Archive of Our Own

Izuku’s feet hurt.

He walks in straight lines and curving ones, eyes protected from the scraping, burning dust by the pair of goggles Mom had found three years ago, he thinks. The expertly tied cloth that loops around his nose and mouth and causes sweat to well up endlessly at his nape is the only thing keeping the weaponized earth from his lungs, but even so he coughs. Sometimes at night, when the darkness is absolute, he can’t sleep for the lack of breath. His mom said it was asthma...he had never had it, Before.

He didn’t have a lot of things, Before.

The road beneath him is a bit obscured, overtaken by vegetation and the sand that never stops moving, devouring what it pleases with every whim of the wind. But Izuku has learned from it.

He never stops moving either.

His body doesn’t thank him; at sixteen years old his knees ache with every step that pounds through his swollen soles but his hips ache when he stops, and it’s easier to just stay moving, so he does. In the mornings, when he rises with the red sun—hidden always behind the dust—his knuckles are swollen; he still doesn’t know why this is, but he massages them anyway along with his feet, preparing them for another battering that he decides he won’t think about. There is no end—every day he walks and every day he moves, but he does not have an end. He long ago gave up on the safety he and his mother would always talk so fondly of.

There is nothing ‘safe’, anymore.

This week he ran out of food. Japan is an island—is it still? thoughts like this make his headaches worse because for all he knows, the facts he once knew are now obsolete—and food was scarce even three years ago when The Event happened. When Mom was alive, things were different. Men would see a mother and child and some base part of them would take their pity and manifest it as a spare ration or two, and Izuku learned long ago to appreciate such things. His pride never was a well-fed beast nestled inside of him, and it died entirely after The Event took things like food, water, shelter from him. He supposes he was spared the heartache of killing it off himself. Not every person can say the same, he knows.

But Izuku is a man himself, now. At sixteen he is a man, and he is alone, and he has to search for himself; he must forage for food that doesn’t exist anymore in long-dead towns and cities, since the ground is poison and won’t grow a thing, anymore. At least, that’s what Musutafu was like when he left. His hunger drove him out here into the wilds, unknown stretches of highway covered in dust with empty fields to his left and right. Long-dead vehicles lay abandoned in ditches, their paint stripped away by the wind to reveal dull metal, and Izuku looks in every one along the way. He knows this is hopeless, people would have taken something as precious as food out of glove boxes and middle consoles, but his stomach won’t let him not look.

It’s on his third day of this he hits a wall.

He tries to tell himself that it’s mental, all in his head, a battle he can win against himself when his stomach threatens to tear him to shreds, doubling him over with cramps during a hot afternoon. He needs water, too, though that seems easier to ignore at the moment. He still has a few drops left in his All Might water bottle, tucked safely away both in his backpack and in his mind; a treat for another day survived. Water. A treat.

On the fourth day of his wanderings, his vision begins to center. The edges were already blurry, given the sand and dirt that swirls around him at all hours of the day, the earth’s natural defenses against it dried up into twigs and refuse—but now they darken. When he bends over to look under the chair of a minivan he stumbled upon with high hopes, he wakes up sprawled awkwardly on the cabin floor, limbs askew.

He’s never fainted before.

Suddenly the fear of being alone rises over him like a tide that had been held back fiercely only to hit that much harder when released.

If he dies, no one will know.

In Izuku’s mind, being alone was good up until this moment, a final protection against those that would do him harm, would find out his secret and use it against him. His secret—his quirklessness—the reason he and his mother stayed separate, the reason she died when the sickness finally overcame her and there was no one around to help him. No one to assist him in digging a grave not nearly deep enough or to help bandage the blisters he obtained while doing so.

His secret, which is the reason he is here on this highway, hungry, as he searches a van left to rot, because should anyone know...they will kill him.

Izuku is hungry and food is scarce, and the quirkless, while disliked even Before, are considered useless now. Extra mouths to feed. Extra oxygen taken that could instead go to the strong—those with god’s gift of a quirk.

Izuku will guard his secret with his life.

But that also means it may take his life, in the end. Put out as a flame in this stinging, endless wind, just like Mom’s.

As he exits the van, feet unsteady and breaths a bit shallow, a feeling comes over Izuku that he hasn’t allowed himself to feel, not in the entire three years of this existence. Mom had always been so good at keeping just how bad it all was from him, though in the end, he knew. Her sweet smile lingered even as her plump body turned thin and the circles under her eyes grew dark. Up until the very end, he let her believe that he wasn’t worried, that his confidence in their ability to make it out of all of this was never shaken.

He smiled at her even as she closed her eyes for the last time, unable to burden her with his fears that he kept carefully locked away inside of him, behind unerring positivity and hope.

He was able to keep it up for a while after she left.

But now, with hooded eyes looking over endless land made dull by unforgiving wind and debris— as he feels the small bits of sand that no matter what he does he can never keep entirely off of his skin— as he watches the line of highway in front of him disappear into more nothing—

He knows he isn’t going to make it.

The next day, when he finally collapses, registering his cheek jarring harshly into the pavement before even that is gone too, he finds he doesn’t feel afraid.

He feels relief.

