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Izuku is four and has yet to show a quirk. That’s ok though, many people are late bloomers.
-
Izuku is six, and is taken in for testing. He doesn’t have the toe joint associated with being quirkless, but that doesn’t always mean a lot. It could be a quirk that’s invisible, it could be apparent later in life, he could still be quirkless. After all, the toe joint is an indicator and not a guarantee.
Nothing about his treatment changes. Why would it? In day to day life, he has nothing. Possibilities don’t matter to children.
-
“One for All binds to the users quirk and makes it more powerful. Though, since-” All Might begins explaining.
“I ah… Uhm. I might have a quirk that’s functionally useless? We could never find signs of anything, and- Well, we gave up and just say quirkless. It’s...”
All Might considers this carefully.
“We will have to watch you carefully then. If you notice anything strange, make sure to tell me.” He booms cheerfully. His happy mask slips briefly as he looks down at Izuku.
“Though, if it’s honestly so unnoticeable, I don’t think we’re going to have much of an issue with it.” He admits, his tone soft as he reaches towards Izuku.
-
They don’t.
-
Gran Torino even makes a point of testing Izuku for the strangest of things, once he hears there may be a hidden quirk.
There’s nothing to find.
-
Izuku laughs bitterly as he considers the utter insanity.
To go from “probably nothing” to six additional quirks? Absolutely batshit.
His arm still throbs from the use of Black Whip, but the pain is the least of his concerns.
-
His problems never end. Training, showdowns with the league and any other big bad that dares show itself, more training on top of that, and then trying to find time for a life.
He just has to take his life one step at a time. All Might even says as much, taking a deep breath in and straightening up to say “It’ll do you no good to run yourself into the ground worrying. You’ll kill yourself before you make it to thirty if you do that.”
-
New quirk, new hell, new issues. Sometimes Izuku wonders about the quirk that’s supposed to be his own, but he’s tired of crying over it. He’s tired of the anxiety and self loathing he had because the thing refused to show.
He’s got better things to do, being seventeen and on his way into the official hero job.
-
Izuku is nineteen, and All Might is dead. Izuku had barely started heroism, and All For One had broken out and caused hell.
What pains him isn’t that it was All for One. What pains him was that it wasn’t directly All for One.
Almost an entire street had been blown away in the fallout of the historic fight and swept the once legendary hero with it, slamming him against some jutting metal and spiking him through the head before he could know that he was in the air.
Izuku cries and cries and then cries some more. He’s gently taken off hero duty for a few weeks, but they couldn’t keep him away for long.
Todoroki tries to advise him against it, as does Uraraka and Iida and everyone else in the class. Even Bakugo shows concern, in his own grating way.
But Izuku couldn’t keep sitting there, doing nothing. There’d always been the looming reality that All Might would die, potentially without warning. He’d had years before to grieve, and he’ll have years after to heal.
He wanted to work, and make the world a better place. Not just sit there crying when he’d been warned years in advance that the milk would spill.
-
Izuku is twenty two with all six extra quirks, and he’s famous world wide.
How couldn’t he be? The wonder hero with seven quirks, working hard to save people in flashy displays and equally hard to help people with charity.
Izuku is twenty three when he is number one.
-
Izuku is twenty five, and Shigaraki is behind bars. All for One is out there.
But right then, Shigaraki was the proof that Izuku could fight and make a difference. The twisted manchild sat behind the glass, acting like a rabid dog in his desperation to fly towards his mortal enemy.
Izuku is unflinching. Shigaraki was never an heir, just a pawn. He’ll rot here, forever. There’s some sympathy in Izuku’s heart, but Shigaraki earned death long ago. Sitting in jail is almost not enough justice.
When did Izuku get so bitter and jaded? Did it simply come with the job?
He quietly resolves to work on getting back some of the optimism he had, and walks away from Shigaraki- the child molded into a shambling mess of hate.
-
Time marches onward. Izuku is twenty six, Izuku is twenty seven, Izuku is twenty eight.
Izuku is thirty one, and someone makes the comment that he looks the same as the day he was announced as number one.
He laughs and his friends laugh with him, and he is admired for his youthful looks. The discussion turns to when they were dumb kids.
-
Izuku is forty two, and he looks the same as the day he was announced as number one.
He thinks of when he was told a quirk may never show. He thinks about it even as the doctor in front of him flips through the testing results.
“Keep in mind that the technology is new, and as such is prone to error. But…” The doctor begins, hesitating.
“This is consistent with most longevity and immortality quirks we’ve been able to put into the database. We can talk about technicalities all day, but the bottom line?
You’re immortal.”
-
Izuku is fifty one, and he watches his mother’s coffin sink to the bottom of the grave.
