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***
Izuku’s breath hitches.
There is something wrong.
It is slick and deep and dirty and Izuku is hollow where he is supposed to breathe. His heart has stopped. He is not breathing. The air is still. It is quiet. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This is not right. Something has gone wrong.
Izuku closes his eyes. They are shut and tight for a long time. When they open, there is a pull from his gut. Something burns inside, out. It isn’t big and bright, it does not illuminate the street, his knees are being scraped again. There are no ashes. It fizzes, it simmers, it is low, it is painful. Izuku’s face is more wet than his shaking palms. His fingers curl and he looks at them, turns them over to look at the backs, and he lifts them close to his face. They are trembling. They are weak. They are slick and deep and dirty and Izuku is hollow. He can’t breathe.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
“Kacchan?” he whispers. His knees are scraped even further when he drags himself close, the air is escaping him and he falls forward, fingers pressing, pressing - “Kacchan. Kacchan .”
He traces over the area. There’s blood. Kacchan is still. He is limp. And Izuku’s hands, his palms and fingers and arms — red.
Izuku did this. But this — wasn’t — this wasn’t supposed to happen . He didn’t mean it.
This is not right. Something has gone very wrong. The air around Izuku conjures from the ground, tall and solid. It boxes him in, inches closer with every burn in Izuku’s throat. It keeps him still, keeps him there, forces him to be present and look . It makes sure he cannot move. It forces his eyes to peer through the transparent walls, at what is in front of him. At what he has done.
Izuku is cold. There is a pull. Something stings. And Izuku screams.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
Izuku is stumbling to his feet, the air is cold against the skin where his hero costume is torn but he can’t relish in it—he just burns, he’s burning all over. He takes in big gulps of the cold air and his throat stings with it, his lungs and his mind is all over the place.
He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know how this happened.
He runs.
There is no air. He is not breathing. He is hollow. Izuku is loud as he runs and the tears are hot, his face is burning. He doesn’t know where he’s really going, but his feet skid across the street of Ground Beta and it’s deserted, the sun is setting and it’s getting dark. Izuku can see the peek of the moon, the pale light that surrounds it and the glint of stars hidden in the lavender sky.
It makes him press his bloody hands to his cheeks and gasp in attempt to keep in a sob. He keeps running.
He doesn’t know who is doing this — who is forcing the limbs attached to his consciousness to move. He does not feel the ground he is supposedly running on. They are numb. He is numb. He does not feel the air around him. The way it rustles the curls attached to a head—his head. His. Izuku flinches when he feels hair brush over the skin that is attached to him. His skin, his body—not his, can’t be his, doesn’t want it to be his—and he is not in control.
There are knives all over him, they are carving into his sides, branding themselves into the skin over the bones that are his with a burn that Izuku doesn’t feel. His throat scrapes against something rough and jagged when he swallows and something at the back of his mouth splits when he locks his jaw and Izuku’s mouth is full of pennies.
He trembles, his face burns and gets sticky with something that drips from his chin and taps the back of his hands. (Not the fronts. Not his palms. His palms are slick and deep and dirty.)
Izuku doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know where to go from here. He can’t remember. Not all of it. His nails bluntly drag against the deep and dirty, bloody crust covering his palms as both of his feet thud wildly against the ground. He can’t stop scraping. His lips crack when he parts them and he can’t breathe—the air is gone. His chest is heavy, his stomach is grabbed and pinched and twisted and his throat is stinging, stomach is flipping.
He squeezes the pennies between his teeth to swallow the bile back down.
Izuku can only see ash blond hair. Eyes as red—as dark as his palms. Lifeless—they stared into his soul. Izuku is worse than Kacchan ever was to him. He is so much worse.
Izuku digs deeper, scrapes harder. He curls his fingers and pulls, rips at the thin skin on the inside of his hands. He needs to hurt—he needs to bleed.
Something has happened. And Izuku—he is the one who who made it happen. He is the one who made it happen. Something has happened and Izuku has done it.
He runs until he is tripping up small steps.
His hands hit against a hard surface and he is stumbling into Heights Alliance as he chokes. It is quiet except for what is playing on the TV and Izuku is terrified. His chest is rising and falling and he is pulling on his pants and there is no air and he is hollow and there is no air and something has happened and there is no air and—
“Midoriya!” someone shouts. “You’re here! Thank god, man!”
Izuku’s head whips in the direction of the voice and he only sees red before the image is washed away with a fog, a haze, and his face his sticky again and he is trembling as he begins to sob because he is evil.
“Are you alright? What’s going on?”
