“How long,” Melissa asks, “are you going to keep doing this to yourself for?”
Izuku shrugs, shoves away the hollowness in his chest. “I don’t know,” he replies. “What else can I do? I don’t know anything else.”
“You can—” he watches her pause and shake her head on the screen. “You don’t have to retire all at once, you know. You can slow down, a little bit at a time, and give yourself a chance to figure out what you want outside of heroics.”
“See, that’s the problem,” he replies, something blank and numb within him. “I’ve never wanted anything outside of heroics.”
Melissa is far from the first person to tell Izuku that, maybe, it’s time to leave hero work behind him. He’s twenty-eight and can’t remember the last time he went more than maybe a couple months at the most without some new terrifying near-death experience happening. Every time he calls his mom, or visits her apartment, leads to an inevitable argument over his career choices and self-destructive tendencies. He barely has a relationship with her anymore, their bond stretched thin by constant stress and irreconcilable differences. She hates the path he’s chosen for himself, while truly, he could have never chosen anything else.
It's worse with his friends, almost. Shouto is barely around, traveling constantly with his diplomat husband, while Tsuyu’s spent the last several months in South America, working with environmentalists and ecologists to restore parts of the Amazon Rainforest. She’s not the only one out of the country, with Tenya on a trip to Europe to visit Yuuga and Mina while Kyouka’s touring with a band in Russia at the moment.
Things are somehow more strained between him and his friends who are still in the country. He hasn’t seen Ochako in months, when he used to see her every other week. She’s been slowly lightening her heroics workload, taking fewer and fewer hours and dedicated most of her time in-uniform to rescue work.
Actually, he’s the only one still in full-time hero work (more than full time, honestly), since Eijirou’s recently retired.
He and Ochako are the last two holdouts, and soon, it’ll be just him (or just her, if his luck catches up to him before she retires).
Heck, the only person who hasn’t suggested he retire has been Mei, and that’s because their relationship is built around her tinkering with the prosthetic in the place of his right arm and coming up with support equipment for him. But, well, even then, some of the things she’s said…
“If you keep on like this, you might need another surgery before the end of the year. You’re really straining the connection port, see? That’s why you’re having pain issues there.”
Maybe she’s trying to talk him into retirement, in her own way.
But how can he?
Heroics is all he’s ever wanted. A hero is all he thought he would ever be. In middle school, when he’d come so close to giving up, when he’d truly started doubting that he could ever be a hero, he hadn’t been able to see a way forward. He’d been pulled out of that before he could do anything, Toshinori had found him and saved him from himself, but now… Now, he’s twenty-eight and facing the same problem once again.
Who is he, if he’s not a hero? Who is Midoriya Izuku outside of the trappings of heroics?
He doesn’t know, and not knowing who you are is terrifying, so, against all intelligence, all logic, he pulls the jumpsuit on again and sets out again, to patrol, to answer calls for help, to keep himself busy by keeping people safe.
(Even if he knows that’s a lie.)
(Pro Heroics isn’t about keeping people safe, he’s known this and been lying to himself about this for years, since before Shigaraki’s death, since before the end of the war, since before he even left high school.)
(The people in charge of the heroics industry don’t have the peoples’ best interests in mind.)
Another fight leads to another hospital trip leads to another worried lecture from Ochako, leads to another fight with his mom, leads to another video chat with Melissa, who looks at him with sad eyes and keeps helping, keeps supporting him, even as he works on killing himself.
She’s probably the only reason he’s still alive right now, how he’s managed to avoid being killed by one of the many people he’s fought.
It’s not that he wants to die.
He just doesn’t know how to stop.
He doesn’t know how to stop hurting the people around him, or how to stop hurting himself.
It’s not that he wants to die.
He just doesn’t know how to live.
He steps out, dressed in his hero suit, and he thinks, maybe today, it’s finally me. If he has to go, it’s better to go in the line of duty, to die saving people, to die a heroic death. Let the world remember him as a hero, not as a fuckup who doesn’t know how to stop hurting the people he loves.
And yet, somehow, every time, he scrapes by, barely slides past death with no room to spare.
“You can’t keep doing this, Izuku,” Ochako tells him. She stopped calling him Deku outside of work years ago, separating hero persona from civilian identity. Little does she know, the hero persona is all that’s left.
