“Thank you for getting me into your schedule so soon.” Izuku finds himself sitting cross-legged on the bed in the room he’s been staying in, laptop on his lap and headphones on. He has the curtains open, letting light in and keeping the room from seeming too cave-like. It’s half a miracle, what something as simple as opening the curtains can do for your mood. Yeah, he’s still tired, and the same general dread he’s been living with for the past few years is still gnawing at him, but with the curtains open, he feels a lot less like he just wants to curl up and stop existing.
He’s just begun a video session with Dr. Mori Hanae, experienced psychologist serving the Pro Hero community. For a couple years, in his early twenties, he saw her regularly, and now he’s back.
“Of course,” she replies, a smile shining easy on her face. There’s laugh lines around her mouth and crowfeet by her eyes, and her brilliant red hair is shot through with steel grey. “I’ve been lightening my load a bit as I get ready for retirement, so I had a lot of open space I could fit you into. Now. You sent me… quite the lengthy email, so we have a few jumping-off points today. But first, in your words: how are you feeling today?”
He huffs, lips twisting into a wry smile. His least-favorite therapy question, back again.
“Like shit,” he replies. “It’s—there’s a lot going on.”
“I imagine so.” Dr. Mori nods. “You want to talk about it?”
Shaking his head, he rolls his eyes. “That’s kind of the point of therapy, isn’t it?”
“That’s true, but you already know that you’re free to decline any question you’re not ready to address.”
He does, and he has in the past, although he’s always done his best to answer the questions as they’re presented. The reason he’s doing this is so he can work on this stuff, not put off working on it, although… sometimes, he does have to shelve things for a later day because he just… the spot they poke at is just too sensitive, still.
“Yeah, I know,” he replies, nodding. His hand is running back and forth over the blanket, the texture tingling in his skin. The repeated motion helps him think, most of the time, like it’s lubricating the gears in his brain. “I… well, I did almost kill myself on Thursday morning, so there’s that. I’ve taken the past four days off work, and today will be the fifth, which means this will be the longest amount of time I’ve taken off work that isn’t the direct result of illness or injury in…” He can’t even come up with an accurate length of time. “…Years.”
“Now, I have to ask for official reasons, you’re currently safe?” There is a measure of genuine concern in her expression, Izuku thinks, as he nods.
“Yeah. I’m currently staying with. Uh. My dead almost-fiancé’s family, who also happen to be people I’ve known since high school, two of whom were my teachers and one of whom is basically my surrogate little sister, which sounds pretty odd when I say it out loud.”
Dr. Mori shrugs. “Whatever works,” she replies. “As long as it’s a safe and healthy situation.”
“It is,” he replies, nodding.
He watches her lean over to make a note of something, before she straightens back up, sitting back in her chair and briefly reaching up to adjust her glasses.
“Alright, time to get to the meat of things,” she says. “What do you want out of therapy, this time? You mentioned a few things in your email, and I asked you to think about it a bit, too, so let’s figure it out right now: what are your goals?”
He breathes deep, spine straightening so he breathes deeper, feels his lungs press against his ribcage as he inhales, and sighs, letting some of the tension drain from his body along with the air he exhales.
“Well,” he begins, and pauses, tilting his head, his hand lifting away from the blanket so he can wind a lock of hair around his index finger. “I just… I… I want to be…”
I want to be healthy, he wants to say, and maybe that’s part of the truth, but speaking it right now feels like a lie. He doesn’t want to lie. He can’t say that he’s honest by nature, or that he’s not a liar, because he grew up while lying constantly, to both the person closest to him and himself.
That kind of thing sticks with you. And while he’s not an honest person, lying right now will get him nowhere, will get him nothing. It’s antithetical to what he’s trying to do here, which is… What, really? That’s the exact question Dr. Mori is asking him, and he has maybe half an answer for her.
“I… don’t want to,” he starts again, because that feels closer to the truth, but it’s not quite right. “I… I’m just. I’m tired. I’m tired of living…” A pause, and he tacks on, “like this,” because it’s something a little closer to the truth. He is…
He’s very tired.
He’s been tired for a long time, he thinks.
“Can you explain what you mean by that?”
Yeah, he can, it’s just a matter of pulling the thoughts out of his head and putting them into order and putting them to words and speaking them, which is a lot of steps and a lot of work.
“It… It’s kind of… I don’t think I’m… actually tired of living. Of being alive. I don’t think that’s… I think I’m just tired of… of hurting.” He shrugs, even though it feels like he’s carrying a heavy weight on his shoulders—the weight of living, the weight of the world, the weight of his own failures. “I just… I’ve been thinking, a lot, about why I called Shouta instead of… instead of actually killing myself. And… the only thing I can come up with is that I don’t actually want to stop living. I don’t know what that means, really, what that means for me, but… I just. That’s what I have.”
