Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There are many stories that end on rooftops.

Midoriya Izuku looks over the edge of the building, wind tussling his hair. It’s a long way down; from here, everyone looks like ants. Insignificant.

You wanna be a hero so bad? I’ve got a time-saving idea for you. Take a swan-dive off a roof—maybe you’ll get a quirk in your next life.

He looks back over the rooftop; sees the tiny splatter of blood. All Might’s blood, coughed out when his form shrank into something skeletal and small. Looks at the door he’d stepped through: It’s too dangerous. There’s other ways to help people, like becoming a police officer or doctor.

But he can’t do that.

Deku, Deku.

Doesn’t have the brains, and he knows that schools don’t admit quirkless weaklings like you, Deku. Might as well hope to work as a trash collector.

He hears an explosion in the distance; smells smoke. They sound like Kacchan’s— searing pain on his shoulder where he burned through the uniform; a mocking voice: you wouldn’t even make it as a rent-a-cop.

Fingers reaching, wings flapping, sickly sweet caramel—

He’s untying his shoes, one by one. They’re red, as red as he will be when his body hits the pavement—because that’s inevitable, now, he can tell. His movements are robotic, and he wonders if he should leave a note.

For once, he’s not sobbing, or if he is he can’t tell over the numbness that has covered him. Crying makes him think of his mother—but she has Mitsuki. And Kacchan is too smart to be caught; he doubts they’ll find the suicide baiting. They probably won’t bother to investigate— quirkless, useless useless useless—

There’s a railing on the roof, and he feels himself step over it, feet carefully stepping on the lip of concrete there. He looks down again, sees the windows stretching down below him, feels the wind whip through this hair. It’s far enough to be instant. Just sleep.

He’s tired. So tired.

His hands unclamp from the railing behind him, and he feels himself fall.

There are many stories that end on rooftops. As his stomach drops and the wind whistles through his ears, Midoriya Izuku doesn’t know that for his story, it’s the opening line.

Chapter Text

Aizawa Shouta does not go anywhere without his capture weapon.

It’s a lesson he learned the hard way, when he was left defenseless because he was supposed to be safe. He’d reached for it, instinctively, when a gun was pulled on a board meeting by someone with a shapeshifter quirk. His own quirk had flared automatically, reverting their appearance, but when he reached for his scarf and it wasn’t there he had frozen for just a moment. For just long enough for the bullet to fire from the gun; for it to hit its target.

The hero had lived, but might as well not have. Blood loss had rendered his quirk—minor enhancement—useless as it worked just to keep him alive. He was crippled permanently, vanishing from the hero world in a manner of months when said world realized he wouldn’t recover.

So now, even though the only reason he is in this building at all is to file paperwork for UA and wait in the infuriating halls of bureaucracy, his capture weapon still sits around his neck and his nerves are on high-alert. They always are, when he’s the only visible hero in an area, because letting your guard down is how you get killed.

And that’s why, when a blur flies down past the full-wall window, black but human-sized , it’s an immediate reaction: he’s on his feet in an instant, quirk flared and weapon wrapping around a support as he smashes through the window and lashes out to catch whatever it is that is falling.

The glass shatters roughly, pieces driving into the arms he’d pulled up to shield his face in a practiced motion, but he can barely feel them. Instead, all he can feel is the tension in the scarf as it goes taut on the pole, and the thwip of fabric as it snaps around the figure snugly.

There’s a moment of suspension, as Shouta hangs midair from a shattered window on a too-bright day with a dead-weight on the other end. Then the momentum brings him toward the windows of the floor below, and he pulls on the weight below sharply to yank it up, up in an arc that he can catch. 

His heart drops into his feet as cradles the child—because it’s a child , clad in a black middle-schooler’s uniform. He blinks up at Shouta, and he wants to scream because he recognizes those eyes, so tired and done with the world.

“That was less painful than I expected,” the kid says, words hollow and breath still stolen by the wind. “Faster, too.” His eyelids flutter, and Shouta’s blood pumps in his ears.

“You’re going to be alright,” he says to him. He pulls on the capture weapon carefully with one arm, scaling the building with practiced precision. “Can you stay awake for me, kid?”

The kids hums, then winces. “Thought being dead was supposed to stop the pain,” he mumbles.

Shouta grimaces—he’d undoubtedly cracked a rib or two with that catch.

He’s up and through the shattered window, and when he releases the capture weapon from the post, he realizes absently that everyone in the lobby is standing there, staring at him open-eyed, yelling and screaming words that he can’t quite hear through the pulse in his ears. Someone points at his arms, and he looks down at the glass sticking out of them with a vague sense of discomfort.

“Has someone called an ambulance?” he hears himself ask. Other people step forward, and someone pries the child from his arms gently and pushes him a chair that he collapses into. His head falls into his hands, and then there is nothing.

When he wakes, it’s to the hum of machinery and stiffness in his arms. His eyes open to the sterile whiteness of a hospital room, and looking down he sees that his arms are covered in bandages—that explains the stiffness.

He shifts, and grunts at the pain that shoots through him with the movement. There’s movement in the corner of his eyes, a blur of black and yellow, and then Hizashi is kneeling before him. “Hey. You alright, Shouta?”

His eyes lock onto Hizashi’s and he remembers falling, glass, and—“The kid. Is he—”

“Just some broken ribs and bruising,” Hizashi reassures him. “All that,” he gestures to the bandages on Shouta’s arms, “is from jumping out of a window and getting covered in broken glass .”

He shifts upright to better glare at his husband. “You’d rather the kid—” His voice breaks off.

“No, no, of course not, Shouta.” He grins, a bit awkward. “Could’ve gone feet-first, though.”

They sit there for a moment, just listening to the faint humming of the room. Hizashi’s in plainclothes, and Shouta is in a hospital robe.

“Costume?”

Hizashi laughs, high and fake. “I’m impressed it was still recognizable as fabric.”

Shouta winces. “Hizashi—”

His husband lets his head drop into his hands. “Just—he’s a middle schooler , Shouta. How did he—why was he even—who let him up there? He shouldn’t’ve been able—”

“But he’s alright?”

Hizashi meets his gaze, eyes dark. “Physically. As far as I know.”

“Have you—”

“-—spoken to him? No. His mother, though … she found me. Told me to tell her when you were awake. Speaking of which …” He lifts up a remote from the hospital bed and presses the button for the nurse. “I … should’ve done that already.” He pulls out his phone and Shouta lets his head fall back on the thin hospital pillow, listening to Hizashi speak softly; “Yeah, sorry, he’s awake—”

“Aizawa Shouta?” It’s a nurse, entering the room with a smile. “You feeling alright? Any pain?”

His arms feel like they’ve been stabbed with half a dozen knives, but it’s nothing he can’t handle. “Not really.”

“Alright. Just so you’re aware, we performed some minor surgery on your arms to remove all of the glass. We do have people with healing quirks on staff, but we need your consent if you’d like them to heal the damage more than just bandages.” She hands Hizashi the clipboard she holds in her hands, and he flips through the sheets. “Since your hands are occupied, your husband’s signature will do.”

 Shouta turns to face Hizashi. “No, it’s fine. We’ve got a coworker.”

The nurse hums. “Alright. You’re fine to be discharged, then. Should be the next form.”

Hizashi flips it up, squints through it, and signs it with a flourish. He hands it back to the nurse, who takes it. “We don’t have to leave right away, do we? Aizawa would like to … see the kid he was brought in with.”

The nurse shrugs. “You’d have to get permission from his guardian, but—oh! Hello, Ms. Midoriya!”

When he turns to the door properly, his first impression is green—her hair, her eyes, and her shirt are all green. She stands there, frozen in the doorway, and there’s a detached moment as he notes her resemblance to the kid. His mother, clearly, who stands there staring blankly at him with tears in her eyes. The nurse ducks out the door behind her, and it’s just the three of them standing in a hospital room with humming machines.

Finally, she speaks. “You’re … you’re the hero that caught … caught my Izuku, aren’t you?”

Shouta nods, and he tries to hold out a hand for her to shake—but, of course, they’re bandaged and unusable. “Yes,” he says instead.

Midoriya stumbles forward and collapses into one of the hospital chairs. “Thank you so—I don’t know what I would have done if—How did he—” She chokes in a breath. “I don’t—I didn’t see . Oh Izuku, Izuku , how could I have—” Her breath shudders off into sobs.

It’s Hizashi who leans forward, laying a gentle hand on her shoulder. “He’s alright,” he says softly. “He’s alive.”

“I didn’t notice —”

“Children,” Shouta says, feeling awkward and stilted, “can be very good at hiding things. Especially when they … feel it will protect someone they love.”

Hizashi looks at him, and the recognition that burns there cuts deep. Because of course he knows what Aizawa speaks of: the months where he secluded himself after Shirakumo’s death because he didn’t want anyone to worry. Old guilt rears up, angry, but he slaps it down with well-practiced logic.

Midoriya only sobs louder, and when Aizawa lays a hesitant hand on her other shoulder she lunges forward and hugs him tightly.

“ Thank you ,” she whispers, and it’s a powerful sound, a voice that is broken but thankful that someone saved her entire world. He returns the hug as she sobs into the hospital robe, and they sit there: Hizashi with a hand on her back in a bright hospital room.

He doesn’t know how long they stay there, crippled by emotion, but eventually she pulls back with a watery sort of cough. “Do you … want to see him?”

He can only nod, and Hizashi does the same.

“Alright,” she says, and it’s almost a whisper. “I’ll … take you to him.”

The kid looks so small in the hospital bed.

Shouta can see the bandages peeking up from underneath the hospital ground, wrapped around his ribs and he sees the blur again—a black shape that gets wrapped in white just in time .

The kid—Izuku—blinks at him. It’s hard to tell if the blankness in his stare is the drugs or the same detached apathy he had seen previously. “You … caught me,” he rasps.

Shouta winces. It sounds painful, more painful than he remembered the kid speaking before—but then, he was so high on adrenaline his senses were likely hyperfocused. “You alright, kid?” he asks. It might as well be an answer anyway.

Izuku’s gaze—green, blank—drifts towards Hizashi and then his mother, who stand to either side of him. “Mm,” he hums. “Breathing’s weird.” He frowns at Shouta, and it’s an oddly slow movement. “How’d you catch me? Why did you—”

“ Izuku .” Midoriya steps forward and takes her son’s hand gently, and he glances down at it blankly for a moment, looking vaguely uncomfortable.

Shouta coughs. “Capture scarf,” he replies to the first question, and suppresses a wince at the second. He reaches for the familiar weight automatically, but it’s not there, and it’s not like he has hands able to grab it right now anyway. “Saw you falling, so I acted.”

“You’re a hero.” It’s the blank way that he states it that throws Shouta off, because he’s used to odd reactions to claiming to be a hero. Doubt, shock, awe, hope, dread—he’s seen them all. But what he sees in Izuku’s is a conflicted apathy, and from the way his mother winces and sobs harder, this isn’t in character.

“I am,” he says. He lowers his voice, because he knows he isn’t a soothing figure, before he asks the next question. “How did you get to the roof, Izuku?”

That gets a reaction, a violent flinch and a spike in the beeping of his heart monitor. Izuku coughs violently, and the sound is cracked enough that Shouta feels a sympathetic pain from his ribs.

His mother sobs harder, grasping at Izuku’s hand like a lifeline. He stares at Shouta, and he’s hit with the overwhelming impression of a cornered animal. “I … I…” He trails off, and shuts his mouth firmly.

They stare at each other for a long moment, until Shouta sighs and drops his gaze. “Alright, sorry kid.”

Hizashi cuts in, and his voice is that calm-trauma-victim voice that Shouta can only hope to imitate. “We just were wondering, since you shouldn’t have access to that roof. Something strange must have happened to get you up there, didn’t it?”

Izuku nods, absently, and stiffens when he realizes he’s done so. “N-No.”

“Okay. Do you think you might be able to tell us about yesterday?”

The kid flinches again, and Shouta feels his chest ache in sympathy at the pain the motion likely caused.

“It doesn’t have to be the part about the roof, though,” Hizashi continues. “You had school that day, didn’t you? What did you learn about?”

Izuku shoots a panicked look at his mother before turning back to Hizashi. “I … it was school,” he mumbles. “Normal.”

“Well,” Hizashi says, and he laughs the soft fake-laugh to soothe Izuku, “it’s been a little while since I was in middle school, little listener! I don’t quite remember what you would be doing this time of year!”

The panic retreats slightly, to be replaced by the absentness again. “I … we talked about careers, I guess,” he forces out.

“Oh, what do you want to be, little listener?”

And it’s then that Izuku truly crumbles in on himself, crouching and holding himself tightly. “I … I don’t know,” he whispers.

His mother chokes out a sob. “Izu-Izuku? What do you mean, darling? I thought—”

Izuku shivers. “He said—he said it’s not realistic .”

Shouta’s head shoots up aggressively. “Who’s he ?”

The kid startles, curls into himself tighter. Hizashi puts a firm hand on his shoulder. “N-Nobody.” It’s a clear lie, and Shouta curses himself for spooking Izuku. He’s defensive, now—they’re not going to be getting anything else out of him.

“I’m sorry to hear that, little listener,” Hizashi says. There’s a beat of silence before he turns and addresses his mother. “I’m sorry to bother you, Ms. Midoriya—”

“I-Inko,” she interrupts softly.

“Inko, then. Are you alright if I ask about his injuries?” He shoots a half-glance at Shouta, for him .

Inko nods, and seems to visibly pull herself together. “Y-Yes.” She fumbles with a stack of papers on the chair next to her. “Um. Five b-broken ribs, m-mild concussion. S-Something with his back: a … a sprain? The-they had a doctor with a healing quirk come in for that. Since it was p-possible nerve damage.”

“The bandages are for the ribs, then,” Hizashi surmises. Shouta just stares at the kid for a moment—he knew , logically, that the kid was going fast and that stopping that momentum abruptly can be dangerous but— god the kid almost died.

Inko nods again. “Y-Yes. They said it was…better to let those heal on their own? I think?” She shuffles through the papers again. “Right. And t-that concussions aren’t … aren’t really t-treatable with quirks, mostly.”

Shouta nods, he knows that all too well. Inko looks at him, his arms, and asks, “W-What about you, um—”

“Eraserhead,” he says. He looks down at his arms with mild annoyance. They still throb but they’ll only be like this for another two hours at most. “I … jumped through the window, so got a lot of glass in them,” he says.

Hizashi nods. “They did some surgery to get it all out, but we have a coworker to take care of the rest of the healing.”

“Oh,” Inko breathes. Her eyes are filling with tears again. “T-Thank you,” she sobs.

Izuku just blinks at them, empty.

Hizashi hands Inko a business card—one of Shouta’s, that Hizashi had forced him to make—and smiles at her gently. “Feel free to contact us at any time,” he says.

Inko nods, squeezes Izuku’s hand. He turns to look at Hizashi, and there’s a faint flicker of recognition. “Wait,” he says quietly, coughs. “You’re … you’re Present Mic.”

Hizashi grins and shoots him a thumbs up. “You bet I am.”

Izuku frowns, pensieve, but says nothing more.

“Just so you’re aware,” Shouta says, and his voice is too gruff for this situation and he hates it, “at some point, I believe the police will be coming by for a statement.”

Izuku startles.

“Routine, I’m afraid,” Hizashi says. “They just need to know how you ended up there—for security purposes.”

Izuku is still and frozen, and his mother hugs him desperately. “Thank you,” she says to Hizashi, and it’s the same form as before, a thank you to a savior.

“Of course,” Hizashi says. “It’s our job. We’re heroes.”

And as the two of them step out of the door, he’s almost sure he hears a sob—the sobs of someone who has finally let themselves cry.

Chapter Text

Izuku can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t see. There is nothing except blankness in his head, and an absent awareness that his mother is crying beside him.

There’s a pain in his chest—the ribs, he knows—every time he breathes. And he focuses on it, because the pain is grounding, and then he turns to his mother and oh she’s crying .

“Oh, Izuku ,” she sobs. “How … how didn’t I notice , darling?”

Notice what? he wonders. He stares at her eyes, green like his and full of desperate tears, and feels guilt snake around his chest. “Tired,” he says blankly. He feels floaty, and there’s a coldness in his arm where the IV rests.

His mom sniffles. “I—oh, Izuku .” Her head falls into her hands and he watches her take great shuddering breaths.

He stares at her for a moment, aching with pain that is not from the ribs but from self-hatred that he made Mom sad before he lets his eyelids flutter closed and feels himself drift away.

“Izuku?” It’s a soft voice that makes him blink open his eyes, then wish he didn’t as pain pounds through his skull.

“Mmgh,” he says, eloquent. He blinks up at Mom; she’s wearing a different shirt now, and her eyes are dry but puffy.

“Izuku,” she says again, “there’s someone here to see you.”

His eyes look past her to land on the other person in the room; it’s someone who looks plain and unassuming in a tan jacket that makes him think of a detective from an American show. The man removes his hat and looks between Izuku and his mother, a guilty expression on his face. “I’m sorry, is now not a good time? I didn’t realize I was waking him—”

“He’s been half-awake for a day now,” Mom says, and Izuku winces at how tired she sounds. “It’s as good a time as any.”

The detective nods. “If you’re sure.” He pulls one of the hospital chairs forward and sits, meeting Izuku’s gaze. “Hello, Midoriya. My name is detective Tsukauchi NaomasaI’m sorry to disturb you, but I do have a few questions for you to answer. Is that alright with you?” He settles a clipboard on his lap and pulls out a pen.

