Work Text:
Izuku was a hero.
He may only legally be considered a hero in training, but he was hero in the most basic sense of the word.
He thinks of Eri and Kota.
He thinks of Todoroki and Shinso.
Izuku thinks, and watches.
The sky night was always beautiful, even in the midst of war, fighting and death, Izuku found the sky to be a constant. He wondered if Eri and Kota were okay, he hadn’t had the chance to check on his friends in a while, at lease those not fighting by his side.
Izuku is only 16 years old. Izuku is not a child
Izuku is a hero.
He remembers, at the beginning, when those that he fought with stared in concern at him and his class. He remembers their doubt. Izuku doesn’t remember when that doubt disappeared, but now they looked to him to fight.
Izuku is a hero.
He remembers holding his classmates, those that they lost as they looked at him with hope. They lost their future, in a battle for their future. It was almost poetic.
Izuku is a hero.
He thinks back to before the streets were stained with blood, before bodies had to be piled into alleys. He can never quite remember what it was like. Smiling children, playing on logs and in rivers, Kacchan was there with him, Kacchan was always there. Izuku misses him.
Izuku is a hero.
Finally, Izuku remembers when he was first enlisted. The Hero Public Safety Commission had summoned him to their office, they told him they were short in numbers and they needed help, they had praised him for his skills and abilities, for his quirk.
Izuku had been fighting ever since.
They never called Izuku a hero, instead they said he was their ‘secret weapon’. He was going to turn the tides of war, he would fight and win.
Izuku was not a hero.
Izuku was a weapon.
Izuku is wielded by the heroes for their own benefit. Izuku will be stretched and fought with until he is broken. Izuku feels broken.
Izuku feels broken, and perhaps he is, in a metaphorical sense. Maybe that was insensitive to those that lay on the ground, missing parts that might be used to identify them. It didn’t matter.
He always loved the sky. A constant in pain and suffering. He looks now and can’t help but wonder whether his friends were up there, and how long it would be until he was too.
There wasn’t much else to look at anyway.
Izuku was a weapon.
Izuku was a hero.
Izuku was alone.
In the wreckage of the battle, he honestly couldn’t tell whether he had won or not. Maybe there was no winner. With all the deaths and sacrifices, it felt dirty to say they had won.
Izuku was a lot of things. A hero. A weapon. Alone. But one thing was for certain in all the destruction.
Izuku was a child.