So this is a chapter I think a lot of people have been expecting for a while. It's also a chapter where I try to do my best Neil Gaiman impression!
Either way, READ ON MY DUDES.
Izuku was in Hell.
He knew that because there was no sky above him, nor ground beneath his feet. Only an all-consuming, starless night that wrapped around him like a suffocating cloak, squeezing and crushing his lungs. It pressed against his temples and eyes like the thumbs of a hated enemy, it punched into his gut like a fist. It weighed on his shoulders trying to force him to the floor.
He couldn't see his body. He couldn't see his hands before his eyes, or the feet under his legs. He couldn't feel cold air in his lungs, or the pain of what surely should be his crippling wounds.
All he could feel was the numbing, corpse-like cold of the void across every inch of his skin.
For a moment, he almost gave in to the darkness. He almost curled into a ball, ready to stay there, still and silent forever.
And then he heard it. Or rather, he felt it.
Something was calling to him. A whisper carried on a wind that he couldn't feel. A distant, beckoning hiss that spoke to the very depths of his soul.
On legs shaking, on feet numb, he stepped forwards. Then again, and again, and again until he was staggering and stumbling through the eternal dark.
He didn't know what was whispering to him, but he trusted it. It wouldn't hurt him, this thing, this strange feeling calling to his blood. It was somehow… familiar, as if it had always been calling to him. As if he had always heard it, somewhere, deep within his heart.
Izuku tried to feel for his quirk, for the monster within that he called Nemesis. He was met with only silence, and yet, he knew that Nemesis was still there. Still within him, still flowing through his blood and curling around his heart and stalking through his mind.
He didn't know why he couldn't hear his demonic quirk's words. Maybe here, in its birthplace, it was bound to be silent. Or maybe he was Nemesis, and Izuku Midoriya had died up on earth.
He didn't know anymore.
But in this strange, cold, unrelenting void, he knew he was at peace. Not the peace of medication, but the peace of… being whole. Being one. Being the thing his blood had been demanding he become all this time.
He wasn't sure how long he walked uncertainly through the eternal void but eventually, he saw something. Something that got bigger and more defined as he approached it, step by tentative step.
It was a gate.
It was small like the gate of a cottage. It was tall, like the gate of a chain-linked fence. It was gigantic, like the gate of a vast antediluvian fortress.
And it was connected to a wall of living flesh that stretched eternally in either direction, moaning and screaming with mouths that were melded into its surface. Hands, fingers, feet, stomachs, and eyes seemed to form endlessly out of it.
The gate itself, however, was nothing but solid gold and made of an uncountable number of bars, gears, grates, and cogs. It was also ornate past the point of reason with patterns that Izuku somehow knew, yet had never seen before. Written above it on a great arch in a language long dead, Izuku read, Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here.
He walked towards it.
"RUN, RUN, FOR HELL AWAITS BEHIND THE GATE!" The mouths of the wall screamed and cried and moaned in a cacophony of madness, "TARTARUS KNOWS, TARTARUS KNOWS. THOU MUST FLEE. TARTARUS KNOWS. HELL AWAITS BEHIND THE GATE!"
Izuku approached the gate, and though he couldn't see his own body, he stretched out a hand.
There was an immense rumbling, like overhead thunder. The many gears and cogs and maddeningly complex mechanical parts began to grind and groan and move all at once.
The gate began to open.
The mouths fell silent.
Beyond the gate was a vast, thick fog that seemed to move like an ocean, flowing back and forth on an endless shore of void-sand. Izuku blinked his eyes hard as he swore he saw faces in that fog. Faces of people long dead, their names lost to history, their bodies on earth long forgotten in graves no one mourned.
He heard the whisper run through his body once more and felt the pull that coxed his blood. He approached the edge of the fog-ocean and for a moment, stood on its eternal shore. He knew, instinctively, that no mortal should ever step into this damned mist. No mortal mind could withstand the madness hidden within its depths. No mortal soul could survive the terrors of hell without being corrupted forever.
Izuku stepped forwards.
