Work Text:
Izuku’s day starts off like any other.
He wakes up at 6:00 AM, fumbling around awkwardly to shut off his alarm as Ochako grumbles discontentedly, still half-asleep. He huffs out a laugh and leans over to kiss her forehead and caresses her cheek as her half-lidded eyes glisten with exhaustion. “Good morning, love of my life.”
A hint of a smile ghosts her face before she stifles it.
“Izuku,” she pleads, her voice cracking. “Please change your alarm to something other than All Might yelling.”
“‘Chako,” Izuku smiles, amused. Ochako does not look impressed. “You said that about my last alarm, and the one before that, and the one before that one. I don’t think it’s the alarm that’s the problem.”
“No, it’s just— ugh,” she rubs at her eyes furiously. After over three years of living together, Izuku knows all too well what she’s going to say next: “It’s too early.”
“Maybe your patrol time is just too late,” Izuku teases, shaking her lightly as her eyes drift shut. She opens them in an instant to glare at him, but there’s no true anger or annoyance there. “Do you want some breakfast?”
She’s silent for a moment, until she murmurs something inaudible. Izuku sighs affectionately and brushes a strand of her hair out of her face. “Too early?”
She nods languidly, before quickly drifting off to sleep once more. She’s cute like this, with messy hair and parted lips and a soft, rumbling snore. So, like every morning, Izuku takes a minute to lie there with her, simply admiring her features softened by sleep. He could spend all day like this, and if he still had the ability to hold a pencil for long periods at a time before being riddled with pain, she’d be his muse — the only thing he’d ever want to draw.
He checks the time and, after noticing that he’s been admiring her for a few minutes, he decides to finally get ready for work. He kisses her chastely on the forehead and tip-toes to the opposite end of their room where he keeps his suits and ties. Izuku prides himself on his tie collection — they’re all Pro-Hero themed ones, of course, but he holds a particular fondness for the ones of his wife and their friends, with Chibi versions of their faces plastered all over them. Katsuki hates it when he wears the Dynamight one, so Izuku always makes sure to wear it when he knows they’ll be interacting at some point during the day.
“I should really ask about making a Deku tie,” Izuku murmurs to himself, quietly so as not to wake his wife. “I probably wouldn’t wear that one, that would be so embarrassing, but it would complete my collection.”
He decides on wearing his Uravity tie today. His students always like it when he shows up with something Ochako-themed, and although Izuku doesn’t do well with a classroom full of teenagers teasing him for being in love, he knows that it gives them something to smile about. Something to look forward to when they’re older in a profession where getting older is oftentimes a miracle. He lingers briefly on that thought before he hurriedly shoves it to the back of his mind. They’ll fight to live if they know what life has to offer. And so, he thinks, it’s worth a bit of jest in the end.
No need to get upset over my students’ imaginary deaths, he tells himself. But in the mornings, when the sun is just beginning to beam down on Japan and there is nothing but the sound of their apartment floor creaking as he dashes to get ready for work, he thinks of what he’s training these kids for and, for just a moment, he allows himself to grieve what might become of them.
They’ll like my tie, Izuku thinks over and over again in a mantra, desperate to quiet what he likes to call his bad thoughts — the ones that appeared when he was seventeen and never quite left. They’ll like my tie and they’re going to tease me about it, but it’s fine because they’re alive and they’re happy and society is not like it was when I was their age. They’re happy. They’re okay. And things are better now.
And besides, as Izuku heads to the washroom to brush his hair and his teeth, he looks in the mirror and thinks about how much he likes wearing his wife’s merch. He’s the biggest Uravity fan there is, no doubt about that.
After fixing his tie, Izuku heads to the kitchen to quickly make himself and Ochako a lunch. She doesn’t need to leave for work for another couple of hours, and Izuku would rather Ochako have a few extra minutes of sleep than spend that time making herself food. It’s become part of his morning routine anyway, and he finds it soothing. For as much as his hands tend to bring him pain, Izuku thoroughly enjoys putting them to use as often as he possibly can.
Within the next few minutes, he’s leaving their apartment. He doesn’t need to drive or take the bus to UA — they purposely picked a place to live close to the school so that Izuku could feasibly walk there — and sure enough, within minutes he’s walking through the main entrance and into the office where the rest of his co-workers are.
All Might waves at him. “Morning, young Midoriya!”
“Goooooooood morning, Midoriya!” Present-Mic says — or yells. “Have a good weekend?”
“Morning,” Izuku nods. “My weekend was great. Ochako and I went to visit her parents. It was a nice change of scenery from the city. How was yours?”
Present-Mic waves his hands around dismissively. “I graded a bunch of papers I’d been procrastinating on,” he suddenly smirks. “Which I bet you would have preferred when your in-laws started asking about why they don’t have any little listeners running around the place.”
Izuku’s head whips around, the tips of his ears turning pink in colour. “How did you know?!”
All Might chokes on his coffee. Present-Mic cackles. “All parents are like that!”
