Archive of Our Own ^beta

This is the Hero's Loop. None of them know why or how it happens, but it does, and they don't take it for granted. No, they keep it a closely-guarded secret because they know, oh, how even the corrupt ones know, what could happen were this to become well-known, and every hero, from the kindest to the cruellest, take this one secret beyond their first grave and all the way to their second. 

Izuku died today.

He knows that he did. Logic both agrees and disagrees, because his heart is beating, fingers slightly numb, chest rise-fall-pause-repeating. For a time, a blink and an eon and a lung-full breath, none of that had been the case. There had been blood hot-still over his back, seeping beneath his hero costume, and static agony emanating from his bones, the last thing he processes before he processes nothing more at all.

Then he's blinking, shuddering, phantom agony stuck beneath the supernova waves of his Quirk as he leaps through the air, lands upon a building, jumps once more. Below, on the ground, the middle of the road is a calamity of piled-up cars and screams and running bodies. (He was a still body himself, only a blink and breath ago, but he's alive again now, somehow, and he's here to do his job-) 

When the incident is dealt with (when he dodges, with the death-granted knowledge burning in his lungs, the blow that had previously killed him, had laid him out on the ground with unfelt legs and too much blood seeping from his wound, ferrous and cloying-) Izuku sheds Deku the hero, and jumps up to a nearby roof. Then jumps further away, until he finds a quieter part of the area wherein to huddle upon a roof, staring up at the stars that he can't see because of the city around him.

He doesn't cry, perhaps surprisingly, but frankly he's barely even processed his current reality, let alone the feelings or facts surrounding it.

It's Aizawa-sensei that he texts, when it truly begins to feel like too much.

The underground hero isn't technically his Sensei anymore, hasn't been for several years, but the man has never been far from his Hell Class' lives. No, he's their first port of call for advice, sometimes in life and sometimes in work, and they never fail to invite him to any of their big gatherings. He's theirs, after all, through and through, and the Hell Class don't forget people that are their own, doubly so for the man that was nigh-on their father, and most certainly their hero.

So he texts Aizawa-sensei, and includes a location pin, and is both surprised and not that the reply is instant, and with how he's drowning in the memory of his own blood, it feels almost instant for the man's arrival too. (It isn't, not anything like, because the older hero had over half of the city to cross, but there are reasons that he's still a successful underground hero, and his mobility is one of them, no two ways about it. And he'll always be there for his hellspawn, no matter what, where or when. They're his kids after all.)

Izuku startles a little, lurching to unsteady feet, although he doesn't have time to turn around and see the man before Aizawa is already rounding to face Izuku, just out of reach but with gentle eyes, darker than the night above. Izuku feels just the tiniest bit better.

"Problem Child?"

"Sensei-" Feeling a little better, for all that his voice cracks, splitting right down the centre, some great oak cleaved in half so as to thunder to the ground with a ringing groan of splintering wood. Frankly, Izuku relates to it. (He can still feel the stillness of his own body, the rasp of road beneath his cheek, the too-long falter of his lungs and heart and mind-)
"I- I died."

And Aizawa - Eraserhead - doesn't snort in derision or question him or even scowl.

No, he frowns, the gentle downturn so achingly sorrowful, and his eyes somehow darken further,

"I'm sorry, Izuku."  And the younger man, for all that he can still barely think straight, will never lose his curiosity, his quick mind, and so without a pause, he's opening his mouth,

"Why?"

"Because I couldn't tell you earlier; that you woke up alone afterwards; that you had to go through it at all."  Izuku's tongue has already locked back up, lungs seized and heart staccato-struggling, enough so that he can't speak, but Aizawa-sensei has always been better at reading Izuku than most people, and he's undoubtedly aware of the nature of his own words in the first place, because he sighs, a wry little twist joining his expression.

"Come back to my flat? Or we could go to yours if you'd prefer."  Izuku... He feels dirty, like there's blood caught in the creases of his scars and knuckles and very soul, like death is still draping its arms across his shoulders in some facsimile of a hug, and the thought of going back to his own home like this, well, it's verging on abhorrent. Sickening.

"Yours please Sensei," he requests, a wobbly half-smile managing to twist his features away from his own grief.

"Alright. Come on, Problem Child."  He doesn't offer a hand, nor pity, he only waits for Izuku to take a step towards him first before nodding, just once, in silent approval, in what Izuku recognises as encouragement, and turns to lead the way, back over the roofs. The trust in that action is enough to steady the younger hero.

The journey isn't brief, but it does go by quickly enough that Izuku barely registers the people on the streets below, the cars and chatter and odd argument. No, he blinks a few times, the constant movements forcing his lungs and heart to remain mostly steady, and then Aizawa-sensei is unlocking the front door of a third floor flat, shucking his boots off in the genkan and stepping away to let Izuku do the same.

There are no words exchanged as they both move to sit on the sofa, Izuku hesitating briefly but it only prompts Aizawa to roll his eyes with more affection than anything else, reaching out to flick a blanket over one half of the sofa, so that Izuku doesn't feel bad for wearing his hero costume to sit down upon the navy upholstery. There's a quiet offer of a drink or food, one that Izuku can only shake his head to, half of his attention caught on the cat that pads from the kitchen to the hallway, not so much as glancing over at them.

Finally, Aizawa sighs (it's not exasperation nor even quite reluctance, but perhaps something so simple and awful as sorrow instead-) and shifts to better face Izuku.

