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The apartment, a lavish opulent penthouse set atop of one of Tokyo's most exclusive and expensive high rises, was dark and quiet when its lone occupant entered his security code and opened the door. He paused to give a tired wave to the night security guard sitting on a chair next to the door but said nothing as he entered his home.
There had been a time when he would have paused to exchange actual pleasantries with the guard. To thank him for helping to keep him safe and to share the day's adventures. He knew each of the guards by sight. Knew their names and quirks. Knew which ones had families made up of people and which one had three cats and five, no make that four, fish. He knew when their kid's birthdays were and who their favorite heroes were so that he could make sure they received the latest toy or merchandise no matter how impossible it was to find. He'd invite them in for coffee or dinner and spend the night exchanging stories about childhoods and youthful discretions. Sometimes he'd find out one of them was a UA alum and those nights would be sent sharing horror stories of school days full of Plus Ultra and so much laughter.
That time had passed.
Now he walked through his silent apartment like a shadow.
Everything was neat and clean thanks to the cleaning service that came in daily to keep things in order. He wondered what they thought about the fact that almost everything outside of his bedroom was usually left untouched.
His stomach growled but he ignored it. The kitchen was filled with his favorite foods, picked up for him by a personal shopper. He barely touched any of it. He ate what was provided for him by his assistants throughout the day and his hunger this evening would be fulfilled by a jelly packet from the stash he kept in the drawer in the nightstand next to his bed like it usually was. He made a mental note to leave a note for his assistant to make sure they were still sending anything that had been around for longer than a few weeks to any local food banks or shelters that might need it.
He let out a sigh of almost relief as he entered his bedroom.
This was the only place in the entire apartment that came close to feeling like it truly belonged to him. His assistant came in and made sure that anything time-sensitive or anything that needed to be restocked in the bathroom was taken care of on daily basis but beyond no one else was allowed in the room except every couple of weeks when the cleaning crew would come through to change his sheets and dust and vacuum. There was a layer of stuff here that almost made it seem like he existed in this space. A pile of unread books on the dresser, analysis notebooks he hadn't touched in months stacked haphazardly on the desk, a comfortable Charge Bolt hoodie tossed over the weird chair in the corner that Aoyama had given him a decade ago as a house-warming gift when he’d moved into his very first apartment. There was a Froppy Plush tucked into the top of the lamp on his nightstand, a pair of All Might socks sticking out from underneath the bed, and dozens of photos of him and his friends and fans stuck into the sides of the ridiculously elaborate mirror that had already been in the room when he'd moved in. Looking at these things Izuku could almost pretend that this place was truly his own.
Almost.
Though there was no real reason he closed the door behind him and leaned against it tiredly. He took a deep breath to try and release the tension of the day.
After a moment he gave up. There was no use. There was no escaping the weight that pressed down on him every moment of every day.
Bone tired and weary to his bones he forced himself to move. He quickly shed the suit and tie only giving a brief passing thought to how he should probably take better care of it as he dumped it onto the floor next to his hamper, it cost than some people made in months after all, but he just couldn't bring himself to care. It would be taken care of for him the next day, pressed and hung back in his closet, or sent to the dry cleaners if he'd spilled something on it without noticing.
He padded into the bathroom and stared at the shower. His muscles ached from a long day full of meetings, press conferences, interviews, and lots of standing and walking from place to place. A long hot shower would probably help him lose the layers of tension and pain so that he could sleep. But a shower was also a lot of work. He turned his attention away from the shower and instead opened the medicine cabinet and pulled out the bottle of sleeping pills from within. The bottle was full so his new prescription must have come through. He let the cabinet snap shut as he shook out a couple of pills and tossed his head back to swallow them dry. They went down as heavily as they always did. His eyes met his reflection in the mirror as he lowered his head and he paused.
He barely recognized the face looking back at him in the mirror.
His hair was cropped close to his head and neat. A thin layer of makeup covered his dark circles and his freckles. But it was his eyes more than anything that he didn't recognize. They were shuttered and distant....empty. Something dark crawled down his spine something that almost felt like the trails he'd felt before an attack from behind. A warning from One for All, Danger Sense shadowing him like a ghost. He pushed it down and away trying to ignore the prickle against his skin that felt an awful lot like someone, like all the past holders, were breathing down the back of his neck trying to get his attention.
He sighed and rubbed a hand against his face grimacing as some of the makeup came off on his palm. In a burst of irritated energy he grabbed for his face wash, some name brand his publicist had given him that he was supposed to do an endorsement for after a few months of use, and washed his face off. Once it was done he looked back up hoping that he would feel better now that the wear and tear of the day was washed away.
What he saw was worse than he expecting. Without the makeup, he looked gaunt and deathly pale making the dark circles underneath his eyes stand out in even starker contrast. He stared at his reflection for so long that his vision blurred and his head began to hurt from keeping his eyes open. He ran a hand over his face and took a deep breath as he lowered it. Meeting the eyes in the reflection again he pushed his lips up into a smile.
