Chapter Text
Sun sets on an otherwise normal day, by Midoriya’s standards. He goes to school, says something stupid, and Katsuki Bakugo ruins his day. He walks home with a heavy heart. The usual. Midoriya’s eyes will always settle just above Bakugo’s head, at the things no-one else can see. Honestly, it’s a habit he needs to get out of, Bakugo just assumes that Midoriya is ignoring him.
Worse, actually. Midoriya is staring at the date Bakugo will die, staring at the day his heart will cease to beat, and neurons won’t fire anymore. It’s crazy, all things considered. Some days, that date is a relief. Days like today, it’s gripping Midoriya with a fear so strong that he can hardly breathe. It’s a Tuesday, and if the date above Bakugo’s head is anything to go by, this could be the Tuesday.
This fear is rendered irrelevant as he rounds the corner, and sees the slime villain under the bridge, as his original fear is replaced by white hot terror. Fight or flight kicks in, and there’s absolutely no surprise when his instincts turn to ‘freeze’. Izuku has been called a lot of things in his life, but one keeps cropping up. Coward.
At this moment, he understands why.
He barely recognises the fact that slime tastes absolutely disgusting, as he struggles against the villain, the sludge oozing into his mouth, covering his nose. No matter what he tries, he can’t even begin to get out of this. Arms weaken, legs struggle, and lungs fail. He’s losing consciousness, and quickly. If he were to see the date above his head, there’s no doubt it would read 5:12, Tuesday the 3rd of March. He is going to die without ever meeting his idol, without making his mother proud, without proving Bakugo wrong. All his fight, all his determination, all his dreams, all out the window. As his consciousness creeps from him, he barely catches sight of the hero before him, eyes sliding closed as the fight leaves his body.
___________________________________
Distantly, Izuku can feel the ache in every part of his body. That, however, is the least of his worries. Not important. Nope. Nothing could be more important than the fact that All Might is stood in front of Izuku. All Might. The number one hero. And he’s holding a water bottle, filled with the slime. Rather belatedly, Izuku realises that that’s the villain that All Might has in the bottle. Not only is he alive, he’s standing in front of his idol. You know, the one he was convinced he was going to die before he met. The idol who just saved Izuku’s ass. His jaw drops, and he can’t quite control his shock enough to close his mouth. Scrambling to pick up his notebook, he flips to the next page, about to beg for an autograph, when his eyes fall on the exact page All Might has already signed.
Despite all the joy, and the exhilaration of almost dying, Izuku’s eyes flick up. The counter reads “5:54”, and absolutely nothing else. Izuku’s stomach twists, the implications of that hitting him almost as hard as the villain did. Five fifty four - that could be today, tomorrow, the day after. His mood sufficiently soured, he reluctantly brings his eyes back down to meet All Might’s. His idol tries to leave, with the villain in tow, but it really isn’t Izuku’s fault when he ends up grabbing All Might’s leg.
Really, who could blame him?
Hindsight, they say, is a wonderful thing, and Izuku echoes this sentiment as he hurtles through the air, clutching the leg of the Number One Hero. Despite wanting to curl up and die from embarrassment, he could quite literally die from hitting the ground at an extremely high velocity. All Might doesn’t seem too surprised, leaving Izuku to wonder if he guessed this would happen, but when they land, Izuku is quick to find his feet. Apologies spill from his mouth, stuttering and red cheeked.
“I am so sorry- I just.. I couldn’t.. too good of a situation, you see?”
“Young boy. I am sure you know how dangerous that was right now.” All Might’s voice is disapproving, and Izuku’s skin crawls at the thought.
“All Might, I’m.. I’m quirkless, can I still be a hero?” He blurts, his feelings expressed before he meant to. All Might’s look of shock tells him everything he needs to know. Heart sinking, he turns away, directing his eyes at the floor, at the scorch marks on the autographed notebook.
“My boy.. It may seem impossible but…” All Might heaves a sigh, the kind that makes Izuku think of fathers, and his friend’s dads. “I..” He coughs lightly, hiding it behind his hand, but Izuku’s eyes catch the blood left on the corner of his mouth. Before the number one can get another word out, he vanishes in a cloud of steam.
Izuku screams. He isn’t proud of it, but he screams. Is it 5:54? Has he spent that much time with All Might? Is All Might somehow dead? Is it Izuku’s fault? Did Izuku kill All Might?
It turns out no, Izuku did not somehow kill his idol. All Might has a biological timer and when it wears out, he transforms from a man as large as hope itself, to a tiny scrawny man that Izuku bets he could beat in a fight. Simple, right? When Izuku looks at him, he sees the exact same spirit shown by All Might, shrouded in embarrassment and shame, as if somehow he ought to be ashamed of this form.
