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The handkerchief was crusted with dried blood.
It was such a simple thing ruined with worthless sentimentality and memories of a man frozen in time, but Izuku still clutched it in bloodied fingers. There was no use for it now. It was dirtied and soiled and could only serve to carve out the hearts of those careless enough to care.
It was just a piece of fabric.
Yet, sitting upon Gigantomachia's back, heading towards a battle they weren't guaranteed to win, Izuku couldn't let it go.
It would be so easy to just let it flutter down amongst the destruction and chaos below, to leave it to be forgotten. It would instantly disappear, never to be seen again. It would be stomped into the dirt, buried beneath war and bloodshed, just another piece of trash to be burned. Its loss wouldn't have made him particularly sad, but still, something was stopping him from unclenching his hand.
Maybe it was the hardness in Toga’s expression, the dangerous glint in her eyes that seemed too old and tired to belong to a seventeen-year-old girl. Maybe it was the too-fresh images of a man frozen in time dripping with liquid scarlet amongst blue flames and shattered concrete.
Maybe it was that little spark of something in his chest.
(Something hurting and broken that wrapped around his ribcage, crushing and tired and so very done. )
Izuku gazed down at the pink cloth, body aching with imaginary wounds. It wasn’t his. It had an owner.
And Izuku couldn’t afford the sentiment.
Silently, without a word, without so much as a trembling breath, Izuku turned towards Toga and held out the handkerchief. It was such a small, ugly thing now, but her eyes widened, the rage seeping from her golden irises like blood and paint and tears.
For a moment, a single moment that no one but Izuku would remember, Toga was just a little girl.
A little girl torn down by the years, by loss and this unquenchable desire for things to return back to how they once were just yesterday. When laughter filled the echoing hallways and victory seemed to bear no consequences. When they could bask in simplistic joy like summer sunlight glimmering down upon them, and they were still whole.
Still a little broken, a little damaged, because villains became villains for a reason, but still together, still a full team to heal each other’s chips and bruises.
Yesterday was such a long time ago now.
And yesterday would never come again.
It was already written in stone, in time, in history, but in that single moment, Toga looked as though yesterday was calling out to her, begging for her to fix the impossible.
But in a heartbeat, the moment was over and they were sucked back into the real world, into now.
Her fingers gingerly took the fabric from his hands.
And an unknown weight lifted from Izuku’s shoulders.
Toga nodded her thanks, clutching the fabric to her chest like it was her most prized possession. Izuku blinked, watching the emotions swirl around her tear-stained cheeks like a kaleidoscope of blooming colors. It was fascinating to witness, a villain broken apart from loss, from feelings.
(How many heroes must have been turning in their graves.)
Izuku turned away, watching the destruction blur past. “Do whatever you need to do, Himiko,” he told her, crossing his arms over his chest, ignoring the strange looks he received from the others. “I’m sure you can find us again without getting caught, right?”
He didn’t hear her leave, but he supposed that was a good thing.
“You’re just gonna let her go?” Spinner shouted over the whistling wind and screams echoing from beneath their feet. Chaos exploded across the land: fallen buildings, senseless death, blood splatters painted across concrete. Izuku never really understood the appeal, but if it’s what Tomura wanted, who was he to question it?
Izuku’s existence was dedicated to fulfilling Tomura’s will, and if he wanted to destroy everything, Izuku had to ensure his goal was completed.
“She’s a big girl; she can take care of herself,” Dabi spat, but some of the venom was leeched from his voice. Blood was smeared across his skin still, but he didn’t even seem to notice it. Maybe he simply didn’t care. Maybe he didn’t even know it was there.
Izuku didn’t particularly care.
He didn’t know how to.
Because feelings were complicated and could impair logic at the drop of a hat. To do his job effectively, he needed to be objective; he needed to be cold. He needed to rip that little voice that echoed like church bells in the back of his head to pieces and stomp on its bloodied carcass until it was little more than a blood stain on the ground.
(Just like Jin)
Izuku had long since killed that part of himself and buried its rotting corpse beneath the dirt.
Now he was just tired.
