hero's shadow // mha

39) perfectly wrong

(warnings: implied child abuse, manipulation, slight gore, and torture)

There's blood on the walls.

It seeps through the cracks in the floor and stains the area around Izuku red.

He doesn't remember getting here. He doesn't remember where here even is. This place feels familiar, and yet Izuku can't recall it in his memories. He doubts it's even real.

The air is heavy with something he can't quite identify. It feels a little bit like fear. Like regret. But at the same time, neither of those fit quite right.

Izuku can feel his heart start to squeeze painfully inside his chest. Horror settles over his skin and sends tingles of dread down his spine, and when he tries to move from his spot he finds that he can't. His legs are rooted in place.

He's suffocating, he's sure of it. And yet even as he realizes this, his body remains perfectly still for another few moments, as if on autopilot. As if he's programmed.

This room is important. The copper building on his tongue is proof of that.

All of this feels like change. Like something Izuku ought to remember.

And what a strange feeling that is.

When he finally builds up the strength to twist his head around, he sees a guy strapped to a chair a couple yards to his left. He doesn't know how he didn't notice him before, or how he at least didn't sense him there, but then his mind chooses to focus on the hand-shaped burns on the man's arms and the dullness to his eyes, and he thinks oh.

So this is what this is. Things are starting to feel familiar now, almost hauntingly so.

"Why are we hurting them?"

The voice comes from out of nowhere, making Izuku whip around to try and see where the owner of it could possibly be. The feeling in his limbs is slowly starting to come back to him, but no amount of spinning in place allows him to see whoever is there. If there even is someone there. There's nothing but four bloody walls enclosing him in—four bloody walls cutting off any potential plans for escape.

And then there's the guy in the chair.

The more Izuku looks at him, the more he doesn't want to be here. At all. He wants out.

"Did they do something wrong?"

Izuku's blood turns to ice. He knows who those words belong to now. Kacchan used to tease him about his squeaky voice all the time back when they were both little. Well, it was more like insulting then, not so much teasing, but still.

No. It can't be. Is that...?

"Of course not, Izuku."

He both expected and prepared for it the moment he recognized the setup of the room, and yet Izuku can't help the full-body flinch when he hears the new voice all the same.

His hands start to shake on their own accord, and he nearly trips over himself in his franticness to just make sure he's not here. He can't see him, but that's how it was back then. It doesn't matter if you can't see him, he's there. He's always there.

Izuku's back hits the wall, blood staining his shirt. He can't use his quirks. None of them are coming to him, so does that mean it's over? Did it really happen this easily? Where even was Izuku before this? How did he get here?

Where's Yamada and Aizawa? Or Missy? Or, fuck, All Might—?

The guy strapped to the chair twitches, and Izuku's breathing picks up. He thought he was dead or something, but alas, the corpse is now sitting up straight in the center of the room, the restraints cutting against his skin. A cracked mouth opens to form a soundless wail, and Izuku shivers.