The floor was blood, ankle-deep and never-ending. Around him, untold millions strangled one other, stabbed one other, shot and gutted and beheaded one another only to rise again seconds later. Every war ever fought was being endlessly contested in a shower of constant bloodied rain. They reveled in the maddening chaos of their never-ending battle, laughing and screaming in their all-consuming bloodlust.
Izuku stepped forwards.
The ground was black ice, all-consuming, all-devouring, and under his feet, trapped under the unbreakable frost, were people. Hands clawed at the sheets of ice, grasping for peace from their eternal frozen torment. They screamed with silent mouths and cried frozen tears as their flesh was forever gnawed by the frostbite, by the crushing, void-cold of their endless prison.
Izuku stepped forwards.
Around him were cages, rusting and ancient and hanging on gigantic chains. Each was filled with a human body, naked and bone-thin. Each person tried to claw their way out, or at each other, with fingers bleeding from being worn to the bone, crying and moaning in their misery. Unknowably vast machines with blue-fire furnaces churned and belched out smog and toxic gasses, choking the air and causing the cages to crush tighter, ever tighter.
Izuku stepped forwards.
The cries of untold pleasures filled the air as monstrous, pale-skinned things toyed and tormented their adulating slaves. They removed the skin from their bodies, flaying them alive, roasting them, mutilating them, stitching some together and ripping others apart. Sadistic, hedonistic bliss on a scale unimagined stretched on a floor of silk, with an air filled with a noxious mix of heady, opiate-like aromas, human fluids, and blood.
Izuku stepped forwards.
Decaying food stank and piled around him as bloated, obese figures gorged themselves constantly on the rank meat, on stinking wine and even on one another. They even tore chunks out of their own flesh in their madness to eat, eat, eat. Others drowned themselves in wine and spirits, eternally gasping for air while filling their bursting stomachs with alcohol.
Izuku stepped forwards.
A thousand plagues rotted and tore through the screaming human bodies, they bloated and boiled alive in their own skins, pus and bile falling from their open sores. Their skin molted brown and green and yellow with their flesh devouring viruses. They mutated and changed, becoming vast maggots or horrific demonic rats or other, unnamable things.
Izuku stepped forwards.
There was only darkness and silence now. No, not darkness, but unlight. It was somehow thin here, delicate, like a membranous wing of an insect. He had only to put his hand out to pierce it and he knew he could see to whatever it was hiding. And yet somehow knew that behind this vail was the worst of all that he had seen and heard and felt here. Behind this thin skin of unlight, was true oblivion.
Izuku stepped forwards.
And the gate closed behind him.
He stood now in a vast hall, greater than any other he had ever seen or ever would see. On either side were billions of seats, stretching until they vanished into the horizon. And yet Izuku had the impression that it wouldn't matter where one sat, they would always be able to see the center of the physics-defying hall.
The hewn rock sides were gothic and great, rising up and up into an empty, dark sky. Ash fell softly from that great void, though it did not gather upon the ground. It simply melted the moment it touched the black marble floor.
Along the walls were impossibly vast, gothic windows in the manner of those from cathedrals or basilicas. And yet rather than show saints or great deeds through the colored stained glass, they showed scenes of horrific blasphemy. They showed scenes of the war in heaven, of the great fall and of every vile thought and deed mankind had ever possessed.
Through them Izuku could see a black sun, eternally setting on the horizon of the fog of lost souls. It cast a bizarre half-light upon the hall, lighting it and shadowing it in equal measure.
From the walls in the space between the windows hung vast banners and tapestries displaying the sigils of every demon of hell. Endlessly they hung, unmoving, from the walls of the impossible hall.
There was a smell to the air. A smell of old bones left to dry, of the falling ash from a fire that long since faded, of stale air and unmoving eons. For the first time since arriving in Hell, Izuku felt the weight of his own body. He could feel the tomb-like coldness of the air on his skin and his heart beating softly in his chest.
He also felt… different, strange but not unwelcome. He felt as though he had changed out of ill-fitting clothes into something tailored for him. He could feel a fabric across his body, some kind of tunic perhaps, but it wasn't a feeling that could be prescribed to what he was wearing.
