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There is smoke in his lungs. It’s not exactly what he thought it would be like, he thought it would be thick and suffocating, he thought it would curl around his tongue and sink deep into his throat. But it feels like nothing, a bit hot but that was probably due to the building on fire a few couple feet away. He knows there is smoke in his lungs because he can taste ash on his tongue, but he can breathe fine and he wonders if this is one of the kinder ways to die.
There are voices around him, logically he knows they’re speaking at a volume range a bit too high to be normal but all he can hear are muffled fragments, fake imitations of basic human commination, he doesn’t even attempt to make out what they’re saying.
It reminds him of when he broke his arm for the first time. It wasn’t a particularly cold or sunny day; in fact, it would have been a totally unforgettable one if it wasn’t one of his most jarring memories. He was in a tree; it was the kind of tree that had one of those thick trunks and had branches that separated early on so they were easy to climb on to. He couldn’t remember what shade the leaves were but he could remember that the sky was the type of blue that was so entirely perfect that you couldn’t help but marvel at how beautiful it was.
Memories are funny like that; they arrive scattered and disjointed and you have to avoid filling in the blanks otherwise you are just lying to yourself. He spent a lot of time lying to himself, like that lie he told himself when he was lying in the dirt, face up looking through the leaves and at the blue sky. That lie that he fell naturally, he’s so clumsy, isn’t he? But there’s a dull ache on the place between his shoulder blades that hurts more than the angle his arm is twisted and in the edge of his vision he’s pretending it’s a small animal and not a ball.
‘you’re so clumsy’ they tell him, faceless adults who pick him up off the floor, ‘you need to be more careful’ they say, voices resigned and chiding. Well, not exactly, this is why you shouldn’t fill in blanks in memories because now he was just lying. The memory he constructed was all wrong and false and nothing at all like it actually happened, in fact, he’s pretty sure he’s just combined two memories from many repetitive ones and blended them together, he is sure all he heard was a steady ringing and muffled voices, much like he’s hearing now.
He doesn’t think he’s broken his arm this time but he’s definitely broken something. He knows his mum will be mad at this, well, not mad, more like distress that rises in the form of anger because what else are you supposed to feel when your only child cares more about the lives of others than he does himself? Huh, Aizawa Sensei would be impressed with his bit of honest introspection there, what was the saying? The first thing is admitting you have a problem? Anyways, getting back on topic: He’d be angry too, at himself. Him and Aizawa have been having some ‘self-love’ or perhaps it’s more ‘self-importance’ conversations (as cited above) which he apparently hasn’t learnt a thing from and so Aizawa will also be angry. Kacchan will be angry too, he always thinks it’s his fault that Izuku is a self-sacrificing maniac, which is ridiculous, Kacchan places too much importance on himself sometimes, his actions are entirely his own, probably.
He is being moved. He is aware of this because his leg hurts, both legs actually, but they hurt in a numb sort of detached way which he is grateful for and it makes him sink further into this mist that’s formed in his mind. There is someone speaking directly to him now, he can make out a please and a stay but he’s stubborn and he won’t because he’s tired of making people angry and upset and worried and it’s just so calm here.
He was awake. This was strange because it implied, he had been asleep and he had no recollection of ever shutting his eyes. For a second, he thinks he may be asleep because his eyes were in fact, still closed but he remembers that you can both be awake and close your eyes. He thinks he giggled at that because now he was coughing.
There was a cup being pressed against his lips, the kind of cup that was made out of flimsy white plastic and had that thin rim that folded outwards then under and were good for chewing on when you were bored. Well, he wasn’t sure it was that type of cup exactly but he’s been in hospitals more times than he cares to remember so he figures he’s allowed to take a guess.
“Izuku baby? Can you open your eyes?”
Oh yes, his eyes, he can do that, open his eyes, he’s All Might’s protégé he’s supposed to be able to do everything.
“That’s great baby, can you try speaking for me?”
The funny things with questions such as these is that you can only really answer in two ways, one is vocally: ‘yes, of course I can speak’, and the other is a muffled groan of pain or the slight shake of a head, these are also entirely appropriate responses, but not in all settings, hospitals were fine though.