Maybe this counts as making it out, after all.

Izuku wakes.

He doesn’t know what to feel about that.

His eyes feel crusted over with the familiar texture of lingering sand, sticking them together uncomfortably as he blinks and takes in the room around him. Warm light pours in—natural light, Izuku notices immediately—casting peach tones upon the cream-colored walls and the greenery that takes up every corner he can see from his stationary position. Plants, potted with vining leaves that drape and climb over bookshelves, over end tables, over the window ledge, nearly take his breath away. When was the last time he saw such green? Nothing grows anymore— How is this possible?

He registers a bit of drool cooling on his cheek from where his face lies pressed into a comfortable pillow as he lies face down on a...couch? His heart is pounding insistently, his mind trying to analyze the danger of being in an unknown space, but Izuku quiets it to insist it focus on the feeling of cushions again. Sleeping on the ground and in cold corners of buildings has been his routine for going on six months now—ever since his mother died. Even before that it was a regular occurrence, and so he steals this moment for himself. He snuggles deeper into the blanket draped over him—a real blanket!—and doesn’t fight the giddy feeling in his gut that radiates out from his core and sends tingles to his fingers and toes. He sighs in delight.

But of course, such a moment can’t last forever.

“Oh! You’re awake, young one,” a man’s voice interrupts, sending Izuku flailing up from his prone position on the couch to stand before a person he does not recognize.

He regrets it when his knees immediately buckle. His vision whites as he sees the edge of a coffee table coming up to meet him.

“Woah, woah my boy, don’t do that—” Izuku vaguely hears as he notices, as if his mind is trudging through mud, that he did not, indeed, hit the floor. There’s a hand, large and warm, tugging at his bicep and he’s being lowered back onto the couch even as he blinks the room back into sharp relief. “I don’t know when the last time was that you’ve eaten, but I doubt it was very recently,” the man says quietly, almost as if to himself.

Izuku doesn’t know the last day he had been able to find food. As for eating a complete meal—hell, even a nutritious one—he knows that has to be closer to a year in his past. The room still spins when his head hits the pillow again.

“Now, just stay put. You’re safe here,” the man pauses. Izuku takes the chance to peek at him through heavy lids when he does.

Incredibly tall, with a shock of blond hair atop his head that needs a good brush, the guy is striking. Bright blue eyes dart back and forth across the room as the man works his jaw as if in thought.

“Water, yes, that first…” he mumbles before disappearing somewhere Izuku can’t see. Izuku feels at one with the furniture, his limbs so heavy he thinks they’ll simply phase through to the floor, and time warps until the man is in front of him again.

There’s a cool glass at his lips now, and Izuku feels tears edge at his lashes when the most delicious water he’s ever tasted soothes his scratchy, dry throat. There’s a hand at his back that spans nearly the width of his shoulders and while the part of him that remains hyper vigilant—the part that keeps him alive—screams that he should run...the rest of him revels in it.

The touch is gentle, an approving hum coming from the man as Izuku drinks his fill, gulping greedily at the liquid heaven. Cold water. Cold water. Izuku can’t remember the last time he’d had it.

“That’s it, little one, don’t drink too fast, though. Wouldn’t want you to get sick,” the man says gently, the deep bass of his voice rumbling through Izuku’s weary bones and settling inside of them comfortably.

The thought shocks him out of his bliss and he quickly draws away from the glass held at his mouth, the hand at his back. Why does he inherently trust this man? His mother would be dreadfully disappointed in him, all her hard work of keeping him secret and safe, all for naught the moment a stranger shows him kindness? Izuku is pathetic. The man backs away at his apparent unease. He clears his throat.

“My name is Yagi, and I found you unconscious on the road,” he begins, and Izuku listens intently though he does not look at the man, “you are...very thin, my boy. Where do you come from?”

Izuku ignores the blatant concern that fills the man’s—-Yagi’s—voice. It won’t do him any good to be cared for, he has to leave this place as soon as he can, anyway. He swallows dryly, his mouth still parched even after the plentiful water; he supposes dehydration will do that to a person.

“Musutafu.”

Yagi gasps loudly, and Izuku hates that he flinches.

“Sorry, sorry, my boy. Musutafu? That’s...well honestly that’s quite far. Were you alone? I didn’t see anyone with you.”

And now Izuku is entirely done with this conversation. He won’t tell a man he doesn’t know anything about himself. Who does this guy think he is? With his easy to trust face and his deep, calming voice? Izuku’s heart is pounding in his chest and his breaths come a little harder, and from the corner of his eye Izuku sees Yagi wave his hands in apology.

“But we don’t have to talk about that! I’m sorry, this must all be so strange to you. With the world you must be used to living in,” —what does he mean by that? They both live in this ‘world’— “my questions are unwelcome. I won’t pry, but would you give me your name? ‘Little one’ certainly fits you, but I’m not sure you will like hearing it so much.”

Midoriya finally looks at Yagi from the corner of his eye, narrowed in suspicion. “Midoriya…”

“Midoriya it is then!” Yagi exclaims, and really Izuku should start getting used to this man’s outbursts. He seems to have a big personality that matches his tall frame. “Now, Midoriya, there are a few things we must take care of.”