It was something deeper, something primitive, instinctual, something… natural.
Izuku's gaze turned forwards to focus on the raised center.
Seven thrones sat waiting.
Each one was different. One was made of what seemed to be living flesh, much like the walls outside, though they spawned no mouths or eyes or hands. Just blood and muscle and bone.
Another was pure gold, shining and brilliant and utterly heart-stopping in its awe-inspiring majesty. And yet it permeated a sense of utter, unbelieving horror that sent a shiver down Izuku's spine, even in this terrible place.
Another seemed huge, fit only for a giant and seemed to be of constant, shifting metal and swords and cogs that turned and melted and reforged all in time some unknown clock.
They were all empty, save one.
One on the furthest right of them all was occupied by the corpse of some bizarre insectoid-like monster. It had a human head and torso, though its eyes and nose had long since rotted away and only carcass-dry skin stretched over its skeletal, multi-limbed body. The rest of it from the waist down resembled something akin to a millipede, or a slug, or some other strange, unholy insect.
From either side of its body vast bat-wings lay, their thin membrane torn and ripped apart in tattered shreds. Its body, all rotting chitin and fungi and bones curled and vanished behind the eternally decaying throne. It had been there so long that it had fused to its resting place through the melting of its skin to long-dried pus and unclean fluids.
And yet it was only the center throne which drew Izuku's gaze.
Unlike all the others it was raised a step higher and was made entirely out of old oak wood. It had no ornate patterns, no great embellishments, making it look almost like the throne of a pauper-king. It sported only one feature, a single candle sat upon the flat pediment of the chair, and upon it, was a single blue flame.
And yet this throne called to him. This was where the whispering of his blood was coming from. He could feel it now, greater than ever before, like a siren song to his soul.
He stepped towards it slowly, dimly aware, somewhere in his mind, that he could hear the clicking of talons on void-black marble.
Closer he stepped, ever closer. He could see himself in his mind's eye, taking the throne, sitting upon it, like a king of old.
He could rule this realm of untold, unholy horrors and torments.
He should rule this realm. It… it was in his blood.
This throne. This place. This realm of shadow and fire.
It was his birthright.
He reached close enough to the throne to touch it and his hand outstretched. A hand made of unlight-black, ending in long, claw-like nails that were not quite talons, his scars glowing with a fire-flickering corrupt blue.
He paused.
No. No this wasn't him.
A part of him, deep inside, a piece of his heart, his mind, his soul, told him this wasn't right, this wasn't him. To touch that throne would be to damn himself truly, eternally, to never again see the light that he strived for so dearly.
He wasn't a villain. He wasn't evil.
He was good. And he knew that. Just as he knew he could take the throne for himself, he knew that he shouldn't, that his real calling was greater than this.
His soul was not damned. Not yet.
His fingers curled back.
"Lucifer?"
Izuku jumped and turned. The corpse-thing creaked with the aging of old-still joints as its head turned to view him with unseeing, empty eye sockets. "Lucifer, my sibling, is- is that you?"
Its voice was the howling of ages, the anger of the aged, the rotting of old flesh and the grinding of forgotten bones.
"We-"
"Lucifer!" It began moving more, its body pushing forward from the throne. Dust fell away from it as it slowly uncurled its massive form. Only now did Izuku seem to realize just how huge it actually was. It was bigger than any monster he had ever seen, a true giant of unnatural, impossible size.
"Lucifer!" It began stretching out a hand with too many fingers, attached to an arm with too many elbows. "I-I waited! All this time, I waited for you! I held the realm while all our other siblings left!"
Izuku stepped away as it continued to move towards him at the speed of crawling lava. "We- we're not-"
"Apollyon, Mammon, Beliel, Lilithia," It groaned out, it's voice somehow stuttering and… joyful, "Even our dearest sibling, Satani, left us."
"No! We're not-"
"Have you returned to lead us again?" The monstrous insect-thing asked, "Please, tell me you have! I've been so alone here, waiting on my throne."
