Chapter Text
Izuku is five and reading one of the books from the library when he comes across it. He looks at the word, an unfamiliar one. He looks up to his mom, sitting next to him and also reading. “Mama,” he says, “What is this word?”
She leans over and puts an arm around him. “That’s Nomad.”
He doesn’t give her time to finish before he says, “What does it mean?”
“Well,” his mom frowns for a second, “It’s a person who doesn’t have a home because they don’t need one. They carry their homes with them.”
Izuku stares at her. “They don’t have homes?”
“No,” Inko shakes her head, “It’s more like the entire world is their home, but only for a little while.”
His eyes widen. “Nomad,” he tests, and it fits like the softest t-shirt in his drawer, the one that he’s had for ages and adores. Something about it feels right.
He’s enchanted.
“Mama,” he says, excitedly, “I wanna be a nomad.”
- - - - - -
When he’s eight, he goes camping with his “friends.” Sure, they push him around a little bit and he always has to be the villain if he plays, but his mama won’t let him go on his own, so he thinks that maybe it’s worth it. He’s right, if only for the fact that sleeping under the stars feels as right as the warm hugs he gets from mama.
The next morning, when Kacchan wakes him up with popping explosions by his ear, he still can’t stop smiling. He doesn’t walk home with them, makes his own path. That’s another thing he doesn’t tell mama. She probably would not react well.
When he knocks on the door, his mama lets him in and hugs him. “How did it go?” she asks.
He grins. “I got to sleep under the stars, and it was so cool sleeping away from home, and I got to stay up late and eat candy and work on my notes and-“
She laughs, pulls him into another hug and ruffles his hair. “Would you like to go again?” He nods, nearly too fast if the oncoming headache is any indication.
Later that day, she looks at him thoughtfully. “You’re like my father.” She says.
Izuku doesn’t hear much about her family, because she usually gets sad when she talks about them. He jumps on this chance. “Why?”
“You both have wanderer’s hearts.” He doesn’t really get it yet.
He will.
- - - - - - -
At ten, she sends him out for six summer weeks with his uncle. He’s never met his Uncle Takashi before, and if the manic grin is any indication, he thinks there might have been a reason.
“If you need me, just call me,” she had said, pressing a phone into his hand, “I’ll have you home in a minute if that’s what you want, okay?” He had nodded and pocketed the phone.
Uncle Takashi doesn’t know how to cook very well, and his house is really small in the middle of all the land he owns. Apparently, the reason for that is that he doesn’t really use it. “Inko said you were like us,” he tells Izuku, after the formalities, “So I hope you like the stars.” Izuku’s eyes light up.
The reason he doesn’t use the house much, Uncle Takashi explains, is that he doesn’t like to sleep under a roof. Izuku agrees, because he understands that, too. His mom had promised that if he wanted, one day, he could sleep under the stars. For now, they just compromised with glow in the dark stars on the ceiling. It’s slightly less stuffy that way.
“Here,” his uncle tosses him a sleeping bag and he catches it. “Roll that out. Do you know anything about the woods?” Uncle Takashi asks.
Izuku knows plenty about the woods. He doesn’t, however, think that it’s the sort of knowledge that Uncle Takashi is looking for. “Yes?”
The man is not satisfied with this answer. “Do you, or don’t you?”
“I know some,” Izuku says, and his uncle nods.
“We’ll see.”
Izuku learns a lot of things, that summer. How not to anger grumpy uncles, for instance. He learns other things, too. Things about the woods, good plants to eat and which ones aren’t, ways to find out which is which. Basic herbal remedies, but most of all, movement. He learns to be silent, to run and jump and climb with barely a sound. He wonders if his mom knew how this was going to go.
He comes away from that summer significantly tanned and with an itch he hadn’t realized existed finally satisfied. (It comes back his second week sleeping under glow in the dark stars and only grows from there)
- - - - - -
At thirteen, the kids at school still aren’t great, tease him a lot about his weird habits. His silent walking, the way that he shrinks into himself and his weird muttering. It’s harder to deal with when the itch is under his skin, makes the explosions Kacchan barely touches him with burn like an iron.
Izuku is muscular, if built more for speed than strength. That’s just how he is. If his mom isn’t home, he’ll sleep on the roof, under the few stars he can see. It calms the itch.
One day, on one of his nightly runs, he comes across a mugger. A mugger who’s mugging, as muggers do. He jumps into it, rams into the guy with all of his speed and the guy is shocked enough that the force sends him back. It gives the person he was mugging time to dance out of reach, but apparently it wasn’t shocking enough to stop him
His uncle had given him a few workout regimens. He probably didn’t think Izuku be using them like this. Although, he remembers the crazed look that Uncle Takashi wore quite often. Maybe he did know. He probably saw that Izuku would help anyone after he set a hurt fox (and then a squirrel, and a wild dog, and maybe the mouse he caught counts) free and treated its wound.
He’s only thirteen, not really at the point where he has much muscle or strength behind his attacks, but he thinks that maybe surprise is really what helped him here. It works for him. He climbs back up on the roof and is out until midnight, falling asleep on some random building. He’s fairly safe, staying where people won’t think to look, and this way no one will get mad at him because of the itch.
- - - - - -
Apparently, that first time gave the universe permission to start sending petty crime his way. He does cover his face, because he doesn’t want to deal with the problems, but he’s not here to solve massive crimes. He’s really only trying to save people in the moment. He never even gives a vigilante name.
The list grows, and he gets a lot of business cards and friends. Something about him seems to attract people, some warmth or joy that his bullies (Kacchan) saw and tried to crush. He still wants to be a hero, obviously.