Izuku’s vision is covered by red and white when he furiously shakes his head, fists pressed to his hot, wet face. When there is a hand on his shoulder, he pulls his own away from his face to push the person — Todoroki — back. He pushes him again, hard.
Todoroki flails, “What—”
“Stay away from me!”
Todoroki steps back, eyes narrowed. “What’s going on?”
Izuku turns his head to where he hears the TV — it’s playing the news and something inside drags him down. His knees dig into the carpet with how hard he falls, his arms curl around his stomach. Izuku’s vision is warped and distorted with the wet, but he can see. He can see even when he shuts his eyes and Izuku wants to gouge them out—he doesn’t want to see, he doesn’t want to see, he does not want to see.
But Izuku does. He sees, he sees, he sees—
Ash blond hair. Eyes as red—as dark as his palms. Lifeless—they stared into his soul. Izuku yanks his arms from where they’re holding his stomach and he lifts his hands to his face and he stares and he sees the red. The blood, all over his pale hands—crusted, the evil staining him, printed into his skin, forever changed forever evil, now now, now forever villainous, Izuku is evil.
Because Izuku is still alive.
Kacchan never killed Izuku.
But Izuku…
Izuku—
“Midoriya. Look at me,” Izuku knows the voice he hears.
The monotone and steady mumble. He knows the large hands that fit around his cheeks almost too perfectly, he knows the contrast of the eyes he is looking into when his face is lifted. But the red of that hair.
The red. Red, red, red eyes. Eyes as red—
“Midoriya.”
Izuku grabs Todoroki’s wrists and wrenches his hands from his face. Then he moves quickly, leans to the side, away from Todoroki, and he vomits. He isn’t fast enough, isn’t far enough away for it not to spill on Todoroki.
“Alright, alright,” Todoroki immediately starts to shift. He tucks Izuku’s curls back and places the heel of his palm between Izuku’s shoulder blades to urge him forward. “Alright, forward, there you go. Don’t fight it.” He twists his body and calls over his shoulder, “I need a bucket, please.”
“I’m sorry,” Izuku shakes his head. His tongue is grimy, mouth is sour and sick as he chokes around his sobs and squeezes his pants. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Todoroki—”
“You’re alright, Midoriya. You’re fine,” Todoroki tells him, quietly He runs a hand up and down Izuku’s back, tugs at his hair gently, soothingly in a way Izuku does not deserve. “Just breathe. You’re alright.”
“No. No, no.”
“Midoriya.”
“I killed him,” Izuku whispers.
The room falls silent. Izuku sees ash blond hair. Eyes as red—as dark as his palms. Lifeless—they stared into his soul.
“I killed Kacchan. Todoroki, I killed Kacchan—I - this wasn’t supposed to happen. I don’t know what I did, I don’t know—”
And then Todoroki sighs. He squeezes Izuku’s shoulder and he looks back at the others. He then says very simply, very quietly, “Tell Aizawa that it happened.”
Izuku vomits again.
Todoroki holds him through it.
Izuku feels nothing.
He is nothing. Izuku sits there, on the floor of the common room, in front of and partly covered in his own puke, as his barely-there consciousness. He is nothing. This is not real. Nothing matters. He has ruined everything. This is not Izuku’s life—he does not have one outside of dark walls and bars. Todoroki is not holding him—villains and murderers do not deserve love, friends. Todoroki does not love him—Izuku and all of his sin, his evil, his stained-crimson self cannot be loved.
Izuku looks down at his hands—the deep, crusted dirt that sits in his palms and taunts him with what has happened, with what he has done—and he could laugh. Izuku does not have a Quirk. Not where he is headed.
Izuku’s life is over. Izuku has done something and something has gone wrong and it has happened and it can never be erased. He cannot fix this—there is no fixing this. There will be no turn of events, Izuku will not get his happy ending. Nothing is fine, nothing will be alright, there is no chance for Izuku in the position he is sitting. Right here, right now, everything around him has burned and Izuku is the one who set the flame to his own city.
“Midoriya. Midoriya.”
Izuku blinks. He turns to Todoroki and there is a huff past his lip, a ghost of a laugh, it is humorless.
“I killed him,” Izuku says, “I…”
“Move,” there is another voice, another person Izuku is staring at. It takes him a moment to register the tired face, the dark eyes and stubble. It’s—Aizawa. “Midoriya.”
“Mr. Aizawa … Mr. Aizawa, I—”
“We need to get you to Recovery Girl,” Aizawa grabs his arm and Izuku shakes his head, pulls away.
