Chapter Text
Midoriya Izuku learned the world was unfair at 4 years old.
He remembered his mother’s tight embrace as he sat in his room, rocking him back and forth. She had gripped him tightly, whispering apologizes over and over. That she was sorry.
I’m sorry, Izuku.
Almost as though she were saying: I’m sorry for making you this way.
Because heroes didn’t look like Izuku. He was a kid way in over his head, ambition too big for his small stature and so far detached from reality.
That day, he had learned that Mom had given up on his dream of being a hero.
He noticed it in the expression his mom gave him when she was calling Dad to tell him about his doctor visit, or when she’d watch him draw in his hero journals at the dining table. Izuku couldn’t understand it at the time, but as he grew older he learned to place that feeling as pity.
Kacchan was the only one who hadn’t held back, having shoved a young Izuku to the playground floor when he had tried to join in playing Heroes after kindergarten.
“Didn’t you hear what I said? You’re a total failure, and there’s no way a quirkless deku like you could the Agency of Bakugou!” Kacchan closed his hand into a fist, a burst of smoke erupting from it. “Nobody born as useless as you would ever be able to fight big bad villains like All Might does!”
The day Izuku was found to be quirkless was the day his relationship with Kacchan dissipated from barely a friend to nothing completely. When the bullying started, Izuku had come to terms with the fact that Kacchan saw him as nothing more than a weakling. Useless. A true deku.
But even so, he had promised himself he wouldn’t waver.
Although, in times like these, it was incredibly hard to remember his own words.
A 14 year old Izuku shuddered as he shook out his Hero Analysis notebook, the distinct smell of pond water and koi–fish food reaching his nose. He gagged at the scent, leaving it to air dry on the ground of the school’s open rooftop. The damage did no favors to his already raggedy notebook, which now had the wet ink of “13” bleeding into the cover. He was dressed in his school uniform, the button up a bit too loose for his skinny frame. Water was clinging his sleeves from where he had plunged his arms in to save his notebook from the school’s outdoor pond.
“Jeez, Kacchan...” Izuku puffed out a sigh, allowing his yellow backpack to slip to the ground, before sitting down besides it. He leaned his back against the steel fencing of the roof’s boundary and closed his eyes. The cool metal felt nice against his scalp, and he took a moment to enjoy the breezy air of the late afternoon.
On such a nice day like this one, Izuku would usually enjoy walking home— maybe indulging in a few detours here and there for some hero sightseeing for his analysis notebook. It was the highlight of his day, watching heroes of all different quirks and specialities swooping in to save the day. Of course, he didn’t have a quirk per say, but it didn’t mean Izuku couldn’t draw inspiration from other rising heroes. Maybe he could sketch some ideas for support items that could pull off a move as effective as Kamui Woods’s Binding Lacquered Chain Prison—
“...ey kid? Kid?”
Izuku yelped, feeling as though he just jumped out of his skin. The teacher across from him was equally startled, raising his hands up as though to calm him down. “Woah, woah, hey kid! Sorry to scare you.”
The man in front of him was lanky, tall and wearing a clean navy sweater vest. He didn’t look familiar, but from the uniform and leather bag he was carrying, the man blended in perfectly with the backdrop of a junior high school. A teacher then, probably from the younger grades?
“Hi! Hi, hello.” Izuku pulled over his damp notebook closer to him, clamping it shut. “Is there a problem,” His green eyes wander to the man’s soft expression, remembering his manners. “Sensei?”
“I couldn’t help but notice you sitting up here alone and well...” The man was looking down to meet his eyes, a sheepish smile drawing onto his lips. “Even though you’re not a student of mine, I can't turn my back on anyone who might need help.” He tilted his head to look around. “Seems like lonely company to be here by yourself.”
“Believe that you’ll be born with a quirk in your next life, and take a swan dive off of–“
Izuku banished that train of thought from his mind. “O–oh, it’s not that at all! Actually, I... erm...” He trailed off. How else could he explain why he had come up here? Oh, my childhood friend of nearly a decade had once again spit in the face of my dreams, and rather than try to keep face to my Mom, I’ve decided to sulk alone here. “Just some light reading, is all, really.”
