To Love, To Lose, To Leave

Chapter Five

Throughout Izuku's years here at UA, especially his first year, he was ridiculously notorious for constantly showing up to Recovery Girl's office to have some injury or another treated by her. While Recovery Girl was initially patient with him, considering he had barely gotten One For All, she has long since dropped the pleasantries.

So when Izuku bursts into her office, gasping for air, Quirk flickering on and off around him, he can already tell from the expression on her fact that he wasn't getting out of this unscathed.

The moment the blood stopped dripping off of Izuku, Recovery Girl turned to him with a rolled-up newspaper and smacked the back of his head with it.

"Ow!"

"What the hell were you thinking, boy?!" she scolds, a frown etched deep into her face. "Training with all of those quirks at once that intensely. Do you want to get hurt?!"

"It's not like that, really!" Izuku exclaims, shaking his head. "I just..."

This is for the best, for everyone involved.

"I guess I got caught up in the moment." He gives Recovery Girl a sheepish smile. "Sorry about that."

Recovery Girl lets out a huff. "You and I both know that your apology doesn't really mean anything unless you act on it." A beat of silence, and then, "How much time do you have?"

Izuku looks over to his left, where Yoichi stands solemnly, gaze downcast. Izuku raises one of his eyebrows. Well?

Yoichi's mouth is a thin, frowning line. "Optimistically speaking, you have a week," he says.

Izuku blinks twice, and a dull pang resounds between his lungs.

Ah. Guess I won't be able to go to the movies with Uraraka-san and the rest in the end.

"He says a week."

The frown on Recovery Girl's face doesn't disappear, though it morphs into one filled with softened pity rather than frustrated concern. "Cut down on that Quirk usage, boy. It's for your own good. Now go wash your face, or else it'll dry and stain."

"Yes ma'am." With that, Izuku gets off the bed, and makes his way towards the bathroom, opening the door and flicking the light on in one smooth motion, before closing the door and turning to look in the mirror.

"I'm sorry, Izuku."

Izuku lets out a long sigh. It's not your fault, Yoichi.

Izuku's eyes are puffy and swollen, like he'd been crying profusely for hours. His eyelashes are lumped together in uneven clumps, helping give him a sort of crazed, distorted appearance.

Though, if Izuku's being honest, the blood covers that part pretty well.

Having stopped leaking out of his eyes, thick, jagged globs of sticky crimson streak down Izuku's face—along his cheeks, staining over some of his freckles—down to his chin. Thankfully, Recovery Girl helped with cleaning out the dried flakes of red that clung to the inside of his eyelids. They were a pain in the ass to clean on his own the last time.

Izuku then brings his hands up, inspecting them silently. His fingers are long and thick; knobby, slightly crooked from the sheer amount of times he's basically crumbled the bones in them to dust. The scar tissue on his hand is rough and textured, the pink of it having dulled out over the years.

His fingertips are stained the same color as his face—bright, wet, and sickly—against his pale skin, dripping down the length of his fingers and pooling in his palms.