Izuku could see the end across the blood-gold of the horizon, seeping darkness trickling across the sky like oil and man-made stars bursting from the epicenter. The sun’s dying rays were spewed across the space between the earth and the sky, unbothered and bleeding out. Explosions of light and chaos that polluted the air with potent toxins burned Izuku’s nostrils. The metallic scent of death befriended the acrid smoke and sickly sweet aroma that stained the final chapter in familiarity and childish delusions.
The end took its shape in the form of a battle.
Heroes against villains, so cliche and tiresome and hopeless. Just another page in an ancient comic book, another story with the same ending written a thousand different ways. There was nothing special about this ending.
Objectively, there was nothing special about any of this.
But Izuku recognized those starbursts of light and the nightmarishly sweet scent that cut across the battlefield. He could see what awaited him at the end, who was awaiting his arrival, and bile rose in the back of his throat.
Izuku didn’t like this ending.
But his opinion on the matter was irrelevant.
Tomura was fighting the heroes alone, and Izuku only knew how to follow orders.
(A wooden doll with strings of iron and sightless, glass eyes.)
“Since when do heroes throw kids in the front line of a war?” Spinner demanded, incredulousness warbling his voice as Gigantomachia smashed through the final barrier separating them from Tomura.
Izuku counted the seconds between hope and despair, victory and defeat. There were four U.A. students scattered amongst the destruction, a handful of pros that seemed to be knocking on death’s door, and maybe a few lifeless souls of those unfortunate enough to fail. It was difficult to tell from this height if the fallen were still breathing or if they had already passed on.
(A man frozen in time. Bleeding red red red.)
Once upon a time, Izuku might have been heartbroken, but now, he was just disappointed.
The heroes should’ve been rising past their weaknesses in a glorious show of strength, beating down the villains until they were finally defeated. They were supposed to be winning, prevailing.
How sad it was to see the mighty fall.
But Izuku always enjoyed breaking the unbreakable.
(Quirkless? What the hell are you talking about, Izu?)
Even if that meant digging his nails into the flood of hesitant memories that lapped beneath his eyelids, tearing the joyful smiles and jingling laughter from his thoughts. Even if that meant confronting the storm brewing inside his too-hollow chest and crushing the tremble threatening to overtake his hands.
Weakness was not tolerated. Izuku was better than that.
Even in the face of Katsuki Bakugo.
Especially in the face of Katsuki Bakugo.
Izuku had to be better.
For Tomura.
For Sensei.
Jaw clenched, Izuku scaled down Gigantomachia’s body despite the calls chasing after him from his allies. His attention never left the ashy blonde hair that danced across the battlefield, that launched forward towards the inevitable.
Always forward.
( Worthless ,)
Always towards the future, no matter how uncertain and convoluted it may seem.
He couldn’t remember a time when Katsuki had ever looked back.
But . . .
If he had learned anything from Dabi, it was that the past never truly dies.
It sinks beneath the wave of a single moment, less than the time it takes to blink, and drowns for a short lifetime. It buries itself underneath a decade of twisted shadows and blood-curdling screams that Izuku could still hear once the silence bled into static. The past was a disease that never fully disappeared, just faded within the medication and treatments undergone by oblivious fools.
It could be ignored, but a bullet wound still bleeds beneath a bandage.
Izuku had shed enough blood for the past.
( useless ,)
How much had Katsuki?
His admiration was nothing more than cold ashes now. It had been dead for a long time, and nothing could bring back that spark from when they were little kids playing Heroes and Villains.
But how much had Katsuki actually changed? Did he still remember Kacchan? Remember Deku?
Izuku was deathly curious. He wanted to figure it out. He had a list of questions forming in his too-wild, too-delusional mind as he raced across the wreckage of the battlefield, knife gripped in a recklessly scarred hand.
There was still blood on his hands, staining the knees of his pants, crusted along his blade, but his body had been dyed red long before tonight. What was one more drop, one more life, when nothing came after the end? What did anything matter when Izuku had a job to do, and he was the villain in this war?
Everyone knew what happened to the villains at the end of the story.
But if Izuku could cause a little chaos on his way out . . . maybe it would all be worth it.
The blonde boy, only a cruel handful of months older than Izuku, reared back, his right palm aiming towards Tomura’s exposed side. Nitroglycerin bubbled up and crackled along his skin, and Izuku wanted to choke on its caramel scent.
Now, Tomura didn’t need saving, but Katsuki was Izuku’s.
