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The sprawling maze of hallways and showrooms in the local museum had been Katsuki’s favorite place since his mother and father took him there as a child, hoping their explosive rascal of a son wouldn’t destroy any statues while they supervised an exhibit featuring some of their designs. He’d simply refused to be left at home with a babysitter one more time, and his reputation for singeing off his caretaker’s hair had spread wide enough that they didn’t get very many takers anyways. Surprising them, seven-year-old Katsuki had stopped his whining the second he laid eyes on the massive painting of the legendary old hero All Might that graced that museum’s entrance hall. He was entranced for the rest of the evening.
Katsuki became obsessed with the old heroes from that day on. Historic figures from centuries upon centuries ago, old lore of the villains All Might defeated, the great hero himself under his multitude of names. He scoured the internet for clips of webpages that were practically ancient, headlines of All Might saving families from burning buildings or defeating monsters before they brought the whole world to its knees. Stories distorted by time and poor memory but always shared some greatness that lit a fire in Katsuki’s heart. He knew everything about the man.
Which is why when he passed by a new painting in the museum, adorned with the title “Symbol of Peace”, he stopped dead in his tracks. The painting was not of All Might. It was of a young man, who couldn’t have been older that Katsuki’s seventeen years, his serene face untouched by age.
The young man had light olive skin sprinkled with freckles, his eyes closed under long, dark lashes, a peaceful smile playing across his lips as he held a white-gloved hand to his chest. His face was lit by the golden sun insignia behind him, chipping gold foil matching a dented metal guard resting around his neck that glinted in the light despite it’s rust. The artist had put painstaking detail into the peace, from the fraying of his deep green clothes to the tiny scars on the young hero’s face – and Katsuki was sure this was a hero. He couldn’t have possibly been anything else.
There was something eerily familiar about the boy, the same pull felt when he used his quirk or caught a split second of a sunset between pink and orange-tinged clouds. A knowing without name, without proper definition. It tasted like sun-honey warm summers, ice cold river springs, and bonfire ash.
Cursed.
Katsuki felt the world slow, felt his heart squeeze painfully in his chest, everything muffled from inside to out. He gripped his coffee cup tighter before it slipped out of his hand. His breath shook as he exhaled. He knew he should reach out, knew there was something he should say, but he couldn’t keep a hold on whatever the reason or words may be.
He gripped his free hand into a tight fist until his nails dug into his palms, tearing his eyes away from the painting to the plaque beside it.
Symbol of Peace
By unknown artist, donated anonymously with the attached description, which was requested to be displayed alongside the art piece:
Hero Deku is a name slowly drifting from people’s minds as time passes and we live on unaware that our very society could not exist as it does without his sacrifice. The work he did was pushed behind a curtain for what people claimed was the good of us all. If he were to learn this of himself, I think he would be glad for it. He never wanted to be remembered as a savior or receive reward for the work he did, that was simply his infuriating nature. But I refuse to forget him. Honestly, I can’t, not even if I tried. The bastard lives on. He deserves his time on the pedestal, the time he never got.
In Memory of Midoriya Izuku.
The gilded words felt strangely like they were returning to his mind rather than coming for the first time. A recollection. And Katsuki suddenly wished, more than anything in the world, that he could reach out and push his hand through the canvas. He needed to save this boy from something unseen. Needed to, because he didn’t the first time, and maybe this was another chance, and maybe –
“Sir?”
The interruption came at the same moment a drop of scalding hot coffee dripped onto his hand, making his startle and drop the crushed cup to the floor. It landed with an empty clunk and all the contents splashed to the tile. Katsuki’s first thought was to protect the painting. It was his.
Wait, what? His?
“Oh, goodness!” the woman from before gasped, jolting back to avoid the rapidly expanding puddle of milky brown. “That’s no good!”
Katsuki had nothing in him to respond with, no manners or snapping to fish out of the whirlwind in his mind. Sweat coated his clammy palms as he stared at the cup, his hands, the painting, the plaque, his hands, the painting, his hands, the painting, his hands. The painting. His hands. They were shaking. His hands were shaking.
