Chapter Text
Izuku stands at the pedestrian crossing light rocking back and forth on his feet. His eyes are glued to the red light, willing it to turn green, but it doesn’t even as his eyes water.
His mother asked him to go to the store a few blocks away from his middle school to get some groceries. He clutches the bill his mother gave him that morning and steps onto the road. He walks carefully between the white painted lines painted on the road as he moves further away from the direction of the school and his house.
In the hand not clenching the grocery money, he also clutches his burnt notebook to his chest and tries to ignore the swarming thoughts that plague his mind. It wasn’t out of the ordinary for Kacchan to say something like that to him, and for the most part he’d become numb to the words, but when he wrecked Izuku’s notebook, the one thing he could always turn to when he was overwhelmed, Izuku just couldn’t quite shake his disappointment and teetering anger.
He blows out a breath of frustration and turns the corner. Just a few more crossings and he’ll be at the store. He really just wants to go home now.
Izuku swiftly picks out the few food items his mother requested and clutches the plastic bag in his fist, his other arm still holding the notebook tightly. The cashier glances at it a bit strangely, but Izuku leaves the store before the stranger can make any comments on it.
When Izuku leaves the store...he knows something is off. There’s nothing particularly different about the area surrounding the store or anything he can physically see. Izuku doesn’t know how he knows how the aura in the air shifted, it just has.
He shakes his head and begins walking down the street back home.
On the way back, he hears sirens blaring from a few streets over. His intuition, which he likes to think is his inner hero, makes him think he should make his way over to the source of the noise. The exhaustion from being picked on yet again and waking up early for school every day tells him he should just go home and worry about it later. The heroes exist for the sole purpose of coming to situations like this, right? Whatever is going on will be fine, he needs to get back home and take a nap.
And that’s exactly what he does. Until he hears his mother scream unintelligibly in the middle of his rest and he jolts awake once again.
“Izuku! Izuku come out here!” she hollers from the living room.
Usually, she adds something like “dear” or “please” to her sentences. She’s sweet like that, and it’s something Izuku loves about his mother. The lack of those candy-like words is what really brings Izuku to attention enough to peel his covers back and allow his feet hit the floor beside his bed.
Dread seeps through his stomach, and makes its way into his bloodstream, weaving its way all along his body. In every nook and cranny, he knows something is very, very wrong and maybe he should have listened to his “inner hero.”
“I’m here...what’s wrong,” he mutters as he wipes the sleep from his eyes. He tries his hardest to not look terrified.
Izuku's mother looks at him with wide eyes and points a finger to the television. Her finger shakes as she waits for him to notice the cause of her distress.
Terrified, Izuku's head turns toward the screen and his stomach drops to the floor. There’s no way what Izuku is seeing is real. No way. He’s supposed to stop this kind of thing from happening. This isn’t what heroes should let happen. Not at all.
Izuku clenches his fists at his sides, his fingers grasping desperately at the rumpled cloth of his school uniform. With wide, dry eyes Izuku stares at the lifeless expression on Kacchan’s face as he’s held in All Might’s devastated arms. The blood he’d coughed up is splattered all over the front of his black uniform and his head lolls to the side, unsupported by All Might’s arms.
Izuku doesn’t want to listen to anything. Not the words that the reporter asks All Might, not what All Might says, and most certainly not the words his mother is saying to him. She’s asking if he’s okay and if he got caught in this too, even though it was clear by the way Izuku is staring and shaking that he wasn’t.
“Please talk to me,” his mother pleads. She’s standing in front of him now. He can’t remember her moving at all.
“No, this is fake,” he mumbles, his voice barely audible by the way it catches securely in his throat. “I’m supposed to save him.”
“Honey...don’t think like that. You didn’t know, right?” his mother asks him. Her fingers wrap around the fabric of his loosely hanging uniform. She tugs on it, and he jerks forward.
Izuku shakes his head. “I didn’t. I didn’t go that way today because of the groceries.” He bites hard on his cheek until blood spills onto his tongue. “I should have listened. I thought there was something wrong. I’m so useless . Just like he says.” His cheek throbs with pain but it’s nothing compared to the pain he’s experiencing just looking at that screen.
“Izuku...stop that.” His mother backs away from him. “I’ll get you some water. Go sit down, okay? There are tissues on the coffee table.”
He flicks his eyes toward the table in the middle of the living room. “What…” he mutters before pulling a hand to his cheek. It’s wet. He doesn’t remember crying.
Izuku sits on the couch like his mother says and mutes the television. He won’t look at it. He can’t. It isn’t real anyway.
He wipes the tears away with his coarse jacket sleeve, and it leaves a raw mark on his cheek. Izuku lifts up his phone to inspect the wound. It’s a pinkish streak, much like the trails of tears winding their way down his flesh.
“Useless,” he repeats. Then he hears it in Kacchan’s voice, over and over again, until the tears return. He was right . Why did Izuku ever try to be someone. If he can’t even rush into the scene when someone he’s known his entire life was in trouble, then how will he ever know when to help someone he doesn’t know?
Izuku’s mother returns with a glass of water and sets it on the table in front of him. “He’ll be okay,” his mother says as she sits down next to Izuku on the couch. The way she says it seems like she’s saying it to herself just as much as Izuku. “You know how strong he is,” she adds as she wipes her own tears away.