Izuku’s problem. Izuku’s ghost.
Izuku’s past.
Aggressive. Straightforward. Predictable.
Always so very predictable.
So Izuku jumped between them, already wrapping his fingers around Katsuki’s forearm. He’d watched the U.A. Sports Festival. He’d seen his ghost win over and over again as he had always sworn to do.
He’d seen Katsuki begin with a right hook more times than he could possibly count.
Izuku could only recognize the shred of surprise blooming across Katsuki’s face for a split second before throwing the hero-in-training over his shoulder, away from Tomura.
The boy rolled out of it, his head shooting up to meet Izuku’s too-green gaze.
( quirkless )
Izuku could see the exact moment something clicked in Katsuki’s brain, maybe a faint recollection or the realization of a familiarity. Whatever it was, it was quiet recognition that began in his red red red eyes and spread across his soot-stained expression.
The past never truly dies, and sometimes, no matter how hard one tries to forget it, all it takes is a single catalyst and it all comes rushing back.
Ghosts can go silent, but silence doesn’t equate to nonexistence. They’re still there, still waiting.
Izuku was sick of waiting.
Because just as Katsuki was Izuku’s ghost, he was Katsuki’s too.
Ghosts were meant to haunt.
Just as Katsuki Bakugo was meant to win.
And Izuku Midoriya . . . well.
( Deku.)
“Izuku?”
He was supposed to lose.
The boy with the green curls and too-sharp, calculating eyes straightened, jaw tensing tightly. An error in the system was all it was. A misspoken word or name from the usual script that Izuku had carved into his skull on the good days. A moment of thoughtlessness caused by the stress and shock of battle.
The name sounded unnatural to his ears despite having said it only minutes before in the base. Sure, he had revealed it to Dabi and Hawks, but it was all part of a plan, a series of manipulations to get what he wanted. But no one, not the League, not the Paranormal Liberation Front, not even Sensei called him by that name anymore. It was just Deku.
Deku, the League’s analyst, a vicious monster of a child who knew too much and felt too little. The little quirkless boy who preferred the Nomu’s company over actual people’s because he shared more in common with those man-made beasts than the humans around him. Deku, the small child who dreamed until his brain bled and painted a better future for someone who would always be defective.
“No,” Katsuki breathed, his voice as thin and weightless as the smoke rising up up up. “No, y-you can’t be . . . you can’t be him. H-he . . . he would never . . .”
(And wasn’t it funny how often Izuku was right. He really did know Kacchan better than anyone.)
Behind him, Tomura cackled darkly, the sound hoarse as though he had scrubbed sandpaper down his throat.
“Oh my,” Tomura gasped, his amusement clawing through the flesh of Izuku’s back. Blood bubbled up, rolling in scarlet rivers from imaginary wounds that only Izuku would ever see. “This an old friend of yours? A bit rude that you never introduced us, don’t you think, Deku?”
Katsuki nearly choked at the mere mention of the old nickname, his eyes widening to the size of dinner plates. It was a bit funny how everything always seemed to freeze during scenes like this. When a revelation came forth in the midst of battle, bloodied and bruised and half-way broken between despair and age, yet all they could do in response was stop. Stop moving, stop breathing, stop thinking.
It was an easy way to get killed, Izuku thought.
A boy— half white, half red hair, heterochromia eyes, scar tissue marring his left eye, possible vision impairment, Todoroki Todoroki Todoroki— appeared at Katsuki’s side. Another U.A. student. Another ghost that just haunts and haunts and haunts. “You know him, Bakugo?”
Izuku spun the knife around his fingers, searching Katsuki’s expression for his reaction. It had been years since the last time they’d met, enough time for the boy’s face to sharpen with age and maturity. Enough time for his blonde spikes to darken a shade and his scarlet eyes to deepen with new-found knowledge and experiences he hadn’t had at five years old. Enough time for Katsuki to grow taller, grow stronger, grow into the hero-in-training in front of Izuku now.
The irony of their situation was not lost on Izuku, how someone like Katsuki was the hero and Izuku was the villain. How they were no longer the same children they were the last time they’d met.
How Katsuki Bakugo was the one frozen with sentiment, not Izuku.
“We . . .” Katsuki began, but no words seemed able to follow.