“mhph”
Ah, so a “no”, his mum also seemed to understand the message as her eyes furrowed deeply and her mouth pulled downwards, a movement she’s been doing more of recently, because of him. He can tell she’s been doing it even in his absence because the faint lines around her brow have deepened and her lips fall more naturally as if in constant practice, down, neutral, down, neutral, never up, not with him, not because of him, he hasn’t seen her smile in years.
He only meant to blink but there was an infinite amount of time that passed with the closing of both eyelids to their opening and in that infinite amount of time the room grew dark and his mum had gone.
He was thirsty.
There were voices in his room, the voices were hushed and fast, conspirators waiting for him to wake up so they could question him about why he did it. He let them drift away.
He was thirsty.
When he opened his eyes again Aizawa Sensei was there.
Aizawa Sensei placed a white plastic cup to his lips (he’d been right).
His teacher didn’t ask any questions, he just sat there on the fold away stool by the side of his hospital bed, staring. Izuku counted to three hundred in his head before the man spoke.
“This, this is a failure on my part.”
He said it so clearly, so rehearsed that Izuku nearly took it as fact. Which was blasphemy because it wasn’t his sensei’s fault at all.
“Aizawa Sensei I-“
“No Midoriya, please let me finish”
It was all he could do from not outright protesting. Every atom in his body was buzzing, colliding against each other in frantic demand, screaming at him to tell his teacher that he was wrong. His actions were his own, this was his own fault, his own stupid fault.
He stayed quiet.
“Midoriya, I as your teacher have a position of care for you, it is my duty to care for you, to make sure you’re safe, to make sure you’re cared fo-“
“but”
“No, let me finish. It is my duty as both a hero and teacher to make sure you understand that you cannot just run into danger without a single regard for your own safety and health! You could have died today Midoriya, what on Earth possessed you to run into that building, you have a strength enhancing quirk not a heat resistant one, no logical course of action could have taken place inside that head of yours I-“
There was a slight inflection at the end of his rant, an upwards one to be more specific, like he was trying to hold back hysteria that was surely bubbling in the back of his throat. He looked worried, more worried than usual, the bags under his eyes seemed more prominent and his mouth kept doing that thing his mum’s mouth did when she looked at him, that downwards pull. It was like he was the gravity on everyone’s shoulders, hard pressing and inescapable, the only way to experience relief was to leave the planet entirely, leave him entirely. It was understandable.
“Midoriya?”
There it was again, his name, coated in the sort of sadness he’d heard on his mum’s English soap operas as a child, the sort of scenes where a terrible car accident has happened and they’re all crowded around the hospital bed asking what happened but in a way that won’t trigger the person on the bed except it was real life and it was only Aizawa Sensei and the accident wasn’t an accident at all. Not really.
“Midoriya?”
This time it was more urgent, as if something was going wrong, which was bizarre because nothing was going wrong was it? Everything was going just how it was supposed to be wasn’t it? Aizawa was mouthing something which is weird because he was talking a moment ago wasn’t he? Maybe he was miming something? Maybe someone else is in the room, he would check but he can’t move or see anymore and-
“he’s been out for a week, you said it would only be for a few days, why isn’t my baby boy waking up.”
He loved his mum, her hands were always warm like his own, but hers were softer and padded where his were rough and bony. She often smelt of honey and lemon because that’s her favourite shampoo scent and she always painted her nails a soft baby pink because she thinks that there’s enough harsh things in the world and she doesn’t need to be one of them.
He loves his mum but sometimes he thinks it would be easier if she didn’t love him.
The next time he awoke he awoke with a certain kind of clarity that was absent before. This would be the last time he slipped into unconsciousness unknowingly (probably) which was both a blessing and a curse because now he couldn’t escape the inevitable, the questions of why. Why had he done that, was everything okay?
No, of course it wasn’t, but it would be. Why couldn’t they see that. That he could deal with whatever this thing was by himself, that he would get there eventually, mistakes were normal in recovery, wasn’t it? He wasn’t quite sure what exactly he was recovering from but it was definitely something that needed to be fixed.