Izuku nods, and his head throbs in response. He winces.

“Thank you,” says Tsukauchi. “Would you mind speaking aloud? It just makes it a little simpler for me.”

Izuku feels the urge to melt into his bedsheet. “O-oh. Sorry.”

Tsukauchi smiles. “No worries.” He clears his throat. “Please state your name, age and quirk for the record.”

Izuku coughs, and feels a stabbing pain in protest. “Um…Midoriya Izuku. I’m thirteen.” He winces; his voice is rough; how long has he been asleep? “Quirkless.”

Tsukauchi nods. “Thank you. Could you tell me how you ended up on the roof of 2935 Kessel St?”

He shudders, curls in. “No, no, no.”

“Midoriya?” The detective’s voice is soft with concern. He can’t stand it.

“Can’t tell, can’t tell, can’t tell…”

“You’re not in trouble, Midoriya. This is mostly a security issue. As long as your accessing the roof didn’t involve compromising the security system of the building, nothing you say will leave this room.”

He looks towards Mom, then back at Tsukauchi. “C-Can’t.”

The detective frowns. “Ms. Midoriya, would you mind leaving the room?”

Mom swallows hard. She makes half a motion in Izuku’s direction but stops herself.

“I’m sure he’ll tell you in his own time,” Tsukauchi reassures her. 

Izuku looks at Mom, eyes desperate, because she’s just a big of an All Might fan as he is—was. He can’t—can’t ruin that for her too.

“Alright,” she says finally. She gives Izuku’s hand a squeeze and stands up. The door shuts behind her with a decisive click and Izuku nervously meets the detective’s gaze.

“Are you comfortable telling me now?”

He doesn’t respond.

A sigh. “Alright, that’s okay. Let’s start smaller, then. Can you confirm your presence on the roof of the building?”

“Um, yes sir.”

“Were you alone on the roof?”

“Y-Yes.”

Tsukauchi’s pen pauses on the clipboard. “Midoriya,” he says softly, “I have a lie detection quirk.”

Oh.

“I—I wasn’t alone. B-But I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone. I promised, I promised, I promised—” His voice fades out and he feels himself cry.

Tsukauchi sits up straight in his seat. “Promised who?”

Silence. Izuku stares at his nails.

“Midoriya, did this person threaten you in any way?”

“No! No, no, he would never —”

Tsukauchi writes something down. “Is he the one who took you up there?”

“Um. I guess? In a—in a way.” 

“Do you know why he asked you to keep it a secret?” When Izuku doesn’t respond, he hears the detective sigh softly. “I’m sorry, Midoriya, but this is really important. In my field of work, it’s normally a bad sign when an adult is telling a minor to keep secrets from other adults, especially law enforcement.”

“But he’s—he’s good , I swear, it’s me that’s—”

“He upset you, didn’t he?” Tsukauchi’s voice is so soft, and kind, and something in Izuku breaks .

Now he’s crying, sobs that rob him of breath and pound his head. “Y-Yes,” he chokes out, and that hurts to say . But All Might did hurt him, because All Might was all he’d had—and his true hero hadn’t believed in him. Had been the same as everyone else: you’re lesser, you’re worthless. Deku. You’re stupid for even dreaming, for daring to think you could amount to anything at all. You might as well not be alive.

His head pounds horribly, and there’s a pressure on his chest that he can’t tell is the bandages or is just panic. Because now all he can see is All Might , small, bloody, emaciated, telling Izuku that he was stupid for even considering being a hero—

“Midoriya?”

It was All Might’s smile, his assurance, his optimism that kept Izuku going all this time, and to know—to know that it was a lie that he constructed himself and that everyone else was right when they mocked him and told him to grow up and he’s—he’s not even Izuku anymore, because who is that without All Might—

“Midoriya.” There’s a hand on his shoulder, and he notes that his breath is more like a desperate gulp. He looks up at the detective, and there’s a moment where he just cannot understand the expression on his face, because he looks worried in a way only his mother ever is—

“I’m quirkless,” he coughs out. He realizes too late that he shouldn’t have spoken because now words are tumbling out of his mouth and he can’t stop them . “It’s all my fault I should have known I couldn’t be a hero but I never believed it until—until All Might himself had to tell me, isn’t that stupid? I don’t—I feel so stupid because of course I’m a Deku what else would I be—”

He sees the detective startle out of the corner of his eyes, and cuts himself off sharply, but it’s too late. “All Might? Midoriya, did All Might take you up on that roof?”

Izuku takes in a deep, shuddering breath. “I didn’t—he—”

“Midoriya.”

And now there’s no point lying, in saying anything else because Tsukauchi will know because of that quirk he has. Izuku feels angry tears prick at his eyes. “Fine! He did! All Might took me on that roof. Are you happy? Why do you even care?”

He hears the pen scratch against paper. A quiet, “Thank you, Midoriya, that will be all.” The opening of a door, the sobs of his mother as she comes back in and squeezes his hand.

Izuku is tired; the flash of anger has drained all his energy. So he puts his head on the pillow and sleeps.

Shouta stares at the detective in front of him, expression blank. He knows why he’s here. The detective has obviously gotten Midoriya’s statement, so now it’s his turn to talk. But all he really feels is annoyance because he knows very well he’s not going to be much help. Hizashi is waiting outside the room; he’ll go second, Shouta knows. 

“Aizawa Shouta?” The detective’s expression is irritatingly neutral.

“Yes,” he says flatly. 

“Do you mind giving me your recounting of the event?”

“Sure,” he says. “I was delivering papers—some requests for explosive permits for third year heroic students—2935 Kessel St was the building, I believe. I was waiting in the lobby when I saw a blur go past the window, so I jumped after it and caught it. When I—When I saw him properly I…” He trails off and forces himself to continue. “I saw his eyes. You know the ones, where they’re just...done.” He swallows. “And he said something like ‘I thought being dead was going to hurt more’. He was wearing a black middle-school uniform. I climbed back up into the lobby and I assume I passed out because I woke up in the hospital.”

Tsukauchi nods. “And you spoke to him and his mother in said hospital, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Did he say anything that struck you as relevant?”

Shouta taps his fingers along the table. “He...well, Hizashi asked about school. He didn’t react well to that. I guess it was career day—he said he didn’t know what he wanted to be anymore after ‘he told me it was unrealistic’.” He winces. “I asked who ‘he’ was and he clammed up.”

Tsukauchi’s calm expression breaks slightly. “I suspect I know who that is.” 

He jolts upright, feels anger course through him. “Who—”

“Aizawa,” the detective says, “if I could tell you, I would.”

He slumps back down. “Right.” Damn bureaucracy. “Do you want me to send Hizashi in?”

“That would be appreciated,” Tsukauchi replies. 

Shouta stands, posture a little too tense. He opens the door with more force than strictly necessary, and Hizashi’s head jerks up, startled.

“He’s ready for you,” he grunts out.

Hizashi doesn’t say anything as he passes by Shouta, instead giving him a firm pat on the shoulder: he’ll be alright . And Shouta wants to believe him, but as he sinks into the chair and waits, all he can see are those tired eyes: emerald green but dead to the world. 

He stares at the phone in his lap; wonders if Inko will call. He wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t—she has larger concerns than one pro’s bleeding heart—but he still hopes. A text message, at least. Maybe he and Hizashi should go back for a visit. 

There’s muffled noises from the interrogation room. Hizashi, unsurprisingly, has a lot to say about the hospital visit. He’s always been better at that—people, relationships, talking. The voices rise and fall like waves and he lies his head against the wall and just listens. 

When the door clicks open and Hizashi shakes Shouta’s shoulder gently he realizes he must have drifted off. He stands up with an annoyed groan as Hizashi pulls him upright by the hand. 

“Thank you,” Tsukauchi says from the doorway. There’s something angry in his expression, but it’s not at anyone in the room. “I’ll tell you when I can.”

Hizashi nods solemnly and Shouta opens the door to let Hizashi through. “Please do,” he says. He glances at Shouta.

And as they step out the doorway and into the wind, Shouta thinks of a boy falling from a rooftop, of a body crushed by pavement, and thanks every deity he knows that he’d caught the one in time.

Chapter Text

Yagi Toshinori is not expecting a phone call.

He fumbles for it from his place on the sofa, knocking over his groceries as he grabs it. Tsukauchi Naomasa , the caller ID reads. Why’s he calling?

He picks it up. “Naomasa? Something wrong?”

“ Toshinori. ”

Toshinori falls back onto the sofa in shock. That was the angriest he’s ever heard his friend; he gets called Toshi unless something is very wrong. “Y-Yes?”

“Care to tell me why I just took a statement from a child you left on the roof of a building two days ago?”

He winces at the force of his friend’s words. “I—What? Why do you—”

“Toshinori,” comes the reply, “he … he jumped off the roof.”

His heart sinks into the chest, drowning in the ocean of pure dread and guilt that suddenly manifests there. He—he hadn’t even thought about the kid after he’d left, too preoccupied with his exhaustion from pushing himself to save another young child from the sludge villain he’d foolishly let escape. He’d been feeling horribly guilty about that, as well, but to hear that—that the kid had jumped —

“Is he okay?” he asks. His voice is shaking, and something comes up his throat that could be blood or bile.

A sigh. “He’s alive,” comes Naomasa’s tired voice. “Eraserhead caught him, happened to be in the building. I just was called in because of the security risk of roof access—” His voice cuts off, strangled.

The liquid forces its way up his throat and he gags. It is bile. “Oh God,” he says. Those bright green eyes, so desperate and hopeful and he’d left because—because he was embarrassed about his appearance and—

“Toshinori,” the voice is calmer now, “breathe. I can hear you spiraling, breathe with me, alright?”

His lungs stab in protest as he follows Naomasa’s steady breaths. He puts the phone down on the coffee table and turns on speaker with shaky hands; he doesn’t trust himself to not drop it. “I— Naomasa , I just panicked and left and—”

“Breathe,” he reminds him, “he’s okay. The kid’s okay. Can you hear me, Toshi?”

His lungs shudder in another breath. “Yes.”

“Alright,” Naomasa’s voice has steadied somewhat, and it’s now his crime-scene-description voice, but Toshinori knows him well enough to hear the tremors beneath. “It’s not only your fault, Toshi, alright? It sounds like the kid was bullied pretty badly, probably had a bad day at school—”

That’s not making it better he left a child up there he’s a coward and—

“—did your time run out?” comes Naomasa’s question. “He seemed … shaken. He said you had him promise something.”

It takes Toshinori a moment to understand what the question is. “What? He—” He gulps in a breath of air, and his lungs scream in protest again. “What’s his name?”

Naomasa’s voice is even steadier now. “Midoriya Izuku. Fifteen. Quirkless. Goes to Aldera Middle School. He suffered a sprained spine, five cracked ribs and a concussion from the whiplash of Eraserhead’s catch. The spine has been treated, but the concussion and ribs have been left to heal naturally. Eraserhead filled his arms with glass but has been seen by Recovery Girl, he’s fully healed.”

Clinical facts, he needs them but hates them all the same. He hates the image of that small boy (so small, so light he’d barely noticed him holding on) sitting on a hospital bed, chest covered in bandages. fragile. He hates that he can feel the pain, spine pulled and ribs broken, head spinning with confusion, and that it’s his fault and the kid almost died because he wasn’t paying attention .

“Toshi ….” Hesitant, now, almost gentle. He doesn’t deserve it. “Did you run out of time?”

He feels a phantom grip on his leg. “Yes,” he says. It’s a defeated sound.

“Do you think you could … you could give me a statement?” Toshinori can hear the frustration in Naomasa’s voice, the pity. Ever since the damned injury they’ve had to be so careful about statements, always taken directly by Naomasa and thoroughly checked in order to not spill any compromising information. They both hate it, this need for manipulation, this perversion of the law, but they don’t really have options. Especially not with the paranoia that has haunted him ever since Nana.

“Y-Yes,” he stutters— stutters , not coughs, he honest-to-god stutters because his body isn’t responding. He hears Nana’s voice, “You can’t save everyone, Toshi,” but he should’ve been able to see the eyes of a boy right in front of him.

“Alright,” Naomasa says. Toshinori hears the voice shake but it’s steadier than his own and he latches onto it. “Go ahead.”

“I was … I was chasing after the sludge villain,” he says. “Escaped into the sewers, but I had a general direction and knew he’d have to come up eventually. I ended up in a tunnel, and there was a kid—Midoriya, you said?—in the sludge. He was drowning, and I—well, I used the air-pressure of my punch to blow the villain away. Midoriya was on the ground, probably passed out from lack of oxygen—I gathered up the villain in plastic bottles and put them in my pockets.” A stab of self-loathing goes through him at that, because not further securing the bottles nearly got a second boy killed. “I’d signed his notebook, but I was almost out of time, so I jumped off to leave and—”

His voice cuts off, because he can remember the almost comical image of the boy attached like a barnacle around his leg. “He—he grabbed my leg. I tried to ask him to let go, but he pointed out he’d uh, die from falling from this height—” His voice cuts off again, because. Oh. He’d—he’d clearly thought about falling from heights how stupid could he be—

“So you landed on the roof of the building,” Naomasa prompts gently, “correct?” He also sounds shaken by the wording, though he keeps his voice steady.

“R-Right,” Toshinori says. “He—he said he wanted to ask me a question. He asked if he could be a hero, even if he didn’t have a quirk.” He swallows, remembering the desperate look in the kid’s eyes, that he’d mistaken for fanboy admiration , of all things, not—not the thing it truly was. “I … I said no.”

“Did you run out of time during the conversation, or—”

“Right.” He remembers the kid’s terrified reaction when he depowered, remembers the stabbing pain that accompanied him using his quirk for longer than he should. “Well. It was right before he asked the question, I believe? I just—” A wave of guilt overtakes him. “It’s just, when I power down everything hurts and I wasn’t—wasn’t paying attention—”

“Breathe.”

He sucks in a painful breath. “R-Right. I think I suggested—suggested he become a doctor? Or a police officer? I said that even my quirk hadn’t protected me from … well, what happened to me, and that he should … should be realistic ….”

He hears a sigh. “That … lines up with what he said.” There’s a rustling of paper, like it’s being gripped too hard, and he hears his friend let out a strangled gasp. “Toshi … Toshi, he’s … he’s so small .” 

Toshinori swallows, sees the boy’s eyes, so alive with desperate hope as he looked to him for answers. “I know,” he whispers. His body, which he realizes now has been tense as a bowstring the whole time, collapses boneless into the cushions. “I know .”

“He was so tired,” whispers Naomasa. “It could’ve been the drugs, but I—I don’t think so.” An audible swallow, then, “He tried to protect you, you know.”

“What?”

“Didn’t even tell me, not really. Picked up the situation from context clues, mostly, I just got enough to know that you took him up there. He had his mother leave, needed to be promised that I wouldn’t reveal anything.” The detective laughs, and it’s a little broken. He’s not Detective Tsukauchi, now, he’s Naomasa, and his voice cracks as he continues. “And even then, he was determined to protect you. He would’ve—he would’ve made a great hero.”

There’s certainty in those words, and Toshinori hears them echo in his soul, telling him that he was completely and utterly wrong. Because Izuku wasn’t asking to be a hero for the glory, or the fame—it was the last thing he was living for. And Toshinori had shattered that.

“ I know ,” he replies, and feels himself cry for what could have been.

Chapter Text

When Izuku wakes up, he wishes he hadn’t.

Sleeping, he’s decided, is nice. When his eyes close, his world is cold and dark and quiet, and he can let his mind drift away into the blankness; forget about sneered insults and twisted fingers and lilies left on his desk. He can’t hear crying, there, can’t feel his mother’s desperate grip on his hand or the stiffness of bandages wrapped around his waist. There’s no quiet beeping or electrical flickers; it’s just cold and silent; and he’s drowning in an ink-black sea.

But there’s a dull throbbing pain deep in his chest, a thumping twist of it every time he breathes in or out. And now that he thinks of it, his breath no longer comes naturally, nor do his eyes want to close lightly instead of squint. So they flutter open to a blank white ceiling, sterile and cold, and he feels his hand twitch in his mother’s grip.

“Izuku,” she breathes out. Her face comes into focus as she leans over him, and he feels a guilty stab of self-directed anger at the concern in her eyes. “Are you feeling alright?”

He closes his eyes, but they open again as his head throbs in response. “Hurts,” he croaks. His throat is dry and his tongue is heavy in his mouth. 

His mom worries her lip. “Alright, I’m going to call the nurse over. Is that okay with you, Izuku?”

He blinks at her. “Sure,” he says, because he needs to wipe the worry from her face.

She disappears from view, and after a brief moment he lets his head turn to follow her movement. It rubs against the pillow oddly, and he realizes something is wrong with the hair; is it tied back?

His mom holds up a remote that hangs off of the bed and presses a button on it. “Izuku is awake,” she says into it, “and he says he’s in pain.” She releases it and turns back to Izuku, and when their eyes meet he sees something like relief come over her.

“Can you tell me where it hurts?” she asks gently. Her free hand shakes as it reaches out towards his face in a motion she quickly stops.

He shrugs in response, shoulders pushing up against the pillow with the movement. He shifts an arm sluggishly towards his chest, where the bandages wrap tight. “Here,” he says. “Inside, but…deep. And head.”

The hand his mother holds is squeezed gently. “The nurse will be here soon. We’ll see if she can get you some more medicine. Does that sound good?”

“Sure,” he repeats. He tries to tilt his head up to move it back, but winces as blood rushes in his ears and dizziness hits him.