“He’s always been better than me. He’ll probably laugh at death’s face when it comes for him and it’ll cower from him.” Izuku laughs bitterly. His throat is thick with sobs and disbelief. He eyes the water on the table and debates whether it’s worth it to wash those things away.
Izuku’s mother places an arm around him. “You’re just as good as him. He may be strong in certain areas but you’re stronger than him in others. You’re caring and ignore the mean things kids say to you. That’s incredibly strong.”
“It’s not enough to make it though.” Izuku takes the cold glass in his hand and traces lines through the condensation. He takes a drink and waits for the icy liquid to trickle down his throat. The thickness remains, and he sighs. “I’m going to bed early.”
“Okay, would you like something to eat before you go to sleep? You haven’t eaten much today, have you?” his mother offers.
Izuku shakes his head. “I’m fine.” He stands up and glares at the screen again. Kacchan’s face isn’t there anymore, nor is All Might. A reporter is asking a woman Izuku recognizes to be Kacchan’s mother questions.
“Were you aware this was happening?” the reporter asks her.
The camera pans to her face, eyes watery and her face taut with a mix of anger and regret. “I wasn’t. He just told me he always walks with his friends home and I never thought anything of it.”
“Do you trust that our great hero was able to save your son from worse injury than he could have sustained?”
The woman’s face twists. “Well, he’s always idolized All Might, so I hope so.”
Izuku bites his lip and clicks the television off. He enters his room again and curls into his bed covers. Adrenaline, fear, denial, and agitation keeps Izuku awake, even long after the sun goes down.
He can’t bring himself to look at his phone in fear he’ll see more news stories, so he turns it off. It’s just him, alone, staring at a blank, dark ceiling with no idea of what will happen when he goes to school in the morning.
His fingernails dig into his palm until they nearly break his skin. He should have been there. That thought courses through his head over and over, until the words jumble together and he has no sense of what he was thinking in the first place.
Nobody would accept a quirkless kid who can’t even save his only “friend” into UA. Izuku knows that for a fact.
Telling himself this, he gives up. No tears come, but he wishes they would, so he doesn’t feel like a husk anymore. It’s the worst. Everything is waiting to burst out, but the denial of what just happened keeps all of Izuku’s emotions locked up in his chest.
He eventually exhausts himself staring at the walls and succumbs to sleep. Only then, can he cry.
He wakes up in the morning with a dry throat and a soaked pillow. When his mother comes in his room to wake him up, she bites at her nails at the sight of Izuku’s disheveled form. His hair sticks to his face from the sweat and tears that coat his skin, and his uniform is crumpled, his tie hardly tied together around his neck.
“Go back to sleep, I’ll let your teacher know you aren’t coming in,” his mother tells him.
Falling back asleep is easier than waking up to the reality of this situation.
A month passes, and Kacchan is back to school. He isn’t the same.
Before the incident, Kacchan would nag Izuku to death all day, jab at him and say crude things to get Izuku’s blood boiling, but that just…stopped the second he came back to school after being in the hospital for a month.
Kacchan has to take physical therapy to get his muscles and bones back in shape so he can train for the UA exam again. When Izuku tries to ask him how it’s going, he shoves Izuku away and tells him to shut up about it and leave him alone.
The words are the same as before, but the tone...is far from it. Kacchan sounds sad and angry with himself, rather than Izuku. Just that in itself is enough to make Izuku’s fists clench and his teeth grind together.
“Kacchan,” Izuku grumbles under his breath as he clasps a fist around the back of Kacchan’s jacket.
“What.” There’s not a bit of interest in his voice.
“Are you okay?” Izuku bites his lip and tears away at the peeling skin.
Kacchan’s eyes narrow. “I’m fine. Leave me alone.” He swats Izuku’s hand away and walks off down the hall.
Before…before everything that happened a month ago, Izuku would have felt a little bit upset and insulted by what Kacchan said, but at least he gave Izuku some attention. It was never good or wanted attention, but it was something . Izuku craved any sort of attention from someone other than his mother, even if it was his childhood bully.
"You don't care anymore, do you?" Izuku says before the words can form meaning in his brain.
"What?" Kacchan growls. He turns around but stays where he stands a few meters away from Izuku. "What the hell does that mean?"
"You cared so much before. Now you don't. Why?" Izuku asks. His fingers curl into a fist and he squeezes so hard they ache.
Kacchan scoffs. "Care about what? You ? Is that what this is about?"
Izuku plants his feet firmly on the slick tiled floors. "Yes, that's exactly what this is about."
“Who told you that lie? Is there something wrong with that tiny brain of yours?” Kacchan steps closer. His legs are still wobbly and his face is pale. But he still looks far more intimidating than Izuku could ever muster.
“You always wanted to tell me how much better than me you are. And now you don’t. You don’t even care I exist. Why ?”
Kacchan’s eyes narrow. “You’re not my competition, you know? You’re just Deku and I know you can’t beat me, so why should I care?” Kacchan raises his hands above his head to stretch, and then they settle behind his neck. “You proved that with the slime villain. Maybe I don’t know you as well as I thought. I expected you to burst in with that shitty grin of yours and ruin everything.” He smirks at Izuku. “I may be weak now, but I’m still stronger than you. Don’t forget that.”
“That villain must have messed up your head,” Izuku mumbles as he laughs at Kacchan’s boundless determination. But the funniest part about it is…
Izuku believes every word of it.