Izuku’s eyes go wide.

“Nothing overwhelming! Simple housekeeping. You need a wash and fresh clothes and then...well I really must insist you eat.”

“You have food?” Izuku asks before he can even think to stop himself, the idea of food, enough to share with a stranger, is baffling. Izuku pales at the realization that he has let his guard down so easily— Stupid. Stupid!

Yagi doesn’t even seem to notice. “Yes, I do, and I want to give it to you, Midoriya. Now, follow me and I’ll show you the bathroom.”

Izuku pauses for a moment before doing as he’s asked. He’s much too caught up in the strangeness that is this man.

The shower is warm. Izuku cries again, but this time there are no eyes to judge him and so he leans into it fully, wracking sobs shaking his entire body as he lathers and soaps, shampooing his hair with strange products that look homemade, and he can honestly say he feels lighter for it afterwards.

There are clean, overlarge clothes waiting for him when he exits the shower. ‘Strange’ indeed.

“You can borrow those for now until yours are clean, Midoriya! The pants have a drawstring that should cinch enough to be serviceable,” Yagi yells through the door. Izuku immediately picks them up and feels his knees threaten to turn to jelly once more at the feel.

They’re blissfully clean and soft, and it’s been so long since Izuku has felt either of those things that the tears burn at his sinuses again. He hasn’t cried this much since the very beginning of everything after The Event. He didn’t cry at all when his mother died.

He doesn’t understand why it’s happening now.

Clean clothes on his body and feet bare, he walks out from the bathroom, returning to the only other room he knows. Yagi is nowhere to be seen, and so Izuku takes the opportunity to look around fully. He had woken in the living room, the couch well-loved but taken care of, the coffee table he had seen briefly worn but shining as if polished. As Izuku observes, he would say that’s how he would describe most of Yagi’s things; used but cared for.

He hears a sound come from the door across the room, light spilling out of it. He follows it.

When he enters through the doorway, he feels his jaw drop to the floor.

The table is set, two plates (some sort of china, he’s sure) with metal cutlery placed strategically on both sides at the head of the table, and in the middle is so much food that Izuku doesn’t think he could even conjure it in his dreams.

Potatoes, steaming and salted; broccoli, bright green with perfectly cooked stalks covered in some kind of sauce; cabbage, crisp-fried. Bread. Izuku walks as if in a trance to the plate not at the direct head of the table, his manners that he hasn’t used in years still stowed somewhere in his brain telling him to do so, and sits. His mouth is watering uncontrollably.

“Ah! I didn’t even hear you come in, young Midoriya, you’re quiet as a mouse.”

Yagi draws near and sits in the other chair. Izuku doesn’t look at him.

“How did you...where...what?” he says unintelligibly. Yagi chuckles.

“We still get a bit of rain here in the valley, and I’ve learned over the years how to grow a few things—hearty crops that can be canned or kept for months. I have a cellar that stays cool year round and a rainwater collection system. One old generator that keeps going and going...afraid warm showers won’t be the norm for much longer, though,” Yagi explains cheerfully, and though Izuku can hear the sadness in his voice, he can only appreciate every word with nothing short of wonder.

This is a veritable paradise as far as Izuku is concerned.

Izuku’s stomach rumbles, clenching painfully.

“Please eat, my boy. No need to stand on ceremony here.”

Izuku doesn’t need to be told twice.

Everything is cooked to perfection, and the tastes and textures sate his hunger in a way that just filling his stomach can’t. For the most part, his eyes don’t stray from his plate, too focused on his next bite, but a few times he can’t help looking over at Yagi—who eats much slower—and finds the older man’s eyes trained on him in return.

He doesn’t know how to read the soft look he finds in them.

“This is very good, Mr. Yagi, thank you,” Izuku says shyly after forcing down yet another mouthful. His stomach is uncomfortably full, but looking at the food still left in front of him that he had felt sure he could eat, Izuku is confused. He was starving, so how could he eat so little? He wants to eat more, it’s all so delicious!

Yagi is far too observant. “Do not force yourself, little one. There’s plenty to go around, and you can always eat more later when you’re hungry again, you need only mention it.”

Izuku swallows the bite in his mouth, feeling it move down his throat heavily, ominously settling in his over-full stomach. He stares at Yagi, pricking up his courage and shoving down his fear with both hands as he remembers what soft clothing and a clean body had helped him forget; he cannot stay here.

“Why did you bring me here, Mr. Yagi? What do you want?” Izuku’s eyes go hard, his face dropping into the look of a boy who’s innocence has been buried beneath years of hardship, colored brown like the sands and emptied out like the earth they can’t seem to save. Yagi’s face stays as open as ever.

“I want nothing from you, my boy. I don’t travel the way I found you very often, as it doesn’t aid me to do so, as barren as the lands around the cities are, but today I went...and today there was you. And while I wouldn’t say I believe in fate, I don’t think there are such things as coincidences, young Midoriya. Tell me, why do you seem so keen to leave?” Yagi lifts a hand, quieting Izuku before he even opens his mouth, as his eyes go wide at being found out so easily. “I will not make you stay if you truly don’t want to, but I wish you would reconsider.” Yagi sighs. “It’s hard on me to see you, so young, and on your own. I think you would have died had I not stumbled upon you… Gave me quite a fright, you know? You were so small, and so still…”

Something in Izuku aches at the wet look that overtakes Yagi’s eyes. It makes them shine ever brighter. Izuku looks away guiltily.

