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He’d tried to keep a smile at the start.
Keyword, tried.
He’d fought hard around. It was a regular thing for second years, for their class at least, to be sent out around, far from UA or places where they would be recognized. He planned on it being hard, but not as crushing as it truly did become.
The first month had gone by. Then All For One had reared his head.
He’d tried to call All Might. Tried. Because it wasn’t allowed to call during the test. It didn’t matter if it was All For One, he had to find out how to do it on his own.
So, he did.
He tried hard and worked alone, the only one truly knowing what was going on. He sacrificed his sleep and prowled night and day. He saved people and took down villains. He let caffeine become a pole to keep him up.
Still, he’d tried hard to keep a smile. He got good at it. Putting on a grin when he felt so deeply empty inside.
It’s gotten into his voice too. He still holds that reflex. Being able to pull off any emotion when he felt such a different one.
He kept working. He never slowed down.
He’d held through for god knows how long. Was it a month? Maybe two? Time became lost to him. It was just sunrise and sunset, but it’s not like those were any different. He was out anyways, working hard and chugging coffee like water.
Life seemed fuzzy besides the All For One thing. Everything blurry and muffled around him. On the rare chance he wasn’t on the job, he sat and stared into space, dissociating hard and fast. He’d always wake, though, to those alarm he set, even though he never slept. He just pretended to.
Then it happened.
All For One dangled an old piece of white paper in front of his face. It was printer, but on it was a colourful crayon drawing of a family. A woman with two long lines for green hair, a dad with barely visible spiky white hair, and a small boy in between them with green spirals this way and that.
He pales. He knew that drawing.
He’d drawn that drawing.
He’d drawn that drawing and gave it to his dad.
His dad who left when he was two.
He’d powered through the experience, repressing the crushing feeling in favour of capturing All For One.
He did. They got him. He watched as they slapped quirk-suppressants on his blacked out body and carried him away to the deepest cell there ever would be.
He went home that night and he slept.
Well, as much as he could, with the amount of adrenaline and caffeine in his system, followed by the amount of nightmares and insomnia that plagued his dreams.
He startled awake five times. At one point it was five am. He stopped trying after that and went out to patrol the streets.
All For One is his dad. All For One is his dad. All For One is his-
Stress and nightmares eats him away with every passing day. He loses the energy to hold that smile anywhere he doesn’t have to.
He doesn’t know how long he’s there for, but he survives of caffeine and cheap food. His mom checks up on him. He denies her call and plays everything off as fine.
Then, Midoriya Hisashi had come up, and she’d disappeared. He never got a text about where she was until some doctor had called him.
Still alive, they'd said. But gone.
Gone into the white rooms of horror and insanity. All because of him-
He stops sleeping altogether. The nightmares are too much to bare. He takes little naps like he did before to ensure he doesn’t go clinically insane, but he always wakes up not long after.
And then, after what feels like centuries, he’s headed home.
He doesn’t hold the smile on the boat. He pulls up a hoodie, though he doubts anyone would know who he was, with those sunken eyes and shadowed face. Of course, he’d still trained, but it didn’t mean he didn’t look the tired part of his ways.
He doesn’t know what he does on the boat. For the most part he just lays in bed, either dissociated or having nightmares. At some point he gets up, but those always feel hollow, like he’s just a robot getting up because he needs the nutrients.
He mourns who he used to be. He thinks All Might needs a better successor. He should just go find Mirio and give him One For All and then pass into dust because god, he wants it to end.
He gets off the boat. He’s back on the way to UA. He feels like shit, watching all those people pass, coated in smiles and joy like he used to be-
Everything here reminds him. It all reminds him. Reminds him too much.
The fighting, the yelling, all the memories. He remembers who he used to be, who he used to be, who he used to be god he is such a failure how could he ever live up to All Might he never deserved this he should’ve just jumped-
Everything goes fuzzy around him. He can’t breathe.
He chokes. Why can’t he breathe?
The villain. The villain holding him in his grasp and he’s choking and he’s going to die and One For All will die with him and he’ll never escape and-
Something slimy and big and black shoots out from him.
His vision goes pitch black.
Aizawa is used to out-of-control quirk alerts.
He swoops into the city, capture weapon flaring at the ready the moment he sees it.
A boy, they said. Couldn’t be more than twelve or thirteen.