By fourteen, his mom has given up on keeping track of him. He’s home for dinner any day she is, but her job at the hospital is picking up and she needs the shifts to pay for everything. Hizashi’s checks had stopped coming in. She doesn’t think he knows, but he saw the letter. Scare a dad off by being quirkless, cut the final thread with something else.
He doesn’t mind, but he does pick up jobs here and there to pay for things, when he can. He doesn’t want to tax her any more than he already has.
School itself is boring. Something about his wanderer’s heart had turned into a wanderer’s mind. He understands the stuff they’re teaching. It isn’t hard. What is hard is focusing on the papers long enough to get all A’s. As it is, he has a few A’s and mostly B’s. Math is his worst subject because they want him to show his work, but he doesn’t need to! He understands how to get to the answer without it.
The bullying never really stops, but he has a hard time focusing on them too. He thinks of his hideouts, or his friends, or the fact that he’s stopping by Tsuki’s to cover a shift for her. (Tsuki’s is never boring. She has too many weird customers for that)
- - - - - -
Eraserhead is quite nice. If you can get past the grumpiness. And the ignoring people and glaring and… well, maybe he’s not so nice. What he is, though, is good. Izuku has seen plenty of heroes, some good and some not, but Eraserhead is truly good. He steps in wherever he can. Eraserhead gets a name. Izuku tells him that he’s Nomad.
Maybe it’s because of the fact that he goes to lots of cities and helps his friends there, but Eraserhead gives a longsuffering sigh. “How fitting,” is all he says.
- - - - - -
Izuku wants to be a hero. When the teacher says that to the class, he thinks maybe telling the man was a misstep. “Not Deku,” one of them yells over the din, “He’s too stupid. Can’t even focus on what everyone’s saying!” Which, rude. Izuku can hear them perfectly well, but the way the leaves are falling outside is such a pretty pattern and he already finished his classwork.
His eyes widen when he sees one leap and he’s entranced for the rest of the lesson. The page in his notebook he’s working on is a mix of spirals and leaf-trails, not making sense to anyone but him. The clamor of his classmates leaving distracts him and he looks around.
Kacchan says something then, insults him, but Izuku has stars behind his eyelids, flying in patterns long ago determined by things like gravity and fate. Except, it’s not the stars that move. It’s him, it’s the earth and the planets and the stars far off, all moving in a dance that no one can see the whole of.
Oh. Kacchan is upset again. Izuku watches his book sail out the window, so much less graceful then stars and leaves in the wind. “Why?” He asks Kacchan. Then, out it comes. A swan dive, Kacchan says, off a roof. Izuku shakes his head. He would be less graceful then the leaves, darting about in the wind. Pretty words don’t fit the fall of a human. No graceful paths in the air, not even the arc of a notebook. Just down.
“That’s not a good thing to say,” he tells Kacchan, who’s already leaving. “Heroes aren’t supposed to fall.”
“You’ll never be a hero, you useless Deku!”
“I was talking about you.”
Kacchan doesn’t know what to say to that. He walks away instead. Sometimes, Izuku wonders if they’re having the same conversation. He wonders that about a lot of people. Not many want to talk with him about the pattern of the stars or the arc of electricity.
- - - - - -
All Might, can a quirkless kid be a hero?
Dreams are nice, but you have to be realistic. Maybe-
Oh. So you have to understand that you can’t save everyone, and that there’s only so much one person can do. Thanks!
- - - - - -
UA makes it hard to focus. The building is huge, and the sun reflects off of it just so to illuminate everything in the air. Maybe that’s why he trips, always looking up and forgetting to look where his feet fall.
Caught with a slap on the back. I didn’t want you to fall. Bad luck.
Smiles. I didn’t ask for her name!
The test is easy enough, but he’s distracted by Midnight watching them all take it. He wonders what it’s like, if the mist under her skin feels like the energy under his, aching to be let out. Will he lose points, if he doesn’t show his work on the math part? The end of the test is something that tells him to doodle if there’s still time left. The clock says there is, so he draws the patterns Eraserhead’s scarf took, last time he saw him fight.
Doesn’t he teach here? He wonders if as a teacher, the man will let him see the scarf. Purely for investigative purposes, of course.
- - - - - -
The introduction is interesting, but he’s the only one who replies when Present Mic yells at them for a “Yeah!” It was interesting, how his voice echoed. Do they ever use this place for concerts? Maybe he could ask Pi’s group to sing here, they might enjoy it.
Black hair is asking him something. His voice echoes really well, and he can yell pretty loud. The boy should sing. “-And stop mumbling, you’re distracting e--“
He blinks and tunes back out. Mumbling is kind of rude, so he apologizes to Present Mic, at least. Finally, the explanation is finished. Lots of robots to attack, but not the zero-pointer because it gives no points. Obviously.
- - - - - -
He gets a little distracted. (Story of his life) He hasn’t had time for a proper run in days, so he takes too the roof. There’s lots of debris, so he takes some and uses it to take down a few robots. Occasionally, he stops things from flying at people’s heads. Apparently, there are a lot of impacts and shrapnel.
Nobody thanks him, but he’s used to that. The big robot comes up, everybody runs. He doesn’t. Cries for help have never been something he could ignore. It’s the girl again, the one who caught him looking at the sky.
“Hi,” he says, “Can you move?”
“No,” she’s speaking a little too fast, “And that thing is coming and--“
Izuku smiles at her. “We’re going to be fine. I’m going to move this, and then you only need to move a little, okay?” She nods, and he lifts the thing on her leg just long enough for her to get out from under it. “Can I carry you?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
- - - - - -
62 points. Huh.