Chapter Text
After the final blow was dealt, and the dust settled to a still, Midoryia could finally breathe: laborious as it was painful. In, and out. In. Out. Staggeringly.
He had just killed a man. Hadn’t he?
The sudden silence of it all was deafening, the clamor of nothing wrecking his brain. His ears had a faint ringing to them, his vision dull. It was hard to breathe, and the sweat pooling down his cheeks (that was sweat, right?) stung when they ran into cuts.
Shigaraki—no, Shimura, and hadn’t that been a surprise—lays, finally toppled, on the ground; surrounded by the dust of the dead and the damned. His eyes were hollow as they were bloodshot, the lack of life behind them sucking the last remains of light from their corners.
Midoryia didn’t feel far behind. There was a sickening stirring in his gut, and the voices of the five seemed eerily quiet amidst his anguish. It was, quite possibly, the loneliest he’d ever felt inside his own mind.
He had just killed a man. A beaten, manipulated man who had harmed his loved ones, yes, but a man. Another human.
Izuku had to remind himself that Shimura was evil; even if he hadn’t started out that way. Evil and insane. Insanity cannot be reasoned with.
A bloodcurdling grin flashes by his eyes, and Izuku shudders, falling to his knees.
Maybe it was wrong for Midoryia to feel sicker over the act of killing than the actual loss it brought. Maybe it wasn’t. Midoryia didn’t know. He didn’t know, and the thought made his already laborious breaths stutter.
He fell to the ground, crumpled and used up, sickeningly close to the Symbol of Fear. Through it all, a hoarse voice finally rummaged through the dirt, crying what he thought was his name, but it wasn’t enough.
Midoryia fell anyway.