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There was a time when Izuku didn’t have many friends. Really, he had one, but his friendship with Kacchan was always a little rocky. He had an explosive personality to match the quirk he manifested at kindergarten, and though Izuku would never deny that he had always and would always admire him, it would also be a lie to say that they got along well. So, even if he spent a lot of time with Kacchan—following him and his sidekicks, as he called them, around—, Izuku would often feel rather lonely, isolated, especially when they left him behind, laughing when he couldn’t keep up with their quirks, quirkless and smaller than them to boot.
But then, on one such afternoon in Spring, Izuku found a young boy about his age, crying underneath a sakura tree, the pink cherry blossoms raining down on him with the slight breeze that ruffled through the canopy. Izuku remembers thinking how the soft pinks around him went well with his hair, as if they were a mix of the red and white that met in the middle. He remembers gasping at the sight of red-rimmed blue and grey eyes, fascinated by his unusual colour scheme despite the fact that, ever since quirks spread throughout the population, diversity was in no way lacking. Though perhaps, some of his wonder stemmed from how flurries of snow gathered around the right side of his face, how the tears rolling down his cheeks turned to frost that stuck to his skin.
Izuku was left wondering if the strange colours of his hair and eyes had anything to do with the quirk drawing pretty patterns in ice crystals all over the his right cheek, but at the time, he had pushed his curiosity aside, running to him and asking him what was wrong. There were bruises over his arms where his sleeves wouldn’t reach, and Izuku couldn’t help but run his fingers over the ones painted on his own, his scrapes and mild burns stinging in sympathy.
In that moment, Izuku understood the fear that flashed across the boy’s mismatched eyes when he asked if he had lost his parents, that same feeling pooling coldly in his gut when Kacchan sneered at him for one reason or another, his palms already sparkling with tiny explosions as he stomped towards him. A shy, hesitant nod was the only response he got, repeated once more when asked if he needed help finding them. Izuku remembers how warm his left hand felt when he took it, and how it matched the vibrant red of his hair, once again ignoring the urge to ask a million questions about his quirk when there was something so much more important to focus on.
Like getting him comfortable enough to speak past the obvious lump in his throat, so that he knew where to even start looking for the boy’s parents. Right now, Izuku still remembers how the boy had squeezed his hand tightly when they finally found them, his entire being as if pulled taut when the large man Izuku only knew as Endeavor called for the boy. His booming voice was stern in how he admonished him for disappearing so suddenly while his mother merely dove for him, throwing her arms around him with a relieved sigh as she pulled him away from Izuku, a quick word of thanks thrown his way before she picked him up off the floor.
The boy—Shouto, Endeavor had called him—seemed like a perfect blend of his parents. Fire red and snow white. Warm and cold. Ironically enough, Izuku thought those seemed switched in the man and woman, but he made no comment beyond a short wave as he found his way back home, now that the boy was returned. Something in his gut had told Izuku it wasn’t quite safely, as it should have been.
It wasn’t the last time Izuku found Shouto crying under the sakura tree. The next time, Izuku asked if he had run off, rather than if he was lost. His blue greys shifted in alarm, but once again, he nodded in response, honest though he clearly feared the consequences of his sincerity. Izuku took his hand like before, asked where the last place he saw his parents was, like before, and he took the long way around the block to return him.
They didn’t speak much then, just exchanged names, despite Izuku already knowing Shouto’s.
The third time he found Shouto under that same tree, sniffling, but with no tears on his face when his gaze landed on him, Izuku waited for him to tell him where his parents would be instead of asking right away. He still didn’t ask about Shouto’s quirk. It was only by the fifth time they met that Izuku satisfied his curiosity. Shouto did not ask about his quirk in return, and Izuku felt grateful, a small part of him fearing that, like Kacchan and his other friends, Shouto would start being harsher with him.
To his surprise, when Shouto finally found out Izuku was quirkless, he told him he wished he were like him too. Izuku was torn between relief and sorrow. Someone with a quirk as wonderful as Shouto’s shouldn’t want to be quirkless. But Izuku didn’t argue when Shouto told him he wouldn’t understand. He did, more than most, he thought, but he didn’t want to upset him more than he already was. It was nice to be accepted, that much Izuku would admit to, but it still stung to know that something made Shouto want to be rid of his quirk, when all he ever wanted was to have one that he could use to help people. People like Shouto. But the way he was, all he could do was keep him company, and walk with him for as long as it took to find his stern-faced father and wet-eyed mother.
When Spring gave way to Summer, Izuku remembers the way Endeavor sneered the word ‘quirkless’ the same way Kacchan did when he mumbled something at Shouto after he returned him to his parents. His mother had said something in return, and that was the first time Izuku felt the coldness coming from her rather than Endeavor.