“People aren’t...kind for the sake of being kind, Mr. Yagi,” Izuku says with finality. He thinks perhaps he used to not believe this, but it is an absolute truth now.

Yagi places his hands on the table. “I suppose you’re right, Midoriya. Sadly however, that didn’t used to be the case.”

His voice cracks, sounding wobbly and upset as he rises, taking his cleared plate with him. He didn’t eat much, possibly just as much as Izuku who was compromised by his shrunken stomach, and this nags at Izuku. Who is Yagi, and what is his story? People don’t help like this old man seems to want to. People look out for themselves, not for strange children they stumble across, one of a dime a dozen who has lost someone in this time of poverty and poor health. Izuku is nothing special, and the sooner Yagi realizes this the better; the safer Izuku will truly be.

He should walk out the door right now. He should flee, into the night and into this strange place he doesn’t know his way around. It wouldn’t be the first time he is somewhere he doesn’t know, and he’s found his way before. Izuku is resourceful and stubborn, he is sixteen years old and he is a man and he can take care of himself, damnit. He doesn’t need to be babied and fed and given warm showers and left alone to sleep on soft cushions and given clean clothes until his are washed or looked at with such stifling fondness.

Who the hell is Mr. Yagi and why does Izuku want to trust him so easily?

“Now that you’re clean, I’d like to bandage up your face...if you’ll let me,” Yagi says from behind him, startling Izuku from his thoughts and causing him to jump. Yagi looks remorseful as one bony finger points to the right side of Izuku’s cheek. Izuku, for his part, didn’t even know he was injured.

Tentative fingertips tap at his own skin as Izuku feels around for the offending wound, and is surprised to feel something painful and rough underneath his fingertips across his protruding cheekbone. He must have gotten hurt when he fainted. Izuku stares back at Yagi for another moment before nodding. “I have bandages of my own in my backpack. Please use them.” If Izuku has the means, he may as well take advantage of them. Yagi has already fed and clothed him, the least he can do is contribute to his own medical supplies.

Yagi nods silently before turning away and walking back into the living room that is obstructed from view where Izuku sits at the table, returning soon enough with his things. Without really even looking inside the bag, Yagi immediately locates the small box of rolled gauze and tape that Izuku tries to keep in stock to varying levels of success. He ran out of antibacterial cream a while back and hasn’t been able to find more; he had just resigned himself to probable infections after that.

Yagi makes quick work of his cheek, applying his own cream that Izuku hadn’t even seen him bring in, his movements practiced and sure. Izuku has time to think while the man works, letting his thoughts wander wildly.

Yagi has done this before and Izuku tries to imagine why. Perhaps the man gets injured on a regular basis himself, or maybe he held a job in the medical field? Can Izuku imagine him as a nurse? Not particularly, but he does have a certain warm demeanor that would recommend himself to it. Izuku tries to picture Yagi as a hospital nurse, his tall, skeletal figure walking the halls and handing out bandages. The comical picture makes him snort.

“Are you alright, Midoriya?” Yagi asks, his fingers stopping as he looks Izuku in the eye. Izuku nods his head.

“Fine, sorry. You’re just very good at this.”

Yagi looks at him longer and with a thoughtful expression. When Izuku tries to hold his gaze but eventually looks away, Yagi asks, “Do you get hurt enough to know that, or are you making an educated guess?”

When Izuku looks up at him in surprise he sees a teasing tilt to Yagi’s mouth and huffs in annoyance, “It’s not by my own hand, I can tell you that much.” His mind slips back to his middle school days and earlier, Kacchan’s hands and others’ being too rough in their childish bullying. He doesn’t like to think back to his school days, however. Memories from Before are too upsetting for frequent visits.

Izuku had assumed that Yagi would take his answer in stride like the snide remark it was, but when Izuku looks back up at him when Yagi’s hands remain still, he is surprised to see Yagi looking at him in stifled horror. Izuku can almost see it when he forcibly makes himself let it go.

“Yes, well, let’s keep injuries to a minimum shall we? I don’t think my old heart can take it,” he says lightheartedly, if a bit forced.

And then he smiles, a small show of teeth, and something nags at Izuku from deep, deep within him.

His mind whirls. “You didn’t say exactly why you’re so good at this, Mr. Yagi. What did you do, Before?” Izuku knows he’s being nosy and he really should reign it in, the inherent trust he feels with this man not necessarily an indicator of whether he deserves such blind acceptance from Izuku.

Yagi doesn’t answer for a while, not until he’s done with Izuku’s cheek and really, Izuku thinks he seems too slow, methodical about it. Finally he speaks, that smile returning and squinting his eyes up into half crescents, but it all looks a bit too forced to Izuku. Green eyes narrow as Izuku waits.

