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The snow was no longer white; blood had stained it a dark shade of red. The horror and gore of the view was forceful upon the boy's weary green eyes, but then again so enticingly beautiful that he could not look away. Darkness slowly began to pool into his eyes, clouding his vision, but he still remained entranced by the scene before him.
Sounds had long since faded around him, the only one still present was the heavy thunk of metal on flesh. The sickening crunch still echoed through his mind, though he was sure the sounds must have stopped by now- the limp body before him had been brutalised past the point of recognition.
The boy - Izuku Midoriya - stared at the blood oozing from the carcass that used to be his teacher, which was now being pulled away by the barbaric assailant. It left a trail of crimson, painting a picture of defeat in the canvas of snow that spread around them for seemingly miles. Izuku knew that he should do something; he had to do something, but when he urged his legs to move they stayed locked in place, frozen to the very spot his teacher had left him, telling the boy to stay put.
The memory was beginning to grow fuzzy in his mind, but he grasped for it, not allowing himself to forget the final smile Aizawa had left with him before running into his eventual doom. He pictured his face: the fuzzy stubble on his chin, the deep brown eyes and unruly black hair, before silently adding his face to the part of his mind where only his most precious memories went, so that he could never forget them. He already had several other peoples' visages stored there, those who he would never see again, and he had vowed to never forget them, their names and their faces. Izuku took comfort in repeating them to himself, tugging on his matted green hair and twisting it around his fingers so hard he almost pulled it out as he spoke.
“Tsuyu Asui. Nejire Hado. Mina Ashido. Mei Hatsume. Yuga Aoyama. Uraraka Ochako.”
The boy paused, not wanting to continue, wanting to remain in denial a little longer, begging the world to let him reject reality for a while more, but the struggle was a feeble one, for when he once again focused on the ruby snow, reality came crashing down once more.
“Shōta Aizawa.”
He had paused for only 10 seconds, but it had felt like an eternity to him.
Izuku almost cried then. He hadn't cried since the outbreak had started, had tried to stay strong when, one by one, his friends began to turn on eachother, had stayed strong when the disease infected Uraraka and Shoto, had stayed strong even after being forced to murder Uraraka after she had tried to kill him under the influence of the vicious disease.
It had all started right after the war; they thought they could finally have peace, could finally live freely. They were so, so wrong, because what the heroes hadn't realized was that ‘All for One‘ had a secret backup plan, and that he would rather see the end of the entirety of humanity, even at the cost of himself, if it could prevent the heroes winning. In one of his underground laboratories, he had managed to create a mutation quirk, and when combined with several other quirks and somehow engineered into a disease, was released on mankind.
The disease was horrific - making friends and family turn against each other, filling their hearts with only hatred until it built up so much it overflowed into barbarity, turning the once good people into nothing better than a rabid animal, brutalizing anything that may cross their paths.
Humanity had fallen apart soon after the first outbreak. Aizawa had tried to save them, he had tried so, so hard. It worked, for a few days at least. Izuku recalled the first day after the outbreak, when the entirety of his class had been alive and well, barricaded safely in the classroom. One particular memory came to mind, the nostalgia somehow making the pain even worse.
Izuku stared out the barricaded window, watching the tiny flakes of snow weave their way through the labyrinth of branches and leaves before settling on the ground. The stars were extra bright that night, as if they had been waiting for that night to let out their true shine.
“If the world is going to end, it may as well be pretty, right?”
Izuku was startled to see a blonde haired boy sitting beside him, watching the night sky despite somehow seeming as though he was not really seeing it.
“Kachan? What are you doing awake? Everyone else is fast asleep!”
“I could ask you the same question, nerd,” the blonde said, turning to face izuku, his light hair contrasting with the dark sky perfectly, and the stars highlighting the top of his head, almost making him seem like he had a halo. Despite the angry phrasing, the words were empty; there was no emotion behind them, which izuku had grown used to after being around katsuki for so long.
“Oh yeah, I guess I am.” They descended into comfortable silence for a few moments, before izuku went to speak again.
“Do you really think the world is ending?”
Katsuki chuckled.
“Hasn’t it already? Look out the window, through the snow. There are bodies littering the streets. People are running around like mad men. Of course the world is ending.” The blonde spoke softly, but that didn’t make the impact of his words any less.
