Work Text:
middle school
“What happened to you?”
Shinsou didn’t normally talk to the other kids in class. They usually didn’t answer, refusing to talk to him for fear of his quirk, and he wasn’t interested in them, anyway.
However, when Takeshi showed up to class with large, frayed holes in her uniform, curiosity got the better of him.
She glared at him for a moment, and just as Shinsou assumed she wasn’t going to respond: “It was my soulmate echo, okay?”
“Your soulmate’s quirk destroys school uniforms?”
“It’s obviously some kind of cloth-related quirk,” she said, exasperated. “Like Best Jeanist has! Maybe Jeanist has a secret son, and I’m going to be his soulmate!” She grinned, luxuriating in the fantasy. “What do you think of that?”
“I don’t actually care,” said Shinsou, attempting to return to his manga.
“Whatever,” she said. “What’s your echo, anyway? Some creepy villain thing?”
“I don’t have one,” he said firmly. He hadn’t experienced so much of a glimmer of another person’s quirk — just his own, fluttering around his mind on the rare occasions when someone talked to him, demanding to be used — and he was thirteen years old now.
Soulmates and echoes had emerged not long after quirks did, binding people together on a level that was deeper than romance and friendship. Most people manifested their echo around eight years old, their soulmate’s quirk emerging when they were emotional or distressed. It doubled as a method of finding your soulmate, as you could narrow it down to people around the same age as you with the appropriate quirk.
“You don’t have one?” she said, mildly surprised. Lack of echoes, like lack of quirks, had become increasingly rare in their generation. “I guess that’s not surprising. Just as well, huh?”
“Yeah,” he said, and genuinely meant it. It was bad enough the universe had handed him an undesirable quirk that prevented him from making friends and caused his own parents to reject him. There wasn’t any reason why an additional person should have to deal with that shit.
He had no problem taking care of himself. He didn’t need a soulmate. He didn’t need someone to support and comfort him, someone he could talk to who would understand him. He didn’t even allow himself to fantasize about it, because it was pointless.
He’d make it to UA and become a great hero completely under his own power, and no one would doubt him ever again.
UA entrance exam, Hero Department practical
He was fucked. He was so, so fucked. He was way more fucked than he had expected.
Shinsou knew that the entrance exam for UA’s hero department involved some sort of practical test, but he had hoped that there might be an aspect of it that involved fighting other people, something that would allow him to show off the potential usefulness of his quirk. Of course, he wouldn’t be so lucky — it had to be robots. With his quirk rendered useless, he was nothing more than an ordinary, marginally athletic quirkless teenager trapped in a nightmare labyrinth of combat robots and superhumans.
He hid in an alcove, narrowly dodging flying parts from an exploding robot, hoping to catch his breath and form some kind of a plan. If he could somehow take down at least one robot, he’d at least feel like less of a washed-out failure. He couldn’t bear the thought of some official looking at the big fat zero next to his name.
He had to at least try. He ran out into the open once more, and it wasn’t long before one of the robots was barreling his way.
He rooted his stance firmly, eyes searching for any kind of weakness. There had to be one, right? Something a kid without a combat quirk could exploit? Those shitty bastards wouldn’t really just design a test that was impossible to pass without a combat-oriented quirk, would they?
He knew in his heart that they would, and that just made him want to succeed out of pure spite.
The robot drew closer. He wanted this so fucking bad he could taste it, and it was overriding his good sense.
A completely unknown power surged through his arm, rippling through his muscles and exploding with kinetic energy.
The robot was reduced to rubble, parts flying everywhere, startling everyone nearby.
Shinsou stood there for a moment, completely stunned, with no idea what had just happened, before he realized that it wasn’t just the robot that had been shattered — it was his arm, as well.
“Fuck,” he muttered, looking at his arm, twisted unnaturally, fighting the urge to throw up and pass out at the same time. He dragged himself away from the action, back to the alcove, collapsing painfully onto the concrete as his vision wavered. What had he done…? If he had simply punched the robot and broken his arm in a fit of rash stupidity, that’d be one thing, but it had somehow exploded. Did it actually have some kind of weakness he just happened to find?
His vision tunneled as the pain from his arm intensified. As he lost consciousness, his last thought was that if he died here, he would at least not have to look at the inevitable rejection letter.
He felt as though his eyes were only closed for a second before he was jolted back into reality again. A tiny, ancient woman with a kindly face was standing over him, still splayed out among the rubble of the entrance exam. “There, is that better?”
