The Flap of a Butterfly's Wings

Hiraeth

Izuku knells over, sweat dripping down his forehead onto the cool sand. The sun was rising over the ocean in beautiful pastels, but he hardly took notice of it. He had run the entire length of the beach and back again as his warm up then proceeded to practice strengthening his telekinesis quirk while simultaneously trying to turn invisible. He found that using two quirks that were both physical straining was a lot more difficult than he had initially thought. He hasn't been able to turn invisible while using telekinesis yet, but he seemed to have gotten better at lifting heavier objects.

His mouth moves in incomprehensible mutters, still leaning over with his hands on his knees, "I wonder if when I pulled that tree out of the ground during the Hassaki Raid it unlocked some sort of extra strength in my quirk. It would make sense because ever since then it's been easier to lift heavier objects." To prove this, he goes up to the dump and finds a fridge that's a fairly big size and uses his quirk. His muscles tighten, and a warning of a migraine comes with a pang in the back of his head, but the fridge floats several feet in the air. Izuku floats it towards the rest of the garbage that they had taken out and lets it go with a loud thump.

He was dizzy from overworking himself, and he hasn't had anything to eat since the night before. The only thing that was keeping him from falling over was the rage and fears that coursed through him. It was an addictive feeling: to be so angry that anything seemed beatable, breakable. This must have been what Kacchan had felt like. Izuku suddenly understood why the blond always latched onto anger. It was a safety blanket that made one feel invincible. Even with that, Izuku loathed it. It made him feel out of control, and how he hated to be out of control. He couldn't stand it.

Needing to get everything out, Izuku walked towards a worn, metal storage container and started to punch it with bare fists, invisibility fading away. He screamed even when his voice cracked. He thought that if he yelled loud enough, hit harder, stronger, all of the panic would seep out of him. But it didn't. It never did. He wanted to get AFO's face out of his head, but it never left him.

He punched again and again until he heard a loud crack followed by throbbing pain surrounding both of his hands. He looked down to see that his hands were a bloody mess, covered in red and torn skin hanging on by a thread. His right thumb was bent at an unnatural angle, and he cursed.

Izuku didn't even know where to begin with cleaning up the mess. The entirety of Izuku's hands were screaming in pain, and the blood prohibited him from seeing where he was actually hurt. He couldn't use his healing quirk- that only worked on other people. He's used it only a handful of times since first unlocking it when Ru got shot. And while his quirk healed the person who had gotten hurt, it only transferred the pain to him, but better him than anyone else.

"Ru is going to kill me."

"Not if I beat them to it," a voice says from behind him. Familiar and rough and angry. He had been so lost in himself that he hadn't even paid attention to his surroundings.

Kacchan had snuck right up on him. Izuku stole a sharp breath of air, the agony in his hands no longer at the forefront of his mind.  He slowly turned around, not knowing what else to do. He met Katsuki eye to eye and witnessed the moment Katsuki saw the state of his hands.

"Shit, Izu. Are you trying to fuck up your hands again?"

Izuku didn't have any energy left to react. Maybe he had been trying to ruin himself, so what? It's not like he couldn't still feel the phantom pains of breaking his arms repeatedly until they were covered in more scars than actual skin. There were nights where he lay awake and swore that his arms were throbbing and tensing up.

He looked down at his wrecked hands, realizing that he wasn't wearing his usual long sleeves. There weren't many scars- most of them being from The Arena and vigilantism. But there were clean silver lines on his forearms that weren't noticeable at first, but once seen, they were impossible not to notice. He glued his arms to his sides, a weak attempt to have more secrets revealed.