All Might definitely told him.
Predictably, All Might’s cheeks turn red as he looks at him apologetically. Izuku, albeit flustered himself, manages to give him a shaky smile. He’s not upset — he doesn’t need All Might to feel guilty about it for the rest of the day.
“Yes, I— well,” Izuku stutters, rubbing at the nape of his neck in an attempt to calm himself down. “We told them that Ochako’s a full-time Pro Hero in the heart of her career and a pregnancy would put her behind a desk for longer than she’d like. And she has a lot of goals she’d like to achieve before we consider… Um. You know. Plus I’m…” he gestures awkwardly at himself. “…Me.”
All Might raises a brow at that. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, you know,” Izuku laughs, but doesn’t care to elaborate. There’s a lot of things to take into consideration and a lot of things for Izuku to fear about the idea of becoming a father, not to mention the fact that they’re not even really sure if they want to be parents yet. There’s the fact that his and Ochako’s children are more likely to be born quirkless than the average person — and Izuku wouldn’t love a child any less if that were to happen — but he has lived experience of what it’s like to navigate a world not built for him, and he knows it’s not easy. He knows it increases the risk of bullying — of mental health issues — and of feeling alienated significantly.
And then there’s the other thing: Izuku lives a normal life, but sometimes the normality of it all comes crashing down on him and suffocates him alive, like he’s locked in a box with no chance of escaping. He wakes up, he gets ready for work, he teaches, he patrols, he sleeps, and then he has to convince himself to get up and repeat the cycle all over again. He’s well aware of what the feeling that plagues him is — he knows that it’s depression — but if he manages to do what he has to do and doesn’t think too often about what would have happened if he had died in his prime trying to save Shigaraki Tomura, then it’s fine.
He copes well enough as he is now, but an addition to his and Ochako’s family would change that. It wouldn’t be enough anymore — it wouldn’t be fair to leave Ochako and this hypothetical-child he’s dreamed up to a happy, care-free life when part of Izuku will always remain on the battlefield.
“No,” Aizawa says, yawning as he unzips his sleeping bag. “We don’t know what you mean by ‘I’m me’, but if you’d care to explain sometime this century, Midoriya—”
“Shouta,” Present-Mic sighs reproachfully.
Izuku jumps, but plays it off with a wide grin. “I like kids a lot, but my students are enough as it is for the time being.”
“…Fair enough,” Aizawa grumbles, before promptly going back to sleep. Izuku sighs to himself quietly.
Normal. It’s all normal. And it’s great. It’s better than before — life is good to Izuku now.
He takes a deep breath. He’s fine — he’s okay.
He drowns in normalcy, but he knows that he’s guaranteed to find his way to the surface to breathe eventually. And even if that breath of air hurts to take in, it keeps him alive nonetheless. And he manages that pain, like everyone else who grew to find a new normal after the war.
He still wishes he hadn’t.
Until suddenly, his day isn’t quite so normal after all. He’s not really sure how he notices it — why his second year student, Tanaka, finally catches his eye with her concerning behaviour now of all days. But when he glances over his shoulder as he writes important historical dates to remember for Hero History 101, he pauses momentarily.
Because it’s warm outside today, and Tanaka is wearing her winter uniform — a thick, long-sleeved cardigan emblazoned with the UA logo. And as he watches her closely throughout the rest of his lesson, he feels as though a bucket of ice has been poured over his head. She bites her lip in discomfort frequently, trying her best to shift her sleeves subtly, but never rolls them up higher than her wrist. And she’s visibly overheating, with beads of sweat trickling down her forehead and cheeks as red as tomatoes.
When the bell rings to signal the end of the school day, Izuku asks her to stay behind after class.
“Yes Sensei?” She whispers timidly, fidgeting with her fingers. Izuku notices the way she quickly digs her nails into the palm of her hand every so often. “Was it… Did I do badly on the last test?”
“What?” Izuku frowns. Tanaka doing bad on a test is unheard of — she’s the top student in the school. “What — no, no. Of course not, Tanaka. You did amazing, as always. I was just… Concerned about you today.”
When she closes herself off immediately, Izuku doesn’t need her to explicitly tell him the truth — he knows what’s wrong with her immediately. He tries not to let his eyes drift to her sleeves and swallows nervously. He’s never— he’s never had to deal with a student with self-harming habits before, but watching her brings back memories of a different kind. Ones where it’d been him at fifteen, in her shoes, except nobody ever noticed, because he didn’t fit the right picture.
Or maybe he did — maybe it had been obvious, and it just hadn’t mattered in the grand scheme of things. He stopped eventually on his own, anyway, and all that he has to show for it are tiny white scars that blend in with the ones he earned from being a hero.
“I’m sick,” Tanaka replies smoothly. She’s a good liar — any other teacher wouldn’t be able to tell, but Izuku meets her gaze and knows what he sees. He just… doesn’t quite know what to say. But he knows whatever he does after this, it has to be done right.
