{~Deku one-shots with angst~}

Eradicating Eternity

A/N: Apologies for the millionth time about the crap upload schedule. Hope you like this chap! I wrote it for a school competition, and thought- hey, why not tweak it for fanfiction! And here it is...

AU: Izuku has lived eternities. He's lost as many as people as he's seen, and it's all come down to one thing: The Quirk War.

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Have you ever killed someone?

Have you ever been killed?

Izuku tears off the mask across his face- of a child, a soldier? He had stopped paying mind to the trivial details too many eternities ago- plastered across his face, a slight sting seeping into the creases and curves of his scarred and worn features. Silent. The war is silent, and silence means that the anger is brewing and seething, all the heat and searing fires are being compressed into fireflies.

Anger always had been so alluring.

Thunder strikes the midnight sky and paints it with brilliant rays of light, millions of shards of broken glass fall like heaven's tears and descend as rain, sparks of supernovas long dead are interspersed in the shadows; what is the use of such a winsome world if it cannot grant him reprieve? Unwillingly, Izuku hears. He hears of the constellations coaxing him to escape the abyss, he hears the very soil he is above attempt to sway the boy off the path of ashes he is doomed to, he hears the naivety he lost try to nourish the cracks in his mask.

Indeed, the mask placated on his patched skin is no longer tangible, is no longer retractable; he has already sold his soul away to the mask. He sold it away to see light, ever since it was stolen from his stars. He sold it away to feel warmth, ever since he was rid of his suns. He sold it away to feel love, ever since he was abandoned by fate.

Have you ever felt blood run cold in your hands?

Have you ever been so starved, you tried to chew valueless money to fill the void in your gut?

Midoriya Izuku was once a hero, had endulged himself in the thrill of justice so many eternities ago, but ultimately, he had been a machine of war; a war that stripped him of everything he had ever found valuable in this faux reality. He is still that well-oiled machine, one that has lived the same millions of lifetimes, one that has seen and lost the same millions of things, one that has killed and died the same millions of times. His scorched remains of a ponytail stick to his face from the stampeding rain, but the mild discomfort is nullity compared to experiences far more anguished than this; the young, feeble children beside him feel it vividly however. Soldiers- like shepherded sheep- align the frontlines, these prospering lives already being fed to the flame. Their eyes are locked onto any possible sign of movement on the other side, their crouched stances are frozen and tense; he could smell the fear as if it was blood.

He used to feel fear too, long ago.

The truth is generally ugly, and brutal and gruesomely inexorable. Yet, blunt truths are far superior to sharpened lies. Consequently, his truth is...it is..

Have you ever eaten human flesh to survive?

Have you ever seen the ground painted with your lover's blood?

He hates war. He hates violence. He hates how his heart cannot reprise the emotions that once consumed him. He hates how he yearn for his hands to be worn from living, rather than gnarly from surviving. He hates that he is the cause of his own eternal suffering, because he prayed and begged and cried to the stars to let him pay to save the ones he loved, rather than let them die, no matter how many times it took. He hates that he is lying, because he would do it all over again, to see his friends- see his family - smile, not in vain or pain, but in joy. The truth, is that he wants to change this cycle. He wants to break the chain that has suffocated him for too long. He wants to eradicate the natural greed that comes with being human- the greed that has cursed him with the other millions of lives to come, his greed for wanting to live longer than life allowed him.

In the midst of the gusty greys and the abysmal blacks, a single butterfly- cerulean and solitude- flutters and dances away without a care in the world. Izuku wonders- how does his blood-stained, violence-reeking world looks, in the eyes of such a graceful creature. The truth...is that change is innominate, it means that he cannot control every crucial variable in this world, and he can't- he won't- let anybody flicker out while he holds the flames, even if he burns like dust to the wind. He points his gun at the butterfly; the click of pulling the trigger and the resounding boom echoes in the field and the silencer placed on the world breaks, as the soldiers under his command charge. Once, he would be scared of the lack of emotion on tainted to his face. Now, he has nothing to lose.

The bullets fly and scream past him on both sides, tearing his skin in streaks and lighting up the tenebrous territory in flashes of luminescent lights. In one world, this corpse-filled, shrouded with crimson, barren land may be beautifu. Yet, how could Izuku ever comprehend such a repulsive concept? War killed the ones he loved. War killed him. 

He wants change, has wanted it ever since the first time he re-lived, but who is he but a meek human in the colossal grasps of interglacial audiences?

He is no longer the successor of All Might.

He is no longer Midoriya Izuku, nor Deku.

He simply exists as a fault.

Have you ever lived?

Will I ever live?

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A/N: Hope you liked it!