“I helped people, my boy. Did a little bit of small-time heroing on occasion, nothing too intensive. Small name agency in Tokyo, you know the drill. You pick up a few first-aid skills along the way when you do something like that.”

Well there goes the wind from Izuku’s sails. “Oh…” He isn’t really even sure what he’d been thinking, he just knew that when Yagi smiled, something in him pulled, like a string around his ribs attached at the other end to a moving object, jarring something crucial within him.

Yagi continues on as if Izuku’s brain isn’t silently misfiring, placing the bandages back into Izuku’s bag as Izuku watches closely. This time, however, Yagi isn’t quick about it.

Slowly, his arm pulls out from the depths of the bag, a furrow between his brow that wasn’t there before and Izuku moves to see what the man could have found. He doesn’t have much with him—spare socks and underwear, all with holes and worn spots, one extra pair of pants and one extra shirt, both of which need to be washed. Izuku hadn’t exactly seen bodies of water at the ready to be utilized along his death march into the unknown. Izuku scowls. “What?”

Yagi for a moment doesn’t seem to hear him, hand finally cresting the zippers of Izuku’s backpack and revealing just what has caught his attention like this.

It’s Izuku’s All Might water bottle, faded blue and dented in spots, metal walls caved in by rocks and other things over the years, one of the few possessions Izuku still has from Before. He has tried to keep it in functioning order, protecting it from thieves and destruction many times.

It means much to him, reminds him of easier times and happier days spent watching his favorite hero on television with his mom, sitting in her lap and wrapped warmly in blankets. It also brings a special kind of pain to him, as well.

When Izuku was nine years old, the famed hero All Might—Japan’s number one, Symbol of Peace, idol the world over—simply vanished without a trace. It wasn’t long after that that the world began to fall apart. Izuku was thirteen when it all turned deeply, horribly upside down.

To say Izuku had been devastated at the news of his hero gone missing—well, it’s like saying he’s a perfectly healthy sixteen year old boy. A lie. He doesn’t really want this man who is still practically a stranger to be touching such an important part of his history.

“Don’t touch that please,” Izuku says with forced calm. He wants to rip it from Yagi’s hands if he’s honest. Yagi doesn’t acknowledge his request.

“Who is this, my boy?” Yagi’s voice sounds far away, breathy, as if he’s exhausted himself by running the perimeter of the room. Which he has not. Izuku regards him carefully, his behavior offputting.

“That’s All Might. Do you…not know who All Might is?” Even as he asks he knows it can’t be possible; everyone knows All Might. Has this guy been living under a rock?

Yagi is silent for another minute and Izuku feels his fingers twitch in the desire to stuff away his things and run into the other room. Finally Yagi looks away from the bottle, but when his eyes meet Izuku’s, he doesn’t really know how to read the expression he sees there. He thinks he might call it devastation. Izuku swallows even though his mouth has gone dry.

“What do you know of All Might, young Midoriya.” His tone is flat and Izuku hates it.

“He was…is?…my favorite hero.”

“You don’t know which?”

“Well,” Izuku says sheepishly, rubbing at the back of his neck, “I’m not sure I believe in any heroes anymore. Not much they can do for me now, is there?” He laughs humorlessly before sobering. “Sorry, that sounds selfish. I know heroism means more than what it can do for me.”

“You’re part of the world Midoriya. What a hero can do for you, they do for mankind.”

Izuku looks up at that and Yagi is gazing at him still, eyes full of sadness and mouth held in a tight line.

“Is that why you helped me, Mr. Yagi?” Izuku says gently, something dawning on him about the man in front of him. Maybe he has misjudged Yagi after all, though something still tugs confusingly at him, almost as if begging Izuku to remember what he’s sure he never learned.

Izuku looks at wild blond hair and burning blue eyes. Eyes that seem to light up with some kind of inner fire, no matter the expression on Yagi’s face. It’s hard to put his finger on it exactly, but it smacks of something like the knowledge that everything will be alright. Like a drink of water after being parched for days.

Like hope. Izuku feels hope for the first time in a very long time, and it’s this realization that has him gawping.

“I helped you because I needed to, Midoriya. Because you deserve to not be left to die, alone, dragged into the dust with every other living thing on this earth…not yet if I can help it.”

Izuku forgets to breathe, now. There’s something…something…

“I helped you, because I am here, and I wanted to.”

It clicks like the earth shattering beneath his feet.

“It’s you. You’re All Might, Mr. Yagi.”

Yagi’s eyes go comically wide.

“N-no son, I’m afraid not. Are you feeling alright? Did you hit your head harder than we thought?” he rushes out, his voice trembling and not convincing in the slightest. A smile creeps onto Izuku’s face, a hysterical bark of a laugh bubbling up from him.

“Oh my god it really is you, what the fuck.”

This causes Yagi—All Might…Yagi?—to stop for a moment. “Language, if you please.”

“Oh my god that is such an All Might thing to say!”

“It is not!” the man exclaims, coming to standing and using every bit of his height to intimidate Izuku into believing him. It’s too bad that Izuku could never be afraid of All Might.

