up at the sight of his pale skin.
And hours after that, she left for work.
Then came a loud snap.
The world around him crashed down around him and suddenly his head was flooded with new images, he didn't even know or remembered that he had.
His sweet hard working mother was replaced by a woman who blamed him for being the reason that her husband left her and in turn was abusive both physically and mentally towards him.
She never loved him.
He never went to elementary school and only began to go because someone had looked and found that his mother had a son.
He didn't admire All Might because he had met the hero in person and the hero had been down right horrible towards him, saying his dream was only for fools and he was one in a thousand.
Middle school wasn't much better. Obviously.
Being a quirkless freak, as they called him, was always targeted by taunts and sneers and every physical bullying there is. He was blamed for all his classmates' wrongdoings and always called to the principal's office.
High school was shockingly bad.
Bakugou had struck his fist at him more than he could count and he had actually been the class errand boy, it was so easy to bully him because of his short stature due to a lack of proper food and he never developed the will to stand up for himself, despite being the only quirkless student in the heroics department, let alone, the entire UA campus.
The UA staff never knew his home and class life and he hoped it would stay that way. He didn't dare to say anything or face his mom's wrath at home.
And that's why his new memories didn't make sense.
He was a happy child, sure he was short for his age but he had a great family, a childhood bestfriend who was a little on the grumpy side, he participated in all the trainings he was in and eventually befriended everyone he met.
So where did these images come from?
The next wave of memories, had him in tears.
It was a scene of Bakugou pushing him down the stairs with a bit of explosion and on the way down, he had hit his head.
Bakugou had immediately panicked and ran leaving him bleeding heavily on the floor.
He would have died if someone hadn't stumbled across him and called the ambulance.
The next image was of him waking up in the hospital with a completely different set of memories, it was like he was a completely different person.
He was convinced that he was accepted of being quirkless, his classmates were kind to him, his mother wasn't abusive and that he had the most amazing life in the world.
The doctor had told everyone that he had suffered a blow to the head, making him suppress any unhappy memories from his life, unconsciously.
Everyone was advised to play along with Midoriya's fantasy because, reality would no doubt break him.
For the past two months he had been living a life that was nothing but an illusion, an illusion that he had created and everyone had played along to.
The doctor was right.
Reality did break him.
Midoriya didn't think he could ever look anyone in the eyes, the same way again, not without having a flashback of abuse under their grasp.
His happy go lucky personality was merely the result of him unconsciously rejecting those memories.
It had been his shield from the harsh reality of his life.
He found it so tempting to play dumb, act like he hadn't gotten his true memories back and carry on living under the illusion.
After all it was a lot better than reality.
But that would mean killing the real Midoriya Izuku, the one who only know suffering and had been pushed aside way too many times.
Illusion Midoriya had no true soul, always happy and laughing, forcing everyone around him to act out a lie so that he didn't have a mental breakdown.
It was like the face he had shown to the world, suddenly felt like a mask and it was crumbling right in front of his eyes.
When he looked at the mirror in front of him, it was like looking at an entirely different person.
His eyes that was usually so bright and full of life had become dim and somewhat cold.
There was no smile or a shining personality present but just a guy who sat upright in a bed, you would have thought he was dead if it wasn't for the rising in his chest.
He wondered, why him?
What God had he offended in his past life, to make him deserve to have such a life?
Misfortune fell upon him whenever he went because he was Midoriya Izuku.
He realized that as long as he was Midoriya, he would never find true happiness.
To find true happiness.
Midoriya Izuku needed to die.
So without even thinking, he grabbed as many hooded clothes he had, pick up clothes he would not usually wear.
He ignored his clothes that are hero merchandise.
He searched the apartment and took any money he could find lying around and placed it in one of his old backpacks.
It was a very commonly used backpack and he bet, with his height, people would easily mistake him as a middle school student.
He placed a cap on his head and reluctantly wore his old run down trainers, leaving behind his beloved red high tops and UA uniform.
Once he was all packed, he placed gloves onto his hands and got out a large jug of cooking oil and started sprinkling it everywhere around the house, making sure everything was soaked with it and left through the back window to avoid the street camera, with a box of matches.
Once he was a good distance away.
He struck the match and threw it on the open window directly into the trail of oil.
He didn't even look back as he ran from the apartment that had held nothing but pain and misery.
The apartment went up in a sea of hot flames. Spreading through the neighbors'.
From that day forth.
Midoriya Izuku was declared dead.