A part of him deep down feels more alive than he has in years, because this isn’t a normal part of his day. This is different — not typical — and he’s so very ashamed at it that he tastes bile on his tongue.
“That’s—“ Izuku pauses. He takes a moment to think and still struggles to find the right words to say to her. “Tanaka—“
“I’m really sorry, Midoriya-Sensei,” she interrupts quickly, shuffling her feet. “But my little brother is waiting for me to pick him up from school. May I leave?”
Izuku smiles at her sadly. “Yes. But if there’s anything you—“
She’s gone before he can even finish his sentence.
And for the first time in ages, Izuku truly feels like a human being, not a machine waiting for the inevitable day he shuts down and no one comes to fix him. It’s a dangerous feeling to associate with what he just caught one of his students doing, but before he knows it, it’s all he can think about — sitting quietly at his desk in the classroom, tapping his fingers rapidly on the wood and basking in the way his heart pounds like it hasn’t since he was a kid.
It’s almost like he’s woken up from over a decade-long trance, the whirlwind of emotions in his mind shockingly different from feeling like he’s constantly submerged under water, drowning and subdued all the same. It hurts like only one thing has before.
When his breath catches in his throat and a single tear falls from his eye, Izuku wipes at his cheek hurriedly, utterly mesmerised. Once upon a time, he used to cry for everything — but Izuku hasn’t cried in years. He hasn’t cried in years, and it’s not until now that he’s fully realising how truly insane that is.
It hurts. He’s worried. He’s afraid for his student. And he doesn’t stop worrying, but eventually he does calm down and once he does, normalcy is quick to return. He grades his students’ worksheets, he bids a goodbye to his colleagues when they leave for their homes and their families with relieved, tired grins. Izuku loosens his tie and pretends he’s looking forward to it too. And part of him is — Ochako will be home not too long after his few hours of patrol finish, and then they’ll get to curl up together in bed with their warm bodies pressed against each other’s. He’ll get to feel her lips ghosting the shell of his ear and the softness of her skin beneath his fingers.
And then he’ll wake up trapped again. Suddenly, loosening his tie isn’t enough. Aizawa, who’s always been too observant for Izuku to get away with pretty much anything, levels a questioning look at him. “Midoriya.”
“Sensei,” Izuku parrots back weakly.
Aizawa sighs exasperatedly. “What have I told you? I haven’t been your Sensei for nearly fifteen years. You’ve known me as your coworker longer than you knew me as your teacher.”
“I’m never going to break that habit and you know it.”
Aizawa just sighs tiredly in response. There’s a brief lull in conversation as Izuku considers how to broach the topic of what to do about Tanaka. He tries his best to tap his fingers quietly, but Aizawa, like he and the rest of former Class 1A, has had no choice but to become hyperaware of every little sound made in their general vicinity.
“I can hear you thinking from over here. Stop it.”
“Sorry,” Izuku frowns. “I… Sensei, I have a question.”
Aizawa stares blankly at him and gestures for him to continue with his hand.
“Have you noticed anything wrong with Tanaka Yuzuki from class 2A?”
“She’s wearing her winter uniform to school and deliberately hiding her arms,” Aizawa replies steadily. Izuku blinks. “She looks down at her sleeves on average, two times per every three minutes. You suspect exactly what I suspect.”
Izuku rests his head in the palms of his hands. “I don’t know how to approach her without— you know.”
“Losing her trust or scaring her off?” Aizawa asks.
Izuku nods softly. “All of the above.”
“Midoriya,” Aizawa pauses, muttering under his breath about how utterly illogical it is to not teach staff at UA how to deal with students who struggle with their mental health and unhealthy coping mechanisms. “I can’t tell you how to avoid that.”
What?
Izuku opens his mouth to reply, but Aizawa beats him to it. “How do you think you should approach her?”
Izuku freezes in his seat, before he takes a moment to imagine it. He thinks of all the ways that would’ve helped him at that age the least — he internally cringes particularly hard at the idea of being forced to roll up his sleeves — before he settles on other ways of approaching the topic instead. He knows he can’t promise that he won’t tell anyone what she’s doing. He is, after all, a mandated reporter. But—
“Honesty,” Izuku blurts out. “If I’m honest, if I tell her exactly what I want to do and how I want to help her, and if I listen and don’t overstep and make her uncomfortable—“
“How are you going to make her comfortable?”
Izuku flounders. “I—“
“Midoriya,” Aizawa’s gaze softens ever so slightly, but Izuku’s heart sinks nonetheless. “You can’t guarantee that she won’t be uncomfortable. Get that into your head now. When you pull Tanaka aside tomorrow, the conversation you have with her is going to be difficult, both for her and for you. You can’t make an uncomfortable conversation comfortable, you can only try to work past the discomfort. If she doesn’t respond well to what you have to say, it’s not because you did something wrong. It’s because she’s going to feel like she did something wrong and you’ve caught her in the act.”