How could one describe their relationship, this old, ruined thing that couldn’t exist?
Katsuki couldn’t.
Izuku just didn’t want to waste energy putting his thoughts to words.
“Are currently on a battlefield, attempting to kill each other,” Izuku finished for him, pointing his still-blood-encrusted blade at Katsuki’s throat. “The heart-to-heart can wait.”
Tomura rasped another chuckle, wrapping a bloodied arm around Izuku’s shoulders. Even at only 75% of All for One, power was radiating off his crackled, half-broken skin, suffocating and not so unlike Sensei himself. He wondered how long it would take for Sensei to completely seal away Tomura’s consciousness, to push Tomura down beneath the waves of quirks and suffocate him.
Would there be anything left in the end?
Izuku really wanted to know.
(The stage was set, the characters in place. The director only needed to say ‘action’.)
Katsuki glanced between the two of them, red eyes hard and swirling with paralyzing shock. For someone who had fought villains a dozen times over, even being kidnapped by them once upon a time, Katsuki didn’t seem like it. His hands were loose at his sides, too shocked, too thrown off kilter to be of any use in a fight. He’d probably get hurt if Izuku or Tomura or someone else went in for the kill. But that Todoroki boy—because he was a Todoroki, Izuku was so sure and he was so rarely wrong—stood at his side, filling in the shadow Izuku left behind a decade ago.
How easily he was replaced with a new, better model.
Bitterness seeped into his throat like acid.
Katsuki—brave, determined Katsuki—didn’t seem to understand. His expression was pitifully crumbled like a wrapper in a child’s too-tight, careless grasp, and for all that Izuku praised Katsuki’s intelligence, he just couldn’t seem to put two and two together.
Was it because he was quirklessquirklessquirkless?
“What happened to you, Izuku?”
It was a plea, a desperate cry demanding answers he really didn’t want to give. If even Katsuki wanted him to satisfy his curiosity, to answer questions with absolutes and certainties . . . Izuku might just snap.
Kacchan was supposed to know everything.
“How close you two are!” Tomura cheered, a maniac tune lacing his words with a sick glee Izuku had only heard a handful of times before. His arm tightened around Izuku’s neck, almost a chokehold but not quite. “If I’d known, I would’ve had you meet sooner, Brat! Maybe you could’ve convinced him back then.”
Izuku resisted the urge to swallow against the lump in his throat. Tomura would’ve felt it, felt the weakness, the tremble about to overtake his body. Weakness was a defect.
Izuku wasn’t defective.
He was an analyzer, a weapon in Sensei’s arsenal.
“I warned you that he wouldn’t join the League,” Izuku hummed, glancing away from the heroes for a split second, a scowl etched across his face. “You didn’t listen.”
“But if I had known you were friends-”
“We’re not.”
Tomura threw his head back, laughter spilling from splitting lips, his scar standing out against his pale complexion. “Since when were you so heartless?” He finally released Izuku, pushing him to the side. Izuku stumbled for a step for correcting himself.
The burns on his chest and shoulder were pulsing.
“Deku is my player two, has been since Sensei brought him back as a blubbering little brat,” Tomura spat, as though Izuku had vanished the moment he laid eyes on the heroes once more. The anger returned, that burning pool of oozing fire that made his crimson irises gleam with a deadly light. “He’s not switching to join your party so don’t even try.”
Katsuki whipped towards Tomura, hands sparking with little bursts of light. He could easily make them bigger, burn them brighter. Izuku had seen him fight in the Sports Festival, had caught sight of him during the UA training camp; Katsuki could do so much better if he desired to.
But that expression . . .
Izuku really didn’t understand it.
“All for One did this?”
It was a growl barely resembling a human. Kind of like the noise one of the smaller Nomu made before it ripped apart its prey, tearing skin from muscle and muscle from bone. Izuku remembered that Nomu. It was a vicious little thing, always getting into trouble, but Izuku used to play with it when he was younger.
He was almost sad when the Doctor had to put it down.
But Katsuki looked one wrong move away from lunging forward.
It was only that Todoroki boy—Shouto, it was Shouto, Dabi never mentioned him but Izuku knew —that held him back with a half-hearted grip on Katsuki’s elbow.
Izuku wanted to tear it off.