"There's a... phenomenon, one called the Hero's Loop."  Izuku goes to say something, but instead stays his tongue, listening on. He gets a slight inclination of the hero's head in silent gratitude.

"Nobody knows when it started or who with, nobody knows how, and nobody speaks of it. Friends and mentors and parents share the knowledge only when it becomes relevant, although that's just a logical precaution."  Aizawa pauses, expression neutral, except for the fact that all of his kids can read him far too well, and there's an undeniable melancholy to him right now, a marrow-deep sorrow and grief. How many people that the hero knows have died, both once or twice?

"All of us, every single licensed or provisionally-licensed hero, comes back to life after the first time they die, looped back just long enough to not die the second tie around. Hence, the Hero's Loop."

For a long moment, there's exactly nothing to be said in return to that.

"And- and nobody talks about this?" He doesn't mean to sound so childish, so vulnerable with the way that his voice wavers. Luckily, Aizawa-sensei doesn't judge him for it, only shaking his head, dark hair shifting,

"No. We know that it's too easily exploited. The media, researchers, the government - none of them would be free enough of corruption or greed or callous curiosity that heroes would be safe. As far as anyone that I've heard of can tell, it only works because we're licensed heroes. If we die trying to help people, trying to be heroes, then we come back. So, no, it's very rare for anyone to even try to speak publicly about it."  That makes far too much sense, honestly. It makes bitter, awful sense.

Suddenly Izuku thinks of the retired hero Slipshod, who had claimed to have died and come back, announcing it with wild eyes to the media immediately after a massive battle, and how he'd been taken to hospital and not heard of again except for one announcement from the agency that he had worked for. Izuku thinks of maybe three or four other cases like that. How those heroes disappear from the public eyes or retract their statements. That, too, suddenly makes a lot more sense. Terrifying sense, sure, because it sounds like one of Shouto's wildest conspiracy theories, something to be bandied about on the weird parts of the internet, but it's true.

Izuku just (died-) lived(-returned) it after all.

"I just- I know I've been in bad situations before, Sensei, I've gotten hurt," Izuku doesn't miss the slight wince to that, and it has him feeling even worse for all that he expects Aizawa doesn't intend it as such,
"-but I just- I couldn't feel my legs and there was so much blood-" He's gasping the words, nigh-on incoherent. Aizawa-sensei, for his part, only leans in closer, the gravity in his voice dragging Izuku in even further,

"I know, kid, and I wish you hadn't gone through that. But I am very much glad that you were able to come back to me, Problem Child, to everyone that cares about you and to everyone that you will help. Understood?"

"Yes," he manages, yet the words that were meant to follow merely bubble like nothing but soap upon his tongue, bitter and astringent.

Feeling queasy with that, Izuku pauses for breath, not even meaning to pause, and yet his next breath hitches, fractures upon his tongue and between his lips in shards of half-rusted iron, and there's nothing but an abyss between his ribs (he's dying, dead, gone, back again-) and he can't breathe-

"Problem Child, Deku, Izuku, I need you to breathe for me, understood?"  There's warmth beside him, not touching, not pressing, simply there, and between that and the emphasis on 'I need you', Izuku is dragged the tiniest step back towards coherency.

"That's better, Izuku, well done, keep that rhythm for me. Try to follow my breathing if you can." There are a few moments of Izuku staring half-sightlessly at the steadily rise-fall-repeating of the chest of the man beside him, before Aizawa speaks up again,

"Do you want contact, proximity or space?"  The question is low, verging on gentle, and utterly forgiving. Open. It gives Izuku more than enough room to gasp out another sob, unsure of when he even started crying, and whilst there aren't words that can pass the jagged edges of his tongue and teeth, a scarred hand lashes out, grasping, reaching, clinging at soft fabric.

It doesn't take more than a couple of seconds for Izuku to be pulled close to something warm and solid, all callused hands and steady breathing and a rhythmic heartbeat.

Finally, Izuku breaks.

It's a different sort of breaking to shattering bones, or even to outright dying (there was so much blood and static-roaring agony, everything too hot yet growing ice-biting cold, his very marrow collapsing into itself, a decaying star-) albeit it's still familiar. Admittedly, he's never fallen apart quite like this, as all-consuming and heart-rending as it is.

So he utterly breaks apart in his once-teacher's arms (always theirs-), and he knows that, at least for right here and right now, he is safe.

(Izuku will later find that out he's the first of his class, of his family, to experience this; he fervently hopes that none of them ever will. Of course, it's a far better alternative than an outright, true death, but still. The veil of death will only cling to him more heavily than ever before, Izuku already knows. It had been a nigh-on Atlas weight before, anyway. Now, he's sure, it will cling akin to spilt oil, a dark, iridescent stain upon his heart and mind and soul, undeniable and awful.

But that's okay. Or rather, it will be okay. He has people like Aizawa-sensei to help alleviate that burden, and maybe now, after years of fighting alongside his class, of rising through the rankings but only with the occasionally-forced support of other heroes, sidekicks, and support staff, he can take enough of a break that he truly begins to recover from this. That he can deal with it in ways far healthier than pushing himself to breaking point again and again until he shatters and physically can't push himself any further to escape his problems.

Izuku died today. But life will carry on, and he'll make it a good life, with Aizawa-sensei and his class at his side.)