That was the last time Izuku saw her. It was the last time Izuku found Shouto under the sakura tree. And though his life kept going, and Izuku still marched on towards the future he had always meant to reach, there was always a small part of him that wondered what happened to the boy with a quirk to match the flames and flurry trapped in the vibrant strands of his hair. The son of Endeavor.
Until that first day, Izuku hadn’t even known that Endeavor had a wife, much less a child. More than one. Shouto had mentioned siblings. Endeavor had never been one of Izuku’s favourite heroes, but after those encounters, there was always a pit in his stomach whenever he thought of or saw the man from then on. Each time, there was a feeling of dread hanging over him that he could never rid himself of. But there was nothing Izuku could do if, despite passing by that tree nearly every day as a child, he just never saw Shouto again. Or, at least, that’s what he told himself, in hopes that it would ease the worry choking him for as long as he remembered those meetings with the sad and closed-off boy with the mismatched hair and eyes.
When he started middle school, the tree was too out of his way for him to pass it while he was headed home, and his days of chasing Kacchan soon came to an end as well. The loneliness remained, but those encounters that had given him a sense of companionship ceased for good too.
Izuku never really forgot them, but as time went on, it slipped into the back of his mind, into the depths of his subconscious where it would only haunt him in dreams that would seem too fuzzy to fully recall when he woke up. Soon, Izuku grew up, and though there was always a memory, it was just out of reach, seeming more and more like a fantasy with each day, each month, each year that passed, undisturbed, and other things stole his focus and his time.
Izuku went on to be the hero he had always dreamed of being. The hero he had hoped to have been for that boy in the little time he kept him company before inevitably leading him back to the parent he had run from for a few moments of respite, even though it was so long ago he hardly thought about it all.
Seeing Endeavor still arose an unpleasant bubbling in his chest from time to time, but it got to a point where he convinced himself there was just something about his face that didn’t sit right with him. Perhaps it was how it was always set in a deep scowl rather than the smile he loved to see on All Might’s face every time he saved someone. Perhaps it was how he never treated anyone warmly, despite the quirk that burned so hot it warped the air around him. Something about that felt awfully familiar in the way it made his stomach twist into painful knots.
But it all came back to him with one fateful encounter, one that Izuku honestly never thought he would have.
The spark of those memories fills his chest with something akin to that wonder from the first time he saw the crystals of ice clinging to a plump, salt-stained cheek, when he held a hand warm as the stones on a hearth where the fire burns strong but tame. Yet, even if the wall of ice that covers the entire block in a matter of seconds is impressive and worthy of that same awe, Izuku can’t think of it that way when he sees the trapped heroes and sidekicks or hears their cries for help amidst the chaos of a villain attack. And it only gets worse when Izuku watches another shot of the same magnitude spread out to the opposite side, the bright orange flames much less forgiving in their immediate devastation, consuming everything in their path in the blink of an eye.
In that split second when he sees it all happen, Izuku remembers everything, and his heart squeezes painfully with the guilt that had never really gone away but had lied dormant for the years that he had somehow stored the memories without meaning to, somewhere he couldn’t reach. His eyes follow the figure when it runs from the oncoming attacks of other heroes and, for once, Izuku’s body freezes rather than moving on its own and throwing him right into the middle of a fight he hasn’t yet had the time to fully process.
“Oi, Deku! The fuck are you standing there for? The villains aren’t gonna wait for you to get your head in the game, so get off your ass.” Kacchan spits before he blasts past him, the force of his explosions ruffling Izuku’s hair as he does.
Villains. Right. They’re fighting the League of Villains as it once again threatens the safety of so many innocent people, forces teenagers such as themselves into situations they shouldn’t have faced so early in their careers. Izuku knew what he was getting into from the very beginning, as he is sure Kacchan did, but some of their classmates had had a rude awakening back at the USJ, with Stain too, and the uprisings that followed him, even if U.A. hadn’t quite been targeted again until now.
The villains are just as merciless as the last time, though, perhaps more so, now that civilians are involved as well, but that quirk didn’t belong to one, did it? Izuku remembers how that quirk belonged to someone sad and scared, but kind. Someone who had been his friend, even if their encounters were few and far between, short whenever they happened. It was him, right? No, it had to be someone else entirely. Shouto was… Shouto was a good kid when they met all those years ago.
Didn’t they talk about wanting to be heroes too, back then? He wanted to help his mother smile.
Izuku remembers telling him he could do it. He remembers telling him he would help him, too.
“I’m going after the one who’s running away!” Izuku calls once his body finally reacts, propelling him forward with a need to know if what he is seeing is real.