The spark was dead. The spark was dead. The spark was dead.
Deku didn’t admire Kacchan anymore.
“What the hell did you do to him?!”
Tomura smirked as Katsuki broke from Todoroki’s grip but didn’t launch toward certain death. Would Tomura let Izuku fight? Katsuki was Izuku’s past, Izuku’s ghost, Izuku’s problem. It wouldn’t be fair if Tomura took that from him.
It wasn’t fair unless Deku proved Kacchan wrong.
“Why don’t you ask Deku?”
“Shut! Up!” Katsuki finally had enough, using his explosions to propel him forward despite Todoroki’s warning shout. It was nearly deafening, the starbursts and smoke that erupted through the air. “He’d never become one of you!”
Izuku felt the heat, the change in the pressure before a wall of blue flames cut a dangerous line in the dirt. Katuski cursed loudly, flipping away from the fire, away from Izuku and all the villains he stood with.
“Sorry to tell ya, Kid,” Dabi mused, voice crackling like the remnants of fire dying across the battlefield, “but our little friend over here stabbed Mr. Number Two in the back. That’s more than most villains can say.”
(The skin around his staples were curling up, too crisp and discolored and flaky. Dried blood crusted around his staples. He was falling apart, falling down. A pawn was falling, breaking, dying. One wrong hit, one wrong move, one wrong breath . . . too many cut strings, too many puppets clattering to the ground in heaps of limbs and vacant eyes.)
(Jin was already dead. Would Dabi have to die too?)
“Hawks?” Todor-Shouto breathed, the skin around his lips tightening in what could’ve been a grimace.
“Deku, go,” Tomura hissed, fingers twitching at his sides as he knelt to the ground. “You won’t respawn if you lose.”
Izuku scoffed. “Bakugo can’t kill me.”
Then the ground splintered like a glass vase shattering on concrete.
A distraction, perhaps, a series of unfortunate events leading to a climax with no real winners. A heartfelt conclusion for heroes, a final act before the curtains closed, a heart-wrenching twist.
It didn’t matter.
It was enough.
Izuku took his chance, dashing forward.
Always forward, always towards this moment.
It’s what he was designed for.
As Tomura’s decay ceased, mountains of ice spiked through the upturned dirt, a row of jagged ridges and shimmering walls. Dabi was already covering his back, another wave of flames colliding with Shouto’s ice.
Steam poured from the wreckage like a cloud of white. Enough to blind, to hinder vision enough to gain an advantage. It would’ve been more efficient moments ago before Katsuki had time to refocus, but Izuku was flexible.
Plans could change. Predictable people could be surprising. Unforeseen variables could appear.
But Izuku was rarely wrong, and he certainly wasn’t going to break his streak with this fight.
Sensei would be so disappointed in him.
Izuku flipped the knife to his left hand as Katsuki leaped back, dodging the long arc of Izuku’s first swipe. Panic was an unpredictable aspect of humanity, but instinct was easy. Instinct was neat, orderly, trained .
People didn’t think when they were scared.
They just reacted.
Izuku knew Kacchan better than anyone else.
Counter-attack.
Right hook.
Always a right hook.
Katsuki reared his right fist back, unbalanced and shaky. It wouldn’t be a powerful hit, barely even worth the bruise it’d form.
But it’s not like Izuku was planning to let the attack connect anyway.
Izuku ducked beneath Katsuki’s arm— green gauntlet, grenade, stores sweat, don’t get hit don’t get hit don’t get hit— and the blade followed the motion, sliding beneath his guard. It would be a deep cut across his chest, maybe a portion of abdomen as well, but it wouldn’t kill him.
Incapacitate, debilitate.
Keep Katsuki out of the running.
But no, it wouldn’t kill him.
“Deku!”
A knick in black armor was all he managed when a taut coil of gray fabric shooting forward, too close, too quick, too annoying.
Izuku gritted his teeth as the capture weapon curled around his wrist, pulling him away from Katsuki. Something popped as he was released, rolling across the uneven, jagged ground, and sent a flicker of pain up his arm. He felt the rocks and debris dig into his skin, but it wasn’t important.
A dislocated wrist wasn’t important.
The way his blisters and burns burst open and oozed beneath his clothes wasn’t important.