“Izuku!” his mother says, voice sharp and worried. “Can I—Do you want help sitting up?” Her hand slips out of his and comes up to cradle his cheek gently.

He blinks at her. Does he? Her hand feels warm on his cheek, and his now-empty one cold. “Yes,” he says.

His mom takes one of his hands firmly and plants her other on his back, carefully pulling him upright. He feels the warmth on the bare skin of his back and realizes he must be in those—hospital clothes—he’s too tired to think of the word. Her hand drops from his back to grab the remote again, and the back of the bed begins to bend upwards, until it supports him, with the pillow trapped against his back and the rough blanket pooled on his legs.

“That better?” she asks. Her voice is impossibly gentle, and Izuku doesn’t deserve it because it was him that put the stress lines on her face and tear stains on her cheeks.

But she would only be sad, so instead he says, “Thank you.” It’s not a lie, but it feels like one.

There’s movement from behind his mom, and he turns his head to see a nurse standing there, looking at him with pity in her eyes. Her hair is bright purple, Izuku notes, and oddly shaped—her quirk? What could she do with it? For a brief moment his hands itch for his notebook and he scans the room for a moment before—oh. There it is, sitting on top of the innocent-red-sneakers that he’d left on a rooftop.

Something crashes over him and his hands fall to his lap. His eyes lower to his arms, and he follows the IV line from up his elbow to a clear bag that pumps cold liquid into his skin.

“Midoriya Izuku?” the nurse asks. Her voice is clipped and professional (angry, they’re always angry ), and he notices that her hair moves a bit after the rest of her head. It was a quirk, then.

“Yes,” his mother says.

The nurse steps to the front of his bed, and he meets her eyes reluctantly. “Your mother said you were feeling pain,” she says. “Do you think you could tell me where?”

Izuku looks to his mother, a quick glance before his gaze returns to the IV. “He said his chest and his head,” she replies for him. Guilt-relief cuts through him again. “Although he said that the chest pain was ‘deep’?”

“Okay,” she replies. Her voice lowers and Izuku looks back up at her as she continues. “Do you think it’s your ribs that hurt, or something below them?”

He thinks for a long moment. “Ribs.”

She smiles, and he watches her hair swish slowly. “That’s good! Do you think you can give me your pain, on a scale of one to ten?. Maybe the ribs first, since you’re already thinking about them?”

Izuku tilts his head, and it throbs in angry protest. “I think … I think six,” he says. Six is burns after the cream, when angry red is soothed by coolness. “Head … head is a three, but it hurts more when I move it. Then it’s … more than six. Not seven.”

A pen scribbles on a clipboard. “Thank you,” she says, and her voice is too kind. He hears her turn, and looks back up to see her facing his mom. “I’m afraid we can’t give him much more, the quirk that produces it isn’t the best for head injuries. We have some older medication, but that doesn’t always—”

“He’s quirkless,” comes his mother’s voice, quiet. Izuku’s gaze falls. “Those will work on him.”

“Biologically, then?” asks the nurse. She doesn’t sound angry, nor does he hear the pity of someone who sees him like glass. It almost sounds like—how he talks about quirks—but he looks at her face and it’s the careful blankness he recognizes from the teachers and he feels an odd mix of sadness and relief. “I’m sorry about that, the hospital marks most with invisible quirks to be safe. He has—”

“—the pinky toe, yes,” finishes his mother. He doesn’t want to look at her, see the face of despair that holds him like he’s glass—well, it’s his mother, so—an expensive All Might figurine. Cute and endearing but oh-so-fragile.

Not like Kacchan. Kacchan isn’t fragile, and his mother doesn’t worry about him breaking when she shoves him or swats the back of his head. Kacchan doesn’t cry, or hide, he stands tall and—he—a wave of dread crashes over him as he realizes that Kacchan told him to take a swan dive and—and now he’s not going to be a hero and it’s all his fault, he’s a useless Deku—

A hand grabs his, squeezes. He blinks at his mother; they’re alone in the room now; there’s only white walls and a worried expression. “Izuku,” she says, and his eyes meet hers as she speaks. “Izuku, can you hear me?”

He tilts his head. Why wouldn’t he—oh. His breathing is hard, and pain thumps in his bones with every breath, worse than before. He takes a shuddering gulp of air and his other hand fumbles for his mom’s. She finds it and grips it firmly.

“Can you breathe with me?” she asks. He wants to shudder at the worry but her grip is too tight. She takes his right hand and rests it against her own chest. “In, out. In, out …” her voice continues, and he forces it in, out, in, out—

Finally, his breathing steadies, and his mother’s grip loosens. He pulls his hands out of hers and twines them together, watches them twitch. “Sorry,” he whispers. “I didn’t—”

“You don’t have to apologize.” Her hands find his chin and gently lifts it up until his eyes meet hers. “Never apologize for this, alright? You just had a panic attack. They … they happen.”

They shouldn’t, though. They happen when his mutters are all in his head—too dangerous to be spoken aloud—and they tumble over each other until he forgets how to blink and breathe. When it starts, he always hides, because the last thing he needs is someone to worry about him. Worry is bad, means he’s failed at hiding.

And now everyone’s worried, because he couldn’t even manage to die right.

Deku.

“Izuku,” his mother tells him softly. Her hand is warm on his cheek. “Izu, you can tell me anything, alright? I want to help. I—I really mean anything , okay? Don’t—Try to protect me—”

He looks up at that, because that doesn’t quite make sense. He protects his mom, that’s his only job; always has been. She hugs him and holds him and cries and he is her brave little boy who hides burns and bruises so she smiles instead of frowns. He’s her hero, because she doesn’t cry when he hides.

“Do you understand, Izuku?” she asks. Her eyes are fixed on his, wide and genuine, glittering with unshed tears.

“No,” slips out of his traitorous mouth, and as he watches her tears escape he realizes All Might truly was right—he can’t be a hero.

Izuku doesn’t speak after she asks him that question. Just a no and a mutter about All Might and heroes, which breaks her heart all over again because her son doesn’t—doesn’t look like that when he talks about All Might. His eyes are bright and hands wild, he’s not dull and emotionless.

Midoriya Inko watches with blank desperation as the nurse slowly lowers Izuku’s bed and settles him down. Izuku blinks at her once before letting his head rest on the pillow and fluttering his eyes closed.

The doctor wheels something into the room; the medication, she assumes. The machine used to administer it looks clunky and old but it is as clean and sterile as every other machine in the room. It hums as he plugs it in, and he and the nurse pull out one of Izuku’s IV’s to replace it with one from this machine.

She watches her son’s hands twitch as it does so, and feels her heart squeeze and has to resist the urge to grab him and hold him tight, to not let anything happen to him ever again. She failed him, she knows that well, because she is his mother and she didn’t notice his suffering. Because he had to have been suffering, to decide that—that dying was better than—

Tears squeeze out of her eyes, painful. She should get more water, but she doesn’t dare take her eyes off the uniformed hospital workers clicking buttons and hooking up tubing because she can’t fail him again .

The machine’s humming almost covers up the beeping from the other instruments. The thump of Izuku’s heartbeat—once loud and something she’d fall asleep to, reassured that it was still beating, that he was still alive —is almost drowned out by the new machine. She has to listen hard to hear it, a steady thump-thump matching the rate of a display half-hidden behind his head. Finally the hum quiets somewhat, and she looks up to see the doctor standing before her.

“This will kick in fairly quickly,” he tells her. “If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask.” His expression is full of pity and Inko hates the reason: she knows she’s pathetic, sitting here with a son she failed to save, all alone and crying. But there’s not much else to do, is there? Nothing to do but wait until her son smiles again.

The nurse approaches. Her hair swishes and Inko remembers the brief flare of life she’d seen in Izuku’s eyes as he watched it. “Do you have someone you can call?” she asks gently. Inko blinks at her, and she continues. “You need to be well, too, in order to help him.”

Take care of yourself , she hears, an echo of her husband’s words, all he’d said when she’d told him about their son. Too busy to help: all the more of a failure that she didn’t see .

Then she feels her pocket, feels a hard rectangle of cardstock. She gives the nurse a wobbly smile. “I—I will,” she says.

“Good.” The nurse slips out of the room, near silent, and Inko is left alone in a room that hums and thump-thumps with the heartbeat of her only son.

She takes out the card and dials the number there, fingers shaky. “Hello? This … this is Midoriya Inko? You … you said I should call.”

Chapter Text

Deku doesn’t show up to school on Monday.

Katsuki doesn’t notice, at first, because he makes a point to not notice Deku’s snivelling face and nonstop mutters. When Deku doesn’t follow him at lunchtime from a distance, muttering and scribbling away, he just thinks that he finally got through to him. That Deku understood that they weren’t friends and he wanted the creepy, stalking nerd to leave him the fuck alone .

Because Deku, apparently, has no fucking understanding of the word no , or of we’re not friends , and actions don’t fucking work either. Every threat just makes him flinch and curl up, but not stop what he does. Every threatening pop and slight burn of his quirk causes him to wilt while gritting his teeth and insisting that Kacchan is going to be a great hero! while still saying that he will too, as if they were on the same goddamn level. Katsuki is powerful, and isn’t going to fucking cower when a villian approaches him—he’s going to blow their face off. What’s Deku gonna do, cry?

Damnit. His quirk sparks angrily and his teacher gives him a look of mild annoyance, but doesn’t say anything.

Does the damn nerd have a death wish?

Somewhat absently, he spins in his seat to look for the nerd, only to see—no one. Deku is absent. Deku is never absent , he’s too much of a nerd to risk missing a day of school, so where the hell is he?

Katsuki blinks as he remembers what he said to Deku on Friday. He couldn’t have really—he wouldn’t have—

“Hey, Bakugo.” One of the extras that follows him around nudges him. Katsuki turns to face him, annoyed. It’s Fingers, who meets his eyes and smirks. “Deku didn’t join us today, huh?”

Katsuki glances to the teacher; she’s writing on the blackboard and not watching them. “What,” he hisses. “Why should I care?” It’s one of the extras that was there when the … the slime monster took him. Bastards didn’t even try to help.

Fingers smirks. “I heard that Deku tried to go through with it. But, ‘course, he’s too much of a failure to even do that properly.”

“Yobun,” the teacher snaps, “eyes up!”

The extra startles and turns his attention to the board, leaving Katsuki alone with his thoughts. Surely he didn’t—there was no way that—God, he hadn’t seen Deku since Friday, had he?

Fuck.

“ Suicide ?” he hisses at Fingers, who responds with a smirk and a nod. But he’d—Deku wasn’t—he’d never—

“Bakugo,” says the teacher. “Please come solve this problem.”

Katsuki turns to her, numbers swimming before his eyes. “Where’s Deku?”

The teacher blinks. Her eyes dart around, looking distinctly uncomfortable.  “I can’t—there’s a confidentiality—”

“ Where is he ?”

“Whoa,” Fingers says from beside him. “Calm down, man!”

The teacher swallows. “I’m not entitled to share any information—”

Katsuki snarls, quirk bursting forth automatically to burn off his sweat. “I’m going out,” he hisses. The teacher makes an aborted attempt to speak, but he’s not listening. He stands, chair scraping against the floor, and marches towards the door.

“You can’t—”

He turns to her. His quirk sparks again, burning more sweat; he’s not sweating, he isn’t panicking . “I’m going .” He yanks the door open and slams it behind him, pulling his phone out of his pocket and pressing his old hag’s contact.

“Katsuki—?”

“ Where’s Deku ?”

“He—oh, Katsuki— ”

In the hallways of Aldera Middle School, Katsuki sinks against the lockers, smoking nitroglycerin, and wonders for the first time if he may have gone too far.

When Shouta’s phone rings and he reads the caller ID, his heart hammers in his ears.

“Hello? This … this is Midoriya Inko? You … you said I should call.”

The voice is shaky and faint, and it takes him a moment to answer. He sits up straight in his sleeping bag and swallows hard, trying to keep the panic from his voice. “Is something wrong?”

Inko laughs, wet. “Fine. He’s fine. I—they made me promise to call someone.” A swallow. “I don’t—my husband’s not in the picture. And … I’d call Mitsuki, but her son isn’t taking it well and he can’t exactly come to the hospital room, and God knows Masaru can’t leave either—”

“Breathe,” Shouta tells her.

A deep breath as Inko listens. “R-right. Sorry. I just—you offered, and left the card, so I was hoping—”

“Yes,” Shouta agrees. “We did. Are you still in the same hospital room?”

A sigh of relief. “Y-yes.”

“Good, that’s good. Do you think you could put my husband and Ion the list of approved visitors?”

“I—I can do that. Yes. I, um, have your card, but your husband—”

“Yamada Hizashi,” he tells her.

“Right.” A rustle of papers. “Th-thank you. Do you know—”

“Hizashi is still at work. Within the hour, I’d say.”

“Alright.” A pause, exhale of breath, and Shouta winces at how tired she sounds. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” Shouta replies, sincere. He’s a hero, that’s what he does. Catches and saves.

The click of the call ending sounds like the thwip of a capture weapon.

His parents pick him up from school that day.

He sits, slumped against metal lockers, for what feels like hours—people walked by between classes and he glared murderously at anyone who dared look at him. His quirk keeps popping sporadically, singeing the metal and leaving the hall smelling like burnt caramel, but he can’t bring himself to care. Because Deku, stubborn, hero-loving Izuku, full of life and nerdiness and energy, had tried to leap off a roof. Because of him.

“Hey.” It’s a gentle voice, and he reflexively turns to snarl at its speaker. “Kats? We’re going to get you home, alright?”

It’s his father, crouched down and holding nitroglycerin-neutralizing towels that he gently wraps around Katsuki’s hands. One hand lays on his shoulder and he remembers his own hand on a shoulder, shuddering as it smoked beneath his fingers. “Dad?”

Dad pulls him up, arm wrapped around his back. Standing, his eyes take in his surroundings: the hallways seem empty. His mother stands in front of him, eyes red and voice tight with emotion. “We’ll talk more when you’re home, alright?”

Talking. The last thing he wants to do is talk, because it’s his fault . Why did he ever think that he should tell Deku that, step over that last line that he’d never crossed before? Deku handled burns and insults and bruises but—but he should have known .

Why did he even think it?

He knows the answer, of course. It’s because he knows, deep down, that if his words haven’t gotten through to Deku yet they never will. No one’s will. Instead, Deku will see a villain one day and leap in and die a brutal, pointless death because that’s just what he does.

Deku may become a hero, but he will also, inevitably, become a martyr.

They’re in the car, now. He’s not sure how he got there, but he’s glad: being strapped in a seat makes him feel a bit more grounded. It rumbles to life and starts driving, and it occurs to him that it’s odd that they’re driving at all. The car is for his parents’ drive to work, not to and from the school. That, they walk.

“We were at work when you called,” Dad tells him. He always was good at hearing even when no one spoke. Katsuki’s palms spark again and Dad wordlessly hands the towel back. Katsuki takes it and wipes his hands clean.

“When did—it was Friday?” His voice is quiet and broken, and he hates it. He doesn’t get like this, sad and emotional , he gets angry at different levels. And he feels the anger, burning in the back of his throat, but he knows he deserves to feel it, not anyone else.

“Yes,” his mom replies. Her eyes are fixed on the road ahead as her voice shakes slightly. “I … well. Inko forgot to tell us, I think. I don’t blame her, she sounded so—”

The anger leaps out of his mouth. “Why didn’t they tell us?”

Mom’s head snaps around, furious. “I just told you , she forgot because her son was dying ! Would it kill you to listen—?”

“Mitsuki,” Dad says, “the road.”

His mother turns back. “Right.”

The car continues in silence. Katsuki stares out the window, anger still burning in his throat.

“Kats,” Dad says. “You’re awfully quiet.”

He grunts in response.

“You can tell us anything, alright firecracker?”

He rests his head against the cold glass and wishes that that wasn’t a lie.

Hizashi and Shouta meet Midoriya Inko outside of her son’s hospital room, sat on a chair in the hallway. Her head snaps up as their footsteps approach, and her panicked expression calms slightly.

Two more chairs sit on the other side of the hallway, and Hizashi and Shouta take them. Shouta reaches out a hand for Inko to hold, which she does, drawing in her breaths deliberately. They stay like that for a moment before Inko finally speaks.

“I’m a terrible mother,” she says.

Hizashi and Shouta both go to deny it, but Inko cuts them off. “No, I am. My son—he’s quirkless, see, and the only thing he ever wanted to be was a hero. I tried to … to convince him otherwise, hoped it’d just go away, but I … I see, now, a hero is all he was meant to be. He was always smiling, you know, when he spoke of heroes? I thought that was just being a fanboy—but Izuku has always jumped in to protect others. To save them.”

She fixes the two of them with a steely glare, words firm. “My Izuku is a hero. But he’s lost that, now, because of what that man —” She swallows. “You’re heroes,” she says softly. “Being a hero is what gave him life, and I want you to give that back to him.”

She takes another deep breath, stares at the two of them intently, desperately. “Can Izuku become  a hero?”

Shouta looks into her eyes, the same green as her son’s, and imagines Izuku full with his mother’s determination. He thinks of a different body crushed on concrete, someone always-smiling whose life was cut violently short. “Yes,” he says. “It isn’t a quirk that makes a hero, it’s their heart.”

Midoriya Inko bursts into tears. “Thank you,” she whispers. She looks behind her, at the hospital door and then back at them. “He needed… he needs to hear that.”