After so many years, after the promises he made to himself that he would always help everyone who needed it, Izuku so desperately wants to be wrong. In the back of his mind, he knows that he is being selfish, that he is needed where the civilians are still being attacked by the other villains. But Izuku remembers the tears streaming down Shouto’s face, the way his hand held so tightly as if afraid to let go, and yet he still kept running and facing the consequences whenever he returned. Izuku only saw the displeased frown on Endeavor’s face, only heard the harsh words at the tip of his tongue upon their arrival, only felt the disdain aimed at him as he muttered under his breath that Shouto shouldn’t be around quirkless nobodies like him. Yet he remembers the bruises and reddened patches of skin that mimicked the burns from Kacchan’s explosions.
Those injuries had hurt Izuku more than just physically when he was a child. Izuku remembers how hard it was to get through one day, then another. Izuku remembers how tortuous it was back then, and yet, he didn’t look for Shouto again.
He didn’t know where to look. But that’s just an excuse, isn’t it? Wouldn’t a hero have done more?
Ice spreads behind the man he is chasing and Izuku jumps into the air, bouncing off the walls as he continues to throw attacks his way, alternating between flames and frost but always with a precision unlike that of any regular villain. It speaks to years of experience, of arduous practice and training that rivalled even his own at U.A. Skill like that would have made an amazing hero, Izuku thinks fleetingly, his heart aching even further at the notion as he once again tries to tell himself it is purely coincidence.
Izuku pushes himself further, jumping over to the rooftops and running as fast as his legs will take him, as fast as One for All allows with the output he can handle right now, and he drops down just in time to intercept the other. It all comes to a head when they find themselves in a very familiar place, where the sakura blossoms shake with the wind and rain down upon them, like pink snowflakes reflecting off the surface of the ice spikes surrounding the man as he drifts to a stop when faced with Izuku. And though his head may be covered by a hood, his face by a cloth mask, there is no mistaking the mismatched blue and grey eyes that fix him, cold and steely.
The street appears to be empty but for them, news of the attack travelling fast and sending the residents into their homes and the store clerks into the relative safety of their backrooms, and Izuku feels somewhat grateful that at least no one appears to be at any immediate risk. But when he expects the attack to come, to have to jump away and struggle to catch up once more when the other takes that chance to start running again, nothing happens. They simply stare into each other’s eyes, and despite his training telling him to not waste the opportunity to capture the villain, Izuku is once again frozen, the ice quirk in no way to blame for it.
“Shouto-kun?” His mouth forms the words before he has the chance to think better of it, let alone stop himself, and something shines in the other’s familiarly unique eyes, wrinkling at the corners as he seems to smile in a way that appears almost bitter.
“So, you do remember me.” He mutters, his voice much deeper than the childish pitch that tugs at the edges of Izuku’s memory. It’s smooth and low, but it drips with a sorrow that is somehow greater than that which he carried at the young age when they first met. “I thought you had forgotten I even existed.”
Slowly, he reaches up and, much to Shouto’s apparent amusement, Izuku instinctively takes a step back, tensing. Everything about this situation feels wrong no matter how he looks at it. It reminds him of his encounter with Shigaraki at the mall, what feels like so long ago even if it hadn’t quite been a year yet, a conversation he shouldn’t be having yet feels forced to listen to. Except this time, there seem to be no lives in danger if he doesn’t comply, no threat even to himself, and that somehow makes it so much more unsettling.
This is a villain whose eyes he is lost in, watching the subtle emotions that flash within them so quickly one might miss them if they aren’t paying attention. But all he sees is the young boy he hadn’t thought of in far too long. A lump forms in his throat as he thinks of the years that went by, what they could have looked like if Izuku had just found Shouto again, wondering if they would be staring at each other like this too, or if things would have been different, somehow.
He pulls down the hood, and Izuku feels strangled when he sees the burn scar surrounding his left eye, partially hidden by the long strands of fiery hair that cascade down his shoulder, mirrored on the right in that same white of freshly fallen snow he remembers.
“Unsightly, isn’t it?” Izuku doesn’t know how to respond to that, remaining silent for a small eternity as Shouto’s gaze shifts to the pink canopy trembling above them with the slight breeze. “This is where you found me. Funny, how fate enjoys a taste of irony.”
“What are you doing, Shouto-kun?” Izuku finally finds his voice, though it comes out strangled and small, choked with guilt that sinks its unforgiving claws deeper into his soul the longer they stand here. “We told each other we would be heroes.”
“A lot happened since we last met, Izuku.” His eyes seem to smile sadly, and Izuku feels his own begin to prickle. “There was only ever one person I truly wanted to save. And he took her from me. I want him to pay.”
“Revenge won’t get you justice.” Izuku tells him, taking one step closer and watching him take two backwards, tilting his head with a humourless laugh rumbling in his chest.