“Pay attention, Bakugo!”
He was so close.
So, so, so close.
Izuku pushed himself to his knees with a clenched fist, glancing toward the voice.
Eraserhead.
A variable, not unexpected but faster than Izuku would have thought. It didn’t mean that Izuku was wrong. No. It didn’t mean that everything was falling apart, that the outcome would inevitably change. It just required adaptation, a little change here and there to adjust to the current situation.
Izuku was good at adapting.
It wasn’t a failure on his part.
Eraserhead, Shouta Aizawa, stood beside Rocklock and Manual beyond the steam, small collections of water floating beneath his burning eyes. His quirk was active, eyes another shade of red that Izuku was getting sick of seeing and black hair dancing above his head. A scar, a little souvenir from the anti-All Might Nomu, one that Izuku hadn’t been able to witness, carved across one of his cheeks, glinting silver in the dim lighting.
Were they trying to prolong Eraserhead’s quirk? Prevent his eyes from drying out, extending the time between blinks? Keep Tomura from using his quirks, a quick take-down, a victory for the heroes?
The grip of the knife dug uncomfortably into Izuku’s palm.
Expected. An expected variable.
That’s all it was.
“Smart,” Izuku groaned, letting his knife clatter to the ground to pop his wrist back into place with a harsh snap. “But not full-proof, Eraserhead, not very rational or logical. Isn’t that your whole shtick?”
Out of the corner of his eye, a yellow blur darted across his periphery, small and too quick to be anything other than a hero. The blob landed on top of a crumbled pile of debris, too far away for Izuku to read their expression.
Gran Torino.
Eraserhead, Rocklock, Manual.
Shouto Todoroki and Katsuki.
Any more and Izuku would be completely surrounded.
Not good, not good at all. Too many variables, too many outcomes. Higher risk, better reward, better outcome, better chance of escape. Too many dots to connect, too many ends to tie.
It wasn’t a miscalculation.
“You’re Deku?”
Izuku rose to his feet, knife reclaimed in his left hand. Eraserhead didn’t dare narrow his eyes, but something about the pinch in his jaw, the tension in his shoulders . . . it made Izuku want to rip his hair out.
It was too close to pity, whatever it was. Izuku didn’t need that; he didn’t need any of it.
Certainly not from a hero who came too late and for all the wrong reasons.
“He really is just a kid,” Rocklock huffed, shaking his head as if in disappointment.
(“You could do so much better than this, Deku. You could be so much better, if only you tried harder .”)
(“ You’re quirkless, not useless, act like it. ”)
“You know an awful lot about me for someone I’ve never met,” Aizawa called out, voice nearly drowned out by the rush of blood roaring in Izuku’s ears, by the screeching of shattering ice.
(“The hell’s with those notebooks? What are you, a stalker? Fucking creep .”)
He’s not wrong.
He didn’t miscalculate.
(“You can’t be a disappointment, Deku. Disappointments end up dead .”)
All the puppets required were still strung up.
Still dancing.
The unnecessary ones were cut down.
(Was Jin unnecessary then?)
The scene was still ongoing, the final bows still approaching exactly as Izuku and Sensei had planned.
(A man frozen in time. So much red . He wasn’t moving.)
Everything was fine.
It had to be.
A rustle of kicked stones echoed behind him.
A shaky exhale, unfamiliar and unsure and everything Katsuki wasn’t supposed to be.
It made the buzzing beneath his skin worse.
“Izuku . . .”
Izuku had always fit in more with the Nomu, had always preferred their company over actual people’s.
It was a well known fact.
If asked later, Izuku would reference this point when he was eventually, inevitably questioned.
Why else would he snap?
Keigo had never seen Deku fight before.
In the months since he had infiltrated the League, he had bore witness to brawls and guttings and fights where blood cascaded down the walls like rain batting against a window. Some people just had a thirst for it, for the violence and adrenaline rush the fight provided in those little moments of uncertainty. Were they going to make it out alive? Would they win? Lose? Would they die from it?
Deku never possessed that thirst, not like the others did.
His was something else entirely.
He craved knowledge like a drug.