“If you’re not you, then you’ll have to prove it to me, ‘cause absolutely nothing right now will make me think otherwise,” Izuku says smugly, crossing his arms across his chest as he hunkers down into his chair. He lifts one eyebrow antagonistically. “Go on.”

Yagi looks indignant, puffing up his chest as he points to himself. “Explain this then. All Might doesn’t look like this young Midoriya, even you must remember that much.”

The man does have him there. However, Izuku doesn’t give him an inch. “I was hoping you would explain that. Does it have anything to do with why you disappeared seven years ago?” Izuku hopes Yagi can’t see him vibrating, all the things he has wanted to ask and know practically bubbling under his skin. How could he get so lucky as to be saved by All Might? Life has a really sick sense of humor, it seems.

“Well look around you then. Do you think All Might would live a life like this? Self-sufficient in Middle-of-Nowhere Japan?”

“I think All Might could do anything he sets his mind to, thanks. Did you forget the part where I said he was my favorite hero?” Izuku slowly sits forward in his seat. “Do you want to know why he’s my favorite, Mr. Yagi?”

Yagi for his part doesn’t catch the look of curiosity before it settles across his face, shoving it away as quickly as he can. Still, it isn’t too quick for Izuku to see.

“Thought so, All Might,” Izuku smirks. ”It’s your smile. Your confidence in the fact that even if things are absolutely terrible, they won’t stay that way, and you could say it all without a word. I used to practice that smile in the mirror every day before school, I hope you know. And when the kids were mean to me for...reasons, I would smile through my tears and my scrapes and my burns. You were a symbol Mr. Yagi, and that meant something! Even after you were gone, it meant something...so will you?”

Izuku isn’t sure Yagi took a single breath the entire time he was talking. “Will I what?”

“Smile. Like you used to. If you do, I’ll know for sure.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea—”

“I think it could be the deciding factor. If you’re so confident you’re not All Might, you’ll do it Mr. Yagi.” For a moment Izuku balks at his own forwardness; he hasn’t spoken with such honesty in the last three years except for in stress-induced bouts of lunacy. He still regrets those, but this…feels good. It feels like him.

“I don’t want to.”

“Why not?”

“Because this is ridiculous and I’m done playing these childish games.”

“Why won’t you do it Mr. Yagi, why won’t you smile for me when it’s so easy, it’s just a quick show of teeth that’s all, come on what have you got to lose—”

“Because I don’t do that anymore!”

Izuku goes completely still, instinctively leaning back from the loud noise of Yagi’s voice. He almost whispers when he asks, “What, smile?”

Yagi slumps his shoulders, his hands hanging limply at his sides as his head bows in defeat. Then, with a deep sigh he runs his palms roughly over his face, seemingly unable to make eye contact with Izuku. He smacks his lips. “Yes.”

Izuku feels the telltale signs of tears heat behind his eyes—he silently curses himself that he didn’t rid his body of all of them in the shower—but this is just too much. Yagi is All Might, but the hero that stands before him is a shadow of a man, and all Izuku wants to know is why. He feels a single wet track make its way down his cheek.

“Oh, oh my boy, I’m sorry I yelled, I really am—”

“Why am I here?” Izuku sobs, the trajectory and waffling of his emotions scaring him. “Why did you find me, and why am I upset about it?!” Izuku flings his body forward, bending in half until his forehead hits his bony knees. It hurts a bit and his voice is muffled as he cries, “How are you All Might and why are you lying about it, an-and why do my feet still hurt even though I haven’t been on them all day? Why can’t I eat very much and how do you have so much food, more than I’ve seen in a year or more and why won’t you smile at me All Might, I just want to see the one thing that would make all of this feel alright!” Izuku inhales so deeply it hurts his ribs. “I miss my mom!”

He doesn’t even want to say any of this but everything just feels like it’s too much and his stupid tears don’t make any sense and he’s scared but he doesn’t know how to say it other than to ask every last question that rumbles around, endlessly in his head— He takes another deep breath and it rumbles uncomfortably in his chest. His mind strays briefly to his asthmatic lungs but the thought doesn’t stop him.

He’s choking on his own breaths, snot and tears soaking into the borrowed pants on his legs and all around him is too silent and too loud at the same time. He wants to disappear. He wants to sleep. He wants to run out the front door but he also wants to take another hot shower.

He wants to take a drink out of his water bottle and pretend like the last three years have never happened and that his mom is going to walk through the doorway with her soft smile and soft arms that will hold him and god, he must be losing it because he thinks he can feel it—

Because he can.

“Shh, it’s alright Midoriya, it’s alright, calm down for me please,” Yagi’s voice rumbles through him, the shock of it all false-starting Izuku’s breathing.

Two spindly yet strong arms encircle him, Izuku’s head butting into Yagi’s stomach as the man awkwardly hugs him while he kneels in front of the chair Izuku is losing his mind on, and Izuku feels as two hands pet at his back in small circles. Yagi still spouts nonsense apologies over and over. Izuku struggles to sit up.

Yagi lets him go and sits back on his heels, hands in his lap, and to Izuku he looks utterly defeated. There are tear tracks down his face, his brows drawn into sharp lines, and he looks as if he wants to jump out of his own skin. Izuku knows the feeling.