Shinsou, his mind a haze of confusion and incredibly deep exhaustion, moved his arm experimentally, and was surprised to find it basically intact. “What’d you…”
The old woman was holding out a cherry red lollipop. “Are you injured anywhere else?”
“No, I don’t think so,” he said, carefully sitting up. She had a healing quirk, he supposed. It wouldn’t be responsible for UA to run exams this intense without someone like that on staff.
His shame and frustration over the exam came flooding back to him all at once, his face screwing up in a scowl.
“You need to be more careful with your quirk, young man,” she said. “With that kind of power, you can’t afford to be reckless like that.”
“That wasn’t my quirk. Mine is nothing like that.” Now that the immediate crisis had subsided, he had so many questions about what had just happened.
“Ah, your echo, then. That would explain it.”
“I don’t have an echo.”
The old woman apparently found this comment funny. “Are you sure, young man?”
“Yes, I’m sure!” he protested, not even understanding why he was so angry. “I’ve never had an echo in my life.”
“Well, some people are late bloomers,” she said, patting him on the shoulder. “Here. Take this lollipop. It’ll help restore your strength. I need to attend to the other children.”
Shinsou snatched the lollipop with more force than he intended. After all, his personal failings weren’t really this lady’s fault. “Yeah, thanks.”
An echo. He had an echo? If there was a more plausible explanation for suddenly manifesting a quirk that wasn’t his own, none was coming to mind.
He was fifteen. If that actually was his echo, than his soulmate had left him waiting, alone, for seven years, purely for the sake of violently sabotaging him during the UA entrance exam.
Of course. Of course his soulmate hated him as much as he hated himself. Why would he expect anything else?
UA Sports Festival, first year
Shinsou didn’t know much about Midoriya Izuku, but he thought that his bright smile as he waved to his friends in the stands told him everything he needed to know. Just another privileged hero course kid, probably born with a splashy quirk that had him set for life, probably surrounded by a loving family and friends. Shinsou couldn’t wait to surprise him with his quirk, to see how he felt when a gen-ed student shattered his dreams. After all, anyone already in the hero course had countless more chances. Shinsou had just this one.
Midoriya wasn’t looking at him like someone who wanted to fight, though. He was looking at him more like a puzzle that needed solving.
“Are you going to fight me or stand there?” Shinsou called out, getting into stance, not about to be thrown off his game so easily. “What are you waiting for?”
“I have to know,” Midoriya said, quietly, almost too quiet to hear.
That was weird enough that it actually did throw Shinsou off his game, enough so that he nearly forgot to activate his quirk, despite having the perfect opening. Even after he witnessed Midoriya’s eyes going blank and his hands unclenching, he still felt unsettled. What did that mean? Was this somehow a trap? How could it be, with Midoriya under his control?
“Walk out of the arena,” he commanded, his chest tight.
Midoriya promptly spun on his heel and took a few strides towards the boundary line.
Then stopped.
Shit. Shinsou fought down his panic. “Keep walking. No, run. Run out of the arena as fast as you can.”
The mental bond between them shattered like overheated glass. A searing pain shot up Shinsou’s arm, momentarily blinding him with shock as he dropped to one knee in agony. He looked down at his hand to see one of his fingers utterly destroyed, twisted and bent like his arm had been at the entrance exam.
That echo, that fucking echo, was sabotaging him again.
“It’s you! It actually is you!”
The excited cry from Midoriya caused Shinsou’s head to snap up. He had one hand clutched around his wrist, and even from across the arena, Shinsou could see one of his fingers mangled in the exact same way.
Shinsou’s heart dropped as he realized the implications.
“Oh fuck me,” he said under his breath.
Present Mic was saying something over the loudspeakers, but Shinsou wasn’t listening. This privileged hero hopeful was his fucking soulmate. And his quirk involved mangling his own body. And somehow, his echo seemed determined to stop Shinsou from achieving his dreams.
What the fuck.
Shinsou did the only reasonable thing he could think of when confronted for the first time by the person with whom he shared a cosmic bond, the person who was supposed to be by his side for the rest of his life:
He ran as fast as he could in the opposite direction.
He ran clean out of the arena and into the school buildings. He ran through the endless halls of UA, pushing past the few students and spectators who were inside while matches were going on, ran past classrooms and stairwells, until he had reached the boys’ bathroom located furthest from the stadium, mercifully devoid of occupants. He slammed the door behind him, bracing himself against it.
He wasn’t surprised when he was nearly knocked over by Midoriya barging in behind him.
