Chapter Text
When Midoriya Izuku was 4 years old, he learned a hard truth about the world: all men are not created equal. As he grew older, he’d eventually learn that that divide was more widespread than he realized, a truth everyone must confront at some point. But at 4 years old, as he sat glassy eyed in the doctor’s office, his daemon Rini trembling in his arms, he learned how this truth would impact him.
“At this point, I think it’s fair to say that Izuku will never develop a quirk.” The doctor said it so casually, like he was commenting on the weather outside instead of destroying the hopes of a young child, and Izuku wasn’t really sure if that made it better or worse.
Izuku’s mother gasped, her hand coming up to cover her mouth. “Couldn’t it be possible that he’s just a late bloomer?” She asked, squeezing Izuku’s hand with her other hand, the other still hovering in front of her face. Izuku could barely even feel her grip, he felt so numb. It felt like his whole world was narrowing down to whatever the doctor was going to say next, like nothing else mattered.
“Under different circumstances, I would consider that as a possibility. While late bloomers are rare, due to some quirks having specific activation criteria, some people have discovered their Quirks as late as 20 years old. However, I’d like you to take a look at this.” He gestured to the screen next to him, the light up screen showing an x-ray of Izuku’s foot.
It had taken them a few tries to get it because Izuku couldn’t stop asking the x-ray tech how his quirk worked, and squirming around. He’d been so excited to see a rare quirk like x-ray vision first hand, and had dedicated a whole page in his All Might themed journal to notes on the man’s quirk. Now, Izuku was as still as a rock, waiting to see what the doctor would say.
“You see, in about the third generation of quirk users, doctors began to notice a pattern that people who were quirked tended to be missing the second joint in the pinky toe. It’s called Elin’s Sign, and it’s estimated to be present in about 85% of quirked people. As you can see, Izuku’s x-ray is negative for Elin’s Sign. And since both you and your husband have very straightforward quirks, I think it would be unlikely for Izuku to have a hidden quirk. While there’s always a chance he could develop a quirk later on, in my medical opinion I think it’s highly unlikely.”
Highly unlikely. Those words kept ringing in Izuku’s ears, drowning out whatever his mother was saying to the doctor. It was highly unlikely that he would develop a quirk. For some reason, he just couldn’t get that to click. How was he supposed to be a hero if he didn’t get an awesome quirk like Kacchan or All Might? This couldn’t be right, it just didn’t make sense.
In his arms, Rini’s shaking got more violent for a minute before she shifted smoothly into a snake, wrapping herself around his arm and squeezing tightly. He looked down to see what she was doing, and realized that at some point, in his shock, he’d dropped his All Might action figure on the ground. The action figure seemed so small, lying there on the white hospital floor. In fact, suddenly he felt small, perched on a stool that suddenly seemed far too big for him.
He never made a move to pick the action figure up, and it stayed there until his mom picked it up and pressed it into his arms, herding him out the door and into their car. He was silent the whole way home, staring blankly at his action figure. He didn’t talk for the rest of the afternoon, his mind still trying to process the information he had received. He was never going to get a quirk.
It finally hit him after dinner, as he sat in front of the computer and watched his favorite video of All Might rescuing people after the disaster. With tears in his eyes, he spun the chair around to face his mother, to ask her the question that had made it so hard for him to accept that he was going to be quirkless. “Mom… do you think I can still be a hero, even if I never get a quirk?” He asked it hesitantly, afraid that she was going to say no. He couldn’t quite understand how he could be a hero without a quirk, but his mom was smart. Surely she would know.
In some ways, her reaction was worse than a simple no would have been. She burst into tears, the battle that she’d been waging against crying finally lost, and wrapped her arms around him. “Izuku, I’m so sorry!” She sobbed, and Izuku felt like he was going to shatter into a million pieces. Rini was squeezing his arm so tight he couldn’t feel his fingers anymore, and then finally, Izuku let himself cry as well.
-----
After his diagnosis, his mother let him stay home from school for a day. She let him eat ice cream for all the meals, and she let him watch whatever he wanted. Even though that turned out to just be hero videos, back to back.
It felt weird, watching hero videos without trying to imagine himself in the situation. He’d always wonder what he’d do in the situation, how he’d handle it with whatever awesome quirk he’d get. Now, it just kind of felt hollow. His mother’s apology was still ringing in his ears.
But after one day, his mother had to send him back to school so she could go to work. And that was when his problems truly started.
The day had started off normal, with Kacchan bugging him about where he had been the day before. “You sick or something?” Kacchan had asked, in that way he had where he didn’t want to seem like he actually cared. Izuku knew better though. “Cause if you are, you gotta stay away from me. The old hag said if I gave her another cold she’d kill me.”