Hizashi stands up, smiles. “Then let’s do that,” he says softy, and opens the door.

Chapter Text

Time is … fluid, to Izuku, now. He will open his eyes blearily and see his mother sitting slumped in a plastic hospital chair, sometimes sleeping, sometimes not. He will feel a stab of pain somewhere; his head, his ribs—and remember why he really does not want to be awake. So he’ll close his eyes until they blink open again, with his mother in another position. He’s eaten a few times, but the memories are vague and fuzzy, food tasteless and identical. Trying to remember how many times this has happened is pointless, and he wonders if it has been months, weeks, or days. He doesn’t know, but he doesn’t exactly care either. He drifts, notes his constants, and floats along through time.

So it’s not exactly surprising that what breaks this flow of numbness is when he opens his eyes and his mother doesn’t sit there, cold plastic empty. He stares at the chair blankly for a moment before panic shoots through him—where did she go? What’s going on? What—

The door creaks open slowly, and he sits up harshly, ribs protesting the movement. He stares at it, sees the light spill in through the crack, until it swings all the way open to reveal three figures standing there.

Izuku squints, and one of the silhouettes comes into focus. “Mom?”

She steps forward and he can see her clearly. “Izuku! You’re awake!”

He nods, looks at the other two figures with apprehension. “Who’re … who’re they?” His voice is rough, he notes, and he wonders when he last had a drink. 

Mom’s face falls slightly, and she turns to gesture them into the room. “It’s the hero who caught you, remember? Eraserhead? And his husband.”

Izuku squints at them, remembers rushing wind and a crushing pressure around his chest. “Oh.” As the figures approach, he stares at the one with dark hair and remembers a rasping voice asking him something, and his head throbs in response. “Hello.”

The hero, Eraserhead, moves forward with what almost looks like hesitance. “Hey, kid,” he says. His voice is low and awkward, and he sits down next to Mom near-silently. His husband, blonde with glasses that reflect the hospital lights, pulls up another chair with a screech and sits on Eraserhead’s other side.

“You caught me,” Izuku says. He’s not sure how he feels, staring into the eyes of the man who stopped his flight and forced him to keep breathing. It’s not anger, exactly, because emotions are still oddly distant and removed. No, it’s a mild irritation that fills him, because Eraserhead had shaken him awake when he just wanted to sleep.

Mom sniffles, inhales harshly. Izuku turns to look at her, and sees her eyes are red from crying. Guilt snakes around his heart and squeezes tightly, and he burns with self-reproach. How could he let Mom be sad? That wasn’t allowed. He was sad, never Mom—his job was to make her smile.

“Izuku,” she says softly, “these heroes … they have something to say to you.” She takes a deep breath, and Izuku can hear her breath catch in her throat. “I … I’m so sorry, Izuku. When you were … when you were four, and asked me if you could be a hero—I gave you the wrong answer. I apologized, but w-what I should have said was ….”

Eraserhead leans forward as Mom’s voice fades away, and one hand is placed carefully on Izuku’s shoulder. Izuku turns to look at him, and his breath catches at the care and sincerity there. “It isn’t a quirk that makes a hero, Izuku. It’s their heart,” he says, looking into Izuku’s wide eyes. “From what I’ve learned of you … you have the heart of a hero, Izuku. You can be a hero.”

“ Oh ,” says Izuku, and feels himself cry.

The punching bag leers at him, eyes lowered and scared and green. It cowers and laughs at him, voice worming its way into his ears and refusing to get out.

He listened to you. You’re a villain , aren’t you?

Punch, punch. Liquid dripping down his knuckles—blood? Nitroglycerin?

You knew, didn’t you? He only ever was nice to you, but you were so sure that he must have been faking it. Because no one is that nice without wanting something. People always want something , but you couldn’t figure him out and he scared you .

Katsuki swears and punches the bag again, and his hands light reflexively, trying to burn through the wrappings. They sizzle and smoke instead, making his hands burn and sting.

You didn’t want to understand him , it whispers, because that would mean that you were wrong about what being a hero was. And you already knew that, but admitting it would mean that you were wrong and everyone was lying to you .

Shut up , Katsuki hisses at the voice. Angrily, he yanks at the wrappings to undo them, but they catch and tighten instead. He pulls again, harder, and there’s sizzling as his quirk goes off again. He yanks again, and the wrappings crumble into ash. Scowling, he stomps the ash into the carpet. He’ll clean it later.

“I’m going out!” he yells, pulling on his shoes. He stands and glares at the punching bag, green and scorched, and kicks it with his foot. He grabs his phone from the bedside table and drops it in his pocket, slamming the door open and storming down the stairs.

“Katuski!” his mother screeches. “You’re not going anywhere!”

“Watch me!” he snaps back. He sees her hair in the kitchen heading towards him, and he hurries down the stairs towards the door. His shoes echo loudly against the hardwood floor, and he doesn’t hear his father until his hand is on his shoulder.

“Kats,” his father says. Katsuki spins to face him, and hates the kind, understanding smile on his face. “Firecracker, we know this is hard for you, but we need to make sure you’re safe. Especially after ….”

Viscous slime, sliding beneath his clothes onto bare skin. Forcing its way down his throat, his nose, and laughing and telling him how much his body will help him be a villain—

“I’m not a fucking wimp ,” Katsuki snarls. I’m not a Deku . 

But is that really true? Aren’t you a coward, for never asking, for thinking that you could never help him and never even trying , not noticing until he listened and jumped off a building—

Shut up!

His hands spark again, and this time his sweat lights and explodes. His father just looks sorry for him , because he was always able to tell when his lights were involuntary or purposeful and Katsuki hates that .

“Katsuki!” It’s his mother again, closer this time. “Katsuki, you are not leaving this house!”

“Like fuck I’m not!” he snaps back. His hands spark again, and this time it’s on purpose. Intimidation, like you do to Deku, coward—

“I need to blow shit up,” he growls. “It’s either fucking trees or this goddamn house , so let me the hell out !”

“What fucking trees, Katsuki? You can’t just go around—”

“Where the fuck do you think , hag?” The explosion is bigger this time, and he stares down his mother with fury in his eyes. “Where I always go .”

“I’ll go with him,” his father says. His voice is soft and understanding, goddamnit, because of course it is. But it’s the only way he’s getting out of this fucking house, where the voice laughs and whispers and worms its way into his head—

He swallows his words and stares at the hag defiantly. She looks from her husband, to Katsuki, and back. “Fine,” she hisses. “But if you fucking—”

His explosion covers up whatever she was going to say. He doesn’t fucking care. He twists the door handle with too much anger, yanks the door open. Looks back to see his dad following behind him, gaze sympathetic and his mother looking at him with something like pity.

The door slams shut, and Katsuki and his father stand on the sidewalk. His dad holds his hand out to him, like Katsuki is a child , and he stares at it blankly.

“Let’s go,” his father says, so soft and kind .

Katsuki scowls. “Whatever,” he says, ignoring the hand, and stalks off towards the forest.

“There’s something wrong about this,” Naomasa says. He leans back in his chair, and spins slightly to face Toshinori, who’s leaning over the desk with something close to desperation.

“What do you mean?” Toshinori asks. His hands grip the table angrily, but depowered he doesn’t even dent it.

Naomasa frowns at his screen. “Well, there’s just—he didn’t say anything about bullying, but the way he reacted to the mention of school … there’s no way that his experience with school is good. But I pulled some favors to get his school record, and it just—it doesn’t make sense.” He spins the screen around so it faces Toshinori. Midoriya Izuku’s face—even in a school picture—is fraught with nerves. The boy’s disciplinary record blinks back at them, marking him as “disruptive”, someone who “starts fights” and “disrupts class”. “It’s hard to tell anything about people after something that traumatic, of course, but when I followed up—”

“—they lied?” Toshinori guesses. He sees a battered notebook, a jittery boy who grabs his leg out of desperation. A boy who mutters, who seems to be nothing but anxiety personified. He can’t imagine someone like that starting fights . The mere idea is ridiculous.

“No,” Naomasa replies. “But when you have my quirk, you get familiar with people dodging questions. And they didn’t lie , but they weren’t honest, either.”

“A coverup,” Toshinori concludes. “But—what could they be hiding? It’s just a little middle school bullying, isn’t it?” Even to himself, his voice sounds shaky and unsure. There’s something nagging at him, a voice in the back of his head whispering that quirkless means something different, now, Toshinori.

“I don’t know,” Naomasa says. His eyes are lit with the sort of angry stubbornness that, more than his quirk, makes him an excellent detective. “But we are going to find out .”

All Might stares back at him, steam billowing through the room, hair nearly brushing the ceiling of the small office. “ Yes ,” he replies, the pain on his side and guilt in his gut curling together into determination. “We will.”

Chapter Text

“You know,” his father says as they walk down the sidewalk, calm as ever, “it’s alright to feel upset about Izuku.”

Katsuki’s hands spark. “I’m not feeling sad , dammit! I’m angry .” Leaves crackle beneath his feet, and he stomps through them with heavy steps. “Damn Deku, too weak to even fucking live —”

A hand on his shoulder. Katsuki spins to face his father, words freezing in his throat. “Katsuki,” he says, eyes hard but voice soft, “can you walk me through what you just said?”

  Katsuki swallows. His hands spark again, and he scowls at the pavement. “Didn’t say nothin’,” he spits.

“ Katsuki .” His father’s voice is soft and kind and understanding and goddamnit . He knows this voice. He looks up to meet his father’s gaze, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Sit down, son.”

They’re near the forest, and his father nods towards a rock on the side of the sidewalk. Katsuki stomps over to it and plops down, hands still in his pockets. His father drops next to him, all slow and careful, and Katsuki’s hands itch with the urge to flare again, to get away, and just...and just scream and yell and—

“Katsuki.” His father’s hand is gentle on his shoulder. “Hey there, firecracker, can you talk to me, please?”

He stares at his shoes, watches the soles bounce against the rock as he kicks it. “Don’t wanna,” he protests, but it’s quiet now. His father is just... like that somehow, can make him stop screaming with a quiet request to sit down. He hates it, but his hands, stuffed in his pockets, don’t try to spark again.

“I know,” his father says. Gentle, understanding. “You’re a lot like your mother, aren’t you, firecracker?”

He turns on him at that, hands wrenched out of his pockets, because fuck no he isn’t his mother, he wouldn’t—he isn’t—A hand ruffles his hair gently, and his hands fall to his lap.

“That’s not a bad thing,” Dad continues. “But it means it’s a bit hard for you to talk, isn’t it? Especially with her.”

Katsuki scowls, but doesn’t reply. The question was rhetorical, anyways.

“Do you remember our exercises, Katsuki?” he asks. “Walking through your thoughts?”

He does, but a spike of fear shoots through him, and right now he can’t douse it in nitroglycerin and he shivers. “Yeah,” he whispers. “Don’t—don’t wanna, though.”

“Kats,” his father says, “I want to understand, alright? It’s my job to help you, so I want to hear you.”

“’M not weak .”

“Of course you aren’t. Is Mom weak?”

“Fuck no! She—She’s always winning those fashion competitions and shit, and she—”

His hair is ruffled again. “I have to do this with her, too, Katsuki.” Katsuki turns to stare at him, surprised. “Doesn’t make her weak. Just means we think a little different, so we need to check in sometimes.”

Katsuki stares at his father’s calm, smiling face, and clenches his hands into fists. “Fucking—Fine. Whatever. I’ll—I’ll do the exercise, or whatever.” He drives the fists into his thighs, and feels his father’s gentle fingers in his hair.

“How do you feel about Izuku’s hospitalization?”

Something swirls in his stomach, and Katsuki grits his teeth to stop the fire from burning it again. Dad doesn’t like that, cause everything being angry isn’t—isn’t how other people think. “Shitty,” he says finally.

“Why do you feel like that?”

His fists curl tighter. “’Cause I...I fucked up. I’m not supposed to , but shouldn’t I have—” Have noticed? Have stopped myself from saying—

“So you feel guilty?”

Guilty. He thinks of the fucking flashcards that he had to flip through, remembers one showing a boy stealing a cookie and holding his stomach. He prods at the thing in his chest, feels a twinge of nausea. “I guess.”

His father hums. “Is there something specific you feel guilty about?”

Something burns behind his eyes, at the corners, like sweat. He sees Deku standing there, spinning with an angry look that made Katsuki think he was finally going to say something , before he’d sparked and Deku had flinched. Sees his eyes , which had gone—gone almost dead and he should have—

“ I told him to do it ,” he chokes out. He can’t breathe, for some reason, and the burn in his eyes is strong and he sees Deku’s eyes with that awful quietness and defeat that he’d wanted, because that was safe , but when it happened he’d just—it was Deku , he cowered but he never gave up , damn him, and he’d been glad—

“What?” There’s an edge in his father’s voice he’s never heard before, something in his eyes that isn’t kind but is—but is scared , like his face when they’d watched scary movies and he’d jumped—

The nausea curls tight around him, and he chokes on it. He can taste the vomit, and he just sees eyes that he—he—

“I...I didn’t think he’d do it .” His voice is almost gone, and he bends over, and anger flares bright inside of him, because the nausea is too much and he can’t breathe and he has to burn it, burn it before—

His father’s arms wrap around him and hold him tight, and Katsuki’s hands start to blister. “B-breathe, Katsuki, alright? We’ll...we’ll figure this out together.”

“Alright,” Katuski gets out, strangled, then he lets his palms spark and screams .

“Honestly,” Naomasa says, giving Toshinori’s outfit a quick once over, “you should join us for more investigations like this.”

Toshinori winces slightly as he shifts, feeling oddly confined in a shirt and pants that Naomasa had considered “inconspicuous”. They don’t cling to him as tightly as his hero suit does in his muscle form, but the shirt touching his chest and wrists makes him feel as though he is going to break through it with any movement. He picks at the end of his sleeve absently, unhappy.

“When you wear clothes that fit, you really look quite inconspicuous.” Naomasa tells him brightly. “You should do it more often.”

“I’m going to rip it,” Toshinori complains, feeling oddly childish. “Waste of a shirt.”

Chiyo, who had been standing to Naomasa’s side contemplatively for the past minute, suddenly swung out her cane to his Toshinori firmly on the leg. He yelped.

“You,” she snaps, “are not doing any sort of hero work! You need a break after that reckless stunt you pulled with the Sludge Villain!”

“But he was drowning —”

Chiyo pokes him in the side, though she had enough mercy to poke the uninjured side. Still, he winces. “And what good are you to the other people who need saving if you die, Yagi?” She whacks him again, this time his foot. “You knew your time limit! Other heroes could have—”

“ What other heroes?” Toshinori snaps. “No one was even moving, and I only moved when I heard someone say how long he’d been in there! He would have died .” His voice lowers. “I can’t—lose—” He sees the desperate green eyes of a kid whose dream he crushed, and left on a rooftop because apparently he didn’t have a brain.

The recovery heroine sighs. “Alright. Just … we care about you, Yagi. And you can help people like this. Without your quirk.”

Quirkless . Can I be a hero if I’m Quirkless, All Might?

Guilt twists into his side, making it ache. He shakes it off, forces his face to calm. “So,” he says, “you’re not going to budge on this, are you.”

“You wanted to help,” Naomasa says. “And they have an opening for a substitute teacher. Honestly, with your plans to start teaching at UA soon, you need the practice anyway!”

“Oh, god,” Chiyo groans. “I forgot he was looking for a successor there. You better not infect your successor with your stupid self-sacrificial mentality.”

Toshinori winces. “Uh…”

 “Just let him go,” Naomasa advises her. “He’ll be fine. Toshi, your clothes look fine , you’re not going to rip them, and kids don’t expect much from substitutes anyways. Just remember who you’re doing this for, right?”

He sees green eyes again, staring at him and full of desperate hope. “Right. Thank you, Naomasa.”

Naomasa grins. “You’ve got this, alright? Here are your documents.” He shoves a folder into Toshinori’s hands. He grips it tightly, almost bending it. “You’ll nail this. What’s a little job interview? You’re the Number One Hero, after all.”

Guilt twists around him again, squeezing his side tightly. He manages to nod, for the sake of his companions, but the smile on his face is even more forced than usual.

After all, he doesn’t deserve that title, because heroes don’t leave broken children on rooftops.

Izuku sits upright on his hospital bed, eyes down on his hands. The faint buzzing of the room, he thinks, is probably the light, since the painkillers they have him on are pills and the IV sits silent in one corner. Across the room sits a woman, legs crossed with a clipboard on her lap.

She’s just asked him about how he was feeling, and he almost wants to laugh. What kind of a question is that? All he feels is a blank numbness that fills him and makes him wonder why he’s even awake. Why...why bother, when…

“I’m fine,” he says to the sheets that cover his legs. He can see his mother’s chair out of the corner of his eye, and its emptiness makes him shiver.

“Alright,” she replies. Her voice is soft and almost musical, and he wonders if that’s her quirk. Voice quirks always affect the normal voice in some way, and it would make sense for a therapist to—she’s talking again. “How about we just talk about you, then. Can you tell me about yourself?”

Izuku scowls. “You already know it, though. It’s all on your clipboard, isn’t it?” He looks up reluctantly to see her tilting her head at him.

“I know some things,” she says. “But I’d prefer to hear it from you.” She uncrosses her legs and shifts forward in the chair. “Can you tell me why you’re seeing me?”

“‘Cause I jumped off a roof.” His gaze has returned to his fists. “Reported suicidal tendencies in a hospital setting result in a therapist being sent to the room during recovery, to gauge their stability.” He pokes at the sheets. “In my case, the aftermath of an unsuccessful suicide attempt means once I’m off the hard painkillers, they’ll send a therapist. And that’s you.”

