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June tenth was a hard day.
Just a few years ago, it was a day Izuku looked forward to. Taking Yagi-san out for lunch, visiting Dagobah together, reminiscing about his younger days. Izuku always liked to hear Yagi’s stories, but on the man’s birthday, he would do his best to react like he was hearing everything for the first time. Nothing could get Yagi’s eyes sparkling like talking about Shimura Nana, and Izuku would do anything to keep that sparkle alive as long as possible.
The sparkle was gone now, and he felt its loss more on June tenth than on any other day.
It wasn’t because it was Yagi’s birthday, though—it was because it was All Might’s birthday, and the whole world was celebrating.
For the week leading up to the celebration and for at least a day or two after, Japan would be inundated with All Might content. TV specials, limited edition merch, cosplayers, public memorial services—all things Izuku would have been thrilled about, once upon a time.
But now he didn’t look around and see All Might, he saw Yagi-san. Yagi’s bright blue eyes, Yagi’s brilliant smile, Yagi’s voice, Yagi’s words, Yagi’s heart. It was excruciating, especially the first year.
Yagi had retired from hero work nearly ten years before his death and had never picked up teaching again after Izuku’s year. In his final years, he got to do something he thought he’d never have a chance to do—be domestic, part of a family. He was never embarrassed about telling people how much he appreciated him, how glad he was they were in his life, how grateful he was to spend time with them. Everyone chalked it up to something he picked up in America. From anyone else, it would be too much—but that was Yagi-san for you.
The last time Izuku had taken him to the beach, Yagi had reached over his shoulder to where Izuku’s hand gripped his wheelchair and simply laid it overtop.
I couldn’t have asked for a better successor, or a better son.
Of course it had driven Izuku to tears. Both men knew this would be one of the last times, if not the last. As Izuku had grown into an adult and their relationship evolved, they had become more and more open about their emotions. Izuku was no longer embarrassed to cry in front of his mentor, and Yagi no longer tried to hide his fondness for the people in his life, Izuku especially.
Through Izuku, Yagi had gained a large family. Izuku thought fondly on the early years of celebrating Yagi’s birthday, when the man was still fully mobile. Eri was still young enough that she wanted to run around and play heroes and villains, and somehow she always managed to rope Kouta in. Yagi would happily play the villain and let both kids swing around on his arms, dragging them all over his backyard.
They’d spent more and more time at Yagi’s house over the years. It became something like a home base for Izuku’s chosen family. It was rare for Yagi to be left alone for more than a day or two, and he never seemed to mind. His kitchen was always well-stocked, he never had to clean or mow his lawn, and his house was stuffed to the gills with hero merchandise.
Yagi’s house was where they congregated when they needed to receive support as well as give it. Even after he lost his muscle form completely, even after he lost the ability to get around without a cane or a chair, All Might never lost his smile. His house was always bathed in a feeling of security, love, and warmth. Yagi’s house was where Ochako stayed after her parents died, where Eri went when she ran away from home, and where Class A gathered on the anniversaries of some of their hardest days—the Gunga Mountain Villa raid always brought the biggest crowd and they felt their losses all the more acutely for it.
Izuku had stayed at Yagi’s house for two months, the year before he died. He holed up in one of the spare bedrooms like a dog waiting to die, but instead, Yagi saved him. Made him soup and hot cocoa, sat in silence on the other side of the locked bedroom door when it was all too much to talk about but Izuku couldn’t bear to be completely alone.
They became even closer than they were already, in those two months and the year after—the last year of Yagi’s life. He helped repair Izuku’s broken heart and shared stories he’d never shared before, about his own experiences with love and loss and regret. He repeated words Izuku had heard before in a different context, and they meant much more this time.
I’m only human. I can’t save people who are out of my reach.
But, he added this time, being human means sometimes I can’t even save people who are right in front of me.
Don’t let your grief rob you of your love.
That’s what Izuku was trying to do now, two years after the death of his mentor—his father, because that’s what Yagi was. He was trying not to let his grief overtake him.
But it was hard, with Yagi’s eyes everywhere. He wanted to be angry, to tell the world that they didn’t really know him, to hoard all the grief and sadness for himself and drown in it. But he’d tried that, last June and the June before. He was getting tired.
And if he was honest with himself, he was a little bit proud to see how beloved Yagi-san was. When he could stay calm, it was kind of nice to look at the posters and see Yagi instead of All Might, because he had more memories of Yagi’s laugh than All Might’s, and he could imagine how this whole celebration would make Yagi laugh.