Countless times, Keigo had watched as Deku hunched over his notebooks, his hand scribbling line after line after line. Some nights, the only sound filling the room would be the turning of pages and the furious scratch of graphite against paper. His eyes were always so sharp in those moments, so wide and hungry that Keigo was half-sure the kid would starve to death if he didn’t absorb more, didn’t learn more more more.
And Keigo had seen the results of those sleepless nights first hand, had seen the way the villains used the information Deku produced to obliterate heroes. He’d read through a few reports himself, and the depth, the detail, the detached way Deku could just line up ways to kill heroes, to destroy and rip them from their pretty pedestals . . .
Deku was like a well-oiled machine.
Keigo recognized the signs of conditioning, of breaking someone apart until they only lived for someone else’s benefit. The scars spilling down Deku’s skin were enough proof; he was designed for a purpose, and Deku had stopped fighting it a long time ago.
So, no, Keigo had never known Deku to be a fighter; he never used fists or weapons to take down his enemies. His brain was more than enough.
He hadn’t thought Deku was capable of dirtying his own hands, not like Shigaraki or Toga.
He was wrong.
So very, critically wrong.
Leaning heavily against Tokoyami, haphazard bandages wrapped around his torso, Keigo saw the wreckage, felt it in the cauterized stab wound on his back.
No one else could see, not from this distance, but Keigo had always had especially sharp vision.
He could see the fresh blood dripping from the edge of Deku’s blade. He could see the frantic breathing reverberating through the boy’s chest, the way he favored his right arm like something was broken. He could see the faint temor of tension in the boy’s shoulders and the way those green eyes were darting from threat to threat.
No safe zone, no way out without fighting.
Still calculative, still manipulating invisible strings, but there was some feral quality to his movements now, a sort of primal desperation that made people like Deku particularly dangerous.
Deku was a villain like the rest of the League, the rest of the Paranormal Liberation Front; Keigo knew this. But at the same time, he was completely different.
Izuku, the little boy Deku used to be, maybe still was beneath all the training and scars and ruin, had no choice in the matter.
Keigo had to wonder if Izuku, before misfortune had come knocking at his door, before he’d been drowned in the darkness of the underground, would have ever believed that he’d eventually end up on a battlefield, fighting against heroes and people who might’ve been his friends in another life.
If Izuku would ever believe that he’d hold his own against pros in spite of his quirklessness, would ever believe that he’d make it this far, even if it wasn’t in the direction he might’ve wanted.
Probably not.
Izuku wasn’t Deku.
And Deku knew exactly what he was.
In the middle of a war, Deku knew his role, probably had prepared for it for years.
Did Deku know this was how it was going to end?
Did he see all this coming?
Was everything going according to his plan?
Keigo didn’t know. He wasn’t Deku; it wasn’t his job to know.
But still, he must’ve had some inkling about this, right? Must’ve known that the heroes would attack, that lives would be lost, that everything would crumble at his feet like a stack of cards. It must’ve at least crossed his mind once or twice while he was scheming away.
It would be improbable to believe anything else.
Which meant that Deku had contingency plans.
The heroes weren’t going to win so easily, huh?
The wreckage down below was already catastrophic, verging on ruinous; Keigo wasn’t sure how much more they could take before everything was destroyed. Shigaraki had woken up already, Gigantomachia storming across the battlefield like a tornado of destruction. Most of the League and key members of the Paranormal Liberation Front had escaped, and Keigo wasn’t stupid enough to believe that they’d be captured by the end of the night.
Not when Deku had that gleam in his eye.
Not when the boy, injured and bleeding from a gash across his forehead, cocked his head, assessing, watching, seeing .
Always seeing more than he should.
Keigo couldn’t hear what Deku’s last words were, couldn’t hear the bombshell he’d inevitably leave behind.
He just watched Deku’s lips move as he pulled some black, cylindrical device from his pocket.
Familiar, pulsing black portals opened at Deku’s feet, swirling with purple mist and pitch fog. They pulled the villains within their depths, laughter echoing across miles of debris and bloodshed.
An impossible feat considering Kurogiri was still in custody.
The heroes rushed forward as they always did, as they were trained to do.
Deku only hesitated a breath behind all the other villains, the harsh, desperate viciousness fading from his expression.
Keigo thought he just looked tired as he spread his arms, falling backwards in the portal.
It was as graceless as a child’s swan dive.
And then Deku was gone.