“But how do I—“
“I don’t know,” Aizawa replies grumpily, taking a huge sip of coffee. When he rubs at his eye, Izuku notices that they’re blood-shot and silently hands him eye-drops. He nods once in thanks. “…It’s different for every student. I’ve had some who are willing to tell me everything and others who never look me in the eye again.”
“I don’t want to make it worse,” Izuku whispers weakly, wishing that his eyes would water just a little bit. He craves it like nothing else.
“I know you don’t,” Aizawa sighs, awkwardly patting him once on the shoulder before he begins to head out the door. “Have a good night, Midoriya.”
“You too,” Izuku replies numbly, knowing his night is not going to be good, nor will it be bad. It’s going to be normal. Predictable. Safe.
He doesn’t want to be safe. He never has.
And that scares him.
The next morning, Izuku wakes up and for the first time in years, is not met with the same routine. He’s nervous — he feels downright nauseous— and it takes him so off guard that he sits on the edge of his bed for over ten minutes. After a while, Ochako groggily sits up, frowning at him.
“Izuku?” She whispers. “Is something wrong?”
Izuku hasn’t told her about Tanaka yet — let alone how much it’s affecting him. Part of him doesn’t want to yet, because voicing it aloud would mean having to work through how he’s feeling and why he’s feeling that way, and doing that would make things better again, and therefore normal.
For just a moment in time, Izuku wants to not have to think. He wants to feel — he wants to be right smack in the middle of it all, despair, anxiety— everything rushing through him with the strength of a thousand hurricanes. And he wants his tears to burn steadily as they fall, because he needs the reminder that he still can. That growing older doesn’t mean he can’t feel pain or emotion to the extent he did when he was younger. That despite it all, he’s mortal.
“Yes,” Izuku replies shakily anyway, because he refuses to lie to Ochako. When her eyes widen, he’s quick to correct himself. Her ideas of wrong have also been skewed by her experiences in the war, and he knows all too well that her first thought is likely to be who died if he does not hurry to explain. “Yes, but it’s good. I mean— not good. It’s not good, it’s bad. Something’s wrong. But it doesn’t feel… I feel? I shouldn’t. But I do.”
“You feel…?” Ochako blinks. “…But you shouldn’t?”
Izuku breathes in sharply. “Sorry. That didn’t make any sense. It’s… Uh, it’s work.”
A flicker of light shines in Ochako’s eyes as she nods in what Izuku’s oversimplification has led her to believe is understanding. She places a comforting hand on the small of his back, her fingers brushing over his skin in small, rhythmic circles. “It’s been a while since you’ve taken a day off.”
Izuku stiffens momentarily, before forcing himself to relax. “I’m fine.”
“Izuku,” she’s quick to amend. “Why don’t we both take some time off? Go out of the country somewhere, have a nice time all to ourselves,” she winks. Izuku huffs out a half-hearted laugh. “Okay, but seriously. I know you hate not working. I do too. But sometimes it’s healthy to just step back and do something else, you know?”
“You hate the idea of vacationing,” Izuku mutters. “You have nightmares about it.”
Whenever Izuku isn’t holding her in his arms and gently reminding her that she isn’t on the battlefield with Toga Himiko anymore, he’s holding her in his embrace as she cries on his shoulder about an incident that happened just a year after they’d graduated from UA.
She’d broken her arm one night while she was out with Mina and Kyouka, and naturally, had been taken off duty for her next patrol. The next day, there’d been an earthquake, and a little boy in her usual patrol area had died buried beneath a collapsed building because none of the heroes on scene had the ability to get him out. Hero and Quirk enthusiasts around the country had a field day with creating theories as to how that boy could’ve lived, if only Ochako had been there to save the day.
Sickeningly, it contributed quite significantly to her rise in popularity. It had taken a lot of convincing to get Ochako to show up for the Hero Billboard Chart that year, since she was the first one out of them all to make it into the Top 10. Afterwards, she’d gotten drunk — properly wasted — and the words she’d sobbed that night will haunt Izuku to his grave: “they’d hate us, Izuku! She’d hate me for this! We didn’t fix anything! We didn’t— it’s the same! It’s all the exact same as before!”
Nobody blamed Ochako for what happened of course — she’d just broken her arm, after all, and she had only been a sidekick at the time, not even a full-fledged Pro Hero with her own agency. Only nineteen years old, they liked to say. They never quite understood that for former Class 1A, nineteen years old felt many decades older when you hadn’t anticipated making it past sixteen.
Mistakes — or mere imperfections — were something they were supposed to have grown out of because of it.
And sure enough, it didn’t stop Ochako from obsessively pouring over those articles — those what-ifs — for hours upon hours of each day. Sometimes, even years later, Izuku still has to pull her away from them, has to squeeze her hands gently as she mutters senseless apologies to a girl that’s been dead for almost as long as she’d lived, and a little boy whose death shattered the remaining part of her soul that made it out of war unscathed.
