{~Deku one-shots with angst~}

A Transient Life (A Perrenial Place in my Heart)

1. Culmination

Ozone filled his lungs when he awoke. 

Metallic and distinctive, sharp and engulfing, Midoriya cracked his eyes open to blaring white lights that sting. 

He doubted it was just the lights. 

A dull, painful ache, deep into the very atoms of his bones, spread to the webs of veins under his skin, the mind-blurring sensation solely and souly felt. 

It was a scream hidden under the wraps of his own flesh. 

His breathing piked, all the oxygen seeming to have escaped from the room, and Midoriya clung to the sheets surrounding him in a desperation- because it burned, everything that he was made of; it burned like forest fires and stars and arson and too condensed sunlight- before a gentle hand on his shoulder broke him out of his trance. 

Izuku met peaceful, ozone eyes, and felt relief. 

"R-Reco-" Midoriya started, before pain- more stinging and pounding than the ache engulfing his very presence- erupted inside his chest, like millions of shards piercing his skin, prohibiting his speech. 

"Don't talk, child. It'll only hurt more." Chiyo chided gently, her voice cracking in between. Meeting her gaze to try find out answers, Izuku realised the absolute crestfallen state of her expression. Shadows cast over her features, and her permanent youthlessness seemed to have evaporated since the last time Izuku had seen her; the wrinkles and exhaustion on her face were accentuated but...by what?

Midoriya searched in those abyss for eyes, questions he was dying to have answers to. The pain that engulfed and ate at him was too much; more than any pain he had ever felt before. Chiyo fell to her knees, and despite Izuku's inability to help, he still flinched as if he wanted to reach for her and help her get back up. To his ever-growing well of dread, Shuzenji started to cry; sniffles at first, before tears slowly rolled down her face, yet she never let her face break, never lost the professionalism (she had been here, at the end of a hero, so many times before, and yet it never stopped hurting, never stopped the shards from her heart from becoming dust after so, so long). 

'What's wrong?' Midoriya wanted to ask, the dread entangling inside of him slowly becoming fear. 

He had been injured before...why was it different this time?

Why did it feel like the world was singing him an eulogy?

"You're going to die, Midoriya." Chiyo whispered, and silence filled his ears, his mind, his heart. 

What? 

Izuku's world crashed and collapsed into the very bed he was laying on. "I'm sorry"s filled the air, and not for the first time, Midoriya hates how hopeless those words feel. 

------

2. Introspection 

A quirk.

The very thing Izuku had always praised and idolised was the single cause that cursed him to an early grave now.

Midoriya Izuku is the true, roughened diamond underneath Deku, an aspiring young hero. The hero that is said to lead the next generation of saviours. The hero that was to become a pillar- amongst many other pillars- that the people call trust and believe was genuine. Yet, chained to a hospital bed for the rest of his life, Izuku did not feel as if his death was even worth it. 

He won't die saving people. 

He won't die so someone else could live. 

He is simply going to die because a young child had developed her quirk within his grasps- and Midoriya had felt so warm, hugging that smiling child with tear tracks marking her face and dust in her hair, carrying her to safety after a building collapsed- and now he will curse her with the knowledge she will be a killer.