“Young man?”
Katsuki ran.
He ran until he’d shoved his way through the museum doors, until he’d jostled his way through the busy city streets, until he’d turned onto his street, until he’d raced up to his bedroom, until he fell into his desk chair and used his shaking hands to look up a name.
Midoriya Izuku.
Izuku.
The results were abysmal. God fucking dammit, Izuku.
After scrolling through and eliminating a few random internet profiles of people with similar names, Katsuki added the word “Deku” to the mix. Still nothing. He tried “painting”, and the bottom of the page finally offered an old ass article that looked promising. Unfortunately for him, his mother barged in before he could start reading.
“Katsuki!” she snapped, planting a fist on her hip and fixing him with a signature glare he’d stolen from her long ago. He did it better. “What the hell was that?”
“What the hell are you talking about,” Katsuki griped, looking away from his laptop screen with great effort.
“I thought you were out, then you just burst in the house running like someone set your damn ass on fire!” his mother squawked, “You scared the shit out of me, brat!”
“Not my fault you got shot nerves, hag,” Katsuki scowled.
His mother barked a laugh. “It sure fucking is! Now answer the damn question!”
“I remembered something last second,” Katsuki said. It didn’t feel like a lie. “Now get off my ass.”
“Watch your language.”
“You watch your language.”
“Don’t get sass with me, brat, I made you,” the hag quoted like she had a million times before.
“That explains the sass,” Katsuki countered.
His mother snorted, the fucking witch. “Shame you didn’t get more of your dad, woulda’ been a lot more pleasant to raise.”
“I’m a damn blessing to raise,” Katsuki grumbled, turning back to the computer screen, “Now leave me alone.”
“Hell no,” his mother responded. Katsuki slumped his shoulders back and groaned. “You’re home early, you’re helping me make dinner. Get your brat ass up and at ‘em.”
Katsuki slammed his laptop shut, skin burning, and his hand lingered on top for a second before he was finally able to pull himself away.
“Why the glum face, cooking with your mother ain’t that bad.”
“Yeah, it fucking is.”
“What the hell did I say about language?”
It was hours before Katsuki was able to return to his room, grabbing his laptop off his desk and retreating to his balcony, pulling up the article. It resided in screenshots from an old, abandoned blog from twenty-or-so years ago. The poster sited the article as sixty years old at the time of posting, meaning it had been almost eighty years since the initial publication. The headline was in big, bold font;
FORGOTTEN HERO REDISCOVERED IN A PAINTING?
When I asked newly graduated nurse and self-described “avid historian and hero nerd” Yamamoto Eri about the painting she’d found in an old relative’s attic, her eyes lit up. The painting, that appears to be of a teenage boy in old hero regalia, was discovered under cobwebs in the attic of a house left to her after her estranged great uncle died without children to pass it to. The painting drew me in immediately, both for it’s incredible detail and the obvious love held for the subject by the artist.
The line somehow filled Katsuki with inexplicable pride and despair. The author of this article was right. They had to be.
But there’s something far more interesting to this find than just the artistry: a note left alongside it.
“I believe the note was written by my great uncle, though I’ve never met him,” Yamamoto says, “I think he’s the artist behind the piece, too.” I asked her what the note said, to which she answered, “There are two, actually. The first one describes a forgotten, selfless hero called ‘Deku’ – he’s the subject of the painting. He died young.” She pauses for a second, brows knitting in a passing moment of grief for the alluring painted hero. “The other note,” she continues, “is also from the artist. He chides himself for not giving the painting away sooner, claiming he was selfish to hold onto it for so long. Then, he asks for whoever finds it – me – to donate it under an anonymous name, along with the first letter.”
Mysterious paintings of mysterious, tragic heroes. It certainly makes an intriguing story. But it goes even deeper.
