Chapter Text
There is a mark upon his hand, red like the sunrise and for the morbid, like he has dipped his hand into blood and it has stained permanently.
( maybe it has)
It’s his soulmark, Izuku knows that much. It’s the indelible ink of someone’s claim on his soul— just like everyone on this earth seems to want to do. Someone who wants him just because a mark said they should, that they have a right to him because of it.
Izuku does not like soulmates.
To elaborate, he has seen what comes of ‘fated pairs’. He’s watched his parent’s marriage deteriorate at the hands of a man who cares only for how his property looks in public, watches his mother smile the best she can and weep during the nights they are alone.
His mother makes him feel loved— alone together in an apartment meant for three but too small all in the same breath. His father leaves one day— sends money back as a reward for Inko remaining his wife, able to go so kick further in the world as an attached man. His father is a businessman in all but occupation.
So they live in an apartment too big for two but his mother is large in a space that is now hers. She cooks in the evenings, humming and they dance to the tunes from his mother’s old music collections, spinning and giggling until they collapse upon the floor.
She teaches him the names of the stars, tells him ancient stories of places that no longer exist and heroes so different to the ones around him now. She talks of a man who bore pride upon his breast like a shield, of a man who loved— a man who loved so hard that grief destroyed him.
She holds Izuku’s hands between hers and shows him how to connect the dots between his freckles like he does the stars above their heads. She tells him that he carries his own night sky with him wherever he goes, that it doesn’t matter where he is— that his own skin is it’s own universe and that it is where Izuku truly belongs.
She tells him of love— pure and strong and an inferno that brings warmth. She waxes on, the pink flush of love that brings circles to her cheeks but tears to her eyes. She whispers about soulmates, when he is tired and struggling to stay awake. His mother traces the marks on his hands, telling him that one day he will meet his soulmate. It’s his other half, she says.
( she doesn’t say he’s incomplete but Izuku hears it anyway)
A soulmate is meant to be everything you need. A perfect other half, a balance to everything you are and can be. A link and a transfer— a perfect partner, able to feel your pain and your pleasure.
( but Izuku is quirkless and he is useless— what is to stop his soulmate from being like his father?)
It’s only a week later that agony consumes him— a face twisted in pain and screams that are not his joining his thoughts. His mother rushes over like he is being burned alive— he thinks he might be. And when it drops off, sudden and sharp, Izuku is left with a face scarred beyond healing. He—
Izuku does not love soulmates.
There are so many ties holding him together already— ties to someone who loves him, ties to someone who hates him, ties to someone who does not care.
He doesn’t like to think that he is missing something more than he already is. He’s already missing so much— the sight of his own face without a memory of pain, the crushing guilt of tying someone else into the inevitable train wreck his life is going to be.
No matter how his life plays out, he is going to face everything they can possibly throw at him. Quirkless rights continue to dwindle, the percentage rapidly falling and they are becoming a rarity— a novelty in some places. And with an element of novelty, comes a sense of danger.
Quirkless people were inherently disadvantaged in a system meant for the quirked. They were other, lesser— a remnant from a time that is ready to be forgotten.
Izuku is lucky, in some aspects. Other places have not been as kind to the quirkless as Japan has
He knows Australia has been purged, a vast desert where only the strong survive and nobody could spare resources for a useless unit. Children were tested regularly— the quirkless left to die, vast nomad cities moving quickly across a landscape that borders on anarchy and they leave behind the remnants of their unwanted waste.
No foreign powers intervene now— a decade of retaliation had followed the last intervention by the USA over 60 years ago and the pressing need to tend to their own borders allowed the ruthless land to continue on. It is eerily reminiscent of how Katsuki is allowed to grow up and the irony is not lost on Izuku throughout the years.
At least here, Izuku lives.
He’s not an idiot, for all that he is optimistic. There has to be a way— but it’s a needle in a haystack, a thread in a carpet that stretches for miles. The chances of him ever gaining a quirk are infinitesimally small— but small is above zero, his chance is inherently above zero. Anything above zero is a cause for cheer— it’s a chance.
