Archive of Our Own ^beta

The battle raged on for nearly 30 minutes.

The streets were a mess, and the heroes were kept at bay by the perimeter of the battleground as more and more nomu blocked them from reaching the struggling students of class 2-A. (It was always class 2-A)

There was blood on the ground and on the walls of the building nearby. No one was left unscathed by the ruthless attacks of the league. Even without All For One, the scene being filmed by the reporters that day eerily reminded them of something akin to what happened in Kamino.

The civilian's nearby the area were screaming and crying, some trying to run away from the destruction, while some pushed their way closer to see the battle up close, phones shaking in their trembling hands. 

Choked cries of children fighting for their lives filled the air. Battle cries and explosions and lasers ringing in everyone's ears. Gasping and wheezing and fighting.

God, they were fighting. These children were fighting not only for themselves, but for everyone. 

Mothers and fathers and siblings watching the news could only cry and pray. Their hearts shaking in their chests as they begged and begged and begged to please let them be okay, oh god please.

A broken arm, a cut cheek, a burnt torso, a bullet through the foot, a piece of glass through the shoulder, a cough of blood, a cry, a crackle of green.

All of Japan watched in morbid fascination as the crackle of green and the rumored leader of the League of Villains faced off.

They continued watching even as they saw the building behind them tremble.

They watched as it fell.

The dust settles after a while, and there is only silence.

Izuku knows he's not going to make it out of this one.

It's funny, because for as long as he could remember, everyone had always told him that his lack of self-preservation was going to kill him someday. It was funny, because this time, he had tried his best not to die.

He let out a morbid chuckle, the bleeding hole in his abdomen letting him know a pain that he never felt before. A tear makes its way slowly down his dirty cheek, and he takes that moment to look at the person sitting opposite of him in the tiny space. 

Shigaraki Tomura. His sworn enemy since the day he accepted One For All. His tormentor. His childhood friend's kidnapper. His nemesis.

His gray-blue hair hung shaggily in front of the hand still attached to his face, his long trench coat torn and dirtied beyond repair. From what Izuku could see from here, Shigaraki was almost in as much pain as him, if not worse.

It was almost a gut feeling, how he knew that both of them wouldn't make it out of this alive. 

Shigaraki cracks a dry smirk and opens his mouth.

"Giving up so easily, brat?" He rasped out, his one visible red eye glaring at him between the fingers on his face. His body struggled to take in breaths, but his hatred rung true, even in what could be his dying moments. 

Izuku didn't care to berate himself for speaking his thoughts out loud again, at least, not this time. His heart and body and mind was tired. He suddenly felt older beyond his years as he took in the hatred being directed at him, having been on the receiving end of the look more times than he can count in his achingly short life. 

"Are we done, yet?" He whispers instead, ignoring the previous question.

The older male's eyes squint. "What?"

The freckled boy lets his eyes connect with the red eyed gaze, a weary smile stretching on his childish face.

"Are we done yet, Tenko?"

Shigaraki flinches as if he'd been slapped, his eyes widening and his breaths coming out quicker.

"Don't call me that!" He roared, trembling. He shakily stumbled onto his feet, the small space they were in shaking dangerously as small bits of dust and debris rained down on them from above. 

Izuku just sighs, utterly exhausted and resigned. 

"You know" He continues, ignoring the angry figure just a little away from him. "If we die here, the cycle of One for All and All for One finally ends" 

Shigaraki doesn't answer.

"All the pain" He whispers, "All the death, and destruction over the years. All the wasted actions, all the mindless suffering, all of it would just… end." 

"Like fuck it will" Shigaraki spits out, "The society we're living in is rotten. You think if we die it will all go away? If you do, you must be more stupid than I thought" 

"And exactly how much of that was caused by the people before us, Tenko?" He retorted, eyes steadily resting on the weary figure across him. "The people inspired by our actions? By our creed?" 

"That doesn't fucking matter!" He shouts, his eyes wide and almost manic. "There's still evil in the world because of those fucking heroes! Because of the society that they built! That All Might built!" 

Shigaraki suddenly feels the world tilting, and he barely catches himself on the wall beside him, his whole body trembling in pain and the need to fight.

"For the first fifteen years of my life, I was quirkless" Izuku says, shocking the older male nearby. His inner fury pauses.

"For fifteen years, people called me worthless and useless. They told me I was good for nothing, that my wanting to be a hero was a pipe dream. For the first fifteen years of my life, people shoved me into lockers, stole my stuff, and beat me up till I was black and blue." Izuku's eyes shifted to the ground. "They told me that I was better off dead. They told me to jump off a roof. They told me that I was a mistake. My whole life, they told me I was a deku" 

Shigaraki couldn't move or speak, what could he possibly say to that?

"In hindsight, If I didn't have mom and my stubbornness, I could have become a villain like you, or really just committed suicide." He said, shrugging nonchalantly, like it didn't even bother him.