“I couldn’t let it go without knowing more,” Yamamoto confessed, “I searched the whole attic.” Saying this, she pulls out a box full of old papers and notebooks. They’re old and weathered, barely legible handwriting titling some of them as ‘Hero Analysis For the Future Vol. #’. A few others look to be letters. “This was all I could find. I pieced it together enough to form a very broken, very sad story.”
That story goes as follows:
The boy in the painting is named Midoriya Izuku. He was a hero. “Possibly,” Yamamoto says, “the greatest hero of all time.”
Katsuki doesn’t feel compelled to disagree.
A villain drove Midoriya – also known as the hero “Deku” – into a battle. The details are hazy, but Yamamoto claims that the practically ancient newspaper clips she found preserved online were clear that this threat was a threat to the world itself. “The structure everything was built on was threatening to collapse,” she says, “But Deku wasn’t doing this by himself.”
He better fucking not have been. What kind of idiot takes on a villain like that by himself?
“Who was with him?” I ask.
“I don’t know their name for sure, as most of the information is from their perspective, but it makes the most sense for them to have been a character Deku called ‘Kacchan’ in his notebooks,” Yamamoto answers. It seems a very affectionate name.
Katsuki felt his cheeks grow warm. Kacchan.
“Kacchan and Deku fought this villain together. It’s unclear as to when, or if they did it alone, or if the battle really happened at all, but my gut feeling tells me it did.” Yamamoto trails off after that.
“Did they win?” I ask, pen poised above my paper, drawn in by the story. Yamamoto doesn’t answer for a moment, red eyes focused on a point just past me. Lost in thought – or maybe grief.
“They died.”
My stomach lurches.
“They defeated the villain, but it cost both of their lives. They were in high school,” Yamamoto answers somberly. “I was only able to find one piece of evidence that the final battle Deku wrote about in his notebooks even happened.” She pulls out a printed photo of another old article. It’s framed as a conspiracy claiming a massive earthquake from a few weeks before was really a hero battle. Two witnesses are cited as seeing two young men, one a hero dressed in dark green, jump into a fight with a terrifying entity they were unable to describe.
They saw who Yamamoto believes to be Kacchan fall first. And then, as the witness from all those decades ago said, “A vengeful God was unleashed.”
Midoriya Izuku.
Midoriya Izuku.
Deku.
Izuku.
He got himself killed.
He got himself killed, even after Kacchan had saved him, even after he’d defeated the villain, even after he might’ve finally been okay again. How could he do that? How could he give up like that? How could he do that? He was hero, goddammit.
Hot tears ran down his face as Katsuki slammed his laptop shut, refusing to finish the article about stupid Deku and his stupid sacrifices. He tasted ash. He was ash. He’d been burned. Scattered. With him. Where? Where was he?
He slid his laptop to the side and frantically pushed to his feet, gripping the balcony railing and feeling the cold metal burn against the fire in his chest. The Symbol of Peace died. Hero Deku died.
Izuku died.
“What the hell did you go and do that for?” Katsuki asked the empty night in front of him, voice cracking with an emotion he’d forgotten how to feel. The night didn’t answer, only remained in its velvety, suffocating darkness. The cold air left a chill on his tear-stained cheeks. He clenched his fist tighter around the railing. “Fuck.”
“Fuck,” he breathed again, releasing the railing just to slam his fist down on top of it. He wiped at his eyes aggressively with the shoulder of his shirt, sniffling loudly and sucking in a full breath.
What the hell was going on? He didn’t know Deku. He didn’t know the boy in the painting. That was impossible. It was impossible for him to grieve some kid he’d never met, some kid who died hundreds of years ago, some kid who might never have existed in the first place. And yet here he was, bleeding for Izuku, crying for Izuku, mourning for Izuku.
He was unable to stop thinking about the boy in the painting, no matter how much time passed. Every detail was burned into his mind, from the deep green curls of his hair to the constellations of freckles and scars across his cheeks. He couldn’t stop thinking about him and Kacchan, facing down a massive villain and sacrificing themselves to succeed.