A sigh, again, reaches Izuku’s ears. “My boy, this must not go anywhere, you hear me?” After waiting for Izuku to nod his approval, All Might lifts his shirt to reveal a gnarled scar on his stomach. Izuku’s hairs stand on end, seeing the symbol of peace look so.. frail. It sets everything on edge, and Izuku is suddenly seized by the fear that someone will stumble upon All Might in such a fragile state, or even worse, a villain may capitalise on the chance to damage All Might while he’s vulnerable.
“Izuku, these scars are a constant reminder of how physically weak I am, and how damaged I am after throwing my all into hero work for the better part of my life. This is the damage I have received, with a quirk as strong as mine. I have refined my body, for years, and I still almost lost my stomach,”
Izuku inhales sharply, feeling the breath catch on his throat as he takes it in.
“I cannot encourage you into this world as a quirkless young boy, whilst knowing what it did to my body.”
Izuku’s head is still reeling as he walks home, eyes stinging with bitter tears. All Might didn’t owe Izuku anything, yet he walks home feeling somehow cheated. If anyone else had told Izuku that, it wouldn’t sting nearly half as bad. His idol, looking him in the eyes and telling him he was useless if quirkless, well that stings.
He’s so wound up in his own emotions that he hardly notices the flurry of activity as he crosses the road. The only thing to snap him out of his head is a piercing scream, of pure, unadulterated terror. If the sound itself wasn’t enough to wake him up, the ringing in his ears sure would.
And the voice he hears. The voice that makes his blood run ice cold in his veins. It’s Bakugo’s voice, and it’s loud and angry as it usually is. That’s not what sends that awful chill down his spine, it’s the fact that beneath all of Bakugo’s anger and fury, there’s a hint of fear.
___________________________________
Beneath the surface, where Bakugo lets his anger show, there’s a flurry of fear and uncertainty, rearing its ugly head too close for Bakugo Katsuki to like. He’s never scared, and why should he be? With everything he’s come up against so far, he is always the best. At this moment, with the slime villain’s tendrils oozing over his face and nose, he doesn’t quite believe it anymore. The feeling of being suffocated is new to him, and he vaguely wonders if this is what drowning feels like, surrounded by something that takes away his ability to breathe and function. For all of his attacks, for all of his ugly, desperate attempts to get the fuck out of this thing, Bakugo Katsuki is utterly, unfathomably weak.
He is weak, and it’s showing, in front of all these pro heroes, because he can’t get out of this slimy bastard’s grip. No matter what cheap, underhanded punch he tries to throw, it doesn’t work. What use is brute strength when the person you’re fighting can simply withstand it? His breathing is weak, and he realises how dangerous this is for him. He cannot win this fight. His first real encounter with a villain, and he’s helpless, succumbing to a bastard who may as well be made of mucus.
The pro heroes can’t quite help, and as Bakugo watches them struggle, he feels his consciousness drifting from him, his grip on reality fading slowly but surely. Even as he watches what very may well be the end of him, he can recognise the spark of bright green hair anywhere. Of course Deku would be here, the place is teeming with heroes. What Bakugo Katsuki does not expect, however, is Deku’s shitty little schoolbag to be thrown at him, and to hit the villain square between the eyes. He certainly does not expect All Might to follow Deku, and he absolutely doesn’t expect to watch All Might kick the villain’s ass.
He watches Deku out the corner of his eye, watches him get berated for not listening to the heroes, for running in to the fray without a plan, and he watches Deku cry his stupid eyes out on the floor. Just another Tuesday.
“Hey! Kid!” The voice is familiar and gruff - one of the heroes who tried saving him. And failed. Bakugo looks up at them, narrowing his eyebrows in frustration. A pro hero who couldn’t even save him does not have the right to chew him out for using his quirk the way he did.
“Nice work there, you held him off quite well!”
For the second time today, Bakugo is utterly bewildered.
___________________________________
To tell you the truth, Izuku Midoriya has been thoroughly humbled. After his grilling by the pro heroes, he received another grilling from the Number One hero, about not throwing himself into situations like that, especially given that he’s quirkless. The embarrassment stings, hot and painful, but he knows that it’s needed. It was incredibly stupid of him to go rushing to Bakugo’s aid like that, but he really can’t explain why he did it.