Or he tried to at any rate. The bared teeth expression was nothing more than a ghost of a smile. He straightened his face and tried again. It still didn't come. Fear began to well up at him and he raised his shaking hands to forced his lips up into a smile. Memories of silly versions of this exact pose done with All Might over the years hit his brain like a runaway train and he dropped his hands and took a quick step back from the mirror. He closed his eyes and pushed the memories away the last thing he wanted to think about right now was his mentor and how disappointed he would be that he was failing the most important ideal he'd given to Izuku since he was a child. "Always smile, even in your darkest hour. Especially in your darkest hour."
He took a deep breath and tried again to force his face into a smile. He couldn't even manage a strained, fake one this time. After a moment he let the attempt drop. As he did a wave of pure exhaustion slid through him. He pressed his palms down on the sink and couldn't ignore how they shook from the strain of doing so. He was tired, so tired.
When had he gotten so tired he couldn't even find it in himself to smile?
He closed his eyes tightly and tried to clear his mind enough to think. The only answer that came to his head was a memory of the day he'd become the Number One hero. Two years after he'd graduated and one year after his official debut as a solo hero he had rocketed up to the spot. The youngest Number One since they'd officially begun to keep records. He knew he had All Might to thank. His mentor had endorsed him from the moment he'd stepped out of the shadows at end of the war against All for One. From that moment on, even though he hadn't even graduated from high school yet, people began to take bets on when he would reach the top spot. Apparently, the only one surprised by his meteoric rise had been himself.
That moment however quickly proved to be a double-edged sword. It was both the moment of his greatest personal triumphs as a hero but also the beginning of the end of his career. Oh, not his actual career. He was still a hero. But in terms of actually getting out and doing hero work, it was essentially the end of the line. Now instead of getting to actively participated in the real aspects of hero work, of patrolling and actively searching out villains, of teaming up with other heroes and investigating a long-running important case, of hearing a cry from an alleyway and rushing to someone’s aid, he was mostly called in only if there was a need for a high profile takedown.
Instead of hero work, most of his job was regulated to being the Symbol of Hope, the Face of Hero Society. He answered the silly interview questions and stared in movies (until it was discovered how bad an actor he was and he was replaced with his stunt double), did voice work for commercials, and the occasional animated special. If he was lucky he got to make appearances at children's hospitals or charities, but mostly he just shook visiting politicians hands and had his face plastered on posters that reminded children to brush their teeth with their Deku toothbrushes and billboards that reassured their parents that Japan was once safe because Deku was on the scene.
All these things hadn’t been completely unexpected for him. All Might had made an entire second career out of doing just this sort of thing. He'd done a whole course on this side of the hero business Izuku's third year when it became apparent that all of the infamous Class A was going to be in high demand with the public once they were let out into the wild. So Izuku knew that this sort of thing would be expected of him once he reached the upper levels of the rankings he'd thought he was prepared for it.
He wasn't.
He had tried so hard to find the balance. At times it felt like he almost succeeded but then something would happen. He would get busy with one thing, usually something the Commission needed him to do, and he would miss an appearance that he'd really wanted to make with a charity or a hospital. They would always be very understanding but he knew that they were hurt by him not showing up. He always provided a large donation and tons of merchandise and gifts but it never made up for the hole that pricked into his heart at the thought of all those disappointed people....disappointed kids.
As time went on the problem continued to grow harder to deal with. There was always something that the Commission needed from him. Always something that his publicist wanted him to do to keep his popularity up. The things he wanted to take part in, the things that were important to him, started to fall by the wayside. He pushed back at the start but eventually, it just got to be so overwhelming. He was being pulled in three directions, four if you counted the time he needed to take care of himself, and it wasn't long before he could no longer keep himself centered.
He knows he could have asked for help. Knows he SHOULD have asked for help. He had a good, solid support system in place. He had people on that list that had gone through stuff like this before. He had ALL MIGHT on that list who had practically written the rule book on how to deal with it. He’d had decades of practice keeping all of these sorts of balls in the air at the same time. He'd gone through all of this, and so very much more, and still come out mostly himself in the end. So there was no excuse really for not asking for help when it became clear that he wasn't able to handle everything that came with being Number One like he thought he would be able to.
At the start, he hadn't wanted to bother the others because everyone was dealing with their own stuff. They had just survived the same war that he had. They were recovering from their own wounds, mapping their own new scars. He couldn't justify dumping stuff as silly as whining about all the interviews he had to give or how many meetings he had to go through or that the Commission didn't want him using anything other than Strength in his fights for fear of confusing or scaring the public. All that sounded pretty petty compared to the things some of the struggles his friends were going through. They needed him to be there to support them not to listen to him complaining about such inconsequential things. Then when it became more and more obvious that he wasn't able to keep up with things the way he'd liked he didn't tell them because he didn't want to disappoint them.
He had failed them.