"How.." Shigaraki said, eyeing the green haired boy incredulously. "How did you end up becoming a hero, when society shunned you like they shunned me?" He shakily finishes, the space they were in falling into silence, like they were in their own little bubble of time. 

A wobbly smile takes up Izuku's face. "Because I believed in them" He says, a fire in his eyes flickering dimly. "I believed in him"

A vision of his mentor enters his mind before crumbling away into a wave of regret.

"If you die here, there will be no more symbol of peace" the villain says, the fight in his voice dampening the more he spoke. "You will have failed that old coot anyway"

Izuku shook his head. "That's not true" he smiles reassuringly. "The symbol of peace doesn't have to be a holder of One for All. I know that my friends will be the ones to give that hope to the world again, when they become heroes. I can feel it in my heart" He says, and then breaks out into a series of painful coughs, a small amount of blood splattering on the ground. All the pain across his body has become numb, and the two opposites continue to sit there in the dark space, knowing that their time was running out.

Inko sits on the couch, face in her hands as tears roll down her face in waves. Even as her vision blurred with tears, her eyes never left the T.V. screen as she awaited for an announcement of the situation.

"It's been almost 40 minutes since the building collapsed, with Midoriya Izuku- an aspiring hero and U.A. student, and Shigaraki Tomura- the leader of the League of Villains, trapped underneath. If the heroes don't find them soon, it is very possible that their lives will be at extreme risk as both blood loss and the lack of steady oxygen may result in a less than ideal situation. We are all praying that the heroes find them before the unthinkable happens"

"This is fucking stupid" Shigaraki says, hand mask long abandoned. He didn't need it to fuck up his oxygen intake more than it already was.

"Us being stuck here? Or us dying?" Izuku shoots back, an empty smirk on his face.

"Everything" He says with a sneer. "This society, being stuck with All Might junior.." He scowls. "Failing the one person who reached out to me when no else could give a single shit" 

The smirk on the freckled boy's face vanishes.

"I was just a kid, you know?" He says humorlessly, letting out a painful chuckle; flecks of red decorating the corners of his cracked lips.

"Didn't know any better than anyone else. I put one hand on my dog's back and suddenly…" he doesn't continue, Izuku doesn't need him to in order to understand what happened next.

After a short period of silence, he continues. "I was all fucking alone" He spat out. "In the streets, fearing my quirk, waiting for a hero- anyone to save me, but nobody came. Nobody reached out, except for Sensei" 

His red eyes go dull. "He gave me a purpose. He wasn't one of the many people who looked away." He clenches his fist. "And I fucking failed him"

He lets out a heavy breath and lets his head fall back until it hit solid cement with a thunk.

Izuku knows that Shigaraki-- no, Tenko --has done many terrible things in his life. To him, and his friends, and his teachers, and the innocent people who were just going about their day as normal. He knows this, but he still can't help himself from empathizing with the older male. It was almost twisted, how similar their situations were before their own respective mentors came into the mix.

Blinking his eyes slowly, he tries to take in a breath but coughs instead, feeling his blood crawling up his throat. His eyes burn as the fear of dying finally settles in. He knows he said it before, he even joked about it for gods sake! But even then, feeling as his limbs slowly got numb, as his eyes got blurrier, as his hearing painfully got worse, Izuku can't help but wish for his mother's embrace and assurance, for his friend's concern, for his mentor's smile.

His eyes latch on to Tenko then, on his shivering form, on the ever present hatred in his eyes.

His heart hardens in resolve, and he knows what he has to do. 

"I have a lot of regrets, if this is how we're going to die" He starts, standing up from his crouched position. Tenko startles from the sudden movement and stands up as well, a scowl painted on his face as he readies himself for a possible attack.

"I'm going to regret not seeing Eri again" He says, putting one foot in front of him, getting closer to the tense male. "I'm going to regret never fully fixing things with Kacchan, I'm going to regret never having another movie night with my friends" he continues. "I'm going to regret not being able to graduate with my class-- my family at this point." He finally stops, his trembling legs pausing a few feet away from the confused villain.

"I'm going to forever regret not seeing my mother today" He almost whispers, tears building up behind his eyes. He takes a deep breath.

"But there's one thing I can do, right now. Something we should have all done a long time ago." He says, raising his head to meet the perplexed red gaze focused on him. 

Izuku drops to his knees in front of him, ignoring the way it definitely jostled something inside him. He ignores the fear of dying for just a moment, the importance of his actions perfectly clear in his mind. He ignores their differences, seeing the man in front of him not as Shigaraki Tomura, but Shimura Tenko. Nana Shimura's grandson, Toshinori Yagi's biggest regret, and the consequence of failing a person you were supposed to protect.

He bends down as far as his bleeding torso will allow him, hands on his knees, messy curls almost touching the floor.

