checkmate rewrite

chapter seven

Warning- blood, gore, mentions of death

Hadn't he wanted it to? Even in the early days, when he thought of heroes he thought of the fame. The rankings, the names, the fans, all of it had been part of what made up a hero in Izuku's eyes. When he'd gone to U.A., he'd been enamored with the idea of becoming the best kind of celebrity one could be in Japan.

Izuku felt sick as he watched himself clumsily run across the screen, one side of his costume wet and dark from the blood. He didn't scroll down- he knew better than to read the comments. Someone, multiple someones, had been filming him running to the commission after his fight with Mindjack. The caption of the current video he was watching detailed new speculation on an uncovered unground hero- social media's favorite kind. There had been videos and pictures leaked of 'Occult' before but nothing like this. This was real fame. This was humiliating. This was why Mindjack had stopped chasing after him when he definitely could have caught Izuku. The video looped three times more before Izuku found the strength to turn it off.

The morning was rough. He felt caught. Occult was supposed to be the better him. The Occult on the screen looked like a scared little kid running away. Izuku was starting to realize he wouldn't feel like he was a real hero until he'd proven he was just as good as everyone else who had a quirk. It wasn't a healthy or realistic goal. The little voice of reason that so rarely made an appearance liked to remind him of that fact every so often, but shaking the thought off was impossible. It was deeply entrenched in him as part of his identity.

Izuku drafted a text to Hitoshi asking him to come over before deleting it a second later. How could he talk to Hitoshi about this without revealing who he was? He decided to text Tsuyu instead. It was the right choice. She responded instantly- telling him to come over to her apartment instead.

Tsuyu's apartment was one of his favorite places in the world. It was smaller than his and always smelled strongly of vanilla. An assortment of pale pink and green blankets were stacked neatly in the living room even though her apartment was warmer than most and there were even more photos, all of her family, neatly hung in a row in the hallway. Izuku felt himself take his first deep breath of the day as he sat in her hand-me-down armchair.

"What's on your mind, kero?" Tsuyu asked as she sat in the chair adjacent to his. Her hair was tied back today in a complicated-looking bun. She had her determined face on, she knew Izuku wasn't just here to chat.

Izuku allowed himself a second deep breath before explaining what had happened, minus a few details. His arm ached as he got to the part where he'd accidentally but thankfully impaled himself. She remained silent through it all, simply nodding along as he pulled out his phone and showed her the same video he'd stumbled across this morning.

"I can't believe you didn't mention anything at dinner yesterday," she said once Izuku had run out of words. She shook her head as if she was truly baffled. "You have stitches in your arm and you still didn't say anything."

"What was I supposed to say?" Izuku said with a little too much edge. He could feel himself getting defensive. After the ego check from this morning, he didn't need to be lectured by his friend too. "Your mom was with us the whole time. She doesn't want to hear about gruesome injuries. Not with- she doesn't need to think about stuff like that."

Tsuyu's eyes turned soft and affectionate. "You're right. I'm sorry, I just wish you'd called me when it happened. You could have stayed with me. I could have taken you to an actual doctor, not Shouji."