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When Izuku finally makes it to the battlefield, he comes too late.
He’s known, though, for several heartbeats, for half a dozen breaths, for the entire length of the ocean he’d crossed that something is wrong.
It’s confirmed when he sees it, sees him.
There’s no war cry for him to join, no victorious grin for him to share, no battle for him to take part in; there’s nothing left for him except bitter, all consuming grief and eerie silence. His world is tilted, off its axis and spinning out of control, and a terrible hopelessness wells up in him because he’s known since he felt something in him snap a handful of precious moments ago that he would, inevitably, be fighting alone.
“Kacchan.”
The word, the name, is carried away by the wind, lost in the cacophony of a thousand voices shouting at him to do something, please, Deku, Shigaraki is coming, Deku you have to- some of the villains are turning on him, Deku, this is your chance, Mirio’s down- please, DEKU-
It’s buried beneath the static that fills his ears, the thundering of his own heart.
He doesn’t feel anything at all as he falls to his knees, eyes fixed on the person he’s been chasing all this time- an arms length away and yet completely unreachable, beyond his grasp with only one way to follow.
Best Jeanist says nothing.
Green eyes sunken and bleak behind a veil of disheveled blonde hair, the hero once known for his ability to empower the weak and calm the fearful with a handful of phrases has nothing to offer him but silence.
There are no apologies or excuses that fill the void between them. No words would be able to breathe life back into an empty shell. No platitudes would be able to quell the yawning black hole growing in his chest where he once felt the spark that propelled him towards his -- their -- dream. There are a million ways he could beg for forgiveness, admit his mistakes, shoulder the blame, but they would fall on deaf ears and not one of them would light fire in those dull red eyes again.
“Kacchan,” he says again, because he doesn’t know what else to say.
All Might’s shiny face and bright grin is marred by grime and dried blood, and he wants to laugh at the irony of it, how this little piece of paper and ink so perfectly encapsulates the ugly feeling wrapped around him like a heavy cloak.
Even as he drags himself to his feet, ruined card and shattered dream cradled in each hand, he feels nothing . Tomura Shigaraki, All For One, they’re beyond him now, beyond any hero’s ability to rescue or defeat. They’d struck the one fatal weakness he had, that he hadn’t even known existed -- this blond haired, crimson eyed maelstrom of an Achilles heel now severed and leaving him crippled and limping towards his own final stand.
He gets up because he has to. He faces the villain because he has to. He fights because he has to.
Otherwise, he doesn’t think Kacchan will let him rest.
We’re supposed to do this together. Save together. Win together. Aim for number one together.
“I guess we’ll lose together too,” Izuku says around a smile, choking on a sob.
“Oh, Izuku…” Nana says, closing her eyes to the pandemonium of grief that batters their little corner of his soul.
The rest of the vestiges watch the chaos grow both inside their wielder's heart and outside where a war still rages fiercely with no end in sight. It’s a stalemate, a battle of attrition, and no matter the winner, all that will be left are survivors, not victors. As heroes, they know time is running out, that casualties are rising and the price of their hesitation is innumerable, immeasurable -- but a line has been crossed, a time limit reached.
Midoriya Izuku is, was, will be their final hope in ending this war lasting lifetimes, but they know he cannot finish this century-long struggle alone.
They felt it too, the agony that pierced their newest and last holder of One For All, fracturing so deep nothing would ever mend what was broken. Even with Deku here, capable of weidling every Quirk at his disposal with the expertise of lifetimes embedded in every cell, there is nothing they can do now. The evidence is all around them -- in the crumbling buildings, the bloody heroes, the screaming civilians, the sickened villains. Deku’s- Izuku’s unyielding heartache.
Victory is dead and the careful balance has tipped, tilted, and shattered, taking Hope with it.
There are no options left and no time to deliberate. They have one card left, their own last stand, and from now on…Midoriya Izuku will truly be alone.
“Goodbye, Izuku. And good luck.”
All for one, and one for all.
Midoriya Izuku wakes up.
