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When Izuku was a child, he hated storms. The wind howled, the trees thrashed, the rain pelted, and the darkness crept. It had the world aching, full of destruction. The strikes of lightning left bruises and burns across the earth's surface. Nothing was ever left untouched. Unharmed.
Perhaps once, long ago, he thought differently. He might have seen the kindness in an April Shower with how it brought them May Flowers. He might have run out in the last few minutes of it sprinkling only to twirl as fast as he could next to his mother and stomp in gathered puddles.
That had been before the rain took more from Izuku than it had given.
His childhood friend, Bakugo Katsuki, and their parents had been traveling to a national park in the next city to go camping for the weekend. Despite Kacchan's mother's complaints about the lack of amenities in the wilderness - "I'm a woman of luxury," she had told the other occupants of the car - she wasn't willing to refuse her only child's desire to rough it for a few days when it was the only request he had for his birthday.
It had been ever so unfortunate that it had rained the night before, leaving the roads in a more dangerous state. Their mothers day in the front, giggling and gossiping about a coworker, while Uncle Masaru sat in the back with them. He might have been squished between two car seats, but he was one of the few people who could calm down Kacchan when he was in one of his tantrums.
It was when they were circling around a hill that Izuku lost everything for the first time. A truck driver had been going too fast, and the road was still slippery from the torrential downpour the previous night. Mitsuki had tried to pull out of the way, but there was little room to move and the way the truck swerved and resulted in a head on collision. The Bakugo's vehicle wound up flipping over the railing landing them in the water below.
Afterwards... Well, afterwards Izuku went to live with his grandmother. She told him that his auntie and mom died upon impact, but he knew that wasn't true. He knew she didn't want him to know they drowned; he just didn't have the heart to tell her that he could remember every moment of the accident.
It was engraved into his mind as if it had become part of his own DNA. He could remember the way Mitsuki told Kacchan she loved him before Masaru busted the window. The man hadn't been able to fit through, but he had been able to shove them out of it. Sometimes in his sleep, he would hear his mother tell him to be brave.
While his friend and he made it out of the ordeal, barely six years old as they cried and waited for help to arrive, he hadn't seen the other boy since. It would be years later, and through his own research, that Izuku found out that Kacchan died from complications while in the hospital.
Grandma Itomi was... cold. The woman hadn't been sure how Inko had gotten her kindness when she was the one who birthed her. He had heard several tales about the woman, about how she loved in her own way but had difficulties showing it. In the decade he spent living in her home before her passing, he thought he had only seen her show any kind of emotion once. When she had mistakenly called him by his mother's name. It was also the only time she had been willing to speak to him about his mother aside from the funeral.
Still, life with her wasn't horrible; it just wasn't warm. Grandma Itomi encouraged his brain, taking him to and from tutors when teachers mentioned his boredom. She complimented his artistic skills and signed him up for classes when he expressed a desire to better them. He knew she loved him… in her way. She just wasn't someone he could go to if his heart ached for his mother to hold him.
She bought him a therapist for that.
The good points of living with her was the new friend he made. Shinsou Hitoshi. He was an odd child, but who was Izuku to judge? Both were social outcasts, tossed to the side by most of those they met. It was understandable that they might click, that they might be found in one another.
As much as Shinsou tried to brush Izuku aside at first, firm in his belief that he needed no one, Izuku was never one to back down from a challenge or a person in need.
Eventually, the two became inseparable. It wasn't like Izuku's first friendship in Bakugo, where he followed the other sins like a lost puppy. No, for once he lead the interactions. If he didn't want to play a game, they wouldn't. If he thought a certain vending machine would have the best snacks, that's the one they visited. When he didn't like something, Hitoshi would actually stop.
At moments, Izuku wondered if this was what an actual friendship was like, or if Shinsou was just weird. He'd put his money on weird. The guy had an obsession with fortune telling, especially tarot.
And then, when the two of them entered high school, they met Todoroki Shouto. If Izuku found Hitoshi to be quiet, then this guy was essentially mute. At first Todoroki had been standoffish, almost as cold as Itomi, but he eventually warmed up to them after a bit of prodding.