Izuku didn’t answer him, just stared blankly ahead, and that was when the whispers started. “I heard he’s quirkless.” It was a faint whisper that Izuku barely heard, and he guessed that was probably the point. But he did catch it, and so he whipped his head up, searching for the source.
Adaichi, his classmate with a quirk that let her set her hair on fire, gasped. She was standing next to Tsubasa, which made it easy to pinpoint the whisperer. “You’re quirkless?!” She asked Izuku loudly, clearly not realizing it was supposed to be a secret, and then the whole room erupted into discussion about it.
“I heard that if you interact with a quirkless person you lose your quirk! It’s like comtaginious!” Nakamura loudly announced to the class, his daemon puffing her feathers out on his shoulder. Everyone else seemed to take this as a statement of fact, and scrambled away from Izuku.
Except, of course, Kacchan, who sneered at the other kids. “What are you, morons?!” He looked like he was going to say more, but the teacher swooped in, resting her hand gently on Izuku’s shoulder as she smiled at the other kids.
“Don’t worry, kids, of course being quirkless isn’t contagious. All that this means is you have to be a bit more gentle when you play with Izuku! He’s still the same kid as he was before.” Her hand felt like such a heavy weight on Izuku’s shoulder, and when he looked up at her, it was obvious that she felt very uncomfortable.
His heart plunged down into his stomach, and the whispers in the class suddenly seemed unbearably loud. He felt like he couldn’t breathe, like he was going to choke on the heavy air, when a loud voice came from his side. “We could still get a quirk later on! We just don’t have one now!” Rini, by his side as a bear cub, had her hackles raised, as she boldly addressed the class.
The shock of Rini addressing them directly seemed to quiet the whispers until Kacchan broke the silence. “Yeah, they could still get a quirk later on! And if he does, it’ll probably be better than you extras!”
The mood seemed to lighten after that, with the students seeming to agree that maybe Kacchan was right. And his classmates' attitude seemed to lighten towards him, at least for the next few weeks. But his teacher’s discomfort wouldn’t fade so easily.
-----
The relative peace with his classmates wasn’t long lived. The one piece of normalcy he still had, his friendship with Kacchan, quickly soured when Izuku took it upon himself to try to stop Kacchan from being mean to some other kids on the playground.
It seemed obvious to him that stopping Kacchan was the right thing to do. All Might always said it was wrong to be mean to people weaker than you, and with Kacchan’s awesome quirk, everyone was weaker than him. He thought Kacchan would understand once he explained, but instead Kacchan seemed annoyed, and on that day he found himself on the receiving end of Kacchan’s quirk for the first time.
He’d thought it was a one off, he’d even told him mom it was an accident when he had to ask for the first aid kit, but one time turned into two, which turned into three, and then it just kept happening. Izuku didn’t understand why Kacchan was acting this way. If they were going to be heroes, Kacchan had to be nice to people!
So everytime Kacchan tried to pick on someone, Izuku got between them. And everytime, Kacchan got angier, and his injuries got worse and worse. And then at some people, Izuku stopped having to get between Kacchan and other kids, because Kacchan started going straight for Izuku.
The first time it happened, when Kacchan shoved Izuku over in the classroom, his palms sparking and scorching Izuku’s shirt, Rini had gone straight for Dai, taking the form of a dog and biting hard into Dai’s side. It had turned into a full out fight, despite Izuku pleading with Rini to let it go, only ending when the teacher’s daemon grabbed Rini by her neck and pulled her off.
The teacher was furious. “Unbelievable, to think such a thing would happen in the classroom!” She scolded them, and Izuku hung his head. Kacchan, however, wouldn’t back down.
“I didn’t do anything wrong!” He exclaimed heatedly, and the teacher's face softened.
“Of course, I know.” She said, and Izuku’s head whipped back up to stare at her. She couldn’t have missed the burn marks on Izuku’s shirt, right? “Izuku, go to the principal’s office and wait until your mother gets here.”
Rini shifted to a smaller form, falling out of the dog’s mouth and scampering up to the teacher. “Izuku didn’t do anything wrong! Kacchan attacked Izuku, and I attacked Dai!”
“Izuku can speak for himself!” The teacher scolded Rini, before turning her attention to Izuku. “Just as Katsuki would be responsible if his daemon attacked you, you are responsible for her actions! You must learn to control yourself.”
He didn’t understand at the time, but looking back on this, this moment was when the reality of what being quirkless became clear. He’d so far viewed it as something limiting his future and his dreams, but this moment made it clear that being quirkless changed how others felt about him as well, a factor he hadn’t considered yet.
Those incidents kept occuring, with Kacchan attacking him and then him getting in trouble for it, until finally Izuku and Rini realized that for reasons they couldn’t understand, no matter how obvious it was that Kacchan was the aggressor, if Rini or Izuku retaliated, the teachers would blame them. Izuku’s mom had tried to fight the school on it, but they made it clear that if Izuku kept “picking fights” then this wouldn’t be the right school for him.
