Chapter Text
Izuku awoke with a painful gasp. Before his brain could quite register that he was awake and safe, his body threw itself off his mattress. His gasps formed a mist that hung stubbornly in the air as he battled to slow his breathing and heartbeat to a manageable level.
"Izuku?"
His mother's voice followed behind the weak glow of an old lighter as she gently pushed back the thin, ragged curtain that separated his small sleeping nest from the rest of the hastily constructed shack they called home.
She shuffled in and flicked on the string of fairy lights that they had nailed into the wood behind his pillows way back when he was a little boy. The little stars did very little to penetrate the frigid darkness, but their glow was comforting. They glinted off the drying streaks of tears on his cheeks as he unconsciously shifted towards her reassuring warmth.
"Oh, honey."
The sympathy and pain in his mother’s voice was unbearable. It struck a dagger of guilt through his heart to think he had worried her so.
Izuku scrubbed a hand down his face, trying to remove any evidence of distress.
"Did I wake you?" He whispered, his voice still clogged from tears and rough from interrupted sleep.
"It's fine," she murmured reassuringly as she clicked off her lighter and returned it to the pocket of her oversized, frayed cardigan. Izuku let her pull him into her arms and bury her face in his curls. She rocked them gently, soothing him. "I'm here, sweetheart."
He felt the strangling threat of tears once again. He never wanted to be away from his mother, yet that was exactly what would happen in a little more than a year’s time after the Exam. There was no way he would ask her to forfeit her place at Unit A to follow him into the wilderness when he inevitably failed.
He would be alone.
And being alone was a death sentence.
He clung to his mother’s arm and hid his face in her shoulder. She tightened her grip on him protectively.
They both knew that this would be his last year living in the township. The Exams were open to everyone already residing within the camp, as well as to anyone aged fifteen in the other local towns too - U.A. wanted the best and brightest among their ranks, after all. There was no way that he could compete with that many people who would have prepared their whole lives just to have the opportunity to compete for a place at the famous U.A. School of Justice.
The stray tears that dropped into his hair betrayed exactly what he had suspected: she didn't believe he'd pass either.
"I'm sorry, Izuku," she had whispered, back when he was four-years-old and the first Exams were announced. They were meant to control the population of Unit A and ensure only the best and brightest remained. Izuku had intellectual promise, but it was clear even at that early age that he certainly was not physically cut out for a test of strength.
It was almost humorous – his condition was something so easily remedied before The Ending. Plenty of children had been diagnosed with asthma, which was, for the most part, very easily treated with medicines and inhalers. For the first few years in the New Society, this remained the case, but resources became more and more scarce, until eventually even the most basic medicines became a myth. Something very rarely seen, even on the black market. Something people would fight for. Something people would die for.
When Izuku was four-years-old and Unit A announced their fitness requirements as part of their citizenship test, he knew he was living on borrowed time.
An awful thing for a four-year-old to realise, and a devastating thing for his mother to have to confirm.
Despite that realisation, life continued as usual for the next ten years (the occasional uprising and riot aside.) Unit A was famous: a town that everyone wanted to join. A town that was just slightly ahead of everyone else's game. Although modern medicine was now all but extinct, their healer Chiyo became a master in all forms of herbal and homemade cures; it was by no means ideal, but it was better than the “nothing” that other towns had to manage with. Even their buildings were comparatively well-constructed, with a generator that still provided a rationed amount of electricity everyday thanks to the Kaminari family who had donated their skills to the rest of the populace. And, as their crowning jewel, their education system had become so highly regarded that parents began to beg and barter for their children to join, for their children to get even half a chance of survival - and so the Exams began. Weed out the weak and bring in the strong.
Any town was better than the desolate wasteland of the old cities and suburbs, but UA was a shining beacon among them.
It was Izuku's home, and he desperately wished to stay.
He had tried bulking up and learning self-defence (in the form of scrapping with Kacchan) to try and better his chances, but every time he knew he'd choke and gasp for the rest of the evening with his mother terrified that this would be the asthma attack that finally finished him off. It hadn't yet, but he knew it eventually would in this harsh world of perpetual fighting and running.
It wasn't personal: that was just the way things were now.
Adults had to pull their weight. This took the form of combat or resource collecting. Even resource collecting often involved an awful lot of sprinting away from raiders and the Creatures. Izuku would struggle to do either, especially in cold weather like this.
He felt his mother stifle a yawn in his hair. He rubbed her arm reassuringly.