She hums. “Very thorough. You’ve researched this, haven’t you?”

He squints at her. “Why wouldn’t I?” He pokes at the sheets again, at the fold that sticks up slightly. “I was gonna end up here eventually. Unless I died first.”

She scribbles something on her clipboard, and the scratch of pencil on paper makes his hands itch for his own notebook. “So you felt this was an inevitability?”

He snorts. “You have my file. Don’t you know the statistics for quirkless people in my generation?” He counts them off on his fingers. “Suicide rate is around 30%, with 80% of those people succeeding. 65% of the population has reported encountering severe quirk discrimination that results in physical injury, 85% have reported being suicide baited, either directly or by lilies, and the unemployment rate of quirkless people between the ages of 16 and 30 is 20%. Those with jobs report pay discrimination an additional...uh, 20%, I think—”

“You memorized the statistics?”

Izuku stops his counting. “Yeah.” He folds his shoulders inwards, protective. “It’s what I’m good at. Analysis. The official statistics seemed... wrong so I adjusted them for age and...well…” He shrugs. “A lot of the statistics were skewed due to the senior population.”

“Have you experienced these things, Midoriya?”

He looks up at her, stares into eyes that are caring but for some reason concerned . “Of course I have. I’m—I’m not special.”

She hums, sounding somewhat disapproving. “So you believed this was your future.”

He sees a rooftop again, blood-splattered and a figure crouched, revealing a spiraling injury an ugly red and purple. “I...I didn’t want it to be. But it was always...always there, in the back of my head, right? I knew, but I was going to—”

You can’t be a hero.

You have the heart of a hero.

“Going to what?”

He curls inward. “I was gonna be a hero. I was , but then—” He squints at her, suddenly paranoid. “Information shared here is confidential, isn’t it?”

She tilts her head and nods. “Yes. Unless the information you report puts you or in danger, information shared here stays in this room.”

Izuku nods. “All Might...has always been my hero.” His hands find each other and intertwine, twisting nervously. “He always...always smiled , even when things were hard, so I smiled like him and when he saved me, I thought...I thought that just maybe —”

“All Might saved you?”

“Oh. Right. Um, the Sludge Villain? He, uh, tried to drown me...said something about taking over my body? I’m not sure. But afterwards, I just...I just needed to know, so I...I grabbed All Might’s leg and...after we landed, I asked him.”

He looks up at her, sitting there calm and staring at him kindly. He swallows and continues. “He...he said that I couldn’t be a hero. Without a quirk. So I—well, I told you. That was kind of...all I was. So he left, and I felt empty and I thought that maybe everyone was right.”

“Everyone?”

“Kacchan, the teachers, classmates—you know. My mom, too, a little bit. She’d...she’d never say it, and I know she loved me, but me being quirkless was something she felt sad about. She apologized to me, you know, after the diagnosis.” His vision is fogging up, and he realizes his eyes are watering. Why is he—why is he saying all of this? He should have just stopped, why is he telling this...this stranger everything? He’s—He’s screwing up again, being a damn failure as always—

“Midoriya?”

His head snaps up, and he stares into her eyes, purple and wide, and remembers abruptly his suspicions from before. “Why am I—what are you doing to me?” His hands clench around the sheets, and he feels himself shaking. “Is it your quirk? Turn it off!”

She smiles, but now it looks sad. “It’s not my quirk, Midoriya. You just...wanted to tell someone. Do you want to be done for today?”

“ Please ,” he chokes out.

“Alright.” She stands, puts her clipboard under her arm. “It was nice meeting you, Midoriya.”

“Mm.” Izuku stares at the sheets for a moment before he looks up again, vision still blurred by silent tears. “L-Likewise, Ms—?”

“Shinsou,” comes the gentle reply, and as the door swings shut, Izuku falls back on the bed and tries to remember how to breathe.

Chapter Text

The office that Toshinori sits in is small, drab and slightly off in a way he can’t quite pinpoint. The chair beneath him is a pale green-yellow that reminds him uncomfortably of vomit. He scans the wallpaper—a pale off-white lined with white, and his gaze focuses on a framed plaque on the wall. 2136 - Quirk Control Excellency - Aldera Middle School.

At the desk in front of him, a woman with bright pink hair types away at a computer, humming quietly. The only other noise comes from an air conditioner in the corner of the room, which hums at a volume just loud enough to be annoying.

In his grip, the manilla folder containing his identification crinkles. Why had he decided to arrive an hour early? His back already hurts from the uncomfortable chair, and his side twinges angrily when he shifts. 

“Shimura Toshinori?” His head turns to face the pink-haired woman at her sudden voice. “Principal Watanabe will see you now.”

Toshinori forces himself to his feet, his back and side protesting loudly at the movement. His posture, he knows, is poor, but his full height brushes the ceiling of most traditional buildings, and it hurts his side less as well. Even still, he has to duck through the doorway to the principal’s office as he pushes the door open.

“Hello,” comes a greeting from the man sitting at the desk. He is short, balding, and reminds Toshinori viscerally of a weasel. His voice is almost oily as he steps out from behind the desk and holds out a hand. “Shimura, was it?”

Toshinori blinks at him, fighting hard to prevent his expression from shifting. This man, for whatever reason, is setting off every danger-sense he has. One for All burns beneath his skin, wary. “Yes,” he replies, taking the hand. It’s slightly wet to the touch.

Watanabe shakes it aggressively before dropping it and turning back to his desk. “Sit, sit!” he says as he himself sits back in his chair. “I’m excited to meet you,” he says. “We were having a bit of trouble getting a new teacher on such short notice, so when we saw your application we were quite excited!”

Toshinori nods, sinking into the chair slowly. It’s almost overly soft, compared to the waiting chair outside, and his back sighs in appreciation. “I have my identification here,” he starts, gesturing to the manilla folder in his hand, “so if you’d like to—”

Watanabe waves a hand. “No need, no need.” He leans forward over the desk, and the look in his eyes almost strikes Toshinori as predatory. “So you’ve worked with All Might in the past?”

Toshinori has to fight the urge to cough. “Yes, in my prime. Nothing too major, of course, just some administrative work ….”

“Still,” Watanabe says, “that’s impressive! I’m sure you met all sorts of people there.” That gleam in his eyes intensifies, and Toshinori is abruptly struck by the realization that it is greed glinting there.

“Of course,” he deflects. “But, as you heard, after my retirement my health started to fail. I thought teaching would be a good way to pass my knowledge onto others.”

Watanabe frowns. “Oh, right, your health. Your file said …”—he flips through some papers on his desk—“… that you have internal bleeding that causes you to cough up blood, on occasion. I trust you can keep your classroom sanitary?”

“Of course,” Toshinori replies. He straightens slightly, and his side twinges. “Is there anything else you needed?”

Watanabe flips through the papers again, stopping on a certain page and frowning. “Ah, yes,” he says. “For some reason, your application didn’t mention your quirk?”

Toshinori thinks of a boy of green, sitting on a rooftop with dead, dead eyes. “I’m quirkless.”

“Ah,” replies Watanabe, voice flat.

Toshinori can’t tell if it’s his imagination that the principal’s eyes go cold.

From beyond his locked door, Katsuki can hear his mother screaming.

He sits, curled on his bed and staring at the All Might poster on his wall. His punching bag sits abandoned in one corner of the room, ash still kicked into his carpet. All Might’s eyes, bright blue and fiery even through a picture, seem to burn through his skin and into his mind, where he whispers all the things that Katsuki doesn’t want to hear.

A hero, All Might’s voice whispers, does their best to prevent civilians from being harmed.

Damn it, damn it, damn it . Katsuki forces himself to his feet and burns , quirk bursting out of him with a blast of released pressure. Burns the voice away, because he doesn’t care damnit, Deku fucking deserved it and—

“KATSUKI!” his mother’s shriek is audible even over the explosions. “STOP THAT, BRAT!”

His father’s voice responds, low and soothing, and Katsuki scowls and wraps his hands with the towels. The thoughts creep up again, and he sees Deku’s eyes , and feels the nausea rise again because Katsuki was fucking stupid , he’s supposed to be smart , why would he do something stupid , that’s what Deku does and—

Shit.

When you notice your thoughts spiralling, he hears his fathers say, distant, stop yourself and ask why. You’re a smart boy, Katsuki, you can figure it out.

But he’s not smart. He’s proven that , clearly, because only fucking morons tell people to jump off rooftops, no matter how annoying they are.

He breathes, angry, as his mother starts screaming again. It’s not at him, not yet, so he ignores her, curling his fists and trying not to spark his hands in the towel. He … he feels guilty . Guilty means he thinks he did something wrong. Telling Deku to jump off the roof was wrong.

There. That’s it.

But this is more than just that, isn’t it? whispers All Might from his place on the wall. Would you feel the same if this happened to Fingers? To a different extra?

He scowls into the pillow. His stomach curls angrily inside him, and he sees Deku again, hand outstretched like he’s weak . Deku, who smiled like All Might and protected extras even when they did nothing to help. Deku, who protected people from him .

Heroes , he hears his own voice crowing, are the ones that beat villains! I’m going to be better than All Might one day, and never lose!

Oh.

When his mother slams open his door, screeching something about him being a horrible child and not understanding how her own son could do this, he looks into All Might’s glossy eyes and breaks .

“If I ever find the bastard that told the kid to give up on being a hero,” Shouta growls as he collapses onto the bean bag chair at home, “I’m going to make him eat his teeth. One by one .”

“A tad graphic,” Hizashi responds mildly as he shuts the door to their apartment, locking it behind him, “but I can’t say I disagree .”

Shouta drags a hand over his face. “He’s … he’s good , ‘Zashi. And the way he just … he just stared , like no one had ever said that to him before—”

Hizashi sighs, and slumps onto the couch. “Yeah,” he agrees. “And … look at you, Shou. It’s not like your quirk helps you fight, it just evens the playing field. And someone with that much drive ….” His voice trails off. One of their cats leaps onto his lap, and Hizashi pats it distractedly.

Shouta stares out the window, feels glass in his arms again. He feels a sudden weight in his arms, and wonders what those green eyes would look like, full of life and determined.

“Frankly,” Hizashi says, still petting Sprinkles, “I’m a bit upset at his mother.” Shouta turns his head to face his husband, and Hizashi raises his hands in surrender. “I know that you don’t blame her for … not noticing. But you heard what she said. She apologized when he got his diagnosis. Like it was an illness, not just the lack of a random power.”

Shouta shrugs. “That’s just how people are,” he says dully. “It’s why most of my students are the ways they are. Powerful quirks, yes, but they’ve been praised their whole lives for them. Think they deserve the ‘honor’ of being a hero just because their quirks are strong. They won’t last a week in the field.”

Hizashi hums in agreement. “The system isn’t doing them any favors.”

They both fall silent, listening to the rain fall on the rooftop. Bastard leaps onto Shouta’s lap and snuggles into him, and Shouta scratches between his ears appreciatively. The injustice of it all hits him again, angry and aggressive, and a memory of himself , small and with a quirk seen either as stupid or villainous by everyone around him, makes his heart burn with a long-forgotten intensity.

“He will be a hero,” Shouto says finally. “Damnit, he’ll be a better one all my homeroom students put together.”

Hizashi turns to him, curious. “The kid’s … well, not in a great place, Shou. How exactly …?”

“When I was … lost,” Shouta says carefully, “what saved me was schedules. Consistency. I’ll talk to his mother, and when he’s released ….”

Hizashi tilts his head at him, gaze interested.

Shouta’s hand grips his capture weapon in a bone white grip. “… I’ll train him myself. ”

The lights in the principal’s office are sickly yellow as Toshinori sits in the too-comfortable chair, watching the oily Watanabe smile. “I just have one question,” Toshinori asks, light. “What happened to that other teacher? The one that left so abruptly?”

The principal’s smile hardens slightly, into something guarded and twisted. “One of her students had an … incident,” he says. “She couldn’t handle the pressure, so she turned in her resignation on the same day.”

Something about the word resignation sits oddly in that man’s mouth, and Toshinori feels a shiver run down his back. “Which student?” he asks, trying his best to keep his voice only mildly curious.

“Bakugou Katsuki,” the principal replies. “He heard something about an … acquaintance of his, and left the class Monday, very upset.”

“Who was this acquaintance?” Toshinori presses, voice ticking up in urgency even as he tries to keep it even. 

“Oh,” the principal responds, turning to paperwork on his desk. “No one important. Some quirkless kid. Threw himself off a building.”

“This kid …” Toshinori continues, a faint sense of dread rising, because surely not , “he wouldn’t happen to be a student at the school, would he?”

The principal laughs. “Of course not anymore ,” he replies. He looks at Toshinori dead in the eyes, and the hero’s sense of danger-danger-danger flares bright and painful. “I mean, why would we teach a waste of space? Especially one who isn’t bothering to keep himself alive.”

He leans over the table, smile sharp and dangerous, and Toshinori’s blood freezes cold. Something in the man’s gaze holds him there , frozen solid and terrified. The skin where Watanabe’s hand had touched his seems to burn.

“After all,” the principal says, eyes boring into Toshinori’s, “quirks are the next step in evolution. And less evolved creatures…” the paper in his hands crumbles to ash, “ go extinct .”

Chapter Text

Midoriyas, contrary to popular belief, do not cry rivers.

Because there is a difference between tears of raw, positive emotions—ones that flow out with ease and ferocity—and those that force their way out in painful sobs. Pride causes Inko’s tears to flow easily, pride and excitement for her baby boy. The other tears are the ones that burn behind your eyelids, red-hot and full of grief and sadness. These tears squeeze their ways out of her eyes and trace molten paths down her skin, clinging to her face like a filmy mask. These tears do not erupt from her like pride-tears; they scream behind her eyes for hours until they finally leak out and make her breath come short in labored gasps.

Inko’s happy-cries are fountains of emotions that make Mitsuki laugh and call it her second quirk. And maybe it is some sort of vestigial mutation, though it certainly can’t be a true quirk —her darling Izuku does this as well. But when she cries like this, people smile and laugh because her blubbered words make it clear that it’s pride or joy that fuels them.

When Inko sad-cries, people stare and worry that she cannot breathe.

It’s not an unreasonable concern; when she cries with grief, her breaths hiccup and her body shakes with coughs. It comes shuddered, with great gulping breaths interrupted by gasping sobs.

Inko does not like sad-crying, and sometimes she resents her happy-crying too—because that makes it all the more clear, when sad-tears come, that she is not okay.

She sits in the hospital hallway as she cries, Izuku’s room just on the other side. She had been kicked out for his therapy appointment—not that she needed much encouragement, because she’d been blinking back hot tears for nearly an hour. The therapist had made it … all the more real , because it solidified that her darling son really was not okay , and he hadn’t been for a long time.

How could she have been so blind?

She sees Izuku’s eyes again, their green dulled by their lifelessness. It’s so clear , now that she looks for it. His posture is slumped on the hospital bed, and almost defensive—had he ever sat like that at home? Had he cried out for help and had Inko somehow missed it ?

She knows Izuku had slumped sometimes when she asked about school, or about Katsuki, but—well, when she asks Katsuki about school he just grumbled. So to her, slumped deflections were just … that was just what teenagers did , wasn’t it? And him not telling her of problems—well, it was normal for teenagers to hide things from their parents; kami knows Inko did that plenty. But there was something different about Izuku’s silence, she knows now, and she curses herself for not looking into his eyes and seeing .

Inko buries her head into her hands as her body shakes with sobs.

“Hey,” comes a voice from above her, soft. “Are you alright?”

Inko’s head snaps up and she inhales sharply, tear-stained face looking to the speaker. It’s a slender woman with white hair and a worried expression. Her hands are twisted together nervously and her eyes look like they—well, they look like she recognizes Inko’s situation.

Inko swallows and nods jerkily. “I’m alright. I just … well, I had t-to leave the room f-for my son's therapy session, and I just—” She gestures with her hands helplessly.

The woman smiles sadly. “I understand.” She sits down lightly in the chair next to Inko and holds out her hand. “I’m … Yukimura Rei.”

Inko nods and wipes her eyes. “Midoriya Inko,” she replies, taking the hand.

Yukimura meets Inko’s eyes, a question there as she removes her hand from the handshake and hovers it over Inko’s shoulder. Inko nods, and the hand that holds her is cold and soothing.

“So,” she says, “you’re here for your son?”

Inko shudders and nods, shoulders hunching in. “Y-yes. I … well, he a-attempted s-suicide and he’s at his m-mandatory therapy app-pointment right now so—” She cuts herself off. “Do you … have any children?”

Yukimura’s expression shutters. “Yes,” she replies, quiet. She dips her head and twists her hem between her fingers. “Four. Well, three, now, they tell me.”

Oh . No wonder she understands, if she’s lost a child of her own. “Is … one of them here, then?”

Yukimura shakes her head, not looking up from her lap, and a sad smile crosses her face. “Just me here. I am the one that is unwell.”

Inko blinks at her, because … this is the pediatric ward, so why—

“The nurses let me take walks sometimes,” Yukimura continues. “This place … it reminds me of my children, so I walk this way. And when I see … another mother alone ….”

“Thank you,” Inko whispers. Sad-tears gather in her eyes again, and they burn as they trickle down her face.