Izuku cried out and stumbled back as the smell of the creature hit him. It was like every infected wound in the world, every bloated corpse with every writhing, fat maggot chewing on old, decayed flesh.
"We- we're not-!" He turned to run from the monster but tripped and fell over his own feet. He landed with a heavy smack on the marble floor and went to push himself back up.
And for a second, he froze.
He could see himself, reflected in the impossibly black marble floor. He could see his horns, one pair curling around his pointed ears, one pair curling up over his head and coming to a sharp uptick.
He could see his hands and arms. The unlight coating them to the elbows, black and shadowed, his fingers ending in sharpened claw-like nails. He could feel the same on his legs, covering him to his upper thighs. He could feel his feet, his rending claws scraping against the marble on hind legs like a wolf.
He could feel his tail, spear-tipped, and curling from the base of his spine.
He could see his teeth, sharp as if shaven down to knife-like points.
He could see his wings, folded against his back and arching above his head.
He could see his eyes, black as the void, cold and burning, crushing and all-consuming, lit only by the paganistic green of his irises.
Worse of all, he could see the halo of unlight that crowned his head, royal and unholy all at once.
Izuku could see himself.
And he knew he belonged here.
And he knew he needed to escape.
The monster scraped itself along the floor, and Izuku turned up to see it. Gigantic, spear-like legs smashed through the marble around him as it crawled over him. Pus and black fluids dripped from open, painful sores as the body of the blasphemous creature lowered itself. The wings it sported tried to stretch, though they failed and instead cracked and creaked with the decay of millennia.
"Lucifer, why do you-" It stopped suddenly. It had been stretching out a hand towards him, as if to help him up, but suddenly its open-socket eyes became… angrier. "Wait… you're not Lucifer."
Its voice was no longer feverously joyful, but a horrific, maddening anger that was growing with every second. "Who- Who do you think you are, little demon? Imitating my family?! Stealing my brother-sister's blood and threading it in your flesh?! Wearing the crown like it is yours to own?!"
Izuku was beyond words now. His terror, all too human and sane, was utterly consuming. He began scrambling back, away from the huge millipede-slug-corpse-like thing that had no right existing on this or any other plane of reality.
"Who are you to mock me like this?!" Its voice was the grinding passage of time itself, the slow fall of all things into death and rot. It rose to a horrific roar that came from every direction and filled every inch of the air as it screamed into the starless sky, "I AM NIRGALI OF DECAY AND PLAGUE."
And then it moved.
Izuku barely dodged the attack. A vast mantis-like forearm rushed forward and smashed into the floor, tearing up the marble and throwing it to one side. Izuku moved faster than he had ever moved, save perhaps when Nemesis had claimed him at the USJ.
He dodged and dodged and dodged again as the monster, Nirgali, moved faster than it had any right too. It smashed into the ground with its vast body flowing after it, its many limbs swiping and clawing at the boy. Through the marble-dust that rose it dived again and again after Izuku, seeing with corpse-empty eyes, sniffing with a nose long rotted away.
Izuku ran. He sprinted on clawed feet from the monster, though it sped after him with the sound of a million thunderous insects. He could hear the buzzing of demonic flies, the screaming of unnatural locust and the war-cry of the black death itself.
As he ran he felt his wings unfurling from his back and, just as the air sang with the sound of rushing death on carapace-spear, he leapt.
The mantis-like forearm missed him by merely an inch as he took to the air, flying up and up into the eternal dark of the vast hall. It consumed and swallowed him instantly, though even in its embrace he knew he would not be able to hide from the infernal creature that chased him.
Nirgali howled, and in its howl, it infected the air with its unholy pestilence. He could almost see it, like a living fog of a billion tiny, gnawing flies, rushing towards him.
Izuku screamed and in the same moment, turned and raked his talons across the air, spewing forth a deadly wave of brilliant blue fire.
Within an instant, the fog was destroyed, burned to nothing.
"WHAT IS THIS? WHAT ARE YOU?" Nirgali's roar was like hearing time itself erode the human soul, breaking it down piece by rotting piece.