“I’m sorry, little one. I— I wasn’t prepared for this…”

“Me either, I don’t know why I can’t stop crying,” Izuku slurs, his voice thick with tears.

“You’ve been through much over the last few years, my boy. I don’t have to know anything about you to be sure of that.”

“I haven’t cried this much since I was a toddler, so that’s no excuse,” Izuku says resignedly.

“It’s...a trauma response, Midoriya. Your body has been holding on to what it thinks are superfluous emotions until it feels safe enough to let them go. Tears don’t help in survival situations, after all,” Yagi says, eyes boring into Izuku, almost willing him to understand.

Izuku does. “So I...I feel safe here...with you.”

“It seems so, yes.”

“All Might did always make me feel safe,” Izuku says pointedly, sniffling loudly. He stares at Yagi relentlessly as the man squirms under his gaze, looking at the hands in his lap.

“Yes, well...I suppose that would make sense. I think he—” he looks at Izuku now, “I used to have that effect on many people.” Yagi sheepishly rubs at the back of his neck. Izuku smiles.

“Knew it.”

Yagi sighs. “Yes, you did. I’m sorry I lied to you, my boy, but you have to understand, I am not All Might anymore. I’m simply Yagi Toshinori, a man doing his best to live out a few more years in peace before everything goes to shit.”

“Language.” Izuku says, smirking even though it feels wrong, his face tight from crying and his heart doing somersaults along with his stomach. His smirk softens into something gentler as he lifts his hand, an invitation, and Yagi looks at it in confusion.

“My name is Midoriya Izuku, and it’s nice to meet you, Yagi Toshinori.”

Yagi practically melts when their hands meet, his fingers absolutely dwarfing Izuku’s in a warm embrace.

“Likewise, my boy.”

Questions and answers come slowly after that emotionally draining night in Yagi’s kitchen, as Izuku heals and rests, sleep overtaking him more than he would have expected. Yagi tells him it’s his body using the newfound energy he gets from sufficient food to care for itself, as well as years of adrenaline fatigue. Yagi knows this from his school days, he says, all the ways the body heals from trauma one of the modules he had to take at UA. Mention of the now-legendary school results in endless questions from Izuku about his experiences there, and an afternoon is filled with the tales of Yagi’s early heroism.

The beginning of many such pleasantly spent afternoons.

The stories come gentle and easy, except when they don’t, and Izuku finally comes to understand just what happened to All Might one morning over mugs of tea that Yagi makes with some sort of weed that really isn’t half bad.

“I lost that fight, young Midoriya,” Yagi says of a terrible battle that apparently no one knows of, against a man named All for One. The loss of which directly began the downfall of the world around them.

Izuku cringes when Yagi shows him the remnants of the wound that puckers the skin across most of his torso.

“I didn’t really recover after that. ‘All Might’ as a hero was dead, and I left…selfishly, I think. I disappeared into anonymity as I nursed myself back to basic health and learned how to be Yagi Toshinori again. I…have much guilt over this, my boy. I stayed quiet while the world fell to pieces…the world as it is, is a direct consequence of my failures. I’m sorry, Midoriya, for what I did to you.”

Izuku doesn’t know how to respond to that, this day.

Then, a few weeks later, Yagi cries when Izuku tells him about his mother.

“I’m so sorry my boy…I’m so sorry for what I’ve done—what I didn’t do. I ruined your life and took your mother’s… How can I ever make amends?”

And then Izuku does know what to say.

“You can’t, Mr. Yagi,” the man looks at him, stricken, “but I don’t want you to. I don’t blame you, and I won’t in the future. You tried, don’t you see? Do you blame me for my mom’s death?”

“No! No, of course not, young Midoriya…”

“Because it was due to circumstances out of my control. Mr. Yagi…sometimes you can fight, and fight, and break yourself, and it makes no difference.”

Yagi looks at him with a pained expression, and Izuku can track where blue eyes roam his face; the bridge of his nose, across freckled cheeks, down to his mouth and chin. Yagi can see his pain and his loss, and this only makes Izuku feel more at ease.

“It’s not the same, young Midoriya. I ran. I fled.”

“Are you not human? Can you be absolutely sure that had you returned, it would have fixed anything? Were you even strong enough to take on a man with All for One’s strength?” Izuku sounds desperate now, needing Yagi to accede to his point. By the way Yagi’s eyes dart to the floor, Izuku thinks he may be cracking the iron walls the man has made for himself, but he knows such walls won’t be shattered overnight.

Izuku looks at his hands that fidget in his lap as he sits on the couch that he’s been sleeping on every night. He loves it’s softness, it’s safety. “The world we live in is terrible Mr. Yagi, and I don’t know how long we even have in it anymore, but I don’t think spending our days wishing for a reset button is going to do us any good.”

He hears Yagi move before he feels long arms wrap around his shoulders, dragging him into a tight hug. One of Yagi’s hands touches the back of Izuku’s head, fingers combing through his freshly cut hair; Yagi is surprisingly skilled with a pair of scissors.

“You’re too kind, my boy. You forgive too easily…”

“No, I don’t. You don’t forgive easily enough.”