“Yeah,” Ochako shrugs. “I hate the idea of not being able to save people. Whenever I’m not, I can’t help—“ her voice cracks slightly, but she squares her shoulders and continues on. “—I can’t help but think that there’s someone out there who’s dead, who wouldn’t have been if I hadn’t decided to rest that day. But that’s not fair on me, and— and I’ve been working on it. So if you need a break, Izuku, we can both take a break.”
“…Maybe,” Izuku tells her as he stands up fidgeting with his fingers. They both know a vacation is simply not in the cards for them. “I’ll think about it. Maybe you’re right. Maybe that’s what we both need. I’m just— I’m just not sure yet, and I wish we could talk more about it, but—“
“—But you’re already running late for work,” Ochako finishes for him, smiling softly. “Don’t worry about it. We can talk about whatever you want when you get home.”
Izuku kisses her on the forehead before he leaves their bedroom.
“Love you!” she calls out to him. Izuku’s stomach twists itself into knots.
“I love you too!”
•••
“…I’m just checking in, Tanaka. I want to see how you’re doing.”
Aizawa was right to warn him about how making the conversation with Tanaka comfortable would be impossible, but Izuku still hadn’t prepared himself for the air between the two of them to be quite so stagnant from the moment it began.
“Tanaka,” he tries again softly — sadly — as she backs away, crossing her arms and turning her nose up at him as she glares, and glares hard. Anger looks so wrong on her soft features that Izuku hesitates for a moment, beginning to wonder if he should’ve approached this differently. “I’m not trying to—“
“Sorry for my bluntness, but I don’t understand, Sensei, why you’re still asking me if everything is alright,” she snaps. “When I told you yesterday that I just wasn’t feeling well.”
“Tanaka,” Izuku retorts softly, taken a little off guard by the ferocity behind each of her words. She’s usually such a timid girl, he just hadn’t anticipated such a reaction. Maybe he was stupid for that. “I understand if you don’t want to talk about it, but I’m not accusing you—“
“But you are!” She throws her hands up angrily. “You pulled me aside after class ended, just like yesterday, and you’re trying to insinuate that— that— that I’m crazy. What? have I finally done something to make you realise you were wrong for considering me one of your prized students? Gonna kick me out of UA because I’m not good enough for this stupid school?! Or has my parents’ reputation finally caught up to me?!”
“Is that why you do it?” Slips from Izuku’s mouth before he can decide whether or not it’s a good idea to say.
Tanaka’s fists clench at her side.
Uh oh, Izuku thinks.
“It's none of your business!”
She slaps a hand over her mouth when she realises what she’s said — what she’s admitted to, and her eyes are so wide with fear that Izuku begins to feel sick. He’s never once had a student look at him that way — like he’s going to hurt them. The nausea grows as he finds himself marvelling at the growing pit in his stomach.
Why can’t he just be happy with normalcy like everyone else? Why does he uncontrollably revel when something different happens? He’s a grown man, but he’s never quite felt like anything but an actor playing a part, and playing it well. Except he’s hidden behind this front of being in control and content for so long that when faced with any situation that makes him unsure and uncomfortable down to the very bone, it’s like being born anew. Like being exactly how he’s supposed to be.
“I understand that this isn’t an easy topic to discuss with me,” Izuku pauses, feeling his stomach twist itself into knots. “I do get it—“
“That’s what every single one of you says,” Tanaka interrupts heatedly. “None of you actually get it, otherwise you guys wouldn’t constantly look and sound like a fucking robot when confronting me! Is that what happens after leaving UA, Sensei? Am I gonna wake up one day and just get it and stop because there’s nothing left to feel so strongly about? Because that’s why I do it, if you really want to know! I want to be good enough, but I also want to feel! I don’t want to lose sight of my humanity like some of you!”
Izuku understands why she’s snapping defensively like this — knows she feels like she’s being attacked, but her words send a terrible chill down his spine and he can’t hide the stricken look on his face, even though he tries so desperately to. Is that truly what he looks like to her? Like he’s so emotionless in the way he approaches things that he’s more of a robot than a human being who loves and cares, who wishes and wants for things?
He used to feel things with the intensity of a thousand suns. He. Used. To.
In a way, that’s what training and working as a hero is supposed to do — it’s supposed to make you efficient, and nothing’s more efficient than being able to shut off what most ordinary civilians can’t: panic, fear, desperation. But Izuku thinks of himself as somehow different. His way of not feeling isn’t supposed to be about not being human, just… about getting to tomorrow alive. And then the next day, and the day after that. His generation was meant to mark a change in heroics — they were supposed to be authentically themselves. But evidently, he hasn’t been. Evidently, he’s become complacent in a system he swore to change.
Ochako’s words echo in his head: maybe it is the exact same as before. Maybe we didn’t fix as much as we thought.
Izuku doesn’t dare to look past Tanaka, because if he does, he’s afraid he’ll see Shigaraki’s ghost, with lips twisted in a sneer and eyes gleaming with pure and utter hatred. Tanaka eyes him carefully before visibly deflating. A tear slips from her eye.