“I know,” he replies, as he always does. He does know. He’ll either quit, or he’ll die, and his money’s on the latter option.
“I can’t keep watching you do this to yourself.” Ochako sighs and looks away, eyes half-lidded as she stares at the wall. The almost-blank wall, the wall of Izuku’s apartment… that he’s left blank, like that, the blank wall in the almost-empty apartment…
He hasn’t had a home in quite some time, he thinks.
“You’re going to kill yourself doing this,” she tells him, voice thickening as tears well up in her eyes. “And… and… I love you, Izuku, I love you so much it hurts sometimes, but… it hurts all the time, now, because you won’t listen, and you won’t quit, and I’m going to have to watch you die.”
What she doesn’t tell him, in this moment, is that she thinks she’s already watched him die, years ago, and it’s just a matter of time before the body and mind follow the soul.
“I’m sorry,” he says. It’s the only thing he knows to say.
“No, you’re not,” she shakes her head, sniffling as she turns away. “You’re not sorry. Sorry people change their behavior, and I know you never will.”
He hasn’t seen her in months, not since that conversation. And now, he finds himself sitting, cross-legged, on his bed, staring down at his phone in one hand, his flesh hand (when was the last time he just spent time with one of his friends? When was the last time he even bothered to call his mom, or to pick up when she called him?), and the bottle of pills in the other, in the metal one, the one taken from, the one he sacrificed years ago.
The longer he waits for his heroic death to happen, the less likely it will be. He knows what his doctors say—if he’s not careful, he’ll end up forcefully retired of an injury, and if he killed himself after that, it would just be pathetic.
(This is pathetic, a little voice that sounds like Kacchan whispers in the back of his head, and he squashes it, mercilessly, because Kacchan is dead and he has no say in this life anymore.)
It’s still suicide, he knows. But he doesn’t know a life outside of heroics, and whether he chooses it or it chooses him, it’s coming.
He’s weak, and a coward, and he’s just running from inevitability.
However, he doesn’t care. He cannot bring himself to. The future is terrifying, the world outside heroics a huge unknown to him.
So, if he’s taking the easy way out, then let him. He’ll hurt his friends, his family, his mother and Ochako and Tenya, he’ll hurt them one last time in one last way and then he’s done. He’ll never hurt them again, because as long as he’s alive, that seems to be all he can do. He’s poison, and everything he touches withers and dies. He’s pain, he’s all sharp edges and shattered glass shards trying to hold themselves together with caustic adhesive.
Once he’s dead, he’ll never be able to hurt them again.
His phone is in his hand, because he’s scrolling through his contact list one last time. It’s been… it’s been so long, too long, since he’s called anyone, since he’s really messaged them. There are still numbers on here, belonging to dead friends, and maybe looking at them and remembering who’s not here isn’t helping, or maybe it is, because the sight of Toshinori’s number is enough for guilt to jab at his heart. Toshinori had looked at him, seen him, trusted him, given him the sacred gift of One For All.
And here he is, throwing it away, along with his life, because he knows he’s the last, some way, somehow, he’s the last to bear it, he is supposed to be the last.
(Perhaps, if he were to pass it on, the power, which he had barely ever been able to control, would be too much.)
(Perhaps there were only ever going to be nine.)
The guilt isn’t enough to stop him, however. If it were, he would have retired much, much sooner, because he’s made of guilt at this point.
When he reaches Tenya’s contact, he almost presses the call button, because he hasn’t heard Tenya’s voice in weeks, not since before he went to France. Even after Ochako stopped talking to him, Tenya never quit, and he’s almost grateful for that.
He stops himself, though, because he does not want to burden Tenya with this. He doesn’t want Tenya to have to deal with being the last person he calls before he kills himself.
He deserves better than that.
The characters blur together as he scrolls back up to the top, and then, thoughts jumping from one train to the next, he tabs over to the group chats, opening up the Class A chat, which has, somehow, remained intact over the years. He hasn’t messaged it in months, maybe even over a year, but he doesn’t know for sure.
Kouji sent the last message in it, a picture of a small child—of Kouji’s child—petting a deer. It was sent a few minutes ago, and a light smile steals its way across Izuku’s lips at the sight.