He couldn't move fast enough, he couldn't fly fast enough. Nirgali was reaching towards him with one multi-fingered, multi-elbowed corpse-like hand and it was so close, so close, so close…
And then the air split apart with the sound of an almighty trumpet and the purest of light.
It was the most painful, yet somehow most soothing sound Izuku had ever heard. The light was so white, so undiluted and perfect that it hurt him to even be caught within it. It embraced him, it crushed him, it comforted him and tormented him. His skin burned as if caught within the most terrible of flame, and it was healed with the touch of the divine.
The light took him in its embrace and Izuku felt safe. The sound surrounded him, and he no longer felt fear. He simply stopped struggling and hung, suspended in the air as the light pierced the darkness. He closed his eyes and went limp, falling back into himself. He felt no pain, no power, not even his own body.
Just his soul remained, his tattered, worn, corrupt soul still fighting for all it was worth to be good.
The light went past him, and it hit Nirgali.
The monster, the thing, the beast of Decay and Plague simply fell away, recoiling and fleeing utterly from the purity and power of the light that punished and healed in equal measure. Nirgali could have stank of charred, burned flesh, it could have screamed a thousand bloody, malignant curses to the suspended form of the boy, but all Izuku could hear was the trumpet. All he could feel was the light.
Izuku felt his spirit slowly, carefully being lifted out of the dark realm of Hell, away from the shadow and flame.
And back into the world of the living.
Inko's hand moved forward towards the window, the cold glass barely registering within her mind. It was shaking, as her whole body was shaking. Her heart might well have stopped within her chest, she didn't know. All she knew was that the doctors were turning away from her son, who lay, lifeless and dead on the hospital table.
The only sound she heard was the tinny whine of the heart monitor, reading nothing and announcing the death of Izuku Midoriya.
The seconds stretched for years, and each seemed to age her just as much. She could feel the weight of all her fears, all her anxieties pressing at her shoulders, trying to force her to her knees, trying to force her to fall into despair and never rise again.
And it almost did. Her legs were giving way, her hand slipping from the window, the breath stolen from her lips.
Izuku's finger suddenly twitched.
The heart monitor beeped.
Then it beeped again.
And again.
And again.
Time came crashing back into motion, the entire world seemingly catching up all at once in a mad chaotic crash of sound and light and action. The doctors had paused for barely a second before they were back at his side. They shouted and barked orders, machines whirred back into life and monitors exploded with sounds and lights and data.
Izuku Midoriya had died.
And now he was alive.
It should have been impossible, but Izuku Midoriya had always been an impossible child.
A smile tugged at the corners of Inko's lips. It was a smile of joy, of hope, of the wishes of the desperate coming true. The breath returned to her lungs and she could feel her heart hammering in her chest.
Her son was alive. Her son was alive.
He would live. He would walk again, talk again, make memories with her and for himself. His story had not ended, not here, not yet.
And she had him to thank for it.
The thought robbed the smile from her lips and was quickly followed by a new, more terrible thought.
What had he done?
Inko sat beside her son, holding his hand as she watched his sleeping form.
The doctors had told her everything of course. His internal organs had been almost ruined beyond repair, over half the bones in his body shattered, his skull broken and enough pints of blood lost to have almost killed him even if he hadn't suffered his other injuries.
And yet, somehow, he had recovered from it.
Like a broken record they had told her over and over again as they had wheeled him into the room, it was truly a miracle he was alive.
Inko however, didn't believe in miracles. She had stopped believing in them when she had been in the car crash as a young woman, the one which had left the ugly scar across her abdomen.
The one which had ruined her for children.
She didn't believe in miracles because despite all the medical knowledge in the world there was no repairing what had been done to her. It was a tragic accident, they'd told her, a thousand to one chance that she had even survived at all, a true act of God. Surely the loss of being able to have children was worth that?
No. Not when it was all she had ever wanted. Just a baby of her own to raise right, and good, and see grow into someone she would always love and be proud of.
Inko didn't believe in miracles.
