Work Text:
reconstruction — ree-k uh n- struhk -sh uh n
noun: to rebuild; to heal
The thing about Izuku’s life is that it is overwrought with change.
The change is never gradual, never slow. It is rapid, violent, giving him whiplash and sending him reeling.
So it is only natural that this change, too, should come as sudden as every change before.
It starts, and ends, with All Might’s eyes staring into his, fingers pushing a notepad towards him. With All Might’s voice, low and gentle but oh, so serious, telling him the story of a Quirkless boy who dreamed and dreamed. With a twisted, hideous hole beneath the hero’s shirt, with the pain and vulnerability of the great man who Izuku had once idolized.
It starts, and ends, with Izuku’s answer or, perhaps, his lack of one. With his eyes downcast and his shoulders shaking. I’m so sorry, he wants to say, but it’s not the same as before. He’s hurting, and the pain is familiar, but for the first time in years he is hurting for someone else’s sake.
Pain is awful, but even this is better than the icy numbness that had been locked around his heart.
It starts, and ends, with a quiet acknowledgement and a gentle, blooming trust. The next day, Izuku awakens and finds himself drawn to the notepad. His fingers, scarred and twisted, wrap around the pencil, and in the next moment he is frozen. He doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know what to say.
He hasn’t had a voice in so long. How do you speak when your words are like stones cast over a pond, sinking to the bottom to lie among the gravel below?
It starts, and ends, with an unspoken word.
Why?
It ends here, with shaky handwriting on lined yellow paper. It ends here, with the clattering of the pencil as it lands on the floor.
It ends here, but it starts once again.
And so begins the reconstruction of Midoriya Izuku.
“Why?” reads All Might, voice soft and trembling. He sighs like a mountain and runs a hand over his face, and Izuku caves in. It was the wrong thing to say. He should never have written it, should have stayed silent.
A gentle hand on his shoulder interrupts his thoughts. Izuku looks up into eyes that gleam blue like electricity and a face as wizened and kind as an oak.
“Because I want you to heal,” says All Might. “Because I can tell you are hurting and I am hurt in turn when I watch you.”
Izuku stares. His mouth opens and closes and no sound comes out. Slowly, tentatively, he reaches out one finger and taps the paper again.
“You are not a bad person, Midoriya Izuku,” declares All Might, tone humming with intensity and grip tightening. “I’ve seen you, and the way that you are, and I know that you are not evil. You are broken, but not irreparably. You still hold the pieces.”
He leans back, a small, kind smile gracing his features, different from the wide grin he perpetually displays. “You are broken, but not destroyed. It is my job to make you whole again.”
Izuku bows his head and cries.
“Hey,” says the girl with eyes that sparkle like the sun. It’s frightening to look at her; she reminds him too much of what he might have been.
He says nothing. His fingers twist nervously in the hem of his shirt.
“I saw you the other day,” continues the girl, sitting down beside him with no apparent fear and watching him intently. “But Aizawa-sensei came and took you away.”
Izuku remembers; it had been only the start of a series of mistakes.
“If I’m honest, I was kinda afraid of you.” Izuku flinches but the girl doesn’t sound like she’s afraid. She even throws back her head and lets out a breathy laugh, as if the concept is ridiculous. “But I’ve seen you with All Might-sensei, and he seems to like you. And, well, if All Might thinks you’re not a danger then who am I to say anything different?”
It makes sense, in a bewildering, strange way. Izuku finally turns his head just slightly, just so he can see her out of the corners of his eyes. She returns the gaze and beams at him.
“You wouldn’t be here if the teachers thought you would harm us,” continues the girl confidently, “but no one wants to approach you after Bakugou...well, you know.”
He does know. Izuku cringes and looks away again.
“I don’t blame you for that. Bakugou’s kind of a jerk. Honestly, we’ve all been wanting to punch him for a while, but most of us have to been too scared. But he definitely deserved it.”
Izuku exhales slowly and reaches a hand into his pants pocket. With shaky, nervous fingers he withdraws his notepad with its single word and flips to a fresh page.
Why are you here?
