Warning: this is hella angsty and hella dark. Just so you're prepared. TW for blood and emotional abuse.

Also, this is only part one. There will be a sequel. The sequel, you will (probably) be pleased to know, will be significantly happier.

EDIT 10/19/17: Fanfiction decided to take every italicized word and make it not italicized so that's great. It's fixed now. Thanks, Fanfiction. I love it when you screw with my formatting.

decomposition — dee-kom-p uh - zish - uh n

noun: to break up into pieces; to decay.

It starts with a little boy and his dreams.

"All Might is so cool!" cheers Kacchan, waving his fists in the air. Izuku nods enthusiastically, because it's true. All Might is very cool.

"When I grow up, I'm gonna be a hero," he says.

It starts with his mother's arms around him, her cries in his ear. "I'm so sorry, Izuku," she says, and his heart plummets.

It starts with a name.

"You can read it like 'Deku'," says Kacchan. "That means useless." Everyone laughs and Izuku wants to cry, but he knows if he does it will only prove Kacchan's point, so he bites his tongue until it bleeds and tries to pretend he isn't hurt.

It starts with a friend turned against him, standing over him with smoke coming from fists and burns and bruises littering Izuku's body. "You're weak," says Kacchan. Izuku's lip trembles and he feels his heart shatter, and when everyone leaves he sobs into the dirt.

He'd only wanted to help. All he's ever wanted to do is to help.

But the world is not kind to people like Izuku, who put others before themselves and who are prepared to be broken in body and spirit.

Izuku feels the weight of his bruises and screams and screams and screams.

It starts in these places, each a seed planted in his heart. It starts there, but it begins, in truth, with an outstretched hand and gleaming eyes between greasy, too-long bangs.

"The world's not fair," says the voice that grates like broken glass.

Izuku nods.

In doing so, he unwittingly signs a contract he wishes he'd never signed.

It begins with Shigaraki Tomura's hand on his wrist, middle finger raised just slightly above his skin. It begins with Shigaraki Tomura's voice in his ear, words like poison in his veins.

Izuku's dreams topple from the shelf like a snowglobe knocked carelessly with an elbow. They fall in slow motion, building momentum, and in this moment they hit the ground. And, like a snowglobe, they shatter.

Glass is strewn across the ground. Glittery liquid laps at his toes.

And so begins the slow decay of Midoriya Izuku.

Izuku holds his hand out to the light and watches the glinting of the knife. It gleams, like a star, and it's fascinating.

Izuku moves through the darkness, poison leeching from his eyes, and plunges the knife into thick, soft flesh.

Red blood drips from the blade, sticky and wet and bright like poppy flowers. Izuku lets it run across his fingers. He tastes it; it's an odd taste. Metallic. It tastes like death and pain.

Izuku is numb.

In the night, Izuku curls up on the old, worn mattress and stares upwards. It's dark, here, but for the moonbeams that seep through the hole in the roof that he's never bothered to fix.

Izuku raises his hands above him and inspects them. They're meticulously clean, scrubbed raw with soap and water, scrubbed until they hurt and the skin turned pink. They are clean, clean, clean.

Izuku inspects them in the moonlight. They're stained with red; they're covered in dirt. Shadows pool under the fingernails.

He pulls them close against his chest and closes his eyes. His heart beats against his chest.

A tear falls from his eye, glistening for a moment in the moonlight, crystallized by the nighttime, before disappearing into the mattress and forming a spot of darkness by the side of his face.

Izuku is numb, but a small part of him is eternally screaming in pain.

"We're attacking UA," says Shigaraki. "We're gonna kill All Might."

Izuku says nothing. The piece of him that's still a child pounds its fists into the walls and sobs.

Izuku bows his head.

Fire fills the air. Smoke curls around him, like fingers brushing against his skin.

Izuku shivers, despite the heat. Steam and dust coat the inside of his mouth, tasting like ash, tasting like metal, tasting like blood.

The boy with the pale hair holds his hands against Kurogiri's body and threatens to blow him up.

Izuku stands and watches.

All Might does not die.

Shigaraki bleeds on the floor. He screams until his throat is hoarse, hurling curses at anyone in the vicinity. He rages, he whines, he cries like a child.

Izuku stands off to the side and bears it.

Bandaged fingers reach for his skin. Izuku very carefully doesn't flinch.

"Why didn't you do anything?" asks Shigaraki, manic. His eyes gleam behind his bangs and his teeth shine in a cruel, cruel smile and Izuku wonders how he ever thought of the man as a friend.