Yukimura Rei smiles, and as she puts her hand on Inko’s shoulder again, the fabric crackles slightly with frost. “It’s the least I can do,” she says. She stands and tilts her head at Inko. “I hope to see you again?” It’s a question, ever so hesitant, and that look in her eyes is just so familiar .

“Of course,” Inko replies, watery, and waves goodbye to Rei, white hair disappearing into the blankness of the hospital walls.

On Wednesday, Katsuki returns to school.

After his complete breakdown in his bedroom that resulted in tears that were healthy or whatever, his parents had argued about whether or not returning to school would help. His mother insisted that he needed a sense of schedule in his life again and to see his “shitty friends” while his father claimed that Katsuki should take more time to reflect with them.

Not surprisingly, his mother won.

Katsuki isn’t particularly upset about this turn of events. He itches to … well, do something to distract himself from the constant whispering in his head and the nausea that bubbles up in his stomach at random times. And there’s something … bothering him about school, something squirming at the back of his brain that he doesn’t yet understand.

Something is just not right .

So he gives a short nod goodbye to his parents and heads out the door, hands shoved in his pockets and shoulders slumped. There’s a pebble on the sidewalk and he kicks it angrily, feeling a thrum of satisfaction when it hits a tree.

“Hey! Bakugou!”

Katsuki turns to see two figures jogging up to him, waving their hands excitedly. Fingers and Eyeballs. He huffs and turns back, continuing his walk to school.

Fingers’ stick hands squeeze Bakugou’s shoulder as he catches up. “Bakugou,” he repeats. “You’re back!”

Katsuki growls and his hands light defensively. “Get off me.”

Fingers back up, raising his hands in surrender. “Sorry, sorry, I forgot man.”

“Touchy,” Eyeballs snorts. Katsuki spins and lights up again, and Eyeballs also raises his hands in surrender, albeit more sarcastically.

“So …” Fingers drawls, “what happened Monday? You just stormed out without warning!”

Eyeballs leans closer, eyes bright. “Yeah, what was with that?” He glances at Fingers. “See, Yobun here said you flipped when he mentioned Deku, but he’s always full of shit, so ….”

Katsuki scowls again. “‘Course it was Deku, dumbfucks,” he growls. “Who else would it be?”

Eyeballs raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, but it’s Deku ,” he says in a tone that sounds far too reasonable. “Who gives a shit about him?”

The slowly simmering anger and nausea in Katsuki’s stomach suddenly curdles. What? “Just because he’s a nerd doesn’t mean he should die ,” he snaps.

Fingers shrugs. “I mean he’s not much use to society, right? A drain on resources.”

Katsuki stares at Fingers, and his hands spark reflexively—not with anger but with fear . What the hell? Have they … have they always been like this? Deku’s an annoying stalker nerd but he’s still … still a person . He doesn’t deserve to die . “Where’d you hear that?”

Fingers shrugs and kicks a rock into the woods. “Dunno. Everyone, I guess.” He squints at Bakugou. “Are you feeling alright, man?”

Katsuki swallows and plasters a scowl back on his face. “Fine.” They’re nearly at school now, and the turmoil in his stomach has only intensified.

“Oh, by the way,” Eyeballs says, “we’ve got a new homeroom teacher. Old one quit or some shit after your episode.”

Katsuki blinks. After … after his episode? But he barely did anything , he just missed a day and a half of school. She was Deku’s homeroom teacher too, wouldn’t—wouldn’t that make more sense as a justification?

As they step into the school and head towards homeroom, Katsuki feels all the eyes of his classmates on him, blankly curious and cautious. They all dip their heads to him formally and part to let him through.

“Good to see you back, Bakugou,” says someone from his side. He whips around to stare at them—it’s an extra he barely recognizes, who is giving him a smile that just—just isn’t right . The hair on the back of Katsuki’s neck stands up.

There is something really wrong with this school.

As Toshinori sits in the teacher’s lounge, waiting for class to start, he can’t help rubbing the place that Watanabe had touched him. It itches oddly.

“So ….” It’s a green-skinned woman with slitted pupils who addresses him from her place atop a desk. She tilts her head and her snake-hair hisses around her. “Shimura, is it?”

Toshinori starts and nods. “Yes.” He stops rubbing his wrist and extends his hand out to her in greeting. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Nakamura Saki,” she replies. She eyes his outstretched hand but doesn’t take it. “Marked already, are you?”

Toshinori frowns, the hair on the back of his neck standing up. “What?” 

A high laugh from a chair at a desk. A tall woman with hair nearly to her waist spins around, and Toshinori is hit with the faint scent of flowers. “Don’t be dramatic,” she says, voice lilting musically. She stands and takes Toshinori’s outstretched hand gently. “Kobayashi Meiku,” she says.

“Nice to meet you,” Toshinori says. The smell of flowers is potent, and he has to resist the urge to sneeze. The mild sense of wrongness recedes at her kind words, though he still gives Nakamura a suspicious glance.

“Likewise,” Kobayashi replies. “Have you met the rest of the homeroom teachers yet?”

Toshinori shakes his head awkwardly, glancing around the room. “No, actually,” he admits. “I’m not the best at introducing myself.”

“And no one else is talkative,” Kobayashi laments. “Well, that’s easily fixed! Come on, don’t be frosty to our new member!”

Someone from the back of the lounge sighs loudly. “He’s just a substitute, though.”

Kobayashi frowns, hands on her hips. “With that attitude, yes!”

Toshinori coughs. “I mean, I did just plan on staying for the rest of this year—”

There’s quiet hissing from his side, and Toshinori turns to face Nakamura. She seems to be doing an odd snake variation of laughing. “That’s what Kakusei said, and look at him now.” 

A horned man, standing in the corner with a cup of water, grumbles. “Shut up.”

“That’s Kakusei,” Kobayashi informs him unnecessarily. “The one over there with the spike-hair is Yamamoto, black-hair is Takahashi, and—”

The door slams open to a short woman with yellow hair, eyes bright. An orange bubble shoots out from one hand as she strides towards Toshinori with purpose.

“—that’s Suzuki,” Kobayashi finishes. “Late as always.”

Suzuki doesn’t even bother glancing at Kobayashi as she replies. “You know how it is, I just had to take out the trash again.” Her eyes gleam with near-manic excitement, and Toshinori has to suppress a flinch as they lock eyes. “Is it true you worked with All Might?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Toshinroi notices that the orange bubble that had shot past him seems to be moving back and forth across a desk. Such blatant quirk use? This was a public school, so shouldn’t the teachers be bound by—he should calm down. It’s the teacher’s lounge, and no one is around to see. She’s just saving some time, like anyone would when running late to work.

“Shimura?”

Toshinori blinks, suddenly remembering the question. Suzuki still stares up at him. “Yes, I did,” he replies.

“And you’re quirkless.” It’s said in a blunt, neutral tone, and Toshinori feels his stomach drop as he thinks of green eyes, desperate and afraid.

“Yes.” His reply is cold, maybe too cold. “Have been since I was born.”

There’s a hiss from Nakamura, and her tongue flicks out. Toshinori shivesr. “Hmm,” she says. “Fascinating.”

The horned man crumbles his paper cup in his hand. “Stop drooling, you’re creeping him out.”

Nakamura smiles, and Toshinori notices razor-sharp fangs. “You know as well as I do that snakes don’t drool, Kakusei.”

“Cut it out, you two,” Kobayashi snaps. Her voice has lost some of its musicality, but the smell of flowers has intensified.

Kakusei throws the crumpled cup at Nakamura; one of her snakes lunges up and catches it in its mouth. “I hate you all,” he says.

“It’s time for homeroom, anyway,” one of the other people comments. His hair is spiny and looks pin-sharp … Yamamoto? “If you all don’t get going, the kids will be wild by the time class starts.”

Suzuki groans dramatically, and her bubble returns to her, depositing its contents neatly into her arms. “Brats,” she says. “Honestly, they should respect their s-elders.” She looks at Toshinori quickly and diverts her gaze. Toshinori frowns, but his head is almost fuzzy and he can’t quite grasp —

“I’ll point Shimura to homeroom,” a quiet voice says. It’s the black-haired person from before, and they stand in a smooth motion. “Unless you’d rather, Kobayashi?”

Kobayashi waves a hand. “Go ahead.”

Toshinori collects his belongings and stands, ducking out of the door that Takahashi is holding for him. The air is oddly fresh here, and he feels a chill running down his back from his skull all the way to his toes.

His wrist itches something awful. He reaches down to rub it again, awkward with the folders in his hands.

“You’re really quirkless,” Takahashi says. Their voice is curious, kinder than Suzuki’s, but something deep in Toshinori screams at him to run.

He frowns instead. “Yes.”

“Huh,” Takahashi says. They’re stopped at a door now, and even from here Toshinori can hear the noise. “Well, good luck then.” They give Toshinori a final nod before continuing down the hallway.

Toshinori thinks of green eyes and a broken smile, takes a deep breath, and pushes open the door.

Chapter Text

The sub who steps into the classroom is tall, blond, and painfully skinny. His eyes are sunk into his face, and he clutches his folders to his chest tightly. He stumbles to his desk and drops the papers onto it, breathing hard enough that Katsuki can almost hear it.

The bell rings, loud and grating, and the sub straightens the papers hastily. The noise in the classroom lowers somewhat as the more studious students slowly trickle back into their seats, leaving only the groups huddled around Katsuki’s desk and the back. They’ve been talking above him for the past half hour, as Katsuki fought to keep his expression blank as they cycled through meaningless conversation topics that settled wrong in his stomach.

None of them seem to react to the bell, so Katsuki lets off an explosion and snarls at them. They scatter back to their seats, and Katsuki turns back to the front to see—

The sub stares at him, intimidating in a way Katsuki has never felt before. Those blue eyes burn into his soul and his nausea spikes dramatically as he swallows.

“Good morning,” the sub says. His posture is hunched, but he still towers over the class in stature and in something deeper. “My name is Shimura-sensei, and I will be your homeroom teacher for the rest of this year.” He turns to write his name in kanji on the blackboard, his movements are sharp and methodical. “I am going to start by taking roll. Sato Daichi?” 

“Here.” An extra near the back shoots a hand up, quirk-extended. Shimura-sensei blinks, and Katsuki resists the urge to shiver.

“Right. Suzuki Himari?”

“Present.”

Katsuki turns his head slightly to the side as he hears Fingers start to whisper something, tuning out the roll. 

“Wonder if Deku’s still on the list,” Fingers was saying, voice a near drawl. Katsuki’s hand tightens around his pencil. 

“What do you mean? He’s just in the hospital, right?” Some extra he doesn’t care enough to even nickname. Maybe he should, if she’s spouting bullshit like this. Maybe just Dumbass.

“Nah, last I heard he was expelled.”

Katsuki’s head snaps fully towards Fingers and the other extra. “What do you mean, he was expelled?”

Fingers gives him the same odd look as earlier. “Cause he almost died.”

“Yobun Banzo.”

Fingers’s head snaps up, and he extends his fingers lazily. “Present.” He turns back to Katsuki conspiratorially. “Not exactly a shock , is it? Was bound to happen sooner or later.”

“What do you mean?”

It’s Dumbass that stares at him this time, generic face tilted with an odd expression. “I mean, you know the statistics.”

Katsuki just blinks, not even deigning to grace that with a response.

“Bakugou Katsuki.”

Katsuki starts at the sound of his name. He raises a hand and grunts. That’s about as much energy as he has to give right now.

“You know, the statistics,” Fingers insists when Katsuki´s hand lowers. “We use them for examples in math and shit?” He rolls his eyes as Katsuki continues to stare. “Right, forgot we were talking about our resident class genius. Have you ever even studied?”

“I’ve used the textbook.”

Dumbass sighs. “It’s not in the textbook, it’s the in class examples and whatever. Like when we do statistics we use like, quirk stats and stuff? Quirkless unemployment rates, quirk discrimination, crime rates?”

“Nakashima Yua.”

Dumbass’s head jerks up at the teacher’s voice. She raises her hand. “Here.”

Fingers snaps his fingers and makes a weird sort of gesture in Katsuki’s direction, as if that explains anything at all. “You know, class?”

Katsuki just stares at him blankly, both because he doesn’t have an answer because it’ll piss him off.

“Whatever,” Fingers groans. He leans back in his hair and glares at the ceiling. “Fuckin’ geniuses, not having to pay any attention in class.”

Katsuki scowls, shoving down the growing nausea in his stomach. Damn, he really needs to burn it off. “Who needs math to be a hero, anyway?”

Dumbass squints at him. “What about like, stats and whatever?”

Fingers pokes her harshly. “Shut up. He can hire people.”

A throat is cleared from the front of the room. Katsuki looks up lazily, and immediately has to suppress a shiver again at the glare of the teacher. His fists clench and his anger boils up, threatening to spark his skin.

“Now that roll is finished,” Shimura-sensei says pointedly, eyes sweeping over Fingers and Dumbass, “I am going to give a little more of an introduction. As you may have already guessed, I will be your homeroom teacher for the remainder of the semester. As such, feel free to come to me with any concerns relating to schoolwork, personal matters, or quirk use. The rest of this hour will be spent as a study hour.” Shimura-sensei’s eyes rake across the room again. “Does anyone have any questions?”

A hand shoots up after a moment. Shimura-sensei nods at her, and her voice is deeply curious when she speaks. “What’s your quirk, Shimura-sensei?”

Katsuki leans forward, hands heating again in anticipation, because—his stance, while outwardly slumped, conveys such a sense of passive power that it has to be something strong. His gaze is so piercing—maybe laser-eyes? Or their cold nature might suggest ice?

Shimura-sensei blinks, and the sheer disappointment in his gaze makes Katsuki want to sink into the floor, despite not asking the question. “I’m quirkless,” he says matter-of-factly, straightening the papers on his desk with a snap. “Any further questions?”

The classroom is dead silent. The extra who asked the question sits rigid in her seat.

“Wonderful,” Shimura-sensei says, and the rest of that hour of homeroom is the quietest hour Katsuki has ever known.

As Yagi Toshinori sits at his desk, itching at his wrist absently, he has to fight to keep his expression from showing the nausea that boils in his stomach.

It’s just so blatant. Students using their quirks to raise their hands or emphasize points, the sheer shock in the classroom when he revealed he was quirkless. It’s clearly been … well, encouraged by the teachers. Which is fair enough, the quirk use seems mostly harmless, but something about it makes him shiver.

His gaze lifts from the papers on his desk and lands on the blond kid in the middle of the classroom, one Bakugou Katsuki. His current posture, somewhat stiff, is at complete odds from his lazy slump at the beginning of class.

Toshinori frowns, trying to pinpoint what bothered him so much about the change in stance. Bakugou had threatened the other students in such a casual way at the beginning of class, with the self-assured confidence of someone who had done that many times before. And the casualness in which he responded to his two chattering classmates all points to someone with an unflappable sense of confidence.

For that to vanish at the mere mention of Toshinori being quirkless—

In fact, all of the students had reacted that way, with expressions of pure confusion and something almost like fear. The silence he’d expected to fall away after he finished talking still hasn’t broken.

That … there is something wrong there, and it is driving him insane that he just can’t quite pinpoint what.

A hand raises from the back of the classroom, and Toshinori’s head snaps up at the movement. The student raising it meets his gaze and flinches, and the hand shoots down immediately.

Toshinori raises an eyebrow at the student, whose gaze is now firmly on the page in front of them. A shiver runs down his spine, and he rubs his rest against the bottom of his desk.

What … what was that?

Someone whispers something fiercely at Bakugou—it’s one of the students that had spoken to him during roll. Toshinori glances down at the attendance list—Yobun, who had responded to his name with casual quirk use. Bakugou snaps something back under his breath, and there—the aggressiveness has returned full force.

Hmm. Bakugou … wasn’t that the student who’d had the “outburst” that caused his predecessor to leave?

The kid’s eyes drift up to his, and Toshinori sees something break through Bakugou’s angry expression in a painful twinge. The student snaps his gaze back to the papers laid out on his desk.

Toshinori itches his wrist again, staring up at the clock on the wall. The second had creeps towards the minute, and Toshinori watches as half of the students visibly startle at the sudden noise. The sudden flurry of movement and paper-rustling ensues as the class scrambles towards the door, only speaking in quiet whispers and furtive glances.

Bakugou Katsuki stands from his desk and throws his bag over his shoulder, hands stuffed into his pockets. He looks towards Toshinori again, and there’s something in his gaze that Toshinori can’t quite identify. Anger? Suspicion? Then the student turns and stalks out the door, ducking into the sea of his classmates and disappearing into the halls.

Toshinori scratches at his wrist again as the classroom empties. The pit in his stomach deepens in an emotion he feels so rarely as the Symbol of Peace, because it is his job to be confident and smile and fix the world’s problems with a well-placed punch. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t familiar, because it is, in a bone-deep way he’d forgotten, from when he was young and before his mentor entered his life.

Because the sinking in his stomach isn’t just dread, or horror—it’s the memory of being watched and hated, for being judged for something you can’t control. It’s the phantom eyes of his classmates again, pointing and laughing and kicking him into the dirt.

It’s the complete certainty, that despite no one saying a word, that you are nothing but a worthless outlier, deserving of society’s scorn.

Toshinori slumps on his chair, suppressing a shudder as he sees a boy with life drained from his eyes falling down, down, down.

If he’s right … and he knows there is something wrong here, with the rampant quirk use and casual behaviors ….

Quirkless doesn’t mean what it used to, does it?