The girl laughs, and it sounds like music. “Because,” she says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world, “you seem like someone who doesn’t have anyone to talk to.”
The girl’s name is Uraraka Ochako and she is his salvation.
Everything about her is bright, from her smile to her eyes to the way she talks. She never comes too close, never drifts too far, always carefully respecting his boundaries. She’ll talk and talk and talk, but she never pushes him to answer, and he is content to listen.
One day, when the sun is high above, Uraraka appears at All Might’s door with a friend in tow.
“This is Iida,” says Uraraka, smiling.
Iida bows, hands straight like boards against his sides. “Iida Tenya,” he introduces formally. He pauses for a moment, mouth set in a frown, before forging bravely onwards. “I must admit I have some apprehension on this meeting, but Uraraka assures me that you are at least safe, even if she cannot promise that you are trustworthy. I would greatly like to be able to assess you myself, and to provide support if it proves necessary.”
Izuku stares, jaw hanging slack. Behind Iida, Uraraka grins and sends him a thumbs up.
This is a terrible idea. They will betray you, like everyone does. And even if they don’t, you don’t deserve their kindness.
Izuku thinks of Shigaraki’s hand outstretched, inviting words a balm against his tears. He thinks of Shigaraki’s welcome, his generosity that had swiftly turned to poison.
(He thinks of All Might’s hand on his shoulder, the kindness in his features. “I want to help you to heal,” and “My job is to make you whole.” )
Izuku opens the door to his room wider and lets them in.
There’s a growing feeling, inside Izuku’s chest, in the hollow cavity that had once held his heart.
It’s hard to identify; it burns with familiarity, but every time he tries to grasp it it slips between his fingers, running away into the wind like grains of sand or pieces of glass, glittering and shining and swirling upwards to become the stars.
It’s hard to identify, but it feels like many things. The sound of Uraraka’s laughter, the intense caring in Iida’s tone, the gentleness of All Might’s touch, the softness of his mother’s hand when she runs it through his hair. It’s hard to identify but it gleams like sunshine and smells of lilacs.
It’s a candle, or kindling, an ember he’d thought extinguished once again pulsing with...with…
(With warmth.)
It is entirely by accident that he finds her.
“It’s just surveillance,” says Aizawa, words slurred and disinterested. “All Might’s busy, so you’re stuck with me.”
It’s not surveillance, because a little girl runs into him with arms bandaged and eyes quivering with fear and Izuku sees himself as he was when he was young. Her tears are his, her pain the same that had ripped through him for the majority of his life.
“Eri,” growls the masked man, hand outstretched. “Let’s go.”
Izuku looks down at the girl, who shakes and shakes and holds onto his clothes like a lifeline and trembles with pure terror. He reaches out to touch her bandaged arm and Shigaraki’s fingers brush over his skin like ghosts.
Aizawa steps forward, capture weapon rising. “Midoriya,” he warns.
“Eri, we wouldn’t want anything bad to happen, would we?” says the man, words hissing like poison and turning Izuku’s veins to ice. “Children. So unruly.” This he directs towards Aizawa with a shrug of his shoulder as if to say, What can you do. They’re so hard to control.
Izuku has spent most of his life under someone else’s control. He feels Eri’s pain in his gut, and it’s a visceral, rabid thing.
“Alright, boy,” commands the man. “Hand her over.”
Eri lets out a choked sob, and Izuku lifts a hand to cup the back of her head.
(“Shut up,” snarls Shigaraki. “Just shut up, you useless, good-for-nothing leech. ” His foot connects with the back of his head and Izuku curls into a ball.
Or he’s crying in his room, unable to stop the loud, painful sobs, and then a villain stands over him with irritation on his features and drives burning fingers into his gut.
Or he’s sent on a mission for the first time, and instead of killing the victim he’s begging for help, and his handler is grabbing him by his hair and squeezing his throat until he can’t even breathe.
Or he’s a little boy who stares at his sullied, bloodied hands and swears to never speak again.)
“Hand her over,” says the man, and fire swirls in Izuku’s gut. He stands, and pulls the girl up with him until her feet are dangling in the air and the heat of her tiny body is pressed into his chest.
