Learning to Fly

He knew all the right words, knew how to say them with a smile on his face, knew that he looked convincing as he did it, judging by the responses he always got. He knew how to smile and laugh and tell everyone how much he loved teaching, how happy he was to be able to inspire the next generation of heroes, even as the shape of the title began to change, to become something brand new, something Izuku loved and was glad to have been a part of. He was so proud of his contribution, of being able to make that final sacrifice to make it all possible. His friends still reminded him every day of everything that he’d done, how grateful they all were. They still invited him out for meals and workouts, still convinced him to spar with them on occasion even though he knew they were all going easy on him, and Izuku, usually, caved. Most days he didn’t want to do it, just wanted to go back to his crappy teacher’s apartment and sit in the dark for a bit, be alone with his thoughts. He knew that was a bad idea, though. Once he started, he’d never be able to stop, and he still had things to do, smiles to give, half-truths to tell.

Because yeah, he meant it when he said those things, but also... it fucking sucked. For one single year of his life, he’d thought he had it all. It was stressful, and painful, and terrifying, to levels he couldn’t even begin to put into words, but it was everything he’d ever wanted. For that one sweet year, he’d been special. He’d helped people, saved people, he’d taken down villains no one else could. On his selfish days, he thought he’d been more powerful than maybe any other hero there was – All Might himself said that he’d shown strength All Might couldn’t have kept up with, not to mention the quirks he’d taken on even when no one knew what was going on. All Might had done what he could to help with that, and of course he’d had one other person at his side, helping him along the way no matter how much he tried to deny it, sometimes.

But every time Izuku hung out with all his wonderful, amazing friends, he remembered everything he’d lost. He’d spent most of his high school career watching them all pull away from him, watching them grow and learn and improve at every turn, while Izuku had just clung to something tiny that remained inside him, knowing that one day, one day soon, it would burn out entirely and he’d been done.

And so it had. He’d felt it, the moment they disappeared, and had called in sick to class, so he could curl up in bed and just sob. No one else was allowed to see him that way, he couldn’t imagine how hard they’d take it, ho awful they’d feel, how much pity they’d have for him. They had that anyway, he hadn’t wanted to make it even worse. So instead he’d just taken his time to sob, then he’d walked out with a smile on his face, laughing it off and blaming a headache he didn’t actually have. Only one person had figured it out; that same person who had always been there, a little ahead, or occasionally a little behind, but always in his sights, if he just turned his head a little. Until then, he’d asked that same question every day: how are the embers doing?

He’d never asked again, after that day, even though Izuku hadn’t said a word.

Even now, it still made him clench his jaw to keep it from trembling, any time he thought about it too hard. He’d been urged to become a teacher, had agreed to give it a go, had turned out to be good at it, but some days it just felt like he was... going through the motions. Some days – maybe most days – he woke up and wished he didn’t have to go, wished he could just curl up in a ball with the black-and-orange plushie that had shown up on his desk at work one day without a word, could just stay there and feel sorry for himself, for a little longer. But he dragged himself up, went to class, smiled and laughed with his students, and hoped they wouldn’t notice that it didn’t always reach his eyes. Hoped they wouldn’t notice the way he had fallen apart inside, notice that he was just scrambling to keep the pieces in a neat pile so no one would figure it out.

And some days, when it was really bad, he sent a message or made a phone call. It never amounted to anything, he never actually got a yes to his requests, but just hearing his voice made Izuku feel better, some days.

Well, maybe better was a strong word.

It made him feel a tiny bit less empty, just enough to keep going, to climb to his feet and get to work, like everyone else was doing. All his friends were out there working hard, and he had to do the same. He was doing a good thing, after all. He was raising the people who would do his old job, now that he couldn’t; was raising the people who hopefully wouldn’t have to do his old job, at least to the same extent. His world just felt flat, that was the problem. No matter how much he knew he was doing good things, was making a difference, he just didn’t seem to feel it. Even when he was hanging out with his friends, or his mother, he felt himself smile and laugh, he didn’t have to force them, he knew, logically, that he was enjoying himself. He just didn’t seem to... feel it, anymore. He knew he should probably get help with that, should talk to someone about it, but he wasn’t ready for that yet. For now, he’d just watch his friends go flying through the air as they launched themselves into battle; he’d watch them create new pet projects that meant so much to them, the way being a hero had once meant everything to Izuku; he’d watch them exhaust themselves, and chuckle over the bets between teachers over how long it would take them to burn out and end up in a hospital, because they couldn’t seem to understand how to take a damn day off, anymore.

He even watched his own students, some days, and felt a hint of bitterness creep into him. He was glad for them, every time they learned something new, or improved on their personal best; but somewhere deep inside, dark and alone, he thought it was unfair. Those kids got to do all the things he’d once done, all the things he’d dreamed of, while Izuku just slowly faded into obscurity, left behind by all the people who had once been the closest to him. Sometimes he just didn’t have the energy left to pretend, to fake the excitement that he knew he should feel.

Maybe, when the embers left, they’d taken something else with them. Something had broken inside him, fallen to ashes, and just like that power that had once been such an important and integral part of him, it had broken, left him empty. He’d considered asking All Might about it, about whether he’d felt the same way, when his own embers had burned out, but he could see the look of concern on All Might’s face, could hear the concern and pity in his tone, and he wasn’t ready to face that.

Not yet.

Maybe not ever.