Or he can, it’s just that no one would believe a word that came out of his mouth. The downside of his quirk is that it’s a hell of a lot easier to say he’s quirkless, than it is to explain his quirk. Bakugo’s timer read Tuesday, and so far Izuku has not had to worry about that. Today, however, the worry was so overwhelming that Izuku took matters into his own hands, doing everything he could to stop that stupid ticking time bomb from being right. So as All Might stands and lectures Izuku, all he can think is that he did the right thing. All he can think about is the little display above his head, above Bakugo’s, and above All Might’s. If Izuku knows when people will die, he can do his damndest to change it.
“Young boy, that was.. Incredibly dangerous. I want to be mad at you, but I can’t, as it is truly my own fault we ended up in this situation.” All Might pauses, looking over at the back of Kamui Woods. “The heroes today would not have had to intervene if it weren’t for my own clumsiness.”
“But I must ask, Midoriya, why did you do that?” He asks, and Izuku would be lying if he said he couldn’t tell that All Might was curious. It’s an unusual sight, a quirkless boy rushing in to attack the very villain that tried to kill him just hours previous.
Izuku’s sigh is heavy, the realisation that he has to continue his white lie to All Might is uncomfortable, and mixes bitterly with the shame from earlier. “Once I realised what was happening I couldn’t just stand and watch, and once I started running I just.. I suppose I couldn’t stop.” He pauses, pondering over his words. “My body just moved on its own, I guess,”
All Might chuckles, nodding at him. “Well, at the very least, don’t do that again. Get yourself home, young boy.”
Izuku is quick to nod, and even quicker to obey him, stumbling over his feet as he evacuates the scene. If he wasn’t rushing home to stop his mom from worrying, he was definitely rushing to get out of the way of Bakugo. Once he’s been checked over, Izuku doesn’t doubt that Bakugo has some anger he’d like to alleviate, and he’s not interested in being on the receiving end of that. Lost in thought as he walks, he thinks about how weird of a day this otherwise normal Tuesday has become.
Well first of all, he almost died. Then he met his idol. He’d say the altercation with Bakugo was abnormal, but then he’d be lying to himself. He met All Might, the star-studded hero taking the number one spot in Japan, beating all odds and coming out on top in every situation he entered. Izuku has idolised him since he knew what heroes were, and swore to his mother, to Bakugo, to everyone he ever met, that when he gets a quirk he’s going to grow up to be the strongest hero in Japan, just like All Might. Then his quirk came in and dashed those hopes, leaving him quirkless on paper, and weak in Bakugo’s eyes. And today, his idol, who shaped both |zuku’s life and bedroom decor, told him he would never become a hero whilst quirkless. The words had stung coming from a doctor’s mouth, and stung him again coming from his classmate, and stung him even more when they came from his own lips. He had uttered the words, quiet and painful, but with an air of understanding, and with the tiniest flicker of hope that he could be wrong. The worst pain of all, however, was his mother’s silence when he asked her, followed by the quietest apology a son would ever hear from his mother. When he thinks back to that day, he almost chokes on his bitterness - almost suffocates on his desperation. Then more than ever, Izuku needed his mom to say anything else.
And then he tried to save Bakugo’s life. The very same Bakugo that tried to ruin most of Izuku’s life, and Izuku had put that on the line to save him. He had thrown himself at the villain who had almost killed him in an attempt to save the life of the most selfish and unlikeable person he had ever met. Izuku had looked the pro heroes in their eyes and thrown himself into the fray, even after seeing how little damage they had done to the villain. His stomach flips at the thought, embarrassed that he didn’t even take that into account. And now he’s here, stumbling back home on weak legs and tired eyes. He’s so caught up in his thoughts, letting his legs carry him back home on autopilot. Izuku has been through a lot today, and honestly, he just wants to catch his mom up. If anything, he wants a break.
“Young boy!”
And god, no matter how tired he was, Izuku would recognise that voice anywhere. His eyes shine as he looks up at the Symbol of Peace, still taller than him even out of his hero form.
“What you did earlier was incredibly..” All Might pauses, as if to try and think of the right word to use. “Foolish of you. Brave, and incredible, but foolish.
“And I know that as the number one hero, and the hero at the scene, I should be telling you off, but I can’t.”
Izuku freezes, looking up at him again, seemingly in disbelief.
“In fact, I see a lot of myself in you, if I am to be honest with you. And in your actions especially. You told me you couldn’t stop yourself, and you just had to help?”
Izuku nods, not really grasping where All Might is going with this.
“My quirk.. It was passed on to me, by someone who saw the same potential in me. It’s the only known quirk that can be passed on to others, willingly. And, I’d like to give it to you, Izuku.”
He’s pretty sure his heart stops.