But she did believe in other things.
She lowered her head down onto her arm as she looked to her son. She eyed the stumps of horns on his head, they'd been forced to shave them down during the surgery. The doctors couldn't explain where they'd come from.
Her eyes turned to the side of the bed where Izuku's new tail, a long and thin thing, was draped over the covers, ending with a spear-like tip and barbed at the corners. They couldn't explain where that had come from either.
They couldn't explain a lot of things when it came to Izuku.
She knew why, of course, but she hadn't told them.
Instead, she had simply nodded, thanked them and told them she would be staying overnight with him. They had allowed it, she was his mother after all, and if he woke up he would need her there.
Her thumb moved over her son's knuckles softly. His skin was cool to the touch, though not deathly so. Not so much that she thought he would fade any second now. Still, it was terrible to see him like this. With drips pushed into the tops of his hands, wires and machines surrounding him, and with a mask over his face helping him breathe.
Beside her machines beeped and whirred occasionally. Digital doctors assisting in keeping her son alive while he recovered from… from a nightmare not of his making.
They had told her what had happened.
Someone had attacked the USJ while the children had been there to work on rescue exercises. Some fanatical religious cult, or so they said. They had scattered the children while they were waiting for All Might to arrive, all so some giant monster they had brought could kill him.
Her son had been trying to get back to his classmates when they had attacked him… and Nemesis had done the rest.
Her hand squeezed Izuku's a little tighter.
Nemesis. She had felt a strange twist in her stomach when Izuku had told her he had named his quirk. Why had he given it such a… dark title? Why Nemesis? Was it some attempt at being poetic?
Or maybe he was always supposed to call it that.
She shook her head. No, she couldn't go believing in fate. Not now, not when so many of her hopes were dependent on one being able to shape their own destiny.
She had always tried to distill that into Izuku. Shape his own path, forge his own future. Nothing was written in stone, nothing was predestined. There was only the fate one wrote for oneself. It was only through hard work and determination that one made it happen.
She looked away. What a hypocrite she was.
Hard work? Determination? Where had those virtues been when she had struck her deal with that accused creature? She didn't regret it of course, not when the most perfect son any mother could ask for lay before her. He was a troubled child, yes, a child to whom Hell itself laid claim.
But he was her child first and foremost. Nothing could change that, nothing ever would. She would fight every demon of Hell for the right of her child to make his own destiny.
She looked away from her son for only a moment to the phone which sat at her side. Despite there being no notifications, she opened it anyway and checked the messages.
Inko Midoriya: Where are you? What did you do? How did you save him? ANSWER ME DAMMIT
The Bastard: I did what I always do. I made a deal.
Inko Midoriya: What deal? What are you talking about? ANSWER ME. WHAT DID YOU DO?
She had sent that an hour ago and had received nothing. If he wasn't going to answer her, fine, he could go back to rotting in Hell or… whatever it was he did with himself. She had to admit she had been surprised to see him burst into the observation room at all.
Part of her wondered how he had even heard about what had happened, then again, he was… him, so there could be a million ways he heard about it.
Without thinking her jaw clenched. She wouldn't thank him for this. Never. This was basic fathering, and something that could have been entirely avoided if he had simply sat down with their son at some point and talked to him about who he was, what existed in his blood, why he had the power he had.
But of course, that wasn't who Hisashi Hokori was. He wasn't even really Hisashi Hokori. Everything about him was a fabrication, a lie. Every word from his lips was a falsehood designed to trap and ensnare.
He looked out only for himself, and nothing else came before that.
And yet… she remembered what she had seen in his eyes. The emotion that she had never seen before in that blasphemous gaze of his. Was that a lie too? All part of whatever scheme he was playing?
The logic in her brain told her it was. The depths of her heart, however…
He had saved their child, that much was obvious. When he could have let Izuku die he had instead, acted. She wasn't sure how his deals worked, though she understood enough that there was always a sacrifice involved. Nothing was free, nothing was simply handed over. Everything came at a price.
She blinked exhausted at her phone before she clicked it closed and looked back to her son. And as she did so, she couldn't help but wonder.