"It's late. You should go back to bed - I'm sorry I woke you."
His mother pushed him back by his shoulders and eyed him critically in the dim light of the string of stars behind his head.
"Don't apologise for needing your mother, Izuku.”
She gathered him up in her arms again and laid them both down in the blankets. She wrapped herself up behind him, but he felt her shiver slightly nonetheless. "Let's both get some sleep."
Izuku thought his cheeks would flush with the embarrassment of still needing to sleep with his mom behind him, but they didn't. He appreciated the comforting presence of his fairy lights and mother.They wrapped him in a warmth that he hadn't realised he needed.
"Night, mom," he whispered to her, giving her hand a quick kiss before wrapping it around his middle.
"Goodnight, sweetheart. I'll always be with you."
It was a lie, but a sweet one all the same.
***
Cold dawn silently skulked over the jagged gravestones that made up the remains of the distant city skyscrapers. Frigid sunlight seeped through the shadows like a whispered threat and pierced through the iron clouds onto the corrugated tin roofs of U.A. Crouching on the highest point, his red eyes slit against the rays, Katsuki Bakugou let out a frustrated huff.
He scowled and momentarily shoved his fingertips further into the thick fingerless gloves that adorned the palms of his hands to try and transfer a little heat into the numb digits, before shaking them back out to return to the challenge in front of him. 3, 2, 1. He clicked the stopwatch and started hastily pulling apart the 9mm in front of him, dropping the magazine, shoving back the slide… and so on until the weapon was completely disassembled. He then reconstructed it blindingly fast until it was restored to its full (rusted) glory. He slammed the button on the stopwatch and glared at it.
Not quick enough.
He did it again. And again. And again. Until a pair of heavy shoes crashed onto the roof behind him, causing him to fumble as the roof wobbled so violently that he almost lost his magazine off the side.
“Goddammit, Deku!” he growled, only just catching it with the tips of his fingers as he practically dangled off the side of the roof with only an ankle hooked around a loose pipe (serving as a chimney for the fireplace below) for purchase.
He could hear the little shit laughing and wheezing behind him.
“Yeah, yeah, don’t fucking die over there,” Bakugou grumbled as he pulled himself back up. He reassembled the gun in a flash, before finally turning to Izuku with a shit-eating grin and handing it to him, handle first. “You’re damn lucky this wasn’t loaded – I would say I could have mistaken you for a Nomu, but you’re way too ugly.”
Izuku traded the gun for a steaming tin cup, eyebrow raised. “Good morning to you too, Kacchan.” He greeted, smirking. Asshole. “Sleep well?”
“Shaddap, nerd,” he snapped. “Got your stopwatch?”
Deku reached into the deep pockets of his green overcoat and dangled the chain between his fingers, still smirking. They stared at each other for a silent second before simultaneously slapping the timer button and disassembling their respective weapons, their figures silhouetting in the rising sun and quick breaths solidifying and observing in the bleak morning air.
Izuku’s heart pounded, and his tongue peeked between his lips as he forced his fingers to move faster than they wanted to in the cold morning air.
“Ha! I win!” Kacchan’s grin was feral as he slapped his stopwatch half a millisecond before Izuku, who rocked back with a defeated grimace.
“Again!” Izuku demanded.
“Best of fifty?”
“A hundred.”
Kacchan barked out a laugh, resetting his watch. “Oh ho, feeling competitive today are we, nerd?”
His teasing turned into an outraged yell as Izuku set off his stopwatch with no warning and started the race, not taking his determined eyes off his childhood friend and eternal rival.
They drew even, fifty each. Before Kacchan could demand a tiebreaker, they were interrupted by his mother’s screeching below.
“Katsuki! Katsuki!”
“What the fuck do you want, hag?” he shouted back down to her.
“Don’t you shout at me, Katsuki Bakugou, I am your mother!”
“Then stop shouting at me!” Kacchan shouted right back. Izuku shook his head at their interaction and set about picking up both their empty mugs. He pocketed his glock.
“Morning, Mrs. Bakugou!” Izuku called politely over the side. Her demonic expression immediately took on a soft, angelic shine in the sunlight.
“Izuku! How are you, dear?”
“I’m doing well, thank you!”
“And you’re still wearing the hat I made you, sweet boy!”
Izuku rubbed a hand over the top of it self-consciously, “The warmest I’ve ever had, Mrs. Bakugou!”