So Izuku stopped telling his mom, and Rini stopped fighting back. At first Izuku would just lie about injuries, claiming he tripped. He didn’t want to make it harder for her. By the time he turned 10, he and Rini had learned to take care of his wounds, so they didn’t have to worry her at all.
---
As they got older, things slowly changed. It wouldn’t be accurate to say that things got better, but things got less physical. When they were 11, Kacchan became the first in their class to settle. This wasn’t a surprise to anyone, Katsuki had a talent for coming in first, even in things that weren’t really a race.
Dai had been particularly thrilled over this, and had even had a rare conversation with Rini the day she settled. After she’d finished posing on Kacchan’s desk so everyone could get a good look at her settled form, her glossy black fur shining under the fluorescent lights, she’d struttered over to Izuku’s desk, to where Rini was curled up by Izuku’s bag as a ferret.
“I bet your mind must be going about a million miles an hour right now.” She sneered, and that confused Rini so much she actually replied, uncurling herself to look at Dai in confusion.
“What are you even talking about?” She asked, and from the way Dai’s eyes lit up at her response, Rini knew she’d somehow made a mistake.
“You must be so jealous.” Dai purred, leaning in. “I mean, this is just proving that Katsuki and I are destined to be heroes. Everybody knows settling small is a mark of a real hero.”
Rini bristled at the implication, her tail puffing up in size. “Why would I be jealous? I could settle small too, this doesn’t mean anything.”
“Sure you could, but it just doesn’t seem likely to me. I mean, why would something go right for you? Honestly, it’s better if it goes wrong, because then you could at least move on from this fucking pipe dream.”
Izuku must have been listening in to their conversation, because he grabbed Rini and pulled her away before she even had a chance to jump at Dai.
Dai laughed at that, and turned to leave. Clearly, she’d gotten what she wanted out of this interaction. And, curiously enough, it seemed like Kacchan had as well.
Izuku wasn’t sure if it was because he had settled and Izuku hadn’t, or if there was something else to it, but after that, the bullying slowed a bit. Sure, Kacchan wasn’t exactly nice, but the bullying tended to be just verbal.
It was like a breath of fresh air for Izuku and Rini. No more trying to hide injuries from their mom, no more replacing school supplies. Of course, such a good thing couldn’t be expected to last forever.
Izuku knew Kacchan very well, and he knew exactly what would set him off, and avoided those things like the plague. That served him well for several years, but he couldn’t control what other people did, which is why he knew he was in serious trouble when the teacher had brought up high school.
Unlike some previous teachers, Mr. Kutsuki didn’t seem to have it in for him. He’d always been somewhat ambivalent towards him and seemed happier to just pretend Izuku didn’t exist. Of course, the one time that Izuku wanted to be ignored, Mr. Kutsuki seemed to remember he existed. Right in the middle of his talk about how all the students wanted to be heroes, and about how Kacchan has applied for UA.
“Oh, yeah, Midoriya, don’t you want to go to UA as well?” Mr. Kutsuki said casually, his words cutting though the excited mood in the room and leaving silence in their wake.
Izuku’s heart wilted in his chest. That was it. He was dead. He shrunk down into his desk, but he couldn’t escape the sudden attention of his classmates. It was quiet for only a moment before the room erupted into a mix of laughter and derision.
“Midoriya’s trying out for UA? He’d have a snowball’s chance in hell!”
“They barely accept anyone! Even I didn’t bother to apply, and unlike him I actually have a quirk! Some people think too highly of themselves!”
“This is what happens when you’re too nice to quirkless people! They start to get big ideas like this, and it’s just ridiculous!”
And then, finally, the one he knew was going to be the worst. “Deku you fucking loser, why the FUCK would you even apply?! You really think UA is gonna want your useless, quirkless ass?!” Kacchan ranted, slamming his palms against his desk.
Izuku curled up further into his desk, already smelling the burning wood. There wasn’t any way to save this situation, so he might as well be honest. He could hardly make it worse. “A-actually, they got rid of the ban against quirkless students a few years ago, so if I score well enough on the entrance exam-”
Kacchan’s hands sparked up and the burning smell grew stronger. Izuku snapped his mouth shut as Katsuki stalked towards him. “Score well on the entrance exam?! You’d fucking die in the goddamn exam! Quirkless, defenseless Izuku! You just can’t let go of this goddamn pipe dream, can you?! Doesn’t this shitty school suffer enough without you going out of your fucking way to embarass it?!”
“Bakugo!” Mr. Kutsuki said sharply, and Izuku snapped his attention to him, desperate for a lifeline. Was he going to defend him? Tell Kacchan to calm down? “Please refrain from speaking ill of the school. And return to your seat, class has started and we have a lot to go over today.”