The sun has barely climbed over the horizon, he can hear the gentle clinks of pots and pans in the kitchen where his mother is cooking dinner, it’s his first day of UA and he’s so excited-
He throws up.
“Oh dear, don’t you think you should stay home today? You don’t look so good,” his mother frets, big round eyes creased with worry.
Izuku swallows down the nausea with a smile. “It’s okay mom! Just nervous I guess.”
It’s his first day of UA and his body is filled with butterflies that feel more like hornets. He can’t believe he’s going to walk through the same door as All Might! His hero! His mentor of nearly a year now, he still can’t believe it sometimes! And now he’s taking his first steps towards being a hero as great as the Number One, can stand on the same ground as Kacch-
He throws up again.
He meets a girl whose smile makes him feel as light as air, and a boy who is as reliable and serious as he is quick and intelligent. They feel like home. The halls welcome him like an old friend, whispers of a new beginning, and it leaves him lightheaded.
The nervousness spikes at the sight of their homeroom number, and he has to squash the urge to run far, far away.
The doors open and green eyes are inexorably drawn to one striking figure, just like every time before, drawn into his orbit again and again and waiting for the inevitable, catastrophic collision.
Kacchan looks the same as he always has with that shock of blonde hair and eyes like forge fires brimming with heat and molten metal, and Izuku keeps searching that familiar face until his new friend gently prod him forward into the classroom. His feet move without conscious thought, somehow sitting directly behind Kacchan who never stops looking out the window with a smooth brow and faraway gaze.
The class is a riot of colors and personalities, so loud and varied it should make him anxious at the firestorm of potential, but instead his hands finally stop shaking. Someone bumps into Kacchan’s desk and the terrifyingly distant look in his eye is replaced by crackles and shouting and even more noise as each hero-hopeful tests each other's boundaries. Sharp grins and black eyes, comforting shadows and beautiful voices, fire and ice and everything in between.
It should be frightening, knowing he’s only had his Quirk for less than a year with a legacy to uphold. It should be overwhelming with the attention of his new friends and classmates who have been training for far longer than he has.
Instead, once their homeroom teacher walks in, all in one piece, he feels like he can finally breathe.
“The lowest performing student will be expelled.”
“What?”
They all pass, miraculously.
He made it through even with a broken finger that shoots agony up his arm, just like last t-
Kacchan is mad at him. But not in the same way he always isthat’s why when he demands Izuku to meet him after school at the forest where they spent their childhood, Izuku has to swallow down an okay, yes, anything you want and simply nods.
The trees seem smaller, the light not as bright through the canopy, the darkness between the leaves not as frightening, but what has his full attention is the way Kacchan looks at him. He can’t stand that pain shadowing Kacchan’s expression -- pain he’s never seen before, never wants to see again.
What he doesn’t expect when their eyes meet is to start crying.
It wells up in him as soon as he sees Kacchan waiting for him in the middle of the small clearing, the Kacchan he knows now superimposed by several others, some he doesn’t even recognize. Each tear is pulled from a well deep in his chest he never knew existed. They overflow endlessly like a cracking dam set to break, unstoppable, and he doesn’t understand why. All he knows is that everything in him hurts with a renewed fervor, like he’d somehow forgotten a broken bone or open wound, and each tear and sob makes the suffering less unbearable, less like he’s suffocating from how big it feels, like it’s not all his- but who else could it belong to?
He doesn’t know why he can’t breathe around the gnawing ache in his chest or why Kacchan lets him cry and cry and cry with that look on his face -- like he knows exactly why Izuku’s insides writhe with ardent, unending sadness.
He doesn’t yell, doesn’t shout, doesn’t shove, doesn’t say anything at all.
He just stands there, sunlight flitting around him and through him like he’s somewhere else entirely.
It comes back in bits and pieces.
“I’m the Deku who never gives up!”
When he’s awake.
“You’re the best. That’s why I wanted to defeat you.”
When he’s at school.
“A hero’s job is to risk his life and to turn his promises into reality!”
