Death Paradox 💥BAKUDEKU💥

Chapter 34

Strength

✧༺✦✮✦༻✧

Izuku

Chapter 34

Izuku jolted awake, his chest heaving as if he'd just surfaced from drowning. The darkness pressed around him, thick and suffocating, broken only by a faint green glow to his right. His breaths came in shallow gasps, his heart a hammer in his chest.

For a moment, he didn't know where he was. His hands clawed at the sheets, his mind still trapped in the last parallel—frostbitten landscape of Shadowrend, Shoto's devastated expression as Izuku begged him to leave.

"It's okay," Izuku had whispered, the words freezing on his lips as he spoke them. "You have to go. You have a chance, Sho. I'm... destined to die anyway."

The memory of it lingered like a ghost in his veins, making him shiver. Shoto hadn't wanted to leave, his hesitance etched into every desperate glance back. But Izuku had insisted, his words brittle and breaking. Even now, Izuku could still hear the crunch of Shoto's boots as he ran, every step a shard of glass piercing his heart. He'd told Shoto to go, to live, but as the cold closed in and his strength failed, the uncertainty had crushed him. Had Shoto survived?

It took several trembling breaths before his surroundings began to settle into place. The faint scent of wood polish and the creak of old floorboards told him he was back at Heights Alliance. His room. His bed. Safe.

But safe didn't feel real. Not yet.

He sat up slowly, dragging the blanket with him and wrapping it tightly around his shoulders. He sat motionless there for a moment, hyper-aware of every sensation. The way the blanket slid over his shoulders in a way that should have been comforting. But it only left him uneasy. His fingers ghosted over his left shoulder, where the wounds had been—jagged, angry gashes that had bled too much and left him gasping for air even after leaving Doomspire. They weren't there anymore. Smooth skin met his touch, unbroken and whole, but the phantom ache lingered, pulsing faintly beneath his fingertips.

Izuku's gaze dropped to his hands, trembling uncontrollably before him. They didn't look like his anymore—too scarred, too weak. Too frozen.

He turned them over, half-expecting to see the blackened, frostbitten skin that had marked his final moments in the last world. The pain of not only his festering wounds but the cold had been excruciating, and the helplessness even worse—watching Shoto push himself beyond his limits to keep them warm, to keep him alive. But it hadn't been enough. In the end, the cold had claimed him.

Tears welled in his eyes before he could stop them, spilling down his cheeks in hot streaks. He bit his lip to stifle a sob, but the sound came out broken anyway, cracking in the stillness of the room.

He pressed his hands to his face, as if trying to erase the memory. The phantom ache of the frostbite lingered, sharp and cruel, even though his skin was whole. But even that didn't compare to watching Katsuki crumble to ash. Izuku had died three times now, but this was the first time he'd ever had to watch Katsuki die. And it broke him. Completely, utterly, irrevocably broke him.

He didn't want to think about it—didn't want to see it again—but he could still see it, no matter how much he tried to bury it. The way Katsuki's body had twisted, fighting as the decay spread, the black veins crawling up his skin, relentless and merciless. The way his hands—the same hands that had tussled his hair, that had pulled Izuku back from the edge so many times—had begun to crack, ash flaking off until there was nothing left but dust.