Dr. Mori is quiet, for a few moments, creases appearing in her forehead as she frowns before smoothing away a moment later. “It wouldn’t be a stretch for me to say that you want to stop hurting, then.”
“…No,” he agrees, “it wouldn’t be.”
If he thinks about it (and oh, he’s thought about it), he’s spent almost his entire life hurting, emotionally, psychologically, in one way or another. There were the first four blissful years of his life that he can’t even remember, and a brief period of time prior to Hitoshi’s death, that are the only periods of time in his life he thinks he wasn’t hurting. So even as he agrees he wants to stop hurting, it’s almost terrifying, in its own special way, to admit that.
Has he been so defined by his hurts that he doesn’t know who he is without them? It’s perhaps the same issue he has with his hero work: he doesn’t know how to define himself outside of Midoriya Izuku, alias: Deku, the Number One Pro Hero of Japan. Once upon a time, there were other ways he could define himself: Toshinori’s successor, Inko’s son, Katsuki’s rival, Hitoshi’s boyfriend, Ochako’s best friend, Shouto’s platonic soulmate…
One by one, those relations have been stripped away. He’s still Toshinori’s successor, Katsuki’s rival, Hitoshi’s boyfriend-almost-fiancé, but what do they matter when the people those titles are tied to are dead?
And as for Ochako, and Shouto, and Inko… He hasn’t spoken to either Ochako or Shouto in months, not in any way more than just passing hellos, and can he really relate himself to his mother this closely when their relationship has been fraught and frayed and tenuous for almost a decade?
“Earth to Izuku,” Dr. Mori says. He blinks and twitches as she snaps him out of his thoughts, shaking his head to bring himself back to solid ground. “You look like you were doing some deep thinking, there. Care to share?”
“Uh,” he pauses, licks his lips. “I was thinking that… I don’t really know who I am, outside of work?”
She blinks, and presses her lips together, and nods, eyes widening briefly (not in shock, but like she’s saying “well, that’s a problem” with them). “That… sounds like something that needs addressed, at some point.”
“I mean, I… had other ways of defining myself, but those… those aren’t really relevant anymore because all the people they’re related to are dead or I don’t really talk to them anymore or I just don’t have a good relationship with them, and… well. They’re just not there anymore.”
“Would you like to explain those to me?”
“Well, I mean…” He shrugs. “I was… You know. I was… I was Ochako’s best friend, but now she isn’t talking to me, and I was Hitoshi’s boyfriend, and he’s dead but it’s not like I’ve had any other partners since him, and I was… I was Katsuki’s rival, but he’s dead, too, and I was Shouto’s… eh… well,” he’s a little self-conscious about saying this out loud, because it’s a little… it’s a little out-there, and a little sappy, but it’s not like Dr. Mori hasn’t heard wilder things come out of his mouth before. “We called each other our platonic soulmates, but we literally haven’t spoken in months.”
“So…” she draws the syllable out, raising an eyebrow. “You’re telling me you define yourself by your job—by hero work—and by your relationships with other people.”
And he knows that expression. She’s trying to point him to a conclusion without blatantly stating what she thinks. People are more likely to accept things that they think are their ideas, after all.
He probably knows exactly what conclusion she’s trying to guide him towards.
“Uh… yeah,” he replies, grimacing and rubbing the fabric of his shirt between his fingers. “I’m… uh. I’m guessing that is… one of those things that’s probably been screwing me up for a very long time that we just… never noticed?”
“And why do you think that?”
“Well, that’s generally what that eyebrow raise means, plus, just, the way you said that…”
Dr. Mori sighs, rubbing a hand over her face. “Sometimes, I forget that you can read people just as well as I can. You project a very… affable, oblivious kind of personality to the general public.”
“Getting people to underestimate you is just another way of getting the upper hand.”
Yes, for the Number One, he does think a lot like underground heroes do, he knows this, thanks. Part of it’s the fact his homeroom teacher for three years was an underground hero, and part of it’s his childhood. It’s not like he never hit back, after all.
“That makes sense,” Dr. Mori agrees, nodding. “Back to the whole… defining yourself by your relations to other people thing. Why do you think that could be a problem?”
On reflex, he replies: “people die.” Then he pauses, blinks, tugs on a lock of his own hair. “And relationships change. People leave. Friendships fall apart. You just have to… redefine yourself, though. I guess I never really did that, huh?”
“Mm.” She presses her lips together, and, ah, he’s given her a… flawed answer. A concerning answer? Something in there has her thinking. “And why do you think that you just have to redefine yourself?”