The second time Aizawa Sensei entered the room he was quiet. There was a sort of composure about him that unsettled Izuku, he watched as his teacher strode purposefully towards the chair by the bed and sat down. Nothing was said and it filled the room with a quiet buzzing, it grew louder with every beat of his heart until its steady thump joined in the symphony of static around him, his breath becoming a manual action as he focused on inhaling but it kept getting lost, seemingly dispersing into the silence around him before even reaching his lips.
“I think there are some things you do not tell me.”
Aizawa’s Sensei’s words felt impossibly loud, cutting through the orchestra playing in his head with one single swift motion.
“And that is fine, I do not expect for you to tell me everything because I am not your diary, yet you have chosen me to be your confidant, the person to help you and give you advice. But Midoriya, how am I supposed to help you if the thing I need to help you with is kept from me?”
Aizawa Sensei paused, there was an edge to this casual tone he was projecting, as if he knew what he was saying was toeing the line, as if he understood this secret was so fragile yet so big that if it was addressed too directly it would shatter into a million pieces and splinter itself into Izuku’s skin and make him bleed. What would happen if the secret did shatter? Would Izuku be left to hold close the biting pieces of a broken promise to All Might? What would All Might do if he saw Izuku surrounded and bloodied? Would he walk away, would he take it back, would he help and patch him back up?
“I suspect, whatever this thing is, is holding you back. I will not ask you about it again, but may I ask your permission to speak with All Might.”
Izuku could just feel the first cracks start forming, it felt almost dream like that Aizawa Sensei was even having this conversation with him.
“I- I don’t know what you ah mean?”
His voice sounded weak to his own ears, he was never that good at lying directly, it’s always that the truth was always too strange to believe. Who would think a quirk as powerful as this could be passed down through generations, storing up enough energy in order to defeat a semi-immortal man hell bent on destroying the world? Yeah… Random mutation it was then.
Aizawa Sensei straightened his back, like he had prepared for this exact response, he probably had.
“There is a saying my husband says often, too often actually now I’m thinking about it but it goes something like ‘Shota, an old man once told me that secrets are only secrets if you don’t want them to be discovered.’ Granted it was about the new cat I brought home the other day that I hid in the study, nevertheless problem child, I feel like it applies to you. Which probably seems ridiculous to yourself seeing as it must be incredibly important and you would never tell it to me on your own free will.”
“Present Mic said that?”
Aizawa Sensei raised an unimpressed eyebrow at his response. Understandable, it was just that he didn’t want to reply, didn’t want to confirm or deny anything his teacher had said. It was true, in a way, what he had said about secrets not really being secrets if you want them to be discovered, because no matter how scared it made him feel, that’s truly what Izuku wanted.
It wasn’t something he could explain, not really. There was a strong desire to bare naked, all these secrets and lies that he had woven around himself like armour, each lie poorly stumbled through and each truth carefully hidden worn like chainmail that had dug into his soft flesh and now had embedded themselves there. It was Izuku’s own special brand of torture. The desire to shed himself of this burden plagued his every waking day, seeped into his dreams at night and tainted them into nightmares that followed him from his bed. It was exhausting. He wished he could tell someone. He couldn’t.
“I have made a decision Midoriya, I will not let you run yourself into the ground. This was a curtesy more than anything, I hope you forgive me but you must know I am doing the right thing.”
And with that his teacher stood up. There was no room for debate as the walls had already closed in, pressing tightly against the metal rings surrounding the bed, making them creak and ache and moan in protest. Loud beeps pierced through the now empty room yet they could not be heard, drowned out by the deafening roar exploding from his eardrums, it felt final, it felt like the end. He could feel hands press into him but he could not feel himself move, he was going to die here, with strange hands touching him because he had forgotten how to breathe. He was useless.
They didn’t hear her. The mother. She was screaming, the sort of scream that shredded your airway but came from somewhere otherworldly. It was the sort of scream that Pandoras box would have made when opened for the first time, a scream containing all the suffering and pain in the world, devoid of hope.