When he’s unconscious from training or a villain attack.
"I'm no longer the useless Deku who can't do anything right... I'm the Deku who gives it his all!"
Not all of it. Not all at once, not in order.
Not soon enough.
“You’re next.”
Izuku thinks he’s losing his mind at first, but if he is, then Kacchan is too.
Kacchan, who sees it all, right alongside him in a way Izuku has always dreamed of. They’re in sync but slightly off from the rest of the world -- a few shades too dim, saturation turned down too low, always marching a half-step ahead of everyone else. But unlike Izuku, it’s not tearing him to pieces, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for someone, anyone to follow. Instead of seeing double, constantly living in deja vu, mind scrambling because it’s like playing a video game with ten years in between now and the first time he tried, Kacchan…keeps moving forward. Eyes bright and fierce like living coals, determination burning fever hot, he blazes ahead even with images flickering behind his eyelids and voices in his ears.
Izuku admires that, so much, and it makes the burden easier to bear but…
It scares him too, sometimes, because Kacchan blasts so far above with these fractured ghosts of a maybealwaysnever that he seems to disappear right along with them.
There’s a clock ticking in the distance, tick, tock, tick, tock, relentless and unstoppable.
He hears it when his friends speak, when he trains with his class, when he’s saving civilians, when he’s fighting villains, when he’s screaming through nightmares.
Tick, tock, tick, tock.
As much as he hates the sound, he’s more afraid of it stopping.
Some things are different.
Spinner, not Magne. Fat Gum, not Sir Nighteye. Present Mic, not Midnight.
"I want to be strong enough so no one will worry about me."
Some things are the same.
Rag Doll. Twice. Crust. Native. Star and Stripe.
"If I can't save the one small girl in front of me, how can I become a hero that saves everyone?"
He does his best, tries to forge a new path with the blood on his hands and the scraps left in his mind, empty save for his own thoughts echoing back at him- and that, maybe, is the hardest thing to get used to.
He thinks there used to be more of him, and he also thinks he gave up a lot to come back to this, try again. He wonders what he gave up all this for, what could possibly be worth living with too many puzzle pieces jammed into a too small frame, but every time he tries to go down that path, beat down that door, it makes his throat close up and eyes burn.
It makes things different in a way he doesn’t expect.
He doesn't think he and Kacchan have changed much from before despite this chancecursesacrifice except it feels all sped up, trapped in an epilogue of sorts after skimming the main story. The hurt and misunderstandings that lasted years only take weeks to work through, months to finally bridge and meet in the middle, even without this siren blaring in the back of his mind that they’re on borrowed time. It feels a little like cheating somehow, a little like what they have isn’t quite set in the same foundations.
And as always, Kacchan charges ahead like a shooting star while Izuku is left behind to think and plan and worry -- about the next step, the coming conflicts, the end that makes his heart ache so fiercely he wants to cover his eyes and pretend he can’t see.
Looking forward has never been so hard.
"There will always be people beyond our reach that we can't protect. Which is why we have to save people we can reach."
It ends the way it begins.
Hope and Victory, side by side. A prophecy fulfilled, a destiny reached, a fate satisfied. Win to save, save to win, a mantra finally achieved with the two of them standing together atop a broken last chance -- it comes together the way it was meant to, before, the first time.
But Izuku forgets, he always seems to forget, that this isn’t the first time.
A price had been paid with his missing pieces, the voices absent from his mind, the wildfire of his inherited legacy cooling to embers. And even at that steep cost, he couldn’t bring back all of them, all of him, could he? He remembers it now in startling, heartbreaking clarity, the way he had been too late before, and even after all of this, nothing can stop the inevitable.
He blinks and Kacchan is there, supernova eyes blinding like his magnificent explosions, teeth sharp and white as he roars in victory.
He blinks and Kacchan is gone, like he has been since the beginning, eyes still blazing but from so far away Izuku knows he could never reach.
It ends the way it begins.
“The deeper the darkness the more dazzling the light shines."