@naimitsuno asked: ❛ When we die, we turn into stories; and every time someone tells one of those stories, it’s like we’re still here for them. ❜
there were TWO funerals. he learns that’s fairly common with the high profile heroes.
the first was the public one -- big and important, on multinational networks as the WORLD mourned a hero. he hadn’t been allowed to be close for that one. he’d opted not to argue, standing quietly with other UA students with his head bowed and his eyes wide. he’d not even been able to cry because it hadn’t hit yet. hadn’t taken him and torn him apart. he’d been too far away for most of the funeral to see anything but threads of dull gold, hair as it rested above the top of the casket.
his classmates, who had every right to be JUST as shaken as he was, had put their hands on his shoulders and consoled him. he felt like a hypocrite. he barely registered the feeling of anyone’s presence. only kaa-chan had shaken him from that reprieve and only for a moment.
( kaa-chan being solemn just felt weird. )
the second funeral is a more private affair. the tombstone has his name carved in it but izuku swears it blurs every time he tries to read it. he can’t -- he can’t shake that feeling.
he also doesn’t care about propriety. he stands right next to endeavor and hawks. he lets the rest of the top heroes file in around him as he stares down into the casket. there’s a hand on his shoulder, firm and warm, but he doesn’t acknowledge it still. he’s dying, somehow he can feel the struggle for every breath, the fight to move, the attempts to will his cells themselves to STOP in deference.
toshinori yagi looks very human in death. even in his small form he’d always carried something to izuku. there’d be a radiance beneath his skin, honor had stained him, duty had given him a glow. izuku had LOVED him like he’d never loved anyone besides his mother. how distant his father is... it isn’t a surprise that all might has stepped into that role. but death robs him of the warmth, the glow, the internal radiance. he’s flat. his cheeks are waxy. his hands are folded over his chest izuku wishes, once more time, he could speak to all might.
he starts when hawks speaks to him. his breath catches in his throat and that silence he’d been stuck in is cut through. ( he admires hawks. he wants to be like hawks. they shared things, deep things, things he doesn’t understand but he knows when looks at hawks that there’s this quiet, unequivocal acceptance that no one had ever showed him before. )
" i —— ” they’re pretty words. he might have believed them more easily if he’d been less shattered. for some reason though... they break the dam. they cause a crack in the wall he had built for himself, sheltering from the reality.
his breath catches again in his throat and his face twists as he tries desperately to hold back tears. to be strong. to feel strong. ONCE. “ it’s not... but.... h-he deserved a better end than this. a better student. n-no one ——— ” no one should go like that. here one moment and gone the next. caught in a national tragedy, killed as a symbol, not a man, though the man had been the one to truly die. “ senpai. .. ” he says, near a whimper.
he folds himself into hawks, works his way into his arms and sobs, broken heaving things that rip through his chest as he clings to the taller man. he sobs so hard that his arms shake, that his breath is ripped from his lungs and he chokes on tears.
“ everything hurts. ”