Be Careful What You Wish For

The Beginning of Despair

Somehow he got accepted into U.A., despite what he thought was an extremely poor performance in the practical exam. Aside from the no pointer one, he destroyed a grand (and impressive, for all the wrong reasons) total of exactly zero robots. But for rescuing that girl, along with securing the safety of all other participants on the battleground, he was awarded sixty rescue points in return.

Karma does exist, he mused, a large grin splitting his freckled face in two as he approached the gates to U.A. for a second time, with hopefully many more to come. But this time it was not as a contestant, but as a student, his uniform worn proudly as proof of his achievement.

Studying at U.A. he would have no use of his quirk, his original quirk, for a long (yet not long enough) time to come. In fact, through all the excitement of finally attending the school of his dreams and being tutored by All Might himself, along with many other of his favorite heroes, he almost forgot about it. Pushed to the back of his mind, he smiled at the new friends (actual friends!) he made, passing his school days in bliss, with only a few hiccups here and there to break it up.

But he would receive a grim, grim reminder on the day that their homeroom teacher, Aizawa, took them for a school trip to the USJ.

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The first death was himself-ripped in half with his intestines floating uselessly in too dark water, painted bright red through his blood. Out of all deaths so far, this was easily the most painful.

He didn't die right away. It had been faster than choking to death on disgusting sewage slime, but there was something about watching your guts spill out of your body that made the whole experience so much more real. Suffocating was an experience waiting to be over, falling was too fast to register, but seeing his insides spilling out into the open had a finality to it. Aside from the excruciating pain, it left him with a feeling of absolute vulnerability and a promise that it was too late.

He screamed without sound, his lungs filling with water dyed crimson. It tasted like iron. Bitter, harsh and disgusting.

But worse than all that-than the pain, the fear, the blood, the absolute shock and terror-was the expression on Asui Tsuyu's face.

It only lasted a second. The frog girl's normally neutral expression twisted into something awful, black eyes filled with pure unadulterated horror, as she watched her classmate for barely a month bleed out in front of her. She did not even notice the villain approaching behind her.

He tried to scream once more, uselessly, reaching a shaking hand out in a desperate attempt to warn her, do something, but all that came out was silence and blood.

Then everything turned black. Midoriya Izuku was dead. But it was only one more death added to a list that would steadily grow, stretching far (too far) into the horizon.

At some point, he would grow used to it. But even as the fear of dying would slowly be erased and replaced with solemn acceptance, there was one thing he could never grow used to.

Dying he could handle; pain and fear little more than white noise to exhausted ears. But watching someone else die (you couldn't do anything you worthless Deku, what kind of hero are you?) was something different entirely. It didn't matter how many times it happened-every time was just as painful as the first. At least he didn't have to look himself in the eyes as the burning fire called life faded in them, before finally being extinguished once and for all.

Except it wasn't once and for all, was it? Except it would happen again, and again, because Izuku was worthlessworthlessworthless. Except he would die, again, whether it's because he was too weak, or so that he could erase, undo, fix the mistakes he made.

But this was something only he could do. This was his responsibility.

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AN: Ready for the true suffering to begin? :)