"You could have done something. You could have killed those kids. But instead we lost ."

Four fingers dig into his arm. The fifth hovers dangerously above it.

"I could kill you. Right now, I could kill you."

Izuku closes his eyes.

"Speak, damn you! Say something or I will kill you!"

Do it, thinks Izuku, and doesn't say a word.

Shigaraki doesn't kill him.

Izuku curls up on the floor with his knees pressed against his chest. He shivers, naked in the darkness of his room, in the shadows of his cage.

He holds his arms out and inspects the scars dotted along them. They are varied and many. They line his entire body.

He traces a finger along the freckled scars on his legs. He imprints a constellation, skin pressed white under the pressure, and watches it slowly fade into nothing.

Izuku thinks of the pale-haired boy. He sees flame and rage and red eyes that burn like embers, boring into his face. He thinks of lips pulled wide over bared teeth, shouting in a familiar voice.

Shigaraki yells something intelligible in the bar. Izuku flinches and buries his head in between his knees.

He puts a vise on his heart and tries to forget about the pale-haired boy.

(He fails.)

Stain is poison. Stain is conviction.

Izuku stands opposite him in the alleyway. Shadows ripple between them.

Stain flicks his tongue out and sighs, the breath grating on the way out like sand, like glass. "Who are you?" he asks.

Izuku slowly pulls a knife from the holster pressed against his side. He inspects it; it's sharp.

Stain throws back his head and laughs and laughs. "You're no hero," he says. It's not a question. "Did Shigaraki send you?"

Izuku nods once. Stain laughs again.

They tense as one; coordinated, they move to strike, like two vipers twisting around each other in a deadly dance.

A figure in blue bursts into the alleyway, ice spreading across his path. The boy on the ground makes a noise of distress and Izuku pauses.

He holsters his knife and slips into the shadows.

Shigaraki won't be pleased, but tonight is not the night.

The pale-haired boy slams him into the ground so hard that a small crater forms. Izuku chokes on his own breath and ends up inhaling the heat from the boy's explosions.

Something snaps inside his chest. A rib, probably. And a heart.

"Fucking stay down," roars the boy, inches from his face. His breath is hot against Izuku's skin.

Pain, and a memory.

Kacchan, mouths Izuku, voiceless. The boy—Kacchan—doesn't see it, blocked as it is by the metal of his mask.

The fight moves on.

Kacchan is raging.

Tied down like a wounded animal, voice hoarse from shouting, eyes filled with flame, he screams and rages and curses at the gathered villains in the bar.

"Join us," says Shigaraki.

"Fuck no," replies Kacchan.

The red eyes roam the room, angry, cornered, wild.

They skim over Izuku and then latch on.

Izuku isn't wearing his mask.

"Deku?" breathes Kacchan.

The door explodes under the force of a powerful fist.

"I am here," says All Might, righteous vengeance thrumming through his every word.

Izuku slips back into the shadows.

Izuku is captive.

He is crumpled on the ground, forearms braced against the dirt. He's trembling, moments from collapsing.

Izuku coughs and taste blood. On his hands, his arms, his face: blood.

The sky is red in the sunset and all Izuku ever sees is blood.

He's surrounded. The heroes ring around him, watching, waiting, ready.

Izuku can't fight anymore.

Get up, says Shigaraki's voice in the back of his mind. You'll never be useful if you can't get up.

He's exhausted. Physically, mentally, emotionally.

He wants to close his eyes and sleep. He wants to never wake up. But sleep brings nightmares, pain and blood and flashes of fear, and Izuku always awakens with mouth agape, screaming soundlessly into the cold emptiness of his room.

"Surrender," says All Might, voice surprising in its gentleness. "Please."

What will become of me, thinks Izuku.

What will you do with me, thinks Izuku.

What do I have to gain? he wonders.

What do I have left to lose?

Izuku lets his head fall so that his forehead is pressed against the dirt. He moves his hands to cup the back of his neck.

I surrender, he mouths into the earth.

No one hears.

Hands on his wrists, on his shoulders, on the back of his head. Hands pulling knives from here, and from there, and from there as well. From his boots, from his belt, from his pocket, gleaming metal shards of the half-life he's led.

A room. Plain, white, empty. The lights above, utilitarian and brutal, flicker occasionally. Metal cuffs, icy-cold against his wrists.

"Midoriya Izuku," says the policeman.

It's the first time he's heard his name in years.

Izuku bows his head and cries.