Maybe he’s delaying, maybe he’s nervous, but he tabs back over to his contacts, and catches sight of one of the first ones, grouped at the top with all his favorite contacts. All these years, and Aizawa’s number is still there, still a favorited contact. Several of his classmates still swing by UA often, to visit their old homeroom teacher, and Izuku used to be one of them.
Briefly, he wonders what happened. Heroics has always been his life, but when did it become the only thing in his life? He used to have friends. He used to get along with his mom.
He used to be a person.
And here he is, a shell of the man he used to be, getting ready to take his own life.
God, he’s pathetic.
And he wonders, for a moment, what everyone will think of him when he’s dead. What will they say? How will they remember him?
And he finds that he doesn’t want to know. Will he be remembered as a coward, as the weakling who would rather take his own life than face a life without his career, or will he be remembered as a hero, as… as someone who saved people, but ultimately was unable to save himself?
He doesn’t know, and he doesn’t want to.
His gaze had found its way to the pill bottle and then back again to his phone as he thought, landing once more upon Aizawa’s contact name. The man always talks about potential, and how challenging it can be, to teach teenagers how to survive as heroes, to teach them how not to self-destruct after they graduate. Izuku must be quite the disappointment to him, self-destructing in this most spectacular fashion. Aizawa has undoubtedly been able to track his decline, been able to pinpoint and see and pick out every moment where Izuku has chosen self-destruction over self-preservation.
Perhaps he is being used as an example, held up and shown to the students as a perfect illustration of what not to be.
Perhaps he’s a warning sign.
Perhaps he’s a train wreck, happening in slow motion.
That thought does not leave him, the thought that he is a disappointment. He is, he absolutely is, he knows this and accepts this.
So why does it strike at him, deep in his core? He’s always been a disappointment, so why is he… why is he getting upset about this now?
And maybe… maybe, he realizes, it’s upsetting because now, it’s all he ever will be. He will only be the disappointment who hurt his friends until his dying breath.
On its own, that is not enough to convince him that maybe he shouldn’t kill himself. But that, combined with his innate, selfish desire to see his friends, to talk to them, because he misses them and he just… he just wants to see them again, even though all he can do is hurt them… He wants to talk to his mom, he wants to hug her again, and not rehash their argument for the hundred millionth time.
And the final, ultimate addition: he remembers his time in high school. He remembers Aizawa, as a teacher, as the first teacher to pay attention to Izuku, as one of the few teachers to give Izuku the time of day, to look out for him, to truly help him.
“I am here to help you be the best you can be,” Aizawa had once said, one afternoon, to a sixteen-year-old Izuku. “Whether that’s as a hero or not. I’m your teacher. I’m here to help you.”
And he’s even kept that promise after graduation, although Izuku hasn’t asked him to, yet. But his classmates… his friends… they talk, and he sees them talk, sees messages in the group chat about ways Aizawa’s continued to help…
It’s a combination of all those factors, and then some, that has him pressing the call button and holding the phone to his ear. Something snaps and shatters in his chest, the trappings of apathy falling away from him and letting pain takes its place.
He’s crying by the time Aizawa answers.
“I need help,” he says, stuttering the words out between sobs. “I need help, please. I don’t—”
The pills are still in his hand, matte black fingers wrapped around the white plastic bottle.
He doesn’t want to hold this anymore, and he sets the bottle down.
“I need help,” he whispers, repeating himself.
“Where are you?” Aizawa asks, despite the fact that it’s almost three in the morning and he was absolutely just woken up from a dead sleep. “What do you need help with?”
“My apartment,” Izuku replies, screwing his eyes closed as the gravity of what he almost just did begins to finally collapse onto him. It presses him down, bending his spine, as he curls into the vacuum of space that seems to be manifesting in his chest, his chin dropping down to his breastbone. “I, I think—I think I just. I think I just almost killed myself.”
“Stay on the phone,” Aizawa orders. It’s still familiar, even if it’s been years since he was in the man’s class.
“Okay.” His voice cracks and breaks, but that’s normal, that’s because he’s crying, for what feels like the first time in years (and it is the first time in months). “I can do that.”