Archive of Our Own ^beta

It isn’t a new thought, it’s something he’d lived with for years. It started off as a seed, planted into his mind at only four years old along with his quirkless diagnosis. The hard protective layer of that seed then cracked open when his father left, leaving a small lush green sprout in his wake. When Kacchan first started calling him Deku, Dekunoubu, useless, that sprout was watered and every insult, bruise, burn, and thoughtless apology continued to drench the poor thing in water; however, unlike most plants, the seed didn’t suffer. Instead it flourished, it took root in his mind and as the beautiful greens grew taller they brought life to bright red petals but the good it made, the determination that filled him with was a double-sided coin. Those once small roots overtook his brain to support the life above it and at only nine years old those roots showed their purpose in a single thought.

Everyone would be happier if I was gone.

It started off small like that, every time Kacchan screamed at him for getting too close, every time his mom sighed at his requests he’d think, you ruin their lives. 

Still, the plant was a double-sided coin and while the roots were ever-present they stayed in the background (spreading, sucking life and energy from everything they touch). Meanwhile, the bright greens and reds filled him with life and determination and he put it all into his dream, into becoming a hero. Notebooks and pencils, computer screens and long walks, he started trying to understand what he did not have, he began to analyze quirks. What was at first a tool to help him become a hero, a quirkless hero, became a hobby, his passion, his life. His little notebooks were his escape and he loved every second of it, that is until they too became tainted by the world. 

Creepy.

Weirdo.

Stalker.

Villain.

His classmates thought he was jealous, they claimed he wanted to take their quirks or their lives due to it. It wasn’t true but that didn’t make the whispers stop and it didn’t stop the chanting of the roots.

You scare everyone, you’re a creep. Everyone would feel safer if you were dead.

Dead was a new word, before the roots would tell him to be gone, to disappear but now they call him somewhere more permanent. That permanence, that line of thinking scared Izuku so despite the whispers he dove further into his notebooks, always found nose deep in one, scared if he looked away the roots would take control and he’d do something he wouldn’t even be able to regret. Life always did have a thing against Izuku though so the one day his paper shield is ripped from his hands he’s hit with a devastating blow.

“Take a swan dive off the roof of the building and pray for a quirk in your next life!”

Kacchan, his first and last friend, his oldest and worst bully finally crossed the line he’d been toeing for years and he didn’t just cross it, he lept. His other classmates had joked and taunted and left out-of-place flowers on his desk but even they had never told Izuku to explicitly kill himself. Kacchan was always an overachiever though so even when telling someone to take their own life he went the extra mile and gave steps to take.

The loss of his comfort and the words echoing in his mind caused his roots to pulsate. Once again the plant was watered, he thinks as he reaches into the koi pond, retrieving his ruined notebook. It’s hard, getting his legs to move on a path home instead of up a dozen flights of stairs but he’s able to do it and he makes it all the way to the underpass before he’s stopped not by his tired soul or deep-rooted thoughts but by a villain made out of sludge. It engulfs him and while his little flower soaks up liquid he drowns in it.

It’s what he’d thought of for years but he’s scared. He doesn’t want to die, he just doesn’t want to live. They are different, so so different and he’s scared. He can barely comprehend something new happening around him before he finally succumbs to the loss of oxygen. He’s not sure he’s lucky or unlucky that he awakens again but at the very least he’s awoken by the number one hero, his lifelong idol, tapping his face. For the first time in years it's not his roots that scream for action it’s his flower. All Might says something but Izuku’s mind is still fuzzy though he does understand that the hero is trying to leave which Izuku can’t let happen, not when he has such a burning question to ask so he grabs onto the man and his flower shines.

They land “take a swan dive off the roof” and Izuku asks his question. He doesn’t like the answer, doesn’t like the withering man that replaces his idol or the hole in his side. “It’s good to dream, kid, just make sure those dreams are attainable, realistic.” Callous words linger in the air long after the hero has left. The words knock around in his head, each repetition wilting the flower that used to be so strong. It’s not all at once but the longer he stays up on that roof where his favorite hero left him the more he has time to think and the more he realizes that while he doesn’t want to die he can’t force himself to walk anywhere but forward.

His flower that gave him the life to become a hero was dead thanks to every person in his life doubting the only thing it craved.

His mom whispered it.

Kacchan screamed it.

His classmates sang it.

His teachers mocked it.

The number one hero professed it.

Midoriya Izuku was never meant to be a hero, but as he stands on the ledge of whatever building he’d been left on, the weight of his backpack (the weight of his life) off his shoulders he breathes for the first time in what feels like years. Chunky red shoes stand alone as Izuku thinks maybe, just maybe there is something else he can do that may not save anyone but would make everyone’s lives better.

“God.” Kick

“fucking.” Kick

“damn it!” Crack

“You really are.” Kick

“just a useless!” Crack

“worthless!” Kick

“Deku!” Snap

The boy takes a clean, translucent hand and grabs a handful of hair that used to be green, now it’s just red, it’s all so red. 

