Chapter Text
“You should give up on that dream of yours, kid.” The doctor says without even looking at the green-haired mother and her child. The pair flee away in tears and for the next few days a great many more tears are shed.
He cries because, how is he supposed to accomplish his ultimate dream without the power to stand on even footing with everyone else?
She weeps because, she knows she’s not very strong, and she has no one else she can blame.
His best friend tantrums and cries [although he’ll swear on anything he’s not crying] because his dream of becoming the next great # 1 with his best friend the ultimate # 2 -keeping each other sharp and drawing the best out of each other - is dead. He’s under no illusions that the top is a lonely place without somebody to butt heads against.
Time passes, and Izuku never stops believing, hoping, dreaming. Not when innocent childish cruelty sees him alone in a corner at the park - drawing heroes and heir costumes rather than playing hero in makeshift costumes like everyone else. Not when less innocent cruelty asks what he can even do for the fifth time that day only to sneer and condescend when he answers honestly [his mother raised him right, after all]. And not when physical cruelty becomes the new normal. Not while the teachers snicker and chuckle as he’s battered back and forth in the back corner of the classroom.
His greatest hero doesn’t manage to find him after his heroic [if foolish] charge toward the slime, no instead he finds someone else. A brilliant, eccentric, and [in his opinion] incredibly pretty girl with pink dreads and a need for test subjects. He’s in such a state that when she gets right into his personal space he doesn’t even blink.
She recruits him to her cause, and so begins an odd sort-of-friendship. He goes to a good if relatively unknown and uninteresting High School while she goes off to UA. He tests her gadgets for her and slowly, patiently teaches her how to interact with people a bit more politely. She helps him bulk up, teaches him everything she can [quite a lot, actually] about engineering, and helps him out from within his timid shell bit by bit. They both learn from each other, her about costume design and heroic idealism, him about diagramming, blueprinting, fabrication and engineering equipment of his own. They work toward their dreams together, and in their third year together, Mei proposes a different sort of partnership between them.
She’s the first to hold his hand, there is grease on both of their palms.
He’s the first one to suggest getting dinner together, they get greasy American takeout and watch the stars on a hill, discussing what it would be like to one day visit them.
They both come to love one another and smile more than they have before in their lives.
Time passes and 2 years after graduating from High School Mei and Izuku come apart. She’s moving to America to start her own business, to follow her greatest dream: becoming a world-renowned inventor and engineer. In large part due to Mei’s own boundless encouragements, Izuku’s own dream has survived as well, and so he’s staying in Japan. There is still love between them, but it has changed from romantic to familial and as Izuku hugs Mei once more before she boards her flight they promise to keep close going forward.
Mei leaves Izuku a gift: her local lab space and a couple of last-minute jobs she knows he will enjoy and that he can handle.