They didn’t hear her, not really, of course they heard the screams, it was hard not to. But they didn’t hear the repetitive whispering in between: “quirkless, she’s quirkless, my baby girl, help my baby girl.” It was like a prayer, a hopeless prayer to no one.
But Izuku heard, he heard her.
He heard what was hidden inside those mournful whispers, ‘my child is quirkless, no one will save her’. He understood, with every fibre that stitched his body together, he understood. He would save her.
///
Shota had had enough. He wasn’t giving up on the kid, gods no. He was however, giving up on trying to help him when he knew for certain that he only had a third of what the hell was going on. And he knew just the person to interrogate.
All Might was sitting in front of him. The number one Hero didn’t look so heroic, not when he was twiddling his thumbs.
“I want to make one thing clear All Might. I don’t care what you’ve got going on with my student, but he is my student. You and I both know the potential that’s practically thrumming in this boys’ veins and yet how on earth am I supposed to nurture this if I don’t know what’s happening with my student!”
His own face remained passive even when All Might’s winced. There was no time to mess around, especially not now. He had been having frequent talks with Midoriya this last month, he had thought, albeit foolishly, that they were making progress. But there was always something that was always unsaid. When quirks were mentioned, most specifically, when Midoriya’s quirk was mentioned, it was like there was this invisible force that had creeped up the young boy’s spine and curled tightly around his neck, keeping whatever secret forcibly down.
He felt bad, for about five seconds after he informed Midoriya of what he was planning to do, he didn’t believe in going behind peoples backs or not respecting them and their wishes but damn, this kid was going to die. That was it, he will be dead in five years max if whatever this was, wasn’t sorted out.
Shota opened his mouth to kindly inform the number one Hero of this fact, the fact that this child’s hero streak would cost him his life before he could reach his late teens.
Then, All Might deflated.
No, not deflated as in deflated in horror, in defeat. His shoulders didn’t curl in on themselves, his spine didn’t bend in shame, he deflated.
Like a balloon, a fucking fun sized kid’s balloon.
It was, in all honestly, incomprehensible.
What the fuck.
Oops he might have said that out loud.
“I, I have a lot to explain but first I need you swear to me, swear to me that this will not leave this room, will not leave your mouth unless it’s to me or young Midoriya.”
Shota’s spine straightened automatically as he leaned towards the skeletal man on the sofa in front of him.
///
Izuku woke up with the sound of a door closing.
All Might.
Aizawa Sensei.
Shit.
They both looked awful, Aizawa Sensei’s jaw seemed to be locked in place, his hands were bunched into fists but his shoulders were slouched and his eyes half lidded like normal, as if he was trying to appear calm. All Might on the other hand, looked awful. His clothes hung loose on his body like they normally did when he was in his normal form but this time, they seemed to simply seemed to swallow him whole.
Wait.
All Might was in his civilian form.
“Wait! Before you speak problem child.”
Aizawa Sensei put his hand out in a stopping motion.
“The fact that this secret was kept from me and wasn’t promptly told to me at the beginning of this school year is simply appalling, but it pains me to admit that it is understandable. Still, we have missed out on valuable training time.”
Aizawa Sensei glanced nastily towards his mentor; the Number One Hero cowered in response.
“I have been training you as if you have had your quirk since you were four years old, not for a few months and yet Midoriya, you seem to have defied all expectations for such a situation. Anyone less devoted would have lost their life.”
The last part was thrown away from him and purposely pointed towards All Might.
“Not to even mention the weekly meetings we’ve been having. The fact you were quirkless opens up a whole can of worms, no, don’t look at me like that, I don’t care if you were quirkless, or if you still are, I am a Hero, I understand quirkless discrimination has risen in violence and hatred in the last years, now I know your background, we can actually make some real progress.”
“no”
It wasn’t as much of a whisper than it was a confession, and it was said so softly that he could pretend he never said it at all.
“No?”
Izuku’s hands clenched weakly on the blanket in front of him, his thumb making calming circles on the soft fabric.
“I- I don’t, I mean, just, just because you’re a hero, doesn’t mean anything it, it doesn’t mean anything, not to someone who is quirkless, it, it means nothing.”