The friends who are left stand with him, watching.
Everyone knows better than to comment on his youth as they attend the funeral of someone taken by age.
-
Izuku is sixty five, and he’s tired.
Not physically. He’s extremely resistant to the effects of aging, and it’s come to light that he may be so resistant that his oldest wounds are almost gone. So resistant that the history of his body would never remain.
But he’s still tired. He’s tired of fighting All for One on and off, tired of watching everyone else age- and die- and yet feel himself stagnate a little more each day, and he’s tired of looking at his friends children and knowing that unless he dies suddenly, he’ll be outliving them.
He visits Shigaraki one last time, in jail.
“Didn’t know the number one had a brat.” Shigaraki notes tiredly. Izuku doesn’t correct him.
“I would’ve thought you’d be older, but maybe he just waited that long. It’s not like I get a ton of news in here.”
“The only thing he’s ever rushed is to help people.” Izuku agrees. He doesn’t have children himself. He was never interested, and now he knows that he’s got good chances of outliving his own.
“No kidding.” Shigaraki snorts. Time took its toll, and Shigaraki is tired too. But his tiredness is in the wrinkles and walk as well as his mind.
“Why are you here?” He sniffs.
Izuku isn’t actually able to answer.
Shigaraki watches with a tired and bitter look in his eye as he watches Izuku leave silently.
-
Izuku is eighty. He’s alone. He’s smiling.
All for One smiles back, healed.
They dance the dance once more.
-
Izuku is one hundred. He’s perfectly fine physically, always getting out fine but never quite winning against All for One.
-
Izuku is old. And for once, All for One isn’t going to fight him.
One tired spirit to another, they stand on a bridge in the city. Izuku had looked All for One in the eyes, sighed, and walked away. All for One didn’t do public destruction without one hell of a reason anyways. But of course he had to be followed as he sat and stared at the water.
“How do you do forever?” Izuku finally asks.
“You give yourself a purpose.”
But it isn’t that simple. Izuku had a purpose.
“I was supposed to be a hero.”
“Well, then what’s the problem?” All for One asks.
The centuries old enemy flinches as Izuku turns to him, hatred burning deeper in his eyes than it had any right to.
“I’m not some shitty little brat having his first crisis over the concept of eternity.” Izuku hisses
“I’m tired. I help people every day but none of the root causes are solved. I give every penny I can and nothing changes. I speak in deafening volume and yet everyone is already deaf.”
“Welcome to hell.”
“... I guess.” Izuku responds, swinging his legs over the edge.
“Are you certain you kept mentally aging?” All for One asks suddenly. He keeps talking as Izuku glares. “Understand that the observation is natural for me, not obsessive. But ever since around… oh… twenty one? You haven’t seemed to mentally age outside of being more tired.”
Izuku thinks carefully about whether to respond seriously or rip All for One’s throat out.
“It wouldn’t surprise me, not anymore. It takes a lot to do that.” Izuku chuckles.
“Well, then I’ll have to give you the gold membership to hell.” All for One huffs, sitting next to Izuku.
Izuku can only quirk an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Does it surprise you? Every time I think about it I just wish that either I’d taken that immortality quirk later, or just gotten a different one.”
“But not just let yourself age and die?”
“I’ve never been that kind of person. And be honest with me, are you?”
Izuku had to steady his breathing.
“No, but that doesn’t make anything about it easier.”
And he’s honest. He wouldn’t simply end it, but god was he tired.
Time was moving on and Izuku was being left behind.
“It doesn’t.” All for One agreed simply.
And as they sat there, silent once more, Izuku had to wonder if this was really what was happening. He was sitting on a bridge with his mortal enemy lamenting about how hard it is to keep moving towards forever when it still felt like he was twenty.
“This doesn’t suddenly mean we’re not diametrically opposed anymore.” Izuku warned.
“Shame. Are you sure? Because I assure you that I haven’t killed anyone in about fifty years. Not directly anyhow.”
“Your followers, on the other hand…”
All for One didn’t have the enough shame to wince, just look vaguely displeased. “Touche.”
“I’m going to go home. Don’t collapse society while I sleep.” Izuku informed flatly, standing to leave.
“It’d give you a vacation from trying to fix it.”
“ You go take a vacation from trying to destroy it it you shitty old coot.
“Once more, touche.”
“See you in the next fight I guess. Or the next three am ramen run, either works by this point.”
“Goodbye Midoriya.”
Izuku was still tired as he walks away, but he consoles himself that he is the light to so many peoples dark. Takes a small bit of pride in the fact that he could theoretically be a pillar forever.
After all, if he can’t have that much in the face of forever, then why bother remaining?
Izuku keeps walking forward.