The arms squeeze him tighter and Izuku thinks of what he’s said. It’s true. It seems like Yagi had taken on the mantle of martyr from a young age, and then even once his body had been destroyed, never thought for a second that he could put it down. Izuku knows how that feels in a way, his own secret still hanging over him. With each day that passes where he is happy here, his past maintaining its hold on him less and less, Izuku wants to tell Yagi. Wants to bear his soul and his fears because the man has shown him that it’s okay to do so, that even if it feels like the earth will swallow him whole if he lets his shame pass his lips, it didn’t for Yagi. It doesn’t have to do so for Izuku, either.

One morning, Izuku is helping Yagi with the daily chores—cleaning, caring for the garden that thrives inside of Yagi’s greenhouse made of hodgepodge materials, gathering water from the tanks to be used in the house—and a question nags at him. There isn’t even a second removed from Izuku thinking it and speaking it aloud, and this strikes him as important. He is not afraid of Yagi Toshinori.

“Why do you still call me ‘little one’, Mr. Yagi?” The name isn’t said quite as much anymore, ‘young Midoriya’ probably being Yagi’s favorite, but it’s still slipped in regularly. Izuku wouldn’t say he dislikes it, he’s just...curious.

Yagi is beside him where they stand over the sink, washing potatoes with two little brushes that Yagi supplied. At first he wonders if the man heard him, the time he takes to answer dragging on, but eventually Izuku sees his hands still and he looks up at Yagi. The man looks back at Izuku with a steady gaze.

“Because you’re little to me even if you aren’t still on this side of too thin, but more than that...well I think you deserve to be little. The opportunity to be such was taken from you far too soon I think, my boy. I can stop if you like,” he says matter of factly. Izuku’s chest feels a bit tight.

“N-no...I- I like it…” Izuku feels a warmth that reaches to his toes and his stomach ties in knots. He can’t believe he got so lucky as to be found by a man such as Yagi who is so free with his affection and his care. Sometimes at night he wakes, unsure if he’s been dreaming all of this in some delirious last stand his brain is staking before he dies back on that road on the outskirts of Musutafu, but the clean clothes against his skin and full stomach bring him back to reality.

Just in case, he pinches himself quickly, hidden behind the potato in his hand. It hurts. And then Izuku realizes what he wants to do.

“You aren’t wrong, I guess, Mr. Yagi...but it was kind of difficult my entire life…” Izuku’s face flushes, unsure if this is the best way to say all of this, but Yagi is patient beside him, still and quiet and clearly listening to him intently. “Even before the world ended, there were bullies. Mean kids at school—you know the story, it’s one a lot of kids experience, I think.” Not to the degree that Izuku did, of course. None of those kids were quirkless and then fell into a society that no longer disliked that portion of the population but rather vehemently tried to end it. There is very little keeping Izuku safe right now in actuality; a few walls and an ex-hero, even if that hero is All Might. He tries not to think about that too much. “They thought I was weak and annoying, that I was reaching above my capabilities...Mr. Yagi, I’m quirkless.”

He holds his breath after he says it, looking at the brush in his hands rather than up at the man beside him, waiting for Mr. Yagi to either comply with the way Izuku thinks of him—kind, generous, understanding—or for him to turn on him like every other person he’s ever known, barring his mother. His mind can’t help immediately jumping to how it will feel to go back out into the world alone, after knowing such kindness. It’ll be awful, he’ll hate it so much—

“Izuku, look at me, my boy.”

The use of his first name strikes Izuku nearly dumb, and it takes him a moment more to do as he was asked. Yagi’s eyes have taken on that fiery look again, the blue striking, but at the same time look soft...kind. Izuku takes a deep breath.

“Thank you for telling me this. I know it must have been very difficult for you.”

Yagi stops what he’s doing and dries his hands, turning to face Izuku completely before taking a knee, their eyes meeting on equal levels and Izuku gets the feeling that something very important is going to be said.

“I do not care about such things my boy, I hope you know. I would never turn on you for something so simple, something so far out of your control. When I was young, this was a much more common thing, did you know?” Izuku shakes his head. “Yes, Midoriya. In fact, I was quirkless as a young man.”

“No…”

Yagi chuckles. “Yes, which brings me to something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about anyway, my boy.” Suddenly Yagi’s face has taken on a hard edge, and Izuku gets the feeling that he was right about this turning into something important. Izuku nods encouragingly.

“My boy, I’d like to tell you about my quirk named One for All, and just who All Might was meant to be.”

The sun is warm against Izuku’s skin, the kitchen window flooding the room with the sparkling rays of it, even tinged red as it is, as Yagi tells him. Everything.

Everything about a quirk that can be passed down to another. Everything about a quirk that was made to defeat a man only known as All for One.

Izuku may not believe in fate either, but a quirkless boy and a dormant quirk coming together like this seems like too much of a coincidence for Izuku to not go to sleep on his comfortable couch later that night with just a little more hope than he woke with. After all, they say it only takes one man to change the world, do they not?

Maybe a boy could be enough.

When Izuku wakes the next day and he rises with a plan in his heart, he realizes something that resonates heavily for being something so small. He smiles.

His feet no longer hurt.