Well, prodding and getting punched in the face. Shouto had never been one for understanding tact.
Soon, much to Izuku's delight, the duo became a trio, and they were as thick as thieves. It felt so easy, playing off of one another like it had always been meant to be this way. Two quiet companions to Midoriya's constant mumbling and chatter. Two forces of nature to pull Todoroki out of his reclusive shell. Two wells of empathy to understand Hitoshi's rage and cruel wit. None of them believed to be deserving of the others.
Their friendship was tested of course. Not by them but life's horrible taste in humor. Not even by their almost death when Todoroki and Izuku kept some weird guy who had no nose from killing a kid their age and a security guard.
Midoriya had been missing for days, as many days as it had been storming. The rain never seemed to end except in small bursts that didn't last more than a quarter hour. The last they had seen him was when he was headed to his cram school, swearing that he was going to be late after their trip to the Cafe took so long. Since then, neither of his friends had heard a word from him, by text or by phone.
It wasn't until the rain finally cleared up that they saw their friend on the television. He was being clutched by a young girl, maybe five at the oldest as he carried her out of a building. After him was the body of the recently graduated Togata Mirio, covered in a sheet. The news anchor stated he was a key player in the capture of a medical student who worked with the Yakuza. The man had been experimenting on his adoptive daughter along with dozens upon dozens of people. The homeless, wandering children, and late night teenagers.
("I'm going to marry him," Hitoshi heard Todoroki say. It was the first time he regretted giving the rich pretty boy a black eye.)
Midoriya still didn't return to school in the next coming weeks. Sometime during his kidnapping, his grandmother had passed in her sleep and there had been no one to notice her death. He had been the first one to see her body.
Once again, he was all alone. Everything stolen from him as fate laughed in the echoes of the quiet in his home.
He was eighteen, without any other family, and suddenly thrust into adulthood. If it weren't for his extenuating circumstances, and the fact that he was the top student of his year, Midoriya knew he would have lost his scholarship to the private high school he attended. At least there had only been three months left before graduation.
All too soon it seemed like gone were the days of seeing one another whenever they pleased, and now they had to steal free moments in one another's lives if they wanted to keep each other in their life.
Midoriya was good at it, making sure he kept up with their schedules so he could call at an opportune time. Shinsou was jealous in a way. He had always found it difficult to relate to others, let alone communicate with them. And here Izuku was, taking time out of his day to make sure he spoke with the two of them at least twice a week.
If it weren't for the fact that Shinsou knew the guy was slowly drowning himself in self-hatred and guilt, maybe he wouldn't be so pleased to be around him. He knew that made him a terrible person and an even worse friend, but he had never cared for deluding himself into believing he was a decent human being.
Perhaps that was why he didn't stop himself from walking into the oncoming subway.
It was Todoroki who spent too long and yet not long enough thanking the guy who pulled Hitoshi back from what would have been his death. The stranger had the energy of an energizer bunny, almost instantly exhausting the two more nonchalant members of the trio friendship.
Once the guy left with phone numbers exchanged, Shouto wandered over to the windows, staring out down at the sidewalk in front of the hospital. They didn't talk for a while, both of them concentrating on what was in front of them. For the one with candy cane colored hair, it was the missing link of their group as he helped sketch out a flower on the steps of the building for the daughter he recently was able to adopt. It only took him fourteen months to gain guardianship. For the insomniac, it was his hands as his fingers fiddled together, unable to settle into his skin as he waited for the disappointment to come.
'Don't speak,' part of him thought, 'don't tell me he's yours... not when you know it'll hurt.' A bigger part wanted him to say the words, to hear the claim. He wanted that pain, the punishment of what he didn't get.
"He'll understand," Todoroki said. He knew. It made this situation even worse. It made him disgusted with himself. Maybe he would take Izuku up on his suggestion of finding someone outside of their three to talk out the constant whispers and screams in his head.
All of the sudden, it was like the sky opened up, washing away the chalk from the children's play.
When Izuku was a child, he hated storms. Full of destruction and pain. Shouto could see the beauty in them. The way the rain washed away the aches the world left in their bodies.
It left them clean, and sometimes a little less broken.