Black, slimy tentacles swing this way and that, grappling onto whatever they can grab and flinging them. They rip lamps from the floor and people from the streets. Many other heroes are already on the job, mainly trying to save and shoo people always as they try to keep the midnight tentacles from destroying more things.
Aizawa dashes this way and that, trying to dodge the wild tentacles. There’s barely any strategy to them. Just swing, hit, and grab.
He wrangles his capture weapon around one, flinging himself upwards. He releases just in time to avoid being dragged by a slimy black whip.
His eyes move fast behind golden goggles, blinking fast.
There! He spots it. A small kid, though he looks to have muscle on him. An oversized All Might hoodie covers his body, but his head is titled back, eyes wide and black as the void, mouth agape in silent screams.
Aizawa locks eyes with it, and his hair flares up with red activation.
The response is instantaneous.
Slimy, black tentacles ravaging the city slap and shrink black, swinging and flailing back into the body of the boy. The black void clears from those wide eyes, and the boy falls quick like a rag doll released from strings.
Aizawa shoots down, shooing the other heroes away as he snatches the kid up in his arms. He wonders where his parents are but then he sees and oh no-
Those green curls. Those freckles dotting that too-pale face. He knows that face.
He stares at the sunken cheeks and eyes, the eyebags so dark he’d thought they were black eyes. The multitude of scars, the stink of caffeine and dirt.
Green eyes barely flutter open, empty and exhausted but stressed.
They trail around almost lazily before they find Aizawa, and recognition sparks in their gaze.
But, when they speak, their voice is hoarse, quiet, burned to the crisp and full of sorrow and exhaustion.
”Mr. Aizawa...?”
He nods, standing up. “Yeah, kid, it’s me.”
The boy hums. “Sorry” He says.
He turns to the other heroes. His eyes burn, but he keeps his quirk activated.
”Anyone got a-“
A newer hero he doesn’t recognize or care to recognize hands him quirk suppressant cups.
He nods in thanks, trying his best not to blink as he snaps them around his student’s wrists. His student startles a bit at the motion. He pays it no mind and lets himself fall into the sweet relief of blinking.
He turns to the heroes. “I’m taking him.”
The others look like they’re about to protest. “I’m taking him to Recovery Girl” He says sharply.
The other heroes seem to nod, though they look like they’re about to protest.
He walks away.
The body in his arm hums. “Recovery Girl?”
He nods. “Yeah, Recovery Girl.”
”I don’t have any broken bones.”
”Yes, but you look like death, I’m taking you to Recovery Girl.”
Midoriya chuckles, though it’s more of a humourless huff.
The underground hero takes another look at its student.
Its hard to imagine that this kid, this pale, insomnia-ridden kid, with empty, exhausted eyes that are filled with only relief and stress, is the same bouncing, bright-eyed boy that he’d sent off.
He thinks about that smile. That determination. That pure will.
And he looks at the boy in front of him.
Sunken eyes, eyebags so dark they’re bruises. Face shadowed and caved-in.
”God, what happened to you, kid?”
Midoriya hums.
”Tried to reach out for help. At the start” He says, voice low and sentences broken.
“S-Said I couldn’t. Against the rules. Had to do it by m’self.”
Midoriya blinks lazily at the sky.
”S-Sacrificed stuff for it. Didn’t sleep. Just patr’olled ‘n fou’ht”
Worry grows in his chest as he continues to listens to his student ramble.
”N-Napped a bit so I didn’t go ins-sane ‘course. Didn’t get mu’ch th’ugh, always had n-nightmaress.”
His speech is slurred, but it’s enough for Aizawa to get the gist.
“A-Arrested him, though.”
Aizawa already knows who him is. It was all over the news.
”S-Still couldn’t sleep. St’ress ‘n stufff. Just kept work’n.”
His worry only grows.
”Did you eat anything? Drink?”
Midoriya blinks lazily at him. “‘Ad cof-coffee a-and whatever was in the fridge.”
Aizawa frowns. “When was the last time you had a full meal?”
Midoriya hums noncommittally. “‘Dunno. Lost track o’ time a while ago.”
Aizawa’s frown deepens. “We’ll fix that.”
Midoriya hums again.
He steps into the nurses office at UA.
He already knows it’s going to be a rocky road.
