Do you know the way home?
I was supposed to be the number one hero. That's what they all told me; get the girl, beat the villain, and ride off into the sunset. What a load of bullshit.
What kind of number one hero couldn't even save her, couldn't even protect her and couldn't even keep her?
It was all my fault; one choice, one snap decision. I made that call and it cost me everything; now I have to pay for it. Paying for my dead world.
Paying with the ache in my chest, the pain that never leaves and that weight, no longer the weight of the world but something heavier.
"What else could I have done?" I scream, knowing he could hear. "I couldn't save her, because I was weak! He took her away! He took away my world and the love of my life!"
The darkness has been the only one to listen; my only friend in the cold, winter night. It has always been there, holding me close for the past year, draining me of my life, my will to live. Instead of her, my world; my warm chocolate haired world.
The cold grips me as it often does, restricting the air in my lungs and the beat of my heart. My heart squeezed by the frigid skeletal hands of life, for what is life if not cold, emotionless, and hell; all without her.
"Why did you do it?" I plead to the dark, slowly coming to a kneel, desperate for at least one answer, one reason to keep on living on today of all days.
My only response is the wind, brushing the almost winter air onto me. Even in December, the winter's air is warmer than my heart or what remains. The cold, the frigid life I lead, as cold as the ring that remains on my finger, perhaps even colder.
All that was left, all that was not dust. All I have left of my world.
"I guess it's… uhm, happy anniversary, Oc-" I swallow, my throat dry. "Well the anniversary of my-our-proposal. Before he happened," I whisper to the heavens, the stars gazing back at me like she would. Her eyes were warm hazelnut with dancing stars in them, no matter what she could make me smile with just a glance. Even at the end they still sparkled.
"You shouldn't have taken the hit" " I was kneeling down, but I feel as though I was falling. The sky and the dark are ignorant of me, my gaze raised and hopeless. I still ask why... "Why did it have to be you? It should have been me, not you!" I howl as I feel the rain on my face.
No, something else. It tastes like salt, a well that I thought had dried up long before.
Tears.
Tears I thought I used up while gripping the ring of the girl I loved, as I gave it to the woman of my dreams, before he happened. Tears I thought I ran dry at the funeral as we spread her ashes. Tears I slept with going to bed alone for the first time and having the darkness embrace me instead of her.
"I-I know… I know you ha-hate to see me cry… I used to cry a lot... But those…they…are nothing like these," I stutter out, thinking of her as we woke up in each other's arms. The first and the last time that would ever happen. Wrapped in arms of pure warmth even the sun couldn't produce, it was the first and last time I heard "I love you," from my new fiancé. First and last time we suited up together in our new apartment. Our first and last time as graduates.
"I haven't been myself, not without you. You left, and it took me with you. You took all the happiness of all my memories. The memories of kissing under the fireworks for the first time, or dancing at our graduation. They just feel like cold, distant memories," I say to the darkness. Like a bad joke, I watch from my rooftop as an immense display of fireworks would rocket into the sky.
"They announced the Hero Ratings today," I spit disgusted by the thought of celebrating today of all days. "Guess who's number one?"
I, then, feel this pain, an agony, in my chest. My heart pounds, trying to break out of my chest, and my lungs hitch, breath scatters with the wind. It feels like someone has driven a knife through my chest and into my lungs and is turning it slowly, agonizingly slowly. It reminded me of the day a year ago, the pain I felt as he grinned like a Cheshire cat. As he grabbed her my world, and slowly made me watch, made me scream, made powerless as she turned to dust.
Ashes to ashes, dust unto dust.
"I killed him, you know?" I say to the wind, leaning my head back on the roof railings. Kacchan would kill me if he saw me now. "I knew what I was doing; I snapped his neck. Twisted it good when I kicked him."
I turn back to stare at the horizon, the sky a hazy grey and white and black. "he begged. He asked for me to stop, like a dog on a leash." I continue to rant at the snow and darkness, the wind indifferent to my musings. I grip the railings, hard. They creak under the tension of my fingers. "But even then, I saw his smile as he begged. His disgusting lips dried and split. It haunts me in my nightmares, it is the face I see when I fight, no matter my opponent," The snow was as white as his hair. Was., And how it changed to red as I beat him, over and over. Until his hair was no longer the color of snow but the crimson of blood.
"I'm a monster, aren't I?" I ask to the darkness, hoping it may give me an answer.
"No, you're my hero," a voice whispers like a soft breeze. The sound of an angel, the sound of my world. "I miss you, my love. it's time for you to come home, don't you think?" it asks as I do circles trying to find it, to reach for it.
"Ochako!" I scream, as I finally see it, a shimmer of my chocolate brown-haired angel and her smile. I see it, I feel it. That warm smile she always greets me with. That feeling as if I am drinking hot chocolate, that feeling that made my heart skip a beat.
"It's time to come home, isn't it?" she asks, as I watch her hold out her hand. "Come home, Izuku. Come home to me," she whispers as I start to walk, towards her. "You know how to come home?" she asks as she disappears like the stars when morning comes.
"Yeah I do," I say, staring at the edge of the skyscraper. "It's the only way I can come home to you, Ochako," I say as I walk, I walk to the edge and smile. "The only way," I whisper to my love, my heart, my world, as I fall.
And I just wait, I wait for it. The ground, the way home. "See you soon Ochako,"
Epilogue:
"It is with great honour that I announce the next number one hero, a student of mine. He has made me so proud of his sacrifice and resolve," I call outstanding on stage, across from me a mosh pit of heroes and reporters. "He is everything we need, my fellow heroes I announce DEKU your number one," I freeze as I feel something, I haven't felt for close to 4 years. I feel an energy race through my body, a life force long passed on.
"Yagi-sensei you alright?" my young, explosive student asks,
"No, he's gone," I say, falling to my knees, my legs unable to hold me up any longer as I stare at it. The number one spot my successor had just achieved.
"What do you mean gone…..." He yells, confused as about all the phones in the theatre erupt with a singular mass ping. With that ping they know the news, they know what has happened. What I just learned as One for All returned..
"Izuku Midoriya is dead,"
[Thank you for reading hope you enjoy!
Thank you my Beta reader EdouRanSan! Your editing was extremely helpful!]