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Something in his very posture is ablaze, haloed by the setting sun except he is not a thing of the night, he carries the fiercest of sunlight through the dark times, just as he has carried his class through nightmares and exams and war itself.
But it has left its marks. Its scars.
The first and most obvious, of course, is when he shouldered flames and ice and a power not quite his own to prove that his to-be-friend's power belonged to them, and his hands were left with spider-web facsimiles of fractures upon his skin, bone-deep and angry. (Izuku, however, was never angry; he has been frustrated, he has been protective, he has been wild. He has not been angry. Not yet.)
He shouted across an arena filled with shattering chunks of ice and rising heat, words deep from the ugly part of him that will always be the boy without a Quirk and who would do many things if only they stopped him from being a Deku. He flicked again and again and again, barely even thinking of the agony of it because he just needed Todoroki to understand, needed the other boy to even begin to comprehend that no matter his home life and how good or bad that may have been, he was still fucking blessed to have a Quirk at all, to be someone with a chance to make something of his life, the opportunity to grow past whatever his childhood might have been.
(And Izuku also, in the very depths of his being, wants to think that he can help Todoroki to be okay. He didn't like the stilted pain that the other boy had when talking about his childhood, and Izuku is sure that Todoroki was a child who never deserved to be caught up in desires and disasters far greater than his own, that of his mother and father and siblings. But he could surely begin to become his own person now. Surely he could grow into his own power.)
With all of this in mind and heart, with his determination to do whatever he could for Todoroki, Izuku had broken himself time and again, screaming himself hoarse, and then he had seen it, had seen the light of change in those two-tone eyes.
Then, within moments, there was an explosion, and then Izuku was passing out, all darkness and agony and air rushing around him.
He woke up hours later with new scars, and with hope. It was worth it.
The second is actually four scars. They are not as well-known, and that is only partially due to their placement. The media was there for the Sports Festival.
Izuku was alone when he faced Muscular. He was not alone later that night, when he pushed himself too far, too hard, too fast, only to still fail, to have to scream his pain to a forest floor of a place that is ablaze just as he is. Kacchan is gone, and Izuku has failed, no matter that he saved Kouta-kun or that his friends' gazes are worried, understanding things that weigh heavier than the drag of his Quirk upon his very marrow.
There are dug-deep wounds upon his arms and chest, and four of those marks do not fade with healing. No, they remain, furrowed deep. (They are the trenches of his own war, the back and forth of his power and his grief and his heroism and his weakness, wandering their too-harsh paths upon his skin-)
But they get Kacchan back, and All Might defeats All For One to the sight of his own emaciated form, and that only leaves scars unseen. It weighs upon Izuku (his shoulders never quite seem to be fully straightened anymore, no matter how tall he tries to stand, because there are far too many burdens upon him-) but not in a way that most people can notice. That most people would even quite care to notice.
And so Izuku battles on, wearied by mars upon his skin and soul, dragged down by his own deadweight, but battle on he does. What other choice would there be?
The third is, again, a thing unseen: it is the realisation of his own power. Oh, he had been fully aware that he could and has hurt people, that he has shattered mountaintops and himself and a determination a decade in the making, but at least he mostly knew what he was doing or dealing with. Sort of. Now, however, he has inky tentacle-things taking him over, lashing out, threatening and everyone nearby, his class and 1-B, and he is terrified.
Izuku has been out of his depth for a long time, he knew that. And that wasn't okay, per se, but it was manageable. At least he was finally beginning to get control of himself and of One For All. He was pulling his percentages up, moving faster and hitting harder until- until-
Until he nearly hurts everyone with something utterly foreign but also steadfastly his own. Because Black Whip had felt right, in a certain way, had sat comfortingly warm in his arms despite how they had been tearing out of him at the same time, like there had been a voice whispering advice and reassurance in his ear, in his mind, trying to tell him to calm down, to wait, to take control, to breathe-
His friends had helped him. They had helped Izuku when he could not help himself (and oh, how he loathes to be a burden again, because now he has a Quirk but he is being a useless Deku, and what does that say about him; does that make him the problem, rather than his Qiurk status?) and there had been almost nothing in terms of repercussions, truly.
Except a lack of active punishments does not truly make Izuku believe that it was okay, nor does it mean that he doesn't suffer for the Quirk outburst. Because, in between the concern from his class and the promises of research from All Might and the accusations from Kacchan, Izuku finds plenty of time to blame himself, to curse himself, and to stare at his mostly-blank arms, with nothing but freckles and scars seeping from wrist to fingertip, to think about how ink-like whips had carved themselves into existence from him, and how they had wreaked destruction.
Izuku's friends do not hesitate around him, do not seem to fear him. It's a shame he cannot feel the same.
Despite everything in his life up to now, Izuku doesn't think that he's ever feared himself before. It's an irreparable splinter deep in his heart. (It hurts.)
The fourth is, perhaps, a slightly silly thing. A single nick of an injury that doesn't heal quickly or smoothly enough to not result in a slightly jagged line, just at the corner of his jaw. But Izuku, despite everything, has managed to avoid scars on his face before, and this was just from something as stupid as not ducking a piece of rubble quickly enough in a training exercise. But perhaps that's because it's so silly, such a small thing. It could have not happened. He could have gone to Recovery Girl. (Just like so many things in his life, if Izuku had just been a little quicker, a little wiser, a little better, it would not have happened. There would have been no blood at all. Nobody would have been hurt, there would have been no injuries to heal badly or well, and no scars to remind him of how he messes up even the small things.
But Izuku did mess up, and now he has this inch or two of just-jagged scar at the corner of his jaw to show for it. To remind him of his uselessness.