Recovery Girl slaps an IV on him so fast it’s almost scary when he arrives.
Midoriya has been mostly out of it the entire trip back, though he’d stayed awake long enough that he’d managed to wave to Recovery Girl before she practically knocked him out.
Now, Aizawa sits across from him, watching the chest of student go up and down slowly.
He wonders what made his student like this. When he’d gone out, he was a beaming, bright boy with enough love to outshine the sun.
Now, looking down at him, he almost looked like All Might in his true form.
He knows that at some point during the test his mother had been administered into a mental hospital for two weeks at the call of one of her neighbours. She was out now, had been out for a long time.
That couldn’t have been enough to make him like this. Sure, he’d had a great relationship with his mother, but this is Izuku Midoriya.
It’d take a lot more than a long hospital stay to make things happen the way they did.
Aizawa sighs.
Izuku makes an odd noise in his sleep.
Aizawa glances up.
Izuku’s face is screwed up in almost pain, body pulled taught. He rolls over, making noises almost like choking. His quirk begins to crackle dangerously across his skin.
Aizawa leans forwards, grabbing at his student’s arm, hair flying up as he erases his quirk. He doesn’t want another incident like last time.
”Hey, problem child” He calls, shaking him slightly.
Izuku whines, body flailing.
He shakes his arm with more vigour. “Midoriya.”
Izuku jolts violently, though he doesn’t wake.
He shakes him again, practically pushing him. “Midoriya.”
Midoriya chokes, then startles awake with a gasp, eyes blown wide.
The heart monitor hooked up next to him thrums fast and dangerous, just like his breathing as he whips his head to look around.
”Wh-Where?”
Aizawa lays a hand on his arm. ”Breathe, problem child.”
The kid looks like he wants to protest, but he doesn’t. He manages to slow his breathing, the heart monitor relaxing.
Then, shakily, he glances around the room.
”Where?” His voice is quiet, hoarse, almost.
”Recovery Girl’s office. Have been for about four days.”
”Four days?” It sounds like he wanted to sound shocked, but his ragged voice betrays him and it just sounds tired.
Aizawa nods, then stands up. “I’ll get a good meal for you, kid. Any requests?”
Aizawa watches the gears turn in his students head, almost as if he’s forgotten how to comprehend what a full meal is. Not that Aizawa can blame him. He looks dead on his feet.
Aizawa waits patiently.
”K-Katsudon” The green-haired boy breathes out, voice shaky. “A-And maybe coffee?”
”I’ll get you tea and katsudon” Aizawa says, and turns abruptly before Izuku can protest.
Izuku doesn’t know how long he sits there, but at one point Recovery Girl comes in and gives him the rundown. He pays as much attention as he can through the tired fog that is his mind.
He thinks distantly that he should be patrolling. Sure, he’s only a student, but he’s been on job for a while. He should just get a little caffeine and a protein bar or something and then he’ll patrol to streets and take a nap on lunch. Perfect strategy.
As if she can see his very thoughts, the rescue hero glares at him sharply. “You’re staying here until I say you can go” She says, and he nods with a very high-pitched “yes, ma’am!”
He doesn’t fall back asleep. His mind clears a bit, but he just finds himself fiddling with the hem of his sheets until the door opens, and he glances up to a familiar tired face and a lovely smell he’d forgotten the smell of.
He breathes it in. His stomach growls. “Is that katsudon?” He asks, almost dreamily.
Aizawa sets the tray down on his lap. “Yes, and some tea.”
Izuku frowns. “No coffee?”
”No coffee.”
He feels a little disappointed at that, but, hey, it’s better than anything he’s had in a while, and so he stabs into it and digs in.
Its a bigger portion than he would usually like, but he doesn’t mind. The more the merrier.
He tries not to choke as he eats it. He practically melts under the taste of actual food.
Aizawa sighs from beside him. He tries to pay little mind, focused only on the food before him.
”Drink the tea” Is the thing his teacher says to him when he pauses over the bowl.
He looks it over. “Does it have caffeine?” He asks.
”Drink it.”
Izuku stays put.
”It wasn’t an option.”
Izuku sighs, and reluctantly grabs at the cup. The heat swirls around his face, making him blink. It smells sweet, and he takes a sip.
Chamomile. With honey. And some sort of other taste?