Izuku is still shaking when Dr. Shinsou leaves the room, hands curled into fists on the sheets. His head is spinning around and around in a desperate, panicked spiral, because he didn’t mean to say that, but it’s not choking him like it usually does, robbing him of any space to think unless he lets it stutter out his mouth. No, the frantic circling of his thoughts is muted by that awful sense of numbness and nothingness that he normally only feels at night when his thoughts spiral dark.

You and I think too much, Izuku , he remembers his mother telling him. She poked him fondly in the head. And you’ve got such a big brain it has more space to do the worrying .

Oh god, is Dr. Shinsou going to tell Mom?

A quiet knock comes from the door, and Izuku turns in time to see it slowly swing open. It’s his mother who stands there, eyes oddly red. She puts a hand on the doorframe and seems to try to smile. “Izuku,” she asks, hesitant, “is it alright for me to come in?”

Izuku shrugs and turns his gaze back to the sheets. The material is scratchy where it is bunched in his fists. “If you want.”

She nods at that, stepping in the room, but it’s a shaky movement. The guilt around Izuku’s stomach tightens painfully.

“How was it?” she asks softly when she is seated. Her hand twitches as if to reach out towards him, but Izuku is gripping the sheets too tightly to let go.

“Dunno,” Izuku replies. He studies her face for a long moment, seeing the tear-tracks down her cheeks, and looks away. “I think she quirked me.”

Mom blinks at him. “What?” Her expression darkens to something protective, an anger that seems so strange on her kind face. “She got that close to you?”

Izuku blinks right back at her. “What do you mean?” He tilts his head at her, and feels his thoughts spin. “Her quirk’s voice activated, isn’t it?”

Mom shakes her head. “No, touch activated. Some form of mind control?” The worry in her eyes has lessened somewhat, but she still stares at Izuku expectantly.

“Oh.” Izuku falls back against his pillow. He stares at the ceiling blankly and counts the tiles there.

“So she didn’t …?”

“No,” Izuku says sharply. The tiles on the ceiling are large and few, only twenty-seven in number. He starts counting again.

Mom sighs, the sound heavy with emotions Izuku is too tired to untangle. “Good.”

A machine beeps from the hallway, steady and sure. Izuku wonders idly how many times he has counted the tiles on the ceiling. Maybe he should start counting that instead.

“Izuku,” Mom says softly, “please, just—know that you can talk to me, alright? I know you might not want to worry me, but not knowing makes me worry just as much.” She taps his head lightly. “We’re a bit alike in that way.”

The guilt-snake around his stomach tightens and hisses at him, sharp and accusatory. It snaps at any response he may have, and his throat flinches and closes up.

Mom sighs, but her voice still is soft and so kind. “Alright,” she murmurs. “You don’t have to talk, you know.” Her gaze leaves his and scans the room, then stops, clearly finding it. She stands and moves out of his line of sight, and there is a quiet thump as something is placed on the table next to him.

Izuku stares upward. Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five ….

Mom reaches out a hand to his, carefully taking it in her own. She squeezes it tightly and leans over him, giving him a gentle kiss on the forehead. “I love you, Izuku.”

Hours later, when his mother has shifted to the recliner in the corner of the room and the lights are off, he turns his head to the side.

Something charred and wrinkled sits there, title ink smeared and smudged. Hero Analysis for the Future , it reads. 13 .

“ You have the heart of a hero, Izuku. You can be a hero. ”

In the darkness of a hospital room, surrounded by the humming of machines, something inside Izuku sparks back to life.

Chapter Text

At lunch, everything is too loud and too quiet all at the same time. The extras chatter around him absently, painfully mundane conversation topics that he struggles to follow. But he has to follow them—because he’s apparently fucking missed all this shit because he didn’t care enough to pay attention. Still, he catches himself drifting when the conversations becomes particularly dull, and even wishes fucking Deku don’t call him Deku, don’t were here. His muttering was at least more interesting than this drivel.

Abruptly, he notices that he’d stopped paying attention again. He tunes back in as his fingernails bite into his palm.

“—can’t believe the homework Kakusei-sensei assigned us,” groans Flame-Hair. She stabs at her food somewhat aggressively, and Katsuki realizes he’s also barely touched his food. He shoves a mouthful in his mouth hurriedly as the extra continues. “I mean, what’s the point of making us memorize the vocab words? Most teachers like, give you a list.”

“We are third years,” Spider-Eyed points out. She tilts her head and her pairs of eyes blink one by one. “They’re going to give us harder work.”

“But memorization is stupid,” groans Fingers. He shoves a bite of rice in his mouth and speaks through it. “He just wants to make us suffer. Sadistic bastard.”

Eyeballs leans forward. “Speaking of teachers,” he says in a low tone, almost conspiratorial, “what do you all think of Shimura-sensei?”

The mood drops perceptively, and Katsuki watches with fascination as each of their expressions shift into discomfort. He feels his own twist as well, suppressing a shiver at those cold eyes that stared him down from across the room.

It’s Spider-Eyed that breaks the silence, drumming her fingers against the table. “He … he was lying, right?”

Katsuki scoffs, and the table turns to him as one. “Why’d he do that, though?” he points out. “Bit weird. It’d make more sense for a quirkless to pretend to have a quirk.”

Fingers blinks at him. “What?”

Katsuki stares right back, feeling his anger bubble hot in his stomach. “What d’you mean, ‘what’, dumbass?”

Bubbles clears his throat—Katsuki had barely even noticed him until now. “People wouldn’t fake quirks,” he says. He sounds like Katsuki just suggested that the Earth was flat or something. “You don’t—how would that even work?”

Katsuki shrugs, but the anger has deepened into something dark and pitlike in his gut. He swallows, and clenches his fist under the table to keep it from sparking. “If you don’t show the quirk … I mean, I’d’ve believed Shimura-sensei if he said he has laser-vision or somethin’.”

Flame-Hair tilts her head. “So you think that’s his quirk, then?”

Katsuki spins to face her. “Hah? The fuck did I just say? What fucking reason would he have to pretend to be quirkless?”

Fingers shakes his head. “He’s not quirkless,” he says. “Can’t be. He doesn’t … doesn’t act it. Right? You all saw it!”

“He didn’t,” agrees Horns. He looks up at the ceiling of the cafeteria like it’ll give him knowledge or some shit. “Maybe it’s like … a test?”

“Of what?” Katsuki snaps. “The fuck is up with you all? He said he’s quirkless, he’s fuckin’ quirkless. You’re all fuckin’ dumbasses.”

“What’s up with you?” Eyeballs asks. “You’ve been acting weird since this morning.” His grin shifts to something Katsuki can’t quite identify. Smugness? “What, little Deku your friend after all?” His voice shifts sing-song. “ Deku-lover, Deku-lover, Deku-lover…”

His palms light and the explosion scorches the table; he’s standing and his hand is reaching out to grab Eyeballs and he’s screeching but Eyeballs is still just smiling and mocking and singing Deku over and over again and—

He’s on top of Eyeballs, and the singing stops and he screams instead and suddenly he can think and— what the fuck did he just do.

Katsuki stands above a curled up Eyeballs. They’d moved towards the open floor, away from the tables, and Eyeballs is nursing a burnt shoulder and snarling something at Katsuki, curses and insults and meaningless phrases. It’s all just noise, because all Katsuki hears is villain, villain, villain—

Eyeballs spits at Katsuki’s feet. “Fuckin’ sympathizer.”

Katsuki hears several people inhale sharply around him, and his ears ring from the explosion and his palms still trail smoke. When a hand latches onto his shoulder and pulls him away, saying something about a counselor, he lets it, and wonders how he ever could have thought he was a hero.

Midoriya Izuku, reads the header on a water-wrinkled page. Quirk: None.

The rest of the page sits blank, and Izuku taps his pencil against his chin, staring at the page with an odd mixture of anxiety and excitement. 

The next line should be strengths, but he doubts his hands are steady enough right now to make that legible.

Nor would he know what to write there.

“Izuku?” It’s his mom, looking up from her book to lean towards him. “Could I see what you’re writing? It’s fine if you’re not comfortable, though!”

Izuku chews his lip. “Sure,” he replies. His voice is quiet as he holds out the journal for inspection.

There’s a soft inhale as his mom’s mouth falls open. “Oh,” she says, and there’s—there’s happiness there, now, and Izuku has to swallow a lump in his throat as he sees her eyes well up with tears. “Izuku…”

Izuku’s shoulder hunch in, embarrassed in spite of himself. “I—it’s silly, but I justwasthinking that maybe I could—could w-write a little bit about myself even though I’m not really a hero—”

His mother takes his face in his hands and turns it towards her. “You already are a hero,” she tells him firmly. 

The lump in his throat shudders, and he swallows. “A-Alright.”

Her hands drop onto his shoulders. “Do you … have a hero name?” She gestures to the right of the page, where the said name always goes if he also knows their civilian name.

A hero name. Somehow, even with all of his daydreaming and playacting as a kid, some part of him never really believed that he deserved one of his own. He told himself he’d choose one related to his quirk, when it finally came in—and when he gave up on that—

But he thinks of a rooftop, of people like ants and a flight coming to a sudden halt as his waist is firmly entangled in fabric. He remembers the wind through his hair, of a hospital, and of a hero who took his hands and told him you can be a hero .

He swallows, and his hand shakes as he grips the pencil. His mother looks at him with something that is both fragile and strong, eyes bright with care that gives both joy and sorrow.

“I think so.” He looks down at the notebook, at his name written in firm kanji, and presses his pencil into the page to print two more.

更生. 

Renewal. Life.

Rebirth.

“Kousei,” he breathes, and when his mother chokes out a sob and wraps her arms around him in a tight embrace, he melts into her with a smile on his face.

“Aizawa,” says Tsukauchi, voice weary and relieved as the door swings open, “thank you for agreeing to help with this case.”

Shouta slumps into the seat in front of the desk. “It’s my job,” he replies. He props himself up on his elbows and leans forward. “So, you said it was a quirk-related homicide?”

“Close,” comes the reply. “There’s no obvious quirk use in the murder itself, but as this is the third murder in the area, all with similar causes of death and disposal of the bodies … well, it’s clear we’re looking at a serial killer.”

Shouta sucks in a breath through his teeth. Damn, he hates serial killers, especially those with a ‘type’. “So the quirk-related aspect is in the targets?”

Tsukauchi slides a folder over the desk. “All of the victims had ‘weak’ quirks, according to their relatives and family members.”

Shouta winces. “Quirk supremacy, then?”

The detective taps his fingers on the table in a pattern. “It’s a bit early to say conclusively, but we’re worried that’s the case. And the definition of ‘weak quirks’ seems to line up with Destro’s definition.”

“A copycat, then.”

“Most likely.” Tsukauchi flips open the folder and taps the autopsy report. “All died of a snapped neck, with bruising around the neck suggesting a twisting. They also were all tied up in a trash bag, only discovered when neighbors reported the smell.” He winces, and Shouta feels bile creep up his throat. “The method of disposal also seems to suggest a call to Destro’s reference to weak-quirked people as ‘trash’.”

Shouta takes the file and flips through it. “And the killer is operating in Musutafu, then?” Something nags at him; there’s something important about that location.

“Yes.” Tsukauchi taps his fingers against the desk. “Incidentally, Musutafu has one of the lowest rates of ‘weak-quirked’ and quirkless people in Japan, which does make it easier to compile a list of possible victims.” He gestures vaguely at his computer. “We’ve put some of the higher-risk targets under surveillance.”

That’s good, at least . But … Shouta flips to the front cover of the folder, running his finger down the list of statistics for Musutafu. His finger slows and stops at quirk statistics .

“This can’t be right.” So called ‘weak-quirked’ people account for nearly 60% of the population, so a number like 15% is—and the quirkless rate—

The detective’s expression is grim. “Musutafu does seem to have a long history of disappearances, and their police force … I can’t say too much, but I was assigned this case for a reason.”

Shouta pulls himself up on his elbows. “So there’s a … ”

Tsukauchi’s eyes bore into Shouta’s. “I don’t know,” he says darkly, and Shouta’s stomach drops to his feet. “But it’s hard to believe that a quirkless rate of 1% is a coincidence, isn’t it?”

Chapter Text

Inko stares at the two characters that she’d written in ink on her skin. Rebirth , they read, Kousei.

Her son’s hero name.

Something leaks out of her eyes, hot and wet. They’re odd today, because they’re neither pride-tears nor sorrow-tears. They sneak out of the corners of her eyes and trace a path down her cheeks.

“Kousei,” she says softly. She traces the characters again and closes her eyes, not bothering to wipe her face.

“Midoriya?”

Inko turns, head raising to see Himura Rei standing before her, grey eyes soft as she takes in Inko’s form. She gestures to the empty chair next to Inko. “May I sit here?”

Inko swallows. “Sure,” she replies.

Rei sits, and the pleasant chill that emanates off her makes it suddenly easier for Inko to breathe. She places a cool hand on Inko’s shoulder. “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” Inko replies, and is surprised how much she means it. She had thought—she had feared —well, her Izuku had looked so small and tired and frighteningly empty when he woke, mere mentions of heroes make him want to flinch. Izuku , her little hero-lover, flinching at heroes? It just wasn’t—wasn’t right.

But then he wrote in his notebook, and Inko had very nearly cried tears of relief.

Relief. Maybe that was what she felt now.

“That’s good,” Rei replies. Her gaze falls to Inko’s wrist, reads the characters there. Her breath catches, and Inko is horrified to see her eyes fill with tears. “That’s— oh .” Her hand falls from Inko’s shoulder.

“What’s wrong?”

Rei leans back in the chair, expression haunted. “I—well.” She stares at the characters again, and a tear falls down her face, leaving a frosty trail in its wake. “My son—he—he was thinking that would be his hero name….”

Inko blinks. “Oh. That’s—my son just picked it out for his—do you—is there already a hero with—?”

Rei shakes her head. “My—my eldest. He never got to use it.” Her shoulders shake, and it’s Inko’s turn to place careful hands on her shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” Inko murmurs. “I didn’t know—”

Rei takes a shuddering breath, and pulls her arms close to herself, a phantom hug, and turns to meet Inko’s gaze. “No, it’s alright,” she says. “He would—he would have liked someone to use it.”

Inko stares at the characters again.

Rebirth .

Kousei.

“Appropriate,” she says softly.

“Yes,” replies Rei. A shaky hand reaches out and closes over the words tightly. “For both of them.”

They sit there, two mothers in a too-white hall; a silent bond between the grieving.

And as Rei shudders and her grip grows tight, Inko swears that she will be like her son, and save her from whatever demons lurk in her past.

The knocking on the door of the staff door is loud and jarring, cutting through the almost unnatural silence of the room. Toshinori’s head snaps towards the noise with just a little too much speed—he winces, because that was the reaction of a pro hero, not of a schoolteacher. He coughs into his elbow and cringes to see it splattered in blood.

“Who’s Bakugou’s teacher?” It’s Suzuki who stands in the doorway, eyes wild and glowing faintly as tiny bubbles leak from her fingertips. “Who’s his homeroom teacher?”

From the corner of his eyes, Toshinori sees the horned Kakusei stand. “ It’s … Tahara, right?” He scans the room wildly, and his gaze lands on Toshinori. He feels a chill run through him as the already dark eyes darken further. “Oh. She left.”

“Fuck,” Suzuki swears, slamming the door behind her in a splash of orange. The word is at such odds with her previous demeanor that Toshinori feels slightly off-balance. “We’ve already got Kobayashi with him, but—”

“Calm down,” Kakusei says, and Toshinori wonders if he imagines the glance his way. “Technically, we should still send Shimura—”

“I’ll go.” Toshinori barely realizes he’s spoken, or that he’s standing, and for just a moment the pain in his side is almost completely muted by the adrenaline. “I ought to get to know the students, right?”

Kakusei looks towards Suzuki, who narrows her eyes at him. Something in them glints.

“Your funeral,” she says, slumping into a chair and spinning in a slow circle.

Toshinori turns to Kakusei, who only gives him a half-shrug. “I suppose,” is all he says. “Be gentle with him.”

How odd , he thinks, as he heads out the door and towards the counselor’s office. Bakugou Katsuki does not exactly seem like a person who needs coddling.

“Midoriya,” Dr. Shinsou says, voice soft and understanding, “you understand that what your peers did to you was wrong, correct?

Izuku’s hands are curled around the fabric of his pants—they’d let him change out of the hospital scrubs by now—and he stares resolutely at the floor. “Yeah,” he replies.

“You went through what seems to be some severe conditioning by your classmates,” Dr. Shinsou continues. “And I would not be surprised if you are in a situation where you understand something but don’t really believe it.”

Izuku bites the inside of his cheek, because that is exactly right, and exactly why everything is so frustrating. He knew—had always known, probably, on an intellectual level, that Kacchan shouldn’t push him, that his classmates shouldn’t leave spider lilies on his desk and call him Deku and steal his things. And if it had happened to anyone else, he would have been furious, would have stepped in and told them to stop.

But it isn’t someone else. It’s him , and that makes it somehow … different.

“I hate it,” he says suddenly, and his nails try to dig into his palms through the fabric. “I know all of this, I do , but sometimes I just—it’s easier to just—” His voice trails off. “To—to just not say anything, I guess.”

“And that is completely normal,” Dr. Shinsou says. “Your logical mind and emotions don’t always agree with each other, and I suspect with your analytical mind … you think of the emotions as ‘not real’?”

He nods glumly. “I know it’s irrational, and that I’m not the one wrong in this situation, but it just—sometimes I believe them—”

“Midoriya,” Dr. Shinsou says softly, “just because they’re not logical, doesn’t mean your emotions—your feelings—aren’t real.”

