hero's shadow // mha

87) heavy dusk

He takes a step forward, then another, bare feet sinking into the dirt.

The young boy holds out the burnt plushie as an offer, frowning slightly. "Why haven't we tried harder?" He breathes quietly, still so innocent, and Izuku can't take the ringing anymore.

He stands nearly two feet taller than him, and he reaches a hand down, hovering over his head of curls for a moment before dropping it and gripping his scalp. He feels like his insides have grown too large in the few seconds since he's been here, and he will soon split apart at the seams.

Why? Izuku hears in his head, again and again. Why didn't we? What did we do?

This cannot be real. Perhaps Izuku is nowhere, not in Extract, not in All for One, not in One for All. He exists in the space between all living things, just barely skirting by. This Izuku in his hold is a fake, some poor reimagination of who he really is.

The child gasps, but it's quiet, as if he's been conditioned to never make a sound. The plushie drops and disappears into the bloody mound of gardenias, and when Izuku begins to drag the fake along behind him with one hand, he sees him reach for it unsuccessfully.

But this must be another reimagination, too, another mistake. How sick is he to be dreaming of this? How angry must he be in real life to be thinking of this shit?

He sees a pond full of koi and lily pads, and Izuku reaches it with a deathly sort of silence reverberating in his brain.

Nails dig into Izuku's arms and scrabble against him when he pushes the boy under, forcing him beneath the water. Blood mixes with cerulean, and the thrashing scares away the fish. Izuku stares at his rippled reflection until the blood makes it impossible to do so anymore, and he only becomes more angry at how easy this all is.

His vision blurs, and his limbs shake.

If it were the real Izuku fighting back, if it were him writhing and screaming under the surface instead, would it make a difference in how he feels? Would he feel less certain?

But the roles have always been reversed, haven't they? So it's not a fair comparison. It doesn't even matter.

As Izuku holds him down, he watches his little self change; his body distorts, converting into the smoky version of his normal One for All counterpart. But it's a fake, too, of course. Izuku does not sense the things he should here—this is all in his mind, and he just wants to wake up. He thought killing the younger image of himself would do the trick, but he's not there yet. It's harder for him to keep this version of Izuku at bay, but he manages by using Black Whip to squeeze his throat and force him to breathe in the water engulfing him.

Izuku isn't sure how long exactly he crouches there holding the figure under, but all he knows is he is ripped away sometime near the end of it.

A blur of gold blinds him as harshly as the sun, and then he's flung back a few yards. He doesn't recognize the newcomer at first, but then the wispy figure straightens up after yanking the other Izuku out of the pond, and the realization hits him.

He cowers upon meeting the eyes of All Might's vestige, skin prickling. The yellow smoke, vibrant with energy, falls to the floor and spreads out, reaching Izuku's feet. It cannot be his master's true One for All self, but it's so similar that for a moment Izuku is on the fence about it.

His confusion dissipates when Yagi begins to whisk around the trembling body of the fake, entirely helpless.

Panics floods him. No. No, no. He didn't kill him, did he? He didn't kill that little boy.

This isn't real, so it shouldn't matter, but it does now that All Might has gone and seen it. Izuku's lungs feel full, and every breath is like shards of glass going down his bronchial tubes. Is this what it felt like? Izuku has been drowned before, and it felt something like this, but he never imagined it would actually feel real to a fake.