It was always something different that broke the spell and set him off. The first year, he’d lost it at a merch store employee who didn’t recognize him out of his hero costume and decided Izuku would make a great audience for his anti-All Might Ted Talk. No one could blame him for that one. It had taken both Tsu and Tenya to drag him out of the store while Ochako made excuses to the staff. She had assured him it was so out of character for Deku that no one would make the connection, even with video. The four of them had ended up crying in the parking lot with Izuku in the center of a very tight group hug.
Last year, it had been smaller stuff. He’d been walking around downtown in casual clothes, trying to avoid the All Might noise as he ran his errands but failing miserably. He’d ended up in the middle of a street fair, some kind of artist’s alley. Izuku took out his grief on a kid that time, and he wasn’t proud of it. But the kid was spouting some nonsense about All Might standing for traditional values, being a paragon of virtue, blah blah blah, and it turned into a blatantly homophobic rant. Izuku had wanted to hurt him so badly his hands were shaking. He’d scared himself. He’d asked the kid if he liked any current pro heroes, and which of them he thought shared his “traditional values.” The kid was a Deku fan, which made Izuku nauseous.
Preserved on the internet forever was video of Deku shouting at a terrified teenager that “All Might loved his ‘faggot son’ and it looks like you’re one of my fans as well so maybe take a minute to educate yourself before you go spouting that hateful nonsense on the street and don’t you ever attribute that rhetoric with my dad ever again because he had more compassion and love in his little toe than you have in your shriveled rotten heart.”
The video cut off just as Tenya stepped in, but Izuku had already visibly run out of steam. He got some flak for the incident, but most fans agreed with his sentiment even if they thought he went a little overboard. There was still a loyal base of “feral Deku” fans out there, waiting for the next time he slipped up. He’d publicly apologized to the kid and his parents and sent them as much pride-themed pro hero merch as he could get his hands on.
Izuku didn’t want to fight anyone this year. He didn’t want to end up on HeroTube, he didn’t want to feel himself fracture over the tiniest thing. He had too many triggers these days, it felt like. Izuku supposed that was an unavoidable biproduct of all the trauma and dead friends, but he still wanted a break. If he could let go of some of this grief, maybe he could find some of that love again.
He missed the warmth of Yagi’s love and the love he felt in return. He knew it was still there, but it was buried under hurt and jealousy and a desire for people to understand their relationship even though no one ever would, not completely.
Young Izuku would be stunned to learn that he wasn’t just All Might’s biggest fan—All Might was his as well.
He’d felt a very weird sense of déja-vu walking into Yagi’s bedroom after the man’s death. It was plastered with Deku merchandise. Posters on all of the walls, a few on the ceiling. A Deku bedspread, Deku plushies, and a shelf dedicated to Deku figurines. He had figurines of all of his students, but no one would have to guess his favorite.
Seeing the room almost made Izuku regret getting him started on collecting hero merch, but it had made the man so happy—and Izuku was the last person who could criticize him for it.
It was weird, to think of himself as an analog to All Might. The media had made comparisons before, as Deku climbed the ranks and made a name for himself. All Might’s relationship to the infamous UA Class A was well known, and they hadn’t exactly tried to hide the fact that they were closer than the average student and teacher.
More than the media, Izuku was surprised to see kids making the comparison. He was spending this year’s June tenth on Dagobah beach, soaking up the sun and enjoying the clean waterfront. The beach had become quite the destination in the years since Izuku and Yagi cleaned it up, and on a warm summer day like today, it was full of families.
“Deku!”
“All Might!”
“Deku!”
“No, All Might!”
The kids arguing couldn’t have been more than five or six. They were both red in the face and holding their respective action figures aloft as they made their arguments.
Izuku was glad to see that All Might was still popular with kids, even so long after his retirement. It was one thing for the country to hold memorials and another thing entirely for kids to still be playing with All Might action figures.
“All Might always saved everyone with a smile and he was huuuuge, look at his muscles! Deku’s too small to beat All Might!”
“Deku’s beaten tons of giant villains, that doesn’t mean anything! He doesn’t always smile but that’s dumb anyways, sometimes he has to focus on fighting. And then when he does smile, it’s like, zwah! And everyone feels safe!”
“All Might is awesome, Deku is lame!”
“All Might is old and boring and he can’t save anyone because he’s dead!”
Izuku shouldn’t have felt proud of not blowing up at children on the beach, but he did, a little. Maybe they were just too young, or maybe he was actually healing. Either way, it was for the best, because there was no Tenya around this time to calm him down.
Instead of freaking out, Izuku stood up and jogged over to the kids, removing his Dynamight ball cap and exposing his signature green curls and grinning.
“Hey! All Might is my favorite, but want to hear about the time I wiped the floor with him?”