“Shinsou,“ he said, breathlessly. “We need to talk about what just happened —“
Shinsou whipped around and regarded the boy from the hero course, his wide-eyed and pleading expression, his shattered finger providing the tell-tale evidence, and he felt all of his anger and jealousy and loneliness spilling out of him uncontrollably. Without thinking twice, he used his good arm to slam Midoriya against the bathroom wall. “Where were you?”
There was fear in his eyes. “What do you mean?”
“I mean where were you? All those years, I thought I was alone. And then you finally decide to show yourself and it’s to break my fucking arm during the entrance exam? What the hell, Midoriya?”
“I broke your… oh, no…”
“After that, the Sports Festival was my only chance to transfer into the hero course, and you decide to fuck that up too?” He let Midoriya go. “Are you actually a soulmate or some kind of curse?”
“I’m sorry!” Midoriya collapsed onto the floor, tears pouring from his face. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry I wasn’t there, and I’m sorry I broke your arm! I didn’t mean to!”
Shinsou looked down at the blubbering mess, his hatred for himself outweighing his anger at Midoriya. His first interaction with his soulmate, and he’d assaulted him and made him cry. He was such a fucking asshole.
“You know what?” he said, rubbing at his tired eyes. “Forget this. Forget me. Forget this ever happened. Goodbye, Midoriya.” He turned toward the door, but was stopped by a terrifyingly firm grip on his wrist.
“No,” said Midoriya, kneeling on the floor, his tears suddenly replaced by an expression of sheer determination.
“We wouldn’t be the first people in the world to try to ignore all the soulmate crap and walk away,” Shinsou said, attempting unsuccessfully to shake Midoriya’s grip. “Trust me, you don’t want this.”
“Yes, I do.”
Shinsou’s anger bubbled up all over again. “No, you don’t. Do you even know what my quirk is?”
“Yeah, it’s a mind control quirk. Ojiro told me about it, but I already pretty much knew from the echoes.”
The echoes — he wasn’t even thinking about that. He didn’t want to know how many times Midoriya had accidentally brainwashed someone because of him. “So then you know why you shouldn’t even be talking to me,” he said, hoping to scare Midoriya off. “I could brainwash you right now. I could make you hurt yourself, or your friends. I could turn out to be some shitty villain. That’s what everyone thinks.”
“You won’t,” said Midoriya, with complete conviction, standing up, still grasping Shinsou’s wrist as though his life depended on it.
“You can’t possibly know that.”
“I do,” said Midoriya, “because you’ve only ever used your quirk to help me.”
“…What?”
“Back in grade school, I… didn’t exactly have a quirk. It’s a long story, I’ll explain later. Anyway, I got bullied a lot, almost every day after school. Until my echo came in.” Midoriya’s eyes were shining. “Whenever Kacchan or the others would get up in my face, I’d just have to get them to respond to me, and suddenly — they’d just go blank. I could tell them to go away, and they would. Eventually they gave up.”
Shinsou swallowed hard, his mouth dry.
“Your echo protected me, Shinsou. That’s how I know you’re not going to hurt me. Because you were my hero.”
Midoriya released Shinsou’s wrist, allowing his uninjured hand to fall back against the fabric of his gym clothes, clenching itself so tightly that his nails were digging into his palm. Shinsou had no idea how to process what was happening, much less what to say to Midoriya’s expecting face. Before he could stop it, he was laughing, a harsh, hysterical laugh.
“I don’t know what I was expecting,” he said. “I really don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this.”
Midoriya laughed nervously. “This wasn’t really what I was expecting, either,” he admitted.
“Disappointed yet?” It was a challenge.
“No, not at all,” Midoriya said with heartbreaking sincerity. “Are you?”
“I’m a lot of things right now, but disappointed isn’t really one of them.”
Midoriya’s smile lit up brighter than the flickering fluorescent lights overhead. Shinsou’s heart leapt into his throat.
“My quirk,” said Shinsou, speaking carefully, “…it actually helped you?”
“Yeah!” Midoriya’s unbridled enthusiasm nearly knocked Shinsou backwards. “I was so happy when my echo turned out to be so cool! You’re going to be an awesome hero!”
“…I…”
“You’re going to have to tell me all about how it works! I’ve already got a bunch of notes I’ve taken from when the echo activated, but there’s a bunch more I don’t know yet. You’re trying to get into the hero course, right? When you do, we’ll be able to help each other out all the time!”
“When…?” Everything was happening so fast that Shinsou could barely keep up. “I’m probably not going to be transferred after that.”
There was that fiery determination again. “We’ll figure it out,” said Midoriya. “I know that you’re already a hero. We just need to make everyone else see.”
Their eyes met, and for the first time in his life, Shinsou felt understood.