A leather messenger bag was dropped to the floor. The lanky teacher, seeing his hesitation, lowered himself to Izuku’s level. He sat down at a distance, tentative and careful, almost as though he were trying to coax a small animal. The motions of someone trying to appear as welcoming as possible.
“You’re an upperclassman, yes? What hero schools are you planning to apply to?” The teacher says, gesturing towards the discarded hero journal at Izuku’s curious glance. “Surely someone with an observational journal for heroes would be gunning to be one.”
The teacher laughed, looking as though he was relishing in the memory. “You know, I wanted to be a hero too, when I was younger. I even managed to get into Shiketsu before I realized my true calling. With all of the harsh training, studying and rules, enrolling in a hero academy is tough work.”
Izuku knew that the teacher was trying to distract him, but he took the change of subject gladly. “Y–yeah, I mean... being a hero has always been my dream since I was a kid.” The sentiment was childish, but Izuku smiles a bit at the thought of not being ridiculed for it. The teacher was... neutral. He didn’t look at Izuku with pity like his Mom and classmates did, and he especially didn’t look at him with the disdain that Kacchan reserved for him.
Not in a way that made him feel lower than the worms wriggling in the dirt. A useless deku . “I can’t even remember a time when I wasn’t watching heroes. Whether it was on the television, or through alerts on my phone... they’ve always been there. Looking so much bigger than life.”
Izuku beams. “I want to be that kind of person, that can save people. I’ve been studying everyday since the year started for UA’s practical exam. Just so I can be a great hero that can change the world, like All Might!”
“All Might?” The teacher whistles. “That’s quite a tall goal you’ve set for yourself.”
He brought his thumbs to his cheeks, pulling his mouth into a toothy smile. “So that’s who you want to be like? Mr. Egao ?” He chuckled to himself. “With your great studying ethic and a flashy quirk, who’s to say you can’t right?”
The man’s eyes glint in curiosity. “I hope I’m not intruding, but what kind of quirk do you have? It might be a bad habit from my past, but I simply love hearing about other people’s abilities.”
Izuku’s face fell at the man’s words. He wouldn’t be able to have the honest conversation he wanted without opening up about his quirklessness. “Actually,” He fidgeted with his hands. “I... don’t have a quirk, Sensei. Sorry if that disappoints you.”
The teacher didn’t speak, so Izuku gave in to his rush of words. “I mean– that’s the way everyone usually reacts when I say that. And tell them about what I want to be.”
“I study like crazy, taking practice exams and looking at flashcards while I eat and yet it's not enough . I’m... useless. Better off not wasting my time and trying.”
He clenches his fists against his lap, fingernails digging into his palms. “I would give up every part of myself to be a hero and save people. Because as much as I like listening to the radio and reading hero alerts, I could never be happy living on the sidelines.”
“I–” he says, shaking his head. “I didn’t come up here because I was feeling hopeless or was going to give up.”
“I’m... frustrated. Frustrated that I feel as if I’ve already been rejected by UA before even applying.”
Izuku searched the man’s dark gaze pleadingly. “You... You’ve worked with hero students in the past right? You’ve seen the drive, dedication from your classmates, to help people, right? So tell me, Sensei...”
It was a question he had asked himself over and over. The teacher had kept quiet as Izuku talked, and Izuku was grateful that finally, finally , someone was listening to him with sincerity. A rare moment of confidence bubbled up in him and he raised his voice to a shout, closing eyes. “Can even someone without a quirk like me be a hero?”
The silence that followed seemed to mute everything else around him. The distant sounds of cars and the murmur of city noise from Musutafu fell quiet to Izuku, who drew in a harsh breath. This teacher who climbed up the rooftop stairs to help him, who sat with him and listened to Izuku pour his heart out.
He so badly wanted someone else to believe in him– to tell him that he could be a hero.
Izuku heard a rattled laugh across from him, low and breathy. He dared open his eyes, watching as the teacher stood up and approached him. The expression on his face was unreadable, and Izuku couldn’t help but notice the growing unease blossoming in his chest. The environment chilled around him, and suddenly Izuku became aware of how far away he was from the rooftop staircase, back still pressing against the roof’s fence. “...Sensei?”