And somehow, his hands grasp that needle and pull it, shining and sharp and far more painful than he had anticipated, sparkling into the sunlight. It’s a hair— a literal hair.
He glanced up at the gaunt man staring down at him, the grin seemingly threatening to split the man’s face apart. “A-all might?” He isn’t sure what expression is actually on his face right now but it’s enough to make his mentor laugh, and then rapidly cough for a few moments after.
( his hand comes away red)
“My boy! This is it— this is One for All, the quirk that was passed to me and that I pass on to you! Eat this!”
The wind blows through the sand on the beach, little eddies and waves of sand grains racing across the shore as Izuku struggles to compute. “E-eat it?!”
The blond man only laughs, dramatically miming swallowing spaghetti.
( It’s dry and sticks against his tongue, going down his throat with the same consistency as trying to swallow a cat’s hairball)
He gags it down, and waits. He doesn’t know what he expects— a rumble of power or lightning that crackles around his body. There’s nothing— Izuku feels just as normal as he had moments before, and a seed of doubt that has been planted for months begins to stir.
All Might is looking on happily and nods, like he’s pleased with the outcome of this particular action.
“My boy, it’s time for you to go. And remember— clench your butt and One for All will do the rest.”
It doesn’t do the rest.
It’s like riding the wind, a constant eddy of movement and Izuku shatters one of his arms the first time he takes down a robot in the exam. It’s excruciating, and his thoughts turn to his soulmate— who surely would’ve felt that. He grows grim at the thought, a sudden reminder of what he is here to do. Of what he wants in life, of what is at stake should he not become a hero.
Izuku has been given a chance. He refuses to waste it.
But there’s a girl— trapped under rubble, the shadow of a robot built only for destruction, one that means nothing to the aspiring heroes around him. But he can see terror in her face—
(and he sees red eyes crying out as kacchan skirted far closer to death than comfortable)
(he can’t not)
He cries, after his legs are healed and only the bruising remains. He has squandered his chance, given up what he wanted for a girl who wouldn’t have been harmed, not really. They would never allow a child to die in the exams— Izuku is a fool and he has proved them all right.
The package that arrives on his doorstep a few weeks later is heavier than he expects— when the hologram throws up the grinning visage of his mentor, he feels his foundation shake.
“You can be a hero.”
“He saved me”
“This, is your hero academia.”
The very core of his world shifts— no longer are his plans dreams, sitting in the back of his mind as a quick antidote to hopelessness. They are concrete— it’s gripped between his fingers, clenched so tightly that he has buckled the paper and it is wrinkled in his hands.
When he walks into the class, he sees the girl who he saved and the boy who yelled at him during his exams. They are kind, Izuku thinks.
But their eyes are focusing on his scar— more than anyone else has, an intensity in their gaze he hasn’t seen before. Recognition.
He scans the classroom, almost frenzied. And there—
A boy, standing feet away from him, white and red hair neatly divided. A blue eye stares out from a familiar scar, and Izuku already loves him.
The boy’s mismatched eyes are wide, clearly shocked— he can tell they are making a scene, as the class watches two soulmates meet.
His soulmate steps forward quickly, a hand outstretched—
(it’s an offer a truce a trap it’s everything Izuku wants)
“No, thank you.”
Izuku tucks his hands into his pockets, and stares pointedly at the proffered limb, an awkward silence building in the tense room as the boy slowly withdraws his hand. He looks hurt— lost, like this was something of a chance for him.
“I’m Todoroki Shouto—“
Izuku laughs, a cracking sound that comes somewhere near panic.
“I know. I just don’t care. I don’t do the soulmate thing and I don’t want you. Please respect this.”
It’s clearly the last thing anyone expected— but Izuku has been preparing for this scenario his entire life.
( he already has hardened his heart)
When Izuku sits, the classroom begins to move around quietly and he attempts to banish Todoroki’s expression from his mind.
He fails and those wide eyes haunt him for days afterwards.
( he just forgets his soul has a say too)