What had been the price for Izuku's life?
Izuku woke as he always woke.
With a jolt.
His eyes sprang open and his head jinked back against the pillow. He took a sudden sharp intake of breath, only to find that it hurt to breathe. Then his body seemed to recall that it hurt to live and as such he was hit by a rushing wave of muscle-gnawing pain and mind-draining numbness. Painkillers fought with his wounds as they battled over how much agony would be inflicted on his body.
But it didn't matter.
He knew. He knew what he had done. The drugs, despite fighting a desperate battle with his memories, couldn't stop that which filtered through into his mind. The flashes of the USJ, the blood on his hands, the stench of fire and burning flesh, the feeling of hate, hate, hate that lingered even now in the very depths of his heart.
Shaking fingers curled softly, grabbing fist-fulls of the blankets which lay across him.
His eyes were open, wide, staring up at the ceiling, his breathing was not the mad panic of anxiety and fear, nor however was it soft and easy. It was forced, strained, the breathing of one who had to tell themselves to keep breathing.
He stared without seeing. His gaze lost to the memories filtering through his pain and painkiller addled brain.
Memories not just of what he had done to the man he admired above all others, but of what had happened after that.
Memories of Hell.
Memories of the blighted realm forged of darkness and terror where he had walked. Memories of the blood, the madness, the pain and suffering without end.
Memories of the throne which had called to him, whispering to his very soul.
And most damningly, memories of how close he had come to calling it his home.
"Izuku?"
He felt weightless. He felt as heavy as stone. He felt empty and full, dead and alive. He felt… he didn't know how he felt. There was no emotion fitting for what passed through his mind in that eternal moment.
Izuku was lost. Lost to himself, lost to the memories that danced before his mind's eye. Lost to the darkness that his soul had been exposed to and had yet welcomed with open arms. Lost to the insanity of what he had seen, and what he had almost claimed as his own.
"Izuku!"
How could anyone recover from this? How could anyone act normally ever again?
"Izuku!"
He wasn't human.
He wasn't human.
He wasn't-
"IZUKU!"
The word finally brought him out of himself. His transition from the crushing empty madness of his thoughts back into the real world was marked only by the slight shifting of his head, and the way his eyes refocused upon his mother.
She was there, standing over him, her hands reached out to his shoulders and her eyes filled with tears. The look within them was nothing but pure love, relief, and joy that her child was awake, and even more, that he was alive.
Izuku felt a guitar string thrum in his heart, and something of the emotionless wall he'd build within himself cracked.
"Mom?"
She spoke no other words. She simply grabbed him and pulled him tight, for a moment ignoring the wires and IV drips that were connected to his skin.
Izuku felt the soft warmth of her cheek against his and the comforting embrace of his mother's arms. Tears welled along his eyes, and even though he knew inside he should be furious with her for holding back the knowledge that he wasn't human he couldn't help the choking cry that crawled from his throat.
He was alive. Of that he was glad, at least.
And someone loved him. Despite everything he knew he had done, all the pain he had caused, all the terror he had wrought. She loved him.
For just a moment, that was all he needed to remember who he was, truly, on the inside.
His arms curled around her shoulders, grabbing her shirt tightly and refusing to let go. Together they cried giant, heaving sobs of joy and sorrow in equal measure. The kind of sobs that shake the whole body, that rattle the heart and ache the lungs and burn the nose and throat. The kind of tears that only those who had come so close to losing everything they love and care about, only to be saved at the very last second could ever know.
"Izuku you're alright, you're okay, oh thank God, thank God," His mother's words whispered into his ear as she held him to her tightly like he would fall away at any second.
Izuku's eyes opened slowly, looking past her shoulder and back into his memories. Though this time he didn't dwell on them. This time he allowed them to drip, one at a time, though his mind's eye.
The Demon. All Might. Blood. Fire. Hell. Light.
"Mom?" He whispered to her, breaking her repetitive mumbling.
"Yes, my angel?"
"What am I?"
