Izuku Midoryia One-Shots

Understanding Yourself Is Hard

Warning: detailed description of self-injury.

Izuku used to cut himself.

He was nine when he first heard of it -self-harm, that is-. He doesn't remember where he exactly saw or heard of it, but the mere idea of it was so intriguing that he couldn't help to not ignore it.

He was nine and was so distraught and empty that he was desperate to feel something other than the constant ache in his chest that threatened to swallow him whole.

Izuku remembered back to when the kids at school beat him up, and how he couldn't bring himself to hate it. He enjoyed the feeling of getting bruised up, he enjoyed the feeling of physical pain.

Call him a masochist, he doesn't care. Izuku would take physical pain over mental any day. Midoryia thought about what it would be if he was the one to inflict pain on himself, if it would feel any different.

It did, in ways that he could never describe. He was nine when he made his first cut, it was small and shallow, barely deep enough to bleed.

It felt euphoric. The drowning in his chest felt a little bit more dryer, the heaviness in his head a tad bit more light.

Izuku didn't see the problem with self-harm. He didn't know that this wasn't the right way to cope, so he kept on doing it. He told himself that it helped, that it made living through each day just the more bearable.

(He ignored all the times he felt a deep rooted self-hate after he had cut. Tried to ignore the feeing that this wasn't right, that he needed to ask for help.)

His mother never found out, nobody did. It was a secret that he planned to be buried in his grave. Even when he cut bone-deep one time and almost (at the time he wished) bled out. He never asked for help; Izuku didn't think he needed it. He was dealing with his own problems just fine; he didn't need to burden anyone with it.

He scarred up his hips and thighs and arms until he had no more room. He cut over the scars, making them darker and more apparent.

Izuku forced himself to stop four years later, right after he met All Might. By then he knew how bad it was, but it was near impossible to stop. It had helped him for so long and as sick as it sounds, it had become his only friend. The blade knew all of his deepest darkest secrets and it was always there for him in his time of need.

He somehow managed to stop, if only to not disappoint All Might. He couldn't bring himself to throw away the blade, it felt cruel to do so. Midoryia kept it, out of reach in a dusty old black box, hopefully to never be opened again. For the first few months he had felt so empty and desolate, but after awhile, he slowly got better. Izuku finally had strength to back up his life-long dream of being a hero. The only thing that kept him here for so long.

(It was hard to accept the fact that if All Might hadn't offered the quirk, he would have taken Kacchan's advice. The veracity of it though was undeniable and Izuku only let himself dwell on it for a morsel.)

He wouldn't say he was happy, no, that was too far-fetched. What Izuku could say however, was that he was more hopeful that things could get better.

While he trained with All Might, Midoryia found himself thinking about his addiction less and less. Sure, he had his bad days were his skin would scream at him to be torn open, but those days were getting far in between. He began to trust Yagi before he even realized it. The hero was the first person (besides his mother, of course) that he trusted wholeheartedly. It was a strange feeling, to have faith in someone, but it wasn't an unwelcome one.