“…
Will we die?
I don’t want to die, Kachan , not yet.”
Katsuki looked sadly at Izuku, his gaze unwavering, before he quickly glanced down at his hands guiltily.
“We’ll be fine ‘zuku, I’m sure. But… but you’ve gotta promise me something ok? Please?”
Izuku nodded suspiciously; Katsuki never said please.
“If - if I become like- like them… You have to kill me.”
“NO.” Izuku half shouted, before lowering his voice to a lower volume, remembering the others were sleeping. “No. I- I can’t do that. You know I can’t do that. Don’t make me do that Kachan. Please don’t ask me to do that!” Izuku started to shake, reaching his hand towards Katsuki but flinching back before touching him, instead bringing his hand up to tug at his Green locks.
Katsuki winced, as if the almost-touch had burned him, and desperately grabbing at izukus wrist.
“Listen to me, I can’t become one of them, I can’t- I-I’m sorry for being selfish and asking this of you but - you're the only one I want to kill me. You're the only one. You always have been - if I ended up killing you while infected I would never be able to forgive myself, my very soul would crumple in on itself and die. Please- I- I need you to promise this. ”
Izuku didn’t cry, but he could feel his heart breaking. He knew that if he even ever so slightly harmed the blonde, he would nerve be able to mentally recover, but in the end he could never say no to Katsuki; he never had been able to ever since they were young, when Izuku had decided to follow the bratty, overconfident child around and worship him like he was a god. Izuku knew that, in the end, he would do anything for Katsuki, even if it meant breaking himself in the process.
“Okay.” He whispered into the fading light as a cloud blanketed the starry night sky, causing the room to descend into darkness.
He wondered if he had agreed too easily.
After that, everything pretty much went to shit. Somehow, Uraraka and Todoroki had become infected. 5 students had been murdered by Uraraka, while Todoroki had summoned up his last bit of free will to launch himself out of the window upon discovering he was infected. Izuku had to kill Uraraka with his own hands, and it had hurt him more than he could have ever imagined; he missed her, she was his best friend. For many nights afterwards he woke up in cold sweats dreaming of her blood on his hands and screams of the fallen students in his ear.
Aizawa had been wounded badly, but had still tried his best to save them. He had taken them all to a shack in the middle of nowhere, away from the virus where, supposedly, they could be safe.
They had been fine for a few days, happy even. It was hard without their families, but they all had each other, at least. Every night izuku would play cards with Kirishma, Jiro and Momo, and then he would go stargazing with katsuki; they had always liked stargazing when they were kids, and ever since the beginning of the outbreak, the stars had been extra bright. Perhaps they were trying to make up for the horrors of the world with their incredible beauty, Izuku had suggested. Katsuki had snorted, lacing his voice with sarcasm as he replied in agreement. The two of them had laughed up at the sky, cherishing what little happiness they could grasp.
But they couldn’t stay hidden forever. Eventually, someone found them. Izuku could hear him before he arrived, and could feel the forest that was situated beside the shack scream as the monster of a person left a path of destruction through the middle of it. That day, the snow had been extra heavy, so izuku and aizawa had gone to collect more firewood, meaning that they were out there alone. Aizawa had told Izuku to hide in the roots of a tree, and not to come out no matter what - his quirk was already weakening after the war, slowly losing its last embers.
That was when he learned what the latter stages of the infection look like.
Endeavour's face was half rotted, his jaw hanging loosely below his mouth. His skin had begun to decay in places, shiny red muscle showing through. Izuku almost wretched at the very sight of him - he was oh so grotesque. He wondered if this was how real life zombies looked, if maybe it wasn’t just a disease outbreak, but instead a zombie apocalypse. Was endeavor even still alive, or had his anger and hatred consumed him from the inside out?
However, the only thing he could think about was how Todoroki would feel about seeing his father like this. But then he realized that Todoroki might not even be able to think, not after he launched himself out that window. Izuku never had the time to mourn, and didn't even know if he was dead.
He would have mourned for a little longer, if it hadn’t been for the loud sound that he heard, giving the impression of a mixture between a thunk and a squelch.
Looking up, it took him a moment to process what he saw.
He hadn't realized earlier, but endeavor had been carrying a large metal shovel, which he was now holding above his head, ready to swing a second time.