"Shadow… and fire…" Nemesis's voice was a pained, distant thing and it crawled rather than stalked along the meat of his brain.
It sounded as exhausted as he felt, and his eyes narrowed in irritation at it, but he was too tired to deal with it now.
He felt his mother's hesitation. In the way her hands gripped tighter to his body, in the way her breath faulted from her lips, in the way the air of the room seemed to tilt ever so slightly. There was a long pause from her, which spoke more to Izuku than she ever could have with words.
She shifted. Moving from his embrace to sit on the bed and for the first time since holding her, her eyes met his.
He felt a fluttering of candle-fight along his scars, somehow anxious and protective.
"Izuku…" Her hand moved to run through his messy, limp locks of greenish-black hair before moving to his cheek.
There was pain in her eyes. Regret. Sorrow. Memories that stabbed at her heart and tore at her conscience. She took a deep, shuddering yet solid breath and wiped away the lingering tears.
Her voice cracked as she spoke, "You-"
The door burst open suddenly and in rushed two nurses and an old woman, whom Izuku recognized a second later as Recovery Girl.
The mother and child yelped in unison, and Izuku felt a strange, drunken stab of fire at his scars before the shock fell away.
There was a moment of confused frowning before Recovery Girl placed her hands squarely on her hips and almost growled at the two.
"A false alarm I see. Humpf!" She turned back to the two confused looking nurses and began shooing them away. "Off you go, off! I'll deal with it from here."
The door closed behind the two nurses as Recovery Girl began walking around the boy, a deep frown etched onto her face. "When I got the alert that your vital signs had spiked, I feared the worst!" She hopped up on a chair across from him. "You're lucky to be alive, Mr. Midoriya! Very lucky indeed! And your recovery has been nothing more than miraculous, to say the least." She spoke all of this while poking and prodding at various parts of him. Before he could reply she took out a torch and shined it into his eyes. "Someone up there must like you."
"I-I-" Izuku stammered and then looked to his mother, who looked equally as shocked.
"Excuse me but-"
"You need to rest up. Both of you." The old woman's narrow gaze turned now onto Inko, who cowered back. "You've been at his side for four days. You need to go home and sleep."
"Four days?" Izuku blinked in shock. He'd been out for four whole days?
"Yes, young man, four days." She hopped off the chair and began walking back around, moving towards the door. "Which means a lot of people want to talk to you. I'll be back in again soon, I've more tests to run, but until then just try and relax."
She shut the door behind with a quick click and silence once again settled on the room. Izuku's mind drifted back to the question he had asked her. The question which now burned at the very core of his soul.
The question he needed answering.
"Mom-" Izuku began but was quickly cut off.
"Sweetheart, you don't need to ask what you are."
She spoke softly, though there was something to her tongue. Something hiding, something suppressed, something that shouldn't be there because she was his mother and why was she doing this?
"You're my angel, my hero," She moved a hand to his cheek and cupped it again, looking into his eyes. You're my wonderful, amazing son. It doesn't matter what anyone else tells you, you will always be my world, and I will always love you." She smiled, and in that smile was held a million tiny truths. Truths hiding the one great lie she was desperately keeping from her own son. "Nothing will ever change that, do you understand? Nothing."
Izuku paused for a moment which could have lasted a second, or a hundred years before slowly, almost carefully, nodding in response. "Alright, mom. I love you too."
He could see, looking into the same pagan-green gaze that he himself held, that she wasn't lying to him.
But she wasn't telling the truth either.
SO YEAH. Writing that first piece was SO super fun, especially as I'd been planning it since the beginning. Also, really, his ol' Uncle/Aunt Nirgali should be nicer to him, that's his nephew after all!
Any theories on what ol' Hokori did to save Izuku?
So I'm gonna apologise in advance but the next chapter may be a little late for the obvious reasons. Holiday seasons don't exactly leave a lot of time to write fics. The next chapter is written, of course, but it's mostly the editing which takes time so... I dunno. We'll see.
ANYWAY, happy holidays to all of you and hope you enjoyed! Thank you for reading! Till next update dudes!