Izuku lifts his gaze to hers, and the sincerity there makes his breath hitch. “R-Really?” he asks, hating how his voice shakes at the single word.

“Yes,” she says firmly. “Midoriya, what your school did to you was—it was terrible. This isn’t your fault—you did not cause these problems. It’s not your fault that your mother worries, that your friend bullied you, that your teachers mistreated you. It isn’t your fault .”

Tears well up in Izuku’s eyes, burning hot as he blinks hard.

“And dying,” she continues, voice soft but still sincere , “will not make the world better off.”

Izuku buries his face in his hands, shudders, and breaks .

“—kugou? Bakugou? C—you hear—dear?”

The world swims before him, a room unfamiliar of brown and burgundy. Peach-colored hair, pastels and flower-scent faint. His hearing pulses in and out, and even now he can hear someone whispering villain villain villain in his ear.

“Bakugou.” There’s a hand on his shoulder, and the smell of flowers is suddenly strong enough to let him identify the type. Chrysanthemum, white and yellow blooms on the porch. Something about his hearing sharpens, and he notices absently that he’s shaking.

He blinks, and it’s the counselor, Kobayashi-sensei, who stands before him. The smell, he realizes, is coming from her hair.

“You with us?”

He nods. His hands are clasped into tight fists, and there’s a slight burning that tells him his quirk has been active. He lets it go, and winces as it gives a final pop against his skin.

“Sorry,” Katsuki mutters.

Kobayashi-sensei hums. “Your homeroom teacher will be here shortly,” she says, releasing her grip on Katsuki’s shoulder and moving back behind her desk. She moves to click a few things on her computer, settling into her seat. “Who is … ?”

Oh. Is … is Shimura-sensei technically …?

“That would be me.”

Katsuki’s head whips around to face the doorway, and the figure that stands there— stoops , because his head is a few inches taller than the doorframe—is Shimura-sensei. Here, so close to him, the chilling sensation of being next to power engulfs Katsuki, and he straightens his posture on mere instinct.

“I see.” Katsuki turns back to face Kobayashi-sensei, whose expression has frozen oddly. Not for the first time, Katsuki wishes he was better at faces, at understanding what they mean when they twist and tense. “Shimura, correct?”

“Yes.” Shimura-sensei steps through the door and into the room, and pulls out a chair so slowly that Katsuki shivers again. “I understand that I haven’t really been Bakugou-shounen’s homeroom teacher in any meaningful way, but I thought this would be as good a time as any to start to get involved with these duties.”

“I see,” Kobayashi-sensei says again. Her eyes turn from Shimura-sensei to Katsuki after a long moment that makes Katsuki’s palms itch. “I hear there was an incident at lunch today.”

Incident. Here, away from all the classmates that just … say things, Katsuki feels a bit of his paranoia melt away. After all, Kobayashi-sensei will take his side, so he should just—

Something swirls in his stomach, and Katsuki nearly vomits at the sudden dizzy sensation that overtakes him. He’s choking on the sweet scent of chrysanthemum, there’s a stabbing pain in his head, and— what the hell was he just thinking?

He coughs, and his mouth moves without thinking. “Fuck, woman,” he hisses, “you have a whole garden in here?”

Her expression twists again into something he still doesn’t recognize, damnit . “I’m sorry,” she says. “My quirk can be used to calm, but with you coming in here—I must have overdone it a bit.”

A creak to his right, Shimura-sensei leaning forward. “You have a quirk license, then,” he notes with interest. “A therapist’s quirk waiver, I’d guess.”

Kobayashi-sensei’s gaze snaps away from Katsuki’s. “Is there a reason for your inquiry, or …”

Shimura-sensei waves his hands as if in dismissal. “Just curiosity.”

“Hm.” The smell of chrysanthemums is still present, but muted, and Katsuki could swear there’s a different scent there too, but it’s too faint for him to quite identify. “So, Bakugou,” she says, “the report here says that you attacked Yobun Banzo. Is that correct?”

“If you mean Eyeballs, yeah.”

“Did he say something to provoke the attack?”

Deku-lover, deku-lover…. “He said some bullshit ‘bout Deku,” comes his reply, and the smell of flowers is sweet, and a pleasant fog is trying to smother him again, tell him that everything is okay when it’s not —

Katsuki’s hands spark, and the sensation vanishes abruptly. He glares at Kobayashi-sensei. “Stop using your fuckin’ quirk on me,” he snaps.

Shimura-sensei straightens abruptly. “You’re using it on him without consent?”

The scent vanishes near completely, and Shimura-sensei coughs violently into his elbow. It smells like copper, and Katsuki’s stomach drops when he sees blood on his sleeve.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asks, sharper than he means. Something deep and sick drops makes him swallow.

“Medical condition.” Shimura-sensei slumps back into his chair, eyes dimmer than before.

“By something about Deku …?” Kobayashi-sensei sounds impatient as she leans forward on her desk.

“Called me a Deku-lover,” Katsuki spits. “The fuck does that even mean?”

Kobayashi-sensei’s eyes sharpen. “I see,” she says. She types something on the computer, and gives a nod to Katsuki to continue. “And that bothered you?”

“They’ve been—they’ve been saying weird shit about Deku and I just—fuck. I don’t like ‘im but he’s still a person, yaknow?” The confession is wrenched out of him through gritted teeth. “They just said some weird shit ‘bout Shimura-sensei and then Eyeballs made it about Deku and I just—dunno, moved.” His fists are clenched tight on his knees, and he feels an itch underneath his skin, quirk trying to activate.

Both Kobayashi-sensei and Shimura-sensei lean forward at the mention of his name. “Shimura-sensei?” Kobayashi sends an odd glance at the man in question.

Katsuki meets her gaze evenly. “He uh—told us he was quirkless this morning, an’ the dumbasses were arguin’ that he wasn’t cause he didn’t ‘act like it’, whatever the fuck that means.”

Something sharpens in Shimura-sensei’s gaze, something sharp and almost feral. His gaze snaps to Kobayashi-sensei’s. “Oh, is that so?”

Kobayashi-sensei’s face pales as the aura of power that surrounds Shimura-sensei focuses on her. Katsuki watches with interest as she swallows harshly, then fixes her face with a perfect smile. “How odd,” she says.

The smell of flowers is back, stronger than before. Katsuki’s mind fills with a pleasant fog, and then there is nothing.

Chapter Text

“ Toshi? Toshi, can you hear me?”

“He’s not going to be able to.”

“It’s gotten stronger, I know it has. There’s no reason it shouldn’t—with mental quirks—”

He fuzzes over, and smoke drifts into his eyes. Light, light and power and something—something almost like fear —

“It’s in the air, Toshi. Can you hear me? It’s the air.”

Something warm on his shoulder. It fills him and he feels it leak out through the smoke. He is weightless.

“Remember,” it insists. Something digs into his shoulder as smoke mingles with smoke. “You have to remember .”

The smoke swirls and curls around him, desperate and writhing. It is dragged away from him and he would scream if he had lungs, cry if he had eyes, kick if he had limbs. He reaches out regardless, scrabbling desperately at something no longer there.

“ Wake ,” he hears, and it echoes and pounds through his skull. It catches, twists harshly, and he screams.

“Mom,” says Izuku, voice quiet in the hospital room, “you didn’t just…they weren’t just being nice, right?”

His mother looks up from her book. Her baffled look has him clarifying quickly.

“The heroes.” He taps his pencil against his notebook in a nervous tick. “When they came in. You didn’t just ask them to say that, right?”

His mother hesitates for a brief moment, just long enough to make the pencil creak. “They…they said it to me, in the hallway,” she says slowly. “I told them what I said to you, that day, and the scruffy one—he, he said what you should have heard. I told them that, and…they wanted to tell you themselves.” She gives a watery sort of laugh. “So I suppose the answer is ‘kind of’?”

Relief washes over him, heavy and soothing. “Ah.” He worries his lip. “If that’s…he really thinks that, then.”

“Yes.”

It’s so…unbelievable, so wonderful , that he can’t help but want to protest. It doesn’t make sense , because this hero doesn’t even know him, hasn’t met him more than when he was at his lowest point. He shouldn’t believe in Izuku. Weak, weak Izuku, who couldn’t even fall right.

But he did.

“Do you…know his hero name?”

His mother fumbles with her purse. “Oh, right, yes! He gave it to me, I believe.” The quiet rustling is soothing, and he leans backwards on the bed. “I know it’s here somewhere…aha!” She brandishes it triumphantly. “Eraserhead.” She looks at Izuku curiously. “You know of him?”

Click-click-click . Pieces snapping into place. Dark costume, wild hair, something wrapping around his torso and pulling tight. He didn’t think—he didn’t recognize him; he must have been out of costume, and a mixture of awe and deep, deep mortification washes through him.

He hadn’t know the name, but it tells him enough. The Quirk-Erasing Underground Pro .

He grabs his mother’s arm and shakes it fiercely. “Mom, mom, that’s the hero that fights quirkless!”

There is something eerie lingering in the air.

Aizawa Shouta darts along the rooftops, the only noise the soft swish of fabric as it flutters ever so slightly through the air. The city is almost dead silent—no loiterers, no one catching a last minute bus or stumbling out of bars. Those that do dare roam the streets do so silently, out in groups of two or for and purposeful in their movements.

There is no one out that does not belong here, and that makes Shouta shiver.

It is his first patrol of the area, what he refers to as his normalcy-setting patrol. He needs to get a feel for what the activity is in the area without him, know what is normal in order to know when he can step in, know what signs to look for and what to listen for. And on streets roamed by a serial killer, it is all the more important to learn the normal to find the places where bodies disappear.

He lands lightly on the next building and crouches, one hand resting on the water tank beside him. He takes the moment to scan the streets methodically, eyes lingering on silent street corners and alleyways.

There! A noise—laughter. His head snaps towards it, eyes darting, searching for flickers of movement. A brief flash of metal; a giggle; he swings from his perch and creeps towards a better look.

Two girls are stumbling through the alleyway, movements unsteady. They are both clearly intoxicated and Shouta fights the urge to sigh.

One of them stumbles, landing heavily on the wall. Her ears flash in the light—heavily pierced, clearly what caught Shouta’s eye. “Ow,” she says flatly. She glares at the wall in question. “That wa’—that was rude .”

“Shhh!” Her companion shoves her finger over her lips in an exaggerated motion matched by the volume of her words. Her hair, bright purple and curled, shakes violently with the motion. “We gotta—gotta be careful .”

“It’ll be fine,” replies the other. “No one’s gonn— I mean—our quirks are—” She squints and shoves herself upright. “We’ll be fine.”

The purple-haired girl scowls. “ Yours is fine.” She pokes her companion’s chest firmly. “Light mapin—manip—control is cool. My hair’s jus’ stupid .”

“Nah, nah, it’s fine . You’ve got me.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

There’s a clatter from somewhere down the alleyway. Shouta’s head snaps towards it and one of the girls gasps loud enough to make Shouta’s heart sink.

“Shh!”

“Oh shit, I’m—I’m sorry, Anju, honest, I didn’ think that—we shouldn’ta left I’m sorry —”

“Shut up !”

Footsteps. Shouta crouches and prepares to leap down, eyes straining in the dark. If those girls don’t shut up —

“I really am sorry, Anju—” Goddamnit .

Her companion (Anju?) seems nearly as annoyed as Shouta. “Oh my god shut up— ” She shoves her companion against the wall angrily; the girl hits with a heavy thump and a whine of pain. Shouta swears internally. He didn’t see the hit, is her head—

“Oh dear,” drawls a voice that makes the hairs of his neck stand on end. “Breaking curfew, are we?”

Fuck . Shouta’s attention snaps back to the end of the alleyway, eyes landing on the figure that looms there—tall, hooded, and in a posture so casually deadly all of Shouta’s instincts go haywire. No visible weapons, but cloaks could hide nearly anything. His posture tenses but he has to wait, observe —

“I’m s-sorry!” stutters out the still unnamed girl.

Anju huddles next to her, nodding frantically. “We—We were on our way back, I swear it, honest!” She bows deeply and nearly topples over. “We’ll jus’ be—on our way—”

The aura thickens. “Don’t lie to me, girl, I can smell the filth on your breath.” The figure sniffs. “On both of you.”

Anju blanches, and stumbles backwards into her companion. “We really are on our way—”

The girl shoves Anju back unsteadily. “Please don’ hurt her, I know hair’s dumb but mine’s good enough for botha us I swear —”

“Ah,” breathes out the figure. “Weak-quirked, are you, girl?”

Anju stumbles. “I’m—no—”

A blade slices out through the darkness. “Boss says no killing tonight, but he didn’t say anything about lessons .” One hand digs into the wall beside them and crushes brick to dust. “Seems fair, don’t  you think?’

Anju screams and scurries backwards, tripping hard over her feet and landing with a violent thump. The figure advances, hand digging across stone, blade bright in the dark.

Enough . Shouta’s eyes flash red.

The figure stops dead. Stumbling backwards, they steady themselves, brandishing the knife shakily. The girls stumble back. “You bastards, which one of you dared —”

In one smooth motion, Shouta drops from the rooftops, capture weapon lashing out and snaring the figure snugly before slamming them to the ground, hard. “That,” he says, “would be me.”

The hood had been knocked askew, and the eyes of his opponent were visible, wide and frantic. “Give it back !” they screech. “You monster —”

He yanks the restraints tighter. “The only monster I see is you.”

One of the girls whimpers.

“No, no, give it back give it back I’ll be good I swear—”

“If you answer my questions—”

A bright flare of light. Shouta stumbles back, blinking—flashbang? Why would anyone—

His captive wiggles with a surge of quirk strength and kicks Shouta square in the chest; he coughs and swears as his grip on the capture weapon falters. He hits the ground hard, head spinning with stars as he struggles to shove himself back up.

Crying off to his side. He blinks hard and stares—purple. Where’s—He shoves himself upright and nearly vomits. Fuck. Concussion. The alleyway seems to be empty other than the curled up form of the girl.

“What’s—where’s your friend?” he rasps. He shakes his head to clear it and regrets it immediately.

She sniffles and meets his gaze with a glare. “Where do you think, hero ? Ain’t it obvious?”

His head feels fuzzy, and he stares at her blankly.

She scowls. “They took her.”

Shouta blinks, swears, and picks up his phone to dial Tsukauchi.

“ Hey, Toshinori. How are you doing? ” 

Toshinori sinks backwards into his couch. The apartment that he’d rented in Musutafu is small, but well-furnished—Shuzenji had insisted, threatening to break his ankles if he didn’t treat his body well.

“It’s been going fine.” He turns on the television and turns it to the news without much consideration; the background noise was soothing.

“ ...just ‘fine’? ”

Toshinori blinks. “What?”

“ Toshi ,” Naomasa laughs, “ you’re conducting an investigation! I know you’re new to this, but you’ve got to give me more than just ‘fine’!”

“Oh, right.” He scratches the back of his neck sheepishly. “It’s certainly…odd, I suppose. They seem kind of lax with quirk usage? I’m not sure, though…I mean, they are just kids, so it seems cruel to prohibit quirk usage entirely, you know?”

Naomasa hums. “ And Midoriya Izuku? You heard much about him? ”

Toshinori frows. “No. It’s weird. The principal mentioned him offhandedly—” He shivers, remembering his oily hands—“but not by name. I’m at a bit of a loss.”

“ Well, it’s still early ,” Naomasa reasons. “ Just keep your eyes open. ”

“Of course,” he replies. Something stabs in his temples, and he rubs his eyes. A flare of danger itches beneath his skin.

Midoriya. Midoriya Izuku.

For some reason, he feels he is forgetting something.

Katsuki swings open the door to the math class.

The room falls silent, the extras turning towards him, as if someone standing in a doorway is in any way interesting. They’re staring, in fact. He scowls at them, the fuck’s their deal?

“Ah, Bakugou, Kobayashi told me you’d be arriving,” calls Yamamoto-sensei. “Please take your seat.”

Katsuki lets his palms spark at the tone. “Yeah, yeah.” He stalks to his seat with a confidence that makes him smirk. “I know how seats work, teach.”

The classroom titters, and immediately, it’s as if tension has broken. 

Katsuki grins and plops down between Fingers and Eyeballs, the latter eyeing him warily before leaning over. “Hey, uh, no hard feelings, right?” He taps his desk nervously. “I mean I just figured, with it being Deku —“

Katsuki snorts. “Course. You’re still a dumbass, though.”

Eyeballs breaks into a relieved grin, and Fingers slaps his back playfully. “Nice to have you back, man.”

The math teacher has started talking, so he shifts his attention without bothering to reply. Wasn’t like that comment deserved a response, anyhow.

After all, nice to have you back ? He hadn’t gone anywhere.

Distantly, Katsuki’s head throbs.

Chapter Text

Just posting this to let everyone know that until further notice, Flightless is being edited! Things will be moved around slightly, writing will be added, but overall it will be the same fic. I hope to get back to updating soon!! 💞

Anyways I say this because people subscribed to the fic may get a bunch of notifications as I edit chapters of this fic. Didn’t want to confuse anyone if they came here looking for new chapters and couldn’t find any!

Seriously though, most of the editing is done it’s just a matter of adding certain sections. So this process shouldn’t take more than a week or so.

I love you all!! Thank you so so much to those who comment and bookmark you guys have given me a ton of motivation to get back to this fic after lowkey forgetting about it for a while. Yall are wonderful 💕💕💕

With lots of love,
Ember