The teacher’s palm fell gently onto the top of his head, lost in Izuku’s mess of green curly hair. He pats him reassuringly, although the tension doesn’t leave Izuku's shoulders. The teacher’s fingers are cold and calloused against his scalp. The hairs on Izuku’s neck stand on end, and he dares himself to look up.
Something about this situation suddenly felt very, very wrong.
The man speaks slowly, as though he were speaking of something far beyond Izuku’s comprehension. “Tenacity is one of the greatest virtues of a hero. Picking yourself up over and over again. Climbing when your peers– even the society you live in, keeps knocking you down.”
He brought his other hand out from behind, hand flexing open and reaching to hover over Izuku. The man’s fingertips barely grazed against the perimeter of his face. “No one believes in you– yet you hold onto the hope that the world will reward you for your efforts. Maybe you are more like All Might than you think– with the blind optimism you parade around.”
It happens in an instant– fear slithering up his spine and constricting at his heart. The aura the man omitted was a shock that seized at Izuku’s nerves and weighed lead at the air in his lungs. An image pulses in his mind– so tangible and real that he swears he can taste it.
He’s being buried alive. Bodies upon bodies, the pale blank faces of the people he loves and the people who he’ll never come to know. Izuku’s vision swims– every bone in his body feeling as though it’s been pinned down, paralyzed.
Illusions of hell.
Izuku couldn’t see the man’s expression from the hand obscuring his vision, but he could hear the mockery in the man’s voice. “Out of all the people I’ve had the pleasure of talking to– you were quite the curious case.” He says, hand moving forward to rest on Izuku’s forehead. “Goodbye.”
Izuku flinches backwards, to move out of the way and do something , but the man’s hand resting on his head tightens to hold a fistfull of his hair. His other hand crackles to life with red energy and then all Izuku knew was pain.
He was going to die. Izuku’s body reacted before his mind could catch up with it, desperately trying to pry the hand off his face. It was an inferno to his skin, raging and sending a stabbing pain that pulsed on his cheeks, throughout his entire body. The nightmarish picture in his mind rose up to pull him in, hands dragging him deeper into the agony.
The man, the villain, had said something else, but Izuku couldn’t hear him over the white static of pain that was darting across his skin, threatening to consume him from the front of his face to the tips of his toes.
He couldn’t think, mouth opening as if to scream at the searing hot pain tearing at every one of his nerves. Was he screaming? Could anyone hear him?
Hot tears began to pool from his green eyes as his fingernails dug into the man’s wrist. He was going to die. Black began to swim in his vision, the sea of red in front of him blurring. He didn’t want to die.
Izuku’s mind fizzled out to the pulling grip of unconsciousness, and felt no more.
~
He was being pinned.
“You’re such a little crybaby, Deku!”
A small Kacchan gloated over him, tiny sneaker pressed against the middle of Izuku’s chest to hold him down.
Izuku squeezed his eyes closed, tears of embarrassment threatening to spill down his freckled cheeks. His knees were covered in scrapes, fresh scratches layering over old scars.
The act only made Kacchan laugh more, lifting his foot off and folding his arms together. arms across his chest. “It’s no fun having you play villain when you just cry and fall over instead of fighting. Look, Deku is bleeding!”
Izuku sits up, swiping furiously at his nose with the back of his hand. Blood streaks on knuckles. Agitating it seemed to make it worse, as Izuku realizes it’s on his lips, in his mouth.
The stinging taste, mix of tears, iron, and frustration is harsh on his tongue. He doesn’t grimace.
He feels a compulsion, like an itch, pulling him to the sensation. So he wipes at it more, small fingers crawling up his cheeks in fascination. He’s smearing it. It’s all over his face, covering his freckles and sinking deep into his skin.
A pang of clarity reaches Izuku through the memory. This... isn’t right.
This isn’t right. Izuku feels displaced, staring at his hand, no longer his hand but some sort of mess of color and scent.