“Well, life is…” he pauses, breathing, breathing deep, like he’s dragging the air into his lungs and then forcing it back out like a viscous substance pushed through a sieve. “Life is change. People are changing. People change constantly until they die. So, I mean, obviously I’m going to have to do a bit of redefining myself over the years.”
It’s quiet for a moment as Dr. Mori nods and clasps her hands together. “So… what’s concerning me is that you only define yourself by your work and by your relations with other people. Who are you, at your base? Who are you in relation to yourself?”
He opens his mouth.
Blinks.
Closes his mouth.
“Uh… That is a very open-ended question, are you wanting me to reply now?”
“Not necessarily,” Dr. Mori replies. “It’s something we can work on over time. After all, people are incredibly complex. It’s going to take time to answer. We can get started now, if you would like, or we can shelve it for another day and find something else to work on.”
“I just…” He shrugs. “I know who I am. I just… don’t really like what I see, I guess. And, I mean…” He pauses to take a breath, inhaling and exhaling and using that moment to find his words. “I guess… I guess I… See what you mean, about… about my identity. I… I’ve only been defining myself by my work, and I guess that’s what… led me to this point. I… do you have any reading material I could… go over?”
“About self-identity?” she asks, and at his nod, she continues: “yes, absolutely. I can send you some titles and PDFs, and we can come back to this at a later point, after you’ve had some time to think about it.”
The session continues, and by the time the hour is up, Izuku is exhausted, even more so than he had been during his first day at the Aizawa-Yamada house. Therapy is difficult. It’s opening your soul to someone and trusting that they can help you clean out the infections within it. They ask hard questions which have hard answers, questions and answers which dig deep into some of the most hurt, most wounded parts of yourself.
He just wants to curl up and nap for the rest of the day, but that’s a little bit out of the question. He has one more video meeting in a couple hours, this one with his manager-slash-PR-goddess Yuuki, and then he has his appointment with Mei this evening. Most of his prosthetic-related appointments happen at odd times because of Mei’s odd work schedule. It’s never been a problem before, and it still isn’t really one at all—Eri just offered to go with him tonight, and he had to figure out how to politely decline because he… doesn’t really want to put her in the middle of whatever’s going to be going down between him and Mei tonight, because he’s really not sure how the appointment is going to go.
But that’s later, and this is now, so he drags himself off the bed and picks up his bag and stumbles out of the room and almost trips over a cat.
He had almost forgotten the Aizawa-Yamada family has a cat, honestly. Mothman, their little black tabby, is a complete cryptid. According to Shouta (with supporting statements from Eri and Yamada), she only comes out when her food dish is empty. He almost kicks her, but stops last second, and she looks up at him with big, baleful amber eyes. She opens her mouth, her jaw seemingly splitting apart to reveal teeth, way too many teeth, is that a normal amount of teeth for a cat??, and she yowls, a long screech, before sprinting off in a brown-and-black blur.
Feeling like he just had an encounter with an eldritch god in their tiny physical form, he finishes his walk to the bathroom. He had tossed things into his bag on autopilot when Shouta told him to pack, and for a moment, he’s grateful to his autopilot brain for having automatically tossed in his shower stuff. It’s been five days since his last shower, and it’s starting to show, his skin starting to feel sticky, his hair starting to look greasy.
(At least he has curly hair, so it’s not immediately obvious from the outside, and he could probably go another few days before it got really bad but he knows it’s been five days and his skin is sticky and it’s Self Care Time Even Though He Doesn’t Want To Take Care Of Himself. He’ll feel better after a shower, he always does, and Shouta had also maybe unsubtly pushed him towards taking one by telling him where the extra towels were because Autopilot Izuku did not remember to pack a towel.)
He pointedly does not look at the mirror as he walks into the bathroom and shuts and locks the door behind him. It only takes a few moments to pull out his for-travel shower stuff and get it set up on the shelves in the shower, and he turns it on to let the water heat up as he strips and still very carefully does not look at himself in the mirror. Hopefully, it’ll be too steamed over after he gets out, and he’s gotten pretty good at smearing moisturizer over his face and spreading it evenly without having to check and make sure he hasn’t missed spots.
The water is almost hot enough to scald him when he steps into it. It runs over his head, falls on his shoulders and back, runs in rivulets down his chest and belly and legs. The heat sinks into his bones, begins to work away at some of the aches and pains, begins to wear away at the stress in his body like it wears through rock.
Water, given enough time, washes away all things.
Just like how it erodes away stone, it eats away at the walls around his heart. He’s already more open, more vulnerable, than he usually is, considering he’s coming fresh off a therapy session, but even if he hadn’t been, this still would have been the outcome:
Him, crying in the shower. The heat of his tears is indistinguishable from the heat of the shower. He’s crying, yes, but it’s just… a release of emotion.