Aizawa was on the floor, blood oozing from the reopened wound in his stomach - the stitches must have burst after he was bludgeoned with the shovel.
Izuku wanted to shout a warning to his teacher, but found his body was frozen to the spot, and he could only watch as the shovel was raised high above his head.
The shovel fell with a sickening crunch onto his skull. Izuku swallowed down his horror, materializing in vomit form which he begrudgingly forced back down his throat. He thought it would stop there, that the endeavor-zombie-hybrid would leave his teacher carcass alone, but it didn’t leave it there, and continued to hit izuku's teachers concaved skull again and again and again and again.
The thunk echoed in the boy's mind eternally.
Frozen in shock, the boy crouched in the snow, watching as Aizawa's body was dragged away by the stumbling monster called endeavor.
Izuku didn’t know how long he just sat there for, but by the time he got up, his hands and fingers had gone sickenly blue. He stumbled back to the cabin, not even noticing the pain as tears swelled in his eyes.
He tried not to cry.
As soon as he approached the cabin he knew something was wrong. He couldn’t see well in the setting sun, but he noticed that about half of the windows were cracked and the light bulb was flickering eerily. Horror crawled its way up into his stomach, winding around his gut and squeezing.
The green haired boy approached slowly, wearily as he tried to weave together the last embers of one for all that he had. The door hung open on its hinges, and he slowly nudged it open, eyes widening at the carnage inside.
The remnants of scorched bodies littered the floor, all twisted in unhealthy ways, as if they had been writhing in agony. A figure was wedged in the corner, as though it had tried to back away, tried to escape its fate before inevitably failing. He recognised Momos necklace and choked back a sob as she saw her body clinging onto one shaped rather similarly to jiro’s.
As he was taking in the slaughter before him, he heard a rustle besides him and spun around just in time to block a punch from katsuki, whose face was contorted in such a look of wild anger he had never seen such intense hatred before, and whose hair was caked in blood and soot.
“Kachan…?”
The blondes' eyes seemed to focus a little, the anger in them lessening.
“‘Zuku?” He whispered in horror, the realization slowly dawning on him as his face rapidly changed back and forth from intense anger to overwhelming fear.
“I - What happened?”
“Zuku- you- you need to kill me. KILL ME!” He screamed in urgency as his hands began to twitch, desperately fighting the animalistic urge to tear the Green haired boy's throat from his body.
“I CANT KACHAN! How can you expect me to do that!? How can I do that to you? I- I-“ izuku couldn’t finish as tears finally began to form in his eyes, streaming down his cheeks.
Katsuki gave him a look that meant a thousand words. A look that told him of the stars and the sea, of the earth and the sun and of the past and the future that they were once promised. “Please, ‘zuku.” Katsuki whispered in a soft, tender voice, roughly pressing a long shard of glass into izuku's hand.
Izuku simply nodded as tears streamed down his face, pushing katsuki out the door and onto the white snow. He knew they would both prefer to die under the stars, the same way they had always lived under them.
“We can go together.” Izuku smiled. He discovered he was more sure of that than he had been of anything in the last few days. Katsuki made a sound to object, but he saw how sure the Green haired boy was, and how sincere his eyes were, and realized there would be no convincing him. He could feel a both familiar and unfamiliar rage trying to overpowering him, though he suppressed it as much as he could.
“Quickly. Please.” He hissed, digging his fingers into Izuku's arm. Izuku stared for a second, before pulling him into a tight embrace. The blonde didn’t even realize the sharp pain through his abdomen at first, before the warmth of the other boy's hug began to wear off. It was a clean impalement, straight through both of their stomachs and slightly puncturing katsukis abdomen.
Izuku yanked the shard out with a hiss, and the both collapsed next to each other on the white powdery ground.
“Was it worth it, do you think, Kachan?” “Was what worth it?”
“The stars being pretty - was it worth the world ending?”
Katsuki paused for a moment, as if in dead thought, before slowly breathing out. “Nah.”
Izuku chuckled for a moment before turning to stare at the blonde as the edges of his vision slowly went black.
“The stars are very pretty tonight, at least.”
Katsuki smiled back at him.
“Yeah. They are.”
Two pools of crimson blood slowly expanded across the white snow, merging under the stars.