When he'd made his speech after getting to Number One he'd promised everyone, his family, his friends, his fans, and all of Japan, that he was strong enough to take care of them. That the villains of the past, or ones like them, would never be able to rise in that way again. Why?
Because HE was here.
He hadn't said that in so many words. He wouldn't have been able to do so with a straight face while All Might had been sitting in the front row blowing his nose on a handkerchief with Izuku's face on it with tears streaming down his face. But the sentiment had been there and given the way that all his friends and family had teased him and how all the news outlet had proclaimed the Symbol of Peace torch officially passed it was clear that everyone had picked up on it.
He had not lived up to the promise he'd made that day. He hadn't even come close to living up to it. He’d managed to last half a year before he’d fallen into the trap the Commission had set for him. The one where they made it easier for him to simply let them deal with the day-to-day aspects of his career. He’d given in because running an agency was harder than he’d expected, even one that had the resources given to him by All Might behind it, especially on top of everything else he was dealing with. So even though he knew better he gave in and allowed them to get their foot in the door.
He’d told himself at the time that that was as far as they were going to get. But inch, by inch, they slithered in deeper and deeper. Until they had him so wrapped up that getting out of it was more work them just letting them stay. Somehow despite being smart, despite defeating the worst villain Japan had ever know, he still hadn’t felt the Commission’s strings encircling him until it was far too late.
"Puppet!"
Izuku's head jerked to look back up in the mirror as Kacc...as Bakugou's....voice echoed through his brain.
"You've turned into nothing but a Commission Puppet!"
It had been the last time he'd seen the other man. Over a year had passed since that moment but it was one that still lived in Izuku's head and refused to leave. It had taken place a month after the then Number 2 Hero had announced that he was pulling himself from the Hero rankings and moving to the United States to work there. Izuku had been confused, and so very angry, at his childhood best friend. The blond had been talking about this moment from the time they'd been old enough to realize that they too could be heroes themselves someday. Sure in all the stuff they had planned Bakugou was always Number 1 with Izuku at his side in the Number 2 spot but they had worked so hard to get to where they were. Gone through so much. For Bakugou to just...leave...
At the time Izuku didn't understand it. Now he understood it all too well.
Of course, the discussion had gone as they always did when they’d held opposing views. They'd fought. Snarled at each other and picked and prodded at sore spots that only each other knew so well how to make a direct hit at. They'd managed to stop just short of a physical fight. Probably because neither of their hearts was really in it and Bakugou was in the middle of packing. Izuku had done most of the talking but it was Bakugou that had gotten the final words in the end. He'd delivered his final reprimand at Izuku's face and that knowing sneer at how direct a hit he'd managed was the last thing that Izuku had seen as he'd turned on his heel and fled.
A week late Bakugou had left overseas and Izuku hadn't spoken to him since.
Puppet...puppet...puppet...
The word swarmed through Izuku's head now as he stared at his reflection. He felt it echo with each pounding beat of his heart. He gripped at the counter, strength shooting through his arms, he could feel it shake and buckle underneath his strength. There was a large cracking snap that shot up through Izuku's spine he pulled back the counter crumbling a little bit. It felt like the world he was living in. He gasped for breath and watched as tears began to leak from his eyes. Eyes he didn't recognize inside a face that was no longer his own.
Puppet.
He jerked back away from the mirror. He pulled back his shaking arm and smashed his fist into the mirror. The glass shattered as his fist crashed through it and kept going through all the bottles in the cabinet behind it and punched a hole into the wall. Pain engulfed him as he jerked the arm back and swung himself around, his hip clipped the corner of the counter and the bottle of sleeping pills crashed the ground the unsealed top popping off and scattering around the room.
He stared at the destruction he’d caused for a long moment, the chaos of the room matching the chaos of his swirling emotions. Then he rushed out of the room and forced himself to sit down on the edge of his bed. He gripped his aching arm to his chest. Thankfully it didn't feel like anything was broken but it hurt like he'd come very close. Panic coursed through him at his complete loss of control. He couldn't remember the last time something like this had happened.
The pain seemed to clear out some of the fog that was clouding his brain and he reached out and grabbed onto it. Concentrated fully on it. It was something he could feel. Something that proved he was still alive. That he was still made out of flesh and bone. That he wasn't made of wood.
He was a real boy.
He was still his own person.
He could still change things.
There was still a way to make everything right. To the people of Japan, to his friends and family, to himself.
Pure determination shot through him in a way that it hadn't in a very long time. The urge to rush off and start fixing things right away pushed him to stand up. A wave of dizziness and nausea stopped him in his tracks and caused him to collapse back onto the bed. He struggled for a bit but stopped when it felt like he might actually throw up. The sleeping pills on top of the length of the day and the lack of real food proving to be too much even for him. He tried to activate One for All to use it to keep pushing through the exhaustion and pain but it fizzled as his eyes began to drift shut.
"Sleep, child," a voice he recognized as the First Holder’s echoed through his head as the quirk shut down and Izuku felt himself being pulled towards restful darkness.
"There will be time enough tomorrow to change the world."
The End