“I … Why, why would I go to Recovery Girl?” Izuku murmurs. “I’m not—I’m not hurt. I’m not hurt, God, not me - it’s not me,” Izuku is suddenly crying again. He presses his hands to his face and laughs into his hand, around his sobs, his cries, he — is hollow. Izuku is cold. He wipes his curls out of his face and falls forward, squeezing his fists. “No … No, I’m fine. I’m fine, I’m not hurt, not me,”
“Midoriya. Listen to me.”
“I killed Kacchan—”
“I need you to listen to me and listen well. You were hit by a Quirk, Midoriya.” Aizawa’s hands are on Izuku’s shoulders. They are firm. The grip hurts, but it’s—grounding. Aizawa’s eyes are hard. “Bakugou is fine. You both were hit by—”
“What?” Izuku shakes his head. “No … No, I … He’s—he’s dead. I killed him. I - the blood,” Izuku lifts his hands to stare at his palms. His palms stained with the blood of ... “I watched him die as I kneeled over him—”
“How did you murder him?” Aizawa asks. “What was the weapon? Where? When? What were you doing before that?”
How did … They were in Ground Beta. But Izuku has no idea what they were doing there—what they were doing before that—how they even got there in the first place.
He isn’t sure how it happened. All Izuku knows is red. Kacchan’s eyes—the crimson of them … The color seemed to be everywhere. But …
Izuku swallows. The situation is terrifyingly unclear the more he tries to think about it. It isn’t—his thoughts—aren’t working.
A Quirk?
Aizawa continues.
“This is a Quirk that twists your reality and we need to get you to Recovery Girl immediately, Midoriya. Stand up, let’s get you on your feet.”
“It’s … A Quirk—” Izuku blinks and he allows Aizawa to grip his arm and drag him up to his feet and then—he is reaching to grab onto nothing as his surroundings turn dark.
Izuku is hollow. He is cold. He is nothing.
***
Izuku’s gasps.
There is something wrong.
It is slick and deep and dirty and Izuku is hollow where he is supposed to breathe. His heart has stopped. He is not breathing. The air is still. It is quiet. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This is not right. Something has gone wrong.
Izuku closes his eyes. They are shut and tight for a long time. When they open, there is a pull from his gut. Something burns inside, out. It isn’t big and bright, it does not illuminate the street, his knees are being scraped again. There are no ashes. It fizzes, it simmers, it is low, it is painful. Izuku’s face is more wet than his shaking palms. His fingers curl and he looks at them, turns them over to look at the backs, and he lifts them close to his face. They are trembling. They are weak. They are slick and deep and dirty and Izuku is hollow. He can’t breathe.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
“Kacchan?” he whispers. His knees are scraped even further when he drags himself close, the air is escaping him and he falls forward, fingers pressing, pressing - “Kacchan. Kacchan.”
He traces over the area. There’s blood. Kacchan is still. He is limp. And Izuku’s hands, his palms and fingers and arms — red.
Izuku did this. But this — wasn’t — this wasn’t supposed to happen. He didn’t mean it.
This is not right. Something has gone very wrong. The air around Izuku conjures from the ground, tall and solid. It boxes him in, inches closer with every burn in Izuku’s throat. It keeps him still, keeps him there, forces him to be present and look. It makes sure he cannot move. It forces his eyes to peer through the transparent walls, at what is in front of him. At what he has done.
Izuku is cold. There is a pull. Something stings. And Izuku screams.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
Izuku leaves. He runs until his chest aches and his throat burns.
It is not real. Nothing has happened.
Izuku repeats this as he watches red disappear into the drains, watches as his palms go back to being pale aside from the flush and burn of the scrubbing. His fingers slide over the edges of the sink, when he breathes his messy curls lift half an inch. They tickle his mose and his inhale make his teeth sensitive. He watches his own adams apple when he swallows, winces when his nails split against the sides of the sink from the way he is gripping it.
None of it is real. Nothing has happened. Nothing has happened. Nothing has happened.
(But something has. Something has happened and he thinks—he thinks maybe something is happening. Something is happening. He is missing something—)
“Hey.”
Izuku flinches at the hand on his arm before the voice. He grips the pale wrist and he stares at it. It’s too much. One word, a hardly-there touch, and it’s somehow too much.
“Hey,” the voice says again, softer. Careful.
Izuku watches as his own nails dent Todoroki’s skin. They dig and claw and Todoroki does not move, does not pull his arm away from Izuku. Izuku has to do it himself. So he does. Izuku pulls his bottom lip into his mouth, his breaths are shallow and quick as he stares into the sink. The sink that the red from his palms ran down. Disappeared into the drain. Gone. Like nothing has happened.