Maybe he should never had tried to make being a Deku a good thing. He should have known better.)
But Izuku didn't get it healed officially, and now every time he props his hand upon his chin there is the catch of a valley against a valley, a great mistake against his first true triumph, and he feels right down to his core how he has not yet improved enough.
No, he still isn't enough, still hasn't gotten far enough, still needs to do more, so every day after class he clocks into one of the various school gyms and pushes himself further and further, until he is struggling to breathe and his clothing is sticking to him despite it being exercise clothing and he's getting sunspots wavering like heat in his vision and he- He doesn't collapse, he doesn't think, but he'll lose a little bit of time to just trying to breathe, eyes closed, knees weak, as he attempts to recover.
There are concerned glances, sometimes, from his teachers or from his friends, when he comes back to the dorms notably exhausted, or when he doesn't manage to fully hide a wince at an overworked muscle twinging or a strained joint from rolling a little too far.
But Izuku has been scarred for his mistakes. He does not want to let his future self be a burden as well, not if it puts scars upon another's skin.
The fifth is a mar upon his very soul.
In all truth, there have been other scars in between. Physical nicks and burns and scrapes that never fully leave his skin, although fortunately few are as marrow-deep as those on his hands.
The first life he takes, however, goes deeper than his marrow; it cuts deeper and sharper than any other wound he has ever had before, than any physical wound could dig and he survive it, and yet it does not show upon him, is not emblazoned upon his skin like his freckles or the shallow gouge upon his jaw or the deep troughs carved upon his hands. No, it is subtle, found only in the creases around his eyes, the tension of his shoulders, the tremble of his fingertips.
On that day, he stood amongst the rubble and bodies, with his nemesis crumpled at his feet and a sunset staining the sky the same colours as his bloody knuckles, a fire haloing him as he turns back to those who have witnessed his fight, and he drags up a smile that he does not truly feel.
Because he is happy, in part, although far more relieved than joyful. But above all else, Izuku is tired, utterly exhausted in so many ways, and now he has yet another weight upon his shoulders, anchors coiled between his ribs that threaten to drag him right to his knees except he refuses to give in to himself when there are still people looking to him. (Izuku feels... Kami, but he feels dirty. Soiled. Like the blood drying in the creases of his knuckles and the valleys of his scars will never leave him alone. No, this blood will always stain him from the inside-out, will drag him down and tang at the back of his throat no matter what he does or who he becomes.)
And so he had stood there, wings of fire in the sky and weariness lining his bones in something like granite, and there had been cheers and crying and phones filming his desecration-triumph-finality, and Izuku had been able to do nothing but raise a bloody fist just like his mentor did, months and months ago.
Izuku is supposed to be a hero. Izuku still wants to be a hero. When he has just taken a life, when he watched not shadows but mere blankness snap over that red gaze, he does not feel much like a hero at all. (He feels dirty, feels wrong, feels like he has done something that he should never have even considered in the first place, something too broad and heavy and dark for his shoulders-)
He has saved people, with this, and he had no other choice other than to lose. But he has lost a part of himself in the name of that heroism.
Izuku's scars do not heal, per se. They are, however, eased over time with trust and affection and simply more experience.
It takes him a long, long time to share some of his scars with his loved ones, or how those scars have affected him. He hesitates to share how scared of himself he is, in case it makes his friends and family fear him too; he does not know how to articulate to his friends who have yet to kill another person what it is to know that he took a life, that he snatched the very thing he is supposed to protect, and that he can still see that moment of light-lost whenever he closes his own eyes. Izuku does not know how to be vulnerable.
But he learns. It takes time, and his friends gaining their own scars, but Izuku does indeed learn. Their teachers will talk to them long-after they graduate, will look at them with pride and heavy eyes and with understanding, will congratulate them for establishing their Agency or for climbing the ranks or for a successful public mission, but their teachers will also sit beside them at parties or in homes or on a rooftop at night, and they will talk to them. They will share tales of their own scars, things that most of the class were not ready to hear yet at sixteen or seventeen, no matter that they had all lived through a war (Izuku's friends did not truly feel the burden of the war in the same way that he did, and Izuku was glad for that in a dozen different ways, but it also twisted something inside of him, just a little, something that took a long time to unspool, to unknot-), and it will help far more than it perhaps should to hear these equal tales of sorrow and grief and utter wrongness.
Heroes face many horrors. But they all face those horrors, bear those scars, tremble before those ghosts, and so that makes it easier at least. A burden shared is not truly a burden halved, but it is a burden eased all the same, one better understood, simpler to deal with.
And with this, Izuku's burdens begin to ease over time. (His own sense of being a burden, also, begins to lessen, because he is both more capable than he once was, and he also sits through enough therapy sessions and late-night confessions with his classmates, or rather his Agency-mates, now, to be able to figure out that he isn't an issue just because he isn't perfect. And, even if he does need help and attention from others, that his friends love him enough that it's no burden to them at all.) He begins to fear himself less, as he gets to know the Quirks and vestiges and nuances of One For All, to be sure in his own abilities both within and beyond a fight.
Izuku is more confident now, he finds. More settled. He is comfortable with his scars, both those inside and out, and with how they have begun to heal over time, not leaving him whole but leaving him contented at least, and ever-more so.
So, yes, he has scars, but Izuku is okay all the same. No, Izuku is happy, and he has an entire class and family and mentors that he loves, and how he is loved by in return.
He is someone beyond the boy-warrior-successor that he was once heralded as, blood on his hands and the setting sun to his back. He is Deku the Hero, and Izuku the loved one, and simply someone who has suffered but who has survived past that to become better. To become happier. And that is all he needs.