_·The Sun Of 2-A] -×Oneshot×-

The Aftermath

This chapter is very dissociation-heavy, and rings with confusion on the character's part.
It's the long-awaited and forgotten chapter I promised last year, the aftermath of the battle.

Be warned, graphic depiictions of blood and gore, badly dealt with grief, flashbacks and lack of comprehension and recognition of surroundings.

In short, very angsty.

~

It took a moment. Only a moment, for the realization to cross his face. The following agony was almost instantly scored out, the bright-as-aurora sparks of his quirk ripping away the dark blood and stains from his uniform, greens and whites and greys swallowing up his features and bathing him in light. It was as if the gods had given this boy the light of a dwarf star, allowing him to collect more and more energy, shine more and more and completely bypass his limits.

Until he explodes.

He threw up his fist, air pressure being released in a deafening surge, the ground swelling as if caused by an earthquake and seeming to ripple as a boulder dropped into a lake. The skyscrapers cave from their foundations, folding in on themselves like failed origami structures and with their own groans of despair. 

He's blown back, right off of his feet, some twenty yards behind the hero. Behind his friend. 

Some part of Shinsou knows that Izuku saved them. The boy had seen something far more important than the shrapnel blurring towards him and had acted without an ounce of hesitation. He'd seen something that he had to change, and Shinsou knew he wouldn't ignore it, choose them over himself

He'd always choose them .

The swaying ground beneath him seemed to have evened out, becoming soft and warm. Comfortable. But the battlefield that his friend was dying on didn't include poster-covered walls, images of cats and hand-drawn portraits of the heroes and people he loved. The bed was covered in recognisably soft blankets, half being from the group around him. He rubbed the materials between his fingers slightly, realizing that he should already know what they felt like and moved his eyes back to the scene before him. 

It had to be nighttime because his pale yellow cat light was glowing on the bedside table, with its blue-painted smile and curved eyes. He startled at the vague voices that floated around his ears, reminding him that the wind was howling outside the window. Today was a bad day. Dissociation-heavy and feeling cold, they'd agreed to stick together through the night. 

He remembered that they met up and knew that this was when life had been infinitely better, but it also felt vividly unrealistic . 

Izuku was right beside him but was also being ripped apart before his eyes in some other plane of existence that he never wanted to be in again. He adored how they'd stayed with him after a day of mutual troubles and nights of restlessness on all sides. They were the most awake of the group and would chat and complain and sometimes reveal a rare secret from their childhoods. It had been better times, even if those long past secrets had brought tears to eyes and made worries resurface. 

Those had been far better than the other reality.

This was the night when Izuku had told them that he would change the future and that he considered his friends to be more important than his own life. The windows had rattled, as if enraged, the wind becoming more violent. It was all in perfect clarity, as he was living that moment and not just daydreaming while his friend was dying .