A hand slides over Izuku’s shoulder from his side and there’s pressure, a tight grip. Izuku feels all of it with an uncomfortable intensity, something sitting on his stomach from the inside, another thing pulling it done, into his guts, settling it into his intestines. Izuku tightens his face and he breathes to keep in the tears. It doesn’t work.
“What is it?” Todoroki asks, frowning at Izuku through the mirror. He is cautious, eyes are hard but open. “Is it bad again?”
Izuku shakes his head. He doesn’t even know what Todoroki is talking about—doesn’t know what he means by “bad” doesn’t know if Todoroki’s referring to Izuku’s flashbacks, to the thoughts and memories and images he has no choice but to look at—Izuku doesn’t know how to tell Todoroki that it’s bad. That it’s worse than it’s ever been, that it is terrible and nasty and maddening and sick and awful.
“Midoriya.”
“Todoroki, I—” Izuku grips the edges of the sink even tighter. His arms shake and he falls forward and his breath gets stuck in his throat as he chokes around a sob, “Todoroki, I did something awful. I—I messed up. God, I messed up, I don’t even-”
“ … Hmm?”
“It’s bad. It’s really bad.” Izuku pulls his thick snot back into his nose, trembles and exhales a sob, “Something happened to Kacchan. I …”
Todoroki freezes.
And then he sighs, pulling his hand away from Izuku’s shoulder. “This … Again? I thought…”
Izuku doesn’t understand.
He can’t find it in himself to try to understand either because his mind is pulling and breaking and snapping and Izuku is heaving and sobbing into the sink. He can remember it—he remembers it, he remembers what happened. He is cold, he can’t breathe, and Todoroki’s eyes are so piercing and focused on him through their reflections, he feels trapped.
“Midoriya.”
“Todoroki, I don’t know—don’t know what I did—”
“You didn’t do anything,” Todoroki says. He squeezes Izuku’s arm again and tugs him back, away from the sink, muttering, “Midoriya. We have to get you—”
“Can’t, I can’t,” Izuku grabs Todoroki’s arm when he’s turned around completely and shoves his face into Todoroki’s shoulder, tightens his fingers around the thin fabric of Todoroki’s shirt. His legs buckle from under him and he collapses into Todoroki’s arms, gasps into his shirt, “I did it, Todoroki, I—I don’t—I don’t—”
“I’m taking you to Aizawa,” Todoroki mumbles, dragging Izuku up. “Stand up. Come on, you’re alright. It’s a Quirk, you’re okay.”
Aizawa. Right. Todoroki — Todoroki has to tell Mr. Aizawa about what Izuku’s done. Aizawa has to expel Izuku, has to send him to the station — and Izuku’s… Izuku’s life is over. Izuku does not have a life from here on out. He does not have a career, not a future.
Izuku shakes his head, tightening his arms around Todoroki because he still wants it. He still wants to feel Todoroki’s warmth before it’s gone, still wants to be held and hushed and told it’s going to be okay, even if it isn’t, even if he doesn’t deserve it —
“Todoroki,” Izuku says. “Tell me it’s going to be okay. Tell me — tell me it’s fine, tell me it’s okay, say I’ll be okay, please .”
Todoroki is walking. He is holding Izuku, walking arms secured around Izuku warm and safe and everything that Izuku won’t have once —
“It’s a Quirk. You haven’t done anything. You’ll be fine,” Todoroki continues to tell him. And when he gets to Recovery Girl, Aizawa tells him the same thing.
Izuku looks at his hands. He blinks.
“It’s a Quirk?” he asks. And then he looks up —
His knees buckle, he is weightless, he is nothing.
***
Izuku’s heaves.
There is something wrong.
It is slick and deep and dirty and Izuku is hollow where he is supposed to breathe. His heart has stopped. He is not breathing. The air is still. It is quiet. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This is not right. Something has gone wrong.
***
Izuku’s chokes.
There is something wrong.
It is slick and deep and dirty and Izuku is hollow where he is supposed to breathe. His heart has stopped. He is not breathing. The air is still. It is quiet. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This is not right. Something has gone wrong.
***
Izuku’s vomits.
There is something wrong.
It is slick and deep and dirty and Izuku is hollow where he is supposed to breathe. His heart has stopped. He is not breathing. The air is still. It is quiet. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This is not right. Something has gone wrong.
***
Izuku’s throat feels like it is tearing apart as he screams and falls to his knees.
This isn’t right. This isn’t right. This isn’t—
“What’s happening?” he breathes beneath his breath, staring down at Kacchan — his still, limp body. Lifeless and torn and bloodied. Izuku pulls at his chest and he is gasping and sobbing and choking.
“This isn’t real,” he whispers to himself, knuckles still pressed to his exposed chest.