Sometimes, on increasingly rare occasions, he’d considered saying it to someone else; someone who would get it, someone who wouldn’t give him pity but anger. Someone who would get so damn mad on his behalf, would rant about how fucking unfair it was, how shitty the universe had been to him. He wanted that, wanted to hear that anger, wanted to know someone else was just as mad at the world as he was. The only thing stopping him? The chance that he wouldn’t be. The chance that maybe, just maybe, he’d never even considered it, had just accepted it as the law of the world, that shitty quirkless Deku was destined to remain that way, no matter what he tried to pull to get around it. Because maybe, while Izuku was watching the TV, seeing all his old classmates do amazing things and thinking about when they used to do them together, they weren’t thinking of him in return.

He wasn’t ready to face that thought yet.

So he kept it to himself, and he wrote down his story – all of their stories – so that even when he was gone, people would still know the things he and his friends had done. There were important things to learn from his story, he thought; how to work hard, how to sacrifice, how to be merciful and how to not. They could learn those things elsewhere, too, of course, but Izuku liked to think that one day, someone would come across his words and relate to them, truly understand them, and maybe Izuku would get to be a little bit of a hero again for that one moment, long after he was gone. He didn’t care about glory and recognition – well, maybe a little; it would have been nice – but he did care about making sure it didn’t go to waste, making sure that his sacrifice was worth something, beyond that one life he’d finally been able to help, right at its end. Everyone had their own story, even the worst villains did what they did because they thought it was right, however twisted their logic might have been to get there. And Izuku’s story was that of quirkless boy with a dream, an impossible dream, that for a brief time, he’d gotten to live. As bitter and empty as he was about it being gone, he could still appreciate that he’d ever gotten that opportunity, no matter what the sacrifices he’d had to make for it, in the end. Now, that dream had come to an end, and Izuku had just had to accept that, even if it made him cry in the dark some nights, that one text chat pulled up on his phone as he debated whether he should reach out. All that was left was a statue that tourists occasionally took selfies with, and his story.

“Do you feel lonely?”

That one question was what had sparked his spiralling thoughts, this time, and he honestly couldn’t answer it. He knew he should, knew he probably did, but that same emptiness just overwhelmed everything else. He didn’t know how to feel lonely anymore, he didn’t think.

“I think it’s pretty cool that I can use my experience to encourage other people,” he’d said instead, and Aizawa had allowed him that, this time. He knew that wouldn’t always be the case.

Occasionally he could scrape some time with one or other of his friends, but he knew he should have made more effort, should have reached out more often instead of waiting for them to do it. He just hated the thought of dragging them away from more important things out of obligation to him. Their days off work never lined up, they were never able to all meet up together like the old days, and he knew he missed that, even if he didn’t exactly feel it.

His smile was a little more genuine when he met up with All Might, though. It was still a little surreal that he could do that, that All Might was no longer some unattainable goal, but a friend, a part of his family. So when he announce that he had a gift for Izuku, it wasn’t exactly surprising. He often brought him back little gifts when he travelled to visit his friends overseas, often presented him with hero merch, even, to add to his ever-growing collection. It was the sweetest thing, and maybe one of the only things left in his life that made him smile for real anymore.

Merch, this gift was not.

When All Might set that case in his hands, he didn’t know what to say, what to think. It was clearly so expensive, clearly the result of so much work, so much more than Izuku deserved. His friends had done that for him, even though he’d done nothing to warrant it. It was a gift, but it was also an obligation: he had to do right by it, had to make it worth it, and that thought was... a little terrifying. He would never be able to repay them, would never be able to make it worth all the sacrifices they must have made for years. Worst of all, they’d managed to keep it from him. For almost a decade, all of his closest friends had been working together on the project, and they’d somehow managed to not blurt it out, or slip up and give it away. Somehow, they’d managed to keep him in the dark.

Would he have wanted to know? He’d have had to tell them not to, if he’d known. He would have had to tell them it was fine, that they didn’t need to, that he was happy with his life exactly the way it was and they should focus on themselves instead. All his friends who lived in modest apartments, or with their parents; who cooked at home even on the days they didn’t feel like it and would have preferred to buy something; who had a single drink in the bar and then laughed it off when people suggested more, saying they didn’t like to drink too much in case any incidents arose; who had made a deal immediately out of high school to never give each other gifts for their birthdays, or throw big parties, in favour of ‘funding their projects’.

How much of that had been for him?

But when All Might told him he’d earned it, that it was his power, he couldn’t deny the tears that began to form in his eyes. His friends had sacrificed so much for him, but hadn’t he sacrificed everything for the world? Wouldn’t he have done the exact same thing, if the positions had been reversed? They were his friends, and he loved them, and they loved him back, even when they couldn’t meet up often.

Izuku was happy.

For the first time in... as long as he could remember, when All Might said those words, and that smile burst out of him without even a hint of force, he remembered what it was like to feel it.

And when that costumed figure showed up, breathless and clearly sleep-deprived and failing to hide how excited he clearly was, Izuku remembered what it was like to feel a lot of things. To feel anger, and terror, and pain, and joy, and love. To feel the utter helplessness of hearing Don’t come, Deku and knowing that even though he’d do everything in his power to fix it, in that moment, there was nothing he could do. He’d been pushed out of the hero world time and time again, by classmates and teachers and quirklessness in a seemingly endless cycle, but all that mattered now was that gloved hand that reached out to him.

“Let’s go, Deku.”

This time, Katsuki was inviting him back in, and that was all that mattered.