He finished the rest of the article. Deku must’ve used the last of his strength to defeat the villain. Kacchan was already gone by the time he’d won. Other heroes had come to find them, but the witness had run away before they saw anything more. No one had gotten there in time to save either of them, but they had saved everyone else.
The woman who found the painting said she wasn’t exactly sure why the details of the fight had been covered up and framed as a natural disaster, why the two young men didn’t have the fame and recognition they would deserve for something as great as what they did. Maybe it was to prevent further mass hysteria after the fall of a society, maybe was to silence outcry over the deaths of children on the front lines, maybe it was simply because lies are more digestible than truth.
The article itself hadn’t gotten out to many people, and most of those who did see it labelled it as wishful and attention seeking at best and conspiracy at worst. But, for whatever reason, Katsuki knew it was real. Midoriya Izuku was real.
“Oi, brat, tell me where you’re going before you leave,” his mother snapped at him from the couch, shooting him a glare that he gladly reciprocated.
“Out.”
“Out where, Katsuki,” she demanded.
He huffed at her. “The museum.”
She frowned, cocking a brow. “Again? Shit, Katsuki, how much can you see in that place?”
“A lot,” Katsuki snapped back, leaving the house before she could argue further. He shoved his hands into his pockets and scowled at the ground. It was like if he went and saw the painting just one more time, everything would fall into place. It was all he was interested in anymore, and he hated it. He needed Midoriya Izuku to get out of his head.
Bastard.
He made a beeline for the painting as soon as he got inside, not even having to look where he was going to know where he was. The whole building was mapped in his brain, just like the painting, just like the plaque, just like Deku himself seemed to be. No matter how hard he thought about it, no matter how much he used logic to argue with his own mind, he couldn’t shake the feeling that Deku’s introduction to his life was not new. Some fucked up sense of déjà vu he got from a dead man.
In the halls, he passed paintings of other ancient heroes, posed in the heat and fire of battle. The heroes he’d looked up to since he was a child despite being told most were merely fiction. The fiery red wings of the man who could fly. The crazed spark of determination in the eye of the woman with rabbit ears. The confidence of All Might, the greatest hero of all. Until Deku.
He knew when he was getting close to the painting, a strange sense of anticipation building in his gut like there’d be anything new about the art piece that had stayed the same for months. He forced a deep breathe and shoved down any feelings he could latch onto in his chest. It was just a painting. Just a stupid fucking painting of some stupid fucking dead guy who was standing right in front of him.
Who was standing right in front of himself.
What the hell.
Katsuki felt his heart stop beating in his chest as every muscle in his body froze him to the spot, staring in wide-eyed awe at the teenager standing in front of Midoriya Izuku’s painting. His fluffy curls were stained the darkest of green, strong hands clutching a notebook to his chest, big viridian eyes transfixed on the art before him. Freckles were scattered over his cheeks like dandelion seeds in a field, the slant of his nose and curve of his lips stirring something in every inch of Katsuki’s being.
The stranger that he recognized looked from the painting to his notebook, flipping through the pages as he rapidly mumbled something under his breath. Katsuki’s heart panged.
“They worked together, right?” the boy mumbled just slow enough for Katsuki to hear, seeming exasperated. “So where’s Kacchan?”
“Hi,” Katsuki said without thinking, almost like he was trying to provide an answer to the boy’s question. The boy startled, snapping his notebook shut and whipping around to face Katsuki, mouth wide as if to blurt out explanations or yelps of surprise. But he froze and fell silent when their eyes met.
In jeweled green eyes, Katsuki saw blood dripping, blinding grins, and purple bruises blooming across skin. He saw static rain, dusty rubble, and peaceful grassy expanse. Sun-honey warm summers, ice cold river springs, and bonfire ash.
He didn’t know this boy anymore. But he wanted to.
He stuck out his hand. “I’m Katsuki.”
The boy looked from his face to his hand and back again, small smile hinting at his lips.
He took Katsuki’s hand.
“Izuku.”