"Shimura Tenko" He rasps, a twin trail of tears streaming down his face. "I'm sorry"

Tenko's breath hitches above him.

"I'm sorry that we failed you as heroes and as human beings" He clenches his eyes shut, willing himself not to let anymore tears fall. "I'm sorry for everything that you went through." 

Izuku feels more than sees the trembling hand tightly clutching the back of his neck, one finger threateningly kept away. He ignores it, even as fear does its best to crawl it's way into his heart.

"I'm sorry that you were on your own" He continues. "But most of all, I'm sorry for not being there when you needed us the most" The small space shudders and groans after so much movement, but the sounds seemed so far away in this moment.

After a few more seconds, the hand leaves his neck, and Tenko falls to his knees.

"You were a kid" He shakily says, "You couldn't have known. You weren't a hero. Why are you apologizing?" 

"Because now I am, or at least, I was training to be" He responds, getting up from his position. "Because I wished my tormentors would have said the same thing to me when I was growing up" He falls back on his rear, breath becoming shorter, vision blurred by tears and dizziness. 

His arm reaches out, his scarred and crooked fingers falling over Tenko's own, and he pitches himself forward until his head is touching his chest. "Tenko" he says, voice shaking uncontrollably. "I'm sorry" 

Izuku finally lets his tears fall. All of his regret, fear, and sadness overflowing into shuddering sobs. Tenko's arms hang uselessly beside him, his own eyes burning at the younger's apology. All of his inner fight and hatred suddenly drain out of him as his shoulders slump forward, a bone deep weariness he has never felt before settling into his body.

He shakily raises one of his hands, a part of him that has been used to hurt others, and carefully lays it on the curly mess of hair on his chest, his pinky finger curled to the knuckle.

He lets go of the tight lock on his heart and breaks, his own tears running down his dry and cracked face as his body curls around Izuku's own, waiting for the inevitable.

Please, Uraraka thinks as she uses her quirk to lift another boulder.

Please, Dabi thinks as he watches the heroes while restrained, looking for a flash of gray-blue hair in between the destruction.

Please, Katsuki thinks as he stands by the sidelines, his body and quirk overused, a million regrets crawling on his back like unacknowledged sins.

Please, Toga thinks, fear shaking her heart like it has never done before, spying on the situation from her hiding spot.

Please, Eraserhead thinks as he uses his capture gear to do what he can, begging his student to keep up the stubbornness he was known for ever since his first year. 

Please, Kurogiri thinks as he takes back Dabi from enemy hands, hesitating for a few seconds to look for his charge.

Please, All Might thinks, don’t take my boy, not yet.

It’s quiet, Izuku thinks as he’s laid against the wall, barely able to support his own weight. A body settles in beside him as he feels his strength leave him, his body sluggishly slouching against Tenko. His breaths come out as soft, raspy wheezes as his internal bleeding gets worse. He probably punctured a lung.

It’s quiet, Tenko thinks as he feels curly hair tickle his cheek. He opened his mouth to take a breath and barely felt any air pass his dry lips as he laid his full weight against the wall. His shoulder ached from being impaled earlier, and it continued to bleed until the clothes near the area were almost black. He was probably going to die from blood loss.

It’s quiet, they both think for the first time. Since they took up their own ideals and dreams, since they joined a side, since they swore their lives to a cause that fueled them to death itself.

“You aren’t.. so bad…, brat” Tenko whispers, vision blurry and tongue heavy.

He doesn’t get a reply.

A few more tears fall down his face as he remembers his words.

“I’m sorry”

“I’m sorry… too” 

Darkness.

“I found them!” A hero yells urgently.

Yagi Toshinori runs.

Nana Shimura smiles sadly, leaving her two boys as light peeks through the air pocket they were buried in.

Aizawa Shouta falls to his knees. Someone screams. Katsuki Bakugou goes feral.

Toshinori burns the sight before him in his blue eyes, body frozen to the spot.

Izuku giggles as he holds hands with Tenko’s gloved ones, the older boy next to him ruffling his curly hair. They are both children again, in this moment. In the end, It is what they truly are.

“Come on!” He says. “We gotta go!”

He follows the boy into the light, leaving everything else behind.

.

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.

.

A deep sigh leaves his weary body.

Even after two months, at the end of the day, his feet always bring him here.

His sunken eyes stare out into the sea, watching as the seagulls fly over the water and the wind leaves a cool breeze over his sickly body.

He looks over Dagobah beach, at the beauty it emanates as the sun starts to set beyond the horizon.

He thinks of his curly green hair, his endearing little ticks, his burning eyes. He thinks of him as he basks in the beauty of the scene before him.

Another breeze passes through him, and it feels like a hug.

“Thank you” 

His hands push up against his face as Toshinori cries in utter despair. 

Izuku hugs him from behind as much as his little body will allow him, smiling. 

“Thank you”