He was pretty sure he was crying; he couldn’t really breathe through his nose and his cheeks were wet, that normally meant you were crying right?
“Young Midoriya”
All Might had whispered his name, everyone was whispering now, too scared to damage this fragile revelation that Izuku had thrusted upon them.
“What do you mean by that Midoriya?”
Izuku could barely see his eyes were leaking so much, how could he respond to that? How could he lay down the moments of his life that he’d kept close to his chest, the moments that woke him up with a jolt most nights, the moments that followed him as he laughed with his friends in a Hero school with no quirkless people in it.
“Please, help me understand.”
Aizawa Sensei had closed the gap, he was kneeling by the bed this time so now he was eye level, not a towering figure but an illusionary gesture of equality. But Aizawa Sensei had spent months showing Izuku that he was trustworthy, so he would tell them.
And Izuku did tell them, he told them about his childhood and the discrimination and the hurt and the pain and the fear. He told them how helpless he was, how no one would aid him. He told them the particular story of how he very nearly died and it went like this:
It was a hot day, he had one of his mother’s hair bands pushing his hair out of his face because he was looking down at the ground and he needed a haircut soon. He was looking for bugs, more specifically, he was looking for those small jumping spiders. They were so tiny but they were so quick and he was so envious of them, of how they were able to escape at a moment’s notice, away from any danger and pain. He had spent too long looking and now it was getting dark. He was lucky he had stayed around the boundary of the woodland area so finding his way to the path was easy.
That’s when things started to go wrong. It happened fairly quickly, one minute he was strolling along and the next he was being held close. Not a safe sort of close, a painful close, it was difficult to breathe because the arm surrounding his ribs was pressing too tightly. There was another kid with him too, tucked in the folds of the other arm. They both shared a look, a wild sort of feared look one does when something confusing and painful is happening but suddenly, in that moment all he could think of was that girl had the brightest eyes he’d ever seen.
Then the Hero came. It was an old Hero, nearing his retirement, his name was Light Beam and he could cause temporary blindness, concentrate energy to a single laser and make the air around him warm. Izuku knew all of this because he researched him when he got home later.
This Hero, Light Beam, seemed to have been chasing this Villain for a while, apparently this villain was partial to hostage negotiations and took quite a lot of fun in making Hero’s choose which hostage to save. The Villain had a quirk which let him find out basic information about a person through touch and gave this information to the Heroes and let them decide.
He was only 11, still naive that he would be saved. It swiftly disappeared after the Hero chose to save the girl. Why did he? Well, because Izuku was quirkless.
Yes.
In that moment in time, Izuku’s life had infinitely less meaning than the girls whose eyes shone brightly, because he was quirkless.
He was worthless he told them.
Worth less than everybody else.
He told them that he was just lucky there was another hero in the area to save him, who wasn’t aware of what he was.
He told them that his mother didn’t let him out for a week.
///
Jesus fucking Christ.
That was all that was going through Shota’s mind. The amount of abuse this kid put up with was ridiculous, it felt fake, unreal, unimaginable, but it was true. The kid had no reason to lie, no reason to exaggerate the truth. The kid went through torture, that’s what it was, torture.
All Might moved into his vision and towards a sobbing Problem Child, he watched on as the two embraced, a problem child indeed, in fact, it didn’t even begin to cover it. There would be a lot of ripping back walls, ripping back expectations and trauma. It was going to be a lot but it was going to work, it had to. He knew it would all be okay, he just had to make sure Midoriya knew it to.
///
A nurse had walked in, he didn’t quite see her due to All Might and the greatest hug they were sharing, but her small kitten like heel could be heard tapping on the cold floor of the hospital room despite the loud sobbing the two were doing.
“ahem”
Reluctantly they both unhooked themselves from each other, looking sheepishly towards the soft looking woman. She smiled kindly.
“Okay darling, let me just check your burns, your bones in your legs have set nicely, you can thank Recovery Girl for that, but the burns will need to be healed with creams for a while before any quirk can be used on them, you were in and out of consciousness for a while if you remember, that was because you had about several small fractures on both legs and one clean break on your left, you’re lucky it was a clean break.”
“Burns?”
