@noquirk
Still. Quiet. Utterly peaceful. (Well, if one could define peaceful as standing, unmoving, hair standing on your neck and goose flesh covering your arms despite the warmth of the sun overhead).
Lull before the tempest. Or, perhaps, during.
Izuku remembers, distinctly, hearing some mention about things being the calmest at the center of a storm. Standing in the eye of a tornado.
One can see the chaos unfolding before them; the rush of the wind strong enough to pull homes from their very foundations (the foundations of belief, of his very being, being pried from his mind; confronted with a cold reality. The truth the other had come to terms with long before) the heavy, pounding, rushing rain. The thunder so loud you can’t hear anything (the rushing of his own blood in behind his ears).
He can see it but it does not reach him, the wind barely brushing through disheveled, tangled, hair. Destruction close, imminent, but not quite present as of yet. (If he were to reach out, the force of it would surely tear his arm off at the shoulder, would blow him away to dust. As if he were the mirage. The one destined to never be). So he doesn’t. Just stands and stares; observing this hurricane who shares his name.
There’s a reason storms are named after people.
The phrase, unbidden, bounces around his skull; in his voice but also not. Familiar, in a way, but as if it were planted there without his knowledge. Waiting and biding time, patiently, until its time to surface.To torment him. Where had he heard that from?
A book, likely, some late night read of a psychological thriller featuring some clever villain who was, conveniently, not too clever for the hero. In books, the villains were never too clever for the heroes. But what happens when the villain was supposed to be the hero?
What happens when the one who was supposed to rescue, is the one who harms. The one who mutilates others in the name of an unknown justice. What then. Does the villain still lose?
Or is whoever wins automatically the hero.
That’s the most devastating aspect. Or at least, one of them. (who could pick just a single, disgusting, detail in a happenstance as extraordinary as this?) That Izuku understands.
He doesn’t but he does. There was something, something this storm witnessed or heard that caused it to amass the power it has. A strong gust from the sea, the shifting of tectonic plates beneath the earth’s crust. A catastrophe. That Izuku had not been witness to.
There was a fork in the road, a diverging path, an opportunity to become what is before him today.
And, he would never, ever, dare to breathe it aloud; but Izuku can see it. What led to this. As clearly as if he had walked that crimson laid path himself. He wonders if the storm can see it too; his other self’s story. He wonders if this rumbling earthquake, this terrifying flood, this blazing fire feels any regret being confronted with what could have been.
If he had held onto his innocence, no matter how much it destroyed him in the end.
But Izuku knows himself too well to believe that is a possibility. Whatever he chooses, he dedicates himself to. That is the way he was built.
Driven by every self deprecating thought, every moment of doubt, every whisper of every insult that had been repeated over and over until it was ingrained into the very fibers of his soul.
Driven by rage and indignation at the horrors this tornado has committed while sharing his face (for the most part, there were scars they didn’t share, braces that were unique to the other.).
Driven by the utterly devastating realization that he could have done this, could have been this.
He doesn’t feel any regret, any hesitance, any mercy, as he finally, finally, breeches the outer limits of this opposing reality he’s been confronted with; hand grasping into the raging inferno and blistering winds to take hold of his mirror image. Pulling him closer and up by the collar; eyes betraying his own thunder within.
There is a reason why storms are named for people; there is an equally good reason why they are never given the same name.