“But there’s something inherently wrong with society that he is seen as a hero when he has ruined so many lives.”
“You’re talking about Endeavor.”
“Who else?” Shouto all but growls at the mention of his name, fire bursting from his left cheek as ice crackles up his right arm, something in his expression seeming broken beyond repair. But that can’t be right; Izuku refuses to believe there is no hope left to save him.
“You don’t have to do this.”
“You wouldn’t understand.” Shouto says simply, giving no room to argue, and much like when they were kids, Izuku wants to disagree, feeling the ghosts of cuts and bruises marking his body all over, the scars that were left behind. “You haven’t lost everything, like I did.”
“I was born with nothing instead.” Izuku tries anyway, once again watching the distance between them grow when he attempts to shorten it.
“And yet, here you are. I almost couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw you in the sports festival. All Might found you, didn’t he?” Izuku bites his tongue at the accuracy in his assumption, wondering if he knows more than he should or if it is nothing more than a lucky shot in the dark from interactions he may have witnessed somehow. “Like you found me, under this sakura tree so many springs ago.” Shouto gestures above their heads. “The only difference is I couldn’t be found again when he locked me away from everything and everyone.”
“Shouto-kun—”
As soon as Izuku takes one more step, Shouto jumps backwards into a defensive stance, his gaze like a warning that he shouldn’t try to go any further or he will end up regretting it. And yet, deep down, Izuku wants to believe that he wouldn’t hurt him, replaying his initial attack in his mind’s eye and noticing how none of the civilians had been targeted, only heroes caught in his ice and fire’s wake. He wants to believe that there is some part of him that still cares, in some way, that doesn’t want to hurt innocents. But those heroes were innocent too, weren’t they? What had they done beyond their jobs in ensuring the safety of the public?
“I’m really sorry this is how we meet again. For some reason, I wish it had been on better terms. Isn’t that weird? I hardly knew you, but you were always on my mind. Part of me thought they would break you, too, but I’m not surprised they didn’t.”
“You’re not broken.”
“No, I am.” Shouto shakes his head slightly, left hand coming up to cover the ragged scar spreading down to half his cheek. “This is proof enough of it.”
Izuku’s heart squeezes with sympathy and he tries to reach for Shouto without thinking, a deep and overwhelming urge to soothe the hurt so clear on his face taking over him and clouding his judgement. He wants so badly to be able to help, to do what he hadn’t when they were younger, trying to convince himself that there was nothing he could have done back then, but now he might be able to bring him back from the ledge from which he seems ready to jump.
The moment he extends his hand, Shouto startles at the sudden movement, ice crackling at his fingertips and forming around his foot before shooting upwards with a twitch of his wrist. Izuku gasps as a sharp pain spreads through him, sparking from the left side of his stomach and numbing almost immediately with the freezing cold that radiates from that concentrated point. Shouto’s eyes seem wide with shock as they stare down at Izuku’s midsection, and he lowers his head slightly, following his line of sight to find rivers of red trickling down the clouded crystal, dripping at his feet little by little.
With his features darkening with the shadows of regret, Shouto takes a few more steps back, his chest heaving as his breaths turn shallow. Seeing horror twisting his features, Izuku almost wants to reassure him that everything is fine, but the words turn to ash on his tongue as he feels the ice creep further inside him, making him feel so unbearably cold he can only shiver weakly. His fingers twitch as his hand hovers between them, still reaching for Shouto, refusing to go down, but the littlest movement only sends more mind-numbing pain throughout him and Izuku is torn between trying to wrench himself free of the ice spearing through him and just staying put for fear of bleeding out faster than he can get help.
His eyes meet Shouto’s and he opens his mouth, but once again, no sounds come but for his ragged breaths as spots start to appear in his vision.
“I’m sorry.” Shouto whispers, Izuku’s ears as if stuffed full of cotton and muffling everything. “I’m no good, you see? All I ever do is break beautiful things. It’s what I was made for.”
Before Izuku can say or do anything else, Shouto twists on his heel and flees, leaving behind a trail of frozen footsteps that reflect the sunlight in ways that shouldn’t look so entrancing. Izuku manages to break off the ice spike with his fist, grunting when his legs give under his weight and he falls down to his knees. He should go after him. He needs to stop him before he does anything he truly can’t come back from.
But all that Izuku can do is fall to his side as his strength begins to leave him, and he feels colder and colder with each second that passes, staring up into pink coloured skies as petals rain from above him. And when darkness finally engulfs him, he simply remembers wishing this was nothing but a nightmare made up of fantasies about a boy he never really met. At least then, he wouldn’t feel like he failed him before either of them had a chance to even try to make things right.