It is slick and deep and dirty and Izuku is hollow where he is supposed to breathe. His heart has stopped. He is not breathing. The air is still. It is quiet. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This is not right. Something has gone wrong.
“This isn’t real,” he whispers as he closes his eyes and counts to ten.
Izuku closes his eyes. They are shut and tight for a long time. When they open, there is a pull from his gut. Something burns inside, out. It isn’t big and bright, it does not illuminate the street, his knees are being scraped again. There are no ashes. It fizzes, it simmers, it is low, it is painful. Izuku’s face is more wet than his shaking palms. His fingers curl and he looks at them, turns them over to look at the backs, and he lifts them close to his face. They are trembling. They are weak. They are slick and deep and dirty and Izuku is hollow. He can’t breathe.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
This isn’t real.
“Kacchan?” he whispers—he can’t stop it, his lips move on their own. His knees are scraped even further when he drags himself close, the air is escaping him and he falls forward, fingers pressing, pressing - “Kacchan. Kacchan.”
He traces over the area. There’s blood. Kacchan is still. He is limp. And Izuku’s hands, his palms and fingers and arms — red.
This is not right. Something is not right. Something has a hold on him.
Wake up.
Wake up.
Wake up.
This is a Quirk.
“What do you know about the Quirk?” he whispers to himself as he runs, his legs are moving fast, the wind rushing against the cuts on his face stings. “What have you gathered? What has Aizawa told you? What do you know?”
This isn’t real.
Izuku stumbles up the steps to Heights Alliance.
Kacchan is okay.
His classmates yell his name as Izuku crashes to his knees with his sobs.
It twists reality.
— Into what?
“What is it?” Todoroki asks him, head tilted to the side. “What did you do, Midoriya?”
“Nothing,” Izuku whispers. No, his hands are clean. Clean of Kacchan’s blood at the very least. He looks at Todoroki. “I’d never do anything to hurt Kacchan.”
Izuku is weightless.
***
Izuku jolts.
“About fucking time.”
Kacchan. When Izuku bolts up, his entire body aches and he doubles over with the immense pain that courses through him—but he keeps his eyes open, teary as they are, to stare back into red eyes.
Lively, fiery, red eyes.
Lively. Lively. Lively.
He sees them and the way they clash sharply with the white of the rest of his surroundings. He can feel the bed, the thin sheets over his skin, the prickle of the IV hooked to his arm.
Is this real? Is this real?
“Hey. Nerd.”
Izuku whips his head around and focuses back on what’s in front of him—close and right there and alive - it is Kacchan. He’s squinting and for once those narrowed eyes and pale lashes aren’t intense, not in the way that pokes like knives beneath Izuku’s skin. The corners of Kacchan’s lips are tugged down. He looks tired.
His eyes burn.
“Kacchan,” Izuku breathes. “Kacchan. You’re okay.”
Kacchan blinks. His shoulders sag. “Right back at you, Deku.”
Oh.
Something in his chest is tearing.
The first time around—at least what Izuku remembers as the first time—Aizawa said that both of them …
That’s why he looks so tired.
“How did you leave?” Izuku whispers.
Kacchan scowls. “How the hell did you?”
“I had to remember for myself that I’d never … I don’t know.” Kacchan raises a brow and Izuku presses his lips. He continues, “I’d never hurt you, Kacchan.”
Kacchan stares at him. And then he’s blinking in the other direction, pulling on the blond hairs at his nape as he exhales through his teeth. “I … Never again. That’s. What I had to fucking remember.”
That thing in Izuku’s chest tears itself apart, tugs and stretches and rips itself into little shreds. But it’s fine.
Kacchan’s eyes are fiery. Lively. It’ll mend itself.
Izuku falls back into the hospital bed and he looks over to the left as the door to the small room opens. It’s Mr. Aizawa. He looks as exhausted as Izuku feels as he runs his fingers through his hair.
“How long?” Izuku asks.
“Five days. For you, at least. Bakugou got out yesterday. Day four.” He practically hisses as he tosses something on a nearby chair. “You’ll be the death of me, you two.”
Izuku sucks in a breath through his teeth as he tilts his head back to look up at the ceiling.
As long as Izuku isn’t the death of Kacchan, he’ll be okay.
“Yeah, yeah,” Kacchan scoffs as he turns on his heel and makes his way back to the seat he was at, arms folded over his chest. He mumbles, “Long as I’m not the death of Deku, I don’t give a shit.”
Izuku exhales and while it’s shaky, his lungs doesn’t burn with it. He holds his hands up to the light and his palms aren’t dark, aren’t crusted in crimson. They’re clean and pale.
This is real.
Nothing is wrong right here.
He’s okay.