Well… It was something. Izuku would happily take that. It bought him time, and he was determined to use it to make a plan. If Kacchan got distracted and forgot for a little bit, he’d have maybe a five minute window of time to slip out, get his shoes, and make a run for it. If he could just get past today, then Kacchan would probably cool down by tomorrow.
Of course, all his planning was wasted because when class ended, Kacchan was standing over his desk before he even had time to put his books in his bag, a dangerous smile lighting up his face. “Where the hell do you think you’re going, Deku? We’re not done yet.”
Izuku moved to try to put his stuff in his bag, but Kacchan was faster, snatching Izuku’s notebook off his desk. One of Kacchan’s friends jeered at him. “Whatcha got there, Bakugo? His diary?!”
Without taking his eyes off Izuku, Kacchan held the notebook up over his shoulder, showing the cover to the two behind him. There was a brief moment of silence as he scanned the title, and then he burst into laughter. “Seriously?! Deku’s taking notes on how to be a hero?! God, that’s pathetic!”
He was laughing so hard he had tears in his eyes, and Izuku can feel his cheeks burning. He laughs, nervously, holding Rini close to his chest. “Yeah, it’s very funny guys. Could I get my notebook back now?”
In answer, Kacchan holds the notebook between both his hands, and activates his quirk, exploding the notebook. Rini shifts in his arms to a cat, hissing at Dai and struggling to get out of Izuku’s arms, but he won’t let her go.
He doesn’t mean to escalate the situation, but he can’t help himself from crying out: “Seriously?! That’s so mean, Kacchan!” He instantly recognizes it as a mistake, but it’s not one he can take back.
Kacchan seems to take that as a challenge, and opens up the window and throws his notebook out. Izuku yelps, jumping out of his seat to go look out the window. Kacchan calmly closes the window, and grins at him.
“Most first string heroes show potential early on. People look at them and just know they’re destined for greatness. When I’m the only student from this shitty school to make it as a hero, they’ll talk about me that way. So, just a word of advice-” He sets his hand on Izuku’s shoulder and smiles at him, his smile sharp and dangerous. “-don’t even THINK of applying. Okay?”
Kacchan activates his quirk, and with Izuku’s shoulder burning he can’t do anything but give a shaky nod. It’s small, but it seems to appease Kacchan, and he lets go, turning to leave. The smell of smoke and burnt skin is overwhelming, and his shoulder aches from trying to hold Rini in such a heavy form. But he doesn’t want to risk her lunging for Dai again, he just wants this situation to be over. But just when he thinks he’s in the clear, Kacchan stops by the door and turns to look at him.
“Ya know, if you want to be a hero, there might actually be a way.” He pauses for a moment, leaning against the door frame casually, and Izuku truly has no idea what to expect from him. He surely couldn’t be about to encourage Izuku, could he? “Just pray you’ll have a quirk in your next life, then take a swan dive off the roof.”
There’s a moment of silence, and Izuku feels numb. He knew they weren’t friends, he knows he shouldn’t be surprised by this, but for some reason it really hits deep. Rini lets out a yowl and tries to jump at Dai, who’s laughing. Kacchan is laughing too, and for a moment, Izuku thinks about letting Rini go. About telling Kacchan what he really thinks. His shoulder is burning, and he wonder if maybe, if he finds the right words, if he could make Kacchan understand.
But there’s no point to that. If Kacchan doesn’t understand now, he never will. And so he tightens his arms around Rini, holding her tightly, and Bakugo’s friends laughs. “Man, that’s pathetic! For a second there, I thought he might actually have a backbone, but I guess I was expecting too much!”
Izuku’s eyes are burning with tears that he’s fighting back, but he doesn’t say a word. He just wants this to be over, and so he can’t give them anything to work with. So he doesn’t cry until they’ve left, until the echoing of their laughter is so far down the hall that he can barely hear them. Only then does he let himself break down.
Rini shifts in his arms again, this time to a fluffy rabbit, her go to form for when he was upset. She snuggles against his chest as he strokes her fur, trying to gather himself. “Just ignore him, Izuku. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. A real hero would never tell anyone to kill themselves, not even as a joke!”
“What would he do if I did it? If I did kill myself? He’d never be able to become a hero then!” Izuku found this to be so frustrating. “He has everything, a perfect quirk and perfect control over it! Why is he wasting it like this?!”
“He might never become a hero, Izuku, because of his temperament. And even though we will have to work harder than him, I think we can do it. Let’s just go get the notebook, okay? And then we can head home.” She nuzzled against his chin and he finally smiled.
“Yeah, let’s go home.” He had a feeling that this was all going to turn out okay.