Izuku breathes in deeply and summons his demons.
“No.”
The fall is dramatic and violent. There is fighting, and injury, and pain. Izuku sees none of it, except for in the eyes of those who stumble back with clothes torn and faces smudged with dirt and soot.
But none of that matters.
What matters is that Eri is safe.
(What matters is that, watching her, a piece of Izuku starts to heal.)
Words come slowly, like sandpaper against his throat. And yet, slowly but surely, they do come.
The first thing he says is ‘no’, to a man who personified his tormentors.
The second thing he says is ‘sorry’, to a woman he’d caused pain.
“Sorry,” whispers Izuku, quiet, trembling. His mother gasps, one hand reaching to clutch at her chest, the other reaching to stroke his face.
“Izuku,” she says, voice choked and tearful. “Izuku, Izuku, you have nothing to be sorry for.”
He does, but he is exhausted from just that word and cannot reply. She doesn’t seem to care, instead reaching out with both arms and pulling him close against her, cradling him like she used to when he was young. It’s awkward, now that he is taller than her, but they ignore this.
“I love you,” promises his mother. “I love you more than anything. You know that, right?”
He closes his eyes and nods.
“And you trust me?”
Of course .
“Then trust me on this.” Her hands cup his face and turn it towards hers, gentle fingers brushing his eyelids open so that he is looking at her. “You have nothing to apologize for. Never, ever think that any of this is your fault.”
Izuku bites his lip against a sob and taps her chest. Then he curls his fingers into claws and presses gently.
“You didn’t hurt me. No, no, Izuku, look at me.” Her hand catches his and she kisses each knuckle, lips brushing like whispers against his scars. “ You never hurt me. It was them who did the hurting, when they took you away.”
The tiny, smoldering fire in Izuku’s heart grows. It’s painful, clawing at his throat like some sort of beast, but it is a good pain, like he hasn’t felt in years.
Izuku curls up against his mother and cries.
(Another piece, slowly, gently, heals.)
Toshinori watches him sleep, curled around the young girl he had saved. Her hands clutch at his shirt, and his arms cradle her, fingers still tangled in her hair.
Toshinori smiles.
It’s time.
For the boy who is strong. For the boy who is good. For the boy who has killed and hurt and been hurt. For the boy who was shattered and painfully pulled the pieces back together.
For the boy who, even after everything, remains good. Remains kind.
A single, gleaming hair. A mantle passed from the Symbol of Peace to the boy who had once been a villain.
“Are you sure about this?” asks Torino.
Toshinori nods. His eyes, hooded and dark, catch the light and for a moment shine like sapphires.
“He’s the one.”
Torino sighs, weights on his shoulders. “I hope you’re right about him.”
“I hope so too.”
All Might had told him many things, but he had not told him everything.
Now, though, he does. It makes Izuku sick. It makes Izuku elated. It makes him giddy with knowledge and fearful of this trust.
And that’s when the shoe drops.
“I’d like for you to be my successor,” says All Might, and the world spins out from under Izuku’s feet.
“Why?”
A small smile, bittersweet with memory.
“Because you are stronger than anyone I know.”
It ends (and begins) in the same place that it started. With a flame-eyed boy and his anger, and his trust.
“Deku,” he says, hands curled into fists. Red eyes stare down at his feet.
Izuku stiffens, turns.
“Deku, I—”
A breath.
“I’m sorry.”
The words are shallow but the meaning is not. And Izuku, broken, shattered, scarred Izuku, hears and understands and finally, fully heals.
“Okay.”
Izuku is a boy who was broken. He is the toppling of a vase, the leaking of blood from a wound. He is the button dropped and lost between the cracks.
But he is found again.
The feeling in his chest is a flame, of warmth, of love, of trust. Because he is broken, but he is strong.
And never did he truly fall apart.
Izuku is a ‘Deku’ who means ‘never giving up’. He is a hero who has been tried by sword and flame, who has been discarded and beaten and lost and who has risen above it all, still strong, still kind.
Izuku is a great hero. Izuku is only a child.
Izuku is loved.
But, most importantly:
Izuku is healed.