“I’m—“ she hesitates. “That was low of me. I pay attention in class. I’ve seen the clips of you in the war. I know of what you and— and other heroes have gone through, and I know you’re not robots without emotions. I don’t know why I—I’m really sorry.”
After a moment of silence, she murmurs: “…I get it if you expel me for what I just did, I won’t get mad. I’ll leave quietly.”
Izuku startles. “Tanaka, I’m not going to expel you because you reacted strongly to an uncomfortable situation. That would be— I wouldn’t do that,” he gives her a small, reassuring smile. “And for what it’s worth, I apologise too.”
“You didn’t do anything,” she mutters.
Izuku shakes his head. “I made you uncomfortable. That’s something that I wish I could take back.”
“No,” Tanaka replies softly, looking at him oddly. It’s then that Izuku notices his own eyes are welling with unshed tears, for the second time in ages. “You just… You actually care. I didn’t see it until now. I still just—“
“Don’t want to talk about it?” There’s a lump in his throat, and he’s not used to that feeling anymore. It takes all of his strength to remain kept together in front of Tanaka — he missed this feeling, but he won’t subject his student to the sight of him bursting into tears. Also, he thinks silently to himself. That would be embarrassing.
“Promise you won’t tell?” she whispers.
“I promise,” Izuku tells her. “That I won’t tell anyone who doesn’t need to know, but I need to notify Aizawa Sensei and Principal Nezu, and I know your situation with your parents is…”
“They’re in prison,” she offers bitterly.
“I won’t have them notified, of course, but I still need to make sure that you’re safe,” Izuku continues softly. “I’m obligated to as a hero and your teacher. We can get you help, Tanaka.”
Tanaka bites her bottom lip nervously. “I know you have to but it’s just… I’m not crazy.”
“I know you aren’t.”
“I know that,” she says quickly. “But… What if they think I am? What if they don’t get it?”
“Aizawa Sensei and Principal Nezu?” Izuku prods gently. She nods stiffly. “They won’t think you’re crazy, I promise.”
When she looks at him in disbelief, Izuku wryly decides to add: “Aizawa Sensei taught me and Kach— Dynamight, and he never thought we were crazy when we were your age, if that helps put it in perspective. And Principal Nezu is… Nezu. Frankly, he has no room to judge.”
Izuku shivers the moment he finishes speaking. He’s going to get him for saying that, but it makes Tanaka snort, so he thinks it was worth it.
“Huh,” Tanaka replies after a brief pause, sniffling as she wipes away the remainder of her tears. “…Yeah, that does help actually.”
“I’m glad,” Izuku smiles.
“Sensei?”
“Yeah?”
“I really am sorry,” she whispers. “I’m not just saying that to try to get out of trouble. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
“You didn’t—“ Tanaka gives him a pointed look, and Izuku decides to concede. “What you said wasn’t nice and it surprised me a bit, I won’t lie. But I’m a teacher and a hero, and I’ve learned to not let words people say and don’t mean affect me, especially my students. I know you were only lashing out because I cornered you. You’re still young and it’s— I should’ve expected it. You’re not immune to feeling and acting the same way other kids your age would.”
“You wouldn’t have ever done that,” she huffs softly. “I’m not cut out to be a hero.”
“You can’t compare yourself to what I appeared to be like at your age, from the clips that you’ve seen of me,” Izuku tells her. “I lashed out sometimes too, it’s a natural part of being young and trying to find your place in something that seems so much bigger than you. So don’t compare yourself to anyone but yourself, for that matter. If you’ve improved — even just a bit — from the time you first started at UA to now, then you’re cut out to be a hero. You are worthy of being here, no matter if you struggle sometimes or need help.”
“But—“
“—Actually, sometimes it’s the strongest people who are the ones in need of saving. And if they take that hand, if they let themselves be helped, it only makes them that much stronger.”
It’s silent for a while, and Tanaka stands stiffly in front of him, seeming to contemplate his words and what she should say next. Izuku doesn’t rush her — doesn’t tell her she should leave soon, because he thinks he’s finally done something right, and he doesn’t want to ruin it.
“But—“ Tanaka swallows thickly. “But what if I can’t? Does that make me weak?”
“No,” Izuku replies immediately. “Not at all. It just means that we’ll give you help anyway, and you get to decide when you feel ready to take it.”
Tanaka rubs furiously at her tear-filled eyes. “Thank you, Sensei.”
Izuku smiles at her as she leaves, but the moment he’s alone, it’s like his entire mind ignites on fire, wild and raging and incapable of thinking things through with a level-head. His heart sinks to his stomach and his throat grows dry, and Izuku feels and yet it hurts, and now it’s too much. It’s too much. He can’t shove it to the back of his mind or try to ignore it like he usually would — and he can’t marvel in the tears streaming down his face because it’s accompanied with ragged breaths and the weight of the world on his chest. He can’t breathe.