“Oh, barf,” Kacchan mimed vomiting over the side of the roof, aiming directly for his mother’s hair. “Go and play favourites somewhere else.”
Mrs. Bakugou grinned demonically once more. “Maybe if you weren’t so late for school, Katsuki, I wouldn’t have to drag myself all the way out here to…”
“All the way out here? This is our goddamn roof!”
“… remind you of the same goddamn routine you’ve been doing for the last ten years!”
“Alright, alright, woman,” he growled. “Fucking hell, sure you’re the town’s seamstress and not its fucking rooster?”
He cut off her retort by hopping off the other side of the roof and dropping to the mud below with a thud.
Izuku peered over the ledge.
“Uh, sorry about him, Mrs. Bakugou,” he called down with a wave, “Thanks for coming to get us.”
Mitsuki’s soft smile re-materialised on her harsh face. “That’s no problem, Izuku. You have a lovely day!”
“You too!” he called over his shoulder as he hopped off the roof to follow his friend, skipping down two tall storage containers of rice on his way down rather than weather the jarring impact from the direct fall.
He jogged to catch up to Kacchan who was already slouching a fair distance ahead, his hands buried deep into his dark brown winter coat. Izuku rolled his eyes; Kacchan looked like an actual delinquent. Who was he even trying to impress? Everyone here had known him since he was in diapers and ran all across camp playing All Might vs. Nomu with Izuku.
They walked shoulder-to-shoulder towards the wooden hut that served as their classroom in silence. They had less and less to say to each other the closer the exam date crept. Sometimes, it was like Kacchan was mourning his loss before he had even gone.
In this world, the luxury of having someone to miss you was a privilege to be treasured.
***
The year dragged on.
Despite their morning routine continuing like clockwork, Kacchan gradually became increasingly distant and cruel, surrounding himself with those who would follow his lead, never ask questions and not contest his intellectual prowess – Izuku sat very firmly outside of that definition. Frankly, he was more grateful for that by the day, even if it left him ostracised and cast out by the only humans left in existence to tolerate his presence.
One day, as he was helping herd a few runaway pigs back to their pens on the far side of the township, he found himself thrown to the ground by an ear-splitting blast. As he blinked mud out of eyes that were dazzled by the accompanying flash, roaring laughter beat against his blown-out eardrums.
Shaking off the spinning, Izuku finally stumbled to his feet, coughing raggedly in the lingering smoke. Kacchan’s figure, tossing a lighter in his palm, became clearer as the smoke dissipated.
“Stupid Deku,” he grinned, soot smeared on one side of his face, “always getting in my way!”
Izuku grabbed the equally dazed pig by the rope around its neck before it could sprint away in fear again.
“Kacchan, what the hell are you doing? Every Nomu for miles around must have heard that!”
Kacchan sneered. “And I’ll kill every last one of those freaks with my explosives – I’ll show them not to mess with U.A.’s strongest fighter!”
Izuku started to pace forward, but the dead-weight of his terrified pig kept him in place. “Kacchan, this isn’t a game!” he scolded incredulously, muffling a cough behind his hand again as the smoke dug its claws into his throat, trying to steal his breath. “You could kill someone!”
Kacchan’s eyes turned wild, “Oh, I could kill someone, Deku?” he scoffed. “Bit rich coming from the biggest liability in the township. If you really want to ‘save U.A.', you’d be better off taking a swan dive from my roof and spare us all the burden of covering your weak ass.”
It was vicious, even by Kacchan’s standards. Hurt ripped through Izuku’s heart at his words, infuriating tears catching in the corners of his eyes before the sentence was even completely finished.
Even Kacchan looked momentarily stunned by his own vitriol before his lips curled scornfully again, “No point in wasting anyone’s time by taking the exam. You might as well save everyone the trouble.”
And with that, he stomped off, mud caking the sides of his boots as his feet slammed into the puddles on the way back into the main settlement, leaving Izuku stunned. Eventually, the pig nuzzled his hand, making him jerk back with shock, as if it recognised the glum tears running down its (temporary) human’s face as being symptomatic of a wound deep in his core.
Izuku sniffed the tears back and petted the pig’s head.
“Don’t worry,” he said to the pig, as if it could suddenly comprehend complex Japanese, “I couldn’t let him live with how he would feel if I actually jumped. I’ll just prove him wrong!”
And if the declaration at the end of his sentence was said with a determination that didn’t quite sound genuine, and if his gritted smile didn’t quite reach his eyes… well, at least the pig didn’t call him out on it.