Kacchan makes another retort to his crowd, and in the echoing symphony of laughter hovering above him Izuku found that he couldn’t focus on anything else but the pungent smell of blood. The heavy musk of copper, filling his senses and moist on his lips.
Focus, Midoriya Izuku.
He’s torn away from the childhood memory, the white static of his mind retreating from his eyes. And he wakes up.
He... doesn’t know where he is. Izuku could sometimes be absentminded, sure. If he’s stuck in a particularly deep train of thought, he would find himself zoning out. His brain would run leaps and bounds away from him, leaving his body to run its mouth on its own. But this, this felt like an entire new level of disassociation.
It’s nighttime– but hadn’t it just been day? He can barely remember. The wall in the corner of his vision is dark, brick texture barely visible in the moonlight. It’s like he’s in the backseat of his mind, watching a b–reel unfold through misted eyes.
Izuku stands alone in an alleyway, staring down at the ungodly amount of red staining his hands. He distantly realizes that the bright tang of metal in his mouth wasn’t in his head.
Hands trembling, he concentrates on taking deep breaths. In and out. Anxiety was a whole other beast– one he had inherited from his mother– but he couldn’t let himself slip away. Not until he knew what was going on. Nervousness bubbles in the pit of his stomach, and Izuku feels displaced from his own body. A stranger in his own skin.
He lowers his hands and takes in the sight before him.
A woman lying in a pool of her own blood.
Izuku’s legs give way underneath him. His backs away from the unmoving body, red shoes skidding against the concrete ground before his back knocks into the brick wall behind him.
No way. No way, no way, no way.
The woman across from him– her dark brown hair askew in front of her face– is mangled on the ground. Like a puppet with its strings cut, she’s rested on her side, legs tangled from her pencil skirt and arms splayed out before her. Before him.
“H–Hey!” Izuku says as he lunges forward, hands hovering about the woman in uncertainty. His voice constricts, although he’s not sure if it’s the heaviness at his tongue or the squeezing anxiety at his airway. She looked like she had been mauled .
A villain. Izuku tenses at the thought, refusing to tear his eyes away from the eerily still woman.
Surely, it was a villain that had done this. A villain had...
His eyes trace the length of his hand. Scratches were peppered at his wrist, as though someone were trying to get him off. As if a woman was grasping him within an inch of her life, begging him to let her go.
Izuku fought off the wave of nausea overcoming his body, hands reaching up to grab at his hair. He gags, pulling his legs up towards up and burying his head into his knees. He felt his heart thumping in his ears, an invisible hand seizing and twisting at his gut. The raw instinct of panic pounding against his chest yelled to run, hide. He twitches as if to move, but immediately pauses at the sound of a voice.
... A young woman, no older than 35. Quirk: Empath. She can project her emotions onto anyone she makes contact with–
The murmur in the back of his head rises to an overpowering voice, insistent and buzzing in his mind. The voice reminds him of the shrill voice of an antique radio, scratchy and detached from the sounds of Izuku’s short, semi–hysterical breathing.
He looks back at the woman, pale and lips parted.
Her quirk can be activated by the lightest of skin contact, but has the drawback of causing massive fatigue for its user, who may not be able to use it for a while–
Blood was stuck to the roof of his tongue, in the back of his throat where he had eaten it.
But in moments of adrenaline and fear, then surely...
When had blood tasted so good?
She can activate it as a last resort.
Izuku’s breath hitched, and he tore his hands out of his hair to wipe desperately at his mouth. Just to get it off of him, away from him. The panic he had felt, now knowing that the emotion is not his , subsides and retreats into his skin.
Quirks were more than extensions of people– they were dynamic abilities, completely integrated into the individual even from birth. When a quirk develops, every young child gets a chance to learn how to harness it. To suppress their innate desires and control it.
But this– this felt like the extremity of that, a gnawing desire that was thrust upon him in its maturity. Amplified and deafening. Izuku felt as though he were possessed.
For the first time that evening, the static of his mind briefly retreats, and Izuku is able to place the feeling his new quirk brought to him, trying to bury it in his chest.
Pleasure, hunger–satiating happiness singing from his senses.