weary travelers.

CRUMBLED THOSE I LOVE YOU STICKY NOTES TO DUST

Mom leaves in the morning like she always does. She kisses him goodnight and calls him her little hero and then like it was all a dream, she has disappeared. His mind is gone again and the voices that replace it won't stop screaming.

The awful thing that lives in his head with him tells him he doesn't deserve anything, that he's selfish and that he's a monster. His ears pop pop pop and crackle, fizz, and hiss and he can hear the boom across his head. He hates it. He doesn't want to be selfish, he doesn't. Kacchan was selfish and Kacchan hurt him. Kacchan is still hurting him, even though he's not with Izuku anymore. He doesn't want to be like Kacchan. He doesn't want to hurt people.

His mother can't really look at him when he's like this―

She won't be able to stand him if he gets worse. So he'll be something good.

He wants to help, he only wants to help. To help like All Might, though he doesn't always smile because sometimes people need to know that it's alright to be sad. That everybody cries and that they have a right to be upset and angry about their situations. They have a right to cry, and he'll say it a thousand times over. Because Kacchan was wrong, he wasn't a crybaby. He was―is―overemotional. And everybody tells him that it's a good thing, that it's what makes him Izuku.

(He wonders who Izuku is to them. When he looks in the mirror his skin withers away into wood, he's just a worthless Deku after all.)

(Kacchan is a hero, why would a hero lie?)

(Right, Kacchan is a hero. Kacchan will burn down buildings and sear skin, Kacchan will be the villain. Only villains leave bubbled skin and crying eyes behind them. But Kacchan is a hero, so maybe all the villains are Hero's and all the heroes are Villains, the big baddies, ones at the top, like Tomura's sensei. Like Endeavor, like, like―)

(Take a swan dive off the roof and pray for a quirk in your next life!)

(Then what is he? He can't be a hero. Deku's aren't heroes.)

(Izuku―he wants―he wants to be something.)

He can still hear his father slamming the door behind, he can still see it.

Izuku gets up, out of bed. And he wonders if he looks like that, too, when he leaves. He wonders if his mother can hear him shaking.

_

All men are not created equal, Tomura thinks. It makes him angry enough to pour his apple juice in a shot glass. It makes him feel grown. Makes him feel like he can do something about it.

Like he can save Izuku, like he can save anyone.

Tomura can't stand real alcohol, it's bitter and it burns and―well, he knows his father used to drink when he was upset.

His father used to drink and he'd get mad. Mad enough to break his glass and take a bath to the table and smack nee-chan and mother and him around―course Tomura would cry and scream and he'd get thrown out til his father was sober enough to realize that it was fucked up to make your kid sleep with your dog outside.

Nee-chan used to sneak him food. Izuku reminds Tomura of her. Dark hair, dark eyes, gaunt face, round eyes full of fear and guilt and guilt and guilt, so he tries to make it better and she turns to dust and.

And well.

Well.

Tomura doesn't know what he would do if he killed Izuku.
_

It's quiet out, Shouto thinks. It's quiet. Natsuo―who insists on being called Natsu-nii is reading on the ratty couch tucked in the corner of the equally ratty bar. The bartender, Kurogiri, is humming some off-key tune from a song Shouto maybe heard on the train on his way to school.