(Yes, that’s what crying always is, but this crying is different from any crying he’s done in the last five days.)
The walls of the shower are tile, brownish, small, and cold against his shoulder and cheek where he leans on them. He’s crying because he has the space to, he thinks, because there’s a tangled ball of emotions that’s been growing in his chest for years and he’s finally begun to untangle it.
(It says something that the last time he cried like this was… a few days prior to the last time he saw Ochako in person, if his memory is correct.)
He spends, all told, close to thirty-five minutes in the shower, and the first twenty of those are spent solely on him leaning against the wall and crying. At some point, he had found himself sitting on the floor of the shower, curled up, arms wrapped around his knees, and he doesn’t remember making the choice to sit down (doesn’t even remember the act of sitting down).
There’s something that’s been scooped out of him, scraped out and washed away by the water leaving a cavernous space in his core. Something will fill that space again, soon enough, but he lets the post-catharsis relief carry him through his after-shower routine.
He ends up killing time between appointments by doing chores and paperwork and a bit of reading. He’s been rolled into the household chore rotation, which he appreciates (he is not a freeloader), although his assignment is… notably smaller than everyone else’s.
While he’s doing some tidying up in his room (it’s a bit of busywork, honestly), he makes a note to maybe stop by his apartment on the way back from Mei’s—she generally gives him a ride home, which tend to be some of the most terrifying near-death experiences of his life.
Finally, early in the afternoon, his appointment time with Yuuki rolls around and he sets himself up in the bedroom again, cross-legged on the bed and with his headphones on.
Yuuki picks up within moments of him hitting the call button. Her usually immaculate night-blue hair is falling into her face, fringe freed from her white headband.
“Holy motherfucking shit, Deku,” she says, shaking her head. “I’m not going to yell at you for taking time off—gods only know you fucking need it—but holy shit people are losing. Their. Fucking. Minds.”
The way he bares his teeth is more of a cringe than a smile. “Eheh. Yeah. I can imagine. I… have been staying offline, though, for the most part.”
“Good.” There’s a fire burning behind her silver eyes. “People are animals. You’re taking the time off to deal with some personal issues, right? Taking a leave of absence maybe? Your emails haven’t exactly been… as coherent as I’m used to getting from you.”
“Ah.” He nods. “Yeah… It’s. Uh.”
Yuuki’s office is secure. It’s soundproofed, swept for bugs daily, and she’s an absolute wildcat about kicking people out who do not need to be there (something Izuku has been on the receiving end of, multiple times).
Because of those reasons, he doesn’t feel much apprehension about telling her why he’s taking the time off.
“I… may or may not have almost committed suicide on Thursday morning,” he says, looking away from the screen of his laptop and rubbing the back of his neck as he does. Maybe he’s a little anxious waiting for her reaction, his heart beginning to flutter in his chest, but she’s been open with him about her own struggles in the past.
A moment of quiet passes before she responds.
“Well,” she says, smacking her lips together. “I can see why you haven’t exactly been saying anything about why you’ve gone dark. I’m sure people would lose their shit even more if they found out their Number One had almost killed himself.”
“Yeah,” he agrees, nodding. “I’m going to be taking a leave of absence, just to… recover, and… address some of the issues that led to the attempt. I’m not sure what the public reason is going to be…”
“Just saying you’re taking some time off to handle your own health will be enough,” she says, typing something into her computer. “If they try to press any more than that, they can hang, for all I care. Do you have any preferences for breaking the news? Could just break it on Twitter, might make them feel like it’s less serious, but could also do a press conference. If we do a press conference, it would be a good idea to have you make an appearance, to help assuage public doubts and cut off the ‘he was catastrophically injured in a secret mission and they’re trying to save face’ theorizing.”
“We’d get that theorizing with a twitter thread, too,” he points out. “I’m not sure I’m ready to, ah, do a press conference, although I’m sure I could make it happen if we decided that was the best way to do it. I could also potentially film something that could be posted on Twitter? I probably couldn’t do that until sometime tomorrow, though, I don’t currently have my makeup with me.”
“That sounds like the most reasonable option.” Yuuki types in something more and then glances back at the camera. “If you could come up with a rough script of what you might want to say and send it to me by… say, noon tomorrow, I could get that edited and polished for tomorrow afternoon and then you can send me the video by… tomorrow evening? Is that enough time for you?”
He nods. “Yeah. And if it isn’t, I’ll let you know. How, uh, how are things managing… without me?”
“Apart from having to deal with the vague public panic over your unannounced absence? Things are a well-oiled machine here. You have trained your sidekicks well.”
This time, the smile that flashes across his face is a genuine smile.