He moves his tongue around inside his mouth, taking more sips to try and discern what else lies inside his drink. It does taste good, too. Not like the bitter coffee he’s been drinking for...
How long was it? Ah, well. Time is an illusion anyways.
He reaches the bottom of the cup, and the taste is stronger there, and it hits him instantly.
He whips around, an almost betrayed look in his eyes.
”Did you put medicine in my tea?” He asks accusingly.
Aizawa nods. “You look dead, kid.”
”So?” He asks, though he dutifully finishes the tea off anyways.
Aizawa levels him with a look that has him shrinking back in submission. “You needed some kind of medicine or at least vitamin in you.”
”I’ve eaten protein bars” Izuku protests.
”And?”
Izuku pauses, thinking. “Coffee.”
Aizawa sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Problem child.”
Izuku looks away guiltily.
He stays there for around a month or so.
He gets bored easy, but people visit him often, even if just to give him food and tell him off. Even his mom visited once, and they broke down into tears in each other’s arms.
Still, he appreciates the food. And the tea grows on him.
At one point, All Might stops by, and Midoriya sputters over his words as he tries to cover up his guilt.
“Calm down, Young Midoriya” All Might waves his hands placatingly.
All Might lays a tray of food down before him. It’s soba.
Todoroki.
He digs into it, his mind wandering to his red-and-white friend as he does.
”Hey, All Might?” He asks, voice quiet.
”Yes, Young Midoriya?”
You don’t have to call me young all the time. “How are my friends? Classmates?”
”Your classmates?” All Might echoes. “They’re fine, Young Midoriya. They’re just waiting for you.”
Izuku feels a stab of guilt as he looks back down at the steaming noodles. They’re warm, unlike how Todoroki prefers them to be.
All Might must’ve seen something in his eyes, because he places a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Young Midoriya, they don’t think any of less of you because of what’s happened. Take your time.”
Izuku nods, albeit a bit shakily. He takes a sip of the tea, the slight sting of medicine sliding down his throat. “Alright.”
Tell him, a voice in his head goes, tell him before it’s too late.
”A-All Might” He begins.
”Yes, Young Midoriya?”
”I-I met him.”
”Met who?”
Izuku inhales sharply. “A-All For One.”
He hears his mentor do the same.
”I-I tried to call for your help, but t-they said I couldn’t because it was against the rules. I tried, All Might, I’m sorry. B-But he’s in jail now. They took him away and he’s in jail and I’ll never have to see his face or that drawing or think about it ever again and-“
He’s distantly aware of the heart monitor picking up in speed. He stares down at his shaking hands. Shaking hands once so young as they handed that father monster that drawing oh god-
There’s a hand on his shoulder, a voice calling his name.
He tries to pay attention. What are they saying?
”Breathe.”
Breathe? Isn’t he already breathing? He would be dead if he wasn’t breathing.
But now that he thinks about it, his chest does hurt a lot, and there’s no air in his lungs it’s being pulled out by hands around his neck oh god he’s going to die he’s going to die he’s going to-
Everything seems lost. All he can think about is the hands, and the drawing, and how much of a monster he must be to be related that man and-
Something freezing splashes over his face, and he startles.
He coughs, water spilling out from his mouth. When did that get there?
He blinks, eyes bleary. “Wh-What?”
”Oh, thank God, you’re awake.”
Izuku turns to look at him slowly, breath evening out. He feels tired, his bones lead and weary.
”Wh-What?” He repeats.
“You had a panic attack” All Might explains to him, looking anxious.
Izuku looks back down at his hands. Right, that. “O-Oh.”
They sit in silence, his eyelids fluttering as he fights off exhaustion.
All Might places a gentle hand on his shoulder, though his voice seems far as he speaks.
”Rest, Young Midoriya. I’ll be right here when you wake up.”
And with that, he falls into the abyssal darkness that is slumber.
The day they release him is an odd day.
They send him back to the dorms on the allowance of his mother and him, along with a bottle of pills and an appointment.
He stares up at the tall buildings of Heights Alliance, and feels anxiety begin to thrum in his chest.
”Are you alright?” Aizawa asks in an oddly concerned voice.
Izuku nods. “Yeah” He says.
He stares up at the building before him.
Maybe...
Maybe he can have another start.