ITS FOUR AM, I'M VERY TIRED AND I WROTE THIS INSTEAD OF SLEEPING. Wife has not edited, as I didn't want to wake her.
Warnings: ANGST. Talk of death and blood.
Izuku hated the days he wasn't quite fast enough, strong enough, wasn't there early enough to save somebody. Those were the worst.
No matter how many people he saved, how many lives he prevented from ending, there would always be that one son-mother-daughter-father where he wasn't enough.
And he hated it.
For a long time, it felt like a personal failure, no matter how many times he succeeded, how many families or friends he could reunite after a disaster, when the time came that he just….couldn't, it always felt like a personal…lack.
Even for the things he couldn't have stopped- an earthquake causing a building to collapse, a flood sweeping someone into too deep water, a villain attack that he was nowhere near at the time…
It didn't matter, really.
But…
There was one incident that stuck with him the most.
The one that changed his entire outlook on the situations where he wasn't quite fast enough. He'd tried so hard, during that battle. He'd acted to save a young woman- in her early twenties- caught in an attack.
He hadn't been on duty then. He'd been in civilian clothes, on his way to the mall, when a villain with an earth manipulation quirk went nuts. He'd been ripping the ground apart, tearing foundations of buildings apart, and letting them collapse. Deku hadn't hesitated, he'd acted to save those he could, even as he lashed out at the villain in question, aiming to subdue him so that the earthquakes he was causing- small and localized, but dangerous in this shopping hub with all the buildings and people.
Other heroes had arrived within moments, and Deku had subdued the villain, but the ground had still shook, aftershocks, and unstable buildings collapsing all around the heroes.
Deku had seen a building coming down, on a woman who had frozen in the street, watching the chaos around her. His body had moved on its own- as it always had. Always would.
He's swept the woman up, and shielded her with his own body, once it became obvious he wouldn't be able to avoid the entirety of the collapsing building. They'd been buried.
More than that, rebar had pierced through his body and into hers.
He could remember her sobbing against him, in the dark, the wet slick feeling of blood- his and hers- the hard metallic cold of the steel rebar in his body. He remembered whispering comforting words to her, a hand pressing hard against her wound, where he could feel the blood welling up, as well as he could.
He remembered the agonizing wait for rescue workers to dig them both out of the mess, while he tried to stop her bleeding, and keep the woman some level of calm.
(He would later learn it hadn't been that long objectively, but…)
He remembered talking to her, and her whispered "Please, don't let me die Deku."
And he had promised "I'll do everything I can. I'll try my best."
When they had been dug out of the mess, he'd been taken with her to the ambulances, and he had hoped so hard that she would make it.
She didn't. The rebar had destroyed something internally that it shouldn't have.
Deku had insisted on being present to break the news to the family, who had of course been aware thanks to video footage of the incident, as well as the hospital informing her next of kin.
The woman's name had been Yamamoto Michi.
And Deku would remember the world of her husband for the rest of his life. The man had been childhood sweethearts with Michi, and they'd married kind of young, but everyone had seen it coming. He'd loved her- Izuku could tell that even during their first meeting.
Which made the words he had shared, after Deku had apologized all the more meaningful, even through his tears.
"You didn't break your promise- you or the doctors here. You promised to try and keep her alive. And you did, you tried. Death may have taken her, but he had to fight you- and them- for it."
On dark days, when dust and ash, smoke and blood filled the air, Deku would hold those words close to his chest.
Death may come for those he wanted to save, but he'd have to fight for every life he took in Deku's presence.