He stumbles blindly out of his chair, not fully sure where he’s heading at first until he enters the staff washroom and distantly hears the sound of a shattering mirror after he catches himself from falling by slamming into it. All of a sudden, it becomes clear to him why he’s so upset — why he isn’t relieved that his conversation seemed to have actually helped his student.
Because things are going to go back to normal again.
Izuku dry heaves over the toilet, and it’s only then that he realizes he hasn’t eaten or drank a single thing today. It’s an odd thing to focus on through pure, blind panic, but after years of experience with panic attacks and PTSD triggers, he’s learned to grab onto whatever gets him distracted enough to pull himself out of it.
He doesn’t fully calm down, but he gets to a point where he’s able to form half-delirious thoughts, and that’s when his eyes land on the shards of broken glass. His head throbs in dull, rhythmic bursts of pain and he bites his tongue hard enough to draw blood when he realises what he’s considering — how he’s contemplating escaping from this box of normalcy for the time being, without guilt following him at every corner.
His hands tremble as he picks up a particularly sharp shard and shoves it into his pocket.
•••
Izuku doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting on the roof of UA, but he knows it’s been long enough to watch the sun set and the moon begin to rise. He takes deep, shuddering breaths as he basks in the way moonlight hits his face and a cool breeze tussles his hair. The mirror shard in his palm just about feels like the heaviest thing he’s ever held.
Part of his mind tells him that what he wants to do makes sense in the long run — it’s not like before, when he’d been young and incapable of fully understanding when he’d passed the threshold into too much. And besides, this way, he can break through the tight confines of normalcy and enter a new battlefield, one where he only has to worry about hurting himself.
Izuku rolls up his sleeve and takes the shard out of his pocket, and pauses just as he rests the point of it against his forearm. He feels his cheeks turn pink in shame.
“What am I doing?” He mutters, deciding not to add any pressure — not to grit his teeth and drag the shard across his skin like he’s still that same quirkless kid with a hopeless dream. Embarrassment bubbles up within him as he thinks: why am I seriously contemplating this now?
But god, he’s tired — tired of living by the same script, tired of being constantly on edge for no reason because he’s been primed for the kind of battle that will never reach him again. Tired of wanting to feel and then only getting it when someone else is in pain, and isn’t that just so very selfish of him? That he waits and he hopes for a moment where he’s forced into action, at someone else’s peril?
Everything else has returned to normal except for Izuku. Izuku started off as a fucked up kid and grew into an equally fucked up man. And now he’s tired, and suddenly making it to another day feels impossible.
He hears the sound of someone opening the door to the roof and shutting it as softly as they can behind them. Izuku takes another second to listen before he decides how to react. He swivels his head briefly to glance at them, making eye contact with Aizawa Sensei. He exhales, letting a breath he didn’t know he was holding out.
“Here to talk me off the ledge?” Izuku murmurs.
“No,” Aizawa Sensei pauses. “But I won’t let you jump if you try.”
“The extra essays you’d have to grade if I did would not be that bad, Sensei.”
“Midoriya,” he looks at him, dead serious. “If you jump and make me grade your students’ essays alongside mine, I won’t be too far behind you. And when I get my hands on you in the afterlife, you’ll be sorry.”
Izuku snorts loudly. He caught Aizawa looking at the glass shard in his hand a while ago, and he has an inkling that he already knows that whatever this is, it isn’t a suicide attempt. Nonetheless, he says: “I’m not going to jump.”
“I know,” Aizawa replies blandly. “Care to explain what you are doing?”
“Thinking.”
He gives Izuku his signature look. “…With glass pressed against your arm.”
“I’m thinking about whether to do it,” Izuku adds, because he doesn’t see the point in lying. He also doesn’t need to explain what ‘it’ actually is, because it’s glaringly obvious. “Well— I was. You’re not going to let me do it.”
Aizawa raises a brow. “Says who?”
Izuku blinks. “I— what?”
Aizawa sighs. “I’m not saying this to be cruel, Midoriya, but I don’t think what you need right now is to be coddled or comforted in a traditional way. You don’t need me to convince you to hand over the shard and you don’t need me to supervise your every step after we leave this rooftop, whether you decide to do it or not. What you do want — or what you should know, is that I won’t see you differently, no matter what. You’re not a porcelain doll. You won’t break, and if you feel like you will, you know when to get help. I’ve seen you do it. I’ve seen you tell others to do it. Treating you like a clueless child incapable of fully understanding what you’re doing would annoy you more than it would help you.”
”You know, Sensei,” Izuku whispers. He watches as Aizawa opens his mouth to demand he call him Shouta, or just Aizawa. They’ve been co-workers for long enough, but Izuku never really will be able to kick the habit. “I’m tempted. I really am.”
“Midoriya—“ he tries, watching the way the moonlight reflects off the glass in his hands.
“—I haven’t thought about cutting since I was fifteen years old,” Izuku doesn’t know why he huffs out a laugh. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t need to say the quiet part out loud: until now. “I’m 32 years old, and how badly I want to do it is humiliating.”
