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It was going to take very long. Typically, by this method, it takes five minutes tops based on how shallow he makes the wound. Today, Izuku wants it to be quick. Today, Izuku wants to be enveloped in the darkness.
He wants to be rid of the brain fog.
He said something he wishes he could take back. It wasn’t in anger, or even something inherently mean, but the look of shock he got from Shinsou was one that instantly made Izuku want to apologize.
Izuku had said it so coldly and plainly. He should’ve at least had the mind to add at least some kind of emotion rather than have him sound like he was apathetic to suicide. He was just explaining the statistics.
It’s not like Izuku doesn't have enough experience with it either.
If today all goes as planned, this will be his seventy-fourth suicide. He can’t really say it was an attempt. He knows that whatever he does to himself, he does, in fact, pass away. It’s just a matter of time until his body miraculously revives itself.
The first time he took his own life and Izuku woke up, he thought it was some cruel joke. Realistically, Izuku knew he couldn’t have survived the overdose. He fact-checked it time and time again to make sure he succeeded, to make sure that even if he got his stomach pumped, he wouldn’t be able to be revived. He planned this death with the utmost precision. He did so in a meticulous manner with everything planned out without failing anywhere. He accounted for everything.
However, he didn’t account for a death quirk. In the first case, he woke up on his bed surrounded by his vomit and feeling sluggish. Otherwise, his previous cuts from the day before were healed without any explanation and had minimal scarring.
At first, he was confused. Had death just brought him to the same world? Was he just a ghost now? But when he entered the kitchen, his mother greeted him with the smell of miso soup along with a smile.
This had disproved that he was dead.
He should’ve died. There was no way that he could’ve lived through his overdose. Izuku knew then that he had discovered a hidden quirk.
Then, he was in awe. He had finally gotten a quirk. The one thing he had been craving his whole life aside from becoming a hero had been granted.
Then it dawned on him. It was a quirk that would restrict him from being freed to his death, to be freed into a paradise. He should’ve been dead.
He wishes he were dead.
His second death wasn’t even four hours later by jumping off the highest roof in Musutafu.
He woke up.
Now, here Izuku was with his handy razor that has helped him cope throughout the past four years of his life. Even if he couldn’t die, it didn’t mean he couldn’t feel pain and suffer through his own means.
Self-harm wasn’t always an item in his mind. There wasn’t much to lure him to use it. He had been in pain from the constant bullying and harassment his entire life, why would he choose to make himself suffer more? It didn’t make sense to him. It wasn’t logical to put himself in more pain when he already had enough in his life.
With his adventures of killing himself, he learned the peace of slicing his skin open and watching as the lovely crimson rolled down his pale skin.
He felt free then, so he decided to do it some more.
Here Izuku sat in his ensuite bathtub in his dorm with the lights off and his razor in his hand. As of late, Izuku hadn’t been killing himself often. There was never really a reason to anymore. He had a quirk aside from his immortality quirk that was powerful and strong that basically guaranteed that he’d become a hero, a strong one too. He’d practically become a new All Might! He became the successor to his long-time idol and had his support. He had actual friends now. He was no longer bullied and pushed down the stairs. He wasn’t in constant fear from just entering a classroom or walking down a hallway.
That excluded the times when living and dealing with the stress became too much. When his failures and inadequacies became too much of a burden to him, like after the USJ incident and he watched his sensei get pummelled into the ground repeatedly, all Izuku was able to do was gawk with his eyes and mouth wide open while his teacher suffered. He couldn’t move then. He failed to help his teacher, let alone save him.
Izuku had to repent for that, so he killed himself when he arrived home after Recovery Girl let him go from her infirmary.
This excluded the days following All Might’s retirement after the summer camp attack. After Kacchan was kidnapped. After Izuku and his friends went to save kacchan and retrieved him, Izuku went home to his mother and killed himself that night.
All Might was no longer a hero.
All For One was in Tartarus.
Shigaraki and co. were running amok without any ideas of their whereabouts.
Izuku wasn’t enough and he needed to pay the price for being nothing more than a useless Deku.
Izuku leaned his head back against the cool tiles of the bathroom, taking in a sharp breath. He needed to go blank, even if it was for only a few minutes before he miraculously woke up again. He needed to start over. Maybe when he was finished here, he could get the gall to apologize to Shinsou for being so stone-hearted when talking about the topic. Maybe he could excuse himself by trying to say that the topic was generally rough to talk about so he tried to sound more detached so as to not feel as saddened. It was a lame and frankly, a pretty terrible excuse, but Izuku could see why Shinsou was so off put by Izuku’s response about the statistics. Maybe he could bring up how he was bringing up facts and was trying to recite it as to the reason why he sounded so cold. That sounded slightly more believable.
His gaze from the ceiling fell to his scarred arms. Whether the scars from surgery or from the many self-inflicted wounds he found, he was prepared to cut. Holding the blade firmly in his hand, he pushed through his delicate skin.
It’s funny how the skin is supposed to be a protective layer for the body, yet it’s so easy to break through to get to the most vital parts of the body. Here Izuku lay, slicing the veins of his body to end his life once again. Here Izuku lay, dying.
Fading into the black was something Izuku longed to see. It’s something he desperately wanted to hold onto a remain there. It was the moments before the black took over that Izuku truly felt at peace. He could no longer feel the stinging of his wrists and forearm and blood seeped through his gaping skin. He felt weightless and blissful. His vision swam and was clouded over. He realized there was no reason for light when he dies. There’s no way to see the light when death washes over him. When the sides of his vision are swept away to fuzzy blurs, Izuku smiles.
The last part of his consciousness to go is his hearing. It’s spotty, but still active until his last moments.
He recalled the time he died with heavy commotion going on around him. That time was asphyxiation. The noise of the crowd didn’t fade out, just kept cutting out more and more frequently until it completely disappeared -when Izuku died.
His last sense to go is always his hearing, which is why he can faintly hear the rapid knocking at his bedroom door.
He so badly wants to yell, give me five minutes, but Izuku is weak due to most of his blood flowing down the drain.
Hearing no answer from the boy inside his room, the knocking somehow gets louder, more frantic. Izuku can’t imagine why. He hadn’t scheduled anything with his friends, he checked before he started his death.
Izuku also doesn’t know why the knocking persists or how he can hear it pretty clearly from where he is.
It’s a few moments later when he hears a deep voice calling his name.
Izuku wants them to leave, so he can die peacefully just for a few minutes.
Then he hears the knocking turn to pounding and how his hearing starts to fail him more. It cuts out every three or four batterings of his door. There’s another voice accompanying the deepest one. Izuku can’t quite place it or make out their words.
His world is fading and his smile is slipping.
He thinks the door breaks down to the incessant knocking. He can’t see. He’s numb to any vibrations that would give it away. He can barely hear over the deafening noise of death coming for him.
Before his heart beats for the last time preceding his seventy-fourth death, he hears voices next to him, frantic, panicked voices.
He wants to tell them to look away, that he’d be okay in just a few minutes.
In his last moment, he dreads telling the two next to him the truth.
He dies for the first time next to two people who have tears rolling down their faces, clutching his shoulders, begging for him to return.
He dies just to come back minutes later.
He wishes he could go back to the darkness.
Izuku doesn’t want to wake up.