“They were all right, how could you be a hero when you couldn’t even kill yourself right?!” Izuku screams into his own blank and slightly deformed face. He drops the soaked hair and lets his head fall back to the ground with a sickening squelch because while his face was well enough preserved the backside of his head was much less intact than it had been not five minutes before.

He feels like he should be disgusted looking at his own dead body and he is but not in the way that makes him think he’ll lose the little lunch he had that day but in the way every other person who knew looked at him.

Pathetic

Useless

Worthless 

Deku

Izuku has never been one to feel anger, most emotion had fizzled out, replaced by an empty feeling caused by roots that had grown around and dug into his heart. However, those roots were gone now with the rest of his physical body (because that’s a differentiation he has to make now) and with this freedom Izuku could finally feel more than just hollow and right now that freedom to feel allowed him to be filled with burning rage.

With a snear plastered on his face, Izuku puts a foot on the side of his face and grounds it, he deserves this anger after everything he’s been through, especially because now it’s all for not because Izuku isn’t stupid; he’s actually really smart so he does understand he did die (there’s too much blood and damage for any other explanation) but that he’s not gone. He could just think ghosts were real and he’d become one but as his head moves until the weight of his translucent foot he knows that can’t be the explanation because there is no way they wouldn’t know ghosts were real if they were able to interact with the living world. Izuku is dead but he’s not a ghost. Izuku is dead and he knows quirks like the back of his hand. Izuku killed himself because he was quirkless and now Izuku has a quirk. The anger quickly begins to waver and he desperately tries to hold onto it in fear of being lost to the dark again so he grits his teeth and spits, “Why won’t you just die already?”

Before he can continue (not that he knew what he was going to do next) Izuku hears a whistle of wind and looks down the alley to see something whipping towards him. “Hey!” the figure barrels toward him, not once touching the ground. Instead, they move through the air with the help of thin white bandages (a capture weapon, his mind supplies as red eyes pierce through the dark).

If Izuku learned anything in his recently ended life it was when to run and with the most notorious underground hero coming straight for him with an angry snarl it like one of those times so Izuku does what Izuku does best. He runs.

Most kids understandably don’t know what an underground hero is but those that do know of them would say they’re dark figures who hop rooftops in the dead of night and take out small-time thugs, hell even most adults think that’s all there is to underground heroics. In reality, while underground heroes do patrol at night they actually more often are used on raids for organized crime, although with a stable number one hero and symbol of peace, organized crime is at an all time low in Japan. Plus  roof hopping is not a sustainable form of transportation. If Shota needs to get somewhere fast he’ll head up but otherwise he and most other heroes stick to the streets for normal patrols which is how he hears it. 

At first it doesn’t sound like much, just muted talking but as he cautiously approaches the origin the muted voice turns into yelling with flesh hitting flesh being background noise to the words. From the sound alone, he’d guess it’s a beat down, not a fight. With that conclusion drawn Shouta begins to run towards the growing sounds which become clearer the closer he gets.

“-eku!” The voice shouts, followed by a sickening crunch. Then just a bit quieter the person adds something that turns his blood to ice. “They were all right, how could you be a hero when you couldn’t even kill yourself right?!” A heavy and hard slam of what he can only assume is a body hitting something, another person, a wall, the ground he doesn’t know.

Hurrying his pace drastically, Shouta turns the corner to a dark alleyway and halts. There about halfway between himself and the other end of the road is a short person who emits an ethereal glow from their partially see-through body. The person, a young boy from the looks of it, has messy locks of hair although the colors are muted and the alley is dark so he can't differentiate anything else. The boy then looks at whoever lays motionless at his feet, really looks at them and says “Why won’t you just die already,” in a tone so soft it disturbs him deeper than anything he’d already seen. That disturbance is what finally allows Shouta to snap out of his quick haze and dash toward the pair before things could escalate any further.

”Hey!” He shouts to get the kid’s attention, the kid who quickly looks toward him and gives a breathy curse before turning on his heel and booking it out of the alleyway. It’s annoying but Shouta resolves to catch the kid later and instead turns his attention to the victim laying in an unmoving heap on the group. With an exhausted breath taken to prepare for the worst Shouta grabs the flashlight from his utility belt but stops suddenly as his boot contents to the pavement with a wet squelch. Quicker now, he grabs the light and clicks it on, pointing it down to the body, because with their head a bit too flat on the sidewalk and blood and bits of brain splayed out on the concrete around them he knows it can only be a body. The body is far too small and definitely belongs to another kid because they’re wearing a fucking middle school uniform, a blood soaked uniform but that doesn’t matter because this kid will never have to use it again.

Shouta forces himself to shut down that train of thought, at least until he’s dealt with the situation so he forces on his mask of indifference and focuses his energy on calling in the death - the murder. After that he takes another deep breath in and out before he returns to staring at the young life taken much too early and thinks-

“Why is the world so cruel?”