”Why?”
Izuku laughs flatly. ”Because I’m 32. Because I’m a—a Pro Hero. A teacher. And my— this just seems so… Juvenile.”
Aizawa raises a brow. “Self-harm isn’t something only people of a certain demographic are allowed to struggle with, Midoriya.”
“I know,” Izuku swallows thickly. “I know. But sometimes it feels like it’s treated like that? As if it’s something you just grow out of one day and I keep thinking… I keep wondering… why haven’t I grown out of it too when it seems like everyone else has? I feel like the only one my age who still thinks about putting a blade to my arm. How am I supposed to help my students who struggle if I either feel this or nothing at all? I just want to feel alive again.”
Aizawa Sensei sighs heavily. “Do you really think that having your own struggles is preventing you from being there for your students?”
“Uh,” Izuku says. “Well, kind of?”
“You’re an idiot,” he deadpans. “And you’re depressed and passively suicidal.”
“Wow,” Izuku murmurs sullenly. “Thanks.”
“Don’t act like you didn’t already know that,” Aizawa looks at him, and although there isn’t any blatant concern on his face, Izuku sees it in the way his mouth twitches ever so slightly into a frown. “Tanaka told me to come find you.”
Izuku winces. “She thought she hurt my feelings.”
“She said you looked like she’d just stabbed you in the heart,” he tells him.
“She just—“ Izuku taps his fingers repeatedly against his thigh — another fidgeting habit of his. “She caught me off guard. She kind of insinuated I’m… Robotic. And that’s far from the kind of hero — the kind of person — I want to be. Especially in front of my students.”
“You’re far from robotic, Midoriya,” Aizawa huffs. “Anyone who’s known you for longer than ten seconds knows you’re an emotion sponge.”
“I stopped crying,” Izuku tells him, and then laughs. It grows in pitch by the end, sounding more hysterical than anything else. “I hadn’t cried in years, and then when I did it felt like I was finally myself again. I hadn’t felt like that in so long, it was almost foreign. And it took one of my students hurting herself to do it. I’m just—“ he lets out a breath. “Normalcy doesn’t suit me. Stability doesn’t either. It never has, and I craved more of it. Part of me was happy that Tanaka—“
He trails off, because he can’t say the last part out loud — let alone think it — without being hit by a wave of nausea.
“It’s better if I get that instability from myself.”
Aizawa stares at him. “And what happens when that becomes part of your normal? What happens when suddenly, it’s just a part of your life and it’s not unexpected or unusual and you begin to need more? Take a moment to think about it logically, Midoriya.”
“I don’t want to be logical.”
“I said the only thing I won’t let you do is kill yourself,” Aizawa retorts. “And I meant it.”
“I’m not going to—“
“How sure are you?”
Izuku pauses, because the truth is that he can’t be sure, not when he’s living life day-by-day, trying to survive without feeling, and then trying to cope when all of a sudden he feels too much. He looks down at the shard of glass, situated eerily in the palm of his hand and thinks about how easy it would be to drag it across his throat and be done with it all.
It’s the first time he’s thought about doing it — truly, properly deciding to end his life. He’s thought about death before, wondered how people would react if he died, but he’s never thought of ending his life by his own hand. He’s always thought he’d go out fighting.
Izuku lets it fall to the ground.
And Aizawa stays true to his word — he doesn’t coddle him, nor does he demand that Izuku go right back into therapy — although now that he thinks about it, he probably should. He sits there with him until they’re both shivering from the cold and head back inside together. Aizawa makes Izuku a cup of coffee, and he whispers a small thank you as he takes a tentative sip.
“You’re not a robot,” is as close to comforting as Aizawa gets, and in all honesty, Izuku is kind of thankful for that.
“Maybe not, but it feels like it. I’ll just never get used to…” Izuku gestures around them. “This. The peace. I’ve seen it all be torn apart and I can’t move on from that. Not when there’s still so much to fix.”
Usually, what people tend to tell him next is something along the lines of you’ll find your new normal eventually, it just takes longer for some people, but Aizawa just hums and says: “then pretend that’s your battlefield.”
“What?”
“Pretend that’s your battlefield,” Aizawa repeats himself simply. “It’s a lifetime’s worth of work and it won’t be easy. Treat it like you would a fight against Shigaraki. Asking you to move on and stop being prepared for war all the time would be idiotic. What happened happened, and the memories aren’t going to leave you anytime soon, so find the fight you need elsewhere. Not within others. Not within yourself, but within the system.”
“Does that help?”
Aizawa sighs, seeming to hesitate for a moment. “…It helped me after the war. When I stopped treating it like it ended and I was no longer useful and directed my attention onto you and the rest of your classmates, it got easier.”
“…I’ll try it,” Izuku murmurs, before coughing awkwardly. “Thanks for… you know.”
“Anytime,” Aizawa replies smoothly.
Izuku knows he means it.