He didn’t realise he had been burned but when he looked down at his newly exposed legs, he could see patches of salve covering up dark skin.
“How?”
He muttered but immediately feeling foolish, of course he was burnt, he ran into a burning building. A deep blush crawled its way onto his face.
She smiled, not in a mean way, but reassuringly as she picked up his file.
“It says here; injuries were caused when patient entered a burning building, a wooden beam collapsed onto patient causing a complete fracture on the left leg and partial fractures on both. Burns were also sustained, covering 30% of skin on left leg, 10% on right as well as multiple burns to be observed across the rest of the patient’s body.”
She put the file down and drew the bed sheets across his body again.
“You were incredibly lucky young man, even luckier that you managed to save the little girl as well.”
She turned to look at the two Heroes in the room.
“Right, well, please do not distress my patient out anymore, I will be back in a few hours with your dinner, it’s about time you start eating real food again.”
When she exited the room, it was silent again.
There was a tension in the room, lesser than before but still it crowded the small hospital room with its presence. Izuku knew what it was, the singular question that was on everyone’s minds, unhelpfully prodded into existence by the Nurse’s earlier statement:
“Even luckier that you managed to save the little girl as well”
He knew he would have to tell them why; it would be easier now; they would sympathise when they connected the pieces together. He felt like a neat little puzzle really, which was weird because he was anything but that. But he could see it, from their perspective, what he seemed to be: trauma from childhood has manifested itself in self-destructive ways because he was never taught that his existence was worth any sort of value.
They were right, of course. But it felt so more twisted, so more intertwined with his entire being that it felt lesser to phrase it like that, to see it like that. He was that yes, but he was also someone who pushed forward, who helped those in need, who forgave and forgave, not because he was a traumatised child but because he strived to be good, to be a piece of comfort in a world that is sharp and unforgiving for those who do not fit. He was everything good and bad in the world just like Aizawa Sensei and just like All Might.
“There was a mother, she, she was screaming”
Izuku looked away and out of the hospital window, it was probably around four in the afternoon so the sun wasn’t hanging low yet but it would soon, this was his favourite part of the day, where the sun still held a strong grip in the sky, shining fiercely over the creatures that it kept warm. It was a glorious thing really, the sun, he could tell why people worship it.
“It was, I know I should have told someone, I know that. But, but all I could think of was this child and she was quirkless, I heard her say she was quirkless and no one else heard her and I know it was stupid, so stupid of me to do but you don’t understand, in that moment I wasn’t the Hero Deku, I was the child Deku. I, it was too close to me I couldn’t, I couldn’t not. I had to, I had to save her, for me, I had to save her for me.”
He didn’t bother looking back, he blinked a few times, tears that had finally overflown their boundary spilled out onto his cheeks and into the corners of his mouth. He had done it for himself, of course he meant to save the girl but really, the girl was him, the girl was every time no one came to save him, he was her and she was him. He would do it again in a heartbeat.
He told them that, that he’d do it again. The statement cracked through the air, creating an opening for the two Heroes to speak. He expected reprimands, lectures of why that was forbidden, not:
“Yes, we know problem child, but it’s our responsibility to make sure you know how to survive whilst doing it.”
Izuku smiled a tiny bit as he looked back towards them, tears still fresh on his face.
“Thank you”
He whispered, softly, gently, it was full of relief and hope, it was tentative and small but it was all he could give right now. Aizawa Sensei seemed to know, he always understood the small subtleties of words, of pauses and things left unsaid, he was good like that. All Might on the other hand still looked like he was going to keel over so he beckoned the older man over for a hug.
“I’m sorry”
He spoke.
“I know”
And Izuku did know, no doubt he would receiving multiple gift packages tomorrow, always a joint effort between his mum and All Might, it was almost scary how in sync they were.
A knock on the door.
“Aizawa Sensei? Can we come in?”
Ah, his friends, wow, his friends, isn’t that crazy, friends?
The door opened and it felt like a new beginning, a deep breath. Izuku smiled as Ochako bounced her way in, class 1A in tow.
“Deku!! I’m so glad you’re alright!!!”
Fin-