The Hardest Choices

Bittersweet Goodbye

Izuku was alone. And cold. And hurt.
Maybe in another universe someone would've come to save him. To help him. To support him.
But here it was not the case.
And Izuku was tired. So so tired.

Tw : Death, Suicide

Izuku lies on the rain-soaked roof, his school bag lying next to him. The rain is his only companion, sharp droplets pelting against his skin and his clothes soaked through to his bones. The darkness of the night envelopes him entirely. Through the ambient sound of raindrops loudly buttonholing the rooftop, he feels nothing. No fear, No will, No passion.

The only comfort he feels is from the rhythmic tapping of the constant droplets on his skin.
Izuku continues to lie there silently as the steady rain falls around him. The sky darkens which pleases him, because it added to the cool temperature which comforts him.
Standing now, two things tumbles simultaneously: him and the black umbrella in his bag tumbling down into the deck shattering the structure of silence surrounding him. All his school stuff float around in the wind, sprawling on the cold and wet concrete. The colors from all his class work mix to form a pool of hues among the rain-soaked objects next to him.
But he doesn't care. He doesn't have the energy to care.

Izuku stares impassively at the colorful mess around him and realizes it's a fitting reflection of his own chaotic psyche. The overwhelming range of rainbow hues used for his schoolwork now carries no significance or happiness for him.
They're just empty, meaningless colors, something to be ignored. Izuku is now certain that nothing matters anymore, and he's filled with the subtlest sense of hopelessness as he contemplates the tumultuous complications of life.
He feels the rain falling harder and harder, tasting the earthy smell of the wet asphalt and sharp freshness of the painted-cement-covered roofing around him. Finally, in a moment fit onto the thumbnail of the mind, he grasped how terrible his situation was.

As he stands contemplating his lifeless works, detached, he thinks of Bakugo telling him to commit suicide. Even as his internal black snow has left, replaced by a colorless one where hope cannot exist, he remembers these inhospitable, and weighty words.

It won't be Bakugo, Izuku tells himself, that will push him to leap from the roof. He just had done nothing genuinely supportive in their latest real conversation, obliterating Izuku's appetite for life emotions once and for all which triggered his latest overwhelming withdrawal from the world. Ironies were evident now in their world beyond comprehension after the fact that Bakugou had once told him that he would end up killing himself one day. Bakugo could sense something in Izuku's heart even before Izuku knew it for himself.

Some time later, Izuku stands on the edge of the rooftop with his black gakuran flitting from the gusts of wind. He struggles to remember because it doesn't really matter, right? How did he get here again?

Looking at the illuminated skyline underneath sprawling ahead of him, he feels like the only peculiar thing in the world. Large screens blinking, and there's one fragile speck of life staring down at all that glory from so high- it doesn't match, really. He imagines that if he jumps right now, he will become a lifeless speck with a painless fall beneath him, and there would be a wonderful release waiting for him.

As he leans forward and looks at nothing in particular, realizing that he's not able to go back, the certainty that it's unthinkably irrelevant to exist more becomes now crystal clear to him. Sighing resigned, feeling quite behind the point now, Izuku lets out a small chuckle. Ishikawa used to tell him that laughing at misfortune might ease the pain once in a while but this realization's shear absurdity genuinely become the only way for Izuku to feel anything now - mad laughter vibrating across the flat roof. He looks toward the city lights from his perch and imagines them to represent infinity, and everything and nothing at the same time...exactly like an image of himself in the real world.

The irony does not escape him. For once he isn't filled with anxiety or dread but with a power that he's never felt in his life. He realizes that he is no longer afraid of death. With a little less uncertainty, a little less numbness, equanimity floods him. However, as if emerging by itself alongside the fading terror, is a new cold and sobering awareness: He finally fears living more than dying.

Death - in fact - seems the better choice, determined as he is to go up against the pain that's grown exhausting for Izuku. Forsaked by his former friends, molested in his own family, deteriorating pieces of junk nothing satisfied him. He really has nothing to lose. And suddenly, consumed all over again by an almost perfect cold darkness down in his chest, his arms splayed wide open, perched on the edge - he stretches his spindly arms tight, and for a moment, he lingers there consuming the moment. The taste, sound, and smell of mortal flesh before unexpected warmth from his jacket brings back memories in flashes. He tastes the steam coming from the drain nearby, he hears the policeman on the street corner below him boasting to onlookers, he thinks he smells warm cookies mixed with minibus exhaust, for some reason.

His nostrils muscle as his cellist grin has its last moments intertwined with disgust at his senses in how discordant they felt that moment - this irony shows him life would be mere tainted cookies while he only felt despair wrapping his lips tight.

Feeling exposed - he wrung his jacket free, eyes slipping shut as gravity began to pull his happiness-luck ratio towards a higher price of happiness regarding death. Against the anvil in his chest fading in and out, the end never seemed so inevitable, straight forward to him.
Feeling peace for the first time, a ghostly smile lingered on Izuku's lips as he leapt from the rooftop. He fell to a waiting black void with no ringing, searing, or hurt confided in its primordial hollow. Life had never been kind to Izuku, but for once it ended his life in the indifference he was always told awaited every person hopeless and red-faced.

Down below on the rainy street, only bundles of clutter talked about various heartless things – throwing around opinions and desires as meaningless as the ongoing rainflakes, the only news that passed unnoticed. In the midst of it, a broken phone flashed and bleeped as it lay manhandled in a damp gutter. In the silence, a single message labeled "mom" was visible for all those deserted, bleak eyes – and as unheeded yet conceivable as it was oblivious.