hero's shadow // mha

53) moth and flame

(cw: minor breakdown, unintentional self-harm)

He manages to make it into the bathroom before he breaks down completely.

He's lucky he's not attached to any machinery as he was when he first woke up. Instead, the nurses (upon Yamada's insistence) put one of their brand new portable vitals monitors inside his arm like a chip. That way Izuku won't have to be stuck in his bed or call someone if he has to piss.

They were still clear about how Izuku is not to strain himself or move around, however. He's in a recovery state, even though he's healing pretty quickly. The doctors, to be fair, aren't even sure why he's been healing so fast—Izuku isn't about to tell them he has a new regeneration quirk, of course, so it's natural for them to be a little cautious.

The chip is only temporary and will be removed before he's released, so there's that to put his mind at ease.

Izuku isn't too worried about it anyway. He watched them put it in, and if he has to take it out himself, he knows where to find knives.

Since he only has one barely functioning arm right now, he struggled when he tried to turn the handle to the bathroom. His stiff bandages made it so he couldn't tighten his fingers around it, and it wasn't one of the ones where you could just press down—so, really, the logical thing would've been to call someone for help.

But Izuku would actually rather die than do that. He did what any normal, anxiety-ridden superpowered teen would: he got frustrated, sent a little bit of energy from Boost to his fingers, and used his teeth to tear off the bandages on his hand once his fingers flexed enough to rip them.

It took three seconds. And then he was in.

So here he is now, barely able to breathe, wishing the fucking emotions would go away. There are too many of them. He hates it.

He's always pushed away his own feelings, ever since he was little and not allowed to show them. Ever since he had to put on a brave face for his mother and hide the bad stuff inside him. He put all of his feelings on the back burner and never dealt with them until eventually, years later, they all just started smoking and setting off all of the alarms.

And even then, Izuku didn't put out the resulting fires. His building burned down, and he went on to the next place.

If he doesn't even deal with his own emotions, why the hell would he ever want someone else's? What cruel joke is this? Did his father do it on purpose? Was he expecting this to happen?

He stumbles further into the bathroom, staring into the mirror. There's something there along with the foreign feelings. There's something on him, in him, around him. Everywhere.

Past the guilt and fear and anger and sadness—he can feel something. A quirk's first breath. A new beginning.

It's...

A hand lands on his shoulder, but the worst part is that it doesn't. There's nothing there when he snaps his neck around, there's nothing staring back at him in the mirror.

Paranoia worms its way deep inside his stomach, the root of all his problems right now, and it doesn't go away.

Deku?

Izuku hears the voice, young and clouded with horror and regret, but doesn't want to. He doesn't want to even acknowledge it.

He can feel the heavy weight of Tsubasa's wings now and it's almost maddening. The colors around him blur, the shapes distorting as he tries to breathe again. He can't afford to have the chip inside him alerting one of the nurses.